Class P 575 ft 
 BooIii__JEj&L__ 
 
 CopigM'N?. 
 
 l^Oh 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPCSm 
 
Series XX Nos. 9-10 
 
 JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY STUDIES 
 
 IN 
 
 Historical and Political Science 
 
 (Edited 1882-1901 by H. B. ADAMS.) 
 
 J. M. VINCENT 
 J. H. HOLLANDER W. W. WILLOUGHBY 
 
 Editors 
 
 THE POLITICAL ACTIVITIES OF 
 PHILIP FRENEAU 
 
 BY 
 SAMUEL E. FORMAN, Ph. D. 
 
 BALTIMORE 
 THE JOHNS HOPKINS PRESS 
 
 PUBLISHED MONTHLY 
 
 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER, 1902 
 
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY STUDIES 
 
 IN 
 
 Historical and Political Science. 
 
 (Edited by Herbert B. Adams, 1882-1901.) 
 
 FIRST SERIES.— Local Institutions.-~$4.oo. 
 
 I. An Introduction to American Institutional History. By E. A. Freeman. 25 cents. 
 
 II. The Germanic Origin of Nevr England Towns. By H. B. Adams. 50 cents. 
 
 III. Local Government in Illinois. By Albert Shaw.— Local Goveruiaent In 
 Pennsylvania. By E. R. L. Gould. 30 cents. 
 
 IV. Saxon Titliiugmen in America. By H. B. Adams. 50 cents. 
 
 IT. liocal Government in Micliigan, and the Jforthw^est. By E. W. Bbmis. 35 cents, 
 
 VI. Parish Institutions of Maryland. By Edward TNGliE. 40 cents. 
 
 VII. Old Maryland Manors. By John Hbmsley Johnson. 30 cents. 
 
 VIII. Norman Constables in America. By H. B. Adams. 50 cents. 
 
 IX-X. Village Communities of Cape Ann and Salem. By H. B. AdamS. 50 cents. 
 
 XI. The Genesis of a New Kngland State. By A. Johnston. 30 cents. 
 
 XII. liOcal Government and Schools in South Carolina. By B. J. RAMAas. 40 centt 
 
 SECOND SERIES.— Institutions and Economics.— $4.00. 
 I-II. Methods of Historical Study. By H. B. Adams. 50 cents. 
 
 III. The Past and the Present of Political Economy. By R. T. Ely. 35 cents, 
 
 IV. Saniuel Adams, The Man of the Town Meeting. By James K. Hosmer. 35 cent* 
 V-VI. Taxation in the United States. By Henry Carter Adams. 50 cents. 
 
 VII. Institutional Beginnings in a "Western State. By Jbsse Macy. 25 cents. 
 VIII-IX. Indian Money in New^ England, etc. By WiiiiiiAM B. Weeden. 50 cents. 
 
 X. Tow^n and County Government in the Colonies. By E. Channing. 50 cents. 
 
 XI. Rudimentary Society among Boys* By J. HEMSiiEY Johnson. 50 cents^ 
 
 XII. Land Laws of Mining Districts. By C. H. ShinN. 50 cents. 
 
 THIRD SERIES.— Maryland, Virginia and Washington.— $4.00. 
 I. Maryland's Influence upon Land Cessions to the U. S. By H. B. Adams. 75 cents, 
 II-III. Virginia Local Institutions. By E. Ingle. 75 cents. 
 IV. Recent American Socialism. By Richard T. Ely. 50 cents. 
 V-VI- VII. Maryland Local Institutions. By Lewis W. Wilhelm. $1.00. 
 
 VIII. The Influence of the Proprietors in Founding NevF Jersey. By AUSTIN 
 Scott. 25 cents. 
 
 IX-X. American Constitutions. By HORACE DAVIS. 50 cents. 
 XI-XII. The City of Washington. By J. A. Porter. 50 cents. 
 
 FOURTH SERIES— Municipal Government and Land Tenure.— $3.50. 
 I. Dutch Village Communities on the Hudson River. By I. Elting. 50 cents. 
 II-III. Tow^n Government in Rhode Island. By W. B. Foster.— The Narragansett 
 
 Planters. By Edward Channing. 50 cents. 
 
 IV. Pennsylvania Boroughs. By William P. Holcomb. 50 cents. 
 
 V. Introduction to Constitutional History of the States. By J. F. Jameson 
 
 50 cents. 
 
 VI. The Puritan Colony at Annapolis, Maryland. By D. R. RANDALL. 50 cents. 
 VII- VIII-IX. The Land Question in the United States. By S. SATO. $1.00. 
 
 X. Tow^n and City Government of JVew^ Haven. By C. H. Levermore. 50 cents. 
 XI-XII. Land System of the Xew Kngland Colonies. By M. Egleston. 50 cents. 
 
 FIFTH SERIES.— Municipal Government, History and Politics.— $3.50. 
 I-Il. CityGovernment of Philadelphia. By E. P. Allinson and B. Penrose, 50 cents. 
 
 III. City Government of Boston. By JAMES M. BuGBEB. 25 ce?its. 
 
 IV. City Government of St. Louis. By Marshall S. Snow. 26 cents. 
 V-VI. Local Government in Canada. By John George Bourinot. 50 cents. 
 
 VII. Kffect of the War of 1812 upon the American Union. By NICHOLAS 
 MUEBA.Y Butler. 25 cents. 
 
 VIII. Notes on the Literature of Charities. By Herbert B. Adams. 25 cents. 
 
 IX. Predictions of Hamilton and De Tocquevllle. By James Bryce. 26 cents. 
 
 X. The Study of History in C^ngland and Scotland. By P. FrederiCQ. 25 cents. 
 
 XI. Seminary Libraries and University Extension. By H. B. Adams. 26 cents. 
 
 XII. European Schools of History and Politics. By A. D. White. 25 cents. 
 
^Or 
 
 THE POLITICAL ACTIVITIES OF 
 PHILIP FRENEAU 
 
'KF'LIBRARY OF 
 CONGRESS, 
 
 ■y«ro CoHEfi Recbived 
 
 Str\ i 1902 
 
 <5n«mtOHT SHTWY 
 
 LASS §«Sifi§JXX Nos. 9-10 
 
 coPYB. JO HNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY STUDIES 
 
 IN 
 
 Historical and Political Science 
 
 (Edited 1882-1 901 by H. B. ADAMS.) 
 
 J. M. VINCENT 
 J. H. HOLLANDER W. W. WILLOUGHBY 
 
 Editors 
 
 THE POLITICAL ACTIVITIES OF 
 PHILIP FRENEAU 
 
 BY 
 SAMUEL E.'FORMAN, Ph. D. 
 
 BALTIMORE 
 THE JOHNS HOPKINS PRESS 
 
 PUBLISHED MONTHLY 
 
 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER, 1902 
 

 o a/2. 
 
 Copyright, 1902 by 
 
 JOHNS HOPKINS PRESS 
 
 THE FRIEDENWALD COMPANY 
 BALTIMORE, MD. 
 
 ..V/ 
 
(S PREFACE 
 
 <i In this sketch of Philip Freneau I have tried to bring 
 
 out in its proper proportion the pubHc side of the man s 
 career. There have appeared several accounts of Freneau 
 as a poet, and these are appreciative and just. But as a 
 politician and publicist Freneau has not received the atten- 
 tion which he deserves. Historians have been content to 
 bestow upon him a contemptuous phrase and let him pass. 
 He is a '' reptile journalist," a " barking cur," a " low edi- 
 tor," a '* democratic scribbler." Such treatment is unfair 
 to the memory of Freneau and is not good history. Any 
 one who will take the trouble to get at the facts of Fre- 
 neau's life will find that he deserves the gratitude of pos- 
 terity, not its contempt. It was a long and stormy Hfe 
 and it was lived for human rights and human freedom. 
 
 In the prosecution of my work I have been greatly as- 
 sisted by the Librarians of the New York Historical So- 
 ciety and of the Pennsylvania Historical Society, and to 
 these gentlemen my thanks are due. I am also indebted 
 to the late Professor H. B. Adams and to Dr. J. M. Vin- 
 cent, of the Johns Hopkins University, for valuable sug- 
 gestions. 
 
 S. E. FORMAN. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 Youth and Early Manhood 9 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 The Poet of the Revolution 20 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 The Democratic Editor 35 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 The Poet of the War of 1812 80 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 Conclusion 97 
 
 Bibliography 103 
 
THE POLITICAL ACTIVITIES OF 
 PHILIP FRENEAU 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 YOUTH AND EARLY MANHOOD 
 
 Philip Freneau was born of Huguenot parentage in the 
 city of New York, January 13, 1752. His father died 
 when PhiHp was but a child. His mother upon the death 
 of her husband removed from New York to New Jersey, 
 and with her four children established herself upon the 
 Freneau estate of Mount Pleasant, a settlement just out- 
 side of Middletown Point (now Mattawan) in Monmouth 
 county. Philip was given into the hands of good tutors 
 and proved to be a diligent pupil. One of his teachers 
 was the Rev. William Tennant, a divine whose name is 
 still held in blessed memory in Monmouth county. Dr. 
 Tennant was acting president of Princeton College when 
 Freneau entered that institution as a Freshman in 1767.^ 
 The youth was so well prepared that the president wrote 
 a note to Mrs. Freneau congratulating her upon her son's 
 superior acquirements/ Philip remained at Princeton Col- 
 lege for four years, and during that period his future career 
 was largely determined. The college was a hot-bed of 
 w^higgism.^ Teachers and students joined in resisting the 
 
 ^ Hageman's History of the College of New Jersey. 
 
 ^ Griswold's Poets of America, p. 31. 
 
 ^ " Several years before a speck of war against the mother 
 country could be discovered, an electric spark of patriotic fire 
 was struck in Princeton which betokened the fiame that afterward 
 lighted up New Jersey. James Madison in 1770 wrote to Thomas 
 
10 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau, [474 
 
 pretensions and aggressions of England. The president, 
 John Witherspoon, was one of the signers of the Declara- 
 tion of Independence. Among the students in whose 
 minds rebellion was germinating were Henry Lee, Hugh 
 Brackenridge, Samuel Spring, William Bradford, Aaron 
 Burr, Frederick Frelinghuysen and James Madison." 
 With these great spirits Freneau mingled freely. James 
 Madison was his classmate, while Brackenridge, Madison 
 and Freneau formed a friendship which remained firm not 
 only during their college career, but which was dissolved 
 in after years only by death. " These three," says Gris- 
 wold, " were all gifted with satirical powers which they 
 were fond of displaying as frequently as there were occa- 
 sions. They joined in lampooning not only the leaders of 
 adverse parties in college, but also those prominent public 
 characters who opposed the growing enthusiasm of the 
 people for liberty. I have before me a considerable manu- 
 script volume of personal and political satires written by 
 them in about equal proportions." ^ Freneau and Bracken- 
 ridge tried their hands at verse as well. In the attempt 
 Brackenridge discovered what he could not do, although 
 vanity constrained him to an occasional indulgence in bad 
 verse all his life. Freneau's sophomoric pen, on the other 
 hand, moved easily and gracefully and turned off lines that 
 sometimes sparkled with the light of genius. Some of 
 these youthful pieces were included by Freneau in an edi- 
 tion of his poems published in after years. Most of them 
 are of no consequence, yet they show that Freneau's na- 
 tive talent for verse writing was very strong. 
 
 Martin: 'We have no news but the base conduct of the merchants 
 in breaking through the spirited resolutions not to import. The 
 letters to the merchants regarding their concurrence were lately 
 burned by the students of this place in the college yard, all of 
 them appearing in black gowns and the bell tolling. There are 
 about 115 in the college grammar school, all of them in American 
 cloth.' " Princeton and its Institutions, vol. i, p. loi. 
 
 * MacLean's History of the College of New Jersey. 
 
 ■^ Poets of America, p. 14. 
 
475] Youth and Early Manhood. 11 
 
 Freneau was graduated in distinguished company in 
 1771. It is doubtful whether Princeton College has ever 
 sent out a class that contained a larger per cent of cele- 
 brated men. Of the eight who then took their degrees, 
 six achieved fame and high position in church, in state, in 
 letters, and in science,^ yet neither Freneau nor Madison, 
 apparently, took any of the prizes. In the records of the 
 college there is an account of the commencement exercises 
 of 1771, and the sixth and seventh items of the programme 
 are as follows : 
 
 6. An English forensic dispute on the question: Does 
 Ancient poetry excel Modern? Mr. Freneau the respond- 
 ent, being necessarily absent, his argument in favor of the 
 ancients was read. Mr. Williamson answered him; Mr. 
 McKnight replied. 
 
 7. A poem on " The Rising Glory of America " by Mr. 
 Brackenridge, was received with great applause.'' 
 
 A little further down in the account we find that Mr. 
 Madison was also excused from attending the exercises. 
 One would like to know where those two young gentle- 
 men were upon this important occasion. Freneau ought 
 certainly to have been present for he was the largest con- 
 tributor to the entertainment. In addition to his speech 
 on the poetry of the ancients, he was the principal author 
 of the poem that was read by Mr. Brackenridge and that 
 gained such hearty applause. There can be no doubt that 
 this poem was for the most part composed by Freneau, for 
 Brackenridge himself has told us that such was the case.* 
 
 'The members were: i. Gunning Bedford, Member of Conti- 
 nental Congress and of the Constitutional Convention of 1787. 
 2. John Black. 3. H. H. Brackenridge, Judge of the Supreme 
 Court of Pennsylvania and eminent in literature. 4. Donald Camp- 
 bell. 5. Philip Freneau. 6. Charles McKnight, the most dis- 
 tinguished surgeon of his day. 7. James Madison, President of 
 the United States. 8. Samuel Spring, a celebrated divine. 
 
 ^ MacLean's History of College of New Jersey, vol. i, p. 313. 
 
 * Southern Literary Messenger, vol. viii, p. 2; also Hildeburn's 
 Issue of the Press of Pennsylvania, vol. ii, p. 148. 
 
12 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [476 
 
 The poem was to have been a joint production, but Brack- 
 enridge, recognizing the slowness and heaviness of his 
 own lines when compared with the graceful and sponta- 
 neous verses of Freneau, wrote but a very small part, be- 
 ing content to deliver it from the platform and to leave the 
 honors of authorship to his friend. 
 
 In this commencement ode, " The Rising Glory of 
 America," Freneau strikes the key-note of his life — resist- 
 ance to Great Britain. The Massacre at Boston, March 
 5, 1770, is thus glanced at: 
 
 Nor shall these angry tumults here subside, 
 Nor murders cease through all these provinces, 
 Till foreign crowns have vanished from our view 
 And dazzle here no more — no more presume 
 To own the spirit of fair liberty. 
 Vengeance shall cut the thread, and Britain sure 
 Will curse her fatal obstinacy. 
 
 The following is a clever bit of prophecy for a boy of 
 nineteen; we find in it a constant and favorite theme of the 
 poet — the greatness of America: 
 
 I see, I see 
 Freedom's established reign, cities and men, 
 Numerous as sands upon the ocean shore. 
 An Empire rising where the sun descends! 
 The Ohio soon shall glide by many a town 
 Of note; and where the Mississippi stream. 
 By forests shaded, now runs sweeping on 
 Nations shall grow, and States not less in fame 
 Than Greece and Rome of old. We too shall boast 
 Our Scipios, Solons, Catos, sages, chiefs 
 I That in the womb of time yet dormant lie, 
 
 Waiting the joyous hour of life and light. 
 
 Freneau left college in September, 1771, with his mind 
 full of epics and his heart full of liberty and hatred for 
 oppression. He went to Philadelphia and pretended to 
 read law, but probably he neglected his Blackstone for the 
 society of wits, for he fell in with the whig leaders of the 
 place and established a reputation as an exceedingly clever 
 young scape-grace. It was while in Philadelphia in 1772 
 
477] Youth and Early Manhood. 13 
 
 that he first saw himself in print. In that year the vale- 
 dictory ode came out in pamphlet form. The charms of 
 authorship seem to have allured him from serious study, 
 for he soon abandoned law altogether. In the spring of 
 1772 he left Philadelphia and undertook to teach a school 
 on Long Island but failed miserably. In the autumn of 
 the same year we find him assisting his classmate Brack- 
 enridge in the management of an academy on the " East- 
 ern Shore " of Maryland. The following letter to James 
 Madison, besides giving his experience as teacher, shows 
 how restless and aimless was his early manhood: 
 
 Somerset county in Maryland, 
 
 November 22, 1772. 
 Sir, 
 
 If I am not wrongly informed by my memory, I have 
 not seen you since last April, you may recollect I was then 
 undertaking a School at Flatbush on Long Island. I con- 
 tinued in it thirteen days — but — 
 
 Long Island have I bid adieu, 
 
 With all its brutish brainless crew. 
 
 The youth of that detested place, 
 
 Are void of reason and of grace, 
 
 From Flatbush hills to Flatbush plains, 
 
 Deep ignorance unrivalled reigns. 
 
 I am very poetical but excuse it. " Si fama non venit 
 ad aures/' if you have not heard the rumor of this story 
 (which, by the by, is told in various taverns and eating 
 houses) you must allow me to be a little prolix with it. 
 Those who employed me were some gentlemen from New 
 York, some of them are bullies, some merchants, others 
 scoundrels: They sent me eight children, the eldest of 
 whom was 10 years old. Some could read, others spell 
 and a few stammer over a chapter of the Bible — these were 
 my pupils and over these I was to preside. My salary 
 moreover was £40. There is something else relating to 
 that I shall not at present mention. After I forsook them 
 
14 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [478 
 
 they proscribed me for four days and swore if I was caught 
 in New York they would either Trounce or Maim me: 
 but luckily I escaped with my goods to Princeton — where 
 I remained till commencement — so much for this affair. 
 
 I have printed a poem in New York called the American 
 Village, containing about 450 Lines, also a few short pieces 
 added; I would send you one if I had a proper opportu- 
 nity. The additional poems are — A Poem to the Nymph 
 I Never Saw — The Miserable Life of a Pedagogue — and 
 Stanzas on an ancient Dutch House on Long Island — As 
 to the main poem it is damned by all good and judicious 
 judges. My name is on the title page. This is called 
 vanity by some — but " who so fond as youthful bards of 
 fame?" 
 
 I arrived at this Somerset Academy the i8th of Oc- 
 tober and intend to remain here till next October. I am 
 assistant to Mr. Brackenridge. This is the last time I 
 shall enter into such a business; it worries me to death and 
 by no means suits my " giddy, wandering brain." 
 
 I would go over for the gown this time two years, but 
 the old hag Necessity has got such a prodigious grip of 
 me that I fear I shall never be able to accomplish it. I 
 believe if I cannot make this out I must turn quack, and 
 indeed I am now reading Physic at my leisure hours, that 
 is, when I am neither sleeping, hearing classes, or v/riting 
 poetry — for these three take up all my time. 
 
 It is now late at night; not an hour ago I finished a little 
 poem of about 400 lines, entitled a Journey to Maryland — 
 being the sum of my adventures — it begins — 
 
 From that famed town where Hudson's flood 
 Unites with Streams perhaps as good; 
 Muse has your bard begun to roam — 
 
 and I intend to write a terrible satire upon certain vicious 
 persons of quality in New York — who have also used me 
 ill — and print it next fall. It shall contain 5 or 600 lines. 
 Sometimes I write pastorals to show my wit. 
 
479] Youth and Early Manhood. 15 
 
 Deep to the woods I sing a Shepherd's care, 
 Deep to the woods . . .° call me there, 
 The last retreat of Love and Verse I go, 
 Verse made me mad at first — and will keep me so. 
 
 I should have been glad to have heard from you before 
 now; while I was in college I had but a short participa- 
 tion of your agreeable friendship, and the few persons I 
 converse with and yet fewer whose conversation I delight 
 in, make me regret the loss of it. I have met a variety of 
 rebuffs this year, which I forbear to mention. I look like 
 an unmeaning Teague just turned out of the hold of an 
 Irish Ship. Coming down hither I met with a rare ad- 
 venture at Annapolis. I was destitute of even a brass 
 farthing. I got clear very handsomely. Could one ex- 
 pect ever to see you again, if I travel through Virginia, I 
 shall stop and talk with you a day or two. I should be 
 very glad to receive a letter from you if it can be conve- 
 niently forwarded. 
 
 In short " Non sum qualis eram" as Partridge says in 
 Tom Jones. My hair has grown like a mop, and I have a 
 huge tuft of beard directly upon my chin. I want but five 
 weeks of twenty-one years of age and already feel stiff with 
 age. We have about 30 students in this academy who prey 
 upon me like Leeches, 
 
 " When shall I quit this whimpering pack. 
 And hide my head in Accomack " 
 Shall I leave them and go 
 Where Pokomokes long stream meandering flows — 
 
 Excuse this prodigious scrawl without style or sense. 
 I send this by Mr. Luther Martin who will forward it to 
 Col. Lee — and he to you I hope. Mr. Martin lives in Ac- 
 comack in Virginia this side the bay. 
 
 Farewell and be persuaded I remain your truly humble 
 servant and friend, 
 
 PH. F-R-E-N-E-A-U-'° 
 
 ' Illegible. 
 
 " Manuscript in the Archives of the Department of State at 
 Washington. 
 
16 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [480 
 
 This letter keeps us informed of Freneau's doings as far 
 as the autumn of 1773, after which time we lose sight of 
 him for a year or two. It is impossible to say where he 
 was or what he was doing immediately after leaving Mary- 
 land, although we may confidently assume that on all 
 occasions and in all places he did pretty much as he 
 pleased. When we next meet with him he is in New York, 
 the hot-bed of toryism, lampooning the tories. In 1775 
 we find him paying his respects in the columns of Hugh 
 Gaine's "' " Mercury " to General Gage, who had proclaimed 
 in June of that year that the provinces were in a state of 
 rebelHon and out of the King's protection. Freneau pro- 
 fessed, as rebels are wont to profess, to be deeply injured 
 by the epithet " rebel." 
 
 " Rebels you are " — the British Champion cries; 
 Truth, stand thou forth and tell the wretch he lies. 
 Rebels! and see this mock imperial lord 
 Already threats these rebels with a Cord! 
 
 Americans! at Freedom's fane adore! 
 But trust to Britain and her flag no more. 
 The generous genius of their isle has fled 
 And left a mere impostor in his stead. 
 
 To Arms! To Arms! and let the Murdering Sword 
 
 Decide who best deserves the hang-man^ s cord. 
 
 Nor think the hills of Canada too bleak 
 
 When desperate freedom is the prize you seek. 
 
 For that the call of honor bids you go 
 
 O'er frozen lakes and mountains wrapped in snow. 
 
 Haste! to your tents, in iron fetters bring 
 Those slaves that serve a tyrant and a king. 
 So just, so virtuous is your cause, I say 
 Hell must prevail if Britain gains the day.^^ 
 
 " Hugh Gaine, an Irishman, was the editor of the New York 
 Mercury. His journal was edited in the interest of the whig party 
 until the British troops approached New York in 1776. Then he 
 went over to the royal cause. His double course is severely 
 criticised by Freneau in his poem entitled: "The Political Biog- 
 raphy of Hugh Gaine." 
 
 " The poem h-om which those lines are taken is addressed " To 
 The Americans, on the rumored approach of the Hessian forces." 
 
481] Youth and Early Manhood. 17 
 
 Thus the young man, without the shghtest hesitation, 
 and without any authority or responsibihty, declares in 
 the most fervid language for American Independence and 
 proclaims a war upon England a twelve-month before 
 Jefferson drew up the famous Declaration of the Fourth of 
 July, 1776. In truth, such daring lines as these quick- 
 ened the minds of the colonists and did much to create 
 the sentiment which made the Declaration of Independence 
 a plausible thing. To strong and brave minds, to the 
 Henrys, and Otises and Hancocks, the only solution of 
 the difficulties with the mother country was to be found in 
 the absolute severance of all political ties. In this opin- 
 ion Freneau shared to the fullest extent. In the year 1775 
 the opinion-makers of the Revolution were exceedingly 
 busy and none were more active than the young poet. In 
 verse, sometimes good, more frequently bad, always bold 
 and always effective, he held up for the detestation of man- 
 kind. General Gage, Lord North, King George the Third, 
 and the royal Governors, wherever he could find them. 
 One of the shortest of these poems will serve to show how 
 the cutting and slashing of the pen preceded the cutting 
 and slashing of the sword, and how telling was Freneau's 
 work as a precursor of a great movement. The poem is 
 given entire. 
 
 EMANCIPATION FROM BRITISH DEPENDENCE. 
 
 Libera nos, Domine, Deliver us, O Lord, 
 
 Not only from British Dependence but also — 
 
 From a junto that labor for absolute power, 
 Where schemes disappointed have made them look sour, 
 From the lords of the council who fought against freedom 
 Who still follow on where delusion shall lead them. 
 
 From a group at St. James that slight our petitions, 
 And fools that are waiting for further submissions, 
 From a nation whose manners are rough and abrupt. 
 From scoundrels and rascals whom gold can corrupt, 
 34 
 
18 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [482 
 
 From pirates sent out by command of the king 
 To murder and plunder but never to swing, 
 From Wallace and Graves and Vipers and Roses " 
 Whom, if Heaven pleases we will give bloody noses, 
 
 From the valliant Dunmore with his crew of banditti, 
 Who plunder Virginians at Williamsburg city, 
 From hot-headed Montague mighty to swear, 
 The little fat man, with his pretty white hair, 
 
 From bishops in Britain, who butchers are grown. 
 From slaves that would die for a smile of the throne, 
 From assemblies that vote against Congress proceedings, 
 (Who have seen the fruit of their stupid misleadings). 
 
 From Tyron," the mighty, who flies from our city. 
 And swelled with importance disdains the committee; 
 (But since he is pleased to proclaim us his foes, 
 What the devil care we where the devil he goes); 
 
 From the caitiff Lord North, who' would bind us in chains. 
 From our noble King Log, with his tooth-full of brains, 
 Who dreams and is certain (when taking a nap) 
 He has conquered our lands, as they lay on his map, 
 
 From a Kingdom that bullies and hectors and swears, 
 I send up to heaven my wishes and prayers, 
 That we disunited, may freemen be still. 
 And Britain go on — to be damn'd if she will. 
 
 The young verse-maker was sure as to the course to be 
 pursued by America, but he was not sure as to the prob- 
 lem that confronted his individual life. The poetry in his 
 nerves unbalanced him and weakened his purposes. His 
 property in New Jersey was neglected, and gradually be- 
 gan to slip from his hands. The young patriot followed 
 his instinct — often a surer guide than reason— and aban- 
 doned himself to verse-making. The muse he chose was 
 satire. The troublous times, he said, admitted of no other 
 choice. 
 
 In doing this Freneau was building better than he knew. 
 The pieces which he sent to the press every week were 
 
 " " Wallace and Graves," British naval officers. " Vipers " and 
 " Roses," the names of two ships in the English service. 
 " The last royal governor of New York. 
 
483] Youth and Early Manhood. 19 
 
 rarely ineffectual. They made the tories wince and they 
 inspired the whigs with hope and courage. They brought 
 him no money, yet they did better than this. They ren- 
 dered the country an important service, and they brought 
 their author lasting fame : they made him the " Poet of the 
 Revolution." 
 
' CHAPTER II 
 
 THE POET OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 In 1776, Freneau left New York and its tory citizens to 
 their own devices and embarked upon a vessel bound for 
 the Danish West Indies. According to one account he 
 sailed as the agent of a New York trading firm; another 
 account states that he shipped as a common sailor and 
 worked his way up to the post of captain.^ It is certain 
 that he learned the art of navigation and that he soon be- 
 came the master of a ship. From this time on we shall 
 find him a rover, now upon the sea, now upon the land; 
 now a captain, now an editor, but always a poet, writing 
 for the American cause. 
 
 His first voyage was to the Virgin Islands, where he 
 seems to have remained for some time. He fell in love 
 with the natural beauties of the southern isles, and con- 
 ceived a disgust for their institutions. Slavery was always 
 an abomination in his eyes. The mild form of northern 
 servitude was distasteful to him, but the degraded condi- 
 tion of the West Indian slave awakened the warmest indig- 
 nation in his generous mind. In a poem descriptive of the 
 island of Santa Cruz, he expresses in sorrowful strain his 
 repugnance to the ugly form of human bondage found 
 there. " It casts," he says in a preface to this poem, '' a 
 shade over the native charms of the country; it blots out 
 the beauty of the eternal spring which Providence has 
 there ordained to reign; and amidst all the profusions of 
 beauties which nature has scattered — the brightness of the 
 heavens, the mildness of the air, and the luxuriance of the 
 vegetable kingdom — it leaves me melancholy and discon- 
 
 ^ American Magazine of History, vol. xvii, p. 124. 
 
