When Tone left Ireland his French plans were as ill formulated as his political philosophy. A year later in Paris he was acting out the role of a fully fledged revolutionary. Fundamental to the process was his American experience. To the Irish reformers America was the original land of liberty, and Tone and Russell had talked of emigrating there. But in August 1795 Tone arrived in the new American capital at the height of a vicious partisan contest which was to determine the future structure of American politics. What he saw was an apparent life-and-death struggle between ‘aristocracy’ and ‘democracy’, in which the former had aligned itself with Britain against France. The experience soured his view of Americans, sharpened his sense of Irishness and anti-Englishness, and helped define his republicanism.

I

The Cincinnatus sailed with some 300 passengers on board. Many would have been emigrants, Presbyterians and skilled artisans for the most part. Tone, as a gentleman, was in a minority and adopted a suitably paternalistic stance towards his fellow passengers. Conditions were cramped, and though the Tones had hired a ‘state cabin’, it measured little more than eight feet by six. Supplies donated by their Belfast friends were shared with the other passengers, and the instructions accompanying Dr McDonnell's medicine chest allowed Tone to act as ship's doctor. He tried, with some success, to introduce a sense of order and hygiene among the passengers, and the overcrowding and shortage of fresh water notwithstanding, prided himself on landing his ‘patients’ safely, with the loss of but one, after the six-week voyage.

The crossing was calm, uneventful and at times even exhilarating when the Tones sighted a shoal of porpoises, a dolphin, or now and again a shark or whale. After five weeks at sea, however, the vessel was stopped by three English frigates and boarded by a recruiting party. For two days the party remained on board, harassing passengers and crew alike, then pressed all the deckhands save one, and 48 of the passengers, into the British navy. Tone was wearing trousers rather than the breeches normal for a gentleman, and he too would have been pressed but for the screams of Mary and Matilda.