Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio 9780271077895

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let t ers w rit t en from t h e b a n k s o f t h e o h i o

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LETTERS WRITTEN FROM THE BANKS OF THE OHIO CLAUDE ¯ FRANÇOIS ¯ADRIEN DE LEZAY ¯MARNÉSIA

edited with an introduction by benjamin hoffmann translated by alan j. singerman

t he pennsy lva nia stat e u nive rs it y pre s s u niver sit y pa rk , pe nns ylvania

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Lezay-Marnézia, Claude-François-Adrien, marquis de, 1735–1800, author. | Hoffmann, Benjamin, 1985– , editor. | Singerman, Alan J., translator. Title: Letters written from the banks of the Ohio / Claude-François-Adrien de Lezay-Marnésia ; edited with an introduction by Benjamin Hoffmann ; translated by Alan J. Singerman. Description: University Park, Pennsylvania : The Pennsylvania State University Press, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Summary: “A critical translation of an account of a failed colonial project by opponents of the French Revolution, led by the aristocrat Claude-François-Adrien de Lezay-Marnésia, in present-day Ohio”—Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2016033129 | ISBN 9780271077161 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Ohio River Valley—Description and travel. | Lezay-Marnézia, Claude-FrançoisAdrien, marquis de, 1735–1800. | French— Ohio River Valley—History—18th century. | Scioto Land Company. Classification: LCC F517 .L689 2017 | DDC 977—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/ 2016033129

Copyright © 2017 The Pennsylvania State University All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA 16802–1003 The Pennsylvania State University Press is a member of the Association of American University Presses. It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Material, ansi z39.48–1992. This book is printed on paper that contains 30 post-consumer waste.

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C ON T E N T S

Editor’s Note and Acknowledgments | vii Introduction | 1 Benjamin Hoffmann Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio Claude-François-Adrien, marquis de Lezay-Marnésia Translated by Alan J. Singerman Editor’s Foreword | 45 Letter to Monsieur Le Chevalier de Boufflers, Member of the French National Assembly: Marietta, November 15, 1790 | 47 Letter to Monsieur Jacques-Henri Bernardin de SaintPierre: Fort Pitt, November 2, 1791 | 52 Letter to My Eldest Son: Philadelphia, December 15, 1791 | 99 Appendix Prospectus for the Colony on the Ohio and Scioto Rivers in America (1789) | 115 The French on the Banks of the Scioto: Letter to an Immigrant to Kentucky (1790) | 117 The Paris High Court on the Scioto (1790) | 122 Letter Written by a Frenchman Immigrating to the Lands of the Scioto Company (1790) | 125

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New Prospectus of the Scioto Company (1790) | 128 Modern Chivalry: Containing the Adventures of Captain John Farrago and Teague O’Regan, His Servant (1792) | 132 Hugh Henry Brackenridge Letter to Monsieur Audrain, Merchant in Pittsburgh (1800) | 138 Claude-François-Adrien, marquis de Lezay-Marnésia My Memories: To My Children (1851) | 145 Albert de Lezay-Marnésia Chronology | 158 Notes | 165 Bibliography | 205 Index of Proper Names | 219

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Contents

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E DI T O R ’S NO T E A N D A C K NOW L E D G M E N T S

“Because they were confiscated by the police, these letters have been hard to come by,” remarked Joseph-Marie Quérard in 1833 on the subject of the Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio by Claude-François-Adrien de LezayMarnésia (1735–1800). And they have been hard to come by to this day, given that the present edition is the first to appear since 1800. What were the circumstances of their original publication, and why were they subject to censorship? Upon his return to France after a twenty-two-month adventure in the United States, Lezay-Marnésia stayed in Paris from June 20 to September 16, 1792. It was during this period that he entrusted Prault with the manuscript of the Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio. During the year of his death he described the following: “Circumstances did not allow three of them to be brought out that were published as essays by Prault in 1792. The Girondins ruled at the time. Other factions followed the Girondins, and the liberty of the press was reduced to the freedom to take immense risks.” The Girondins’ proscription of the Letters is surprising insofar as their leader, Jacques-Pierre Brissot, had also expressed his support for French immigration to the United States. While Brissot saw the solitude of America as the ideal place to get rid of threatening plebeians, the colonies imagined by his compatriots in the New World promised France profitable business partnerships. One year after the censorship of the Letters, the Girondins still had their eyes on America: they entrusted Edmond-Charles Genet with the mission of raising an army in the United States in order to win Louisiana, Florida, and Canada (then under Spanish and British domination) to the Republic’s cause. Suzanne Desan observes, “The Girondins aimed to create sister

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republics that shared ‘political and commercial interests’ with France and the U.S.” Did Lezay-Marnésia, who hoped for the creation of a French colony in the Northwest Territory, not share their ambitions? Two political standpoints nevertheless distinguish his projects from those of the Girondins. On the one hand, the Letters describe a colony that has severed all diplomatic and commercial ties with the fatherland of its founders. Lezay-Marnésia anticipated sending France only a tribute of plants from the New World, as a mark of affection. Brissot and his allies doubtless hoped for more substantial benefits from their future establishments in America.Moreover, the Letters called out across the Atlantic to the malcontents and victims of the Revolution: aristocrats, priests, monks, nuns, magistrates, soldiers, traders, and artists received an invitation from Lezay-Marnésia to join him as quickly as possible. His work does not, of course, prescribe the formation of a group of French citizens in America whose members would prepare to return home arms in hand. Nevertheless, by exhorting his readers to leave France in order to found a colony built on the political principles of the Monarchiens, it is not surprising that the Letters would have provoked the Girondins. These different reasons (to which we could add Lezay-Marnésia’s reputation as a reactionary aristocrat) explain the censorship to which the Letters fell victim in 1792. For various reasons, the Letters’ second encounter with the public also failed. At the time of their reprinting in 1800, they did not meet with the success that, due to their intrinsic merit, they might have deserved. The work of an Encyclopedist, the letters embroider on a theme dear to Enlightenment literature—utopia—and their pastoral tone is inspired by Julie, or the New Heloise (1761) and the Lettres d’un cultivateur américain (1784, 2 vols.; 1787, 3 vols.) by St. John de Crèvecœur. Only a few months after their second publication, however, a “kind of poem, half descriptive, half dramatic,” was published: Atala (1801). Chateaubriand’s narrative would arouse in his readers a new thrill and impose its shimmering and melancholic portrayal of the United States as a new model for reshaping their previous ideas about the New World. Republished too late in a changed world, the Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio can be read as the last text of a tradition that Chateaubriand ended by inaugurating his own. Nonetheless, in 1800 Lezay-Marnésia had high hopes of success. In a note to the second edition of the Reading Program for a Young Lady, he expressed his intention to enrich his compilation of letters with other missives written in America. This note clarifies an important formal characteristic viii

Acknowledgments

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of the Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio: Lezay-Marnésia did not understand them as a definitively closed space, but rather as a collection that promised to grow if the public viewed his initial missives favorably. He referred to a “considerable group of letters written from North America,” which, despite being largely destroyed during the Revolution, contained enough texts to “gather . . . into a volume.” Thus the Letters represent a book that Lezay-Marnésia viewed as a first version of a work to be completed progressively, on the model, perhaps, of the Letters from an American Farmer by St. John de Crèvecœur, who ceaselessly added to his text between 1782 and 1787. Lezay-Marnésia’s openness to inclusion and addition has inspired certain editorial choices on my part. In addition to the three missives published under the title Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio, other texts in which LezayMarnésia addresses the United States have been reproduced in the appendix. I have not included anything from his private correspondence—from which long excerpts have been published by Élisabeth Bourget-Besnier—because I have preferred to give precedence to the texts that were read by LezayMarnésia’s contemporaries, that helped to model their ideas about America and influenced the decision of some to travel there in turn. I have therefore reproduced Lezay-Marnésia’s letters that the Scioto Company published in 1791 in its New Prospectus, as well as his “Letter to Monsieur Audrain,” published in the second edition of the Reading Program for a Young Lady (1800). Moreover, in the interest of illustrating Lezay-Marnésia’s American adventure, and to confront as well as complete the Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio, I have included in the appendix fragments of texts in which the marquis appears as a character: an excerpt of Hugh Henry Brackenridge’s novel Modern Chivalry (1792–1815), where Lezay-Marnésia is described during the time he lived near Pittsburgh; and a long passage from Lezay-Marnésia’s youngest son’s My Memories, where the writer describes the trip he took to America with his father. Although these texts by Brackenridge and Albert de Lezay-Marnésia are not without occasional inaccuracies (Brackenridge attributes to LezayMarnésia a role in the counterrevolution that he never played, while Albert de Lezay-Marnésia sometimes errs in the chronology of his father’s voyage), they nevertheless fill certain gaps left by the Letters, raise doubts about the truthfulness of several scenes described in said Letters, and help us to understand in greater depth the projects and the personality of a man whose successive failures and lack of pragmatism have often led to facile caricatures. Far from being merely this obtuse aristocrat, the backward dreamer that one is sometimes Acknowledgments

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tempted to mock, Lezay-Marnésia in also a scorner of absolute monarchy, a reformer, a theorist, and a philanthropist, as well as a utopian thinker whose work dialogues with the writings of Fénelon, Montesquieu, Prévost, Rousseau, and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. Published here is the 1800 edition of the Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio. The punctuation has been modernized and the spelling of certain names of people and places has been corrected, both in Lezay-Marnésia’s text and in the appendix. My notes to the texts appear as endnotes. LezayMarnésia’s own notes appear as footnotes, with my additional editorial comments bracketed within them. I would like to thank the Beinecke Library at Yale University and the Whiting Foundation for the research grants they so generously awarded me. I also wish to express my gratitude to the Department of French at Yale University, and to the Department of French and Italian at The Ohio State University for supporting me in my work. I would like to give special thanks to Alan J. Singerman for enthusiastically accepting to translate the text and for his innumerable suggestions to improve the volume. This project could not have come to fruition without him. Merci du fond du cœur! My debt of gratitude is great to those who helped in the various stages of this edition’s preparation: Kendra Boileau, Charles Walton, and Caleb Smith for encouraging me to take on the current project; Suzanne Desan for her rich comments on the introduction; Ian Curtis, Richard Riddick, and Annie de Saussure for their assistance with the proofreading and the translation of the critical material; Jocelyne Moreau-Zanelli for her remarkable book, which has remained on my desk for years; and Thomas M. Kavanagh and Christopher L. Miller for reading my first essays on Lezay-Marnésia’s work so attentively. This book is dedicated to Audrey Hoffmann, whose support and numerous suggestions have been a precious help to me, on this occasion as on so many others. Benjamin Hoffmann

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I NT R ODUCT ION Benjamin Hoffmann

building france in america Return and Ruination “We must now stop hoping for any kind of settlement in America: with each day that casts new light upon this continent and each man we encounter, we feel how unbearable it would be for honest and right-feeling Frenchmen, accustomed to a peaceful life, to settle here.” Albert de LezayMarnésia penned this bitter account in 1792 while waiting to leave Philadelphia and embark on the return voyage to France alongside his father, the marquis Claude-François-Adrien de Lezay-Marnésia. Two years earlier, father and son had crossed the Atlantic to found a colony on the banks of a tributary of the Ohio that was intended as a refuge for those of their countrymen who were hostile to the Revolution. By early 1792 the situation had become dire. Quarrelsome by temperament, the marquis de Lezay-Marnésia had alienated his former associates and, having dissipated the lion’s share of his once-considerable fortune purchasing land he was never to see with his own eyes, found himself penniless and faced with debtors’ prison. He would narrowly avoid spending time in a cell in a Philadelphia jail thanks to his son’s obtaining desperately needed financial aid from a distant acquaintance. News

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of the death of the marquis’s eldest daughter, Adrienne de Beauharnais, was a further blow, hardening his resolve to return home. In May 1792 LezayMarnésia and his son would return to France having failed to remake their homeland on the banks of the Scioto. And yet their colonial enterprise had begun with great promise. Casting himself in the role of a latter-day patriarch, the marquis de Lezay-Marnésia had visions of the Northwest Territory as the Promised Land to which he would valiantly lead a virtuous people: “All the testimonies concur, all the accounts agree, and all assure us that the land we are going to live on is the Promised Land,” he had declared in the winter of 1790. In a series of missives sent to Jean-Jacques Duval d’Éprémesnil—a rather more circumspect associate who, having bought land in America, left Lezay-Marnésia with the task of building their settlement—the marquis never ceases to deplore his homeland’s growing turmoil, which stands in stark contrast to the idyllic tranquility of the Scioto region. He is effusive about the commercial opportunities presented by this fertile land and, above all, the possibility of creating a society whose political and social organization would be radically opposed to that being elaborated in postrevolutionary France. How did this grandiose project come to such a sorry end? What does it tell us of the construction of America in the late eighteenth-century French imaginary? And where does it fit with the bloody history of territorial expansionism in the Trans-Appalachian West? Written in the twilight of the Enlightenment, Lezay-Marnésia’s letters in many ways prefigure the antiAmerican discourse of the nineteenth century. In what measure are phantasmatic representations of fact—the compensatory construction in words of a utopian city that would never see the light of day in reality—the real material of Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio? “Scioto is all that anyone talks about” In early autumn 1789 an American poet named Joel Barlow walked through the door of 162 rue Neuve des Petits Champs, where he had just opened a Paris sales office with his associate, William Playfair. The recent turn of events in French politics had given them hope that their newly founded Scioto Company would undergo rapid growth. Three million acres on the banks of the Scioto were put up for sale. In a prospectus distributed to their potential clients, they describe the territory variously as a shelter from the political storm raging in France, the location of a present-day Arcadia, and the perfect 2

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place to found settlements destined to do lucrative trade with the rest of the United States. Jocelyne Moreau-Zanelli observes of the Prospectus, “Deftly alternating between arguments seeking to gain the confidence of its readers, whet their appetite for accumulation, then awaken their fears, the text knows exactly how to sway a French audience already enamored of America, ready to believe all kinds of chimeras, and worried for the future of their country.” In order to dispel any doubts that potential immigrants might have been harboring, Barlow and Playfair included the translation of an American brochure that conveniently passes over the presence of American Indian tribes. They also gave extracts from the French version of St. John de Crèvecœur’s Letters from an American Farmer, in which he paints an idyllic picture of the banks of the Scioto. The publicity campaign was an instant success; would-be settlers flocked to the rue Neuve des Petits Champs. Soon Barlow and Playfair’s office was crowded with aristocrats set on founding a New World colony modeled after Clarens, hoping to enjoy the virtuous and peaceful life led by the heroes of Rousseau’s New Heloise. Noblemen rubbed shoulders with young bourgeois who—driven by wanderlust, increasing impoverishment, or France’s uncertain future—came to join the long line of Europeans who left to make their fortune in America. The velvet-coated bourgeois stood cheek by jowl with priests in cassocks, uniformed officers, variously attired bureaucrats, merchants, and a significant number of artisans, who came to buy what land in America their means allowed. The buyers of tracts were accompanied by a troop of indentured laborers who sought to sell their toil to the new landowners in exchange for a salary and passage to the New World. The diverse geographical origins of this multitude of aspiring colonists mirrored their social heterogeneity: people clamored for news of the Scioto colony all over France, from Périgueux to Rouen, Saumur to Grenoble. Indeed, inhabitants of the provinces bought a quarter of all the land sold. Overall, 350 clients shared an area of 162,294 acres among them (sold at a price of six livres per acre). The least well-off buyers had to content themselves with a meager fifty acres, whereas the nobility generally bought upward of one thousand acres, the largest single tract being twenty-four thousand acres. The flux of emigrants ready to leave for the banks of the Scioto was a phenomenon of considerable magnitude, driven by convincing publicity and word-of-mouth advertising. “Scioto is all that anyone talks about,” declared Madame de Beaumont in February 1790. And yet, despite their flourishing business, Joel Barlow and William Playfair were faced with a problem whose consequences were Introduction

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becoming harder and harder to control: from the outset, their project had consisted of selling land they did not own. A Disastrous Enterprise In order to comprehend fully the human and financial drama that would befall the French immigrants when they arrived on the banks of the Ohio, we first need to understand the origin and operation of the Scioto Company to which they had entrusted their fortunes and futures. In October 1787 the U.S. Congress had granted the Ohio Company—an American enterprise largely comprising veterans of the Revolutionary War—preemptive rights on three million acres located in the Scioto region. The contract stipulated that the Company had to make four payments of $500,000 in order to receive a quarter of the total area of land upon each payment. It was these preemptive rights that the directors of the Ohio Company sought to sell to major European investors. To this end they called on the services of Joel Barlow, an alumnus of Yale with a checkered career who, having first tried his hand at being a professor and then a chaplain, later became a newspaper editor and then a lawyer. In 1787 Barlow had garnered critical success with the publication of the epic poem The Vision of Columbus, more notable today for its fervent patriotism than its literary merit. Despite his limited experience in the world of business, Barlow was chosen by the Ohio Company to represent its interests in Europe. In May 1788 Barlow set out for Le Havre with the mission of selling or mortgaging the land covered by the Scioto contract. After a stopover in Paris, Barlow traveled to London and Amsterdam, where he was unable to find any willing investors. He returned to Paris in the spring of 1789. Barlow still failed to make any sales, all the while living at the Ohio Company’s expense; its directors had begun to harbor serious doubts as to their employee’s diligence. Admittedly, Barlow’s task was far from easy: his potential clients wished to buy title deeds outright but were instead offered the option of advancing the sums necessary to validate the option contract. It was in these circumstances that he became acquainted with William Playfair. A Scotsman who had come to France to commercialize a new process for laminating metals, Playfair would otherwise have been known to posterity as the inventor of the pie chart. The two men became business partners in the summer of 1789, undertaking their disastrous joint enterprise soon after. On August 3, 1789, Barlow and Playfair gathered a small group of perfectly respectable French associates at the Paris offices of their notary, Rameau, 4

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to found the Scioto Company. The intention was to amass enough capital to pay Congress and thereby validate the option on the Scioto land. In order to achieve this aim, they resorted to a plainly dishonest ruse: they told potential buyers they owned the land outright. In theory, clients would never find out about this initial deception, as the group intended to use their clients’ money to pay Congress and thereby actually take possession of the land. It was, however, to prove an overambitious attempt to brush aside a number of insurmountable obstacles. Indeed, Barlow and his associates were forgetting a key clause in the contract between the Ohio Company and the U.S. Congress: the requirement to amass $500,000 (the price of a quarter of the total Scioto land) before coming into possession of a single acre. Furthermore, the Scioto Company was using an inaccurate map—selling land to which they had no claim. Barlow further neglected to mention the presence of American Indian tribes near the land his clients were buying, or the considerable hardship of life on the American frontier. He intentionally led clients to believe that the neighboring regions were populated when in fact there was only a single settlement, Marietta, which was still something of a backwater. All told, Barlow’s enterprise was built on questionable foundations in terms of both moral integrity and financial viability. It was in late November that Barlow informed the directors of the Ohio Company of the considerable liberties he had taken with the terms of his mission, which had never stipulated selling the Scioto land outright. His employers were staggered to discover the engagements he had made without consulting them—but it was too late to take them back. Since November 3, 1789, the Scioto Company had been selling sham title deeds to buyers who— paying no heed to the ominous precedent set by the Mississippi Company’s spectacular collapse under Philippe d’Orléans’s Regency (1715–23)—thronged to the rue Neuve des Petits Champs just as their forebears had flocked to the rue Quincampoix. The buyers’ desire to leave France would come to fuel a virulent anti-Scioto campaign in the press. Sciotophobes and Sciotophiles Heated exchanges took place between “Sciotophobes” and “Sciotophiles” in a series of letters, caricatures, pamphlets, satirical texts, articles, and poems; gathered into a single volume, they would make for an intriguing new chapter in the cultural history of the Revolution. As is systematically the case with late eighteenth-century French discourse on the United States, the quarrel about Introduction

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immigration to the Scioto region was a stand-in for a debate about France— the country’s future, social organization, political institutions, and what it might draw from the American example, positive or negative, in order to theorize its own regeneration. The terms “France” and “America” occupy opposing positions in a circle of argumentation where they take on contradictory meanings depending on the speaker’s parti pris: “France” and “America” become synonymous alternatively with regeneration and anarchy, the golden age and uncontrollable bloodshed, each side painting the other in terms of its own hopes and fears. A minor tributary of the Ohio, situated more than four thousand miles from Paris, became the subject of a raging controversy both in the capital and the countryside during the winter of 1789–90 precisely because Scioto provided a proxy for debating politics at home. During this period, the structure of the Constituent Assembly was in constant flux: the initial Patriot group was continuously splitting into more or less moderate sub-factions as events forced members to decide how far was too far for each of them. The Assembly was riven by disagreements over questions as fundamental as the role of the clergy and aristocracy, or the manner in which a constitutional monarchy might divide powers between the king and the representatives of the people. It was at this time also that the Assembly proposed the sale of the biens nationaux, “national lands” recently confiscated from the Church, in order to cut public debt. The growing disagreement between Monarchists and Patriots over these questions became manifest during the Scioto affair, with each side symbolically adopting a particular vision of the eponymous faraway place. Among the Monarchists, some turned to America as the place where their reforms might come to fruition. The Patriots, on the other hand, wished to realize their own idea of political and social regeneration at home in France. For one side, the Scioto region was an anti-France, whereas, for their opponents, France was the true Scioto: the debates on this topic followed the progression of the revolutionary discourse, from reformist to radical. Let us first examine the position of the Sciotophobes, whose attacks on Barlow and Playfair’s company had two main objectives: to wit, shattering the American illusion that was drawing their countrymen away to a hostile land, and striking at the heart of the Monarchists’ conservative political program. One of their most polemical representatives was a Prussian-born nobleman naturalized as a French citizen, best known by the nom de plume he used in the Chronique de Paris, Anacharsis Cloots. Trenchantly antiaristocratic and in favor of exporting republican values to all, Cloots used Scioto as a backdrop onto which he projected a caricatural image of effemi6

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nate nobles whose iniquities are all the more monstrous due to the fact that they seek to perpetuate them on virgin soil. America’s state of nature stands in stark contrast to the aberrant character of the privileges afforded to the aristocracy under the ancien régime. Cloots employs a choice insult to sum up the French involvement in Scioto: “Two ships full of fools left from Le Havre.” Although the colonists in fact came from diverse backgrounds, Cloots reserves his venom for the members of the nobility, whom he depicts as the victims of a collective delusion. In Cloots’s view the nobles were in for a rude awakening, having read too many rose-tinted literary works like those of Crèvecœur: Our delicate ladies, who condemn themselves to this exile with the delirium of fever, will have time enough to repent. No charming transformation escapes their flights of fancy. Trees turn into palaces; hordes of savages into gentle shepherds; poverty, anguish, boredom, and early death into a joyous picture of long-lasting bodily and moral delight. These pretty women, never having attended the school of hardships, will be unable to draw upon experience in order to save themselves. It will be too late to listen to reason by the time their scalps are trophies for barbarians who remove the pericraniums from peaceable laborers without warning. There’s nothing like projects born in an armchair! When the colonists’ first letters home confirmed his direst predictions, Cloots welcomed the news with no little schadenfreude: “Come now, Messrs. d’Éprémesnil, Marnésia and company, reign over your superb Scioto estates. No doubt, the lesson’s worth a cheese!” Other major figures in the history of the Revolution contributed to the anti-Scioto campaign. Camille Desmoulins, a habitué of the newly formed Jacobin Club and the founder of Révolutions de France et de Brabant (published from November 1789), used his newspaper to relentlessly launch attacks against the Monarchists and aristocrats. The Scioto affair gave Desmoulins the perfect opportunity to settle scores with the nobility and clergy, whose members he saw as so many enemies of the Revolution. Like Anacharsis Cloots, Desmoulins was adroit at using the unlikely pairing of refined seigneurs with coarse “savages” to comic effect—providing a political critique. By transporting an imaginary French aristocrat to the banks of the Scioto it was that much easier to demonstrate the inanity of hereditary rights, since the personal attributes of cunning, skill, and strength are the only laws that Introduction

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applied in the wilderness of the New World. On March 8, 1790, Desmoulins used the Scioto affair to fire a satirical broadside against seigneurial privileges that targeted his various opponents. Taking conservatives like MirabeauTonneau, the Abbé Maury, and Cazalès to task, as well as more liberal Monarchists like Malouet, Desmoulins accuses them of wishing to perpetuate the ancien régime’s iniquities in America: “What would become of my newspaper if you leave alongside d’Éprémesnil to rebuild turreted châteaux with your dovecotes and Droits du seigneur on the banks of the Scioto?” A few days later Desmoulins let fly with another salvo, deploying some black humor worthy of the marquis de Sade to describe the fate that might await d’Éprémesnil’s wife once her husband had succumbed to the blows of a tomahawk: I see her amid the forests with nobody to turn to for help—using her noble muscles to carve out a refuge in a tree trunk, remembering halcyon days with Monsieur Thilorier, the boudoir of her youth, her allowance of 20,000 livres and the sweet nothings of Monsieur de Cluny’s ministry. Her own servants will abandon her with the intention of using their strong arms to become landowners in their own right, and around her Monsieur d’Éprémesnil’s widow will see only orangutans fighting each other for her third wedding night. Eaten by remorse and withered by consumption, longing for the banks of the Seine, she will set sail and return to Le Havre—winds and tempests permitting that she is not to be destined to pass from the arms of an orangutan to the belly of a shark. However, the honorable lady would not face any of the perils Desmoulins wished on her, as she never made the voyage to America, instead following her husband to the guillotine on June 17, 1794, a few weeks after his death. Unlike other Sciotophobes, such as the author of Observations Pertaining to the Planned Establishment of a Colony on the Banks of the Ohio and Scioto in North America, Desmoulins had little interest in the validity of the Scioto Company’s promises nor in the fate of its clients once they reached America. He would feign to ignore the fact that these clients included members of the Third Estate, rather than just the nobility and clergy. Desmoulins’s aim is not to warn his compatriots against a fraudulent scheme but to demonstrate that the elites of the ancien régime were lacking in patriotism, being ready to leave France once their former preeminence was no longer assured.

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For Desmoulins, Scioto was an imaginary space more than a real territory— a rhetorical position that allowed him to lay bare his adversaries’ true nature. Unlike Desmoulins, for whom the French colonization of America was an inherently unpatriotic enterprise, Jacques-Pierre Brissot was less cut-anddried in his view of the Scioto affair—and with good reason, as he himself had taken part in various transatlantic speculations. A member of the GalloAmerican Society, which aimed to promote intellectual and commercial exchanges between France and the United States, Brissot was among the most fervently pro-American of his compatriots at a time when enthusiasm for the New World was not in short supply. In 1788 he undertook a sixmonth trip around the East Coast of the United States on behalf of Étienne Clavière and Théophile Cazenove, who were considering speculating on American stocks. It was on this trip that Brissot met William Duer, an important figure in the Ohio Company we will have occasion to discuss below. Brissot recounted his journey in New Travels in the United States of America, Performed in 1788, which deals with the Scioto Company. Brissot was well acquainted with the Company and its milieu. In the late 1780s the future Girondist deputy was a frequent guest of Duval d’Éprémesnil, later a key figure in the promotion of French immigration to the Northwest Territory. Another of his friends, Clavière, did business with Joel Barlow’s future associate, William Playfair. Therefore, in one of the notes of his New Travels, Brissot must balance his personal convictions about France’s political and economic opportunities in the United States with the wish to distance himself from a wave of migration portrayed by the contemporary press as a reactionary scheme. Brissot begins by defending the Scioto Company, declaring that it holds “incontestable title deeds” (which was untrue) and uses the services of a “geographer held in high regard in America” (it would later transpire that the geographer in question had miscalculated the western border of the land being sold to the settlers). However, although he disagrees with the Scioto Company’s hardline detractors, Brissot is no less critical of what he supposes to be the intentions of the aristocrats leaving for the United States: “Without doubt a cruel disappointment awaits the French aristocrats who have had the foolish idea of immigrating there [to the Scioto region] to establish a monarchy . . . ; they are fleeing in order to keep their titles, honors, and privileged esteem, but they have stumbled upon a new society in which the titles conferred by vanity and chance are trampled underfoot, even ignored—where brute strength alone commands respect.”

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Granted, the unsuitedness of the French nobles to the hardscrabble existence of the backwoods did not bode well for their future in America; nevertheless, in Brissot’s eyes his compatriots remained hapless victims of fate—bereft of their vocation—who might eke out an existence in the New World. In his view, migration would, furthermore, serve both the immediate and future interests of France, reducing a burdensome population of beggars and allowing the country to establish ties with what would become a platform for lucrative trade in years to come. Whereas Lezay-Marnésia calls on those discontented with the Revolution, inviting them to leave for good, Brissot describes his compatriots’ journey across the Atlantic as the means by which to enduringly attach them to their homeland as they would “pave the way for ties of politics and commerce with a people who, one day, shall be France’s major partner.” Brissot’s nuanced position on French immigration to America was, however, an exception to the growing number of writings that for various reasons roundly condemned the phenomenon. Some, such as the anonymous author of The New Mississippi, or the Dangers of Inhabiting the Banks of the Scioto, are in the mold of Buffon and Cornelius de Pauw, describing a barren land alternating between extremely harsh winters and stiflingly hot summers, inhabited by dangerous animals and threatening “savages.” Others depict the western United States as the ground on which ancien régime France is about to reconstruct itself just as it was—with its aristocrats full of their own importance and its rapacious royal officials—while France is, paradoxically, undergoing a regeneration in which the values the philosophes’ discourse traditionally associated with America (freedom of speech, religious tolerance, equality before the law) are finally being realized. As Suzanne Desan writes, “Transatlantic cultural exchange fortified nationalist sentiment: the self-dubbed Patriots sought to steal the mantle of authenticity and liberty from l’Amérique and drape it around the new French nation instead.” In contrast to the projected American dystopia, redolent of a past that seemed to spring straight from the annals of the ancien régime, stood the French utopia that was inspired by the social and political model embodied by a certain idea of the United States. This symbolic chiasmus between the two countries finds a particularly pure expression in “The French on the Banks of the Scioto,” a poem by François Andrieux in which aristocrats seeking refuge in America encounter a philosophe returning to France at the news of the storming of the Bastille: “You’ve just arrived, I’m leaving,” the aristocrats are told by the philosophe, who hastens back to the new home of liberty. In the same vein, “The Paris High Court on the 10

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Scioto” offers a gleeful satire of magistrates who carry “to the very edge of Pennsylvania, their solemn manner, their ermine robes, their mortarboards,” losing nothing of their hauteur while judging cases brought by Algonquin and Iroquois. More or less outraged Sciotophobes were opposed by more or less sanguine Sciotophiles. These supporters of the Scioto Company would become embroiled in the war of words in their turn. Bewildered by the critiques of their planned emigration, they would nevertheless hold steadfast to their reasons for resolving to leave France. Published in February 1790, Monsieur de V.’s Letter to Monsieur le C. D. M. replies to a certain series of Observations that had appeared in the National Spectator. The author admits to having been unsettled by the latter’s admonitions but justifies his intention to leave for Scioto in the hope of escaping the insecurity plaguing France and finding more favorable circumstances in America. It seems probable that this text was written by one of the Company’s clients; it was part of the Sciotophiles’ counterattack, in which Barlow and Playfair were active figures. The latter penned a defense titled Letters and Observations Addressed to Monsieur l’Abbé Aubert in which he draws on the eyewitness accounts of the Abbé Raynal, St. John de Crèvecœur, and Thomas Hutchins in order to support the Prospectus’s promises. Playfair again used a similar strategy when the New Prospectus was published in December 1790, adjoining extracts of letters written by immigrants to Scioto that categorically deny the rumors then spreading in France. Among the signatories of these letters we find Claude-FrançoisAdrien de Lezay-Marnésia, who gives a vigorous defense of the Scioto Company. Lezay-Marnésia was himself a target for the Sciotophobes due to the role he had played since early 1790 in the creation of a group of landed proprietors in the Northwest Territory: the Society of the Twenty-Four. “Plans for building châteaux in the land of the savages” “Some set off down revolutionary roads, others considered civil war; others again left for the Ohio, where they were preceded by plans for building châteaux in the land of the savages,” Chateaubriand once declared of the different paths open to French aristocrats at the beginning of the Revolution. The expression he employs in allusion to the clients of the Scioto Company is particularly apposite, capturing the delirious quality of the pipe dreams to which some of these emigrants were in thrall—none more so than the marquis de Lezay-Marnésia. Introduction

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Born into an ancient noble family of the Franche-Comté, ClaudeFrançois-Adrien de Lezay-Marnésia had left military service in 1769 and given himself over to various literary projects. A poet and contributor to the Encyclopédie—for which he wrote the entries on “Masturbation” and “Plunderer”—in 1785 he published Happiness in the Countryside, in which he expounded the view that the nobility should return to overseeing their estates in person and endeavor to create a bond of affection with their vassals through the practice of philanthropy. The text depicts a patriarchal society inhabited by benevolent lords and honest peasants that prefigures the society he would envision creating on the banks of the Scioto several years later. Initially Lezay-Marnésia had welcomed the Revolution with enthusiasm. A fervent admirer of Montesquieu and Rousseau, he longed for the opportunity to realize reformist projects and promote a greater political role for the nobility. He was elected as the representative of the nobility for the bailiwick of Aval and attended the Estates-General, where he was reunited with his childhood friend the chevalier de Boufflers. He soon joined the ranks of the Monarchists in the Constituent Assembly, where his discreet presence would be characterized as “vegetative,” although he did make several speeches, notably against capital punishment for grain exporters and—basing his view on the principles expounded by Rousseau in the Letter to d’Alembert on the Theater (1758)—opposing the right of actors to hold positions in the administration. Although the revolutionary movement gained his sympathy at first—he joined forty-six fellow deputies of the second order who sat in solidarity with the Third Estate on June 25, 1789—Lezay-Marnésia was thunderstruck by the abolition of aristocratic privileges on the night of August 4 and outraged by the decree of November 2, 1789, that seized the Church’s wealth on behalf of the nation. The feverish pace of change, which far outstripped the simple reforms he and his Monarchist colleagues had proposed, soon had him fixed on emigration. Sent from Paris on November 9, 1789, a letter to his wife gives the reasons for his imminent departure: How, above all when one has had the misfortune to have been noble, can one become accustomed to being but a wretched creature, to seeing oneself relentlessly injured, debased? I admit that such a shameful courage is not mine to command. It seems to me that no such courage would be necessary if one were to seek a homeland where one could surely find that peace, repose, and security that now exist in a single country: New 12

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England, where good laws and good morals make men truly free and as happy as it is possible to be upon this Earth. Why did Lezay-Marnésia choose to set sail for the distant shores of America instead of finding refuge, as so many of his compatriots did, elsewhere in Europe? In his description of the French settlers in America, Ghislain de Diesbach distinguishes between two groups: “the adventurers, who imagine making their fortune in only a few years, and the fantasists, the dreamers, the disciples of Rousseau who, haunted by the myth of the ‘Noble Savage,’ take the United States to be a sort of earthly paradise where at last they might realize humanity’s oldest dream: the return of the Golden Age.” Although Lezay-Marnésia was not indifferent to the possibility of turning a fast profit, he fits squarely in the second category, seeking to return to a state of nature conceived as that “in which man came from the hand of the Creator and in which he has been instructed by God himself,” and which he described again, after his return to France, as the only place where it remains possible to live the “pleasant illusions of the golden age.” In presenting America as the real space in which two mythical eras might be relived, LezayMarnésia reveals the extent to which he was steeped in a discourse that had long imprinted a glowing image of the New World on the minds of his compatriots. This discourse had circulated at least as far back as Voltaire, who praised William Penn for having “brought to Earth the Golden Age of which so much has been said, and which it would seem has only truly existed in Pennsylvania.” Following in the footsteps of William Penn, Benjamin Franklin became the flag-bearer for Pennsylvania and a major celebrity on the political scene. As François Furstenberg observes, Franklin managed to “use the myth of the Pennsylvania Quaker to his advantage, further spreading the popularity of the state in Enlightenment Europe.” Far from diminishing after the Revolutionary War, French enthusiasm for the new Republic grew even more fervent. The historian Robert Darnton has used the term “craze” to describe the allure of all things American among Lezay-Marnésia’s contemporaries—evidence of this fascination ranging from numerous texts to pantomimes and plays depicting American Indians. Anti-Americanism in eighteenth-century France, as Philippe Roger has shown in his classic study, channeled Buffon’s scientific works in order to depict a cursed land where flora and fauna brought over from Europe are ineluctably fated to degeneracy. By contrast, pro-American sentiment drew on a political discourse that bore equally as distorted a relation to the truth, being mediated by a plethora of Introduction

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representations (treatises, brochures, travel diaries, short stories, and novels). This discourse opposed the vision of a continent where prosperity, equality, tolerance, and liberty prevail to the image of the sempiternal iniquities of the Old World. In the short interval between the American and French revolutions, Americanophilia reached its peak in terms of enthusiasm—America never again seemed so close to embodying the age-old dreams of the New World. Marked by this ideological climate, it was only natural that LezayMarnésia should have decided on America when he sought refuge outside his homeland: the social and political program he had been unable to promote in France would be realized on the faraway plains of the Scioto. Playing on ardent pro-Americanism and widespread anxiety over France’s future, the Scioto Company offered a seemingly reasonable solution to those who wished to emigrate. Lezay-Marnésia did not take much convincing, coming to the rue Neuve des Petits Champs on January 14, 1790, in order to buy twenty thousand acres for himself and one thousand more for his daughter and then, with a pang of regret, coming back the next day to buy another one thousand acres and again on February 11 to buy one hundred more. These repeated purchases suggest that Lezay-Marnésia was convinced of making an excellent investment and worried that he might not be making the most of the opportunity. In possession of an area of land that made him one of the Scioto Company’s biggest clients, Lezay-Marnésia played a leading part in the creation of the Society of the Twenty-Four. The eponymous twenty-four members banded together in early 1790 with defined statutes and goals that they continued to refine at each of their meetings. It was not necessary to be a noble in order to join (largely made up of aristocrats, the Society was nevertheless open to commoners) but simply to have acquired one thousand acres or more from the Scioto Company. The Society planned to establish two towns on the twenty-four thousand acres it allocated. The first, whose name was not decided on, was to house artisans and farmers. These laborers would be given room and board by the landowners, who would reward them with fifty acres at the end of their three-year contract. The second town, initially named Newpatrie before Lezay-Marnésia proposed they rechristen it Aigle-Lys, would contain all the municipal, religious, and educational buildings and would be home to the landowners and their families. This overall layout demonstrates that the Society of the Twenty-Four intended to maintain a sharp division between their colony’s two towns, keeping institutional power for themselves to the detriment of the working classes, who would also be on the front line of potential attacks 14

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by American Indians. Nevertheless, it would be inaccurate to take a caricatured view of this project, representing it as an attempt to create a mirror image of ancien régime France in the western United States. Although the members of the Society of the Twenty-Four had been born into a nation structured by the division between nobles and commoners, their intention was not to invest these categories with the same significance in America as in France. In early 1790 their vision was to create a society founded on the distinction between “landowners” and “farmers.” On the one hand, the landed class would run the colony, managing its growth and reproducing in America the kind of sociability its members had enjoyed at home; on the other, the working classes would not only be tasked with feeding the population but also with repelling potential marauders. Marked deeply by the recollection of Clarens in Rousseau’s New Heloise, which had given them the model of a hierarchical society whose permanence and harmony were guaranteed by its members’ mutual bond of affection, Lezay-Marnésia and his associates expected that the status quo would be maintained by acts of benevolence toward their workers. As noble birth would no longer be the criterion for assigning individuals to social categories, it would be theoretically possible to imagine some mobility between the categories, notably in the case that a farmer became a landowner himself at the end of his three-year contract. However, the Society reserved the right to choose who could join their number, stipulating that would-be members had to be sponsored by a current member and approved in a ballot of the other associates. Inspired by the practices of Masonic lodges, this procedure for admitting new members would allow the Society of the Twenty-Four to preserve a shared outlook among its membership and maintain consensus over its plans for a paternalistic project in America. The project was nonetheless plagued by a philosophical paradox that threatened its chance of coming to fruition from the outset. It sought to return to a state of nature, supposedly preserved in the Ohio region, in order to lead a simple and virtuous life there—one that would be alien to the corrupting influence of the big cities. But it also sought to bring to the Ohio the refinements of the ancien régime’s urbane society, especially music, a taste for belles lettres, and the art of conversation. Equally inspired by Voltaire’s urbane soirées at Ferney as by the diatribe against sophistication that Rousseau put into Fabricius’s mouth, the Society of the Twenty-Four had a paradoxical dream—that of a refined state of nature. This outlook, developed over the course of nine meetings held by the Society between January 24 and February 10, 1790, furnished Lezay-Marnésia Introduction

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with a canvas on which his fertile imagination unceasingly embroidered. Impassioned by ever more grandiose projects, in letters sent to his partners he expounded the vision of a flourishing colony, displaying an alarming ignorance of living conditions on the American frontier. Deforestation, in LezayMarnésia’s view, was far from a dangerous activity. Having had several of their novice woodcutters injured while felling giant sycamores, the colonists of Gallipolis, a town founded in the Northwest Territory by another group of clients of the Scioto Company, might have begged to differ. The climate would be “most salubrious and very temperate” Lezay-Marnésia again assured his partners, not foreseeing the long winter he would later spend in an encampment buried among the snowdrifts. As for the American Indian tribes living west of the Appalachians, Lezay-Marnésia imagined these “noble savages” would ask for nothing more than to be allowed to adopt European customs and participate in bucolic fêtes champêtres. They were, in reality, rather less favorable to the colonization of their lands, inflicting a historic defeat on the American army on November 4, 1791: the bloody rout of General Arthur St. Clair’s troops at the Battle of the Wabash (we will come back to this event below). This idyllic representation of the Ohio region, which displays a marked tendency to confound the Trans-Appalachian West with a Swiss canton taken from the pages of Rousseau, allows Lezay-Marnésia to enjoy his American chimeras without much thought for the real. Aigle-Lys, he predicts, would soon boast factories whose products would be sold across the United States and the Caribbean, competing with British trade. “All you need in this country is ambition and action,” Lezay-Marnésia asserts with the bravado of a captain of industry. The marquis did not only have dreams of economic prosperity but also of spreading French culture to the United States. In one passage he casts himself in the role of founder of the new Sorbonne: “Like the major American towns we shall have a university and ours will have over those others the great advantage that the French language will be taught there.” A member of several literary academies, Lezay-Marnésia planned to associate the future university (Lezay College? Marnésia University?) with a philosophical society whose members would dedicate themselves to the study of the arts and humanities as well as agronomy. A newspaper published in the language of Molière would complete the Society’s civilizing mission. While the prematurity of these projects is striking—Lezay-Marnésia’s imagination was roving at a time when the location of the future colony was still undecided—they are nevertheless telling with regard to an assumption that was 16

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one of the project’s most singular aspects. Their intention was not to integrate into a preexisting American colony or to create a multinational society alongside other immigrants, favoring mutual assistance and the choice of broad church deism, such as that which Crèvecœur outlines in the 1787 French version of his Letters from an American Farmer. Rather, they sought to transport a homogenous society to America, a society united in its language, customs, rejection of the French Revolution, and of course religion. Lezay-Marnésia saw his future colony as a little France in America, or, at least, the incarnation of a certain idea of France set on the banks of the Ohio, intending to bar entry to Americans (whom he held in complete contempt) and other Europeans (of whom he said nothing, unlike Bernardin de Saint-Pierre). The new society would comprise Frenchmen chosen for the purity of their morals and the conformity of their political views with Lezay-Marnésia’s own. Nowhere is what we can only call the folly of Lezay-Marnésia’s great expectations more apparent than in the domain of religion. He was not content with an ordinary priest for Aigle-Lys—only a bishop would do. The latter would lead the faithful in worship and supervise the almshouses and aid committees that would soon, in Lezay-Marnésia’s confident prediction, flourish on the virgin banks of the Scioto. Alas, despite their efforts, the Society of the Twenty-Four failed to obtain the creation of a diocese from Pope Pius VI; in the end, the priest charged with tending to parishioners in Aigle-Lys answered to the diocese of Baltimore. Lezay-Marnésia’s disproportionate religious designs are, however, not merely further proof of his confused priorities in trying to establish a settlement from nothing; they also attest to a genuine anxiety about the future of Catholicism in France. Aigle-Lys was thus to have a prophylactic role: the future colony would transplant Catholicism to the American West during a time when the French were becoming accustomed to scenes at home like those described by the horrified Abbé Morellet: “churches profaned and closed, sacred vessels paraded on poles around Paris, communion wafers trampled underfoot, a fille d’opéra upon the altar in the place of the ‘so-called Virgin,’ and a ballet in Notre Dame.” In short, the emphasis Lezay-Marnésia places on the religious question situates his emigration in the lineage of countless predecessors since the sixteenth century who, wishing to preserve proscribed teachings in the face of persecution, had sought refuge in America. Lezay-Marnésia imparts a biblical flavor to his journey to the western United States; the banks of the Scioto take on an air of the Jordan in his writing. He declares that he would have been Abraham or Boaz if he could have chosen his destiny and compares the Introduction

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banks of the Ohio to the Promised Land. In addition, his son also makes analogies between his father’s adventures and the Old Testament. For Albert, the Revolution was a second flood and his father’s mission in America was akin to that of the dove that took flight from the ark to seek land. Like a patriarch—at fifty-five years old, he was among the oldest embarking for Scioto—Lezay-Marnésia sees himself bringing a chosen people to America. In order to scrutinize the morals of the future colonists, he asked that they submit their marriage certificates and confession statements signed by their priest; the precaution would prove ineffective, as the candidates presented Lezay-Marnésia with fakes that he accepted without further ado. Far from being stringently selected, Lezay-Marnésia’s band would contain some of the most “perverted” elements of the “Parisian rabble.” No matter: while crossing the desert, Moses, too, was disappointed in the conduct of his people, who were quicker to idolize the golden calf than to prostrate themselves before the Tablets of Stone. Like Moses, Lezay-Marnésia never arrived at his voyage’s final destination: as we will discuss below, he reached Marietta in the Northwest Territory but was never able to take possession of the thousands of acres on the banks of the Scioto to the south and west. In this regard, there is a faint melancholy about the title of his work. Although Scioto was all the rage in contemporary gossip and the toponym had become synonymous with the French adventure in the American West, Lezay-Marnésia does not use the name on the cover of his work. We might have expected him to use it for publicity reasons, to link his work explicitly to an enterprise that was the subject of much debate. By allusion, his chosen title reflects the project’s failure. The expression “banks of the Ohio” indicates that the voyage was interrupted, never reaching the tributary of the Ohio that was to be its final destination. Tantalizingly near to the land of his dreams, the banks of the Ohio were to be Lezay-Marnésia’s Mount Nebo; his letters are the testament of a patriarch who came within sight of the Promised Land but never set foot on it. On the Path to the Promised Land Lezay-Marnésia’s confidence in one day seeing Aigle-Lys was undiminished during the crossing—a long and arduous one, according to his son’s account—and upon arrival in the United States. Arriving in Alexandria, Virginia, on July 29, 1790, his enthusiasm redoubled on his first encounter with America. Admittedly, he and his compatriots were greeted by troubling 18

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news: the roads leading west of the Appalachians were in very poor condition and fierce American Indians lay in wait, purportedly ready to scalp new arrivals. Far from being put off by what he brushed aside as mere hearsay, Lezay-Marnésia elaborated a conspiracy theory: the English, alarmed by the imminent foundation of a colony whose trade would soon spread across the United States, were spreading these false rumors in order to dissuade the French immigrants who had come to compete with them. “They realize how much [our settlement] will harm their business for we shall bring to the heart of America the very arts by which they have unfairly kept it subaltern,” Lezay-Marnésia declared, convinced of having outfoxed his rivals. After a fortnight in Alexandria, he conferred to a companion the mission of transporting to the Scioto region the sixty laborers hired in France. Meanwhile, he traveled to New York with his son in order to deal with the American authorities on behalf of the Society. Lezay-Marnésia met the new republic’s most important leaders: Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, and George Washington himself. He also made the acquaintance of William Duer, an unscrupulous businessman who had played a pivotal role in the Ohio Company’s activities. The latter loaned 12,000 French pounds to Lezay-Marnésia and his associates and promised to use his influence in government to obtain an exemption from direct taxation and military service for the future inhabitants of Aigle-Lys. His business concluded, the marquis headed west, remarking for the first time on the considerable gap between his notions of the wilderness of the New World and the actual hardships of the American frontier. The natural barrier of the Appalachian Mountains presented more than a simple obstacle, which led Albert de Lezay-Marnésia to conclude, as did many of his contemporaries, that it in fact threatened the political unity of the fledgling American nation. It also marked the boundary between the last vestiges of European civilization and a state of nature that proved much less enchanting than the author of the Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio had imagined it in France. Following the Forbes Road that linked Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, passing through Lancaster, Lezay-Marnésia and his son came upon roads that were barely useable, log cabins with only animal skins on the floor to welcome their weary limbs, and American colonists who seemed closer to animals than civilized men. It is most plausibly in Pittsburgh that Lezay-Marnésia wrote a number of letters that the Scioto Company published as extracts in its New Prospectus (December 1790). The marquis declares that he has nothing but good to say of his dealings with the Introduction

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Scioto Company and that his new lands are incomparable. He was, however, hardly in a better position to make this claim than he was in Paris, as he had still not set eyes on a single acre. Over 180 miles of rough terrain had to be covered before he did. Lezay-Marnésia publicly takes a stance in the debate raging between Sciotophobes and Sciotophiles—he authorizes his correspondent to make the letter public—to persuade his countrymen to immigrate to America. As the author of the “Letter Written by a Frenchman Immigrating to the Lands of the Scioto Company” writes, the security and prosperity of a new colony largely depended on its number of inhabitants. It was therefore in Lezay-Marnésia’s best interest to describe his lands in Scioto as a veritable paradise, anticipating the wonderment he expected to experience when he finally took possession of them. The marquis continued on his journey with his son in tow, embarking at Pittsburgh to follow the Ohio downstream to Marietta. They arrived in early November; while Marietta was supposed to be only a stopover on their way to Scioto, it ended up being the westernmost limit of their journey. Founded in 1788 by General Rufus Putnam and a band of veterans of the Revolutionary War, Marietta still only had five hundred inhabitants when Lezay-Marnésia arrived there two years later. The town was named after Marie Antoinette in recognition of France’s role in American independence. Despite this symbol of friendship between the two nations, it was in Marietta that a serious disagreement took place between Lezay-Marnésia and his American associates. Arriving on November 5, 1790, Rufus Putnam asked Lezay-Marnésia and one of his companions, the comte de Barth, to join an expedition of twenty rangers and two guides that would seek to scout out the exact location where Aigle-Lys would be built. Alarmed by the presence of hostile tribes in the region, Lezay-Marnésia ruled out the possibility of hazarding into this dangerous territory. His refusal angered the general, who ignored him as a result and chose to deal exclusively with de Barth in future. To make matters worse, Lezay-Marnésia’s collaboration with the Society of the Twenty-Four ended less than a fortnight later. On November 15, 1790—the same day he sent the first of the Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio to the chevalier de Boufflers—Lezay-Marnésia announced that he would found his own settlement independently of his partners and of his countrymen already at Gallipolis. While the exact reasons for this split remain unknown, it is possible that the marquis’s far-fetched projects for Scioto had long been a source of tension among the Society of the Twenty-Four, ultimately leading to their parting ways. With sixty laborers in his service, Lezay20

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Marnésia was far from having the necessary manpower to form a dissident colony in the Scioto wilderness. The point was moot, however, as by midNovember it was no longer possible to think about laying foundations: an exceptionally harsh winter had set in, forcing Lezay-Marnésia to take up residence in Marietta while awaiting more clement weather in spring. It was during this winter that a threat he had long dismissed became clearer: that of American Indian resistance. Although the directors of the Scioto Company had tried to ignore their existence, several of the American Indian tribes living in the Northwest Territory were less than thrilled by the colonial projects being formed in their lands. Situated thirty miles north of Marietta, the colony of Big Bottom was attacked during the night of January 2 and 3, 1791, by Delaware and Wyandot warriors; fourteen colonists were killed and three went missing. Marietta was menaced by the same danger. In his memoirs, Albert de Lezay-Marnésia recounts that the inhabitants could not venture out of town without risking being cut down or scalped by American Indians waiting in ambush. LezayMarnésia found himself in the unenviable position of being separated from his land in Scioto by nearly one hundred miles and the fierce resistance of the American Indian tribes, held at arm’s length by the Americans in Marietta due to his propensity for both irascibility and fantasy, and completely estranged from his former associates in the Society of the Twenty-Four. He survived the famine caused by the difficulty supplying the town during the winter as best he could and, as soon as the snows melted, in early 1791, set out east again in the company of his son. Lezay-Marnésia clung stubbornly to the hope of settling in Scioto one day—until the defeat of Arthur St. Clair at the Battle of the Wabash (November 4, 1791) put an end to his hopes for good. Rather than returning to France, where political developments did not augur well, he purchased a property of four hundred acres on the banks of the Monongahela, which he christened Azile. “A nice retreat for a philosophical farmer” In his memoirs, Albert de Lezay-Marnésia suggests that Azile might have been the realization of his father’s high hopes for life in the United States: “The soil was virgin and the location attractive. It could become a nice retreat for a philosophical farmer, even if it were only to wait for the outcome of the bloody anarchy that was tearing up France.” At least at first, Lezay-Marnésia seemed to grow accustomed to life in his new abode. A letter to d’Éprémesnil Introduction

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attests to this, describing the abundant vegetables produced by his potager and the plentiful game in the nearby woods. The marquis even had brick and pottery workshops built, hoping they would generate an annual profit of 100 louis. Economically viable and sweetened by the charms of nature, his retreat was further graced with good company: Lezay-Marnésia came across another unfortunate client of the Scioto Company, the marquis de Lassus de Luzières, who had come to settle near Pittsburgh with his wife, children, and son-in-law. Three other countrymen—Barthélémi Tardiveau, Pierre Audrain, and Jean-Baptiste-Charles-Lucas des Pintreaux—also attended their gatherings, as did a choice guest, the writer Hugh Henry Brackenridge. Settled in Pennsylvania, on an estate where little by little he was recovering from his adventures, Lezay-Marnésia had something of Candide about him, cultivating his garden and enjoying happiness in moderation. And yet, despite the bucolic charms of this life, Lezay-Marnésia decided to sell his property—for “almost nothing,” his son specifies—less than a year after settling there. To explain this decision, Albert de Lezay-Marnésia makes mention of his father’s “inexperience with difficulties of life” and “indecisive character.” But the inability of the marquis to acclimatize to a foreign country whose language he did not speak and whose citizens he disliked was not his only reason for leaving a property he would describe, some years later in “Letter to Monsieur Audrain,” as a lost paradise. External factors also made him take the bold (to say the least) move of returning to France while it was in the grip of the Revolution—with the king having just attempted the Flight to Varennes and Lezay-Marnésia’s name on the list of émigrés. Moreover, Lezay-Marnésia was faced with extreme financial difficulties: he was receiving no further funds from France, and William Duer, who was about to go bankrupt in spectacular fashion, was unable to continue the line of credit he had granted the marquis. The news that reached Lezay-Marnésia in early 1792 increased his resolve to return home: his eldest daughter, Adrienne, had died the previous August. Stunned by this loss, Lezay-Marnésia and his son decided to return to their family, setting sail in May, two years after leaving France. The end of Lezay-Marnésia’s tale was to be unhappy: one misfortune after another awaited him on his return home. A Return to the Native Land “We had left France in order to escape the disasters revolution threatened to bring upon the country; we returned at the very moment that revolution 22

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made good upon its darkest promises,” Albert de Lezay-Marnésia remarks on the subject of his paradoxical emigration. Indeed, the moment his father had chosen to return home was a delicate one. After the crossing and a brief sojourn in London, they entered Paris on June 20, 1792, just as the Revolution entered a new phase: that same day the masses descended on the Tuileries Palace, forcing the king to toast the nation’s health and wear the Phrygian cap. On August 10, Lezay-Marnésia and his son were still in Paris to witness the turbulent end of the constitutional monarchy, when the mob stormed the Tuileries Palace in anger. They were joined in the capital by Albert’s elder brother, Adrien de Lezay-Marnésia, who was returning from studies at the University of Göttingen. While waiting for the authorities to approve his passport, Lezay-Marnésia pursued a number of activities. Still plagued by financial difficulties, he was obliged to sell off his estates at Moutonne, Présilly, and Grandvaux. He also took the opportunity to give the manuscript of the Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio to Prault. First published in 1792, the Letters were banned by the Girondist government not long after and were not reprinted until 1800. Having been granted a passport, Lezay-Marnésia and his sons set off for the Franche-Comté. In mid-September father and sons took up residence at their ancestral seat at Saint-Julien, but following a row with their father Albert and Adrien left for Paris in early 1793—again choosing an inopportune moment for landed aristocrats to move to the capital, as Louis XVI had just been executed. Lezay-Marnésia remained at Saint-Julien until he was arrested, in March 1794, as a ci-devant noble whose name still had not been struck from the list of émigrés. During his imprisonment in Besançon he learned that his wife had died on June 30 while in exile in London. Set free in October 1794 thanks to a certificate of civism written in his favor by the municipality of Saint-Julien and the Orgelet Revolutionary Committee, he returned to his estates to devote himself to writing and gardening. This brief respite from turmoil ended with the coup of 18 Fructidor, Year V (September 4, 1797) and the wave of persecution against Royalists and émigrés that followed, forcing him to leave France once again. Lezay-Marnésia found refuge in Switzerland, first in Lausanne and then Coppet, where he was the guest of Necker. He was unable to return home immediately: although struck from the list of émigrés by the department of the Jura, he remained on that of the Haute-Saône, where he still owned land. In early 1800 he was finally allowed to reenter France and took residence in Besançon, where he began his final work, The Action of the Principles of Religion and True Philosophy. Of this Introduction

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“Apologia for Christianity” only fragments remain, clearly inspired by Pascal’s Pensées. Lezay-Marnésia was never to finish this work: on December 9, less than a year after his return to France, he died, leaving nothing of his once considerable fortune other than debts and the Château de Saint-Julien.

lezay- marnésia, thwarted utopian Writing the Truth about America Lezay-Marnésia’s Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio begin with a seemingly anodyne statement that in fact goes to the heart of a problem that has remained unresolved since Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic: the publisher promises that, unlike his countless predecessors, Lezay-Marnésia is telling the truth about America. It is a bold claim, given that contemporary European discourse on the New World largely consisted of commentaries and reinterpretations written by novelists and ivory-tower philosophers, based only on secondhand accounts by bona fide travelers. The length and arduousness of a transatlantic voyage greatly restricted the number of witnesses to events in America, which meant that the knowledge available about the New World remained limited during the eighteenth century. As Durand Echeverria has observed, this situation was slow to evolve: “Practically all, however, of these French reports and interpretations published during the war [the American Revolution] were composed from second-, third-, or fourth-hand information and were usually written in haste and with little critical evaluation of the facts.” His publisher effectively promises that Lezay-Marnésia’s letters will break with the weary repetition of ideas and recycling of homogenous themes, giving a new lease on life to a discourse that had long been moribund. However, it would be too simplistic to distinguish between philosophers writing in France and travelers returning from the New World on the assumption that in the works of the latter one might find a discourse about America that would finally reveal the “truths” inaccessible to the former. In their accounts of America, eighteenth-century travelers show a great propensity to recast discourses they had heard prior to their actual experiences. This phenomenon might be explained by a number of interlinked factors. First, travelers more or less consciously drew models from the works of their predecessors. These models might be stylistic—as in the use of a pastoral mode to 24

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describe nature in America—or thematic, predetermining certain topoi such as descriptions of Quakers, American Indians, or Niagara Falls. Indeed, without these generic elements a text on the New World would have been seen as incomplete by both author and readers. More profoundly, gaining knowledge via an intermediary of a reality one has never directly experienced produces expectations that constitute an a priori interpretative frame: the discovery of America was not an encounter between an unformed consciousness and an unknown land, but rather an experience during which observations were constantly compared and contrasted with presuppositions in order to either confirm or invalidate the latter. As such, each traveler’s account is marked by the traces of its predecessors. Another ideological factor also comes into play in the specific case of how the French saw late eighteenth-century America. Because the American model was often taken up by the philosophes in the course of their arguments in favor of the civil and religious liberties for which they were agitating at home, the discourse on America came to have a polemical function. America’s role in debates about France contributed to the distortion of discourse regarding the New World, casting the continent in a predetermined role in a clash of ideas that, in truth, had little to do with America. As both a traveler and philosopher, Lezay-Marnésia would seem to fit the role of the ideal observer Rousseau calls for in a famous footnote to his “Second Discourse.” However, far from being an exception to the mass of men of letters who projected their dreams and theories onto the American continent—and despite his publisher’s commercially motivated claims to the contrary—Lezay-Marnésia’s work bends observable reality to suit his goals and aspirations. Plain lies, omissions, self-delusion, denial, and intentional misunderstandings combine to conjure an imaginary continent out of words, one that often corresponds to the author’s idea of the New World prior to crossing the Atlantic and not to what he discovered during his travels. In this regard, the first and third letters are telling examples of Lezay-Marnésia’s reinvention of America in this work. Addressed to the chevalier de Boufflers, Lezay-Marnésia evinces a curious paradox. The principal subject is an episode in which Paulée, the queen of the Huron, visits the author while he is living in Marietta. Lezay-Marnésia undoubtedly embellishes the scene: the behavior of the American Indians he describes to Boufflers is strikingly unrealistic, as they behave just like the marquis’s dinner guests of yesteryear at his estates in the Franche-Comté. Furthermore, Lezay-Marnésia’s son was to give a very different account of the Introduction

