Press and Speech

In 1734, printer John Peter Zenger was arrested for printing seditious libel in two issues of his newspaper, the New-York Weekly Journal. One issue asserted that New Yorkers “think, as matters now stand, that their liberties and properties are precarious, and that slavery is now likely to be entailed on them and their posterity. His arrest was recorded in the minutes of the New York Colonial Council on November 18, 1734.

Learning Activities