COLONIAL PRESS
News that appeared in the early colonial press frequently
came from European newspapers and other foreign sources,
was several weeks old, and resembled accounts of recent
history more than current events. Religion often strongly
influenced local news and rumor frequently found its way
into the press. Newspapers were allowed to publish by
authority of colonial governments and through the first two
decades of the eighteenth century it was rare for papers to
challenge local leaders.
The press did not exist in the British American colonies
from the point of initial settlement. The British first established colonies on the mainland in North America in 1607.
From the first days of settlement, many colonists tried to
re-create many aspects of the culture they left behind in
the mother country. But printing presses were not always
included. The Puritans, religious dissidents who settled
Massachusetts first, brought printing to the British colonies
in North America when they set up a printing press in 1638,
and Boston became the first center of printing in the British colonies. The Puritans believed that it was essential for
believers to have easy access to the Bible and they needed
a printing press in order to make copies of the Bible readily available. The Puritans had established Harvard College
in 1636 to train ministers. The printing press was set up at
Cambridge to help provide resources for the college and the
church. The first book published was the Bay Psalm Book,
printed in 1640.
Over the course of the seventeenth century, the number
of printing presses in the British colonies grew slowly. By
the last decades of the century, some printers considered
establishing a newspaper. Boston continued to be the center of growth and development in the printing industry in
the American colonies. Here, Benjamin Harris became the
first printer to actually try a newspaper when he published
Publick Occurrences, Both Foreign and Domestick on
September 25, 1690. Harris published a summary of news
from Massachusetts, the other colonies, and Europe. He
also published an essay criticizing the colonial government
for failing to adequately handle problems with the Native
Americans. Harris only produced one issue of Publick
Occurrences. Local authorities shut down the publication
because he failed to get official permission to publish the
newspaper. It would be fourteen years before someone tried
again.
On April 24, 1704, John Campbell printed the Boston
News-Letter. Having learned from Harris’s experience,
Campbell asked for permission to publish and seldom questioned the government because he feared being shut down.
Campbell clearly hesitated to criticize the public authorities, but he successfully broke the news drought and made
newspapers an accepted part of the printing industry in the
British colonies.
Campbell finally faced competition beginning in 1719,
when William Brooker, the new postmaster in Boston,
began publishing the Boston Gazette. Although the Boston
Gazette became a radical news sheet in later decades, it initially remained fairly predictable and inoffensive in order to
continue to gain information from government officials.
In 1721, the friendly and safe relationship between newspaper printers and public officials ended. James Franklin
(Benjamin Franklin’s older brother) began publishing the
New England Courant. Franklin had been encouraged to
begin the Courant by a group of citizens opposed to the
leaders of Massachusetts and that opposition showed in the
pages of Franklin’s newspaper.
Much of the disagreements in Massachusetts also related
to religious differences. Supporters of the government
tended to be members of the Puritan Congregational Church
while those in the opposition tended to be members of the
Church of England. Letters and essays in the Gazette and
the Courant reflected disagreements over how to deal with
the Native Americans, worries about the French in Canada,
and other governmental issues. They even argued over the
issue of the validity of smallpox inoculation. Franklin led
the attack against the new method of preventing disease,
partially in order to attack Increase and Cotton Mather,
influential Puritan ministers who supported inoculation.
James Franklin finally went too far in 1722 when he
attacked the local authorities for failing to adequately
defend against pirate attacks. Franklin was charged with
contempt and told he could no longer publish the Courant.
Franklin just made his apprentice brother Benjamin the
official printer and continued publication. The two brothers
eventually had a falling-out and Benjamin left Boston for
good. James finally ended the Courant in 1726. He moved
to Newport, Rhode Island, where he later established that
colony’s first paper, the Rhode Island Gazette.
