Propaganda

PROPAGANDA: AN OVERVIEW

David F. Herr

RALLIES, LECTURES, AND SPEECHES

Carol Brennan

POLITICAL HUMOR AND CARTOONS

Carol Brennan

BIASED NEWSPAPER REPORTING

Stephen Rockenbach

PARTY POLITICS

George A. Milite

Propaganda: An Overview

The American Civil War gave rise to rich and diverse propaganda, although in neither the Union nor the Confederacy was much of this propaganda generated by the government directly, aside from speeches by their respective presidents. Unlike governments in subsequent wars, both sides dedicated the bulk of their attempts at persuasion to international lobbying, rather than focusing on the home front. There was, however, no shortage of propagandistic rhetoric from politicians seeking election, newspaper editors and reporters, and assorted public speakers. The South's changing fortunes during the war limited the amount of propaganda it produced. Whereas there were close to 800 daily papers published in the South in 1860, there were at best twenty by the end of the war.

The influence of nongovernmental propaganda was complex and significant. During the 1863 New York City draft riots, for example, Republican newspapers played a pivotal role when they fixed blame for the riots on New York Governor Horatio Seymour, who had delivered a series of speeches attacking emancipation and conscription. In the South during the closing years of the war, Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president, increasingly became a reviled figure once Southern editors turned their vitriol against him. They repeatedly accused him of choosing poor generals and meddling in military affairs.

Newspaper editorialists both North and South were perhaps the most significant contributors to wartime propagandizing. At the same time, they also criticized the practice: "It is impossible to condemn too strongly," the Newark, New Jersey, Daily Advertiser exclaimed in January 1861, "the pestiferous inventions and exaggerations of reckless political gossips and paid letter-writers, whom the times have hatched into being." The problem was not merely the dishonesty of the propaganda, but its results. The stories had, the Advertiser asserted, "a tendency to take the bread out of the mouths of thousands, and in the end to endanger the Union everywhere and bring anarchy itself in their train" (Smith 1948, p. 1,043). The Daily Picayune of New Orleans spoke in equally harsh terms against anti-Confederate propaganda, labeling some newspapers, "atrabilious sheets, whose columns are blackened by detraction and scandal—whose mission is to misrepresent and slander" (Dumond 1964 [1931], p. 487).

Diverse Expression

The unexpected ferocity of the fighting during the war's early stages and the conflict's profound implications quickly gave rise to an abundance of varied propaganda. Newspapers were by far the most common medium. Nineteenth-century papers were overtly political and built their readership through allegiance to specific party politics. Their appeal to the masses was limited until the 1830s. Reliable steam-powered cylinder presses helped create the era of the "penny press" by the late 1830s. The inexpensive papers' new audience was less interested in political diatribe, and newspapers, including the New York Herald, responded by beginning to publish sensational stories about crimes and scandals. The Civil War proved a desirable topic and the papers provided coverage of the fighting, as well as editorials on the actions of both governments. Many papers also included poetry from poets and amateurs alike, as well as directly propagandistic political cartoons. Readership was large in urban regions. Hundreds of thousands of Americans subscribed to Harper's Weekly, for example. Although Southern subscriptions rates are more difficult to determine, many Confederates regularly read Southern Illustrated News and the Magnolia Weekly.

One reason the warring governments may not have felt compelled to produce their own domestic propaganda was the effort of private citizens. Historian George Winston Smith (1948) argues that the various clubs and organizations in New England that reproduced editorials for wide dissemination as broadsides played a significant role shaping public opinion. Boston businessman John Murray Forbes, for example, began in 1862 to have newspapers reprint editorials at his expense for distribution to Massachusetts troops and residents. Northern pamphleteering was also significant. Union Leagues and pamphlet societies distributed millions of propaganda pamphlets throughout the war. The South had a tradition of outspoken public speakers, and many of these men employed their rhetoric skills during the sectional conflict. These "fire eaters" were wealthy, powerful men who took every opportunity to disseminate their propaganda. They included large planters like Robert Barnwell Rhett and Edmund Ruffin, and the newspaper editor and lawyer William Lowndes Yancey.

Literature was another popular form of war propaganda. New fiction genres focused on the war included stories of women defending the home front, tales of boy's adventures supporting the war, and stories about the opposing side. Harriet Beecher Stowe introduced what proved to be the most enduring of the fictional works used propagandistically almost a decade before the fighting: Uncle Tom's Cabin, published in 1852. Stowe effectively captured the inhumanity of slavery, and her book became wildly popular; more than three hundred thousand copies were printed between 1852 and 1853 alone. Almost 8,000 more were printed during the war.

Poetry and music were also effective media for propaganda and may have surpassed newspapers and broadsides in their reach. Easily learned and passed on orally, songs and poetry about the war were enormously popular on both sides. The message was rarely subtle, as reflected in the opening lines of a poem by George H. Miles:

God save the South!

God save the South!

Her altars and firesides—

God save the South!

