CHAPTER II
THE FIRST NEWSPAPER IN AMERICA
Contemporary indifference to Harris—His important part in struggle for free press—Prosecuted by Jeffreys—Jailed and pilloried for seditious publication—Imprisoned for second time—His arrival in America—Opens coffee-shop — Publishes first newspaper in America—Reasons for suppression—Author of New England Primer—Returns to England—Date of death unknown.
Into this settlement came Benjamin Harris, arriving, according to one authority, in 1687; according to the Boston Town Records, in 1686. If ever a community needed a particular type of man, Boston of this period needed Benjamin Harris—London bookseller, printer, "brisk asserter of English liberties," and later on the author of the New England Primer. That he was suppressed and driven back to the London from which he had come, was the misfortune of a colony not liberal enough to welcome him, for he was of the type of the earlier Pilgrims and of those later New Englanders who directed the fight for independence.
Contemporary records afford us little information about Harris, though he left his impression on the journalism of two countries and was an exceptional figure in the fight for a free press in both England and America. That he has been neglected by those who have come after him, has been due, not so much to indifference to him personally as to the general indifference to the journalist who fails, no matter what the cause.
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