THE NATCHEZ SLAVERY PRESS AND THE ROAD TO DISUNION, 1800-1865

INTRODUCTION

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"I am thankful that God in his providence has put into our hands these weapons prepared by the South herself, to destroy the Fell monster." - Sarah Grimké, 1839

…

When Sarah Grimké wrote these words in 1830s America, the abolitionists had just adopted a new tactic in the fight against slavery: they clipped and compiled items, mostly fugitive slave ads, from southern newspapers. Theodore Weld collected these damning exhibits and published them as American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses in 1839, recording, in the words of the slaveholding aristocracy of the South, the brutality of slavery.

It was an effective strategy, if the goal was to counter southern rationalizations that slave owners treated their slaves well, never (or rarely) split up families, and abolitionists were just an unruly mob of liars and provocateurs. The pamphlet enjoyed wide distribution, and even such notable writers as Charles Dickens and Harriet Beecher Stowe used excerpts from American Slavery As It Is for their own works. (1)

To the abolitionists, the newspapers were “weapons prepared by the South herself,” but to the historian, southern newspapers are tools and building materials, compasses for direction, mortar to fill in gaps in continuity, fountains of economic information, and sources for southern thinking and attitudes. It is difficult to conjure up a single aspect of southern history that can dismiss the newspapers as entirely irrelevant. The speeches and movements of any major personage figure prominently, even minutely at times, in newspaper coverage. Editorials offer insight into the thoughts of southerners on politics, culture, the economy, transportation, Indian affairs, crop diversification, the reliability of the northern Whigs, customs of faraway places, and international affairs. The newspapers recorded wars near and far, news from the expanding territories, deaths from yellow fever, gin fires, South American revolutions, the latest books from Europe, sea serpent sightings off Boston, and the deeds of presidents and kings and rogue elephants. (2)

Historian Barbara Tuchman once noted, “As to newspapers, I like them for period flavor perhaps more than for factual information. One must be wary in using them for facts.” (3) It is true, newspapers have their limitations. All sources have their own peculiar disadvantages and weaknesses, and the duty of the historian is not to disdain and exclude the hasty work of rowdy newspapermen and women in favor of diaries, letters, court documents and government reports. The historian, hopefully, realizes the liabilities and strengths of all his tools and building materials, just like any competent carpenter practicing his craft.

Nevertheless, the historian, in carefully appraising the tools of the craft, may find it difficult not to see newspapers much as Sarah Grimké saw them: as weapons. Comic Negro stories, fugitive slave ads, items proclaiming slave auctions, and proslavery propaganda crafted from the most transparent of rationalizations do not inspire much admiration for the subject. Weld experienced little trouble finding the material that he distributed in the North in American Slavery As It Is, and the researcher who peeks into the slavery press will quickly discover many similar items.

The antebellum South condemned itself. The southern newspapers, 140 years after the end of slavery, offer ample evidence of a foul and evil system aided and abetted by a whole series of necessary delusions that allowed the members of the ruling class to sleep at night. Trying to maintain a historian’s objectivity in the face of such overwhelming hypocrisy and brutality makes this historian’s head hurt. The only reason that the southern newspapers are no longer weapons is that the target, southern slavery, no longer exists, despite the rearguard revisionist rhetoric of southern apologists who want to pretend that the excesses of slavery have been exaggerated by historians.

…

On a personal note, I wandered into the wild and weird, and often wonderful, world of the Natchez press quite by accident. More interested in the journalism of the Wild West, I nonetheless decided to go to Natchez, Mississippi, in the summer of 2001, to participate in a month-long research program that included the processing of court records from the 1830s and tutoring in the evaluation and uses of many kinds of primary documents. Mostly, I wanted to get out of Los Angeles for a month.

Southern journalism became a passion, particularly in the period before the Civil War. I did not find much to admire in most of these people, but they were never boring. Andrew Marschalk, the “Father of Mississippi Journalism,” grew up in New York during the Revolution, barely escaped impressment in England, and served in the American military on the frontier in the 1790s, all before he started his thirty-year career as a journalist in Mississippi. Lorenzo Besançon found himself enmeshed in four affairs of honor in 1837; one of these ended in a duel in which he killed his opponent. That same year, he got into a fight on Election Day with John A. Quitman, one of Mississippi’s most famous statesmen. Giles Hillyer avoided physical violence but dished out verbal violence as well as he endured it throughout the tumultuous 1850s.

What made them, and their many contemporaries, tick? What juicy nuggets of information could be gleaned from secondary sources, the newspapers, court documents, property records, census reports and other sources? Would a study of southern newspapers and journalists reveal anything about the nature of southern society as a whole? I soon discovered that I would have to do most of the digging myself if I wanted answers to any of my questions about the journalists of antebellum Natchez. And what can we learn about the place, the time, and the people that will help us to understand a world rooted in slavery as the foundation of all that was southern, antebellum, and Natchez?

I have compiled my facts and sources, and I have tried to tell the story of Natchez journalism and its practitioners. By the very nature of the profession, thousands of articles and millions of words remain behind, penned, selected, and edited by the subjects. It seems only natural to let the journalists tell their own story in their own words as much as possible. Like Theodore Weld, I let the South speak for itself.

…

Southern journalism gets the short end of the stick in histories of the American press with most of the attention focused on New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and general trends in other northern cities. General histories of mass media have room for only a few paragraphs on newspapers in New Orleans and Baltimore before they discuss the role of the newspapers in the era of sectional tensions that preceded the Civil War. At any given time, specific newspapers in different regions experienced different purposes and rates of development. When press history begins in Natchez (around 1800), the small struggling territorial newspapers of the region could not be compared to the newspapers of the major cities of the North, a few of which had been around for close to a century.

A general press history, with the immense span of time and the various forms of media that must be discussed, can hardly be expected to recite the mundane details of every community and how the press differed from one hamlet to the next. Press historian Michael Emery describes frontier journalism of the early republic and, in the decades preceding the Civil War, southern journalism of the era. The press in Natchez presents characteristics of both frontier and southern journalism of the era.

The Press and America, by Michael Emery, Edwin Emery, and Nancy L. Roberts, describes the late 18th-century development of the political press in America, after the colonies became the United States of America and political factions funded party organs to attract and inform the citizens of the new nation. The book also comments on westward expansion in the early 1800s and the rapid appearance of newspapers in recently settled areas. Early Natchez newspapers displayed the characteristics of both the political press and the frontier press. In 1800, the American government designated Natchez as the capital of the Mississippi Territory, recently acquired from Spain. Far from the settled regions of North America, Natchez was the center of administration for the new territory. Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans competed for power and influence, and almost overnight, Natchez required political newspapers despite its remote frontier location. (4)

The Press and America also provides a brief summary of the rise of the abolitionists in the 1830s. William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator appeared in 1831 and became a major organ of the abolitionist movement. Other anti-slavery newspapers followed, and the abolitionists took advantage of improving press technology (and low postage rates for many kinds of printed material) to flood the nation, North and South, with anti-slavery publications.

From the 1830s to the outbreak of the Civil War, sectional tension over slavery increased, and the newspapers certainly played a major role in inflaming or attempting to quash the growing divide between North and South. The “fire-eaters,” southerners who denounced abolition in the most forceful terms, used the southern newspapers, the legislature and the stump to attack the anti-slavery movement of the North, and to urge secession if the two sections could not come to an agreement favorable to southern slaveholding interests. (5)

In News for All, Thomas Leonard discusses the effects of the abolitionist press in greater detail. Abolitionist literature ended up in flames in many areas of the South, postmasters refused to distribute it, and legislatures passed laws prohibiting incendiary literature. Anti-abolitionist mobs also harassed activist foes of slavery in the North.(6) Violence in the North subsided in the late 1830s, perhaps as a response to the publication and wide distribution of American Slavery As It Is. Was it harder to provoke mob conditions if the South condemned itself with fugitive slave ads and other damning evidence? Perhaps, or maybe fierce anti-abolitionist sentiment had burnt out of its own accord after a few years.

Leonard notes that the printing capacity of the North overwhelmed that of the South, calling it a superweapon for the anti-slavery movement. The slave states produced a fraction of the printed material of the South. The deluge of hostile anti-slavery tracts flooding Dixie must have seemed anti-southern to many white southerners, encouraging a wave of paranoia and accusations of an anti-southern conspiracy. In truth, northern presses published more proslavery material than the South. And DeBow’s Review, the prominent southern journal that provided a forum for many of slavery’s defenders, came out of northern print shops for distribution in the South, a fact that its publishers tried to keep secret. (7)

Leonard notes that the abolitionist movement outmaneuvered the South by using media advances to distribute an effective anti-slavery message. Proslavery arguments remained in the South, in southern journals and newspapers, seldom venturing out of Dixie’s echo chamber in an accessible pamphlet form to influence opinion in the North. George Fitzhugh, author of Cannibals All!, condemned the northern exploitation of immigrant labor as much worse than black slavery, but he never reached a wide audience. No one in the South ever compiled northern news items to embarrass the free states in the way that American Slavery As It Is showed the hollowness of the South’s defense of a paternalistic slave system. (8)

Most general histories of the press do not delve this far into the differences between northern and southern journalism, and more in-depth studies of the southern press are few and far between. Some press histories specialize on a specific newspaper or region, with New York understandably getting the most attention. Aspects of southern press history appear in some studies. For example, Clement Eaton’s Freedom of Thought in the Old South contains a few chapters on the press, although it focuses on the Upper South. Many states passed laws suppressing expressions of anti-slavery sentiments, and Eaton suggests that the sporadic use of these laws and the frequent implementation of lenient penalties indicated that the South respected the freedom of the press. (9) A comprehensive treatment of the southern press has yet to appear.

Fortunately for my purposes, the historically important community of Natchez stimulates the interest of many historians and writers, and secondary sources on Natchez often cite the newspapers, summarize press history for specific newspapers, and describe incidents involving area journalists. In Antebellum Natchez, Clayton James uses newspaper articles to make a number of points about Natchez politics, culture and economics. William Davis’s A Way Through the Wilderness briefly describes the press in Natchez (and other parts of the Old Southwest) during the Territorial period.

Biographies can also be a source for useful material. Mack Buckley Swearingen’s The Early Life of George Poindexter discusses an early feud between an editor and a local political figure that resulted in libel suits, a beating, and charges of cowardice in battle during the Battle of New Orleans. (10) Robert May’s biography of John Quitman, one of Mississippi’s most prominent antebellum political operators, provides a few details on Quitman’s fistfight with Free Trader editor Lorenzo Besançon as well as Quitman’s successful campaign against Natchez Courier editor Giles Hillyer for a congressional seat. (11) With the appropriate dates in hand, I was able to find the right newspapers where I uncovered a mountain of material on these incidents and many others.

Articles from historical journals yield helpful information. A 1972 article examines seven major newspapers in the state and speculates on the influence of newspapers on the final outcome of the election of 1860. (12) Two journal articles on the role of the Mississippi press in the 1850s contend that it enforced “intellectual isolation” by excluding and repressing ideas that threatened the comfortable southern view of slavery, and inflamed the South by sensationalizing John Brown’s attack on Harper’s Ferry. These articles cite newspapers from across the state, including quotes from Natchez newspapers, and provide some perspective on the state as whole. (13) A very useful article from 1957, “The Mississippi Press in the Jackson Era, 1926-1841” by Nelson Miles, details the status of the state’s newspapers in the 1820s, when supporters of Andrew Jackson started a number of newspapers to counter the large number of sheets that favored John Quincy Adams. The article covers the entire state, with special attention to events in Natchez like the conflict and cooperation of the town papers. (14)

Diaries are not only fun, they are useful, especially with background and color. William Johnson’s diary, a great asset for anyone studying Natchez from 1835 to 1851, presented some bits of information on several Natchez editors. (15) Land records, marriage records, court documents, census reports and other official papers also provide valuable information, and some of it is a lot more interesting than it sounds.

The best sources are the newspapers themselves. Not always the most reliable source for historical accuracy, the newspapers represented the voice and opinions of the society they served and influenced. They tell the modern researcher what Natchez newspaper readers wanted to hear (and what the editors wanted them to hear), and these views had to be supported by all of white society. Similarly, mainstream views on women, Native Americans and northerners can be examined and analyzed.

Newspapers also provide clues to how newspaper establishments operated, with a statement of purpose, an editorial on the importance of newspapers, and notices containing mundane information such as an apology for errors that might explain that the paper is understaffed because of a yellow fever epidemic. When newspapers changed hands, editorial notices often explained the motives of both the outgoing and the incoming editors. The departing journalist might be moving to another state, changing professions, retiring, or getting married. The new owner often offered a few details of his past experience. These, and many other items in the newspapers, provide welcome scraps of information about these men as they shaped public opinion and responded to the needs of the public they served.

…

This study employs frequent and lengthy passages from the newspapers of Natchez from the antebellum period. More than just quaint and interesting passages from America’s past, these quotes often provide a useful glimpse into the character of the southern press and the society it served and influenced. A simple summary of these views would fail to provide the proper context in which these views developed and propagated. The editorial style of the 19th century tended to be combative, flowery and even pompous at times. The journalistic principles of balance and objectivity had not yet become a part of American newspaper practice, and the era’s newspapermen and women plied their trade with a creative ear for sarcasm, hyperbole, distortion and other literary adornments.

Southern journalists wrote forcefully partly because of rigid views of honor that demanded a strong commitment to a position and the desire to go to great lengths to defend these viewpoints. The newspapers provided a very important forum for southern views, and newspapermen and women used the medium to full advantage, revealing much about the time and place. Using lengthy quotes lets the Natchez editors speak for themselves and reveals much about the character of the southern press.

…

After the United States acquired the Mississippi Territory from Spain in the 1790s, Natchez soon became the focus of the region’s political and economic life. Political maneuvering moved the capital to nearby Washington for several years before the capital moved to Jackson in the center of the state when Mississippi achieved statehood in 1819. Nevertheless, Natchez remained an important city, politically and economically, until the Civil War.

The rich cotton planters of the Mississippi River Valley congregated in Natchez, maintained palatial homes in the area, and conducted various forms of business there. The wealthy elite often kept their families on remote plantation homes during the unhealthy season, and then gathered in Natchez for the winter, the social season. Politicians and statesmen valued the opinions and support of these wealthy planters, and the political leaders of Mississippi realized the importance of Natchez as a meeting place for the most influential people in the southern part of the state. The newspapers of Natchez became an important part of the network of influence and information that directed Mississippi politics. Operating under varying degrees of independence, Natchez editors strived to attract the attention and patronage of state leaders at the same time they tried to appeal to the political and cultural tastes of as many potential newspaper readers as possible.

Newspapers started in territorial Natchez as marginal but vital expressions of a frontier community, providing basic information on the acts of the territorial legislature, commerce, and the news of the world. The frontier press acted as a window to the world, and a central depository for community information in an isolated region. The role of political press appeared very quickly, first in the conflict between the Federalists and the Jeffersonians at the end of the 1790s, then in the guise of factions among the Jeffersonians from 1800 to the War of 1812. Both sides supported newspapers to distribute and argue their views. This role of party press remained long after the Natchez region had outgrown its frontier character as a result of a growing population, a developing network of transportation and communication, and a frontier that continually moved west. After 1830, to counter a growing perception of an abolitionist threat, the southern press increasingly took on the appearance of a slavery press, and Natchez newspapers devoted more space to slavery and slavery-related issues, justifying the institution, denigrating blacks and abolitionists, and warning of a coming northern threat to the southern way of life.

Throughout the transition from frontier press to party press to slavery press, Natchez journalism consistently displayed an element of conflict, often spurred by exaggerated southern views of honor. Beatings, fights, duels and challenges to duels highlight the relations of the press to the community. This penchant for conflict can also be viewed in non-physical manifestations, in a number of lawsuits and, especially, in accounts printed in the newspapers about ongoing debates on issues and personalities.

The differing strategies of the slavery press demonstrate this conflict very well. In the 1850s, the Democratic press, represented by the Mississippi Free Trader, usually expressed an extreme view that the North made excessive and unrealistic demands on the South on issues involving slavery and the status of slavery in the new western territories. They often denied the accusations that they advocated secession and disunion, but the inflammatory nature of much Democratic rhetoric made secession seem the obvious goal. The opposition, representing a succession of different parties from the Whigs to the Know Nothings to the Union Party, adopted a more moderate tone in the pages of the Natchez Courier. Compromises offered by the North, numerous Courier articles assured its readers, represented real and sincere efforts to heal the breach between the two sections, and the extremists flirted dangerously with secession, heedless of the potential risk of civil war.

These varying strategies of the slavery press never disagreed on slavery or abolition, however. Slavery, an institution blessed by god, benefited white and black alike as loving white masters Christianized the inferior black man, and directed his primitive energies to useful work. Abolitionists, funded and misled by malicious leaders and British agitators, refused to understand southern reality, and projected their own unhappiness and discontent on the South.

…

This study supports these statements with examples from the newspapers and the analysis of events recreated as well as possible from historical documents. The general history of the press in Natchez and the lives of Natchez journalists are examined and analyzed in the first two chapters to supply some background information and context necessary for a better understanding of the place and the times. Chapter Three explores specific incidents involving Natchez journalists to illustrate the different forms of conflict they faced and the long-term nature of these conflicts. Chapter Four provides examples of the political nature of the Natchez press, focusing on slavery and southern perceptions of the increasing sectional tension of national politics from 1848 to the Civil War. To provide a more complete view of the Natchez press, the final chapter briefly examines a few aspects of Natchez newspapers that do not reflect specifically southern values. Most of the chapter, however, explores the ways in which southern views affected values and economics, as a contrast to the previous chapter’s focus on politics. Again, many examples of conflict are illustrated to support the thesis.

An understanding of Natchez, its society, its press and its journalists may furnish some insight into the minds of men and women who so valued their perceived right to human property that the risks of secession and civil war seemed like a great and worthy adventure instead of folly and madness.

ENDNOTES FOR INTRODUCTION

(1) Thomas C. Leonard, News for All: America’s Coming of Age with the Press (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 75-79.

(2) The newspapers that Sarah Grimké and Theodore Weld found so useful have much to tell beyond the purposes of abolitionist activists. Researchers feel blessed upon encountering these newspapers in their original form and thereby experiencing a momentary connection with the southern folk who spread out and perused these same pages on the street, in the coffee houses, and at the race track. Most often, the researcher must be content with the photographic impressions of these journals on microfilm, using the capricious microfilm-reading machines that often seem to have been specifically designed to test the stamina and ingenuity of historians.

(3) Barbara Tuchman, Practicing History: Selected Essays by Barbara Tuchman (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1981), p. 42. This quotation is from an essay titled “History by the Ounce,” originally published in Harper’s Magazine, July 1965.

(4) Michael Emery, Edwin Emery, and Nancy L. Roberts, The Press and America: An Interpretive History of the Mass Media (Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1996), pp. 80-83, 61-74, 99-109. The frontier press is characterized by limitations imposed by a small staff and a small readership. These newspapers served the expanding West, they were located in small towns but generally provided information to a larger trading area. Advertising revenues were small, and frontier newspapers often struggled financially. However, they provided basic political, financial and community news. According to Emery, the frontier editors “knit the communities into organizations that could begin to bring civilization to the remote areas.” As one of the most important centers on the Mississippi River, Natchez developed quickly enough that it was not a frontier community by 1815 or so. The political press, in contrast to the commercial press of the 18th century, developed from the political conflict between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists in the 1790s. Both sides in the conflict funded newspapers to push their political perspectives, and most newspapers became highly politicized in this environment. As political coalitions changed, collapsed and reformed, the political press remained largely intact throughout the antebellum era. The Natchez press was a frontier press only to 1815, but it displayed characteristics of the political press from 1800 to 1860. Large cities, such as New York and Baltimore, also hosted large-circulation dailies known as the popular press, sometimes known as the penny press. Beginning in the 1830s, these newspapers took advantage of large metropolitan populations and advances in printing technology to reach an increasing number of readers. (For example, the New York Herald had a circulation of nearly 80,000 in 1860 when it was the largest daily in the world. The circulation for a Natchez newspaper in this period seldom numbered much above 1000.) Natchez, like most Southern cities (except New Orleans and Baltimore), lacked a population large enough to take advantage of the technology that made the popular press possible. It is mentioned here to complete the discussion of all the manifestations of the press in the United States before the Civil War.

(5) Emery, Emery, and Roberts, The Press and America, pp. 121-126.

(6) Leonard, News for All, pp. 67-71.

(7) Ibid., pp. 72-75.

(8) It is unlikely that the South could have come up with proslavery material that would have any dramatic effect in the North. Slavery As It Is very effectively refuted a number of southern beliefs about slavery as a benign institution, beneficial to blacks and whites alike. Northerners were aware of the conditions of immigrant labor because of a free, sensationalist press in New York and other large cities. Southern attempts to expose northern exploitation of the work force would not have been a surprise to anyone. Conversely, a virtual southern embargo of incendiary material effectively muzzled most frank discussion among southerners of the real consequences of slavery.

(9) Easton’s book is useful for descriptions of these laws and the manner in which they were enforced but it is arguable that the community enforced the spirit of these laws through intimidation and vigilante action. Law enforcement seldom got involved because abolitionists and other dissenters, well aware of the fate of those who defied the community, seldom challenged the laws. Clement Eaton, Freedom of Thought in the Old South (New York: Peter Smith, 1951 [1941]).

(10) Mack Buckley Swearingen, The Early Life of George Poindexter (Chicago: University of Chicago Libraries, 1934), pp. 125-137.

(11) John Quitman, a native of New York who moved to Mississippi as a young man, eventually became one of Mississippi’s most illustrious statesmen. He served as governor of the state (twice), as congressman, and in several state offices. His service in the Mexican-American War earned him a reputation as a war hero. Some southern historians claim that Quitman, an ardent secessionist, might have been the first president of the Confederacy if he had not died after a lingering illness in 1857.

(12) Only two of the newspapers surveyed supported John Bell for the presidency in 1860. John Breckinridge won the state, but Bell won in the two counties that had newspapers supporting him, despite the fact that both counties also had newspapers that supported Breckinridge. One of these counties was Adams, home of the Natchez Courier. The other county was Warren, the location of Vicksburg. David L. Potter, “The Mississippi Press and the Election of 1860,” Journal of Mississippi History XXXIV (February 1972): 247-252.

(13) See Donald Brooks Kelley, “Harper’s Ferry: Prelude to Crisis in Mississippi,” Journal of Mississippi History XXVII (February 1965): 351-372; and Donald Brooks Kelley, “Intellectual Isolation: Gateway to Secession in Mississippi,” Journal of Mississippi History XXXVI (February 1974): 17-37.

(14) Edwin A. Miles, “The Mississippi Press in the Jackson Era, 1824-1841,” Journal of Mississippi History XIX (January 1957): 1-20.

(15) William Johnson was a free black man in Natchez who operated a lucrative and popular barbershop and other business ventures. From 1835 to his untimely death in 1851, he kept a diary that has proven valuable to historians because of the many details it provides of the social, economic and political life of Natchez.

CHAPTER ONE: OVERVIEW OF THE NATCHEZ PRESS, 1800 - 1865

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"In America there is scarcely a hamlet that has not its newspaper. It may readily be imagined that neither discipline or unity of action can be established among so many combatants, and each one consequently fights under his own standard. All the political journals of the United States are, indeed, arrayed on the side of the administration or against it; but they attack and defend it in a thousand different ways." - Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835

…

Despite a few obscure and unreliable sources that mention newspapers as early as 1789, journalism in the form of a weekly newspaper really began in the Natchez District with the first issue of the Mississippi Gazette in 1799. This coincided with the transferal of authority in the region from Spain to the United States. Natchez, the seat of Spanish control in the area, became the center of U.S. sovereignty, although the small settlement of Washington, a few miles north of Natchez, claimed the official title, for a few years at least, as the locus of territorial authority. The first printing press in the area owed its existence to the needs of the territorial government to disseminate and circulate printed copies of the territorial laws and the territorial code for citizens in a vast area that included most of modern-day Alabama and Mississippi. The first territorial governor, Winthrop Sargent, invited Andrew Marschalk, a U.S. army officer stationed at Walnut Hills (present-day Vicksburg) some seventy miles upriver from Natchez, to use his small printing press to do the business of government printing. (1)

Marschalk had brought a small mahogany press made in London to the area in the 1790s, and it was this press that Sargent hoped would be available for government printing. Marschalk had printed a ballad titled “The Galley Slave,” possibly as a demonstration, which caused “great excitement” in Natchez. Although the details are unclear, Marschalk constructed a larger press capable of printing a foolscap sheet, and proceeded to print the territorial laws. He probably printed the laws while still at Walnut Hills, then sold the press to Ben M. Stokes, who set up the Mississippi Gazette in Natchez. The Gazette failed within a year or two. In 1800, a Mr. Green from Baltimore brought a press to Natchez to publish Green’s Impartial Observer, which also failed and was taken over by James Ferrell and renamed the Natchez Intelligencer for a brief time before it also folded. The Intelligencer passed to John Shaw who named it the Halcyon before he formed a partnership with Timothy and Samuel Terrell to publish The Mississippi Messenger, an enterprise that lasted about five years. (2)

Marshalk returned to Natchez in the summer of 1802 and produced the first issue of the Mississippi Herald in July of that year. He may have acquired his old press from Stokes or he may have brought another from Philadelphia. The Herald lasted until at least 1808, and Marschalk changed the name of the paper several times during this period. In 1803, the banner read the Mississippi Herald and Natchez Repository, which changed to Mississippi Herald and Natchez City Gazette in 1804. The City was soon dropped and the paper was known as the Mississippi Herald and Natchez Gazette until 1808. (3)

A few other short-lived newspapers appeared in this period, including John Wade’s Constitutional Conservator and a paper published by James Bradford mentioned but not named by Marschalk. (4) John Winn published the Weekly Chronicle from 1808 to 1811, and he may have been using the same press employed by the Terrells to publish the Messenger.

In 1812, Natchez journalism entered a period of stability dominated by two main newspapers that competed for readers until 1824. The Mississippi Republican, published anonymously for more than a year, began in 1812. It changed hands several times, operated by Peter Isler, J. McCurdy, William C. Evens & Co., S.W.H. Cissna & Co., and Sylvester Russell. William H. Benton acquired the paper in 1824 and changed the name to the Mississippi Republican and Literary Register for the last few months of its existence.

The most important of the editors, Richard C. Langdon, published the Republican from February 1818 to October 1820. Langdon would later edit the American Standard and the Ariel, the latter being one of the more interesting Natchez newspapers because of an unusual mixture of respectful political news — it was a Whig newspaper founded primarily to support John Quincy Adams — and literary content.

In April 1813, Andrew Marschalk moved to Washington and started a new newspaper, the Washington Republican. (5) As Natchez grew and changed over the next twenty years, Marschalk always served the region as a journalist, even though he moved back to Natchez and changed the name of the paper several times. For a few years, the banner proclaimed the lengthy title of the Mississippi Republican and Natchez Intelligencer. From 1818 to 1825, Marschalk called it the Mississippi State Gazette, and changed it to simply the Natchez Gazette in 1827. In that year, Marschalk, struggling financially, merged with another struggling Jacksonian newspaper, the Mississippi Statesman, operated by James Burke, and the paper was rechristened the Mississippi Statesman and Natchez Gazette until 1829. Over the next few years, it was known as the Natchez Gazette again, then as the Mississippi Gazette, and finally as Time’s Tablet and Mississippi Gazette for a few months before Marschalk retired in the fall of 1832. (6)

The Ariel, already mentioned, ran from 1825 to 1829. In its short life, a number of Natchez figures worked on it at one time or another as editor or publisher, including E.B. Baker, Richard C. Langdon, James K. Cook and Phineas F. Merrick. Another Whig paper, the Southern Galaxy, started in the summer of 1828. At first the banner listed the publisher as William C. Grissam and Co. For much of the two-year life of the paper, Grissam published the Galaxy anonymously, but for most of 1830 he published it under his own name. Cyrus Griffin edited the paper for at least part of the time because several 1829 letters to the editor are addressed to him, but the Galaxy never listed him, or any other ambitious journalist, as editor. Griffin suffered from various ailments and the rest of the staff often ran the paper in his absence, frequently prompting humorous notes, signed by “The Printer’s Devil,” apologizing for the quality of the paper. The Southern Galaxy ceased publication in the summer of 1830. (7)

Natchez lawyer William P. Mellen purchased the Ariel in 1829 and transformed it into the Natchez. Editor James K. Cook of the Ariel continued to work for publisher Mellen on the Natchez for several years, and the paper retained its National Republican orientation. In 1833, Mellen changed the name again, to the Natchez Courier & Adams, Jefferson, and Franklin Advertiser. This unwieldy name only lasted until the fall of 1833.

In the fall of 1832, publisher Nelson Wooster started the Mississippi Journal and Natchez Advertiser, with the help of James K. Cook as editor. (8) Wooster died in March 1833, and his brother Charles published the Journal until his own death in June the same year. Cook and several others tried to continue the paper, but Natchez could not support two Whig papers unless the owner could handle financial losses. Mellen took over the Journal and merged it with his own paper, which was briefly known as the Natchez Courier and Journal. (9) The Courier would be the longest-lived of the antebellum newspapers of the Natchez region. Except for a few months in late 1863 and early 1864, when the War Between the States caused publication to be erratic, the Courier lasted until 1871.

For most of the period, the Courier enjoyed a spirited rivalry with the Democratic Mississippi Free Trader and Natchez Gazette. For several reasons, it is highly likely that the first publishers of the Free Trader — De Rush, Stanton, and Besançon — purchased the press and equipment from Andrew Marschalk or his creditors. The use of the Natchez Gazette as part of the title, the continuation of the paper’s Democratic Party affiliation, and Besançon’s admiration of Marschalk all support the idea that Marschalk’s old press still produced newspapers even if the “Father of Mississippi Printing” had retired. Besançon encouraged Marschalk to write for the Free Trader several times, and Marschalk provided several remembrances of his early life in New York during the American Revolution. Besançon’s interest in the early history of printing in Mississippi also encouraged Marschalk to write an article that — despite a few inaccuracies — provided valuable information for later historians. (10)

The long rivalry between the Whig Courier and the Democratic Free Trader would be the liveliest newspaper “war” in the history of antebellum Natchez. Both parties represented a large cross-section of the region’s inhabitants of large planters, merchants, journeymen, and small farmers. The Democratic Free Trader fought more fiercely for state’s rights and, later on, proclaimed secession as the only sensible solution for a beleaguered South. The Whig Courier staunchly defended slavery but also urged caution in southern relations with the North, deriding the Free Trader as inflammatory and disunionist. The Courier’s stance attracted accusations of “appeasement” and “abolitionist” from its Democratic rival. The Free Trader, like the Courier, persevered through the final decades of growing northern-southern strife, through the election of 1860 and the early days of the Civil War, finally ceasing publication in 1861.

Only one other newspaper appeared in Natchez between 1835 and 1865. John Lavins and James Edwards, operating at the landing at Natchez-Under-the Hill, published the Natchez Cutter in 1841. The Cutter concentrated on the affairs of the Mississippi River, its culture and economy, and largely ignored politics. Focusing on river news, the Cutter published the comings and goings of steamboats, events at Natchez-Under-the-Hill, and social news from New Orleans and other river cities. Lavins and Edwards published the Cutter six days a week from March to May in 1841 before the paper folded. (11)

Both the Free Trader and the Courier passed through the hands of a dozen or more proprietors from the 1830s to the 1860s. Lorenzo Besançon edited the Free Trader for four years. In 1837, he was sole owner and proprietor, but before and after that year, Besançon operated the paper in partnership with several Natchez entrepreneurs. Many of the later Free Trader editors lasted for two years or less before moving on. Some of the more durable journalists included merchant T.A.S. Doniphan (August 1840 to October 1848), Richard Elward (May 1849 to September 1852), Edward Pickett, Jr. (September 1852 to December 1855), and James W. McDonald (January 1856 to January 1858).

The Courier also went through editors quickly. After five years in the business, founder William P. Mellen sold the Courier to Samuel H.B. Black, who operated the paper for four years (1836 to 1839). After several short-lived publishers gave up the hectic business of Natchez journalism, Milford N. Prewett ran the paper from 1843 to 1847. In later years, Prewett’s wife Harriet operated the paper in her husband’s name because he suffered from a persistent illness. The Prewetts moved to Yazoo City in the west central part of the state and purchased another newspaper, the Yazoo City Whig, which Harriet published under her own name for over a decade after Milford died. (12)

William R. Adams, who bought the Courier from the Prewetts, sold it after three years to Giles M. Hillyer. A native of Connecticut, Hillyer had lived in Mississippi for a few years when he bought the Courier. He would be a journalistic and Whig fixture in Natchez for almost twenty years. From the summer of 1850 to May 1862, Hillyer edited the Courier, bought land and slaves to become a small planter himself, and pursued a political career, even running unsuccessfully against John Quitman for Congress in 1855. Hillyer left the Courier late in 1861 (13) to offer his services to the Confederacy but returned to Natchez after the war and resumed the editorial direction of the paper from December 1865 to February 1867. The Courier changed hands several times in the last few years of its existence and finally closed its doors forever in 1871.

One other area newspaper should be mentioned and discussed briefly even though it was not published in Adams County or, truth be told, in the state of Mississippi. The Concordia Intelligencer served the citizens of the town of Vidalia in Louisiana, on the other side of the Mississippi River directly across from Natchez. C.S. Smith started the Intelligencer in 1841 and it changed hands frequently, with at least ten different owners before it closed in 1858. A failed Natchez doctor and businessman, Robert Patterson, bought the paper in 1843, seeking a new profession after the Panic of 1837 ruined him and he had failed at several other business ventures. He succumbed to a long illness in 1846 and his wife Mary published the paper for a few months before she sold it to James Edwards, an editor on the Intelligencer for several years when it was owned by Patterson. Edwards, no stranger to Natchez journalism, had previously been involved in running both the Courier, and the Cutter. Edwards owned the Intelligencer for about three years.

Up to 1852, several short-time publishers ran the paper, including G.B.N. Wailes, the brother of Benjamin Wailes, a prominent Natchez man of letters. Two other publishers ran the Intelligencer for longer periods of time, W.F. Eisley (of Port Gibson) from 1852 to 1856, and John McDowell, who ran it from 1854 to 1858. (14)

The Concordia Intelligencer, named for the Louisiana parish where Vidalia was located, played a slightly different role for the region than the Natchez papers. It contained the most important national and international news, market reports, advertising and the usual curiosities. In comparison to the Natchez newspapers — the Courier and the Free Trader — the Intelligencer lacked intensely partisan election coverage and violent political attacks. Vidalia, a much smaller town than Natchez, desired its own forum for vital news items and for the relevant business-related notices and reports. The Intelligencer’s readers must have also enjoyed the cultural items that analyzed northern and European culture and comfortingly found southern culture to be superior. But the Intelligencer did little more than print the names of the candidates and the results of the elections. The residents of Vidalia had little interest in Mississippi state politics. (Those that did could easily subscribe to the Natchez papers.) And it is probably reasonable to assume that Vidalia avoided the excesses of the exuberant politics of its own state because of Vidalia’s small size and the distance from New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The Intelligencer ceased publication in 1858. (15)

The Civil War understandably created an unstable and precarious situation for journalists in Natchez. The Free Trader ceased publication in May of 1861 (and it is highly likely that the Natchez Democrat — which began late in 1865 and continues to be the main Natchez newspaper in the early 21st century — used the press and equipment that had been used for the Free Trader). After Hillyer left, the Courier continued under other management, often anonymously, and publication became sporadic during the disastrous summer of 1863 after the fall of Vicksburg and subsequent Union domination of the Mississippi River. When the Courier resumed regular publication in the fall of 1863, no regular editor was named and the military orders of the occupying Union forces figured prominently. The Natchez press played a role it had never dreamed of — as a mouthpiece for a victorious army of invasion. The military used the paper to ensure that general orders for a relatively peaceful and orderly occupation could be distributed and known to the residents of the area. It also offered carefully selected news of the war and a few other items of general interest, but very little advertising.

