The XYZ Affair refers to French attempt to receive a bribe from American diplomats involved in treaty negotiations with France to address their ongoing seizure of American ships. The media attention towards this political scandal initially benefited Federalists, as the party did not have French sympathies. Yet the Federalist reaction to the XYZ affair would eventually cause a backlash against them and contribute substantially to the election of their opposition, Thomas Jefferson, to president in 1800. The fall out from the XYZ Affair led to tensions domestically, and internationally, resulting in the Quasi-War with France from 1798 to 1800.
Conflict in Europe
Between the onset of the French Revolution in 1789 and the final defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte at Waterloo in 1815, the foreign policy of the United States confronted the dilemma of possible or actual global warfare between the two most powerful European states, Britain and France. Within this larger conflict, American ships and sailors were targeted by these rivals in an effort to undercut them economically. In addition, the conflict between the Federalists and their opponents in domestic politics often revolved around whether the new republic should side with the English, the French, or remain as neutral as possible. As president, George Washington proclaimed a policy of neutrality and condemned French efforts to curtail proper diplomatic channels during the Genet Affair, in which a French diplomat sought private funding to attack British ships.1
Diplomatic Tensions Escalate
The adoption of the Jay Treaty with Britain by the Washington administration in 1795 angered the French. In these negotiations, Washington valued that “cool and temperate characters” oversee its terms.2 While the treaty was an effort to secure trading with the British, the French viewed secrecy around the treaty as the United States as siding with the British. This only amplified scrutiny on American shipping by the French. As sentiments turned their former ally, George Washington attempted to replace the ministered to France, James Monroe, who was sympathetic to the French Revolution, with Federalist Charles Pinckney. The French refused to accept this change.
In the fall of 1796, the French government began to allow French ships to seize and search neutral American ships for supposed contraband that would benefit Britain. As relations between the two countries worsened in the late spring of 1797, President John Adams sent a special delegation to Paris. Elbridge Gerry and John Marshall joined the American ambassador to France, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney to negotiate a new treaty that would replace the 1778 American-French Treaty of Amity and Commerce that the two nations signed in the midst of the American Revolution.
When the diplomats arrived in Paris in October 1797, the French foreign minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord granted the group only a short fifteen-minute meeting and then left them with three French officials named Jean Hottenguer, Pierre Bellamy, and Lucien Hauteval. The three officials became popularly known as X, Y, and Z, respectively according to how the American negotiators labeled their French counterparts when sending messages back to Washington, D.C. The French demanded a large bribe, over a quarter of a million dollars, be given before negotiations even began. The American officials refused and when further talks failed the Americans returned home in the spring of 1798.
Consequences of the XYZ Affair
At this point, Adams was asked by some of his opponents to release the messages from the American negotiators because they believed Adams was too anti-French and was hiding positive news about the meetings. On the contrary, the messages stirred up American public opinion against the French. Adams seized the opportunity to push for an enlarged navy consisting of six new naval frigates and an enlarged ten-thousand-man Provisional Army.
Adams overreached, however, when he and his Federalist allies passed the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798. The first act allowed the President to arbitrarily arrest and deport anyone who was not an American citizen and deemed dangerous, while the latter act allowed the government to jail and fine anyone, including citizens, who criticized Congress or the President. The Adams administration used the Sedition Act to shut down critical portions of the press and arrest the editors of a number of opposing newspapers. The public reacted vehemently against these intrusions against free speech and individual liberties. Additionally, the public was upset by Adams’ decision to not reveal the names of French diplomats, but still refered to them as “X,” “Y,” and “Z” to protect their identities.
Later in 1798 the legislatures of Kentucky and Virginia passed resolutions declaring the Alien and Sedition Acts to be unconstitutional and threatened to block the enforcement of those acts within those states, challenging federal authority. In the end, Adams did not force a showdown over states rights and virtually no foreigners were deported. Additionally, the raiding of American vessels without a diplomatic solution led to the Quasi-War with France, an undeclared naval conflict between the two countries. The inability for Federalist to find popular diplomatic solutions with France swung large segments of public opinion behind the Democratic-Republicans and Thomas Jefferson, leading to his election to president in 1800.
Kevin Grimm, Ph.D. Beloit College, updated Zoie Horecny, Ph.D., 20 May 2025
Notes:
1. “Neutrality Proclamation, 22 April 1793,” Founders Online, National Archives, "To George Washington from Edmond Charles Genet, 13 August 1793,” Founders Online, National Archives.
2. “From George Washington to Timothy Pickering, 31 July 1795,” Founders Online, National Archives.
Bibliography:
De Conde, Alexander. The Quasi-War: The Politics and Diplomacy of the Undeclared War with France, 1797-1801. New York: Scribner's, 1966.
Estes, Todd. The Jay Treaty Debate, Public Opinion, and the Evolution of Early American Political Culture. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006.
Federalists Reconsidered eds. Doron Ben-Atar and Barbara B. Oberg. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998.
Foner, Eric. Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Second Seagull Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2008.
The Revolution of 1800: Democracy, Race, and the New Republic eds. James Horn, Jan Ellen Lewis, and Peter S. Onuf. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002.
Perl-Rosenthal, Nathan. “Private Letters and Public Diplomacy: The Adams Network and the Quasi-War, 1797–1798.” Journal of the Early Republic 31, no. 2 (2011): 283–311.
Weisberger, Bernard A. America Afire: Jefferson, Adams, and the Revolutionary Election of 1800. New York, NY: William Morrow, 2000.
Wilentz, Sean. The Rise of American Democracy: From Jefferson to Lincoln. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2005.
