" Our forefathers had been satisfied
with securing liberty for themselves without trying to impose it on
all other nations. It was this proselyting spirit which caused their
war against Britain. Hence, the anti-French element allied itself with
England. That nation was rapidly being forced into a position where
she alone would stand between French fanaticism and the disruption of
all society. These pro-British were, in the eyes of the French
sympathisers, base ingrates, as culpable as a nation would have been
who sided with Great Britain during the Revolutionary War.
Divided into these hostile factions during this summer of 1792, the
United States reached the first parting of the ways upon her foreign
policy. Hitherto she had been of small moment to European nations,
touching them only on boundary questions connected with the New World.
But in the mighty struggle between one people bursting the bands of
centuries of repression and monarchical rule, and another nation in
authority who saw prerogative, property, and person in danger from the
deluge, the United States would become important as a place for fitting
out and as a base of food-supply.
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