You get a sense of how old the publication is when you consider that the biggest news story in its first issues was the death of Napoleon Bonaparte.

The death of Napoleon Bonaparte is placed beyond a doubt. News has been received from Liverpool dated July 8th. The Ex-Emperor died of a cancer in the stomach, and was buried on the 7th of May.

In that summer of 1821, the news of the ex-emperor’s death sparked many debates at dinner tables across America. Was Napoleon a liberator or a tyrant?

The Post picked up the story in August and was still running related items into October.

The illness of the ex-emperor lasted in the whole, six weeks. During the latter days of his illness he frequently conversed with his medical attendants on its nature, of which he seemed to be perfectly aware.

As he found his end approaching, he was dressed, at his request, in his uniform of Field Marshal with the boots and spurs, and placed on a camp bed, on which he was accustomed to sleep when in health.

In this dress he is said to have expired. Though Bonaparte is supposed to have suffered much, his dissolution was so calm and serene that not a sigh escaped him or an intimation to the bystanders that it was so near.

Napoleon's withdrawal from Russia, a painting by Adolph Northen.

Still widely revered in France, Napoleon had many American admirers who regarded him as a champion of liberty. Most of the world hated and feared him, though. Napoleon had kept Europe at war for twelve years. His struggle for empire had cost the lives of 6 million soldiers and civilians. He had been defeated and imprisoned, but escaped and narrowly missed becoming the ruler of Europe.

Despite his past, and the destruction he caused, he seemed to enchant people. He made admirers out of most people who met him—even his enemies. Since his re-capture in 1815, journalists had been writing of his intelligence, his vision, and his destiny. Now that he was safely dead, and could never again escape from exile, it became easier, and safer, to sing his praises.

The Post quoted one particularly fawning passage from a British newspaper.

“[Napoleon's] person was well-turned, broad in the shoulders, and, till he grew fat, very elegant downwards. The late Mr. West told us that he had never seen a handsomer leg and thigh.

His head was somewhat too large for his body, but finely cut, as we may all see in his medals. It looks like one of the handsomest Roman emperors. His face [had] a forehead of genius, and mouth and chin of resolute beauty.

Napoleon was of a warm temperament, generous and affection…. His abilities, independent of his warlike genius, were considerable. His intellect was strong and searching, and he acquired so much information that he could converse with all sorts of men on the topics which they had particularly studied.

[A Swiss historian who met Napoleon] says, “quite impartially… I must say, that the variety of his knowledge, the acuteness of his observations, the solidity of his understanding… his grand and comprehensive views filled me with astonishment, and his manner of [conversation], with love for him.”

While the Post reprinted such hero worship, it wasn’t buying any of it. The editors, being sturdy champions of the republic, viewed Napoleon dispassionately:

Thus has terminated the life of perhaps the most extraordinary man who has ever figured upon the stage of history. Born obscurely, and without evident means of advancement, he rose to supreme power, not only over France, but over the continent of Europe, and his authority was extended to both hemispheres.

Disdaining man but as the means of his own exaltation, he probably surpassed all other rulers in his ascendancy over everyone who came within the vortex of his personal influence.

After having dethroned kings and overthrown empires, he himself became the football of fortune, was dethroned and exiled to a high rock in the midst of the ocean, under the guard of the greatest powers of Europe.

There he was imprisoned, and there he has expired—a striking example of the inevitable destruction attending an uncontrollable ambition, and a warning to despots.

The Post’s editors, Messrs. Atkinson and Alexander, knew that celebrity news would sell papers. But they recognized that Napoleon Bonaparte, like most celebrities, was best admired from a distance.

190 Years Ago: The Post Covers The Death of Napoleon The Saturday Evening Post

Our first issue appeared on August 4^th, 1821, making us the oldest magazine in the United States. (Because our publication was interrupted in 1969, we are not the oldest continually published magazine, however; that honor is held by Scientific American.)

The Post began life as a weekly newspaper, printed on the same equipment Ben Franklin used to publish The Pennsylvania Gazette. The Post‘s four pages were crowded with dense columns of small type; there were no illustrations besides a few crude pictures of hats and boots in advertisements.

The articles may seem archaic today, but those early issues carry a lot of the same content that appears in today’s shrinking newspapers. For example, there is coverage of national news, particularly the continued growth of the country.

The President of the United Sates, by his Proclamation, dated the 10^th instant, agreeable to the conditional power invested in him by an act of Congress, announce the Admission of the State of Missouri into the Union.

Meanwhile, Andrew Jackson was taking up his appointment as Florida’s first governor. The territory had recently been purchased from Spain, and Jackson was eager to prove the absolute authority of the U.S. in the region.

The Spanish Governor of Pensacola has been arrested and thrown into prison by order of Gen. Jackson. The reasons for this procedure is his not having surrendered up all the papers which were legally claimed by the late treaty. They are now in the possession of the American authorities.

In one regard, the Post was quite unlike a modern newspaper. The owners exercised their right to include moral instruction squarely on page one. In the August 18, 1821, issue, they presented an “Admonition Against Sabbath Breaking.”

It is the duty of every Christian to observe [Sunday] as a day of rest from work, buying, selling, travelling (except in cases of great and unavoidable necessity) and from all kinds of sport and diversion. To spend the sacred time in idleness and amusement; to neglect the public and private duties of the day tends to bring the judgments of God on the country. It leads you to bad company, to a habit of idleness, drunkenness, extravagance, and so on to ruin, as many [condemned criminals] have acknowledged [shortly before their] execution.

But when it came to filling up the pages with copy, the Post did what modern newspapers still do; reprint items of passing interest from other newspapers.

A fact, to the curious.— On the 7th of June last, about five o’clock in the afternoon, there passed over Willistown (NH) and Goshen (VT), a swarm of the animal denominated the “Devil’s darning Needle” [the dragonfly]. The swarm extended a mile in width, and was more than an hour in passing from east to west.

There is now residing in Stafford, a man by the name of Nolan, who is at present married to his twenty-sixth wife, and has by the whole, seventy-three children. He is one hundred and five years of age, and his present wife is now pregnant.

The latest accounts from New Orleans, Savannah and Charleston represent those places as entirely free of malignant fever.

A patent churn has been manufactured in Orange county, (N.Y.) which can be worked by a dog!

A man has been sold at public auction, at the market house in Detroit for being found idle, and not giving an account of the manner in which he obtained a livelihood. The purchaser was to be entitled to his services for ten days, and he was then to be walked out of the territory unless he agreed to maintain himself by creditable labor.

The City Gazette of Washington says, that in [leveling the ground] in front of the President’s house, the laborers came to a spot where five graves were opened. One of the coffins was in perfect preservation, and the remains of a corpse was exposed, exhibiting long dark hair, perfectly strong and neatly folded up under the skull. [The White House grounds are] said to have been the burying ground of the Peerce family, of Bladensburg, and that the bodies have been interred about 40 years.

On one subject, there is a particularly strong resemblance between the Post of 1821 and modern newspapers. Then, as now, journalists love to report on the death of celebrities.

On Our 190th Birthday, a Look at Our Earliest Issues The Saturday Evening Post