“Cleaning the Augean Stables”: Victor Du Pont, Consul at Charleston, 1795-1798

In the wake of American independence, the two allies, France and the United States, became embroiled in a number of controversies that led to the so-called Quasi-War. Quarrels over the American debt to France and the interpretation of the terms of the alliance of 1778 embittered relations. The French interpreted the Jay Treaty of 1794 between the United States and Britain as a betrayal of the alliance of 1778. That treaty set the stage for a conflict between US commercial vessels and French privateers. This worsening of Franco-American relations occurred during a time of bitter partisanship in France and the French revolutionary wars. As diplomatic relations virtually ceased, the French consuls came to play a more important role. Victor Du Pont de Nemours (1767-1827), the French consul at Charleston, North Carolina, helped to halt the seemingly inevitable slide toward war by his mémoire of 1798, which unsparingly detailed the excesses of the French privateers and the legitimate complaints of the United States. Du Pont’s training and preparation enabled him to excel as consul in the vital port of Charleston between 1795 and 1798, while also bridging the diplomatic and consular worlds and the ancien régime and French Revolution.

An examination of Victor’s training and career serves as a microstudy of the consular corps during the Revolution. The post of consul at Charleston was particularly daunting, because of the role of privateers and corsairs in the area. Unlike many revolutionary appointees, Victor had been well trained for the challenges the consulate posed. His career also indicates the importance of patronage networks during the ancien régime and the Revolution and the impact of the Revolution on those who served abroad. We have consulted not only the official but also his private correspondence, which in many ways is more revealing, at the Hagley Museum and Library.[1] This correspondence is particularly valuable because most of the private papers of the consuls have not survived. The official correspondence, in contrast, is often guarded and formulaic because of the uncertain and shifting political climate. Although some of the Du Pont correspondence was burned and some lost because it was buried, the letters that remain illustrate the grace and elegance of someone trained under the ancien régime. Others have consulted the extensive family correspondence but they have focused on Pierre Samuel and his younger son Éleuthère Iréneé, the founder of Du Pont Chemical, rather than Victor. We even have Victor’s views of the principal events of his life written in a 1799 retrospective aperçu. After recounting his professional career, he notes the yellow fever in Charleston, the emergence of two of his daughter’s teeth and the premature birth and death of his son, George Washington du Pont, among other events. Historians, such as Marc Belissa, have underscored the important political role of the French consuls in the United States in reinforcing or undermining certain prejudices that bedeviled Franco-American States relations, as illustrated by Victor’s career.[2] His mémoire of 1798 to Talleyrand on the danger of hostilities between the two republics and his recapitulation of the brigandage and piracy of French privateers[3] underscored that the French corsairs had acted “beyond limit and also contrary to the principles of justice as well as sane policy,” reinforcing Talleyrand’s instincts for conciliation with the United States.[4]

Pierre Samuel’s decision to name his eldest son after his godfather, Victor de Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau, illustrate the ties that he cultivated among courtiers and intellectuals. Pierre Samuel emphasized to his younger son Éleuthère what a great advantage it was “to begin life with powerful friends.” In comparison to his own life, his son, he thought, had a “bed of roses.”[5] His father paid careful attention to his education. In 1784 at the age of seventeen Victor worked as a sous-chef under his father at the Bureau de Commerce. Pierre Samuel sent him on a tour of various commercial establishments throughout France in 1785 and 1786 where he acquired a knowledge of the French provinces and French manufacturing and trade. In 1787 he returned to the Bureau where he served until his post was eliminated. His father then turned to Vergennes, a close friend and supporter, who helped get the son a diplomatic appointment.[6]

