William Hamilton Says: Don't Vote for Simon Snyder. He's a Lousy Speller, and will be a Lousy Governor.

William Hamilton was no cloistered saint.  His politics was fickle, and his Lancaster Journal was equally so.

Hamilton had flip-flopped his Lancster Journal's political allegiance from the anti-Federalists to the Federalists, after being attacked in print by Federalists Robert Coleman and Charles Smith.

Although Hamilton had supported Thomas Jefferson's anti-Federalist party in the 1796 presidential election, within 3 years Hamilton's newspaper reversed course and was a card-carrying Federalist.

In a March 1805 Lancaster Journal Hamilton used his barbed pen to attack the campaign of Simon Snyder for Pennsylvania governor.  Hamilton argued that Simon Snyder was a bad speller, so that meant he would also be a bad governor. In the same column, Hamilton caricatured Snyder's spelling ability, by mis-spelling Snyder's name as "Simom Snider."

Snyder (born into a Lancaster Moravian family) eventually became the first Pennsylvania German governor of Pennsylvania.

Despite William Hamilton's hard-core flaws, I tend to give him the benefit of the doubt. American politics was young.  It was a new country and a new system. American politicians and their publishers were playing it by ear. Learning from their mistakes. Politicos were supposed to act sophomoric.

P.S. William Hamilton went on to become a state senator and treasurer of Lancaster County. But within two years he was bankrupt and alone. He died at age 49,  "insane" in the Lancaster poorhouse. But he has become one of my favorite Lancaster publishers, warts and all.