Now that the war is nigh—

Now that we arm to die—

Chanting—our battle-cry,

Freedom or Death! (Miles 1866)

Northern poetry was similarly direct, as evidenced by these lines from Caroline A. Mason's poem, "God Bless Abraham Lincoln":

God bless him—with a large increase,

With righteousness that shall not cease,

With wisdom and His "perfect peace." (Mason 1864)

While much of the most famous poetry and song from the Civil War years may not be overtly propagandistic, authors nonetheless frequently tried to convey that the cause they championed was great and its heroes admirable. Sidney Lanier's poem "The Dying Words of Stonewall Jackson" paints a heroic image, as does Walt Whitman's homage to Abraham Lincoln, "O Captain! My Captain!" John Savage's "Dixie" takes the Confederate song and makes it a Union cheer, with such lines as, "Oh, the Starry flag is the flag for me; 'Tis the flag of life, 'tis the flag of the free" (Hill 1990, p. 222). People on both sides drew from a wealth of similar material as they sought to apprehend their place in the conflict.

The Meaning of Propaganda

Propagandists of all stripes invoked a wide range of emotionally charged topics in their attempts to incite or persuade, including nationalism, nation-making, the Constitution, the fighting, race, gender, and patriotism. While almost every aspect of the war was the subject of propaganda, the most popular forms were driven in part by the desires of the audience and the context of the moment. Shortly after Southern troops fired on Fort Sumter, the focus of propaganda shifted to addressing the implications of war. Following the Union retreat at Shiloh, Confederate propagandists began to crow about imminent victory. Each battle or political move generated the next wave of propagandistic material.

Studies of newspaper editorials during the period leading to war reveal that the most divisive issue was slavery. Slavery was either seen as a challenge to the notion of liberty, or as an institution that needed to be protected if the rights of individuals (individual property owners, that is) were to be affirmed. On both sides of the argument, propagandists placed the survival of the country in the balance. Both sides turned to the Revolutionary generation for inspiration. Increasingly, propagandists claimed that their side was the true inheritor of the American Revolution, whereas their opponents desired a society antithetical to the values the Revolution embodied.

During the war, both sides experienced a shift away from blind public support. New debates arose as a result of wartime deprivation and, for the South, the increasing uncertainty of victory. Peace movements launched their own propagandistic efforts and the press in North and South freely criticized the policies of their respective governments. While there was some government censorship, the trend was more toward restraint. War correspondents were a new type of journalist, and enjoyed almost unlimited access to the military. In fact, correspondents were often present when commanders discussed strategy. Some reporters were even used by the military to communicate orders. Despite this unfettered access, the quality of war reporting was often poor. The style of reporting was propagandistic, not objective. Southern reporters tended to exaggerate the size of the enemy forces, whereas Northern reporters sometimes claimed victory even when the Union lost. The press on both sides was fond of evaluating the performance of prominent generals. Reporters praised their victories or castigated them for losses. One of the Confederacy's most unpopular generals, Braxton Bragg, was notorious for his dislike of war reporters.

The absence of extensive government propaganda efforts and the proliferation of organized civilian efforts make Civil War propaganda quite different from that seen in later conflicts. Rather than centralized control aimed at shaping ideas about a conflict, the Civil War period featured many voices and little repression of critical views.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cullop, Charles P. Confederate Propaganda in Europe, 1861–1865. Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press, 1969.

Dumond, Dwight Lowell. Southern Editorials on Secession. New York and London: Century Company, 1931. Reprint, Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1964.

Fahs, Alice. The Imagined Civil War: Popular Literature of the North and South, 1861–1865. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.

Freidel, Frank, ed. Union Pamphlets of the Civil War, 1861–1865. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1967.

Hill, Lois, ed. Poems and Songs of the Civil War. New York: Gramercy Books, 1990.

Mason, Caroline A. "God Bless Abraham Lincoln." In Personal and Political Ballads, ed. Frank A. Moore. New York: G. P. Putnam, 1864. Available on-line from http://hdl.loc.gov/umich.dli.moa/.

Miles, George H. "God Save the South." In War Poetry of the South, ed. William Gilmore Simms. New York: Richardson & Company, 1866. Available online from http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/.

Mott, Frank Luther. American Journalism: A History, 1690–1960. 3rd ed. New York: Macmillan, 1962.

Perkins, Howard Cecil. Northern Editorials on Secession, vol. 2. New York and London: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1942. Reprint, Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1964.

Smith, George Winston. "Broadsides for Freedom: Civil War Propaganda in New England." New England Quarterly 21, no. 3. (1948): 291–312.

Stevenson, Louise L. "Virtue Displayed: The Tie-Ins of Uncle Tom's Cabin." In Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture: A Multi-Media Archive. Available from http://www.iath.virginia.edu/utc/.

Winship, Michael. "Uncle Tom's Cabin: History of the Book in the Nineteenth-Century United States." In Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture: A Multi-Media Archive. Available from http:// www.iath.virginia.edu/utc/.

David F. Herr

Rallies, Lectures, and Speeches

During the American Civil War, both the Union and Confederate sides actively marshaled support for their respective cases through rallies, lectures, and speeches. At these frequently well-attended events, impassioned orators either condemned slavery and the treasonous secession of the Confederate states, or affirmed the South's moral justifications for slavery and its right to secede in order to continue its way of life. Celebrated orators such as Edward Everett and Frederick Douglass drew large crowds, but so too did various politicians, ministers, and other notables.

