USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880, Vol. III > Part 80
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ness and afflictions of Human Life, illustrated ;' for, the price of said book being but eight pence, it will take away the profits of too many, and perhaps encourage government to continue this burthen."- Buckingham's Specimens of News- paper Literature.
2 In a memorandum quoted by Buckingham (vol. ii. p. 49), Russell says : -
"I had never studied stenography, nor was there any person then in Boston who understood reporting. The presiding officer of the conven- tion sat in the deacon's seat under the pulpit. I took the pulpit for my reporting desk, and a very good one it was. I succeeded well enough in this, my first effort, to give a tolerably fair report in my next paper; but the puritanical notions had not entirely faded away, and I was voted out of the pulpit. A stand was fitted up for me in
623
THE PRESS, ETC., OF THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS.
Russell's enthusiasm for the new Constitution, and for the " more perfect union " of States which it secured, was strong and enduring, and was the foundation of the steady improvement which may be observed in the Centinel from this time onward, and of the full measure of success which followed it. The other papers hailed the new birth of the nation, as in duty bound, with more or less of cordiality ; but the steady development of national feeling, the steady consolidation of national power, was not witnessed by all with the same pride and confidence. So long as the issue of the Revolutionary struggle remained undetermined, the press of the country was united by one controlling sentiment, -hatred of Great Britain ; and by one controlling purpose, - the successful termination of the war. When the stress of the exigency was past, and the war itself began to recede from men's thoughts, this harmony was disturbed, and the passions and prejudices of men grew more and more fruitful with every year. The separation into parties was not fully accomplished until Washington had retired from public life; but it was already beginning as early as the adoption of the Federal compact, and a man was on one side or another, according as his political sympathies inclined him towards England or France. The frightful spectacle of the French Revolution was now about opening. A considerable portion of the press of the United States followed and recorded its excesses with approval and even with admiration, as inspired by the same love of liberty which had just triumphed on this side the ocean.1 This was the beginning of the Republican party, which a little later was compacted by a real or pretended fear of centralization and monarchy, as the natural outgrowth of the new Constitution. The Federalists were accused of ingratitude towards France and of subserviency to Great Britain ; and the Federal leaders of cherishing aristocratic and monarchical ideas. The Boston Gazette, still managed by Benjamin Edes, was perhaps the most ardent friend of the French Revolu- tion, and the most strenuous opponent of the Federal Constitution and the leaders of the Federal party. The Chronicle, less pronounced in its oppo- sition to the Constitution, became not less violent in its abuse of the Federal administration. Its opposition to the Alien and Sedition laws, passed by Congress in 1798, was so violent as to cause the arrest of the editor and his trial. But neither party held the monopoly of violence. Frantic vitupera- tion is the most common characteristic of the political communications in most of the newspapers of the time.2 Such flowers of rhetoric as " native
another place, and I proceeded with my report- ing." [Sce Mr. Lodge's chapter in this volume. -ED.]
I Cobbett said in 1796: " There is not a single action of the French Revolutionists but has been justified and applauded in our public papers, and many of them in our public assemblies. Anarchy has its open advocates. It is a truth that no one will deny, that the newspapers of this country have become its scourge." - Porcu- pine's Works, ii. 223.
