USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880, Vol. III > Part 81
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1 [See James Freeman Clarke's chapter in the present volume .- ED.]
630
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
Of the evening dailies the Transcript, established in 1830, and the Four- nal, in 1833, were the earliest. These were not political newspapers, but made themselves first of all purveyors of news, pure and simple, - the first named, which was for a while in the editorial charge of Epes Sargent, add- ing to this a certain distinction, maintained to the present day, as a dis- penser of light and lively gossip and small-talk. Avoiding topics of weight upon which opinions were earnest, its many contributors amused their Gres Sargent readers with harmless questions of fashion, of the weather, of the theatre, with watering-place cor- respondence, and copies of verses. More earnest matters mingled with all this, as the years went on and public affairs grew ever graver. The Boston Traveller was published as a weekly paper as early as 1825. In 1845 it became a daily, and completed the list of established and permanent daily newspapers of reputation. The growth of the penny press dates from about this time. The cheap dailies rapidly multiplied ; and the Herald, Times, Bee, Mail, and others of the same stamp, substan- tially alike in their appearance and in the matter which filled their col- umns, found a large though fluctuating circulation. They were, however, in their nature ephemeral, and disappeared one after another, -with the ex- ception of the Times, which was kept alive for twenty years, and the Herald, which maintained its ground with even greater persistency, until, reinforced a dozen years ago in capital, intelligence, and character, but retaining still the characteristics which secure to the cheap newspaper its wide distribution, it has taken a more and more influential position among the dailies of the city.
For good.or for evil, the newspaper press of the United States has at- tained an importance and an influence unparalleled in any other country. Nowhere else does the number of newspapers bear so large a proportion to the population,1 nowhere else are the newspapers so universally read. If it must be added that nowhere else is the standard of veracity, of public morality, and of decency - as exhibited in the general tone of the newspaper press-so debased, we may at least qualify the charge in a way which twenty years ago would have been impossible, by saying that a marked improve- ment is to be observed in every one of these respects.2 The purification of
1 As early as 1841, the number of newspapers in the United States exceeded the number in all the countries of Europe with two hundred and thirty-three millions of population. Journal of Statistical Society, of London, vol. iv.
2 To take a single but most conspicuous ex- ample, -for a dozen years preceding the outbreak of the Rebellion the debasing influence of the New York Herald upon the people of the coun- try was to be measured not alone by its enor- mous circulation, but also by the example it offered to the managers of all other newspapers as the most successful enterprise in the history
of journalism. Smaller editors in smaller cities emulated its cynicism, its ribaldry, its abuse of the best men, its complicity with the worst ; and found their account in such a course. . The New York Herald of to-day is a respectable and use- ful newspaper, conducted with all its old enter- prise and ability, and doubtless more prosper- ous than at any previous period of its career ; and it would probably be impossible now to find in the country any example of the same contempt of decency and moral principle which conferred such bad eminence upon it a gener- ation ago.
631
THE PRESS, ETC., OF THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS.
the political atmosphere, brought about by the war of the Rebellion, has produced no more extraordinary or encouraging result than this ameliora- tion of the newspaper press. To say that it is not yet the leader in morals or politics, is simply to say that newspapers are business enterprises, depend- ing for their success on the favor and patronage of their readers. When the newspapers of the country shall be scen to reflect the instincts and princi- ples and opinions of the best classes of the population, they will constitute the most powerful and efficient force in correcting that tendency to a " lev- elling downward," which one of the most intelligent and friendly of our foreign critics has pointed out as among the most dangerous traits of the American people.
The weekly newspapers, of which the name is legion, stand on a quite dif- ferent footing from the dailies. In the important matter of news, and the expression of critical opinions on current events, political or other, they can of course not attempt to rival the daily sheets. They arc, therefore, for the most part either devoted to the interests of a special class, profes- sional, religious, or philanthropic; or else to the dissemination of society gossip, or literary contributions from correspondents, and selections from books, magazines, and such other sources as may be open to the editor. The carliest of the modern Boston weeklies belonged to the latter category. Of these the most conspicuous was the New England Galaxy, established in 1817 by Joseph T. Buckingham, and conducted by him until 1828 with great vigor and success. The Galaxy had at the outset its own speci- alty, indicated by its sub- title, the Masonic Magazine. This was, however, made small account of after the first few numbers, and the paper soon made itself felt in the little community by the variety and occasional brilliancy of its literary contributions, and still more by the sharpness of its comments on whatever might be for the moment the subject of popular attention. For several years Mr. Buckingham was not without one or more libel suits on his hands, the result of his indiscreet vivacity in personal criticism. The number of contributors he was enabled to rely on gave great variety to the pages of the Galaxy, especially in its earlier years.
