Irishmen were among the first paper manufacturers in this country. Many of them, prior to the Revolutionary War, were engaged in the printing business. Naturally they drifted into publishing newspapers. At the period immediately following the Revolution, it is estimated by the census bureau that there were published in the United States two hundred papers. Of these, it is said, twenty-five were controlled by foreigners, and were, as a rule, the most influential papers published, and were issued in the large towns like Philadelphia, New York and Boston.
The election of John Adams as president, and the inauguration of his federal policy, brought into being a strong opposition press, which arrayed itself on the side of Thomas Jefferson. The editors of that period, not unlike the politicians of their time, did not mince matters. Their trenchant quills smote the Federalists with such force that the administration of Mr. Adams deemed it necessary to pass a law that would curb the spirit of the times and muzzle the opposition press. The result was the enactment of the Alien and Sedition act. The twenty-five papers which were controlled by the foreigners were the special mark of the alien and sedition laws.
Appleton’s Encyclopedia, speaking on this subject, says:
“The apology for the sedition act was the unquestionable licentiousness of the press, which, at that time, was chiefly controlled by refugees and adventurists from Great Britain and Ireland.”
Lossing, in his United States History, says, “that outside of New England, the most influential papers were controlled principally by foreigners.”
The majority of the refugees and adventurists, so called, were men of Irish blood; all of them men of learning, enterprise and push. They hated the Federalists for their pro-English leanings, especially President Adams, whom they believed to be friendly to England in the contest against France. Several of them had had a taste of British tyranny at home, and all were imbued with the spirit of ’98.
Among the very earliest newspaper enterprises was that of Hugh Gaine in New York city. Gaine was a native of Ireland. He began his new world career as a book-seller. In 1752 he commenced the publication of the Mercury. Hudson, in his history of journalism in the United States, says of the paper, that it was one of the best in all the colonies in the collection of intelligence. Hugh Gaine prospered as an editor, book-seller and publisher.
How noble was the attitude of Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, who lent his mighty influence to launching the Maryland Gazette. His financial and moral aid made possible its vigorous contest for the freedom of the colonies.
The alien and sedition act was particularly aimed at the Irishmen, who, almost to a man, arrayed themselves under the broad banner of Jefferson, the leader of the Republicans. The first man to suffer under the alien and sedition laws was an Irishman, Congressman Matthew Lyon of Vermont, a native of Wicklow, a printer, who started the Farmer’s Library, and later issued the Fairhaven Gazette. This “peppery, red-headed little Irishman,” as he was called by his contemporaries, hated everything that had the odor of Federalism about it, and for an article written by him, published in a Vermont paper, reflecting on President John Adams, he was indicted by the United States Court. A writer, speaking of the article for which he was indicted, says that “the language was decidedly Lyonesque.” He was fined $1,000 and imprisoned for three months. While in jail he was reëlected to congress, and on his release would have been rearrested on another charge under the same act, had he not availed himself of his constitutional rights and declared that he was on his way to Philadelphia to attend a sitting of Congress.
Lyon is remembered for his varied congressional life, and the episode especially with Congressman Griswold of Connecticut. Griswold referred to Lyon deprecatingly one day, and revived an old story of alleged cowardice during the Revolutionary War, which his political opponents used against him. The result was an exhibition of old-time pugilism on the floor of congress. For this offence an attempt was made to expel him from the house on two occasions, but each time it failed for want of a two-thirds vote.