William Duane 1760-1835, American journalist, b. near Lake Champlain, N.Y., of Irish parentage. He learned the printer's trade in Ireland and in 1787 went to Calcutta (now Kolkata), where he edited the Indian World. His attacks on the local government there brought about his deportation and the confiscation of his property. Unable to secure redress in England, Duane moved to Philadelphia and joined Benjamin Franklin Bache in editing the Aurora. Upon Bache's death (1798), Duane became sole editor. An able and courageous writer, he made the Aurora the leading Jeffersonian organ. His acid criticism, however, led to his arrest (1799) under the Alien Act. Acquitted, he was arrested again under the Sedition Act (see Alien and Sedition Acts ). Charges against him were dismissed when Jefferson came into office. Duane's prosperous journal declined after the removal of the government to Washington, D.C., but it remained influential in local politics. In the War of 1812, Duane served as adjutant general. He retired from the Aurora in 1822 and traveled in South America, writing upon his return A Visit to Colombia in the Years 1822 & 1823 (1826).

Duane, William (1760–1835),journalist in the U.S., India, and England, was associated with B. F. Bache in the editorship of the Philadelphia Aurora, and after Bache's death was sole editor of this Jeffersonian paper (1798–1822, 1834–35). Arrested under the Sedition Law, he was acquitted with a nolle prosequi by Jefferson. He was the author of The Mississippi Question (1803), A Military Dictionary (1810), An Epitome of the Arts and Sciences (1811), and A Visit to Colombia (1826).

William Duane

The American journalist William Duane (1760-1835) was an effective advocate of Jeffersonian democracy. He and his son William John Duane, a prominent lawyer, were embroiled in the political controversies of the time.

William Duane came from a family of Irish patriots. Born near Lake Champlain, N.Y., he was taken by his mother to Ireland when he was 5. Disinherited for marrying a Protestant, he became a printer and went to Calcutta, India. He prospered until he was deported for printing attacks against the governmental officials of the East India Company. Vain attempts to seek justice in London deepened his hatred of England. In 1796 he went to America, where bitter partisan conflict was spreading and other Irish immigrants were already bringing a special radical fervor to the experimental republican government.

Duane assisted Benjamin Franklin Bache in editing the Aurora, the leading journal of the Jeffersonian party. When Bache died in 1798, his widow, Margaret, continued publication; Duane, himself a widower, married her 2 years later. He also intensified the paper's vehement, often sarcastic advocacy of the Jeffersonian cause. An eloquent writer and a clever editor, he was hated by the Federalists.

John Adams's administration never succeeded in jailing or silencing Duane. But he was constantly in danger, was once attacked by armed men, and in 1799 was charged with sedition in both state and national courts. Safety came only with the election of Thomas Jefferson in 1800. To Jefferson, Duane was more than a partisan editor; he was a trusted adviser and a good printer and bookseller.

When the capital was moved from Philadelphia to Washington, Duane moved too; but he never received the patronage in printing he had expected from the Jeffersonians, and he became increasingly disillusioned with them. An unswerving Democrat, he wrote An Epitome of Arts and Science (1811), which attempted to make useful knowledge available to those who lacked wealth and leisure. The Aurora ceased publication in 1822. Duane died on Nov. 24, 1835.

Toward the end of his life Duane had joined the opposition to the National Bank. That institution, with its vast powers seemingly uncontrolled by the government, represented a new form of tyranny to many Democrats. One of Duane's five children, William John Duane (1780-1865), was a central figure in the resulting controversies. Through his state offices and through a series of publications, he became a noted opponent of banking monopolies.

President Andrew Jackson, at war with the National Bank, decided to remove the government's deposits and place them in state banks. On June 1, 1833, he appointed William J. Duane secretary of the Treasury. The Jacksonians apparently assumed that Duane, a well-known opponent of the National Bank, would carry out their wishes. He refused, and on September 23 he was dismissed. His opposition to the National Bank was actually a suspicion of all banks. He felt that Federal deposits should be where close watch was possible. More careful and astute than many other Jacksonians, Duane saw the dangers in reckless state banking that would lead to the Panic of 1837.

Further Reading

Duane's place in the development of American newspapers is noted in Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism: A History, 1690-1960 (3d ed. 1962). He also figures prominently in James Morton Smith's authoritative study of the Alien and Sedition Laws, Freedom's Fetters: The Alien and Sedition Laws and American Civil Liberties (1956). See also Eugene Perry Link, Democratic-Republican Societies, 1790-1800 (1942), for Duane and his party; Harry Tinkcom, The Republicans and Federalists in Pennsylvania (1950), for Duane and his home state; and Nathan Schachner, The Founding Fathers (1954), for Duane and national politics. For the controversies in which the younger Duane was involved see Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Jackson (1945), and Bray Hammond, Banks and Politics in America, from the Revolution to the Civil War (1957).

Additional Sources

Phillips, Kim Tousley., William Duane, radical journalist in the age of Jefferson, New York: Garland Pub., 1989. □