Noah Webster to James Madison · July 5, 1784 · Webster lobbying for Virginia copyright law · Documents the eight-state campaign that preceded the 1790 Act
What Made America Different · Part III of III · Series Finale
Context Series · Episode 03C
Your Words, Not the Guild's
Before 1790, American printers routinely pirated English books because it was cheaper than paying American authors for new work. One man spent eight years traveling to every state legislature to fix that. His name was Noah Webster. The book that resulted sold 100 million copies. This is that story — from the documents.
Episode Length
~17 minutes
Primary Sources
8 linked documents
Archives
LOC · Copyright History Database · First Amendment Encyclopedia · National Archives
Time Period
1710 – 1800
The first copyright law in the world was passed in England in 1710. It protected publishers. Not authors — publishers. The people who owned the printing presses. The people who sold books. The person who wrote the book had no rights in it once they sold the manuscript. America's Copyright Act of 1790 inverted this. For the first time in the history of English-language law, the author owned what they created. This is what happened next.
This episode is the third and final part of a three-episode series on how specific legal decisions — land ownership, patents, copyright — gave America a different economic foundation from every other country on earth. Each episode has made the same argument the same way: not through assertion, but through the documents. The copyright story is the most personal of the three, because it centers on a single man who understood what needed to happen, did the work to make it happen, and then watched it produce something he never fully anticipated.
01
The World Before · 1710 – 1789
Who Owned a Book — Before the Author Did
The Statute of Anne, passed by the British Parliament in 1710, was the world's first copyright law. Its full title was "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by Vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or Purchasers of such Copies." The phrase "Authors or Purchasers" is the tell: the law was designed primarily to protect the London booksellers' guild — the Stationers' Company — which had held a monopoly over printing since the 16th century. Authors appeared in the title but were, in practice, secondary.
Before American Copyright · 1710–1789
The Statute of Anne (1710) protected copyright for 14 years — but the right was held by whoever owned the copy, usually the publisher, not the author. Authors sold their manuscripts outright, then had no further rights to what they had written.
In the American colonies, the Statute of Anne did not apply. There was no colonial copyright law. Any printer could reprint any book without paying the author — and many did.
American printers routinely pirated popular English books rather than pay American authors for original work. Why commission an unknown American writer when you could reprint a London bestseller for free? The economics punished original American authorship.
An author who published in one state had no protection in another. A book copyrighted in Massachusetts could be legally reprinted in Virginia without the author's permission or payment. The system was unworkable for any author whose audience crossed state lines.
No American could build a career as a writer under these conditions. The economic foundation of a domestic literary culture did not exist.
After the Copyright Act of 1790
The Copyright Act of 1790 was titled "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by securing copies of maps, charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies." Authors came first — then proprietors (publishers). The inversion was deliberate.
Authors could secure the exclusive right to copy, print, and sell their works for 14 years, with right of renewal for another 14. The right originated with the creator, not the publisher. Publishers could receive it only if the author assigned it to them.
A single federal standard replaced the patchwork of state laws. An author protected in Massachusetts was now protected in Virginia. The national market for American books became legally accessible.
Original American work became a protectable, valuable asset. The economic calculation for printers changed: commissioning an American author now produced something no one else could legally reprint. The incentive to create original American work appeared for the first time.
Within a generation, the United States had a domestic publishing industry. Within a century, American writers were among the most widely read in the world.
02
The Copyright Act · May 31, 1790
The Document — What It Said and What It Changed
An Act for the Encouragement of Learning
Copyright Act of 1790 · First Session of the First Congress · Signed May 31, 1790 · 1 Stat. 124 · Library of Congress
"Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That from and after the passing of this act, the author and authors of any map, chart, book or books already printed within these United States, being a citizen or citizens thereof, or resident within the same, his or their executors, administrators or assigns, who hath or have not transferred to any other person the copyright of such map, chart, book or books... shall have the sole right and liberty of printing, reprinting, publishing and vending such map, chart, book or books."
The key words are "author and authors" — placed first, before any reference to publishers or proprietors. The right originates with the creator. The act also established the first federal registration and deposit system: to receive copyright protection, an author had to register the title with the local federal district court and deposit a copy with the Secretary of State. This created a public record of American creative work — a national catalog of what Americans were writing and publishing.
The act was signed by President Washington on May 31, 1790 — the same year as the Patent Act, the same year as the first patent grant. The same Congress that built the patent system built the copyright system. Both came from the same constitutional clause — Article I, Section 8, Clause 8. And both were the product, in significant part, of the same relentless lobbying campaign by one man who understood what was at stake before anyone else did.
03
Noah Webster · 1782 – 1790
The Man Who Built the System — Eight Years, Thirteen States
Noah Webster was twenty-four years old in 1782. He had just graduated from Yale, taught school in Connecticut, and written a spelling book — a textbook that taught American children to read and spell using American English rather than British. He finished it and immediately faced a problem: there was no copyright law to protect it. Any printer in any state could reprint it and keep all the money.
What Webster did next was one of the most consequential lobbying campaigns in American history — and almost no one knows it happened. He spent the next eight years traveling to state legislatures across the country, making the case for copyright protection, and watching his argument slowly work its way into law. The campaign is documented in the copyright history archive at the University of Texas Law School — one of the most complete records of early American copyright lobbying in existence.
