From the 1690 banning of Americas first newspaper after one issue until the American Revolution, publishers struggled to exercise their right to print the social, political and economic debates of the day without restraint. In post-Revolutionary debates over the adoption of the Constitution, states rights and the Reconstruction issues that followed the Civil War, newspapers have continued to serve as a forum for popular (and unpopular) expression. 66 pioneers who created the American press and contributed to its evolution from a position of complete subjection to authority in the late 17th century to political and economic independence by the end of the 19th century are profiled in this DLB volume.
66 entries include: Samuel Adams, Henry Ward Beecher, James Gordon Bennett, Cassius Marcellus Clay, Frederick Douglass, Benjamin Franklin, Horace Greeley, Sara Jane Clarke Lippincott, Thomas Paine, Anne Royall, James Watson Webb and John Peter Zenger.