Jean Baptiste de Ternant

Jean Baptiste Ternant, chevalier (born December 12, 1751 in Damvillers ; died November 15, 1833 in Paris ) was a French military and diplomat.

From August 1791 to May 1793 he was the successor of Eléonore François Elie Moustier, who was recalled at the request of the American government, as the French ambassador to the United States. Here he was noticeably more popular than his predecessor, since he had fought in the ranks of the Marquis de Lafayette on the American side in the War of Independence from 1778 to 1783. In Paris, however, his diplomatic mission was given all the less attention as the country got deeper and deeper into the turmoil of the revolution . After the abolition of the monarchy, Ternant was dismissed from his post by the ruling Girondins, and Edmond-Charles Genêt was his successor .

The Smithsonian holds an oil portrait of Ternant, painted by Charles Willson Peale in 1781.

literature

Douglas N. Adams: Jean Baptiste Ternant, Inspector General and Advisor to the Commanding Generals of the Southern Forces 1778-1782. In: The South Carolina Historical Magazine 86: 3, 1985. pp. 221-240.
Alexander DeConde: Entangling Alliance: Politics & Diplomacy under George Washington . Duke University Press, Durham, NC 1958.

Web links

Frank Whitney: Jean Ternant (1751-1833) - biography for the web project French Volunteers and Supporters of the American Revolution

Individual evidence

↑ Date of death according to Frank Whitney (see web links, there footnote 2), who sifted through the will and the posthumous papers of Ternant during his research; In the literature there are often deviating information, which is probably due to confusion. Many American sources give April 1816 as the date of death and couches as the place of death, this probably goes back to the information in the Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography . The Library of Congress has further information in its personal file (< http://lccn.loc.gov/n85049014 >)

^ Art Inventories Catalog of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

personal data
SURNAME	Ternant, Jean Baptiste de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Ternant, Jean Baptiste
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	French military and diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH	December 12, 1751
PLACE OF BIRTH	Damvillers
DATE OF DEATH	November 15, 1833
Place of death	Paris

[1] Date of death according to Frank Whitney (see web links, there footnote 2), who sifted through the will and the posthumous papers of Ternant during his research; In the literature there are often deviating information, which is probably due to confusion. Many American sources give April 1816 as the date of death and couches as the place of death, this probably goes back to the information in the Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography . The Library of Congress has further information in its personal file (< http://lccn.loc.gov/n85049014 >)

[2] Art Inventories Catalog of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.