History of Journalism in the United States/Chapter 10

by George Henry Payne

CHAPTER X

AFTER THE REVOLUTION

Critical period in American history—Greater interest in the news—Prominence of journals and writers—Press held in contempt as the representative of the people—Characteristics of papers—Bareness of life of laboring class—Russell and the Massachusetts Sentinel—Loyalty of Russell shown—First daily in America—Thomas Greenleaf—His office wrecked.

The war is ended, and there has come into existence a nation in which the liberty of the press is one of the canonical principles. During the brief period from the time of achieving independence to the adoption of the Constitution, there are to be severe tests of the metal of the people—it is to prove indeed the critical period in American history. It is unique in history as a period in which there was little other government than that by public opinion. The glory of that period was the adoption of a constitution that has made the American Republic a leader among nations.

With the protection and encoura.gement of the press as one of the fundamental principles of the new nation, its history is now one of development, and of participation in the development of the government.

With the end of the war there came an end, of course, to the Loyalist press. To a great extent, it might be said that the patriotic press also passed away—not physically, but as a political power—for new conditions brought new problems and with these problems new men arose; men who, in their cleverer use and more up-to-date handling of the new institution, made the pioneers of the pre-Revolutionary days seem small and insignificant.

To add to these generally favorable political conditions, there was a development of physical conditions, so important in the modern newspaper. In the first place, the war had furnished a great incentive to American manufacturing; types, presses, paper and ink were now manufactured in this country. The citizens of the cities in which various papers were printed had been aroused by the struggle before the war and by their suffering during the war, and had lost their self-interest which had made them indifferent to the doings of the outside world. Their conception of life had been broadened sufficiently to make them take a greater interest in the "news." The residents of the different states had come to know that they were, after all, Americans, citizens of one country. They had become familiar with the fact that important newspapers were published in different parts of the country.

The interest in public matters diversified on the first reaction. This is true after all wars. But in a very short time a few absorbing themes were arousing the people. The depreciated currency and the large debt—as well as a lack of power in Congress, resulting in that body being treated with the utmost contempt in the press—led to chaotic conditions, bordering almost on anarchy, as we see in the movement against lawyers and judges. But even in this time, when there was no rule but the rule of public opinion, and when, unfortunately, there was no leadership such as that to which the people had become accustomed, there was still such a great respect for public opinion, that, out of all the disorder and chaos, there came a strong and remarkable government.

It was in the fight over the adoption of the Constitution that those journals and writers that were to become conspicuous leaders of public opinion came to the fore. It was here that the lead was assumed by New York, its geographical position having given it an advantage which was freely used by its not always scrupulous politicians.

For the next twenty years the press of the country was practically under the dominance of two men; and though both would have indignantly resented the suggestion that their activities brought them within the classification of active journalists, of one of them at least, Alexander Hamilton, it is true that his public career after the war was as closely identified with the journalism of the country as were the men who actually earned their living by writing for and printing the newspapers.

With the prejudices against the trade—prejudices inherited from England, the social ideas of which still dominated the nation—it was understandable that men who prided themselves on being "gentlemen "should disown too close an association with a calling such as "Printing," which had yet to live down its early stigma.

What is to-day regarded as the very strength of the press was then a great cause of its being held in some contempt—it actually represented the people, the "rabble"; it came from the people, its mechanical artificers were of the people, and therefore, except when it was properly "led," it was not considered a power for good. This distrust of the masses was not shown in the attitude of the statesmen of the period toward the press alone—it was, as one writer has said, a characteristic of the eighteenth century. It was a widespread belief that the commonwealth must depend on the "powers, estates and vested interests "rather than on the masses of the people, who were a danger unless "led or repressed."^[1]

The prejudice was active, not only with the men who made use of journalism in developing the policies of their respective parties, but among the men of later generations who undertook to write the history of their country; and, as we shall see, a century was to pass before journalism came to be considered as having a professional status sufficient to entitle it to a place in the curriculum of a reputable university.

