1. Iyengar and Reeves, Do the 1. Media Govern?
2. Cox, Journey through My Years, 235–37; Sinclair, Available Man, 22.
3. H. L. Mencken, “Bayard vs. Lionheart,” in Carnival of Buncombe, 15.
4. Marvin, “Space, Time, and Captive Communications History,” 20–38. Many modern-day journalists and citizens also believe that the media should function as a “watchdog” against abuses by government. However, the only acceptable mode of performing this function, in current journalistic ideology, is to expose wrongdoing in news reports, thereby fulfilling the public’s “right to know.” Nothing in current main stream journalistic culture, including the “public journalism” movement, authorizes journalists acting as engaged, critical partisans, except (occasionally) within the limited confines of the op-ed pages. See Gleason, Watchdog Concept; Weaver and Wilhoit, American Journalist, 104–45; Klaidman and Beauchamp, Virtuous Journalist, 126–43, 154–55. In many other parts of the world, the modern journalistic traditions are quite different, with most newspapers maintaining frank political identities and journalists acting as engaged partisans up to very recent times. A number of European nations (including France, Italy, Norway, and Sweden) have considered a politically engaged press important enough to provide government subsidies aimed at maintaining news papers affiliated with each major political party in each major locality, in defiance of worldwide economic trends toward apolitical, profit-oriented newspaper monopolies. See Smith, The Newspaper, An International History especially 164–68; Smith, Newspapers and Democracy; Koss, Rise and Fall of the Political Press in Britain. Koss dates the demise of the British party press approximately to the 1960s, but the British press still strikes most American readers as much more politicized than their own.
5. For the late development of the “news function” in newspapers other than the large urban dailies, see Russo, “Origins of Local News”; Baldasty, Commercialization of News; Clark, Southern Country Editor. Even that most whiggish of journalism historians, Frank Luther Mott had to admit that the “partisan press dominated American journalism” up through the Civil War (American Journalism, 253).
6. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 185–86.
7. Schudson, “Troubleshooting Manual for Journalism History,” 463–66. For works dispelling commonly accepted myths about the impact of the watchdog press in the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, see Hallin, “Uncensored War”; and Lang and Lang, Battle for Public Opinion.
8. Political historians have been the heaviest consumers of newspaper sources, but they have rarely given extensive or explicit treatment to the political role of newspapers and newspaper editors, even in otherwise exhaustive works. According to J. Mills Thornton III (Politics and Power in a Slave Society, 128), the press was “third great element in party governance,” along with party conventions and legislative caucuses, but it has also been “perhaps the most infrequently noticed” by historians. A survey of the literature more than bears out Thornton’s assumption. Two major synthetic works on the evolution of the party system completely ignore the role of the press: Chambers and Burnham, American Party Systems; and Kleppner et al., Evolution of American Electoral Systems. Though newspapers were, after Bibles and almanacs, the most widely circulated type of printed matter in the early American republic (Gilmore, Reading Becomes a Necessity of Life, 193), even historians of print culture and popular reading have devoted relatively little attention to them. Two essay collections intended to present representative samples of work in the “print culture” field either omit the partisan press entirely or restrict the subject to part of one chapter: Davidson, Reading in America; and Joyce et al., Printing and Society in Early America.
9. For influential examples of these interpretations, see “The Dark Ages of Partisan Journalism,” in Mott, American Journalism, 167–80; and Park, “Natural History of the Newspaper.”
10. Sloan, “Journalism Historians Lost in the Past, Need Direction,” 4–7, 48. Other surveys and critiques of the historiography of journalism can be found in Startt and Sloan, Significance of the Media, 1–15, 78–105; Nord, “A Plea for Journalism History”; Nerone, “Mythology of the Penny Press”; Marvin, “Space, Time, and Captive Communications History”; Carey, “Problem of Journalism History.” The textbooks men tioned are Mott, American Journalism; and Emery and Emery, Press and America. Michael Schudson, in his 1997 article “Troubleshooting Manual for Journalism History,” argued that journalism historiography was still just beginning to move beyond the whiggish concerns and questions of these textbooks, and Schudson, Andie Tucher, and James Carey all essentially endorsed that view again in a panel at the 2000 meeting of the Organization of American Historians.
11. The political scientist Thomas E. Patterson argues that the media have taken over many former functions of the political parties, including the screening of presidential candidates. See Patterson, Out of Order, 29, 35.
12. Overviews of the present state of the field can be found in: Hench, Three Hundred Years of the American Newspaper; Solomon and McChesney, Ruthless Criticism; Sloan and Startt, Significance of the Media. A recent synthesis of the new journalism history for the early national period is Humphrey, Press of the Young Republic. There remains a tendency among even the most sophisticated historians of journalism to treat aggressive news reporting as the press’s preeminent, essential, teleological function. They tend to write with automatic approval whenever they find newspapers becoming independent of party politics, and tend to construct their studies as searches for origin points, or early examples, of modern characteristics such as the ideology of objectivity, “coverage” of major events, and typical stylistic devices such as the “inverted pyramid” story structure. Though written in a non-whiggish tone and often aimed at subverting modern myths about the journalism profession, these studies are nevertheless engaged in an inherently limiting enterprise. They are virtually forced to focus on the relative handful of big-city newspapers that can be considered potential precursors to modern journalism, and deal with the vast majority of the nineteenth-century press only as foils or points of contrast, if at all. For cases in point, see Rutenbeck, “Editorial Perception of Newspaper Independence”; Rutenbeck, “Newspaper Trends in the 1870s”; Schudson, Discovering the News; Schiller, Objectivity and the News; Mindich, Just the Facts.
13. Fallows, Breaking the News, 182; Patterson, Out of Order, 39–42, 52, 141, 154, 156; Crouse, Boys on the Bus, 57, 344–53; Entman, Democracy without Citizens, 8–9. Entman cogently describes the modern media as exercising “power without control,” in a list of characteristics revolving around the sterility of the media’s present-day political role: “abundance [of information] without growth” in citizen participation or understanding; “aggressiveness without accountability,” and “pressure without reform.”
14. Silbey, American Political Nation, 54. Despite this statement, Silbey’s text makes only scattered references to the role of the press. Though some works of political history have considered the role of the press in politics more thoroughly, even they have portrayed partisan newspapers merely as useful adjuncts to the political parties—“a kind of public address system to supporters,” according to Ronald Formisano (Transformation of Political Culture, 16). Standard works that deal rather extensively with the role of political newspapers and newspaper editors while still treating them as appendages to the political system are: Cunningham, Jeffersonian Republicans; Cunningham, Republicans in Power; Fischer, Revolution of American Conservatism; McCormick, Second American Party System; and Remini, Election of Andrew Jackson.
15. On newspapers and party politics in the late nineteenth century, see Summers, Press Gang; and McGerr, Decline of Popular Politics.
16. Except where noted, the following general discussion of the press’s role in nineteenth-century politics is grounded in my own research and in the general literature on journalism history and party history. Besides those already cited, works that have strongly influenced my ideas include: Bailyn and Hench, Press and the American Revolution; Hench, “Newspaper in a Republic”; Baldasty, Commercialization of News, 11–46; Sloan, “Early Party Press”; Sloan, “Purse and Pen”; Smith, Press, Politics, and Patronage; Stewart, Opposition Press of the Federalist Period, 3–32; Hamilton, Country Printer; Lyon, Pioneer Editor in Missouri; Cole, Jacksonian Democracy in New Hampshire; Kehl, Ill Feeling in the Era of Good Feeling; Gienapp, Origins of the Republican Party; Van Deusen, Thurlow Weed; Niven, Gideon Welles; Robertson, Language of Democracy; John, Spreading the News; McGerr, Decline of Popular Politics, 14–22.
17. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 517.
18. Ketcham, Presidents above Party; Troy, See How They Ran.
19. In addition to my own research and the works on party history already cited, the description of early campaigning in the next few paragraphs rests primarily on the following works: Isaac, Transformation of Virginia; Sydnor, Gentlemen Freeholders; Maier, From Resistance to Revolution; Dinkin, Voting in Provincial America; Dinkin, Voting in Revolutionary America; Dinkin, Campaigning in America; Taylor, “‘Art of Hook and Snivey’”; Dupre, “Barbecues and Pledges”; Jordan, Political Leadership in Jefferson’s Virginia; Heale, Making of American Politics; Heale, Presidential Quest. On celebrations and toasting, see Koschnik, “Political Conflict and Public Contest”; Newman, “Principles or Men?”; Newman, Parades and the Politics of the Street; Travers, Celebrating the Fourth, 69-106; Waldstreicher, “Rites of Rebellion”; Waldstreicher, Perpetual Fetes.
20. Dupre, “Barbecues and Pledges,” 483; Baltimore Whig, 8, 23, 24, 28, 29 Sept., 1, 2,5, 6,7 Oct. 1813.
21. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 518.
22. Similar points are made in Koschnik, “Political Conflict and Public Contest,” 228-29; and Grasso, Speaking Aristocracy, 473—74. The critical role of print in turning local celebrations and meetings into a powerful force for nationalism is a major theme of Waldstreicher, “Rites of Rebellion” and Perpetual Fetes.
23. Trenton True American, 29 July 1816. Editors could also manipulate the readings of public opinion that were taken from the pages by printing toasts selectively, as the True Americans editor did by including a large number of toasts condemning a congressional pay raise that he and the paper were campaigning against.
24. John Binns to Thomas J. Rogers, 5 Feb. 1816, Binns file, Dreer Collection, HSR
25. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 517.
26. Leonard, News for All, 3-61; Brown, Knowledge Is Power, especially 132-59, 218-96; Conroy, In Public Houses, 234-36, 279-80, 304-305, 313; Smith, The Newspaper: An International History, 95. Space and time considerations have made it impossible to address the important question of readership very extensively in this book. The only way to generate hard information on newspaper readership for this period is to under take painstaking social history research, examining, through estate inventories and similar records, exactly what reading material individual families had on hand. The most thorough study of this infrequently seen type (Gilmore, Reading Becomes a Neces sity of Life) confirms the anecdotal evidence presented here about the penetration of early newspapers. Wowed by the claimed circulation figures of the sold-on-the-street commercial dailies that first began to appear in the 1830s (the “penny press”), scholars have tended to overestimate the change in newspaper readership levels that the new cheap newspapers represented, depicting them as America’s first “mass medium.” For examples, see Tucher, Froth and Scum; Schudson, Discovering the News, 12-60; Schiller, Objectivity and the News; and Mott, American Journalism, 215-53. While penny newspapers such as the New York Herald may have been the first to achieve huge individual circulations, the evidence for their supposedly revolutionary impact on newspaper readership as a whole has been more assumed than demonstrated. (A common source for claims about the revolution in readership are some highly speculative circulation statistics, mostly mere estimates before 1830, presented in Lee, Daily Newspaper, 711-45.) The penny press may have heralded the centralization of newspaper production as much as the expansion or democratization of newspaper reading. It was also a phenomenon that was for decades largely limited to a few major eastern cities. For a strong critique of the historiography on the penny press, see Nerone, “Mythology of the Penny Press.” A recent account, Henkin, City Reading, 101-135, basically endorses the “mythology” but makes an advance by emphasizing that the penny press was a “decidedly urban,” or even decidedly New York, phenomenon.
27. Mesick, English Traveller in America, 225-29; Farkas, Journey in North America, 60-61,151-52.
28. For “mediation” as one of the primary tasks of newspaper editors and other early party activists, see Waldstreicher and Grossbart, “Abraham Bishop’s Vocation.”
29. The best source on these matters is John, Spreading the News, which shows that the early postal service was a powerful instrument of public policy.
30. “Credit to Whom Credit is Due,” Trenton True American, 5 Jan. 1802.
31. Smith, Press, Politics and Patronage, 114-26.
32. Wilson, Presidency of Van Buren, 64.
33. Van Deusen, Thurlow Weed, 38-69; Baldasty, “New York State Press and Anti-masonry.”
34. Filler, Crusade against Slavery, 55-62; Stewart, Holy Warriors, 133.
35. McCormick, Second American Party System; Kleppner, et al., Evolution of American Electoral Systems, 77—in; Silbey, American Political Nation, 5-32.
36. McWilliams, “Parties as Civic Associations.”
37. The most thorough work on Tammany Hall is Mushkat, Tammany.
38. Quotation from Silbey, American Political Nation, 52. On the national party committees, which remained weak and seminomadic as late as the 1960s, see Cotter and Hennessey, Politics without Power, 1-38. The party chairman became a somewhat more authoritative figure after the Civil War, as an intermittent tradition developed of giving the chairman a patronage-heavy cabinet post such as postmaster general. (ibid., 92-94; and also see, Fowler, Cabinet Politician. Parties in the U.S. Congress shared a similarly uneven pattern of development, with strong partisanship long preceding institutionalization. See Polsby, “Institutionalization of the House.” The weakness and general invisibility of the old national party committees stood in marked contrast to the thorough institutionalization of formal party organizations that took place in other democratic nations such as Great Britain.
39. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 518. The patterns of newspaper expansion in the early republic bear out Tocqueville’s assertion. Political crises and transformations coincided frequently with the establishment of large numbers of new newspapers. See chapters 6 and 14 and the charts in appendix 1 below.
40. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 62. See also, Clark, Public Prints, 252-53.
41. Baltimore Whig, 8 Sept., 2, 5 Oct. 1813. For a similar case of candidate authentication, see Baltimore Patriot, 22 May 1815,13, 22, 25, 31 Jan., 9 Sept. 1816.
42. Thornton, Politics and Power, 129; Niven, Gideon Welles, 60-61; Miller, Historical Sketches of Hudson, 64-67; Detroit Democratic Free Press, 5 November 1832,3 April 1833.
43. Three important exceptions are Baldasty, “Press and Politics in the Age of Jackson”; Hamilton, Country Printer; and Smith, Press, Politics, and Patronage. A broad, international survey of newspaper history published in Great Britain but little known in the United States, declares that “the editor had become the linchpin of all party political activity” all over Europe by the 1880s, many decades after the same situation had developed in America: Smith, The Newspaper: An International History, 105.
44. Heale, Making of American Politics, 157-58.
45. McCormick, Second American Party System, 352.
46. Baldasty, “Press and Politics in the Age of Jackson,” 7-13.
47. Quotation from To the Republicans of Hunterdon, 15. For the idea of editors as party whips, I am indebted to Thornton, Politics and Power, 129.
48. To the Republicans of Hunterdon, 7.
49. New York World, 23 November 1882, quoted in Gienapp, Origins of the Republican Party, 151-52.
50. Remini, Van Buren and the Making of the Democratic Party, 125-33.
51. Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” 83-87.
52. Philadelphia Franklin Gazette, 21 May, 18, 19, 21 June 1819; Pasley, “‘Indiscreet Zeal’ of John Norvell.”
53. “Editorial Courtesy,” Hartford Times, 4 March 1833.
54. Quotation from enclosure with Duff Green to Cabell and Co., 4 June 1831, Duff Green Papers, LC. On the Washington Institute affair, see Pretzer, “The British, Duff Green, the Rats and the Devil.”
55. Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” 101.
56. The decline of newspaper-based politics at the national level can be traced to the creation of the Government Printing Office in 1860 and the attendant end of heavy government patronage of Washington newspapers. See Smith, Press, Politics, and Patronage, 219-48. The best sources on the continuation of newspaper-based politics into the twentieth century are the autobiographies of party editors in small cities and towns, such as Josephus Daniels of Raleigh, North Carolina (Tar Heel Editor and Editor in Politics), navy secretary under Woodrow Wilson and a mentor of Franklin D. Roosevelt; and William Allen White of Emporia, Kansas (Autobiography of William Allen White).
57. One of the very few recent monographs to directly tackle democratization is Shade, Democratizing the Old Dominion, dealing with one state and taking democracy largely as a given for the rest of the country. The democratization of political language is analyzed in Robertson, Language of Democracy.
58. For two statements of this view, among many that could be cited, see Roediger, Wages of Whiteness, 55-60; and Baker, “Domestication of Politics,” 622-632.
59. Attacks on the idea that meaningful democratization occurred before the Civil War include Pessen, Riches, Class and Power, and Altschuler and Blumin, Rude Republic. My own views on this question are given more fully in Pasley, “Party Politics, Citizenship, and Collective Action.”
60. Wilentz, “On Class and Politics,” 45. This same essay provides a thorough review of the relevant literature, which is far too voluminous to cite here.
61. Ibid., 56.
62. Formisano, “Deferential-Participant Politics,” 478—79. For an elaboration of this argument, and a review of the historiography on the rise of “professional politicians” (including a fuller effort to define the term), see Pasley, “Artful and Designing Men.”
63. Ridgway, Community Leadership in Maryland.
64. Blumin, Emergence of the Middle Class, xi, 1-65.
65. Appleby, Capitalism and a New Social Order, 51—78.
66. On this antiparty political morality and its canons of “patriot” leadership, see Ketcham, Presidents Above Party, and Hofstadter, Idea of Party System, chaps. 1 and 2. For a strong case that “classical republican” is a good general term for this political culture (among many that could be used), see Richard, Founders and Classics.
67. While I do not make the argument in quite the same terms, my findings are consonant with those of Rosenberg, Protecting the Best Men. Both the “new libertarianism” and the later betrayals of it are described in Leonard Levy’s books, Emergence of a Free Press and Jefferson and Civil Liberties.
68. On the relatively high voter turnouts in the Federalist-Republican contests, see McCormick, “New Perspectives on Jacksonian Politics.”
69. See the highly influential works, Wallace, “Changing Concepts of Party,” and Hofstadter, Idea of Party System.
70. Roosevelt, Benton, 78.
1. Except where noted, the account of the printing trade in the following pages draws especially on: Botein, “Printers and the Revolution”; Botein, “Meer Mechanics”; Hamilton, Country Printer; Wroth, Colonial Printer; Clark, Public Prints; Remer, Printers and Men of Capital; Silver, American Printer; Silver, “Aprons instead of Uniforms”; Pretzer, “Tramp Printers”; Rorabaugh, Craft Apprentice; Leonard, Power of the Press, 13-53; Brigham, Journals and Journeymen; Smith, One Hundred Years of Hartford’s “Courant”; Morse, Connecticut Newspapers.
2. Franklin, Franklin’s Autobiography, 9-10; Prentiss Autobiography, AAS, 65; Clark, Public Prints, 194-95; Botein, “Printers and the Revolution,” 12-13, 16-17; Botein, “Meer Mechanics,” 140-50.
3. Wroth, Colonial Printer, 79-86, 115-21; Rorabaugh, Craft Apprentice, n-14; Moran, Printing Presses, 17-47, 59-62; Silver, American Printer, 28-49; Hamilton, Country Printer, 5-12,15-16; Prentiss Autobiography, AAS, 41-42.
4. Wood, Radicalism, 11—56. Even into the nineteenth century, according to one recent study, “physical labor’s traditional association with poverty, brutishness, and lack of mental content” remained in force. See Glickstein, Concepts of Free Labor, 10.
5. Botein, “Meer Mechanics,” 157-58.
6. Weed, Autobiography ofThurlow Weed, 58; Franklin, Franklin’s Autobiography, 26, 36, 42, 44, 50, 52; Pretzer, “Tramp Printers,” 3-5; Silver, American Printer, 8-10; Hamilton, Country Printer, 22-25; Greeley, Recollections, 83-105. On the large role of appearance, including an upright posture, symmetrical body, and graceful movements, in establishing one’s gentility, see Bushman, Refinement of America, especially 30—78. On the general early American drinking problem, see Rorabaugh, Alcoholic Republic.
7. James Parker, “A Letter to a Gentleman in the City of New-York,” Broadsheet, 2 Nov. 1759, in MacAnear, “James Parker versus New York Province,” 323, 329; Botein, “Meer Mechanics,” 156-160; Thomas, History of Printing, ed. McCorison, 464—71; Wood, Radicalism, 35, 85-86.
8. Botein, “Meer Mechanics,” 180; Botein, “Printers and the Revolution,” 20.
9. Botein, “Printers and the Revolution,” 20-21; Botein, “Meer Mechanics,” 182-83; Benjamin Franklin, “An Apology for Printers,” Franklin, Writings of Franklin, ed. Smyth 2:174.
10. Brown, Knowledge Is Power, 16-41; Clark, Public Prints, 70-71; Mott, American Journalism, 8-9.
11. Mott, American Journalism, 9-10; Duniway, Freedom of the Press in Massachusetts, 68-69; Clark, Public Prints, 71—73.
12. Clark, Public Prints, 77-102; Mott, American Journalism, 11-14; Steele, English Atlantic, 132-67.
13. James Parker, “Letter to Gentleman,” in MacAnear, “Parker versus New York,” 324; Alexander, Narrative, 1-35; Botein, Zenger’s Malice; Mott, American Journalism, 31-38. The famous case of James Franklin’s New England Courant, a paper bitterly critical of Boston’s Puritan oligarchy but written by a “club” of local gentlemen, can be interpreted in a similar fashion. See Leonard, Power of the Press, 18-24; Duniway, Freedom of the Press in Massachusetts, 94-103, 163-66; Botein, “Meer Mechanics,” 204; Thomas, History of Printing, ed. McCorison, 104-10; Mott, American Journalism, 15-21.
14. Botein, “Meer Mechanics,” 204-209. Nash, Urban Crucible, 199-202, argues that newspapers had became an “indispensable” part of colonial politics by the 1740.
15. The term “correspondent” was used literally, meaning a gentlemen who wrote letters describing or commenting on news events, not a paid news gatherer.
16. Abraham Bishop to Jonathan Law, 1 May 1811, Bishop Letterbook, Yale.
17. Levy, Emergence of a Free Press, 16-61; Buel, “Freedom of the Press,” 72—76. The newspaper’s role in the growth of appeals to popular rights and public opinion, and the attendant increase in colonial paeans to and defenses of the press, can be seen, from wildly different perspectives, in Morgan, Inventing the People, 122-48; Smith, Printers and Press Freedom; and Warner, Letters of the Republic.
18. Warner, Letters of the Republic, 1-4, 34—72,179n5; Schlesinger, Prelude to Independence, xiii-xiv, 281-301; Kobre, Development of the Colonial Newspaper, 95-173; Davidson, Propaganda and the American Revolution, 225-45; Leonard, Power of the Press, 33-53; Bailyn and Hench, Press and the American Revolution; Humphrey, This Popular Engine.
19. Martin, Men in Rebellion; Buel, “Freedom of the Press,” 72. Actually, Buel writes that “colonial Americans” held this belief, but it is more accurately located in the minds of the educated white male gentry who made up the active political leadership of the colonies.
20. “Address to the Inhabitants of Quebec, 1774,” in Schwartz, Bill of Rights, vol. 1, 223.
21. Levy, Emergence of Free Press, 62-88; Buel, “Freedom of the Press,” 75-81; Nerone, Violence against the Press, 18-52.
22. Warner, Letters of the Republic, 67-68; Davidson, Propaganda and the American Revolution, 15, 242; Morgan, Inventing the People. This interpretation departs somewhat from the German philosopher Jilrgen Habermas’s original formulation of the “public sphere” (in Structural Transformation) as being truly rather than just apparently open to all and personless. It is also important to acknowledge that the “public sphere” (and the concept of public opinion it helped foster) had an even more important political purpose than the concealment described here. It served to partially neutralize the enormous personal authority and prestige of monarchs and nobles, as well as to provide (to use the modern political vernacular) a more level rhetorical playing field for critics of monarchical government such as the American Revolutionaries. On the debate over Habermas’s ideas, see Brooke, “Ancient Lodges and Self-Created Societies”; Calhoun, Habermas and the Public Sphere.
