SOURCE: "Orestes Brownson, Journalist: A Fighter for Truth," in The Commonweal, Vol. XXXVII, No. 16, February 5, 1943, pp. 390-93.

In the following essay, Maynard favorably assesses Brownson's career as a journalist.

All his life long he was primarily a journalist, and of a kind that has probably never been surpassed in America and certainly never matched. That Brownson was a minister until he was forty-one was only incidental to his journalism, as was his lecturing. These tilings, indeed, were only spoken (and less effective) journalism, too. Though by practice he got rid of his early rusticity of manner, and developed a resonant voice, he was never quite at ease as a speaker. Young Isaac Hecker, who fell under his influence in 1841, noted that the tall (and as yet slim) Vermonter spoke without notes and with a logic and sincerity that appealed to those of a philosophical cast, but also noted...