Editing Federalist Party (section)

==Bases of support==
===Press===
The [[spoils system]] helped finance Federalist printers until 1801 and Republican editors after that. Federalist [[United States Postmaster General|Postmasters General]], [[Timothy Pickering]] (1791–94) and [[Joseph Habersham]] (1795–1801) appointed and removed local [[postmaster]]s to maximize party funding. Numerous printers were appointed as postmasters. They did not deliver the mail, but they did collect fees from mail users and obtained free delivery of their own newspapers and business mail.<ref>Carl E. Prince, "The Federalist Party and Creation of a Court Press, 1789–1801." ''Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly'' 53#2 (1976): 238–41.</ref><ref>Si Sheppard, ''The Partisan Press: A History of Media Bias in the United States'' (2007).</ref>

To strengthen their coalitions and hammer away constantly at the opposition, both parties sponsored newspapers in the capital ([[Philadelphia]]) and other major cities.<ref>Jeffrey L. Pasley. ''"The Tyranny of Printers": Newspaper Politics in the Early Republic'' (2001)</ref> On the Republican side, [[Philip Freneau]] and [[Benjamin Franklin Bache]] blasted the administration with all the scurrility at their command. Bache in particular targeted Washington himself as the front man for monarchy who must be exposed. To Bache, Washington was a cowardly general and a money-hungry baron who saw the Revolution as a means to advance his fortune and fame; Adams was a failed diplomat who never forgave the French their love of [[Benjamin Franklin]] and who craved a crown for himself and his descendants; and Alexander Hamilton was the most inveterate monarchist of them all.<ref>Donald H. Stewart, ''The Opposition Press of the Federalist Period'' (1969)</ref>

The Federalists, with twice as many newspapers at their command, slashed back with equal vituperation. [[John Fenno]] and "Peter Porcupine" ([[William Cobbett]]) were their nastiest penmen and [[Noah Webster]] their most learned. Hamilton subsidized the Federalist editors, wrote for their papers and in 1801 established his own paper, the ''[[New York Post|New York Evening Post]].'' Though his reputation waned considerably following his death, [[Joseph Dennie]] ran three of the most popular and influential newspapers of the period, ''[[The Farmer's Weekly Museum]]'', the ''[[Gazette of the United States]]'' and ''[[The Port Folio]]''.<ref>{{cite book |last=Lora |first=Ronald |title=The Conservative Press in Eighteenth-and Nineteenth-century America  |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fRpKaRzq6OMC&q=The+Farmer%27s+Weekly+Museum&pg=PA103 |publisher=[[Greenwood Publishing Group]] |year=1999 |pages=103–111 |isbn=0-313-31043-2}}</ref>