Newspapers

Sources

Periodical Publications . The eighteenth century, Samuel Miller wrote in 1803, “may be emphatically called the age of periodical publications.” In 1780 there had been thirty-nine American newspapers; by the end of the century the United States, with a population of about three million, supported a total of 242 newspapers, twenty-four of them dailies, 180 weeklies, and the rest published two or three times a week. By 1820 there were more than four hundred papers published every week and forty-two published daily. With the first daily newspaper being printed in America in 1783, the rise of daily papers over the next twenty years was an astonishing fact.

Coffeehouses . Generally costing six cents or more a copy, newspapers were too expensive for the average person to buy. Instead, a merchant seeking information from another port would go to a coffeehouse, where he could talk with other businessmen and read copies of newspapers bought by the proprietor. Some coffeehouse keepers also printed their own papers, gathering information from the papers brought in by sea captains. In London Edward Lloyd opened his coffeehouse in 1730, eventually developing his own newspaper, as well as an insurance firm, based on the knowledge of trade and international conditions gleaned from his customers. In Philadelphia William Bradford opened the London Coffeehouse in 1754 as an adjunct to his print shop and newspaper, the Pennsylvania Journal. Merchants paid to join the London Coffeehouse, as Bradford would be first to receive out-of-town papers. Even the colonial governor came regularly to Bradford’s coffeehouse. In New York the Ferrari family managed the Merchants’ Coffeehouse until 1772; in 1776 Cornelius Bradford took it over but was driven out during the Revolution. He returned in 1783 and made the Merchants’ Coffeehouse a center for news, collecting information from ships in port and publishing “Mr. Bradford’s Marine List” in New York’s papers. Bradford kept a book of all ships in port and invited all visitors to the city to record their names and addresses in the coffeehouse. The Merchants’ Coffeehouse became an informal gathering place for men of influence and a profitable place for men who hoped to become influential.

Gilbert’s Coffeehouse . These coffeehouses all functioned as news sources, and in New York and Philadelphia they were influential in establishing the first daily newspapers. In Boston, however, the successful Gilbert’s Coffeehouse made a daily newspaper unnecessary. Gilbert’s maintained the kind of news books other coffeehouses did, and provided out-of-town papers for its patrons. But Gilbert’s also had two men with a boat ready to row out to any incoming vessel for news, and in this way the coffeehouse provided its patrons, who paid ten dollars a year, with the latest information.

Benjamin Towne . The first daily paper in America, the Pennsylvania Evening Post, and Daily Advertiser, began as a competitor to the traditional sources of news. Benjamin Towne was one of Philadelphia’s most colorful characters. In 1775 Towne had launched Philadelphia’s first successful triweekly paper, the Pennsylvania Evening Post. Though Towne was backed by Joseph Galloway and Thomas Wharton, both Loyalists, he attacked his rival, James Humphreys, publisher of the Pennsylvania Ledger, for his Tory sympathies and successfully ran him out of the city. Towne sold his paper at the unusually low rate of two pennies an issue, or ten shillings a year. When the British occupied the city, Towne stayed; when the British left, Towne’s paper continued to publish, in fact giving coverage to the British evacuation.

Confession . Towne had no politics other than selling papers, although he was charged with treason by the returning Patriots. In an attempt to clear his name, Towne asked John Witherspoon, president of Princeton College, to draw up an apology for him. Witherspoon concluded the confession, “Finally I do hereby recant, draw

back, eat in, and swallow down, every word that I have ever spoken, written or printed to the prejudice of the United States of America, hoping it will not only satisfy the good people in general, but also all those scatterbrained fellows, who call one another out to shoot pistols in the air, while they tremble so much they cannot hit the mark.” Towne refused to sign the confession. In November 1783 he would be indicted for treason, and in 1788 would be pronounced guilty by the Pennsylvania Executive Council.

A First . Towne tried to ingratiate himself with the citizens of Philadelphia through his paper. On 17 June 1783 Towne published the first issue of the Pennsylvania Evening Post, and Daily Advertiser, the first daily newspaper published in America. For the first year the paper never had more than two pages, but in its second year of publication Towne was printing four-page papers, though he did not publish every day. On 22 August 1783 Towne advertised for a news hawker to sell his papers on the street. One rival printer noted contemptuously that Towne himself could be seen walking the streets selling his papers. While most papers were sold by subscription, Towne’s was the first sold on the streets. Towne also priced his paper well below the prevailing price: the Pennsylvania Evening Post, and Daily Advertiser sold for one half or one third as much as his rivals. Towne introduced the first paper intended for mass circulation. Unfortunately, he could not win favor with the state government in Pennsylvania, could not sell advertising, and by the end of 1784 was out of business.

