It was four or five years younger than the only other newspaper of the then far West, the _Kentucky Gazette_.

The paper gives an interesting glimpse of many of the social and political conditions of the day.

In political tone it showed Blount's influence very strongly, and was markedly in advance of most of the similar papers of the time, including the _Kentucky Gazette_; for it took a firm stand in favor of the National Government, and against every form of disorder, of separatism, or of mob law.

As with all of the American papers of the day, even in the backwoods, there was much interest taken in European news, and a prominent position was given to long letters, or extracts from seaboard papers, containing accounts of the operations of the English fleets and the French armies, or of the attitude of the European governments.

Like most Americans, the editorial writers of the paper originally sympathized strongly with the French Revolution; but the news of the beheading of Marie Antoinette, and the recital of the atrocities committed in Paris, worked a reaction among those who loved order, and the _Knoxville Gazette_ ranged itself with them, taking for the time being strong grounds against the French, and even incidentally alluding to the Indians as being more blood-thirsty than any man "not a Jacobin." [Footnote: _Knoxville Gazette_, March 27, 1794.] The people largely shared these sentiments.
In 1793 at the Fourth of July celebration at Jonesborough there was a public dinner and ball, as there was also at Knoxville; Federal troops were paraded and toasts were drunk to the President, to the Judges of the Supreme Court, to Blount, to General Wayne, to the friendly Chickasaw Indians, to Sevier, to the ladies of the Southwestern Territory, to the American arms, and, finally, "to the true liberties of France and a speedy and just punishment of the murderers of Louis XVI." The word "Jacobin" was used as a term of reproach for some time.
The "Gazette" Sound in its Politics.
The paper was at first decidedly Federalist in sentiment.