and the campaign of personal and party abuse in partisan news reports, in virulent editorials, in poems and skits of every kind, was echoed from one end of the country to the other. The National Gazette closed in 1793 due to circulation problems and the political backlash against Jefferson and Madison's financial involvement in founding the paper. The other Republican paper of primary importance was the Aurora General Advertiser, founded by Ben Franklin's grandson and heir, Benjamin Franklin Bache, on October 2, 1790. The Aurora, published from Franklin Court in Philadelphia, was the most strident newspaper of its time, attacking John Adams' anti-democratic policies on a daily basis. No paper is thought to have given Adams more trouble than the Aurora. His wife, Abigail, wrote frequent letters to her sister and others decrying what she considered the slander spewing forth from the Aurora. Jefferson credited the Aurora with averting a disastrous war with France, and laying the groundwork for his own election. Following Bache's death (the result of his staying in Philadelphia during a yellow fever epidemic, while he was awaiting trial under the Sedition Act), William Duane, an immigrant from Ireland, led the paper until 1822 (and married Bache's widow, following the death of his own wife in the same Yellow Fever epidemic). Like Freneau, Bache and Duane were involved in a daily back-and-forth with the Federalist editors, especially Fenno and Cobbett. Noah Webster, strapped for money, accepted an offer in late 1793 from Alexander Hamilton of $1,500 to move to New York City and edit a Federalist newspaper. In December he founded New York's first daily newspaper, American Minerva (later known as The Commercial Advertiser). He edited it for four years, writing the equivalent of 20 volumes of articles and editorials. He also published the semi-weekly publication, The Herald, A Gazette for the country (later known as The New York Spectator). As a partisan he soon was denounced by the Jeffersonian Republicans as "a pusillanimous, half-begotten, self-dubbed patriot", "an incurable lunatic", and "a deceitful newsmonge ... Pedagogue and Quack." Fellow Federalist Cobbett labeled him "a traitor to the cause of Federalism", calling him "a toad in the service of sans-culottism", "a prostitute wretch", "a great fool, and a barefaced liar", "a spiteful viper", and "a maniacal pedant." The master of words was distressed. Even the use of words like "the people", "democracy", and "equality" in public debate, bothered