The Cayuga Patriot
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- Title:
- The Cayuga Patriot
- Collection:
- 19th Century Prison Reform Collection
- Date:
- 1843-12-16
- ID Number:
- RMM01157_B01_F07_007
- Collection Number:
- 1157
- File Name:
- RMM01157_B01_F07_007.pdf
- Work Type:
- documents
- Description:
- The Cayuga Patriot was a weekly Auburn newspaper founded in 1814, becoming the sixth in the county. It was established in political opposition to Auburn's first newspaper, the Western Federalist, and thus advocated strong support for the Democratic-Republican Party formed by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison (for more on President Madison, see the "James Madison lithograph" in this exhibit). This note from the newspaper's publisher, I.S. Allen, to Enos T Throop points to an interesting constellation of politics, journalism, war, and prison. Enos T Throop was a leading representative of the Democratic-Republican Party and assumed the duties of New York governor after Martin Van Buren’s resignation in 1829. He won the following gubernatorial election, with support from highly partisan newspapers like the Cayuga Patriot.
As documented elsewhere in this digital collection, Enos T Throop had a heavy hand in the 19th Century prison reform movement. In March of 1830 he spoke to the Assembly and Senate about the cramped conditions of New York penitentiaries. In particular, the south wing of Auburn Prison was considered useless since it did not follow the "new model" of enforced isolation made possible by the private rooms built throughout the north wing. Until the south wing could be renovated, he promised to send future convicts from nearby counties to Sing Sing Prison instead. See his executive order elsewhere in this collection. In his January message to the Legislature of that same year, he called for the assembly to “inquire into the propriety of making further provision for ameliorating the condition of the insane poor.” Based on the evidence gathered in their study, the "‘New York State Lunatic Asylum at Utica" was eventually built in 1843.
U.F. Doubleday, publisher and writer for the Cayuga Patriot, was also a politician with connections to Auburn Prison. He was elected to the Twenty-second Congress as a Jacksonian in March of 1831 and served until 1833. He was appointed inspector and warden of Auburn Prison in 1834. Shortly thereafter he helped charter the Auburn and Syracuse Railroad which would greatly increase the newspaper's readership and the Auburn population (becoming the third largest city in New York State). He was elected to Congress again in the following year and served until 1837. Upon Doubleday's departure to New York City in 1846, Henry A Hawes and Henry M Stone purchased the paper. A year after they consolidated with the Tocsin, Second to form the Cayuga New Era. U.F. Doubleday also published *A brief account of the construction, management, and discipline &c. &c. of the New-York State Prison at Auburn* which can be accessed in this collection.
The Cayuga Patriot also adamantly supported Daniel D. Tompkins for Governor of New York following the first of his two terms as vice president under James Monroe from 1817 to 1825, though he lost the gubernatorial election to DeWitt Clinton. During his tenure, however, he lobbied for liberal reforms in the school system, the state militia, and within the criminal and slavery codes. After the War of 1812, which Democratic-Republicans supported, Tompkins was in terrible physical and financial health. After falling from a horse in 1814, he was frequently bed-ridden and unable to perform his leadership duties. By 1817 he expected to "resign the office of Vice President at the next session, if not sooner, as there is very little hope of my ever being able to perform its duties hereafter." Although he did eventually return to public life, his financial affairs were in chaos. In his haste to raise and spend the huge sums required for New York's wartime defense, he had failed to document his transactions, commingling his own monies with state and federal funds. In 1816, an audit revealed the state treasury was short by $120,000 and rumors of his confinement to a New York debtors' prison circled wildly. While these rumors ultimately proved false, he did fall into alcoholism and died in June of 1825 soon after leaving office.
The Cayuga Patriot Publishers: J.G. Hathaway, <1814>; S.R. Brown, <1815>; James Beardslee, <1816-1817>; D. Rumsey, <1818-1819>; U.F. Doubleday, <1821-1827>; Doubleday & Allen, <1829>-1831; Isaac S. Allen, 1831-<1833>; Allen & Lounsbury, <1834-1842>; I.S. Allen, <1844>-1845; U.F. Doubleday, 1845-1846; Hawes & Stone, 1846-1847. - Cite As:
- Enos Thompson Throop. Papers, #1157. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.
- Repository:
- Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library
- Archival Collection:
- Enos Thompson Throop Papers
- Box:
- 1
- Folder:
- 7
- Format:
- Image
- Rights:
- The content in the 19th Century Prison Reform Collection is believed to be in the public domain by virtue of its age, and is presented by Cornell University Library under the Guidelines for Using Text, Images, Audio, and Video from Cornell University Library Collections [http://hdl.handle.net/1813.001/CULCopyright]. This collection was digitized by Cornell University Library in 2017 from print materials held in the Rare and Manuscript Collections, with funding from a Digital Collections in Arts and Sciences Grant to Katherine Thorsteinson. For more information about these volumes, please contact the Rare and Manuscript Collections at rareref@cornell.edu. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item.