Las T. Bucking kum
The Saturday Evening Gazette, established in the same year with the Advertiser, was, like the Galaxy, a vehicle for the lighter news and gossip of the day; but it was not illuminated by the vivacity and individ- ual energy which gave interest to the older sheet. Issued nominally on Saturday evening, it has always been distributed on Sunday morning, and has probably owed to this circumstance its long and prosperous existence, which still continues.
On the first of January, 1831, appeared the first number of what may now be regarded as, in its history, characteristics, and influence, one of the most
632
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
remarkable newspapers ever printed. The Liberator was, from its inception to its close, - a period of thirty-five years, - substantially the work of a single man ; and there is no more impressive example, in the history of jour- nalism, of an inflexible purpose pursued for a full generation with zcal which never flagged, with courage which never flinched, with steadiness which never wavered. The first intention of Mr. Garrison was to publish his paper in the city of Washington. From this purpose he was dissuaded by his friends, who convinced him that in such a war as he was entering on his chances of success - slender enough at the best - would be reduced to nothing if he stationed himself within the lines of the enemy. He therefore on New Year's Day sent forth his first paper from Boston, without a single sub- scriber, a single coadjutor, or a single dollar of capital. He was his own editor, publisher, and printer. He lived in his printing-office, - a small attic in Congress Street. It is difficult to understand how he could have got his paper under the eyes of his readers, for the customary courtesy of exchange was not extended to this new comer, and the facilities for dis- tributing printed matter at a distance were very different fifty years ago from those of the present day. But the paper was read, and produced an immediate and striking effect all over the country. At the South laws were passed making it a penal offence for any free negro to take the Liberator from the post-office, offering rewards for the apprehension of any person detected in circulating it; and in the State of Georgia a reward of five thousand dollars, " to be paid by the Governor to any person or persons arresting and bringing to trial under the laws of the State, and prosecuting to conviction, the editor and publisher of the Liberator, or any other person who shall utter, publish, or circulate said paper in Georgia." At the North, even in Boston, it was seriously proposed to enact a special law under which the paper could be suppressed and its editor punished. In the midst of these dangers the Liberator held its course, and was only discontinued when the abolition of slavery in the United States had become an accom- plished fact.1
The earliest of the class newspapers were those devoted to the interests of the various religious denominations. The idea of a distinctively religious newspaper first took" definite form in the mind of Nathaniel Willis, son of the printer of the Boston Chronicle, and himself a printer, who had served his apprenticeship at the end of the last century in the printing-office of his father.2 By him, as early as 1816, the Boston Recorder was established, with the aid of Sidney Edwards Morse, who became its first editor. The Re- corder was the representative of the Orthodox Congregationalists, and
1 [See Dr. Clarke's chapter in this volume. - ED.]
2 " The subject of a religious newspaper still rested heavily on my mind. I talked with Chris- tians in Boston often about it. Many, though they liked the plan, objected to it as impracti- cable, especially in the hard times occasioned
by the war. Dr. Griffin said he never heard of such a thing as religion in a newspaper ; it would do in a mgaazine. I said I had some experience in publishing a newspaper, and believed it could be done if Christians would encourage it." - Autobiography of.a Journalist, by Nathaniel Willis, 1858.
633
THE PRESS, ETC., OF THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS.
was sustained by that body with much steadfastness until its union with the Congregationalist in 1867; the latter having been established in 1849.
