# History of Journalism in the United States/Chapter 12

CHAPTER XII
THE EDITOR AND THE GOVERNMENT
Such was the condition in January, 1793, when, as a contemporary irreverently put it, "Louis Capet lost his caput "and France became a republic. Citizen Genet, ambassador of the new government, arrived in this country and brought with him a new issue—Genet expected America to declare war on England. The people were, to a large extent, in sympathy with France, and Freneau, to whose republican heart the French cause was dear—moreover, he was a Frenchman by descent—espoused the cause of Genet most fei^ently. Genet's actions, however, brought down on him the disapproval of the administration and aroused against him the Hamilton party. President Washington decided that this was no time for gratitude, and by proclamation called for a neutral course. The friends of Genet and of republican France bitterly protested and Freneau openly addressed the President.
"Sir," said the editor to the President, "Sir, let not, I beseech you, the opiate of sycophancy, administered by interested and designing men, lull you into fatal ​ lethargy at this awful moment. Consider that a first magistrate in every country is no other than a public servant whose conduct is to be governed by the will of the people."
Nor did Freneau stop there; he defended Genet against the President: "Why all this outcry," he asked, "against Mr. Genet, for saying he would appeal to the people? Is the President a consecrated character that an appeal from him must be considered criminal? What is the legislature of the union but the people in congress assembled? And is it an affront to appeal to them? The minister of France, I hope, will act with firmness and with spirit. The people are his friends, or rather the friends of France, and he will have nothing to apprehend, for as yet the people are sovereign in the United States. Too much complacency is an injury done his cause, for as every advantage is already taken of France (not by the people) further condescension may lead to further abuse., If one of the leading features of our government is pusillanimity, when the British lion shows his teeth, let France and her minister act as becomes the dignity and justice of their cause and the honor and faith of nations."
This effrontery led Washington to send for Jefferson and practically to demand that Freneau be dismissed from the State Department. It was then that Washington declared that "that rascal Freneau" had been trying to use him as a distributing agent for his newspaper by sending him three copies every day, and that he (Washington) "would rather be on his farm than be made emperor of the world."
After his interview with the President, Jefferson recorded in his Anas his own impressions. Written for ​ posterity, it is an interesting picture of the Father of the Country, affords a pleasant view of the writer and is no mean tribute to Freneau.
The President, he tells us, brought up the subject of Freneau's attack on him, declaring that there had never been an act of the government that the editor had not abused.
"He was evidently sore and warm," he goes on, "and I took his intention to be that I should interpose in some way with Freneau, perhaps withdraw his appointment of translating clerk to my office. But I will not do it. His paper has saved our Constitution, which was galloping fast into monarchy, and has been checked by no one means so powerfully as by that paper. It is well and universally known, that it has been that paper which has checked the career of the rrionocrats; and the President, not sensible to the designs of the party, has not with his usual good sense and sangfroid, looked on the efforts and effects of this free press, and seen that, though some bad things have passed through it to the public, yet the good have preponderated immensely."
To answer Genet's appeal to the people against the government, and the Republican editors who were supporting him, Hamilton took up his pen and addressed the public in the papers, signed "No Jacobin," which appeared first in the Daily Advertiser and were reprinted by Fenno. No matter how strong the S)mipathy of the people for France, or how great their gratitude, they realized the justice of Hamilton's statement in his initial paper that the minister of a foreign country has no right to appeal over the head of the President. The government tolerated Genet's impudence as long as possible and then demanded his recall, the attitude of Washington and ​ the arguments of Hamilton having finally brought public opinion around to the administration.
Not content with the Gazette of the United States and Fenno's efforts—which from Fenno's own description and his appeal to Hamilton for financial assistance, had evidently not been as successful as the party leaders wished—Hamilton and his friends established another paper, this time in New York, under the editorship of Noah Webster, afterward distinguished as the lexicographer. Webster was already prominent in his home state, Connecticut, having contributed letters, the forerunners of editorials, to the Connecticut Courant as early as 1780. During the vigorous debate over the adoption of the constitution he had been one of the conspicuous journalistic proponents of Federalism. He was a man of learning and of great industry, but narrow-minded and exceedingly vain. He believed that he was responsible for the adoption of the Constitution. Ob the other hand, his work as a teacher and his campaign on behalf of the copyright law had made him a conspicuous person, and when he visited New York in August, 1793, an offer was made to him to establish a paper, the capital for which was provided by Hamilton and King, among others.
​ The next political division in the country came over the treaty with England, negotiated by John Jay. The Republicans were quick to see the unpopularity of this document, which Washington had ratified in August, 1795. Practically every paper in the country teemed with letters or long series of essays denouncing or defending the instrument; chief of these was Hamilton's series of thirty-eight newspaper articles, signed "Camillus," which were printed in Noah Webster's Minerva. Some of these were written, it is said, by Rufus King and John
Jay But the strongest journalistic protagonist of Federalism was William Cobbett, afterward to be famous in England as writer and reformer,—a man of little education but undoubted genius. In 1794 he landed in New York, without friends; from there he went to Philadelphia, where—apropos of the arrival in this country of Dr. Joseph Priestley, who, on account of his criticism of church and state, had found England an uncomfortable place, and. had emigrated to America,—the democratic newspapers were making vicious attacks on England. Cobbett, who had had some slight experience in pamphleteering, attacked Priestley and the haters of England in such vicious form as to warm the hearts of the Federalists.
