Biography
Charles Holt was an American printer and editor and the publisher of the Bee in New London, Connecticut, the leading Democratic-Republican newspaper in southeastern Connecticut. He created the newspaper specifically as a Jeffersonian counter to the Federalist Connecticut Gazette. In May 1799 Holt published an editorial attacking the Adam's administration's military buildup against France, and in particular the conscription of a "standing army" which he argued when recruited in peace times was a tool to suppress political opposition and threatened civil liberties. He was indicted under the Sedition Act in September 1799 and tried in Hartford in April 1800. The federal jury convicted him and he was sentenced to three months in the New London jail and a $200 fine. After his release he continued the Bee for several more years and later moved to New York to edit the Columbian.
Belt identifies Justice Bushrod Washington as the judge at Holt’s April 1800 Sedition Act trial and states that Holt pleaded not guilty, relying on the statute’s unconstitutionality and the absence of evil intent. Holt resumed editorial work from his prison cell. This source’s six-month nominal sentence conflicts with the stored three-month sentence; no duration or endpoint is changed from this discrepancy alone.