A controversial media figure from the founding era.
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James Thomson Callender (1758 – July 17, 1803) was a political pamphleteer and journalist whose writing was controversial in his native Scotland and later, also in the United States. His revelations concerning George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and later Thomas Jefferson, led to his marginalization politically. His contemporary reputation as a "scandalmonger" has overshadowed Callender's frequently perceptive analyses of revolutionary events.[citation needed] He wrote against the continuing influence of the British Crown, and he warned that Adams, Washington and Hamilton planned to impose a titled aristocracy and hereditary positions in the Senate and the Executive.[1] In the United States, he was a central figure in the press wars between the Federalist and Democratic-Republican parties. After Jefferson won the presidency, Callender solicited employment as a postmaster, which was denied by Jefferson. Callender then published existing rumors claiming President Jefferson had children with slave Sally Hemings.
Self-educated, Callender worked as a recorder of deeds in Scotland when he began publishing satire. He turned to politics, some thought to 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. Subsequently, he was 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.
