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{{Infobox newspaper
The '''Philadelphia Aurora''' was a triweekly [[newspaper]] published in [[Philadelphia]] from 1794 to 1824. The paper was founded by [[Benjamin Franklin Bache (journalist)|Benjamin Franklin Bache]], who served as editor until his death in 1798. It is sometimes referred to as the Aurora General Advertiser.<ref> {{cite web | url = http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026172/ | title = About this Newspaper: The Philadelphia Aurora. | accessdate = 2010-05-30 | work = Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers | publisher = The Library of Congress | quote = Title: Bache's Philadelphia aurora. : (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1797-1800}}</ref><ref>Richard N. Rosenfeld's, AMERICAN AURORA (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997) presents a history of this newspaper.</ref>
| name =
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| logo_border = yes
| logo_alt =
| image =
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| image_alt =
| caption =
| motto =
| type = [[Daily newspaper]]
| format =
| founder = [[Benjamin Franklin Bache]]
| editor = [[William Duane (journalist)|William Duane]] (1798–1822)
| foundation = {{start date|1790|10|1}} (as ''General Advertiser, and Political, Commercial, Agricultural and Literary Journal'')
| political = Radical republicanism
| language = English
| ceased publication = {{end date|1824}}
| headquarters =
| publishing_city = {{plainlist|
* Philadelphia (1794–1800)
* Washington (1800–1802)
* Philadelphia (1802–1824)}}
| publishing_country = United States
| sister newspapers =
| ISSN =
| eISSN =
| oclc = 88155826
| RNI =
}}


The '''''Philadelphia Aurora''''' (originally the '''''Aurora General Advertiser''''') was a newspaper, published six days a week in [[Philadelphia]] from 1794 to 1824. The paper was founded by [[Benjamin Franklin Bache]], and was continued as a tri-weekly, after his death from yellow fever in September 1798, as a leading organ of [[Democratic-Republican Party|radical republicanism]] by the Irish-American journalist [[William Duane (journalist)|William Duane]].<ref name="LOC">{{cite web | title = About this Newspaper: The Philadelphia Aurora. | url = http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026172/ | access-date = 2010-05-30 | work = Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers | publisher = The Library of Congress | quote = Title: Bache's Philadelphia aurora. : (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1797-1800}}</ref><ref name="Rosenfeld">{{cite book |last1=Rosenfeld |first1=Richard N |last2=Duane |first2=William |title=American Aurora : a Democratic-Republican returns : the suppressed history of our nation's beginnings and the heroic newspaper that tried to report it |publisher=[[St. Martin's Press|St. Martin's Griffin]] |location=New York, NY |year=1998 |isbn=9780312194376 |oclc=40942824}} presents a history of this newspaper.</ref>
The Aurora's articles generally denounced Federalists, including vitriolic attacks on the presidential administrations of Washington and Adams.

==History==
The paper was started on October 1, 1790, as the ''General Advertiser, and Political, Commercial, Agricultural and Literary Journal'' by Bache. His grandfather, [[Benjamin Franklin]], had died earlier that year and Bache had inherited all his printing equipment and many of his books. By 1791, the name had been contracted to ''General Advertiser''. In 1794, it was renamed the ''Aurora and General Advertiser''.

Bache had died while awaiting trial on charges of seditious libel against President [[John Adams]] and his [[Federalist Party|Federalist]] administration as result of his attempt to justify the French position in the [[XYZ Affair]].<ref>{{cite journal |last=Clark |first=Allan C. |date=1906 |title=William Duane |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40066936 |journal=Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C. |volume=9 |pages=(14–62) 22 |jstor=40066936 |issn=0897-9049}}</ref> His widow, [[Margaret Hartman Markoe Bache]], relied on the paper's editor, William Duane, to continue publication. They were later to marry.<ref name="Weisberger22">{{cite book |last=Weisberger |first=Bernard A. |url=https://archive.org/details/americaafirejeff00weis_0 |title=America Afire: Jefferson, Adams, and the Revolutionary Election of 1800 |date=2000 |publisher=William Morrow |isbn=9780380977635 |page=[https://archive.org/details/americaafirejeff00weis_0/page/218 218] |url-access=registration}}</ref>

