USA > Illinois > Newspapers and periodicals of Illinois, 1814-1879 > Part 2
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I. Illinois Herald, established at Kaskaskia in 1814; re- named Western Intelligencer in 1816; renamed Illinois Intelligencer in 1818; followed the state capital to Vandalia in 1820.
2. Illinois Emigrant, established in Shawneetown in 1818; renamed Illinois Gazette in 1819.
3. Edwardsville Spectator, established at Edwardsville in 1819.
4. Star of the West, established at Edwardsville in 1822; renamed Illinois Republican in 1823; discontinued at the time of the election in 1824.
5. Republican Advocate, established at Kaskaskia early in 1823; renamed Kaskaskia Republican in 1824; con- tinued until 1825; revived early in 1826 as Illinois Reporter, and continued for about a year.
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It appears from this list that Illinois had but one terri- torial newspaper, which bore at successive times three various names. With the coming of statehood in 1818, a rival party, and therefore a rival newspaper, was inevitable. As early as the twenty-ninth number of this second paper, dated January 9, 1819, the Emigrant indicated that two newspapers, although they were as far apart as the limits fixed by nature and population would permit, could not exist pacifically in Illinois.
The coming of the Illinois Emigrant indicated no shifting of the population; more significant was the advent of the Edwardsville Spectator in 1819. By this year the popula- tion of Madison County had increased to a number between four thousand and fifty-five hundred; Edwardsville, the county town, contained sixty or seventy houses, a courthouse, a jail, a bank, and a land-office. Alton, but a few miles away, had one hundred houses.8 The new capital on the upper Kaskaskia was already projected by land speculators. In the next year the seat of government was moved, and with it the Illinois Intelligencer, to Vandalia. The other papers of the period were significant only as parties to the conven- tion struggle.
Throughout this period from 1814 to 1824 the country was developed rapidly to the northward. The population had grown by 1820 to 55,21I.9 In 1814 there were nine post-offices in the territory, and three hundred and eighty- eight miles of post-roads.10 From that time both post-offices
8 Pooley, Settlement of Illinois, 1830-1850, pp. 319-320.
9 U. S. Census Report, 1820.
10 Boggess, Settlement of Illinois, 1775-1830, p. 131, State Papers, 13th Cong., 3d Session.
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and post-roads increased greatly." By 1819 a road was opened from Shawneetown, by way of Carmi to Albion, in Edwards County. In February, 1821, the legislature author- ized the building of a turnpike road from the Mississippi opposite St. Louis, across the American Bottom to the bluffs. Edwardsville, Springfield, and Peoria were connected by a mail route in 1822; in the same year a road and a mail route were established between Vandalia and Springfield, over which the State Capital was soon to continue its migration to the northward.12 In the same year also, a direct path was established from Iroquois Post (now Iroquois) to Dan- ville. In 1824 this path was extended northward to Chicago, and southwest from Danville for one hundred and fifty miles,13 but no mail was carried over any part of this route until eight years later. Springfield was the northern terminus of the mail route early in 1823, and the next year Sangamon County was still almost entirely without ferries, bridges, or roads. Over most of these routes mail was carried once a week.
River transportation had developed rapidly through the introduction of the steamboat. The Orleans had gone down the Ohio from Pittsburg in 1811, the Washington in 1817. In 1817 the first steamboat to touch a port on the upper Mississippi reached St. Louis; Galena saw its first steamboat in 1822. This was the field, and these were the means of communication in which and by which the newspapers of
11 In 1821 there were fifty-seven post-offices, but in 1823 and 1825 only fifty three. Until after the first decade, Shawneetown did more postal business than any other town in Illinois, and in 1817 it was the only post-office in the state in which a clerk was employed. In 1821 it did twice as much as Edwardsville, and four times as much as Kaskaskia. See U. S. Official Registers or "Blue Books," for 1817-1825.
