He continued to take a keen interest in all that went on,
to correspond with his friends, and to use his influence for what he
thought wisest and best for the general welfare. These were stirring
times, too, and the progress of events brought him to take a more
active part than he had ever expected to play again; for France,
having failed, thanks to his policy, to draw us either by fair words
or trickery from our independent and neutral position, determined,
apparently, to try the effect of force and ill usage. Pinckney, sent
out as minister, had been rebuffed; and then Adams, with the cordial
support of the country, had made another effort for peace by sending
Pinckney, Marshall, and Gerry as a special commission. The history of
that commission is one of the best known episodes in our history. Our
envoys were insulted, asked for bribes, and browbeaten, until the two
who retained a proper sense of their own and their country's dignity
took their passports and departed. The publication of the famous X, Y,
Z letters, which displayed the conduct of France, roused a storm of
righteous indignation from one end of the United States to the other.
The party of France and of the opposition bent before the storm, and
the Federalists were at last all-powerful. A cry for war went up from
every corner, and Congress provided rapidly for the formation of an
army and the beginning of a navy.
Then the whole country turned, as a matter of course, to one man to
stand at the head of the national forces of the United States,
and Adams wrote to Washington, urging him to take command of the
provisional army.
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