USA > Illinois > The era of the Civil War, 1848-1870 > Part 43
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The rise of sport bore unique testimony to the departure of the frontier-to the need of formal exercise to take the place of the more strenuous physical demands imposed upon the pioneer. Military companies continued to attract the inter- est of youths who appreciated the magnetism of gay colored uniforms for the damsels; yet a declining interest was reflected in the growing demand for more active sport that organized athletics alone could satisfy. First came a transition period during the fifties, when the more exciting forms of sport were represented by a chess match played between the chess clubs of Chicago and Quincy by telegraph, pigeon-shooting matches, coincident with the formation of an Audubon club for the preservation of game, cricket games between teams from Chi- cago and Milwaukee, and the beginnings of pleasure boating and boat racing in Chicago. Chess was able to hold its own as a form of indoor amusement, but none of these out-of-
27 Chicago Tribune, April 24, 1866.
28 Cairo Democrat, October 1, 1863.
29 Ottawa Republican, January 31, 1867.
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door sports seized a firm democratic hold upon the sturdy westerner.
Although the rapidly growing population of Chicago encouraged experiments with gymnasiums on a commercial basis, yet even they had little real success; and when there was agitation in Alton for a gymnasium and for formal phys- ical culture, the city fathers calmly shook their heads and pointed to the woodpiles in the back yards. Yet in. 1859 Chi- cago youths, cadets in a local military company, were able to realize their ambition for a gymnasium which also served as a drill hall.30 So also the Young Men's Literary Association of Ottawa in 1865 undertook a campaign for a "gymnasium and reading room;" Rockford moved in the same direction two years later; and the young men of Cairo established a gymnasium in 1869.
Meanwhile other forms of diversion were gaining ground; in 1869 the "cue-rious fact" was related that Chicago spent two millions of dollars a year on billiards.31 The first billiard tournament in Chicago, which was the second in the United States, was held in April, 1863; five years later the city was chosen for a contest to decide the national billiard champion- ship. The horse-racing instincts of the frontier were gradually supplanted by a craze for the great American game of base- ball. The game had attracted informal attention ever since the formation of the National Baseball Player's Association in 1858; Chicago had a baseball club as early as 1856, but for some time the game had little real popularity. Ten years later the situation. had changed: in 1865 a convention of baseball clubs with representatives from four states and eleven cities organized at Chicago the National Association of Baseball Players of the Northwest; in 1866 formal clubs were organized in Jacksonville, Cairo, and Rockford; the following year the Independent Baseball Club of Cairo issued a call for a baseball convention at Chicago on July 26, during the visit of the national club of Washington; the object was to secure recog- nition as members of the national association and to provide
30 Chicago Press and Tribune, August 10, 1859; Alton Weekly Courier, July 6, 1854.
31 Jonesboro Gazette, January 23, 1869.
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for a state championship tournament. Then followed the first great baseball tournament in Chicago, in which fifty-four clubs were represented. It was not long before the game became "all the rage; " on October 23, 1866, the Egyptians trounced Magenta at Cairo by a score of 59 to 6, and soon all kinds of nines were organized-the printers played the clerks, the fats played the leans, the old challenged the young, the mar- ried the single, even rival boarding clubs pitted their strength against each other.32
Literary activities in Illinois were to a large extent con- fined to the journalistic field. Although the market for books increased rapidly after 1850, none but the humblest publishing ventures were undertaken in Illinois; one of these was Uncle Tom's Cabin as it is, by W. L. G. Smith, a reply to the popular classic by Harriet Beecher Stowe. No greater interest was shown in western periodicals; a few literary and "common novel publishing" journals had a slight circulation, but these were almost universally eastern publications.33 All early attempts to develop western literary periodicals came to an untimely end. Such a case was that of the Literary Budget, 1852-1855, the monthly and later weekly bulletin of W. W. Danenhower, the Chicago bookseller, which soon developed into a literary journal of considerable merit. It announced editorially: "A new field is open to authorship.
