'Of great utility to the people of Cincinnati': The Centinel of the North-Western Territory reports the French Revolution.

• Author: Baker, Jr., Lee

By all accounts, life on the American frontier at the end of the eighteenth century could be very lonely, especially in an area as large and pristine as the Northwest Territory. The isolation of life at the fringes of civilization could be remedied by the presence of a newspaper that brought the outer world, which probably seemed so far away, into close proximity, allowing settlers to maintain contact with the eastern seaboard. But there was more to newspapers than mere diversion; they were (and still are) not only sources of news or advertisements but also a medium for informing and shaping public opinion. (1) In the days before mass distribution, newspapers were usually read by multiple readers with the same copy circulated among a large readership of friends or acquaintances. This process of sharing information fostered a sense of engagement within the local community and with the outside world that reinforced common goals by creating a shared sense of risks as well as accomplishments. As such, newspapers can serve as a mechanism for binding a community together and forging a consensus on how to address common problems. (2) In this sense, they can be valuable sources for determining how communities viewed themselves and the difficulties that they faced.

This study explores one of the many issues facing Cincinnati during its early years of settlement through the prism of its newspaper, The Centinel of the North- Western Territory, the first (and only) newspaper in the Northwest Territory during the early 1790s. Specifically, it examines how relations with Native Americans were reflected through that newspaper's coverage of the major international news of that period, the French Revolution. The editor of The Centinel of the North-Western Territory published articles on the French Revolution to show how the French dealt with their problems so that local readers could see models of how to "scientifically" improve the quality of life in Cincinnati.

Cincinnati is one of the oldest cities in the Midwest. Founded in 1789 and originally known as Losantiville, it quickly became a center of trade and commerce as well as the military capital of the Northwest Territory. By 1793, Cincinnati had about 900 inhabitants, with an additional 200 soldiers stationed at Fort Washington. There was one church, First Presbyterian, but no brick buildings; the entire town was constructed from logs. There was as yet no music hall, theater, or any outward sign of eastern culture. It had, though, a news paper, The Centinel of the North-Western Territory, which printed its first edition in November, 1793, in a log cabin on the corner of Sycamore and Front streets (the site is today beneath a baseball stadium). It was not uncommon for a town the size of Cincinnati to print a newspaper. During the 1790s, the United States had the highest number of newspapers per person in the world (one for every fifty people). Nearly every community, no matter how small, had its own newspaper, most modeled after the Gazette of the United States (printed in Philadelphia) or the National Gazette (printed in New York). (3)

Cincinnati's early years were not especially auspicious and it struggled to carve an economic niche for itself out of the virgin forests and fertile plains. In addition to the typical administrative and economic problems facing all new settlements, it had, like most frontier towns, an ambivalent relationship with some of the local Native Americans. To address this problem, the first building of any importance in Cincinnati was Fort Washington (built in 1789). This vital community asset physically dominated the town throughout the 1790s, and its role in shaping relations with local Native Americans was extremely important in ensuring Cincinnati's viability as a city. Like revolutionary France, Cincinnati was at war during 1793; the Northwest Territory may have been formally integrated into the United States, but the army was still grappling with Native Americans who inhabited the area and laid claim to its lands.

The United States Army suffered two major setbacks in the early 1790s in its efforts to settle the Indian problem in the Northwest Territory. During the fall of 1790, President George Washington sent approximately 1,400 men under the command of General Josiah Harmer into the Ohio country to assert the U.S. claim that the Ohio River was not the northern limit of American settlement. The unit was ambushed twice and lost about half of its men to the Miami Indians, who were aided by the British, before withdrawing across the Ohio River. This defeat caused much anger and resentment against both the army for its failure and the British as accomplices of the Miami. (4) In 1791, a contingent of the United States Army, led by General Arthur St. Clair, suffered one of the worst defeats in the history of the Indian wars when a Miami war party led by Little Turtle killed approximately 900 American soldiers in western Ohio. The survivors fled back to Cincinnati and over the next few years the jubilant Native Americans tried to force settlers south of the Ohio River, which they considered the northern boundary with the United States. (5) Thus, during the early 1790s one of the problems afflicting Cincinnati was the ongoing confrontation between its residents and local Native Americans. (6)

The Centinel of the North-Western Territory (hereafter The Centinel naturally addressed this problem, linking its coverage of the relationship between frontier settlers and Native Americans with the course of events during the French Revolution. That there could be any connection between these very different issues may seem odd, but the climax to the Indian wars in the Northwest Territory came at precisely the same moment that the revolutionaries in France had surmounted their own difficulties and defeated their foreign and domestic enemies. In addition, the Ohio River Valley had a long tradition of interest in French affairs dating back to the days when Frenchmen were among the first Europeans to explore the region. As will be shown, the editor of The Centinel contextualized news of the Indian wars within a particular framework of reporting on events associated with the French Revolution. While it is not possible to ascertain the editor's overt intent because editorial commentary was non-existent, the ways in which he juxtaposed news on both issues offers compelling circumstantial evidence of an intent, whether conscious or not, to link them. One might also surmise that as a result of the pro-French perspective of his reporting, William Maxwell, contrary to his claims of being an independent voice free of political bias, may have contributed to or reflected the development of pro-Republican Party politics in the nascent Ohio Valley settlements.

The Centinel, the first and only newspaper in the Northwest Territory during the early 1790s, was primed and published in Cincinnati. Its founder and editor, William Maxwell, had moved to Cincinnati from Lexington, Kentucky, where he had been John Bradford's assistant at the Kentucky Gazette. According to historian Thomas Leonard, journalism in the eighteenth century was a "business of upstarts" who could only hope to just make ends meet. As one New Jersey editor complained, "subsisting on a country newspaper is generally little better than starving." The general belief was that no newspaper outside of the major cities could support its owner in anything but the barest circumstances. (7) Maxwell knew of the difficulties associated with making a newspaper profitable in a small community but confessed his contentment with "small gains." (8) He appears to have done well enough, however, to contribute $3 to a fund to rebuild the Presbyterian church in 1794 (the average contribution was $2.70). (9) Maxwell eventually tired of journalism and sold his newspaper in 1796 to Edmund Freeman, who changed its name to Freeman's Journal. He died in 1809. (10)

Maxwell published the first edition of his newspaper on November 9, 1793, at an annual subscription rate of $2.50, or seven cents per weekly issue. His explicit goal was to start a newspaper which would be "of great utility" to people of Cincinnati by providing them with information "of what is going on in the east of the Atlantic in arms, and in the arts of peace [in other words, in Europe]," as well as "the different transactions of the states in the union." (11) This aim fits into the idea of the press as an agent of enlightenment which was quite common during this period, but its focus was in using "knowledge" to promote local independence from the territorial government. During the first few months of its existence, for example, the newspaper frequently published letters that condemned a territorial ordinance which required all local tavern owners to obtain a license, an overt attempt to control the proliferation of such establishments within Cincinnati. The Centinel took the lead in characterizing that law as an overt act of "oppression" by a non-elected government and urged local solutions to local problems. (12)

Beginning with the first issue of The Centinel, Maxwell acknowledged the difficulties that the community faced and offered to provide information that would be useful in addressing those issues, including economic and political problems that could be improved by the local application of knowledge in the broadest sense. One of these problems was that "the inhabitants are daily exposed to an enemy who ... have [sic] swept away whole families." Since residents of Cincinnati are "disposed to promote Science" within a context of local initiative, one of the problems which he would address would be the "Indian problem." (13) In essence, Maxwell's newspaper was not intended to serve simply as a source of European and American news or as a promoter of local independence from territorial leadership, but more so as a source of information that settlers...