Rag Linen | Online Museum of Historic Newspapers

Same old, same old?  I couldn’t help but identify similarities and connect some dots between this 18th century essay, published in the 1766 January 23 edition of THE PENNSYLVANIA JOURNAL, at the height of Stamp Act resistance and the beginning of the American Revolution, to today’s debt ceiling/default crisis.  Perhaps this 18th century newspaper article can shed some light and perspective on the potential consequences of massive debts and default.

To the PRINTER

IT is of great importance that the lovers of liberty be convinced, that if Great-Britain should push matters to the last extremity to execute the Stamp-act, we shall be able to maintain our ground, and she obliged to desist; for such a conviction will tend strongly to animate the courage of all to struggle chearfully[sic] with temporary difficulties, as they will see that we are not engaged in a desperate cause. This may apologize for my attempting to shew, in addition to what was said in my former letter, how the credit of the government will be affected, if their American commerce be lost, or stopped for a time.

The credit of states is much of the same nature with that of private men. A merchant or tradesman are said to be in good credit, when his visible gains are greater than his expenses, when he makes punctual payments, and the wares he fells may be depended upon as to their goodness and value, and when those who deal with him can have a reasonable assurance that he will make a profit by the commodities they intrust him with: and if it should happen otherwise, that he has a remaining substance sufficient to answer all demands. Such men will be trusted with near as much as they are worth and some times more, at the lowest price for the goods they buy, and the lowest interest for the money they borrow. So a nation may be said to be in good credit, when it has ample revenues, and is not incumbered with debts, or if that should be the case, has at hand effectual and equitable means to discharge them; when her public expenses do not exceed what can easily be raised without overburdening the people with taxes, or if they do exceed at any time, she is able to make abundant provision for them; and when the subjects have a reasonable assurance that the government is well able to fulfill punctually all her contracts with them. Hence it is easy to see that the credit of a state is to be kept up in the same way that private men maintain theirs, viz. by securing to itself the means of doing justice to particulars, and always doing it with the strictest honour; any chicane or appearance of disability will necessarily have the same effect here as among individuals. Indeed states are more concerned to keep up a good opinion of their integrity than private men; because those that trust them have only their honour and interest to depend upon for payment. —— Let us now-see whether Great Britain will be able punctually to fulfill her engagements with her subjects, if her intercourse with America be cut off; and but a very superficial view of the present state of the nation will be sufficient to determine this point. For it well known that their public debts are swelled to an enormous size; above one hundred and thirty millions have been borrowed to defray the expenses of the various wars they have been engaged in, for which their standing revenue has been insufficient. Of this prodigious sum but a small part has been occasioned by the defence[sic] of America. Almost every considerable branch of the revenue is appropriated to the discharge of the interest of the several loans, as it becomes annually due. The sinking fund, which is made of the surplusages[sic] that arise from those taxes and impositions that produce more than the sums charged on them, is expected to pay off the principal after a certain number of years. As the government has been able hitherto to perform punctually all its bargains with the subjects, because these branches of the revenue have produced money enough to answer all demands upon them, or if at any time they have happened to be deficient, it has been easy to provide for that deficiency, public credit has been unshaken; men of property have been ready to advance their money, whenever a vote of parliament has called for it, because they had a reasonable assurance that the interest voted would be regularly paid, and the principal be secure. Not it is plain that if the parliament becomes unable to fulfill its contracts with the subjects, all confidence in them must expire: but whenever those branches of the revenue are by any accident so lessened as to become not sufficient to pay the interest of the sums charged upon them, and no new ways of raising money occur, every one must see it will be impossible for them to fulfill their contracts any longer. Now this will infallibly be the event if they loose their trade to this continent. For the whole revenue will be affected, and many of its most considerable branches exceedingly reduced, yea entirely ruined.

