Southern Press Research Articles

The Poison Pen: Slavery, Poison, and Fear in the Antebellum Press

ABSTRACT When enslaved people were accused of poisoning enslavers, it was newsworthy throughout the antebellum United States. Part of the broad appeal of such articles was their malleability; as reports of supposed poison plots or arsenic in a planter’s coffee travelled from newspapers in slave states to the pages of Northern publications, the articles morphed in form, purpose, and emotional tone. Southern readers looked to stories about thwarted poison plots to assuage their fears of a similar fate and present a brave united front. Meanwhile, Northern newspapers invited a host of other emotions from their audience, from enjoyment and schadenfreude to sympathy and anger. This article on messaging about slavery, poison, and fear in the antebellum United States builds on my monograph, Mastering Emotions: Feelings, Power, and Slavery in the United States, to focus on the emotional politics of fear. Examining how news about enslaved poisoners circulated and shapeshifted sheds light on the relationship between the antebellum press and collective emotions, and on the role of fear in defenses and critiques of slavery. While the Southern press framed stories about enslaved poisoners to address and manage members of the slaveocracy’s fears, the abolitionist press worked to invoke and amplify that terror.

Editors’ Introduction

Editors’ Introduction

‘Creating insurrections in the heart of our country:’ fear of the British West India Regiments in the Southern US Press, 1839–1860

ABSTRACTIn the decades leading to the Civil War, the United States and Great Britain faced a number of diplomatic crises, during which southern politicians often became alarmed at the prospect of British soldiers invading the southern coastline. The perceived threat was part of a wider southern paranoia over Britain’s role in what was seen as a conspiracy to demolish the southern American system of slavery for Britain’s ultimate economic gain. The alarm over an imagined British invasion was exacerbated by the fact that the anticipated invaders were free black men, the West India Regiments, stationed in the British West Indies. The tone of this paranoia was shaped by the memory of black participation in the War of 1812 and the fear that slaves would flee to British lines in any future conflict. An analysis of the discourse about these men in the southern press tells us much about the fears of southern slaveholders with regard to the trustworthiness of their own slaves and the ever-present threat of slave rebellion. Ultimately, the fears expressed about a disciplined black army led by an abolitionist imperial power reveal the true nature of southern anxiety over the stability of the South’s own form of white supremacy.

“Do We Have Any Men to Follow in Her Footsteps?”: The Black Southern Press and the Fight for Teacher Salary Equalization

The black southern press was an entity dominated by male editors and entrepreneurs. The effort to equalize teacher pay, one of the core fights for rights in the South, and the principal effort at gendered race advocacy during the World War II era, was led in large measure by black women. While both the fight for salary equalization and the survival of the black press depended upon segregation to maintain their survival, those newspapers were entities dominated by men advocating for equal salaries in a profession dominated by women, and the gendered nature of their coverage shaped knowledge of the fight within the black community.

Piercing the Paper Curtain: The Southern Editorial Response to National Civil Rights Coverage

As journalists from around the world descended on the South during the civil rights movement, the local southern press served largely as an ally to segregationists and the campaign for massive resistance to integration. Despite the best efforts of pro-segregation propagandists, the visiting press often presented perspectives and realities deemed a threat to the “southern way of life.” In response, outside journalists and news organizations became the targets of segregationist backlash, including sustained editorial attacks from within the southern press aimed at their alleged integrationist anti-southern agendas, affiliations, and motives. As outside journalists repeatedly experienced intimidation, ridicule, and even violence while covering the movement, southern editorials cultivated and fanned the flames of this already hostile environment.

The National Joker: Abraham Lincoln and the Politics of Satire

The National Joker: Abraham Lincoln and the Politics of Satire

Book Review: A Press Divided: Newspaper Coverage of the Civil War, edited by David B. Sachsman

