USA > Illinois > Newspapers and periodicals of Illinois, 1814-1879 > Part 6
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INTRODUCTION
Forcible discontinuance or interruption was the lot of at least eight papers as a direct result of radical expressions of opinion. Papers at Bloomington, Chester, Chicago, Jonesboro, Maroa, Mason, Mendota, and Olney were attacked by mobs or authorities, and in some cases the plants were destroyed. The attempt of General Burnside to sup- press the Chicago Times is the most important instance in Illinois of official action against newspapers in the exciting days of civil conflict.
After the proclamation of emancipation had been issued the Times was so bitter in its denunciation of the adminis- tration that the paper soon earned the designation of "cop- perhead sheet," and aroused an intense hostility against it and its owner. General Ambrose E. Burnside, in command of the Department of the Northwest, with headquarters at Cincinnati, issued an order for the suppression of the Times, and the commander at Camp Douglas was charged with the execution of the order. On the morning of June 3, 1863, soldiers marched into the press-room and took possession of the establishment. About eight thousand papers had been printed, a part of which were destroyed, but the larger part of which were issued. No edition was permitted on June 4. A great mass meeting was held in the Court- house Square on the evening of June 3, in advocacy of free speech and a free press. A meeting was also held during the day in the circuit court room, at which a petition to the President to revoke the order was signed by all present, in- cluding many prominent Republicans and business men; and Senator Lyman Trumbull and Isaac N. Arnold tele- graphed personally to Mr. Lincoln to the same effect. The order was revoked June 4, and publication was resumed on June 5. The policy of the Times was not changed;
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its circulation, as General Grant had foreseen, was aug- mented by official interference.80
The first downstate paper to encounter opposition by force was the Mendota Times, established in 1859 by a Mr. Fisk as a Democratic and pro-slavery sheet. Early in 1861 Fisk was declared to be a copperhead and was forced by a recruiting company to make a speech for the Union and to haul up a Union flag. Threatened with worse treatment, he
80 Andreas, History of Chicago, Vol. 2, p. 495; Rhodes, IV, 253-254.
The action of General Burnside, although at once revoked by President Lin- coln, was by no means precipitate; and it was in accord, in spirit at least, with the feeling of many other officials, both civil and military. As early as June 25, 1862, Governor Morton of Indiana wrote to Secretary of War Stanton of an organization of disaffected citizens in Indiana who he believed were likely to cause trouble by carrying out their purpose to circulate and encourage "newspapers of extremely doubtful loyalty," including the Chicago Times. On August 7, 1862, Governor Yates wrote to Secretary Stanton: "There is an urgent and almost unanimous demand from the loyal citizens that the Chicago Times should be immediately suppressed for giving aid and comfort to the enemy. I solicit an immediate answer. Do not delay, for I fear the people will take into their hands the power which should only be used under the authority of your department."
Major Generals C. S. Hamilton and Stephen A. Hurlbut on February 8, 1863, issued orders prohibiting the circulation of the Chicago Times in their commands. General Grant, writing to Hurlbut February 13, 1863, concerning this order, ex- pressed what was probably the general feeling of Union army officers on the subject: "I have seen your General Orders, No. 4, February 8, prohibiting the circulation of the Chicago Times within your command. There is no doubt but that paper, with several others published in the North, should have been suppressed long since by authority from Washington. As this has not been done, I doubt the propriety of suppressing its circulation in any one command. The paper would still find its way into the hands of the enemy, through other channels, and do all the mischief it is now doing.
"This course is also calculated to give the paper a notoriety evidently sought, and which probably would increase the sale of it. I would direct, therefore, that General Orders, No. 1, be revoked."
The order of Major General Burnside (General Orders No. 84) was issued on June 1, 1863, to prohibit the circulation of the New York World in the Department of the Ohio, and to stop the publication of the Times. That part relating to the Chicago paper was worded:
"On account of the repeated expression of disloyal and incendiary sentiments, the publication of the newspaper known as the Chicago Times is hereby suppressed." Brigadier General Jacob Ammen, commanding the District of Illinois was charged with executing that order.
