Remarkable Journals.

185

CHAPTER XIII.

SEVERAL NOTABLE JOURNALS.

THE NATIONAL GAZETTE OF PHILADELPHIA.ORGAN OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. THE CELEBRATED FRENEAU. - - NEWSPAPERS IN NEW JERSEY.-THE MASSACHUSETTS MERCURY AND NEW ENGLAND PALLADIUM. SHIPPING NEWS AND HARRY BLAKE. - - INCIDENTS IN HIS LIFE. - NOAH WEBSTER AND THE NEW YORK COMMERCIAL ADVERTISER. COLONEL WILLIAM L. STONE.

ONE of the remarkable journalists that the creation of parties produced in this country was Philip Freneau. We have already mentioned him in these pages. In October, 1791, he started the National Gazette in Philadelphia, while he was a clerk in the State Department under Jefferson, a position which he obtained through the influence of Madison, who had been a classmate of his at Nassau College. Ten years previously he was connected, as a writer, with the Freeman's Journal. Three or four years of his time were spent on that paper. Other publications afterward received his contributions in numerous sharp paragraphs and satirical verses on the men, manners, and measures of that momentous period of our history. After being a sea-captain, he edited the Daily Advertiser of New York. When the national government went to Philadelphia he accompanied Jefferson, and became famous as the editor of one of the leading organs of the rising Democratic Party.

The National Gazette was a Democratic organ in every sense of the word. It violently assailed the measures of Hamilton and his adherents in the cabinet of Washington; it was vituperative on Adams, and boldly attacked Washington personally whenever he showed any leaning to the Federal side. The course of Freneau created trouble in the political family of the President. It would have been strange if it had failed to do this. Indeed, it was believed that the policy of the Gazette was inspired by Jefferson. Washington was of this opinion. Freneau at one time, on oath, made a statement that Jefferson did not suggest or furnish any of the contents of the paper at that period. This did not shake the belief of Washington, who repeatedly brought the matter up in cabinet meetings. The President had even requested Jefferson to administer some rebuke to Freneau for his conduct. In his Anas, Jefferson stated that, at a cabinet council, Washington remarked:

That rascal, Freneau, sent him three copies of his paper every day, as if he thought he (Washington) would become the distributor of them; that he could see in this nothing but an impudent design to insult him: he ended in a high

tone.

On another occasion, speaking of the President, Jefferson said:

He adverted to a piece in Freneau's paper of yesterday; he said he despised their attacks on him, personally, but that there had never been an act of the government, not meaning in the executive line only, but in every line, which that paper had not abused. He was evidently sore and warm, and I took his intention to be, that I should interpose in some way with Freneau, perhaps withdraw his appointment as translating clerk in my office. But I will not do it. His paper

has saved our Constitution, which was galloping fast into monarchy, and has been checked by no one means so powerfully as by that paper. It is well and universally known that it has been that paper which has checked the career of the mon

ocrats.

According to Griswold, it was acknowledged by Freneau, in his old age, to Dr. John W. Francis, in New York, that Jefferson wrote or dictated the most offensive articles in the Gazette against Washington and his Federal friends. On one occasion he showed a file of that paper to Dr. James Meade, in which the alleged contributions of Jefferson were marked.

Shortly after the Presidential election of 1792, when John Adams and George Clinton were the candidates for Vice-President, the Gazette published a paragraph which we annex, and which was in full accordance with the views of Jefferson, as indicated in the above memoranda from his Anas:

The mask is at last torn from the monarchical party, who have, but with too much success, imposed themselves upon the public for the sincere friends of our republican constitution. Whatever may be the event of the competition for the Vice-Presidency, it has been the happy occasion of ascertaining the two following important truths :-first, that the name of Federalist has been assumed by men who approve the constitution merely as "a promising essay towards a well-ordered government;" that is to say, as a step towards a government of kings, lords, and commons. Secondly, that the spirit of the people continues firmly republican, and if the monarchical features of the party had been sooner held up to the public view, would have universally marked the division between two candidates (equally unassailed in their private characters) one of whom is as much attached to the equal principles of liberty entertained by the great mass of his fellow-citizens, as the other is devoted to the hereditary titles, orders, and balances, which they abhor as an insult to the rights and dignity of man.

Freneau was severe on Hamilton. He was so frequent in his attacks that Hamilton finally came out in reply, in which he charged that the National Gazette had been established for the special use of the Secretary of State. In the controversy, Jefferson assigned as a reason for sustaining Freneau the desire he had to have the news from the Continent of Europe translated from the Leyden Gazette, instead of having it come frittered through the English press to the American readers: all Jefferson did was to furnish the Leyden Gazette to Freneau !

The National Gazette continued to be the organ of the Republican

The Close of Freneau's Career.

187

Party, pouring its hot shot into the Federal camp whenever a proclamation was issued or any opportunity offered, and was only eclipsed in violence by the Aurora. Soon after the appearance of the yellow fever in Philadelphia in October, 1793, the Gazette said : With the present number (208) concludes the second volume, and second year's publication of the National Gazette. Having just imported, on his own account, a considerable quantity of new and elegant printing types from Europe, it is the editor's intention to resume the publication of this paper in a short time, and previously to the meeting of Congress on the second day of December next.

The publication of the paper was never resumed. It had accomplished its work. Freneau afterward contemplated publishing a paper in New York, and both Jefferson and Madison gave him letters to parties in that city, commending him for his "extensive information and sound discretion." The publication of the paper in New York was deferred. In May, 1795, he issued the Jersey Chronicle at Mount Pleasant, N. J., in which he continued to oppose the Federalists. He set the Time-Piece agoing in New York in March, 1797. Matthew L. Davis afterward became its editor. It passed from his management into the hands of an Irishman, named John D'Oley Burke, the author of a play called "Bunker Hill, or the Death of Warren." Burke was arrested in 1798, under the Alien and Sedition laws. In 1808 he was killed in a duel.

