Zenger Trial

Known for, Zenger Trial. Notable work. The New York Weekly Journal. The trial, as imagined by an illustrator in the 1883 book Wall Street in History. John Peter Zenger (October 26, 1697 – July 28, 1746) was a German printer and journalist in. The Trial When Cosby disbarred Zenger's lawyers, James Alexander and William Smith, he did not count on Andrew Hamilton taking their place. Hamilton was one of the best lawyers in Philadelphia.

The Trial of Peter Zenger, edited with an introduction by Vincent Buranelli: a Project Gutenberg eBookThe Project Gutenberg EBook of The Trial of Peter Zenger, by VariousThis eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and mostother parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictionswhatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms ofthe Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll haveto check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.Title: The Trial of Peter ZengerAuthor: VariousEditor: Vincent BuranelliRelease Date: June 3, 2017 EBook #54836Language: EnglishCharacter set encoding: UTF-8. START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRIAL OF PETER ZENGER.Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, MFR and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. XVI.THENew-York Weekly JOURNAL.Containing the freshest Advices, Foreign, and Domestick.MUNDAY February 18, 1733.Mr.

Iii PrefaceIn this book you will find the reasons for the fame of PeterZenger and Andrew Hamilton. You will also find the reasonwhy James Alexander deserves mention as the third memberof a great trio. Zenger was the central figure of a colorfuland influential historical event—his trial for seditious libel.Hamilton was the champion who won him his freedom. Theplace of Alexander in all this is virtually unknown, and yetwithout him Hamilton’s fame would be cut in half, whileZenger would not merit even a footnote in the histories ofAmerica, of democracy, or of journalism.Alexander edited the New York Weekly Journal. Thatsimple fact means that he was the first American editor topractice freedom of the press systematically and coherently,and the first to be justified legally. The defense of Zenger’sperson was a defense of Alexander’s philosophy of journalism.The victory engineered by Hamilton was the result of acourtroom campaign along lines laid down by Alexander.Perhaps it would be too strong to say that the genius behindthe Journal was our greatest editor, but it would behard to name one of equal importance. If we believe, as wedo, that freedom of the press is essential to our civilization,surely we ought to give due recognition to the first Americanto say so and to act effectively.

For this Scottish immigrantof the eighteenth century taught his adopted land the firstlaw of sane journalism: that the news is to be reported onthe basis of factual accuracy, and that censorship by the authoritiesis to be resisted as far as is consistent with nationalsecurity and the interests of society.The introduction to the text of the trial is based on aseries of articles by the author, published in the followingjournals. Iv “Peter Zenger’s Editor,” American Quarterly, VII (1955), 174-81. “Governor Cosby’s Hatchet-Man,” New York History, XXXVII (1956), 26-39. “The Myth of Anna Zenger,” William and Mary Quarterly, XIII (1956), 157-68. “The Meaning of the Zenger Case,” Social Studies, January, 1957.

“Governor Cosby and His Enemies,” New York History, XXXVII (1956), 365-87. “The Architect of Our Free Press,” Social Education, XX (1956), 311-13.For permission to use material from these articles, thanksare due to the respective editors and to the following societies:American Studies Association, New York State HistoricalAssociation, Institute of Early American History andCulture, and National Council for the Social Studies.

Theauthor also wishes to thank Mr. Kaltenborn, withoutwhose Fellowship the research would never have been undertaken,much less published. V Foreword by H. KaltenbornMy desk encyclopedia allots the subject of this book these two briefsentences: “Zenger, John Peter (1697-1749), American journalist, bornGermany. His acquittal in libel trial helped further freedom of pressin America.”That represents a very sober acknowledgment of the fact that theZenger case established highly important precedents and is a landmarkin the history of the free press among the English-speaking peoples ofthe world. With all this it is something of an anomaly that Peter Zengernever learned to write good English.

