And on these hills, uncultivate and wild, When Boston's streets ran blood. Think on that day, The temper of your souls. Let every arm, This day be active in fair freedom's cause, And shower down, from the hill, like Heav'n in wrath, To blast the adversary. The Battle of Bunker's-Hill, V., i., ed. 1776. B. NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES-COLLEGES THE NEW ENGLAND PRIMER. NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES.1 The first newspaper established in America was The Boston News-Letter, a weekly, which ran from 1704 to 1776.2 It was usually printed on a (printer's) half-sheet, and contained short pieces of foreign and domestic news. Its space was so scanty that in 1719 it had got thirteen months behindhand with the foreign news from regions beyond Great Britain; for some time, therefore, a whole sheet was printed every other week, until the publisher was able to announce proudly that that part of his news-record was "now less than five months" behindhand. The Boston Gazette was started in 1719; The New England Courant in 1721. Several other papers were started in Boston within the next fifteen years; but only one of them, The Boston Evening-Post, continued to the Revolution. In 1768 The Boston Chronicle began to appear twice a week. In 1770 The Massachusetts Spy was published thrice a week for a few months; in 1771 it became a weekly, but of larger size than any which had yet appeared in Boston, being printed on a whole sheet, four columns to a page. Pennsylvania was only a little behind Massachusetts, the third newspaper in America, The American Weekly Mercury, being started in Philadelphia, Dec. 22, 1719, one day later than The Boston Gazette. The second newspaper in the colony, The Pennsylvania Gazette, founded in 1728, was bought in 1729 by Franklin, who published it twice a week for a while and soon made it very profitable. Several other Pennsylvania newspapers (some of them in German) sprang up at various times before the Revolution. The first daily newspaper in 1 Most of the facts are taken from Thomas's History of Printing in America. 2 A newspaper, Publick Occurrences, was started in Boston in 1690, but the authorities suppressed it after the first issue. the United States, The Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser, was founded in Philadelphia in 1784. The colony of New York was the third in the field, The New York Gazette making its appearance in 1725. Before 1770 eight other newspapers had been started in New York, although some lived but a short time. Virginia had but two newspapers before the Revolution, founded in 1736 and 1766 respectively. In Maryland the first newspaper was started in 1727; in Rhode Island and South Carolina, in 1732; in Connecticut and North Carolina, in 1755; in New Hampshire, in 1756; in Delaware, in 1762; in Georgia, in 1763. At the outbreak of the Revolution there were in the colonies 37 newspapers, distributed as follows: Pennsylvania, 9; Massachusetts, 7; New York, 4; Connecticut, 4; South Carolina, 3; Rhode Island, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, 2 each; New Hampshire and Georgia, I each. Not to be deceived by words we should remember that the stunted little newspapers of Colonial and Revolutionary times were, in size, circulation, and amount of news, very different from the journals of to-day. The "editorial," too, in its modern sense, was unknown to our great-grandfathers; letters to the publisher took its place to some extent, and in times of public excitement the old Gazettes and Mercuries might do a good deal to indicate and to mould public sentiment. But in general the Colonial and Revolutionary newspaper not only presented little news but had little or nothing to say about it. The American magazines, like the newspapers, closely followed English models, and were not much if at all inferior. To the modern reader, however, they seem on the whole feeble, dry, and dull. Some idea of them may be had from the plan set forth in the preface to The American Magazine and Monthly Chronicle for the British Colonies, which was launched in 1757, at Philadelphia, "By a Society of Gentlemen," and is a superior sample of its class: each number was to contain "an account of European affairs"; "a philosophical miscellany"; "monthly essays, in prose and verse"; history of the present war in North-America"; "monthly transactions in each colony, the account of new books, preferments, births, marriages, deaths, arrivals of ships, prices current." The emphasis on the practical and instructive is evident; of entertainment little was sought, and little found. Yet on the whole the talent available for these magazines was greater than the demand for them, and few and evil were the days of their pilgrimage. The American Maga a zine and Historical Chronicle, a