DAVID McHAM'S
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Section 1

Section 2

• History in Britain
• Coming to America
• The Revolutionary War
• Gaining Independence
• Section 2 Review

Section 3
Section 4

Section 2: Coming to America
America Before The Revolution
Why They Came
Britain Before The Revolution
How Britain Goofed
Colonization Begins
The Ulster Scots
The Pilgrims and The Puritans
The Mayflower Compact 1620
Acts Against America 1763 to 1775
The Boston Massacre 1770
Thomas Paine: Common Sense and The Crisis
Publik Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick 1690
The John Peter Zenger Trial 1735
Events Leading to The Trial
Federal Hall

America Before The Revolution
The colonies had been in existence for 150 years when the Revolution began.

Americans during this time enjoyed the highest per capita income of any people in the world. However, 10 percent of the population owned about 45 percent of the property. The percentage was higher in the South -- the 10 percent owned 75 percent.

About 40 percent of the people were independent farmers. A typical farmer in the North owned 10 head of cattle, 16 sheep, 6 pigs, 2 horses and a team of oxen. They sold two-thirds of their crops for cash.

Large numbers of craftsmen and shopkeepers created a thriving middle class.

The early Americans traded widely. They bought sugar and molasses from the West Indies and turned it into rum. Newport, Rhode Island, had 30 distilleries. By 1775 Americans were producing one-seventh of all the iron in the world. Americans were also large producers of paper, chocolate, rum, etc. They exported fish and lumber.

Nevertheless, the debts to English merchants were high and many were in debtors' prisons.

Americans were mostly Protestant, but a wide range of protestantism. The most common were Congregational in the north and Presbyterian in the south, Catholics were tolerated only in Maryland and Pennsylvania.

Americans loved music and singing. They liked to dance. Dances in the South sometimes lasted most of the night. The well-to-do loved to dress. Women spent lavishly on beauty products.

They ate well. They didn't eat tomatoes and not everyone ate cucumbers. Ham was the favorite meat and Virginia ham was the best.

They drank hard cider, most of it manufactured in Massachusetts. And they drank a lot of it. Aside from the church, the tavern was the primary meeting place.

On the eve of the revolution America had 3,500 doctors, but no dentists. Craftsmen developed false teeth. George Washington's false teeth were made of ivory, not wood.

America developed its own language, using Old English words -- catercornered (aka cattycornered), scant, burly, deft -- and picking up new words wherever they found them -- popcorn, cold snap and skunk. They called boys Bub.

Americans married early and they produced large families. Those families needed places to live, and western expansion was the ultimate result.

A Good Place to Live
Between 1760 and 1775 the idea that America was a good place to live swept the British Isles. In that 15-year period, more than 55,000 Irish (mostly Protestant), 40,000 Scots and 30,000 Englishmen emigrated to the colonies. This was 2.3 percent of the population in Ireland and 3 percent of the population of Scotland.

Gentleman's Magazine, published in London, reported that 43,720 emigrants sailed from five Irish ports between 1769 and 1774.

So concerned at the people leaving, the British government set up a commission to determine why. The secretary of state for America, Wills Hill, the Earl of Hillsborough, reported to Parliament that they were going to America "for no other reason but because they hope to live better, or to earn more money... than they can at home."

Several factors figured in this migration:

1) In Britain during this period the population increased dramatically.

2) But, in Britain the crafts were being filled, and the hopes of young people to go into a certain trade was not the way it had been before.

3) The amount of land in Britain stayed the same, and much of it was in the hands of the nobility/aristocrats.

4) The rule of primogeniture.

Postscripts
The earliest Americans had been given land grants, especially in Virginia, Massachusetts and the middle colonies. Also, keep in mind what names were given to locations in America: Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Williamsburg, William & Mary, Boston, Charlestown, New York, New London, etc...

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Why They Came
From an article on Boston, England, in The American Legion Magazine, May 1976:

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Britain Before The Revolution
In 1714, Queen Anne died without heirs.

The British nobility asked the ruler of the Duchy of Hanover in Germany to become king of England in 1714. There was a tie to the Stuart monarchy through a great-grandmother.

The Duchy of Hanover was a patch of northwest Germany near the Dutch border. The British nobility liked the ruler there because he was Protestant.

There was a more legitimate king, but the nobility would not hear of him. He was James Edward Stuart, the son of James II, whom the nobility had ousted in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when William and Mary were installed.

James was living in exile in France. He was Catholic and the leaders of what was now Britain feared that he would try to restore Catholicism as the official religion of Britain.