Now some of the principal articles of the revenue that are mortgaged for the payment of the national debt are these, a poundage on goods exported and imported, that is, a subsidy of one shilling in the pound on all commodities imported into, or exported out of the kingdom, except some few articles allowed to be imported & exported duty free, the duty on candles, coals, and cinders, the malt tax, that on all spirituous liquors & the duty on tobacco. But if the exports out of the kingdom are lessened to the value of two or three millions (which will be the case if exportation to this continent cease) the aforesaid subsidy on goods exported must be lessened in proportion to that prodigious sum. So if above a million of the manufacturers of Great-Britain are turned out of employ, and reduced to the most distressing poverty (which I have shewn in my last will be a consequence of the loss of the American trade) the consumption of candles, coals, and cinders, malt, sprituous[sic] liquors, and tobacco will be prodigiously lessened, because a great part of the consumers will be unable to pay for them. But these duties produce more or less always in proportion to the encreased or diminished consumption of the articles mentioned. Hence they will soon prove insufficient for the payment of the sums charged upon them. Therefore the government will have no other way to fulfill its obligations to the subjects but by contriving new taxes to supply the deficiency so arising; but in so great and general a decay of trade that method will be plainly impracticable. The revenue then must prove unequal to the annual demands upon it; whenever this happens, the subjects must be deprived of what is justly due to them; the proprietors of the public funds will sell out as fast as possible, for every one will try to save himself as well as he can in the general ruin; this will occasion stocks to fall away suddenly to nothing. Transferable annuities with all the security the government can give will be little valued, and all confidence in parliamentary faith destroyed. But almost all the monied men in the nation are more or less interested in those funds, and many have lent their whole fortunes to the public, supposing the principal always secure, and that the interest would be punctually paid; the latter would be reduced to beggary, and every one of the former would be sufferers, as the nation is more or less deeply indebted to them. Such an event as this must involve the government in the utmost confusion and distraction; all orders of men would be affected, and a kind of universal bankruptcy ensue. It is not possible to conceive the rage and indignation that would boil in every breast. To see multitudes of families by their confidence in the public faith tumbled in an instant from affluence and splendor to the lowest depths of penury and distress, while all are feeling the effects of the general ruin, will inflame even unprejudiced spectators against the government that betrayed them; much more than the unhappy sufferers. In short it appears to me highly probable that such a catastrophe would be very near unhinging the constitution itself, and reducing them to as chaotic a state, as the earth was at first, when it was without form and void, and darkness covered the face of the deep.

It would exceed the limits of this paper, to paint all the consequences of a loss of the public credit; it is plain they would be terrible and lasting. If parliamentary faith is once violated, it will be the work of ages to recover the lost confidence of the subject; none will be willing to advance their money on securities given by the government, through the necessity that calls for it be ever so urgent, unless such an enormous interest is allowed, as will attone[sic] for the risk they run. Great-Britain, unless she is perfectly infatuated, will certainly take a special care to maintain her public credit; but it is obvious from the deduction given above, that this cannot be done without preserving her trade to America. In a very few years such growing deficiencies in the revenue must arise, if our intercourse with her is stopped, as will highly perplex the Ministry and Parliament, distress many individuals, and raise a general alarm throughout the nation. Multitudes will see that it is impossible for them to live without us, and whatever besotted orders may have been given respecting the seizure of our ships, they will be forced, in spite of their utmost resolution, to recall them; or if a fit of madness should size the bulk of the nation, so that they determine to put all to the risque rather than not compel us to submit, we may rest assured that their public credit cannot long survive such a determination, but if that once fails, Great-Britain will not be in a condition to attempt any thing very formidable against us. We have therefore all the assurance, that the nature of the thing admits, that if we are but unanimous, steadily refuse the stamps, transact all business as usual without them, cultivate a spirit of frugality and industry, and persist in the noble resolution of declining all commerce with our mother country, we shall in a few years at farthest compleat[sic] our deliverance from the present meditated scheme of oppression, and effectually establish our liberties for the future.

PHILELEUTHERUS.

Without any mention in the issue, the 1775 April 6 edition of Isaiah Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy — featuring the famous serpent “Join or Die” cartoon in the name plate — was his last from Boston.  As the colophon states, it was printed at the “South-Corner of MARSHALL’s-LANE, leading from the MILL-BRIDGE into UNION STREET,” Boston.

In the colophon, Thomas also boasted having “the greatest CIRCULATION of any in New-England.”  While the average subscriber base of New England newspapers was closer to 600 in 1775, the Patriot Boston Gazette and Massachusetts Spy saw their numbers skyrocket during the Revolutionary crisis. The Spy claimed one of the largest circulations in colonial America with 3500.

