The French and North American Revolutions in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

Over supper on 26 February 1796 President John Adams was said to have commented to Vice-President James Madison ‘that there was not a single principle the same in the American and French Revolutions’.¹ The constitutional origins, government and national characters of the two nations were altogether different.² During the Terror similar claims were made, epitomized by the unknown translator of Honoré Riouffe’s exposé of Jacobin depravities:

Whatever congeniality in the object or means, a warm passion for liberty may have enabled some men to discover between the American and French revolutions, there was certainly none at this epocha — not more at least than there is between a man and a monkey — a frightful resemblance, from which the man turns with horror and aversion. And this likeness, as well as the partiality for it, must have been occasioned by their viewing the objects through a corrupt medium. But if there be any, who still advocate the terrific system, by which this monster [Robespierre] and his colleagues established their power in France, they are dangerous citizens in this happy country; for nothing is more certain than that, if such men were trusted with power, they would abuse it in the same manner, and wealth and virtue would become equally treasonable in the United States, as they have been in France.