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

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to found The Spectator with Joseph Addison in 1711. Their writing in general and
The Spectator specifically were very influential in the American colonies. They
created a new literary style and focused less on political and more on social
behavior. 15 By running such material, newspapers reinforced ties back to the mother
country, but also brought political, social, and literary developments from London
to the colonies. 16
Literary essays in the public prints were a key to driving the early public
discourse in the Chesapeake. In their early decades, the Maryland Gazette and the
Virginia Gazette were more literary in orientation than those of the other British-
American colonies. Many works were taken directly from British newspapers,
usually with no notation of source, but many locally written essays and poems were
published as well. These items often followed the English newspaper tradition,
especially the essay form pioneered by Addison. 17 In early issues of the Annapolis
newspaper, local author “The Plain-Dealer” wrote of politics, literature, and even
freedom of thought: “Whereas the Man who Thinks Freely, whose Heart is set
upon Truth, Doubts only in order to be Certain; removes his Doubts by Doubting;
and Believes or Disbelieves a Proposition, in Proportion to the Evidences, that
appear to him for it or against it.” 18 The Maryland Gazette also ran a poem praising
Virginia Governor Alexander Spotswood’s 1716 exploration across the Alleghany
Mountains:
This Expedition was design’d to trace
15 Louis T. Milic, “Tone in Steele’s Tatler,” Newsletters to Newspapers, 33-45.
16 Wm. David Sloan and Julie Hedgepeth Williams, The Early American Press, 1690-1783
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994), 99.
17 Elizabeth Christine Cook, Literary Influences in Colonial Newspapers, 1704-1750 (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1912; reprint, Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1966), 2-
5 and 179-229 (page citations refer to the reprint edition). Copeland, Colonial Newspapers, 16.
18 The Plain-Dealer [pseudo.], “No. 5,” Maryland Gazette, (Parks, Dec. 17, 1728), 1-2. Cook
considers this essay to display the author’s “Deistic” tendencies, in Literary Influences, 159-160.