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same episode. Yet the distortion of the promised “truth” about America is more complex than the partial embroidering of an encounter between the representatives of different cultures. Lezay-Marnésia goes to great pains to convince the chevalier de Boufflers that his description of American Indians will serve to reform the idea the French have of the latter, but nevertheless reproduces himself a stereotypical discourse that is French in origin. In this regard, the point where the text turns to the theater is telling. Lezay-Marnésia claims that his description of the queen of the Huron would allow playwrights to form a more accurate picture of American Indians, but in fact his portrait of Paulée follows the conventions of French discourse on “savages.” Overall, the letter confirms the presuppositions of its readership while claiming to amend those same presuppositions. This paradox is far from gratuitous, for in giving a comforting image of American reality—in particular the American Indian tribes that posed a major obstacle to colonization—LezayMarnésia purposefully avoids disabusing his compatriots of their misapprehensions, instead inviting them to follow in his footsteps in the Northwest Territory. Meanwhile, the marquis promotes colonialist notions that negate the specificity of American Indian culture—its textual representatives are perfectly happy to abandon their own culture in order to reproduce French customs and norms pertaining to sociability—and support a conventional discourse about the supposed temperamental affinity of Native Americans and Frenchmen, an affinity that would allow the latter to impose their authority over their New World subordinates. He also adds an erotic promise to this colonialist vision: in a telling detail, Paulée happily receives his “somewhat sensual and at the same time very paternal” kiss, a male fantasy integral to the imperial imagination. The third letter is as slippery as the first, deploying a number of subterfuges in order to mask the failure of the author’s projects. While LezayMarnésia’s last months in America were in fact marked by the manifold difficulties discussed above, the final letter manages to persist in painting a pleasant and reassuring picture of life across the Atlantic through an account of the successful migration of Monsieur des Pintreaux and his wife. The des Pintreaux really existed, as is attested to by a short passage from New Journey where Brissot mentions them as a family from Normandy who had moved near Pittsburgh before the Revolution. However, Lezay-Marnésia rewrites the des Pintreaux story by merging the latter’s biography with details of the marquis’s own first text, a morality tale titled The Happy Family (1766), which Grimm deemed “truly insipid.” The opposition of Monsieur des Pintreaux’s 26

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parents to their son’s marriage retreads the story of the ill-fated match that is at the center of Lezay-Marnésia’s tale, while the rest of his third letter takes many liberties with the real life of des Pintreaux and his wife. Presenting a tale that is more than half fictional as a true story is not the missive’s only, or even most flagrant, departure from the “truth” that Lezay-Marnésia’s collection of letters purportedly reveals. In fact, the story is a sort of diversion that allows him to brush under the carpet the abject failure of his colonial project in America. The marquis does, however, leave revelatory traces—unguarded moments where he speaks the truth despite himself. Lezay-Marnésia touches in veiled terms on “most difficult circumstances” and “distress,” although he refrains from any further comment. Until the very end of the collection, Lezay-Marnésia strives to depict America as he would have wished to see it rather than as he found it, to persuade the reader—and no doubt himself, having given in to the consolations of writing—that America truly is the blissful idyll he so desired. If the first and third letter rewrite the reality of America in order to make it fit with the author’s expectations, the second pushes the enterprise of invention further in imagining an ideal society, a hybrid and contradictory construction admixing the promise of a colonial project and that of a utopian city. The Risks of Erudition Springing from a long line of French representations of North America, the central letter in Lezay-Marnésia’s collection bespeaks the evolution of this tradition in the aftermath of the American Revolution. “From the émigrés’ perspectives,” François Furstenberg observes, “the United States was a distant place. It was less a nation than a remote borderland on the fringes of European civilization.” Indeed, Furstenberg goes on to write, “To an extent that many people today forget, that was also the perspective of the people with whom the émigrés socialized during their travels in the United States: men like Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, and Adams. None of these founding fathers could afford to ignore the diplomatic, economic, or political hierarchies of the Atlantic world, or the relatively powerless place they occupied in it.” Like the five Frenchmen whose American travels and posterity Furstenberg retraces, Lezay-Marnésia viewed America as existing on the margins of Europe. In the Northwest Territory—on the periphery of America itself—he saw the opportunity to launch a new French colonial enterprise. The very fragility of the nascent U.S. republic allowed interested onlookers to project Introduction

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vast colonial ambitions onto the great blank canvas of the American continent. These onlookers shared a view of the Trans-Appalachian West as an unexploited gold mine of political, strategic, and economic opportunities that the fledgling United States would be as powerless to keep for itself as the American Indian tribes were. What distinguishes Lezay-Marnésia’s colonial designs from those of his compatriots—the project Talleyrand presented to the French Institute, for example—is its literary bent. Fictional works, particularly in the utopian genre, shaped the very formulation of LezayMarnésia’s colonial designs; indeed, it was this enchantment with literary ideas that doomed his designs to failure before a single stone was laid. Where exactly do these influences manifest themselves in Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio? Readers of Flaubert and Cervantes will already know that reading novels can give rise to pipe dreams about worlds in comparison to which reality seems to pale. The curious case of Lezay-Marnésia demonstrates that reading about utopias is no less risky. Indeed, it shows that reading More and Montesquieu can induce its own sort of bovarysm: a treatise on the best form of republic, no less than a sentimental novel or chivalric romance, may leave the reader dissatisfied with the world as it truly is. Sent from Pittsburgh on November 2, 1791, the second letter of Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio describes in detail a colonial project that Lezay-Marnésia wishes to realize with the help of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, the author of Paul and Virginia (1791). Named “Saint-Pierre” in the latter’s honor (and perhaps to persuade him to participate in an uncertain endeavor), the city would have been established in the western part of Pennsylvania, “between the Allegheny and the calm Monongahela.” While Lezay-Marnésia has already spent fifteen months on American soil at this point, his project is not so much inspired by on-the-ground observations as it is by various texts he mentions by name: The Adventures of Telemachus (1699) by Fénelon, the apologue of the Troglodytes in Montesquieu’s Persian Letters (1721), the Studies of Nature (1784) by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and, of course, Rousseau’s Julie, or the New Heloise (1761), are repeatedly held up as examples by Lezay-Marnésia. Among all the literary models at his disposal, the most influential is undoubtedly Rousseau’s Clarens, a society where mutual affection among its members guarantees the permanence of a political structure characterized by a strong hierarchy. Divided into the population of servants and the central couple of Julie and Monsieur de Wolmar, Clarens is a microcosm where the formation of a sentimental bond between masters and servants assures the cooperation of all in 28

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search of the common good. The servants, who are likened to children, perceive the masters they work for as strict and loving parents, justified in punishing their children should the latter give in to licentious practices that would make them unworthy of the reflected virtue in which they are so fortunate to partake. Rousseau’s description of the paternalistic society of Clarens is the locus classicus for all those who—like Lezay-Marnésia in Happiness in the Countryside—advocate the restitution of lands to the nobility in order that the latter might work to better the life of the peasantry and lead by example, effecting a moral regeneration of the countryside, and all the while inviting other aristocrats to quit the corrupting influence of the city. The social organization that Lezay-Marnésia intends to create in SaintPierre is inspired by the concern with hierarchy at the heart of Clarens’s political system (it is worth noting that slavery is never mentioned by LezayMarnésia as a possible social system for his colony, given that it was already forbidden in the Northwest Territory). As in Rousseau’s model, Saint-Pierre’s society would be divided into two groups charged with distinct responsibilities: workers and landowners, living in separate zones. The first zone, situated outside the city walls, would accommodate the artisans and laborers whose main role would be to provision Saint-Pierre. Meanwhile, those living within the city walls would share the administrative, political, and religious responsibilities. This division of labor reflects a clear inequality between the two groups: Lezay-Marnésia affords no possibility for members of the working classes to join the oligarchy of landowners, even if the former were to one day own land themselves. The text’s silence on this matter allows Lezay-Marnésia to leave unquestioned a contradiction that is inherent to the social model he promotes. To wit, such a system would seem to have feet of clay as the poorest citizens are supposed to forever content themselves with their lot as subordinates, while the landowners are given the opportunity to live a life of contemplation within the comfort of their American refuge. LezayMarnésia finds in Rousseau’s Clarens a solution that might allow him to perpetuate his political system in the long term. In their behavior toward the working classes, the oligarchs of Saint-Pierre will model themselves after Julie’s treatment of her servants: they will adopt a social contract based on philanthropy. Lezay-Marnésia explains that property owners “will owe these men, their salaried help, care, protection, ample remuneration for their work, graciousness, indulgence, and kindness.” Moreover, he enjoins them to erect a “hospital for the disabled and sick” as well as “two schools.” In other words, the landlords will lessen the difficulties encountered by the working Introduction

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classes with charitable giving; they will use philanthropy as a palliative to the inequality of conditions, and it will provide the oligarchs with the gratitude of the lowliest citizens as well as recognition for their political role. It is thus toward literary works that Lezay-Marnésia turns in order to imagine the elements of his colonial project. He does so to such an extent that the complete failure of his project can be explained by the paradoxical ambition that results: to build a real city out of utopian dreams. A Project of Many Contradictions Lezay-Marnésia’s project might be summed up in terms of contradiction. He plans to create a utopia, but utopias are not blueprints for cities that can be built in the real world. Rather, they are the result of a mental exercise, the imagining of “lateral possibilities to reality,” to borrow Raymond Ruyer’s expression. That impossibility is part of the very nature of utopias is hinted at by the genre with which they are most often associated: travel literature. In Sade’s Aline and Valcour it is during a voyage across the Pacific that the utopia of Tamoé is discovered the day after a storm. Ignorant of the exact location of a place he comes across by pure serendipity, the traveler can attest to the utopia’s existence but cannot establish a durable link that would allow others to follow his example. The affinity between the utopian genre and travel literature, between a certain mode of political speculation and one of exoticism, brings out “Utopia’s secessionism,” to use Frederic Jameson’s term from Archaeologies of the Future. Jameson uses this term to mean the tendency of utopias to recede from the empirical world and history—a recession that problematizes the possibility of their serving as models for real societies. Unlike the many utopian writers he read, Lezay-Marnésia wanted to realize in the here and now that which is perhaps only meant to exist outside the realm of reality. In his letters, the marquis does not worry unduly about how American Indian tribes might actually receive his compatriots, although the realization of his project greatly depended on it. The American Indian tribes were in fact fighting against the westward expansion of the United States at that time. On November 4, 1791, only two days after Lezay-Marnésia’s letter to Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, an army sent by George Washington, as mentioned above, was defeated by American Indians at the Battle of the Wabash (fought near present-day Fort Recovery, Ohio). Despite the many grim proofs of the American Indians’ fierce opposition to the growing presence of European settlers beyond the Appalachian Mountains, Lezay30

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Marnésia continues to depict them as children who will gladly welcome their French fathers: “The good Indians will feel that friends have arrived, and since they really call the French their fathers, they will cover them with a multitude of unaffected and sincere marks of their affection. They will abandon themselves to the penchant they have always had for a cheerful, just, sensitive nation that honors men in whatever shape and color they appear.” In this idyllic depiction, American Indians are described as obedient colonial subjects, impatiently awaiting the arrival of their natural masters. LezayMarnésia’s pastoral depiction of what was in fact a war zone again demonstrates the constitutive ambiguity of the text—it is a prospectus describing at once a colonial project and a utopia in the making. Indeed, little by little, the status of the text becomes increasingly uncertain. What had started as a request to Bernardin de Saint-Pierre turns into a detailed description of a utopian city reminiscent of Thomas More’s masterpiece. Lezay-Marnésia declares that Saint-Pierre will be shaped like a crescent and that the houses, unadorned and simple, will all have gardens. In 1516 Thomas More had already insisted on the geometrical form of his city Amaurot, which would be built of constructions creating perfect vistas with gardens ever present at the core of the urban space. The harmony of spatial organization in More’s city mirrors the perfection of the political system adopted by the Utopians, while the eschewal of luxury is another dominant feature of utopian constructions that LezayMarnésia likewise adopts. The literary model furnished by More is complemented by a source of inspiration drawn from architecture: Claude-Nicolas Ledoux’s (1736–1806) Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans. Based in Lezay-Marnésia’s home region, Franche-Comté, fewer than a hundred kilometers north of his Château at Saint-Julien, the saltworks were proof that it was possible to make real a dream vision of symmetry. Lezay-Marnésia derives the crescent shape of his project from Ledoux’s semicircular layout, modifying its function somewhat. For Ledoux, this spatial organization was to facilitate the overseers’ control over the workers; it would make objective and enduring “the social harmony of which the King is the guarantor in God’s name.” As Michel Foucault has shown, Ledoux establishes a panopticon organized around a central point on which inward gazes converge while a single eye looking outward can observe all without missing anything: “Among all the reasons for the prestige that was accorded, in the second half of the eighteenth century, to circular architecture, one must no doubt include the fact that it expressed a certain political utopia.” In Lezay-Marnésia’s project, however, the laborers live outside the Introduction

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urban center and their behavior is monitored by the “Approbateurs” (“Commenders”), who are themselves obliged to circulate in order to observe the laborers. Here the semicircular shape marks a break between an interior space, surrounded by walls, rigorously organized and reserved for the elite, and an exterior space whose development is more anarchic—intended for agricultural activity and inhabited by the working classes. However, the semicircular shape is not, for Lezay-Marnésia’s project, in service of Foucault’s “disciplinary gaze”; the denizens of Saint-Pierre hold power for themselves, and their actions are not subject to discipline. Despite this difference, at Saint-Pierre just as at the Royal Saltworks, the geometrical layout expresses and promotes a social order, one that conforms to the role given to architecture by Ledoux himself: “Beauty that is none other than proportion holds a sway over men against which they cannot resist: figures of a pure and flattering correctness adorn the walls of the monument; they personify principles, and by the influence of their charms alone they accelerate development and propagate its effects.” For Ledoux, as for Lezay-Marnésia, the rigorous spatial order of the built environment is at once the sign of a rational mind that has molded nature to its own ends, the reassuring image of an ordered world, and a silent exhortation to discipline and virtue. Architecture is the path to the “desirable happiness of the fabled times of the Golden Age”; it demonstrates the possibility of making utopian ideals real. The spatial organization that Lezay-Marnésia inherits from More is not the only point in common between his project and the utopian genre: another is the ideal of insularity, as Lezay-Marnésia regrets that Saint-Pierre cannot be constructed on an island. Authors of utopian fictions tend to situate their utopias on islands because insularity would afford their imagined societies some protection from exterior influences that might lead to the regression of their political and social perfection over time. Fénelon, for example, makes use of a number of “utopian isles that are embedded in the unfolding of the narrative” in his Adventures of Telemachus (1699). In order to overcome the disadvantage of his being an inland colony, Lezay-Marnésia imagines a sort of social isolation that would allow the inhabitants of SaintPierre to preserve their customs on American soil. The future city would only admit inhabitants of French origin, strongly advising them to avoid all political involvement in America itself. In order to think through the means of preserving a French identity in the midst of a dominant culture, LezayMarnésia turns to the examples provided by Moravians and Jews, two peoples 32

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who had demonstrated their ability to preserve their customs despite settling among communities that did not share them. In sum, the only possible equivalent to the geographical isolation of traditional utopias is conceived as autarky on the part of the inhabitants of Saint-Pierre, surrounded by the United States of America. Despite his evident fascination with the utopian genre, Lezay-Marnésia repeatedly expresses a sense of dissatisfaction with it. The second letter thus oscillates, as suggested above, between two contradictory positions: that of a colonial project destined to be realized and that of a utopia with no existence outside of words. Reticent Utopian Lezay-Marnésia sees himself as a man of action: he crossed the ocean and invested the lion’s share of his fortune to build a city. His goal is to provide his fellow citizens a haven where they might rest, heal their wounds, and even prosper by joining a growing community that would compete with the British merchants. It should not surprise us then to see Lezay-Marnésia interrupt his letter to express his impatience. He grows tired of merely writing when he would much prefer to be building: “Will we never make anything but books? Shall we be contented with providing entertainment, with stimulating vivid, gentle, and sensitive imaginations, with giving them pleasure followed by regrets by continually offering them what are indeed often enchanting visions that we only see, unfortunately, in works of genius with no hope that they will ever be realized? Shall we constantly limit ourselves, with grand and beautiful ideas, to provoking sterile admiration and providing a few delightful hours that become a distant memory as soon as the book is closed?” “Diverting” reading in the least noble sense of the term, for LezayMarnésia utopias offer only the vain pleasure of an ephemeral escape from reality. Whereas Fénelon and Montesquieu had the leisure of meditating on utopian projects that might be studied by a powerful monarch—perhaps even inspiring him to reform—Lezay-Marnésia is faced with the urgent situation of those who, like himself, had to leave France and needed assistance. In these turbulent times, he feels his aim cannot be merely to write of a wise and reasoned utopia. Thus, while on many occasions expressing the influence of the utopian genre on his idea of Saint-Pierre, Lezay-Marnésia clings to the hope of creating a genuine haven in a specific location rather than a nonexistent idyll that is “no place.” Introduction

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This distaste for imaginary constructions without real applications is not the only way the vexed relation of Lezay-Marnésia’s text to the utopian tradition is manifest. It is also brought out by the significance he attaches to the model suggested by the town of Bethlehem in Pennsylvania, which is the subject of the first part of the second letter. This Moravian community that played host to Lezay-Marnésia in the summer of 1790 showed that it was possible for a group of a singular foreign origin to prosper in the United States: thus Lezay-Marnésia uses it as a de facto argument in favor of his colonial project when trying to persuade Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. But Lezay-Marnésia also uses Bethlehem as an example of the force with which the idea of the general interest is adopted by its inhabitants, disposing them to serve their community. He hopes to cultivate just such an idea of the general interest in Saint-Pierre by creating the category of Commenders whose role would consist of publicly praising the most generous citizens. Ordinarily, the authors of utopias begin with the meticulous observation of society’s flaws in order to envision a city that has methodically eliminated these systemic shortcomings, with the revulsion produced by the iniquity of the real world giving them the energy to complete their task. It is, on the contrary, from the real town of Bethlehem that Lezay-Marnésia draws inspiration, finding therein a clear model for the city of Saint-Pierre. Ultimately focusing on reality rather than fiction, Lezay-Marnésia’s vision tends to diverge from classic utopian scenarios. The importance given to the prosperity of the inhabitants of SaintPierre—one must be rich in order to shower the wider community with one’s munificence–marks another break between Lezay-Marnésia’s project and the utopian tradition. In Thomas More’s Utopia, as in his successor Tommaso Campanella’s City of the Sun, we find a form of small-c communism that determines citizens’ relations to one another, the mode of production of agricultural and manufactured goods, and their modalities of exchange. From this perspective the two texts envisage societies in which money and private property are abolished. For More as for Campanella, the abolition of private property is a return to the teaching of Jesus Christ. The two writers lean toward what Edward L. Surtz has called a form of “Christian communism”: “There is an underlying consistency in the attitude toward Christian communism in Hythloday’s views as propounded in Utopia. . . . God originally intended communism to be the social system best suited for human beings. Fallen man, however, divided up possessions hitherto held in common, and introduced the right of private property.” 34

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Thus the abolition of private property that More demands is less a striking break with the practices of his time and more a call to return to the common ownership of goods originally established by God. This same return is called for by Campanella in The City of the Sun, which defends common ownership in terms of its reducing the selfishness of individuals in favor of the general interest. Far from wishing to abolish private property in Ohio, however, Lezay-Marnésia counted on being able to entice his compatriots with the promise of vast tracts of land. The emphasis Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio places on the economic role of agriculture closely reflects the principles propounded by the Physiocrats, who were a major influence on the liberal aristocracy of the eighteenth century. All the while demonstrating that physiocratic thought was not simply an economic theory but also encompassed philosophical, epistemological, and esthetic dimensions, Liana Vardi reminds us that one of the cornerstones of physiocratic doctrine was the belief that “agriculture alone is capable of creating sustainable wealth.” In line with this theory—which he had already defended in Happiness in the Countryside —Lezay-Marnésia envisaged farms of over fifteen hundred acres whose cultivation would not only support whole families but also bring them a large surplus to be sold both in Saint-Pierre and farther afield. Thus Lezay-Marnésia uses the appetite for gain to encourage immigration to America, breaking with the monastic inspiration of the founding texts of the utopian tradition and viewing the land as the primary source of the wealth of nations (as the Physiocrats did). Indeed, he evokes the “replenished treasure” that Saint-Pierre would generate year after year, and which he intends to be used for the improvement of infrastructure and the means of production, thereby promoting a capitalist economy of exponential gains. This system could not be further from the one advocated by More, where gold is degraded in the eyes of the citizenry in order to destroy its capacity to serve as an exchange value. The future economic growth of Saint-Pierre is to be accompanied by a territorial expansionism. Both aim for the potentially exponential development that marks, above all other elements, the extent to which LezayMarnésia’s dream city departs from the utopian model he otherwise seems to favor. Unlike his predecessors, he makes no attempt to imagine the means by which Saint-Pierre might remain true to its idealistic conception and stay in the sort of perpetual present characteristic of utopias (at once safeguarding them from exterior interferences and interior changes that might upset the perfect balance of their political system and social contract). On the contrary, Introduction

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Lezay-Marnésia envisions certain changes as being inevitable, notably population growth, which he seems little concerned with regulating. He is most concerned with addressing the contradiction between the principle according to which a city can only be happy with a limited number of inhabitants and that which dictates the inevitable growth of a prosperous population. It is in the proliferation of modest-sized cities that Lezay-Marnésia finds the solution to the problem: “When the mother hive becomes overpopulated, it sends its swarms out to create new hives. Thus, when your colony has grown sufficiently, it will hasten to found others, to give itself daughters, emulators, and friends. It will endow them with the lands that it will constantly acquire and will enrich them with its principles and its example.” Lezay-Marnésia then fleshes out the idea of this thriving empire spreading throughout the United States. The many cities originating from SaintPierre will develop complementary economic activities and do business both together and with the rest of the country; each year, they will send deputies to a meeting in order to keep alive the bond of fraternity resulting from their shared origins. By imagining a growing network of cities, Lezay-Marnésia breaks with the tradition of closure and secrecy that characterizes utopias. Far from attaining enduring perfection, Saint-Pierre will have to keep creating more cities in order to preserve the happiness of its inhabitants, a project the American government would have certainly considered hostile, though Lezay-Marnésia does not consider this. The colony of Asylum, conceived by Frenchmen and also located in Pennsylvania, could be considered a relative success because, rather than forming a fixed population base, it effectively allowed émigrés to wait out the revolutionary storm in its confines. For Lezay-Marnésia, however, Saint-Pierre would be the mother city of an “empire of the Ohio” he sees in his mind’s eye spreading across an American territory that, being scarcely charted prior to Lewis and Clark’s expedition (1804–1806), still lent itself to imaginary landgrabs, the possibility of projecting utopian constructions onto the background of terra incognita. In the end, it is the extravagant ambition of Lezay-Marnésia’s colonial project that undermines its concrete realization and confines it to paper and ink. Castles in Words Lezay-Marnésia regularly betrays his worries for the future of Saint-Pierre through certain stylistic details of which the paradoxical usage of the future indicative is a notable example. Of course, it is appropriate that he chooses 36

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this tense, since the second letter describes a project he has yet to bring to fruition. Being an indicative tense, the future conveys the idea that there is no doubt about Saint-Pierre’s upcoming construction. Nevertheless, in several instances the future tense loses its modal value of certitude and becomes a “prophetic future,” evoking a scenario surrounded by a considerable degree of uncertainty, as is notably the case in the following passage: Ah, Sir! I can see it because I have known it, because I still take pleasure in it; I see this moment when each family will take possession of the parcel of land that is bestowed on it. A fervent admiration, a sort of ecstasy will be the initial feeling of its members. It will be as if their imagination is overwhelmed by the grandeur of the spectacle; the novelty, the majesty, the immensity, and the tranquility; but the tranquility will soon be replaced by movement and activity. The ax will strike and fell the enormous aged children of the earth. Their branches will be devoured by flames; their trunks piled one on another will form walls, and an impenetrable shelter will soon be ready. The tone will be familiar to readers of the Bible, where the future tense is often used to make prophecies. In Lezay-Marnésia’s text it is the association between the future tense, abstract vocabulary, grandiose ideas, and metaphors that leads to a shift in meaning: the author shows us an archetypal family experiencing an ecstasy only possible upon arrival in the Promised Land. By adopting the posture of an oracle, unfortunately, Lezay-Marnésia leads the reader to understand that Saint-Pierre is another beautiful but misleading vision. However, as unreal as it may be, it plays a therapeutic role for the author, who frequently interrupts the recounting of his plans to comment on his state of mind at the time of writing: “When the whole face of the earth is battered by dreadful storm winds, the idea of your republic gives me repose, consoles me, and charms me; it grips me, and I caress it lovingly. I am like a passenger surrounded by dangers in a furious sea, threatened by lightening, terrified by waves, who discovers, by the bright, fleeting, sinister light of the flashes, one of the Islands of the Blessed.” Comparing Saint-Pierre to the Islands of the Blessed, Lezay-Marnésia contradicts the letter’s primary argument. In Greek mythology these islands of the underworld are reserved for the souls of the virtuous after death. While Lezay-Marnésia claims to believe that Saint-Pierre embodies the possibility of happiness in the world of the living, he confesses, in one of the unguarded Introduction

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moments that punctuate his letter, that the colony represents only the hope of finding joy after death, a promise of future happiness that allows him, not without grimacing, to bear his present misfortunes. The conclusion of the text indicates the therapeutic nature of his writing, of which Lezay-Marnésia himself is the primary readership, admitting that he has never in fact met the famous Bernardin de Saint-Pierre to whom he writes. The length of the missive (approximately two-thirds of the volume) is further proof that writing provided a temporary haven for the author, a way to forget momentarily the difficulties he was encountering in America. Saint-Pierre will never exist in Pennsylvania but rather forever remain a beautiful castle in the realm of words. Indeed, condemned by the excess of its creator’s ambitions, Saint-Pierre’s only existence is between the covers of Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio. Its pages like the ground where the author wanted to build walls, the words and the sentences akin to the forests and the swamps he would have needed to master, the literary work is a toil as arduous and painful as the one a settler had to endure to make civilization flourish in the American wilderness. A rigorous architect, a moralist, a philosopher, a legislator, and a dynamic businessman, Lezay-Marnésia rules like a sort of demiurge over every aspect of the city and creates a complete world with utmost care. This attention to detail also appears in the literary work itself, as the city is made of words chosen with attention, built with sentences the author crafts precisely: We will begin to enjoy, from the first year, an affluence well beyond these hopes. Beneath these modest roofs, where we shall lack none of the essentials, peace will reign and with it the good cheer that is its inseparable companion. The calm, close-knit life of the Swiss, their interesting, easy activities, their open and honest manners in a climate far better than the one they left, on a far more fertile soil, in the midst of all the riches of nature, will endow your settlers with the imaginary bliss of Tempe in the American forests. The dual ternary rhythms of this last sentence in perfect unison, a promise of happiness springs forth one last time, even more evocative for being alluded to and then held back until the end. It displays at a microscopic level the rigor and the harmony of the city Lezay-Marnésia wished to create, and transposes the care he would have taken of the real city to his literary construction. It also brings together the major themes of the letter as a whole, merging the recollection of Clarens (manifested by the reference to the 38

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Swiss), the memory of the golden age (the allusion to Tempe), and America, conceived as the place where this ideal fusion will at last be possible. LezayMarnésia’s careful construction of a literary cosmos compensating the failure of his colonial project shifts the status of the text from that which it espouses at the outset. The letter to Bernardin de Saint-Pierre is not a mere plea for help, readable only as a historical document that lies outside the ambit of literature. It becomes a work of art that required all the culture and craft of a true writer to accomplish. Having only the liberty to build castles in the air, Lezay-Marnésia shapes a magnificent world—a textual Saint-Pierre. Lezay-Marnésia Today In Archaeologies of the Future Fredric Jameson argues that utopias are collages of heterogeneous ideas and observations that ultimately contradict one another, and as such they cannot envision a society radically different from the one we know. In that light, Saint-Pierre’s main interest for us today is not so much that it proposes a novel form of political organization but rather the manner in which it weaves together ideology and the vestiges of a cultural imaginary, notwithstanding the complete failure of the these elements’ uneasy alliance. But in book form they are preserved for posterity, waiting to be rediscovered by we archeologists, twenty-first-century readers confronted with this forgotten work. Saint-Pierre manifests Lezay-Marnésia’s nostalgia, one shared by a number of his compatriots, for the time when France’s presence in North America constituted a vast empire “extending from Labrador to the Floridas and from the shores of the Atlantic to the most remote lakes of Upper Canada”; Saint-Pierre reminds us that trans-Appalachia was synonymous with a state of nature from whence civilization might begin again along rational lines. The project also casts light on the deep-rooted stereotypes about American Indians that existed in late eighteenth-century colonial discourse. But perhaps above all, Saint-Pierre marks the chimerical re-creation on American soil of a France that was already lost, a France whose values, political system, and religious beliefs had been swept away in 1789 by revolutionaries who dreamed of giving shape to their own vision of utopia. Its contribution to the utopian genre aside, why is it significant that we rediscover Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio today? It constitutes the missing link in an evolution that has seen a complete reversal in what “America” means in French thought: “America has moved from representing a pastoral Arcadia and Europe’s past to symbolizing Europe’s future and the land of Introduction

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incessant change, mobility, impersonality, and progress—in short, the apotheosis of modern society,” as Aurelian Craiutu and Jeffrey C. Isaac observe. In his travel writing, Lezay-Marnésia bridges these two interpretations of America. On the one hand, he describes a rural idyll according to the “pastoral” mode of New World representation. On the other hand, Lezay-Marnésia portrays a violent, volatile, avaricious population in terms that make his writing a forerunner to the most trenchant critiques of modern America, those which, from the mid-nineteenth century onward, cast the New World in unflattering contrast to the Old: “American cities were ugly and its people uncivilized; there was no intellectual and artistic culture to speak of; the dollar alone was what mattered; capitalism and capitalists in America were particularly brutal; political institutions were corrupt and its politicians venal,” writes Jeremy Jennings. In Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio these successive interpretations of America coexist, corresponding to the depiction of the land and the people, respectively. Lezay-Marnésia reserves his enthusiasm for the “happy shores” whose “prodigious fertility” might allow for the rebirth of the shepherds of “Theocritus and Virgil.” Meanwhile, he aims his criticism at the Americans themselves, a “fickle,” “lazy” people, “subject to boredom,” “always anxious,” and unable to “resist [money’s] appeal.” Lezay-Marnésia makes a clever distinction between the land and the people who had claimed it, contrasting an idealized image of the American Indians’ virtuousness to the barbarity of the colonists who had made their home west of the Appalachians. Thus Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio does more than simply bring attention to a potential French colonial project in the western United States— it also represents a turning point in the progressive reinterpretation of the idea of America, the marked tarnishing of America’s image in the decades following the French Revolution. Not only does Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio navigate between the two conceptual poles identified by Craiutu and Isaac, but it also occupies a place between the two great works that interpreted America for the French before and after 1789: Crèvecœur’s Letters from an American Farmer and Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (1835–1840). Crèvecœur does not place political analysis at the center of his project but rather re-creates America “through the mirror of memory,” to borrow Bernard Chevignard’s felicitous expression, in a polyphonic text where fiction rubs up against autobiography, the compiling of anecdotes, and the practice of allegory. An explicit commentary on American society and its political institutions, Democracy in America is quite the opposite of Crèvecœur. Tocqueville neither gives an account of the 40

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travels on which his observations were based nor makes a fiction of them, leaving novelistic practice to Gustave de Beaumont and reserving travel writing for two texts that would be published posthumously. Brief and restricted to the Scioto expedition and its disastrous aftermath, LezayMarnésia’s Letters may not possess the richness of Crèvecœur’s work, which rivals the progressive expansion of the American nation in its three successive volumes in French. Nor does it come close to the depth of analysis or near prophetic power of Tocqueville’s work. Nevertheless, Lezay-Marnésia demonstrates a talent comparable to that of his compatriots in the two genres they respectively came to epitomize. An epigone of Crèvecœur, with whom he shares a taste for effusive sentimentality and a propensity for bursts of lyricism, Lezay-Marnésia is anxious, like Tocqueville, about the political development of the United States. Thus he occupies a place in a long line of commentators (Chateaubriand would follow in his footsteps, along with a number of less illustrious writers, such as Victor Jacquemont, Michel Chevalier, Jean-Jacques Ampère, and Ernest Duvergier de Hauranne) who question the viability of the American republic and the possible reconfigurations of a Union divided by slavery and confronted with the problems thrown up by its own territorial expansion. One might wager that it is the hybrid, indeterminate genre of Lezay-Marnésia’s letters—at once a historical document, an epistolary novel, a travel journal, and a reflection on the early days of the American republic— that best ensures their interest for twenty-first-century readers. Aficionados of American history, specialists in the French Revolution, and scholars of travel literature, just as much as admirers of Rousseau and lovers of utopian fiction, will all find enjoyment and illumination today in rediscovering Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio.

Introduction

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E DI T O R ’S F O R E WORD

The author of these letters put in our keeping a manuscript that contains a large number of them. We are presenting only three of them to gauge if they are to the taste of the public. It is very difficult, at the present time, to get the public interested in any writings that do not have a direct relationship to the great ideas in the air, to the great movements that sweep it along. The more newspapers, journals, and pamphlets it reads, the fewer books for which it has time. However, while North America is the country that should be the least foreign to the French, it is perhaps also the one they know the least. Books deceive more often than they enlighten, and we owe them more errors than truths. Separated from the Americans by an immense distance, the French are nonetheless brought closer to them by powerful common interests. In breaking the chains of America, they developed a strong desire to acquire liberty for themselves, but they took a different path to achieve this. We have no right to judge which path is the better. Time alone will decide. If the collection of letters we are revealing here is published, perhaps they will give an impression of North America that is quite different from the one other writers have given us. It seems as if they have been in league to deceive us. The ones, extravagant enthusiasts or biased authors, have taken, to

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paint all of America, the colors that Milton used to paint heaven on earth, presenting its inhabitants like so many perfect Spartans. The others, as unjust as they are excessive, have tried to make us believe that this enormous continent, disavowed by nature, was condemned to an eternal infancy and did not have the strength to produce anything but weak, cowardly, and degenerate animals. It is especially the men in these vast regions that they have maligned. The author of these new letters on North America, who has no ax to grind, who believes that fiction is not necessary to keep a reader interested, and who has no other goal than to instruct his friends and please them, has consistently tried to tell them the truth. If he sometimes combats people like Mably, Chastellux, or Raynal, he never fails to show them the respect they are due. He opposes all opinions that he believes to be false, all inaccurate accounts, all exaggerations of any kind, yet he says not a word about the work that M. Brissot de Warville published on North America in three large volumes in octavo.

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LE T T E R T O MONSIEUR LE CH EVALIER DE B O UF F LE R S , MEM BER O F THE FRENCH NAT IONA L A S S EM BLY Marietta, November 15, 1790

It is you, Monsieur le chevalier, who created the sweetest of shepherdesses and then turned her into the kindest of queens whom you sent to reign in Golconde, your abode at the very end of the earth, that I owe the story of my unembellished adventures with a true queen in my part of the world. Living in the finest house of Marietta, surrounded by generals, majors, and colonels, and by a distinguished throng of knights of the Order of Cincinnatus, that is to say, living in a shack as humble as the humblest cottages of Europe, and having for neighbors titled plowmen who drive their own plows, cultivate their fields quite poorly, are dressed in a shabby woolen blanket six days of the week, and blow their noses in their fingers—something that even our peasants in France do not do—I had an unexpected visit, just as I was sitting down to dinner, from the queen of the Huron, accompanied by her daughter, two ladies of the court, and a nobleman, apparently her head equerry. It is because she regarded me as the sachem or leader of the French that she felt obliged to grant me the honor of a visit, coinciding somewhat awkwardly with dinnertime in Marietta, for even though my lifestyle is the most lavish in town, anywhere else it would be considered less than modest. But good princes and, more to the point, good princesses inspire confidence along with love. I was emboldened. I invited the queen and her entourage to

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partake of my very frugal meal. Fortunately a Canadian interpreter was among the group. A generous pot of soup, which I was able to stretch with additional provisions from my people, satisfied our first pangs of hunger and brought our illustrious guests to appreciate French cuisine. They found it to be better than their own fare, and far better than that of the Anglo-Americans. They ate modestly, with good manners, and with much less awkwardness than many respectable priests would feel when dining with the nobles of their parish. They used their knives, forks, and napkins with almost as much facility as we—something the Americans succeed in doing only with great difficulty. Thinking it would please them, I offered brandy, which they refused, but they willingly drank cider and, even more willingly, wine. They found our liquors of France to be excellent, and they drank their coffee with obvious pleasure. The only thing that seemed to surprise them was that those of us who were sitting and eating comfortably were served by others who were standing and not eating. Indeed, this is not customary for primitive peoples; they adapted, however, without the least trouble. You have noticed, Monsieur le chevalier, that there is no company that is not more pleasant after dinner than before. Good digestion and the refreshing spirits of wine taken in moderation incline one to kindness and conviviality. My good Indians felt it, just as I did. By the end of the meal we were well acquainted and almost on intimate terms. They were impressed by my grandness when I presented small tokens of knives, ribbons, mirrors, and needles. Quite rightly, they seemed very grateful. They took hold of my hands, shook them affectionately, and held them up to their hearts with great feeling. Once we had regained composure, an interesting conversation arose between us. There is a cherished tradition among the Indians to think highly of the French. They speak of them with great reverence and call them their fathers. They could not be happier to have them settle in their vicinity. They offer to call on them often and are willing to forge the closest of bonds with them. It is of course natural and right that they would prefer us to the Americans, who look down on the natives and want no other contact with them beyond the trading of fur skins, which they would do more of if it were it not such a benefit to the others; but the Americans’ constant abuse has taught the Indians to distrust them and to protect their interests. Natives are now generally well aware of the value of the goods in which they trade. What they know especially well is the value of a fond and close relationship. They

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enjoy the one they have with us. They are most grateful to be treated as human beings; their eyes sparkle with unmistakable joy and affection when we call them friends. Encouraged by the success I was having with them simply by being French, I wanted to see if some gallantry would also be received so well. Sitting next to young Paulée (the name of the royal princess), I attempted, with my gestures, to communicate sweet nothings—truly the saddest way to express gallantry is to do so by interpreter—which the good-natured princess did not dismiss. She clearly understood the message in my gaze, which boldly praised her charms. I understood just as well her response, which came in the form of an endearing smile. Emboldened, I took her hand and squeezed it softly in mine. She gently squeezed mine in return. Encouraged further, I kissed Paulée. This pure and innocent kiss was one of the sweetest I have ever given. It was somewhat sensual and at the same time very paternal; however, if I had been with this winsome savage when I was only forty, perhaps I would have, alas, been much less fatherly! She resembles your queen of Golconde, not when she was on the throne but when she was Aline, still rich with her jar of milk and her innocence. I have to admit that she is less white-skinned, and although she is only sixteen, she has lost a lot more of her bloom; but she is neither red nor copper-colored like the books very inaccurately describe the Indians of this country. Her skin is swarthy, almost olive, rather like Algerians, Tunisians, or even the Spanish, who are so proud, in America, of not being black, although they are far from white. Her hair is long, free-flowing, and a beautiful black color. Her figure is what you would expect, resembling one of Diane’s nymphs. Her legs and charming feet are encased in attractive buckskin boots that reveal their pretty shape. The part that covers the bottom of her feet is decorated with delicate embroidery that is every bit as smart as that of the shoes worn by your lovely ladies. To speak of women without saying anything about their finery would be to forget a part of them that is virtually essential. Nature teaches all of them not to depend completely on its gifts alone, and therefore they are just as familiar, in the American forests, with the art of dressing as in your superb drawing rooms. Indeed, I find it even more becoming, since it is not taken to such excess. Although you are accustomed to the fashion of French women, my dear knight, I would recommend to you, if only for the novelty of it, the adornment of Paulée.

Letter to de Boufflers

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Her head is either decorated solely with her ebony hair, which is long, smooth, and perfectly divided, or simply covered by a little black hat with a large colored ribbon. Her ears are entirely encircled by silver rings from which hang little bell-shaped charms. Hanging from her neck is a thin silver cross, about eight inches long, with flowerets at the end of the crosspieces. A blouse made of very fine silk, in a beautiful red color, whose sleeves only reach to the elbow, veiling her young charms without revealing too much. This blouse is completely covered with interwoven silver rings that form a fabric very similar to the coats of mail worn by our knights of yore. Bands of silver an inch and a half wide are wound around her arms. A skirt of fine green cloth completes her dress, which is in truth very elegant, very decent, and very appealing. If the French theater still exists, which may not be the case, despite the deservedly high consideration in which the actors are held by the National Assembly, contrary to the opinion of Rousseau, all of whose principles they nonetheless profess to have espoused while they are often so contradictory to their own,* do the actresses who play young Indian princesses a great favor by telling them how Paulée is dressed. Alzire, the lover of Manco-Capac, as well as that of the hero of The Tragedy of the Illinois, should not cover themselves with feathers like parrots; they should rather adopt Paulée’s attire, which is so comely and would, I believe, be a sensation on stage. I have forgotten the names of the characters in the two American tragedies to which I have just referred, but I recall a line from each. They should be engraved in our memories: “Do you believe Manco-Capac capable of such a crime?”  “Learn to respect the dignity of the natives.”  * It was scarcely possible for the author to be so completely mistaken in his judgment, since the number of theaters has increased tremendously. It is easy to understand why. Those who were rich and are no longer so; those who were well-off and are not any more; those who held offices, jobs, or positions that have disappeared; those who, owing to the current state of things, have had to abandon activities they enjoyed, pleasures they were used to, and their favorite interests, who have been deprived of everything they loved in life and have nothing left but memories and regrets, seek in the theater distractions that have become necessary for them. They go to cry over the misfortunes of Agamemnon’s family in order not to weep continually over the less spectacular disasters of their own. They need to escape from the ruins and misery that surround them and, especially, get away from themselves. The same cause that draws a crowd of people to the bars when they are the most unhappy and impoverished is what fills our numerous theaters. [Editor’s note from the 1800 edition.—Ed.]

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I bid you adieu, dear knight. Pleasures, arts, and good taste are not to be found in North America, and especially at the frontiers of the United States. I believe that they will never come here if you do not bring them yourself; but there is tranquility, liberty, and peace here, so I would lack nothing if I had with me my family and one or two friends like you.

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LE T T E R T O MONSIEUR JACQ UES- HEN RI BE R NA R DI N DE SAINT- PIERRE Fort Pitt, November 2, 1791

Surely, Sir, you are not a person who can be surprised by great flights of the soul; and although I do not have the honor of knowing you personally, you will not be surprised that I have the honor of writing to you. You will even find it quite natural that thousands of miles from the stormy clime where you live I am inviting you to flee, as I have done, men whom, like you, “I wished to serve, and who persecuted me.” God, who can see into our hearts, knows that my intentions were pure, and that neither personal nor even class or party interest had any role in my decision; it was solely the good of France that I desired passionately. It was not only the happiness of the priests and noblemen that I wanted; I wished for the happiness of all the people of France. I had, I admit, a few moments of hope. It went up in smoke the moment I saw the composition of the Estates-General. Being witness to the struggle between all the passions and all the vices, it did not take me long to understand that the very men who had been sent to save the state would be the ones who would destroy it. However, I did not understand right away the enormity of the abyss in which they had plunged it, and I spent over a year at its brink before I was able to discern its true depths. When I finally did, I was so carried away by my imagination, or perhaps deceived by my distress, and counting on the promises of several friends who had assured me that they would soon

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follow me, that I sought a sweet and peaceful refuge in America, where I took possession of a large tract of land that I had bought on the banks of the Ohio River, which well deserves the name of “beautiful river” that the natives have given it. I rejoiced in the idea that I would finish my days tending to the touching interests of a happy colony, but having been disappointed on all accounts, other than by the description of the land, which is not misleading, I found nothing real in all the enticements of a large association of the most eminent Americans, who call themselves the Scioto Company, in a superb Prospectus published by its agents in Paris. This company, whose leaders had devised a truly novel and magnificent plan that was supposed to enrich America with the fruits of the plague visited on France and give a calm, comfortable asylum to the indignant victims of the scoundrels; this company, which proposed the creation of a new state within the United States composed of the most energetic, experienced Frenchmen, tempered in the midst of the storm and rich through their industriousness, their sciences, their arts, their fortitude, their courage, and their sociability; this company, after having conceived such a grandiose and beautiful idea, did not display the slightest ability to put it into practice; it is not even capable of producing the land it sold, which is still inhabited by the Indians, who are in no way disposed to give it up. In the midst of these fateful circumstances, that I could not foresee, I find myself deceived in my dearest and my last hopes. In truth, it is largely my own fault; I plunged into an enterprise of the greatest importance that I should have considered more carefully and only surrounded myself with sensitive, good, enlightened men, declared enemies of disorder and vice, ardent and wise friends of rules, justice, and of humanity, capable of organizing a society in such a way as to permit it to enjoy all the happiness that work, union, and wisdom bring to men, and to bring to fruition, insofar as possible, those ideas of pure felicity of which Montesquieu offered a ravishing model in his Story of the Troglodytes, as did Fénelon in his divine Telemachus, and as you do, Sir, in your magnificent Studies of Nature. I should have gone to you and repeated the simple, touching words that you said to Rousseau who, although he doubtlessly possesses the imagination needed to create marvelous projects, did not possess the strength of character, this firmness, this gentle perseverance without which such plans cannot become reality. As you said to him, I should say to you: “With all the love you have for the happiness of men, why have not you, yourself, tried to form a happy republic? I have known many men from various countries and of every social position who Letter to Bernardin de Saint-Pierre

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would have followed you. Why would you not create, in some uninhabited region of North America, so rich in superb lands, a colony similar to the one that William Penn made in the midst of savages?” Never has such a favorable opportunity presented itself to the virtuous genius who has the courage and the will to gather together men capable of great resolution and place them in the wilderness of the New World to lead peaceful, pure lives in the comfort of a patriarchal community, in the charms of a fraternal existence. J.-J. Rousseau found insurmountable obstacles to the establishment of colonies such as both you and he imagine them, owing to the lack of faith exhibited by all the peoples of Europe. I believe, on the contrary, that everyone has the right and even the duty not always to agree with a great man. I believe that the general lack of faith would be one of the strongest motives for emigration for hearty, pious souls, deeply penetrated by the distress they feel before the spectacle of the countless disorders and vices produced and propagated by impiety, and that it would be easy for a worthy man with the requisite qualities to lead them to faraway shores where, fortified by their mutual example, they could devote themselves to the happiness of adoring God and practicing the virtues taught, ordered, and rewarded by religion, even in this life. The proof of this assertion was revealed to me a short time ago. I cannot, Sir, keep myself from sharing it with you. The picture of happiness that crowns wisdom is worthy of you; you are worthy of it. I pray that I am worthy enough to describe it as I saw it! Having left New York with the futile hope of taking immediately into my possession the land I had acquired near the confluence of the Scioto and Ohio Rivers, I made a halt, near the Pennsylvania border, in a rather wide basin surrounded by hills crowned by forests and with the slopes carefully cultivated. Nature has not spoiled this spot. It would be very ordinary if work, combined with intelligence, had not embellished it. In the middle of this basin, on a small hill, is the city of Bethlehem, inhabited by a rather large number of families and Moravian brethren. As you approach it, you feel as if you are going to enter the kingdom of peace, wisdom, and tranquil happiness. Large, rich farms are spread over the neighboring lands, which are sprinkled with numerous flocks of striking beauty. The meadows are greener here than elsewhere and the lands more fertile. You are struck by the calm and abundance that reign everywhere. When you finally arrive, you take lodgings in a vast, immaculate, and comfortable inn that invites you to enjoy the good fare and rest it promises. You are greeted by a respectable, solicitous 54

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family, whose manners are simple and affectionate, and whose amiable and touching attentions are in no way importunate. After having enjoyed an excellent lunch with the dignified host of this establishment, which, although it is an inn, is no less hospitable, I asked him to serve as my guide and to show me everything of interest in this intriguing community. The first thing I saw was a wide, clean, straight avenue bordered by stone houses, each separated from the others, with no sign of luxury or any exterior decorations but spacious, comfortable, and quite pleasant by their very simplicity. I entered several of them; I saw the tidiness, the wise disposition, the cleanliness, and the air of affluence and contentment that characterized them. In each of them, the inhabitants exercise a useful occupation, with great dedication, perseverance, and activity. Nowhere else have I seen work performed with such ease and with such contentment. At the end of the street, you can see a vast building that contains all the objects that serve the common interest. It is also the dwelling of the bishop, who is the guide and father of this enlightened and devout people. The plain-living pastor of a steadfast flock, he only occupies a small part of the building, just what he absolutely needs and decency requires. He has the zeal and charity of the apostles, and like them he needs no palace; but in his humble abode he is surrounded by respect and love. I was deprived of the pleasure of meeting this respectable bishop; he had gone to visit the other Moravian settlements when I passed through Bethlehem. I heard him praised with this accent born of truth that you never find in praise that is not dictated by genuine feeling and justice. Beside the bishop’s quarters, on the second floor there is a very large but plain room where the devout Moravians gather to carry out the ceremonies prescribed by their faith. I did not attend their service, but I am convinced that they conduct it with deep devotion. The walls of their temple are less decorated than plastered with very bad paintings whose subjects are taken from the most edifying stories. Near this temple there is a large room where all the heads of family meet to discuss the business of their community. In this room one can see the portraits of all of the founders of this happy colony. Several of these portraits are of women. They hardly do honor to the painter’s talent, but, in my opinion, they honor highly the good, sensitive men who want to conserve the tender and durable memory of those who led them by wise paths to a harbor of peace, virtue, and happiness. This respectful sensitivity is not an American quality. In all my travels through the territories of the United States I saw but Letter to Bernardin de Saint-Pierre

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a single monument of public gratitude. It is the church of St. Paul in New York, which is dedicated to the memory of General Montgomery. The first and second floors of this house are filled with looms of fine quality. Above, there are vast attics, and the whole structure is topped off by a tower from which the entire basin is visible, and from which you have the pleasure of looking down on a very large garden, the only one I have seen in America that is cultivated with care and intelligence. All the vegetables and fruit trees found in Europe can be found there, along with many useful plants that are unknown to us. I went from this public building to another. How interesting it is! It is a school for girls. Ah, Sir! What women we would have if the education they received had resembled the one given by the Moravian teachers! There are fifteen or twenty women dedicated to this touching, sublime function. They teach the purest morality, and not content to dispense their lessons on morality to their pupils, they seize on—they even orchestrate—opportunities for them to put it into practice. From everywhere in North America, wise parents send their daughters to this school, and even a few Indians are raised there. Among the latter, I noticed one who had an enchanting face. Like all her companions she wore an expression of serenity, and her eyes were full of intelligence. Along with the most attractive features, she radiated health and seemed to possess both the loveliness of her age and its charming gaiety. A very precious plant that is being cultivated by these venerable sisters is the granddaughter of the baron de Zinzendorf, founder and first patriarch of the Moravian Brothers. Although she is not graced with great beauty, she was introduced to me with pride and love. I flattered one and the other by the sensitivity with which I greeted this interesting introduction. The father of this child, who bears such a distinguished name among the Brothers, belongs to the Bethlehem community and lives in the simplicity, the perfect equality, that characterizes this very singular, respectable, and fraternal society. The pupils are divided into classes, according to their age. They are instructed methodically and cheerfully in the principles of their religion. They are led to feel its importance and love its spirit. They are taught French, German, and English. They learn to do all the work that is suitable to their sex. I have never seen more beautiful embroidery than that which comes from their hands. No paintbrush produces such fresh and truer flowers than those that blossom from their needles. They are prepared for all of the duties that they will need to assume later, and every effort is made to raise them in a manner 56

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that will make them good mothers. Walks, exercises, and all the innocent games are offered them in generous measure, but they know how to direct them so that, without reducing the pleasure, they serve their education. Their quarters and clothes, which are identical for all of them, are immaculate. Their linen is dazzlingly white. What a delightful spectacle to see a large group of girls who, all still at the age and in the habit of innocence, appear happy without the excessive excitement of turbulent joy. Observing them, one cannot avoid thinking of this old yet still apt comparison with newly blossomed flowers, made yet more sweet and lovely by the gentle wind’s caress. The poor moderns! The ancients have taken everything. To you, Sir, they have left the most vivid, cheerful, and gentle images, the most harmonious and refreshing colors; but you do not share your treasures with anyone. There is in Bethlehem a very large store, maintained with Moravian order and cleanliness. One need say no more. It contains all of the merchandise from Europe and America that you could desire, even some from Asia. The soils and industry of all peoples have combined to fill it. You would find everything very expensive, if everything that is sold there were not of such excellent quality. In any case, in North America prices are excessively high, which is inevitable among poor peoples, who produce little and enjoy luxury that, while humble, is no less expensive, and among whom the spirit of enterprise is given to a very small number. The Moravian Brothers practice the mechanical arts with unusual intelligence. The little river that meanders below their city is bordered by magnificent factories. The waters harnessed by their genius turn the millstones, drive the saws, full the cloth, pour the oils, break up the hemp and the flax, and beat the iron, effecting in no time what human strength alone would take much longer, with much more difficulty, to accomplish. It is a beautiful sight for both the eyes and the mind, this mixture of waters rushing onto the wheels and endowing them with their perpetual motion; buildings that rise up, with all their rural opulence, amid the trees that form verdant masses that disappear into the air; flocks in the abundant and rich pastures; and the patriarch who directs and commands, and who, his soul at peace, submits everything around him to his intelligence. The constant noise, which has the variety and modulations of these varied sources, is one of the characteristic colors of this tableau, which is not restricted to our sight; but who could put it to use, this invisible color? Homer, Tasso, Virgil, you, Sir. Back at my inn, a multitude of scattered thoughts arose without finding a focus, mingling with my numerous but unsettled desires. I rested for an Letter to Bernardin de Saint-Pierre

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hour, which was necessary to get my thoughts in order; then, during an excellent, copious, long meal, I received additional background information from my host. The Moravian society, while much more numerous, may be compared to Jacob’s family in the land of Goshen. It had no model to follow and must serve as such for all those who wish to reach a state of perfection and wisdom and enjoy all the felicity of which men are capable. These Brothers built their system on the two most solid foundations, reason and religion, that they had the talent to render more attractive than what are referred to as pleasures in other societies. I do not know if their founder thought through his plan in depth, but, even considering the laws of Moses, Numa, and Lycurgus, it seems to me that there has never been such a successful implementation, since he has managed to diminish, as much as possible, the sum of ills and to increase, as much as possible, the sum of good things. He solved a fine problem in finding the means to give to the common cause as much or even more interest than each person in other associations gives to personal property, and in not only having preserved each individual from poverty, but in having given to all of them the advantages of wealth, since no one is denied all the pleasures that are not forbidden by morality or by reason. What do they lack? The honors that flatter pride, which are for but a small minority that always abuses them; this inequality of means that makes the disfavored dependent on the others, who are all too often corrupted by their fortune and use it more to humiliate their fellow men than to help them. It is a fine thing to have followed the example of the most intelligent and most happy of animals, and to have given to men the wisdom and happiness of the beavers and the bees. Not only do the Moravian Brothers share the fruits of their lands, they also pool all their industry, their talents, their determination, and their virtues. The human ego that horrified Pascal is unknown to them. Each of them is employed in the best way for that person, and they only practice useful professions that require good sense, fortitude, and love of work rather than a fine imagination. No one is unhappy with his lot, any more than he feels either the pleasure or the suffering of vanity. Some work the fields, while others are employed in the mechanical arts, in trade, or in administration. Everything is perfectly organized among them because each of them fulfills exactly the function for which he is best suited. The spirit that drives the Moravian Brothers drives the women as well. They enjoy the consideration, the respect, the esteem, the gentle, tender attention, and the reasonable influence that better institutions would accord 58

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them everywhere. They are given the jobs and put in charge of the activities that are proper for their sex. They oversee the creamery. They weave the wool, the cotton, the hemp, and the flax. They make the finest muslin, the most beautiful embroidery, and, like the women and their daughters in heroic times, they dress their brothers, their children, and their husbands. They are all dressed the same, certainly not with coquettish refinement but with a severe decency and a cleanliness that would be meticulous, if cleanliness ever could be so. They wear outfits quite similar to the ones that appear in old Flemish paintings. What progress the art of dress has made since they were executed! In perfecting it so prodigiously, have women also discovered the art of being better, kinder, more loved, and, especially, more respected? When you see the calm and satisfaction emanating from the faces of these happy mortals as they perform their tasks, you are tempted to conclude that work imposed like a duty and a punishment for other beings is a reward for them. As fruits of their labor, they receive clothes that are superior to luxury products, commodious and comfortable lodgings, healthy and tasty food, and enjoy a happiness constantly renewed by the practice of virtue. Wise and peaceful, they need no one but themselves. Applying themselves assiduously to agriculture and the arts, they are always busy and never tired. Living in abundance, justice, and liberty, life is not an exile for them, and— the height of felicity—they possess the firm hope that God will reward them for having succeeded in living happily on this earth. The country that suits best the Moravian Brothers, perhaps the only one that suits them perfectly, is North America. They need many contiguous pieces of land, little contact with other men, who are useless to them and can often do them harm, and the untrammeled liberty to obey customs that are so different from those that are universally practiced, since these customs are those, yet more perfect, that the congregations of the first Christians followed.* Neighbors would only bring them strife that they fear, lawsuits that * To justify this assertion, which could appear bold and even erroneous to inattentive minds, I am going to cite a very elevated authority, that of Saint Paul who, in his first letter to the Corinthians, tells them, “So when you gather together, as you do, it is no longer to eat the Lord’s Supper, for each of you hastens to eat his own dinner without waiting for the others; thus, some have nothing to eat while others stuff themselves. What shall I say to you? Will I praise you? I will certainly not praise you for this.” 1 Corinthians 20–22. I do not know if the Moravian Brothers have maintained the feasts that the first Christians practiced, but I do know that there is no action of theirs that is not inspired by the spirit of charity that Saint Paul accused the Corinthians of neglecting so much. Holding everything in common, how could they not do the same with all the virtues? Although

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they detest, and fear of the virtually unavoidable contagious diseases when people are packed together. Wisdom and peace do not reside in the crowd.* The mind rests so gently, the soul is so contented among the Moravian Brothers, that it is not surprising that mine have wandered in their midst, and that for a long while I have neglected my principal subject. Let us return to it. Perhaps, Sir, you will tell me that I am wrong to offer the transplantation of the Moravian Brothers from Germany to the Pennsylvania hills as clear proof of the ease with which new colonies could be established, because, in their case, they abandoned their homeland and had a firm, intense faith. Of course they were believers, and it is precisely because they believed strongly that they wished to distance themselves from a multitude of people that they considered faithless; or, what was about the same thing for them, they thought them to hold beliefs that were contrary to or at least very different from their own, and they perceived in them a nearly complete indifference toward moral qualities, which is the typical result of religious indifference. Do you think, Sir, that amid the convulsions that torment and disorganize France, in this spirit of destruction that topples its throne and altars, among the completely perverse mass which composes the general population of France, there are no men, perhaps weak, perhaps even guilty, but who have not drunk in the horrible cup of atheism, who consider the existence of God to be as certain as their own existence, and who are persuaded, like Saint Job, that “wisdom is to fear the Lord, and intelligence is to flee evil?” I am persuaded that the Roman Church alone has been able to maintain the faith in all its integrity, I will not stand in judgment of the Moravian Brothers’ doctrine; but I believe that I can say, without exaggeration, that of all the Christians they alone live in the continual practice of evangelical principles. * A few leagues from Bethlehem there is a second Moravian colony named Nazareth. It resembles the first in every respect. There are thus still a few spots on earth where men are happy and good! In Nazareth there is a school for young boys. They come from everywhere in North America, including the native population, to learn how to become men. Although Catholic, I am thoroughly convinced that if there were in the Roman communion an association similar to that created by the Moravian Brothers, I would exhort my children and my dearest friends to see it and join it, and I am certain that they would soon be instilled with its spirit and, along with me, would make every possible effort to become a part of it. Faithful to our dogmas, if a Zinzendorf were to rise among the French, I would be, if necessary, the humblest and most zealous of his disciples. Some will laugh, I know, at the enthusiasm that this community inspires in me, but the great man to whom this letter is addressed will not be among them. Ah! What do I care about the laughter and disdain of most men? Wherever I may be, wherever I may live, I will not hear them.

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There are certainly many French people who are still truly Roman Catholics very attached to their faith, and it is no less certain that a man devoted to this faith and who has the necessary qualities could easily succeed in assembling them and forming a colony that, founded on the solid bases of piety, reason, and good moral and political principles, would serve as a durable example of wisdom and happiness for everyone on earth. How many just while entirely human motives would not make common cause with the religious reasons, which are still so powerful for a large number of people, to quickly determine a multitude of sensitive and indignantly outraged men to flee a country where people seem to take pleasure, for the abominable goal of disorganization, in accumulating atrocities that are the most despicable by the spirit that produces them, and at the same time the most absurd, since they do no more than reveal the vileness and furor of those who commit them, without being of any use in reaching the goals they set for themselves? Among the aforementioned nobles, insulted, stripped of their possessions, their property burned down, how many would not be prepared to leave an iniquitous, ungrateful homeland that rewards the services of the fathers by plunging the children into degradation and misery?* * If one were to accuse me of thinking that all those who made up the class of nobles in France have remained irreproachable, before and after the Revolution, that person would be sadly mistaken. Many of them, trailing far behind the ideas that the Montesquieus, the Rousseaus, the Mablys, and reason itself had put forward and with which they had filled men’s minds, were led into error by their ignorance and their prejudice, even as regards their own interest. They did not see that, in order not to lose everything, they should have agreed, in all fairness, to sacrifice the things that had been unjustly acquired by their ancestors and even more unjustly kept by them. They accumulated errors and faults. Although less excessive, their pretentions were even more unreasonable than those of their fathers, because times have changed, rights have been clarified and evaluated. To uphold their claims, they resorted to reprehensible and false means. They alienated the nation that they should have treated with care and respect. What I have said of the nobles applies even more so to the priests, who are much more blameworthy, since, for reasons that are obvious, their wrongs are infinitely worse by the very fact that they are priests. But among these priests, among these nobles, how many were not more rigorously critical of themselves than their adversaries would have dared be before the days when all the brakes failed, when all restraint was lost, when audacity became boundless, when blind fury became our only guide? What did they want? The only government that is suitable for a very large and populous country. A free monarchy so well organized that in the whole empire only depraved men could have any reasons not to love their fatherland. What were they proposing? The wisest means, the easiest way to reach this goal. One can appreciate their principles by rereading the writings of Messieurs Mounier, de Lally, and Malhouet. They held the pen, but reason, justice, and eloquence dictated the words. One may also consult the writings published by a club known

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These priests, these cenobites driven from the sanctuary, deprived of their harbor, their rest, their habits, and even of the subsistence that they so justly received for the sacrifice they had made of their liberty, of all the most legitimate pleasures, and of their own earthly possessions, deprived of the resources necessary to live in a society that will repulse them by its disgusting, as the Impartials. Ah! Why did this club not exercise the influence it deserved by the pure doctrine it professed? [In a November 9, 1789, letter, sent from Paris to his wife, LezayMarnésia painted a similar picture of the folly of revolutionary France: “Certainly France, in its current state of absolute disorganization and most dreadful anarchy, and where the terrible resort to a civil war has become a source of hope, is no longer inhabitable for those who love peace, a quiet and honest life, and wise and true freedom. We must leave if we do not wish to be subjected to outrage, humiliation, disgust. How can we remain among people who, through unconsciousness, frivolity, and immorality, were guided by men who misled them to become the most cruel and coldly atrocious people? How, above all, when we have the misfortune of having been noble, can we become accustomed to existing now only as fallen beings, incessantly insulted and degraded?” Letter quoted by Élisabeth Bourget-Besnier in Une famille française sous la Révolution et l’Empire: La famille de LezayMarnésia [A French Family during the Revolution and the Empire: The Lezay-Marnésias] (Paris: printed by author, 1985), 25. Jean-Joseph Mounier (1758–1806) was elected to the Estates-General by the Third Estate of Grenoble. A partisan of constitutional monarchy, he sided with those who favored a bicameral legislature and supported an absolute veto for the king. Mounier resigned as a deputy after the siege of Versailles in October 1789. He then lived in exile in Switzerland before serving Napoleon Bonaparte as prefect of the Ille-et-Vilaine in 1802–4. His Nouvelles Observations sur les États-généraux de France [New Observations on the French Estates-General] (1789) was a reference text for the Monarchist Club at the Constituent Assembly. Trophime Gérard de Lally-Tollendal (1751–1830) was elected to the Estates-General by the nobility of Paris. He spoke out in favor of the royal veto and a monarchy controlled by two houses. Like Mounier, he resigned from the Assembly after the October Days and went into exile in Switzerland. In 1792 he returned to defend the king’s cause but was arrested after August 10. Liberated a few days before the September massacres, he lived in London until the coup of 18 Brumaire in 1799. Pierre-Victor Malouet (1740–1814) was elected the first delegate of the Third Estate of Riom to the Estates-General. The author of an essay on slavery (Mémoire sur l’esclavage des nègres [Memoir on Negro Slavery], 1788), he joined the Massiac Club and worked to promote bicameralism. He immigrated to England after August 10, 1792, and only returned to France after 18 Brumaire. Malouet founded the Impartials, which comprised proponents of the constitutional monarchy. This club enjoyed only an ephemeral existence, from the early days of the Estates-General to the declaration of the Constituent Assembly (July 1789). On the Monarchiens, see Robert Howell Griffiths, Le Centre perdu: Malouet et les “monarchiens” dans la Révolution française The Lost Center: Malouet and the “Monarchiens” during the French Revolution (Gap: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 1988); and Aurelian Craiutu, A Virtue for Courageous Minds: Moderation in French Political Thought, 1748–1830 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012).—Ed.]

