The Whiskey Insurrectionists may have imagined that they were too remote to be reached in their western wilderness, but he taught them a most salutary lesson that, as they were in the Union, the power of the Union could and would reach them.
One of the matters which Washington could not have foreseen was the outrageous abuse of the press, which surpassed in virulence and indecency anything hitherto known in the United States.

At first the journalistic thugs took care not to vilify Washington personally, but, as they became more outrageous, they spared neither him nor his family.

Freneau, Bache, and Giles were among the most malignant of these infamous men; and most suspicious is it that two of them at least were proteges of Thomas Jefferson.

Once, when the attack was particularly atrocious, and the average citizen might well be excused if he believed that Jefferson wrote it, Jefferson, unmindful of the full bearing of the French proverb, _Qui s'excuse s'accuse_, wrote to Washington exculpating himself and protesting that he was not the author of that particular attack, and added that he had never written any article of that kind for the press.

Many years later the editor of that newspaper, one of the most shameless of the malignants, calmly reported in a batch of reminiscences that Jefferson did contribute many of the most flagrant articles.