How Philadelphia Printers Shared News of the Declaration

John Dunlap printed official broadsides of the Declaration of Independence for the Continental Congress, but other printers were issuing the same text in other forms.

And that was how the Congress wanted it. The point was to spread the news through newspapers, broadside reprints, and public readings, not to keep it confined.

Back on Tuesday, 2 July 1776, the Pennsylvania Evening Post was the first newspaper to report that the Congress had voted for independence. Since Benjamin Towne and his staff laid out and printed the last page of that paper in the afternoon, they could slip in one more line of fresh news:

This day the CONTINENTAL CONGRESS declared the UNITED COLONIES FREE and INDEPENDENT STATES.

The next morning, David Hall and William Sellers’s Pennsylvania Gazette shared the same item.

The only Philadelphia newspaper to publish on Friday, 5 July, was Heinrich Miller’s Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote, printed in German. Miller ran two paragraphs about independence and the Declaration being on the press at the start of his local reports.

On Saturday, 6 July, 250 years ago today, the Pennsylvania Evening Post ran the full text of the Declaration starting on the front page. Towne’s print shop had probably laid out that text the previous day since newspapers usually printed the front page first.

Only a few Americans saw the Dunlap broadside and other government publications, but thousands would read the Declaration text in newspapers over the following weeks.

“Time turns his Glass, and round the Pole Another Year begins to roll”

In 1775 the British artist John Hamilton Mortimer issued a series of prints titled Twelve Characters from Shakespeare.

One of those portraits showed Edgar from King Lear, in his guise as Poor Tom the madman, as shown here.

Among that character’s lines was “Poor Tom’s a-cold.”

Two hundred fifty years ago today, the young carriers of the Pennsylvania Evening Post quoted that line as they regaled their customers with this poem.

New-Year’s Verses,
Addressed to the CUSTOMERS of
The PENNSYLVANIA EVENING POST,
By the PRINTER’s LADS who carry it.

MONDAY, JANUARY 1, 1776.

“POOR TOM’s a cold”---God bless you, Masters,
And save you all from all Disasters!
Time turns his Glass, and round the Pole
Another Year begins to roll:
Welcome the new, adieu the old,
For every Year Poor Tom’s a-cold.

Sages have said, and Bards have sung,
That long ago, when Time was young,
The World enjoy’d a golden Age:
No Dog-Star kindled then to Rage;
No Summer’s Drought, nor Winter’s Snow,
Forbade the limpid Stream to flow:
No Torrents of descending Rain
With Desolation spread the Plain:
No languid Air, with sickly Breath,
Diffused the pois’nous Seeds of Death:
No Comet’s Blaze, of horrid Light,
Shot thro’ the Curtain of the Night;
No chilling Blast flew howling by,
No Lightnings rent the burning Sky,
Nor Thunder shook the rolling Sphere.
One genial SPRING was all the Year.
Then were the Hills and Vallies seen
Forever blooming, ever green;
And, like the Season, mild and gay,
Man liv’d a Stranger to dismay;
For smiling Peace, with Plenty crown’d,
Gave Health and Joy to all around.
No Din of War, no civil Hate,
Were then the chastening Rods of Fate.
O had I seen those Days of old!
But now, alas! Poor Tom’s a-cold:
But you, who live with Hearts at Ease,
Will surely never let him freeze.
Sweet Madam, Gentle Sir, Good-morrow;
God keep you free from Pain and Sorrow,
And let me hope, ere long, to boast
Good News!----Good News!----in the EVENING POST.

This example of carriers’ verse is interesting in how little it says about current affairs. The American colonies were at war with the London government, but the only possible allusion to that was the mention of “civil Hate.”

Earlier American examples of these verses reveled in the patriotism that the newspaper employees and their customers supposedly shared, heaping disdain on foreign enemies like France and Spain. But in a time of civil war, loyalties were more problematic. Better to talk about the weather.

That wasn’t because the printer of the Pennsylvania Evening Post, Benjamin Towne, kept away from politics. He supported the colonial resistance and independence, and a year later his 1777 carriers’ verse celebrated, “Shout, George is King no more.”

Of course, the British army occupied Philadelphia late that year. In 1778 Towne’s carriers offered lines praising Gen. Sir William Howe to the skies.

