Wanna hear about the origins of part of the 1st Amendment: freedom of the press? Let's start in 1710 Germany. Because why not?
John Peter Zenger was born in Impflingen, a small town (pop. 890) in southwestern Germany about 70 miles northeast of Stuttgart. The Zengers immigrated to New York in 1710.
The winter of 1708-1709 was brutal. The Rhine froze solid for five weeks. Not only did the grapevines die, but cattle froze, as well. Firewood wouldn't burn in open air, birds froze in mid-air, your spit would freeze before it hit the ground. That would do it for me, too.
Drawn by the (ultimately false) rumors that Queen Anne would give them free passage overseas and land in America, thousands of Germans went to London. Initial attempts to resettle the "Poor Palatines" ("poor" because of how terrible they looked and "Palatines" because they came from an area controlled by Elector Palatine) failed, due to the sheer number of these refugees and the cost of putting them up.
In an effort to clear the refugee camps, the Poor Palatines got sent mainly to New York, where many settled along the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers (note Palatine Bridge, NY, off of I-90, across the Mohawk River from Canajoharie - a town which gave me considerable problems in pronunciation when we lived up that way). They had to work off the expense of their passage.
The governor of New York - Robert Hunter - agreed to provide apprenticeships to all Poor Palatine children. John Peter Zenger got himself bound to William Bradford, the first printer in New York. Bradford published the first book in New York's history but had a history of causing problems with the upper class in his newspaper. Bradford's "Appeal to the People" in 1691 caused such an uproar with "flagrantly libelous and seditious" tracts that his printing press, type, and all publications were confiscated. He was jailed and placed on trial, but the jury couldn't come to an agreement on the verdict and Bradford was freed. Zenger spent eight years with Bradford.
He married his first wife in Philadelphia in 1719, but she passed away soon after. On August 24, 1722 he married Anna Catharina Maul in Manhattan. Anna had come to New York as part of the same migration group as Zenger. She's important to the story. After a brief partnership with Bradford in 1725, Zenger opened his own printing business in New York which in 1730 had a total colonial population of less than 50,000. Zenger mainly printed books in Dutch until 1732, when William Cosby became New York's new governor.
Cosby was a jerk who ruled his colony as a tyrant. His goal as governor was self-enrichmentIn a salary dispute with his interim predecessor Rip Van Dam, Cosby took Van Dam to court and demanded the case proceed through "equity jurisdiction," which meant that there wouldn't be a jury. Colonists hated these trials, because the British could carry out justice without the colonial legislature's consent. It was tyranny, said the colonists.
Cosby won his case against Van Dam, but Chief Justice Lewis Morris dissented and wrote the minority opinion in Cosby vs. Van Dam. Van Dam was represented by William Smith and Lewis Alexander. Cosby demanded Morris' written opinion and Morris obliged, but not before having it published with a letter which, in part, read:
If judges are to be intimidates so as not to dare to give any opinion, but what is pleasing to the Governor, and agreeable to his private views, the people of this province who are very much concerned both with respect to their lives and fortunes in the freedom and independency of those who are to judge them, may possible not think themselves so secure in either of them as the laws of his Majesty intended they should be.
It was an 18th century mic drop.
Cosby removed Morris from office, dismissed Van Dam, and disbarred lawyer William Smith.
The only newspaper in New York was the New York Gazette, and it was a Cosby newspaper published by - wait for it - William Bradford, Zenger's mentor and former partner, for however brief a time. On November 5, 1733 Lewis Morris, William Smith, and Lewis Alexander founded the New-York Weekly Journal - America's first independent political newspaper - with Alexander handling most of the editorials which, wouldn't you know, were critical of Cosby. Zenger was the publisher.
The articles were written anonymously. Cosby let it go for a couple of months until James DeLancey, the man who replaced Lewis Morris as Chief Justice, convened a 19-member Grand Jury to accuse the Weekly Journal of breaking the law of seditious libel in New York. They declined to indict. He tried again nine months later, to the same result. Cosby was furious. Three weeks after the second attempt at an indictment failed, Cosby ordered the public hangman to ceremonially burn copies of the newspaper and offered a 50-pound reward for the names of the authors. The hangman, who was elected by the Colonists, refused. Zenger wasn't naming names, and no one came forward to identify the authors.
