William Cobbett - France and The United States: 1792–1800

France and The United States: 1792–1800

Cobbett had developed an animosity towards some corrupt officers, and he gathered evidence on the issue while in New Brunswick, but his charges against them were sidetracked. He wrote The Soldier's Friend (1792) protesting against the low pay and harsh treatment of enlisted men in the British army. Sensing that he was about to be indicted in retribution he fled to France in March 1792 to avoid imprisonment. Cobbett had intended to stay a year to learn the French language but he found the French Revolution in full swing and the French Revolutionary Wars in progress, so he sailed for the United States in September 1792.

He was first at Wilmington, then Philadelphia by the Spring of 1793. Cobbett initially prospered by teaching English to Frenchmen and translating texts from French to English. He became a controversial political writer and pamphleteer, writing from a pro-British stance under the pseudonym Peter Porcupine.

Cobbett also campaigned against the eminent physician and abolitionist Dr. Benjamin Rush, whose advocacy of bleeding during the yellow fever epidemic may have caused many deaths. Rush won a libel lawsuit against Cobbett, who never fully paid the $8,000 judgment, but instead fled to New York and back to England in 1800, via Halifax, Nova Scotia to Falmouth in Cornwall.