2 As early as 1782, Franklin, writing from Passy to Francis Hopkinson, says :-
" You do well to avoid being concerned in the species of personal abuse, so scandalously com- mon in our newspapers that I am afraid to lend one of them here until I have examined and laid aside such as would disgrace us, and subject us among strangers to a reflection like that used by a gentleman in a coffee-house to two quarrellers, who, after a mutually free use of the words 'rogue,''villain,''rascal,' 'scoundrel,'etc., seemed
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
blackguardism," " spurious exotic," "quill-driving animal," "Jacobin ver- min," " mud, filth, and venom," " diabolical malice," and the like flourish on every page. In spite, however, of this ugly feature, the improvement in the general conduct of the principal papers was marked and steady. The march of events, both at home and abroad, was too imposing to permit the editors to limit their interest and attention to the trivial and personal details which had formerly absorbed them. The foreign intelligence was now received with greater regularity and frequency, and became an important feature of all the newspapers. Russell's enterprise was conspicuous both in collecting this intelligence and in digesting it for publication. He had the habit of visiting all vessels, on their arrival from foreign ports, to procure the latest news. At the office of the Centinel regular files of the Moniteur were kept, which brought Talleyrand and Louis Phillippe as frequent visi-
tors to the office during their stay in Boston. A gold snuff-box from the former and an atlas from the latter were memorials long preserved by the
editor ; and one of them, at least, was of constant service in preparing his summaries of the military news from the Continent. The proceedings and laws of Congress 1 and of the State Legislature, reports of the meetings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an occasional debate in Parlia- ment, and more frequent and copious intelligence from other American cities mark the steady growth of the newspaper in importance and interest.
The Boston Gazette expired in 1798. It was the last newspaper which went back to the days preceding the Revolution; and its venerable editor, Benjamin Edes, took leave of the public in a pathetic if somewhat high- flown farewell address. Its place as the ultra-Republican organ (the Chron- icle being generally regarded by the more violent Republicans as not quite pronounced enough in its hostility to the Federalists) was filled the next year by a new paper, the Constitutional Telegraphe ; which, however, unable to show any reason for its existence, lasted but about three years, its editor following the example of Edes with a farewell address dated " Boston Gaol, March 30, 19th day of imprisonment," having been condemned to a deten- tion of three months for a libel on one of the judges of the Supreme Court. The Telegraphe was but one of several papers which the ill-considered en- thusiasm of political parties set on foot in the last years of the century, which
as if they would refer their dispute to him. 'I of the government were accordingly transmitted know nothing of you or your affairs,' said he; 'I only perceive that you know one another !'" Franklin's Works, x. 461.
1 Concerning the publication by the Centinel of the laws of Congress, Buckingham has the following, which is creditable alike to the printer and the government : -
" While Congress was holding its first session, Russell wrote to the department of state and offered to publish gratuitously all the laws and other official documents, the country being then almost or quite bankrupt. All laws and other papers emanating from the various departments
to him and were published 'by authority.' At the end of several years he was called upon for his bill. It was made out and, in compliance with the pledge, was receipted. On being in- formed of the fact, General Washington said : 'This must not be. When Mr. Russell offered to publish the laws without pay, we were poor. It was a generous offer. We are now able to pay our debts. This is a debt of honor, and must be discharged.' A few days after, Mr. Russell received a check for $7,000, the full amount of his bill." - Specimens of Newspaper Literature, ii. 59.
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THE PRESS, ETC., OF THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS.
lived a few months or a few years, and died leaving no sign. One of these, the Federal Orrery, established in 1794 by Thomas Paine, - an enthusiastic young Federalist just graduated from Cambridge, from whose accomplish- ments much was expected, - created a temporary excitement in Boston by a series of papers entitled " Remarks on the Jacobiniad," in which an imagi- nary poem was reviewed, with extracts, accompanied by satirical criticisms on prominent Republicans. Paine was assaulted in State Street for the publication of these papers, which were attributed - whether rightly or not is, we believe, not known - to the Rev. J. S. J. Gardiner, assistant rector of Trinity Church, who was attacked without mercy in the columns of the Chronicle and the Gazette. Paine was of an expansive literary turn, and by no means confined himself to his newspaper. His patriotic songs achieved a national reputation, and yielded extraordinary sums to their author, sums unexampled in that day and for many a day after. The most famous of these was " Adams and Liberty," - a flamboyant lyric in ten verses in the metre of the "Star Spangled Banner," written at the request of the Massa- chusetts Charitable Fire Society, and from the sale of which Paine is said to have received more than $750. Perhaps even more remarkable was the popularity of a poem in the heroic metre, delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society in 1797, which is declared to have brought its author not less than $1,200.
Russell's Gazette was a semi-weekly newspaper established in 1795, strongly Federalist, and a ferocious enemy of France, Jefferson, and the Republican newspapers. It had also its special vanity as an elegant critic and patron of the theatre, then newly established in Boston. Under one ownership and another it survived as late as 1830, always holding its place as a prominent and influential journal.
