Biography:

William Duane (1760-1835) was a notable journalist of the Jeffersonian era. Born in Lake Champlain, New York, Duane was educated in Ireland in the business of printing and moved to Calcutta, India, in the 1780s where he worked as an editor. He returned to America in the 1790s, and settled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he worked with Benjamin Franklin Bache on the Aurora, one of the leading newspapers of the time. Upon Bache’s death, Duane, a strong supporter of Thomas Jefferson, became the paper’s sole editor and made the Aurora a leading voice for the Democratic-Republican Party. (Jefferson credited the paper for helping him win the presidential election of 1800.) Duane’s criticisms of the Federalist Party were so strong, however, that he was twice arrested under the Alien and Sedition Acts. Once Jefferson came into office, he acquitted Duane and in 1805 made Duane a lieutenant colonel. By the War of 1812, Duane had risen to adjutant general. Prior to retiring from the Aurora in 1822, Duane published several works, including American Military Library, or Compendium of the modern tactics (1809), An Epitome of the Arts and Sciences (1811), and Explanation of the plates of the system of infantry discipline, for the United States Army (1814). William Duane died in Philadelphia in 1835.