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scandalous, and shameful character, will they remain within this society that can only fill them with scorn if they can escape it? These virgins who, after having enjoyed a life of calm innocence, in the practice of tender devoutness, saw their asylum violated and the sacred pact they had made broken, will they ever become accustomed to the display of licentiousness, the language of impiety, the excesses of corruption, after having led the modest, tranquil, reflective life of the cloister? These magistrates, formerly perhaps surrounded by too much respect, perhaps armed with too much power, perhaps justly accused of having fought against despotism less by a genuine love of liberty than out of a desire to assume part of its authority; these magistrates, who are deprived of both the offices they had bought at great cost and the prestige that they brought them, will they be able to accept their fall from grace with dignity and courage? Will they be great enough to bear their new obscurity and be satisfied with equality? These braves soldiers who are capable of suffering any hardships, except for insults, would not they like to leave a country that treats them to such abuse? These merchants whose ventures have been completely destroyed, their hopes dashed, their fortunes crushed by the Revolution, have they anything to do with a nation that nature has made uselessly rich and intelligent, since this country desires, in its madness, by ruining its own commerce, to fall to the level of the poorest peoples? These artists who were the glory and charm of France, will they really want to continue to live there when they are no longer paid and honored? In this deplorable France, for people of merit and reason, they have managed to render voluntary exile a necessity. Ah! Sir, since instead of being content to make the necessary reforms, with the enlightenment of wisdom and considerations of fairness, they’ve determined to dissolve this beautiful empire, to render its people ferocious, to punish and stigmatize moderation and virtue as one should stigmatize vices, your only problem will be to choose from the multitude of those who will wish to accompany you. Unfurl your standards, but beware of accepting all those who will want to enroll. Will we never make anything but books? Shall we be contented with providing entertainment, with stimulating vivid, gentle, and sensitive imaginations, with giving them pleasure followed by regrets by continually offering them what are indeed often enchanting visions that we only see, unfortunately, in works of genius with no hope that they will ever be realized? Letter to Bernardin de Saint-Pierre

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Shall we constantly limit ourselves, with grand and beautiful ideas, to provoking sterile admiration and providing a few delightful hours that become a distant memory as soon as the book is closed? You have conceived, Sir, the beautiful idea of “a Republic directed by the laws of Nature.” You base it on reason and piety, and you see it as the largest possible association, since it comprises “all the unhappy people on earth.”* With a few restrictions, a few necessary modifications, Sir, put this grand idea into practice. I dare to guarantee you that, under your flags, far more than beneath Rousseau’s banner, a crowd of good men will rally, weary of the oppression by despots and of the oppression, a thousand times more disastrous, of anarchy, weary of the spectacle of all the crimes and of the all-toowell-founded fear of all the evils. Gather together, Sir, the debris of Europe, which no longer exists, enrich America with it, the America that does not yet exist and perhaps never will if this great opportunity escapes. Come, Sir, and be the leader of a good people; come and acquire a new and even more sacred right to the eternal gratitude of human beings, and draw to yourself the eyes of God. I would prefer, Sir, that your republic be on an island. An asylum of peace, of harmony, and of happiness should only admit very few travelers. Just as the humid winds at sunset, filled with impure vapors, wilt the rose, the breath from profane mouths is deadly to virtue and destroys felicity. Good people need only themselves, and wicked people only seek them out to corrupt or deceive them. “Everything that facilitates communication between * Studies of Nature, vol. 4, p. 248. [Lezay-Marnésia made a partial record of the political speculation presented by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre in “A Fragment Serving as a Preamble to Arcadia.” Saint-Pierre declares that he has formed the dream of a happy society, established “at the heart of South America, on the rich and deserted banks of the Amazon.” See Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, L’Arcadie et l’Amazone [The Arcadia and the Amazon], ed. Raymond Trousson (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1980), 11. His goal seems to have been to unite inhabitants of diverse origins (Europeans, but also Algerians and slaves who had fled the colonies), who would have shared their know-how and eventually formed a homogeneous people. Saint-Pierre nevertheless concludes his outline of this society with a reflection that Lezay-Marnésia cites partially: “I cast onto the paper all the studies I had conducted on this subject; but when I wanted to assemble them, to give myself and others an the idea of a republic directed according to the laws of nature, I saw that with all my work I would never fool any reasonable spirit” (13). Abandoning a utopia situated in his own time in an unknown space, Saint-Pierre transports it to Arcadia in antiquity. LezayMarnésia thus borrows Saint-Pierre’s initial project. However, unsatisfied with simply transferring it to North America, he transforms it into a refuge reserved only for the French, and silences the doubts expressed by his predecessor regarding the likelihood of the realization of a utopia contemporary with the reader.—Ed.]

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the different nations,” Rousseau said so well, “brings to the ones not the virtues of the others but rather their crimes and vitiates in all of them the mores that are most suitable to their climate and to the constitution of their government.”* All fertile islands, favored by nature, are already occupied by the nations of Europe. I do not believe that you would be tempted to add your settlers to their current inhabitants. Looking for new lands would be long, difficult, and risky, and when you are abandoning a house on fire, there is no time to lose. Let us choose therefore, on the immense American continent, a remote, virtually uninhabited place, on the banks of the great rivers, with rich soil capable of development. For nothing is developed yet in the enormous expanse of forests, suitable for all crops, beneath a pure sky and in a mild, healthy climate. Let us choose a land where, separated from the rest of the human race, we can live in peace and abundance, in the exercise of tranquil virtues and in the bonds of tender fraternity. The rich shores of the Amazon that you seem to prefer seem less suitable to me to achieve your aims than the fertile banks of the Allegheny and the Monongahela, up to the point where the Ohio River is formed by their two currents. Of all the sites of the two worlds, I do not think that there are any as suitable for grazing as the ones enclosed by these two rivers. If shepherds like those of Theocritus and Virgil have ever existed, it would surely be on these happy shores. Whatever advantages the southern countries may have, they also have disadvantages that I consider horrible and that should be avoided at all costs. Excessively rich in the superfluous, they are ill suited to the essential crops. They produce lavish amounts of exquisite perfumes and delicious fruit but are inimical to wheat and the most useful grains. Demanding little work from men, they lead him to idle contemplation or eroticism; they isolate him, render him inactive, and give him a penchant for the illusions of a lively imagination, for sensual pleasures, or for rest. These countries are perhaps fertile in erotic poets, in extravagant novelists, in Brahmins, in visionary fakirs and balladeers, but it is a land that does not stimulate, that nourishes its inhabitants without fortifying them as do the harsh climates of the North, * Preface to Narcissus, note d. [Narcisse ou l’amant de lui-même, or Narcissus, or the Lover of Himself, is a comedy by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, first performed at the Comédie Française on December 18, 1752, and published in 1753 by Pissot in Paris. Indeed, this sentence can be found in Rousseau’s preface. See Narcisse ou l’amant de lui-même, ed. Henri Coulet (1753; Paris: Éditions Desjonquères, 2008), 33.—Ed.]

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which you should choose, Sir, to establish your colony. You want liberty, reason, and virtue to sprout there, to bloom and bear fruit together. It is only on a land that will nourish generously those who cultivate it, that will occupy them forever without tiring them, that you will find success. The delightful region I am referring to, still almost virgin, seems the most worthy of attracting peaceful and moderate men. It is neither excessively hot nor cold, watered by two superb rivers bordered by rich prairies, and traversed by mountains and hills from which flow a multitude of streams, including plains of modest size but of prodigious fertility and charming valleys. This region, where, like the plants, the farm animals (left to themselves because the Americans are incapable of taking care of them) are superb and prosper beyond all expectation, will fulfill all the needs and even all the reasonable desires of the men you will lead there. They will be, according to their desires, farmers, shepherds, or merchants; or, rather, their tribe will include all these different professions. They will derive from their flocks and their fields far more than they can use for their own maintenance and nourishment. They will manufacture what they do not consume themselves, and the Ohio River will give them a huge outlet for the materials produced by their labor and for the overabundance of their commodities. Lead only fifty families, Sir, to the headwaters of the Ohio, between the Allegheny and the calm Monongahela. Choose from those classes that, when they still existed in France, equally far from the first ranks and the last, could more easily resist the unbridled licentiousness of the ones and the revolting corruption of the others. It is among the nobility that is neither the most distinguished nor the wealthiest and in what was known as the “good bourgeoisie” that you would find the best morality, the most solid principles, and, with less pomp and splendor, the truest virtues. Followed by their servants and by farmers that they will have to choose among the most respectable country dwellers, by artisans that should be selected more for their good character than for their virtuosity in their craft, these families will form a community of a thousand or twelve hundred people that will soon grow much larger when its happy lot becomes known. It will have to take precautions against the arrival of those who will wish to share in this peaceful life. What sensitive soul, animated solely by gentle passions, would not want to live in a corner of this earth where abundance, order, peace, and fraternity reign? In this century of iron, nothing can be done without gold. However, why should one give up comfort, life’s conveniences? Wisdom does not con66

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sist in fleeing enjoyment but rather in taking pleasure with moderation, in bearing steadfastly the necessary privations and the inevitable troubles. It is thus necessary that your settlers arrive with whatever money they are able to gather together, that they buy lands, not only for themselves but also for those they wish to include in their enterprise. They must agree moreover to sell lands only to individuals who have been approved by two-thirds of the heads of family, meeting in council to admit or reject those who apply. In this way, this society, which must attach great importance to preserving itself from the effects and contagion of vice, will be protected and will only allow into its midst people who are imbued with the principles that will direct it, inspired by the spirit that will guide it, and impassioned by this general benevolence, by this mutual interest that, while insuring the prosperity of the whole, will guarantee the safety and felicity of each individual. What charm one would feel if, in approaching his fellow man, he was sure of always meeting a brother and friend! The property transferred to those who will come after the first settlers will, justly, be sold for more than it cost, and the first buyers will, quite legitimately, be able to enjoy the profits that the sale will occasion; but I believe they will have the generosity to forego those profits and devote them to the improvement of the whole community. Profits will not be necessary for them, and superior souls have the constant need to do good works. Properties of fifteen hundred acres will be more than sufficient for the material needs of a large and wealthy family and will even be enough to earn it considerable income. One is quite rich with inexhaustible lands, thrift, good administration, and hard work. Engaged for four years, farmers will work at the clearing that remains to be done on these lands, which they will then work. One objection may be made, but it is easy to resolve. You will say, “Since the lands are already occupied, it will perhaps not be easy to acquire them. One becomes attached to one’s work, especially when it is encouraged and so magnificently rewarded by a soil that never tires of producing.” You would be right if Americans resembled other peoples, but none are as fickle as they are, because none are so lazy and subject to boredom. They constantly need to be stimulated by new things. Not being able to produce them, they have no choice but to move to a new place to find them. Always anxious, unhappy everywhere since they can find everywhere what is absolutely necessary to subsist and do not know how or even want to obtain anything more, they do not put roots down anywhere. In the thirty years since the first crops were planted on the lands that I am proposing to you, their owners have changed Letter to Bernardin de Saint-Pierre

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two or three times. Moreover, little accustomed to seeing money, the Americans are greatly attracted to it and scarcely ever resist its appeal. Perhaps one could also accuse them, rightly enough, of resembling birds that fear the light and flee as soon as dawn breaks. So come, Sir, with the families that wish to have you as their leader. You may be sure that they will find possessions far greater than their modest desires and better than they will dare to expect. May their first act of property be a solemn and touching event! You will lead them into these superb ancient forests that rise with such pomp above the lovely banks of the Allegheny or the Monongahela, sown with trees for the most part unknown in France, far fresher and taller, with more nuanced greenery, with a far gentler and more imposing majesty than the trees, so unvaried, of the forests in Europe, and that combine the brilliance and elegant shapes of their infinitely diversified flowers with the delightful and penetrating odor of the most exquisite scents. Beneath their sumptuous branches, you will make, Sir, a temple of foliage, supported by rich columns, sparkling with the colors so vivid, sweet, and varied of the Judea trees, the tulip trees, the dogwoods, and all types of acacias. The uplifting arts, which are charming to tender souls and delightful to sensitive imaginations, will accompany you. Thus your celebration will begin with the sound of melodious and touching music that will penetrate hearts with profound feelings of gratitude and love of the God full of kindness who, having spirited you away from a turbulent world, has led you into the reign of peace; music such as the soul of the good, the great Rousseau would have conceived and composed for such a solemn occasion; music, finally, whose sublime accents, lifting man up to God, will also unite him more intimately to other men by inspiring in him the delicious penchants of mutual affection and gentle benevolence. Oh! Sir, what prodigious effect this august, moving harmony will produce in this vast, silent, and magnificent sanctuary of nature! The transports of love will rise up to the skies; the embraces of friendship will unite all the hearts. God will never have been more adored; men will never have loved one another more. How little talent the following orator will need to touch people! The simpler his eloquence is, the more suitable it will be. What will he say that will not already have been understood? What emotions will he try to give that have not already been experienced? What affections will he attempt to communicate that people will not have already felt? How well disposed he will find his audience, so moved to participate

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heart and soul and with the sighs of a deep and tender piety in the celebration of our mysteries! What august and touching pomp! On an alter of grass, decorated with the most dazzling flowers, which our eyes have never beheld, bathed in delicious odors emanating from the sassafras and benzoin, these divine mysteries will be celebrated by venerable and saintly pontiffs with the majesty due such sublime functions, with the tender emotions of the most genuine devotion. Priests, the faithful, men, women, and children, all will be united in the same sentiment, the sentiment of love and gratitude; all will have but one heart that will be entirely devoted to their God. Once the sacrifice is completed, the air will be filled with songs of thanks to God. If the verses and music of these songs are simple, touching, lively, and shining with sweet, nearly heavenly joy, worthy of the great occasion for which they have been composed, they will be hymns of the angels sung here on earth. Upon leaving this temple, shining with verdant magnificence, the most holy in the universe, since it will have been consecrated by deep, keen piety, and by the practice of a religion profoundly engraved in the soul; upon leaving this temple, I say, your settlers will spread out into rooms made of greenery and flowers where they will find tables piled high with the excellent products of the region where they have come to live. Around these tables will gather equally the men, women, farmers, landowners, priests, and artisans. They will be careful to include Indians among them: All men are equal. It is not birth, It is virtue alone that makes the difference. If this maxim cannot be rigorously applied in any civil society, since its authorities, positions, and ranks are necessary to maintain peace and order, to insure its posterity and felicity, at least it can and must be followed in these solemn occasions when rejoicing, love, and consciousness of one’s happiness bring together a very small community blessed with all the riches of the earth and fulfilled by its virtues. What a simple and magnificent banquet! The succulent meats of the flocks nourished by the rich pastures of nature will be served beneath branches adorned with clusters of superb flowers, in the middle of aromatic and sweet plants, on lawns that unite the most tender and lively colors, constantly refreshed both by the heavy dew and by the transparent water of little

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streams.* The game, which still grazes without fear in its forests;† these birds with which the Jesuits, who never tired of doing good works, enriched Europe, and which, living wild in the American woods, are so much tastier, have so much more delicate flesh, and are so much larger than the ones in our farmyards where they are raised with such care and trouble;‡squirrels that they are right to kill and eat;§ pigeons whose flocks seem like clouds that veil the sun; pheasants, partridges, as common in this country as they are rare in Europe; enormous fish, of numerous varieties, and for the most part delicious.¶ * American farmers, who do not bother to provide lodgings for themselves, are even less concerned with their animals. During the harshest winters, when the ground is covered with snow, they leave them exposed to the bitter cold and feed them badly, in meager quantities. Nonetheless, their livestock flourishes. Their steers, cows, and sheep are magnificent. The cows give full buckets of milk, of excellent quality. The flesh of the pigs is very good, and these animals reproduce prodigiously. Their chickens, geese, and ducks are no better cared for, which does not prevent them from having eggs and poultry in enormous quantities. † Stags and does are very common in this part of America; however, as the men clear the lands, they are beginning to drive them off. ‡ There are flocks of wild turkeys on the banks of the Allegheny, the Monongahela, and the Ohio Rivers. They are rather tame. Often they weigh as much as twenty-five pounds. § The squirrels, given their population and their voraciousness, are a real scourge. In very short order they can destroy an enormous quantity of grain, especially corn. They are pretty animals that can be easily tamed. ¶ The Allegheny, the Monongahela, and the Ohio Rivers are loaded with fish of nearly all kinds. There are monstrously large ones, like the catfish, the buffaloes, the sturgeons, the perches, and the pikes. It is common to catch fish that weigh from fifty to sixty pounds, but not eighty to a hundred and even more, as M. de Crèvecœur says. Those who have given credence to the exaggerations of this writer have been completely deceived. Like those painters who, not being capable of capturing the beauty of Helen, represented her as rich and heavily made up, M. de Crèvecœur, not knowing how to render nature how it appears in reality—sublime, magnificent, and often enchanting—made gigantic pictures of it; that was easier. It would be unjust, after this well-founded criticism, not to give homage to two charming texts that are found in the Lettres d’un cultivateur américain. One of them is titled “The Vineyard and the Sassafras,” the other “Anecdote about a Wild Dog.” The ancients have written nothing more pleasant or more touching. The pure, simple style of these two pieces, with their highly interesting content, is worthy of Gessner’s pen and offers a surprising contrast with the bombastic, neological, bloated tone, the false enthusiasm, the stark coldness of the rest of the work. The neighbors of these three rivers where the fish are so plentiful do not even have nets yet. They are content with simple lines whose bait is eaten and whose hooks are carried off by the fish, who go off to die and become the prey of other voracious fish who benefit nearly alone from these apathetic and improvident Americans. The sky, the earth, and the rivers seem to compete for the privilege of shower-

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The vegetable kingdom, so rich in this region, will also be a magnificent source of foods for this meal. The bread will be made of pure wheat flour that French agriculture will greatly perfect.* The nourishing potatoes, the enormous ing them with gifts; it is just too much trouble for them to bend over and pick them up. These people are a study in contrasts. They are lazy and greedy. Although they are scrupulous observers of the religious discipline they have adopted, they are indifferent toward its doctrine and very negligent as regards its morality; the man who dares not hum a tune on Sunday in his room will lend his money at 60 percent interest. [Lezay-Marnésia exaggerates in turn, since the fish evoked by Crèvecœur weigh no more than twenty-five pounds: “Perch, pickerel, the barbet, or catfish weigh twenty-five pounds; the buffalo fish, weighing twenty pounds, is the best of all.” See Lettres d’un cultivateur américain [Letters from an American Farmer], 3 vols. (Paris: Cuchet, 1787), 3:408. This quote is borrowed from a section of the Lettres titled “L’Esquisse du Fleuve Ohyo et du Pays de Kentuckey” [“Sketch of the Ohio River and of Kentucky”] (387–441), which accompanied the promotional documents distributed by the Scioto Company to its clients. The irritation manifested by Lezay-Marnésia concerning Crèvecœur’s “exaggerations” might be explained by LezayMarnésia’s feeling of having been fooled by the author of the Letters from an American Farmer as much as by the associates of the Scioto Company. “Anecdote d’un chien sauvage” [“Anecdote about a Wild Dog”] (1:199–216) and “Anecdote du Sassafras et de la Vigne Sauvage” [“The Vineyard and the Sassafras”] (1:224–29) are the two texts from the Lettres d’un cultivateur américain (Paris: Cuchet, 1784) by Crèvecœur that were most appreciated in their time. The “Anecdote about a Wild Dog” provided the artist Antoine Borel (1743–1810) with the subject for two drawings “L’Enfant perdu” [“The Lost Child”] and “L’Enfant retrouvé” [“The Found Child”] conserved at the Blérancout Museum. In Paul and Virginia, the scene where the two heroes are found by Fid˘ele the dog is compared with the “Anecdote d’un chien sauvage.” See Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Paul and Virginia, trans. John Donovan (1788; London: Peter Owen, 2005), 139. On the reception of these two texts, see Howard C. Rice, Le Cultivateur américain, étude sur l’œuvre de Saint John de Crèvecœur [The American Farmer, Essay on the Works of Saint John de Crèvecœur] (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1933), 82–83. Salomon Gessner (1730–1788) is a German-language Swiss poet whose works, notably Idylls (1756) and The Death of Abel (1758), were very well received in their time, in particular by Rousseau and Diderot. On Gessner, see John Hibberd, Salomon Gessner: His Creative Achievement and Influence (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976). The “bombastic, neological, bloated tone” of which Lezay-Marnésia accuses Crèvecœur might be explained by the circumstances of the French translation of the Letters from an American Farmer. Crèvecœur had forgotten much of his first language, French, over the course of the twenty-seven years he spent across the Atlantic. He had to relearn French upon his return to France in 1781 and was assisted in the French translation of the Letters by the Académicien Jean-François de Saint-Lambert (1716–1803). On this question, see Rice, Le Cultivateur américain, 75–106.—Ed.] * The flours of the Allegheny region are superb when they are produced in good mills. They are exported at great profit to New Orleans. They could compete with the fine flours of Bordeaux if, like these people, the Americans lined their barrels with paper, and, in this way, protected their merchandise from contact with air and humidity; but this precaution would become difficult for them or very expensive. I do not believe that they have any

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cabbages, the corn cakes, all the vegetables and tasty fruits, and all the edible plants* will be served with the same prodigality that is shown by the new, vigorous, and overly energetic soil that produces them. They will be samples of the abundance to which your settlers can look forward. The refreshing beer, the local paper mills. They remain, still more than the Portuguese, dependent on the English industry. If the Americans knew how to and wanted to benefit from the Revolution in France, what country would flourish like theirs? * “Plantes édules” means plants that are good to eat. “This word,” as Rousseau observes, “is one of those Latin words that should become part of the universal language of botany.” In no place are edible plants so abundant as in the region from which I am writing. You can find Jerusalem artichokes there whose roots, shaped like pears, taste like our artichoke hearts. The watercress of the Alène River, whose origin, the distinguished author of the Agricultural Course tells us, is unknown, is the most common grass found here in sandy soils. The same grounds are covered with purslane. Ordinary chervil, musk rose, and sorrel are often found in somewhat humid places. A very precious plant for the sweetness of its fruit is the honey apple. This plant, which is in great abundance, reaches a height of five or six inches on a single stalk. Its leaves, divided into five sections, resemble those of the plane tree but are of a darker green. Its blossoms, white and with a single petal, are like those of the bindweed of the bays. They are replaced by a fruit a little larger but of the same shape and color as Marseilles figs. They also have their taste but combined with that of very good plums. I believe that Miller, in his excellent Gardner’s Dictionary, describes honey apples. But I cannot be sure without my books, and lacking the necessary skill, I cannot describe these things accurately. I will not attempt to provide a list of all the edible plants that grow in this land. There are an infinite number of them. The prune tree is native to this region and yields little plums that resemble cherry plums, of a delicate violet hue blended with pink. They taste good, although slightly bitter. The peach trees, untended, have proliferated to such an extent around the Americans that they only pick a small part of the fruit, and their pigs devour the rest. They are nonetheless very good, despite the fact that the trees have not been perfected by grafting. They make excellent brandy from them, but in small quantities. [Lezay-Marnésia cites the definition of the word “édule” that is given by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his Fragments pour un dictionnaire des termes d’usage en botanique [Fragments for a Dictionary of Terms of Usage in Botany] (1774), in Œuvres complètes de J.-J. Rousseau [The Complete Works of J.-J. Rousseau], ed. Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond, 5 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1969), 4:1219. Despite the wish expressed by both Lezay-Marnésia and Rousseau, it is the word comestible (“edible”) that has prevailed in French. Lezay-Marnésia is referring to the article “Cresson alénois” [“Garden Cress”] in the third volume of the Cours complet d’agriculture théorique, pratique, économique et de médecine rurale et vétérinaire [Complete Course of Theory, Practice, and Economics of Agriculture, Including also Rural and Veterinary Medicine] 12 vols. (Paris, 1781–1805), by the abbé JeanBaptiste François Rozier (1734–1793). Philip Miller (1691–1771) is the author of The Gardener’s Dictionary Containing the Methods of Cultivating and Improving the Kitchen Fruit and Flower Garden (1731). This work was translated into French by Laurent de Chazelles (1724–1808) under the title Dictionnaire des Jardiniers, 8 vols. (Paris: Guillot, 1785).—Ed.]

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cider sparking like champagne, sweet and piquant like that of Arbois, will flow freely. Abundance is appropriate in times of deep, genuine joy. Splendor may unite with thrift, which is not natural to pure, violent joy. Such joy is rich and grows more so from the sharing of all possessions by the community. What unbridled gaiety will animate this gathering! Smiles will be on all faces; pleasure will shine in everyone’s eyes; everyone’s heart will be filled with emotion and fondness. The good Indians will feel that friends have arrived, and since they really call the French their fathers, they will cover them with a multitude of unaffected and sincere marks of their affection. They will abandon themselves to the penchant they have always had for a cheerful, just, sensitive nation that honors men in whatever shape and color they appear.* Perhaps one day, when they are more evolved, they will come to realize that the true children of nature are not these wandering hordes whose life is more like that of the animals they hunt to eat their flesh and trade their skins for dangerous burning drinks than the life that should be led by creatures born to till the land, embellish it, and rule over it. They will recognize, I say, that the true children of nature are those whose souls have retained the stamp of God, who follow his laws imperturbably, who have conserved the morality that comes with that stamp, and who, by the perfectibility of which, among all the animals, it has rendered them alone capable, always tend to elevate themselves, through the knowledge and practice of good, toward the being who is the eternal and inexhaustible source of it. The time that drags so slowly and makes meals seem so long in societies that only know vice and opulence, where only the greed of the guests and the stupid pride of Amphitryon are flattered, where, despite the efforts—and even because of those efforts—the spirit is rarely satisfied and the heart never, this time will flow like a rapid, pure spring among the flowers, in these hours of jubilation where the happiness of being together will unite a people of brethren in simple, joyous, abundant meals, enlivened by the general benevolence and by the feeling of good conscience, the mother of true contentment. * It is easy to see that this praise of the French nation would be a dull or cruel joke if it were addressed to the French of today. It is their fathers, the French that the author saw in his youth, that he is praising out of habit, sentiment, and the memory of what they once were. People, not so long ago still gentle, kind, and full of honor, what has become of you? Along with your virtues, you have lost everything. How guilty are the miserable individuals who, for forty years, under the pretext of enlightening you, have been in league to pervert you! The gifts they have given you resemble those of the devil in the eyes of your first parents. Purveying false ideas, they have given you the vices that you would never have acquired without them and the ills from which you were to have been protected: anarchy, disorder, disgrace, and misery.

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At their end, as is the practice in a well-known society after its fraternal banquets, I would like your settlers to form a chain of union and take a heartfelt oath to love one another with a friendship that is sincere, active, inalterable, and constantly renewed so that it will grow forever.* Can one forget these amiable youths for whom no celebration is complete without dancing? You will lavish on them innocent pleasures, Sir, in order to turn them away for all those that are not. What a new and truly enchanting picture! Beneath the thick shade of the gigantic wild cherry and plane trees,†to tunes from European music unknown to these shores, the young men and women, French and Indian, will perform light, lively dances, charming in their novelty and especially in the complicity, the naïve joy, the sweet innocence, and the touching caresses that the dancers will share, happy beginnings of the friendship that will form between your settlers and the good Indians. Cold and hard-hearted philosophers, if you could see such a spectacle and feel, despite yourself, your eyes fill with sweet tears, you would agree that * Since the world was created, there are good institutions among men. The one that I refer to has produced and may still produce the greatest things. For a long time it maintained and may still maintain precious reserves of enlightenment. It was and would still be, if men so desired, a source of virtues, but men neglect everything and conserve nothing, and it does not occur to even the wisest of them to collect the debris in the general disaster. † Among the multitude of beautiful trees of North America, few are more beautiful than the wild cherry trees. They rise up to great heights and are as much as thirty-five feet in circumference. Their wood is hard and generally healthy. The planks that are derived from it are very suitable to the fabrication of wainscoting and superb furniture. They have the color of dried roses. They can be polished until they gleam beautifully. Like the sassafras, the benzoin, the red oak, the black walnut, the tulip, the cedar, the papa, the sugar maple, and so many other charming and useful species, these trees are easy to transplant in France, even in the northern provinces. The winters, shorter in truth in this part of America than in the area around Paris, are just as harsh. I believe that good people should leave France in this time of willful disorder and misfortune; but I also believe that, forced by their sensitivity and their principles to abandon her, they should conserve a tender and painful memory of her and try to share with her all the good things they will have found in a more peaceful world. Perhaps she will find a way to give birth to a new calm in her bosom, and then the children that she drove away with the injustices and the fury will return with the homage of their love, bearing a wealth of plants that will spread new beauties over its countryside and give new rejoicing to its inhabitants. Amen. [The Histoire générale des Voyages [General History of Travels] by Antoine-François Prévost d’Exiles, 20 vols. (Paris: Didot, 1746–89), 2:377, evokes the “papa,” “which is a fruit the size of a muskmelon, similarly hollow, with as much resemblance, within and without, concerning the shape and color.”—Ed.]

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the souls that are drawn together, that become as one, that are united and inflamed by the same sentiment, that rise together toward their God, that religion purifies, that charity sets afire, and that innocent pleasures, more sweet and true than all the others, touch and reward, are happier than those that your systems stifle, isolate, and render insensitive to everything except personal interest. Let us adore and love, and we shall have a foretaste of celestial bliss. Paradise would lodge itself in advance in honest, good, and loving hearts if they were gathered together in the same corner of the world. Surely you will not allow to be lost the memory of a day so filled with everything that can guarantee happiness for virtuous and sensitive men. You will preserve its memory by a perpetual anniversary. This marvelous celebration, occurring each year, will always be a new source of joy in which each person will feel with delight and say truthfully, “I am happy, and all those who are gathered here are happy like me!” With such powerful reasons to abandon their homeland, virtuous families, united by their principles, by their feelings, and by their choice, who, out of love for peace, attachment to their faith, and desire to preserve their customs and those of their descendants from the example and force of the impulses that could so easily lead them astray, will have renounced long-held habits, their fortunes, their friends, their relatives, their country, in short everything to seek a refuge where they are free to be happy and pure, these families will resort to the only means they have to assure for their association an enduring calm and happiness. They will return, insofar as possible, to the state of nature, which is not, whatever people may have said, the life of savages, which is only a degeneration, but the state in which man came from the hand of the Creator and in which he has been instructed by God himself. They will separate and spread out into the vast open country they have acquired. Like the Swiss, they will build scattered dwellings, close enough, however, to give one another help and to enjoy the pleasure of one another’s company. Despite the very mistaken idea according to which there should be many men for little land, you, Sir, will give a great deal of land to few men. It is the best way to induce them to lead a life in which they both farm and herd, in which they learn to provide one another mutual services and to help one another constantly, and in which they learn the gentle necessity of loving one another. They will possess wealth, simplicity, the righteousness of the patriarchs, the only men on earth who have known happiness. If I had been able to choose my fate, it is that of Abraham or Boaz that I would have preferred. Letter to Bernardin de Saint-Pierre

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Ah, Sir! I can see it because I have known it, because I still take pleasure in it; I see this moment when each family will take possession of the parcel of land that is bestowed on it. A fervent admiration, a sort of ecstasy will be the initial feeling of its members. It will be as if their imagination is overwhelmed by the grandeur of the spectacle; the novelty, the majesty, the immensity, and the tranquility; but the tranquility will soon be replaced by movement and activity. The ax will strike and fell the enormous aged children of the earth. Their branches will be devoured by flames; their trunks piled one on another will form walls, and an impenetrable shelter will soon be ready. What powerful and delightful sensation man feels when, for the first time, he places his hand on a piece of land, still virgin, and imprints on it the seal of his power! Space is born, vistas arise, magnificent landscapes are created. An atom is truly the king, the master of nature. Progress is rapid; it takes little time to clear a large patch of land. The work of spring is already rewarded in the fall. After having seen the grains entrusted to this rich, deep soil turn green and grow vigorously, the family is soon reaping the bountiful harvest. Other efforts are added to those devoted to the clearing, cultivation, and harvesting. The family, its farmers, and the numerous flocks all need housing: whether of wood or bricks, the houses are quickly erected. The land is no longer a wilderness. Within the space of four or five months, the forests have been replaced by cheerful sites, with fields and prairies adorned by attractive lodgings. Do not think, Sir, that driven by the pleasure of imagining and describing I am using my pen as if it were the whistle at the opera used to produce new decorations in the blink of an eye. Nothing is so rigorously true as everything that I have the honor of telling you. Less than a year is needed to establish a community and to have all necessities in abundance, even the principal conveniences. However, walls no longer rise at the sound of a lyre, so you understand perfectly that I assume that each head of family will dispose of a sufficient number of farmers and laborers to move the work forward at a fast pace and guarantee that the rewards will be prompt. In four or five months, twelve men, especially if they are German or French, will have planted enough land for the corn, potatoes, turnips, and all kinds of vegetables to feed thirty people, as well as the animals during the cold season. With the help of the neighbors, it will only take them a few days to build dwellings that will suffice until such a time as they can erect larger ones, and all of the lodgings for the farmers and the animals will soon be built as well. Winter will come, and we will endure cheerfully its rigors in our warm, com76

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fortable houses, rich with all the necessary foodstuffs, surrounded by the most beautiful livestock, all kinds of poultry and game, and with the most excellent fish at our disposal, so to speak. We will begin to enjoy, from the first year, an affluence well beyond these hopes. Beneath these modest roofs, where we shall lack none of the essentials, peace will reign and with it the good cheer that is its inseparable companion. The calm, close-knit life of the Swiss, their interesting, easy activities, their open and honest manners in a climate far better than the one they left, on a far more fertile soil, in the midst of all the riches of nature, will endow your settlers with the imaginary bliss of Tempe in the American forests. Inspired by the desire of the common good, each person will apply himself to activities that are useful to everyone; even without having learned them, each will practice one or several trades. When people are not distracted by false pleasures, when they withdraw from society, they become inventive. They are surprised to discover that they have hidden talents. The men will work with planes, turn the lathes, and each day some comfortable, convenient piece of furniture will come from their hands. The women will not be idle: their brushes and needles will decorate the dwelling. Their efforts will establish order there and provide for a variety of pleasures. Truly good books, neither pedantic nor frivolous, will make the evenings seem short, and sometimes the sound of music will make them even more charming. But while the masters are so pleasantly occupied, the farmers will be at work too: they will cut down trees, clear more land, increase the size of the community, and double the wealth in the following year. Well treated, dressed, and fed, housed in well-heated abodes, they will bless the fate that brought them to America when they recall the misery that drove them from Europe. With their current comfort and the assurance of an even better future, what more could they desire? With what joy will we receive our neighbors and friends in these happy refuges! With what innocent pride will we show them the progress of the new crops! “We will spare them nothing, not even an oyster,” but they will be pleased to discover at their neighbors’ and friends’ the same prosperity that they enjoy at home. They will exchange advice with us. What a fortunate position to be in when, for your own happiness, you have to try to increase the happiness of others! What sweet and frank joviality will reign at the lengthy but charming winter meals! The food will be simple, good, and healthy, precisely as it should be for people who like to live well and are somewhat sensual but not at all greedy. What pleasant conversations will fill the evenings! The memories, the comparison of past and present, and the plans Letter to Bernardin de Saint-Pierre

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for the future will never allow the discussions to flag; the most touching interests will sustain them. How calm the nights will be after such tranquil days! Beneath the eyes of the virtuous parents, the tender and pure loves of the children will rise. Happy marriages will soon reinforce the bonds between the families and strengthen their rapport. The winters spent in this manner will not be hard to bear; nonetheless, spring will be greeted with joy and a rejuvenation of the soul. The work will begin anew with even greater fervor. Each year will add to the progress, and it will take little to bring the plantation to perfection, with vast buildings, smiling prairies, fertile fields, abundant and neat gardens, and delicious orchards, covered and adorned with all the riches of the earth. This life, in truth, will be the simplest but also the sweetest and wisest that one could lead. How peaceful the end will be! After placing your settlers on rich, charming plantations, and after putting each family in the bosom of an earthly paradise, Sir, your work will not be over. By nurturing relationships that are as agreeable as they are useful, you will maintain the same spirit, the same intimacy in your colony. You will not want it to preserve all the French customs, just all the good ones. You will want it to retain its familiarity with the humanities, sciences, and arts, as well as to prevent its morals from degenerating and to preserve forever its religion.* You will have an easy way to achieve this goal. Although, since Babylon * In this age that calls itself philosophical, and that gives such horrible proofs of its philosophy, I will have the courage to say, not that we need to shackle religious opinion, which would be both absurd and unjust, but that it is wise, prudent, and appropriate to avoid, as much as possible, the mixing of the various religious groups, which could be of no advantage to any of them, and which, for all of them, would be rife with disadvantages. Such a mixture, if religious spirit is accompanied by ardor and fervor, produces rivalries, jealousies, and hatreds that soon create divisions and quarrels and bring terrible consequences. On the other hand, amid a large diversity of religions and opinions, if the spirit is not combined with fervor and ardor, a man becomes uncertain and finds each day his faith increasingly shaken and weakened. He turns to principles that he creates for himself, of which he is the sole judge, that he develops, restricts, and modifies as he pleases, and eventually falls into an indifference that soon degenerates into atheism, if not as an avowed creed at least in practice. (In North America, the truth of this can be easily observed.) If this man is of the lowest social class, completely unenlightened and scarcely able to think clearly, to what degree of immorality will he not decline? The inhabitants of the frontiers of the United States, scattered sparsely in the mountains, with little communication between them, demonstrate the excesses that characterize human beings who have been deprived of any church doctrine and the degradation to which they sink. More isolated than the savages, who live in tribes, each family of these inhabitants is alone, idle, devoid of morality, and nearly unclothed. The animals enjoy more resources than they do.

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and Nineveh, cities have nearly always been seats and masses of corruption, you, Sir, will build one that you will succeed in preserving from luxury, misery, and all the base passions and vices of the other cities. You will place it in the very center of your colony, on the banks of one of the two rivers. A vast square, shaped like a crescent, may be all the space it will need. At the back, a majestic temple will rise. On its sides will be built the modest, neat lodgings of the ministers of the faith. Across from each other, in the middle of each side of the crescent, we could place two buildings: one to be the courthouse, the other to be used for the necessary meetings and for warehouses. The square will be completed by a school and an educational facility for girls. In the middle, we will raise a column from which a fountain will flow and on which the names of the first settlers will be engraved, as well as a noble, simple, touching inscription that will inform their successors of the reasons for their emigration.* The rest of the space will be filled with the simple When hunting fails to provide sustenance, they survive miserably with a few boiled potatoes that they eat without salt. When they fall ill, they have no one to call on for help. In a hut built of tree trunks crudely piled up, scarcely covered with any bark, we saw a dying man in the arms of a young woman who was attempting to open his veins with a pair of scissors in the hope of bringing him back to life. Where can you find misery this deep? Left to themselves, without neighbors, support, or consolation, the fate of these inhabitants is the most horrific that I have ever known. The most excessive poverty of the Europeans is a comfortable life compared to theirs. No aid agency exists for them. A rifle is their only form of wealth. They live off their prey, like vultures and wolves, and like these animals they often feel the horror of hunger. When they are ill, they find themselves with no recourse. They have never been visited by a doctor nor consoled by a pastor; charity has never softened their troubles nor attempted to relieve their suffering. The only men they ever see are occasional travelers forced, in this wilderness, to seek shelter in their shacks, where they impatiently wait for daybreak, eager to get away from the spectacle of excessive degradation and misery into which men can fall. * The following inscription had been adopted by an association prepared to create a city near the banks of the Scioto River. It would already be in existence if the company that sold them the lands had done what was necessary to deliver them. But this company did not fulfill any of its commitments and has abandoned the unfortunate clients in a hostile America. In reading this inscription, you will see that I am not transcribing it out of personal pride but rather because it expresses what I felt: “True Frenchmen /Abandoned their homeland out of patriotism. / They were unable to bear the spectacle of ills, / Innumerable, immeasurable ills / In which it was plunged by an atrocious anarchy. / In fleeing, / They bemoaned the ruins / Of the most beautiful empire in the world, / Torn by its own hands. / They shed tears on its shores. / They came to this place / That no man had inhabited / To ask for a new homeland. / They came with good, sensitive hearts / With the intention / Of practicing the gentle virtues / And to enjoy there / The peace of true liberty / And the charms of fraternity, / To live there in rudimentary simplicity, / And to harvest, / By applying themselves to diligent, moderate work, / All the gifts that agriculture offers. / The

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houses of the individuals, unadorned but cheerful, comfortable, and even elegant. They will all have gardens. As wise as it is not to make the fields a reflection of the cities, it is just as reasonable to include in the cities the images of the fields. You will be right to prefer, Sir, the greatest possible modesty for the houses of individuals, but you will also want some grandeur, even a certain splendor in the public buildings. It is a fine thing to be proud both of one’s own simplicity and of the magnificence of public edifices. Either I am mistaken or Socrates and Rousseau would have felt the same way. Outside of the inner circle, but close by and still on the shore, will be built a charity hospital, not for the needy, for there will never be any of these among men whose humanity will always prevail, but for the sick who will need to be closer to the caregivers than they would be in their families. It would be best, Sir, if this establishment were entrusted to the devout daughters of the hero of humanity, to the divine Saint Vincent de Paul. There are many of them in Canada, and, just as in France, they are models for the virtuous caregiving inspired by religion. When they do not make people soft, and when they do not ignite greed, the arts and commerce are fertile sources of creature comforts and innocent enjoyment that serene wisdom does not condemn. I thus believe, Sir, that you will favor the development of the ones and establish the other, but maintaining them in limits that will not allow them to lead to luxury or even awaken fantasies. A sure way to succeed in both these areas is to create manufacturing facilities that only use local products. They will not remain idle. I believe, therefore, that you would be wise to limit yourself at the beginning to the fabrication of sheets, fabrics, and hats, to the preparation of leathers and other objects that can be enhanced by men’s hands. Nonetheless, in the creation of these enterprises, one can perhaps foresee a pitfall that must be avoided. It is much less a wealthy republic than a happy and wise republic that you will wish to institute. No legislator has succeeded in combining the advantages of trade with the preservation of morality, the purity of principles, and the energy of the virtues. In the great empires it would be unrealistic to attempt it, but in a new land, in a new community, with a small number of scrupulously selected members, it not only seems possible to me but easy to accomplish. I will Eternal will watch over them. / They arrived on . . . / Their names are inscribed / On the other sides of this column.”

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dare, Sir, submit my ideas to you; it is up to you to determine what they are worth. Fifty families of property owners, one hundred at the very most—the latter number being preferable but a greater one could only be harmful—will compose your whole state.* They will all be partners and create together the commercial businesses, whose minimal risks and nearly certain extensive profits they will share. They will name twelve administrators, a quarter of whom will be replaced each year. An advance of one thousand crowns by each of the families, if there are one hundred of them, or two thousand if there are only fifty, will be more than adequate to finance, generously, the founding of the colony. In four years there would be fifty-two families working on fifty-two looms. They must all, with no exception, come from France. The first year we would have thirteen of them come. Two of them would be employed at the hat factory, five would make fabric, and the six others would produce sheets. The second year the same number of families, with the same assignments, would come to join the first ones; the third year the same number would come; and the fourth, finally, the contingent of fifty-two families would be complete. In the factories, eight would work making hats, twenty producing fabrics, and twenty-four fabricating sheets. They would sign contracts for four years, and each year a quarter of them would be replaced by new workers. In France, an intelligent, reliable representative, who will, above all, share the views of the colony, will select the workers, agree on terms with them, and arrange for their transportation to an American port, where another representative will send them on to their destination. During the four years that they will be employed, the expense for each worker, including food and clothing, will be around F 1,200: 200 for their ship passage, 100 for travel expenses from the port where they will disembark to the colony, and F 600 for their salary of 50 crowns a year. Their subsequent clothing will come from their own hands, and you will quickly see that their food, although abundant and very good, will not be very costly. The circumstances and level * However much love they may have for democracy, it is not credible to think that men who have been brought together by their mutual suitability, tastes, shared principles, and choice could envisage including in their administration and their interests men whose extreme difference in education, at the very least, prevents them from being their equals. They will owe these men, their salaried help, care, protection, ample remuneration for their work, graciousness, indulgence, and kindness. Nothing more. It would be absurd for the farmers and craftsmen to have the same rights as the property owners, since they cannot make the same financial and intellectual contributions and do not have the same interests.

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of success may cause us to develop and modify these projections, on which we need linger no more. We said, Sir, that each family of property owners would possess 1,500 acres of land. With such an expanse of remarkably fertile land, how easy will it not be for them to furnish the workshops with all the hemp, flax, and wool they will need, as well as the wheat, potatoes, vegetables, and meat necessary to feed the workers? Each one of them will contribute a hundredth of the cost of the above. How enormous the profits will be for a business that will incur no expense for the raw materials or the sustenance of the workers. If we were to allow private entrepreneurs to make these profits, even if they were much lower for them, not having the same level of resources that the heads of the families will enjoy as a group, they would still be much too high, since they would rapidly result in the rise of social inequality, which, in a colony such as yours, we cannot guard against vigorously enough. The consequences are, alas, rapid and extremely harmful! As long as possible, let everyone be wealthy enough to live in the greatest plenitude, but let no man be rich enough to be tempted by pomp and luxury or even the desire to be envied! May the only difference between possessions be a product of the respective talents of the inhabitants, the result of tastes that are more delicate, more informed, and more ingenious! I believe, Sir, that the association I am proposing between all of your settlers is the most effective means of staving off, perhaps even preventing forever, this terrible inequality of wealth, which I consider to be the greatest misfortune that may befall a society created to yield the greatest happiness in equality, in the bonds of loving fraternity. This association will have another precious advantage, which is the extreme ease it will provide for the settlers to contribute copiously to the public generosity. Let us read in men’s hearts, even generous men! It requires some effort for them to resolve to sacrifice sums that are already in their hands. They abandon quite easily, however, sums that they have not yet received and are pleased to see them used for really lofty projects, projects that are truly useful. I do not believe that I am exaggerating in assuring you that the production of your workshops will soon reach at least 1,000 écus and will quickly exceed that.* The associated property owners, who, in providing the manu* I am convinced by my knowledge of this country and its commercial outlets that I am not exaggerating the profits I project. How greatly will they not increase when the commercial branches proliferate? The inhabitants of Kentucky, numbering one hundred thousand, obtain from the seaports all the merchandise they use, and these ports obtain from

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facturing facilities, will already have had the advantage of increasing the value of the production of their soil, will gladly sacrifice a third of the profits that they will have coming to them from their businesses. For the first years, let us assume that a third of the profits is F 100. In a country where money is scarce, where the number of good workers will proliferate owing to the policies of the settlers, where, consequently, labor will become cheap and food will cost almost nothing, how many really great, beautiful things, clearly contributing to everyone’s prosperity, will this sum not produce! Permit me, Sir, to anticipate your thoughts and take pleasure in the delightful perspective that is already unfolding before me. On a land more attractive, rich, varied, and majestic than the banks of the Pineiós, I see brought together the principles of the happy pastors of Moschus and Gessner, the culture and industriousness of the Swiss, the arts, taste, and exquisite sensitivity of the Athenians, and the virtues of the Spartans. Rich with F 100,000 a year, let us use each year our replenished treasure. The principal concerns of the enlightened and sensitive men you will have brought together will be to help those who are afflicted by sickness, to console and serve them, to cultivate the children and educate the young, to shape their minds, to give them the knowledge and love of the divine laws and even the good human laws that are derived from them. The first buildings to be raised will thus be the hospital for the disabled and sick and the two schools. The Lord will pardon them for not beginning with his temple, and his eyes will fall on these establishments where charity, the virtue that he rewards the most highly, will be exercised, and where living, pure temples will be prepared for him. In the second year, the Lord’s house will be built. Architecture will lend its richness, painting its genius, sculpture all the resources of its art and all the England everything they sell in America. It is the English who supply the Americans with nearly everything sold in the United States, while the Americans have a huge abundance of raw goods that they scarcely exploit. The Blue Mountains, which are already quite populated, will offer a very big market. South America and the West Indies will assure them of another enormous market of incalculable value. All you need in this country is ambition and action. [Lezay-Marnésia’s decision to immigrate to the United States is indissociable from a hope of profit that he entertained from the beginning of the elaboration of his project at the end of 1789. A letter to his wife dated February 26, 1790, announces, “In less than a year what we bought for six francs will be worth more than a louis” (quoted in Bourget-Besnier, Une famille française sous la Révolution et l’Empire, 33). The financial success of his plans seemed to him to be what was least doubtful about his project: “Either my enterprise will be justified by great success or, if it is not crowned with this success, it will boil down to simple trip, recompensed by a very good placement of money, for there is no doubt regarding this placement” (ibid., 36).—Ed.]

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efforts of its talent. I would like to see engraved on the pediment, illuminated by rays of light, these words written on the rational of the great priest of the Hebrews, “Doctrine and Truth,” and inlaid on the first two pilasters, whose façade will be decorated, the Ten Commandments. After two years, four public edifices will have already been erected. In the third year, the buildings designed to render justice and to hold assemblies will rise, but once these works are finished, the funds coming from a third of the commercial profits will not lie idle. However wealthy, just, and generous the contributors may be, contributions are tiresome for those who have to pay them and disagreeable for those who are charged with collecting them. Neglect nothing, Sir, and go to any lengths to forestall even the smallest pretexts for discontent. The lightest worry, the slightest appearance of trouble, even a shadow of concern must not affect your blessed community. However, it will still be necessary to maintain properly the useful and respectable establishments that will have been built. One way to accomplish this, which is both inexpensive and simple, is to buy the lands that will serve to endow adequately, but not excessively, the ministers of the altars, the schools, and the charitable institutions, and provide the city with ample and necessary income. Alternatively, the managers of the businesses could use the profits earmarked for public expenditures to buy land and provide for the expenses necessary to hire French farmers who, later, if they deserve it, will be given the farms. The farms will be the reward for hard work and good conduct and should only be granted to those who demonstrate that they are really worthy of it. For the tranquility, happiness, and long-term survival of a community such as the one you will create, no effort should be spared to insure moral purity and even piousness. When innocence has fled the cities, if it cannot find refuge in the country, total upheaval soon follows the general corruption. In a large state, all the government can do is fight against perversity. It often even finds itself forced into indulgence, which, although it may be a political necessity, is no less vile and abominable. It flatters and promotes it, because it cannot or will not repress or contain it. At the very most, it takes stopgap measures that do not destroy it. I am convinced, therefore, that any large state, whatever its government, is incompatible with happiness and virtue. But in organizing a small society, whose members are rigorously chosen, I am certain that it is possible to foresee everything, to organize everything in such a way that it remains virtuous and happy for a long time. Its growth is its sole danger, but that can be prevented by imitating the bees. When the mother hive becomes overpopulated, it sends its swarms out to 84

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create new hives. Thus, when your colony has grown sufficiently, it will hasten to found others, to give itself daughters, emulators, and friends. It will endow them with the lands that it will constantly acquire and will enrich them with its principles and its example.* Let us return, Sir, to your city. It will need a name and will receive it from veneration and love. We will call it “Saint-Pierre,” a name that every heart will leap to embrace. However much respect is due the prince of the apostles, however much esteem we owe the naïve philosopher who had the ingenuousness to believe that the language of his soul, whose love of universal good was its sole burning passion, would be understood by a people that Philippe governed from a den of licentiousness, and who were already too advanced not to be corrupted, it will not be in their honor that it will be so named. This honor will belong to the religious philosopher who finds in his faith the basis for his principles, who, when they try to disparage them by disdain and ridicule, when they attempt to destroy them, rises up to the majesty of Scripture and proves its authenticity by the force of his arguments and gives to his arguments an irresistible force by the force of Scripture. Equal to his masters, it is to the only disciple we have left of the likes of Pascal, Fénelon, and Rousseau that we reserve this honor. It is to this unhappy, tender, and sublime man, who only lives for virtue and adorns it with the colors dictated by the richest * The ease with which one can acquire land, which, in our overpopulated Europe, would require a magic wand, is not surprising in America where immense regions are uninhabited. The first colony, established at the head of the Ohio, will be a provident mother who will very easily prepare the settlements of its children. Her offspring will have, with no difficulty, the same resources and will employ the same means of production and marketing while being careful not to develop the same branches. Some could create glassworks, which are lacking in these regions; ceramics factories, which are nonexistent here; pottery workshops, which are in great need. Others could develop clock making on a grand scale and reap considerable profits. Papermaking, the production of wallpaper, ironwork, fur, cutlery, and tool making, all the useful arts exercised intelligently will be rich mines, but not corruptive ones like gold mines. When the colonies have increased in number, and that will not take very long, if each of them does not allow itself to exceed one hundred families of property owners, even though they will be independent of one another, they will always remain united by the precious bonds of fraternity, and their representatives will meet every year to deal with matters of common interest. If the spirit in which they were founded subsists, whenever a community has become too large, it will divide into smaller groups. Reason and experience have shown only too well that those that become too large tend to degenerate, to become corrupt, and to destroy themselves in the end. In politics and in morality, as in mechanics, any spring loses its strength when it is stretched too far.

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imagination, turns it into the most satisfying exercise of our reason, and lends it the charm of sensual pleasure itself.* Our most illustrious French ancestors will certainly be immortalized in the city of Saint-Pierre. The squares, the streets, and the fountains will bear the glorious names of Fénelon, Pascal, Buffon, Catinat, Rousseau, Racine, Corneille, La Fontaine, Massillon, Vincent de Paul, Sully, Necker, and Montesquieu. Nor shall we forget Tollendal, Mounier, and Clermont-Tonnerre Streets.† * I only know Monsieur Bernardin de Saint-Pierre through his writings. The praise I give him is certainly very high, but it has no other motive than to satisfy my soul’s need to render him homage. Literary flattery, which is nothing more than an appeal for flattery in return, does not exist from one world to the other. Europe is already just a memory for General Washington, and the Americans recognize, as will future generations, the tiny number of superior men that Europe still possesses. † These names will be just as worthy, I believe, as those that bear most of the streets of Paris. A people can never promote too vigorously its great memories. Remembering often one’s models of virtue is a way to prepare oneself to imitate them. [A man of letters, and of the Church, François de Salignac de La Mothe-Fénelon (1651–1715) is notably the author of the Adventures of Telemachus (1699), a frequent reference in the writings of Lezay-Marnésia. In a letter to his wife from November 9, 1789, Lezay-Marnésia compares his project for the creation of a colony in the United States to the construction of Salente, one of the utopian cities imagined by Fénelon in his didactic novel: “We will be like Idomeneus when he edified Salente, we will build walls, we will make laws, we will be animated by all the great interests that men can have, not a moment of our days will be empty” (quoted in Bourget-Besnier, Une famille française sous la Révolution et l’Empire, 26). Nicolas de Catinat de La Fauconnerie (1637–1712) was a French soldier who gained recognition during the reign of Louis XIV. He was named marshal of France in 1693. Jean-Baptiste Massillon (1663–1742) was a man of the Church, a member of the French Oratory, the bishop of Clermont, and a famous preacher. He delivered Louis XIV’s eulogy in 1715. On Vincent de Paul, see note 34, page 188. Maximilien de Béthune, duc de Sully (1559–1641), held the position of superintendent of finances under Henri IV. Lezay-Marnésia wrote a eulogy on Sully for the Académie française’s eloquence contest of 1763 (the eulogy has not been recovered). Jacques Necker (1732–1804) was a Genevan financier and the general director of finances under Louis XVI. A friend of Lezay-Marnésia’s (the two men met at Versailles when Necker was a minister), he came to his aid during Lezay-Marnésia’s exile in Switzerland, hosting him at his castle in Coppet. Lezay-Marnésia showed his recognition for his benefactor in the Voyage au pays de Vaud [Travel to the Canton of Vaud], published in 1800 in the second edition of the Reading Program for a Young Lady. On this text and LezayMarnésia’s stay in Switzerland between late 1797 and early 1800, see Alfred Roulin, “Le Voyage au Pays de Vaud de M. de Lezay (1799–1800),”M. de Lezay’s travel to the Canton of Vaud (1799–1800) Revue historique vaudoise 55 (1947): 175–91.

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Excuse me, Sir, for these innumerable details, perhaps useless and boring to you but quite attractive to me. When the whole face of the earth is battered by dreadful storm winds, the idea of your republic gives me repose, consoles me, and charms me; it grips me, and I caress it lovingly. I am like a passenger surrounded by dangers in a furious sea, threatened by lightening, terrified by waves, who discovers, by the bright, fleeting, sinister light of the flashes, one of the Islands of the Blessed. With the love of rural life that you will inspire in your landed colonists, you should have no difficulty finding enough residents for your city. Since it must be small to remain pure and happy, it will be very easy to populate it as much and perhaps more than it will need to be. Let us make a list; we will return to each of the items. A bishop and twelve priests will be necessary. We will need at least five judges. We have seen that twelve heads of families will be put in charge of the manufacturing facilities and the marketing. The school will require instructors of medicine, mathematics, and perhaps botany and chemistry. You will not wish to see the fine arts abandoned, so you will have music and drawing teachers. The needs of a larger population to refresh and expand its ideas through communication, the pleasure of coming together with one’s friends,

On Montesquieu, see note 5, page 184. The fact that Lezay-Marnésia associates Mounier with Montesquieu is in no way surprising: in the Considérations sur les gouvernements [Considerations on Governments] (1789) and the Recherches sur les causes qui ont empêché les Français de devenir libres [An Inquiry into the Reasons Why the French Have Been Prevented from Becoming Free] (1792), Mounier underscores the relationship between his own ideas and those developed by Montesquieu in De l’esprit des loix [The Spirit of the Laws] (1748). On the Monarchiens’ reading of Montesquieu, see Craiutu, Virtue for Courageous Minds, 72–79). On Tollendal and Mounier, see page 62. Stanislas Marie Adélaïde, Comte de Clermont-Tonnerre (1757–1792), was a close friend of Lezay-Marnésia’s. Both men were among the forty-seven deputies of the nobility at the Estates-General who joined with the Third Estate on June 25, 1789, and were counted among those close to the Monarchist party. The toponymy of Saint-Pierre’s streets played a function that was both soteriological and ideological: it allowed for preserving the names of great French men who, because of their devotion to the monarchy and the Church, now risked being forgotten. The community of Saint-Pierre was envisioned as an anti-Paris that sought to restore to the ancient glory of France the role of a model, one that the revolutionaries disavowed during the same period by renaming the streets of the capital. On this question, see Roland-Guy Bonnel, “Sur les rives de l’Ohio: La cité utopique de Lezay-Marnésia” [“On the Banks of the Ohio: Lezay-Marnésia’s Utopian City”], Lumen: Travaux choisis de la Société canadienne d’étude du dix-huitième siècle 13 (1994): 43–59.—Ed.]

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and the desire to give a more perfect education to one’s children and to render the fields more attractive by leaving them from time to time will prompt many families to come spend the harshest months in our city. You will note, Sir, that I place neither craftsmen nor workers there. This is not an oversight; it is because I believe that a complete calm should always reign there, that our sight should only fall on objects that cannot be disturbing, and because I would like people there to enjoy constantly the charms and peace of the Elysium.* A pleasant suburb, comprising pretty, clean houses, will be the home of the craftsmen. The houses will belong to the association of property owners and could be a source of revenue for the city or, much better, a way to reward the hardest-working and best-behaved artisan families, and a way to punish those who cause problems by taking this housing privilege away from them. Saint-Pierre will be the capital of the colony. It will be the motherland of those that follow. It will not only need to satisfy worldly and material needs; it will also have the holy duty to spread the gospel, give religious instruction, and provide spiritual aid outside its walls. Its clergy, comprising a bishop and twelve priests, will hardly be too large, especially since its functions will not be limited to celebrating mass: it will furnish the majority of the schoolteachers and one of the governors of the free hospital; and it will participate in the education of the girls and fulfill all of the duties required of its charitable work. The closer your colony’s clergy comes to the early church, the closer it will come to the perfect gospel. It seems that life in common would be the most appropriate for its members. There is no need to emphasize the moral and religious advantages of this life. Grandeur, majesty, and a saintly solemnity—that we will be careful not to allow to degenerate into theatrical decoration, as the Italians do—will characterize the religious ceremonies. I do not believe that there would be any drawbacks, and there may well be many advantages, in using the French language for the songs, psalms, hymns, and all the services except for mass. The sacred poetry of both Racines, by Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, de Pompignan, and a few * The crafts industries are doubtlessly an interesting and pleasant spectacle, but the unruliness of the workers, their quarrels, and the excesses to which they are driven by drunkenness are not. While it is true that their misbehavior will be rare, since they will be watched over, educated, and surrounded by good examples, it is still better that only those who are tasked with punishing it be exposed to it, and that it never be a source of aggravation for the others.