On the eve of war, 10 days after his last Boston issue, Thomas moved his presses a safe distance from Boston — 42 miles west to the country town of Worcester.

During his rush of packing and moving, Thomas apparently only had time and funds to order two advertisements in other Boston newspapers.  The first ran in the 1775 April 10 issue of the Boston Post-Boy.  The second published a day after Thomas’s actual move date, 1775 April 17, in the Boston Evening-Post.  The second ad, pictured below, “begs the continuance of the favors of his good Customers.”

Unfortunately, Thomas’s begging didn’t work.  By 1780, the circulation of the Massachusetts Spy sank to between 300 and 500, a total circulation loss of about 90 percent in five years. Click here for more details and sources of 18th century newspaper circulations.

Thomas’s advertisement in the Evening-Post also claimed the move from Boston to Worcester was temporary. “As soon as the tranquility of this unfortunate Capital is restored, he intends returning to this Place and serving them as usual.”   That never happened.

According to the American Antiquarian Society, which Thomas founded in 1812, “after the war, Thomas continued to live and work in Worcester. In partnership with former apprentices, he owned several printing offices and bookstores, as well as paper mills and a bindery, employing over one hundred and fifty people. Thomas published newspapers, broadsides, sheet music, periodicals, pamphlets, and a yearly almanac. He produced over four hundred book titles for both adult and juvenile readers, including the first dictionary printed in America and the first American edition of Mother Goose’s Melody (1786). Thomas was Worcester’s postmaster from 1775 to 1801. He joined the Order of Freemasons in Worcester in 1793 and became Grand Master of Massachusetts in 1802. In that year, at the age of fifty-three, Thomas retired to pursue his interests in the history of the young nation and in the origins of printing.”

***Speaking of revolutionary printing, a colonial-era print shop will be opening April 15, 2011, on Boston’s historic Freedom Trail. Rag Linen is honored to have a seat on the new shop’s executive board. For more details about the Printing Office of Edes & Gill, visit bostongazette.org (we also designed their website).

The below advertisement was published in the bottom right-hand corner, page three, of the 1775 April 17 issue of the Boston Evening-Post, which turned out to be its second to last issue.  Published by Thomas and John Fleet, the Evening-Post concluded its run on April 24, 1775, with this passage: “The unlucky transactions of the last week are so variously related, that we shall not at present undertake to give any particular account thereof.  The Printers of the Boston Evening Post hereby inform the Town that they shall desist publishing the papers after this day, till matters are in a more settled state.”

Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party and the Making of America, by Benjamin L. Carp, is hot off the presses and available for sale today at your local book store or from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Powell’s and Yale University Press. Some online book stores still show a publish date as October 25, but the publisher shipped early so the book should be ready any moment.

I’ve only read the first four chapters (of 10) so far, but I already place Defiance of the Patriots safely among my favorite history books. In fact, it may be top 10 material. J.L. Bell of Boston 1775 puts it best: “For folks interested in the real story of the Tea Party, Defiance of the Patriots is the most thorough and wide-ranging account out there.”

I first heard about Defiance of the Patriots back in April. I had just shared, via Rag Linen, a 1774 newspaper report on the unexpected consequences of the Boston Tea Party. Not long after sharing the historic report, I learned, via Twitter, from J.L. Bell, that the 1774 news item confirms the thesis of Benjamin Carp’s upcoming book. Specifically, that pressure to look good to other ports made Bostonians act radical.

Excited for the new book and its in-depth analysis of the Boston Tea Party, especially after reading this Tufts Journal piece, I contacted Benjamin and invited him to contribute a short piece for the readers of Rag Linen. Benjamin was very kind to accept my offer and has even shared some excerpts from his book, which are appropriately themed. Without further ado…

In 1773, newspapers were the colonists’ primary means of communicating and influencing public opinion. Parliament had passed the Tea Act, and Bostonians were mobilizing against what they regarded as an unjust law. This political movement had two crucial ingredients: communication between Boston and its neighboring towns (who helped comprise the “Body of the People” meetings at the Old South Meeting House), and communication between Boston and the other cities that were receiving tea shipments from the East India Company: New York City, Philadelphia, and Charleston. Neighboring towns and sister cities helped to spread the reasons for resistance and build an atmosphere of mutual reassurance. Newspapers also helped to draw boundaries within the community by publishing threats to the consignees—the merchants who were designated to receive the tea shipments from the East India Company. The consignees and their supporters tried to give as good as they got in the newspapers, but they failed to sway public opinion.

