This sounds interesting. It would be a heck of puzzle to tackle, but I
wish someone would gather a reliable list of 18th-c pen-names and their
real authors - mysteries abound, and misidentifications once made recur
like bad pennies (as with Richard Henry Lee and the Federal Farmer essays,
actually written by a New Yorker).

As to Cato -- made popular in 18th-c America by
- Cato's Letters, published by Trenchard and Gordon in London
  in the 1720s and widely read by the Founders;
- Addison's play (which Washington had performed for his troops
  at Valley Forge and which P Henry and N. Hale mined for quotes;
- not to mention Plutarch's Roman patriot, adversary of Caesar --

I found three noteworthy essayists who used the pseudonymn:

George Clinton, governor of New York and opponent of the U.S. Constitution
wrote seven letters against ratification over the pseudonym Cato in the
New York Journal. These were answered by Alexander Hamilton in his letters
signed Caesar in the Daily Advertiser.

In the election of 1804 the Federalist congressman William Plumer, of New
Hampshire, as author of nine essays published over the pseudonym Cato.

Volume 28 of the Jefferson Papers pp 433-4n notes that "Cato" was a
pseudonym used by Robert R. Livingston, of New York.

Are the authors mentioned suggesting that Jefferson used the penname Cato,
too?



Dr. Jon Kukla, Executive Vice-President
Red Hill - The Patrick Henry National Memorial
1250 Red Hill Road
Brookneal, Virginia 24528
www.redhill.org
Phone 434-376-2044 or 800-514-7463

Fax 434-376-2647

- M. Lynn Davis, Office Manager
- Karen Gorham, Associate Curator
- Edith Poindexter, Curator