"NO OTHER HERALD" - Niles Register and the Supreme Court

JEFFREY B. MORRIS

Day after day the short, stout man with the weatherbeaten, plain face and the keen, gray eyes stooped over his desk. Some of his ten-hour stints were spent reading through documents 'piled high around him. Others were devoted to scanning newspapers from all over the United States. Still other sources of information had to 'be examined–some of the 4,000 letters written to him each year. Then, after all this, the wheat had to be culled from the chaff so that news could be printed. Long editorial essays on political economy had to 'be written.

It was in this way, week after week, for twenty-five years, in a building on Water Street in Baltimore, that the man known simply as "H. Niles" to his readers published that news weekly which was the great journal of the early nineteenth century.[1] Henry Steele Commager has written of Niles Register:

It had all the news, all the information, all the reports from the 'best journals, and it had all the documents too.... It was national, it was authoritative, it was indispensable.[2]

Niles Register provided the Supreme Court of the United States with its first sustained, accurate coverage. The news paper's first great twenty-five years are almost coterminous with the greatest years of the Supreme Court under Marshall. By printing verbatim decisions of the high court, unbiased reportage of decisions in Washington and on circuit, a wide variety of stories and documents relating to the origins and effects of those decisions, debates in the Congress and the state legislatures relating to the judiciary and its decisions, and by paying attention to a variety of other matters–this weekly newspaper informed a nation about the work of the Supreme Court.

Historically, critics of press coverage of the Court have charged the fourth estate with oversimplification, shallowness, misinterpretation, distortion, bias and factual error.[3] There are, however, particular difficulties with reporting the work of the Court. The Supreme Court speaks once and then is silent. Its decisions are complex, encompass a variety of subject areas, and are handed down on relatively few days. The reporter must work only from the legal opinion. There are no backgrounders, handouts, or public relations puffery to help out.

The opinions often "mask the difficulties of a case rather than illuminate them".[4] Dissents and concurring opinions, offering a parade of potential "horribles", blur the meaning of the majority's opinion. And, of course, the Court's internal operations are secret, both protecting and obscuring the institution. The task of reporting about the Court calls for very different skills than those for the coverage of other news. It never has and never will be an easy task.

Hezekiah Niles

When an editor's most salient characteristics are accuracy, fairness, and integrity, one wonders if his publication has "personality". Yet, reading page after page, volume after volume of Niles Register, one get to know and to like "H. Niles". This is because Niles engaged in a continuing dialogue directly with his readers, talking to them "from the fireside," and responding to their letters in his columns. It is because he was self-consciously attempting to publish a work which would be useful in the future.

It is, as well, because–though he was a man of decided opinions, who made those opinions felt–he obstinately insisted upon providing his readers with the opinions of those with whom he disagreed and with the raw materials to attempt to find the truth out for themselves. And, it is because this Quaker and Mason was a man of marked tolerance, not only for the political views of others, but for outsiders such as Jews and Indians.

Hezekiah Niles began his Register before 'he was thirty-four years old.[5] Born October 10, 1777, Niles' early years were spent in 'Wilmington, Delaware. At seventeen he was apprenticed to a printer in Philadelphia, then the nation's capital, where he spent several years learning typesetting and bookbinding. Breathing the air of budding party rivalries, he became a Jeffersonian Republican, writing articles supporting Jefferson in the 1796 election.

Niles returned to Wilmington where he spent a decade as a printer.[6] Along with typical job printing, he produced a two-volume edition of the political writings of the prominent Delaware Republican, John Dickinson.[7] He also edited and published the state's first literary magazine, Apollo, or, Delaware Weekly Magazine, which survived eight months, about average for magazines of the time. Involved with the Democratic Republican Party, he was elected town clerk and Assistant Burgess of Wilmington, holding each office twice.

After his second publishing partnership and his literary magazine failed, Niles moved to Baltimore, then a major commercial center, the nation's third largest city (and soon to be its second), a city with genuine cultural aspirations. There, he operated a book and stationery store from 1805 to 1811 and became editor of the four-page daily (three pages were ads) Evening Post, Baltimore mouth of the Democratic Republican Party, a newspaper typical of the partisan press of its time.[8]

The Evening Post was sold in June 1811. Two weeks later, Niles issued a prospectus for a new newspaper. The first issue of Niles Register was published on September 7, 1811. For twenty-five years, his editorial responsibilities and relations with his readers were Niles' chief interest. He did, however, find the time to produce an anthology of primary source materials on the American Revolution,[9] to participate in two national tariff conventions, and in local, state and national politics.