Edward Everett

In the cities and towns of the Union side, mass meetings were frequently held to rally patriotic support for the war. The famed orator Edward Everett—a former governor of Massachusetts, president of Harvard College, and one of the most respected Whig Party politicians of his era—was the most sought-after speaker at such events. In November 1863, Everett spoke at the dedication of a Soldiers' National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the site of terrible Union losses earlier that year:

And now, friends, fellow-citizens, as we stand among these honored graves, the momentous question presents itself, Which of the two parties to the war is responsible for all this suffering, for this dreadful sacrifice of life, —the lawful and constituted government of the United States, or the ambitious men who have rebelled against it? …I call the war which the Confederates are waging against the Union a "rebellion," because it is one, and in grave matters it is best to call things by their right names. I speak of it as a crime, because the Constitution of the United States so regards it, and puts "rebellion" on a par with "invasion." The constitution and law, not only of England, but of every civilized country, regard them in the same light; or rather they consider the rebel in arms as far worse than the alien enemy. To levy war against the United States is the constitutional definition of treason, and that crime is by every civilized government regarded as the highest which citizen or subject can commit. (Everett 1864, p. 61)

His speech was two hours in length, but was followed by President Abraham Lincoln's far briefer, yet also eloquent, the Gettysburg Address. Everett's words, however, were characteristically forceful and stirring, and widely reprinted in Union newspapers of the day.

Frederick Douglass

One of the most popular figures on the Northern lecture circuit was Frederick Douglass, a former slave and America's most famous abolitionist in the years leading up to the war. Douglass published a series of newspapers and journals, and during the war his editorial writings took up the Union cause and advocated for the abolition of slavery. These writings also shaped his lectures, including one event at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in May 1863, titled "What Shall Be Done with the Negro?" This speech gives a sense of Douglass's stirring oratorical powers:

Our answer [to the question of what should be done with the slaves] is, do nothing with them; mind your business, and let them mind theirs. Your doing with them is their greatest misfortune. They have been undone by your doings, and all they now ask, and really have need of at your hands, is just to let them alone…. Let us stand upon our own legs, work with our own hands, and eat bread in the sweat of our own brows. When you, our white fellow-countrymen, have attempted to do anything for us, it has generally been to deprive us of some right, power or privilege which you yourself would die before you would submit to have taken from you. (Douglass 1975, p. 164)

Following the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 and the authorization of new Union Army regiments for black soldiers, Douglass became an ardent recruiter of blacks for the Union side.

Recruitment Rallies

Recruitment rallies in general—such as those occurring during a massive recruitment drive in Boston, Massachusetts, during the spring and summer of 1862—were a commonplace event in many cities during the first years of the war (O'Connor 1997, p. 101). The Boston effort, a response to President Lincoln's call for 600,000 more troops, kicked off in August with a major rally at Faneuil Hall, during which a brass band playing military marches and hymns. This was followed by a weeklong drive in which recruiters canvassed the city and set up recruiting tents on busy street corners. During the final week of the August drive, all stores and businesses closed at 2 p.m. and a festive atmosphere overtook the city. Large crowds turned out for the daily rallies in which local politicians and military officials urged the men of Massachusetts to join the Union fight. The jubilant mood of the city got a bit out of control at times, as when crowds pumped up with patriotic fervor tossed bricks through the windows of businesses that had not closed promptly at 2 p.m.

Southern Ministers

In the Confederate states, lectures were a popular draw in cities, many of which were suffering severe economic hardships, including a lack of food. In the final year of the war, these speeches increased in number as local officials and church pastors sought to bolster the spirits of an increasingly hard-pressed civilian population. Often, the ideals of the American Revolution were invoked, because patriotic sentiment in the Confederacy rallied around the belief that the secessionist states were battling the tyranny of a larger power, much as the original thirteen colonies had fought for their independence from England. In a somewhat ironic twist, some members of the British aristocracy supported the Confederate cause.

Sermons were also an occasion to provide justifica-on for the preservation of slavery. In Savannah, Georgia, a minister named Stephen Elliott delivered a sermon on September 18, 1862, which Jefferson Davis had proclaimed as a day of thanksgiving throughout the Confederacy for battlefield victories at Manassas, Virginia, and Richmond, Kentucky. He was the Episcopal bishop of Florida and subsequently, during the war, the first and only presiding bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America. "It is very curious and very striking, in this connexion, to trace out the history of slavery in this country, and to observe God's providential care over it ever since its introduction," noted in his sermon. "Strange to say, African slavery, upon this Continent, had its origin in an act of mercy. The negro was first brought across the ocean to save the Indian from a toil which was destroying him, but while the Indian has perished, the substitute who was brought to die in his place, has lived, prospered and multiplied" (Elliott 1862, pp. 11–12).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Boston Daily Advertiser, August 28, 1862.

Douglass, Frederick. The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass. Edited by Philip S. Foner. New York: International Publishers Company, Inc., 1975.

Elliott, Stephen. Our Cause in Harmony with the Purposes of God in Christ Jesus. Savannah, GA: Power Press of John M. Cooper, 1862.

Everett, Edward, and Abraham Lincoln. Address of Hon. Edward Everett, at the Consecration of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, 19th November 1863. Boston: Little, Brown, 1864.

