The Origins of a Free Press in Prerevolutionary ... - Web Publishing

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ministry. 112 “A free press was supposed to be an instrument of liberty enabling a
scattered people to make common cause against oppression,” but during the crisis
of the Revolution, that concept allowed for suppression of Tory newspapers within
the concept of press liberty. 113 New Yorkers attacked printer James Rivington for
his Tory positions and forced him out of business. In Boston, printer James Mein
was also attacked by mobs and driven out of town. The ideals of a free press were
being subordinated to the fight for freedom. 114
In Virginia, the printing presses became an active part of the war. A new
newspaper was published in Norfolk, Virginia in 1775, and reportedly mocked the
actions of Governor Dunmore and the captain of the British ship upon which the
governor had taken refuge. Troops landed and seized the Patriot press, allowing
Dunmore to use it to publish another Virginia Gazette—but one with a Tory
perspective—from onboard the British ship. 115 In Williamsburg, William Hunter,
Jr., son of the former printer, took over the first Virginia Gazette in partnership with
John Dixon. But the partnership did not last long, as Hunter was a Tory
sympathizer who joined the British forces and left the colony in 1778. All of the
Williamsburg presses moved when the state capital relocated to Richmond at the
end of 1779. 116
By the 1770s, colonial newspapers were markedly partisan with little printed
in support of the Tories. As Copeland concluded, British suppression of American
112 Botein, “Printers and the American Revolution,” 43.
113 Richard Buel, Jr. "Freedom of the Press in Revolutionary America: The Evolution of
Libertarianism, 1760-1820," 81, in Bailyn and Hench, Press and the American Revolution.
114 Copeland, Idea of a Free Press, 208-209.
115 John E. Selby, The Revolution in Virginia, 1775-1783, 2 nd ed. (Williamsburg: Colonial
Williamsburg Foundation, 2007), 58, quoting Fred S. Siebert, “The Confiscated Revolutionary
Press,” Journalism Quarterly, (1936) 13:179-181. McMurtrie, Printing in Virginia, 22-23. None of
Dunmore’s newspapers are extant.
116 Ibid., 22-23. “Old Virginia Editors,” 9-14.