The Highland Scots tried three times to restore James to the throne -- 1715, 1719 and 1745 -- in rebellions, obviously without success.

The new king was George I. He never learned English. He ruled from 1714 until 1727, when he was succeeded by his son, who became George II.

On October 25, 1760, King George II died. He was 77. He had ruled 33 years -- without distinction. He spoke English with a German accent and preferred Hanover to London.

He was succeeded by his grandson, George, the Prince of Wales, who was 22. His father, Frederick, had died nine years earlier, in 1751, when George was 13.

George III was the youngest king since Edward VI, who succeeded his father Henry VIII in 1547 when he was 10.

The Seven Years War
England was involved in a great war with France -- the Seven Years War. It was one of the most significant wars ever. The kings had little to do with the affairs of state. That mostly was handled by Parliament and by its leaders.

William Pitt
The leader in Parliament was William Pitt, the prime minister. He was known as the Great Commoner (referring to the House of Commons). He was the Winston Churchill of his day. He was a great orator and a great leader. He had kept England from losing the war with France. And, although the war was costing a great deal of money, England was on the verge of victory.

However, the new king -- George III -- did not care for Pitt. Here's why: His tutor and best friend all the years when he was growing up (the last nine without a father) was a Scotsman, John Stuart, who had been given the title of the Earl of Bute (boot). Bute longed to be prime minister. He was suspected/it was believed that Bute had an ongoing affair with George III's mother (Princess Augusta).

In 1759, the year before George III came to power, the British had pushed France out of West Africa, giving England and its powerful shipping trade a virtual monopoly on the slave trade.

Also in 1759 Britain had won the battle of Quebec over France. That gave Britain control over all of the northeastern American continent.

Later, Spain joined the war on the side of France but was defeated.

Eventually, Pitt was ousted and the Earl of Brute did indeed take over for a while. Under Bute, with the king's acquiescence, a peace treaty was signed with France and Spain in 1763 ending the Seven Years War.

This was highly controversial, especially in what happened to the spoils of the war. Cuba, which Americans had helped capture in 1762, and the Philippines were returned to Spain. Also, the French were allowed to fish on the East Coast of America.

Pitt denounced the treaty on the floor of the House of Commons in a speech that lasted three and a half hours.

Meanwhile Parliament was largely a closed corporation. It was ruled by the descendants of the noblemen responsible for ousting James II in 1688 and replacing him with William and Mary. They gained even more power when they handed over the throne to the German Georges. As a result, the Georges couldn't exercise much control since they owed their crowns to the people who had given it to them. England was a mercantile state. The ongoing wars had made the merchants rich, rich, rich.

The electoral system was antiquated, and only about two percent of the population was eligible to vote.

Bute was replaced officially as prime minister with George Grenville.

The British national debt (the war debt) was 133 million pounds. Grenville ushered in an austerity program.

Support of the Indians Stopped
One of the things he did was to end the British support of the Indians in America. Until then, the Indians had been subsidized with provisions and food so that they would side with the British against the French. When the policy was changed, the Indians turned on the settlers.

The Western Prohibition
In 1763, the Grenville government got Parliament to approve a proclamation declaring that no Americans could settle west of the Alleghenies (in Western Pennsylvania).

The reason the government gave was that this was to prevent settlers from going into territory controlled by France. But, the Americans didn't like the prohibition and went anyway. This issue was to come back to Britain during the Revolutionary War when many of the settlers in what is now Tennessee and Kentucky fought on the side of the colonies. They were still mad.

To make matters worse, the British decided to send troops to America to support the prohibition. The cost of having these troops on American soil was 320,000 pounds a year and the Grenville government decided the Americans should pay that.

This policy is an indication of how bad policies by the British were to create an atmosphere that would eventually lead to war.

The Sugar Act
In 1764 Parliament passed the Sugar Act. It wasn't so much the tax as the fact that the nature of the act threatened to end the lucrative rum-making business in the colonies.

At that time the colonists were importing sugar and molasses from the West Indies to America, making rum and exporting it. The British were determined to collect a tax on molasses of three cents a gallon. To ensure that the tax was collected, the British set up a Royal Navy squadron in Halifax to be the tax collectors.

But, since the Sugar Tax was designed to collect only 45,000 pounds, the British decided to raise more money through more taxes. This is the way that the Stamp Act came into being in 1765.

Each of these events was significant, but the Stamp Act was the turning point.

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How Britain Goofed
In The March of Folly (1984), British historian Barbara Tuchman lays out what she believes was the cause for the split between the colonies and the British government.

Tuchman said that the major issue was the right of Parliament as the supreme legislative body of the state -- but not of the empire, according to the colonists -- to tax the colonies.

