Adams described "the terrorism excited by Genet, in 1793, when ten
thousand people in the streets of Philadelphia, day after day, threatened
to drag Washington out of his house, and effect a revolution in the
Government, or compel it to declare war in favor of the French Revolution
and against England." Adams related that he "judged it prudent and
necessary to order chests of arms from the War Office" to be brought into
his house to defend it from attack, and he had it from "the coolest
and firmest minds" that nothing but the outbreak of yellow fever in
Philadelphia that summer "could have saved the United States from a fatal
revolution of government." On the other hand, letters written by Hamilton
during the time of all this excitement show that he thought little of it,
although he more than anyone else was its target. In May, 1793, he wrote
that the number of persons who went to meet Genet "would be stated high at
a hundred," and he did not believe that a tenth part of the city
participated in the meetings and addresses of Genet's sympathizers. "A
crowd will always draw a crowd, whatever be the purpose. Curiosity will
supply the place, of attachment to, or interest in, the object."
Washington's own letters at this period show no trace of concern about his
personal safety though he smarted under the attacks on his motives. An
entry of August 2, 1793, in Jefferson's private diary, forming the volume
since known as "The Anas," relates that at a cabinet meeting Knox
exhibited a print entitled the funeral of George W----n, in which the
President was placed on a guillotine. "The President was much inflamed;
got into one of those passions when he cannot command himself; ran much on
the personal abuse which had been bestowed upon him; defied any man on
earth to produce one single act of his since he had been in the Government
which was not done from the purest motives; that he had never repented but
once the having slipped the moment of resigning his office, and that was
every moment since; that by God he had rather be in his grave than in his
present situation; that he had rather be on his farm than to be made