England, but it was accepted as almost
a declaration of war by France. The attitude of the French government did
not become intolerable until after the retirement of Washington from the
presidency. John Adams, who succeeded Washington, belonged to the
Federalist party, which supported a strong central government with
aristocratic tendencies, and was opposed to the Republican party, which
sympathized with the French Revolution, and whose members were,
therefore, known also as "Democrats." Alexander Hamilton was the chief
spirit of the Federalists and Thomas Jefferson of the Republicans. The
intense Jacobinism of Jefferson's views may be judged from some of his
utterances, in which he even defended the terrible September massacres of
the French Revolution. Speaking of the innocent who perished he said: "I
deplore them as I should have done had they fallen in battle. It was
necessary to use the arm of the people, a machine not quite so blind as
balls and bombs, but blind to a certain degree. A few of their cordial
friends met at their hands the fate of enemies. * * * My own affections
have been deeply wounded by some of the martyrs to this cause, but rather
than it should have failed, I would have seen half the earth desolated;
were there but an Adam and an Eve left in every country, and left free,
it would be better than it is now."

The spread of these ideas shocked and alarmed conservative men, including
Washington himself, Hamilton and Adams, and led to measures of
restriction that were injudicious in their severity. The nation, however,
united as one man, irrespective of party, to resent the intolerable
insolence of the French, who assumed that they could crush America with
the same ease that they subdued the petty states of Italy and Germany.
The French Directory, which had succeeded to the Terrorists in the
exercise of power virtually supreme, was composed of men whose depravity
we have seen shockingly illustrated in the recently published memoirs of
Barras. Its foreign policy was managed by the vulpine Talleyrand, who is
accused by Barras of having extorted large sums of money from the lesser
States of Europe as the price of being let alone--although it is
extremely probable that Barras and others of the Directory shared in
these ill-gotten funds. Talleyrand tried to extort similar tribute from
America, demanding that a douceur of two hundred and fifty thousand
dollars be put at his disposal for the use of the Dire