The mother country claimed the right and the colonists denied it.

While acknowledging allegiance to the Crown, the colonies considered themselves independent of Parliament and their assemblies coequal with it.

Tuchman says that the Americans overacted, but they were acting in their own self-interest.

If there was folly, she said, it was with Parliament.

The British also had great contempt for the American solider. Here's what Tuchman says about that:

"...British contempt for the colonial soldier, who was eventually (with French help) to take the British sword in surrender was the oddest, deepest, most disserviceable misjudgment of the years leading to the conflict."

As a result, the British tended to ignore the colonies. Tuchman says that until 1768, no department was specifically charged with administration of the colonies or execution of measures pertaining to them.

Tuchman, Barbara W. The March of Folly. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984

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Colonization Begins
In 1585 Sir Walter Raleigh tried unsuccessfully to establish a colony on Roanoke Island (the Lost Colony).

After peace with Spain in 1604, colonization began in earnest.

England believed that it was going to have the part of the new world that stretched from 30 to 60 degrees latitude -- that is, from the Gulf of Mexico to the top of Canada.

Tracts and pamphlets were used to encourage colonization.

The bays in America offered a great opportunity for settlement. It was the land that was the biggest drawing card.

The Settling Groups
In 1607 the first permanent settlement was made at Jamestown.

In 1620 the Plymouth colony was begun. It was a small band of religious dissenters who condemned the half-way English church as utterly and completely sinful.

The Massachusetts Bay Colony (1629) also became heavily religious with Puritans assuming leadership.

Maryland was established in 1634. It was envisioned as a refuge for Roman Catholic Englishmen.

Carolina was granted to a group of royal supporters in 1663. It was split in 1712.

William Penn established a Quaker refuge in Pennsylvania in 1682.

In 1733, Georgia was founded as a bulwark against Spanish settlements (already established in Florida) and as a refuge for English debtors.

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The Ulster Scots
The American colonies grew from 250,000 in 1700 to almost 1,200,000 in 1750. Most of this increase can be attributed to immigration and most of the immigration was by the Ulster Scots (known as the Scots-Irish) and the Germans.

Most of the settlement was in Pennsylvania. By the end of the colonial period, Pennsylvania was about one-third German and one-third Ulster Scots.

The Scots were mostly Presbyterians from the low country. Their families had been moved to Ulster in Northern Ireland during the 17th century.

The English/British enacted a woolen act that limited the export of wool and woolen materials. Feudal landlords oppressed them. A test act disenfranchised many of them.

As a result, the Scots began looking for somewhere to go. America was the cheapest and closest opportunity.

The first great wave of Ulster immigrants came after agricultural failures in 1716 and 1717. Others came at various times until by 1776 a quarter of a million Scots had arrived in America. Many of them came as indentured servants.

They tended to arrive in Philadelphia, they moved into the Shenandoah and Cumberland areas and on into the Piedmont area of the Carolinas. Some of them even found their way further down the Blue Ridge chain into the deep south.

The Germans

The German migration began in the 1720s. The patterns they followed were very much the same as those of the Scots. More of them stayed in Pennsylvania, especially in Lancaster County. We mistakenly refer to them today as Pennsylvania Dutch because of the way the word Deutch was pronounced.

The migration reached its peak in mid-century and stopped during the French and Indian War.

The Germans tended to be Lutherans, but some were Moravians or United Brethren.

The Source:

Rothbard, Murray N. Conceived in Liberty. New Rochelle: Arlington House, 1975.

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The Pilgrims and The Puritans
In late 1620 the Mayflower arrived at Plymouth with 102 or 101 persons aboard, including indentured servants. The 41 men aboard signed on November 11, 1620, (later to be November 21) the Mayflower Compact.

Aboard the Mayflower were 51 "saints," who called themselves Pilgrims. The others were a variety of people. The Pilgrims were Separatists who were fleeing England because they did not accept the Church of England.

After staying briefly at Plymouth, they went on to Boston.

Ten years later, another group came to Boston and established the Massachusetts Bay Colony. They would most accurately be described as Puritans.

While they did not separate themselves from the Church of England, they nevertheless had different views. They were, after all, the same people who brought Oliver Cromwell to power.

They did have fixed beliefs. Because of that, they forced Roger Williams (1603?-1683) out of the colony in 1636. He founded Rhode Island and is considered the first Baptist in America.

Anne Hutchinson (159l-1643) advanced the idea of a direct, personal contact with God. She was brought to trial and banished.

