Gerry wrote to members of higher authority within the French government asking to meet with them. In October , Gerry returned to the United States empty-handed, nervous about an impending war. Army, and construct naval vessels against the French. Adams refused and believed that, ultimately, peace was the reasonable option. Letters of the situation in France arrived.
Adams kept the correspondences a secret, rousing suspicion of secrecy in his cabinet. After some time, Adams released the papers. The letters W, X, Y, and Z were used to hide their identities. Thus, the affair was called the XYZ Affair. After reading the letters, many in Washington and Philadelphia called for war against France.
Grant Rutherford B. Hayes James A. Garfield Chester A. Roosevelt Harry S. Truman Dwight D. Eisenhower John F. Kennedy Lyndon B. Bush Bill Clinton George W. They even went so far as to see it as a declaration of war, seemingly proving what they had already believed when the American delegation returned to the United States. Some even believed Adams had told his diplomats to refuse to pay the bribe on purpose, so that this exact scenario they found themselves in would happen and the belligerent Federalists whom they mistrusted greatly could have their excuse for war.
At the time, paying bribes to diplomats in Europe was par for the course. That the Federalists all of a sudden had some moral objection to this, and that this objection was strong enough to send the nation to war, seemed a little fishy to Thomas Jefferson and his small-government cronies.
They therefore still opposed military action, but were very much in the minority. But President John Adams never asked Congress for a formal declaration.
No one did, really. In , France and the rest of Europe went to war, a conflict in which President George Washington declared American neutrality.
However, both France and Great Britain, the major naval powers in the war, seized ships of neutral powers including those of the United States that traded with their enemies. With the Jay Treaty, ratified in , the United States reached an agreement on the matter with Britain that angered members of the Directory that governed France.
The French Navy consequently stepped up its efforts to interdict American trade with Britain. Throughout and , the French and the Americans fought a series of naval battles in the Caribbean, which, when strung together, are called the Pseudo-War with France. And France, which was in the nascent stage of its republic, had neither the time nor the money to fight a costly transatlantic war with the United States.
They just wanted French ships to leave the American ships alone — like, let them sail in peace. Plenty of room for everyone. Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you.
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