Page:History of Journalism in the United States.djvu/193

Rh the arguments of Hamilton having finally brought public opinion around to the administration.

Not content with the Gazette of the United States and Fenno's efforts—which from Fenno's own description and his appeal to Hamilton for financial assistance, had evidently not been as successful as the party leaders wished—Hamilton and his friends established another paper, this time in New York, under the editorship of Noah Webster, afterward distinguished as the lexicographer. Webster was already prominent in his home state, Connecticut, having contributed letters, the forerunners of editorials, to the Connecticut Courant as early as 1780. During the vigorous debate over the adoption of the constitution he had been one of the conspicuous journalistic proponents of Federalism. He was a man of learning and of great industry, but narrow-minded and exceedingly vain. He believed that he was responsible for the adoption of the Constitution. Ob the other hand, his work as a teacher and his campaign on behalf of the copyright law had made him a conspicuous person, and when he visited New York in August, 1793, an offer was made to him to establish a paper, the capital for which was provided by Hamilton and King, among others.

As he was, with the members of the Federal party, ardently attached to Washington, Webster accepted the invitation, and the result was the appearance, in 1793, of the American Minerva, afterward to be the New York Commercial Advertiser, now the Globe—the oldest paper in New York City. To Webster was due the introduction of the economical device of setting up a subsidiary paper, which he called the Herald, issued semiweekly. It was made up entirely from the columns of the Minerva without recomposition.