So harsh were the Puritans that they executed four people who had been banished but who returned to the colony. The four were Presbyterians.

The Puritans
At the start of the 16th century when the sect was just beginning, the word Puritan was applied to any person in England who was considered a Protestant. The name Puritan was first used in 1566.

Puritans differed greatly among themselves.

What they believed:

Henry VIII started to take away power from the Catholic church in England about 1536. For many Puritans, he hadn't gone far enough.

The Puritans gained their greatest power in England with the rise of Oliver Cromwell. But most of that power came to an end in 1660 with the restoration of the Stuart dynasty.

Boston, England
The best known of the Puritans in America were descendants of John Cotton. Cotton was a strong advocate in resettling in the new world.

The name Boston derives from St. Botolph's town, as the village in England was called until the 16th century. St. Botolph was a Benedictine monk. There were no Bostonians (England) aboard the Mayflower.

When he immigrated, John Cotton joined 250 of his parishioners in Boston, Massachusetts. In all, seven shiploads of Bostonians moved from England in the 1630s and they are the ones who named the town Boston.

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The Mayflower Compact 1620
The Mayflower Compact, November 11, 1620

The Mayflower carried the first Pilgrims to America.

The company that organized the expedition had a charter for Virginia. The expedition was off course, and the leadership decided on the compact as one way of guaranteeing the stability of the colony in an area they didn't have a right to.

The Mayflower had 101 or 102 passengers. The trip across the Atlantic took 65 days. Before they arrived in America, the 41 men aboard signed the compact. The Mayflower dropped anchor at Provincetown Harbor on November 21, 1620. They went on to Plymouth, where they were to stay.

They arrived there on December 26.

What the compact said:

See the Compact at:

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Acts Against America 1763 to 1775
1763 - The Nonexpansion Decree
1764 - The Sugar Act
1765 - The Stamp Act
1766 - The Declaratory Act
1767 - The Townshend Acts
1773 - The Tea Act
1774 - The Coersive Acts
1775 - The New England Restraining Act

The First Hundred Years
A hundred years before, two acts had been passed:

The first act passed that seemed to be repressive toward the colonies was the Navigation Act of 1661. It provided that only English merchants and English vessels could lawfully engage in trade of the colonies. It also limited shipping of items from the colonies to foreign ports.

The Trade Act of 1663 required that goods produced in Europe could not enter the English colonies unless they were carried in English vessels and shipped from England, Wales or the town of Berwick, Nova Scotia.

The 1760s and 1770s
Then came the 1760s and 1770s.

In this period Britain was faced with a financial crisis. It had amassed a huge debt from the Seven Years' War. As a result, the government had to come up with ways to produce money. Further taxes in Britain weren't practical. So, Parliament looked to America. A side issue had to do with limiting America's ability to trade with anyone it wanted. That would be a direct threat to Britain.

In a 12-year period from 1763 to 1775 Britain passed a series of acts directed at the colonies. On the surface, looking at it from Britain's point of view, these were simply revenue-producing acts.

The Americans looked at them differently The acts involved every aspect of American life. What made the acts particularly difficult for the Americans to accept was that they were all done by the British government without any consultation with the Americans.

The British were not concerned about the impact their actions would have on the American colonies. And they were to have a monumental impact. But the British were so unconcerned about the colonies that it wasn't until 1668 that the British government had a specific department to oversee the affairs of America.

The acts were:

The Nonexpansion Decree
In 1763 the British government issued a proclamation that prohibited settlers west of a north/south line that ran along the Allegheny and Appalachian mountains. This was known as the nonexpansion decree.

Perhaps the British government didn't want to antagonize the French. But the policy had as much to do with lands the government had designated as Indian settlements.

At the same time as the nonexpansion policy was announced, Britain decided to send troops in the colonies as a safeguard against the Indians and in the event of a new breakout of war with France.

These actions intensified anti-British sentiment, particularly on the frontier. Many new Americans hoped to settle west of the mountains in what would become Kentucky and Tennessee.

In 1768 a new boundary was established that gave Americans the right to some settlement west of the Appalachians. By then, the action was too late for those who had already gone west of the mountains.

The Sugar Act
In 1764 Parliament passed the Sugar Act. It wasn't so much the tax as the fact that the act threatened to end the rum-making business in the colonies. The colonists were importing sugar and molasses from the West Indies to America, making rum and exporting it. The British were determined to collect a tax on molasses of three cents a gallon. To ensure that the tax was collected, the British set up a Royal Navy squadron in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to be the tax collectors.

The British were particularly irked because the Americans were trading freely with the French, Dutch or Danish West Indies -- whose sugar and molasses were much cheaper than the British brands.

