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Federalist editor

Noah Webster married Rebecca Greenleaf (1766–1847) on October 26, 1789, in New Haven, Connecticut. They had eight children:

Webster joined the elite in Hartford, Connecticut, but did not have substantial financial resources. In 1793, Alexander Hamilton lent him $1,500 (~$ 34,171 in 2023) to move to New York City to edit the leading Federalist Party newspaper. In December, he founded New York's first daily newspaper American Minerva, later renamed the Commercial Advertiser, which he edited 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 Federalist spokesman, Webster defended the administrations of George Washington and John Adams, especially their policy of neutrality between Britain and France, and he especially criticized the excesses of the French Revolution and its Reign of Terror. When French ambassador Citizen Genêt set up a network of pro-Jacobin " Democratic-Republican Societies " that entered American politics and attacked President Washington, he condemned them. He later defended Jay's Treaty between the United States and Britain. As a result, he was repeatedly denounced by the Jeffersonian Republicans as "a pusillanimous, half-begotten, self-dubbed patriot", "an incurable lunatic", and "a deceitful newsmonger... Pedagogue and Quack."

For decades, he was one of the most prolific authors in the new nation, publishing textbooks, political essays, a report on infectious diseases, and newspaper articles for his Federalist party. In 1799 Webster wrote two massive volumes on the causes of “epidemics and pestilential diseases”. Medical historians have considered him as “America’s first epidemiologist”. He was so prolific that a modern bibliography of his works spans 655 pages. He moved back to New Haven in 1798, and was elected as a Federalist to the Connecticut House of Representatives in 1800 and 1802–1807.

Webster was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1799. He moved to Amherst, Massachusetts in 1812, where he helped to found Amherst College. In 1822, his family moved back to New Haven, where Webster was awarded an honorary degree from Yale the following year. In 1827, Webster was elected to the American Philosophical Society.