…

In the early days of the republic, newspapers provided political information to a growing electorate dispersed across the nation from the Atlantic coast across the Appalachians to the Mississippi River. The press of early 19th-cenutry America contained national and foreign events, advertisements for local business concerns and, most importantly, the newspapers functioned as a political forum. As the franchise embraced a greater number of adult white males, the political press became a major conduit for news from the capital, important speeches, and opinions on the controversial issues of the day.

In the early decades of Natchez journalism, the relative success of the newspapers that lasted more than two years can largely be attributed to government patronage rather than support from a reading public. Marschalk’s Mississippi Herald, for example, lasted for six years while other newspapers came and went with startling regularity. Marschalk subsidized his income from subscriptions and advertising with revenues earned from printing the laws and other business for the territorial government. As president in early 1801, Thomas Jefferson appointed a new governor of the territory, and the government, formerly controlled by Federalists appointed by Sargent, passed into the hands of the Jeffersonians. A staunch Jeffersonian Republican, Marschalk had secured the contracts for printing the laws and the official business of the territory by 1806, or possibly sooner. Every issue of the Mississippi Herald and Natchez Gazette after 1806 identified the publisher as “Andrew Marschalk, Printer of the Laws of the United States.” A newspaper publisher who enjoyed the business of the government could absorb some of the losses in the unstable world of frontier journalism.

Why was it so difficult to maintain a newspaper in Natchez in the early 1800s? Newspapers in America at this time usually came out weekly, and publishers offered yearly subscriptions. Copies were not sold separately. For example, Green’s Impartial Observer cost four dollars per year and other newspapers cost up to six dollars annually. In a cash-poor economy, however, subscribers might agree to a slightly higher price to be paid later. A promise of payment, however, was not the same thing as cash in hand, and collecting fees from subscribers often turned out to be a difficult task. Many editorials throughout the antebellum period complained of the problems involved in trying to collect these subscription fees. (16)

The frontier newspapers did not fail because of a lack of interest on the part of area readers. Not only did subscribers refuse to pay their fees, many readers borrowed newspapers from their neighbors, undermining the revenue from subscribers. One New York editor, echoing his fellow journalists all over the country, estimated that only one-tenth of his readers actually paid for a copy of the paper. (17) Natchez, especially in the earliest years of the territorial period, did not have enough newspaper readers committed to spending their own cash to easily support a local journal.

Nevertheless, the frontier newspapers played an important role in the political, cultural and economic development of the territory. First, the dissemination of important political news and government announcements fulfilled one of the most important functions of the Natchez frontier press. Noteworthy speeches and important proclamations of the government — federal and territorial — filled many of the front pages. Green’s Impartial Observer of February 21, 1801, for example, printed a speech by Georgia’s governor that filled most of the front page. These newspapers also contained dispatches and letters from around the nation and around the world, with news of the latest wars and intrigues. In the period before 1812, examples of well-covered events included the wars with the Barbary kingdoms of North Africa and, much closer to home, the Burr conspiracy with its resulting trials and political machinations. (18)

Second, the Natchez press served as an outlet for advertising. Early issues of the Observer and the Mississippi Herald displayed announcements of various goods and services, including room and board, and agricultural supplies. Some ads offered land for sale or for lease. Farmers and planters announced that prize horses had been lost or stolen. Slavery also played an important role in the notices as traders offered their human cargo for purchase, or owners hunted for fugitives.

How did an editor get the news that appeared in the newspaper? How did the publishers get the product to the customers? How did these processes change between 1800 and 1865? For most of this period, newspapers were four pages long and appeared weekly. From the 1830s, some newspapers experimented with publishing more frequently, and the banners reflect these experiments as the ¬Natchez Courier became the Semi-Weekly Courier or the Daily Courier for a time. The Free Trader also exhibits this trait. Newspapers that published several times a week or daily usually had a weekly edition that published the most important news from the whole week for subscribers who did not feel it necessary to read the paper more than once a week. Newspaper frequency changed, going from weekly to semi-weekly to daily, and back to weekly again, based on the economy. (19)

The size of the newspapers varied widely through the period. The Free Trader and the Courier of the 1850s were usually large, much larger than the standard newspaper size of today, close to 24” x 28.” On the other hand, the publisher of the relatively modest Ariel provided a newspaper with dimensions close to an 8 1/2” x 11” sheet of paper. The size of newspapers reflected a number of considerations, including availability, prevailing style and the amount of news. In the first issue of the Washington Republican, Marschalk apologized for the small size of the paper: “The contemplated size of our paper is a royal or (at least) a medium sheet: — when our readers are informed, that no paper of either of those dimensions, can now be had, we trust, further apology for its present form is unnecessary. We confidently expect a supply of large paper, in a short time.” (20)
Printing press technology improved during this time as well, and editors followed the latest developments. A front-page 1815 article described the speed and output of a new steam-powered press purchased by the London Times. The new press “performs every part of what Printers understand by the term ‘press work’ without human labor: except that the sheets of paper are required to be placed on a cylinder & taken off when they have the impression.” Noting the cost of the steam press, the article stated that the amount “will be speedily refunded by the savings that will arise from the invention as it allows the discharge of several Pressmen.” This steam press scarcely resembles the machinery it replaces, printing 1,100 sheets an hour “with an astonishing clearness and beauty of printing,” at a rate five times faster than the old hand-worked press. (21) Natchez, with newspaper circulations way below 1,000 at the time, did not need such a press in 1815. Publishers certainly followed the latest developments, however, and the changing look of the newspapers as well as rising circulation through the period indicates that Natchez journalists updated their printing presses when they could.

Editors filled their pages from a number of sources. They used local talent for editorials and some general interest pieces. Some local reporting brought in a few pieces of information. Marschalk mentions in one issue that he will not be in the office for three days because he will be “attending the Mayor’s Court.” (22) The newspapers, as noted earlier, published laws and speeches.

One important method of newsgathering for the entire period involved reprinting articles from other newspapers. Every newspaper in the nation subscribed to a number of other newspapers and simply lifted the most interesting articles. Editors exchanged subscriptions with each other, and the agreement allowed editors to use stories from the publications they received. A randomly chosen issue of the Courier (23) features articles from the National Gazette, the Port Gibson Southerner, the U.S. Gazette, the Louisville Journal, the Columbia Argos (Mississippi), the New York Herald, the Boston Times, the Mobile Advertiser, the New Orleans Bulletin, the New Orleans Bee, the Pittsburgh Advocate, the Cincinnati Post, the Cambria County Spy (Pennsylvania), and others.

Editors relied on every new batch of newspapers to fill the paper. One earnest notice, from the first issue of the Weekly Chronicle, (24) reflected the apologetic tone of the editor because the mail had not included any recent newspapers:

“We have delayed our publication this day, for the arrival of the mail, under the expectation that it would furnish us something new; but to our great disappointment and mortification, no papers of a recent date were received — We are therefore constrained to give our paper to the world, with less interesting matter than we contemplated. To pledge ourselves to make amends in future, is what might be expected, and what we could promise — But until we command punctuality in the whole line of post offices and mail carriers, and assure our friends that irregularities will no more occur, our promises, like so many others that are made, would never be fulfilled.”

In April of the following year, the Weekly Chronicle changed its day of publication from Wednesday to Saturday to accommodate “an alteration in the arrival and departure of the Eastern and Southern Mails.” Later, dispatches arrived by steamboat, and the most interesting items might be placed in the newspaper under a heading like “The Latest from the ‘Niagara,’” and, after 1850, Natchez newspapers often contained timely news items headed by “The Latest by Telegraph.”

A news-hungry citizen could get his hands on a newspaper in several different ways. Most readers subscribed (and prices varied widely through the antebellum period, from four dollars a year to ten dollars a year, for a four-page weekly newspaper) and the papers were distributed every week by employees of the publisher. Many newspapers available on microfilm have hand-written names above the banner on the first page; these are the names of the subscribers, written from a list that enabled the publisher (or, often, a separate business manager) to keep track of several hundred (or several thousand) subscribers. (25) Citizens who did not subscribe for home delivery had other options. They could subscribe to a reading room — Marschalk operated a reading room in Washington and several reading rooms are advertised in the Natchez newspapers (26) — where the customer paid a fee to have access to all the newspapers and books provided by the establishment. Alternately, a customer could have access to all the reading material just by paying for coffee or tea during every visit. (27)

Some patrons avoided paying for the newspaper by borrowing or stealing from a neighbor, and many subscribers simply refused to pay the bill at the end of the year. Publishers found several ways to deal with the huge but often necessary loss of revenue from stealing, borrowing, and delinquent subscribers. They hired bill collectors, they printed notices that negligent subscribers would be prosecuted, and they printed pleas to the readers to pay up or the newspaper would go out of business. Publishers seldom struck subscribers from the list or stopped delivery to delinquent subscribers because a longer subscriber list meant higher advertising rates and more political influence. (28)

New publishers and editors often included a mission statement or a note to subscribers, explaining the circumstances that had generated a new periodical or precipitated a change in ownership. Marschalk’s statement (29) for the first issue of the Washington Republican, April 13, 1813, is worth publishing in full:

TO THE PUBLIC.
“IT has been customary, (time immemorial) at the commencement of a Newspaper, for the Editor to make an exposition to the public, whose patronage he solicits, of his motives for the undertaking — his political opinions — and, also, to make many promises of the very great superiority his work is to possess over all his compatriots.

In complying with this custom, the Editor of the WASHINGTON REPUBLICAN will occupy as little space in the columns of his paper, as the nature of the case will admit.

First, as to his motives — they are the same, he believes, which actuates the generality of mankind, (if they will be as candid in the confession as he is), viz. SELF INTEREST: — this leads him, in the present instance, to hope, that the industrious pursuits of his profession, will not only be rewarded by the approbation and patronage of a generous public — but will do more — enable him to rear, with becoming propriety, a little family, whose only (terrestrial) hope is in him.

As to his political opinions, he claims the right of a free born American — to have them — and to express them (with decency) — but he claims for himself, no greater privilege in the columns of his paper, than he is ready and willing to grant to every individual of the community. — He conceives it very immaterial to enter into a particular detail of his sentiments on the present state of public affairs: — As to the war, in which we are now unfortunately engaged, (for all wars ought to be so considered) — he does most fervently believe, that if ever a nation had JUST CAUSE to wage one, the United States, in the present case, is that nation. To record with care and diligence, the events of the war, as they arise, and as opportunity and resources will permit, will be his principle study; and in every other particular, as it will be his interest, so will it become a duty, to use his every exertion to render the Washington Republican a useful, instructive and interesting journal.

With one positive promise he concludes — viz. that as his press has not been purchased by any party or set of men — no control, except his own shall be exercised over it.”

Marschalk’s mission statement begins sarcastically as he assures readers that he will, of course, provide a newspaper superior to all others. With his next point, that he was working in his own interests, Marschalk exhibited a very important motive that Natchez newspapers seldom acknowledged. No one got rich running a frontier newspaper, but a publisher could seek printing contracts and take on other publishing jobs. Apart from the financial rewards, however, a Natchez publisher might be able to gain influence and clout in the political world of Adams County and Mississippi.

The reference to the War of 1812 in the Washington Republican’s mission statement emphasizes that every time period generated its own unique purposes for the newspapers. The War of 1812 seems to have rejuvenated journalism in Natchez. From 1808 to 1812, existing records indicate references only to a single newspaper in Natchez. The Weekly Chronicle served Natchez from 1808 to 1811, and its news sections relied heavily on international reports that emphasized the exploits of Napoleon. Two newspapers appeared in the Natchez area after the start of the War of 1812, and both newspapers reported heavily on the struggle with Britain.

Marschalk forcefully asserted his independence with his final remark that “no control, except his own” would determine the content of the newspaper. Throughout his career, Marschalk prided himself on his independence, but it was not always so important to Natchez journalists. Although Marschalk and Besançon bristled when they had to work under the direction of others, many editors quietly did the work for sometimes-anonymous publishers. At times, the identity of an author or publisher became a heated issue in the early newspaper rivalries, particularly in the period before 1820 when Marschalk accused the editor of the Mississippi Republican of being the paid creature of George Poindexter, a powerful political operator during Mississippi’s territorial period.

…

Echoing the contentious political press in the settled part of the country, the Natchez press offers examples of political hostility at a very early period. In an 1806 number of the Mississippi Herald, Marschalk responds to an editorial in the Mississippi Messenger by adopting a contemptuous tone of superiority and referring to editor Samuel Terrell as “Sammy.” Marschalk supported the Jeffersonians, and then the Jacksonian Democrats throughout his three decades in Mississippi. In the early days, however, the Natchez press could not be neatly divided into two rival papers representing two major national parties. In the example cited above, Terrell’s Messenger supported the Jeffersonians just as Marschalk did. Conflicts did not arise over national issues; the factions within the party of the Jeffersonian Republicans usually developed out of local issues and personalities. A major issue that provoked violence and enmity between the competing groups of Natchez arose out of the controversy on the location of the territorial capital. The dispute between supporters of the town of Washington — a few miles from Natchez — and Greenville generated a bitter and spirited rivalry at a time when the newspapers largely agreed on most national issues. In the most famous manifestation of this contest, George Poindexter, who would later be governor of the state, administered a physical beating to Marschalk in his printing office in Washington after a long series of hostile articles in both Marschalk’s Washington Republican and the rival Mississippi Republican of Natchez.

The Mississippi Republican and the Washington Republican continued the political feuding within the party of the Jeffersonians that had started with Marschalk and Terrell. Until early in 1815, the news content of these newspapers largely centered on the War of 1812. Even much of the political abuse shared between these newspapers focused on the actions of Natchez natives during that conflict. The Battle of New Orleans proved to be a special focal point for Natchez press and Natchez politics, for a number of reasons. Jackson’s army had passed through Natchez on the way to the battle, and many volunteers from the region served under Old Hickory. The battle generated an intense feeling of pride and patriotism in all Americans in 1815, partly because it was an overwhelming victory over the British in a war that had gone badly for the country much of the time. The people of Natchez, however, experienced a special feeling, an exuberant reverence for the battle, its veterans and, especially its commander because so many Mississippians had participated defending the region where they lived. (30)

By 1825, party spirit again developed in the nation. Many Jackson supporters, angry over the “corrupt bargain” allegations after the election of 1824 that put John Quincy Adams into the White House, began to campaign actively for Jackson’s next run for the White House. In response, the Natchez supporters of John Quincy Adams organized several newspapers to counter the strength of Jackson in the area, represented by two Jackson newspapers, Marschalk’s Gazette and the Mississippi Statesman.

By the 1830s, the rivalry between the Mississippi Free Trader and the Natchez Courier reflected the fierceness of the period’s political climate, and some of the harsh words led to physical harassment, dueling, and fighting. In a mere four years as editor of the Free Trader, Besançon experienced every imaginable type of conflict with angry Whigs. In 1835, Mellen sued Besançon and his business partners for commenting on a labor dispute, calling the Courier management “Rats!” for their treatment of journeymen printers. Later that same year, a group of angry Whigs confronted Besançon, bodily removed him from the Free Trader office, and forced him to publicly apologize for an editorial. (Besançon later retracted his apology.) In 1837, Besançon was involved in four affairs of honor, one of which ended in death for his opponent. (31) In the fall of that year, Besançon and John Quitman got into a fight on Election Day, a conflict which is described in William Johnson’s diary as well as in the Free Trader.

In 1843, Milford N. Prewett of the Courier challenged the Free Trader’s T.A.S. Doniphan to a duel. Prewett was arrested, found not guilty, and the duel never happened. The latter period of the rivalry lacks any incident as dramatic as these experiences, but the verbal fencing continued until the start of the Civil War. By the late 1850s, the Free Trader editorialized on the rights of the South and the case for secession, and attacked the Courier for its more cautious Unionist approach. Editor Giles Hillyer — who supported the American party, also known as the Know Nothings, after the collapse of the Whigs — endorsed Union Party candidate John Bell in 1860 and published scathing articles on the radical and questionable nature of secession. When Mississippi seceded early in 1861, Hillyer, like so many other southern Unionists, enlisted in the Confederate army and rose to the rank of colonel and head quartermaster for Braxton Bragg in Tennessee. (32)

The onslaught of the abolitionists put southern society on the defensive. The Jacksonian press became the slavery press. On a regular basis, the Natchez newspapers reported news stories that supported and strengthened planter beliefs in white supremacy and the intellectual inadequacies of the Negro. Editors printed lectures and opinions that supported the view that slavery, no longer a necessary evil as it had been viewed from the 1790s to the first few decades of the 19th century, was actually a positive good, an institution that benefited owners and slaves alike. The authors of these articles praised enlightened southern society, denigrated the industrial North, and rationalized their views from every angle, with the support of every perspective imaginable: the Bible, economics, morality, ancient and modern history, pseudoscience and others. Southern journalists demonized the abolitionists and other northern opponents, misrepresenting their views and blaming the North for slave resistance and economic downturns.

ENDNOTES FOR CHAPTER ONE
(1) Information on the earliest years of the Natchez press can be found in: Swearingen, The Early Life of George Poindexter, pp. 57-59, 122-139; Clayton James, Antebellum Natchez (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1968), pp. 103-104, 230-231; William C. Davis, A Way Through the Wilderness (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1995), pp. 183-184, 233-234; Charles S. Sydnor, “The Beginning of Printing in Mississippi,” Journal of Southern History I (February 1935), pp. 49-55; and William B. Hamilton, editor, “Notes and Documents: The Printing of the 1799 Laws of the Mississippi Territory,” Journal of Mississippi History II (April 1940), pp. 88-99.

(2) James, Antebellum Natchez, pp. 103-104; Davis, A Way Through the Wilderness, pp. 183-184.

(3) Unless otherwise noted, information on the Mississippi press is derived from examining the newspapers, usually on microfilm. Mississippi newspapers for this era can be found at many archives, universities and public libraries in the South. The Mississippi Department of Archives and History in Jackson, Mississippi, has a particularly large collection of the state’s newspapers. The Natchez Project Archives at California State University, Northridge, has a large collection of Natchez newspapers on microfilm, and most of the newspaper research for this project was conducted at this facility.

(4) Davis, A Way Through the Wilderness, p. 184.

(5) Andrew Marschalk may have moved out of the area between 1808 and 1813. There is no evidence of Marschalk newspaper activity in this period. It is possible that Marschalk’s Natchez newspapers of 1808 to 1813 may have been published but do not exist anymore. This is unlikely because of the way that Marschalk numbered his volumes. The Washington Republican began on April 13, 1813, numbered Volume 1, Number 1. In all the name changes that Marschalk’s newspaper experienced over the next twenty years, he retained this numbering until he decided to renumber his newspapers, going back to 1802, the first issue of the Mississippi Herald. If Marschalk had published continuously up to 1813, he would have retained the numbering of the Mississippi Herald when he moved to Washington.

(6) Much of this information comes from reading the newspapers mentioned, but another valuable source is Edwin A. Miles, “The Mississippi Press in the Jackson Era, 1824-1841,” Journal of Mississippi History XIX (January 1957): 1-20.

(7) Terry Alford, A Prince Among Slaves (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977) contains much of the information about Griffin, as well as much useful material on Marschalk.

(8) It is highly likely that Wooster purchased the press of the Southern Galaxy, which had been inactive for two years.

(9) At the whim of the publisher, the Natchez Courier and Journal endured several variations on its name over the next few decades, but from here on, it will usually be noted as the Natchez Courier.

(10) Marschalk wrote the letter to Besançon on September 2, 1837, and the South-western Journal published it in its December 1837 issue. When Marschalk died in August 1838, Besançon published the letter along with Marschalk’s obituary in the Mississippi Free Trader on August 11, 1838.

(11) The Cutter receives little attention from historians. All the information on the Natchez Cutter in this study comes from an examination of the available copies of the newspaper itself on microfilm.

(12) Christopher J. Olsen, “‘Molly Pitcher’ of the Mississippi Whigs: The Editorial Career of Mrs. Harriet N. Prewett,” Journal of Mississippi History LVIII (Fall 1996), p. 238.

(13) The Courier listed Hillyer as editor until May 1862.

(14) Most of the information about the Concordia Intelligencer (1841-1858) comes from an examination of the newspaper on microfilm. The information about G.B.N. Wailes can be found in Charles S. Sydnor, A Gentleman of the Old Natchez Region: Benjamin L.C. Wailes (Durham: Duke University Press, 1938).

(15) These conclusions about the Concordia Intelligencer are derived from an afternoon in the archives at Louisiana State University, sampling issues from the entire run of the newspaper. Especially in the 1850s, the Intelligencer preached the superiority of southern life and criticized anti-slavery sentiments such as those found in Uncle Tom’s Cabin (April 16, 1853), a speech by the abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner (July 4, 1856), and the views of a “New Black Republican U.S. Senator” from Rhode Island. The Intelligencer asked in an editorial of January 12, 1855: “Has Emancipation and Nominal Freedom Improved the Condition of the Negro Race of St. Domingo?”

(16) See the Weekly Chronicle, December 23, 1809, and the Mississippi Free Trader, May 26, 1842, for warnings from the publishers that subscribers must pay their bills. Many other examples can be found.

(17) Mordecai Noah, of the New York National Advocate, 1822, cited by Charles G. Steffen, “Newspapers for Free: The Economies of Newspaper Circulation in the Early Republic,” Journal of the Early Republic XXIII (Fall 2003), p. 392.

(18) Aaron Burr toured the states and territories along the Mississippi River in 1806 and 1807, and many of his actions seemed very suspicious to his political opponents back in New York and the capital. He endured several trials for a number of charges, including treason, for which he was declared not guilty in all the proceedings. One of these trials took place in early 1807 in Washington, Mississippi, not far from Natchez. See the Mississippi Herald, December 30, 1806; January 7, 1807; May 6, 1807; July 8, 1807; and many other dates in 1806 and 1807. A number of good secondary sources cover this fascinating period of Burr’s life, including: Milton Lomask, Aaron Burr: The Conspiracy and Years of Exile, 1805-1836 (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1982); and Buckner F. Melton, Jr., Aaron Burr: Conspiracy to Treason (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2002).

(19) A comprehensive account of how these newspapers operated would be difficult, probably impossible, to compile, but the editors offered some glimpses into this process through items in the newspapers. Other sources, particularly court documents, also offer a few insights into newsgathering, distribution and the mechanical processes of printing.

(20) Washington Republican, April 13, 1813.

(21) From the April 26, 1815 issue of the Washington Republican, reprinting an article from a source identified only as “a London Paper of Dec. 16.”

(22) Mississippi Herald, July 23, 1807.

(23) June 2, 1837.

(24) The Weekly Chronicle, July 6, 1808.

(25) Some of Marschalk’s personal copies of his own newspapers have turned up on microfilm and they are quite a find. Marschalk marked all over them, crossing out entire ads, boxing others, and generally covering these newspapers with crosses and lines. I have a pretty good idea what many of these marks mean, but deciphering them entirely would provide much valuable insight into the way newspapers operated in the antebellum period.

(26) See the Mississippi Republican, March 19, 1818, for an advertisement for the “Natchez Political and Commercial News Room.”

(27) Steffen, “Newspapers for Free: The Economies of Newspaper Circulation in the Early Republic,” pp. 410-419.

(28) Ibid., pp. 384-390.

(29) It was the custom of the time to replace many uses of ‘s’ with a symbol that looked very much like ‘f.’ This practice was not used for capitals or at the end of a word. For example, the mission statement began, “IT has been cuftomary ...” This custom had ended entirely by the 1820s. For clarity, I have used ‘s’ instead of ‘f’ in all quotes throughout this thesis.

(30) Davis, A Way Through the Wilderness, pp. 317-318.

(31) Miles, “The Mississippi Press in the Jackson Era, 1824-1841,” pp. 14-15.

(32) Hillyer is mentioned several times in The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1880-1901). See Volume 20, p. 671; Vol. 23, pp. 854, 858; Vol. 30, pp. 547, 549, 674, 714; and others.

CHAPTER TWO: A PRECARIOUS OCCUPATION: THE LIVES AND PERSONALITIES OF THE NATCHEZ JOURNALISTS

2006-04-01T16:25:00.000-08:00

"The journalists of the United States are generally in a very humble position, with a scanty education and a vulgar turn of mind." - Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835

"With more than $10,000 of real property in my possession, I am in danger of prison for $100." - Andrew Marschalk, editor, 1822

…

Who were these editors, publishers and journalists who so faithfully filled the role of slave propagandists? What processes changed the nature of Natchez and the nature of the Natchez press in this period? What incidents and personalities can illuminate the forces that led so tragically, and perhaps so inevitably, to a bloody War Between the States? How did the press portray and manipulate politics, economics and culture to support and glorify the “covenant with death,” to ignore the reality of its brutishness, and to dress it up as an institution blessed by God?

A social system based on slavery must fashion every element in that society to support a system of bondage. In antebellum America, the developing republic came to rely on the press and its freedoms; and the southern slave society had to recognize the importance of the press, and the dangers of its freedoms. The publishers and editors of Natchez came from different backgrounds, but they all had to honor the needs and demands of southern society. We must understand who they were, what they were seeking, what changes and challenges they faced in the Old Southwest, what drove them to accept the rationalizations of a slave system, and why they aided and abetted the slave system through the power of their presses. Examining the lives of the printers and editors, in general and with a special focus on three individuals, may help us to understand how they came to be accomplices in supporting an economic and cultural system based on enslavement.

Aspiring journalists gravitated to Natchez for a number of reasons: business opportunities, presentation of a particular political view, a forum of expression, a temporary job, and/or a powerful attraction to the journalistic profession. Dozens of men (and a few women) operated as editors and publishers in the Natchez area before the Civil War. A group of people distinguished by many differences in personality, economic status, political leanings and educational accomplishments, they can nevertheless be examined as individuals who had much in common.

With the exceptions of Mary Patterson of the Concordia Intelligencer and Harriet Prewett of the Natchez Courier, only white men worked as editors and publishers in Natchez journalism. (1) Two major motives directed the efforts of these journalists: political and economic. A few editors actively sought political office, but most Natchez journalists used their newspapers to advocate the political views of a specific party or faction, attracting like-minded readers and patronage, as well as potential financial support, from party leaders. Many ambitious young men became newspapermen to take advantage of literary skills or previous experience as printers. Some seasoned businessmen got into the newspaper business to supplement their other business activities.

Few individuals — even in the 1840s and 1850s when journalism became a more stable profession — relied on the newspaper as a sole means of support. Young and ambitious editors started a career in the newspaper business but quickly began buying land in town and in the cotton lands, and many operated other businesses, practiced law, or went into politics. Established planters sometimes purchased newspapers as a political forum or as an extra business venture, not to reap a financial bonanza from journalism.

Most of the journalists have left precious little beyond the newspapers, debt cases, and official records as raw material for the scholar to use to provide insight into the lives of the Natchez printers and the operations of antebellum newspapers. Others, like William P. Mellen, have left considerably more in the way of records but only participated in journalism for a short time.

Fortunately, enough documentary evidence exists for some of these journalists that a useful if brief examination of their lives can be compiled. Because of the often transient nature of Natchez journalism (especially before 1835), the three editors chosen may not be generally representative of the editors of the period. Certainly, Andrew Marschalk’s thirty-five-year career in Natchez marks him as uncharacteristically persistent (as well as characteristically stubborn). Lorenzo Besançon worked as an editor, editorial writer, and publisher in a Natchez career that spanned five very eventful years at both of Natchez’s major newspapers during the Jacksonian era. Besançon’s penchant for controversy and his talent for dueling did not mix peacefully with the fiery, honor-drenched spirit of the South in the 1830s, and generated a series of events that Besançon likened to gladiatorial combat. Giles Hillyer stuck with the Courier for twelve years despite the collapse of all three parties supported by his paper — the Whigs, the Know Nothings and the Constitutional Union party — while the rival Mississippi Free Trader bounced from one owner to another as the Democratic organ for southern Mississippi.

These three individuals may be very different from each other and from their colleagues in the Natchez press, but these differences do not invalidate the utility of their stories for drawing a few conclusions about the lives of Natchez journalists. Marschalk, Besançon and Hillyer invested heavily in cotton land, like many other Natchez journalists. Journalism, they most likely hoped, would be a means to an end, a first step to success. However, journalism often proved to be a less than lucrative profession in the long run; debt cases for all three are found in large numbers in Natchez records. Political motivations and affiliations directed the actions of these three as well, just as they motivated most other editors. For example, Richard Elward purchased the Free Trader in May 1849, because he lost his government job in the wake of the Whig victory in the election of 1848. He sold the paper in September 1852, after almost four years as the editor of the main Democratic organ in Natchez.

Long after Natchez had lost much of its frontier character, violence and the defense of honor characterized the men of the Old Southwest, including journalists. Marschalk’s long career in the military may have prepared him for some of his later experiences, which included a beating by George Poindexter. Besançon was involved in numerous affairs of honor. Hillyer avoided dueling and fighting but he did not shrink from the rough world of Natchez politics, running against John Quitman in the election of 1855. After Fort Sumter in the spring of 1861, Hillyer enlisted in the Confederate Army, despite the strong Unionist stance he had adopted in the Courier. Other editors involved in dueling or other violent incidents include Milford Prewett, T.A.S. Doniphan and James McDonald.

Born in New York City in 1767, Andrew Marschalk led an interesting and adventurous life before he came to the Natchez area at the end of the 1790s. His ancestors had come from Holland and his father was said to have been a baker for Washington’s Revolutionary Army. A broadsheet from 1769, when the future editor of the Natchez Gazette was only two years old, indicates that the Marschalk family participated in the fractious politics of New York in the colonial period. (2)

Marschalk grew up in the days when British colonial policy generated dissent and revolution in the colonies, and he wrote about his experiences and memories of 1770s New York for the Natchez Free Trader in 1837. As a nine-year-old schoolboy, Marschalk recalled visiting the fort on Saturdays “to view the occasional drill and exercise of one or two companies of British troops, who then formed its garrison.” One day, Marschalk and his schoolmates found the fort deserted and examined the empty barracks and magazine. Returning home, Marschalk discovered that “‘all was not right’ between ‘king George’ and ‘the people.’” Two war ships, the Asia and the Phoenix, appeared and “commenced a cannonade on the fort and city, to the great terror of the inhabitants, who sought shelter in their respective cellars.” (3)

Despite the bombardment, Marschalk and his classmates attended school at the Dutch Reformed Church the next day, only to be sent home by the instructor. “We rushed to the Bowling Green (at the foot of Broad Way) to give the king’s statue a pelting ... our missiles rebounded from the lofty sides of the magnificent gilt horse and his rider — with a reverberating sound — and he who succeeded in hitting the head of either king or steed was a captain of the day.” Marschalk described the military preparations of the frenzied New Yorkers: “Companies of militia were daily parading and drilling in all directions. Batteries were erected at several points on the banks of the Hudson ... daily assemblages of excited and enraged people were held; and several persons who had rendered themselves obnoxious by an open avowal of opposition to the measures of the citizens, and who were stigmatized as tories were rode on rails — and some of them tarred and feathered, and expelled from the city.” A group of twenty-five or thirty men destroyed the printing office of the royal printer. And the “young warriors of the stone and sling were deprived of our sport of battering the royal statue” when New Yorkers pulled it from its pedestal and hacked it into pieces “to be cast into bullets for the use of the numerous troops daily arriving in the city.” Marschalk described the following battle, the retreat of the American troops, and the burning of New York City, “generally attributed to the vile incendiary act of the infuriated soldiery for not being permitted to plunder the city.” Marschalk also recalled a chance childhood meeting with General Israel Putnam during the defense of the city. (4)

Marschalk’s 1838 obituary in the Mississippi Free Trader said he fought in the American Revolution at the age of 14 but, except for an article written by Marschalk for the Free Trader describing George Washington’s triumphant return to New York City after the British evacuation late in 1783, few records exist to reveal what Marschalk did for the cause at such a young age. (5) Evidence suggests Marschalk began his education in the printing trade as an apprentice in New York but ran away from the establishment in 1787. (6) Marschalk lived in England at the end of the 1780s where he probably continued learning the printing trade because he brought a press with him when he returned to the United States in 1790. (7) While in England, Marschalk nearly suffered impressment aboard the frigate Enterprise. However, the captain of the Enterprise had been the commander of the Asia during the shelling of New York City in 1776 and Marschalk’s memories of the battle convinced the captain that Marschalk told the truth when he claimed he was an American. Combined with the intercession of a friend from New York, the captain allowed Marschalk his freedom and he soon departed for Philadelphia on the Pigeon. (8)

For most of the 1790s, Marschalk served in the U.S. military on the frontier of the Northwest Territory, fighting Indians under the commands of Anthony Wayne and Arthur St. Clair. During the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, Marschalk, by now a captain, served as commandant at Fort Miamis. (9) The following year, Capt. Marschalk, acting as quartermaster, distributed liquor rations to the soldiers at Fort Jefferson near present-day Greenville, Ohio. In this capacity, he reported that he had “taken from a certain John Anderson two kegs of adulterated whiskey which he was endeavoring to pass as Fine Brandy.” Marschalk later reported that he “stop’d ... three keggs of cordial, the property of W. Cribbs ... this stuff is not fit for any use.” Marschalk agreed not to compensate the suttlers for bad liquor and to continue patrolling for adulterated whiskey. (10) In 1798, while stationed at Walnut Hills (later Vicksburg), Marschalk printed the words to a ballad titled “The Galley Slave,” the first work printed in Mississippi. (11) The following year, Winthrop Sargent, the governor of the newly formed Mississippi Territory, encouraged Marschalk to print the laws for the new territorial government. (12) Marschalk printed some of this work in Natchez.

