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DAVID T. Z. MINDICH
THE CANING OF JAMES GORDON BENNETT,
THE PENNY PRESS,
AND THE PRIMORDIAL SOUP OF MODERN AMERICAN JOURNALISM
150 Word Abstract
This paper looks at how and why the popular, nonpartisan press arose in the
1830s. Journalism historians have long maintained that the penny
press was
born from an era of democracy and egalitarianism. The author argues
here
that journalism historians have not caught up with the contemporary
historians' beliefs about the age of Jackson, which focus on the
inegalitarian aspects of the age. Throughout the paper, the author uses the
beating of one New York editor, James Gordon Bennett, by another,
James
Watson Webb, to illustrate this issue. This paper attempts to rip
Bennett
and Webb out of the now dated narratives constructed by journalism
historians
and to place them instead in a Jacksonian America that would be
recognizable
to modern historians. In doing so, this work develops a new theory
about the
birth of the penny press: that it was primarily influenced not by
the era's
successes, but by its failures.
740 West End Avenue
New York City 10025
(212) 316-9211
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DAVID T. Z. MINDICH
THE CANING OF JAMES GORDON BENNETT,
THE PENNY PRESS,
AND THE PRIMORDIAL SOUP OF MODERN AMERICAN JOURNALISM
75 Word Abstract
This paper looks at how the popular, penny press arose in the 1830s.
Journalism historians have long maintained that the penny press was born
from
an era of democracy and egalitarianism. The paper develops a new
theory
about the birth of the popular press: that it was primarily influenced
not
by the era's successes, but by its failures. The paper uses the
beating of
one New York editor, James Gordon Bennett, by another, James Watson
Webb, to
illustrate these issues.
740 West End Avenue
New York City 10025
(212) 316-9211
[log in to unmask]
THE CANING OF JAMES GORDON BENNETT,
THE PENNY PRESS,
AND THE PRIMORDIAL SOUP OF MODERN AMERICAN JOURNALISM
David T. Z. Mindich,
Ph.D Candidate in the
American Studies Program
and
Adjunct Professor in the
Journalism Department
of
New York University
740 West End Avenue
New York City 10025
(212) 316-9211
[log in to unmask]
THE CANING OF JAMES GORDON BENNETT,
THE PENNY PRESS,
AND THE PRIMORDIAL SOUP OF MODERN AMERICAN JOURNALISM
On a sunny spring day, May 9th, 1836, James Gordon Bennett left his
newspaper office to begin his morning perambulations around Wall
Street,
seeking information for the financial column of his new one-cent
paper, the
New York Herald. That morning, as he roamed the narrow, tortuous streets
of the financial district, Bennett might very well have been counting his
blessings. He was a man on the rise; in part because of his coverage
of one
of the most sensational crimes of the century-- the axe-murder of a
beautiful prostitute-- his paper, which he had started a year before with
a
five-hundred dollar investment, was quickly becoming one of the most
successful newspapers in New York.[1] Bennett even boasted that his
paper had
the highest circulation in the world. Indeed, the Scottish-born Bennett,
who had single-handedly sold the ad copy, reported events, wrote the
columns, and edited the newspaper, was now in a position to advertise for
help: "A smart active boy wanted, who can write a good hand,"
Bennett had
advertised. Bennett also called for "a new corps of Carriers" to augment
the growing army of those who hawked his paper. Bennett was a rare
example of the total fulfillment of the American Dream, a man who could
hardly keep up with his own success. It was on this brilliant spring
morning that a rival editor, James Watson Webb, caught up with Bennett
on
Wall Street, shoved him down a flight of stairs, and beat him severely
with
his cane.[2]
Why Webb beat Bennett has never been explained beyond the former's penchant
for violence and the latter's obnoxious character. It is true that in the
weeks before the beating, Bennett's columns had included numerous jabs at
Webb, the editor of New York's leading newspaper, the staid and
elitist
Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer. "We are rapidly taking the wind
out
of the big bellied sails of the Courier & Enquirer" wrote Bennett,
poking
fun at his rival's rotundity and the dimensions of the Courier's large
news sheet. Bennett promised that the Herald would ultimately best the
"
bloated Courier" (italics mine). In the weeks before the assault,
Bennett
also called Webb a "defaulter," guilty of "disgraceful conduct," and
offered to send him a piece of the dead prostitute's bed as a "momento
mori." [3] But Webb was not the only editor who Bennett addictively
insulted;
one of Bennett's biographers points out that he "managed to attack in a
single issue seven newspapers and their editors." While other
editors
returned Bennett's verbal abuse or simply ignored it, Webb beat
Bennett--
three times, in fact, in 1836. So why did Webb resort to violence
while
others abstained? This paper examines the rise of the first
nonpartisan
press through the prism of Webb's conflicts with Bennett.[4]
How and why the popular, nonpartisan press arose in the 1830s is the focus
of this paper.[5] Historians have long maintained that the popular
press of
the 1830s came out of "Jacksonian democracy" in much the same way as
Athena
was born from Zeus's head: springing out fully formed. I will argue here
that journalism historians have not caught up with the contemporary
mainstream historians' beliefs about the age of Jackson, which focus on the
inegalitarian aspects of the age. This paper attempts to rip Bennett and
Webb out of the now dated narratives constructed by journalism
historians
and to place the two editors instead in a Jacksonian America that
those who
are familiar with the latest historicial scholarship would recognize. In
doing so, this work develops a new theory about the birth of the
popular
(or "penny") press: that the first commercial press in the United
States
was primarily influenced not by the era's successes, but by its
failures.
Before arguing with historians, it is useful to list the part of the
outline that is not being argued: In the beginning, that is before
the
founding of the first penny paper, the New York Sun in 1833, most daily
newspapers were expensive (generally 6 each or nearly ten percent of
the
average daily wage[6]), partisan, and sedate. Many included the words
"advertiser," "commercial" and "mercantile" in their titles, reflecting
their business orientation. The readership of these papers, which are
variously-- and often interchangeably-- called the "party" or
"mercantile"
press, may have been high, but they had few subscribers by the
standards of
even a few years later.[7] Before the penny era, papers were shared or read
aloud to groups in the partisan clubs and inns, and sent through a
partisan
postal service.[8]
From 1830 to 1840, while the population grew less than 40 percent, the
average total circulation for all U.S. dailies nearly quadrupled.[9]
Records
for urban areas show an even more marked shift. The top-selling
newspaper
in 1828, Webb's Courier and Enquirer, circulated fewer than
five-thousand
copies a day. By 1836, fueled by his coverage of the axe-murder of
the
prostitute and aided by advances in printing technology, urbanization,
and
literacy, Bennett boasted a daily distribution of ten to fifteen
thousand
for his upstart paper.[10] Unlike Webb's paper, which sold for six
cents a
day, Bennett's Herald, Day's Sun and Lynde's Transcript sold for a
penny,
hence the cognomen, the "penny press." These "pennies" were also not
exclusively sold by annual subscription as were the six-centers, but
mainly
by newsboys who urgently sold their papers in the streets and
door-to-door.
The six-cent papers were connected to a tradition of party affiliation that
had begun before the American Revolution but was encouraged first by the
Federalists from 1789 to 1801, followed by Jeffersonian and Jacksonian
Democrats. The post offices, printing presses, inns, and newspapers in
a
city or town were often connected through party affiliation and were
often
owned by the same person. Many postmasters were also newspaper
editors;
through the privilege of franking, they would have "free and certain"
delivery of their papers; the government, through the granting of federal
printing contracts, would enjoy the expensive, yet certain, support of
their editors. The Federalists increased federal postmasterships from
100
in the start of the period to more than 800 by the end, helping to
create
what one Democrat called a "court press." This strategy was pursued by
the
Democrats, too; during Jackson's 1832 reelection campaign, the
official
Jacksonian newspaper, Francis Blair's Globe, was franked by
postmasters and
congressmen to people throughout the country.[11] The pennies resemble today's
newspapers more closely than the six-centers do. For one, unlike the party
or mercantile press, the pennies were not supported by political parties
and the articles were more likely to cover news outside the narrow
political and mercantile interests of the six-centers. News of crimes, for
example, was more prevalent in the pennies, as was other news, often
sensationalistic, that fell beyond the six-centers' purview. A final
characteristic that separated the pennies from what came before was that
they also actively asserted their own nonpartisanship. The inaugural
issue
of the New York Transcript announced its political slant simply: "we have
none."[12]
==============================================
Dates of Principal Events Discussed in this Paper
November, 1832 Andrew Jackson is reelected president
1833-1837 The most violent part of the ante-bellum period
September, 1833 Day founds the New York Sun
May, 1835 Bennett founds the New York Herald
January, 1836 Webb beats Bennett for the first time
April, 1836 Ellen Jewett is murdered, probably by Richard Robinson.
Bennett says the Herald's circulation has topped the Courier and
Enquirer's.
