Louisiana and Aaron Burr 209 



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 Revo- 

 lution 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 Washing- 

 ton and the Central Government in the interests of 

 revolutionary France. Genet wished to embroil 

 America with England, and sought to fit out Ameri- 

 can 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. 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 un- 

 der 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 class of her people who were politically dom- 

 inant were saturated with the ideas of those doc- 

 trinaire politicians of whom Jefferson was chief. 

 These Jeffersonian doctrinaires were men who at 

 certain crises, in certain countries, might have ren- 

 dered great service to the cause of liberty and hu- 

 manity; but their influence in America was on the 

 . whole distinctly evil, save that, by a series of acci- 

 dents, they became the especial champions of the 



