USA > Illinois > Newspapers and periodicals of Illinois, 1814-1879 > Part 4
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INTRODUCTION
sibylline gravity utters forth his oracles of political wisdom to a benighted world." 46
The presidential campaign of 1840 brought into being a large number of papers. Of the seventeen established in 1839, six may reasonably be considered campaign ephemera, which were discontinued in 1840 or 1841, or, finding evidence of permanent support, changed their titles to indicate their altered character. In 1840 such papers as Sucker, Spirit of '76, Sovereign People, Illinois Free Trader, Old Hickory, and Old Soldier were started merely as campaign sheets; and there were at least twelve others primarily of the same character. Sixteen of the thirty new or refurbished down- state papers established in 1840 ended with the campaign or within the following year.
In tone the papers were not materially different from those of the preceding period. There were, to be sure, a good many very poor sheets, of a colorless, neutral tone, the forerunners of the abject bread-getters, never exalted to the dignity of bread-earners, which became widely prevalent in the decade from 1870 to 1880. But more of the papers were run by men of backbone and brains - proportions varying. Politics continued to be the primary interest, and the political tone was nothing softened since 1824. No presidential contest in Illinois produced more violent news- paper utterances than that of 1840. It was a campaign especially to the taste of the settlers in the young, crude state, and the inhabitants entered the lists without reserve, and with sufficient vocabularies. Witness this following, from
46 Illinois State Gazette & Jacksonville News, May 9, 1835. The promptness with which newspapers were set up in incipient villages is well illustrated in the case of Grafton. The first settlers built their cabins in 1832, streets were laid out in I836, and John Russell published the Backwoodsman there in 1837.
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ILLINOIS HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS
the Vandalia Free Press, edited by William Hodge, for July 27, 1838 (extra):
"GLORIOUS TIMES" OF PATENT DEMOCRACY!
A "Mousing Grimalkin" for President!
A practical amalgamator, his vice!
A Taney Federalist in the chair of Marshall.
A Secretary of the Treasury whose financial blunders would disgrace a schoolboy!
An Attorney General who has yet to learn the first rudi- ments of political honesty!
A servile Senate fawning at the footstool of Puss's throne!
Hodge was not a fair representative of the Illinois news- paper men of his day, perhaps, but however the papers differed in degree, they were alike in being strong party organs, one-sided, and never independent.
The strong bias that seemed to be demanded of the news- papers of the time, the bias that fed the party or factional spirit, at the same time reduced the power of the papers. 'Newspapers at present have but little influence," wrote Hooper Warren in 1828.47 "The readers are few, and these are taught to believe that all that appears in a news- paper is a lie, of course." At this same time De Tocqueville remarked the small influence of American papers,48 and Harriet Martineau had never heard any one deny the prof- ligacy of newspapers in general, or that the American were the worst. Why "the republic has not been overthrown by its newspapers"49 Miss Martineau might have learned from Hooper Warren.
47 Edwards Papers, 336.
48 Democracy in America, I, 235. (Bowen, 1882.) But see also 238.
49 Society in America, I, 75. (Paris, 1837.)
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INTRODUCTION
Though the newspaper readers were few from the point of view of an unsuccessful editor, the ratio of newspapers to population was large, as the following table will show, and their influence was without doubt greater than the dis- couraged editor of the Galena Advertiser believed.
RATIO OF NEWSPAPERS TO POPULATION IN 1837
Town
Population 50
Pop. of Co. (1835) Newspaper
Alton
. 2,500
9,016
4
Chicago
8,000
7,500
3
Galena
1,200
4,350
I
Jacksonville .
2,500
16,500
3
Ottawa
400
4,754
I
Pekin
800
5,850
I
Peoria.
1,500
7,000 .
I
Shawneetown
600
8,660
I
Springfield
17,573
2
Vandalia
850
3,638
2
In the following statistical view of the publishing in- dustry in the state in 1840, presented in the census report for that year, two items require comment. The four peri- odicals assigned to Jo Daviess County it seems impossible to identify. There were but two towns of any consequence in the county at that time, and neither, so far as available materials show, supported a periodical other than a news- paper. The same difficulty attends the daily paper in Schuyler County. Possibly the Rushville Political Examiner was issued daily in the heat of the campaign.
