“That Bulwark of Our Liberties”: Massachusetts Printers and the Issue of a Free Press, 1783–1788

NOTES

• The Puritan oligarchy did not originally regulate the press. Restrictions were instituted for the first time in 1662, when the General Court appointed Captain Daniel Gookins and Reverend Jonathan Mitchell as licensers of the press in Massachusetts. The General Court continued to appoint ministers to license the press until 1692, when the Crown gave the authority to regulate the press to the royal governor. See Livingston R. Schuyler, The Liberty of the Press in the American Colonies Before the Revolutionary War (New York: Thomas Whittaker, 1905), pp. 7–10; Isaiah Thomas, The History of Printing in America (Worcester, Massachusetts: Isaiah Thomas, Jr., 1810; reprint edition edited by Marcus A. McCorison, Barre, Massachusetts: Imprint Society, 1970), pp. 5–6; Clyde Augustus Duniway, The Development of Freedom of the Press in Massachusetts (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1906), p. 41.
   Google Scholar
• The royal governors of Massachusetts had the authority to regulate the press from 1692 to 1730. When Jonathan Belcher became the new governor in 1730, his official instructions no longer contained the provision concerning press regulation. See Duniway, pp. 63–69, 104–07; Schuyler, pp. 72–76.
   Google Scholar
• Thomas, p. 6.
   Google Scholar
• American Herald, October 30, 1786.
   Google Scholar
• Independent Chronicle, January 24, 1788.
   Google Scholar
• Independent Ledger, December 15, 1783; American Herald, March 10, 1788.
   Google Scholar
• Independent Chronicle, August 14, 1788.
   Google Scholar
• American Herald, September 4, 1788.
   Google Scholar
• American Herald, August 21, 1788.
   Google Scholar
• Schuyler, pp. 21–22; Massachusetts Centinel, January 19, 1785.
   Google Scholar
• Falmouth Gazette, January 22, 1785; Salem Gazette, January 25, 1785.
   Google Scholar
• Boston Gazette, January 17, 1785.
   Google Scholar
• Edwin Emery, The Press and America: An Interpretative History of the Mass Media (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1972), p. 15.
   Google Scholar
• Duniway, pp. 119–22; Willard Grosvernor Bleyer, Main Currents in the History of American Journalism (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1927), p. 77.
   Google Scholar
• Duniway, p. 136; Thomas, p. 259; James Melvin Lee, History of American Journalism (Garden City, New York: The Garden City Publishing Company, Inc., 1917), pp. 109–10; Van Beck Hall, Politics Without Parties: Massachusetts, 1780–1791 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1972), p. 117.
   Google Scholar
• Essex Journal, April 6, 1785; Salem Gazette, April 19, 1785; Exchange Advertiser, April 21, 1785; Falmouth Gazette, May 7, 28, 1785.
   Google Scholar
• Falmouth Gazette, June 4, 1785.
   Google Scholar
• Massachusetts Centinel, May 4, 1785.
   Google Scholar
• Salem Gazette, May 10, 1785; Independent Chronicle, May 12, 1785.
   Google Scholar
• American Herald, August 22, 1785; Salem Gazette, August 23, 1785; American Mercury, August 29, 1785; Falmouth Gazette, September 3, 1785.
   Google Scholar
• Massachusetts Centinel, May 4, 1785; Continental Journal, May 5, 1785; Independent Ledger, May 9, 1785.
   Google Scholar
• American Herald, August 22, 1785; Salem Gazette, August 23, 1785; American Mercury, August 29, 1785; Masssachusetts Spy, September 1, 1785; Falmouth Gazette, September 3, 1785.
   Google Scholar
• Boston Gazette, May 23, 1785; Salem Gazette, May 24, 1785; Hampshire Herald, May 24, 1785; Exchange Advertiser, August 19, 1785.
   Google Scholar
• Salem Gazette, May 10, 1785; Boston Gazette, May 16, 1785.
   Google Scholar
• Exchange Advertiser, August 19, 1785.
   Google Scholar
• Massachusetts Spy, April 21, May 12, 1785.
   Google Scholar
• Massachusetts Spy, May 12, 1785; Plymouth Journal, May 17, 1785; American Journal, April 19, 1785.
   Google Scholar
• Continental Journal, April 8, September 1, 1785; Essex Journal, May 11, 1785; Salem Gazette, August 30, 1785.
   Google Scholar
• Essex Gazette, June 8, 1785.
