USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Metropolitan Boston; a modern history; Volume II > Part 19
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The "Herald of Freedom" is remembered chiefly for the reason that it was the defendant in the first libel suit tried after the Revolution in Massachusetts. An article "From a Correspondent" appeared in Febru- ary, 1790, containing a severe attack on the private character of John Gardiner, a member of the Legislature. Freeman was arraigned under
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an indictment charging libel, and the trial, which took place in February, 1791, attracted wide notice. Attorney-General James Sullivan recog- nized the importance of discriminating between "liberty of the press" and "licentiousness of the press," but he maintained that the Common Law doctrine of libel had not been altered by Article 16 of the Constitution of 1780. No less a personage than Harrison Gray Otis served as counsel for the accused editor. The verdict was "not guilty."
It should be noticed, however, that, as has already been intimated, the press went so far in the abuse of the liberty it claimed for itself at the end of the eighteenth century and the opening of the nineteenth as to forfeit the backing of a large part of the public on whose goodwill its prosperity depended. Political intolerance produced coarse and slanderous person- alities in almost every issue of every paper. It was because John Adams became convinced that the "licentiousness" of the press must be curbed that he signed the Sedition Act of 1798.
For convenience we may consider at this point the story of the "New England Galaxy & Masonic Magazine," established as a weekly on Octo- ber 10, 1817, by Joseph T. Buckingham, the Masonic department being conducted for several months by Samuel L. Knapp. Buckingham, born in Connecticut, worked in Boston as a printer for several years, and then became a founder of magazines and an editor of newspapers, the most important of which was the "Boston Courier," of which we shall have more to say further on. He left the "Galaxy" in 1828. In the following decade the paper had a new publisher or editor almost every year, and took over several small publications. William Warland Clapp, of the "Evening Gazette," acquired it in 1838 and it remained in the Clapp family for many years, conducted as "a family newspaper, devoted to news, commerce, agriculture, manufactures, religion, literature, arts and sciences."
Buckingham, whose "Memoirs" and other writings are a useful source of information respecting the press of his time, made the "Galaxy" both hated and feared. He violated the ordinary rules of decorum without compunction-and everybody read his paper. When James Gordon Bennett was making his early survey of conditions in America prepara- tory to the founding of the "New York Herald," he noted with interest that Buckingham thrived on abuse. His extravagance of style and state- ment obtained him a large following and no small degree of influence. But John Quincy Adams in 1824 referred to the "Galaxy" as "a paper for years advertised for sale to the highest bidder of the Presidential candi- dates at which at last has opened a battery of scurrilous abuse upon me and in avowed support of Mr. Calhoun."
For some time in the 30's William J. Snelling managed the "Galaxy," a brilliant and bold newspaper man, although somewhat erratic. He
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waged war on Boston gamblers and adorned his office with all the para- phernalia of a gambling house. The "members of the profession" threat- ened him and some good citizens abused him, but no actual attack was made on him. He became one of the most talked about men of the day and visitors used to go to his office to see what manner of man he was. They usually found him selling his paper over the counter and sur- rounded by a small arsenal of weapons. Snelling was born in Boston and educated at West Point; he had been a fur trapper in Maine and a miner in Galena, when he began the career as a writer, to which he gave twenty years of a life of only forty-four years. In his last years he was an editor of "The Boston Herald." With amusing indirection the biog- raphers say that "his habits were not as good as his talents."
While Buckingham was conducting the "Galaxy" the law of libel again became a subject of lively debate. For some years great uncer- tainty prevailed as to the correct application of the law. In one case Chief Justice Parsons announced that publication of the truth as to the character of elective officers or of candidates for elective offices was not libel, but that the defendant in the present instance, having libelled not an elective but an appointive officer, it was sound law to exclude evidence that might prove the truth of the statements made. Again, when the "Independent Chronicle" animadverted on the official conduct of the Chief Justice, he refused to take shelter under the appointive nature of his office and asked the Attorney-General to state that no objection would be offered to the admission of evidence to verify the statements in the paper. Governor Gerry announced one policy as to libel in a special message to the Legislature in 1812. The next Governor reversed that policy. Clearly there was no certainty as to what the law was and no agreement as to what it ought to be.