A Press Divided: Newspaper Coverage of the Civil War . David B. Sachsman, ed. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction, 2014. 416 pp. $54.95 hbk.Eighteen essays that grew out of the Symposium on the 19th Century Press, the Civil War, and Free Expression in Chattanooga, Tennessee, bring a fresh perspective on the role of newspapers during the Civil War. Based mainly on content analyses, the essays are roughly divided into three areas: coverage of the 1860 election and the subsequent secession crisis, newspaper accounts of the conflict itself, and dissension and suppression in the North and South.The works cover such diverse topics as contemporary characterizations of George Armstrong Custer, feminine portrayals of Abraham Lincoln, and newspaper accounts of the views of Union soldiers. Particularly interesting and relevant today are essays that explore the limitations of press freedom during times of crisis. Together the works grapple with the question of whether the press during the Civil War was instrumental in shaping public opinion or merely a reflection of it.Many of the essay writers are former journalists and the essays are readable and, at times, even artful. The collection begins with David Bulla's essay on the newspaper coverage of Lincoln's rise and the 1860 election. He finds that while newspapers in Chicago and New York pushed Lincoln onto the national stage, Democratic newspapers, especially in the South, largely ignored his ascendancy. Debra Reddin van Tuyll focuses her study on the southern press, noting the variations in editorial positions after Lincoln's election and the extent to which the papers united once secession seemed inevitable. Thomas Robinson looks at the newspaper coverage of the secession crisis in one Georgia county and finds papers divided over the issue. Likewise, Erika J. Pribanic-Smith found division when she studied newspapers in Missouri. Despite Missouri's position as a border state, she found the newspapers were overwhelmingly Unionist.In the section on how newspapers covered the Civil War itself, Andrea Foroughi argues that cartoons featuring Abraham Lincoln dressed in women's clothing reveal not only what the cartoonists thought about Lincoln, but also about what they believed about gender roles of the time. Stephen R. Duncan's contribution to the collection is a biographical essay of Sylvanus Cadwallader, a New York Herald correspondent who enjoyed close access to Ulysses S. Grant. Duncan finds within the work of Cadwallader the makings of a new breed of reporter who did not merely espouse the party line but relied on personal interactions and multiple sourcing.Dianne Bragg considers the role of Tennessee newspapers in helping create a southern national identity. She concludes that newspapers in the cities generally remained faithful to the southern cause whereas those papers in rural areas returned to reporting community interests as time went on.James E. Mueller investigates the contemporary press coverage of George Armstrong Custer and finds that though the Boy General would become a cultural icon after his defeat at Little Big Horn, during the Civil War he was barely noticed. …

“The First of Our Hundred Battle Monuments”: Civil War Battlefield Monuments Built by Active-Duty Soldiers During the Civil War

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] New York Times was wrong in more than one respect when it heralded dedication of two monuments to Union fatalities at First and Second Manassas with its June 13, 1865 headline, The First of Our Hundred Battle Monuments. Those two memorials (see pp. 37-39) were predated by at least four, and possibly five or six, memorials that were erected on Civil War battlefields by active-duty soldiers during war to mark where their comrades fought and where some were buried. These wartime memorials represent earliest efforts to commemorate Civil War combat and combatants and earliest attempts to mark Civil War battlefields for posterity. Their history illuminates sentiments of soldiers who memorialized their very recently fallen comrades and heroic events of war on very ground where historic actions occurred. However, these monuments have received little attention from historians of war and collective memory it has spawned. soldiers' sentiments, and manner in which they expressed them, reveal much about veterans, about Civil War-era American culture, and about why Civil War battlefields have become sacred ground deserving preservation and interpretation. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Colonel Francis Bartow (1816-1861) was shot through chest while leading Seventh Georgia Volunteer Infantry regiment in first major battle of Civil War at Manassas, Virginia, on 21 July 1861. He died moments later and is generally recognized as first brigade commander to die in war. His wife was in Richmond and learned news from Mrs. Jefferson Davis. Bartow had been an avid secessionist, a member of Confederate Congress, Georgia House of Representatives and state Senate. fatherly Bartow was popular with his predominantly youthful troops, some of whom called themselves Beardless Boys. (1) Bartow's body lay in state in capitol at Richmond and later was buried in Savannah's Laurel Grove Cemetery. Soon his comrades initiated efforts to mark spot where he fell--activities that were covered by southern press, but not by New York Times. Southern newspapers reported that Eighth Georgia's officers ordered a plain, round marble column to mark spot where Bartow fell. (2) Melvin Dwinell, a second lieutenant in Rome Light Guards, Co. A, Eighth Georgia, and editor and proprietor of Rome Tri-Weekly Courier, said the Shaft is plain white marble, six feet long, four feet above ground and about eight inches in diameter at top. (3) [See Sidebar.] This print pictures monument as somewhat taller and broader than post Dwinell recorded, and about twice diameter of stone's base (p. 27), which remains on battlefield today near twentieth-century monuments to Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson, who earned his nickname at this spot. But roll of drum reminds us of our wandering ... According to Melvin Dwinell, a second lieutenant in Rome Light Guards, Co. A, Eighth Georgia, and editor and proprietor of Rom Tri-Weekly Courier, at about eight in morning of 4 September, Eighth Georgia left Camp Bartow at Manassas Junction and marched seven miles to battlefield, arriving before 11 AM. Dwinell says that on arrival, they stacked arms and were dismissed until necessary arrangements could be completed for raising shaft, or, perhaps, it would more properly be called a post. Dwinell was an excellent writer, and his ruminations as he ambled around battlefield while waiting for ceremonies to commence are a telling commentary of what must have been on minds of many soldiers who had first seen elephant, as Civil War soldiers referred to their first battle experience, just six weeks earlier. Consequently, they are worth quoting at length to illuminate soldiers' sentiments and to set stage for dedication ceremony for first Civil War monument: Only 7th and 8th Regiments of this Brigade were in battle . …

