In 1854, Rufus Wilmot Griswold first published The Republican Court; or American Society in the Days of Washington, which was the first time a source suggested Washington finished his oath with “So help me God.” As Boston 1775 asks, “Did it really take two-thirds of a century for a significant detail of a well-attended public ceremony to be described in print?”

What is perhaps more interesting is the fact that Griswold only used one eyewitness source in his entire focus on Washington’s inauguration.  That firsthand account was a letter from an unidentified person. The same extract of the letter first appeared in the May 13, 1789 issue of The Gazette of the United States.  Read Griswold’s only eyewitness source below. “One of the most august and interesting spectacle ever exhibited on this globe.”

“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.

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).

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 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)

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.