He was not a newspaper editor, butonly a printer who published the writings of others in an effort to earnan honest living. It was the incidental cause he served, rather than hisprofessional work, that brought him his enduring fame.He began his career as a printer’s apprentice. He worked for WilliamBradford, the only printer in New York. Zenger became Bradford’spartner, but soon established a business of his own, and since Bradfordpublished the weekly newspaper that supported the British governor, itwas only natural that those prominent members of the colony who opposedthe governor should contract with Peter Zenger to print and publisha weekly paper for the opposition. Governor Cosby, whose word was lawin the British colony of New York, was an arbitrary individual.

As apersonal representative of the British king he ran things pretty much ashe pleased. His arbitrary acts helped create an opposition known as thePopular Party.

Zenger’s weekly became the organ for this party. Likeother colonial newspapers of that day, it printed foreign news, literaryessays, so called poetry, and a small amount of advertising. But its mostinteresting contents were the political articles attacking Governor Cosbyand the actions of his administration. All these editorial comments werewritten by prominent members of the opposition party, but they werealways signed with pen names.Zenger’s was the only name associated with the new opposition journal.Governor Cosby knew very well that Zenger was only the printer and hadnothing to do with the paper’s policy. He also knew that James Alexander,a brilliant leader of the political opposition, wrote or edited mostof the articles that were critical of the Cosby administration. But the law,then as now, places responsibility on those who publish a libel—not uponthose who write it.

As a newspaper reporter, I myself once profited by thatdistinction. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle had to defend a one hundredthousand dollar libel suit for an article I had written. The leader of areligious sect that had its headquarters in Brooklyn was selling what itcalled Miracle Wheat. I exposed the one dollar a pound charge for thiswheat as a fraud upon the public.

That gave me the interesting task ofhelping the Eagle’s lawyers prove with the help of agricultural experts thetruth of my printed assertion. For today, as in the days since PeterviZenger’s trial, the truth of the libelous allegations mitigates damages andjustifies the libel.It was not until the trial of Peter Zenger that his extremely able lawyercreated the notable precedent that the truth must be accepted as justificationfor a libel and in mitigation of whatever damages might have beensuffered by the plaintiff. In the Brooklyn Eagle Miracle Wheat case thelibel was clear and the court so instructed the jury, which promptlybrought in a verdict of six cents for the plaintiff.

This justified the Eagleand humiliated the sellers of Miracle Wheat.The Peter Zenger trial established one other notable precedent for libelcases. This was that the jury before which he was tried had the right notonly to pass upon the fact but also the law in the case. The logic and eloquenceof Zenger’s attorney persuaded the jury that it had the right todetermine how and to what extent the letter and spirit of the law couldand should be applied in the Zenger case.It is an interesting fact that the entire preceding history of the freedomof the press among English-speaking peoples played its part in the Zengertrial. The writings of Milton, Locke, Swift, Steele, Addison, and Defoewere all quoted to justify the freedom with which Zenger’s newspapervoiced its criticism of Governor Cosby and the way he governed.This willful executive first attempted to have Zenger indicted by agrand jury, but the jury refused to act. Then he ordered Zenger’s paper tobe burned by the public hangman, and it was duly burned, though not bythe hangman.

Finally the Governor secured the issue of a warrant forZenger’s arrest and the printer was put in jail on a charge of seditiouslibel. Zenger’s journal missed a single issue. Then, thanks to his wife, itappeared every Monday while Zenger was in jail. Zenger’s wife, AnnaCatherine, took over the print shop and saw that the paper was published.She didn’t write the contents any more than her husband, but she nevercomplained that the printer’s family was suffering for others.Nowadays it is a Constitutional right that “Excessive bail shall not berequired,” but in Zenger’s day there was no such rule. His bail was sohigh that neither he nor his friends could meet it.

The fact that he wasput in jail also helped sway public opinion in Zenger’s favor.The record of the Zenger trial as it is developed in this book is one ofthe notable case histories of American jurisprudence. Andrew Hamilton,Zenger’s able attorney, made such a case for his client that it attractedattention not only in the colonies but in England. New York voted himthe freedom of the city.Governor Cosby did not long survive the rebuke he suffered by Zenger’sacquittal. And here is a curious fact worth recalling: Andrew Hamilton,whose notable defense of Peter Zenger has become an imperishable partof the history of our free press, was also the architect of IndependenceHall in Philadelphia.