Interview: Lee Cheuk-Yan

A different approach Yet the 40-day strike at Hong Kong International Terminals (HIT) that ended in early May brought about a 9.8 percent pay increase, the first for the hundreds of strikers in more than a decade, and a promise to improve conditions that had workers doing 12-hour-plus shifts without breaks. Lee says shifts sometimes extended to 24, 48 and even 72 hours. It was historical in the sense that we were able to hang on for 40 days. Since 1949, this was the longest strike. It is a miracle. We don’t have a strike fund. We are not like the AFL-CIO ([n the United States]. Originally I didn’t think we could last, then I made a move to raise funds from the public. We were able to raise HK$8.9 million (€870,000) for 400-plus workers. I was shocked about the public support. No one believed that such appalling working conditions existed in the docks, in the terminals . So shameful. I think it really did get a lot of sympathy from the public. Secondly, I think it was because of Mr. Li Ka-shing (the Hong Kong billionaire who controls more than 70 percent of the city’s port traffic), the richest man in Asia. People feel it is a classic David and Goliath case. Isn’t the outcome of the dockworkers’ strike an indication that workers can assert their rights in modern-day Hong Kong? I would say we were only partially successful because we could not even get union recognition , a collective bargaining agreement. We got partial recognition because HIT cannot escape meeting with us. On the final day, they said they won’t go back to the bargaining table. They just gave us a unilateral wage increase of 9.8 percent and promised improvements that had already been offered at the bargaining table regarding lunch breaks, working hours. Two confederations played very different hands on behalf of dockworkers in a recent wages dispute INTERNATIONAL union rights Page 20 Volume 20 Issue 3 2013 You were very active in both the dockworkers’ strike and the June 4 pro-democracy vigil. Were they, in any way, related events? I’ve always been with the labour movement, and with an independent labour movement in Hong Kong, you deal with worker issues and the issue of democracy. If you don’t vote, workers’ rights cannot be protected. My starting point is both workers’ rights and the democratic rights of workers. Are such rights threatened in a Hong Kong that may enjoy relative autonomy but which has been part of the People’s Republic of China since the handover from Great Britain in 1997? You have to deal with the Communist Party regime. After the handover, they had a coalition with big business. They want big business to be on their side. Their concern is overwhelmingly stability . They want to cooperate with the capitalists, and that the capitalists should cooperate with them. That is the political deal: the capitalists support the Communist regime, and the Communist regime supports the capitalists. Workers, of course, are always the ones that sacrifice. Could you say the colonial model established for Hong Kong under British rule, which enshrined capitalism, works quite well for Communist leaders in China, where state-run capitalism has become the order? They find the colonial government [model] really works well for them. They themselves have the same mentality as a colonial government. As a oneparty -rule, authoritarian regime, they have no problem taking over that, no problem continuing to suppress workers’ rights. They believe Hong Kong needs stability. That means you don’t have workers going on strike to make problems for the capitalists. JOSEPH B. ATKINS is a veteran journalist and professor of journalism at the University of Mississippi. He is the author of Covering for the Bosses: Labor and the Southern Press. His blog is http://www.laborsouth .blogspot.com. INTERVIEW ❐ LEE CHEUK-YAN, HKCTU Lee Cheuk-yan, is Chair of the Hong Kong Labour Party, and Chair of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China. He is also General Secretary of the Hong Kong...