The Declaration of Independence and Big Capital

The folks at Seth Kaller, Inc., and the Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries sent a report on a big sale:

The rare first newspaper printing of the Declaration of Independence we auctioned yesterday brought $632,500—a record price for any historic newspaper. . . . The July 6, 1776, edition of the Pennsylvania Evening Post was only the second printing of the Declaration in any form. The copy sold yesterday is one of just four issues of the Post’s Declaration printing that have appeared at auction in the past 50 years.

The purchaser was David Rubenstein, co-founder of the Carlyle Group. Six years ago he bought an antique copy of the Magna Carta, then loaned it to the U.S. National Archives while funding a large display facility for the agency. He’s also made multimillion-dollar gifts to benefit Monticello and the Washington Monument.

In its booklet announcing this sale, with good photographs of the newspaper for sale and other 1776 printings of the Declaration, the firm noted the typographical differences between Benjamin Towne’s Post printing and the earlier official broadside issued for the Continental Congress by Pennsylvania Packet printer John Dunlap (shown above).

Both versions capitalize the beginning of sentences, proper names, and words such as “God,” “King,” “Prince,” etc., but excluding those, Dunlap capitalzes an additional 291 internal words (within sentences). However, Towne capitalizes only two internal words.

This observation led us to compare two June 1776 working drafts of the Declaration, one in Thomas Jefferson’s hand, and one copied from Jefferson’s draft by John Adams. The Adams copy follows the same pattern, with Adams capitalizing many words that Jefferson has in lower case.

The firm suggests that there might have been multiple manuscripts of the Declaration in July 1776, one used by Dunlap and one by Towne—one perhaps from Adams and one from Jefferson.

I think this analysis is missing an important factor. Almost all the words capitalized in Dunlap’s broadside but not in Towne’s newspaper are nouns. The rest are adjectives preceding important nouns. In eighteenth-century English it was still common, though old-fashioned, to capitalize all nouns and noun phrases (while capitalizing and italicizing proper nouns). Dunlap followed that rule of style for his Declaration broadside; Towne chose the more modern style for his newspaper reprint. The differences between the two printings could thus arise from each printer applying a systematic rule to the same text.

Was Dunlap guided by John Adams’s style? I doubt that since Dunlap also published Adams’s Thoughts on Government in 1776, and that pamphlet didn’t capitalize most nouns, as this careful transcript shows. (I also checked images of the pamphlet, but I can’t link to them.) Adams did capitalize many nouns, though irregularly, in the letters leading up to that pamphlet. Thus, I conclude:

• Dunlap didn’t conform to Adams’s capitalization when setting his manuscripts.
• Dunlap didn’t always capitalize all nouns, even in serious publications like Adams’s pamphlet.

Dunlap also didn’t capitalize most nouns in his newspaper, and neither did Towne.

On the other hand, when the Congress issued a broadside on 10 Dec 1776 (about “the Army that now threatens to take Poessession of this City”), Dunlap reached into the capital case again. So it appears that someone important at the Congress in 1776 liked Big Letters for its major announcements.

I haven’t done a systematic survey, but I did see that when the Congress issued its “Address to the Inhabitants of the United States” in May 1778, with Henry Laurens as presiding officer, Dunlap did not use the extra capitals. And John Hancock had gone home.

“I was neither whig nor tory but a Printer.”

Benjamin Towne of the Pennsylvania Evening Post was one of Philadelphia’s most enthusiastic Whig printers from 1775 to late 1777, when the British army seized the city. He was then one of Philadelphia’s most enthusiastic royalist printers. When the Continental authorities returned in the middle of 1778, Towne didn’t flee like the other printers.

That left him with the only printing press in Philadelphia, so he had a monopoly on government business for a while. In fact, the state government paid Towne to reproduce its long list of people who had treacherously cooperated with the British military, including himself. He also got the job of printing some proclamations of the Continental Congress.