The Hall still stands and so does the decision in theZenger case, both symbolizing enduring monuments to freedom. The Causes of the Trial I. Peter ZengerOf all the personalities involved in the Zenger case, noneeludes investigation so much as the man who gave his nameto it. There are irritating lacunae in the biography of JohnPeter Zenger, and no artist ever found him worthy of sketchor portrait (at least none has survived), so that we do noteven know his face. But this lack of information is by nomeans crippling to the historian of the period. If we wouldprefer to know more about Peter Zenger, the plain truthis that half a dozen other men were of more consequencethan he in the establishment of a free press in New York.He was neither the editor of his newspaper nor even a principalwriter for it during its great days; his function hardlywent beyond that of the mere printer. He became famousalmost by accident, famous as a symbol rather than as amotivating force.

We can, therefore, “place” him with theless difficulty, and the data to hand are sufficient for that.He was a German immigrant, a native of the RhenishPalatinate, where he was born in 1697. His family broughthim to the New World in 1710, and that same year he wasapprenticed to William Bradford, the only printer then atwork in New York, and one of the top men of his trade inthe Colonies. 9How much of a soldier he was remains doubtful since,although he rose to the rank of general, it was a period inwhich office frequently enough went with bribery, conniving,and influence rather than with ability.

William Cosbywas in a position to resort to all of these because he enjoyedpowerful contacts in England, being a close friend of theDuke of Newcastle, while his wife was a sister of the Earl ofHalifax. These noblemen may both have been instrumentalin furthering his rise in the army. His administrative careerin the Colonies was certainly largely due to Newcastle, whocontrolled the Board of Trade and was able to send outwhom he chose.Cosby’s first governorship took him to the island of Minorca,where his high-handedness and cupidity exasperatedthe Minorcans, and they protested repeatedly to the Boardof Trade.

He committed one crime that London could notoverlook or minimize: while England and Spain were atpeace in 1718 Cosby ruthlessly seized the goods of a Spanishmerchant, ordered them sold at auction, and then manipulatedthe records to cover his tracks. The whole thing was tooflagrant. The Governor was ordered to reimburse his victimand removed from his post in Minorca.Notwithstanding the incident, Cosby was able to wangleother appointments, of which the New York governorshipwas the most important. 19Mr Delancey excused his accepting of the commission at theexpense of his predecessor by saying that the Governor couldnot be diverted from removing Mr Morris, and that if he didnot accept it the Governor was resolved to put Mr Harisonin the office, a man nowise acceptable to anybody. If that hadbeen done it would certainly have been of great advantage toMr Morris, for Mr Harison was of so bad a character, and soodious to the people, that they certainly would have pulledhim from the Bench.Harison finally went too far in his shady deals and ruinedhimself.

William Truesdale, one of the small fry who workedfor him, owed a debt to a persistent creditor, Joseph Weldonof Boston. Somehow Harison got hold of a dunning letterfrom Weldon to Truesdale. Just what he had in mind is notclear—a pathetic lament that the historian has to make sooften in dealing with what passed for ratiocination in thisparticular mind—but he caused a warrant to be sworn outagainst Truesdale in Weldon’s name. If you think he simplyhad his minion arrested without further ado, you do notknow Francis Harison. His behavior is described thus byColden:Mr Harison met Truesdale at an ale house where, pretendingnot to like the beer, he invited Truesdale and his company tomeet him two hours afterwards at another house.

When Truesdalecame to the other house he found the Under-Sheriff, whoimmediately arrested him. Truesdale sends to Mr Harison,as his friend, to help him in his distress.

As soon as Mr Harisoncame, he, in a seeming great surprise, said to Truesdale, “Inthe name of God, what is this? I hear you are arrested for sucha sum”—and blamed him for not informing of it that he mighthave kept him out of the Sheriff’s way.New York’s archvillain must have been very pleased withhimself as his victim was carted off to jail.