485] The Poet of the Revolution. 21 
 
 solate. Thus the earth which, were it not for the lust of 
 pride and dominion, might be an earthly paradise, is, by 
 the ambition and overbearing nature of mankind, rendered 
 an eternal scene of desolation, woe, and horror: the weak 
 go to the wall while the strong prevail." ' 
 
 This hatred of slavery was not an evanescent passion of 
 youth doomed through the hardening processes of years 
 to die; it was a settled principle of his life and conduct. 
 In another poem, written in middle life, he thus holds up 
 the torch of liberty, and with it runs ahead of his times by 
 half a century: 
 
 " O come the time and haste the day 
 When man shall man no longer crush; 
 When reason shall enforce her sway, 
 Nor these fair regions raise one blush, 
 Where still the African complains. 
 And mourns his yet unbroken chains." ^ 
 
 '' In after life," says Duyckinck, " when the poet himself 
 became the owner of slaves in New Jersey, he uniformly 
 treated them with kindness, manumitted them in advance 
 of the Emancipation Act in the State, and supported on 
 the farm those of them who were too old to take care of 
 themselves." 
 
 When Freneau returned to America, independence had 
 been declared and the Revolution was progressing with 
 varying fortune. The poet threw himself into the strug- 
 gle with a poet's ardor. One of his first acts after fairly 
 getting upon land was to ratify the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence in four hundred spirited verses. This poem, en- 
 titled " American Independent," was printed at Philadelphia 
 in 1778 at the press of Robert Bell, the printer of Thomas 
 Paine's " Common Sense." When foreign troops were 
 ravaging the land, when the principal cities were in pos- 
 session of the enemy, when the Continental Army at Val- 
 ley Forge was starving, when toryism threatened to wreck 
 the cause of liberty, Freneau's animating voice was heard. 
 
 ^ United States Magazine, 1779. ^ Poems, edition of 1795. 
 
.22 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [486 
 
 Americans! revenge your country's wrongs 
 
 To you the honor of the deed belongs. 
 
 Expel yon thieves from these polluted lands, 
 
 Expect no peace * till haughty Britain yields, 
 
 Till humbled Britons quit your ravaged fields. 
 
 No dull debates or tedious councils know, 
 
 But rush at once embodied on your foe! 
 
 Your injured country groans while yet they stay, 
 
 Attend her groans, and force their hosts away. 
 
 Your mighty wrongs the tragic muse shall trace, 
 
 Your gallant deeds shall fire a future race. 
 
 To you may Kings and potentates appeal, 
 
 You may the doom of jarring nations seal, 
 
 A glorious empire rises bright and new, 
 
 Firm be its base, and it must rest on you. 
 
 Fame o'er the mighty pile extends her wings. 
 
 Remote from princes, bishops, lords, and kings, — 
 
 Those fancied gods, who famed through every shore, 
 
 Mankind have fashioned and like fools adore. 
 
 Freneau kept his eye upon the events of the day and 
 cheered and exhorted and celebrated as the poet-general 
 of a revolution should. But he was not content to lurk 
 and write. In 1778 New Jersey became the battle-ground 
 of the revolution, and the region of the poet's home was 
 filled with the soldiery of the contending parties. The 
 battle of Monmouth was fought almost within sight of his 
 ancestral door. Philip shouldered his gun for the defense 
 of his fireside. He entered the army as a private and was 
 promoted to the rank of sergeant.^ His career as a soldier 
 was brief and unimportant, but it served to show the stuff 
 of which he was made. 
 
 Freneau soon laid down the sword for the pen. The 
 year following the battle of Monmouth (1779) was a busy 
 one, and was more profitably spent than if he had remained 
 in the field. Poem after poem came out to revive the 
 flagging spirits of the revolutionists. His old college- 
 mate and colleague in poetry, Hugh Brackenridge, was 
 in Philadelphia trying to drive the wolf from the door by 
 
 * Aimed at Lord North's " Conciliating Bills " which arrived in 
 New York in April, 1778, and which conciliated nobody. 
 ■* Jerseymen in the Revolution, p. 465. 
 
487] The Poet of the Revolution. 23 
 
 editing "The United States Magazine, A Repository of 
 History, Politics and Literature." The columns of this 
 periodical were open to Freneau and he became one of its 
 principal contributors. Brackenridge used a free lance 
 and his magazine was feared and hated.^ In addition to 
 the poems that were written on the voyage to the West 
 Indies, there appeared in this magazine Freneau's " King 
 George the Third's Soliloquy," and his " Dialogue be- 
 tween his Britannic Majesty and Mr. Fox." The object of 
 these pieces was to urge on to carnage and conquest rather 
 than to awaken feelings of the sublime and beautiful. They 
 are blunt, coarse appeals to the Americans to " up and at 
 the bloody red coats," and there is no poetry in them. The 
 British army is characterized as a band of devils that it 
 would be a mercy to rid the earth of. George III in solil- 
 oquy, thus describes his method of raising a force to march 
 against America: 
 
 Is there a robber close in Newgate hemmed? 
 Is there a cut-throat fettered and condemned? 
 Haste loyal slaves, to George's standard come, 
 Attend his lectures when you hear the drum! 
 Your chain I break; for better days prepare; 
 Come out my friends from prison and from care. 
 Far to the West I plan your desperate sway, — 
 There 'tis no sin to ravage, burn, and slay. 
 There without fear your bloody aims pursue. 
 And show mankind what English thieves can do. 
 
 In the dialogue between Fox and King George, the lib- 
 eral-minded and far-seeing statesman thus advised his 
 monarch : 
 
 In one short sentence take my whole advice, 
 (It is no time to flatter and be nice) 
 With all your soul for instant peace contend. 
 Then shall you be your country's truest friend; 
 Peace, instant peace, may stay your tottering throne. 
 But wars and death and blood can profit none. 
 Withdraw your arms from the American shore. 
 And vex her ocean with your fleet no more; 
 Implore the friendship of the injured states, 
 Nor longer strive against the stubborn fates. 
 
 ® Southern Literary Messenger, vol. vii, p. 3. 
 
24 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [488 
 
 But the haughty monarch would not Hsten to Fox, or to 
 any one else. The war went on by land and by sea, and 
 whether by land or by sea, Freneau was prompt to record 
 in "superior [?] lays" the glorious deeds of the Ameri- 
 cans. In 1779, the gallant Paul Jones of the Bon Homme 
 Richard, gloriously defeated Captain Pearson of the Sera- 
 pis, and the victory was duly celebrated by our poet, and 
 the victor thus urged on to further conquest: 
 
 Go on great man to scourge the foe, 
 And bid these haughty Britons know 
 They to our thirteen states shall bend; 
 The stars that veiled in dark attire 
 Long ghmmered with a feeble fire, 
 But radiant now ascend. 
 
 Bend to the stars that flaming rise 
 
 On western worlds, more brilliant skies, 
 
 Fair Freedom's reign restored. 
 
 So when the Magi came from far 
 
 Beheld the God-attending star, 
 
 They trembled and adored. 
 
 " The United States Magazine " died in the first year of 
 its life and its talented editor abandoned journalism and 
 sought and gained distinction in law. Freneau was in 
 no sense the editor of this magazine, as has been stated so 
 frequently.'' He simply gave a helping hand to his friend 
 Brackenridge, who was the real proprietor. 
 
 After the magazine had gone under, Freneau ventured 
 again upon the sea. This time he sailed for the West In- 
 dies with letters of marque against British commerce, 
 commanding the Aurora, a smart little craft fitted out for 
 privateering.* But Freneau's naval achievements were 
 destined to be of no greater importance than his career as 
 a land soldier. When his vessel was well beyond the 
 
 ^ See Griswold's Male Poets of America, p. 32, and Alibone's 
 Dictionary of Authors. 
 
 ® Forman's Journey down the Ohio, p. 10. From Freneau's own 
 account of this voyage, it does not appear that he was the actual 
 commander. See his " Some Account of the Capture of the ship 
 Aurora " recently published for the first time. 
 
489] The Poet of the Revolution. 25 
 
 capes at the mouth of the Delaware Bay, she was pursued, 
 and after a sharp engagement, was captured by the British 
 cruiser Iris. The captives were taken to New York and 
 confined in a British prison-ship that lay moored of¥ the 
 battery. Freneau was placed upon the Scorpion, where he 
 was kept two months, and then, when dangerously sick of 
 a fever, was removed to the hospital-ship Hunter, "' to all 
 hospitals disgrace." From the Hunter in a short time he ' 
 escaped, broken and emaciated by the cruel experiences 
 through which he had passed. Of course the incident be- 
 came the occasion of a poem. The whole story is told 
 in " The British Prison-Ship," in four cantos, written and 
 published in 1781. 
 
 Freneau wrote nothing for the American cause that was 
 more effective than this piece. In it the cruelty and inhu- 
 manity of the British were depicted by the hand of one who 
 had himself seen and suffered. " The picturesque inci- 
 dents of the voyage which is described; the animated ac- 
 tion of the capture; the melancholy circumstances of the 
 prison-ship contrasted with the happy scenes of the shore; 
 the stern terrors of the Hospital, are all in Freneau's best 
 vein."^ The following lines are too realistic to be untrue: 
 
 Such food they sent to make complete our woes,-.- 
 It looked like carrion torn from hungry crows: 
 Such vermin vile on every joint were seen, 
 So black, corrupted, mortilEied, and lean. 
 That once we tried to move our flinty chief, 
 And thus addressed him, holding up the beef: 
 
 " See, Captain, see! what rotten bones we pick; 
 What kills the healthy cannot cure the sick; 
 Not dogs on such by Christian men are fed, 
 And see, good master, see what lousy bread! " 
 
 " Your meat or bread," this man of death replied, 
 
 " 'Tis not my care to manage or provide — 
 But this, base rebel dogs, I'd have you know 
 That better than your merit we bestow." 
 
 When the poet escaped from the clutches of the British, 
 he returned to Philadelphia and slowly regained his health. 
 
 ® Poems of the Revolution, edited by E. A. Duyckinck, p. 10. 
 
26 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [490 
 
 He soon resumed his post as verse-chronicler of the revo- 
 lution and followed with anxious eyes the closing scenes 
 of the struggle. On the eighth of October, 1781, he ad- 
 dressed these savage and semi-prophetic lines to the proud 
 Cornwallis : 
 
 Would thou at last with Washington engage, 
 Sad object of his pity not his rage? 
 See round thy posts how terribly advance 
 The chiefs, the armies, and the fleets of France. 
 Fight while you can for warlike Rochambeau 
 Aims at your head his last decisive blow; 
 Unnumbered ghosts from earth untimely sped, 
 Can take no rest till you like them are dead. 
 Then die, my lord; that only chance remains 
 To wipe away dishonorable stains. 
 For small advantage would your capture bring — 
 The plundering servant of a bankrupt king.^'' 
 
 A month later came Yorktown and the consummation 
 of American Independence. Freneau, like all Americans, 
 hated Cornwallis bitterly, and gloated over the fallen 
 chief in coarse and careless verse. With this malediction 
 he sped him from our shores: 
 
 Now curst with life, a foe to man and God, 
 Like Cain we drive you to the land of Nod; 
 He with a brother's blood his hands did stain. 
 One brother he, — you have a thousand slain. 
 And may destruction rush with speedy wing. 
 Low as yourself to drag each tyrant king.^^ 
 
 The war was over but there was aftermath enough to 
 keep the patriotic pen of Freneau in motion. When the 
 traitor Arnold left New York in December, 1781, the 
 poet's fiercest and choicest curse went with him; the battle 
 of Eutaw Springs was celebrated in a lyric that Scott 
 learned by heart and regarded as one of the finest things 
 in the language; Washington, on his way to Virginia was 
 greeted in Philadelphia by a worthy ode; the rejoicing over 
 the recognition of National Independence stirred the poet 
 
 ^0 Poems Relating to the Revolution, p. 121. " Ibid., p. 132. 
 
491] The Poet of the Revolution. 27 
 
 to one of his highest flights/' Taking it altogether, the 
 year 1782 was a most productive one. Freneau seems to 
 have settled down to literature with the purpose of making 
 a living out of it. He wrote constantly and much, both 
 in prose and verse, for '' The Freeman's Journal," through- 
 out the three years of its existence. 
 
 Freneau was now enjoying fame as poet, essayist and 
 patriot, but money was not forthcoming. America was 
 too poor to pay for literature and the poet was driven to 
 seek bread upon the water. Next to literature he loved 
 the sea. He became captain of a vessel and it was a com- 
 mon occurrence of his life to sail down to the West Indies 
 with a cargo of grain, and bring up a cargo of molasses 
 and poetry. In 1784, we find him wandering about among 
 the ruins of old Port Royal and riming the sad condition 
 of that unfortunate and desolate place. For five or six 
 years without interruption, he led the hardy life of a tar. 
 
 In April, 1789, George Washington proceeded in tri- 
 umph through the States to New York to be inaugurated 
 as president. " Thursday last between two and three 
 o'clock," says the *' Gazette of the United States " of 
 April 25, 1789, " the most illustrious president of the 
 United States arrived in this city. At Elizabethtown he 
 was received by a deputation of three senators and five 
 representatives of the United States, and the officers of the 
 state and corporation, with whom he embarked on the 
 barge for the purpose of wafting him across the bay. It is 
 impossible to do justice to an attempt to describe the 
 scene exhibited in his Excellency's approach to the city." 
 In another column in the same number of the Gazette is 
 this notice: 
 
 " Thursday, April 23, arrived here the schooner Colum- 
 bia, P. Freneau, in 8 days from Charleston. On board 
 was Dr. King from S. America, with a collection of nat- 
 ural curiosities, particularly a male and female ourang- 
 outang." 
 
 " Poems of the Revolution, pp. 201, 260, 270. 
 
28 The Political Activities of Philip Prenean. [49S 
 
 Captain Freneau, with Dr. King and his monkeys on 
 board, brought his ship into Hne and sailed up the bay with 
 the gay and magnificent procession of boats that escorted 
 the president-elect to the capital city. When the poet 
 landed he found himself in the midst of old friends. There 
 was his room-mate and classmate, James Madison, the 
 young "father of the constitution"; there was the ambi- 
 tious and unscrupulous Aaron Burr; and, the rising Henry 
 B. Livingston, boon companions at Princeton. These 
 men, now powerful in the nation, were glad to grasp the 
 hand of their old friend, for they recognized in him one 
 almost as famous as themselves and one not inferior in 
 talent. Freneau was charmed by the new and invigorating 
 associations of New York life. He gave up his ship and 
 again took up his pen. He made friends with the leading 
 democrats, and was soon conspicuous as a champion of 
 democracy. The pen of a contemporary has left us a pic- 
 ture of him as he moves about in printing offices and 
 government halls, or stands chatting with senators and 
 generals. '' He was somewhat below the ordinary height; 
 in person, he was thin yet muscular; his countenance was 
 traced by care; he was mild in enunciation, neither rapid 
 nor slow, but clear, distinct and emphatic. His forehead 
 was rather beyond the medium elevation; his eyes a dark 
 gray, occupying a socket deeper than common; his hair 
 a beautiful iron gray. He was free of all ambitious dis- 
 plays. His habitual expression was pensive. His dress 
 might have passed for that of a farmer." '^ 
 
 Freneau found employment as a writer for the New 
 York Daily Advertiser." He does not seem to have been 
 
 " Sketch of Freneau in Dr. J. W. Francis' Cyclopedia of Ameri- 
 can Literature, vol. i, p. 333. 
 
 ""About 1790," says Major Samuel Forman in his "Journey 
 down the Ohio," " Captain Freneau married my sister Eleanor." 
 Eleanor Forman was the daughter of Samuel Forman of New 
 Jersey, one of Freneau's neighbors, and a hero of the revolution. 
 The poet and Eleanor seemed to have been drawn together by 
 an affinity of tastes, for she was a verse-maker as well as he. 
 
493] The Poet of the Revolution. 29 
 
 its editor, as Hudson and others assert, but its manager or 
 superintendent — a kind of man-of-all-work/' One of his 
 co-laborers upon the Advertiser was John Pintard, a warm 
 personal friend, and the translating-clerk in the Depart- 
 ment of State. Freneau worked vigorously for the Ad- 
 vertiser, and he was soon recognized in political circles as 
 a strong ally of the anti-federalists. 
 
 In 1790, Thomas Jefferson came to New York to as- 
 sume the duties of Secretary of State. He had just come 
 from Paris where he had been an eye witness of the storm- 
 ing of the Bastile and had learned from terrible object- 
 lessons to respect the power of the masses. When he 
 arrived in New York, his democracy was at a white heat 
 and he eagerly set about building up a democratic party. 
 He met Freneau and found him a congenial spirit. The 
 true eye of the great politician saw^ in the poet good tim- 
 ber for the edifice it was his intention to rear. Jefferson, 
 as a well-known patron of letters, was in a position to 
 make overtures to any man of distinguished talents. An 
 opportunity to render Freneau good service soon pre- 
 sented itself. When the government removed to Phila- 
 delphia early in 1791, John Pintard, the French translator 
 in Jefferson's office, resigned his place, declining to leave 
 New York for the pitiable stipend of two hundred and fifty 
 dollars per annum, the amount appropriated for the trans- 
 lating-clerk. Madison and Henry Lee urged Jefferson to 
 appoint Freneau to the position made vacant by Pintard. 
 Jefferson gladly acceded to their request, and on February 
 28, 1 79 1, wrote to Freneau as follows: 
 
 ''Sir: The clerkship for foreign languages in my office 
 is vacant. The salary indeed, is very low, being but two 
 
 The writer has seen in manuscript some very clever verses written 
 by Mrs. Freneau. For several years before marriage, their cor- 
 respondence is said to have been conducted largely in rhyme. 
 The Freneau home, when we get glimpses of it, was a happy one, 
 albeit unthrifty. 
 
 ^^ Hudson's Journalism in America, p. 175. 
 
30 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [494 
 
 hundred and fifty dollars; but also, it gives so little to do 
 as not to interfere with any other calling the person may 
 choose which would not absent him from the seat of gov- 
 ernment. I was told a few days ago that it might perhaps 
 be convenient for you to accept it. If so, it is at your ser- 
 vice. It requires no other qualification than a moderate 
 knowledge of the French. Should any thing better turn 
 up within my department that might suit you, I should be 
 very happy to bestow it as well. Should you conclude to 
 accept the present, you may consider it as engaged to you, 
 only be so good as to drop me a line informing me of your 
 resolution." '' 
 
 We have not Freneau's reply to this letter but we know 
 that he was in no hurry to accept the offer. It was his in- 
 tention to remove from New York, his work upon the 
 Advertiser rendering him but slender returns; but he had 
 misgivings about going to Philadelphia. His immediate 
 project was to settle in New Jersey and to establish a 
 country newspaper, a plan which he long cherished and one 
 which he finally carried out. Madison, however, saw the 
 value of the man as a democratic publicist and would not 
 listen to his burying himself in the obscurity of a New 
 Jersey village. He went to Freneau and reasoned with 
 him, endeavoring to make him sensible of the advantages 
 that Philadelphia offered for his private undertaking over 
 a small country town. He explained the nature of the 
 services required of him as translator in the Department 
 of State. Freneau had thought that he would be expected 
 to turn English into French, and feeling his incompetency 
 for this work, delicacy forbade him to accept the position. 
 Madison dissipated this objection by assuring him that no 
 such task would be required of him. Freneau listened to 
 the solicitations of his friend and decided to go to Phila- 
 delphia at once. Madison wrote to Jefferson stating that 
 he might expect Freneau in Philadelphia in a very short 
 
 ^® Jefferson's Works, vol. iii, p. 215. 
 
495] The Poet of the Revolution. 31 
 
 time. The letter contains a tribute to Freneau's char- 
 acter and genius, and principles, and closes with these 
 words : " It is certain that there is not to be found in the 
 whole catalogue of American Printers [Editors] a single 
 name that can approach rivalship."" 
 
 But Freneau halted in New Jersey, and Jefferson con- 
 cluded that he had abandoned the notion of going to 
 Philadelphia. On May 9 Jefferson wrote to Madison: 
 
 " Your favor of the first came to hand on the third. 
 Mr. Freneau has not followed it. I suppose, therefore, he 
 has changed his mind back again, for which I am sorry." " 
 A few days after this Jefferson wrote to Thomas Mann 
 Randolph, his son-in-law, as follows: 
 
 " I enclose you Bache's as well as Fenno's papers. You 
 will have perceived that the latter is a paper of pure tory- 
 ism, disseminating the doctrine of monarchy, aristocracy, 
 and the exclusion of the people. We have been trying to 
 get another weekly or half-weekly set up, excluding ad- 
 vertisements, so that it might go through the States and 
 furnish a whig vehicle of intelligence. We hoped at one 
 time to have persuaded Freneau to set up here but 
 failed." " 
 
 Jefferson did not intend to lose Freneau if he could help 
 it. Further pressure was brought to bear upon the editor. 
 Gen. Henry Lee, another friend, wrote to him and urged 
 him to embrace the opportunities of a career at the seat 
 of government.^" The general promised aid in securing 
 subscribers for the projected paper and, (Parton says) ad- 
 vanced money for the enterprise."^ Jefferson, on July 21, 
 1791, again wrote to Madison with the view of getting Fre- 
 neau. " I am sincerely sorry," he says, " that Freneau has 
 declined coming here. Though the printing biisiness be 
 
 " Writings of Madison, vol, i, p. 535. 
 ^^ Jefferson's Writings, vol. v, p. 330. 
 ^' Ibid., vol. V, p. 336. 
 
 "° Randall's Life of Jefferson, vol, ii, p. 74. 
 ^^ Parton's Life of Jefferson, p. 433. 
 
32 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [496 
 
 sufficiently full here, yet I think he would set out on such 
 advantageous grounds as to have been sure of success. 
 His own genius, in the first place, is so superior to that of 
 his competitors. I should have given him the perusal of 
 all my letters of foreign intelligence and all foreign news- 
 papers, the publication of all proclamations and other pub- 
 lic notices within my department, and the printing of the 
 laws, which added to his salary would have been a consid- 
 erable aid. Besides this, Fenno's being the only weekly 
 paper and under general condemnation for its toryism and 
 its incessant efforts to over-turn the government, Freneau 
 would have found that ground as good as unoccupied." 
 
 This encouragement from such influential quarters 
 finally caused Freneau to abandon his original scheme and 
 settle in Philadelphia. On the twenty-fifth of July, four 
 days after Jefferson's last letter to Madison, he himself 
 wrote to Madison: 
 
 " Some business detains me here [in New Jersey] a day 
 or two longer from returning to New York. When I 
 come, which I expect will be upon Thursday, if you shall 
 not have left the city, I will give you a decisive answer 
 relative to printing my paper at the seat of government 
 instead of New York. If I can get Mr. Childs to be con- 
 nected with me on a tolerable plan I believe I shall sacri- 
 fice other considerations and transfer myself to Philadel- 
 phia." 
 
 Freneau came to terms with the printer, Childs, and in 
 a short time repaired to Philadelphia, leaving his family 
 temporarily behind him. In the course of a few days after 
 his arrival he received the following document: 
 
 " Philip Freneau is hereby appointed clerk for foreign 
 languages in the office of Secretary of State, with a salary 
 of two hundred and fifty dollars a year, to commence from 
 the time he shall take the requisite oaths of qualification. 
 Given under my hand and seal this i6th day of August, 
 179I' Thomas Jefferson.'"^ 
 
 '' Jefferson MS. Archives of State Department at Washington. 
 
497] The Poet of the Revolution. 33 
 
 This is the story of Freneau's coming to Philadelphia to 
 set up a paper and of his appointment to an office under 
 Jefferson. It is a simple story and one that is not sug- 
 gestive of crookedness upon the part of any of the per- 
 sons connected with it. As far as Freneau is concerned, 
 his course was one of absolute single-mindedness through- 
 out. He intended to start a newspaper of his own, and a 
 democratic newspaper at that. If he did not set up one in 
 New Jersey, then he would start one in New York. Jef- 
 ferson, Madison, and other democrats, hearing of this, 
 held out, in a perfectly honorable way, inducements for him 
 to establish his paper in Philadelphia, and after due re- 
 flection he adopted the counsel of his friends. Those 
 friends knew that he intended to edit a paper — that indeed 
 he must do something of the kind or starve. They knew, 
 moreover, that he was a fierce and uncompromising demo- 
 crat and that he would conduct the paper according to his 
 own notions. What their motives were in getting such a 
 man to come to the seat of government is very easy to 
 determine. They wanted the influence of his pen for party 
 purposes. Whether Jefferson was justified in using pa- 
 tronage for the accomplishment of his purpose is a prob- 
 lem of ethics for those who are interested in the question 
 to solve. It may be here remarked that from the begin- 
 ning of our government to the present day influential edi- 
 tors have fared very well in the matter of federal appoint- 
 ments. With Freneau, the establishing of his paper in 
 Philadelphia was purely a matter of business, and it is dif- 
 ficult to conceive how there could have arisen in his mind 
 any quibbling as to the rightfulness or wrongfulness of his 
 earning a little additional money by translating. The mat- 
 ter would not be worth referring to, if, as we shall see 
 later, so much had not been made of it by the enemies of 
 Freneau and of Jefferson. 
 
 We shall now take up a chapter in Freneau's history 
 which has not received the consideration it deserves. We 
 shall follow Freneau in his career as an editor. We all 
 35 
 
34 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [498 
 
 know something of him in a vague sort of way as a poet. 
 We know a little of him, too, as an editor, but, unfortu- 
 nately what we know of him as an editor is false knowl- 
 edge. Washington Irving called him a " barking cur,'^ 
 and succeeding historians down to Goldwin Smith, who re- 
 fers to him as a '' reptile journalist," have been content to 
 perpetuate a false and unjust estimate of the man. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE DEMOCRATIC EDITOR 
 
 The plan and purposes of the new paper were published 
 at considerable length. The Gazette was to appear every 
 Wednesday and Saturday;^ the subscription price was to be 
 three dollars per annum; the, news published was to be of 
 national character, especial attention being promised to 
 the doings of the national government; the columns of the 
 Gazette were to be open to all original and interesting 
 productions whether prose or verse; political discussion 
 was to be conducted with perfect fairness and the great- 
 est latitude; the debates of congress and reports of de- 
 partments were to be printed; all important books were to 
 be reviewed; advertisements were to be allotted a certain 
 space and were not to encroach upon the columns intended 
 for general reading matter. 
 
 The title of the paper, '' The National Gazette," suggests 
 the aims of its founder. It was to be a paper for circula- 
 tion in all parts of the union. It was to be an organ with 
 national influence and a national constituency as opposed 
 to those papers which appealed to local constituencies 
 and which rarely found their way out of the neighborhood 
 in which they were printed. This was the idea of the editor 
 and his advisers, and every effort was made to keep the 
 paper cosmopolitan and to get it into distant parts. 
 
 Freneau pushed forward the publication of the Gazette 
 and the first number came from the press several days be- 
 fore it was announced to appear. In the first issues there 
 was nothing to shadow forth that violent partisanship 
 which later was to make its editor one of the best hated 
 
 ^ It was actually published every Monday and Thursday. 
 
 s 
 
36 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [500 
 
 men in America. In one respect, indeed, it offended from 
 the beginning the opinion of a large and influential ele- 
 ment of the American people. It supported without re- 
 serve the principles of the French revolution. Its col- 
 umns were filled with equality and fraternity, and Tom 
 Paine and Rousseau. Aside from this undisguised endorse- 
 ment of w^hat was then to many minds, political heresy, its 
 tone was mild, and its articles harmless and colorless. 
 Its professed policy was broad and patriotic. It early 
 maintained the doctrine that the union between the states 
 should be social and commercial as well as political. " The 
 interests of the northern and southern states are insepa- 
 rable forever. It seems to have been the design of nature 
 in her formation and distribution of that part of North 
 America known by the name of the United States, that a 
 mutual dependence should take place between the north- 
 ern and southern inhabitants." ^ But the tendency of the 
 paper was unmistakable. It appealed to the common 
 people as the true rulers of government. Its evident pur- 
 pose was to evoke and energize the spirit of democracy. 
 