Benjamin Franklin moved to Philadelphia, the other
center of printing in the British colonies. William Bradford
had established the first press in Philadelphia in 1685, but
he moved to New York City in 1693 after a falling-out with
Quaker leaders. William Bradford’s son, Andrew, published
the first paper in Philadelphia on December 22, 1719. Ten
years later, Benjamin Franklin took over the management
of Samuel Keimer’s Pennsylvania Gazette, which had first
appeared in December 1728. Franklin had opened his own
shop in Philadelphia in the spring of 1728 and had planned
to publish a paper to rival Bradford’s Mercury. Keimer,
Franklin’s first employer when he came to Philadelphia
from Boston, learned of Franklin’s newspaper plans and
rushed to publish the Gazette first. But Keimer could not
turn the Gazette into a successful venture, so he passed it
on to Franklin. Franklin quickly succeeded, winning the
government printing contract away from Bradford. By age
twenty-four, Benjamin Franklin was the sole proprietor of
what many regarded as the best newspaper in the colonies.
Franklin’s success revolved around a number of ventures.
He filled the pages of the Gazette with news and materials
gleaned from a variety of sources, including other newspapers and letters acquired from readers. He included essays
on a variety of topics, both political and otherwise. Although
not particularly religious, Franklin may have contributed
to the Great Awakening by welcoming George Whitefield
into his home, giving his preaching front-page play, and by selling bound editions of Whitefield’s sermons. Franklin
also ventured into other printing projects, most notably the
extremely successful Poor Richard’s Almanack, which he
began publishing in 1732. Benjamin Franklin retired from
the active management of the Pennsylvania Gazette at age
forty-two, but he continued to give advice about the operation of the Gazette and helped a number of young printers set up shop and establish newspapers throughout the
colonies.
Newspapers appeared in other colonies. William Bradford founded New York’s first paper when he issued the New
York Gazette on November 8, 1733. William Parks founded
the Maryland Gazette in Annapolis in 1727. Parks later also
founded the first paper in Virginia, when he began publishing the Virginia Gazette in Williamsburg in 1736.
On June 10, 1731, Benjamin Franklin published an “Apology for Printers” in the Pennsylvania Gazette. He declared
that “Printers are educated in the Belief, that when Men differ in Opinion, both Sides ought equally to have the Advantage of being heard by the Publick; and that when Truth
and Error have fair Play, the former is always an overmatch
for the latter: Hence they cheerfully serve all contending
Writers that pay them well, without regarding on which side
they are of the Question in Dispute.” Increasingly, newspaper printers perceived their news sheets as the location for
discussion and debate in order to determine the direction for
community decisions. But public officials continued to be
unsure about how the newspaper press should function and
what should be the relationship between newspaper printers
and government leaders. This uncertainty helped produce
one of the most famous free press trials in history.
The trial of John Peter Zenger grew out of a political
conflict in New York. Originally settled by the Dutch as
New Amsterdam in the early 1600s, the colony became
New York in 1664 when the British conquered the colony.
In the 1730s, opponents of Governor William Cosby sought
ways to inform the people about Cosby’s questionable
actions. They provided financial support for the founding
of Zenger’s New York Weekly Journal on November 5, 1733.
Throughout the rest of 1733, the Journal criticized Governor Cosby and his government for failing to govern properly. By early 1734, Cosby tried to shut down the Weekly
Journal by seeking grand jury indictments or action by the
colonial legislature. Failing in all of these efforts, Cosby
had the royal council issue a warrant for Zenger’s arrest
for encouraging sedition. Zenger was imprisoned for nine
months, a fact that produced considerable sympathy for
his situation. James Alexander, who had done much of the
editing of the Weekly Journal, planned to defend Zenger,
but Cosby had him disbarred. Zenger’s supporters hired
Andrew Hamilton of Pennsylvania, one of the most famous
lawyers in the colonies.
In defending Zenger, Hamilton helped enunciate principles of great importance for the future. He quickly admitted that Zenger had published the items in question. This
admission should have produced a quick guilty verdict
because the issue of who printed the seditious material was
technically all the jury could deal with. Hamilton, however,
sought to go beyond the point of who published to deal with
what was published. He urged the jury to consider the truth
of what Zenger had printed. He declared that it was essential for good government that citizens have the freedom
to criticize their rulers and to judge the validity of criticisms aimed at ruling authorities. The jury found Zenger
“not guilty,” which technically meant that Zenger had not
printed the material in question. It took years for the implications of this trial to be fully understood and implemented,
but Zenger’s trial established the first examples for the
admissibility of information about the issue of the truth of
alleged libels and the role of a jury in determining whether
a publication was seditious or defamatory. This verdict was
a step toward establishing the press’s role as a locale for
discussion and debate over the actions of government.
