VI.An Opposition Newspaper

The roguery was there, but as usual there was no intelligence to back it up and make it work. The intriguer had counted on a smooth explanation to fend off the man in whose name he was practicing on Truesdale. Instead, Joseph Weldon felt outraged when he learned what was going on, rushed down from Boston, swore that he never gave anyone any authority to act for him, and added that at the time he did not even know of Harison’s existence.

After this scandal there was no place in New York for Francis Harison. Even his protector in the governor’s mansion could not save him. A Grand Jury indicted him for using Weldon’s name, whereupon he fled from the Colony in May of 1735, made his way to England, and never came back. From then on his story is virtually a blank, the last word on him being that he was down-and-out when he died.

However, this melancholy denouement was in the future and unforeseen when Cosby put Harison in charge of theGazettein 1732. The new editor began to ride very high indeed, for he was in the enviable position of one who could both flatter his own side and castigate its critics with impunity since there was no rival newspaper to contradict him. With Harison in command, the administration’s mouthpiece lavished on William Cosby the adulation that he loved and could get only from a trusted henchman, interspersing at the same time quick jabs at Morris, Van Dam, Alexander, and the rest.

Here is the way theGazettecovered one meeting between the Governor and the Assembly:

The harmony and good understanding between the several branches of the legislature—whereby nothing came to be demanded on the one side but what was for the public general good and welfare of His Majesty’s people, and everything done on the other which may recommend the honorable House toHis Majesty, to his representative and to their constituents—will, we hope, continue to us all those blessings which we enjoy under a government greatly envied, and too often disturbed by such as, instead thereof, are struggling to introduce discord and public confusion.[10]

TheGazetteresorted to verse to make its case:

Cosby the mild, the happy, good and great,The strongest guard of our little state;Let malcontents in crabbed language write,And the D...h H...s belch, tho’ they cannot bite.He unconcerned will let the wretches roar,And govern just, as others did before.[11]

Cosby the mild, the happy, good and great,

The strongest guard of our little state;

Let malcontents in crabbed language write,

And the D...h H...s belch, tho’ they cannot bite.

He unconcerned will let the wretches roar,

And govern just, as others did before.[11]

It went to Pope’s translation of theOdysseyto find a suitable description of the opposing faction:

Thersites only clamored in the throng,Loquacious, loud, and turbulent of tongue,And by no shame, by no respect controlled;In scandal busy, in reproaches bold;But chief, he gloried with licentious style,To lash the great, and rulers to revile.[12]

Thersites only clamored in the throng,

Loquacious, loud, and turbulent of tongue,

And by no shame, by no respect controlled;

In scandal busy, in reproaches bold;

But chief, he gloried with licentious style,

To lash the great, and rulers to revile.[12]

These passages epitomize the problem facing the Popular party. In fighting the Governor there was no hope of success unless he could be met at every critical spot, and one of the most critical was precisely that of journalism. Irregular pamphlets and open letters were of little use against a systematic weekly dose of administration propaganda in theGazette. The passage of time only made the problem more acute.

Naturally we do not have minutes of the discussions that went on between the anti-Cosby conspirators, but we do not need such information to see the rationale of the strategy they worked out. Their behavior is most eloquent on thatscore; it systematizes by practical example the disjointed notes, memoranda, and other documents that have come down to us.

First of all, they would do everything they could to sap the political strength of their hated enemy: they would support opposing candidates at elections, they would provide legal counsel for those whom he attacked through the courts, they would found a newspaper to bring their side of the controversy before the bar of public opinion. Secondly, they would wage their war on another front, in London, sending to the Board of Trade a steady barrage of propaganda designed to prove that William Cosby was no more fit to govern New York than he had been to govern Minorca. Eventually they would dispatch an emissary to make the situation clear in personal talks with the authorities.

With the lines thus drawn up, the first blows were struck on October 29, 1733. On that day was held the election of an assemblyman for Westchester, and the candidate of the Popular party was Lewis Morris. Governor Cosby, desperately anxious to defeat this formidable antagonist, threw everything he had to the support of his own man, William Forster. The result was the famous poll on the green of St. Paul’s Church, Eastchester.[1]

The two candidates, arriving with motley arrays of their followers behind them, were like commanding generals bound for battle. The image is not at all inexact, for Westchester was a stronghold of the Delancey-Philipse element of the Court party, and both sides were able to count on a disciplined mass of voters.

The sheriff presiding over the election was, like many officials, a creature of the Governor. Cosby evidently had ordered him to make sure, in one way or another, that the result went against Morris—in other words, to rig the election if necessary. When it became clear that Morris had a majority of the voters with him, the sheriff intervened and tried to snatch a victory by disfranchising one whole body of the population.

It had been customary to let Quakers vote without taking the oath, for by their religion they were forbidden to “swear.” Instead they were allowed to “affirm.” That custom gave Cosby’s sheriff a loophole. He decreed that no one who would not take the oath should be allowed to cast a ballot, and so he ruled the Friends out of the election, hoping that this maneuver would change the result. In fact it did not, for even without this group of his supporters Morris won a resounding victory.

