18 
Indiana University Studies 
American adventurer to Brissot,®^ who in turn introduced him 
(March 26, 1793) to one of his colleagues*^- as a proper person 
to give information on the proposed expedition against Now 
Orleans. Imlay, to be sure, was not the only American now 
involved in these intrigues, nor was he the most influential.®'^ 
But he bore a reputation as an authority on Kentucky, which 
was strategic territory in the Louisiana plan; he was armed 
with a recommendation from Thomas Cooper;®® and, tho per- 
haps not at the outset, enjoyed the prestige of belonging to 
the circle of Paine, of which Brissot was also a member. The 
fact that Brissot himself had visited America in 1788 and 
had published in 1791 a book which dealt to some extent with 
the Western country®® was also, no doubt, one cause of his 
interest in Imlay. At all events it is clear that Imlay contrib- 
uted thru Brissot his best efforts toward bringing the govern- 
ment to a realization of the opportunity for action. To the Com- 
mittee of Public Safety, which had come into being in April, 
ac(iuainted with Imlay’s A To^^ofjvaq^hical Description and that he had been so well im- 
pressed with the account of Kentucky that he had at first intended to settle there 
{Sonte Information, pp. 24-25). 
'■1 Moncure Conway’s account of Paine’s circle of intimate friends, which included 
the Brissots and Imlay as well as Mary Wollstonecraft [The Life of Thomas Paine, 
II, 66), probably belongs to a slightly later date, tho to the year 1793. Thomas Clio 
Riel. man, an intimate friend of Paine during that period, thus describes the group of 
friends who gathered about the famous radical at his home in the Faubourg St. Denis : 
“Here with a chosen few he unbent himself ; among whom were Brissot, the Marquis 
de Cbatelet le Roi of the gallerie de honore, and an old friend of Dr, Franklin’s, 
Bancal, and sometimes General Miranda. His English associates were Christie and 
family, Mrs. Wolstonecraft [sic], Mr. and Mrs. Stone, &c. Among his American friends 
were Capt. Imlay, Joel Barlow, &c. &c.’’ (Rickman, The Life of Thomas Paine, 
p. 131.) 
®- Probably Le Brun or Otto. 
See letter to “Citoien”, in Affaires Etrangeres, Corresp. Polit. Espange, Vol. 635, 
fo. 584. This letter has been printed in The American Historical Rcvieic, HI, 503. For 
the documents from the French foreign office which were published in the American 
Historical Review in 1898 and in the Annual Report of the American Historical Asso- 
ciation for the pear 1896, I am indebted, in common with other students of this period, to 
Professor F. J. Turner and the other members of the Historical Manuscripts Com- 
mission. To Professor Turner and to Dr. J. Franklin Jameson, I am also indebted for 
aid in securing copies of the Brissot letter referred to above and of the very significant 
letter of Brissot to “Citoien Ministre’’ of April 22, 1793 (see below, footnote 70), which. 
I think, has not heretofore been published. 
General George Rogers Clark had, it seems, addressed the French government 
thru Thomas Paine on the same subject sometime in 1792. See an account of Paine’s 
letter of February 17, 1793, to Dr. O’Fallon in Annual Report of the American Historical 
Association for 1896, I, 967. 
Cooper was one of the few Englishmen and Americans who were voted the honor 
of French citizenship. See Moncure Conway: The Life of Thomas Paine, I, 349. See 
also Dr. Joseph Warner to Joel Barlow, October 18, 1792, as printed in C. B. Todd’s 
Life and Letters of Joel Barlow, p. 97. The name of Thomas Christie occurs in the 
same list, which was published in Brissot’s Patriote francais on September 25, 1792. 
Nouveau Voyage dans les Etats-U nis de V Amerique Septentrionalc. 