Cosby had Zenger arrested for printing seditious libels on November 17, 1734. Cosby was able to do so without a Grand Jury indictment by proceeding against Zenger by "an information," a highly unpopular legal procedure among the Colonists. The Supreme Court of Judicature - headed by Cosby crony DeLancey - issued a warrant for Zenger's arrest and took him to jail, in the Old City Hall's attic. In the bench warrant it was alleged that Zenger should be tried
For printing and publishing several seditious libels dispersed throughout his journals or newspapers...as having in them many things tending to raise factions and tumults among the people of this Province, inflaming their minds with contempt of His Majesty's government, and greatly disturbing the peace thereof.
With Zenger in jail, Alexander continued to write articles. Zenger's wife, Anna, continued to print the Weekly Journal - the first female newspaper publisher in American history. The Weekly Journal only missed one regular issue while Zenger was in jail. This actually helped build support for Zenger's case.
Zenger was represented by Alexander and Smith. DeLancey set bail at £400 - a bail that far outweighed the "crime," and was far richer than Zenger could afford. Zenger sat in jail until his trial. At Zenger's arraignment, Lewis and Alexander argued that the entire tribunal was invalid, since Lewis' removal as Chief Justice was improper and, as such, DeLancey's appointment was invalid. The court, obviously, refused to acknowledge this. DeLancey exclaimed, "You have brought it to that point that either we must go from the bench or you from the bar!"
Lewis and Alexander refused to withdraw their argument and on April 16, 1735 were barred from arguing before the Supreme Court of Judicature. Zenger had no legal representation. He asked the court to appoint an attorney for him and a young Cosby fan, John Chambers, was assigned by the Court. It went better for Zenger than you would expect.
The court was adjourned until August 1735 to let Chambers get to work, and it bought time for Lewis and Alexander to get better representation. Chambers entered a "Not Guilty" plea on grounds that, if what Zenger was printing was libel, then the Attorney General Richard Bradley must prove that it was libel, and that the Attorney General would not be able to do so. Basically, Zenger didn't have to prove that the Weekly Journal *wasn't* libelous. The Attorney General had to prove that the Weekly Journal *was* libelous.
Chambers' work in challenging the jury pool greatly helped Zenger. Because when Andrew Hamilton - NOT to be confused with Alexander Hamilton the bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman - rose on Zenger's behalf, he immediately confirmed Attorney General Bradley's case against Zenger by straight up admitting that Zenger was, in fact, the publisher of the Weekly Journal.
BUT!
Hamilton followed that argument up by saying that, basically, it can't be libel if the accusations are true.
Hamilton:
The question before the Court and you, Gentlemen of the jury, is not of small or private concern. It is not the cause of one poor printer, nor of New York alone, which you are now trying. No! It may in its consequence affect every free man that lives under a British government on the main of America. It is the best cause. It is the cause of liberty.
DeLancey immediately told the jury to focus: the Weekly Journal was just dripping with libel. That makes Zenger guilty of libel.
The jury didn't buy it. After a "brief deliberation," - one source says it took less than ten minutes - the jury found Zenger "Not Guilty." Well of course, he was guilty of publishing attacks on Cosby but, because, those attacks were true, he's not technically guilty.
A dinner was thrown at the Black Horse Tavern in New York City in honor of Andrew Hamilton. He left to return to Philadelphia to a salute of cannons and was given the Freedom of the City.
As The Historical Society of the New York Courts noted the Zenger case didn't establish legal precedent in the freedom of the press. But it did influence "how people thought about these subjects and led, many decades later, to the protections embodied in the United States Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Sedition Act of 1798."
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John Chambers went on to enjoy an esteemed and lucrative career in the law. He married into the powerful and wealthy Van Cortlandt family and was the uncle and godfather of the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Jay.
Lewis Morris would later become governor of New Jersey. He was the grandfather of signer of the Declaration of Independence Lewis Morris, New York Chief Justice Richard Morris, New Jersey Chief Justice Robert Morris, and Founding Father and Senator Gouverneur Morris.
John Peter Zenger was released from jail the day after his Not Guilty verdict, where he published the Weekly Journal until his death in 1746 - he was 49 years old. Anna continued the publishing until Zenger's oldest son, John, took over in December 1748. The Weekly Journal ceased publication in 1751.
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Interesting source:
The Narrative of the Case and Tryal of John Peter Zenger, Printer of the New-York Weekly Journal.