Here are two excerpts from the book that help to illustrate the significance of newspapers. The first, from page 84, describes Bostonians’ reaction to news of the Tea Act, and the newspaper squabbles that followed.

The consignees . . . had no desire to turn down the lucrative Company contract. Richard Clarke took to the newspapers, as “Z.,” to argue that the Tea Act wasn’t such a bad thing. By eliminating the middleman, the new law would make tea cheaper. He was confused about why the Tea Act suddenly caused Bostonians to yelp about the Townshend duty, since the people of Massachusetts had been importing plenty of dutied tea over the last few years. For that matter, Americans silently paid much more to Parliament in duties on wine, sugar, and molasses—why complain about tea? . . . Finally, Clarke argued, the East India Company could prove to be an ally in the fight for charter rights, and might help Americans get the tea duty removed—so long as the colonists didn’t try to ruin the Company’s sales with “unsuitable Behaviour.”

But these arguments failed to sway public opinion in Boston, where the public was forming ranks alongside the Sons of Liberty.

Instead, the consignees began to hear warnings about what would happen to them if they defied their neighbors. On November 1, the Boston Gazette reprinted a letter from “PHILELEUTHEROS” (Greek for “freedom lover”). “Secure yourselves,” this New York writer warned, “from the gathering storm, before it . . . overwhelms you with a sudden, dreadful, and sure destruction.” If the consignees persisted in injuring their country by importing tea, they would not be safe no matter how many troops and fortified walls might surround them. “You cannot readily become your own cooks, butchers, butlers, nor bakers: You will therefore be liable, to be suddenly, and unexpectedly taken off, in the midst of your confidence and supposed security, by those whom you may chance to confide in, and employ. ”The author called upon a local Brutus or Cassius “to sheath their daggers in the hearts of such base, such abandoned and infamous Parricides.” If the consignees hoped to profit from their treason, the author warned, the triumph would be short-lived. Guilt, hatred, and infamy would be their lot for generations to come. The choice was now the consignees’ to make. Threats to their safety lurked around every corner. The consignees would have to watch their backs.

This second passage, from page 139, describes the aftermath of the Boston Tea Party.

The tide swelled into Boston harbor overnight. There was no moonlight to mark the tea’s passage as it slipped away on the churning waves. Eventually the broken chests and clumps of tea formed a floating line, like a winrow of hay, along the surface of the water. The line ran from the South End of Boston along the Dorchester shore to Castle Island, almost as a taunt to the consignees and commissioners. “Those persons who were from the country returned with a merry heart; and the next day joy appeared in almost every countenance, some on occasion of the destruction of the tea, others on account of the quietness with which it was effected.”

Of course, not every countenance was joyful. Admiral John Montagu had been forced to watch the destruction of the tea without being able to lift a finger in response. On the morning after the Tea Party, he took a stroll on the wharf and looked with astonishment at the scene of devastation. He asked some of the Bostonians, “who was to pay the fidler” now? Perhaps they answered with a sudden fear and foreboding, perhaps with a jeering smugness. “The Devil is in this people,” Montagu concluded, “for they pay no more respect to an act of the British Parliament, which can make England tremble, than to an old newspaper.” He then stalked off the wharf.

According to The Development of the Colonial Newspaper by Sidney Kobre (1960) colonial news came from the following sources:

1 // Private letters, containing matters of general interest, sent to residents or to the publisher
2 // Ship captains and sailors at the dock or tavern
3 // Merchants receiving or sending goods
4 // Travelers on sea or land who had some news to tell
5 // Soldiers fighting in wars who returned with information or sent letters
6 // Postcarriers who picked up items on their route
7 // News which came to the governor from governors or from officials in other colonies or from the King
8 // Official news of the colony secured from the governor and (later) the assembly
9 // Postmasters or friends in other colonial towns, who acted as volunteer or unpaid correspondents
10 // Later: Colonial newspapers, when they were established in Philadelphia, New York, Annapolis, Williamsburg, etc., furnished news of their communities

To help launch his colonial Philadelphia newspaper, John Dunlap turned to his brethren printers in Boston to publish “proposals for printing by subscription, a weekly news-paper, entitled The Pennsylvania Packet, And General Advertiser.”  The inaugural issue of Dunlap’s newspaper was printed printed on October 28.

