[dropzone]

True, the French played a closing role our winning the Revolutionary War. But that's only one chapter in history. French altruism has absolutely nothing to do with it. Remember that it was the French that incited the Indian Nations to massacre colonists in the French Indian War. After after the the American revolution, we were at war with France 1798-1800 (the Quasi war). France caused us many trade headaches as our nation was getting started.

The US colonies were just a pawn in the ongoing British/French antagonism. I adjust my appreciation accordingly.

It was the British War with France that enables the Louisiana Purchase and the British victory Waterloo that finally put an end to European designs on the New World. Our enemies merely canceled each other out in the end.

[Pharmboy]

No argument there...although I would add is that they could have supported us with money, supplies, weapons and ammunition and stopped short of ground troops. But, when Washington was president, he came to dislike the French immensely (remember Citizin Genet, etc.), and Jefferson was the major apologist for the French in our new country.

[Alberta's Child]

I completely agree with you on that point. France didn't provide military support to the colonists in North America simply to engage in "nation-building." And you can be sure of something else, too . . . if anyone in France had stood up and suggested that "British tyranny is a religion of peace," he would have been strung up and shot in Paris.

[ruoflaw]

Yes, well I think that falls under the enemy of my enemy is my friend. We fought France under the British flag during the French and Indian war and then we fought against the British in Revolutionary war and then when Major General Anthony Wayne defeated the Indians at Fallen Timbers in 1794,the British were backing and inciting the Indians to riot and to kill and take Americans as hostages. I had forgotten about the Quasi war...the undeclared war fought entirely at sea.