"The Tyranny of Printers": Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic

Abstract

The Tyranny of Printers" tells a new story about the partisanship of the 1790s and the rise of political parties.Anchoring his political history in the history of journalism, Pasley locates newspapers at the heart of early American politics, specifically with the emergence of the Republicans as an opposition voice during John Adams's administration.Thomas Jefferson and James Madison initially used the press as a means of disseminating the Republicans' political positions.They were followed by a group of men-whom Pasley portrays as young turks--who quickly took up the cause and established a thriving Republican newspaper network.Newspaper editors not only articulated and disseminated an alternative to the Federalists in power; they themselves became professional politicians.And, because they often rose to powerful positions without the aid of education or family status, Pasley argues, they helped to democratize the American political system.Through extensive attention to the biographies and career trajectories of printer-editors, print, politics, and power today.Jeffrey Pasley has captured a moment of possibility for the power of partisan journalism and the career opportunities it offered, at least for some.If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the network, at https://networks.h-net.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 160 citations exist upstream.