SOURCE: Smith, Jeffery A. “The Enlightenment Education of Benjamin Franklin Bache.” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 112, no. 4 (October 1988): 483-501.

In the following essay, Smith discusses the influence of Bache's education in Europe, as well as of the ideas of his grandfather, Benjamin Franklin, on his career as a journalist and on his political beliefs.

Unlike the newspaper writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, early American journalists were sporadic writers. A few sought publicity for themselves, but most preferred to be anonymous or used pseudonyms. They thus avoided possible embarrassment or legal retribution and left their publishers to face any consequences from their articles.¹ As partisan journalism intensified in the Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary periods, however, journalism moved closer to being a recognized, full-time profession for some Americans. If their work did not make them wealthy, it could at least bring them notoriety and the satisfaction of...