Page:History of Journalism in the United States.djvu/169

Rh antipathies bred by the war, he argued, had taken too deep root.

News, in the sense of personalities, could not be carried further than he carried it in depicting the scene when his sanctum was invaded by an irate citizen, who threatened to kill him. This was a news development that was afterward to be emulated by James Gordon Bennett and other editors attacked under similar circumstances.

When it came to the fight for the adoption of the Constitution, Russell was a tower of strength in the only issue that ever, gave the Federalist party any great popularity. But he went further. He organized meetings of the plain people of Boston to urge ratification; and as other states ratified, each ratification was set forth prominently. There is modern enterprise shown in his account of the part he played when the Massachusetts convention, held in a church, came to pass on the Constitution:

His loyalty is instanced by the fact that he printed the public laws gratuitously and, when the bill was asked for,