The West is full of subject-matter for legend, story or history. All that is lacking is the proper channel. This channel we offer. The Budget claims to be a western literary paper, and we invite writers to send us articles on western subjects, for publication." 34 Another interesting experiment was made by the Chicago Magazine, the West as it is, in 1857, a monthly edited by Zebina Eastman for the Mechanics' Insti- tute of Chicago; beautifully and profusely illustrated and devoted to literature, biography, and historical reminiscences, it was considered a magazine of the "highest tone." There
32 Cairo Democrat, October 24, 1866, July 12, 1867; Rockford Gazette, July 30, 1868; Rockford Register, April 27, 1867; Andreas, History of Chicago, 2 : 613-614 In an important game at Chicago in 1867 the victors made thirty- two runs in the last inning.
33 Canton Weekly Register, April 20, 1854; Illinois State Register, July 8, August 26, 1852.
34 Fleming, "The Literary Interests of Chicago," American Journal of Sociology, volumes 11 and 12.
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was also the Chicago Literary Messenger, which had a short life in 1865 and after, the Chicagoan, 1868-1869, and the Illustrated Chicago News, 1868. Certain ventures having a degree of literary success were those incidental to other aims; besides Danenhower's Literary Budget there was Sloan's Garden City, 1853-1854, a paper edited by Walter Sloan, a vender of patent medicine, and later by his son; it became a pro-western literary organ of genuine merit. Stories and literary contributions by John Russell of Bluffdale and others appeared in the Baptist Monthly of Chicago, and serials and other "light literature" were included in the columns of the Chicago Merchants' Weekly Circular and Illustrated News.
The regular newspapers conveyed to their readers not only the event and comment of the day but also the vast bulk of products of the poetry, essay, and fiction writers; for nearly all courted support as purveyors of pure literature as well as politics. In general, it must be said that the scissors and paste- brush were wielded much more vigorously than the pen; yet, in the hot, dull midsummers, any editor, like George T. Brown of the Alton Courier, might be aroused to inject new literary attractions into his paper. In 1853 he held a prize contest for tales of western adventure, as a result of which Dr. E. R. Roe of Jacksonville was awarded the first prize of $100 for his story of the "Virginia Rose." Later in the year the Courier published The Mormoness, or the Trials of Mary Maverick, a Narrative of Real Events, which John Russell had written especially for that paper. 35
Radical reform journals, like the Western Citizen, the Illinois Organ, and the Gem of the Prairie, were especially zealous in stimulating literary and educational progress. Edited by aggressive representatives of New England Yankee- ism, they sensed more keenly than many of their contempo- raries the importance of developing a truly western literature. "The West must have a literature peculiarly its own," declared the editor of the Gem. "It is here that the great problem of
35 Alton Courier, July 15, 30, August 27, 1853; the following year the Courier published serially Russell's Flora Jarvis: or the Young Wife's Plea for the Maine Law. E. C. Banks to French, January 10, 1850, French manu- scripts. An aggressive reader often took a dozen newspapers besides one or two ladies' or special magazines.
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human destiny will be worked out on a grander scale than was ever before attempted or conceived of." 36
Before 1848 central and southern Illinois were to a large extent dominated by the press of St. Louis; even the Spring- field papers complained that they did not receive a patronage in the capital as large as did the "foreign" organs. After that date, however, self-sufficiency began to develop in this as in other fields. By 1854 the state could boast of over 150 papers, including twenty dailies and 118 weeklies. Chicago, the literary purveyor for northern Illinois, then had seven dailies and fifteen weeklies and all the six monthlies, bi- monthlies and semimonthlies published in the state. The southern counties suffered from a corresponding dearth; poli- tics was lopsidedly democratic there and little interest was taken in things literary by the general public of a region high in illiteracy. In 1849 the Southern Illinois Advocate, published at Shawneetown, standing on the edge of Egypt for "universal liberty abroad, and an ocean bound republic at home," was alleged to be the only newspaper in some ten counties of that region.37 With its premature death a few months later it yielded the palm to the Jonesboro Gazette, which has had a continuous existence to date and which for long was the most influential democratic paper in southern Illinois. Numerous attempts were made at Cairo and other points to establish other journals, but only a few were able to meet with success.
