[1] Ephraim Pentland, a 20-year-old journalist who had been employed at the Aurora in Philadelphia, established the Commonwealth to give voice in Pittsburgh to the radical cause in opposition to the Quid-oriented Tree of Liberty and the Federalist-leaning Gazette.

[3] Pentland's columns teemed with personal abuse, which grew especially bitter following McKean's victory over Simon Snyder in the 1805 gubernatorial election.

[1] An editorial on Christmas Day bashed Tarleton Bates and Henry Baldwin, associates of the Tree of Liberty's nominal publisher Walter Forward, as "despicable sycophants" and "two of the most abandoned political miscreants that ever disgraced the state.

[7] Members of one publishing group, upon taking charge, complained that "They have found the establishment which has fallen into their hands sickening from the neglect of its former friends, and drooping from the desertion of its old patrons.

[2] Pentland's father-in-law, Senator Abner Lacock, who had regularly contributed columns to the Commonwealth,[2] used the Statesman as a political weapon and was sometimes suspected of writing for the paper under the alias "Hannibal.

An 1826 directory spoke of the Statesman as "in a more flourishing condition than it has been for many years, owing to the late improvement of its appearance and the addition to the editorial department.

[3] Butler continued the paper's anti-Jackson stance,[15] and during the presidential campaign of 1828, supposedly put out Coffin Handbills attacking Jackson.