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other great poets will lend itself readily to this august purpose, and the sonority of the music will add its harmony. The nomination of the bishop shall fall to the heads of family. Wisdom, piousness, and religion will conspire to make this choice. The Saint-Pierre school will soon be a university, because North America, and especially the Roman Catholics, who have limited means of instruction, will need a school where languages, sciences, and religion, in all its simplicity, are taught. The colony will have the obligation to preserve the pure doctrine of this university, as well as the taste for arts and humanities and the gentle moral principles that this inspires, and perhaps the United States will owe it the advantage of having a few more inhabitants. It will be under the direct governance of the bishop and the judges. Your republic, Sir, will comprise men, perhaps the most perfect on earth, but still men. They will know passions, passions that are necessary because if there were no vices there would be no virtues either. These passions will need regulators and guides. Far less judges than arbiters and mediators, the five magistrates will hear all the disputes. They will speak the language of persuasion, and in most cases they will draw up agreements rather than render judgments. Sometimes, however, bad attitudes, the source of obstinacy, will force them to pronounce sentences. Then this obstinacy will have an additional resource, because not once in a century should a citizen complain that his rights have not been sufficiently respected. The discontented party will be able to appeal to a court composed of the five judges and the six commercial governors chosen by lots. Their decision will be definitive, because anyone who would not submit to the judgment of his friends and brothers and would have recourse to the American courts would be punished by the disapproval of his brothers and friends. A general coldness, a widespread discontentment, and an absolute refusal to frequent him would soon force him to withdraw from an association that could no longer hold for him any pleasure or advantage. There is little fear, however, that frequent difficulties would arise in a colony where everyone shares the same interests, the rights are so clear and uncomplicated, the occupations so simple, the manners so measured, and the feelings so fraternal. Nonetheless, disagreements may occur between the property owners, their tenants, the farmer workers, and the laborers. The judges will decide, but not as a final recourse. If one of the two parties does not accept their decision, he will have the right to appeal it to a panel of six people, three of them chosen by each opponent but never from among the property owners. Letter to Bernardin de Saint-Pierre

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If I were certain, Sir, that you will adopt the idea that I am proposing to you, I would have simply sent you a few lines instead of this enormous letter; but, alas, I am not at all sure that you hold men in high enough esteem to deign to rally even a small number of them and lead them to a distant and peaceful retreat where their wisdom and happiness would be a model and an object of envy of the rest of the world. I sow a profusion of seeds in the hope that they will sprout in strong and sensitive souls, and that a man who has had enough and is indignant at the victory of debauchery will come with them bearing the altars of religion and will raise new ones devoted to reason and virtue in these more peaceful regions. You will neither have the right, Sir, nor the need to create new laws for the colony you will found. The true genius of liberty dictated those of Pennsylvania. You will live and breathe under their light and gentle yoke. You will enforce them far better than they are generally, and your settlers will enjoy their invaluable advantages, much more than the current inhabitants, because they will respect them scrupulously.* You will, however, add specific regulations to the general laws. * When I use the word “republic” in speaking of the French community that I wish to see founded on these banks that the sky and earth seem to have particularly favored, I certainly do not intend to attach the idea of sovereignty. I know that it cannot be a state in a state. It will be under the authority of the state of Pennsylvania and will not be a power in and of itself. The republic I am proposing could exist in all governments, since it would submit to the established regime in all of them, even in the most absolute monarchies. Like the Moravian Brothers or, if you prefer, like the Jews, it would have particular usages and customs that, far from being contrary to the laws of the state, would only impose a stricter duty to conform to them. If there is a place in this world where associations such as the one of which I am offering the barest sketch would be infinitely useful, it is Pennsylvania. Its laws are excellent; nevertheless, I would venture to say that they do not have the relative qualities that would best suit the local circumstances, its vast territory, and the character of its inhabitants. It is certain, at least, that they are not widely respected, and that it would be difficult for it to be any different in an immense region where the population is very sparse, and where the families are remarkably spread out. The executive there is virtually powerless, owing to the difficulty of controlling such a scattered people. There are homes more than a hundred miles from the places where justice is meted out, and where the authorities of the state reside. Some of the relatively large cities are not at all organized. Pittsburgh, the capital of a county, does not even have a city hall yet. It is easy to see that the police, so necessary in all civilized countries, is essentially lacking in this state. If it was inhabited by a more mobile, more impassioned population, less sheltered from the temptations spawned by wealth and poverty, it would soon fall prey to the greatest disorders and calamities. I am not afraid to say, and my observations bear it out, that in its current situation North America has chosen the form of government the least apt to promote its prosperity. Often inactive, always slow, it shows little foresight, estab-

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Absolute perfection does not exist on earth. What is suitable, even very good, for the masses is not sufficient for a small community that forges paths that everyone cannot follow to achieve happiness. The views of a legislator embrace a whole empire, but those of the head of a community, vast, more profound, and often more sublime, are limited to the society he founds. lishes nearly nothing, lacks sufficient force to control its people and the means—perhaps the will—to vitalize it, puts all its focus on the major cities, and seems to forget the faraway regions with which relations are rare and difficult because of the great distances and extremely poor condition of the roads, which, for a whole part of the year, are impassable. The union of the different American states was surely useful, even necessary, for the success of its revolution and the liberation of its people. Now that this has been irrevocably accomplished, and it has no—nor can have any—enemies to fear, this union is just another disadvantage of its government, owing to the extreme lethargy that it imposes on the general development, the dependency in which it holds and the difficulties it causes for all of the initiatives of the individual states by hindering their enterprises and discouraging their spirit of competition. It seems that North America has a choice of two paths to take to arrive at the highest level of prosperity for which it can hope. The first is to divide itself into eight monarchies, which would still be allied but independent of one another, and to adopt the British constitution, or rather the more perfect constitution that the Polish people have just chosen. Even on a far smaller surface than the vast territory of the United States, democracy is impossible to maintain. Storm by storm, or more slowly by simple inertia, it will necessarily degenerate into anarchy, which, in the unavoidable course of events, it will only escape to fall under the horrible, debilitating yoke of despotism. The second path that the Americans could choose, much preferable to the former, in my opinion, is to divide itself into a multitude of small republics that would be free to organize themselves as they saw fit, on the model of the Greek or Swiss republics. Not being surrounded by any great nation, with inhabitants far more self-possessed than the Greeks, it would have to fear neither foreign wars nor the internal divisions produced by jealousy and rivalry. They would peacefully cultivate on a rich soil the genius, industry, arts, and virtues of Sparta, Athens, Bern, and Fribourg. The Americans could choose a third path, a mixture of the above alternatives. The diversity of their climate seems to promote it. Nature appears to have destined southern countries to be monarchies and those whose climate is colder to be republics. They could thus divide their possessions into two parts: the South a monarchy, the North a republic. However, a more uniform regime would be more suitable. Justice and moderation are rarely joined to power. Master of Italy, Rome devoured the universe. [By recommending the adoption of the British constitution, Lezay-Marnésia is echoing the political principles defended by the Monarchiens. The constitution of Poland, which he then prefers to that of England, had been discussed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) and Gabriel Bonnot de Mably (1709– 1785) in, respectively, Considérations sur le gouvernement de la Pologne [Considerations on the Government of Poland] (1772) and Du gouvernement et des lois de la Pologne [On the Government and Laws of Poland] (1781). The project, comprising the north and the south of the United States, was founded on the hypothesis, notably developed by Montesquieu in De l’esprit des loix [The Spirit of the Laws] (1748), that there is a relationship between a region’s climate and the political system adopted by its inhabitants.—Ed.]

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With different goals, Pythagoras and Numa could not have the same plans. Yours, Sir, will resemble neither the one nor the other. Creator of a new concept, you will use new means. The local knowledge I have acquired and the observations that I have made on the neighboring people permit me to foresee some of the regulations that wisdom will dictate for the complete success of your settlement. I think that you will make it as different as possible from the manner of living of the former inhabitants of the region. This will be the only way to maintain the customs, manners, religion, and virtue of your settlers. The men shown in books are less truthfully depicted in relation to this context than elsewhere. I even believe that you will forbid the use of beans, as Pythagoras did his disciples.* Passive citizens, enjoying the protection and benefits of a free and moderate government, your good Frenchmen will restrict themselves to paying their taxes and will levy none themselves unless it be at the request of the administration. The seats of representatives and senators, and especially the portfolios of ministers, would only distract them from fonder concerns and more precious interests. They will be far above these offices, which their sense of duty will always lead them to respect, but which their good sense will * This great man was certainly not guilty of the absurdity of forbidding a common, basic, and healthy food for the most futile and ridiculous of reasons. Since they used beans for elections, however, and he did not want his disciples to turn away from the study of nature, in forbidding them he was merely attempting, by resorting to an allegory, to make them understand that they should not participate in any way in the affairs of government. If he were to come back to life and witnessed the manner in which elections in North America are run, he would be all the more convinced that small societies that wish to remain happy and pure must avoid any involvement in the interests, movements, and passions of society at large. I have seen these elections. The laws of the Constitution, of reason, and of decency are outrageously violated. The candidates brazenly display themselves, plot, maneuver, and appeal with shameful gestures to the rabble, which they normally disdain. They get them liquored up and buy them by stupefying them. They have no qualms about resorting to the most disgraceful inaccuracies, and the most flagrant violations of the law are tolerated. Children vote, and men who do not have the right cast their votes. The same people, dressed differently, return several times to vote for the candidate they are supporting. In these elections you get the impression that anything goes, except justice and honesty. What can you expect from the representatives of a nation that chooses them in this manner? Judging by the way they use their liberty, it seems that the nations fortunate enough to have gained it do everything they can to justify kings and to console the peoples that are under their reigns. The more I see, the more I observe, the more convinced I am that democracy is the most impossible form of government to establish solidly over a vast territory. Suitability is the highest law. Without it, you are building on sand, and the structure soon crumbles, crushing its builders, and a society only survives by resorting to bad regimes that only slow the collapse to make it even worse.

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prevent them from ever occupying. The limits of their possessions will be those of their immediate world. True happiness, so rare, cannot develop over a space too vast. The men who have conceived a true idea of it, the Fénelons, Montesquieus, and Rousseaus, placed it in the little kingdom of Salente, or the little republic of the Troglodytes, or a little canton in the Alps, at Clarens, in Julie’s home. It flees the crowd; it finds the passions that trouble it frightening; it even fears its unruly pleasures; it likes to turn inward, to seek order; it wants tranquility and peace: “the interest of calm.” That is happiness, as a true philosopher defined it so well.* But this spirited calm, where can one find it if not in small associations that the venerable family spirit and fraternal sentiments would direct? If you have good reason, Sir, to prevent your settlers from getting involved in interests that do not really concern them, you will have even more reason to create insurmountable obstacles for strangers who would try to come into their midst. There is one approach that, far from attacking or harming property, will make it even more valuable, because it will give a sacred right to obtain, whenever circumstances demand it, prompt and generous help. A simple appeal to the administrators from a head of family will suffice to obtain, from the city’s revenues and the business profits, the resources he needs. To receive the funds, he will need only to submit an IOU for the sum he is requesting and pay it back on the date he will set himself. To help a brother or friend, what a worthy, felicitous use of the public wealth! There need be no fear that this ease of borrowing will lead to abuses. Wisdom, order, and moderation will render these needs very rare, and public opinion, honor, and social mores will serve as good guardians of the public treasury. If pressing circumstances or even capriciousness, all too common among men, were to force some property owners to leave the association, their lands, furniture, everything they own on the soil of your republic would be bought from them by the community of family heads at a higher price than they * M. du Bucq, former first assistant of the navy, so well-known for a multitude of felicitous and profound sayings. With a single word, he clarifies an abstract idea or sets out a brilliant principle. [Jean-Baptiste Dubuc (1717–1795), a member of a powerful family of settlers, was president of Martinique’s chamber of commerce and agriculture in 1759. Choiseul named him head clerk of the colonial bureau of the naval ministry in 1764. He was the author, with Pierre Ulric Dubuisson, of the Lettres critiques et politiques sur les colonies et le commerce des villes maritimes de France, adressées à G. T. Raynal [Critical and Political Letters on the Colonies and on the Trade of the French Maritime Cities, Addressed to G. T. Raynal] (1785) and defended the exclusif mitigé (the “limited exclusive system”) that allowed the colonies to obtain products and slaves sold by powerful foreigners.—Ed.]

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would have been able to obtain from any stranger, and they would be replaced by new families chosen by a vote of two-thirds of the property owners. Landed wealth, when it is obtained by efforts and careful supervision, yields an abundance of everything necessary and even very extensive excess; but it produces neither pomp nor luxury nor overly refined pursuits. Nonetheless, since several of the settlers will perhaps possess high income from sources outside the colony, you will have to find means, Sir, to prevent them from yielding to the temptation to spend too freely and to surround themselves with too much splendor. This splendor, this lavishness, will not provoke envy, but it will be inimical to the spirit of equality, and this precious equality, this shared wealth, will be very important to preserve. Sumptuary laws are troublesome and only point to limited intelligence. They constantly produce the desire to violate them, or at least to circumvent them. They create the need for an inconvenient surveillance and teach people to dissimulate. These are serious defects. Their advantages do not sufficiently compensate for them. It would thus be better to try to do without them and to accomplish more without them than with their help. You will succeed in this, Sir, by the general spirit that you will inspire. Too wise to attempt to stifle passions, you will manage them. Instead of allowing them to draw people toward the vices, you will force them to become the wings of the virtues. In the absence of purer, more elevated motives, vanity and pride will become your servants. Personal lavishness will be transformed into great generosity. Instead of surrounding their houses with superb columns, people will drain the swamps; they will not have magnificent horses and carriages, but they will open new roads; they will not fill their tables with rare and delicate foods whose worth is far less in their real quality than in their excessive cost, but no one will go hungry or even be deprived of healthy, adequate, and even tasty food. While people will not really deprive themselves, they will spread and ennoble their pleasure. If one’s pride is not titillated by a small number of pleasure seekers who would share false delights, how much more nobly will the generous soul be rewarded by the cheers of an adoring public! The rich in your republic will be happier than those who are less well-off; they will be able to do more good. Rome had censors. Venice has inquisitors. The days when France had spies and informers have just barely ended. Instead of these agents of fear and anxiety, you will establish ministries of justice and gratitude: “Commenders.” How noble and sweet their functions will be! Never critical, they will observe and announce not brilliant actions but useful actions, good conduct, and 94

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active while nonetheless tranquil virtues. Each year they will proclaim the name of citizens who will have best deserved their praise. For this simple, touching ceremony, which will have no need of pomp, they will choose Saint Jean’s Day, the apostle of love. The praise that they grant will be inscribed in the annals of the republic, which will be read every year. What a book! The rest of the world would be incapable of producing such an interesting one. Men who have been well educated, who have taken pleasure in accumulating wide knowledge, who have cultivated the habit of thinking, and who find, without resorting to external means, distractions, and great pleasure in the exercise of their talents, have little fear of leading a retired life that they know how to enliven and embellish. The company of others is, nonetheless, sometimes necessary. Full of ideas, sensations, and sentiments, they need to maintain them, to broaden them, to communicate them, and to share those of others to preserve and nourish their zeal. Most of the property owners in your colony will belong to this class of people. After having enjoyed for eight months all the activities offered by rural life, after having savored all the pleasures of patriarchal life, they will relish, during the harsh months of winter, gathering in a town where there are only friends, where pleasant and useful arts will be practiced and cherished, where different pleasures will offer some variety to those that normally compose their happiness. There, protected from the noise, turbulence, and disorder that is so common in other cities, they will enjoy all the advantages. They will find there greater privacy, more pleasant company, the resources and charms of the various talents, the union of the pleasures of the mind and the interests of the soul, in short, all the bliss that genuine, loving brotherhood can offer. The elders will be respected, consulted, and cared for; the young will be guided, enlightened, and, never exceeding the bounds of decency, given the choice of a wide variety of distractions. We will encourage and satisfy the innocent tastes of all ages. Because they mixed everything together, the French derive little enjoyment from anything. Constantly throwing the two sexes together, they went against nature’s plan, which gave them different penchants and duties. They destroyed the respect that they owe each other, and because of the habit of always being together, the attraction they hold for each other has weakened. Having better sense, the ancient peoples, and those among the modern ones who have remained the closest to the classical customs, by allowing each sex to devote itself to the activities and tastes that suit it, preserved the original order, inner peace, and a greater liberty and sincerity, and protected themselves from Letter to Bernardin de Saint-Pierre

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the confusion that disturbs everything and from the surfeit that causes everything to languish. Among these peoples, the woman is the queen of her house and has that prestige. She governs intelligently and economically. She is surrounded by respect. The children and servants are under her authority. Her vigilance misses nothing, and abundance springs from her ministry. “She distributes their daily fare to her household staff and servants. She opens her hand to the poor. She receives blessings from the children she has raised and praise from her husband.”* Her friends come to visit her. She holds little parties for them. With no rivalries, pretensions, or jealousy, their days are spent in easy work, pleasant games, and friendly conversations. The presence of men would perhaps disturb the peace and innocence of these activities and would add nothing to their charm. This picture, so amiable indeed but not idealized, has models in Switzerland, England, and even in America. A wise American lady, presiding over her tea table, is certainly happier than the most famous French woman, be she fawned over and surrounded with infinite attentions. She is free of noise; she can dress in private; her living room is not filled with an overdressed, idle crowd; no one writes madrigals for her, but she is not the victim of satire. No one brags about her, but she is honored and receives deserved marks of esteem. Satisfied with herself and with her fate, she lives calmly and peacefully. Among themselves, the men are less constrained and aspire to higher things. They are not obliged to limit their ideas. They discuss important subjects; their conversations are robust, and even their games become more interesting. In your republic, accustomed to respecting themselves and honoring one another, they will not degrade themselves by disgusting drunkenness. A terrible sanction would punish it: scorn.† Imagine how many resources the city of Saint-Pierre will offer its inhabitants. Numerous, well-chosen books, including physics, biology, and botany libraries. Several of the inhabitants could come together to found a Society of Agriculture, Arts, and Sciences that would enlighten and serve the community. The love of the humanities and fine arts will found other societies. * The Book of Wisdom, prov. 31. † The danger of societies that do not mix the two sexes is that some malicious gossip may develop in the circle of women, and that there may be an abuse of wine and alcohol among the men. This latter vice is common to people who lack ideas and are subject to boredom. It is very widespread, or rather nearly universal, among the natives and the Americans. There is no reason to fear that the settlers of Saint-Pierre would indulge in this.

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Finally, when the rigors of winter suspend the rural pleasures, which they will always prefer, they will be replaced by diversions that are livelier and nearly as pleasant. Their amusements will be those that are suitable for an amiable, sensitive, and polite people. Music will often bring them together. They will applaud the songs of their sons and daughters. What a delightful melody for fathers, for mothers, and for sensitive relatives! Severity is not wisdom. You certainly will not forbid the young to dance. Fostering their charm and high spirits is perhaps a sure way to preserve them from many vices and even to maintain their precious innocence. Constraint creates the temptation to act badly by teaching people to dissimulate. Reasonable liberty prevents people from contemplating such behavior. Why would they want to steal something if they know it will be given to them? A perfect and quite interesting model to set up dances in Saint-Pierre is the one proposed for Geneva in the Letter to d’Alembert on the Theater. It gives an idea of the happy gathering of people of all ages and of parties that are decent, gay, lively, and touching. I refer you, Sir, to the indicated pages of this delightful work. They will console you for the boredom that my own pages may cause you. As happy as men can be on this earth, the property owners of the SaintPierre colony will increase their satisfaction by sharing it occasionally, but not at set dates, because the benefit on which one is counting seems to degenerate into a right and loses its appeal. From time to time they will gather their farmers, craftsmen, and workers, along with their children and wives, and with simple and varied distractions, hearty, animated meals, races, dances, and appropriate games, they will brighten some of their days. By these easy and agreeable means, they will gain more than they would by making them equals; they will gain tender and loyal friends. After having charmed the snow and wintry weather with the pleasures of friendly, lively, and brotherly company, when the songs of the birds and the return of the greenery finally announce fairer weather, they will welcome the spring with exhilaration, return to their fields joyously, and take back up, with renewed zeal, their interesting work. That is how, Sir, they will enjoy a peaceful, happy life, in which old age will be a tranquil evening, and whose end will be calm and filled with thoughts of just rewards. A republican education, domestic models, always healthy, a religion that is always respected and practiced, which will lead men to repress their hidden vices; a government both strong and fatherly; the power of public opinion, and the fear of universal scorn that will suppress public vices will produce Letter to Bernardin de Saint-Pierre

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children who resemble their fathers, nay, who are even more perfect. For centuries on end, your republic will subsist in its glory, in its peaceful felicity, and with all its virtues. The men will remain good and happy, because they will possess everything they could reasonably desire. Finally, Sir, I’ve reached the end of this enormous letter, which I have just as much trouble tearing myself away from as you will have reading it, if you have the energy to read it to the end. Reduced to hopes, I like to indulge them. Deceived in my expectations both by the people I fled and by the one I came looking for, I thought that the latter would take justice and reason as guides in seeking liberty, and that the former, who seemed to have become wiser, would be able to benefit from the liberty that both circumstances and the innumerable mistakes of its former masters gave to it. Disappointed by both of them, what do I have left? The opinion that there are still, in the midst of the disasters of France, energetic and courageous men who have the strength to resolve to free themselves from the tyranny of anarchy and to extract themselves from the ills and vices all around them to come to a beautiful, rich, and peaceful land on which they can establish a colony based on happiness and reason. May the man of genius, the good man I am asking to assemble them, accept this honorable mission and become the benefactor of a society of true wise men and of their descendants! At the very least, may my ideas, so pure, not be dismissed as pleasant pipe dreams—as has happened to so many others, greater and more beautiful—and not be regarded as the useless fantasy of a sensitive and distressed soul! Tired of the calamities and crimes that are devastating and sullying our deplorable fatherland, come find peace of mind, Sir, in a new country that you may populate as you please. Let yourself “be charmed by its temperature and solitude”; what you will find there will “suffice for your needs and pleasures.” “Once the fields have been cleared,” you will easily build an “attractive and comfortable cabin, and before your door a river will flow.”* This great pleasure will be redoubled by a pleasure more worthy of you: the chorus of blessings from the people you will have made happy.

* The words in quotes are those of M. de Saint-Pierre. They may be found on page 137 of Paul and Virginia. [Lezay-Marnésia is rewriting in the future tense the present-tense narrative of the principal narrator of Paul and Virginia (see page 97 of the translation by Donovan).—Ed.]

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LE T T E R T O MY ELDEST SON Philadelphia, December 15, 1791

I have left, my dear Adrien, this Azile that I have praised so much without going too far. In all likelihood I will never see it again; however, I wish to speak to you about it once again, or rather I want to acquaint you with the neighbors I left there. I need to do this to soothe my heart. This little picture, worthy of ancient times, may interest you, although to paint it well a common brush would not suffice; one would need Greuze’s delicate strokes. Three miles from my plantation, on the right, as you go up the superb and peaceful Monongahela, there is a fairly high mountain topped off by a huge plateau made of excellent land from which you can see far off into the distance. This place, briefly inhabited long ago by a Frenchman who named it “Montpellier,” had been abandoned for many years when Monsieur and Madame des Pintreaux came to live there. It is necessary to know the brief story of their early years to understand how much admiration and interest they deserve. M. des Pintreaux, the son of the first magistrate of a town in Normandy, was destined to enter the same career that his father was pursuing with such intelligence and virtue. He quickly completed the studies required for the noble profession of the law, and his first pleading was rewarded with brilliant success. Thus he had only to be patient to see the consideration

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he received for the merits of his family compounded by respect for his personal merit, so much more flattering for him in his province. His rigorously just character, however, and his proud, independent spirit prevented him from observing tranquilly that power or reason had established great inequality among men, an inequality that is perhaps useful, perhaps even necessary, in the associations that found huge empires. Although he belonged to a superior social caste, he only sought equals and refused to accept a constitution that had divided the citizens by class. Corneille, a countryman of M. des Pintreaux and a lawyer, too, was more tolerant. If some insolent noblemen showed scorn for him, he took revenge by humbling them with his masterpieces of the theater and soon ascended to a position far above the most famous of them. In Rome, M. des Pintreaux would have been one of the Gracchi. In France, he would probably have played a great role if he had been able to foresee the Revolution. Love, which forges one’s character, set his aflame. The young Elise was born into a social class that he condemned, although this class does seem to warrant some gratitude, having produced Sully, Montaigne, Vauban, and Fénelon. More than just beautiful, her face revealed her fine intelligence and character, and the sweetness and serenity that come from profound sensitivity. In a town as small as Pont-Audemer, everyone knows one another. There was even a strong bond between M. des Pintreaux’s and Elise’s families. He soon pardoned Elise for being noble, or rather he deemed her worthy of not being so. Nonetheless, her nobility created an obstacle between them, and their fortune would create yet another. He was in love. He thought that he could overcome the obstacles, but he was too virtuous to attempt to seduce her, and Elise had too much virtue to be seduced. He made his feelings known to her, not with the indolence of common suitors but with the passion and energy of ardent souls. “I love you,” he told her, “and perhaps, if it were not for you, love would never have had much of an effect on me. This very love, I would have stifled it if I had only seen in you an ordinary woman, constantly coquettish, satisfied with daily little conquests, at the best frivolous if not shameful, and never thinking of developing her mind, elevating her reflections, preparing herself for the sweetest, holiest of unions, to become united with a man worthy of her. If I have surprised you, Elise, by this declaration, which would doubtlessly seem strange and brutal to any other woman, I would be mistaken in my opinion of you; we would not be a good match, 100

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and although it would be extremely hard I would give up forever my hopes, my happiness, and any thought of marriage.” Despite her suitor’s opinion, Elise could not prevent herself from being surprised by such an admission. She had seen no other example of this in the books she had read; nonetheless, she was both proud and worthy of it. “I like your frankness,” answered Elise, with the lovely embarrassment and enchanting modesty that make love so charming. “You will see that I am worthy of it. I perceived your feelings and have done even more. I am not afraid to admit it: I have shared them. But, alas! My love is doomed, as is yours. While it is true that our parents hold each other in esteem, they will never consent to our marriage.” “Our parents, yours at least, are noble, and they have all of the old, false prejudices. But their pride will not be more powerful than nature. They will not destroy their daughter’s sacred right to a legitimate freedom simply out of respect for empty titles. They will not take the risk, by forcing her to forego the husband that her heart has chosen, by forcing her also to forego happiness, of becoming guilty of the loss of her virtue. There is no virtue without liberty. My father,” M. des Pintreaux continued passionately, “is a fair man. Would it be for his son alone that he would lose his sense of justice, to which he owes the fame and respect that surround him? He will recognize my rights better than your parents will yours, and he will use all of his influence over them to assure that my rights are respected.” After these words, he promptly withdraws, rushes to his father, and, scarcely able to speak, throws himself at his feet, bathes them in tears, tells him in the most passionate tones possible the conversation he has just had with Elise, hugs his knees fervently, and waits to learn his fate. Astonished by such passion, the judge is not moved. He remains just as cold in his son’s arms as he is in his courtroom and simply says to him, “You won’t understand anything I say in your current state; it is no use speaking to you now. Tomorrow you will be calmer, and you will have my answer.” Elise, for her part, confided in her mother, who loved her daughter but loved her titles even more. She told her to go talk to her father. Elise did not bother; she knew there was nothing to be gained by it. After one of those nights that every novel describes, and that all lovers experience, the fateful next day came. M. des Pintreaux, summoned by his father, went to see him. Reeling between hope and fear, he could not imagine that his father would refuse his request; nevertheless, he foresaw his refusal. He found his father sitting tranquilly beside his desk. He was completely Letter to My Eldest Son

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calm and wore a benevolent expression. “I’ve given you time,” he said, “to get ahold of yourself so that you can listen to reason. Although what I have to say is not what you want to hear, you will have the strength to listen to me and the courage to obey. You wish to be united with a sweet, virtuous young lady who possesses all of the qualities that make a girl perfect. You feel that she shares the love you have for her. Nothing is more natural than your choice of each other. Each of you deserves to be preferred exclusively by the other, but, my son, you know very well that in the social order, everywhere on earth, it is not enough—it isn’t even necessary—that people love one another for them to marry. The interests of families, questions of fortune and position, and public approval are essential to decide marriages. None of these conditions is met in the case of you and Elise. Rise above your passion and yourself, my son; give up your illusions, and try to understand that the happiness, all too often short-lived, of a marriage based on love alone is not what you should be seeking. Look at the future. After the days of passion, so quick to wane, you will see the regrets of a woman who has sacrificed her social station; you will have children with no fortune that you cannot raise properly, and who will be forced out of their rightful rank; you will be surrounded by troubles and sadness, and your life, after a delightful moment of intoxication, will be nothing more than a long regret.” “Wise laws have granted fathers the authority to prevent their children’s mistakes and the misfortune of their descendants. I would have recourse to them if, contrary to my expectations, you were to persist in seeking a marriage that neither Elise’s father nor myself can approve. I am leaving now to inform him of the secret that you have just confided in me.” M. des Pintreaux’s father did indeed withdraw, leaving his son thunderstruck. It is easy to imagine the eloquent, passionate monologue that followed this decision. Afflicted by the most violent distress, M. des Pintreaux found the strength to conceal it. When his father returned, he only allowed him to see coldness, sadness, and respect. Without haste or overt actions, he calmly waited for an occasion to meet Elise. It was bound to come sooner than later. He met her in a house in town where there was a large gathering. She wore a changed but not crestfallen expression. In her eyes one could distinguish both pain and courage. Her penetrating gaze pierced her beloved’s heart. They understood each other and were careful to dissimulate what they were feeling. They managed to arrange a rendezvous in which they swore by heaven and by their love that they would be joined immediately in holy matrimony. 102

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They could not have recourse to ordinary means. They were too young to dispose of themselves legally, and they were too virtuous and respected each other too much to even consider sinful ways to force their parents to marry them. M. des Pintreaux left for Paris. Scarcely had he arrived when he rushed to Passy, to the retreat of the sage, the genius of America, Doctor Franklin. Devoted to perfect liberty and equality, he thought that the man who had brought them to the New World by the force of his ideas, the grandeur and multitude of his means, would listen to him with interest and give him the advice he needed to settle there and escape both the despotism of the kings, the alleged arrogance of the nobility, and what seemed to him the overly broad authority of the fathers. He was not mistaken. Franklin received him with the simplicity of wisdom and genius, and granted him the close attention that his eloquence and determination warranted. He applauded him and expressed admiration while still trying to dissuade him with arguments that would have been strong enough to stop a man in whom the passion for liberty was less fierce and whose love was more moderate. As could be foreseen, Franklin was not successful. M. des Pintreaux had not come to ask him for reasons to give up his plans but rather for advice on how to achieve them most easily and effectively. He obtained it. Franklin gave him the most careful advice and the most specific instructions and recommended especially that he show respect for moral standards, so necessary in America, whose glory and felicity they guaranteed. No matter how unnecessary this exhortation was for M. des Pintreaux, he was overjoyed to hear it. He left Franklin enlightened by the best instructions and in possession of the strongest letters of recommendation. Upon his return to Pont-Audemer, before his arrival was known, he saw Elise and spoke to her thus: “Elise, without wanting to abuse the commitment that you made to me, without wanting to take advantage of the enormous sacrifices it would force you to make, I have nonetheless obtained all the information necessary to determine the path we must take to honor our commitment and make it forever holy. I would hardly be worthy of the happiness to which I aspire if I had neglected the means to prepare for it. I would be absolutely unworthy of it if I were too cowardly to remind you of everything you have to lose by joining your fate to mine, and what great toil, hardships, and pains you will have to bear—whereas, for me, there can be only one truly horrible misfortune, which is losing you. However, I must admit it, perhaps one day liberty would console me. Without it, even with you, I could not live. Letter to My Eldest Son

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A few tyrants, everyone else slaves: that is the state of this unfortunate world. The kings exercise their tyranny on the throne or allow it to be exercised by others; the governors and intendants exercise it in the provinces, the nobles in their villages, and the fathers in their families. Tyranny is everywhere, and I cannot bear it. I want to escape it, but you, Elise, will always be adored in this slave kingdom. In a country that has lost its moral compass, you will bring people to cherish virtue once again by your example; you will be the glory and joy of your social circles and your family; you will live in the comfort and peace that you will create around yourself. Why would you choose to leave all of this”? “To find a thousand times more: a husband that I love, a faithful and loving friend, a protector, a guide, someone on whom I can depend for the rest of my life.” “An immense stormy sea separates us from the United States.” “It leads to free, tranquil ports.” “You do not know the language of the people of this country.” “I will only need and only wish to speak to my husband.” “We will not be able to bring any wealth with us.” “We will bring the courage and strength to do without material things.” “I alone will be your whole universe.” “You will indeed be my whole universe.” “Elise, this charming complexion will be burned by the sun; these delicate hands, these feeble arms will be forced to perform continual and difficult work.” “My body will become stronger, my soul more resilient, and in the evening I will enjoy more the moments of repose.” “Elise, my dear Elise, do not let yourself be deceived by the exalted feelings caused by the grandeur of an extraordinary, indeed unique, action. The fame, the glory that you perhaps expect, will not compensate us for what we leave behind. Alas! In this new world, where I am led by my hate for the old one, you will only have a wilderness and my heart. You would only be able to live far from the cities, where the land is inexpensive and the opportunities to spend few.” “A wilderness and you is all I desire. Oh! What do I care about fame? I only seek peace and contentment. I will find them both with you in the wilderness.” “Elise, while your determination astonishes and delights me, do not make a final decision yet. Take two weeks, at least, to give yourself time to think it over and make sure this is what you really want. Oh, my Elise, my dear, dear Elise, you should fear and foresee a long, painful, eternal regret”! “I’ve foreseen everything, I fear nothing. Nonetheless, I accept the two weeks you offer me—not that I need them to bolster my resolve, but to prove to you that I am in no way rushing into a decision that is simple and natural, since I love you. Farewell, I am going to prepare everything I need for our voyage.” At the end of the two weeks, M. des Pintreaux could not bring himself to say anything to Elise. She reminded him 104

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herself. A note told him where he was to meet her. “Well,” said Elise, as she approached him, “I am ready. When do we leave?” Foreseeing new objections from him, she added, “I’ve made my decision, and it only remains to set the day once and for all. You will be my brother during the voyage and my husband upon arriving.” They took the time necessary, although brief, to prepare for a definitive expatriation. M. des Pintreaux gathered together all the funds he could derive from a small inheritance an aunt had left him. He made the purchases that are indispensable for a country where everything is still rare and expensive and began to watch for news of the departure of an American ship to renounce forever an empire, full of errors and abuses to be sure, but that he condemned perhaps too severely. Alas! Countries without extreme passions, without vices, without excesses, in which order reigns along with abundance, happiness, and virtue only exist in the exalted imagination of poets. Diminish and avoid evil as much as possible; tolerate, bear, pardon, enjoy, and increase, by one’s reason and intelligence, what is good. That is the lot and duty of the wise man in this world. Informed of the day that the ship was to sail, Elise and her beloved hurried to the port where they were to embark. Their retinue was small, including only Marcellin, a young child of thirteen or fourteen, handsome, open, and good at heart. Scarcely had they arrived at Le Havre when, after having honored the shores of their country with a few tears, they went on board the vessel that was to transport them to a completely new life. A successful crossing brought them quickly to Philadelphia. Following Franklin’s advice, and even more their souls’ desire, their first concern was to sanctify their love. They went to the Catholic temple where, by the voice and hand of a priest, they received God’s blessing. Do not expect me, my dear Adrien, to try to describe the ecstasy of their consecrated, pure, and blissful love. Marriage is the holiest of bonds, the most noble state on earth. Let us respect the couple’s privacy. With Franklin’s recommendations, they were sure to be well received in Philadelphia. They found there all the counsel they needed. Once their plan was known, they received all the information that would insure its success. They were advised to go to Fort Pitt, happily situated at the confluence of two beautiful rivers, with a healthy climate, charming countryside, mild temperature, respectable inhabitants, and excellent lands that were not overpriced. They followed this wise advice and were glad they did. M. des Pintreaux soon bought the plantation he owns still today. Letter to My Eldest Son

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The day that his wife, young Marcellin, and he took possession of it was calm, serene, and gently lit by a pure sun—one of those pleasant days when it seems as if heaven and earth together want to celebrate the human race. It was a beautiful season. Spring was arriving with all the splendor, all the richness, and all the variety it bestows on the fortunate western regions. The air was heavy with the mellow perfumes of the sassafras, benzoin, and acacia trees. The new, infinitely varied green of the trees that rise up to the clouds, the colors, so vivid, fresh, soft, and brilliant, of the flowers of the tulip trees, love trees, dogwoods, and wild cherry with bunches of fruit, and a thousand other charming bushes made for a delightful spectacle. They felt great gratitude and joy at this sight, but they only found, on this enchanting piece of land, a poor, dilapidated cabin, a few acres of land badly cleared, and an immense solitude. Elise’s heart tightened. She could not prevent a feeling of sadness and a small stir of fear. After a long look at the endless space surrounding them, she raised her eyes to the heavens, threw herself into her husband’s arms, and cried out in an intense but tender and expressive voice, “God, nature,” and hugging her husband more fiercely, “and you.” A few tears dropped from their eyes and those of Marcellin, but this moment of extreme emotion was over in a flash, giving way to the strength they had brought to this place. They had a charming meal on the lawn. It restored their courage and good humor. Elise finished it with some songs. They spent the rest of the day preparing their shelter for the night. All three of them went to work. Moss, dry leaves, and earth served to fill the holes in this shack open on all sides. When evening came, they savored a meal that is known only to those who have earned it by their labor, efforts, and intelligence. They arose at dawn and in nature’s temple blessed and invoked its creator. How fervent and earnest was their prayer! It was followed immediately by work. They began by laying out a large garden, which was to be Elise’s personal domain. It was designed tastefully and tended devotedly. The docile earth yielded readily to vigorous hands, and they were soon able to plant the most precious seeds from Europe. In this fertile, nearly virgin soil they prospered beyond all hope. A trench and a strong fence protected them until a hawthorn hedge could be planted. At the end of the principal lane they built a grass altar shaded by trees with rich, fragrant flowers. That is where, each evening, Elise, her husband, and Marcellin came to offer their hearts to the

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Lord. Patriarchs like Abraham and Sarah, and like them without priests or temple, their service was no less precise, loving, and devout. Once the garden was finished, M. des Pintreaux and Marcellin extended their conquests. They went to work diligently on the fields already cleared. They were quickly made ready for the planting of potatoes, barley, rye, and corn. While the men were working in the fields, Elise tended to the garden, prepared meals, and decorated the cabin. The men never came inside without discovering new improvements. Soon the walls were covered with pretty wallpaper from France. The curtains and the chair coverings matched the design of the wallpaper. Attractive pieces of china, like all Americans have, decorated the mantel; English crockery, fresh, light, and charming, covered the sideboard. In this miserable hut there was cleanliness, refinement, and even elegance. You cannot imagine how much pleasure this innocent, inexpensive luxury, in the middle of the forest, gives to those who have the intelligence to obtain it. Do not think, however, that Elise’s efforts were completely disinterested. Each of her actions brought her praise or a caress from her husband. How priceless is a reward desired by love and given with love! It was late in the season, and the work moved forward. At the end of autumn large expanses of land were ready to be planted with wheat. Winter arrived. The little household was already enjoying the riches of its farm. Elise had all the abundance, all the duties, all the pleasures of a good farmer’s wife. Two superb cows gave her all the milk she needed; her large flock of chickens furnished eggs, and the backyard was alive with fine pigeons. Twice a day she fed generously all of her feathered creatures. The hungry crowd presses all around her; Others chased away and constantly returning Lay siege to the basket and in her very hand, Bold parasites, come to steal their grain.* This spectacle, lit by a beautiful day, is enchanting. * “Poem of the Gardens” by M. l’Abbé de Lille, book 4. [Jacques Delille, often called “Abbé Delille” (1738–1813), was the author of a 1770 verse translation of Virgil’s Georgics, and of a poetic work, Les Jardins, ou l’art d’embellir les paysages: Poème [Gardens, or the Art of Embellishing Landscapes: Poem] (1782). This book, written in eight cantos, achieved a high level of success in the eighteenth century and was translated into numerous languages.—Ed.]

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Winter interrupted the work but did not put it to an end. Cold but usually clear, the weather nearly always allowed M. des Pintreaux and Marcellin to fall and burn enormous trees, begin new clearings, and enlarge their domain. Elise spun yarn and did all of her household duties while awaiting their return. Although often separated, they were never bored. They were always delighted to be back together again. For the strongest couples, as for the most devoted lovers, a little absence does great good. Seeing each other all the time is seeing each other too much. Sunday, the day of rest, so religiously and scrupulously observed in America, was a holy day for them, too, without being dreary. After truly fervent prayers, there were all sorts of readings, some entertaining, others instructive, and all of them interesting. While satisfying the principal material needs of his household, M. des Pintreaux had not forgotten to provide for the needs of the mind: books. He had composed a library of the best English and French works. The Holy Bible, a few excellent sermons, the small number of good books on agriculture, the very best moralists, a few distinguished historians, the works that give the best information on America and its industries, the harmonious, tender Racine, the great Corneille, the good La Fontaine, the divine Telemachus, the Liaisons of Thompson, those of M. de Saint-Lambert, the Georgics and the Gardens of M. l’Abbé de Lille, and the pleasant Orchard of M. de Fontanes. Such was his collection. It made holidays seem shorter and was a consolation when the weather turned bad. The patriarchs were never deprived of children. Elise and her husband lived like them and were rewarded for it. A year later Elise was a mother. A month after his birth, dressed in white, in a cradle adorned with brilliant flowers only found in North America, followed by his parents, the infant was carried by Marcellin to the grass altar, which was decorated with anemones from the woods, buttercups from the fields, and delicate violets. After a few moments of meditation, the father took his son in his arms, raised him toward heaven, and recited a hymn of gratitude and love. “Oh, my God!” he cried, “the God that I have only come to know well, and that I have only loved perfectly in the sweet, tranquil, fortunate refuge where you have led me; my God, I offer to you this child that I owe to your kindness. His tender mother and I will raise him in your holy law. The first words that he will stammer will be in your praise. He will be our companion in toil, and the innocence and appeal of the work in the fields will keep him from vice. He will recognize and adore you as the father of nature, the unflagging benefac108

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tor of human beings. Give him the heart and virtues of his mother, and may he be the consolation and support of my final days. By making our fields fertile, we will leave him our good example as his inheritance.” In a calm, happy life any new events are hardly ever anything but a brief interruption in this felicity. Very few intervened in the life of this little family. For them, each day usually resembled the one before, and this uniformity brought no boredom. In any case, in the farm work, in the great spectacle of nature, is there not enough variety? Five years flew by quickly in this gentle yet lively rural existence, nearly five years in their entirety, since Elise, in this whole time, only went twice to Fort Pitt, where she was duly admired, and her husband never spent a night away from their abode. Their flocks had grown and their fields expanded; their orchard was already producing an abundance of fruit, and three charming children added a new interest to their days, doubling their happiness. Out of love for them, Elise had the courage to leave them. Wealthy beyond her desires for herself and her husband, she wanted to be yet richer for her children and obtain for them comforts that she had done so well without. She returned to France where a small inheritance awaited her. Reduced by half owing to the circumstances of this beautiful but deplorable empire, she had some difficulty obtaining what remained. Although she was only able to collect a sum of F 12,000, her family and that of M. des Pintreaux, finally forced to admire and respect the couple, their love for them renewed by her presence, gave them kind and useful presents in an attempt to atone for the excessive severity that they had shown toward her and her husband. Each of them made its offering, being careful to take into consideration the needs of a modest household in which luxury had become quite foreign. Some lovely printed fabric, good sheets from Louviers, an ample supply of linen, agricultural implements, a small quantity of comfortable furniture, a dozen prints featuring attractive pastoral scenes, and a few excellent books: those were the gifts she received. How precious she found them! She thought of her children and of her husband. She knew how valuable were the slightest things in the middle of the forests, the American forests, separated from the home of industry and of the arts by the immense seas. Admired, celebrated, and cherished in her homeland, beseeched not to leave it again and to bring her family back, despite all the efforts made to entertain her, she yearned for her woods. She had known extreme fatigue and deprivation there, but in the poor cabin restored by her own hands, she had also found peace of mind, her heart filled with keen, pure pleasure. The Letter to My Eldest Son

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strongest entreaties had no effect on her. She made all her preparations for her return and left two months after her arrival, followed by three good farmers from Normandy and two strong, hardworking girls. What an occasion was the reunion of this wife with her husband and this mother with her children! There is no brush capable of painting it. There were smiles everywhere, tearful eyes, and hearts overflowing. Elise was overwhelmed by hugs and kisses, the children delirious, Marcellin overjoyed, and M. des Pintreaux in a state of pure bliss. There had never been such a touching, delightful scene. Solitude no longer reigned in Montpellier. The work was begun with new vigor. Good humor was everywhere, and gay, spirited songs encouraged the oxen in their labors or merged with the sound of the axes as they struck rhythmically the trees they felled. Marcellin, proud of his seniority, trained his companions with an amusing seriousness. In the evening, all fatigue was forgotten in the eager chatter. Marvelously incredible tales from both worlds kept it alive. M. des Pintreaux often took advantage of these tales to give solid instructions to his workers. He was their high priest, their guide, and their friend, yet always their master, a quality he felt quite necessary to maintain despite his convictions about absolute equality. It had occurred to Elise, rightfully, that her humble cabin could not long suffice for her family with the addition of six servants. She had brought back with her the plans for a pleasant, modest new house. It was soon put into effect: a brick factory was established. Everyone became a factory worker. Need and willpower create the arts, and the intelligence of a leader, supported by mutual advice, quickly perfects them. It took just a few months to raise a new house, of modest size but elegant in its simplicity. All the comforts that French intelligence knows how to arrange in a small space, and of which the English have no idea, were assembled there. The hard color of the brick was replaced with a muted white coating. It was covered with tile, a method unknown in America; green shutters were attached. The pretty country house that Rousseau desired can be found in Montpellier.* When it was finished, Elise thought it deserved an inauguration. She proposed to her husband to go invite their neighbors and * See Émile. [“I would have a little rustic house—a white house with green shutters—on the slope of some agreeable, well-shaded hill. Although a thatch roof would be the best in every season, I would grandly prefer not gloomy slate but tile, because it makes a cleaner and gayer impression than thatch and because that is how the houses are roofed in my country—it would remind me a little of the happy time of my youth.” Jean-Jacques Rous-

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friends. With the help of Marcellin and all the workers she took advantage of his absence to put in all the furniture. The wallpaper was hung, the drapes put up, the prints placed on the walls, and on the dressers and graceful French tables were placed large vases filled with flowers. Elise had hidden from her husband a part of the riches she had brought from France. She took pleasure in his surprise and delight when, upon returning with the most distinguished people in the district, she received him in a simple white outfit, accompanied by her children, all dressed plainly but adorned by their natural grace. This decoration seemed to be the work of a fairy. Indeed, a sensitive, ingenious, and loving woman is a powerful fairy. She makes everything more beautiful and spreads charm over each and every detail of life. I will not describe to you, my dear Adrien, the meals, the pleasures of this party, the sole and unique one that this couple gave or will give. They feel all too well the value of their normal felicity to seek distractions from it, even for more lively pleasures. It is their happiness that I am trying to depict for you, a happiness for which they had no models; may they have many imitators! Although they could now very easily stop working themselves, they have no intention of doing so. They know what they owe to their work, and that it is their physical labor that protects them from lethargy, that brings peace of mind, strength of body, and good health. While trouble, hate, furor, and terror ravage nearly the whole earth, there is one solitary, innocent, and peaceful family, each day more content with its fate in the American forest. If they were brave and wise, what else would men need to be as happy they are? The love of work, for its own sake, fertile fields, a simple, pleasant, comfortable house, and respectable neighbors among whom one might find a good and true friend. A good, sweet, kind, and sensitive woman who, after having suckled beautiful children, prepares them to live virtuously and with an understanding of true happiness. Eight leagues above Montpellier, following the river, may be found another French homestead. There, M. de Lassus, formerly (for now everyone is formerly in France) treasurer of the Hainault province, has settled on a large, rich plantation, with his wife, a son, and his daughter, the latter married to an educated, honest, kind young man. Arriving with a large sum of seau, Emile: or, On Education, trans. Allan Bloom (1762; New York: Basic Books, 1979), 351.—Ed.

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money and many fine pieces of furniture, followed by workers of various professions and farmers, he, unlike M. des Pintreaux, did not have to conquer and create everything. All he needed was his desire and to give orders and direct the work. He had soon built a house, not a magnificent one but pleasant and attractive, suitable for the needs of a rich man who does not live lavishly. It is surrounded by attractive gardens, and its inhabitants find calm, community, and mutual interests there, everything needed to satisfy intelligent tastes and moderate desires. The banks of the Monongahela are beginning to be neither wild nor primitive. The ships that move up and down it stop before these new plantations that, in Italy or France, would not even be noticed. People come from afar to admire them. In a region where people have nothing, they are astonished by everything. Nonetheless, the Americans will not imitate these structures, so superior to theirs. Eternal imitators of the English, to whom they remain consistently inferior, it seems that for all Americans there is but a single plan, more or less extensive, according to which all the houses are built—banal and with little comfort. At first it appears surprising that the wealthy English who traverse incessantly countries where the arts produce their masterpieces, who bring to their own country the most perfect examples, do not also bring back the sentiment and enlightened love that go with them. But most of the English do not travel; all they do is spread gold around and exchange one place for another. If a few French families, with sufficient personal fortunes, were to settle around Fort Pitt, they would discover in this country the charming banks of the Loire and the Seine, but even more favored by nature and with the peace and happiness that have abandoned them. My letter, my dear Adrien, is already very long, but how can I finish it without devoting a few lines to the deepest, the most tender gratitude? I owe mine to a Frenchman who has lived in Fort Pitt for five or six years, M. Audrain. Endowed with a fine character and an engaging, fertile mind, one of those souls that you meet so rarely, he did for me everything that such a man can do. He brought enchantment to my solitude with the most interesting conversations, guided me through the most difficult circumstances, consoled me in my distress, and prevented me from falling into total despair. He helped me with his time, his work, his intelligence, and all the resources of his mind, and ultimately rescued me from a horrible predicament, from the misery in which the dishonest actions of the disastrous Scioto Company had plunged me. May the deep, well-founded gratitude I feel survive me! I 112

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bequeath it, my dear Adrien, to your energetic heart and to the honest soul of your brother, who is most assuredly penetrated by it as profoundly as I am. May the name of M. Audrain be a hallowed name in my family! May the touching, holy hospitality of the ancients last forever between his descendants and mine! If one of his children goes to France, take him in, love him, and become his most devoted brother. Farewell, my dear Adrien. the end

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A P PE N DI X

Prospectus for the Colony on the Ohio and Scioto Rivers in America (1789) The United States Congress having sold five million acres* of land located on the Ohio and Scioto Rivers in America to a certain number of individuals who have formed a company with the intention of cultivating and inhabiting this land; and this company concluding that two million acres are sufficient for their plans, propose to sell the other three million acres that compose the western part of this territory, of which a part adjoins the one that is currently being cultivated. The nature of the soil and the excellence of the climate, as well as the produce of this land, are described in a brochure translated from the English original printed in America. The truth of the facts presented in this brochure is not only confirmed by Mr. Thomas Hutchins, squire and geographer of the United States, but also by the unanimous report of all the travelers, all the people who have seen this region, all of whom give the exact same description. All of them agree that the land in this region is one of the most fertile in the world. In addition to the fairness of the climate and the excellence of the soil, there is the quality of the government. Perhaps this advantage should be ranked first; it is without a doubt above all the others in excellence. The English government is generally considered the best of those in Europe. The American government, which should be considered to be the * The English acre is around one and a quarter arpents.

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English government improved instead of this same government imitated, has this advantage on the former that individuals only have to pay three pounds twelve francs a year for it, whereas in England they pay fifty-five pounds for their liberty. Europe, Asia, and Africa were populated in an era of ignorance, and the trace of this can never be erased entirely; it is only in America, where, while enjoying all the happiness that one may expect from the advantages of the climate and of the soil, one can put into practice in a vast country the same plan that one would adopt for the land of an individual. Any sensible man would agree that the greatest fortunes that exist in the world began by the simple acquisition of good lands, but bought before they had reached their full value. Well, it is on such a basis that the following speculation is founded; it is supported by incontestable facts. And first of all, let us not lose sight of the fact that the considerable sums, of which nine-tenths must be spent according to the plan we propose, are intended for the acquisition of lands that, in eight years at most, will have more than doubled in value, even if no farmers are sent, because they border on other lands that are being put into production and cultivated at the present time. The sums used to acquire these parcels will for this reason be well employed and cannot be lost. We cannot promise exactly the same thing for the sums that we will advance for the expenses to establish the colony, but, while admitting for a moment that it would be possible for these latter amounts to be lost, we maintain that it is very improbable, and it is in fact impossible, in any case, that they could be lost entirely. [The author of the Prospectus describes the considerable profits that the buyers can expect to realize before making a first recapitulation of the reasons why the purchase of lands in the region of the Scioto cannot fail to be a profitable investment.] By spending a reasonable sum of money, by working for the happiness of a large number of people, and by guaranteeing them a comfortable and honest existence, they gain at the same time a considerable income that is not subject to any of the events to which men’s plans are ordinarily exposed, agriculture being the most durable and safest means that nature gave man to reward his work. As a result, we will not even take into consideration the profits that could result from the exploitation of the mines found in these regions, nor the advantages that could come from the fur trade; we will restrict our focus

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to the income that must come from the cultivation of the land, and we will estimate these profits at the minimum level. In a century enlightened by reason and in which the art of calculation has been brought to such a high level, let us abandon any unjust and extravagant system and follow only plans that are founded on humaneness and concrete evidence. If in the one we propose here the appearance of a considerable profit is tied to that of an incontestable security, which is a rare combination, it can be attributed to the fact that in this undertaking nature will contribute more to the increase in value of the properties than all of the efforts of any company could do. Since the number of inhabitants will increase regularly as soon as the first foundations of the colony have been lain, it is inevitable that it will prosper rapidly, as has always happened in America in the various colonies that have been established, and there is no doubt that this will be especially true for a parcel of land that is so fertile and so felicitously situated in the middle of navigable rivers, in a mild and favorable climate, beneath the thirtyninth to forty-first degree of latitude, and under a free and well-established government. The French on the Banks of the Scioto:* Letter to an Immigrant to Kentucky (1790) françois andrieux

So you are going to the ends of the universe To populate the wild shores of the Scioto? And you are embarking in the hope * River in Kentucky, northwest of Virginia, in North America. [Clearly, Andrieux had only a vague idea of the exact location of the Scioto, since this 231-mile-long river originates in the center west of the present state of Ohio (in Auglaize County) and flows into the Ohio at the city of Portsmouth, on the Kentucky border. For Andrieux, as for other denigrators of French immigration to the United States, the Scioto region was more an imaginary place than a real territory, as is demonstrated in Denis Guiraud’s Song of the Emigrants, where it is located “in the country of the Incas”: “Off with you, off with you, aristocratic cohort, / Bear your haughty pride to the farthest climes! / Bring back to life, in the American fields, / Feudal rights, mainmorte, and marquisates! / But hark my prophetic dream / On your destiny in the country of the Incas.” Quoted by Marius Veyre in La Maison de Lezay-Marnésia, 1240–1884 [The House of Lezay-Marnésia, 1240–1884] (Strasbourg: Brant, 1958), 31.—Ed.]

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to the income that must come from the cultivation of the land, and we will estimate these profits at the minimum level. In a century enlightened by reason and in which the art of calculation has been brought to such a high level, let us abandon any unjust and extravagant system and follow only plans that are founded on humaneness and concrete evidence. If in the one we propose here the appearance of a considerable profit is tied to that of an incontestable security, which is a rare combination, it can be attributed to the fact that in this undertaking nature will contribute more to the increase in value of the properties than all of the efforts of any company could do. Since the number of inhabitants will increase regularly as soon as the first foundations of the colony have been lain, it is inevitable that it will prosper rapidly, as has always happened in America in the various colonies that have been established, and there is no doubt that this will be especially true for a parcel of land that is so fertile and so felicitously situated in the middle of navigable rivers, in a mild and favorable climate, beneath the thirtyninth to forty-first degree of latitude, and under a free and well-established government. The French on the Banks of the Scioto:* Letter to an Immigrant to Kentucky (1790) françois andrieux

So you are going to the ends of the universe To populate the wild shores of the Scioto? And you are embarking in the hope * River in Kentucky, northwest of Virginia, in North America. [Clearly, Andrieux had only a vague idea of the exact location of the Scioto, since this 231-mile-long river originates in the center west of the present state of Ohio (in Auglaize County) and flows into the Ohio at the city of Portsmouth, on the Kentucky border. For Andrieux, as for other denigrators of French immigration to the United States, the Scioto region was more an imaginary place than a real territory, as is demonstrated in Denis Guiraud’s Song of the Emigrants, where it is located “in the country of the Incas”: “Off with you, off with you, aristocratic cohort, / Bear your haughty pride to the farthest climes! / Bring back to life, in the American fields, / Feudal rights, mainmorte, and marquisates! / But hark my prophetic dream / On your destiny in the country of the Incas.” Quoted by Marius Veyre in La Maison de Lezay-Marnésia, 1240–1884 [The House of Lezay-Marnésia, 1240–1884] (Strasbourg: Brant, 1958), 31.—Ed.]

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Of bringing to these climes what has been lost to France, 5 The arrest warrants, the so-called royal censors, The tithe, the salt tax, and the feudal rights, The courthouse grounds, the convents, the chapters, And above all the pensions, the shield, and the titles? You dwell happily on this sensible plan. 10 But, before leaving, do read what has been written to me: It comes from Alexandria;* it is a novel story; The tale comes from afar but is no less faithful. In our fine days of glory and prosperity, When these dangerous words, homeland and liberty, 15 Were scarcely in use by us Frenchmen, When fear led so many writers to prudence; In this sweet time, finally, when all was going so well, A young upstart who thought he was smart Had the nerve to think and went so far as to write 20 That the order that threw a burgher in prison Did not always prove that an official was right And that tolerance and philosophy Would one day vanquish impious fanaticism. His pamphlet was going to produce a dangerous fuss. 25 We had then, for our good fortune, a prelate who was The friend of Loyola, the intrepid Christophe, Who was hardly a philosopher; Phélypeaux trumped up arrest warrants, And Mister Omer Joly made them stick in court. 30 By a fine order, saintly frantic, The work declared scandalous, heretical, By an order of the court was cut to pieces and burned; The author, out of respect, was merely thrown into the Bastille. The sojourn apparently cured his loony head. 35 He escaped, running from country to country. * City in the United States of America. [As regards Alexandria, in Virginia, and the stay of the French emigrants in 1790, see the introduction, 18–19.—Ed.]

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Finally, after myriad misadventures, the poor fellow Put down his roots on the banks of the Scioto. Soon he gathered together some families of savages Scattered among the woods that covered these shores. 40 These ferocious beings, under his instruction, Cleared fields and built homes; And reminiscent of the genius of Robinson, He saw a colony born of these new men. This was not enough; he wanted, as they say, 45 To cultivate both their hearts and minds; But what did he teach them? A flock of absurd fantasies: That men are all born equal and are brothers; That the honors that each desired Should only be in the interest of everyone; 50 That a man debases himself and his being When he serves another man and tells him: Be my master; That one should consult the law of nature, embedded in everyone’s heart, On matters of law and mores; And that, despite the brilliance of military valor, 55 Being useful to one’s fellow man is the first of all virtues. The poor Indians, touched and dazed, Listened and retained these childish thoughts. They limited their knowledge to useful objects, And did not even suspect the existence of the finest sciences, 60 Quibbling, both civil and canon law, Any more than theology and heraldry. Sainville, enjoying his tranquil life in their midst, Saw his companions, following his advice, Thank him each day for their felicity, 65 And turn the word French into a title of honor. But who can stifle love of country? Regrets arose in his troubled soul.