In 1822 a "Galaxy" case came into Boston Municipal Court, and Judge Josiah Quincy admitted evidence to demonstrate that what had been said about a certain clergyman was true, affirming that "the constitutional guarantee of the liberty of the press authorized the publication, for justifi- able ends, of facts that in Common Law had been considered libellous." This ruling brought about the acquittal of the defendant, who was Buckingham.
Yet another year and another judge reversed the ruling of Quincy. At last in 1827 by statute it was settled that a defendant may offer in evidence the truth of the matter he has stated. The liberals had won. What was considered the last substantial restriction on the freedom of the press in Massachusetts had been removed.
Another Boston editor prosecuted for libel was John S. Lillie, to whose paper, the "Constitutional Telegraph," we must give some notice. It began as a semi-weekly on October 2, 1799. The founder was Samuel
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S. Parker. Jonathan S. Copp and Lillie in turn became the publishers in 1800 and John M. Dunham in 1802. The last issue under this name is dated May 22, 1802, when the "Telegraph" was replaced by the "Repub- lican Gazetteer."
The founder's purpose was to provide a mouthpiece for the extreme members of the Republican party. In his salutatory the editor said he proposed to issue the paper in the interest of "those Federal Republicans who constitute the great mass of real American citizens, men attached to no faction, who prefer the interests of their own to those of any other country, who comprehend and revere the principles of civil liberty as recorded and established in the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution of the States and the Federal Government. . " The editor relied on his correspondents for most of his original matter. "Democritus," a former correspondent of the "Chronicle," who had been silent for some time, wrote a series of essays for the "Telegraph." Parker was a physician living most of the time in Worcester. Delano Goddard in his essay on the newspapers of that time denounces this "country doc- tor" as "a vile blackguard." The paper fiercely opposed the candidacy of Caleb Strong for Governor in 1800 and venemously attacked Alexander Hamilton on the occasion of his visit to Boston in June of that year.
The "Telegraph" of February 18, 1801, contains a notice by Lillie to his readers that "being unprepared to meet the Common Law of England in its full extent and rigor he prefers to remain for a short time incog. Conscious of his own integrity of heart, [he] will not (when prepared) shrink from a fair and impartial trial by a jury of his own countrymen." This means that Lillie had been indicted for libel on an officer of the government, namely, Mr. Justice Dana, although in origin the case traced back to a communication respecting the Lord Chief Justice of England. After some time the editor threw himself on the leniency of the court, but he was fined $100 and sentenced to three months' imprison- ment. He bade his readers farewell in a long article dated "Boston Gaol, March 30, 19th Day of Imprisonment," containing a long account of the case, which was given to the public the following day in the pages of the "Telegraph." The issue of April 14 carried the name of Dunham as printer and editor. Meantime the original manuscript of the offending contribution had been examined and attributed to one John Vinal. The grand jury indicted him, but he was acquitted.
Dunham and the "Gazetteer" went on together until October 29, 1803, when he admitted Benjamin Parks to partnership, and with the last issue of that year the ownership was transferred to Benjamin True and Parks, who renamed it "The Democrat," and obtained John M. Williams as edi- tor. Parks became the sole publisher again with the opening of the year 1806. On May 9, 1809, the paper took the form of a single-sheet tri-
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weekly. The last known number bears the date May 25. Meantime there had been inaugurated as the "Boston Courier," on June 13, 1805, a weekly country edition of the "Democrat," which also within a few weeks ceased publication.
The life of these several papers was precarious and turbulent. John M. Williams was no other than the witty satirist, to speak mildly, or the professional scandal-monger, to state the common opinion of the time, who wrote under the name of Anthony Pasquin, a pseudonym most aptly chosen. He was born about 1765 in London. In 1797 a court in Dublin denounced him as "a common libeller." Ere long he had a dis- agreement with his Boston employers and published in the "Centinel" of June 27, 1804, an article in criticism of them as an advertisement. True & Parks repudiated that announcement in their own paper and Williams ceased to be connected therewith.
An earlier "Courier" than that mentioned above had already run its brief course in Boston. Benjamin Sweetser and William Burdick began the issue of a semi-weekly of that name on July 1, 1795, "at their Printing- office opp. the Court House, Court Street." They changed the style on October 21 to this pretentious title, "The Courier. Boston Evening Gazette and Universal Advertiser." Burdick retired at the end of the year and the burning of the printing office on March 9, 1796, ended the publication, Sweetser at once bought the "Federal Orrery," and changed its name on November 3, 1796, to "The Courier and General Advertiser."
