Rag Linen | Online Museum of Historic Newspapers

Last week, J.L. Bell wrote on  his Boston 1775 blog about Gen. George Washington’s arrival in Cambridge to take command of the Continental Army. Washington was accompanied by Gen. Charles Lee, an experienced British officer who was bitter about not being appointed Commander in Chief and, according to Wikipedia, had nothing but the utmost disdain for Washington. The Boston 1775 blog post references a letter in which Lee wrote: “We arrived here on Sunday before dinner. We found every thing exactly the reverse of what had been represented.”

Lee’s privately-shared frustration with the actual state of the army may have also been publicly evident from his short one-paragraph response to his welcome address.  By comparison, Washington wrote a three-paragraph response. Certainly, this may be an analytical stretch, but it’s interesting to read Lee’s private critical assessment and compare it to his public response, as published in the June 29 to July 6, 1775 New England Chronicle. This newspaper was printed from Stoughton Hall at Harvard College in Cambridge, making it the likely first report of Washington’s July 3rd arrival.

Washington’s response, printed in the same issue, is straight forward and sympathetic to the circumstances under which the army was formed.  As J.L. Bell comments, the army was still reeling from the Battle of Bunker Hill.  In the second paragraph of his response, Washington states:

“The short space of time which has elapsed since my arrival does not permit me to decide upon the state of the army. The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such circumstances, should at once possess the order, regularity and discipline of veterans — Whatever deficiencies there may be, will I doubt not, soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the men. These qualities united with their native bravery and spirit will afford a happy presage of success, and put a final period to those distresses which now overwhelm this once happy country.”

Click the detail image above or this link to read the entire page from the July 6, 1775 New England Chronicle that features the welcome addresses and responses from Washington and Lee upon their arrival at Cambridge.

President Abraham Lincoln was shot at 9:30 p.m. on Friday, April 14, 1865, at Ford’s Theater. He was moved to a house across the street where he died at 7:22 a.m. on Saturday, April 15. The news bulletins through 2 a.m. reached the New York Herald by telegraph in time to make its first edition, making it the first national report.

Interestingly, the news is still so fresh in the first edition of the April 15 New York Herald that there is still doubt about the assassin. One dispatch describes “the person who fired the pistol” as a “man about thirty years of age, about five feet nine, spare built, fair skin, dark hair, apparently bushy, with a large mustache.”

The very next sentence, however, quotes a witness who identified the shooter. “Laura Keene and the leader of the orchestra declare that they recognized him as J. Wilkes Booth the actor, and a rabid secessionist. Whoever he was, it is plainly evident that he thoroughly understood the theatre and all the approaches and modes of escape to the stage.”

An interior report isn’t so quick to name Booth — “The assassin had not been arrested up to the hour of our latest despatches. Who he is is not positively known, though suspicion points strongly to a certain individual.”

Perhaps the most bloodcurdling report from the Herald’s first edition was the news of Lincoln’s brain oozing out of the bullet hole in his head.

Historic newspapers are the first drafts of history.  And this fist edition — known as the 2 a.m. edition — of the April 15, 1865 New York Herald is certainly the first draft of a major event, printed just hours after Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theater.

As published in the December 26, 1803 issue of the Independent Chronicle (Boston).

The Rag Linen 1776 collection begins with important news from Parliament in London at the end of 1775 and concludes with Washington’s victory letter from his headquarters just outside Trenton on December 26, 1776. Between, we make stops to read period reports of the Fortification of Dorchester Heights, the Siege of Quebec, the Declaration of Independence, the pulling down of the equestrian statue of King George III in New York City, the Battle of Long Island and the Articles of Confederation. According to the synopsis for David McCullough’s 1776 book, “The darkest hours of that tumultuous year were as dark as any Americans have known. Especially in our own tumultuous time, 1776 is powerful testimony to how much is owed to a rare few in that brave founding epoch, and what a miracle it was that things turned out as they did.”