The election was momentous beyond the fact that it returned to the Assembly a veteran of rough-and-tumble politics who was sure to throw his weight against the Governor wherever he could, and that it hardened the Quakers against the regime. It revealed Cosby as completely unscrupulous in dealing with his opponents, as a man who, occupying the position of chief upholder of the law, had no hesitation in playing fast and loose with it when he thought he could gain some advantage. Before the election he had been guilty of many questionable things, such as the legal attack on Van Dam and the removal of Lewis Morris from the Supreme Court, but these were at least debatable, with something to be said for him even if he could not be exculpated. Now his conduct was not debatable. It was plainly unethical, if not technically illegal.

The Westchester election was, in more ways than one, a triumph for the Popular party, which had impelled Cosby into a crime that was at once manifest and useless, revealing him as stupid as well as criminal.

The furor had hardly begun to die away before there burst upon the Governor the bombshell of an opposition newspaper. TheNew York Weekly Journal, edited by James Alexander and printed by Peter Zenger, was the firstpolitical independentever published on this continent. The men behind it created a journalistic category new to American experience when they deliberately decided to make a continuing open battle with Governor Cosby the rationale of their editorial policy. They published a specifically political newspaper, no arm of the authorities or toady to headquarters, but the mouthpiece of those who were challenging the representative of the king in their Colony. There was nothing hesitant or sporadic about their undertaking. The paper came out every Monday, always truculent and always propagandizing one point of view in politics. The political issue was the onlyraison d’êtreof publication. Everything else—foreign news, essays, verses, squibs, advertisements—was filler.

Here was something original for this side of the ocean, an experiment in journalism as critical as ever was attempted by any members of our fourth estate; and successful, for theJournallived and throve and became the ancestor of the great American political organs of modern times.

Now for all of this James Alexander was more responsible than any other man. From his literary remains we know that he was in full possession of the theory of a free press long before the occasion rose for him to implement it as a working editor, and that, the occasion having risen, he wrote muchof the copy for the opposition newspaper and blue-penciled virtually all the contributions bearing on the feud with the Governor.

This pivotal figure of American history was Scottish by birth, heir to the title of Earl of Stirling (a title his son made illustrious in the patriotic annals of the Revolution). He studied mathematics and science in Edinburgh, but compromised his future there by joining the Jacobite rising that attempted to place the Old Pretender on the British throne in 1715. After the fiasco, Alexander, like so many of his class, found Scotland too hot for him. He fled to America, studied law, went into politics, and eventually entered the Councils of both New York and New Jersey. Mathematician, scientist, lawyer, and politician, he was one of the most extraordinary men of his generation, a gentleman and a scholar, a charter member of Benjamin Franklin’s Philosophical Society, and the trusted confidant of more than one Governor.

The idea of founding theJournalwas probably his. For one thing, he was already something of a journalist, having published various items in William Bradford’sGazettewhen it was the only newspaper in town. Secondly, he was among the first overt opponents of Governor Cosby, the collision between them being remarkably quick and remarkably bitter, perhaps even more so than the Cosby-Morris and the Cosby-Van Dam conflicts. Only a few months after arriving the Governor wrote to his patron, the Duke of Newcastle:

There is one, James Alexander, whom I found here in both the New York and the New Jersey Councils, although very unfit to sit in either, or indeed to act in any other capacity where His Majesty’s honor and interest are concerned. He is the only man that has given me any uneasiness since my arrival.... In short, his known very bad character would be too long totrouble Your Grace with particulars, and stuffed with such tricks and oppressions too gross for Your Grace to hear. In his room I desire the favor of Your Grace to appoint Joseph Warrell.[13]

Many more letters of a similar content passed between the governor’s mansion in New York and authoritative personages in England.

Alexander repaid the compliment in his own correspondence. To his old friend, former Governor Robert Hunter, he confided:

Our Governor, who came here but last year, has long ago given more distaste to the people than I believe any Governor that ever this Province had during his whole government. He was so unhappy before he came to have the character in England that he knew not the difference between power and right; and he has, by many imprudent actions since he came here, fully verified that character. It would be tedious to give a detail of them. He has raised such a spirit in the people of this Province that, if they cannot convince him, yet I believe they will give the world reason to believe that they are not easily to be made slaves of, nor to be governed by arbitrary power.... Nothing does give a greater luster to your and Mr Burnet’s administrations here than being succeeded by such a man.[14]

This letter is notable for giving Alexander’s own express statement about the reason for publishing the brand newJournal:

Inclosed is also the first of a newspaper designed to be continued weekly, chiefly to expose him [Cosby] and those ridiculous flatteries with which Mr Harison loads our other newspaper, which our Governor claims and has the privilege of suffering nothing to be in but what he and Mr Harison approve of.Mr Van Dam is resolved, and by far the greater part of the Province openly approve his resolution, of not yielding to the Governor’s demand. He has not as yet answered, nor will the Governor’s lawyers be able for one while to compel him unless they break over all law and persuade the new Judges [Delancey and Philipse] into a contradiction of themselves. Which if they do, the world shall know it from the press.[15]

Mr Van Dam is resolved, and by far the greater part of the Province openly approve his resolution, of not yielding to the Governor’s demand. He has not as yet answered, nor will the Governor’s lawyers be able for one while to compel him unless they break over all law and persuade the new Judges [Delancey and Philipse] into a contradiction of themselves. Which if they do, the world shall know it from the press.[15]

The advent of theJournaldid nothing to lessen the bitterness of Cosby’s condemnation of Alexander, for although it was known as “Zenger’s paper” (since it bore only the printer’s name), the Governor was in no doubt about who was the guiding genius of the enterprise. On December 6, 1734, he writes to the Board of Trade:

