SOURCE: Smith, Jeffery A. “World Revolution and American Reform.” In Franklin and Bache: Envisioning the Enlightened Republic, pp. 111-33. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

[In the excerpt that follows, Smith focuses on Bache's newspaper and publishing activities, describing the evolution of his goals as a publisher, the content of his publications, and his political and social beliefs.]

In the first few months of publication, Benjamin Franklin Bache attempted to follow his announced plans for making the General Advertiser an educational newspaper. The second issue, for instance, had articles on calculating erosion and checking the quality of gunpowder. Having promised in the first issue “to gratify the Public” with anecdotes about his grandfather, he also inserted an account from an English newspaper of some of Franklin's accomplishments. Stories about Franklin and instructive items continued to find a place, but Bache was not satisfied with the merely informative. With fundamental conflicts arising over national goals, he wanted to publish a paper that would report the thrust and parry of contending conceptions of the future. In his fourth week as an editor, he complained to readers about a temporary shortage of exciting news. Heads were not then being cut off in France, he said sarcastically, and in domestic politics he found no party disputes, legislative debates, or “even so much as a piece of private abuse to grace a paper.” Saying that contentious times were happy ones for editors, he exclaimed, “Zounds, people now have no spirit in them.”¹

For a political journalist of the 1790s, there was seemingly no greater shortcoming than failing to paint subjects in the most arresting hues. Bache, like Franklin and Jefferson, was affable and self-assured, but angered by injustice and provoked by affronts to his moral principles. Anxious to contribute to a revolution of hearts, he lost much of his interest in stocking readers' minds. On January 1, 1791, after three months of publishing, he dropped the word “Agricultural” from the paper's full title and removed a motto—“Truth, Decency, Utility”—from beneath the nameplate as he expanded the size of the pages. Bache told his readers that he needed space to cover Congressional news and that he was unable to offer the variety of material he had originally proposed as long as “more important matter” was at hand. He was raising the price of an annual subscription to six dollars, he said, but the paper would be a third larger. Later in the year, Bache dropped the words “Political, Commercial and Literary Journal” from the nameplate.² The paper was becoming increasingly polemical and was promoting reforms in line with enlightened republicanism.

Although Benjamin Franklin Bache was not alone among American editors in advocating libertarian solutions to societal problems, his General Advertiser was in a position to be an important channel of information and opinion. Its potential impact was not limited to those who subscribed or otherwise managed to see a copy; the news and essays Bache published were read by political leaders and reprinted elsewhere. Making use of the free postal exchange of newspapers among editors, eighteenth-century journalists simply gathered much of what they printed by selecting press material from other states.³ The General Advertiser offered pointed analysis, and, on occasion, a scandal or some striking development in government policy. As a daily located in the nation's capital, the paper was well situated to dramatize issues and assign blame. In conveying the hopes and animosities of those seeking a more egalitarian world, Bache demonstrated how well he had learned the kind of political and economic lessons taught by Franklin and Jefferson.

I

Educated in Europe, where dancing and fencing were considered valuable branches of learning, and in the home of one of the century's most agile writers, Bache was not about to produce plodding journalism. The view he and his correspondents offered in the first years of the decade was that it was a time of extraordinary promise for citizens of all nations, particularly America. An editorial in the newspaper's second month declared that “nature has done everything on her part to render the United States more fully competent to supporting an independent empire, than any other country whatever.” Other comments at the same time rejected doubts about the viability of democratic government and stated that in no part of the globe did “new truths have a better prospect of being attended to and received than America.” The nation was, the paper contended over the next several years, a refuge where the oppressed were welcomed and differing religions tolerated. “May this prospect never be clouded,” one editorial said, “but may it extend more and more until the lights of Philosophy, Liberty and Philanthropy shall eradicate the benighted corners of the whole world.”⁴

With as much fervor as any newspaper of the period, the General Advertiser gave credit to the former British colonies on the shores of a largely unexplored continent for beginning an era of worldwide revolution. The founding of the United States was a “triumph of reason and liberty—the harbinger of universal freedom and happiness to the race of mankind.” The paper said that America's Revolution had already inspired the French upheavals and would continue to provide an example of a free people's ability to achieve peace, stability, and general prosperity. In one issue the United States, an “Eden in the West,” was described as enjoying “the smiling radiance of Heaven” while “the expansive energy of principles” was sweeping across the Earth with the force of an earthquake that “must overthrow the Colossus of despotism.”⁵ In another editorial, France was pointed to as the country which had “hitherto set the pattern to all Europe in matters of taste and fashion” and was now prepared to afford the more “noble example” of liberty:

France was the brightest gem in the crown of tyranny—the monarchy in which the arts and sciences most flourished, and which presented the most favourable prospect of arbitrary power in the world. An Empire so respectable, from whom tyranny derived her chief ornament and support, embracing the side of freedom, will serve to bring her cause into great credit and reputation.⁶

Believing that the progress of history could nevertheless take various paths in different countries, Bache was, like his grandfather, not always too particular about the exact form a free government took because its ultimate success would depend on the people's attitudes and behavior. In 1792 the Advertiser stated that the three “enlightened nations” of the world—England, France, and the United States—were in a sense competing to show which kind of system would best achieve public liberty and happiness. “Perhaps we shall see that each plan has its merit,” the paper said, “who has a right to decide dogmatically that there is but one right way in politics?” Readers were then cautioned against “a persecuting spirit” that would try to impose political orthodoxy by force. Later in the year they were told that the American Revolution had succeeded because of the “general light and information of the people of the United States” and their “singular magnanimity, which nothing but superior wisdom could have inspired.” Bache insisted, “On knowledge and virtue then are raised the pillars of this rising republic.”⁷

Enlightened people naturally wanted freedom, the paper argued, and freedom produced greatness. “It is an established principle, that wherever reason and philosophy prevail, liberty will insensibly flourish,” said one brief essay, “nor is it a practicable measure, or in the power of man to establish a system of oppression by military force, unless a nation is previously reduced to its original meanness by ignorance and superstition.” In the time of the Grecian commonwealth, when “liberty was in its zenith,” Greece was consequently an “emporium of arts and sciences” and “raised mankind to the highest summit of grandeur and independence.” As relaxed and confident as Bache could be about the development of democracy, however, he was extremely intolerant of those who would degrade others. Assessing the “present posture of affairs in Europe” in 1792, he presented a vivid scene of old wrongs being eliminated:

An universal effervescence is apparent—kingdoms, states, and empires are convulsed—the struggles of reason, right and liberty have produced the fermentation—the fæces of despotism, superstition and prejudice will be pursued away, and the pure waters of life, transparent and invigorating, will remain: these will be imbibed in copious draughts by an enlightened race of men, who have for ages been drinking the enervating and intoxicating potions prescribed for them by the emissaries of darkness—the traitors to the dignity of human nature.⁸

