Early American Publishers And Printers

Early American publishers and printers played a central role in the social, religious, political and commercial developments in colonial America, before, during, and after the American Revolution. Printing and publishing in the 17th and 18th centuries among the Thirteen Colonies of British North America first emerged as a result of religious enthusiasm and over the scarcity and subsequent great demand for bibles and other religious literature. By the mid-18th century, printing took on new proportions with the newspapers that began to emerge, most notably in Boston. When the British Crown began imposing new taxes, many of these newspapers became highly critical and outspoken about the British colonial government, which was widely considered unfair among the colonists. Schlesinger, 1935, p. 63.

In the early years of colonial settlement communications between the various colonies, which were often hundreds of miles apart, usually consisted of dispatches, hand-written one at a time, then carried by private carriers to their destinations. Before 1700, there were no newspapers in the colonies, so official news came slowly, especially to those who lived away from the colonial seat of government in the major townships or in the remote countryside. Eldridge, 1995, p. 18, Colonial law and news overall was therefore not available in comprehensive print form for the common colonist, whose only knowledge of these things was usually passed on by word of mouth from colonial officials or traveling couriers, or by means of a simple post in a town square. Religious literature was also scarce, and while many colonists possessed bibles, usually brought over from England, they were generally in short supply, while religious literature overall was in great demand among the colonists.

As the remote British Crown in Parliament continued to impose additional taxes, in particular the Stamp Act of 1765, various colonial newspapers and pamphlets began openly criticizing imperial policy with acrimonious accounts of such affairs. These were published by notable printers, such as Benjamin Franklin, William Goddard, William Bradford and others, who were politically involved in the controversy with the British Crown over taxation, freedom of the press and other such rights. A number of printers, including Goddard and Bradford, belonged to the Sons of Liberty and used their printing presses as a means of promoting colonial opposition to the Stamp Act and other royal legislation they deemed unfair to them as colonial Englishmen who lacked representation in the Parliament. The open criticism of such advents coming from the press often brought accusations of printing libelous and seditious material.

The plentiful historical accounts of the colonial period still have brought little investigation into how printers affected the religious, social and political growth in the colonies. Most scholarship on printers and publishing in the colonies confines itself to either an account of individuals such as Isaiah Thomas in the context of each colony, or only lends itself to the mechanics of printing presses and typography, as does Lawrence Wroth in ''The Colonial Printer''. According to Wroth, however, the overall subject of early American printing and publishing as it affected political and social issues in the colonies and how it ultimately led to a revolution, which is the focus of this article, has been pursued with a "noticeable reluctance".

Colonial newspapers

Newspapers in colonial America served to disseminate vital political, social and religious information that explicitly appealed to the colonist's growing sense of unity with other Americans. This was a cause of great concern to the royal colonial governments among the colonies who feared that the mass dissemination of news and opinion undermined their authority. Colonial Boston was where the American newspaper emerged, and where it was nurtured through its initial stages. Initially newspapers were delivered through the mails at no charge for postage until 1758.

During the first quarter of the eighteenth century, there were twice as many printers in Boston as there were for in all the other colonies combined. There were only six American newspapers, where four of them were published in Boston. Moreover, the greater majority of the books and pamphlets of the period bore a Boston imprint, making eastern Massachusetts the literary and typographic center of colonial America.

Colonial newspapers played an active role during the Christian revivalist controversy that occurred in the early 1740s. The controversy started in and centered around Boston, where Thomas Fleet was one of the most visible critics, using his '' Boston Evening Post'' to publish criticism against the established Clergy, along with the newspaper of Thomas Prince, ''The Christian History''.

On September 25, 1690, the first newspaper to emerge in the British colonies in America was the '' Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick'', printed and published in Boston by Richard Pierce for Benjamin Harris. Harris had fled England for fear of religious persecution and speaking out against the crown. His newspaper was welcomed and received enthusiastically by the colonists, however, it was not approved or well regarded by the colonial governor, especially since it had no official printing license, required by British law at that time. i.e."no person as tokeep any printing-press for printing, nor asany book, pamphlet or other matter whatsoever" without "especial leave and license first obtained" from the governor. As one historian put it, "the first newspaper published in America became the first to be suppressed by the authorities" Wroth, 1938, p. 19. In 1695 Harris returned to England where he was arrested for publishing his newspaper. The first successful newspaper in America was ''The Boston News-Letter'', which appeared in 1704, and until 1719 it was the only newspaper in the colonies. The Antiquarian Society, 2021 Essay.

