keyed to measures which were audacious but which can hardly be described
as reckless. By plunging heavily he might make a big winning; if he
failed, he was hardly worse off than if he had not made the attempt. To
draw the United States into the war as the ally of France was only one
part of his mission. He was also planning to reëstablish the
French colonial empire, the loss of which was still an unhealed wound.
Canada, Louisiana, and the Floridas were all in his mind. In Louisiana,
France regarded conditions as being so favorable that Genet was instructed
to make special efforts in that quarter. Spain, which had entered the
coalition against republican France, held the lower Mississippi. Spain was
therefore the common enemy of France and of the American settlements west
of the mountains. Ought not then those two republican interests to work
together to expel Spain and to seize Louisiana? Moreover, there was a
belief, not without grounds, that the older States which formed the
American union were indifferent to the needs and interests of the country
west of the Alleghenies and would be more relieved than afflicted if it
should take its destinies into its own hands. Such considerations animated
a group of Americans in Paris, among whose prominent members were Thomas
Paine, the pamphleteer, Joel Barlow, the poet, and Dr. James O'Fallon, a
Revolutionary soldier now interested in Western land speculation. All were
then ardent sympathizers with the French Revolution, and they entered
heartily into the design of stirring up the Western country against Spain.
The project attracted some frontier leaders, among them George Rogers
Clark, famous for his successful campaigns against the hostile Indians and
the British during the Revolutionary War. He was to lead a force of
Western riflemen against the Spanish posts in Louisiana, and Genet brought
with him blank brevets of officers up to the grade of captain for bestowal
on the Indian chiefs who would cooperate. The expenses of the expedition
were to be met by collections which Genet expected to make from the
treasury of the United States on account of sums due to France.