Once convinced, all relations with Jefferson were terminated. It is interesting in this connection to note something repeated by Madison, to the effect that “General Lafayette related to me the following anecdote, which I shall repeat as nearly as I can in his own words. ‘When I last saw Mr. Jefferson,’ he observed, ‘we conversed a good deal about General Washington, and Mr. Jefferson expressed high admiration of his character. He remarked particularly that he and Hamilton often disagreed when they were members of the Cabinet, and that General Washington would sometimes favor the opinion of one and sometimes the other, with an apparent strict impartiality. And Mr. Jefferson added that, so sound was Washington’s judgment, that he was commonly convinced afterwards of the accuracy of his decision, whether it accorded with the opinion he had himself first advanced or not.’”
EARLIEST SIGNATURE OF WASHINGTON
A third Virginian who was almost as closely associated was Edmund Randolph. There had been a friendship with his father, until he turned Tory and went to England, when, according to Washington’s belief, he wrote the “forged letters” which gave Washington so much trouble. For the sake of the old friendship, however, he gave the son a position on his staff, and from that time was his friend and correspondent. In the first administration he was made Attorney-General, and when Jefferson retired from office he became Secretary of State. In this position he was charged with political dishonesty. Washington gave him a chance to explain, but instead he resigned from office and published what he called “a vindication,” in which he charged the President with “prejudging,” “concealment,” and “want of generosity.” Continuing, he said, “never … could I have believed that in addressing you … I should use any other language than that of a friend. From my early period of life, I was taught to esteem you—as I advanced in years, I was habituated to revere you:—you strengthened my prepossessions by marks of attention.” And in another place he acknowledged the weakness of his attack by saying, “still however, those very objections, the very reputation which you have acquired, will cause it to be asked, why you should be suspected of acting towards me, in any other manner, than deliberately, justly and even kindly?”
In the preparation of this pamphlet Randolph wrote the President a letter which the latter asserted was “full of innuendoes,” and one statement in the pamphlet he denounced as being “as impudent and insolent an assertion as it is false.” And his irritation at this treatment from one he had always befriended gave rise to an incident, narrated by James Ross, at a breakfast at the President’s, when “after a little while the Secretary of War came in, and said to Washington, ‘Have you seen Mr. Randolph’s pamphlet?’ ‘I have,’ said Washington, ‘and, by the eternal God, he is the damnedest liar on the face of the earth!’ and as he spoke he brought his fist down upon the table with all his strength, and with a violence which made the cups and plates start from their places.” Fortunately, the attack was ineffective; indeed, Hamilton wrote that “I consider it as amounting to a confession of guilt; and I am persuaded this will be the universal opinion. His attempts against you are viewed by all whom I have seen, as base. They will certainly fail of their aim, and will do good rather than harm, to the public cause and to yourself. It appears to me that, by you, no notice can be, or ought to be, taken of the publication. It contains its own antidote.”
Not content with this double giving up of what to any man of honor was confidential, Randolph, a little later, rested under Washington’s suspicions of a third time breaking the seal of official secrecy by sending a Cabinet paper to the newspapers for no other purpose than to stir up feeling against Washington. But after his former patron’s death regret came, and Randolph wrote to Bushrod Washington, “If I could now present myself before your venerated uncle it would be my pride to confess my contrition that I suffered my irritation, be the cause what it might, to use some of those expressions respecting him which, at this moment … I wish to recall as being inconsistent with my subsequent convictions.”
Another type of enemy, more or less the result of this differing with Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Randolph, was sundry 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 Bache wrote a pamphlet, with the avowal that “the design of these remarks is to prove the want of claim in Mr. Washington either to the gratitude or confidence of his country…. Our chief object … is to destroy undue impressions in favor of Mr. Washington.” Accordingly it charged that Washington was “treacherous,” “mischievous,” “inefficient;” dwelt upon his “farce of disinterestedness,” his “stately journeyings through the American continent in search of personal incense,” his “ostentatious professions of piety,” his “pusillanimous neglect,” his “little passions,” his “ingratitude,” his “want of merit,” his “insignificance,” and his “spurious fame.”
The successor of Bache as editor of these two journals, William Duane, came to the office with an equal hatred of Washington, having already written a savage pamphlet against him. In this the President was charged with “treacherous mazes of passion,” and with having “discharged the loathings of a sick mind.” Furthermore it asserted “that had you obtained promotion … after Braddock’s defeat, your sword would have been drawn against your country,” that Washington “retained the barbarous usages of the feudal system and kept men in Livery,” and that “posterity will in vain search for the monuments of wisdom in your administration;” the purpose of the pamphlet, by the author’s own statement, being “to expose the Personal Idolatry into which we have been heedlessly running,” and to show the people the “fallibility of the most favored of men.”