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Dear George, George Washington was an avid reader of newspapers and a strong supporter of freedom of speech, but having to endure the personal attacks made on him as president by the anti-Federalist press was understandably a bitter experience, particularly for a man who so valued his public reputation. Here are a few pertinent quotations: "I consider such easy vehicles of knowledge [newspapers and magazines], more happily calculated than any other, to preserve the liberty, stimulate the industry and meliorate the morals of an enlightened and free People." To Mathew Carey, 25 June 1788 "I should be happy in the mean time to see a cessation of the abuses of public Officers--and of those attacks upon almost every measure of government with which some of the Gazettes are so strongly impregnated; & which cannot fail, if persevered in with the malignancy they now team, of rending the Union asunder. . . . "In a word if the Government and the Officers of it are to be the constant theme for News-paper abuse, . . . it will be impossible, I conceive, for any man living to manage the helm or to keep the machine together." To Edmund Randolph, 26 August 1792 "The arrows of malevolence . . . , however barbed and well pointed, never can reach the most vulnerable part of me; though, whilst I am up as a mark, they will be continually aimed. The publications in Freneau's and Bache's papers are outrages on common decency; and they progress in that style, in proportion as their pieces are treated with contempt, and are passed by in silence, by those at whom they are aimed. The tendency of them, however, is too obvious to be mistaken by men of cool and dispassionate minds, and, in my opinion, ought to alarm them; because it is difficult to prescribe bounds to the effect." To Henry Lee, 21 July 1793 "We get so many details in the Gazettes, and of such diferent complexions, that it is impossible to know what credence to give to any of them." To James McHnery, 3 April 1797 "There is so little dependence on News paper publications, which take whatever complexion the Editors please to give them that persons at a distance, & who have no other means of information, are often times at a loss to form an opinion on the most important occurrences." To Oliver Wolcott, 15 May 1797 Best regards, Phil Chase, Editor in Chief (electronic mail, October 27, 2003)
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