It was Thomas Paine-not yet Robert Treat Paine by Act of the Legislature-who founded and edited the "Federal Orrery." The date of the first number was October 20, 1794. It was put out twice a week. The price was $2.50 a year. The first printers were Ezra W. Weld and William Greenough, at 42 Cornhill. Paine, but lately out of Harvard, with a reputation for literary scholarship to sustain, strongly Federalist in his views, addressed himself to the public thus :
Confiding to the smiles of an indulgent and generous public, the editor of the "Orrery" is enabled to anticipate the earliest period which his most sanguine hopes had contemplated, as the commencement of his publication.
To the sons and daughters of science and taste he returns his most respectful thanks for the reception of many elegant favors. . . . The "Orrery" will be the agent of all parties, but the slave of none. . . . As subjects of discussion it will never be the trumpeter or the denouncer of public men or national measures :- Republicans have the eye of an eagle and can penetrate their spots while they admire the splendor. The admin- istrators of a free government should expect the scrutiny of their political creators :- but the demon of private slander shall never conduct the orbit of the smallest satellite, that twinkles in the horizon of the "Orrery."
Such was fine writing in the estimation of this young editor whose prestige before his first issue was in the hands of the public that furnished
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him with a longer list of subscribers than any of his prospective com- petitors possessed. Many excellent literary effusions in the "elegant" manner of the time were presented in the "Orrery" from various outside contributors, of whom one was the rector of Trinity Church and another was Sarah Wentworth Morton. Paine himself contributed the rather ambitious performances known as the Jacobiniad and the Lyars. But, as Buckingham states it, "notwithstanding the complacent tone of the prospectus, the paper was not remarkable for urbanity of intercourse with its political opponents." For instance, when the third anniversary of the French Republic was celebrated by the Jacobins in 1795 with a procession and dinner in Faneuil Hall, Paine seized the chance to lam- poon the leader of the party he hated, in a
Song of Liberty and Equality which ought to have been sung in Faneuil Hall on the . . .. Birthday of the French Republic; and ought to be sung on the Birthday of all other Republics, whether male or female, that may hereafter be born.
Paine's hopes for his paper came far short of realization. He mani- fested an almost total lack of discretion. He was always in a dispute with someone, and often the altercations became physical as well as personal. He had other interests and pursuits which required much time. Having published three volumes of fifty-two numbers each he sold to Sweetser. But the new owner could not retrieve its subsiding fortunes and within the year 1796 it ceased to exist.
A publication of a composite character, partly newspaper and partly magazine, was the "American Apollo," to which Paine had been con- tributing before he founded the "Orrery." Octavo in form, each number included some portion, separately paged, of the publications of the Mas- sachusetts Historical Society. The first number came out on January 6, 1792. The publishers were Joseph Belknap and Alexander Young. It was a weekly. Thomas Hall succeeded Young in May, and in September . the last issue in magazine form was issued and the last to contain the extra pages for the Historical Society. It now became a folio. Hall retired in July, 1794, and the paper disappeared with the Christmas number of that year. Several amusing literary affrays were carried on in the "Apollo." Mrs. Morton as Philenia and Paine as Menander exchanged stanzas. There was correspondence about marriage and celibacy by "A Bachelor," "Hymen," and "Ezekiel." An original novel, "The Hapless Orphan," provoked controversy as to the merits of American writers.
Another early weekly-during the last four months of its existence a semi-weekly-was "The Boston Evening Post and the General Adver- tiser," founded by Edward Eveleth Powars on October 20, 1781. Early in 1784 the first half-title became "The American Herald." The last number printed in Boston was for June 30, 1788, when the paper was
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removed to Worcester, where it continued for fourteen months mainly in the interest of agriculture. In April, 1784, the imprint read Powars and Nathaniel Willis, which would intimate a renewal of an old rela- tionship, for they had been associated in the publication of the "Inde- pendent Chronicle." This time their partnership lasted about two years.