After finishing his military service, Marschalk returned to Natchez and started the Mississippi Herald in 1802. Three other newspapers had been started during the interim, and Marschalk’s paper merged with the Mississippi Gazette to become the Mississippi Herald and Natchez Gazette, which lasted until 1808. The other papers lasted two years or less. (13) Marschalk published newspapers in Natchez and nearby Washington almost continuously until 1833. Several gaps of two years or less illustrate the difficulties of the newspaper business in this period. He moved back and forth between Washington and Natchez, merged with other struggling newspapers, and worked for others in the 1820s. To make ends meet, he supplemented his newspaper activities with numerous outside ventures, buying land, taking in boarders, operating a drug store and a reading room, as well as serving as territorial printer, county clerk and justice of the peace at one time or another. (14)

Marschalk may have given up an adventurous military life of fighting Indians and confiscating liquor on the frontier but he had hardly given up controversy and conflict. The practitioners of the southern press became targets for hotheads of the political opposition. Natchez often hosted competing news organs and some lively newspaper feuds. If the political scene provided little in the way of controversy, angry individuals could express their frustration with contrary opinions by physically accosting publishers. One story claims that James Bowie challenged Marschalk to a duel because of some dispute. (15) The tale is unlikely but it points out the rough nature of the city and the violence that journalists could face from the excitable citizens.

In November 1818, Anthony Campbell “violently and furiously enter[ed] the office of [Marschalk] and did assault and threaten to strike him.” The jury found Campbell guilty and fined him sixty dollars. (16) Less violently, Marschalk used the courts to protect his interests. In 1818, he pursued a libel suit against his rival and fellow editor Richard C. Langdon, who succeeded Peter Isler on the Mississippi Herald, for printing a handbill critical of Marschalk’s performance as justice of the peace. In a separate libel suit, Marschalk accused a man named James Hackett of distributing the handbill “to scandalize, traduce, and villify Andrew Marschalk, Esq., one of the Justices of the Peace and to represent [Marschalk] as a corrupt + unjust magistrate, regardless of his duty and unfit to be entrusted with the administration of publick justice.”

The text of the handbill is quoted in the court documents. Hackett’s handbill said that Marschalk had falsely accused him of theft and degraded his character in the eyes of the citizens of Natchez without evidence. He said of Marschalk that “the head of a respectable family was not to have been expected to stimulate a stranger for the sake of fees” and that “the publick are now told that [Marschalk] was capable of such baseness.” The jury found Hackett guilty and fined him $50 and court costs, which brought the total to $93. The results of the case against Langdon are not included among the documents. (17)

Langdon continued to print handbills. The 1822 case of The State of Mississippi v. Langdon illustrates that publishers could get into trouble for printing and distributing libelous material even if it was not printed in the newspaper medium. John B. Nevitt, who would later be sued by Marschalk for not paying his bills, pursued a libel suit against Richard Langdon because he “maliciously and wickedly printed and published a certain scandalous and malicious libel in a certain handbill directed ‘To John B. Nevitt the Hero of Tripoli, Knight of the Murky Countenance + c. + c.’ and signed ‘One of the People’ ... in which the character and fame of [Nevitt] is exposed to shame, detestation, and infamy, tending to inflame the minds of the good people, and breach the peace of the State.” Langdon’s partner Francis Baker testified that “the libel in question was printed in the office of the Mississippian owned by the defendant and himself in partnership.” Baker claimed he was not present. (18)

Marschalk mellowed in later years, merging his Natchez Gazette with the Mississippi Statesman in the 1820s. The Statesman, started by several supporters of Andrew Jackson a few years earlier, needed a more experienced editor. By this time, Marschalk seemed to be content to provide the most basic description of events, run the ads, and print the laws. Marschalk soon left the Statesman to publish the Natchez Gazette in partnership with William P. Wood, a business relationship that lasted only a few months. Financial difficulties forced him to give up his press in 1833 and he died in 1838 at the age of 71. (19)

Lorenzo Besançon edited the Mississippi Free Trader from 1835 to 1839 and left a deliciously full account of duels, fights, labor disputes and other conflicts in which he participated. His 1853 obituary displays a life of variety and adventure equal to that of Marschalk, but few details remain of his life outside of Natchez. (20) The outline of the obituary is intriguing enough. Only in his late twenties when he departed Natchez in 1839, Besançon subsequently served as a captain in the army in the War with Mexico and later immigrated to California to look for gold. He later worked as a reporter and editor for the New Orleans Southern Democrat. Other sources indicate an interest in the filibustering expeditions of the late 1840s and early 1850s as he arrived in Corpus Christi, Texas, at the head of a group of men prepared to invade Mexico. The organizers canceled the project and the group disbanded. (21)

By 1835, the early period of journalistic instability had almost come to an end in Natchez and two newspapers began to emerge as dominant: William Mellen’s Courier and Journal and Besançon’s Mississippi Free Trader and Natchez Gazette. The rivalry would continue through the Civil War, long after both editors had given up Natchez journalism. The first years of the rivalry displayed the conflicts well known to Natchez journalism, including a libel suit arising from a labor dispute. Mellen pursued a lawsuit against Lorenzo Besançon, Thomas J. Holliday, William H. Ewing, John Mastin and William Holliday, the editorial board of the Free Trader, in 1835.

In August 1835, Mellen sued the proprietors of the Free Trader for conspiring to intimidate journeymen printers and scaring them away from working for Mellen’s paper, the Courier and Journal, causing Mellen financial hardship. An advertisement insulting to Mellen had been published in the Free Trader. Purporting to be from the “Journeymen Printers Price Current,” the notice proclaimed: “Live Stock — or Rats! In consequence of the late turnout of the regular journeymen printers, Rats are in fresh demand; the house of mellen + Co. having advertised for a fresh supply and as the Stock on hand is limited, a cargo of the Long Tailed Species will be taken up immediately. No advance prices.” Mellen claimed that the ad had so negatively influenced journeymen printers against him that he was unable to conduct his business and had lost several thousand dollars. He sued the defendants for $10,000. (22) The case was soon dismissed. Mellen and Besançon left Natchez journalism within a few years, but the rivalry of the two papers continued.

Besançon’s anti-Whig editorials accused the opposition of attempting to intimidate the opposition press, and the Free Trader frequently reported violence committed by Whigs against Democratic political gatherings. On November 2, 1835, the Free Trader published a warning “TO MECHANICS” that “monopolists” were threatening the livelihoods of some of the city’s laborers. “We have been credibly informed that several mechanics at the last election, who were themselves democrats, were distinctly told by their whig employees, that they must vote the whig ticket or be discharged.” An angry mob, riled by the implications of the article, accosted the proprietor of the Free Trader and demanded to know who had written the offensive material. The proprietor persuaded the men to disperse as Besançon agreed to meet with a single member of the group to discuss the matter. That afternoon, Besançon passed a large crowd that recognized him and began shouting that he should be lynched. The crowd chased a surprised Besançon into the Free Trader office, shouting that “not an inch of the hide of the editor, nor two types of the establishment shall be left.” (23)

After some negotiating and several attempts to persuade the crowd to disperse, an informal tribunal escorted Besançon to the courthouse for a meeting. Besançon later condemned the assemblage as an illegal proceeding and an insult to the Constitution. The Whigs denied Besançon any fair chance of defending himself, and he agreed to print a retraction saying that he had been misinformed about the original incident. Besançon printed the retraction the next day, but on November 13 he published an article titled “A History of the Outrage of Monday Night, November 2,” repudiating his apology and detailing the incidents of the evening and the threats to himself. He called the courthouse proceedings “as despotic and arbitrary as any order ever issued by the Dey of Algiers.” (24)

Besançon found 1837 to be an especially memorable year as he took part in several affairs of honor and a fight with General John Quitman. Four challengers sought to share the field of honor with Besançon. He killed one man in a duel and two other challengers backed off. In May, Besançon accused the lawyer Thomas Armat of being the writer of an article in the Courier titled “Rules,” and a copious flurry of notes passed between Armat and Besançon and their representatives over the affair. Besançon eventually admitted that he had been mistaken and settled the affair without bloodshed. All this correspondence Besançon published in the Free Trader for the enlightenment of the public. (25)

In his time in Mississippi, Besançon had accumulated 2300 acres in Mississippi, as well as 7500 acres in Texas. His income had increased from $2000 a year to $8000 a year, and he had represented Tunica County in the Mississippi legislature. Besançon had also served as quartermaster general for the Mississippi militia. (26)

Besançon’s life remained adventurous after he left Natchez. “Amid the fortunes of the Mexican war, he held the post of Captain in a company of Mounted Rangers, between Vera Cruz and the City of Mexico, which duty we believe he discharged with the full confidence of his comrades in arms. Soon after the close of the war, he emigrated to California, where, for several years, he participated in the scenes of the life of a miner. On his return to New Orleans, he again resumed the editorial profession, by conducting a Pierce and King paper, entitled ‘The Southern Democrat.’” Besançon also fought in the Yucatan Peninsula after the War with Mexico, as second-in-command to George White’s mercenaries, hired by the Mexican government to put down the Mayan uprising. (27) He died in January 1853 in Louisiana at the age of 41.

Giles Hillyer arrived in Mississippi in the late 1840s and purchased the Natchez Courier, the state’s major Whig journal, in 1850. As tensions heightened between North and South during the 1850s, Hillyer operated the Courier as a strong Union voice for a decade, strongly opposed to secession right up to the outbreak of war in the spring of 1861. Hillyer, despite his strong and often barbed criticisms of the Democratic Party in general and secessionist views in particular, also supported southern culture and political ideals and did not refrain from fiery critiques of abolitionism and other northern views threatening to the South.

Born in Connecticut (28) about 1820, Hillyer lived in New York during his formative years. His 1871 obituary claimed Hillyer “was a lawyer by profession, a man of education, possessing fine powers as a public speaker, a handsome person and pleasing manners ...” (29) By 1848, he had relocated to Mississippi with his wife Elizabeth, a native of New York, and a young daughter. After two years as editor of the Aberdeen Independent in Mississippi’s Monroe County, Hillyer purchased the Natchez Courier in the spring of 1850. Hillyer’s stint on the Aberdeen Independent, a Whig paper in northeastern Mississippi, seems to have prepared him for the aggressive nature of Mississippi party politics; as the new editor of the Courier, Hillyer eagerly waded into the secession crisis of 1850, forcefully and successfully defending Whig positions from Democratic organ attacks, beginning with his earliest issues in the spring of 1850.

In his first notice to Courier subscribers, Hillyer declared that he would honor all contracts and agreements made by the previous owner. But he added: “Another, and still higher obligation, due alike to himself, to the friends of the administration and to the public, is to devote all his energies to maintain for the Courier a high reputation, as a useful and influential political and family journal — one which its opponents will respect, while its friends shall never blush for.” (30)

A few days later, the Courier published a longer and more complete mission statement:

“His opinions are honestly held and will be fearlessly avowed. No stranger to the Mississippi press, nor entirely ignorant of the political condition of the State and the Union, he comes before the patrons of the Courier and the public at large, with the same political statements he has contended for in another field with the same ardent attachment to the South that he believes he has already made manifest elsewhere, and with an anxious wish to make the enunciation of these sentiments and expression of that attachment an effective on for the great causes in which he would labor.

An active and zealous advocate of the election of Zachary Taylor, and as ardent a supporter of his administration — a firm believer in the integrity of his intentions, the wisdom of his counsels, and the purity of his patriotism — all the influence that can be brought to bear from the editorial columns of this paper shall be exerted to sustain the administration, … as long as that administration is true to itself, to the constitution and the country.”

It was another manifestation of the Whig-Democratic rivalry that the Free Trader and the Courier fought so tenaciously for twenty-five years. Hillyer declared that the Courier would be the standard bearer for the Whigs of Adams Country, proudly supporting the presidency of Zachary Taylor.

The Mississippi Free Trader, the Democratic party organ in Natchez and one of the major newspapers of the state, wasted little time in challenging the Courier’s devotion to Whig principles. On May 15, the Free Trader claimed that “the old hostility of this journal [the Courier] to Governor Quitman was sold to the new editor along with the old types and office accounts. His hostility to the governor, as exhibited in Friday’s Courier, ‘Outvenoms all the worms of Nile.’” The Courier had attacked Mississippi icon John Quitman’s speech at Raymond, a performance that the Free Trader had described as “masterful.”

The Courier defended itself particularly well, quoting Quitman’s intemperate words at Raymond:

“The Free Trader avers that the hostility of the Courier to Gov. Quitman was sold to the new proprietor with its types. If we paid any consideration for that article, we regret it, because even if we had none previously, the mere reading of the Governor’s late Raymond speech would have given us gratis much political hostility to that gentleman as we care about entertaining. ... What necessity was there for Gov. Quitman to condescend, at a meeting ostensibly held without distinction of party, to accuse those who differ with him of being ‘interested office-seekers,’ ‘old federalists,’ (!) ‘selfish landholders,’ ‘timid men, ‘men whose minds have become tinctured with free-soilism,’ ‘pedlars of curious notions in politics, morals and government, as well as in wooden and tin wares’? Is the executive honored by descending to the level of the brawling politician, and by the utterances of charges as gross in their language, as they are unwarranted in the intended application?”” (31)

The secession crisis was heating up, and Quitman had nothing conciliatory to offer to the state’s moderate voters. The Courier noted his inflammatory language and insults, and this editorial also pointed out that the Free Trader accused the new editor of an unreasonable, knee-jerk hatred of Quitman. The Courier very ably defended itself for criticizing Quitman with a few words from his recent speech. If the Courier was hostile to Quitman, perhaps they had good reason.

In June, the Free Trader reprinted a short item from the Holly Springs Jacksonian — a newspaper from northern Mississippi — accusing Hillyer of being “tinctured with Free Soilism.” The Courier responded:

“The charge made by the Jacksonian in its last sentence is simply a falsehood, manufactured out of whole cloth. It deserves a sharper epithet, but one which never ought to soil the columns of a newspaper. The Jacksonian is known to be so far led away by its unbridled prejudices, as to be the common vehicle of foul calumny. The Free Trader is only excusable for its republication, on the ground of its entire ignorance of our opinion.” (32)

In July 1850, the Courier accused the Democrats of hypocrisy following the death of the Whig president Zachary Taylor, a southerner, and the ascension of northerner Millard Fillmore to the nation’s highest office:

AN UNPLEASANT DILEMMA

We have a word to say to those alluded to above, who after having denounced Taylor’s as an abolition administration, are regretting his death, because Fillmore has become President. If they have been sincere in their denunciation of the former — if they have spoken the truth — then they should not regret the change. If Taylor’s was an abolition administration, Fillmore’s can not be worse. Taylor they have assured us was for the Wilmot proviso, would not veto a bill abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia, and would do a hundred other unrighteous acts. Fillmore can do no more! Their regrets therefore only stamp their hypocrisy with an extensive folly.” (33)

In the months before Taylor’s death, the Free Trader had mercilessly scorched Hillyer’s views on slavery. Taylor, a slaveholder himself, opposed extension of slavery into the new territories, a stance that enraged many southerners who had previously looked upon Taylor as a slaveholding president who would protect the institution. His premature death had encouraged numerous glowing eulogies from the political opponents who had vilified him for months. The Free Trader, like Democrat newspapers across the nation, then turned their editorial guns toward Taylor’s successor, Millard Fillmore.

The secession crisis of 1850 eventually lost its momentum for most southerners. Secessionist leaders in South Carolina and Mississippi discovered that the other states stepped back from the abyss of disunion, and the secessionists in these cautious states did not measure up to the rhetoric of the most ardent fire-eaters. By the time of the Nashville Convention in June, only nine of fifteen slave states participated, and many of the participating states sent only token delegations. (34) Many diehard secessionists — called “bitter-enders” by the Courier and other Whig newspapers — railed over the Compromise of 1850 and the South’s alleged submission to the North, but cooler heads realized that the North had indeed made important concessions, and the dangers of secession blew over, despite a Democratic press that often remained shrill and divisive throughout the decade.

Right up to the outbreak of the War Between the States, Hillyer’s Courier criticized the belligerence of the Democratic press, and often challenged the disunionist stance of rival newspapers, the Free Trader in particular. The Courier would admit that the South had been wronged in certain cases, such as California’s admission as a free state, which excluded the southerners who felt they had earned the right to colonize the Golden State and to export their “peculiar institution.” However, the Courier also advocated a temperate attitude and continually warned of the dangers of secession. “Union Rhapsodies,” a typical 1858 editorial, mocked the Free Trader’s attitude:

““We like rhapsodies; but we like arguments better,” says the Free Trader. We have given that paper both facts and arguments, and to neither has it responded ... Has the South retrograded in influence or in position since [the secession crisis of 1850]? Let us see. Has not the Supreme Court decided the question of slavery fully in her favor, and that prohibitions of our domestic institutions were beyond the power of Congress or the General Government? Is there any longer on legislative record a Congressional prohibition of slavery in our Territories? You claim the Democratic party as the great friend, the ally of the South. Fourteen of the fifteen Southern States support that party. Well, are not eight of the nine Judges of the United States Supreme Court, Democrats, and four of them from the South; and in the natural course of events will it not be many years before the personal complexion of that Court can, under any phase of politics, be at all changed? Have we not a Democratic Senate, almost two to one? Are not Buchanan and Breckenridge in (and very sorry are we for it,) for three years more? Is not the House, last year Black Republican, this year Democratic by twenty majority? Is not the Kansas bill the law of the land, and the Cincinnati platform the great chart of the Democracy is administering the Government? ... If we are not better off than then, Buchanan had better give up his seat to our leader, and you surrender your power to the millions of free men who voted in 1856 for Millard Fillmore ...” (35)

In the view of Hillyer and many other slave-owning southerners, the North had acted responsibly to protect slavery in the states where it existed. As the editorial pointed out, the Democratic Party, the “ally of the South,” controlled all three branches of government, yet the Free Trader persisted in its extremist stance and its attacks on the North. Was Hillyer playing politics with the Courier’s attacks on the inflammatory tone of the Free Trader? Or did he see the dangers of secession and Civil War in the near future if the southern extremists persisted?

Hillyer thrived in Natchez in the 1850s. He owned real estate worth $3000 in 1850. By 1860, his real estate was worth $40,000. He experienced a cash-flow problem despite his real estate holdings, as is displayed by frequent debt cases and mortgages. One interesting case reveals that Hillyer received $1000 in 1855 by mortgaging the slave Sam and Sam’s family. Sam is described as “a press boy working for the Courier office, purchased ... in 1850 at the Forks of the Road,” the notorious slave market just outside of Natchez. (36) Hillyer paid off this debt but was forced to mortgage Sam and his family just a year later.

Hillyer became a Know Nothing after the dissolution of the Whigs and ran unsuccessfully against John Quitman for a seat in the House of Representatives in 1855. (This election will be covered in more detail in the next chapter.) Hillyer’s desire for office may help to explain some of his cash-flow problem. A receipt in the Alexander Farrar Papers shows that Farrar advanced Hillyer more than $1200 between 1852 and 1856, with the first loan noted on “the 29th April 1852 a few days before starting a Whig National Convention.” (37)

In the 1860 election, the Courier supported the Constitutional Union candidate, John Bell. (The Free Trader, like four out of seven of Mississippi’s major newspapers, supported John C. Breckinridge, who won the electoral contest in Mississippi and much of the rest of the South.) His determined pro-Union stance did not deter Hillyer from serving in the Confederate Army when the war began. Hillyer had joined the 16th Mississippi Infantry by June 1861. By February of 1862, he had been promoted to major, and General G.B. Crittenden commended his “untiring energy and marked ability” in supplying his division in Tennessee. Hillyer served in Tennessee through 1862 and 1863. In May 1863, General Braxton Bragg promoted Hillyer to acting chief commissary. In August of that year, Hillyer reported unenthusiastically to Bragg that supplying beef and bacon to the Army of Tennessee would be difficult: “The prospects for a supply beyond October 1 are not merely uncertain but gloomy indeed ... local resources are insufficient.” Hillyer expressed “regret at such a gloomy account.” In January of 1864, Hillyer requested relief from duty as chief of subsistence. (38)

In his absence, the Courier appeared sporadically, and the Union Army took over publication for a time after Natchez was occupied in 1863. Hillyer returned to the Courier at the end of 1865 and edited it through the early years of Reconstruction. When Mississippi convened to formulate a new state constitution after the Civil War, Hillyer was chosen as a representative from Adams County. Hillyer strongly supported the Black Codes, and justified the prohibition against black land ownership by warning that “nests of negro colonies would at once be formed around every city, town and village, whose occupants would alone be supported by theft or other crime.” (39) Hillyer had plenty to write about during Reconstruction, and he did not hesitate to heap stinging criticism on the mismanagement of the state government after Congressional Reconstruction became the law of the land. In 1868, he called the Mississippi legislature “a collection of wild and imported animals,” “the Jackson monstrosity,” and “the Black and Tan Menagerie.” (40) Later, he lamented the condition of his adopted state: “the evil is terrible. We are without law, without courts, without officers of justice; the whole country judicial system is paralyzed; the whole municipal system is stopped.”(41)

In 1868 the Courier office and materials were destroyed by fire, and Hillyer sold the newspaper he had operated for so long. He moved to Vicksburg and edited the Vicksburg Daily Times from March to July of 1869. His death in Vicksburg on April 22, 1871, is recorded in the Natchez Weekly Democrat, which states that Hillyer died “after a long and painful illness.”(42)

…

With marriage records, census records, land records, court cases and the use of a few select secondary sources, we can examine many aspects of the lives of other Natchez journalists, editors and scribblers we know little about, as well as the reasonably well-documented careers of Marschalk, Besançon and Hillyer.

Newspaper proprietors often experienced considerable difficulties in collecting subscription fees, advertising costs, and other money owed for printing work. The newspapers of the era contain many pleas from editors imploring them to pay their bills. One especially impassioned and eloquent lament from the editor of the Free Trader appeared on May 26, 1842:

A SOLEMN APPEAL TO SUBSCRIBERS

“READ THIS IF YOU PLEASE. — I am out of money, out of materials, out of means to pledge, by which money might be raised. None can be borrowed. The weekly expenses of this paper are necessarily heavy. The force required to print it must be paid. They are not machines, but men — toiling, laboring men. They cannot work for nothing. I have a family; I owe just debts; my sole means are invested in this establishment; every hour of my time is devoted to it; there are thousands that enjoy daily and weekly the products of my labor and my capital, but there are many who do not pay me. Is this right? Is it just? I put it to the conscience of every delinquent subscriber, is it honest? What is the difference between subscribing for and receiving a paper, upon the condition of paying for it and failing to do so, and violently robbing a man of the same amount? In both cases you are taking, without authority, your neighbor’s goods ... The Free Trader has certainly a large circulation, but then its outlays are heavy and the expense of collecting its debts (seldom over from five to thirty dollars) swallows up most of the profits, and few men ever grew rich on a newspaper. Most men sink under the expenses and are utterly ruined. Whether this shall be my fate depends on the success of this appeal.”

The item goes on for most of a column and is signed by T.A.S. Doniphan, who would operate the Free Trader until 1848, six years after this notice appeared. Either a lot of deadbeat readers felt guilty and rushed to the Free Trader with cash in hand, or Doniphan was bluffing.

Subscribers would not pay their fees. It was a common lament of the editors of the early republic. Why didn’t editors merely strike the deadbeats from the delivery list instead of providing news for free to dozens, maybe hundreds, of readers who would not pay? Editors filled the papers with threats toward nonpaying subscribers, they hired collection agents, but they shied away from the most obvious solution — stopping delivery of the newspaper. Not surprisingly, longer subscription lists boosted advertising rates, and an editor who could boast of a large circulation (even if many or most of them did not pay) enjoyed more enthusiastic political support. Editors definitely had good reasons to tolerate subscribers who did not pay, as well as the many citizens who stole or temporarily borrowed newspapers from their neighbors. (43)

Sometimes, however, editors did try to collect delinquent subscriptions and other fees through the courts. Between 1804 and 1820, Marschalk carried his grievances to the Adams County court more than twenty times. He sued Anthony Campbell for almost $60 in 1819, seeking $200 in damages. Marschalk sought more than $200 from Richard May in 1826 “for value received.” In the same year, he sought $142.50 from John Munce for advertisements that were not paid for.(44)

Marschalk also had problems with John Forsyth. In 1828, Forsyth owed $833 for “the insertion of and publication before that time, of divers advertisements and paragraphs in a certain newspaper called ‘The Natchez Gazette,’ printed and published by the said Andrew Marschalk ... and in a certain other newspaper called the ‘Mississippi Statesman and Natchez Gazette’ ... and a certain other newspaper called the ‘Statesman and Gazette.’” Forsyth said he would pay the debt but died soon after. Marschalk received less than $300 from the estate. (45)

In a debt case that lasted from 1833 to 1835, the court awarded Marschalk the sum of $241.40 from John B. Nevitt, planter, politician, and the town’s leading advocate of the Catholic Church. Nevitt had not paid for two subscriptions to the Gazette (one of these was for his son George) “for certain advertisements inserted in [the Gazette] over a long span of time,” and for unspecified goods and services. (46)

In 1856, Giles Hillyer collected “... the chairs scenery and stage paraphernalia of [the] Clinton Thespians,” a traveling theater troupe that proved unable to pay for $215 for printing work, presumably advertising in the Courier or handbills and posters. (47) The record does not state what Hillyer did with these items.

In a cash-poor economy, everyone, including businessmen, depended on credit for business transactions, expecting projected future profits to pay for the purchase of goods and services. Publishers went into debt to buy printing supplies, to increase land holdings and to invest in other business ventures. Publishers and editors could also be creditors, extending credit to subscribers and for services and supplies. When debts were not paid, journalists could be plaintiffs or defendants in civil court. Some examples of the problems of debt have already been mentioned. Court records from Adams County contain dozens of debt cases involving publishers and editors trying to recover money owed them or being pursued for debt.

James White, another Marschalk creditor, sued the firm of Marschalk and Evens for the sum of $49.99 “for the work and labor, care and diligence.”(48) Like many of the debt cases, the official papers do not give any details on the nature of the debt. In 1814, The Bank of Mississippi sought $67.50 from Marschalk for a promissory note to Thomas Winn. In 1820, the Bank again sued Marschalk for an unpaid promissory note, this time for the sum of $170. William Allinder worked for Marschalk from February to November 1823 as a “compositor and pressman in and about the printing [office] of a certain newspaper ... printed and published in [Adams County] called ‘the Mississippi State Gazette’” for $33 a month. In May 1824, Allinder sued Marschalk for $287.10 for unpaid wages and a further $187.10 for “divers sums of money” that Allinder loaned to Marschalk. However, an itemized list among the documents shows that Allinder frequently borrowed small sums of cash from Marschalk to buy, among other things, a $27 coat, a pair of pantaloons ($2.50), a blank book of fine paper with a Morocco cover (made to order for $5), and several tickets to the theatre ($1 to $1.50 each). The total of these amounts reached over $140. The court dismissed the case in November 1824, but the details of the agreement reached by the parties are not given. (49)

The estate of William Murray sought $400 from Marschalk in 1827 for unidentified services. (50) The records for Mississippi Territory show that Marschalk was sued for debt twenty times between 1805 and 1814. In an 1822 letter to a friend, Marschalk remarked that “with more than $10,000 of real property in my possession, I am in danger of prison for $100.”(51)

In 1820, D. Knox and T. Nixon sought payment on a $75 promissory note made out by James K. Cook “for value received.” In 1828, during Cook’s stint at the Ariel, Thomas Ronalds sued Cook for $153.45 for not paying for twenty reams of imperial printing paper. (52)

Southern businessmen often invested in numerous ventures and the Natchez journalists commonly dabbled in various occupations and schemes, sometimes leaving the newspaper business entirely. Newspaper offices sometimes doubled as bookbinderies or reading rooms, and printers produced private handbills for customers. Like everyone else with money and ambition, journalists acquired land for planting or speculation. They sought official printing contracts and jobs in the city or county government.

Almost all Natchez journalists accumulated land when possible. Between 1802 and 1820, Marschalk purchased at least six plots of land, ranging from lots in the cities of Natchez and nearby Washington to a forty-acre farm near the intersection of St. Catherine’s Creek and Kitchen’s Mill Creek (53) and “100 French acres” located seven miles from Natchez. (54) Marschalk sold some of these parcels of land within a few years but he retained some for as long as twenty years. Marschalk mortgaged several of these plots more than once when he needed money. In the last years of his life, Marschalk used the land to provide for the care of his wife Sydney and his young daughter Ana Maria. (55)

William Mellen, publisher of the Courier and Journal from 1835 to 1836, purchased a lot in the southeast corner of Natchez (56) in 1835 and lived there in a house that still stands until his death in 1864. Mellen mortgaged the land in 1841 but paid it off the following year and later bought the adjoining lot. (57) Mellen purchased five other lots in the city of Natchez, and his wife Sarah purchased the 300-acre Locust Grove plantation for $9880 in 1850. (58) The sale included at least ten slaves, 1000 bushels of corn, seventy-five hogs, twenty-five cattle, eighteen sheep, two wagons and a farm house. The Mellens sold Locust Grove in 1859.

Phineas Merrick, proprietor of the Ariel in the late 1820s, bought five parcels of land in and around Natchez between 1823 and his death in 1831. In 1830, William Grissam mortgaged a lot and several buildings in the city of Natchez to Merrick. The agreement also included four slaves and “press-types, implements and furniture complete of the printing establishment of the Southern Galaxy in [Natchez] consisting of two presses about ten stands and about 2500 lbs of type.” (59) The land, slaves, and the printing equipment became the property of Merrick when Grissam proved unable to pay. (The firm of Grissam and Hotchkiss was over $25,000 in debt in 1830.)

…

Andrew Marschalk held the printing contract for the territorial government in his earliest days in the Natchez area. Journalists often found their way into government positions following or concurrent with their newspaper careers. Court papers show that James K. Cook, who had to mortgage the Ariel to Merrick though he stayed on as editor, served as court clerk in Natchez for many years. Both Andrew Marschalk and Samuel H.B. Black of the Natchez Daily Courier served as justices of the peace.

Court cases also reveal that the newspaper proprietors supplemented their income by printing handbills for customers. Several publishers sued a man named John Forsyth in the late 1820s for not paying his printing bills. James K. Cook, acting for Merrick, sued to recover the sum of $136.50 “for divers advertisements in the Ariel newspaper and other printing jobs, handbills, and c.” (60) Also acting for Merrick, Langdon sued Forsyth for $208.50 for services, described in the same words. In both cases, the plaintiffs won. (61)

Aside from taking in boarders and speculating in land, Marschalk also published The Tablet, a literary newspaper, and tried to establish a newspaper called The Watchman in Port Gibson in partnership with Thomas H. Ewing in the 1830s. The latter venture does not seem to have been successful as Marschalk and Ewing were sued in 1833 by Mary T. Defrance for nearly $500 for not paying for room and board, liquor, the care of horses and other services. (62) For a time, Marschalk also operated a drugstore. Near the end of his life, Marschalk mortgaged his apothecary to John Quitman for $3000. (63)

In begging for the payment of subscription fees and by trying out various business propositions in addition to journalism, a major motive for the Natchez editor was providing for his family. According to the 1820 census, Andrew Marschalk’s household contained seventeen people, including four slaves. Before 1850, the census did not name the persons marked except for the head of the household, but many scraps of information in various kinds of records provide clues to the identities of many of the people in Marschalk’s extended family. The census does provide age group, gender, and race.

Marschalk’s large number of children make up most of the 1820 census listing. The census lists the oldest white female in the Marschalk household in the 16-26 years of age category. There are two listed. Clearly, Marschalk’s first wife Susannah no longer lived in the household but there is no information about her death. The two women in this category are probably Marschalk’s last wife Sydney and his recently-married daughter Ana Maria Evens. She married William Evens in 1818. Another of Marschalk’s daughters, named Susannah like her mother, married Robert Stewart the same year. The 1820 census lists the Robert Stewart household separately, a total of four people and no slaves. (64)

Because the 1820 census does not contain a separate listing for Ana Maria Evens and her husband, it is likely they lived with Marschalk because he formed a business with Evens under the name of Marschalk and Evens. An 1819 lawsuit describes Marschalk and Evens as printers. (65) William and Ana Maria Evens and their young son Charles died in the fall of 1825, possibly in one of the frequent yellow fever epidemics. (66)

Jane Eleonora Marschalk married Miller Stewart, Robert’s brother, in 1824 and still lived in the Marschalk household in 1820. One other white female under the age of ten cannot be identified and may be a daughter or granddaughter of Marschalk who died in infancy without being mentioned in any other records. (Death records show the demise of Catherine Ann Marschalk, “the infant daughter of Andrew Marschalk” on January 2, 1821 of “anomolous diseases.” As the child’s age is listed as “days,” it seems unlikely that Catherine Ann is the same daughter under five years old from the 1820 census.)

Eight white males below the age of 26 lived in the Marschalk household, including three between 18 and 26. William Evens has already been identified. Three of Marschalk’s sons, James T., George, and Andrew, probably lived with their father at this time.

Adams County records indicate that, in 1817, Marschalk acquired an apprentice named John Mason “from the Orphan’s Court.” Marschalk would provide “meat, drink, clothing, lodging and everything necessary” for Mason until he reached the age of 21. Mason would “learn the art, trade and mystery of a printer” and how to read, write and cypher. By the terms of the agreement, Marschalk would provide Mason with a suit of clothing at the end of the indenture period. (67) It is likely that Mason is one of the male children listed as he would only have been 13 at the time of the census. The white males not identified could be children (or possibly grandchildren) of Andrew Marschalk who were never identified in any of the other records. Marschalk might have had another apprentice that was not recorded in the deed book.

Andrew Marschalk took in boarders as well. In the 1818 civil case Marschalk v. Champlin, he sued George Champlin for $200 for money borrowed from Marschalk “and also for meat drink washing lodging and other necessaries.” (68) The 1820 census might include some boarders among the unidentified persons.

Of the four slaves, only two correspond to persons mentioned in the other records. A single female slave aged 26-45 might be the same unnamed “negro woman 60 years of age (old and infirm)” sold among many other items to cover an unpaid promissory note in March 1834. The same sale included “a slave named Robert (lame) 30 years” (69) who may be one of three male slaves aged 14 or younger in the 1820 census.

According to the 1830 census, the Marschalk household consisted of fifteen persons. In 1833, he transferred the deeds of some of his land to provide for his wife Sydney, his infant daughter Ana Maria Marschalk (named for his deceased daughter of the same name), two grandchildren and his sons Andrew, Francis and Abel. All of them must be in the household of the 1830 census. The presence of three men aged 25-30 and one man aged 40-50 imply that Marschalk continued to take in boarders. The 1830 census lists only two slaves, probably Robert and the unnamed woman from the previous census.

The censuses of Adams County from 1820 to 1840 indicate that large households constituted the normal situation for all classes and journalists were not exempt. The 1820 census listed ten people in the household of Richard C. Langdon, of the Mississippi Republican and the Ariel. Phineas F. Merrick, a large landholder who dabbled in insurance as well as publishing the Ariel for a few years, was the head of a household of fourteen, including seven slaves, in 1830. William Grissam, of the Southern Galaxy, lived with nine other people, including four slaves, according to the same census. In the 1840 census, the Mississippi Free Trader’s T.A.S. Doniphan headed a household of nine. James K. Cook, also of the Ariel, lived by himself in the 1830 census, a rarity among Natchez residents.

