Scandal & Civility

Scandal & Civility
by Marcus Daniel
(Oxford, 386 pages, $28)

Politics and the press have not always been as tame as they are today.

To get some perspective on such views [that the Founding Era was one when Olympian political figures and impartial, public-spirited newspapers guided the nation in its times of crisis], one need go no further than "Scandal & Civility," Marcus Daniel's detailed study of the American press in the 1790s. The idea that this critical period was marked by a calm spirit of reasoned debate is a myth, as Mr. Daniel shows, and a deeply misleading one at that. The postrevolutionary age witnessed the unexpected rise of fiercely contending political parties; an increasingly bloody French Revolution that divided Americans into warring camps; a string of crises, such as the Genet affair, the Whiskey Rebellion, the XYZ affair; and the passage of the Alien and Sedition acts punishing dissent. It would not be too strong to assert that every step along the way the very survival of the nation was at risk.

Jefferson opposed the Alien and Sedition Acts as unconstitutional, stating that they stepped on states rights.

And what role did newspapers play? A profound one. As Mr. Daniel amply shows, they stoked debate with abandon as well as with a mean- spiritedness and partisan passion that make today's scuffles seem tame by comparison.

Ah, the good old days.

One of the most famous editors of the age was Philip Freneau, an ardent Republican and once "penniless young poet," and the publisher of the National Gazette, a semiweekly newspaper. What makes Freneau so interesting is that George Washington's secretary of state, Thomas Jefferson, hired Freneau to work as a minor clerk at the State Department; however, his real responsibility was to galvanize, through his newspaper, Republican opposition to the administration he served. Rival journalist Richard Fenno, who was himself aligned with Washington rather than Jefferson, accused Freneau of being a "demon of slander," and Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, who often felt the sting of Freneau's articles, condemned Jefferson for paying Freneau with public funds, though to no avail.

The more one knows about Jefferson the more his halo crumbles.

Sick of the constant tirades against the government, an outraged President Washington called on Jefferson to put a stop to Freneau. Remarkably, Jefferson refused, insisting the National Gazette had "saved our Constitution." But if Washington felt the pain of Freneau's attacks, it was nothing compared with what he suffered at the hands of another Republican, Benjamin Franklin Bache, who published the Aurora, a newspaper whose inimitable motto was Surgo ut Prosim ("I rise that I might serve"). A grandson of Benjamin Franklin, the worldly Bache was no run-of-the-mill journalist, which only gave more force to his criticisms. He labeled "unconstitutional" Washington's actions on behalf of the Jay Treaty – a 1794 agreement with Britain, reviled by pro-French Republicans, concerning trade, sovereignty and the looming specter of war – and called for the president's impeachment. Remember, until then Washington was seen as virtually untouchable.

Imagine calling for Washington's impeachment.

Nor did Bache stop there. At the same time that his paper praised revolutionary France's bloodthirsty dictator, Maximilian Robespierre, as the "embodiment of virtue," he derided Washington as a "Demi-God of a Turkish seraglio." Others joined the fray: One writer spoke of Washington's "childish ambition"; another said that Washington was "cowardly"; a third that he was "insipid." Bache himself blasted Washington as "guilty of the foulest designs against the liberty of the people."

Robespierre virtuous, Washington demigod of a harem.

In an age when our newspaper industry is increasingly embattled, "Scandal & Civility" serves as a timely reminder of just how vital a thriving news culture is to the well-being of our democracy. The book, it should be said, is the outgrowth of a doctoral dissertation and is at times marred by the jargon one finds in graduate seminars. But it neatly presents an animated portrait of the postrevolutionary era, when opinionated, brash, irreverent newspapers were indispensable. They are no less indispensable to us today.