of the city suffered severely, losing in all sixty-two persons, among them being both Fenno and Bache. The death of the latter brought to the front William Duane, one of the most powerful of the early political editors.
Duane was born in the northern part of New York, in 1760. His father died shortly after. His mother, after trying to live in Philadelphia and Baltimore, had gone to Ireland. A dispute with his mother over his marriage—she was a woman in comfortable circumstances—led to his determining to learn some business as a means of livelihood, and he turned to printing. After working for a while in London he went to Calcutta, and there published a newspaper which for a while was very successful. A bold criticism of the East India Company, however, led to his being forcibly put aboard ship and sent to England, while his property in India was confiscated. For some time he was a parliamentary reporter for the General Advertiser of London, now known as the London Times, but the refusal on the part of the authorities to take any interest in his ill-treatment in India so disgusted him that he finally determined to return to the United States; he arrived here in 1796. He obtained employment as one of the editors of the Aurora, and after Bache's death conducted the paper for the widow, whom he later married.
It was against Duane as much as any single individual that the Alien and Sedition laws were directed by the Adams Administration, a fact that makes Duane a singularly interesting person, as the passage and enforcement of those laws led to John Adams' retirement to private life and contributed more than any other event to the passing of the Federalist party.