At the age of 20, Victor began a diplomatic career in which he served three French ministers to the United States: Elénor-François-Élie, marquis de Moustier, (1751-1817), a monarchist who later became an émigré, from November 1788 to November 1789; the Chevalier de Ternant, a constitutional royalist, from June 1791 to June 1793; and Pierre Auguste Adet, a scientist and a politician, from June 1795 until his appointment as consul to Charleston in September 1795. Revolutionary politics roiled the diplomatic corps as it did the army and resulted in frequent turnover of the staff. In November of 1787 Victor departed for the United States to begin his diplomatic career as unofficial private secretary to Moustier.[7] Moustier, “shrewd, articulate, intelligent,”[8] had a solid grasp of the problems plaguing Franco-United States relations. In 1788 Moustier prophesied that “Free [his italics] Americans will become much more dangerous enemies for us than they ever were as American colonists.” An American alliance, however, would bring “inestimable” benefits to France.[9] In a subsequent letter Moustier noted that the world might look back to this moment when “this child Colossus” stood up and became strong.[10]

When Victor left France with Moustier, he took with him letters of introduction from Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson. As secretary, Victor gained valuable experience, traveled extensively on the East Coast, especially New York City and Philadelphia, and became acquainted with many of the prominent figures in the United States. Victor kept a journal of the ambassador’s travels and a résumé of consular reports. He even hoped that his unofficial status could be converted into a regular appointment as official secretary to Moustier whose mentorship he valued.[11] Instead, Victor received an official appointment as secretary to the French legation in May of 1789 and worked under Louis-Guillaume Otto (1754-1817), “a man of common sense,” of great spirit, and greater ability until his return to France together with Moustier in November of 1789.[12]

During his time at home, Victor served as aide-de-camp to Lafayette while his father was playing a prominent role in the Revolution as president of the National Convention and as an advocate for moderate reform. In June of 1791, Victor returned to the United States with Jean Ternant (1751-1833), the French minister (1791-1793), who had been appointed through the influence of Lafayette.[13] During his tenure, France witnessed the outbreak of war, the overthrow of the king, and the establishment of the first republic—what Jean-Antoine- Joseph Fauchet (1761-1834) later dubbed a time of “incredible negligence” from Paris.[14] The marked disarray of the French government—there were five foreign ministers in France between March and August of 1792—may explain why Ternant’s letters were not answered.

During Victor’s absence, his father had become more apprehensive about the radicalization of the Revolution. Shortly before the declaration of war by France on Austria in April of 1792, Pierre Samuel feared that “we are betraying our oaths,” and the people to “tyranny” and to “the enemies of the constitution and the country.”[15] He had been increasingly uneasy about the position of the royal family whom he, along with his younger son, tried to defend on 10 August 1792 when a mob invaded the Tuileries and overthrew the king. The elder Du Pont had gone into hiding, but his printing establishment and his apartment had been vandalized. Meanwhile Victor served as secretary to the French legation (but without recognition) until he sailed again for France in April of 1793 after Ternant’s recall and his replacement by Genet.

Victor was probably lucky to have missed the tumultuous tenure of Edmond-Charles Genet and the subsequent and doomed mission of Fauchet, his first and last diplomatic assignment. Tensions had built up between the two republics; Genet had been recalled and the United States’ minister to France, Gouverneur Morris, widely thought hostile to the Revolution, withdrawn. French representative Jean Antoine Joseph Fauchet (1794-1795), a Montagnard doctrinaire and friend of Robespierre, had “disavowed Genet, decommissioned his privateers, disbanded his ‘invasion’ forces, and managed to reassure the administration of France’s wish not to disrupt further its chosen course of neutrality.”[16] He had also shipped significant amounts of grain to France. That success was not to last. Increasingly, Fauchet came to believe that many US officials were deceitful. John Jay had been negotiating the treaty in London that would bear his name and which was signed in November of 1794 but not ratified until February of 1796. That treaty regulated commerce and navigation between the two countries but the French saw it as a betrayal of the alliance of 1778 because it allowed the admission of British vessels into US ports and accorded them “most favored nation” status. For others it was a Pandora’s Box “that contained the ingredients for a bloody war.”[17] They anticipated that it would set the stage for conflict between US commercial vessels and French privateeers, which it did. Both Fauchet and Adet, his successor (1795-1796), meddled in US politics and unsuccessfully opposed that British treaty. Toward the end of his mission in April of 1795, Fauchet wrote a despairing memo in which he focused on the “most intractable problems . . . . Americans bought too little from France, too much from Britain (which they paid for with French gold), and carried more of France’s colonial trade than was healthy for her external economy.”[18]

