William Duane (1760–1835) was the outspoken and impecunious editor of the Philadelphia Aurora, the nation’s most influential Republican newspaper, and a leader of the party’s radical egalitarian wing. Born in what is now Vermont, he spent his early decades as a printer and journalist in Ireland, England, and India, from which he was expelled in 1795 for anti-British rhetoric. The following year Duane settled in Philadelphia with his family and soon attracted notice with a pseudonymous pamphlet critical of George Washington. Duane took over the editorship of the Aurora on the death of editor Benjamin Franklin Bache in 1798 and ran the newspaper until 1822. From 1801–07 he operated a Washington, D.C., bookstore and printed the proceedings of the United States Senate with his son William J. Duane and Roger C. Weightman, who assumed management of both in the latter year (ANB description begins John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography, 1999, 24 vols. description ends ; DAB description begins Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography, 1928–36, 20 vols. description ends ; Bryan, National Capital description begins Wilhelmus Bogart Bryan, A History of the National Capital: From its Foundation through the Period of the Adoption of the Organic Act, 1914, 2 vols. description ends , 1:595).

Duane was appointed lieutenant colonel of riflemen on 8 July 1808 and resigned on 31 July 1810 (Heitman, U.S. Army description begins Francis B. Heitman, comp., Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army, 1903, 2 vols. description ends , 1:385). In his most important letter to TJ of 4 Feb. 1809 (DLC), Duane cited his precarious finances and ongoing litigation in requesting that his printing business not be disrupted by military service distant from Philadelphia and expressing concern that the new secretary at war might not agree to such an arrangement.