Mr James Alexander is the person whom I have too much occasion to mention.... No sooner did Van Dam and the late Chief Justice (the latter especially) begin to treat my administration with rudeness and ill-manners than I found Alexander to be at the head of a scheme to give all imaginable uneasiness to the government by infusing into, and making the worst impression on, the minds of the people. A press supported by him and his party began to swarm with the most virulent libels.[16]

Cosby realized further that Alexander was not the only one in New York who was playing at the new kind of journalism, and he said of Morris:

His open and implacable malice against me has appeared weekly in Zenger’sJournal. This man with the two others I have mentioned, Van Dam and Alexander, are the only men from whom I am to look for any opposition in the administration of the government, and they are so implacable in their malice that I am to look for all the insolent, false and scandalous aspersions that such bold and profligate wretches can invent.[17]

Cosby’s cries of rage and anguish are understandable enough. From the date of theJournal’s appearance (November 5, 1733) until his death more than two years later it constituted itself his most alert censor, critic, and judge. Every Monday the lash fell across his shoulders, the attacks varying through the gamut from airy satire to thundering condemnation. The opposition writers called him everything from an “idiot” to a “Nero,” and pointedly suggested that his London superiors should do something to alleviate the affliction they had imposed on their Colony.

The first issue started the ball rolling with a brilliant and biting story of the Westchester election and Morris’ victory in spite of the sheriff’s heavy-handed machinations; and from then on there was no letup. The fundamental idea being to convict Cosby of violating the rules of his governorship, theJournalnever ceased to hammer at this theme. The best example of the technique is in the issues of the last two weeks of September, 1734, a continued essay that accuses Cosby of voting as a member of the Council during its legislative sessions, of demanding that bills from the Assembly be presented to him before the Council saw them, and of adjourning the Assembly in his own name instead of the king’s.

All three of these acts violated the rules by which the Governor was bound, and when theJournalcarried the story to the Board of Trade, Cosby was warned about them. He could not, of course, be condemned out of hand on the basis of a newspaper story, but the significant thing is that the Board should have found the story sufficient basis for mentioning the subject.

Most of theJournalwriting is lost irretrievably behind a veil of anonymity, which is not too important since whoever “Cato” and “Philo-Patriae” and “Thomas Standby” may have been, they were acting in concert. But every once in awhile individual personality peeps or glares through the writing, as in this reply to one argument for the prudence of obeying the government, no matter what. The text of the reply is saturated through and through with the pent-up gall and venom on which Lewis Morris had been feeding for so long:

Let this wiseacre (whoever he is) go to any country wife and tell her that the fox is a mischievous creature that can and does do her much hurt, that it is difficult if not impracticable to catch him, and that therefore she ought on any terms to keep in with him.Why don’t we keep in with serpents and wolves on this foot? Animals much more innocent and less mischievous to the public than some Governors have proved.A Governor turns rogue, does a thousand things for which a small rogue would have deserved a halter; and because it is difficult if not impracticable to obtain relief against him, therefore it is prudent to keep in with him and join in the roguery; and that on the principle of self-preservation. That is, a Governor does all he can to chain you, and it being difficult to prevent him, it is prudent in you (in order to preserve your liberty) to help him put them on and to rivet them fast.No people in the world have contended for liberty with more boldness and greater success than the Dutch; are more tenacious in retaining it; or more jealous of any attempts upon it; yet in their plantations they seem to be lost to all the sense of it, and a fellow that is but one degree removed from an idiot shall, with a full-mouthed “Sacrament, Donder and Blixum!” govern as he pleases, dispose of them and their properties at his discretion, and their magistrates will keep in with him at any rate, and think his favor no mean purchase for the loss of their liberty.There have been Nicholsons, Cornburys, Coots, Barringtons, Edens, Lowthers, Georges, Parks, Douglases, and many more,as very Bashaws as ever were sent out from Constantinople; and there have not been wanting under each of their administrations persons, the dregs and scandals of human nature, who have kept in with them and used their endeavors to enslave their fellow-subjects, and persuaded others to do so.[18]

Why don’t we keep in with serpents and wolves on this foot? Animals much more innocent and less mischievous to the public than some Governors have proved.

A Governor turns rogue, does a thousand things for which a small rogue would have deserved a halter; and because it is difficult if not impracticable to obtain relief against him, therefore it is prudent to keep in with him and join in the roguery; and that on the principle of self-preservation. That is, a Governor does all he can to chain you, and it being difficult to prevent him, it is prudent in you (in order to preserve your liberty) to help him put them on and to rivet them fast.

No people in the world have contended for liberty with more boldness and greater success than the Dutch; are more tenacious in retaining it; or more jealous of any attempts upon it; yet in their plantations they seem to be lost to all the sense of it, and a fellow that is but one degree removed from an idiot shall, with a full-mouthed “Sacrament, Donder and Blixum!” govern as he pleases, dispose of them and their properties at his discretion, and their magistrates will keep in with him at any rate, and think his favor no mean purchase for the loss of their liberty.

