January, 1812, told of Dennie's death and "that the confederacy of scholars disbanded almost as soon as it was formed." At this time the Port Folio was the oldest literary journal in America.
Nicholas Biddle became the next editor. He supplied the magazine with a number of articles upon paintings, old and new, and resigned his charge early in 1812. Dr. Charles Caldwell was requested to succeed him. "I accepted the proposal," he says, in his "Autobiography," "in less than a minute, and in less than one hour began to prepare for the performance of the duty it enjoined" (Autobiography, page 322). Caldwell entered upon his task under an engagement to furnish ninety-eight pages of matter for each number, and this matter would have to be to a great extent original. In six months Caldwell increased the number of subscribers twenty-five per cent. The war naturally became the theme of greatest interest. General Brown declared that "he reported himself, and ordered his officers to report themselves in their connection with all interesting events of the army, as regularly to the editor of the Port Folio as they did to him, or as he did to the Secretary of War." In this way the magazine obtained some interesting and valuable biographical notes of military and naval officers. Dr. Caldwell employed as assistant editor the famous and versatile Thomas Cooper. Cooper was an Englishman, who was born in London in 1759, and had been a member of the National Assembly of France. He quarrelled with Robespierre, and challenged him to a duel. Robespierre swore revenge, and Cooper, knowing that flight alone could save him from the Jacobin Club, returned to England. He was censured by Burke, and replied in a bitter and abusive pamphlet. He followed his intimate friend, Mr. Priestley, to America and lived with him at Northumberland, where Coleridge and Southey dreamed of establishing an Eden of Pantisocracy. When Cooper came to Philadelphia, Washington and Jefferson and Jay and Madison were there. Cooper lent his pen to Jefferson and the Democrats, and was paid by them. He was appointed to a judgeship, but soon removed. He was elected professor of chemistry and moral philosophy in Dickinson College, and from there he went to the chair of chemistry in Columbia College, South Carolina. He left Philadelphia in 1819, and died in the South in 1840.
Judge Workman was a second assistant writer. The most extensive contributions that Dr. Caldwell made to the magazine were his reviews of "An Essay on the Causes of the Variety of Complexion and Figure of the Human Species," by Samuel Stanhope Smith, President of Princeton College. The reviews covered ninety pages and dealt with a philosophical and experimental examination of the strange case of Henry Moss, a Maryland negro, whose name, as Dr. Caldwell says, is as well known to the readers of periodicals as was that of John Adams or Thomas Jefferson or James Madison. Moss was a full-blooded African, whose skin, save in a few spots, turned white. Caldwell's critiques appeared in the Port Folio, 1814, pp. 8 and 457, and also in the American Review, II, 128, 166.
Dr. Caldwell at this time edited Delaplaine's Repository, and Smith had his revenge in a telling criticism of that work in the Analectic Magazine, to which Caldwell replied in 1816. To finish the story, there is to be found in the Port Folio of 1820, page 153, an article on S. S. Smith, with portrait, which is as ample in praise of the essay as Caldwell was liberal in detraction. Caldwell resigned his editorship in 1816. In the next month Oliver Oldschool the Fourth made his appearance in the person of John Elihu Hall.
The magazine was still well manned and well maintained. Philadelphia still kept her leadership in culture and literary production. In 1814 only twenty new books were annually put forth in America, and yet in April of that year the Port Folio declared, "From facts within our own knowledge, we fearlessly assert that Philadelphia contains scholars not a few whom Europe herself would be proud to acknowledge." In 1817 the London Monthly Magazine began to copy from the Port Folio.
But about 1820 the prestige of Philadelphia begins to fade and her ancient influences to hang about her "like a giant's robe upon a dwarfish thief." In this year (Port Folio, page 463) is heard the first note of alarm. New England is gaining; "with such rivalry Philadelphia must yield the proud title which she has borne, or rouse from the withering lethargy in which she slumbers." New York jealousy is increasing. In 1820 Salmagundi says that "one of the editors of the Port Folio was discharged—for writing common-sense." These trifles indicate a shifting of the balance of power. Three years more, and the cry of discontent and peevish querulousness reaches its height.
"With the exception of some scores of verses 'tempered with lovers' sighs' and oozing from the brains of 'lunatics, lovers and poets,' the last volume contains very few communications from any friend to us and our cause. In the days of our first predecessors such was the number and zeal of contributors that the editor was obliged to exchange the labor of composition for that of selection, and he often expatiated with gratitude upon the learning, the liberality and the industry of his voluntary assistants. Although they wore their visors up before the public, most of them are now known to us, and we can recognize many of them at home and abroad, pushing their fortunes at the bar, in the desk or the academy, or serving their country in high and honorable stations. They were all quickened with the fervid spirit of enterprise and adventure. They combined learning and wit and genius with industry, perseverance and ambition. They laid the foundation of a work which has outlived all its rivals and contemporaries; but they have left few to inherit and emulate their disinterested devotion to the cause of letters.... England, that detestable country where everyone has been starving for the last century, where everyone has been crushed by the load of taxes, and everyone has been flying from home to avoid the oppressions of the Ministry, prints several thousand copies of a magazine, and the whole edition is sold and paid for in twenty-four hours. These matters are ordered differently here. Instead of purchasing our newspapers and magazines we subscribe for them."
Alack-a-day! the world went very well in the consulship of Plancus! No doubt even in the best and soundest of their times the magazines did suffer by the subscription plan. The remaining stock of the Analectic Magazine was sold for seven cents a volume in sheets, and the stock of the Literary Gazette, its successor, brought but six and a quarter cents per pound.
Hall took the opportunity presented by the publication of "The Lives of the Signers," by his friend and contributor, John Sanderson, to trouble the deaf public again with his bootless cries:
"Oh! that we could boast a reading public; and that we could say, with truth, that any other books than a few novels and poems and, generally, an elegant folio Bible, kept for ornament and family dignity, were to be found in half the splendid mansions of Philadelphia. But 'we can procure the book at the Philadelphia Library.' Yes, and the author of an excellent work must be left to beg and starve, and his wife and children must be doomed to penury because their natural protector was a literary man and an author, who conferred honour on his species. Burn the Philadelphia Library, we say. Aye! burn it! if this must be its influence, to deprive meritorious authors and enterprising artists of their sustenance and of the means of continuing their labours. Let those who cannot afford to purchase valuable works, who wish to peruse scarce tomes, the work of former generations, resort to the library; but let our rich merchants, our thrifty lawyers and the elegantly neat Quaker proprietors of the soil of this city, who have sons and daughters to be educated for usefulness and happiness, be ashamed to creep into the repository of rare, ancient and learned volumes, and ask in a soft voice of the librarian, 'Is Sanderson's Biography in?' and to add, 'My daughters wish to see it.'"