The Stamp Act
The Stamp Act of 1765 was the first direct tax levied on the colonists. It specified that Americans must buy stamps for newspapers, almanacs, legal papers such as deeds and mortgages and some business documents such as playing cards. Its purpose was to raise funds to help support the British army stationed in America. This led to the cry, "taxation without representation." Massachusetts invited the colonies to send delegates to a general congress to talk about this and other measures the British had passed. The act was passed on March 22, 1765, and went into effect on October 31, 1765. The British were forced to repeal the law and did on March 18, 1766.

The Declaratory Act
Parliament repealed the stamp tax, but at the same time passed the Declaratory Act, 1766, which said that "The Parliament of Great Britain had, hath, and by right ought to have full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the Colonies and people of America in all cases." Among those in the House of Lords who voted against the measure was Lord Cornwallis.

The Townshend Act
With the Townshend Act of 1767 Parliament imposed tariffs on various goods imported from Britain. These included lead, paper and tea. The act was named for chancellor of the exchequer, Charles Townshend.

In January 1769 Benjamin Franklin said everything would be all right if Britain would

The Tea Act
Meanwhile the British government again backed down, and in 1769 it repealed all the Townshend duties except the one on tea.

Tea was the most important beverage in the colonies, and soon Britain was to use tea as the means to finally get to the people, especially those in Boston. They did it with the British Tea Act of May 10, 1773.

The tea act was designed to help the British East India Company, which had a large tea surplus, by providing a tax exemption. Americans could have gotten tea more cheaply, but The Tea Act eliminated that possibility. From then on, tea could be bought only through special agents of the British East India Company.

This led to the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773.

Bostonians, dressed as Indians, boarded three ships bearing tea belonging to the East Indian Company and dumped 342 chests of tea into Boston harbor.

Tea disorders continued into 1774 when a tea-carrying vessel, the Peggy Stewart, was burned at Annapolis, Maryland.

Britain demanded that someone in Massachusetts pay for the tea that had been wasted in Boston. But the colonial legislature and the city of Boston refused to pay for the tea. Citizens demonstrated instead. General Thomas Gage, governor of the colony, informed the British cabinet that Massachusetts had revolted.

By now it was evident that Britain intended repressive action against the colonies. The colonists were willing to pay their way. The British were just going about it the wrong way.

The Coersive or Intolerable Acts
The next year - 1774 - after The Tea Act and after the Boston Tea Party, Parliament passed the Coersive Acts. Americans called them the Intolerable Acts.

Four measures were included in the acts:

New England Restraining Act
The New England Restraining Act, passed on March 30, 1775, was designed to punish the New England colonies for the anti-British sentiment being drummed up there.

The act set July 1, 1775, as the date after which trade from New England would be limited to Great Britain, Ireland and the British West Indies. Then, after July 20, New England ships would not be allowed to fish off the coast of Newfoundland - a prime fishing area.

About the same time as the shots were being fired at Lexington and Concord, the British parliament extended the colonies to be included to Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, Maryland and South Carolina.

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The Boston Massacre 1770
An incident occurred on March 5, 1770, that became known as the Boston Massacre.

One version of how it happened:

Some boys were throwing snowballs or chunks of ice at a British sentry. In the exchange that followed a mob of men and boys threatened the soldiers with clubs and stones. British soldiers fired on them.

Five persons were killed, all Americans. Three persons were killed then, eight wounded. Two of the wounded died later.

The event was widely reported in the colonies. Paul Revere, a silversmith and engraver, did a version of the massacre that spread the idea of whathappened. As a result of the engraving, the event took on a highly symbolic meaning in the colonies.

The citizens of Boston called a town meeting and demanded the removal of the British troops and the trial of the British involved for murder.

The British authorities agreed to these demands. The captain involved, Thomas Preston, was represented by John Adams and Josiah Quincy. He was acquitted. It could not be proved that he ordered his soldiers to fire. Two of his soldiers were found guilty of manslaughter, branded on the hand and dismissed from the Army.

A Postscript
One of the men killed was Crispus Attucks. He was of mixed ancestry - black and Indian. He was from New Providence and was evidently in Boston to prepare to go to sea as a merchant seaman. Versions vary greatly as to Attucks' role in the confrontation.

However, what is not in doubt is that Attucks was one of the men who died. That made him the first American of African descent to die in any conflict in behalf of America.

On the Internet
A great many discussions of the massacre are available on the Internet - as are depictions of Paul Revere’s painting of the event.