He first served on the First Branch of the City Council of Baltimore and participated in such varied civic groups as the Abolition Society, Fire Company, and Typographical Society. He is reported to have loved good food, wine and tobacco. He must have loved home, hearth and family–he had twelve children by his first wife, Anne, and another eight by his second wife, Sally. He died in Wilmington at sixty-one, after suffering a stroke, on April 2, 1839. The Baltimore Chronicle wrote of him:

frank, honorable, independent and truly republican spirit, simple in his manners, and habits, affectionate to his family, liberal to those who he employed in the prosecution of his business, disinterested and public spirited.[10]

Two towns were named after him–in Michigan and in Ohio.

Niles Register

H. Niles published his fifty volumes on medium octavo, 65/8" by 91/8" two columns to a page. The weekly was normally sixteen pages in length. Each half-year, Niles bound and indexed the twenty-six issues, producing a library-size volume of at least 316 pages. The subscription price during Niles' editorship remained at $5 annually plus postage.

The Register "differed markedly from the weekly newspapers and weekly magazines of its day".[11] During the first third of the nineteenth century, there were few newspapers. They were limited in content–half of their usual four pages were advertising matter. Circulations were small, dailies averaging perhaps 1,000 with the largest 4,500 (New York Courier and Enquirer, 1833) and normally limited to the locality.[12] Newspapers were heavily partisan, weapons employed as artillery in the propaganda wars between parties.

Presidents literally hired poets to edit administration "mouthpieces." The typical newspaper was marked by contentiousness, personal virulence, sarcasm, untruthfulness, and scurrility.[13] While magazines were more diverse, they too had small local circulations (up to 2,500 in 1825), and when dwelling on politics were full of "bitter attack and savage reprisal."[14]

The Register was somewhere between a newspaper and a magazine. It took no advertising, avoided partisanship, aimed at a national rather than a local audience, and considered it a first object to "register" material for the future. The leading scholar of the publication, Norval Neil Luxon, describes it as

…..actually a weekly news magazine specializing in printing official documents, governmental reports, Congressional speeches on matters of great public moment and diplomatic correspondence, with a summary of the significant news of national interest.[15]

Niles differed from his fellow-editors in that he wished his readers to make up their own minds:

all public papers and proceedings . . . needful to a correct understanding of the nature and character of public measures shall be given . . . without much, if any, comment, let them affect what party or persons they may–and both sides, and all sides, shall have the same opportunity of being heard before 'the bar of the public reason'. When this is the case, the 'people will not often fail to form a rightful judgment of everything that may interest them.[16]

Niles attempted to present a fair, accurate, impartial picture of the great issues that divided the nation–the elections, the War of 1812, the Missouri question, states rights, nullification, slavery.

The editing, furthermore, conceptualized the role of his publication to encompass that of a reference work. He printed such documents as the Articles of Confederation, state constitutions, lists of governors and college presidents, election and population statistics. Niles aimed at informing his readers, at achieving a work which was essential for a man's library,[17] and he considered the major function of his journal to preserve significant documents and facts for posterity. Indeed, the motto of the newspaper on its masthead was "The 'Past–The Present–For the Future."

Niles filled his Register primarily with news and primarily news relevant to government and politics. The great bulk of the pages of the weekly was made up of documentary material–abridged Congressional debates and unabridged Congressional speeches of particular interest, Presidential and gubernatorial messages, reports of cabinet officials, diplomatic corespondence, reports and letters relevant to controversy, treaties and the like. These were printed "in their raw state."[18] As one reader put it:

in your usual manner, you have served up to your readers a little meat rather than "fed them milk".[19]

Often when Niles had more news and documents than would fit within the covers of an eight-page weekly, his conscientiousness about informing his readers and posterity was such that he printed and mailed free of charge eight and sixteen page supplements. Nine times he printed supplementary volumes, normally 192 pages long, which he sold for one dollar.