 Was there need for such a paper? Was the spirit of 
 democracy flagging and the tide running toward a gov- 
 ernment, strong, centralized, and aristocratic? Was the 
 constitution, as Jefferson says it was, galloping toward 
 monarchy? We cannot understand Freneau and the part 
 he played in public affairs until we have found answers to 
 these questions, and to answer them we must try to get as 
 clear a notion as possible of the state of political opinion 
 in the United States in 1791. 
 
 To do this let us begin with the rulers. Let us interro- 
 gate those who were in the saddle at the time, and deter- 
 mine the direction they were galloping by the tendency of 
 their thought; for as men think, so are they. 
 
 If we begin with the President, there can be no doubt 
 of Washington's perfect loyalty to the constitution and to 
 
 ^ National Gazette, November, 1791. 
 
501] The Democratic Editor. 37 
 
 a republican form of government. In 1786, indeed, he 
 
 recognized that times were changing, and that monarchy 
 
 was in the air,^ but he deprecated with the utmost horror 
 
 the progress of monarchical sentiment. Freneau has 
 
 attested to the soundness of the great chief's republicanism 
 
 in these lines: 
 
 " Oh Washington, thrice glorious name! 
 What due rewards can man decree? 
 Empires are far below thy aim, 
 And sceptres have no charm for thee. 
 Virtue alone has your regard, 
 And she must be your great reward." 
 
 We pass from the President to the Vice-president. John 
 Adams has written many hundreds of pages upon the sub- 
 ject of government, but human reason cannot fathom his 
 meaning and what he really thought will never be known.* 
 Madison, open and above board, spoke of him to Washing- 
 ton as aiming at mixed monarchy," but Adams said he was 
 not aiming at monarchy, and we must believe he knew his 
 motives better than Madison knew them. We cannot get 
 from his writings what Adams thought, but we can learn 
 from them what he felt. He hated democracy, he loved 
 a strong government. " Democracy," ^ he says, " never 
 has been and never can be so desirable as aristocracy or 
 monarchy, but while it lasts, is more bloody than either. 
 Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, 
 
 ^ Sparks' Life and Writings of Washington, vol. ix, p. 187. 
 
 * An English reviewer of the day thought he understood Adams: 
 " The great and leading idea which runs through the ingenious 
 and learned works of Mr. Adams is that a mixture of the three 
 powers, the regal, the aristocratical and the democratical, prop- 
 erly balanced, comprises the most perfect form of government." 
 American Daily Advertiser, Nov., 1792. Such an interpretation 
 must have been based upon such statements as these: " The Eng- 
 lish Constitution is the only scientifical government." John 
 Adams' Works, vol. vi, p. 118. "A hereditary first magistrate 
 would perhaps be preferable to an elective one." 
 
 ^ In a conversation with the President in 1792, Writings of 
 Madison, vol. i, p. 558. 
 
 ® John Adams' Works, vol. vi, p. 483. 
 
38 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [502 
 
 exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democ- 
 racy that did not commit suicide." And again: "It is 
 true and I rejoice in it, that our president has more power 
 than the stadt-holders, the doges, the archons, or the 
 kings of Lacedaemon." He expresses his profound dis- 
 trust of self-government in these words : " The proposi- 
 tion that the people are the best keepers of their own lib- 
 erties is not true. They are the worst conceivable, they 
 are no keepers at all; they can neither judge, act, think, 
 or will, as a political body. Individuals have conquered 
 themselves; nations and large bodies never.'" In a letter 
 to his democratic cousin, Samuel Adams, John Adams, in 
 a few inadvertent words, betrays his feelings towards pop- 
 ular liberty. Samuel Adams had advanced the proposi- 
 tion that the love of liberty is interwoven in the soul of 
 man. John Adams, candidate for popular favor, replied: 
 " So it is, according to La Fontaine, in that of a wolf." ' 
 Late in life, John Adams said that his political downfall 
 was largely due to the writings of Philip Freneau.* He 
 would more justly have attributed his retirement to his 
 own writings. 
 
 When we come to Washington's first cabinet we find a 
 house divided against itself. Relying upon his own vast 
 authority and the rectitude of his intentions, the president 
 invited to assist him in governing, two men whose views 
 upon government diverged as widely as possible. Thomas 
 Jefiferson and Alexander Hamilton, by every principle and 
 implication of their being, were unfitted to work together, 
 and Washington's attempt at a mixed cabinet failed. In 
 a short time the imperious and imperial Hamilton domi- 
 nated Washington and the administration, and Jefiferson 
 was forced to retire. 
 
 What were Hamilton's views upon government? If he 
 could have had his will, what form of government would 
 
 ■^ Works of John Adams, vol. i, p. 587. 
 
 " Works of Samuel Adams. ' Works of John Adams. 
 
503] The Democratic Editor. 39 
 
 have been instituted? What was the tendency of our gov- 
 ernment when it was under his direction? To get an an- 
 swer to this question, we may take the testimony first of 
 a friend, then of an enemy. Gouverneur Morris, an inti- 
 mate friend and co-worker in politics, said of Hamihon: 
 " He hated repubHcan government because he confounded 
 it with democratic government. One marked trait of the 
 general's character was his pertinacious adherence to 
 opinions once formed. He never failed on every occa- 
 sion to advocate the excellence of and avow his attach- 
 ment to monarchical government." ^° Thomas Jefferson 
 corroborates this language by putting the following words 
 in Hamilton's mouth; words, Jefferson avers, which were 
 written down almost immediately after they were spoken: 
 " I own it is my opinion, although I do not publish it in 
 Dan and Beersheba, that the present government is not 
 that which will answer the ends of society by giving sta- 
 bility and protection to its rights, and that it will probably 
 be expedient to go to the British form."^^ 
 
 Hamilton's correspondence is replete with lugubrious 
 apprehensions that the government by the people might 
 fail." The people were to him " informe ingens, cui lumen 
 ademptiim" " In a letter to Theodore Sedgwick he speaks 
 of democracy as a virulent poison, that was threatening to 
 destroy the life of the nation." In 1802, when he had been 
 unhorsed and Jefferson was in fhe saddle, he writes to his 
 old friend and fellow-aristocrat, Morris, bitterly com- 
 plaining of his fate: "Mine is an odd destiny. I am still 
 laboring to prop the frail and worthless fabric. Yet I have 
 the murmurs of its friends no less than the curses of its 
 foes for my reward. What can I do better than withdraw 
 from the scene? Every day proves to me more and more 
 
 " Sparks' Gouverneur Morris, Life and Works, vol. iii, p. 260. 
 ^^ Ford's " Jefiferson's Writings," vol. i, p. 169. 
 "See Hamilton's Works, vol. v, p. 441; vol. vi, p. 54; vol. iii, 
 p. 260. 
 
 " Ibid., vol. vi, p. 540. " Ibid., vol. vi, p. 568. 
 
 / 
 
40 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [504 
 
 that this American world was not made for me." ^^ At a 
 banquet in New York, in reply to a toast Hamilton uttered 
 these remarkable words: "Your people, sir, your people 
 are a great beast." ^^ But enough of quotations. Every- 
 body knows now as well as Jefferson knew in 1791 that 
 Alexander Hamilton hated democracy and that he had 
 little faith in the government that he had helped to estab- 
 lish. 
 
 It is of interest to note also what the lesser lights, what 
 senators and representatives and diplomats of the time 
 thought of democracy. The young and eloquent Fisher 
 Ames, the confidential friend of Hamilton and a leader 
 in the house of representatives, declared democracy to be 
 the isthmus of a middle state, nothing in itself. Like death 
 it was the dismal passport to a more dismal hereafter. 
 He thought our nation began self-government without 
 education for it. " Like negroes," he says, " freed after 
 grown up to man's estate, we are incapable of learning 
 and practicing the great art of taking care of ourselves." " 
 He greets Hamilton's sympathetic ears with these words: 
 " Our government is becoming a mere democracy which 
 has never been tolerable or long tolerated." '^ And again, 
 in an explosion of disgust and despair he cries: "Our 
 country is too big for union, too sordid for patriotism, too 
 democratic for liberty! What is to become of it, He who 
 made it best knows." '^ 
 
 Gouverneur Morris has answered for Hamilton and may 
 now answer for himself on the subject of democratic gov- 
 ernment. Writing from Paris to Rufus King he says: 
 " The people, or rather the populace — a thing which, thank 
 God, is unknown in America — are flattered with the idea 
 that they are under no restraint except such as might be 
 
 ^^ Hamilton's Works, vol. vi, p. 530- 
 
 ^® Adams' History of the United States, vol. i, p. 85. 
 
 " Works of Fisher Ames, vol. i, p. 224. 
 
 ^^ Hamilton's Works, vol. vi, p. 201. 
 
 ^® Ames' Works, vol. i, p. 327. 
 
505] The Democratic Editor. 41 
 
 inspired by magistrates of their own choice." '° This 
 haughty lieutenant of Hamilton's having narrowly escaped 
 the fury of that same Parisian populace, wished to check 
 the power of the people in his own country by a strong 
 government. He believed that a national law should re- 
 peal any state law, and was for a senate for life, appointed 
 by the chief magistrate. The body should consist of men 
 of wealth and of aristocratic spirit — one that would " lord 
 it through pride." 
 
 Theodore Sedgwick, speaker of the House of Repre- 
 sentatives, had no faith in the manner of electing the 
 president. ^^ John Jay, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, 
 doubted whether the people could long govern themselves 
 in an " equal, uniform and orderly manner." " Oliver 
 Wolcott, Comptroller of the Treasury, and successor of 
 Hamilton as Secretary, believed that our system of gov- 
 ernment would fail." Chauncey Goodrich, a leader in poli- 
 tics wrote : " Our greatest danger is from the antagonism 
 of levelism. What folly is it that has set the world agog 
 to be all equal to French barbers?" George Cabot, sena- 
 tor from Massachusetts, held the belief that " Democracy 
 in its natural operation is the government of the worst." ^* 
 
 Such was the faith, or rather lack of faith, of our fed- 
 eral fathers. Such were the avowed opinions regarding 
 self-government held by those who were administering the 
 government, making its laws, conducting its diplomacy, 
 pronouncing its justice, at the period when Freneau set 
 up his National Gazette in Philadelphia. Washington 
 warned the federal leaders against their monarchical no- 
 tions, reminding them that it was but a step from think- 
 ing to speaking and but another to acting.^^ And they did 
 
 ^° Life of Rufus King, vol. i, p. 432. 
 ^^ Hamilton's Works, vol. vi, p. 511. 
 
 ^^ Gill's " Administration of Washington and Adams," vol. i, p. 
 390. 
 =' Ibid., p. 88. '* Lodge's Cabot, p. 341. 
 
 ^° Sparks' " Life and Writings of Washington," vol. ix, p. 187. 
 
42 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [506 
 
 act as far as prudence would permit. Hamilton tried to 
 hedge Washington around " with a divinity that did befit 
 a King." Titles and royal trappings were employed to 
 dazzle and awe; measures were introduced into congress 
 under Hamilton's doctrine of " implied powers " that made 
 democrats like Maclay and Madison stand aghast. Ham- 
 ilton and Hamiltonism ruled not only in the cabinet but in 
 the legislature also. It was charged that the Treasurer 
 in British fashion cracked his whip over congress,^ and 
 " converted the legislature into a committee of sanction," 
 and Washington himself was accused of " treading on the 
 neck of the senate." " 
 
 The organ upon which the federalists relied to make 
 public opinion for their cause was John Fenno's " Gazette 
 of the United States." This paper was started in New 
 York but was moved to Philadelphia when the government 
 was transferred to that place." Fenno was completely 
 under Hamilton's control and the columns of his Gazette 
 were filled with the monarchical notions of his patron. The 
 following extract, taken from the writings of " Tablet " who 
 contributed, every week, something upon the subject of 
 government, will give an idea of the spirit of Fenno's 
 paper: 
 
 *' Take away thrones and crowns from among men and 
 there will soon be an end of all dominion and justice. There 
 must -be some adventitious properties infused into the 
 government to give it energy and spirit, or the selfish, 
 turbulent passions of mien can never be controlled. This 
 has occasioned that artificial splendor and dignity that 
 are to be found in the courts of many nations. The people 
 of the United States may probably be induced to regard 
 
 ^® Mercer in a speech in congress said: " I have long remarked 
 in this house that the executive, or rather the treasury department, 
 was really the efficient legislature of the country. The House of 
 Representatives is converted into a committee of sanction." 
 
 " Maclay's Journal, p. 131. 
 
 ^^ Hudson's Journalism in America, p. 18. 
 
507] The Democratic Editor. 43 
 
 and obey the laws without requiring the experiment of 
 courts and titled monarchs. In proportion as we become 
 populous and wealthy must the tone of the government 
 be strengthened." ^^ 
 
 Americans were invited to distrust their fitness for sov- 
 ereignty, " for the experience of past ages proved that 
 whenever the people have exercised in themselves the three 
 powers, the democracy is immediately changed into an- 
 archy. Violent orators agitate the multitude as the winds 
 toss the waves, and the people agitated by demagogues 
 have committed all excesses." Titles were upheld as the 
 essential features of a vigorous government. The argu- 
 ment for them was simple and cogent. There are differ- 
 ences in men, in talent, in wealth, in position; therefore, 
 there should be titles to designate these differences. 
 
 Hamilton, the powerful patron of the Gazette, was the 
 theme of its highest panegyric. " He is the highest jewel 
 in Columbia's crown. As a pillar in the Federal building 
 he seems to unite the solidity of the Doric order, the deli- 
 cacy and elegance of the Ionic, and the towering beauty of 
 the Corinthian." In return for this subserviency, Fenno, 
 as we shall presently see, merely demanded cash. 
 
 It was to furnish an antidote to the aristocratic and 
 monarchical sentiments of Fenno's paper that Freneau's 
 " National Gazette " was established, and the better we 
 know the Gazette of the United States, the plainer does 
 it become that an antidote was needed. The columns of 
 Fenno's paper read like those of a journal of the court of 
 St. James. A few paragraphs will illustrate : " The prin- 
 cipal ladies of the city have with the earliest attention and 
 respect paid their devoirs to the amiable consort of our 
 beloved president, namely, the Lady of his Excellency, the 
 Governor, Lady Stirling, Lady Mary Watts, Lady Kitty 
 Duer, La Marchioness de Breham, the ladies of the Most 
 Honorable Mr. Layton, the Most Honorable Mr. Dalton, 
 
 ^® Gazette of the United States, March, 1790. 
 
44 J The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [508 
 
 the Mayoress, Mrs. Livingston of Clermont, Lady Temple, 
 Madam de la Forest, Mrs. Houston, Mrs. Griffin, the Miss 
 Bayards and a great number of other respectable charac- 
 ters." 
 
 Again: ''We are informed that the President, His Ex- 
 cellency, the Vice-President, His Excellency, the Governor 
 of this State, and many other personages will be present 
 at the theatre this evening." 
 
 Again: ''The Most Honorable Morris and Lady at- 
 tended the theatre last evening." 
 
 Such royal gibberish as this could not be reasoned with 
 and Freneau did not attempt to reason with it, but he 
 drove it out of Fenno's paper and out of the United States. 
 He caused it to be laughed at, and that it could not en- 
 dure. A bit of horse-play like the following was far more 
 effective than any amount of abstraction could have been: 
 — The writer, in imagination goes ahead of the time ten 
 years and gives a page of news for the year 1801 — 
 
 " On Monday last arrived in this city in perfect health, His Most 
 Serene Highness the Protector of the United States, who on 
 Wednesday next will review the regular troops which compose the 
 garrison." 
 
 " Yesterday came on before the circuit court of the Protector, the 
 trial of James Barefoot, laborer, for carelessly treading on the 
 great toe of My Lord Ohio. The defendant was found guilty, 
 but as the offense appeared quite accidental, and his lordship had 
 already inflicted on him fifty lashes, the court fined him only 100 
 pounds and ordered him to be imprisoned six months. Consider- 
 ing the blood and rank of the prosecutor, the humanity of the 
 sentence cannot be too highly extolled. His lordship's toe is in 
 a fair way of recovery, although one of his physicians thinks the 
 nail is in danger." 
 
 " Yesterday was capitally convicted by a majority of the jury, 
 John Misprision, for high treason, for lying with the mistress of 
 the Protector's second son, the duke of Erie. Great efforts will be 
 made to obtain a pardon, but it is feared that the enormity of the 
 offense, with a suspicion of its being the third or fourth time he 
 has taken this liberty with his Grace, will prevent their desired 
 efifect." 
 
 " Sunday last, being the birthday of the Protector's lady, was 
 celebrated in this city with becoming attention. No divine service 
 was performed. The levee of her Highness was remarkably 
 
509] The Democratic Editor. 45 
 
 crowded. She looked uncommonly cheerful considering it is the 
 ninth month of her pregnancy. In the evening the theatre was 
 unusually brilliant in expectation of her Highness's company, who 
 for the reason just mentioned was obliged to forego the pleasure." 
 
 " It is said that Lady Champlaine, a maid of honor to her High- 
 ness the Protectoress, has had an intrigue with the Duchess of 
 Rye's footman." 
 
 " To remedy the inconveniences attending the election on the 
 death of every protector, a bill will be brought in at the next 
 session of Congress to make the ofifice hereditary, and to increase 
 his annual revenue from five hundred thousand to one million of 
 dollars. It is certainly impossible for his Highness to support 
 the dignity of his high station upon his present small allowance." 
 
 " The hereditary council will meet in the future at the new 
 palace in Philadelphia. This superb edifice cost the moderate sum 
 of six hundred thousand dollars, ten cents and five mills, which 
 exceeded the calculations of the first lord of the Treasury only 
 by two dollars, three cents and one mill." 
 
 " A few copies of the act to restrain the freedom of press may 
 be had at this office." 
 
 Monarchy was not the only thing the National Gazette 
 abhorred. Freneau, as a life-long democrat and consistent 
 whig, detested the avowed principles of the federal party 
 and there was no love in his heart for its leader, Alexan- 
 der Hamilton. Hamilton was therefore singled out and 
 made the principal target for the anti-federal arrows that 
 sped from Freneau's bow. It was upon the appearance of 
 Hamilton's report on manufactures that Freneau's career 
 as a publicist began. The Secretary of the Treasury an- 
 nounced the startling doctrine that it was the unquestion- 
 able meaning of the constitution that Congress had power 
 to provide for any object that concerned the general wel- 
 fare. The phrase " general welfare," he contended, was 
 susceptible neither of specification nor of definition. Every 
 object which in its operations extends throughout the 
 union concerns the general welfare and it was left to the 
 discretion of the National Legislature to decide what shall 
 be regarded as concerning the general welfare. The Sec- 
 retary entertained no doubts that whatever concerned 
 education, agriculture, manufacturing, or commerce was 
 within the sphere of the action of the National Govern- 
 ment. 
 
46 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [510 
 
 Freneau, as a champion of strict construction, swooped 
 down upon the doctrine of " implied power " with savage 
 talons. " Is there," the Gazette asks, '' any object for 
 which money is not necessary, or any object for which 
 money may not be applied and brought under the object of 
 congress? Under such a construction of the power of 
 congress, what is to become of the word constitutional? 
 Nothing henceforth would be unconstitutional. It would 
 be the easiest thing in the world to conceive that religion 
 is a matter of the general welfare; and then an ecclesiasti- 
 cal establishment supported by government would quickly 
 follow. Besides, such a doctrine knocks down every 
 boundary worth contending for between the general gov- 
 ernment and the state government. This doctrine of non- 
 specification and non-limitation of the power of the consti- 
 tution was subversive of liberty." "" The Secretary is 
 charged with bad faith in attempting to promulgate such 
 ideas. He is reminded that when he urged the adoption 
 of the constitution, he taught the people that usurpation 
 was not to be apprehended; that construction by implica- 
 tion was impossible, that the states had nothing to fear. 
 Now, by a little refinement in politics, and by the legerde- 
 main of fiscal operations, he was about to do all that he 
 had promised would not and could not be done. The fund- 
 ing scheme, the bank scheme, the excise, were all contrary 
 to himself, the constitution and American freedom. 
 
 Hamilton was unfitted by nature to brook opposition, 
 and he met the opposition of Freneau in a most unfortu- 
 nate manner. At first he left his defense in the hands of 
 his editor Fenno, but Fenno was a heavy fellow and could 
 do little but rave. He hurled invective against any who 
 should dare to criticize a measure of government. The 
 National Gazette, he said was the vehicle of party Spleen 
 and the opponent of the principles of order, virtue and re- 
 Hgion;'" its editor was a "wretch," "a spaniel," "a fawn- 
 
 ^° National Gazette, 1792. 
 
 ^^ Gazette of the United States, Aug. 2, 1792. 
 
511] The Democratic Editor. 47 
 
 ing parasite," *' a black-guard," ** a grumbletonian," " a 
 crack brain," " a Bedlamite," *' a jackal of mobocracy," " a 
 salamander." Freneau reprinted in his own paper these 
 courtly epithets, and kept calm. A few lines of doggerel 
 was all the reply he would vouchsafe to his enraged ad- 
 versary. 
 
 Since the day I attempted to print a gazette 
 
 This Shylock-Ap-Shenkin does nothing but fret; 
 
 Now preaching and screeching, then nibbling and scribbling 
 
 Remarking and barking and whining and pining 
 
 And still in a pet, 
 From morning 'till night with my humble Gazette. 
 
 Instead of whole columns our page to abuse, 
 Your readers would rather be treated with news; 
 While wars are a-brewing, and kingdoms undoing. 
 While monarchs are falling, and princesses squalling, 
 While France is reforming, and Irishmen storming — 
 In a glare of such splendor, what folly to fret 
 At so humble a thing as a poet's Gazette. 
 
 One Printer for Congress (some think) is enough 
 To flatter and lie, to palaver and pufif, 
 To preach up in favor of monarchs and titles, 
 And garters and ribbands to prey on our vitals. 
 
 To criticise government and governors seemed to him a 
 perfectly legitimate act and he exercised this right with- 
 out any great perturbations of conscience. A squib from 
 his paper furnishes the basis of a philosophy for the free- 
 dom of press: 
 
 " Free government in any country naturally urges by impercepti- 
 ble advances to tyranny," unless corrected by the vigilance of the 
 people. Nothing but the perpetual jealousy of the governed has 
 ever been found effectual against the machination of ambition. 
 When this jealousy does not exist in some reasonable degree the 
 saddle is soon placed upon the backs of the people and occupied 
 by a succession of tyrants. There never was a government that 
 had not its flatterers whose incense of adulation is always in 
 readiness to be offered at the shrine of power, and whose abilities 
 are prostituted to cover the abuse of office. Monarchies it is well 
 known owe no small share of their disability to such support. 
 Republics ought to be above it." ^ 
 
 '^ National Gazette, 1791. 
 
48 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [512 
 
 But it must not be inferred that Freneau abused the lib- 
 erty of the press. The National Gazette was not a scur- 
 rilous or libellous sheet. It has an unsavory reputation in 
 history, but we shall see before we have finished, that it 
 does not deserve such a reputation, that scurrility and slan- 
 der are not a feature of its pages. It was called atheistical 
 and subversive of religion and morals, not because it de- 
 nied the existence of God or attacked religion, for it let 
 such subjects severely alone, but because it advocated 
 democratic principles. In those days if a man was a 
 democrat he was an atheist, and that was all there was 
 to it. Compared with the Daily Advertiser, a republican 
 contemporary, or with Fenno's paper, the National Ga- 
 zette was a mild and decent sheet. The fear and hatred 
 that it won for itself arose from the ability with which it 
 was edited. It was supported by the best talent of the 
 age. Hugh Brackenridge, Freneau's classmate at col- 
 lege, now eminent as a jurist, sympathized with the aims 
 of the paper and contributed largely to its success by writ- 
 ing for its columns.^ James Madison worked for it, 
 talked for it, and wrote for it.^* Jefiferson could not have 
 been more interested in it if his political life had depended 
 upon its success. He was always writing about it to his 
 friends, calling attention to its merits, and drumming up 
 subscribers and subscriptions. He kept Freneau sup- 
 plied with foreign newspapers, and thus enabled him to 
 make his paper the source of the fullest information re- 
 specting the mighty movements and triumphs of democ- 
 racy in Europe. By good management on the part of the 
 
 '^ Brackenridge, Francis Hopkinson, and Freneau are admitted 
 by critics to be the three greatest American prose writers of the 
 eighteenth century. Freneau's prose writing is characterized by 
 Moses Coit Tyler as " delightful, easy, sinewy, touched with a 
 delicate humor, crisp and keen edged." Lit. Hist. American 
 Revolution, vol, ii, 275. 
 
 '* " I used occasionally to throw in an article with a view chiefly 
 to contrast the monarchical spirit which characterized Fenno's 
 paper." Randall's " Thomas Jefferson," vol. ii, p. 74. 
 
513] The Democratic Editor. 49 
 
 editor and his friends, the paper prospered and became the 
 power it was sought to make it. In May, 1792, Freneau 
 pubHshed the following card in his paper: " Upward of six 
 months being elapsed since the pubhcation of this paper, 
 and the subscriptions having succeeded beyond the editor's 
 most sanguine expectations, he now begs leave to solicit 
 the attention of the people of the United States to a pub- 
 lication which he trusts will at all times be found truly 
 republican in its principles and tendency." 
 
 The chief business of the Gazette was to destroy Hamil- 
 ton, the one man in whom the hopes of the federalists lay. 
 That the Secretary of the Treasury was the head and front 
 of the federal party was clearly recognized by Jefiferson. 
 " Hamilton is really a colossus to the anti-republicans," he 
 writes to Madison. '' Without numbers he is a host with- 
 in himself. When he comes forward there is nobody but 
 yourself who can meet him. For God's sake take up your 
 pen and give him a fundamental reply.'"' Freneau, after 
 the manner of editors generally, did not concern himself 
 deeply about " fundamental replies." His plan was to 
 render Hamilton and his schemes odious and unpopular. 
 f'Every utterance, every report, every recommendation of 
 the Secretary was construed as having but one ultimate 
 aim — the overthrow of the constitution and the establish- 
 ment of a monarciiy. His funding system, his national 
 bank, his excise law, his love of titles, his advocacy of a 
 perpetual public debt, his loose-construction notions, were 
 all of the same cloth. ) If you want rules for the conversion 
 of a limited republic into an absolute monarchy, said 
 Freneau, here they are: 
 
 1. Get rid of constitutional shackles. 
 
 2. Confer titles of rank. If the principal magistrate should be 
 particularly venerable in the eyes of the people take advantage of 
 that fortunate circumstance. 
 
 3. If the principal magistrate is averse to titles, persevere in 
 indoctrinating the people with the idea. Time will gain it respect. 
 
 ^° Jefferson's Works, vol. iv, p. 122. 
 36 
 
50 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [514 
 
 4. Harp incessantly upon the dangers of the mob. 
 
 5. Let the great nostrum be a perpetual public debt. If a debt 
 is not at hand assume one, and then swell it and stretch it in every 
 possible way. 
 
 6. Interest the legislators in speculation and speculators in 
 legislation. 
 
 7. Establish an incorporated bank by which those who are to 
 inherit the kingdom that is preparing for them may be enriched. 
 
 8. Arrogate all power to the general government under the 
 phrase " general welfare." 
 
 9. Secure a rich manufacturing class by making laws in their 
 interests. 
 
 ID. Create a standing army. 
 II. Take England as a model. 
 
 Hamilton's doctrine that a public debt is a public bless- 
 ing was resisted by the National Gazette with bull-dog 
 ferocity. " Brutus," who fulminated for months against 
 the funding system ably supported these charges: 
 
 1. The funding system threw $50,000,000 into the hands of the 
 wealthy. 
 
 2. It combined the money interest with the monopoly of the 
 NationM Bank. 
 
 3. By its excise and impost ofifsprings it swallowed up by future 
 payments the last resource of the country. 
 
 4. The certificates of indebtedness fell into the hands of specula- 
 tors and foreigners. 
 
 5. It had diverted capital from its proper channels and turned it 
 into speculation. 
 
 6. It created an immense body of revenue officials from the 
 Secretary down to the tide-waiter, all bound together by common 
 interests. 
 