Victor arrived back in France (4 June 1793) with Ternant’s recommendation, citing his “patriotic zeal and his other good qualities.”[19] Upon his return home, Victor accepted, albeit briefly, a nomination in the local guard. He was urged to do so by a friend: “This step will prove your patriotism and that of your father, which is seriously doubted.”[20] He served less than seven months. The moderate views of his father generated suspicion and triggered Pierre Samuel’s arrest on 22 July 1794 and imprisonment in La Force in Paris.[21] Victor was also shocked when he went to the bureau of foreign affairs to see Otto only to learn that Otto was under arrest.[22] The vicious factionalism of the Revolution cost the lives of many, especially those of the political elite.[23]

Thermidor meant not only the release of his father (and Otto) but also Victor’s appointment in the consulate division of the ministry of foreign affairs in December of 1794, through the influence of a friend of his father-in-law, Miot de Melito. Victor was far from content, seeing the position promised him occupied by others. Moreover, he was working with a young man who had never worked in foreign affairs and who was, he thought, overpaid.[24] In that post he met the former resident to Geneva, Adet, who had studied under Lavoisier and knew Victor’s brother, Éleuthère Iréneé, who had apprenticed under the famous chemist. Adet, designated as French minister to the United States (1795-1796), knew of Victor’s earlier service and of his excellent English and helped secure his appointment in January 1795 as secretary of the legation. Victor and his wife sailed in April of 1795 for the United States. En route, Victor complained to his father of the “incertitude, negligence, casualness, the stupidity, and the delays in comparison to the precision, speed and the profound secrecy which had been the case earlier.”[25] Victor deplored the disorder. If only the ministry was not filled with “poltroons, jacobins nor brute beasts.”[26] His assessment of the French administrators was not positive: “knaves, intriguers, Jacobins and the fools of the republic advance and triumph.”[27]

Victor would serve as secretary of the legation under Adet for a little more than two months. Victor confided his rather droll yet sobering assessment of the personnel– all too revealing of the tumult of the time. These remarks reflect the dominance of ideology in the selection of personnel as underscored in the works of Masson, Martin, Baillou and his collaborators, and Maurice Degros.[28] Adet (1763-1834) is “un bon enfant mais nul” with “his uncertain manner, his declamations, his avarice.” Victor thought that Létombe, the consul general, “a man of merit” would succeed perfectly with the Americans but unfortunately he was too old and had problems with his memory. Mozard, the consul in Boston, he casts as an intriguer, a Jacobin, a false man with an equivocal reputation who was insupportable because of his airs of importance. He sees Rozier in New York as a brave man who knew nothing of life but consular affairs. De Launay in Philadelphia, an honest and honorable man, knew his métier. He was, however, too temperamental and too pretentious to succeed. Du Hais of Baltimore, a man of spirit and perhaps a very able doctor, he found a very “triste” consul. Then he mockingly assessed himself. Victor Du Pont of Charleston had a great advantage in that in the middle of Americans he is “like a fish in water.” His conduct with them would be always appropriate, never “gauche,” and never as affected as that of other Frenchmen. Moreover, he had a good reputation and important friends, but he never maneuvered enough to avoid the denunciations of Frenchmen, especially the so-called clubs who would treat him badly. He had some preparatory knowledge and realized that the position of consul in the United States demanded great study, familiarity with the law and notarial affairs, and adroit politics. After this rather sobering assessment of his contemporaries. He adds a whimsical note “But there is a God for drunks and for men who doubt nothing . . . .”[29]

