James T. Callender

James Thomson Callender (1758 – July 17, 1803) was a political pamphleteer and journalist whose writing was controversial in his native Scotland and the United States. His contemporary reputation was as a "scandalmonger", due to the content of some of his reporting, which overshadowed the political content — some modern scholars note Callender's writings in favor of democracy. In the United States, he was a central figure in the press wars between the Federalist and Democratic-Republican parties. In the late 1790s, Thomas Jefferson sought him out to attack President John Adams, which Callender did. After Jefferson won the presidency, Callender was later denied employment as a postmaster by Jefferson, then Callender reported on President Jefferson's alleged children by his slave concubine Sally Hemings.

Self-educated, Callender worked as a recorder of deeds in Scotland when he began publishing satire. He turned to politics, some thought sedition, in a pamphlet, The Political Progress of Britain, which caused a furor and led him to flee Great Britain for America. He gained notoriety in Philadelphia in the 1790s with reportage and attacks on Alexander Hamilton. He was subsequently imprisoned under the Alien and Sedition Acts, and later turned against his one-time Democratic-Republican patrons. In 1803, he drowned, apparently falling in the James River due to intoxication - although there was some speculation among Federalists that his death may not have been an accident, as he was due to testify in a highly publicized trial later that month.

Callender was born in Scotland. He did not gain a formal education, but secured employment as a sub clerk in the Edinburgh Sasine office, the equivalent of the Recorder of Deeds. While working in that office, Callender published satirical pamphlets criticizing the writer Samuel Johnson. "Deformities of Samuel Johnson", published anonymously, appealed to populist Scottish sentiments. Later he wrote pamphlets attacking political corruption. Callender's political writings were tinged with radical democratic egalitarianism, Scottish nationalism and a pessimistic view of human nature, and were critical of the liberal notion of progress. An admirer of Jonathan Swift, Callender sought to cut the wealthy and the powerful down to size in his writing.

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