What motivated the start of Press Register 200 years ago?

James Lyon published the first newspaper in Mobile, The Mobile Gazette, sometime around late April 1813. Because the owners of The Mobile Commercial Register acquired his newspaper in 1822, The Mobile Press Register this month celebrates 200 years of publication.

Viewed in isolation, the issuing of the Gazette by a wandering American printer was an event of little significance to anyone except perhaps to Lyon and a handful of others in the town of fewer than 500 souls.

More than half of these inhabitants were slaves or free blacks. Whites comprised the remainder. Any observer would have concluded that the town did not offer much of a potential newspaper subscriber or advertiser base.

What motivated Lyon to start a newspaper in Mobile with such unlikely prospects?

Newspaper Politics

The answer lies in the fact that the birth the Gazette was a product of broad political currents and personal alliances taking place in early 19^th century America.

By the time of Thomas Jefferson’s election to the presidency in 1800, newspapers had become the Republic’s central political organizations. Editors didn’t just comment on the party system, they ran it. Editors acted as the chief party spokesmen and newspaper offices often served as local party headquarters. For good reason, historian Jeffrey L. Pasley has dubbed this party system as newspaper politics.

When Jefferson bought Louisiana in 1803 for the United States, Secretary of State James Madison

Gen. James Wilkinson

sent commissions to Mississippi Territory Gov. William C.C. Claiborne and General James Wilkinson, the ranking Army officer on the frontier, to go to New Orleans and accept the province on behalf of the United States.

Secretary of War Henry Dearborn entrusted delivery of his orders for Claiborne and Wilkinson to a loyal Republican newspaperman—James Lyon. It may have been purely coincidental, but probably was not, that in 1799, Lyon began publishing a campaign newspaper in Georgetown, Virginia, in support of Thomas Jefferson.

With Jefferson’s election as president, Lyon became public printer to Congress. Additionally, Republicans revered Lyon’s father, Matthew Lyon, who had been imprisoned during the Adams administration for violating the Sedition Law. The senior Lyon also had served in the Revolution, was acquainted with Wilkinson and had been elected to Congress in 1796. In his first attempt at office a few years earlier, Matthew Lyon had employed his then 17-year-old son James as editor of the Rutland, Vermont, Farmers’ Library to support his campaign.

First English Language Newspaper in Louisiana

It may have been purely coincidental, but again probably was not, that Lyon followed Claiborne and Wilkinson to New Orleans. On December 13, 1803, seven days before Claiborne and Wilkinson officially received Louisiana for the United States in the Place d’Armes, James Lyon began publication in New Orleans of his Union, the first English language newspaper in Louisiana.

Certainly, New Orleans offered Lyon a chance for financial gain. Nearly 25,000 people lived in the Crescent City, making it the largest city west of the Appalachian Mountains. As the main outlet for western commodities, millions of dollars in produce flowed through the port.

Nevertheless, the substantial hurdles Lyon faced in publishing the Union make it unlikely that he decided to start the newspaper by chance as the territory passed into American hands. The high cost and difficulty of transporting basic printing equipment to New Orleans and the likely shortages of paper make such a coincidence improbable.

Since subscribers and advertisers for the Union did not yet exist, at least not in any number, turning a profit from the publication also seems an unlikely motivation, or just plain unlikely, at least for a time.

Plans for Newspaper Chain

Moreover, James Lyon had a plan. He wanted to create a national chain of newspapers that would speak as one voice for the Republicans. He founded seven of them in 1800 alone. Through these papers, Lyon believed Republicans would be able to tailor uniformly their messages throughout the country.

To found so many newspapers, Lyon must have had the backing of wealthy members of the Republican Party. Just 27 years old in 1803, Lyon had operated many businesses including a sawmill, ironworks, papermill, shipbuilding, bookstore and lottery. But he was not known for making money.

Lyon pursued his ambition in New Orleans for nearly a year before selling the Union to James M. Bradford and leaving New Orleans for Carthage, Tennessee, in December 1804. Lyon probably never intended to stay long in New Orleans. His wife and children had remained in Tennessee.

We don’t know how Lyon came to be in Mobile in 1813. But it seems likely that Madison, now president, once again entrusted his loyal newspaper editor to deliver orders to Gen. Wilkinson to take possession of the city for the United States.

The Spanish surrendered Mobile to Wilkinson on April 13 and Lyon shortly afterward started publication of The Mobile Gazette. As he had in New Orleans, Lyon soon sold the newspaper and returned to his family. Lyon died in poverty on April 13, 1824, in Cheraw, South Carolina.