It is February 17th. Welcome to Episode 48 of History in a Year. Today, the United States is insulted on the world stage. To prevent a war with France, President John Adams sends three diplomats to Paris. But instead of peace talks, they are met by three shadowy French agents who demand a massive bribe just to open the door. When the American public finds out, the cry goes up: “Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute!” We watch as war fever sweeps the nation, the U.S. Navy is born, and the young United States prepares to fight its oldest ally.
STEPHEN:
Welcome to History in a Year: America’s First 250 Years.
LEAH:
Join us every single day as we journey from the Revolution of 1776 to the 250th anniversary of the United States.
STEPHEN:
You can find every episode and join the discussion at PointedWords.com. I’m Stephen.
LEAH:
And I’m Leah.
STEPHEN:
It is February 17th. Welcome to Episode 48. Over the last two days, we’ve looked at the domestic nightmare facing John Adams. But today, the crisis goes global.
LEAH:
We are heading to Paris. And to understand what happens there, we have to understand just how angry the French government was with the United States in 1797.
STEPHEN:
They were furious. And honestly, from their perspective, they had a right to be. France had helped us win our independence. We literally had a treaty of alliance with them.
LEAH:
But when Britain and France went to war, George Washington declared America neutral. And then, we signed the Jay Treaty with Great Britain, which basically gave the British favorable trading rights.
STEPHEN:
The French government—which was now being run by a five-man executive group called the Directory—saw the Jay Treaty as a massive betrayal. They felt like America had stabbed them in the back and sided with their worst enemy.
LEAH:
So, the French Directory retaliated. They issued orders to their navy and to privateers to start hunting down American merchant ships.
STEPHEN:
It was open season. French ships were stopping American vessels in the Caribbean and the Atlantic. They were seizing the cargo, stealing the ships, and leaving American sailors stranded. By the time John Adams took office, the French had captured over three hundred American ships.
LEAH:
It was an undeclared war on American commerce. And back in Philadelphia, Alexander Hamilton and his “High Federalists” were screaming for blood. They wanted a formal declaration of war against France immediately.
STEPHEN:
But John Adams was a realist. He knew the United States military was practically non-existent. We had a tiny army, and our navy consisted of a handful of revenue cutters. We could not fight a superpower.
LEAH:
So, Adams decided to try diplomacy one last time. In the summer of 1797, he appointed a bipartisan peace commission of three highly respected men to go to Paris and negotiate a new treaty.
STEPHEN:
He sent Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, a staunch Federalist from South Carolina. He sent John Marshall, another brilliant Federalist from Virginia who would later become the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
LEAH:
And, as a peace offering to the opposition, he sent Elbridge Gerry, a Democratic-Republican from Massachusetts who was known to be highly sympathetic to the French Revolution.
STEPHEN:
Adams thought this trio—two Federalists and one Republican—would show the French that America was united in wanting peace.
LEAH:
The three Americans arrived in Paris in October 1797. They requested an official meeting with the French Foreign Minister.
STEPHEN:
His name was Charles Maurice de Talleyrand. And Talleyrand is one of the most fascinating, slippery, and corrupt figures in all of European history.
LEAH:
Talleyrand was a survivor. He had been a bishop before the Revolution, survived the Reign of Terror by fleeing to America, and then came back to become the Foreign Minister under the Directory. He was brilliant, but he was notoriously greedy. He used his office to amass a massive personal fortune.
STEPHEN:
And Talleyrand had absolutely zero respect for the United States. He viewed America as a weak, divided, second-rate country that could easily be bullied.
LEAH:
So, instead of meeting with the American envoys officially, Talleyrand kept them waiting. He let them sit in Paris for days, completely ignoring them.
STEPHEN:
Then, he initiated a back-channel shakedown. He sent three secret agents to the Americans’ hotel rooms to deliver his demands.
LEAH:
When President Adams later released the official reports of this incident, he redacted the names of these three French agents. He replaced their names with the letters X, Y, and Z. Hence, the “XYZ Affair.”
STEPHEN:
(For the record, their real names were Jean-Conrad Hottinguer, Pierre Bellamy, and Lucien Hauteval. But X, Y, and Z sounds much cooler).
LEAH:
Agent X arrived first. He sat down with the Americans and essentially said, “The Foreign Minister is very angry with your President’s anti-French speeches. Before negotiations can even begin, you must soothe his hurt feelings.”
STEPHEN:
Pinckney, Marshall, and Gerry asked how exactly they were supposed to do that.
LEAH:
Agent X laid out three demands. First, President Adams must issue a formal apology for insulting France. Second, the United States must grant a massive loan to the French government to the tune of 32 million Dutch guilders—about ten million US dollars.
STEPHEN:
And third? Talleyrand required a personal bribe. A “sweetener.” Specifically, fifty thousand pounds sterling, which was about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Just to open the door and talk to him!
