class, the plain people, whereas the Gazette appealed to the more cultivated.
In his narrative of newspapers,[1] Dr. Eliot said of these writers for the Spy that they were "most of them young men of genius, without experience in business or knowledge of the world." But it is of such men that enthusiasm for the right is born. They furnish the passion without which there cannot be war, when many of those who, while seeing the righteousness of war, are dominated by intellect, weaken and hesitate.
It is to Thomas that we are indebted for the first history of journalism, which is included in his comprehensive History of Printing, published in 1810. In his own resumé of this period, commenting on the part that the journals played in preparing the public mind, and his own endeavors to arouse the laboring classes, he says: "Common sense in common language is necessary to influence one class of citizens as much as learning and elegance of composition are to produce an effect upon another. The cause of America was just; and it was only necessary to state this cause in a clear and impressive manner to unite the American people in its support."[2]
This is the statement of Thomas, one of the men who fought for the cause, not only as a publicist but as a soldier—as one of the journalists of Liberty, as well as of America. He knew better than any modern historian what it was that aroused the colonists, what it was that made them fight. It is an eloquent tribute to democracy as well as to journalism.
When the young printer began the publication of the Massachusetts Spy, he was in his twenty-seventh year.
