unsavory facet of the upper class. Nevertheless, on May 10, Dixon changed his plea to guilty regarding one count, and the next day did the same for the other two. He was sentenced to six months of hard labor at the New York State Penitentiary at Blackwell's Island. Dixon reportedly responded, "This is a pretty situation for an editor." He would later claim that Hawks had paid him $1000 to change his plea. The press reacted with its usual fervor: Dixon is a mulatto, and was, not many years ago, employed in this city, in an oyster house to open oysters and empty the shells into the carts before they were carried away. He is an impudent scoundrel, aspires to every thing, and was fit to be any body's fool. Somebody used his name (such as he called himself, for negroes have, by right, no surnames) as the publisher of a newspaper, in which every body, almost, was libelled. He is now caged, and, we may hope, will, when he comes out of prison, go to opening oysters, or some other employment appropriate to his habits and color. Dixon served out his sentence then returned to New York. He resumed the Polyanthos, emerging as the leader of a cadre of like-minded editors interested in exposing immorality. Dixon now focused his efforts on Austrian dancer Fanny Elssler, whom he accused of sexual misconduct. On August 21, 1840, he went so far as to rally a riot against her and then published the inciting speech in the Polyanthos. He then targeted men who seduced young, working-class women, boarders who cheated their landlords, dysfunctional banks, and so-called British agents who were supposedly stirring up anti-American sentiment among American Indians and black slaves. Dixon claimed to be "a battering-ram against vice and folly in every shape", writing: The Polyanthos cannot die. The protecting Providence that watches over the safety of the just, and defeats the machinations of the wicked, will make it bloom ... We prophesy that the latest descendant of the youngest newsboy will animate his hearers with the desire to emulate the enviable fame of DIXON! Our name will be handed down to the end of time as one of the most independent men of the nineteenth century! Our very hat will become a relic. On February 16, 1841, Dixon turned to a crusade against a New York abortionist known as Madame