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Joseph Dennie (August 30, 1768January 7, 1812) was an American author and journalist who was one of the foremost men of letters of the Federalist Era.Massachusetts Historical Society 1879, p. 362 A Federalist Party, Dennie is best remembered for his series of essays entitled The Lay Preacher and as the founding editor of The Port Folio, a journal espousing classical republican values. Port Folio was the most highly regarded and successful literary publication of its time,Spiller 1948, p. 36Horner 1966, p. 581Hickey 1999, p.108 and the first important political and literary journal in the United States.Dowling 1999, p. 1 Timothy Dwight IV once referred to Dennie as "the Joseph Addison of America"Hickey 1999, p. 107 and "the father of American Belles-Lettres."Marble 1907, p. 206
In 1787 Dennie was admitted to the sophomore class of Harvard College, where he was very popular with his peers.Clapp 1880, p. 8 This popularity did not extend to his tutors, and he was suspended in December 1789 for six months after insulting the faculty.Clapp 1880, p. 9 Dennie had difficulty finding suitable employment after earning his degree in 1790, but by 1793 he was practicing law (though earning very little for his work).Clapp 1880, pp. 13–16 In a January 1794 letter to his parents, however, Dennie reports that he had been appointed as a Lay reader for the Episcopalian church in Charlestown, New Hampshire. Nevertheless, he insisted that this new vocation would not deter him from his goal of practicing law, though by then he was planning on remaining in New Hampshire to practice rather than returning to Massachusetts.Clapp 1880, pp. 15–23 Shortly after writing the letter, Dennie was admitted to the Trial court and opened a practice in Charlestown.Clapp 1880, p. 23 However, he rarely appeared in open court;Buckingham 1852, pp. 198-199 indeed, he probably made only one appearance.Ward 1896, pp. 667–668
Dennie's disappointment over the failure of The Tablet inspired him to begin work on The Lay Preacher, the first of which appeared in The Farmer's Weekly Museum, a New Hampshire newspaper which was the leading literary journal of the 1790s.Hickey 1999, p. 103 After Dennie took over as editor of the paper in 1796, its circulation increased dramatically, stretching, as one commentator put it, "from Maine to Georgia."Clapp 1880, p.28 Under Dennie's leadership the paper had a decidedly Federalist slant, supporting both the Quasi-War and the Alien and Sedition Acts. Dennie collaborated often with his friend Royall Tyler;Westbrook 1988, p. 100Richards 1997, p. 1 the two wrote a satirical column by the name of "The Shop of Messrs. Colon and Spondee" which appeared in the Museum.Tyler 1920, p. 119Ellis 1971, pp. 66–67 In 1798 Dennie lost a considerable amount of money when the paper's printer went Bankruptcy. He remained as editor for a few months afterward at a reduced salary but was soon replaced by the printer's brother. The paper's circulation dropped precipitously following Dennie's departure. Later in the year Dennie ran an unsuccessful campaign for Congress; following this defeat, he turned down offers to edit several prominent journals, including a generous offer from Boston's Independent Chronicle, as he refused to work for a Democratic paper.Marble 1907, p.216 Instead, he accepted an appointment from Timothy Pickering (at the time United States Secretary of State) to a position as Pickering's personal secretary.Clapp 1880, pp. 31–32
Once in Philadelphia, Dennie resumed his editorial career with the Gazette of the United States, a Federalist-friendly newspaper.Hickey 1999, p. 108 In 1800 Dennie, along with Philadelphia bookseller Asbury Dickens, began work on the Port Folio. Under the pseudonym Oliver Oldschool, Esq.,Adams 2006, p. 221Trent 1903, p. 212 Dennie wrote, in 1803, a scathing attack on Jeffersonian democracy, for which he was brought up on charges of seditious libel.Adams 1986, p. 60 Dennie wrote, in part:
A democracy is scarcely tolerable at any period of national history. Its omens are always sinister, and its powers are unpropitious. It is on its trial here, and the issue will be civil war, desolation, and anarchy. No wise man but discerns its imperfections, no good man but shudders at its miseries, no honest man but proclaims its fraud, and no brave man but draws his sword against its force. The institution of a scheme of policy so radically contemptible and vicious is a memorable example of what the villany of some men can devise, the folly of others receive, and both establish in spite of reason, reflection, and sensation.Adams 2007, p. 67–68
This paragraph was reprinted in Federalist newspapers throughout the country. While Dennie was acquitted, the severity of the attacks leveled in Port Folio would henceforth be lessened.Marble 1907, p. 216 However, when Dennie criticized democracy, it was not the republican democracy found in the United States today, but rather the "democracy" found in France under Robespierre and Napoleon. Dennie was invoking Aristotle's argument that "an absolute democracy is not to be reckoned among the legitimate forms of government. It is the corruption and degeneracy, and not the sound constitution of a republic."Dowling 1999, pp. 2–3
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