 However, the French Revolution was about who should rule at home. They fought for “liberty, equality, and fraternity.” Neither equality nor fraternity can be achieved through force by the state. Perfect equality is elusive and, even if it could be achieved, would be inconsistent with liberty. Whereas Americans struggled for tangible goals, the French took on the Sisyphean task of striving for abstractions. Yes, the second paragraph of the American Declaration of Independence deals in abstractions and universal truths. However, it is important to keep in mind the Declaration’s historical context. The signers of the Declaration did not think they were establishing a national government or founding a national Union when they signed it. There is not one shred of evidence in the historical record that they believed they had founded either a national government or a permanent Union upon the Declaration’s self-evident truths. They understood that they were signing their names to a document that simply explained why it had become “necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another” and that declared “the causes which impel them to the separation.” The Declaration was a document of dissolution. That is, it de-founded an empire, it did not found a new one. In the Declaration, thirteen constitutional political societies declared why it had become necessary for them to sever the political bands which had connected them to England. After winning their independence Americans turned to the concrete lessons of history and experience to guide them in securing their liberty by establishing government on a solid foundation. “Experience must be our only guide,” John Dickinson reminded his colleagues at the Philadelphia Convention. “Reason may mislead us.”[1] They sought not to create something new under the sun. Human reason, they knew, was fallible. Reason alone, unguided by history and experience, was likely to lead one into wild abstractions and the creation of an unstable government. Under such a government, novel and untested, liberty would not be secure. The only safe path forward was to look to history and allow experience to guide their reason. Experience was “the best oracle of wisdom” and “the least fallible guide of human opinions,” wrote Alexander Hamilton in The Federalist.[2] James Madison, his collaborator, concurred. Experience was “the oracle of truth” and “the guide that ought always to be followed whenever it can be found,” wrote Madison.[3] Experience would help prevent reason from leading them astray. The French, on the other hand, deified Reason above not only experience, but also above religion and divine revelation. Indeed, they even transformed Notre Dame into a Temple of Reason and held pseudo-religious festivals in honor of this new deity. Reason unrestrained and unguided by history and experience proved unable to establish stable government or to secure liberty in France. Instead, it led them to descend into the Terror, the reign of Napoleon, and, ultimately, to the restoration of the monarchy. Wendell Berry was right about abstraction: “abstraction is the enemy wherever it is found.”[4] Let us turn instead, as America’s Founders did, to experience. “That experience is the parent of wisdom,” explained Hamilton, “is an adage, the truth of which is recognized by the wisest as well as the simplest of mankind.”[5] The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.
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NOTE TO READERS
The French Revolution lasted from 1789 until 1799. The Revolution precipitated a series of European wars, forcing the United States to articulate a clear policy of neutrality in order to avoid being embroiled in these European conflicts. The French Revolution also influenced U.S. politics, as pro- and anti- Revolutionary factions sought to influence American domestic and foreign policy.
When the first rumors of political change in France reached American shores in 1789, the U.S. public was largely enthusiastic. Americans hoped for democratic reforms that would solidify the existing Franco-American alliance and transform France into a republican ally against aristocratic and monarchical Britain. However, with revolutionary change also came political instability, violence, and calls for radical social change in France that frightened many Americans. American political debate over the nature of the French Revolution exacerbated pre-existing political divisions and resulted in the alignment of the political elite along pro-French and pro-British lines. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson became the leader of the pro-French Democratic-Republican Party that celebrated the republican ideals of the French Revolution. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton led the Federalist Party, which viewed the Revolution with skepticism and sought to preserve existing commercial ties with Great Britain. With the two most powerful members of his cabinet locked in opposition, President George Washington tried to strike a balance between the two. From 1790 to 1794, the French Revolution became increasingly radical. After French King Louis XVI was tried and executed on January 21, 1793, war between France and monarchal nations Great Britain and Spain was inevitable. These two powers joined Austria and other European nations in the war against Revolutionary France that had already started in 1791. The United States remained neutral, as both Federalists and Democratic-Republicans saw that war would lead to economic disaster and the possibility of invasion. This policy was made difficult by heavy-handed British and French actions. The British harassed neutral American merchant ships, while the French Government dispatched a controversial Minister to the United States, Edmond-Charles Genêt, whose violations of the American neutrality policy embroiled the two countries in the Citizen Genêt Affair until his recall in 1794.
In 1794, the French Revolution entered its most violent phase, the Terror. Under foreign invasion, the French Government declared a state of emergency, and many foreigners residing in France were arrested, including American revolutionary pamphleteer Thomas Paine, owing to his British birth. Although U.S. Minister to France Gouverneur Morris was unable to obtain Paine’s release, Morris was able to intercede successfully on behalf of many other Americans imprisoned during the Terror, including the American Consuls at Dunkirk, Rouen, and Le Havre. Once the Terror ended in late July of 1794, the arrests ended, and Paine, who had been scheduled to be executed, was released. Although the French Revolution had ended its radical phase, Federalists in the United States remained wary of revolutionary ideology infiltrating the United States. Many French citizens, refugees from the French and Haitian revolutions, had settled in American cities and remained politically active, setting up newspapers and agitating for their political causes. A French spy, Victor Collot, traveled through the United States in 1796, noting the weaknesses in its western border. When a breakdown in diplomatic negotiations resulted in the Quasi-War with France, the Federalist-controlled Congress passed a series of laws known as the Alien and Sedition Acts, intended to curb political dissent and limit the political participation of immigrants by easing deportation and lengthening the time required for citizenship. A number of political radicals were arrested for sedition, including Congressman Matthew Lyon and newspaper editors James Thompson Callendar and William Duane. Many refugees, sensing American hostility, chose to return to France and Haiti since the political situation had temporarily calmed in both places. The Alien and Sedition Acts, originally intended to prevent a growth in pro-French sentiment, actually backfired for the Federalists. Taken aback by such extreme measures, swing voters in the presidential election of 1800 instead backed the pro-French Thomas Jefferson and his Democratic-Republican Party, instead of the Federalist John Adams, who was running for re-election as President. Adams had also alienated the anti-Revolutionary wing of his party by seeking peace with France, whose revolution had already been brought to a close by General Napoleon Bonaparte. Despite Federalist warnings that electing Jefferson would bring revolution to the United States, Jefferson instead chose to distance himself from political radicals and win over political moderates. The revolution in France was over, and while many Americans voters sympathized with the revolution in the abstract, they did not want the revolution’s most radical changes put into effect in the United States. |
How was the french revolution like the american revolution?
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