Bache and his writers spoke of the American and French Revolutions as if their fates were intertwined. Failure in France, they reasoned, would give new life to monarchical power. “Few people have a proper sense of the importance of the success of the French revolution to the welfare and happiness of America,” said one of Bache's editorial paragraphs in 1792. “Should a counter-revolution be ultimately effected in France, the advocates of hereditary government and titular dignities here may again be emboldened to come forward with their pernicious doctrines.” On the other hand, a successful outcome in such a populous and powerful nation would “crush those plants of ambition which have been long hatching for us on the hot-bed of European depravity.” A month later, after noting the celebrations on the Fourth of July, Bache was able to say with satisfaction that the fourteenth of July had been given “almost equal attention by the patriots of America, and will no doubt in future be considered as our second day of eminence in the calendar of Liberty.”⁹

Bache accordingly made his paper a champion of the revolutionary change in France and a leader of Republican opinion on the issue. The United States should be grateful for the French help it received during its own revolution, the paper maintained repeatedly. “An Old French Soldier,” for example, wrote to remind Americans that “the blood of Frenchmen drenched the foundation of the temple of your liberty.” In addition, readers were urged to see France's potential as a principal market for the nation's merchants and farmers. Bache reported on demonstrations of support for France in America, printed the words to “The Marseillaise,” and, like many of his correspondents, identified the French struggle as “the cause of humanity.” Responding to doubts expressed in less radical publications in the summer of 1792, he stated that no one could “seriously suppose that the present struggle of that nation is not the beginning of that universal reformation which is about to take place in the world for the general benefit of the human race.”¹⁰

Soon, however, came news of the September 1792 massacres in Paris, the execution of Louis, the beginning of the French Revolutionary Wars, and the Reign of Terror. One of the victims of the Terror was Condorcet, the Enlightenment philosopher and revolutionary politician who spent the last months of his life in hiding, writing his moving Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain. Anticipating that he and his wife Sophie would be arrested, he wrote a testament recording his last wishes for his daughter Eliza, that she practice republican virtue and love liberty and equality. Having admired Franklin's philosphies and been one of his eulogists in France, Condorcet suggested that Eliza learn English and recommended her to Thomas Jefferson and to Franklin's grandson, Benjamin Franklin Bache. Shortly after being captured and confined, Condorcet was found on the floor of his cell, dead from a stroke or perhaps from suicide by poison.¹¹ Bache did not have to help Condorcet's daughter, but he was one of the American publishers of his Esquisse, a polemical history of human thought which upheld reason and justice, as infrequent as they may be in human conduct, against ignorance and superstition.

As early as 1790, Bache had worried about the “unbridled licentiousness” of a vengeful populace unaccustomed to the “novelty of freedom.” In 1793, with the administration attempting to distance itself from the Treaty of Amity and Commerce that Franklin had negotiated with France, Bache wrote to his father that Hamilton was striving to have the document interpreted narrowly, “that is, the British interest has by far outweighted the French with the government, the commercial, the monied interest carries all before it.” By the summer of 1794, one of Bache's correspondents began a letter to the editor saying simply that the “friends of liberty and mankind” ought to pray for the French Revolution. “The citizens of the United States are peculiarly interested in their cause and its triumph,” the writer continued. “Our peace and prosperity depend greatly upon it; and nothing else will prevent the unjust aggressions of Britain, in the present temper of her vindictive rulers.”¹²

As the turmoil in Europe intensified, Americans became increasingly divided in their attitudes toward England and France. Shortly after France declared war on England and a coalition of European countries early in 1793, Edmond Genêt arrived in the United States with hopes of gaining American support. Despite Washington's proclamation of neutrality and warnings from Jefferson, the French minister dispatched privateers to attack British vessels and made plans to invade British and Spanish territory. Bache's newspaper attempted to shore up Genêt's position with pro-French essays and war reporting, but the administration took steps to stop the diplomat's actions and enforce neutrality. When “A Jacobin” wrote in the Advertiser that France's treaty of alliance with the United States allowed the minister's activities, Alexander Hamilton responded with a “No Jacobin” series in Dunlap's American Daily Advertiser. Identifying Genêt himself as “A Jacobin,” the secretary of the treasury charged that the French minister had privately “threatened to appeal from The President of The United States to the People.”¹³

Americans—many of whom were initially sympathetic to the French cause—were distressed by Genêt's apparent recklessness. Accounts in Bache's newspaper maintained that the minister never intended to meddle in domestic politics or to insult the president and, moreover, was being persecuted by a conspiracy of government officials who seemed to find him “too democratic” for their liking. Washington was criticized for accepting a policy that would anger a good ally and force Americans into “the protection of the English, who having already acquired considerable influence in the large towns, will find it an easy task to subject this country anew.” Most of the blame, however, was placed squarely on “the crooked politics of a treasury officer to add one more to the disgraceful list of perfidious nations” opposing France. Hamilton and others in high positions had descended to spreading gossip against the representative of an important nation “instead of attending to the important concerns of a great and rising commonwealth.”¹⁴

Bache had, in fact, turned down the opportunity to publish Hamilton's “No Jacobin” jab at Genêt, writing in the Advertiser that he had not wanted to print a personal attack “which we, indeed, positively knew to be ill founded.” When Hamilton sent Bache a warning that its rejection would be considered evidence that the paper was “‘devoted to the support of a foreign interest, in opposition to the government of our country, and to its real welfare,’” Bache published the threat and said of the secretary in a reply:

Whether our correspondent is, in any degree, actuated by foreign influence, we are not so ungenerous as to hazard even a surmise, but we can honestly disclaim all such undue or improper influence, as much as he, or any of our fellow-citizens; nor will we yield to him, or any man, in warmth of regard for the ‘real welfare’ of our country.¹⁵

The Advertiser writers presented the Republican view that a cabal of Hamiltonians was guiding the country back to British domination, or at least shaping society in the English mold, and that the people needed to be roused and their enemies confronted. Bache and other prophets of world revolution did acknowledge from time to time that their victory was not always assured, especially in Europe where “the attainment of universal freedom” was being hampered by “corruption in every form, gigantic prejudices, and the darkness of ignorance among the great mass of the people” who had only recently glimpsed the “rays of reason.” In a letter which spoke of “the depressed and servile condition of the wretched peasantry” of Ireland, for instance, a correspondent stated that “as free Americans, we ought to look with a fraternal eye on the efforts of every people, who are nobly endeavouring to shake off the yoke of tyranny, and to assert those rights of which they have too long been despoiled, by the ruffian band of despotic power.” The writer wondered, however, if the Irish people were too weak to fight “a monstrous aristocracy, in church and state.”¹⁶

