Edmund March Blunt (1770–1862), a native of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, published the Impartial Herald in Newburyport, Massachusetts, 1793–96. He also operated a bookstore and a circulating library there. In 1796 Blunt published the American Coast Pilot, a source that gave nautical directions for the most important harbors, capes, and headlands of North America and portions of South America. The work was translated into many languages and went through numerous editions during his lifetime. Blunt also printed other nautical works and an 1817 guide to New York City, to which he moved about 1810 (DAB description begins Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography, 1928–36, 20 vols. description ends ; Brigham, American Newspapers description begins Clarence S. Brigham, History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, 1690–1820, 1947, 2 vols. description ends , 1:379; Longworth’s New York Directory description begins Longworth’s American Almanac, New-York Register, and City Directory. New York, 1796–1842 (title varies; cited by year of publication) description ends [1810], 111; New-York Times, 6 Jan. 1862).

Blunt wrote a similar letter to President James Madison on the same day (Madison, Papers description begins William T. Hutchinson, Robert A. Rutland, John C. A. Stagg, and others, eds., The Papers of James Madison, 1962– , 29 vols.: Congress. Ser., 17 vols.; Pres. Ser., 5 vols.; Sec. of State Ser., 7 vols description ends , Pres. Ser., 3:361; see also same, 4:343).