The French Revolution began on July 14, 1789, when the exasperated citizens of Paris, spurred on by relatively small cadre of middle-class intellectuals, stormed the Bastille Fortress and freed the political prisoners held there. Many Americans believed that the French embraced their own understanding of ordered liberty and would create a constitutional republic similar to the U.S. Americans benevolently smiled on the political upheavals that defined itself by three benign words: liberté, égalité, fraternité.

Liberty, equality, and fraternity quickly transformed into oppression, inequality, and anarchy.