Definition
Angry at Jay's Treaty, France began seizing American ships, so in 1797 President John Adams sent three envoys, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, John Marshall and Elbridge Gerry, to Paris to make peace. Before talks could begin, agents of the French foreign minister, Talleyrand, demanded a bribe and a loan, and the envoys refused. In 1798, Adams released the envoys' reports with the French agents' names replaced by the letters X, Y and Z. Americans were furious and took up the slogan "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute," Congress created a Navy Department, and an undeclared naval war with France, called the Quasi-War, began.
Why it matters on the AP exam
The affair turned American opinion against France and strengthened the Federalists, and the war fever that followed led to the Alien and Sedition Acts. Adams chose peace over the full war that some Federalists wanted, which split his party, and the Convention of 1800 ended the Quasi-War and released the United States from its 1778 alliance with France. Questions ask students to explain how events abroad shaped politics at home in the 1790s, a chain of causation that runs from Jay's Treaty through the XYZ Affair to the Alien and Sedition Acts.
In the sources
“We replied, it is no; no; not a sixpence.”
Connections
- Jay's Treaty: France, angry at the treaty, began seizing American ships
- Alien and Sedition Acts: Federalists passed them in the war fever that followed
- Quasi-War: the undeclared naval war with France that began in 1798