The Federalists—decried by Duane as "ardent eulogists of privileged orders . . . [and] of a British form of government"<ref name=":53">Duane, William (1797), ''Letter to George Washington President of the United States'', Baltimore: Printed for George Keating’s Bookstore. Cited MacGiollabhui (2019), p.113.</ref>—had triumphed with the succession of [[John Adams]] as president in 1797, but did not succeed in their efforts to close down the paper. In February 1799, juries rejected attempts to prosecute Duane for sedition following an incident, reported by the Federalists as a "[[Society of United Irishmen|United Irish]] riot", in which he had been accosted while posting petitions against the [[Alien and Sedition Acts]].<ref name=":82">{{cite book |last=MacGiollabhui |first=Muiris |url=https://escholarship.org/uc/item/75x28210 |title=Sons of Exile: The United Irishmen in Transnational Perspective 1791-1827 |publisher=UC Santa Cruz (Thesis) |year=2019 |pages=107–111}}</ref> Duane was again charged, for seditious libel, in response to articles published in the ''Aurora'' intimating that [[Kingdom of Great Britain|Great Britain]] had used intrigue to exert its influence on the United States. But able to produce a letter that John Adams himself had written a few years earlier implying the same in respect of the appointment of [[Thomas Pinckney]] as the United States' minister to London, Duane avoided prosecution.<ref>Smith, James Morton (1956), ''Freedom's Fetters'', Ithaca, NY: [[Cornell University Press]], p. 287.</ref> In May 1799'','' Duane was severely beaten in his home by army officers demanding to know the source for an article detailing abuses in the repression of [[Fries's Rebellion|Fries’ Rebellion]] in western [[Pennsylvania]].<ref>Clark (1906), pp. 26-27.</ref><ref name=":93">{{cite web |title=Those "Wild Irishmen" and the Alien and Sedition Acts |url=http://www.mathewcarey.info/life-legacy/carey-the-nationalist-1796-1819/those-wild-irishmen-and-the-alien-and-sedition-acts/ |access-date=2023-01-02 |website=Mathew Carey |language=en-US}}</ref>

In 1800, the ''Aurora'' played a singular role in defeating efforts in the Federalist-controlled Congress to, in effect, steal the presidency from Adams's challenger, [[Thomas Jefferson]]. It published details of the Ross Bill which would have established a closed-door Grand Committee, chaired by the [[Chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States|Chief Justice of the Supreme Court]], an Adams appointee, with powers to disqualify [[United States Electoral College|College electors]].<ref>Weisberger (2000), p. 235.</ref> Facing charges of breaching Senate privileges and of contempt, Duane went into hiding for several weeks until the Federalist-controlled Congress adjourned.<ref>{{cite web |title=U.S. Senate: Senate Holds Editor in Contempt |url=https://www.senate.gov/about/origins-foundations/parties-leadership/duane-republican-editor-contempt.htm |access-date=2023-01-05 |website=www.senate.gov}}</ref> Jefferson called the Aurora "our comfort in the gloomiest days", and John Adams named Duane as one of the three or four men most responsible for his defeat.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Phillips |first=Kim T. |date=1977 |title=William Duane, Philadelphia's Democratic Republicans, and the Origins of Modern Politics |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20091178 |journal=The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography |volume=101 |issue=3 |pages=(365–387) 368 |jstor=20091178 |issn=0031-4587}}</ref>

In anticipation of Jefferson's victory, Duane had moved the paper to Washington, the new federal capital, in 1800, and renamed it ''Aurora, for the Country''.<ref>Pratt, John (1971), [http://npshistory.com/publications/inde/hsr-duane-home-office.pdf Independence National Historical Park: The Home and Office of William Duane (Publisher of the Aurora) 316 Market Street, Philadelphia, Historic Structure Report]. Washington D.C.: Office of History and Historic Architecture Eastern Service Sector, United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service, pp. 29-30.</ref> The paper did win new prominence (for a period appearing as an earlyday [[Congressional Record]]),<ref name=":12">Pratt (1971), p. 30.</ref> but Duane did not receive the patronage in printing he had expected from the new administration.<ref name="HSP22">{{cite web |last=Majewicz |first=Cary |title=William Duane (1760-1835) |url=https://hsp.org/sites/default/files/legacy_files/migrated/findingaid3114duane.pdf |access-date=May 23, 2021 |website=www.hsp.org |publisher=The Historical Society of Pennsylvania}}</ref> After two years, he returned with the paper to Philadelphia.<ref name=":12" />

