VIII. A Newspaper War
The Journal’s anti-Cosby campaign touched off the first of the many newspaper wars that have raged on the banks of the Hudson. As often as it attacked did the Gazette rush to the rescue amid an acrimonious exchange of accusations and insults. Thus, referring to the sentiments of the people of New York toward their Governor:
The Journal. They think, as matters now stand, that their liberties and properties are precarious, and that slavery is like to be entailed on them and their posterity if some past things be not amended.[19]
The Gazette. Now give me leave to say what I have reason to believe some of the people of this City and Province think in relation to that paragraph in Zenger’s paper. They think it is an aggravated libel.[20]
In such a tone did New York’s two newspapers carry on their duel, one which concedes nothing to the later age of yellow journalism in its furious charges and countercharges of deceit, ignorance, calumny, and slander. The above onset and riposte stand out because the passage from the Journal sounds like Alexander himself, while Governor Cosby agreed with the Gazette that it was “libelous” and made it part of the formal indictment of Peter Zenger.
Both sides went at it hammer and tongs. In the Journal, where Cosby is called a “Nero,” his kept journalist is his “spaniel.” The Gazette retorts with epithets like “seditious rogues” and “disaffected instigators of arson and riot,” and proposes that the name “Zenger” be turned into a common-noun synonym for “liar.”
The men behind the opposition newspaper made a point of referring to Harison obliquely in satirical mock “advertisements” like these:
A large spaniel of about five foot five inches high has lately strayed from his kennel with his mouth full of fulsome panegyrics, and in his ramble dropped them in the New York Gazette. When a puppy he was marked thus (FH), and a cross in the middle of his forehead; but the mark being worn out, he has taken upon him in a heathenish manner to abuse mankind by imposing a great many gross falsehoods on them. Whoever will strip the said panegyrics of their fulsomeness, and send the beast back to his kennel, shall have the thanks of all honest men, and all reasonable charges.[21]
The spaniel strayed away is of his own accord returned to his kennel, from whence he begs leave to assure the public that all those fulsome panegyrics were dropped in the New York Gazette by the express orders of his master; and that for the gross falsehoods he is charged with imposing upon mankind, he is willing to undergo any punishment the people will impose on him if they can make full proof in any Court of Record that any one individual person in the Province (that knew him) believed any of them.[22]
The writers of these squibs had measured their man perfectly. They could become furious, caustic, ironic or insulting—that is, serious—with the Governor and the rest of the men around him; but the proper approach to Francis Harison was through satire. From the Journal he received a systematic dose of it.
For six months he absorbed the barbs of ridicule while maintaining an air of indifference. Finally, able to stand the badgering no longer, he whirled on his tormentors and attempted to repay them in their own coin:
Supposing another should turn the tables upon the authors of these infamous and fictitious advertisements, how easily might it be done? The real or imagined defects of the Amsterdam Crane, the Connecticut Mastiff, Phillip Baboon, Senior, Phillip Baboon, Junior, the Scythian Unicorn, and Wild Peter from the Banks of the Rhine might be enlarged upon, and placed in a most ludicrous light.[23]
Since the crass and clumsy Harison was devoid of the slightest capacity for satire, he inevitably suffered when he picked up the weapon that was wielded so devastatingly by his enemies. The only interesting thing about this paragraph is that it identifies the men of the Popular party who contributed most to the Journal: Rip Van Dam, William Smith, Lewis Morris, Senior, Lewis Morris, Junior, James Alexander, and Peter Zenger.
The honors of combat obviously went to “Zenger’s paper.” It was not always fair, by a long shot—nor has any newspaper ever been when fighting a war with a rival. But Cosby and Harison and the Court party in toto were too vulnerable for all the Journal’s broadsides to go astray. The Governor was hit over and over again. So was his editor. So were his other cronies.
They fought back in the Gazette, but they were always on the defensive, always incapable of getting a real attack going. Finally Cosby, boiling with rage, determined on something more practical than a war of words.