May, 1836 Webb beats Bennett for the second time
1837 Decline of street violence and the labor press; continuing rise of
pennies
March, 1838 Cilley-Graves duel; national outrage against dueling
==============================================
The Press "Revolution," "Jacksonian Democracy," and Historians of
Journalism
Journalism historians generally place the birth of modern American
journalism and the rise of "objectivity" in the Jacksonian era and tie
it
to the "democratic spirit" of the age. What came before, they argue,
was
primitive, "biased" and almost medieval in its lack of journalistic
integrity. The pennies, the historians argue, brought about a
"revolution." Frank L. Mott, author of American Journalism, titles a
chapter on the pre-penny era the "Dark Ages of Partisan Journalism," a
phrase countered by the author's laudatory title for the penny period:
"Sunrise"! Michael Emery and Edwin Emery, in their popular The Press
and
America, call the changes "revolutionary," and announce that the
pennies
supplied "news" not "views." The Emerys also cite the "democratic
ferment"
and "emergence of common people" during the Jacksonian age. Mitchell
Stephens, in A History of News, connects the pennies' rise with the
"spread
of Jacksonian democracy."[13]
Michael Schudson, in his 1978 book, Discovering the News, also sees the era
as significant, calling the rise of the commercial press in the 1830s a
"revolution"; he cites universal white manhood suffrage, the
"rise" of the
"middle-class," and an "egalitarian market economy" as reasons.
Schudson
also asserted that the era saw the birth of "objectivity" claims.[14]
"Before the 1830s," he writes "objectivity was not an issue." He also
asserts that "the idea of 'news' itself was invented in the Jacksonian
era." Although these claims are clearly overstated,[15] a kernel of
truth
remains: many newspapers formally severed their party ties and an ethic
of
nonpartisanship, albeit unevenly followed, emerged. Unlike their
six-cent
ancestors, the pennies were supported by circulation and advertising,
not
party patronage.
That the pennies asserted their own nonpartisanship still leaves open the
question of whether the papers were born out of the "democracy" of
the
Jacksonian age. Schudson, in Discovering the News, claims that the
modern
press emerged during the thirties, an era he titles the "Age of
Egalitarianism."[16] But while Schudson and others claim that "objectivity"
grew out of the era's democratic promise, evidence shows that the
nonpartisan press emerged in response to precisely opposite factors:
violence, class conflict, racial and gender subjugation, and the failure
of
the Jacksonian promise. In fact, while Schudson and other journalism
historians see a connection between the pennies and Jacksonian
democracy,
recent criticism calls into question the whole idea that democracy
existed
at all during the Jacksonian era.
In Schudson's mind, the Jacksonian period saw the decline of the "gentry
rule" of people like Webb. The whole apple cart was overturned by
the likes
of Bennett and others, defined by Schudson as the "middle class." This
"middle class" supplanted the gentry, bringing about the "ideal and
institutional fact of mass democracy" and a "democratic culture."[17]
According to Schudson, the pennies were democracy's offspring.
Schudson's views owe much to historians of the Jacksonian era, notably
Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Allen Nevins, and Henry Steele Commager.
Schlesinger's Age of Jackson, published in 1945, was the culmination of the
"progressive" historians, as they are now often called, who believed
strongly that the age of Jackson represented a triumph of democracy and
"the people" over the old ways. This view of Jackson and the era is a
whiggish one, and mirrored popular thinking about Roosevelt and the New
Deal, both of which were mentioned by Schlesinger in Age of Jackson.
Schudson cites Nevins and Commager's Pocket History (1967) to represent
Jackson's legacy. Schudson writes:
The authors summarize Jackson's creed as "faith in the common man; belief
in political equality [and] belief in equal economic
opportunity [...]"
They argue that Jackson's policies implemented this creed and that
a
democratic wave swept the country in the form of manhood suffrage,
... a
cheap press, public schooling, and the advance of the religious
sects most
democratic in their governance.
For all the abuse this view has taken in the past decade or two, it does
not seem to me to have been seriously tarnished....[The
revisionists'
position], far from being an attack on the idea that the 1830s were
an
egalitarian age, confirms just that hypothesis. [18]
But in the years directly before Schudson's book went to press in 1978,
until today, historians of the Jacksonian age have produced a body of
work
that not only "tarnishes" the Schlesinger view of Jacksonian
democracy,
but thoroughly discredits it.[19] And to suggest that revisionists,
led by
Edward Pessen (who Schudson cites) confirm Jacksonian "democracy" is
to
misrepresent them. Pessen, for one, is unequivocal in the force of
his
revision: "The age may have been named after the common man but it
did not
belong to him," Pessen writes. At the end of his Jacksonian America:
Society, Personality, and Politics, Pessen even suggests a new name for
the
period: "Not the 'age of Jackson' but the 'age of materialism and
opportunism, reckless speculation and erratic growth, unabashed vulgarity,
surprising inequality, whether of condition, opportunity, or status,
and a
politic, seeming deference to the common man by the uncommon men who
actually ran things.'"[20]
A forceful repudiation of Schudson's "progressive"-based view of the
Jacksonian era comes from Daniel Schiller in his 1981 book,
Objectivity and
the News. Finding "a pattern of objectivity," emerging in a weekly
newspaper devoted to crime news, Schiller devotes many pages to an analysis
of the penny era and relies on post-"progressive" social historians for
his analysis. He believes that the pennies arose out of labor's unrest
in
late 1820s and early 1830s and sees a problem in Schudson's theory
about
the "middle class," which Schiller believes was divided into
"disparate and
frequently hostile" camps of merchants and artisans. The merchants' and
artisans' work and welfare were being shaken by the rise of national
market
system, Schiller suggests, but their interests were often contrabalanced.
"That the penny press found a way to speak to both groups at once was
its
most ingenious and fundamental contribution," writes Schiller.[21]
Statements, such as the Sun's "It Shines for All," reflected an appeal to
the many different economic and social groups.
After Schiller: New Approach to Class Struggle
While historians of the Jacksonian period have become skeptical of the
"democratic" promise of the age, journalism historians, with the
notable
exception of Schiller, have not reconciled the revisionists' new
understanding. Where Schudson sees a rising middle class, Schiller sees a
group, angry and divided, but united in its opposition to the elite
forces.
But Schiller's perceptive theory that the pennies appropriated labor's
class-based anger does not go far enough in understanding the hot
turbulent
storms of the age of Jackson, the race and gender wars, and the violence,
both in the streets and in the newspapers, between the elite and
labor, and
between men of the same class. The frantic desire to make change, to move,
to build, to kill, and most of all to make money, is writ large in the
newspaper columns of the day as well, but journalism historians have
yet to
capture it beyond arguing for or against Jacksonian democracy. A study of
the period, including a close examination of the daily press, can show
what the pennies reveal about the class conflicts, violence, and sense
of
empowerment among the masses. Webb's violence against Bennett is a
good
place to start.
Bennett had worked for Webb in the pre-penny days, made a name for himself
as a brash, entertaining Washington columnist, and left Webb's
charge after
the Courier and Enquirer switched parties to become a Whig organ.[22]
Bennett, a Democrat, then tried unsuccessfully to start a Democratic paper
in Philadelphia before coming to New York to found the independent
Herald
in May of 1835. Within the year, Webb publicly beat his former
employee
twice in the streets of New York.
The first time Webb beat Bennett was on January 20th, 1836. In his lead
column on January 19th, Bennett announced that it was "with
heartfelt grief
that we are compelled to publish the following awful disclosure of the
defalcations of our former associate, Col. Webb....But as we control an
independent paper, we could not refuse it." What follows are accounts
by a
broker of Webb's failures in the stock market leading to his owing the
broker more than $87,000. It was with "pain regret, and almost with
tears
in our eyes," that Bennett published the expos . The crocodile tears
did
not stop Webb from chasing down his former employee, punching him in
the
face, and then striking him in the head with a large club.[23]
One theme emerges in Bennett's coverage of this first fight: That Webb's
violence can do nothing against the inexorable success of the
Herald, which
threatens to overtake the Courier and Enquirer. Webb's violence is
depicted by Bennett as a desperate attempt by a privileged, dishonest man
to keep money and power for himself. Bennett describes the blow to
his
head almost like a description of a Mexican pi$ata ceremony, with Webb
trying to gain, as the prize, the contents of Bennett's skull: "[Webb]
wanted to let out [of my skull] the never-ending supply of good humor
and
wit which has created such a reputation for the HERALD, and, perhaps,
appropriate the contents to supply the emptiness of his own thick
skull....Webb will make nothing by availing himself of his brute force
against me. He cannot stop the success of the HERALD."[24]
Bennett's success may very well have been on Webb's mind as he stalked the
penny editor. Two days after the assault, Bennett claimed a
circulation
of nine thousand, which he boasted was "about three times" that of
Webb's
paper.[25] And Bennett's descriptions of the fight suggest a rising
Bennett
and a desperate Webb. Webb is seen as knocking down Bennett, who
always
inexorably rises. Bennett writes that the Herald has "reduced" Webb, "a
man
with empty brains and emptier pockets." The Herald, Bennett writes, will
"throw entirely in the shade the Courier and Enquirer, and surpass
it."[26]
The image of the phallic growing tree, dwarfing its father/predecessor
into
a shady submission, was meant to hector Webb, but it was rooted in an
actual class struggle, not only between Bennett and Webb, but between
the
elite and the masses of the Jacksonian era as well.