23. Rush, Autobiography, 113-14.
24. Botein “Meer Mechanics,” 210-25; Botein, “Printers and the Revolution,” 23-49; Thomas, History of Printing, ed. McCorison, 163-64.
25. Thomas Jefferson to Isaiah Thomas, 1809, quoted in Thomas, History of Printing, ed. McCorison, 556n; Schlesinger, Prelude to Independence, 79. This was only the first of Jefferson’s many forays into the founding of newspapers, and may mark the beginnings of his deep belief in their efficacy On similar dealings in another region, see Yodelis, “Who Paid the Piper?,” 1-49.
26. Davidson, Propaganda and the American Revolution, 225. See also, Schlesinger, Prelude to Independence, 297.
27. Botein, “Meer Mechanics,” 210-n; Silver, “Edes,” 248-53, quotation on 252. Silver’s article reprints much source material verbatim.
28. Silver, “Edes,” 250-61; Buckingham, Specimens, 1:165-96; Schlesinger, Prelude to Independence, 71—72, 91-93,178—79; Thomas, History of Printing, ed. McCorison, 134-37; Kobre, Development of the Colonial Newspaper, 118-27. for Hancock’s and Church’s advertisements, see almost any issue of the Boston Gazette during the 1760s.
29. Thomas, History of Printing, ed. McCorison, 137; Boston Gazette, 1 January 1797, reprinted in Buckingham, Specimens, 1:201-202.
30. Thomas, History of Printing, ed. McCorison, 136-37; Buckingham, Specimens, 1:196-205; Silver, “Edes,” 262-68.
31. Silver, “Edes”; Boston Gazette, 1 Jan. 1797; Buckingham, Specimens, 1:201-202, 199, 202, 204-205.
32. Cutler, Connecticut’s Revolutionary Press, 60; Morse, Connecticut Newspapers, 15-16; Buckingham, Specimens, 1:240-45; Shipton, Isaiah Thomas, 32-67.
33. On Russell, see Hench, “Newspaper in a Republic”; and Buckingham, Specimens, 2:1-117. On Goodwin, see Smith, One Hundred Years of Harford’s “Courant”. A good account of the backlash among the Revolutionary gentry against some aspects of the Revolution, especially the volatile, populistic politics that had come to characterize the state governments, can be found in Wood, “Interests and Disinterestedness.”
34. Ebenezer Hazard to Jeremy Belknap, 18 Dec. 1782, “Belknap Papers,” 2:168.
35. Brunhouse, Counter-Revolution in Pennsylvania, 5-6, 121-26. Oswald was the most controversial editor of the 1780s by far. See Teeter, “Printer and Chief Justice,” 235-42; Teeter, “Press Freedom and Public Printing,” 445-51; Ashley, American Newspaper Journalists, 334-38.
36. Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 16 Jan. 1787, PTJ, 11:49.
37. Cranfield, Press and Society, n-30.
38. Ibid., 41-48; Black, English Press in the Eighteenth Century, 135-51; Aspinall, Politics and the Press, especially 67-68; Harris, London Newspapers in the Age of Walpole, especially 119-21,117; Boyce et al., Newspaper History, 82-97.
39. Alexander, Selling of the Constitutional Convention.
40. Heideking, “Die amerikanische Presse und die Verfassungsdebatte”; Charles E. Clark, Printers, the People and Politics; Rutland, “First Great Newspaper Debate,” 43-58.1 am grateful to John P. Kaminski for calling my attention to Heideking’s study. Obviously the Constitution’s opponents produced a large body of writings as well, as found in modern collections like the DHRC, but the evidence is clear that the antifed-eralist writings were much less widely disseminated. Supporters of the proposed federal constitution in 1787-88 are referred to in the text as “federalists” (lower-case), in order to distinguish them from supporters of the later Federalist party. While overlapping, the two groups were not the same.
41. Clark, Printers, People and Politics, 12-18, 35-37; DHRC: Rat. by States, 3:329-30; Morse, Connecticut Newspapers, 15; Hartford Connecticut Courant, 10, 24 Dec. 1787, in DHRC: Rat. by States, 3:492-93; “The Landloser,” Hartford American Mercury, 7 Jan. 1788, in DHRC: Rat. by States, Microfiche Supplement, Connecticut document no. 64.
42. Hofstadter, Idea of a Party System; Ketcham, Presidents above Party; Wallace, “Ideologies of Party.”
43. “A Pennsylvania Mechanic,” Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer, 29 Oct. 1787, in DHRC: Rat. by States, Microfiche Supplement, Pa. Doc. no. 170. The practice of polite writers using literary personae that were well known in their set is described in Shields, Civil Tongues and Polite Letters. The problem may have been that the antifederal writer really was unknown to elite readers, because an outsider to their social circles. The federalist irritation with such a contribution to the printed public sphere reveals the truly fictional nature of its outward personlessness and inclusiveness.
44. “Galba,” Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer, 31 Oct. 1787, in DHRC: Rat. by States, Microfiche Supplement, Pa. doc. no. 174; also see Pa. doc. no. 185; “PROPOS ALS for a Literary Register,” Gazette of the State of Georgia, 29 Nov. 1787, in DHRC: Rat. by States, 3:248-51; “Philadelphiensis I,” Philadelphia Freeman’s Journal, 7 Nov. 1787, in DHRC: Rat. by States., 2:280-85.
45. Nerone, Violence against the Press, 60-63; Walters, Dallas, 18-20. For an overview of federalist reprisals nationwide, see Rutland, “Great Newspaper Debate,” 50-51.
46. At this point, I depart somewhat from Stephen Botein’s interpretation, especially the part of it summed up in the following statement: “During the Revolutionary years, the trade adapted to a new politics of controversy. By so doing, printers seemed assured of recognition as major figures in the political life of the republic. . . . they would be expected not only to register events but to make and modify them.” (“Printers and the Revolution,” 49) Clearly, the Revolutionary gentry expected to “make and modify” events using the press, but there is really no evidence of printers taking the lead in politics before the late 1790s. Even then, and for long after, printers became political actors in their own right only over the resistance of more traditional political leaders.
47. Botein, “Printers and the Revolution,” 6, n, 51, 49-57; Silver, American Printer, 22-25, 14; Stewart, Documentary History, 6, 59 (quoted).
48. Bailyn and Hench, Press and the Revolution, 1, 9-10, 53; Thomas, History of Printing in America; Buckingham, Specimens; Stewart, Documentary History, 59.
49. Rosalind Remer describes specialization of printing during the 1790s in Printers and Men of Capital, with pages 24-38 focusing on the emergence of a political specialty.
50. On “competency” as the typical life goal of early American artisans and farmers, see Vickers, “Competency and Competition.”
1. Smith, Press, Politics, and Patronage, i-n;John, Spreading the News, 30-42. Postal policy had its greatest impact in helping newspapers circulate nationally and within areas of dispersed settlement such as the South and West. Private carriers usually distributed newspapers to local subscribers. Newsboys, often the printer’s own apprentices, did the job in urban areas, while in thickly settled rural districts, local newspapers were delivered by post riders who also performed various other jobs for people along the route, such as bringing mail from the local post office and running errands. See Mott, American Journalism, 105-106; Prentiss Autobiography, AAS, 41; Hamilton, Country Printer, 216-22.
2. The highest circulation figure I have seen cited (for the late eighteenth century) is 4,000 for the Boston Columbian Centinel, and this is probably exaggerated. A figure approaching 2,000 was probably more common for the most successful urban newspapers, and even that many copies required many workers, multiple presses, or more expensive iron presses that were rare in America before the 1820s. Cylinder and steam-powered presses were first developed in the 1790s and 1820s, respectively, but had little impact on the newspaper industry until much later. See Mott, American Journalism, 158-59; Brigham, Journals and Journeymen, 19-22; Wroth, Colonial Printer, 79-86; Moran, Printing Presses, 47-141; Silver, American Printer, 37-59.
3. For a study of the fully developed party press of the 1830s that bears these observations out, see Kielbowicz, “Party Press Cohesiveness.”
4. The most judicious secondary treatment of Fenno is John B. Hench’s introduction to “Letters of Fenno,” 89: 299-306, while chapter 1 of Marcus Daniel’s recently completed dissertation, “Ribaldry and Billingsgate,” is probably the most thorough. On Fenno’s father and his work for Russell, see Jeremy Belknap to Ebenezer Hazard, 2, 8 May 1789, “Belknap Papers,” 3:123-25; and John Fenno to Joseph Ward, 20 Dec. 1789, Hench, “Letters of Fenno,” 89:352.
5. Christopher Gore to Rufus King, 18 Jan. 1789, Life and Correspondence of King, 1:357; Jonn Fenno, “An Address,” 1 Jan. 1789, Agreement of John Fenno with John Lucas, Joseph Ward, Christopher Gore, Thomas Russell, James Bowdoin, Saml. Eliot, Jonathan Mason, and Caleb Davis, 1 Jan. 1789, in Hench, “Letters of Fenno,” 89:312-14, 311; John Fenno to Mary Curtiss Fenno, 4 Feb. 1789, Fenno-Hoffman Papers, Clements Library.
6. Belknap to Hazard, 2 May [1789], “Belknap Papers,” 3:123; John Fenno to Joseph Ward, 5 April 1789, Hench, “Letters of Fenno,” 89:325.
7. Botein, “Printers and the Revolution,” 11—57; Humphrey, This Popular Engine, 23-43; Wroth, Colonial Printer, 169-90, 230-36; Hamilton, Country Printer, 47-92; Yo-delis, “Who Paid the Piper?”; Clark, Public Prints, 193-214. Statistics taken from Weiss, Graphic Summary, 7-9.
8. Franklin, Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, 85, 91; Van Doren, Franklin, 106-23, 127-29; Wright, Franklin of Philadelphia, 53-55; Clark, Public Prints, 205-207.
9. Botein, “Printers and the Revolution,” 17.
10. GUS, 15 April 1789; Anderson, Imagined Communities, 62.
11. GUS, 15 April 1789. Fenno’s avoidance of local ties and references resembles the intentionally vague, “generic” quality that David Waldstreicher (Perpetual Fetes, 30-39) has noted in nationalist celebrations during the American Revolution.
12. John Fenno to Joseph Ward, 5 April 1789, Hench, “Letters of Fenno,” 89:324; John Fenno to Mary Curtiss Fenno, 22 March 1789, Fenno-Hoffman Papers, Clements Library.
13. John Fenno to Joseph Ward, 28 Jan., 17, 23 Feb. 1789, Hench, “Letters of Fenno,” 89:315, 320-21; John Fenno to Mary Curtiss Fenno, 4 , 7 Feb., 8 March 1789, Fenno-Hoffman Papers, Clements Library.
14. Fenno to Ward, 5 Aug. (“auxiliary”), 5 April (“Men of Sense”) 1789, Hench, “Letters of Fenno,” 89:334, 324; Miller, Federalist Era, 6-8. On the use of monarchs’ images to build national loyalty, see Colley, Britons, 195-236.
15. GUS, 22, 28, 25 April, 6 May, 14 Nov. 1789.
16. Ibid., 15 April 1789; John Fenno to Joseph Ward, 9 Oct. 1789, Hench, “Letters of Fenno,” 89:342.
17. John Fenno to Joseph Ward, 5 July, 5 April 1789, Hench, “Letters of Fenno,” 89:329,324.
18. GUS, 12 Dec. 1789 (quoting Stockbridge Western Star), 18 Sept., 21 April 1790; Fenno to Ward, 28 Nov. 1789, Hench, “Letters of Fenno,” 89:348.
19. John Fenno to Joseph Ward, 26 July, 5 Aug. 1789, Hench, “Letters of Fenno,” 89:332,334.
20. John Fenno to Joseph Ward, 8 Oct., 5 Aug. 1789, ibid., 89:339,334.
21. Handover, History ofLondon Gazette, 19-66.
22. GUS, 27 April 1791; Fenno to Hamilton, 9 Nov. 1793, PAH, 15:393-94; John Fenno to Mary Curtiss Fenno, 31 May, 20 and 27 July 1798, Fenno-Hoffman Papers, Clements Library. While women had been mobilized to a degree during the Revolution, male disapproval of females discussing or involving themselves in politics outside of certain ritualized occasions such as parades reasserted itself and grew stronger as parties developed and political campaigns became more rough and intense. See Baker, “Domestication of American Politics.”
23. John Fenno to Joseph Ward, 28 Nov., 9 Oct., 28 Nov. 1789, Hench, “Letters of Fenno,” 89:348,340-42,348; GUS, 28 Nov. 1789. Johnson quoted in Handover, History of London Gazette, 53.
24. John Fenno to Joseph Ward, n April 1790, Hench, “Letters of Fenno,” 89:360; Treasury Department accounts, PAH, 13:106,142; Hamilton’s “Cash Book,” PAH, 3:58.
25. John Fenno to Joseph Ward, 14 Nov. 1793, Hench, “Letters of Fenno,” 90:187.
26. Ibid.; John Fenno to Alexander Hamilton, 9 Nov. 1793, Alexander Hamilton to Rufus King, [n Nov. 1793], Hamilton to John Kean, 29 Nov. 1793, PAH, 15:393-94, 395-96,418.
27. Fenno to Ward, 14 Nov. 1793, Hench, “Letters of Fenno,” 90:187.
28. John Fenno to Joseph Ward, 8 Oct. 1789, ibid., 89:339.
29. Fenno to Ward, n April 1790, ibid., 89:360.
30. Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 9 May 1791, PTJ, 20:293. A balanced assessment of Adams’s views can be found in Shaw, Character of John Adams, 230-36
31. Thomas Jefferson, “Notes of a Conversation with George Washington,” 1 Oct. 1792, PTJ, 24:435; McCoy, Elusive Republic, 136-65; Banning, Jeffersonian Persuasion, 126-60.
32. Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph, 15 May 1791, PTJ, 20:416; Pop-kin, News and Politics in the Age of Revolution, 8-9,122-23; Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, 9 Sept. 1792, PTJ, 24:356-57; GUS, 6 November 1790 ff., n Dec. 1790 ff., 27 April 1791 ff.
33. Jefferson to Carrington, 16 Jan. 1787, PTJ, 11:49.
34. Ibid.
35. Thomas Jefferson to [Benjamin Franklin Bache], 28 April 1791, Bache Papers, Castle Collection, APS.
36. Jefferson to Randolph, 15 May 1791, PTJ, 20:416. There are many secondary accounts of Jefferson’s newspaper project, the best of which are Cunningham, Jeffersonian Republicans, 13-19; Smith, Press, Politics and Patronage, 12-23; and Editorial Note, “Jefferson, Freneau and the Founding of the National Gazette” in PTJ, 20:718-53. See also Daniel, “Ribaldry and Billingsgate,” chap. 2.
37. James Madison to Edmund Randolph, 13 Sept. 1792, PJM, 14:365.
38. Ibid.; James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, 1 May 1791, PJM, 14:15; Jefferson to Madison, 21 July 1791, PTJ, 20:657.
39. Among the many works describing the founding generation’s political morality are Ketcham, Presidents above Party; and Hofstadter, Idea of a Party System, 1—73. For Madison’s acknowledgment that the incipient opposition was a party, see his essays “Parties” and “A Candid State of Parties,” Philadelphia National Gazette, 23 Jan., 26 Sept. 1792, and PJM, 14:197-98, 370—72. The former essay roundly condemns parties even as it suggests that some might be inevitable and even necessary. Madison made a distinction between “natural” and “artificial” parties, of which the emerging Republicans were the former and Hamilton’s Federalists the latter. For a perceptive account of the evolution of Madison’s thought on parties, see Elkins and McKitrick, Age of Federalism, 263—70.
40. Jefferson to Washington, 9 Sept. 1792, PTJ, 24:356-57.
41. “An American, No. II,” GUS, n August 1792, in PAH, 12:192.
42. Thomas Jefferson, “Anas,” n March 1800, in Bergh, Writings of Jefferson, 1:435; Matthew Livingston Davis Memorandum Book, Rufus King Papers, Vol. 57, N-YHS, 25-26; Pasley, “Journeyman, Either in Law or Politics,” 550-52,560. A convenient summary of Jefferson’s many entanglements with the press can be found in Mott, Jefferson and the Press.
43. Leary, That Rascal, 166-86; Thomas Jefferson to Philip Freneau, 28 Feb. 1791, Jefferson to Madison, 21 July 1791, PTJ, 19:351, 20:657.
44. Philip Freneau to Thomas Jefferson, 5 March 1791, PTJ, 19:416-17; Freneau, “The Country Printer,” in Poems of Freneau, ed. Pattee, 3:63-64; James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, 24 July 1791, PTJ, 20:667; Philip Freneau to James Madison, 25 July 1791, PJM, 14:57; Cunningham,Jeffersonian Republicans, 17.
45. James Madison to Charles Simms, [post 23] Aug. 1791, Madison to Joseph Jones, Madison to Mann Page Jr., 23 Aug. 1791, Madison to James Madison Sr., 13 Nov. 1791, Daniel Carroll to Madison Jr., 22 Nov. 1791; William Madison to Madison Jr., 3 Dec. 1791, Carroll to Madison Jr., 12 December 1791, Madison Jr. to Henry Lee, 18 Dec. 1791, PJM, 14:73, 71—72, 107,122-23, :37> :47> :54i Cunningham, Jeffersonian Republicans, 17-18; Thomas Jefferson to Philip Freneau, 13 March 1792, Jefferson to Thomas Bell, 16 March 1792, Jefferson to Washington, 9 Sept. 1792, Editorial Note, “National Gazette” PTJ, 20:758-59, 24:357, 20:730-31; Daniel Carroll to James Madison, 21 Dec. 1791, 8 Jan. 1792, Henry Lee to Madison, 8 Jan. 1792, Madison to Lee, 21 Jan. 1792, Lee to Madison, PJM, 14:175,182-83,183,193, 219.
46. Philadelphia National Gazette, 31 Oct., 1, 8 Dec, 1791, 22 Dec, 9, 16 Apr., 3, 7 May 1792. The National Gazette’s advertising peaked at slightly more than two columns in the issue of 16 April and dropped off from there as the editorial content became more partisan.
47. Ibid., 31 Oct. 1791-15 March 1792; Leary, That Rascal, 197-99. The first clearly partisan essay series, an attack “On the Funding System,” by “Brutus,” began 15 March 1792.
48. For Madison’s eighteen essays for the National Gazette, see PJM, beginning with the editorial note at 14:110-12.
49. Philadelphia National Gazette, 2 April 1792.
50. Ibid., 26 April 1792. Much of the National Gazette’s best material has been reprinted in Freneau, Prose of Freneau, ed. Marsh.
51. I am not claiming that they wanted a permanent party system at this point, which they did not, only that “republican” was being used to identify a particular group of politicians, rather than merely a philosophical preference. James Roger Sharp makes a similar argument and calls the Federalists and Republicans “proto-parties” in American Politics in the Early Republic.
52. Philadelphia National Gazette, 30 April 1792.
53. Ibid., 7 May, 4 July , “A Farmer,” 25 July, “Brutus,” 1 Aug., n June 1792.
54. Ibid., 26 Sept. 1792.
55. Ibid., 22 Dec. 1792.
56. Ibid., 5 Sept. 1792.
57. Ibid., 22 Aug. 1792, 12, 15, 19, 29 Sept., 6 Oct. 1792. A good brief account of the 1792 election in Pennsylvania can be found in Walters, Dallas, 32-42.
58. Philadelphia National Gazette., 12, 19 Sept., 10, 24 Oct., 17, 24 Nov., 1, 5, 8. 12, 22, 29 Dec. 1792.
59. Ibid., 4, 7, 25 July 1792, 24 April, 5 Jan. 1793; Freneau, Prose, 281-82, 288-89, 294-95.
60. GUS, 26 Jan. (“cacklers”), 2 (“wits”), 5 (“villains”), 26 May (“worst”), 6 (“effrontery”), 23 (“propagators”), 27 June (“brawler”), 1 Aug. (“enemies”), 4 Aug. 1792.
61. Ibid., 2 May 1792. This narrow, traditional “public sphere” is described in Habermas, Structural Transformation, 1-26.
62. GUS, 8 Aug., 26 May, 9 June 1792; Leary, That Rascal, 203- 204.
63. GUS, 26 Jan., 2,19 May 1792,13 Feb. 1793.
64. Sawvel, Complete Anas of Jefferson, 124.
65. Alexander Hamilton to Edward Carrington, 26 May 1792, PAH, 11:429 (“faction”), 431-32, (“malignant”), 435-36.
66. Hamilton to Carrington, 26 May 1792, PAH, 11:444, 442.
67. “T. L. No. 1,” GUS, 25 July 1792, in PAH, 12:107; Leary, That Rascal, 209.
68. Philadelphia National Gazette, 28 July 1792, and GUS, 1 Aug. 1792, both in PAH, 12:123-25.
69. “An American, No. 1,” GUS, 4 Aug. 1792, in PAH, 12:159.
70. Madison to E. Randolph, 13 Sept. 1792, PJM, 14:364-65.
71. Freneau’s affidavit was published in the GUS, 8 Aug. 1792, and has been reprinted in PAH, I4:188n3-189n3.
72. Editorial Note, “National Gazette” in PTJ, 20:748-51; Granato, “Freneau, Jefferson and Genet”; Leary, That Rascal, 238-45.
73. GUS, 4 Aug. 1792.
74. On the fear of conspiracy as a political and intellectual force in early America, see Bailyn, Ideological Origins, 22-159; Wood, “Conspiracy and the Paranoid Style”; Hutson, “Origins of ‘Paranoid Style.’”
75. “An American, No. 1,” in PAH, 12:158-59. For other examples, among many, see GUS, 2 May, 8 Aug. 1792.
76. Philadelphia National Gazette, 24 April 1793, reprinted in Freneau, Prose of Freneau, 297-98. See also, Jefferson to Washington, 9 Sept. 1792, PTJ, 24:355.
77. Jefferson to Washington, 9 Sept. 1792, PTJ, 24:357.
78. Elkins and McKitrick, Age of Federalism, 282; Editorial Note, “National Gazette,” PTJ, 20:752-53.
79. Carroll to Madison, 21 Dec. 1791, Henry Lee to Madison, 8 Jan. 1792, Madison to Henry Lee, 21 Jan. 1792, Lee to Madison, 6 Feb. 1792, PJM, 14:175-76,183-84,193, 219.
80. For example, a scan of one widely circulated journal, the weekly Boston Independent Chronicle, turns up at least seven substantial National Gazette pieces appearing between 15 Dec. 1791 and March 1792, and four between 19 April and 4 July 1793, to take only two randomly selected periods. And this was a newspaper that had its own writers and took relatively little from the exchange papers.