Another newspaper of much influence at this time was the Massachusetts Mercury, established in 1793 by Young & Etheridge; better known by its later title of the Palladium, adopted in 1801, when it passed under the con- trol of Warren Dutton as editor, and became the vehicle through which some of the ablest writers of the Federal party addressed the public. Con- spicuous among these writers was Fisher Ames, whose contributions were frequent through all the years which intervened between his retirement from public life and his death in 1808.
With the election of Jefferson in 1800 the strife between the two parties took new vigor and fiercer hatred. The history of the newspaper press for the next fifteen years is the history of this strife, and of the suspicions and slanders, the accusations and retorts, of the chiefs of the hostile camps.1
1 John Adams, writing from Quincy, in 1811, Jones much in the same spirit, but with even to Benjamin Rush, says : - " If I am to judge stronger disgust : " I deplore with you the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed, and the malignity, the vulgarity, and the mendacious spirit of those who write for them; and I en- close you a recent sample, the production of a New England judge, as a proof of the abyss of by the newspapers and pamphlets that have been published in America for twenty years past, I should think that both parties believed mne the meanest villain in the world." (Works, ix. 636.) And Jefferson writes to Dr. Walter VOL. III. - 79.
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
Probably there never was a time in any country when the newspapers of a single small town were enriched with the political contributions of such a number of men of undisputed ability, force of character, and patriotism. Fisher Ames in the Palladium, James Sullivan in the Chronicle, George Cabot in the Centinel, J. Q. Adams, Christopher Gore, John Lowell, Timothy Pickering, Levi Lincoln, William Plumer, and many more of the foremost men of an age rich in political vigor continued to fill the newspapers with those unique compositions, half essay, half harangue, which exerted an in- calculable influence in holding the people of Massachusetts and New England to the losing cause of the party whose sun had set when the administration of John Adams came to an end.
The writers of the Centinel opposed without discrimination every meas- ure of importance originating with the administrations of Jefferson and Madison. The embargo was characterized as "a bold stroke to starve a people into democracy." The war with Great Britain was declared to be carried on "to afford encouragement to British, Irish, and Jersey runaway sailors to enter on board American vessels, and then to be PROTECTED while they are underworking the native-born American seamen and nav- igators, and thereby taking the bread from the mouths of their wives and children. This is the great object of this war."
Whatever may have been the object of the war, there can be at the pres- ent day no doubt that one of its most marked results was the extinction of the absurd jealousies and hatreds of the past twenty years, the union of the best men of both parties in the support of Monroe, and the inauguration of the "era of good feeling," -a phrase, by the way, which Russell first used on the occasion of the President's visit to Boston in 1817.
That the asperities of party politics had been the meat and drink of the two great party newspapers it would perhaps be too much to say, but the Chronicle survived the reconciliation only two years. In 1819 it was sold to the owners of the Boston Patriot, and united with that paper. It had managed to live for fifty years, and its influence had been very great. Its great antagonist, the Centinel, was also growing rusty with age and peace, but held out yet another ten years under Russell's management, though in a vis- ibly declining condition; until in 1828 it was sold to Adams & Hudson, who published it until 1840, when it was purchased by the proprietors of the Daily Advertiser, and was heard of no more. The day of personal news- papers was passing away. While the matter which filled them was small in amount and of no great variety, they were managed without much difficulty by a single editor, who was to all intents and purposes the newspaper. With the growth of business and population, the enlargement of the life of the town, and the multiplication of interests and of topics, the simplicity of such news- paper work became obsolete. In these vastly changed conditions, also, the
degradation into which we are fallen. As a by forfeiting all title to belief."- Works, iv. 234. vehicle of information and a curb on our func- tionaries, they have rendered themselves useless
[See further, on these political antagonisms, Mr. Lodge's chapter in this volume .- ED.]
