Elbridge Gerry - XYZ Affair

XYZ Affair

President Adams appointed Gerry to be a member of a special diplomatic commission sent to France in 1797. Tensions had risen between the two nations after the 1796 ratification of the Jay Treaty, made between the US and Great Britain was seen by French leaders as signs of an Anglo-American alliance, and France had stepped up seizures of American ships. Adams chose Gerry, over his cabinet's opposition (on political grounds that Gerry was insufficiently Federalist), because of their long-standing relationship; Adams described Gerry as one of the "two most impartial men in America" (Adams himself being the other).

Gerry joined co-commissioners Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and John Marshall in France in October 1797 and met briefly with Foreign Minister Talleyrand. Some days after that meeting, the delegation was approached by three French agents (at first identified as "X", "Y", and "Z" in published papers, leading the controversy to be called the "XYZ Affair") who demanded substantial bribes from the commissioners before negotiations could continue. The commissioners refused, and sought unsuccessfully to engage Talleyrand in formal negotiations. Believing Gerry to be the most approachable of the commissioners, Talleyrand successively froze first Pinckney and then Marshall out of the informal negotiations, and they left France in April 1798. Gerry, who sought to leave with them, stayed behind because Talleyrand threatened war if he left. Gerry refused to make any sort of significant negotiations afterward, and left Paris in August. By then dispatches describing the commission's reception had been published in the United States, raising calls for war. (The undeclared Quasi-War (1798-1800) followed.) Federalists accused Gerry of supporting the French while Republicans such as Thomas Jefferson supported him. In response to the Federalist attacks on him, and because of his perception that the Federalist-led military buildup threatened republican values, Gerry formally joined the Democratic-Republican Party in early 1800, standing for election as Governor of Massachusetts.