ZENGER TRIAL

ZENGER TRIAL. Although appointed governor of the New York and New Jersey colonies in 1731, Colonel William Cosby did not arrive until 1732. In the interim, New York politician Rip Van Dam served as acting governor of New York and Lewis Morris did the same for

the New Jersey colony. Both collected the governor's salary. Shortly after Cosby arrived, he sought to recover half the governor's salary from each of his predecessors. His suit in 1733 against Van Dam ended abruptly when New York's chief justice, Lewis Morris, ruled that New York's supreme court justice could not act as an equity court to hear Cosby's case. Cosby summarily removed Morris, replacing him with James De Lancey, a young politician allied with Cosby.

In November 1733, Morris and his allies James Alexander and William Smith hired John Peter Zenger to publish an anti-Cosby newspaper—the New York Weekly Journal, which was the first opposition paper in America. The paper attacked Cosby with satire, humor, and irony, as well as serious essays on politics and government. Through innuendo, but not by name, the paper compared Cosby to a monkey and suggested he was tyrant. In January 1734, New York Chief Justice De Lancey urged a grand jury to indict Zenger for libel, but that body refused. In November 1734, a sheriff arrested Zenger, but again the grand jury refused to indict him. Nevertheless, in January 1735, the prosecutor charged Zenger with the misdemeanor of libel. Zenger's attorneys, James Alexander and William Smith, challenged the legality of De Lancey's appointment as chief justice, and De Lancey responded by disbarring both lawyers.

De Lancey appointed a pro-Cosby lawyer to represent Zenger, but when the trial began in July 1735, Andrew Hamilton of Philadelphia, the most famous attorney in the colonies, represented Zenger. The traditional defense in a libel case was to argue that the defendant did not actually publish the material. To the shock of everyone present, Hamilton, using a brief largely written by Alexander, admitted that Zenger had published the allegedly libelous newspapers, but then argued that Zenger should be permitted to prove the truth of his publications. This claim ran counter to English law, which held that a defamatory publication was libelous, whether true or not, and that, in fact, "the greater the truth [of the libel], the greater the scandal." Speaking directly to the jury, Hamilton attacked this theory, noting that it came out of the repressive star chamber during the reign of England's King James I. Hamilton argued that the significant political differences between England and America called for a different law of libel, and thus he urged the jury to give a general verdict of not guilty. De Lancey instructed the jury to follow the traditional English practice in libel cases, and hold Zenger guilty of publication, leaving it to the Court to determine if the publication was libelous. The jury ignored De Lancey and acquitted Zenger.

The jury's verdict did not change the law of libel in America or Britain, but it became a political force, putting colonial governors on notice that American juries would be supportive of those printers who attacked the largely unpopular royal officials. In the 1790s, both Britain and America adopted the twin principles of James Alexander's brief: that truth should be a defense to a libel and that juries should decide both the law and the facts of a case.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Finkelman, Paul, ed. A Brief Narrative of the Case and Tryal of John Peter Zenger: Printer of the New York Weekly Journal. St. James, N.Y.: Brandywine Press, 1987.

PaulFinkelman

See alsoCivil Rights and Liberties ; Libel .

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

Andrew Hamilton 1676?–1741, colonial American lawyer, defender of John Peter Zenger , b. Scotland. He practiced law in Maryland and then Pennsylvania, where he became (1717) attorney general and held other offices. When the governing party in New York had disbarred all local lawyers who ventured to defend Zenger, Hamilton was brought in and by his brilliant defense secured Zenger's acquittal (1735), establishing truth as a defense against libel charges.

Bibliography: See biography by A. B. Konkle (1941).