William Hunter - Finding Free Speech

In June 1798, President John Adams signed the now infamous Alien & Sedition Acts to suppress political dissent.

Facing imminent personal risks, a gutsy Kentucky newspaper editor ran the first editorial denouncing the law's attempt to stifle the freedom of the press.

Almost immediately, government lawyers recommended his arrest and prosecution.

That editor was William Hunter, amazingly, the son of a British soldier.

During the American Revolution, he accompanied his father on a campaign to fight the American Rebels. Witnessing first-hand the terrors of combat and twice experiencing capture, Hunter wrote the only surviving account written by a child of a British soldier during the American Revolution. Previously unknown, the journal is one of the most important document discoveries in recent years.

Remarkably immigrating to an enemy country, Hunter started the second newspaper west of the Alleghenies in Pennsylvania. Moving to Kentucky's capital, Hunter spoke his mind as a newspaper editor, took entrepreneurial risks, and helped start educational and civic institutions.

Particularly compelling, Hunter overcame two major personal setbacks that tarnished his character and left him bankrupt. Each time, he tenaciously persevered and regained prominent stature.

Later, Hunter became an elected Kentucky representative, a staunch Andrew Jackson supporter, and moved to Washington, DC, to root out fraud and waste in his administration. Beyond the well-known founders, William Hunter represents a previously underappreciated community leader who made essential contributions to developing democratic and civic institutions in Early America.

A former management consultant with one of the largest global consulting firms, Gene established a second career as a writer and a historian of the American Revolution. Since 2013, he authored 20 scholarly articles for the prestigious, peer-reviewed Journal of the American Revolution, a leading source for information on the American Revolution and the nation's founding. For seven consecutive years (2015 through 2021) running, at least one of Gene's essays has been selected for the print edition of the Annual Volume of the Journal of the American Revolution. Gene hosts and curates a website helping casual and professional researchers locate diaries and memoirs and other Revolutionary War sources at www.researchingtheamericanrevolution.com. Gene lives in Washington, DC with his wife and two adult sons.