The establishment of one denominational organ naturally led to others. The Baptists were next in the field with the Watchman and Reflector, which followed the Recorder after an interval of three years, and which has per- haps reached a larger circulation than any of its rivals. It was followed in 1821 by the Christian Register, established by David Reed as the exponent of the principles of Unitarianism, and as a vehicle for the continued discus- sion of the points in theology raised some years before by the Unitarian controversy, so called. The intellectual superiority of the new sect enabled Mr. Reed to avail himself of the advice and assistance of many men of distinguished ability.1
Zion's Herald, the Methodist organ, was established in 1824; the Uni- versalist, in 1829; and the Christian Witness, the representative of the Episcopal Church, in 1835, -completing the list of denominational weeklies, so far as the Protestants were concerned. The Catholics, not to be singular, in 1838 established a Catholic organ, the Pilot. All these sectarian news- papers have been maintained in apparent prosperity up to the present time.2
A class of newspapers of great importance to the material prosperity of the country is that of the agricultural papers. The earliest of these was published at Boston in 1816, the Massachusetts Agricultural Repository and Fournal. The next were the American Farmer, established in Baltimore in 1818, and the Ploughboy, in Albany in 1821. The fourth was established in Boston in 1822, under the title of the New England Farmer, by Thomas Green Fessenden, who conducted it with ability and discretion until his death in 1837. Transferred in 1846 to Albany, and continued there under a change of name, it was some years later revived in Boston, where it has continued without interruption to the present day. The evident usefulness of a well managed newspaper for farmers, - a class of home-keeping men, always much given to adhering to old and established methods, - caused this class of papers to multiply with great rapidity. Farmers' journals sprang up all over the country; and, in addition to these, almost all the weekly papers found it for their interest to make up for every issue a farm- ers' column. It is difficult to estimate the influence of all this information in improving the methods of agriculture in a country like our own; in introducing machines for farm work; in improving the breed of cattle and horses; in explaining systems of drainage, and the treatment of poor
1 In a sketch of the history of the Register, read by Mr. W. II. Reed, at a dinner com- memorative of its fiftieth anniversary, Mr. Reed says of his father : " Ilis chief advisers in the earlier years of the Christian Register, were Dr. Channing, Dr. Ware, Professor Norton, and other gentlemen of equal ability outside the min- isterial profession. Among those who contrib- VOL. III. - 80.
uted to its columns were President Kirkland, Dr. Noah Worcester, Judge Story, Dr. Green- wood, Dr. Bancroft, President Sparks, and Mr. Edward Everett."
2 [See more or less mention of them in the chapters in this volume on the various denomina- tions. The Pilot was the earliest permanent Catholic organ. - ED.]
634
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
1
land; in broadening the minds and enlarging the resources of one of the most important classes of the population.
The example set by the religious and the agricultural newspapers has been followed by innumerable journals established in the interest of other professions and classes. Law, medicine, commerce, natural and mechan- ical science, mining, architecture, music, are represented each by its special journal, which faithfully reports whatever of interest in its own line transpires all over the world. Temperance, spiritualism, the rights of woman, - whatever new movement of reform or progress, whether real or imaginary, is set on foot, is at once furnished with its organ in the form of a newspaper, through which its friends may assert and defend its claims ; until it seems as if, in spite of the enormous and ever increasing accumula- tion of books, the remark of Mr. Hale upon taking charge of the Advertiser in 1814, concerning the dependence of the vast majority of the people on their newspaper, and the small amount of any other reading accomplished, must be nearly as true to-day as it was two generations ago.
Having finished this rapid survey of the growth of the newspaper press for a hundred years, let us go back to the beginning and look at the con- dition and progress of general literature during the same period.
It is obvious that every condition of political and social existence a hun- dred years ago was unfavorable to intellectual production. The absorbing interests and labors of the war were followed by the depression of property, and later by the excitement of a new government and the strife of parties, which engrossed the attention of nearly all of that class capable of literary work. Of this class, as of the whole population in fact, the intellectual stamp was severely practical and even prosaic, with little imagination or vivacity. Admirably developed on the side of political aptitude, of public and private virtue, of good sense and sound judgment, of personal indepen- dence, they were deficient on the side of the genial virtues, of taste, friend- ship, the capacity for recreation. With a Puritan ancestry so close behind them, they could not well have been otherwise. And yet the distinctive fea- tures of that ancestry-the Puritan quaintness, hardness, rigidity, theologie style-had, in fifty years of political excitement and struggle, well nigh dis- appeared. Where there is a man of conspicuous intellectual force, he does not waste himself in his closet nor in the pulpit; he is busy with affairs of state. Astonishing as has been the development of mind, the enlargement and emancipation of thought, the journalism and the literary work of these years is distinctly inferior to that of the colonial period. That the literary ability is not wanting is shown by the state-papers of the day, which are models of clear, vigorous, and often elegant writing. That the literary instinet is not wanting is shown in the early establishment (in the one instance at the darkest hour of the Revolutionary War) of such institutions as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Massachusetts Historical Society. The American Academy was founded in 1780, with
635
THE PRESS, ETC., OF THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS.