Niles was not lacking in political opinions of his own. He was a strong nationalist, who opposed states rights, nullification, and secessionist movements. He was a classic Jeffersonian with "a deep and abiding faith in democracy." He acceded to majority rule when it went against him.[20] He was against slavery but not an extreme abolitionist. Niles expressed these views in his Register but would not use the newspaper to advance party or person or to 'bias the presentation of ideas.

The Register was full of economic matters. H. Niles was a political economist of importance, "an outstanding member of that group of American nationalist economic writers," who opposed the classical school of English economic philosophers, such as Adam Smith, Malthus, Ricardo, and James Mill.[21]

Niles' interest in protection was not limited to essay-editorials in his journal. He was a prominent participant at the Harrisburg and New York national tariff conventions of 1827 and 1831 and compiled pamphlets from his essays and editorials in the Register on his economic philosophy which were very widely distributed.[22]

The Register and the Supreme Court

Browsing through Charles Warren's monumental works on the Supreme Court,[23] one find references to dozens of newspapers published during the first part of the nineteenth century. In the Register itself there are news stories and commentary relevant to the work of the court from all over the country.

What made coverage in Niles Register so important is that it was accurate and unbiased; that its reputation for integrity was such that its editorializing was paid serious attention; that for its time it was read by a large number of subscribers distributed over all parts of the nation; that its readership included a disproportionate number of "opinion-formers" and political elites; that through the exchange system, its news and views reached many times the number of its subscribers.

Niles took great pride in the reputation his Register had for accuracy. Indeed, the journal came to be cited in court for proof of facts, and as a source of reported decisions.[24] He was fastidious in attempting to warn his readers to distinguish between fact and rumor, careful in typesetting, and corrected errors expeditiously. While H. Niles' editorial commentary, particularly his campaign for protection, was controversial, his newspaper was a trusted reference work.

The circulation of the Niles Register ranked second in the United States among both newspapers and magazines prior to 1833. The Register started with 1,500 subscribers and generally maintained between 3,500 and 4,500. The circulation was national in character. There were subscribers in every state, in the territories, and abroad.[25] As Richard Gabriel Stone said:

For twenty-five years people from every section of the country accepted his weekly contributions as connecting links in a national chain that bound them together.[26]

The constituency of the Register was, as Edward Stanwood said, "the best-informed part of the community in every part of the country."[27] John Adams, James Madison, John Quincy Adams, and the Marquis de Lafayette were subscribers and correspondents. The Senate purchased a complete set of the Register for its use while the House of Representatives debated whether four or six sets might be enough 'before settling upon the purchase of ten.[28]

The Executive departments and state governments also owned sets of the journal, and it was supplied to U.S. emissaries overseas, who could also have found it in numerous private libraries in Europe and even in the possession of foreign governments.[29] Thomas Jefferson, by 1817 a jaundiced observer of any newspaper, paid a year's subscription in advance, an unusual practice for the time, and wrote:

I have found it very valuable as a Repository of documents, original papers and the facts of the day, and for the ease with which the index enables us to turn to them...[30]

But, during a time when generally newspapers had a wide influence upon the formation of opinion, the influence of the Register went beyond the quantity and quality of subscribers. In many towns, the newspaper was passed around, and groups would meet once a week to read and discuss news items from it.[31]

The influence of Niles Register was multiplied by the "exchange system." Since there were few out-of-town reporters, editors mailed their papers to each other and republished or abstracted stories from the paper nearest any happening. Since Niles Register was a national journal, an exceptionally large number of editors "exchanged" with H. Niles.

Thus, when Niles published an item (which itself might have come on exchange from a small country newspaper), it was plucked out of the Register by newspaper editors throughout the country. As Beveridge suggests, when Niles published Marshall's opinion in full in McCulloch v. Maryland, it was given "wider publicity than any judicial utterance previously rendered in America… it reached every paper, big and little in the whole country and was reproduced by most of them."[32]

Niles Register reported almost all of what posterity considers to be the major cases decided during the Marshall era–the single strange exception was the Dartmouth College case.[33] The week after a major decision, the Register normally reported it in a brief story. For what were considered major decisions, opinions of the Court were then printed verbatim within relatively few weeks. The Schooner Exchange, McCulloch Isici v. Maryland, Cohens v. Virginia, Gibbons v. Ogden, Brown v. Maryland, Worcester v. Georgia and the Amistad–all were selected. The choice of cases to which such space was allotted passes the test of history.