monthly of fifty pages, established at Boston in 1743, ran three years and four months. The New England Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure, a monthly which came out when it could, after the appearance of three or four numbers in the course of six or seven months, was discontinued in 1759. The Royal American Magazine, printed in handsome type, with two copperplate engravings in each number, began to be issued at Boston in January, 1774; it had a considerable list of subscribers, but the battle of Lexington killed it. In Pennsylvania conditions were also unfavorable for longevity. The General Magazine lived only six months, in 1741. The American Magazine (already mentioned) seems to have died in a year. The Pennsylvania Magazine, edited and written, in part, by Thomas Paine, was started in January, 1775, and died in July, 1776, the last number containing the Declaration of Independence. The United States Magazine, edited by H. H. Brackenridge, with Philip Freneau as a leading contributor, was published at Philadelphia through 1779, and was then discontinued "until an established peace and a fixed value of the money shall render it convenient or possible to take it up again." After the war, magazines were again attempted. The Boston Magazine came in and went out with the year 1785. The Columbian Magazine, started in 1786, lived three years. The American Museum was established in 1787. Other magazines made their appearance from time to time, and had some success. But it was not until 1815, thirteen years after the founding of The Edinburgh Review had inaugurated a new era for magazines in Great Britain, that American magazine literature was placed upon a solid basis by the establishment of The North American Review. COLLEGES. The intellectuality of the stock which peopled British America is shown by the fact that they early established colleges. Harvard College was opened in 1638; William and Mary College, Virginia, in 1694; Yale College in 1701; College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) in 1746; Washington and Lee University, Virginia, in 1749; Univer 1 The dates of founding or chartering are often different from the dates of actual opening. Thus Harvard was founded in 1636, by a vote of the Legislature appropriating money; it was chartered in 1650. The dates here given are taken from Johnson's Universal Cyclopædia. sity of Pennsylvania in 1753; King's College (now Columbia University) in 1754; Frederick College, Maryland, in 1763; Rhode Island College (now Brown University) in 1765; Rutgers College, New Jersey, in 1770; Dartmouth College in 1770; Hampden-Sidney College, Virginia, in 1776; Washington College, Maryland, in 1782; Dickinson College, Pennsylvania, in 1783; College of Charleston, South Carolina, in 1785. Thus before the Revolution nine of the thirteen colonies had institutions of higher learning. These colonial colleges were of course small and poorly equipped. But most of them nevertheless did good work, especially in the classics. The requirements for admission to Harvard are thus stated by Cotton Mather in his Magnalia (Book IV., p. 127, ed. 1702): "When Scholars had so far profited at the Grammar Schools, that they could Read any Classical Author into English, and readily make, and speak true Latin, and Write it in Verse as well as Prose; and perfectly Decline the Paradigms of Nouns and Verbs in the Greek Tongue, they were judged capable of Admission into Harvard-Colledge." The college course, in Harvard at least, "embraced the contemporaneous learning of the colleges in England,"1 including (in 1643) rhetoric, logic, ethics, divinity, arithmetic, geometry, physics, astronomy, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Syriac, Chaldee, etc.1 President Dunster wrote in 1649 that some of the Harvard students could "with ease dexterously translate Hebrew and Chaldee into Greek." 2 This steeping in the great languages and literatures of antiquity was one of the best possible ways to prepare for the creation, later, of a worthy literature in the mother tongue. The American poets and novelists were yet to be born. Meanwhile their ancestors wisely conned the pages of Homer, Virgil, and Cicero. THE NEW ENGLAND PRIMER.8 From this curious little book the children of New England, for a century and a half, learned the elements of religion and morality as well as of reading. The first compiler of it seems to have been Benjamin Harris, a Boston publisher, who, before he fled from England in 1686, had printed The 1 Peirce's A History of Harvard University, p. 7; Appendix, pp. 6, 7. 2 Felt's The Ecclesiastical History of New England, Vol. II., p. 10. 3 See two articles by J. H. Trumbull in The Sunday School Times, April 29 and May 6, 1882; and The New-England Primer, by P. L. Ford (Dodd, Mead & Co., 1897). |