He was the obvious man for the job. Writer, journalist, and editor, he had been schooled in the task of integrating written material and in working up connecting links and explanatory passages as they were needed. Again, not only did he stand near the head of the legal profession, so that he was fully equipped to juggle the problem of libel, the textbook citations, and the technicalities and philosophy of the law (essentials in dealing with any such trial), but he had an unparalleled position at the center of the Zenger turmoil. No one in New York knew more than James Alexander about how and why Peter Zenger came to be tried before the Supreme Court of the Colony. How could it have been otherwise when the _New York Weekly Journal_ was under fire, and Alexander was the _Journal_’s editor? He himself had approved, and perhaps written, the “libelous” issues on which the prosecution was based. He himself would have been in the dock as defendant instead of the printer if only the attorney general had been able to get him indicted. Alexander had been a leader of the Popular party from the beginning of its struggle with Governor Cosby. He had conspired against the Governor, fought him in the Courts and through the press, and used every weapon to hand in an all-out effort to ruin him politically. There was hardly a dissident movement in New York with which Alexander was not allied as adviser or mentor. It was only natural that he should have been one of Zenger’s lawyers, for he understood as few others could just what the administration attack amounted to, and how a counterattack should be developed. It is not difficult to imagine the intelligence and the alertness with which he noted every word that was spoken at the trial. He must have been the perfect spectator if ever there was one. And all this does not exhaust the depths of his familiarity with the incident. Until his disbarment he had been one of the counsel for the defense, which made it his duty to draw up a brief in preparation for his plea. He fulfilled his duty so well that when he was summarily removed by order of Chief Justice Delancey he was able to hand over to Andrew Hamilton a whole plan of campaign, and Hamilton (brought in unprepared and at the last moment) relied on it substantially throughout the proceedings. It takes nothing from Hamilton, whose performance remains one of the classical things in the history of American law, that Alexander gave him the lead which he followed with such stunning success—that is, the decision to base Zenger’s defense on the truth of the _Journal_ articles, and on that basis to ask the jury to bring in a verdict of “Not guilty.” Alexander already held that guiding thread in his hand months before Hamilton appeared on the scene. (Not that he invented the idea, but he saw that it was the gambit to play.)