“From the vantage point of the twentieth century, journalism historians look back on the period between 1789 and 1808 as the ‘dark ages’ of the American newspaper.” This great line leads the third chapter — titled Weapons in the Great Debate — of John Tebbel’s Compact History of the American Newspaper.

“The golden age of America’s founding was the gutter age of American politics,” said Eric Burns, author of Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism, during a C-SPAN presentation on his book.  According to Burns, when Franklin, Washington, Jefferson and Adams were creating this country, journalism was more vile than ever before or ever since.

Tebbel and Burns are primarily referring to The Gazette of the United States and the National Gazette, which were the 18th century equivalent of MSNBC and FOX NEWS. The Aurora General Advertiser, Porcupine’s Gazette and New York Evening Post are three other titles often included in the dark ages.

The Gazette of the United States, edited by John Fenno, supported the Federalist party, which wanted a big, central government and weak states. Alexander Hamilton was the party’s symbolic figurehead. National Gazette, edited by Philip Freneau, represented the Republicans, who wanted more state power and weak central government. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson were the Republican’s symbolic figureheads.

According to Burns, Hamilton and Jefferson both used government money — funds from the State Department — to launch their respective Gazettes, which provided as much competitive back-and-forth entertainment as an Agassi-Sampras tennis match. For examples of the barb exchanges watch chapter 14 of Burns’ C-SPAN presentation (starts at 29:52).

As you’ll learn from Burns, Thomas Jefferson had a very devious side to him.  “Jefferson would leave the door to the state dept unlocked at night on occasion and he would leave documents on the desk which, if taken out of context or willfully misinterpreted, could make the Washington administration look bad. Phillip Fernau was the editor of the National Gazette, Jefferson’s paper, and he’s the one who would sneak into the office late at night, copy down these documents and publish articles about them in the National Gazette a few days later.”  Jefferson lied to George Washington on at least one occasion when Washington asked Jefferson if he knew anything about how the National Gazette was obtaining its information.

UPDATE: Via Twitter, @woodpainter asked us to provide a source for Hamilton and Jefferson using State Department money to found their respective Gazettes.  Below are the specific sources, time logs and page numbers with excerpts:

According to Burns’ C-SPAN presentation about Infamous Scribblers (starting at 27:14):

Hamilton appropriated or, if you will, misappropriated government money to start a newspaper. He didn’t think he was doing anything wrong. He took funds from the State Department and created a newspaper called The Gazette of the United States. And he thought that was just fine because he was using government money to promote government positions… Jefferson, however, took State Department money and used it to fund a paper which savaged the government of which Jefferson was one of the main decision makers.

Beyond that, on page 267-8 of Infamous Scribblers, Burns writes:

But it was Hamilton who made [Fenno's newspaper] possible, Hamilton who raised the money to get the Gazette started… He saw to it that all of the Treasury Department’s advertising went to the Gazette of the United States and encouraged friends and firms that did business with various governmental agencies to put their own ads in the paper, the implication being that Hamilton would consider such transactions a favor and that favors were more often than not returned… In addition, Hamilton arranged for Fenno to get as many of Treasury’s printing contracts as possible… In fact, as Ron Chernow points out, Fenno ‘was even listed in the 1791 Philadelphia directory as an officer of the U.S. government.’ Such a relationship between journalism and government could not exist today, not openly at least, and would be scandalous if revealed.

Burns quotes the July 25, 1792 issue of the Gazette of the United States on page 282 of Infamous Scribblers and continues onto pages 283-4:

‘The editor of the National Gazette receives a salary from the government,’ readers are informed in a back-page letter, which then asks how such a publication can be trusted… But was Hamilton not guilty of the same thing? Was he not in fact as much a hypocrite as Jefferson, pursuing his own political ends at the expense of taxpayers… The Gazette of the United States was using government money to support government positions, Hamilton explained, and he believed that to be a perfectly legitimate expense… As late as 1796, Hamilton was still writing in the Gazette of the United States about Jefferson’s having ‘conferred a sinecure office in [the State] department… on Mr. Freneau to induce him to remove to Philadelphia, and set up a newspaper at the seat of the government called the National Gazette.

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.

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.

Throughout Europe during the 1500s, experiments were made in printed news, such as illustrated news broadsides that appealed to a mostly illiterate population. Frans Hogenberg was the first to successfully build a career in illustrated journalism.

According to the Hollstein Studies in Prints and Printmaking, Frans Hogenberg moved from England to Cologne in 1570 and founded a publishing house. With a large staff, Hogenberg’s scope of work moved beyond maps, cityscapes and portraits.

Starting in 1570, Hogenberg began work on broadsheets illustrating historic political and military events that took place in Europe during the 16th century.

Knowing that Hogenberg’s illustrated journalism career began in 1570, only his engravings of events dated after 1570 can truly be considered news broadsides because they were published in a timely manner, often only weeks after the event occurred. His pre-1570 work is more accurately labeled historical broadsides.

Shown above are four examples of Hogenberg broadsides (click the photo to enlarge).

Upper left: The knights tournament at which Gabriel, Comte de Montgomery, mortally wounds King Henri II by his lance. Dated June 30, 1559.

Upper right: The beheading of Philip de Montmorency, Count of Horn, in the main square at Brussels, which signified the start of hostilities in the Eighty Years’ War. Dated June 4, 1568.

Lower left: The military coup in Brussels that began the process of that ended the Pacification of Ghent. Dated September 5, 1576.

Lower right: The Sack of Antwerp, known as the Spanish Fury, during the Eighty Years’ War. The Spanish Fury was “one of the most notable deeds of blood upon record — [7000] human beings butchered and houses burned — how the city was plundered,” as reported 300 years later in the November 25, 1876 issue of the New York Times. Dated November 4, 1576 with contemporary hand coloring.

Since Hogenberg’s career in illustrated journalism began in 1570, the top two examples are more accurately considered historical broadsides while the bottom two were engraved weeks after the actual events and therefore safe to call illustrated news broadsides.

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.

According to The Stamp-Collector’s Magazine, published in 1871:

“In the year 1712, Queen Anne sent a message to the House of Commons, complaining of the publication of seditious papers and factious rumours… On the 12th of February in that year, a committee of the whole House was appointed, to consider the best means for stopping the then existing abuse of the liberty of the press. The evil referred to had existence in the political pamphlets of the period. A tax upon the press was suggested as the best means of remedying the evil; and for the purpose of avoiding a storm of opposition, the impact was tacked on to a bill for taxing soaps, parchment, linens, silks, calicoes, etc. The result of the tax was the discontinuance of many of the favourite papers of the period, and the amalgamation of others into one publication… The stamp was red, and the design consisted of the rose, shamrock and thistle, surmounted with a crown. In the Spectator of June 10, 1712, Addison makes reference to this subject, and predicts great mortality among “our weekly historians.”