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| Book Description from University
of Virginia Press Although frequently attacked for their partisanship and undue political influence, the American media of today are objective and relatively ineffectual compared to their counterparts of two hundred years ago. From the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth century, newspapers were the republic's central political institutions, working components of the party system rather than commentators on it. The Tyranny of Printers narrates the rise of this newspaper-based politics, in which editors became the chief party spokesmen and newspaper offices often served as local party headquarters. Beginning when Thomas Jefferson enlisted a Philadelphia editor to carry out his battle with Alexander Hamilton for the soul of the new republic (and got caught trying to cover it up), the centrality of newspapers in political life gained momentum after Jefferson's victory in 1800, which was widely credited to a superior network of papers. Jeffrey L. Pasley tells the rich story of this political culture and its culmination in Jacksonian democracy, enlivening his narrative with accounts of the colorful but often tragic careers of individual editors. About the Author |
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Full Table of Contents |
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 | The Partisan Press Reconsidered |
| Uneven Political Development and the Origins of the Newspaper Role |
| Newspaper Editors in Nineteenth-Century Politics |
| Themes and Implications |
| Artisans with Bookish Inclinations: The Colonial Printers |
| Print, Printers, and Political Elites in Colonial America |
| The American Revolution and the Beginnings of Partisanship |
| Serving the Founders: Printers and Newspapers After the Revolution |
| Defending the State and Imagining the Nation: John Fenno's Gazette of the United States |
| The Failure of Fenno's "National Plan" |
| The Statesmen and Their Surrogate: Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and the Origins of the National Gazette |
| Embodying the Opposition: The National Gazette in Action |
| A Path Not Taken: The Fall of the National Gazette and the Failure of Centralized Newspaper Politics |
| Celebrity Grandson and Young Socialite |
| Turning Partisan |
| Downward Mobility, Radical Politics, and the Birth of the Aurora |
| "Surgo Ut Prosim": Benjamin Franklin Bache as Professional Politician |
| Slouching Towards Partisanship: The Republican Press before the Sedition Act |
| Precocious Partisans: Matthew Lyon and John Israel |
| Fashioning the Weapon |
| Why did the Sedition Act Fail? |
| Holt and the Bee: A Case Study from the Land of Steady Habits |
| Escape from Connecticut (to Political Professionalism on the Hudson) |
| Federalist Repression, Popular Rights-Consciousness, and the Radicalization of Young Printers |
| The Limits of Elite Sponsorship |
| Printers of the Republic: The New Partisan Press of the Late 1790s |
| Federalist Repression and the Forging of the Network |
| The Making of a Transoceanic Radical |
| Exile on Market Street: Duane and the Aurora |
| The Editor as Leader and Lightning Rod |
| William Duane's American Dream |
| The Lessons of 1800 |
| Invading the Federalist Homeland |
| Tramp Politicians: The Emergence of Political Editing as an Occupation |
| Renovating the Federalist Press |
| Talents, Virtue, and Wealth: Real and Imagined Federalist Advantages in the Journalistic Arms Race |
| Alexander Contee Hanson versus "The Rules of Arithmetick" |
| The Limits of Federalist Newspaper Politics |
| The Gentrification of the Southern Partisan Press |
| Printers and Other Politicians: Differing Perspectives and Emerging Tensions |
| The Federalists and Civil Liberties: The Even Darker Side |
| William Duane and the Morning After |
| Origins of the Republican Schism |
| Editors, Lawyers, and the Pennsylvania Legal Reform Movement |
| A Gentleman's Rebellion against the "Tyranny of Printers" |
| The Decline of Duane, but Not the Editors |
| The Wages of Mobility: The Rise and Fall of James J. Wilson |
| Senator Roberts and the Editors |
| Merino Rams and Mutton Soup: To Congress and Back with Thomas J. Rogers |
| "An Army of Printers": The War of 1812 Era and the Origins of Jacksonian Newspaper Politics |
| Newspaper Editors and the War on Good Feelings |
| John Milton Niles and the Democratization of Connecticut |
| The Election of Andrew Jackson and the Coming of the Editorial "Millennium" |
| Newspaper Growth during the Pre-Revolutionary Crisis |
| Expansion of the Newspaper Press, 1700-1820 |
| The Pace of Newspaper Creation, 1780-1820 |
| Newspaper and Population Expansion Rates, 1730s-1810s |
| Republican vs. Federalist Newspaper Expansion |
| The War on the Jay Treaty: Opposition Newspapers, 1795 |
| Eve of Sedition: Opposition Newspapers, Spring 1798 |
| Editorial Revolution: Republican Newspapers Published between June 1798 and December 1800 |
| Invading the Federalist Homeland: Republican Newspapers, 1801-1806 |
| The Federalists Strike Back: Partisan Federalist Newspapers, 1800-1806 |
| The Political Wars of 1812: Republican & Federalist Newspapers Founded 1807-1814 |
| Philadelphia Aurora, front page, 1795 |
| New London Bee masthead |
| Goshen, N.Y. Orange Patrol masthead |
| Pittsburgh Tree of Liberty masthead |
| William Duane |
| Worcester National Aegis masthead |
| Hudson Wasp, front page, 1802 |
