Jefferson thereupon expressed extreme surprise that
his note had been printed, and on the plea of explaining the matter
wrote to Washington a letter, in which he declared that his friend
Mr. Adams, for whom he had a most cordial esteem, was an apostate to
hereditary monarchy and nobility. He further described his old friend
as a political heretic and as the bellwether Davila, upon whom and
whose writings Mr. Adams had recently been publishing some discourses.
It is but fair to say that no more ingenious attack on the
Vice-President could have been made, but the purpose of it was simply
to arrest the public attention for the real struggle which was to
follow.
The true object of all these movements was to rally a party and break
down Jefferson's great colleague in the cabinet. The "Rights of Man"
served to start the discussion; and the next step was to bring on from
New York Philip Freneau, a verse-writer and journalist, and make him
translating clerk in the State Department, and editor of an opposition
newspaper known as the "National Gazette." The new journal proceeded
to do its work after the fashion of the time. It teemed with abuse
not only of Hamilton and Adams and all the supporters of the treasury
measures, denouncing them as "monarchists," "aristocrats," and "a
corrupt squadron," but it even began a series of coarse assaults
upon the President himself. Jefferson, of course, denied that he had
anything to do with the writing in the newspaper, and Freneau made
oath at the time that the Secretary wrote nothing; but in his old age
he declared that Jefferson wrote or dictated all the most abusive
articles, and he showed a file of the "Gazette" with these articles
marked.
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