Here's one of them:

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Thomas Paine: Common Sense and The Crisis
Thomas Paine was born in Thetford, England, the son of a Quaker. He worked in a variety of jobs, including corset maker and inspector of spirits. He wasn't known for his writing. He did participate in discussion groups, which were popular in England at the time.

He became determined to go to America. He met Benjamin Franklin and got a letter of introduction to a newspaper editor in Philadelphia.

Paine arrived in America in 1774. He was 37.

He was a solitary, self-taught man who drank too much, bathed infrequently and possessed neither property nor social status.

On January 10, 1776, he published Common Sense. It stated the cause of the colonists. It was originally published in a Philadelphia newspaper, but was reprinted in pamphlet form. It sold 120,000 copies in three months and half a million copies in the first year.

Paine agreed in advance to give half the profits (if any) to the printer with the rest going to mittens for the Continental army. After the second printing he relinquished the copyright and allowed for free printing.

The Crisis
Thomas Paine wrote the first of the 16 tracts called The Crisis while serving with General Nathaniel Greene as a volunteer aide-de-camp during the war. They were published first in newspapers, then in pamphlet form.

No. 1 was dated December 23, 1776. General George Washington had it read to the troops at Valley Forge. It starts like this:

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Publik Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick 1690
The first newspaper published in the colonies was at Boston on September 25, 1690. The printer/editor was Benjamin Harris. He had put out a newspaper in England but had fallen into disfavor there as a result of publishing a pamphlet considered by the government to be offensive. He spent time in prison, then fled to America.

His American paper was called Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick. It was immediately suspended by the government because Harris had failed to gain permission to print.

Therefore, only one issue of the paper was printed. It had four pages,
each 6 x 10 l/4 inches.

The reason the colonial government could suspend Harris' paper was that the English government had given authority to control printing to the appointed, colonial governors.

This paragraph was included in the instructions to colonial governors between 1686 and 1730:

Many excellent sites on the Internet deal with Publick Occurrences.
You can see the paper itself at several of them, including Wikipedia.

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The John Peter Zenger Trial 1735
John Peter Zenger was a German emigrant who had come to New York in 1710. He was an apprentice of William Bradford, the printer in New York, for eight years.

After working for a time in Pennsylvania and Maryland, he returned to New York and became a partner with Bradford. In 1726 he set up his own printing shop. In New York at the time permission to print wasn't necessary. But if you printed something that the authorities didn't like, you could be brought to trial.

The first issue of Zenger's New-York Weekly Journal came out on November 5, 1733, although it was dated October 5. It was printed every Monday. The only other paper, Bradford's New York Gazette, had the support of the governor, who was English. Bradford did have the approval and support of the president of the governing council of New York City, who was Dutch.

On Sunday, November 17, 1734, Zenger was arrested on a warrant "for printing and publishing several seditious libels." The governor had a difficult time getting an information (a lesser charge than an indictment) necessary to bring Zenger to trial.

Those who refused: the house of representatives, the mayor and magistrates, the supreme court. Finally the attorney general was directed by the governor and he compiled. He filed an information against Zenger accusing him of seditious libel.

Background
The first paper in New York was William Bradford's New York Gazette, which started on November 8, 1725. It was the official government newspaper. That meant it printed, among other items, those the government wanted printed. It was here that Zenger learned his trade, working as an apprentice for Bradford.

In 1732 William Cosby became governor in New York, appointed by the crown. However, many prominent people in New York City were Dutch. The English had only been in control of the colony since 1673.

One of those who had enormous influence was Rip Van Dam. He had been on the common council in New York City for 30 years and was its president. At 72, he was old enough to remember the Dutch influence. Also, he had been acting governor for 13 months before Cosby arrived. Almost immediately after Cosby arrived, he and Dam got into a political hassle. Specifically, over the cut.

Cosby contended that by custom he was due to receive half the money Van Dam had been paid as acting governor. But, Cosby was dislikable and, therefore, disliked. Van Dam refused the demand.

As newspaper publisher, Zenger was a front man for those who disagreed with the administration of William Cosby. Primary among them was James Alexander.

Rip Van Dam was taking a chance in supposing he had the authority to grant permission to Zenger to start the paper. Remember we are talking about a printer who had been here only 13 years and whose native language was German. Zenger could count on contributors to his paper from those opposed to Cosby.

Reprinting Cato's Letters
New political concepts were in the air. The writings in England of Cato, the pen name for Londoners John Trenchard and William Gordon, had in the 1720s, argued for a policy that truth must be admitted as a defense against a charge of seditious libel.

