TheNo.22! Issued Occasionally for The Clements Library Associates

Prepared in the Interests

of Book Collecting at the

University of Michigan

1Sept; 1950

The First FreedomWhen Colonel McCosmic happily

completes an editorial guaranteedto put the finishing touch on theBritish Empire, when the somewhatfurtive stall of the Daily Workerfinishes warping their copy in 'ac­cordance with the Party Line forthat particular day, when the honestsmall town editor strikes out blunt­ly against favoritism, graft, or cor­ruption, all of them, whether theyrealize it or not, owe a heavy debtto John Peter Zenger.

Freedom of speech in the Am er­icas is an old idea. But the partic­ular manifestation of it known asfreedom of the press doesn 't go backquite as far. One of the foundationstones of that freedom is The Tryalof John Peter Zenger, of New-York,Printer, Who was La tely Try'd andAcquitted for Printing and Pub lish­ing a Libel against the Government ,a book just presented by The Clem­ents Library Associates to the Li­brary.

Zenger was a newspapermanwhose ideas didn 't entirely agreewith the royal government of thecolony of New York. As a matter offact, he was not only a newspaper­man, he was the whole working pressof New York. When his paper, TheNew-York Weekly Journal, made afew bitter remarks about the char­acter of the royal governor of thecolony and his advisors, Zengerfound himself in jail, his paperburned by the public hangman, andhis two attorneys disbarred for pre­suming to speak in his defence.

But a "Philadelphia Lawyer,"Andrew Hamilton, a leader of thecolonial bar, came to the aid of theput-upon printer, and in a brilliantseries of arguments changed thewhole course of American law.Up till then the jury in a libelcase was supposed to judge onlywhether or not the publisher had

This issue of the Qua rto isdevoted largely to the group ofbooks presented to the Libraryat the Spring meeting of TheClements Library Associates .

actually printed the alleged libel.After Hamilton's argument, thejury took upon itsel! to judgewhether the matter in question waslibelous-and juries have been do­ing the same thing ever since.

The Tryal is Zenger's own recon­struction of what happened, and ifthe story is a little "slanted" in hisfavor, the same thing has beenknown to happen in the writings ofmore modern reporters.

A Boston Best-sellerBritannia awoke wi th something

of a start in the year 1763 to the dis­covery that she was the proprietressof a large and imposin g em pire­an empire that h ad been assembledmore or less subconsciously. but ,'eryeffectively.

What probably woke h er was asevere pain in the pocketbook. Em­pire comes high, as many a con­queror has discovered.

In 1763, at the end of the SevenYear's War, known to the Americancolonists as the French and IndianWar, Britain had ousted the Frenchfrom th e greater part of NorthAmerica. But with a vastly increasedfrontier and a whole host of newresponsibilities in the way of savageIndian tribes on that same frontier,plus a hostile Spanish viceroyalty alittle farther to the west, the Britishfound that a larger and larger armywas needed, Instead of being able torelax after the peace that ended thewar, the British taxpayer was beingcalled on for more and greater con­tributions to the cost of government.

The final solu tion of the Britishgovernment was a revenue measure,the Stamp Act of 1765, introducedto the Americans in a scarce twenty­two page pamphlet printed in Bos­ton in 1765, and just given to theClements Library by The ClementsLibrary Associates.

One of John Adams' most quotedcomments is the one in which heobserved that the American Revo­lution was actually complete beforethe fighting ever began. That is, thethinking of the American colonieshad been slowly diverted from aLondon, King-fixed loyalty, to anAmerican orientation, with colonyoverranking king, before the firstshots were fired at Lexington andConcord.

This document, the panacea forthe perspiring and protesting Brit­ish taxpayer, was perhaps the mostimportant single step in the ~eorien­tation of American loyalty.

The British Cabinet, seeking fora happy solu tiou of its financial di­lemma, turned with considerablereason to the idea that people whoare being protected ought to helppay the costs of that protection.Literally, this meant that the Brit­ish statesmen saw no reason why thecolonists. who were being protectedby British arms, shouldn't contrib­ute to the cost of keeping those armsbright, useful, and in the propergeographical location.

