Page:History of Journalism in the United States.djvu/126

CHAPTER VIII

THE BOSTON GAZETTE AND SAMUEL ADAMS

Adams a great journalist—His remarkable industry—Associated with Jonathan Mayhew—New group takes up patriotic struggle—Gazette office headquarters of patriots—Boston Tea Party planned there—James Otis and Joseph Warren among editorial contributors—Important contributions of John Adams—Notable writings of Samuel Adams—Attacks on Gazette—Edes and Gill threatened—The days before the Revolution—Edes dies in obscure poverty.

If Massachusetts was the leader in the events before the Revolution, and she unquestionably was, Samuel Adams was the leader in Massachusetts, and the organ through which he swayed the people was the Boston Gazette. There is not an American schoolboy who is not familiar with the names of Samuel Adams, "Father of the Revolution "and of John Adams, "Statesman of the Revolution," but probably very few people are fully aware of the great extent to which these two used, and how much they relied on, that very important pre-Revolutionary newspaper.

The history of the Boston Gazette is the history of its influence, which came not only from its notable contributors, but from its courageous and able editors and printers, Benjamin Edes and John Gill. It takes not a tithe from the statesmanlike reputation of Sam Adams that he was, after Franklin, America's greatest journalist, though indifference to this aspect of his career has been the attitude of most of the historians of this period.

In order to write adequately the history of journalism,