Did he whisper,“Honest Iago!” to himself? 20The roguery was there, but as usual there was no intelligenceto back it up and make it work. The intriguer hadcounted on a smooth explanation to fend off the man inwhose name he was practicing on Truesdale.

Instead, JosephWeldon felt outraged when he learned what was going on,rushed down from Boston, swore that he never gave anyoneany authority to act for him, and added that at the time hedid not even know of Harison’s existence.After this scandal there was no place in New York forFrancis Harison. Even his protector in the governor’s mansioncould not save him. A Grand Jury indicted him for usingWeldon’s name, whereupon he fled from the Colony inMay of 1735, made his way to England, and never cameback.

From then on his story is virtually a blank, the lastword on him being that he was down-and-out when he died.However, this melancholy denouement was in the futureand unforeseen when Cosby put Harison in charge of theGazette in 1732. Thersites only clamored in the throng,Loquacious, loud, and turbulent of tongue,And by no shame, by no respect controlled;In scandal busy, in reproaches bold;But chief, he gloried with licentious style,To lash the great, and rulers to revile.These passages epitomize the problem facing the Popularparty. In fighting the Governor there was no hope of successunless he could be met at every critical spot, and one of themost critical was precisely that of journalism. Irregularpamphlets and open letters were of little use against a systematicweekly dose of administration propaganda in theGazette. The passage of time only made the problem moreacute.Naturally we do not have minutes of the discussions thatwent on between the anti-Cosby conspirators, but we do notneed such information to see the rationale of the strategythey worked out. Their behavior is most eloquent on that22score; it systematizes by practical example the disjointednotes, memoranda, and other documents that have comedown to us.First of all, they would do everything they could to sapthe political strength of their hated enemy: they would supportopposing candidates at elections, they would providelegal counsel for those whom he attacked through the courts,they would found a newspaper to bring their side of thecontroversy before the bar of public opinion. Secondly, theywould wage their war on another front, in London, sendingto the Board of Trade a steady barrage of propaganda designedto prove that William Cosby was no more fit to governNew York than he had been to govern Minorca.

Eventuallythey would dispatch an emissary to make the situation clearin personal talks with the authorities. An Opposition NewspaperWith the lines thus drawn up, the first blows were struck onOctober 29, 1733.

On that day was held the election of anassemblyman for Westchester, and the candidate of the Popularparty was Lewis Morris. Governor Cosby, desperatelyanxious to defeat this formidable antagonist, threw everythinghe had to the support of his own man, William Forster.The result was the famous poll on the green of St. Paul’sChurch, Eastchester.The two candidates, arriving with motley arrays of theirfollowers behind them, were like commanding generalsbound for battle. The image is not at all inexact, for Westchesterwas a stronghold of the Delancey-Philipse element ofthe Court party, and both sides were able to count on adisciplined mass of voters. 23The sheriff presiding over the election was, like manyofficials, a creature of the Governor. Cosby evidently hadordered him to make sure, in one way or another, that theresult went against Morris—in other words, to rig the electionif necessary. When it became clear that Morris had amajority of the voters with him, the sheriff intervened andtried to snatch a victory by disfranchising one whole bodyof the population.It had been customary to let Quakers vote without takingthe oath, for by their religion they were forbidden to“swear.” Instead they were allowed to “affirm.” That customgave Cosby’s sheriff a loophole.

He decreed that no one whowould not take the oath should be allowed to cast a ballot,and so he ruled the Friends out of the election, hoping thatthis maneuver would change the result. In fact it did not, foreven without this group of his supporters Morris won a resoundingvictory.The election was momentous beyond the fact that it returnedto the Assembly a veteran of rough-and-tumble politicswho was sure to throw his weight against the Governorwherever he could, and that it hardened the Quakers againstthe regime. It revealed Cosby as completely unscrupulous indealing with his opponents, as a man who, occupying theposition of chief upholder of the law, had no hesitation inplaying fast and loose with it when he thought he could gainsome advantage. Before the election he had been guilty ofmany questionable things, such as the legal attack on VanDam and the removal of Lewis Morris from the SupremeCourt, but these were at least debatable, with something tobe said for him even if he could not be exculpated. Now hisconduct was not debatable. It was plainly unethical, if nottechnically illegal.