In October 1778 the Rev. Dr. John Witherspoon, a delegate from New Jersey (shown here), found Towne at a bookstore. This is how Isaiah Thomas described their meeting in his History of Printing in America:

After some conversation, Towne requested the doctor to furnish him with intelligence and essays for the Evening Post, as he formerly had done. The doctor refused, and told him that it would be very improper for a member of congress to hold intercourse with a man who was proscribed by law; but he added, “if you make your peace with the country first, I will then assist you.”

“How shall I do it, doctor?”

“Why,” answered the doctor, “write and publish a piece acknowledging your fault, professing repentance, and asking forgiveness.”

“But what shall I say?”

The doctor gave some hints; upon which Towne said, “Doctor, you write cxpeditiously and to the purpose; I will thank you to write something forme, and I will publish it.”

“Will you? then I will do it,” replied the doctor. The doctor applied to [the bookseller] for paper and ink, and immediately wrote, “The humble Confession, Recantation and Apology of Benjamin Towne,” etc. It was an excellent production, and humorously ironical; but Towne refused to comply with his promise to publish, because the doctor would not allow him to omit some sentences in it.

Witherspoon’s essay somehow made it into print nonetheless. Written in Towne’s voice, it started by acknowledging that he had printed under the protection of both the American and British governments, and went on to claim that he had printed lies for the latter.

The facts being thus stated, (I will presume to say altogether fully and fairly) I proceed to observe, that I am not only proscribed by the President and supreme executive Council of Pennsylvania, but that several other Persons are for reprobating my paper, and allege that instead of being suffered to print, I ought to be hanged as a Traitor to my Country. On this account I have thought proper to publish the following humble confession, declaration, recantation, and apology, hoping that it will assuage the wrath of my enemies, and in some degree restore me to the favor and indulgence of the Public. In the first place then, I desire it may be observed, that I never was, nor ever pretended to be a man of character, repute or dignity. . . .

I do hereby declare and confess, that when I printed for Congress, and on the side of Liberty, it was not by any means from principle, or a desire that the cause of Liberty should prevail, but purely and simply from the love of gain. I could have made nothing but tar and feathers by printing against them as things then stood. I make this candid acknowledgment not only as a penitent to obtain pardon, but to show that there was more consistency in my conduct than my enemies are willing to allow. They are pleased to charge me with hypocrisy in pretending to be a Whig when I was none. This charge is false; I was neither whig nor tory but a Printer. 

Towne toughed it out in Philadelphia for the rest of the war, but he had trouble finding subscribers for his Evening Post and printed sporadically. In 1783 he tried something novel: printing a new issue of the paper every day. The result was America’s first daily newspaper, but Towne couldn’t keep up the pace past 26 Oct 1784. He went back to job printing and died nine years later, still in Philadelphia.

“A New-year Song, as heretofore!”

After Gen. Sir William Howe took Philadelphia in the fall of 1777, printer Benjamin Towne remained in the city and continued to print the Pennsylvania Evening Post. But he did have to adjust some of his attitudes of the previous year, as his apprentices’ verse for the New Year of 1778 displays:

New Year’s Verses,
Addressed to the KIND CUSTOMERS
of the
PENNSYLVANIA EVENING POST,
By the PRINTER’s LADS who carry about the same.
THURSDAY, January 1, 1778.

TOWNE’s Evening Post!---Good Masters pray,
Permit your Postboy still to pay
His annual Tribute at your Door,
A New-year Song, as heretofore!
Too long—I own it with remorse,
I labor’d, like a jaded Horse,
To fetch and carry loaded Squibs,
Bouncing Crackers, artful Fibs,
While CONGO’s Harness gall’d my Ribs!
Then Safety, Peace, and Freedom fled,
And Truth was fain to hide her Head;
But now, from those vile Shackles free,
Which fetter’d you as well as me,
I’ll tell the Truth, and gladly fly
To contradict each daring Lie;
Throw in my little Mite to bring
Each Wanderer back to bless the KING!
For then, to crown the rising Year,
Sweet smiling Peace shall soon appear,
With Joy and Plenty in the Rear.
This Hope we all may cherish now,
For thus has JOVE commission’d HOWE.

