Rag Linen | Online Museum of Historic Newspapers

According to a November 1, 1773 letter from an officer in New York to his friend in London, seven weeks before the Boston Tea Party, :

All America is in a flame on account of Tea-Exportation. The New-Yorkers as well as the Bostonians and Philadelphians, are, it seems, determined that no Tea shall be landed. They have published a paper in numbers called the Alarm. It begins first with “Dear Countrymen,” and then goes on exhorting them to open their eyes, and like the Sons of Liberty throw off all connection with the tyrant their Mother Country. They have on this occasion raised a company of artillery, and every day almost are practicing at a target. Their independent companies are out at exercise every day. The minds of the lower people are inflamed by the examples of some of their principals. They swear that they will burn every ship that comes in; but I believe our six and twelve pounders, with the Royal Welsh Fuziliers, will prevent any thing of that kind.

The Alarm being referenced was a broadside authored by John Dickinson in which urged “Beware of the East-India Company.”

The exact excerpt from above, as published in the April 18, 1774 Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet, under the dateline London, January 25, appears below. Following are two more interesting letter extracts from the same newspaper that present excellent perspective and insight into the colonial (not just Boston) tension percolating in late 1773 and early 1774.

Also read Boston 1775’s “Boston Mobilizes Against the Tea“.

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.

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)

The Culper Spy Ring was a professional network of 20 spies managed by Benjamin Tallmadge of the 2nd Connecticut Light Dragoons under orders of General George Washington. The Culper Ring’s mission, according to Wikipedia: Infiltrate British-controlled New York City and report troop dispositions and intentions, and conduct covert operations throughout the American Revolutionary War.

As P.K. Rose points out in The Founding Fathers of American Intelligence, the Culper Spy Ring was the most professional of Washington’s agent networks. However, beyond the Culper Ring, “Washington had numerous other agents reporting on enemy activities in New York City. Among them [was] James Rivington, a prominent Tory newspaper publisher.”

“Jemmy 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,” according to Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism (Eric Burns, 2006).

Wikipedia states: “[Rivington] published one of the most famous Loyalist newspapers in the American colonies, while secretly supplying George Washington with information… Rivington, who opened a coffee-shop adjacent to his printing-house, would have been the last New Yorker suspected of playing the part of a spy for the Continentals, but he furnished Washington with important information. His communications were written on thin paper, bound in the covers of books, and conveyed to the American camp by agents that were ignorant of their service. The date of Rivington’s secret change of heart is disputed, but when New York was evacuated in November 1783, Rivington remained in the city, much to the general surprise. Removing the royal arms from his masthead, changed its title to Rivington’s New York Gazette and Universal Advertiser. But his business rapidly declined, his paper ceased to exist at the end of 1783.”

Pictured below is a rare 1783 issue of the Royal Gazette, printed by James Rivington, patriot spy.

Here’s an odd and humorous discovery from the April 7, 1755 issue of the New York Gazette, printed by James Parker. Enjoy.