It was not until 1704 that the colonies' second newspaper, ''The Boston News-Letter'', appeared. Printed by Bartholomew Green for John Campbell, proprietor and Postmaster in Boston, this newspaper was also published in Boston, but had government approval and remained in operation for 74 years until 1776, when the British occupied Boston. The '' Hartford Courant'' is considered to be the oldest continuously published newspaper in the United States, though there is some debate on that status. Before the Stamp Act of 1765 there were twenty-four newspapers among the colonies, save New Jersey, whose news came from newspapers in neighboring Philadelphia and New York. By 1787 Thomas Jefferson expressed the sentiment now shared by many printers over the idea of freedom of the press when he said, "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."

Among the dozens of newspapers that existed before and during the American Revolution, many of them proved to be exceptionally noteworthy in terms of criticizing colonial government, promoting freedom of the press, and other freedoms, and furthering the cause for American independence. Newspapers easily accomplished these ends as they had already become indispensable to the colonists who relied on them for information prior to the revolution, and who considered the printed distribution of materials an essential means in keeping the overall community informed, while promoting the ideals of freedom they embraced. Newspapers would also play an important role in outlining public debates while the Constitution was being ratified in 1787–1788.

Promoting independence

The idea of an independent American union began to emerge after the French and Indian War, when the Parliament began imposing heavy taxes on the colonies for the debts it incurred during that war. By 1774, the idea for an independent union was not yet one of complete separation from the mother country in England and had assumed that the colonies would still be an essential component of the British Empire and still under the authority of the King and Parliament. By the end of 1773, after the Boston Tea Party, the idea of colonial independent union with its own government began appearing in various newspaper articles and essays, most often written by anonymously by newspaper editors for fear of reprisal and prosecution. They promoted the idea that there was a need for an “American Congress” that would speak on behalf of the Americans, and in no uncertain terms insisted that an independent American congress should have equal status with British authority. After the Boston Tea Party, the British responded with the Intolerable Acts that, among other things, closed down the busy port of Boston. Word of this incursion quickly spread in newspapers and broadsides and in response the various colonies, in support of Massachusetts whose trade had largely been halted, sent representatives to Philadelphia and formed the First Continental Congress. To assert pressure on England to repeal the acts, they formed the Continental Association, which called for a colony wide boycott of British goods. This only served to infuriate King George III, and within months he sent troops to Boston and from there they marched on Lexington and Concord in April 1775, which started the American Revolutionary War. The war caused many printers to flee Massachusetts and relocate their shops elsewhere or otherwise close down. Newspapers such as the ''Boston Gazette'' and ''The Providence Gazette'' were among the most visible in publishing literature that fostered the idea of American independence, which now was receiving popular support among the colonies.

Selected publications

The first magazine that appeared in American colonies, ''The American Monthly Magazine'', printed by Andrew Bradford in February, 1741, and its editor, John Webbe. The first religious periodical published in America, was the ''Ein Geistliches Magazien'', by Sower in 1764. In 1719 the ''Boston Gazette'' was established in Boston; the first newspaper in Philadelphia, the American Weekly Mercury, was also founded by Andrew Bradford the same year. In 1736, the first newspaper in to emerge in Virginia was the ''Virginia Gazette'', founded by William Rind In Virginia. Rind was soon appointed public printer. This gazette printed Thomas Jefferson's '' A Summary View of the Rights of British America'' in 1774, two years before he drafted the Declaration of Independence. Wroth, 1922, pp. 86–87 Also in 1774, the ''Virginia Gazette'' reprinted the articles of the Continental Association, calling for a boycott on British goods, drafted and signed by members of the First Continental Congress, in response to the Intolerable Acts, which united the colonies in a boycott of British goods and a prohibition against any exports to England. The articles in this Association were met with mixed reactions from the colonists, and from various American and British individuals in Britain, with letters for and against the measure appearing in colonial newspapers, with criticisms coming mostly from moderate or loyalist presses.

On April 22, 1775, three days after the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the ''Virginia Gazette'' reported that a large quantity of gunpowder in Williamsburg had been stolen during the night by order of Lord Dunmore. The news traveled quickly and was repeated in ''The Pennsylvania Evening Post''. The news reports subsequently prompted Dunmore to pay for the gunpowder and for a time averted armed conflict in Virginia.

