Some of us vividly recall the start of the funeral procession behind the cortege of John F. Kennedy in November 1963. The White House gates swing open, the new president and Mrs. Johnson walk forth. Emerging behind them, solitary, bemedaled, tall and made taller by his kepi, two steps before the other dignitaries and chiefs of state, is the president of the French Republic, Charles de Gaulle. We imagine that de Gaulle sought his place at the head of that company out of personal pride, out of his fierce sense of stature—after all, only he remained of the Allied leaders of World War II—out of a conviction of la grandeur de la France. No doubt all of this was so. But one doesn't have to seek for shrouded impulses. De Gaulle took his place by virtue of history's protocol. France had been the first nation to recognize the independence of the United States. De Gaulle was there by right.

The Treaties of Friendship and Commerce and of Alliance of 1778, in which France recognized American independence and sealed an agreement to aid the new nation in its war with Great Britain, France's historic archrival—the basis of de Gaulle's claim to front rank in that funeral procession— marked the formal birth of French influence upon American political culture. That influence had a curious history—"had" such a history because it ended quite early in our national life. It is the story of that influence—upon American politics and political culture—as well as the reasons for its comparatively short duration that I would like to try to relate here.