When the end of the revolutionary struggle came, there were forty-three papers in the colonies. The three best of these were the Connecticut Courant, the Boston Gazette and the Pennsylvania Packet. Their news was either very general or very local; the advertisements were matters of particular importance to the people locally. The essays and contributed editorials were of interest to those of culture and to those who had ideas and theories as to the government. For the academic and literary, there was poetry and sometimes ponderous literary work. The Boston Weekly Advertiser printed as a serial, "Robertson's History of America," which ran through one hundred and fifty numbers.

The lack of news concerning the country in general was due almost entirely to the difficulties of transmission. The Post-Office would not carry the papers and the post-riders had to be bribed to take them along with the letters. It took six days for a letter to go from Boston to New York, or nine days in bad weather; still, when a paper arrived in a small village, nearly all the adult population gathered around the minister while he read it from start to finish. The dignity and prosperity of a town were established by the fact that it supported a weekly journal.^[2]

The absence of political parties gave emphasis to the two great divisions of society, i. e., the rich and the poor.

Unskilled labor was paid but two shillings a day, and it was only by the strictest economy that the laborer kept his children from starvation and himself from jail. He was not considered one of the real people, had no right to vote, lived in low dingy rooms, rarely tasted meat and looked up respectfully to those who were able to vote — those, that is, who were able to pay the tax that gave them the franchise—as his "betters." He dressed in a way that marked him wherever he went: "A pair of yellow buckskin or leathern breeches, a checked shirt, a red flannel jacket, a rusty felt hat cocked up at the corners, shoes of neat's-skin set off with huge buckles of brass, and a leathern apron, comprised his scanty wardrobe."^[3]

Spring elections for 1785 found the papers filled with exhortations to the people to oppose all those who were aristocrats. "Beware the lawyers! Beware the lawyers!" was the title of a pamphlet, typical of the times, exhorting them to vote against those who were interested in property and not in human rights.^[4] The people were led to believe that the lawyers prospered only as the people suffered, this prejudice going so far that even the judges were notified that the people did not want them to sit.

Another problem that the people had to face was the lack of sound coinage, for counterfeiters and clippers were so busy that it was said that a good halfpenny or a full weight pistareen was not to be found in the States. The papers of the colonies warned their readers to beware of counterfeiters and to take no French guineas "till they had examined carefully the hair on the King's head."^[5]

In times past, especially in New England, it had been the ministers who had dominated the community, mentally as well as religiously. The great career of Franklin, already passed into history and associated with newspapers, and the honored names of Samuel Adams, Otis and others, led the people to give stricter attention to the journalists who began to be more nimierous and more conspicuous. In turn, young men,—who, in the early days of the colonies, would have chosen the profession of minister, lawyer, doctor, or even school-master—now began to see the possibilities of training for a vocation that had the attraction of wielding great influence in the community.

Not in war so much as in the after-war periods are democracies threatened. This is shown by the critical periods in American history. The reasons are that men will rush to the defense of their homes, but on their return they are restless of their old responsibilities and, with the lack of discipline of a democracy, are apt to listen to the dreamer or the theorist.

When the war broke out, journalism had established itself as an institution and the freedom of the press was no longer a matter that concerned solely the unfortunate printer like Harris, who dared the prejudices, the ignorance and autocracy of the times; the martyrs of the past could have wished for no greater results than those which had come about in but a little over a century—a country free from all the old autocratic ideas of the past, liberated from the old tyrannies, not by compromise, but by blood, and carrying aloft, as one of its most important standards, the Liberty of the Press. While the people gave much credit to educated men such as Samuel Adams and John Adams, they gave greater credit to themselves as the class from which had sprung the Franklins, the Zengers and such men as Edes. The success of a cause is dependent on the quality of the fighters that are attracted to it, but we are all a little inclined to concentrate our attention on the socially distinguished rather than on those whose surtouts show wear. The judgments of history are continually being reversed, while such men as Harris and Zenger have had difficulty in getting into history at all. Class consciousness arose in this period through the sense of affiliation with men who were good fighters, even if they were not of the best families or the ruling class.