George Grenville, first lord of theTreasury, proposed to do this byimposing a tax in the form of stampsrequired for most official and someother documents.

The colonies set up a yell of pro­test through their colonial agents,their unofficial ambassadors, whohad their headquarters in Londonand their hands on the pulse of Em­pire. Grenville, who prided himselfon being nothing if not a reasonableman, gave them a whole year to sug­gest a better pIau. No suggestion

turning up, exce p t th at old andlargel y ineffective methods of volun­leer con tri butions be followed,Grenville pu shed the fam ous StampAct of 1765 through a Parliamentcompletely unaware of th e signifi­cance of the act to which it readilyassented.

The issue of the act prin ted inLondon is fairly common. The Li ­brar)' ah ead)' had Lord Shelburne'scopy a nd another bearing the royalarms wh ich marked the books fromGeorge Ifl's own libra ry. But issuesprinted in Am erica, and especiallythe one printed in Boston, the heartof the colonial protest movementagain st the act, are exceedingly rare.

The Stamp Act hit the colonistsharder than any previous piece oflegislation. Not only was it undis­gu ised taxation by the British Par­Iiament of the American colonies,which gave birth to th e famous cryof "No taxation with ou t representa­tion," but also it was purely andsimply a revenue measure. It wasdesigned to raise money. The moneywas to be spent, true eno ugh, in thesuppor t of the military establi sh­ment in the colonies where it wasraised, but this fail ed to ap pease thecolonials.

Other ac ts had hit the colonists.The Sugar Act of 1764 had put aserious crimp in the normal smug­gling enterprises of the most re­spected merchants. Since the veryfirst of the commercial con trol actsthat were a part of the British eco­nomic philosophy of the time, oneclass or ano ther of colonists hadbeen hurt from time to lime.

But Grenvill e had made a seriousmistake.

This time he hit the most vocal.most edu cated, most influential, andmost important elements in theAmerican colonies.

The new taxes hit the lawyer.And the lawyer was th e leader ofth e settleme nts. In the froutiertow ns, th e " jedge" was the arbiterof socie ty. Tn the sophisti cated so­ciety of th e seaboard, the lawyerwent to the provincial assembly, hesat upon the courts of the colony,

and he led in busin ess an d socialactivity.

This ";as the first class a t whichGrenville had leveled the StampAct. And it was well drawn, that act.Every type of legal document, frombirth to burial, every form of deed,conveyance. writ, assignment. orwhat have you was carefully sing ledout and a fixed fee provided, Thelawyers DE the colonies were doomedto 'wa de in a morass o f stamps.

Not satisfied wi th hamstringingth e legal profession, Grenville thenmoved against the most vocal of allclasses, th e Fourth Estate. Everynewspaper. every pamphlet, everyalmanac had from then on to bearrevenue stamps.

The reading matter of the Amer­ican colonist was fairly restricted.But no home was co mplete wi thoutan almanac, and in areas where thepostal system had penetra ted, news­papers were delivered. read care­fully, and passed on through an al­most indefinite sequen ce of hand­me-downs. An d if auy colonist feltreally upset about some th ing, hehad always cherished th e fact thathe could p ublish his views in a pam­phlet , In those days th at was no tespecia lly expensive. Now, he fouudthe Brit ish gove rnment sudde nly inhis way.

Naturally, th e newspaper pro­prietors. who were also the principalpublishers of the colonies. wereagainst the Stamp Act almost to aman. And they were vcr)' noisyabout it. If an aggrieved lawyer pro­duced a bitterl y anti-Briti sh pam­phlet , he had no trouble at all infindi ng an eq ually aggrieved pub­lisher who was only too will ing toprint and publish th e lawyer' spamphlet. It was an ideal situationfor American authors.

