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Updated: June 9, 2025
The fact, nevertheless, remained that a seat had been given the editor at Mr. Jefferson's elbow. Three months before Madison heard that his relation to Freneau was bringing him under public censure, he showed an evident interest in the "Gazette" hardly consistent with his subsequent avowal of having nothing to do with its management.
Tempted into Gaine's bookstore by the display of volumes, he chanced upon a friend who called him by name. And old Hugh Gaine, turning slowly about at the sound of a name he knew so well, stared at the enemy he had never seen: "Is your name Freneau?" he asked. And the poet answered: "Yes, Philip Freneau."
Conspicuous among these was the "National Gazette," a paper edited by Philip Freneau, the poet, a clerk in the Department of State.
To Washington he expressed the same suspicions; and, from his own record in his Anas, he appears to have been rebuked by the president, and to have persisted in a most unfriendly course. Washington, according to the same record, then spoke with great warmth concerning the hostility of Freneau as manifested in his newspaper.
How utterly insincere appears the last clause of this paragraph, compared with the one next preceding it! The most scurrilous of the attacks alluded to proceeded from Freneau, a clerk in Mr. Jefferson's office! Letter to Mr. Jefferson, Secretary of State, dated "Philadelphia, May 23d, 1793, second year of the republic."
The President was responsible for his cabinet and for the measures of his administration, and it was impossible to separate them long, even when the chief magistrate was so great and so well-beloved as Washington. Freneau, editing his newspaper from the office of the Secretary of State, seems to have been the first to break the line.
A patriotic ode written in French, by Duponceau, and translated into English by Freneau, was sung; and the Marseilles hymn was chanted by Genet and the company, the minister adding two stanzas composed by himself, and having special reference to the navy.
Clair, and elsewhere records that in reading politics aloud to Washington "he appeared much affected, and spoke with some degree of asperity on the subject, which I endeavored to moderate, as I always did on such occasions." How he swore at Randolph and at Freneau is mentioned elsewhere.
Washington was much irritated at the abuse, and Jefferson in his "Anas" said that he "was evidently sore & warm and I took his intention to be that I should interpose in some way with Freneau, perhaps withdraw his appointment of translating clerk to my office. But I will not do it."
That a large number of the articles were from Jefferson's damning pen few of the Republican leader's friends denied with any warmth, and the natural deductions of history would have settled the question, had not Freneau himself confessed the truth in his old age. What Jefferson did not write, he or Madison inspired, and Freneau had a lively pen of his own.
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