Dunlap and Claypoole . In 1784 John Dunlap and D.C. Claypoole, both veterans of the Continental Army, launched the second daily paper in America and the first successful one. The Pennylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser contained shipping news, international stories, and advertising. Dunlap and Claypoole did not aim for a mass circulation; their paper looked very much like the other coffeehouse papers of the day. Its readers were men of business, eager for prices on international markets, for news of political events that might influence trade, and for confirmation of their ships reaching distant ports. Lists of ships arriving in Philadelphia were supplemented with news from other vessels the docked ships had encountered on the high seas. In this manner the Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser kept Philadelphia merchants informed, indirectly, of their fleets across the globe. In 1791 the two partners split, Dunlap beginning Dunlap’s American Daily Advertiser and Claypoole starting the Mail, or Claypoole’s Daily Advertiser. This competition lasted until 1793 when the yellow fever epidemic forced both men to suspend publication and then to join forces once again on 9 December with Dunlap and Claypoole’s American Daily Advertiser. While Dunlap and Claypoole focused on business news, they also published stenographic reports on the proceedings in Congress, and on 19 September 1796 they were the first to publish President George Washington’s Farewell Address.

Gazette of the United States . The real spark for competition between newspapers came with the creation of the federal government and the establishment of political parties. The writers of the Constitution recognized the need to provide the American people with news, and as the new government was being formed, New York Federalist leaders in April 1789 hired John Fenno, a failed Boston merchant, to launch the Gazette of the United States. Fenno’s paper presented the views of the Washington administration. While Claypoole and Dunlap reached a small audience of businessmen, Fenno’s Gazette of the United States was meant to reach a national audience, bringing all Americans into a political community with the federal government at its center. To encourage the creation of this national community, the Washington administration proposed to allow the newspaper free postage throughout the country. Congress would not agree to this; instead, in 1792 Congress allowed all papers to circulate in the mails at a minimal charge.

National Gazette. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson at first supported the Washington administration (Jefferson was secretary of state, and Madison wrote many of Washington’s speeches.) But by 1791, after Alexander Hamilton had successfully proposed a national bank, both men thought the administration was creating too strong a national government and recognized the need for opposition to the “doctrines of monarchy, aristocracy, & the exclusion of the people” advocated by Hamilton and Fenno. Three days after Washington signed the bank bill into law, Jefferson wrote to Philip Freneau, a Princeton classmate of Madison’s and editor of the New York National Advertiser. Jefferson offered Freneau a job as translator in the State Department, paying him $250 a year for part-time work, which would leave Freneau time to edit a new newspaper, the National Gazette.

Newspaper War of 1792 . Freneau published the National Gazette’s first issue in October 1791. In March 1792 Freneau began a series of newspaper essays attacking Hamilton’s vision for economic development. Hamilton’s financial system “has given rise to scenes of speculation calculated to aggrandize the few and the wealthy, by oppressing the great body of the people, to transfer the best resources of the country forever into the hands of the speculators, and to fix a burthen on the people of the United States and their posterity, which time … will serve to strengthen and increase.” The whole plan, Freneau wrote, had been “copied from British statute books” and was part of a general scheme for creating a British-style government, with Hamilton as prime minister controlling the Congress through corruption and patronage. Fenno was slow to respond, waiting until June to declare that Hamilton’s opponents were “persons from other countries who having lately escaped from bondage, know not how to enjoy liberty.” Freneau saw an opening here, since Hamilton himself was a person from another country, and many other Americans were not native born. This made the debate on the nation’s economic future into a bitter personal campaign. “Hear! Hear!,” Freneau’s National Gazette proclaimed, “ye foreigners from every country.… Fenno swears … that you foreigners are a set of rebellious turbulent dogs, a pack of run-away slaves, who are come here to overturn the government!” Hamilton responded in an anonymous article, charging that Jefferson was behind Freneau’s attack, and that the secretary of state used his official position to support the National Gazette. Hamilton went on to charge Jefferson with various counts of official misconduct while he wrote a series of essays defending his own. Jefferson prided himself on never writing a line which he did not himself sign and stayed out of the debate, though he had plenty of supporters. Madison, Freneau, James Monroe, and others eagerly took up the cause.

Aftermath . Washington was thoroughly dispirited at this falling-out in his official family. He determined to retire but was persuaded not to do so by Madison, Jefferson, and Hamilton, who agreed on nothing but Washington’s importance. In 1793 Washington was reelected and Jefferson retired. The National Gazette folded the same year, but the General Advertiser and Aurora (commonly known as the Aurora) carried on the campaign. In Philadelphia the dispute between Hamilton and the opposition continued with increasing vehemence during the 1790s as the Washington administration made a treaty with England and the opposition created “Democratic-Republican Societies” to discuss political issues. These Democratic-Republican clubs, like the businessmen’s coffeehouses, functioned as gathering places for leaders and interested citizens to exchange news, though their favored topic was politics, not commerce. Newspaper circulation increased, and though Washington and Hamilton despaired of the country’s fate in this bitterly divisive time, the political press actually helped forge a stronger national identity. The Gazette of the United States, National Gazette, and Aurora circulated throughout the union, and in all parts of the United States men and women identified themselves with the policies of either Hamilton or Jefferson rather than with local personalities and issues.

