It was hoped that this new editor and journal could give leadership and tone to the whole Federalist press, for a sad lack of vigor was evident from Maine to Charleston. The leading Federalist newspapers of the time, Benjamin Russell’s _Columbian Centinel_ in Boston, the _Courant_ in Hartford, the _Gazette of the United States_ in Philadelphia, and the Baltimore _Federal Gazette_, did not fully meet the wishes of energetic Federalists. Their conductors did not compare with the chief Democratic editors: James T. Callender, whom Adams had thrown into jail; Thomas Paine; B. F. Bache, Franklin’s grandson; Philip Freneau, and William Duane. Some agency was needed to rouse them. They should be helped with purse and pen, wrote John Nicholas, a leading Virginia Federalist, to Hamilton. “They seldom republish from each other, while on the other hand their antagonists never get hold of anything, however trivial in reality, but they make it ring through all their papers from one end of the continent to the other.” In the summer of 1800 Hamilton called Oliver Wolcott’s attention to libels printed by the Philadelphia _Aurora_ upon prominent Federalists, and asked if these outrageous assaults could not be counteracted. “We may regret but we can not now prevent the mischief which these falsehoods produce,” replied Wolcott.
The establishment of journals for party purposes had become, in the dozen years since the Constitution was ratified, a frequent occurrence, and no political leader knew more of the process than Hamilton. He had won his college education in New York by a striking article in a St. Kitts newspaper. No one needs to be reminded how in the Revolutionary crisis, when a stripling in Kings College, he had attracted notice by anonymous contributions to Holt’s _Journal_, nor how in the equally important crisis of 1787–88 he published his immortal “Federalist” essays in the _Independent Journal_. Samuel Loudon, head of the _Independent Journal_, used to wait in Hamilton’s study for the sheets as they came from his pen. To support Washington’s Administration, Hamilton in 1789 encouraged John Fenno, a Boston schoolmaster of literary inclinations, to establish the _Gazette of the United States_ at the seat of government; and in 1793, when Fenno appealed to Hamilton for $2,000 to save the journal from ruin, the latter took steps to raise the sum, making himself responsible for half of it. Hamilton also financially assisted William Cobbett, the best journalist of his time in England or America, to initiate his newspaper campaign against the Democratic haters of England. He, Rufus King, and others in New York helped provide the capital with which Noah Webster founded the _Minerva_ in that city in 1793, and he and King together wrote for it a series of papers, signed “Camillus,” upon Jay’s Treaty. If Hamilton’s unsigned contributions to the Federalist press from 1790 to 1800 could be identified, they would form an important addition to his works.