The quality of the leading Illinois press became such that it was complimented as surpassed by very few papers in the land; the modern newspaper was gradually developing during this period. With the westward extension of telegraph lines in 1848, daily issues, previously confined to Chicago, appeared in the other towns of the state. In 1848 the Illinois State Journal became a daily, and in the next year the State Register followed its rival. On account of heavy telegraphic charges the Quincy Whig and Peoria Register, after brief experiments in 1848, were compelled to suspend their daily issues. In 1850 there were eight dailies in the state; four years later the number had increased to twenty. There was considerable
36 Gem of the Prairie, February 26, 1848.
87 Illinois State Journal, May 18, 1849; Scott, Newspapers of Illinois, 315.
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complaint of the news telegraphed from the east to western papers, that important matters were ignored and items for- warded such as: "a fire in New York destroyed a thousand dollars worth of property," or "Barnum's lilliputian elephant has eaten three apples and a pint of peanuts." 38
In 1848 editors were still glad to receive payment for subscriptions "in Wood, Winter Apples, Potatoes, Cabbages, Turnips, Flour, Corn, &c." 39 For a time, too, the pioneer atmosphere was still reflected in the fisticuffs between rival editors. At uneventful seasons the editor was likely to write an editorial urging the planting of shade trees, at the same time apologizing " for the digression " on the ground that he was "troubled wherewithal to fill this sheet." 40 In the same period, however, the editor of the Warsaw Signal, ahead of the times, was planning a collection of newspapers and urging his fellow editors to send him three copies of their journals to be bound, one for his own use, one for the proposed Illinois Historical Society, and one for the Smithsonian Institution at Washington.
Other characteristics of the modern newspaper made their appearance. Detailed publication of the proceedings in crim- inal trials whetted the appetite of the public for sensational news. In the spring of 1850 editors and readers alike reveled in the mysterious and sentimentalities of the trial of Professor John W. Webster, a Harvard chemistry instructor who was convicted of and later confessed to having murdered and dis- posed of his most intimate friend, Dr. Parkman. Yet it was considered good editorial form to conceal such taste in announcements such as : "A fondness for the details of revolt- ing crimes is characteristic of a brutal mind, and the experience of the past few years proves that the publication of trials, so far from checking crime has, paradoxical as it may seem, actually increased it. We pander to no such appetite for honor; though we are aware that this sin of omission on our part is regarded by many as altogether unpardonable. We
38 Illinois State Register, August 25, 1848, July 31, 1851 ; Vermont Chronicle clipped in Alton Courier, April 9, 1855; Seventh Census, 736; Scott, Newspapers of Illinois, Ixx-Ixxi; Illinois State Journal, September 8, 1848.
39 Ibid., November 15, 1848.
40 Ibid., April 10, September 10, 1849.
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give the following details solely because the telegraph fur- nished us, from day to day, during the progress of the pro- tracted trial, with the particulars of the evidence as it trans- pired, and we do not like to leave the story half told." 41
To such newspaper copy little influence leading to the increase of crimes can be traced, although it did call attention to developments that had seldom come to notice in pioneer days. Some editors held that there was no actual increase of crime and frankly declared that their methods had come to involve the dragging of all sensational news into the open. There is serious question as to whether there was actual fabri- cation of sensational news items; yet in dull seasons there was a suspicious tendency for news items to appear noting that an anonymous German had met his death by falling into the canal or river, had gone suddenly insane, committed suicide, or been convicted at some distant point of wife- beating.
Modern reportorial work had its beginnings in this period when the editor discovered that it had become his function to chronicle the local news of the region in which his paper cir- culated. This became a very laborious part of his work: "he must be a kind of Paul Pry," he noticed, "but he cannot be everywhere at once." Accordingly, he invited subscribers to assist him in becoming posted on all local developments and submit news items "when a new school-house, church or mill is built, a new store or shop opened, or bridge constructed, or a new road made, or when a political, literary, or religious society is formed, or meeting held, or when there is a ball, picnic, school examination, or any festive gathering." 42 When, however, the volunteer failed to respond with enthusiasm and efficiency, the professional reporter was sent out into the high- ways and byways to garner items.
Most of the papers were political organs, aggressively preaching to their readers the importance of an unwavering allegiance to their party leaders. The actual demand for such organs was artificially stimulated and greatly overestimated;
41 Illinois State Register, April 4, 1850; Joliet Signal, April 16, 1850. On June 13, 1867, the Jacksonville Journal without hesitation pronounced sensa- tionalism " the shame of the newspaper press."