Dunlap was the printer of the first copies of the Declaration of Independence although his Packet was second to print the full text of the Declaration (July 8, 1776) after The Pennsylvania Evening Post (July 6, 1776).  The Pennsylvania Packet eventually became the first daily newspaper in America with its September 21, 1784 issue.

Below is the full text of Dunlap’s colonial newspaper launch announcement, as published in the October 21, 1771 issue of The Massachusetts Spy. Click to enlarge.

Supplementing his weekly Massachusetts Spy newspaper, perhaps to satisfy a demand for more hard-hitting anti-British essays and illustrations, Isaiah Thomas printed the first issue of Royal American Magazine in January 1774.  The magazine was published every month until the eve of the Revolutionary War and featured Paul Revere and John Hancock among its many contributors.

“Besides the usual variety of general literature, this work contains a faithful summary of the public transactions of Boston during that eventful year, and great value is added to the work by the public documents preserved in its pages,” according to Samuel Burnside, Memoir of Isaiah Thomas, Transactions and Collections of the American Antiquarian Society.

Below is an early — possibly the earliest — advertisement for the premier issue of Royal American Magazine, as published in Thomas’ Massachusetts Spy on October 14, 1773.

Despite the abundance of lumber in 18th century America, the technological and chemical combination for making wood pulp paper wasn’t discovered until the mid-19th century.  During the 18th century and first two-thirds of the 19th century, American newspapers were printed on paper made from linen rags.  Pictured below are 10 American newspapers dated between 1750 and 1796, each printed on rag linen paper.  Notice each paper’s distinct characteristics — shape, size, color, texture, etc.

According to J.L. Bell’s Boston 1775 blog, colonial “printers collected [rag linen] to give to their paper-makers so they could eventually have more paper to print on. Particularly during the war, when imports from Britain were scant, newspapers contained a lot of advertisements asking homemakers to bring in scraps of linen for recycling.”

Colonial printers were more likely to print newspapers and pamphlets on American-made paper while importing higher-quality English or Dutch paper for their most important jobs (i.e., book printing and perhaps the most newsworthy items).  According to The Colonial Printer by Lawrence C. Wroth:

It must be understood that the paper made in colonial America, especially in the early days, was not the finest in quality. The word “handmade” has a connotation in these days that dazzles the intelligence even of persons ordinarily unimpressed by shibboleths. The American paper of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, handmade, of course, from rags, was an honest paper, tough and durable in general, but as variable in quality as one would expect from indifferent materials handled by provincial workmen in rude manufactories.

The variance in quality didn’t dilute its durability.  Thanks to the strength and sturdiness of “homemade” rag linen paper, the first drafts of colonial America’s most historical events are often well preserved in printed form. It’s these historic accounts, printed on the pages of newspapers, that come to life in the Rag Linen blog.

William Caslon I (1692-1766) was an English gunsmith and typographer. His typefaces, particularly his roman typeface that eventually took his own name, was an instant success. Historians have said that Caslon gave England a national typeface. By the mid 18th century, printers all across Europe and the American colonies were using the Caslon typeface to print books, newspapers and pamphlets.  A Caslon typeface was even used to print the original Declaration of Independence. Shown above is one example of a Caslon typeface, fashioned after the original, by the International Typeface Corporation, which is available for purchase.

Before Caslon, most English books and newspapers were printed using Dutch-made fonts. According to A Concise History of the Origin and Progress of Printing (Philip Luckombe, 1770), “It may be observed that it was owing to the ingenuity and care of more than one Dutch founder, and the stupidity and carelessness of our own, that the preference, till of late years, was given to Dutch letter; but it has now entirely lost its former credit by the influence and conspicuous superiority of the laborious productions of the late ingenious Mr. W. Caslon, and his son, now his successor.”

For more information on colonial printing practices, check out The Colonial Printer by Lawrence Wroth. This book was recommended to me by Gary Gregory, founder of Lessons on Liberty and a leading authority on 18th century printing. If you’re visiting Boston soon and want a walking tour with a focus on colonial newspaper printing, check out Ben Edwards of Walking Boston.

