Thus it happened that from the hour when the first rumblings of the impending European revolution were heard on this side of the Atlantic, the citizens of these states evinced an earnest and sympathetic concern; 1 and as the revolutionary drama unfolded through its earlier scenes the enthusiasm and lively sympathy of the people grew apace. The atmosphere was electric. Anticipations of citizens ran high. Liberty was again in travail. 2 The institutions of freedom were about to descend upon another nation. The shackles of political and ecclesiastical tyranny were being torn from the limbs of twenty-five millions of slaves. 8 Having revolutionized France, America's ideals might be expected to leaven the whole of Europe. 4 The millennium could not be far away. Admiration for the French cause and devotion to it swept all before them. So much so that when, in the autumn and winter of 1792-93, the thrilling news of the successes achieved by the French armies in repelling the invaders of the new republic began to arrive in America, a wave of irresistible and uncontrolled enthusiasm swept over the land. 5 The "French Frenzy/' with its maudlin outbursts of professed attachment for the great watchwords of the Revolution Liberty, Equality, Fraternity with its pageants and civic feasts, its cockades and liberty caps, its ribald singing of republican songs and dramatic intertwinings of the standards of the two sister republics, deserves a place altogether by itself as an extraordinary expression of the public mind.
- 1 Hazen, Contemporary American Opinion of the French Revolution, pp. 141 et seq.
- 2 Ibid., p. 143.
- 3 Dwight, Travels, vol. iv, p. 361.
- 4 Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. v, pp. 154, 274; Massachusetts Historical Collections, Sixth Series, vol. iv, Belknap Papers, p. 503.
- 5 The entire episode is treated with great fullness and equal vividness by Hazen, Contemporary American Opinion of the French Revolution, pp. 164-188.
