American Minervas first edition, which was published on 9 December 1793; in it Webster predicted that Americans would be more patriotic "than other nations before them" because they now "own[ed] their land and property".

In the 19th century, the Richmond Enquirer started publishing unsigned opinion pieces and thereby created the first instance of a dedicated editorial page in a newspaper. The pronoun "I" was more common in early 19th-century editorials than it is in contemporary times, but,