Back in Pennsylvania, the ''Aurora'' promoted judicial and constitutional reforms intended to hold state judges and state senators to greater popular account. As a result, in the gubernatorial election of 1805 it help split the Jeffersonian coalition in the state: previously defeated Federalists ("Quids") coalesced with "Constitutional Republicans" to secure the re-election of [[Thomas McKean]], a lawyer who had rejected the ''Aurora''<nowiki/>'s program.<ref>Phillips (1977), pp. 381-382, 385-386.</ref><ref>Bushey (1938), pp. 153-156.</ref> When his successor from 1808, [[Simon Snyder]], whom the ''Aurora'' had supported, also failed to deliver on reform, a bitter, long lasting feud, ensued, This included a print war with Duane's former associate in the [[London Corresponding Society]], [[John Binns (journalist)|John Binns]], a trusted advisor to Snyder and, from 1807, editor in Philadelphia of the ''Democratic Press.''<ref name=":112">{{cite web |last=Quinn |first=James |date=2009 |title=Binns, John {{!}} Dictionary of Irish Biography |url=https://www.dib.ie/biography/binns-john-a0673 |access-date=2023-01-03 |website=www.dib.ie}}</ref> The conflict did much to discredit radical republicanism and to embolden [[Nativism in United States politics|nativist]] protests against "foreign extremists".<ref>{{cite book |last=Wilson |first=David A. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=u7lcDwAAQBAJ |title=United Irishmen, United States: Immigrant Radicals in the Early Republic |date=2011 |publisher=Cornell University Press |isbn=978-1-5017-1159-6 |pages=73–74}}</ref> The influence and readership of the ''Aurora'' declined.<ref name="Rosenfeld2">{{cite book |last=Rosenfeld |first=Richard N |title=American Aurora : a Democratic-Republican returns : the suppressed history of our nation's beginnings and the heroic newspaper that tried to report it |author2=William Duane |publisher=[[St. Martin's Press|St. Martin's Griffin]] |year=1998 |isbn=9780312194376 |location=New York, NY |oclc=40942824}} presents a history of this newspaper.</ref> In 1822, Duane "dropped his editorial pen",<ref>Clark (1906), p. 41.</ref> and in 1824 the paper ceased publication.<ref>{{cite news |last=Humanities |first=National Endowment for the |title=Aurora general advertiser. [volume] |url=https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026161/ |access-date=2023-01-01 |issn=2574-8475}}</ref>


==Further reading==
==Further reading==
*{{cite book|last1=Bache|first1=Benjamin Franklin|authorlink1=Benjamin Franklin Bache|first2=William |last2=Duane|title=Truth will out! : the foul charges of the Tories against the editor of the Aurora, repelled by positive proof and plain truth, and his base calumniators put to shame.|url=http://digital.library.pitt.edu/cgi-bin/t/text/text-idx?c=darltext;view=toc;idno=31735054847813|accessdate=2013-03-12|date=1798-06-19|publisher=Philadelphia Aurora|location=Philadelphia, PA, USA|id={{OCLC|156194798|10987100|22050416}}}}
*{{cite book|last1=Bache|first1=Benjamin Franklin|author-link1=Benjamin Franklin Bache (journalist)|first2=William |last2=Duane|title=Truth will out!: the foul charges of the Tories against the editor of the ''Aurora'', repelled by positive proof and plain truth, and his base calumniators put to shame.|url=http://digital.library.pitt.edu/cgi-bin/t/text/text-idx?c=darltext;view=toc;idno=31735054847813|access-date=2013-03-12|date=1798-06-19|publisher=Philadelphia Aurora|location=Philadelphia, PA |id={{OCLC|156194798|10987100|22050416}}}}
*{{cite book|title=Philadelphia Aurora|publisher=Benjamin Franklin Bache|location=Philadelphia, PA, USA|oclc=10313125}}
*{{cite book|title=Philadelphia Aurora|publisher=Benjamin Franklin Bache|location=Philadelphia, PA |oclc=10313125}}
*{{cite book|title=Philadelphia Aurora|publisher=William Duane|location=Philadelphia, PA, USA|oclc=10312981}}
*{{cite book|title=Philadelphia Aurora|publisher=William Duane|location=Philadelphia, PA |oclc=10312981}}
*{{cite book|last=Tagg|first=James|title=Benjamin Franklin Bache and the Philadelphia Aurora|accessdate=2013-03-08|origyear=1973 (thesis)|year=1991|publisher=[[University of Pennsylvania Press]]|location=Philadelphia, PA, USA|isbn= 9780812282559|id={{OCLC|632090888|645801285|23141064}}}}
*{{cite book|last=Tagg|first=James|title=Benjamin Franklin Bache and the Philadelphia Aurora|origyear=1973 (thesis)|year=1991|publisher=[[University of Pennsylvania Press]]|location=Philadelphia, PA |isbn= 9780812282559|id={{OCLC|632090888|645801285|23141064}}}}


==References==
==References==
<references/>
<references/>
{{pennsylvania-newspaper-stub}}