 The editor's compassion was deeply moved for the sol- 
 dier of the revolution who had been paid by certificates 
 of indebtedness which had passed out of his hands at a 
 discount into the hands of speculators, and which by Ham- 
 ilton's law, had appreciated to several times their value. 
 The theme caused the editor to drop into rhyme : 
 
 Public debts are public curses 
 
 In soldiers' hands; there nothing worse is! 
 
 In speculators' hands increasing, 
 
 A public debt's a public blessing. 
 
515] The Democratic Editor. 51 
 
 Jonathan Pindar, who is Philip Freneau'" in disguise, 
 appears before Hamilton and other magnates as candi- 
 date for the position of poet-laureate. To further his 
 chances of appointment he promised to swear — 
 
 The nation's debt's a blessing vast, 
 Which far and wide its general influence sheds, 
 From whence Pactolian streams descend so fast, 
 On their — id est — the speculators' heads. 
 
 That to increase this blessing and entail 
 To future time its influence benign, 
 New loans from foreign nations cannot fail 
 While standing armies clinch the grand design. 
 
 That taxes are no burthen to the rich. 
 That they alone to labor drive the poor — 
 The lazy rogues would neither plow nor ditch, 
 Unless to keep the sheriff from the door. 
 
 Freneau was a master of irony and frequently subjected 
 Hamilton's sensitive nerves to this species of wit. The fol- 
 lowing piece is -a sample of the fine satire that was con- 
 stantly directed against the federalists and their chief: 
 
 A NEW POLITICAL CREED. 
 
 " Whoever would Hve peaceably in Philadelphia, above all 
 things it is necessary that he hold the federal faith and the federal 
 faith is this, that there are two governing powers in this country, 
 both equal and yet one superior; which faith unless one keep 
 undefiledly without doubt he shall be abused everlastingly. The 
 Briton is superior to the American and the American is superior 
 to the Briton, and yet they are equal and the Briton shall govern 
 the American. 
 
 " The Briton while here is commanded to obey the American 
 and yet the American ought to obey the Briton; and yet they 
 ought not both to be obedient. For there is one dominion nominal 
 of the American and another dominion real of the Briton. And 
 yet there are not two dominions but only one dominion. 
 
 " The American was created for the Briton and the Briton for 
 the American, and yet the American shall be a slave to the Briton 
 and the Briton the tyrant of the American. 
 
 ^° Jefferson says these " Probationary leaders," as they were 
 called, were written by St. George Tucker and not by Freneau. 
 They were, at any rate, saddled on the editor. Ford's Writings 
 of Thomas Jefferson, vol. vi, p. 328. 
 
_^^ The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [516 
 
 " The Britons are of three denominations, and yet only of one 
 soul, nature, and subsistence: The Irishman of infinite impudence; 
 the Scotchman of cunning most inscrutable; and the Englishman 
 of impertinence altogether insupportable. 
 
 " For the true faith is that we believe and confess that the 
 government is fallible, and infallible: Falhble in its republican 
 nature; and infallible in its monarchical tendency; erring in its 
 state individuality and unerring in its federal complexity. So that 
 it is both fallible and infallible; yet it is not twain but one govern- 
 ment only, as having consolidated all state dominion in order to 
 rule with sway uncontrolled. This is the true federal faith, which 
 except a man believe and practice faithfully, beyond all doubt he 
 shall be cursed perpetually." 
 
 Such reading was exceedingly painful to a proud and 
 highly organized nature like Hamilton's. Fenno defended 
 the Secretary as best he could, but Fenno was no match 
 for Freneau. The National Gazette continued to pour 
 forth its efifective broadsides until Hamilton's patience 
 gave way and he determined to break a lance in his own 
 behalf. Freneau he affected to despise. In the editor and 
 clerk who met his eyes daily in the office of government he 
 saw only the servile instrument of Thomas Jefferson. 
 Without evidence and without reason he cherished the no- 
 tion that the National Gazette had been established by the 
 Secretary of State, and that it was supported and directed 
 by him, and that Freneau was a man of straw. With vis- 
 ion blurred and his facts all tangled, Hamilton rushed into 
 print with an attack upon Jefferson. The chastisement, 
 of course, had to be administered over Freneau's shoul- 
 ders. In July, 1792, there appeared in Fenno's Gazette 
 the following communication: 
 
 Mr. Fenno : 
 
 The editor of the National Gazette receives a salary from the 
 government. Quaere: Whether this salary is paid for translations 
 or for publications the design of which is to villify those to whom 
 the voice of the people has committed the administration of our 
 public affairs, — to oppose the measures of government and by 
 false insinuation to disturb the public peace? 
 
 In common life it is thought ungrateful for a man to bite the 
 hand that puts bread in his mouth, but if the man is hired to do 
 it, the case is altered. T. L. 
 
517] The Democratic Editor. 53 
 
 '' T. L." was Alexander Hamilton. Freneau paid but 
 little attention to the squib, doubtless because he did not 
 suspect its high authority. He re-printed it in his paper 
 and said it was beneath notice, and propounded this query 
 by way of retort: "Whether a man who receives a small 
 stipend for services rendered as French Translator to the 
 Department of State and as editor of a free newspaper ad- 
 mits into his publication impartial strictures on the pro- 
 ceedings of the government, is not more likely to act an 
 honest and disinterested part toward the public than a 
 vile sycophant who, obtaining emoluments from the gov- 
 ernment far more lucrative than the salary alluded to, 
 finds his interest in attempting to poison the mind of the 
 people by propagating and disseminating principles and 
 sentiments utterly subversive of the true interests of the 
 country and by flattering and recommending every and 
 any measure of government, however pernicious and de- 
 structive its tendency might be to the great body of the 
 people? " The world is then called upon to judge between 
 the motives of Freneau and those of Fenno." 
 
 The world probably took very little interest in the mo- 
 tives of either of the editors, yet it did take the greatest 
 interest in the names that were soon involved in the con- 
 troversy that ensued. A struggle between Hamilton and 
 Jefferson was fraught with issues of the most profound 
 significance. The triumph of Hamilton meant conserva- 
 tism and the rule of the classes in America; the triumph 
 of Jefferson meant radicalism and the rule of the masses. 
 To be precise and just, we may say that Hamiltonism 
 meant a strong central government administered in the 
 English spirit, while Jefifersonism meant a light and easy 
 central government that would respond readily to the will 
 of the populace. Both Jefferson and Hamilton honestly 
 wished to avoid a quarrel, yet a conflict between them was 
 inevitable. Hamilton by a few inopportune strokes of the 
 
 ^^ National Gazette, July, 1792. 
 
54 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [518 
 
 pen in a moment of irritation precipitated the contest. In 
 reply to Freneau's retort he wrote for Fenno's paper, over 
 the signature " An American," a letter that made peace no 
 longer possible. 
 
 " Mr. Freneau," he said in this letter — ^thinking and car- 
 ing nothing about Freneau — " Mr. Freneau should not 
 escape with the plea that his hostility toward the measures 
 of government was only a mark of independence and dis- 
 interestedness." The whole truth in regard to the National 
 Gazette should be known. That truth for the enlighten- 
 ment of the world and the discomfiture of Jefferson is then 
 set forth in these paragraphs: 
 
 " Mr. Freneau, before he came to Philadelphia, was em- 
 ployed by Childs and Swaine, printers of the Daily Adver- 
 tiser, in New York, in the capacity of editor or superintend- 
 ent. A paper more devoted to the views of a certain party, 
 of which Mr. Jefferson is the head than any to be found 
 in this city was wanted. Mr. . Freneau was thought a fit 
 instrument; a negotiation was opened with him which 
 ended in the establishment of the National Gazette under 
 his direction. 
 
 " Mr. Freneau came here at once editor of the National 
 Gazette and clerk for foreign languages in the department 
 of Mr. Jefferson, Secretary of State; an experiment some- 
 what new in the history of political manoeuvres in this 
 country; a nezvspaper instituted by a public oificer and the 
 editor of it regularly pensioned with the public money in 
 the disposal of that officer, an example which could not 
 have been set by the head of any other department with- 
 out having long since been rung through the United States. 
 [By the National Gazette, of course.] 
 
 " Mr. Freneau is not, then, as he would have it sup- 
 posed, the independent editor of a newspaper who though 
 receiving a salary from the government has firmness 
 enough to express its maladministration; he is the faith- 
 ful and devoted servant of the head of a party from whose 
 hands he receives the boon. The whole complexion of 
 
519] The Democratic Editor. 55 
 
 this paper exhibits a decisive internal evidence of the in- 
 fluence of that patronage under which he acts. Whether 
 the services rendered are equivalent to the compensation 
 he receives is best known to his employer and himself; 
 there is, however, some room for doubt. It is well known 
 that his employer is himself well acquainted with the 
 French language, the only one of which Mr. Freneau is 
 the translator and it may be a question how often his aid 
 is necessary. 
 
 " It is somewhat singular too, that a man acquainted 
 with but one language, engaged in an occupation which it 
 may be presumed demands his whole attention — the editor 
 of a newspaper — should be the person selected as the 
 clerk for foreign languages in the department of the United 
 States for foreign afifairs. Could no person be found ac- 
 quainted with more than one foreign language? and who in 
 so confidential a trust could have been regularly attached 
 to, in the constant employ of the department and imme- 
 diately under the eye of the head of it? "'* 
 
 Hamilton then turns from Freneau to Jefiferson and 
 hauls that gentleman over the coals for divers political 
 iniquities. At the time of Hamilton's attacks, Jefiferson 
 was in Virginia designing geometrical wheelbarrows and 
 mould-boards of least resistance. He does not seem to 
 have entered into the melee but was content to let Freneau 
 and Hamilton fight it out for themselves. Many writers 
 rushed to his defense, but his own hand was stayed, and 
 the hand of Freneau even is not apparent in the replies to 
 Hamilton's attack. Moreover the champions of Jefferson 
 had their articles printed not in the National Gazette but 
 in the Daily Advertiser of Philadelphia. 
 
 If the reader has recalled the facts connected with Fre- 
 neau's coming to Philadelphia he will have seen that Ham- 
 ilton's charges were nothing more than assumptions. 
 These charges Freneau met in a characteristic way. He 
 
 ^* Gazette of the United States, Aug., 1792. 
 
56 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [520 
 
 went before the Mayor of Philadelphia and duly swore: 
 " That no negotiation was ever opened with him by 
 Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State for the establishment 
 or institution of the National Gazette; that the deponent's 
 coming to the city of Philadelphia as a publisher of a news- 
 paper was at no time urged, advised or influenced by the 
 above officer, but that it was his own voluntary act; that 
 the Gazette or the Editor thereof was never directed, con- 
 trolled or attempted to be influenced in any manner either 
 by the Secretary or any of his friends; that not a line was 
 ever directly or indirectly written, dictated or composed for 
 it by that officer, but that the editor had consulted his own 
 judgment alone in the conducting of it — free, unfettered 
 and uninfluenced.' ' ^* 
 
 This solemn and explicit denial by a man whose char- 
 acter was above reproach would have caused a less pertina- 
 cious and a more sagacious man than Hamilton to let the 
 matter drop. But his feelings now had the whip hand of 
 his judgment and he could not stop. He rushed further 
 into the blind encounter. He now came forward with the 
 insinuation that Freneau had sworn to a lie. This he said, 
 would be just what a pensioned tool would do. How, he 
 would like to know, was Mr. Freneau able to swear that 
 Mr. Jefferson never wrote a line for his paper. No editor 
 who does not himself write every line for his paper can 
 make any such affirmation as that. Facts were against 
 Mr. Freneau. He then opens his artillery of facts : 
 
 " It is a fact, Mr. Freneau, that you receive a salary as clerk for 
 foreign languages, and yet you can translate but one language." 
 
 " It is a fact that you left New York to become the editor of the 
 National Gazette." 
 
 " It is a fact that your appointment was antecedent to the com- 
 mencement of your paper." *° 
 
 " It is a fact that Mr. Jefferson was in the beginning opposed 
 to the constitution." 
 
 ^^ Gazette of the United States, Aug., 1792. 
 
 *° Freneau's appointment was made Aug. 3, 1791. The first num- 
 ber of the Gazette appeared Oct. 31, 1791. 
 
521] The Democratic Editor. 57 
 
 " It is a fact that that officer arraigns the principal measures of 
 government." 
 
 " From these facts the inferences which are to be drawn are 
 irresistible. If you had previously been the conductor of a news- 
 paper in this city — if your appointment had been any considerable 
 time subsequent to the institution of your paper, there might have 
 been some room for subterfuge. But as matters stand you have 
 no possible escape." 
 
 " It makes no difference, Mr. Freneau, whether there was a pre- 
 liminary negotiation or not; there are many facts to presuppose 
 that such a negotiation did occur, and these facts will be brought 
 out, sir, if scruples of family connection or the dread of party 
 resentment do not forbid. And the evidence adduced will be 
 incontestable. Any honest man must conclude that the relations 
 that subsist between you and Mr. Jefferson are indelicate, unfit, 
 and suspicious. Your apology that the meagre compensation 
 provided renders it necessary for the translator to engage in some 
 other occupation is inadmissible, for a competent clerk could have 
 been employed at a full salary, and if his work as a translator did 
 not occupy all this time, he could have used his surplus time at 
 some other kind of work in the department. If there had been 
 difficulty in finding sUch a man, undoubtedly, you, the editor of a 
 newspaper should not have been selected, and the fact that you 
 were selected is a proof of sinister design. The fact that your 
 predecessor, Mr. Pintard, received but two hundred and fifty 
 dollars a year and was a newspaper man is not to the point; the 
 employment of that gentleman was a natural consequence of a 
 particular situation. These strictures involve you, Mr. Freneau, 
 but it is confessed that they are aimed at a character of greater 
 importance in the community." ^ 
 
 Nothing could be more flimsy and illogical than the 
 above, and it is strange that an intellect like Hamilton's 
 should have expressed itself in such a way. It was due 
 doubtless to the fact that he had begun the controversy in 
 a mental fog and could not find his way out. He had got 
 the cart before the horse. On Aug. ii, 1792, he made the 
 charge that Madison had conducted an unworthy negotia- 
 tion with Freneau, and two days after wrote to Elias Bou- 
 dinot for an authentication of the charge. "If I, recollect 
 right," Hamilton says to Boudinot, '' you told me, that 
 this, if necessary, could be done; and if practicable it is of 
 
 *^ Gazette of the United States, Aug., 1792; Hamilton's Works, 
 vol. V, p. 518. 
 
58 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [522 
 
 real importance that it should be done. It will confound 
 and put down a man who is continually machinating 
 against public happiness." (Not Freneau but Jefferson is 
 meant.) 
 
 " You will oblige me in the most particular manner by 
 obtaining and forwarding to me without delay the par- 
 ticulars of all the steps taken by Mr. Madison — the when 
 and the where — with the liberty to use the name of the 
 informant. His aiUdavit to the facts, if obtainable would 
 be of infinite value." 
 
 But behold! '* the when and the where" and the " affi- 
 davit of infinite value," to meet Freneau's affidavit did not 
 materialize. Boudinot informs him that there is no direct 
 evidence of a negotiation available; that the gentleman 
 upon whom he relied for information was more attached 
 to Freneau than he had supposed and would say nothing; 
 that there was nothing but hearsay upon which to base 
 the charge, although he (Boudinot) would do all he could 
 to get together some evidence.*^ Hamilton also wrote to 
 Jonathan Dayton for " the when and the where " of the al- 
 leged negotiation, but that gentleman, although desirous 
 of frustrating the designs of a particular party, could not 
 comply with his request. 
 
 Freneau called for the proof that was promised, declin- 
 ing to answer charges of a personal nature unless they 
 were supported by the declarations of persons. But proof 
 there was none, and Hamilton was driven to the miserable 
 confession " that the secret intentions of men being in the 
 repositories of their own breasts it rarely happens and is 
 therefore not to be expected that direct and positive proof 
 of them can be adduced. Presumptive facts and circum- 
 stances must afford the evidence." ^ 
 
 After this graceless acknowledgment that his charges 
 against Freneau were without proof, Hamilton spared the 
 
 Hamilton's Works, vol. v, p. 520. 
 Parton's Life of Jefferson, p. 447. 
 
523] The Democratic Editor. 59 
 
 editor and applied his bad names to Jefferson direct. The 
 bringing of Freneau into this quarrel was most unfortunate 
 to Hamilton's cause and reputation. He stood before the 
 country convicted of an unwarranted attempt to injure an 
 innocent private citizen in order that he might punish a 
 political enemy. And the country did not forgive him. 
 *' He lost something," says Parton, " which is of no value 
 to an anonymous writer in a presidential campaign, but is 
 of immense value to a public man — WEIGHT." His 
 query in Fenno's paper calling in question Freneau's honor 
 was the beginning of his political downfall. Besides, view- 
 ed from the standpoint of private morality, Hamilton's at- 
 tack upon Freneau was very low, for he was himself doing 
 precisely what he accused Jefferson of doing. He was 
 supporting a partisan paper by means of the patronage of 
 his department. Freneau did not fail to bring out the fact 
 that Fenno was exclusive printer to the treasury depart- 
 ment, and that his emoluments in that direction were 
 twenty-five hundred dollars per annum."" And candid his- 
 tory brings out another fact still more damaging, to wit, 
 that Fenno was at times the direct beneficiary of Hamil- 
 ton's private purse. Not long after the attack upon the 
 editor of the National Gazette, Fenno wrote to Hamilton 
 stating that he was in financial straits and that if the hand 
 of benevolence and patriotism were not speedily extended 
 to him his career as a printer would be over.*^ Hamilton 
 upon the receipt of the letter wrote to his friend Rufus 
 King as follows: 
 
 "My Dear Sir: 
 
 *' Inclosed is a letter just received from poor Fenno. 
 It speaks for itself. 
 
 " If you can without delay raise looo dollars in New 
 York, I will endeavor to raise another thousand at Phila- 
 
 National Gazette, Sept., 1793. 
 Life of Rufus King, vol. x, p. 502. 
 
60 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [524 
 
 delphia. If this cannot be done we must lose his services 
 and he will be the victim of his honest public spirit. 
 " Yours truly, 
 
 ''A. Hamilton." 
 
 " Poor Fenno " continued to publish his Gazette, hence 
 it is tolerably certain that the " hand of benevolence and 
 patriotism " was in some way extended. 
 
 Either a consciousness of his innocence or his stubborn 
 nature prevented Freneau from offering an elaborate de- 
 fense against Hamilton's charges. His biographer there- 
 fore is not called upon to dwell long upon his exculpation. 
 As we have seen, Jefferson kept out of the quarrel. His 
 name as far as possible was kept out of the National Ga- 
 zette. He was attacked in Fenno's paper and defended in 
 the Daily American Advertiser, a paper which was as vio- 
 lent in its republicanism as Freneau's paper. In one of 
 the articles in the Advertiser in behalf of Jefferson is the 
 following incidental defense of Freneau: 
 
 " Mr. Freneau has the following well-authenticated claim for the 
 office of Translator. A native of the Middle States, he had been 
 liberally educated at Princeton. To an accurate knowledge and a 
 refined taste in the English language, he had added a similar 
 acquirement in the French, the nation with whom we have the 
 most intimate relations and whose language has become in a great 
 measure throughout Europe the general medium of political nego- 
 tiation. Through life his morals were without blemish and his 
 conduct in the revolution was that of a sound whig and republican. 
 Perhaps his sufferings as a prisoner of war may have excited 
 additional sympathy in his favor. [In the matter of getting an 
 appointment.] To what trait in his character, to what defect in 
 his qualification does "American" [Hamilton] object? To his 
 occupation? and if so, to occupations in general or to printing in 
 particular? The low rate of pay made it necessary to get one 
 engaged in some other business. Is printing less honorable, less 
 beneficial to mankind than all others? Does " American " come 
 forward to traduce it and lessen it? Vain and unworthy effort! 
 Whether he had already set up a press or was about to set up one, 
 — for " American " can have it either way — is a matter of indiffer- 
 ence. He could not take the clerkship without the aid of the press. 
 The objection in the point of influence, if the characters in question 
 were capable of it, is scarcely worthy of notice. The office was 
 created by law and a salary attached to it. If the person appointed 
 
525] The Democratic Editor. 61 
 
 performs these duties, what other claim can the principal have 
 upon him? Degraded indeed would be the condition of a free- 
 man, if an appointment to an office carried with it low subservience 
 to the Superior. It is treasonable to infer that any such sub- 
 servience exists between a superior and his subordinate and a 
 great injustice has been done both Jefferson and Freneau by 
 ' American.' " *® 
 
 We cannot let the Hamilton-Freneau-Jefferson quarrel 
 drop without giving Jefferson's version of the affair. 
 Washington had called his two secretaries to task for their 
 bickerings and implored them in the name of the country 
 to cease from their strife. Jefferson answered at consid- 
 erable length the charge that he had set up the National 
 Gazette and that Freneau was his hireling: 
 
 " While the government was at New York I was applied to on 
 behalf of Freneau to know if there was any place within, my 
 department to which he could be appointed. I answered there 
 were but four clerkships, all of which I found full and continued 
 without any change. When we removed to Philadelphia, Mr. 
 Pintard, the translating clerk, did not choose to remove with us. 
 His office then became vacant. I was again applied to there for 
 Freneau and had no hesitation to promise the clerkship to him. 
 I cannot recollect whether it was at the same time or afterwards, 
 that I was told he had a thought of setting up a paper there.*^ But 
 whether then or afterwards, I considered it a circumstance of 
 some value, as it might enable me to do what I had long wished 
 to have done, that is to have the material parts of the Leyden 
 Gazette brought under your eye, and that of the public, in order 
 to possess yourself and them of a juster view of the affairs of 
 Europe, than could be obtained from any other public source. 
 This I had ineffectually attem.pted through the press of Mr. Fenno, 
 while in New York, selecting and translating passages myself at 
 first, then having it done by Mr. Pintard, the translating clerk, 
 but they found their way too slowly into Fenno's paper. Mr. 
 Bache essayed it for me in Philadelphia, but his being a daily 
 paper did not circulate sufficiently in other states. He even tried, 
 at my request, the plan of a weekly paper of recapitulation from 
 his daily paper, on hopes it might go into the other States, but 
 in this, too, we failed. Freneau as translating clerk and the 
 
 *" American Daily Advertiser, Oct., 1792. 
 
 *^ We cannot gather from the correspondence whether it was 
 before or afterwards. The offer was made Feb. 28, 1791. A letter 
 from Madison, May, 1791, reads as if Jefferson was aware of 
 Freneau's intention. 
 
62 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [526 
 
 printer of a periodical paper likely to circulate through the states 
 (uniting in one person the parts of Pintard and Fenno) revived 
 my hopes that they could at length be effected. On the establish- 
 ment of his paper, therefore, I furnished him with the Leyden 
 Gazettes with an expression of my wish that he could always 
 translate and publish the material intelligence they contained, and 
 have continued to furnish them from time to time as regularly as 
 I have received them. But as to any other direction or any indica- 
 tion of my wish how his press should be conducted, what sort of 
 intelligence he should give, what essays encourage, I can protest in 
 the presence of Heaven that I never did by myself or any other, 
 or indirectly say a syllable nor attempt any kind of influence. I can 
 further protest in the same awful presence, that I never did by 
 myself or any other, directly or indirectly write, dictate, or procure 
 any one sentence or sentiment to be inserted in his or any other 
 gazette, to which m,y name was not affixed or that of m.y office, 
 I surely need not except here a thing so foreign to the present 
 subject as a little paragraph about our Algerian captives, which I 
 once put into Freneau's paper. 
 
 " Freneau's proposition to publish a paper having been about 
 the time that the writings of Publicola and the discourses of 
 Davilla had a good deal excited the public attention, I took for 
 granted from Freneau's character, which had been marked as that 
 of a good whig, that he would give free place to pieces written 
 against the aristocratical and monarchical principles these papers 
 had inculcated. This having been in my mind, it is likely enough 
 I may have expressed it in conversation with others, though I do 
 not recollect that I did. To Freneau I think I could not, because 
 I still had seen him but once and that was at a public table, at 
 breakfast at Mrs. Elsworth's, as I passed through New York the 
 last year. And I can safely declare that my expectations looked 
 only to the chastisement of the aristocratical and monarchical 
 writings, and not to any criticism on the proceedings of govern- 
 ment. Colonel Hamilton can see no motive for any appointment 
 but that of making a convenient partizan. But you, sir, who have 
 received from me recommendations of a Rittenhouse, Barlow, 
 Paine, will believe that talents and science are sufficient motives 
 with me in appointments to which they are fitted, and that Freneau 
 as a man of genius, might find a preference in my eye to be a 
 translating clerk and make a good title to the little aids I could 
 give him as the editor of a Gazette by procuring subscriptions to 
 his paper as I did some before it appeared, and as I have done 
 with pleasure for other men of genius. Col. Hamilton, alias 
 * Plain Facts,' says that Freneau's salary began before he resided 
 in Philadelphia. I do not know what quibble he may have in 
 reserve on the word ' residence.' He may mean to include under 
 that idea the removal of his family; for I believe he removed 
 himself before his family did to Philadelphia. But no act of mine 
 gave commencement to his salary before he so far took up his 
 
527] The Democratic Editor. 63 
 
 abode in Philadelphia as to be sufficiently in readiness for his 
 duties of his place. As to the merits or demerits of his paper 
 they certainly concern me not. He and Fenno are rivals for the 
 public favor. The one courts them by flattery, the other by 
 censure, and I believe it will be admitted that the one has been as 
 servile as the other severe. No government ought to be without 
 censors; and where the press is free, no one ever will." *^ 
 
 This solemn and semi-official history of the establish- 
 ment of the National Gazette agrees perfectly with the 
 facts as they have hitherto been related in these pages. It 
 agrees with the account given by James Madison,** with 
 the sworn statement of Freneau, and it must stand as true 
 history until evidence is produced to shake it. Freneau 
 was the independent editor of an independent paper. 
 
 The charge of perjury with which Hamilton tried to 
 blacken Freneau's character, aroused the resentment of 
 the poet and excited the editor to the fullest exercise of 
 his license. '° If the federalists had heretofore been 
 scourged with whips, they were now scourged with scor- 
 pions. Every phase of their policy was assailed in the Na- 
 tional Gazette most bitterly, most fearlessly, and with a 
 persistence that was as relentless as fate. The senate held 
 its sessions with closed doors. The Gazette attacked these 
 doors with a crow-bar. Appealing to Hamilton's " great 
 beast " — the people — it says : 
 
 A motion for opening the doors of the senate chamber has 
 again been lost by a considerable majority — in defiance of instruc- 
 tion, in defiance of your opinion, in defiance of every principle 
 
 *^ Writings of Jefferson, vol. vi, pp. 106-108. 
 *® Writings of Madison, vol. i, pp. 569-570. 
 
 ^" Fenno continued to cast discredit upon Freneau's oath. 
 " Enquirer " wanted to know if Freneau took the oath reverently, 
 if he kissed the holy evangel in a pious manner. The correspond- 
 ent suspects that instead of kissing the Bible he saluted with 
 reverence a copy of Jefferson's " Notes on Virginia." A doubting 
 rhymester thus delivered himself: 
 
 To many a line in humble prose 
 Thy voice is wont to swear, 
 And once to shame thy patron's foes 
 Didst lie before the mayor. 
 Gazette of the United States, Aug., 1792. 
 
64 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [528 
 
 which gives security to free men. What means this conduct? 
 Which expression does it carry strongest with it, contempt for 
 you or tyranny? Are you freemen who ought to know the indi- 
 vidual conduct of your legislators, or are you an inferior order 
 of beings incapable of comprehending the sublimity of senatorial 
 functions, and unworthy to be entrusted with their opinions? How 
 are you to know the just from the unjust steward when they are 
 covered with the mantle of concealment? Can there be any ques- 
 tion of legislative import which freemen should not be acquainted 
 with? What are you tO' expect when stewards of your household 
 refuse to give account of their stewardship? Secrecy is necessary 
 to design and a masque to treachery; honesty shrinks not from 
 the public eye." 
 