* * *
* *
*
If Bennett was trying to find the perfect villain to represent what his
readers might hate about the elite, he did not have had to search
far. As
Schiller points out, Webb's paper, too expensive for the masses, was
seen
by wage workers as a monopoly of knowledge at a time when knowledge
was
increasingly viewed as a necessary capitalist tool.[27] But there were
also
other reasons why workers resented the paper. Employees, for example,
resented that the Courier and Enquirer was a possession to be borrowed
from
the boss, after he would finish it himself. The first biographer of
Bennett, Isaac Clark Pray, likened the innovation of a cheap press to that
of the matchbox; no longer would people have to borrow newspapers or
burnin
g coals from their rich neighbors.[28] Furthermore, Webb was
connected to the
most hated man of his day, the head of the U.S. Bank and enemy of
Andrew
Jackson, Nicholas Biddle, who bought Webb's support with a large
"loan"
(Webb and an associate were condemned by a House subcommittee for
taking
bribes from Biddle).[29] Finally, a nativist with anti-Irish
sentiments, Webb
was an enemy to the largely immigrant, working class New York
Democrats. It
would be difficult to overstate labor's hatred of the Courier and Enquirer
's editor, a hatred so intense that long before Bennett's public
wrangling
with Webb, laborers sang songs about him:
Who sold himself to one Nick Biddle,
And said the Democrats he'd diddle,
Were he allowed to play first fiddle?
James Double W. ....
Who said aristocratic rights
Should supersede the poorer wights,
And calls mechanics "troglodytes"?
James Double W.
Who, when some emigrants contrived
To reach these shores, where Freedom thrived,
Announced them "live stock" just arrived?
James Double W.
Whose plighted faith and consequences,
His boasted knowledge--all pretense---
Was lately valued at six pence?
James Double W. ....[30]
It is clear from Bennett's rhetoric and the working class anger which he
appropriated that Webb stood for much more than merely Webb
himself. It is
clear that Bennett, his readers, and modern journalism historians
(including Schiller) see Webb as a stand-in for a declining elite.
Similarly, the rising Bennett is seen as paradigm for the rising (or in
Schiller's view, angry) masses. But contrary to these views, Webb and
Bennett are in two key ways not representative of the struggles of the
Jacksonian era.
First, while it is true that the two men lived in a bifurcated age of haves
and have-nots, and while the fortunes of Webb and Bennett declined and
rose, the people they have come to represent in theory did not
follow their
models in practice. Pessen, after studying tax records, concludes that,
unlike what was previously believed, the gap between rich and poor
actually
widened during the Jackson era. Unlike Webb, the vast majority of the rich
became richer. In northeastern cities, Pessen writes, the top 1 percent of
wealth holders owned a quarter of all wealth just before Jackson came to
Washington, and owned half by mid-century. And, conversely, the
majority of
all Americans in 1850 were assessed for no property whatsoever.[31] According
to Jack Larkin, a chronicler of the ante-bellum lifestyle, artisans during
the years of Jackson were inexorably being converted into pieceworkers.
The "ten-hour" workday movement, which began in the thirties,
"implicitly
recognized that older, more episodic work rhythms were
disappearing."[32] The
decline of Webb and the rise of Bennett contravened the fortunes of
members
of their respective classes.
The second reason why Webb and Bennett do not confirm the classic
interpretations of the Jacksonian age is that while much good work has
been
done by Schiller and others to understand key events in the pennies' early
history in terms of class tensions, these tensions are often more
complicated than they seem. For example, Schiller finds class tensions in
the famous murder of the prostitute, Ellen Jewett; sides were drawn,
says
Schiller between the masses who identified with and supported the
prostitutes and the elite who frequented them and defended the accused man.
But Bennett did not support the prostitute, and instead defended the
accused killer, Richard Robinson. In a 1990 dissertation, Andrea Tucher
offers convincing evidence that Robinson was indeed the murderer-- a
fact,
Tucher suggests, that was known by all, including Bennett. Tucher's
most
important suggestion was that Bennett may very well have run an
extortion
operation out of his editorial office, taking money from the rich
customers
in return for a promise to not publish their names and for Bennett's
support of Robinson.[33] Finally, while many poorer folks may have
supported
the prostitutes, a number of violent working class gangs routinely
confronted and beat up the prostitutes, and terrorized others as well. A
week after the prostitute was killed, for example, a gang known for
its
anti-brothel violence threw hot coals in the face of an elderly woman
and
savagely beat a man who came to her aid.[34]
Not only did the masses behave in a complicated way, the elite did so as
well. In the Jacksonian era, as Leonard Richards shows in his
Gentlemen of
Property and Standing: Anti-Abolition Mobs in Jacksonian America, violence
was often provoked by mobs of the higher classes-- merchants and the
like-- who feared the loss of stability that the emerging market economy
had brought. Many elite mobs felt that the abolitionists were
responsible
for everything they feared about the roiling age.[35] As I will
outline, Webb
was often associated with mobs. But even here, Webb's position does
not
exactly represent a clear elite-masses dichotomy. The elite mobs
often
attacked other elites, such as the when they broke into the churches,
meetings, and businesses of abolitionists and their sympathizers and beat
up those inside.[36]Webb and Bennett: Not Democracy, But Change and
Mobility
While journalism historians have tried to make Webb and Bennett stand-ins
for a declining elite and a rising middle class, what these men
actually
represent is more complicated; they represent something that resists
explanation, although we must try; they represent the idea and fact of
change and mobility. Again, this needs to be discussed in parts.
First, they represent a change in the way business was conducted in
America, a change some historians see as starting after the Ghent peace
treaty with Britain following the War of 1812,[37] and the subsequent
commercial boom. The rhythms of living and business were changing, from a
tight, communal, and informal market, to a town and city-based market
of
strangers. This is captured wonderfully in Washington Irving's "Rip
Van
Winkle" when Rip comes back after his long sleep and sees his own town,
now
livelier and "disputatious," and comes upon a "lean bilious looking fellow
with his pockets full of handbills."[38] The two editors reflect this shift
in lifestyles, with Webb, for obvious reasons, fighting the changes every
step of the way. Webb, living a life of patronage, supported by
parties,
special interests, and the elite who used his paper, worked short
days,
took time off, traveled, and engaged in politics. Bennett, in
contrast, was
surrounded by strangers and was supported by no one; he worked up his
paper with the intensity of a driven man, and did so by turning a
basement
office into a one-man, 18-hour, seven-days-a-week sweatshop.[39]
Second, the Webb-Bennett relationship represents the loss of deference and
the rise of a working class irreverence; Webb represents a earlier
era,
concerned with rules of society, while Bennett's modus operandi was
iconaclasm and irreverence. Alexis De Tocqueville, visiting the U.S. in
the early eighteen-thirties, wrote about how democracy "renders the
habitual intercourse of the Americans simple and easy,"[40] a
characteristic
not of Webb but of Bennett. The pride and aristocratic airs of Webb,
who
fought duels to protect his name, is reflected in his newspaper's
careful
discussions about honor and social rights. Time after time, Webb would
meticulously analyze the honor dueling parties. Once, after a
particularly
violent aborted duel, Webb criticized the violence but not the duel
itself.
[41] The next day Bennett quoted Webb at length and laughed at his
hypocrisy. Bennett writes: "This homily comes with an exquisite grace from
a man who has kicked up more disgraceful brawls than any other of the
same
dimensions ever did." Bennett then criticized Webb for not taking a
stand
against dueling. "Who has the courage" to oppose dueling, Bennett
asks. "If
no other will, we shall." Finally Bennett insinuated that Webb was a
coward.[42] Bennett's attacks on Webb's coverage was less a careful
critique
than a public demonstration that Bennett could take a measure of his
former
boss's "dimensions," and hold him up to ridicule.
One of the Herald's chief innovations was its departure from the
six-centers' concern with propriety and honor. The articles in the Herald
about Webb's beatings contain no suggestion that Bennett was offended
or
indignant over Webb's violence. The emotion that comes through is
feigned
pity over Webb's declining condition, and an irreverence calculated to
further affront Webb's honor and to entertain the Herald's readers.
Bennett's ability to mock the airs of the aristocracy can be seen in the
days immediately following his beating. Claiming that the Herald has
produced a "new era" in the city, Bennett wonders why the other papers did
not support him after the beating and even compares himself to
Socrates and
the other papers to the ancient sophists who tried to destroy him. "The
days of Webb and his impotent paper are numbered," promised Bennett--
empty
bombast indeed, but fiery and irreverent, too.[43]
Even a glimpse at the daily fare in both papers would reveal the sea change
from a mannered to irreverent society . On one day in April, 1836, the
Courier and Enquirer's dry political reports included one of a
Rhode Island
election ("The Providence Journal brings us full returns of the recent
election in that State, from every town but New Shoreham...) and a
vapid
account of a failed congressional bill. On the same day, the Herald
mentioned Congress too, but the topics, tone, and terseness of the two the
papers contrast markedly. Here is the Herald:
_Nothing done in Congress--equally idle at the Five Points.