Whether they were career journalists like Andrew Marschalk or political dabblers like Thomas Reed or Phineas Merrick, Natchez journalists of the early republic lived through exciting times and suffered through unstable periods as newspapers came and went in the first third of the nineteenth century. They lived in the same way as other ambitious southern gentlemen, in large households with at least a few slaves, acquiring land when they could and dabbling in every business opportunity that looked good as they fought off their creditors by going after their debtors.

With so many newspapers in Natchez and so many Mississippi gentlemen getting involved in one journalistic enterprise or another, categorizing any of them as journalists seems almost pointless. Every man wore a dozen hats in his lifetime and some of them wore the hat of the newspaperman at some point and some of them didn’t. Andrew Marschalk wore it for over thirty years whereas other men wore it for a few years or months.

CHAPTER THREE ENDNOTES

(1) It is possible that other women worked in Natchez journalism in a capacity that prevented their work from being recognized. Harriet Prewett was never credited for her work on the Natchez Courier, but she took over the Yazoo City Whig and was listed as editor. Her Natchez work was noted much later.

(2) Alford, Prince Among Slaves, pp. 86-88.

(3) Mississippi Free Trader and Natchez Gazette, December 7, 1837.

(4) Mississippi Free Trader and Natchez Gazette, December 7, 1837.

(5) Mississippi Free Trader and Natchez Gazette, November 30, 1837.

(6) Alford, Prince Among Slaves, p. 86.

(7) Sydnor, “The Beginning of Printing in Mississippi,” pp. 49-55.

(8) Mississippi Free Trader and Natchez Gazette, December 7, 1837. The article says the impressment incident took place in August 1799, but this is clearly erroneous because letters to and from Winthrop Sargent show that Marschalk was printing the territorial laws of Mississippi at that time. It may be a typographical error for 1789, a date which fits very well for this vague period of Marschalk’s life.

(9) Marschalk is said to have served with Meriwether Lewis at Chickasaw Bluffs. He may also have known William Clark and future president William Henry Harrison, both of whom are listed on the officer roster for the Battle of Fallen Timbers.

(10) Letters to Captain John Miller. Andrew Marschalk Papers, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, Mississippi.

(11) Dunbar Rowland, History of Mississippi: Heart of the South, Volume II, L-Z (Chicago, 1925), entry on Andrew Marschalk. Alford, in Prince Among Slaves, speculates that Marschalk’s close call with impressment inspired the subject matter of “The Galley Slave.” William Reeve, composer, and J.C. Cross, lyricist, wrote a musical comedy titled The Purse, or Benevolent Tar, in London in 1794. “The Galley Slave” was one of the songs in The Purse, which was performed in Philadelphia in 1795 and in Boston by 1797. “The Galley Slave” was one of the top ten songs in 1790s America. Almost every secondary source refers to The Purse as an opera. However, examining the work shows that is actually a musical comedy in one act with several songs. Ellen Koskoff, editor, The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Volume 3: The United States and Canada (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 2001), p. 180; Douglas C. McMurtrie, A Bibliography of Mississippi Imprints, 1798-1830 (Beouvoir Community, Mississippi: The Book Farm, 1945), p. 19; Stanley Sadie, editor, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Volume 21, Recitative to Russian Federation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 75-76; and O.G. Sonneck, Bibliography of Early Secular Music (Washington, D.C.; H.L. McQueen, 1905), p. 122. (See Appendix for the text of “The Galley Slave.”)

(12) Hamilton, editor, “Notes and Documents: The Printing of the 1799 Territorial Laws of the Mississippi Territory,” pp. 90-91.

(13) Sydnor, “The Beginning of Printing in Mississippi,” pp. 49-55.

(14) Deed records, Book E-X, 1802-1835, Hall of Records, Adams County, Natchez, Mississippi. Marschalk v. Champlin, 1818; Marschalk v. Langdon, 1818; Marschalk v. Hackett, 1818; Defrance v. Marschalk and Ewing, 1834, Historic Natchez Foundation, Natchez, Mississippi. Marschalk’s many different business ventures will be discussed in more detail throughout this chapter.

(15) William C. Davis, Three Roads to the Alamo: The Lives and Fortunes of David Crockett, James Bowie, and William Barret Travis (New York: HarperCollins, 1998), p. 645.

(16) The State v. Anthony Campbell, 1818, Historic Natchez Foundation, Natchez, Mississippi. Campbell, a shopkeeper and militia captain, later entered the newspaper business and became one of the town’s leading journalists. James, Antebellum Natchez, p. 95.

(17) Marschalk v. Langdon, 1818; Marschalk v. Hackett, 1818, Historic Natchez Foundation, Natchez, Mississippi.

(18) The State of Mississippi v. Langdon, 1822, Historic Natchez Foundation, Natchez, Mississippi. Nevitt was a large planter and a leading Catholic of the region.

(19) Miles, “The Mississippi Press in the Jackson Era, 1824-1841,” pp. 2-5.

(20) Natchez Courier, January 25, 1853.

(21) Robert E. May, Manifest Destiny’s Underworld (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002), p. 17.

(22) Mellen v. Besançon, et.al., 1835, Historic Natchez Foundation, Natchez, Mississippi.

(23) Mississippi Free Trader, November 13, 1835.

(24) Mississippi Free Trader, November 13, 1835.

(25) Miles, “The Mississippi Press in the Jackson Era, 1824-1841.” pp. 14-15. The affair with Armat is covered in more detail in a later chapter. Unfortunately, there is very little information on the other affairs of honor that Besançon was involved in. Miles says, without offering any details, that the challenges were all related to his appointment as bank commissioner. The identity of the man he killed is unknown, although Miles quotes a letter written by one of Besançon’s New York family members that says that Lorenzo Besançon “shot his adversary above the hip, he died in 36 hours. The principals in [the other duels] backed out, and the whole was thus disposed of.”

(26) Ibid., p. 14. There are many gaps in the record of Besançon’s life in Natchez. Active for only a few years in the life of Natchez, he does not appear on any of the censuses. He may not have had his primary residence in Natchez as he represented a different part of Mississippi in the legislature.

(27) The Natchez Courier, February 7, 1853.

(28) Some sources say Hillyer was born in New York, but the 1850 Mississippi census gives his birthplace as Connecticut.

(29) Natchez Democrat, April 29, 1871.

(30) Natchez Semi-Weekly Courier, April 30, 1850.

(31) Natchez Semi-Weekly Courier, May 17, 1850. Most articles in the newspapers of this period are anonymous or pseudonymous. Since the Unionist tone of the Courier remains similar throughout the many years of Hillyer’s editorship, it is likely that he wrote most, if not all, of the editorial content. However, authorship can not be known with absolute certainty. Because Hillyer’s name is prominent in every issue of the Courier from 1850 to 1861, he was certainly prepared to take responsibility for the tone of these articles even if he did not write every one.

(32) Natchez Semi-Weekly Courier, June 4, 1850.

(33) Natchez Courier, July 18, 1850.

(34) Because of concerns about the admission of California as a free state and other issues related to the balance of power between North and South, slave state leaders called for a convention to be held in Nashville, Tennessee, so that the South could make plans to counter any threat to southern power. By the time of the Nashville Convention in the summer of 1850, most southerners agreed that northern compromises were sufficient to keep the peace. Extremists in several states, particularly Mississippi and South Carolina, advocated more state and regional conventions to coordinate southern actions against any threats to slavery. Most southerners rejected the extremists, and the secession controversy died out by the end of 1851. For more information on the secession crisis of 1850, see Cleo Hearon, Mississippi and the Compromise and 1850 (Jackson, MS: Mississippi Historical Society, 1914); and William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 475-535.

(35) Natchez Courier, March 6, 1858.

(36) Deed Records, Book KK, 1854, p. 279, Hall of Records, Adams County, Natchez, Mississippi.

(37) Alexander Farrar Papers, Louisiana State University, Department of Archives and Manuscripts, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

(38) The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1880-1901). See Volume 20, p. 671; Vol. 23, pp. 854, 858; Vol. 30, pp. 547, 549, 674, 714; and others.

(39) William C. Harris, Presidential Reconstruction in Mississippi (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1967), p. 131.

(40) William C. Harris, The Day of the Carpetbagger (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1979), p. 131, quoting the Natchez Courier, January 10, 13 and 31, 1868.

(41) Ibid., p. 35.

(42) Natchez Daily Democrat, April 29, 1871.

(43) Steffen, “Newspapers for Free: The Economies of Newspaper Circulation in the Early Republic,” p. 385.

(44) Marschalk v. Campbell, 1819; Marschalk v. May, 1826; Marschalk v. Munce, 1826, Historic Natchez Foundation, Natchez, Mississippi.

(45) Marschalk v. Forsyth, 1829, Historic Natchez Foundation, Natchez, Mississippi.

(46) Marschalk v. Nevitt, 1835, Historic Natchez Foundation, Natchez, Mississippi.

(47) Deed Records, Book LL, 1854, p. 25, Hall of Records, Adams County, Natchez, Mississippi.

(48) White v. Marschalk and Evens, 1819, Historic Natchez Foundation, Natchez, Mississippi.

(49) The Bank of the State of Mississippi v. Marschalk, 1814, 1820; Allinder v. Marschalk, 1824, Historic Natchez Foundation, Natchez, Mississippi.

(50) Murray v. Marschalk, 1827, Historic Natchez Foundation, Natchez, Mississippi.

(51) Davis, A Way Through the Wilderness, pp. 67-68.

(52) Knox and Nixon v. Cook, 1820; Ronalds v. Cook, 1828, Historic Natchez Foundation, Natchez, Mississippi.

(53) Deed records, Book F, 1809. p. 81, Hall of Records, Adams County, Natchez, Mississippi.

(54) Deed records, Book F, 1810, p. 321, Hall of Records, Adams County, Natchez, Mississippi.

(55) Deed records, Book O, 1824, p. 29; Book U, 1833, pp. 243, 247, Hall of Records, Adams County, Natchez, Mississippi.

(56) Deed records, Book W, 1835, p. 370, Hall of Records, Adams County, Natchez, Mississippi.

(57) Deed records, Book DD, 1841, p. 1; Book KK, 1854, p. 474, Hall of Records, Adams County, Natchez, Mississippi.

(58) Deed records, Book HH, 1850, p. 360, Hall of Records, Adams County, Natchez, Mississippi.

(59) Deed records, Book S, 1830, p. 47, Hall of Records, Adams County, Natchez, Mississippi.

(60) Cook, for use of Merrick v. Forsyth, 1828, Historic Natchez Foundation, Natchez, Mississippi.

(61) Langdon, for use of Merrick v. Forsyth, 1828, Historic Natchez Foundation, Natchez, Mississippi.

(62) Defrance v. Marschalk and Ewing, 1833, Historic Natchez Foundation, Natchez, Mississippi.

(63) Deed records, Book X, 1837, p. 197, Hall of Records, Adams County, Natchez, Mississippi.

(64) Stewart was a prosperous cabinet maker. For Robert Stewart, the 1840 census shows a household of 42 people, including 19 slaves. The 1850 census lists the value of Stewarts’s real estate at $4000.

(65) White v. Marschalk and Evens, 1819, Historical Natchez Foundation, Natchez, Mississippi.

(66) Ariel, October 31, 1825.

(67) Deed records, Book I, 1817, p. 351, Hall of Records, Adams County, Natchez, Mississippi.

(68) Marschalk v. Champlin, 1818, Historic Natchez Foundation, Natchez, Mississippi.

(69) Deed records, Book U, 1833, p. 147, Hall of Records, Adams County, Natchez, Mississippi.

CHAPTER THREE: CONFLICT AND HONOR AND THE NATURE OF THE NATCHEZ PRESS

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"Political editorship is nearly synonymous with opposition — another name for vexatious struggles on an arena where the gladiatorial cut and thrust is given and repelled, received and sent back, with a celerity and skill that might shame the trained bands of the Roman coliseum." - Lorenzo Besançon, editor, Mississippi Free Trader, 1839

…

The journalists of Natchez before the 1830s, a unique breed like journalists across the nation, served their purpose in spreading the news and encouraging debate in the new republic at they same time they struggled with debts and duels and assaults, floods, earthquakes and yellow fever epidemics. The 19th-century Southern editor also coped with the rigid demands of honor, and the conflicts that resulted from the volatile mix of honor and inflammatory material in the newspapers, on a regular basis. A Southern editor had to balance the behavior expected by his supportive readers with the offense he might give to his opponents. If he did not express his view forcefully enough, he risked alienating the political base that supported his newspaper. On the other hand, intemperate and insulting words might provide a pretext for angry letters, harsh words, mobs, beating and challenges to duels. A Natchez editor had to be prepared for fists and bricks and dueling pistols. If he toned down the rhetoric or backed down from a duel, he risked losing influence and support in the community. If he continued to berate his opponents or accepted a duel challenge, he risked bodily harm or death.

The incidents described in this chapter illustrate the conflicts that burdened newspaper editors because of the nature of the profession. The merchant, the lawyer, the planter and the doctor could avoid these contests with little difficulty if he wished, but a Southern newspaperman in a competitive, self-important environment like Natchez had to put forward strong views to be an effective statesman for his political party and stay in business. None of the four incidents discussed in this chapter depicts a formal duel, two men facing each other on the field of honor with pistols drawn. These examples depict several kinds of inflammatory material that could appear in the newspapers as well as, in two of the incidents, the violence that could result. These incidents also reveal the ongoing nature of these conflicts. An editor lived with the consequences of the contents of his newspaper for months or years. The last few months of the feud between Andrew Marschalk and George Poindexter are recorded week by week, but the bad blood between them began many years before. Personal animosities are not so strongly emphasized in the newspaper war in Natchez during the presidential election of 1828, but it was still a hot campaign because Marschalk and the Jacksonians still smarted over Andrew Jackson’s defeat by John Quincy Adams in the election of 1824. In 1837, John Quitman attacked and beat editor Lorenzo Besançon with a cane, but for Besançon, it was just one more dramatic altercation in a series of lawsuits, lynch mobs, vigilante courts and duel challenges he experienced in four years of Natchez journalism. Articles from a few months of the 1855 campaign for congressman between the ubiquitous Quitman and Courier editor Giles Hillyer produced dozens of insulting and inflammatory statements, but it was merely a part of the decade-long rivalry between the Courier and the Free Trader when Hillyer was editor.

The Natchez newspapermen set up shop in the brawling, boisterous environment of antebellum Mississippi with ambitions of acquiring land, wealth and influence. They knew, or they quickly learned, that success depended on an adherence to certain rules, a sense of honor, a stubborn persistence, and an acceptance of slavery. If it was too much for them, they gave up journalism and moved on. If they stayed, they had had to accept Southern views of honor and the potential conflict that could result.

The lives of these journalists must have contained many interesting and relevant incidents of violence, conflict, emotion, tension and humor. We know of only a few of these incidents from a few lines in newspapers and court documents. In a few cases, these incidents are inextricably tangled up with the history of the newspapers just because of the nature of the job and the society, an environment that attracted political, newsworthy conflicts that would then receive great attention in the newspapers. Examining a few of these incidents in detail may help us put ourselves in the shoes of the men who lived the daily conflicts of antebellum southern journalism.

…
During the War of 1812, a rising Mississippi politician assaulted the editor of a local paper after enduring weeks of ridicule. George Poindexter, a Southerner by birth, epitomized Southern honor at its least flexible and humorless extreme, and belligerently defended every perceived slight against his honor. The editor, Andrew Marschalk, lacked such a view of personal honor, perhaps because he came from a working-class background in New York City. Poindexter probably never seriously considered issuing a formal challenge to Marschalk because the New Yorker would not have been considered a gentleman and Marschalk would not have accepted the challenge. Marschalk, however, was no coward. He had been aggressively representing the interests of his political allies for years, he took his lumps when it was necessary, and his pen never seemed to run dry of venomous comments. He did not have to blast away at anybody to prove to his readership that he would represent them.

Early in March 1815, Poindexter walked into the office of the Washington Republican and struck Marschalk with a walking cane. Some sources say Poindexter used a brickbat or that Marschalk was beaten almost senseless. The two men had know each other since 1802, they had even been allies in the fractious policies of the territory’s early years, but considerable bad blood had developed between them by 1815, and the beating was only the most sensational incident in an ongoing feud that was fought in the newspapers, in the courts, and even on the battlefield. Poindexter had arrived in Mississippi Territory in 1802, just a year after Marschalk published the first issue of the Mississippi Herald. Poindexter, a young, energetic and ambitious lawyer, quickly ingratiated himself with the Claiborne faction of the Jeffersonian Republicans. (1) As early as November 1803, Poindexter had been appointed as Attorney General for the Mississippi Territory. Early in 1807, he was the territorial representative to the U.S. Congress. And by the time of the 1814-1815 feud with Marschalk, he was a territorial judge presiding at Washington, the capital of the territory, a few miles north of Natchez. Marschalk had started the Washington Republican in the capital in 1813.

Poindexter’s bad temper and combative nature were well known. Soon after his arrival in Natchez, he almost got into a fight over a newspaper article. In 1811, Poindexter killed Abijah Hunt in a duel and, soon after, he narrowly avoided a duel with Stephen Minor. (2) J.F.H. Claiborne said that “his life, at this period, was a perpetual embroilment.” (3)

An aggressive journalist, Marschalk seldom pulled punches when engaging his political opponents. An extant bench warrant shows that he had been accused of libel in Mississippi Territory as early as May 1803. In 1807, Marschalk ridiculed Samuel Terrell, the editor of the Mississippi Messenger, mocking his youth and implying that Poindexter’s faction controlled the Messenger: “I know you are a good sort of a young man — always do as you are bid, and never contradict anybody — but Sammy, as it is well known that you do not make a practice of scribbling, (nay, some go so far as to say that you are not even adequate to the reading of a proof sheet — but there is much slander in the world Sammy) — are you not apprehensive that ill natured people may accuse you of being the cats paw and Scavenger of ‘Ambidexter & Co.’?” Marschalk went so far as to suggest a parody advertisement for Terrell to run in the Messenger, an official notice that the Poindexter faction was running the newspaper: “AMBIDEXTER & Co., Ministers Plenipotentiary, Envoys Extraordinary, and Ambassadors in Ordinary ... Beg Leave to inform the public of this and the neighboring Territory that they have opened their shop at the MESSENGER OFFICE ...” (4)

A conflict between Marschalk and Poindexter might have seemed inevitable to a 19th-century Natchez observer, even though they belonged to the same party, the Jeffersonian Republicans. Federalist power dissipated pretty quickly in the Old Southwest, and the factions that developed within the Republican Party were based on personalities and local issues.

“Parties in the Territory of that day were personal rather than political,” noted Clayton James, (5) and no case demonstrates this phenomenon more clearly than the Poindexter-Marschalk feud. Court documents show that Poindexter sued Marschalk for debt in 1812. The two men had business dealings as early as 1802, but the role of this relationship in later disputes can only be based on speculation. (6) For the historian inclined to seek out a specific cause, the mists of time have hidden the ultimate origins of the feud. Both men possessed combative personalities and, by 1814, had achieved prominent positions in Natchez political society. By the winter of 1814-1815, the feud had been going on for some time, and a close scrutiny of events that culminated in this beating will help us to understand many important issues of the time, the nature of the press, and the combative culture of the Old Southwest.

The immediate chain of events that led to Poindexter’s beating of Marschalk began in the fall of 1814 when Marschalk published an anonymous letter from “A Bystander,” almost certainly Marschalk himself. The letter criticized Poindexter for disparaging remarks he had made about a memorial to the U.S. Congress for settling the controversy with Britain over the validity of many of the titles to land in the northern part of the territory. Poindexter, on receiving the memorial, “threw it scornfully down, saying that no gentleman in the town would sign such a paper, and that every man who did was a damned rascal.” Bystander pointed out that Poindexter’s statement insulted the citizens of Adams County, “men of the first respectability, standing and intelligence in the territory; and who perhaps, possess more patriotism and interest for its welfare and that of its citizens, than he has, or ever will.” (7)

Marschalk also resurrected an accusation from 1811 that Poindexter, as Mississippi’s territorial representative to the U.S. Congress, had withheld a petition entrusted to him by the people of the territory. To modern eyes, these issues appear to be minor squabbles, and figuring out why these accusations led to such acrimony and violence seems baffling. But a man’s honor could hardly be separated from his physical person in the Old Southwest. Some southerners took the code of honor more seriously than others, and few southern politicians displayed a more explosive idea of honor than George Poindexter. In addition, the right to petition was a vital mode of recourse that the generation of the American Revolution (which included Marschalk) had fought for. If Poindexter really had withheld a petition from Congress, he was denying his constituents one of the four rights awarded inclusion in the First Amendment, and his foes would be certain to describe it as an affront to the Constitution.

Within a few weeks, Marschalk published a series of letters in the Washington Republican under the pseudonym “Castigator.” The controversy of the withheld petition resurfaced and Poindexter also suffered attacks for the old duel with Abijah Hunt and many vague charges about his morals. At the same time the Castigator letters appeared, news of the War of 1812 enlivened Mississippi Territory with rumors of a British invasion along the Gulf Coast. Perhaps tiring of the political sniping but more likely eager for military glory, Poindexter resigned his post as territorial judge and joined Andrew Jackson’s army as it marched to defend the Old Southwest against the British. In early 1815, differing versions of Poindexter’s role in the Battle of New Orleans would enliven the Natchez press for several weeks. (8)

Just because Poindexter had left Natchez to march with Jackson, the newspaper feud did not subside. On October 12, Marschalk’s newspaper published the first in a promised series of letters from a writer calling himself Castigator. This letter, while harsh on Poindexter, stuck to the subject at hand — the recent memorial dismissed by Poindexter — and refrained from mentioning the earlier repressed petition, the duel with Abijah Hunt, or any other charges. In a two-column editorial, Castigator claimed to have signed the offending memorial, derided Poindexter for his insult about those who signed, and implored Poindexter to explain himself to his constituents in Adams County:

“Now, sir, I am a signer; yet, am not disposed to take advantage of your imprudencies, your intemperance, or the intoxication into which you may have been carried, by the teazing importunities (mixed with a little abuse) of a trooper, confined to the prison bounds, and like to lose his trip in consequence of your delinquency in paying him for work and labor done.

You are now, sir, categorically called on to make good your charges, or acknowledge you lie.

You cannot say, sir, you are attacked. You have thrown the gauntlet yourself first; you have attacked the whole community, as well as the representatives of the people, in terms of vulgarity becoming yourself alone, and not your station.

If, sir, the charge you are now called upon to substantiate, or deny, be too crude for the delicacy of your investigating faculties, you can be indulged with an imparlance upon joining issue on the merits of our memorial. Shew, if you can, its injustice, inexpediency, or impolity, that the attainment of its object can possibly militate against the prosperity of our territory; the peace or quiet of its inhabitants.

My reason, sir, for addressing you through the public prints is, that the occasion is public. The attack you made involves not an individual or a neighborhood, but the whole people of a territory. Our defence, therefore, as well as your justification, should be equally extensive.”

In the October 19, 1814, issue of the Washington Republican, Marschalk published the full text of the memorial “which the hon. George Poindexter finds so much fault with for its personal insinuations against himself. — Every one can read and draw his own conclusions.” The petition thanks Congress for settling the confusing state of land claims in the northern Mississippi Territory. Land had been granted and sold under several different national governments (notably England and Spain before the United States acquired the territory), confusion had reigned, and Congress had made decisions on the regulation of the validity of these claims. The memorial contained no details and blames no one for dishonesty or confusion. The memorial mentions no single individual. It seems likely that Poindexter did make the “damned rascals” comment because it would have been very easy for him to simply deny it, but his reasons for being displeased with the memorial remain obscure.

If Poindexter had criticized the memorial, he could have explained himself or he could have simply ignored the entire controversy. Instead, he had Marschalk arrested and jailed for contempt. Marschalk posted bond for his release pending a trial in the April 1815 term but he refused to post bond to guarantee that he would not print the rest of a promised series of Castigator letters. Incarcerated again at Poindexter’s insistence, Marschalk stayed in jail for several days before he secured a writ of habeus corpus from Judge Josiah Simpson. (9)

Marschalk may have gone too far in his swipes at Poindexter, but the latter surely abused his office by incarcerating Marschalk. The freedom of the press became a main theme in the Washington Republican in the ensuing weeks. Marschalk had withheld many of the remaining Castigator letters from the newspaper, publishing them in a pamphlet which he advertised in the Washington Republican. In the November 9, 1814, issue, he printed the seventh Castigator letter and set upon Poindexter’s misuse of judicial power:

“You attack, individually, the people for petitioning and judging for themselves - You then, officially, attempt to restrain their right to investigate your conduct, through the medium of the press.

When, sir, the rights of the people are invaded, there is no time to enquire the cause. Repel the invasion, and then compromise for the injury done. The submission of a free people to the constituted authorities, is only a compliance with their own laws . . . .

. . . The late attempt made by your honor to destroy the liberty of the press, has roused the attention of every pretender to liberty and republican government. It leaves no ground for suspicion - renders conjecture necessary - the act speaks for itself, in language not to be misunderstood. I mean to investigate its merit with candor and decency. Respect is due to your station; but not to your illegal and unconstitutional acts.

That your sentence against the printer (col. Marschalk) for him to remain in prison until he should give security to keep the peace and be of good behaviour, connectedly with the charge of libel, is contrary to law, I appeal to every gentleman of the profession. Nor could you or your obsequious attorney general, produce a syllable of law, or a single authority in support of your judgment . . . The last part of your sentence, ‘that he should not, in the mean time, print & c. in any form,’ was abandoned and stricken from the record sub silentio. Even to countenance the reading of such an arbitrary and unconstitutional act, exercised on a fellow citizen, in a case involving the rights of all, was calculated to excite horror and contempt, in the breast of a virtuous and patriotic judge — resistance and fury in the people — dismay and terror in its author ...

A judge may be honest in the decision of private cause and a traitor to the liberties of the people. He will manifest when a victim of his resentment is brought before him. He, then, prostitutes the sanctity and dignity of his office, to gratify his vengeance and private malice. Was not this the case with col. Marschalk, the printer, whom you imprisoned several days illegally, and unconstitutionally?”

Hardly a week passed without a new assault on Poindexter for something. In the December 7, 1814, issue, Marschalk devoted nearly four columns of type to ridicule of Poindexter. As well as a very long letter from a writer identified as “Philo-Castigator,” a number of shorter items continue the assault on the judge, such as this amusing trifle:

“The Ink fish when pushed, emits a dark susbstance, thereby clouding the water, that it may make its escape. The judge seems inclinable to try a finesse of this form; and well he may; for “Castigator” is playing him with his rod, as a fisherman would his fish. — We beseech his honor to nibble no more. Our friend in justice, and in civility, may take our “grub-street” advice, that there is a hook under the bait.”

The Mississippi Republican defended Poindexter, with articles by authors who signed with names like “Veritas” and “Aristides.” Poindexter handed out handbills under the title Judge Poindexter’s Address to the People, No. 1, but very little of the material defending Poindexter survives for October and November. Several editorials from December reveal that the editors of the Mississippi Republican successfully discovered writers who could match Marschalk for bitterness. A single article composed of a rather long paragraph called Marschalk “the miserable biped who edits the Washington Republican,” “this old dotard,” and “the pitiful old vagrant, who under the name of the liberty of the press, disgraces the art of printing by his licentiousness;- who, to gratify his personal animosity is daily striving with the vilest arts to undermine a man known to his fellow-citizens for a long series of years, for his probity and integrity.” (10) In the Mississippi Republican of December 14, 1814, a writer using the initials “N.D.” attacked the rival newspaper for its misuse of the style of “Junius,” the English political writer:

“To notice at length the tedious nothings of Castigator, or the pithy notes of his bull-faced “editor,” would be paying a compliment to both that neither deserve: ashamed of his borrowed or rather stolen garb, the former in his last piece has used his own language, and logic: the one vulgar, the other false, and truly proper for the dirty vehicle that has sent them forth amongst us.”

The same issue contains other attacks on Marschalk, including this selection from a letter signed by “Fiat Justice:”

“A certain hireling amanuensis, who weekly patches up pretty sentences from various political writers, as well as he can, and addresses them en masse to the Hon. George Poindexter, through the polished medium of the Washington Republican, when from their matter, they might as well be addressed to the President of a bible society, seems to be fighting the air, as furiously as the valiant knight of Lamancha did a windmill. Lest this beardless boy should in his contest with Æolus soar too high to afford himself a safe retreat, and be carried off in some violent hurricane, to an unknown region, I have determined, if possible, to interfere my feeble aid to prevent such a lamentable catastrophe and for the purpose, to draw his attention to a visible tangible object, against which he may charge with the greatest precision, and the guardian Angel, Truth, shall decide the victory.”

The Mississippi Republican published Poindexter’s version of the Battle of New Orleans on January 18, 1815, only ten days after the battle:

“On the 8th inst. at the dawn of day, the british forces were in motion, and instantly commenced a most furious, and vigorous assault on our lines. The attack was well planned, and bravely maintained by the foe: in the face of a galling and destructive fire from our infantry and artillery. The result was at no time doubtful, the assailants being repulsed in every charge with immense slaughter.”

Poindexter neglected to mention any acts of heroism committed by himself personally as he described a few actions of the Tennessee militia, led by General Carroll, the officer to whom Poindexter had been assigned. (11)

Marschalk responded within a few weeks with a letter written by an unnamed “gentleman of respectability, and high in rank, in Gen. Jackson’s army:”

“I am told that judge Poindexter has written letters to Washington relative to his prowess since his arrival here, and particularly, on the 8th instant. He has returned to Natchez; though you hear him spoken of in this way, you are authorized to contradict it. It is a notorious fact that on the commencement of the cannonading, which commenced the action of the 8th, instead of repairing to his post by the person of Gen. Carroll, he mounted his horse & rode full speed to New Orleans, six miles from the battle ground; and was actually met by the officer charged with the prisoners taken in the action, returning to camp, after the firing in every quarter had ceased. His conduct and flight is notorious in camp, and he is mentioned by both officers and men, with indignation and CONTEMPT.”

The following week, Marschalk continued his campaign to discredit and ridicule Poindexter, printing another paragraph from the same letter he had used the week before and running another letter about the battle, sent by a “private militia man,” who claimed that “when the first or second cannon was fired from the british, the judge was in the act of rising from the bed, — a negro boy was struck by the ball and killed near his honor; who dressed himself immediately, ordered his horse, and rode off to New Orleans, full speed, where he remained ‘till the action was over ... He has completely disgraced himself here. I am told he has pushed off to Natchez, with publications, to forestall the report: This I have from one of his best friends.”

Not content with this swipe at Poindexter’s courage, Marschalk included a very long letter from Philo-Castigator in the same issue. This diatribe fills most of a page and disparages Poindexter on a number of minor, petty points. For example, the letter accuses Poindexter of writing all of the Mississippi Republican editorials defending him, using a number of different names to make it look like he has a number of supporters. Further, Philo-Castigator ridicules Poindexter for comparing himself to Wellington and Mansfield. The letter overflows with insults but contains no substance.

On March 1, 1815, the Mississippi Republican responded with an article signed by “Aristides,” defending Poindexter as a public servant who “has filled the most honorable and dignified stations” who “retired with the full confidence of the administration.” Aristides attacks the motives and the character of Poindexter’s accusers:

“There is not in the whole circle of civilized man, a more odious and detestable creature, than the retailer of camp slanders . . . Such a being in the true style of squint-eyed gossips ever on the alert to find out something brewing in the great world, which if told, would make a noise, and somebody would not hold his head quite so high at court. Every hour brings forth materials for a letter from Mr. such a one of high rank and great respectability to his friend in the village, filled with denunciations, imprecations, frightful images, grave surmises, and downright matters of fact which Bill Tattle and a half dozen other of his messmates, “all good men and true,” will swear to, if necessary, placing it beyond all doubt, that an officer was seen riding one way, when in the opinion of Major Neverout he ought to have gone the other, and that he was only wounded, when according to the most modern system of tactics he ought to have been killed. Or at any rate, even giving up that point for arguments sake, his wound was not so bad, as it should have been, for it is now settled, in a late treatise written by Doctor Limbo on amputations, that a wound is not a wound, properly so called, unless the patient looses a leg or an arm, or an eye.” (12)

On March 8, the Washington Republican reported Poindexter’s assault on Marschalk:

“Judge Poindexter was arrested on Saturday last, on a Territorial Warrant, for an assault on the Editor of this paper, in the door of his office; and being brought before the justice who issued the warrant, refused to enter into recognizance for his appearance at court the justice not requiring security);- while a missimus was making out, to commit him to prison, he withdrew from the court house, and was followed, and taken into custody by the deputy sheriff. He then issued a habeus corpus for himself, returnable before the hon. judge Leake, and left town on Sunday morning, in custody of an officer, for the residence of the judge, in Claiborne county, after giving bond and security to the sheriff, that he would not escape, - Since which we have had no account of him.”

The feud did not end, but it had peaked with the physical attack on Marschalk. The printer was found guilty of libel for one of Marschalk’s mocking articles, but the court neglected to pursue two other indictments for libel. The court sentenced Marschalk to three months in prison, and the persistent printer did not miss a single issue. Poindexter continued to be a major character in Mississippi politics, but he moved away from the Natchez area soon after these incidents. He later served as governor of Mississippi and died in 1853.

…

By the election of 1828, Marschalk had been a fixture of Mississippi journalism for a quarter of a century. He had just turned sixty, but Marshalk showed he could still engage in a brawl with words and write with a poison pen against his political enemies. Even if much of what he wrote crossed the line into silly rhetoric that was easy to ridicule, Marschalk displayed an eagerness to further the goals of the Jacksonians that his readers could admire, even as some of them rolled their eyes at some of the excesses of the presidential election of 1828.

A decade and a half after the feud with Poindexter, Marschalk’s interest in the case of the slave Prince enmeshed him in some political controversy during the 1828 contest between Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams. Prince’s exciting story of capture and enslavement began in the interior of Africa where he enjoyed privileged status as a prince among the Futa. Enslaved by a neighboring kingdom, Prince — whose real name was Ibrahima — eventually ended up in Natchez where he suffered forty years of enslavement. Marschalk became interested in the case, gathered donations to help the cause of freeing Ibrahima, and petitioned Secretary of State Henry Clay to help return the slave to Africa. After many months of diplomacy and negotiating, Ibrahima traveled north but he did not go to Africa as originally agreed, touring the northern states, seeking funds to purchase his large family and generating publicity and attention that Natchez, and the slave states in general, would rather do without. (13)

Other editors knew and respected Ibrahima and reported his story in Natchez newspapers. Cyrus Griffin of the Southern Galaxy published a four-part series on Prince in May and June of 1828, congratulating the newly-freed slave who had left Natchez in April to go to the capital: “We ... cannot but acknowledge our gratitude to an overruling Providence, in remembering this old man, and granting him the only remaining, and, to perhaps the sweetest consolation, in the closing scene of life, of sleeping in the land of his fathers.” Griffin’s series on law, government, religion and customs in Futa Jallo indicates that the editor had spent a considerable amount of time with Ibrahima.

