The Mysterious Constitutional Courant

Yesterday’s posting introduced Lawrence Sweeny, a New York newspaper carrier. He played a small but significant role in promoting resistance to the Stamp Act in 1765.

In September of that year, after protests against the Stamp Act had erupted in Boston and Newport, a fake newspaper called the Constitutional Courant appeared in New York. It was dated 21 Sept 1765, and said to be “Printed by Andrew Marvel, at the Sign of the Bribe refused on Constitution-Hill, North-America.” The Princeton University library displays its front page.

Isaiah Thomas later wrote that the Constitutional Courant was really printed in Woodridge, New Jersey, by William Goddard (1740-1815). After being trained in New Haven and New York, Goddard had run a newspaper in Providence until that spring, and the next year he tried Philadelphia. Crown officials reported hearing that James Parker (1714-1770) owned that press and, as a postmaster, sent copies to other cities.

The “newspaper” contained three anti-Stamp Act essays signed with three different pseudonyms and a brief mention of the recent change in government in London. Reportedly the established New York printers had turned down those essays because they were too incendiary. Hence the need for a special printing and secrecy.

In an exhaustive article published by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Albert Matthews reported that there were at least two reprints of the Constitutional Courant, presumably from other presses responding to local demand. One of those reprints probably occurred in Boston since the 7 October Boston Evening-Post quoted one essay and told readers, “we hear, it will soon be republished.”

Lawrence Sweeny was one of the people who sold the Constitutional Courant on the streets of New York. According to Thomas, royal officials called him in and demanded to know where that paper had been printed. “Sweeney, as he had been instructed, answered, ‘At Peter Hassenclever’s ironworks, please your honor.’” Peter Hasenclever had come to America in 1764 to manage an extensive iron-manufacturing enterprise in New Jersey.

The masthead of the Constitutional Courant was the first reappearance of Benjamin Franklin’s “Join or Die” snake since 1754, when he created the image to promote colonial cooperation and the Albany Plan. From then on, the snake promoted a united American front against new measures from London instead of against external enemies. Printers pulled out those snake woodcuts again in 1774 as the conflict with London heated up.