_How lovely the ladies looked yesterday on Broadway![44]
Bennett employed the "simple and easy" lack of deference that De
Tocqueville noticed and Webb deplored.
While Bennett's rise and Webb's decline run against the economic trend of
most of the rich and poor, the fact of their mobility, upward and
downward,
is a third way in which they reflect the era. Again, this aspect of Webb
and Bennett, and what it represents is more complex than the
journalism
historians and even the "progressive"/"revisionist" debaters have
suggested. I have shown, following Pessen's research, that the direction
of Webb and Bennett's mobility run opposite to that of the elite and
working classes. But the very fact of their change in fortunes is
important, because if there is one characteristic that marks the early
penny era it is mobility, the promise of mobility, and the fear of it as
well.
Mobility
In the 1830s, people moved. More canals, steamboats, railroads, roads,
turnpikes, and bridges were built under Jackson, who was often
skeptical of
public works, than under any previous president.[45] The changing market
economy uprooted families and individuals and, increasingly, people began
to move away from rural homes and to the cities to find work. The
fiction
of the Jacksonian era and beyond, until the Civil War, reflects this
traveling age: Irving's Rip Van Winkle travels through time, while Ichabod
Crane flits from town to town; Cooper's Natty Bumpo is forever
foraging in
the woods; some of Hawthorne's characters wander the woods too, while
others seek kinsmen in other cities; on a grander scale, ships carried
people across the country and the world, as reflected in Herman
Melville's
great narratives of the sea, written about his younger days in the
nascent
years of the pennies.[46]
Politically and socially, it was an exciting and heady age for those who
were fortunate enough to be born white, male, and Protestant. It
is
difficult to imagine a definition of democracy that would include the
Jacksonian kind (Southern blacks, of course, were generally slaves, and
northern ones were badly abused and politically disenfranchised;
American
Indians generally fared no better than free blacks; Irish and other
non-native born Americans were often deprived of their civil rights; women,
too, politically powerless, did not gain suffrage until the twentieth
century, and some even compared their plight to that of the slaves[47]).
But
the era was deeply concerned with the idea of democracy. Although
Pessen
shows how Jackson did not introduce universal white manhood suffrage
(it
preceded him, in fact), for the first time the votes of all white men
did
matter. And while he believes that Jackson's laisez-faire policies
hurt
the poor, Pessen does acknowledge Jackson's "seeming deference" to
them.
Jackson and his Democratic confreres appealed to the poor for their
votes,
in what one historian called an era of "lowest common denominator"
politics.[48] While the upward economic mobility of the working classes, as
I
have discussed following research by Pessen and others, was greatly
exaggerated, the increasing currency of the myth of mobility is evident
from the press and political rhetoric of the day. The myth of
politicians
rising from humble origins was employed by both major political
parties.
Jackson himself, who had never been poor and who, at the time of his
first
presidential campaign held great wealth and owned more than one
hundred
slaves, was a beneficiary of this myth.[49]
People began to feel empowered by new religious beliefs. While a discussion
of the teleology of Jacksonian mobility is difficult, part of the equation
must include the changes brought about by religion. Calvinism, one of the
central religious influences of pre-Jacksonian America, embraced the
doctrine of Predestination, the belief that humans can do nothing to
affect
their eternal fate. By the coming of the Jacksonian age, however, a
revivalist faith began to supplant the old Calvinist doctrines. The reviv
alists brought with them a belief in eternal mobility. Charles
Finney, the
leading revivalist of his time, was a lawyer turned preacher who believed
that salvation was possible for all. Gaining national attention for
the
revivals he staged, Finney encouraged his followers--many of whom
recently
empowered by suffrage--to "vote" for salvation. Come up to the bench,
he
would beckon them, and elect yourself to heaven.[50]
Finney's beliefs influenced and echoed those of reformers everywhere:
revivalism, abolitionism, temperance, anti-tobaccoism, vegetarianism,
and
other isms were seen as necessary tools with which to build a perfect
life
fit for salvation. "All great reforms go together," said the
abolitionist
Frederick Douglass, reflecting a belief of the reformers, or what some
called the "anti-everythingarians" of the day.[51] The ante-bellum
reformers
held the common belief that admission to heaven (or, for the doubters,
to a
utopia), would be gained only through a total separation of evil. Thus
abolitionists called for northern secession, temperance advocates
called
for anti-drinking laws, and others, like Thoreau in his journey to
Walden,
simply dropped out completely. This activist approach to heaven was
embraced by many, including the wealthy Tappan family which secured a New
York City Church for Finney; it was also feared by many, including
Webb,
who organized a mob that sacked Finney's church.[52]
While Bennett hated the abolitionists, calling them "crazy-headed
blockheads,"[53] he did share their faith in change and perfectibility.
All of
the above dimensions of mobility can be seen in the following passage
from
Bennett's editorial page. Notice how the promise of the age is played
out
in the passage, and how mobility, in its variegated forms, is
demonstrated:
We mean to elevate the daily press to the same rank in literature and
influence that Shakespeare did the low-sunk Drama in the days of
Elizabeth,
or Milton the Epic during the Commonwealth, or Scott the Novel in our own
time. Do not smile, gentle reader, at our ambition--at our
enthusiasm.
Hitherto, the daily newspaper press has been entirely devoted to
political
news, public events, and commercial intelligence, and the daily
routine of
ordinary existence. It possessed no soul--it was enlivened with
no ge
nius--it was actuated with no breathing spirit of fire,--it was dull
as the
lake of Asphaltides-- or as the Courier and Journal-- brimstone and
saltpetre combined. The daily newspaper press is one the most
important
elements of modern civilization. Its power-- its brilliancy-- its
secret
charms-- its hidden mysteries,-- have never yet been
revealed--never yet
been dug out from the dullness of montebanks, ninnies, or
miserable
twaddlers. We mean to call forth these hidden treasures so far as our
strength and talent and energy can. To do so requires
perseverance--which
we have, experience-- which we have, fearlessness-- which we
have, a
private character untainted--which we have, a moral and physical
courage
that nothing can intimidate-- which also we have, and a
circulation and
advertising patronage unequaled in the world--part of which we
already
have, and the rest will soon follow. See if it don't.[54]
From the bombastic beginning of the above passage, where he promises to
reach immortal heights, to the final sentence where, through slang, he
underlines his working class irreverence, Bennett brings his American
dream
to the people and invites them, however vicariously, to share in it.
Public and "Personal Outrages": A Press Born Out of a Violent Era
I have shown how the penny press emerged not from a period of democracy or
from the growth of the middle class, but from an era of change and
complex,
occasionally violent conflict. But the nature of the violence is
important too, and here we will turn to an examination of Webb's violence
and what it says about the conflicts of the era as a whole.
The day after his second beating, the headline in Bennett's Herald screamed
out from the first page: "OPENING OF THE SUMMER CAMPAIGN-- JAMES WATSON
WEBB'S SECOND FRACAS-- WALL STREET IN COMMOTION-- RETREAT OF THE
BELLIGERENT-- RETURN OF THE KILLED AND WOUNDED." Bennett was exuberantly
reporting on his favorite topic-- himself-- and was using his
misfortune to
sell papers. But while he often wrote about his life with hyperbole,
comparing himself to Socrates and even Moses at times, this time he had a
narrower goal: to paint Webb as a dangerous outsider. "The violent
and
disgraceful personal outrages which have so frequently disgraced the
city,
were yesterday repeated by James Watson Webb, the editor and
proprietor of
the Courier and Enquirer," wrote Bennett, who offered to convince the
head
of "Bellevue Asylum" to have the "insane" Webb committed.[55]
Although Bennett was merely having some public fun at his rival's expense
and boosting the Herald's circulation, Webb may very well have
made it to
Bellevue in later times. A violent man in any age, Webb was
nevertheless
representative of the era's violence and the instigator of physical
attacks
on individuals and groups. According to one chronicler of the Jacksonian
age, the years from 1833-1837 were the most violent of antebellum
America.[56]
This time also corresponds with the birth and rise of the pennies and the
height of Webb's violence. In 1833, after the abolitionist newspaper,
the
Liberator, attacked the reactionary American Colonization Society, the
society called a meeting, held in Webb's office, and staged a massive
riot,
which included seizing and tormenting an elderly African-American man.[57]
In 1834, Webb led a mob in the bloody election riots in New York City.
In
1836 he beat Bennett (on three separate occasions), and in 1837 he
almost
fought a duel with Congressman Samuel H. Gholson of Mississippi.
