Anthony Haswell (printer)

Anthony Haswell (6 April 1756 – 26 May 1816) was an English immigrant to New England, where he became a newspaper, almanac, and book publisher, the Postmaster General of Vermont and one of the Jeffersonian printers imprisoned under the Sedition Act of 1798.

Anthony had witnessed the Boston Massacre and developed an interest in the politics of the time, becoming a member of the Sons of Liberty and composing ballads for the movement.

[3] In April 1775 Thomas was forced to evacuate his press from Boston, moving to Worcester where publication continued,[3] but within a year Haswell bought his way out of his apprenticeship early.

[2] Haswell shortly gained a certain notoriety by publishing Ethan Allen's controversial deist tract, Reason, the Only Oracle of Man: Or, A Compendious System of Natural Religion in 1785.

As the politics of the early Republic developed, Haswell fell into the camp of Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party, becoming one of the leading printers of the movement.

As a result, he was arrested, taken from his house in the middle of the night by Federalist marshal Jabez Fitch (the same "oppressive hand" Haswell had condemned) and immediately taken by horse to a jail in Rutland, some 50 miles away, to await adjudication.

[3] In a trial conducted at Windsor on 5 May 1800 by Supreme Court Justice William Paterson he was found guilty of seditious libel, sentenced to a two-month imprisonment, and fined $200.

[9] The Haswell case has since been frequently mentioned in studies relating to freedom of the press, specifically with regard to the responsibilities of those who publish or repeat the words of others.

He reported that while his paper's circulation had once been 1400 per week, "[t]he unhappy political divisions which for some years past have afflicted our country, have been peculiarly injurious to me," and that he had been "reduced to distress, and almost to penury.

[2][12] He did receive the government printing concession,[2] and continued as a printer for another decade and a half, briefly attempting another magazine as well as producing several books, notably Memoirs and Adventures of Captain Matthew Phelps.