The French Revolution
In 1789, the French Revolution broke out, sending shock waves through Europe and the United States. From 1789 to 1792, as the French overthrew their monarchy and declared a republic, many Americans supported the revolution. Democratic-Republicans seized on the French revolutionaries’ struggle against monarchy as the welcome harbinger of a larger republican movement around the world. To the Federalists, however, the French Revolution represented pure anarchy, especially after the execution of the French king in 1793. Along with other foreign and domestic uprisings, the French Revolution helped harden the political divide in the United States in the early 1790s.
French Revolution
The French Revolution (1789–1799) initiated a crisis in the European world and proved a challenge for early American foreign policy. This painting depicts The Storming of the Bastille in July 1789, which is widely regarded as the most iconic event of the Revolution.
At first, in 1789 and 1790, the revolution in France appeared to most in the United States as part of a new chapter in the rejection of corrupt monarchy. A constitutional monarchy replaced the absolute monarchy of Louis XVI in 1791, and in 1792, France was declared a republic. Republican liberty, the creed of the United States, seemed to be ushering in a new era in France. Indeed, the American Revolution served as an inspiration for French revolutionaries.
The events of 1793 and 1794, however, challenged the simple interpretation of the French Revolution as a chapter of unfolding triumph of republican government over monarchy. The French king was executed in January 1793, and the next two years became known as "the Terror," a period of extreme violence against perceived enemies of the revolutionary government. Revolutionaries advocated direct representative democracy, dismantled Catholicism, replaced that religion with a new philosophy known as "The Cult of the Supreme Being," renamed the months of the year, and relentlessly employed the guillotine against their enemies. Federalists viewed these excesses with growing alarm, fearing that the radicalism of the French Revolution might infect the minds of citizens in the United States. Democratic-Republicans interpreted the same events with greater optimism, seeing them as necessary to eliminating the monarchy and aristocratic culture that supported the privileges of a hereditary class of rulers.
The controversy in the United States intensified when France declared war on Great Britain and Holland in February 1793. France requested that the United States make a large repayment of the money it had borrowed to fund the Revolutionary War. However, Great Britain would judge any aid given to France as a hostile act.
Apprehensive of foreign entanglements and war, President Washington's official policy was one of neutrality. He knew that England and France, as well as Spain, would be quick to seize American resources and territory if given the excuse of war. His hope was that America could stay out of European conflicts until it was strong enough to face any serious foreign threat to its existence. Therefore, despite the mutual defense treaty the United States established with France in 1778, Washington and the Federalists declared that the French Revolution rendered previous agreements with France non-binding, and issued a formal Proclamation of Neutrality in 1793. Democratic-Republican groups, however, denounced neutrality and declared their support of the French republicans. The Federalists used the violence of the French revolutionaries as a reason to attack Democratic-Republicanism in the United States, arguing that Jefferson and Madison would lead the country down a similarly disastrous path.
Jay's Treaty
During the same period in the 1790s, the British Royal Navy began encroaching on United States neutrality by pressing sailors into service from American commercial ships. Although the majority of sailors impressed into the British navy were English citizens working for American merchants (and receiving higher wages and achieving better standards of living), this violation infuriated Americans; this was compounded by the fact that England had not yet withdrawn its soldiers from posts in the Northwest Territory, as required by the Treaty of Paris of 1783.
In response, President Washington sent John Jay to negotiate a treaty with England. Jay's Treaty, signed in 1794, guaranteed the removal of British forces from forts in the Northwest Territories, committed disputes over wartime debts to arbitration, gave the United States limited trading rights with British colonies, and restricted U.S. cotton exports. Although Jay's Treaty helped prevent war with England, it provoked an outcry among American citizens who saw it as a concession to England. The Senate narrowly ratified Jay's Treaty, but the debate it sparked solidified the Federalist and Democratic-Republican factions into full-scale political parties.
Undeclared Naval War with France
Jay's Treaty also angered France, which saw it as a violation of the Franco-American mutual defense treaty of 1778. By 1797, French privateers began attacking American merchant shipping in the Caribbean and harassing vessels on American trade routes.
The result was an undeclared naval war—what later became known as the Quasi-War—with France, most of which was fought in the Caribbean from 1798 to 1800. During the war, the United States slowly pushed the French out of the West Indian trade system. Ultimately, the Quasi-War strengthened the U.S. navy and helped expand American commercial networks in the Caribbean. This was a victory for the Federalists, who sought to establish an American merchant presence in the Atlantic. Eventually, the United States and France agreed to end hostilities and to end the mutual defense treaty of 1778—an act that President Adams considered one of the finest achievements of his presidency.
The Quasi-War had a negative affect on political relations between Federalists and Democratic-Republicans. Democratic-Republicans, dismayed by the Quasi-War, often voiced their opinions in political speeches and writings. In response, Adams and the Federalist Congress passed the unpopular Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798. Although these acts openly justified the suppression of dangerous "aliens," in reality, they restricted the free-speech rights of the opposing Republicans by censoring anti-Federalist writings. The Alien and Sedition Acts were widely unpopular and vehemently opposed by the American public.