Biography
Ann Greenleaf was a New York newspaper publisher and the widow of Thomas Greenleaf, who had founded the Argus and the Greenleaf's New Daily Advertiser as the principal Democratic-Republican papers in New York City. After Thomas Greenleaf's death in the 1798 yellow fever epidemic, Ann took over publication of both papers, becoming one of the very few women publishing a daily political newspaper in late-eighteenth-century America.
In late 1799 Federalist authorities indicted her under the Sedition Act over articles in the Argus that had reprinted Bache and Duane material attacking Alexander Hamilton and the Adams administration. She was arrested but the prosecution against her was suspended after she sold the Argus to David Denniston in early 1800. The case was finally dropped after Jefferson took office and the Sedition Act expired in March 1801. Her case is significant in U.S. press-freedom history as the only known Sedition Act prosecution of a woman publisher.
