Cohen, Hennig. The South Carolina Gazette, 1732-1775. Charleston: University of SC, 1953.
Print culture in Colonial South Carolina, as with many of the colonies, reflected the state of the region. During the seventeenth century England prohibited the publication of newspapers to prevent ideas of self-sufficiency in the colony. So, printers were mainly producing books, religious tracts, and government documents, though the first American newspaper was printed illegally in 1690. From the time that printing presses were brought over from Europe, they had an important role in society for the American colonists because it helps them re-create a sense of English life. The press provided a sense of stability for information as it could print something that was then an unchangeable piece with connections to authors, thinkers, and other people. Colonists were consuming the books, which were often reprints of British texts and tracts from their printers, and so were familiar with contemporary thinking. However, such information and news traveled very slowly. Months would pass in transporting books and news from England or from colony to colony.
The ban of newspaper printing was not just a hindrance on the spread of news, but also on literature. While books were available, secular literature was not the topic of choice. Most people had little knowledge of secular writing because religious books and tracts were so plentiful. Printers had to find a way to provide something different in newspapers than what people already had access too. The first clear choice was to print all of the important government speeches—a choice made for the printers by the government itself. Criticism of the political officials was not an option due to censorship, and neither was religious instruction since the people already got a lot of this kind of print. The profusion of religious text would have made a religious newspaper undesirable and commercially unviable. As a result, printers turned to essay writing and even poetry modeled after English styles. Soon printers began to see the opportunity for satire, a form that was particularly popular for readers. Even with these options for printing, they were sometimes short on material come press time so printers would reprint items from their own collections of books. With the advent of newspapers, many people gained new access to secular literature. The critic Elizabeth Cook goes so far as to say that “Newspapers were the centers of all the literary influences in the colonies before 1740” (6).
The introduction of legal newspapers in the colonies led to the better–but not faster–spread of current information. They would print important events from the colonies and England in a manner that was easily accessible by a subscription fee to colonists. These gazettes began many of the newspaper printing practices that are still used today. The two column folded newspapers set a precedent of form for modern newspapers. There methods for fact checking also created a legacy. These gazettes were ordered based on the progress of printing. That meant that editorials and letters are at the front since they can by typeset early and news is in the inside fold since it was the last bit to go through the press. Newspapers were also a place for local advertisements, which were often ads for sales. For South Carolina, the most common advertisements were for the sale of slaves. Since printers typically charged for a letter or advertisement to get printed, these inclusions subsidized the newspaper–an example of how the slave economy was implicated in and buttressed the broader economics of Colonial Carolina, including early print culture.
In printing articles, printers generally accepted anything they could, and as some topics were points of debate they tried to print both sides of the argument. Although they may have had altruistic ideals in mind, the more likely case is that they needed to print all perspectives in order to maintain their subscribers. As a result, many of the pieces that appeared in newspapers were followed by responses. This pattern applies to letters and poems as well as essays.
The industry of printing in America was not without its difficulties. Printers were known as lower-class workers and were unlikely to amass wealth. Benjamin Franklin, for example, was barred from marrying when the girl’s family learned about his prospects in society as a printer. Colonial printers used essentially the same press that Gutenberg had invented over a century earlier, which used lead pieces set in a frame. The wearing out of types, the price of materials, and the production of ink inhibited the business from being lucrative. Newspapers particularly struggled as many were always in need of more paper, which at the time was cloth. Printers had to be jacks-of-all-trades to keep their presses running. Colonial printers could not afford to have division of labor so they served multiple roles. Beginning as an apprentice, a young printer would learn the mechanics of printing as well as content work. Printers had to have a strong background in written language because they acted as editor and writer.
The South Carolina Gazette had a number of printers during its early years. Thomas Whitemarsh, sent by Benjamin Franklin, established the paper in 1732. Unfortunately, he died only two years later. After that, Benjamin Franklin got involved as he had with many colonial newspapers. Franklin had established a network of printers through apprenticeship ties across the colonies. He sent his partner Lewis Timothy to Charles Town to take up the print shop and its newspaper under a five-year partnership agreement. Lewis Timothy died in 1739 before the agreement ended, and his wife took up the printing. Elizabeth Timothy operated the print shop and newspaper under her son Peter’s name until he was old enough to take over. Even after the agreement ended the Timothy family kept in contact with Franklin. Peter continued the newspaper until the Stamp Act of 1765, after which he temporarily suspended the gazette.
The first set of documents, “Letters to the Editor,” includes an article from the Meddlers on the best places for the elite to spend their evenings in Charleston, a letter in response to the Meddlers’ article, and a satirical advertisement about newspapers. The second collection, “Gazette Poetry,” features two poems on the issue of men having affairs with their slaves, “The Cameleon Lover” and “The Cameleon’s Defense.” The third poem in the selection deals with growing animosity from South Carolinians toward Georgian colonists.
Bibliography
Clark, Charles. Public Prints: The Newspaper in Anglo-American Culture, 1665-1740. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Cohen, Hennig. The South Carolina Gazette, 1732-1775. Charleston: University of South Carolina: 1953.
Cook, Elizabeth. Literary Influences on Colonial Newspapers 1704-1750. New York: Columbia University Press, 1912.
Frasca, Ralph. “The Emergence of the American Colonial Press.” Pennsylvania Legacies 6.1 (2006): 11-15. JSTOR. Web. 15 April 2014.
Merritt, Richard. “The Colonists Discover America: Attention Patterns in the Colonial Press.” William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series 21.2 (1964): 270-287. JSTOR. Web. 15 April 2014.
Silverman, Kenneth. Colonial American Poetry. New York: Hafner Publishing Co, 1968.
Williams, Julie. The Significance of the Printed Word in Early America. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999.