The Poison Pen Duels of William Duane and Peter Porcupine  Some eight thousand  times a day, six days a week,  pressmen  cranked the heavy wooden press of the Weekly Aurora newspaper of Philadelphia.  They were printing platens of tiny type on the Aurora’s eight linen paper pages, much of it poison pen invective written by pro-Jeffersonian editor William Duane against mortal enemy Peter Porcupine (William Cobbett), the editor of the pro-Federalist paper The Porcupine’s Gazette, just a few blocks away.  Duane and Cobbett continued their written vendetta through their respective presses for over 15 years and even across the Atlantic, until, with the end of the War of 1812 and the Treaty of Ghent, the fiery Irishman Duane and prickly Brit Cobbett “buried the hatchet” in early 1815,  shook hands symbolically, forgave each other their lying slanders, and called a pax on their maddened mud-slinging.  The editors’ political battles began with the swearing in of President John Adams, whose Executive Mansion residence was just down the block from the Aurora’s press.  Both Duane and his publisher, Benjamin Franklin Bache, despised Adams as a Federalist with British monarchist sympathies.  The Aurora was a Jeffersonian Democrat political publication friendly toward the French, even during the US Quasi-War with France.  Duane began writing lengthy editorials against presidential policies and cohorts, saying “the pen and the press are my formidable weapons,”  and he kept his press running scorching hot most of the time.  Cobbett, a British emigrant and bookseller in Philadelphia, started the Porcupine’s Gazette the day Adams took the presidential oath, and keenly defended with his quill any critical press about the President or his party, especially coming from the Aurora.  Cobbett took up the prickly “nom de guerre” Peter Porcupine for his essays, and chiefly delighted in shredding the Aurora opinions with biting vitriol.  In the maiden issue of the Porcupine’s Gazette, Cobbett declared the Aurora and its editorial staff “his enemies,” declaring “engarde!” for a lengthy duel of type fonts, ink, and paper.  Pam Keyes  https://www.historiaobscura.com/tag/porcupines-gazette/  See also Fake news?  Media vitriol?  In Philly it's as old as the nation's founding by Patrick Glennon at http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/commentary/fake-news-media-vitriol-in-philly-its-as-old-as-the-nations-founding-20170922.html

The Sedition Act Trials by Bruce A. Ragsdale, Director, Federal Judicial History Office Federal Judicial Center Prepared for inclusion in the project Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History Federal Judicial Center Federal Judicial History Office 2005  The Sedition Act Trials:  A Short Narrative Between 1798 and 1801, in the midst of the threat of war with France, at least twenty six individuals were prosecuted in U.S. federal courts on charges of publishing false information or speaking in public with the intent to undermine support for the federal government.  The accused ranged from the editor of the most influential opposition newspaper in the nation to a New Jersey resident who drunkenly jeered President John Adams.  All of the defendants were political opponents of the Adams administration.  These prosecutions under the Sedition Act of 1798 provoked debates on the meaning of a free press and the rights of the political opposition.  As the first federal trials to attract widespread public attention, the Sedition Act trials also prompted discussions of the political influence of life-tenured judges and of the proper relationship between the judiciary and the elected branches of the federal government.  See 79-page document at https://www.fjc.gov/sites/default/files/trials/seditionacts.pdf  

One of the Sedition Act’s early victims was former slave (indentured servant, if you prefer), Irishman Matthew Lyon (other misfits included Benjamin Franklin Bache, the grandson of Ben Franklin; James Callender, the first to write about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings’ children; and Thomas Cooper, who challenged John Adams’ constitutional authority to declare April 25 a “national day of fasting and prayer”).   In 1764, after arriving from Ireland, Lyon was sold for two bulls.  He would boast of this testament to his personal worth and redemption following the sale to a Connecticut farmer.  https://highlandcountypress.com/Content/Opinions/Rory-Ryan/Article/Fake-news-and-the-return-of-the-Sedition-Act/4/83/37354