On June 4 Secretary Stanton issued General Order No. 91, directed to General Burnside: "By direction of the President of the United States, the order suppress- ing the publication of the Chicago Times is hereby revoked." This order of revocation was issued in response very largely to the resolutions sent on June 3, from Chicago, signed by fourteen prominent citizens, including Mayor F. C. Sherman,
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soon abandoned his paper and disappeared.81 The next paper to suffer was the Bloomington Times, which under the care of J. and B. F. Snow showed such marked Southern proclivities and uttered so many expressions of sympathy for the Southern states that a McLean County regiment (94th Illinois Volunteers), abetted by prominent citizens, destroyed the office, type, and press and incidentally the paper. This occurred in August, 1862.82 A temporary suppression without violence or material damage was en- forced against the Jonesboro Gazette in the spring of 1863. Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph H. Newbold was sent to Jones- boro with a part of the 14th Iowa Volunteer Infantry to
and endorsed: "We respectfully ask for the above [resolutions] the serious and prompt consideration of the President. Lyman Trumbull, Isaac M. Arnold."
President Lincoln's attitude is explained and other points are suggested by a letter from the President to Arnold, dated May 25, 1865:
"In regard to the order of General Burnside suspending the Chicago Times, now nearly a year ago, I can only say I was embarrassed with the question between what was due to the military service on the one hand, and the liberty of the press on the other, and I believe it was the despatch of Senator Trumbull and yourself, added to the proceedings of the meeting which it brought me, that turned the scale in favor of my revoking the order.
"I am far from certain to-day that the revocation was not right; and I am very sure that the small part you took in it is no just ground to disparage your judgment, much less to impugn your motives. I take it that your devotion to the Union and the administration cannot be questioned by any sincere man." Nicolay and Hay, Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, X, 108.
Whether this letter indicates such feeling or not, there was much feeling that a mistake had been made in allowing the Times to continue publication. This view was forcibly expressed by the Chicago Tribune and many other papers. Reviewing, in his final report, his work as Acting Assistant Provost Marshal General in Illinois, James Oakes wrote, August 9, 1865:
"But the grand cause - the only really guilty and formidable source of the dangers through which Illinois has passed - is to be found in the steady streams of political poison and arrant treason which have been permitted to flow from the wicked, reckless, and debauched newspaper press of the state. " Chief among these instigators of insurrection and treason, the foul and damnable reservoir which supplied the lesser sewers with political filth, falsehood, and treason, has been the Chicago Times."
For official communications here cited, see Official Records, War of the Rebellion, Ser. I, Vol. 23, pp. 381, 385, 386; Vol. 24, pp. 41, 50; Ser. III, Vol. 3, p. 252; Vol. 5, pp. 837, 838.
81 History of LaSalle County, Illinois (2 vols., Chi., 1886), I, 375.
82 History of McLean County, Illinois (Chicago, 1879), p. 298.
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gather up and return to the service a number of deserters from the 109th Illinois who had returned to their homes. His work was seriously impeded by the radical utterances of the Gazette, which, like a majority of its constituents, was bitterly against the war. Consequently he closed the office during the six weeks of his stay. Colonel Newbold so conducted himself, however, as to make many warm friends, and helped materially to change local sentiment toward the Government. As a resident of Jonesboro, still living, has written, "the episode turned out very well."
The Loyalist, an extreme advocate of abolitionism, was established by George Brewster at Mason, Effingham County, in April, 1863. His radical utterances caused bitter feeling, and in nine months resulted in his being forced to leave. He was allowed to remove his establishment. The Picket Guard of Chester suffered more severely on the other side. John R. Shannon, the editor, found fault vituper- atively with the measures adopted to suppress the rebellion. He became so extremely abusive that a body of soldiers broke into the office in July, 1864, and threw the type into the streets. The press was not seriously injured, and the office was refitted.83 At Olney the Democratic press was broken up by a mob of soldiers and its publication was dis- continued. A similar explosion of wrath at Maroa hung fire until 1867. There one T. J. Sharp began a Democratic Times, in January. His published expressions of discontent with the results of the war brought him into collision with various citizens, by whom he was badly beaten on November 27 and ordered to leave town. He did so, leaving also his printing equipment.84 Other papers than these mentioned 83 History of Randolph, Monroe, and Perry Counties, Illinois (1883), p. 197.