Joe Louis, the Southern Press, and the “Fight of the Century”

Joe Louis, the Southern Press, and the “Fight of the Century”

Jesse Who?: Race, the Southern Press, and the 1936 Olympic Games

This study examines the ways that news of African Americans was presented to white readers in the United States during the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. A content analysis of articles and photographs from 83 daily newspapers from 24 states found that whereas newspapers throughout the country exhibited a number of forms of racism, those in the Deep South were particularly aggressive in their anti-African American message. This was accomplished by minimizing and censoring news of Jesse Owens and other successful African American athletes, and by depicting African Americans as Coons, Mammies, and Bucks—minstrel character roles that had been used for decades to marginalize and humiliate blacks. Balanced or conflicting coverage was never offered to readers in the Deep South. Although the story of Jesse Owens remained temporarily unavailable to most readers there, African Americans made the news when they were associated with crime. Meanwhile, readers outside of the Deep South were able to see more of Jesse Owens, the iconic figure who “defeated whites at their own game” while remaining humble and dignified. As such, he was perhaps the first African American athletic figure who defied the traditional minstrel character stereotype.

The Bravest of the Brave: The Correspondence of Stephen Dodson Ramseur (review)

Reviewed by: The Bravest of the Brave: The Correspondence of Stephen Dodson Ramseur Keith Bohanon (bio) The Bravest of the Brave: The Correspondence of Stephen Dodson Ramseur. Edited by George G. Kundahl. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010. Pp. xv, 324. $45.00 cloth) This volume includes the edited correspondence, over 180 letters, of Confederate army general Stephen D. Ramseur. The great majority of this correspondence is addressed to David Schenk, Ramseur's closest friend and brother-in-law, and Ellen Richmond, Ramseur's cousin and wife. Ramseur was on intimate terms with both of these people, but the overall tone and subject matter of his correspondence with each of them is very different. The insightful letters to Schenk deal in large part with political, military, and business affairs. Those to Ellen, or "Nellie," reflect Ramseur's intense love for her and his Christian convictions. Stephen D. Ramseur hailed from a mercantile family in the North Carolina Piedmont town of Lincolnton, and his values and religious beliefs reflect those of a typical small, slaveholding family of the antebellum South. Following two years of study at Davidson College, Ramseur attended West Point, graduating in the class of 1860. He then served as an artillery officer in the U.S. Army before resigning his commission in the first week of April 1861. Ramseur's subsequent outstanding service in the Confederate army on the battlefield and in camp led to a rapid series of promotions. A severe wound in the arm sustained at Malvern Hill while leading his regiment, the Forty-ninth North Carolina, kept Ramseur away from the army for much of the remainder of 1862. When he rejoined Lee's army, he was a brigadier general in command of an infantry brigade. Ramseur subsequently directed his regiments with skill and courage at Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, and Spotsylvania Court House. At the end of May 1864, Ramseur received a promotion to major general shortly after his twenty-seventh birthday. As a division commander, Ramseur amassed a mixed record, his penchant for attacking resulting in costly defeats at Bethesda Church in early June 1864 and at Stephenson's Depot the following month. The later battle particularly upset Ramseur, as it elicited harsh criticism of him [End Page 102] in the southern press. Ramseur repeatedly defended his actions at Stephenson's Depot in letters that contain no admission of misjudgments that could have contributed to the rout of his command. Ramseur's letters are valuable not only for statements about military and political matters, but also for what they reveal about the cultural, religious, and social values of mid-nineteenth-century white Southerners. The missives reveal a deep hatred for the foe, particularly those written in the summer and fall of 1864 when Ramseur witnessed the devastation of the Shenandoah Valley. Ramseur was a fervent and unwavering believer in southern independence, even in the midst of battlefield defeats and the anguish that military duty entailed because of separation from his beloved Nellie. George Kundahl did a fine job editing these literate letters, thoroughly identifying the people, places, and events mentioned in them and providing satisfying background commentary. This reader did question the inclusion in their entirety of a few mundane official Confederate army documents, such as requests for commissions and blank bonds for a quartermaster in Ramseur's original regiment. Such documents could probably have been summarized in footnotes or omitted entirely from the volume. The final letters in the book, written in the fall of 1864, are particularly poignant as they express Ramseur's deep concern for his wife as she approached the birth of their first child. Ramseur's death at the battle of Cedar Creek in October 1864 occurred immediately after the birth of the baby; the general never knew the sex or name of his child. Keith Bohanon Keith Bohanon teaches in the department of history at the University of West Georgia, in Carrollton, Georgia. Copyright © 2011 Kentucky Historical Society

