Lew Powell’s On This Day In North Carolina (John F. Blair, 1996) alerted us to an article from a Charlotte newspaper in 1825 criticizing the first appearance of a Sunday newspaper in the U.S.
Here’s the text of the article as it appeared in the Catawba Journal on April 26, 1825:
A new paper has lately been established in New-York, and is issued on Sunday! This, we believe, is the only instance in the United States, of a paper published on the Sabbath. The Evening Gazette, of Boston, is partly a Sunday paper — a small portion of it, under the head of “second edition,” is dated on that day; though we are not aware that it is distributed to subscribers on the sabbath.
Sunday papers in Europe are quite common; but it is to be hoped they will never become so in this country. If they are tolerated here, we may look next for the introduction of Sunday Theatres, and other fashionable vices of Europe. We are as little inclined to bigotry as any one: but it certainly appears to us, that a proper reverence for the sabbath — setting aside its influence on the future destinies of man, — is essential to good morals and good society, and consequently, that its open and wanton profanation is destructive to both.