''The New-England Courant'' made its appearance on Monday, August 7, 1721, as the third newspaper to appear in Boston and the fourth in the colonies. Founded in Boston by James Franklin, Benjamin Franklin's older brother, who was started in retaliation for losing his printing job at the ''Boston Gazette'' when its ownership changed hands and the printing was given to Samuel Kneeland. Writing under the assumed name of Silence Dogood, Benjamin Franklin wrote more than a dozen articles. One such article led to James Franklin's month long imprisonment in 1726 by British colonial authorities for printing what they considered seditious articles after he refused to reveal the identity of the author. After being released, James resumed his printing practice. Franklin's newspaper had been current for only four months when it was ordered shut down, where he was "... strictly forbidden by this Court to print or publish the ''New-England Courant'', or any other pamphlet or paper of the like nature, except it be first supervised by the Secretary of this Province; and the Justices of His Majesty's Sessions of the Peace for the County of Suffolk ..." Hudson, 1873, pp. 66–67.

On October 2, 1729, Samuel Keimer, the owner of ''The Pennsylvania Gazette'' in Philadelphia, who failed to make a success out of this newspaper, fell into debt and before fleeing to Barbados sold the ''Gazette'' to Benjamin Franklin and his partner Hugh Meredith. Under Franklin ''The Gazette'' became the most successful newspaper in the colonies. On December 28, 1732, through the ''Gazette'' Franklin announced that he had just printed and published the first edition of ''The Poor Richard'', (better known as ''Poor Richard's Alamanack'') by Richard Saunders, Philomath. The almanack proved to be a huge success with a printing run that lasted more than twenty-five years.

The first printing press constructed in America was made at Germantown, Pennsylvania in 1750. At the same place, in 1772, the first regular foundry for casting type was built by Christopher Sower, however, its type implements were sent over from Germany and were intended solely for the production of German types. The third press to appear in the colonies. Salem was the third town in the Colonies, in the order of time, to enjoy the advantages of a public printing press.

On June 19, 1744, Franklin took on David Hall, introduced by William Strahan while Franklin was in England, as a business partner and made him manager in charge of the ''Gazette'', allowing Franklin the time to pursue his scientific and other interests. Upon the proposal of the Stamp Act, Hall warned Franklin that subscribers to their newspaper were already cancelling their accounts in anticipation of the unpopular tax — not over an increase in the cost it would place on the newspaper, but on principle. Bailyn & Hench (eds.), 1981, p. 25. After buying out Franklin in May 1766, Hall took on another partner and established a new firm of ''Hall and Sellers'', which printed the Continental paper currency issued by Congress during the American Revolutionary War.

James Davis came to the North Carolina province in 1749, answering a call by their Assembly for an official printer to print their laws, legal journals and paper currency. He became the first printer to establish a print shop in that colony and in the process, founded and printed North Carolina's first newspaper, the ''North-Carolina Gazette''. Elliot, 1965, p. 7. Thomas, 1874, Vol. II, p. 166. In 1755 Benjamin Franklin appointed Davis as the first postmaster of North Carolina. Lee, 1917, pp. 53–54.

The first newspaper established in Connecticut was ''The Connecticut Gazette'' in New Haven, on April 12, 1755, a weekly newspaper issued every Friday, by James Parker, in New Haven. Thomas, 1874, vol. II, pp. 85–86. As the premier newspaper in that colony, it functioned as a military record in reporting the events of the French and Indian War. Parker's partner was Benjamin Franklin who often helped printers in getting started. That year Parker also published 10 religious pamphlets, five almanacs and two New York newspapers. He rarely visited New Haven and left his junior partner, John Holt, as the editor of the newspaper. The Gazette had, for a time, a large circulation throughout the Connecticut Colony. The ''Gazette'' was continued by Parker & Company till 1764, was briefly suspended, but was later revived by Benjamin Mecom. Its motto, printed on its front page read, "Those who would give up Essential Liberty, to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety". The ''Gazette'', like other newspapers of that period, was highly critical of the Stamp Act.

''The Providence Gazette'' was first published October 20, 1762, by William Goddard, and later with his sister Mary Katherine Goddard, at the time the only newspaper printed in Providence. The paper was published weekly and passionately defended the rights of the colonies before the revolution and ably supported the cause of the country during the war. After American independence was established following the war it continued to promote federal republican principles.

The ''Pennsylvania Chronicle'', published by William Goddard, first number appeared January 6, 1767. This was the fourth newspaper to be printed in the English language established in Philadelphia, and the first with four columns to a page, printed in the northern colonies.

John Dunlap was commissioned by the Second Continental Congress to print 200 broadsides of the Declaration of Independence. These copies came to be known as the Dunlap broadsides. John Hancock sent a copy to General Washington and his army at New York with instructions that it be read aloud.

''The Pennsylvania Evening Post'' was a newspaper published for the duration of the American Revolutionary War, by Benjamin Towne, from 1775 to 1783. It was the first newspaper to publish the United States Declaration of Independence, and was the first daily newspaper in the United States.