There was another reason why journalism was to come into its own. Up to the time of the Revolution it was, even when uncensored and free from persecution, at Jiest a tolerated usurper of authority, a disturber of the peace and of conditions as they were. Under the new conditions it was the voice of the people—recognized as such even by those who lamented the democratic tendencies of the times and the growing influence of journalism. Even they were driven to journalism to controvert the "pernicious" theories that were sweeping away the old order of things.

But the new figures in the field were fully alive to their responsibilities as well as to their opportunities. Not only were they unawed by the difference between the humble beginnings of journalism and the mightiness of those who had been dethroned, but they were determined on a still further participation in government, and a further elimination of class distinction.

No better example of the new type of journalist was there than Major Benjamin Russell, who, in addition to learning his business with Thomas, had served six months as Thomas' substitute in the Continental Army. With a partner named Warden, he began, on March 24, 1784, the publication of a semi-weekly, the Massachusetts Centinel and the Republican Journal. For forty-two years the paper under his leadership was an actual power, not in the sense that the old Gazette had been, as the representative of a group, but because it represented Russell's own personality and responded to his will as he interpreted the public sentiment. In many ways it was the prototype of the great American dailies as we are to see them later in the times of Greeley, Bennett, and others. Gradually, it marked the continuation of Boston's leadership of the Press.

Russell had had a good training in the printing office of Thomas and had earned a majority in the Continental Army. When Major Andre was executed Russell was one of the guard. As a journalist he showed at once that he had no inclination to play a minor part, and led an attack on those British factors and agents who, now that the war was over, were endeavoring to build up British trade. He put his opposition to business relations with the British on many grounds, but the most effective was that it tended to drain the country of currency, which, in those days of financial confusion, was an alarming prospect.

Although a Federalist, Russell, as might be expected of one bred in New England and sensitive to all its prejudices, did not follow the lead of Hamilton in the matter of advocating liberal treatment of the Loyalists. The antipathies bred by the war, he argued, had taken too deep root.^[6]

News, in the sense of personalities, could not be carried further than he carried it in depicting the scene when his sanctum was invaded by an irate citizen, who threatened to kill him. This was a news development that was afterward to be emulated by James Gordon Bennett and other editors attacked under similar circumstances.

When it came to the fight for the adoption of the Constitution, Russell was a tower of strength in the only issue that ever, gave the Federalist party any great popularity. But he went further. He organized meetings of the plain people of Boston to urge ratification; and as other states ratified, each ratification was set forth prominently. There is modern enterprise shown in his account of the part he played when the Massachusetts convention, held in a church, came to pass on the Constitution:

I never had studied stenography, nor was there any person then in Boston that understood reporting. The presiding officer of the convention sat in the Deacon's seat, under the pulpit. I took the pulpit for my reporting desk, and a very good one it was. I succeeded well enough in this my first effort to give a tolerable fair report in my next paper; but the puritanical notions had not entirely faded away, and I was voted out of the pulpit. A stand was fitted up for me in another place, and I proceeded with my reports, generally to the acceptance of the Convention. The doubts that still existed as to whether enough of the states would come into the compact to make the Constitution binding, made the proceedings of the Convention intensely interesting. When the news arrived of the acceptance of it by the state of Virginia, there was a most extraordinary outbreak of rejoicing. It seemed as if the meeting-house would burst with the acclamation.^[7]

His loyalty is instanced by the fact that he printed the public laws gratuitously and, when the bill was asked for, sent a receipt. Washington himself directed that he be paid:

"This must not be," said Washington, on learning the fact. "When Mr. Russell offered to publish the laws without pay, we were poor. It was a generous offer. We are now able to pay our debts. This is a debt of honor, and must be discharged."

Shortly afterward a check for seven thousand dollars was sent to Major Russell.^[8]

It was such ardent advocacy of the Federal constitution, ably backed up by Hamilton in the "Federalist," that brought to the Federal party its main support. While the Federalists were the party in favor of the Constitution the opposition could not stand against them. Once, however, that issue was dead, and the issue became popular control, with the Federalists opposed to popular rights, they lost influence. Party consistency, however, led men like Russell to remain Federalists, and this he did even up to the administration of Madison, when he bitterly opposed the war with England—the last stand of the Federalist party, which practically passed away with the Hartford convention. The election of Monroe marked its complete eclipse, and then followed the "era of good feeling," an expression said to have been originally uttered by Russell.