81. Philadelphia National Gazette, 9, 27 Oct. 1793; Leary, That Rascal, 245-46.
1. Gordon Wood has aptly described the revolutionary elite’s political and social values as a “republicanism” that was opposed to both monarchy and democracy. Rather than out-and-out proponents of hierarchy, they tended to be “enlightened paternalists,” willing to grant varying degrees of influence to popular opinion but preferring a polity in which patriotic statesmen of weight could lead as their consciences dictated, without the need of constant competition or incessant popular supervision. On this score, the leading Republicans had more in common with Federalist leaders than they did with activists such as Bache and John Beckley See Wood, Radicalism, 95-225; Ketcham, Presidents above Party; Pasley, “A Journeyman, Either in Law or Politics.”
2. In the past decade or so, Benjamin Franklin Bache has suddenly become a popular historical subject. Jeffery A. Smith has produced two works in which Bache is a major focus, Franklin and Bache and Printers and Press Freedom, while James Tagg has published a thorough biography. The most recent book involving Bache is Rosenfeld, American Aurora, a hybrid of history, anthology, and novel in which the author assumes the persona of Baches partner and successor William Duane. See also Daniel, “Ribaldry and Billingsgate,” chap. 3.
3. Benjamin Franklin to Richard Bache [Sr.], n Nov. 1784, Franklin, Writings of Franklin, 9:279; Smith, Franklin and Bache, 81-82; Tagg, Bache, 44-45.
4. Benjamin Franklin Bache Diary, 5 April 1785, Benjamin Franklin Bache Papers, APS; B. F. Bache to Richard and Sarah Bache, n May 1785, Society Collection, HSP (quoted); Tagg, Bache, 45-46; Smith, Franklin and Bache, 88-89.
5. Benjamin Franklin Bache to Benjamin Franklin, 1 Aug. 1787, BP-CC, APS; Smith, Franklin and Bache, 100-101; Tagg, Bache, 59-65.
6. Benjamin Franklin Bache to Richard Bache, 10 Jan. 1793, BP-CC, APS.
7. Benjamin Franklin Bache to Benjamin Franklin, 21 Dec. 1779, B. F. Bache Papers, APS; B. F. Bache Diary, 30 Sept., 2 Feb., June-July 1784, B.F Bache Papers, APS; Tagg, Bache, 39, 27,127; Smith, Franklin and Bache, 60.
8. Van Doren, Franklin, 655-58, 709-10; Tagg, Bache, 127-28. On these men as journalist-politicians, see Popkin, Revolutionary News, especially 35-95.
9. Darnton, Literary Underground, 14—70; Darnton and Roche, Revolution in Print, 3-66. On Bache forgetting his English, see Benjamin Franklin Bache to [Richard Bache], 15 Sept. 1782, B.F. Bache to [Sarah Bache], 27 July 1783, 9 Feb. 1785, B. F. Bache Papers, APS; Tagg, Bache, 29.
10. Benjamin Franklin Bache to Margaret Hartman Markoe, 6 Dec. 1789 (quoted), 20-22, 22-24 March 1790, BP-CC, APS; Tagg, Bache, 72-77.
11. Benjamin Franklin Bache to Margaret Hartman Markoe, 2, 10 May 1790, B. F. Bache Papers, APS; Bache to Fermin Didot, 7 May 1790, Typographic Library Manuscripts, Columbia Univ.; Robert Morris to Benjamin Franklin Bache, 28 July 1790, BP-CC, APS.
12. GA, 2 Oct. 1790; Benjamin Vaughn to Benjamin Franklin Bache, 1 Sept. 1790,1, 3 Sept. 1790, BP-CC, APS; B. F. Bache to F Didot, 7 May 1790, Typographic Library Manuscripts, Columbia University; Tagg, Bache, 100-101.
13. GA, 23 Oct. 1790; Tagg, Bache, 99; Benjamin Franklin Bache to Margaret Hart-man Markoe, 21 June 1791, BP-CC, APS.
14. Jefferson to T M. Randolph, 15 May 1791, PTJ, 20:416; GA, 1 (“Hydra”), 4, 5, 6 Dec. 1792.
15. GA, 7 Dec. 1792. The political upheavals in revolutionary Philadelphia are covered in Rosswurm, Arms, Country, and Class; and Foner, Tom Paine and Revolutionary America, 107-44.
16. GA, 23 Jan. 1793.
17. Benjamin Franklin Bache to Richard Bache, 3 Feb. 1793, BP-CC, APS.
18. Tagg, Bache, 165-66.
19. Benjamin Franklin Bache to Richard Bache, 3 Feb. 1793, BP-CC, APS.
20. Tagg, “Bache’s Attack on Washington.” Simon Newman, in “Principles or Men?” has recently shown that the “forms and manners” with which the Federalists surrounded Washington, such as birthday celebrations and triumphal “progresses,” were continuations of the rituals that had formerly been used to honor the king. Thus it was far from unreasonable for radical Republicans like Bache to see these as signs of creeping monarchy.
21. GA, 31 Jan. 1793.
22. Ibid., 1 Jan. 1794.
23. [Bache], Remarks Occasioned by the Late Conduct of Mr. Washington, 65.
24. The eighteenth-century “public sphere” is conceptualized in Habermas, Structural Transformation, 27-117, and further conceptualized, more concretely described, and then critiqued in Michael Warner’s works, Letters of the Republic and “Mass Public and Mass Subject.” The most informative treatment of the founders’ use of classical pseudonyms is Richard, Founders and Classics.
25. Aurora, 23 Nov. 1795.
26. [Bache], Remarks Occasioned, iv (quoted), passim. This pamphlet is attributed to Bache by James Tagg in Bache, 286-87.
27. Aurora, 5 March 1797.
28. Carey, Autobiography, 39; Remer, Printers and Men of Capital, 37-38; Carter, “Political Activities of Carey.”
29. Aurora, 5 June 1798 (quoted), n Aug. 1802.
30. Samuel C. Johonnot to Benjamin Franklin Bache, 18 Aug. 1790, BP-CC, APS.
31. Wood, Radicalism, 298.
32. B. F Bache to R. Bache [Sr.], 3 Feb. 1793, BP-CC, APS.
33. Elizabeth Hewson to Thomas T Hewson, 24 Oct. 1796, Hewson Family Papers, APS, quoted in Smith, Franklin and Bache, 147; Elizabeth Hewson to Thomas T Hewson, 5 June 1797, Hewson Papers, APS, quoted in Tagg, Bache, 287.
34. Minutes of the Democratic Society of Pennsylvania, HSP, 2 Jan 1794; Tagg, Bache, 207-208. Donald Stewart calculated that at least thirty-two printers were members of various Democratic societies, and many of these were or became prominent Republican party editors. See Stewart, Opposition Press, 648—649n42.
35. Democratic Society Minutes, HSP, 5 June 1794; Foner, Democratic-Republican Societies, 84.
36. Democratic Society Minutes, HSP, n Sept. 1794, also reprinted in Foner, Democratic-Republican Societies, 91-93; Tinkcom, Republicans and Federalists, 108-109; Phillips, William Duane, 104-107; Michael Leib to Lydia Leib, 5, n, 20 Oct. 1794, Leib-Harrison Papers, Society Collection, HSP.
37. Aurora, 8 Nov. 1794.
38. Tagg, Bache, 246-49. On the southern mission, see Margaret H. Bache to Benjamin Franklin Bache, 10 July 1795, BP-CC, APS.
39. Benjamin Franklin Bache to Margaret H. Bache, 8, 10 (“tool”) July 1795, 15 July 1795 (“patriot”), New York, 18, 21 July 1795, BP-CC, APS.
40. Margaret H. Bache to Benjamin F Bache, 2, 4 July 1795, BP-CC, APS.
41. The best account of the Philadelphia Republican “Grub Street” is Durey, With the Hammer, 74—79, quotation on 75. On Reynolds, see Twomey, Jacobins and Jeffersonians, 214-40; and Tagg, Bache, 285, 402-403. On the immigrant radicals generally see Phillips, William Duane; Durey, “Thomas Paine’s Apostles”; Durey, Transatlantic Radicals; Jacob and Jacob, Origins of Anglo-American Radicalism, 313-28.
42. Matilda Tone to Margaret H. Bache, [circa fall 1796], BP-CC, APS.
43. Benjamin Franklin Bache to Margaret H. Bache, New York, 3 (“sold”) July 1795, 3 July 1795, 5 July 1795, 8 (“not so well”), 10,15 (“toad eaters”) July 1795, BP-CC, APS.
44. Benjamin Franklin Bache to Charles Debrett, 3 Dec. 1796, BP-CC, APS.
45. These examples are taken from an advertisement headed “Political Novelties” that began running in the Aurora of 21 May 1796.
46. Remer, Printers and Men of Capital, 26-31.
47. When I call the Aurora a “party paper” here, I do not mean to portray it as a mere tool of a party organization. Instead, the term is meant to convey the fact that Bache’s paper both promoted a set of beliefs and worked hard in election campaigns to elevate a particular set of men to office.
Bache biographer James Tagg argues that the editor was a “transitional figure,” an “ideologue” fundamentally different or even superior to “the many who embraced mere party politics after 1800.” (Bache, 401) To me, this obfuscates the nature of Bache’s activities. The editor was indeed an “ideologue,” but that by itself does not make him distinct from a party politician. Ideology was what drove Bache to be a party politician. After 1795, Bache and his Aurora successors were material and integral participants in every election that would be held in Philadelphia for thirty years. They were consummate party men. At the same time, they also held and fought for democratic beliefs as radical as any in the Anglo-American world of their day. Tagg tries to distinguish between “radicalism” and “partisanship” (ibid., 402-403), but in reality the two usually went hand in hand. Tagg demonstrates the problematic nature of the distinction when he lists Bache’s successor William Duane among the party men or politicos and Dr. Michael Leib among the radicals. In fact, Duane and Leib were close political partners and together they would be one of the strongest forces in Pennsylvania politics in the early nineteenth century. On the Duane-Leib relationship, see Phillips, “Duane and the Origins of Modern Politics,” and Phillips, William Duane.
48. For Bache’s earlier regrets about the use of tickets, see GA, n Oct. 1794. For the 1795 campaign, see Aurora, 5 Oct-24 Oct. 1795. For secondary accounts, see Miller, Philadelphia, 75-78; Tagg, Bache, 257.
49. Aurora, 9,12,13 Oct. 1795.
50. This sentence paraphrases Anderson, Imagined Communities, 62.
51. Aurora, 13 Oct. 1795.
52. Ibid., 13 Sept. 1796.
53. Ibid., 13 Sept-28 Dec. 1796;Tagg, Bache, 290-96.
54. Aurora, 8,15 Oct. 1796; Tagg, Bache, 294; Miller, Philadelphia, 86.
55. Tagg, Bache, 311-52.
56. Benjamin Franklin Bache to an unnamed Aurora subscriber, 8 June 1798, copy, BP-CC, APS (quoted); [Bache], Truth Will Out!, iii-iv; Aurora, 9 May, 9 Aug. 1798; Tagg, Bache, 328,346-47, 370.
57. On Bache as the Sedition Law’s “chief target,” see Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 26 April, 3 May 1798, PJM, 17:120-21, 124; Smith, Freedom’s Fetters, 95, 107, 188.
58. Aurora, 9 May, 28 June 1798; Smith, Freedom’s Fetters, 107.
59. Aurora, 27 (quoted), 30 June 1798; Smith, Freedom’s Fetters, 200-202.
60. Tagg, Bache, 115^73; [Bache], Truth Will Out!, m; Aurora, 13 July 1798.
61. Francis Markoe to Margaret H. Bache, 4 Aug. 1798, BP-CC, APS.
62. James Monroe to Benjamin Franklin Bache, 8, 9, 30 Oct. 1797, 26 March 1798, BP-CC, APS.
63. Jefferson to Madison, 26 April 1798, PJM, 17:120-21.
64. Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Smith, 23 Aug. 1798, WTJ, 7:275-80.
65. Of the many secondary sources on Cobbett, the most relevant here is List, “Role of Cobbett in Philadelphia’s Party Press.” Possibly the most sophisticated discussion of Cobbett’s American career (which ended in 1800) appears in Daniel, “Ribaldry and Billingsgate,” chapter 5. Though one of the most well-known and frequently quoted editors of the 1790s, William Cobbett is not a major figure in this study because in my view he was (in his American phase, anyway) more of a satirist than a politician. Though the Republicans greatly feared the apparent popularity of Cobbett’s publications, he largely stayed out of electoral politics, never writing, for instance, about the presidential election during the election year of 1800 (Daniel, “Ribaldry and Billingsgate,” 539). Moreover, he had a distant, sometimes hostile relationship with many more mainstream Federalist leaders and editors. There is no doubt that, as Daniel argues, “the transgressive, iconoclastic” nature of Cobbett’s journalism was “profoundly political” (Daniel, “Ribaldry and Billingsgate,” 486) in a larger cultural sense. Yet his example was followed relatively rarely in America before the 1830s. Other editors used satire and engaged in personal attacks, in some cases exposing aspects of their victims’ private lives. Yet there is no example I know of an American partisan journalist whose jibes and innuendos were anywhere close to as personal, frequent, and extreme as those of Cobbett, who blasted through even such strong taboos as those against attacking women and intimating the homosexuality of a public figure.
66. Cobbett, Porcupine’s Works, 1:374, 6:52-53, 7:294-95; Philadelphia Porcupine’s Gazette, 17 March 1798; Smith, Freedom’s Fetters, 191-92.
67. Aurora, 3 July 1798.
68. Ibid., 27 Aug. 1798; William Duane to Tench Coxe, 14 Sept. 1798, Coxe Papers, HSR
69. William Duane to St. George Tucker, 9 Sept. 1798, Tucker-Coleman Papers, William and Mary; John Fenno to Joseph Ward, 30 Aug. 1798, Hench, “Letters of Fenno,” 90:228.
70. Notice dated n Sept. 1798, typescript copy, BP-CC, APS.
71. William Duane to Tench Coxe, 12,14 Sept. 1798, 30 Oct. 1798 (quoted), Coxe to Margaret Bache, n.p., 13 Sept., 22 Nov. 1798, Coxe Papers, HSP.
72. Philadelphia Porcupine’s Gazette, 3, 6, 30 Nov., 18 Dec. 1798, 27 Feb. 1799, 1, 3 May 1799.
73. Thomas Boylston Adams to William S. Shaw, 29 July 1800, Washburn, “Letters of Thomas Adams,” 27:119.
74. These two paragraphs are particularly influenced by Warner, “Mass Public and Mass Subject.”
1. Stewart, Opposition Press, 3; Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 19 Oct. 1823, WTJ, 10:275; “On the Utility of Education,” Wilmington Mirror of the Times, 4 March 1801; Fisher Ames to Theodore Dwight, 19 March 1801, Allen, Works of Ames, 2:1410-11.
2. Thomas Jefferson, “Notes on Professor Ebeling’s Letter of July 30, 1795,” WTJ, 7:48.
3. Stewart, Opposition Press, 624; Mott, American Journalism, 121-22; Fischer, Revolution of American Conservatism, 132. See appendix 1 for an explanation of how my newspaper statistics were constructed.
4. For the number of newspapers founded, see Hench, “Newspaper in a Republic,” 280; Lathem, Chronological Tables of American Newspapers, 22-43.
5. On older journals in decline by the 1790s, see: Buckingham, Specimens, 1:198-205; Anderson, Shepard Kollock, 125-26, 142-43; Ashley, American Newspaper Journalists, 334-38.
6. See Buckingham, Specimens, 1:255, 267-91, quotations on 267 and 272—73; Hench, “Newspaper in a Republic,” 48-52; Benjamin Franklin Bache to Margaret H. Bache, 8 July 1795, BP-CC, APS.
7. Hartford American Mercury, 8 Sept., 6 Oct. 1794, 20 July, 16 Aug. 1795, 25 April, 23 May 1796,13 Feb. 1797; Elisha Babcock to Ephraim Kirby, 18 Oct. 1794, 4 Aug. 1795, 13 Nov. 1797,17, 22 Sept., 20 Oct. 1801; Samuel A. Law to Kirby, 22 July 1795, Kirby Papers, DU; Briceland, “Ephraim Kirby,” 139-54,176-78,198-99.
8. Another exceptional figure was Thomas Greenleaf of the New-York Journal, a committed antifederalist and leader of the Tammany Society. See Hudson, Journalism in the U.S., 144-45; Young, Democratic Republicans of NY., 120, 129, 203, 209, 252, 400; Buckingham, Specimens, 1:281.
9. Austin, Matthew Lyon, 1-89.
10. Matthew Lyon to Albert Gallatin, 4 Dec. 1803, Gallatin Papers, N-YHS (quoted); Austin, Matthew Lyon, 64-89; Rutland Farmers’ Library, 1 April 1793 ff; HBAN, 1091,1083.
11. Lyon’s tumultuous early years in Congress are thoroughly covered in Austin, Matthew Lyon, 90-102.
12. Annals of Congress, 5th Congress, 2d sess., House, 1009-1017
13. Durey, With the Hammer, 76—77.
14. Washington Herald of Liberty, 12 (“Portrait”), 26 Feb., 16 April (“To Arm”) 1798.
15. See John Israel to Israel Israel, 12 Oct. 1804, Coxe Papers, HSP. On Israel’s membership in the Democratic Society and his occupational background, see Foner, Democratic-Republican Societies, 440. A brief secondary work on John Israel is Prince, “John Israel.” Quotation from John Israel to Albert Gallatin, 23 Sept. 1798, Gallatin Papers, N-YHS.
16. Israel to Gallatin, 23 Sept. 1798, Gallatin Papers, N-YHS; Washington Herald of Liberty, 12 Feb., 16 April, 19 Feb., 3 Sept. 1798.
17. Washington Herald of Liberty, 8 Oct. 1798
18. Ibid., 3 Sept.-22 Oct. 1798, quotations from 8, 22 Oct.
19. John Israel to Albert Gallatin, 15 April 1799, Gallatin Papers, N-YHS.
20. Washington Herald of Liberty, n Feb. 1799.
21. Tinkcom, Republicans and Federalists, 232, 235; Ferguson, Early Western Pennsylvania Politics, 151.
22. Washington Herald of Liberty., 9 Sept. 1799-22 Oct. 1799, quotations from 9 Sept., 7 Oct., 30 Sept., 21 Oct. 1799; John Israel to Albert Gallatin, 6, 20 Oct. 1799, Gallatin Papers, N-YHS.
23. Pennsylvania Archives, 9th ser., 3:1585; John Hamilton to William Hoge, 15 Jan. 1800 (quoted), enclosure in William Hoge to Albert Gallatin, 28 March 1800, Gallatin Papers, N-YHS.
24. Hoge to Gallatin, 28 March 1800, Hamilton to Hoge, 15 Jan. 1800, Gallatin Papers, N-YHS.
25. Snowden and McCorkle to James Madison, 9 Aug. 1797, 25 June 1798, PJM, 17:41,157; Evans, American Bibliography, entries 31906, 33485.
26. Chambersburg Farmers’ Register, 18, 25 April, 2, 9, 16, 23 May, 6 June 1798. The proceedings of an apparently Federalist meeting appeared in the issue of 23 March 1798. The Register’s first Republican political essay appeared in the issue of 13 June (“Sidney”), but a Federalist rebuttal appeared in the next issue, that of 20 June (“A Citizen”).
27. Alexandria Times, 10,12 April 1797, n, 31 July, 2,15 Aug. 1797; Norfolk Epitome of the Times, 9,16 April, 3,14 May 1798.
28. Smith, Freedom’s Fetters, 3-93, quotations on 24; Durey, With the Hammer, 107-109; Durey, “Thomas Paine’s Apostles”; Durey, Transatlantic Radicals; Twomey, Jacobins and Jeffersonians.
29. Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 26 Apr. 1798, PJM, 17:120; Smith, Freedom’s Fetters, 95.
30. Addison, Liberty of Speech and Press, 18-19.
31. Rosenberg, “Addison and Origins of Federalist Thought”; Rosenberg, Protecting the Best Men, 64-87. Rosenberg’s work called my attention to the importance of Addison’s grand jury charges as sources for understanding Federalist thought on the Sedition Act.
32. Jefferson to Carrington, 16 Jan. 1787, PTJ, 11:49; Addison, Liberty of Speech and Press, 18,19.
33. Annals of Congress, 5th Cong., 2d sess., House, 2098; Addison, Reports of Cases, 205. Allen’s was one of the few speeches in the debate that focused on the broad rationale for the act rather than on its constitutionality. The new cultural histories of the French Revolution have rather agreed with the Federalists on the press’s role in subverting the ancien régime. For examples, see Chartier, Cultural Origins of the French Revolution; Popkin, Revolutionary News; Darnton and Roche, Revolution in Print; Darnton, Literary Underground.
34. Addison, Liberty of Speech and Press, 20; Annals of Congress, 5th Cong., 2d sess., House, 2098. The text of the act “for the punishment of certain crimes against the United States,” is conveniently reprinted in Smith, Freedoms Fetters, 441-42. The “cutting edge” nature of the Sedition Act is described in Levy, Emergence of a Free Press, 297-98; and Berns, “Freedom of the Press.”
35. Stanley Griswold, “To my Children & friends,” ms. memoir dated 4 Jan. 1801, Michigan Collection, Clements Library, University of Michigan.
36. Addison, Reports of Cases, 211-12.
37. Ibid., 210. Douglass Adair has argued for a similar concept of “fame” as the prime motivation of many of the American Founders. See Fame and the Founding Fathers, 3-26.
38. Addison, Reports of Cases, 210-n.
39. Addison, Liberty of Speech and Press, 20.
40. Addison, Reports of Cases, 203; Rosenberg, Protecting the Best Men, 82-89.
41. Addison, Reports of Cases, 159.
42. Wood, Radicalism, 23, 36-38, 63-64, 184-86. On the Federalist commitment to republicanism, see Kerber, Federalists in Dissent.
43. Jefferson, Writings, 290-91.
44. Quoted in Williamson, American Suffrage, 10-n.
45. Addison, Reports of Cases, 202-203.
46. Ibid., 213; Annals of Congress, 5th Cong., 2d sess., House, 2100.
47. Annals of Congress, 5th Cong., 2nd sess., House, 10 July 1798, 2140-2141.
48. Smith, Freedom’s Fetters, 159-274; Shulim, “John Daly Burk,” 19-36.
49. Shulim, “John Daly Burk,” 31, 35-36; Smith, Freedom’s Fetters, 204-220, 398-417; Hench, “Newspaper in a Republic,” 174-79.
50. For example, see Levy, Emergence of a Free Press, 282-349; Berns, “Freedom of the Press”; Chambers, Political Parties in a New Nation, 140-41; Miller, Federalist Era, 228-42; Sharp, American Politics in the Early Republic, 187-225; Elkins and McKitrick, Age of Federalism, 719-26; Koch and Ammon, “Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions.”
51. The “new libertarianism” is described in Levy, Emergence of a Free Press, 309-37, the latest version of a work first published in 1960. The existence of the new libertarianism is perhaps mostly strongly attacked in Berns, “Freedom of the Press,” 135-42, while a milder, less sweeping demurral can be found in Rosenberg, Protecting the Best Men, 89-99.
52. Koch and Ammon, “Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions”; Beeman, Old Dominion and New Nation, 188-201, 204-206, 209-12, 215-16; Kurtz, Presidency of John Adams, 380-82; Gilpatrick, Jeffersonian Democracy in North Carolina, 82-123; Miller, Federalist Era, 242. On the “new libertarianism” not being implemented, see Rosenberg, Protecting the Best Men, 89-234; Dickerson, Course of Tolerance; Nelson, Freedom of the Press From Hamilton to the Warren Court; and even Levy, Emergence of a Free Press, 308-49.
