of religion, society, property, and
morals, which they beheld in Paris, seemed to them to be threatening
their own country, and they became as extreme as their opponents in
the exactly opposite direction. Federalist divines came to look
upon Jefferson, the most timid and prudent of men, as a Marat or
Robespierre, ready to reproduce the excesses of his prototypes; while
Pickering, Wolcott, and all their friends in public life regarded
themselves as engaged in a struggle for the preservation of order and
society and of all that they held most dear. They were in the habit of
comparing French principles to a pestilence, and the French republic
to a raging tiger. Even Hamilton was so moved as to believe that the
United States were on the verge of anarchy, and he laid down his life
at last in a senseless duel because he thought that his refusal to
fight would disable him for leading the forces of order when the final
crash came.

Washington, with his strong, calm judgment and his penetrating vision,
was less affected than any of those who had followed and sustained
him; but he was by no means untouched, and if we try to put ourselves
in his place, his views seem far from unreasonable. He had at the
outset wished well to the great movement in France, although even then
he doubted its final success. Very soon, however, doubts changed
to suspicions, and suspicions to conviction. As he saw the French
revolution move on in its inevitable path, he came to hate and dread
its deeds, its policies, and its doctrines. To a man of his temper it
could not have been otherwise, for license and disorder were above all
things detestable to him. They were the immediate fruits of the French
revolution, and when he saw a party devoted to France preaching the
same ideas in the United States, he could not but feel that there was
a real and practical danger confronting the country. This was why he
felt that we needed an energetic policy, and it was on this account
that he distrusted the President's renewed effort for peace. The
course of the opposition, as he saw it, threatened not merely the
existence of the Union, but wittingly or unwittingly struck at the
very foundations of society. His anxiety did not make him violent, as
was the case with lesser men, but it convinced him of the necessity of
strong measures, and he was not a man to shrink from vigorous action.
He was quite prepared to do all that could be done to maintain the
authority of the