In the spring of 1793 the French Republic appointed Edmond Charles Genet, familiarly called “Citizen Genet,” Minister to the United States.  He was a young man, not more than thirty, of very quick parts, who had been brought up in the Bureau of Foreign Affairs, had an exorbitant idea of his own importance, and might be described without malice as a master of effrontery.  The ship which brought him to this country was driven by adverse winds to Charleston and landed him there on April 8th.  He lost no time in fitting out a privateer against British mercantile vessels.  The fact that by so doing he broke the American rule of neutrality did not seem to trouble him at all; on the contrary, he acted as if he were simply doing what the United States would do if they really did what they wished.  As soon as he had made his arrangements, he proceeded by land up the coast to Philadelphia.  Jefferson was exuberant, and he wrote in exultation to Madison on the fifth of May, concluding with the phrase, “I wish we may be able to repress the spirit of the people within the limits of a fair neutrality.”  If there be such things as crocodile tears, perhaps there may also be crocodile wishes, of which this would seem to be one.  A friend of Hamilton’s, writing about the same time, speaks in different terms, as follows: 

He has a good person, a fine ruddy complexion, quite active, and seems always in a bustle, more like a busy man than a man of business.  A Frenchman in his manners, he announces himself in all companies as the Minister of the Republic, etc., talks freely of his commission, and, like most Europeans, seems to have adopted mistaken notions of the penetration and knowledge of the people of the United States.  His system, I think, is to laugh us into war if he can.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Irving, V, 151.]

Citizen Genet did not allow his progress up the coast to be so rapid that he was deprived of any ovation.  The banquets, luncheons, speech-makings, by which he was welcomed everywhere, had had no parallel in the country up to that time.  They seemed to be too carefully prepared to be unpremeditated, and probably many of those who took part in them did not understand that they were cheering for a cause which they had never espoused.  One wonders why he was allowed to carry on this personal campaign and to show rude unconcern for good manners, or indeed for any manners except those of a wayward and headstrong boy.  It might be thought that the Secretary of State abetted him and in his infatuation for France did not check him; but, so far as I have discovered, no evidence exists that Jefferson was in collusion with the truculent and impertinent “Citizen.”  No doubt, however, the shrewd American politician took satisfaction in observing the extravagances of his fellow countrymen in paying tribute to the representative of France.  At Philadelphia, for instance, the city which already was beginning to have a reputation for spinster propriety