Thomas Paine, almost a fatality of the French Reign of Terror, later claimed that America had had its own version: "The reign of terror that raged in America during the latter end of the Washington administration, and the whole of that of Adams..." https://books.google.com/books?id=RHpMAAAAMAAJ&pg=RA2-PA55 Challenge--make this outrageously exaggerated characterization of the Federalist era accurate: instead of a few editors going to jail under the Sedition Act, mass executions of "Jacobins". Of course, an actual rather than Quasi-War with France would help, but would even that be enough?