A monger is a merchant dealer or trader (as opposed to a pedlar, who is a traveling vendor of goods).  Mongers were respected merchants, though they were not as wealthy as merchants who had their own set up stores.  With respect to professions, the term is applied as a suffix (especially in the UK) to specify someone who deals in a particular kind of good.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monger  

scandalmonger  noun  a person who creates or spreads reports about actions and events that cause public shock and disapproval  https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/scandalmonger

Scandalmonger, a novel by William Safire   A presidential hopeful has taken a beautiful, vulnerable woman as his mistress, though both are married to others.  His rival for the presidency of the United States has even more sensational secrets to guard about his own past.  An ambitious journalist unearths the stories of the private lives of both, and he hefts in his hand what he calls "the hammer of truth."  The time is the end of the eighteenth century.  The political figures whose intimate lives are about to be revealed are Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson.  The journalist out to shape the course of the young nation's history is "that scurrilous scoundrel Callender," the fugitive from Scottish sedition law who pioneered the public exposure of men in power.  The women he makes famous are the mysterious Maria Reynolds and the slave Sally Hemings.  The novelist and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist William Safire brings these real characters in our history to life.  For those who think that Washington sex scandals and lurid journalism are recent developments, this novel will be a revelation, for Safire shows vividly how media intrusiveness into private lives--and politicians' cool manipulation of the press--are as old as the Constitution.  The "scandalmonger" of the title is James Thomson Callender, a writer with a poisonous quill pen who is secretly on the payroll of Vice President Jefferson.  When Callender publishes documents leaked to him about a secret Congressional investigation into Treasury Secretary Hamilton's financial dealings, Hamilton counters with a confession of an affair with the blackmailing Mrs. Reynolds--admitting to a sin but not a crime.   https://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm/book_number/555/scandalmonger  Reviews of William Safire's novel Scandalmonger:  "A devilishly constructed entertainment about political warfare, legal brinkmanship and assassination by quill pen" - TIME  "Catnip to history buffs" - PUBLISHERS WEEKLY  "History, twistery, fact or fiction--whatever you label it, this is a polished piece of historical writing." - SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS

Going somewhere?  Emigrate means to leave one's country to live in another.  Immigrate is to come into another country to live permanently.  Migrate is to move, like birds in the winter.  The choice between emigrate, immigrate, and migrate depends on the sentence's point of view.  Emigrate is to immigrate as go is to come.  If the sentence is looking at the point of departure, use emigrate.  The point of arrival?  Immigrate.  Talking about the actual process of moving?  Use migrate.  https://www.vocabulary.com/articles/chooseyourwords/emigrate-immigrate-migrate/

John Dingell:  My last words for America  John D. Dingell, a Michigan Democrat who served in the U.S. House from 1955 to 2015, was the longest-serving member of Congress in American history.  He dictated these reflections to his wife, Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), at their home in Dearborn, on February 7, 2019, the day he died.  Link to obituary at https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/john-dingell-my-last-words-for-america/2019/02/08/99220186-2bd3-11e9-984d-9b8fba003e81_story.html?utm_term=.2fd97d3c7b54  

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY  I was sixteen years old when the first World War broke out, and I lived at that time in Hungary.  From reading the newspapers in Hungary, it would have appeared that, whatever Austria and Germany did was right and whatever England, France, Russia, or America did was wrong.  A good case could be made out for this general thesis, in almost every single instance.  It would have been difficult for me to prove, in any single instance, that the newspapers were wrong, but somehow, it seemed to me unlikely that the two nations located in the center of Europe should be invariably right, and that all the other nations should be invariably wrong.  History, I reasoned, would hardly operate in such a peculiar fashion, and it didn't take long until I began to hold views which were diametrically opposed to those held by the majority of my schoolmates. . . . Even in times of war, you can see current events in their historical perspective, provided that your passion for the truth prevails over your bias in favor of your own nation. - Leo Szilard, physicist (11 Feb 1898-1964)

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2040  February 11, 2019