Webb's
feud with Congressman Jonathan Cilley of Maine in 1838 led to a duel
between the latter and Webb's friend, W.J. Graves, a congressman from
Kentucky. Graves killed Cilley, the only example in American history of
one congressman killing another. In 1842, Webb himself fought a duel
with
a congressman, Thomas Marshall of Kentucky; Webb was injured, and then
briefly jailed for breaking New York's anti-dueling laws.[58]
A Violent Era
The years from 1833 to 1837 were violent in a number of ways. The violence
of the Old West reaches us through the filters of B-movies and
other mass
media, but a more complete and general picture emerges through the
work of
the post-"progressive" revisionist historians. While shootouts may
have
been less common in the nineteenth century than they are in twentieth
century Hollywood, ante-bellum life was, like Webb, extremely violent,
even by our standards. The violence, from mob riots to the quaint
antebel
lum custom of "eye-gouging," was most certainly affected by the
enormous
quantities of hard liquor consumed by Americans, four gallons per
capita,
by one estimate, and was a daily fact for many city-dwellers.[59] One
historian
counted nearly fifty reported riots nationwide in the years 1834 and 1835
alone.[60]
Setting the tone for the violent era were the U.S. and state governments.
Jackson's own bellicosity rivaled and probably surpassed Webb's;
as he
acknowledged himself, his violence was part of his nature: "I was born
for
a storm and calm does not suit me."[61] A hero of the 1812 war,
Jackson was
also representative of the various forms of violence in the era,
especially
with regard to Native Americans, slaves, political rhetoric, and personal
confrontations. In 1818, then General Jackson led an expedition
through
Spanish-owned Florida to attack Seminole native-Americans. Without
permission he killed countless Indians, took a Spanish Fort and executed
two British citizens.[62] Indian "removal" was at a peak in the
Jacksonian
era, removal often a euphemism for genocide.
A wealthy man by the time of his election, Jackson lived well off the backs
of his slaves at his farm, the Hermitage. Obviously, the very fact of
slavery was another great form of violence in ante-bellum America,
to say
nothing of the routine beatings, rapes, and other abuses by white
masters
and their surrogates. Jackson himself kept runaway slaves in chains
and
once placed an advertisement to recover a runaway that offered fifty
dollars, plus "ten dollars extra, for every hundred lashes any person will
give him, to the amount of three hundred."[63]
Jackson, like many in the era, fought duels, including one over a horse
race which left Jackson injured for life. Perhaps it was the
ancient
bullet, won in this duel and lodged in Jackson's gut near his heart,
causing eternal bleeding and giving him a funereal air, that best
represented the violence and pain of the man and the era which took his
name.[64] In 1835, Jackson was also the victim of the first
assassination
attempt of an American president, during the height of the era's
violence.
It was a "sign of the times," remarked New York's Evening Post.[65]
In the North street violence peaked from 1832 to 1837; mob violence
probably troubled people the most, especially the blacks,
abolitionists,
and Irish immigrants who were the most likely targets. But even
members of
the elite were alarmed, including Philip Hone, who called 1834 the
"riot
year."[66] Northern anti-abolitionist violence peaked in 1837 with
the
killing of an abolitionist editor, Elijah Lovejoy in Alton, Illinois.
After this incident, the violence abated somewhat, and public opinion in
the North became increasingly tolerant of abolitionism.[67]
Why were the middle eighteen-thirties so violent? Two historians, Richard
Hofstadter and Carl Prince, see the inegalitarianism of the era as
an
important factor. Hofstadter calls the violence a "symptom" of the
"pathology of nation growing at a speed that defied control, governed by an
ineffective leadership..., bedeviled by its internal heterogeneity,
and...cursed by a... wrong [slavery] that many of its people had even come
to cherish as a right." Prince argues that the violence may have been
"encouraged by an ideology that espoused political democracy without
paying
much attention to its social and economic substance." The year 1834,
Prince argues, was the first year in the nineteenth century that people
within urban centers believed that their interests were suddenly and
radically different from their neighbors'.[68]
Dueling and Drubbing
Two forms of ante-bellum violence, duels and beatings, were widely
practiced in antebellum America and were also favored by Webb. A look at
the social function of these forms can give us a deeper understanding
of
the relationship of Webb and Bennett. Dueling was a particularly
Southern
practice, but it was practiced in the North and by Northerners, too.
In
1804, Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel in New Jersey.
And
Webb himself displayed a lifelong interest in duels, both through his
coverage of the "fracas" and other duels, and as a participant. The
ritual of the duel is both a way of resolving conflicts and of
reaffirming
ideals of society and honor through the code duello. Just as modern
litigants reaffirm their faith in the validity of the courts by
participating in legal structures, men embarked on the "social drama" of
the duel with its intricate rules to renew their membership in the
antebellum gentry. The duel would often start with an exchange of notes
and escalate to choosing weapons, seconds, and the drawing up of
rules. The
vast majority of cases were resolved peacefully on the battlefield, or
through letters, and even bellicose men like Jackson and Webb settled
many
duels for every one they fought.[69]
Why did Webb beat Bennett instead of challenging him to a duel? Even by
its proponents and participants, dueling was not considered the
appropriate
method of conflict resolution for all parties. Specifically, dueling was
not practiced by two men of different "classes." Masters did not duel
slaves, for example; they beat them. Occasionally, the choice to beat
rather than to duel was in itself a comment on the character of the
victim.
After Charles Sumner of Massachusetts stood up on the Senate floor in 1
856 to criticize Andrew P. Butler from South Carolina, Preston Brooks,
a
congressmen from South Carolina and Butler's cousin, beat the
Massachusetts
Senator with his cane. Brooks was demonstrating that Sumner was no
gentleman, unworthy of a duel, and fit to be beaten like a dog, or more to
the point, like a slave. The Richmond Enquirer wrote after the
caning:
"The Vulgar Abolitionists in the Senate are getting above
themselves....They have grown saucy and dare to be impudent to
gentlemen!....They must be lashed into submission."[70] This passage
reveals
the social or "class" aspects of the choice to beat rather than to
duel. It
also shows how the Enquirer felt that the remedy to Sumner was to keep him
down, both in terms of political power and by the use of actual force.
It is not entirely coincidental that the above passage achieves a sort of
symbiosis with Bennett's accounts of the Webb's beatings, with the
latter
trying to beat down the former, and with the former always getting up
and
forever climbing. Webb's violence is part and parcel of the violence
of
the day and the social/political framework in which it operated.
Because
they represented different classes, Webb could not duel Bennett. And
despite Bennett's increasing wealth (or perhaps because of it) Webb
thought
that his only option was to beat him.
Bennett's coverage of the beatings carefully subverts the gentry-servant
relationship that Webb's cane had sought to establish. Bennett,
and
vicariously, the non-elite readers of the Herald would not be kept down
by
anyone. In the classic master-slave narrative, the master beats the slave
and breaks his will, but Bennett had rewritten the gentry-servant
relationship so that the servant uses the pen to fight back, and ultimately
conquer. Bennett had tapped into the myth of mobility, based on the
evangelical spirit of the age, on the feeling that people can change
their
situation, (even though only white men could participate in the
adventure
and even this group saw their fortunes decline), and on a rare
embodiment
of the American Dream, Bennett himself.
If Bennett advertised himself as more powerful than Webb, constantly rising
after being knocked down, and rising higher and higher so as to dwarf the
declining six-cent editor, this merely echoed prevalent beliefs
about the
important and heroic role of the "free" press. The "honest press" (as
the
nonpartisan press was called) was seen by labor as an important weapon
in
the fight against special interests, including the elite newspapers.
The
following is from a labor paper, the Working Man's Advocate:
No weapons we'll use, nor for aught do we care
But knowledge and union to bring on the field
For those are the keenest and those will we bear
Whilst the press will inspire us and be our safe shield.[71]
The lesson of the above is unmistakable: not actual weapons but the press
would help to win the battles for the working men. While Bennett
did not
naturally align himself with "working men's" or union causes, he did
use
his pen to attack. And attack he did. With his indiscriminate attacks
on
Catholics (Bennett's faith), Protestants, Jews, natives, immigrants,
blacks, men, women, drunkards, temperance advocates, abolitionists,
slave-owners, six-penny papers, penny papers, and everyone else, Bennett
was the scribbler's equivalent of a one-man mob.
* * *
* *
*
Within months of Jackson's leaving office and the arrival of his
hand-picked successor, Martin Van Buren, the economy collapsed, due in
part
to eight years of laissez-faire economics and inflated paper money. The
Panic of 1837 also marked two major turning points: the decline of
street
violence and the supremacy of the pennies. While it would be
difficult to
prove that the pennies replaced the street violence of the early
thirties,
there is a correlation. To illustrate this transition, which marks one of
the most important contributions of the pennies, we turn to one final
example, that of the Cilley-Graves duel.
