GREAT AMERICAN SCANDAL: LETTER FROM THE XYZ AFFAIR

Here is an item from the Littlejohn Collection that dates from just before one of the first major diplomatic crises of the young United States: the so-called “XYZ affair.” The item is a letter dated October 2^nd, 1797 from Charles Cotesworth Pinckney to Elbridge Gerry.

Here is the transcript:

 

 

Paris Oct. 2d. 1797

Dear S[i]r.

Your favour from Brussells & the one previous to it from Rotterdam arrived safe. I sympathize sincerely with you in the disagreeable inconveniences you have experienced on your journey; I trust they were not renewed after your quitting Brussells. I flatter myself that I shall have the pleasure of seeing you this evening or to dinner tomorrow at No. 1131 Rue de Grenell fontaine, faubourg St. Germain - In case Mrs. Pinckney, Gen’l Marshall & myself should chance to be out at the time of your arrival, I beg leave to apprize you that the apartments Major Mountflorence appropriated for you are on the right hand of the vestibule or antechambre - after entering the Court Yard; those of Gen’l Marshall are on the left. Mrs. Pinckney is much mortified that she finds she is not to have Mrs. Gerry's company, a pleasure she flattered herself she should enjoy, when first we heard of your appointment; she is exceedingly sorry to hear of your indisposition, & she will be happy to pay every attention to alleviate it. Gen’l Marshall & myself desired a friend to intimate to the Minister of foreign affairs that we did not intend to officially notify to him our arrival 'till you joined us, - this has been acquiesced in. With great regard & esteem I remain

  Your sincere friend

CHARLES COTESWORTH PINCKNEY

 

Mr. Gerry -

The backstory to this letter and the XYZ affair is this: Pinckney (b. 1746, Charleston), a prosperous patriot-lawyer who served in the South Carolina militia (as a colonel, 1776 through 1777) and the Continental Army (as a brigadier general, 1782-1783) -- between which terms he had stint as a prisoner-of-war -- was tapped by then-President Washington to be minister to France in 1796. (Pinckney was also a signer of the Constitution.) By 1796, the warm relations between the revolutionary colonials and France that had characterized the American Revolutionary War period had cooled considerably (due mainly to the Jay Treaty of 1794) -- in the meantime France, too, had shed its monarchical trappings in favor of republican democracy, and a new regime was in power. This new French government was hostile to the Federalists (Washington's party), and appears to have had the intention of influencing the upcoming 1796 election in favor of the Republicans (Thomas Jefferson's party). As Marvin Zahniser put is in his book "Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Founding Father," "Pinckney was [thus] in the unenviable position of representing an administration which the French considered thoroughly discredited (p. 139)."

Yet Pinckney (and his wife and daughter) set sail for France in September of 1796. By the time he made landfall in mid-November, relations between France and the U.S had taken a turn for the worse: the French government "had 'suspended' diplomatic relations with the United States and was harassing American commerce" at sea (Zahniser, 140). Though he managed to make it from the coast to Paris, and even presented his credentials to a government official, Pinckney learned on December 12 that he would not be recognized or received as an American diplomat - France had grievances that would need to be addressed, or re-paid, before any meetings would take place. Thinly veiled threats from the French government persuaded Pinckney to evacuate he and his family to Amsterdam in early February of 1797.

Fast-forward to October, 1797: President John Adams (inaugurated March, 1797 and also a Federalist) decided to send a three-man diplomatic commission to France in order to ease the tensions that had only increased since Pinckney's  expulsion eight months earlier. The other members of the commission were John Marshall (a Virginian, former Revolutionary soldier, future Chief Justice of the Supreme Court) and Elbridge Gerry (from Massachusetts, signer of the Declaration of Independence, American statesman). As can be noted, Marshall is mentioned in the above letter, and Gerry is of course the addressee. At the time that this letter was written, the three plenipotentiaries were in the process of descending upon Paris in order to start relations afresh.

But it was not to be: to simplify a complex, nuanced chain of events, France, with a new foreign minister in place (Talleyrand) and flush with the recent continental military victories of Napoleon, was in no way amenable to renewing relations with the United States on its plenipotentiaries' terms. Over a number of days and weeks soon after the above letter was written, the U.S. commission opened informal talks with the French, who, through various channels, eventually demanded considerable sums of money (i.e. bribes) in order to open formal negotiations. The four French agents who made the demands were eventually anonymized in the publication of plenipotentiaries' correspondence in the U.S., which was occasioned by the uproar within the U.S. government that ensued following the commission's report of demands for bribes. The agents, in the publications, were referred to as "W,""X,""Y," and "Z." The agent known as "W' apparently played a small role, so the name of the altercation come to be known as the "XYZ affair." The fallout of this breakdown in relations between France and the U.S resulted in the "Quasi-War" between the two countries, in which France continued its aggression against American commercial vessels on the high seas and along the American east coast. This undeclared war lasted until 1800, when a treaty was signed to end it.

The story goes that Pinckney, when prodded by a French agent demanding bribes, finally, with a bitterness built up over nearly a year, exclaimed "No, no, not a sixpence."