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Knudson, Jerry W. Jefferson and the Press: Crucible of Liberty. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006. 248 pp. $34.95.
In Jefferson and the Press: Cruable of Liberty, Jerry W. Knudson presents a thoughtful description and analysis of the role and function of the press during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson. He concludes that Americans learned how democracy works through the debates and arguments about the major political issues of the early 1800s that appeared in American newspapers.
Knudson begins with a discussion of the role of the press at the time and the editors who engaged in it. He discusses how the newspaper press grew and developed during the early 1800s and also reviews the careers of the men who guided the newspapers under study, concluding that they were strongly attached to their respective political parties and worked to use the...