s by the entry of England into the war
which a Coalition was waging against the French Republic. That
intervention at once sharpened the sympathies of both sides and gave
them a practical purpose. England and France were now arrayed against
each other, and Americans, though their Government remained neutral,
arrayed themselves openly as partisans of either combatant. The division
followed almost exactly the lines of the earlier quarrel which had begun
to appear as the true meaning of Hamilton's policy discovered itself.
The Hamiltonians were for England. The Jeffersonians were for France.

A war of pamphlets and newspapers followed, into the details of which it
is not necessary to go. The Federalists, with the tide going steadily
against them, had the good luck to secure the aid of a pen which had no
match in Europe. The greatest master of English controversial prose that
ever lived was at that time in America. Normally, perhaps, his
sympathies would have been with the Democrats. But love of England was
ever the deepest and most compelling passion of the man who habitually
abused her institutions so roundly. The Democrats were against his
fatherland, and so the supporters of Hamilton found themselves defended
in a series of publications over the signature of "Peter Porcupine" with
all the energy and genius which belonged only to William Cobbett.

A piquancy of the contest was increased by the fact that it was led on
either side by members of the Administration. Washington had early put
forth a Declaration of Neutrality, drawn up by Randolph, who, though
leaning if anything to Jefferson's side, took up a more or less
intermediate position between the parties. Both sides professed to
accept the principle of neutrality, but their interpretations of it were
widely different. Jefferson did not propose to intervene in favour of
France, but he did not think that Americans were bound to disguise their
moral sympathies. They would appear, he thought, both ungrateful and
false to the first principles of their own commonwealth if, whatever
limitation prudence might impose in their action, they did not _desire_
that France should be victorious over the Coalition of Kings. The great
majority of the American people took the same view. When Genet, the
envoy of the newly constituted Republic, arrived from France, he
received an ovation which Washington himself at the height of his glory
could hardly have obtained. Nine American citizen