1790s Press and the Republic

            The American press during the 1790s played the printed role of today’s electronic media; which like today, was used as a vehicle to attack the principles and policies of the opposing political parties. Since the dawn of a literate public actively engaged in government, politicians have both supported and cursed the effects of the press on the political process. The rapidly growing media of the late eighteenth century was seen as a necessary evil that could serve or destroy the evolution of the new Federal government.

            The United States of America was an experimental constitutional republic in its infancy during the 1790s. Its republican ideals and political theories were affecting the world; and when the French Revolution erupted in Europe, many Americans were becoming very interested in its outcome and in politics in general. As Duke de La Liancourt Rochefoucault observed on his visit to America, “every one here…takes an interest in state affairs, is extremely eager to learn the news of the day, and discusses politics as well as he is able.”[1] The great political debates fostered the development of the two predominant political parties in America, the Democratic Republicans and the Federalists.

            As these new political parties were forming and gathering their supporters, a new revolution was being born, a “reading revolution.”[2] Printed materials played a major part in the Revolutionary War; but technological advancements (“stereotyping, steam-powered printing, machine papermaking, and the introduction of cloth bindings”) and government “subsidies to newspaper publishers” created a new phenomenon, which “helped lay the groundwork for a new information network.”[3]  

            The printed information by the press in the 1790s was biased and often considered to be extremely fraudulent and slanderous to those it opposed. Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Norvell that a newspaper would “be most useful…by restraining it to true facts and sound principles only.”[4] In the first issue of the New York Evening Post, a newspaper established by Alexander Hamilton, Jefferson’s opponent, wrote: “’It is the Press which has corrupted our political morals and it is to the Press we must look for the means of our political regeneration.”[5]

            Both political parties would use the press to their advantage and both would attack the press for the damaging material they printed. The Federalist Party went so far as to attack the First Amendment and freedom of speech, when President John Adams signed into the law the Alien and Sedition Acts. Now, the government had authority to punish any citizen who wrote, printed, or published “any false, scandalous and malicious writing…against the government of the United States.”[6] Clearly, punishing any person for their printed views or opinions found to be contrary to the government could be seen as degrading to political discussion in any republic.

Bibliography

“An Act in Addition to the Act, Entitled ‘An Act for the Punishment of Certain Crimes Against the United States.’” The Avalon Project. Accessed on March 2, 2015. http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/sedact.asp.

Horrocks, Thomas A. Popular Print and Popular Medicine: Almanacs and Health Advice in Early America. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2008.

Jefferson, Thomas. Letters and Addresses of Thomas Jefferson. Edited by Parker, William B. and Viles, Jonas. Buffalo: National Jefferson Society, 1903.

Novotny, Patrick. The Press in American Politics, 1787-2012. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2014.

Thomas Paine: Common Sense for the Modern Era. Edited by King, Ronald F. and Begler, Elsie. San Diego: San Diego State University Press, 2007.

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[1] Thomas Paine: Common Sense for the Modern Era, edited by Ronald F. King and Elsie Begler, (San Diego: San Diego State University Press, 2007), 123.

[2] Thomas A. Horrocks, Popular Print and Popular Medicine: Almanacs and Health Advice in Early America, (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2008), 9.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Thomas Jefferson, Letters and Addresses of Thomas Jefferson, edited by William B. Parker and Jonas Viles, (Buffalo: National Jefferson Society, 1903), 175.

[5] Patrick Novotny, The Press in American Politics, 1787-2012, (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2014), 25.

[6] “An Act in Addition to the Act, Entitled ‘An Act for the Punishment of Certain Crimes Against the United States.’” The Avalon Project, accessed on March 2, 2015, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/sedact.asp.