Fahs, Alice. The Imagined Civil War: Popular Literature of the North and South, 1861–1865. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.

New York Times, May 16, 1863.

O'Connor, Thomas H. Civil War Boston: Home Front and Battlefield. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1997.

Sutherland, Daniel E. The Expansion of Everyday Life, 1860–1876. New York: Harper & Row, 1989.

Carol Brennan

Political Humor and Cartoons

The American Civil War witnessed the rise of searing political humor featured on the pages of scores of new newspapers founded in the mid-nineteenth century. Much of the humor took the form of cartoons, which merged opinion with visual artistry and, in the North, helped shape public opinion against the war. In an era entirely devoid of electronic media, such propagandatinged images were crucial to marshalling public sentiment.

Thomas Nast

In 1857 the New York publishing house Harper and Brothers launched a new illustrated publication called Harper's Weekly, which was modeled after the highly successful British publication, the Illustrated London News. Though Harper's Weekly was focused on New York City, it was also widely read in cities such as Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington; and in the first months of the war it experienced circulation peaks as high as 115,000 copies per issue (Fahs 2003, p. 42). In 1862 Harper's Weekly rehired a young German-born illustrator named Thomas Nast (1840–1902), who had spent the past three years working for other publications. Considered the father of American political cartooning, Nast produced scores of images for Harper's Weekly, many of which appeared on its cover.

Just twenty-two years old in 1862, Nast, as an immigrant, had experienced difficulties in school during his early teen years. He was believed to be functionally illiterate, at least in English, his second language. He was, however, a talented artist, and his pictorial illustratitions of Civil War battles and the evils of slavery spoke to a nation of new immigrants like himself, many of whom possessed the same limited English-language skills. Nast was an ardent supporter of President Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party, and was committed to the Union cause—personal beliefs that were reflected in his illustrations. These often delivered scathing indictments of Confederate policies, as with two multi-image prints from 1863: "The War in the West, " which depicted the suffering of civilians in border states, including starving women and children, and "Southern Chivalry Dedicated to Jefferson Davis," which showed a Confederate soldier holding the severed head of a Union soldier and Confederate wagons tossing wounded soldiers out onto the roadside to die. Nast was also known for producing battlefield scenes that were epic in scope and rich in detail, such as "Grand Review of the Army of the Potomac" from 1863, in which the line of soldiers appears to stretch on into infinity. Such images stirred patriotic sentiment and helped boost public support for the war, despite the terrible death toll that was rising daily by that time, and they thus became invaluable tools of wartime propaganda.

Railing against Copperhead Perfidy

Nast produced scathing satirical images critiquing Northern opponents of the war, who were known as Copperheads, and also as Peace Democrats. This faction—considered somewhat allied with their Democratic Party brethren in the South—advocated an immediate end to the war. One famous image by Nast was used for a much-circulated anti-Copperhead leaflet called A Traitor's Peace. Published by the Congressional Union Committee of Washington, DC, its front page featured Nast's illustration of Confederate States of America President Jefferson Davis standing triumphant on a Union grave, accepting the bowing gratitude of a Union Army soldier who was missing part of his lower leg. Underneath Nast's image were conditions for peace taken directly from a Richmond newspaper, which called for the withdrawal of all troops from Confederate states, and the warning, "so surely shall we make [the North] pay our war debt, though we wring it out of their hearts" (Wagner 2006, page for April 20).

The Union General Ulysses S. Grant, who in later years would become a close personal friend of Nast, once famously described him as the one person most responsible for the preservation of the Union. President Lincoln also spoke highly of Nast and his work, once calling him "our best recruiting sergeant. His emblematic cartoons have never failed to arouse enthusiasm and patriotism, and have always seemed to come just when these articles were getting scarce" (Heidler 2002, p. 1,390). During Lincoln's 1864 bid for reelection, Nast's pen produced several images for Harper's Weekly that derided the Copperheads, who were Lincoln's most important political opponents, and who were exerting their influence on the presidential campaign of Lincoln's Democratic Party challenger, a Union Army general named George McClellan. In one of Nast's most famous cartoons of the era, "How Copperheads Obtain Their Votes," Nast depicted Copperheads in a cemetery at night copying names from the headstones onto voting ballots. The Copperhead peace movement in the North incited such forceful public opposition that McClellan was eventually forced to recant his position on the matter of ending the war before a Union victor.

Union Abolitionist Sentiment

Another well-known work of Nast's was "Emancipation," from 1865. In this multi-image piece, vignettes juxtapose African American life in the slave-owning Confederate South with hopes for a life of freedom and dignity in the North. The anchor image is a multigenerational family scene in which several blacks gather around a wood-burning stove marked Union. A portrait of Lincoln is visible in the home, and is repeated elsewhere on the page. Scenes depicting the barbarity of bondage, such as fugitive slave hunts and slave auctions, contrast with images of a former slave in the North being paid wages and a black mother sending her children to school.