The Print Shop at Colonial Williamsburg

Colonial newspapers are unsung heroes of the American Revolution and the Revolutionary War. Specifically, several newspapermen and women deserve recognition for their role in America’s founding, including:

• Benjamin Edes and John Gill, Boston Gazette
• Isaiah Thomas, Massachusetts Spy
• William Goddard, Pennsylvania Chronicle
• Peter Timothy, South Carolina Gazette
• Thomas Green, Connecticut Courant
• John Holt, New York Journal
• Solomon Southwick, Newport Mercury
• William Gradford III, Pennsylvania Journal
• Mary Goddard, Maryland Journal
• Anne Catharine Green, Maryland Gazette
• James Rivington, Royal Gazette
• Paul Revere, engraver for colonial newspapers (e.g., Massachusetts Spy and Boston Gazette)

One author who recognizes the revolutionary role of newspapers, and their printers and journalists, is Eric Burns, author of Infamous Scribblers (2006).

Marrying the story-telling flair of McCullough with the journalism history acumen of Mott and Emery, Burns says that the Boston Gazette, arguably the most influential newspaper the country has ever known, got us into the Revolutionary War, sped up the course of the war and may have even determined the outcome of the war. And a good chunk of Infamous Scribblers is dedicated to supporting this thesis.

As Burns admits, “Perhaps the importance of the press to the outcome of the war can be exaggerated, but not easily and not by much. It was newspapers that kept the colonies informed of the progress of the fighting in a way that letters and patterers could not have done, and in the process united the colonies in a way that was beyond the ability of the jerry-built wartime government.”

Burns points out that newspapers were the only form of media at the time and served as the great unifier of our nation during a time when America “needed unity as much as we needed ammunition.”

Below are a few other highlights from Infamous Scribblers:

On reporting and publishing during the Revolutionary War: “The Revolutionary War was not an easy one to cover. For one thing, once the fighting started there was more news than ever but no more shipments of ink or type or spare parts for the presses coming into American ports. There were no more shipments of paper either, and, as for the quantities still available or smuggled into the colonies from a friend in the motherland or a trader in another European nation, there were higher priorities for it than journalism.”

On a newspaper’s role in the Revolutionary War: “It was Franklin, though, who most succinctly and accurately assessed the role of the media in the days leading up to the war. It was he, astute as ever, who pointed out that the press not only can ’strike while the iron is hot,’ but it can ‘heat it by continually striking.’”

On an unlikely spy embedded as a printer: “Jemmy [James] Rivington’s Tory newspaper, the Royal Gazette, was extremely critical of George Washington. However, Rivington was also a spy who passed along secrets of the British navy to colonial leaders. On one occasion, Rivington helped break a British code that almost surely saved American lives during one of the war’s earlier battles.” Read the Rag Linen blog post on this topic.

Additional resources on the role and significance of colonial printers during the American Revolution:

• Prelude to Independence: The Newspaper War on Britain, 1764–1776 (Arthur Schlesinger, 1958)
• Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism (Eric Burns, 2006)
• Back Issues: The Day the Newspaper Died (Jill Lepore, 2009)
• Boston 1775: Edes and Gill (J. L. Bell, 2006-2010)
• Rag Linen Collections: The Stamp Act of 1765 and 1776

Below is the presentation Eric Burns gave at a book store in Washington, DC, which aired on C-SPAN.

At a town meeting on March 12, 1770 — one week after the Boston Massacre — James Bowdoin, Joseph Warren and Samuel Pemberton were appointed to a committee to prepare the Patriot account of the massacre.

According to John Doggett Jr.’s 1849 enhanced edition of the Patriot account, during that March 12 meeting a “report made by John Hancock, Samuel Adams, Joseph Warren, and others” was presented to the citizens of Boston.  “The whole presenting, it is believed, the most complete and authentic account which has been published of the massacre.”

This report by Hancock, Adams, Warren, et al. was also published in the March 13 to 20, 1770 issue of the Essex Gazette, printed in Salem, Massachusetts, about 18 miles north of Boston. To help commemorate this Friday’s 240th anniversary of the Boston Massacre, below are 24 images from that famous edition of the Essex Gazette.