There have been Nicholsons, Cornburys, Coots, Barringtons, Edens, Lowthers, Georges, Parks, Douglases, and many more,as very Bashaws as ever were sent out from Constantinople; and there have not been wanting under each of their administrations persons, the dregs and scandals of human nature, who have kept in with them and used their endeavors to enslave their fellow-subjects, and persuaded others to do so.[18]

This was political independence with a vengeance. Never before had an American newspaper dared to treat an officer of the crown so. Other periodicals depended on official sanction to keep them going, or at least never strayed too far from the line laid down for them. TheJournalhad no sanction and toed no line. It was, depending on one’s political sympathies, either an outrageous innovation or else simply an unfamiliar experiment. In either case it needed to be legitimized in the eyes of its readers.

That was why Alexander, as editor, pushed the issue of freedom of the press so hard. New Yorkers who had been unaware of that freedom would come upon it every time they opened “Zenger’s paper.” Side by side they would find stories about the misdemeanors of the Governor and essays defending and defining a free press, an ingenious interplay of practice and theory, a journalistic dialectic shifting between independent news reporting and the theory that justifies such reporting. Under Alexander’s editing hand the contributors both pilloried their enemy in the executive mansion and claimed the right to do so.

Alexander did not, of course, invent the technique. It was already well known in Britain, and he took it over for his own purposes, just as our political philosophers such as Jefferson, Franklin, and Madison took over ideas already current in Britain and France. Like all our Colonial editors, hewas dependent on classics such as Milton, Locke, Swift, Steele, Addison, and Defoe. He used all of these at different times, quoting them as authorities for unfettered journalism and free speech.

Most of all he used the celebratedCato’s Lettersof Thomas Gordon and John Trenchard. They furnished him with an ideal model. The letters had appeared in theLondon Journaland theBritish Journalonly a decade before, when, signing themselves “Cato,” Gordon and Trenchard castigated his majesty’s government, and particularly the men responsible for the scandal of the South Sea Bubble. They also larded their attacks with animadversions on freedom of the press, which they explicitly defended as intrinsic to liberty itself. They caused so much embarrassment to the Ministry that it was forced to counterattack: characteristically for the eighteenth century, it solved the problem by buying out theLondon Journal.

But that did not kill the argument, forCato’s Letterswere published in four volumes and enjoyed a tremendous popularity on both sides of the Atlantic. It took James Alexander to show just how much might be done with them over here. He manifestly had read and reread Gordon and Trenchard, soaking up their ideas as avidly as a sponge soaks up water, and, turning editor, he found in them a treasure trove of journalistic philosophy and invective. His policy is theirs adapted to the situation in Colonial New York.

He copied out extracts from theLettersboth for his own private edification and guidance and for use in theJournal. There is extant in his handwriting part of the letter headed “Of the restraints which ought to be laid upon public rulers.” He thought it apropos of the Cosby administration, so it appeared in theJournalon May 27, 1734. Here are a few others that he selected, or else approved, for reprinting: “The right and capacity of the people to judge of government,”“Of reverence true and false,” “Of freedom of speech: that the same is inseparable from public liberty,” “Reflections upon libelling,” “Cautions against the natural encroachments of power.”

To put his editorial credo in a nutshell, Alexander went to another classical source, theCraftsman, and printed this maxim on November 12, 1733:

The liberty of the press is a subject of the greatest importance, and in which every individual is as much concerned as he is in any other part of liberty.

Under the aegis of his text he adroitly maneuvered the opposition newspaper against all the power of the Governor—and against all the defenses thrown up by Francis Harison as editor of the Governor’s newspaper.

TheJournal’s anti-Cosby campaign touched off the first of the many newspaper wars that have raged on the banks of the Hudson. As often as it attacked did theGazetterush to the rescue amid an acrimonious exchange of accusations and insults. Thus, referring to the sentiments of the people of New York toward their Governor:

TheJournal. They think, as matters now stand, that their liberties and properties are precarious, and that slavery is like to be entailed on them and their posterity if some past things be not amended.[19]TheGazette. Now give me leave to say what I have reason to believe some of the people of this City and Province think in relation to that paragraph in Zenger’s paper. They think it is an aggravated libel.[20]

TheGazette. Now give me leave to say what I have reason to believe some of the people of this City and Province think in relation to that paragraph in Zenger’s paper. They think it is an aggravated libel.[20]

In such a tone did New York’s two newspapers carry on their duel, one which concedes nothing to the later age of yellow journalism in its furious charges and countercharges of deceit, ignorance, calumny, and slander. The above onset and riposte stand out because the passage from theJournalsounds like Alexander himself, while Governor Cosby agreed with theGazettethat it was “libelous” and made it part of the formal indictment of Peter Zenger.

Both sides went at it hammer and tongs. In theJournal, where Cosby is called a “Nero,” his kept journalist is his “spaniel.” TheGazetteretorts with epithets like “seditious rogues” and “disaffected instigators of arson and riot,” and proposes that the name “Zenger” be turned into a common-noun synonym for “liar.”