42 Belleville Advocate, June 19, 1863.
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in the period after 1854 about thirty-five or forty new ven- tures were launched each year, a large percentage of which came to grief. Campaign papers, too, sprang up like mush- rooms in every important canvass and supplemented the work of the regulars.
Whig editors labored under the direction of Simeon Fran- cis, the veteran pioneer editor who since 1831 had directed the destinies of the Illinois State Journal. Francis retired with a handsome competency in 1853, having for a long time been dean of the editorial profession. Until his removal to Oregon in 1859, he gave his services to the State Agricultural Society, which he had been instrumental in organizing and which he served as recording secretary. Francis and his brother Allen, the junior editor, sold out to John Bailhache and Edward L. Baker, who had joined their fortunes in the editorial manage- ment of the Alton Telegraph, another leading whig paper. Judge Bailhache, a personal friend of Henry Clay, was nine years the senior of Francis and had begun his editorial career in Ohio in 1810; in 1836 he had come to Alton and taken charge of the Telegraph. His son, William Henry Bailhache, succeeded his father upon the death of the latter in 1857. Baker, a young man of twenty-six when he took up active edi- torial direction of the Journal, was identified with its editorial policy for nearly twenty years. Paul Selby, one of the organ- izers of the republican party while editor of the Morgan Journal, became associate editor in 1862 and was henceforth in various ways identified with the Journal. Other noteworthy downstate whig papers were the Morgan Journal, the Quincy Whig, and the Aurora Beacon.
In Chicago whiggery was upheld by Charles L. Wilson of the Daily Journal, by the Tribune company after 1852, and by the Commercial Advertiser. "Father" Alfred Dutch of the Advertiser was an iconoclastic spirit with much in common with John Wentworth, his democratic prototype. Some demo- crats were shrewd enough to support Dutch in his financial crises on the ground that he never attacked the principles of the democratic party nor the record of the party: "he picks out certain prominent men of the party for personal abuse and there his political warfare begins and ends," explained
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Wentworth.43 Dutch did not welcome the competition of the Tribune when it abandoned its nonpartisan position for whig- gery; he charged its publishers with selfish motives and one of them with having said "that he didn't care a d-n about either whigs or democrats-but that a whig paper was the only one that could get a paying advertising business." 44 It is significant that all the prominent Illinois whig journals cast their fortunes with the republican party when it was formally organized in Illinois in 1856, and their editors did yeoman service for the cause.
The democrats looked to Springfield for journalistic as well as political leadership. Indeed, the patronage of the state printing was an important factor in the success of the Illinois State Register. It was controlled editorially by Charles H. Lanphier and George Walker until the death of the latter in 1858 and Lamphier's withdrawal in 1863. Lanphier was a journalist of no mean ability and directed the editorial policy in confidential relationship with Douglas. John Wentworth claimed that the Register controlled a number of sporadic dem- ocratic sheets in central and southern Illinois by hiring a travel- ing journeyman printer as local editor and sending him Register editorials to digest and quote back as public opinion in those sections.45 The Alton Courier, founded in 1852 by George T. Brown, after the city had been without a democratic paper for over ten years, was an aggressive journal that soon claimed the largest circulation of any downstate paper. Other influen- tial democratic papers were the Ottawa Free Trader, pub- lished by William and Moses Osman, the Joliet Signal, the Charleston Globe, edited by the second oldest democratic editor in Illinois, W. D. Latshaw, and the Belleville Advocate.46
43 He continued his explanation: "The democrats must see that he is kept as editor. For, if he abandons his post, some one will come here who will abandon all his personal abuse and vindictiveness, and advocate whig principles at length, and an entire organization of the whig party. And, with the aid of all the banks and other corporations, a whig editor who would advocate, with tact and ability, whig principles and a whig organization, to the exclusion of all personal issues, might for a time, at least, revolutionize the city." Chicago Democrat, April 5, 1852.