The revolutionary wars impacted all of these men as they did Victor. After France declared war on Great Britain on 1 February 1793, the United States soon became entangled in bitter maritime controversies. In interpreting the French treaty of 1778, the Hamiltonians favored an “impartial” neutrality that favored the British while the Jeffersonians wanted a “benevolent” neutrality that would favor the French.[30] Adet and Victor were dispatched to the United States at a time when the French were moving toward confrontation and reprisal in the light of the Jay treaty. French corsairs were preying on American commerce, and the worsening of Franco-American relations doomed the possibility of a new commercial treaty. British domination of the sea meant that the Anglo-French trade was carried almost exclusively in American-flagged ships. The United States did not buy enough wine and brandy to offset the imports from America of grain, salted meat, and tobacco. The difference was paid in cash that went to Britain, which the French rightly saw as “a French subsidy of the British war effort.”[31] The French trade imbalance remained a problem in French eyes. The Americans found their ships entangled in French port controls; the ships were delayed, detained, and even confiscated. Sometimes the crew and passengers were held and the type of goods that could be imported and exported restricted.[32] Deceit flourished with the British forging American papers and the French resorting to simulated sales of French prizes to neutral buyers. By July 1796 the French government had announced that the French would seize American merchantmen.[33] For some historians such as Peter Hill, American neutrality favored the British and drove the French to retaliate and attack American shipping.[34]

Few would have been as well prepared to deal with this situation as Victor Du Pont. Victor found the consulate in Charleston to be “the most difficult” and “the most interesting of the continent,” possibly because it was notorious for its French privateers. As consul he found himself mired in maritime disputes and enforcing his interpretation of the Treaty of Amity and Commerce with France.[35] Victor certainly took his duties seriously; he purchased the 1793 edition of Vattel when he was in Charleston.[36] He also found himself ensnared in American partisan politics. He succeeded Charles-Antoine-Louis Fonspertius, whose scandalous conduct had alienated the Americans. Victor reported that Fonsperitius had passed his days in bed and his nights gambling.[37] Negligent and incompetent, he had left the accounts in a “frightful disorder” and probably embezzled funds.[38] Victor could not understand why he had been kept in his position for so long: “His conduct had been disagreeable to the Americans and not suitable to the dignity of France or its interests.”[39] Fonspertius like many of the French was an “incorrigible” sans-culotte.[40] Victor did get support from Philippe-André-Joseph Letombe,[41] the French consul general in Philadelphia, whom he respected. Letombe referred to Fonspertius “of unfortunate memory.” “You will,” he told Victor, “be the Hercules who will clean the Augean stables.” He mixed his classical metaphors when he told Victor to contact a particular individual who would “give you the key to the labyrinth.” Letombe did not doubt that Victor would succeed: “You will continue to distinguish yourself . . . you have the example of your celebrated father and as they say such a father such a son.”[42] That proved an accurate forecast. Victor helped negotiate an accommodation between the United States and France. He could congratulate himself on “contributing not a little to hindering a rupture so fatal to the two republics.”[43]

Victor Du Pont played a vital role in Franco-American relations at a particularly tense time as the two republics teetered on the brink of war. Certainly his memo paved the way for a peaceful accommodation between the two republics. Few, if any, had as deep an understanding of the economic conditions of his day. His father, Pierre Samuel, had trained him well through various apprentices when he was a young man and remained an important influence in his son’s life, even editing the final memo Victor sent to Talleyrand. Many of the French diplomats and consuls left the United States alienated and embittered but not Victor, who continued to aid Americans, even after his return to France. Many have underrated his accomplishments because he is too often seen through the eyes of his father and the accomplishments of his younger brother, the founder of Du Pont chemical. His career also illustrates the importance of examining the role of consuls in interstate relations.

1. We want in particular to thank Lucas Clawson, the archivist at the Hagley Museum and Library for his invaluable assistance.

2. Marc Belissa, “Les Consuls français aux États-Unis et les premiers temps des relations franco-américains,” in La Fonctions consulaire à l’époque moderne: L’Affirmation d’une institution économique et politique (1500-1800),edited by Jörg Ulbert and Gérard le Boudëc (Rennes: Presses Universitatires de Rennes, 2006), 51.