The most controversial questions involving the Court during the period Niles edited the Register–the Bank question, the supremacy of the Court over state court decisions and state laws when in conflict with the U.S. Constitution, and the Cherokee problem–are covered at length and fairly. Along with the publication of the opinion and a variety of other stories and documents, Niles offered his own editorial opinion on those questions.

For cases considered to be of importance but of somewhat less interest, there were news stories running one-half column or more and later follow-up stories. Typical of such coverage was that given to Sturges v. Crownshield. The decision was handed down on February 17, 1819. On February 27 there was a front page story taken from the National Intelligencer which covered over a column and summed up the holding. That story was followed by a column written by H. Niles, obliquely indicating his approval of the decision and noting that it "powerfully shews the necessity of a general bankruptcy law."[34]

On March 6, a column was given over to two articles from the New York Evening Post and the Baltimore American discussing the substance of the opinion and its effects.[35] On March 20, there was a 2_ column article from the National Intelligencer carefully and dispassionately analyzing the decision and that in an indistinguishable case, M’Millan v. M'Neill. The same day there was a half-column from the New York Evening Post indicating the application of Sturges to a jury trial in a New York state court.[36] On May 22, there was still another column, this time from the New York Daily Advertiser, reporting an analysis of the effects of Sturges in pending New York cases by Chief Justice Spencer of the New York State Supreme Court.[37]

Coverage of other cases, generally taken from other newspapers or from correspondence to Niles, one to three paragraphs in length (including cases from Green's Heirs v. Biddle to more run-of-the-mill admiralty, piracy, customs, and negotiable instruments cases, now lost in obscurity) is somewhat less satisfying due to brevity, which often blurred the legal significance and obscured other implication.[38]

If Niles was scrupulous in segregating news and commentary, and in giving "equal time" to positions contrary to his own, he was not lacking in a point of view regarding the Supreme Court of the United States. Those views were expressed most vigorously during that era of controversy over Supreme Court review of state laws–the time of McCulloch (1819) and Cohens (1821). His concerns, about the role the court was assuming in the constitutional system as well as the direction of some of its decisional law, were modified a decade later as a result of worry about the union breaking apart and, one suspects, growing respect for John Marshall and his brethren.

Basically, Niles' attitude towards the Court might be labeled a moderate, Jeffersonian Republican position. He saw the need for a judiciary, which was not subject to the ebb and flow of public opinion, but did not wish it immune from all checks.

Niles believed that there was a need for some final arbiter of state constitutional issues, but believed that it would be better placed in an institution responsible to the people. He did not believe in life tenure for judges and suggested various devices for re-confirmation of Justices by the Senate after a term of years. Niles was particularly concerned about excessive public veneration of the Court. These views are encompassed in reactions he expressed after a visit to the court in 1821:

I could not look at the bench without something like veneration–but, recollecting some of its decisions or ‘oracles", the reflection that the judges were only men, immediately crossed my mind, and checked the homage (though it did not lessen the respect), which the senses of seeing and hearing had predisposed to me to render it.[39]

Niles' vehement criticism of the decision in McCulloch, set out at length in Beveridge's Marshall,[40] was essentially based upon the concern that the decision would sanction the establishment of monopolies by the Congress and tend towards the destruction of state power. He admitted to writing with hesitation in the issue of March 13th, one week after the decision was rendered, because he had not yet read the decision (which was to be printed in the following issue). He was of the view that the opinion was a great wound:

We are awfully impressed with a conviction that the welfare of the union had received a more dangerous wound than fifty Hartford conventions, hateful as that assemblage could inflict–reaching so close to the vitals as seemingly to draw the heart's blood of liberty and safety, which may be wielded to destroy the whole revenues, and so do away the sovereignties of the states.[41]

Nor, once he head the opinion, did Niles think very highly of Marshall's craftsman-ship.

