American Revolution and the Press

Overview

In the years surrounding the American Revolution, the publishing industry—in the form of newspapers and pamphlets—was key to keeping Americans connected and apprised of the conversations that were happening about their collective fate, as well as the events of the war itself. Outside of the major cities, the American population was distributed across an extremely large area; only 10 percent of the population lived in the cities, and many Americans lived hundreds of miles from the nearest true urban center. It is not coincidence that the rise of the American publishing industry, helping to knit these far-flung Americans together, occurred in parallel to the rise of anti-British, pro-independence sentiments. Initially concerned mainly with the dissemination of European news, from the middle of the eighteenth century, American newspapers focused more and more on colonial matters.

The American Revolution was fought from 1775 to 1783, beginning after several years of sometimes violent conflicts between colonial and British forces. The American victory established the independence and sovereignty from Great Britain of a new political state formed from thirteen colonies of British America.

The first newspaper in North America was published in Boston in 1690: Benjamin Harris's Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestic published a single edition before the colonial government forced it to shut down. Fourteen years later, the government permitted the publication of the weekly Boston News-Letter, the first regularly published newspaper in the American colonies, soon followed by weekly newspapers in New York and Philadelphia. Inspired by papers in Great Britain, they were usually four pages long in a two-column double-sided format, printing a combination of British and colonial news. By 1750, there were fourteen newspapers published at least weekly (some were published two or three times a week); twenty-five years later, that number had more than doubled, to thirty-seven, and while seventeen of those folded during the war years, thirty-three new ones began operating in the same period. The first daily newspaper, the Pennsylvania Evening Post, began in 1775 in Philadelphia. A year later, it became the first newspaper in the newly formed United States to publish the Declaration of Independence.

These early newspapers differed from modern, or even early twentieth century, newspapers in important ways. There were no news agencies like the Associated Press or Reuters, providing standardized news coverage for large areas; those would not be founded until the second half of the nineteenth century. There was an "exchange" of stories, in which articles initially written for one paper would be reprinted in papers in other cities. Without a telegraph, radio, or telephone—all at least a century away—news was much slower to arrive; urgent news developments from other cities might be delivered by rider, but foreign news developments were at least several weeks old. Despite this slower pace, the press—including both regular periodicals like newspapers and the irregular publication of pamphlets, which were cheaper to publish than books and disseminated news, opinion, and essays on contemporary issues—was instrumental in making the colonies feel united and helping to shape American identity and culture.

While it remains common for any given newspaper to tend to traditionally lean in one direction or another politically, in the colonial era journalism did not aspire to objective coverage in the sense that would develop in later generations. Newspapers were usually strongly partisan, and writing under a pseudonym—as Benjamin Franklin did in the 1720s as Silence Dogood—was a common stratagem for avoiding punitive measures when criticizing government officials. The extent of this criticism was further than is common in the modern era; it could often exceed what would be considered libel by modern legal standards.

Politics, religion, and commercial concerns were the primary focuses of eighteenth century journalism. Political opinions initially published as pamphlets would, if they attracted enough interest, be reprinted in newspapers—sometimes more than once. This was the antecedent to the syndicated content that developed decades later. Thomas Paine's Common Sense, for example, was first published as a 49-page pamphlet in January 1776; it was subsequently printed and reprinted in numerous newspapers, usually as excerpts or summaries (though the Connecticut Courant reprinted it in its entirety, despite its length). The pamphlet presented Paine's argument for American independence and was the first written work to present a serious case for it. Paine structured his argument like a sermon (another common source of pamphlets), connecting sovereignty and democratic governance to what he saw as traditional Protestant beliefs. It was the most widely read written work of its era, and remains in print, the best-selling American work of all time. In 1790—by which time Paine had become involved with the French Revolution—it was even printed in translation in France.

