The Scientist Turned Spy

The Scientist Turned Spy

by Patrick Spero

Andrew Michaux was the most accomplished scientific explorer of North America before Lewis and Clark. His work as a botanist, which he first honed in Persia, took him from the Bahamas to Hudson Bay. But there is more to his story than collecting American plants and seeds for the glory of France.

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 Louisiana, and establish an independent republic in the American West. Evidence also strongly implicates Thomas Jefferson in this plot. Drawing on sources buried in the vault of the American Philosophical Society, Patrick Spero sheds new light on an incipient American political scene that fostered reckless diplomatic ventures under the guise of scientific exploration, revealing the air of uncertainty and opportunity that pervaded the early republic.

HC