3. James Alton James, “French Opinion as a Factor in Preventing War between France and the United States, 1795-1800,” The American Historical Review 30, no. 1 (October 1924): 53-54.

4. Printed in S. E. Morrison,”Du Pont, Talleyrand and the French Spoliations,” Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, XIX (1915-16): 63-79.

5. Marc Bouloiseau, ed. Bourgeoisie et Révolution: Les Du Pont de Nemours (1788-1799) (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale, 1972), 24.

6. Roman d’Amat, Dictionnaire de biographie française (Paris: Librairie Letouzey et ané, 1970), 12:475.

7. Moustier had served in the French cavalry and on various diplomatic missions and later became involved with the émigré cause. Peter P. Hill, French Perceptions of the Early American Republic, 1783-1793 (Philadelphia, PA: American Philosophical Society, 1988), 19-20.

8. Ibid., 29.

9. Moustier to Montmorin, New York 21 April 1788 quoted in Hill, French Perceptions of the Early American Republic, 29.

10. Moustier to Montmorin, New York 29 March 1789 quoted in ibid., 30.

11. Hagley, Winterthur Mss., Group 3, series A, box 1 W3-183, VMDP to DPDN 28 March 1789.

12. Hagley, Winterthur Mss Group 3, series A, box1 W3-183 VMDP to DPDN (Pierre Samuel) 15 May 1789. Otto had served as secretary of the French legation and then chargé d’affaires ad interim. After his return to France in 1792, he was appointed first head of the division of foreign affairs. The fall of the Girondins meant his arrest. He survived and went to Berlin with Sièyes as secretary to the legation.

13. Frank Whitney, Jean Ternant (1751- 1833), http://xenophongroup.com/mcjoynt/ternant.htm. Also see Frank Whitney, Jean Ternant and the Age of Revolutions: A Soldier and Diplomat (1751-1833) in the American, French, Dutch and Belgian Uprisings (Jefferson, NC: Mc Farland and Company, Inc., 2015).

14. Hill, French Perceptions of the Early American Republic, 123.

15. Hagley, Winterthur Manuscripts, Group 2, series A-correspondence, Box 3, out file, W2-399, Paris, 13 April 1792, P.S. Dupont to Pétion.

16. Hill, French Perceptions of the Early American Republic, 130.

17. Alexander De Conde, The Politics and Diplomacy of the Undeclared War with France 1797-1801 ( New York:Charles Scribner's Sons, 1966), 10.

18. Memo of 13 April 1795 quoted in Hill, French Perceptions of the Early American Republic, 135-136.

19. Frederick Jackson Turner, ed., Correspondence of the French Ministers to the United States, 1791-1797, 2 vols. Reprint 1904 (New York: Capo Press, 1972), 2: 192, Ternant to Minister of Foreign Affairs, 10 April 1793; Hagley, Winterthur Manuscripts, Group 3 Victor Du Pont, Series B Personal papers Box 22 W3 3877, Ternant to minister of foreign affairs, 10 April year 2, [1793].

20. William H. A. Carr, The du Ponts of Delaware (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1964), 34.

21. Hagley, Winterthur manuscripts, Group 3, box 1, outfile W3-227, Victor to his father, dated 26 Thermidor, 13 August 1794. The letters of the Du Ponts when Pierre Samuel was in prison are printed in Bouloiseau, ed. Bourgeoisie et Révolution, 208-217.

22. Hagley, Winterthur Mss Group 3, series A, box1 W3-240 Victor to Gabrielle, jeudi, n.d.

23. See Marisa Linton, Choosing Terror: Identity and Politics in the French Revolution (Oxford: University Press, 2013) and Timothy Tackett, The Coming of the Terror in the French Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015).

24. Hagley, Winterthur Mss Group 3, series A, box 1 W3-238 victor to his wife, 6 nivôse, 26 December 1794.

25. Bouloiseau, ed. Bourgeoisie et Révolution, 123.

26. Ibid., 123.

27. Hagley, Winterthur Manuscripts, Group 3 Victor Dupont, series A, correspondence, Box 3, outfile: 1795-1798, W3-265, VMDP to DPDN, 19 July 1795, 1 thermidor n.y., Philadephia.

