Journalism

Newspapers became a major agent of change in colonial and revolutionary American society. With the rise of egalitarianism, increased literacy, rapidly evolving postal and transportation systems, and a booming population, print became easily accessible. The revolutionary era was one of the most politically and journalistically dynamic periods in U. S. history. During this period, the press played an important role in determining the direction of an emerging political system.

Newspaper publishing expanded rapidly after 1750. The press, originally born to serve religious fervor and society’s elite, became a powerful political instrument that served all individuals. Circulation might have been limited during this era, but total readership accounted for much more than numbers show. For example, large groups of people often shared one newspaper. Tavern and coffeehouse owners subscribed to newspapers for their customers to read. Ministers would even read the latest news to their congregations. As the revolutionary period wore on, people increasingly turned to newspapers for news.

Papers during this period usually were one large sheet folded twice to create four pages. Type size was very small, and no large headlines or fancy graphics were used. The first and last pages of a newspaper usually consisted of advertising, while the middle two pages included news and literature. Local news was less common in 18th-century newspapers but became more prominent in the early 1800s.

Throughout the revolutionary and early republican periods, printed dissent was never fully accepted. The John Peter Zenger trial of 1733 is popularly known for establishing the jury’s right to decide whether or not a publication was defamatory or seditious, and the admissibility of evidence about the truth of an alleged libel. But this interpretation is misleading. Publishing any kind of official document or legislative debate was still dangerous for printers during this period, because neither of these precedents was established in law until 50 years after the Zenger trial. While newspapers still affected public opinion, printers remained on guard. Despite their vulnerable position, many colonial newspaper editors gave voice to the opposition to imperial regulations after 1765.

When the British imposed the Stamp Act of 1765— requiring all legal documents, official papers, books, and newspapers to be printed on specially taxed, stamped paper—printers denounced the action and refused to use the stamped paper. Throughout the resistance movement (1764-75), colonial newspapers offered a venue for articles and essays on the imperial relationship. Most of this discussion was published anonymously or under a pseudonym because protecting the identity of the author limited legal action and because many people believed identifying a publication with a single person weakened an argument and reflected the views of an individual and not the larger community. Most newspapers initially sought to assume a neutral position and printed the views of both sides in the imperial controversy, but when editors discovered their subscriptions declining because of this impartiality, they decided to follow their pocketbooks and chose one side or the other depending on where they thought they would gain the most readers.

Newspaper publishers faced difficulties during the Revolutionary War (1775-83). Military operations disrupted publication and there was a shortage of printing materials. Paper prices rose sharply, mostly because of the need for rags in making paper. News coverage was limited. Major events sometimes appeared as no more than one paragraph, and English newspapers, which were a prime source for information, were scarce. Thus, most news was delayed. Although many newspapers stopped publishing during the war, nearly as many were started and readership continued to grow. Editors were also threatened by politics and the events of the war. Whether for or against independence, each paper served only one political point of view. Revolutionary publications denounced Great Britain, and Loyalist newspapers declared all revolutionaries traitors. The safety of printers and newspapers hung in the balance as troops moved from town to town.

After the Treaty of Paris (1783), newspapers remained highly political. Loyalist publications closed, and other newspapers supported a variety of political issues depending on local circumstances. The United States Constitution of 1787 created a national debate in the press. Attacking each other more vehemently than ever, newspapers published articles either for or against the ratification of the Constitution. The most famous essays in favor of ratification were the Federalist Papers, written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. All but 12 newspapers favored ratification, limiting the anti-Federalist voice in the press.

During the 1790s the Federalist Party and Democratic-Republican Party used newspapers extensively. John Fenno‘s Gazette of the United States became the mouthpiece for Alexander Hamilton and other leading members of the Federalist Party and, in turn, received their financial support. Democratic-Republican leaders also helped establish a number of newspapers. In 1791 Thomas Jefferson and James Madison encouraged Philip Freneau to publish a newspaper in Philadelphia to counter Fenno. Freneau, who held an appointment from Jefferson as a translator at the State Department, began his National Gazette in October 1791 and soon was engaged in heated partisan debate charging Hamilton and his followers with “changing a limited Republican government into an unlimited hereditary one.” Hamilton and Fenno responded, pointing to Freneau’s State Department job as a sinecure and proclaiming critics of the administration as “enemies of freedom.”

Although Freneau abandoned the National Gazette after the epidemic of yellow fever in 1793 (see also disease

AND epidemics), other editors took up the cause for the Democratic-Republicans. Benjamin Franklin Bache began publishing a newspaper six months after the death of his grandfather, Benjamin Franklin, and entered the partisan fray in support of the Democratic-Republicans in 1792. When Freneau ceased publication in 1793, Bache’s paper assumed greater importance, and reflecting the idea that he was bringing new light to the political scene, he changed the paper’s name to Aurora in 1794. The Aurora became the nemesis of the Federalist Party, publishing attack after attack on what Bache called the advocates “for hereditary power and distinctions.” Bache took a prominent role in the election of 1796 in support of Jefferson whom he saw as “the steadfast friend to the Rights of the People” and became the target of Federalist Party ire in 1798 when he was prosecuted under the Sedition Act. The Federalist Party, riding high on popularity because of the Quasi-War (1798-1800) crisis with France, passed the Alien and Sedition Acts (1798) to stifle public criticism of their politics. The Sedition Act forbade the printing of “false” and “malicious” material, and Bache was one of 14 people prosecuted under the measure. Bache died in prison from yellow fever, but his wife Margaret continued the Aurora, with the help of William Duane. (Duane subsequently married Margaret and edited the paper well into the 19th century.)

Oddly, the Sedition Act did not have the effect the Federalist Party intended. Rather than stopping criticism, it forced many more newspapers to take a political stand. Before the Sedition Act there were about 50 Democratic-Republican newspapers out of 185 in the nation. Only a dozen were as strongly partisan as the Aurora. Once the law came into effect, the moderate partisan newspapers became more extreme, and another 40 pro-Democratic-Republican newspapers were established. In other words, the law intensified the role of journalism in the development of political parties. Moreover, these newspapers seized the high ground and proclaimed a special role as the guardians of freedom. As one editor explained, the Sedition Act threatened “one of the most essential articles in the code of freedom, . . . in the bill of rights, namely, liberty of speech, printing, and writing.”

After the election Of i8oo, the Sedition Act expired and government prosecution of newspapers diminished. During the opening decades of the 19th century, politicians and editors had come to view the press as a major political instrument. The total number of newspapers expanded further, with as many as 50 newspapers added in a single year. Both Democratic-Republican Party and Federalist Party editors persisted in their heated rhetoric, and thus newspaper content remained highly political, filled with opinion and argument. The split ran into the War of 1812 (1812-15), with the Democratic-Republi-

The Pennsylvania Magazine, published by Thomas Paine in 1775 and 1776 (Library of Congress)

Can Party and the Federalist Party disagreeing about the necessity for the war. The Baltimore Riots of 1812 began when a mob tore down a newspaper office and continued with an attack on the Federalist editor and his supporters. By the end of the war, the Federalist Party had greatly weakened, but political issues remained central to journalism.

Further reading: Bernard B. Bailyn and John B. Hench, eds., The Press and the American Revolution (Worcester, Mass.: American Antiquarian Society, 1980); Richard D. Brown, Knowledge Is Power: The Diffusion of Information in Early America, 1700-1865 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); Jeffrey L. Pasley, “The Tyranny of Printers”: Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001).