53. Meriwether Jones to St. George Tucker, 2 Jan. 1800, Tucker-Coleman Papers, CWM.
54. Newport Companion and Commercial Advertiser, 2 May 1798; Newport Guardian of Liberty, 3 Oct. 1800; HBAN, 1:258-60, 2:1374; Matthias Bartgis to James Madison, Matthias Bartgis file, 24 Dec. 1802, Letters of Application 1801-1809, RG59-NA.
55. Collection problems are a constant theme in histories of early American printing and publishing. For example, see Hamilton, Country Printer, 59-60, 65-67; Brigham, Journals and Journeymen, 23-26; Stewart, Opposition Press, 17-19.
56. William Duane to Tench Coxe, 15 Oct. 1798, Coxe Papers, HSP; James Lyon to Thomas Jefferson, 14 Dec. 1800, James Lyon file, Letters of Application 1801-1809, RG59-NA.
57. Hench, “Newspaper in a Republic,” 111-22.
58. David Chambers to Joseph G. Chambers, 23 Apr. 1796, Benjamin Franklin Bache to Joseph G. Chambers, 14 Sept. 1796, Chambers Papers, AAS; David Chambers Autobiography and Genealogy, Vertical File Manuscripts #3302, Ohio Historical Society.
59. New York Time Piece, 25 Sept. 1797.
1. Hofstadter, Idea of a Party System; Ketcham, Presidents above Party; Bailyn, Ideological Origins; Banning, Jeffersonian Persuasion. For a convincing application of republicanism to artisans, see Wilentz, Chants Democratic, 61-103. As we will see later, classical republican antipartyism was much stronger and more resilient among the political and social elite than in other strata of American society, because republicanism’s idealization of social and political consensus and leadership by “disinterested” statesmen made little provision for the aspirations or interests of the middling and lower orders. See Appleby, Capitalism and New Social Order. Nevertheless, classical republican rhetoric and antiparty ideas were present in some form at all levels, especially in the 1790s.
2. Except where noted, the descriptions of Connecticut’s political culture in the following paragraphs are based on: Collier, Roger Sherman’s Connecticut; Gilsdorf and Gilsdorf, “Elites and Electorates”; Purcell, Connecticut in Transition; Daniels, Connecticut Town; Thomas, “Politics in the Land of Steady Habits”; Grasso, Speaking Aristocracy.
3. Swift, System of the Laws of Connecticut, 67-68, 58.
4. Foster, Jeffersonian America, 306.
5. Morse, Connecticut Newspapers.
6. Printers File, AAS; Hamilton, Country Printer, 278; HBAN, 52-53, 1432; New London Bee, 14, 21 June 1797.
7. New London Bee, 14 June 1797-24 Jan. 1798.
8. Ibid., 6 June 1798.
9. Prince, Federalists and Civil Service, 66—72.
10. New London Bee, 23 June 1802.
11. Charles Holt to Ephraim Kirby, 21 Dec. 1797, Kirby Papers, DU; Wood, Radicalism, 194-96.
12. Charles Holt to Ephraim Kirby, 25 Nov. 1798, 9 May 1799, Kirby Papers, DU; Briceland, “Ephraim Kirby,” 199-202; New London Bee, 6, 20 June 1798.
13. Hartford Connecticut Courant, 30 Sept. 1799.
14. New London Bee, 14 Nov. 1798; Charles Holt to Ephraim Kirby, 25 Nov. 1798, Kirby Papers, DU.
15. Hartford Connecticut Courant, 30 Sept. 1799.
16. New London Bee, 23 June 1802, 14, 28 Nov. 1798; Charles Holt to Albert Gallatin, 29 Nov. 1801, Gallatin Papers, N-YHS.
17. Wright, Anti-Shepherd-Crat, 13.
18. Alexandria Times, June 1798-Mar. 1801.
19. James D. Westcott to Thomas Jefferson, 18 Mar. 1801; Westcott to Levi Lincoln, 18 Mar. 1801, Westcott file, Letters of Application 1801-1809, RG59-NA.
20. New London Bee, 12 June 1799.
21. Smith, Freedom’s Fetters, 375-84; Grasso, Speaking Aristocracy, 454-55. On the accuracy of the charge, see Kohn, Eagle and Sword, 219-38.
22. New London, Bee, 21 May, 27 Aug., 24 Sept. 1800.
23. Morse, Connecticut Newspapers, 25-27; Stewart, Opposition Press, 617; Thomas Jefferson to Charles Holt, 23 Nov. 1810, Jefferson Papers, LC (quoted).
24. Buckingham, Specimens, 2:310-14; Duniway, Development of Freedom of the Press, 146.
25. Smith, Freedom’s Fetters, 379-80.
26. Cunningham, Republicans in Power, 12-29; Briceland, “Ephraim Kirby,” 300-342.
27. Holt to Gallatin, 29 Nov. 1801, Gallatin Papers, N-YHS; Vickers, “Competency and Competition.”
28. Aronson, Status and Kinship in the Higher Civil Service, 10-14; Smith, Press, Politics and Patronage, 46-47; White, Jeffersonians, 347-54.
29. Prince, Federalists and Civil Service, 72.
30. New London Bee, 23 June, 28 Apr. 1802; Charles Johnson to Thomas Jefferson, 26 Apr. 1802, James Shannonhouse file, Letters of Application 1801-1809, RG59-NA.
31. Charles Holt to Ephraim Kirby, 21 June 1802, Kirby Papers, DU; Hudson Wasp, 12 Aug. 1802.
32. New London Bee, 23 June 1802.
33. HBAN, 1:583-85, 588-89; Miller, Historical Sketches of Hudson, 64-67; Matthew Livingston Davis to William P. Van Ness, 4 Feb. 1807, Davis Papers, N-YHS.
34. Hamilton, Country Printer, 175—76,187-188; HBAN, 588; Hudson Wasp, 7 July, 12 Aug. 1802.
35. Hudson Bee, 17, 24, 31 Aug., 7,14, 21, 28 Sept. 1802.
36. Hudson Wasp, 7,17 July, 12, 30 Aug. 1802.
37. HBAN, 528, 583, 614; Hudson Balance, 18 Jan. 1803 ff; Hudson,Journalism in the United States, 225; Mushkat, Tammany, 39-40.
38. Charles Holt to B. F. Thompson, 23 Feb. 1816, Book Trades Collection, AAS.
39. Charles Holt to Jabez D. Hammond, 7 Apr. 1818, Misc. Uncatalogued Manuscripts, NYPL; Hamilton, Country Printer, 124, 278; Munsell, Typographical Miscellany, 148-49.
40. New London Bee, 23 Sept. 1801.
41. Based on a biographical database created primarily from information in the Printers File, AAS, and BDUSC.
42. Pittsfield Sun, 16 Sept. 1800.
43. Detweiler, “Changing Reputation of the Declaration”; Travers, Celebrating the Fourth, 69-106,161-63,169-80; Maier, American Scripture, 170—72. Maier’s focus on debunking the Declaration’s importance as a legal document causes her to underestimate its powerful, posthumous role in tying the memory of the Revolution to popular aspirations for political democracy and equal rights. Ordinary Americans perceived, remembered, and interpreted the Revolution very differently than the statesmen who penned most of the founding documents. The most eloquent statement on this theme remains Young, “George Robert Twelves Hewes.”
44. Levy, Emergence of Free Press, 297-98; Smith, Printers and Press Freedom, 156-67. I would distinguish this popular constitutionalism from both the theoretical “new libertarianism” discerned by Levy and the libertarian “trade ideology” of the colonial printers depicted by Jeffery Smith.
45. Chambersburg Farmers’ Register, 18 April, 2, 9, 16, 23 May, 6, 13 (quoted), 20 June, 4 (quoted) July 1798, 20 Feb. 1799; HBAN, 836-38,1426; Stewart, Opposition Press, 884.
46. Chambersburg Farmers’ Register, 13, 20, 27 June, 4, 18 July, 22 Aug., 19 Sept., 17 (quoted), 24, 31 Oct. 1798, 27 Feb., 6, 20 March, 3 April 1799.
47. HBAN, 1448,1485; Pittsburgh Mercury, 1812-1817; Printers File, AAS.
48. Norfolk Epitome of the Times, 17, 21 May 1798.
49. Wood, Creation, 393-564.
50. Norfolk Epitome of the Times, 21 May 1798.
51. Appleby, Capitalism and New Social Order, 51—78.
52. Aurora, 24, 25, 27, 30 April 1799. A good account of Fries Rebellion and the troops’ behavior can be found in Elkins and McKitrick, Age of Federalism, 696—700.
1. Cunningham,Jeffersonian Republicans, 168—74.
2. Uriah Tracy to Oliver Wolcott, 7 Aug. 1800, Gibbs, Memoirs of the Administrations of Washington and Adams, 2:399-400.
3. Cunningham, Jeffersonian Republicans, 166—74.
4. Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 5 Feb. 1799, PJM, 17:225-26.
5. Cunningham, Jeffersonian Republicans, 169-172; Durey, With the Hammer, 104-106,110-13,119-20.
6. Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 19 Feb. 1799, PJM, 17:234; Jefferson to James Monroe, 19 Feb. 1799, Jefferson to Tench Coxe, 21 May 1799, WTJ, 7:365, 378-80; Hugh Henry Brackenridge to Coxe, 3 Feb. 1800, Coxe Papers, HSP; Cooke, Tench Coxe, 352-53; Cunningham, Jeffersonian Republicans, 131-33; Ames, History of Intelligencer, 3-36; Washington National Intelligencer, 31 Oct. 1800.
7. Gilpatrick, Jeffersonian Democracy in North Carolina, 104-106, 108-109, n9_23> 129, 136; Elliott, Raleigh Register, 18-22; Ames, History of Intelligencer, 68-80; Twomey, Jacobins and Jeffersonians, 30-32, 52-53; Cunningham, Jeffersonian Republicans, 173; Stewart, Opposition Press, n; Raleigh Register, 4 Feb.-n Nov. 1800.
8. Andrews, Pittsburgh’s Post-Gazette, 1-6; Newlin, Brackenridge, 209-10.
9. Brackenridge to Coxe, 3 Feb. 1800, Ezekiel Forman to Coxe, 14 Jan., 13 March 1800 Coxe Papers, HSP.
10. H. H. Brackenridge to John Israel, 10 April 1800, in Pittsburgh Tree of Liberty, 23 Aug. 1800; Field, “Press in Western Pennsylvania,” 231-32; Alexander Fowler to Al bert Gallatin, 25 Sept. 1801, Gallatin Papers, N-YHS; Cunningham, Jeffersonian Re publicans, 173; Stewart, Opposition Press, n; Brackenridge, Recollections, 70; Pittsburgh Gazette, 16, 23 Aug. 1800; Tarleton Bates to Tench Coxe, 15 May 1804, Coxe Papers, HSP; Pittsburgh Tree of Liberty, 23 Aug. 1800.
11. Cunningham, Jeffersonian Republicans, 173; HBAN, 2:1141.
12. Solomon Myer to Albert Gallatin, 25 May 1799, Gallatin Papers, N-YHS; HBAN, 2:992, 854; Field, “Press in Western Pennsylvania,” 240.
13. Of 107 editors of strongly Republican newspapers who were identified, occupational information could be found for 93. Among that group, the three leading occupations were: printers, 80; lawyers,6; schoolteachers, 4. On average, each editor spent 13.2 years publishing newspapers, a figure that is somewhat low, because (except in a few cases where the information is unusually complete), it counts only newspaper work for which the editor was listed on a masthead, thus omitting time spent as an uncredited apprentice or editorial assistant. These statistics are based on a biographical database of partisan editors that was created using the Printers File, AAS; BDUSC, and myriad biographical works and local histories, most of them listed in the bibliography. For more information, see this book’s companion web site at <http://pasley-brothers.com/newspols>.
14. For runaway slave advertisements in the Raleigh Register and other North Carolina journals, see Parker, Stealing a Little Freedom. The literature on this topic understandably focuses on the content of the ads and on what can be learned about slavery from them rather than on their role in the economics of the press. For an argument that slave advertisements played a strong role in buttressing the colonial press, and vice versa, see Waldstreicher, “Reading the Runaways.”
15. Garnett, “James Mercer”; Egerton, Charles Fenton Mercer, 1-8.
16. Advertisement in Alexandria Times, 17 Aug. 1798; HBAN, 2:1114-15; Fredericksburg Genius of Liberty, 7 Dec. 1798; Robert Mercer to John Francis Mercer, 7 Jan. 1799, Landon Carter to John Francis Mercer, 7 Feb. 1800, Mercer Family Papers, VHS.
17. Durey, “With the Hammer”, 114-15,152-56. For an account of one of Jones’s duels, against a rival editor, see William Radford to Gen. John Preston, 15 April 1800, Preston Family Papers, VHS.
18. Meriwether Jones to Creed Taylor, 9 April 1799, Taylor Correspondence, UVA; Palmer, Calendar of Virginia State Papers, 8:531; HBAN, 1403; Printers File, AAS.
19. HBAN, 2:1139,1141; Durey, “With the Hammer,” 114-27.
20. Meriwether Jones to St. George Tucker, 2 Jan., 12 May 1800, Tucker-Coleman Papers, CWM; Jones to Albert Gallatin, 26 June 1801, Gallatin Papers, N-YHS; Jones to Taylor 9 Apr. 1799, Taylor Correspondence, UVA.
21. On the General Committee, see Cunningham, Jeffersonian Republicans, 149,154; Cunningham, Republicans in Power, 180-87, 238 Amnion, “Richmond Junto.” An original document showing the committee’s membership and operations is Philip Nor-borne Nicholas, George Hay, Meriwether Jones, et al., to John Ambler, 1 Feb. 1804, printed but hand-addressed circular, Ambler Papers, VHS. For the membership of the committee and each of its county-level subcommittees during 1800, see Palmer, Calendar of Virginia State Papers, 9:77-87. On Jones’s death, see Printers File, AAS.
22. Robert Mercer to J. F Mercer, 7 Jan. 1799, Landon Carter to J. F Mercer, 7 Feb. Mercer Family Papers, VHS; Meriwether Jones to James Madison, 13 March Meriwether Jones file, Letters of Application 1801-1809, RG59-NA (quoted); Jones to Taylor, 9 April 1799, Taylor Correspondence, UVA.
23. Baltimore American, 16-18 May 1799,16,18 May 1800. Also quoted in CunnIngham, Jeffersonian Republicans, 168.
24. Pittsburgh Tree of Liberty, 16 Aug. 1800.
25. New York American Citizen, 10 March 1800; Cunningham, Jeffersonian Republicans, 168.
26. Samuel Morse to Ephraim Kirby, 2 July 1800, Kirby Papers, DU; Morse to Thomas Jefferson, 4 Feb. 1802, Jefferson Papers, LC.
27. Samuel Morse to Thomas Jefferson, 26 June 1800, Jefferson Papers, LC.
28. Danbury Sun of Liberty, 24 June 1800, reprinted in Aurora, 2 July 1800; Morse to Kirby, 2 July 1800, Kirby Papers, DU.
29. Lancaster Intelligencer, 31 July 1799.
30. Pittsfield Sun, 16 Sept. 1800.
31. Danbury Sun of Liberty, 24 June 1800, reprinted in Aurora, 2 July 1800.
32. Bailyn, Ideological Origins, 55-93, quotation on 56; Hench, “Newspaper in a Republic,” 5-7, 181-233, quotations on 186-87.
33. Danbury Sun of Liberty, 24 June 1800, reprinted in Aurora, 2 July 1800.
34. Goshen Orange Patrol, 13, 27 May, 10 June 1800; HBAN, 1:577. Hurtin had previously published a nonpartisan paper called the Goshen Repository.
35. Portsmouth Republican Ledger, 29 July 1800.
36. Lancaster Intelligencer, 31 July, 7, 14, 21, 28 Aug., 4, n (chart) Sept. 1799; Higgin-botham, Keystone in Democratic Arch, no, 231,353; Riddle, Story of Lancaster, 115-16.
37. New York American Citizen, 10 March 1800; Boston Constitutional Telegraph, 2 Oct. 1799.
38. An updated roster of 1790s editors who held office can be found at <http://pasleybrothers.com/newspols>.
39. For the application of the term “cadres” to Federalist editors, see Prince, Federalists and Civil Service. For a similar view of the basically deferential and traditional role played by Federalist editors of the 1790s, see Fischer, Revolution of American Conservatism, 129-34.
40. Washington, Pa., Herald of Liberty, 12 Feb. 1798; Wolf and Whiteman,Jews of Philadelphia, 31-32.
41. Pittsburgh Gazette, 23, 29 Aug. 1800; Newlin, Brackenridge, 214. See also, Prince, “John Israel,” 50-51. Like many a Federalist printer, Scull was basically commercial in orientation. His bile against Israel and Brackenridge originated mostly in his irritation that his fourteen-year monopoly of the Pittsburgh printing business was at an end. See Andrews, Pittsburgh’s Post-Gazette, 38-52.
42. Pittsburgh Tree of Liberty, 23 Aug. 1800; Washington Herald of Liberty, 12 Feb. 1798; Goshen Orange Patrol, 13 May 1800; John Israel to Albert Gallatin, 6 Oct. 1799, 2 July (with enclosure, ms. copy of indictment in case of James Ross v. John Israel, Allegheny County Court, Dec. term, 1800), 12 Aug. 1801, Gallatin Papers, N-YHS; Andrews, Pittsburgh’s Post-Gazette, 49.
43. John Israel, “Address to the Citizens of Allegheny and Crawford Counties,” Pittsburgh Tree of Liberty, 16, 23 Aug. 1800.
44. Pittsburgh Tree of Liberty, 23 Aug. 1800.
45. Wilmington Mirror of the Times, 29 March, 6 Aug. 1800.
46. This attempted newspaper organization preceded the development of a formal national party. The famous Republican “congressional caucus,” often regarded as a precursor to the national party conventions, was in fact a completely informal gathering, with no official authority whatever. There were exactly two “caucuses” in the 1790s. A group of congressmen met in early 1796 to plot strategy on the Jay Treaty but did nothing about the presidential or any other election race. In early 1800, a random group of Republican congressmen got together at James Madison’s boarding house to clear up confusion over the vice presidential race. That was the national Republican “organization” in a nutshell. See Chase, Emergence of Nominating Convention, 9-12.
47. HBAN, 2:1447; James Lyon, “Proposals for Publishing . . . the National Magazine,” in New London Bee, 31 July 1799; Richmond Friend of the People, 5 July 1800. For Lyon’s ads, see almost any issue of the Aurora from 1799 to 1801.
48. Benjamin Russell to Charles Prentiss, 20 Dec. 1806, Charles Prentiss Correspondence, AAS
49. Hartford American Mercury, 19 March 1801. For a lengthy contemporary essay on the Republican newspaper network, complete with reviews of how the most prominent journals performed in the 1800 campaign, see “Republican News-Papers,” Trenton True American, 21 July 1801.
50. Donald Stewart reached a similar conclusion: “Quotations from [the Aurora] far outnumbered those from any other [publication] in the Republican press.” See his Opposition Press, 612.
51. Trenton True American, 21 July 1801.
52. Aurora, 27 Jan., 19 Feb. 1800.
1. Duane has long been well-known to specialists in this period, of course, and his profile with general readers has recently been raised by his appearance as the “narrator” of Rosenfeld, American Aurora. The best secondary treatments of Duane, providing rich insights into the importance of his transatlantic perspective on American politics, can be found in Phillips, William Duane, and Durey, Transatlantic Radicals. The former work is a verbatim reprint of Phillips’s 1968 University of California-Berkeley dissertation, in which form I originally read it. The book version has a new title, but the text remains unchanged down to the pagination. Besides being the best study of William Duane, Phillip’s book is indispensable for understanding the political, social, and economic history of Philadelphia and the nation from the 1790s to the 1830s, and covers far more than William Duane’s career.
2. William Duane to Tench Coxe, 13 June 1801, Coxe Papers, HSR
3. Duane, Biographical Memoir, 1-2; Phillips, William Duane, 35, 5-6; Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, 4:508.
4. Duane, Biographical Memoir, 2-3; Phillips, William Duane, 5-10.
5. Phillips, William Duane, n-21.
6. Ibid., 21-30; William Duane, Bill of Sale to Edward Shaw, [1794], Duane Family Papers, APS; John Kelly to Mathew Carey, 23 Jan. 1795, Lea and Febiger Collection, HSP (quoted), reference courtesy of James N. Green.
7. Phillips, William Duane, 30-32; Wfilliam Duane], Memorial to Court, 26 Aug. 1795, draft, Duane Family Papers, APS; Hudson, Journalism in the U.S., 211-12.
8. [William Duane] to I. E. Hay, [Dec. 1794], draft, Wfilliam] D[uane] to Governor of St. Helena, 1795, draft, Duane Family Papers, APS; Phillips, William Duane, 32-33; Kelly to Carey, 23 Jan. 1795, Lea and Febiger Coll., HSP.
9. Phillips, William Duane, 37.
10. [William Duane] to Commander of St. Helena, n.d., Duane Family Papers, APS.
11. Phillips, William Duane, 34, 36-46; Duane, Memorial to Court, 26 Aug. 1795, Duane Family Papers, APS; Thale, Selections from LCS Papers, 312-13, 322-25, 328-31, 37m.
12. Thackara Diary, HSP (quoted); William Duane to James Thackara, 5 June I79[8], in Thackara Diary, HSP; Phillips, William Duane, 49.
13. Dwight, Letter to George Washington, 17-18, 47-48.
14. Duane to James Thackara, 5, 7 June 1798, in Thackara Diary, HSP; William Duane to Richard Bache, n Sept. 1798, copy, William Duane to Tench Coxe, 12,14, 28 Sept., Oct. 1798 Coxe Papers, HSP; Phillips, William Duane, 54-61; Duane, Biographical Memoir, 6; HBAN, 2:891-92.
15. Duane to Coxe, 12, 14 Sept. 1798, 30 Oct. 1798, Coxe to Margaret Bache, 13 Sept., 22 Nov. 1798, John Beckley to Coxe, 12 Nov. 1798, Coxe Papers, HSP; Cooke, Tench Coxe, 346-47; HBAN, 2:891.
16. Stewart, Opposition Press, 235, 242-47, 333, 480, 500; William Duane to Ephraim Kirby, 3 July 1800, Kirby Papers, DU; Aurora, 12, 22, 24 Aug., 3 Sept., 5 Oct. 1799, 12 Feb. 1800.
17. William Duane to Tench Coxe, 7 July 1800, Coxe Papers, HSP.
18. Berkeley and Berkeley, John Beckley, 196-99; Duane to Kirby, 3 July 1800, Kirby Papers, DU; Aurora, 17 June 1800ff.
19. On Washington and Adams administration personnel policies, see White, Federalists, 253-322.
20. Aurora, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25 June, 2 July, 5, 8, 23, 26 Aug., 2 Sept. 1800; Duane to Kirby, 3 July 1800, Kirby Papers, DU.