By 1740 there were sixteen newspapers in the British colonies, all weeklies. By the time of the American Revolution in 1775, there were some thirty-seven newspapers in business, with most of them routinely publishing literature promoting colonial independence from Britain.

''Freedom of the Press'' evolution

Many printers in England who were printing literature promoting the English Reformation fled England to the European continent or to the new world to escape religious and political prosecution under the reigns of King Henry VIII and Queen Mary I, both Catholics who were trying, unsuccessfully, to reverse the Reformation movement during their reigns. John Daye, who was printing and distributing Protestant literature and pamphlets, was a definitive example of this advent. At the same time there was a need for the General Assembly to establishment a press and appoint an official printer to perform the printing of legislative acts. Brigham, 1936, p. 536. Salem was the third town in the Colonies, after Cambridge and Boston, to see the introduction of a printing press.

With the invention of the printing press a powerful tool was given to the common class who naturally was inclined to publicly challenge monarchial authority. In relatively little time the potential influence of the printing press became evident in many countries and increased with the years, despite all the efforts at censorship by the ruling class.

In 1660, Marmaduke Johnson was sent over from England to work with Samuel Green in the printing of a Bible translated into an Indian language by John Eliot. Winship, 1945, p. 204. Matteson; Malone (ed.), 1943, v. 10, p. 110. When this enormous task was completed Johnson returned to England, and within a year came back to the colonies with his own printing press with the intention of starting his own private enterprise. Laws requiring the Court approval and licensing had been repealed, but upon Johnson's return they were reinstated with Johnson specifically in mind. After several failed appeals to the Court, they finally conceded to his wishes, with a few restrictions in place, allowing Johnson in 1674 to become the first printer in the American colonies to operate his own press. Unfortunately Johnson died shortly thereafter that same year and never fulfilled that dream. John Foster bought Johnson's equipment and became the first printer to produce a woodcut engraving of Richard Mather in the American colonies to actually produce works on a privately operated press.

Before 1660, prosecutions involving seditious news accounts were virtually unknown in the colonies, but a pattern of change became evident in the latter 1600s. Prosecutions involving sedition climbed from a low of only 0.7 percent in the 1660s to 15.1 percent by the 1690s. Despite the fact that the alleged cases almost always involved the truth, they were clearly on the rise in the colonies. Historian Larry D. Eldridge notes that there were 1,244 seditious speech prosecutions before the Zenger case, and has drawn from the court records of every colony that existed before 1700. During this time many writers accordingly felt it necessary to write under an assumed name for fear of prosecution and confiscation of their printing presses.

Many printers were accused of sedition and libel for publishing critical accounts of colonial authority. The first such significant case of press censorship presented itself during the trial of Thomas Maule in 1696, when he publicly criticized the conduct of Quakers during one of the Salem Witch Trials. For publishing his work, ''Truth Held Forth and Maintained'', he was arraigned as the first person in the province to be prosecuted for the crime of libel. Maule was sentenced to receive ten lashings for saying that Rev. John Higginson "preached lies, and that his instruction was the doctrine of devils." Wroth, 1938, p. 176.

Newport in Rhode Island, with the 1727 arrival of James Franklin was the fourth town in New England where a printing press operation was introduced. Franklin had removed to the more liberal town of Newport from Boston because of the ordeals he had experienced when he criticized various official and religious dignitaries in his newspaper, ''The New-England Courant'', which he was jailed for in 1722. Scott, 1958, pp. 217–218.

Another definitive example involved the trial of John Peter Zenger who was tried for libel in New York in 1735 for allegedly libeling Governor William Cosby, but was freed on the basis that Zenger's account was true. The now landmark case proved to be an importance step toward establishing freedom of the press in the colonies. The British government subsequently felt that the printing and publishing trade as practiced in the colonies undermined their authority.

While the technology of printing saw little change from the middle of the seventeenth century to the end of the eighteenth, its usefulness broadened considerably during this time. The first printing press arrived in the colonies in 1638 and belonged to British printer Stephen Daye and was part of the founding of Harvard University. This press was established to allow the printing of religious works without fear of interference from Parliament. Its first printing turned out the Freeman's Oath, published in January 1639. Weeks, 1891, p. 6. Roden, 1905, p. 9. It was in the Harvard printing office were many printers got their training, and their books, pamphlets and broadsides helped to promote and sustain the enlightenment movement in New England. Printing presses, books and newspapers were primarily found in the northern colonies, as the southern colonies were either royal or proprietary and were not allowed to govern themselves as much as those in the north during their early histories.