28. Frédéric Masson, Le Département des affaires étrangère pendant la Révolution, 1787-1804 (Paris: E. Plon, 1877); Virginie Martin, “Devenir diplomate en Révolution: Naissance de la ‘carrière diplomatique,” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 63, no. 3 (2016): 110; Jean Baillou, Charles Lucet, and Jacques Vimont, eds., Les Affaires étrangères et le corps diplomatique français (Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1984); and a series of articles in Revue d’Histoire diplomatique by Maurice Degros that appeared between 1982 and 1999.

29. Hagley, Winterthur Manuscripts, Group 3 Victor Dupont, series A, correspondence, Box 3 outfile: 1795-1798, W3-264, VMDP to DPDN family, Philadelphia, 17 July 1795, 29 messidor, n.y. Also in Bouloiseau, ed. Bourgeoisie et Révolution, 219-220, Victor du Pont to his father Philadelphia, 27 messidor an III (17 July 1795).

30. Alexander De Conde, A History of American Foreign Policy (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1963), 54.

31. Peter P. Hill, “Prologue to the Quasi-War: Stresses in Franco-American Commercial Relations, 1793-1796,” The Journal of Modern History 49 (March, 1977): 1046.

32. Ibid., D1049.

33. Thomas A. Bailey, A Diplomatic History of the American People ( Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1970), 90.

34. Hill, French Perceptions of the Early American Republic, xiii.

35. For example, see Hagley, Winterthur Manuscripts, Group 3 Victor Dupont, series A, correspondence, Box 3 outfile: 1795-1798, W3-270, VMDP to Governor of S. Carolina, 29 Feb. 1796, 10 Ventôse, n.y.

36. Emerich de Vattel (1714-1767) was a Swiss jurist whose masterpiece, Le Droit de gens was second in circulation only to Hugo Grotius’ De Jure Belli ac Paci. The elegance as well as simplicity of his style appealed to many. His stress on natural law and his application of principles directly to the conduct of government made the work both popular and influential. This pragmatic natural law approach had an unquestionable resonance because of its reliance on reason and its stress on absolute moral standards. Vattel argued that a neutral nation must be impartial.

37. Hagley, Winterthur Manuscripts Group 10, Series E, Eleuthera (du Pont) Smith transcript volumes: DPDN Autobiography vols. 10-18; 1784-1801 vol. 14: 20 Août 1794- 9 Février 1795, excerpted letter p. 74-78, Victor du Pont to Pierre Samuel Dupont, Philadelphia, 28 Juin 1795.

38. Hagley, Winterthur Manuscripts, Group 3 Victor Dupont, series A, correspondence, Box 3 outfile: 1795-1798, W3-262, VMDP to DPDN, Philadelphia, 3 July 1795.

39. Hagley, Winterthur Manuscripts, Group 3 Victor Dupont, series A, correspondence, Box 3 outfile: 1795-1798, W3-265,VMDP to DPDN, 19 July 1795, 1 Thermidor n.y., Philadelphia.

40. Bouloiseau, ed. Bourgeoisie et Révolution, 127 quotes Victor to Pierre Samuel, Charleston, 19. Brum. IV, (1 November 1795).

41. Létombe, a small town lawyer, had arrived in Boston in 1779 at the age of 41. “Despite bad health and worse finances,” he worked in Boston for fourteen years until he was dismissed by the Girondins in 1793. He was so popular in Boston that on his departure the city gave him an eleven-gun salute. He defended himself so well that the post Thermidorean regime sent him back as consul general in 1795. Hill, French Perceptions, 12-14.

42. Hagley, Winterthur Manuscripts, Group 3 Victor Du Pont, Series A, Correspondence, Box 7 infile:1787-1796, W3-1057, Letombe, Philadelphia to Victor Du Pont, 26 Sept 1795, 4 vendémiaire, an iv.

43. Amat, Dictionnaire, 12:475.