Governor Bowdoin as its first president; and was of great service in promot- ing a love of scientific observation, and in preserving and making known such observations and discoveries as were made.1
The Massachusetts Historical Society was founded in 1790, - ten years after the American Academy, - chiefly through the enthusiasm of Jeremy Belknap, for the purpose of " collecting, preserving, and communicating the antiquities of America."2 Its collections were at first published in the form of a weekly periodical called the American Apollo, and published by Joveny Belknap Belknap & Young. This method was continued for nine months. The collections were then issued monthly, and collected into volumes as often as they accumulated to a sufficient mass. After 1799 they were published only in volumes at intervals averaging about two years. The interest and value of these col- lections, and of the published proceedings of the Society now covering nearly a century of active life, are quite inestimable. They are, however, by their nature works of limited circulation, and in the early days of the Society their influence was confined to a very narrow circle of readers and students.
Of miscellaneous literature at this time there was next to none. Of the books which this serious people read at this period some idea may be gath- ered from the infrequent booksellers' advertisements in the newspapers.8
The appetite for a lighter and more attractive literature than the book- sellers provided was, however, not absolutely wanting. By the year 1789 it was sufficient to produce a genuine monthly magazine, highly miscellaneous indeed as to its contents, and with no very elevated standard of style or matter, but sufficient unto its day, and ominous of better things to come. The first number of the Massachusetts Magasine, or Monthly Museum of Knowledge and Rational Entertainment, was issued in January, 1789.4 It
1 [An account of the Academy is given in Mr. Dillaway's chapter in Vol. IV. - ED.]
2 In a letter to Mr. Hazard, asking him to become a member, Belknap writes: “ We have now formed our society, and it is dubbed not the Antiquarian but the Historical-Society. It consists of only eight, and is limited to twenty- five. It is intended to be an active not a passive literary body ; not to lie waiting like a bed of oysters for the tide of communication to flow in upon us, but to seek and find, to preserve and communicate literary intelligence, especially in the historical way." - Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., i. xv.
8 Ilere is one from the Independent Chronicle of Feb. 17, 1780 : " The following books may be had of J. Boyle, in Marlborough Street, as cheap as the times will allow, - viz., Lord Chesterfield's celebrated letters ; Sherlock's Discourses, 4 vols. ; Doddridge's Rise and Progress of Religion in the
Soul ; Watts's Lyric Poems; Stickney's Singing- Books ; Josephus's Works, 4 vols, ; Kennet's Roman Antiquities ; Bundy's Roman Ilistory, 6 vols. folio ; Mrs. Rowe's Devout Exercises ; Eng- lish Grammar ; Complete Housewife ; Crosby's Mariner's Guide ; Dodd on Death ; Lives of Crim- inals, 3 vols .; etc." A few Latin classics, and books on physics and surgery are added The same paper advertises : " In a neat pocket volume, the whole of the orations that have been deliv- ered on the fifth day of March annually, to per- petuate the memory of the horrid massacre per- petrated on the 5th of March, 1770. There will be ten orations in the volume,and the price will be 20 dollars, scwed, in blue."
4 This is, however, by no means to be sup- posed the first venture of this sort in Boston, though it was the first which seemed to establish itself on something like a permanent footing. Mr. Tudor appends to his account of the An-
636
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
was an octavo of sixty-four pages, made up of brief articles seldom extend- ing beyond two or three pages, and as varied in character as may be inferred from the title-page, which promises " Poetry, Musick, Biography, History, Physick, Geography, Morality, Criticism, Philosophy, Mathematicks, Agri- culture, Architecture, Chymistry, Novels, Tales, News, Marriages, Deaths, Meteorological Observations, etc .; " with this motto from Horace : -
" Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci, Lectorem delectando, pariterque monendo."