27Mr Van Dam is resolved, and by far the greater part of theProvince openly approve his resolution, of not yielding to theGovernor’s demand. He has not as yet answered, nor will theGovernor’s lawyers be able for one while to compel him unlessthey break over all law and persuade the new Judges Delanceyand Philipse into a contradiction of themselves. Which if theydo, the world shall know it from the press.The advent of the Journal did nothing to lessen the bitternessof Cosby’s condemnation of Alexander, for althoughit was known as “Zenger’s paper” (since it bore only theprinter’s name), the Governor was in no doubt about whowas the guiding genius of the enterprise.

On December 6,1734, he writes to the Board of Trade:Mr James Alexander is the person whom I have too muchoccasion to mention. No sooner did Van Dam and the lateChief Justice (the latter especially) begin to treat my administrationwith rudeness and ill-manners than I found Alexanderto be at the head of a scheme to give all imaginable uneasinessto the government by infusing into, and making the worst impressionon, the minds of the people. A press supported byhim and his party began to swarm with the most virulentlibels.Cosby realized further that Alexander was not the onlyone in New York who was playing at the new kind of journalism,and he said of Morris:His open and implacable malice against me has appearedweekly in Zenger’s Journal. This man with the two others Ihave mentioned, Van Dam and Alexander, are the only menfrom whom I am to look for any opposition in the administrationof the government, and they are so implacable in theirmalice that I am to look for all the insolent, false and scandalousaspersions that such bold and profligate wretches caninvent. 28Cosby’s cries of rage and anguish are understandableenough.

From the date of the Journal’s appearance (November5, 1733) until his death more than two years later it constituteditself his most alert censor, critic, and judge. EveryMonday the lash fell across his shoulders, the attacks varyingthrough the gamut from airy satire to thundering condemnation.The opposition writers called him everything from an“idiot” to a “Nero,” and pointedly suggested that his Londonsuperiors should do something to alleviate the affliction theyhad imposed on their Colony.The first issue started the ball rolling with a brilliant andbiting story of the Westchester election and Morris’ victoryin spite of the sheriff’s heavy-handed machinations; and fromthen on there was no letup.

The fundamental idea being toconvict Cosby of violating the rules of his governorship, theJournal never ceased to hammer at this theme. The bestexample of the technique is in the issues of the last two weeksof September, 1734, a continued essay that accuses Cosby ofvoting as a member of the Council during its legislative sessions,of demanding that bills from the Assembly be presentedto him before the Council saw them, and of adjourningthe Assembly in his own name instead of the king’s.All three of these acts violated the rules by which theGovernor was bound, and when the Journal carried the storyto the Board of Trade, Cosby was warned about them. Hecould not, of course, be condemned out of hand on the basisof a newspaper story, but the significant thing is that theBoard should have found the story sufficient basis for mentioningthe subject.Most of the Journal writing is lost irretrievably behind aveil of anonymity, which is not too important since whoever“Cato” and “Philo-Patriae” and “Thomas Standby” mayhave been, they were acting in concert.

But every once in a29while individual personality peeps or glares through thewriting, as in this reply to one argument for the prudenceof obeying the government, no matter what. 33In such a tone did New York’s two newspapers carry ontheir duel, one which concedes nothing to the later age ofyellow journalism in its furious charges and counterchargesof deceit, ignorance, calumny, and slander. The above onsetand riposte stand out because the passage from the Journalsounds like Alexander himself, while Governor Cosby agreedwith the Gazette that it was “libelous” and made it part ofthe formal indictment of Peter Zenger.Both sides went at it hammer and tongs. 37The Journal was burned on schedule, with Harison presiding,but he had to bring in a slave to set the fire, and theywere virtually alone in front of the City Hall as the flamesrose. 42Another charges that Cosby’s candidate in the Westchesterelection, William Forster, was “a known Jacobite,” an astonishinggrievance in this context since James Alexander washimself a Jacobite, a veteran of the rising of 1715.These are mere debaters’ points (at the most charitableestimation), and they prove that the leaders of the Popularparty could be just as unscrupulous as the Governor whenthey put their minds to it.