We frankly confess our opinion, that the writer of the opinion, in question, has not added anything to his stock of reputation by writing it–it is excessively labored.[42]

As Niles' criticism of McCulloch was copied by papers throughout the country, public opinion rapidly crystallized against the decision, "the sleeping spirit of Virginia" was aroused, and Spencer Roane took up the cudgels to speak to the lawyers and judges of the country, as Niles had spoken to the "plain people."[44]

Niles both expected the decision in Cohens v. Virginia and regretted it:

The decision was exactly such as we expected... . We had no manner of doubt as to the result that the State sovereignty would be taught to bow to the Judiciary of the United States. So we go. It seems as if al most everything that occurs had for its tendency that which every reflecting man deprecates.[45]

Niles nonetheless drew a sharp line between disagreement with the Court and defiance of its decisions. After the State of Qh'o ignored a circuit court injunction and seized money in payment of its tax (unconstitutional under McCulloch) from the Bankof the United States, Niles wrote:

Much as we are opposed to the principle at operation of the bank of the United States, –decided as we are in the opinion, that congress transcended its authority by incorporating it–and convinced also that the decision of the supreme court in the case of McCulloh vs. the State of Maryland was wrong, yet believing that the states have a right to tax this institution and its branches. –Still we regret this act' of Ohio. It is not for any of the states, much less individuals, to oppose force of the law, as settled by the authorities of the United States, however zealous we may be to bring about a different construction of it, through persons legally vested with power according to the constitution to act in our name and in our behalf.[46]

During the controversy over the Cherokee Indian case, he distinguished between his belief in "lessening the power and altering the jurisdiction" of the Supreme Court and "resistance of its authority." Niles was, after all, a staunch Unionist:

There must be some tribunal of last resort …else it is impossible that the union should continue.[47]

Although Niles always retained reservations as to the power and jurisdiction of the Court, his respect for it increased over time. In 1828 he wrote of it:

Though the constitutional construction of this lofty tribunal, is not wholly comformable to our humble opinions of right,–we have often thought that no person could behold this venerable body without profound respect for the virtue and talents concentrated on its bench; and with a great degree of confidence that, as there must be some power in every government having final effect, it could hardly be vested any where more safely than in the supreme court, as at present filled.[48]

Niles paid tribute to Marshall during the nullification crisis:

I trust I may be pardoned for directing your attention for a moment to the eminent man, who has now for thirty years presided over its highest tribunal, and to whose lot it has fallen, more than to that of any other man, to interpret authoritatively the provisions of the federal constitution. Questions most momentous and most embarrassing, have been solved 'by his gifted intellect, as by intuition; and the arguments by which his decisions have been sustained, while they are intelligible to the meanest capacity, are such as to reflect honor on the highest intellect. Though contending politicians may not always acquiesce in his conclusions, yet none can doubt the strength and depth and clearness of his mind, or the uprightedness, integrity, and purity of the judge.[49]

Although Niles normally limited his reportage of deaths to a sentence or two, Marshall's was accompanied by pages of memorial resolutions, reports of the burial, and of editorial coverage. Niles' initial reaction was uncharacteristically emotional:

It may truly said that a great man has fallen in Israel'... next to WASHINGTON, only did he possess the reverence and homage of the heart of the American people– not forced by any sudden burst of party zeal, but gently and kindly, yet ardently, flowing from a deep conviction of his long public service, and private practice of whatever embellishes and adorns human nature. No man that lived more nearly filled up the measure of his country's glory' than he.

Some other will attempt a sketch of his character–the task will be

performed, but we are incapable of it. . . .[50]

Still–one must always remember that Niles was invariably fair. The week after he reported John Marshall's death, while noting that "happy to say that it is the only thing of the sort that we have seen," Niles republished an editorial from the New York Evening Post critical of Marshall's career."[51]

Niles Register gave extensive reportage to the work of the Justices on circuit. In forty cases from 1818 to 1831, the Register covered trials, charges to juries, and questions of law occurring customs, admiralty, piracy, banking, negotiable instruments, and riparian rights cases.