Nast was not the only political cartoonist who gained prominence during the war years, though he remains the best known. Besides Harper's Weekly, another publication that published strong pro-Union cartoons was the New York Illustrated News. The New York City printing house of Nathanial Currier and James Merritt Ives also produced scores of propagandistic images. Currier and Ives's immense factory turned out hundreds of hand-colored lithographs that were the mid-nineteenth-century version of poster art for the home. During the war years these lithographs often contained strongly pro-Union imagery, as with one from 1861, The Dis-United States, Or the Southern Confederacy, which shows prominent figures from the first six states to secede from the Union. The figures representing Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia are seated on bales of cotton, while the one representing Louisiana sits astride a barrel of liquor, the one representing Florida sits in a canoe, and, most prominently, Francis Pickens, representing South Carolina, the initiator of secession, is seated atop the back of a kneeling slave (Wagner 2006, page for January 19).

Southern Political Humor

Political humor was far less developed in the Confederate states than in the North. Wartime shortages meant a drastically reduced stock of ink and newsprint, and many publications struggled to stay afloat. Because of this scarcity, few publishers had funds to pay established professional writers and artists. Many publications, such as the Southern Illustrated News and Magnolia Weekly, relied on reader submissions to fill their pages, and, indeed, in the first half of the war thousands of war poems and hymns to Dixie were sent in every week.

The only Confederate artist to equal Nast's success was Adalbert J. Volck (1828–1912), who like Nast was a German immigrant. Volck, a dentist in Baltimore, produced artwork that was intensely critical of antislavery advocates and of Lincoln. Many of these images were reproduced under Volck's pen name, "V. Blada." One example of Volck's work is Under the Veil—Mokana (1863), which caricatures Lincoln as a female dancer in an Arab harem, and gives him obviously African facial features. This image reflected a belief found in the South that Lincoln was of mixed ancestry. Another of Volck's works was copied from a widely circulated Northern print of Lincoln writing the Emancipation Proclamation, but in Volck's version allegorical details reveal the president to be doing the work of the devil. Volck's Worship of the North (1863) shows Lincoln and several other figures, including a young man who is a sacrificial victim, surrounded by such phrases as "free love," "negro worship," and "socialism." Volck's works, many of which were published via subscription series throughout the South, also included less ferocious, but nevertheless patriotic images. These include Offer of Bells to Be Cast into Cannon (1863), which showed Roman Catholic and Protestant clergy bringing their dismantled church bells to the local forge so that the metal could be used for Confederate Army field weapons.

During the war years, the Atlanta Constitution published regular letters that were the work of the journalist Charles Henry Smith (1826–1903), writing under the pen name "Bill Arp." This weekly feature, which allowed Smith to poke fun at the North using the voice of a typical Confederate, was written in a common Southern vernacular form. The first of these appeared quite early in the war as a letter to "Abe Linkhorn" written by the fictional Arp in response to Lincoln's order for the Southern rebels to disperse. From Rome, Georgia, Arp writes:

Mr. Linkhorn: Sur: These are to inform you that we are all well, and hope these lines may find you in statue ko. We received your proklamation, and as you have put us on very short notis, a few of us have conkluded to write you, and ax for a little more time. The fact is, we are most obleeged to have a few more days, for the way things are happening, it is utterly onpossible for us to disperse in twenty days. Old Virginny, Tennessee, and North Callina, are continually aggravatin us into tumults and carousements, and a body can't disperse until you put a stop to sich onruly con-dukt on their part. (Smith 1903, p. 7)

Smith continued to write a regular feature as Bill Arp even after the war, which permitted him to voice opinions he might not have otherwise been able to express in his position as the mayor of Rome, Georgia. In New York City, Nast went on to further distinguish himself with cartoons that called attention to the rampant municipal corruption in the city under a notorious figure, William Marcy "Boss" Tweed.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fahs, Alice. The Imagined Civil War: Popular Literature of the North and South, 1861–1865. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.

Heidler, David Stephen, Jeanne T. Heidler, and David J. Coles. Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: A Political, Social, and Military History. New York: W.W. Norton, 2002.

Smith, Charles Henry. Bill Arp from the Uncivil War to Date, 1861–1903. 2nd ed. Atlanta, GA: Hudgins Publishing Company, 1903.

Streitmatter, Rodger. Mightier Than the Sword: How the News Media Have Shaped American History. Jackson, TN: Westview Press, 1997.

Sutherland, Daniel E. The Expansion of Everyday Life, 1860–1876. New York: Harper & Row, 1989.

Wagner, Margaret E. The American Civil War: 365 Days. New York: Harry N. Abrams/Library of Congress, 2006.

Carol Brennan

Biased Newspaper Reporting

Newspapers performed the vital task of providing civilians and soldiers with information about military events, politics, and the home front. Most small rural communities had at least one newspaper, and large cities, such as New York, had several. Civil War-era newspapers, however, were quite forthright about their biases. Many editors were politicians or had political aspirations. Editors usually supported a particular political party, resulting in the reporting of most news from a single political view. A few editors considered their newspapers to be neutral, but the common practice of the day was to editorialize on recent events instead of simply conveying the facts. The political impact of newspapers was most evident during the secession crisis, but throughout the Civil War editors fought their own rhetorical battles over the war's conduct. Although there were fewer newspapers in the South, newspapers both North and South fueled political debates and offered social commentary. During the war people in the Union and the Confederacy read newspapers not only to become informed, but also to form their own opinions on controversial topics such as emancipation, military strategies, and political leadership.

