e United States government, and asked for his
reception as the representative of his nation. By these private
instructions, assuming that the American executive might not be
sufficiently compliant with the wishes of the French government, he was
authorized to employ, with the _people_ of the United States, the same
policy which had been so successfully used in Europe in producing
revolutions.

Genet was provided with blank commissions, both naval and military; and
while enjoying the flattering attentions at Charleston for several days,
he undertook to authorize the fitting out and arming of vessels in that
port as privateers, to depredate upon the commerce of England and other
nations at war with France. For this purpose he granted commissions,
enlisted men, and, by authority assumed by him under a decree of the
convention, he constituted all consuls of France the heads of courts of
admiralty, to try, condemn, and authorize the sale of all property
seized by the privateer cruisers sailing under Genet's _letters of
marque_. Two of these privateers, manned chiefly by Americans, soon put
to sea under the French flag, cruised along the Carolina coasts, and
captured many homeward-bound British vessels and took them into the port
of Charleston. The frigate in which Genet came to America became one of
these privateers, and proceeded northward toward Philadelphia,
plundering the sea on her way.

The French minister travelled to Philadelphia by land, and reached that
city on the sixteenth of May. His journey was like a continued ovation.
The whole country through which he passed, electrified by the French
Revolution, appeared alive with excitement; and the honors which the
republicans, in their antipathy to aristocracy, had been anxious to
withhold from Washington because it was man-worship, were lavished upon
the person of the representative of the French republic without stint.
On approaching Philadelphia he was met at Gray's ferry, on the
Schuylkill, by a considerable number of persons, who had come to welcome
him to the federal capital, and to escort him to his lodgings;[47] and
on the following day he received addresses from several societies and
from the citizens at large, who waited upon him in a body.

Meanwhile, _L'Embuscade_ had arrived at Philadelphia with a British
vessel, called _The Grange_, as a prize; and intelligence of Genet's
unwarrantable proceedings at Charleston in authorizing privateers had
been receive