"Vivid storytelling built on exacting research." —Bill Keller, New York Times Book Review In 1735, struggling printer John Peter Zenger scandalized colonial New York by launching a small newspaper, the New-York Weekly Journal. The newspaper was assailed by the new British governor as corrupt and arrogant, and as being a direct challenge against the prevailing law that criminalized any criticism of the royal government. Zenger was thrown in jail for nine months before his landmark one-day trial on August 4, 1735, in which he was brilliantly defended by Andrew Hamilton. In Indelible Ink, Pulitzer Prize–winning social historian Richard Kluger has fashioned the first book-length narrative of the Zenger case, rendering with colorful detail its setting in old New York and the vibrant personalities of its leading participants, whose virtues and shortcomings are assessed with fresh scrutiny often at variance with earlier accounts.

Trial In The Supreme Court Of Judicature Of The Province Of New York In 1735 For The Offense Of Printing And Publishing A Libel Against The Government.

No country values free expression more highly than does the United States, and no case in American history stands as a greater landmark on the road to protection for freedom of the press than the trial of a German immigrant printer named John Peter Zenger. On August 5, 1735, twelve New York jurors, inspired by the eloquence of the best lawyer of the period, Andrew Hamilton, ignored the instructions of the Governor's hand-picked judges and returned a verdict of Not Guilty on the charge of publishing seditious libels. The Zenger trial is a remarkable story of a divided Colony, the beginnings of a free press, and the stubborn independence of American jurors.

When members of the founding generation protested against British authority, debated separation, and then ratified the Constitution, they formed the American political character we know today-raucous, intemperate, and often mean-spirited. Revolutionary Dissent brings alive a world of colorful and stormy protests that included effigies, pamphlets, songs, sermons, cartoons, letters and liberty trees. Solomon explores through a series of chronological narratives how Americans of the Revolutionary period employed robust speech against the British and against each other. Uninhibited dissent provided a distinctly American meaning to the First Amendment's guarantees of freedom of speech and press at a time when the legal doctrine inherited from England allowed prosecutions of those who criticized government. Solomon discovers the wellspring in our revolutionary past for today's satirists like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, pundits like Rush Limbaugh and Keith Olbermann, and protests like flag burning and street demonstrations. From the inflammatory engravings of Paul Revere, the political theater of Alexander McDougall, the liberty tree protests of Ebenezer McIntosh and the oratory of Patrick Henry, Solomon shares the stories of the dissenters who created the American idea of the liberty of thought. This is truly a revelatory work on the history of free expression in America.

In a hot, crowded courtroom in colonial New York, on an August day in 1735, a jury found printer John Peter Zenger innocent of the charge of seditious libel against the British royal governor. The verdict established the political precedent for the right of people to criticize their government in print and helped shape the Bill of Rights more than fifty years later. Combining narrative with voices from primary sources, the book shows the conflict between characters that led to this momentous trial in American history.--From publisher description.