And Grenville made cer ta in thepop ular detestation of th e bill byincluding in it a seriously large taxon playing cards and on dice. Evenin those remote times the Americanshad become aware of the fascinationof the galloping dominoes, and hadevolved assort ed interesting ways ofsquandering their substance withcards.

Ann Arbori tes have a particularlywar m feeling of symp athy for thecolonists, since the Stamp Act putan almost impossibly high tar iff ondiplomas-it cost two pounds to geta degree, and two pounds in thosedays went a very long way indeed.Higher education was really goingto be high, if Grenville had his wayabout it.

The basic p remise of the bill wasfalse, although Grenville was ap­p arently honestl y igno rant of thefact . There simply wasn't enoughspecie, enou gh cash money, in thecolonies to meet the stamp tax,which had to be paid in speci e. Theold mercanti list philosophy had op­era ted to drain all coin out of the

colou ies-until most of th e metalcurrency left was wh at filtered inthrough various qu estionable cha n­n els of trade from the Spanish king­doms to the southo So even if theAmericans had wanted to pay­which they didn't-they couldn' thave continued to pay for any con­sidera ble period of time.

Protest rose ra p idl y to unheard ofheigh ts. Previously loyal areasturned patriot overnight. And theMassachuset ts legislature, most ofwhose members doubtless first readthe provision s of the Stamp Act inthe very edition just given to theClements Library, issued a call foran inter-colonial Congress. theStamp Act Congress that fore­shadowed the later ContinentalCongress, and firs t pointed the waytoward an American unity of pur­pose and act ion.

The Boston printers, Edes andGill, who brought out this editionof the Stamp Act tried their bestto imi ta te exactl y the ap pearanceof the Briti sh royal acts as primedby the London publishers, even tothe elabora te border around th etitle-page. Their supply of typeornamen ts didn't qui te hold out,and they had to shift varie ties mid­

way through their title-page border,but they did manage a very credit­able imitation.

Mr 'Thomasand His Magazine

In a century and three-quartersthe taste of the American publichasn't altered much, and The RoyalA merican Magazine proves it .

To the Clements Library's col­lection of early American periodi­cals The Clements Library Associ­ates have added a run of this, oneof the rarest and most significant ofour country's first magazines, It notonly proves the enduring quality ofthe taste of the people-it reflectscolonial interests and concerns onthe eve of the Revolution.

The Royal American Magazinewas the brainchild of a rising staramong American publishers in theyear '773. Why, wondered youngIsaiah Thomas, wouldn't a discreetmixture of literature, pictures, andpoetry sell copies of a magazine?There didn't seem to be any verygood reason why not, so he tried itout. Already successful with his anti­British newspaper, The Massachu­setts Spy, Thomas paid a great dealof attention to his latest venture anddid his best to make it click.

Naturally, he believed in adver­tising. And since advertising in thecolumns of his own newspaper wasabont the cheapest and, he thought,the best available, it's no wonderthe Massachusetts Spy reflects all thebeginnings of the new magazine.

Politics weren't considered quitethe thing for a magazine. so, exceptin a few cartoons, we look in vainfor a direct reflection of the anti­British feeling then so prevalentin Boston, the city where TheRoyal A merican appeared, Butthere was no taboo on sex, and sothe "moral" stories of penitent se­ductees begin with the early issues.Some politics does creep into the oc­casional fantasies-as when a stal­wart young American in "TheDream" finds himself in the courtof King Tyranny, an unpleasingmonarch with an amazing resem­blance to a certain member of theHouse of Hanover, the th ird Georgeof his name.

Thomas looked further afield.

He sought to encourage "original"contributions. But the burning fireof American literary genius seemsto have been smoking considerablyin the Boston of '774. At any rate,Isaiah had trouble in beating talentout of the underbrush. Less thantwenty-five per cent of the materialin the issues he published is orig­inal. True, Miss Phyllis Wheatley,America's famous Negro poet, senthim two short poems, and number­less New Haven and Cambridgeundergraduates were ready, willing,but not very able, to contribute.