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Sitting on the shore, tears came to his eyes: “I am,” he said, “exiled in this place! 70 “Oh France! Happy clime! So dear to my youth! “I have lost all hope of returning to your bosom; “I served my country; they sent me away. “I never think, without indignation, “Of the gothic errors, strange customs, 75 “Of the whole absurd mass of barbarous prejudices “Whose weight crushed the French in their servitude. “They laughed about their ills and thought they were cured. “Oh! If they dared one day to emerge from slavery! “To have the courage to be happy! 80 “If they refused all yoke but that of the laws! “France! The world would be jealous of you! “My prayers will never be answered.” While he was sunk in these sad thoughts, Loud cries troubled the peace of his wilderness. 85 On the river a vessel came into view. He rises, he sees it drift, advance; They reach the shore; they disembark, they dart forward; Sainville runs to meet them: “Oh heaven! Is it possible? Oh happiness! “What! Are these Frenchmen? What merciful God, 90 “What extraordinary miracle brings you to this place? “My brothers! My friends! What am I to believe? “I too am French; I was born in Paris. “What is happening there? Answer me. I still love my country.” —“Well! If you love it,” said a man with a tonsure 95 Wearing a gleaming golden cross, “Weep for this country, for it has been desecrated. “No one believes in God any more; all the French are damned. “They are destroying the convents; they want to rid themselves of monks; “Temperate, useful men, canons 100 “Are pensioned off as a reward for their good works! “To so dishonor religion! “Take away all of our possessions! Speak to us of salaries! 120

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“And call me Mister, like a little vicar! “Oh, what a scandal! The people will elect its ministers! 105 “There will be no more fat church tax collectors. “My bishopric brought me one hundred thousand francs of revenue; “They were so evil as to reduce it to thirty; “And no abbey! They took everything from us! “I schemed and protested against the decrees, 110 “And by an order in the spirit of the gospels, “Tried to incite the French people to a civil war, “And all that out of charity, Christian zeal, “Heaven’s interest and not my own.” A young man shouted, “I have little pity for the priests 115 “But to force me to prove that I am as good as my ancestors! “They fought well, in their time, with their lance thrusts: “Since I am their son, I have all of their virtues; “I am more noble than they, so I cancel them out; “How dare people say to my face, 120 “When my ancestor served so well the state, “That I may be no more than a smug dolt? “Ah!” said an agent, “my wound is deadly; “Would you believe that they did away with the salt tax?” Sainville, beside himself, hugged them in his arms; 125 Struck by these odd cries that he did not understand, He inquires, he responds, he runs from one to the other. “Ah! You were not there; how lucky for you! “No, you did not see the Revolution, “The whole nation rise up in arms; 130 “And take the Bastille in their madness. “—Heavens! What? The Bastille has fallen?—And is destroyed. “I cannot believe my ears. “But where do they lock up the writers now? “—They don’t lock any of them up; it is a terrible thing; 135 “Liberty, so harmful to talent, “Is making horrible strides and is impossible to halt; The French on the Banks of the Scioto

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“People have the right to say and print anything; “They examine everything, become informed, and discuss. “Soon they will dare to censor the Sorbonne. 140 “Laws will define and limit powers, “Show the citizens their rights and duties. “France no longer wishes to expand by war “And is declaring peace to the rest of the world. “The kingdom is destroyed, ruined, overturned, 145 “And we have left without regret a country gone mad “In which we are losing favors, pensions, and benefices! “In which they have just created judges who take no spices! “Those are the decrees that have provoked our indignation; “The nation wants them, the king has signed them; 150 “Read them and share our fury, our alarm.” Sainville read; tears filled his eyes. “Oh heaven!” he cried, “Oh God whom I bless! “Now I will be able to see my dear country again! “And you have left it, you miserable people! 155 “What have you come seeking in this sad refuge? “Forests, wilderness, untilled fields? “And work too hard for your puny arms? “Where will you find again your happy country, “And the treasures she offers to hardworking people? 160 “What was missing other than a good government? “Reason, which is presiding over this great change, “Will one day make it a model for all nations. “Those who abandon it were not worthy of her. “Since liberty is reborn in its ramparts, 165 “I cannot wait to get there; adieu, gentlemen. You are here; I am gone.”

The Paris High Court on the Scioto (1790) notice

So much has been said recently about Scioto that everyone knows this wide and long river that has given its name to the territory through which it passes and is part of North America. 122

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“People have the right to say and print anything; “They examine everything, become informed, and discuss. “Soon they will dare to censor the Sorbonne. 140 “Laws will define and limit powers, “Show the citizens their rights and duties. “France no longer wishes to expand by war “And is declaring peace to the rest of the world. “The kingdom is destroyed, ruined, overturned, 145 “And we have left without regret a country gone mad “In which we are losing favors, pensions, and benefices! “In which they have just created judges who take no spices! “Those are the decrees that have provoked our indignation; “The nation wants them, the king has signed them; 150 “Read them and share our fury, our alarm.” Sainville read; tears filled his eyes. “Oh heaven!” he cried, “Oh God whom I bless! “Now I will be able to see my dear country again! “And you have left it, you miserable people! 155 “What have you come seeking in this sad refuge? “Forests, wilderness, untilled fields? “And work too hard for your puny arms? “Where will you find again your happy country, “And the treasures she offers to hardworking people? 160 “What was missing other than a good government? “Reason, which is presiding over this great change, “Will one day make it a model for all nations. “Those who abandon it were not worthy of her. “Since liberty is reborn in its ramparts, 165 “I cannot wait to get there; adieu, gentlemen. You are here; I am gone.”

The Paris High Court on the Scioto (1790) notice

So much has been said recently about Scioto that everyone knows this wide and long river that has given its name to the territory through which it passes and is part of North America. 122

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All the travelers agree on the beauty of this region, which produces crops that are both excellent and varied; a region that only awaits farmers to respond to men’s desires and to satisfy their tastes, a region for which so many picturesque stories have created such enthusiasm that entire families have made plans to settle there. Several projects have been formed for this purpose, and people are very excited at the prospect of creating an empire there that will be infinitely richer and more beautiful than the one found in France. They do not believe it will be necessary to wait for several generations to pass before an uncultivated soil can unite the useful to the agreeable and become inhabitable, choosing to believe that it will be sufficient just to go there; and that is why the High Court, which can no longer function in these lands, is setting up business in North America, certain of replacing, and with interest, what has been taken from it here. In such circumstances, the only hard part is taking the first step, and it has been taken. Scioto has judges, and when it has Academicians, it will become at the very least the rival of France and Paris. People will be surprised, without a doubt, at the speed with which the project in question is being put into effect and the rapid reception of news about it; but the Fairies are at work, and their magic spell is no more extraordinary than everything we are seeing here. . . . It would be good to have the correspondence between the counselors’ wives who stayed in Paris and those who came to Scioto; we would find them curious. We have only gotten our hands on a few letters, but they give us an idea of what the rest must look like. Here is one dated from Paris, which is addressed to a sister-in-law whose name is withheld: “The National Assembly is giving me nightmares, and to protect myself from this sickness that oppresses me every night, I breathe every evening the smoke from several motions that I have burned in my room, and it is a soporific that puts me to sleep. Abbot Maury has as many souls as he has members and fingers; he is a vigorous companion for any and all expeditions. They say that he is the most active citizen anyone knows, night and day. My cousin, quick-tempered as usual, is furious with the prelates; she says that they would rather die from indigestion than as martyrs, and that with the exception of the bishop of Clermont she would not give a pipe of tobacco for their valor. They let Abbot Maury speak for them and could care less if he were assassinated. The Paris High Court on the Scioto

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When will all this be over? Nonetheless, I fear more than anyone does a counterrevolution. May God preserve us from that; as for me, I think that all this will fall apart on its own, and that it will not succeed, not succeed at all. The Jacobin Club is currently the best show in Paris, having replaced the Convulsionaries. They say that they perform the most original contortions there, and that they speak with a demoniacal eloquence never heard before. Our old counselor, whom I always see with pleasure, says that it is a little window to hell. There is no doubt they vomit saltpeter and fire, and that Mount Vesuvius, according to a Neapolitan, is a Milky Way compared to this famous club that is connected to all the underground passages of the kingdom.” Response dated from Scioto: “We are under a beautiful sky here, but that’s all we have. There is plenty to graze on, but it is only grass, grass everywhere, until our plantations begin to produce. The trees here are magnificent, and we have installed swings everywhere so that, in accordance with the decrees of the National Assembly, we can say better than ever, ‘Jump, President! Jump, Marquis!’ People here are growing accustomed to seeing us in our senatorial robes, although the other day a buffalo, acting as if he had received lessons from Martineau, pursued relentlessly one of our gentlemen. I bathed once in the Ohio River, but ever since I learned that the Algonquin and the Iroquois washed there also, I can no longer suffer such savage waters. I have never liked mixtures, and I was already rather upset, when I was in Paris, to have to drink the same water that everyone else drank. Accordingly, I would separate from my husband tomorrow, although I like him well enough, if he dared fool with another woman; it is already enough that he fools with me. Our meals here are quite amusing; the dishes need to be labeled. There are birds and fishes so strange that you cannot remember their names, but we eat them because they are attractive and taste good. We see here men and women covered in leaves who dance on one foot with surprising agility; others who open their vein and bring you their blood in a wooden bowl as a mark of their respect. Well, we would not have known these phenomena if we had never left Paris. It does little good to know the Palais-Royal by heart; that sort of knowledge is quite useless. 124

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When the Scioto will be settled, we will learn things of which the Academies and even the Sorbonne have no idea. Adieu, your most devoted servant.”

Letter Written by a Frenchman Immigrating to the Lands of the Scioto Company (1790) The prospectus of the Scioto Company thought it could get away with claiming in Paris that the tracts it was proposing were surrounded by populated and cleared land, that it is not an isolated place that could be considered a wilderness. Is it possible to abuse more cruelly the understandable ignorance of my good fellow citizens where it concerns things that are so distant? The mockery would not be greater if these gentlemen had invited us to camp on the Plaine des Sablons to have the pleasure of being close to the Palais-Royal. Let us take a look at these famous populated and cleared regions that surround the lands that we were sold and prevent them from being isolated and wild. To the west of the Scioto, you have to go 160 miles, to the confluence of the Miami and Ohio Rivers, before you come to a colony that is under way. To the east of the Scioto you have to go two 220 miles and to the confluence of the Muskingum and the Ohio before finding another colony. These two nascent colonies are just forts at the mouth of the two rivers. In the 380 miles between them, and immediately behind each fort, there are vast forests that extend to the great lakes, filled with implacable savages who constantly harass the Americans and destroy pitilessly all the parties they come across. What a charming neighborhood! You must admit that one could not be less isolated. The prospectus tells us that the center of the United States is on the Scioto and that in just a few years the general government of the Union will be established there. People of Paris, people of Paris! These gentlemen know well how to appeal to you; they have seen how much you crave to have the court in your fine city! So they promise you one on the Scioto! Seriously, what a shameful abuse of words! You might as well say that the center of the Russian empire being located in the middle of Siberia, the Empress will have her throne transferred there in a few years. These are bold assertions whose deception is evident to educated people, but that it is difficult to combat because, after all, the physical possibility favors the liar. The authors of the prospectus included an attractive map to convince the skeptical that the prospectus was truthful, just as this document was intended to confirm the accuracy of the map. It is just like two valets in a comedy Letter Written by a Frenchman

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When the Scioto will be settled, we will learn things of which the Academies and even the Sorbonne have no idea. Adieu, your most devoted servant.”

Letter Written by a Frenchman Immigrating to the Lands of the Scioto Company (1790) The prospectus of the Scioto Company thought it could get away with claiming in Paris that the tracts it was proposing were surrounded by populated and cleared land, that it is not an isolated place that could be considered a wilderness. Is it possible to abuse more cruelly the understandable ignorance of my good fellow citizens where it concerns things that are so distant? The mockery would not be greater if these gentlemen had invited us to camp on the Plaine des Sablons to have the pleasure of being close to the Palais-Royal. Let us take a look at these famous populated and cleared regions that surround the lands that we were sold and prevent them from being isolated and wild. To the west of the Scioto, you have to go 160 miles, to the confluence of the Miami and Ohio Rivers, before you come to a colony that is under way. To the east of the Scioto you have to go two 220 miles and to the confluence of the Muskingum and the Ohio before finding another colony. These two nascent colonies are just forts at the mouth of the two rivers. In the 380 miles between them, and immediately behind each fort, there are vast forests that extend to the great lakes, filled with implacable savages who constantly harass the Americans and destroy pitilessly all the parties they come across. What a charming neighborhood! You must admit that one could not be less isolated. The prospectus tells us that the center of the United States is on the Scioto and that in just a few years the general government of the Union will be established there. People of Paris, people of Paris! These gentlemen know well how to appeal to you; they have seen how much you crave to have the court in your fine city! So they promise you one on the Scioto! Seriously, what a shameful abuse of words! You might as well say that the center of the Russian empire being located in the middle of Siberia, the Empress will have her throne transferred there in a few years. These are bold assertions whose deception is evident to educated people, but that it is difficult to combat because, after all, the physical possibility favors the liar. The authors of the prospectus included an attractive map to convince the skeptical that the prospectus was truthful, just as this document was intended to confirm the accuracy of the map. It is just like two valets in a comedy Letter Written by a Frenchman

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bouncing back and forth between them a good old father they want to charm. We concluded, based on these honest testimonies, that all the Scioto land had been surveyed. We saw, to our great pleasure, the location of the cities, villages, and universities. Alas! None of that exists, and it is a real shame, because it was all very beautiful. There are no savages in the document who, brandishing a tomahawk, crush the skull of the imprudent scribbler and take his scalp. A well-paid draughtsman can easily draw grids in his office and place here and there cities full of right angles. But a surveyor is not so bold in the western territory of the United States. . . . The western territory of the United States rather resembles the El Dorado described by Voltaire, into which you enter with the current but from which nothing can escape without the help of incredible machines. It has been pretty clearly demonstrated that, to take advantage of the only opening that nature has provided, one of two things would need to be done: either force Spain to give us passage to New Orleans, or agree with her to dismember the United States. In either case, blood would flow. The prospectus speaks to us of the huge crops we are going to have in a fertile region with a healthy climate; of the pleasure we will have settling comfortably in imaginary cities that we have acquired, similar to Noah’s sons after the universal flood; of the incalculable number of acres we are going to clear in three years time; of the honest fortunes (the word is modest for recruiters) we are bound to make. Alas! Quos Deus vult perdere, prius mente capit. God fogs the reason of those whose downfall he seeks. It is for their sins that he permitted gullible inhabitants of Paris to take this fiction literally. I must tell you, in all good conscience, that the savages are more cruel and active than ever. They can see that all the treaties that were made with them end up costing them the land where they were born and where the bones of there fathers rest; that they are chased from door to door for the most part from the ocean shores to those of the Ohio; and that the fate of the nations already destroyed awaits those who are still fighting for their property. They have been enlightened by misfortune; they have joined together; they defend step by step the western lands; they spread out in small bands on the shores of the Ohio; they intercept all the boats that come down separately and without taking precautions; they attack all the parties that show themselves on the banks of the river or in the wilderness that you have 126

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to cross to get to the inhabited states by land; they hide in the brush, behind rushes, behind trees; and, as they are good shots, kill without striking a blow, any imprudent individual who wanders off. The American newspapers are full of these horrible details. Congress has just had to order that the troop of 800 men posted on the border of its western territory be increased to 1,200 in order to better occupy, if such a thing is possible on a frontier that extends 1,500 miles, the trails by which the savages slip into the former states. You even read in all the current public papers that the governor of the western territory was massacred with his guard on the Ohio, where he rather resembled Robinson Crusoe on his desert island. There is a stark contrast between these facts and the hope of occupying peacefully our lands. Far from settling in our cities and vigorously cultivating our fields, we will be only too happy to arrive with our scalps still intact at the mouth of the Scioto, to squeeze into a little corner that we will surround with fortifications, as have done, since 1787, the colonists on the Muskingum where, despite the advantage of being situated across from Fort Harmar, full of artillery and the home of the Congress’s troops, they still do not dare sow fields any more than two leagues away on the shores of the Ohio and three leagues away on the Muskingum (with the greatest caution) and there, a spade in their hand and a rifle on their shoulder, plant a few vegetables, not in our so lauded fields but in little gardens that we share temporarily in the space of a half league at the most. And when these difficulties have been overcome, when, our numbers strengthened by the brothers that the company will have gathered together from every corner of the kingdom, we will be able to run off the savages and take possession of our lands, what fortune, good God! can we hope for? We will be able to produce the bare necessities, we will survive; that is all, absolutely all. Fortunes are not made in the United States by those who possess two or three hundred acres, but rather by the capitalists who grab ten or twenty thousand, break them up into lots, and resell them to the industrious emigrants. In any case, it is not enough to just produce; you have to sell to cover myriad expenses, the cost of linen, clothes, stockings, shoes, sugar, wine, et cetera, et cetera. So you have to find a market for your goods; and I have shown you that of all the difficulties, that is perhaps the most insuperable. As for the opposition from the savages, you will say, there is an easy remedy: many respectable Frenchmen bought property from the Scioto Company in good faith; the Company must now deliver it to them. That is what a Parisian lawyer would say. I informed myself on this question, and I was told that when a vendor is not himself opposed to the buyer taking possession of the Letter Written by a Frenchman

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property, it is up to the buyer to do so by whatever means he can. The company’s role is to get us to the Scioto, at our expense, of course; ours is to sustain ourselves there as best we can. We will perhaps have the pleasure, for our six francs an acre, of burying a few savages there, if they do not do it to us first. The company is acting like some popes, who distributed crowns but left it up to the newly anointed pontiff to dislodge the legitimate owner from his throne. New Prospectus of the Scioto Company (1790) We can measure the success that the colonists can expect to meet quickly by the letters we have just received from some of them. It would be best if we could make all of them public, in their entirety. People would see how little faith they should put in the stories that malicious individuals are constantly spreading; they would read why and how so much calumny has been produced and, of course, believed. The following excerpts will suffice to convince people who sincerely want to know the truth; nothing will convince the others. excerpt of a letter from m. de marnésia, dated october 12, 1790

Well, Sir, here I am on the banks of the Ohio. I thus have the right, perhaps even the duty, to enlighten the French who, in good faith, want to be informed of the success of the venture that several of their countrymen have undertaken, who want to know before rendering judgment, and who are wisely suspicious of both the apologists of the Scioto Company, who are perhaps self-interested, and its detractors whose accusations are perhaps unfounded and motives impure. The position, Sir, in which I find myself is quite unusual if not to say unique. Surrounded by the most novel things of such immense proportions, moved necessarily to the most numerous and broad speculations, occupied by the most powerful interests, associated with an enterprise that is either foolhardy or superb, surrounded by so many things that can ignite one’s imagination and even lead to eloquence, perhaps without even intending or wanting to do so, I must limit myself to the soberness of a narrative and deny myself the enthusiasm that would be provoked naturally by all that I see before me and all the ideas it brings to mind.

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property, it is up to the buyer to do so by whatever means he can. The company’s role is to get us to the Scioto, at our expense, of course; ours is to sustain ourselves there as best we can. We will perhaps have the pleasure, for our six francs an acre, of burying a few savages there, if they do not do it to us first. The company is acting like some popes, who distributed crowns but left it up to the newly anointed pontiff to dislodge the legitimate owner from his throne. New Prospectus of the Scioto Company (1790) We can measure the success that the colonists can expect to meet quickly by the letters we have just received from some of them. It would be best if we could make all of them public, in their entirety. People would see how little faith they should put in the stories that malicious individuals are constantly spreading; they would read why and how so much calumny has been produced and, of course, believed. The following excerpts will suffice to convince people who sincerely want to know the truth; nothing will convince the others. excerpt of a letter from m. de marnésia, dated october 12, 1790

Well, Sir, here I am on the banks of the Ohio. I thus have the right, perhaps even the duty, to enlighten the French who, in good faith, want to be informed of the success of the venture that several of their countrymen have undertaken, who want to know before rendering judgment, and who are wisely suspicious of both the apologists of the Scioto Company, who are perhaps self-interested, and its detractors whose accusations are perhaps unfounded and motives impure. The position, Sir, in which I find myself is quite unusual if not to say unique. Surrounded by the most novel things of such immense proportions, moved necessarily to the most numerous and broad speculations, occupied by the most powerful interests, associated with an enterprise that is either foolhardy or superb, surrounded by so many things that can ignite one’s imagination and even lead to eloquence, perhaps without even intending or wanting to do so, I must limit myself to the soberness of a narrative and deny myself the enthusiasm that would be provoked naturally by all that I see before me and all the ideas it brings to mind.

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I am simply going to offer a description, therefore, with the simplicity of the most scrupulous truth. I swear on my honor that I will tell this truth, and that I will not speak a word that is not true. The lands sold to Frenchmen by the agents of the Scioto Company are the richest of all those that are under the dominion of the United States. The neighboring lands, whose clearing only began three years ago, are proof that they are so fertile that you could hardly find any comparable land anywhere else on earth. Cultivated by Frenchmen who are far more active, work far harder, and are much better farmers than the Americans, who have not yet progressed very far in the art of agriculture or in the other arts, they will yield much more than the fields of their neighbors. Wheat, corn, vegetables, flax, and hemp will grow there in abundance, and tobacco can be cultivated there very successfully as well. I doubt, or rather do not believe, despite what people claim, that indigo can be grown there. The climate, with temperatures the same as that of the region of Avignon, is fortunately not hot enough to be favorable to this crop. It would be enough for moderate men to live with all their basic needs abundantly fulfilled, and they would be only too happy to add things that, without being as necessary, are still of great value for the pleasure they procure, like the high-quality sugar the maple trees provide in enormous quantities, game of all kinds, a great variety of fish, large herds of wild oxen, wool, cotton, silk that it is easy to introduce here owing to the abundance of mulberry trees, and magnificent and highly varied woods. All these riches, I say, would have sufficed to satisfy the desires of the first inhabitants of the earth, but with a far greater variety of desires than they, we need many more forms of pleasure. It is only through trade that we can obtain them. It will be quite easy for us to establish a broad network of trade with all the southern regions of America and even with the rest of the world. The Ohio, on whose banks we have settled, as well as the Mississippi, provides us an easy avenue that Kentucky, this year and the last, employed to immense advantage. It exported its goods to the south, perhaps even too abundantly, and reaped very large profits. The livestock in this country, handsomer and more robust than what we have in France, is almost the equal of that of the Swiss; with continued efforts, the wool will soon become as fine and beautiful as that of England, and the horses of this region, which are of English stock, have good conformation and are reliable and hardy.

New Prospectus

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Colonists who come with a little money and a lot of ideas cannot find themselves in the presence of an abundance of raw materials of excellent quality without making plans to use them. Therefore, one of their first thoughts was to build factories in their midst, and they have already studied the means to achieve that. These simple, easy-to-effect means will provide them, in all likelihood as early as next year, workshops where cloth, sheets, silk fabrics, and ironware will be made. Not only have workers been engaged, but they will soon arrive to exercise their skill in places that are still only a magnificent wilderness. A few Frenchmen who have come to America have leveled rather severe criticism that is completely unfounded. Here is the reason. Since the Company did not expect the number of emigrants to be so high and fast, it had not made any preparations to receive them; nothing was ready when they arrived, and they did not even have a contact person from the Company during their first day in Alexandria. They were extremely surprised and troubled, but that did not last very long; to the extent possible, all the problems were resolved. The emigrants were lodged, fed, reimbursed, and compensated most generously for the delay, indeed quite troublesome, that they experienced; and those who are reasonable—the majority of them—are not only satisfied but are truly filled with gratitude. There they are on the happy shores of the Ohio. They bring their courage, steadfastness, and firm resolve to begin the necessary work. Helped by the climate, by the fertility of the soil, by the concurrence of all the local circumstances they could desire, they have the greatest assurance that they will prosper promptly and abundantly. We will have accomplished all the hard work, and all the difficulties will have been mitigated for those who follow us. They will discover in us brothers who are well settled in attractive, clean, and comfortable houses with abundant and good provisions and very happy to share everything with them. As for me, I can only speak of the Scioto Company in the most gracious terms. I had such large interests to treat and such important ideas to discuss with M. Duer, its superintendent. I have never met such vast intelligence, so capable of giving birth to great projects and combining them in such a way as to insure their success without the slightest doubt. He is the right man to facilitate the creation of a colony such as ours that is beginning like none other anywhere with the joining together of such powerful means.

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As regards the Scioto Company, the only thing I have had to defend myself against is the excessive benefits it has accorded me; I have only had to struggle with its lavishness. People have tried to convince me that I am being deceived by it, and they are right: it has rendered my fate infinitely superior to what I expected and even to what I could have desired. There, Sir, is what I have to say about this Company, and I do so to pay homage to the truth and to express, albeit feebly, my gratitude. You may, Sir, use my letter as you see fit; I have no fear of its being shared, because it does not contain a word that is not the exact truth. I am impatient for you and Mr. Playfair, to whom I ask you to give my kind regards, to come judge for yourselves. Come quickly, and send before you wise and kind people who will bring talents and virtues to our community. They will see in our cities that all the trades are already in practice, as well as some of the fine arts such as sculpture and engraving. With the sincerest affection of your most humble and obedient servant, Signed De Lezay-Marnésia. the marquis de marnésia writes september 24 to mr. gréa, lawyer, at lons- le- saunier 

The fears, Sir, that your friendship for me has caused concerning my actions relative to my fortune, have no more come true, fortunately, than those of Mr. G . . . The agents of the Scioto Company have, indeed, deceived me, but not like you thought; instead of impostures and false promises, they have downplayed the truth drastically. It is certain that the lands that they sold me are in the most fertile place of the two worlds, in the mildest temperature, in the most healthy climate, and that each acre of land produces at least forty to sixty bushels of grain and that the sales are so hardy that corn and wheat fetch on the average six pounds a bushel. excerpt of a letter from mr. de marnésia to mr. de beyerlé, counselor at the former high court of nancy 

We are finally here on the shores of the Ohio. I am going to head for the magnificent land where the most astonishing and most certainly happy fate has led me. All the testimonies concur, all the accounts agree, and all assure us that the land we are going to live on is the Promised Land.

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People only speak of it in ecstatic terms, and it is not without a little envy that they see us settle there, since even in America men are not complete angels. I swear to you, no one here thinks they have been deceived. Do not take seriously those people in France who want to think so, and even less those who do not believe it themselves but would like to persuade others that it is so. According to these letters and the earnest money that has been paid, the buyers can be completely tranquil as regards their security.

Modern Chivalry: Containing the Adventures of Captain John Farrago and Teague O’Regan, His Servant (1792) hugh henry brackenridge

At this instant, an aged and venerable looking man descended from the mountain, with a slender and delicately formed young lad accompanying him, having on his shoulder the carcass of a raccoon, which he held by the hinder feet, and which probably had been cut out of a hollow tree, or taken in a trap, that afternoon. The Captain thought with himself, that he would have no great objection to have an invitation from the old man and his son, as he supposed him to be, to go home with them and lodge for the night; taking it for granted from the appearance of understanding in the countenance, that they were of a grade of education above the bulk of the people of that country. It so happened, after explanation had taken place, that he did receive an invitation, and went home with them. The residence was romantic, situated on a small eminence on the north side of the valley, which, running east and west, the sun struck it with his first beams, and the zephyrs, playing in the direct line of their course, fanned it in the summer heats. A small cascade at a little distance, with a sandy bottom, afforded a delightful bathing place; and the murmur of the falling water, in the silence of the night, was favourable to sleep. It was a cabin of an oblong figure, perhaps twenty by twelve feet, consisting of two apartments, the one small, and serving as a kitchen, the other answering the purposes of hall, parlour, and bedroom. The family consisted of the old man, the young lad his son, and an attendant who acted as cook, butler, and valet-de-chambre. Duncan, having rubbed and combed the Captain’s horse, and turned him loose to eat, was stowed away in the kitchen, 132

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People only speak of it in ecstatic terms, and it is not without a little envy that they see us settle there, since even in America men are not complete angels. I swear to you, no one here thinks they have been deceived. Do not take seriously those people in France who want to think so, and even less those who do not believe it themselves but would like to persuade others that it is so. According to these letters and the earnest money that has been paid, the buyers can be completely tranquil as regards their security.

Modern Chivalry: Containing the Adventures of Captain John Farrago and Teague O’Regan, His Servant (1792) hugh henry brackenridge

At this instant, an aged and venerable looking man descended from the mountain, with a slender and delicately formed young lad accompanying him, having on his shoulder the carcass of a raccoon, which he held by the hinder feet, and which probably had been cut out of a hollow tree, or taken in a trap, that afternoon. The Captain thought with himself, that he would have no great objection to have an invitation from the old man and his son, as he supposed him to be, to go home with them and lodge for the night; taking it for granted from the appearance of understanding in the countenance, that they were of a grade of education above the bulk of the people of that country. It so happened, after explanation had taken place, that he did receive an invitation, and went home with them. The residence was romantic, situated on a small eminence on the north side of the valley, which, running east and west, the sun struck it with his first beams, and the zephyrs, playing in the direct line of their course, fanned it in the summer heats. A small cascade at a little distance, with a sandy bottom, afforded a delightful bathing place; and the murmur of the falling water, in the silence of the night, was favourable to sleep. It was a cabin of an oblong figure, perhaps twenty by twelve feet, consisting of two apartments, the one small, and serving as a kitchen, the other answering the purposes of hall, parlour, and bedroom. The family consisted of the old man, the young lad his son, and an attendant who acted as cook, butler, and valet-de-chambre. Duncan, having rubbed and combed the Captain’s horse, and turned him loose to eat, was stowed away in the kitchen, 132

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while the raccoon was barbecued for supper, and the Captain with the host, and his son, were pursuing the explanation of what they respectively were; being yet in a great degree unknown to each other. It appeared that the old man was the marquis de Marnessie, who had been an emigrant from France, a short time after the commencement of the present revolution, and had served some time in a corps of 10,000 men, which had been formed of the nobility, under the combined princes, against the republic. Having been under the necessity of abandoning his seats with precipitation, he had been able to carry with him, but a few thousand livres. These had been reduced in supporting himself and friends in the service, and he had brought but a few hundred to America. This country he had been led to seek, disgusted with the combined powers, when the stipulations of the convention of Pillnitz began to transpire, and the object appeared to be, not so much to support the monarchy, as to divide the country: chagrined also with that neglect, and even contumely, experienced from the German princes, who appeared to think with contempt of their services, and to repose their confidence alone, in their own forces, and discipline. Coming to America, he had retired from the sea coast, both to be out of the way of the French democrats in the towns, and in order to occupy a less expensive residence. He had found this valley unappropriated by the state, a warrant for an hundred acres of which he obtained from the land office, at the low rate of fifty shillings; and having cleared a small spot, had made a garden, and cultivated what is called a patch of Indian corn, subsisting and amusing himself and his family, chiefly by trapping and hunting in the neighbouring mountain; wishing to forget his former feelings, and to live upon the earth as regardless of its troubles, as if buried under it. His cabin was neat and clean, with flooring of split timber, and stools made out of hewn logs. A few books, and half a dozen small paintings, a fuzee, and an old sword, being the only ornament of its walls. Having supped on the barbecued raccoon, they took bed upon the planks, each furnished with a blanket, being the only mattress, or covering, with which they were provided. A great deal of conversation had passed in the course of the evening; and considerable sympathy of mind had taken place on the part of the marquis towards the Captain, considering him in the light of an emigrant with himself, having been obliged to abscond, from sans culotte rage, and popular fervor, which, though not of the same height with that in France, yet was of the same nature, and different only in degree. Modern Chivalry

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The invitation was given by the marquis, and accepted on the part of the Captain, and to remain in that retirement for some weeks, until matters were composed, and it might be safe for him to take his way again through the country, and return to his dwelling. Duncan took care of the horse, chopped wood, carried water, and assisted the French valet to barbecue raccoons, young bears, squirrels, pheasants, partridges, and other game, that the traps, or fuzee and dog, of the marquis and his son, accompanied by the Captain, could procure. Much conversation passed in the mean time, on the affairs of France; sometimes sitting on a rock on the side of the mountain, or under the shade of an elm tree in the grassy valley; or walking out to set a trap; at other times, in an evening in the cabin, when they had returned from the labor or amusements of the day. These conversations were chiefly in the French language, which the Captain spoke very well; but in relating any particulars of that conversation, we shall give it in English, to save the printer the trouble of having it translated. And we shall confine ourselves to a very few particulars, meaning rather to hasten to the action of the work, than to delay the reader in an episode, longer than is absolutely necessary to let some things be matured, that are next to take place. chapter xv

It was in one of those temperate and pleasant evenings which in this climate succeed the autumnal equinox, that the marquis and the Captain walking out together, the subject of the conversation happened to be the right of the people of France to overthrow the monarchy, and establish a republic. The Captain had read the pamphlet of Thomas Paine, entitled Rights of Man, and was a good deal disposed to subscribe to the elementary principles of that work; a leading doctrine of which is, that at no time can the pact or customs of ancestors forestall or take away the right of descendants to frame whatever kind of government they think proper. This must be understood, said the marquis, like most other general propositions, with some limitation, or exceptions; or at least some explanation, before the mind of all, at least of mine, can acquiesce in the deductions. It may easily be supposed that I am not a proper person to canvass this subject, having been of that class of men who had all to lose, and nothing to gain, by a revolution in the government of the country where I lived. Nevertheless, if my feelings do not deceive me, I ought not to be considered as a person under great prejudices. For it seems to me, that I am detached from 134

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the world, and never more expecting to be restored to my country, so as to live in it with reputation, or even with safety, I am like a person with all his senses awake, and within a few seconds of death; his vanity is asleep, his pride is gone; he looks back upon his pursuits, and his hopes with true philosophy, and makes a proper estimate of all the acquisitions, and all the enjoyments of life. Or rather, I may be thought to resemble a disembodied spirit, who, no longer capable of enjoying the false glories of life, is not liable to be seduced by the appearance of them. The shades of departed men in the elysian fields as imagined by the ancients, and painted by the poets, cannot be more abstracted from former impressions, than I feel myself to be, in this kind of elysian, and posthumous valley. When I converse with you who have come from the world, and may return to it, I am in the situation of the Grecian worthies defunct of life, when visited by Ulysses. Achilles candidly acknowledged to him, that he had rather live as a hired labourer with a poor man, who had little food, than to rule over all the ghosts. I will in like manner declare, that such is my predilection for my country, and that ravishing delight which I would take, in breathing my native air, and seeing my native soil, looking at the buildings which were accustomed to strike my eyes in better days, that I would prefer fishing along the streams for my precarious and daily food, or digging the soil, and procuring my subsistence with a peasant, than to be the President of the United States, deprived of the countenance of my countrymen, and the view of that other heaven, and that other earth. The contempt that I may have entertained, or at least the undervaluing inseparable from my situation, which I may have felt, for the undignified with nobility amongst us, is totally gone: I could lay myself down, with the meanest plebeian, and call him my brother. Descent, title, and fortune, have disappeared from the eyes, and I see nothing but man, in his rude and original excellence, as a conversing and sociable animal. Nevertheless, even in this state of mind, I cannot wholly subscribe to the analysis of Paine. Let us examine his position. The new born infant has a right to a support from its ancestor, until it shall be of years to provide for itself; but has it a right to his estate after it shall have been of a mature age? Surely not a natural right; nor a right sanctioned in all cases even by the municipal law; for the ancestors may alien, or devise away from the heir. But if he claims as heir, or takes by devise, is it not under the artificial establishment of society, that he makes this claim, or takes this gift? Shall he not then take this estate subject to that government in the principle and form of it, under which this estate was acquired, and by which Modern Chivalry

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it is preserved to him? The civil relations that exist from the aggregate to him, are a law, as well as the relations that exist from individuals. Suppose all minors of age at one hour, and all ancestors just departed at the same moment, there might be some reason then in supposing that the descendants were not bound by the former establishments, but were at liberty to introduce others; or, the descendants emigrating, and occupying a new soil, are certainly at liberty to frame new structures. But not while a single ancestor exists, who has an interest in the old mansion-house, and is attached to the building, however Gothic; because the ancestor had this right before the minor was born, and his birth could not take it away. I say, then, contrary to the principle of Paine, that our ancestors having established an hereditary monarchy, it is not in the power of the descendants to change it. They may remove from under it, if they will, but not pull the house down about our heads. The early feudalist, whose acquisitions and possessions of them, depended on that military subordination and tenure which gave rise to the system, when he took his place in it either as a chieftain, or a vassal, submitted to it; he had his voice in this social compact; and shall his descendants be allowed to unhinge the tenure, and change the fabric which was not of his building? Shall he claim the advantages of that species of government to which he has been introduced, and not submit to the inequalities of it? or shall it be changed but by universal consent? Shall even a majority change it? No: because each individual is, in the language of the law, a joint tenant, and has a right, per my & per tout, in the part, and in the whole. It can no more take away the right an individual has in the system of government, than the right he has in his estate, held by a prior law. Upon investigation, it will be found more a question of power than of right; just as in these woods, I take the raccoons and rabbits, not that I conceive myself to have any right to have come from the banks of the Loire to make these depredations, but that having come, I have the skill to do it. The Captain was led to smile at these last words of the marquis, as savoring of misanthropy, equalizing the case of brute animals with men. I can easily excuse, said the Captain, this sally of your mind, and must resolve it into the wounds your feelings have received from the reverse of your fortune, and the dreadful outrages which have taken place, in the course of the revolution, from the fury of the human mind. Nor would I call in question wholly the justness of your position, with regard to the right of changing a mode of government. Nevertheless, it may admit of some discussion in the generality, and be so bounded as to leave some great cases out of the rule. I grant you 136

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that the descendant, on the principle of natural right, can claim nothing more of the personal labour of the ancestor, or of his estate, than support, until he shall be of an age which gives strength of mind and body to enable him to provide for himself. But does he not possess by his birth, a right to so much of the soil as is necessary for his subsistence? You will say he may emigrate. But suppose all adjoining known lands already peopled; he cannot emigrate without committing injustice upon others. He must therefore remain. How to preclude him from all right to think, or act in affairs of government, with a view to improve, and to improve is to change, is restraining the mind of man in a particular capable of the greatest extent, and upon which depends, more than on all things else, the perfection of our species. I would put it upon this point; is it conducive to an amelioration of the state of life, and likely to produce a greater sum of happiness, to innovate upon established forms, or to let them remain? It is true, indeed, that when we consider the throes and convulsions with which a change in government is usually attended, it ought not to be lightly attempted; and nothing but an extreme necessity for a reform can justify it. It is almost as impossible, comparing a physical with a moral difficulty, to change a government from despotism to liberty, without violence, as to dislodge a promontory from its base, by any other means than mining and gunpowder. Of that I am convinced, said the marquis; for there never was a people more generally disposed to a degree of reform, than the people of France, at the commencement of the revolution. The writings of philosophers had pervaded the minds of the highest orders, and it had become the passion of the times to lean towards a certain extent of liberty. It had become the wish of the good, and the humour of the weak, to advance the condition of the peasantry. As an instance of this, I myself had written a book, entitled Sur le bonheur de la campagne, with the express view of depicting the depressed situation of the common people in the country, and the means of raising them from that condition. But a reform once begun, it was found impossible to arrest it at a middle point. It may be resolved into a thousand causes, but the great cause was, the insatiable nature of the human mind, that will not be contented with what is moderate. For though there were doubtless a considerable portion of the nobility who were opposed to any diminution of their power and pageantry; yet, on the other hand, as great an evil existed in the wish of extreme equality in others; or rather, a wish to bring all things to a perfect level, that from thence they might begin to ascend themselves. There began to be insincerity Modern Chivalry

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on the part of the court, and licentiousness on the part of the people; and finally a contest, lurid and dreadful, like the column of dark clouds edged with blue, and fraught with lightning. A contest so terrible, that I have thought myself happy in escaping from it, even though I have been obliged to call upon the rocks and the mountains to cover me in this valley. The above is a sample of those conversations which took place, between the marquis and the Captain, during the space of some weeks which the Captain spent in this rural and obscure recess. In the meantime, the count, the son of the marquis, had been dispatched occasionally through the settlement, and to the village where the late outrage had been perpetrated, in order to learn what had become of the revenue officer, as also to ascertain the state of the public mind, and when it might be safe for the Captain to show himself in public, and return by the main road to his habitation. Nothing had been heard of O’Regan, but accounts the most unfavorable were obtained of the disposition of the people. The flame of opposition had spread generally, and the whole country appeared to be involved in a common burning. They had demolished all inspection houses, far and near; assembled in committees, and framed resolves of the utmost violence. The obnoxious were banished; and even the lukewarm in the cause were threatened with the destruction of their goods, and injury to their persons. They had begun to frame guillotines, and to talk of taking off the heads of traitors to the cause. The Captain was not a little alarmed at these proceedings; but the marquis who had seen the machine of the guillotine in actual operation, was seized with a horrid fear; and he almost imagined to himself that he saw it moving of its own accord towards him; his reason told him, that it was not at all improbable but that it might be brought to approach him very speedily, as the same sans culotte anarchy and violence began to show itself in these regions, as had broke out in France.

Letter to Monsieur Audrain, Merchant in Pittsburgh (1800) claude- françois- adrien, marquis de lezay- marnésia

No, my friend, I will never be guilty of the horrible crime of lese-gratitude or lese-friendship.* I am separated from you by the seas at present. It is all too * I am sending this letter for anyone to read; if it meets any success, I will try to gather enough of the considerable group of letters written from North America that were

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on the part of the court, and licentiousness on the part of the people; and finally a contest, lurid and dreadful, like the column of dark clouds edged with blue, and fraught with lightning. A contest so terrible, that I have thought myself happy in escaping from it, even though I have been obliged to call upon the rocks and the mountains to cover me in this valley. The above is a sample of those conversations which took place, between the marquis and the Captain, during the space of some weeks which the Captain spent in this rural and obscure recess. In the meantime, the count, the son of the marquis, had been dispatched occasionally through the settlement, and to the village where the late outrage had been perpetrated, in order to learn what had become of the revenue officer, as also to ascertain the state of the public mind, and when it might be safe for the Captain to show himself in public, and return by the main road to his habitation. Nothing had been heard of O’Regan, but accounts the most unfavorable were obtained of the disposition of the people. The flame of opposition had spread generally, and the whole country appeared to be involved in a common burning. They had demolished all inspection houses, far and near; assembled in committees, and framed resolves of the utmost violence. The obnoxious were banished; and even the lukewarm in the cause were threatened with the destruction of their goods, and injury to their persons. They had begun to frame guillotines, and to talk of taking off the heads of traitors to the cause. The Captain was not a little alarmed at these proceedings; but the marquis who had seen the machine of the guillotine in actual operation, was seized with a horrid fear; and he almost imagined to himself that he saw it moving of its own accord towards him; his reason told him, that it was not at all improbable but that it might be brought to approach him very speedily, as the same sans culotte anarchy and violence began to show itself in these regions, as had broke out in France.

Letter to Monsieur Audrain, Merchant in Pittsburgh (1800) claude- françois- adrien, marquis de lezay- marnésia

No, my friend, I will never be guilty of the horrible crime of lese-gratitude or lese-friendship.* I am separated from you by the seas at present. It is all too * I am sending this letter for anyone to read; if it meets any success, I will try to gather enough of the considerable group of letters written from North America that were

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likely that circumstances, old age, illness, and the need to prepare finally for a stable and tranquil retirement when one has led a wanderer’s life, a life full of strife and agitation, and when one has succumbed to age, infirmity, and suffering, will not allow me to come nearer to you; but my heart will always fly to wherever you are; it will never lose the memory of the days with you at Fort Pitt where all I had in the world were my vast rosy plans, you, and nature.* How charming your company was for me! How pleasant our conversations seemed to me! How attractive our memories were! How interesting our conjectures, and how our imagination, still so lively, embellished them! You found a way to reconcile me with life after I had been battered by so much sorrow and so many storms. Beautiful Monongahela, wide and clear Allegheny,† my happiness has remained on your delightful banks; I shall not destroyed in large part by the revolutionary events into a volume. If it is published, I will be so bold as to say that it will provoke interest, at the very least, the interest of novelty and truth. Circumstances did not allow three of them to be brought out that were published as essays by Prault in 1792. The Girondins ruled at the time. Other factions followed the Girondins, and the liberty of the press was reduced to the freedom to take immense risks. [As regards the circumstances of the publication of Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio, see the Editor’s Note and Acknowledgments, page vii–ix.—Ed.] * Fort Pitt owes its founding to the French. They built it to be a barrier against the English and attacks by the savages. They called it Fort Duquesne, a well-deserved tribute to a leader who combined military talents and the virtues of a wise man. It seems that a more enlightened sense of pride would have respected the original names; they would have recalled successful endeavors, whereas the new names condemn them to oblivion. [Built in 1754 at the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers, Fort Duquesne was named in honor of the governor of New France from 1752 to 1755, the marquis MichelAnge Duquesne de Menneville (1700–1778). The French of Fort Duquesne repelled the raid of General Edward Braddock (1695–1755) at the Battle of the Monongahela (July 9, 1755), in which George Washington participated as a twenty-three-year-old colonel. Led by John Forbes (1707–1759), a new British campaign was launched in 1758 to capture Fort Duquesne, forcing the French to abandon the fort and burn it down. It was rebuilt and named “Fort Pitt” in honor of William Pitt (1708–1778), the British minister of war during the French and Indian War.—Ed.] † Fort Pitt is built at the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers. Where they join, they become the Ohio River, or “Beautiful River.” Their banks are superb and rich through cultivation and fertility. They are and will long be happy places owing to their peacefulness, customs, abundance, and simplicity. In all likelihood, no courses will ever be found there to degrade and corrupt fragile people; perverse slaves, cowardly or ferocious, will not break their chains to forge daggers to cut the throats of their brothers who are more tranquil, less barbarous, and more reasonable than they. There, for many long years to come, the people will enjoy few of the pleasures that luxury and the arts bring, but they will be rich with the gifts offered by a fertile, inexhaustible, magnificent nature and happy with the absence of uncontrollable passions and the vices that corrupt, ravish,

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find it on the shores of the rivers in France where peace will surely not return anytime soon. When I was forced by my fateful destiny to leave the place that I have loved the most and had to go to Philadelphia, you accompanied me there. What did you not do for me there? Without you I would not have been able to defend myself against the American shrewdness. At the moment of my departure, your tears streamed down my chest. Your eyes followed as far as they could the ship that was taking your friend far from the country of peace, rest, and friendship to carry him to a land threatened by all the convulsions and all the misfortunes brought by chaos. Mine, riveted to the bank, were veiled by tears and stared at it long after they could no longer see it. So many pleasures, so many wonderful things did the necessity of returning to my country take from me! At least I will always have the memory of them. This memory of things one no longer has is the one blessing that is left the unfortunate soul who has lost them. On a light vessel, comely and clean, with an excellent American captain and good, honest passengers, my crossing was short and agreeable. After a month of travel, to the day, I arrived in the magnificent port of London. What a majestic scene! How keen an idea it gives of the wealth and power of the English people! The buildings, the palaces, and the rich cities strike one’s imagination less than an immense number of vessels gathered in a vast pond that seem ready to bear to the rest of the universe the orders of a dominant nation and to bring back the tribute of the most treasured productions, which justify this line by Mr. Lemierre, who sprinkled his rugged poetry with a great number of very beautiful such lines: “Neptune’s trident is the scepter of the world.” After seeing Philadelphia, London did not impress me that much. One is a faithful imitation, although somewhat faded, while the other is the original. I found there your brick houses, your narrow façades, your little tomblike doors, your copper door knockers, and, everywhere, the disregard of architecture and, what is worse, the ignorance of the proper disposition of the rooms and the complete negligence of conveniences. The English taverns are about the same as those found in the good cities of America. People gather there with just as much enthusiasm; they eat beef, which would be excellent if they would only wait a bit and cook it longer, puddings of all and destroy many peoples who used to be civilized. The only happy societies are those that begin like the United States began.

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kinds, cabbage, potatoes, common vegetables that are tasteless owing to the extreme simplicity of their preparation, and the ever-present butter sauce. On the shores of the Thames, as on those of the Delaware River, people get seriously drunk on “porter,”* as well as on heavy, flat Portuguese and Madeira wines that they make yet stronger with the brandy they add to them. However, the good wines of France often caress the English gullets. The phlegm of both people must be a burden for them, since they seek so often to cheer themselves up with strong unsavory liqueurs. When they succeed, the room is filled either with raucous hilarity and the jokes, more coarse than funny, that it inspires, or long political debates, satirical jabs at the government, and declarations against those who are running it. George, Pitt, and the Parliament are even less apt to be spared than Washington, Hamilton, and the Congress.† Except for some very minor differences, the English are the same in the two worlds. There are many reasons why they have maintained their primitive customs. Crowded into their island or separated from civilized men by both the seas and their immense continent, their blood rarely mixes with that of other peoples. Happy because of their government and perhaps owing to their penchant for meditation, they hardly seek to communicate with foreigners. When you are happy at home, you scarcely feel any need to seek anything outside it. While they may not be at all cold, they are quite solemn and thus do not inspire any keen desire to get to know them better. A philosopher may want to know them because he feels they deserve it, but they are too different from superficial men for such people to be drawn to them. Moreover, happy with their lot, they do not find distractions and pleasures necessary, and their opinion of their worth, while perhaps a little exaggerated, often makes them unjust toward others. If they command esteem and even respect because of their character, their pride makes them unappealing and difficult to like as much as they should be. I would like to have an Englishman for a friend, but I would not like to live in an English society. They have * A strong beer, really very good. † Mr. Hamilton, finance minister of the United States, a very witty and wise man, would be capable of soon raising North America to the highest level of political prosperity if he were supported by a spirit of national interest. But the Americans, divided into several states despite their union, have very divergent interests. They are rather insensitive to the general good, and their federation, instead of being useful to them, hampers their progress. It would therefore perhaps be desirable for the president of the United States, the respectable Washington, to add a little more energy to his great qualities.

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too little regard for politeness and graciousness. But to whom am I directing these observations? To you, my friend, who knows England as well as we both know France, who has been living for fifteen years in America, who sees and judges so well. But this matters little, since I have no pretention of offering you new ideas here; I offer them to you simply as my thoughts, and all of my thoughts belong to you. I stayed only a short time in London and returned to France by Calais. [Upon his arrival in Calais, Lezay-Marnésia takes rooms in Pierre Dessin’s inn described by Laurence Sterne in his Sentimental Voyage across France and Italy (1768). He then goes to City Hall, where he is questioned before receiving his passport. Back at Mr. Dessin’s inn, he is shocked by the innkeeper’s greed. LezayMarnésia soon announces his departure for the capital.] I will leave tomorrow for Paris. I hope that I will see shining there the sweet rays of the dawn of liberty; however, as I, the most intense, most ardent of its lovers, grow close to the site of its happy empire, my heart sinks into sadness and pain. I observe sinister omens and fear that the cradle of this liberty so fervently desired will be troubled by violent storms and battered by disastrous tempests. Surely my fears are unwarranted; however, the somber calm I see in some, the wild exaltation I see in others, and the apprehension I note in everyone make me fear the worst. And this bonnet, this horrible blood red bonnet, terrifies me despite myself. Still, my reason reassures me. It tells me that an enlightened people that has the reputation of being kind and sensitive would reject liberty itself if it were necessary to procure this highest of all blessings through criminal acts. It will sense that it would run the risk of not achieving it and of losing it forever if, to gain it, it employed violence and persecution. It will allow itself to be led by wise men who have long devoted their efforts to leading men to happiness by perfecting their reason and by giving them strength, steadfastness, and the love of all the virtues. The fervent prayers of the pure souls will rise to the throne of the Eternal Father and will receive from the Supreme Governor this spirit of wisdom, justice, and order that alone can insure lasting prosperity for nations. In any case, I am hoping that our France will become even happier than your America; it has a greater abundance of means. May it take advantage of them. However, I had scarcely left it when my heart leapt back toward this tranquil America. It will often return to your family that you have wedded

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to my heart by the dearest of bonds in naming your last son after me.* It will often enjoy the sweetest memory of these charming strolls and engrossing conversations that I so frequently and so keenly appreciated on the banks of this beautiful river. How vast nature is there! How rich! How fresh! How beautiful! How greatly it stimulates the imagination! How greatly it nurtures the sensitivity of the soul! Yes, my friend, on these happy shores one is always young at heart, always at peace because he desires nothing more than the facile perfection of the beautiful, superb sites that are so easily rendered fertile by his spade. It calls out to settlers from all reaches of the universe, inviting them to come and bring to life the pleasant illusions of the golden age on the soil where it should exist, if it is still possible for it to exist anywhere. Make some pilgrimages, my friend, I urge you, to Azile,† and visit all the streams that water it, embellish it, and fertilize it;‡ enter those beautiful grottos from which several of them flow; and on the lawns in the form of altars, pour some dishes of milk and scatter some flowers gathered from their banks. Ah! If I could only hope to be the priest of these rustic deities! As hymns I would sing the touching idylls of Gessner and the romances of Florian. Farewell, my friend, my heart is heavy; I glimpsed happiness, and it is with the fondest regret that I recall it; tears are coming to my eyes. Farewell. P.S. Protector, friend of all good and honest settlers, surely you continue to see often the respectable family of M. de Lazière. Remind me to him; offer him my deepest respects. Encourage Madame d’Erbigni not to forget the beautiful Roman pigeons I gave to her. Ask her to feed them some crumbs of bread from her pretty white hand and give them a few kisses in memory of * This is a very touching custom among Americans, and it is worthy of antiquity. They name their children, both first and family names, after people for whom they have a strong, solid, true esteem. America is populated by little Washingtons and even many Lafayettes. M. Audrain resolved that one of his children would be named Adrien Marnésia. This living monument to his feelings for me will establish a fraternal bond between his descendants and mine. May the relationship last forever! † Anagram of my name that I gave to a plantation I had acquired a half league from Fort Pitt. [On Azile, see the introduction, page 21–22.—Ed.] ‡ The word “creek” means the same thing as “stream,” but since natural phenomena are on an incomparably larger scale in the New World than in ours, the American streams are commonly as big as our medium-sized rivers.

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the old shepherd from whom they came;* and when you go to Philadelphia, please see also this excellent M. de Cazenove† who treated me so well during my stay in this city. Assure him of my deepest gratitude. * M. de Lazière, whose name is L—Z, is a first cousin of M. de Villedeuil, one of Louis XVI’s ministers. He was treasurer of the H[ainaut] States and a rich property owner. Suspicions, all too often unjust, and the persecutions that revolutions produce, forced this respectable man to give up his fatherland and seek peace in the American wilderness. He married his daughter, who was blessed with a pretty face, a gentle character, an agreeable and cultivated mind, and the talents that come from a very fine education, to M. d’Erbigni, a young man of great merit, good sense, and courage. The author, upon sending two pigeons to Mademoiselle de Lazière, joined to his present four lines of poetry that are not very good but are probably the best French verse that was ever written on the banks of the Ohio. Here they are: “On the wild shores of the beautiful river / I found two pigeons, I recognized them: / They are, I am quite certain, the pigeons of Venus, / Adored in these parts under the name of Lazière.” [Lezay-Marnésia is referring to Pierre-Charles Laurent de Villedeuil (1742–1828), who was comptroller of finances, then minister of the king. He immigrated to England during the Revolution and did not return to France until after the fall of Napoleon.—Ed.] † M. de Cazenove lived for a long period in the United States, where he was the commercial representative of Holland. I have seen few men who were as worthy of esteem and of a more pleasing demeanor. He seems to have only borrowed the best qualities from the peoples he has frequented and become all the more charming for it. Part of his family is in Lausanne, his brother and sister-in-law Madame de Cazenove d’Arlens. She is the author of several works that show a propitious imagination and that have the rare quality of being written in a simple, spontaneous style. [Born in Amsterdam to French parents, Théophile de Cazenove (1740–1811) wed in 1763 Margaretha Helena Van Jever, the daughter of a wealthy citizen of Amsterdam. At the head of a brokerage and business firm, he collaborated in 1788 with Étienne Clavière and Pieter Stadnitski in a speculative scheme on the American debt that brought him to bankruptcy. Chosen by Stadnitski and three Amsterdam banks to be their agent in the United States, he settled in Philadelphia in March 1790 and speculated on government bonds. Beginning in 1792 he persuaded his employers to invest in the purchase of lands and laid the foundations of what was to become the Holland Land Company. The Dutch bankers he represented acquired more than five million acres in western New York and in northern and western Pennsylvania. Having become an American citizen in 1794, Cazenove returned to Europe in 1799 and became Talleyrand’s secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Théophile Cazenove is the author of a travel journal, Cazenove Journal, 1794: A Record of the Journey of Théophile Cazenove through New Jersey and Pennsylvania, ed. and trans. Rayner Wickersham Kelsey (Haverford: Pennsylvania History Press, 1922). A city in the state of New York, Cazenovia, was named in his honor. Antoine de Cazenove d’Arlens (1748–1822) is the brother of Théophile de Cazenove. Lieutenant colonel in the hussars in the service of France, he resigned his commission in 1792 and settled in Montchoisy near Lausanne where he hosted other émigrés. President of the city of Lausanne from 1801 to 1803, he became a justice of the peace in 1811. Cousin of Benjamin Constant and friend of Mme de Staël, Constance-

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My Memories: To My Children (1851) albert de lezay- marnésia

My entry into the world. Without scarcely any other preparation, I went from this ignorant childhood to life in the world. At fifteen and a half, I was an officer in the dragoons; I saw my first military service in this quality in Brittany. I attended the last assembly of the Estates of this province. The revolutionary volcano that was soon to shake France, and then the whole world, to its foundations, had already exploded there; the spirit of disorder, insubordination, and revolt was rising everywhere: among the people, in the middle classes, and in the army. The war declared against the castles was being waged there by the pillage, murder, and burnings that we were charged to combat with troops who were largely in sympathy with the enemy and very nearly complicit with it. In Rennes, where the Orléans regiment in which I was serving was garrisoned, I saw the Moreaus, the Rapatels, and the Ellevious take, in these tumultuous scenes, the first steps that would lead to the various careers they would later undertake, each in his own domain, with more or less brilliance. Such was the world into which I entered and which was to mold me. I had spent two years immersed in these bloody conflicts, so ill suited to complete my early education, when in 1790 my father, who was a member of the Constituent Assembly, despairing of the survival of the monarchy, resolved to go seek in America a refuge from the savage anarchy that reigned everywhere and to found a French colony there. The idea was good and the expectations judicious; it attracted a lot of attention. My father promoted it with his typical intense enthusiasm, trying to recruit to his project all the men of elevated rank and position he could find who were inclined, like himself, to despair of the future of France given its present state. He succeeded in forming a nucleus of twenty-four people of high distinction who agreed to be associated with his project but only with their names and good Louise de Cazenove d’Arlens (1755–1825), born de Constant-Rebecque, comes from a family close to Voltaire. She married Antoine de Cazenove in 1785. Hostile to the French Revolution, then to Bonaparte, this admirer of England took up residence there between 1802 and 1803. She published seven novels, including Alfrede, or the Warwick Manor (1794), The Orphans of Flower Garden (1798–1799), and Letters from Clémence and Hippolite (1806). She is likewise the author of a journal, Two Months in Paris and Lyon under the Consulate (February–April 1803), published by her great nephew in Paris in 1903.

