Hacking the Newspaper Exchange Network: How a Poor Vermont Farmer Used His Pen-Printed Newspaper to Spread his Abolitionist, Atheist, Anti-Temperance Message in Antebellum America

James Johns (1797-1874) handwrote his newspaper the Vermont Autograph and Remarker from 1832 until 1873, with his handwriting closely mimicking newspaper printing. Johns craved to know the news, but as a poor farmer, he could not afford to buy newspapers. Taking advantage of the postal law that allowed editors to send copies of their newspapers to other editors for free, Johns was able to access and exploit the network of newspaper editors, sharing his views on political, social, and religious issues as his articles were reprinted. Johns received newspapers in exchange, which served as the raw material for his next Vermont Autograph. This paper uses Johns’ extant Vermont Autographs, his journals, and—for the first time—the newspapers Johns sent his Vermont Autographs to, which reprinted and commented on his articles. Previously dismissed as an eccentric who handprinted a newspaper for 40 years, Johns emerges as a politically astute, but complicated, thinker whose views were given great weight by his contemporaries. He was a respected Whig—and then Republican—voice against slavery. But unlike many of his fellow abolitionists, he was anti-temperance. And unlike virtually all in the nineteenth-century United States, he was an atheist. This paper examines Johns’ use of the network of newspaper editors to spread his views.

David George is a PhD candidate at the University of Aberdeen focusing on 19th Century American history. I am currently finishing my PhD on James Johns and his newspaper the Vermont Autograph & Remarker. I am also a lawyer, specializing in appellate law.