LATE a Council of GODS, by the Mandate of Jove
Was call’d on OLYMPUS to meet;
The THUNDERER spoke—and the MUSE from above
Descended his Speech to repeat.
Ye know, all ye Powers that attend on my Throne,
Your Will to my Pleasure must bow;
I will that those Gifts which you prize as your own,
Shall now be bestow’d on my HOWE.
Astraa, who long since had quitted the Earth,
Presented her Balance and Sword,
A Soul that does honor to Titles and Birth,
Imperial Juno conferr’d;
Fierce Mars gave his Chariot, gay Hermes his Wand.
Alcides his Club and his Bow,
Sweet Peace with her Olive Branch graced his Hand,
And Pallas did Wisdom bestow.
Thus adorn’d with Endowments and Armour divine,
The Hero by JOVE was address’d;
This Balance and Sword to thy Hands we consign,
Let Justice preside in thy Breast.
But temper’d with Mercy let Justice appear,
Majestic, yet mild and serene;
And still in the Heat of your martial Career,
Let the Prospect of Peace close the Scene.
Though Discord your generous Zeal to oppose,
Shall nourish Sedition and Hate,
Till your Friends feel the Horrors of War with your Foes;
Yet Success is ensur’d you by Fate.
Sweet Peace shall revive from the Horrors of War,
Her Empire again be restor’d,
Affection and Duty shall cover each Scar,
And HOWE by the World be ador’d.

Towne’s verse for the previous new year had wished the best for the Continental Congress, Gen. George Washington, and the Continental troops. But in December 1777 the Congress was in York, Washington and his army in Valley Forge. So Towne’s verse referred to the Congress as “Congo’s Harness.”

But then Howe pulled out of Philadelphia, and in July 1778 the Congress returned.

TOMORROW: Benjamin Towne makes his choice.

“Hail now the joyful day!”

It’s a Boston 1775 tradition each New Year’s season to quote one of the verses that printers’ apprentices carried around and distributed at that time of year, soliciting tips.

This year’s verse comes from the shop of the Pennsylvania Evening Post, which Benjamin Towne (c. 1740-1793) launched in January 1775—a most newsworthy year, as it turned out. Philadelphia was the largest and most dynamic city in British North America, so Towne had a lot of competition. His strategy was to publish three times a week instead of just once or twice, and to support the radical Whigs.

The year of 1776 brought for American Whigs the best of times (British forces leaving Boston and Charleston, the Congress declaring independence, new state governments being established) and the worst of times (British forces coming back to New York, driving the Continental troops through New Jersey, and threatening Philadelphia). But the American victory at Trenton took some of the pressure off, so the newspaper boys could feel optimistic.

This is what they came up with for New Year’s 1777.

New-Year’s Verses
Addressed to the CUSTOMERS of
The PENNSYLVANIA EVENING POST,
By the PRINTER’s LADS who carry it.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 1, 1777.

Hail! O America!
Hail now the joyful day!
Exalt your voice,
Shout, George is King no more,
Over this western shore;
Let him his loss deplore,
While we rejoice.

You know, I think this is written to the tune of “God Save the King.” Kind of ironic.

The Latin tag in the next verse was translated as “He who transplanted us hither will support us” by a helpful footnote on the broadside.

Now in thy banner set,
Transtulet sustinet;
God is our King,
Who does in mercy deign,
Over us for to reign,
And our just rights maintain,
His praises sing.

O may he deign to bless,
The great and each Congress,
Of this our land,
With wisdom from on high,
And unanimity,
To save our liberty,
Nobly to stand.

And on the virt’ous head,
Abundant blessings shed,
Of Washington;
Give him to know thy will,
Fill him with martial skill,
His station to fill,
’Till glory’s won.

And may our Gen’rals all,
Officers great and small,
Be Heaven’s care:
Within the hostile field,
Guard them with thine own shield,
While they the sword do wield,
In this great war.

O may our men be spar’d,
If not for death prepar’d;
Lord hear our cry,
Let us behold thy face,
And taste of thy rich grace,
While we this earth do trace,
Before we die.

And to thee th’ Lord of host,
Father, Son and Holy Ghost,
We’ll give all praise,
And ever magnify,
Honor and glorify,
To all eternity,
And never cease.

Of course, in September 1777 the British army whupped the Americans at Brandywine and occupied Philadelphia for that winter.

TOMORROW: What did that mean for Benjamin Towne?