 " The Peers of America disdain to be seen by vulgar eyes, the 
 music of their voices is harmony only for themselves and must 
 not vibrate in the ravished ear of an ungrateful and unworthy 
 multitude. Is there any congeniality excepting in the administra- 
 tion, between the government of Great Britain and the government 
 of the United States? The Senate supposes there is, and usurps 
 the secret privileges of the House of Lords. Remember, my 
 fellow citizens, that you are still freemen; let it be impressed upon 
 your minds that you depend not upon your representatives but 
 that they depend upon you, and let this truth be ever present to 
 you, that secrecy in your representatives is a worm which will 
 prey and fatten upon the vitals of your liberty.^^ 
 
 Freneau could be trusted to keep the " truth ever pres- 
 ent " before the mind of the public, and after little more 
 than a year of agitation the doors of the senate were 
 opened to the public and secrecy no longer preyed upon 
 the vitals of liberty. His hostility to Hamilton's National 
 Bank scheme was equally pronounced. To a " Truly 
 Great Man " (Washington) he addresses these lines : 
 
 George, on thy virtues often have I dwelt, 
 And still the theme is grateful to mine ear, 
 Thy gold let chemists ten times even melt 
 From dross and base alloy they'll find it clear. 
 
 Yet thou'rt a man — although perhaps, the first. 
 But man at best is but a being frail; 
 And since with error human nature's curst, 
 I marvel not that thou shouldst sometimes fail. 
 
 That thou hast long and nobly served the state 
 The nation owns, and freely gives thee thanks, 
 But, sir, whatever speculators prate. 
 She gave thee not the power to establish BANKS. 
 
 "' National Gazette, Feb., 1792. 
 
529] The Democratic Editor. 65 
 
 Probably to no other influence was the final downfall of 
 the National Bank more directly traceable than to the ha- 
 tred for it which was inspired in the minds of the people 
 by the National Gazette. Freneau was now the leading 
 editor in America. He was the oracle for all editors of 
 humble democratic sheets. In the south, where there 
 were but few newspapers, it w^as the only paper that had a 
 general circulation." The leaders of the republican party 
 left no stone unturned to get it among the people, and the 
 fifteen hundred copies of its circulation were sent where 
 they would do the most good. In the small papers of the 
 country extracts from it were published as coming from a 
 sacred source. Examine a democratic paper of the time 
 and the chances are that you will find in it a clipping from 
 the National Gazette and when the extract is found, the 
 chances are still great that it is an attack upon the National 
 Bank." Public opinion was in a formative state when 
 Freneau attacked the bank scheme, and the seeds of en- 
 mity to it which he sowed fructified in its destruction. 
 
 The strength of the paper, however, is to be found in 
 its democracy and in its perpetual harping upon the theme 
 of federal enmity to republican government and federalist 
 love of monarchy. There may have been no intention in 
 the minds of the federal leaders to abandon republican 
 forms of government as soon as expedient, yet Freneau be- 
 lieved there was and made the people believe there was; 
 and that was all that was necessary for the success of 
 democracy. 
 
 Jefiferson, as we shall see, could not be induced even by 
 Washington to forsake Freneau, and we are not surprised 
 at his loyalty, for Freneau was a thorough Jefifersonian, 
 and in the Gazette Jefferson's opinions were reflected as in 
 
 ^" In Virginia, in 1791, there were nine newspapers; in South 
 Carolina, three; in North Carolina, two; and in Georgia, two. 
 National Gazette, Nov., 1791. 
 
 "^ One of the charges against the Gazette was that it was circu- 
 lated in every state. National Gazette, March 27, 1792. 
 37 
 
66 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [530 
 
 a mirror. We can imagine the pleasure of the great demo- 
 crat in the Httle sentiments from Paine and Rousseau which 
 sparkled in the columns of the Gazette; or this morsel of 
 an epitaph for the tomb of Frederick the Great: 
 
 Here lies a king, his mortal journey done, 
 Through life a tyrant to his fellow-man; 
 Who bloody wreaths in bloody battles won — 
 Nature's worst savage since the world began. °* 
 
 In January, 1793, " Louis Capet lost his caput " — as the 
 irreverent Boston Argus put it — and France was declared 
 a republic. In May of the same year, citizen Genet, the 
 embassador of the new republic after an almost triumphal 
 journey northward from Charleston, arrived in the city of 
 Philadelphia amid the roar of cannon and the acclamations 
 of a noisy populace. War had just been declared by 
 France against England and the ebullient minister was 
 sent by his government to awaken the sympathy and se- 
 cure the aid of America in behalf of France. His mission 
 began with the brightest prospect of success. Farmers 
 and merchants offered him provisions at a lower price 
 than they would sell them to the agent of any other na- 
 tion. Six hundred thousand barrels of flour were at his 
 disposal."'' When he passed through a city, enthusiastic 
 lovers of France crowded the avenues shouting for the lib- 
 erty of the nation that had helped America to secure her 
 own freedom. At Philadelphia three thousand went out to 
 Dobb's Ferry to meet the representative of the sister re- 
 public; while a counter demonstration, gotten up by the 
 lovers of England, numbered barely three hundred. Genet 
 was banqueted on every possible occasion and toasted 
 sometimes when a toast to Washington was forgotten. 
 Men put on the tri-colored cockade, joined Jacobin clubs, 
 and restricted the form of salutation to " citizen." 
 
 Citizen Freneau was with the French heart and soul. 
 The French cause was dear to him for sentimental reasons 
 
 ^* Freneau's Poems. ^^ National Gazette, May, 1793. 
 
531] The Democratic Editor. 67 
 
 as well as for political, for, as De Lancey says, " although 
 he belonged to the third generation of his family in Ameri- 
 ca, he was as thorough a Frenchman as if he had been 
 born under the sunny skies of Provence or had drawn his 
 first breath amid the Bordelais or beneath the lofty tower 
 of an ancient chateau of historic Normandy." ^^ With the 
 warmth of a Frenchman and the boldness of an American 
 he threw the influence of his paper upon the side of the 
 French party. The interests of America became in his 
 mind identical with the interests of France. He believed 
 with John Dickinson that if " France did not succeed in 
 her contest every elective republic upon earth would be 
 annihilated and that the American repubHc would be 
 crushed at once/' As between France and England it was 
 impossible for Freneau's fervid and positive mind to pro- 
 fess neutrality. " When of two nations the one has en- 
 gaged herself in a ruinous war for us, has spent her blood 
 and money for us, has opened her bosom to us in peace 
 and has received us on a footing almost with her own citi- 
 zens, while the other has moved heaven and earth and 
 hell to exterminate us in war, has insulted us in all her 
 councils, in peace shut her doors to us in every port where 
 her interest would admit it, libelled us in foreign nations, 
 endeavored to poison them against the reception of our 
 most precious commodities: to place these two nations on 
 an equal footing is to give a great deal more to one than 
 to the other, if the maxim be true that to make unequal 
 quantities equal you must add more to one than to the 
 other. To say in excuse, that gratitude is never to enter 
 into the notions of national conduct is to revive a principle 
 which has been buried for centuries, with its kindred prin- 
 ciples of the lawfulness of assassination, perjury and poi- 
 son."" That is the way the matter appeared to Jefferson; 
 Freneau's feelings upon the subject were still stronger. 
 
 ' Edward F. De Lancey in Proceedings of the Huguenot Soc. 
 Jefferson's Works, vol. iii, p. 98. 
 
68 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [532 
 
 But the president decided that it was no time for grati- 
 tude and declared by proclamation that the United States 
 should pursue an impartial course and should grant noth- 
 ing to France that was not granted to England also. A 
 storm of disapproval burst upon the president's head 
 when this proclamation was published. Of all the voices 
 that were lifted up against his policy, none was louder and 
 none was more distinctly heard by the president or gave 
 him more discomfiture than the voice of Freneau. " Sir," 
 said the editor to the president, " Sir, let not, I beseech 
 you, the opiate of sycophancy, administered by interested 
 and designing men, lull you into a fatal lethargy at this 
 awful moment. Consider that a first magistrate in every 
 country is no other than a public servant whose conduct 
 is to be governed by the will of the people." ^* 
 
 When Genet had brought upon himself the united oppo- 
 sition of the administration and had alienated many of his 
 supporters by his high-handed actions and by his boast 
 that he would appeal from the president to the people, 
 Freneau stood by him and supported him to the last. 
 " Why all this outcry," he said, " against Mr. Genet, for 
 saying he would appeal to the people? Is the president a 
 consecrated character that an appeal from him must be 
 considered criminal? What is the legislature of the union 
 but the people in congress assembled? And is it an 
 af¥ront to appeal to them? The minister of France, I 
 hope will act with firmness and with spirit. The people 
 are his friends, or rather the friends of France, and he will 
 have nothing to apprehend, for as yet the people are sov- 
 ereign in the United States. Too much complacency is an 
 injury done his cause, for as every advantage is already 
 taken of France (not by the people) further condescension 
 may lead to further abuse. If one of the leading features 
 of our government is pusillanimity, when the British lion 
 shows his teeth, let France and her minister act as becomes 
 
 ^^ National Gazette, June, 1793. 
 
533] The Democratic Editor. 69 
 
 / 
 the dignity and justice of their cause and the honor and 
 faith of nations." '^ 
 
 This was strong language and it affected Washington 
 powerfully. Before this French interference he had never 
 been crossed in his policy, and criticism went hard with 
 him. " By God," he said in one of those passions that 
 sometimes took possession of him, " By God that he had 
 rather be in his grave than in his present situation. That 
 he had rather be on his farm than to be made emperor of 
 the world; that that rascal Freneau, sent him three copies 
 of his paper every day, as if he thought he would become 
 the distributor of his paper; that he could see nothing in 
 this but an impudent design to insult him." ^" 
 
 Washington was so sensitive and fretful upon the sub- 
 ject of Freneau that he intimated to Jefiferson that it would 
 be agreeable to him if the secretary would withdraw Fre- 
 neau's appointment as translating clerk. " But I will not 
 do it," said Jefferson. " His paper has saved our consti- 
 tution which was galloping fast into monarchy, and has been 
 checked by no one means so powerfully as by that paper. 
 It is well and universally known that it has been that 
 paper which has checked the career of the monocrats and 
 the president has not with his usual good sense looked 
 upon the efforts and effects of that free press and seen that 
 though some bad things have passed through it to the 
 public, yet the good have preponderated immensely." 
 
 Jefferson could have discharged Freneau but he could 
 not have silenced him. The sturdy editor had taken up 
 the French cause for its own sake and without regard to 
 consequences. His perfect independence in the manage- 
 ment of his paper is attested to indirectly by Jefferson in a 
 letter written to Madison after Genet had been abandoned 
 by the more discreet republicans. Speaking of Genet, 
 Jefferson says in this letter: " He has still some defend- 
 
 National Gazette, July, 1793. 
 Jefferson's Works, vol. i, p. 231. 
 
70 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [534 
 
 ers in Freneau's and Greenleafs papers. Who they are 
 I do not know/'^ This was written after Jefferson had 
 abandoned Genet. Does the language imply subserviency 
 upon the part of Freneau? If the National Gazette had 
 been under the control of Jefferson would it have con- 
 tinued to support a cause after its master had withdrawn 
 his support from the cause? 
 
 Besides being its greatest literary champion, Freneau 
 was in other ways a conspicuous figure among the pro- 
 moters of the French cause. His editorial office was a 
 rendezvous for French sympathizers; he sohcited and col- 
 lected funds to be sent to France, acting as agent for the 
 "French Society of Patriots of America." "" At the not- 
 able civic feast given in Philadelphia in honor of Genet an 
 ode in French was read, and Citizen Freneau was requested 
 to translate it into EngHsh. This the poet did in an un- 
 commonly careless and unhappy fashion. 
 
 Historians have the habit of abusing Fren.eau for the 
 part he played in the French incident and they are espe- 
 cially severe when they animadvert upon his opposition 
 to Washington. It is difficult to see why this habit has 
 not been laid aside. Freneau as a partisan of France had 
 for company the greatest and wisest of the land, patriots 
 and statesmen and scientists. The heart of America, its 
 generosity, its justice, its pride, its gratitude were all on 
 the side of giving assistance to the French. Policy alone 
 dictated neutrality. Freneau, knowing nothing of policy, 
 and failing to appreciate the wisdom of Washington's 
 course, resisted the government in its effort for neutrality. 
 Washington as the head of the government could not 
 escape criticism, and Freneau did not spare him. Yet 
 Freneau's part in the widespread and violent opposition to 
 Washington has been grossly misrepresented. After read- 
 ing the story of the French episode as it is usually told. 
 
 ®^ Jefferson's Works, vol. i, p. 
 ^^ National Gazette, July, 1793. 
 
535] The Democratic Editor. 71 
 
 one would expect to find the National Gazette filled with 
 scandalous and scurrilous attacks upon the president. As 
 a matter of fact one will find there nothing of the kind. 
 There are some pretty sulphurous passages in that paper, 
 and no wonder. There were blows to give as well as blows 
 to take. When Fisher Ames spoke of those who sup- 
 ported the French cause " as salamanders that breathed 
 only in fire, as toads that sucked in no aliment from the 
 earth but its poison, as serpents that lurked in their places 
 the better to concoct their venom," ^' — when a federalist 
 talked that way about French democrats in America, we 
 can scarcely expect the reply of the democrat to be as 
 gentle as the cooing of a dove. But the savage passages 
 in the National Gazette are not directed against Washing- 
 ton. The most offensive paragraph that can be found in 
 Freneau's paper is, unquestionably, one that comments 
 upon the president's proclamation of neutrality. It reads: 
 " I am aware, sir, that some court satellites may have 
 deceived you with respect to the sentiment of your fellow 
 citizens. The first magistrate of a country whether he be 
 called king or president seldom knows the real state of a 
 nation, particularly if he be so buoyed up by official im- 
 portance as to think it beneath his dignity to mix occa- 
 sionally with the people. Let me caution you, sir, to be- 
 ware that you do not view the state of the public mind at 
 this critical moment through a fallacious medium. Let not 
 the little buzz of the aristocratic few and their contempt- 
 ible minions of speciilators, tories and British emissaries, 
 be mistaken for the exalted and generous voice of the 
 American people." The ugliest and coarsest sentence that 
 Freneau pubHshed against Washington is to be found in 
 the paragraph just quoted. It was most certainly not writ- 
 ten by Freneau, yet he must be held responsible for it. 
 When it is examined and compared with other pasquinades 
 of the time it must be admitted that its tone was mild and 
 
 ®^ Fisher Ames' Works, vol. ii. 
 
72 
 
 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [536 
 
 decent. It is equally mild and decent when compared with 
 editorial utterances of our own day. 
 
 Personally Freneau shared the general regard and rev- 
 erence for Washington, and he let no opportunity slip for 
 paying tribute to the great man. If placed together, the 
 verses written by Freneau in Washington's praise would 
 make a comfortable little volume. Even when the French 
 trouble was at its height, he could see the greatness of the 
 man, for, in June, 1793, when Washington was probably 
 the most unpopular man in America, the poet forgot his 
 partisanship far enough to publish in his Gazette a grace- 
 ful and inspiring ode written in the president's praise. 
 
 Yet Freneau did not make an idol of Washington. His 
 working hypothesis was that the president was a man after 
 all, and he had but little patience with those who afifected 
 to see in Washington a god. It was the fashion in high 
 federal circles to twist every anti-federal sentiment or 
 movement into treason to Washington. " Would to God 
 this same Washington were in heaven," cried Senator 
 Maclay, disgusted with what he thought was Washington- 
 worship. " We would not then have him brought forward 
 as the constant cover to every unconstitutional and irre- 
 publican act." ^'' When soon after Washington's death ex- 
 travagant and even blasphemous encomiums appeared 
 from every quarter, Freneau thus rebuked their fulsome- 
 ness: 
 
 One holds you more than mortal kind, 
 One holds you all ethereal mind, 
 This puts you in your Savior's seat 
 That makes you dreadful in retreat. 
 
 One says you are become a star, 
 One makes you more resplendent far; 
 One sings that when to death you bowed 
 Old mother nature shrieked aloud. 
 
 We grieve to see such pens profane 
 The first of chiefs, the first of men; 
 To Washington — a man who died — 
 Is "Abba, father," well applied! 
 
 "* Maclay's Journal, p. 351. 
 
537] The Democratic Editor. 73 
 
 He was no god, ye flattering knaves, 
 
 He " owned no world," he ruled no waves, 
 
 But — and exalt it if you can — 
 
 He was the upright HONEST MAN. 
 
 In the autumn of 1793, Philadelphia was stricken by a 
 deadly plague. A putrid yellow fever broke out in the 
 city and thousands of victims perished. Half of the popu- 
 lation fled into the country. Government offices were 
 closed and business came to a standstill. In the general 
 depression that accompanied the pestilence Freneau suf- 
 fered with others. His list of talents did not include a 
 talent for business and the finances of his paper were badly 
 managed. Subscribers though often dunned failed to re- 
 mit; and it was upon subscriptions that the paper chiefly 
 depended, for the editor scrupulously refused to allow ad- 
 vertisements to encroach upon the space allotted to read- 
 ing matter. 
 
 On the 26th of October, the following notice was in- 
 serted in the Gazette: 
 
 With the present number (208) conclude the second volume and 
 second year's publication of the National Gazette. Having just 
 imported a considerable quantity of new and elegant type from 
 Europe, it is the editor's intention to resume the publication in a 
 short time — at the opening of the next congress. 
 Please send in subscriptions. 
 
 S^^" Printers of newspapers may no longer send in exchange 
 until further notice. 
 
 About the time of the discontinuance of the newspaper, 
 Jefiferson resigned his office, and Freneau was compelled 
 to resign his clerkship in the department of state. It is 
 not absolutely certain that a bankruptcy wound up the 
 affairs of the Gazette. The yellow fever may have driven 
 out Freneau as it drove out thousands of others. Jefifer- 
 son writing to Randolph said: " Freneau's paper is dis- 
 continued. I fear it is the want of money. I wish the 
 subscribers in our neighborhood would send in their 
 money." "" In a letter to Wm. Giles, Freneau says : " Sev- 
 
 ® Jefferson's Works, vol. vi, p. 428. 
 
74 The Political Activities of Philip Freneaii. [538 
 
 eral unfavorable circumstances have determined me to a 
 final discontinuance of the National Gazette." *"" Precisely 
 what the unfortunate circumstances were we do not know. 
 Three causes for abandoning the Gazette are suggested by 
 the facts: Shortage in subscription money, the prevalence 
 of the yellow fever, and the loss of government patronage 
 and of his clerkship through Jefiferson's resignation. The 
 publication of the paper was never resumed. Freneau as 
 an editor had done his work. 
 
 What was that work? What was the mission of the Na- 
 tional Gazette? What was its influence upon American 
 politics and upon the American mind? 
 
 We have considerable material from which we may draw 
 answers to these questions, for politicians have expressed 
 themselves freely regarding the National Gazette. For 
 Hamilton's opinion of the paper we are prepared: "As to 
 the complexion and tendency of that Gazette a reference 
 to itself is sufficient. No man who loves the government 
 or is a friend to tranquility but must reprobate it as an in- 
 cendiary and pernicious publication."*'^ And again: "If 
 you have seen some of the last numbers of the Gazette you 
 will perceive that the plot thickens and that something 
 very like a serious design to subvert the government dis- 
 closes itself." To Hamilton's mind, then, the Gazette was 
 a most dangerous foe to the government — which happened 
 to be the federalist party. 
 
 The testimony of John Adams regarding the influence 
 of Freneau is interesting. " We Federalists," he wrote to 
 Benjamin Stoddard, " are completely and totally routed 
 and defeated. If we had been blessed with common sense 
 we would not have been overthrown by Freneau, Duane, 
 Callendar or their great patron and protector." ^^ In a 
 
 ^ From a letter in the possession of the Pennsylvania Historical 
 Association. 
 
 ®^ Hamilton's Works, vol. vii, p. z^. 
 ®® John Adams' Works, vol. viii, p. 514. 
 
539] The Democratic Editor. 75 
 
 letter to Thomas Jefferson,*" Adams says: "What think 
 you of terrorism, Mr. Jefferson? I shall investigate the 
 motive, the incentive to these terrorisms. I shall remind 
 you of Philip Freneau, Lloyd, Ned Church," etc. — naming 
 other partisan writers. Late in life the aged statesman 
 said: " The causes of my retirement are to be found in the 
 writings of Freneau, Markoe, Ned Church " ^^ — and other 
 troublesome newspaper men." It will be seen that when 
 Adams begins to name the writers that have injured his 
 political fortunes, he always puts Freneau at the head of 
 the list. The Editor of the National Gazette seems to 
 have lain like an incubus upon his life. For the year 1791 
 there is but one entry in his diary and that is a jotting re- 
 specting the National Gazette. In writing to Tristam 
 Dalton in 1797 Adams says: "I have ever believed in 
 his [Jefferson's] honor, integrity, love of country and 
 friends. I may say to you that his patronage of Paine and 
 Freneau is and has long been a source of inquietude and 
 anxiety to me." '^ When it assailed Washington, Adams re- 
 joiced, saying that he himself had held the post of libellee- 
 general long enough. The following verses are a sample 
 of the writings that Adams found so destructive of his 
 peace: 
 
 TO A WOULD-BE GREAT MAN. 
 Certat tergeminis tollere honoribus. 
 
 Daddy vice, Daddy vice, 
 
 One may see in a trice 
 The drift of your fine publication; 
 
 As sure as a gun, 
 
 The thing was just done 
 To secure you — a pretty high station. 
 
 Defenses you call 
 
 To knock down your wall 
 And shatter the STATE to the ground, sir. 
 
 So thick was your shot, 
 
 And hellish fire-hot 
 They've scarce a whole bone to be found, sir. 
 
 ®'John Adams' Works, vol. ix, p. 582. 
 
 ^^ John Adams' Works, vol. iii, p. 414. 
 
 ''^ Ford's Writings of Jefferson, vol. vii, p. 108. 
 
76 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [540 
 
 When you tell us of kings, 
 And such petty things, 
 Good Mercy! how brilliant your pages! 
 So bright in each line 
 I vow now you'll shine — 
 Like — a glow worm to all future ages. 
 
 On Davilla's '^ page 
 
 Your Discourses so sage 
 Democratical numskulls bepuzzle 
 With arguments tough 
 
 As white leather or buff, 
 (The republican Bull-dog to muzzle). 
 
 Fisher Ames expressed his view of Freneau's paper as 
 a factor in politics in these words : " The manifestoes of 
 the National Gazette indicate a spirit of faction that must 
 soon come to a crisis. Every exertion is made through 
 their (the republicans') Gazette to make the people as fu- 
 rious as themselves." ^^ 
 
 Timothy D wight of Hartford, " the Metropolitan see of 
 Federalism," upon reading the Gazette was moved to ex- 
 press himself thus: "Freneau your printer, linguist, etc., 
 is regarded here as a mere incendiary and his paper is a 
 public nuisance." '* 
 
 Oliver Wolcott was not quite so severe but he hits the 
 nail pretty squarely on the head when he said that it was 
 the settled purpose of the National Gazette to destroy the 
 popularity of the leading men of our country." 
 
 Rufus King complained that the censures of the Na- 
 tional Gazette were creating a dissatisfaction with the gov- 
 ernment." 
 
 Freneau's friends have not placed on record as much 
 evidence of the great influence of the Gazette as his ene- 
 mies have left; yet they have not been silent. We have 
 already seen that Jefferson estimated the Gazette as being 
 
 " Adams' Discourses of Davilla — a treatise defending strong 
 government. 
 
 ^^ Fisher Ames' Works, vol. i, p. 128. 
 
 ''* Gibbs' Washington's and Adams' Administration, vol. i, p. 109. 
 
 ""^ Ibid. ^® Life and Correspondence of Rufus King. 
 
541] The Democratic Editor. 77 
 
 one of the strongest influences in American politics. In 
 his judgment, it was the Gazette that saved the United 
 States from drifting into monarchy. The great democrat 
 watched the paper with an anxious eye and its success 
 brought him the highest satisfaction. " Freneau's paper," 
 he wrote to a friend, " is getting into Massachusetts under 
 the patronage of Hancock and Samuel Adams, and Mr. 
 Ames the colossus of the monocrats, will either be left out 
 or have a hard run. The people of that state are republi- 
 can, but hitherto they have heard nothing but the hymns 
 and lauds of Fenno." " 
 
 James Madison was also gratified at the work which his 
 old friend was doing in the cause of democracy. " Fre- 
 neau's paper," he said, "justifies the expectations of his 
 friends and merits the diffusive circulation they have en- 
 deavored to procure it." ^* 
 
 From the contemporaries of the National Gazette, we 
 may glean some matter that will enable us to form a judg- 
 ment as to the part it played in the propaganda of demo- 
 cratic doctrine. In the unfriendly Connecticut Courant we 
 find this tribute to its influence : ^' From the National 
 Gazette whence in streams pure and smoking like a drain 
 from a whiskey distillery it is conveyed to reservoirs es- 
 tablished in every part of the community." ^' 
 
 In the friendly Independent Chronicle, of Boston, we 
 read : " As the friends of civil liberty wish at all time to 
 be acquainted with every question which appears to regard 
 the public weal, a great' number of gentlemen in this and 
 neighboring towns have subscribed for Mr. Freneau's Na- 
 tional Gazette." '" 
 
 The Halifax Journal of North Carolina attributes the de- 
 feat of Mr. Adams in that state to the discussion of his 
 career in the columns of Freneau's paper. The South 
 
 " Jefferson's Works, vol. iii, p. 491. 
 ^^ Madison's Works, vol. iv, p. 543. 
 '^ Connecticut Courant, 1792. 
 *° Boston Independent Chronicle, 1793. 
 
78 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [54^ 
 
 Carolina Gazette was so enraged by Freneau's opposition 
 to the measures of government, that it called for his pun- 
 ishment. 
 
 These utterances of friends and foes ought to give us 
 a fairly correct notion of Freneau's place in the history of 
 our politics. They teach us that he was hated and feared 
 as the greatest editor of the democratic party. His paper 
 was published in the seed-time of democracy in America.. 
 The soil of party politics was virgin and Freneau sowed 
 with a lavish hand. To the federalist mind it seemed that 
 the seeds he was sowing were dragons' teeth which would 
 one day spring up as giants and destroy society and gov- 
 ernment. Society and government were not injured by 
 the principles advocated by the editor, but the federalist 
 party was. 
 
 The part Freneau played in the making of democratic 
 sentiment may be summed up as follows : 
 
 1. He was the ablest champion of what is known as " Jef- 
 fersonian simplicity." The war which he waged upon 
 titles, distinctions, and court-like ceremonies was success- 
 ful and decisive. 
 
 2. Through his paper the strongest opposition to Ham^ 
 ilton's centralizing schemes found expression. If Freneau 
 had not early checked Fenno, it jnay be that loose con- 
 struction would have run away with the constitution. 
 
 3. Freneau's paper did much to give a French coloring 
 to our political philosophy. The doctrines of liberty, fra- 
 ternity, equality, of equal rights to all and special privi- 
 leges to none, was unwelcome to many American minds in. 
 Freneau's day, yet this was the keynote of all Freneau's 
 writings. The editor of the National Gazette was the 
 schoolmaster who drilled Jefifersonian or French Democ- 
 racy into the minds — willing or unwilling — of the Ameri- 
 can people. 
 
 Freneau's place in the history of journalism is distinct 
 and eminent. He is the prototype of the partisan editor. 
 
543] The Democratic Editor. 79 
 
 A recent student of the history of American journalism 
 thus speaks of him: 
 
 " Next to Washington, Jefferson and Hamilton, one 
 figure assumes a prominence superior to that of all others 
 engaged in the political contest, not so much perhaps by 
 the weight of his intellect as by his versatility and vivacity 
 and the keenness and the readiness of the weapons he 
 brought to the contest. We refer to Philip Freneau. 
 What Tyrtaeus was to the Spartan was Freneau to the re- 
 publicans or anti-federalists. In all the history of Ameri- 
 can letters or of the United States press there is no figure 
 more interesting or remarkable, no career more versatile 
 and varied than that of Philip Freneau." *^ 
 
 *^ Magazine of American History, vol. xvii, p. 121. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE POET OF THE WAR OF 1812 
 
 Freneau had just entered his forties when he ceased to 
 pubHsh the National Gazette. He had given two of the 
 best years of his Hfe to that paper, but there was a long 
 span still before him. Immediately upon leaving Philadel- 
 phia he went to Charleston, South Carolina, to visit his 
 brother Peter. Peter Freneau was a democratic editor 
 of repute, the Secretary of State of South Carolina, and 
 Jefferson's political manager in that state. Philip was well 
 received in Charleston and he made friendships while there 
 which were genuine and lasting. 
 