The men behind the opposition newspaper made a point of referring to Harison obliquely in satirical mock “advertisements” like these:

A large spaniel of about five foot five inches high has lately strayed from his kennel with his mouth full of fulsome panegyrics, and in his ramble dropped them in theNew York Gazette. When a puppy he was marked thus (FH), and a cross in the middle of his forehead; but the mark being worn out, he has taken upon him in a heathenish manner to abuse mankind by imposing a great many gross falsehoods on them. Whoever will strip the said panegyrics of their fulsomeness, and send the beast back to his kennel, shall have the thanks of all honest men, and all reasonable charges.[21]The spaniel strayed away is of his own accord returned to his kennel, from whence he begs leave to assure the public that all those fulsome panegyrics were dropped in theNew York Gazetteby the express orders of his master; and that for the gross falsehoods he is charged with imposing upon mankind, he is willing to undergo any punishment the people will imposeon him if they can make full proof in any Court of Record that any one individual person in the Province (that knew him) believed any of them.[22]

The spaniel strayed away is of his own accord returned to his kennel, from whence he begs leave to assure the public that all those fulsome panegyrics were dropped in theNew York Gazetteby the express orders of his master; and that for the gross falsehoods he is charged with imposing upon mankind, he is willing to undergo any punishment the people will imposeon him if they can make full proof in any Court of Record that any one individual person in the Province (that knew him) believed any of them.[22]

The writers of these squibs had measured their man perfectly. They could become furious, caustic, ironic or insulting—that is,serious—with the Governor and the rest of the men around him; but the proper approach to Francis Harison was through satire. From theJournalhe received a systematic dose of it.

For six months he absorbed the barbs of ridicule while maintaining an air of indifference. Finally, able to stand the badgering no longer, he whirled on his tormentors and attempted to repay them in their own coin:

Supposing another should turn the tables upon the authors of these infamous and fictitious advertisements, how easily might it be done? The real or imagined defects of theAmsterdam Crane, theConnecticut Mastiff,Phillip Baboon, Senior,Phillip Baboon, Junior, theScythian Unicorn, andWild Peter from the Banks of the Rhinemight be enlarged upon, and placed in a most ludicrous light.[23]

Since the crass and clumsy Harison was devoid of the slightest capacity for satire, he inevitably suffered when he picked up the weapon that was wielded so devastatingly by his enemies. The only interesting thing about this paragraph is that it identifies the men of the Popular party who contributed most to theJournal: Rip Van Dam, William Smith, Lewis Morris, Senior, Lewis Morris, Junior, James Alexander, and Peter Zenger.

The honors of combat obviously went to “Zenger’s paper.” It was not always fair, by a long shot—nor has any newspaper ever been when fighting a war with a rival. But Cosby and Harison and the Court partyin totowere too vulnerable forall theJournal’s broadsides to go astray. The Governor was hit over and over again. So was his editor. So were his other cronies.

They fought back in theGazette, but they were always on the defensive, always incapable of getting a real attack going. Finally Cosby, boiling with rage, determined on something more practical than a war of words.

The Governor paused long enough to see what could be done through the usual legal channels, with Chief Justice Delancey given the job of extracting a grand jury indictment for libel. That this attempt failed twice is indicative of the administration’s unpopularity. The jurors manifestly had determined from the start that they would do nothing, and though they were in no more doubt than Delancey about the identity of the principal men who wrote for theJournal, they used the “anonymity” of the affair as an excuse to avoid indicting anybody.

With the second grand jury failure, Cosby’s attention began to focus more intently on the newspaper and its printer. His next move was to order copies of the obnoxious periodical to be burned, which was done even though the Assembly and the magistrates refused to participate. Naturally the man in charge was the man maintained expressly for such purposes. Harison was all the more eager to perform the duty in that, besides the eternal ridicule theJournalheaped on him, in one issue it had run a letter from the freeholders of Orange County thanking their assemblyman, Vincent Matthews, for making a vitriolic attack on him fromthe floor of the legislature. A copy from that issue was one of four earmarked for the flames.

The hatchetman’s first instinct was to adopt strong-arm methods. He therefore went around to Peter Zenger’s establishment, disburdened himself of some violent opinions (“more fit to be uttered by a drayman than a gentleman,” says Peter), and threatened to cane him on the street. That was why the printer took to wearing a sword whenever he went out—the sword that gave an excuse for much heavy sarcasm in the columns of theGazette.

Harison did not overlook more indirect and devious methods of dealing with his critics. He sent a couple of his creatures, John Alsop and Edward Blagg, to Orange County to spread the story that theJournalwith the freeholders’ letter commending Matthews had been burned by the common hangman, and that the signers were to be rounded up and thrown into jail—a rumor that caused some trepidation among the solid citizens of the county.

Unfortunately Harison, misjudging the situation in his usual fashion, had jumped the gun a little too smartly. He counted on the hangman to do the job because he himself, as recorder of New York City, was supposed to persuade the magistrates to throw their authority behind the ceremonial burning. But when he met with them, he found himself in an atmosphere of chilly distrust, for they knew that Cosby was trying to kill legitimate opposition. Harison started to argue that there were sound British precedents for dealing thus with theJournal; was quickly shown up as grossly ignorant on that score (he put up the defense that he did not carry his lawbooks around with him); was roundly snubbed; and departed in a spasm of fury. The magistrates then forbade anyone within their authority, including the hangman, to have anything to do with the affair.

TheJournalwas burned on schedule, with Harison presiding, but he had to bring in a slave to set the fire, and they were virtually alone in front of the City Hall as the flames rose. It was the most dismal fiasco of a career studded with fiascoes.

