ON THIS (BAD) DAY IN HISTORY...
JULY 6, 1796
Washington’s Bad Press: More of a Pain Than His False Teeth
“If ever a nation was debauched by a man, the American nation has been debauched by WASHINGTON.”
—Aurora General Advertiser, 1796
George Washington was in a snit as his second presidential term neared its end. The cloak of esteem that once made him nearly invincible to criticism had long since been torn away. Now, as he prepared to retire to Mount Vernon after decades of devoted service to his country, he was being trampled in the partisan muck (“buffeted in the public prints by a set of infamous scribblers,” he wrote) and betrayed by men such as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, whom he had once considered close friends.
“Saint Washington,” as the Aurora General Advertiser* sarcastically referred to the nation’s first president, was accused of having monarchical pretensions, particularly in the aftermath of the Jay Treaty, which some viewed as overly favorable to “aristocratic” Britain and detrimental to revolutionary France. “He holds levees like a King,” Philip Freneau wrote in the Jersey Chronicle; “receives congratulations on his birthday like a King; receives ambassadors like a King; makes treaties like a King; answers petitions like a King; employs old enemies like a King . . . swallows adulation like a King, and vomits offensive truths in your face.” (No wonder Washington called Freneau “that rascal.”)
Critics were relentless in their attacks—“always working, like bees, to distill their poison,” the president wrote. Published cartoons showed him being marched off to the guillotine, while some toasted “a speedy death to General Washington.” But as future president Woodrow Wilson would write in Harper’s magazine in 1896, “The men who sneered and stormed, talked of usurpation and impeachment, called him base, incompetent, traitorous even, were permitted to see not so much as the quiver of an eyelid as they watched him go steadily from step to step in the course he had chosen.”
Indeed, Washington did remain mostly silent in the face of this venomous censure—at least publicly. Privately, however, he maintained a less- than-stoic stance. Tired, ailing, and deeply wounded, Washington lashed out in a letter to Thomas Jefferson** whom he blamed for secretly inciting much of the invective: “Until the last year or two ago, I had no conception that Parties would, or even could go, to the length I have been witness to,” Washington wrote on July 6, 1796. The president then expressed disbelief and consternation that after all his efforts to keep the United States strictly neutral in the endless clash between Britain and France, “I should be accused of being the enemy of one nation and subject to the influence of another.” The president was further appalled by the incendiary misrepresentations used to “prove” foreign entanglements on the part of his administration—delivered, he wrote, “in such exaggerated and indecent terms as could scarcely be applied to a Nero, a notorious defaulter, or even to a common pickpocket.”
“But enough of this,” Washington concluded his missive; “I have already gone farther in the expression of my feelings, than I intended.” The wearied and disgusted president restrained his feelings even further in his farewell address, published three months later. The original draft pulsed with Washington’s anger at his mistreatment, especially in sharply partisan press of the era. “Some of the Gazettes of the United States have teemed with all the invective that disappointment, ignorance of facts, and malicious falsehoods could invent,” he vented in one peevish version of the address, “to misrepresent my politics and affections; to wound my reputation and feelings; and to weaken, if not entirely destroy the confidence you had been pleased to repose in me.”
In the final draft, though, Washington was nothing but magnanimous as he prepared to step down and cede power—willingly, unlike those monarchs with whom he had been so unfairly compared.
He would leave the endless squabbling to future generations.
*At a time when virulent partisanship was becoming commonplace in the press, the Aurora—published by Benjamin Franklin’s grandson—was a particularly anti-Federalist paper. “If you read the Aurora . . . or those Gazettes which are under the same influence ” Washington wrote, “you cannot but have perceived with what malignant industry, and persevering falsehoods I am assailed, in order to weaken, if not to destroy, the confidence of the public.”
** Martha Washington, who blamed her husband’s declining health on the relentless attacks he endured, had a particular hatred for Jefferson. The two worst days of her life, she reportedly said, were when the president died—and when Jefferson came to Mount Vernon to offer his condolences
More Bad Days in History: The Delightfully Dismal, Day-by-Day Saga of Ignominy, Idiocy, and Incompetence Continues
Washington’s Bad Press: More of a Pain Than His False Teeth
“If ever a nation was debauched by a man, the American nation has been debauched by WASHINGTON.”