==External links==
⚫
[[Category:Newspapers published in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania]]
*[https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=U073gGq-K-4C Archives at Google News] (1792–94, 1796–1800, 1807, 1810) (incomplete coverage)
⚫
[[Category:Publications established in 1797]]

⚫
[[Category:Defunct newspapers of Pennsylvania]]
{{Authority control}}

⚫
[[Category:Publications established in 1794]]
⚫
[[Category:Defunct newspapers of Philadelphia]]
[[Category:Publications disestablished in 1824]]
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[[Category:1794 establishments in Pennsylvania]]
[[Category:1824 disestablishments in Pennsylvania]]

Latest revision as of 15:08, 6 July 2024

TypeDaily newspaper
Founder(s)Benjamin Franklin Bache
EditorWilliam Duane (1798–1822)
FoundedOctober 1, 1790 (1790-10-01) (as General Advertiser, and Political, Commercial, Agricultural and Literary Journal)
Political alignmentRadical republicanism
LanguageEnglish
Ceased publication1824 (1824)
City
  • Philadelphia (1794–1800)
  • Washington (1800–1802)
  • Philadelphia (1802–1824)
CountryUnited States
OCLC number88155826

The Philadelphia Aurora (originally the Aurora General Advertiser) was a newspaper, published six days a week in Philadelphia from 1794 to 1824. The paper was founded by Benjamin Franklin Bache, and was continued as a tri-weekly, after his death from yellow fever in September 1798, as a leading organ of radical republicanism by the Irish-American journalist William Duane.[1][2]

History

[edit]

The paper was started on October 1, 1790, as the General Advertiser, and Political, Commercial, Agricultural and Literary Journal by Bache. His grandfather, Benjamin Franklin, had died earlier that year and Bache had inherited all his printing equipment and many of his books. By 1791, the name had been contracted to General Advertiser. In 1794, it was renamed the Aurora and General Advertiser.

Bache had died while awaiting trial on charges of seditious libel against President John Adams and his Federalist administration as result of his attempt to justify the French position in the XYZ Affair.[3] His widow, Margaret Hartman Markoe Bache, relied on the paper's editor, William Duane, to continue publication. They were later to marry.[4]

The Federalists—decried by Duane as "ardent eulogists of privileged orders . . . [and] of a British form of government"[5]—had triumphed with the succession of John Adams as president in 1797, but did not succeed in their efforts to close down the paper. In February 1799, juries rejected attempts to prosecute Duane for sedition following an incident, reported by the Federalists as a "United Irish riot", in which he had been accosted while posting petitions against the Alien and Sedition Acts.[6] Duane was again charged, for seditious libel, in response to articles published in the Aurora intimating that Great Britain had used intrigue to exert its influence on the United States. But able to produce a letter that John Adams himself had written a few years earlier implying the same in respect of the appointment of Thomas Pinckney as the United States' minister to London, Duane avoided prosecution.[7] In May 1799, Duane was severely beaten in his home by army officers demanding to know the source for an article detailing abuses in the repression of Fries’ Rebellion in western Pennsylvania.[8][9]

In 1800, the Aurora played a singular role in defeating efforts in the Federalist-controlled Congress to, in effect, steal the presidency from Adams's challenger, Thomas Jefferson. It published details of the Ross Bill which would have established a closed-door Grand Committee, chaired by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, an Adams appointee, with powers to disqualify College electors.[10] Facing charges of breaching Senate privileges and of contempt, Duane went into hiding for several weeks until the Federalist-controlled Congress adjourned.[11] Jefferson called the Aurora "our comfort in the gloomiest days", and John Adams named Duane as one of the three or four men most responsible for his defeat.[12]

In anticipation of Jefferson's victory, Duane had moved the paper to Washington, the new federal capital, in 1800, and renamed it Aurora, for the Country.[13] The paper did win new prominence (for a period appearing as an earlyday Congressional Record),[14] but Duane did not receive the patronage in printing he had expected from the new administration.[15] After two years, he returned with the paper to Philadelphia.[14]

Back in Pennsylvania, the Aurora promoted judicial and constitutional reforms intended to hold state judges and state senators to greater popular account. As a result, in the gubernatorial election of 1805 it help split the Jeffersonian coalition in the state: previously defeated Federalists ("Quids") coalesced with "Constitutional Republicans" to secure the re-election of Thomas McKean, a lawyer who had rejected the Aurora's program.[16][17] When his successor from 1808, Simon Snyder, whom the Aurora had supported, also failed to deliver on reform, a bitter, long lasting feud, ensued, This included a print war with Duane's former associate in the London Corresponding Society, John Binns, a trusted advisor to Snyder and, from 1807, editor in Philadelphia of the Democratic Press.[18] The conflict did much to discredit radical republicanism and to embolden nativist protests against "foreign extremists".[19] The influence and readership of the Aurora declined.[20] In 1822, Duane "dropped his editorial pen",[21] and in 1824 the paper ceased publication.[22]

