One of the matters which Washington could not have foreseen was the outrageous abuse of the press, which surpassed in virulence and indecency anything hitherto known in the United States.  At first the journalistic thugs took care not to vilify Washington personally, but, as they became more outrageous, they spared neither him nor his family.  Freneau, Bache, and Giles were among the most malignant of these infamous men; and most suspicious is it that two of them at least were proteges of Thomas Jefferson.  Once, when the attack was particularly atrocious, and the average citizen might well be excused if he believed that Jefferson wrote it, Jefferson, unmindful of the full bearing of the French proverb, Qui s’excuse s’accuse, wrote to Washington exculpating himself and protesting that he was not the author of that particular attack, and added that he had never written any article of that kind for the press.  Many years later the editor of that newspaper, one of the most shameless of the malignants, calmly reported in a batch of reminiscences that Jefferson did contribute many of the most flagrant articles.  Senator Lodge, in commenting on this affair, caustically remarks:  “Strict veracity was not the strongest characteristic of either Freneau or Jefferson, and it is really of but little consequence whether Freneau was lying in his old age or in the prime of life."[1]

[Footnote 1:  Lodge, II, 223.]

An unbiassed searcher after truth to-day will find that the circumstantial evidence runs very strongly against Jefferson.  He brought Freneau over from New York to Philadelphia, he knew the sort of work that Freneau would and could do, he gave him an office in the State Department, he probably discussed the topics which the “National Gazette” was to take up, and he probably read the proof of the articles which that paper was to publish.  In his animosities the cloak of charity neither became him nor fitted him.

Several years later, when Bache’s paper, the “Aurora,” printed some material which Washington’s enemies hoped would damage him, Jefferson again took alarm and wrote to Washington to free himself from blame.  To him, the magnanimous President replied in part: 

If I had entertained any suspicions before, that the queries, which have been published in Bache’s paper, proceeded from you, the assurances you have given of the contrary would have removed them; but the truth is, I harbored none.  I am at no loss to conjecture from what source they flowed, through what channel they were conveyed, and for what purpose they and similar publications appear.  They were known to be in the hands of Mr. Parker in the early part of the last session of Congress.  They were shown about by Mr. Giles during the session, and they made their public exhibition about the close of it.

Perceiving and probably hearing, that no abuse in the gazettes would induce me to take notice of anonymous publications against me, those,