Robert Treat Paine, Jr., was a Federalist essayist, editor, orator, lawyer, and poet whose best-known poem, Adams and Liberty (published as a broadside, circa 1798), both capitalized on and contributed to the violently anti-French feeling that built steadily in America during the administration of President George Washington and reached a climax in the demonstrations and legislation following President John Adams's disclosure of the details of the XYZ Affair in the spring of 1798. Paine's prose eulogy on the death of Washington also found a significant, though smaller, national audience, while his An Oration, Written at the Request of the Young Men of Boston, and Delivered, July 17th, 1799, in Commemoration of the Dissolution of the Treaties, and Consular Convention, between France and the United States of America (1799) was reviewed in journals in Philadelphia, New York, and other cities. Paine's local reputation, not to say notoriety, rested in large part upon certain...