LEAH:
The Americans were stunned. A ten-million-dollar loan? The entire federal budget of the United States was barely that much! And a personal bribe of a quarter of a million dollars?
STEPHEN:
Agent Y and Agent Z showed up over the next few weeks to press the issue. They badgered the Americans. They threatened them.
LEAH:
Agent Y told them, “You do not speak to the government of France! You are treating with people who have a vast amount of power, and you must pay for it!” He explicitly threatened that if they didn’t pay the bribe, the French fleet would ravage the American coast.
STEPHEN:
Finally, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney had had enough. According to the legend, when the French agents demanded an answer, Pinckney looked at them and shouted, “No! No! Not a sixpence!”
LEAH:
The Americans refused to pay a single penny in blackmail. John Marshall and Pinckney packed their bags and left France in disgust. Elbridge Gerry foolishly stayed behind, thinking he could still negotiate, but Talleyrand just ignored him.
STEPHEN:
Meanwhile, back in Philadelphia, John Adams was waiting for news. In March 1798, the dispatches from Marshall and Pinckney finally arrived at the President’s House.
LEAH:
Adams read the reports, and his blood ran cold. He realized that peace was impossible. The French had spit in America’s face.
STEPHEN:
Adams went to Congress and announced that the peace mission had failed. He asked Congress to immediately start funding a military buildup, including arming merchant ships to defend themselves.
LEAH:
But Adams didn’t release the dispatches right away. He knew that if he released the details of the bribery and the threats, it would instantly trigger a declaration of war from Congress. And he still wanted to avoid a full-scale war if he could.
STEPHEN:
And this is where Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans made a massive, humiliating political miscalculation.
LEAH:
Jefferson and his party loved France. They didn’t believe Adams. They thought Adams was lying about the peace mission failing just so he could build an army and establish a Federalist dictatorship.
STEPHEN:
The Republican newspapers demanded that Adams release the dispatches. They accused him of hiding the truth. They practically dared him to prove that the French had been unreasonable.
LEAH:
Adams probably smiled to himself. They were walking right into his trap.
STEPHEN:
In April 1798, John Adams handed the XYZ dispatches over to Congress. He let them read exactly what the French agents had demanded.
LEAH:
The reaction was nuclear. The Democratic-Republicans were stunned into silence. Thomas Jefferson was so embarrassed he basically fled the capital and went back to Monticello.
STEPHEN:
When the details leaked to the public, the entire country exploded in patriotic outrage. All the pro-French sympathy that had existed since the Revolution evaporated overnight.
LEAH:
A new rallying cry swept the nation. It was printed in every newspaper, shouted in the streets, and toasted in every tavern: “Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute!” STEPHEN:
It meant, “We will spend millions to build an army and a navy to fight you, but we will never pay you a single penny in blackmail.”
LEAH:
Overnight, John Adams became a national hero. Crowds gathered outside his house cheering for him. People started wearing black cockades on their hats—the symbol of the American Revolution—to counter the French tricolor cockades.
STEPHEN:
A new song called “Hail, Columbia” became an unofficial national anthem. Whenever it was played in theaters, audiences would stand up and cheer for ten minutes straight.
LEAH:
Riding this massive wave of popularity, Adams and the Federalist Congress went to work. The United States finally woke up and started building a real military.
STEPHEN:
In April 1798, Congress officially created the Department of the Navy. They authorized the completion of three massive, state-of-the-art heavy frigates: the USS United States, the USS Constellation, and the legendary USS Constitution—”Old Ironsides.”
LEAH:
Congress officially canceled all treaties with France. They authorized American naval vessels to capture armed French ships anywhere in the world.
STEPHEN:
And they decided to build a massive new provisional army. To lead it, they brought George Washington out of retirement at Mount Vernon. Washington agreed, but on one condition: He demanded that Alexander Hamilton be made his second-in-command and the actual field general.
LEAH:
So now, Alexander Hamilton has an army. The United States is arming its ships. The country is whipped into a patriotic frenzy.
STEPHEN:
The Quasi-War had begun. It was an undeclared naval war fought in the Caribbean and along the American coast. American ships were finally shooting back at the French.
LEAH:
But as the war fever grew, the Federalist party became paranoid. They looked at the French Revolution, they looked at the immigrants coming into the country, and they started to believe there were French spies and traitors everywhere.
STEPHEN:
They believed the enemy wasn’t just in Paris; the enemy was right here at home, writing for the opposition newspapers.
LEAH:
Join us tomorrow for Episode 49. The Quasi-War and the Alien & Sedition Acts. We watch as the fear of a foreign enemy pushes the United States government to turn against its own people. John Adams signs some of the most oppressive, unconstitutional laws in American history, making it a literal crime to criticize the President.
STEPHEN:
I’m Stephen.
LEAH:
And I’m Leah.
STEPHEN:
You can find every episode at PointedWords.com. And this… is our story.