The election of 1828 had produced plenty of partisan attacks, invective and propaganda before the Natchez newspapers began squabbling over Prince. Supporters of Andrew Jackson had not forgotten the previous presidential election, when “Old Hickory” had won the most electoral votes, but the final choice had been decided by the House of Representatives because he did not get a majority. Henry Clay used his considerable clout to put John Quincy Adams in the White House, and Jackson’s supporters accused Clay of making a “corrupt bargain” when Adams appointed him Secretary of State.

In March 1828, Marschalk revealed another reason for the anti-Adams onslaught to come: he no longer enjoyed the patronage of the government as Printer of the Laws of the United States, a very lucrative contract that kept many newspapers viable in the early days of the Republic. “It has been taken from us, who have held it many years, under the administrations of Jefferson, Madison and Monroe … What cause, if any, was there for our rejection, and the preference of another in our place?” (14) Marschalk had held onto the position for several years under the Adams administration but the contract had been yanked because Marschalk supported Jackson. Parts of the article vaguely asserted that Henry Clay had used his influence to deprive Marschalk of the patronage when he learned from a letter that a pro-Jackson newspaper was still printing the laws when it should have been transferred to an Adams newspaper. Marschalk may have been referring to the letter he wrote to Clay about Ibrahima’s situation.

The manumission of Prince did not become an issue until a few weeks before the election. However, the newspapers of Natchez did not lack for inflammatory material for the late summer of 1828. The Southern Galaxy, an Adams newspaper, attacked the Jackson party as “ANTI-UNIONISTS” for the nullification conventions held in South Carolina and Georgia. “Sectional jealousies – personal animosities and private resentments have been increased, or awakened anew into life, and we are now afloat up on a sea of discord.” (15) The Ariel repeated an old story that Jackson had once been a slave trader. For most of September and October, the three major newspapers revisited the not-so-distant past to connect the leaders of the other party with the Burr Conspiracy of twenty years before. The Ariel and the Southern Galaxy first reported that the infamous Aaron Burr, on his mysterious tour of the Mississippi frontier, had met Andrew Jackson, stayed overnight with him, and plotted with Jackson to commit treason against the United States. Marschalk’s Statesman and Gazette countered that Jackson had been one of the first Western politicians to denounce Burr, and that many Western leaders harbored Burr during this time, including Henry Clay. Although he was not a nominee for presidency in 1828, Clay was Secretary of State to Adams, and the negotiator of the “corrupt bargain.” Clay’s association with Burr lasted long after Jackson had denounced the New Yorker, and far more damaging, Clay had represented Burr at his first trial for treason in Kentucky. (16)

In this noxious atmosphere, two weeks before the election, Marschalk used Ibrahima’s northern tour to accuse Adams and Clay of inciting the nation’s slaves to rebellion. According to the agreement with Ibrahima’s owner, the aged slave should have gone directly to Africa after arriving in the nation’s capital and meeting Clay and the president in May 1828. Ibrahima had other ideas, and he toured the North, appearing at lecture halls and gathering contributions to buy his children and grandchildren so they could be freed before he went to Africa. Ibrahima’s visit to Boston peaked with a banquet and a series of toasts and pronouncements that would make any southerner’s blood boil, including, “Southern Gentlemen, are you not alarmed? Methinks I hear Dame Fate exclaim, Africa shall be free without the aid of the Colonization Society.” (17)

Marschalk saw an opportunity to attack the Adams administration for its negligence in allowing Ibrahima’s tour. The old editor produced an inflammatory handbill (later reprinted in the October 16, 1828, issue of the Statesman and Gazette) titled “Mr. Adams and the Emancipation and the violation of the faith of the Administration,” claiming that the National Republican Party of Adams and Clay was “a large party in what are called the FREE STATES, resolved to emancipate the slaves of the south at all hazards. This party has several presses under its command, which in the same sheet in which they advocate the re-election of Mr. Adams, are actually exciting the slaves to revolt, by the same species of argument which produced the massacre of San Domingo [Haiti].” Violating the agreement with Ibrahima’s master by allowing the former slave to travel about the North was “doing more harm to cause the massacre of St. Domingo to be reacted here, than any other thing which has ever occurred in the union.” Among other flashy and incendiary statements, Marschalk’s screed warned, “the slaves of the south are openly invited to revolt and to murder their masters” and placed the blame on “the emancipating administration” of John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay.

Marschalk devoted a full page to the controversy, finding a variety of ways to attack Adams and Clay on the issue of slavery. The Stateman quoted the toast of abolitionist Domingo Williams: “May the slave holders of the world be like the whales in the ocean, with the thrasher at their BACK and the SWORD fish at their belly until they rightly understand the difference between FREEDOM and slavery.” Marschalk grabbed on to this quotation and repeated it three times in the long editorial, referring to it as “the horrible toast of Domingo Williams.” He added, “recollect whose lives you are hazarding by sustaining doctrines so abominable — recollect that precisely similar threats and logic, by the Illuminati of France, to those now advanced by the Illuminati of Boston, in the official journal of Mr. Adams, produced the catastrophe of Boston, in which the sleeping babe was murdered in its cradle, and the wives and sisters of the slain were reserved for a fate more horrible than death.” (18)

Few in the Natchez district took his dramatic protestation seriously, but the opposition papers, notably the Ariel, attacked and ridiculed Marschalk’s stance. The Ariel characterized Marschalk’s article as “dangerous.” “Who would have heard of the dinner and toasts of the free blacks in Boston if this production had not issued from the press of this city?” (19) Common practice encouraged this suppression of any mention of insurrection in the newspapers of the time, and Marschalk had broken the precedent. The very danger he warned against became more likely just because he had mentioned it. The Southern Galaxy and the Ariel both piled on, accusing Marschalk of inflaming the countryside, correcting his distortions and pointing out his hypocrisy because of his own involvement in bringing Ibrahima’s plight to the attention of the administration. A venomous piece in the Ariel appeared under the title “Off to the Alligators in the Swamp!!!” and warned that Marschalk and Clay had encouraged Prince to “rouse the free negroes, and raise a mighty Army and march through the southern states, and murder the sleeping babies in their cradles, and take the wives and sisters captives, and reserve for them a more horrible fate.” The people of Louisiana and Mississippi should “prepare yourselves for the dreadful scenes that now await you . . . it is well known that Prince is marching at the head of his Black Troops with the Moorish Cimeter at his side.” (20)

Several Jackson newspapers supported Marschalk’s excesses with similar stories, and the back-and-forth sniping did not abate until the election. Jackson became president, winning Mississippi easily just as he had done four years before. It is highly unlikely that the squabbling over Prince had much effect on the political outcome, serving only to embarrass Marschalk and to provide his opposition counterparts with material suitable for ridicule.

Outraged southerners felt that inflammatory implications that any major party’s policies might encourage another Haitian rebellion had no place in political campaigning no matter how tense the contest became. Marschalk had clearly crossed a line. The rise of abolitionism would raise tensions between the sections over the next three decades and the conflict would be fueled by western expansion and the fight over Kansas. A newspaper could accuse a candidate of being too accommodating to the northerners or the Abolitionists, but the threat of insurrection should not be mentioned or applied to a political candidate for mere party politics. Santo Domingo could be mentioned in verbal attacks against northern abolitionists or during scares that an insurrection might come, but such accusations against viable southern candidates were almost unknown from the time of the Ibrahima controversy to the rise of the Republican Party.

…

A decade passed and the leadership of the Democratic press passed from Marschalk to Lorenzo Besançon, and the nascent parties that had fought over Adams and Jackson soon settled into a reasonably stable two-party system of Whigs and Democrats that lasted until the Whigs fell apart in the early 1850s. In the state election season of 1835, Besançon’s Mississippi Free Trader had angered the Whigs, culminating in a kangaroo court in which an angry mob of Whigs demanded an apology that Besançon later retracted. He continued his attacks on the Whigs, designating politician John Quitman as a special target.

Though Besançon was from New York state, he regularly participated in the rituals of the duel during his time in Natchez. He also stood up for Democratic politics and seemed to care little about riling up the Whigs and their hero, John A. Quitman. Besançon’s habit of detailing his adventures in the Free Trader made him a target for further Whig enmity … and an object of admiration among his political allies.

As the election of September 1837 approached and Quitman became a candidate for leadership in the state militia, Besançon called him a “noted political demagogue.” Besançon continued: “We have ever been opposed to mobs and mob-laws, because we would preserve spotless the fair fame of our city” and stated that the Free Trader would continue to report on Quitman’s attacks against the Democratic party “regardless of the threats so often made to deter us from a free exercise of the liberty of the press.” (21) The opposition Natchez Courier declared the Free Trader “guilty of an outrage upon the whole community” for its criticism of “our Quitman.” Besançon responded on September 6, the day of the election, citing Whig hypocrisy: “The Whigs never lose an opportunity of abusing a Van Buren man, even pronounce a democratic candidate an insult to the citizens of Natchez and heap the vilest epithets upon our nominees.” (22)

Early in the afternoon on that same day, Besançon and Quitman got into a fight near the Adams County courthouse. Several accounts of this physical altercation exist and William Johnson’s diary provides the most well known — and probably most objective — version. The Free Trader editor swung at Quitman with a sword thrust “that would have killed him had not a piece of Silver in the Pocket of [Quitman] arrested the Progress of the [blade].” The fight was broken up before it became fatal. (23)

In a long article titled “A Concise history of the various whig insurrections and violations of law in this city, including the late exploit of a political demagogue, on the day of the election for Major general, for which he was a candidate,” Besançon gave the longest version of the incident. According to Besançon, they crossed paths in the courtyard. “Judge Quitman with several of his friends, were in the yard ... he advanced upon me and roughly demanded, if I was ‘the author of an article in which he was called a political demagogue?’” Besançon admitted authorship. Quitman “then demanded — ‘Am I to understand that you consider me a political demagogue?” When Besançon answered in the positive, Quitman attacked him with an iron cane and Besançon defended himself with a sword cane. Quitman’s friends disarmed Besançon, and Quitman hit him with the cane several times. “Some gentlemen from the Court House, separated us, and the officers interfered. Even after that [Quitman] was allowed to retain his weapons, while some of his friends, who are very courageous when they are in no danger, cried out ‘let him flog him!’ ‘kill him!’” (24)

The Free Trader published further statements from Quitman and several witnesses on September 21, 1837. Quitman admitted that he approached Besançon on Election Day and characterized his iron cane as a “small iron stick, scarcely thicker than a wire.” When Quitman did not receive the apology he demanded, he “applied my cane to his head and shoulders.” Quitman claimed it bent on the first blow and he cast it aside, using no other weapon than his fists for the rest of the fight despite Besançon’s use of the sword cane. Quitman claimed that he stopped his attack as soon as other parties interfered, but one of Quitman’s witnesses disputed this part of his testimony, saying that after the initial interference by outsiders, Quitman “had seized Mr. Besançon by the collar and succeeded in striking him one or two blows ... before they could be entirely separated.” The same witness added the charming detail that Quitman called Besançon “a contemptible puppy and liar.” (25)

Despite the timing of the beating on Election Day, the politics of the time reveal little that could be worthy of such an outrageous attack as that made by Quitman. Like the Poindexter-Marschalk feud, the 1837 incident was more personal than political. Quitman felt his personal honor had been insulted by Besançon’s impertinence, and Quitman had to defend this honor in order to maintain his credibility among his supporters. Quitman may have avoided the dueling protocol because he had been a vocal advocate of an anti-dueling society and he did not want to appear inconsistent before his admirers. Or he may have been concerned that Besançon had already killed a man while dueling in 1837.

…

The two-party system that had developed in the 1820s fell apart in the 1850s as northern and southern branches of the national parties diverged in their sectional needs. The Whigs elected a presidential candidate in 1848, but this victory could be more properly attributed to the popularity of Whig candidate Zachary Taylor — a hero of the War with Mexico who rode the tidal wave of militarism into the White House — than to any genuine enthusiasm for the Whig platform. The Whigs chose another Mexican War general for the 1852 election, but the organization had been weakened by the fallout from the secession crisis of 1850, and Winfield Scott lost to Franklin Pierce. By 1856, the Whigs had disappeared and former Whigs had scattered as the political spectrum reorganized over several years. In the North, some former Whigs joined the Democratic Party but most of them entered new parties: the anti-slavery Republicans and the anti-immigrant American Party, closely associated with the Know Nothing movement. (26)

In the South, virtually no southerner could view the Republicans as an option, so the Know Nothings looked surprisingly advantageous for cautious southerners who feared that the extremists in the Democratic Party would lead the South to secession and war. Know Nothings enjoyed some success in state and local elections, especially in urban areas where the native population viewed large groups of immigrants as a threat economically and politically. (27)

However, the Know Nothings failed to develop a viable and useful platform beyond the establishment of restrictions on immigrants and longer terms of residence for naturalization. The party’s failure to grow beyond this simplistic, one-note scapegoat probably doomed the movement to a quick death from the start. (28) The movement peaked in Mississippi in 1855, and the election for U.S. Congress, Fifth District (southern Mississippi, including Natchez), points out many features of 1850s electioneering and the political chaos of the times. This contest pitted one of Mississippi’s most famous and hallowed personages, John Quitman, the Democratic candidate, against Giles Hillyer, the former Whig editor of the Natchez Courier.

Hillyer, another transplanted Northern editor, seems to have avoided fights and beatings and duels during his time in Mississippi journalism. There are no records that indicate he ever issued or accepted a challenge, endured a beating or got into a fight. Like Marschalk, he proved his worth to his readership by forcefully opposing the Democratic Party and its Natchez organ, the Mississippi Free Trader. Hillyer’s Courier clearly defended Whig or (in the mid-1850s) Know Nothing principles while supporting the slave society and berating the abolitionists.

Early in the 1855 campaign for congress, the Know Nothings courted Quitman, a former Whig known for his independence. (29) The Know Nothings had misjudged their man as Quitman, the child of immigrants, considered their anti-immigrant positions to be a needless and dangerous distraction in the face of the growing divisions in the country over slavery. Quitman, for all his recent disagreements with the Democratic administration of Franklin Pierce, sided with the Democrats and agreed to run for the congressional seat. (30) The Mississippi Free Trader paraphrased his first campaign address early in August, where he characterized Know Nothingism as “distracting our citizens upon an issue which was of small importance at best. While the enemy are marshalling their forces and thundering at our very gates, we like the ancient Jews are quarrelling among ourselves while we ought to present an undivided front to the enemy. In the next Congress men and parties will take their positions, not upon foreign or anti-foreign questions, but upon the all absorbing one of slavery or anti-slavery and the other minor questions will be lost sight of in the great struggle of the north for supremacy and the south for existence.” (31)

The Mississippi Know Nothings, spurned by Quitman, experienced a few difficulties in finding a replacement but finally settled on Giles Hillyer. Quitman and Hillyer debated in a series of meetings in September in fourteen counties. A lively newspaper war ensued, with the Free Trader and the Courier trading barbs aimed at the opposing candidates, the opposing parties, and the opposing newspapers. (32) Judging from the Free Trader’s stories and from the Courier before and after 1855, the Courier had a difficult time finding any effective material to use against Quitman. Although Quitman had changed parties, he had stuck to his strong state’s-rights stance consistently for over twenty years. “Old Chapultepec,” as Quitman was called for his role in the Mexican War, could do no wrong for many residents of the district. (33) As one editorial prophetically stated, “An enthusiasm is aroused for the Hero-Statesman of Monmouth which will triumphantly elect him as the Representative of the people, and utterly obliterate every vestige of Know-Nothingism in the District.” (34)

When the Free Trader stated that Hillyer could not be trusted because he had been born in the North, the Courier responded that Quitman also was a Yankee by birth. It would have been better for Hillyer to ignore this unfair attack as the Free Trader seized on Hillyer’s ineffective responses. Hillyer claimed to be from New York, the same state as Quitman. But Hillyer had actually been born in Connecticut. The Free Trader also pointed out that Quitman, much older than Hillyer, had been born in a New York that still tolerated slavery. “He drew in Southern principles with his mother’s milk.” (35) Hillyer’s defense and counterattack had not been fruitful. The Free Trader took advantage of many of Hillyer’s inconsistencies through the years. He had specifically attacked nativism in the early 1850s when the Courier still supported Whig principles. The Free Trader gleefully reported on some Courier articles from 1852 in which Hillyer advocated the candidacy of Winfield Scott and urged “our adopted citizens” to vote for the old general because Scott supported reducing the number of years of residency for naturalization. “Mr. Giles M. Hillyer was guilty of gross inconsistency, instability or duplicity.” (36)

Many Free Trader columns make very little mention of the Democratic platform as most issues preferred to criticize and insult the Know Nothings. Before the campaign started in August, an article titled “Know Nothing Tactics” called the nativist party “a political faction which veils its deeds in secrecy and endeavors to commit its members to systematic deception” that must “resort to fraud at every step of its process . . . They are disposed to descend to even lower depths than their brethren of Massachusetts.” The Know Nothings are described as “cutpurses of the empire” who organize “conclaves, which bind by terrible oaths and fearful penalties their members to secrecy and implicit obedience, possessing all the evils of the caucus system.” (37) One frequent theme about the Know Nothings claimed that the abolitionists controlled the party’s agenda, and the southern wing of the party had been relegated to a “humiliating position” in subordination. “The North — the mighty Abolition Know Nothing North — scorns to receive the tributes which Southern recreants offered them . . . They despise and spit upon the platform and return to their homes breathing abolition sentiments more fiercely than ever . . . demanding the total surrender of every principle which the South holds dear.” (38) On Election Day, the Free Trader reminded voters of a Courier column from May in which Hillyer wrote that Fugitive Slave Law should be modified “so as to make it ‘less offensive to the public sentiment of the North.’” (39)

The Democratic press used other angles to degrade the Know Nothings. The Courier was accused of “reviling Catholics and misrepresenting their doctrines and practices; and in forging or garbling quotations in order to render them and their religion odious to their fellow-citizens.” (40) Several times, the Free Trader published public defections from the opponents organization, such as an October 3 item titled “Know Nothingism Doomed — More Withdrawals in Franklin” which listed five men citing “a duty to discharge which we think can only be performed by voting the Democratic ticket, and dissevering all connection with every other party.”

The Know Nothings managed to get their message out, and they had some valid points from the point of view of the sectional threat of immigration to the South’s interests. In a debate with Quitman reported in the Courier on August 30, Hillyer pointed out that the North absorbed most of the nation’s immigrants, who quickly became voters with no appreciation for the South’s institutions. The balance of power in the House of Representatives tilted dangerously to anti-slavery attitudes, partly because of the growing number of immigrants in the northern states. Hillyer also warned that if sectional tensions led to secession and war, the northern armies would be filled with immigrant soldiers. (41)

Despite a valiant and spirited effort by the cresting Know Nothings, the Quitman juggernaut could not be stopped. Although Quitman lost Adams County, he won the House seat by a margin of more than 2,000 votes out of a total of more than 11,000 cast. The Democrats won the governor’s mansion and four out of five of Mississippi’s congressional seats. (42) The Know Nothings would get about twenty percent of the popular vote in the 1856 presidential contest, and then disappear. The Democrats would fall apart in 1860, torn by increasing sectional tensions and unrealistic expectations on the part of southern Democrats regarding the North’s attitude to slavery.

…

What can be said about these fighting editors and the Natchez society of the Old Southwest that might help us to understand their world and their times? First, the environment did not encourage a long-lasting career. Only a handful of editors survived more than five years in this environment. An adventurous life could only partly prepare an ambitious spirit for the excesses of political and personal payback in the combustible environment of Natchez. Even a figure like Lorenzo Besançon — filibuster, Mexican War veteran, gold miner — found Natchez a little too stimulating.

Besançon’s voluminous candor in his Free Trader editorials and his many exciting and dramatic exploits should not disguise the brevity of his career as a Natchez journalist. Typically for Natchez newspapermen, Besançon left Natchez after a five-year stint as an editor. After Besançon, Free Trader editors came and went almost like clockwork, seldom serving for more than three years. (43) Even allowing for some exaggeration — which may not be necessary — Besançon killed a man, suffered a severe beating and narrowly avoided a lynching. If other editors experienced similar trials and tribulations, it is no surprise that they abandoned Natchez journalism for careers and locales less violent and more financially rewarding.

Secondly, their world and career placed them in a position of paradox. A private individual not involved in journalism could control the environment in which he expressed his statements and opinions. Affairs of honor could be settled individually with a duel or an apology based on the etiquette of the dueling code. An honest editor, however, trying to fulfill his responsibility to the public and his party, risked widespread offense against his political opponents, encouraging numerous physical attacks and challenges. An editor who softened his views to avoid possibly fatal controversy risked losing the support of the subscribers on which his financial success depended.

Besançon left Mississippi in 1839 and said good-bye to his faithful Democratic readers with a farewell valedictory: “Political editorship is nearly synonymous with opposition — another name for vexatious struggles on an arena where the gladiatorial cut and thrust is given and repelled, received and sent back, with a celerity and skill that might shame the trained bands of the Roman coliseum.” (44) Modern readers of these words might not realize that he was not speaking figuratively when he compared editorship with gladiatorial combat.

Thirdly, southern editors coped with frequent attacks in various ways. Marschalk, despite his brushes with violence and conflict, avoided the dueling process mostly because his career ended by about 1830 and the level of violence of that decade had not been sparked by Nat Turner’s rebellion and the rise of the abolitionist press. Lorenzo Besançon and John Quitman, both transplanted natives of New York, found themselves products of a later time and a defensive southern culture that forced them into a cycle of violence that Besançon eventually found to be exhaustive.

Finally, it is interesting to note the relatively trivial matters that encouraged such violence at a time that the sectional issue of slavery tore the country apart. A wave of riots in the 1830s terrorized North and South both. Angry mobs targeted abolitionists and anti-slavery newspapers. In Alton, Illinois, just across the Mississippi River from slave state Missouri, an armed group of slavery supporters attacked and killed editor Elijah Lovejoy while he defended his printing press. The fatal attack on Lovejoy happened in 1837, the same year of Lorenzo Besançon’s involvement in four duels and the fight with Quitman.

Public violence persisted in the settled South long after it had largely died out in the North. The wave of anti-abolitionist violence that swept the entire country in the 1830s and the persistence of dueling and public violence in the South in the 1840s and 1850s might indicate the divisive power of a controversial issue, in this case slavery. But what were the issues so important to these men of honor that they spent so much time sending notes back and forth, finding seconds and a surgeon and making elaborate arrangements to shoot at one another? Gentleman of the Deep South did not seek fights with editors over slavery because no newspaper could criticize “the peculiar institution” and survive in the region. Besançon and the lawyer Thomas Armat almost met on the field of honor because Besançon had wrongly identified Armat as the author of an article in the rival newspaper. John Quitman attacked Besançon with a cane in broad daylight mostly because the editor had publicly named him in an editorial and called him “a noted political demagogue.”

Though they did not fight among themselves over slavery, the southern view of the social order fostered a culture of rigid honor. The code of the frontier that may explain the behavior of Poindexter slowly evolved into a different code by the 1820s, a code of cultural honor, a code that defined an entire society rather than the individual. Marschalk’s attempt to exploit southern fears of slave rebellion demonstrated how slavery had become a vital and unchallengeable institution. The ridicule directed against him was a very uneasy ridicule. (45)

The individuals who operated the newspapers participated in the political and cultural life of the nation, and, by the nature of their occupation, followed most important events and trends globally, nationally and locally. Especially at the local level, events and personalities ensnared many journalists because of their prominent positions as distributors of news. Often, these entanglements generated newsworthy events that the participating journalists preserved to some extent in their newspapers, defending themselves, explaining their positions and reacting to coverage in rival newspapers. Historians should not be surprised, therefore, to discover that some Natchez newspapermen and women preserved much material of interest about events in which they participated. These events can be used to demonstrate how journalists lived, but they can often be used for more general statements about politics and culture in the South.

Such incidents also help to explain what it meant to be southern, and what it meant to be a southern journalist. Beyond the pieces of data available in the records and the short version of a duel or a beating, a southern journalist lived for weeks or months with the threat of violence and conflict for every controversial word he wrote. Expanding these events, to explain what happened over time, demonstrates the dedication required to put out a newspaper with any courage or conviction. A journalist, who established his newspaper and stuck with it for years or decades, displayed amazing fortitude and dedication. He had to believe what he wrote, he had to stand by it. If he had any doubts about slavery, he kept them to himself if he wanted to remain in the South. More sensibly and efficiently, the southern editor had no doubts about slavery. He set up his paper, cheerfully neutral on bondage or supportive of the slave system, or he soon adopted a position acceptable to the community. Making sense of newspaper quarrels, often precipitated by incidents that seem trivial, can help us to understand the South.

CHAPTER THREE ENDNOTES

(1) When Jefferson became president in 1801, the Jeffersonian Republicans in the Mississippi Territory assumed control of many appointed offices and soon broke into two factions. Cato West headed one coterie and William C. C. Claiborne, the recently appointed governor of the territory, led the other. The main point of contention at the time was the location of the territorial capital. Claiborne’s faction wanted the capital to remain in the southwest corner of the territory, near Natchez. West’s faction wanted the seat of government to be moved to Greenville, far north of Natchez, along the Mississippi River. Marschalk and Poindexter were on the same side at this point. The years, and the changing situations in a growing community, would change that by 1814. James, Antebellum Natchez, pp. 101-105.

(2) Abijah Hunt owned and operated a string of cotton gins between Port Gibson and Natchez. He also owned a retail business and a 3200-acre plantation. Davis, A Way through the Wilderness, p. 203. Stephen Minor was the largest cotton planter in the region in the early days of the Natchez District. James, Antebellum Natchez, p. 52.

(3) Davis, A Way Through the Wilderness, p. 233, quoting Claiborne’s Mississippi as a Province, Territory and State.

(4) Mississippi Herald, April 1, 1807.

(5) Davis, A Way Through the Wilderness, p. 233, quoting Clayton James, “Municipal Government in Territorial Natchez,” Journal of Mississippi History XXVII (May 1965), p. 12.

(6) Documents in the case of George Poindexter v. Andrew Marschalk indicate that Poindexter and Marschalk used each other’s services freely from late 1802 until at least 1806. Invoices show that Poindexter subscribed to Marschalk’s Mississippi Herald from 1803 to 1806, advertised his services as a lawyer in the Herald, commissioned the printing of handbills and notices from Marschalk, purchased books and pamphlets, and utilized Marschalk’s business for other related tasks. An invoice from Poindexter shows that Marschalk employed Poindexter as an attorney (though, unfortunately, these services are not clearly defined). Many details of the case are missing from the surviving documents, but it is clear that Poindexter sued Marschalk for debt in 1812. The two men submitted the records of their business dealings with each other, each apparently claiming that that the other owed him money. Poindexter successfully disputed many of Marschalk’s claims, and the presiding judge awarded Poindexter $23.77 during the April Term of 1814. George Poindexter v. Andrew Marschalk, 1814, Historic Natchez Foundation, Natchez, Mississippi.

(7) Washington Republican, October 5, 1814.

(8) Swearingen, The Early Life of George Poindexter, pp. 125-132.

(9) Swearingen, The Early Life of George Poindexter, p. 127.

(10) Mississippi Republican, December 21, 1814.

(11) In the following weeks, as Poindexter struggled to combat the charges of cowardice made against him, he collected affidavits to prove that he had not fled the battle without good reason. According to Swearingen, the affidavits claimed that Poindexter had been wounded by a cannon ball that crashed through his tent at the start of the battle and he rode to New Orleans for medical attention because camp doctors were too busy to tend his wounds. In 1816, Poindexter finally requested an affidavit from General Carroll, and the recommendation he received from his commander exonerated Poindexter of the charges of cowardice. Swearingen, The Early Life of George Poindexter, pp. 135-136.

(12) It should be noted that this editorial, like many of the Mississippi Republican editorials, seems to be going out of its way to avoid the real point of the letters describing Poindexter’s flight from the battlefield. Marschalk printed two very simple, straightforward letters describing Poindexter’s flight from the Battle of New Orleans. The Mississippi Republican’s reply, though it is clever and makes a good point about the nature of camp slanders, avoids the real questions. Did Poindexter flee the battle or not? This response merely muddied the waters.

(13) The story of Ibrahima is a very interesting one, carefully told in Terry Alford’s Prince Among Slaves (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977). For this paper, I have relied on pages 86-111 and 142-152, as well as some extra newspaper research to supplement the research of Alford.

(14) Statesman and Gazette, March 6, 1828.

(15) Southern Galaxy, September 18, 1828.

(16) For more information on the Burr Conspiracy and the peripheral involvement of Henry Clay and Andrew Jackson, consult Milton Lomask, Aaron Burr: The Conspiracy and Years of Exile, 1805-1836 (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1982); and Buckner F. Melton, Jr., Aaron Burr: Conspiracy to Treason (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2002).

(17) Alford, Prince Among Slaves, p. 140.

(18) Statesman and Gazette, October 16, 1828.

(19) Ariel, October 18, 1828.

(20) Alford, Prince Among Slaves, pp. 148-152.

(21) Mississippi Free Trader, September 2, 1837.

(22) Mississippi Free Trader, September 9, 1837.

(23) James, Antebellum Natchez, p. 263. James quotes the diary of William Johnson, a free black who pursued a successful career as a barber and landowner in Natchez.

(24) Mississippi Free Trader, September 12, 1837.

(25) Mississippi Free Trader, September 21, 1837.

(26) W. Darrell Overdyke, The Know Nothing Party in the South (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University, 1950), pp. 45-56.

(27) Ibid., pp. 170-210.

(28) Ibid., pp. 261-295.

(29) Quitman had been a Whig in the fall of 1837 when he caned Lorenzo Besançon on Election Day. Robert May, John A. Quitman: Old South Crusader (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1985), pp. 96-98, 298-300.

(30) May, John A. Quitman: Old South Crusader, pp. 296-305.

(31) Mississippi Free Trader, August 8, 1855.

(32) Unfortunately, the Courier for this period is not as extensive as the files of the Free Trader, which are complete for August through November 1855. Some of the Courier’s political opinions can be deduced from the Free Trader’s responses.

(33) Quitman had been given the nickname for his role in the 1846-1848 War with Mexico, where he led a division and served as Military Governor of Mexico City. May, John A. Quitman: Old South Crusader, pp. 167-199.

(34) Mississippi Free Trader, August 15, 1855.

(35) Mississippi Free Trader, October 17, 1855. Quitman, quite a bit older than Hillyer, had grown up in New York when slavery was still legal in that state. Slavery was fully abolished in New York in 1827, when Quitman was nearly thirty and had lived in Mississippi for several years.

(36) Mississippi Free Trader, October 3, 1855, incorrectly printed as October 2.

(37) Mississippi Free Trader, June 20, 1855.

(38) Mississippi Free Trader, July 11, 1855.

(39) Mississippi Free Trader, November 7, 1855. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 had been part of the compromise that had stolen secessionist thunder during the crisis of 1850. It increased fines for those who aided fugitive slaves and also punished northerners who refused to help in recapturing slaves. The Fugitive Slave Law also set up special courts in northern states so that claims against alleged fugitive slaves could be judged immediately, and captured blacks could be sent into bondage more quickly.

(40) Mississippi Free Trader, September 26, 1855.

(41) Overdyke, The Know Nothing Party in the South, pp. 199-200.

(42) May, John A. Quitman: Old South Crusader, p. 304.

(43) The Natchez Courier, on the other hand, had a single editor for most of the 1850s, but Giles Hillyer does not seem to have concerned himself with affairs of honor and managed to avoid physical violence.

(44) Mississippi Free Trader, July 30, 1839.

(45) Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 25-61, 362-401.

CHAPTER FOUR: THE SLAVERY PRESS AND THE POLITICS OF SECESSION

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"It is not at all surprising that the people of the South are so indifferent to the rights of the African race. For, as far as the negro is concerned, the press, the pulpit, the bench, the bar, and the stump, conspire with a unity of purpose and pertinacity of zeal, which is no less lamentable than extraordinary, to eradicate every sentiment of justice and brotherhood from their hearts. They sincerely believe Wrong to be Right, and act on that unhappy conviction." - James Redpath, The Roving Editor, 1859

"The slavery controversy in the United States presents a case of the most violent antagonism of interests and opinions. No persuasions, no entreaties or appeals, can allay the fierce contention between the two mutually repulsive elements of our system." - Mississippi Free Trader, August 28, 1857

…

The antebellum slavery press played two major roles: political and economic. Deciding which of these roles was most important is not an easy task because of the shifting situations of specific newspapers. A large political role for the newspapers can be seen from the very earliest days of the Natchez press, but a careful examination of the nature of political rhetoric shows a marked transformation in the manner in which the newspapers conducted political business as Mississippi and its place in the republic changed between 1800 and 1860. Starting about 1830, the Natchez newspapers clearly highlighted the importance of sectional politics and the South’s increasing concern over its slave interests. This focus on sectional matters, emphasized by column after column of many newspapers dedicated to stories on abolition, submissionists, disunionists and secessionists, popularized these issues and inflamed large segments of the white southern population. As early as 1850, disunion and civil war seemed likely, if not inevitable.

Of course, politics is more than candidates and elections and the president’s latest speech. What exactly constitutes a political article? Articles titled “Abolitionists Endorse Whig Candidate” or “The Dangers of the Tariff” can be safely characterized as political pieces. Sometimes the distinction is not so clear. Some articles promoted stereotypes of women, northerners or blacks without specific references to elections or parties or candidates, yet some of these articles certainly had a political purpose.

Until the late 1820s, many southerners viewed slavery as a necessary embarrassment, echoing Thomas Jefferson’s imagery of slavery: “As it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.” (1) In the early 1800s, southern planters commonly admitted the problems of slavery, but they rationalized the institution in a number of ways. They had inherited a bad system and they would have liked to have been able to do away with it, but the slaves could not be freed en masse because they would either starve during the winter or rampage across the countryside. This attitude changed drastically by the 1830s, and the Natchez press would play its part in propagandizing slavery as a beneficial institution.

A number of factors put the South on the defensive, but the rise of the abolitionist movement and the wide distribution of anti-slavery literature disturbed the southern planters and the placidity of their worldview. Nat Turner’s rebellion of 1831 also shook the core belief of white southerners that slaves felt contentment and gratitude for the paternalistic care of the good white people. A shift in reasoning began in the 1830s, in response to Nat Turner and the publication of abolitionist journals like William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator. By the end of the decade, slavery was no longer a necessary evil; the institution had become a positive good, beneficial to whites and blacks, northerners and southerners. Blessed by God, endorsed by the Bible, southern thinkers lauded slavery as a vital cog in the machinery of freedom. (2)

Attitudes towards slavery and blacks surfaced in many articles, and these types of articles, while also useful for cultural reasons, provide excellent examples of more subtle political uses. In a slave society, the social order had to be rigidly maintained, and politics played a major role in supporting and strengthening the rules that made up this social order. The press in such an environment endorsed candidates, publicized the viewpoints of a party, and supported the social order in a manner that transcended party politics. The Natchez press supported slavery in several ways. Natchez newspapers offered various philosophical and practical justifications for the institution, printed individual stories that mocked black behavior, and often proposed to show the negative consequences of disturbing the accepted power structure.