21. Baltimore American, reprinted in Aurora, 2 July 1800.
22. Pretzer, “Tramp Printers,” 4; Silver, American Printer, 16, 25.
23. Aurora, 3 Aug. 1800.
24. Afrthur] Campbell to David Campbell, 21 (quoted), 26 Feb. 1800, Campbell Family Papers, DU.
25. Phillips, William Duane, 56-100.
26. Aurora, 4 Aug. 1800; William Duane to Tench Coxe, 3 Nov. 1800, Coxe Papers, HSP.
27. James McHenry to Philemon Dickerson, 3 Sept. 1800, PAH, 25:116; Hartford Connecticut Courant, 18 Aug. 1800.
28. “Circular,” Nov. 1834, in Duane, “Letters of Duane,” 391-94.
29. Phillips, William Duane, 71—74; Aurora, 16, 21 May 1799.
30. Aurora, 24, 25, 27, 28 March, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19 May 1800; Phillips, William Duane, 84-92.
31. New London Bee, 26 March 1800; Trenton True American, 21 July 1800.
32. William Duane to James Madison, 10 May 1801, PJM: Sec. of State Ser, 1:153.
33. William Duane to Thomas Jefferson, 10 June 1801, Duane, “Letters of Duane,” 267-68; Duane to Albert Gallatin, 13 Dec. 1801, Gallatin Papers, N-YHS.
34. William Duane to Thomas Jefferson, 10 May 1801, Duane, “Letters of Duane,” 262; Duane to Madison, 10 May 1801, PJM: Sec. of State Ser, 1:153.
35. Duane to Jefferson, 10 May 1801, Duane, “Letters of Duane,” 262.
36. Holt to Gallatin, 29 Nov. 1801, Duane to Gallatin, 13 Dec. 1801, Gallatin Papers, N-YHS; William Duane to Joseph Nancrede, 30 Sept. 1801, Duane, “Letters of Duane,” 268-69.
37. Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, 5:117.
38. Aurora, 1 Sept. 1802; Salem Register, 10 Sept. 1802.
39. Trenton True American, 21 July 1801; Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, 4:508, 117, 5:112.
1. Miller, Brief Retrospect, 2:247-51, quotation on 251.
2. Ibid., 2:249.
3. Ibid., 2:253. As one example of this point, Miller might have cited William Duane’s Aurora, the circulation of which, even according to a hostile observer, was “universal throughout the United States—and in every hovel of Pennsylvania it is to be found and read.” (Quoted in Cunningham, Republicans in Power, 273.)
4. Miller, Brief Retrospect, 2:252-53.
5. Ibid., 2:254-55.
6. Thomas, History of Printing, ed. McCorison, 18-21, Thomas remarks at 2on.
7. There is a vast literature in political science defining and refining the idea of “critical elections” and realignments, the technical aspects of which I do not mean to engage. Works that I found particularly helpful include: Key, “Theory of Critical Elections”; Burnham, Critical Elections; Clubb, Flanigan, and Zingale, Partisan Realignment; Shefter, Political Parties and the State. “Critical elections” and their attendant realignments form the theoretical basis for the successive “party systems” that historians have described in Chambers and Burnham, American Party Systems; and Kleppner, et al., Evolution of American Electoral Systems.
8. Taylor, “From Fathers to Friends of the People.” David Hackett Fischer makes a similar argument in Revolution of American Conservatism.
9. Historians might well dispute the lesson and credit Jefferson’s win to Aaron Burr’s work in New York or some other cause, but the widespread perception about newspapers is undeniable, as the evidence presented in this chapter shows. For overviews of the strong interest that both sets of party leaders took in partisan news papers after 1800, see Cunningham, Republicans in Power, 236-74; and Fischer, Revolution of American Conservatism, 129-49,424-29.
10. Dill, Growth of Newspapers, 22; Weiss, Graphic Summary, 4-5; Melish, Travels, 577; Thomas, History of Printing, 2:517-25. Thomas’s figure of 359 newspapers in 1810 falls somewhat short of the 396 found by Weiss, using HBAN. I have used Weiss’s figures to calculate the rate of increase. Two dissenting opinions against the thesis that the press was largely political in this period can be found in Nerone, Culture of the Press, and Fearon, Sketches of America, 228-30. Both books based their conclusions on the early newspapers of Cincinnati, a place where party politics was not yet well devel oped, and, problematically, take them as representative of the whole American press.
11. Lambert, Travels, 2:217-18, 3:124,186, 247-51; Melish, Travels, 59-60; Tudor, Letters on the Eastern States, 124-25; Bristed, America and Her Resources, 316, 311; Holmes, Account of U.S.A., 381-82.
12. Smith, Press, Politics, and Patronage, 41-55.
13. See the many references to Lincoln and Granger in Cunningham, Republicans in Power, as well as their many letters to Jefferson in the Jefferson Papers, LC, especially in the early years of his presidency. One of Granger’s more extended descriptions of New England politics, immediately preceding his appointment as postmaster general, can be found in Granger to Jefferson, 15 April 1801, Elizur Goodrich file, Letters of Application 1801-1809, RG59-NA. Home in Worcester, Lincoln sent particularly detailed reports in his letters to Jefferson of 28 July 1801, 25 July 1802, 16 Oct. 1802, Jefferson Papers, LC, and 24 Oct. 1801, John M. Forbes file, Letters of Application 1801-1809, RG59-NA.
14. Elisha Babcock to Ephraim Kirby, 29 March 1803, Kirby Papers, DU; Granger to Jefferson, 4 June 1800, 5 Sept. 1802, Granger to Jefferson, 18 Oct. 1800, Lincoln to Jefferson, 28 July 1801, 25 July 1802, Jefferson Papers, LC.
15. Lincoln to Jefferson, 28 July 1801, Jefferson Papers, LC.
16. Ketcham, Presidents above Party, 100-13; Hofstadter, Idea of a Party System; Jefferson to Francis Hopkinson, 13 March 1789, Jefferson to John Dickinson, 6 March 1801, in Jefferson, Writings, 940-42, 1084; Lincoln to Jefferson, 15 June 1801, Jefferson Papers, LC.
17. Lincoln to Jefferson, 25 July 1802,15 June 1801, Jefferson Papers, LC.
18. Granger to Kirby, 8 March 1802, Kirby Papers, DU.
19. Lincoln to Jefferson, 28 July, 16 Sept. 1801, 1 Apr. 1808, Jefferson Papers, LC; William Lincoln, Manuscript History of Worcester Newspapers, Lincoln Family Papers, folio vol. 45, Lincoln AAS; William Lincoln, History of Worcester, 332-34; HBAN, 1:418-19; Collection Notes, National Aegis Business Records, AAS.
20. William Lincoln, History of Worcester, 235-36, 333-34; [Francis Blake], “The National Aegis; By Hector Ironside, Esq.,” broadside circular included at beginning of the microfilm edition of the Worcester National Aegis; Worcester National Aegis, 2, 9, 16, 23, 30 Dec. 1801.
21. National Aegis, 13, 20, 27 Oct. 1802.
22. Ibid., 6,13, 27 Oct., 3,17, 24 Nov. 1802.
23. Ibid., 13 Oct., 17, 24 Nov., 15 Dec. 1802. Lincoln and Granger both approved and sometimes even urged the regional equivocation regarding Paine. See Lincoln to Jefferson, 6 Dec 1802, Jefferson Papers, LC; Granger to Ephraim Kirby, 19 Nov. 1802, Kirby Papers, DU.
24. Portsmouth New Hampshire Gazette, 9 Feb., 19 Jan. ff, 14, 21 Dec. 1802, n Jan. ff, 1 Feb. 1803.
25. Salem Impartial Register, 12 May 1800 ff.; Bentley, Diary, 2:112, 335-36; 4:53; Whitney, “Crowninshields of Salem,” 8-13; Tapley, Salem Imprints, 79-83, 112. The Crowninshields are treated (perhaps somewhat inaccurately) as representative Jefferso-nians in Goodman, Democratic-Republicans of Massachusetts, 113-18.
26. Salem Register, 4 Jan. 1802 ff.; Whitney, “Crowninshields of Salem,” 18-29; Buckingham, Specimens, 2:333-34; Tapley, Salem Imprints, 113-27; Bentley, Diary, 2:452-56; Levi Lincoln to Thomas Jefferson, 13 Dec. 1802, Samuel Bedford file, Letters of Application 1801-1809, RG59-NA.
27. Bentley, Diary, 3:54-55.
28. On the Political Observatory, see Stanley Griswold to David McClure, 19 March 1804, Gratz Collection, HSP; Griswold to Stephen R. Bradley, 13, 24 Dec. 1804, 10 Dec. 1805, Griswold Papers, BHC-DPL. On the Eastern Argus, see Nathaniel Willis, “Autobiography of a Journalist” (1858), reprinted in Hudson, Journalism in U.S., 290; and Fassett, Newspapers in the District of Maine, 107-108.
29. Wilmington Mirror of the Times, 8 Nov. 1800; Prince, New Jersey’s Jeffersonian Republicans, 89-90; James J. Wilson to William Darlington, 22 July, 20 Aug., 26 Nov. 1801, Darlington Papers, LC; Cunningham, Republicans in Power, 240.
30. See the perhaps overly rosy discussion of Republican leaders’ aid to newspapers in Cunningham, Republicans in Power, 243-46. If as heavily subsidized as Cunningham suggests, Republican newspapers should have been much more stable and profitable than they were. For an example of a politician subscribing to distant newspapers, see the personal ledgers of western territorial official and former editor Stanley Griswold, which record subscriptions to newspapers in Cincinnati and Chillicothe, Ohio; New Brunswick, New Jersey; Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Washington, D.C.; and Hartford and Litchfield, Connecticut. See Ledger, n July 1805-14 Dec. 1810, Griswold Family Papers, Baker Library, Harvard Business School.
31. Stanley Griswold to David McClure, 19 March 1804, Gratz Collection, HSP; Worcester National Aegis, 6 June 1804.
32. Robinson, Jeffersonian Democracy in New England, 68—70; Lodge, Life and Letters of Cabot, 349; Adams, New England in the Republic, 235-39; Paullin, Alas of Historical Geography, 90.
33. National Aegis, 6 Sept. 1804 ff., 31 Oct. 1804 (quoted). This theme was general in the New England Republican press during 1804. The Portland Eastern Argus (23 Aug. 1804 ff.) was less single-minded but much more prolific than the Worcester paper, printing not only essay after essay of its own, but also reprinting extensively from the Independent Chronicle, Walpole Political Observatory, Norwich True Republican, and other journals. See also, Adams, New England in the Republic, 238-39.
34. Robinson, Jeffersonian Democracy in New England, 36-51; Purcell, Connecticut in Transition, 125,139-68; Adams, New England in the Republic, 230-39.
35. Portland Eastern Argus, 6 Jan., 30 Aug., 16 Nov. 1804, 4 Jan., 24 May, 30 Aug. 1805. See also Fassett, Newspapers in the District of Maine, 118-19,195-201.
36. Matthew Livingston Davis Memorandum Book, King Papers, vol. 57, N-YHS, 34-35; Matthew Livingston Davis to William P. Van Ness, 15 Aug. (quoted), 28 Aug. 1805, 1 Aug. 1809, Davis Papers, N-YHS. On the publishing history of the Morning Chronicle, see Kline, Correspondence of Burr, 724-27, 738; HBAN, 667-68.
37. Besides the National Aegis, examples of newspapers as politicians’ fronts may be found in Cooke, Coxe and the Early Republic, 439; and Partridge, “Press of Mississippi.”
38. Wright, Anti-Shepherd-Crat, quotation on 5; [Shepherd], Report on the Trial of Andrew Wright; HBAN, 389.
39. Tapley, Salem Imprints, 118-19, 134-40; Bentley, Diary, 2:453, 3:175, 178—79, 185, 188, 204, 244, 305; Buckingham, Specimens, 2:336-38.
40. Partridge, “Press of Mississippi,” 502; Claiborne, Mississippi, 396-97.
41. National Aegis, 3 Feb., 24 Nov. 1802; Lincoln, History of Worcester, 233-37, 244~~49> 333-34; Worcester Massachusetts Spy, 19 Dec. 1804,16 Jan. 1805.
42. Orcutt, History of New Milford and Bridgewater, 170,185, 256-57, 265—72, 597-99; Dexter, Graduates of Yale College, 4:476-77; Stanley Griswold, “To My Children & Friends,” Ms. memoir, 4 Jan. 1801, Michigan Collection, Clements Library; Bishop, Church and State; Griswold to Ephraim Kirby, 14 Nov. 1801, 1, 6 Feb., 24 May, 28 June 1802,15 June 1803 (quoted), Griswold to Kirby, 18 Jan. 1802, Griswold to Kirby, 10 Dec. 1802, Kirby Papers, DU; Griswold to Thomas Jefferson, 12 Nov. 1804, Griswold file, Letters of Application 1801-1809, RG59-NA; HBAN, 489-90.
43. Stanley Griswold to Thomas Jefferson, 12 Nov. 1804, Griswold to Henry Dearborn, 26 Nov. 1804, John Langdon to James Madison, 20 Dec. 1804, Stephen R. Bradley to Madison, 25 Jan. 1805, Griswold to Madison, 4 Apr. 1805, Griswold file, Letters of Application 1801-1809, RG59-NA; Griswold to Bradley, 13, 24 Dec. 1804, Griswold Papers, BHC-DPL. On the Political Observatory’s reputation, see most issues of the Hartford American Mercury, Salem Register, and Portsmouth New Hampshire Gazette during Griswold’s tenure, especially in the last eight months of 1804.
44. Worcester National Aegis (Cotting), 16 July 1806 (and most issues from 9 July to 3 Dec. 1806); Worcester National Aegis (Trustees), 9 July; 10 Sept., 17 Dec. 1806; William Lincoln, Manuscript History of Worcester Newspapers, Lincoln Family Papers, AAS; HBAN, 418-19.
45. Stanley Griswold to Henry Dearborn, 26 Dec. 1804, Griswold file, Letters of Application 1801-1809, RG59-NA; Bentley, Diary, 3:341-42; Tapley, Salem Imprints, 138-47; Buckingham, Specimens, 2:336-40.
46. Binns, Recollections, 36-178, quotation on 160; DAB, s.v.; Higginbotham, Keystone. On the radical exiles generally, see Durey, Transatlantic Radicals.
47. Prentiss Autobiography, AAS, 36, 40, 51 (quoted); Higginbotham, Keystone, 99, 117, 235; Printers File, AAS; Field, “Press in Western Pennsylvania,” 234-35; Pittsburgh Commonwealth, 31 July, 7 Aug. 1805; Hudson, Journalism in U.S., 290.
48. Doggett, Long Island Printing, 10; Hamilton, Country Printer, 55-57, 289; HBAN, 1462, supplement^.
49. Frasca, “Franklin’s Printing Network”; Frasca, “Apprentice to Journeyman to Partner”; Pretzer, “Tramp Printers,” 3-16.
50. Rorabaugh, Craft Apprentice, 76-96; Wilentz, Chants Democratic, 129-32; Pretzer, “Tramp Printers”; Botein, “Printers and the Revolution,” 49-52.
51. John Norvell to Thomas Jefferson, 9 May 1807, Jefferson Papers, Missouri Historical Society. On Norvell himself, see Pasley, “Indiscreet Zeal of John Norvell”; BDUSC; HBAN, 1461.
52. Weed, Autobiography, 33.
53. Silver, American Printer, 58-61; Rorabaugh, Craft Apprentice, 76.
54. H. Chapin to Thurlow Weed, 13 Dec. 1816; James R. Reynolds to Weed, 15 Aug. 1817, 31 Jan., 30 July 1818; Samuel H. Moore to Weed, 16 Aug. 1817, 6,13 Oct. 1817; Graham Klinck to Weed, 30 Sept. 1817; Augustin P. Searing to Weed, n Dec. 1817; J. Howe to Weed, 5 May 1818, Weed Papers, University of Rochester.
55. Weed, Autobiography, 69—70; Stevens, New York Typographical Union No. 6, 75-81, 98-100.
56. Weed, Autobiography, 70, 76-84; Reynolds to Weed, 30 July 1818, Weed Papers, University of Rochester.
57. This general conclusion is based on the Weed Papers at the University of Rochester, where a stark shift in the pattern of correspondence, away from journeyman printers and labor troubles, occurs in early 1819. On specific points mentioned in this paragraph, see Israel W. Clark to Thurlow Weed, 17 Jan. 1819; Solomon Southwick to Weed, 30 Jan., 18 Feb., 4, n April, 18 June 1819, 8 Mar. 1822; Obadiah German to Weed, 24 April 1819; Charles G. Haines to Weed, 7 Feb. 1820; Alden Spooner to Weed, 27 Jan. 1821; Benjamin Smead to Weed, 20 Aug. 1821; Charles Galpin to Weed, 18 Sept. 1821, Weed Papers, University of Rochester; Weed, Autobiography, 76-78.
58. Van Deusen, Weed, 22-37.
59. Thomas listed 172 Republican editors, for 126 of whom some biographical information could be found in the Printers File, AAS, or in standard reference works. There were 96 printers in this group (76 percent) and 54 officeholders (43 percent). Of the 54 editor-officeholders, 44 (81 percent) had been initially trained as printers. Given the frequent sketchiness of the Printers File on matters other than an individual’s printing career and on areas other than New England and the Middle Atlantic states, the officeholding figures should be considered minimums. The detailed data on which these figures are based can be found on this book’s companion web site, <http://pasleybrothers.com/newspols>.
60. Wilentz, “On Class and Politics,” 56. For two accounts of social mobility in the partisan newspaper business that emphasize its ambiguity and impermanence, see Gary R. Kornblith, “Becoming Joseph T. Buckingham: The Struggle for Artisanal Independence in Early Nineteenth-Century Boston” and William S. Pretzer, “From Artisan to Alderman: The Career of William W. Moore, 1803-1886,” in Rock, et al., American Artisans, 123-52.
1. Washington Federalist, 30 Sept. 1800.
2. Fisher Ames, “The Dangers of American Liberty,” Ames to Jeremiah Smith, 14 Dec. 1802, Allen, Works of Ames, 1:135, 2:145°-
3. John Nicholas to Alexander Hamilton, 4 Aug. 1803, PAH, 26:139-40; Fischer, Revolution of American Conservatism, 129-34; Nevins, Evening Post, 12-13.
4. Keene New Hampshire Sentinel, 23 March, 20 April, 15 June, 25 May , 9, 16 Nov. 1799,1 March, 20 Sept., 22, 29 Nov. 1800.
5. Ibid., 23 March 1799.
6. This paragraph reflects the overall theme of Fischer, Revolution of American Conservatism; and Banner, To the Hartford Convention, 216-67. See also Adams, New England in the Republic, 230-80. It will be seen below that I do not completely accept Fischer’s argument that “young Federalists,” a category not as clear-cut as Fischer portrays it, were able to make the Federalists into a “modern,” viable party. In my view, the irreducible elitism and social organicism of Federalist ideology made this impossible.
7. Prentiss Autobiography, AAS, 53; Buckingham, Specimens, 24-112, especially 57, no—in; Fischer, Revolution of American Conservatism, 261-62.
8. For the derivation of these statistics, see appendix 1.
9. Washington Federalist, 25 Sept. 1800. A similar statement from the Portland Gazette, founded 1798, can be found in Fassett, Newspapers in the District of Maine, 61-62.
10. Printers File, AAS; Hamilton, Country Printer, 261; Munsell, Typographical Miscellany, 146-47; Richardson and Richardson, Charles Miner, 20-23, 27-28,52-58.
11. For somewhat overstated arguments about the change in the rhetoric of Federalist newspapers around this time, see Banner, To the Hartford Convention, 257-60; and Fischer, Revolution of American Conservatism, 129-49.
12. Morison, Life and Letters of Otis, 1:286-320; Fischer, Revolution of American Conservatism, 110-28,150-81,424-29.
13. Morison, Life and Letters of Otis, 1:299-300; Fischer, Revolution of American Conservatism, 140-49; Taylor, William Cooper’s Town, 353-54.
14. Benjamin Russell to Charles Prentiss, 20 Dec. 1806, Charles Prentiss Corr., AAS.
15. Ibid.
16. Nevins, Evening Post, 19-20; Fischer, Revolution of American Conservatism, 137-38; Edward D. Bangs to Nathaniel Howe, 28 Feb. 1814, Bangs Family Papers, AAS.
17. Hudson Wasp, 7 July 1802 ff.
18. Nicholas to Hamilton, 4 Aug. 1803, PAH, 26:139-40; Ames to Smith, 14 Dec. 1802, Ames to Christopher Gore, 13 Dec. 1802, Ames to Theodore Dwight, 19 Mar. 1801, Allen, Works of Fisher Ames, 2:1451, 1446, 1411; Fischer, Revolution of American Conservatism, 133-38.
19. Buckingham, Specimens, 2:156-169; HBAN, 317-18; Bernhard, Fisher Ames, 332-34; Fischer, Revolution of American Conservatism, 136.
20. Mason, “Autobiography,” 32-33; Buckingham, Specimens, 2:319; Nevins, Evening Post, 14-17; Hudson, Journalism in U.S., 217-21; Mott, American Journalism, 184-85; DAB, s.v.
21. Fischer, Revolution of American Conservatism, 140, 364-65, 138, 346, 340; John Prentiss Autobiography, AAS, 42, 61-64; Charles Prentiss Corr., AAS; Konkle, “Enos Bronson”; Scharf and Westcott, History of Philadelphia, 3:1982.
22. Schauinger, “Hanson, Federalist Partisan”; Fischer, Revolution of American Conservatism, 366-67; Renzulli, Maryland:Federalist Years, passim.
23. Baltimore Federal Republican, 14 Sept., 29 July, 26 Aug. 1808.
24. Ibid., 4 July 1811; Schauinger, “Hanson, Federalist Partisan,” 355.
25. Calderhead, “Strange Career in the Young Navy,” 380-81.
26. Fisher, “Francis James Jackson and Newspaper Propaganda,” 98-109; [Hanson], Reflections upon the Late Correspondence; Trial of Alexander Contee Hanson; Baltimore Federal Republican, 30 Nov. 1808.
27. Baltimore Federal Republican, 25 July 1808.
28. Ibid., 12,16, 26 Sept., 2 Dec. 1808.
29. Ibid., 13 July, 30 Sept. 1808.
30. Fischer, Revolution of American Conservatism, 366-67.
31. Hanson, Accurate Report of Argument against Baptis Irvine, 39-40; Baltimore Federal Republican, 13 July 1808.
32. Baltimore Federal Republican, 13 July, 26, 31 Aug., 5, 7, 9,14,16, 21,30 Sept. 1808.
33. These statements are based on my readings of Maryland newspapers for the 1808-15 period, when numerous reports of such debates appeared, and the long-forgotten work of David A. Bohmer: “Maryland Electorate and the Concept of a Party System” and “Voting Behavior during the First Party System.” On the rarity of campaign speeches and debates in the Federalist-Jeffersonian period, see Dinkin, Campaigning in America, 12-13,36.
34. In Revolution of American Conservatism, David Hackett Fischer has written eloquently of Federalist attempts to adapt their philosophy and methods to democracy, but in my view he overestimates their success.
35. Baltimore Federal Republican, 22 Aug. 1808.
36. Schauinger, “Hanson, Federalist Partisan”; Steffen, Mechanics of Baltimore, 155-66, 239-43, 279-81.
37. Baltimore Federal Republican, 20 June 1812. The article is reprinted in Scharf, History of Maryland, 3:4.
38. Steffen, Mechanics of Baltimore, 228-50; Swisher, Taney, 57-59; Renzulli, Maryland: Federalist Years, 247-321; Nerone, Violence against the Press, 67—70; Hickey, War of 1812, 56-67.