The bias in newspaper reporting often resulted from editors establishing newspapers with the purpose of representing a particular political or social perspective. There were abolitionist newspapers, such as William Lloyd Garrison's (1805–1879) Liberator, foreign language newspapers, including German newspapers in most Northern cities, and papers that supported various political parties. During the war most Northern newspapers aligned with either the Republican and Democratic parties. With their particular points of view, newspapers served as a forum for political debate. Many editors were more concerned about shaping public opinion than on reporting what happened.

Newspapers varied in size and circulation. Horace Greely's (1877–1970) New York Tribune boasted a circulation of 55,000, whereas a typical rural newspaper would have only a few hundred. All newspaper editors, however, read and printed news from other papers, often responding to other editorials. They would also sometimes print unsubstantiated information or rumor, correcting any errors later, if at all.

Wartime Correspondents

The desire for information led larger newspapers to hire correspondents to travel in search of newsworthy information. Some of these men followed the armies, and on several occasions these reporters, or "specials" as they were called, witnessed battles firsthand and wrote reports. Correspondents, however, could only report on what they witnessed or were told, which often caused the newspapers to print misinformation. A reporter who witnessed the First Battle of Bull Run on July 21, 1861 (also known as First Manassas) returned to Washington, DC, before the battle had ended, mistakenly spreading the news of a Union victory. Based on these early reports, New York newspapers announced the "glorious Union victory" the day after the battle. As J. Cutler Andrews relays in his 1955 work The North Reports the Civil War, other newspapers were able catch the error before they went to press and were then able to print the correct account of the disastrous Union defeat. Even correspondents who took the time to check their facts often gave overly optimistic and ingratiating accounts of the Union army and its officers. Because reporters relied on officers as a source of information, some newsmen found that they could gain access to the armies if they frequently spoke well of military men in their articles.

Union Newspapers

In addition to providing the public with information, newspapers could also affect shape public opinion and affect politics. Horace Greely, editor of the New York Tribune, initially supported President Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), but as the war continued Greely went on to criticize Lincoln's leadership and the military situation. He condemned Lincoln for taking so long to develop an emancipation policy, but also rebuked Lincoln for not seeking a peace treaty with the Confederacy. Greely's criticism was not consistent or along party lines, but may be attributed to the Lincoln's decision to appoint one of Greely's political enemies, William H. Seward, as Secretary of State.

Lincoln understood that editors played an important role in politics and public opinion. He made a concerted effort to correspond with James Gordon Bennett (1795–1872), the editor of the New York Herald. Bennett's newspaper had a wide circulation, including overseas subscriptions, and its large professional staff meant that the Herald often had better intelligence than the Union Army. On one occasion the newspaper printed the Confederate Army's muster roll, which the staff meticulously gathered from Confederate newspapers. Unlike Greely, however, Bennett resisted infusing the news with his own political agenda.

Bias was most evident among those editors who opposed the war, known collectively as the Copperhead press. Copperheads were members of the peace faction of the Democratic Party, which opposed Lincoln's wartime policy, especially emancipation, and called for a peaceful restoration of the Union. Some of these editors were simply opposed to the president's decisions, but a few editors made unsubstantiated claims to turn public opinion against the Republican Party. The best example of this political bias occurred after Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation. On October 10, 1862, the Cincinnati Enquirer, considered a Copperhead newspaper by local Republicans, declared that "the President's Negro Proclamation, if it can be enforced, will bring hundreds and thousands of negroes into Ohio to compete with the white laboring men." This was a scare tactic aimed at convincing readers to vote for Democrats in upcoming state elections. A New York Copperhead newspaper, the Weekly Caucasian, also used race as a way to sway opinion against emancipation. On October 11, 1862, as Andrew S. Coopersmith recounts in his 2004 work Fighting Words: An Illustrated History of Newspaper Accounts of the Civil War the paper warned readers that if the defenders of slavery were defeated "and the negro distorted into the status of the white man, then liberty and Republican institutions, and civilization itself, will be overthrown" (pp. 106–108). Editors eager to criticize Lincoln also allowed false information to be printed. In 1864 the New York World ran a phony proclamation that indicated President Lincoln was calling for four hundred thousand additional volunteers. The announcement implied that the war was not going well and, in response, military officials temporarily stopped publication of the newspaper.

Newspapers and Secession

Southern newspapers played an important role in the establishment of the Confederacy. During the winter of 1860–1861, southern newspapers provided a forum for the debate over secession. After Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 election, prosecession editors published heated editorials warning that Lincoln's presidency would result in abolition and violence against white southerners. These editors used fear to convince undecided southerners that secession was the only viable course of action. On October 30, 1860, South Carolina's Charleston Daily Courier declared that "if Lincoln is elected there is an end to cotton and all the various advantages that result from it." The editor based his conclusion on the assumption that Lincoln would end slavery and because no free black farmer had been known to grow cotton, the crop would perish.