Paul Revere’s engraving of Boston’s “Bloody Massacre” is one of his most well known works. As of this posting, more than 60 percent of the Google image results for “Paul Revere engraving” return his engraved depiction of the Boston Massacre.

A lesser known engraving by Revere is his patriotic response to the Stamp Act, titled “A View of the Year 1765“. An advertisement for Revere’s 1765 political cartoon was published in the January 27, 1766 issue of the Boston Gazette (see original ad below). Contextual background on this Revere engraving and the January 27, 1766 Boston Gazette can be found on page 48 and 49 of A True Republican: The Life of Paul Revere (Triber, 2001).

On September 25, 1690, the first issue of Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick hit the streets of Boston.  With that issue, Benjamin Harris published the first attempt at an American newspaper.

Harris intended for his newspaper to be printed monthly. It contained four pages — three with printed news and a blank one for readers to jot down personal reports before passing it along to family or friends. However, the first issue was printed without license and featured several eye-brow-raising reports, such as the King of France’s alleged affair with his daughter-in-law. The newspaper was immediately banned and all issues burned under the order of Governor Thomas Hinckley. No second edition was ever printed. In fact, the only original copy known to survive is held by the British Library, likely the issue sent back to the homeland by the Governor Hinckley. The issue’s three pages of printed news are shown above — click to enlarge.

With this one-issue-only asterisk next to its title in the history of journalism, Publick Occurrences is debated as the first American newspaper. Many historians give the title of first American newspaper or at least first successful American newspaper to the Boston News-Letter, which began publishing in 1704, almost 14 years after Benjamin Harris’s attempt. Check out the previous post to see a 1716 sample of the Boston News-Letter, when it was still the only newspaper being published in the colonies.

As a short digression, the reason for the 14-year gap partially falls on journalism trends and American reader interests during this time.  Copies of the popular London Gazette, which began publishing in 1665, were shipped across the Atlantic Ocean – usually taking four to eight weeks per voyage – to provide English and European residents in the New World with reports from their homelands. An intense hunger for news  from the motherland, satisfied by the thriving transatlantic readership of the London Gazette is, in part, the reason why we didn’t see the first successful newspaper printed on American soil until 1704.

Back to Benjamin Harris, whose career in publishing began in England during the 1670s. When strict press censorship under the Licensing of the Press Act of 1662 temporarily lapsed from 1679 to 1685, Benjamin Harris was quick to begin printing news. On July 7, 1679, Harris launched the twice-weekly Domestick Intelligence newspaper that, as the title suggested, focused on local topics. Below are two photos from the October 31, 1679 issue of Harris’s Domestick Intelligence. Not long after the revival of the act, in 1686, Harris moved to Boston to avoid severe punishment for his politically- and religiously-charged reporting. According to The Public Prints (Clark, 1994):

“The timing could not hardly have been accidental. For violating the revived act, in fact, he had been pilloried and imprisoned just before coming to Boston in 1686. Prior to that, as an associate of Titus Oates, the vehement anti-Catholic publicist, and opponent of the accession of James, he had been prosecuted under common-law seditious libel proceedings during the earlier hiatus in the act. In Boston, he set up shop as a publisher, opened the London Coffee House, and engaged the printers of the town to print books and an almanac.”

The London Coffee House was a public place for people to read foreign newspapers (i.e., London Gazette) and books.  After Harris’s unsuccessful attempt at publishing an American newspaper in 1690, he continued to run the coffeehouse until 1695 when he packed his bags and moved back to London.  According to Clark:

“Boston printers, however, continued to produce broadsides, presumably with governmental sanction, that occasionally reported public events by printing excerpts from the London newspapers. In addition, the postmaster of Boston, a Scottish bookseller named Duncan Campbell, began exchanging news of Europe and the colonies with correspondents elsewhere in America. Thus the familiar devise of the hand-written newsletter took its place in the American communications chain in the 1690s.”

Duncan Campbell’s son John succeeded him as postmaster in 1702 and soon transitioned the handwritten newsletters into the printed and appropriately titled Boston News-Letter, the first successful newspaper in the colonies.

For more history on the first newspapers, check out our Beginning of Newspapers collection.