Covering for the Bosses: Labor and the Southern Press

Covering for the Bosses: Labor and the Southern Press

Covering for the Bosses: Labor and the Southern Press

Covering for the Bosses: Labor and the Southern Press

Book Review: Covering for the Bosses: Labor and the Southern Press. By Joseph B. Atkins. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2008. 246 pp. $45 hardback

Book Review: Covering for the Bosses: Labor and the Southern Press. By Joseph B. Atkins. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2008. 246 pp. $45 hardback

Nineteenth-Century Abolitionists and the Databases They Created

American As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses, produced through the collaboration of Angelina Grimke Weld, her husband, Theodore Weld, and her sister, Sarah Grimke, had a tremendous impact on the abolition movement when it was published by the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1839. (1) The book offered abolitionists new ammunition for their spoken and written war against It is not well known, however, that American As It Is was the product of a new way of using media, one that is now familiar to us through our computer-based keyword and Lexis/Nexis searches. The book combined personal testimony from those who lived, or who had lived, in the South, elicited via a form letter--a questionnaire of sorts--with evidence gleaned from a vast archive of newspapers. Here, I will focus on that innovative use of newspapers, for in American As It Is, the Grimkes and Weld reconceptualized the press and mined it as a database. Angelina and Sarah Grimke were born into a slaveholding family in South Carolina but rejected that life to become ardent abolitionists, traveling New England as strong, effective speakers, testifying to their direct experience of seeing the effects of slavery on both slaves and owners. When Angelina Grimke married the abolitionist and reformer Theodore Dwight Weld in 1838 and settled in Fort Lee, New Jersey, with her husband and sister, the two sisters retired from public speaking. Abolitionist friends were dismayed at losing such convincing orators. (Weld, himself an inspiring orator, had ended his speaking career in 1836 due to health problems.) The work the three next embarked upon, American As It Is, was, according to Thomas C. Leonard, the most widely read antisiavery publication until Uncle Tom's Cabin--and Harriet Beecher Stowe reportedly slept with it under her pillow while writing her pathbreaking novel (121). American As It Is included testimony from those who had lived in the South and from former slaveholders like Angelina and Sarah Grimke themselves. (2) It relied heavily on materials from the southern press, particularly advertisements for runaway slaves. Republishing these ads was not in itself an innovation, however. Abolitionists had already discovered that they could reconceptualize the information from such ads so that they functioned no longer as respectable, conventional notices of slaveholders seeking lost property, addressing other likeminded readers, or, if brought to a nonslaveholding readership, as exotic or troubling announcements, news from some other world. For example, William Lloyd Garrison's Boston-based paper the Liberator, beginning with its sixth issue in 1831, reprinted ads for runaway slaves and slave auctions in a section called Slavery Record. This reprinting turned the slaveholder's voice against himself. As Dan McKanan observes, when these ads were recontextualized, [t]he slave owner became a witness against himself, testifying that violence was intrinsic to the property relation of slavery. (3) Soon, other journals took up the practice of using such self-subverting quotation[s] (135). Using such ads was attractive because it removed abolitionist discourse from the abstract realm of rhetorical defense or opposition and crucially used the slaveholders' own words, spelled out in the brass tacks language of commercial speech. The Grimke-Weld collaborative, however, shifted from treating these ads as anecdotes to reinterpreting them as data about the brutality of The marks, scars, and shackles that slaveholders noted as a means of identification became indictments of the treatment of slaves. American As It Is represented data mined from an enormous number of papers. Forty-five years later, Weld recalled, After the work was finished, we were curious to know how many newspapers had been examined. So we went up to our attic and took an inventory of bundles, as they were packed heap upon heap. …

