Zenger Trial. In 1733, John Peter Zenger, a German immigrant, launched the first opposition newspaper in the American colonies.His
New York Weekly Journal vigorously attacked New York's royal governor William Cosby. Among the chief backers of this paper were Lewis Morris, whom Cosby had recently removed as chief justice of the colony. Zenger's paper relentlessly attacked Cosby, using sarcasm, innuendo, and allegory to ridicule the overbearing, greedy, and politically inept governor and his chief advisers. The
Weekly Journal was also the first American publication to reprint numerous essays by the leading English libertarian philosophers of the period, including
Cato's Letters, essays written by John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon that would heavily influence the ideology of the American Revolution a generation later.
After several futile attempts to persuade a grand jury to indict Zenger, Governor Cosby arranged for his arrest in November 1734. When the grand jury once again refused to indict Zenger, the colony's attorney general, Richard Bradley, charged the printer with seditious libel. Zenger was initially represented by James Alexander and William Smith, two prominent New York attorneys who were also among the chief backers of the
Weekly Journal, but the new chief justice, James DeLancey, disbarred them when they challenged the legitimacy of his appointment. DeLancey then selected a pro‐Cosby lawyer, John Chambers, to defend Zenger. Chambers planned a traditional defense, in which Zenger would have denied publishing the allegedly libelous newspapers. When the case came to trial, however, Zenger was represented by Andrew Hamilton of Philadelphia, the most prominent attorney in British America. Defying the prevailing rules of libel law, Hamilton argued that his client should be acquitted because what he had published about the governor was, in fact, true. Although apparently guilty under the accepted understanding of libel law, Zenger was acquitted by the jury in August 1735.
Zenger's acquittal did not change the common law of libel, but it did set a powerful political precedent: Zenger was the last colonial printer prosecuted by royal authorities. In 1736 Zenger published
A Brief Narrative of the Case and Tryal of John Peter Zenger, in which Hamilton, writing anonymously, recounted the events of his famous libel trial and reiterated his argument that newspapers should be free to criticize the government so long as what they wrote was true. Frequently reprinted in England and America, the
Brief Narrative helped shape the political culture that led to the
Revolutionary War and the subsequent adoption of the
Bill of Rights.
See also
Censorship;
Civil Liberties;
Colonial Era;
Journalism;
Revolution and Constitution, Era of.
Bibliography
Vincent Buranelli, ed., The Trial of John Peter Zenger, 1957, reprint 1985.
Paul Finkelman, ed., A Brief Narrative of the Case and Tryal of John Peter Zenger, Printer of the New York Weekly Journal, 2000.
Paul Finkelman