Although Philadelphia had no such distinctive character as Russell to take up the fight for journalism after the war, it was in this period that Philadelphia offered the country its first daily paper. On September 21, 1784, the Pennsylvania Packet or General Advertiser of Dunlap and Claypoole appeared as a daily, evidently in response to a large increase in the advertisements, for in the first issue of this new daily there were plenty of advertisements but not a single line of comment to indicate that the founders of the first daily newspaper on the American continent were aware that they were embarking on a most interesting and historic undertaking.^[9]

For some time after the Revolution there was no vigorous newspaper in New York. The New York Journal, which we have seen, during the Revolution, fighting on amid difficulties, came back to the city with the English withdrawal; but old John Holt had run his course, dying a year after. The widow and Eleazer Oswald, a relative, continued it until 1787, when it was bought by Thomas Greenleaf, an enterprising printer, son of the Joseph Greenleaf whose writings in the Massachusetts Spy had so incensed the royal authorities. Greenleaf had learned his trade under Isaiah Thomas and had worked as a sub-editor of the Independent Chronicle of Boston. Beginning November 19, 1787, he issued a daily, the New York Journal and Daily Patriotic Register, the first in New York and the second in America. Greenleaf's training, as one might expect, was such as to make him suspicious of the "big wigs" who had gathered in Philadelphia, and, when the controversy started over the adoption of the Constitution, his paper printed the "Brutus" series in answer to the "Federalist." He was not content with mere argument, however. When the Constitution was adopted by the state, and the jubilant citizens expressed their exultation by a parade and a pageant, Greenleaf devoted a column to ridiculing the festivity and those who had taken part in it.

In the following issue he announced that the daily had been given up, pathetically adding that those who intended to withdraw subscriptions "at this juncture of the Printer's sufferings and distress will please to indulge themselves one more reflection on the subject." In the succeeding issue he tells the whole story, admitting the folly of trying to conceal what had happened. The jubilant paraders, roused more by his ridicule of themselves than by his attack on the Constitution, had broken into his place and, though he fired twice at the mob, he was obliged to retreat, while most of his plant was destroyed!^[10] It is a good graphic story that he writes, the kind that editors do write as a rule when their places have been attacked or they have been horse-whipped; the mode of punishment for editors, as we shall see, varying with the generations.

After this Greenleaf naturally turned more earnestly to the anti-Federalist party; his was the first Democratic organ in the country, and the first to attack Washington's administration. His alignment with the Democratic party became so complete that in 1789 he was elected a sachem of Tammany Hall. On his death, the Independent Chronicle of Boston said, "he was a steady, uniform, zealous supporter of the Rights of Humanity."^[11]

The crowning glory of the party was the "Federalist," Alexander Hamilton's great contribution to journalism and political literature. To the publication of the "Federalist "in the newspapers of the country has been ascribed the fact that the doubting country accepted the Federal Constitution.

In the Federal convention that met in Philadelphia in 1787, there was no real appreciation of the democratic character of the nation. In that convention, democratic sentiment was in a weak minority; the Federal union was the work of the commercial people of the seaport towns, the planters of the slave states, the officers of the Revolutionary army and the property-holders.^[12]

This lack of realization was reflected, first, in the fear that the executive might assume the powers of a king; secondly, in the long serious discussions which led to the complicated machinery by which the choice of the president was left to an electoral college. This, it was intended, should consist of estimable and well-informed gentlemen who would meet and select, after calm and lofty debate, the best possible candidate, according to " their own unfettered judgment."

So little did the Fathers realize that there was, aside from the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government, a fourth factor, the power of public opinion, that it was a matter of astonishment to them that in the very first instance public opinion reduced the electoral college and its estimable gentlemen to mere automatons.

