To Alexander Hamilton from Francisco de Miranda, 4 November 1792
From Francisco de Miranda1
Paris Novr. the 4th. 1792.
the 1t. year of the Republic.
My dear friend,
The affairs & Success of france take a happy turn in our favour. I mean in favour of our dear Country America, from the North to the South. The official Communications from the new appointed Minister of france,2 & the Information our friend Col. Smith shall give to you, will Shew how things are grown ripe & into maturity for the Execution of those grand & beneficial projects we had in Contemplation, when in our Conversation at New Yorck the love of our Country exalted our minds with those Ideas, for the sake of unfortunate Columbia.
I am sincerely yours
M.
Copy, Academia Nacional de la Historia, Caracas, Venezuela.
1. For Miranda’s earlier career and his friendship with H, see H to Miranda, January–July, 1784, and the introductory note to H to Miranda, November 23, 1784.
After leaving New York, where in 1784 he had met H, Miranda in 1785 went to Europe and toured the Continent with William S. Smith, John Adams’s son-in-law. In 1789 he visited England where he made an unsuccessful attempt to secure the British ministry’s support for his plans for a revolution in Spain’s Latin American colonies. Early in 1792 he went to France to place his proposals before that country’s Revolutionary government. He met with some success in France, for he attracted the interest of Pierre Henri Hélène Marie Lebrun-Tondu, Minister of Foreign Affairs during the first months of the Convention, and Jacques Pierre Brissot de Warville, leader of the Girondists and a member of both the Committee for the Constitution and the Diplomatic Committee during the opening days of the Convention. According to a later statement by William S. Smith, who had been in Paris in 1792, French officials at that time were drawing up plans for fomenting a revolution in the Spanish territories in South America. Included in such plans was a proposal that Miranda command an expeditionary force which would be supported by forty-five ships of the line (, I, 216–17).
2. Edmond Charles Genet had served as translator in the French Office of Foreign Affairs during the American Revolution. In 1787 he was appointed secretary to the French Minister at St. Petersburg, and in October, 1789, he became chargé d’affaires at that post. Expelled from Russia because of his adherence to the French Constitution of 1791, he returned to Paris during the summer of 1792 and was appointed Minister Plenipotentiary to the United States. He did not arrive in the United States until April 8, 1793, for he was detained at Paris by the Girondists, who had hoped up until the time of the King’s execution that the royal family might accompany Genet to the United States.