What else did Niles Register print about the work of the federal judiciary? Some items, which are de rigeur in major newspapers these days are found in very different form. The opening of the annual four to six week term was not the subject of a story anticipating and describing the major cases on the docket. Normally, cognizance was taken of a new term in one sentence. For example, the 1821 term, which had Cohens to decide, began with this story (in its entirety):

The Supreme Court is now in session at Washington city and employed in the decision of many important questions.[52]

Nor does one find in the Register the kind of "end-of-the-term wrap-up" with which we have become familiar–discussing major decisions of the term, alignments of the Justices and so forth. If account was taken of adjournment, it was either perfunctory, or in the context of the court's ability to keep up with its case load. The Justices were praised at the end of the 1827 term:

The Supreme Court of the United States concluded an arduous and important session of ten weeks, on Friday the 16th inst[ant]. Nearly eighty cases, some of them of deep and delicate interest, and of high consequence, have been decided–on some of which the court was not unanimous, which also caused much extra labour to the judges, and loss of time to business in general. The most gratifying testimony is borne of their sedulous attention to the great matters submitted to them.[53]

There were only seven Justices appointed to the Court in the twenty-five years Niles edited the Register. There was comparatively little speculation as to how these vacancies might be filled. After Livingston's death in 1823 the Register simply reported:

It is strongly reported that the present secretary of the navy, Smith Thompson, will be appointed a judge of the Supreme Court in place of Mr. Livingston, dec[eased].[54]

When John McLean was appointed in 1829, he is spoken of having "transferred" from Postmaster General. The brief story does not meditate upon the effect of the appointment upon the Supreme Court but rather shows alarm about the possibility of a partisan appointment of the new Postmaster General on the delivery of the mails.[55]

The penchant of the twentieth century press for printing rumors of the resignation of Justices is anticipated in Niles columns with respect to only one member of the Court, John Marshall. Several times there were rumors or concern expressed about his leaving the bench.

With the exception of Marshall's death, the Register did not print obituaries of Justices as we know them today, with lengthy biographies and/or critical analyses of their career. Justice Tod[d] was disposed of with one sentence:

He was one of the most excellent men who ever lived.[56]

There was a four paragraph story at the time of the almost simultaneous deaths of Justice and Mrs. Bushrod Washington[57] and later coverage of memorial services for the Justice. Of course, there was coverage of John Jay's death.[58]

Relatively little was printed about the Justices which did not come out of their judicial duties. News accounts of Presidential inaugurations would note the attendance of the Justices and the participation of the Chief Justice;[59] brief miscellaneous items about one or another Justice might occur several times each year.

We read of Marshall as a delegate to the Virginia Constitutional Convention, of Justice William Johnson's correspondence attacking nullification,[60] and of a controversy over Bushrod Washington's sale of his slaves.[61] On the lighter side, Niles reports a feud between Justice Smith Thompson and District Judge Van Ness over the location of the Circuit Court in New York City,[62] of Story's views on women.[63] and of a dinner given in honor of Justice McLean in Nashville.[64] (For the first story, see Judicial Potpourri, page). At a dinner in honor of Justice Baldwin, a toast was given:

The Supreme Court of the United States–Although it sits in the darkest room of the capitol, the hall is illuminated with the purest moral light.[65]

The Register's coverage encompassed, of course, Congressional proceedings including those affecting the judiciary: the great constitutional debates, proposals to expand the circuit system and so on. The Register also included in its pages resolutions of state legislatures, gubernatorial messages, and correspondence of notables such as Jefferson. It was and is a unique repository of information pertinent to the judicial branch in the early nineteenth century.

With "penetrating editorial judgment," "fidelity to principle, industry and truthfulness, and a deep sense of responsibility to his readers, Hezekiah Niles produced "the great American news magazine of the early nineteenth century a reference work "whose columns mirror the most nearly complete and most nearly accurate picture of the American political scene from 1811 to 1849" found in any one contemporary publication.[66]

Treating each of his readers as if he had the intellectual vigor and breadth of interest of a Jefferson, Niles provided for his nation extensive and accurate news coverage of the Supreme Court as well as thoughtful criticism during the "Golden Age of Marshall." The press of later generations, of our own time, and of posterity should be measured by the standard set by Niles Register.