They did not disdain to useagainst him the weapons that he used against them. Toooften the struggle has been painted in stark tones of blackand white, when it was really a matter of degree, with neitherside having a monopoly of either vice or virtue—which is tosay little more than that we are dealing with the factionalpolitics of real men rather than with the stereotypes of melodrama.Again, some of the Articles are of doubtful validity, aswhen Cosby is accused of destroying a deed given to the Cityof Albany by the Mohawks, and of permitting the French tomap and sound New York harbor on the pretence of tradingthere. The Governor retorted that the deed was unjust tobegin with, and that to have kept it in force would havedriven the Indians into the arms of the French; and thattrade with Louisbourg was legitimate and humanitarian becausethe garrison was close to famine.But if a number of the Articles have a dubious ring, othersdo make fundamental points. They mention the dismissalof Morris from the Supreme Court, the Van Dam lawsuit,and the attempt to rig the Westchester election. 44We have been, while we traced Mr Van Dam through a labyrinthof detestable falsehoods, very often at a loss how to believethat a man of his years could forge so many and sonotorious scandals, but we are to inform your Grace that theresentment, malice and revenge of some of the wickedest menare thrown to his assistance. No government or administrationcan please these restless minds. Nothing will satisfy them butthe power which they joyfully would exercise to the destructionor ruin of their fellow subjects.

We beg Your Lordship tobe assured that we know, and daily are made more sensible of,our happiness under His Excellency’s administration. Morris on the London FrontDuring the year 1734 the quarrel between Governor Cosbyand his enemies went on, and then in December he learnedthat Lewis Morris had sailed for England. Things were becomingmore tense. The two factions had met head-on inanother election contest, that for the Common Council ofNew York City, and again the Governor had suffered a humiliatingdefeat. Smarting with resentment, and goaded bymounting fury, he had promptly turned around and thrownhimself on the one man who was vulnerable: he had jailedPeter Zenger on the charge of “seditious libel.” If the printershould be convicted, that alone would justify Cosby, andcompromise his opponents, in the eyes of the authorities.The leaders of the Zenger faction might join their printerin the city prison.

At best, the opposition press would bemuzzled, in which case the anti-Cosbyites would have to gooutside New York to have their pamphlets printed, whiletheir newspaper must be destroyed.There was no time to lose. The plan to send a personal45representative to London should be implemented, LewisMorris being a satisfactory choice since he was already knownin the British capital. Everything was done as secretly as possible,and Morris embarked clandestinely to prevent theGovernor’s taking any countermeasures.The strategy for him to follow had been worked out inconsultations with his colleagues. We know the generalitiesof the case he was to make against the Cosby administration,and they are of special interest as indicating how the Popularparty thought London should be approached. Here wefind no trivialities such as those in the Articles of Complaint.Morris was to adhere strictly to criticisms that told:At a consultation between James Alexander, William Smith,and Lewis Morris Jun., as to the matters to be entrusted toCol. M—, it was determined that he should exert himself toprocure among other things: The removal of the Governor ifpossible—his own restoration to the Supreme Court—the dissolutionof the then existing Assembly—the removal of FrancisHarison and Daniel Horsmanden from the Council of New York—instructionsto Gov. 48The trial of the printer was the critical moment for allconcerned, the leaders of both sides being as anxious aboutthe outcome as was Peter Zenger himself.

Cosby had doneeverything he could to ensure a verdict in his favor. Thedefense countered by bringing in the leading attorney ofPhiladelphia, perhaps of the colonies, Andrew Hamilton.The common people of the city thronged the galleries as theproceedings began.What happened during that momentous August day is oneof the moving, triumphant pages of American history. Wecan still feel, in reading the text of the trial, the emotionaltremor that vibrated in the courtroom at the clash of twopowerful forces. We can still follow Andrew Hamilton as hestalks his opponents like an implacable duelist with a rapier,pinking now one and now the other as they venture to challengehim. We can understand the hot befuddlement ofChief Justice Delancey and Attorney General Bradley whenthey found their prepared defenses useless against a kind ofattack they never expected; we can understand their moraldisintegration when the verdict went against them, and theyhad to think what to say when they reported to the governor’smansion.

