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The Scientist Turned Spy: André Michaux, Thomas Jefferson, and the Conspiracy of 1793
The incredible story of an explorer caught up in international intrigue at the dawn of US history
André Michaux was the most famous scientific explorer of North America before Lewis and Clark. His work took him from the Bahamas to Hudson Bay, and it is likely that no contemporary of his had seen as much of the continent. But there is more to his story.
During his decade-long American sojourn, Michaux found himself thrust into the middle of a vast international conspiracy. In 1793, the revolutionary French government conscripted him into its service as a secret agent and tasked him with organizing American frontiersmen to attack Spanish-controlled New Orleans, seize control of Louisiana, and establish an independent republic in the American West. New evidence also strongly implicates Thomas Jefferson in this plot. Drawing on sources buried in the vault of the American Philosophical Society, Patrick Spero offers a bona fide page-turner that sheds new light on an incipient American political climate that fostered reckless diplomatic ventures under the guise of scientific exploration, revealing the air of uncertainty and opportunity that pervaded the early republic.
André Michaux was the most famous scientific explorer of North America before Lewis and Clark. His work took him from the Bahamas to Hudson Bay, and it is likely that no contemporary of his had seen as much of the continent. But there is more to his story.
During his decade-long American sojourn, Michaux found himself thrust into the middle of a vast international conspiracy. In 1793, the revolutionary French government conscripted him into its service as a secret agent and tasked him with organizing American frontiersmen to attack Spanish-controlled New Orleans, seize control of Louisiana, and establish an independent republic in the American West. New evidence also strongly implicates Thomas Jefferson in this plot. Drawing on sources buried in the vault of the American Philosophical Society, Patrick Spero offers a bona fide page-turner that sheds new light on an incipient American political climate that fostered reckless diplomatic ventures under the guise of scientific exploration, revealing the air of uncertainty and opportunity that pervaded the early republic.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published September 17, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 19, 2024
André Michaux, a gifted botanist, was slated to be the original Lewis and Clark, cutting the first path to the Pacific accompanied by Native guides. Then the French Revolution happened, the busybody Citizen Genêt joined us, plans changed. The new plan was for Michaux to be the vanguard of Kentuckians' invasion of Spanish Louisiana, to be followed by the establishment a glorious republic à la France (and the United States).
Patrick Spero's The Scientist Turned Spy explores this little-known chapter of American history in exhaustive detail, delving, for instance, into the nuances of the American Philosophical Society, which planned to sponsor the purely botanistic journey that Michaux never took. Though it sometimes seemed overlong, the great merit in this book is Spero's expert portrayal of the tension between the Jeffersonian and Washington/Hamiltonian visions for governance of the new United States, culminating in Washington fighting with himself over whether to use federal troops against American citizens of the west, who were disillusioned with what they saw as the new national government's favoritism toward the eastern states. You'd forgive General Washington for collecting most of his famous silvery hair during this nail-biter.
There is too a fascinating review of the ample evidence to support, not only the idea that Jefferson was in thrall to the French Revolution, but that Jefferson had full knowledge of Citizen Genêt's plot to kick Spain out of Louisiana, which risked treacherous destabilization on the continent. I highly recommend The Scientist Turned Spy to those interested in early American history.
Patrick Spero's The Scientist Turned Spy explores this little-known chapter of American history in exhaustive detail, delving, for instance, into the nuances of the American Philosophical Society, which planned to sponsor the purely botanistic journey that Michaux never took. Though it sometimes seemed overlong, the great merit in this book is Spero's expert portrayal of the tension between the Jeffersonian and Washington/Hamiltonian visions for governance of the new United States, culminating in Washington fighting with himself over whether to use federal troops against American citizens of the west, who were disillusioned with what they saw as the new national government's favoritism toward the eastern states. You'd forgive General Washington for collecting most of his famous silvery hair during this nail-biter.
There is too a fascinating review of the ample evidence to support, not only the idea that Jefferson was in thrall to the French Revolution, but that Jefferson had full knowledge of Citizen Genêt's plot to kick Spain out of Louisiana, which risked treacherous destabilization on the continent. I highly recommend The Scientist Turned Spy to those interested in early American history.
November 8, 2025
* It's really a 4.5* I had the excellent opportunity to see Spero speak about this book last year, and I finally got the chance to dive into it. It did not disappoint.
As a historian, I have read my fair share of dry, factual, lecture-based books, and it takes patience and time to digest them. Spero is a natural at making complex and often convoluted historical periods easily digestible for the average reader and historian alike. It is a story of an otherwise forgotten botanist on a quest for new knowledge, traveling from France to America on the cusp of the French Revolution. He leaves one complicated environment and enters another. André Michaux, a botanist who would rather be left to his discoveries, is at the financial mercy of a king about to be beheaded, then to multiple fragile governments, then to American scientists, and finally to a scheming, sometimes loud-mouthed ambassador named Edmond Genet. In the pursuit of seeking new knowledge, Michaux is stuck between the scheming Genet, radical George Rogers Clark, who thinks America has turned its back on the West, the Spanish, the French, and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, who believes the knowledge found out West might just be worth the dabble in treachery. With his reliance on the financial support of others, his unyielding need to discover new botanical specimens, and a dependence on enslaved people working on his behalf, as well as the help of indigenous translators and guides, and weather than doesn't quite work in his favor, and of course the politics of everyone around him, the reader will follow a story fit for an HBO Drama miniseries.
As a historian, I have read my fair share of dry, factual, lecture-based books, and it takes patience and time to digest them. Spero is a natural at making complex and often convoluted historical periods easily digestible for the average reader and historian alike. It is a story of an otherwise forgotten botanist on a quest for new knowledge, traveling from France to America on the cusp of the French Revolution. He leaves one complicated environment and enters another. André Michaux, a botanist who would rather be left to his discoveries, is at the financial mercy of a king about to be beheaded, then to multiple fragile governments, then to American scientists, and finally to a scheming, sometimes loud-mouthed ambassador named Edmond Genet. In the pursuit of seeking new knowledge, Michaux is stuck between the scheming Genet, radical George Rogers Clark, who thinks America has turned its back on the West, the Spanish, the French, and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, who believes the knowledge found out West might just be worth the dabble in treachery. With his reliance on the financial support of others, his unyielding need to discover new botanical specimens, and a dependence on enslaved people working on his behalf, as well as the help of indigenous translators and guides, and weather than doesn't quite work in his favor, and of course the politics of everyone around him, the reader will follow a story fit for an HBO Drama miniseries.
December 18, 2024
This is a fascinating non-fiction history book by Patrick Spero, “The Scientist Turned Spy: André Michaux, Thomas Jefferson, and the Conspiracy of 1793.” I highly recommend it for anyone who is interested in historical botany AND the history of our nation’s political interest in scientific progress (and actions to promote science research taken by the American Founding Fathers). I don’t read much American history so I appreciated how well this book clearly walked me through geographic regions and events in our history at a time when Kentucky was the civilized west in need of opening trade routes via New Orleans.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews