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Edmond-Charles Genêt was born on January 8, 1763, in Versailles, France. He was the only son of Marie Anne Louise Cardon and Edme Jacques Genet, for many years premier commis of the Bureau of interpretations of foreign affairs at Versailles.
His four talented sisters were appointed to posts of honor in the household of Marie Antoinette and the oldest, Henriette, who became celebrated later as Madame Campan, was the first lady in waiting to the Queen.
Genet, who was a precocious child, was given the best educational advantages under tutors and his learned father.
At fourteen, he was made a secretary in his father’s office, where he translated many of the documents of the American Revolution. In 1780, young Genet studied at Giessen and spent some months in Berlin studying law.
Genet then went to Vienna in the secretariat of Baron de Breteuil and returned to Paris in September 1781, just in time to assume the office left vacant by the death of his father.
In the foreign office, he was again brought into contact with the affairs of the young American Republic; he later boasted that it was he who bore to Vergennes tidings of the surrender of Cornwallis.
Genet was sent to England in 1783 as acting secretary of the legation with Count de Moustier to secure information that might prove useful in connection with the contemplated treaty of commerce between Great Britain and France.
Many intellectual interests besides the linguistic demands of his position in the department of foreign affairs made these years, 1781-87, happily busy ones for Genet.
He kept up an active correspondence with scientific and liberal-minded intellectuals like La Rochefoucauld and Condorcet.
At the death of Vergennes, Genet’s bureau was abolished in a policy of retrenchment. Friends at Court soon secured for him appointment as secretary to the Comte de Segur, minister to the Court of Catherine II.
He went to Russia in the early fall of 1787, stopping over at Warsaw where he was introduced to King Stanislaus Poniatowski. Thus by the time he was twenty-five Genet had made the rounds of the most important courts of Europe.
Segur quitted St. Petersburg in October 1789 and Genet was left as charge d’affaires of France.
His revolutionary sentiments and his adherence to the Constitution of 1791 made him obnoxious to Catherine.
He was forbidden to appear at Court and put under surveillance. On news of the events of June 20, 1792, in Paris, he was expelled from Russia. He left St. Petersburg on July 27, and on his arrival in Paris was received cordially by the Girondist ministry as one who had suffered for liberty at the hands of the autocratic Catherine.
They planned to utilize him as an evangel of their faith. First they sent him on a temporary mission to Geneva. On November 19, 1792, he was appointed minister plenipotentiary to the United States, but was held in Paris by the Girondists until the day of the King’s execution in the hope that Louis XVI and the royal family could be sent with him to America.
Genet arrived at Charleston, South Carolina, on April 8, 1793, aboard the French frigate I’Embuscade and was feted by Gov. William Moultrie, Commodore Gillon, an old friend of the Genet family, and other high dignitaries who gave him encouragement in his plans.
He fitted out four privateers in Charleston and then started to Philadelphia by way of Camden, Salisbury, Richmond, and Baltimore. The people of the back country attested in demonstrative fashion their sympathy with France, but the cold caution of the cities, the neutrality proclamation that had met him en route, and the zeal for peace and prosperity that was evident on every hand, convinced Genet that he could not hope for active American participation in the war on the side of France.
He still expected, however, to press the right of France under the treaties of 1778 to fit out privateers in American ports and bring her prizes into them. These same treaties were causing Washington and his advisers grave concern, and had occasioned sharp disagreements.
George Hammond, the British minister, was in Hamilton’s confidence and protested vigorously the depredations on British commerce by the French privateers. Genet consorted with Jefferson, the known friend of France, and his coterie of intellectual and rather radical friends.
From his arrival in Philadelphia until the decision of Washington and his advisers early in August to ask for his recall, Genet was the storm center of American politics.
Supporters of the administration finally succeeded in discrediting him by publishing the charge that he had threatened to appeal from Washington to the people.
In the midst of these party factions in the declaredly neutral republic, Genet tried unremittingly to carry out his instructions. He sent the botanist Andre Michaux to Kentucky to make common cause with the disaffected element there for an expedition down the Mississippi to wrest Louisiana from Spain.
In South Carolina, he worked with the aid of restless and dissatisfied leaders like Stephen Drayton and Alexander Moultrie to take Florida from Spain.
When the French fleet, leaving Santo Domingo to the double devastation of revolutionary and racial conflicts, came to New York, he planned to send it to recapture St. Pierre and Miquelon for France and to help his emissary Henri Mezieres stimulate Canada to revolt. But mutiny in the fleet, the activities of the hostile South Carolina legislature against Drayton and Moultrie, and the lack of funds to enable Clark to start his expedition down the Mississippi before the arrival of Genet’s successor, Fauchet, made these energetic enterprises abortive.
Following the news of his recall, Genet increased his activities, but to no avail. The sagacious maneuvers of Federalist leaders had turned the tide of popular support from him to Washington.
The repudiated minister, however, had stimulated the organization of local clubs, variously termed Democratic or Republican societies, that soon radiated into almost every state.
These became vehicles for the expression of local grievances and contributed no little to the articulation of the growing Republican party. They were Genet’s real though unwitting bequest to the democratic movement.
When his successor arrived in February 1794, Genet bought a small farm on Long Island.
About 1800, he moved to a farm in Rensselaer County, New York, where he spent more than three decades in peaceful if not always calm retirement.
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Genet was a member of many learned bodies.
Genet became an American citizen.
An intermittent correspondence with his sister, Madame Campan, was his only link with France. On the coming to power of Louis Philippe, however, he sought some remunerative appointment from him in America.
On November 6, Genet married Cornelia Tappen Clinton, daughter of Gov. George Clinton of New York.
After the death of his wife, he married, on July 31, 1814, Martha Brandon Osgood, daughter of Samuel Osgood, former postmaster-general of the United States.
1726–1781
1787–1853
1774–1810
1809–1896
1815–1826
1808–1877
1802–1888
Born in 1816.
1819–1824
1800–1872
1824–1904
1821–1891
1805–1838
November 9, 1896 – April 17, 1917
