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.Then Madison took a more deliberate steptoward establishing a partisan press, persuading a former Princeton Col-lege classmate, the poet Philip Freneau, to come to Philadelphia to edit aweekly paper and give a voice in the capital to the  republican interest.Jefferson offered Freneau a position as  translator in the State Departmentat $250 a year, and in October 1791 the National Gazette began publication.In 1789 the administration had established, in the fashion of the Britishgovernment, an official organ, the Gazette of the United States, to support itspolicies and print official communications, orders, and laws, which wasfinanced in part by government printing and advertising.During 1792, asJefferson s suspicions of the Federalists aristocratic and monarchical de-signs grew, and as Hamilton became enraged at Freneau s stinging attacks,a newspaper and pamphlet war broke out from Boston to Virginia, makingincreasingly obvious the disunity within the government and initiating thespread outward to attentive citizenry what were still largely personal differ-ences among extended but relatively small groups of gentlemen.²¹The Taming of the American Revolution 51Attitudes toward France and England among the political leadership, al-ready part of the mix since the inception of the federal government and theFrench Revolution of 1789, increasingly injected more passion into politicaldifferences in the new nation.Most Americans had welcomed the FrenchRevolution, and as European monarchies waged a reactionary war againstthe new republic, many Americans sympathized with embattled France.Butwhen England became part of the alliance against France in 1792, and asthe revolution became radical during 1793 with the beheading of Louis XVI,the Terror of 1793 94, and the attack on Christianity, sharp divisions fol-lowed in the United States, with the Washington administration seemingto tilt toward Great Britain and the  republican opposition remaining pro-France.With Britain and France at war, Washington proclaimed the UnitedStates s neutrality, but France expected special consideration as a formerally, and Britain imposed new restrictions on American shipping and seizedU.S.ships in the West Indies.Despite Britain s continuing treatment of thenew nation as an inferior, Washington and Hamilton preferred to work foran accommodation with the former mother country, which they regarded asthe United States s natural trading partner.Meanwhile, the arrival of a newFrench minister, Edmond Genet, seemed to auger well for redressing thebalance, as Jefferson and Madison wished, toward France.Genet met withenthusiastic crowds in the South and warm cooperation from Jefferson, butthe overconfident Genet proceeded to defy the administration s neutralityby seeking to outfit French privateers in American ports and even to raisean army in Kentucky to liberate Louisiana from Spain.Soon Jefferson wasforced to disown Genet, vote with the cabinet to request the French govern-ment to recall their minister, and try to contain the fallout that could onlydamage sympathy for France and the  republican interest. During 1794Washington appointed the aristocratic arch-Federalist and Anglophile JohnJay as special envoy to Britain, and the treaty that Jay brought back in 1795,more than any other policy difference, caused partisan polarization in Con-gress and led to the divided ruling gentry reaching out to a broader publicand mobilizing popular demonstrations for and against the treaty.Fromthis point on, citizen attentiveness began to rise, participation in the publicsphere increased, and Jeffersonian Republican party organization began inearnest.²²The latter cannot be regarded as a populist movement, though it oftenused populist rhetoric.Its organization came from the top down: aside fromcommunications in newspapers, its central core consisted of gentlemen52 The Taming of the American Revolutionwriting letters and networking with other gentlemen.But in 1793 94 a newpolitical entity appeared on the public stage that, while not a widespreadpopular movement, nevertheless expressed a thoroughly populist mentalityand justified its actions as rooted in the sovereignty of the people [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]