Pro-administration papers, meanwhile, were expressing horror at the brutality in France and mocking Bache for his unwearying support of the revolution. Bache and his fellow Republican editors responded by trying to give the best appearance to the purges and executions. Finding that America's “aristocratic prints” exulted in the fall of Robespierre, Bache's General Advertiser contended that republicans were attached to principles rather than individuals and would not miss a man who stifled public opinion and concentrated authority in his hands. American “papers under British influence” had been pleased at the suppression of popular political societies in France, the paper pointed out, and had argued for abolishing the pro-French Democratic-Republican societies that were forming in America. Restrictions on free inquiry might occur in France, the editor said, but “no man in our enlightened republic would be swayed by the force of so pernicious an example and be tempted tamely to give up that right because it had been tyrannically wrested from his brethren the French.”¹⁷

Bache professed shock at what he regarded as the “calumnies on the French revolution” published in the “British prints” of the United States. The London newspapers they relied upon for war news gave “truly laughable” accounts of French victories in which “a severe beating is called a check” and flight “a change in position.” In Britain “ministerial” papers received government subsidies which, Bache observed, would explain their survival and their “doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance,” but support for “principles so subversive of popular government” in America was surprising. “There is undue influence some where,” he said. In fact, Federalist printers were routinely given postmasterships as rewards for their political sentiments. John Fenno, the premier Federalist editor, had received a substantial amount of printing business from the Treasury and the Senate, and Hamilton raised a considerable sum to keep him from bankruptcy in 1793. The Advertiser's reaction was to dub Fenno's paper the “pensioned Gazette” and its editor the tool of “the American Chancellor of the Exchequer.” The Gazette returned the compliment by periodically asserting that Bache was supported by French gold, a charge that Bache ridiculed and denied.¹⁸

The General Advertiser was also able to deride its chief rival's portrayal of the emerging American opposition as incendiary factions and “blood-thirsty Jacobins,” but defending France was a greater challenge. The frenzied killing was said to be necessary for liberty and to be expected as the result of the atrocities that had been inflicted on the French people. One correspondent, quoting a speech in the National Assembly, pointed to the “feudal rights” which had allowed lords to seize the property of their vassals, hunt poor peasants for pleasure, and usurp the role of the husband on the wedding night. Bache explained that the French populace had more cunning, determined enemies at hand than Americans had fought. America did not have so much misery, he wrote, and a “royal puppet, on this spot, did not dance on the wire of a band of courtiers, the most despicable and abandoned wretches that ever disgraced mankind.” In a statement that could have been used to explain his own later journalistic ethics, he excused a Paris mob's “insult” to Lafayette by saying: “When parties run high, the good cause must be supported with enthusiasm and absolute violence, to outweigh the activity and extravagance of opposite partizans.”¹⁹

II

Since Federalist policies and practices seemed to ignore the fundamental moral framework of enlightenment egalitarianism, Republicans, like Bache, gave up the classical ideal of impartiality and recognized the enduring partisan conflicts that would exist under the Constitution. In Hamilton's stated outlook on political economy, self-interest was the driving force, democracy was a disease, and the pursuit of property naturally gave rise to a division into the few and the many. In his Report on Manufactures submitted to the House late in 1791, Hamilton had emphatically rejected the idea of America as an agricultural nation and denounced the specific physiocratic arguments that supported it, saying that foreign demand for farm surpluses would be too uncertain, that the population had reached a level allowing for diversification into manufacturing, and that government would have to be involved, because other nations did not practice free trade and Americans would need incentives to enter new enterprises.²⁰

Faced with heavily indebted federal and state governments and an enfeebled economy, many Americans shared the secretary's desire to secure the public credit, but critics interpreted Hamilton's ambitious funding system as a windfall for speculators in depreciated notes and the creation of the Bank of the United States as a boon for wealthy investors. Madison, who led an unsuccessful effort in Congress to offer payments to the original holders of the debt as a matter of fairness, used the pages of the National Gazette to launch a strident attack on the Hamiltonian program and its implications in 1792. He contrasted the healthy, uncorrupted life of farming with the miseries and uncertainties of relying on manufacturing. A society of idle rich and struggling poor was not a proper basis for a democratic republic, Madison's writings suggested, as he scorned measures that were “pampering the spirit of speculation” and that “might smooth the way to hereditary government.” Already, he said, the country was split into two groups—the republicans and those favoring the “opulent” who thought “that government can be carried on only by the pagentry of rank, the influence of money and emoluments, and the terror of military force.”²¹

Bache and his correspondents analyzed Hamilton's policies with a mixture of praise and contempt. A restoration of public credit was considered beneficial, and the development of some manufacturing was seen as a means of making the United States more independent. On the other hand, Advertiser essays generally reflected egalitarian inclinations by displaying more faith than Hamilton had in free trade and less tolerance for economic privileges and a continuing public debt. The idea of government giving special incentives and protection to some commercial ventures of the wealthy violated republican principles and seemed “a production of the dark ages” rather than “the present enlightened æra.” The nation would come to realize that the debt should be eliminated, the paper said, and that the investors should put their money to more productive uses. “It is bad policy for them to retire on their 6 per cents,” commented an editorial. Speculation on the national bank, another opinion essay said, “drained all the natural channels of business” and produced a “prostitution of morals.”²²

When bank shares went on the market and quickly rose in price, some of the Advertiser's contributors lamented that honest republican industry and frugality would succumb to the lure of easy wealth. One wit wrote to ask Bache why he did not sell his shop to buy bank stock. “I know that this advice is contrary to certain maxims deeply impressed on your mind by the venerable Doctor Franklin!” the letter said. “But, with all respect for the memory of that great Philosopher, I think, with a majority of Americans, that his maxims of prudence, economy, honesty, & c. are too abstract for actual practice, and too narrow for the policy of this Rising Empire.” Bache was a fool, the writer said sarcastically, for slaving day and night when gentlemen were letting their money work for them. Bache did not take the situation so lightly. “The spirit of speculation, and the desire of amassing fortunes rapidly, without awaiting the slow but sure progress of industry and frugality, is ever attended, in any state or country, with a multiplicity of evil consequences,” he observed. “Among these, a thirst for rank and distinction is not the least, and may justly be termed the child of speculation.”²³

Hamilton's most egregious error, in Bache's mind, was failing to recognize the place farming should have in the nation's priorities. In his second week of publication, after listing Franklin's reasons for thinking agriculture “the basis of all real power in a state,” Bache remarked, “The Americans have felt the blessings of their attention to that great man's advice, which, if they continue to follow, it will lead them to every national advantage, to a continuance of peace, to an increase of wealth, to a redoubled population, and to a degree of consequence in the world, to which no other pursuit can possibly raise them.” Bache's investment advice for anyone with available cash was “a snug farm near a good market.”²⁴

