26 INTRODUCTION. 



carded from the Journal the cut of the king's arms, and substituted in its stead 

 the device of a snake severed into parts, with the motto " unite or die."* If 

 Rivington suffered at the hands of the exasperated colonists, Holt was visited 

 with the royal vengeance in forms scarcely less destructive. On the approach 

 of the British army in 1776, he was obliged to quit the city and leave his pro- 

 perty to be destroyed by the enemy. After a short interval, the Journal reap- 

 peared in Kingston. Driven thence by the capture and destruction of that place 

 in the same year, Holt continued the paper at Poughkeepsie until the termination 

 of the war, when he returned to New- York. He died in 1784. His paper, 

 continued by his widow and descendants several years, at length passed into the 

 hands of Thomas Greenleaf. 



Early in the present century, the well known "American Citizen," edited 

 with distinguished ability by James Cheetham, appeared. The New- York 

 Packet, by Samuel Loudon, a native of Ireland, was a spirited auxiliary of the 

 popular cause. That Journal was published at Fishkill while the city of New- 

 York was in possession of the enemy. 



During the same period, Robertson & Co. of the Royal American Gazette. 

 and Lewis of the New- York Mercury and General Advertiser, made such an 

 arrangement with the publishers of the other papers as to form a daily publica- 

 tion. But these newspapers were all discontinued at the peace of 1783. There 

 were, therefore, at the close of the revolutionary war, nearly one hundred and 

 fifty years after the introduction of printing in Massachusetts, and nearly a cen- 

 tury after its establishment in Pennsylvania, only three newspaper publications 

 in the state of New- York. These were Holt's and Loudon's, then respectively 

 published at Poughkeepsie and Fishkill, and the New- York Gazetteer, which 

 was commenced in Albany in May, 1782, by Valentine & Webster, and was 

 succeeded two years afterwards by the Albany Gazette, published by Charles 

 R. Webster, and has been continued by him and Websters & Skinners until the 



* Thomas' History of Printing. 