Fiend, Coward, Monster, or King: Southern Press Views of Abraham Lincoln

This article examines Southern editors 'views of Abraham Lin-coln from 1860–1865. The press s role in shaping, defining, and re-flecting the public s views of Lincoln was crucial for the region 's readers, many of whom did not even know the Illinois lawyer in 1860. Southern press views of Lincoln are examined during five key periods: the presidents election and inaugural address; the open-ing of the war; his issuance ofthe Emancipation Proclamation; the election of 1864; and Lincoln's assassination. The research finds a diversity of Southern press views for much of 1860. Once war was declared, however, editorial criticism did not subside until the presi-dent's death. Even then, some newspaper editors voiced happiness at the assassination.

Abraham Lincoln and Press Suppression Reconsidered

During the Civil War the federal government was responsible for the greatest amount of newspaper suppression in the nation's history. More than 300 newspapers were shut down, most of them Democratic papers that were sympathetic to the Confederacy. Some historians have criticized President Abraham Lincoln for allowing such widespread constraints on the press. This article reconsiders the nature of Lincoln's view of press freedom. Based on a letter the president sent to a Union general, it concludes that Lincoln changed his thinking about midway through the war and began to believe that suppression of the press was not the appropriate policy. This article examines Southern editors' views of Abraham Lincoln from 1860–1865. The press's role in shaping, defining, and reflecting the public's views of Lincoln was crucial for the region's readers, many of whom did not even know the Illinois lawyer in 1860. Southern press views of Lincoln are examined during five key periods: the president's election and inaugural address; the opening of the war; his issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation; the election of 1864; and Lincoln's assassination. The research finds a diversity of Southern press views for much of 1860. Once war was declared, however, editorial criticism did not subside until the president's death. Even then, some newspaper editors voiced happiness at the assassination.

Creating "The Propaganda of History": Southern Editors and the Origins of "Carpetbagger and Scalawag"

ONE READS THE TRUER DEEPER FACTS OF RECONSTRUCTION WITH A GREAT despair, wrote W. E. B. Du Bois. is at once so simple and human, and yet so futile. (1) Du Bois's words from nearly three quarters of a century ago still resonate. How could something so noble end in such anguish and injustice? Historians have offered many explanations for the precipitous collapse of Radical Reconstruction. They have stressed the North's failure to redistribute confiscated southern lands to ex-slaves, leaving freedpeople economically dependent on white landowners. They have explained that southern governments based on black suffrage never obtained legitimacy in the eyes of most white Americans. They have assessed the terrible damage done by the Ku Klux Klan and the White Leagues. They have observed the waning idealism of northern Republicans and how quickly the North wearied of deploying the U.S. Army to protect southern radicals. They have studied the harm done by corruption and by the chronic factionalism that crippled southern Republican regimes. They have observed that southern freedpeople, with their constant cries for government protection, came to be seen in the North--like striking factory workers--as enemies of a free labor economy. And time and time again historians have pointed to the common denominator underlying all of these factors: the profound racism that permeated American society, North and South. (2) In their manifold efforts to explain Reconstruction's demise, however, historians have largely overlooked a key element: the hostility of southern journalists. In 1867 Congress nullified the postwar governments created by President Andrew Johnson, leaving the Democratic press as the only institution in the South fully under the control of native whites and in a position to oppose northern policy. Southern newsmen picked up the gauntlet and, at the moment of seeming northern triumph, mounted a counteroffensive against what they saw as alien, radical governments being imposed on the region. Before the North realized it, southern editors had seized the rhetorical high ground, crying Negro Rule with renewed vigor. They coupled this old trope with the new symbols scalawag and carpetbagger, castigating Negro-scalawag rule and, even more effective, Negro-carpetbag rule. The result was a trio of symbols that defined the ideological parameters of the era. By 1870, no political actor in either the North or the South could discuss the future of Reconstruction without--in some fashion--engaging this rhetoric. While historians of the postwar South have extensively used newspapers as sources, the southern press as an institution remains largely unexplored. The only general work is Hodding Carter's short book of printed lectures, Their Words Were Bullets: The Southern Press in War, Reconstruction, and Peace (1969), which surveys the entire period from 1861 to 1877 in thirty-two pages. Of the 2,904 entries in David A. Lincove's exhaustive Reconstruction in the United States: An Annotated Bibliography (2000), a bare handful of entries concern the southern Democratic press. The only book, excepting Carter's, is a study of Charleston News and Courier founder and editor Francis Warrington Dawson; the remaining twenty-one relevant entries are locally focused journal articles and a 1976 dissertation. (3) Ironically, scholars know more about the region's incipient (and largely ephemeral) Republican newspapers than about the infinitely larger and vastly more influential Democratic press. (4) This work is a study of Reconstruction symbolism and rhetoric as expressed in the writings of southern journalists during the transition from Presidential to Radical Reconstruction (1867-1868). It examines those newsmen' s creation of the words carpetbagger and scalawag and demonstrates that they created the epithets as counter-Reconstruction weapons at the precise moment when they would do the most damage: during the radical constitutional conventions that were meeting in conformity with the Reconstruction Act--and while public sentiment about the radical program was only beginning to crystallize. …