When Hamilton's Report on Manufactures appeared, Bache made a point of contrasting its conclusions with Jefferson's wish that American “workshops remain in Europe,” as well as with Franklin's opinion that the United States “attend principally to agriculture.” Franklin, the Advertiser noted, had been upset by the “pale and sickly” condition of English factory workers and only approved of America having “domestic manufactures” that would not injure health or take necessary time away from the household and farming. For his own part, Bache provided a classic portrayal of nations abandoning hard work and equality as they grew rich and dissolute. “Too great attention to commerce will soon introduce idleness and luxury,” Bache wrote, “and though it may enrich a few particular persons, it will impoverish the country.” A national reliance on agriculture, he said, would preserve industry, liberty, and the virtues of strength, patience, and courage.²⁵

Bache's primary sociopolitical objective was a moral cleansing of the world, one which would engender not only liberty and equality, but also the feeling of brotherhood and benevolence that Franklin in particular had thought necessary for the maintenance of a democratic republic. The virtue of treating fellow citizens with decency and compassion was seen as the responsibility that went with Americans' new freedom. Writings published and republished in the General Advertiser said that the more individuals controlled themselves and acted properly, the less government would have to do. “Conscious virtue is the only solid foundation of all happiness,” stated the paper in a list of aphorisms. “If thou regardest thine own welfare, health of body, and peace of mind, observe this short precept,—be always doing good.” The rewards of virtue and costs of vice were clear to Franklin's grandson, as was a need to do more than just talk about the subject. In the early years of his paper, as he was setting out his philosophy, Bache wrote:

The supreme sense and relish of virtue, or whatever is lovely and heroic in affections and conduct, is not to be obtained by perusing dull, formal lectures on the several virtues and vices, and declaiming loosely on the effect; but by exhibiting to the moral eye living examples, or what is nearest to those pictures genuine copies of manners, that it may learn easily to separate between the fair and harmonious, the deformed and dissonant.²⁶

Bache wanted Americans to remember that “without frequent pruning of vicious shoots, the most virtuous governments will degenerate, and bear bad fruit.” One essay described the need for societal efforts to restrain vice as medicine checked disease, especially as the country becomes “more extensive and populous; more civilized & refined, more opulent and commercial, and is farther removed from the simplicity of nature.” There was, the General Advertiser said, a “moral use to be made of history,” a chance to learn from examples in order to “shun the paths of vice and immorality, cruelty and barbarism: or implant in our minds the more refined sentiments of benevolence and philanthropy.” Advancing nations, republicans such as Bache suggested, always faced a contest between the enlightenment and the corruption of the public. “The prognostics of national prosperity or decline, do not vary more than those which indicate a wholesome or destructive change in the constitution of different individuals,” he wrote. “Justice, wisdom, love of liberty, and an honest national zeal will ensure prosperity and power to every people whom they influence.”²⁷

Bache feared—as his grandfather had—that America had not fully escaped the attractions of the English form of government and its social hierarchy. In the classical republican paradigm, a complex, commercial nation like Britain might naturally produce inequality and therefore political friction, but a balancing of monarchical, aristocratic, and democratic elements resulted in stability. Hereditary authority had disappeared in America, but the Constitution seemed to recognize the traditional concept of mixed government with the strength of the one in the president, the wisdom of the few in the Senate, and the liberty of the many in the House. In Bache's brand of enlightened republicanism, however, the mass of people—with enough education and economic security—could be trusted with the ultimate, predominant power in society. “The English government is like the American, as a Cheshire cheese is like the moon; they have the same form, but are very different in substance,” an Advertiser editorial said. The British had “the will of the legislature for a constitution,” while the American government was framed by the people, and officials were servants who “are chosen from among the people by the people, return to the people and are responsible to the people.”²⁸

The editor and his correspondents did find aspects of the nation's new political structure to praise. Abuses of authority could be checked, they agreed, with three branches of government, two houses of Congress, and state and federal levels. Yet, they were at their most exuberant in extolling the principle of vox populi, vox dei. Government needed to have “the good of the people in view as the end, and the WILL of the people as the guide,” wrote “A Republican.” “It is the glory of a Democracy that every question arising; is determined by the only just mode of decision the voice of the majority.” The writer allowed that the will of the majority could be “fairly given by Representation,” but said, “The moment the government contradicts this voice from that moment it is no longer republican.” Bache produced similar statements about the paramount importance of majority rule. Americans fought for such liberty in the Revolution and were “rapidly rising to greatness” under their present system, he said, “but should a majority of the people at any time think that they could enjoy greater political happiness by a change of government, the principles of the Constitution would not be looked on as fixed principles.”²⁹

By the middle of the decade, Bache was concluding that the American political system had not given enough power to the people. Noting that the “American Constitution is said to resemble the fabled constitution of Great Britain” with “monarchy, aristocracy and democracy blended,” he stated that the “seeds of destruction lurk in a constitution that has engrafted on it incompatible principles.” One of the elements must eventually predominate, he thought, as indeed Britain had found with monarchical rule “daily swallowing up the privileges of the commons.” In the United States, where the Federalists were asking for more “energy” in the exercise of authority, Bache said, “It might be asked whether a form of government containing opposite, or in other language, balancing principles is adapted to a people, where there are no grades in society, where all are equal, and no royal or noble privileges are to be created or secured?” The framing of the Constitution itself had to be viewed with suspicion. “Was it wisdom that planned a government containing within its own bosom the elements of eternal discord?” Bache asked. “Or was it designed, that the people might become weary of their condition and at length call out for a king?”³⁰

After the ratification of the Jay Treaty of 1795, with terms Republicans angrily regarded as too favorable to Britain and as disregarding the public will, Bache reached the point of backing arguments for democratization of the Senate and presidency, two institutions which had, his paper said, acted against majority will in approving the agreement. Bache published an impassioned, anonymous pamphlet, Remarks Occasioned by the Late Conduct of Mr. Washington, which maintained that America did not want a new King George, but that the nation's thinking had remained too monarchical at the time the Constitution was written and was still indolent enough to be deceived by Washington's stature as a hero. A chief executive had enormous responsibilities, readers were reminded, and yet could be brought down by ill health, the corruptions of power, the machinations of evil advisers, and the difficulties of mastering complex issues. The vice-president was “an inert personage” while some appointees were “too active” in governing. The pamphlet's solution was one Bache's grandfather had endorsed at the Constitutional Convention, the plural executive. A model, the Remarks said, was the new French Directory, which had shown the requisite “vigor, secrecy, and celerity” in battling the forces of monarchs and had united its country while Washington had divided his.³¹

Although Bache's newspaper noted that Franklin had supported unicameralism, and even seemed to agree with his standard story that two houses would act like a two-headed snake and die of thirst trying to decide which direction to take, the pamphlet did not propose eliminating the Senate. Single houses might be considered more democratic, but they had produced questionable results under the Articles of Confederation and under Pennsylvania's state constitution in effect from 1776 to 1790, both of which had plural executives and annual elections for representatives. Still, in the Remarks, senators were labeled as a “class of men more advanced in political corruption” than any other and the Senate itself was traced to British practice. The pamphlet therefore recommended Virginia's “wise resolutions” for constitutional amendments in response to the treaty controversy, changes which would reduce the term of senators to three years, give some authority for accepting treaties to the House of Representatives, and establish a tribunal other than the Senate for impeachment trials.³²

