tion to
preserve neutrality between the belligerents of Europe, and to treat
France with impartiality but with a sincere desire for her friendship.
Between the lines may be read also an equally sincere desire to placate
the opposition and to free himself from all imputation of a bias toward
Great Britain and a monarchical system. From the first news of
Pinckney's dismissal, President Adams was disposed "to institute a fresh
attempt at negotiation": he even approached Jefferson to see if he would
not persuade Madison to serve on a special commission, believing that
Madison's well-known Gallic sympathies would commend him to the French
nation. At the same time he declared stoutly in a message to Congress,
in special session on May 15, that France had treated the United States
"neither as allies nor as friends nor as a sovereign state." Attempts
which had been made to create a rupture between the people of the United
States and their Government "ought to be repelled with a decision which
shall convince France and the world that we are not a degraded people
humiliated under a colonial spirit of fear and sense of inferiority."
While he therefore recommended measures of defense, he asked the Senate
to confirm the appointment of three commissioners whom he proposed to
send to France. Two of these, Pinckney and John Marshall, were
Federalists, but the third was Elbridge Gerry, a Massachusetts
Republican, who was the second choice of the President, Dana having
declined to serve.

While Congress was acting upon the President's recommendations and
voting appropriations for fortifications and for the completion of the
three frigates which were then on the stocks, disquieting disclosures
came from the West. Spain having declared war upon England in the
previous fall, British emissaries, it was rumored, were concerting plans
for the conquest of New Orleans and West Florida. While expeditions made
up of Western frontiersmen and Indians descended upon the Spanish
strongholds in the Southwest, a British fleet was to blockade the mouth
of the Mississippi. The evidence which President Adams laid before
Congress in July implicated Senator Blount, of Tennessee. In common with
other land speculators, he had become alarmed at the rumor that France
was about to acquire Louisiana, and had agreed to use his influence
among the whites and Indians of the Southwest, where he had formerly
been governor, to assist the designs of Great Britain. He was