In a series of articles for a Dutch publication, he invented a fictitious French officer in whose mouth Jefferson put a pro-American argument designed to counter the British propaganda.39 “I have fought and bled for [America] because I thought its cause just,” Jefferson wrote in the officer’s voice. Once home, however, “the Frenchman” found his friends offering “condolences … on the bitter fruits of so prosperous a war.” How could such good people, Jefferson’s officer wondered, be so misinformed?