The idea of altering the Constitution to undercut the administration and its adherents had little appeal. As the 1796 election approached, the Democratic-Republican societies were rapidly disappearing not only because they had failed to defeat the Jay Treaty and Washington had denounced such “self-created” organizations after the Whiskey Rebellion, but also because they had to fight charges of being anti-federalist. Bache and his scribblers, said a correspondent in the Gazette of the United States, were part of “that inveterate antifederal junto who exerted every nerve to prevent the people of the United States from adopting the present Constitution of Government.” Another Gazette writer, “plain dealing,” added that if the young editor thought of the president as a traitor and of the Senate as corrupt for accepting the treaty, then it was time for “this magnus apollo Citizen Bache to unfold his great plan of political redemption.” If the Constitution had undone the country, “plain dealing” continued, then Bache should offer a new one, one which would resemble the legislative work of Robespierre and make “us poor oppressed Americans leap for joy.” The contributor accused Bache of wanting the people to act for themselves, without representatives, and of seeking a system where no aristocrat would have a head after three months.³³

Opposition journalists and politicians were anxious to deny Federalist allegations of their having radical, French-inspired ideas for subverting the Constitution. The correspondence of the two presidential candidates took up the matter as Jefferson and Adams agreed that a plural executive like the French Directory would only foment new divisions and that corruption was the real danger to elective governments. Expressing a wish that there could be an “ocean of fire” between the United States and the venal oligarchy of Britain, Jefferson told Adams that he had come to hate politics. The “morals of a people,” he hoped, could be the foundation of government in the United States:

Never was a finer canvas presented to work on than our countrymen. All of them engaged in agriculture or the pursuits of honest industry, independant in their circumstances, enlightened as to their rights, and firm in their habits of order and obedience to the laws. This I hope will be the age of experiments in government, and that their basis will be founded on principles of honesty, not of mere force. We have seen no instance of this since the days of the Roman republic, nor do we read of any before that.³⁴

Bache and his writers were also content to concentrate less on the abstractions of political structure than on the reality of political behavior. The discussion of constitutional alternatives he published was only a few pages in the midst of an eighty-four-page pamphlet castigating Washington for lacking ability as a general and for abandoning republican practices as president. The underlying problem was not so much the form of government as the sentiments and conduct within it. Washington's failures, the Remarks said, stemmed from a pompous attitude that the people should remain in their place and the aristocrats in theirs. “He loves good faith in pecuniary transactions being himself a man of property,” the pamphlet commented. “He has no hatred of the lower orders of society, but neither has he any active philanthropy for them; since few really love what they do not also respect.” Bache's most basic objection to the Senate was that it also showed contempt for the public by meeting behind closed doors, particularly as it met in secrecy to consider the Jay Treaty. Both Bache and Freneau had campaigned to open its meetings to the public, saying that republican government required that the people know what their representatives were doing.³⁵

The persistent theme of Republican journalism of the 1790s—the leitmotiv of papers like the Advertiser, Boston's Independent Chronicle, and the New York Argus—was that the federal government had fallen into the hands of an aristocratic party aligned with Britain and hostile to the interests of the general public. When a harshly worded letter from Thomas Jefferson to Philip Mazzei made similar accusations and in 1797 found its way into a Federalist paper, Noah Webster's New York Minerva, Bache said he could only agree with the vice-president's conclusion, that there was “a Monarchical and Aristocratical party” in America. “We also think, and many good citizens throughout the United States think with us,” the editor added, “that the Federal Constitution is not perfection, that it is too much on the model of the British.” When Webster, one of Bache's usual sparring partners, decided to declare Jefferson's correspondence “treasonable,” Bache retorted that if that were the case, then “every page” of his newspaper had been treasonable for years.³⁶

In fact, the Advertiser had wasted few opportunities to disparage what Bache and his contributors identified as regressive tendencies in the country they had touted as the harbinger of enlightened change. The paper's outlook thus could shift quickly from revolutionary optimism to a more traditional republican solemnity. “I begin to tremble for my countrymen,” said a 1792 editorial concluding that Congress was taking an expansive view of its powers under the Constitution, “I fear there is an irresistable propensity in all governors to slide into despotism.” In another issue, readers were told that the “idea of the necessity of a nobility for preserving decorum in, and giving eclat to a nation, has been so assidiously propagated through the world, and the minds of men have been so dazzled by the tinsel splendor of courts,” that many people were reconciled to the existence of social distinctions. “It takes some time for a root to be eradicated from a soil where it long uninterrupted grew,” said a correspondent, “and it will yet be some space, before the most baneful and poisonous of all roots, viz. the root of royalty is entirely grubbed up in America.”³⁷

III

Some of the antiadministration rhetoric coming from Bache's press put a classical republican stress on plain, honest manners and on the press's role in maintaining vigilance against corruption. The “most virtuous should be the real nobility of every nation,” stated one essay, and the “only effectual check upon the monied interest” was the public awareness made possible by the wide circulation of information. “Remember that had not Rome slumbered,” said an editorial in the classical mode, “Cæsar would never have enslaved his country.” Writings spoke of the need for the pure republican habits of industry and frugality and of the importance of sacrificing personal comfort to battle liberticide in all its forms. Replying to the frequent Federalist assertion that Bache and his fellow Republicans were pursuing liberty and libels to dangerous extremes and inviting repression, the editor of the Advertiser said:

Anarchy never sprung from a state of rational liberty, it is the child of ignorance and despotism. The history of all nations exhibits the same picture nearly: Government first established for the good of the greater number, too often degenerates into an instrument of ambition and oppression in the hands of the few over the many. It is only by constant watchfulness that its original intention can be preserved, and not by lullabies to republicanism.³⁸

Along with such traditional libertarian sentiments about popular involvement in governing, however, went the enlightened republican emphasis on social and economic equality. “It has been a favorite, and undoubtedly a just principle, that, in Republics, equality in the property of individuals should be preserved as much as possible,” said an editorial by Bache. The way to prevent disparities was to diffuse knowledge to “every class” in society. “Industry and economy, it is true, may lead to wealth,” he explained, “but when they come to the assistance of talents and ingenuity the rise is certain.” In an essay blaming monarchy for ignorance and the unequal distribution of nature's “abundant feast,” the paper said that the unenlightened mind was “of the nature of a machine, which, to be of any service, must be actuated by some co-ercive power.” Equality, Advertiser correspondents contended, was enlivening. “What a happiness for America, that the sparks of her liberty kindled the flame in France; for her example has reverberated, and the glow of our late revolution is again upon us,” observed “A Republican” in 1793. “Frenchmen, who have just broken the fetters of despotism, have given an example to Americans; they have taught them that distinctions among citizens are incompatible with the spirit of a Republic.”³⁹

