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How delightfully charming and naïve is Fulton’s confidence that his picture of an altruistic ambition would excite a sympathetic emotion in Bonaparte. If Napoleon read the letter he must have smiled at Fulton’s enthusiastic simplicity.

Fulton’s leaning to French views at this time is explained by the fact that in politics he was intensely republican, in fact, somewhat extreme, a position that was undoubtedly encouraged and strengthened by his mentor, Barlow, who we have seen was a candidate for the celebrated Convention of 1793. This same leaning very likely influenced his remaining in France, rather than undertaking his contemplated return to his native land, because at this period his political ideals seemed more probable of realization in the former than in the latter country.

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Fulton’s first efforts for mechanical navigation. Some early submarines: Bourne, Van Drebbel, Mercenne, de Son, Wilkins, Bushnell.

While Fulton was taking out patents for his little canals—patents that never had either practical or profitable application—and endeavoring to earn a livelihood through the introduction of some of his methods of canal construction, there was germinating in his mind the great principle of mechanical propulsion on water that was eventually to win for him both fame and a competence.