William Cosby - The Zenger Case

The Zenger Case

The New York Weekly Journal was an opposition newspaper, pro-colonist and anti-Royal, economically supported by the Morrisites. It was founded in 1733 by John Peter Zenger, a recent German immigrant. Its mordant editorials were mainly written by socially notorious people, Morrisites, like James Alexander, who published anonymously.

Its most controversial editorials were about:

• Morris' deposition
• Cosby's attempt of rigging the 1734 elections
• Post-electoral satiric ballads, where Royalist partisans were "petty fogging knaves" and the Popular partisans would "make the scoundrel rascals fly."
• Cosby's stealing collected taxes
• Cosby's appropriation of Indian lands
• Official permission to French ships docking in New York's harbor

In November 1734, Governor Cosby ordered his men to burn up four of its editions—7, 47, 48, 49—down at the pillory. Those allegedly contained seditious material. On 17 November, Zenger was arrested for seditious libel against Cosby. His arrest did not close the Journal, however; his wife, Anna, continued printing the newspaper.

Working through Chief Justice DeLancey, Governor Cosby disbarred the local defenders of Zenger, urging the jury to punish him. But the Morrisites hired Andrew Hamilton, a celebrated lawyer from Philadelphia, as Zenger's attorney. Hamilton argued that the newspaper couldn't be punished unless what it had printed was falsely seditious. The principle he proclaimed still stands in modern United States law: libel only exists when falsehoods are perpetrated; the truth can never be libelous. Zenger was acquitted by the jury in 18 August 1735. James DeLancey declined to reverse that decision. Although the Zenger case did not entirely put an end to prosecutions for seditious libel, it set a precedent for freedom of the press.