Page "Treaty of Alliance (1778)" Paragraph 17

Although the Washington Administration had declared that the treaty remained valid, President Washington's formal Proclamation of Neutrality, and the subsequent Neutrality Act of 1794, effectively invalidated the military provisions of the treaty and touched off a period of increasingly deteriorated relations between the two nations.

The efforts of the new French Minister Edmond-Charles Genet to raise militias and privateers to attack Spanish lands and British warships, during the Citizen Genet Affair, despite Washington's pledge of neutrality turned public opinion against the French and led to the resignation of Thomas Jefferson, a longtime supporter of the French cause, as Secretary of State.

In turn, the signing of Treaty of London of 1794, or Jay's Treaty, convinced many of the French people that the United States were traitors who had surrendered to British demands and abandoned them, despite the assistance they had provided the United States in their own fight for independence during the American Revolutionary War.