Many papers of this period should have mention, but in most instances it is hardly necessary more than barely to mention them. So early as December 30, 1784, Peter Edes published the first number of the "Exchange Advertiser," a weekly which came to its end on January 4, 1787 ; the "Centinel" humorously conducted the obsequies two days after its demise. William Barrett, on Washington's Birthday, 1785, invited the public to consider the merits of "The American Journal and Suffolk Intelligencer," "Printed at his Office, sign of the Eagle, and directly opposite the Rev. Mr. Thatcher's Meeting-house, Brattle Street, Where subscriptions for this paper are taken in, and Printing in general Per- formed with Fidelity and Despatch." The last number now known of this weekly is of July 12, 1785. The same Edward E. Powars, whose name has frequent mention in this narrative, undertook a weekly news- paper in 1790, of which the first issue was dated July 17 and the last December 13, only five months later. The title at the outset was "The Saturday Evening Herald, and the Washington Gazette ;" the first half was soon changed to "The American Herald." Publishers seemed to think a change of title might bring a change of fortune in those times. Printers and editors shifted from paper to paper as readily as the "desk- men" today. Powars, for instance, was with the "Chronicle" from 1776 to 1779, the "Evening Post" from 1781 to 1784, the "American Herald" from 1784 to 1788, "The Saturday Evening Herald" in 1790, and the "Argus" from 1791 to 1793. The "Times" as a newspaper title is found in Boston first in 1794. Hall & MacClintock sent out the initial number of "The Times : or the Evening Entertainer" on October 4 of that year as a tri-weekly. The experiment was a failure; the last copy known is dated for the eighth of the next month. Another "Times" sought the favor of the Boston public in 1807, but it was issued only once a week. Edward Oliver and Isaac Munroe adopted the name for a magazine in quarto form in which they printed current news items and marriage and death notices. Begun on December 12, 1807, it continued until October 15 of the following year, when as a substitute for it, and for a magazine called "The Emerald," the publishers put out the "Boston Mirror." This weekly absorbed "The Pastime," of Schenectady, New York, in Novem- ber, 1808, and managed to survive until July 21, 1810. But little informa- tion is available about the "Columbian Detector," a weekly and semi- weekly, of which a few copies are known to have been published in 1808 and the final number on May 19, 1809, when it was taken over by the
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"Boston Patriot." As a weekly edition of the "Patriot," David Everett and Isaac Munroe started the "American Republican" on March 13, 1809. They were not too proud to relinquish an unprofitable venture just three weeks later. "The Fredonian" lasted much longer, from February 20, 1810, to May 15, 1815; Eleazer G. House published it "for the editors" whose names are not mentioned.
Suggestive indeed is the title of a publication for which Merrill But- ler was responsible-"The Scourge." The editor used the pseudonym "Tim Touchstone." Nominally a weekly the numbers were often belated. The issue of November 30, 1811, contained an account of an attack on Butler, "the editor, in the office of Mr. James L. Edwards, in which the newspaper called the 'Scourge' is printed." On December 3 the editor received a sentence of six months' imprisonment for libel. The paper ran from August 10 to December 28, 1811. Edwards at once established "The Satirist," which was edited under the name of "Lodowick Lash'em." A change of style to "The Boston Satirist, or Weekly Museum" failed to save it from early extinction. Its term was even shorter than that of its predecessor, only from January 16 to May 9, 1812. More enduring was "The Yankee," which lasted from January 3, 1812, to January 20, 1820, when it proved unable to survive the destruction of its office by fire. The founders were Benjamin True and Thomas Rowe, the editor was David Everett. Everett also founded "The Pilot" on September 25, 1812, and True & Rowe did his printing. The matter in the two papers was largely the same. "The Pilot" suspended on January 22, 1813. Thereafter "The Yankee" had several publishers, the last being True and Equality Wes- ton. On the first day of the year 1814 Edmund Munroe and David Fran- cis began printing for John Parker the "Boston Spectator," a weekly quarto which had the distinction of an index. It survived until February 25, 1815. William Burdick, already mentioned, was responsible for the institution of the "Evening Gazette, and General Advertiser" on August 20, 1814. This weekly on August 10, 1816, was transmogrified into the "Boston Intelligencer," with no change of numbering. On March 18, 1817, the sale of the paper to William W. Clapp was announced. Some person unknown assumed the name "Samuel Simpleton" and began the publication on January 10, 1818, of a weekly quarto to which he applied the title "The Idiot, or, Invisible Rambler." There is a possible clue to the identity of the printer in the announcement in an October issue that subscriptions would be received by Nathaniel Coverly in Milk Street. The paper ran a full year and then was absorbed by its younger rival "The Kaleidoscope," founded late in November, 1818, published by Hews & Goss and edited by Nathaniel H. Wright. The new weekly did not live quite a year. Both may be classed as newspapers because of their print- ing of notices of births and deaths and a fair amount of local news.
