Power of the Press

In the 1863 fall elections the Union ticket (Republicans and War Democrats) swept all New York statewide offices. Here a Democrat newspaper believes the problem to be Abolitionists sending their journals to families across the country with the help of the Republican bureaucracy. To prevent Union tickets from winning big in the 1864 elections, which include the U.S. presidential contest, the editorial urges its readers to supply their neighbors with Democrat papers. Unfortunately the following clipping got cut off in midstream.

From a Seneca County, New York newspaper in November or December 1863:

The Duty of the Hour.

We have repeatedly urged upon our conservative friends the manifest propriety of liberally advocating sound Democratic principles. This is the only hope we have of overcoming the madness and folly of the hour. The Abolitionists fully understand the power of the press and they lose no opportunity to advance their own dangerous dogmas in this particular manner. – They have devised a systematic plan for flooding the country with papers teaching fanaticism in all its various forms, and the great retenue [sic] of postmasters, provost marshals, collectors, &c., &c., gives them superior advantages over their opponents. – The only way to counteract them is by increased watchfulness and energy. If the circulation of Democratic newspapers could be increased full one half, we should sweep the abolition party forever into oblivion. – Democrats, therefore should lose no time in seeing that every locality and neighborhood are supplied with sound Democratic journals, and we appeal to our friends to give this matter their serious attention. If any family be unable to take such a paper, efforts should be made to supply it for the coming year, at all avents [sic]. Let not the enemy sow tares among you. We believe there is a concerted plan now being carried out to poison the minds of every Democratic family that can be reached, by sending it some abolition newspaper. This should be prevented by a prompt and general effort to do exactly the opposite. One half of the next year’s campaign may be considered done when conservative men have thoroughly supplied their respective neighborhoods with papers of sound political principles. When this accomplished our friends can drop politics for the … [cut off here].

Another clipping near this one in the notebook basically equated War Democrats with Abolitionists.

I haven’t seen any evidence of Republican newspapers in the Civil War clippings notebook in the Seneca Falls library, but in a different notebook I was excited to see the front page of a Seneca County Free Soil newspaper from 1848. *** 12/02/2013: Yesterday I checked it out again. The Masthead from the October 3, 1848 issue:

Seneca Free Soil Union.

A Political and Family News Journal, Published every Friday Morning, at Seneca Falls, New York. – Terms: $1,50 in advance, or $2,00 at the end of the year.

It wasn’t just in Seneca Falls that people were already planning for the 1864 elections. Would other Republicans oppose President Lincoln’s renomination?

From the Richmond Daily Dispatch November 12, 1863:

The Presidential question.

A Washington telegram to the Herald says:

The political cauldron is beginning to boil here. Parties and factions are preparing for the final struggle. It is a noticeable fact that, among the wire workers already actively engaged, Chase in the Cabinet, and Banks in the field, are now the only opponents of the re-election of Mr. Lincoln, who have preserved the organization which supported them in the Chicago Convention. They are in fact the only Presidential candidates who appear now to have organized parties at their backs. The Chase forces are marshalled from the Northwest, and those of Banks come from the New England States. The contest is being rapidly developed. The fears of Mr. Lincoln’s advocates are that he may be slaughtered in the house of his friends.

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Earlier in November 1863 the Republican-leaning The New-York Times blamed Copperheadism for mob violence opposing draft enforcement in Carbon County, Pennsylvania.

From The New-York Times November 7, 1863:

The Origin of the Troubles Terrible Outrages The Results of Copperhead Teachings.

BEAVER MEADOWS, Friday, Nov. 5, 1863.

Banks Township, Carbon County, Pennsylvania, is a mining region of little note, yet a district lively with work, and embracing within its narrow circuit some of the richest coal orchards in Pennsylvania. Perched on the very highest portion of land in the State, in a cold and desolate r[e]gion, peopled only by Irish, Welsh and German miners, and the few agents and owners of the mines, but little that transpires below ever comes up here. If the half which has occurred here within the past three months ever came down to the press and the news marts of the people below, a very edifying comment upon the beneficent influence of Copperhead teachings upon their innocent disciples would be furnished, the incendiary followers of WOODWARD, HORATIO SEYMOUR, &c. It is not exaggeration to say, that here in Banks Township, situate, lying, and being but one hundred and twenty miles from New-York City, and but one hundred miles from Philadelphia, a reign of mob-law, as full of incidents of riotous brutality, and daily scenes of cola[d] blooded and deliberate murder has long existed, equaling the records of any period of equal length in any territory of the same size in Eastern Tennessee. …

The success of this insolent violation of law and order inaugurated the reign of terror which has settled down on this district. Mob orators from Mauch Chunk have told these deluded miners that “they must not submit to the Lincoln tyranny, that the object is to draft every Democrat, that they must stand in the doors and resist every officer connected with the draft who comes near them,” &c., &c. The results of this dissemination of the cardinal doctrines of Copperheadism are briefly summed up in the following statement of facts: …

Mauch Chunk was renamed Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania after the famous athlete’s death in 1953.