At Charleston, Genet received an enthusiastic reception.  The Revolutionary commander, General Moultrie, who was then governor of South Carolina, entered so cordially into Genet’s plans that in his first dispatch home, Genet was able to say to his government that Moultrie had permitted him to arm privateers and had assisted the various branches of his mission in every possible way.  Such was Genet’s energy that within five days after his arrival he had opened a recruiting station at which American seamen were taken into the French service; he had commissioned American vessels as French privateers; and he had turned the French consul’s office into an admiralty court for which business was provided by the prizes that were being brought in.

After seeing under way all matters that he could attend to in Charleston, Genet moved on to Philadelphia, and received on his way thither such greetings as to give to his journey the character of a triumphal progress.  Meanwhile, L’Ambuscade, the French frigate which had brought Genet to Charleston, was proceeding to Philadelphia, taking prizes on her way and sending them to American ports.  In Delaware Bay she captured the Grange, an English merchantman lying there at anchor, and took this vessel with her to Philadelphia as a prize.  As Genet neared Philadelphia on May 16, L’Ambuscade gave notice by firing three guns, at which signal a procession was formed to meet Genet at Gray’s Ferry and escort him to his lodgings.  He found awaiting him a letter from George Rogers Clark, which gave an account of his plans for the invasion of Louisiana and the capture of New Orleans, and which announced his readiness to start if he were assisted by some frigates and provided with three thousand pounds sterling to meet expenses.  Genet received reports from other agents or friendly correspondents in the Spanish territory, and so active was he in forwarding the objects of his mission that on June 19 he was able to write to his government, “I am provisioning the West Indies, I excite the Canadians to break the British yoke, I arm the Kentukois and prepare a naval expedition which will facilitate their descent on New Orleans.”

These claims were well founded.  Genet did, in fact, make an effective start, and had he been able to command funds he might have opened a great chapter of history.  George Rogers Clark was the ablest and most successful commander that the frontier had yet produced, and such was the weakness of the Spanish defenses that had his expedition been actually launched as planned, the conquest of Louisiana might indeed have been accomplished.  It was not any defect in Genet’s arrangements that frustrated his plans, but his inability to raise money and the uncertainty of his position as the agent of a government which was undergoing rapid revolutionary change.