It is natural to attribute great national deeds to a handful of Great Men. Jefferson the Author of the Declaration of Independence. Lincoln, who won the Civil War and freed the slaves. Washington, the Indispensable Man. But every leader, no matter how great his accomplishments, must work from a foundation of individual acts done by others. Eisenhower, speaking to Walter Cronkite 20 years after D-Day, caught this perfectly, recalling “little individual acts of heroism, leadership coming to its very acme.”
So, as we near the 250th anniversary of our “Origin Story,” I want to go back more than four decades before that to a “little individual act of heroism” and the story of John Peter Zenger.
Zenger was German born, coming to the American colonies when he was about 13, and bound for eight years to an apprenticeship with the printer, William Bradford, considered New York’s first professional printer. By 1725, Bradford was publishing the New-York Gazette, the first (and for a while the only) newspaper in the Province. Zenger, having fulfilled his bond, acted as production manager and junior partner of Bradford. In 1726, Zenger went out on his own and began publishing books and pamphlets. Bradford maintained his preeminent position, but the market had room for two printers, and Zenger became a modest success.
At this time, Colonial New York was controlled from afar by Britain: it was the British who made the laws, and the British Crown that appointed Royal Governors without much, if any local consultation. The Colonists were irritated by British dominance, but not sufficiently riled to do much more than grumble about it. Bradford’s paper, reflecting commercial reality, was generally supportive of the Governors, and they, in turn, assigned him printing contracts. In 1731, Governor John Montgomerie passed away. His replacement, William Cosby, already had a bad reputation as an exploitative and domineering Governor elsewhere. He reaffirmed it by taking 13 months to get to New York, and, upon his arrival, by demanding, and then suing the acting Governor, Rip Van Dam for half of Van Dam’s salary.
One would think Cosby’s chances of winning that lawsuit would have been remote, but one would be wrong. This was a different world of law, one of rule by fiat. The Governor had broad powers, which Cosby used liberally, and, in 1733, he won his case, over a written dissent from New York’s Chief Judge, Lewis Morris.
That wasn’t enough for Cosby. Angered by Morris’s apparent apostasy, he struck back by removing him from office altogether. Morris, however, had his own resources. First he ran for, and won the Eastchester seat in the Province’s Assembly. Then, together with Van Dam and attorneys James Alexander and William Smith, he set up the first truly independent newspaper in New York, the New-York Weekly Journal. To print it, they hired John Peter Zenger.