After a Courier reporter had accused him of corruption, Jonathan Cilley, a
Democratic congressmen from Maine, attacked Webb on the floor of
the House,
noting the infamous bank "loan." Webb's friend, W.J. Graves, a congressman
from Kentucky, then delivered a letter from Webb to Cilley, which the
latter refused to read. Cilley told Graves that he could not be held
responsible for "language used in debate," meant no discourtesy toward
the
Kentucky congressman, but could not say that Webb was a gentleman. Going
by the code duello, Cilley, by impugning Webb's reputation, had also
cast
doubt on the honor of Graves. Notes were exchanged and finally the
two met
on a Maryland field, each holding rifles at one hundred yards. Webb
claimed that he searched for the dueling parties so that he might
substitute himself for the Kentucky congressman, but he arrived after
Graves shot Cilley dead on the third round of shooting.[72]
Bennett's response to the duel was predictable. He reported that "upwards
of a hundred subscribers of the Courier yesterday withdrew their
patronage
from the wicked and blood-crimsoned sheet" and called Webb a "murderer."
But the Herald's coverage also suggested how Webb symbolized the
violence
of the era, how that violence was coming to an end, and finally, how
the
penny press would replace it. Calling the duel an "atrocious plot
against
the tranquillity and well being of society," Bennett placed the violence
of the era on Webb's doorstep:
For five or six years past there has been an organized conspiracy to set
aside all order, and to make passion the interpreter, in
fact, the
substitute for law. Open incitements to rioting, public denouncings of
persons opposed to their desires, and violent assaults upon quiet
and
unoffending citizens, have been the claims this Wall street gang,
and its
ruffian leaders, have preferred to the respect and confidence of
us all.[73]
In the above passage, Bennett creates a dichotomy between "tranquillity,"
"order," "law," and "us all" on one side and the violent,
privileged cabal
of Wall Streeters on the others. While Bennett had used rhetoric like
this
before, now it had begun to resonate. Bennett now included long
passages
from other newspapers that denounced Webb. And they all suggested that
Webb
was a threat to civilized discourse. The Transcript, another penny paper,
asked if Webb will "be allowed to take his editorial chair and will
the
public take his paper from his bloody hands?" The Sun pointed out that
Webb's "turbulent spirit" had "more than once carried him to Washington
on
similar errands." Does Webb, asked the Sun, "stand ready to defend
his
paragraphs with his pistol case?"[74] Newspapers of all stripes
denounced the
duel and Webb; but the above passages show more than a general
censure:
they all show horror that ideology and newspapering would be coupled
together. Will laws be abandoned? Will the public buy from bloody hands?
Will the editor defend himself not with words, but with bullets?
The
editors had found a better method than violence, the newspaper
business,
and were now threatened by the ideological and violent Webb.
It is impossible to evaluate the veracity of Bennett's report of the
following week that "over one hundred and fifty young men have
enrolled
themselves, for the purpose of inflicting a marked personal indignity
on
James W. Webb, or any of his associates, the first time they are seen
in
the streets." But Bennett used this report to condemn these "young
men"
and Webb. By getting in the middle of two bellicose sides, Bennett
had
cast himself in the role of helpful moderator, while at the same time
plotting the demise of his rival's paper. "No, no, no," Bennett cried
in
his column at the prospect of more violence. "Let the moral, legal,
and
respectable inhabitants of New York, only indicate their horror at the
late
doings, by calmly, but firmly withdrawing all patronage, all
subscriptions, all advertisements, from the blood-stained sheet."[75]
The pennies had taken the measure of the ideological and violent Webb and
had seen something in him that represented the age as a whole. But
many
representations of ideology and violence-- the labor press, the violent
street struggles, the anti-abolitionist mobs-- all abated by the late
thirties. Schiller points out the labor press did not survive the Panic
and
ensuing depression of 1837, and that the pennies did survive.[76] Similarly,
a leading historian of Jacksonian violence writes that violence
declined
after the Panic (Webb himself would fight one more duel, for which he
would
be tried, convicted, and briefly jailed, and even he would become more
respectful of the law), in part due to lagging funds for both
abolitionist
and anti-abolitionist groups.[77] And while some mainstream partisan
and
commercial newspapers would survive in one form or another until the
Civil
War, after the panic none would keep up with the success of the
pennies.[78]
But why did the pennies survive the Panic? Only one explanation seems
plausible: that the public accepted the pennies' rejection of
divisiveness,
partisanship, and violence.
If we accept as a component of "objectivity" the notion of the journalist
as a passive participant, a mirror if you will, then Webb can be
seen as
anti-"objective": violence and uncontrolled rage are the opposites of
the
"objective" mind. The word, "detachment," with all the implications
of
pulling oneself out of one's life, is still problematic, but we can
concede
that Webb's violence, including his mob actions, duelings, and beatings,
show that the editor could separate his mind from his body less succes
sfully than Bennett could. Bennett, with his humorous looks at his own
misfortune, had retained Webb's passion (he is not what we would
recognize
as a "dispassionate" modern journalist) but had transformed it.
Although
Bennett used aggressive rhetoric, it was contained in the columns of
his
paper. Bennett and his penny confreres detached themselves from
Webb's
brand of ideology and violence.[79]
Conclusion
The birth of the penny press came not from democracy and a rising middle
class, and not only from factors already acknowledged--
sensationalism,
urbanization, the rise of literacy, and technological advances--but
also as
a response to a difficult and violent era. For if we accept Prince's
notion that the middle 1830s was violent because it was the first time in
the nineteenth century that neighbors felt that their interests were
incompatible, we are struck by the pennies' creation of an opposite
paradigm: that neighbors could transcend party and share interests,
specifically the interest in buying a nonpartisan paper. The pennies, in
replacing divisive ideology and violence with nonpartisanship and the
rhetoric of "objectivity," had discovered an inexorable business idea,
one
which would remain with journalism well beyond the Jacksonian era.
Bibliographic Essay
The chief sources for this research are the newspapers themselves.
Bennett's New York Herald and Webb's Morning Courier and New-York
Enquirer
are undervalued but rich resources for historians of the period. For
the
Jacksonian period, the best synthesis is still Edward Pessen's
Jacksonian
America: Society, Personality, and Politics (Urbana: University of
Illinois
Press, 1985), a thorough rebuttal to Schlesinger and the "progressive"
historians. Another excellent (and more recent) synthesis is Charles
Sellers' The Market Revolution : Jacksonian America, 1815-1846 (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1991). Other books helped to clarify the
inequalities and violence of the era, notably Leon F. Litwack's North of
Slavery: the Negro in the Free States, 1790-1860 (Chicago: University
of
Chicago Press, 1961); Kenneth S. Greenberg's Masters and Statesmen:
The
Political Culture of American Slavery (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University
Press, 1985); Richard Ellis' The Union at Risk: Jackson Democracy,
States'
Rights, and the Nullification Crisis (New York: Oxford University Press,
1987),; Paul A.Gilje's The Road to Mobocracy: Popular Disorder in New
York
City, 1783-1834 (Chapel Hill:University of North Carolina, 1987); and
Leonard L. Richards' Gentlemen of Property and Standing: Anti-Abolition
Mobs in Jacksonian America (London: Oxford University Press, 1971).
James L. Crouthamel's Bennett's New York Herald and the Rise of the
Popular Press (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. 1989) and
James
Watson Webb, a Biography (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University
Press,
1969) are they best biographies of the two editors, even though
Crouthamel
himself points out that much of what we know of Bennett comes from his
columns.
Figure 1:
A likeness of James Gordon Bennett from Harper's Weekly, 10 July 1858.
Bennett, cross-eyed and awkward, once remarked that he was turned away
from
a brothel for being "too ugly." (Stephens, A History of News, p. 352).
Figure 2:
James Watson Webb as he appeared in Harper's Weekly, 4 September 1858.
Figure 3:
"THE HERALD ESTABLISHMENT" In August 1845, Bennett ran a series of
sketches of his business. The sturdy five-story building reflects the
success of Herald, which by this time had passed Webb's Morning Courier
and
New-York Enquirer to become New York's top selling newspaper [Herald, [27
August 1845].
Figure 4:
"THE HERALD ESTABLISHMENT--THE PRESS ROOM" The double-cylinder steam
presses at the Herald's office are starting their daily run. The two
modern
presses, according to Bennett, "are capable of throwing off 5,000 copies
per hour each." By four in the morning, the news carriers, about
twenty in
number, gather to deliver the paper by subscription. By six o'clock,
"several hundred" newsboys gather to hawk the Herald on the streets of New
York [Herald, 28 August 1845].
[1] Mitchell Stephens, A History of News: From the Drum to the Satellit
e (New York:
Viking, 1988), pp. 207-208.
[2] Herald,
21 April, 4 May, 18 April, 10 May 1836.
[3] Herald, 21 April, 30 April, 7
May, 20 April 1836.
[4] James L. Crouthamel, Bennett's New York Herald
and the Rise of the Popular Press
(Syracuse, N.Y.: Syra
cuse University Press, 1989), p. 26.
[5] In the context of the Jacksonian
era, "nonpartisan" means that for the first time
since
the ratification of the Constitution in 1789, U.S. newspapers would increa
singly
separate themselves from direct affiliation with pol
itical parties.
[6] Michael Schudson, Discovering the News: A Social Hist
ory of American Newspapers (New
York: Basic Books, 1978), p. 15.