We can judge how heated the situation had become by reverting once more to that most percipient of contemporary witnesses, Cadwallader Colden:

One might think, after such aversion to this prosecution appeared from all sorts of people, that it would have been thought prudent to have desisted from farther proceedings. But the violent resentment of many in the administration who had been exposed in Zenger’s papers, together with the advantage they thought of gaining by his papers being found libels by a Jury, blinded their eyes so that they did not see what any man of common understanding would here have seen, and did see.[24]

Governor Cosby was indeed blind. He was blinded by a baffled fury that had grown increasingly unreasoning as his hopes crumbled into nothingness. Instead of bowing to his will, his enemies were causing him grave embarrassment with his superiors, compelling him to a perpetual defense of his right to remain in his office. And locally they had made him a laughingstock. With cool impudence Morris and Alexander (these two above any) tormented him from behind the safeguard of an “anonymity” that fooled nobody, and was intended to fool nobody—least of all the victim of their attacks, for the dagger was honed to a fine edge precisely by Cosby’s awareness of who held it. The commanders of the Popular party were all very much at large, hurling their invectives at him and satirizing his attempts to retaliate.

The hunters had fenced in the tiger, and were baiting him from a safe distance, prodding him into a frenzy—until with asingle bound he leaped on the one man who stood within reach.

Printer Peter Zenger had not even a specious “anonymity” between him and the Governor. TheJournalwas “his” newspaper. Accordingly a warrant for his arrest went out from the Governor and the Council, and the sheriff arrested Zenger on November 17, 1734, and held him for trial on a charge of “seditious libel.” Harison, needless to say, was one of the councillors who signed the warrant; in fact, he is the only person mentioned by name as having done so in the well-known “apology” that Zenger printed in his newspaper on November 25:

As you last week were disappointed of myJournal, I think it incumbent on me to publish my apology, which is this. On the Lord’s Day, the seventeenth, I was arrested, taken and imprisoned in the common jail of this City by virtue of a warrant from the Governor, the honorable Francis Harison, and others in the Council (of which, God willing, you will have a copy); whereupon I was put under such restraint that I had not the liberty of pen, ink or paper, or to see or speak with people, until upon my complaint to the honorable Chief Justice at my appearing before him upon my habeas corpus on the Wednesday following. He discountenanced that proceeding, and therefore I have had since that time the liberty of speaking thro’ the hole of the door to my wife and servants. By which I doubt not you will think me sufficiently excused for not sending my last week’sJournal, and hope for the future, by the liberty of speaking to my servants thro’ the hole of the door of the prison, to entertain you with my weeklyJournalas formerly.

During all the printer’s imprisonment theJournalfailed of but that one issue. The credit for its punctual appearance every Monday thereafter belongs to his wife, Anna Catherine Zenger, who stepped into his shoes back at the shop. AnnaCatherine has a real claim to fame for standing by her husband, a loyalty by no means insignificant in a woman with a family. She may have been emboldened by her ability to keep the press going in his absence, but even so it would have been a crushing blow if he had been given a harsh sentence as, for all she knew, might have been the outcome. The little evidence there is indicates that she never pressed him to give in and name the men who actually were responsible for theJournal. She must have known that the New York administration would gladly trade the printer for the editor, a comparatively minor figure for the archenemy—that is, Peter Zenger for James Alexander—but there is no record of her ever complaining that the Zenger family was suffering for someone else.

The Court party’s editor used the occasion for a show of mock sympathy with the Popular party’s printer. TheGazettefor December 9, 1734, has a reference to

the pretended patriots of our days, the correspondents of John Peter Zenger, who are every hour undermining the credit and authority of the government by all the wicked methods and low artifices that can be devised, and which they flatter themselves are consistent with their own safety. I am sorry they are so tenacious of their own as to neglect that of their poor printer.

Harison had a fine time thinking up jibes like this. It would have been poetic justice if he had been around to suffer—with Governor Cosby and the rest of the Court party—through the acquittal Peter Zenger won so triumphantly on August 4, 1735. But by that time New York had become too hot for this particular member of the faction, and he was on the other side of the Atlantic.

The arrest of Peter Zenger was one of Cosby’s gross mistakes. No one in the Colony could miss the fact that he wasbent on revenge, for the public bodies—Assembly, Common Council, grand juries—had all refused to have anything to do with proceedings that they recognized as strictly the Governor’s private affair. Nor could there be any doubt that his purpose was to silence a critic who had been uttering unpalatable truths. Popular feeling was exacerbated by the fact that Cosby’s vindictive wrath fell, not upon the powerful men of the opposite faction, but upon an insignificant German immigrant who plied the trade of printer in the city.

The way the thing was done added to the animosity that Cosby provoked. Zenger’s bail was placed at so high a figure that he could not meet it, his lawyers were disbarred for protesting against the Governor’s hand-picked court of Chief Justice James Delancey and Associate Justice Frederick Philipse, the prisoner had to linger in his cell for nine months before he was given his day in court, and Cosby tried for a packed jury in so blatant a way that his own chief justice had to disavow him. None of this could be kept secret; when the trial was finally held local sentiment had turned against the Governor to the point where he had only his closest friends with him.

As the Zenger case developed step by step in New York, Cosby was being forced to a more energetic defense on the London front, where Van Dam was waging a pamphlet war against him, and where Morris was present in person.

Months before the newspaper war began Van Dam had resolved to keep the New York public and the London authorities informed of the way in which the Cosby suit for half of his salary was going, and he began to publish successive accounts, with Peter Zenger doing the printing forhim just as for the rest of the Popular party. Zenger’s business got better as the political controversy got worse. In the summer of 1733 he turned out for Alexander and Smith their arguments against the validity of the equity court. Shortly afterward Van Dam gave him the job of handling two protests in which the stubborn old Dutchman expressed his personal indignation at the way he was being treated by the Governor.