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THE PRESS, ETC., OF THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS.
semi-weekly issue became inadequate to the needs of the business world ; but it was curiously long before a daily newspaper found a footing in Boston. At- tempts were made in this direction as early as 1796 and 1798. The Polar Star and Boston Daily Advertiser appeared in the former year, and the Fed- eral Gazette and Daily Advertiser in the latter. The one lived six months, the other three. Boston was for once far behind her sister cities in enter- prise. The American Daily Advertiser had been established in Philadelphia as carly as 1784, and the New York Daily Advertiser the next year; but it was not until 1813 that the first daily made good its claim to existence in Boston. The Boston Daily Advertiser, of which the first number appeared on March 3 of that year, was published by W. W. Clapp, and edited by Horatio Bigclow, who says in his salutatory that the city of New York is now supporting, "besides monthly, weekly, and semi-weekly publications, eight daily newspapers." It was not surprising that the commercial needs of a rapidly growing port like Boston should require a daily newspaper, and the space occupied by advertisements from the first number attests the rea- sonableness of the new undertaking. Mr. Bigelow remained the editor scarcely more than a year. On the 6th of April, 1814, the paper passed from his hands into those of Nathan Hale, whose conspicuous ability, energy, good judgment, and good taste rapidly raised the Advertiser to a high rank among the leading newspapers of the country.
Mr. Halc's introduction of himself upon taking charge of the Advertiser was interesting as showing his sense of the inadequacy of the newspapers of that day, and of the responsibility justly attaching to an editor.1 It was plain, explicit, modest, and manly. He lived to make good all that he un- dertook. From the first number the Advertiser was distinguished by brief comments on prominent topics, having a candid and manly air, and always temperate and just. From these grew the regular " leaders," more full and more considered year by year, which mark the advance from the newspapers of the earlier days, whose commentaries were communicated by writers not connected with the publication, and partook too commonly of the nature of personal criticism.
From the establishment of the morning daily, the old semi-weekly papers became more and more obsolete. The Chronicle, the Gazette, the Palladium,
1 " Almost the total amount," he says, "of the reading of at least one half the people of this country, and a great part of the reading of a large portion of the other half, is from the daily or weekly newspapers of the country. Many of these readers rely solely upon the amount offered by a single paper. . .. Thus it is manifest that the office of an editor is one of great importance and responsibility ; and accord- ingly we find that if we have any striking traits of national character, their origin may be clearly discerned in our 'universal relish for newspaper reading, and in the general character of the newspaper which we read." He declares simply and frankly that "he is a Federalist ; and if Fed-
eralism of the Boston stamp have any distin- guishing marks, his is certainly of that impression. Such is his acquaintance with the character, mo- tives, and wishes of the leading Federalist men, in New England in particular, that he places in them an unlimited confidence." He hopes to be able to satisfy the expectations of his readers in the matter of news, both foreign and domestic, as soon as he has become more familiar with the sources of intelligence and the means of collect- ing it. He promises to care for the mercantile interests of his readers, knowing that he must depend chiefly on merchants and traders for support. {See a further account of Mr. Hale in Mr. Adams's chapter in Vol. IV .- ED.]
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
and finally the Centinel itself were successively absorbed by the Advertiser. Repeated enlargements in the size of the sheet were accompanied by corre- sponding expansion of its work and of its circulation.
The Advertiser, as Mr. Hale recognized, was essentially a business paper. Of its twenty-four columns frequently only two or three, seldom more than five, were given to what is known as reading matter. No notice was taken of theatres or concerts, though these were duly advertised in its columns.
I hathan Hals
There were no book notices, and no correspondence either foreign or do- mestic. Literature and art were alike ignored. As late even as 1833, when Charles Kemble and his brilliant daughter played their first engagement in Boston, the Advertiser's account of their first performances was limited to a single paragraph.1
On the other hand the political complexion of the paper was marked and distinct from the outset, and grew more and more emphatic as the issues between the Whig and Democratic parties became more clearly defined. It was a loyal and steadfast adherent of Webster, not only as the great ex- ponent of Whig principles and Whig policy, but also during and after the embittered quarrel in which the splendid prestige of Webster was set against the growing and deepening public sentiment of New England and the North, and which left that great man without the support and without the confi- dence of the great body of his constituents.
