land colonies. The desire to have a paper in Rhode Island that would more fairly represent the point of view of the Whigs than did the Newport Mercury, the one paper published there, led the Governor to encourage William Goddard, one of the famous printers of the time, to establish the first printing press in Providence, and in 1762 to publish a newspaper there, the Providence Gazette.
What Samuel Adams and his group were doing in Boston, Stephen Hopkins, the Governor of Rhode Island — "a far-seeing and accomplished statesman," comparable in intellectual traits with Benjamin Franklin, according to one authority—did almost as well in that little colony.[1] He was not only the author of a strong pamphlet that drew out the "Halifax Gentleman," the first Loyalist writer in the field, but his contributions to the Providence Gazette[2] helped to build the paper up as a patriotic organ, to counteract the efforts of the Loyalists, and to arouse the men of the colony to a full sympathy with the patriots of Boston.
William Goddard, the publisher of this paper, was as important in his field as Hopkins was in his. Not meeting with sufficient encouragement in Providence, which was a small place, he moved to New York and worked with John Holt on the New York Gazette and Post Boy.[3] In 1766 he went to Philadelphia and became the partner of Galloway and Wharton, both Loyalists, in the Pennsylvania Chronicle. In 1773, having found the venture unprofitable, Goddard went to Baltimore, where he started another newspaper. Here he devoted himself to working out a plan for a line of post-riders
- ↑ Tyler, Literary History of the American Revolution, 64.
- ↑ W. G. Foster, Stephen Hopkins, ii. 48.
- ↑ Sabine, The American Loyalists, 326.