   Google Scholar
• Falmouth Gazette, May 21, 1785.
   Google Scholar
• Falmouth Gazette, September 3, 1785.
   Google Scholar
• Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism: A History of Newspapers in the United States Through 250 Years, 1690 to 1940 (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1962), pp. 143–44; Duniway, pp. 136–37; Rollo G. Silver, “Aprons Instead of Uniforms: The Practice of Printing, 1776–1787,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 87 (April 1977): 177-79; Lee, pp. 110–11.
   Google Scholar
• Independent Chronicle, April 20, 1786; Massachusetts Gazette, May 24, 1786.
   Google Scholar
• American Herald, August 22, 1785; Salem Gazette, August 23, 1785; American Mercury, August 29, 1785; Falmouth Gazette, September 3, 1785; Massachusetts Gazette, May 15, 1786.
   Google Scholar
• Massachusetts Gazette, June 5, 1786; Continental Journal, June 8, 1786, Worcester Magazine, first week in June, 1786.
   Google Scholar
• Continental Journal, August 3, 1786.
   Google Scholar
• Falmouth Gazette, November 19, 1785; American Recorder, December 23, 1785; Lee, p. 111.
   Google Scholar
• Falmouth Gazette, September 17, November 19, 1785; American Recorder, December 23, 1785; Essex Journal, November 9, 1785.
   Google Scholar
• Salem Gazette, August 2, 1785.
   Google Scholar
• Clifford K. Shipton, Isaiah Thomas: Printer, Patriot, and Philanthropist, 1749–1831 (Rochester, New York: The Printing House of Leo Hart, 1948), p. 42; Mott, pp. 143–44.
   Google Scholar
• Handbill published by Isaiah Thomas to announce the end of the Massachusetts Spy, April 3, 1786.
   Google Scholar
• Shipton, p. 42; Mott, American Journalism, pp. 143–44.
   Google Scholar
• Essex Journal, April 19, 1786; Massachusetts Gazette, April 24, 1786.
   Google Scholar
• These figures are based on a survey of newspapers during the American Revolutionary era (1775–1789). The survey was designed to provide some indication as to the percentage of space allotted to various types of materials. The sample used consisted of the issues of the first week of every month of every newspaper in the period under study. In this particular instance, only the figures for the space allotted to advertising are used.
   Google Scholar
• Worcester Magazine, fourth week in June 1786, fourth week in July 1786, first week in October 1786, fourth week in March 1787; Continental Journal, August 3, 1786; Boston Gazette, October 16, 1786; Independent Ledger, October 16, 1786; Essex Journal, October 18, 1786, January 10, 1787; Continental Journal, October 19, 1786.
   Google Scholar
• Essex Journal, December 20, 1786.
   Google Scholar
• Hampshire Herald, September 26, 1786.
   Google Scholar
• Printers' petition of February 8, 1786, Massachusetts State Archives, Senate File 718; John B. Hench, “Massachusetts Printers and the Commonwealth's Newspaper Advertisement Tax of 1785,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 87 (1977): 199-211; Duniway, p. 137; Lee, p. 112.
   Google Scholar
• Committee Reports of February 10, 1786, Massachusetts State Archives, Senate File 718.
   Google Scholar
• American Herald, March 24, 1788; Massachusetts Gazette, March 25, 1788; Worcester Magazine, fourth week in March 1788.
   Google Scholar
• Massachusetts Spy, April 3, 1788.
   Google Scholar
• John Bixler Hench, “The Newspaper in a Republic: Boston's Centinel and Chronicle, 1784–1801” (Ph.D. dissertation, Clark University, 1979), pp. 185–86; Dwight L. Tweeter, Jr., “Decent Animadversions: Notes Toward a History of Free Press Theory,” in Newsletters to Newspapers: Eighteenth-Century Journalism, edited by Donovan H. Bond and W. Reynolds McLeod (Morgantown: School of Journalism, West Virginia University, 1977), pp. 242–43; Don Higginbotham, The War of American Independence: Military Attitudes, Policies, and Practice, 1763–1789 (New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, Inc., 1971), pp. 259–60.
   Google Scholar
• New London Bee, September 3, 1800, quoted by James Morton Smith, “Political Suppression of Seditious Criticism: A Connecticut Case Study,” The Historian 18 (Autumn 1955): 56.
   Google Scholar
• Leonard W. Levy, Emergence of a Free Press (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 173.
   Google Scholar