39. HBAN, 235-36; Georgetown Federal Republican, 18 Nov. 1808, 28 April 1815.
40. Georgetown Federal Republican, 10 March 1815. Hanson’s election to Congress has sometimes been misinterpreted as indicating popular approval of his views and the Federal Republican. The continuing Republican hold over Baltimore, and the safe Federalist nature of Hanson’s congressional seat, can be seen in Martis, Historical Atlas of Political Parties in Congress, 73-84; and Martis, Historical Atlas of Congressional Districts, 234.
41. Schauinger, “Hanson, Federalist Partisan,” 355-58, 361-64; Daniel Webster to Charles March, 7 June 1813, Papers of Webster, 1:147; Renzulli, Maryland: Federalist Years, 303-18.
42. Ferguson, Law and Letters in American Culture.
43. Ellis, Joseph Dennie and His Circle, 108-13; HBAN, 1402; Philadelphia Port Folio, 10 Jan. 1801 ff.
44. Goodrich, Recollections, 1:435, 2:118-22; Good, “Theodore Dwight,” 87-96; Par-rington, Connecticut Wits, xxxiii-xxxv; Fischer, Revolution of American Conservatism, 296-97.
45. “Mr. Hill’s Letter to the Typographical Festival,” 18 Nov. 1833, in [Bradley], Biography of Isaac Hill, 207; Buckingham, Specimens, 2:318; William Coleman to Charles Prentiss, 20 Jan. 1817, Charles Prentiss Corn, AAS.
46. Of 166 Federalist editors on Thomas’s 1810 list, there were 138 for whom some information could be found. At least 109 of them (79 percent) were printers by training, comparable to the proportion of printers among the Republican editors (76 percent). (It will be remembered that a sizable, but unverifiable, number of these Federalist printer-editors were like Thomas Dickman and Jesse C. Tuttle, editors in name only.) However, only thirty-six Federalist editors ever held public office (26 percent), a much lower proportion than the Republicans (43 percent). Moreover, only 66 percent of the Federalist editor-officeholders were printers, as opposed to 81 percent of the Republicans. The differences are magnified if one removes from the Federalist numbers seven printer-editors who held postmasterships under the Washington and Adams administrations, on a mostly nonpolitical basis.
47. Figures based on BDUSC See this book’s companion web site <http://pasleybrothers.com/newspols> for a complete roster of newspaper editors who served in Congress through 1860.
48. To see the much greater volume of Federalist leaders’ contributions, contrast PAH and Allen, Works of Ames, with PJM and PTJ.
49. Mason, “Autobiography,” 32-33; Nevins, Evening Post, 25-34.
50. Baltimore Federal Republican, 9,12,14 Sept. 1808.
51. There were some notable exceptions to these generalizations, especially in New England and especially among the handful of politically active Federalist printers. For the close attention to politics paid by George Goodwin of the Hartford Connecticut Courant, see Goodwin to David Daggett, 28 Oct., 20 Dec. 1802, 28 March, 1, 9 April, 22 Aug., 15 Oct. 1803,10 April 1805, 10 April, 23 Sept. 1806,10 April 1809, 9 April 1810, 12 April 1811,16 Oct. 1815, 27 Feb., 5 March, 9,10, n April 1816, 9 April 1817, 22, 24, 25, 5 Oct. 1818, Daggett Papers, Yale; Smith, One Hundred Years of Hartford’s “Courant”, 80-100.
52. Washington Federalist, Oct.-Dec. 1804; Hudson Balance, 16 Feb., 23 March, 6, 13 April, 1 June 1802.
53. Goodrich, Recollections, 2:143-160; DAB, s.v.
54. Philadelphia Port Folio, 10 Jan. 1801.
55. Ibid., 1 Jan. 1803.
56. Ibid., 4, n April, 2 May 1801, 18 Dec. 1802, 15 Jan., 23, 30 April 1803; “Equality III,” Works of Ames, 1:245.
57. Philadelphia Port Folio, prospectus, included at beginning of the microfilmed edition.
58. Kerber, Federalists in Dissent, 1-22, 173-215. For a footnoted Federalist satire, see “The Triumph of Democracy,” Washington Federalist, 8 January 1801. On the “insider” character of polite literature, see Shields, Civil Tongues and Polite Letters.
59. Fischer, Revolution of American Conservatism, 141ff., 424-29.
60. Hudson Balance, 22 June 1802; Hudson Wasp, 7 July 1802.
61. Worcester Scorpion, 26 July, 2, 9 Aug. 1809. On the Federalist self-image, see Taylor, “From Fathers to Friends of the People.”
62. Hudson Wasp, 7, 17, 31 July, 12, 23, 30 Aug., 9, 23 Sept., 14 Oct., 2, 25 Nov. 1802, 26 Jan. 1803; DAB, s.v.
63. Boston New England Palladium, 7 August 1801.
64. Fisher Ames to Christopher Gore, 24 Feb. 1803, Allen, Works of Ames, 2:1457; Bernhard, Fisher Ames, 339; Banner, To the Hartford Convention, 259.
65. Nevins, Evening Post, 52-56; Adams, New England in the Republic, 271-75; Kerber, Federalists in Dissent, 23-66.
66. Hudson Wasp, 7 July 1802.
67. Fischer, Revolution of American Conservatism, 140-49; Kerber, Federalists in Dissent, 50-51; Malone, Jefferson the President: First Term, 230-31. Quotations from Hudson Wasp, 23 Aug. 1802; Philadelphia Port Folio, 22 Jan. 1803; Worcester Scorpion, 2 Aug. 1809. For other Federalist uses of sexual innuendo to attack Republicans, see chap. 4 and Phillips, William Duane, 243.
68. Printers File, AAS; BDUSC; Hamilton, Country Printer, 54, 83, 100, 150, 242, 292, 309; Richardson and Richardson, Charles Miner; Taylor, William Cooper’s Town, 351-54,358-59, 383, 384, 424.
1. Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, 14 June 1807, WTJ, 9:73.
2. George W. Campbell, Circular to Constituents, 14 Apr. 1808, in Cunningham, Circular Letters, 2:572.
3. Durey, Transatlantic Radicals, 264-65.
4. Ames, History of Intelligencer, 1-67, quotations on 38.
5. Durey, With the Hammer, 143-71; White, Jeffersonians, 550.
6. Ambler, Thomas Ritchie, 18-20; Hudson, Journalism in U.S., 268.
7. Margaret Ritchie Stone, “Sketch of My Dear Father,” Ritchie-Harrison Papers, CWM (quoted); Ambler, Thomas Ritchie, 1-20; Malone, Jefferson the President: First Term, 225-26; Mott, Jefferson and the Press, 50-51.
8. Richmond Enquirer, 24 July 1854 (quoted), reprinted in Hudson, Journalism in the U.S., 270; Ambler, Thomas Ritchie, 294-95; Dabney, Richmond, 129-30.
9. Richmond Enquirer, 23 May 1804.
10. Cunningham, Republicans in Power, 185, 238; Ambler, Thomas Ritchie, passim.
11. Palmer, Calendar of Virginia State Papers, 9:390-91. By contrast, the other Richmond newspaper proprietors, most of them conventional printers, simply asked for the office and sometimes even cited the low prices they would charge.
12. Richmond Enquirer, 9 May 1804; Malone, Jefferson the President: First Term, 225-26.
13. Thomas Jefferson to Charles Holt, 23 Nov. 1810, Jefferson to Thomas Ritchie, 7 Dec. 1818, Jefferson Papers, LC; Jefferson to Nathaniel Macon, 12 Jan. 1819, WTJ, 10:120; Mott, Jefferson and the Press, 60-61; Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 9 July 1819, in Cappon, Adams-Jefferson Letters, 543.
14. On Grantland’s printing background, see Printers File, AAS. The statistics on editors, printers, and publishers who served in Congress are a based on a study of BDUSC, the full results and details of which are presented on the companion web site to this book, <http://pasleybrothers.com/newspols>.
15. Cook, Life and Legacy of David Williams, 49-50, 52-57, 138-56; King, Newspaper Press of Charleston, 55-67, 73—75,147-55; BDUSC.
16. For more examples of southern gentlemen as powerful editors, see Osthaus, Partisans of the Southern Press; and Dabney, Pistols and Pointed Pens. On Gales, see Ames, History of Intelligencer, 68-84; Durey, Transatlantic Radicals; Elliott, Raleigh Register.
17. See Durey, Transatlantic Radicals, 113, 187, 195-97, 285; Griffith and Talmadge, Georgia Journalism, 23-25; Bell and Crabbe, Augusta Chronicle, 20-27; Samuel Morse to Tench Coxe, 20 July 1804, Coxe Papers, HSP; and the files of the Savannah Georgia Republican, 1802-1805.
18. On the suppression of dissent in the antebellum South, see Nerone, Violence against the Press, 84-110; John, Spreading the News, 257-83; Eaton, Freedom-of-Thought Struggle in the Old South.
19. Levy, Emergence of a Free Press, 311-37.
20. Thomas Jefferson to Thomas McKean, 19 Feb. 1803, WTJ, 8:218.
21. Dickerson, Course of Tolerance, 26-27; Rowe, Thomas McKean, 337-38, 332-33; Levy, Emergence of a Free Press, 341; Thomas McKean, “Opening Address to the Assembly,” n Dec. 1802, Pennsylvania Archives, 4th ser., 4:502.
22. Dickerson, Course of Tolerance, 22-25, 29_3:; Levy, Jefferson and Civil Liberties, 58-69.
23. Hochman, “Liberty of the Press in Virginia.”
24. [James Sullivan], A Dissertation upon the Constitutional Freedom of the Press in the United States of America (Boston, 1801), quoted in Dickerson, Course of Tolerance, 14, 15.
25. Speeches in People against Croswell, 47; Hudson Wasp, 12, 23, 30 Aug. 1802.
26. Aurora, 16 Dec. 1802; Danbury Republican Farmer, 30 May 1804.
27. Aurora, 5 Jan. 1803; Durey, “With the Hammer,” 167.
28. Hudson Bee, 17, 24, 31 Aug., 7,14, 21, 28 Sept. 1802.
29. Ibid., 21 June, 19 July 1803.
30. Ibid., 2 Aug. 1802; Hamilton, Country Printer, 199, 274; Smith, Freedom’s Fetters, 403-14.
31. Hudson Bee, 2 Aug. 1803.
32. Ibid., 16 Aug. 1803.
33. Savannah Georgia Republican, 6 Sept. 1803. The Republican Litchfield Witness, 7 May 1806, expressed similar views in response to the Connecticut prosecutions of Federalists.
34. Hudson, Journalism in U.S., 289-93.
35. Wright, Anti-Shepherd-Crat, quotations on 19 and 17.
36. Rosenberg, Protecting the Best Men.
37. McKean, “Opening Address,” n Dec. 1802, Pa. Archives, 4th ser., 4:502; Rowe, Thomas McKean, 333; Speeches in People against Croswell, 64.
38. Tocqueville, Journey to America, 64-65; Cohen, “Lawyers and Political Careers”; Eulau and Sprague, Lawyers in Politics, n-12 and passim; Gawalt, Promise of Power, 4-5,38-41, 62-63, 82; Gawalt, “Sources of Anti-Lawyer Sentiment”; Bloomfield, American Lawyers, 54-55; Hall, Magic Mirror, 49-66; Martin, Men in Rebellion, 80-82; Bogue, et al., “Members of the House,” 284-85.
39. Gawalt, “Sources of Anti-Lawyer Sentiment”; Gawalt, Promise of Power, chaps. 2 and 3; EHis, Jeffersonian Crisis, 111-13.
40. Ellis, Jeffersonian Crisis, 113-16; Gawalt, Promise of Power, 60—70, 81-82; Bloomfield, American Lawyers, 43-48; Hall, Magic Mirror, 67—77.
41. This is the overall thesis of Ellis, Jeffersonian Crisis. The following paragraphs also draw heavily on this work.
42. Trenton True American, 14 July 1801; James J. Wilson to William Darlington, 9 Sept. 1802, Darlington Papers, LC; Boston Constitutional Telegraphe, 31 March 1802; Buckingham, Specimens, 2:313.
43. Easton Northampton Farmer, 17, 24 Sept. 1808; Easton Centinel, 24, 27 Sept., 4 Oct. 1822.
44. Not all editors were radical Republicans, and not all lawyers were moderates, to use Richard Ellis’s terms for similar points of view. Yet “radical” lawyers tended to be marginal practitioners like Republican activist John Beckley, while moderate editors tended to be more like the Federalist printers, political ciphers whose papers were controlled and written by gentlemen.
45. Litchfield Witness, 6, 21 Aug. 1805.
46. This has not been the view of many historians, who have followed Henry Adams (whose histories of the Jefferson and Madison administrations avenged his ancestors’ defeats) in arguing there was increasingly little difference between the values and political culture of the Republicans and Federalists after 1800. Supposedly Republicans adopted Federalist policies, while Federalists adopted Republican political methods. The most tendentious examples are Levy, Jefferson and Civil Liberties, McDonald, Presidency of Jefferson, and Fischer, Revolution of American Conservatism, but the general theme has continued through many decades of scholarship and textbook-writing on the early republic. One of the primary pieces of evidence for this view is the way the Republicans and Federalists allegedly exchanged positions on press freedom, a contention that the rest of this chapter attempts to undermine.
47. For an analysis of People v. Croswell and an overstated argument for Hamilton’s place in the history of libertarianism, see Berns, “Freedom of the Press and Alien and Sedition Laws,” 150-59.
48. Speeches in People against Croswell, 62-78, quotation at 63.
49. Ibid., 63-64.
50. Ibid., 70-71; Kyo Ho Youm, “Impact of People v. Croswell”; Rosenberg, Protecting the Best Men, 108-17, quotation on 114; Levy, Emergence of Free Press, 338-40.
51. Commonwealth v. Clap (1808), 4 Mass. 163.
52. Buckingham, Specimens, 2:310-315; Duniway, Freedom of Press in Massachusetts, 146.
53. Levi Lincoln to Jefferson, 13 Dec. 1802, Samuel Bedford file, William Carlton to Samuel H. Smith, 6 May 1803, Carlton file, Letters of Application 1801-1809, RG59-NA; Tapley, Salem Imprints, 126-31, 134-38; Bentley, Diary, 3:175, 178, 186, 4:31; Duni-way, Freedom of the Press in Massachusetts, 146.
54. Duniway, Freedom of the Press in Massachusetts, 147; Dickerson, Course of Tolerance, 31-32; Nelson, Freedom of the Press from Hamilton to Warren, 117-20.
55. Munsell, Typographical Miscellanies, 103; [Shepherd], Report on Trial of Andrew Wright; Wright, Anti-Shepherd-Crat.
56. HBAN, 380-81; Salem Essex Register, 9 Feb., 25 June 1811; Bentley, Diary, 4:6.
57. New York Evening Post, 31 May 1803, reprinted in Hudson Bee, 21 June 1803.
58. Rosenberg, Protecting the Best Men, 120-128; William Duane to Thomas Jefferson, 4 Feb. 1809, Ford, “Letters of Duane,” 317-19; Phillips, William Duane, 242; Clark, William Duane, 20; Munsell, Typographical Miscellany, 102-104,107,108,113.
59. Duane to Jefferson, 4 Feb. 1809, Ford, “Letters of Duane,” 318-19; Phillips, William Duane, 242.
60. Hudson, Journalism in the U.S., 290-91; Fassett, Newspapers in the District of Maine, 123-39.
61. Nevins, Evening Post, 51; Munsell, Typographical Miscellany, 113.
62. Hamilton, Country Printer, 289; White, History of Litchfield, 164-65; DAB, s.v.; Printers File, AAS.
63. Litchfield Witness, 21 Aug., 18 Sept. 1805.
64. Ibid., 4, 25 Sept., 9, 16, 23, 30 Oct. 1805; White, History of Litchfield, 164; Wilmington American Watchman, 27 Sept. 1817.
65. Litchfield Witness, 5,19 March, 16 April (quoted), 9 July, 30 July, 6,13 Aug. 1806, April 1806-June 1807, passim; Hartford Times, 7 Oct. 1817; Wilmington American Watchman, 27 Sept. 1817.
66. Litchfield Witness, 30 July, 6,13 (quoted) Aug. 1806; Meriwether, et al., Papers of Calhoun, 1:25, 25n, 8:277-78.
67. Litchfield Witness, 3 June 1807; HBAN, 34,1462; Hamilton, Country Printer, 289; Printers File, AAS; DAB, s.v.
68. Rosenberg, Protecting the Best Men, 114-15; Rowe, Thomas McKean, 332-89.
69. [Gerry], Message from His Excellency the Governor; Billias, Elbridge Gerry, 321-23; Duniway, Freedom of the Press in Massachusetts, 153-56.
70. Ibid.; Trial of Alexander Contee Hanson, 1-12, 47-55; Baltimore Federal Republican, 30 Nov. 1808.
71. Levy, Emergence of Free Press, 341-42.
72. Smith, War and Press Freedom, 91-93; Dickerson, Course of Tolerance, 39-46; Billias, Elbridge Gerry, 322-24.
73. Hanson, Accurate Report of Argument Against Baptis Irvine; Baltimore Federal Republican, 29 July 1808.
74. Rosenberg, Protecting the Best Men, 130-52.
1. James J. Wilson to William Darlington, 27 May 1802, Darlington Papers, LC; William Penrose to Alexander J. Dallas, (Nov. 1800), John Dawson to Dallas, 15 Jan. 1801, A. J. Dallas Papers, HSP; William Duane to John Vaughan, 29 July 1801, Vaugh-an folder, Historical Society of Delaware.
2. [Duane], Experience the Test of Government, 7-8.
3. William Duane to Tench Coxe, 13 June 1801, Coxe Papers, HSP.
4. Leven Powell to Burr Powell, 26 March 1800, Leven Powell Papers, CWM.
5. Phillips, William Duane, 119-24.
6. Ibid., 124-30, quotations on 129-30.
7. William Duane to William P. Gardner, n June 1801, Gardner file, Letters of Application 1801-1809, RG59-NA.
8. Phillips, “Duane, Philadelphia’s Republicans, and Origins of Modern Politics”; Phillips, William Duane, chap. 4.
9. William Duane to Thomas Jefferson, 10 June 1801, Ford, “Letters of William Duane,” 267.
10. The following two paragraphs rely heavily on the brilliant analysis of Pennsyl vania political history between 1776 and 1800 in Phillips, William Duane, 101-13.
11. n. Walters, Alexander Dallas, 88-89.
12. Phillips, William Duane, 103-104.
13. Aurora, 6, 9 March 1801.
14. Ibid., 6 March 1801.
15. Ibid., 9 March 1801.
16. Ibid., 6 March 1801.
17. Ibid., 9 March 1801.
18. Phillips, William Duane, 139.
19. Quotation from “Theory of Federalism,” Aurora, 18 April 1801.
20. William Duane to Albert Gallatin, [1801], Gallatin Papers, N-YHS; Phillips, William Duane, 141-42.
21. Duane to Gardner, 11 June 1801 (copy), Gardner file, Letters of Application 1801-1809, RG59-NA; Aurora, 18 Apr. 1801; Duane to Jefferson, 10 June 1801, Duane, “Letters of William Duane,” 265-67.
22. Alexander J. Dallas to Albert Gallatin, 14 June 1801, Gallatin Papers, N-YHS.
23. Though he was not an active radical on the issues of equality for women and racial minorities, Duane was considerably more sympathetic to the rights of those groups than most politicians of his era. For instance, his solution to the government’s Indian troubles, earnestly proposed to Jefferson in 1802, was to give them representation in Congress. See Duane to Jefferson, 7 Jan. 1802, Duane, “Letters of William Duane,” 273.
24. Dallas to Gallatin, 14 June 1801, Gallatin Papers, N-YHS.
25. Ibid., William Duane to James Madison, 10 May 1801, Brugger et al., PJM: Sec. State Series, 1:152; Duane to Jefferson, 10 June 1801, Duane, “Letters of William Duane,” 265, 267; Duane to Coxe, 13 June 1801, Coxe Papers, HSP.
26. Alexander J. Dallas to Albert Gallatin, 16 Dec. 1801, Gallatin Papers, N-YHS; Higginbotham, Keystone, 41; Dallas to George Latimer, 1 July 1802, A. J. Dallas Papers, G. M. Dallas Coll., HSP.
27. Walters, Dallas, 114,123,133; Thomas Leiper to Thomas Jefferson, 26 Aug. 1802, Jefferson Papers, LC; Alexander J. Dallas to Jonathan Dayton, 22 Feb. 1802, Gratz Collection, Seventh Administration, HSP. Moreover, he seems to have had personal business dealings with some of the Federalists whose interests he defended to the administration , including George Latimer. See Dallas to Latimer, 5 May 1807, A.J. Dallas Papers, G. M. Dallas Coll., HSP.
28. Walters, Dallas, 25-31,100-110,122-23.
29. Alexander J. Dallas to Albert Gallatin, 30 Sept., 15 March 1801, Gallatin Papers, N-YHS; Thomas Cooper to Dallas, 13 Oct. 1814, Rosenbach Museum and Library; Edward Fox to Jonathan Roberts, 4 Jan. 1813, Roberts Papers, HSP.
30. Albert Gallatin to Thomas Jefferson, n Aug. 1803, Writings of Gallatin, 1:134.
31. Aronson, Status and Kinship in Higher Civil Service, 7-14, 207-210; White, Jeffer-sonians, 345-68; Cunningham, Process of Government under Jefferson, 3-26, 165-87; Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 10 March 1808, Bergh, Writings of Jefferson, 12:5.
32. Stanley Griswold to Thomas Jefferson, 12 Nov. 1804 (quoted), Griswold to James Madison, 4 April 1805, Griswold file, Letters of Application 1801-1809, RG59-NA. Similar tactics won Griswold raises and promotions throughout his western career. See Griswold to Jefferson, 3 Dec. 1805, 5 May 1808, Jefferson Papers, LC; Griswold to Stephen R. Bradley, 10 Dec. 1805, Griswold to Elijah Boardman, 10 Oct. 1806, Griswold Papers, BHC-DPL; Griswold to Abraham Baldwin, 15 Dec. 1806, draft, Griswold Papers, Baker Library, Harvard Business School; Griswold to Jefferson, 14 Nov. 1808, Griswold file, Letters of Application 1801-1809, RG59-NA; Griswold to Samuel Huntington, 2 April 1810, Rice Collection, Ohio Historical Society; and Gris-wold’s entire file in Letters of Application 1809-17, RG59-NA.
33. William Carlton to Samuel H. Smith, 6 May 1803, Carlton file, Levi Lincoln to Jefferson, 13 Dec. 1802, Samuel Bedford file, Letters of Application 1801-1809, RG59-NA; Newmyer, Justice Joseph Story, 49.
34. For the quotation from Granger and the statistics on Federalist postmasters, see Prince, “Federalist Party and Creation of Court Press,” 238-40.
35. See chart in Smith, Press, Politics and Patronage, 46-47.
36. Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, 5:112.
