The Tyranny of Printers by Jeffrey L. Pasley

Author:Jeffrey L. Pasley
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780813921891
Publisher: University of Virginia Press

THE VIEW FROM THE PRINTING OFFICE

The surprisingly limited conceptions of press freedom and increasingly negative view of newspaper politicians evinced by Republican officeholders brought a complex reaction from the Republican editors. As committed party zealots, they usually tried (if no factional dispute interposed itself) to support whatever actions national, state, and local Republican officials took, including the occasional legal proceedings against their Federalist counterparts. They did so, however, with some reluctance and an uncomfortable awareness of the ironies involved.

In response to Governor McKean’s libel proposals of 1802, William Duane agreed that newspapers given to “indiscriminate abuse” of public men ought to be “discountenanced.” He thought the Gazette of the United States particularly well suited for this treatment. Still, the Aurora editor pointedly omitted any words of approval for the suggested tightening of the libel laws. He endorsed only the idea that the libelous papers should not be “supported by the patronage of men friendly to the constitution.” In other words, no one should subscribe to Federalist newspapers or give printing contracts to their proprietors, limiting the coercion used to that which could be exerted through the marketplace. In a similar vein, the Danbury Republican Farmer declared that while it was clearly time that many “disgraceful” Federalist publications be “checked,” this should be done “not by legal shackles, or legislative provision, but by the neglect of the people,” which would force “these wrong-headed editors ... to seek some other means of living, than ravaging their country with political pestilence.”26

Duane particularly objected to the prosecution and continuing harassment of the turncoat Callender in Virginia. Though the Aurora had spent much of the previous year eviscerating Callender, Duane spoke from his own experience in making political hay out of martyrdom when he questioned “whether the method taken . . . will have any effect other than the contrary of what was intended.” No one believed Callender’s tales, Duane argued; persecution would only give him notoriety and credibility that he otherwise lacked. Moreover, freedom of the press seemed “much endangered” by the precedent of Republicans prosecuting an editor.27

Charles Holt reacted with cagey ambivalence to the troubles of his crosstown rival Harry Croswell. Though still deeply bitter about his own troubles under the Sedition Act, Holt refrained from calling for Croswell’s prosecution and focused instead on the hypocrisy of the Federalists regarding the press, calumniating government leaders when they had once wrung their hands over the dangers of any political criticism and crying out for the same liberties they had recently tried to suppress. He marveled at such “low and venomous slander” coming from “men who but a few months since were harping upon the respect due to constituted authorities, and the sacredness of private character.” The Republicans’ renunciation of sedition prosecutions was one of the qualities that made them superior to the Federalists. “If republicans made use of sedition laws or the good old common law to protect their rulers from these unprincipled vipers,” Holt suggested in September 1802, before any of the actions

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