These partial attacks on Cosby were followed by a general indictment, a full bill of particulars drawn up to expose him point by point with the most meticulous exactitude. Almost everything that could be alleged against him with any degree of plausibility at all was set down in Van Dam’sArticles of Complaint.

The apparent author was not the real one. Van Dam undoubtedly had a hand in formulating the charges, but the writing must have been due to someone else since Van Dam was not skillful with the pen. James Alexander springs to mind as the obvious candidate for the role of ghost writer, a suspicion that is strengthened by the accusations that Cosby leveled at both him and Morris. Nevertheless, Van Dam was responsible for theArticles, a fact on which he insisted with dogged self-righteousness.

The indictment is composed of 34 separate counts. Not all of them are watertight, for some descend into carping criticism about trivialities. One, for instance, accuses Cosby of accepting a gift of French wines from the commander at Louisbourg:

You received of the said Frenchman by way of present all of the said brandy, claret and salad oil, which were carried into the fort and lodged in your cellar; and this, I suppose, induced you to grant a liberty to trade here, which you ought not to have done.[25]

Another charges that Cosby’s candidate in the Westchester election, William Forster, was “a known Jacobite,” an astonishing grievance in this context since James Alexander was himself a Jacobite, a veteran of the rising of 1715.

These are mere debaters’ points (at the most charitable estimation), and they prove that the leaders of the Popular party could be just as unscrupulous as the Governor when they put their minds to it. They did not disdain to use against him the weapons that he used against them. Too often the struggle has been painted in stark tones of black and white, when it was really a matter of degree, with neither side having a monopoly of either vice or virtue—which is to say little more than that we are dealing with the factional politics of real men rather than with the stereotypes of melodrama.

Again, some of theArticlesare of doubtful validity, as when Cosby is accused of destroying a deed given to the City of Albany by the Mohawks, and of permitting the French to map and sound New York harbor on the pretence of trading there. The Governor retorted that the deed was unjust to begin with, and that to have kept it in force would have driven the Indians into the arms of the French; and that trade with Louisbourg was legitimate and humanitarian because the garrison was close to famine.

But if a number of theArticleshave a dubious ring, others do make fundamental points. They mention the dismissal of Morris from the Supreme Court, the Van Dam lawsuit, and the attempt to rig the Westchester election. Several are devoted to Cosby’s contemptuous treatment of his Council:

You have, contrary to your instructions, displaced Judges, Justices of the Peace, Sheriffs, etc., without the advice of Council.[26]The Council being part of the legislature, as above, you have taken it upon you (in order to influence their debates) to sitamong them and act as their President, though by your patent His Majesty has given you a negative voice to prevent the passing of any law prejudicial to His Majesty’s prerogative and the public good.[27]Where the advice of the Council has been thought necessary you have not given general summonses as usual, but have only summoned so small a number as would constitute a quorum, in which you were sure of a majority to carry such point as you thought proper, and by this method seem to support your proceedings by the sanction of advice of Council—when three makes a majority of such a quorum, and nine might have been dissenting had they been summoned.[28]You have taken it upon yourself to act as President of the Council in receiving bills and messages from the General Assembly.[29]By these methods you have rendered the Council useless in their legislative capacity of being that check and balance in government that His Majesty intended they should be.[30]

You have, contrary to your instructions, displaced Judges, Justices of the Peace, Sheriffs, etc., without the advice of Council.[26]

The Council being part of the legislature, as above, you have taken it upon you (in order to influence their debates) to sitamong them and act as their President, though by your patent His Majesty has given you a negative voice to prevent the passing of any law prejudicial to His Majesty’s prerogative and the public good.[27]

Where the advice of the Council has been thought necessary you have not given general summonses as usual, but have only summoned so small a number as would constitute a quorum, in which you were sure of a majority to carry such point as you thought proper, and by this method seem to support your proceedings by the sanction of advice of Council—when three makes a majority of such a quorum, and nine might have been dissenting had they been summoned.[28]

You have taken it upon yourself to act as President of the Council in receiving bills and messages from the General Assembly.[29]

By these methods you have rendered the Council useless in their legislative capacity of being that check and balance in government that His Majesty intended they should be.[30]

Van Dam’sArticles of Complaintconstituted a deadly blow at Governor Cosby, what with his Minorca past added to his present troubles in New York, nor was he slow to recognize the fact. We have already seen how he was warned by the Board of Trade because of reports in theJournal. Fearing the effect of theArticlesin London, he prompted his confederates of the Council to draw up for the Duke of Newcastle a point by point “refutation”—which does not, however, actually refute anything fundamental, for if it deals validly enough with the trivialities, it sedulously avoids, or else boldly denies, the facts about Cosby’s maladministration and misdemeanors. At the same time the Cosby councillors appended a note that gives the Court party’s version of the New York situation:

We have been, while we traced Mr Van Dam through a labyrinth of detestable falsehoods, very often at a loss how to believe that a man of his years could forge so many and so notorious scandals, but we are to inform your Grace that the resentment, malice and revenge of some of the wickedest men are thrown to his assistance. No government or administration can please these restless minds. Nothing will satisfy them but the power which they joyfully would exercise to the destruction or ruin of their fellow subjects. We beg Your Lordship to be assured that we know, and daily are made more sensible of, our happiness under His Excellency’s administration.[31]

