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French botanist - Charleston native - Andre Michaux

To set the record straight, French botanist - Charleston native - Andre Michaux did not willingly conspire against the government of the United States with regard to the Louisiana Territory in 1786. Michaux was, however, the unwitting dupe of that sly French envoy, Edmund Genet. Charlestonians choose to remember Andre Michaux for his botanical research farm across the Ashley River from Middleton Place and for his discovery of the Rhododendron, the Big Leaf Magnolia, and the Carolina Lily.

In 1785 - 1786, our city underwent a name change from Charles Town to Charleston, and a long-shelved plan to establish an institution of higher learning finally took form in the College of Charleston.

The British had evacuated Charleston in mid-December 1782 and within a year international ships lined up at our wharves to load indigo, naval stores, and rice. Charleston recovered from the effects of the Revolutionary War more quickly than any other seaport in North America.

In 1786, a decade after William Bartram, the English botanist, passed through these parts and a half-century before noted ornithologist John James Audubon dwelt among us, Andre Michaux, the man noted as Louis XVI's personal botanist, disembarked at Adger's Wharf and commenced a life-long love affair with the Carolinas.

This Frenchman's birthplace was within sight of the splendidly landscaped gardens of Versailles Palace. The elder Michaux was employed as a gardener there and thus the path was paved for a servant's son to receive a comprehensive agricultural education.

In fact, upon his death in 1802, Andre Michaux was recognized as one of the world's premier botanical authorities.

The next time that you're rushing along Aviation Avenue toward International Boulevard and the Charleston International Airport, look for the historical marker that notes the location of Michaux's experimental botanical gardens, circa 1788-1800.

From that location, Michaux exported to France numerous plants unknown there that he had discovered in the Carolinas and Georgia. Unfortunately, Andre Michaux's reputation was marred by his association with fellow French diplomat Edmund Genet and the conspiracy to thwart George Rogers Clark's expedition to wrest the Louisiana Territory from Spain.

From the time of his youth until his departure for America Andre Michaux witnessed up close daily the splendor of the court of Louis XIV. The grand balls, the great hunts, and the continual festive existence of the Second Estate in that extravagant decade prior to the Revolution unfolded in a panoply of dazzling brilliance before Louis XVI's chief horticulturist.

The idea that this internationally acclaimed tree and plant expert was over here to identify new species of plant life that might rival indigo and tobacco was an added blessing accruing from the meek foreigner who moved so well in any class of society.

Michaux had been born in Satory, in Versailles - a part of Yvelines, Ile-de-France. Ile-de-France is and has traditionally been for generations, the wealthiest of the twenty-six administrative districts of France. Michaux's father had become notable for scientific agriculture a generation prior to such a movement occuring in Britain.

Though royal stipends made it possible for Michaux to tour and study all over Europe, historians credit much of the great botanist's scientific method to the tutelage he received from his innovative father.

When Louis XVI offered the Versailles gardener 10,000 livres to tour America, a sum measuring approximately a quarter million dollars in today's purchasing power, Michaux rousted his son from a local school, and together the two set off for the port of New York with the intention of working their way (collecting plant specimens) to Florida.

Andre's son managed the nursery - much of which today is the property of the Charleston International Airport.

Shortly upon the establishment of the experimental botanical plantation, the son, also named Andre, had an eye shot out by a Charlestonian shooting birds in a nearby field.

The end result of the tragedy was that the elder Michaux traveled alone through long stretches of the North and South Carolina backwoods.

Though he dressed as a rustic frontiersman and carried a weapon, Michaux was often in danger from the outlaws who waylaid stravellers in the narrow mountain passes.

Botany in the 18th century enveloped the spectrum of herbal medical cures.

Andre Michaux had established himself here with a base of operation and exploraton for nearly a decade prior to the arrival of his fellow countryman, Edmund Jacques Genet, or "Citizen" Genet, as this darling of the moderate revolutionary Girondist party preferred to be introduced in the newly republican France of the 1790s.

Perhaps the bonhomie of swashbuckling French military men such as Duportail, L'Enfant, De Kalb, and Lafayette had predisposed Charlestonians to embrace these sons of Gaul as deliverers and never as deceivers.

Genet was sent here by Count Mirabeau, president of the new National Assembly, to pry America out of its neutral position in the great war taking shape between Britain and her allies and the revolutionary state of France.

All up and down Charleston's French Quarter - the streets parallel to Queen Street - prominent Carolinians toasted Citizen Genet as the beau ideal of Europe's new breed, the "republican man."

That they were being used as pawns in an attempt to sway President Washington into a pro-France stance was a thought that never crossed our own citizens' minds until years later.

How did a man such as Andre Michaux who was so consumed with his botanical interests become ensnared in a web of intrigue that could have gotten him the hangman's noose?

Michaux and Genet most likely had met prior to the latter's arrival here on the warship Embuscade in April of 1793 since they both hailed from the royal town of Versailles. Charlestonians approved of Genet's furtive mission of privately arming local privateers to raid British shipping in the Atlantic. Our forebears raised enough hard cash to outfit three sleek raiders - Republicaine, the Anti-George, and the Sapoopnêt.

Charlestonians raised so much money for Genet's quasi-American interests that militia units were armed for the purpose of attacking Spanish-Florida. Hostile activities of this nature were illegal for Americans to engage in, yet President Washington's proclamation of neutrality coincided with Genet's arrival in Charleston and news traveled slowly in those days.

Genet departed Charleston enroute for Philadelphia aboard the great French warship. He felt energized from the overwhelming reception that he'd gotten from the Francophile element at his first American stop. Michaux was intent upon establishing another botanical nursery on the New Jersey side of New York harbor. Within the same time frame that Genet met Washington in Philadelphia, Michaux met Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, a fellow naturalist. Jefferson had devised a grand scheme for charting the midwest, the land owned then by Spain that one day would be called by France the "Louisiana Territory."

Eighteen-year-old William Clark, of what would become the famed Lewis and Clark expedition of 1805, was turned down by Jefferson on account of age.

During the negotiations between Jefferson and Michaux over exploring Spain's land holdings in America, Edmund Genet connived with Michaux to pass strategic information intended for Jefferson on to him [Genet].

Jefferson got word of the foreign intrigue and warned Michaux that anything covert could earn him and Genet imprisonment - or the hangman's noose.

Andre Michaux returned to France and rode out the French Revolution on the island of Madagascar.

Michaux's friend and financial backer, Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours, sent an envoy to Charleston to sell the experimental nursery that now has the marker in Michaux's honor.

However, the du Pont representative decided to acquire the New Jersey nursery for the du Pont family to use as a base of American commercial operations.

Du Pont was Michaux's confidante and he was the patron of Francois Quesnay, the French economist who influenced Adam Smith.

It's probable that Michaux would have known Quesnay, too. Andre Michaux's legacy as naturalist and cartographer survive today 241 years after his death in 1802.

(See more columns at www.moultrienews.com or www.historyslostmoments.com).