The political situation which led to the establishment of the "Minerva" was that created by the intrigues of Citizen Genet, and by the bitter hostility to Washington's administration on the part of the French sympathizers. Washington had issued his proclamation of neutrality, and the Jacobin clubs had opened upon him with their newspapers and pamphlets and public addresses in the most virulent manner. It is scarcely too much to say that the animosity between the French and anti-French parties in the United States was keener--it certainly was madder--than that which had existed between Americans and Englishmen during the war which had so lately closed. The earlier movements of the French Revolution had called out in America even more than in England the liveliest expectations of a golden age. Americans, flattered by the French alliance and by the reputation in which their young republic was held, were intoxicated with vanity, and filled also with an eager hope that principles of which they were standard-bearers were to be dominant in Europe. The theoretical and _doctrinaire_ views which seemed for the time to be justified by the success of the American people came to stand for universal principles of reason, capable of bearing all the weight of human experience, and of serving in the place of religion. The most enthusiastic, beholding a new era, were only a few steps in advance of more cautious men, and the new _régime_ in France received the sympathy not only of Jefferson and Madison, but of Washington and Hamilton. It was only when the flood-gates were opened that the uniform sentiment was broken in upon, and parties were formed of "Gallo-maniacs" on one side, as their enemies called them, and anti-Gallicans on the other. But this split into two parties had occurred before Genet arrived, and the breach was only widened by that head-strong minister's action. There can be little doubt that the prudence of Washington, aided by the conservative Hamilton and the unwilling Jefferson, saved the country at the time from committing itself to the insanity of active coöperation with the raging French republic.