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wishes, until such a time as the initial success of the undertaking prompted them to become affiliated more seriously. Among them were the names of Lally-Tollendal, Malouet, Mounier, Vichy, et cetera, et cetera, who left to my father the mission of the dove leaving the ark, which was to go in search of land, and the glory that would accrue to the founder if his endeavor was crowned with success. While my father was a clever man and even a good second-rate poet, he hardly had the organizational and administrative skills required to pull off such a great undertaking. Full of enthusiasm for his idea, he behaved as an enthusiast, delegating to the dreams produced by his imagination the accomplishment of his grand colonial project, the most difficult of human enterprises, one that requires the greatest counsel of prudence, reflection, and experience. Here is an example of his colonizing schemes. It was natural for him to try to grow as quickly as possible the population of his colony; for this purpose he appealed to farmers, craftsmen, and their wives to join his venture. He gave priority to the women who were pregnant, since that was a provision for the future; but my father was deeply religious, and for inclusion in the group he required applicants to produce written proof of confession from their priests and marriage certificates, which the applicants provided readily, valid or not, and which he accepted with a very Christian gullibility. So it was that he transported from Paris to America around a hundred assorted individuals who, we realized later at great peril to ourselves, were among the most perverted of the Parisian rabble, several of them having been involved in the bloody scenes that dishonored the cradle of the Revolution. In his religious calculations, before even owning the land on which his colony was to be established and where it would be possible to found a church, my father wanted to have a bishop. He requested and received from the pope a bull in which a Benedictine of the Saint-Denis chapter was named bishop of Gallipolis, which was the name he had given to the future capital of his future colony. This prudent Benedictine, in his pious zeal for his future church and doubtlessly also to avoid the desecrations of which there had been so many examples, took the precaution of spiriting away part of the sacred vessels and vestments of the Saint-Denis church to enrich his own. That also was a provision for the future. So it was that, duped by everyone he had dealt with, either for the purchase of the land on which the colony was to be situated, or for the choice of the men he brought along with him, and his own dupe, he compromised 146

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foolishly whatever had been spared of his great fortune by the fury of the revolutionary demolishers. I leave my regiment to accompany my father. The seat of the colony was to be the confluence of the Ohio and Scioto Rivers, in the backcountry of the United States. My father had purchased twenty-four thousand acres there; it was the size of a small province. When I learned that he had made up his mind, I offered to share the new adventurous life he was beginning. He accepted. I left my regiment and joined him in Paris. I took advantage of the time he was spending on his final preparations to attend the great spectacle that the Constituent Assembly was offering to the world. The memorable scenes I witnessed, the great talents that were developed there, made my thoughts soar. I saw the Mirabeaus, the Maurys, the Tronchets, the ClermontTonnerres, the Robespierres, the Barnaves; and so many others who have either disappeared in the revolutionary storms or risen to greatness in them, many by crime, a few by virtue. We embarked. We embarked in the month of May, 1790, on a poor little brig that had only ever been used to transport coal along the coasts of England, devoid of all the conveniences that are absolutely necessary to compensate for the numerous and various discomforts that are inseparable from a long sea voyage. It was loaded with passengers, a thoroughly incoherent mixture of craftsmen, soldiers, monks, actresses, prostitutes, and rioters. The exasperation produced by all sorts of hardships, as well as the inconveniences of the sea, led to quarrels and brawls that several times became a threat to the security of everyone. The ignorance of our captain regarding lengthy sea voyages had nearly doubled the length of the crossing. Finally, after nine weeks of suffering, the land breeze, bringing us the balsamic fragrance of the continent, signaled its approach. Our arrival in Alexandria in Virginia. It is impossible, when you have not experienced it yourself, to imagine the intoxicating sensation you feel upon breathing this perfumed air after a long sea voyage. You really believe that you are going to take possession of the Promised Land. We entered Chesapeake Bay, which is formed by the mouth of the majestic Potomac, sailed up the river for twenty leagues, and saluted on our way Mount Vernon, the home of General Washington, located on a hill above the right bank of the river. It is a tribute, prompted by a unanimous feeling of respect, that all ships pay to the liberating hero. We finally disembarked in Alexandria, Virginia, a city just arising at that time. We stayed there until my father received from his contact in New York word that we could go to that city. This contact was My Memories

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Colonel Duer, one of the most distinguished men of the United States by his talents and the respect he enjoyed. At that time he was the country’s most important financier. His commercial ventures were enormous and, like nearly all men who give free rein to the inspiration of their genius and to the fascination of their imagination, he collapsed in the end under the weight of his colossal speculations. During my stay in Alexandria, I indulged in the contemplation of the natural surroundings in which everything appeared new and gigantic to me. I strolled along the banks of this river that, twenty leagues from its mouth, is still two miles wide. I wandered in the virgin forests, with their lush vegetation, so bold, so varied, in which the sassafras, benzoin, and liquidambar trees, the Virginia cedars, the balsams, and so many other sweet-smelling plants that are unknown in our countryside are interspersed with huge trees, the tallest being the tulip tree, which would be the king of trees by the beauty of its bearing, by the richness of its branches, if its numerous herb-colored tulips did not blend in with the color of its leaves. But if the flowers lose some of their effect in this respect, they produce, in these warm climes, another that is truly marvelous with the innumerable humming birds that, under a dazzling sun, come flitting about their calyxes and create, by the blaze of their brilliant and varied colors, the scintillating effect of thousands of diamonds, rubies, and sapphires marrying their flames. After a stay of around fifteen days, we left Alexandria. Eight miles from there, we crossed the land on which the city of Washington was to be built, destined to become the capital of the federation and the seat of government. They were just then laying out the streets and squares. We saw in passing Baltimore, Jersey, Philadelphia, and finally New York. Philadelphia, located on the Delaware River, already a very important city, was known for the uniform regularity of its streets, all of them crossing one another at right angles, as well as for its brick houses, with no buildings, gardens, or monuments relieving the monotony. Only Market Street, which divided it into more or less equal parts, had an interesting look with its beautiful covered market in the middle and extending its whole length. Moreover, if you have seen England’s cities, you have seen all the cities in America: the same shapes, same exteriors, same arrangement of the rooms; everything in the manners, practices, and language is reminiscent of an English colony. There were numerous Quakers about, which produced a curious variety in this monotonous population. The most refined coquetry could not have imagined anything more to enhance the natural charm of the women than 148

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the costume of the lady Quakers, so clean and neat, of such elegant simplicity; it adds to the attractiveness of those who are pretty a piquant originality that is shared even by those who are not. Owing to its fortunate location at the mouth of the Hudson (or North) River, which gives it an excellent port, and across from Long Island, which was already flourishing, New York seemed destined to be the queen of the vast commerce that the United States seems more and more likely to develop, given the rich variety of their production and the industrial and entrepreneurial genius of their people. Washington. President Washington was living there at that time, and we had the honor of being introduced to him and, one by one, to the other illustrious principals of the War of Independence, the Adamses, Hamiltons, Jeffersons, Madisons, et cetera, great names that a grateful liberty has transmitted to the admiration of posterity for having given to the world the fine spectacle of a revolution unblemished by crime, of selfless patriotism, and of unsullied glory. Washington was tall and had a cold, solemn manner. He lived in the noble simplicity of the leader of a young, honorable republic, with no splendor but not without dignity, drawing all of his grandeur from himself and from the glorious destiny he had given to his country. The house he occupied was undistinguishable from the other houses inhabited by respectable people: no guard or sentry. He could often be seen riding his horse, followed by a single servant, without any escort other than public respect and veneration. We leave to take possession of our land. Whether in New York or Philadelphia, we spent just the time my father needed to take care of his business, then we set out for the region that his imagination had turned into a Promised Land, and where we were only to find, in reality, bitter disappointment, ceaseless dangers, privations of all kinds, disgust, and misery. We made the trip from Philadelphia to the Blue Mountains without any major difficulties, but not without experiencing the inevitable annoyances for strangers for whom everything was new—manners, habits, language—and who were subjected to a frequently indiscreet and bothersome curiosity. I still have the memory of Harrisburg, I was so struck by its charming position on the pretty Susquehanna River, flowing graciously through the most attractive country. We reached this great mountain chain that separates into two parts, longitudinally, the vast American continent, and which seems to be set by nature between the western and eastern states that human constitutions have My Memories

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claimed to reunite in the same federal bond, but that the nature of things and the diversity of interests will unavoidably separate in a more or less distant time. In this place you could believe you were at Hercules’s columns of this new world. There ceased indeed any trace of civilization; the roads, bad enough up to that point but passable, were now nothing but gaps cut through the steep slopes of the mountain, the way stations only shabby shelters, dirty and smoky, a rest place for hunters and rare travelers who, given the roughness of their appearance and language, seemed to represent the transition from civilized men to savages. Having arrived at Skinner’s, the first station (its strangeness has kept me from forgetting it), we found a sort of hut built out of roughly cut logs, set one on another, the cracks covered with moss mixed with soil in place of mortar. In the middle of one of its rooms was the hearth from which the smoke was escaping, when it could, by a hole cut into the roof. For our dinner we were offered salted dried beef, black bread, and whisky, a detestable grain alcohol. Around a rough-hewn block shaped like a table that served as a pedestal for a filthy lamp, animal skins were spread on the ground. It was the common bed for everyone who showed up. Such was then the state of infancy of civilization in these parts. Fiftyeight years have gone by since that time. If it were possible for me to see them today, I would find the population quadrupled, rich fields in place of the uncultivated lands, flourishing cities, beautiful roads, canals, and railroads connecting the most remote parts of this vast continent, the creative genius of industry enlivening and invigorating these regions I had seen as wilderness. Nonetheless, literature, the arts, the elegance of manners, the urbanity that are the honor and charm of societies are far from having followed the same progression. The dust of the counters, the raucous noise of the workshops frighten away the muses and graces: liberal and polite, they flee the passion for profit and the frantic speculation that dominate life there nearly exclusively. Our arrival in Pittsburgh. We finished the laborious crossing of these mountains and arrived in Pittsburgh, formerly Fort Duquesne, when the French were in possession of Canada. At that time the population of this young city was no larger than two thousand souls. It is located at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers, which mix their waters to form the Ohio, aptly named the Beautiful River. Nature seems to have taken pleasure in lavishing its gifts on this privileged region: a temperate climate, which must have become more and more so as civilization reduced the over150

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abundance of forests and waters, combines with virgin land to multiply the most varied productions; enormous mines of coal, the fuel of industry, are visible at ground level. So many precious advantages, combined with the location of this city between two gorgeous rivers that bring products from the vast regions they water, then carry them off again with those of its own industries, on the Ohio and the Mississippi, to the populations of the vast regions that these rivers wind through for around fifteen hundred leagues, call it to the grandest of commercial and industrial destinies that are normally reserved for a Mediterranean city. We embarked on the Ohio on large flat boats, crudely built with planks of white wood that were taken apart upon arrival, travel on the river being only downstream at that time. Today numerous steamboats constantly traveling up and down the Mississippi and the Ohio, and in the opposite direction from New Orleans to Pittsburgh, have given a most lively look to the once nearly deserted shores of these great rivers by the multitude of houses and flourishing cities that cover them. We stopped in Marietta. We were forced to suspend our trip and stop at Marietta, a village located at the convergence of the Ohio and the Muskingum Rivers, about five hundred miles from Pittsburgh and still half this distance from our property on the Scioto, which we could not yet claim, since the savages still controlled all the territory between the Great Lakes and the Ohio River. We had to await the results of an expedition that the American government had sent under the orders of General St. Clair to expel the Indians and protect the settlers. But this little army—three thousand men strong, recklessly engaged in these vast solitudes, a veritable labyrinth that offered no means of mounting an attack against the natives, who knew all the positions, all the twists and turns, and for whom each tree and each dip in the ground offered shelter or the possibility of ambush—was entirely destroyed. This disaster put an end to our hopes of creating a colony. Nearly all of our companions decided to go to New Orleans. As for us, we spent the winter in Marietta, in blockhouses from which we could only stray a few hundred steps without being exposed to bullets from savages waiting in ambush. I am still moved at the memory of the terrible spectacle I witnessed one day when I was walking alone in these age-old forests, lost in thought, scarcely concerned with the danger. In the neighborhood of Marietta may be seen one of those enigmatic monuments whose origin or age could not be determined by science, nor My Memories

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what became of the people who built them, people whose regular constructions, resembling in many respects our modern system of fortifications, in addition to various art objects that have been found there, are testimony to their advanced civilization. I brought back a very curious one: it was a stone about a foot and a half long, shaped in the form of a scepter, round at both ends and rather artistically sculpted. Unfortunately I lost it. I was headed in this direction when, crossing over one of these trees felled by the hand of time and a constant obstacle in this wilderness, I almost stepped on a man lying at my feet. He was stripped naked; blood streamed from wounds in his chest, and his head, horribly disfigured by the gashes inflicted by the tomahawk and by his scalp being ripped off, pointed to a very recent exploit by a savage. I had heard the rifle shot without paying much attention to it, thinking that it could be one of our own people practicing shooting squirrels, as they often did. I recognized this unfortunate fellow as one of the Americans I sometimes accompanied on their long hunts from which they brought back furs, in which there was a lucrative trade. Hunts. We went on these hunts in groups that were large enough to defend ourselves if we met a party of Indians. The only supplies we brought along were powder, bullets, hatchets, knives, biscuits, and whisky. We would spread out along the streams to wait for wild animals that came to drink there; bears, stags, small deer, buffalo or wild oxen, a kind of small wildcat, wild turkeys sometimes, but rarely beavers, whose colonies were leaving these areas whose calm was beginning to be troubled by the arrival of men. In the evening we made shelters from bark stripped from trees; the slain animals were cut up, and their flesh, roasted over the bivouac fire by hanging the pieces from ropes that we turned like spits, was our food. The skins, after serving as beds, were placed along the river as we moved up it for great distances until we had exhausted our supplies. Then we loaded the furs, the product of the hunt, either into pirogues built with strips of bark artistically strung together or into dugouts, and we thus made our way down the river after ten or fifteen days, sometimes more, of this adventurous life. Visits by Indians. We spent our time in this manner, without any other forms of entertainment than occasional visits from Indians belonging to tribes who came to renew with the leader of the French recently arrived on this shore the friendship that their fathers had formed with our nation when it still owned Canada. We received, among others, the visit of a young queen of the Chickasaw tribe, accompanied by her father, some women, and a troop of young Indian men. Her clothes consisted, in hot weather, of a sort of 152

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Indian tunic; when it was cold, she covered herself completely, from head to toe, with a wool blanket, held together by a belt around the hips. On her feet she wore elegant moccasins embroidered with various colored fabrics. Her pierced earlobes fell in long fleshy rings on her shoulders, which is a general practice among the Indians; the remainder of the ear was trimmed all around with small silver rings. She was small in stature, with the litheness that comes from freedom of movement; her copper-colored face, crowned with smooth raven-black hair that she sometimes adorned with leaves, flowers, and feathers, was not lacking a certain charm, at the very least that which is inseparable from youth and novelty. In any case, this royalty was not the object of any obvious homage. The young Indians who were part of her retinue, all of them more or less bizarrely tattooed, considered that the more they disfigured themselves by smearing their faces—sometimes entirely, sometimes in part, sometimes in bands—with vermillion, black, and blue, the more finely adorned they were. They brought us as presents young bears, turkeys, and other game that we served to them prepared by a very good cook that we had brought from France, and that they devoured in their rather disgusting manner. They entertained us greatly with their various games, which included races, games with balls, and dances they executed with marvelous dexterity. You cannot imagine, without having seen it, the power and skill with which they threw their tomahawks or war clubs and hit targets placed far away. We enlivened their games with prizes that consisted of a few coins and other trifles: the queen received her present, a silver tumbler, with transports of joy and evidence of such gratitude that one could have easily taken advantage of it in the most extreme ways. One day we found, among these visitors, the savage that M. de Lafayette had brought with him to France and who, unable to get used to the spectacle and pleasures of civilization, preferred to return to his forests. He had retained from the education they had tried to give him in France the ability to play the flute, and he charmed his compatriots with it. We saw him again in Philadelphia, where he was part of an Indian delegation sent to negotiate a treaty with the American government. He died there. I was greatly annoyed on one of these occasions. We were around thirty leagues from Niagara, and I had an extreme desire to visit the falls, one of the great marvels of the vast American nature. Our Indian visitors offered to take me there and back. For them, hospitality is sacred. I could have complete confidence in their word. In addition to the excitement that this intriguing destination lent to my desire to make this trip, it was stimulated My Memories

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yet more by this original and novel manner to do it. I begged and beseeched my father to give me this satisfaction, but my entreaties could not overcome his resistance. This regret has accompanied me my whole life. That is how we spent our time in Marietta, reduced to live, so to speak, the same life as these savages amid the sparse population of Americans, true savages themselves who, with no life or resources elsewhere, had pushed forward into these regions like lost sentinels of civilization who were seeking to make a life in this wilderness. Any hope of founding a colony being lost, we left this wilderness and returned to Pittsburgh. Any hope of a founding a colony being lost, as soon as the Ohio was open for navigation, we returned to Pittsburgh with a small number of servants. The news out of Europe was such that we were led to believe that we could never return to France, so my father decided to settle in Pittsburgh. My father buys a little piece of property in the area. He bought a small property of four hundred acres two miles from the city, on the pleasant, fertile shores of the Monongahela. He named it “Asilum.” A family of farmers that had remained attached to us was charged with putting it into production: the soil was virgin and the location attractive. It could become a nice retreat for a philosophical farmer, even if it were only to wait for the outcome of the bloody anarchy that was tearing up France. But my father, owing to his age, to his inexperience with difficulties of life that were so new to him, and to his indecisive character, was incapable of finding the energy demanded by such a resolute course of action and by circumstances that nothing had prepared him for. In addition, our financial resources were nearly exhausted; no funds, no news was reaching us from France, and it was doubtful that in such circumstances his banker in New York would continue to extend the credit he had granted him until then. Understandably preoccupied with these grave considerations and frightened by his isolation in a country whose habits, manners, and language were completely foreign to him, my father sold his property for almost nothing, and we went back to Philadelphia. Return to Philadelphia. Our sinister predictions were fulfilled only too well; the great expense occasioned by the long trip we had just made and the payment of a few debts contracted during our previous stay in Pittsburgh had consumed nearly all the proceeds of the sale of Asilum. The news from France was more and more threatening; there was no more hope for the slightest help from there, and, to make matters worse, the banker recommended to us was bankrupt, owed an enormous amount of money, and was in prison. What were we to do and become in such a situation, foreigners in this greedy, 154

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pitiless land, penniless, with no credit, and no way to pay our debts, as modest as they were, and the cost of our return to Europe? My father threatened with prison. I urged my father in vain to find some way to get us out of this alarming plight, either by appealing to foreign residents or to Frenchmen living in this city who could not fail to be touched by his situation: useless entreaties! Neither the threats of creditors nor the prospect of prison could shake him. In his futile resignation, he simply said, “I’ll go to prison, I’ll die there, and I’ll finish a miserable life that has already lasted too long!” Nonetheless I became convinced that the threats were going to have their effect; I thus resolved to seek by myself a way to extricate my father from this horrible position. I did not allow myself to be discouraged by the natural thought that I, a poor child with no present or future, could not hope to obtain the respect and consideration denied to a man of the position and esteem of my father. I make an attempt to extricate him from his financial difficulties. I still had hope, however: I remembered that during our first stay in Philadelphia, a young Italian noble, count Andreani, had shown much interest in me. He was very close to the Bingham family, then the richest and most powerful in the city, and wielded considerable influence with them. It occurred to me to reveal to him the horrible position of my father and implore him to help us or at least give us advice. This inspired idea appeared to me to be a way of salvation, and overcoming my natural shyness I went bravely to find him, encouraged by the idea that whatever the result of this action inspired by filial devotion, it would, at the very least, provoke interest. “Sir,” I said to him, “although you barely know me, I have come to ask you a favor, an enormous favor; it is to save the life and honor of my father. A noble idea brought him to leave France, where he held a high position and possessed a great fortune. Deceived in all his hopes, the dupe of scoundrels of all stripes, his own dupe, after wandering two years in this foreign land which he had adopted as his own, the owner of immense properties that he had acquired and that, by the force of circumstances, he could not even approach, after having exhausted all of his resources and not being able to hope for any help from France at this time, he is threatened with prison for lack of the means to pay a few modest debts contracted to provide for our keep and that of our servants. My father’s pride leads him to prefer this extreme fate to the humiliation of asking for help. Mine has given me other counsel: it suggested to me the idea of confiding our troubles in you with the hope that you might My Memories

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deign to sympathize with us. My father needs 10,000 livres to pay his debts and give him the means to return to Europe; this is the sum I have come to beg you to help him procure, whether by your personal assistance or by your kindly intervention on our behalf. I am quite aware, Sir, of the audacity of my action; I know that owing to my youth I can give no legal guarantee to the generous man who would take pity on our misfortune. But, Sir, one may be of age with respect to honor at a younger age than that set by law, and it is this guarantee on my honor that I offer you with the following means of reimbursement. My family has a relationship with the family of Sir William Pulteney, one of the wealthiest individuals of England. His only daughter, Miss Pulteney, and my sister, the countess de Beauharnais, companions during their youth at the Abbey of Pentemont, are the closest, most intimate of friends; I offer to the person who is willing to lend my father the 10,000 livres he needs, with my personal IOU for this sum, a draft on William Pulteney, payable, in his absence, by his daughter, who is personally in possession of the immense fortune of her mother—a draft that, with or without the signature of my father, who knows absolutely nothing of my actions, will be accepted without fail. Now, Sir, tell me if you can help us.” Overcome with emotion and from the effort I had had to make to overcome my shyness, I broke into tears. The count, also greatly moved and after praising my filial piety, told me that I could count on his support and asked me to wait until the following day for the results of the steps he was going to take. Surprising success. I withdrew full of hope, and indeed the next day I received a note in which I was invited to come receive the 10,000 livres that were to save my father from the terrible fate he was facing. You can imagine my feelings of joy and gratitude toward the benefactor who was trusting so generously in my good faith! I lay F 10,000 at my father’s feet. I signed the agreed-on draft. I wrote to Sir Pulteney, explaining what had motivated the boldness of my actions, and I triumphantly brought back the treasure that would save us. It was high time, for my father had just received a notice informing him that if he had not paid his creditors in five days, he would be put under arrest by the authorities. He showed it to me with inexpressible anguish; I threw myself to his knees, saying, “Be not worried, Father, for here are the funds you need to pay all of your debts as well as our return trip to Europe.” At the so completely unexpected sight of the money and the bills I was presenting to him, he drew himself up to the full height of his six feet that the extreme thinness of his body and 156

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members seemed to double, and with a very severe tone and look, he said to me, “Where have you gotten all this money, Sir? I hope that you have not forgotten that I would prefer prison with all its horrors to any means of rescue that would violate the most scrupulous delicacy.” I told him about what I had dared to do and the generosity of count Andreani who, on my word alone, with no legal value, had been willing to obtain this money for me and serve as a guarantee. I said that I thought he, my father, would be willing to validate by his signature the draft that I had signed and added that I would consider this day to be among the finest of my life if he deigned to give me his approval. We went together to express our gratitude to our benefactor, and, after having taken care of everything that our circumstances required, we left this disappointing country that would have left me with nothing but bitter memories if it had not been for the indelible memory of the great Washington and the other founders of American liberty that I had had the honor to meet as a young man.

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C H R ONOLO G Y

1735 August 24: born in Metz, Claude-François-Adrien de LezayMarnésia, the son of François-Gabriel de Lezay-Marnésia and Charlotte-Antoinette de Bressey. He would later cherish the memory of a boyhood spent in the country: “From my earliest youth, it was the prairies, uplands, fields, woods, and waterways that spoke to me directly. Raised in the provinces, the love of the countryside was the air that I breathed. Surrounded by newly established gardens, I, too, became a gardener; the companion of my cheerful labors was a little farm boy of my age. . . . Those days of innocence and happiness went by so swiftly yet I still preserve the memory of them. It has stayed with me in cities and encampments. During toils, troubles, and the study of warfare, pastoral visions came back again to enchant me.” Essai sur la nature champêtre [Essay on Pastoral Nature] (Paris: Prault, 1787), 4–5. 1747 February 26: commissioned as an officer in the king’s infantry regiment. He is promoted to ensign on August 25, 1755. 1759 February 24: promoted to captain. July 15: publishes “Maraudeur” [“Plunderer”] in the Encyclopedic Journal (50–56). The article would be reproduced in Diderot’s Encyclopedia as “Voleur” [“Thief ”] (1765). 1763 For the Académie française’s Prize for Eloquence, Lezay-Marnésia writes in praise of Sully, the great statesman of Henry IV’s reign. 1766 Publication of his first work: L’Heureuse famille, conte moral [The Happy Family, Moral Tale] (Geneva and Nancy: Leclerc, 1766). March 3: marriage with the marquise Anne-Marie-Claudine de

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1767 1768 1769

1772 1775

1777

1778

Nettancourt-Vaubecourt at the church of Saint-Sauveur in Verdun. Lezay-Marnésia’s uncle, Louis-Albert, Bishop of Évreux, officiates; his uncle-in-law, Jean de Nettancourt d’Haussonville, the marquis de Vaubecourt and commandant of the Citadel of Verdun, is also present. Admitted to the Nancy Royal Society of Belles-Lettres. He gives his inaugural address on October 20. April 5: birth in Moutonne of first child, Adrienne-GabrielleFrançoise-Claudine. Knighted in the Order of Saint-Louis. That same year, LezayMarnésia’s hostility to Choiseul’s military reforms obliges him to resign from the army, leaving with the rank of lieutenant general. The reforms concern troop and officer numbers, as well as the recruitment, training, and organization of regiments. The exact nature of Lezay-Marnésia’s disagreement with Choiseul is not known, but it seems that the widening of the segment of society from which officers were recruited played a major part in his opposition: Lezay-Marnésia saw a military career as the preserve of the nobility and perceived this reform as an attack on the prerogatives of his order. After resigning, he spends his time between the Château de Nettancourt (part of his wife’s dowry), his residence in the Faubourg Saint-Germain (Rue des Petits-Augustins), and the Château de Moutonne, near Lons-leSaulnier. August 9: birth in Moutonne of second child, Adrien-PaulFrançois-Marie. June 5: birth in Moutonne of third child, Albert-Madeleine-Claude. Becomes a member of the Academy of Lyon. He translates the second edition of John Coakley Lettsome’s The Naturalist’s and Traveller’s Companion (1744–1815) into French with the title Le Voyageur naturaliste, ou Instructions sur les moyens de ramasser les objets d’histoire naturelle et de les bien conserver. His translation is published in Paris and Amsterdam. Knighted in the Order of Saint George of Burgundy. March 12: elected by a unanimous vote to the Academy of Besançon. He would become a full member in January 1778, then serve as president during 1779. February 16: death in Lons-le-Saunier of François-Gabriel de LezayMarnésia. Lezay-Marnésia becomes provost of Grandvaux, holding the title until its abolition in 1792. That same year he publishes the Illustrations

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Essai sur la minéralogie du bailliage d’Orgelet en Franche-Comté, lu dans la séance publique de l’Académie des Sciences et des Arts de Besançon, le 5 décembre 1778 [Essay on the Mineralogy of the Bailiwick of Orgelet in Franche-Comté] (Besançon and Paris: Charmet and Mérigot Jeune, 1778). Lezay-Marnésia assists the Reverend Martin Sherlock with the translation into French of his Letters from an English Traveler and New Letters. Initiated into the Loge des Neuf Sœurs in Paris. Voltaire, Franklin, and John Paul Jones had been initiated in 1778. Lezay-Marnésia would remain a member until 1785. Publication of the first edition of Plan de lecture pour une jeune dame [Reading Program for a Young Lady] (Paris: Prault). Lezay-Marnésia becomes a member of La Sincérité, a masonic lodge in Besançon. Death of Charlotte-Antoinette de Lezay-Marnésia. From his uncle, Lezay-Marnésia receives the Château de Saint-Julien, where he and his wife establish their household. Publication by Prault of Le Bonheur dans les campagnes [Happiness in the Countryside]. June 17: marriage of Adrienne de Lezay-Marnésia with Count Claude de Beauharnais. Their daughter, Stéphanie-Louise-Adrienne de Beauharnais (1789–1860), would be adopted by Napoleon I and given the title “Princesse française.” On April 8, 1806, she would wed Charles Frederick, grand duc de Baden (1786–1818). Publication of the Essai sur la nature champêtre [Essay on Pastoral Nature] (Paris: Prault). Named to the presidency of the Mont-Jura district. At the Château de Saint-Julien, Lezay-Marnésia founds a masonic lodge for his servants, with himself as its “master.” Writes a ballet héroïque titled Apelles and Campaspe, which is set to music by Laborde, Piccinni, and La Cépède (this text is published in the 1800 edition of Les Paysages, ou essai sur la nature champêtre [The Landscapes, or Essay on Pastoral Nature], by Louis in Paris). Publication of the second edition of Le Bonheur dans les campagnes [Happiness in the Countryside] (Neufchâtel and Paris: Royez). April 27: publication of the allegorical poem “Les Lampes” [“The Lamps”] in the Journal of Paris (vol. 118), in honor of Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Buffon (this text is published in the 1800 edition of The Landscapes, or Essay on Pastoral Nature). Lezay-Marnésia finances the publication of Mémoire au peuple français [Memoir to the French People], written by his friend Joseph-Antoine-Joachim Cerutti.

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1789 August 3: foundation of the Scioto Company. August 16: LezayMarnésia is elected deputy in the Estates-General, representing the nobility for the bailiwick of Aval. September 4: in a speech to the Chamber of Deputies, Lezay-Marnésia endorses the royal prerogative of suspensive veto. The text of his speech is published in 1789 in the format of a four-page document titled Idée d’un député du bailliage d’Aval sur la permanence de l’Assemblée nationale [Idea of a Deputy from the Bailiwick of Aval on the Permanence of the National Assembly]. June 25: joins the deputies for the Third Estate. October 1789: Lezay-Marnésia moves into the Hôtel Royal in Paris (Rue Neuve Saint Marc). September 3–October 20: he participates as a member in the Comité des Recherches, which seeks to unmask conspiracies against the public order. November 9: in a letter to his wife, he envisages moving to New England. December 10: he opposes a motion calling for the death penalty for those who export wheat. December 24: he opposes actors being allowed to hold public office. 1790 January 14: Lezay-Marnésia purchases twenty thousand acres for himself and one thousand acres for his daughter. January 15: he buys a further one thousand acres, and another one hundred on February 11. January 24: first meeting of the Society of the Twenty-Four. The Society would hold nine meetings in total through February 10, 1790. February 5: in a speech at the National Assembly he calls for the repeal of the decision to divide the kingdom into departments. April 19: Lezay-Marnésia signs the declaration in favor of Catholicism as the state religion. May 26: resigns from the National Assembly. May 25: Nautilus of Scarborough sets out to sea at Le Havre. Among the 119 passengers onboard are Lezay-Marnésia and his younger son, Albert, as well as 60 people hired by the marquis. June 4: death at Lons-le-Saunier of the bishop of Évreux, Lezay-Marnésia’s uncle. July 29: Nautilus of Scarborough makes landfall at Alexandria, Virginia. Mid-August: Lezay-Marnésia travels to Philadelphia and New York, where Washington, Adams, Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison receive him. September: Lezay-Marnésia and his son travel to Pittsburgh and embark on the Ohio River downstream. Early November: arrival in Marietta (present-day Ohio). Lezay-Marnésia sets up his household there, waiting for the land acquired at the mouth of the Scioto by the Society of the Twenty-Four to be surveyed and cleared. November 15: writes first of the Letters Written Illustrations

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from the Banks of the Ohio, addressed to the chevalier de Boufflers. The same day, he writes a letter of resignation to the Society of the Twenty-Four, announcing his decision to found an independent colony. 1791 Spring: leaves for Pittsburgh, where he purchases a property called “Azile” on the banks of the Monongahela. August 16: death of Adrienne de Beauharnais at Saint-Julien. November 2: second of the Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio sent from Pittsburgh to Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. November 4: General Arthur St. Clair defeated at the Battle of the Wabash by a coalition of Native American tribes. The land bought by Lezay-Marnésia and the other members of the Society of the Twenty-Four, situated right in the middle of the conflict zone, is now inaccessible as long as the war continues. December: having sold Azile, Lezay-Marnésia travels to Philadelphia with his son and Pierre Audrain. December 15: writes the third of the Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio. The letter is addressed to Adrien de Lezay-Marnésia from Philadelphia. 1792 January: in Philadelphia, Lezay-Marnésia and his son learn of Adrienne de Beauharnais’s death the previous summer. March: in grave financial trouble, Lezay-Marnésia narrowly avoids debtors’ prison after Albert intervenes on his behalf with the count Paolo Andreani. April 24: writes to his wife from Philadelphia to tell her of his departure for London and his decision to move to Switzerland without traveling through France. May: embarks at Philadelphia with his son. After twenty-four days at sea, they arrive in London where they are guests of the Pulteney family. June 20: Contrary to what he had written to his wife, Lezay-Marnésia arrives in Paris with his son. They reside at the Hôtel d’Orléans, 23 Rue de Richelieu. August 15: the department of the Jura lifts the order to have Lezay-Marnésia’s property seized. August 20: writes to his wife announcing his decision to return to his property in the Jura. August 22: Adrien de Lezay-Marnésia is united with his father and brother in Paris. September 11: LezayMarnésia informs his wife of negotiations to cede some of his land. These negotiations lead to the sale of what remains of his property in Moutonne, Présilly, and Grandvaux. September 13: Lezay-Marnésia and his son swear an oath of loyalty to the Constitution as decreed by the National Assembly. September 16: they obtain a passport to leave

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Paris. November 18: Lezay-Marnésia arrives at Saint-Julien accompanied by his sons. January: Lezay-Marnésia falls out with his sons. Adrien and Albert leave their father in order to travel to Paris shortly after Louis XVI’s execution. Lezay-Marnésia lives at Saint-Julien, nearly destitute. March: Lezay-Marnésia is arrested in Saint-Julien. Imprisoned for two weeks at the town hall of Lons-le-Saunier, he is transferred to Besançon on March 28. He is held at the Capucins until June 15 then at Fleury Prison. June 30: death of Lezay-Marnésia’s wife while exiled in London. Her name would be finally struck from the list of émigrés on August 23, 1801. October 20: Lezay-Marnésia is set free after having obtained a certificate of civic virtue from the local council of Saint-Julien and the revolutionary committee of Orgelet. He returns to Saint-Julien. September 4: the Directory seizes power in the coup of 18 Fructidor, beginning a new wave of repression against Royalists and émigrés. Lezay-Marnésia is struck from the list of émigrés by the Jura department, but not by the Haute-Saône, where he holds property. He immigrates to Nyon, then to Lausanne. He is a frequent guest of the Neckers at the Château de Coppet, where he is reunited with his eldest son. While in Switzerland Lezay-Marnésia prepares the second edition of the Reading Program for a Young Lady, adding several texts (including the “Lettre à Monsieur Audrain, à Pittsbourg, sur le voyage de retour” [“Letter to Monsieur Audrain, Merchant in Pittsburgh”]. It would be published in Lausanne in 1800. March 15: Adrien de Lezay-Marnésia’s wife, Françoise-Renée, petitions the government in favor of her husband. April 22: despite Josephine de Bonaparte’s intervention, the Directory decides that the names of Lezay-Marnésia and his sons must remain on the list of émigrés in accordance with the Law of Suspects (passed September 17, 1793). November 10: the order is given to seize Lezay-Marnésia’s property. Late 1799: he writes Voyage au pays de Vaud [Travel to the Canton of Vaud], published in the second edition of the Reading Program for a Young Lady (Lausanne, 1800). February: writes a novella, L’Héroïsme de la charité [The Heroism of Charity] (published as part of Reading Program for a Young Lady).

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March 21: the national property administration orders that the sale of his property be adjourned. April: he returns to Besançon. November 9: Lezay-Marnésia dies in utter poverty, without finishing his last work, L’Action des principes de la religion et de la véritable philosophie [The Action of the Principles of Religion and True Philosophy]. His name is struck from the list of émigrés on June 18, 1801.

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NO T E S

editor’s note and acknowledgments 1. J.-M. Quérard, La France littéraire, 10 vols. (Paris: Firmin Didot frères, 1833), 5:287. 2. C. F. A. de Lezay-Marnésia, Lettres écrites des rives de l’Ohio [Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio] (1792; Paris: Prault, 1800). Prault’s edition is dated year IX (September 23, 1800–September 22, 1801). In certain bibliographies the Letters are dated 1801 rather than 1800. 3. See “Letter to Monsieur Audrain” in the appendix, page 139. 4. On Brissot and French immigration to America, see page 9–10. 5. On Edmond-Charles Genet’s mission in the United States, see Harry Ammon, The Genêt Mission (New York: W. W. Norton, 1973), and François Furstenberg, When the United States Spoke French: Five Refugees Who Shaped a Nation (New York: Penguin, 2014), 44–53. 6. Suzanne Desan, “Transatlantic Spaces of Revolution: The French Revolutions, Sciotomanie, and American Lands,” Journal of Early Modern History 12, no. 6 (2008): 502. 7. The Northwest Territory was a region created in 1787 by the United States where slavery was forbidden. The Northwest Ordinance defined the regulations of

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administration and set the rules of admission for its constituent parts. The Northwest Territory comprised the present-day states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin and dissolved in 1803 when its southeastern region was admitted to the Union as the state of Ohio. 8. See Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio, page 74. 9. On this subject, see page 61–63. 10. François-René de Chateaubriand, “Préface de la première édition d’Atala, 1801” [“Preface to the First Edition of Atala, 1801”], in Œuvres romanesques et voyages [Novels and Travel Narratives], ed. Maurice Regard (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1969), 18. 11. On the literary posterity of Chateaubriand in travel narratives, see Dominique Jullien, Récits du Nouveau Monde: Les voyageurs français en Amérique de Chateaubriand à nos jours [Tales from the New World: French Travelers in America from Chateaubriand to the Present] (Paris: Nathan Université, 1992). 12. See “Letter to Monsieur Audrain” in the appendix, page 138–39. 13. André Beaunier, for example, described Lezay-Marnésia rather quickly in the following terms: “A poet, a philanthropist, and a loony.” See La Jeunesse de Joseph Joubert [The Youth of Joseph Joubert] (Paris: Perrin, 1918), 283.

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introduction 1. Letter from Albert de Lezay-Marnésia to his mother, January 10, 1792, Philadelphia, quoted by Élisabeth Bourget-Besnier in Une famille française sous la Révolution et l’Empire: La famille de Lezay-Marnésia [A French Family During the Revolution and the Empire: The Lezay-Marnésias] (Paris: printed by author, 1985), 52. 2. See New Prospectus of the Scioto Company in the appendix, page 131. 3. On Jean-Jacques Duval d’Éprémesnil, see note 3, page 183. 4. Several extracts from the Prospectus pour l’établissement sur les rivières d’Ohio et de Scioto en Amérique [Prospectus for the Colony on the Ohio and Scioto Rivers in America] (Paris: Prault, 1789) are reproduced in the appendix. 5. Jocelyne Moreau-Zanelli, Gallipolis: Histoire d’un mirage américain au XVIIIe siècle [Gallipolis: The Story of an American Mirage in the Eighteenth Century] (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2000), 99. On the Scioto Company, see also Theodore Belote, The Scioto Speculation and the French Settlement at Gallipolis (New York: Burt Franklin Reprint, 1971); Theodore T. Belote, “Selections of the Gallipolis Papers,” Quarterly Publications of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio 2 (April–June 1907): 39–92; Hélène Fouré-Selter, Gallipolis, Ohio: Histoire de l’établissement de cinq cents français dans la vallée de l’Ohio à la fin du XVIIIe siècle [Gallipolis, Ohio: The Story of the Establishment of Five Hundred French in the Ohio Valley at the End of the Eighteenth Century] (Paris: Éditions Jouve, 1939); and Suzanne Desan, “Transatlantic Spaces of Revolution: The French Revolutions, Sciotomanie, and American Lands,” Journal of Early Modern History 12, no. 6 (2008): 467–505. 6. Moreau-Zanelli, Gallipolis, 147. 7. Extract from Bulletin général des journaux de Madame de Beaumont [Madame de Beaumont’s General Bulletin of

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Newspapers], no. 43, February 5, 1790, quoted by Desan in “Transatlantic Spaces of Revolution,” 480. 8. In the aftermath of Louis XIV’s death and in the face of looming bankruptcy, the regent Philippe d’Orléans called on the Scottish economist John Law (1672–1729) to settle the financial crisis. Law instituted a “system” carrying his name and resting on two pillars. The first was the General Bank, created in 1716 on rue Quincampoix in Paris. Law introduced an entirely novel system: his shares were payable by one-quarter cash and the rest in “state papers.” The General Bank became the Royal Bank in December 1718 with banknotes henceforth guaranteed by the king. The second pillar of Law’s system was the Mississippi Company, soon renamed the Perpetual Company of the Indies, whose objective was the colonization of Louisiana, over which it had held a twenty-five-year monopoly. In 1719 the Company of the Indies lent the Crown 1.2 billion livres and arranged to refund the public debt at 3 percent interest. Share prices skyrocketed, reaching levels entirely unrelated to their real counterparts. Investors scrambled in the offices of the rue Quincampoix, fighting for shares they planned to resell once their price had risen. His system’s success was so great that Law decided to merge the Company of the Indies and the Royal Bank. Beginning in early 1720, his system began to falter when large shareholders, followed by many smaller ones, asked to cash in their shares for metal money. Shares rapidly lost their value, investors panicked, and riots broke out in Paris. Law only narrowly escaped being lynched and was forced to flee to Venice. In October 1720 the order was given to suspend the value of banknotes, marking the end of Law’s system. This episode in financial history should be distinguished from the Scioto Company’s project. On the one hand, the failure of Law’s system did not result from the dis-

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honesty of its creator, but rather from the excessive speculation it engendered. On the contrary, Joel Barlow and his associates deceived the clients of the Scioto Company by leading them to believe they were buying property titles in due form, when in fact they were merely purchasing preemption rights on land that was still owned by the U.S. Congress. On the other hand, while the rue Quincampoix investors lost their fortunes, many of the rue Neuve des Petits Champs buyers risked their lives in addition to their savings by settling in the Northwest Territory. Despite these differences, both the Company of the Indies and the Scioto Company attracted clients from all strata of society and met with great success both in and out of Paris; they embellished the picture they painted of Louisiana and the Scioto region, respectively, in order to persuade buyers, describing Louisiana as a land of plenty where gold and silver mines were waiting to be exploited. A 1790 pamphlet drew a parallel between the two companies, describing the Scioto project as a “New Mississippi”: Le Nouveau Mississippi, ou les dangers d’habiter les bords du Scioto, par un patriote voyageur [The New Mississippi, or the Dangers of Inhabiting the Banks of the Scioto, by a Peripatetic Patriot] (on this text, see note 27, page 168). On Law’s failure, see Edgar Faure, La Banqueroute de Law, 17 juillet 1720 [Law’s Bankruptcy, July 17, 1720] (Paris: Gallimard, 1977); Antoine Murphy, John Law: Economic Theorist and Policy-Maker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); and Thomas M. Kavanagh, Enlightenment and the Shadows of Chance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 67–104. 9. In order to give a flavor of this phenomenon, a poem by Andrieux (“Les Français aux bords du Scioto” [“The French on the Banks of the Scioto”], 1790) is given in the appendix along with an extract from a satirical text (“Le Parlement de Paris établi au Scioto” [“The Paris High Court on the Scioto”], 1790) and a passage taken from a

letter written in New York by a client of the Scioto Company (“Lettre écrite par un Français émigrant sur les terres de la Compagnie du Scioto” [“Letter Written by a Frenchman Immigrating to the Lands of the Scioto Company”], 1790). 10. On Anacharsis Cloots, see Albert Soboul, “Anacharsis Cloots, l’orateur du genre humain” [“Anacharsis Cloots, the Orator of the Human Race”], Annales historiques de la Révolution française 52, no. 239 (1980): 29–58. 11. On this subject, see François Labbé, Anacharsis Cloots, le Prussien francophile: Un philosophe au service de la Révolution française et universelle [Anacharsis Cloots, the Prussian Francophile: A Philosopher at the Service of the French and Universal Revolution] (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999). 12. Anacharsis Cloots, Chronique de Paris [Chronicle of Paris], March 15, 1790, in Écrits révolutionnaires, 1790–1794 [Revolutionary Writings, 1790–1794], ed. Michèle Duval (Paris: Éditions Champ libre, 1979), 7. 13. Ibid. 14. Cloots, Chronicle of Paris, August 5, 1790, in ibid., 34. The last part of this quotation is an allusion to La Fontaine’s fable “The Crow and the Fox.” See Complete Fables of Jean de La Fontaine, trans. Norman Shapiro (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 5–6. 15. Camille Desmoulins, Révolutions de France et de Brabant [Revolutions of France and Brabant], no. 15, March 8, 1790, quoted by Moreau-Zanelli in Gallipolis, 224. 16. Desmoulins, Révolutions de France et de Brabant, no. 17, March 22, 1790, quoted by Roland-Guy Bonnel in Éthique et esthétique du retour à la campagne au XVIIIe siècle: L’œuvre littéraire et utopique de LezayMarnésia, 1735–1800 [Ethics and Aesthetics of the Return to the Countryside in the Eighteenth Century: Lezay-Marnésia’s Literary and Utopian Works, 1735–1800] (New York: Peter Lang, 1995), 281. 17. In issue 35 of Révolutions de France et de Brabant, a satirical engraving depicts

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Madame d’Éprémesnil against a backdrop that is both luxurious and louche. Swooning and half-undressed, she is falling into the arms of an opulently dressed man who stands next to an unmade bed. The caption makes the context even more explicit: “Madame d’Éprémesnil regretfully takes leave of M . . . d . . .’s arms, and readies herself to set sail for the Scioto.” This engraving is reproduced by Desan in “Transatlantic Spaces of Revolution,” 489. 18. This series of four articles by an anonymous author appeared in the Spectateur national [National Spectator], on January 27, 28, 29, and 30, 1790. These “observations” strongly contradicted the promises of prosperity made in the Prospectus, demonstrating that the future colony’s economic opportunities had been greatly exaggerated and launching a broadside against the directors of the Scioto Company, guilty of overcharging for land not yet paid for. It is not here a question of France’s internal politics but of the interests of the Company’s clients— the need to protect them from the falsehoods of American speculators. On this series of articles, see Moreau-Zanelli, Gallipolis, 218–20. 19. On the Gallo-American Society, see Robert Darnton, “The Craze for America: Condorcet and Brissot,” in George Washington’s False Teeth: An Unconventional Guide to the Eighteenth Century (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), 127–28. 20. On this subject, see Desan, “Transatlantic Spaces of Revolution,” 479. 21. Jacques-Pierre Brissot, Nouveau voyage dans les États-Unis de l’Amérique septentrionale, fait en 1788, 3 vols. (Paris: Buisson, 1791). This text was translated by Maria Soceanu Vamos and Durand Echeverria under the title New Travels in the United States of America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964). 22. On Brissot’s relations with the main figures of the Scioto Company, see Moreau-Zanelli, Gallipolis, 75–76.

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23. Brissot, Nouveau voyage, 2:424. Thomas Hutchins is the geographer in question. 24. Ibid., 2:424–25. 25. See Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio, page 61–63. 26. Jacques-Pierre Brissot, Le Patriote français [The French Patriot], April 13, 1790, quoted by Moreau-Zanelli in Gallipolis, 228. 27. Le Nouveau Mississippi, ou les dangers d’habiter les bords du Scioto, par un patriote voyageur [The New Mississippi, or the Dangers of Inhabiting the Banks of the Scioto, by a Peripatetic Patriot] (Paris: JacobSion, 1790). According to a handwritten note in Bibliothèque nationale’s catalog, a certain Roux is the purported author, a sergeant major in the Prémontrés district of Paris. On this subject, see Bonnel, Éthique et esthétique du retour à la campagne, 470. 28. Desan, “Transatlantic Spaces of Revolution,” 493. 29. A pamphlet titled Je m’en contrefouts [I Don’t Give a Brass Farthing] describes a similar crossing, although in a wholly different style. Returning from America after the storming of the Bastille, the Père Duchesne encounters a boatload of departing emigrants including Lezay-Marnésia, d’Éprémesnil, and Mounier. Père Duchesne insults them profusely before inviting them to go “fuck themselves in the Ohio.” See Mont-Lucy, Je m’en contrefouts (Paris: Imprimerie du Père Duchesne, 1792). 30. Anon., “Lettre de M. de V. à M. le C. D. M. à l’occasion des Observations publiées sur l’établissement du Scioto,” Bibliothèque nationale, Pb 3898 bis. (Paris, 1790). 31. William Playfair, “Lettres et observations adressées à M. l’Abbé Aubert, au sujet de l’extrait d’un écrit intitulé: ‘Le Nouveau Mississippi ou les dangers d’habiter sur les bords du Scioto’ ” [“Letters and Observations Addressed to Monsieur l’Abbé Aubert on the Subject of the Extract of an Article Titled: ‘The New Mississippi or the Dan-

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gers of Inhabiting the Banks of the Scioto’ ”], quoted by H. Fouré-Selter in the appendix to Gallipolis, Ohio, 200–204. This text appeared in Affiches, annonces et avis divers [Assorted Advertisements, Announcements and Notices], no. 102, April 12, 1790. 32. The Nouvelles du Scioto, ou relation fidèle du voyage et des infortunes d’un Parisien qui est arrivé dans ces pays-là, où il était allé pour s’établir [News from the Scioto, or a Faithful Account of the Voyage and Misfortunes of Parisian Who Traveled to Those Parts to Settle There] (Paris: Lenoir et Leboucher, 1790), signed by a certain Monsieur d’Allemagne, and the “Lettre écrite par un Français émigrant sur les terres de la Compagnie du Scioto” [“Letter Written by a Frenchman Immigrating to the Lands of the Scioto Company”], May 23, 1790, penned by an anonymous author aimed to dissuade others from immigrating to the Northwest Territory. D’Allemagne and the author of the “Letter” tell a tale of the countless woes that befell them and decide to return to France after having renounced their projects to settle in America. 33. François-René de Chateaubriand, Mémoires d’outre-tombe [Memoirs from Beyond the Grave] (1848), ed. Jean-Claude Berchet, 4 vols. (Paris: Le Livre de poche, 1989), 1:407–8. 34. Lezay-Marnésia’s forebears had been ennobled in the thirteenth century. One of Claude-François-Adrien’s ancestors, Hugo de Lezay, participated in the Crusade to the Holy Land in 1240, and the family’s coat of arms is displayed at the Salle des Croisades at Versailles. The Lezay-Marnésias were noted for their feats of arms: ClaudeFrançois-Adrien’s grandfather ClaudeHubert de Lezay-Marnésia was brigadier general in the Royal Army and was made marquis in 1721 in recognition of his twenty-seven years of service. His son, François-Gabriel, also attained the rank of brigadier general. Members of the ancient martial nobility, the Lezay-Marnésias were also the owners of multiple estates in the

Jura (Moutonne, Saint Julien, Présilly, Vernantois, etc.). On the eve of the Revolution, they were one of the richest families in the Franche-Comté. 35. On Happiness in the Countryside, see Bonnel, Éthique et esthétique du retour à la campagne, 233–94. 36. In “Les Lampes” [“The Lamps”], which appeared in the Journal of Paris in 1788, Lezay-Marnésia sings the praises of Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Buffon. 37. On Lezay-Marnésia’s links with Boufflers, see note 1, page 181. 38. Actes des Apôtres [Acts of the Apostles] 36 (1790): 15–16, quoted by Bonnel in Éthique et esthétique du retour à la campagne, 333. 39. C. F. A. de Lezay-Marnésia, letter quoted by Bourget-Besnier in Une famille française sous la Révolution et l’Empire, 25. 40. Ghislain de Diesbach, Histoire de l’émigration, 1789–1814 [The History of Emigration, 1789–1814] (Paris: Grasset, 1975), 455. 41. See Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio, page 41. 42. See “Letter to Monsieur Audrain” in the appendix, page 143. 43. François-Marie Arouet Voltaire, Philosophical Letters: Or, Letters Regarding the English Nation (1734), ed. John Leigh, trans. Prudence L. Steiner (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2007), 12–13. 44. On Benjamin Franklin obtaining “celebrity status” in eighteenth-century France, see Antoine Lilti, Figures publiques: L’invention de la célébrité (1750–1850) [Public Figures: The Invention of Celebrity, 1750– 1850] (Paris: Fayard, 2014), 87–95. 45. François Furstenberg, When the United States Spoke French: Five Refugees Who Shaped a Nation (New York: Penguin, 2014), 241. 46. Darnton, “Craze for America.” 47. Philippe Roger, The American Enemy: The History of French AntiAmericanism, trans. Sharon Bowman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005),

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1–29. Buffon sought to demonstrate that the American climate was as inimical to the physical growth of animal species as to the development of intellectual faculties among American Indians. On this question, see note 4, page 179–180. 48. For Aigle-Lys’s coat of arms, the Society planned to use an eagle carrying a lily in its mouth accompanied by the motto “Shall they know any limits?” On this subject, see Moreau-Zanelli, Gallipolis, 194. 49. In 1782 Lezay-Marnésia joined the Loge des Neuf Sœurs [Nine Sisters Lodge], a Masonic lodge in Paris. It is there that he met Chamfort, Delille, and Fontanes. The lodge, which Nicholas Hans has called the “UNESCO of the Eighteenth Century” (in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 97, no. 5 [1953]: 513–34) owed its reputation to the famous men who belonged to it, particularly Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin. In 1784 Lezay-Marnésia became a member of La Loge de la Sincérité in Besançon before creating a Masonic lodge for his servants at the Château de Saint-Julien in 1787, where he served as “venerable master.” Among the members of the Scioto Company, Duval d’Éprémesnil and the marquis de Vichy also participated in Freemasonry. On Lezay-Marnésia and Freemasonry, see Bonnel, Éthique et esthétique du retour à la campagne, 119–38. 50. Lezay-Marnésia suggests to d’Éprémesnil that they exercise caution in choosing Aigle-Lys’s future inhabitants: “Let us spread the message to others, but choose them well. We need men driven by the hatred of vice, propelled by the love of virtue and the simple life.” Letter from Lezay-Marnésia to M. d’Éprémesnil, May 26, 1790, quoted by Moreau-Zanelli in Gallipolis, 193. 51. Lezay-Marnésia describes a Parisian soirée that he sees as prefiguring those he will attend in America: “Madame d’Éprémesnil is also completely determined to set sail in September. In her salon I saw a sample of our soirées to come in Newpat-

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rie. One of her daughters played the pianoforte, another sang duets in a charming voice with Monsieur de Paray who will make the voyage along with Madame d’Éprémesnil.” Letter from Lezay-Marnésia to his wife, March 6, 1790, in ibid., 194. 52. Letter from Lezay-Marnésia to his wife, November 9, 1789, in ibid., 191. 53. Ibid. 54. On St. Clair’s defeat, also known as the “Battle of the Wabash” and the “Battle of a Thousand Slain,” see note 75, page 171–172. 55. See Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio, page 83. 56. Letter from Lezay-Marnésia to d’Éprémesnil, August 7, 1790, quoted by Moreau-Zanelli in Gallipolis, 198. 57. In the third volume of his Lettres, Crèvecœur recounts a conversation between a Frenchman, an Englishman, an Irishman, a Scotsman, and a German who decide to found a colony named “Socialburg” together. “Origine de l’établissement de Socialburg, situé au nord-ouest du comté d’Albany, dans la colonie de New York” [“On the Origin of the Settlement of Socialburg, Situated North-West of the County of Albany in the Colony of New York”], in Lettres d’un cultivateur américain [Letters from an American Farmer], 3 vols. (Paris: Cuchet, 1787), 3:56–96. See the critical introduction and translation by Ed White, “Introduction to and Translation of Hector St. John de Crèvecœur’s ‘Origin of the Settlement at Socialburg,’ ” Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 7, no. 1 (2009): 235–41. 58. Lezay-Marnésia’s hostility toward Americans is often in evidence in the Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio; see in particular his critique of their permanent “fickleness” on page 67. 59. On the differences between Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and Lezay-Marnésia’s projects for French colonies in America, see note 8, page 184.

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60. André Morellet, Mémoires de l’abbé Morellet, de l’Académie française, sur le dixhuitième siècle et sur la Révolution (1821), ed. Jean-Pierre Guicciardi (Paris: Mercure de France, 2000), 359. 61. See Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio, page 75. 62. “These banks are the land we were promised and whose inhabitants you should lead down the path of prudence and happiness.” Letter from Lezay-Marnésia to d’Éprémesnil, May 12, 1790, quoted by Moreau-Zanelli in Gallipolis, 198. 63. See My Memories in the appendix, page 146. 64. Ibid. 65. The land put on the market by the Scioto Company was situated just over ninety miles south of Marietta. 66. Letter from Lezay-Marnésia to d’Éprémesnil, August 7, 1790, Alexandria, quoted by Moreau-Zanelli in Gallipolis, 289. 67. Born in England, William Duer (1743–1799) moved to New York in 1768. He helped write the New York State constitution and served in the Continental Congress of Philadelphia through 1778. He became one of the most significant suppliers for the American army and took part in much land speculation, notably that of the Ohio Company in the Northwest Territories. Duer served as assistant to Alexander Hamilton, the first secretary of the U.S. Treasury, but was forced to step down in 1790 after using his position for personal gain. After this disgrace he supervised (unsuccessfully) the Scioto Company’s attempt to acquire officially the lands whose preemption rights it held. In 1792 his attempt to speculate in American bonds prompted the first financial panic to occur in New York. Imprisoned for his debts, he died on parole. On Duer, see Robert Jones, The King of the Alley: William Duer, Politician, Entrepreneur, and Speculator, 1768–1799 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1992). 68. See My Memories in the appendix, page 149–50.

69. These extracts are reproduced in the appendix. 70. Despite his efforts to denounce the Scioto Company’s falsehoods, the author admits that he does wish for the arrival of new immigrants: “I feel that I am weak and self-serving like other men; sometimes I catch myself wishing that the Company attract many of my compatriots to the Scioto—provided that I know none of them!” (“Lettre écrite par un Français émigrant sur les terres de la Compagnie du Scioto”), 25. 71. Lezay-Marnésia’s writings had the intended effect. Moreau-Zanelli, in Gallipolis, 345, cites the account of an expatriate who, in June 1791, imputes to LezayMarnésia’s influence the arrival in Philadelphia of 120 French immigrants headed for the Scioto. 72. Born in Sutton, Massachusetts, Rufus Putnam (1738–1824) began his military career in the Seven Years’ War, later making a name for himself during the American Revolution. In 1786 he founded the Ohio Company of Associates with General Benjamin Tupper and representatives of several counties of Massachusetts, intending to acquire and settle land in the Northwest Territory. Chosen as director of the Ohio Company, on April 7, 1788, Putnam founded Marietta, the first settlement in the Northwest Territory, at the confluence of the Ohio and the Muskingum. 73. Civil and criminal lieutenant for the bailiwick of Haguenau in Alsace, JeanJoseph de Barth (1726–1793) followed a path not dissimilar to Lezay-Marnésia’s, being elected deputy to the National Assembly before joining the Society of the Twenty-Four and then immigrating to the United States. He died during the yellow fever epidemic that ravaged Philadelphia in 1793. 74. See My Memories in the appendix, page 151. 75. In order to put a stop to tribal incursions on the region’s settlements, George Washington ordered General

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Arthur St. Clair to lead an offensive during the summer of 1791. The military objective was to attack Kekionga, the capital of the Miami tribe (situated near present-day Fort Wayne, Indiana). However, due to a lack of supplies, St. Clair was forced to remain at Fort Washington (present-day Cincinnati) until October. At the beginning of the expedition St. Clair had nearly two thousand men under his command (around six hundred soldiers in the first and second infantry regiments, eight hundred conscripts, and six hundred members of the militia) and was accompanied by around two hundred civilians (children, washerwomen, and prostitutes). This was the greatest military force to be assembled since the War of Independence. But by November desertions and sickness had reduced the expedition to 1,120 members, civilians included. At dawn on November 4, 1791, St. Clair’s men were surprised by one thousand warriors led by Little Turtle, chief of the Miami people, and Blue Jacket, chief of the Shawnee. After hours of combat St. Clair gave the order for the survivors to flee and thus to abandon the wounded, the camp, and their provisions. Of St. Clair’s 920 men, 632 were killed and 264 wounded. As for the two hundred civilians, almost all were massacred. The American Indian forces, on the other hand, suffered only twenty-one killed, with only forty men wounded. St. Clair’s rout at the Battle of the Wabash represents the U.S. Army’s greatest defeat at the hands of the American Indians. It also signaled the definitive end of Lezay-Marnésia’s colonial projects on the banks of the Scioto, situated at the heart of the area of conflict. The United States did not take control of the region until Anthony Wayne’s victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers on August 20, 1794. On the Battle of the Wabash, see Spencer C. Tucker, Almanac of American Military History, 4 vols. (Santa Barbara, CA: ABCCLIO, 2012), 1:411–12; and Allan W. Eckert, That Dark and Bloody River: Chron-

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icles of the Ohio River Valley (1995; New York: Random House, 2011), 558–69. 76. “Azile” is an anagram of LezayMarnésia’s surname. 77. See My Memories in the appendix, page 154. 78. Letter from Lezay-Marnésia to d’Éprémesnil, June 21, 1791, Azile, quoted by Bonnel in Éthique et esthétique du retour à la campagne, 385. 79. On de Lassus de Luzières, see Carl J. Ekberg, A French Aristocrat in the American West: The Shattered Dreams of De Lassus de Luzières (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2010). 80. On Tardiveau, see Howard C. Rice, Barthélémi Tardiveau: A French Trader in the West (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1938). On Pierre Audrain, see Warren J. Wolfe, “The First American Citizen of Detroit: Pierre Audrain, 1725–1820,” Detroit in Perspective (Winter 1981): 45–47. On Jean-Baptiste-Charles-Lucas des Pintreaux, see John F. McDermott, “John B. C. Lucas in Pennsylvania,” Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine 21 (September 1938): 209–30; and Hugh G. Cleland, “John B. C. Lucas, Physiocrat on the Frontier,” Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine 36 (March 1953): 1–15. See also note 105, page 174–75. 81. Lezay-Marnésia is a character in Brackenridge’s satirical novel Modern Chivalry: Containing the Adventures of Captain John Farrago and Teague O’Regan, His Servant (1792–1815). Azile and its inhabitants are described in chapters 14 and 15 of the fourth volume, which are reproduced in the appendix of this volume. 82. See My Memories in the appendix, page 154. 83. Ibid., page 154. 84. This letter is reproduced in the appendix. 85. On the subject of Duer’s bankruptcy, see note 67, page 171. 86. Albert de Lezay-Marnésia, Mes souvenirs: À mes enfants [My Memories: To My

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Children] (Blois: E. Dézairs imprimeur, 1851), 22. 87. On the publication history of the Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio, see the Editor’s Note and Acknowledgments in this volume. 88. As evidenced by his acrimonious split with the members of the Society of the Twenty-Four, Lezay-Marnésia’s irascibility is confirmed in an observation made by his son: “My father belonged to the school of philosophers for whom charity extends to all of humankind but all too often excludes those closest to them. Such was Mirabeau, the people’s friend, one of the leaders of that school, who, all the while espousing the tenets of tenderest love for humanity as a whole, was the cruelest and most selfish tyrant to his family, as to all of his subordinates—brooking no argument that might wound his thin-skinned pride. Such was my father too.” Lezay-Marnésia, Mes souvenirs, 23. 89. “We departed carrying our scant luggage like poor pilgrims taking only the bare necessities for a fortnight; without a fixed plan or aim, without knowing where our footsteps would lead in the midst of these immense and bloody upheavals of society and with the disfavor attached to everything that was noble and honest. . . . The Republic had raised its banner on the scaffold where Louis XVI had just been sacrificed and spread terror throughout France.” Ibid., 24. 90. “The Fragments of the Action of the Principles of Religion and True Philosophy” published by Lezay-Marnésia under the title “Pensées littéraires, morales et religieuses” [“Literary, Moral, and Religious Reflections”], in Plan de lecture pour une jeune dame [Reading Program for a Young Lady] (1784; Lausanne: A. Fischer and Luc Vincent; Paris: Louis, 1800), 150–98. 91. In order to finance his American projects Lezay-Marnésia sold off a number of his assets, using property at Grandvaux to pay for investments made on his daughter’s behalf and convincing his wife to sell

some of her own land. He made F 200,000 in total from the sales, half of which he advanced, hoping to reimburse the other with the F 60,000 of income he counted on making from his land in Scioto. Upon returning to France in 1792, he was obliged to sell most of his remaining assets. On this subject, see Bonnel, Éthique et esthétique du retour à la campagne, 382. 92. See the Editor’s Note and Acknowledgments. 93. The Abbé Prévost is just one example of those authors who wrote abundantly on America without ever visiting it. On the role of America in three successive discourses—novel, journal, history—and Prévost’s creation of an “American Arcadia” myth see Jean Sgard, “Prévost et l’espérance américaine” [“Prévost and the American Hope”], in L’Amérique des Lumières, partie littéraire du colloque du bicentenaire de l’indépendance américaine (1776–1976) [Enlightenment America, Literary Section of the Colloquium on the Bicentenary of American Independence (1776–1976)] (Geneva: Droz, 1977), 51–59. See also Guillaume Ansart, “Imaginary Encounters with the New World: Native American Utopias in Eighteenth-Century French Novels,” Utopian Studies 11, no. 2 (2000): 33–41. 94. At the end of the eighteenth century, a round trip between France and the United States generally took around seventy-five days. On this subject, see the introduction to René Rémond’s Les États-Unis devant l’opinion française, 1815–1852 [The United States in the Eyes of French Opinion, 1815– 1852] (Paris: Armand Colin, 1962), 19–30. 95. Durand Echeverria, Mirage in the West: A History of the French Image of American Society to 1815 (1957; New York: Octagon Books, 1966), 43. 96. Brissot’s reading of Crèvecœur’s Letters from an American Farmer had a determinant influence on his travels in America and on the account that he published upon his return. On this subject, see Howard C. Rice, Le Cultivateur américain, étude sur l’œuvre

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de Saint John de Crèvecœur [The American Farmer, Essay on the Works of Saint John de Crèvecœur] (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1933), 207. 97. On this subject, see Guillaume Ansart, “From Voltaire to Raynal and Diderot’s Histoire des deux Indes: The French Philosophes and Colonial America,” in America Through European Eyes: English and French Reflections on the New World from the Eighteenth-Century to the Present, ed. Aurelian Craiutu and Jeffrey C. Isaac (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009), 71–89. 98. “Individuals may well come and go, but it seems that philosophy does not travel, and the philosophy of one people is little suited to another. The reason for this is obvious, at least with regard to distant countries. There are scarcely more than four sorts of men who make extended voyages: sailors, merchants, soldiers, and missionaries. Now, the first three classes should hardly be expected to provide good observers, and as for those of the fourth, even if they were not subject to the prejudices of their station, as are all the others, it has to be believed that being occupied by the sublime vocation that calls them, they would not voluntarily devote themselves to research that appears to be a matter or pure curiosity and that would distract them from the more important labors to which they have dedicated themselves.” JeanJacques Rousseau, “Discourse on Inequality,” in The Major Political Writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ed. and trans. J. T. Scott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 138–39. 99. This passage of Albert de LezayMarnésia’s memoirs, My Memories, is reproduced in the appendix. 100. On the French image of American Indians during this period, see Gordon M. Sayre, Les Sauvages Américains: Representations of Native Americans in French and English Colonial Literature (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997).