Further Insights

Differences between Great Britain and its thirteen North American colonies intensified after the passage of the Stamp Act in 1765, which enacted a direct tax on the colonies (which had to be paid with British currency, not the colonial currency more commonly used domestically) in order to recoup the expenses of the North American theater of the Seven Years' War (the French and Indian War). The act was criticized throughout Britain, not just in the colonies, but colonial dissent centered on two points: the French and Indian War had not, contrary to parliamentary claims, protected colonial interests, since the colonies had no dispute with the French and were not at serious risk of invasion; and the tax, which singled out the colonies, was enacted by a parliament that included no representation from the colonies themselves. Though the Stamp Act was repealed the following year, Parliament affirmed their right to tax or otherwise pass laws pertaining to the colonies; the Townshend Acts, proposed by Chancellor to the Exchequer Charles Townshend, imposed indirect taxes on goods like glass and paints, which had to be imported from Britain. Over the next decade, tensions continued to rise, primarily fueled by the economic impact on colonists; though the articulations of disputes focused on political and philosophical disagreements, had American colonists not tangibly suffered as a result of British policies, it is unlikely the disputes would have ever gone further than pamphlets.

Boycotts of British goods led to a resistance movement throughout the colonies against the 1773 Tea Act, which again enacted a tax on colonists who were not represented in Parliament. Protests were held throughout the colonies, notably in Maryland, Philadelphia, and North Carolina, though the Tea Act is most popularly associated with the Boston Tea Party—the destruction of taxed tea in Boston by the Sons of Liberty. Membership in the Sons of Liberty included several printers and newspaper publishers; other printers didn't officially join, but opened their print shops to political meetings. Following the tea protests, Massachusetts colonists were singled out for punishment by the Coercive Acts, known in the colonies as the Intolerable Acts, which included the forced quartering of British troops in the American colonies, helping to inspire the Third Amendment to the Constitution fifteen years later.

Combat between British and American forces preceded the actual war, when the British Army attempted to disarm the Massachusetts militia, leading to militia forces successfully forcing a temporary British evacuation in 1776, though an attempt to invade Quebec and inspire a rebellion against the British there was a resounding failure. On July 2, 1776, the Continental Congress (the legislature of the colonies) voted to declare independence from Britain, officially beginning the war; the combined colonies were conventionally referred to as the United States from that point on, though a federal government was not established until 1777 with the Articles of Confederation, and it remained skeletal and anemic until the government established in 1789 by the Constitutional Convention. The eventual American victory came about not simply owing to American military successes, but because Britain was fighting an unpopular war on multiple fronts (the Second Anglo-Mysore War and Fourth Anglo-Dutch War were fought concurrently), and thanks to financial and military support from Britain's archenemy, France. The French alliance brought with it additional help from the Spanish. A strong victory by General Washington in the Siege of Yorktown in October 1781 helped give the anti-war faction in Parliament the leverage they needed to first cease offensive actions in North America and then press for peace in the Treaty of Paris in 1783, which recognized American sovereignty seven years and two months after the Declaration of Independence.

Throughout all these stages—from the decade-plus before war began, through the rising tensions, through the war itself, and through the post-war years as the United States sought to define itself politically, economically, and culturally—the printed word was a significant part of patriotic efforts. Writers, journalists, and pamphleteers did their best to sway the public to their cause, whether that was support for the war, calls for reconciliation, or positions on the best direction for the American government to take.

Issues

There were no political parties in the United States in the colonial era. Informal political factions were referred to as Patriots (alternatively, Rebels or American Whigs), who supported independence, and Tories (or Loyalists), who opposed the war and supported loyalty to the British Empire. "Whig" and "Tory" were borrowings from British terminology, in which Tories were conservative traditionalists, usually monarchists and Anglicans, and Whigs were constitutionalists who sought to limit the power of the monarch, supported democratic reforms, and supported greater tolerance for (and could include members of) "dissenter" sects of Anglophone Christianity such as Puritans and Presbyterians. In part because of the religious dimension to the Tory/Whig divide, Whiggish Americans were more likely to be found in New England, which had a history of founding by Puritans and other dissenters. Tories were most common in the middle and southern colonies, which had been founded as crown colonies by English loyalists. Both Patriots and Loyalists were found throughout the colonies: Patriots tended to be younger, Loyalists older; many Loyalists saw themselves as moderates, who agreed with many of the changes sought by the Patriots but were alienated by the violence of the Patriots and considered independence too extreme a goal. Once war actually began, Loyalists became less common; comprising maybe 15–20 percent of the adult white male population, they were especially concentrated in the Carolinas (where in some places Loyalist recruitment exceeded Patriot recruitment) and New York City, where many northern Loyalists relocated, sometimes en route to an eventual migration to Canada.