And so, like many another Amer­ican publication before and since,the sundry issues were pretty largelypaper hung. The Works of Dr Ben­jamin Franklin, the most famous ofall the colonists, and perhaps thefirst truly international figureamong Americans, gave Mr Thomasa clipped story about waterspouts.The varied writings of JosephPriestley, among others, were alsoculled for paragraphs and articles.

There were a few valiant writerswho sought to equal the demand.In the field of science Dr ThomasYoung of Newport contributed sev­eral articles on medical observa­tions of assorted common diseases.Not too often right in his surmises,the doctor was at least laying thegroundwork of the scientific meth­od. In the field of agriculture, Ber­nard Romans, cartographer andengraver, provided Mr Thomaswith a piece about the raising ofindigo, a crop of very considerableimportance to Americans.

The fiction, as has been noted,centered around sentimental seduc­tion scenes, and allegedly "true-to­life" stories. In a sense, here is theultimate ancestor of True Confes­sions and True Story , magazineswhich, although they may not be inthe intellectual van of America, arewell up in the list of circulation fig­ures. A few Oriental tales gave freerein to the imagination of the NewEngland authors. Most of the otherpieces are of the more or less harm­less variety. In an almost whollyProtestant milieu, the editor took afew healthy whacks at the Roman

Catholic church. Although with achange in his reading public, it'sperfectly evident that he would havebeen quite as willing to crack downon the Protestants. As for slavery,he was "agin it ," like Calvin Cool­idge and sin. But his "aginness" wassufficiently modulated so as not todisturb the better thought of slavetraders among the leaders of Massa­chusetts society.

In part of the prolonged adver­tising campaign that Thomaslaunched, first to announce hismagazine, second to encourage thegrowth of a list of subscribers, andfinally in a frantic effort to keep thething alive, he says that he hopes tomake The Royal American "fit toconvey to posterity the labours ofthe learned:' Whether he succeededor not is probably open to debate,but he did manage to bring out anumber of issues of the magazine,even though haunted by bad luck,and, finally, to get out from underwith more or less grace.

A jinx, perhaps derived fromthe not overly happy title, cameearly. The first issue was delayedmore than a month, for the arrivalof the new type which had beenordered by Thomas was held up byshipwreck and subsequent salvageoperations. When it finally came,Thomas sought energetically tocatch up with his missing numbers.Actually, he never quite made it.

One significant contribution themagazine did make. That was in thefield of illustration. A series oftwenty-avo plates was done entirelyby two American engravers, PaulRevere, more noted for his silvermaking and his horsemanship, andJoseph Callender. These includeassorted semi-classical efforts alongwith some dynamic political car­toons. Incidentally, in The RoyalAmerican appears the first Americanhunting print, and the first Ameri­can hunting song, modeled onEnglish magazine archetypes, whichThomas was by no means too proudto imitate.

Finally convinced that the maga­zine was not going to pay, Tbomasdisposed of it to Joseph Greenleaf.

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President Schoolcraft &his Algie Society

The Cleme nts L ibra ry Associates'gift of the Constitution of th e A lgieSociety (Detroi t, 1833), adds a li ttleknow n item to the r ich Michigancollections of the Li brar y, a few ofwhich were described in the recentbulletin of the Li brary, One H un­dred Michigan R arit ies.

The Algic Society was founded ,encouraged, and led by HenryRowe Schoolcraft, a ma n who toda ywould be called Michigan' s firstanthropologist. Author and scien­tist, Schoo lcraft's great concern inlife was the North Am erican Indian,especially the Algonquin branch ofth e family. In artiele after articleand book af ter book, he exploredthe life and language of the Indians.No desk-bound speculator, he knewpersonally and lived among th epeoples he wro te about, T he nameof the society it self is derived fromthe word "Algonqui n."

The Algic society was formed toenco urage the send ing of mission­aries among "the Nor th \ Vesttribes ." To Schoolcraft, of course,North West meant the Old North­west T erritory, of which Michiganwas a part.