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101. In the first of the Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio Lezay-Marnésia references playwrights who staged American Indians. The marquis alludes in particular to Manco-Capac, premier ynca du Pérou [Manco-Capac, First Inca of Peru] (1763) by Le Blanc de Guillet, and to Hirza, ou les Illinois [Hirza, or the Illinois] (Paris, 1767) by Edme-Louis Billardon de Sauvigny. Among the eighteenth-century plays that take place in North and South America are also Montézume [Montezuma] (1702), a lost tragedy by Louis Ferrier de la Martinière, Les Mariages de Canada [The Canadian Weddings] (1734) by Alain-René Lesage, Alzire ou les Américains [Alzire or the Americans] (1736) by Voltaire, and La Jeune indienne [The Young Indian Girl] (1764) by Chamfort. 102. See Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio, page 49. 103. Brissot relates the testimony of the doctor Antoine François Saugrain (1763– 1820) on the subject of the des Pintreaux family: “The whole family seemed happy: the husband worked, went to sell provisions in town, and, to relax, read books from a small library which delighted him. He had arrived in Pittsburgh with 50 louis, had, for 25 louis, bought two or three hundred acres where there was a small cabin and a garden, and through his work he had ameliorated both.” Nouveau voyage, 1: 383. 104. Friedrich-Melchior Grimm, Correspondance littéraire, philosophique et critique par Grimm, Diderot, Raynal, Meister, etc. [Literary, Philosophical, and Critical Correspondence by Grimm, Diderot, Raynal, Meister, etc.], ed. Maurice Tourneux, 16 vols. (Paris: Garnier Frères, 1877–82), 7:127. 105. In “John B. C. Lucas, Physiocrat on the Frontier,” 3, Hugh G. Cleland underlines many inconsistencies between Lezay-Marnésia’s story and what we know of the true Monsieur des Pintreaux: LezayMarnésia changes the name, the birthplace, and the social origin of des Pintreaux’s wife (Anne Sebin), and the date of the death of

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des Pintreaux’s father is also different. “Extant documents contradict almost every detail of his story,” concludes Cleland (3). John F. McDermott reached a similar conclusion in his study on Jean-BaptisteCharles-Lucas des Pintreaux’s life: he declared that Lezay-Marnésia’s account “is in the main a literary indulgence.” See “John B. C. Lucas in Pennsylvania,” 211. 106. See Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio, page 112. 107. Furstenberg, When the United States Spoke French, 407. 108. Ibid. 109. The five men are Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, FrançoisAlexandre-Frédéric de La RochefoucauldLiancourt, Louis-Marie de Noailles, Médéric-Louis-Élie Moreau de Saint-Méry, and Constantin-François de Chassebœuf, comte de Volney. 110. In July 1797 Talleyrand read a text titled “Essai sur les avantages à retirer des colonies nouvelles dans les circonstances présentes” [“Essay on the Advantages to Be Gained from New Colonies in Present Circumstances”] to the members of the French Institute. It outlined a project in favor of establishing French settlements in the Mississippi valley, without slave labor, peopled exclusively by volunteer colonists. On this topic, see Furstenberg, When the United States Spoke French, 353–54. 111. See Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio, page 66. The fact that LezayMarnésia addresses himself to Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, while admitting in the second of the Letters not to know him personally, can be explained by the colonial projects that the author of Paul and Virginia had also imagined in America. In 1778 SaintPierre wrote an essay for the minister Vergennes describing a colony that France could construct to the west of the English colonies, which never came to fruition. In 1789 he may have been involved in a new colonial project in America: according to Henri Carré, d’Antraigues and Duval

d’Éprémesnil sought to convince SaintPierre to help them found a colony in the United States. Lezay-Marnésia was not, then, the first to recognize Bernardin de Saint-Pierre as a forerunner and as a support for his own colonial design. On this subject, see Moreau-Zanelli, Gallipolis, 69–70; and Henri Carré, Les Émigrés français en Amérique, 1789–1793, extrait de la Revue de Paris du 15 mai 1898 [French Immigrants in America, 1789–1793, Taken from the Revue de Paris of May 15, 1898] (Paris: Chaix, 1898), 4. 112. On utopia in eighteenth-century French literature, see Guillaume Ansart, Réflexion utopique et pratique romanesque au Siècle des Lumières: Prévost, Rousseau, Sade [Utopian Reflection and the Novel in the Enlightenment: Prévost, Rousseau, Sade] (Paris: Lettres Modernes Minard, 1999). 113. On this subject, see Capucine Lebreton, “Esthétique et politique dans La Nouvelle Héloïse” [“Aesthetics and Politics in The New Heloise”], in Rousseau et la Philosophie, ed. André Charrak and Jean Salem (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2004), 117–39. 114. On this subject, see Benjamin Hoffmann, “Bâtir des châteaux en Amérique: Utopie et retraite dans les Lettres écrites des rives de l’Ohio (1792)” [“Building Castles in America: Utopia and Retreat in Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio”], Dix-Huitième siècle 48 (2016): 311–24. 115. See Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio, page 81. 116. Ibid., page 83. Lezay-Marnésia gives similar recommendations to the nobility in Le Bonheur dans les campagnes [Happiness in the Countryside] (1785; Paris: Royez, 1788), 165–94. 117. On this subject, see Roland-Guy Bonnel, “Sur les rives de l’Ohio: La cité utopique de Lezay-Marnésia” [“On the Banks of the Ohio: Lezay-Marnésia’s Utopian City”], Lumen: Travaux choisis de la Société canadienne d’étude du dix-huitième siècle 13 (1994): 43–59.

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118. Added to the Dictionary of the French Academy in 1762, the word “utopia” is defined as a “plan for an imaginary government.” The 1798 edition adds the following precisions: “Typically refers to a plan for an imaginary government where everything is perfectly regulated for the common happiness, as in the fantastic country of Thomas More’s Utopia.” On the semantic evolution of this term, see Hans-Günter Funke, “L’évolution sémantique de la notion d’utopie en français” [“The Semantic Evolution of the Concept of Utopia”], in De l’utopie à l’uchronie: Formes, significations, fonctions [From Utopia to Uchronia: Forms, Meanings, Functions], ed. Hinrich Hudde and Peter Kuon (Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1988), 19–37. 119. Raymond Ruyer, L’Utopie et les utopies [The Utopia and Utopias] (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1950), 9. 120. This affinity is reflected especially in a collection of narratives published by Charles Georges Thomas Garnier titled Voyages imaginaires, Songes, Visions, et Romans Cabalistiques [Imaginary Voyages, Dreams, Visions, and Cabbalistic Novels], 39 vols. (Amsterdam and Paris: Rue et Hotel Serpente, 1787–89), where imaginary worlds belonging to an as yet undiscovered elsewhere arise. On this collection, see the three studies by Nathalie Kremer, Géraldine Henin, and Agnieszka Teodorczyk, collected under the title “Voyage au bout de l’imaginaire” in Les Genres littéraires et l’ambition anthropologique au XVIIIe siècle: Expériences et limites [Literary Genres and Anthropological Ambition during the Eighteenth Century: Experiences and Limits], proceedings of the conference held at Université François Rabelais de Tours, June 18–19, 2003, essays collected and presented by Alexandre Duquaire, Nathalie Kremer, and Antoine Eche (Louvain: Peeters, 2005), 135–63. 121. Fredric Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other

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Science Fictions (London: Verso Books, 2007), 23. 122. See Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio, page 73. 123. Ibid., page 79–80. 124. In Thomas More’s Utopia, the shape of the city of Amaurot is “almost square,” and its houses are identical and decorated with gardens. See The Yale Edition of the Complete Works of St. Thomas More, ed. J. H. Hexter and E. J. Surtz (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1965), 64–66. 125. On Ledoux and utopia, see Autour de Ledoux: Architecture, ville et utopie [Around Ledoux: Architecture, City, and Utopia], proceedings of the conference held at the Saline royale d’Arc-et-Senans, October 25–27, 2006, ed. G. Chouquer and J.-C. Daumas (Besançon: Presses Universitaires de Franche-Comté, 2008). On Ledoux and Lezay-Marnésia, see Bonnel, “Sur les rives de l’Ohio,” 54. 126. This is also the form that inspired John Wood, the Younger (1728–1781) to construct the Royal Crescent in Bath. On this subject, see J. Carré, “Les Origines du Crescent et l’urbanisme thermal britannique,” [The Origins of the Crescent and British Thermal Urbanism] in Deux mille ans de thermalisme: Économie, patrimoine, rites et pratiques [Two Thousand Years of Balneology: Economy, Heritage, Rituals, and Practices], proceedings of the conference held at Royat (Puy-de-Dôme), collected by D. Jarrassé (Clermont-Ferrand: Presses Universitaires Blaise Pascal, 1996), 117–28. 127. Fabien Gaveau, “Surveillance et police en utopie: De la tournée au regard” [“Surveillance and Policing in Utopia: From the Rounds to the Watch”], in Autour de Ledoux, 85. 128. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (1975; New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 174. 129. The Commenders are a group given the mission by Lezay-Marnésia of obtaining

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information about the behavior of citizens in order to find the clearest examples of virtue and to celebrate them publicly during an annual meeting. It is easy to see how their role could be converted to a police function, with praise giving way to reprobation and punishment. On the Commenders, see Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio, pages 94–95. 130. Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, L’Architecture considérée sous le rapport de l’art, des mœurs et de la législation [Architecture considered in Relation to Art, Mores, and Legislation], 2 vols. (Paris: printed by author, 1804), 1:2. 131. Ibid., 1:3. 132. “I would prefer, Sir, that your republic be on an island. An asylum of peace, of harmony, and of happiness should only admit very few travelers. . . . Good people need only themselves, and wicked people only seek them out to corrupt or deceive them.” See Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio, page 64. 133. Raymond Trousson, Voyages aux pays de nulle part: Histoire littéraire de la pensée utopique [Travels to Nowhere: A Literary History of Utopian Thought] (Brussels: Éditions de l’Université de Bruxelles, 1999), 79. 134. See Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio, page 90. 135. Ibid., page 63–64. 136. Ibid., page 94–95. 137. See Trousson, Voyages aux pays de nulle part, 14. 138. “The rich in your republic will be happier than those who are less well-off; they will be able to do more good.” See Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio, page 94. 139. Edward L. Surtz, “Thomas More and Communism,” PMLA 64, no. 3 (1949): 556. 140. “They claim that property comes into existence when men have separate homes with their children and wives. From this self-love is born; for in order to increase

the wealth or dignity of his offspring or leave him heir to his goods, every man becomes publicly rapacious if he is strong and fearless, or avaricious, deceitful, and hypocritical if he is weak. When self-love is destroyed, only concern for the community remains.” Tommaso Campanella, The City of the Sun: A Poetical Dialogue, trans. and ed. D. J. Donno (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 39. 141. “Physiocracy was much more than an economic theory: it rested on a particular understanding of the human mind, of the role of reason and imagination so that, as well as expanding their doctrine into the social and political realms, physiocrats also tackled culture, attempting to define an aesthetic.” Liana Vardi, The Physiocrats and the World of the Enlightenment (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 3. 142. On this subject, see Bonnel, Éthique et esthétique du retour à la campagne, 235. 143. See Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio, page 83. 144. Ibid., page 84–85. 145. Founded in 1793 at the instigation of Antoine Omer Talon and the viscount Louis-Marie de Noailles, with the support of Robert Morris, an American merchant and speculator, and John Nicholson, comptroller-general of Pennsylvania, Asylum was situated on the banks of the Susquehanna River in the state of Pennsylvania and intended for the reception of refugees from France and Saint-Domingue. During the height of its activity, the colony counted two hundred inhabitants in fifty or so houses and boasted a theater, chapel, and several stores and inns. Larger and more impressive than the others, one abode waited in vain for the arrival of Marie Antoinette and her children, for whom the citizens had built it. In 1802, when Napoleon authorized the return of the émigrés to France, the vast majority of the inhabitants of Asylum decided to cross back over the

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Atlantic and the colony declined rapidly. Although it never brought its founders the considerable profits they had expected, the colony nonetheless allowed many French men and women to survive until their return to France. Among Asylum’s distinguished guests were Talleyrand, the duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, and LouisPhilippe d’Orléans. On Asylum, see Furstenberg, When the United States Spoke French, 227–45. 146. Volney is targeting Crèvecœur and Lezay-Marnésia in this passage, where he tells of his visit to Gallipolis in July 1796: “Such is the situation of the colony projected on the Scioto; which is a little remote from the poetic felicity chaunted by the American Farmer, and the delights of the future capital of the Empire of the Ohio prophesied by another writer. If the authors of such romances could hear the panegyrics bestowed on themselves on the spot, they would surely be disgusted with those trite rhetorical talents, that in the present instance have destroyed the comfort of five hundred families.” ConstantinFrançois de Chassebœuf, comte de Volney, View of the Climate and Soil of the United States of America (1803; London: J. Johnson, 1804), 364. 147. See Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio, page 76. 148. For example, see the use of the future in Isaiah 2:4: “He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not lift up sword against nation, and never again will they learn war.” 149. See Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio, page 87. 150. Ibid., page 86. 151. The Vale of Tempe, through which the Pineiós River flows, is situated in Thessaly between Mount Olympus and Mount Ossa. Virgil, Horace, and Ovid all considered it a place of extreme beauty.

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152. See Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio, page 77. 153. Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future, xii–xiv. 154. François-René de Chateaubriand, Atala, in Atala/René (1801), trans. Irving Putter (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1952), 17. 155. On utopia and the French Revolution, see François Hincker, “L’effet d’utopie de la Révolution française” [“The Utopian Effect of the French Revolution”], Matériaux pour l’histoire de notre temps [Materials for the History of Our Time] 9, no. 1 (1987): 2–7; and Stéphanie Roza, Comment l’utopie est devenue un programme politique: Du roman à la Révolution [How the Idea of Utopia Became a Political Program: From the Novel to the Revolution] (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2015). 156. Aurelian Craiutu and Jeffrey C. Isaac, “Introduction,” in Craiutu and Isaac, eds., America Through European Eyes, 7–8. 157. Jeremy Jennings, “French Visions of America: From Tocqueville to the Civil War,” in Craiutu and Isaac, eds., America Through European Eyes, 183. 158. See Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio, page 65. 159. Ibid., page 67–68. 160. Bernard Chevignard, Michel SaintJohn de Crèvecœur: Au miroir de la mémoire [Michel Saint-John de Crèvecœur: In the Mirror of Memory] (Paris: Éditions Belin, 2004). 161. On Marie, ou l’esclavage aux ÉtatsUnis [Marie, or Slavery in the United States] (1835) by Gustave de Beaumont, see Clarisse Zimra, “La Vision du Nouveau Monde de Chateaubriand à Beaumont: Pour une étude de forme de l’exotisme” [“The Vision of the New World from Chateaubriand to Beaumont: Toward a Formal Study of Exoticism”], French Review 49, no. 6 (1976): 1001–24, and C. Dunn Henderson, “Tyranny and Tragedy in Beaumont’s Marie,” in Craiutu and Isaac, eds., America Through European Eyes, 143–60.

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162. After Tocqueville’s death in 1859, Gustave de Beaumont published “Excursion to Lake Oneida” and “Two Weeks in the Wilderness” in volume 5 of his Œuvres complètes de Tocqueville [The Complete Works of Tocqueville] (Paris: Michel-Lévy Frères, 1866), 161–71, 173–258. Both texts are reprinted together in Democracy in America and Two Essays on America, ed. Isaac Kramnick, trans. Gerald E. Bevan (New York: Penguin, 2003), 873–935. 163. See Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio, page 90–91. 164. On these commentators on America, see Jennings, “French Visions of America”; and Aurelian Craiutu, “A Precursor of Tocqueville: Victor Jacquemont’s Reflections on America,” in Craiutu and Isaac, eds., America Through European Eyes, 117–41. editor’s foreword 1. In his “Letter to Monsieur Audrain” (see the appendix, page 138–139), LezayMarnésia declares that “the revolutionary events” had destroyed a large number of the letters he had written in America. He asserts nevertheless that he had saved enough to compose a volume. On the question of the corpus of Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio, see page ix. 2. Published in 1792, during the time when the Girondists were dominating the Convention, the first edition of the Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio was immediately banned. The principal causes for this censorship were the letters’ call for French emigration and the criticism of the Revolution developed in the second letter. The collection was reedited in 1800, the year of Lezay-Marnésia’s death. On this question, see the Editor’s Note and Acknowledgments. 3. The first allusion (“extravagant enthusiasts”) aims at J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur (1735–1813), author of Letters from an American Farmer (1782). Crèvecœur published a largely modified and enriched

translation of this work under the title Lettres d’un cultivateur américain (1784, 2 vols.; 1787, 3 vols.). The idyllic character of his representation of America was stressed by Washington himself: “Perhaps the picture he gives, though founded on fact, is in some instances embellished with rather too flattering circumstances.” Letter from Washington to Richard Henderson, Mount Vernon, June 19, 1788, quoted by Jared Sparks, The Writings of George Washington, 12 vols. (Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Metcalf, and Hilliard Gray and Company, 1833–37), 9:386. The second allusion (“biased authors”) has for its target the Jesuit Joseph-François Lafitau. In his Mœurs des Sauvages américains comparées aux mœurs des premiers temps [Customs of the American Indians Compared with the Customs of Primitive Times] (1724) he establishes a constant parallel between American Indians and the people of antiquity. 4. Buffon (1707–1788) had sought to demonstrate in several works (Variétés dans l’espèce humaine [Of the Varieties of the Human Species], 1749; Animaux de l’ancien continent, Animaux du nouveau monde, Animaux communs aux deux continents [Animals of the Old Continent, Animals of the New World, Animals Common to the Two Continents], 1761; De la dégénération des animaux [Of the Degeneration of Animals], 1766) that cold and humid climates in America explained the inferiority in size, weight, vigor, and variety of American animal species compared to European species, as well as the gradual degeneration of species originating from Europe when transported to America. In order to refute Buffon’s theories, Thomas Jefferson included in his Notes on the State of Virginia (1785) a chart comparing the weight of animal species in America and in Europe in an attempt to prove the consistent superiority of the former over the latter. The allusion of the editor of Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio might also target Cornelius de Pauw, author of Recherches philosophiques sur les Américains,

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ou mémoires intéressants pour servir à l’histoire de l’espèce humaine [Philosophical Research on the Americans, or Interesting Memoires to Serve the History of the Human Species] (1768), a work that reuses and radicalizes Buffon’s theories on the degeneration of species in the New World and insists on the inhospitable character of the climate, fauna, and flora in America. For more on Buffon and de Pauw, see Philippe Roger, The American Enemy: The History of French Anti-Americanism, trans. Sharon Bowman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); and Durand Echeverria, Mirage in the West: A History of the French Image of American Society to 1815 (1957; New York: Octagon Books, 1966), 3–38, 65–66. 5. In Animals of the Old Continent, Animals of the New World, Animals Common to the Two Continents (1761), Buffon asserts that Amerindians are naturally weak in body and in spirit because of the “diminishment of living Nature” in America. Cornelius de Pauw defends this opinion in his Philosophical Research, in which the first section of the fifth part is significantly titled “Of the Moronic Genius of the Americans.” In order to refute these theories on the presumed intellectual inferiority of the Indians, Jefferson quotes in his Notes on the State of Virginia a speech given by the Iroquois Chief Logan in 1774 before Lord Dunmore which, Jefferson affirms, demonstrates an eloquence superior to that of Cicero and Demosthenes. 6. Abbé Gabriel Bonnot de Mably (1709–1785) is notably the author of Observations sur le gouvernement et les lois des États-Unis d’Amérique [Remarks Concerning the Government and the Laws of the United States of America] (1784). Mably dedicated this work to John Adams, whom he had met during one of Adams’s diplomatic visits to Paris, and implies that he had written it upon Adams’s request. In his Recherches historiques et politiques sur les États-Unis de l’Amérique septentrionale, 4 vols. (Paris:

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Froullé, 1788) Filippo Mazzei dedicates two volumes to refuting the theories of Mably and Raynal. Mazzei blames Mably for having communicated false ideas about the political principles of the United States and for having given even more weight to unfounded criticisms—notably on the subject of the excessive power given to the people—considering that Mably had, elsewhere, expressed enthusiastic wishes for the prosperity of the American republic. Mazzei’s text was edited and translated by Constance D. Sherman under the title Researches on the United States (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1976). 7. The marquis François-Jean de Chastellux (1734–1788) participated in the War of American Independence as a major general in the French expeditionary forces led by count Rochambeau. While in America he befriended George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, whom he later encountered in Paris during Jefferson’s visit as ambassador of the United States. His work, titled Voyages dans l’Amérique septentrionale dans les années 1780, 1781 et 1782 [Travels in North America, in the Years 1780, 1781, and 1782] (Paris: Prault, 1786), was violently attacked by Brissot in his Examen critique des Voyages dans l’Amérique septentrionale de M. le marquis de Chastellux [A Critical Examination of the Marquis de Chastellux’s Travels in North America] (London, 1784). Brissot notably contests Chastellux’s criticism of the Quakers and his statements regarding the natural inferiority of Africans. 8. Guillaume-Thomas Raynal (1713– 1796) is the author of Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes [A Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies], a collective work of which Diderot was one of the principal collaborators. See Michèle Duchet, Diderot et l’Histoire des deux Indes ou l’écriture fragmentaire (Paris: Nizet, 1978). A best seller

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of the eighteenth century, this encyclopedia of European enterprises in India and in America was edited thirty times between 1770 and 1789, in addition to which there were approximately forty unauthorized editions. 9. Founder in 1787 with Étienne Clavière of the Gallo-American Society whose mission consisted in the promotion of commercial and intellectual exchanges between France and America, Brissot de Warville (1754–1793) published several works related to the United States, of which he was an unconditional admirer. The editor alludes to his New Travels in the United States of America, published with Buisson, in Paris, in 1791. letter to monsieur le chevalier de boufflers 1. Stanislas Jean de Boufflers (1738–1815) was a knight of the Order of Malta who saw active service for France during the Seven Years’ War. Boufflers was appointed major general in 1784 and held the post of governor of Senegal from 1785 to 1787. In 1788 he was admitted to the Académie française. Elected deputy for the bailiwick of Nancy in 1789, Boufflers was reunited with Lezay-Marnésia at the Estates-General of that year. The two men had become acquainted as children, at the residence of Lezay-Marnésia’s mother in Nancy. Subsequently, Boufflers was a regular guest at Lezay-Marnésia’s châteaux at Moutonne and Saint-Julien. Along with Pierre-Victor Malouet and the duc de La RochefoucauldLiancourt, he was one of the founders of the “Club des Impartiaux.” In the wake of the storming of the Tuileries Palace (August 10, 1792), Boufflers took refuge at the court of Henry of Prussia, returning to Paris in 1800 to take up the post of assistant librarian at the Bibliothèque Mazarine. Sue Carrell has published the first two volumes of the correspondence Boufflers held with Éléonore de Sabran between 1777 and 1815

(Le Lit bleu: Correspondance, 1777–1785 [The Blue Bed: Correspondence, 1777–1785] and La Promesse: Correspondance, 1786–1787 [The Pledge: Correspondence, 1786–1787], Paris: Tallandier, 2009 and 2010). On the circumstances in which this letter was written, see page 20–21. 2. This is an allusion to Boufflers’s slightly salacious tale titled Aline, reine de Golconde [Aline, Queen of Golconde] (1761), which was well-known in its time. The kingdom of Golconde is an ancient city in India, famous for its diamonds. Boufflers describes it as “the most prosperous state in Asia.” See Aline, reine de Golconde, in Le Lit bleu, 350. 3. On Marietta, see page 20–21. 4. Created in 1783 by soldiers from the Continental Army, this society was open to French and American officers. George Washington was its first president. The name “Cincinnatus” was chosen in reference to the Roman citizen who abandoned his plough in order to rush to the defense of the Republic and returned to till his fields after the republican victory. The society’s aim was to foster continued friendship between veterans and to save for posterity the memory of their camaraderie during the American Revolution. Following the suggestion of Benjamin Franklin, who opposed the founding of the hereditary order, the comte de Mirabeau had published in London the translation of a work by Aedanus Burke (Considerations on the Society or Order of Cincinnatus) under the title Considérations sur l’ordre de Cincinnatus, ou Imitation d’un pamphlet AngloAméricain par le Comte de Mirabeau (London: J. Johnson, 1784). Mirabeau decries the foundation of the order, which he suspects of being the germ of a European-style aristocracy. The Society of the Cincinnati still exists today and is active in the United States and France. 5. Lezay-Marnésia was fifty-five years old in November 1790. 6. In My Memories Albert de LezayMarnésia gives a very different description

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of his father’s royal guest. See the introduction, page 25–26, and the appendix, page 152–53. 7. During his mandate at the National Constituent Assembly, Lezay-Marnésia opposed the motion to give the rights of active citizens to actors, drawing on the arguments that Rousseau defends in the Lettre ă M. d’Alembert sur les spectacles [Letter to d’Alembert on the Theater] (1758). 8. This is an allusion to the tragedy by Antoine Blanc (known by the name Le Blanc de Guillet, 1730–1799) called MancoCapac, premier ynca du Pérou [MancoCapac, First Inca of Peru], which was first performed on June 12, 1763. Mounted again in 1784, the play was the subject of numerous jibes. La Harpe (Lettre 209) terms it “a masterpiece of idiocy.” Meanwhile, for Grimm Manco-Capac was a “deformed drama” of which the main appeal was a “drought of ideas” (Literary, Philosophical, and Critical Correspondence, June 15, 1763). On Manco-Capac see Philippe Bourdin and Gérard Loubinoux, La Scène bâtarde: Entre Lumières et romantisme [The Hybrid Stage: Between the Enlightenment and Romanticism] (Clermont-Ferrand: Presses Universitaires Blaise Pascal, 2004), 174. 9. Lezay-Marnésia is referring to the tragedy in five acts by Edme-Louis Billardon de Sauvigny (1736?–1812) titled Hirza, ou les Illinois [Hirza, or the Illinois] (Paris: veuve Duchesne, 1767). The Biographie universelle, ancienne et moderne [Ancient and Modern Universal Biography] (Paris: Michaud, 1825) cites this account by Charles Palissot de Montenoy (1730–1814) of Hirza’s reception: “Its poetry seems no less wild than its place of action. Although, during the course of its performances, the author changed the ending three or four times, this play could not go on” (497). The role of Hirza was played by Marie-Madeleine Blouin, known as Dubois (1746–1779), a student of the famous Mademoiselle Clairon (1723–1803).

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Performed again in January 1780, the play was lambasted in the Literary, Philosophical, and Critical Correspondence (February 1780): Grimm criticizes Billardon de Sauvigny for having written a “vaudeville-tragedy” including numerous allusions to contemporary news. Billardon de Sauvigny is the author of another tragedy about America, Vashington, ou la liberté du Nouveau Monde, tragédie en quatre actes [Washington, or the Freedom of the New World, Tragedy in Four Acts] (Paris: Maillard, 1791). On the works of Billardon de Sauvigny, see François Moureau, “Des guerres d’Amérique à la Révolution française: Le théâtre de Billardon de Sauvigny” [“From the American Wars to the French Revolution: The Theatrical Works by Billardon de Sauvigny”], in Images of America in Revolutionary France, ed. Michèle R. Morris (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 185–97. 10. Lezay-Marnésia is citing from memory a line from Manco-Capac, act 2, scene 2 (“Trois-tu d’un tel forfait Manco-tapac capable?”). This discordant verse caused a stir when Le Blanc’s play was first staged. Bachaumont refers to it in his Mémoires secrets [Secret Memoirs] (June 1763), declaring that it had “left an impression in everyone’s memory, including my own.” When he published the play in 1782, Le Blanc rewrote the line as follows: “Well then, did you think me capable of such an effort?” Manco-Capac, premier ynca du Pérou (Paris: Belin, 1782), 25. 11. This is a citation of Hirza, or the Illinois, act 1, scene 1. In The Literary, Philosophical, and Critical Correspondence (January 1780), Grimm writes on the subject of Hirza’s creation in 1767: “One took little away from M. de Sauvigny’s tragedy, Hirza, or the Illinois, other than this ridiculous line: ‘At last let us avenge, let us avenge the pride of the name of savage.’” Billardon de Sauvigny reworked this line when Hirza was published: “Heed prudence as much as courage / Never lessen the pride of the name of sav-

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age” (7). This is an imitation of a line from Voltaire: “Come now: grandeur of the spirit is here the lot / Of the unhappy people they call savages.” See Alzire ou les Américains, Tragédie [Alzire or the Americans, a Tragedy] (1736), in Œuvres complètes de Voltaire, Théâtre [The Complete Works of Voltaire, Theater] (Paris: E. A. Lequien, 1821), 3:449. letter to monsieur jacques- henribernardin de saint- pierre 1. After having visited a number of European countries, as well as Martinique and the Isle de France (present-day Mauritius), Jacques-Henri-Bernardin de SaintPierre (1737–1814) befriended Jean-Jacques Rousseau and regularly attended the salons hosted by Mlle de Lespinasse and Mme Necker beginning in 1771. He is the author of Voyage to the Isle of Mauritius (1773), Studies of Nature (1784), and Paul and Virginia (1787). Named the steward of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris in 1792, professor of ethics at the École Normale Supérieure in 1794, and member of the Institute of France in 1795, he sided with Bonaparte in 1802 and entered the Académie française the following year. Regarding his involvement in several French settlement projects in the United States, see note 111, page 175. For more on Lezay-Marnésia’s stay near Pittsburgh, see pages 21–22. This letter was written barely a month before his departure for Philadelphia: paradoxically, LezayMarnésia invited Bernardin de Saint-Pierre to build a colony in Pennsylvania even though he was already planning his own return to France. 2. Quotation from Bernardin de SaintPierre, Paul and Virginia, trans. John Donovan (1788; London: Peter Owen, 2005), 97. 3. Lezay-Marnésia is probably referring to Jean-Jacques Duval d’Éprémesnil (1746– 1794). A boisterous member of the Paris High Court and adversary of Marie Antoinette during the diamond necklace affair,

he sat with the nobility at the Constituent Assembly and fiercely defended the privileges of his order. As a member of the Society of the Twenty-Four, d’Éprémesnil bought one thousand acres of land in January 1790 from the Scioto Company together with his wife, as well as ten thousand acres in his name alone the following month. The pro-Revolution “Sciotophobes” turned him into one of their favorite targets, and Camille Desmoulins in particular predicted his bankruptcy and death at the hands of American Indians in an article published in Révolutions de France et de Brabant [Revolutions of France and Brabant], no. 17, March 22, 1790, 161–63. In a letter from May 12, 1790, LezayMarnésia encouraged d’Éprémesnil to join him in the United States from where he was preparing his own departure: “You should prefer the district of America, which beckons to you, to this ruinous land of Europe whose only good remaining purpose is to serve as an example to the world of the most degrading of all shame and the most baneful of all disasters.” Quoted by Bonnel in Éthique et esthétique du retour à la campagne, 327. Despite Lezay-Marnésia’s repeated exhortations from the United States, d’Éprémesnil would never follow him to America: accused of having conspired against the Revolution, he was guillotined on April 23, 1794. Regarding the role of d’Éprémesnil in the Society of the Twenty-Four, see Jocelyne Moreau-Zanelli, Gallipolis, 208–14. Lezay-Marnésia might also be alluding here to Madame de Leval, who had acquired land titles for 1,200 acres from the Scioto Company. Having heard about the difficulties of her compatriots in the Northwest Territory, she attempted to establish a colony in Maine whose purpose would have been to unite the French expatriate population of North America. She wanted to have Lezay-Marnésia participate in this project, one he considered barely feasible and which, indeed, never became a

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reality. For more on Mme de Leval and the “Company of the French Union,” see Bancel de Confoulens, “A French Description of Frenchman’s Bay, 1792: With Notes on the Proposed French Colony in Eastern Maine,” New England Quarterly 1, no. 3 (1928): 396–410; and Frances Sergeant Childs, “Fontaine Leval, a French Settlement on the Maine Coast, 1791,” in American Antiquarian Society (Worcester, MA, 1942), 187–222. 4. On the Scioto Company and its Prospectus, see page 2–3. 5. This is an allusion to the eleventh and fourteenth of The Persian Letters (1721) in which Montesquieu (1689–1755) tells the story of an imaginary Arabian people, the Troglodytes. Montesquieu is frequently referenced in the work of Lezay-Marnésia, relying on his authority in Le Bonheur dans les campagnes [Happiness in the Countryside] (1785; Paris: Royez, 1788), 130, in order to argue that religion is the best guarantee of social order. 6. Lezay-Marnésia is referring to The Adventures of Telemachus (1699), a didactic novel by François de Salignac de La Mothe Fénelon (1651–1715). 7. For more on the Studies of Nature (1784), see page 64. 8. This is a revised quotation from a conversation between Bernardin de SaintPierre and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, related in “Fragment by Way of Preamble to Arcadia.” Arcadia is an unfinished work of which only some passages remain, along with the first book—titled Les Gaules— which was published in 1788 in the fourth volume of Studies of Nature adjacent to Paul and Virginia. The first half of the excerpt (until “who would have followed you”) is faithfully quoted by LezayMarnésia, except for one difference that does not alter the meaning of the text (Lezay-Marnésia wrote “men from various countries and of every social position” while the original text reads “men of all

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countries and of all conditions.” See Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, L’Arcadie et l’Amazone [The Arcadia and the Amazon], ed. Raymond Trousson (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1980), 8–49. On the other hand, Lezay-Marnésia modifies the second part of this quoted excerpt. In Arcadia Saint-Pierre asks Rousseau, “But why wouldn’t you have founded, with some other Europeans lacking in land or fortune, a settlement similar to that which William Penn established in North America, amongst savages, in some uninhabited island in the South Sea?” (49). This question is rewritten by LezayMarnésia, who eradicates the mention of Europeans “lacking in land or fortune” and replaces “uninhabited island in the South Sea” with an “uninhabited region of North America.” Moreover, although the use of the conditional past tense in Saint-Pierre’s text suggests that the creation of a “happy republic” would be a highly uncertain possibility, belonging to a time already past, the present tense, which Lezay-Marnésia uses as a substitute, confers a sense of plausibility to this settlement. Attempting to place himself under the auspices of both Rousseau and Saint-Pierre, Lezay-Marnésia alters their conversation such that it anticipates and justifies his utopian projects: he wishes to see the creation of an entirely French colony, founded in North America, rather than a utopian, cosmopolitan community planted on an island in the Pacific Ocean. Further (page 65), Lezay-Marnésia discredits the possibility of an insular utopia due to the investment of time required to discover an uninhabited island, time that would have been too great a luxury given that the Revolution was creating an urgent need for a place of refuge for its opponents. 9. French hosts had already visited the city of Bethlehem in Pennsylvania. The marquis de Lafayette mentions in his Mémoires, correspondance et manuscrits [Memoirs, Correspondence, and Manuscripts], 6 vols. (Paris: H. Fournier aîné,

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1837), 1:28–30, the six weeks of recuperation he spent there in the fall of 1777 after having suffered a leg injury during the Battle of Brandywine. In the second volume of Voyages dans l’Amérique septentrionale dans les années 1780, 1781 et 1782 (251–60), Chastellux reports the operations of the city of Bethlehem where he spent a few days in 1780. In June 1797 La RochefoucauldLiancourt also stayed in Bethlehem and describes the city in detail in his Voyages dans les États-Unis d’Amérique, fait en 1795, 1796 et 1797 [Travels in the United States of America, Performed in 1795, 1796, and 1797], 8 vols. (Paris: Du Pont, Buisson, Pougens, 1799), 7:15–43. 10. The Moravian Church, or “Unitas Fratrum” (“Unity of the Brethren”), is a Protestant church originating in Moravia (the eastern part of the modern-day Czech Republic). Influenced by the teachings of the reformist Jan Hus (1369?–1415), the Moravians turned to Protestantism in the late fifteenth century. Under the protection of Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf (see note 74, page 785), they settled in Saxony before creating congregations across the world, notably in North America. On the Moravian Church, see Joachim Faiguet de Villeneuve’s (1703–1781) article in the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d’Alembert. 11. There are three orders of ministry in the Moravian Church: deacon, presbyter, and bishop. 12. Born in Ireland, Richard Montgomery (1738–1775) served in the British Army before beginning a new life as a gentleman farmer in the colony of New York in 1772. Named major general in the Continental Army, he led the invasion of Canada in 1775 and was killed during the Battle of Quebec. The structure built to honor his memory at St. Paul’s Chapel in New York, commissioned by Congress on January 23, 1776, is the first official American monument. Initially buried in Quebec City, Montgomery’s body was only brought back

to the United States in 1818 and now rests in St. Paul’s cemetery. On Richard Montgomery, see Michael P. Gabriel, Major General Richard Montgomery: The Making of an American Hero (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002). 13. The question of women’s education was a frequent concern in LezayMarnésia’s work: he devoted an entire work to the topic, the Plan de lecture pour une jeune dame, where he urges women to cultivate their minds in order to learn how to “age free of ill humor and boredom” (2). 14. Born in Dresden, Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700–1760) enabled the descendants of the Hussites, persecuted in Moravia, to establish the township of Herrnhut in eastern Saxony. He played a central role in the renaissance of the Moravian Church and worked to expand its influence. In 1741 he traveled to America and acquired land in Pennsylvania in order to found the community of Bethlehem. The Moravians later built other settlements, including Nazareth and Emmaus, both in Pennsylvania, as well as the town of Salem in North Carolina (known today as Winston-Salem). Jaucourt discusses Zinzendorf ’s role in the revival of the Moravian Church in the article titled “Hernhutisme” in the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d’Alembert. Faiguet de Villeneuve also mentions Zinzendorf in the article “Moraves ou Frères Unis” [“Moravians or United Brethren”]. 15. In his “Discours de réception à la Société royale des belles-lettres de Nancy” [“Inaugural Address at the Nancy Royal Society of Belles-Lettres”], delivered on October 20, 1767, Lezay-Marnésia expresses his opinion in favor of the reasonable imitation of ancient works. This speech was published in the updated edition of Plan de lecture pour une jeune dame, 237–53. 16. According to Genesis 47:6, the land of Goshen was among the most fertile land

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of Egypt. Pharaoh gave it to Jacob and to the brothers of Joseph when they left Canaan, fleeing famine. 17. Job 28:28. 18. The Magistrats, whose coming migration to America Lezay-Marnésia envisions here, were vigorously attacked in an anonymous pamphlet titled “The Paris High Court on the Scioto.” This satire speaks of the imaginary woes of the members of the Paris High Court after having settled in Ohio and re-created the excesses of the ancien régime. Excerpts from this text are included in the appendix. 19. For more on this topic, see page 18, as well as Albert de Lezay-Marnésia’s My Memories in the appendix, page 146. 20. In his correspondence with d’Éprémesnil, Lezay-Marnésia asserts that the United States has enough natural resources for its economic development but lacks, nevertheless, competent manpower able to exploit them. He concludes, therefore, that America has a real need for the future colony on the banks of the Scioto River, which promises to bring about prosperity. He is convinced that treacherous Albion is responsible for the alarming rumors about the French settlers’ slight chances of success. According to LezayMarnésia, the English spread this hearsay as an attempt to endanger the French colony, which they saw as a threat to EnglishAmerican trade: “They feel just how much our settlement will harm their business because we are bringing to the heart of America the very arts which, until now, had made their trade excessively affluent.” Letter from August 7, 1790, to d’Éprémesnil, quoted by Moreau-Zanelli in Gallipolis, 289. 21. Crèvecœur also paints an enchanting portrait of the region where the future edification of the town of Saint-Pierre was planned: “I know well of those who would scorn my opinion and call me a poor judge: I would send them to the charming banks of the Rivers Ohio, Monongahela, Musk-

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ingum, Scioto, and to the foot of the Alleghenies and the Appalachians. . . . This region will always be a place of health, work, industry, and activity that I value much more than those of greater opulence, and of a more sumptuous life requiring less need for fatigue and labor.” See Lettres d’un cultivateur américain [Letters from an American Farmer], 3 vols. (Paris, Cuchet, 1787), 2:178–79. Even though LezayMarnésia describes Crèvecœur as an embellishing author a little further in the text (see page 70), his depiction of America in large part derives from Crèvecœur’s Lettres. 22. This segment echoes one of LezayMarnésia’s famous alexandrines: “L’âge d’or était l’âge où l’or ne régnait pas” [“The golden age was the age when gold did not reign”]. See “Épître à mon curé” [“Letter to My Priest”], in Essai sur la nature champêtre [Essay on Pastoral Nature] (Paris: Prault, 1787), 186. 23. In the history of French writing about the United States, the critique of inquiétude (in the Pascalian sense of the term) became a reoccurring theme: it was taken up by Chateaubriand, describing “the impossibility of staying in place” and the “necessity of movement” as characteristic of the American national spirit and by de Tocqueville in the chapter titled “Why Americans Seem So Restless in the Midst of Their Well-Being.” See François-René de Chateaubriand, Mémoires d’outre-tombe, 1:536; and Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Olivier Zunz, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (1835–40; New York: Library of America, 2004), 625–28. 24. The Dictionnaire universel d’agriculture et de jardinage [Universal Dictionary of Agriculture and Gardening], 2 vols. (Paris: David le Jeune, 1751) by FrançoisAlexandre Aubert de la Chesnaye Des Bois (1699–1784) provides the following definition of this term: “Cercis siliquastrum, elsewhere called Judas tree. It grows in Provence and Languedoc and is of medium height.”

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25. The dogwood is a woody tree with thick bark, one species of which bears red berries. According to the Universal Dictionary of Agriculture and Gardening, the tree is named “Cornu” (“horn”) in Latin “because its wood is as hard as horn.” 26. Lezay-Marnésia quotes with slight variations two verses from Voltaire: “Les mortels sont égaux; ce n’est point la naissance, / C’est la seule vertu qui fait leur différence” [“All living beings are equal, and it is virtue, not birth, that sets one apart from the other”]. See Fanaticism, or Mahomet the Prophet: A New Translation, ed. and trans. Hanna Burton (1741; Sacramento: Litwin Books, 2013), 46. 27. This “well-known society” to which Lezay-Marnésia is referring is the Society of Freemasons. For more on Lezay-Marnésia and Freemasonry, see note 49, page 170 in the introduction. The “chain of union” mentioned in this sentence is a Masonic ritual. 28. Lezay-Marnésia expresses another disagreement (see page 54) with JeanJacques Rousseau. Although LezayMarnésia understands the state of nature to be defined as the Garden of Eden before original sin, Rousseau considers it to be the condition in which primitive man displayed characteristics similar to those of animals: “considering him, in a word, such as he must have come from the hands of nature—I see an animal less strong than some, less agile than others, but, all things considered, the most advantageously physically organized of all. I see him satisfying his hunger beneath an oak, quenching his thirst at the first stream, finding his bed at the foot of the same tree that had furnished his meal, and with that his needs satisfied.” See “Discourse on Inequality,” in The Major Political Writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ed. and trans. J. T. Scott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 66. 29. Contrary to what he affirms here, Lezay-Marnésia never had the opportunity

to witness the distribution of land among French immigrant families: he was stopped in November 1790 in Marietta by the winter as well as the hostilities between colonizers and American Indians, and therefore he never succeeded in taking possession of the land further west that he had bought from the Scioto Company. 30. In Letters from an American Farmer and Other Essays, ed. Dennis D. Moore (1782; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 44–45, and also in Lettres d’un cultivateur américain, 2 vols. (Paris: Cuchet, 1784), 2:312–13, Crèvecœur also establishes a causal relationship between the French immigrants’ origin and their chances of achieving prosperity in America. Thrifty and tenacious, the German settlers seemed to him to be the most likely to succeed, followed by the Scottish and the Irish, hindered by their drinking habits and their quarrelsome spirit. Of twelve families from each country, Crèvecœur predicts that, generally speaking, seven Scottish families, nine German families, and four Irish families would create a durable settlement. 31. Lezay-Marnésia spent his first winter in the United States in extremely difficult conditions, which his son Albert describes in his memoirs (see My Memories in the appendix). The scene presented here is less an evocation of his personal memories than a recollection of Lettres d’un cultivateur américain where the pleasures enjoyed by the settlers during winter are described in detail. See, in particular, “Description d’une chute de neige dans le pays des Mohawks, sous le rapport qui intéresse le cultivateur américain” [“Description of a Snowfall in the Mohawk Country, Bearing on What Would Interest the American Farmer”], Crèvecœur, Lettres d’un cultivateur américain (1784), 1:261–84. 32. On the Vale of Tempe, see note 152, page 178. 33. Quotation altered from a line of the play Le Méchant by Jean-Baptiste Louis Gresset (1709–1777): “Son parc, son potager,

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ses bois, son avenue / Il ne vous fera pas grâce d’une laitue” [“His grounds, his garden, his trees, his avenue; / He will spare you nothing, not even a lettuce”]. Le Méchant, comédie en cinq actes et en vers [The Evil One, a Comedy in Five Acts and in Verse] (Paris: Sébastien Jorry, 1747), 62. 34. Saint Vincent de Paul (1581–1660), a central figure during the spiritual revival of the seventeenth century, is the founder of the Company of the Daughters of Charity (1633), dedicated to serve the poor and the sick. Philanthropy is a primary virtue for Lezay-Marnésia, and he assigns it a political role in his Le Bonheur dans les campagnes (1785). 35. The minutes from the first assembly meeting of the Society of the Twenty-Four (January 24, 1790) stipulates that each associate must commit to purchasing a minimum of one thousand acres of land adjacent to that of other members (MoreauZanelli, Gallipolis, 188). Lezay-Marnésia therefore sets the bar higher for the future landowners of Saint-Pierre, with five hundred additional acres per family. 36. “The banks of the Pineiós”: see note 152, page 178. Moschus, an ancient Greek bucolic poet, lived around 180 BCE. Along with his friend Bion of Smyrna, he is considered the inventor of a poetic genre: the idyll. He is notably the author of Europa. On Gessner, see page 71. “The culture and industriousness of the Swiss”: the diffusion of the Swiss model throughout the Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio can be explained by Lezay-Marnésia’s fascination with the community of Clarens described in Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse [Julie, or the New Heloise] (1761). The novel makes an appearance in the Letters where “Julie’s home” is mentioned as an example (page 93). The Swiss community seems to have occupied Lezay-Marnésia for a long time: for example, the garden of his château in Saint-Julien was named “Clarens.” See Albert de Lezay-Marnésia, Mes souvenirs, 23.

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37. The rational was an ornament worn on the chest embedded with twelve precious stones on which were embroidered the words “Doctrine and Truth.” The high priest of Israel wore it to officiate at religious ceremonies. 38. Is Lezay-Marnésia thinking of Peter Abelard (1079–1142) and Philippe I of France (1052–1108)? Abelard is notably the author of a theological treatise titled Theologia Summi Boni [A Theology of the Supreme Good] (1120). Regarding the “licentiousness” of the reign in question, Lezay-Marnésia is possibly alluding to the remarriage of Philippe I with Bertrade de Montfort, for which they were excommunicated at the Council of Autun in 1094. 39. Jean Racine (1639–1699), French dramatist, is the father of Louis Racine (1692–1763), author of religious poetry. Jean-Baptiste Rousseau (1671–1741), French poet and dramatist, is the author of Odes sacrées [Sacred Odes] (1712). Jean-Jacques Lefranc de Pompignan (1709–1784) is the author of Poésies sacrées [Sacred Poems] (1751) and Ode sur la mort de Jean-Baptiste Rousseau [Ode on the Death of Jean-Baptiste Rousseau], generally considered to be his masterpiece. 40. In his Philosophical Letters, Voltaire had praised the laws of the state of Pennsylvania along with their founder: “The new ruler was also the legislator for Pennsylvania: he made wise laws, none of which has been changed since that time. The first was to prohibit maltreatment of anyone because of his religion, and to consider as brothers all those who believe in God. . . . William Penn might well have boasted that he brought back the golden age of which so much is spoken and which in fact never really existed save in Pennsylvania.” See Philosophical Letters: Or, Letters Regarding the English Nation (1734), ed. John Leigh, trans. Prudence L. Steiner (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2007), 12–13.

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41. Lezay-Marnésia’s reflections here on the duties attributed to women echo with his previous writings. In Plan de lecture pour une jeune dame he praises English women for their domestic virtues: “The attachment these women have for their husbands and their children, for their servants and for their responsibilities, makes them worthy of the veneration they receive and provides them with significant authority within their families” (64). Likewise, in Le Bonheur dans les campagnes women contribute to the well-being of their husbands and are described as the “adored queens” of the household (76). 42. Lettre ă M. d’Alembert sur les spectacles [Letter to d’Alembert on the Theater] (1758) is Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s response to the article “Geneva,” published by d’Alembert in the Encyclopédie. LezayMarnésia refers to it while speaking before the National Constituent Assembly on December 24, 1789, in order to substantiate his opposition to the admission of actors into administrative functions: “Read [the] letter on theater, and do not announce your decision before having studied and pondered the question before us; you will see, in this letter, what [Rousseau] thinks about actors, and perhaps you will feel that you should not give them the right to sit in your administrative assemblies” (Speech on December 24, 1789, quoted by Bonnel in Éthique et esthétique du retour à la campagne, 330–31). letter to my eldest son 1. This letter is addressed to LezayMarnésia’s eldest son, Adrien-PaulFrançois-Marie de Lezay-Marnésia (1769–1814). When his father and younger brother embarked for the United States in May 1790, Adrien de Lezay-Marnésia stayed in Franche-Comté with his mother. In December of the following year he went to study diplomacy at the University of Göttingen. In August 1792 he met his

father and brother in Paris before settling with them in the family château in SaintJulien. Following a dispute with their father, Adrien and his brother left for Paris early in 1793, where they joined the National Guard and the Section de la Butte-des-Moulins. Adrien frequented Joséphine de Beauharnais, his relative by marriage, as well as Madame de Staël, whose father was Lezay-Marnésia’s friend. In 1795 Adrien published two works of political theory: Qu’est-ce que la Constitution de 93? [What Is the Constitution of ’93?] (Paris: Migneret et Maret, 1795); and Qu’est-ce que la Constitution de 95? [What Is the Constitution of ’95?] (Paris: Migneret and Maret, year 1795). In these texts he spoke out in favor of a division of legislative power among two houses and an executive power wielded by a single leader with the right of veto. In De la faiblesse d’un gouvernement qui commence et de la nécessité où il est de se rallier à la majorité nationale [On the Weakness of a New Government and Its Necessity to Rally to the National Majority] (Paris: Mathey, Desenne, Maret, 1796), he entered into dialogue with De la force du gouvernement actuel de la France et de la nécessité de s’y rallier (1796) [Observations on the Strength of the Present Government of France and upon the Necessity of Rallying Round It, trans. James Losh, Bath, UK: R. Crittwell, 1797] by Benjamin Constant, and denounced the risks that the instauration of a centrist party engenders for the stability of representative institutions. On the intellectual dialogue between Constant and Adrien de Lezay-Marnésia, see Stefano de Luca, “Benjamin Constant and the Terror,” in The Cambridge Companion to Constant, ed. H. Rosenblatt (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 92–114; and Aurelian Craiutu, A Virtue for Courageous Minds: Moderation in French Political Thought, 1748–1830 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 206, 210–11, 216–17. After being forced to immigrate to Switzerland following the

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coup of 18 Fructidor, Year V (September, 4, 1797), Adrien owed his return to France at the end of 1799 to the protection of Joséphine de Beauharnais. He was named ambassador to the elector of Salzburg, before being charged with organizing the reunion of Valais with France. He later became prefect of the Rhin-et-Moselle department (1806–1810), then prefect of the Bas-Rhin department (1810–1814) and devoted himself to the development of the agricultural industry and the introduction of new crops in the region. He died on October 9, 1814, in Strasbourg in an accident when, during an official visit from the duc de Berry, his carriage’s horses bolted. On Adrien de Lezay-Marnésia, see JeanPaul Clément, “Lezay-Marnésia: Pour une France américaine? Des limites de la liberté,” Revue des deux mondes (February 2009): 115–26.; Bourget-Besnier in Une famille française sous la Révolution et l’Empire, 77–107; and Marius Veyre, La Maison de Lezay-Marnésia, 1240–1884 [The House of Lezay-Marnésia, 1240–1884] (Strasbourg: Brant, 1958), 38–111. For the circumstances under which this letter was written, see pages 21–22. 2. “Azile” was the name given by LezayMarnésia to the four-hundred-acre property near Pittsburgh, which he acquired early in 1791 and sold at the end of the same year. On Azile see pages 21–22, as well as Hugh Henry Brackenridge’s description in Modern Chivalry and Albert de LezayMarnésia’s My Memories (both reproduced in the appendix). 3. On the des Pintreaux family, see page 26. 4. Maximilien de Béthune, duc de Sully (1559–1641), was an adviser and minister to Henri IV. Sébastien Le Prestre, marquis de Vauban (1633–1707), was an engineer and military architect under Louis XIV. 5. Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) was the first United States ambassador to France, where he stayed from 1776 to 1785.

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In 1783 he participated in the signing of the Treaty of Paris, which ended the War of Independence. He stayed with the Americanophile Jacques-Donatien Le Ray de Chaumont, in his hôtel de Valentinois in Passy. On Franklin’s stay in France, see Claude-Anne Lopez, Mon Cher Papa: Franklin and the Ladies of Paris (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990). Lezay-Marnésia most likely met Franklin through Freemasonry: he joined the Nine Sisters Lodge in 1782 while Franklin was its “venerable master.” The true M. des Pintreaux met Franklin thanks to his friend Jacques-Donatien Le Ray de Chaumont, Jr., the son of Franklin’s landlord in Passy. On this topic, see Cleland, “John B. C. Lucas, Physiocrat on the Frontier,” 3. 6. Lezay-Marnésia’s choice of first name is undoubtedly an allusion to Rousseau: Marcellin is the name of Julie’s son in Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse (1761). 7. On The Adventures of Telemachus, see note 6, page 184. James Thomson (1700– 1748) was a Scottish poet. The correct title of his work is not The Liaisons but The Seasons (1726–1730). Lezay-Marnésia’s friend, Jean-François de Saint-Lambert, is also the author of a collection of poetry titled Les Saisons (1769). On the Abbé Delille, see page 107. Louis de Fontanes (1757–1821), author of Le Verger [The Orchard] (1788), was a protégé of Lezay-Marnésia’s, and the tutor of his son, Albert. 8. Lezay-Marnésia is alluding to Antoine Houdar de la Motte’s (1672–1731) famous line, “L’ennui naquit un jour de l’uniformité” [“One day boredom is born of uniformity”], from “Les amis trop d’accord” [“Friends Too Much in Agreement”], in Fables nouvelles [New Fables] (Paris: chez Grégoire Dupuis, 1719), 262. 9. Before the Revolution, PierreCharles-Dehaut de Lassus de Luzières (1738–1806) was the mayor of Bouchain and treasurer of the province of Hainaut.