Zenger published Cato's essay on free speech twice (the name of the essay was "Of Freedom of Speech: That the same is inseparable from Publick Liberty") and his "Reflections upon Libelling" and his "Discourse on Libels."

To that time the English courts had viewed such prosecutions of seditious libel as an opportunity to defend the crown. Hence, the concept of the greater the truth, the greater the libel. In the context of the times, truth was often very damaging.

The term sedition in this context is best applied to practices that tend to disturb internal public tranquillity by deed, word, writing, etc.

Also, Parliament had in 1679 passed the Habeas Corpus Act as a safeguard against illegal imprisonment. Therefore, even in the colonies, supporters of the crown were hesitant to proceed in a case of this kind.

So what was set up here is more than a trial over press rights. It was a trial of the English system in America. It was also the first great political squabble in America with a newspaper in the middle.

The trial itself was the first great American public drama.

The Trial
Zenger had been arrested on November 17, 1734. The trial began on August 4, 1735. That is, eight months and 17 days. And, Zenger was held in prison during that time.

The governor conveniently failed to apply the right of habeas corpus to Zenger's case.

Among Zenger's supporters and contributors were James Alexander and William Smith, both lawyers. When Zenger was arrested, they questioned the validity of the process by which Zenger was being held and were disbarred. John Chambers was appointed to represent Zenger.

Behind the scenes James Alexander and others came up with another lawyer for Zenger. He was the best-known lawyer in the colonies. He was Andrew Hamilton, a Quaker lawyer from Philadelphia. He was speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly. He was 59.

Trials were set up in such a way that both judges and a jury were involved. In this instance three judges -- one of them the chief judge -- presided and a jury of 12 was seated.

The judges said pointedly that the jury might find that Zenger printed and published the papers in question and leave it to the court to determine whether they were libelous. In effect, this left little for the jury to do.

Hamilton began this way: "I cannot think it proper to deny the Publication of a Complaint which I think is the right of every free born Subject to make and therefore I'll save Mr. Attorney the trouble of examining his Witness to that point; and I do confess (for my Client) that he both printed and published the two Papers set forth in the Information. I do hope in so doing he has committed no Crime."

Hamilton argued for justifiable truth. He said "falsehood makes the scandal, and both the libel." Hamilton said that the words themselves must be libelous -- that is, false, malicious and seditious or "we are not guilty." He offered to prove "these very papers that are called libel to be true."

Hamilton then brought up the Magna Carta, mentioned the Star Chamber and said that older courts have been holding truth as a defense of libel. He said New York was behind the times.

The judge told Hamilton that he could not give truth as the evidence for libel.

Hamilton said: "These are Star Chamber Cases, and I was in hopes that Practice had been dead with that Court."

Eventually Hamilton argued directly to the jury: "Then it is to you, Gentlemen, we must now appeal for Witnesses to the Truth of the Facts we have offered."

He said that free men had both the right and the duty to contain the arbitrary argument of the government.

Then in his closing statement, he said:

The jury found Zenger not guilty. People in the courtroom responded with bursts of loud applause and three cheers. The verdict was August 4, 1735, the same day it started.

The Effects of the Trial
This was the first fully reported public event in America. Colonial newspapers reported on it and a 40-page pamphlet was put out by the Zenger forces and was reprinted and widely circulated in England. The pamphlet was put together by James Alexander and called A Brief Narrative of the Case and Tryal of John Peter Zenger. It was published by Zenger in 1736.

Leonard W. Levy says in Emergence of A Free Press:

"(it) was, with the possible exception of Cato's Letters, the most widely known source of libertarian thought in England and America during the eighteenth century."

The legal effects were minimal, one reason being that in 1776 our relationship with England changed and seditious libel was theoretically gone. However, we were to see the situation resurface in the early days of the nation.

Hamilton had made two sweeping arguments: l. That the juries in seditious libel cases should decided the law as well as the fact. 2. That truth should be a defense of libel.

Hamilton's contention that juries should be judges of the law as well as of the fact in seditious libel cases was not established in England until Fox's Libel Act was passed by Parliament in 1792.

His other contention that truth should be admitted as evidence did not come into American law until it was included in a clause in the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. New York State did not recognize truth as a defense in criminal libel suits until 1821. Eventually libel was to emerge as a civil matter and not criminal. Truth is a defense in civil libel.

Nevertheless, this was the turning point in America toward the right and the ability of the people to exercise some say against the government. A statement made by Hamilton at the trial was to be a seed: "What strange doctrine is it to press everything for law here, which is so in England!"