12 Tillson, Reminiscences of Early Life in Illinois, 54.
13 Boggess, Settlement of Illinois, 1775-1830, p. 158.
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the first decade served and were served. But the delays in the mail service and in the delivery of freight were so frequent and so prolonged as to be to-day almost incredible. The Illinois Emigrant issued no number between June 23 and August 24, 1819, because paper shipped down the Ohio on June 13th was delayed by low water and did not arrive until more than two months later. If this delay was suf- fered by a paper nearest the source of supply and directly on the Ohio, more extended gaps might well be expected in the other early files. On June 21, 1823, the Illinois Gazette received through the post a New York Spectator of November 22, 1822, a Richmond Enquirer of December 7, 1822, and a Frankfort Commentator of January 2, 1823. "Such is the wretched state of the mails west of the moun- tains, and complaints and remonstrances seem unavailing to improve it," remarked the editor. On this mail service the early western papers depended for their news of the out- side world. Hall, in the Illinois Gazette, pictures the situ- ation in 1821 thus:
"After a lapse of several weeks (three months, to be exact) we are now enabled to resume the publication of our sheet. Paper (the want of which has been the cause of the late interruption) was shipped for us early last fall, on board of a boat bound for St. Louis - to which place, owing prob- ably to the forgetfulness of the master, it was carried and has but just now come to hand. Our situation is such, and our means so inadequate to guard against these occasional interruptions, by laying in large supplies of paper, ink, etc., at a time that we are more or less affected by every change in the elements, or defalcation in individual promises. High and low water it seems are equally our enemies - the one is sure to delay the arrival of some article necessary to the
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prosecution of our labors, while the other hurries something of which we stand in the most pressing need, down the cur- rent beyond our reach. And high winds, and warm and cold weather, equally delight to make us their sport. But we assure our subscribers that however much they may regret missing a paper for a week, they cannot regret it more than we; for, after all, we are the only losers." More than five years had been required to complete four volumes.
This uncertainty, especially in the freight service, lasted until long afterward. "You are doubtless waiting with some degree of impatience," wrote Hooper Warren to Ninian Edwards from Galena, July 6, 1829, "for the appearance of the Galena Advertiser. After waiting more than three weeks after my arrival, the materials from Springfield arrived from St. Louis. How they got there I have never learned. . When we were elated with the certainty of getting out the paper immediately, we were astonished to find that the keg of ink had been left behind! I put it into the wagon myself at Springfield with the other materials sent to Beardstown on the Illinois. Dr. Philleo started down the river immediately, which was three weeks ago last Saturday, to look for it. We heard from him by letter at the Lower Rapids on the 20th ult., at which time he had not found it, and was about to start down to St. Louis. We expect him by the next boat or stage." 14 In the next year, publication of the Illinois Monthly Magazine at Vandalia, the state capital, was considerably delayed by the failure of paper to arrive, and editor Hall gave this difficulty in the matter of transportation as one reason for removing the publication to Cincinnati. "We feel no inconsiderable regret," wrote the editor of the Illinois State Gazette and Jacksonville News on
14 Washburne, Edwards Papers, 408-409.
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January 17, 1835, "at being compelled to an occasional suspension of our publication (owing to a want of paper); but the regret is lessened somewhat by the fact that every paper in the state, with perhaps a single exception, has suf- fered like disappointments." The News had then suffered a suspension of three weeks.
The general character of the newspapers of the period was political, the tone frequently controversial, but highly moral and often religious. As newspapers they would to-day be regarded, even from the point of view of the country weekly, as sad efforts. Of political news, either state or national, there was no lack, and the editors sometimes showed considerable enterprise in securing it; but of local news in the present sense there was very little. Occasionally some space was given to an account of an unusual murder in the vicinity, or an extraordinary rise or fall of the river; but usually the remoteness of the event seemed to increase Its importance, and one finds more often an account of the hop yield in Silesia than of the wheat crop in Illinois. It was easier to reset items from the eastern papers, when they arrived, than to gather facts and compose original matter.15 This was especially true in the frequent periods when the politician who ran the paper was absent, and the work was left to the itinerant and bibulous printer.
