page_title: Harry Croswell
section_title: Battling for freedom of the press
hierarchical_section_title: Harry Croswell / Life / Battling for freedom of the press
context_page_description: Harry Croswell was a crusading political journalist, a publisher, author, and an Episcopal Church clergyman. Though largely self-educated, he received an honorary degree of A. M. from Yale College in 1817, an honorary Doctorate of Divinity from Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut in 1831 – an institution he co-founded – established the first public lectures in New Haven, and founded an evening school for the education of adult African-Americans in the city. He was a key figure in first amendment battles over freedom of the press and religious freedom. After abandoning politics for religion, he became the much respected Rector of Trinity Church on the Green in New Haven, Connecticut, for forty-three years, growing his church and establishing seven new churches within the original limits of his parish. Though he published fourteen books, and wrote newspaper articles as an editor and journalist weekly for eleven years, he is best known as an author for being the first person to define the word cocktail in print.
context_section_description: New York was the swing state in the 1800 election that saw President Thomas Jefferson elected by one vote in the electoral college. Harry Croswell was a staunch Federalist, one of those who opposed Jefferson.  When Connecticut newspaper editor Charles Holt moved to Hudson and founded the Democratic-Republican Party paper The Bee, Croswell countered by founding the Federalist paper The Wasp.  Croswell's political humor and darting jabs and stings at the President, New York Governor George Clinton, Attorney General Ambrose Spencer, and the rest of the Jefferson party apparatus down to the local sheriff and editor Holt, were so effective, that it was feared he would influence the election of 1804 against Jefferson. Jefferson wrote to one of his party's governors:
  I have therefore long thought that a few prosecutions of the most prominent offenders would have a wholesome effect in restoring the integrity of the presses. Not a general prosecution, for that would look like persecution: but a selected one.
  The renowned case of the People v. Croswell began when Croswell published on September 9, 1802 an attack on Jefferson. The state's Democratic-Republican attorney General Ambrose Spencer indicted Croswell for a seditious libel as:
  ... being a malicious and seditious man, and of depraved mind and wicked and diabolical disposition, and also deceitfully, wickedly and maliciously devising, contriving and intending, toward Thomas Jefferson, Esquire, President of the United States of America, to detract from, scandalize, traduce and vilify, and to represent him, the said Thomas Jefferson, as unworthy of the confidence, respect and attachment of the people of the said United States ...
  The attempt to intimidate Croswell by prosecution for criminal libel backfired. It instead "resulted in the greatest advancement in press freedom in the history of America." Croswell refused to back down, even after losing his first January 1803 trial at Claverack court house to political judges and packed juries.  Though defended by local Federalist layers, including his friend William Peter Van Ness, he lost the second appeal trail under prominent anti-Federalist Justice Morgan Lewis in June 1803 as well. Despite facing enormous fines and jail, he kept up a barrage of attacks in his newspaper, and insisted on a third trial.  It would be held at the New York Supreme court in Albany. 
  On February 13, 1804, the greatest Federalist lawyer, Alexander Hamilton, himself a newspaper editor as well, came up from New York to argue for the defense in the final trial in front of the New York Supreme Court.  Croswell's lawyers based their case on the precept that "Truth is a defense against libel". Justice Lewis again presided, and was unlikely to overrule his own previous ruling, so all three judges would have to vote to overtrun the lower court's conviction.  Persuaded by Hamilton's eloquence and forensic analysis, the single Federalist Justice James Kent was joined by Justice Thompson and Justice Henry Brockholst Livingston in voting for Croswell. For a short time it seemed Croswell and Hamilton had triumphed.  However, Justice Lewis abruptly adjourned the proceedings.  When the court reconvened, Justice Livingston announced he had changed his opinion, and now upheld the convicton. Two years later, on November 10, 1806, on the occasion of the next available position opening, Livingston was appointed to the U.S. Supreme court. Croswell's conviction stood.
  However, Justice Lewis was running for governor, and prosecuting journalists for telling the truth was unpopular. Croswell was never sentenced.  Though he was eventually granted a new trial it never occurred since it was soon rendered moot. Even though Croswell and Hamilton had lost the case, the watching New York assemblymen who filled the galleries during the famous trial were so impressed by Hamilton's defense and Croswell's courage, that in 1805 they changed the state law on libel. Eventually, the other states followed, establishing the precept that truth was a defense against libel, when published with "g
caption: Thomas Jefferson in 1800
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