Further reading

[edit]
  • Bache, Benjamin Franklin; Duane, William (1798-06-19). Truth will out!: the foul charges of the Tories against the editor of the Aurora, repelled by positive proof and plain truth, and his base calumniators put to shame. Philadelphia, PA: Philadelphia Aurora. OCLC 156194798, 10987100, 22050416. Retrieved 2013-03-12.
  • Philadelphia Aurora. Philadelphia, PA: Benjamin Franklin Bache. OCLC 10313125.
  • Philadelphia Aurora. Philadelphia, PA: William Duane. OCLC 10312981.
  • Tagg, James (1991) [1973 (thesis)]. Benjamin Franklin Bache and the Philadelphia Aurora. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 9780812282559. OCLC 632090888, 645801285, 23141064.

References

[edit]
  1. ^ "About this Newspaper: The Philadelphia Aurora". Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. The Library of Congress. Retrieved 2010-05-30. Title: Bache's Philadelphia aurora. : (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1797-1800
  2. ^ Rosenfeld, Richard N; Duane, William (1998). American Aurora : a Democratic-Republican returns : the suppressed history of our nation's beginnings and the heroic newspaper that tried to report it. New York, NY: St. Martin's Griffin. ISBN 9780312194376. OCLC 40942824. presents a history of this newspaper.
  3. ^ Clark, Allan C. (1906). "William Duane". Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C. 9: (14–62) 22. ISSN 0897-9049. JSTOR 40066936.
  4. ^ Weisberger, Bernard A. (2000). America Afire: Jefferson, Adams, and the Revolutionary Election of 1800. William Morrow. p. 218. ISBN 9780380977635.
  5. ^ Duane, William (1797), Letter to George Washington President of the United States, Baltimore: Printed for George Keating’s Bookstore. Cited MacGiollabhui (2019), p.113.
  6. ^ MacGiollabhui, Muiris (2019). Sons of Exile: The United Irishmen in Transnational Perspective 1791-1827. UC Santa Cruz (Thesis). pp. 107–111.
  7. ^ Smith, James Morton (1956), Freedom's Fetters, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, p. 287.
  8. ^ Clark (1906), pp. 26-27.
  9. ^ "Those "Wild Irishmen" and the Alien and Sedition Acts". Mathew Carey. Retrieved 2023-01-02.
  10. ^ Weisberger (2000), p. 235.
  11. ^ "U.S. Senate: Senate Holds Editor in Contempt". www.senate.gov. Retrieved 2023-01-05.
  12. ^ Phillips, Kim T. (1977). "William Duane, Philadelphia's Democratic Republicans, and the Origins of Modern Politics". The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. 101 (3): (365–387) 368. ISSN 0031-4587. JSTOR 20091178.
  13. ^ Pratt, John (1971), Independence National Historical Park: The Home and Office of William Duane (Publisher of the Aurora) 316 Market Street, Philadelphia, Historic Structure Report. Washington D.C.: Office of History and Historic Architecture Eastern Service Sector, United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service, pp. 29-30.
  14. ^ a b Pratt (1971), p. 30.
  15. ^ Majewicz, Cary. "William Duane (1760-1835)" (PDF). www.hsp.org. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Retrieved May 23, 2021.
  16. ^ Phillips (1977), pp. 381-382, 385-386.
  17. ^ Bushey (1938), pp. 153-156.
  18. ^ Quinn, James (2009). "Binns, John | Dictionary of Irish Biography". www.dib.ie. Retrieved 2023-01-03.
  19. ^ Wilson, David A. (2011). United Irishmen, United States: Immigrant Radicals in the Early Republic. Cornell University Press. pp. 73–74. ISBN 978-1-5017-1159-6.
  20. ^ Rosenfeld, Richard N; William Duane (1998). American Aurora : a Democratic-Republican returns : the suppressed history of our nation's beginnings and the heroic newspaper that tried to report it. New York, NY: St. Martin's Griffin. ISBN 9780312194376. OCLC 40942824. presents a history of this newspaper.
  21. ^ Clark (1906), p. 41.
  22. ^ Humanities, National Endowment for the. "Aurora general advertiser. [volume]". ISSN 2574-8475. Retrieved 2023-01-01.
[edit]
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