It does not appear that anything was omitted from this comprehensive pro- gramme. The editors congratulate themselves at the outset on being able to work in " a soil which Genius has marked for her own, and in which literary flowers continually bud and blossom; " and at the end of the first year are glad to assure themselves that in their first volume "stoical severity can find nothing incompatible with pure morality, nor adverse to the grand principles of religion; neither has the blush of sensibility crimsoned the cheek, nor the lovers of wit received gratification at the pain of innocence." They promise a sedulous attention to matter and manner, " lest a failure of this kind might discourage Hope from any further attendance, extort an indignant frown from the smiling Apollo, and wrest the prophetick scroll from the hand of Fame, - all which is most seriously deprecated."
During this same year the newspapers print an advertisement of the " First American Novel," The Power of Sympathy, or the Triumph of Nature : A novel founded in truth, and dedicated to the young ladies of America. The new magazine printed elegant extracts from this production which time has mercifully swallowed up, but which we can well enough imagine to have been a tearful history overcharged with sentiment and romance, and loaded down with moral essays and reflections on suicide and seduction. A stronger omen of the sensational school was issued two or three years later. In the Massachusetts Mercury, April 4, 1793, appears the advertisement of The Helpless Orphan, or Innocent Victim of Revenge: A novel founded on inci- dents in real life. By an American lady. This also has happily disappeared.
thology, and the club which conducted it, the fol- lowing list, which he says " contains (1821) the titles of all the magazines that have been pub- lished in Massachusetts " : ---
American Magazine and Hist. Chronicle. 3 vols. 1740-43. Royal American Magazine I
= 1774. Boston Magazine -
= 1784. Massachusetts Magazine 8 1789-96. Columbian Phoenix and Boston Review 1 1800.
New England Quarterly Magazine 1
1802.
New England Med. Journal (quarterly). Established, 1812. 1815. North American Review
Athenæum (selections from foreign mag- azines)
1816.
Ordeal .
1809.
1816.
Omnium Gatherum -
1810.
Cabinet and Repos'y of Light Literature ISII. I General Repository and Review 1812-13. 4 Panoplist - Calvinistic Monthly 28 1806-20.
[The Boston Magazine, begun with Novem- ber, 1783, was published by Norman & White ; later by Greenleaf & Freeman; and then by Edmund Freeman. Sabine says it extended to 1789. Imperfect sets are in the Public Library and in Harvard College Library. - ED.]
Of the periodicals still in existence in 1821 he gives the following list : -
Monthly Anthology 1803-1[.
Literary Miscellany 1805-6.
Emerald, or Miscellany of Literature 1806-8.
Something by Nemo Nobody I809.
Massachusetts Agricultural Repository and Journal = The Christian Disciple, Unitarian (every two months). The Gospel Advocate, Episcopalian (monthly).
American Baptist Magazine (monthly).
The Missionary Herald (continued Panoplist).
637
THE PRESS, ETC., OF THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS.
But Mrs. Hannah Foster's " Novel, founded on fact," entitled The Coquette ; Or the History of Elisa Wharton, published originally in 1797, ran through half-a-dozen editions, continuing for a generation to move the sympathy of tender readers by its vapid and high-flown sentiment, and is still attainable.
Eight volumes of the Massachusetts Magasine, running over as many years, brought it to the end of its career. Its work was taken up, though in a somewhat different spirit and style, a few years later, by an association of literary gentlemen calling themselves the Anthology Club,1 who in 1804 assumed the conduct of the Monthly Anthology, or Magazine of Polite Liter- ature, of which the first number had been issued in the preceding November. Of this little club of active-minded young men, - a modest centre of lite- rary radiance in the little town, - and of the periodical which it sustained with a worthy pertinacity for eight years, the memory is surely worth pre- serving. One of its members, William Tudor, has left us an account of it, of which so much as space will allow shall be here transcribed. Its founder was the Rev. William Emerson, who became the editor of the Anthology after six numbers had been issued by his predecessor, Mr. Phinchas Adams, and " who induced two or three gentlemen to join with him in the care of the work, and laid the foundation of the Anthology Club."
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