50 These figures are from Mitchell, Illinois in 1837, and are probably estimated.
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ILLINOIS HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS
CENSUS OF 1840
COUNTIES
Printing Offices
Binderies
Daily Newspapers
Weekly Newspapers
Semi- and Tri-weekly
Newspapers
Periodicals
Men Employed
Capital Invested
Adams
4
I
I
6
$1,600
Cook
3
I
2
2
I
19
8,300
Edgar.
I
I
3
8oc
Fayette
2
2
6
4,000
Fulton
2
2
4
. ...
Gallatin.
2
2
7
1,500
Hancock
2
I
I
4
1,000
Jersey.
I
I
4
1,000
Jo Daviess.
2
2
2
4
II
3,500
La Salle
2
2
8
2,000
Madison.
4
3
I
I6
14,000
Montgomery.
I
I
3
1,200
Morgan
2
I
I
I
I4
3,000
Peoria .
2
2
9
3,500
Putnam .
I
I
2
1,100
Randolph .
2
I
2
5
1,800
Rock Island
I
I
I
5
2,300
Sangamon
3
I
4
28
13,000
Schuyler.
I
I
3
600
St. Clair.
I
I
2
500
Tazewell
I
I
200
Wabash.
2
2
7
1,400
Will .
I
I
3
3,000
Winnebago
2
2
6
2,000
Total
45
5
3
38
2
9
175
71,300
Throughout the first half-century of our newspaper history the weekly papers were all these things to all men; each presented a symposium of politics, agriculture, morals, mechanics, science, and literature - something to please each member of the family, indeed. But the idea of special types was present very early, and found concrete habiliment in several premature publications. As early as 1829 a
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INTRODUCTION
religious paper was started; in the next year appeared an agricultural journal, the second west of the Alleghanies, and a monthly literary magazine. The first harbinger of the flock which was to spread the Washingtonian movement abroad in the state came in 1836; in 1837 an educational monthly endured a brief life of neglect. In the next year a paper was started at Edwardsville to promulgate a uni- versal language. Finally, ambitious Chicago produced in 1839 the first daily paper in the state, and in 1840 the second. It should be noted too, that the two oldest papers in Illinois to-day look back to this period for their beginnings. Most of these pioneers in special fields require here a word of comment.
Religious journalism, which has been important numeri- cally since the middle of this period, began with the Pioneer of the Valley of the Mississippi, established at Rock Spring by John Mason Peck and T. P. Green, and first issued on April 25, 1829. It was a private venture, and Baptist. Baptist journalism in Illinois has been, from the beginning, wholly a matter of private enterprise in contrast with that of Ohio and Michigan, among the western states.51 The idea of the Pioneer originated with Peck, who felt that his Baptist seminary, and the state, needed the stimulus that a weekly paper would give. He found a Rev. T. P. Green willing to furnish half enough money to start the venture, and to act as publisher. The rest of the funds Peck secured from eastern Baptists, who, no doubt, at Peck's suggestion, stipu- lated that half of the profits should go to the seminary. Peck was editor, and in his travels solicited subscriptions. But the paper was a dead expense from the beginning;52
51 Justin A. Smith, History of the Baptists in the Western States, 380.
52 Rufus Babcock, Memoir of John Mason Peck, Phila., 1864.
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ILLINOIS HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS
the Rev. Mr. Green soon starved out, and was succeeded by a Mr. Smith, son-in-law of Mr. Peck. In June, 1836, the office was moved to Alton, where it was a distressing burden to its originator until January, 1839, when it was combined with the Baptist Banner of Louisville, Kentucky.
That an attempt was made to establish a pretentious literary monthly in Illinois in 1830 provokes astonishment paralleled only by the wonder that the attempt was carried two years toward success. James Hall, lawyer, writer, circuit judge, state treasurer, editor of the Illinois Emigrant from 1820 to 1822, of the Illinois Intelligencer from 1829 to 1832, trustee of Illinois College, writer of fiction, literary biography, and commercial statistics, vehement politician and maker of many enemies - this versatile Pennsylvanian established the Illinois Monthly Magazine at Vandalia, October, 1830, and published it there for two years. Illinois had been a state but twelve years, and contained more horse- thieves in the southern and Indians in the northern sections than litterateurs in both. Yet here was this hopeful voice calling out from Vandalia to the people of Illinois for articles on subjects literary, scientific, cultural - for fiction and for poetry - and for appreciation in coin of the realm. It had nearly a score of predecessors in the Ohio valley,53 including The Medley (1803), Western Review (1820) and Transyl- vanian (1829) at Lexington, Kentucky; Cincinnati Literary Gazette (1824), Western Monthly Review (1828), Sentinel and Star in the West (1829), and Olio, at Cincinnati, the western publishing center of that time. Of these predecessors to Hall's venture, Olio (1821-22) is of interest here because one of its editors was Samuel S. Brooks, who became
53 Venable, Early Periodical Literature of the Ohio Valley. Cairns, On the De- velopment of American Literature from 1815 to 1833, pp. 60, 61.