[7] J
ohn C. Nerone, "The Mythology of the Penny Press" with criticism by Michae
l
Schudson, Dan Schiller, Donald L Shaw, and John J. Pa
uly, (in Critical Studies in Mass
Communication, December,
1987), pp. 387. Nerone argues an opposite point, that the
pennies' circulation may have been high, but that their readership may hav
e not been
significantly higher than the shared elite newsp
apers. Nerone and his critics offer an
interesting discussi
on of this period.
[8] Carl Prince in The Federalists and the Origins of
the U.S. Civil Service (New York:
New York University
Press, 1977) discusses the inns of the Federalist era as a place to
read and be read to. The inns, post offices, printers, and newspa
pers were often
connected through political affiliation, an
d during the years before Jefferson's
Presidency in 1801, w
ere generally Federalist (224-225). Circulation did not depend on
the number of subscribers. However, the pennies did vastly increas
e personal ownership of
newspapers.
[9] Schudson, Discovering the News,
p. 13; Daniel Schiller, Objectivity and the News: The
Public and the Ris
e of Commercial Journalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1981), p. 12.
[10] James L. Crouthamel. James Watson
Webb, a Biography (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan
Univers
ity Press, 1969), pp. 31; Herald, 21 April 1836, p. 1. The rise in circul
ation
was facilitated by advances in printing technology, a
lthough Schudson argues in
Discovering the News (pp. 33-34)
that the advances generally followed the need established
by the increas
es in circulation. The growing urbanization of the Northeast, coupled
with a rise in literacy, is also frequently cited by historian
s as important in the rise
of the penny press (Frank Luther
Mott, American Journalism, A History: 1690-1960 (Third
Edi
tion. New York: Macmillan Co., 1962), pp. 304-305; Schudson, Discovering th
e News, pp.
35-39)
[11] There is a rich literature on the
pre-penny press and the political aspects of
printing.
For the Federalist period press, see Prince's The Federalists, especially
pp.
183-225 or his "The Federalist Party and the Creation o
f a Court Press, 1789-1801." (In
Journalism Quarterly, 1976
, pp. 238-241). Also see Donald Stewart's The Opposition Press
of the Federalist Period (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1
969) Eugene Perry
Link's Democratic-Republican Societies, 1
790-1800 (New York: Columbia University Press,
1942) ; the
introduction to Nobel Cunningham Jr.'s Circular Letter of Congressmen to
Their Constituents 1789-1829. (Vol 1: 1789-1807. Williamsbur
g, VA: University of North
Carolina Press, 1978); and Geral
d Baldasty's The Press and Politics in the Age of Jackson
(
Journalism Monographs, Columbia, SC: Association for Education in Journalis
m and Mass
Communication, 1984), especially pp. 7-21. Bald
asty's monograph is informative and
thorough, but focuses o
n the partisan press at the expense of the pennies.
[12] In Gerald J. Ba
ldasty's The Commercialization of the News in the 19th century
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), esp. pp. 124, the
author presents evidence
that political news declined and crime and other
news rose after the advent of the
pennies; the New York Tr
anscript is quoted in Willard G. Bleyer, Main Currents in the
History of American Journalism (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1927), p. 16
7.
[13] Mott, American Journalism, p. 215; Michael Emery and Edwin Emery,
The Press and
America: an Interpretive History of the
Mass Media, 6th edition (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
Prentice
-Hall, 1988), p. 114. The Emerys do not explain how one might express one
self
without a "view"; Stephens, A History of News, p. 205.
[14] Schudson, Discovering the News, pp. 44, 56, 16.
[15] Michael Schud
son, Discovering the News, p. 3. First of all, as Mitchell Stephens
points out in A History of News, (and a quick perusal of pre-J
acksonian papers will
support this) journalists had been cl
aiming fairness, balance, and truthfulness, crucial
element
s of "objectivity," since well before the American Revolution. (see especia
lly in
Stephens, pp. 57, 256-270). And the very presence o
f the newspapers proves that "news"
existed before the 1830
s. In fact, Schudson himself, when he discusses the era before
"'news' itself was invented" writes "newspapers had increasingly tried
to be up-to-date,
especially in reporting the arrival of sh
ips and in printing the news they brought with
them" (ital
ics mine). (Schudson, Discovering the News p. 26). For the literature on th
e
pre-penny "news" see footnote 11, above.
[16] Schudson,
Discovering the News, p. 12.
[17] Schudson, Discovering the News, pp.
57-58.
[18] Schudson, Discovering the News, pp. 43-44.
[19] Schlesinger
's The Age of Jackson (New York: Book Find Club, 1945) is widely seen by
historians as the culmination of the "progressive" school
, which viewed the period, and
American history as a whole,
as a conflict between the people and special interests.
J
ackson and his associates, according to this view, represent the "people."
Much of what
came after Schlesinger responded to this interpretation.
Bray Hammond's Banks and
Politics in America: From the Revo
lution to the Civil War (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1957) dep
arted from Schlesinger's view that the elite controlled the Bank of the
United States and Jackson and "the people" opposed it. The Dem
ocrats, Hammond argues, were
impelled to fight the B.U.S. less for ideali
stic reasons than for a desire for
speculation unrestrained
by a strong bank. Richard Hofstadter, in The American Political
Tradition and the Men Who Made It (New York: Vintage, 1974) cautions
against comparing the
genuine achievements of the New Deal with Jacksonia
n Democracy, which was, in many ways,
a vehicle for "small
capitalists"(pp. 70-71). By the time Edward Pessen's Jacksonian
America: Society, Personality, and Politics (Homewood, Il.: Dorsey
Press, 1969) was
published, a new critique of Jacksonian "d
emocracy" was emerging, based not on economics
or politics
as much as on social aspects of the era. Lee Benson, in The Concept of
Jacksonian Democracy: New York as a Test Case (Princeton: Princ
eton University Press,
1961) suggests that class may not ha
ve been as important as ethnic, religious, or national
background in mold
ing party identity. Others, such as Leon F. Litwack in his North of
Slavery: the Negro in the Free States, 1790-1860 (Chicago: Univer
sity of Chicago Press,
1961) looked at specific communities
and concluded that the age of Jackson was anything
but dem
ocratic. The plight of women, African-Americans, and native-Americans in t
he Age
of Jackson is, as Schlesinger himself admits in hind
sight, "shamefully out of mind."
(Gerald N. Grob and George
A. Billias' Interpretations of American History: Pattern and
Perspectives [Vol. 1. New York: Free Press, 1992], pp. 281). Pessen use
s the new "social
historians" in his critique of the "progr
essive" school. Since Pessen's book, much has
been written
about the age of Jackson, and the notes that follow will provide a
representative group from the revisionist "social historians." The
re are a number of good
historiographies of the Jacksonian age. Grob and
Billias' Interpretations of American
History, pp. 254-269 i
s a good introduction to the topic; also see Pessen's Jacksonian
America, pp. 329-367; Sean Wilentz's "On Class and Politics in Jackso
nian America" In
Reviews in American History. v 10. 1982; a
nd Daniel Feller's "Politics and Society:
Towards a Jackson
ian Synthesis" in Journal of the Early Republic, V. 10, 1990, p. 135.
[20]
Edward Pessen, Jacksonian America: Society, Personality, and Politics (Ur
bana:
University of Illinois Press, 1985), pp. 100, 327
. Here, as elsewhere, I quote from the
second edition (197
8). While the edition comes after Schudson's, the first (1969) edition,
w
hich precedes it, contains nearly identical quotes and is no less emphatic
in its
revision of the "progressive" school.
[21] Schille
r, Objectivity and the News, p. 10; p. 17.
[22] As I shall discuss in the
following pages, Webb had switched parties after receiving
"loans" from
the head of the Bank of the United States, Nicholas Biddle.
[23] Herald,
19 January 1836. For part of the early pennies' history, the first page of
the newspaper was for advertisements. On this day, the
"disclosures" were published on
page 2, column 1; Herald,
20 January 1836; Herald, 21 January 1836.
[24] Herald, 21 January 1836.
[25] Herald, 23 January 1836; Circulation figures are unreliable, as Neron
e (q.v., 386)
points out, but certainly the Sun and pro
bably the Herald were overtaking Webb's paper by
this point
.
[26] Herald, 22 January 1836.
[27] Schiller, Objectivity and the News
, pp. 33-40.
[28] Isaac Clark Pray, Memoirs of James Gordon Bennett and H
is Times. By a Journalist
(New York: Stinger and Townse
nd, 1855), p. 199.