The broader significance of the Zenger case was in the feeling that laws framed for England should not be applicable to the English colonies unless the colonists themselves approved. This was a revolutionary idea that is found more and more between 1735 and 1775. The Zenger case was not repeated by the various governments in the colonies again.

Postscripts
Andrew Hamilton did not ask for a fee, but on September 29, 1735, the common council of the city of New York presented him with a "freedom of the city" citation. It was in a gold box weighing five and one-half ounces.

Zenger published the Journal until he died on July 28, 1746. He was about 66 years old. The Journal was continued by his widow, Anna Catherine, then their son until about 1752.

Because of his actions in the Zenger case and other matters, William Cosby was discredited. He remained governor, though, and died in office on March 10, 1736, at the age of 46.

Andrew Hamilton died six years to the day after the trial -- August 4, 1741. He was 65.

Sources:
Buranelli, Vincent. The Trial of Peter Zenger. New York: New York University Press, 1957.
Levy, Leonard. Emergence of a Free Press. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.

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Events Leading to The Trial
The Dutch in New York
From 1648 to 1673 England and Holland fought three wars, all caused by fierce commercial rivalry. During one of these, four English frigates entered the harbor of what was then New Amsterdam. The Dutch governor, Peter Stuyvesant, had to surrender and the city was renamed New York. In 1673-74 the Dutch reoccupied it briefly. Afterwards the English kept it until after the Revolutionary War.

Licensing and Seditious Libel in America
As we have seen, those who printed without the permission of the crown were sometimes put in prison in 16th- and 17th-century England. England did do away with licensing in 1695. But sedition remained as a part of the common law.

The colonies used the laws of England/Britain, and sedition was one of the laws the colonial governors were charged with enforcing.

Colonial governors and other administrators were appointed by the crown (actually selected by Parliament, but technically appointed as the representatives of the crown).

People who came as governors of the colonies, and those on the staffs of governors, brought with them an aristocratic approach. They were condescending. They believed in control over the people to show the strength of the English/British nation. This gave them greater status among their peers. Perhaps a more simple reason for their actions was that the governors and their staffs tended to hold the colonists in low regard.

For the longest time in the colonies, a printer had to have the permission of the governor to print.

This was true in Massachusetts, as seen in the Benjamin Harris case. Harris was the first person to publish a newspaper in American -- Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick -- in 1690. But, he did not have approval of the colonial governor.

But approval or licensing wasn't the only means of control.

Sedition could be broadly defined and was in the eyes of the beholder, i.e., the governor. Usually mere criticism was sufficient for a charge of sedition.

Conviction under a charge of seditious libel was easy. All the government had to do was allege that sedition had occurred. The proof was that the offending material was in print.

Truth was not a defense. The very act of criticism was the crime. The axiom was: the greater the truth, the greater the libel.

Judges also were appointed by the crown, or English/British government, often with the backing of the governors.

Therefore, the courts had a way of deciding against the people and for the government. In a seditious libel case, the jury could only rule on the evidence. That is, the only responsibility of the jury was to say whether or not the material had been published.

This was a particularly odious situation to those who more and more saw themselves as Americans, not English.

Cato's Letters
John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon wrote 138 essays in English newspapers between 1720 and 1723. They were collected in four volumes that went through six editions between 1723 and 1755.

The most famous of the essays was on freedom of speech and press. The name of the essay was "Of Freedom of Speech: That the same is inseparable from Publick Liberty."

Cato's Letters were widely reprinted in America. Some authorities believe the essays provided the underlying reasoning that led to the revolution.

The essays called for:

Regarding seditious libel, Cato's Letters urged that the truth be allowed as a defense.

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Federal Hall
The site where the trial was held - not the building itself _ is one of the most famous sites in America. It is Federal Hall at 26 Wall Street.

This was the site of the nation's first capitol. That is, it is where the new Congress met for the first time after the approval of the Constitution. The date: March 4, 1789.

Washington was inaugurated on the steps on April 30, 1789.

The Congress that met in New York in 1789 had 22 senators and 59 representatives.

Washington signed the act to move the capitol to the District of Columbia on July 16, 1790. An interim move to Philadelphia was made on August 12, 1790. The move to Washington, D.C., was on November 17, 1800.

The building that is there now is not the original building. The current building was built in 1842 as the New York Customs House.

One of the reasons the building is so well known is that it is often shown on television in relation to what is happening at the New York Stock Exchange. The exchange is across the street. People who work in the area often take their lunches on the steps in good weather.

The administration of Federal Hall is under the direction of the National Park Service. Exhibits include one on Congress and another on the Zenger trial. A large statute of Washington is on the front of the building.

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