Secessionist editors openly criticized southern editors who believed that the Union could be preserved or that secession should be organized and gradual. In several cases secessionist editors called for Unionist papers in the south to be banned. South Carolina secessionist William Lowndes Yancey (1814–1863) sent a threatening letter to Unionist editor William G. Brownlow, which Brownlow printed in his paper, the Knoxville Whig. The letter indicated that Yancey believed someone would hang Brownlow in 1861. Brownlow's reply, reprinted by Donald E. Reynolds in his 2006 book Editors Make War: Southern Newspapers in the Secession Crisis, says "come what may, through weal or woe, in peace or war, no earthly power shall keep me from denouncing the enemies of my country" (p. 172). Confederate authorities did eventually capture Brownlow, but he was released and did not return to Knoxville until Union forces occupied the city in 1863.

Confederate Newspapers

In the Confederacy, newspapers reported the progress of the war to people on the home front who were desperate to hear news of Confederate victories. As with Union correspondents, Southern journalists tended to write what they believed people wanted to hear or, rather, what would sell papers. Confederate newspapers often printed stories about how Union soldiers abused southern civilians, although reporters witnessed few of these accounts. Printing stories about the greed or incompetence of "Yankees" helped build morale, so editors freely printed rumors and second-hand stories for the good of the war effort. After the Confederate victory at Fredericksburg, Virginia, in December 1862, the Knoxville Daily Register exaggerated the odds against the Confederate troops by claiming, as J. Cutler Andrews reprints in 1970's The South Reports the Civil War, that the Union "had 200,000 soldiers participating in the battle while the Confederates had only 20,000" (p. 230). In fact, during the battle an estimated 78,000 Confederate soldiers faced approximately 120,000 Union troops, a much smaller disparity than the Register's ten to one odds. Over-exaggerating reports of victories and downplaying defeats did raise morale in the Confederacy, but it also meant that citizens were often misinformed about the prospects for ultimate victory.

The Southern press could also be critical of Confederate political and military leaders. Editors freely commented on the character and performance of generals, especially when these commanders restricted reporters' access to the news. In early 1862 Confederate general Braxton Bragg issued an order excluding correspondents from accompanying his army after he read newspaper accounts that he believed depicted him in a negative way. Bragg's unsuccessful invasion of Kentucky in September 1862 only drew additional criticism from the press. Editor John M. Daniel of the Richmond Examiner wrote about Bragg on November 19, 1862. Andrews reproduces Daniels words in The South Reports the Civil War. "with an iron heart, and iron hand, and a wooden head, his failure in a position where the highest intellectual facilities were demanded was predestined" (p. 253). The negative press coverage drew the attention of Confederate president Jefferson Davis (1808–1889), who took action to reduce the extent of Bragg's command. Confederacy newspapers also scrutinized Davis's actions. Although there were no competing political parties in the Confederacy, some editors blamed Davis for military losses by claiming that Davis made poor choices when appointing generals.

The Civil War-era press held a substantial amount of influence, but publishing standards of the time also allowed editors to take liberty with the facts. In spite of some efforts by both Union and Confederate governments to censure newspapers, editors openly voiced their opinions about the war. This allowed people access to a wide range of perspectives and created a national forum for discussion of major issues. The extent of bias in Civil War newspaper reporting, however, often contributed to controversy and political division.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Andrews, J. Cutler. The North Reports the Civil War. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1955, reprinted 1985.

Andrews, J. Cutler. The South Reports the Civil War. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1970, reprinted 1985.

Coopersmith, Andrew S. Fighting Words: An Illustrated History of Newspaper Accounts of the Civil War. New York: New Press, 2004.

Douglas, George H. The Golden Age of the Newspaper. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999.

Harris, Brayton. Blue and Gray in Black and White: Newspapers in the Civil War. Washington, DC: Brassey's, 1999.

Ratner, Lorman A., and Dwight L. Teeter Jr. Fanatics and Fire-Eaters: Newspapers and the Coming of the Civil War. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003.

Reynolds, Donald E. Editors Make War: Southern Newspapers in the Secession Crisis. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2006.

Stephen Rockenbach

Party Politics

By the election of 1860, the wheels of secession had been set in motion, and the disputes and rivalries among the major political parties reflected this starkly. The Democratic and Republican parties represented camps that seemed diametrically opposed (with the Republicans opposing slavery and the Democrats accepting it), but within each party were rifts that would grow as the Civil War progressed. Lincoln, the presidential victor, represented the conservative (moderate) Republicans, who wanted to end slavery but favored a gradual end as a means of preserving the Union. The radical Republicans, who counted staunch Northern abolitionists among their ranks, wanted an immediate end to slavery across the nation. The Democrats were split into Northern and Southern factions, with the Southern faction more steadfastly opposed to any government action that could curtail the rights of white citizens to hold slaves as personal property.

Southern and Northern Politics

For the duration of the war the Southern Democrats remained fairly unified, with their key focus on maintaining the Confederacy and the slave economy. The states that made up the Confederacy were not a monolithic entity, however; indeed, little unified them but their commitment to maintaining slavery. President Jefferson Davis led the new government with a strong hand and helped create a centralized government to hold the seceded states together (Catton 1971, pp. 220–221). Moreover, because the Confederate constitution called for the president to serve a single six-year term, Davis had no need to worry about running for reelection.

