’War Hawks’: Using Newspapers to Trace a Phrase, 1792–1812

When Readex put its huge newspaper archive online between 2004 and 2006, it created a powerful tool for scholars to better understand the past. A case in point is the genesis of the term “War Hawk.” Historians have always assumed that this term originated on the eve of the War of 1812, but a search of the Readex digital newspaper archive reveals that by then it already had been in use for at least twenty years. Like other derogatory terms—such as “Tory” and “aristocrat” or “Jacobin” and “mobocrat”—it was an established phrase in the American political lexicon. But unlike those terms, it was used by both parties whenever the opposition party talked of going to war.