The American Annual Register, or, Historical Memoirs of the United States for the Year 1796

Philadelphia: Bioren & Madan, 1797. First edition. vii, [1], 288pp. Uncut. 8vo. Contemporary marbled paper boards, rebacked with calf, worn at extremities, endpapers renewed. Foxing and toning. First edition. vii, [1], 288pp. Uncut. 8vo. A native of Scotland which he fled to avoid prosecution for libel, Callender was a notorious journalist and political pamphleteer during the Federal period, issuing savage attacks on George Washington, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and others.

Planned as a review of the year with alternating chapters on the proceedings of Congress and miscellaneous events, his American Annual Register is "a highly seasoned, anti-Federalist account of national politics during the year 1796. Published in the following summer, at about the time of Callender's meeting with [Thomas] Jefferson, the Register was almost certainly subsidized to a greater or lesser degree by Jefferson's Republican friends (if not actually by Jefferson himself). But for the Jeffersonians the book was to prove an unprofitable investment, for despite its many telling blows of a personal and abusive nature against President John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and other Federalist luminaries, the Register generally failed to cause much of a stir. Confused, often incoherent, and steeped in trivia, it was perhaps best described by the pro-Federalist Gazette of the United States (Philadelphia) as 'the veriest catch-penny that was ever published, the mere tittle-tattle of Jacobinism.' Even Vice-President Jefferson himself confessed disappointment" (Jellison, Charles A. 'That Scoundrel Callender.' The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 67, no. 3, 1959, pp. 295-306.)

Often confused with Callender's The History of the United States for 1796, which is often mistakenly referred to as a reprinting of this earlier work, Callender's Annual Register was an entirely different work. Callender would write in the preface of The History published later in 1796: "My collection of materials required more room than had been expected, and it was found necessary to close the volume [i.e. The American Annual Register...] without completing the plan. Some gentleman, who wished to see the publication proceed, offered to assist by subscriptions for a second volume. But this was unsuitable, because persons who had not see the former one could not with propriety be asked to subscribe for a continuation of it. I therefore began the same task over again under a different title page [i.e. The History...]. The subject was fertile, and repetitions of what had been said already have been avoided with so much care thjat they do not, in whole, extend to near half a page." It would be in The History that Callender would reveal the details of Alexander Hamilton's affair with Mrs. Reynolds in chapters five and six. The editors of the Hamilton Papers note about the American Annual Register: "This earlier version does not include any references to the 'Reynolds Affair.'" Howes C69; Evans 31905; Sabin 10062; Reese, Federal Hundred 67 (ref)