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An interesting Boston charter of a century ago was Peter P. F. DeGrand, a French immigrant, whose personal fortune was small, but who became an active promoter of railways in Massachusetts. The reali- ties of today far exceed the "extravagant" predictions which exposed him to ridicule. He took a lively interest in politics. John Quincy Adams mentions him in his Memoirs. His name belongs in this roster because of his venture into newspaperdom on May 1, 1819, with the "Boston Weekly Report of Public Sales and of Arrivals," at first a quarto and later a folio, printed by Elisha Bellamy.
Destined to a long and influential career, the "Boston Daily Adver- tiser" was founded on March 3, 1813, with William Warland Clapp as publisher and Horatio Bigelow as editor. Its ancestor was the semi- weekly "New England Repertory," which began on July 6, 1803, in New- buryport and came to Boston in January, 1804, where it was continued by its founder, John Park, as "The Repertory." After five years Andrew W. Park joined his brother for a time, but the original owner had been by himself again for a full year when on July 2, 1811, William W. Clapp took over the paper with Park as editor. After another year Park with- drew, and on March 4, 1813, the paper was consolidated with the just- established "Advertiser," of which it served as a tri-weekly issue. On April 7, 1814, Clapp and Bigelow transferred their interests in the "Advertiser" to Nathan Hale, who kept Clapp as printer for a time.
Hale had been the editor of the "Boston Weekly Messenger," a paper started in 1811 by a group of Federalists as a vehicle for their political opinions. He had been a lawyer, but he gave his whole time to his new venture, and became the real founder of the "Advertiser," of which he continued as editor and general manager for forty years and as chief adviser to his sons in its conduct for ten years more.
Thus the record shows what a number of papers were absorbed in time by Boston's first successful daily. There was the Federal- ist group-the "Centinel," the "Palladium," and the "Gazette." There was the Jeffersonian group-the two "Chronicles" and the "Patriot." And there were the immediate ancestors of the "Advertiser," the "Reper- tory" and the "Messenger."
Although the first to achieve success, the "Advertiser" was not the first daily to be attempted in Boston. Just why Boston should have been unable to support a daily, while Philadelphia and New York had been maintaining them for thirty years, is hard to explain. The first Boston experiment lasted about four months, the second only three.
It was on October 6, 1796, that the first number of the "Polar Star : Boston Daily Advertiser" appeared, "printed for the Proprietors," whose names were not mentioned, "by Alexander Martin," and edited, although he was not named, by John O'Ley Burk. The last number uncovered by
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historians is dated February 2, 1797. During its brief existence the title was changed twice and the size twice enlarged. The short life of the paper has been attributed to the outspoken manner in which Burk expressed his views. He had been one of the "United Irishmen," and as a fugitive he liked to tell of his trial at the University of Dublin on charges of Deism and Republicanism. Certain of his articles in the "Dublin Evening Post" supplied the ground for the accusations. With true Celtic instinct for a fray he became almost at once involved in con- troversy with the other Boston papers. Buckingham's recollection was that the old papers attacked Burk, perhaps from jealousy or out of dis- like for the intrusion of a foreigner. He in turn addressed himself "to the readers of the several newspapers in Boston" respecting "the vices that existed in newspaper establishments." His rebuke may have been deserved, but it must have seemed presumptuous as coming from one lately escaped from his native island to elude the penalties of his own printed indiscretions. He kept the "Polar Star" quite clear from such squabbles as those he reproved. But he was unpopular. He denounced all things British and he extolled all things French. When he aban- doned Boston he went to New York and associated himself with Freneau and "The Time Piece," but there again his political articles involved him in difficulties. While in Boston he wrote a tragedy on the battle of Bunker Hill and the death of Warren, which was produced several times at the Haymarket Theatre, although more for patriotic reasons than for dramatic merit.
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