[29] Crouthamel, Webb, p. 40-43. Crouthamel argues tha
t the House committee was biased
and used Webb for part
isan reasons, to show that the Bank should not be rechartered. Webb
hims
elf denied that he knew the source of the "loans." But the evidence against
Webb is
very compelling. First, Webb's support of the Bank
grew stronger as each loan was received
(Crouthamel, Webb, p. 9). Second
, within a year of the third "loan" he abandoned the
Democr
atic party altogether, professing "impartiality" but supporting the Whigs,
Biddle's
party (Ibid, pp. 39-40). And finally, Biddle himse
lf, writing during the year of the
questionable "loans," ju
stified paying editors for their support: "If a grocer wishes to
apprize the public that he had a fresh supply of figs, the printer wh
om he employed, for
that purpose, never thinks of giving hi
s labor for nothing, but charges him for his
trouble in ins
erting the advertisement. If the Bank, in like manner, wishes a printer to
insert information about its concerns, why should it not p
ay him for his trouble?"
(Baldasty, The Press and Politics,
pp. 18-19).
[30] Working Man's Advocate, 8 November 1834, quoted in Phil
lip S. Foner's American Labor
Songs of the Nineteenth Century (Urbana: Un
iversity of Illinois Press, 1975), p. 35.
[31] Pessen, Jacksonian Ameri
ca, p. 81; According to Charles Sellers, "the rise from rags
to riches wa
s statistically mythical." The Market Revolution : Jacksonian America,
1815-1846 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 239
.
[32] Jack Larkin, The Reshaping of Everyday Life: 1790-1840 (New Yor
k: Perennial
Library, 1988), pp. 60-61.
[33] For this
compelling theory, see Andrea Tucher's "Froth and Scum": Truth, Beauty,
Goodness, and the Axe-Murder in the First Years of the Ne
w York Penny Press (Dissertation,
New York University, 1990), pp. 95-98.
See also The Life and Writings of James Gordon
Bennett, Ed
itor of the New-York Herald (Author and publisher unknown). Pamphlet, New Y
ork,
1844.
[34] Patricia Cline Cohen, "Unregulated Youth: Masculinity
and Murder in the 1830s City"
(In Radical History Revie
w, Winter, 1992), p. 44.
[35] Leonard Richards, Gentlemen of Property a
nd Standing: Anti-Abolition Mobs in
Jacksonian America
(London: Oxford University Press, 1971), esp. p. 3-19.
[36] The Tappan fa
mily of New York City, the chief patrons of abolition, were often the
victims of vandalism. Sellers, in The Market Revolution, po
ints out that Tappans were
anti-labor. Thus the Tappan fami
ly, while great supporters of slaves and free blacks, the
m
ost downtrodden segments of antebellum society, were reviled by many whites
(388).
[37] George Dangerfield, The Awakening of American Nationalism,
1815-1828 (New York:
Harper and Row, 1965), pp. 1-8; Se
an Wilentz, Chants Democratic: New York City and the
Rise o
f the American Working Class, 1788-1850 (New York: Oxford University Press,
1984),
pp. 23-24.
[38] Washington Irving, The Sketch Bo
ok (New York: New American Library, 1961), p. 48.
[39] Crouthamel, Webb,
70; Bennett noted the difference often, as he does in the
following editorial: "We do not, as the Wall-street lazy editors do, co
me down to our
office about ten or twelve o'clock-- pull ou
t a Spanish segar-- take up a scissors-- puff
and cut -- cu
t and puff for a couple of hours-- and then adjourn to Delmonico's to eat,
drink, gormandize and blow up our cotemporaries. We rise i
n the morning at five o'clock--
write our leading editorials, squibs, ske
tches &c., before breakfast. From nine till
[sic] one we
read all our papers, and the original communications, the latter being more
numerous than those of any other office in New York....We
also give audience to visitors--
gentlemen on business-- and some of the
loveliest ladies in New York, who call to subs
cribe-- God b
less them. At one, we sally out among the gentlemen and loafers of
Wall-street...We dine moderately and temperately-- thank God for hi
s mercies-- read our
proofs-- take in cash and advertisemen
ts, which are increasing like smoke-- and close the
day by
going to bed always at ten o'clock.... That's the way to conduct a paper wi
th
spirit and success." (Herald, 16 August 1836, quoted in
Bleyer, Main Currents, pp.
189-190). Later, as the Herald
became increasingly successful, Bennett traveled more and
t
ook longer vacations.
[40] Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America
(New York: New American Library, 1956),
p. 221.
[41] Morning Courier an
d New York Enquirer, 5 May 1836.
[42] Herald, 6 May 1836.
[43] Herald,
12 May 1836.
[44] Herald and Courier and Enquirer, 29 April 1836.
[45]
Pessen, Jacksonian America, p. 103.
[46] See Washington Irving's "Rip
Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" in The
Sk
etch Book (New York: New American Library, 1961); James F. Cooper's "Leathe
rstocking"
series, especially Deerslayer, Or The First Warp
ath (New York: New American Library,
1980); Nathaniel Hawth
orne's Scarlett Letter, "Young Goodman Brown," and "My Kinsman,
Major Molineaux" in The Complete Novels and Selected Tales of Nathanie
l Hawthorne (Edited
by Norman H. Pearson. New York: Modern
Library, 1965); and Melville's sea narratives,
which includ
e Typee, A Peep at Polynesian Life (Evanston: Northwestern University Press
,
1968), Redburn: His First Voyage (Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, 1969), and, of
course, Moby Dick (Indianapolis: Bobbs-
Merrill, 1964).
[47] See Pessen's Jacksonian America for a general accou
nt. For the plight of free
blacks, see Litwack's North
of Slavery. For women's views on themselves as slaves, see
Nancy F. Cott's The Bonds of Womanhood: "Woman's Sphere" in New England
(New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1977), the "bonds" in ti
tle being both those of friendship and of
slavery.
[48]
Ronald G. Walters, American Reformers: 1815-1860, (New York: Hill and Wan
g, 1978),
p. 8.
[49] Pessen, Jacksonian America, p. 172.
[50] Pessen
, Jacksonian America, pp. 69; Keith J. Hardman Charles Grandison Finney
(Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1987), pp.151-
152. The idea that God is
present in humans was not develop
ed, but popularized by the revivalists. The Quakers, for
ex
ample, believed this long before the Jacksonian era.
[51] William S. McF
eely, Frederick Douglass (New York: Touchtone, 1991), p. 123; Pessen,
pp. 68-70.
[52] Hardman, Finney, pp. 262-267. Finney was a
n influential and fascinating figure of
the Jacksonian
era. In addition to his preaching, he went on to become one of the early
presidents of the progressive Oberlin College.
[53] Hera
ld, 1 September 1845.
[54] Herald, 21 April 1836.
[55] Herald, May 10,
1836; for the reference to Moses, see Stephens, p. 242.
[56] Richards,
Gentlemen of Property and Standing, pp. 3-19.
[57] Richards, Gentlemen o
f Property and Standing, p. 29.
[58] Crouthamel, Webb, pp. 72-76.
[59]
Larkin, The Reshaping of Everyday Life, p. 286; In The Market Revolution
, Sellers
shows that liquor consumption peaked in the 1
830s (p. 260).
[60] Carl Prince, "The Great 'Riot Year': Jacksonian Demo
cracy and Patterns of Violence
in 1834" (in Journal of
the Early Republic, Vol. 5, Spring, 1985), pp. 18-19.
[61] Pessen, Jacks
onian America, p. 321.
[62] Dangerfield, The Awakening of American Nation
alism, p. 46-50; Jackson killed "any
and all Indians wh
erever he could," writes Sellers in The Market Revolution, p. 98.
[63] P
essen, Jacksonian America, 172; Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Co
urse of
American Democracy, 1833-1845 (Vol. 3. New York
: Harper and Row: 1984), p. 51.
[64] Remini, Andrew Jackson, pp. 227, 4
34, 69.
[65] New York Evening Post, 4 February 1835.
[66] Prince, "The
Great 'Riot Year,'" pp. 1-2.
[67] Litwack, North of Slavery, pp. 123-131.
[68] Richard Hofstadter and Michael Wallace, American Violence: A Docume
ntary History
(New York: Knopf, 1970), p. 477; Prince,
"The Great 'Riot Year,'" pp. 18 and 7.
[69] Kenneth S. Greenberg, Mast
ers and Statesmen: The Political Culture of American
Sl
avery (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), pp. 23-24.
[70]
Greenberg, Masters and Statesmen, pp. 144-146.
[71] Schiller, Objectivity
and the News, pp. 39-40.
[72] The above was gleaned from the New York H
erald of 26 and 27 February 1838;
Crouthamel's Webb, pp
. 72-73; and Greenberg's Masters and Statesmen, pp. 28-39.
[73] Herald, 2
8 February 1838.
[74] Transcript and Sun, 27 Februrary 1838, quoted in th
e 28 February Herald.
[75] Herald, 3 March 1838.
[76] Schiller, Object
ivity and the News, p. 46.
[77] Richards, Gentlemen of Property and Stand
ing, p. 157.
[78] The Courier and Enquirer declined after the birth of th
e pennies; the pennies and
former pennies, by the early
1850s, including the Sun, Herald, Tribune, and Times, were
the leading New York papers, for outpacing the commercial and mercantile p
ress
[Crouthamel, Webb, pp. 149-150].
[79] I thank Mitche
ll Stephens for his help in formulating the ideas of this section.