Page:History of Journalism in the United States.djvu/171

Rh ments but not a single line of comment to indicate that the founders of the first daily newspaper on the American continent were aware that they were embarking on a most interesting and historic undertaking.

For some time after the Revolution there was no vigorous newspaper in New York. The New York Journal, which we have seen, during the Revolution, fighting on amid difficulties, came back to the city with the English withdrawal; but old John Holt had run his course, dying a year after. The widow and Eleazer Oswald, a relative, continued it until 1787, when it was bought by Thomas Greenleaf, an enterprising printer, son of the Joseph Greenleaf whose writings in the Massachusetts Spy had so incensed the royal authorities. Greenleaf had learned his trade under Isaiah Thomas and had worked as a sub-editor of the Independent Chronicle of Boston. Beginning November 19, 1787, he issued a daily, the New York Journal and Daily Patriotic Register, the first in New York and the second in America. Greenleaf's training, as one might expect, was such as to make him suspicious of the "big wigs" who had gathered in Philadelphia, and, when the controversy started over the adoption of the Constitution, his paper printed the "Brutus" series in answer to the "Federalist." He was not content with mere argument, however. When the Constitution was adopted by the state, and the jubilant citizens expressed their exultation by a parade and a pageant, Greenleaf devoted a column to ridiculing the festivity and those who had taken part in it.

In the following issue he announced that the daily had been given up, pathetically adding that those who intended to withdraw subscriptions "at this juncture of the Print-