While in the middle of the eighteenth century, the balance of political opinion in the newspaper industry might have been a little more balanced, the Stamp Act resulted in newspapers heavily favoring independence, because the burden of the tax on paper goods was largely borne by the printers who owned the newspapers. In the 1770s, most Loyalist papers either shut down or relocated to New York or other Loyalist centers (Mellen, 2015). One of the prominent supporters of the pre-war Patriot cause was Anne Catherine Hoof Green, who had inherited the Maryland Gazette from her husband in 1767, becoming the first female newspaper publisher in the country. She oversaw the publication of numerous patriotic pamphlets before dying in 1775, the year before the war began, leaving the operations of the paper to her two sons.

While most newspapers supported the Patriot cause, this did not mean there were no areas of dispute. Frequently debated topics included the interpretation of Paine's Common Sense (and subsequent works), as the pamphleteer's popularity had made him a common touchstone for all literate Americans (and for that matter, many who gathered in public places to hear the paper read); the relationship between church and state, and other issues of American religion; the relationship between colonial/state government and federal government, which would become one of the most important issues in the later years of the war; and how Loyalists or politically neutral citizens and businesses should be treated. There were many who condemned the use of violence by Patriots against their fellow Americans, for example, speaking out against highly publicized incidents of tarring and feathering; likewise, the issue of whether Washington's army and colonial militias were justified in confiscating Loyalist property for the war effort was one that saw unending debate. Furthermore, while censorship was a constant concern in the pre-war years, the government and the military simply needed the newspapers too much during the war, which freed editors and writers to openly criticize the government even when they agreed with the overall aims, without fear of reprisals or need for anonymity.

In addition to the newspapers, pamphlets—typically published by the same printers as the newspapers, though not necessarily with the same editorial oversight—were an important medium of the eighteenth-century press. The practice of distributing short leaflets (folded or saddle-stapled if more than a single sheet) arguing in favor of a position or responding to a previous pamphlet had begun in the years leading up to the English Civil War (1642–1651). In addition to Thomas Paine, many of the founding fathers first made names for themselves as pamphlet-writers, including Alexander Hamilton, who as a young man of 19 wrote A Full Vindication of the Measures of Congress, in defense of the First Continental Congress's response to the Coercive Acts. Hamilton's pamphlet was itself a response to Free Thoughts on the Proceedings of the Continental Congress, a staunchly Loyalist pamphlet by A. W. Farmer (a pseudonym for Episcopal rector Samuel Seabury); "Farmer" subsequently responded to Hamilton with A View of the Controversy, to which Hamilton responded with The Farmer Refuted.

While this back and forth exchange of pamphlets is now most associated with The Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers (Cheney, 2015) that were circulated in the years surrounding the Constitutional Convention, the practice had begun in the pre-war years and continued unabated. It was one of the primary means by which Americans heard political issues debated. Before the war, the greatest bursts of activity in pamphlet publishing surrounded three key events: the Stamp Act, the Townshend Acts, and the Tea Act and subsequent Coercive Acts.

The Revolution was also covered in the British press (Bickham, 2009). While the war was necessarily treated differently than in American papers, in the late eighteenth century the British press was the freest in the world. British papers published opinions covering the gamut from the Radical Whigs and religious dissenters, who celebrated the idea of American independence, to the Tories, who feared that an American victory would lead to Britain being overtaken by its European rivals—a power vacuum in the American colonies, they argued, could result in France or Spain absorbing their resource-rich one-time allies.

Late in the war, when American independence was treated as a foregone conclusion, British papers openly wondered if the United States—a country founded in "criminal enterprise," in the words of English historian Edward Gibbon—could be a responsible member of the international community and whether it would make good on its prewar debts to British creditors. Even those papers which supported the Tory cause often found much to admire in George Washington, who had been a well-respected officer during the French and Indian War before the Revolution began. Washington himself was a voracious reader of newspapers, and during the war received authorization from Congress to launch the New Jersey Journal, an Army-run paper designed to counter the criticism from Loyalist papers in New York.

Bibliography

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