Of particular, continuing concern for the paper's writers was what they saw as the imperious nature of the administration's style and of Federalist complaints about citizens meddling in government affairs. In 1792, “Mirabeau” listed ten “forerunners of Monarchy and Aristocracy in the United States,” which included Washington's formal levees, observances of the president's birthday, and ostentatious displays that supposed the people “to be children, and that they are governed by their senses and imaginations, and not by their reason.” Mirabeau complained that the officers of government wanted public matters to be their exclusive business. “It is well enough in England to run down the rights of man, because the author of those inimitable pamphlets was a stay-maker,” he wrote, referring to Paine, “but in the United States all such prescriptions of certain classes of citizens, or occupations, should be avoided; for liberty will never be safe or durable in a republic till every citizen thinks it as much his duty to take care of the state, as to take care of his family, and until an indifference to any public question shall be considered as a public offence.”⁴⁰

Bache took the position that understanding the “principles of fair, equal government” was within anyone's ability, that good and evil were easily discriminated and that only self-interest distorted the picture. “The mass of mankind, even those classes which have been degradingly denominated the herd,” he wrote, “are more to be trusted in the operations of government, than those classes which assume a superiority, and whose prejudices and passions are continually at war with plain reason.” Over and over again, the Advertiser stated that government policies were allowing “paper noblemen” to feed on “the toil of the useful classes” as they selfishly speculated in land and finance. The “dishonest traffick of land-jobbing” encroached upon “the permanent source of individual competence and independence,” said “A Back-woods Man,” and the funding system turned a successful speculator into an aristocrat who “wishes arbitrarily to rule over those whom he has cheated.”⁴¹

As a solution, Bache did not necessarily rule out taking from the rich, which Franklin and Jefferson had proposed in a limited sense and which was promoted in an unbounded fashion by some English radicals and, in France, by François-Émile “Gracchus” Babeuf, the leader of the communistic Conspiracy of the Equals in 1796. In 1797, Bache published an American edition of Thomas Paine's Agrarian Justice, a pamphlet which began innocuously enough with the Franklinesque statement, “Practical religion consists in doing good; and the only way of serving God is, that of endeavouring to make his creation happy.” Paine made a point of rejecting Babeuf's notion of eliminating all property distinctions between rich and poor, but he did say that wealth beyond what a person's hands produced came from society and was, at least in part, owed to society. Affluence resulted from paying low wages and from owning land, which was the natural inheritance of all, Paine reasoned. His proposal for advancing human happiness was that landowners be taxed in order to create a fund which would help the young get a start in the world by providing fifteen pounds to each person at the age of twenty-one and would assist the elderly by giving annual pensions of ten pounds to everyone who had reached the age of fifty.⁴²

Ideas for reform published in Bache's paper sometimes followed similar, specific lines. In one case, an editorial noted the scarcity and expense of wood fuel for cities and suggested that farmers pay a special tax if they did not plant “useful trees” along the borders of their fields. Proposals put forth to alleviate other problems of urban dwellers ranged from establishing places where lost children could be housed temporarily to hiring a constable to see that building excavations were covered at night so that pedestrians would not fall in. Officials were urged to clean up the filthy alleys where the poor lived and to provide free and universal public education. In an essay titled “Benevolence,” readers were told that being willing to help those in poverty was an honorable, “god-like affection” and a duty everyone owed to society. “How often do we see men of opulence,” the paper asked, “one moment bestowing costly presents on their equals in wealth, and the next spurning from them an unfortunate fellow mortal, whose modest necessity, perhaps, requests but a shilling.”⁴³

General advice was given in moralistic essays about drinking, gambling, and dueling, but Bache's publication gave attention to the particular needs of the poor. While agreeing that outright charity was appropriate for those who could not help themselves, the paper's writers agreed, invoking Franklin's opinions, that the impoverished who could work should not become dependent on donations. One contributor, citing the views of Jefferson and others, argued that workhouses, with their miserable conditions, were not the answer, but rather assisting the poor in their own homes or boarding them with farmers. Honest work and the resulting individual dignity were the basis of good health and good behavior, essays said, and labor, after all, was “the only fountain of wealth.” The Franklin gospel of helping one's self and one's neighbors and believing in the importance of the productive majority was thus being preached in the Philadelphia of the 1790s.⁴⁴ Bache's most sustained editorial crusades, however, were against the systematic brutalities of slavery and harsh criminal justice.

With a ringing condemnation of human oppression, Pennsylvania became the first state to pass legislation for the gradual abolition of slavery in 1780. Only a small number of slaves were left in Philadelphia by the 1790s, and citizens organized to assist and educate the city's freed and fugitive blacks. Looking elsewhere, however, Bache's newspaper found much to condemn. The slave trade, which the Constitution had protected until 1808, was assailed in explicit stories of blacks being seized in Africa and subjected to hideous conditions aboard vessels crossing the Atlantic. One of the accounts described a woman who, after delivering a baby, “gave her son the first and last kiss, and precipitated herself with him in the waves.” Slavery, writers said, also degraded the masters and was inconsistent with the nation's ideals. As Franklin had begun to do decades earlier, Bache not only supported abolition, but also defended the intelligence of blacks and urged Americans not to buy slave-produced commodities.⁴⁵

The frequency and nature of such articles may well have limited the appeal of the General Advertiser in the South and other areas where Jefferson and Madison wanted a national newspaper with a Republican message to circulate. Saying that defenders of the slave trade had paid little attention to right and wrong, Bache complained, “When we speak of doing justly and mercifully towards poor Africans, they talk of their property being injured thereby, and when we profess a regard to these sacred principles, they call us fanatics.” Bache invited additional disgust by showing respect, as Franklin and Jefferson had, for the rights and abilities of the Indians who conducted intermittent warfare with white settlers. Among the stories of the mistreatment of native Americans was one which ended by asking, “How is peace to be expected on our frontiers when our own citizens thus provoke hostilities?” The paper outpaced most Americans on women's rights by considering female participation in politics and praising Mary Wollstonecraft, the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women.⁴⁶

Editorials about criminal justice were nearly as vehement as those about slavery. Crimes, the General Advertiser said, were committed by the desperately poor and hungry. “Let the division of property be made as nearly equal as possible, or advantages given that will form an equivalent, and mankind will become virtuous instantaneously,” one essay asserted. Bache supported the efforts of Pennsylvania's prison reform movement to release honest debtors and to teach criminals the value of morality and industriousness. The newspaper praised the state for limiting the death penalty to four crimes and expressed the hope that “enlightened and humane” citizens would eliminate capital punishment entirely. The fear of solitary confinement and hard labor would do more to prevent crime than “human sacrifices,” the Advertiser maintained. The death penalty was a proof of ignorant government, especially when imposed for an “artificial crime” against property which was “in a manner created by society.”⁴⁷