84 Counties of Cumberland, Jasper, and Richland, Illinois, Historical and Biographical (1884), p. 658.
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escaped similar treatment by temporary suspensions or by change of editors or policies.
Several instances of threatened violence to editors or their establishments which occurred previous to this time are mentioned here for want of a better place. The earliest, probably, was that in Vandalia in February, 1823, which has already been discussed.85 The Illinois Republican at Springfield, an energetic Democratic paper to which Stephen A. Douglas as a young man was a contributor, was, in 1837, twice attacked by a mob, of which the sheriff of the county was a member. The mob was prevented from doing destruc- tion only by the vigorous defense offered by the Webers, owners of the property. 86 In June, 1841, Ogle County "regulators" shot to death John and William Driscoll, two notorious horsethieves and outlaws. Philander Knappen, editor of the Rockford Star, denounced the execution edi- torially and printed a communication of similar import. Soon afterward three citizens, with the approval of public opinion, made pi of all type in the office. Knappen aban- doned journalism in Rockford.
The destruction of the office equipment of the Nauvoo Expositor, though the result of a factional disturbance among the Mormons, and not connected with any general
85 See p. xlvii, note.
86 A bit of the reminiscences of an old settler, published in 1871 and quoted in History of Sangamon County, Illinois (1881), pp. 225-224:
In 1837 Dr. Henry was one of the commissioners superintending the construc- tion of the new State House in Springfield and a frequent contributor to the Sangamo Journal. Stephen A. Douglas was at the same time writing for the Illinois Repub- lican and in several anonymous articles he attacked Dr. Henry and his official work. A committee of friends of Henry called upon the editor of the Journal to demand the name of the author, but the editor dispersed them with a vigorous use of his fists. Douglas, who witnessed the affair, wrote a highly colored account which the paper published. As a result the office was attacked by a mob, led by the sheriff, on two successive days, June 27 and 28, 1837, but the proprietors, with Douglas and other friends, beat them off. The sheriff was stabbed in the fray on the second day, fainted, and was carried home. That ended the riots. "These things gave notoriety to the paper."
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stress of public opinion, was a part of the lawlessness that resulted in the death of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. In 1844 the despotism of Joseph Smith, leader of the Mormons in Hancock County, with Nauvoo as their holy city, became unbearable to a considerable number of his followers, who revolted. In order to publish the causes of their revolt and to disclose the iniquities of Smith and his Danite band and other new ecclesiastical inventions, these men established a newspaper, the Nauvoo Expositor. The first and only issue appeared Friday, June 7, 1844. It was published by Wil- liam Law, Wilson Law, Charles Ivins, Francis M. Higbee, Chauncey L. Higbee, Robert D. Foster, and Charles A. Foster, with Sylvester Emmons as editor, and contains the preamble, resolutions, and affidavits of the seceders from the church at Nauvoo. On June 10 the city council declared the Expositor a nuisance and directed the mayor to have the establishment removed, which he did.87 For this destructive act Joseph Smith and sixteen others were, after a week's delay, arrested on a charge of riot. "After a long and close examination they were all discharged." 88 In the meantime the dissenting publishers of the Expositor, apparently not awaiting the pretty farce by which Smith's mayor and magistrate gave a resemblance of legal consider-
87 The order of removal was worded thus:
You are hereby commanded to destroy the printing press from whence issues the Nauvoo Expositor and pi the type of said printing establishment in the street, and burn all the Expositors and libelous handbills found in said establishment, and if resistance be offered to your execution of this order, by the owners or others, demolish the house, and if any one threatens you, or the mayor, or the officers of the city, arrest those who threaten you, and fail not to execute this order without delay, and make due return hereon.
By order of the City Council, Joseph Smith, Mayor.
In a proclamation printed in the same issue of the Neighbor, Smith deemed the paper filthy and pestilential, and its publishers a set of unprincipled scoundrels, blacklegs, counterfeiters, debauchees, and villainous demagogues.