—Aurora General Advertiser, 1796
George Washington was in a snit as his second presidential term neared its end. The cloak of esteem that once made him nearly invincible to criticism had long since been torn away. Now, as he prepared to retire to Mount Vernon after decades of devoted service to his country, he was being trampled in the partisan muck (“buffeted in the public prints by a set of infamous scribblers,” he wrote) and betrayed by men such as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, whom he had once considered close friends.
“Saint Washington,” as the Aurora General Advertiser* sarcastically referred to the nation’s first president, was accused of having monarchical pretensions, particularly in the aftermath of the Jay Treaty, which some viewed as overly favorable to “aristocratic” Britain and detrimental to revolutionary France. “He holds levees like a King,” Philip Freneau wrote in the Jersey Chronicle; “receives congratulations on his birthday like a King; receives ambassadors like a King; makes treaties like a King; answers petitions like a King; employs old enemies like a King . . . swallows adulation like a King, and vomits offensive truths in your face.” (No wonder Washington called Freneau “that rascal.”)
Critics were relentless in their attacks—“always working, like bees, to distill their poison,” the president wrote. Published cartoons showed him being marched off to the guillotine, while some toasted “a speedy death to General Washington.” But as future president Woodrow Wilson would write in Harper’s magazine in 1896, “The men who sneered and stormed, talked of usurpation and impeachment, called him base, incompetent, traitorous even, were permitted to see not so much as the quiver of an eyelid as they watched him go steadily from step to step in the course he had chosen.”
Indeed, Washington did remain mostly silent in the face of this venomous censure—at least publicly. Privately, however, he maintained a less- than-stoic stance. Tired, ailing, and deeply wounded, Washington lashed out in a letter to Thomas Jefferson** whom he blamed for secretly inciting much of the invective: “Until the last year or two ago, I had no conception that Parties would, or even could go, to the length I have been witness to,” Washington wrote on July 6, 1796. The president then expressed disbelief and consternation that after all his efforts to keep the United States strictly neutral in the endless clash between Britain and France, “I should be accused of being the enemy of one nation and subject to the influence of another.” The president was further appalled by the incendiary misrepresentations used to “prove” foreign entanglements on the part of his administration—delivered, he wrote, “in such exaggerated and indecent terms as could scarcely be applied to a Nero, a notorious defaulter, or even to a common pickpocket.”
“But enough of this,” Washington concluded his missive; “I have already gone farther in the expression of my feelings, than I intended.” The wearied and disgusted president restrained his feelings even further in his farewell address, published three months later. The original draft pulsed with Washington’s anger at his mistreatment, especially in sharply partisan press of the era. “Some of the Gazettes of the United States have teemed with all the invective that disappointment, ignorance of facts, and malicious falsehoods could invent,” he vented in one peevish version of the address, “to misrepresent my politics and affections; to wound my reputation and feelings; and to weaken, if not entirely destroy the confidence you had been pleased to repose in me.”
In the final draft, though, Washington was nothing but magnanimous as he prepared to step down and cede power—willingly, unlike those monarchs with whom he had been so unfairly compared.
He would leave the endless squabbling to future generations.
*At a time when virulent partisanship was becoming commonplace in the press, the Aurora—published by Benjamin Franklin’s grandson—was a particularly anti-Federalist paper. “If you read the Aurora . . . or those Gazettes which are under the same influence ” Washington wrote, “you cannot but have perceived with what malignant industry, and persevering falsehoods I am assailed, in order to weaken, if not to destroy, the confidence of the public.”
** Martha Washington, who blamed her husband’s declining health on the relentless attacks he endured, had a particular hatred for Jefferson. The two worst days of her life, she reportedly said, were when the president died—and when Jefferson came to Mount Vernon to offer his condolences
More Bad Days in History: The Delightfully Dismal, Day-by-Day Saga of Ignominy, Idiocy, and Incompetence Continues
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