Third Estate.  On the other hand, Gouverneur Morris, who was then living in Paris, sympathized frankly with the King.  Nevertheless he was chosen to succeed Jefferson as the American Minister.  In notifying him of the appointment, Washington let him know that there had been objections.  “It was urged that in France you were considered as a favorer of the aristocracy, and unfriendly to its Revolution.”  Washington’s reminder that it was his business to promote the interest of his own country did not have any apparent effect on Morris’s behavior.  He became the personal agent of Louis XVI, and he not only received and disbursed large sums on the King’s account, but he also entered into plans for the King’s flight from Paris.  During the Reign of Terror which began in 1792, he behaved with an energy and an intrepidity honorable to him as a man; in general, however, his course tended to embroil and not to guard American interests.

In the face of the European coalition against revolutionary France, the principle of action was that announced by Danton,—­“to dare, and to dare, and without end to dare.”  Genet therefore went on his mission to America keyed to measures which were audacious but which can hardly be described as reckless.  By plunging heavily he might make a big winning; if he failed, he was hardly worse off than if he had not made the attempt.  To draw the United States into the war as the ally of France was only one part of his mission.  He was also planning to reestablish the French colonial empire, the loss of which was still an unhealed wound.  Canada, Louisiana, and the Floridas were all in his mind.  In Louisiana, France regarded conditions as being so favorable that Genet was instructed to make special efforts in that quarter.  Spain, which had entered the coalition against republican France, held the lower Mississippi.  Spain was therefore the common enemy of France and of the American settlements west of the mountains.  Ought not then those two republican interests to work together to expel Spain and to seize Louisiana?  Moreover, there was a belief, not without grounds, that the older States which formed the American union were indifferent to the needs and interests of the country west of the Alleghenies and would be more relieved than afflicted if it should take its destinies into its own hands.  Such considerations animated a group of Americans in Paris, among whose prominent members were Thomas Paine, the pamphleteer, Joel Barlow, the poet, and Dr. James O’Fallon, a Revolutionary soldier now interested in Western land speculation.  All were then ardent sympathizers with the French Revolution, and they entered heartily into the design of stirring up the Western country against Spain.  The project attracted some frontier leaders, among them George Rogers Clark, famous for his successful campaigns against the hostile Indians and the British during the Revolutionary War.  He was to lead a force of Western riflemen against the Spanish posts in Louisiana, and Genet brought with him blank brevets of officers up to the grade of captain for bestowal on the Indian chiefs who would cooperate.  The expenses of the expedition were to be met by collections which Genet expected to make from the treasury of the United States on account of sums due to France.