undry editors and writers
who gathered under their patronage and received aids of money or of secret
information. One who prospered for a time by abusing Washington was Philip
Freneau. He was a college friend of Madison's, and was induced to
undertake the task by his and Jefferson's urging, though the latter denied
this later. As aid to the undertaking, Jefferson, then Secretary of State,
gave Freneau an office, and thus produced the curious condition of a clerk
in the government writing and printing savage attacks on the President.
Washington was much irritated at the abuse, and Jefferson in his "Anas"
said that he "was evidently sore & warm 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."
According to the French minister, some of the worst of these articles were
written by Jefferson himself, and Freneau is reported to have said, late
in life, that many of them were written by the Secretary of State.

Far more indecent was the paper conducted by Benjamin Franklin Bache, who,
early in the Presidency, applied for a place in the government, which for
some reason not now known was refused. According to Cobbett, who hated
him, "this ... scoundrel ... spent several years in hunting offices under
the Federal Government, and being constantly rejected, he at last became
its most bitter foe. Hence his abuse of General Washington, whom at the
time he was soliciting a place he panegyrized up to the third heaven."
Certain it is that under his editorship the _General Advertiser_ and
_Aurora_ took the lead in all criticisms of Washington, and not content
with these opportunities for daily and weekly abuse, Bache (though the
fact that they were forgeries was notorious) reprinted the "spurious
letters which issued from a certain press in New York during the war, with
a view to destroy the confidence which the army and community might have
had in my political principles,--and which have lately been republished
with greater avidity and perseverance than ever, by Mr. Bache to answer
the same nefarious purpose with the latter," and Washington added that
"immense pains has been taken by this said Mr. Bache, who is no more than
the agent or tool of those who are endeavoring to destroy the confidence
of the people, in the officers of Government (chosen by themselves) to
disseminate these counterfeit letters." In addition Ba