"If they send him off, I think I shall not long be safe myself": Contesting Early American Citizenship in the Longchamps Affair, 1784–1786

Abstract

Abstract: Through the little known Longchamps Affair, this article explores the interaction between state and national, and popular and legal, conceptions of American citizenship during the founding era. In 1784, French migrant Charles Julien de Longchamps attacked a French diplomat on the streets of Philadelphia, sparking a national debate on what it meant to be an American citizen. While the French government demanded his expatriation, in an unexpected turn of events, Longchamps alleged that he had been naturalised as a citizen of Pennsylvania the day before the attack, and consequently had the right to stand trial in the United States. The affair became a national referendum on the nature of American citizenship. Officials employed a state-centric, legal vision of membership inherited from the colonial period to argue that Longchamps was not an American citizen and advocate for his removal. These claims were disputed in newspaper coverage across the United States, which instead contended that Longchamps' commitment to revolutionary values proved his citizenship, invoking a broader national community. The public perceived Longchamps' fate as inherently tied to their own, demonstrating that a shared sense of belonging across the United States was equally as important as state membership in shaping how citizenship was understood in real terms. The Longchamps Affair provides a window into the ambiguous and contested nature of membership during the founding decades, both in determining what constituted American citizenship, and how the rights conferred by citizenship differed for native-born Americans and naturalized migrants.