In New York City, printer John Peter Zenger was tried for seditious libel after his newspaper, the "New York Weekly Journal," published articles criticizing the colonial governor William Cosby. Zenger's lawyer, Andrew Hamilton, argued that truth should be a defense against libel, a position not recognized under existing English law. The jury's acquittal, despite the judge's instructions, established a crucial precedent for press freedom in colonial America.

The Zenger trial became a foundational symbol of a free press in American literary culture, directly influencing the First Amendment traditions that protected poets and publishers. The case was celebrated in patriotic verse and later poetry that engaged with censorship and free expression, and it established the legal environment in which figures like Philip Freneau, the Poet of the American Revolution, could publish politically charged verse without fear of prosecution.