It was a criminal libel case brought against a Federalist journalist named Harry Croswell for his statements about a number of public officials, including then-President Thomas Jefferson.

In a famous and lengthy argument on Croswell's behalf, Alexander Hamilton tried to convince the judges that truthful statements should not be considered defamatory, regardless of what they concerned.

[1] A strong sympathizer with the Federalist Party of President John Adams, he took a job writing for the Balance and Columbian Repository, a newspaper with similar political leanings.

[2] Croswell then convinced his own editor at the Balance to let him start The Wasp, a small sheet, dedicated to attacking and antagonizing Holt and disparaging Republican politicians and Jefferson.

[2] In the September 9, 1802 issue of The Wasp, Croswell repeated a charge against Jefferson that had first appeared in the Evening Post, a New York City newspaper founded by Alexander Hamilton.

Holt had mocked the Federalists' claims against Jefferson's character and said the worst they could say about him was that he had paid a fellow Virginian, James Thompson Callender, to attack the Adams administration in print.

Federalists had been charging that Jefferson had paid Callender not only to attack Adams but also to call the late George Washington "a traitor, robber and perjurer ... and for most grossly slandering the private characters of men who, he well knew, were virtuous."

The defendant was accused of ... being a malicious and seditious man, and of depraved mind and wicked and diabolical disposition, and also deceitfully, wickedly and maliciously devising, contriving and intending, toward Thomas Jefferson, Esquire, President of the United States of America, to detract from, scandalize, traduce and vilify, and to represent him, the said Thomas Jefferson, as unworthy of the confidence, respect and attachment of the people of the said United States.

Croswell, represented pro bono by a team of prominent attorneys, including William Peter Van Ness, pleaded not guilty to both charges.

But that, Kent held, had led to an overly tame English press, and laws in the new nation had already been tending toward allowing the truth, if justified, as a defense to a libel charge.

I adopt, in this case, as perfectly correct, the comprehensive and accurate definition of one of the counsel at the bar, that the liberty of the press consists in the right to publish, with impunity, truth, with good motives, and for justifiable ends, whether it respects government, magistracy, or individuals.

[citation needed] Twenty years later, James Kent observed that courts had begun applying that standard to all civil defamation actions, regardless of who the plaintiff was.

"If the charge, in its substance and measure, be true in point of fact, the law considers the plaintiff as coming into court without any equitable title to relief."

In cases such as New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts, Associated Press v. Walker and Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., it afforded the media greater latitude, through the actual malice test, when challenged over allegedly false and defamatory statements by public figures than private ones.