Hugh Gaine : A Colonial Printer-Editor's Odyssey to Loyalism

Hugh Gaine was a Colonial New York printer who in the second year of the American Revolution first allied his press to the American cause, then deserted to publish his newspaper for the British. This first book-length biography of Gaine contributes substantially to our knowl­edge of journalism in the Colonial period and provides fascinating insights into life in Revolutionary times. Gaine was more than a turncoat Amer­ican, Lorenz shows. From his reading of the files of Gaine’s newspaper, from un­published material, and from a wide va­riety of printed sources, Lorenz has pieced together this study of economic and political conservatism, religious be­lief, and social class feelings which made Gaine a prototypal Loyalist to the British cause, though a citizen, or at least a resi­dent, of the United States, to the end of his days, in 1807.