But there was another side to the neutrality question even more full of difficulties and unpopularity, which began to open just as the worst of the contests with Genet was being brought to a successful close.  Genet had not confined his efforts to the seaboard, nor been content with civic banquets, privateers, rioting, and insolent notes to the government.  He had fitted out ships, and he intended also to levy armies.  With this end in view he had sent his agents through the south and west to raise men in order to invade the Floridas on the one hand and seize New Orleans on the other.  To conceive of such a performance by a foreign minister on the soil of the United States, requires an effort of the imagination to-day almost equal to that which would be necessary for an acceptance of the reality of the Arabian nights.  It brings home with startling clearness not merely the crazy insolence of Genet, but a painful sense of the manner in which we were regarded by the nations of Europe.  Still worse is the fact that they had good reason for their view.  The imbecility of the confederation had bred contempt, and it was now seen that we were still so wholly provincial that a large part of the people was not only ready to condone but even to defend the conduct of the minister who engaged in such work.  Worst of all, the people among whom the French agents went received their propositions with much pleasure.  In South Carolina, where it was said five thousand men had been enlisted, there was sufficient self-respect to stop the precious scheme.  The assembly arrested certain persons and ordered an inquiry, which came to nothing; but the effect of their action was sufficient.  In Kentucky, on the other hand, the authorities would not interfere.  The people there were always quite ready for a march against New Orleans, and that it did not proceed was due to Genet’s inability to get money; for the governor declined to meddle, and the democratic society of Lexington demanded war.  Matters looked so serious that the cavalry was sent to Kentucky, and the rest of the army wintered in Ohio.  It was actually necessary to teach the American people by the presence of the troops of the United States that they must not enroll themselves in the army of a foreign minister.

Nothing can show more strikingly than this the almost inconceivable difficulties with which the President was contending.  To develop a policy of wise and dignified neutrality, and to impress it upon the world, was a great enough task in itself.  But Washington was obliged to impress it also upon his own people, and to teach them that they must have a policy of their own toward other nations.  He had to carry this through in the teeth of an opposition so utterly colonial that it could not grasp the idea of having any policy but that which, from sympathy or hate, they took from foreigners.  Beyond the mountains, he had to bring this home to men to whom American nationality was such a dead letter that they were