horror with which it affected most of the Federalists.  They were already looking to Jefferson as their leader, and Jefferson, though at the time Secretary of State under Washington, was secretly encouraging them, and was playing a very discreditable part toward his chief.  The ultra admirers of the French Revolution not only lost their own heads, but turned Genet’s as well, and persuaded him that the people were with him and were ready to oppose Washington and the Central Government in the interests of revolutionary France.  Genet wished to embroil America with England, and sought to fit out American privateers on the seacoast towns to prey on the English commerce, and to organize on the Ohio River an armed expedition to conquer Louisiana, as Spain was then an ally of England and at war with France.

    The Jeffersonians’ Western Policy.

All over the country Genet’s admirers formed Democratic societies on the model of the Jacobin Clubs of France.  They were of course either useless or noxious in such a country and under such a government as that of the United States, and exercised a very mischievous effect.  Kentucky was already under the influence of the same forces that were at work in Virginia and elsewhere, and the classes of her people who were politically dominant were saturated with the ideas of those doctrinaire politicians of whom Jefferson was chief.  These Jeffersonian doctrinaires were men who at certain crises, in certain countries, might have rendered great service to the cause of liberty and humanity; but their influence in America was on the whole distinctly evil, save that, by a series of accidents, they became the especial champions of the westward extension of the nation, and in consequence were identified with a movement which was all-essential to the national well-being.

    Kentucky Ripe for Genet’s Intrigues.

Kentucky was ripe for Genet’s intrigues, and he found the available leader for the movement in the person of George Rogers Clark.  Clark was deeply imbittered, not only with the United States Government but with Virginia, for the Virginia assembly had refused to pay any of the debts he had contracted on account of the State, and had not even reimbursed him for what he had spent. [Footnote:  Draper MSS., J. Clark to G. R. Clark, Dec. 27, 1792.] He had a right to feel aggrieved at the State’s penuriousness and her indifference to her moral obligations; and just at the time when he was most angered came the news that Genet was agitating throughout the United States for a war with England, in open defiance of Washington, and that among his plans he included a Western movement against Louisiana.  Clark at once wrote to him expressing intense sympathy with the French objects and offering to undertake an expedition for the conquest of St. Louis and upper Louisiana if he was provided with the means to obtain provisions and stores.  Clark further informed Genet that his country had been utterly ungrateful to him, and that as soon as he received Genet’s approbation of what he proposed to do he would get himself “expatriated.”  He asked for commissions for officers, and stated his belief that the Creoles would rise, that the adventurous Westerners would gladly throng to the contest, and that the army would soon be at the gates of New Orleans. [Footnote:  Do., Letter of George Rogers Clark, Feb. 5, 1793; also Feb. 2d and Feb. 3d.]