Taken together, then, what Bache and other writers were condemning as immoral and inconsistent with the revolutionary promise of the American republic was greed, domination, and intolerance. Wealthy white men, it appeared, were shaping the nation for their own power and benefit. A “political creed” Bache published in 1797 stated that a country where “one description of men is privileged, and another debased” was in a state of slavery. “Those, who set themselves up as a gazing stock to the rabble, and excite a species of admiration by affecting some frivolous distinction from other people,” said an Advertiser editorial, “are under the influence of the meanest kind of ambition.”⁴⁸ Bache followed Franklin in offering a philosophical prescription for more egalitarian conditions that was less interested in creating a constitutional structure to control or eliminate class struggle than in reforming old habits and promoting particular national policies. To achieve new outlooks and opportunities that favored the common person, Bache, like his grandfather, saw a need for the cultivation of minds through education and the press and for greater and more principled participation in the political system.

Notes

1. GA, October 1, 2, 23, 1790.

2. GA, January 1, August 16, 1791.

3. On the exchanges and how the system was altered in the nineteenth century, see Richard B. Kielbowicz, “News Gathering by Mail in the Age of the Telegraph: Adapting to a New Technology,” Technology and Culture 28 (January 1987): 26-41.

4. GA, November 10, 11, 15, 1790; June 18, 1791. See also GA, September 19, 1792; July 23, 1793; July 16, 1794.

5. GA, July 4, 27, August 16, 1793. On the influence of American ideas—particularly unicameralism—in France, see Joyce Appleby, “America as a Model for the Radical French Reformers of 1789,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 28 (April 1971): 267-86.

6. GA, October 30, 1790.

7. GA, April 12, December 24, 1792. See also GA, September 22, 1791.

8. GA, July 19, 1792; December 31, 1793.

9. GA, June 22, July 23, 1792. See also GA, November 26, 1791; October 26, 1792.

10. GA, July 17, August 18, 1792; July 3, August 27, 1793. On the potential economic links, see GA, December 16, 1793. For examples of demonstrations of support for the French Revolution, see GA, August 1, 1792, March 15, 1793.

11. Elisabeth and Robert Badinter, Condorcet, Un Intellectuel en Politique (Paris: Fayard, 1988), pp. 217, 607, 619-21. The Badinters and other historians have accepted the notion that Bache was among those who frequented Sophie's salon in Paris before the downfall of her husband, but the young man left France before she began entertaining such luminaries as Jefferson and Paine. Her philosopher-politician husband did share many of Franklin's beliefs, ranging from the adages of Poor Richard to the advantages of unicameral legislatures. See Alfred O. Aldridge, Franklin and his French Contemporaries (New York: New York University Press, 1957), pp. 49-50, 87-88, 223-32. Sophie survived and reentered French intellectual life after the death of Robespierre.

12. GA, November 6, 1790; July 31, 1794; Benjamin Franklin Bache to Richard Bache, August 22, 1793, as quoted in Tagg, “Benjamin Franklin Bache and the Philadelphia Aurora,” p. 329. See also GA, July 17, 1794.

13. GA, July 12, 1793; “No Jacobin No. 1,” in The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, ed. Harold C. Syrett, 27 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961-1987), 15: 145. For an example of pro-French war coverage, see “Good News From France,” in GA, July 11, 1793.

14. GA, July 11, 15, December 23, 27, 1793. For criticisms of Washington, see, e.g., GA, July 12, 1793; February 10, 1794.

15. GA, July 25, 1793.

16. GA, September 22, 1791; May 24, 1793.

17. GA, October 10, 17, 20, 1794. For examples of Federalist hostility toward France and Bache, see [Philadelphia] Gazette of the United States, December 8, 1792; February 9, March 16, April 6, 1793; May 2, 5, 6, 8, 9, 16, 30, 1794; for an example of the principles vs. person distinction being made, see February 9, 1793, “A Republican.” On the suppression of publications, see Hugh Gough, The Newspaper Press in the French Revolution (London: Routledge, 1988); Jeremy D. Popkin, The Right-Wing Press in France, 1792-1800 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980).

18. GA, May 19, October 7, 23, 1794; John Fenno to Alexander Hamilton, November 9, 1793, in Syrett, ed., The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, 15: 393-94; Alexander Hamilton to John Kean, November 29, 1793, ibid., p. 418. On Federalist papers being assisted by postal appointments, see Carl E. Prince, “The Federalist Party and Creation of a Court Press, 1789-1801,” Journalism Quarterly 53 (Summer 1976): 238-41. On Fenno's finances, see Culver H. Smith, The Press, Politics, and Patronage, The American Government's Use of Newspapers, 1789-1875 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1977), pp. 13-19. For examples of the accusations made against Bache, see Gazette of the United States, June 3, 1796; [Philadelphia] Porcupine's Gazette, November 16, 1797. For examples of Bache's denials, see A, November 27, 1795; September 27, 1797. For complaints about Fenno's patronage, see, in particular, GA, May 8, June 18, 1794; A, November 8, 1794; January 15, 1795; June 6, November 3, 1796. For the charge that Fenno received money from private benefactors, see A, April 4, May 12, July 3, 1798.

19. GA, June 21, 1792; January 25, March 15, 1793; May 19, 1794. See also GA, October 29, 1791; November 1, December 12, 1792; March 22, 26, May 31, 1793; July 15, 1794.

20. John R. Nelson, Jr., Liberty and Property: Political Economy and Policy-making in the New Nation, 1789-1812 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), pp. 22-79, 165; Report on the Subject of Manufactures in Syrett, ed., The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, 10: 230-71. For a brief account of physiocratic thought, see John Kenneth Galbraith, Economics in Perspective: A Critical History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), pp. 46-56.

21. Lance Banning, The Jeffersonian Persuasion, Evolution of a Party Ideology (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1978), pp. 126-60; “Republican Distribution of Citizens,” in The Writings of James Madison, ed. Gaillard Hunt, 9 vols. (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1900-1910), 6: 96-99; “The Union,” ibid., 6: 104, 105; “A Candid State of Parties,” ibid., 6: 115, 116.

22. GA, September 23, 1791; January 7, 23, May 1, 30, 1792. For examples of the paper's essays on economics, see GA, June 28, October 6, 27, November 19, December 5, 1791; January 7, 9, 16, 23, 1792; A, June 20, 1795.

23. GA, August 12, 1791; March 1, 1792. See also GA, July 11, 14, 1791; February 15, 1793.

24. GA, October 12, 1790; June 15, 1791. See also, GA, November 8, 28, 1790; January 16, 1792. Bache advised a friend from his school days in Geneva that investing in land offered an independent life to a person of industry and know-how but would not make a fortune. Benjamin Franklin Bache to Gabriel Cramer, December 20, 1794, in Lucien Cramer, Une Famille Genevoise, Les Cramer (Geneva: Librairie E. Droz, 1952), pp. 66-67.