Actually, it wasn't the mission­aries th at Schoolcraft was after asmuch as it was the educatio n whichmissionaries alone seemed willingto br ing to th e In dians. Drugged,tricked, cheated, and scorned by th ewhite people of the frontier, theon ly hope of the In d ian was to catchup to the culture of the dominantand dominating civilization. School­craft's answer as to how to do it wasby edu cation.

With the first printing of theConstitution of the Society, done inDetroit by p ionee r printers Clelandand Sawyer, was a speech by School­craft, urging the im portan ce of theeducational side of mission work.And alo ng with this is the li st oimembers , active and honorary, whowere pl edged to help along thework. T he old army, th e " IndianFighting Arm y," beloved of sen ti-

mental novelists and the pu lp wri tergene rally, is supposed 10 have be­lieved in the' ancient saw anent theonly good Indian bei ng a deadIndian. Proof tha t this just wasn'tso is in the list of members whereofficers of the U .S. Ar my arc num­erous. The grea t majority of themwere stationed at posts in Mich igan,at the Suo, Michillimackinac, orelsewhere in the T erritory.

How successfu l Schoolcraft's ef­forts were is open to considerabledeba te. III th e long Tun , lJC was un­able to save the Ind ian from theexploiter. Now, almost twelve dec­ades later , the position of the Ind ianin the state of Michigan is hardl y asgood as it was when Schoolcraftwrote. At least then the settlers werestill worried by th em. BIIt the docu­ment is indisputa ble testimon y thatsome of the early men of Michiganwere men with ideals and the willto pu t those ideal s in to practicaleffect.

The Red Brotherand The Old South

When the arm ies of the Confed­eracy began the long series of un­interrupted triumphs which endedwith the reab sorp tion of the Northa t Appomattox , as any true Sou th­erner will confirm, one of the Con­federate government's first con­cerns was to secure the friendshipand adherance of the more power­ful Indian nation s.

On the surface, at least, the pro­gram was successful. From T heClements Library Associates comesthe Treaty wit h the Cherokees,Richmond, Va. J862, in which thechiefs of th e Cherokee nati on en­tered into a treat y of "perpetualpeace and fr iendship, and an alli­ance offensive and defensive" withthe Commissioners of the Confed­eracy.

Both sides d uring the War be­tween the States had plans for usingthe services of their Indian allies­plans foreshadowed by severa l pro­vision s of the Treat». The Confed­eracy actually called a contingent

into action, and the noble red me ncame and wa tched one batt le fromreserved seats. Bill Nye maintai nsthat the Confedera tes had "sched­u led somethi ng ex tra special in theway of scalping and such for afterthe battle." The battle turned outto be a vigorous one, in the courseof which severa l of the newfangledexplosive cannon ball s landed inth e genera l vicinity of the savagespectators.

Almost unani mously the Indiansdisco\'ered tha t they IJadn'( lo st anywars just then and departed enmasse.

The T reaty, however, remains torecord one of the few "internation­al" successes scored by Confederatediplomacy. Virtually surroundedby the sta tes of the Confederacy, theCherokees didn't rea lly have muchchoice -in the matter . Nor did theeven ts of the war much d isturbthem.

Almost an y Confedera te printing,printing done in the states of theConfederacy du ring the period inwhich that governmen t was in pow­er, is rare, but treaties, because ofthe few wh ich were ever negotiated .arc among the rarissimi.

THE Little TurtleOn Temperance

Most of the leaders of the Amer­ican Indians have had to depend onthe pens of their foemen for theirimmortality. Onl y infrequentlywere the words of a given chief everpre served . Bu t T he Clements Li­brary Associates have given the Li­brary a little pamphlet by one of thegreatest of th em all, The LittleT urtle, chief of the Miami, conq uer­or of General s SI. Clair and Harmar,

T itled the M emo-rial of EvanT homas, and published for theQuakers in Balt imore, the workactually is almost entirely devotedto a speech by The Little Turtle inwhich he points ou t the terrible rav­ages bei ng made on all Indiantribes by th e lise of aIcoh ol-"whis­key to the whit eman, poi son to theIndian."