​ James T, Callender, later to become a storm-center in American politics, was one of these emigrants. He had attacked the Pitt administration for its political injustices, in a pamphlet entitled, "The Political Progress of Britain." Cobbett, having had some success with his attack on Priestley, turned his attention to Callender with equal success. This endeavor resulted in his being likened to a porcupine, and from that time on Cobbett signed himself "Peter Porcupine." For a while his writings were printed as a series in The Political Censor, eight numbers of which had appeared up to January, 1797. On March 4, 1797, he brought out the first number of Porcupine's Gazette and Daily Advertiser, and for the next two years he was actively engaged in defending himself and his paper and attacking those who were against the English cause and the Federal party.
The virulence with which Cobbett attacked his opponents, and his vituperation of the French people and French admirers, occasioned so much scandal that it was said that John Adams had resolved to order him to leave the United States, under the provisions of the Alien Act—strong Federalist though Adams himself was. The remonstrance of the Attorney-General prevented this action, but Cobbett decided to return without such a mandate, and secretly sold his property. In the end, however, it was a private lawsuit that resulted in his leaving Philadelphia,—Dr. Benjamin Rush, a famous physician and politician of Pennsylvania, having received a verdict of $5,000 damages for a libelous statement against him. Porcupine's Gazette was suspended in consequence of this verdict, and the following year Cobbett sailed for England, leaving behind him as a legacy all his virulence and ​ vituperative style, which for years was imitated by the American press.
Considering the briefness of his sojourn in this country and the short time that he was identified with American politics and journalism, Cobbett made, as Henry Cabot Lodge has pointed out, a great and lasting impression. Not only was he one of the founders of our party press, but he was, as Senator Lodge says, "the ablest" of them—certainly the most vituperative. He had a vigorous and impulsive, but a half-educated, mind. This was to be to a large extent characteristic of many of the forceful figures who, in the development of journalism in the new country during the next fifty years, were destined to be the pioneers in America not only of journalism but of the country itself.
The Genet incident brought to the front another vigorous anti-Federalist editor, Benjamin Franklin Bache, the grandson of Benjamin Franklin. As a boy Bache had traveled with his grandfather to Paris, and had been educated in France and at Geneva. He gained some knowledge of printing in the house of Didot in Paris, came back with his grandfather to America in 1785, finished his college studies in Philadelphia, and, on the first of October, 1790, appeared as a full-fledged publisher and editor on the General Advertiser. It was not so much under this title as under the title of Aurora—which was assumed in November, 1794—that the paper became a bitter and vigorous opponent of Hamilton and the Federalists.
With the breaking' out of the French Revolution, Bache's pro-French sympathies were given full play, and the French ambassador, Genet, had no more vigorous defender than Bache. Whatever of restraint there had ​ been up to this time, with regard to attacking Washington himself, was disappearing, but it remained for Bache to assail the Father of his Country in most vitriolic fashion. He even went so far in the Aurora that when the song, "Hail, Columbia," which had just been written to the tune of "The President's March," was sung at a theater in Philadelphia, he declared it to be "the most ridiculous bombast and the vilest adulation of the Anglo-Monarchical party."
Bache's denunciation of the song "Hail, Columbia." may possibly be traced to the fact that the air had been composed as a tribute to Washington by Pfyles, the leader of the few violins and drums that passed for an orchestra at the one theater in New York, and had been played for the first time when Washington rode over Trenton Bridge on his way to New York to be inaugurated. On the frequent occasions when Washington attended the theater in New York, during the time that the seat of government was in that city, it was always played on his entrance. To the irate democrats it was too reminiscent of monarchical ceremony, and the respect, shown by the spectators' rising from their seats, irritated them.
Bache's feeling against the Federalists was not lessened by an incident which occurred in the spring of 1797. He had gone down to witness the completion of the frigate United States, the first naval vessel constructed by the government under the Constitution, and had been set upon and beaten by the son of the builder; the chastisement being, he was given to understand, a punishment for his newspaper abuse of Washington and the government in general. The assault on Bache was, to the Federalists, a source of almost equal jubilation with that caused by the ​ successful launching, and it was especially pleasing to "Peter Porcupine."
So bitter did the controversy now become that personal affrays resulted both in and out of Congress. Fenno having charged Bache with being in the pay of France, Bache retorted that Fenno had sold out to the British. The son of Fenno called on Bache and demanded the name of the author of the attack on his father. Bache told the young man to send his father to ask his own questions. The next day the two editors met on Fourth Street and, when Fenno attacked Bache, Bache hit him over the head with his cane. Bache states that, after they had been separated, as he "stooped to pick up his comb," Fenno retreated.
