The Scientist Turned Spy

BOOK REVIEW: The Scientist Turned Spy: Andre Michaux, Thomas Jefferson, and the Conspiracy of 1793 by Patrick Spero (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2024) $34.95 Hardcover

Dreary as they may have been, the COVID lockdowns had a few positive consequences; they did give some historians, among them Patrick Spero, the Chief Executive Officer of the American Philosophical Society (APS), opportunities to pursue long-neglected projects. With the APS library closed, Spero began investigating one of the most intriguing documents in the society’s archives, the so-called Subscription List. Written by APS-member Thomas Jefferson and signed by George Washington and a host of eighteenth-century American luminaries, the list was intended to raise money for an APS-sponsored scientific expedition, led by the noted French botanist Andre Michaux, into the American West. Science, however, soon became a cover for a clandestine French plot to invade Spanish-held Louisiana and establish an independent but pro-French republic.

Born in 1746 near Versailles on a family farm that served the royal household, Michaux as a young man demonstrated an unusual intelligence, a formidable work ethic, and a fascination with plant life. He soon attracted the attention of Louis-Guillaume Le Monnier, a neighbor and prominent French scientist who became a mentor. With a relentless, and Spero suggests humorless, dedication to natural history, Michaux attracted the patronage of Louis XVI. A combination of motives, Spero notes, drove Michaux and other like-minded botanists: a love of pure science, considerations of national prestige, and a faith that newly-discovered plants might have practical uses. Michaux’s research took him throughout France and on to Spain, England, and the Middle East. When he returned to France in 1785 after spending two years in Persia, Louis XVI dispatched him to North America.

Arriving in New York in November 1785, Michaux established a botanical garden in northern New Jersey and later a second garden near Charleston, South Carolina. It became his primary base in America. Spero believes Michaux, as a product of France’s Old Regime, may have felt more at home in “the South’s hierarchical slave society” (page 47) than in the North. Usually travelling with a small party, Michaux’s research took him from Georgia to Canada. He sent thousands of plants to France and discovered the rare Oconee Bell near the Keowee River in South Carolina, but the French Revolution cut off his money supply. Eager to explore the region west of the Mississippi River, he turned to the APS for help.

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Jefferson eagerly embraced Michaux. The Virginian hoped Michaux would uncover evidence to help him rebut Comte de Buffon’s claims that plant and animal life degenerated in the New World. Jefferson, now secretary of state, also saw exploration as a precursor to the westward expansion his vision of an agrarian republic demanded. Acting on behalf of the APS, Jefferson drafted the Subscription List, “a quasi-contract between those who were to pledge money and Michaux” (p. 102). The APS’s fund-raising exceeded expectations, but Michaux began to waver. The Americans wanted to find the fastest route to the Pacific; he wanted to find new plant species, and always a loyal Frenchman, he began to feel a conflict of interests. After he received a commission from the new French government to undertake a western expedition, he rejected APS funding.

The arrival of Edmond Genet, the new French envoy to the United States, complicated Michaux’s situation. Genet hoped to recruit Americans for an attack on Spanish-held Louisiana under the cover of Michaux’s botanical expedition. Genet found allies in America, including the Revolutionary War hero George Rogers Clark. Now in Kentucky, Clark, convinced the United States government had done too little to secure American access to the Mississippi River, had his own plans for an invasion of Louisiana. Genet revealed his scheme to Jefferson who, Spero argues, did nothing to stop him despite the obvious dangers to American neutrality.

When Michaux met Clark in Louisville in September 1793, Clark was already assembling a small army. The operation had become an open secret in the West, which helped recruiting, but quickly proved disastrous. Arthur St. Clair, the governor of the Northwest Territory, issued a proclamation denouncing the operation and revealing the existence of secret Spanish informants, President Washington issued a similar proclamation, and Congress passed bills prohibiting any person in U.S. territory from enlisting in a foreign military or launching an attack from American soil on a friendly nation.

Fortunately for Michaux, he had returned to Philadephia before the plot completely collapsed, and his role in the affair, along with Jefferson’s, did not become public. Spero’s treatment of Jefferson’s involvement is somewhat speculative; John Boles’s Jefferson: Architect of American Liberty (Basic Books, 2017), which Spero does not cite, is more charitable. Presumably chastened by the experience, Michaux, a patriotic but seemingly apolitical Frenchman, resumed his scientific work along the frontier; discovered the yellowwood tree, which is used to make dyes, and returned to France. He died of a fever while exploring Madagascar in 1802. Spero argues Michaux has never received the acclaim he deserves, mainly because he never wrote his memoirs and missed a critical opportunity to publicize his work. Thoroughly engaging, The Scientist Turned Spy may well spark renewed interest in Michaux’s career, and in any event, it is an important contribution to the history of science in America.

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