How sympathetic should Revolutionary Americans have been to the king-killing French Revolution?

Answer 1

The French Revolution occurred after the American War of Independence. Revolutionary Americans were allied with the Bourbon-led Kingdom of France.

In the initial stages, citizens of the new-born US were generally enthusiastic about the French Revolution, with its democratic ideals and opposition to traditional monarchies. Even France's historical rival at the time, Great Britain, was reported to have been sympathetic to the revolutionaries.

Everything changed, however, when King Louis XVI was executed. The British quickly allied with other major European power against the radicalized French Republic. As the majority of Europe operated under some form of monarchy, the coalition hoped to squash the revolution before it could spread to their own borders.

Public opinion in the US turned sour as well, albeit for entirely different reasons.

Having aided the US in its independence war against Great Britain only a few years earlier, France was seen as an essential ally to the Americans—a safeguard against a hostile British government that was still bitter about losing its Thirteen Colonies. The execution of the French king and the ensuing "Reign of Terror" exposed the instability of France, which was alarming to US officials who preferred a strong European ally.

There was also the strong possibility that, once the coalition powers declared war, the US would be dragged into the conflict owing to the Franco-American Alliance. The same alliance that had enabled the US to become independent was now hanging as a burden as many did not want to go to war. When the US declared neutrality in the conflict, the French felt betrayed and thus sent Edmond-Charles Genêt in 1793 to gain American support against the British and Spanish. This eventually culminated into the Citizen Genêt affair.

Despite Genêt's efforts, both the US government and the general public remained wary of Revolutionary France throughout the conflict.

The United States even began fighting the French Republic through the so-called Quasi-War. Taking advantage of the situation, the US government had refused to continue paying its heavy financial debt to France, claiming that the Kingdom of France (from which the colonists took excessive amounts of loans while fighting the British) no longer existed and that, as a result, the debt was erased. Naturally, the French were outraged, and this led to the undeclared war.