Lessons from America: Liberal aristocrats, the French Revolution, and the American experience

Between 1795 and 1798 a close-knit group of emigres from the French Revolution congregated at Moreau de Saint-Mery's book store in Philadelphia. The members of this group shared common experiences and beliefs: most of them have been members of the National Assembly who began their term as radicals and ended it on positions they believed moderate, but which looked reactionary to the radical Jacobins who took control of the Assembly before its dissolution in September 1791. They also represented a cross-section of the Old Regime Elite: the duke de Liancourt, the vicomte de Noailles, Briois de Beaumetz, the vicomte de Blacons, had represented the nobility at the Estates General; Talleyrand, bishop of Autun in 1789, had represented the high clergy; Moreau de Saint-Mery and Nicolas Demeunier had represented the Third Estate, but were quite used to hobnobbing with the nobility in their quality of men of letters. Moreau's store seemed an attempt at keeping alive, and promoting, the virtues of enlightened salons, polite and stimulating conversation above all. As members of the Old Regime Elite, the members of this group credited the Republic of letters with inspiring and spreading revolutionary ideas; as either liberal nobles or men of letters well versed in the world of salons, they believed that virtue and polite manners went together and rejected the Jacobin attempt at revolutionizing the cultural standards of polite society.; Politically, all members of the Moreau coterie placed themselves firmly in the ideological center, between radical Jacobins and conservative Aristocrats. This centrist position rested on principles that can be easily identified as key elements of liberal political thought: respect for property coupled with freedom of commerce; respect for individual liberty coupled with freedom of religion and freedom of the press; political tolerance, meaning inclusion of different, but reasonably compatible points of view. The argument developed in this dissertation is that ex-constituent emigres tried to combine core liberal values with key elements of aristocratic identity in shaping a new type of leader, neither aristocratic nor sans-culotte. America presented these emigres with political and social questions which helped them sort out the past and imagine a new place for themselves in post-revolutionary France.