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INTRODUCTION
one of the most active and trenchant of early editors in Illinois. The greater age and population of the communities in which these early attempts were made, as compared with the village capital of Illinois, make Hall's venture seem the more hazardous.
Yet Hall's purpose was largely practical. "The leading features of our humble attempt," the editor explained in the preface to his first number, "will be to disseminate knowl- edge, to cultivate a taste for letters, and to give correct deline- ations of this country to our distant friends. Every topic connected with the arts, the industry, or the resources of this flourishing state, or of the western country, will come within the scope of this work. . But while we propose to give a prominent place to the useful, it is not our intention to neglect the lighter and more elegant branches of literature. Original tales, characteristic of the western people, are promised, and we think that our arrangements in this depart- ment are such, that the lovers of ingenious fiction will not be disappointed. Literary intelligence will form a portion of each number." Something further of Hall's ideal was expressed in the seventh number, when, in the course of an article on "Periodicals," the editor wrote, "Our editors have become too formal, and stately, and fastidious.
Instead of the infinite variety of topics, which once gave interest to works of this description, nothing is now admitted but reviews, tales, and poetry. . I am much better pleased with the good old-fashioned magazines ... within whose well furnished pages, the reader, whatever might be his taste, was sure to find something agreeable."
Such, indeed, was the character of the Illinois Monthly Magazine, for performance followed close on purpose, and Hall gathered in those two ambitious volumes a quantity,
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ILLINOIS HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS
quality, and variety of matter creditable indeed. He drew on his own resources heavily - he contributed nearly one- half of all that he printed. And he drew at the same time on all other available resources in the state, and soon ex- hausted them.
The energetic citizens of Alton, which at that time was almost the equal of Chicago in population, furnished the first organ of temperance reform, when on June 1, 1836, the Illinois State Temperance Society published there the first number of the Illinois Temperance Herald. The paper never received from subscriptions and advertisements a support sufficient to maintain it, but the society seems to have had fairly ample funds, since for some time as many as six thousand copies of the Herald were circulated.54 Fur- thermore they brought Timothy Turner, an effective tem- perance lecturer, from New York, and at considerable expense secured A. W. Corey as editor of their paper.55 The burden became too great, however; the Missouri Society was in 1839 induced to share the expenses of publication, and the title of the paper was altered to Missouri and Illinois Temperance Herald. The words and Washingtonian were added in 1842, after which time the paper did not long survive.
Ensley T. and C. Goudy began in January, 1837, to publish the first educational journal in Illinois, probably the first in the Mississippi valley. It was entitled Common School Advocate, and was issued monthly. Only a printer
54 Tanner, Martyrdom of Lovejoy, 100.
55 Tanner, supra cit., declared that Corey provoked heated opposition in St. Louis, especially by printing the names of all wholesale grocers of that city who sold liquors, and charging them with participating in a common crime. "Many, in their fury, would have been glad to have wiped out of existence not only the Observer, but also the Temperance Herald, with their editors, printers, and offices, as nuisances in society."
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INTRODUCTION
like Goudy, who ventured and failed in many journalistic undertakings, would have had the courage to use labor, ink, and paper, even, in publishing a school journal in Illinois, at that time. There was no common school system; there were no required qualifications for school teachers; and there was a latent antagonism on the part of a large portion of the populace to an educational system which would entail taxation. 56 "We apprehend," said S. S. Brooks, editor of the Jacksonville Gazette and News in a notice of the Common School Advocate, "there is not sufficient intelligence among the mass of teachers in the state to appreciate the merits of such a work, nor interest enough taken by parents in the success of common schools, or in the education of their children, to induce them to extend, at the present time, an adequate support to the enterprise." The editorial labor was done by "a few literary gentlemen who, from their deep interest in this subject, generously volunteered their services for one year without remuneration." Samuel Willard ascribed the editorship to Rev. Theron Baldwin.57 But Brooks's pessimism seems to have been warranted, for the journal did not continue beyond the year. The failure of the Advocate was in keeping with the fate of all educational journals, four in number, which had been established up to that time in the United States. The first was begun in 1818; the least unsuccessful lived for ten years; others, four, two, and one, respectively. Considering the conditions, the Common School Advocate had its due length of life.