The southern newspapers often filled the lengthy gaps of time between proslavery pamphlets for its readers. The Natchez press regularly published editorial attacks on the abolitionists and reported on violence allegedly provoked by critics of slavery. Natchez newspapers, like journals across the South, also published defenses of slavery on a regular basis.

With the 1860 publication of Cotton is King, most of the wide-ranging justifications for slavery appeared in book form. Cotton Is King defended the institution in a number of ways through a variety of essays written by proslavery philosophers like Samuel Cartwright, a frequent contributor to the Natchez press. (3) In order to portray slavery as a legitimate, reasonable, logical and/or beneficial system, these writers utilized a number of perspectives: moral and political philosophy, political economy, social ethics, political science, international law, and the Bible. The justifications for slavery in Cotton is King did not exhaust all the possible methods and rationalizations, but they demonstrated that the field had a lot of room for innovation for creative southern propagandists.

The southern press played its role in southern society to support and justify the institution, and the Natchez newspapers did not shirk the duty of the press as a purveyor of proslavery propaganda. Proslavery arguments appeared in Natchez on a semi-regular basis within a few years of the beginning of the abolition movement. Less than a month after its first issue in August 1835, the Free Trader featured a proslavery article entitled “Injustice and Evils of Slavery” that admitted that slavery “is against the spirit of Christianity” at the same time it denied “that there is anything in the Old or New Testament, which would go to show that slavery when once introduced, ought at all events to be abrogated, or that the master commits any offense in holding slaves.” The author, Thomas R. Dew, cited examples of Biblical figures who owned slaves and carefully selected quotes from the New Testament, such as “Let every man abide in the same calling where he is called,” to present slavery as a Christian institution. (4)

A more “scientific” approach, taken from the work of Charles Caldwell, filled almost four columns in the Free Trader on December 4, 1835. Caldwell claimed that Africans were obviously inferior to white men, and this inferiority vindicated the popular pseudoscience known as phrenology because the brain of the black man was smaller and “also worse balanced, its animal component being much more preponderant over its intellectual and moral.” Caldwell went on to claim “that the Negro race has never produced a truly great man, either in the capacity of a moralist, an artist, a lawgiver or a sage.” Caldwell compared Central and Western Africa — “as barbarous and uncultivated now, as they were five hundred years ago” — to the accomplishments of the Caucasians, who “have revolutionized the face of a large portion of the globe … The cause is plain,” wrote Caldwell. “The Caucasians . . . have within themselves an ever-living and exhaustless fountain of improvement, which is denied to the other races.” (5)

In the 1840s, Samuel Cartwright wrote a series of letters justifying slavery to William Winans, who had been an active member of the state’s colonization society. These letters appeared in the Free Trader, and nine of them were printed sporadically between December 1841 and April 1842, defending slavery on Biblical, physiological and economic grounds. Whereas Dew’s argument begrudgingly allowed the possibility that slavery might be wrong, Cartwright embraced the developing idea that slaves benefited from slavery, that they experienced more full and productive lives under the care of the white southern elite. (6)

John Fletcher, of Concordia Parish, Louisiana, across the river from Natchez, advertised in the Courier and the Free Trader in 1851, publicizing his book Studies in Slavery for several weeks. The prospectus declared that “the object of the learned Author has been to show that the institution of slavery is of Divine appointment.” Concurrently appearing with the ad, the Free Trader published a long letter from Dr. Cartwright to a Mr. Warner, in which Cartwright praised the book: “It ought to be read by every intelligent person North as well as South.” (7)

Throughout the antebellum period, the newspapers also published material that dehumanized the slave and the free black, denigrating the intelligence and abilities of the race of Africans. As early as 1806, the Mississippi Herald carried a story about an indulgent master who allowed two feuding slave women to settle their differences with a fake duel. (8) Later articles claimed that: free blacks, unable to survive without white protection, suffered a higher rate of mortality than slaves; (9) manumitted blacks in Richmond, Virginia, had petitioned the state legislature, hoping to be enslaved again; (10) and an abolitionist had been captured by a slave who turned him over to authorities, highlighting the loyalty of the slaves and the efficiency of the system. (11)

A survey of the newspapers of Natchez during the slavery period reveals an atmosphere of tension and conflict, and elections heightened the conflicts that could end in violence. However, a more methodical study of the newspapers shows how the nature of these conflicts changed over a period of sixty years. Sectional tensions and the ideological battle over slavery replaced the local feuds of earlier years. By the 1850s, even local elections reflected the conflicts raised by the issue of slavery as the two Natchez newspapers took up sides on the issue of secession. The Democratic organ, the Free Trader, accused the opposition party (which changed from Whig to Know Nothing to Constitutional Union during this uncertain and tumultuous time) of being abolitionists or submissionists. The opposition party, represented by the Natchez Courier, characterized the Democrats as disunionists or rabid secessionists.

Another striking character of the press in the 1850s is the continuing nature of the tensions. The sectional crisis that led to the Civil War could be said to have started with the rise of the abolitionists in the early 1830s, but the acquisition of vast amounts of Mexican territory in 1848 touched off a series of events that followed one another in rapid succession: the Compromise of 1850, the secession crisis that lasted well into 1851, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 and the resulting conflict over “Bleeding Kansas,” the collapse of the Whigs over slavery and the rise of the Republican Party, the Dred Scott case, Harper’s Ferry, and the election of Lincoln in 1860. State and national elections also triggered conflicts even when the nation did not face a national crisis (the 1855 election is a good example). At the same time, the southern newspapers definitely offered frequent coverage and criticism of abolitionist publications and activities. A good example is the 1852 publication in book form of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a work that the southern press definitely noted with scorn. (12)

What follows is a discussion of the Natchez press based upon a sampling of the months of August, September, and October every seven years from 1814 to 1842 and then every three years for the period from 1842 to 1860. The newspapers in 1814 and 1821 displayed very little of the sectional venom that wracked the nation in the 1850s. Marschalk’s attacks on Poindexter reflected a local conflict that had become very personal because of the volatile nature of the personalities involved. The newspapers of 1820 and 1821 turned out to be sedate when compared to the days of the Marschalk-Poindexter feud and the era that would follow. Perhaps Marschalk had mellowed quite a bit. Or maybe things had calmed down because the state capital had been moved to Jackson and Poindexter had moved from the Natchez area. The papers barely mentioned the presidential election of 1820. The newspapers of this period, the Era of Good Feelings, presented quite a contrast to the provocative journals of other times. The browser can leaf through several months’ worth of microfilm without seeing a single overtly political article.

The national election of 1828 presented a startling contrast. Strangely, the Aaron Burr Conspiracy, an affair of twenty years before, became a major issue, and all the scandals and the improprieties of Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay become the subject of nearly every issue in the months leading up to the election. (Henry Clay was not even the National Republican candidate!) The specter of slavery, and the dangers of manumission, surfaced in the controversy over Prince, and Marschalk condemned Adams and Clay for furthering Prince’s cause. The issue of slavery, and Marschalk’s dramatic warnings about Santo Domingo (Haiti), marked the election of 1828 as an anomaly. It had been a very nasty campaign and Marschalk had crossed the line, not by attacking Clay and Adams, but by using scare tactics and merely mentioning the Haiti revolt. Better to never mention Haiti, most southerners thought. The slaves would not revolt if they did not know that a successful revolt had taken place in Haiti.

Despite the issue of slavery, the Prince controversy can still be explained as a local issue. Jackson had passed through the area many times, and a number of Natchez residents had served with him during the War of 1812. The episode with Prince was known to many people. Jackson’s supporters only exploited the Prince issue in the Natchez area and in the parts of Louisiana close to Adams County. When slavery again became a major issue in national campaigns, it would primarily be an attack against party, whereas Marschalk’s criticism in the election of 1828 was an attack on individuals.

Natchez newspapers of the last three decades before the Civil War illustrated the growth and the triumph of a new party system, and a sectional divide that dominated national politics after the acquisition of California and the New Mexico Territory after the war with Mexico of 1846 to 1848. This sectional tension rose to the surface sporadically in the 1830s and the 1840s as the Natchez newspapers criticized the abolitionists. After 1848, the nation faced a series of crises, incidents provoked by the actions of slavery’s promoters and its critics. Almost every year, the Natchez newspapers latched onto a new outrage against their perceived right to own human beings as property. The Free Trader, a Democratic Party newspaper through the entire period, generally spoke with more venomous language than the Courier, aimed at abolitionists and, later in the decade, at Whigs and Know Nothings because of the northern sections of these parties.

The state election of 1835, as shown by Lorenzo Besançon’s experiences, certainly demonstrated the passions excited by party loyalty by the 1830s. A closer examination of the newspapers of the fall of 1835 revealed that the campaign for the presidency in 1836 started very early: the Free Trader advertised its endorsement of Martin Van Buren for president and Richard Johnson as vice president as early as the fall of 1835, more than a year before the election. (13) But the election rhetoric of the time, as devastating as it could get, displayed none of the animosity over slavery that would gradually develop in the succeeding decades. The Natchez press of 1835 defended slavery and insulted abolitionists, but it did not try to paint political opponents as abolitionists. Anti-slavery sentiment had not yet begun to creep into the politics of the major parties. Abolitionism as a movement had gained little acceptance among northerners, and anti-abolitionist mobs targeted prominent abolitionists in dozens of incidents, in the North as well as the South, in the 1830s.

Hotly contested elections remained the norm in Natchez through the late 1830s and the early 1840s and beyond. In the mid-1840s, editors continued to refrain from tarring their opponents in terms based on the conflicting viewpoints about slavery. The use of abolitionist imagery began to appear in the 1840s at election time, and intensified after that as the South focused on their interests in the New Mexico Territory after 1848. As early as 1843, the Free Trader published an article titled “Whiggery and Niggery” that attacked the Whig Party as a whole because northern abolitionists voted Whig more often than they voted Democrat. (14) This trend, still very rare in 1843, would intensify later. The fall of 1845, for example, contains very little material that explicitly evokes abolition in relation to the state election. A survey of the Free Trader for August, September and October yields the expected defenses of slavery and a few attacks on the abolitionists, including an attack on Kentucky abolitionist Cassius Clay and a report that one in 24 free blacks in Massachusetts ended up in jail. The Free Trader devoted more space to the annexation of Texas than to any other story during this period.

With the acquisition of California and the New Mexico Territory in 1848, the nature of Natchez newspapers changed abruptly. The opposing charges of abolitionist and disunionist flew back and forth between the two party newspapers of Natchez on a regular basis, almost continuously, even when campaign season had ended. The nation swerved unsteadily from crisis to crisis, and the Natchez press reflected this state of affairs. It is likely that the press played a vital role in influencing the sectional tensions that would eventually lead to civil war.

In the fall of 1848, the Free Trader devoted close to seventy-five percent of every issue to the election, and the presidential contest between Zachary Taylor and Lewis Cass generated many slavery-related controversies. Between August and November, the Free Trader published an 84-line poem titled “The War Cry of the Democrats;” (15) several refutations of alleged Whig lies about Cass; (16) a “Patriotic Letter from Gen. Quitman” that took up three and a half columns; (17) an attack on Whig vice presidential candidate Millard Fillmore for his “vote on establishing diplomatic relations with the niggers of San Domingo;” (18) and several articles that claimed that Fillmore was an abolitionist because he voted with John Quincy Adams on many occasions. (19) A September 6, 1848, article stated that “to gain its ends by deception is characteristic of the Whig Party” and a more explicit attack on the Whigs, titled “In Detroit — Whigs join with Abolitionists,” appeared in the Free Trader on October 18:

Will not the South be convinced by the unmistakable signs of the times, that the Northern Whigs are their natural enemies, as well as that the Northern Democrats are their natural allies?

Taylor got more than his share of outrageous criticism, much of it pertaining to his views on slavery and its expansion into the territories:

He was not in favor of receiving Texas into our Union, nor in favor of the recent war with Mexico. The only evidence of his being in favor of slavery, that I ever heard of, was the fact that he did what every man at the south must do, if he would have servants, viz: either own or hire slaves. I do well remember that a part at least of the colored people living in his family could read well, and were very pious. I never heard a word from the General in favor of the slave system, but on the contrary, his decided preference for the institutions and customs of the North. (20)

The Free Trader published a series of political letters under the pseudonym “Pushmata,” and the thirteenth letter said that Taylor’s “opinions are too fluctuating” and stated that Taylor “has voluntarily surrendered, or expressed a willingness to surrender, to the will of a majority of Congress, the only constitutional barrier to the abolition of slavery.” Taylor “openly concedes a point, which is the centering wedge of abolition, viz: that ‘slavery is an evil, and blighting in its effects upon the agricultural and commercial prosperity of the South.’” “Pushmata” also raked Taylor over the coals because he “considers that slave labor has had a fatal influence on the prosperity of Virginia, and that it is injurious to all the states where it exists. These are dangerous sentiments …. Whenever we conclude that slavery, as it exists with us, is an evil, we surrender all that our adversaries desire.” (21)

For the next twelve years, the nation conducted its political business in this poisonous atmosphere. The question of the ultimate disposition of the new territory provoked the secession crisis of 1850. A further examination of the Natchez press shows that the crisis did not end with the Compromise of 1850, as the Free Trader continued to advocate and promote a secession convention long after public sentiment had turned against the idea.

A look at the Free Trader and Hillyer’s Natchez Courier in the fall of 1851 shows that both papers retained the heated rhetoric of the year before. The Courier criticized The Mississippian, the secessionist paper of Jackson, for threatening abolitionists with this statement: “This is all we have to say to the abolitionists. If we catch you stealing our slaves we will hang you — legally, and not by a mob, and without excitement or commiseration.” (22) The Courier also attacked perceived hypocrisy on the part of South Carolina’s Robert Barnwell Rhett, “the leader of the disunionists of the South,” for his anti-secession speech in 1812, when the New England states threatened to leave the Union on the eve of the War of 1812. (23)

In a most revealing editorial, the Courier reviled “The New Tactics” and again castigated perceived hypocrisy on the part of the opposition:

”It is somewhat amusing to notice the very same papers which beg so piteously not to be named “disunionists,” and who have been for months stirring up rebellion against laws passed by their accredited Representatives in Congress — we say it is quite amusing to notice that these same journals that contain the bitter complaints, are denouncing those who are silencing their political heresies as “Abolitionists and Whigs”!” (24)

The Free Trader supported the secession convention and contributed to the invective by referring to the Whig candidate for governor as “the traitor Foote” and calling the Whig newspapers “Submission papers.” (25) Publicizing more dearly-held beliefs of the secessionists, the Free Trader featured a letter that claimed that “the northern federalists and abolitionists had subsidized the press and print shops for the purpose of preparing the public mind for the abolition of slavery in the United States in aid of the views of the monarchical interests of Europe . . . These submissionists have witnessed for more than twenty years the untiring efforts of English abolition societies, of the press of that country and of the most prominent divines and statesmen, to urge and recommend the abolition of slavery in the United States.” (26) In October, the Free Trader attributed the success of the Whigs to “the vast amount of wealth and of influence possessed by” the Whig Party and its members, and characterized Democratic success as “proof of the moral strength of Democracy . . . when we see how nobly it has ‘held its own.’” (27)

The Natchez press in 1854 did not devote quite as much space to politics, largely because it was not a presidential election year, nor was it a year for a major state election. However, the Free Trader and the Courier suffered no dearth of controversial political material because of the rise of the Know Nothings. Hillyer supported the Know Nothings in 1855, and the Free Trader verbally assaulted the Courier on a regular basis. Hillyer’s support for the Know Nothings in 1854 amounted to a more neutral position. While the Free Trader harangued the Know Nothing movement with articles with titles like “The Do-Nothings,” (28) and “Ignorance, Intolerance and Fanaticism,” (29) the Courier defended the movement, refuting alleged falsehoods printed in other papers and publishing a claim that “Know-Nothingism does not evidence mush attachment to demagogues of any description.” (30)

These articles about Know Nothingism offered few attempts to identify the movement with abolitionism, but both of the Natchez newspapers published sectional complaints about the abolitionists. The Free Trader, for example, castigated northern magazines in an article titled “Northern Periodicals and Slavery,” claiming that, in the August issue of Harper’s Weekly, “the South was fiercely assailed, and the so-called aggressive spirit of slavery made the scapegoat for all our national sins and domestic discords.” (31) A week later, the Free Trader reported that Chicago abolitionists had rioted at a scheduled speech by Senator Stephen Douglas and caused the cancellation of the event. The sub-heads told the story: “Abolition Rioters Victorious — The Senator Refused Hearing — Free Speech Repudiated in a Free City — Anarchy in Chicago.” (32)

The Courier also recorded northern perfidy, but not as often as the Free Trader. The August 12, 1854, issue featured an item titled “The Effect of Fanaticism,” which described a southerner visiting New York who got drunk and accidentally killed a man who attacked him. “Instantly the New York Tribune throws its eyes to Heaven, and exclaims, ‘Behold the effect of the social institutions of the South!’ All the crime of the act, (and terribly does it paint the murder,) it lays on the system of slavery. To that it attributes the hot blood, the weapon, the deed.” The Courier indignantly responded to the charge and harangued the Tribune for its hypocrisy, pointing out that the New York newspaper often reported on murders and poisonings committed by northerners and did not try to affix blame to the culture of the North.

The Natchez press of 1854 reported a short era of peace, despite the editorials attacking abolitionists. The next few years, however, would see the nation jostled and agitated by one crisis after another. We have already examined 1855 and the acrimony generated by the state election in which the Democrats beat the Know-Nothings. The conflict over “popular sovereignty” would divide the nation and wreck national parties. By the time of the state elections of 1857, the two Natchez newspapers reflected a time of tension and conflict. The Free Trader of August 18 attacked Know Nothingism (in its death throes) and featured a front page article that asked “Shall the Majority of the Democratic Party Control the Policy of the Democratic Party!” in which the anonymous author explained to the reader the reality of 1857 America: the waning influence of the South would soon hamper the ability of southern politicians to protect southern interests. The South “has been growing more and more Democratic, while the changes at the North have been the other way, and the Democratic Party there becomes weaker and weaker.” The same issue overflowed with articles that showed a burning interest in the topics directly affecting southern interests: “The South Betrayed,” “Where Do We Stand,” “The Submissionists,” “Slavery in Kansas.” The first of these articles contained the following passage, underlining southern discontent with the Buchanan administration they helped to elect: “That the South has been betrayed there can be no doubt. Let the reader examine the facts in the case. The Democratic party fought the last battle upon the Kansas-Nebraska bill; Mr. Buchanan endorsed and stood upon that platform; do the provisions of that bill justify the Walker policy in Kansas? If so, the Southern Democracy are dupes and fools.”

The following week, in an article titled “Virginia and the Black Republicans,” the Free Trader attacked some Virginia newspapers for an alleged lack of suitable concern over the question of the Kansas constitution: “If we encourage or even tolerate Freesoilism now, we are leading the way to Black Republicanism in 1860 . . . The Richmond Whig, taking a calm view of the Freesoil movement of the day, sees them likely to rise in the ascendancy, and coolly announces that it will then be ready to co-operate with the Black Republicans against the Democrats.” (33) Every issue from the fall of 1857 displayed similar concerns about the future of the South. Several times a month, the Free Trader would devote most of a page to the issues of slavery, expansion, abolition, and the reality of sectional politics. The Free Trader of August 28, 1857, printed a page with the following headlines: “Sectional Agitation must be Terminated,” “Kansas,” “Perversions, Errors and Duties Pertaining to the Kansas Controversy,” and “Southern Elections.” An attack on the submissionist Woodville Republican appeared on the same page. (34) On the front page of the same issue, the Free Trader published an article on the “Consequences of Slavery Agitation.”

In October, the Free Trader mused about “The Next Presidential Election” and “A Dissolution of the Union.” (35) The latter article speculated: “War between the States in the first period of their separate existence would be accompanied with much greater distresses than it commonly is in those countries where regular military establishments have long been sustained . . . The want of fortifications, leaving the frontier of one State open to another, would facilitate inroads. The populous States would with little difficulty overrun their less populous neighbors. Conquests would be as easy to be made as difficult to be retained. War, therefore, would be desultory and predatory. Plunder and devastation ever march in the train of irregulars.” (36)

Tensions did not subside in the years after 1857, and the South became more defensive of their “peculiar institution.” A Free Trader article from October 11, 1858, predicted the potential disaster waiting in the future. Titled “The Next President,” it discussed the dangers for the Democratic Party if the northern leadership did not recognize southern demands at the national convention scheduled in Charleston in the spring of 1860. “We will abide by the decision of the convention if it nominates the right sort of man.” The front-runner, Stephen Douglas, was not the right sort of man. The South would not be content with Douglas, the article implied, foreshadowing the Democratic split at Charleston by eighteen months or so.

Between the Free Trader editorial of 1858 and the summer of 1860, the sectional tension worsened and the nation was falling apart at the seams. John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry dominated the nation’s press in the fall of 1859, but many other smaller infractions, such as the distribution of Hinton Rowan Helper’s The Impending Crisis, helped to fan the flames. As predicted, the Charleston convention split the Democratic Party: northern Democrats had chosen Douglas, and southern Democrats had chosen Buchanan’s vice president, John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, as their presidential candidate. John Bell of Tennessee joined Lincoln, Breckinridge and Douglas as the Union candidate. The Free Trader joined with most of Mississippi’s major newspapers to support Breckinridge. The Courier supported Bell.

In the months leading up to the election, the Free Trader often devoted eighty percent of its space to the election, praising Breckinridge, undercutting Douglas, criticizing Bell, and vilifying Lincoln. An August 6 editorial looked back to the 1830s to attack Bell for being the only southern congressman to vote in favor of accepting anti-slavery petitions. Later in the campaign, the Free Trader printed articles making fun of Hillyer’s Courier for predicting a Bell victory in Mississippi, and called Bell a disunionist, a Know-Nothing, and a proscriptionist. (37) A September 17 article claimed that Douglas really had no intention of winning the election: he hoped that the split Democratic vote would throw the election to Lincoln, and the two had made an arrangement that Douglas would be Lincoln’s successor.

The Free Trader reported on abolitionist activity in Virginia and Texas and attributed it to Lincoln’s influence. In August, under the title “Let it be Understood,” the Free Trader proclaimed “that no Southerner, no Union-loving man, no patriot can vote for ABRAM LINCOLN, with honor!” (38)

…

In the sixty-year period from the origins of the Mississippi press to the start of the Civil War, the Natchez newspapers experienced a number of transformations because of changes in technology, society, culture, economics and politics. Before 1830, the attempt to put a finger on a single factor as the most important influence proves to be a difficult and largely subjective challenge simply because of the number of potential subjects. Andrew Marschalk’s personality and quirks appears to have had as much influence on the tone of political debates as any national policy. Public interest in the War of 1812 may have been the necessary spark to revive the newspapers in Natchez at a time when the Mississippi press suffered a low point. A changing economy, often referred to as the Market Revolution, probably affected the Natchez area as much as it transformed any region of the United States. (39) Innovations such as the steam boat and the telegraph certainly played a part in the development and role of the press. Many of these causes are inter-related, and quantifying their respective influences would be a difficult and perhaps impossible task.

After 1830, however, the task becomes easier. Many factors influenced the press, but Natchez newspapers were obsessed with defending slavery, demonizing abolitionists, and identifying political foes with the abolitionists, the slave status of Kansas, and the New Mexico Territory. By the 1850s, slavery could only be described as a positive good, ordained by God. Abolitionists accepted payment from foreign agitators, practiced fanaticism and acted on their irrational hatred of the South. The two Natchez newspapers, the Courier and the Free Trader, adopted different strategies to protect southern interests: the Whig Courier advocated a moderate reaction to perceived northern interference; the Democratic Free Trader preached a more extreme philosophy that made secession seem the only realistic target. But the moderate stance seemed more and more like dishonorable submission as the 1850s wore on. After the series of crises popularized and propagandized by the southern leadership, aided and abetted by the Natchez press and other newspapers throughout the South, secession and civil war seemed a natural alternative to many Americans, including enough non-slaveholding southerners to create a Confederate army effective for four years of war.

CHAPTER FOUR ENDNOTES
(1) Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes, April 22, 1820, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

(2) For a variety of proslavery arguments, see E.N. Elliot, editor, Cotton Is King (Augusta, GA: Pritchard, Abbot, & Loomis, 1860), especially “Liberty and Slavery: Or, Slavery in the Context of Moral and Political Philosophy,” pp. 273-289 and pp. 337-380; “The Bible Argument: Or, Slavery in the Light of Divine Revelation, pp. 461-521; and “The Bible Argument of Slavery,” pp. 841-877.

(3) Samuel Cartwright practiced as a physician in the Natchez area and was also one of the editors of the Statesman for a short time. He frequently wrote essays defending slavery and one of his essays, titled “The Education, Labor, and Wealth of the South,” was included in Cotton Is King, pp. 879-896.

(4) Mississippi Free Trader, August 25, 1835.

(5) Mississippi Free Trader, December 4, 1835.

(6) In 1843, Cartwright’s letters to Winans were collected in a book with the unwieldy title Essays, Being Inductions Drawn from the Baconian Philosophy Proving the Truth of the Bible and . . . of the Decree Dooming Canaan to Be the Servants of Servants . . . in a Series of Letters to the Rev. William Winans, (Vidalia, LA: s.n., 1843).

(7) Mississippi Free Trader, September 10, 1851.

(8) Mississippi Herald, September 2, 1806.

(9) Natchez Courier, March 15, 1843.

(10) Mississippi Free Trader, April 2, 1856.

(11) Mississippi Free Trader, January 26, 1860.

(12) For an example, see the Concordia Intelligencer, April 16, 1853.

(13) The Democratic Party held its controversial caucus in May 1835 to anoint Jackson’s chosen successor.

(14) Mississippi Free Trader, October 25, 1843.

(15) Mississippi Free Trader, August 2, 1848.

(16) Mississippi Free Trader, August 2, August 16, and August 23, 1848.

(17) Mississippi Free Trader, August 9, 1848.

(18) Mississippi Free Trader, August 30, 1848.

(19) Mississippi Free Trader, September 6, 1848.

(20) Mississippi Free Trader, August 30, 1848.

(21) Mississippi Free Trader, September 27, 1848.

(22) Natchez Courier, August 12, 1851.

(23) Natchez Courier, August 22, 1851.

(24) Natchez Courier, September 16, 1851.

(25) Mississippi Free Trader, August 2, 1851.

(26) Mississippi Free Trader, August 13, 1851.

(27) Mississippi Free Trader, October 11, 1851.

(28) Mississippi Free Trader, August 15, 1854.

(29) Mississippi Free Trader, August 22, 1854.

(30) Natchez Courier, September 12, 1854.

(31) Mississippi Free Trader, September 13, 1854.

(32) Mississippi Free Trader, September 20, 1854.

(33) Mississippi Free Trader, August 21, 1857.

(34) The Woodville Republican had published this sentence: “Rather than have a family quarrel in the Democratic party, let Kansas go.”

(35) Mississippi Free Trader, October 13, 1857. The first article was reprinted from the New York Day Book.

(36) Mississippi Free Trader, October 6, 1857.

(37) Mississippi Free Trader, August 27, September 3, and September 17, 1860.

(38) Mississippi Free Trader, August 27, 1860. Lincoln’s first name was often incorrectly printed as Abram.

(39) In the first half of the 19th century, technological advances in transportation and communications transformed the North American economy. Before the War of 1812, most rural Americans, remote and isolated from the ocean, rivers and large cities, lived in self-sufficient communities with little incentive to produce surplus agricultural products because of the high cost of transportation. Between 1810 and 1850, canals, improved roads, railroads and the steam boat improved accessibility to local and national markets, increasing the incentive for more small farmers to participate in the market economy. This change radically altered the way that Americans viewed markets, labor and land. See Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846 (New York, Oxford University Press, 1990), especially pp. 3-30.

CHAPTER FIVE: THE NATCHEZ PRESS: CULTURE, VALUES, ECONOMICS

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"But for the Sir Walter disease, the character of the Southerner — or Southron, according to Sir Walter's starchier way of phrasing it — it would be wholly modern, in place of modern and mediæval mixed, and the South would be fully a generation further advanced than it is . . . Sir Walter had so large a hand in making Southern character, as it existed before the war, that he is in great measure responsible for the war." - Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi, 1883

"Looked through Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Mrs. Beecher Stowe. That book is womanish & I am afraid absurdly unprincipled; written by a woman clearly. I feel like I am the man for times coming." - Henry Hughes, The Diary of Henry Hughes of Port Gibson, 1852

"I consider that you have impeached my character. I demand satisfaction." - Courier editor Milford Prewett, to Free Trader editor T.A.S. Doniphan, published in the Courier on October 18, 1843

"[T]he very things necessary to the overthrow of American slavery, were left undone, while those essential to its prosperity were continued in the most active operation; so that, now, after more than a thirty years' war, we may say, emphatically, COTTON IS KING, and his enemies are vanquished." - David Christy, Slavery in the Light of Political Economy, 1860

…

The newspapers of Natchez served a number of purposes beyond the political, and at times, the political functions of the newspapers played a very minor role. Any attempt to document or analyze all of the purposes of the antebellum press would require a much larger work than this paper. However, the material in the Natchez newspapers covered a variety of subjects and served a number of purposes beyond those that have been examined in previous chapters. Two of the topics chosen for further examination, values and economics, display distinct characteristics of the southern way of life. The stringent demands of southern honor burrowed into every aspect of southern life. The subject of values permeates almost every other topic under discussion. Every attitude and opinion became a personal badge of honor, disagreements led to insults, and affairs of honor resulted, in which southern gentlemen defended their honor on a dueling field. The southerner considered any attack on slavery as an attack on his way of life. Slavery had to be justified and defended by any and every rationalization possible. Slavery, culture, economics, politics and values became inextricably mixed, and this mix shows up in the Mississippi press in a number of ways.

However, to be clear, it should be pointed out that southerners had interests beyond honor, slavery and cotton. The southern press, to reach as many readers as possible, had to appeal to other interests beyond politics and economics. More than a frontier, party or slave press, southern newspapers also included a wide range of material on oddities, entertainment, and culture that did not reflect a particularly southern orientation. For example, the following story, taken from a New England newspaper, appeared in the Daily Courier in the summer of 1854:

An Elephant at Large
"We learn from the Providence (R.I.) Journal, of the 6th inst., that the large elephant attached to the Broadway menagerie got loose from his keeper on the way from Pawtucket to Fall River, early yesterday morning. Before starting, his keeper made him lift the binder part of a wagon, loaded with 3500 pounds for the purpose of getting it into line. It is supposed that this, although not unusual, might have suggested to him the mode of attack which he adopted afterwards. When about seven miles from Pawtucket, he got free from the control of his keeper, and meeting a horse and wagon, belonging to Mr. Stafford Short, he thrust his tusk into the horse and lifted horse, wagon and rider into the air. He mangled the horse terribly and carried him about fifty feet, and threw the dead body into a pond. The wagon was broken to pieces, and Mr. Short considerably hurt. The elephant broke one of his enormous tusks in this encounter. A mile further the elephant, now grown more furious, attacked in the same manner a horse and wagon and wounded the horse, with Mr. Thomas W. Peck and his son. He broke the wagon and wounded the horse, which ran away. Mr. Peck was pretty badly hurt in the hip.

While the keepers were engaged in securing the smaller elephant, who had not, however, manifested any signs of insubordination, the larger one got off from them, and went on through Barneyville, when Mr. Mason Barney and another man mounted their horses and kept on the track as near to him as was prudent, giving warning of the danger to the passengers whom they met on the way. The elephant would occasionally turn to look at them, but did not attempt to molest them.

The next man in the path was Mr. Pearce, who was riding with his little son in a one-horse wagon. He was coming towards the elephant, and being warned by Mr. Barney, turned around and put the horse to his speed, but the elephant overtook him and seizing the wagon, threw it into the air, dashing it to pieces and breaking the collar bone and arm of Mr. Pearce. The horse, disengaged from the wagon, escaped with the fore wheels, and the elephant gave chase for eight miles, but did not catch him. The elephant came back from his unsuccessful pursuit and took up his march again on the main road, where he next encountered Mr. Jabez Eddy, with a horse and wagon. He threw up the whole establishment in the same way as before, smashing the wagon, killed the horse and wounded Mr. Eddy. He threw the horse twenty feet over a fence into the adjoining lot, then broke down the fence, went over and picked up the dead horse and deposited him in the road, where he had first met him.

He had killed one other horse and pursued another, who fled to a barn. The elephant followed, but at the door was met by a fierce bull dog, which bit his leg and drove him off.

Once on the route, the keeper being ahead of him, saw him plunge over a wall and make for a house. The keeper got into the house first, hurried the frightened people within to the upper story, and providing himself with an axe, succeeded in driving off the furious beast.

