The Hill, the River and the Plain
To sadden, all agree!”[304]
Cramer realized that books having a local interest would find a ready sale. One of these was Judge Hugh Henry Brackenridge’s Modern Chivalry; another was his Incidents of the Insurrection in Western Pennsylvania, which was an effort to vindicate himself for his course in the Whisky Insurrection. Judge Addison’s impeachment in 1803, by the Republican General Assembly, had created profound interest in Pittsburgh. The account of the trial was immediately published in Lancaster, then the capital of the State, and eagerly read. Another book of local interest was Colonel James Smith’s Captivity among the Indians Westward of Fort Pitt in the Year 1755, published at Lexington, Kentucky, in 1799.
Although a Republican himself, Cramer’s mercantile instincts led him to sell books written in opposition to that party. A little volume of poems was of this class. David Bruce, a Scotchman living in the adjacent village of Burgettstown, whom Cramer designated as “an ingenious Scotch poet of Washington County,” had published in 1801, in Washington, Pennsylvania, a book which, while mainly political in character, had considerable merit. Bruce was a strong Federalist, and his volume was dedicated to Judge Addison. To the Republicans, Brackenridge, Gallatin, McKean, and other more or less local celebrities, Bruce’s references were disparaging. To Brackenridge he addressed the cynical lines:
“When Whisky-Boys sedition sang,
An’ anarchy strod owre the lan’
When Folly led Rebellion’s ban’
Sae fierce an’ doure,
Fo’ks said ye sleely lent a han’
To mak the stoure.”[305]