The New-England Courant made its first appearance on Monday, August 7, 1721, printed and published by James Franklin and was the third newspaper established in Boston.

[4][5][6] James was the elder brother of the renowned Benjamin Franklin, and began his printing career in Boston in March 1716 at the age of twenty-five.

[6][7] Operating without a printing license from provincial government,[a] The New-England Courant became the first truly independent American newspaper to use literary content, critical and often humorous essays.

[7] James announced the birth of the Courant with a scathing attack on Cotton Mather, a major supporter of inoculation,[11] and in its outspoken and candid capacity his newspaper gave the signal for rebellion against such established authority.

[12][13] In a public address James criticized The Boston News-Letter for being overly modest and compliant with governmental authority, referring to it as "a dull vehicle of intelligence".

It consisted of one single sheet printed on both sides, focusing mostly on shipping reports, snippets of information from neighboring towns, and letters from Europe.

[15][16] In 1721, just before The New-England Courant made its first appearance, HMS Seahorse arrived at Boston harbor from the West Indies carrying many passengers infected with smallpox.

[19][20] Strong differences in opinion over the ethics of inoculation sparked a bitter newspaper and pamphlet war, of which the Courant was playing a major role, beginning with its first issue of August 7.

[21] Reverend Cotton Mather, a prominent and respected Puritan who trained as a physician before becoming a preacher, sent out letters to various doctors in Boston, urging their support for inoculation, but nearly all of them were highly skeptical of the practice.

Subsequently, one of the reasons Franklin started the Courant was to give Doctor William Douglass[c] and others who opposed inoculation a voice to make their opposition public.

[24] On January 14 a committee of the House ordered James Franklin from further publication of the New-England Courant as they felt that it was being used to mock religion and held the holy scriptures in contempt, while the "faithful Ministers of the Gospel" were being routinely slandered.

[6][11][31] At various times during his six-year term as printer and publisher of the New-England Courant James Franklin found himself at odds and in the middle of controversy with the Massachusetts provincial government and the Clergy.

On June 11, 1722, he printed what appeared to be an innocent enough account about the particular affairs of the Massachusetts government when he published that, "We are advised from Boston that the government of Massachusetts are fitting out a ship [the Flying Horse], to go after the pirates, to be commanded by Captain Peter Papillon, and ’tis thought he will sail some time this month, wind and weather permitting.”The magisterial Council for their own reasons took this to be an insult, and perhaps a breach of security, resulting in James' incarceration for a couple of weeks.

Beginning at age sixteen, Benjamin would later write some fifteen controversial editorials under the pen name of Silence Dogood, disguising his hand-writing, and submitted them to the Courant by slipping them under the door of the printing shop.

Deeply galled over the cause of his brother's imprisonment, Benjamin "unleashed a piercing attack" at colonial authorities after James' release from jail, through another Silence Dogood editorial (essay 9), which was carried by the July 16–23, 1722 issue of Courant, considered the "most biting of his entire career".

It declared that from now on the Courant would be "designed purely for the diversion and merriment of the reader" and also to "entertain the town with the most comical and diverting incidents of human life."

The Courant thereafter slowly failed in the face of the constant conflicts with Mathers and Puritanical Boston and wore James down, where he subsequently folded the paper and removed to Rhode Island where he eventually died in 1735.