Sedition Act . When John Adams became president in 1797, the United States and France were practically at war. To help foster a sense of national unity, the Adams administration and the Federalist Congress in 1798 passed a series of laws aimed at enemies of the United States. One of these laws, the Sedition Act, made it a federal offense to write, publish, or utter anything which might excite the American people’s hatred of their government. This meant that any criticism of the Adams administration would be against the law. Secretary of State Timothy Pickering put one of his clerks to work studying all newspapers to find evidence of sedition. By this time the opposition papers recognized the need for concerted action, and so Pickering determined to strike at the source by moving against the most influential papers first. By 1800 seventeen individuals would be charged with sedition, including Benjamin Franklin Bache of the Aurora; James Thomson Callender; Charles Holt, editor of the New London Bee; and Congressman Matthew Lyon. The prosecutions backfired; though the papers did have a break in service, by being officially silenced their editors achieved a kind of martyrdom, and the opposition found other ways to present its case. In 1801 the Sedition Act expired, and the Adams administration died with it. “What a lesson to America & the

LETTERS AND NEWSPAPERS TRANSMITTED BY THE POSTAL SYSTEM

world, “James Madison wrote of this demonstration of the power of public opinion “when there is no army to be turned against it.”

The Washington Scene . In 1800 the federal government moved to Washington, D.C. In Philadelphia and New York there had already been newspapers when the U.S. government arrived; the political papers had become additional voices in the local media. But Washington had no paper until Samuel Harrison Smith, a Jeffersonian and editor of the Universal Gazette, decided to move to the newly formed city. For Smith much depended on the election of 1800; as a committed Republican, he had plenty to gain if Thomas Jefferson became president. On the other hand, if the Federalists maintained control of Congress or the executive branch, Smith could not expect success. When he approached Federalist Speaker of the House Theodore Sedgwick in December 1800 for permission to put a stenographer’s desk on the House floor where he would be able to hear debates, Sedgwick refused. In Philadelphia reporters had been admitted to the House floor, Sedgwick and the Federalists said, because their meeting place had room. In the new Capitol building there was not room for reporters. When Smith argued the point, he found himself threatened with censure by the Federalists in Congress. Jefferson’s election changed this, and Smith was able to secure the printing contract for both the House of Representatives and the executive branch. “Can you believe it?,” Smith wrote to his sister. “I scarcely can.… A republican, printing the President’s speech, etc.—Can it be possible? Truly these are strange times.” Smith’s National Intelligencer and Washington Advertiser acted as the official paper of the Jefferson administration, though, unlike the “official” party papers of the 1790s, it did not engage in the personal attacks and heated rhetorical passions of the day.

New-York Evening Post. With Smith and the Republican press ensconced in Washington, the Federalists also abandoned Philadelphia as their capital. The Federalists had been decisively beaten in the election of 1800. The presidential election had been close, with Jefferson narrowly edging out John Adams. But the congressional races were an overwhelming Republican victory. The Sixth Congress, elected in 1798, had sixty-four Federalists and forty-two Republicans; the Seventh Congress had sixty-nine Republicans and thirty-six Federalists. Many Federalists blamed their defeat on the maneuvering of Alexander Hamilton, who had continued to guide the party after his return to private life. Hamilton had written to influential Federalists attacking John Adams’s character; when the letter fell into the hands of Aaron Burr, it was republished throughout the country. Hamilton, aware of his falling political stock and concerned that the principles of Federalism might die out, decided that the Federalists needed a new vigorous voice. In the fall of 1801 he and a group of New York’s leading businessmen quickly raised thousands of dollars to launch a new paper. The New-York Evening Post, under the editorship of William Coleman but with significant editorial assistance from Hamilton, began publication on 16 November 1801 and continues to be published today.

THE EXPANSION OF THE POSTAL NETWORK

The newspaper’s mission was “to diffuse among the people the correct information on all interesting subjects, to inculcate just principles in religion, morals, and politics; and to cultivate a taste for sound literature.” Its real mission at its founding was to criticize the Jefferson administration, which it did with robust glee. When Jefferson proposed to cut government spending by reducing the navy to a flotilla of small gunboats which he thought better for defending rivers and harbors, the New-York Evening Post criticized and ridiculed him. An 1805 hurricane lifted Gunboat No. 1 from its berth in Savannah, Georgia, and tossed it into a field, where, the paper said, it was “defending the agricultural interest.” The newspaper reprinted a Boston toast, “If our gunboats are of no use upon the water, may they at least be the best upon the earth,” and suggested that Gunboat No. 1 was emulating Jefferson, who as governor of Virginia had fled from an advancing British force, taking refuge on a nearby mountain. Though the New-York Evening Post had no use for Jefferson or Madison, it also criticized the New England Federalists who proposed breaking the union in 1814. Unlike New York’s other papers, which were commercial sheets, the New-York Evening Post would present both political and commercial news, reflecting the political ideas of its founders. In this way it formed the link connecting the commercial papers of the earlier years, the partisan political press of the 1790s, and the newspapers of today.

Sources

William E. Ames, A History of the National Intelligencer (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972);

Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, The Age of Federalism (New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993);

Allan Nevins, The Evening Post: A Century of Journalism (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1922);

James Morton Smith, Freedom’s Fetters: The Alien and Sedition Laws and American Civil Liberties (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1956).