37. Phillips, William Duane, 131; Cunningham, Republicans in Power, 258-67.
38. Duane to Gallatin, 13 Dec. 1801, Gallatin Papers, N-YHS.
39. Smith, Press, Politics and Patronage, 43-44; Phillips, William Duane, yiff; Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, 5:112; Duane to Jefferson, 16 Oct. 1807,4 Feb. 1809, Duane to R. C. Weightman, 20 Dec. 1808, Duane, “Letters of William Duane,” 302,318,312.
40. Albert Gallatin to William Duane, 5 July 1801, Gallatin Papers, N-YHS; Phillips, William Duane, 156-65; Duane to Daniel Parker, 22 Dec. 1814, Parker Papers, HSP.
41. William Duane to Thomas Jefferson, (received 5 Dec. 1807), Duane to James Madison, 8 Feb. 1808, Duane to Weightman, 20 Dec. 1808, Duane to Henry Dearborn, 21 Jan. 1810, Duane to Madison, 16 April 1810, Duane to Jefferson, 17 July 1812, Duane to Jefferson, 8 Nov. 1824, Duane, “Letters of Duane,” 304-305, 308-309, 312, 332-33, 349-51, 383-84; Phillips, William Duane, 345-47.
42. Duane to Madison, 8 Feb. 1808, Duane, “Letters of Duane,” 309.
43. Edward Fox to Jonathan Roberts, 2 June 1812 (first letter), Roberts Papers, HSP; Phillips, William Duane, 346,348.
44. Duane to Jefferson, 8 Nov. 1824, 17 July 1812, 5 Dec. 1807, Duane, “Letters of Duane,” 384, 350-51, 305; Duane, American Military Library; Crackel, Mr. Jefferson’s Army, 82-85.
45. William Duane to [William Daggett], 12 Sept. 1811, Boston Public Library; Duane to Jefferson, 17 July 1812, Duane, “Letters of Duane,” 350-51; Duane to Parker, 22 Dec. 1814, Parker Papers, HSP; Phillips, William Duane, 378—79.
46. Duane to Parker, 22 Dec. 1814, Parker Papers, HSP; Duane to Jefferson, 8 Nov. 1824, Duane, “Letters of Duane,” 384; Phillips, William Duane, 404-406.
47. William Duane to Abraham Bishop, 28 Aug. 1802, Duane, “Letters of Duane,” 276.
48. ElYis, Jeffersonian Crisis, 15-16,36-52.
49. Higginbotham, Keystone, 42-43; Phillips, William Duane, 145-148; Aurora, 6 Feb. 1802.
50. Aurora, 9,10 Feb. 1802.
51. Ibid., 12 Feb. 1802.
52. Ibid.
53. Ellis, Jeffersonian Crisis, 160-63; Higginbotham, Keystone, 51-53; Henderson, “Attack on the Judiciary,” 115-16,120-22.
54. Pa. Archives, 4th ser., 4:520.
55. Higginbotham, Keystone, 56-58; Ellis, Jeffersonian Crisis, 165-167; Henderson, “Attack on Judiciary,” 119-120.
56. Aurora, 31 March 1803; Higginbotham, Keystone, 57; Ellis, Jeffersonian Crisis, 166-67.
57. Tolles, Logan of Philadelphia, 233-34; Higginbotham, Keystone, 43-45; Phillips, William Duane, i^ff.
58. Aurora, 17, 22, 23, 24 Sept. 1802; Cooke, Tench Coxe, 436-37; Michael Leib to Mathew Carey, 12 Dec. 1802, Lea and Febiger Papers, HSP; Phillips, William Duane, 153.
59. Andrew Gregg, Robert Brown, John A. Hanna, John Smilie, and William Jones to Thomas Jefferson, 12 Feb. 1803, draft, Jones Papers, Smith Collection, HSP; Phillips, William Duane, 153-54; Duane to Tench Coxe, 14 Feb. 1803, Coxe Papers, HSP.
60. Andrew Gregg to William Jones, 1 March 1803, Jones Papers, Smith Coll., HSP; Alexander J. Dallas to Albert Gallatin, 30 March 1803, Gallatin Papers, N-YHS; Phillips, William Duane, 154-58; Gallatin to Thomas Jefferson, 21 March 1803, Jefferson to Gallatin, 25 July 1803, Jefferson to William Duane, 24 July 1803, draft, Gallatin to Jefferson, n Aug. 1803, Writings of Gallatin, 1:118,154,129-36.
61. Philadelphia Aurora, 22 June 1803; Higginbotham, Keystone, 63; Cooke, Tench Coxe, 438.
62. Cunningham, Republicans in Power, 218.
63. Philadelphia Evening Post, 26 May 1804; [A. J. Dallas], “Address to the Republicans of Pennsylvania,” 10 June 1805, Dallas, Life and Writings of Alexander Dallas, 216.
64. Ellis, Jeffersonian Crisis, 167-169; Higginbotham, Keystone, 64-67; Walters, Dallas, 129.
65. William Duane to Henry Dearborn, 8 July 1810, Duane, “Letters of Duane,” 335 (“overture”); Philadelphia Freeman’s Journal, n Sept. 1804 (“threatened”); Phillips, William Duane, 158-59.
66. “Quiddism, alias Moderation,” Aurora, 5 Aug. 1805.
67. William Duane to Henry Dearborn, 3 July 1810, Duane, “Letters of Duane,” 335.
68. Philadelphia Evening Post, 20 Feb. 1804; HBAN, 2:904; Higginbotham, Keystone, 68; Printers File, AAS.
69. Cooke, Tench Coxe, 439.
70. William Duane to Tench Coxe, 6 May 1802, 22 April 1803, 26 Dec. 1802, Coxe Papers, HSP.
71. Philadelphia Evening Post, 20 Feb. 1804 ff.
72. Ibid., March (passim), 5, 6,14,18 (quoted) April 1804.
73. Ibid., 20 Feb. 1804.
74. Ibid., 26 May 1804.
75. Ibid., 19, 26 May, 1804.
76. Ibid., 22 May 1804.
77. Aurora, 12, 13 (“pitied”), 19, 20 June, 17, 18 (“espoused”), 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31 Aug., 1, 3, 4 Sept. 1804; Cooke, Tench Coxe, 438-46; Higginbotham, Keystone, 68-74.
78. Walters, Dallas, 134.
79. [A. J.] Dallas to [William] Duane, draft or copy, 20 Aug. 1804, A.J. Dallas Papers, G. M. Dallas Coll., HSP; Aurora, 18 Aug. 1804; A.J. Dallas to Albert Gallatin, 16 Oct. 1804, Gallatin Papers, HSP; Phillips, William Duane, 169-70.
80. Andrew Ellicott to Tench Coxe, 16 June 1804, Coxe Papers, HSP.
81. Higginbotham, Keystone, 77-80; Ellis, Jeffersonian Crisis, 169—70.
82. William Barton to [Charles Jared?] Ingersoll, 28 Jan. 1805, A. J. Dallas Papers, G. M. Dallas Coll., HSP.
83. A. J. Dallas to Albert Gallatin, 26 Jan. 1805, Gallatin Papers, N-YHS.
84. Ellis, Jeffersonian Crisis, 171-178; Phillips, William Duane, 178-79; Higginbotham, Keystone, 80-81; Walters, Dallas, 136 (quoted).
85. Higginbotham, Keystone, 87; Higginbotham, Keystone, 85, 50-51, 92-94, 87; Ellis, Jeffersonian Crisis, 161-62, 166, 168, 172, 174; John Kean to A.J. Dallas, 20 March 1805, A.J. Dallas Papers, G. M. Dallas Coll., HSP; Phillips, William Duane, 182.
86. Kean to Dallas, 20 March 1805, A.J. Dallas Papers, G. M. Dallas Coll., HSP.
87. Representative samples of the attacks can be found in Aurora, 3 (“John Doe”), 5 (“company” and “learned”), 6, 7, 8 Aug. 1805. See also, Higginbotham, Keystone, 91-92.
88. [A. J. Dallas], “Address to Republicans,” in Dallas, Life and Writings of Alexander Dallas, 215.
89. Ibid., 214, 216.
90. Ibid., 214, 219, 217, 233.
91. Albert Gallatin to John Badollet, 25 Oct. 1805, Gallatin Papers, N-YHS; Phillips, William Duane, 189; Ellis, Jeffersonian Crisis, 180-181ff; Higginbotham, Keystone, 99-101; Walters, Dallas, 142.
92. Phillips, William Duane, 245-50, 229-33, 243.
93. Ibid., 222-27.
94. Ibid., 228-29; Binns, Recollections, 196-97; Higginbotham, Keystone, 137-38; Philadelphia Democratic Press, 15 May 1807.
95. Ibid.,6, 8 April, 1, n May 1807 ff.; Binns, Recollections, 197.
96. Binns, Recollections, 191-92, 202-n; Phillips, William Duane, 216-22, 229-30, 264-66 ff.; Higginbotham, Keystone, 130,133,136,137-43,147-66.
97. Phillips, “Democrats of the Old School.”
98. Phillips, William Duane, 288-314, 347-51; Richard Rush to John Binns, 4 Feb., 9 July, 10 Sept., 4 Oct., 1,17 Nov. 1812, 27 Jan., 3 Feb., 19, 22 March, 16 April, 30 July, 1813, 4 Aug. 1814, Gratz Collection, HSP. See also, generally, Richard Rush Letters, C.J. Ingersoll Coll., HSP.
99. Phillips, William Duane, 315-44.
100. Ibid., 267-68; William Duane to Caesar A. Rodney, 1 July 1808, Rodney Coll., Box 1, Folder 6, Historical Society of Delaware.
101. Phillips, William Duane, 373 ff.
102. Adams, Life of Gallatin, 442; Richard Rush to Julia Stockton Rush, 13 March 1813, Rush Papers, Library Company of Philadelphia; Binns. Recollections, 211-21, 230-32.
103. Binns. Recollections, 202-11, 232-34; Higginbotham, Keystone, 136-37, 273; Phillips, William Duane, 300, 347-48, 447; Fox to Roberts, 2 June 1812 (first letter), Roberts Papers, HSR
104. Binns, Recollections, 297-301; Phillips, William Duane, 528-32,598-99.
105. [Duane], Biographical Memoir, quotation on 13. The younger Duane also lost his cabinet post by sticking to his father’s principles, refusing Jackson’s order to remove the federal deposits from the Bank of the United States because there was as yet no suitable publicly controlled institution to which they could be transferred. A believer in totally divorcing the government from banking, Duane argued (correctly) that shifting federal money into state banks would only exacerbate the problems that Jack-sonian critics had blamed on the national bank. See Phillips, William Duane, 619-37.
1. Based on a study of BDUSC. See this book’s companion web site <http://pasleybrothers.com/newspols> for a complete list of printers, editors, and publishers who served in Congress up to 1860.
2. Prince, “James J. Wilson”; Prince, N. J. s Jeffersonian Republicans, 89-90; Printers File, AAS.
3. Wilmington Mirror of the Times, 8 Nov. 1800.
4. See Wilson’s early letters to Darlington, in Darlington Papers, LC, a collection almost entirely made up of correspondence from Wilson.
5. Trenton True American, 14 July, 29 Sept., 13 Oct. 1801, 23 Feb., 20 Sept. (“Political Definitions”) 1802, 28 Feb. 1803. Criticism of dueling can be found in ibid., 30 June 1801, 9 Jan., 16, 23 July, 6 Aug., 10 Sept. 1804. Norristown Register, 15 Nov. 1803; Wald- streicher, Perpetual Fetes, 229.
6. Trenton True American, 10 March (quoted) to 23 June 1801; “REPUBLICAN NEWS-PAPERS,” ibid., 21 July 1801.
7. Prince, “James J. Wilson,” 25-26; Prince, N. J. s Jeffersonian Republicans, 88-90; Wilson to Darlington, 22 July, 20 Aug., 26 Nov. 1801, 23 Nov. 1802, Darlington Papers, LC.
8. Trenton True American, 13 Oct. 1801; Wilson to Darlington, 26 Nov., 22 July 1801, Darlington Papers, LC.
9. Wilson to Darlington, 20 Aug. 1802, Darlington Papers, LC; Prince, “James J. Wilson,” 27. For Wilson and the True American’s efforts to abolish slavery in New Jersey (partly an effort to prevent the Federalists from painting the Republicans as a southern-dominated, proslavery party), see the issues of 15, 22, 29 Dec. 1801, 2 March, 1 Nov. 1802, 23 Jan., 13 Feb., 9 April, 9 July 1804.
10. James J. Wilson to Gen. Peter Hunt, 22 Dec. 1806, Coxe Papers, HSP; James J. Wilson to William Darlington, 10 Jan. 1803, Darlington Papers, LC.
11. Wilson to Darlington, 20 Aug. 1802 (quoted), 17 Aug. 1805, Darlington Papers, LC.
12. Trenton True American, 3, 17 Jan. 1803; Prince, N. J.’s Jeffersonian Republicans, 83-88.
13. Ibid.
14. James J. Wilson to William Darlington, 26 June 1810, Darlington Papers, LC.
15. Wilson to Darlington, 21 May, 21 Sept. 1803, Darlington Papers, LC.
16. Prince, “James J. Wilson,” 32; To the Republicans of Hunterdon, 10, 7.
17. Wilson to Darlington, 27 Feb. 1808, 6 Nov. 1804, Darlington Papers, LC; Prince, “James J. Wilson,” 29-32.
18. To the Republicans of Hunterdon, quotations on 7,15.
19. Prince, “James J. Wilson,” 32-35.
20. Wilson to Darlington, 4 March 1815, Darlington Papers, LC.
21. Wilson to Darlington, 4 March 1815, 23 Nov., 22 Dec. 1816, 22 Nov. 1819, Darlington Papers, LC. The conclusion as to Wilson’s low profile in Congress is based on a study of the Annals of Congress as well as the published papers of prominent congressional Republicans, such as Meriwether, Papers of Calhoun; and Hopkins, Papers of Clay.
22. Prince, “James J. Wilson,” 35-37; Elmer, Constitution and Government of N.J., 211-12.
23. On Roberts, see BDUSC, 1725; Klein, “Memoirs of a Senator.”
24. On political professionals as “mediators,” see Waldstreicher and Grossbart, “Abraham Bishop’s Vocation.”
25. Auge, Lives of the Eminent Dead, 412-13; Printers File, AAS.
26. Norristown Register, 8 Dec, 20 Oct. 1803, 7 Oct. 1807; Knox, The Spirit of Despotism.
27. Norristown Register, 14 Feb. 1804.
28. Ibid., 24, 31 Oct. 1805, 30 Sept. 1807ff., 15 Oct., 9, 23, 30 Dec. 1807, 6, 27 Jan., 3 Feb., 9, 16 March 1808, 24, 31 Jan., 14, 21, 28 Feb., 14, 21 March, 26 Sept., 19, 26 Dec. 1810, 24 Dec. 1811, 8, 29 Jan., 12 Feb., 18 April, 17 June, 8 July 1812; James Winnard to Jonathan Roberts, 14 March 1808, 3 March 1810, 29 Dec. 1811, Roberts Papers, HSR
29. Auge, Lives of the Eminent Dead, 412-13; Norristown Register, 6 May 1812; Winnard to Roberts, 3 March 1810, Roberts Papers, HSR
30. Samuel Maffett to Jonathan Roberts, 28 March 1812, Roberts Papers, HSP; Printers File, AAS.
31. Heller, History of Northampton County, 1:290-291; Easton Northampton Farmer, 3 Sept. 1808; Thomas J. Rogers to Jonathan Roberts, 1 June 1812, Roberts Papers, HSP; Printers File, AAS; Thomas J. Rogers having purchased the English Printing Office, Broadside, LCR
32. Ibid.; HBAN, 2:845; Easton Northampton Farmer, 21 Dec. 1805.
33. Ibid., 11 Oct. 1806, 3 Jan. 1807.
34. Ibid., 12 April, 3 May, 20, 27 Sept. 1806.
35. Ibid., 4,11 Oct. 1806.
36. Ibid., 18, 25 Oct., 22 Nov. 1806,1, 8 Aug. 1807.
37. Pa. Archives, 9th ser., 4:2594, 3115; Rogers to Roberts, 26 Jan. 1812, Roberts Papers, HSP.
38. Easton Northampton Farmer, 16 May , 19, 26 Sept., 10 Oct. 1807, 4 June, 14 Aug. 1808; Rogers to Roberts, 3 Jan. 1808, Roberts Papers, HSP; HBAN, 845-46,1436; Reed-er, Family of Christian Jacob Hütter, 3-5.
39. Easton Northampton Farmer, 2, 23 July, 14, 20, 27 Aug., 3,17, 24 Sept., 1, 8,15 Oct. 1808; Easton Pa. Herald, 10 Aug. 1808 ff., 4,18 Jan. 1809.
40. Rogers to Roberts, 6 Dec. 1807, 3 Jan. 1808 (quoted), Roberts Papers, HSP; Easton Northampton Farmer, 22 Nov. 1806.
41. Rogers to Roberts, 26 Jan. (quoted), 20 (quoted), 26 April, 10, 16 May, 7, 14, 21 June 1812, Roberts Papers, HSP. Unfortunately, very few issues of the Northampton Farmer are extant after 1810, so the details of Rogers’s efforts against the millers are unavailable.
42. Rogers to Roberts, 17 Nov. 1811, Roberts Papers, HSP. For examples of Roberts’s reports back to Rogers, see Roberts to Rogers, 30 March 1811, 16 Nov., 17 Dec. 1812, Roberts file, Dreer Collection, HSP.
43. For examples, see Rogers to Roberts, 8, 22 March, 5 April 1812, Roberts Papers, HSP.
44. Rogers to Roberts, 26 Jan. 1812, Roberts Papers, HSP.
45. Rogers to Roberts, 22 March, 5 April, 16 May 1812, Roberts Papers, HSP; Rogers, Biographical Dictionary.
46. Rogers to Simon Bolivar, “Liberator of Columbia Peru &c. £.,” 6 Apr. 1826, draft [?], Rogers file, Dreer Collection, HSP; Rogers, Biographical Dictionary, 3d ed., v-vi.
47. Rogers to Mathew Carey, 4 Jan. 1819, E. C. Gardiner Papers, Mathew Carey section, HSP; Rogers to Carey, 6, 28 (quoted) Jan. 1819, Lea and Febiger Collection, HSP; Rogers to Lewis Coryell, 31 Jan. 1823, Coryell Papers, HSP; Rogers to Condy Raguet, 23 April 1826, Rogers to Bolívar, 6 April 1826, and “Resolution recommending to county commissioners to furnish children educated at the public expense with Rogers’s Biographical Dictionary,” copy, 13 April 1827, all in Rogers file, Dreer Collection, HSP.
48. Rogers to Roberts, 4 Nov. 1811, Roberts Papers, HSP.
49. Rogers to Roberts, 1 Dec. 1811, 22 March, 7 June 1812, Roberts Papers, HSP; Easton Northampton Farmer, 10 Oct. 1807, 2, 23 Jan. 1808.
50. Rogers to Roberts, 10 May , 1 June, 16 Aug. 1812, Roberts Papers, HSP.
51. Rogers to Roberts, 1 Nov. 1812, Roberts Papers, HSP.
52. Samuel D. Ingham to Rogers, 27 Dec. 1816, 17 Jan., 21 Dec. 1817, Rogers file, Dreer Collection, HSP. For political background see, Higginbotham, Keystone; Klein, Game without Rules.
53. Easton Spirit of Pennsylvania, 16 June, 29 Sept., 6,13 Oct. 1815.
54. Easton Centinel, n, 18, 25 July, 1,15, 22 Aug. ff., 17 Oct. 1817,19 Sept. 1818 ff; John Binns to Rogers, 5 Feb., 7, 23 Dec. 1816, Binns file, Dreer Collection, HSP; Rogers to D. D. Wagener, 19 Jan., 5 March 1818, Nathaniel Michler to Rogers, Easton, 18 Jan. 1818, Rogers file, Dreer Collection, HSP.
55. Christian J. Hütter to Rogers, 16 Feb. 1817, 25 Jan. 1818, 13 Feb. 1819 (quoted), Hütter file, Dreer Collection, HSP. Internal evidence makes it clear that many more letters between the two are missing from the file.
56. Meriwether, Papers of Calhoun, 5:672—73, 7:155, 516, 8:xliv-xlvi, 271; Carlisle Herald, reprinted in Easton Expositor, 19 Aug. 1822; Rogers to Mathew Carey, 20 Jan., 27 Feb. 1819,10,14 April 1820, Lea and Febiger Papers, HSP; Rogers to Carey, 4 Jan. 1819, 21 April 1820, Edward Carey Gardiner Collection, HSP; James J. Wilson to William Darlington, 22 Nov. 1819, Darlington Papers, LC.
57. Easton Mountaineer, 7 Jan. 1820-22 June 1821.
58. Easton Expositor, 19 Aug-2 Nov. 1822.
59. Easton Mountaineer, 16 June, 7, 22 July, 18 (“trumpeter”) Aug., 22 Sept. 1820, 22 June 1821; Easton Expositor, 19, 27 Aug., 4 Oct. (“begging for votes”) 1822.
60. Ibid., 27 Aug., 3 Sept., 1, 4 Oct. 1822
61. Easton Mountaineer, 16 June, 5 Oct. 1820, 22 June (“party spirit”) 1821; Easton Expositor, 27 Aug. (“chimney sweep”) 3,10 Sept. (“lowest class”) 1822.
62. “A Free Elector,” ibid., 1 Oct. 1822.
63. Ibid., 10, 24 Sept., 1, 4, 7, 22 Oct. 1822.
64. Ibid., 3,10,17 Sept. 1822.
65. Easton Centinel, 24 Sept., 22 Oct., 5 Nov. 1824; Rogers to Coryell, 31 Jan. 1823, Coryell Papers, HSP; Rogers to Condy Raguet, 23 April 1826, Rogers file, Dreer Collection, HSP; BDUSC.
1. Robinson, Jeffersonian Democracy in New England, 69, 76-94; Adams, New England in the Republic, 239-80; Fischer, Revolution of American Conservatism; Smelser, Democratic Republic, 174-89.
2. Baltimore Federal Republican, 25,13, 27 July, 3 Aug. 1808. On Duane, see Phillips, William Duane, 375—77. On Fitz Randolph, see Prince, N. J. s Jeffersonian Republicans, 244; BDUSC.
3. For an interesting account of how partisan newspapers democratized political rhetoric in this period, including an example or two from Isaac Hill’s newspaper, see Robertson, Language of Democracy, 36-67.
4. [Bradley], Biography of Isaac Hill, 13-19. This is a campaign biography issued with Hill’s own cooperation. A substantial appendix reprints much original source ma terial in full. The best modern secondary source on Hill is Cole, Jacksonian Democracy in N.H.
5. “Mr. Hill’s Letter to the Typographical Festival,” 18 Nov. 1833, in [Bradley], Biography of Isaac Hill, 206-207; Concord N.H. Patriot, 18 April 1809-10 April 1810.
6. Concord N.H. Patriot, 18 April 1809. The colonial beginnings of New England’s popular religious culture are described in Hall, Worlds of Wonder, and its nineteenth-century resurgence and politicization in Hatch, Democratization of American Christianity.
7. Concord N.H. Patriot, 18 April, 9 May 1809, 27 Feb. 1810,12 May 1812, 9 Jan. 1810; [Bradley], Biography of Isaac Hill, 174.