 After a pleasant sojourn of several months in the South, 
 Freneau returned to his New Jersey home. There he 
 spent a year or two doing nothing of importance, unless it 
 was to write an occasional attack upon the government and 
 print it in Bache's "Aurora," — ^just to let John Adams 
 know that Philip Freneau was still living. With letters 
 in his pocket from Jefferson and Madison recommending 
 him for " his sound discretion and extensive information " 
 the editor applied for the managership of a projected 
 newspaper in New York, but nothing came of that 
 scheme.^ We may remember that when he closed up the 
 affairs of the National Gazette he had on hand " a consid- 
 erable quantity of new and elegant type." This type he 
 seems to have removed to his old home in Mount Pleasant, 
 near Middletown Point (now Mattawan), New Jersey, 
 where he set up as a practical country printer. Following 
 the bent of his genius he tried journalism again, this time 
 in the role of a country editor. May 2, 1795, he printed 
 
 ^ Hudson's History of Journalism, p. 187. 
 
545] The Poet of the War of 1812. 81 
 
 the first number of the " Jersey Chronicle." A copy of 
 this quaint journal is preserved in the library of the New 
 York Historical Society. It is a little typographical fail- 
 ure, in the form of a quarto, precisely seven inches by eight. 
 
 Freneau made his bow to his rural constituents in these 
 lines: "The Editor in the publication of this paper pro- 
 poses among other things to present his readers w^ith a 
 complete history of the foreign and domestic events of the 
 times, together with such essays, remarks, and observa- 
 tions as shall tend to illustrate the politics or mark the 
 general character of the age and country in which we live." 
 We learn also from the paper that P. Freneau was ready 
 and willing to print Handbills and Advertisements at the 
 shortest notice, and upon the most reasonable terms. The 
 political tone of the Chronicle was of course democratic, 
 and the editor never failed to deal an opportune blow at 
 the political aspirations of John Adams and Alexander 
 Hamilton. 
 
 But the chronicle did not prosper. '' Newspapers," 
 says Hudson, " have not made their mark in New Jersey as 
 in many of the old states. Situated between New York 
 and Philadelphia, it has been placed in a position to enjoy 
 the news facilities of those two cities." " After a year of 
 struggle the editor announced the discontinuance of the 
 paper, embracing the opportunity " to return his sincere 
 thanks to such persons as had favored him with their sub- 
 scriptions and had by their punctuality enabled him to 
 issue a free, independent and republican paper." 
 
 Another literary venture of 1795 was more successful. 
 Having collected all his poems he published such as he 
 deemed worthy in an octavo volume at his own press. 
 The motley type that greets the eye in this interesting vol- 
 ume was probably set by the poet's own hands. This is 
 the most important edition of Freneau's poetical works 
 that we have. It contains nearly three hundred poems 
 written in almost every variety of metre and is " a treasury 
 
 ^ Hudson's Journalism in the United States, p. 187. 
 38 
 
82 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [546 
 
 of song, tale, satire, epigram and description." In this 
 leather-bound, worm-eaten volume is to be found nearly 
 all that is good, as well as nearly all that is inferior in 
 Freneau. The inferior forms the larger part of the book, 
 to be sure, but there is enough genuine poetry scattered 
 through the volume to keep it utterly from perishing. His 
 volume of 1787 has been deemed worthy of being reprinted 
 in recent years; the volume of 1795 is still more worthy of 
 being rescued from oblivion. 
 
 Freneau was not at all disheartened by the failure of the 
 Chronicle. He had lived all his life amid the wreck of 
 newspapers, and for one to go down was to him the most 
 natural thing in the world. Hardly had the little rustic 
 sheet succumbed than he tried his luck again. In March, 
 1797, in the city of New York, he offered to the reading 
 public the first number of his "Time-Piece and Literary 
 Companion." 
 
 This paper was to be a " vehicle for the diffusion of lit- 
 erary knowledge, news, and liberal amusement in general." 
 At first Freneau associated with him as printer one A. 
 Menut, a Canadian. Menut in a short time dropped out 
 and M. L. Davis, a democratic politician of some import- 
 ance, took his place. Freneau and Davis managed (or 
 mismanaged) the paper until March, 1798, when Freneau 
 withdrew and left Davis the sole manager. Davis kept 
 the paper going until August, 1798, when the Time-Piece 
 went the way of the other ventures. 
 
 The Time-Piece is an interesting potpourri of literary 
 performances, ranging from discussions upon the cultiva- 
 tion of pumpkins, to schemes for the reorganization of so- 
 ciety upon principles of natural right. The political senti- 
 ments of the paper were of the purest Jefifersonian quality. 
 It declared for rotation in office, pure and frequent elec- 
 tions, a free church, a free press, and the abolition of entails. 
 As one turns over the leaves of this rare file one cannot but 
 praise the versatility and tact of the editor in catering to 
 the public taste. 
 
 When the yellow fever broke out in Philadelphia, Fre- 
 
547] The Poet of the War of 1812. 83 
 
 neau had removed his family to his old home in Mount 
 Pleasant where a portion of his inheritance still remained 
 to him. In this quiet village (the name of which, by the 
 way has recently been changed to Freneau) the poet, when 
 not upon the sea, spent most of the remaining years of his 
 life. In his retirement his literary activity did not cease. 
 The magazines of the day welcomed his poetry and he 
 contributed to them constantly. Among those occasional 
 pieces we find one upon the death of Washington. It is 
 a gracious tribute, and bespeaks magnanimity and large- 
 heartedness; for the truth is, Freneau had no reason to 
 love Washington. The country, however, had reason to 
 love its great chief, and Freneau sang the songs of his 
 country. 
 
 As a publicist he still couched a lance for the republi- 
 can party. His political pieces generally appeared in 
 Bache's Aurora, the political successor of the National Ga- 
 zette. In 1799, he collected a few of these productions 
 and had them printed in a small octavo volume under the 
 title: "Letters on Various Interesting and Important 
 Subjects, many of which have appeared in the Aurora. 
 Corrected and Much Enlarged. By Robert Slender, O. S. 
 M." 
 
 O. S. M., being interpreted, is, *' One of the Swinish 
 Multitude." These essays were very spicy and some of 
 them illustrate excellently Freneau's method of striking at 
 a political enemy. For instance, here is one which shows 
 how he went about making life unpleasant for John Adams, 
 and incidentally damaging the chances of the second presi- 
 dent for a second term: 
 
 The Epitaph of Jonathan Robbins.^ 
 (Robert Slender, LoquiUir.) 
 I have just seen the end of Robbins, poor, brave, in- 
 jured, betrayed, unfortunate Robbins. I have seen him 
 
 ^ This Robbins was a sailor who was delivered up to the English 
 by the order of an American court, and was hanged on the charge 
 of inciting mutiny on board the English frigate Hermione. 
 Robbins claimed to be an American citizen, and much political 
 capital was made out of the episode. 
 
84 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [548 
 
 with my " minds eye " as Hamlet says, and a horrid spec- 
 tacle it was. I have just been composing his epitaph, that 
 will go down to posterity on the faithful and impartial page 
 of history. Here it is: 
 
 Reader 
 
 If thou be a Christian and a Freeman, 
 
 consider 
 
 by what unexampled causes 
 
 It has been necessary to construct 
 
 This monument 
 
 of national degradation 
 
 and 
 
 Individual injustice; 
 
 which is erected 
 
 To THE MEMORY of a Citizen of the United States, 
 
 JONATHAN ROBBINS, MARINER, 
 
 A native of Danbury, in the pious and industrious state of 
 
 Connecticut: 
 
 who 
 
 Under the PRESIDENCY OF JOHN ADAMS, 
 
 And by his advice, 
 
 Timothy Pickering being Secretary of State, 
 
 Was delivered up to the British government, 
 
 By whom he was ignominiously put to death; 
 
 because, 
 
 Though an American Citizen, 
 
 He was barbarously forced into the service of his country's 
 
 worst enemy 
 
 and compelled to fight 
 
 Against his conscience and his country's good 
 
 On board the British frigate Hermione 
 
 Commanded by a monster of the name of Pigot. 
 
 He 
 
 Bravely asserted his rights to freedom as a man and boldly 
 
 Extricated himself from the 'bondage of his tyrannical 
 
 Oppressors 
 
 After devoting them to merited destruction. 
 
 If you are a seaman 
 
 Pause : — 
 
 Cast your eyes into your soul and ask 
 
 If you had been as Robbins was 
 
 What would you have done? 
 
 What ought you not to do? 
 
 And look at Robbins 
 
 Hanging at a British yard-arm! 
 
 He was your comrade — 
 
 And as true a tar as ever strapped a block: 
 
 He was your fellow-citizen. 
 
 And as brave a heart as bled at Lexington or Trenton. 
 
549] The Poet of the War of 1812. 85 
 
 Like you 
 
 He was a member of a Republic 
 
 Proud of past glories 
 
 and 
 
 Boastful of national honor, virtue, and independence. 
 
 Like him 
 
 You may one day be trussed up to satiate British vengeance, 
 
 Your heinous crime 
 
 daring to prefer danger or death 
 
 To a base bondage — 
 
 Alas, poor Robbins! 
 
 Alas, poor Liberty! 
 
 Alas, my Country! 
 
 In the following we see Freneau as a campaign swash- 
 buckler : 
 
 OYEZIl! 
 
 " Robert Slender, to the aristocrat, the democrat, the would- 
 be noble, ex-noble, the snug farmer, the lowly plebeian, the 
 bishops and clergy, reverend and right reverend, doctors, and 
 V. O. M.'s little men or title men, gentlemen and simple men, 
 laymen and draymen, and all other men except hangmen (to 
 whom he hath an aversion) throughout this great and flourishing 
 STATE sendeth greeting: 
 
 *' Whereas a great and important day draweth near in which you 
 are to exercise a great right, no less than to choose, elect, set 
 apart, solemnly dedicate, appoint and highly honor either Thomas 
 McKean, chief judge of Pennsylvania, or James Ross, practitioner 
 at law, with the high sounding title, power and authority of Gov- 
 ernor of the State — Having thrown off his apron, laid aside his 
 tools, and neglected for a small time the honorable and ancient 
 employment of shoe-mending, he hath an account of the great 
 division, dissension and contradiction that exists, the fictions, lies, 
 stories, calumnies, misinterprg^tions, wrong interpretations, asser- 
 tions and computations, thoi^it proper not to address one of you 
 but all of you, to call upon you in the most solemn manner, to be 
 upon your guard, to open your ears and attend to even a mender 
 of shoes. 
 
 " Ye aristocrats and great men, whether merchants, doctors, 
 proctors or lawyers, who sigh for greatness and long for dominion, 
 whose hearts yearn for the glory of a crown, the splendor of a 
 court, or the sweet marrow bones that are to be picked in his 
 majesty's kitchen, whose eyes ache painfully once again to see 
 the stars, crosses, crescents, coronets, with all the hieroglyphical, 
 enigmatical, emblematical and all the other cals including rascals, 
 which adorn the courts of kings — give a strong, true and decided 
 vote for James Ross, who supports, approves, hopes for, longs for, 
 and sighs for all these. 
 
86 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [550 
 
 " Ye bishops and clergy, adorers of the triple crown, the mitre, 
 the sable, the high seat in civil power, the much longed for and 
 established church, and the ancient and profligate thing called 
 tithes unite your forces, set Christianity at a defiance and give a 
 firm vote for James Ross. 
 
 " Ye old tories and refugees, British spies, speculators, guides 
 and pensioners, approvers of British policy, aimers and designers, 
 who in your hearts wish again to crouch under the protecting paw 
 of the British lion — arrange your forces and give a fair vote for 
 James Ross. — He is your sincere friend. 
 
 " Ye, supporters of the British treaty, alien bill, stamp act, 
 excise, standing army, funding system, who believe that a public 
 debt is a public blessing, who say that republicanism is anything 
 or nothing, and maintain that treaties made under the sanction of 
 the Constitution are superior to it — draw near — be not idle on the 
 day of election, support James Ross; he thinks as ye do, acts as 
 you act, and will follow where you lead. 
 
 " Ye democrats, soldiers of '76, ye supporters of our independ- 
 ence, ye quellers of Great Britain, ye Americans in heart and in 
 hand draw near, remember that Thomas McKean is your brother, 
 the firm freeman, and the real christian — give him your vote. 
 
 " Ye free-born Americans, whose hearts beat high for liberty and 
 independence, who fear not the threats and disdain the power of all 
 the tyrants on earth, assert your rights, make known that ye have 
 not forgotten the late struggle, that the mean devices and shallow 
 arguments of the X Y and Z's of the present day are not able to 
 trick you out of your liberty or to make you the tools of a foreign 
 despot — vote for Thomas McKean — the constant asserter of your 
 rights and liberties. 
 
 " Ye honest, ye independent, ye virtuous farmers, who sincerely 
 wish to support that unequalled and glorious instrument, the 
 Constitution of the United States, untarnished and unadulterated 
 that ye may have it whole and entire, a sacred deposit to pos- 
 terity, your best interest is at stake, join not with that troop but 
 give an honest vote for Thomas T^Kean, the asserter, the sup- 
 porter and defender of the invaluabre rights of his country. 
 
 " Ye honest and industrious mechanics who daily sweat for the 
 support of your families, who in the hour of danger are ever found 
 foremost in the ranks to defend your own and your country's 
 rights, vote for Thomas McKean, whom great men cannot make 
 wink at injustice and oppression. 
 
 " Let Porcupine growl, Liston pet, the long list of English 
 agents, speculators, approvers of the fate of Jonathan Robbins, 
 tories and refugees, gnash their teeth in vain; be true to your 
 country, proof against bribery, true to posterity, true to your- 
 selves, arrange ye under the banner of freedom and once more 
 conquer, let the word be LIBERTY and McKEAN! " 
 
 Freneau promised that if this volume should prove suc- 
 cessful another would follow, but no such encouragement 
 
551] The Poet of the War of 1812. 87 
 
 followed. When these pieces came out in the Aurora they 
 were interesting, but they were of a day. The volume 
 seems to have fallen flat and a second collection of Mr. 
 Robert Slender's Essays did not appear. 
 
 Write and edit and reprint as much as he would, Fre- 
 neau could not get a living out of literature. To provide 
 for his family the poet again went down to the sea and, 
 about the year 1799, became the captain of a merchant- 
 man. For seven or eight years from this date it is hard 
 to keep trace of him. It is only from poems commemo- 
 rative of scenes or events upon his voyages that we are 
 enabled to get an occasional glimpse of him. In 1801, he 
 was on the island of St. Thomas, and two years later upon 
 the island of Madeira. While strolling around in the ele- 
 gant shades of Madeira, Freneau, coming up with the 
 god Bacchus, Prince of Madeira, straightway indited him 
 an ode: 
 
 I met him with awe, but no symptoms of fear, 
 
 As I roved by his mountains and springs, 
 
 When he said with a sneer, " How dare you come here 
 
 You hater of despots and kings?" 
 
 " Haste away with your barque on the foam of the main, 
 To Charleston, I bid you repair; 
 There drink your Jamaica that maddens the brain. 
 You shall have no Madeira, I swear.' 
 
 But Freneau conciliated the god and sampling some of 
 his choicest wines heaped upon him and them unstinted 
 praise. As Freneau grew older his praise for Bacchus 
 mounted higher and was sounded oftener. When a poet 
 dwells fondly on this theme, one suspects that he is tak- 
 ing too much to strong drink. There is a reason to think 
 Freneau was no exception to the rule. 
 
 In 1804, Captain Freneau sailed to the Canary Islands. 
 While upon Tenerifife, he was invited to visit a celebrated 
 nunnery there. He declined the invitation in verse. Thus 
 we may see that a stretch of years was passed upon the 
 deep, sailing sometimes from New York, sometimes from 
 
88 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [552 
 
 Charleston to the West Indies and the remote islands of 
 the Atlantic. 
 
 In 1807 the poet-captain abandoned his vocation as_ a 
 sailor never to resume it* On a return voyage, as he ap- 
 proached the heights of Navesink behind which a few miles 
 away lay his home, a longing for retirement seized upon 
 hini. 
 
 Proud heights with pain so often seen, 
 
 (With joy beheld once more) 
 
 On your firm base I take my stand 
 
 Tenacious of the shore. 
 
 Let those who pant for wealth or fame 
 
 Pursue the watery road. 
 
 Soft sleep and ease, blest days and nights, 
 
 And health attend these favorite heights, 
 
 Retirement's blest abode. 
 
 In a letter to Jefferson written in 181 5 he thus writes of 
 his retirement: ''Since my last return from the Canary 
 Islands in 1807 to Charleston and from thence to New 
 York with my brigantine Washington, quitting the bustle 
 and distraction of active life, my walks have been confined, 
 with now and then a short excursion, to the neighborhood 
 of Navesink Hills and under some old hereditary trees 
 and on some fields which I well recollect for sixty years. 
 During the last seven years my pen could not be entirely 
 idle and for amusement only now and then I had recourse 
 to my old habits of scribbling verse." ^ 
 
 Freneau was fifty-five years of age when he withdrew 
 from serious occupation. Hitherto his life had been one 
 uninterrupted storm; henceforth it was to be one long 
 calm. It is a pleasant picture which he draws of himself 
 in his quiet home. 
 
 Happy the man who safe on shore, 
 Now trims at home his evening fire; 
 Unmoved he hears the tempests roar, 
 That on the tufted groves expire. 
 
 * Jefferson's MS. in Archives of State Department at Washington. 
 ^Jefferson's MSS. in Archives of the State Department at Wash- 
 ington. 
 
553] The Poet of the War of 1812. 89 
 
 Although poUtics and the sea were forsaken, Freneau 
 remained faithful to his muse. His ruling passion was 
 strong to the last. No passing event worthy of commemo- 
 ration was allowed to go unsung. In 1809 he prepared 
 for the press a fourth edition of his poems, the work ap- 
 pearing in two volumes neatly printed with striking cuts 
 for frontispieces. 
 
 " These poems," the author tells us, " were intended to 
 expose to vice and treason their hideous deformity; to 
 depict virtue, honor and patriotism in their natural beauty. 
 To his countrymen in the Revolution, to Republicans and 
 the rising generation who are attached to their sentiments 
 and principles, the writer hopes this collection will not 
 prove unacceptable." The book was gotten out on the 
 strength of a subscription and in the first volume are 
 printed the names of the subscribers. The subscription 
 plan was set a-going by the publishers without the author's 
 knowledge or approbation. Thomas Jefferson subscribed 
 for ten volumes. In Jefferson's letter to Freneau promis- 
 ing a subscription, he says : " I subscribe with pleasure to 
 the publication of your volume of poems. I anticipate 
 the same pleasure from them which the perusal of those 
 
 heretofore published has given me Under the shade 
 
 of a tree one of your volumes will be a pleasant pocket 
 companion. Wishing you all possible success and happi- 
 ness, I salute you with constant esteem and respect." ° 
 James Madison, then president, also subscribed for ten 
 volumes. The popularity of the poet seems to have been 
 greatest in Pennsylvania. In Philadelphia a bookseller 
 subscribed for 200 copies; in Lancaster a dealer engaged 
 to take 150 copies. A host of subscribers came from 
 South Carolina where the name of Freneau was held in 
 high esteem. In all, about one thousand copies were 
 taken by subscription. We must not despise this small 
 number. Looked at in its relation to the number of 
 
 ^Jefferson's MS. in Archives of the State Department at Wash- 
 ington. 
 
90 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [554 
 
 people, it is as large as an edition of ten or fifteen thous- 
 and copies to-day would be. What poet of our time can 
 do better with his fourth edition? 
 
 The edition of 1809 is neither so picturesque nor so 
 valuable as the edition of 1795. Many of the poems of 
 the earlier volume have been crowded out for the later 
 performances, and rarely has there been any gain by the 
 substitution. Nevertheless in the six hundred pages of the 
 two volumes there was more good poetry than any Ameri- 
 can writer had yet produced, for in 1809, be it remembered 
 Longfellow was but two years old, Poe and Holmes were 
 infants, Bryant had just entered his teens and Lowell was 
 not yet born. 
 
 The clash of arms that announced for the second time 
 American resistance to British aggression was a signal 
 for the old poet to tune his harp anew. As he had been 
 the poet of the Revolution so now he became the poet of 
 the war of 1812. Nothing throughout his life gave him 
 more pleasure than to extol his countrymen at the expense 
 of England. It was the poet's way of indulging hatred. 
 He followed closely the progress of the second war and 
 many a ballad from his pen celebrated the glory of our 
 armies upon land and upon sea. His pieces, we are told, 
 were held in great favor by sailors, and were for many 
 years reprinted in broadsides and sold at all our ports.'' 
 In 181 5, he collected most of these martial performances 
 and printed them in two small volumes at the press of 
 David Longworth, of New York city. On the title page 
 of this rare and forgotten edition the poet thus bids de- 
 fiance to England:^ 
 
 Then England come! a sense of wrong requires 
 To meet with thirteen stars your thousand fires, 
 Through these stern times the conflict to maintain, 
 Or drown them with your commerce in the main. 
 
 '^ Griswold's American Poets, p. 34. 
 
 * The title is: A collection of Poems on American Affairs, and a 
 variety of other subjects chiefly moral and political. By Philip 
 Freneau, 
 
555] The Poet of the War of 1812. 91 
 
 The theme of the first poem of these volumes of his old 
 age is the theme of his life — democracy. In the opening 
 lines we recognize the philosophy of Jefferson and the 
 policy of Madison: 
 
 Left to himself, where'er man is found, 
 
 In peace he aims to walk Hfe's little round, 
 
 In peace to sail, in peace to till the soil. 
 
 Nor force false grandeur from a brother's toil; 
 
 All but the base, designing, scheming few 
 
 Who seize on nations with a robber's view. 
 
 These, these with armies, navies potent grown, 
 
 Impoverish man and bid the nation moan; 
 
 These with pretended balances of state 
 
 Keep worlds at variance, breed eternal hate, 
 
 Make man the poor, base slave of low design, 
 
 Degrade the nature to its last decline. 
 
 Shed hell's worst blots on his exalted race, 
 
 And make them fear, and mean to make them base. 
 
 The following stanzas were written when England had 
 about reached the end of her tether in her policy of terror- 
 izing American commerce and when war was about to be 
 declared. They are bad from the critic's point of view, but 
 there is a ring and a movement about them which is dis- 
 tinctly bellicose and which must have been taking with 
 those who wanted to fight. 
 
 Americans! rouse at the rumors of war 
 
 Which now are distracting the hearts of the nation, 
 
 A flame blowing up to extinguish your power. 
 
 And leave you a prey to another invasion; 
 
 A second invasion as bad as the old. 
 
 When, northward or southward wherever they strolled. 
 
 With heart and with hand, a murdering band. 
 
 Of vagrants come over to ravage your land; 
 
 For liberty's guard you are ever arrayed, 
 
 And know how to fight in sun or in shade. 
 
 Remember the cause that induced you to rise. 
 
 When oppression advanced with her king making boast, 
 
 'Twas the cause of our nation that bade you despise, 
 
 And drive to destruction all England's proud host. 
 
 Who with musket and sword, under men they adored. 
 
 Rushed into each village and rifled each shade, 
 
 To murder the planter and ravish the maid. 
 
92 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [556 
 
 All true-born Americans join as of old 
 
 For Freedom's defense be your firm resolution; 
 
 Whoever invades you by force or by gold, 
 
 Alike is a foe to a free constitution; 
 
 Unite to pull down that imposture, a crown. 
 
 Oppose it, at least, 'tis a mark of the beast, 
 
 All tyranny's engines again are at work 
 
 To make you as poor and as base as the Turk. 
 
 After the best is said, it must be confessed that Fre- 
 neau's last work was his worst. The edition of 1815, like 
 most of his poetry, consisted chiefly of occasional pieces 
 and it is the usual fate of occasional pieces to be speedily 
 forgotten. The volume was reviewed in the '' Analectic 
 Magazine " — a New York periodical — in a kindly tone. 
 " A considerable part of the present collection," wrote the 
 critic, " relates to the transactions of the late war and 
 scarcely a memorable incident either on land or water has 
 escaped the glance of his ever-vigilant and indefatigable 
 muse. He depicts land and naval fights with much anima- 
 tion and gay coloring, and being himself a son of old Nep- 
 tune, he is never at a loss for appropriate circumstances 
 and expressive dictum when the scene lies at sea. His 
 martial and political ballads are free from bombast and 
 affectation and often have an arch simplicity of manner 
 that renders them striking and poignant. The strains of 
 Freneau are calculated to impart patriotic impulses to the 
 hearts of his countrymen and their effect in this way should 
 be taken as a test of their merit." ^ 
 
 With the war of 1812 and the appearance of the poems 
 just noticed, Freneau's career as a writer ended. A short 
 poem under his name may now and then be found in the 
 magazines and newspapers up almost to the time of his 
 death, but writing was no longer a serious business with 
 him. His last years were spent in rural retirement in his 
 New Jersey home. He was, however, far from being a 
 recluse. New York was easily accessible by boat and he 
 frequently visited the scenes of his better days. He could 
 
 ' Analectic Magazine, 1815. 
 
557] The Poet of the War of 1812. 93 
 
 not forget his old democratic friends and they do not seem 
 to have forgotten him. Jefferson, when president, is said 
 to have remembered him with special favor. The story 
 goes that Jefferson sent to Frene'au asking him to come to 
 Washington on important business, and that the poet re- 
 plied in these words: "Tell Thomas Jefferson that he 
 knows where Philip Freneau lives and if he has important 
 business with him let him come to Philip Freneau's house 
 and transact it." This bumptiousness (if Freneau was 
 really guilty of using these words), did not alienate Jeffer- 
 son, for later he tendered the poet an office under the gov- 
 ernment. The position was declined.^" 
 
 In New York literary circles he was affectionately re- 
 ceived as the '' Veteran Bard of the Revolution." We 
 have a charming account of the personal life of the poet 
 in his old age, written by one who knew him well. The 
 sketch is rambling and somewhat garrulous, yet it is so 
 graphic that it must be quoted at length :" " Freneau was 
 widely known to a large circle of our most prominent and 
 patriotic New Yorkers. His native city, with all his wan- 
 derings, was ever uppermost in his mind and affections. 
 
 He was esteemed a true patriot, and his private 
 
 worth, his courteous manner and his general bearing won 
 admiration with all parties. His pen was more acri- 
 monious than his heart. He was tolerant, frank in expres- 
 sion, and not deficient in geniality. He was highly culti- 
 vated in classical knowledge, abounding in anecdotes of 
 the revolutionary crisis, and extensively acquainted with 
 prominent characters. 
 
 " It was easy to record a long list of eminent citizens who 
 ever gave him a cordial welcome. He was received with 
 the warmest greetings by the old soldier. Governor George 
 
 '" New Bedford Mercury, 1884. 
 
 " The quotation is from the pen of Dr. J. W. Francis, a former 
 president of the New York Historical Society. It was written at 
 the request of E. A. Duyckinck, who wished it for his article on 
 Freneau in his Cyclopedia of American Literature. 
 
94 The Political Activities of Philip Frcneau. [558 
 
 Clinton. He also found agreeable pastime with the learned 
 Provoost, the first regularly consecrated Bishop of the 
 American Protestant Episcopate, who himself shouldered 
 a musket in the revolution and hence was called the fight- 
 ing Bishop. They were allied by classical tastes, a love of 
 natural science and ardor in the cause of liberty. With 
 Gates he compared the achievements of Monmouth with 
 those of Saratoga; with Col. Fish he reviewed the capture 
 of Yorktown; with Dr. Mitchell he rehearsed from his own 
 sad experience the phvsical sufiferings and various diseases 
 of the incarcerated patriots of the Jersey prison-ship; and 
 descanted on Italian Poetry and the piscatory eclogues of 
 Sannazius. He, doubtless, furnished Dr. Benjamin De 
 Witt with data for his funeral discourse on the remains 
 of the 11,500 American Martyrs. With Pintard he could 
 laud Horace and talk largely of Jones ; with Sylvanus Mil- 
 ler he compared notes on the political clubs of 1795-1810. 
 He shared Paine's vision of an ideal democracy. 
 
