It may as well be said plainly, he continued, that the passage in the President’s fast day proclamation respecting the hostile designs, insidious arts, and demoralizing principles of a certain foreign nation, referred to France.[772] Did any one ask for proofs that the President’s statement was true? The proofs were so abundant and so evident that the difficulty was to know where to begin. The war upon the defenceless commerce of the United States; the inhuman and savage treatment of those citizens of this country who have been so unfortunate as to fall into the hands of France’s minions by whom they have been so grossly insulted, beaten, wounded and thrust into loathsome prisons and dungeons, even murdered; the recent plot of the French Directory to invade the southern states from St. Domingo, using an army of blacks to effect an invasion, and by these attempting to excite to insurrection the blacks of this country;[773] here, surely, were ample proofs of the hostile and detestable designs of the French government against our own.[774] But there was another matter. The disclosure that had recently been made regarding the secret machinations of the French on the Island of St. Domingo, focused attention upon a matter of the most serious moment. The most vigorous, active, and united measures must immediately be adopted to arouse from their slumber the citizens of this country, that they may give due attention to a particular aspect of the insidious and seductive activities of the French in the United States, of which, Morse averred, he stood prepared to speak with the utmost definiteness.[775] Continuing: