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Charles-Edmond Genet
- Here O’Brien charts with his usual astuteness, forensic skills, and vigorous style, the swathe cut through the United States by Charles-Edmond Genet following his arrival at Charleston in April 1793 as the new minister plenipotentiary of the French Republic.
www.diplomacy.edu/resource/the-long-affair-thomas-jefferson-and-the-french-revolution/
John Adams (1735–1826) was an American Founding Father who served as one of the most important diplomats on behalf of the new United States during the American Revolution. He served as minister to the Kingdom of France and the Dutch Republic and then helped negotiate the Treaty of Paris to end the American Revolutionary War.
- Overview
- US Diplomats Shunned in France
- HISTORY Vault
- Start of the 'Quasi-War'
A diplomatic incident between the United States and France in 1797 outraged Americans and led to an undeclared war.
It might sound like something out of “Sesame Street” but the XYZ Affair was, in fact, a diplomatic incident between France and America in the late 18th century that led to an undeclared war at sea.
When President George Washington sent Charles Cotesworth Pinckney as the U.S. minister to France in 1796, the government there refused to receive him. After John Adams became president in March 1797, he dispatched a three-member delegation to Paris later that same year in an effort to restore peace between the two countries. Once the diplomats—Pinckney along with John Marshall and Elbridge Gerry—arrived overseas they tried to meet with France’s foreign minister, Charles de Talleyrand. Instead, he put them off and eventually had three agents inform the U.S. commissioners that in order to see him they first would have to pay him a hefty bribe and provide France with a large loan, among other conditions.
Pinckney’s supposed response was: “No! No! Not a sixpence!”
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When word of the French demands reached the United States, it caused an uproar and prompted calls for war. After some members of Congress asked to see the diplomats’ reports regarding what had transpired in France, Adams handed them over with the names of the French agents replaced with the letters X, Y and Z; thus the name XYZ Affair.
Congress subsequently authorized various defense measures, including the creation of the Department of the Navy and the construction of warships. Then, in July 1798, it authorized American ships to attack French vessels, launching an undeclared naval war that came to be referred to as the Quasi-War. The hostilities were settled with the Convention of 1800, also known as the Treaty of Mortefontaine, which was ratified in 1801.
- Elizabeth Nix
When the diplomats arrived in Paris in October 1797, the French foreign minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord granted the group only a short fifteen minute meeting and then left them with three French officials named Jean Hottenguer, Pierre Bellamy, and Lucien Hauteval.
Sep 14, 2021 · The XYZ Affair was a 1797 diplomatic incident that occurred between a United States Peace delegation and the French government when French agents demanded a substantial bribe to arrange a meeting with the French Foreign Minister.
ON the afternoon of October 8, 1797, three Americans sat in the office of the Minister for Foreign Affairs at Paris awaiting their reception as Envoys Extraordinary to the Republic of France.
The government of Louis XVI had kept the American Revolution afloat through nearly a decade of war, and the French foreign minister - Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergennes - expected his American allies to follow Paris's lead during peace negotiations, but Adams, Jay, and particularly Franklin executed a briliant end-run around Versailles and ...
Jun 17, 2020 · The American delegation encountered open hostility, and the French minister of foreign relations, Charles Maurice Talleyrand, refused to meet with them. On various occasions, four agents, later called W, X, Y, and Z by President Adams, contacted the Americans.