New with this collection is a supplemental video to help set the tone and importance of the pieces included in the 1776 collection. Enjoy.

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died only hours apart on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence.  One of the best newspaper reports covering their deaths was the July 15, 1826 Niles’ Weekly Register, which also included biographical backgrounds and respects for each.  Here are the first few pages from that issue:

Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is easily one the most famous speeches in American history. For collectors of historic newspapers, the speech is one of the most difficult to find printed in an 1863 paper.

According to Wikipedia, “despite the speech’s prominent place in the history and popular culture of the United States, the exact wording of the speech is disputed. The five known manuscripts of the Gettysburg Address differ in a number of details and also differ from contemporary newspaper reprints of the speech.”

Considering the disputed wording, one would consider contemporary newspaper printings of Lincoln’s speech — similar to the manuscript versions — highly desirable. Rag Linen is fortunate to have one such printing in its collection.

Exactly one week after the dedication of the Soldier’s National Cemetery in Gettysburg, and almost five months after the great battle, the November 26, 1863 Boston Weekly Journal printed Lincoln’s famous words. The issue’s back page is almost entirely reserved for complete printings of Edward Everett’s two-hour oration and Lincoln’s two-minute address. Having the Everett speech in a Boston newspaper is special because he had served as president of Harvard University, Governor of Massachusetts, and U.S. Senator and U.S. Representative for Massachusetts.

Below are images from the back page of the Boston Weekly Journal, including the headlines, introduction and the full printing of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. As you can see, the newspaper indicates that the speech was interrupted five times by applause, including one “long continued applause” followed by “three cheers” at its conclusion.

The Declaration of Independence (1776), the Treaty of Paris (1783), the Constitution of the United States (1787), the Bill of Rights (1791) — all of these are widely recognized for being among the most important documents in American history. Another milestone document was President George Washington’s Farewell Address (1796), in which Washington declared he would not seek reelection for a third term.

“The period for a new election of a citizen to administer the executive government of the United States being not far distant, and the time actually arrived when your thoughts must be employed in designating the person who is to be clothed with that important trust, it appears to me proper, especially as it may conduce to a more distinct expression of the public voice, that I should now apprise you of the resolution I have formed, to decline being considered among the number of those out of whom a choice is to be made.”

Aside from helping to define the term limit for the President of the United States by voluntarily surrendering the office after two terms, it also served as the foundation for American non-interventionism.

“It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.”

Washington’s Farewell Address to the People of the United States was originally published in the American Daily Advertiser (Philadelphia, then Capital of the United States) on September 19, 1796. Below are images from the full printing that appeared on September 21, 1796, in The Herald: A Gazette for the Country (New York). Links to additional background and transcripts are also provided below.

• Primary Documents in American History: George Washington’s Farewell Address
  (Library of Congress)
• 100 Milestone Documents: President George Washington’s Farewell Address
  (Our Documents)

A Googling of “John Hanson” reveals some controversy over whether he should be considered the first President of the United States, the third or just President of the Continental Congress (leaving the POTUS title for GW).

The fact is that John Hanson was indeed the first President of the Continental Congress elected under the terms of the Articles of Confederation, which were officially ratified by all 13 colonies on March 1, 1781.  The Articles of Confederation called for Congress “to meet on the first Monday in November, in every year,” (Article V), and gave Congress the authority “to appoint one of their members to preside, provided that no person be allowed to serve in the office of president more than one year” (Article IX).  Under these ratified Articles — the first constitution of the United States of America — John Hanson was elected on November 5, 1781.

Here is the brief but important report from the November 7, 1781 Freeman’s Journal (Philadelphia) announcing the election of what some historians recognize as the first President of the United States. To those who call Hanson the first, this is arguably the most important presidential report in newspaper history. Only the Pennsylvania Packet scooped this report with its own on November 6, 1781.

In an odd but Hanson-related note, the May 10, 1783 Newport Mercury (Newport, Rhode Island) published a report on page two clarifying the rumored death of John Hanson.  See below.