How must they have felt when the crowd begana delirious demonstration to show its delight that PeterZenger was a free man? How must they have felt, a few hourslater, when they heard that Andrew Hamilton was beingtreated like a hero by the magistrates of the city?Governor Cosby had suffered a crushing rebuke. His swordhad turned into a boomerang.

Having confidently looked foran end to the obnoxious newspaper, he found it justified inthe most complete and unanswerable way—by the judgmentof a group of men typical of those he governed. No longerwas there any hope of silencing his critics, or of arguing withany kind of plausibility that they were guilty of seditiouslibel. His defense was shattered on both fronts, for New49York was sure to have a moral for London. The trial heforced with such demanding arrogance undermined him, anda modest German printer became the symbol of his catastrophe—somethingthe great Lewis Morris had been unableto engineer in face-to-face conferences with the Britishauthorities.The verdict seems to have broken Cosby’s will. Already asick man, suffering from pneumonia, he made no attempt torouse himself for a renewal of the battle that had gone onfrom the beginning of his administration. He had nevercollected the salary from Van Dam, he had lost the criticalelections, Alexander was still unpunished, Peter Zenger wasbeyond his reach, and a free press was definitely establishedin New York.

Cosby was defeated, and he knew it.He did strike one last blow at the old enemy who hadstarted the trouble: he suspended Rip Van Dam from theCouncil. Characteristically, the obstinate Dutchman refusedto acknowledge the suspension, and challenged GeorgeClarke, the next ranking member of the Council (and aCosby man), for the executive power in New York.William Cosby was, appropriately enough, the primemover in the quarrel, but this time he was not personallyinvolved, for he died—a discredited man, but still Governorof New York—on March 10, 1736. Andrew HamiltonThe lawyer who won the acquittal for Peter Zenger was, likehis friend James Alexander, a Scot. Fifa manager 13 скачать. The year of AndrewHamilton’s birth is a matter of some debate, an old storyholding that he was in his eighties when he appeared in theNew York courtroom, while later evidence makes him around65 at that time. His life holds other mysteries. For one thing,50we do not know why he left Scotland. It has been said thathe was forced to flee after fighting a duel; again, the motivehas been called political, which prompts the surmise that hewas implicated in the 1715 Jacobite rising—a pleasingtheory in that it allows us to imagine him and Alexandertogether on the same Scottish battlefield with no presentimentthat their place in history lay twenty years ahead andthree thousand miles away.

We have too little evidence aboutthis phase of Hamilton’s life to speak authoritatively about it.There is even some doubt that he belonged to the Hamiltonclan. When he arrived in America he went by the nameof Trent. However, trouble back home would account forthe pseudonym, and before long he reverted to Hamilton.Rivaling Alexander in the versatility of his talents, he roseto power as soon as opportunity beckoned.

He married anaffluent widow, founded a great landed estate in Maryland(“Henberry,” near Chestertown), went back to England tostudy law as a member of Gray’s Inn, and then enteredColonial politics to begin an illustrious career crowned byhis appointment to the Council and his election to the Assemblyof Pennsylvania.From then on his name appears prominently in Pennsylvaniabusiness. He handled legal cases for the Penn familyand helped draw up addresses to the crown. He gained areputation for opposing arbitrary acts by the Governor, especiallywith reference to the courts, which put him right athome when he entered the Zenger trial.Hamilton’s commanding personality had no little sharein winning an acquittal for Peter Zenger.