The fear of the conservative element was that the voters of the country were so widely scattered that they would not be informed on the questions or the character of the men at issue. There was not the slightest indication throughout the entire convention that the makers of the constitution appreciated the great power of public opinion and the changes it was going to make in their Constitution.

True it is that Benjamin Franklin sat in this convention and was one of its most conspicuous figures; from him, the once poor printer who had risen to great power and authority, visions as to the power of the press in the future might have been expected.

But Franklin was old, the last fifty years of his life had been spent in courts, in diplomatic usage, in polite and scientific circles—a far cry from the simple democratic beginnings in Boston and Philadelphia, when he had been so keen an analyst of the average man's heart and aspirations.

Samuel Adams, another great democrat whose vision might have helped the convention, was at home, a disappointed and disapproving man. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were both abroad.

No other clause of the Constitution has so little reflected the ability of the Fathers as the one relating to the election of the president. The greatness of the men who wrote this constitution looms always larger and larger — an assembly of demi-gods, Jefferson called them,—for they possessed in an unusual degree the faculty of statesmanship, and of seeing clearly what would be the results of a political act. That they failed to see the power of public opinion was one reason why the Constitution was so bitterly opposed that they were unable to have it adopted until, following the suggestion, or rather the demands, of Samuel Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the pledge was given that, as soon as it was adopted, amendments would be passed containing the essential provisions of the Bill of Rights, guaranteeing freedom of speech and of the press.

On Alexander Hamilton fell the burden of defending the Constitution, and under his leadership was founded the first of American parties—the iFederalist party. The methods of party warfare that he inaugurated were to be, in outline, the methods of the next century; the use to which he put the newspapers emphasized more than ever their importance in American government.

With every other aspect of Alexander Hamilton's many-sided career, except that of a journalist, every American schoolboy is familiar. It was, his biographer states, a brilliant newspaper description of a hurricane that decided his career at the age of fifteen. He was then an orphan, of romantic parentage, living in one of the West Indian islands; this bit of writing led the principal people of the island to decide that he ought to have a larger career than Santa Cruz afforded and, in accordance with his wishes, he was sent to New York to be educated. He early distinguished himself on the side of the patriotic cause as an orator and conversationalist; almost from the time he arrived in America he was a contributor, especially on political subjects, to the New York Gazette, and later to the other journals.

It is for the essays that Hamilton wrote with Madison and Jay under the title of the "Federalist" that the journalism of the period is noteworthy. They have, from the influence that they gave to the press of the time, been likened to the letters of Junius, which, appearing in the Public Advertiser of London during the year 1765, went far to counteract the feeling in England that everything connected with journalism was superficial and ephemeral.

The first of these essays, afterward to be famous as the most profound treatises on government, was written by Hamilton in the cabin of a sloop as he came down the Hudson. It was first published in the Independent Journal of New York, on October 27, 1787, and not in the Independent Gazetteer, which was edited by Colonel Eleazer Oswald, a friend of Greenleaf; a man unlikely to be made a confidant by Hamilton—their differences, in fact, leading Oswald to challenge Hamilton to a duel in 1798.^[13] From October, 1787, until the following April several numbers of the "Federalist "appeared every week and were copied by the friendly papers, or by those with whom the Federalists had influence, throughout the country. William Duer wrote several, and both Jay and Madison were contributors, but the main burden fell on Hamilton. In one of the very last numbers he answered the criticism that there was not, in the Constitution, a specific declaration in favor of a free press:

"In the first place," he stated, "I observe that there is not a syllable concerning it in the Constitution of this state; in the next I contend that whatever has been said about it in that of any other state, amounts to nothing. What signifies a declaration, that 'the liberty of the press shall be inviolably preserved'? What is the liberty of the press? Who can give it any definition which would not leave the utmost latitude for evasion? I hold it to be impracticable; and from this I infer that its security, whatever fine declarations may be inserted in any constitution respecting it, must altogether depend on public opinion, and on the general spirit of the people and the government. And here, after all, as is intimated upon another occasion, we must seek for the only solid basis of all our rights."