In 1752 Jonathan Mayhew, the founder of Unitarian Church in America, openly criticized the colonial government in Massachusetts. One of Mayhew's sermons, during an election, strongly promoted the Republican form of government. His sermon was published just after the colonial Assembly passed a bill imposing various custom duties. The bill was strongly attacked in a pamphlet from the offices of Samuel Adams' newspaper, ''The Independent Advertiser''. The bill was derided as the " Monitor of Monitors," claiming that the Legislature was tartly handled. Immediately after the publication of Mayhew's sermon, it became the cause for alarm and consternation among the colonial authorities. David Fowle, the printer, brother of Zechariah Fowle, also a printer, was arrested and, for refusing to divulge the name of the writer of the newspaper article, was sent to jail and harsly interrogated for several days. Fowle became disgusted with the Government of Massachusetts and removed to Portsmouth and bought out ''New Hampshire Gazette'', where he would publicly criticize the Stamp Act of 1765.

Religious printing

Religious perspectives became prominent in colonial American literature during the later 17th-century and into the 18th-century, and were mostly found in Puritan writings and publications, Roden, 1905, pp. 95–96. often resulting in charges of libel and sedition levied by the British Crown. The Puritans already had a history for being persecuted for printing and distributing their views in England, openly criticizing the Church of England. In 1637 King Charles passed a Star Chamber decree outlining 33 regulations that provided for the complete control and censoring of any religious, political or other literature they deemed seditious or otherwise questionable. Among other regulations, it forbade any literature that criticized the Church of England, the State, or the government. The decree bore hard upon all minority parties, but with special severity upon Catholics, Puritans, and separatists. The provisions also gave the authority for the punishment of unlawful publications in the colonies where such impositions were employed in an effort to silence the Puritans. Archbishop William Laud in particular was the most persistent in preventing and punishing unauthorized printing of religious, political and other material. By 1730, however, enforcing these provisions, in the colonies, which included the licensing of printing presses, prior approval of literature slated for publication, etc., became increasingly difficult. Nelson, 1959, pp. 162–163.

In 1752 Samuel Kneeland and his partner Bartholomew Green, commissioned by Daniel Henchman, printed an edition of the King James Bible that was the first Bible printed in America in the English language. As the British Crown owned the printing rights it was illegal to print this Bible in America. Newgass, 1958, p. 32. Subsequently the printing was conducted as privately as possible and bore the London imprint from which it was copied, to avoid prosecution and detection of the unauthorized printing. In the process Kneeland was printing the first Bible ever produced from the Boston Press. Drake, 1856, pp. 630, 774.

In 1663, English Puritan missionary John Eliot over the course of forty years, attracted some eleven hundred Indians to the Christian faith, and established fourteen reservations, or "praying towns" for his followers. Along with other religious works, he published what came to be known as the ''Eliot Indian Bible''. Printed by Samuel Green it was the first Bible published in British-American colonies in an effort to introduce Christianity to the Indian peoples. Eliot's Bible was a translation of the Geneva Bible into the Algonquian language commonly spoken by the Indians in Massachusetts.

Cotton Mather was a Puritan minister in New England and a prolific author of books and pamphlets and is considered one of the most important intellectual figures in colonial America. Mather made free use of the presses in the New England colonies, sometimes in an effort to counter the attacks made on Puritans by George Keith and others. Between 1724 and 1728 he printed sixty-three titles on colonial presses. He is noted for his Magnalia Christi Americana, published in 1702, which outlines the religious development of Massachusetts, and other nearby colonies in New England from 1620 to 1698. In an effort to promote Puritan ethics, he wrote, ''Ornaments for the Daughters of Zion'', written for the benefit of young women on appropriate dress and behavior. He became a controversial figure for his involvement in the events surrounding the Salem witch trials of 1692–1693.

Jonas Green, a protégé of Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia, and member of the Green family, had been engaged in operating the presses of the Puritan colonies. For twenty-eight years Green was the public printer to the Province of Maryland. Joseph Galloway, a close friend of Franklin, opposed the Revolution as a Tory, and by 1778 had fled to England. Like many Tories he believed, as he asserted in this pamphlet, that the Revolution was, to a considerable extent, a religious quarrel, caused by Presbyterians and Congregationalists and the circular letters and other accounts they had printed and distributed. Benjamin Franklin, however, raised as a Presbyterian, who for a time became a Deist, then a non-denominational Protestant Christian, realized the value of printing and promoting overall religious values as a means of strengthening the social fabric and as a means of uniting the colonies in their opposition to British rule. Franklin ultimately published more religious works than any other eighteenth-century American printers.

Thomas Dobson, who arrived in Philadelphia in 1754 was the first printer in the United States to publish a complete Hebrew Bible

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