19
CHAPTER II
THE ZENGERS
(MORE ESPECIALLY JOHN PETER ZENGER)
AND THE LIBERTY OF THE PRESS
AMONG the thousands of Germans who by the bounty of the last of the Stuart dynasty were enabled to seek in America repose from the turbulence entailed on their native land by the wars of Louis XIV, was a widow and her three children. Of the latter, one was destined to be the only individual among those immigrants whose name is more than a genealogical atom today. John Peter Zenger, the hero of the most important trial which took place in colonial America, was born in
20
Germany in 1697. The removal of the family took place about 1710, and in that year Zenger was bound an apprentice to William Bradford. On the expiration of his time Zenger went for a while to Maryland, where, perhaps, he married his first wife.
In 1722 he was again a resident of New York, as the record of his second marriage at the “Dutch Church” shows. He no doubt found employment with his former master, whose partner he became for a brief period in 1725. The only known work bearing the imprint of this firm has been already mentioned. In 1723 he was admitted a freeman of the city, and in 1726 he established the second printing-office in New York. Of his publications down to 1733, mostly sermons in English or Dutch, little need be said. “A Charge to the Grand Jury,” printed by him in 1727, is interesting from Chief Justice Morris’s allusion to
21
witchcraft, which, he hoped, “we are so far West as to know only in name”; and the two tracts printed for Alexander Campbell, in 1732 and 1733, are of local historical value.
In the last-mentioned year Zenger began the publication of the second newspaper issued in New York. It was undertaken at the instance of and supported by a faction opposed to the then Royal Governor. Among them were some of the ablest men in New York of their day, and the boldness and bitterness of their attacks on Cosby soon attracted attention all over America and brought down on the printer the vengeance of the Governor. On November 2, 1734, Cosby issued an order directing certain issues of Zenger’s paper to be seized and publicly “burnt by the hands of the common hangman,” and on the 17th of the same month Zenger was arrested by order of the Council. He was
22
charged with seditious libel, upon an information brought by the attorney-general before the Supreme Court, the grand jury having failed to indict him.
The court had been recently changed to agree with Cosby’s views by the arbitrary removal of the former chief justice, Lewis Morris, afterwards governor of New Jersey and father of the signer of the Declaration of Independence of the same name. Zenger’s counsel, James Alexander and William Smith, the leading spirits of the opposition to Cosby, applied for a writ of habeas corpus, but the court fixed bail at such an amount as Zenger could not furnish. Alexander and Smith then filed exceptions to the constitution of the court and were immediately disbarred, Chief Justice De Lancey saying, “You have brought it to that point that either we must go from the bench or you from the bar.” In place of the eminent pleaders who had undertaken
23
his defence Zenger had only to depend on counsel appointed by the court.
The series of unprecedented acts beginning with the arbitrary removal of Chief Justice Morris, and culminating with the disbarment of two of the most eminent New York lawyers of the time, aroused an intense popular excitement. The services of Andrew Hamilton, formerly attorney-general of Pennsylvania, and then, although age was compelling him to withdraw from active practice,, the most distinguished member of the Philadelphia bar, and probably the only American lawyer ever admitted a bencher of Grey’s Inn “per favor,” were enlisted in Zenger’s case, or, as he fairly termed it before the jury, the “cause of American liberty.” Admitting the publication, Hamilton boldly pleaded its truth, and in contradiction of the legal doctrine of the time, “the greater the truth the greater the libel,” he insisted on the right of
24
the jury to determine both the law and facts, and in spite of the direction of the court to convict Zenger, the jury brought him in “not guilty,” and after an imprisonment of thirty-five weeks he was free.
