What were the reasons many American identified with the French Revolution?
How did conflicting views of the French Revolution contribute to the growing partisan divisions in American politics emerging by the early-mid 1790s?
Answer: An ideal answer will:
1. Discuss how egalitarianism, anti-monarchism, and the emergence of a new constitutional state in Europe caused most Americans of different political views to embrace, at least, initially the French Revolution of 1789.
2. Discuss how the Federalists soon began to have grave doubts about the French Revolution as news of riots and killings terrified them.
3. Discuss how the Federalists became worried that the French Revolution and its violent aftermath would provide momentum to the trend of declining deference and reduced hierarchy in the United States.
4. Discuss how Thomas Jefferson and the emerging republican movement continued to believe that the French Revolution was a grand and noble moment in history, despite their discomfort with its violent excesses.
5. Discuss how many Americans with republican sympathies sided openly with France following Britain's entrance into the war against revolutionary France and formed Democratic-Republican Societies supporting the French Revolution. Assert that most Federalists were, in turn, strongly pro-British in their orientation, particularly after the revelation of the Citizen Genêt affair and that President Washington was determined to maintain strict neutrality in the war between revolutionary France and several European countries and Great Britain.
6. Discuss how these Democratic-Republican Societies also were composed of small-time merchants, manufacturers, mechanics, and other Americans angry at the arrogance of the Federalist aristocracy, fond of the egalitarian ideals of the French Revolution, supportive of the Jeffersonian opposition in Congressional and state elections, and dismayed at Federalist Hamilton's economic policies as well as the expanding power of the federal government asserted by the Federalists.
7. Discuss how the deep divides of the French Revolution solidified the political organization of the Federalists and the Democratic-Republican Societies and inspired the creation of the Democratic-Republican Party.
8. Discuss how competing political views of the French Revolution and the alliance with France influenced contrary political opinions held by Federalists and Democratic-Republicans about declaring war on Britain and the advisability of Jay's Treaty during the early-mid 1790s.
9. Write a concise and effective conclusion.
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