Endnotes

The author gratefully acknowledges the research assistance of Randy L. Sturman and William L. Saunders, Jr., the bibliographic assistance of Vincent A. Burke and Sara J. Sonet of the library of the Supreme Court of the United States, the editorial work of Dr. Dona Baron Morris, and the stimulating suggestions of Professor William F. Swindler, Needless to say, the views of the author do not represent the views of the Supreme Court of the United States.

The journal has customarily been referred to a Niles Register. Actually for its first 2_ years, it was titled Weekly Register; for the next 23_ years, it was Niles' Weekly Register; for the last 12 years, it was Niles' National Register.

This article is limited to consideration of the Register during the years it was edited by Hezekiah Niles, 1811-1836. He was succeeded by his son, William Ogden Niles, who proved more interested in politics than journalism. The journal was sold by Niles' second wife to Niles' friend, Jeremiah Hughes was returned it to a high level for nine years (1839-1848). Age and adverse financial conditions forced a sale to George Beatty of Philadelphia, who simply lacked the editorial expertise to keep the financially-troubled journal going.

1. The description of Niles at work is taken with minimal poetic license from the authoritative work on Niles and his Register, Norval Neil Luxon, Niles Weekly Register; News Magazine of the Nineteenth Century (Baton Rouge, 1947) and from various references in the columns of Niles Register [hereinafter designated "N.R."] e.g. 49 N.R., Dec. 18, 1830, p. 274.
2. Henry Steele Commager, Preface to Alden T. Vaughan (ed.), Chronicles of the American Revolution (N.Y., 1965) vii, viii.
3. The major contemporary works on the relations between press and Court are: Donald L. Grey, The Supreme Court and the News Media (Evanston, Illl., 1968) and Chester A. Newland, "Press Coverage of the United States Supreme Court," 17 Western P.Q. 15-26 (1964). See also, John P. McKenzie, "The Supreme Court and the Press," 67 Mich. L. Rev. 303 (1968), excerpted in Kenneth S. Devol, Mass Media and the Supreme Court, The Legacy of the Warren Years (N.Y., 2^nd ed. 1976), pp. 353-59.
4. MacKenzie, "The Supreme Court and the Press," in Devol, op. cit., 354.
5. The major works on Niles are Lucon, op. cit.; Richard Gabriel Stone, Hezekiah Niles as an Economist, The Johns Hopkins Studies in Historical and Political Sciences, Series LI Number 5 (Baltimore, 1933. See also, Dictionary of American Biography, vol. XIII, p. 521-522).
6. Niles' Wilmington career is discussed in John Thomas Guerther, "Hezekiah Niles, Wilmington Printer and Editor," Delaware History, XVII (Spring-Summer 1976) No. 1, pp. 37-53.
7. John Dickinson, The Political Writings of John Dickinson (Wilmington, 1801).
8. In 1809 Niles' partisan commentaries in the Evening Post on federalist speeches and statements were published in book form as Things As They Are; or Federalism Turned Inside Out! Being a Collection of Extracts From Federal Papers, &c and Remarks upon Them Originally Written for, and Published in the Evening Post (Baltimore, 1809).
9. Principles and Acts of the Revolution in America (Baltimore, 1822), republished by Samuel V. Niles (New York: 1876), republished and edited by Alden T. Vaughan, supra n. 2.
10. Quoted in Luxon, op. cit., p. 64.
11. Luxon, op. cit., p. 1.