25. GA, January 12, 19, 1792. On Jefferson's commitment to agriculture, see Edwin M. Betts, ed., Thomas Jefferson's Farm Book (Princeton: Princeton University Press for the American Philosophical Society, 1953). On Franklin's place in Americans' belief in the virtue of industry, see J. E. Crowley, This Sheba, Self: The Conceptualization of Economic Life in Eighteenth-Century America (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), pp. 82-92, 122.

26. GA, March 19, May 17, 1791; see also October 17, 1791; May 2, 1792. On the need for brotherhood, see GA, December 26, 1791.

27. GA, July 4, 1791; May 2, 29, 1792; A, October 9, 1797.

28. GA, January 27, 1794. For definitions and discussions of “classical republicanism,” see Banning, The Jeffersonian Persuasion, pp. 21-41; Jonathan Scott, Algernon Sidney and the English Republic, 1623-1677 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 14-17, 28-30.

29. GA, May 24, 1791; August 16, 1793. On the operation of the three branches of government, see, e.g., GA, January 16, February 7, 1792. On popular sovereignty, see, e.g., GA, May 18, 22, 1792.

30. A, January 29, 1795.

31. Remarks Occasioned by the Late Conduct of Mr. Washington as President of the United States (Philadelphia: Printed for Benjamin Franklin Bache, 1797), pp. 3, 35-39. For the newspaper's charge that Washington acted against the will of the majority, see A, August 21, September 7, 8, 21, 1795; January 13, 1796.

32. Remarks, pp. 34, 39. On unicameral legislatures, see GA, March 12, 1791; A, April 14, 1795; Ben Franklin Laughing, Anecdotes from Original Sources by and about Benjamin Franklin, ed. P. M. Zall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), pp. 57, 92.

33. Gazette of the United States, September 16, 18, 1795. On the rise and fall of the Democratic-Republican societies, see Philip S. Foner, ed., The Democratic-Republican Societies, 1790-1800, A Documentary Sourcebook of Constitutions, Declarations, Addresses, Resolutions, and Toasts (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1976).

34. Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, February 28, 1796, in The Adams-Jefferson Letters, The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams, ed. Lester J. Cappon, 2 vols. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1959), 1: 259-60; John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, April 6, 1796, ibid., 1: 261-62.

35. Remarks, p. 32. On Freneau's efforts, see Gerald L. Grotta, “Philip Freneau's Crusade for Open Sessions of the U.S. Senate,” Journalism Quarterly 48 (Winter 1971): 667-71. Bache's newspaper had dozens of commentaries on Congressional secrecy. See, e.g., GA, February 15, November 16, 17, 20, 28, December 15, 19, 1792; February 7, 28, December 13, 24, 28, 30, 31, 1793; February 24, March 5, 6, April 16, July 22, September 8, 1794; A, April 30, June 16, 17, 22, 1795; April 30, 1796.

36. A, May 5, 8, 1797.

37. GA, January 20, May 15, 1792; August 21, 1794.

38. GA, February 8, 1792; A, May 21, July 22, 1796. For examples of classical republican rhetoric, see GA, August 20, November 21, 1791; July 6, October 19, December 15, 1792.

39. GA, July 7, 1791; October 19, 1792; February 9, 1793.

40. GA, December 7, 1792.

41. GA, April 4, 1794; A, February 8, 1796; October 27, November 21, 1797.

42. Thomas Paine, Agrarian Justice (Philadelphia: Printed by R. Folwell for B. F. Bache, 1797), pp. iv, 11. On the pamphlet, see Eric Foner, Tom Paine and Revolutionary America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), pp. 249-51. On English radicalism at this time, see Iain McCalman, Radical Underworld: Prophets, Revolutionaries and Pornographers in London, 1795-1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); H. T. Dickinson, British Radicalism and the French Revolution, 1789-1815 (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1985).

43. GA, March 8, 1792; July 25, 1793; May 6, August 9, 1794; A, July 12, 1796; December 18, 1797.

44. GA, November 1, 1790; January 15, 17, 18, 24, 27, February 4, 12, March 5, May 4, August 19, November 24, 1791; January 10, 1792; February 13, 1794; A, July 28, 1796.

45. GA, March 17, April 21, 27, August 19, 1791; January 9, June 29, 1792. See also GA, January 28, February 5, June 14, August 15, 1791. On the conditions for blacks, see Gary B. Nash, Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia's Black Community, 1720-1840 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988). For Franklin's views, see Benjamin Franklin to John Waring, December 17, 1763, in PBF, 10: 395-96; “A Conversation on Slavery,” Public Advertiser, January 30, 1770, in PBF, 17: 37-44; “The Sommersett Case and the Slave Trade,” London Chronicle, June 18-20, 1772, in PBF, 19: 187-88; Benjamin Franklin to Anthony Benezet, February 10, 1773, in PBF, 20: 40-41; Benjamin Franklin to Anthony Benezet, July 14, 1773, in PBF, 20: 296; Benjamin Franklin to the Marquis de Condorcet, March 20, 1774, in PBF, 21: 151.

46. GA, June 29, 1792; October 18, 1794; A, October, 20, 1797. On Indians, see also, GA, May 14, 1791; February 7, 20, 21, 1792; July 24, 1794. On women's participation, see also GA, January 20, 24, 1791; December 26, 1792. For a summary of the attitudes of Americans, particularly Jefferson, toward slaves, Indians, and women, see Richard B. Morris, The Forging of the Union, 1781-89 (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), pp. 179-93. On the image of women, see Karen K. List, “The Post-Revolutionary Woman Idealized: Philadelphia Media's ‘Republican Mother’,” Journalism Quarterly 66 (Spring 1989): 65-75.

47. GA, October 9, 1790; March 1, July 8, August 5, 1791; June 12, 1792. See also, GA, January 14, April 14, 15, June 9, July 22, 1791; January 14, 1792. For a study of the city's efforts to deal with the poor and with criminals, see John K. Alexander, Render Them Submissive: Responses to Poverty in Philadelphia, 1760-1800 (Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1980). On the scale of poverty in Philadelphia and other cities, see Billy G. Smith, “Poverty and Economic Marginality in Eighteenth-Century America,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 132 (March 1988): 85-118. For background, see Bradley Chapin, “Felony Law Reform in the Early Republic,” PMHB 113 (April 1989): 163-83.

48. GA, August 4, 1791; A, September 8, 1797.

Abbreviations

A [Philadelphia] Aurora

GA [Philadelphia] General Advertiser

PBF The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Leonard W. Labaree et al. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959—)

PMHB Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography