Early American Opinion of the French Revolution.-So close were the ties between the two nations that it is not surprising to find every step in the first stages of the French Revolution greeted with applause in the United States."Liberty will have another feather in her cap,"exultantly wrote a Boston edi-tor."In no part of the globe,"soberly wrote John Marshall,"was this revolution hailed with more joy than in America....But one sentiment existed."The main key to the Bastille,sent to Washington as a memento,was accepted as "a token of the victory gained by liberty."Thomas Paine saw in the great event "the first ripe fruits of American principles transplanted into Europe."Federalists and Anti-Federalists regarded the new constitution of France as another vindication of American ideals.
The Reign of Terror.-While profuse congratulations were being exchanged,rumors began to come that all was not well in France.Many noblemen,enraged at the loss of their special privileges,fled into Germany and plotted an invasion of France to overthrow the new system of government.Louis XVI entered intonegotiations with his brother monarchs on the continent to secure their help in the same enterprise,and he finally betrayed to the French people his true senti-ments by attempting to escape from his kingdom,only to be captured and taken back to Paris in disgrace.
A new phase of the revolution now opened.The working people,excluded from all share in the government by the first French constitution,became restless,especially in Paris.Assembling on the Champs de Mars,a great open field,they signed a petition calling for another constitution giving them the suffrage.When told to disperse,they refused and were fired upon by the national guard.This "massacre,"as it was called,enraged the populace.A radical party,known as "Jacobins,"then sprang up,taking its name from a Jacobin monastery in which it held its sessions.In a little while it became the master of the popular convention convoked in September,1792.The monarchy was immediately abolished and a republic established.On January 21,1793,Louis was sent to the scaffold.To the war on Austria,already raging,was added a war on England.Then came the Reign of Terror,during which radicals in possession of the convention executed in large numbers counter-revolutionists and those suspected of sympathy with the monarchy.They shot down peasants who rose in insurrection against their rule and established a relentless dictatorship.Civil war followed.Terrible atrocities were committed on both sides in the name of liberty,and in the name of monarchy.To Americans of conservative temper it now seemed that the Revolution,so auspiciously begun,had degenerated into anarchy and mere bloodthirsty strife.
Burke Summons the World to War on France.-In England,Edmund Burke led the fight against the new French principles which he feared might spread to all Europe.In his Reflections on the French Revolution,written in 1790,he at-tacked with terrible wrath the whole program of popular government;he called for war,relentless war,upon the French as monsters and outlaws;he demanded that they be reduced to order by the restoration of the king to full power under the protection of the arms of European nations.
Paine's Defense of the French Revolution.-To counteract the campaign of hate against the French,Thomas Paine replied to Burke in another of his famous tracts,The Rights of Man,which was given to the American public in an edition containing a letter of approval from Jefferson.Burke,said Paine,had been mourning about the glories of the French monarchy and aristocracy but had forgotten the starving peasants and the oppressed people;had wept over the plumage and neglected the dying bird.Burke had denied the right of the French people to choose their own governors,blandly forgetting that the English government in which he saw final perfection itself rested on two revolu-tions.He had boasted that the king of England held his crown in contempt of the democratic societies.Paine answered:"If I ask a man in America if he wants a king,he retorts and asks me if I take him for an idiot."To the charge that the doctrines of the rights of man were "new fangled,"Paine replied that the question was not whether they were new or old but whether they were right or wrong.As to the French disorders and difficulties,he bade the world wait to see what would be brought forth in due time.
The Effect of the French Revolution on American Politics.-The course of the French Revolution and the controversies accompanying it,exercised a pro-found influence on the formation of the first political parties in America.The followers of Hamilton,now proud of the name "Federalists,"drew back in fright as they heard of the cruel deeds committed during the Reign of Terror.They turned savagely upon the revolutionists and their friends in America,denounc-ing as "Jacobin"everybody who did not condemn loudly enough the proceed-ings of the French Republic.A Massachusetts preacher roundly assailed "the atheistical,anarchical,and in other respects immoral principles of the French Republicans";he then proceeded with equal passion to attack Jefferson and the Anti-Federalists,whom he charged with spreading false French propaganda and betraying America."The editors,patrons,and abettors of these vehicles of slander,"he exclaimed,"ought to be considered and treated as enemies to their country....Of all traitors they are the most aggravatedly criminal;of all villains,they are the most infamous and detestable."