With such words, especially when the wonderful unselfishness that was back of them and the lofty conception of duty that inspired them were known, the doubters were put to flight, but the distrust due to the feeling that omissions had been made in the preparation of the Constitution was the beginning of party strife. The nobility of Hamilton's character and the great ability and worth of his contributions shine nowhere more clearly than in these writings, but the very political division that he created as he. labored was one that was to bear, for him, bitter fruits. Hamilton, in his fight for the adoption of the Constitution, stirred many others, but none more notable than John Dickinson. Signing himself "Fabius," Dickinson came to the defense of the new Consti^ tution, his writings displaying marked literary ability, as well as a knowledge of government second only to that shown in the "Federalist."

The founder of Dickinson College had to suffer many bitter aspersions on his loyalty, despite his great contribution to the political cause in the "Farmers' Letters," previously referred to.

In 1798, in a new series under the signature "Fabius," printed in the "New World," Dickinson took the high ground that it was the duty of Americans to forget the insults of Genet and to work out a policy toward France that would show "the proper sense of gratitude to that country."^[14]

Although a frequent contributor to the newspapers, Dickinson was not oblivious to their faults, as is shown by the letter which he wrote to the publisher of every newspaper in Philadelphia when he was about to be married, in July, 1770; a letter with a very modern appeal.

Gentlemen:

I earnestly entreat as a favor of great weight with me that you will not insert in your newspaper any other account of my marriage than this: "Last Thursday, John Dickinson, Esquire, was married to Miss Mary Morris." An account of the expressions of joy on the occasion will give me inexpressible pain, and very great uneasiness to a number of very worthy relations. The new (Constitution was to bring new journals and new editors. In the Gazette of the United States, of April 25, 1789, it is stated that on the Saturday previous " the most illustrious President of the United States arrived in this city. At Elizabethtown he was received by a deputation of three senators and five representatives of the United States, and the officers of the state and corporation, with whom he embarked on the barge for the purpose of wafting him across the bay. It is impossible to do justice to an attempt to describe the scene exhibited in his Excellency's approach to the city."

The same paper also noted the arrival of the schooner Columbia, Captain P. Freneau, eight days out of Charleston. On board was "Dr. King, from South Africa, with a collection of natural curiosities, particularly a male and female ourang outang." As the escort for Washington proceeded up the bay. Captain Freneau, poet, seaman and scholar, brought his ship—with its cargo of monkeys—into line and sailed along with the gorgeous procession that was escorting the Presidentelect to the capital city.

As the editor of the National Gazette, Freneau was, more than any one else, to be responsible for the political acrimony that marked the beginning of government in this country. To him John Adams traced his downfall. It was this man, Freneau, of whom Jefferson said, when Washington had practically urged him to get rid of his services, that he (Freneau) and his paper, the National Gazette, had done more than any other single agency to combat the Hamiltonian political theories and to keep the country from all monarchical ideas.

1. Walker, Making of the Nation, 150.
2. McMaster, History, i, 58.
3. McMaster, History, i, 97.
4. New York Packet, April 7, 1785.
5. New York Packet, April 21, 1785; Penniylvania Packet, May 13, 1784.
6. Centinel, August, 1784.
7. Hudson, 150.
8. Hudson, 152.
9. The first daily newspaper in England, the Daily Couraout, had appeared March 11, 1702.
10. New York Journal and Patriotic Register, July 24, July 31, August 7. 1786.
11. September 24, 1789.
12. Life of John Adams, i, 441.
13. This error is made by Professor McMaster in his History of the People of the United States, i, 583, and repeated by John Fiske, Critical Period of American History, 341.
    Not only did Oswald and his paper oppose Hamilton and his political theories, but toward the English, with whom Hamilton sympathized, Oswald carried his opposition so far that he had been called the first American Fenian. He died of yellow fever in New York on September 30, 1795, and his body is buried in St. Paul's Churchyard; in spring and summer it affords a shady noon resting-place for the girl employees of the same Evening Post that was once William Coleman's.
14. Stille, Life of Dickinson, 296.