27. FRANCE, DIPLOMATIC RELA TIONS OF THE UNITED STATES WITH. Before 1763, France had plans of oc cupation which ((held North America by its two ends" and threatened to restrict the English colonists in America who actively participated in the struggle for the Ohio Valley for Canada. In 1763, when France relinquished the Ohio Northwest and Canada to England and Louisiana to Spain, French leaders foresaw the revolt of the English colonies and recognized French interest to promote their independence.
American success in the Revolution was largely due to French aid. The result was largely influenced by the sympathy of the French people expressed both in outward acts of indi viduals and of the French government to which the Continental Congress first directed its diplo matic efforts to obtain recognition in the fam ily of nations. In the first year of the war, French secret aid was sent to keep the strug gle alive ; and, after American success at Sara toga, negotiations with France through Frank. lin resulted (6 Feb. 1778) in a treaty of amity and commerce and a treaty of alliance. By the latter the United States, in order to secure French aid, guaranteed the pos sessions of France in America and agreed to receive her prizes in American ports. These treaties, due largely to the French desire to avenge her late humiliations by Eng land, were of momentous consequence in deter mining American independence. Later, in April 1781, when Washington, viewing the critical state of affairs, urged that France must act quickly for American deliverance, the formi dable squadron (28 ships) of Admiral de Grasse set sail from the West Indies for Hampton Roads, promptly brought invincible deliverance from the tenacious Cornwallis, and placed the United States under a debt of gratitude which, never forgotten, was partially repaid over a century and a third later by large American armies dispatched to France to push back the long premeditated German invasion of French territory. In the peace negotiations of 1782, however, France was inclined to favor the Spanish proposal to limit the United States on the west to the Appalachians.
In July 1784, Franklin negotiated with France a consular convention which proved unaccept able because it did not fol)ow Instructions based on the plan adopted by Congress in January 1782. On 14 Nov. 1788 Jefferson signed a new consular convention which, adhering to the plan of Congress and receiving the unanimous consent of the Senate, was made effective by act of Congress on 14 April 1792.
Meantime the French government unsuccess fully attempted by decrees to prevent the tend ency of American commerce to revert to its old channels — a tendency which had produced dis satisfaction in France. Late in 1790 it also com plained that certain acts of the American Con gress in regard to duties were an infraction of the treaty of 1778, and soon proceeded to adopt measures of retaliation. In 1792, following in structions of Secretary Jefferson who desired to secure a new commercial convention, Gou verneur Morris, appointed Minister to France, began negotiations which were quickly and radi cally changed by new revolutionary proceedings.
The American people hailed with enthusiasm the outbreak of the French Revolution but by 1793 there was a strong reaction led by the more conservative element and influenced by the increasing violence of the Revolu tion and the Genet incident, and marked by the President's firm stand on neutrality. At the opening of the war between France and England in 1793, Franco-American re lations became involved by embarrassing controversies and discussions concerning the construction and enforcement of the old treaties. For her aid in the American Revolu tion, France made demands on the United States which threatened to embroil the new re public in a ruinous war with Europe. Under the treaty of 1778, she claimed the right to take prizes into American ports and under the con sular convention of 1788 claimed a jurisdiction for her consuls which was very embarrassing to a neutral. The American government denied these claims, asserting that, by the circumstances of the war, it was released from its treaty obli gations.