For Free Press and Equal Rights: Republican Newspapers in the Reconstruction South (review)

Reviewed by Donna L. Dickerson University of Texas at Tyler For Free Press and Equal Rights: Republican Newspapers in the Reconstruction South. By Richard H. Abbott. Edited by John Quist. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004. Pp. 296. Cloth, $39.95.) Before his death in 2000, Richard H. Abbott had become a significant historian of the Reconstruction era. Beginning with his 1986 study, The Republican Party and the South, 1855-1877 and ending with this final book, Abbott has provided important insights into the role Republicans—be they politicians, military, or newspaper editors—played during Reconstruction. For Free Press and Equal Rights was almost complete when Abbott passed away. John Quist assumed the important task of seeing that Abbott's work was completed. The book is the first to identify and examine Republican newspapers in the South between 1863 and 1877. Abbott's study begins with the earliest newspapers published by federal troops in conquered territories and traces the spread and influence of the Republican press throughout the South until 1877. To accomplish this task, Abbott identified more than 430 Republican newspapers published in the post-Civil War South. A list of those newspapers is included in an appendix. Most Republican newspapers [End Page 437] had short life spans. Established in counties with a significant black population, the newspapers struggled to survive where freed slaves were too illiterate and too poor to subscribe, and businesses refused to advertise. Abbott's analysis looks at each of the Southern states, year-by-year to show how Reconstruction politics affected the survival of newspapers in individual states. While the identification of Republican newspapers is a significant contribution to the field, so too is the analysis of the political variations found among those newspapers. Abbott is careful to avoid typecasting either the editors or their newspapers as radical, moderate or conservative except in the most obvious cases. Instead, he describes Republicans—politicians as well as editors—as not only inconsistent in their basic political beliefs, but full of contradictions. For example, a newspaper that supported the radical plan of land confiscation, did not necessarily support black enfranchisement; the newspaper that supported black enfranchisement, probably did not support black office-holding. Abbott also provides a thorough state-by-state analysis of patronage at both the federal and state levels and its importance in keeping Republican newspapers alive as well as in line with the local, state and federal party. Just as the Republican party's enthusiasm for courting the South began to wane in the early 1870s, so too did the patronage dollars. By the mid-1870s, a newspaper lucky enough to have federal patronage dollars could not survive without state and local patronage. Survival in many cases meant that moderate and conservative newspapers became even more conservative, distancing themselves from the Republican party. Adding to the demise of the Republican press were the escalating printings contracts of Republican state regimes. Some state printing schemes led to scandals that the Democratic press was more than willing to expose as just another example of Republican corruption. Patronage, however, was a necessary evil for both Democrats and Republicans. In fact, without a broad base of patronage support from both parties the Southern press would have barely existed after the war. During this critical period, the party press promoted political identity, educated citizens in their political responsibilities, and pressed the party line. Abbott concludes that whatever Republicans were able to accomplish during the Reconstruction years was due in great part to the Republican editors who, in the face of violence and economic hardship, managed to keep a party press alive in order to promote economic, racial, and sectional equality. If there is a fault with this book it is the title. One would expect a book titled For Free Press and Equal Rights to have a heavier emphasis on free press issues. Indeed, a few Republican papers and editors experienced violence, and some [End Page 438] newspapers that did...