 " I had when very young read the poetry of Freneau 
 and as we instinctively become attached to the writers who 
 first captivate our imaginations, it was with much zest 
 that I formed a personal acquaintance with the revolu- 
 tionary bard. He was at that time about seventy-six years 
 old when he first introduced himself into my library. I 
 gave him a hearty welcome. 
 
 " New York, the city of his birth, was his most intimate 
 theme; his collegiate career with Madison, next. His 
 story of many of his occasional poems was quite romantic. 
 As he had at command types and a printing-press, when an 
 incident of moment in the Revolution occurred he would 
 retire for composition or find shelter under the shade of 
 some tree, indite his lyric, repair to the press, set up his 
 types, and issue his productions. There was no difficulty 
 in versification with him. I told him what I had heard 
 Jeffrey, the Scotch Reviewer say of his writings, that the 
 time would arrive when his poetry like that of Hudibras, 
 would command a commentator like Gray. 
 
559] The Poet of the War of 1812. 95 
 
 " It is remarkable how Freneau preserved the acquisi- 
 tions of his early classical studies, notwithstanding he had 
 for many years in the after portion of his life been occu- 
 pied in pursuits so entirely alien to books. 
 
 *' There is no portrait'' of the patriot Freneau; he always 
 decHned the painter's art and could brook no counterfeit 
 presentment." 
 
 Nearly twenty years of life after his work was over, were 
 left to the poet in which he might mingle with old asso- 
 ciates and discuss the past. It is regrettable that the dis- 
 cussion was too often conducted at the tavern over the 
 flowing bowl. When the old bard looked back upon the 
 road he had travelled, he saw it rough and stony; when 
 he looked forward to the little journey that remained, the 
 prospect was still barren and forbidding. His once ample 
 estate had nearly slipped out of his hands. The records 
 of the county court tell of sales of portions of the land of 
 Philip Freneau and of foreclosures of mortgages upon his 
 property." 
 
 A short time after the war of 1812, while the poet and 
 
 his family were at church, his house at Mount Pleasant 
 
 was burned and all his correspondence and unpublished 
 
 writings were consumed. One cannot help wishing that 
 
 the letters he had received from Madison and Jefferson 
 
 might have been saved. Freneau, reduced now almost to 
 
 poverty, removed his family to a farm-house situated about 
 
 two and a half miles from the village of Freehold. This 
 
 house was occupied by the poet until his death. It still 
 
 stands as a reminder of his worst days, when 
 
 "The joys of wine are all his boast; 
 These for a moment damped his pain, 
 The gleam is o'er, the charm is lost, 
 And darkness clouds the soul again." " 
 
 " The portrait as usually given of Freneau is not genuine. It was 
 sketched by an artist at the suggestion and according to the rep- 
 resentation of members of the poet's family. It is pronounced by 
 those who knew the original to be a fair visualization of the man 
 as he appeared at maturity of life. Poems of the Revolution, 
 p. xxxi. 
 
 " Records of Monmouth County Court, 1823, 1826. " Freneau. 
 
96 The Political Activities of Philip Freneaii. [560 
 
 One stormy night in December, 1832, the old man left 
 Freehold to walk to his home. " He crossed a bog- 
 meadow to shorten the distance. The blinding snow be- 
 wildered him and he lost his way and sank in the morass. 
 He succeeded in getting out and gaining dry ground, but 
 in attempting to climb a fence he fell and broke his hip. 
 When discovered he was lying under an apple-tree at the 
 edge of the meadow — dead." ^' 
 
 About two hundred yards from the spot where Freneau 
 lived in Mount Pleasant is a neat monument bearing this 
 inscription: 
 
 POET'S GRAVE. 
 
 PHILIP FRENEAU, 
 
 Died Dec. 18, 1832. 
 
 Age 80 years, 11 months, 16 days. 
 
 He was a native of New York, but for many 
 years a resident of Philadelphia and New Jersey. 
 
 His upright and benevolent character is the mem- 
 ory of many and will remain when this inscription 
 is no longer legible. 
 
 " Heaven lifts its everlasting portals high 
 And bids the pure in heart behold their God." 
 
 ^^ New Bedford Mercury, 1884. De Lancey suggests that Fre- 
 neau was caught in a " blizzard," and it is likely that he was, for 
 the New York paper of Dec. 18, 1832, contains an account of a 
 violent snow storm. See Albany Daily Advertiser, Dec. 18, 1832, 
 
CHAPTER V 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 We may fitly close this sketch by looking over Freneau's 
 career and making an estimate of his personal character. 
 It is important to do this, for a just conception of Fre- 
 neau's character must be entertained before a nice judg- 
 ment upon some points in our political history can be 
 rendered. 
 
 In its outward aspects Freneau's life was a failure. As a 
 man of genius he availed himself of the undisputed privi- 
 lege of that class to be unsuccessful in pecuniary matters. 
 It was the fashion for our revolutionary heroes to lan- 
 guish in jail for debt and to die forgotten and penniless. 
 Freneau's lifeless corpse under the apple-tree reminds us 
 of the sad fate of Robert Morris and .Charles Henry Lee 
 and Joel Barlow. The poet inherited a comfortable for- 
 tune, but this was dissipated long before his death. For 
 many years he lived from hand to mouth. We have seen 
 that he was intemperate. This was also a privilege in 
 Freneau's day, denied to no one, whether to poet or to 
 preacher. Notwithstanding these shortcomings, we do not 
 find that Freneau was a bankrupt either in character or in 
 reputation. On the contrary we have positive evidence 
 that his manhood was sound. James Madison speaks of 
 his '' spotless integrity." His publishers have nothing but 
 praise for his worth as a gentleman and a scholar. His 
 friends in New York remembered him as tolerant, pol- 
 ished and genial."^ A lady who was a neighbor of Freneau 
 and who frequently visited his house told me (in 1898) 
 that his uprightness and honesty were never called into 
 
 ^ Encyclopedia of American Literature, vol. i, p. 333. 
 39 
 
98 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [562 
 
 question. " He died universally loved and regretted by 
 all who knew him/' was the tribute of his old friend John 
 Pintard.^ The sturdiness of his nature was illustrated in 
 the management of the National Gazette. After his great 
 patron Jefiferson had abandoned the cause of the French, 
 Freneau with characteristic imprudence and independence, 
 continued to pour his broadsides into the friends of neu- 
 trality. 
 
 In matters of religion Freneau was indifferent. He 
 subscribed outwardly to orthodox forms, not because he 
 thought they were true, but because he thought they were 
 useful. He was steeped in the philosophy of Rousseau and 
 Condorcet. For the human mind as well as for human 
 institutions he demanded the utmost freedom. 
 
 " Oh, impotent and vile as vain 
 They who would the native thought restrain! 
 As soon might they arrest the storm. 
 Or take from fire the power to warm. 
 As man compel by dint of might 
 Old darkness to prefer to light. 
 
 " No, leave the mind unchained and free 
 And what they ought mankind will be; 
 No hypocrite, no lurking fiend. 
 No artist, to some evil end. 
 But good and great, benign and just 
 As God and nature made them first.^ 
 
 Like many other poets from David to our own time, 
 Freneau was a pantheist. 
 
 " All that we see, above, abroad. 
 What is it all but nature's God? " 
 
 Like that of many poets, it may be added — like that, 
 for instance of Addison or of Steele — his religion was of 
 very little consequence to himself or to any one else. 
 Nevertheless, he tells us that it extended to '' a practice 
 of the golden rule, as far as weak nature would permit." ' 
 
 ^ New York Mirror, January, 1833. 
 ^ Freneau's Poems, 1815 edition. 
 * Essays, Robert Slender, p. 49. 
 
563] Conclusion. 99 
 
 For the austerities of life he had too much contempt. His 
 impatience with puritanism finds an expression in the fol- 
 lowing verses on " The Puritans ": 
 
 On Sunday their faces were dark as a cloud, 
 
 The road to their meeting was only allowed, 
 
 And those they caught rambling on business or pleasure 
 
 Were sent to the stocks to repent at their leisure. 
 
 This day was the mournfullest day in the week; 
 Except in religion none ventured to-speak. 
 This day was the day to examine their lives, 
 To clear off old scores and preach to their wives. 
 
 In the school of oppression though woefully taught, 
 
 'Twas only to be the oppressors they sought; 
 
 All, all but themselves were bedevilled and blind, 
 
 And their narrow-souled creed was to serve all mankind. 
 
 This beautiful system of nature below. 
 They neither considered or wanted to know; 
 And called it a dog-house wherein they were pent — 
 Unworthy themselves and their mighty descent. 
 
 Such writing as this brought upon Freneau the wrath 
 of his New England contemporaries, and earned for him 
 much unwarranted abuse. In Connecticut and Massachu- 
 setts the newspapers of his day referred to him as an 
 atheist and the foe of good government, and fame has 
 transmitted this opinion of the man to our own times. 
 Yet there is nothing in the history of Freneau's life to jus- 
 tify such an unfavorable judgment. He was a man of 
 strong conviction and strong utterance and many suffered 
 from the freedom of his lance. A careful examination of 
 his long life, however, reveals nothing in him that was base 
 or low. 
 
 With this knowledge of the man's character we are pre- 
 pared to take up a story that has thrown discredit upon his 
 name and upon the name of Jefferson. The story is that 
 Freneau in his old age said that Jefferson did write for 
 the National Gazette; that, indeed, he wrote the most 
 offensive articles that appeared in that paper. In other 
 words, we are told that Freneau admitted that he had 
 
 LefC. 
 
100 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [564 
 
 sworn to a lie when he swore before the Mayor of Phila- 
 delphia that Jefferson never wrote a line directly, or indi- 
 rectly, for the Gazette. This is the way the story comes 
 down to us: Griswold, an encyclopedia maker, said that 
 Dr. John W. Francis said that Freneau told him that Jef- 
 ferson wrote for the Gazette. This statement if true would 
 make both Freneau and Jefferson the clumsiest of liars. 
 From the nature of the story it cannot be absolutely dis- 
 proved, but there are strong considerations for not accept- 
 ing it. 
 
 In the first place, Griswold is extremely unreliable. It 
 is not meant that the learned preacher would deliberately 
 put into print what he knew to be false, but it is meant 
 that he was shockingly careless about getting things right. 
 In illustration of this we may take the first page of the 
 first edition (1842) of the " Poets and Poetry of America," 
 where he attempts to sketch Freneau's life. It would be 
 difficult to find a page more pregnant with mistakes and 
 misinformation than this. In one paragraph of four sen- 
 tences there are five palpable errors. This may be cited 
 as a curiosity of ignorance: 
 
 "As a reward for the ability and patriotism he had dis- 
 played during the war, Mr. Jefferson gave him (Freneau) 
 a place in the Department of State; but his public employ- 
 ment being of too sedentary a description for a man of 
 his ardent temperament he soon relinquished it to con- 
 duct in Philadelphia a paper entitled ' The Freeman's Jour- 
 nal.' He was the only editor who remained at his post 
 during the prevalence of the yellow fever in that city in 
 1791. The Journal was unprofitable and he gave it up in 
 1793 to take command of a merchant ship in which he 
 made several voyages to Madeira, the West Indies and 
 other places. His naval ballads and other poems relating 
 to the sea written in this period are among the most spir- 
 ited and carefully finished of his productions." 
 
 Now, (i) Freneau did not give up his government posi- 
 tion to edit a paper, (2) he did not edit the Freeman's Jour- 
 
565] Conclusion. 101 
 
 nal, (3) yellow fever was not prevalent in Philadelphia in 
 1791, (4) he did not take command of a merchant ship 
 when he left Philadelphia in 1793, (5) his naval ballads 
 were not composed in the period of which he is speaking. 
 It is submitted that we should be very reluctant to attach 
 any importance to anything that such a careless writer 
 might rehearse from memory. 
 
 In the second place, we know that the same Dr. Francis 
 who is quoted as having cast such a foul imputation upon 
 Freneau's character, regarded the poet as a man of sterling 
 integrity. If Freneau had really admitted that he had com- 
 mitted perjury, Francis would hardly have written these 
 words of the perjurer: " His private worth won the admi- 
 ration of both parties." Besides, if Freneau had made 
 such an admission. Dr. Francis, the President of a great 
 Historical Association would have appreciated its histori- 
 cal significance and would have himself spoken of it in his 
 sketch of Freneau. In that sketch he does not refer to 
 any such conversation as Griswold reports. 
 
 In the last place, Freneau's whole life is a denial of Gris- 
 wold's statement. The patriot poet was nothing if not 
 straightforward and truthful, and our credulity is strained 
 when we are asked to believe that he deliberately confessed 
 that he was the greatest of liars and the basest of knaves. 
 History is wholly against the supposition that Jefferson 
 ever wrote a line for the National Gazette and there is 
 not the slightest reason to believe that Freneau ever said 
 that he wrote for it. 
 
 As to Freneau's part in the history of our politics, little 
 need be added to what has already been said. He was 
 not a statesman in any sense of the word. A violent tem- 
 perament and an intolerant nature unfitted him for the 
 leadership of men, while narrowness of mind made him 
 unsafe as a counsellor. Nor was he a politician in a prac- 
 tical sense. He sought no ofifice and he entered into no 
 combinations to secure party advantage. He did not look 
 to office as a reward for his services as a publicist. He 
 
102 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [566 
 
 advocated democracy for its own sake. In the enthusiasm 
 born of sincerity of purpose is to be found his greatest 
 strength. The glow of conviction was upon all his writ- 
 ings, and when he came out with an article denouncing 
 Adams or Hamilton, his words burned themselves into 
 the mind of the public. He appealed to the populace, who 
 read and applauded, and when election time came voted his 
 way. So sure and so uniform was his success in this field 
 that it is safe to say that, excepting Jefiferson himself, 
 democracy in America in the first years of our national life 
 had no abler champion than Philip Freneau. 
 
THE PUBLICATIONS OF PHILIP FRENEAU 
 
 (A) Newspapers, 
 
 1. ''The National Gazette." Published at Philadelphia. 
 First number, October, 1791; last number, October, 1793. 
 A complete file of this paper may be found in the collec- 
 tions of the Library Company of Philadelphia.^ It is diffi- 
 cult to find a complete file elsewhere. 
 
 2. '' The Jersey Chronicle." Published in Mount Pleas- 
 ant, New Jersey, in 1795. A file may be found in the 
 library of the New York Historical Society. 
 
 3. " The Time-Piece and Literary Companion." Begun 
 March, 1797. Freneau was connected with it less than a 
 year. A file may be found in the Lennox Library in New 
 York. 
 
 (B) Books. 
 
 I. "A Poem on the Rising Glory of America; being an 
 Exercise Delivered at the Public Commencement at Nas- 
 sau Hall, September 25, 1771." 
 
 This was published at Philadelphia in 1772. It is a 
 small unbound octavo of 2y pages. It may be found in 
 the Library of Princeton College. 
 
 Hildeburn has the following note on this publication: 
 
 " It is attributed to Judge H. H. Brackenridge and also to 
 Brackenridge and Freneau jointly. In the Edition of Freneau's 
 Poems, printed on his own press and under his supervision at 
 Monmouth in 1809 [he should have said 1795] this poem is given 
 a prominent place without any reference being made to Bracken- 
 ridge's share in its composition. On the title page of Bracken- 
 ridge's * Poem on Divine Revelation ' that piece is said to be by 
 the same person who on a similar occasion delivered a small poem 
 on the rising glory of America. This may have been the ground 
 
 ^ Philadelphia offers the best facilities for the study of Freneau. 
 The Library of the Pennsylvania Historical Society contains 
 nearly all his works. 
 
104 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [568 
 
 on which the last-named poem was attributed to Brackenridge. 
 But as it admits of the construction that he only read or recited 
 the earlier poem of which Freneau claims the sole authorship, I 
 have placed it under the latter's name." Hildeburn's Issues of the 
 Press of Pennsylvania, vol. ii, p. 148. 
 
 2. ''Voyage to Boston. A Poem." A small octavo of 
 24 pages; printed in Philadelphia in 1775. 
 
 3. ''The British Prison-Ship. A Poem in Four Can- 
 toes." An octavo of 23 pages; printed in Philadelphia in 
 1781. 
 
 4. " New Travels through North America." This is a 
 translation by Freneau of Claude C. Robin's "Voyage 
 dans L'Amerique Septentrionale." This small octavo vol- 
 ume of 112 pages was published in Philadelphia in 1783. 
 It may be found in the library of the Historical Society 
 of Pennsylvania. 
 
 5. " The Poems of Philip Freneau, Written Chiefly dur- 
 ing the Late War." An octavo volume of 415 pages, pub- 
 lished in Philadelphia in the year 1786. This very rare 
 and valuable volume may be found in the Library of the 
 Pennsylvania Historical Society. 
 
 6. " A Journey from Philadelphia to New York by way 
 of Burlington and South Amboy. By Robert Slender, 
 Stocking Weaver (Freneau)." This is a small octavo of 
 28 pages; published in Philadelphia in 1787. It may be 
 found in the New York Historical Library. 
 
 7. " The Miscellaneous Works of Mr. Philip Freneau 
 containing his Essays and Additional Poems." Published 
 in Philadelphia, 1788; it may be found in the Library of 
 Congress. 
 
 8. " The Village Merchant " : A Poem to which is added 
 the Country Printer. A small octavo of 16 pages, printed 
 at Philadelphia in 1794. 
 
 9. "Poems Written between the years 1768 and 1794 by 
 Philip Freneau of New Jersey." This was printed at 
 Mount Pleasant in 1795, at the press of the author. It 
 may be found in the Library of Congress, and in the 
 libraries of Harvard and Columbia Universities. This edi- 
 tion contains the major part of Freneau's poems. 
 
569] The Publications of Philip Freneaii. 105 
 
 10. " Letters on Various and Interesting Subjects many 
 of which have appeared in the Aurora. By Robert Slen- 
 der, O. S. M." (O. S. M. — One of the Swinish Multitude.) 
 Small octavo of 142 pages. Published in Philadelphia in 
 1799. It may be found in the library of the Pennsylvania 
 Historical Society. 
 
 11. "A Laughable Poem on Robert Slender's Journey 
 from Philadelphia to New York." This is a reprint under 
 a new title of No. 6. 
 
 12. '' Poems Written and Published during the Ameri- 
 can Revolutionary War, and now Republished from the 
 Original Manuscripts interspersed with Translations from 
 the Ancients, and other pieces not heretofore in print." 
 Published in two duodecimo volumes in Philadelphia in 
 1809. It is to be found in the library of the Pennsylvania 
 Historical Society. 
 
 13. '' A Collection of Poems on American Affairs, writ- 
 ten between the year 1797 and the Present Time." Pub- 
 lished in New York in two duodecimo volumes in 181 5. 
 To be found in the Boston Public Library and in the 
 Library of Congress. 
 
 14. '' Poems on Various Subjects, but chiefly illustrative 
 of the Events and Actors in the American War of Inde- 
 pendence." This is a reprint of the edition of 1786. It 
 was published in facsimile in London in 1861 by J. R. 
 Smith. 
 
 15. ''Poems Relating to the American Revolution." 
 With an Introduction, Memoir, and Notes by E. A. 
 Duyckinck, New York, 1865. 
 
 16. " Some Account of the Capture of the Ship Aurora." 
 New York, 1899. 
 
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY STUDIES 
 Historical and Political Science 
 
 (Edited by H. B. ADAMS, 1882-1901). 
 
 J. M. VINCENT, 
 
 J. H. HOLLANDER, W. W. WILLOUGHBY, 
 
 Editors. 
 
 PROSPECTUS OF TWENTIETH SERIES 
 
 1902. 
 
 The University Studies will continue to publish, as heretofore, 
 the results of recent investigations in History, Economics, and Politi- 
 cal Science. The new series will contain monographs on colonial, 
 revolutionary and early constitutional history. The cost of sub- 
 scription for the regular Annual Series, comprising about 600 pages, 
 with index, ^3.00. Single numbers, or special monographs, at 
 special prices. 
 
 For the year igo2 the titles given below are now announced, and 
 other numbers will follow from time to time. 
 
 I. WESTERN MARYLAND IN THE REVOLUTION. By B. C. 
 
 Steiner. 30 cents. 
 
 II-III. STATE BANKS SINCE THE PASSAGE OF THE NA- 
 TIONAL BANK ACT. By G. E. Barnett. 50 cents. 
 
 IV. EARLY HISTORY OF INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT IN 
 ALABAMA. By W. E. Martin. 30 cents. 
 
 V-VI. TRUST COMPANIES IN THE UNITED STATES. By 
 
 George Cator. 50 cents. 
 
 VII-VIII. THE MARYLAND CONSTITUTION OF 1851. By J. W. 
 
 Harry. 50 cents. 
 
 IX-X. POLITICAL ACTIVITIES OF PHILIP FRENEAU. By S. E. 
 
 Forman. 50 cents. 
 
 NEW EXTRA VOLUMES. 
 
 An extra volume has been published as a memorial of the 
 late Professor Adams. This contains biographical sketches and 
 tributes from various writers and a Bibliography of Publications by 
 Graduates and members of the Department of History, Politics and 
 Economics of the Johns Hopkins University from 1876 to 1901. 
 This is sent free to subscribers for the Series for 1902. 
 
 A History of Slavery in Virginia, by J. C. Ballagh. 160 pages. 
 Cloth, $1.50. See page viii. 
 
 Orders may be sent to 
 
 THE JOHNS HOPKINS PRESS, 
 
 BALTIMORE, MD. 
 
THE JOHNS HOPKINS PEESS 
 
 OF BALTIMORE. 
 
 I. American Journal of Mathematics. Frank Morley, Editor. Quar* 
 
 terly. 4to. Volume XXIV in progress. $5 per volume. 
 
 II. American Chemical Journal. Ira Rkmskn, Editor. Monthly. 8vo. 
 Volume XXVIII in progress. $5 per year. 
 
 III. American Journal of Philology. B. L. Gilderslbeve, Editor. 
 Quarterly. 8vo. Volume XXIII in progress. $3 per volume. 
 
 IV. Studies from the Biological Laboratory. 8vo. Volume V complete. 
 
 V. Studies in History and Politics. J. M. Vincent, J. H. Hollander, 
 W. W. WiLLouGHBY, Editors. Monthly. Svo. Vol. XX in progress. 
 $3 per vol. 
 
 VI. Johns Hopkins University Circulars. Monthly. 4to. Volume XXI in 
 progress. |1 per year. 
 
 VII. Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin. Monthly. 4to. Volume XIII in 
 progress. $1 per year. 
 
 VIII. Johns Hopkins Hospital Reports. 4to. Volume X in progress. $5 
 per volume. 
 
 IX. Contributions to Assyriology, etc. Volume IV in progress. 
 
 X. Memoirs from the Biological Laboratory. W. K. Brooks, Editor. 
 Volume V in progress. 
 
 XI. Modern Language Notes. A. M. Elliott, Editor. Monthly. 4to. 
 Volume XVIII in progress. $1.50 per volume. 
 
 XII. The Journal of Experimental Medicine. W. H. Welch, Editor. 
 Bi-monthly. 4to. Volume VI in progress. $5 per volume. 
 
 XIII. American Journal of Insanity. Henry M. Hurd, Editor. Quar- 
 terly. 4to. S5 per volume. 
 
 XIV. Reports of the Maryland Geological Survey. 
 
 XV. Terrestrial Magnetism and Atmospheric Electricity. L, A. Bauer, 
 Editor. Quarterly. Svo. Volume VII in progress. $2.50 per volume. 
 
 XVI. Annual Report of the Johns Hopkins University. Presented by the 
 President to the Board of Trustees. 
 
 XVII. Annual Register of the Johns Hopkins University. Giving the list 
 of officers and students, and stating the regulations, etc. 
 
 Rowland's Photograph of the Normal Solar Spectrum. Ten plates. $20. 
 Description of the Johns Hopkins Hospital. J. S. Billings, Editor. 116 pp., 
 
 56 plates. 4to. Cloth, $7.50. 
 The Diplomatic Relations of the United States and Spanish America. 
 
 By John H. Latan6 (The Albert Shaw Lectures on Diplomatic History 
 
 for 1899). 294 pp. 21mo. $1.50. 
 The Diplomatic History of the Southern Confederacy. By J. M. 
 
 Callahan. (The Albert Shaw Lectures on Diplomatic History for 
 
 1900). 304 pp. 12mo. $1.50. 
 Essays in the Constitutional History of the United States. J. Franklin 
 
 Jameson, Editor. Cloth, $2.25. 
 Studies in Honor of Basil L. Gildersleeve. 527 pp. Svo. $6.00. 
 The Collected Physical Papers of Henry A. Rowland. In press. 
 
 Communications should be addressed to The Johns Hopkins Press. 
 
 11 
 
BACK VOLUMES 
 
 OF 
 
 Modern Language Notes 
 
 Back volumes of this publication (i 886-1901) can be had by 
 addressing the Managing Editor, A. Marshall Elliott, Johns 
 Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md., at the following prices : 
 Volume i, 1886, $6.00, 
 ii, 1887, 6.00, 
 iii, 1888, 6.00, 
 iv, 1889, 6.00, 
 V, 1890, 6.00, 
 vi, 1 89 1, 6.00, 
 vii, 1892, 6.00, 
 viii, 1893, 6.00, 
 ix, 1894, 6.00, 
 X, 1895, 6.00, 
 xi, 1896, 6.00, 
 xii, 1897, 6.00, 
 xiii, 1898, 6.00, 
 xiv, 1899, 6.00, 
 XV, 1900, 6.00, 
 xvi, 1901, 3.50, 
 xvii, 1902, 1.50. 
 Current Volume for the U. S. and Canada, ^1.50 ; for Foreign 
 Countries, ^1.75. 
 
 SINGLE COPY (current) TWENTY CENTS. 
 
 Of the above, vols, i, iii, vii, viii, ix and x, will not be sold 
 separately; single numbers of vols, i to xv, inclusive, can be had 
 at ;^ 1. 00 each; single numbers of vol. xvi can be had for 50 cents 
 each. Vol. i, No. 3 ; vol. iii, No. i ; vol. vi, Nos. i, 3, 4, 7 and 
 8 ; vol. vii, entire; vol. viii, Nos. i, 2, 3 and 8 ; vol. ix. No. i; 
 vol. X, No. i; vol. xi. No. i; and vol. xii. No. i, will not 
 be sold separately. 
 
 A discount of 10^ is allowed agents and publishers on the 
 current volume only. 
 
 A. M. ELLIOTT. 
 
The American Economic Association. 
 
 The publications of the Association were begun in 1886 and have continued to 
 appear in various forms and series. They number nineteen complete volumes to 
 the close of 1901, and include many of the most important monographs on 
 enonomics that have appeared in America. A complete price list will be sent 
 on application to the addresses below. 
 Recent numbers are as follows : 
 
 THIRD SERIES. 
 Volume I, 1900. 
 
 No. I. Papers and Proceedings of the Twelfth Annual Meeting. 
 
 Pp. 286. Price, $1.00. 
 
 No 2. The End of Villainage in England. By T. W. Page, Ph. D. 
 Pp. 99. Price, $1.00. 
 
 No. 3. Essays in Colonial Finance. By Members of the Association. 
 Pp. 303. Price, $1.50. 
 
 No. 4. Currency and Banking in the Province of the Massachusetts 
 Bay. By A. McF. Davis. Part 1: Currency. Pp. 473. Illus- 
 trated. Price in paper, $1.75; in cloth, $2.00. 
 
 Volume II, 1901. 
 
 No. I. Papers and Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual Meeting. 
 
 Pp. 300. Price, $1.25. 
 No. 2. Currency and Banking in the Province of the Massachusetts 
 
 Bay. By A. McF. Davis. Part 2: Banking. Illustrated. Price 
 
 in paper, $1.75; in cloth, $2.00. 
 No. 3. The Theory of Value before Adam Smith. By Hannah R. 
 
 Sewall. Ph. D. Pp. 132. Price, $1.00. 
 No. 4. A Comparative Study of the Administration of City Finances 
 
 in the United States, with Special Reference to the Budget. 
 