44 Chicago Weekly Democrat, January 15, 1853.
45 Chicago Democrat, May 24, 1849; see also the Douglas manuscript letters to Lanphier.
46 Alton Courier, May 29, 1852; W. D. Latshaw to French, December 4, 1848, French manuscripts.
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In Chicago, John Wentworth, the dean of the editorial profession, managed the fortunes of the Democrat in his own inimitable and irresponsible fashion, as ready to assert himself against opponents in his own party as in the opposition ranks. On July 24, 1861, he closed an editorial career of twenty-eight years, when the Democrat was absorbed by the Tribune. In 1852, John L. Scripps, one of the most talented journalists in the state, who had in four years built up the Chicago Tribune into a popular and influential paper, left the Tribune because of its new whig connections and founded the independent Democratic Press, which was later absorbed by the Tribune.47 Wentworth's Democrat was able, however, to monopolize the regular democratic journalistic field in Chicago until Douglas, by introducing his Nebraska bill in 1854, was shorn of the support of some of his most enthusiastic followers; among them were not only the Chicago Democrat, but also the Alton Courier, the Belleville Advocate, and several others. As a result Douglas found himself face to face with the necessity of reorganizing his journalistic support. In Chicago, Young America was founded and converted in a few weeks into the Chicago Times, published by Isaac Cook, James W. Sheahan, and Daniel Cameron, with Sheahan, an able journalist, in editorial charge. Another Chicago democratic journal was added, when in 1858 Douglas set himself at odds with a large wing of his party, this time with the national or pro-southern democrats, who thereupon undertook to set up a rival press in Illinois.48
The avant-courier of the republican press was the radical antislavery journalism that gathered strength in the late forties : the Western Citizen, with its campaign supplement, the Free Soil Banner, the Gem of the Prairie, and its daily issue, the Tribune, and abortive ventures like the Aurora Free Soil Platform, the Alton Monitor, the Sparta Freeman, the Rock- ford Free Press, and Galesburg Western Freeman. In the editorial motto of the Western Citizen, " anti-slavery, universal freedom, universal brotherhood, fraternity of nations, reign
47 Belleville Advocate, July 7, 1852.
48 The result was the founding of the Chicago Herald, originally the National Union, and the Illinois State Democrat at Springfield. See p. 160.
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of peace" they were influenced by W. L. Garrison, Whittier, and the eastern abolitionists for a more thoroughgoing pacifism than abolitionism.49 Adopting mere non-extension of slavery ground, they served as valuable precursors to the anti-Nebraska revolt and to the republican party, in which they were joined by former whig and democratic journals. The union was for- mally cemented by the three elements at the editorial conven- tion at Decatur on February 22, 1856.50 Henceforth the press, heralding the crusade for freedom, remained a valuable asset in preparing the way for the republican victory of 1860.
The Civil War era was a period of storm and stress for the journalistic profession - a time when the more prosperous and worthy enterprises increased in strength and prosperity, while the weaker journals either declined in influence or col- lapsed and were buried with few mourners. When Chicago dailies, like the Times and Tribune, offered special correspond- ence and telegraphic news and extra editions, their circulation promptly doubled and their financial success was guaranteed. Although John Wentworth sold his Chicago Democrat to the Tribune to avert what he thought was certain failure, he became a witness of substantial journalistic prosperity, while Horace White, Joseph Medill, and Dr. C. H. Ray came to the forefront in the editorial world. Charles L. Wilson, the veteran editor of the Chicago Journal, continued to uphold the conservative republican standpoint and was joined in 1865 by the Republican, for a time under the editorial direction of Charles A. Dana, which voiced the dissatisfaction of certain republican forces offended by the Tribune. The Chicago Times, having absorbed the Herald when Cyrus H. McCor- mick secured control of both papers, aggressively championed the cause of the peace democracy and had a checkered career during the Civil War under the editorial management of Wilbur F. Storey; the war democrats found an organ in the Morning Post, which was established in December, 1860, by
49 Open opposition was voiced on grounds of conscience to the Mexican Gem of the Prairie, January 29, February 19, 21, 1848.
War.
50 See ante, p. 143. An attempt in 1857 to establish a new republican organ at Springfield, the Daily Republican, ended in failure. Daily Springfield Repub- lican, February 9, 1857.
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the former Times editor, James W. Sheahan, a protégé of Douglas, whose advice on the sectional crisis he followed.
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