The Press: Americana

To Editor Matthew Carey of the American Museum, wrote George Washington in 1788: "I consider such easy vehicles of knowledge [magazines] as more highly calculated than any other to preserve the liberty, stimulate the industry, and meliorate the morals of an enlightened and free people." If the encouragement of sainted statesmen could have paid printers' bills and enlisted subscribers, the careers of early American periodicals would have made a less hectic story than they do.* More aptly did Noah Webster write in his American Magazine,†...