In the midst of this bitter controversy came the announcement of George Washington's intention to give up public life at the close of his presidential term. On September 19, 1796, his Farewell Address was printed in Dunlap and Claypoole's Daily Advertiser.
It was not until years later that the facts were made public as to how this particular journal came to be the one selected by the President for his historic announcement. Several days before it was printed he sent for Claypoole, the editor of the Daily Advertiser, and informed him that he had for some time past contemplated retiring from public life, but had "some thoughts and reflections upon the occasion, which he deemed proper to communicate to the people of the United States, in the form of an address, and which he wished to appear in the Daily Advertiser." Claypoole's account of the matter is given in his own words:
"He paused, and I took the opportunity of thanking ​ him for having preferred that paper as the channel of his communication with the people—especially as I viewed this selection as indicating his approbation of the principles and manner in which the work was conducted. He silently assented, and asked when the publication could be made. I answered that the time should be made perfectly convenient to himself, and the following Monday was fixed upon. He then told me that his secretary would call on me with a copy of the address on the next Friday morning and I withdrew.
"After the proof sheet had been compared with the copy, and corrected by myself, I carried another proof, and then a revise, to be examined by the President, who made but a few alterations from the original, except in the punctuation, in which he was very minute.
"The publication of the address—dated 'United States, September 17, 1796'—being completed on the 19th, I waited on the President with the original, and in presenting it to him expressed my regret at parting with it, and how much I should be gratified by being permitted to retain it. Upon which in an obliging manner, he handed it back to me, saying that, if I wished for it I might keep it; and I then took my leave of him."
The stepping down of Washington from the seat of power let loose the political furies. Freneau having retired, Bache had become the chief Republican editor. In the Aurora he went as far as a critic could possibly go:
"If ever a nation was debauched by a man, the American nation has been debauched by Washington. If ever a nation was deceived by a man, the American nation has been deceived by Washington. Let his conduct, then, ​ be an example to future ages; let it serve to be a warning that no man may be an idol; let the history of the Federal Government instruct mankind that the mask of patriotism may be worn to conceal the foulest designs against the liberties of the people."
There was scarcely a limit to the abuse that was heaped on him, the Boston Gazette—of December 26, 1796, January 16, 1797, and February 13, 1797—continuing to pile obloquy on the great Father of his Country.
"If ever there was a period of rejoicing," the Aurora declared on March 6, 1797, "this is the moment. Every heart, in unison with the freedom and happiness of the people, ought to beat high with exultation that the name of Washington ceases from this day to give currency to political iniquity and to legalize corruption."
The indignation of the people at this attack led some of the veterans of Washington's army to march to the office of the Aurora and break into the place, very nearly demolishing it.
After such a tirade it was more or less to be expected that Adams would at least have a reasonably respectful reception when he assumed office. The Republican papers hailed with delight his declaration in favor of popular government, pretending to believe that it came to them as a surprise. Within a few months, however, a speech on French affairs was so distasteful to them that they began abusing him with the same degree of enthusiasm with which they had attacked Washington.
The bitterness between the two factions was checked for a short time by a power before which both had to bow. In the early summer and fall of 1798 there was a recurrence of yellow fever in which the newspaper offices ​ of the city suffered severely, losing in all sixty-two persons, among them being both Fenno and Bache. The death of the latter brought to the front William Duane, one of the most powerful of the early political editors.
Duane was born in the northern part of New York, in 1760. His father died shortly after. His mother, after trying to live in Philadelphia and Baltimore, had gone to Ireland. A dispute with his mother over his marriage—she was a woman in comfortable circumstances—led to his determining to learn some business as a means of livelihood, and he turned to printing. After working for a while in London he went to Calcutta, and there published a newspaper which for a while was very successful. A bold criticism of the East India Company, however, led to his being forcibly put aboard ship and sent to England, while his property in India was confiscated. For some time he was a parliamentary reporter for the General Advertiser of London, now known as the London Times, but the refusal on the part of the authorities to take any interest in his ill-treatment in India so disgusted him that he finally determined to return to the United States; he arrived here in 1796. He obtained employment as one of the editors of the Aurora, and after Bache's death conducted the paper for the widow, whom he later married.
* ↑ National Gazette, June, 1793.
* ↑ National Gazette, July, 1793.
* ↑ Jefferson's Works, i, 353.
* ↑ Scudder, Noah Webster.
* ↑ Smith, William Cobbett, i, 130.
* ↑ E. I. Carlyle, William Cobbett, 69.
* ↑ Studies in History, 110.
* ↑ Scharf and Westcott, History of Philadelphia, i, 493.
* ↑ McMaster, History of the People of the United Stales, i, 565.
* ↑ McMaster, ii, 323, and Aurora, April, 1797.
* ↑ Scharf and Westcott, i, 495.
* ↑ Memoirs Pennsylvania Historical Society, 1864, reprint of edition of 1826, 265. The original "copy" is now in the New York Public Library.
* ↑ December 23, 1796.
* ↑ Aurora, March, 1797.