The Advertiser was for eleven years the only daily paper published in Boston. But in 1824 Mr. Joseph Tinker Buckingham, who had for some years been the editor, as he was the founder, of the New England Galaxy, established a new daily, called the Boston Courier,2 of which the only pro- nounced political principle was at first the necessity for a protective tariff, but which soon grew to be a very prominent and influential organ of the Whig party, and of its foremost statesman, Daniel Webster. More vivacious and discursive than the Advertiser; more hospitable to the ideas and the schemes of social and political reformers, and less exclusively devoted to the mercantile interests of the city, - its columns were frequently enriched with purely literary contributions from authors whose names have since become widely known. Its careful notices of new books and of theatrical perform- ances, and its entertaining Washington correspondence were features then
1 " Mr. Kemble appeared in Hamlet on Monday evening. His acting is chaste and dig- nified, and made a strong impression on his audi- ence. Last evening Miss Kemble appeared in the character of Bianca in the tragedy of Fazio, and was enthusiastically received by a very crowded house. Mr. Kemble sustained that of Fazio with much power."
2 " The first number was issued on March 2, 1824, with the encouragement of less than two hundred subscribers. There was then one daily paper in the city, and the attempt to establish another was thought to be a reckless experi- ment." - Buckingham's Personal Memoirs, ana Recollections of Editorial Life (Boston: 1852), ii. p. 217.
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THE PRESS, ETC., OF THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS.
of rare occurrence in any newspaper. It partook of the personal character and temperament of its founder and manager in much the same way that the Centinel had done a generation before, and was perhaps the last of the Bos- ton newspapers which can be said to have exhibited this peculiarity. As the organization of a newspaper grows more complex, and calls for the labor and supervision of a larger corps of writers, it is as inevitable as it is desira- ble that the personality of the individual editor should disappear and bc replaced by that of the journal. Mr. Buckingham retired from the manage- ment of the Courier in 1848, having been for thirty years one of the most conspicuous figures in the literary history of the city.
The increasing importance and population of Boston about the year 1830 greatly stimulated the creation of daily newspapers. The Boston Post was established in 1831 as a Democratic organ, and has continued to this day faithful to the varying fortunes of the Democratic party. The next year the two Whig papers were reinforced by a third, the Boston Atlas, which became a more pronounced organ than either the Advertiser or the Courier ; and which, for twenty-five years not less constant in its party fealty than its con- temporary and adversary the Post, did not long survive the dissolution of the Whig party. These were years when the political behavior of the people was not such as can be now looked back upon with complacency. It was with extreme slowness and reluctance that men were brought to acknowledge that anything was of more importance to the well-being of the nation than tariffs and cotton-mills and the protection of slave property. The party press did not help them to learn the lesson, and did its best, as must now be owned, to oppose and countervail the irresistible march of ideas and events which was pressing the nation swiftly to the crisis.1 When the crisis had once arrived, and all the lesser doubts and tremors, the hopes of compromise, the depre- cation of imprudent zeal, the pledges of this or that candidate, the defection of this or that place-holder; all the calculations, in short, of the political chess-board, were forgotten in face of the tremendous exigency, - the news- papers of Boston, like those of other cities, rose with the occasion; and, apart from a few disgraceful exceptions which need not be remembered here, served a nobler purpose in compacting and expressing the popular sentiment and will, and in strengthening the hands of the Government. The stimulus of the Civil War enlarged the scope of the great newspapers to a prodigious extent. The arrangements for the receipt of intelligence by telegraph were perfected by the Associated Press to a degrec which would have been more gratifying had there been less frequent cause for suspecting the accuracy of the information. The multiplication of correspondents at important points ; the necessity for detailed reports of everything said or done, or written or sung ; the growth of the habit of " interviewing " any per- sonage possessing even a momentary importance in the public eye, - do but indicate a few of the many directions in which the attention of newspaper managers must now be turned.
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