The editorial occupied a variable, but on the whole, an important place. These first five papers had pretty definite purposes, forwarded or achieved largely by the direct appeal of the editorial, which, not infrequently in "parlous times"
15 Shawneetown was for many years the chief gateway for emigrants to Southern Illinois, and a "port of call" for all the settlers bound for Missouri via the Ohio River. Equipped with the present newspaper reporter's zeal for news, the editor of the Gazette could have made his paper a highly important record of the flowing tide of emigration to the land of promise. But the record was not written. Political maneuvers and quarrels were more important than the incoming population.
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of political conflict, filled one of the four small pages, and in a few instances overran even that ample room. Positive or controversial opinion was often expressed over an obvious but sufficient nom de plume, though quite as often the name of the editor was in itself a sufficient disguise for the individual or the interest behind the paper. Thus we find Sidney Breese writing to Governor Edwards: "If I continue en- gaged in politics, I am determined to make Gov. Reynolds choose between Smith and myself, in other words between the Crisis and the Democrat. Do give your views . . . editorially, thro' me, in the Democrat." 16 Yet R. K. Flem- ing was nominally editor, the paper was referred to by War- ren in the Galena Advertiser as "Fleming's paper," and not until almost a year later did suspicion appear in print that Breese was the actual editor. John McLean, in the Illinois Gazette for July 29, 1820, called Ninian Edwards the "actual editor of the Edwardsville Spectator," nominally, and in fact, edited by Hooper Warren; and we find abundant evidence in Warren's letters to Edwards 17 that in editing his papers Sangamo Spectator and Galena Advertiser, Warren was con- tinually under the influence of Edwards. Yet Warren was one of the strongest and most independent of the early editors, of quite a different sort from Fleming, and the yoke of obligation was burdensome to him.18
While in such cases the nominal editor was the spokes- man for some one else, there were other cases in which editorial utterance¿ were disguised by means of an assumed name. Signed contributions occupied a large and important place in the early papers, as they have done, and still do, in
16Edwards Papers, 543, letter to Gov. Edwards, dated September 21, 1830.
17 In Washburne, Edwards Papers.
18 See Edwards Papers, 409, 410, 421, etc.
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English newspapers. These articles were either remarks of the editor, or bona fide contributions of outsiders. As one of the earliest occurrences of the first kind may be cited a series of letters in the Illinois Gazette, signed "Brutus," attacking Daniel P. Cook.19 They were undoubtedly written by James Hall, who was at that time editor; but, though Hall acknowledged editorial responsibility for the letters, he never acknowledged his authorship of them. Of the second kind there are to be found no more interesting illustrations than are furnished by the many communications of Morris Birkbeck, sometimes signed with his own name, sometimes with "Jonathan Freeman." They were con- cerned especially with slavery or with agriculture, and were as interesting and brisk in style as they were numerous and long.
The political influence and significance of acknowledged editorials was of serious moment, and matters of importance were not hastily disposed of with an irresponsible squib. Big guns were brought to bear, no matter how belated the broad- side. Political leaders were consulted and heeded, even when they were not themselves induced to write. An editor and politician no less important than Daniel P. Cook wrote to Ninian Edwards: "I shall want to make some comments on the importance of the subject, and altho' I shall do it as my own entirely, I shall wish very much to have your assist- ance in that business. Indeed it appears to be a subject of such acknowledged importance that a man who is able to develop its niceties may well expect to acquire some fame for so doing; and I therefore wish your assistance in making any remarks, lest I should discover a want of tolerable
19 The first was printed June 22, 1822. Cook replied in the Illinois Intelligencer ; in answer to this reply Hall assumed responsibility for the articles in an editorial printed July 27.
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knowledge of the subject, which would rather make me appear ridiculous than otherwise." 20
Much of the space afforded by the lack of news was filled with "literature." "Want of room alone," explains one of the earliest editors,21 "has prevented us from fulfilling an intention which we had early formed, of devoting a portion of our columns to literature. Our own resources at this insulated spot, where we can calculate on but little assistance and where we seldom receive new books, must of course be small; but the columns of many of the Eastern papers are tastefully variegated with those lighter productions which delight the fancy, and on them we may sometimes draw, for the amusement of our readers. But among our friends and neighbors there are, no doubt, many who might contribute something towards the amusement and instruction of others." And indeed, to the many cultural excerpts from the taste- fully variegated columns were added stories, poems, and essays by friends and neighbors. John Russell, Morris Birkbeck, and James Hall wrote often for those earliest papers, and made of them sources not to be overlooked by those who would know the early agriculture, horticulture, society, education, and politics, as well as literature of Illinois. Out of the somewhat haphazard occasional use of this kind of material in the first papers there grew a well established custom of devoting certain columns to such matter, a custom that has persisted even to the present in some localities. These earlier productions, however crude, had individuality, vigor, and genuineness not to be found in the sapless tabloid material now supplied in plates at a dollar and a quarter a page.
