[4] In 1831, then Gettysburg lawyer and borough councilman Thaddeus Stevens, gave a speech in Hagerstown, Maryland, where he strongly condemned freemasonry claiming that the organization was seeking to undermine the United States and enslave the American people.

The newspaper, staunchly Democratic, attacked the personal appearance and character of Stevens, in an attempt to undermine the popularity of the local Anti-Masonic Party.

Calling Stevens "bald" "stout" "lame" and a "harlot", and that his speech was "the vilest slanders barefaced falsehood and pandemoniac malignity against a large and respectable portion of our citizens that ever fell from the lips of any man."

After the trial, former state senator Zephaniah Herbert accused Reed, and the other presiding Judge, McClean, of prejudice as both were very active in local anti-masonic circles.

[5] Isaac, who was never a journalist or politician, sold the paper in 1843 to Edward Stahle to finance his tuition at the University of Pennsylvania's Medical School.