We should not forget Alexis De Tocqueville who wrote "Democracy in America" in 1831. Here was a French aristocrat who expressed admiration for our truly free society, where people took the initiative to band together and govern themselves. In comparison, 30 years later the Brits were still trying to break us up by supporting the Confederacy.
And the Marquis de Lafayette. While the French government only supported the war to attack the British, and so that they could regain New France, their were Frenchmen who were supportive of the United States (also, why would an absolute monarchy support the creation of a nonmonarchial government?). The British were the United States traditional enemy until around the late 1800's. France, while having a cultural war with the United States, has never had a political one (though during Napoleon's time it got close to one).