James (Jemmy) Rivington, best known and most influential of the Tory editors during the American Revolution, would be notable solely for his role as a Tory spokesman, but is additionally important because of controversies that marked both his life and his reputation in history. Early in his editorship, he was an unusual guardian of freedom of the press who insisted upon balanced reports and opinion despite Patriot displeasure with his then-strange objectivity. Yet, it was Rivington's newspaper that published the vilest and most unfounded of rumors about Patriots after the war began. The fervor of radical revolutionaries had swept aside his objectivity--and his presses--as at least a minority proved to Rivington that they had little tolerance for a marketplace of words. Thus, the man who had sought objectivity in a time of opinion, who had made an effort to tell both sides, became the voice of one side...