William Lyon Mackenzie - Years in The USA, 1838–1849

Years in The USA, 1838–1849

With the collapse of his Navy Island scheme, Mackenzie settled in New York City in January 1838, with his family joining him in April. In May, he launched a new newspaper, Mackenzie's Gazette, which was initially successful because the Rebellions of 1837 had created American interest in Canadian affairs. In January 1839, he moved to Rochester, New York, and spent several months trying to encourage Canadian exiles to launch a second invasion of Upper Canada, but had no success and eventually returned to New York City. Mackenzie was now determined to settle permanently in the United States, taking the first steps towards American citizenship. For the first time ever, Mackenzie now editorialized on internal American politics. He denounced Martin Van Buren as a tool of British imperialism because his government had issued a neutrality proclamation.

The trial for Mackenzie's violation of American neutrality laws in January 1838 was finally held in June 1839. Mackenzie was sentenced to pay a $10 fine and spend 18 months in jail. Mackenzie attempted to continue to publish Mackenzie's Gazette from jail, but it appeared only erratically. Soon, the unhealthy conditions of the jail led to a deterioration in Mackenzie's health. Throughout 1839, he and his supporters now petitioned President Van Buren, Governor of New York William H. Seward, United States Attorney General Felix Grundy, and United States Secretary of State John Forsyth. Van Buren was initially reluctant to pardon Mackenzie because he did not want to offend the British, but he eventually acquiesced and Mackenzie was pardoned in May 1840, after he had served less than a year in jail.

Mackenzie's stint in prison seems to have soured him on the United States. He continued to attack Van Buren and the British in the pages of the Gazette, but his editorials now also frequently included denunciations of American life for not being what it claimed. Desiring to return to Canada, he asked influential Reformers such as Isaac Buchanan to lobby for amnesty for Mackenzie and the rebels. In the meantime, the Gazette was struggling, in spite of Mackenzie's friendship with prominent American newspapermen like Horace Greeley, and Mackenzie was forced to shut down the paper in December 1840. In April 1841, he launched a newspaper in Rochester, The Rochester Volunteer. In it, he attempted to whip up fever for a war between the United States and Britain over the issue of Alexander McLeod, a Canadian who had been arrested in New York State in November 1840 for his role in the Caroline incident. The American public was not interested, however, and McLeod was acquitted. The Volunteer failed in September 1841, and in June 1842, Mackenzie moved back to New York City.

There, his money problems forced him to take a job as actuary and librarian at the Mechanics’ Institute. Mackenzie became an American citizen in May 1843. Throughout 1843, he worked on a biography of 500 Irish patriots, entitled, The Sons of the Emerald Isle (the first volume of which appeared in 1844) and in fall 1843 quit his job at the Mechanics' Institute to launch a new newspaper, the Examiner, which failed after just five issues. In July 1844, he managed to secure a patronage appointment as a customs clerk in the New York Custom House, but he resigned in June 1845 when Cornelius Van Wyck Lawrence was appointed Collector of the Port of New York and Mackenzie disagreed with his more conservative political views.

While Mackenzie was working at the Custom House, he copied out the papers of Jesse Hoyt, a customs official associated with Van Buren and the Albany Regency. Mackenzie published these papers, selling 50,000 copies, though Mackenzie himself did not make any money from the book, and he was criticized for publishing private papers solely to discredit his political enemies.

In 1846, Mackenzie published the second volume of The Sons of the Emerald Isle, as well as a highly critical biography of Martin Van Buren, whom Mackenzie despised.

In May 1846, Mackenzie's friend Horace Greeley asked him to travel to Albany to report on the state constitutional convention for the New York Tribune. The convention produced a radical constitution for New York State, establishing many new elected offices and resulting in the abolition of the Court of Chancery. In his later years, Mackenzie was much influenced by what he saw at the 1846 New York constitutional convention. Mackenzie stayed in Albany, editing the Albany Patriot until spring 1847 when he returned to New York City to work for the Tribune and to edit almanacs for Horace Greeley.