Meanwhile Freneau again "went down to the sea in ships," and commanded a merchant vessel for several years. With his active brain there was no rest, and, for want of other mental stimulant, he published and republished his poems. In the War of 1812-15 he celebrated our victories as the lamented Halpine, better known as Miles O'Reilly, did those of the rebellion of 1861-5, in characteristic song and sentiment.

In 1832, Freneau, in the eightieth year of his age, perished in a snow-storm near Freehold, New Jersey. On the 29th of August, 1871, Miss Catharine L. Freneau, his daughter, died near Newtown, L. I., aged 70. No doubt she has left papers belonging to her father of considerable historical value.

Newspapers have not made their mark in New Jersey as in many of the old states. Situated between New York and Philadelphia, it has been placed in a position to enjoy the news facilities of those two cities. All the expresses of the New York journals from Washington had to pass over its territory. The State Gazette and True American of Trenton, and the Daily Advertiser of Newark, are now the leading papers of the state. The State Gazette was established in 1792. It is at present edited by E. R. Borden. The Newark Advertiser, which was the old Whig organ, has been the most enterprising sheet in the state. It was the first daily paper there. Its first number was issued on the 1st of March, 1832. It would run

expresses from New York with important news, and make other efforts at first-class journalism. William B. Kenney is its proprietor and chief editor. He was appointed minister to Sardinia by President Fillmore. While absent on this diplomatic mission the Advertiser was managed by a son of its proprietor. The True American is edited by Judge David Noar, and is the Democratic organ in that state. The Evening Courier is the extreme radical Republican organ in Newark, and perhaps in the state. The Daily Journal, published in Newark, is a leading Democratic paper. It is said that its ablest articles were written by the late ex-Senator James W. Wall.

On New Year's Day, 1793, Alexander Young and Samuel Etheridge issued a tri-weekly paper in Boston, which they named The Massachusetts Mercury. In the course of a year the junior partner retired, and Thomas Minns came into the establishment. "Conscious that the low ribaldry and personal defamation which frequently disgrace European publications, and sometimes contaminate the purer effusions of the American Press, have a most certain tendency to depreciate its worth, obstruct its utility, and to sap the foundation of every thing dear and valuable to mankind, the editors of the Mercury will ever strive, with the most cautious attention, to avoid the rocks on which but too many of their contemporaries have been shattered." They also endeavored to make the Mercury immutably impartial;" but it became a little excited over a controversy on the organization of the Illuminati in Europe, in which the Freemasons in this country became a party. The Rev. Dr. Morse preached a sermon on the subject, which was published in the Mercury. Dr. Josiah Bartlett, of Charleston, replied on behalf of the Masons.

Warren Dutton was the chief editor of the Mercury in 1801, when the name of New England Palladium was appended to the original title. Among its contributors was Fisher Ames, who did so much toward the ratification of the Federal Constitution in Massachusetts. Ames, in an essay on newspapers in 1801, strongly opposed descriptions of murders in the public prints. He was desirous of having a higher class of information given.

Another controversy sprung up in 1808, on the writings of William Godwin and the works of Noah Webster, who was then publishing the Columbian Dictionary. Webster contended for the rights of America in literature, as in commerce and manufactures. All these questions have been solved, and passed into history, and have had their influence on the public mind.

Notwithstanding its "immutable impartiality," the Palladium, like all its predecessors, in the midst of so many exciting questions, and of changes of editors and writers, did not always please its readers,

Harry Blake, the Marine Reporter.

189

and it began to lose the influence and patronage it had received. Its commercial reports, although comparatively meagre, aided materially in its prosperity. These were not affected by politics, or religion, or morals. It was in advance of its contemporaries in this department. Shipping news seemed to have been one of the chief features with the press in Boston, and afterward with the press in all the sea-port towns of the United States. Major Russell, of the Gazette, was in the habit of boarding the vessels himself for such news. He paid more attention to this branch of intelligence than many of his rivals. The Palladium became well known for the fullness of its marine department. It was under the management of Henry Ingraham Blake, a small, active man, a journeyman printer, who preferred running around the wharves, boarding vessels, and visiting merchants' offices, picking up items of shipping news here and there, to standing all day in an office at case.

Harry Blake, as he was familiarly called, was as much of a genius in his branch of journalism as the most accomplished writer was in his department. Indeed, it requires a man of peculiar tact to collect and arrange shipping news intelligently and economically for a newspaper and the merchant. It has always been difficult to find competent persons to manage such a department with accuracy and knowledge. There is no poetry about it. It is made up of hard facts. There are only two or three attached to the Press of the present day that at all comprehend its value and importance. The Journal of Commerce and Herald, of New York, have always made a feature of marine news. They have spent large sums of money for this purpose. It has always been a feature with the Boston Advertiser, which it inherited when it absorbed the Palladium and Gazette. Harry Blake made it an indispensable department of the Palladium. He knew all about the mercantile marine of Boston. Not a ship, not a vessel, indeed, belonging to that port, that he did not know her history, from her launch till she ceased to float. He knew her owner's name, her captain's name, when she was due at any port, could almost point out on the map where she ought to be on any given day. Wonderful genius was Harry Blake!

It was the early habit in Boston for each paper to collect its own shipping news. Its marine reporter would spend much of his time in looking over log-books, gathering facts from sea-captains, or from late letters just received by merchants. On the establishment of the Merchants' News-room in the old State House by the indefatigable Topliffs, much of the shipping intelligence of the port of Boston was collected by Samuel Topliff, who kept a small row-boat for the purpose of boarding vessels. Such news was immediately placed on his books. Thence it passed, through the reporters, into