 By Frederick R. Clow, Ph. D. Pp. 148. Price, $1.00. 
 
 Just published: 
 
 Papers and Proceedings of the Fourteenth Annual Meeting. Pp. 400. 
 Price, $1.60. 
 Containing papers and complete report of discussions on 
 
 The Recent Expansion of American Foreign Trade 
 
 The Commercial Policy of Europe 
 
 The Theory of a Protective Tariff 
 
 The Loss of Workmen Through Economic Progress 
 
 The Negro Problem in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta 
 
 Conciliation and Arbitration 
 
 Porto Rican Finance 
 
 Municipal Accounting 
 
 Economic Interpretation of History 
 
 Address subscriptions, applications for membership and inquiries to the 
 
 Secretary of the American Economic Association, 
 Ithaca, N. Y. 
 Address all orders except subscriptions to the publishers 
 
 The Macmillan Co., 
 
 66 Fifth Avenue, New York. 
 iv 
 
STUDIES IN HISIORUMMICS UNO PUBLIC LAW, 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 THE FACULTY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE OF 
 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY. 
 
 RECENT NUNIBERS. 
 
 VOLUME X, 1898-99. 500 pp. 
 Price, $3.00 ; bound, $3.50, 
 
 1. Sympathetic Strikes and Sympathetic Lockouts. 
 
 By Fred. S. Hall, Ph.D. Price, $1.00. 
 
 2. Rhode Island and the Formation of the Union. 
 
 By Frank Greene Bates, Ph.D. Price, $1.50. 
 
 3. Centralized Administration of Liquor Laws in the American Common- 
 
 wealths. By Clement Moore Lacey Sites, Ph.D. Price, $1.00. 
 
 VOLUME XI, 1899. 495 pp. 
 
 Price, $3.50 ; bound, $4.00. 
 
 The Growth of Cities. By Adna Ferrin ^Veber, Ph.D. 
 
 VOLUME XII, 1899-1900. 586 pp. 
 
 Price, S3. 50 ; bound, $4.00. 
 
 1. History and Functions of Central Labor Unions. 
 
 By William Maxwell Burke, Ph.D. Price, $1.00. 
 
 2. Colonial Immigration Laws. 
 
 By Edgar Emberson Proper, A.M. Price, 75c. 
 
 3. History of Military Pension Legislation in the United States. 
 
 ^ By William Henry Glasson, Ph.D. Price, $1.00. 
 
 4. History of the Theory of Sovereignty since Rousseau. 
 
 By Charles E. Merriam, Jr., Ph.D. Price, $1.50. 
 
 VOLUME XIII. 1901. 570 pp. 
 Price, $3.50; bound, $4.00. 
 
 1. The Legal Property Relations of Married Parties. 
 
 By Isidor Loeb, Ph.D. Price, $1.50. 
 
 2. Political Nativism in New York State. 
 
 By Louis Dow Scisco, Ph.D. Price, $2.00. 
 
 3. The Reconstruction of Georgia. 
 
 By Edwin C. Woolley, Ph.D. Price, $1.00. 
 
 VOLUME XIV, 1901. 
 
 1. Loyalism in New York during the American Revolution. 
 
 By Alexander Clarence Flick, Ph.D. Price, $2.00. 
 
 2. The Economic Theory of Risk and Insurance. 
 
 By Allan H. Willett, Ph.D. Price, $1.50. 
 
 3. To he announced later. 
 
 VOLUME XV, 1902. 427 pp. 
 
 Price, $3.00; bound, $3.50. 
 
 Civilization and Crime. By Arthur Cleveland Hall, Ph. D. 
 
 The set of fifteen volumes (except that Vol. II can be supplied only in unbound 
 nos. 2 and 3) is offered bound for $50. 
 
 For full list and further Information apply to 
 
 Prof. EDWIN R. A. SELIGMAN, Columbia University, 
 or to THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, New YorK 
 LONDON: P. S. King &, Son, 
 
 V 
 
Notes Snpplementary to the Studies in History and Politics. 
 
 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT IN ENGLAND. By Dr. ALBEKT SHAW. 
 
 SOCIAL AVORK IN AUSTRALIA AND LONDON. By WILLIAM Gket. 
 
 ENCOURAGEMENT OP HIGHER EDUCATION. By Professor Herbert B. 
 Adams. 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF CITY GOVERNMENT. By Hon. Seth LOW. 
 
 THE LIBRARIES OP BALTIMORE. By Dr. P. R. Uhler. 
 
 IVORK AMONG THE AVORKINGWOMEN IN BALTIMORE. By Professor 
 H. B. ADAMS. 
 
 CHARITIES : THE RELATION OP THE STATE, THE CITY, AND THE 
 INDIVIDUAL TO MODERN PHILANTHROPIC AVORK. By Dr. A. G. WARNER. 
 
 LAW AND HISTORY. By Dr. WALTER B. SCAIFE. 
 
 THE NEEDS OP SELF-SUPPORTING WOMEN. By Miss CLARE DK Graf- 
 
 FENREID. 
 
 THE ENOCH PRATT FREE LIBRARY. By Dr. LEWIS H. STEINER. 
 
 EAKLY PKESBYTERIANISM IN MARYLAND. By Rev. J. W. MclLVAIN. 
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL ASPECT OF THE U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM. By 
 Professor O. T. MASON. 
 
 UNIVERSITY EXTENSION AND THE UNIVERSITY OF THE FUTURE. 
 By Richard G. Moulton. 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OP EDUCATION. By Dr. WILLIAM T. HARRIS. 
 
 POPULAR ELECTION OP U. S. SENATORS. By JOHN HAYNES. 
 
 A MEMORIAL OF LUCIUS S. MERRIAM. By J. H. HOLLANDER and others. 
 
 IS HISTORY PAST POLITICS? By Professor Herbert B. Adams 
 
 Annual Series of Studies in History and Politics, 1883-1901. 
 
 SERIES I— LOCAL INSTITUTIONS. 479 pp. $4.00. 
 
 SERIES II.— INSTITUTIONS AND ECONOMICS. 629 pp. $4.00. 
 
 SERIES III.— MARYLAND, VIRGINIA, AND W^ASHINGTON. 595 pp. $4.00 
 
 SERIES IV.— MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT AND LAND TENURE. 600 pp. $3.50. 
 
 SERIES v.— MUNICIPAL GOVERN3IENT, HISTORY AND POLITICS. 559 
 pp. $3.50. 
 
 SERIES VI.— THE HISTORY OP CO-OPERATION IN THE UNITED 
 STATES. 540 pp. $3.50. 
 
 SERIES VII.— SOCIAL SCIENCE, MUNICIPAL AND FEDERAL GOVERN- 
 MENT. 628 pp. $3.50. 
 
 SERIES VIII.— HISTORY, POLITICS, AND EDUCATION. 625 pp. $3.50. 
 
 SERIES IX.— EDUCATION, POLITICS AND SOCIAL SCIENCE. 640 pp. 
 $3.50. 
 
 SERIES X.~CHURCH AND STATE, COLUMBUS AND AMERICA. 630 pp. 
 $3.50. 
 
 SERIES XL— LABOR, SLAVERY, AND SELP-GOVERNMENT. 674 pp. 
 $3.50. 
 
 SERIES XII.— INSTITUTIONAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY. 626 pp. $3.50. 
 
 SKRIESXIIf.-SOUTH CAROLlNA,M ARYLAND, AND VIR<JINIA. 606 pp. 
 $3,50. 
 
 SERIES XIV.— BALTIMORE. SLAVERY AND CONSTITUTIONAL 
 HISTORY. 588 pp. $3.50. 
 
 SERIES XV.— AMERICAN ECONOMIC HISTORY. 618 pp. $3.50. 
 
 SERIES XVI.- ANGLO- AMERICAN RELATIONS AND SOUTHERN 
 HISTORY. 624 pp. $3.50. 
 
 SERIES XVII.— ECONOMIC HISTORY: MARYLAND AND THE SOUTH. 
 600 pp. $3.50. 
 
 SERIES XVIII.— TAXATION IN SOUTHERN STATES! CHURCH AND 
 EDUCATION. 582 pp. $3.50. 
 
 SERIES XIX.— DIPLOMATIC AND CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY. 650 pp. 
 $3.50. 
 
 The net of nineteen series is now offered, uniformly bound in cloth, for library use, for $57.00. 
 The nineteen series, with eighteen extra volumes, in cloth, for $76.00 
 
 All business communications should be addressed to The Johns Hop- 
 kins Press, Baltimore, Maryland. Subscriptions will also be received 
 or single copies furnished by any of the following 
 American Agents: 
 
 Ne^v York.— G. P. Putnam's Sons. Wagliington.— W. H. Lowdermllk k Co.; 
 
 Boston.— Damrell&Upham; W.B.Clarke Brentano's. 
 
 Co. Cincinnati.— Robert Clarke Co. 
 Clxicago.— A. C. McClurg & Co. 
 
 European Agents : 
 
 Paris.— A. Hermann; Em. Terquem. London.— Kegan Paul, Trench, TrUbnor 
 
 Berlin. — Puttkammer & MUhlbrecht ; & Co.; G. P. Putnam's Sons. 
 
 Mayer & Mtlller. Turin, Plorence, and Ron»«.— E. Loe- 
 
 Lelpzig.— F. A. Brockhaus. scher. 
 
 vi 
 
Extra Volumes of Studies 
 
 IN 
 
 HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL SCIENCE. 
 
 Pliiladelpliia, 1681-1887. By Edward P. Allinson, A.M., and 
 
 Boies Penrose, A. B. 444 padres. 8vo. Cloth. $3.00. 
 BaUiiuore and tbe Nineteenth of April, 1861. By George 
 
 William Brown, Chief Judge of the Supreme Bench of Baltimore, and 
 Mayor of the City in 1861. 176 pages. 8vo. Cloth. $1.00. 
 
 liOeal Constitutional History of the United States. By 
 
 George E. Howard, Ph.D. Volume I. — Development of the Township, 
 Hundred and Shire. 542 pages. 8vo. Cloth. $3.00. Volume II.— In 
 preparation. 
 The Xegro in Maryland. By Jeffrey R. Brackett, Ph.D. 270 
 
 pages. 8vo. Cloth. $2.00. 
 
 The ISupreme Court of the Tnited States. By W. W. 
 
 WiLLOUGHBY, Ph.D. 124 pages. 8vo. Cloth. $1.25. 
 
 The Intercourse between the U. S. and Japan. By Inazo 
 
 (Ota) NiTOBE, Ph.D. 198 pages. 8vo. Cloth. $1.25. 
 
 Spanish Institutions of the Southwest. By Frank W. Black- 
 MAR, Ph.D. 380 pages. 8vo. Cloth. $2.00. 
 
 An Introduction to the Stutly of the Constitution. By 
 
 Morris M. Cohn. 250 pages. 8vo. Cloth. $1.50. 
 
 The Old English Manor. By C. M. Andrews, Ph.D. 280 pages. 
 8vo. Cloth. $1.50. 
 
 The Southern Quakers and Slavery. By Stephen B. Weeks, 
 Ph.D. 414 pages. 8vo. Cloth. $2.00. 
 
 Contemporary American Opinion of the French Revo- 
 lution. By C. D. Hazen, Ph.D. 325 pages. 8vo. Cloth. $2.00. 
 
 Industrial Experiments in the British Colonies of IVorth 
 
 America. By Eleanor L. Lord. 164 pages. 8vo. Cloth. $1.25. 
 State Aid to Higher Education: A Series of Addresses at the 
 
 Johns Hopkins University. 100 pages. 8vo. Cloth. $1.00. 
 Financial History of Baltimore. By J. H. Hollander, Ph.D. 
 
 400 pages. 8vo. Cloth. $2.00. 
 Cuba and International Relations. By J. M. Callahan. 503 
 
 pages. 8vo. Cloth. $3.00. 
 The American Workman. By E. Levasseur (translation 540 
 
 pages. Svo. Cloth. $3.00. 
 
 Herbert B. Adams. A Memorial Volume. 232 pages. Svo. Cloth. 
 A History of Slavery in Virginia. By J. C. Ballagh. 160 
 
 pages. Svo. Cloth. $1.50. 
 
 The extra volumes are sold at reduced rates to regular subscribers to the 
 Studies. 
 
 The set of nineteen (regular) series is now offered, uniformly bound 
 in cloth, for library use, for $57.00, and including subscription to the 
 current (twentieth) series, for $60.00. 
 
 The nineteen series, with eighteen extra volumes, will be sold for 
 $76.00. 
 
 All business communications should be addressed to THE JOHNS 
 HOPKINS PRESS, Baltimore, Maryland. 
 
 vii 
 
THE AMERICAN WORKMAN 
 
 BY 
 
 PROFESSOR E. LEVASSEUR 
 
 AN AMERICAN TRANSLATION BY THOMAS S. ADAMS 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 THEODORE MARBURG 
 540 pages, octavo. Price $3.00. 
 
 This is a specially authorized and carefully prepared translation of the cele- 
 brated work of M. Levasseur on the American Workman. 
 
 Among the topics treated are The Progress of American Industry in the last 
 Fifty Years ; The Productivity of Labor and Machinery ; Labor Laws and 
 Trade Regulations ; Organizations of Labor ; The Strike ; Wages of Men ; 
 Wages of Women and Children ; Factors Determining Nominal Wages ; Real 
 Wages and Workmen's Budgets; Present Conditions and Future Prospects of 
 the American Workman. 
 
 A HISTORY 
 
 OF 
 
 SLAVERY IN VIRGINIA 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES CURTIS BALLAGH, Ph. D. 
 160 pages, octavo. Cloth. $1.50. 
 
 This volume presents the results of an extended investigation of the insti- 
 tutional character of American slavery. The relation of slavery as a form of 
 labor and of social dependence to similar forms in Europe and America is 
 shown. A comprehensive history of the legal and customary treatment of 
 slaves in Virginia is here given for the first time. The work is chiefly based 
 upon contemporary documents and manuscripts, state and county archives, 
 and transcripts from the British Public Record Office. 
 
 viii 
 
CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN OPINION OF 
 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES DOWNER HAZEN, Ph. D., 
 325 pp., 8vo. Cloth— $2.00. 
 
 This essay attempts to study and -depict the opinions of Americans 
 with reference to a revolution which they followed with the most intense 
 interest. 
 
 Part I. Opinion of Americans Abroad. 
 
 Thomas Jefferson in France : — First Impressions. — A Journey 
 through France. — The Passing of the Notables.— The Interlude. — 
 The States-General. 
 
 Gouverneur Morris on the French Revolution: — Morris' Political 
 Creed. — France in the Spring of 1789. — The Constituent Assembly : 
 Its Character. — The Constituent Assembly : Its Work. — The Legis- 
 lative Assembly.— The Convention. 
 
 James Monroe on the French Revolution. 
 
 Part II. Opinion op Americans at Home. 
 
 First Movements of Public Opinion. — An Extraordinary Year— 
 1793. — Democratic Societies. — Levelling Principles. — The Evidence 
 of Contemporary Literature. — Sundry Side-Lights.— The Growing 
 Opposition and its Reasons.— Conclusion. 
 
 Cuba and International Relations. 
 
 By James Morton Callahan, Ph. D. 
 503 pages, octavo. Price $3.00. 
 
 This is a historical study in American diplomacy and international relations 
 as connected with Spain and her former colonies around the Gulf of Mexico. 
 Much of it has a direct bearing upon present conditions in the West Indies, 
 and even in the Philippines. The nature of the subject has led to an exten- 
 sive consideration of the American policy of territorial acquisition. 
 
 The author has made a careful examination of original sources. The mater- 
 ials of his work are drawn from a study of several years among the archives 
 at Washington. 
 
i ^ ]yu2 
 
 The Albert Shaw Lectures on Diplomatic History for 1900 . 
 
 The Diplomatic History of the Southern Confederacy. 
 
 By JAMES MORTON CALLAHAN, Ph. D. 
 12mo. 304 pages. Cloth. Price, $1.50. 
 
 This volume is a study of the efforts of the Confederate 
 authorities to secure foreign recognition and support. It con- 
 siders also the forces which controlled the European powers, and 
 defeated the attempt to divide the American Union. 
 
 It traces the workings of the diplomatic machine during 
 the variations of the military and political situation, observes the 
 attitude, motives, and policy of the nations with whom the Con- 
 federate agents sought to negotiate, and throws light upon inter- 
 national questions arising between the United States and foreign 
 powers. 
 
 Though other materials have not been neglected, the work 
 is, in a large measure, based upon the Confederate diplomatic 
 correspondence, which is now in manuscript in the United States 
 Treasury Department. 
 
 The Albert Shaw Lectures on Diplomatic History for 1899, 
 
 The Diplomatic Relations of the United 
 States and Spanish America. 
 
 By JOHN H. LATANE, Ph. D., 
 
 Professor of History in Randolph-Macon lVo?nan^s College. 
 
 12mo. 294 pages. Cloth. Price, $1.50. 
 
 This is a book of timely interest. The introductory chapters 
 form a convenient epitome of South American colonial history 
 to the foundation of the Spanish republics. Cuban affairs, from 
 the time of Napoleon to the year 1898, with the important ques- 
 tions of international law are comprehensively reviewed. Timely 
 also is the chapter on Central American canals. The diplomatic 
 history of these enterprises is essential to an understanding of 
 the present situation. 
 
 To all who are interested in the great questions of American 
 foreign policy the work will give valuable assistance. 
 
 Orders should be addressed to 
 
 The Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, Md. 
 
SIXTH SERIES The History of Cooperation in the United States.— $3.50. 
 
 SEVENTH SERIES.— Social Science, Education, Government.— $3.50. 
 I. Arnold Toynbee. By P. C. MONTAGUE. 50 cents. 
 
 II-III. Municipal Government in San Francisco. By BERNARD MoSES. 50 cents 
 IV. Tlie City Government of Neiv Orleans. By "Wm. W. Howe. 25 cents. 
 V-VI. English Culture in Virginia. By William P. TRENT. $1.00. 
 VII-VIII-IX. Tlie River Towns of Connecticut. By Charles M. Andrews, f 1.00. 
 X-XI-XII^ Federal Government in Canada. By JOHN G. BOURINOT. $1.00. 
 
 EIGHTH SERIES.— History, Politics and Education.— $3.50. 
 I-II. The Beginnings of American Nationality. By A. W. Small. $1.00. 
 
 III. Local Government in Wisconsin. By D. E. Spencer. 25 cents. 
 
 IV. Spanish Colonization in tlie SoutlivFeat. By F. W. Blackmar. 50 cents. 
 V-VI. The Study of History in Germany and France. By P. Fredericq. $1.00. 
 VII-IX. Progress of the Colored People of Maryland. By J. R. Brackett. $1.00. 
 X. The Study of History in Belgium and Holland. By P. Fredbricq. 50 cents. 
 XI-XII. Seminary Notes on Kecent Historical Ijiterature. By H. B. Adams, J, M. 
 
 Vincent, W. B. Scaife, and others. 50 cents. 
 
 NINTH SERIES.— Education, History, Politics, Social Science. — $3.50. 
 
 I-II. Government and Administration of the United States. By W. W. WlL- 
 
 LOUGHBY and W. F. Willoughby. 75 cents. 
 
 Ill- IV. University Education in Maryland. By B. C. Stbiner. The Johns Hopkins 
 University (1876-1891). By D. C. GiLMAN. 50 cents. 
 
 V-VI. Development of Municipal Unity in the Iiomhard Communes. By Wil- 
 liam K. Williams. 50 cents. 
 
 VII-VIII. Public liands of the Roman Repuhlio. By A. STEPHENSON. 15 cents. 
 
 IX. Constitutional Development of Japan. By T. Iyenaga. 50 cents. 
 
 X. A History of Liberia. By J. H. T. McPherson. 50 cents. 
 
 XI-XII. The Indian Trade in "Wisconsin. By F. J. Turner. 50 cents. 
 
 TENTH SERIES.— Church and State : Columbus and America. — $3.50. 
 I. The Bishop Hill Colony. By Michael A. Mikkelsen. 50 cents. 
 II-III. Church and State In Nevr England. By PAUL E. Lauer. 50 cents. 
 IV. Church and State In Maryland. By GeorGE Petrie. 50 cents. 
 V-VI. The Religious Development in the Province of North Carolina. By 
 
 Stephen E. Weeks. 50 cents. 
 VII. Maryland's Attitude In the Struggle for Canada. By J. W. Black. 50 cents. 
 VIII-IX. The Quakers In Pennsylvania. By A. C. Applegarth. 75 cents. 
 X-XI. Columbus and his Discovery of America. By H. B. Adams and H. WoOD. 50 cents. 
 XII. Causes of the American Revolution. By J. A. Woodburn. 50 cents. 
 
 ELEVENTH SERIES.— Labor, Slavery, and Self-Government $3.50. 
 
 I. The Social Condition of Labor. By E. R. L. Gould. 50 cents. 
 
 II. The "World's Representative Assemblies of To-Day. By E. K. Alden. 50 cents. 
 III-IV. The Negro In the District of Columbia. By Edward Inqlb. $1.00. 
 V-VI. Church and State in North Carolina. By STEPHEN B. Weeks. 50 cents. 
 VII-VIII. The Condition of the Western Farmer as Illustrated by the economic. 
 
 history of a Nebraska township. By A. F. Bentley. $1.00. 
 IX-X. History of Slavery in Connecticut. By Bernard C. Stbiner, 75 cents. 
 XI-XII. liocal Government in the South and Southvrest. By Edward W. Bemis 
 
 and others. $1.00. 
 
 TWELFTH SERIES.— Institutional and Economic History $3.50. 
 
 I-H. The Cincinnati Southern Railway. By J. H. Hollander. $1.00. 
 
 III. Constitutional Beginnings of North Carolina. By J. S. Bassett. 50 cents. 
 
 IV. The Struggle of Protestant Dissenters for Religious Toleration in Virginia, 
 By H. R. MclLWAiNE. 50 cents. 
 
 V-VI- VII. The Carolina Pirates and Colonial Commerce. By S. C. Hughson. $1.00. 
 VIII-IX. History of Representation and Suffrage In Massachusetts (1620-1691). 
 
 By Q. H. Hatnes. 50 cents. 
 X. English Institutions and the American Indian. By J. A. JAMES. 25 cents. 
 XI-XII. Tlie International Beginnings of the Congo Free State. By J. S. Reeves. 
 
 50 cents. 
 
 THIRTEENTH SERIES.— South Carolina, Maryland, Virginia.— $3.50. 
 I-II. Governmentof the Colony of South Carolina. By E. L. Whitney. 75 cents. 
 III-IV. £:arly Relations of Maryland and Virginia. By J. H. Latane. 50 cents. 
 
V. The Rise of the Bicameral System in America. By T. F. MORAN. 50 cents. 
 VI- VII. White Servitude in the Colony of Virginia. By J. C. Ballagh. 50 cents. 
 
 VIII. The Genesis of California's First Constitution. By K. D. Hunt. 50 cents. 
 
 IX. Benjamin Franklin as an Economist. By W. A. WETZEli. 50 cents. 
 
 X. The Provisional Government of Maryland. By J. A. SliiVBR. 50 cents. 
 
 XI-XII. Governntent and Religion of the Va, Indians. By S. R. Hendren. 50 cents. 
 FOURTEENTH SERIES.— Baltimore, Slavery, Constitutional History $3.50. 
 
 I. Constitutional History of Hawaii. By Henry E. Chambers. 35 cents. 
 
 II. City Government of Baltimore. By Thaddetjs P. Thomas. 25 cents. 
 
 III. Colonial Origins of New Elugland Senates. By F. L. Riley. 50 cents. 
 IV-V. Servitude in the Colony of North Carolina. By J. S. Bassett. 50 cents. 
 VI- VII. Representation in Virginia. By J. A. C. Chandler 50 cents. 
 
 VIII. History of Taxation in Connecticut (1636-1776). By F. R. JONES. 50 cents. 
 IX-X. A Study of Slavery in Ne-w Jersey. By Henry S. Cooley. 50 cents. 
 XI-XII. Causesof the Maryland Revolution of 1689. By F. E. Sparks. 50 cents. 
 
 FIFTEENTH SERIES American Economic History.— $3.50. 
 
 I-II. The Tobacco Industry in Virginia since 1860. By B. W. Arnold. 50 cents. 
 III-V. Street Railway System of Philadelphia. By F. W. Speirs. Cloth, $1.00. 
 
 VI. Daniel Rayntond. By C. P. Neill. 50 cents. 
 
 VII- VIII. Economic History of B. & O. R. R. By M. Rbizenstein. 50 cents. - 
 
 IX. The South American Trade of Baltimore. By F. R. Rutter. 50 cents. 
 X-XI. State Tax Commissions in the U. S. By J. W. Chapman. 50 cents. 
 XII. Tendencies in Anterican Economic Thought. By S. SHERWOOD. 25 cents. 
 SIXTEEN THSERIES.-AnglO'American Relations and Southern History. -$3.50. 
 I-IV. The Neutrality of the Am.erlcan Lakes, etc. By J. M. CALLAHAN. $1.50. 
 
 V. "West Florida aud its Relation to the Historical Cartography of the United 
 
 States. By H. E, Chambers. 25 cents. 
 
 VI. Anti-Slavery Leaders of North Carolina. By J. S. BASSETT. 50 cents. 
 VII-IX. liife and Administration of Sir Robert Eden. By B. C. Steiner. $1.00. 
 X-XI. The Transition of North Carolina from a Colony to a Commonwealth. 
 
 By E. W. SiKES. 50 cents. 
 XII. Jared Sparks and Alexis De Tocqueville. By H. B. Adams. 25 cents. 
 SEVENTEENTH SERIES.— Economic History; Maryland and the South. 
 
 $3.50. 
 I-II-III. History of State Banking in Maryland. By A. C. BryAn. $1.00. 
 IV-V. The Kmow-STothlng Party in Maryland. By L. F. SCHMBCKEBIER. 75 cents 
 
 VI. The Lahadist Colony in Maryland. By B. B. James. 50 cents. 
 
 VII- VIII. History of Slavery in North Carolina. By J. S. BASSETT. 75 cents. 
 IX-X-XI. I>evelopment of the Chesapeake & Ohio Caual. ByG. W. Ward. 15 cents. 
 XII. Public Elducationai Work in Baltimore. By Herbebt B. Adams. 25 cents. 
 
 EIGHTEENTH SERIES.— Taxation in the Southern States : Church and 
 Popular Education. — $3.50. 
 
 I-IV. Studies in State Taxation, M'ith Particular Reference to the Southern 
 
 States. Edited loy J. H. Hollander. Paper, $1.00 ; cloth, $1.25. 
 V-VI. The Colonial Executive Prior to the Restoration. By P. L. Kaye. 50 cents. 
 
 VII. Constitution and Admission of Iowa into the Union. By J. A. JAMES. 30 cents. 
 VIII-IX. The Church and Popular Education. By H. B. ADAMS. 50 cents. 
 
 X-XII. The Struggle for Religious Freedom in Virginia: The Baptists. By 
 
 W. T. Thom, 75 cents. 
 NINETEENTH SERIES.— Diplomatic and Constitutional History — $3.50. 
 I-III. America in the Pacific and the Far East. By J. M. CALLAHAN. 75 cents. 
 IV-V. State Activities in Relation to Lahor in the United States. By W. F. WlL- 
 
 LOUGHBY. 50 cents. 
 VI- VII. History of Suffrage in Virginia. By J. A. C. Chandler. 50 cents. 
 VIII-IX. The Maryland Constitution of 1864. By W. S. Myers. 50 cents. 
 
 X. liife of Commissary James Blair, Founder of William and Mary College. By 
 
 D. E. MOTLEY. 25 cents. 
 XI-XII. Gov. Hicks of Maryland and the Civil War„ BY G. L. RadclifFE, sd 
 
 The set of nineteen (regular) series is now' offered, uniformly bound in clotl 
 library use, for $57.00, and including subscription to the current (twentieth) 
 for $60.00. The nineteen series, with eighteen '^ extra vohcmes^'' will be sold for 
 
 The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science ,appear 
 monthly. The subscription is three dollars per year. Orders should be addressed to 
 
 The Johi^s Hopkins Press, Baltimore, Md. 
 
 . LB U '30