Chicago had a population of about five hundred when the first newspaper was set up in it, and mail was carried on
56 Mitchell, Illinois in 1837, pp. 60-61.
57 \V. L. Pillsbury, in Report of the Supt. of Public Instruction, 1883-84, p. cxvii. Quoted in Pub. No. 10, Ill. State Hist. Lib. 333.
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ILLINOIS HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS
a horse once a week by way of Niles, Michigan. And it is significant that the first number of this first paper strongly urged "the commencement and completion of the long- contemplated canal to connect the waters of Lake Michigan with the Illinois River." In that year, 1833, when the Democrat added its voice to the internal improvement chorus, a total of twenty-eight voters elected the first trustees of the new town; and seven thousand Indians met thereabouts to sign a treaty ceding to the United States all of the terri- tory in northern Illinois and in Wisconsin. A second paper was established in 1835, when the population of the town was 3,265, including a number of Whigs who were not con- tent to have their interests ignored by the only paper in the place. They consequently saw to it that the Whig American was started, and this paper, on November 26, 1839, began to issue the first daily in the state. Its rival began a daily in the following year. Thus the dailies really began in this period, but discussion of them is placed in the next, in which they became an important feature of journalism.
Although this sketch is confined to affairs less widely known than the brief career of the Alton Observer, ending in the death of Elijah P. Lovejoy, it is perhaps permissible to recite briefly the events connected with that fatal affair, since the Observer was the first abolition paper in Illinois. Hooper Warren contrasts conditions in 1837, when Lovejoy was killed, with those in 1820, when Warren, unmolested, conducted the Spectator, 58 suggesting the inference that the two men were preaching the same doctrine. But such an inference is erroneous. The Edwardsville Spectator was not an abolition paper, but an anti-slavery paper. Since War- ren's paper was only anti-slavery, the Observer was the first
58 In Genius of Liberty, Vol. I, no. I.
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INTRODUCTION
abolition paper in the state, the first of a considerable num- ber, most of which originated between 1842 and 1850.59
The Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy, who had been forced to leave St. Louis because of his abolitionist utterances, arrived at Alton with a press and an intention to establish a newspaper, or to conduct at that point the one that he was not allowed to continue at St. Louis. Many citizens at Alton resented the idea of an abolition paper in that place, and on the night after the arrival of the press, threw it into the Mississippi. At a public meeting held on the next day Mr. Lovejoy assured that people that they had mistaken his motives, that he had intended to establish a religious, not an anti-slavery newspaper; he asserted his personal antagonism to slavery, but denied that he was an aboli- tionist.
These statements were taken as a pledge by those citizens who felt that they had a right to receive in advance a pledge as to what kind of doctrine Lovejoy was to print in his news- paper. "Upon this condition," says Ford,60 "he was per- mitted to set up the Alton Observer without opposition." The editor had no idea of assenting to such a condition, but for some time he conducted the Observer as a religious paper, opposed to slavery, but not abolition in tone. Gradually his own views changed, however, and within a year he was foremost in Illinois abolition councils. A meeting of anti- abolitionists resolved that Lovejoy had broken his pledge and was threatening the peace of the community. A com- mittee impressed those resolutions upon him, to which he answered with a denial of having given a pledge, and con- tended for right to freedom of discussion. To this his
59 See p. lxxv.
60 History of Illinois, 234-235-
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ILLINOIS HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS
critics replied on September 21 by throwing his press and type into the Mississippi. A state anti-slavery meeting was held at Upper Alton on September 27 for the purpose of forming an anti-slavery society, but as the call included all friends of free discussion, the anti-abolitionists made the meeting futile. Another was held on October 28, at which it was voted to order a new press. News of this act brought on another mass meeting at which was discussed not the right to require an editor to promise in advance what he intends to say, but whether or not he had kept such a promise, and what he intended to do in the future. Lovejoy asserted that he would advocate what doctrines he wished; his opponents resolved that he should not advocate abolition.
