This country should not forget, either for the country’s honor, for the honor of republican justice, or for an example to others … the free and manfully conducted Press [of the Aurora] in the hands of Benjamin Franklin Bache …
[W]hen to take this paper was denounced by the administration and their partizans as sufficient cause for persecution and proscription; when men who professed to be republicans and applauded the virtue of Benjamin Franklin Bache dared not or feared to stand by him and their common country whose cause he espoused; when the menaces of power and the money of the country were employed to overwhelm him; … when bodily injury done on him was countenanced and rewarded; when few men had courage enough to read free opinion in a country where the Constitution guaranteed its freedom; … when those readers were so few as by their subscription not to afford means adequate to the ordinary expences for the support of this Paper; … [t]hen and thus circumstanced, upheld by conscious virtue alone, he stood forward and … upheld the drooping liberties of America …
Under persecution and desertion of friends—under the sacrifice of fortune and the menaces of assassins and even on the bed of death—the same spirit actuated and the constant assurance was impressed on his mind, that by perseverance the cause of virtue must at length prevail.
WILLIAM DUANE, EDITOR, 1798–1822,
AURORA GENERAL ADVERTISER11
High-street (to the left) crossing Second-street, 1798, with one of the market buildings (an old courthouse) immediately to the left.12