20 Washburne, Edwards Papers, 125.
21 James Hall in Illinois Gazette, July 29, 1820.
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The business of publishing a newspaper in the early days was poor enough at best, and the publisher had a hard strug- gle to make a living. The initial cost of a plant was small, and the expense of maintenance was low, but the sources of income were correspondingly meager. Had there been no public printing and no politicians who felt the need of "organs," probably no early paper could have lived a year, for the subscribers were few and the advertisements yielded little income.
The first cost of establishing a plant seems to have varied from four hundred to a thousand dollars, according to the amount of type the publisher felt necessary. The cost of maintenance was small. In many instances one man did all the work; seldom were more than two employed on one paper. Usually, it seems, a lawyer or other ambitious person wishing to start a paper found a printer, furnished the plant, editorials, and some of the news, and left the printer to solicit advertising, gather "items," make selections of news and "elegant miscellany" from the exchanges, set type, and "run off" and deliver the paper.
Public printing was a boon to the three earliest papers, and no doubt did much to prolong their careers beyond the average length. This was especially true of the first and the most successful, which was established at an opportune time. There was a great and growing territory rapidly being settled by ambitious pioneers; there was an increasing body of laws, with no newspaper in which to print them; there was the United States printing patronage to be secured, as well as the official job-work. A law in force May 21, 1810, declared that "whereas, it is provided . . . that advertise- ments should be inserted in some public newspaper pub- lished in the territory ; and whereas, there is at this
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time no newspaper printed in this territory:" 22 such adver- tisements should be inserted in "some of the newspapers published in the Louisiana Territory." The act was to remain in force "until a newspaper is established and pub- lished in this territory and no longer." 23
The privilege of printing the United States laws was of relatively great value and was eagerly sought. An act to authorize the publication of the laws in two newspapers in each territory was passed but three or four months after the first paper in Illinois was established.24 In 1818 the number of papers to be favored was increased to three, and the matter to be published was made to include not only the laws, but resolutions, public treaties, and amendments to the constitution.25 By this act the compensation was fixed at the rate of one dollar for each printed page of the pam- phlet in which the copy was furnished, a page not far from the size of standard law books to-day.
The minimum number of subscribers on which a paper could be run seems to have been fixed by Hooper Warren when he wrote to Ninian Edwards in 1828 that the Sangamo Spectator had but 170 subscribers, of which probably a third would withdraw when the year was up, and that nothing
22 This conclusively corrects Reynolds' statement that the Illinois Herald was established in 1809, an error handed down to the present time. (See Boggess, Settlement of Illinois, 1775-1830, p. 132, for the latest instance.)
23 Alvord, Laws of the Territory of Illinois, 1809-1811; Bulletin Ill. State Hist. Library, I, No. 2.
24 Approved November 21, 1814.
25 Act approved April 20, 1818. The number of papers to be used in each state and territory was changed to two in 1846; the practice was discontinued in March, 1875. The amount of income derived from this source varied. The first Official Register to give the names of the printers of the laws and the amounts that they were paid (that of 1833) gives $177.00 for the first session and $9r.oo for the second. These amounts were much smaller than those paid previously. An incidental benefit accrued from official favor. There was much printing to be done for the Department of State and of War and the Post Office Department, and the news- paper publishers often received from such sources two or three times the amount paid for publishing the laws.
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could sustain the paper but new type and its enlargement. 26 Four hundred subscribers were considered a satisfactory number, although one finds vain boasting here and there that with proper help from all friends this or that paper could increase its list to a thousand.
