There were several cogent reasons why Kentuckians should sympathize with France in the war she was then waging with England and Spain. The American colonies in return for aid in the Revolution had bound themselves to France in any defensive war she should be forced into with Great Britain. In addition resentment against the British was at fever heat, because they continued to hold the forts of the Northwest Territory despite the treaty of 1783 and the officers in charge of the forts aided and abetted the Indians to intermittently raid the settlements of Ohio and Kentucky. Again, Kentuckians desired the United States to become an ally of France; in which event it would give them the opportunity to procure by force of arms the free navigation of the Mississippi; which the Spaniards controlled and hedged about with such commercial restrictions as to create a bitter hatred in Kentucky against Spain.
When Washington by proclamation of April 22, 1793, declared this country's neutrality in the then war in which France was engaged, Citizen Edmund Charles Genet, the agent in the United States of the new French Republic, did everything in his power to excite opposition against the federal government, by organizing political clubs in communities where French sympathy was strong, and his agents were most successful in Kentucky.
Seeing the hopelessness of procuring direct aid from the United States he concentrated his efforts in an attempt to excite Kentucky and the western country into making a river attack upon New Orleans, thus hoping to force war between Spain and the United States.
In November, 1793, five of his agents came to Kentucky. They conferred with General George Rogers Clark and prevailed upon him to accept a French commission as "Major General of the armies of France and Commander in Chief of the Revolutionary Legions of the Mississippi."
General Clark issued a proclamation to the effect that each person participating in the planned expedition against New Orleans should receive a great boundary of land in payment for his services, or, if he preferred it, be paid one dollar a day; and that all should share in the plunder taken. His reputation was such and the scheme so enticing that many volunteered.