Knowing that ChiefJustice Delancey would instruct the jury to leave the verdictto the court, Hamilton had to maneuver them in such a wayas to make them see that they ought to ignore the instruction;and that required not only basic legal argumentation, anassured manipulation of both fact and logic, but also his own51domination of the proceedings. His success was due to hiscourtroom presence added to his maintenance of the initiativefrom beginning to end. He could not afford to falter, nordid he.By comparison, James Delancey looked like a tyro, whichindeed he was—a young man, just 32, who moreover hadgained his office under dubious circumstances, facing onewhom he knew by reputation to be the old master of theircommon profession. Reading between the lines of the trialwe are compelled to infer that Delancey lost control partlybecause of his own inadequacy, and partly because his hostilitytoward Hamilton was tempered by a deferential respectdue to superior knowledge, experience, ability, and prestige.It is just as easy to see how the spectacle of the Hamilton-Delanceyduel swayed the jury, prompting them to act onthe advice of the defense attorney rather than on the instructionof the chief justice.Aside from this historic victory, Hamilton is memorableas the architect of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Whenthe Pennsylvania Assembly decided that it needed a newbuilding, Hamilton was named as one of the Commission tolook into the problem. He submitted a plan for site andstructure, had it approved by the legislators, and then supervisedthe work.

The result was the State House in whichthe Assembly met for the first time in 1736. It still stands,one of the most hallowed buildings in America; now it isknown from its place in the Revolution as IndependenceHall.The Zenger verdict and Independence Hall—how manymen in the history of America have two comparable monumentsto their memory? Andrew Hamilton had done wellthe two major tasks entrusted to him when he died onAugust 4, 1741, exactly six years to the day after the trial ofPeter Zenger. The Meaning of the TrialThe trial of John Peter Zenger was one of the spectacularevents of American history, involving as it did powerful personalities,factional intrigue, a newspaper war, and a splendidcourtroom scene in which low chicanery mingled with highrhetoric. It boasted a shining hero and a glowering villain.It passed through the dramatic sequence of conflict, climax,and denouement. It had a happy ending.Offhand you might think that the Zenger case could benothing more than that—a scintillating drama with a story-bookfinish, a tale worth telling without sequel or epilogue.Yet it was one of the most significant things that ever happenedon this side of the Atlantic.

It was a center fromwhich forces—legal, political, social, constitutional—radiatedthroughout America, and from one generation to anotherdown to our own time.The historian and the dramatist may rejoice at the eventas such, but the real importance of that trial of August 4,1735, lies in what came out of it. When Peter Zenger returnedto his home instead of to his prison cell, that veryfact made him forever a focal point in the development andphilosophy of American democracy.

The implications forthe future were more fundamental, varied, and far-reachingthan any of the men concerned could have dreamed. It is theimplications that lift the Zenger case out of the class of ordinarypolitical prosecutions and give it a transcendentmeaning. 53The trial was the first, and the most important, step towardfreedom of the press in America. Peter Zenger was accusedof seditious libel simply because his press had turned out,and was still turning out as he stood in the dock, a newspaperwith the impudence to criticize the Governor and his administration.The New York Weekly Journal was an astonishingspectacle in the Colonies—a periodical that preached freedomof the press as a fundamental right, and practiced itsdoctrine by reporting the news as it saw fit.Other newspapers might clear their material with the authorities,or at least hedge in saying anything that couldcause unpleasant repercussions. The Journal displayed nosuch self-restraint. It dwelt on the Governor’s misdemeanors,alleged his incompetence, laughed at his mistakes, spotlightedhis attempts to cover up his shady dealings, and more thansuggested that he should be removed from office.The Journal overtly an.

Zenger Trial

The Zenger Trial is important for several reasons. It

established a political and historical precedent that printers were

not to be accused of libel by governmental officials, especially

governors of the colonies, simply for political disagreements. The

trial was also an example of how arbitrary government might ignore

the liberties and rights of the citizens if left unchecked. The

case also was used as an example of the need for an independent

judicial branch which served for good behavior, not at the pleasure

of the governor or executive, during the writing of the

Constitution. The Bill of Rights and the protection of the freedom

of the press can also be traced to the trial. It also was used in

arguing for the need of a grand jury so that the government would

be prevented from simply using the courts to trying enemies of the

administration in power. The Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments to

the Constitution are also examples of the importance of the Zenger

Trial. For more information, see related links below.