In the North, politics were different. The Republican National Convention of 1860 in Chicago made the party's position on slavery quite clear: "[W]e brand the recent re-opening of the African Slave Trade, under the cover of our national flag, aided by perversions of judicial power, as a crime against humanity, and a burning shame to our country and age" (Halstead 1860, p. 139). The radical Republicans saw Lincoln as ineffective and they made their disapproval quite plain. Led by politicians, including Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, and Ohio's James A. Garfield (later President in his own right), they worked both openly and behind the scenes to push their agenda. Aided by prominent individuals such as the abolitionist Wendell Phillips and New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley, the radical Republicans sought to exert their influence on the president.

Lincoln, however, was not about to allow the radicals to dictate policy. A practical man who looked toward the longer term, he allied himself with other conservative Republicans, most notably William Seward, who served as his secretary of state. The president wisely chose both radical Republicans and Northern Democrats to fill various cabinet and other government positions. Salmon P. Chase, a radical Republican and self-avowed rival of Lincoln's, was named treasury secretary and later chief justice of the United States. George B. McClellan, a young and brilliant general, was named commander of the Union Army. Edward M. Stanton, who had served in James Buchanan's cabinet, was named Lincoln's secretary of war in 1862.

Pro- and Anti-War Forces Clash

The tensions between pro- and anti-war politicians continued to grow throughout the war. Many political leaders were opposed to slavery, but equally opposed to the bloodshed that seemed to be increasing daily. Moreover, while among the general public the sentiment was decidedly antislavery, many Northerners viewed blacks as an inferior race nonetheless, just as their Southern counterparts did. As the war continued, many white Northerners began to question whether freedom for the slaves was worth the destruction of so many lives. The sentiments expressed by Maine legislator Moses Page in a speech before the state's house of representatives in 1863 were not uncommon: "I think this country was destined for one people, and would have remained ok, had not the fell spirit of abolition crept in and overturned the work of our fathers" (Stout 2006, pp. 279–280).

Democrats split into two factions: the "War Democrats," who supported Lincoln's aims of reunifying the nation, and the "Peace Democrats" (called Copperheads because they wore copper Indian Head pennies on their lapels), who wanted an immediate end to the war—at any price. The Copperheads produced anti-Lincoln propaganda in the form of pamphlets, articles, newspaper advertisements—even songs. One example was a booklet titled The Lincoln Catechism, Wherein the Eccentricities and Beauties of Despotism Are Fully Set Forth, printed in time for the 1864 election. It offered such question-and-answer couplets as, "What did the Constitution mean by freedom of the press? / Throwing Democratic newspapers out of the mails… What is the meaning of the word 'traitor'? / One who is a stickler for the Constitution and the laws" (pp. 4–5).

The 1864 presidential election was viewed as a critical juncture for a country that was war-weary and cynical. Abraham Lincoln was chosen as the candidate for what was dubbed the "Union Party"—made up primarily of Republicans and War Democrats. (Andrew Johnson, his running mate, was a Democrat from Tennessee.) The Copperheads chose General McClellan as their candidate. McClellan, despite his brilliance, had failed to live up to his reputation while on the battlefield and Lincoln had removed him from his command in 1862.

Partisan Activity and the Public

Both sides printed massive quantities of posters, pamphlets, and other documents stating their case and asking the public for support. In Pennsylvania, an estimated 280,000 pieces of political literature were printed (Neely 2006, p. 74). People from all walks of life had strong political opinions and had no trouble making them known. Poet Walt Whitman wrote about visiting a Brooklyn pub in 1864 and seeing a barmaid wearing a McClellan pin. He "called her and asked if the other girls there were for McClellan too—she said yes every one of them, and that they wouldn't tolerate a girl in the place who was not, and the fellows were too" (Neely 2006, p. 1).

In addition to posters, pamphlets, and buttons, Americans could purchase a variety of political memorabilia, either to show support for a particular group or to build up collections. The printing industry was more than accommodating when it came to meeting this need; for example, copies of the Emancipation Proclamation were produced for display in homes. Cartes de visite (small collectible cards not unlike today's baseball cards or postcards) depicting various political figures proved popular collectors' items as well. People purchased cards with portraits of Lincoln, his cabinet, members of Congress, and other leading figures of the war years (Neely 2006, p. 27).

After the election, conservative and radical Republicans continued to attack each other, but the business at hand was now bringing the war to a conclusion and political intrigue was largely kept behind the scenes. When the war ended in April 1865, the radical Republicans wanted strong punitive action taken against the Confederacy, but Lincoln planned for a more moderate approach. His assassination on April 14 made the question moot.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Catton, Bruce. The Civil War. New York: American Heritage Press, 1971.

Gallagher, Gary W., and Alan T. Nolan, eds. The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000.

Halstead, Murat. Caucuses of 1860: A History of the National Political Conventions of the Current Presidential Campaign. Columbus, OH: Follett, Foster & Company, 1860.

The Lincoln Catechism, Wherein the Eccentricities and Beauties of Despotism Are Fully Set Forth: A Guide to the Presidential Election of 1864. New York: J. F. Feeks, 1864.

Neely, Mark E, Jr. The Boundaries of American Political Culture in the Civil War Era. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.

Schouler, James. Eighty Years of Union, Being a Short History of the United States, 1783–1865. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1903.

Stout, Harry S. Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War. New York: Viking, 2006.

Williams, T. Harry. Lincoln and the Radicals. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1941. Reprint, 1969.

George A. Milite