88 Nauvoo Neighbor, June 19, 1844.
INTRODUCTION
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ation and approval to the acts destroying the paper, had taken themselves safely away. Smith's paper records their flight by noting that the persons concerned in the Expositor have all left Nauvoo, and that the guilty fleeth when no man pursueth.89
The war played an important part not only in the changes that came in the character, number, and circulation of papers; it was more or less directly the cause of three im- portant items in the development of the machinery of news- gathering and newspaper making. These were the inven- tions of the patent inside, the organization of the business that became the Western News Company, and the formation of the Western Associated Press.
In July, 1861, A. N. Kellogg, publisher of the Baraboo, Wisconsin, Republic, finding that in consequence of the enlistment of his patriotic journeymen he would be unable to issue a full sheet on the regular day, ordered of the Daily Journal office at Madison a number of half-sheet supple- ments printed on both sides with war news to fold with his own half-sheets. While mailing his edition it occurred to him that if the awkward fact of his paper's being in two pieces could be obviated an excellent paper could be regularly issued with a decided saving of labor and expense. As a consequence, he issued, on July 12, 1861, the first sheet with "patent inside." The idea was at once taken up by the Madison Journal, then by the Milwaukee Wisconsin, and in August, 1865, by Mr. Kellogg himself in Chicago. G. F. Kimball of the Belleville Advocate began to print insides in 1866.90 By 1880 twenty-one establish- ments were supplying 3,238 papers, most of them in the
89 Nauvoo Neighbor, June 19, 1844.
90 Geo. P. Rowell, The Men Who Advertise, (N. Y., 1870), pp. 206-207.
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western states. Although the idea originated in Wisconsin and has been developed in all parts of the country, Kellogg and Chicago have remained the center of the industry, which has grown to enormous size.
As Chicago was the center of the patent inside industry, it was natural that Illinois newspapers should make more general use of the idea than those of other states. The effect was not marked in the first few years, but by the later seventies nearly one-half of the smaller country weeklies were "co-operative," to use the word by which such papers were designated in the newspaper directories. Many of them, no doubt, would not have been established had not this invention greatly reduced the cost of production.
The Western News Company grew out of the system or- ganized by a young and energetic Chicago newsdealer, John R. Walsh, to build up a business on the increased demand for prompt delivery of newspapers and periodicals due to the war excitement. The system that now distributes nearly all of the copies of the larger papers in the country was begun by James Gordon Bennett, with the New York Herald, in 1835. Out of his idea grew the American News Company and rivals, most of which were absorbed. Until 1861 the business of distributing not only New York, but Chicago papers was carried on by that company with headquarters in New York City. In that year, however, Walsh opened a news depot in Chicago to capture the business of the middle west, and commenced to supply the outlying towns of Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa. Newsdealers in those states soon found that they could get their news- papers from Walsh twelve hours earlier than from the American News Company, and twenty-four hours earlier than by mail.91 Walsh soon had all of the business, and kept
91 Andreas, History of Chicago, II, 500-501.
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INTRODUCTION
it throughout the war. By this time he was distributing fully one-half of the total issue of the Tribune and the Times. 92 This competition led to negotiations which resulted, in 1866, in the absorption of his business by the older company, of which it became the first branch, with Walsh as manager.
The war had brought prosperity to the Chicago papers, and had shown very clearly the need, in that news center, of a press association which would do for the Chicago and other middle western papers what the American News Association was doing for those of New York. On the initiative largely of Joseph Medill, of the Chicago Tribune, a meeting was held at Louisville, Kentucky, on November 22 and 23, 1865, at which the Western Associated Press was formed. Horace White, managing editor of the Tribune, was made a member of the executive committee.
