Old men are naturally suspicious, see plots. And it would require almost more than the fortitude of a saint not to be affected by the type of attacks which were made on Washington and his administration. Not only had his behavior been condemned because of entirely unfounded distrust of his motives, but what he did had been distorted; and not only had his acts been distorted, but he had been assailed by lies which the perpetrators often knew were total likes. And the vilification appeared in newspapers of national circulation that were semi-official organs of the Republican party.
As long as he had been in office he had tried, although towards the end with sometimes stumbling feet, to walk the path he had charted for himself, the path of complete neutrality between factions at home and belligerents abroad. Once he was out of office and intended to remain so for the rest of his earthly career, moderation ceased to be a matter of state. He permitted himself to espouse extremes. He became at last what he had for so long been accused of being: devotedly pro-Federalist. Since he doubted the intentions of all others, he communicated exclusively with Federalists. He could no longer palliate the efforts of the French government to interfere in American politics; he had become angrily anti-French. In his denunciations of French attacks on American commerce, he no longer pointed out that Britain was also guilty. He came to believe that the leaders of the opposition, patriots who had been his coadjutors and friends, were eager to make the United States a vassal of France: might indeed cooperate with a French invasion.
A French invasion! In 1798, that seemed possible.
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