XYZ Affair
Videos
The XYZ Affair was a political and diplomatic episode in 1797 and 1798, early in the presidency of John Adams, involving a confrontation between the United States and Republican France which led to th
A British political cartoon depicting the affair: The United States is represented by Columbia, who is being plundered by five Frenchmen, three of whom are wearing French cockades, one wearing the Phrygian cap – symbols of revolutionary, republican France. The figures grouped off to the right are other European countries; John Bull, representing Great Britain, sits laughing atop the white cliffs of Dover.
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney headed the American commission.
French Foreign Minister Talleyrand
Elbridge Gerry
Elbridge Gerry
Videos
Elbridge Thomas Gerry was an American Founding Father, merchant, politician, and diplomat, who as a member of the Second Continental Congress, and signed the Declaration of Independence and Articles o
XYZ Affair
…1797 to negotiate a solution to problems that were threatening to break out into war. The diplomats, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, John Marshall, and Elbridge Gerry, were approached through informal channels by agents of the French foreign minister, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord. Talleyrand demanded bribes…
Ann Thompson
John Adams, who held Gerry in high regard, 1793, by John Trumbull
Gerry supported the federalist economic policies of Alexander Hamilton