Advertisements were few, seldom filling one-fourth of the paper, and the rates were low. Of these early adver- tisements, those of taverns, whiskey, town-sites, and run- away negroes are found most frequently. The last named is found in surprising numbers, not only in the first decade, but on down to the Civil War, many bearing the little woodcut of a negro with his bundle which so impressed Miss Mar- tineau, and nearly all offering a reward of one cent for the fugitive's return. Prospectuses of new papers, and adver- tisements of eastern, especially Washington, papers were numerous. These, together with notices of Philadelphia, New York, and Boston magazines grew in frequency until the middle of the century, when the use of the telegraph began to shift the whole newspaper situation.
Subscribers and advertisers would have been of more value to the struggling publishers if they had paid, but very often they didn't pay. In the case of nearly all early papers the subscription price if paid in advance was a dollar lower than if paid at the end of the year, but from the frequent appeals for money on account, one surmises that the sub- scribers found a way to save more than the one dollar. They were appealed to in prose and in verse, they were cajoled, praised, lectured, and denounced. Money was wretchedly scarce, but almost any commodity was acceptable. A full list of what the printers offered to receive would be an in-
26 Edwards Papers, 330. After the Spectator had been sold to Meredith, War- ren wrote: "Had not this contract been made it is probable the paper would have died a natural death." P. 364.
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ventory of the daily needs of the pioneer. The publishers of the Illinois Gazette announced that they would receive in payment of subscriptions, clean linen and cotton rags; in payment for subscriptions and advertisements, bacon, tallow, beeswax, and feathers. Later, hides, deerskins, and pork were also acceptable. Had there been no laws to be printed and no politicians to have organs, however, even prompt payment of subscription and advertising accounts would hardly have kept the papers alive, or have brought about the somewhat surprising fact that in the first decade no Illinois paper died through lack of support.
The climax of this first period was reached in the con- vention campaign which began in February, 1823, and ended on the first Monday in August, 1824. The newspapers had a more important place in that contest than in any other important political event in Illinois. They were owned or controlled by leaders in the fray, and in the columns of the few that are left one can follow the shifts of ownership and editorship, the shading off or brightening up of this or that aspect of the main question or of contributory questions, can catch the tense earnestness of spirit with which the oppo- nents struggled, and get much of the violence of invective and abuse which one finds nowadays nowhere except in a municipal campaign.
From the beginning until well on in 1822 the papers were divided mainly on local issues and on men. The slavery question was already looming, but not large, though there had been more or less discontent ever since the passage of the Missouri Compromise, and the parties to the coming struggle were becoming defined. "The anti-convention party," says Governor Ford,27. "established news-
27 History of Illinois, 53-54.
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papers to oppose the convention; one at Shawneetown, edited by Henry Eddy; one at Edwardsville, edited by Hooper Warren, with Gov. Coles, Thomas Lippincott, George Churchill, and Judge Lockwood, for its principal contributors; and finally, one at Vandalia, edited by David Blackwell, the Secretary of State. The slave party had established a newspaper at Kaskaskia, under the direction of Mr. Kane and Chief Justice Reynolds; and one at Ed- wardsville edited by Judge Smith; and both parties pre- pared to appeal to the interests, the passions, and the intelli- gence of the people. The contest was mixed up with much personal abuse; and now was poured forth a perfect lava of detraction, which, if it were not for the knowledge of the people that such matters are generally false or greatly exag- gerated, would have overwhelmed and consumed all men's reputations The whole people, for the space of eighteen months, did scarcely anything but read newspapers, handbills and pamphlets, quarrel, argue, and wrangle with each other." It is a source of wonder that long after these events had passed Governor Ford could record that but one duel had been fought in Illinois.28
The Edwardsville Spectator was the first paper in the state to come out against slavery in Illinois, and to oppose all measures and men that seemed to favor a change in the direction of slavery. The paper was probably con- trolled by Ninian Edwards; it was the mouthpiece of a coterie of strong men, and under Hooper Warren's editorship it pursued a steady and consistent policy that made it the most influential paper in the state. Until early in 1824 it was alone in its opposition to any encroachments of slavery interests. Other papers were less stable, shifted policies, and 28 History of Illinois, 54.
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