olution in France with
joy, but its terrible excesses, when they appeared, produced here the
same effect as in England, of alienating everyone conservatively
inclined. This included the mass of the Federalist party. On the
contrary, most of the Republicans, now more numerous, now less,
actuated partly by true insight into the struggle, and partly by the
magic of the words "revolution" and "republic," favored the
revolutionists with a devotion which even the Reign of Terror in France
scarcely shook. It was in consequence of this attitude on its part that
the party came to be dubbed "democratic-republican" instead of
"republican," the compound title itself giving way after about 1810 to
simple "democratic."

[Illustration: Portrait.]
John Adams
From a copy by Jane Stuart, about 1874, of a painting by her father,
Gilbert Stuart, about 1800--in possession of Henry Adams.

Hostility to England, the memory of France's aid to us in our hour of
need, the doctrine of "the rights of man," then so much in vogue, the
known sympathies of Jefferson and Madison, who were already popular,
and, alas, a mean wish to hamper the administration, all helped to swell
the ranks of those who swung their hats for France. A far deeper motive
with the more thoughtful was the belief that neutrality violated our
treaty of 1778 with France, a conclusion at present beyond question.
Politically our policy may have been wise, morally it was wrong.

The administration, at least its honored head, was doubtless innocent of
any intentional injustice; and it could certainly urge a great deal in
justification of its course. The form and the aims of the French
Government had changed since the treaty originated, involving a state of
things which that instrument had not contemplated. France herself
defied international law and compact, revolutionizing and incorporating
Holland and Geneva, and assaulting our commerce. And war with England
then threatened our ruin. Yet the pleading of these considerations in
that so trying hour, even had they been wholly pertinent, could not but
seem to Frenchmen treason to the cause of liberty. As to many
Federalists, trucklers to England, such a charge would have been true.

France was not slow to reciprocate in the matter of grievances. In fact,
so early as May, 1793, before the proclamation of neutrality could have
been heard of in that country, orders had been issued there, wholly
repugnant to the treaty