The New York Weekly Journal continued to be published
while Zenger was in jail, primarily through the efforts of
his wife Anna. In that experience, Anna Zenger was not
unique. Much of the colonial economy was based on familyrun businesses, and husbands and wives often worked side
by side in making the family income. As a result, a number
of women learned how to run a print shop and took over
when their husbands could not work. In the 1730s, James
Franklin’s wife Ann produced the Rhode Island Gazette
during his lengthy illness and continued it following his
death in 1735. Elizabeth Timothy took over the South-Carolina Gazette follow her husband’s death in 1738, and she
continued the paper for seven years. Mary Katherine Goddard, the sister of William Goddard, joined with her brother
and her mother Mary to help run the Providence Gazette
in 1762. She later helped manage two other papers started
by her brother, the Pennsylvania Chronicle in Philadelphia
and the Maryland Journal in Baltimore. Other unheralded
women probably participated in the printing business as
well as they helped husbands and sons earn the family
income.
Throughout the eighteenth century, the colonial press
became increasingly important as a source of news and
information. In comparison to England and the rest of
Europe, Americans became more literate. Literacy increasingly became the mark of a good citizen. By the middle of
the eighteenth century, over one-half of the adult men in the
colonies could read. But even those who could not read for
themselves turned to newspapers for information. Groups
gathered in local taverns to hear the newspapers read out
loud. The average printing run for a colonial newspaper
was between five hundred and one thousand, but each of
these issues probably reached two or three people which
thus greatly multiplied the impact of each issue. The tavern
became an important local institution where people came
in contact with newspapers and discussed their contents.
Producing a newspaper in the eighteenth century was a
slow process. Thirteen separate processes had to occur in
order to print a single page. Type had to be set by hand in
the form and then locked into place in the press. Once the
form was in position, someone would ink the type using
two large deerskin balls and then place a piece of paper on
top of the type. Then someone else would pull twice on an iron lever that pressed the paper down onto the inked type.
This printed page would be hung up to dry, and the process
would be repeated. Two people working ten hours could
produce two thousand to twenty-five hundred pages a day.
And that count assumes they had all the necessary supplies.
Except for ink, almost all the equipment and materials
needed to produce a newspaper had to be imported. Christopher Sower, Jr., of Pennsylvania, began to manufacture
presses in 1750 and type in 1772, but the best still had to
be brought over from Great Britain. And paper, made from
rags, continued to be scarce and had to be imported until
late in the colonial era.
For most of the eighteenth century colonial newspapers published items of interest primarily from Europe.
Most local news apparently passed more by word of mouth
than through newspapers. Births, deaths, and trading news
appeared most frequently, along with an occasional essay
about a local issue. News items from Europe proved popular, followed by materials from the more distant colonies.
Advertisements also constituted a major part of each issue,
primarily because advertisement revenue helped support
the newspaper and because readers wanted to know what
wares local merchants had to sell.
The focus of the colonial press began to change with
the French and Indian War. Because much of the fighting
occurred in the colonies, Americans wanted to know where
the enemy was and who was winning. They would have
wanted to know this even if all the fighting had occurred
in Europe, but the closeness of the fighting made it even
more important to know as many details as available. By
the end of the war, twenty-three newspapers appeared regularly throughout the colonies. The French and Indian War
helped focus the interest of many colonists on the same subject and thus helped set the stage for the Revolutionary War.
Through the press—newspapers and pamphlets—the colonists began to think of themselves as Americans, fiercely
debated what the character of the republic should be, and
stayed informed about events and developments in the fight
against the mother country.
Further Reading
Copeland, David A. Colonial American Newspapers: Character
and Content. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1997.
Kobre, Sidney. The Development of the Colonial Newspaper.
Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1960.
Sloan, Wm. David, and Julie Hedgepeth Williams. The Early
American Press, 1690-1783. Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press, 1994.
Smith, Jeffery A. Printers and Press Freedom: The Ideology of
Early American Journalism. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1988.
Carol Sue Humphrey