The stir created by the activities of Genet, great as it was, soon was swallowed up in the excitement produced by the sudden emergence of a new factor in American politics; _viz._, indigenous political organizations that were secret. Coincident with the arrival of Genet, and with a view to capitalizing the state of public feeling that his arrival and reception brought to a head, there sprang up in various parts of the country a group of organizations devoted to the propagation of ultra-democratic ideals. These Democratic Societies, or Clubs, were destined to exert a degree of baneful influence upon political feeling out of all proportion to their actual number and weight.[231] Needless to say, the excited state of public feeling, together with the total unfamiliarity of American citizens with political agencies of a secret character, were responsible for this result. The embarrassments under which the French cause in America momentarily suffered on account of reports concerning the multiplied atrocities of the Reign of Terror and the swelling tide of popular resentment because of the indiscretions of Minister Genet, might induce the judgment that the times were unpropitious for the development of organizations whose sympathy for the principles of the French Revolution was notorious.[232] But there was another side to the situation. The heated public discussions provoked by Madison’s Commercial Resolutions, Clark’s Non-Intercourse Resolution, and the appointment of John Jay as Minister Extraordinary to Great Britain, set free such a torrent of anti-British feeling that the spirit of republicanism lifted its head with renewed vigor and stimulated a public sentiment decidedly favorable to the rapid formation and spread of the new organizations. From the day that the first of these sinister Societies was established, and its statement of principles blazoned forth in a multitude of newspapers throughout the country,[233] the public mind found itself wrought upon by a new species of excitement, by suggestions of tricks and plots, by appeals to passion and unreasoning fear, all conspiring to inject into the national spirit an element of haunting suspicion from which it was not soon to be cleared.