France had been succeeded by an arrogant assumption of patronage and
almost of suzerainty menacing to our national independence. Such were the
clouds that rose above the ocean horizon, while the western sky was
darkened by the shadow of Indian hostility as yet far from contemptible,
and directed by able chieftains, like Little Turtle, more than a match in
the field and in diplomacy for most of their white antagonists. These
were the circumstances which made it apparent to Americans that the
Federal Constitution had come not a day too soon, which welded the nation
together like an armor-plate of steel against foes on every hand, and
taught the need of union as it never could have been taught amid
surroundings of prosperity and peace.

The French Revolution acquitted the American people of all obligations to
France. It was not to the French people, but to the French king that
Americans owed the assistance without which the war for independence
might have ended in calamity, and with the exception of the Marquis de
Lafayette the Frenchmen who were conspicuous as servants of the king in
aiding the American cause, were foes, not friends of the Revolution. The
French nation, as such, had no more to do with casting the power of
France into the scales on the side of America than the people of Russia
had to do with their czar's championship of Bulgaria. Had it been in the
power of Americans to have saved Louis XVI. from the scaffold, they would
have shown cruel ingratitude not to have interfered in his behalf. It was
a most arrogant and baseless assumption on the part of the French
democracy to claim credit for what the Bourbon king had done in sending
his army and navy to these shores and supplying funds to equip and
maintain our troops. It is true that the men he sent here were Frenchmen,
and that the money came from the pockets of the people of France, but his
will directed the troops, and diverted to American use the funds of which
France was sorely in need. To Louis XVI., to his great minister,
Vergennes, to Rochambeau and Lafayette, American independence was due, so
far as it was due to any human source outside of America. Rochambeau and
Lafayette both narrowly escaped the fate of their king, and Vergennes
died before the Revolution which would have made him either a victim or
an emigre.[1] So much for the claims of the first French republic that
America was ungrateful in not arraying its forces against embattled
Europe in