With matters in that posture the press arrived, and was placed in a warehouse, where it was guarded by Lovejoy and others. In an attack on the warehouse Lovejoy and one of his opponents were killed. The press was thrown into the river, and the paper was not again printed in Alton. "After the violence of feeling had somewhat subsided," remarks Ford,61 "both parties were indicted for their crimes arising out of these transactions, and all were acquit- ted; making it a matter of record that in fact the aboli- tionists had not provoked an assault; that there had been no mob; and that no one had been killed or wounded." This
61 History of Illinois, 245. For contemporary accounts of this affair see Wil- liam S. Lincoln, Alton Trials, New York, 1838; Rev. Edward Beecher, Narrative of Riots at Alton, Alton, 1838; also Henry Tanner, Martyrdom of Lovejoy, Chicago, 1881. Harris, Negro Servitude in Illinois, 68-98, reviews the event and its results, giving on p. 96 n. an incomplete list of papers which deplored the riot, and saying: "In Illinois the effect of the rioting at Alton upon the anti-slavery cause was not at once apparent. There was a small public meeting in Chicago, which condemned the assault on the warehouse as a blow at the freedom of the press. This and the censure of a few papers like the Peoria Register were the only protests against the outrage. In fact, few people in the state cared to raise their voices in condemnation of the deed - such was the disrepute in which the abolitionists were then held." For its effect at the center of abolitionist agitation see William Lloyd Garrison, The Story of His Life, Vol. 2, pp. 182-192.
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INTRODUCTION
verdict was reached in spite of the fact that the evidence showed that each accused individual had been present when Lovejoy was killed, and that most of them had had weapons of some sort in their hands.82
The Observer was not the only paper suppressed in the course of the slavery struggle in Illinois, as will appear in another section; but Lovejoy was the only editor killed in such affairs, and his death, more than his or other anti- slavery paper, gave coherence and impetus to the aboli- tion movement.
The period ending in 1840, with a total of fifty-three papers, showed little development in the character of the newspapers of the ordinary type. They were still strongly political and partizan; there had been no noticeable im- provement in tone; no great editors had appeared, although such men as John York Sawyer, John Bailhache, J. M. Peck, John Russell, and S. S. Brooks, besides Hooper War- ren and others who had figured in the previous period, raised a part of the press of Illinois well above the level of medioc- rity. In the beginnings of religious, literary, and some other special forms, indications of progress were to be seen, but the chief growth had been numerical and geographical. Although many immigrants had come, and many thousands of idle acres had been tilled, pioneer conditions still pre- vailed, and nothing could have been more uncouth and violent than the newspapers in the campaign of 1840, with which this period closed.
FROM 184I TO 1860
Three important movements affected the character and growth of newspapers in the period from 1840 to 1860. 62 Harris, Negro Servitude in Illinois, 95.
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ILLINOIS HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS
These were the introduction of the telegraph, the coming of the railroad, and the political shifts and realignments that led to the forming of the Republican party organization in Illinois in 1856, and eventually to the nomination of Lincoln. The first two combined to bring about a revolution in economic conditions in the newspaper industry; the third brought to a close an epoch of political chaos among the papers, and established a pretty definite basis of classifica- tion. There were fifty-two papers in the state in 1840. In the score of years following, a total of seven hundred and thirty-one others, at least, were begun. In 1860 two hundred and eighty-six remained, showing a net increase of two hun- dred thirty-four, in spite of the great mortality.
The most striking effect of the introduction of the tele- graph and the railroad was that which it had in promoting the establishment and growth of daily papers. It is a truism well known to newspaper publishers that as soon as the population of a town becomes large enough to support one daily journal, two are started. The relation of popula- tion to the beginnings of Illinois dailies is of course not to be overlooked; the other less obvious, but more suggestive and almost equally important relation warrants consideration.
The telegraph preceded the railroad in Illinois, despite the internal improvement act of 1837, under which the state undertook to build about one thousand three hundred and forty miles of railroad. As a result of this act a road was built eastward from Meredosia, and the first locomotive in the state was put in use November 8, 1838. The line reached Springfield in 1842; but the engines deteriorated and were abandoned; mules were substituted; and the whole prop- erty was sold in 1847.63 The real introduction of railroads
63 W. K. Ackerman, Early Illinois Railroads, Fergus Hist. Ser. No. 23.
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