8. [Bradley], Biography of Isaac Hill, 27; Aurora, 22 June 1803; Concord N.H. Patriot, 10 April 1810.
9. Concord N.H. Patriot, 13 June 1809, 27 Feb., 6,13, 20 March 1810.
10. Ibid., 18 April 1809 ff., 27 Feb. 1810; Isaac Hill to R. Bartlett, 25 Sept. 1816, Misc. Papers, NYPL.
11. Bradley], Biography of Isaac Hill, 25-26, 28-29; Cole, Jacksonian Democracy in N.H, 4-5, 22-23; HiU Wise Sayings of Isaac Hill, 1-2, 5-6; [Hill], Sketch of Andrew Jackson, 49-50.
12. John Norvell to T. J. Rogers, 29 Jan. 1822, Dreer Collection, HSP; Pasley, “Indiscreet Zeal of John Norvell.”
13. Dangerfield, Awakening of American Nationalism, 1-16; Sellers, Market Revolution, 59-79.
14. Carter, “Mathew Carey and the Olive Branch”; Carter, “Political Activities of Mathew Carey; Green, Mathew Carey.
15. Carey, Olive Branch, 10th ed., 43 (quoted), 12. On substantive issues, Carey’s nonpartisanship was more rhetorical than real. Most of his examples and vitriol were aimed at the Federalist opponents of the war, and the book became a powerful weapon in the hands of Republican partisans eager to obliterate the Federalists with charges of disloyalty.
16. Ibid., 12,13, 45,15.
17. Ibid., 45, 50-51.
18. Ibid., 12, 43, 430-32, 45.
19. Ostrogorski, Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties, 2:44; Fischer, Revolution of American Conservatism, 30-32; Niles’ Register 23 (15 Feb. 1823): 370—71; Wallace, “Ideologies of Party.”
20. Dangerfield, Awakening of American Nationalism, 8-16; Skeen, “Compensation Act”; Sellers, Market Revolution, 104-107; Heale, Making of American Politics, 123.
21. Annals of Congress, 14th Cong., 1st sess., House, 1182,1185, Senate, 201.
22. Wallace, “Ideologies of Party,” 108.
23. Annals of Congress, 14th Cong., 2d sess., House, 579-81.
24. Ibid., 14th Cong., 1st sess., Senate, 191-192, 2d sess., House, 507-508. For the accuracy of Hendricks’s depiction of prairie settler life in this period, see Faragher, Sugar Creek. For an argument that this largely cashless, relatively nonmarket-oriented lifestyle was widespread among common American families, and a discussion of the Compensation Act controversy in this context, see Sellers, Market Revolution, 3-33, 106-107.
25. Skeen, “Compensation Act”; James J. Wilson to William Darlington, 15 Sept. 1816, Darlington Papers, LC; Annals of Congress, 14th Cong., 2d sess., House, 507-508; Kendall, Autobiography, 178.
26. Annals of Congress, 14th Cong., 2d sess., House, 586, 524, 536, 553.
27. Annals of Congress, 14th Cong., 1st sess., House, 1183; 2d sess., House, 548-554, 574-584, 616-637, Calhoun quotation on 576.
28. Chase, Emergence of Presidential Nominating Convention, 18-28; Ammon, James Monroe, 352-57.
29. Ammon, James Monroe, 366-79; Dangerfield, Era of Good Feelings, 95-104; Wallace, “Ideologies of Party,” 106-109.
30. Sellers, Market Revolution, 103—71; Ammon, James Monroe, 380-395; Danger- field, Awakening of American Nationalism, 72-140.
31. For a similar point, see Thornton, Politics and Power, 129.
32. Richmond Enquirer, 5, 12 (“Franklin,”) Aug. 1817; Wilmington American Watchman, 26 July 1817; Providence Columbian Phenix, quoted in Wilmington American Watchman, 13 Aug. 1817; Hartford Times, 16 Dec. 1817.
33. Richmond Enquirer, 5 Aug. 1817; Wilmington American Watchman, 26 July 1817; Hartford Times, 9 Sept. 1817.
34. Boston Independent Chronicle & Patriot, 8, n July 1817.
35. Wilmington American Watchman, 19 July, 9,13, 20 Aug., 13, 27,30 Sept. 1817.
36. Here I refer to several influential works on the origins of party politics: the frequently cited article by Michael Wallace, “Changing Concepts of Party”; his mentor Richard Hofstadter’s book, The Idea of a Party System, which derives heavily from Wallace’s research; and Wallace’s later dissertation, “Ideologies of Party.” For decades accepted as the definitive statements on this subject, these works give almost entire credit for the new, positive vision of permanently competing parties to Martin Van Buren and his Bucktail faction in New York, dubbed by their enemies the “Albany Regency.” While the New York Van Burenites did indeed produce an elaborate defense of party during the early 1820s, their arguments were predated by those of the editors in this chapter by several years. There is little indication that Osborn and the rest were inspired by the Bucktails, and given the timing, the influence might well have flowed in the other direction.
Wallace and Hofstadter did not perceive the unique role of editors in the defense and reconstruction of party competition, and they come dangerously close to depicting the new party system as the personal creation of Martin Van Buren. In fact, it was produced by the activities of a broad spectrum of Republican activists all over the country. Wallace and Hofstadter also forced the pro-party argument into a consensus history framework that does not entirely fit. For instance, they contrasted the new party politicians with ideologues, even though many of the arguments for maintaining party politics hinged on the necessity to maintain ideological purity and to avoid betraying older ideals. In my view, Republican editors expressed not so much a new concept of party as the accepted political values of their particular quadrant of the political system. As ground-level political campaigners by trade, they saw the party system as long established and reasonably well functioning, though in need of some improvements. Editors felt that parties could be more efficiently organized and stable, with plenty of rewards available for campaigners, but they showed little interest in the valueless, mechanical, “modern” party bureaucracy painted by Wallace and Hofstadter. For a strong case against the modernity of the Jacksonian era justification for parties, see Wilson, “Republicanism and the Idea of Party in the Jacksonian Period.” John Ashworth, in Agrarians and Aristocrats, 205-18, shows that the defense of parties was a key component of radical Democratic thought in the late 1830s and early 1840s. An evocative portrait of the deep values transmitted by parties can be found in Baker, Affairs of Party.
37. Wilmington American Watchman, 26 July, 20 Aug., 13 Sept. 1817.
38. Ibid., 9, 20 Aug., 26 July 1817.
39. Marshall, “Early Career of Kendall,” 1-47, 65-99; Kendall, Autobiography, chapters 1-5.
40. Marshall, “Early Career of Kendall,” 100-160; HBAN, 151,156-57.
41. Kendall, Autobiography, 182-83.
42. Lexington Kentucky Gazette, 2, 16 June 1817; Marshall, “Early Career of Kendall,” 161-87; Kendall, Autobiography, 182-98.
43. Lexington Kentucky Gazette, 16 Oct. 1817,16 Oct. 1818.
44. Ibid., 2,16, 21, 28 June, 3 July, 2, 9,16, 30 Aug., 13 Sept. 1817.
45. Kendall, Autobiography, 182-90; Frankfort Argus of Western America, 30 April, 22 Jan., 29 Oct. 1819.
46. Ibid., 1 Jan. 1819.
47. Marshall, “Early Career of Kendall,” 188-399; Smith, Francis Preston Blair, 4-25; McCormick, Second Party System, 212-16; Sellers, Market Revolution, 169—70.
48. Phillips, “Democrats of the Old School”; Phillips, “Pennsylvania Origins of Jackson Movement”; Kehl, Ill Feeling in Era of Good Feeling, 119-39, 193-204; Klein, Game without Rules, 79-83.
49. Stevens, Early Jackson Party in Ohio, 3-5, 7,15-16,19-20, 28, 33-34, 39-40, 46-47; Hall, “Moses Dawson,” 175-89.
50. Chambers, Old Bullion Benton, 3-100, especially 81-96; McCormick, Second Party System, 304-306.
51. There is an immense literature on Van Buren’s Albany Regency. I have relied especially on Cole, Van Buren and the Political System, 66-98; Niven, Martin Van Buren, 60-37; Wallace, “Changing Concepts of Party”; and McCormick, Second Party System, 114-15. On Flagg, see Hamilton, Country Printer, 104-105, 272. On Croswell, see Manning, “Herald of the Albany Regency.”
52. Abraham Bishop to Jonathan Law, 2 Feb., 23 April 1809, 26 May, n, 16 July, n Aug. 1810, 1, 3 May 1811, 16 April 1815, Bishop Letterbook, Yale University; Waldstre-icher and Grossbart, “Abraham Bishop’s Vocation”; Dexter, “Bishop and His Writings”; William H. Crawford to Abraham Bishop, 28 March 1817, New Haven Custom House Papers, New Haven Colony Historical Society. The decline of Connecticut Republican fortunes and activity after 1806 is covered in Purcell, Connecticut in Transition, 174-88. Bishop’s later conservatism and lower level of political activity are described in Dexter, Biographical Sketches, 4:19-20.
53. Abraham Bishop to Jonathan Law, 3 May 1811, 26 March 1815 (quoted), Bishop Letterbook, Yale University; Joel Barlow to Abraham Bishop, 25 Sept. 1807, New Haven Custom House Papers, New Haven Colony Historical Society. According the Connecticut Historical Society’s card file index to the Courant, Babcock and the Mercury were mentioned exactly once after 1811.
54. Clark and Hill, “Newspapers of Connecticut,” 92-93; Abraham Bishop to Jonathan Law, 15 Jan., 13 March, 1 April, 18 Apr., 17 May, 18 July, 24 Aug., 5 Sept. (two letters), 7,10 Sept. 1816, Bishop Letterbook, Yale University.
55. Purcell, Connecticut in Transition, 32-44; Increase Cooke to John Babcock, 12 Feb. 1803, Babcock Papers, CHS.
56. Abraham Bishop to Jonathan Law, 15 Feb., 13 March 1816, Bishop Letterbook, Yale University; Purcell, Connecticut in Transition, 211-13.
57. Ibid., 214-18, 230.
58. Niles Autobiography, CHS, 2-3; Hartford Connecticut Courant, 1 Oct. 1816; Hartford Times, 1 Jan. 1817.
59. Hartford Times, 4 Feb.-i April 1817. The “American Toleration and Reform Ticket” first appeared in the issue of 25 Feb. The 1 April issue featured more than three pages of closely spaced electioneering material.
60. “The Age of Improvements . . . No. IV,” ibid., n March 1817; “To the Honorable James Hillhouse,” ibid., 18 March 1817; “The Age of Improvements . . . No. VII,” ibid., 25 March 1817; “Emigration and Toleration,” 8 April 1817.
61. Ibid., 23 Feb. 1817. For an overview of what the other Republican newspapers were discussing, see Brownsword, “Connecticut Political Patterns,” 35-38.
62. “The Age of Improvements . . . No. VII” and “To the Honourable James Hill-house,” Hartford Times, 25 March 1817. The agenda was recapitulated, in numbered list format, in the issue before the election (1 April 1817). On Niles’s Universalism, see his receipt for a slip at the First Independent Universalist Church of Hartford, dated 18 Nov. 1824, Niles Papers, CHS.
63. “Capt. Boardman’s Trial,” Hartford Times, 21 Jan. 1817; “Boston and Hartford,” 4 Feb. 1817. See also, ibid., 25 Feb. 1817.
64. “The Age of Improvements . . . No. IV,” ibid., n March 1817.
65. Ibid., 29 July, 21, 28 Jan., 4 March 1817; Isaac Hill to John M. Niles, 9 May, 24 Aug. 1829, Niles Papers, CHS; Hill to Niles, 28 Oct. 1833, John Milton Niles Papers, NYPL. Hill’s prosecution came just after the overthrow of Federalism in New Hampshire, and he in fact turned it to great advantage. Holding a slight majority in the state legislature, the Republicans intentionally let the prosecution proceed and gave Hill access to the floor so he could mount a lengthy, grandstanding defense. After subjecting the Federalists to two days of intense embarrassment, Hill’s legislative allies triumphantly exonerated him. See Bradley, Biography of Isaac Hill, 46-51. On New Hampshire politics in this period, though not the trial, see Cole, Jacksonian Democracy in N.H., 16-46.
66. Gideon Welles, biographical sketch of Niles in Stiles, History of Ancient Windsor, 2:535.
67. “Age of Improvements . . . No. I,” Hartford Times, 18 Feb. 1817; “Party Desperation,” ibid., n March 1817.
68. Ibid., 1 April 1817.
69. Ibid., 22 April 1817; Goodrich, Recollections, 2:429ns Morse, Neglected Period of Connecticut’s History, 62-63; Stiles, History of Ancient Windsor, 2:534-36. For a general account of the spring 1817 election, see Purcell, Connecticut in Transition, 220-21.
70. The two basic sources on Niles’s early life are an undated, unfinished manuscript autobiography and a manuscript biographical sketch of Niles by his disciple Gideon Welles, both in CHS. The Welles sketch is printed in Stiles, History of Ancient Windsor, 2:534-36.
71. Ibid., 2:534; Niles Autobiography, CHS, 1.
72. Stiles, History of Ancient Windsor, 2:534; Goodrich, Recollections, 2:429m
73. Niles Autobiography, CHS, 1-2.
74. Abel, American Lawyers, 40-41; Chroust, Rise of the Legal Profession in America, vol. 2; Miller, Life of the Mind in America, 109-16; Friedman, History of American Law, 305-306; Nash, “Philadelphia Bench and Bar.”
75. For instance, compare the story of Niles’s early life with that of the printer Horace Greeley. See Greeley, Recollections of a Busy Life, 34-67, 75-82; Van Deusen, Greeley, 5-14. There is no denying that printing, editing, and publishing became more and more separate functions during the nineteenth century, especially on larger and more financially successful newspapers, but the social implications of this are more ambiguous than some writers (Hamilton, Country Printer, 150-51; Botein, “Printers and the Revolution,” 49-57) have claimed. In the Jacksonian period, both lawyering and editing were open to people who would once have been limited to the trades.
76. Hartford Connecticut Mirror, 22 March 1819, quoted in Brownsword, “Connecticut Political Patterns,” 52.
77. Stiles, History of Ancient Windsor, 2:535.
78. Niles Autobiography, CHS, 2; Stiles, History of Ancient Windsor, 2:534-35.
79. [Niles], “Preface,” in Independent Whig, 1st American ed. from 6th London ed., xxii-xxiii.
80. “Glorious Triumph!!!,” Hartford Times, 1 April 1817 (quoted); Brownsword, “Constitution of 1818”; Trumbull, Historical Notes, 56-60; Purcell, Connecticut in Transition, 223-59; John M. Niles, biographical sketch of Alexander Wolcott, in Stiles, History of Ancient Windsor, 834-35 n (quoted).
81. Elections were held in April and September, and the number of advertising columns in the Times increased as follows: March 1817, 4-5; May-June 1817, 8-9; Sept.-Oct. 1817, 9-11; May-June 1818,13-15.
82. Hartford Times, 28 Sept. 1819.
83. Ibid., 26 Aug. 1817.
84. Brownsword, “Connecticut Political Patterns,” 73-149; Brownsword, “Constitution of 1818,” 7—9; Niven, Gideon Welles, 25-27.
85. Hartford Times, 26 May 1818, 2 Feb., 21 April, 4, n May, 1 June 1819.
86. Stiles, History of Ancient Windsor, 2:535.
87. On Universalism, see Hatch, Democratization of American Christianity, 40-42, 126-27,170—72,177; Robinson, Unitarians and Universalists, 47—74.
88. “The New Year,” Hartford Times, 6 Jan. 1818.
89. “The Prospect before Us, No. IV,” ibid., 28 Oct. 1817.
90. On the work’s purposes, see Niles, Connecticut Civil Officer, iii-iv, viii.
91. Ibid., 3 March 1818, 6 April 1819; Niven, Gideon Welles, 27.
92. Hartford Times, 7 April 1818, 9 Sept. 1817. See also, ibid., 4, n Nov., 16 Dec. 1817, 6 Jan., 3, 31 March, 12 May 1818, 2 March 1819.
93. Ibid., 6 April 1819.
94. John M. Niles to John Russ, 5 Feb. 1822, Niles Papers, CHS.
95. Phillips, “Pennsylvania Origins of Jackson Movement,” 494-99; Sellers, Market Revolution, 172—74, 187-89, 191-92; Kehl, Ill Feeling in Era of Good Feeling, 217, 223-34; McCormick, Second Party System, 139-40.
96. McCormick, Second Party System, 187-90; Remini, Election of Andrew Jackson, 53-58; Cole, Van Buren and the Political System, 142-81; Ambler, Thomas Ritchie, 85-117; Van Buren, Autobiography of Martin Van Buren, 514. The key letter, outlining a coalition of “the planters of the South and the plain Republicans of the North,” is Martin Van Buren to Thomas Ritchie, 13 Jan. 1827, Van Buren Papers, LC. On Duff Green, see Green, “Duff Green: Militant Journalist of the Old School”; and Ashley, American Newspaper Journalists, 273—77.
97. McCormick, Second American Party System, 41-49, 54-69, 214-21, 262-65. 304-307; Sellers, Market Revolution, 189; Klein, Game without Rules, 150-66,188-261.
98. Smith, Press, Politics, and Patronage, 59—72; Remini, Election of Andrew Jackson, 76-80. The absence of detailed reference works like HBAN for the period after 1820 makes a definite count of these new Jacksonian papers virtually impossible at this juncture. Remini gives what are probably representative, if not low, figures for a few states. Between 1824 and 1828, he counts eighteen new journals in Ohio and nine in North Carolina.
99. Delaware Democrat and Easton Gazette, began 10 May 1827 and folded 20 Nov. 1828, with the very issue that reported the election results.
100. Binns, Recollections, 242-57; Remini, Jackson and the Course of Freedom, 118-23; Remini, Election of Andrew Jackson, 151-56; Weed, Autobiography, chaps. 20-26, 29-30, 32, 37; Chase, Emergence of Nominating Convention, 121-81; Van Deusen, Thurlow Weed, 38-69; Holt, Rise and Fall of American Whig Party, 12-32; Hudson Wasp, 7 July 1802; Weisenburger, “Life of Charles Hammond,” 383-87.
101. Smith, Press, Politics, and Patronage, 84-99; Pasley, “Indiscreet Zeal of John Norvell.” Rosters of the editorial appointees were compiled by anti-Jacksonian newspapers. See Washington Daily National Journal, 9 Jan. 1829; and Washington National Intelligencer, 27 Sept. 1832. My research has uncovered a few errors and several omissions in these rosters, raising the overall number over the fifty-seven listed by the Intelligencer. On Rogers’s campaign for an appointment, see Samuel D. Ingham to Thomas J. Rogers, 16 Mar. 1828, D. H. Miller to Rogers, 5,10 April 1830, Rogers to D. H. Miller, 10 April 1830, Dreer Collection, HSP; Rogers to Lewis Coryell, 8 June 1828, 5 May, 20 June 1830, Coryell Papers, HSP; Rogers to Isaac D. Barnard, 14 Dec. 1828, Barnard Papers, Townsend-LeMaistre Collection, HSP.
102. Washington Daily National Journal, 5, 9 Jan., 3, 9, 14, 18, 21, 28, 29 April, 1, 14 May, 28, 29 Nov., 3, 4, 5, 23 Dec. 1829,10,12,16,19, 27 April, 4, n, 12 May, 28 Aug. 1830; Niles’ Register, 13 June 1829.
103. John Randolph to Andrew Jackson, 8 Nov. 1831, Bassett, Correspondence of Jackson, 4:370; John Campbell to James Campbell, 23 April, 1830, Campbell Family Papers, Duke; Smith, Press, Politics, and Patronage, 96-99, 297n45.
104. Andrew Jackson to T. L. Miller, 13 May 1829, Bassett, Correspondence of Jackson, 4:32.
105. The standard work on the development of the new mass party system, Mc-Cormick, Second Party System, does not quite make the point about the editors’ role, but it can be seen in the number of newspaper editors that McCormick identifies as key state party figures. “Parties did not ‘emerge,’” McCormick writes, “neither did they ‘form,’ rather, they were formed by astute and energetic politicians. When the process of party formation is examined state by state, it can be seen that at some appropriate opportunity rival leaders, or groups of leaders, took the initiative in creating parties” (351-52). Among a list of nine examples of such leaders, McCormick includes five newspaper editors: Niles of Connecticut, Hill of New Hampshire, Dawson of Ohio, Kendall of Kentucky, and Weed of New York. Elsewhere in the book, McCormick gives prominent party-building roles to more editors, including David Henshaw of Massachusetts, Elijah Hayward of Ohio, Peter K. Wagner of Louisiana, and Thomas Ritchie of Virginia.
106. On Hill’s revenge, see Cole, Jacksonian Democracy in N.H., 89-98.
107. Hartford Times, 29 Dec. 1818, 5,12,19, 26 Jan., 2, 9,16 Feb. 1819.
108. Morse, Neglected Period of Connecticut’s History, 62-63, 79-99; Niven, Gideon Welles, 26-54; Brownsword, “Connecticut Political Patterns,” 183-337; McCormick, Second Party System, 65-67. The Times party’s activities and strategies are amply recorded in their newspaper and (after 1826 or so) in the voluminous Gideon Welles Papers, LC.
109. John M. Niles to Thomas Hart Benton, 28 Jan. 1829, Niles to Gideon Welles, 6, 12, 20, 25 Feb., 5 March 1829, Welles to Niles, 10, 12 (quoted), 19, 22 Feb., 5 March 1829, Noah Phelps to Welles, 12, 13, 22 Feb. 1829, Welles to Phelps, 9 March 1829, Welles Papers, LC; Niven, Gideon Welles, 50—70; Robert V. Kemim, Jackson and Course of Freedom, 166-67,169-80.
110. Niven, Gideon Welles, 71—87; John M. Niles to David Henshaw, 22 Feb. 1830, Misc. Manuscripts, Boston Public Library; F P. Blair to John Niles, 14 Oct. 1831, 27 June 1832, Niles Papers, CHS; John C. Rives to John M. Niles, 4, 20 Aug., 20 Sept., 15, 25 Oct., 26 Nov. 1832, Niles Papers, NYPL; Rives to Niles, 4 June, 2 Aug. 1833, 17 Feb., 27 Oct. 1834, Misc. Personal Papers, NYPL.
111. Morse, Neglected Period of Connecticut’s History, 84-118, 288-99; Niven, Gideon Welles, 104-49; McCormick, Second Party System, 68-69.
112. The best secondary source on Niles’s later political career is Niven, Gideon Welles, 167-252. See also Niles Autobiography, CHS; Stiles, History of Ancient Windsor, 2:534-36; DAB.
113. See this book’s companion web site <http://pasleybrothers.com/newspols> for a complete roster of printers, editors, and publishers who served in Congress up through 1860.
114. Cole, Jacksonian Democracy in N.H., 97-98; Stiles, History of Ancient Windsor, 2:534-36. See the bibliography for examples of Niles speeches reprinted as pamphlets.
115. Goodrich, Recollections of a Lifetime, 2:429n—43on.
116. The most thoroughgoing and vitriolic statement of this view can be found in Edward Pessen’s works, Jacksonian America and Riches, Class, and Power.