Angelica Church wrote to her sister from Lrondon, June the 4th, 1793:
My dear Eliza: I am returned from our ambassadors very much edifyed by reading Fenno's paper, for it speaks of my Brother, as he deserves, and as I and all who dare to know him think.
We are going to our country house. Mrs. Pinckney passes the week with me, and whilst we admire the taste and elegance of Great Britain, we shall still more regret the society, the pleasures, and friendships of America. Ah my dear Sister after all, nothing repays us for a separation from those we have been long attached to. Mr. and Mrs. Bache are to be at Mr. Morris's Villa, which is not far from Down Place. I shall visite her to see it; but request of her to tell you what she has seen, but as she does not like chit chat it will be difEcult to prevail on her. They are soon to return to America. Why am I not to be of the party I It is an age since we arrived, and if I had not seen Mr. Fenno's paper my impatience would have been extreme. Adieu my dear Betsy.
And again on June 5, 1793.
My dear: The packet is arrived, and you are well, this is however not all I wish to know; but it is a great pleasure yet relief to get a letter from you; my love to Alexander the good, and the amiable. Shall I tell you a secret? I have more and better hopes within these days than ever of crossing the Atlantic.
Philip Freneau was an exceedingly cultivated man, and an early American poet of some ability, and the Daily Advertisery which he edited, had a long and apparently prosperous career. Freneau was bom in 1752, and was graduated from Princeton in 1771. It is said that he lost his life in 1832 from exposure, having gone astray in a bog-meadow on returning home from Freehold, New Jersey. His attacks upon the Federalists were mild in comparison with those that he subsequently published in the National Gazette. This journal was established October 31, 1791, and was bitter in its abuse of and opposition to Hamilton and the others. Freneau was clever and witty, and did so much to please Jefferson that the latter made him a salaried interpreter in the State Department, which led to much scandal at the time. The new sheet contained numerous scurrilous articles, some of them attacking Hamilton who was then Secretary of the Treasury, and in Fenno's paper, over the signature of "The American," the latter charged Jefferson with the part he had played in providing Freneau with the sinews of war, and extending to him his patronage. Jefferson's explanation was extremely lame. He acknowledged that "he had heard with pleasure of the publication which promised to administer an antidote to the aristocratical and monarchical doses lately given by the unknown writer of the 'Discourses on Davila' and which also would probably reproduce, at his request, certain extracts from the Leyden Gazette concerning French politics. Subscriptions he admitted to have solicited from a charitable desire to aid his clerk, whom he thought to be a man of good parts. He protested in the presence of heaven that he had made no effort to control the conduct or sentiments of the paper."
In Philadelphia, journalistic controversies were most disorderly, especially when a certain amount of public sympathy was extended to the representatives of the French Republic. It is quite conceivable how Hamilton must have raged internally against the blackguardly abuse of the Aurora and the daily attacks of Bache; but although public opinion of the right kind was finally aroused, Hamilton appears to have, meanwhile, kept silent. So inexcusable were the attacks of the anti-Federalistic journals that the editors were constantly in trouble with the authorities. Even when Washington retired to Mount Vernon the abuse was so disgraceful that a company of veterans known as the Spring Garden Butchers, who had fought directly under the latter in the war, went to the office of the Aurora and looted and demolished the premises. On the 9th of May, 1798, the intolerance of the sane public made itself especially manifest in a demonstration of violence. This day had been appointed as one of fasting and prayer, and the attitude of those who openly fraternized with the French representatives, and who were obsessed with the unhealthy doctrines of the republic, could no longer be tolerated. Declarations were made against the "Jacobins, philosophers, freemasons, and the illuminati," and a political riot marked the limit of patriot endurance. The office of the Aurora was again attacked, where Bache had intrenched himself with a number of friends, who were armed to the teeth. After doing what damage they could, the rioters—many among them being Federalists— broke the windows and plastered the statue of Franklin, who was Bache's uncle, with mud. After Bache's death, from yellow fever, the paper was edited by William Duane, a still more vehement partisan of the Jacobins. In November, 1799, Hamilton was the plaintiff in a libel case against a New York newspaper called the Argus. In its issue of October 6 appears the following excerpt from the Philadelphia publication:
An effort has been recently made to suppress the Aurora, and Alexander Hamilton was at the bottom of it. Mrs. Bache was offered $6,000 down in presence of several persons in part payment, the valuation to be left to two impartial persons, and the remainder paid immediately on giving up the paper, but she pointedly refused it, and declared she would never dishonour her husband's memory, nor her children's future fame by such baseness; when she parted with her paper it should be to Republicans only.
On November 21 David Frothingham, the foreman of the office, was indicted on complaint of General Hamilton. The case was brought to trial before Judge Harrison, the recorder, and the mayor of the city of New York. Cadwallader Colden and Alexander Hamilton were sworn. The former, who was assistant attorney, testified that Frothingham had been called upon and said he supposed he was liable, but saw no criminality as the letter was copied from another paper. Hamilton then testified that he was innocent of the conduct imputed to him. This testimony was objected to by Brockholst Livingston, the defendant's counsel, and the objection was sustained. Hamilton was then asked to explain certain innuendoes in the indictment respecting speculations, etc. This having been done he was interrogated as to what was generally understood by secret service money. He replied it meant money appropriated by a government generally for corrupt purposes, and in support of the government which gave it. On being asked if he considered the Aurora as hostile to the United States, he replied in the affirmative. In defence Livingston tried to prove that Frothingham was not responsible, and that the editor should have been arrested instead. Ogden Hoffman, who appeared for Hamilton, replied that even every journeyman was liable to prosecution, and Frothingham, as fore-man, was especially so. The jury rendered a verdict of guilty with a recommendation to mercy, and the defendant was fined one hundred dollars, and given four months in Bridewell.
Later we find Hamilton constantly writing for the many journals that appeared from time to time in the interest of the Federalist cause. There is no doubt that he worked in conjunction with William Cobbett, whose caustic pen made every one uncomfortable. Cobbett was an English subject who, though he lived among those who had just gained their independence, was ever loyal to the English king. He had been a private soldier in New Brunswick, and when he came to Philadelphia, supported himself by giving English lessons to the French émigrés who flocked from Santo Domingo, and by these he earned from four to five hundred pounds per annum. He first took a shop in Philadelphia, publishing a number of clever but stinging pamphlets, one being an attack upon Dr. Priestley, who was driven out of England in June, 1794," and another entitled " A Bone to Gnaw for the Democrats." He also wrote "A Little Plain English and a New Year's Gift to the Democrats."
Urged by Hamilton he, from 1794 to 1801, published a paper called the Weekly Political Register which remained in existence from 1794 to 1800, when he returned to England by way of New York, and died there in 1835. Under the pseudonym of Peter Porcupine, he bitterly attacked the French and their American sympathizers, and warmly defended Washington, Hamilton, and others of the Federal party. His stay in Philadelphia was not entirely free from turmoil and embarrassment, for upon several occasions he narrowly escaped personal violence from those he had attacked. During the yellow fever outbreak he severely criticized Dr. Benjamin Rush, who was a popular idol, sneering at his treatment of the plague by large doses of mercury and bleeding. He went further, and called Rush a Sangrado, for which offence suit was brought for libel, and after two years judgment was recorded against Cobbett for five thousand dollars. This was too much for the journal, which succumbed, and its editor transferred his activities to a new field.
William Duane vied with Callender and Freneau in bitterness of invective, which was directed against the administrations of Washington and Adams, Hamilton always coming in for his share. Duane's libels