Nor was this enthusiasm confined to Philadelphia. In his admirable daguerreotype of old New York, the venerable Doctor Francis has given a vivid picture, from memory, of the effect of Genet's arrival and sojourn in the country. Speaking of the arrival of _L'Embuscade_, he says: "The notoriety of the event and its consequences enables me to bring to feeble recollection many of the scenes which transpired in this city at that time: the popular excitement and bustle; the liberty cap; the _entrée_ of Citizen Genet; the red cockade; the song of the _Carmagnole_, in which with childish ambition I united; the _rencontre_ with the _Boston_ frigate, and the commotion arising from Jay's treaty. Though I can not speak earnestly from actual knowledge, we must all concede that these were the times when political strife assumed a formidable aspect--when the press most flagrantly outraged individual rights and domestic peace--when the impugners of the Washingtonian administration received new weapons, with which to inflict their assaults upon tried patriotism, by every arrival from abroad announcing France in her progress. The federalists and the anti-federalists now became the federal and the republican party; the _Carmagnole_ sung every hour of every day in the streets, and on stated days at the Belvidere Club-house, fanned the embers and enkindled that zeal which caused the overthrow of many of the soundest principles of American freedom. Even the yellow fever, which, from its novelty and its malignity, struck terror into every bosom, and was rendered more lurid by the absurd preventive means of burning tar and tar-barrels in almost every street, afforded no mitigation of party animosity; and Greenleaf with his _Argus_, Freneau with his _Time-Piece_, and Cobbett with his _Porcupine Gazette_, increased the consternation, which only added to the inquietude of the peaceable citizen, who had often reasoned within himself that a seven-years' carnage, through which he had passed, had been enough for one life."
"Much I saw--much has been told me by the old inhabitants now departed," says Doctor Francis. "When the entire American nation, nay, when the civilized world at large, seemed electrified by the outbreak of the Revolution in France, it necessarily followed, as the shadow does the substance, that the American soul, never derelict, could not but enkindle with patriotic warmth at the cause of that people whose loftiest desire was freedom--of that people who themselves had, with profuse appropriation, enabled that very bosom, in the moment of hardest trial, to inhale the air of liberty. Successive events had now dethroned the monarchy of France, and the democratic spirit was now evolved in its fullest element. It was not surprising that the experienced and the sober champions who had effected the great revolution of the colonies should now make the cause of struggling France their own; and as victors already in one desperate crisis, they seemed ready to enter into a new contest for the rights of man. The masses coalesced and co-operated. Cheering prospects of sympathy and of support were held out in the prospective to their former friends and benefactors abroad. Jealousy of Britain--affection for France--was now the prevailing impulse, and the business of the day was often interrupted by tumultuous noises in the streets. Groups of sailors might be seen collected on the docks and at the shipping, ready to embark on a voyage of plunder; merchants and traders, in detached bodies, might be seen discussing the hazards of commerce; the schools liberated from their prescribed hours of study, because of some fresh report of _L'Embuscade_ or of _Genet_; the schoolmaster uttering in his dismissal a new reason for the study of the classics, by expounding with oracular dignity to his scholars, _Vivat Respublica_, broadly printed as the caption of the playbill or the pamphlet just issued."[49]