During the year 1734 the quarrel between Governor Cosby and his enemies went on, and then in December he learned that Lewis Morris had sailed for England. Things were becoming more tense. The two factions had met head-on in another election contest, that for the Common Council of New York City, and again the Governor had suffered a humiliating defeat. Smarting with resentment, and goaded by mounting fury, he had promptly turned around and thrown himself on the one man who was vulnerable: he had jailed Peter Zenger on the charge of “seditious libel.” If the printer should be convicted, that alone would justify Cosby, and compromise his opponents, in the eyes of the authorities. The leaders of the Zenger faction might join their printer in the city prison. At best, the opposition press would be muzzled, in which case the anti-Cosbyites would have to go outside New York to have their pamphlets printed, while their newspaper must be destroyed.

There was no time to lose. The plan to send a personalrepresentative to London should be implemented, Lewis Morris being a satisfactory choice since he was already known in the British capital. Everything was done as secretly as possible, and Morris embarked clandestinely to prevent the Governor’s taking any countermeasures.

The strategy for him to follow had been worked out in consultations with his colleagues. We know the generalities of the case he was to make against the Cosby administration, and they are of special interest as indicating how the Popular party thought London should be approached. Here we find no trivialities such as those in theArticles of Complaint. Morris was to adhere strictly to criticisms that told:

At a consultation between James Alexander, William Smith, and Lewis Morris Jun., as to the matters to be entrusted to Col. M—, it was determined that he should exert himself to procure among other things: The removal of the Governor if possible—his own restoration [to the Supreme Court]—the dissolution of the then existing Assembly—the removal of Francis Harison and Daniel Horsmanden from the Council of New York—instructions to Gov. Cosby to pass such laws as a new Assembly should conceive conducive to the welfare of the people, and particularly an act for an annual or triennial Assembly, and some others of a special character—to allow the Council to sit without him, and that their advice and consent should be required in conformity with his instructions—that the Governor should also be instructed not to set himself above the law—to grant new charters to the cities of New York and Albany—and that only by adhering to these directions could he hope to be retained in office.[32]

Morris followed his instructions as well, apparently, as he could during almost two years in England. He was quickly disillusioned about the possibility of getting what he wanted. Being of a choleric and impetuous nature, he may havepressed his demands too warmly and eagerly; he may have been too obviously the partisan. But one reason why the recall of Cosby could not be achieved was that too many interests in London wanted him to stay where he was. In a letter to Alexander, Morris wrote:

Everybody here agrees in a contemptible opinion of Cosby, and nobody knows him better, or has a worse opinion of him, than the friends he relies on; and it may be you will be surprised to hear that the most nefarious crime a Governor can commit is not by some counted so bad as the crime of complaining of it—the last is an arraigning of the Ministry that advised the sending of him.[33]

In order to placate Morris, it was suggested to him that he withdraw his indictment of Cosby in return for a promise that he himself should be appointed the first governor of New Jersey under a separate jurisdiction. He announced publicly his refusal of the offer (although some murmuring about his candor was heard when he received that office in 1738). On one point he was partially successful, that of his removal from the Supreme Court: a royal decree declared the reasons for it insufficient. But even so he was not reinstated. His mission to London was not a success. Perhaps the authorities, not at all enthusiastic about removing a governor to begin with, were swayed by Cosby’s accusations against Morris, such as:

Cabals were formed against the government, and a meeting of their factious men is still held several nights in the week at a private lodging which I have discovered, Alexander always present, and Morris, till he lately fled privately for England, in great fear as ’tis publicly reported lest the printer of their seditious libels should discover him.[34]

The Governor certainly had some success with his London defense. He was, after all, the crown’s executive on the spot,and that alone would have given his pronouncements an authority denied to the greatest magnates of the Popular party. The burden of proof lay with them. That they thought they could meet the test is proved by the commission given to Lewis Morris. But, if the Board of Trade went so far as to censure Cosby, they obviously felt inclined to accept his version of what was going on in New York. To the Queen they reported:

Colonel Cosby acquaints us in his letter that the said Alexander and his party have set up a printing press at New York, where the most virulent libels and most abusive pamphlets published against the Ministry and other persons of honor in England have been reprinted, with such alterations as served to inflame the people against the several branches of the legislature and the administration in that Province.That factious cabals are secretly held several times a week in New York, at which Alexander is always present, as Morris was before his coming privately to England....Colonel Cosby further acquaints us that Rip Van Dam, Morris, Alexander, and others of their party, appear by their behavior to be disaffected to his Majesty’s government, and are daily exciting the people to sedition and riot.[35]

That factious cabals are secretly held several times a week in New York, at which Alexander is always present, as Morris was before his coming privately to England....

Colonel Cosby further acquaints us that Rip Van Dam, Morris, Alexander, and others of their party, appear by their behavior to be disaffected to his Majesty’s government, and are daily exciting the people to sedition and riot.[35]

This passage, written while Lewis Morris was there to agitate for the contrary, comes close to a real endorsement of Governor Cosby.

Ironically, it was drawn up just a few weeks after the Governor had been condemned in New York—condemned explicitly on the score of the printing press about which he fulminated to the Board of Trade.

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