Id8 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM
tariff and the purchase of home-made goods. This change in journalism was practically simultaneous with the change of heart on the part of many prominent statesmen of the period.
PARTY ORGAN IN MAINE
Party organs had sprung up in new territory. In Maine, for example, The Eastern Argus was established at Portland on Sep- tember 8, 1803, by Calvin Day and Nathaniel Willis to promote the interest of the Republican Party called by The Argus and many other papers the Jacobin Party after the liberalists of France. When Willis about a year later, November 8 to be exact, became the sole publisher, he was so radical in his po- litical comment that he landed in jail a circumstance that greatly added to. the popularity of The Argus. Week by week he printed in his paper: "[Such and such] week of the impris- onment of the editor for daring to avow sentiments of political freedom." With every week of imprisonment the circulation of The Argus increased. On January 7, 1808, Willis took in Francis Douglas as partner, but later, wanting to make The Argus a religious newspaper and not receiving enough encouragement from the clergy in Portland, he sold out his interest and went to Boston to carry out this idea in The Recorder, started on Jan- uary 3, 1816, possibly the first religious weekly in the country. Douglas ran The Argus from October 6, 1808, until his death September 3, 1820, when his widow took into partnership Thomas Todd. The Argus became a semi-weekly in 1824, a tri- weekly in 1832, and daily in 1835. The Argus during the Civil War Period was a severe critic of Greeley because of his dic- tatorial attitude toward the Administration. Greeley retali- ated with this editorial comment on September 20, 1862 about The Argus : "Boy: take the tongs and throw the foul sheet out of the window and never let another come into the Office." It is now the oldest newspaper in Maine.
PRESS AND POLITICS
After the Tariff of Abominations had been passed in Con- gress, some of the most bitter papers in the South urged a separa- tion from the Union and a few even recommended an alliance
