Newspapers in the Colonies

In time newspapers began to appear in the colonies, but were of little worth, as vehicles of general information, until the period of our Revolution. The first one issued in America was published in Boston in September, 1690. It was printed on three pages seven by eleven inches square, on a folded sheet, and was entitled "Public Occurrences both Foreign and Domestic." The editor said of it: "It is designed that the country shall be furnished once a month (or if any glut of occurrences happen, oftener) with an account of such considerable things as have arrived unto our notice." And he gave warning in his first number that his paper should be the vehicle for exposing slanderers and false reporters, saying: "It is supposed that none will dislike this proposal, but such as intend to be guilty of so villainous a crime." Only one number of this newspaper was published. The first permanent newspaper was "The Boston News-Letter," first issued in the spring of 1704. The first in Pennsylvania was "The American," published in Philadelphia in 1719. The first in New York was "The New York Gazette," in 1725; the first in Maryland was the "Maryland Gazette," issued at Annapolis in the summer of 1728. "The South Carolina Gazette," printed at Charleston at the beginning of 1732, was the first issued in that province; the first in Rhode Island was "The Rhode Island Gazette," printed at Newport in 1732; the first in Virginia was "The Virginia Gazette," printed at Williams burg in 1736; the first in Connecticut was "The Connecticut Gazette," printed at New Haven in 1755; the first in North Carolina was "The North Carolina Gazette," printed at New Berne the same year; and the first in New Hampshire was "The New Hampshire Gazette," printed at Portsmouth in the summer of 1756. At the period of the French and Indian war newspapers were printed in all of the colonies excepting in New Jersey, Delaware and Georgia. The printing-machines on which all the colonial newspapers and books were printed were simple in form and rude in construction, as may be seen in the picture of the Ephrata printing-press here given.

Of the number of the inhabitants of the colonies at that time, we have no exact enumeration. Mr. Bancroft, after a careful examination of many official returns and private computations, estimated the number of white inhabitants of all the colonies to be 1,165,000, and the blacks (who were mostly slaves) to be 260,000, distributed as follows:

Since the English Revolution in 1688--a period of only sixty-six years--the growth of the colonies in population had been marvellous. New England had increased from 75,000 to 425,000; New York, from 20,000 to 85,000; New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland, from 47,000 to 372,000; Virginia, from 50,000 to 168,000; and the Carolinas and Georgia, from 8,000 to 135,000. The assertion of a letter of an "American Farmer" was almost literally true when he wrote: "We are all tillers of the earth from Nova Scotia to West Florida. We are a people of cultivation, scattered over an immense territory; communicating with each other by means of good roads and navigable rivers; united by the silken bands of mild government; all respecting the laws, without dreading their power because they are equitable."

While the English-American colonists were treated by the mother country as minor children or as absolute subjects to be governed, without questionings, by her capricious will; and while every measure of the British ministry was calculated to trammel their advance toward local self-government, that lofty idea was working out in America the great problem of republicanism, whose demonstration by actual achievements the monarchs of Europe were dreading. It was an idea that had spontaneous birth in the minds of all the colonists when they first felt the stimulating air of the freedom of their forest homes; and it grew into a mighty force in the bosoms of individuals before any one dared to openly promulgate it. It was the early inspiration out of which grew the democracy that finally impelled the colonists to proclaim themselves independent and to establish a nation here.