America 767
shaken in their previous sympathies, and blamed the trouble with France on the
British orientation of American policy. As for the French, in these early months of
1798, at the height of the wave of revolutionary democracy in Europe, with revolu-
tion in Switzerland and Rome and insurrection expected in Ireland, they were in
no mood to be patient with an American government which its own people called
Anglophile and aristocratic. A little later, with the renewal of the European coali-
tion against them, Talleyrand and the Directory became more willing to deal with
the United States.
Against the possibility of real war with France, and over Republican objections,
Adams created a Navy Department and began to build a fleet. Hamilton and the
Federalist militants pressed also for an army. Taxes were raised, the small regular
army was enlarged, and generals were appointed, with Hamilton as commander
under Washington’s nominal leadership. What use such an army could be against
the French neither Adams nor the Republicans could understand; but Hamilton
and his followers began to call war with France inevitable and even desirable, and
to dream of campaigns in which, allied with Great Britain, they might invade and
liberate Latin America, in regions unspecified—perhaps Florida, the West Indies,
New Orleans, Texas, or Mexico—an ambition at other times most alive among
“democrats.” There was ground also to suppose that Hamilton, whose dislike of
Virginia was well known, and who had shown his taste for using martial methods
to teach respect for government in the Whiskey Rebellion, might employ his new
army against the agrarian Republicans in the south, or even to bring in what he
would consider a more workable constitution.
Matters were further inflamed by the Naturalization Act, the Alien Act, and the
Sedition Act, passed by Federalist majorities against Republican resistance in
- The first two reflected the belief that democratic ideas were an importation
from Europe. And, indeed, as noted in the last chapter, a remarkable number of
British and Irish radicals had come recently to the United States, and several were
editing very vociferous Republican newspapers. There were also thousands of
Frenchmen in the country. At a time when hostilities with France were actually in
progress, and when the French had shown their willingness to interfere in Ameri-
can politics, and enjoyed a large American following, a reasonable argument for
precautionary measures could have been made; but in truth the three Acts, like the
war spirit which they reflected, were conceived and executed for domestic political
purposes. No one was ever deported under the Alien Act, though many French
refugees were frightened away. About fifteen persons were indicted under the Se-
dition Act, and eleven convicted. There was no “sedition” in the United States, ex-
cept possibly for certain intrigues in the west which never came into the question.
At Quebec, Bahia, Vienna, Budapest, and Dublin the persons put to death for se-
dition had in fact conspired against the state. The same was true of many counter-
revolutionaries executed in France during the Terror. In the state trials in England
and Scotland, the accused had at least favored ideas incompatible with the British
constitution as then understood. The same was not true of those convicted of sedi-
tion in the United States. None of them had taken part in any conspiracy, and they
all accepted the form of government and the constitution. They differed with the
Federalists on how the government should develop, and they criticized its person-