XYZ Affair

XYZ Affair. Jay's Treaty of 1794 with Great Britain, concluded during the war between Britain and revolutionary France, failed to secure the neutral rights of American ships against British searches and seizures. The French were enraged because, after the superior British navy had swept French merchant ships from the sea, France depended on neutral American ships to carry the trade of the French empire. In retaliation, the French began to seize American ships and cargoes. They also refused to receive the new American minister, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney.

Seeking to avoid war, President John Adams sent John Marshall and Elbridge Gerry to join Pinckney in Paris to settle the dispute. The French foreign minister, Talleyrand, believing that the Republicans in the U.S. Congress were gaining ground against Adams's less friendly Federalists, tried to stall the negotiations. He sent three messengers to tell the Americans that before he would receive them, they would have to pay him a $250,000 bribe, loan France $12 million, and apologize for America's supposedly anti‐French policies. Marshall and Pinckney, the two Federalists on the delegation, rejected the demands and left Paris. Gerry, the lone Republican, refused to leave, fearing that a complete break would mean war.

Since Gerry had not left Paris, his Republican colleagues in Congress refused to believe President Adams's report that France had made outrageous demands. They insisted on seeing the letters sent home by the delegation to prove Adams's charges. Adams turned over the correspondence but substituted the letters X, Y, and Z for the names of Talleyrand's messengers. Thus, the episode was dubbed the XYZ Affair. With the Republicans shocked into silence by the proof of French perfidy, Adams in 1798 authorized American ships to protect themselves from French abuse and secured an appropriation to prepare for war. The Quasi‐War with France was under way.
See also Early Republic, Era of the; Federalist Party; Foreign Relations: U.S. Relations with Europe.

Bibliography

Alexander DeConde , The Quasi‐War, 1966.
William Stinchcombe , The XYZ Affair, 1980.

Jerald A. Combs