The forming of this association not only meant co-op- erative use of telegraph news among the papers that held membership, but, also through co-operation with the New York Association, it greatly broadened, at a minimum cost, the news resources of both the western and the eastern papers. Without such associations the telegraph would never have been able to keep pace with the demands of the press, and the telegraphic news service of anything like the scope attained even by 1870 would have been possible only for the largest and wealthiest papers. The effect of this organization and its successor, the Associated Press, upon the number of papers fully equipped with news service, particularly the daily papers, of course, is not to be over- looked. One direct result was to make a close corporation of the newspapers already existing in any particular place, and to render it almost impossible to start a new newspaper
92 Hudson, History of Journalism, 204.
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that could compete with them, inasmuch as the newspaper could not get the Associated Press dispatches without their consent.93
Immediately following the close of the war there was a serious decline in newspaper prosperity. The number of papers started year by year at this time increases, but the figures do not signify healthy growth. The Chicago papers declined in circulation to a point not much beyond that of 1861, and never fully regained their circulation until after the fire. The papers of the larger towns, owing to improved telegraphic service, the rapid growth of the towns, and other causes, did not suffer severely. The country press, on the whole, however, began then a decline in quality that has continued to a large extent to the present time. That decline is not quantitative; it does not include many of the daily papers, nor by any means all of the country weeklies in the state. But the increasing encroachment of the dailies of Chicago and the other larger cities of the state have taken away much of the prosperity and the influence of a large proportion of the country press, the quality of which has consequently declined.
In spite of the various causes that operated against the newspapers between 1860 and 1870, however, there was a remarkable increase in their number. The census returns for 1860 show a total, of all classes, of 286, of which twenty- three were dailies, six tri-weeklies, two semi-weeklies, 238 weeklies, and seventeen monthlies.94 By 1870 these figures had grown to thirty-nine dailies, ten tri-weeklies, four semi- weeklies, 364 weeklies, eleven semi-monthlies, seventy-two monthlies, and three quarterlies- a total of 505, a remarkable
93 Andreas, History of Chicago, III, 706.
94 Kenney, in his American Newspaper Directory and Record of the Press, records 453 papers in Illinois in 1861, but his list is grossly inaccurate.
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INTRODUCTION
increase over the 286 in 1860. Perhaps the most noticeable features of this comparison are the slight increase in dailies and the great increase in monthlies. The actual numerical increase in dailies between 1850 and 1860 was less by only one paper than that between 1860 and 1870. The addi- tional monthly publications, largely in Chicago, were one of the indications of the growing importance of that city as a publishing center.
FROM 1871 TO 1879
The very bulk of the issue of the newspaper and periodical press in the last decade to be considered makes impossible here a treatment much more than merely statistical. This was a time of great numerical increase; it comprehends the great Chicago fire of October, 1871; the dismal year of 1876, perhaps the worst ir the whole history of Illinois newspapers; the rise of the a ... hat, great importance; and the growth of the Chicago press into truly "metropolitan" proportions.
The whole list for 1870 was 505.95 The following decade more than doubled that, showing in 1880 a total of 1,017, divided into seventy-four dailies, six tri-weeklies, seventeen semi-weeklies, 758 weeklies, eighteen semi-monthlies, 118 monthlies, and twenty-two quarterlies. The number of papers in the state each year of this decade is shown by Rowell's newspaper directory to have been as follows :96 1870, 422; 1871, 499; 1872, 518; 1873, 544; 1874, 588; 1875, 642; 1876, 707; 1877, 709; 1878, 716; 1879, 732; 1880, 832. It will be noticed that 1877 had but two more
95 The totals include a few semi-annual and annual publications of which no note is taken in the analysis.
96 In comparing these figures with those of the census reports bear in mind that Rowell's figures are made up at least six months earlier than the census figures. Rowell's number for 1871, for instance, is really for -‹
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papers than 1876. In the United States as a whole there were one hundred and seventy-one fewer newspapers at the beginning of 1877 than there were one year earlier. "It is apparent," wrote Rowell's editor in 1877, "that the last twelve months have, in a financial sense, been unusually unsatisfactory to newspaper publishers. Partly by reason of the excitements and hopes incidental to a national election of an unaccustomed order, a sufficient number of news- papers have come into being to have maintained the total number reported in 1876, had there not been, in addition to the eventual suspension of many of the newspapers, also an unusual mortality among those already established. Journalistic prosperity, however, is not to be judged by the number of papers that are established within a given period, but by the number that maintain their existence; and the centennial year has undeniably been one of extended pecu- niary oppression among the men thhn. publish papers." This "pecuniary oppression" seems to have dwelt most heavily on the dailies, which were reduced in number from fifty in 1876 to forty-seven in 1877.
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