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Updated: June 28, 2025
Frenchmen had never ceased to lament the loss of colonial possessions in North America. From time to time the hope of reviving the colonial empire sprang up in the hearts of the rulers of France. It was this hope that had inspired Genet's mission to the United States and more than one intrigue among the pioneers of the Mississippi Valley, during Washington's second Administration.
It was not any defect in Genet's arrangements that frustrated his plans, but his inability to raise money and the uncertainty of his position as the agent of a government which was undergoing rapid revolutionary change. News that the French Republic had declared war against Great Britain reached the United States early in April, 1793.
Genet had been transmitted to the French government. During the time which elapsed before an answer could be returned Genet's proceedings had been such as to call for all the prudence, foresight, and moderation of Washington.
But even while his recall was being decided, before he knew of it himself, and long before his successor came, Genet's folly produced more trouble than ever, and his insolence rose to a higher pitch.
The rumor of Genet's threat first went abroad in August, and met him, while on a visit to New York, in the form of a statement in one of the public papers. The fact was thus established, notwithstanding the violent assaults made by Genet's partisans upon the integrity of Messrs.
Genet's plan was to raise in this country an army large enough to seize the Spanish possessions in Florida, and to reconquer Louisiana. For the reasons stated, Genet found the people enthusiastic in favor of his enterprise. The enthusiasm was intense. It crossed the Savannah, and found General Elijah Clarke, with his strong nature and active sympathies, ready to embrace it.
At the close of the year 1793, Jefferson, weary of endless contests with Hamilton, whom he accused, not without some justification, of constantly encroaching on his colleague's proper department, not wholly satisfied with the policy of the Government and perhaps feeling that Genet's indiscretions had made his difficult task for the moment impossible, resigned his office.
"The expedition, as you know, has been as much of a farce as Citizen Genet's commissions. But it has been a sad farce to me, inasmuch as it involves the honor of my old friend and Colonel, General Clark, and the safety of my cousin, Mr. Temple." "So you were with Clark in Illinois?" said the Baron, craftily. "Pardon me, Mr. Ritchie, but I should have said that you are too young."
He had been irritated and angered at every step, so much so that he even referred in a letter to Richard Henry Lee to the trial of temper to which he had been put, a bit of personal allusion in which he rarely indulged. "The specimens you have seen," he wrote, "of Mr. Genet's sentiments and conduct in the gazettes form a small part only of the aggregate.
It is not to be wondered at that at the moment Washington should regard a party swayed by the French minister and seeking to involve us in war as unpatriotic and dangerous. He even thought that one probable solution of Genet's conduct was that he was the tool and not the leader of the party which sustained him.
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