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When George Washington needed an eloquent Patriot to rally the rebel cause in New Jersey, he conferred with Alexander Hamilton, who entreated his old friend, Shepard Kollock, to combat vestigial Tory sentiment by establishing The New Jersey Journal, printed just outside Morristown, where Washington headquartered during the War of Independence. Because paper was scarce and expensive in the colonies, Kollock's new press was provisioned from the Army Commissary. In effect, George Washington put Shepard Kollock into business to ensure that northern Jersey, a British stronghold, would have a local source of information free of Tory bias.

Qualifications of a Rebel Printer

Shepard Kollock, well-educated, had been a good soldier in the Continental Army, and had either just resigned his Lieutenancy, frustrated by an absence of promotion, or had been induced to resign by General Henry Knox to establish a newspaper per Washington's concept. Either way, Kollock was unemployed at the right time. The son of a lawyer, he had apprenticed as a printer with his uncle, William Goddard, an editor of the Pennsylvania Chronicle. Later in his distinguished career, Kollock served as a Judge of the Common Pleas and as Postmaster. History may, however, best remember Kollock for work that embodied First Amendment rights such as freedom of speech and the freedom of the press.

New Jersey Newspapers, Circa 1779

The paper from Trenton, in southern NJ, was published by a Quaker; New York newspapers were controlled by the British. Washington and his advisors recognized that northern New Jersey lacked an inspiring Whig voice. Washington envisioned, and Kollock wrote and published, a folio that influenced popular opinion, heightened political consciousness, and unified a territory. New Jersey Journal editorial denounced tyranny as it championed free speech and resistance to oppression at home and abroad. By mixing in local news, Kollock drove home the notion that the Revolution was right out there, in the back yard, where the neighbor boy just battled like a gladiator for your liberty.

Political sentiment in New Jersey, by 1778, had already begun to shift away from the Tory and towards the Rebel viewpoint. Examples representing prior attempts to establish a press covering northern Jersey attest this ideological shift.

The Plain Dealer, written by four Patriots, among them future senators and governors, featured editorial stridently pro-independence; they lacked, unfortunately, a press, and literally posted their handwritten broadside on tavern walls-- but it was read, discussed, respected. Patriots in New Brunswick, meanwhile, became so enraged by the Loyalist slant of James Rivington's New York Gazetteer that they hanged the printer in effigy, boycotted the paper, and burned every copy they could find.

The New Jersey Gazette, however, caught on. William Livingston, the new governor, subsidized its publication with state funding, after discussing the enterprise with Washington. The Gazette's express purpose was to combat the Tory bias of the other papers in local circulation, and to feature New Jersey sources and local interest stories. Livingston and Washington expected the paper to boost morale among the troops, publish accurate, timely accounts of battles and skirmishes to enhance everyone's appreciation for the war efforts on their behalf, and reflect on contemporary political affairs, domestic and foreign, all set between advertisements and entertainments, much like today’s newspapers.

The Gazette met nearly all of Washington’s needs, save for the fact that the paper was published in Burlington—further south in Jersey than Trenton – and 65 miles from the headquarters in Morristown.

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