12. The standard histories of American Journalism are Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism, A History 1690-1960 (New York, 3^rd ed. 1957); Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines 1741-1850 (Cambridge, Mass., 1939); Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines 1850-1865 (Cambridge, Mass., 1938). See also, John [William] Tebbel, The Compact History of the American Newspaper (N.Y., rev. ed. 1969).
13. Tebbel, op. cit., 72-73.
14. Mott, A History of American Magazines 1741-1850, 161.
15. Luxon, op cit., 75.
16. 28 N.R. June 18, 1825, p. 241.
17. N.R. August 23, 1817, p. 403. See also, Stone, op. cit., 8.
18. Luxon, op. cit., 91.
19. 19 N.R. June 18, 1825, p. 241.
20. Luxon, op. cit., 31.
21. Stone, op. cit., 7.
22. Agriculture of the United States (Baltimore, 1827); Politics for Farmers (Baltimore, 1830); Politics for Working Men (Baltimore, 1831).
23. Warren, The Supreme Court in United States History (Boston, 40, 1922, rev. 1926).
24. 30 N.R. April 22, 1826, p. 151-52; 18 N.R. June 24, 1820, p. 299.
25. Luxon, op. cit., 6.
26. Stone, op. cit., 13.
27. Quoted in Luxon, op. cit., 6.
28. 30 N.R. April 22, 1826, p. 151-52.
29. Luxon, op. cit., 298.
30. Thomas Jfferson to H. Niles, Aug. 22, 1817, quoted in Luxon, op. cit., 12.
31. Stone, op. cit., 31.
32. Albert J. Beveridge, The Life of John Marshall, IV: The Building of a Nation (Boston & N.Y., 1919), p. 310, 445.
33. Noted in Warren, op. cit., I, 488. There is a story in Niles Register about the interpretation of the case by the Mayor of New York without naming it. 16 N.R. June 12, 1819, p. 209.
34. 16 N.R. Feb. 27, 1819, pp. 1-2.
35. 16 N.R. Mar. 6, 1819, p. 27.
36. 16 N.R. Mar. 20, 1819, pp. 76-77.
37. 16 N.R. May 22, 1819, p. 214.
38. Perhaps the best short treatment of a case was an analysis prepared by Thos. P. Jones for the journal of the Franklin Institute of Pennock and Sellers v. Dialogue, a patent case. 37 N.R. Sept. 12, 1829, pp. 47-48.
39. 20 N.R. April 17, 1821, pp. 82-83.
40. Beveridge, op. cit., IV, 309-313.
41. 16 N.R. March 13, 1819, p. 43.
42. 16 N.R. April 3, 1819, p. 103.
43. Beveridge, op. cit., IV, 312-13 quoting John Marshall's letter to Joseph Story, March 24, 1819.
44. Beveridge, op. cit., IV, 313. Marshall took to the press to answer Roane and others with essays signed "A Friend of the Union" published in the Philadelphia Union April 24-28, 1819, and "A Friend of the Constitution," Alexandria Gazette, June 30-July 15, 1819. See the modern revelations in Gerald Gunther, John Marshall's Defense of McCulloch v. Maryland (Stanford, 1969).
45. N.R. Mar. 17, 1821, p. 36.
46. 17 N.R. Oct. 2, 1819, p. 65.
47. 39 N.R. Sept. 18, 1830, p. 58.
48. 33 N.R. Jan. 19, 1828, p. 329.
49. 39 N.R. Aug. 28, 1830, p. 11-12.
50. 48 N.R. July 11, 1835, p. 321.
51. 48 N.R. July 18, 1835, p. 341.
52. 19 N.R. Feb. 17, 1821, p. 415.
53. 32 N.R. Mar. 24, 1827, p. 80.
54. 24 N.R. Mar. 24, 1827, p. 49.
55. 36 N.R. July 11, 1829, p. 313.
56. 29 N.R. Feb. 26, 1826, p. 418.
57. E.g., 37 N.R. Dec. 5, 1829, pp. 228-29.
58. 36 N.R. Oct. 2, 9, 16, 1830, pp. 98, 116, 132.
59. E.g. 28 N.R. Mar. 5, 1825, pp. 8, 19.
60. 39 N.R. Oct. 2, 9, 16, 1830, pp. 98, 116.
61. 21 N.R. Sept. 1, 15, 29, 1821, pp. 1, 39, 70-72.
62. 27 N.R. Sept. 11, 18, Nov. 6, 1824, pp. 28-29, 43-48, 158-160.
63. 36 N.R. July 25, 1829, p. 351.
64. 39 N.R. Oct. 30, 1830, p. 154.
65. 37 N.R. Feb. 6, 1830, p. 397.
66. Luxon, op. cit., p. 307, 163; Stone, op. cit., 43; Louis L. Snyder and Richard B. Morris, A Treasury of Great Reporting (New York, rev. ed. 1962), xxvii. See also, Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism, op cit., 188.