suffered the same personal abuse from newspaper editors as did
Washington. Federal editors spoke of him as "a cold thinking
villain whose black blood always runs temperately bad."
EDITORIAL CHANGES
One important change occurred during the Period of the Early Republic, in the matter of editing newspapers. In the Colonial Period the editor was almost invariably a practical printer who depended upon his trade for a living, and where this was not possible, he supplemented the income from his press by ways which have already been outlined in a preceding chapter. He spoke of himself in his columns not as an "editor," but as a printer, undertaker, author, and other terms. Such editorial matter as appeared in his columns was from the pen of other contributors. During the Period of the Early Repub- lic, when papers were founded chiefly for political purposes, the editor came into his own. He was either a printer seeking an office or he was a politician who hired a printer to run his paper. In the Colonial Period the pamphlet was the medium for editorial expression, but with the change just mentioned, to use the newspaper for political purposes, the pamphlet dis- appeared and its contents were printed in the newspaper. To- ward the close of the period men of real ability were hired to edit newspapers in which they had no financial interest. Com- munications from other pens were welcomed, but they were no longer given first place in the paper.
PESTILENCE AND PRESS
The prevalence of yellow fever in Philadelphia during sev- eral seasons toward the close of the eighteenth century, and an epidemic of a malignant fever in New York City in the early part of the nineteenth century, caused several papers in both cities to suspend publication. The fever devastation in Phila- delphia may have been one of the reasons why Freneau failed to resume publication of The National Gazette. For fear that it might return, Joseph Gales, at the suggestion of his wife, who had been a sufferer from the fever in a previous year, sold his Independent Gazetteer, in 1799, to Samuel Harrison Smith, who,