The verdict was received with a burst of applause by the spectators which astonished the court. The bench threatened to commit some of the leaders of the demonstration for contempt, when a son-in-law of the deposed Chief-Justice Morris boldly answered that “applause was common in Westminster Hall, and was loudest on the acquittal of the seven bishops,” a significant allusion which brought further plaudits from the audience and no response from the judges. Hamilton was escorted in triumph by the populace to a public dinner hastily prepared in his honor; on his departure next day for Philadelphia he was given a salute with cannon, and was subsequently
25
presented with the freedom of the city inclosed in a suitably inscribed gold box which is still preserved by his descendants. The outcome of the prosecution of Zenger marks the foot of humanity advanced a rung higher on the ladder of universal freedom, to which the whole body has not even yet attained.
“A brief narrative of the case and tryal of John Peter Zenger, Printer of the ‘New York Weekly Joarnal,’” printed as a folio pamphlet by Zenger in 1736, became the most famous publication issued in America before the “Farmer’s Letters.” Five editions were printed in London, and one in Boston in 1738; numerous others have appeared since, and it holds a recognized place in both English and American State trials. The account of the trial was probably prepared by James Alexander, who was also doubtless the author of the series of papers which
26
appeared in the “Pennsylvania Gazette” in 1737, over the signature of X, in reply to Blenman’s “Remarks on Zenger’s Tryal.”
Some benefit as well as fame accrued to Zenger. In 1737 the New York Assembly made him its printer, and in the following year the legislature of New Jersey did the same. Both offices were soon lost, however, owing to his being an indifferent printer and very ignorant of the English language; at least, Thomas admits the latter, but says he was “a good workman and a scholar.” His publications abundantly prove the incorrectness of the first assertion, and of the second I have found no evidence. The handsomest specimen of Zenger’s press which I have seen is the edition (in small folio) of the Charter of the City of New York printed by him in 1735. A copy of this volume was sold at the second Brinley sale for $140, and resold at the
27
28
Ives sale for $230. Among the important publications issued by Zenger about the same time were “A Vindication of James Alexander . . . and of William Smith,” and “The Complaint of James Alexander and William Smith to the . . . General Assembly,” both folio pamphlets of excessive rarity and great historical importance, but of which, I believe, no library in New York possesses a copy.
Zenger continued his newspaper until his death, and after that event it was carried on by his widow and later by his eldest son. His other publications, so far as I know of them, were mostly of a religious nature, and are now of but little interest except as specimens of his press. Mr. William Kelby tells me that Zenger “died in New York City, on the 28th of July, 1746, in the 49th year of his age, leaving a widow and six children.”
29
JOHN ZENGER, John Peter Zenger’s only child by his first wife, was born about 1719. He learned the “art and mystery of printing” in his father’s office. About 1741 he married Anneke Lynssen, and I suppose continued to assist his father. Early in 1746 his name appears as J. Zenger, Jun., on a pamphlet by Griffith Jenkin, called “A Brief Vindication of the Purchassors Against the Propritors [sic] in A Christian Manner.” It is a rare little tract relating to the title of lands around Newark, a copy of which sold for $205 at the second Brinley sale, and of which I know of but three others. In 1749 he became the publisher of “The Weekly New-York Journal” and “Hutchins’ Almanac” (then called Nathan’s), which had been published by his stepmother. These he continued till his death, which occurred some time before July, 1751, when his press and type were sold by auction.
30
31
I have met with no other publications bearing this printer’s name.
ANNA CATHARINE ZENGER was a native of Germany, and became the second wife of John Peter Zenger at New York, August 24, 1722. Her maiden name was Maul. She bore Zenger several children, whose baptisms are recorded, as is her marriage, at the “Dutch Church,” in New-York City. On the death of her husband she continued his business, carrying on the “New-York Weekly Journal” until December, 1748, when she resigned it as well as the business to her stepson John Zenger. She published the first issue of “John Nathan Hutchins’,” at first called “Nathan’s,” but after 1751, “Hutchins’ New York Almanac,” in 1746, and in the following year “An Answer to the Council of Proprietor’s two Publications [of East New Jersey], ”
32
33
a folio pamphlet of great rarity. Thomas says, about 1750 she lived at “Golden Hill, near Hermamus Rutgers, where she sold pamphlets, etc.”