(Originally published in 1867. This volume from the Cornel...)
Originally published in 1867. This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies. All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume.
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John Binns was born on December 22, 1772, in Dublin, Ireland. His father, John Binns, a prosperous hardware dealer, died in 1774. Mary (Pemberton) Binns, his mother, remarrying within a short time, did not provide her three children with the decencies justified by their inheritance, but she was lavish of her counsel regarding morality and social deportment.
John's education was restricted by a little schooling and much indiscriminate reading.
By 1794 Binns was in London, associated with William Godwin and other agitators. Identified by the officials with political principles then dominant in France, Binns was imprisoned several times before 1801, when there was a general release of political prisoners in England. He then emigrated to America, arriving in September 1801, and proceeding directly to Northumberland, Pennsylvania, at that time "capital" of the projected community of free spirits - Coleridge and Southey among them - who talked of coming hither from Europe. Joseph Priestley and Thomas Cooper were already on the ground, but their thought was not so advanced as to prevent Binns. On July 4, 1802, Binns addressed his community on the glory of America, a subject which he further expatiated upon, from a Republican viewpoint, in a letter to the Federalist Northumberland Gazette. From 1802 to 1807, after a method considered perhaps too direct and personal even for those direct, personal times, he published the Northumberland Republican Argus. He suspended this activity and changed his residence in order to establish in Philadelphia the Democratic Press, a paper published from 1807 till 1829, always direct and personal, always one of the leading organs of its party in the state, but, at the outset, because of its name, Democratic, held even by its friends to be almost too daringly radical.
Governed largely by his belief that Andrew Jackson was a "tyrant, " Binns opposed his election to the presidency in 1828, and in spite of his Irishman's consistent antipathy for England, found himself supporting John Quincy Adams. As part of his campaign against Jackson he published and distributed everywhere pictures of eight imaginary coffins bearing inscriptions relative to the martyrdom of their all too real inmates, soldiers, who, retiring from service at the expiration of their enlistment, though before the military emergency was past, had been, at Jackson's command, executed. This shift of allegiance brought disaster to Binns. His home was attacked by a mob, and financial difficulties necessitated the discontinuance of his paper.
In 1819 he published an elaborate engraving of the Declaration of Independence. The attendant circumstances included angry charges and counter-charges that involved plagiarism of the idea, at least, of making such an engraving, and charges also to the effect (not new to him) that Binns, being no native American, was unworthy of popular confidence. It is likely that the noise did not trouble him, for by now he doubtless thought controversy quite normal. He was an alderman of Philadelphia from 1822 till 1844, and he was for many years a ready orator for all occasions. In 1840 he published Binns's Justice, a manual of Pennsylvania law. The book passed through as many as six editions before his death. The last edition, the eleventh, was published in 1912. Recollections of the Life of John Binns Written by Himself was published in 1854. It is the discursive chatter of a forgotten old man.
(Originally published in 1867. This volume from the Cornel...)
Binns was a member of the Church of the United Brethren.
Binns was president of the London Corresponding Society.
It was said that no one could comprehend the phrase "Irish eloquence" without having heard him. Binns boasted that never till he was almost sixty did he write out a speech in advance - till then the inspiration of the moment had always been enough.
Binns married Mary Anne Boyster, with whom he had ten children.