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A friend of Lezay-Marnésia and of d’Éprémesnil, he was an unofficial member of the Society of the Twenty-Four. After buying two thousand acres of land from the Scioto Company, he emigrated in 1790 with his wife and children. When forced to give up his land on the banks of the Ohio, he acquired a new property in the Pittsburgh region, where he settled with his family during the spring of 1791, at the time Lezay-Marnésia was living at Azile. But new ventures drew him to the south of the United States: with the support of the governor general of Louisiana, the baron de Carondelet, he founded the colony of New Bourbon in what is now Missouri. The colony, which started with 383 inhabitants in 1798, disappeared at the beginning of the nineteenth century. When this letter was written, Lezay-Marnésia planned on joining the efforts of Barthélémi Tardiveau, Pierre Audrain, and Luzières in establishing New Bourbon. The “educated, honest, kind young man” is Pierre-Augustin Bourguignon d’Herbigny (1769–1829), who married Félicité-Odile Dehaut de Lassus de Luzières in Pittsburgh in 1790 and became the sixth governor of the state of Louisiana in 1828. 10. Following his arrival in the United States after the War of Independence, Pierre Audrain (1725–1820) lived for several years near Philadelphia before settling in Pittsburgh in 1786. It was there that he met Lezay-Marnésia in the spring of 1791. After New Bourbon’s dissolution, Audrain went to Detroit in the summer of 1796 in the company of the general Anthony Wayne and Winthrop Sargent, a veteran of the Battle of the Wabash and the interim governor of the Northwest Territory. At the age of seventy Audrain settled in Detroit, where he lived with his large family until his death, holding many different official positions in the city’s courts and administration. On Pierre Audrain see Warren J. Wolfe, “The First American

Citizen of Detroit: Pierre Audrain, 1725– 1820,” Detroit in Perspective (Winter 1981): 45–47. While he expresses his recognition toward Pierre Audrain, Lezay-Marnésia refrains from mentioning the count Paolo Andreani, who gave him the resources necessary to return to France in 1792, lending him 10,000 pounds. On this episode, see My Memories in the appendix, pages 154–57. appendix Prospectus for the Colony on the Ohio and Scioto Rivers in America (1789) The author of this document distributed by the Scioto Company—Prospectus pour l’établissement sur les rivières d’Ohio et de Scioto en Amérique [Prospectus for the Colony on the Ohio and Scioto Rivers in America] (Paris: Prault, 1789)—is probably William Playfair. 1. As regards the Ohio Company, see pages 4–5. 2. All italics are the author’s. 3. Published in 1787 by the Ohio Company, the brochure in question—An Explanation of the Map Which Delineates That Part of the Federal Lands Comprehended between Pennsylvania, West Line, the Rivers Ohio and Scioto and Lake Erie, Confirmed to the United States by Sundry Tribes of Indians, in the Treaties of 1784 and 1786, and Now Ready for Settlement (Salem, MA: Dabney and Cushing, 1787)—was written by the Reverend Manasseh Cutler (1742–1823), chaplain of the Continental Army, botanist, and member of the Academy of Sciences. It was translated into French in 1789 under the title Description du sol, des productions . . . de cette portion des États-Unis située entre la Pennsylvanie, les rivières de l’Ohio et du Scioto, et le lac Érié and distributed to its clients by the Scioto Company. Even more excessive in its declaration than

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the Prospectus, the Description presents the Ohio region as the “Garden of the Universe . . . destined to be the center of a great empire.” 4. Officer in the English army, surveyor, and cartographer, Thomas Hutchins (1730–1789) joined the camp of the patriots during the Revolutionary War. He was named the official geographer of the United States in 1781 and devoted the last years of his life to the surveying of the Northwest Territory. He effectively confirmed the claims of the Description by prefacing it with the following declaration: “I the undersigned certify that the facts contained herein regarding the fertility of the soil, the abundant production, and the other advantages for the farmers are truthful and accurate, and that they correspond perfectly to the observations I made over a period of ten years.” Quoted by Jocelyne Moreau-Zanelli in Gallipolis:, 106. The French on the Banks of the Scioto: Letter to an Immigrant to Kentucky (1790) This poem by François-Guillaume-JeanStanislas Andrieux—titled “Les Français aux bords du Scioto, épître à un émigrant pour Kentucky”—was written in 1790 and published the following year in the Almanach des Muses [Almanac of the Muses]. Andrieux is also the author of a dramatic adaptation of this verse letter, titled Le Philosophe au Scioto ou les fuyards, comédie nationale en trois actes et en prose [The Philosopher on the Scioto or the Fugitives, National Comedy in Three Acts and in Prose] (Bibliotheque nationale MSS Fonds français, 9265, fol. 25–40, ca. 1790). On this play, see Desan, “Transatlantic Spaces of Revolution,” 493–94. Andrieux’s poem and play are part of the campaign of the “Sciotophobes,” which was discussed in the introduction, pages 5–11. 1. This “Christophe” is none other than Christophe de Beaumont du Repaire

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(1703–1781), bishop of Bayonne (1741), archbishop of Vienne (1745), then archbishop of Paris from 1746 to his death. Andrieux calls him a “friend of Loyola” because he was reputed to be an avid partisan of the Jesuits and a ferocious adversary of the Jansenists, against whom he supported the authority of the papal bull Unigenitus (1713). He was also an enemy of the philosophes and especially Rousseau, whose Émile he condemned in a statement issued in 1762. Rousseau answered him in a letter published the following year. See “Lettre à Christophe de Beaumont” [“Letter to Christophe de Beaumont”], in Œuvres complètes de J.-J. Rousseau [The Complete Works of J.-J. Rousseau], ed. Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond, 5 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1969), 4:925–1007. 2. Louis Phélypeaux, comte de SaintFlorentin, duc de la Vrillière (1705–1777), was secretary of state in the King’s House (1749) and a minister of state (1751–1775). He largely abused royal arrest warrants, which rendered him extremely unpopular. 3. Andrieux is referring to Omer Joly de Fleury (1715–1810), nicknamed “Mr. Omer” by Voltaire (letter of October 4, 1763, to Helvétius). Advocate general at the High Council in 1737, advocate general to the Paris Court in 1746, and president of this court in 1760, he was an implacable adversary of the philosophes and delivered indictments against Helvétius’s On the Mind, Voltaire’s Poem on Natural Law and Philosophical Dictionary, as well as Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopedia. 4. Under the ancien régime, “spices” (épices) were “fees that the magistrates of a number of tribunals had the right to receive from parties wishing to obtain a trial by written declaration.” See A. G. Boucher d’Argis, “Épices,” in Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, etc., ed. Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert, University of

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Chicago ARTFL Encyclopédie Project (Spring 2013 ed.), ed. Robert Morrissey, http://encyclopedie.uchicago.edu/. The Paris High Court on the Scioto (1790) The author of “Le Parlement de Paris établi au Scioto, sur les bords de l’Oyo, et se trouve à Paris, chez tous les marchands de nouveautés”—published in 1790 in Paris (Bibliothèque nationale, Lb 39 9346)—is unknown. This satirical text imagines the departure for the Scioto region of the members of the Paris High Court after the suppression of the high courts by the National Assembly in September 1790. Resolved to “bring back the golden age” there and to serve as “legislators” (12–13), they choose to settle in this faraway region. Alas they are highly disappointed when they arrive at their destination: “They finally discovered and set their feet on the Scioto lands; but what barrenness, what void, what a horror! No inhabitants, no beds, no houses, huge snakes, that is all the company they found, whereas they had expected to find some coteries where they could chat and play little games. They fainted, swore, and covered with every conceivable curse the foolish ideas that had inspired such a venture” (23–24). In the end the magistrates resign themselves to their situation and dispense justice on the banks of the Scioto with just as much haughtiness as they did on the banks of the Seine. I reproduce here the notice that precedes the text, as well as the exchange of letters between two counselors’ wives, one who has remained in Paris and the other who has gone to Scioto. 1. Regarding Abbot Jean-Siffrein Maury, see note 6, page 200. 2. François de Bonal (1734–1800) was consecrated bishop of Clermont in 1776. Elected deputy to the Estates-General by the seneschalsy of Clermont-Ferrand, he became a member of the ecclesiastical committee of the Constituent Assembly,

opposed the Civil Constitution of the clergy, and went into exile in 1792. 3. The author alludes to the affair of the “Convulsionnaires de Saint-Médard.” This came about in the context of the Jansenist backlash against the papal bull Unigenitus (1713), which proscribed Réflexions morales sur le Nouveau Testament [Moral Reflections on the New Testament] by the Oratorian Pasquier Quesnel (1634–1719). Between 1727 and 1732, miraculous recoveries and fits of devotion in the form of convulsions took place around the tomb of the deacon François de Pâris (1690–1727). Louis XV would eventually bar all access to the Cemetery of Saint-Médard, forcing the “Convulsionnaires” to meet in private, where they engaged in flagellation and crucifixion. In his Encyclopédie article “Convulsionnaires,” d’Alembert pokes fun at the “sect of fanatics” and the division of the Jansenist faction into “convulsionistes” and “anticonvulsionistes”; Voltaire also attacks the Jansenists in his article “Convulsions” in the Dictionnaire philosophique [Philosophical Dictionary] (1764). On this question, see Catherine Maire, Les Convulsionnaires de Saint-Médard: Miracles, convulsions et prophéties à Paris au XVIIIe siècle [The Convulsionnaires of Saint-Médard: Miracles, Convulsions, and Prophesies in Paris during the Eighteenth Century] (Paris: Gallimard, 1985). 4. Jean-François Regnard (1655–1709) coined the expression “Saute, marquis!” (literally “Jump, Marquis!”) in his 1696 play Le Joueur [The Gambler] (act 4, scene 10). It is used ironically to express the smugness imputed to someone who is excessively pleased with qualities or advantages they do not really possess. 5. The author is perhaps alluding to Louis-Simon Martineau (1733–1799), a lawyer elected to the Estates-General by the city of Paris. He criticized his countrymen who were requesting passports to leave France, defended the Civil Constitution of the clergy, demanded political rights for the

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Jews, and protested, in 1791, against the petition to abolish the royalty. Letter Written by a Frenchman Immigrating to the Lands of the Scioto Company (1790) The author of this text—“Lettre écrite par un Français émigrant sur les terres de la Compagnie du Scioto à son ami à Paris,” Bibliothèque nationale, Pb 1599, New York, May 23, 1790—is unknown. Addressed by a client of the Scioto Company “to his friend in Paris,” this anonymous letter was dated May 23, 1790, and sent from New York. Its author relates the disastrous circumstances of his crossing on the Recovery, an English ship that, taking on water everywhere, sank off the American shores. Fortunately, its eighty-six passengers were able to abandon it in extremis by climbing aboard another vessel that was going to New York. After arriving in the United States, the author quickly understood that the prospectus of the Scioto Company “was insidiously calculated to dazzle a foreign people who could not see through the scam” (3). Taking one by one the promises of the agents of the Scioto Company, he debunks them all vigorously: namely, the lands were put up for sale at a price far above their real value; and they are located in a region that is difficult to reach and inhabited by American Indian tribes that will do everything they can to destroy the hopes of prosperity that had convinced his fellow countrymen to come. After having tried to dissuade his friend, as strongly as he could, from following him to America, the author concludes his letter. He is going to renounce the 10,000 livres he invested in the Scioto venture and head back to France as quickly as he can: “I will come back and live as a sensible man, and all the prospectuses in the world will not fill my head with ambition’s mirages” (25). 1. Author’s italics, here and in the rest of the excerpt. The italics indicate the passages

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taken verbatim from the Prospectus for the Colony on the Ohio and Scioto Rivers in America. 2. The Plaine des Sablons was at Neuilly (not far from the present-day Porte Maillot), about six kilometers northwest of the Palais-Royal. In 1794 it was used briefly as the site for the Mars School, which offered military and civic training for young boys. 3. The colony in question is Fort Washington, founded in 1789 by seventy men under the orders of Major John Doughty, where the city of Cincinnati now stands. It was the most secure military structure in the Northwest Territory, built on a strategic site to launch attacks against the Indian tribes to the north. Located about one hundred miles to the northwest of the lands put up for sale by the Scioto Company, Fort Washington boasted a force of 350 men at the beginning of 1790. 4. The colony in question is Marietta, founded in 1788 beside Fort Harmar, which will be mentioned below (see note 10, page 195). The author is exaggerating the distance that separated the lands put up for sale by the Scioto Company: this colony was only about ninety miles away. On Marietta, see the introduction, page 20. 5. The map distributed by the Scioto Company was titled “Plan des achats des Compagnies de l’Ohio et de la Scioto” [“Map of the Purchases of the Ohio Company and the Scioto”] (Bibliothèque Nationale, PB 1597). It depicted the navigable waterways up to Lake Erie and southern Ohio, as well as the supposed location of lead and salt mines. The author of the letter has good reasons to be suspicious of this map; it showed a territory only a tiny part of which had been surveyed, and whose limits were based on pure conjectures made by the geographer Thomas Hutchins, to whom we referred above (see note 4, page 192). This map proved in fact to be faulty: part of the lands it presented as property of the Scioto Company belonged to the Ohio

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Company. On this question, see MoreauZanelli, Gallipolis, 102–3, 116–17. 6. In chapter 17 of Voltaire’s Candide (1759), Candide and Cacambo reach the kingdom of Eldorado after nearly drowning in a wild river. They stay one month in this marvelous country, then ask the king to let them leave with some of the fabulous riches, which the inhabitants of Eldorado count for nothing. The king orders his architects to build a machine that will lift the two men above the steep mountains surrounding his kingdom, along with one hundred sheep loaded with supplies, gold, and precious stones. 7. This proverb is better known in the following form: “Quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat.” It is the Latin translation of a fragment from Euripides. 8. On April 30, 1790, Congress indeed increased the number of troops of the Regular Army to 1,216 men owing to the growing troubles in the Northwest Territory. On this question, see James R. Jacobs, The Beginning of the U.S. Army, 1783–1812 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1947), 16. 9. The author is mistaken on this point. In May 1790 the governor of the Northwest Territory was General Arthur St. Clair. He was not “massacred with his guard on the Ohio,” since he died years later, in 1818. The event to which the author alludes is not clear; it cannot refer to the defeat of St. Clair at the Battle of the Wabash, since this occurred on November 4, 1791, whereas the latter is dated May 23, 1790. Perhaps the author is referring to the battles of Heller’s Corner (October 19, 1790) and of Pumpkin Fields (October 22, 1790), during which the troops of General Josiah Harmar suffered serious defeats at the hands of the Indian warriors led by Little Turtle. This American campaign, in any case, also comes after the supposed writing of the letter; we must thus conclude that it was written a few months later than its author claims. On the wars of the North-

west Territory, see Allan W. Eckert, That Dark and Bloody River: Chronicles of the Ohio River Valley (1995; New York: Random House, 2011); and Eric Hinderaker, Elusive Empire: Constructing Colonialism in the Ohio Valley, 1673–1800 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 10. Fort Harmar, built in 1785 by Josiah Harmar, for whom it was named, was located at the juncture of the Muskingum and Ohio Rivers. Three years later the city of Marietta was built on the other side of the Muskingum. That is where the Treaty of Fort Harmar was signed on June 9, 1789, by the representatives of the Amerindians and the governor of the Northwest Territory, Arthur St. Clair. New Prospectus of the Scioto Company (1790) On the circumstances of the publication of the Nouveau Prospectus de la Compagnie du Scioto, avec plusieurs lettres écrites du Scioto même [New Prospectus of the Scioto Company, with Several Excerpts of Letters Written from Scioto Itself, Dated October 12, 1790] (Paris: Prault, 1790), and the context in which Lezay-Marnésia’s letters were composed, see the introduction, pages 19–20. 1. Lezay-Marnésia is repeating the deceptive arguments of the Prospectus, whose author emphasizes the advantages of trade on the river: “The land located between two wide rivers has all the conveniences you could want in an area of trade; moreover, its connection to Lake Erie and to Canada by way of the Scioto and with the whole western territory by way of the Ohio offers it more advantages than one could hope to find in any country known to man.” Prospectus pour l’établissement sur les rivières d’Ohio et de Scioto en Amérique [Prospectus for the Colony on the Ohio and Scioto Rivers in America] (Paris: Prault, 1789), 7–8. The author of the “Letter Written by a Frenchman Immigrating to the

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Lands of the Scioto Company” will bring back from his trip to America a very different evaluation of the Northwest Territory in comparison with the rest of the United States. On this question, see the excerpt reproduced in the appendix. 2. This defense of the Scioto Company should be compared with the reproaches that Lezay-Marnésia expresses a year later in his letter to Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, page 53. 3. On May 3, 1790, the 150 passengers of the Patriot disembarked at the port of Alexandria, Virginia. Clients of the Scioto Company, these travelers were met by a man named Thomas Porter, an Alexandria merchant, instead of General Rufus Putnam, who was supposed to lead them to their lands. In the absence of an official representative of the Company, the colonists were worried and irritated; the merchants of Alexandria took advantage of the situation to increase the cost of foodstuffs, while real estate companies proposed lands in Virginia to the newly arrived colonists, criticizing those they had already bought in the Northwest Territory. The arrival of the Liberty, and then the Mary, increased the size of the French contingent, and it was not until July 7, 1790, that a troop of around 220 colonists headed west. This delay of two months contributed to the failure of French colonization in Ohio by provoking the distrust of the clients of the Scioto Company and leading some of them to return to France, where they participated in the anti-Scioto campaign, thus discouraging other people who were contemplating emigration. Among the returnees was d’Allemagne, author of a pamphlet titled Nouvelles du Scioto [News from the Scioto] in which the schemes of the Company are severely criticized. Having arrived in Alexandria on the Nautilus of Scarborough on July 20, 1790, Lezay-Marnésia did not experience any of the troubles his countrymen had met, and he left for New York two weeks later. As regards this episode, see

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Jocelyne Moreau-Zanelli, Gallipolis, 280–89. 4. As regards William Duer, see note 67, page 171. 5. This letter was probably addressed to Joel Barlow, the head of the Scioto Company along with William Playfair. For their role in the Scioto Company, see the introduction, 2–5. 6. Mr. Gréa was a lawyer at the High Court of Franche-Comté. During the stay of Lezay-Marnésia in the United States, Gréa had power of attorney for all his business. In August 1790 Lezay-Marnésia charged him from Alexandria with acquiring one thousand acres of land for the benefit of Baron Marc de la Bretèche. 7. Lezay-Marnésia’s predictions are more optimistic than were those of the first Prospectus. This one foresaw a production of thirty bushels of wheat per acre and a profit of four pounds ten per bushel delivered in Europe (Prospectus pour l’établissement sur les rivières d’Ohio et de Scioto en Amérique, 11–12). 8. Counselor at the High Court of Metz, then at the Sovereign Court of Nancy, the knight Jean-Pierre-Louis de Beyerlé (1738–1805) was a longtime friend of Lezay-Marnésia. In fact, the two men belonged to the Freemasons. A “worshipful master” at the August Fidelity Lodge of Nancy, de Beyerlé was president of the Grand Scottish Lodge of Burgundy. 9. The typographical disposition of the New Prospectus does not indicate any rupture of continuity between the excerpt from Lezay-Marnésia’s letter to Mr. de Beyerlé and this remark by the editor. The New Prospectus finishes with these words. Modern Chivalry: Containing the Adventures of Captain John Farrago and Teague O’Regan, His Servant (1792) Writer, lawyer, and jurist, Hugh Henry Brackenridge (1748–1816) took up residence in Pittsburgh in 1781, where he par-

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ticipated in founding both the Pittsburgh Gazette and, after his election to the Pennsylvania General Assembly, the future University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of Modern Chivalry: Containing the Adventures of Captain John Farrago and Teague O’Regan, His Servant (1792–1815), an epic novel describing the American frontier in a satirical mode. Having resolved to “see how things were going on here and there, and to observe human nature” (4), Captain John Farrago and his faithful servant Teague O’Regan embarked on a series of quixotic exploits that led them through the western portions of the United States. After many adventures, Teague O’Regan was named excise officer and was soon assaulted by a crowd rallying to the call “Liberty and no excise!” (213). (This opposition to taxes belongs to the history of the “Whisky Rebellion” [1791–1794], a popular uprising against the increase of taxes on alcohol ordered by the U.S. Congress to erase the budget deficit caused by the Revolutionary War. On this question, see the introduction by White in ibid., xv–xviii; and William Hogeland, The Whisky Rebellion: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and the Frontier Rebels Who Challenged America’s Newfound Sovereignty [New York: Scribner, 2006].) Tarred and feathered, Teague was forced to flee under penalty of hanging. As for the Captain and his other servant Duncan, the crowd threatened them with a similar fate upon hearing a rumor that they intended to replace Teague in his function as an excise officer. Captain Farrago and Duncan took refuge in the mountains, where they met a French émigré: a certain “marquis de Marnessie,” who is none other than Lezay-Marnésia (see the edition of Ed White [Indianapolis: Hackett, 2009], 216–22). Brackenridge had met LezayMarnésia in 1790, when the marquis was living near Pittsburgh. 1. Brackenridge writes the “marquis de Marnessie,” but there is no doubt that he is

speaking of the marquis de LezayMarnésia, as indicate—despite the occasional inexactitudes—both the biography of the character and the allusion below to his work Le Bonheur dans les campagnes. 2. Contrary to what Brackenridge maintains here, Lezay-Marnésia never served in the armies of the counterrevolution. A little further on, Brackenridge is likewise mistaken about the size of the property owned by Lezay-Marnésia: the Azile domain included four hundred acres of lands, not one hundred as he says. 3. The livre is a French monetary unit worth one pound of silver. It remained the main unit of French currency until 1795. 4. This part of Brackenridge’s narrative contradicts what we know about the circumstances of Lezay-Marnésia’s emigration and his resources in America. LezayMarnésia left France unhurriedly after entrusting the management of his affairs to Mr. Gréa, liquidating part of his fortune, and carrying F 6,000 with him. 5. The Pillnitz Convention (1791) took place after the failed flight of Louis XVI to Varennes. It brought together several European monarchies in a war against France. 6. The word fuzee comes from the French military term for a musket, fusil. 7. Dedicated to Washington and Lafayette, The Rights of Man (1791) by Thomas Paine presents as legitimate the right of the people to rebel when the government ceases to respect their natural rights. Paine goes to the defense of the French Revolution against the attacks formulated by Edmund Burke in Reflections on the French Revolution (1790). 8. Ulysses’s visit to Hades is told in the eleventh book of The Odyssey. 9. Per my & per tout: Old French for “by half and by whole.” 10. In French in the text. The exact title of this work by Lezay-Marnésia is Le Bonheur dans les campagnes [Happiness in the Countryside] (1785; Paris: Royez, 1788).

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Letter to Monsieur Audrain, Merchant in Pittsburgh (1800) The “Lettre à Monsieur Audrain, à Pittsbourg, sur le voyage de retour” is dated June 4, 1792. It was published by Lezay-Marnésia in the second edition of Plan de lecture pour une jeune dame [Reading Program for a Young Lady], rev. and exp. ed. (Geneva: A. Fischer and L. Vincent; Paris: Louis, 1800), 205–23. Pierre Audrain answered Lezay-Marnésia in a letter from August 18, 1792, that gave him news of the friends they shared—Barthélémi Tardiveau, Jean-Baptiste Lucas des Pintreaux, and de Lassus de Luzières—and informed him of the progress of their plans for a colony in Illinois. Audrain and LezayMarnésia were working to create, under the jurisdiction of the United States, a colony where their countrymen in Gallipolis and Marietta would come to settle. This plan was quickly abandoned in favor of another, in New Bourbon in present-day Missouri (see note 9, page 191), that had no better fate. The response of Pierre Audrain is preserved in the Arsenal Library in Paris (LezayMarnésia Papers, file 7326, year 1792). It has been translated into English and published in its entirety by W. J. Wolfe in “The First American Citizen of Detroit: Pierre Audrain, 1725–1820,” 48–51. 1. On the circumstances of the Azile sale, see the introduction, page 22. 2. Antoine-Marin Lemierre (1733–1793) is a French playwright and poet. The line quoted by Lezay-Marnésia is taken from the poem Le Commerce [The Trade] (1756). Lemierre called it “the line of verse of the century,” whereas Louis-Sebastien Mercier quotes it as an example of a “tapeworm” [“ver solitaire”], that is, a “beautiful line of poetry found in an author who produces very little of them.” See Néologie [Neology], 2 vols. (Paris: Moussard and Maradan, 1801), 2:315. 3. On Gessner, see page 71. Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian (1755–1794) is a French writer, mainly known for his Fables (Paris:

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Didot, 1792). He is likewise the author of novellas, plays, and romances, his most famous work being La Romance du Chevrier [The Goatherd’s Romance] (1784), also known as Plaisir d’amour [Love’s Pleasures], put to music by Jean-Paul-Égide Martini (1741–1816), which inspired the song “Can’t Help Falling in Love” (1961) by Elvis Presley. 4. Lezay-Marnésia misspells the name of his friend Pierre-Charles-Dehaut de Lassus de Luzières, who was already mentioned in the last of the Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio, page 111. He is also mistaken in the spelling of the name of the son-in-law of de Luzières, Pierre Augustin Bourguignon d’Herbigny. My Memories: To My Children (1851) Albert-Madeleine-Claude de LezayMarnésia (1772–1857) was the youngest son of Claude-François-Adrien de LezayMarnésia. He accompanied him to America in 1790 and returned with him to France in 1792. After his return to France in 1792 Albert de Lezay-Marnésia was drafted: he served in the armies of the Republic under the patronymic name of Albert, because his father’s name figured on the list of émigrés. Assigned to the second regiment of riflemen, he participated in the sieges of Ypres, Écluse, Anvers, and Breda, as well as the invasion of Belgium and Holland. Having found a job with army caterers, he went to Amsterdam, which he eventually left in the company of a merchant to go to Madeira, the Azores, and Portugal. Back in Amsterdam, he wrote a play that was never published, Le Nouveau Misanthrope [The New Misanthrope; 1799], in which he criticized the upstarts of the Directoire and praised Bonaparte after the coup of 18 Brumaire. After the ascension of Bonaparte to the office of premier consul, his brother Adrien succeeded in having him struck from the list of émigrés, and he was able to return to Paris. Suspected of complicity with the

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émigré community, Albert was given no official function under the Empire and retired to the Saint-Julien family estate. In 1815, after the second Restoration, he was elected representative of the Lot department, then appointed prefect of the Somme before becoming prefect of the Rhône from 1817 to 1822. Excluded from the government under the Villèle ministry, he obtained the prefecture of Loir-et-Cher in 1828, became a peer of France in 1835, and then senator after the coup of LouisNapoléon Bonaparte in 1851. Between 1822 and 1828 he began the writing of his memoirs at Saint-Julien. Having resigned his office after the Revolution of 1848, he took them up again. Published in Blois by E. Dézairs in 1851 and 1854, Mes souvenirs: À mes enfants was intended for his family and not sold in bookstores. This work is extremely rare today; one of the last copies is kept at the French National Library. Albert de Lezay-Marnésia begins with a brief account of the first seven years of his life, which he spent in a boarding school where, he says, the monks taught him nothing. He then compares the manner of raising children in his youth to that which is in practice at the moment he is writing his memoirs, giving his preference to the former: more rigid, it was a better preparation, according to him, for adversity and instilled a respect for traditions. 1. Albert de Lezay-Marnésia is referring to Jean-Victor-Marie Moreau (1763–1813), born in Morlaix and law student at the University of Rennes, where he gained a reputation as a leader during the Journée des Bricales (January 26 and 27, 1789). Promoted to brigadier general in 1793 after distinguishing himself at the Battle of Neerwinden and at the defense of Dunkirk, he became commander in chief of the Army of the North in 1795, then general in chief of the Army of the Rhine. Having participated in a conspiracy against Bonaparte, he was exiled for two years in 1804 and went to live in the United States.

Back in Europe after the destruction of the Grand Army, he became military counselor to the Czar Alexander I and died from wounds received in the Battle of Dresden. The Rapatel family includes numerous French army officers who distinguished themselves during the Revolution and the Empire. The most famous was Paul-Marie Rapatel (1782–1852), who joined the army at the age of sixteen and fought in the Army of the West, then in the Army of Italy. He served Joseph Bonaparte in Spain and participated in the Battle of Waterloo. Continuing his rise during the Restoration and the July Monarchy, General Rapatel became inspector general and commander of the African troops in 1834. Born in Rennes, Pierre-Jean-Baptiste François Elleviou (1769–1842) was a singer, actor, and librettist. Defying his surgeon father who wanted him to become a doctor, he fled to Paris where he joined the Opéra Comique. He had a successful career during the Revolution and the Empire and became a member, then administrator, of the Feydeau Theater. 2. This passage suggests that LezayMarnésia was at the origin of the Society of the Twenty-Four, whereas Duval d’Éprémesnil is sometimes referred to as its founder. On this question, see MoreauZanelli, Gallipolis, 182–84. 3. The Bulletin et journal des journaux of February 5 and the Bulletin National of February 8, 1790, cites the names of Mounier and Lally-Tollendal beside those of LezayMarnésia and d’Éprémesnil to announce their imminent migration to the banks of the Ohio. Contrary to the declarations of Albert de Lezay-Marnésia and the press of the period, Trophime-Gérard de LallyTollendal (1751–1830), Pierre-Victor Malouet (1740–1814), and Jean-Joseph Mounier (1758–1806) were never members of the Society of the Twenty-Four (on this question, see Moreau-Zanelli, Gallipolis, 186). On the other hand, the marquis Abel Claude de Vichy (1740–1793) was indeed a

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member, which is proved by his signature at the bottom of the minutes of the meetings held by the Society of the Twenty-Four on February 5 and 10, 1790. After emigrating in 1791, de Vichy returned to France the following year, commanded the Lyon cavalry at the Siege of Lyon in 1793, and was captured and executed. Lezay-Marnésia knew him from the Nine Sisters Lodge, of which de Vichy was a member from 1784 to 1787. 4. Albert de Lezay-Marnésia is mistaken about the name of the “capital” that his father wished to build with his partners. The Society planned to found two cities: New-Patrie [New-Homeland], where they intended to settle with their families (Lezay-Marnésia later proposed that this city be renamed Aigle-Lys [Eagle-Lily]); and a second city for the craftsmen and farmers, whose name had not been decided before their departure for America. The city of Gallipolis was founded in the Northwest Territory by clients of the Scioto Company who were not members of the Society of the Twenty-Four; it still exists, in Gallia County in Ohio. 5. Albert de Lezay-Marnésia is also mistaken on this point: his father made repeated attempts to obtain from the Vatican the creation of a bishopric on the Scioto property, but he failed to do so. Instead of being named bishop, the Benedictine from the Saint-Maur congregation, Dom Pierre Joseph Didier, was made “Grand Vicar in spiritualibus for a period of seven years” (Moreau-Zanelli, Gallipolis, 203), and it is in this quality that he went to America with the Scioto Company clients. His spiritual authority over the inhabitants of the future colony was to be subordinate to that of Monseigneur Carroll, the first bishop representing the Catholic Church in America, named in Baltimore in 1789 by the Vatican. As Albert de Lezay-Marnésia claims, Dom Didier did indeed take with him part of the Saint-Denis vestments. All the same, if we are to believe the comments of his superiors

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and his flock, it does not appear that his integrity is to be questioned: he apparently wanted to preserve these church vestments from the destruction perpetrated by the revolutionaries. Arriving in Philadelphia in May 1790, Dom Didier left the members of the Society of the Twenty-Four and settled in Gallipolis with his brother, JeanBaptiste Didier, a Parisian jeweler. He l ater migrated to Missouri and lived out his life among his parishioners in St. Louis. On Lezay-Marnésia’s plans in the area of religion, see Moreau-Zanelli, Gallipolis, 199–208. 6. Honoré-Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau (1749–1791), became representative of the Third Estate at the EstatesGeneral, then member of the Constituent Assembly, where his eloquence won him the nickname “Hercules of Liberty.” He played a double game between the Assembly and the king, whom he served as an unofficial counselor. Jean-Siffrein Maury (1746–1817) was elected representative to the Estates-General from the bailiwick of Péronne. He defended the prerogatives of the monarchy and the Church at the Constituent Assembly, where he protested against the Civil Constitution of the clergy and constantly opposed Mirabeau. A famous Parisian lawyer and representative of the Third Estate at the EstatesGeneral, François-Denis Tronchet (1726–1806) was president of the Constituent Assembly in 1791 and one of the defenders of Louis XVI. On Clermont-Tonnerre, see page 87. Representative of the Third Estate at the Estates-General, Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794) spoke at the Constituent Assembly against martial law, defended universal suffrage and the actors’ and Jews’ right to vote, and was involved in the debate over the organization of the National Guard. In May 1791 he facilitated the passage of the principle of non-reelection of the representa-

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tives of the Constituent Assembly to the Legislative Assembly. Lawyer at the Grenoble High Court, Antoine-Pierre-Joseph-Marie Barnave (1761–93) was elected representative of the Third Estate to the Estates-General. He gained a reputation as one of the best orators at the Constituent Assembly, which he presided in October 1790. A supporter of constitutional monarchy and close to the Saint-Domingue planters, he sat on the colonial committee and spoke against citizenship for people of color. 7. Lezay-Marnésia and his son disembarked in Alexandria, Virginia, on July 29, 1790. 8. On William Duer, see note 67, page 171. 9. Adopted by Congress on July 16, 1790, two weeks before the arrival of the Lezay-Marnésias in America, the Residence Act declared that the construction of the future capital of the United-States would be on the banks of the Potomac River and charged George Washington with determining the exact location. The French engineer Pierre-Charles l’Enfant (1754– 1825) was named chief architect and presented his plans for the city in June 1791. 10. John Adams (1735–1826) was the first vice-president of the United States (1789–1797), then the second president of the United States (1797–1801). Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804) was the first secretary of the Treasury of the United States. Founder of the Federalist Party, he wrote with John Jay and James Madison the Federalist Papers (1787–1797), a volume of articles in favor of the Constitution. Member of Congress (1783), then ambassador to France from 1785 to 1789, where he replaced Franklin, Thomas Jefferson (1743– 1826) became vice-president (1797–1801), then the third president of the United States (1801–1809). One of the authors of the Constitution, James Madison (1751–1836) succeeded

Thomas Jefferson in the presidency of the United States (1809–1817). A decree of August 26, 1792, by the Legislative Assembly conferred on him the title of French citizen at the same time as George Washington. 11. Having left Alexandria for New York at the beginning of August, Lezay-Marnésia and his son did not arrive in Marietta until the end of October. The departure for the “Promised Land” of Ohio took place during the month of September 1790. 12. Hercules’s columns designate the two mountains at the Straits of Gibraltar, considered in mythology to be the limits of the known world. 13. Albert de Lezay-Marnésia wrote this passage in 1848. 14. Twenty years before Albert de LezayMarnésia, Chateaubriand developed similar thoughts on the rapid evolution of the United States since 1791, the year of his own stay across the Atlantic: “If I saw the United States again today, I would not recognize it: where I left forests, I would find cultivated fields, where I cleared a path for myself through the brush, I would travel on highways. The Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Ohio no longer flow empty; great three-mast ships ply their waters, and more than two hundred steamboats enliven the shores. In the land of the Natchez, where Céluta’s hut once stood, there is a charming city of around five thousand inhabitants.” Voyage en Amérique [Travels in America] (1827), in Œuvres complètes de Chateaubriand [The Complete Works of Chateaubriand], 16 vols. to date (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2008–), 6:373. 15. Founded on the criticism of philistinism and the lure of gain, the antiAmericanism of Albert de Lezay-Marnésia is characteristic of the period when his Memories were published. The expressions he uses are consonant with those adopted by Baudelaire in Edgar Allan Poe, His Life and Works: “All of that reminds me of the odious paternal proverb: Make money, my

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son, honestly, if you can, BUT MAKE MONEY. Those words stink like a shop! as J. de Maistre said, in reference to Locke.” In Œuvres complètes de Baudelaire [The Complete Works of Baudelaire], ed. Claude Pichois, 2 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1976), 2:251. 16. Marietta is located about 105 miles southwest of Pittsburgh and 95 miles northeast of the lands acquired by LezayMarnésia on the banks of the Scioto. 17. On the defeat of St. Clair, see note 75, pages 171–72. 18. Albert de Lezay-Marnésia is mistaken in the chronology of the events. It was during the winter of 1790 that he and his father were in Marietta, a city in the Northwest Territory they left the following spring to settle in the Pittsburgh region. The expedition led by General Arthur St. Clair, however, did not leave Fort Washington (today Cincinnati) until October 1791, before suffering a crushing defeat on November 4 at the Battle of the Wabash. At this time Lezay-Marnésia and his son were in Pittsburgh, as witnessed by the second of the Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio that carries the following notation: “Fort Pitt, November 2, 1791.” Contrary to what Albert de Lezay-Marnésia implies in this passage of his Memories, the defeat of St. Clair is not what prompted his father to leave Marietta, since it took place nearly a year after his departure for Pennsylvania. On the other hand, it did indeed put an end to any “hopes of creating a colony” that he may still have entertained, the Scioto region being from that moment on controlled by the American Indian tribes that had defeated the troops of General St. Clair. This confusion in the order of events may easily be explained by the considerable length of time between the events and Albert Lezay-Marnésia’s account of them— fifty-eight years, as he remarks himself (page 150). As regards the Battle of the Wabash and this period of Lezay-Marnésia’s stay in America, see the introduction, page 21.

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19. Albert de Lezay-Marnésia is referring to the “Marietta earthworks,” an archeological site located at the junction of the Ohio and Muskingum Rivers. Discovered in 1786 by Major Jonathan Heart, the site was explored by members of the Ohio Company Rufus Putnam and Manasseh Cutler during the founding of Marietta in 1788. Several theories attempt to explain the origin of these conical, pyramid-like mounds, surrounded by walls and trenches. In a letter from 1786 to Ezra Stiles, the president of Yale University, Benjamin Franklin attributed the construction to members of the Hernando de Soto expedition. Later research proved that the site was built by members of the Hopewell culture between 100 BCE and 500 CE. On this subject, see Bradley Thomas Lepper, Ohio Archaeology: An Illustrated Chronicle of Ohio’s Ancient Indian Cultures (Wilmington, OH: Orange Frazer Press, 2005), 240–42. 20. Compare story of this visit as told by Albert de Lezay-Marnésia to the version given by his father in the first of the Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio (page 47–51). Among the multiple differences between the two texts, you will note the one concerning the name of the tribe to which the marquis’s guests belong: they were Chickasaw according to Albert de Lezay-Marnésia, whereas his father states that they belonged to the Huron tribe. 21. The “savage” in question was named Peter Otsiquette, and he was the son of a French father and a mother who belonged to the Oneida tribe (Lafayette had been adopted by this tribe under the name of “Kayewla”). It was in 1786, at the age of nineteen, that Peter Otsiquette agreed to travel to France with Lafayette, who had to obtain first the approval of everyone in his family. In his memoirs, the comte de Neuilly says he saw the young American Indian perform a “scalp dance,” accompanied by tomahawk blows in the air, at a ball given by the countess de Tessé. Otsiquette was back in the United States in July 1788.

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The members of his tribe held him in high esteem; in March 1792 he was chosen to meet Vice-President Adams in Philadelphia with other leaders of the Iroquois Nation. He met his death on this occasion, with no one knowing whether his disappearance was the result of excessive drinking or pleurisy. On Peter Otsiquette, see Laura Auricchio, The Marquis: Lafayette Reconsidered (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014), 137–39. 22. Albert de Lezay-Marnésia underestimates the distance between Marietta and Niagara Falls. Contrary to what he thinks, it is not 30 leagues (which is about 75 miles), but 280 miles in a straight line. 23. The property acquired by LezayMarnésia on the banks of the Monongahela was in fact named “Azile.” It is alluded to by Lezay-Marnésia in the third of the Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio. In naming it “Asilum,” Albert de LezayMarnésia creates confusion with another Pennsylvanian colony, “Asylum.” On this question, see note 2, page 190. 24. Albert de Lezay-Marnésia is referring to William Duer. After having embarked at the beginning of 1792 on an ambitious financial operation for which he borrowed large sums of money and committed all his capital, Duer was imprisoned for debts on March 23, 1792, at precisely the time when Lezay-Marnésia had the greatest need of his help. Duer owed $200,000 to the U.S. Treasury. 25. Count Paolo Andreani (1763–1823) is an Italian traveler, born into a wealthy family from Milan. On March 13, 1784, he accomplished in Milan the first public hot-air balloon flight outside France. After numerous travels in Europe he went in 1790 to the United States, where he visited the state of New York and lived with the Iroquois, Oneida, and Onondaga. In the course of spring 1791, he requested the authorization to join the Arthur St. Clair expedition in order to observe the war against the American Indian tribes led by Little Turtle. His request was denied,

which probably saved his life, since the St. Clair army was crushed at the Battle of the Wabash (November 4, 1791). A victim of financial difficulties caused by unfortunate speculations and the aid he gave Lezay-Marnésia, he returned to Europe in June 1792. He is the author of a travel journal, translated into English by Cesare Marino and Karim M. Tiro under the title Along the Hudson and Mohawk: The 1790 Journey of Count Paolo Andreani (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006). 26. Albert de Lezay-Marnésia is referring to William Bingham (1752–1804), a Federalist senator from Pennsylvania. He had married Anne Willing (1764–1801), the daughter of Thomas Willing (1731– 1821), president of the First Bank of the United States. William Bingham was considered the richest man in the United States. He made his fortune supervising activities of the privateers in the Caribbean Sea during the War of Independence before participating in the financing of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. He was also an important real estate promoter in the state of New York and in the future state of Maine. 27. This scene took place at the beginning of 1792. Albert de Lezay-Marnésia was then nineteen. Full legal age (the age of emancipation from paternal authority) was generally set at twenty-five, before the decree of September 20, 1792, lowered it to twenty-one. The draft that Albert de LezayMarnésia proposed to sign could therefore have no legal value without the signature of his father. When they stopped in London in June 1792, Lezay-Marnésia and his son learned that William Pulteney had honored the debt. 28. William Johnstone (1729–1805) took the name William Pulteney after his marriage in 1760 to Frances Pulteney, heir to a considerable fortune. A friend of Adam Smith and David Hume, he studied law at the University of Edinburgh. Lawyer and

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member of Parliament, he founded, with two associates, the Pulteney Association in order to acquire more than a million acres in western New York. At his death he was considered the richest man in Great Britain, his fortune totaling upwards of 2 million. His only daughter, Henrietta Laura Pulteney (1766–1808), married in 1794 Sir James Murray (1755–1811) and became countess of Bath in 1803. 29. Adrienne de Lezay-Marnésia (1768– 91) married on June 17, 1786, Claude de Beauharnais (1756–1819). The couple took up residence in Paris before going into exile in Saint-Julien at the beginning of the Revolution. Their son, Albéric-Jules-Albert, was born in 1787 and died in 1790. Adrienne de Lezay-Marnésia died from chest disease the following year. Napoleon adopted her daughter, Stéphanie-LouiseAdrienne de Beauharnais (1789–1860), who married in 1806 Charles Frédéric, grand duc de Baden (1786–1818).

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30. Founded in 1217 by Philippe de Dreux, the Abbey of Pentemont (sometimes spelled “Panthemont”) was transferred to Paris in 1672 by order of Louis XIV. The renovation of the abbey, begun in 1743 at the instigation of the abbess MarieCatherine de Béthisy de Mézières, was completed in 1783. Until the Revolution it served as a convent for nuns and as a school for girls belonging to the highest nobility and to the foreign elite (the daughters of Thomas Jefferson were residential pupils there at the end of the 1780s). Adrienne de Lezay-Marnésia and Laura Pulteney met there in 1783. On the Abbey of Pentemont, see François Rousseau, “Histoire de l’Abbaye de Pentemont depuis sa translation à Paris jusqu’à la Révolution” [“History of the Abbey of Pentemont since Its Transfer to Paris until the Revolution”], Mémoires de la Société de l’Histoire de Paris [Memoirs of the Society for the History of Paris] 48 (1918): 171–227.

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B I B L IO G R A P H Y

works by claude- françois- adrien de lezay- marnésia Previous Editions of the Works Included in This Volume “Lettre à Monsieur Audrain, à Pittsbourg, sur le voyage de retour.” 1792. In Plan de lecture pour une jeune dame, 205–23. Revised and expanded ed. Geneva: A. Fischer and L. Vincent; Paris: Louis, 1800. “Lettre du 12 octobre 1790; Lettre du 24 septembre à M. Gréa; Lettre à M. de Beyerley.” In Nouveau Prospectus de la Compagnie du Scioto. Paris: Prault, 1790. Lettres écrites des rives de l’Ohio. 1792. Paris: Prault, 1800. Other Works by Lezay-Marnésia Le Bonheur dans les campagnes. 1785. Paris: Royez, 1788. Discours de réception à la Société royale des Belles-Lettres de Nancy, le 20 octobre 1767. Paris: Quillau Libraire and Dessain Junior, 1767. “Épître à mon curé.” 1775. In Essai sur la nature champêtre, 185–91. Paris: Prault, 1787.

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Essai sur la minéralogie du bailliage d’Orgelet en Franche-Comté, lu dans la séance publique de l’Académie des Sciences et des Arts de Besançon, le 5 décembre 1778. Besançon and Paris: Charmet and Mérigot Jeune, 1778. Essai sur la nature champêtre. Paris: Prault, 1787. L’Heureuse famille, conte moral. Geneva and Nancy: Leclerc, 1766. Idée d’un député du bailliage d’Aval sur la permanence de l’Assemblée nationale. S.l., s.d. British Library (FR 74[28]), 1789. “Les Lampes, allégorie.” Journal de Paris 118 (April 27, 1788). “Maraudeur.” Journal Encyclopédie, July 15, 1759. “Maraudeur”/”Voleur.” In Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, vol. 17, pp. 450–51. Neuchâtel, 1765. Les Paysages, ou essai sur la nature champêtre, pœme. Paris: Louis, 1800. [This volume also contains: Apelle et Campaspe, ballet héroïque; Pièces fugitives; L’Heureuse famille, conte moral; Les Lampes, allégorie; Épître à mon cure.]

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Plan de lecture pour une jeune dame. 1784. Lausanne: A. Fischer and Luc Vincent; Paris: Louis, 1800. [This volume also contains Voyage au Pays de Vaud; Lettre à M. de V.; Pensées littéraires, morales et religieuses; L’Héroïsme de la charité; Lettre à M. Audrain à Pittsbourg; Dialogue entre Buffon et Bailly; and Discours de réception à la Société royale des Belles-Lettres de Nancy.] other relevant primary sources Allemagne, d’. Nouvelles du Scioto, ou relation fidèle du voyage et des infortunes d’un Parisien qui arrive de ces pays-là, où il était allé pour s’établir. Paris: Lenoir et Leboucher, 1790. Andreani, Paolo. Along the Hudson and Mohawk: The 1790 Journey of Count Paolo Andreani. Edited and translated by Cesare Marino and Karim M. Tiro. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. Andrieux, François-Guillaume-JeanStanislas. “Les Français aux bords du Scioto, épître à un émigrant.” 1790. Almanach des Muses (1791): 224–30. ———. Le Philosophe au Scioto ou les Fuyards, comédie nationale en trois actes en prose. Bibliothèque nationale, mss Fonds français, 9265, folio 25–40, ca. 1790. Anonymous. Départ du Haut Clergé pour l’Isle du Scioto. Paris: L. Girard, 1790. ———. Départ pour Scioto, ou mes adieux à la France. Paris, 1790. ———. Lettre de M. de V. à M. le C. D. M. à l’occasion des Observations publiées sur l’établissement du Scioto. Bibliothèque nationale, Pb 3898 bis, Paris, 1790.

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———. Lettre écrite par un Français émigrant sur les terres de la Compagnie du Scioto à son ami à Paris. Bibliothèque nationale, Pb 1599, New York, May 23, 1790. ———. Nouveau Prospectus de la Compagnie du Scioto, avec plusieurs lettres écrites du Scioto même. Paris: Prault, 1790. ———. Le Parlement de Paris établi au Scioto, sur les bords de l’Oyo, et se trouve à Paris, chez tous les marchands de nouveautés. Bibliothèque nationale, Lb 39 9346, 1790. ———. Prospectus pour l’établissement sur les rivières d’Ohio et de Scioto en Amérique. Paris: Prault, 1789. Bachaumont, Louis Petit de. Mémoires secrets pour servir à l’histoire de la république des lettres en France, depuis MDCCLXII jusqu’à nos jours. 36 vols. London: John Adamson, 1783–89. Beaumont, Gustave de. Marie: Or, Slavery in the United States. 1835. Translated by Barbara Chapman. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Billardon de Sauvigny, Edme-Louis. Hirza, ou les Illinois. Paris: veuve Duchesne, 1767. ———. Vashington, ou la liberté du Nouveau Monde, tragédie en quatre actes. Paris: Maillard, 1791. Boufflers, Stanislas Jean de, and Éléonore de Sabran. Le Lit bleu: Correspondance, 1777–1785. Edited by Sue Carrell. Paris: Tallandier, 2009. ———. La Promesse: Correspondance, 1786–1787. Edited by Sue Carrell. Paris: Tallandier, 2010. Brackenridge, Hugh Henry. Modern Chivalry: Containing the Adventures of Captain John Farrago and Teague O’Regan, His Servant. 1792–1815. Edited by Ed White. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2009.

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Brissot de Warville, Jacques-Pierre. Examen critique des Voyages dans l’Amérique septentrionale de Monsieur le marquis de Chastellux, ou Lettre à Monsieur le marquis de Chastellux, dans laquelle on réfute principalement son opinion sur les Quakers, sur les Nègres, sur le Peuple et sur l’Homme. London, 1786. ———. New Travels in the United States of America. 1791. Edited by Durand Echeverria. Translated by Mara Soceanu Vamos. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964. Brissot de Warville, Jacques-Pierre, and Étienne Clavière. De la France et des États-Unis, ou de l’importance de la Révolution de l’Amérique pour le bonheur de la France. Des rapports de ce royaume et des États-Unis, des avantages réciproques qu’ils peuvent retirer de leurs liaisons de commerce, et enfin de la situation actuelle des ÉtatsUnis. London, 1787. Campanella, Tommaso. The City of the Sun: A Poetical Dialogue. Edited and translated by D. J. Donno. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981. Cazenove, Théophile. Cazenove Journal, 1794: A Record of the Journey of Théophile Cazenove through New Jersey and Pennsylvania. 1794. Edited and translated by Rayner Wickersham Kelsey. Haverford: Pennsylvania History Press, 1922. Chastellux, François-Jean, marquis de. Travels in North America. 1786. Translated by Howard C. Rice. 2 vols. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1963. Chateaubriand, François-René de. Atala/ René. 1801. Translated by Irving Putter. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1952.

———. Mémoires d’outre-tombe. 1848. Edited by Jean-Claude Berchet. 4 vols. Paris: Le Livre de poche, 1989. ———. Travels in America. 1827. Translated by Richard Switzer. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1969. Cloots, Anacharsis. Écrits révolutionnaires, 1790–1794. Edited by Michèle Duval. Paris: Éditions Champ libre, 1979. Condorcet, Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de. Lettre d’un citoyen des États-Unis à un Français. Paris, 1788. ———. Writing on the United States. Edited and translated by Guillaume Ansart. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009. Constant, Benjamin. Observations on the Strength of the Present Government of France and upon the Necessity of Rallying Round It. 1796. Translated by James Losh. Bath, UK: R. Crittwell, 1797. Crèvecœur, J. Hector St. John de. Eighteenth-Century Travels in Pennsylvania and New York. 1801. Edited and translated by Percy G. Adams. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1961. ———. Letters from an American Farmer and Other Essays. 1782. Edited by Dennis D. Moore. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013. ———. Lettres d’un cultivateur américain. 2 vols. Paris: Cuchet, 1784. ———. Lettres d’un cultivateur américain. 3 vols. Paris: Cuchet, 1787. Cutler, Manasseh. An Explanation of the Map Which Delineates That Part of the Federal Lands Comprehended between Pennsylvania, West Line, the Rivers Ohio and

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publiés par sa famille. 6 vols. Paris: H. Fournier aîné, 1837. Lafitau, Joseph-François. Customs of the American Indians Compared with the Customs of Primitive Times. 1724. Edited and translated by William N. Fenton and Elizabeth L. Moore. 2 vols. Toronto: Champlain Society, 1974–77. La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, FrançoisAlexandre-Frédéric, duc de. Journal de voyage en Amérique et d’un séjour à Philadelphie, I octobre 1794–18 avril 1795, avec des lettres et des notes sur la Conspiration de Pichegru. Edited by Jean Marchand. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1940. ———. Voyages dans les États-Unis d’Amérique, fait en 1795, 1796 et 1797. 8 vols. Paris: Du Pont, Buisson, Pougens, 1799. Le Blanc de Guillet, Antoine. MancoCapac, premier ynca du Pérou. Paris: Belin, 1782. Ledoux, Claude-Nicolas. L’Architecture considérée sous le rapport de l’art, des mœurs et de la législation. 2 vols. Paris: printed by author, 1804. Lezay-Marnésia, Adrien-Paul-FrançoisMarie de. De la faiblesse d’un gouvernement qui commence et de la nécessité où il est de se rallier à la majorité nationale. Paris: Mathey, Desenne, Maret, 1796. ———. Qu’est-ce que la Constitution de 93? Paris: Migneret et Maret, 1795. ———. Qu’est-ce que la Constitution de 95? Paris: Migneret et Maret, 1795. Lezay-Marnésia, Albert-Madeleine-Claude de. Mes souvenirs: À mes enfants. Blois: E. Dezairs imprimeur, 1851. Mably, Gabriel Bonnot de. Remarks Concerning the Government and the Laws of the United States of America. 1784. New York: Burt Franklin, 1968.

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I N DE X O F P R OPE R NA M E S

Abelard, Peter, 188 n. 38 Adams, John, 27, 149, 161 Alembert, Jean Le Rond d’, 12, 97 Alexander I, 199 n. 1 Ampère, Jean-Jacques, 41 Andreani, Paolo, comte de, 155, 157, 162, 191 n. 10, 203 n. 25 Andrieux, François-Guillaume-JeanStanislas, 10, 117 Antraigues, Emmanuel-Henri-LouisAlexandre de Launay, comte de, 175 n. 111 Aubert de la Chesnaye des Bois, FrançoisAlexandre, 186 n. 24 Audrain, Pierre, ix, 22, 112–13, 138–44, 162, 163, 172 n. 80, 179 n. 1, 191 nn. 9–10, 198 Bachaumont, Louis Petit de, 182 n. 10 Baden, Charles II Frédéric, grand duke of, 160, 204 n. 29 Barlow, Joel, 2–6, 9, 11 Barnave, Antoine-Pierre-Joseph-Marie, 147 Barth, Jean-Joseph, comte de, 20 Beauharnais, Albéric-Jules-Albert, 204 n. 19 Beauharnais, Claude de, 160, 204 n. 29 Beauharnais, Joséphine de, 196, 189 n. 1 Beauharnais, Stéphanie-Louise-Adrienne de, 2, 160, 162, 204 n. 29 Beaumont, Gustave de, 41 Beaumont du Repaire, Christophe, 118 Beaunier, André, 165 n. 13

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Béthisy de Mézières, Marie-Catherine de, 204 n. 30 Beyerlé, Jean-Pierre-Louis de, 131 Billardon de Sauvigny, Edme-Louis, 174 n. 101, 182 n. 9 Bingham, William, 155 Bion of Smyrna, 188 n. 36 Blue Jacket, 172 n. 75 Bonal, François de, 193 n. 2 Bonaparte, Napoléon, 62, 145, 160, 183 Borel, Antoine, 70, 71 Boucher d’Argis, Antoine-Gaspard, 192 n. 4 Boufflers, Stanislas-Jean de, 47–51 Brackenridge, Hugh Henry, ix, 22, 132 Braddock, Edward, 139 Bretèche, Marc, baron de, 196 n. 6 Brissot de Warville, Jacques-Pierre, vii, viii, 9, 10, 26, 46 Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de, 158 Burke, Aedanus, 181 n. 4 Burke, Edmund, 197 n. 7 Butler, Richard, Campanella, Tommaso, 34, 35, 177 n. 141 Carondelet, François-Louis-Hector, baron de, 191 n. 9 Carroll, John, 200 n. 5 Catinat de la Fauconnerie, Nicolas de, 86 Cazalès, Jacques-Antoine-Marie de, 8 Cazenove, Théophile de, 9, 144 Cazenove d’Arlens, Antoine de, 144–45

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Cazenove d’Arlens, Constance-Louise de, 144 Cerutti, Joseph-Antoine-Joachim, 160 Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas, known as, 170 n. 49, 174 n. 101 Chastellux, François-Jean de Beauvoir, marquis de, 46, 180 n. 7, 184 n. 9 Chazelles, Laurent de, 72 Chevalier, Michel, 41 Choiseul, Étienne-François, comte de, 93, 159 Cicero, 180 n. 5 Clairon, Claire-Josèphe-Hippolyte Léris de la Tude, known as Mademoiselle, 182 n. 9 Clavière, Étienne, 9, 144, 181 n. 9 Clermont-Tonnerre, Stanislas-MarieAdélaïde, comte de, 86, 87, 147 Cloots, Anacharsis, 6, 7, 167 n. 10 Condorcet, Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de, 168 n. 19 Constant, Benjamin, 144, 189 n. 1 Corneille, Pierre, 100, 108 Crèvecœur, J. Hector St. John de, 40, 41, 70, 71, 170 n. 57, 173 n. 96, 178 n. 147, 179 n. 3, 186 n. 21, 187 nn. 30–31 Cutler, Manasseh, 191 n. 3, 202 n. 19 Delille, Jacques, 107, 170 n. 49 Demosthenes, 180 n. 5 Desmoulins, Camille, 7-9, 167 n. 15, 183 n. 3 Dessin, Pierre, 142 Didier, Jean-Baptiste, 200 n. 5 Didier, Pierre-Joseph, father, 200 n. 5 Doughty, John, 194 n. 3 Dubois, Marie-Madeleine Blouin, known as Mademoiselle, 182 n. 9 Dubuc, Jean-Baptiste, 93 Dubuisson, Pierre-Ulric, 93 Duer, William, 9, 19, 22, 130, 148, 171 n. 67, 203 n. 24 Duquesne de Menneville, Michel-Ange, marquis de, 139 Duval d’Éprémesnil, Françoise-Augustine, 199 n. 2 Duval d’Éprémesnil, Jean-Jacques, 2, 9, 170 n. 49, 175 n. 111, 183 n. 3 Duvergier de Hauranne, Ernest, 41 Elleviou, Pierre-Jean-Baptiste-François, 145, 199 n. 1

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Fénelon, François de Salignac de La Mothe, x, 28, 32, 33, 53, 85, 86, 93, 100, 184 n. 6 Ferrier de la Martinière, Louis, 174 n. 101 Florian, Jean-Pierre-Claris de, 143, 198 n. 3 Fontanes, Jean-Pierre-Louis, marquis de, 108, 170 n. 49 Forbes, John, 139 Foucault, Michel, 31–32 Franklin, Benjamin, 13, 103, 105, 160, 169 n. 44, 170 n. 49, 181 n. 4, 190 n. 5, 202 n. 19 Garnier, Charles-Georges-Thomas, 176 n. 120 Genet, Edmond-Charles, vii, 165 n. 5 Gessner, Salomon, 70, 71, 83, 143 Gréa, lawyer, 196 n. 6, 197 n. 4 Gresset, Jean-Baptiste-Louis, 187 n. 33 Grimm, Friedrich-Melchior, baron de, 26, 182 nn. 8-9, 11 Hamilton, Alexander, 19, 27, 141, 149, 161, 201 n. 10 Harmar, Josiah, 195 nn. 9–10 Heart, Jonathan, 202 n. 19 Helvétius, Claude-Adrien Schweitzer, 192 n. 3 Henri IV, 158 Herbigny, Pierre Augustin Bourguignon d’, 191 n. 9, 198 n. 4 Horace, 178 n. 152 Houdar de La Motte, Antoine, 190 n. 8 Hutchins, Thomas, 11, 115, 168 n. 23, 192 n. 4, 194 n. 5 Jacquemont, Victor, 41 Jameson, Fredric, 30, 39 Jay, John, 201 n. 10 Jefferson, Thomas, 19, 27, 149, 161, 179 n. 4, 180 n. 5, 180 n. 7, 201 n. 10 Joly de Fleury, Omer, 192 n. 3 Jones, John Paul, 160 Laborde, Jean-Benjamin de, 160 Lafayette, Gilbert du Motier, marquis de, 143, 153, 184 n. 9, 197 n. 7, 202 n. 21 Lafitau, Joseph-François, 179 n. 3 Lally-Tollendal, Trophime-Gérard, marquis de, 61, 62, 146, 200 n. 3

Index of Proper Names

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La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, FrançoisAlexandre-Frédéric, duc de, 175 n. 109, 178 n. 146, 181 n. 1, 185 n. 9 La Vrillière, Louis-Phélipeaux, comte de Saint-Florentin, comte, then duc de, 192 n. 2 Leblanc de Guillet, Antoine, 174 n. 101, 182 n. 8 Ledoux, Claude-Nicolas, 31–32 Lefranc de Pompignan, Jean-Jacques, marquis de, 88, 188 n. 39 Lemierre, Antoine-Marin, 140, 198 n. 2 L’Enfant, Pierre-Charles, 201 n. 9 Le Ray de Chaumont, Jacques-Donatien, 190 n. 5 Le Ray de Chaumont, Jacques-Donatien (son of the former), 190 n. 5 Lesage, Alain-René, 174 n. 101 Lespinasse, Julie-Jeanne-Éléonore de, 183 n. 1 Lettsome, John Coakley, 159 Leval, Rosalie-Josèphe Bacler de, 183 n. 3 Lezay-Marnésia, Adrienne-GabrielleFrançoise-Claudine de, 159 Lezay-Marnésia, Adrien-Paul-FrançoisMarie de, 99–113, 159, 189 n. 1 Lezay-Marnésia, Albéric-Jules-Albert de, 204 n. 29 Lezay-Marnésia, Albert-Madeleine-Claude de, 159, 198 Lezay-Marnésia, Anne-Marie-Claudine de Nettancourt, marquise de, 158 Lezay-Marnésia, Charlotte-Antoinette, marquise de, 158 Lezay-Marnésia, Claude-Hubert, marquis de, 169 Lezay-Marnésia, Françoise-Renée de, 163 Lezay-Marnésia, François-Gabriel, marquis de, 158, 159, 169 n. 34 Lezay-Marnésia, Louis-Albert de, bishop, 159 Little Turtle, 172 n. 75, 195 n. 9, 203 n. 25 Louis XIV, 86, 166 n. 8, 190 n. 4, 204 n. 30 Luzières, Félicité-Odile Dehaut de Lassus de, 172 n. 79 Luzières, Pierre-Charles Dehaut de Lassus, marquis de, 22, 172 n. 79, 191 n. 9, 198, 198 n. 4 Mably, Gabriel Bonnot de, 46, 61, 91, 180 n. 6

Madison, James, 19, 149, 161, 201 n. 10 Malouet, Pierre-Victor, 8, 62, 146, 181 n. 1, 200 n. 3 Marie-Antoinette, 20, 177 n. 146, 183 n. 3 Martineau, Louis-Simon, 124, 193 n. 5 Martini, Jean-Paul-Égide, 198 n. 3 Massillon, Jean-Baptiste, 86 Maury, Jean-Siffrein, 8, 123, 147, 200 n. 6 Mazzei, Filippo, 180 n. 6 Miller, Philip, 72 Mirabeau, Honoré-Gabriel Riqueti, comte de, 8, 147, 173 n. 88, 181 n. 4, 200 n. 6 Montaigne, Michel de, 100 Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de, 12, 28, 33, 53, 61, 86, 87, 91, 93, 160, 169 n. 36, 184 n. 5 Montfort, Bertrade de, 188 n. 38 Montgomery, Richard, 56, 185 n. 12 Mont-Lucy, 168 n. 29 More, Thomas, 28, 31, 32, 34, 35, 176 n. 118, 176 n. 124 Moreau, Jean-Victor-Marie, 145, 199 n. 1 Moreau de Saint-Méry, Médéric-LouisÉlie, 175 n. 109 Morellet, André, 17 Morris, Robert, 177 n. 146 Moschus, 83, 188 n. 36 Mounier, Jean-Joseph, 61, 62, 86, 87, 146, 168 n. 29, 199 n. 3 Murray, James, 204 n. 28 Necker, Jacques, 23, 86, 163 Necker, Suzanne, 183 n. 1 Nettancourt d’Haussonville, Jean de, 159 Nicholson, John, 177 n. 146 Noailles, Louis-Marie, vicomte de, 175 n. 109, 177 n. 146 Orléans, Louis-Philippe d’, 5, 166 n. 8, 178 n. 146 Otsiquette, Peter, 202 n. 21 Ovid, 178 n. 152 Paine, Thomas, 134–36, 197 n. 7 Palissot de Montenoy, Charles, 182 n. 9 Pâris, François de, 193 n. 3 Pascal, Blaise, 24, 58, 85, 86, 186 n. 23 Paul, Saint Vincent of, 80, 188 n. 34 Paulée, 25–26, 49–50

Index of Proper Names

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Pauw, Cornelius de, 10, 179 n. 4, 180 nn. 4–5 Penn, William, 13, 54, 184 n. 8, 188 n. 40 Philippe I, 188 n. 38 Piccinni, Niccolò Vito, 160 Pintreaux, Jean-Baptiste-Charles-Lucas des, 22, 26-27, 99, 100–112, 174 nn. 103, 105, 190 n. 5 Pitt, William, 139, 141 Playfair, William, 2–11, 131, 168 n. 31, 191, 196 n. 5 Porter, Thomas, 196 n. 3 Prévost d’Éxiles, Antoine-François, 74 Pulteney, Frances, 162, 203 n. 27, 204 n. 28 Pulteney, Henrietta Laura, 156, 204 n. 30 Pulteney, William, 156 Putnam, Rufus, 20, 171 n. 72, 196 n. 3, 202 n. 19 Pythagoras, 92 Quérard, Joseph-Marie, vii Quesnel, Pasquier, 193 n. 3 Racine, Jean, 86, 88, 108, 188 n. 39 Racine, Louis, 88 Rapatel, Paul-Marie, 145, 199 n. 1 Raynal, Guillaume-Thomas, 11, 46, 93, 180 nn. 6, 8 Regnard, Jean-François, 193 n. 4 Robespierre, Maximilien, 147, 201 n. 6 Rochambeau, Jean-Baptiste-Donatien de Vimeur, comte de, 180 n. 7 Rousseau, Jean-Baptiste, 88, 188 n. 39 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 3, 12, 13, 15, 16, 25, 28, 29, 41, 50, 53, 54, 61, 64, 65, 68, 71, 72, 80, 85, 86, 91, 93, 110, 160, 174 n. 98, 182 n. 7, 183 n. 1, 184 n. 8, 187 n. 28, 189 n. 42, 190 n. 6, 192 n. 1 Rozier, Jean-Baptiste-François, 72 St. Clair, Arthur, 16, 21, 151, 162, 171 n. 75, 195 nn. 9–10, 202 nn. 17–18, 203 n. 25 Saint-Lambert, Jean-François de, 71, 108, 190 n. 7 Saint-Pierre, Jacques-Henri-Bernardin de, 17, 28, 30, 31, 34, 38, 39, 52–98, 162, 170 n. 59, 175 n. 111, 183 nn. 1–2, 184 n. 8, 196 n. 2 Sargent, Winthrop, 191 n. 10

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Saugrain, Antoine-François, 174 n. 103 Sebin, Anne, 174 n. 105 Sherlock, Martin, 160 Socrates, 80 Soto, Hernando de, 202 n. 19 Staël, Anne-Louise-Germaine de, 144, 189 n. 1 Stadnitski, Pieter, 144 Stiles, Ezra, 202 n. 19 Sully, Maximilien de Béthune, duc de, 86, 100, 158, 190 n. 4 Talleyrand-Périgord, Charles-Maurice de, 28, 144, 175 nn. 109–10, 178 n. 146 Talon, Antoine-Omer, 177 n. 146 Tardiveau, Barthélémi, 22, 172 n. 80, 191 n. 9, 198 Thomson, James, 108, 190 n. 7 Tronchet, François-Denis, 147, 200 n. 6 Tupper, Benjamin, 171 n. 72 Vauban, Sébastien Le Prestre, marquis de, 100, 190 n. 4 Vergennes, Charles Gravier, comte de, 175 n. 111 Vichy, Abel-Claude, marquis de, 146, 170 n. 49, 199 n. 3 Villedeuil, Pierre-Charles-Laurent, marquis de, 144 Villeneuve, Joachim Faiguet de, 185 nn. 10, 14 Virgil, 40, 57, 65, 107, 178 n. 152 Volney, Constantin-François de Chassebœuf, comte de, 175 n. 109, 178 n. 147 Voltaire, François-Marie Arouet, known as, 13, 15, 126, 145, 160, 169 nn. 36, 43, 170 n. 49, 182 n. 11, 187 n. 26, 188 n. 40, 192 n. 3, 193 n. 3, 195 n. 6 Washington, George, 19, 27, 30, 86, 139, 141, 147, 149, 157, 161, 171 n. 75, 179 n. 3, 180 n. 7, 181 n. 4, 201 nn. 9–10 Wayne, Anthony, 172 n. 75, 191 n. 10 Willing, Anne, 203 n. 26 Willing, Thomas, 203 n. 26 Zinzendorf, Nikolaus Ludwig, comte de, 56, 60, 185 n. 10, 185 n. 14

Index of Proper Names

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