1782
Webster Finishes the Blue-Backed Speller — No Copyright Protection Exists
Webster completes "A Grammatical Institute of the English Language" — what would become known as the Blue-Backed Speller — and immediately realizes he cannot protect it. He begins his lobbying campaign, starting in Pennsylvania, where the Continental Congress is in session. He shows his manuscript to "gentlemen of influence" and starts making the case for author protection. The Pennsylvania legislature is out of session. He moves on.
Jan 1783
Connecticut Passes First Copyright Law — "The Act for the Encouragement of Literature and Genius"
Webster's first victory. Connecticut passes what is widely cited as the first copyright law in American history — "An Act for the Encouragement of Literature and Genius." Webster's lobbying is directly credited with its passage. The Yale Law Journal's 1925–26 edition attributes the eventual federal Copyright Act of 1790 to Webster's cumulative efforts beginning here.
1783–1786
State by State — The Campaign Continues
Webster travels to Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and other states, lobbying each legislature individually. By 1786, twelve of thirteen states had passed some form of copyright law — the only holdout was Delaware. The patchwork was imperfect — state protection stopped at state borders — but the principle was established. Authors owned their work. The federal solution had to follow.
1787
The Constitution — The Copyright Clause Written In
The Constitutional Convention writes Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 — the copyright and patent clause — into the Constitution. Madison later noted in Federalist No. 43 that the provision required "no other proof of its utility" than the evidence of its "reason and public good." The federal copyright power now exists. Congress must act on it.
May 1790
The Copyright Act of 1790 — The Federal Law Passes
The first federal copyright statute passes and is signed by Washington on May 31, 1790. Webster immediately secures federal copyright for his speller. The national market for his book — which had been legally unprotectable across state lines — is now his. "Soon after Congress passed a national copyright law in 1790," his biographer writes, "Webster cashed in, inking a new set of deals with his publishers." He understood exactly what had changed.
04
The Economic Record · 1783 – 1861
What the Copyright Built — The Numbers the Archive Holds
The Blue-Backed Speller is the documented record of what the copyright system produced. Webster's account books, preserved and studied by scholars, provide one of the most complete records of early American publishing economics in existence. The numbers are extraordinary.
First edition · 1783
5,000
Copies sold out within months. With no federal copyright, these were the only copies Webster could control. Any printer could have reprinted it without paying him a penny.
Sales by 1804
1M
One million copies of the speller sold between 1783 and 1804 — generating royalties that enabled Webster to retire and begin work on his dictionary.
Licensed copies · 1804–1818
3.2M
Webster's account books document 3,223,000 licensed copies during the second copyright term alone — every one of them generating royalties because the 1790 Act made it illegal to print without a license.
Sales per year by 1861
1M
By the start of the Civil War, the Blue-Backed Speller was selling one million copies per year — making it the best-selling secular book in America and the most widely used educational text in the country.
Total copies — final count
100M
The Blue-Backed Speller sold approximately 100 million copies over its publishing life — the third best-selling book in American history, behind only the Bible and McGuffey's Readers. It taught five generations of American children to read.
What it standardized
American English
By standardizing spelling and pronunciation across the country, the Speller was a force for national unity as significant as any political document. It gave Americans a common written language — and it was made possible by copyright law.
"
Among all modes of acquiring property, or exclusive ownership, the act or operation of creating or making seems to have the first claim. If anything can justly give a man an exclusive right to the occupancy and enjoyment of a thing it must be that he made it.
Noah Webster · Copyright Petition · 1782–1783 · Lobbying state legislatures for copyright protection for his spelling bookWebster to Madison · Founders Online →
The Three Inversions — What the Documents Show
Episode 03A · Land
Entail and primogeniture abolished · Fee simple ownership established
Everywhere else: land belongs first to the hierarchy above you. America: it belongs first to you.
Episode 03B · Patents
Inventor's rights written into the Constitution · World's first examination-based patent system
Everywhere else: your invention belongs to whoever has the political power to claim it. America: it belongs to you.
Episode 03C · Copyright
Author-first copyright law · National market for American creative work
Everywhere else: your creative work belongs to the guild or the publisher that prints it. America: it belongs to you.
These three legal shifts — land, invention, creative work — share a single underlying principle: the presumption was inverted. In every other legal system, the fruits of your labor belonged first to someone above you in the hierarchy. The Crown, the lord, the guild, the publisher. America built a legal system in which the default was the opposite: what you make is yours. That inversion is specific, documented, traceable to individual debates and individual statutes, and verifiable in the archives. It is the most defensible argument for American economic exceptionalism — not because it is the most flattering argument, but because it is the most grounded in primary sources. The land laws are in Hening's Statutes at Large. The Patent Act is in the Statutes at Large. The Copyright Act is in the Library of Congress. The debates are in Madison's Notes and Founders Online. The economic outcomes are in census records, patent filings, and publishing account books. The story is in the archive. Go read it.
Go Deeper — Primary Sources
Every document cited in this episode — linked directly to the archive