America 765
sented themselves, their candidates, their opponents, and the issues in terms of the
struggle raging in Europe. For Federalists, Jefferson was a Jacobin, an atheist, a
libertine, a leveller, and almost a Frenchman. Adams was the friend of order, talent,
and rational liberty. For the Republicans, Adams was a monocrat and an aristocrat
who longed to mix with English lords and ladies; and Jefferson the upholder of
republican principles. An electoral circular put out by the Republican Committee
of Pennsylvania explained the choice. It was “between the uniform advocate of
equal rights among citizens, or the champion of rank, titles and hereditary distinc-
tions;... the steady supporter of our present republican constitution; or the warm
panegyrist of the British Monarchical form of Government.”^29 That the bland Vir-
ginian was a Jacobin, or the irritable Boston lawyer an Anglomaniac, were about
equally fantastic; but such was the atmosphere of debate.
The “Corruption of Poland”
The French Directory took the Jay treaty, along with Monroe’s ambiguities and his
recall, to mean that the United States was now virtually allied to Great Britain.^30
Indeed the British were of somewhat the same opinion; the new treaty with the
United States, as already noted, was one of the few matters for encouragement
mentioned in the address opening Parliament in 1795. As Grenville remarked to
Rufus King a little later, in 1798, at a time when Britain had no allies on the Con-
tinent, he wished that Europe had shown “half the energy” of the Americans
against “the infernal spirit of atheism and modern philosophy.”^31 The French also
concluded from the debate over the Jay treaty, not without evidence, that the
United States government did not enjoy the entire confidence of its own people.
The Directory began to do more officially what Genet had done so largely on his
own initiative. Secretly, with Collot’s mission, it explored the possibilities for a
separate republic west of the Alleghenies. Publicly, the new minister to Philadel-
phia, Adet, under instructions from Paris, interfered in American political affairs;
as the election of 1796 approached, Adet made speeches advising the Americans
to avoid the displeasure of France by electing a true patriot and friend of the great
Republic—Thomas Jefferson. With reason, and counselled by Hamilton, Washing-
ton at this moment reshaped his Farewell Address; he urged Western Americans
to remain in the Union, and all Americans to keep enthusiasm for foreign powers
out of their domestic politics.^32
29 A facsimile of the election circular is included in N. E. Cunningham, The Jeffersonian Republi-
cans, 1789–1801 (Chapel Hill, 1957), 112.
30 For the present section, in addition to works previously cited: S. Kurtz, The Presidency of John
Adams: The Collapse of Federalism, 1795–1800 (Philadelphia, 1957); M. J. Dauer, The Adams Federalists
(Baltimore, 1953); E. W. Lyon, “The Directory and the United States,” in American Historical Review,
XLIII (1938), 514–32; J. M. Smith, Freedom’s Fetters: The Alien and Sedition Laws and American Civil
Liberties (Ithaca, 1956).
31 See above, p. 576; and Great Britain: Hist. MSS. Comm., Manuscripts of J. B. Fortescue Pre-
served at Dropmore, 10 vols. (London, 1892–1927), IV, 272–73.
32 F. Gilbert, To the Farewell Address: Ideas of Early American Foreign Policy (Princeton, 1961),
123–34.