When Napoleon issued the decrees which drove America
into the ranks of his enemies, he could scarcely have har-
bored any illusions as to the strength of American friend-
ship. Whatever this may have been originally, the neutrality
of Washington and the vigor of Adams had shown that
American policies were guided by living issues rather than
by dead memories, nor was there anything in the record of
Jefferson himself to indicate that sentiment for France out-
weighed the interest of America. The estimate which Adet
had transmitted to the department of foreign affairs in 1796,
on the occasion of Jefferson's election to the vice-presidency
had, indeed, proved singularly prophetic:

I have been brought to the conclusion in this connection, Citizen
Minister, that America will have only cause for congratulation for
having summoned this man to the second place in the State. I do not
know whether, as I am assured, we shall always find in him a man en-
tirely devoted to our interests. Mr. Jefferson loves us, because he
detests England; he seeks a rapprochement with us, because he dis-
trusts us less than Great Britain; but he would change perhaps to-
morrow from a sentiment favorable to us, if to-morrow Great
Britain should cease to inspire him with fears. Jefferson, although
a friend of liberty and of science, although an admirer of the efforts
which we have put forth to break our chains and dissipate the cloud
of ignorance which oppresses the hope of humanity, Jefferson, I
say, is an American, and by just so much, he cannot be sincerely
our friend. An American is the enemy born of all the European
peoples. ¹

The Napoleonic decrees were, in fact, the culmination of
a growing resentment at the independent Americanism de-
scribed by Adet. France, whose original help to the American
Revolution rested on dynastic and European aims, expected

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