The elephant finally exhausted his strength, and laid himself down in the bushes, about two miles from Slade’s Ferry. Here he was secured with chains and carried over the ferry to Fall River. A part of the time he ran at the rate of a mile in three minutes." (1)

This story fascinates modern audiences as it must have sparked the interest of the Rhode Island editor who originally included it in his paper and, later, the Natchez editor who reprinted it. Nothing particularly southern characterizes this story, and many other items from this period simply convey interesting tales of other nations, extraordinary people and exotic animals. Throughout the period being studied, newspaper editors often included unusual stories, such as the "Monstrous Negro" mentioned in the Weekly Courier and Journal in 1843. This four-year-old male slave had died in Louisville. The article claimed that the boy had achieved a height of four feet, one inch. At the age of one year, "he began developing in a manner that excited the astonishment of all who saw him. His hair grew with surprising rapidity over his entire body and face, giving him whiskers and beard, as luxuriant as an adult." He could lift 200 pounds. (2) Another oddity rated several articles in the fall of 1817 when the Washington Republican reported a sea serpent had been sighted near Boston, and the paper even reprinted a poem dedicated to the creature in a Boston paper. (3)

Another story that reads like it came from a modern supermarket tabloid claims that mammoths may have lived in North America until the middle of the 1700s. Titled "MAMMOTH," the 1818 article claimed to be from a letter written by an Indian agent at Fort Wayne in Indiana. "This country affords more recent remains of the Mammoth than any other . . . If any reliance can be placed upon the reports or traditions of the Indians, it is not more than 70 or 80 years since they last existed." The author claimed that Indians had brought molars to him with food still on them, and they offered to take him to the rest of the skeleton. The Indians claimed to know the habits of the creature: ". . . he did not lie down . . . he rested leaning against a tree. His food soft wood, of which he eats the whole tree." (4)

The general newspaper-reading public must have been interested in less lurid accounts of the world, as newspaper editors certainly devoted space to science and history. On January 5, 1838, the Free Trader printed a lecture on the "Great Superiority of the Ancients" about Pompeii. In the 1840s, Natchez newspapers published many short articles about the exploration of the Arctic, including many articles about the tragic Franklin expedition of 1845 and the long and dramatic search for survivors. (5)

In June 1843, the Free Trader devoted two full columns to John Lloyd Stephens's Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, discussing some of Stephens's conclusions about the history of the many ancient and ruined Mayan cities he visited in southeastern Mexico: "They were the creation of the races who inhabited the country at the time of the Spanish conquest or of their not very remote progenitors." (6) The article then expanded on this theme, explaining Stephens's evidence: writings of the Spaniards; wooden artifacts that remained in good shape, indicating a comparatively recent date for the civilizations; the indigenous people identified the cities as the homes of their ancestors; and the use of symbols associated with the ruins all across North America. "Passing by all the other evidences of the identity of the race of those who built these wonderful cities . . . with the wandering and degraded beings who now serve the Spaniards as menials, we come to one which is certainly sufficient of itself to convince the most skeptical. It is the print of the red hand upon the wall of almost every house or palace in every town, city or village explored. This the Indians said was the hand of the master of the house." The article claimed that Stephens confirmed that the red hand symbol could be found among many of the tribes of North America "and the red hand is seen constantly upon the buffalo robes and skins of wild animals brought in from the rocky mountains, and, in fact, it is a symbol recognized and in common use among the North American Indians of the present day." The author of the Free Trader analysis concluded that Stephens had successfully presented his case "that the builders of these cities were the immediate progenitors of the inhabitants of the country at the time of the Spanish conquest, and the forefathers of the present degraded race that now inhabits that country." (7)

Advertising in Natchez newspapers also provides clues to some of the diversions and entertainments of the people of the area. The newspapers distributed information about plays, races and clubs, as well as other uncommon entertainment. The Mississippi Herald of 1806 advertised Mr. Rannie, a ventriloquist from Europe who "will give a display of his various and unparalleled performances of extraordinary powers of ventriloquism . . . Mr. Rannie will imitate almost every kind of Birds and Beasts, in a manner that words cannot express." Mr. Rannie performed at the City Tavern and admittance cost one dollar. (8)

The same issue advertised an African lion, which could be viewed on a boat at Natchez-Under-the-Hill. The animal could not be viewed in Natchez proper because "the Den of the Lion is so particularly constructed that it would be absolutely necessary to take the boat entirely to pieces to remove him." Within a few years, the newspapers advertised whole menageries and circuses to entertain the people of Natchez. In 1837, the Free Trader printed a large ad with tempting graphics, promising elephants, hyenas, zebras, camels, llamas, quaggas, buffaloes and "THE UNICORN, OR ONE HORNED RHINOCEROS." In December the following year, the Free Trader announced the imminent arrival of H. Ludington's circus, which included the 12-piece Lafayette Band in addition to bears, camels, panthers, jaguars, lions, badgers, a Bengal tiger and an elephant. An ad page from November 1851 announced two circuses, Dan Rice's Circus and Spalding, Rogers & Orden's People's Circus, "Equestrian, Dramatic and Zoological, Circus, Theatre and Menagerie!"

The Natchez newspapers also kept readers informed of the latest developments in literature, and frequently printed poems and fiction. Local poetry appeared occasionally. Motivated by patriotism as well as literary interest, the Washington Republican published the words to "The Star-Spangled Banner" on October 26, 1814, a few weeks after Francis Scott Key composed it. The editors of these newspapers also printed the latest news on the most recent works of writers such as Washington Irving, Charles Dickens and Sir Walter Scott. (9) Editors sometimes published selections from prominent writers. The Mississippi Republican printed Irving's "Tale of Rip Van Winkle" in two parts in the winter of 1820, and the Free Trader printed selections from The Pickwick Papers in January 1838.

Discussions of literature could assume an unfavorable or political tone. An article in the Courier of August 9, 1843, expressed anger at Charles Dickens for sections of Martin Chuzzlewit, which portrayed Americans as loud, ignorant and vulgar. Southern commentators subjected Uncle Tom's Cabin to scathing criticism. The Concordia Intelligencer of Vidalia, Louisiana, across the river from Natchez, wrote an unfavorable review in 1853, ridiculing Harriet Beecher Stowe's situations as unrealistic and accusing her of advocating miscegenation. (10) The Free Trader objected to a version of the book written for children, titled Pictures and Stories from Uncle Tom's Cabin. The article characterized abolitionism as "crafty, false and base . . . casting its firebrands into the community to create a political conflagration" as it "denounces the Constitution, libels Washington, desecrates the flag of our country and threatens to apply the torch of the incendiary to the national capitol." The Free Trader argued that the juvenile version of Uncle Tom's Cabin, was "calculated to produce a lasting impression on the minds of children too young to reason . . . and it would be perhaps impossible to impress in maturer years, a true view of negro slavery on the mind of one who in his earliest years had been taught abolitionism, with all the fascinating charms of fanciful poetry and pictures adapted to the capacity and appealing to the sensibilities of a child." (11)

The newspapers reflected southern values, influencing and reinforcing attitudes towards slavery, women and honor. Just as the Natchez press defended slavery and trivialized blacks through pseudo-scientific jargon, Biblical justifications and ridicule, it also revealed condescending and dismissive attitudes about gender, when gender issues received any attention at all. Demure, timid women like those of the South were obediently enacting God's intended role for women. Loud, opinionated women like the females who seemed to fill the abolitionist ranks were defiant in the eyes of God and disrupting the peace of the nation.

Natchez readers occasionally found articles that claimed to examine women's attitudes across the nation, such as an item titled "Kissing Customs" in an 1837 issue of the Free Trader. For example, a girl from Alabama, the recipient of an impudent kiss, reportedly remarked, "'I reckon it is my turn now,' and gives him a box on the ear that he didn't forget until next week!" (12) A similar article, titled "How the Girls of the U.S. Kiss — By Region," appeared a decade later in the Courier.

A glance at the titles of articles pertaining to women and male-female relationships confirms that an omnipresent paternalism clouds the attitudes of the southern readership: "Woman's Ample Temper," (13) "How to Wed a Woman," (14) and "Can't Please Old Maids." (15) In October 1829, the Southern Galaxy printed a number of articles that offered advice on "Courtship," "Rules for Husbands," "Rules for Wives," and even a number of "Reasons for Not Marrying." (16) A Free Trader article of 1858 discussed "When Ladies Should Be Looked At":

"Nature and custom would no doubt agree in conceding to all males the right of at least two distinct looks at every comely female countenance, without any infraction of the rules of courtesy or the sentiment of respect . . . It is astonishing how morbidly sensitive some vulgar beauties are to the slightest demonstration of this kind. When a lady walks the streets she leaves her virtuous indignation countenance at home; she knows well enough that the street is a picture gallery, where pretty faces framed in pretty bonnets [are] meant to be seen, and everybody has a right to see them." (17)

The newspapers seldom mentioned women involved in politics except, occasionally, to ridicule the idea in general or to launch a specific attack on abolitionists because of the prominent role of northern women in the movement. An 1838 item mentioned women while complaining of 500 anti-slavery petitions hindering the real business of the House of Representatives: "It is worthy to note that more than half of the petitions of this character are from the female sex. They were all laid upon the table without further discussion. No other business of importance was attended to. Thus it is that the time of congress is worse than wasted by the infatuated policy of fanatics and knaves." (18)

…

Southern values, founded on exaggerated ideas of honor and class, demanded a very rigid view of the world, a perspective that had to be defended with guns, if necessary. This inflated attachment to the idea of personal honor gradually transformed slavery the necessary evil to slavery the positive good. This sense of honor also created a class of gentlemen who felt it necessary to defend every perceived slight and insult on a field of honor. (19) Dueling is included as a topic because of several incidents carefully recorded in the newspapers that supplied sufficient material for analysis and comment. By the time of the Besançon-Armat unpleasantness of 1837, dueling had died out in the North, but its appeal still attracted self-styled southern gentlemen to the dueling grounds of the South, even New York natives like Besançon. As late as 1857, James W. McDonald staunchly defended his decision to duel on the Sabbath. The cult of the duel and its worship of southern honor remained a particularly southern phenomenon all through the period under consideration, and the press illustrates the importance of southern honor and provides many examples of how it operated.

The newspapers provide some interesting and not entirely unexpected insight into the importance of dueling, the manner in which duels came about, and changing attitudes towards dueling. Natchez newspapers documented many duels. Commodore Stephen Decatur, the naval hero of the war against the Barbary States of Tripoli and the War of 1812, died after a duel with another naval officer in 1820. The Mississippi Republican, knowing what interested its readers, devoted three columns to the correspondence between Decatur, Commodore James Barron and their friends as they unsuccessfully sought to find a way to avert the duel. (20)

Newspaper editors, publishing political views in such a public manner on a weekly basis, found themselves the target of many challenges. Some of the editors issued these challenges themselves. And newspaper editors sometimes printed these challenges and the ensuing correspondence to counteract "much misapprehension," as one editor explained in 1837, when the Free Trader devoted more than half a page to the correspondence that passed between Lorenzo Besançon, Thomas Armat, and ten other Natchez residents as they successfully clarified that the alleged insult resulted from a misunderstanding, negating the need for an exchange of fire.

The Free Trader had mistakenly identified Natchez lawyer and politician Thomas Armat as the author of an article titled "Rules" that appeared in the Courier on May 25, 1837. The article listed seven rules that explained how "the most insignificant man may bring himself into pretty considerable notice" by pretending to be "'undecided as to whether he is an administration man or a whig' until interest regulates his 'principles.'" The article also noted that a man could be appointed a commissioner just by hanging around and pestering the legislature. Besançon interpreted the "Rules" article as a personal attack against himself — and not without reason. The New Yorker had arrived in Natchez two years previously and started his career in the city by working for the Courier, the Whig newspaper. By the end of 1835, Besançon started a Democratic newspaper, the Free Trader. He had also been appointed to the position of state bank commissioner. These and other hints convinced Besançon that the article targeted him.

Besançon suspected Armat and published a snide reference to the article in the Free Trader on May 27, identifying the author as someone who "lately got into the legislature to fill a vacancy." Armat, knowing he had been identified as the author of "Rules," wrote to Besançon the same day and asked "whether or not you alluded, or intended to allude to me." Besançon dashed off a note to Armat, asking point blank if he had written the article. Armat eventually denied he had written "Rules," but he refused to answer the question directly in his earliest communications with Besançon. Several letters passed, and the tone became more severe and unyielding. Before the end of May 28, Armat claimed that Besançon's "evasive note" added "insult to injury" and left him "no other alternative than a meeting."

Both parties designated friends to arrange a meeting, and a series of notes passed between Besançon, Armat, A.S. Thurston, Thomas Johnston, James Edward, J.M. Duffield, G.S. Cook, John Quitman, R.M. Gaines, E. Garnett Howell, C. Rawlings, A.E. Addison and Samuel H.B. Black. Nearly 20 letters circulated before the principals decided on "Rules to govern the meeting to take place between Thos. Armat and L.A. Besançon." The duel would take place on June 1, 1837, across the river in Louisiana "on the levee opposite Natchez." A surgeon and two friends would attend both duelists. Separated by thirty paces, each duelist would have four pistols, one in each hand and two "fastened to the body by an ordinary belt not exceeding three inches in breadth, and to be made of material not to obstruct the entrance of a ball." They did not just start blasting away at each other. The letter lists thirteen rules for this engagement, written by Col. G.S. Cook for his friend Besançon and approved by Mr. Duffield on behalf of Armat. The duelists could advance on each other after the order to "Fire" was given, but they had to advance in a straight line; zigzagging was not allowed. The final article shows the seriousness of this duel: "The fight to close after either or both parties shall have been killed, or so badly wounded as to be unable to proceed in the fight, and not before."

Since Armat had not written the offending article, friends of the two men interceded and, after a further flurry of notes and letters, both men were satisfied that their honor could be preserved without a duel. Word had gotten around that Armat and Besançon might engage in a battle, so Besançon, on June 1, published a notice that the difficulty between himself and Armat had been resolved but he would continue to seek the name of the author of "Rules" from the Courier editor. (21) On June 3, the Free Trader published all the correspondence, as well as the original Courier article.

In the fall of 1843, the opposing editors of the two Natchez newspapers exchanged notes, but the matter did not end in a duel. The editor of the Free Trader, T.A.S. Doniphan, claimed that he was morally opposed to dueling. Courier editor Milford Prewett objected to an article in the Free Trader that claimed that the unnamed editor of the Courier had "repudiated his own honest debts" and fled Texas "to escape the gallows on which his companions had expiated their crimes." Letters passed between Doniphan and Prewett, but the Free Trader editor's answers did not satisfy Prewett, who issued this challenge on October 7, 1843: "SIR — I consider that you have impeached my character. I demand satisfaction."

Doniphan responded the same day: "I have received your call for satisfaction. It is well known that I am principled against dueling — being an invasion of the laws both of my country and my god, all of which I wish to obey and respect as a good citizen. I cannot therefore accept your polite invitation."

Prewett printed all of the preceding notes in the Courier on October 18 and attacked Doniphan's character for refusing the challenge:

"So it seems Mr. Doniphan is willing to 'damn by insinuation,' to stab the character of a fellow being without making any reparation, whatever. He would vilify and abuse in the most outrageous and scurrilous manner, and then seek refuge, not behind 'the laws of my country and my God,' for which he hypocritically intimates that he entertains the most Christian-like reverence; but by pitifully sneaking out of responsibility for his own deliberate and malicious acts."

Whatever public disapproval Doniphan may have suffered for refusing to duel did not affect his ability to run a newspaper as he continued as editor of the Free Trader until 1848.

The case came to the attention of the authorities and Prewett was charged with issuing a challenge to a duel. Court documents characterized Prewett as "a person of a turbulent and quarrelsome temper and disposition and contriving and intending only to vex, infuse and disquiet" Doniphan. The case was thrown out of court and Prewett was never tried. (22)

Two Mississippi editors fought a duel in 1857 but, in contrast to Besançon's penchant for full disclosure, the court documents and the scant coverage in the newspapers provide few details. James W. McDonald, editor of the Mississippi Free Trader, fought a duel with R.H. Purdom of the Port Gibson Herald on April 10, 1857, for causes undetermined. McDonald was arrested in December and charged with "leaving the state to fight a duel and fighting a duel out of this state." Purdom issued the challenge on a Saturday, and McDonald chose the next morning as the date for the duel. The participants crossed the river at Grand Gulf and fought the duel in Louisiana. The proceedings culminated in further violence the same day among members of the dueling party as one of the seconds, William H. Wood, was charged with trying to kill John W. Inge.

McDonald's case was dismissed in May 1858, and Wood's case attracted the attention of Governor John McRae who, in a letter from September 1857, suggested that Wood should not be prosecuted if the prosecutor was of the opinion that "Wood acted in self-defense or ... a conviction is doubtful." The governor suggested that Wood should be able "to prosecute his intention of going out in the Nicaragua Expedition." (23)

McDonald shed a little light on this murky affair in the Free Trader while responding to a critical notice in the True Witness, a Presbyterian newspaper, which attacked McDonald because he fought a duel on a Sunday. McDonald defended the Sabbath duel by saying he wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. He "wanted to give [satisfaction] at the earliest moment; he therefore named the next morning, without in fact, thinking that it was Sunday." McDonald wrote at length, attacking the True Witness and its "ungentlemanly notice." McDonald felt particularly insulted at the characterization of the practice of dueling as "cowardly." He also criticized the True Witness as a supporter of Know Nothing politics, asking "whether a man professing christian is worthy of confidence who will stealthily slip into a Know Nothing den, for the purpose of assisting in putting into power a political party whose object and inevitable result would have been the establishment of a religious test in this land of religious freedom?" (24)

Dueling remained popular in the South until the Civil War, long after it had died out in the North. (25) Public sentiment against dueling developed in the later decades of this period, and Doniphan displayed no unusual views with his antipathy to dueling. (26) Natchez newspapers advertised anti-dueling societies and occasionally reported the tragedy of dueling, such as an article from Doniphan's Free Trader titled "Another Duel and Another Editor Killed." Two editors of Vicksburg exchanged four rounds and a Mr. Ryan fell dead. "We know nothing of the circumstances that led to the meeting, and only regret, that in what is called a Christian country, persons should be misled to settle difficulties in this summary monstrous manner." (27)

…

Economic information, a consistently important feature of newspapers, always took up a large amount of space in the Natchez newspapers. Southern businessmen needed information on advertising, domestic and international markets, prices on commodities, especially cotton, and economic news on a regular basis, as quickly as possible. Through the antebellum period, newspaper editors regularly checked other newspapers, the mail and almanacs for the latest economic information. As transportation and communication technology improved, news arrived from steamboats, the telegraph and the railroad, and Natchez editors had to compete with each other and with newspapers across the region to report economic news as quickly as possible. Representative of the kind of timely news presented by Natchez editors for interested businessmen, newspapers of the 1850s often published a "Telegraphic" section of very short news summaries. For example, the Free Trader devoted a whole column to single-line notices. Along with international news on a treaty with China, Queen Victoria's visit to Germany, and a fire on the steamer Agamemnon, the Free Trader also reported that, on the foreign markets, "Flour is quiet, Wheat steady. Coffee dull." Further, the European exchanges, particularly Paris, were "very firm." The telegraphic news reported on Liverpool markets, the New York Weekly Bank Statement, New York Markets, the New Orleans Cotton Market and the Cincinnati Market.

Aside from these timely reports of vital economic information, Natchez newspapers also analyzed economic trends, and editors often included editorials on new crops and techniques, warnings that the South needed to diversify its agriculture, commentary on banking and the railroad, and miscellaneous items of a commercial nature.

"Cotton is King," from an 1854 Free Trader, reprinted the statistics from a Philadelphia Enquirer article, showing the growth of cotton exports, expanding from 570,000 bales in 1824 to well over three million bales in 1853. Another Philadelphia newspaper added this commentary about the nature of the cotton trade: "It dictates the whole course of foreign and domestic policy, appoints men to office and dismisses them, teaches wisdom to Congressmen, and furnishes judges with learning and ingenuity to construe constitutions and laws. Cotton directs the movements of armies and navies, negotiates treaties, organizes Territories, and erects sovereign states. Yes, friend Enquirer, Cotton is King!" (28)

From time to time, the newspapers warned the Natchez planters of the dangers of the monoculture economy and the economic system that had developed around slavery and cotton. The Courier reprinted an article from the Vicksburg Whig that encouraged the southern business interests to develop manufacturing in the region. "We fear that the South will wait for the worst teachings of bitter experience, before she will make an attempt towards that diversification of industry which is known to be the great secret of success in every prosperous community …. When her planters have worn out noble lands and have broken up old associations in removing from these to others which must be reclaimed from the wilderness of nature at vast expense — when this has been done, we say, through a few more generations, then some voice crying in the wilderness may awake the South to the necessity of completing the circle of industry." (29)

The same issue featured an article from the New York Journal of Commerce, reporting on the efforts of Dr. Junius Smith, who had acquired seven cases of black and green tea plants and hoped to "proceed to the South, soon, with a view of forming a plantation." The article goes on to suggest that "we have now the means in hand of extending tea plantations throughout such sections of our country as may be found adapted to their culture."

In the summer of 1851, the Courier reprinted an article from the New Orleans Bulletin: "To the Cotton Planters of the United States." It took up two full columns and warned cotton growers about the dangers of glutting the market, picking the cotton too early just to get it to market first, and selling too low. Imprudent business practices on the part of southern planters enabled the cotton buyers in the North and in England to buy cotton cheaply every season. "Planters knowing how easily and to what extent prices are affected by an over supply, should … keep at home one-fourth or one-third of their respective crops, which would correct the evil. The better remedy, however, would be to plant less cotton, and raise more corn, oats, hay, peas, mules, sheep and hogs; make more of articles for home use and buy less …. So long as planters strive to make so much more cotton than is wanted, strive to hurry a few bales to market earlier than his neighbor, talk very loudly of their growing crop, and publish in the newspapers the first blossom on the first boll of cotton open, with a view to precedence of their neighbors …. they must expect ruinously low prices …. Will the cotton planters never learn to be wise, and only supply the demand." (30)

By the 1830s, railroads and canals transformed the Northeast, and a larger proportion of the upper Mississippi Valley's trade — that had formerly been transported down the Mississippi — turned to the east via northern railroads and the Erie Canal. At first Natchez leaders seemed to be dragging their heels in formulating a plan to take advantage of the new technology, but eventually some Natchez civic and political leaders considered the transportation revolution and wondered how to bring its benefits to the Lower Mississippi Valley and to Natchez. City leaders got serious when a railroad from Vicksburg to Jackson began to lure business away from Natchez, and a Louisiana consortium proposed a route between New Orleans and Nashville that bypassed Natchez and went through Jackson.

A group of investors formed The Mississippi Railroad Company to finance and build a line from Natchez to Jackson to connect with the longer route. However, the Panic of 1837 hindered all attempts to get financing or credit to finish building the line. John Quitman's trip to Europe to tap sources in England, France and Germany proved fruitless during the 1837 worldwide depression. Critics accused the directors of company of mismanagement, and by the early 1840s, the Mississippi Railroad Company declared bankruptcy. Only twenty-five miles of track had been constructed before the abandonment of the project. The newspapers participated in this drama, editorializing on the importance of the railroad, criticizing or praising civic leaders, reporting on the meetings of the board of directors, and repeating rumors of corruption. (31)

After the failure of the Mississippi Railroad Company, newspaper editors realized the potential economic calamity to the future of the region if the railroads bypassed Natchez. Both the Free Trader and the Courier advocated resumption of railroad construction to connect Natchez with Jackson, one of the few things both newspapers agreed on during their long rivalry. An 1843 Free Trader article referred to the pseudonymous Courier author of a pro-railroad article as "an able writer" and commended him for being "industriously engaged in remonstrating against the surrender of the railroad." The article argued that the expense to finish the line would be worth it in the long run: "Mississippi is not rich enough to throw away the hundreds of thousands of dollars already expended on the road. Works of this kind are always to be numbered among those which it is more economical to keep on good repair than to permit to go to ruin by neglect — or by the most foolish of all delays — waiting for better times. The only 'better times' which Mississippi, or any other agricultural State will ever know, must come from an energetic cultivation of its never-failing soil, and by affording every facility for the transportation and exchange of its staple productions for those of other parts of this country and foreign climes. The railway is the only great measure for this facilitation in southern Mississippi." (32)

A few weeks later, the Courier responded to "some wiseacres" who had asserted "that the railroad from Vicksburg to Jackson, had proved an injury to the trade of Vicksburg, and consequently a railroad from Natchez to the interior, would prove injurious to Natchez." The author disputed this assertion, differentiating between the economic possibilities experienced at a trading point and a shipping point. Vicksburg, a shipping point, enjoyed very little of the robust trade that characterized economic relations in Natchez. Vicksburg planters relied on New Orleans merchants for their goods and, when the Panic of 1837 destroyed credit relations, Vicksburg planters suffered more from the ensuing chaos than Natchez planters. "I therefore contend," continued the article in the Courier, "that Vicksburg never enjoyed a trade susceptible of being affected injuriously by the railroad . . . it was fondly hoped that the completion of the railroad to Jackson would concentrate the whole trade of the interior to Vicksburg. This hope, however, proved fallacious." The article espoused the differing circumstances of Natchez, and explained that these conditions exactly corresponded to all the elements that would benefit from a railroad to the interior of the state. "[T]he people of Vicksburg have now learned, that to create a home market, it requires not only the facilities of transportation to their city afforded by a railroad; but a healthy location, a cash capital sufficient to purchase the commodity offered by the planter, a supply of goods and merchandise commensurate with the trade, rendered cheap by direct importation and active competition, together with a command of shipping equal to the commerce of the place — a facility for exportation, essentially requisite to the merchant, to render trade mutually advantageous to both parties. But will any one affirm that these requisites are not possessed by Natchez? Is not this the most healthy location for a commercial mart in the whole southwest?" (33)

…

From these examples, it is clear that the economic role of the newspaper extended far beyond advertising and market reports. Raw data had to be analyzed and interpreted, and the best businessmen looked into the future, seeking visionary ideas for development and investment. Natchez newspapers supplemented specialized journals, such as DeBow’s Review, in providing information on trends and opportunities.

Newspaper readers of antebellum Natchez, like newspaper readers everywhere, wanted a variety of reading material and information. A large number of desired customers preferred economic information on a regular basis and political material almost as often. During elections, political material dominated, but the rest of the time, newspapers provided a greater variety to attract as many potential customers as possible. Natchez editors knew that the potential readership had interests beyond economics and politics. They included many items of general interest, poetry, international news, philosophical musings, literary criticisms, travel reports, lectures, club announcements and other subjects.

An attempt to record and analyze every important trend in the Natchez newspapers would require a work much larger than this one. This chapter documents a sampling of non-political roles of the press in Natchez. The existence of so much material and such a variety of items make it easy to find interesting topics to expand on but difficult to make choices and devote adequate attention to any single topic. It would be easy to write this chapter with completely different topics and completely different examples and still convey the same general idea.

Fitting some of the random items on popular culture into the framework of southern beliefs proved to be a largely pointless task in regards to most of the material. Southerners loved plays, books and circuses as much as northerners. But critics savaged books like Uncle Tom's Cabin, a major and glaring exception to any attempt to generalize about the South and popular culture as a whole. Attitudes expressed in the Natchez newspapers generally reflected popular opinions. Each particular newspaper advocated the policies and personalities of a specific party, but editors generally hoped to attract a larger readership by supporting, in general, the basic ideas and beliefs of the population.

Natchez newspapers also expressed economic attitudes unique to the Deep South. Whenever an editorial justified slavery, or characterized slavery as a positive good, it also defended an economic system, as well as political and cultural beliefs. I included several articles about cotton to show how completely this crop dominated the culture of the South, demanded the justifications of slavery, and dictated the rigid devotion to honor rampant in the South. By the 1850s, planters — set in their ways and dedicated to extracting as much profit out of their investment as possible — found it difficult to transform southern agriculture, despite warnings in the press. The Natchez press reflected southern culture, with its stubborn reliance on slavery, and unconsciously demonstrated the dangers of intolerance and isolationism that eventually led to the Civil War.

CHAPTER FIVE ENDNOTES

(1) Natchez Daily Courier , June 17, 1854.

(2) Natchez Weekly Courier and Journal, September 5, 1843.

(3) Washington Republican, September 20 and December 6, 1817.

(4) Mississippi Republican, April 9, 1818.

(5) John Franklin was the leader of a polar expedition to the Arctic planned by the Royal Navy. The expedition disappeared in the 1840s, prompting many expeditions to search for Franklin and his crew, including the efforts of several American expeditions. Remains of the ships, expedition equipment, and a few graves were found, but the real story of what happened to the Franklin expedition remains a mystery.

(6) The article in the Free Trader, mentions that Stephens had concluded in an earlier book that the cities of the Yucatan had been built by an ancient race of the Old World. By 1843, Stephens had done more research and changed his conclusions.

(7) Mississippi Free Trader, June 21, 1843.

(8) Mississippi Herald, several issues in January 1806.

(9) Scott wrote many of his novels anonymously until the mid-1820s when the secret got out, but his poetry was well-known in the South long before he was publicly identified as the author of the Waverly novels and Ivanhoe.

(10) Concordia Intelligencer, April 16, 1853.

(11) Mississippi Free Trader, September 15, 1854.

(12) Mississippi Free Trader, November 9, 1837.

(13) Natchez Cutter, May 18, 1841.

(14) Mississippi Free Trader, September 6, 1858.

(15) Mississippi Free Trader, September 6, 1858.

(16) Southern Galaxy, October 22, 1829.

(17) Mississippi Free Trader, September 6, 1858.

(18) Natchez Courier and Journal, January 5, 1838.

(19) Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor, pp. 25-114, 362-401.

(20) Mississippi Republican, May 9, 1820.

(21) William Johnson mentioned it in a diary entry for May 30, 1837. "Whilst I was Down at the Landing to day I was told that those Gentleman that had Crossed the River was then about to fight a Duel. It was thot to be Besancon and Armat that had gone across but it was a mistake for they had not gone over … Mr Besancon told me this morning that he had been very much abused by the other party, and that he would fight the whole Concern of them, but what, he would be Satisfied or Revenged He seemed to have a good Strong Disposition to whale Mr Mellen if he met him anywhere and said also that Mr Black would get a fall through the course of the day." William R. Hogan and Edwin A Davis, editors, William Johnson's Natchez: The Antebellum Diary of a Free Negro (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1951), p. 179.

(22) State of Mississippi v. Milford N. Prewett, 1843, Natchez Historical Foundation, Natchez, Mississippi.

(23) The Nicaragua Expedition refers to a filibustering mission then being organized by William Walker to invade and conquer Nicaragua. Walker led one expedition to take over northern Mexico and several expeditions to Central America before he was executed by the Honduran government in 1860.

(24) The State of Mississippi v. James W. McDonald, 1857; The State of Mississippi v. William H. Wood, 1857, Natchez Historical Foundation, Natchez, Mississippi; Mississippi Free Trader, April 28, 1857.

(25) For a comparison of northern and southern views on honor and how these views changed in the 19th century, see Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor, pp. 15-22 and 360-367.

(26) Doniphan did get into a few fights and scuffles that are mentioned in William Johnson's diary. He also turned down a challenge to a duel on at least one other occasion, chronicled by Johnson on April 20, 1841.

(27) Mississippi Free Trader, March 6, 1844.

(28) Mississippi Free Trader, September 15, 1854.

(29) Natchez Courier, November 28, 1848.

(30) Natchez Courier, August 15, 1851.

(31) See James, Antebellum Natchez, pp. 190-192 and 215-216, and May, John A. Quitman: Old South Crusader, pp. 99-106, for more information on the troubles of the Mississippi Railroad Company. These include many citations from a number of Mississippi newspaper articles commenting on the railroad.

(32) Mississippi Free Trader, August 2, 1843.

(33) Natchez Weekly Courier and Journal, September 6, 1843.

CONCLUSION

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Natchez experienced great changes in the years between the American acquisition of the Mississippi Territory and the devastating years of the Civil War. Natchez, a small and isolated frontier town in 1800, grew into a thriving economic center by 1860. Though surpassed by Vicksburg and especially New Orleans, Natchez remained an important town on the Lower Mississippi throughout the antebellum period. With the addition of the Louisiana Territory in 1803, the annexation of Texas in 1845, and the cession of most of northern Mexico in 1848, Natchez lost its frontier status and became a growing and settled city in the center of a communication and transportation revolution. The steamboat and the railroad encouraged population and economic growth. In addition to the changes prompted by these general improvements, advances in printing technology also affected the newspapers, increasing circulation and transforming the way they looked. The transformation from territorial capital to cotton boom town took place in only sixty years. In the transition from frontier press to party press to slavery press, Natchez journalists knew that residents wanted the news, and the editors, eager and ambitious, strived to satisfy these customers.

The men who operated the presses, wrote the editorials, kept track of subscribers and collected articles came from many backgrounds and ran their newspapers with motives of generating a little profit and perhaps employing a little political influence. The lean days of the early decades of the 1800s — when Natchez was a newspaper graveyard — gave way to prosperous and more stable times in the 1820s and 1830s. Supported by the growing cotton economy, Natchez supported two newspapers for nearly thirty years, and the rivalry of the Democratic Free Trader and the Courier provides an informative record of the political rhetoric, the issues and the party conflicts of the decades before the Civil War. The Natchez Courier's uneasy transition from Whig to Know-Nothing to Union demonstrates the problems for moderate white southerners who shunned the extreme positions of the secessionists so firmly entrenched among southern Democrats.

Southern society paid a very high price for the prosperity derived from King Cotton. The growth of the profitable cotton business revived and transformed the slave system, dying in the North and declining in the South in 1800. By 1830, southern slaveholders raking in huge profits from slavery could no longer tolerate the disparagement of slavery, the growth of the abolitionist movement, and the challenges to their Christian view of themselves. If slaveholding was evil, then a society that tolerated, permitted and promoted slavery must be evil as well. Therefore, slavery was a positive good, the slaves must be happy and well-cared for, and southerners felt that the white man was the real victim of slavery, acting out God's plan by taking care of the helpless black man and providing him with useful work.

The story told is largely within the larger transformation of Natchez from territorial capital in 1800 to a center of the Cotton Kingdom in 1860, and the changing role of the press in the region. The press was the creation of a vibrant set of individuals who showed common traits. They were ambitious, literate men, seeking fame and fortune in the world of Natchez journalism. The nature of the profession attracted men who had little reason to challenge the existing slave system. (1) An editor who had his doubts about the peculiar institution either quit or kept his doubts to himself, especially after 1830 and an increasing number of incidents of violence against suspected abolitionists. Most Natchez journalists eagerly became part of the system, purchasing land and slaves as they embraced ideals of southern honor, white mastery, and black inferiority.

The journalists slanted the contents of their publications to support views of black inferiority and the paternal benefits of slavery. Slavery's defenders rationalized the superiority of southern culture by pointing out Biblical precedent for slavery, presenting pseudoscientific observations that claimed biological proof of mental and moral failing among Africans, attacking abolitionist extremism, and other dubious justifications. Even as competing Natchez newspapers sniped at each other over local and state issues, they joined together to condemn and sensationalize the actions of abolitionists, northerners and Republicans. Every national incident became a crisis as northerners sought to limit the extent of slavery and to minimize the power of the slave states. Slave state politicians, desperate to retain their power, exploited the gains of the Mexican War, the secession crisis of 1850, Bleeding Kansas, the Dred Scott case, Harper's Ferry and other events. The newspapers supported the slave power by printing inflammatory and often erroneous interpretations of events.

Although always political and always combative, the Natchez press was also entertaining and reflective of the values, culture, and economy of slavery. The newspapers reported on the events and motivations of duels, feuds and other conflicts, and have become a record of many details of southern honor and how it affected newspapers and the society at large. Southern reflections on national culture also provide many proofs of the southern devotion to their infallibility and they lengths they went to preserve their view of themselves. Economic information centered on cotton markets, although the newspapers did offer articles on other issues, such as transportation and crop diversification.

The Cotton Kingdom thrived on slavery, and southern leaders did not have the vision to face the real problems of slavery and the inequalities in Dixie. The southerner's view of himself and his society could not endure abolitionist attacks on the realistic excesses of the slave system and the basic moral arguments against the institution of slavery in any form. Southerners became defensive, sensitive and intolerant on the subject of slavery. The press played its role, supporting southern prejudices, distributing justifications for slavery and promoting white supremacy for the mollification of the southern planter. By the election of 1860, the rigors of southern honor demanded a capitulation so audacious and unreasonable that the North could not acquiesce. Secession and Civil War must have seemed inevitable, to any critical reader of the Natchez press, long before Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter.

CONCLUSION ENDNOTES

(1) Abolitionist newspapers existed in slave states, but they were very rare and subject to life-threatening harassment. Cassius Clay, of Louisville, Kentucky, is probably the most famous of the southern abolitionist editors. Several attempts were made to drive Clay out of business or assassinate him.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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PRIMARY SOURCES

MANUSCRIPTS

Alexander K. Farrar Papers, Louisiana State University, Department of Archives and Manuscripts, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Andrew Marschalk Papers, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, Mississippi.

GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS

Deed Records, Books A-LL, 1780-1860, Natchez Chancery Clerk’s Office, Adams County, Mississippi.

Chancery and Circuit Court Records, 1800-1860, Natchez Historic Foundation, Natchez, Mississippi.

U.S. Census, Adams Co., Mississippi, 1820-1860, Manuscript Schedules, Natchez Project Archives, California State University, Northridge, California.

PUBLISHED PRIMARY SOURCES

Cartwright, Samuel. Essays, Being Inductions Drawn from the Baconian Philosophy Proving the Truth of the Bible and the Justice and Benevolence of the Decree Dooming Canaan to Be a Servant of Servants; And Answering the Question of Voltaire:"On demande quel droit des étangers tells que les juifs avaient sur le pays de Canaan?" In a series of letters to Rev. William Winans. Vidalia, LA: s.n., 1843.

Cross, J.C. The Purse; or, Benevolent Tar. Boston: W. Pelham, 1791. Music by William Reeve. (Musical Comedy.)

Elliott, E.N., editor. Cotton Is King, and Proslavery Arguments: Comprising the writings of Hammond, Harper, Christy, Stringfellow, Hodge, Bledsoe, and Cartwright, on this important subject. Augusta, GA: Pritchard, Abbot, & Loomis, 1860.

Hogan, William R, and Edwin A. Davis, editors. William Johnson's Natchez: The Antebellum Diary of Free Negro. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1951.

The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1880-1901.

NEWSPAPERS

Natchez, Mississippi

Ariel, 1825-1829
Green's Impartial Observer, 1800-1801
Mississippi Free Trader, 1835-1861
Mississippi Herald, 1802-1808
Mississippi Messenger, 1805-1808
Mississippi Republican, 1812-1824
Mississippi State Gazette, 1818-1825
Natchez Courier, 1833-1871
Natchez Cutter, 1841
Natchez Democrat, 1865-1871
Natchez Gazette, 1825-1827, 1830-1832
Southern Galaxy, 1828-1830
Statesman and Gazette, 1827-1829
Weekly Chronicle, 1808-1811

Washington, Mississippi

Washington Republican, 1813-1817

Vidalia, Louisiana

Concordia Intelligencer, 1841-1858

SECONDARY SOURCES

BOOKS

Alford, Terry. Prince Among Slaves: The True Story of an African Prince Sold Into Slavery in the American South. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.

Davis, William C. A Way Through the Wilderness: The Natchez Trace and the Civilization of the Southern Frontier. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1995.

Davis, William C. Three Roads to the Alamo: The Lives and Fortunes of David Crockett, James Bowie, and William Barret Travis. New York: Harper Collins, 1998.

Eaton, Clement. Freedom of Thought in the Old South. New York: Peter Smith, 1951 [1941].

Emery, Michael, Edwin Emery, and Nancy L. Roberts. The Press and America: An Interpretive History of the Mass Media, Ninth Edition. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1996.

Ericson, David F. The Debate Over Slavery: Antislavery and Proslavery in Antebellum America. New York: New York University Press, 2000.

Freehling, William W. The Road to Disunion: Secessionists at Bay, 1776-1854. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Greenberg, Kenneth S. Honor and Slavery: Lies, Duels, Noses, Masks, Dressing as a Woman, Gifts, Strangers, Humanitarianism, Death, Slave Rebellions, the Proslavery Argument, Baseball, Hunting, and Gambling in the Old South. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996.

Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger with assistance of Frederick Lawrence. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989

Harris, William C. The Day of the Carpetbagger. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1979.

Harris, William C. Presidential Reconstruction in Mississippi. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1967.

Hearon, Cleo. Mississippi and the Compromise of 1850. Jackson, MS: Mississippi Historical Society, 1914. (Dissertation.)

James, D. Clayton. Antebellum Natchez. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1968.

Koskoff, Ellen, editor. The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 2001.

Leonard, Thomas C. News for All: America’s Coming of Age with the Press. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Lomask, Milton. Aaron Burr: The Conspiracy and Years of Exile, 1805-1836. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1982.

May, Robert. John A. Quitman: Old South Crusader. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1985.

May, Robert. Manifest Destiny's Underworld. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.

McMurtrie, Douglas C. A Bibliography of Mississippi Imprints, 1798-1830. Beouvoir Community, Mississippi: The Book Farm, 1945.

Melton, Buckner F. Aaron Burr: Conspiracy to Treason. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2002.

Overdyke, W. Darrel. The Know-Nothing Party in the South. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1950.

Remini, Robert V. Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Empire, 1767 – 1821. New York: Harper & Row, 1977.

Rowland, Dunbar. History of Mississippi: The Heart of the South, Volumes I and II. Chicago: S.J. Clarke, 1925.

Sadie, Stanley, editor. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Sellers, Charles. The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Sonneck, O.G. Bibliography of Early Secular Music. Washington, D.C.: H.L. McQueen, 1905.

Swearingen, Mack Buckley. The Early Life of George Poindexter: A Story of the First Southwest. Chicago: University of Chicago Libraries, 1934. (Dissertation.)

Sydnor, Charles S. A Gentleman of the Old Natchez Region: Benjamin L.C. Wailes. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1938.

Taylor, William R. Cavalier & Yankee: The Old South and American National
Character. New York : Oxford University Press, 1957.

Tuchman, Barbara. Practicing History: Selected Essays by Barbara Tuchman. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1981.

Wyatt-Brown, Bertram. Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.

ARTICLES

Hamilton, William B., editor. "Notes and Documents: The Printing of the 1799 Laws of the Mississippi Territory." Journal of Mississippi History II, no. 2 (April 1940): 88-99.

Kelley, Donald Brooks. "Harper's Ferry: Prelude to Crisis in Mississippi." Journal of Mississippi History XXVII (February 1965): 351-372.

Kelley, Donald Brooks. "Intellectual Isolation: Gateway to Secession in Mississippi." Journal of Mississippi History XXXVI (February 1974): 17-37.

Miles, Edwin A. "The Mississippi Press in the Jackson Era, 1824-1841." Journal of Mississippi History XIX, no. 1 (January 1957): 1-20.

Olsen, Christopher J. "'Molly Pitcher' of the Mississippi Whigs: The Editorial Career of Mrs. Harriet N. Prewett." Journal of Mississippi History LVIII, no. 3 (Fall 1996): 237-254.

Porter, David L. "The Mississippi Press and the Election of 1860." Journal of Mississippi History XXXIV (February 1972): 247-252.

Steffen, Charles G. "Newspapers for Free: The Economies of Newspaper Circulation in the Early Republic." Journal of the Early Republic XXIII (Fall 2003): 381-419.

Sydnor, Charles S. "The Beginning of Printing in Mississippi." Journal of Southern History I, no. 1 (February 1935): 49-55.

APPENDIX: THE GALLEY SLAVE

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Andrew Marschalk printed the ballad "The Galley Slave" at Walnut Hills (Vicksburg) in 1798. It was the first printed material in Mississippi. "The Galley Slave" is from a musical comedy titled The Purse; or Benevolent Tar, written in London in 1794 by J.C. Cross (lyrics) and William Reeve (music). No copies of Marschalk's edition are known to exist, but "The Galley Slave" was popular enough that the text is available in other forms. This text is taken from a 1797 Boston printing of The Purse; or, Benevolent Tar. See Footnote 54 for references.

The Galley Slave
I.

O! think on my fate! Once I freedom enjoy'd
Was as happy, as happy could be!
But pleasure is fled! — even hope is destroy'd!
A Captive, alas! On the sea!
I was ta'en by the foe — 'twas the fiat of fate
To tear from me her I adore!
When thought brings to mind my once happy state,
I sigh! — while I tug at the oar.

II.

Hard, hard is my fare! Oh! How galling my chain!
My life's steer'd by misery's chart;
And though 'gainst my tyrants I scorn to complain,
Tears gush forth to ease my full heart;
I disdain e'en to shrink, tho' I feel the sharp lash;
Yet my breast bleeds for her I adore!
While around me, the unfeeling billows will dash,
I sigh! — and still tug at the oar.

III.

How Fortune deceives! — I had pleasure in tow,
The port where she dwelt, we'd in view;
But the wish'd nuptial morn was o'erclouded with woe,
And, dear Anna! I was hurried from you!
Our shallop was boarded, and I borne away,
To behold my dear Anna no more!
But despair wastes my spirits, my form feels decay!
He sigh'd — and expir'd at the oar.

CHAPTER ONE: OVERVIEW OF THE NATCHEZ PRESS, 1800 to 1865

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"In America there is scarcely a hamlet that has not its newspaper. It may readily be imagined that neither discipline or unity of action can be established among so many combatants, and each one consequently fights under his own standard. All the political journals of the United States are, indeed, arrayed on the side of the administration or against it; but they attack and defend it in a thousand different ways."
— Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835

I. Overview of the Natchez Press, 1800 – 1865

Despite a few obscure and unreliable sources that mention newspapers in the Natchez area as early as 1789, journalism in the form of a weekly news periodical really began in Natchez with the first issue of the Mississippi Gazette late in 1799. Why 1799? Why did American dominion over the area attract a newspaper so quickly when the inhabitants had gotten along quite well without one under Spanish and English jurisdiction? The story of how the press came to Natchez, and why it happened in 1799 instead of 1770 or 1804, can not be separated from the political history of the region.

Europeans had traveled through the region as early as De Soto in the 1520s, and European settlement began in 1714 when the French built a trading post on the landing beneath the bluffs where the city of Natchez would later grow. In 1729 the massacre of the French garrison at Fort Rosalie by the Natchez Indians and the subsequent genocidal retaliation by the French over the next two years discouraged further European immigration for several decades. The North American wars of empire and the American Revolution provoked a high stakes game of chance among the many powers, and the Natchez district was passed around like a hot stone in the last half of the 18th century.

At the end of the French and Indian War, France ceded the eastern part of the Louisiana Territory, including the Natchez District, to England. During the American Revolution, Spanish forces captured much of the area, and England relinquished control to the Spanish crown in 1783. In 1798, the United States claimed the area, soon to be called the Mississippi Territory, under the terms of Pinckney’s Treaty.

It would be several years before any of the vast region known as the Mississippi Territory would be admitted to the union, but this did not change the fact that the needs and responsibilities of the citizens in a republic differed greatly from the duties of colonists, as the people of Natchez had been just a few months previously. As a colony of Spain, France or England, the Mississippi Territory existed as a mere appendage of a vast empire. As a territory seeking eventual statehood within the framework of the United States, the Mississippi Territory — with the Natchez district as its political, cultural and economic heart — needed a source of information to encourage and shape political views and activities. As cotton production increased after Eli Whitney’s cotton gin swept the South, the growing need for market information and other potential financial ventures also increased, especially as the population of the region grew. The newspapers that would soon appear in the Natchez region would serve many purposes, but the political and economic factors dominated the motives of the early journalists.

The press would have developed in Natchez eventually even if it had remained a colony, but the political needs of a community that was now largely in control of its own destiny — and the destiny of the population of the vast territory — created a need for a journal (or two). But it was not an immediate need, as starting a newspaper was a risky business. The immediate origins of journalism in the Natchez area did not develop out of an imminent cry for political or economic information from a concerned populace. Enterprising journalists did not rush from New York or Boston or Philadelphia to put down roots in the infant community of Natchez. With a small population — about 1,400 in 1800 — and an economy that was only beginning to experience the benefits of cotton production, there was no rush to start a newspaper. To get started, journalism in Mississippi required a combination of timing, legal necessity and some prescient and optimistic opportunism.

The first governor of the Mississippi Territory, Winthrop Sargent, took office in August 1798. By the end of May 1799, Sargent and the first Territorial General Assembly — based in Natchez, the largest town in the territory — had approved the Territorial Laws for Mississippi. The territorial government wished to publish the laws and ensure the availability of knowledge of the new legal code throughout the territory, a vast area that included most of modern Alabama as well as Mississippi.

Sargent had early realized the advantages of having a permanent printer in the Natchez area to help disseminate the business of the territorial government and, in the fall of 1798, the governor wrote to Andrew Marschalk, an officer at the fort at Walnut Hills, who owned a printing press. In an 1837 issue of the Mississippi Free Trader and Natchez Gazette, Marschalk recalled his role in the early years of Mississippi printing:

The first press in Mississippi was a small mahogany one, brought by me from London in September, 1790. It was out of my possession for six years, when ordered to this (then) territory (I was an officer in the United States army.) In the year ’97 or ’98, I regained possession of it and a small font of type — say 30 lbs., — and while at Walnut Hills, printed a ballad, (the Galley Slave.) Great excitement was caused in Natchez by the knowledge of a press being in the country, and strong inducements were held out for me to remove to that place. Finally I constructed a large press capable of printing a foolscap sheet, and printed the territorial laws. The press was sold by me to Ben M. Stokes, and he commenced in Natchez, and continued some time, the Mississippi Gazette, on a foolscap sheet. This was some time in the summer of 1799; but he soon failed.
About March or April, 1800, a Mr. Green, from Baltimore, brought a press to Natchez. I do not recollect the title of the paper; it ceased while I was at the North, and the press fell into the hands of James Ferrell, who with one Moffatt, published a paper for a short time.
I arrived from Philadelphia the last of July, 1802, and commenced the Mississippi Herald, I think the 26th of July, the same year.

Marschalk’s memory for dates and certain details is not always accurate, but his words reflect an atmosphere of instability and futility that characterized the frontier press of Natchez in the early years. He also neglected to mention his own aspirations for staying in Natchez and starting a newspaper, aspirations possibly thwarted by the political tenor of the time as Governor Sargent was a stubborn and haughty Federalist — appointed by John Adams — and Marschalk was a Jeffersonian Republican who would later be known as a particularly outspoken and fiery editorial writer. A series of letters between Marschalk, still a lieutenant in the army, Sargent and other officers indicate that Marschalk expressed an initial enthusiasm for establishing a printing office, "an object of public as well as private [be]nefit," in Natchez. Nine months later, in the summer of 1799, Marschalk’s letters reveal a growing frustration with the entire project as he asks for permission to finish the printing of the Territorial Laws at Fort McHenry, where he hoped to be promoted to command of the fort after the death of Captain Piercy Smith Pope. Marschalk eventually finished the job and sold the press to Benjamin M. Stokes, who had helped with the printing of the Territorial Laws. Stokes published a newspaper called the Mississippi Gazette, but not as early as the summer of 1799 as remembered by Marschalk. According to a letter from Marschalk to Sargent, dated December 15, 1799, Stokes had just purchased the press and would soon start his newspaper in Natchez, either in late 1799 or early 1800.

Although many Natchez newspapers for the period from 1800 to 1865 are available on microfilm, the records are capricious and incomplete, especially for the earlier part of the period. Mississippi newspapermen from later in the century showed an interest in the history of the state’s periodicals and occasionally printed articles on the subject. These articles certainly provide a consistent general history of instability and short-lived newspapers, but the information that can be verified often reveals some incorrect information. In documenting the very early history of journalism in Mississippi, I have had to make a few educated guesses and I have been forced to rely on some inaccurate sources. Still, the information that can be verified strengthens the idea of a general narrative of a capricious frontier press until about 1812, even if some of the dates are off by a few months.

Most sources say that the Mississippi Gazette lasted only a year or two, and this seems to be a reasonable assumption as available evidence paints Natchez as a newspaper graveyard. A large number of enterprising and ambitious journalists attempted to start newspapers in those early years. Marschalk mentions "a Mr. Green, from Baltimore," who arrived in Natchez with his own press in the spring of 1800. A few issues of Green’s Impartial Observer are available on microfilm and it probably started in the fall of 1800. Green sold the press to James Ferrall and D. Moffatt, who started the Natchez Intelligencer, which passed to John Shaw. Shaw published a paper known as the Natchez Halcyon before he established a partnership with Timothy and Samuel Terrell and renamed the newspaper the Mississippi Messenger. This last incarnation lasted about five years.

Marschalk returned to Natchez in the summer of 1802, and the first issue of the Mississippi Herald appeared in July of that year. He may have acquired his old press from Stokes or he may have brought another from Philadelphia. The Herald lasted until at least 1808, and Marschalk changed the name of the paper several times during this period. In 1803, the banner read the Mississippi Herald and Natchez Repository, which changed to Mississippi Herald and Natchez City Gazette in 1804. The City was soon dropped and the paper was known as the Mississippi Herald and Natchez Gazette until 1808.

A few other short-lived newspapers appeared in this period, including John Wade’s Constitutional Conservator and a paper published by James Bradford mentioned but not named by Marschalk. John Winn published the Weekly Chronicle from 1808 to 1811, and he may have been using the same press used by the Terrells to publish the Messenger.
The relative success of the newspapers that lasted more than two years can largely be attributed to some manner of patronage of the government. Marschalk’s Mississippi Herald lasted for six years when other newspapers came and went with starling regularity. Marschalk printed the laws for the territorial government. As president in early 1801, Thomas Jefferson appointed a new governor of the territory, and the government, formerly controlled by Federalists appointed by Sargent, passed into the hands of the Jeffersonians. A staunch Jeffersonian Republican, Marschalk had secured the contracts for printing the laws and the official business of the territory by 1806, possibly sooner. Every issue of the Mississippi Herald and Natchez Gazette after 1806 identified the publisher as "Andrew Marschalk, Printer of the Laws of the United States." A newspaper publisher who enjoyed the business of the government could absorb some of the losses in the unstable world of frontier journalism.

Why was it so difficult to maintain a newspaper in Natchez in the early 1800s? Newspapers in America at this time usually came out weekly and publishers offered yearly subscriptions. Copies were not sold separately. For example, Green’s Impartial Observer cost four dollars per year and other newspapers cost up to six dollars annually. In a cash-poor economy, however, subscribers might agree to a slightly higher price to be paid later. Many editorials throughout the antebellum period complain of the problems involved in trying to collect these subscription fees.

The frontier newspapers did not fail because of a lack of interest on the part of area readers. Collecting money owed for subscriptions often proved difficult and many readers borrowed newspapers from their neighbors. One New York editor, echoing his fellow journalists all over the country, estimated that only one tenth of his readers actually paid for a copy of the paper. Natchez, especially in the earliest years of the territorial period, did not have enough newspaper readers committed to supplying their own cash to support a local journal. Nevertheless, the frontier newspapers played an important role in the political, cultural and economic development of the territory.

First, the dissemination of important political news and government announcements fulfilled one of the most important roles in the frontier press of early Natchez. Noteworthy speeches and important proclamations of the government — federal and territorial — fill many of the front pages. Green’s Impartial Observer of February 21, 1801, presents a speech by Georgia’s governor that fills most of the front page. These newspapers also contain dispatches and letters from around the nation and around the world, with news of the latest wars and intrigues. In the period before 1812, examples of well-covered events include the Wars with the Barbary kingdoms of North Africa and, much closer to home, the Burr conspiracy with its resulting trials and political machinations.

Economically, the frontier press played its most important role as a conduit for advertising. Early issues of the Observer and the Mississippi Herald display announcements of various goods and services, including room and board, and agricultural supplies. Some ads offered land for sale or for lease. Farmers and planters announce that prize horses have been lost or stolen. Slavery plays an important role in the notices as traders offer their human cargo for purchase, or owners seek fugitives.

Echoing the hostility of the political press of the settled part of the country, the Natchez press offers examples of political hostility at a very early period. In an 1806 number of the Mississippi Herald, Marschalk responds to an editorial in the Mississippi Messenger, adopting a contemptuous tone of superiority and referring to editor Samuel Terrell as "Sammy." Marschalk supported the Jeffersonians, and then the Jacksonian Democrats throughout his three decades in Mississippi. In the early days, however, the Natchez press could not be neatly divided into two rival papers representing two major national parties. In the example cited above, Terrell’s Messenger supported the Jeffersonians just as Marschalk did. Conflicts did not arise over national issues; the factions within the party of the Jeffersonian Republicans usually developed out of local issues and personalities. A major issue that provoked violence and enmity between the competing groups of Natchez arose out of the controversy on the location of the territorial capital. The dispute between supporters of the town of Washington — a few miles from Natchez — and Greenville generated a bitter and spirited rivalry at a time when the newspapers largely agreed on most national issues. In the most famous manifestation of this contest, George Poindexter — who would later be governor of the state — beat Marschalk in his printing office in Washington after a long series of hostile articles in both Marschalk’s Washington Republican and the rival Mississippi Republican of Natchez. The incident will be covered in more detail in Chapter 3.

In 1812 Natchez journalism entered a period of stability dominated by two main newspapers that competed for readers until 1824. The Mississippi Republican, published anonymously for more than a year, began in 1812. It changes hands several times, operated by Peter Isler, J. McCurdy, William C. Evens & Co., S.W.H. Cissna & Co., and Sylvester Russell. Willam H. Benton acquired the paper early in 1824 and changed the name to the Mississippi Republican and Literary Register for the last few months of its existence.

The most important of the editors, Richard C. Langdon, published the Republican from February 1818 to October 1820. Langdon would later edit the American Standard and the Ariel, the latter being one of the more interesting Natchez newspapers because of an unusual mixture of respectful political news — it was a Whig newspaper founded primarily to support John Quincy Adams — and literary content.

In April 1813 Andrew Marschalk moved to Washington and started a new newspaper, the Washington Republican. As Natchez grew and changed over the next twenty years, Marschalk always served the region as a journalist, even though he moved back to Natchez and changed the name of the paper several times. For a few years, the banner proclaimed the lengthy title of the Mississisppi Republican and Natchez Intelligencer. From 1818 to 1825, Marschalk called it the Mississippi State Gazette, and changed it to simply the Natchez Gazette in 1827. In that year, Marschalk, struggling financially, merged with another struggling Jacksonian newspaper, the Mississippi Statesman, operated by James Burke, and the paper was rechristened the Mississippi Statesman and Natchez Gazette until 1829. Over the next few years, it was known as the Natchez Gazette again, then as the Mississippi Gazette, and finally as Time’s Tablet and Mississippi Gazette for a few months before Marschalk retired in the fall of 1832.

The Mississippi Republican and the Washington Republican continued the political feuding within the party of the Jeffersonians that had started with Marschalk and Terrell. Until early in 1815, the news content of these newspapers largely centered on the War of 1812. Even much of the political abuse shared between these newspapers focused on the actions of Natchez natives during that conflict. The Battle of New Orleans proved to be a special focal point for Natchez press and Natchez politics, for a number of reasons. Jackson’s army had passed through Natchez on the way to the battle, and many volunteers from the region served under Old Hickory. The battle generated an intense feeling of pride and patriotism in all Americans in 1815, partly because it was an overwhelming victory over the British in a war that had gone badly for the country much of the time. The people of Natchez, however, experienced a special feeling, an exuberant reverence for the battle, its veterans and especially its commander because so many Mississippians had participated defending the region where they lived.

By 1825, party spirit had again developed in the nation. Many Jackson supporters, angry over the "corrupt bargain" allegations after the election of 1824 that put John Quincy Adams into the White House, began to campaign actively for their hero’s next run for the White House. In response, the Natchez supporters of John Quincy Adams organized several newspapers to counter the strength of Jackson in the area, represented by two Jackson newspapers, Marschalk’s Gazette and the Mississippi Statesman.

The Ariel, already mentioned, ran from 1825 to 1829. In its short life, a number of Natchez figures worked on it at one time or another as editor or publisher, including E.B. Baker, William Foster [check this]. Richard C. Langdon, James K. Cook and Phineas F. Merrick. Another Whig paper, the Southern Galaxy, started in the summer of 1828. At first the banner listed the publisher as William C. Grissam and Co. For much of the two-year life of the paper, Grissam published the Galaxy anonymously, but for most of 1830 he published it under his own name. Cyrus Griffin edited the paper for at least part of the time because several 1829 letters to the editor are addressed to him, but the Galaxy never listed him, or any other ambitious journalist, as editor. Griffin suffered from various ailments and the rest of the staff often ran the paper in his absence, frequently prompting humorous notes, signed by "The Printer’s Devil," apologizing for the quality of the paper. The Southern Galaxy ceased publication in the summer of 1830.

Natchez lawyer William P. Mellen purchased the Ariel in 1829 and transformed it into the Natchez. Editor James K. Cook of the Ariel continued to work for publisher Mellen on the Natchez for several years, and the paper retained its Whig orientation. In 1833, Mellen changed the name again, to the Natchez Courier & Adams, Jefferson, and Franklin Advertiser. This unwieldy name only lasted until the fall of 1833.

In the fall of 1832, publisher Nelson Wooster started the Mississippi Journal and Natchez Advertiser, with the help of James K. Cook as editor. Wooster died, age 23, in March 1833, and his brother Charles published the Journal until his own death in June the same year at the age of 21. James K. Cook and several others tried to continue the paper, but Natchez could not support two Whig papers unless the owner could handle financial losses. Mellen took over the Journal and merged it with his own paper, which was known as the Natchez Courier and Journal for awhile. The Courier would be the longest-lived of the antebellum newspapers of the Natchez region. Except for a few months in late 1863 and early 1864 when the War Between the States caused publication to be erratic, the Courier lasted until 1871.

For most of the period, the Courier enjoyed a spirited rivalry with the Democratic Mississippi Free Trader and Natchez Gazette. For several reasons, it is highly likely that the first publishers of the Free Trader — De Rush, Stanton and Besançon — purchased the press and equipment from Andrew Marschalk or his creditors. The use of the Natchez Gazette as part of the title, the continuation of the paper’s Democratic party affiliation, and Besançon’s admiration of Marschalk: these factors all support the idea that Marschalk’s old press still produced newspapers even if the "Father of Mississippi Printing" had retired. Besançon encouraged Marschalk to write for the Free Trader several times, and Marschalk provided several remembrances of his earlier life in New York during the American Revolution. Besançon’s interest in the early history of printing in Mississippi also got an article from Marschalk that — despite a few inaccuracies — provided invaluable information for later historians.

The long rivalry between the Whig Courier and the Democratic Free Trader would be the liveliest newspaper "war" in the history of antebellum Natchez. The Free Trader, like the Courier, persevered through the final decades of growing North-South strife, through the election of 1860 and the early days of the Civil War, finally ceasing publication in 1861.

Only one other newspaper appeared in Natchez between 1835 and 1865. John Lavins and James Edwards, operating at the landing at Natchez-Under-the Hill, published the Natchez Cutter in 1841. The Cutter concentrated on the affairs of the Mississippi River, its culture and economy, and largely ignored politics. Focusing on river news, the Cutter published the comings and goings of steamboats, events at Natchez-Under-the-Hill, and social news from New Orleans and other river cities. Lavins and Edwards published the Cutter six days a week from March to May in 1841 before the paper folded.

Both the Free Trader and the Courier passed through the hands of a dozen or more proprietors from the 1830s to the 1860s. Lorenzo Besançon edited the Free Trader for four years. In 1837, he was sole owner and proprietor, but before and after that year, Besançon operated the paper in partnership with several Natchez entrepreneurs. Many of the later Free Trader editors lasted for two years or less before moving on. Some of the more durable journalists included merchant T.A.S. Doniphan (August 1840 to October 1848), Richard Elward (May 1849 to September 1852), Edward Pickett Jr. (September 1852 to December 1855) and James W. McDonald (January 1856 to January 1858).

The Courier also went through editors quickly. After five years in the business, founder William P. Mellen sold the Courier to Samuel H.B. Black, who operated the paper for four years (1836 to 1839). After several short-lived publishers gave up the hectic business of Natchez journalism, Milford N. Prewett operated the paper from 1843 to 1847. In later years, Prewett’s wife Harriet operated the paper in her husband’s name because of a persistent illness. The Prewetts moved to Yazoo City in the west central part of the state and purchased another newspaper, the Yazoo City Whig, which Harriet published under her own name for over a decade after Milford died.

William R. Adams, who bought the Courier from the Prewetts, sold it after three years to Giles M. Hillyer. A native of Connecticut, Hillyer had lived in Natchez for a few years when he bought the Courier and he would be a journalistic and Whig fixture in Natchez for almost twenty years. From the summer of 1850 to May 1862, Hillyer edited the Courier, bought land and slaves to become a small planter himself, and pursued a political career, even running unsuccessfully against John Quitman for Congress in 1855. Hillyer left the Courier in 1862 to offer his services to the Confederacy but he returned to Natchez after the war and resumed the editorial direction of the paper from December 1865 to February 1867. The Courier changed hands several times in the last few years of its existence and finally closed its doors forever in 1871.

The rivalry between the Free Trader and the Courier reflected the fierceness of the period’s political climate and some of the harsh words led to physical harassment, dueling, and fighting. In a mere four years as editor of the Free Trader, Besançon experienced every imaginable type of conflict with angry Whigs. In 1835 Mellen sued Besançon and his business partners for commenting on a labor dispute, calling the Courier management "Rats!" for their treatment of journeymen printers. Later that same year, a group of angry Whigs confronted Besançon, bodily removed him the Free Trader office, and forced him to publicly apologize for an editorial. (Besançon later retracted his apology.) In 1837 Besançon was involved in four affairs of honor, one of which ended in death for his opponent. In the fall of that year, Besançon and John Quitman got into a fight on election day, a conflict which is described in William Johnson’s diary as well as in the Free Trader.

In 1843, Milford N. Prewett of the Courier challenged the Free Trader’s T.A.S. Doniphan to a duel. Prewett was arrested, found not guilty, and the duel never happened. The latter period of the rivalry lacks any incident as dramatic as these experiences, but the verbal fencing continued until the start of the Civil War. By the late 1850s, the Free Trader editorialized on the rights of the South and the case for secession, and attacked the Courier for its more cautious Unionist approach. Editor Giles Hillyer — who supported the American party, also known as the Know Nothings, after the collapse of the Whigs — endorsed the Unionist candidate John Bell in 1860 [check the JMH article on MS press and 1860] and published scathing articles on the radical and questionable nature of secession. When Mississippi seceded early in 1861, Hillyer, like so many other Southern Unionists, enlisted in the Confederate army and rose to the rank of colonel and head quartermaster for Braxton Bragg in Tennessee.

One other area newspaper should be mentioned and discussed briefly even though it was not published in Adams County or, truth be told, it was not even published in the state of Mississippi. The Concordia Intelligencer served the citizens of the town of Vidalia in Louisiana, on the other side of the Mississippi River directly across from Natchez. C.S. Smith started the Intelligencer in 1841 and it changed hands frequently, with at least ten different owners before it closed in 1858. A failed Natchez doctor and businessman, Robert Patterson bought the paper in 1843, seeking a new profession after the Panic of 1837 ruined him and he had failed at several business ventures. He succumbed to a long illness in 1846 and his wife Mary published the paper for a few months before she sold it to James Edwards, an editor on the Intelligencer for several years when it was owned by Patterson. Edwards, no stranger to Natchez journalism, had previously been involved in running both the Courier and the Cutter. Edwards owned the Intelligencer for about three years.

Up to 1852, several short-time publishers ran the paper, including G.B.N. Wailes, the brother of Benjamin Wailes, a prominent Natchez man of letters. Two other publishers ran the Intelligencer for longer periods of time, W.F. Eisley (of Port Gibson) from 1852 to 1856, and John McDowell, who ran it from 1854 to 1858.

The Concordia Intelligencer, named for the Louisiana parish where Vidalia was located, played a slightly different role for the region than the Natchez papers. It contained the most important national and international news, market reports, advertising and the usual curiosities. In comparison to the Natchez newspapers — the Courier and the Free Trader — the Intelligencer lacked intensely partisan election coverage and violent political attacks. Vidalia, a much smaller town than Natchez, desired its own forum for vital news items and for the relevant business-related notices and reports. The Intelligencer’s readers must have also enjoyed the cultural items that analyzed Northern and European culture and comfortingly found Southern culture to be superior. But the Intelligencer did little more than print the names of the candidates and the results of the elections. The residents of Vidalia had little interest in Mississippi state politics. (Those that did could easily subscribe to the Natchez papers.) And it is probably reasonable to assume that Vidalia avoided the excesses of the exuberant politics of its own state because of Vidalia’s small size and the distance from New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The Intelligencer ceased publication in 1858.

The Civil War understandably created an unstable and precarious situation for journalists in Natchez. The Free Trader ceased publication in May of 1861 (and it is highly likely that the Natchez Democrat — which began late in 1865 and continues to be the main Natchez newspaper as of the summer of 2004 — used the press and equipment that had been used for the Free Trader). After Hillyer left, the Courier continued under other management, often anonymously, and publication became sporadic during the disastrous summer of 1863 after the fall of Vicksburg and subsequent Union domination of the Mississippi River. When the Courier resumed regular publication in the fall of 1863, no regular editor was named and the military orders of the occupying Union forces figured prominently. The Natchez press played a role it had never dreamed — as a mouthpiece for a victorious army of invasion. The military used the paper to ensure that general orders for a relatively peaceful and orderly occupation could be distributed and known to the residents of the area. It also offered carefully selected news of the war and a few other items of general interest, but very little advertising.

What encouraged Natchez newspapermen to participate in this unstable and often dangerous profession?

First, it should be pointed out that many journalists found it a marginally profitable venture, particularly if a government printing contract supplemented the profits derived from running a newspaper — collecting subscriptions, advertising — and from printing jobs for customers, such as handbills, pamphlets, business and announcements. In the later part of the antebellum period, the publishers did not find the newspaper business to be particularly risky, certainly no more risky than any other business venture in a cash-poor agricultural economy susceptible to financial reversals and booms, based on droughts, financial panics, bad harvests, epidemics and many other unpredictable factors.
Natchez evolved from a muddy frontier village to a major, though small, economic and cultural center between 1800 and 1860, so examining the purposes of the newspapers and the manner by which a newspaper operated must be supplemented with the many changes that transformed the city ... and the nation.

Natchez, a small and isolated frontier town in 1800, grew into a thriving economic center by 1860. Though surpassed by Vicksburg and especially New Orleans, Natchez remained an important town on the Lower Mississippi throughout the antebellum period. With the addition of the Louisiana Territory in 1803, the annexation of Texas in 1845, and the cession of most of northern Mexico in 1848, Natchez lost its frontier status and became a growing and settled city in the center of a communication and transportation revolution. The steamboat and the railroad encouraged population and economic growth. In addition to the changes prompted by these general improvements, advances in printing technology also affected the newspapers, increasing circulation and transforming the way they looked, although circulation in Natchez, like most other Southern cities, remained too small to take advantage of the most advanced steam presses that enabled New York and Philadelphia to print more than 20,000 copies every day by the 1830s.

One of the most important changes in this period involved the growing emphasis on slavery. Abolitionists also took advantage of the new printing technology to flood the South with antislavery pamphlets and other printed material as early as the 1830s. Before this time, the Natchez press had not ignored slavery. Slave traders advertised their merchandise and owners placed notices for runaways. A few general interest articles on slave antics crept in, such as an unusual story about two female slaves who decided their differences with a mock duel, encouraged by their amused owner.

The onslaught of the abolitionists put Southern society on the defensive. The Jacksonian press became the slavery press. On a regular basis, the Natchez newspapers reported news stories that supported and strengthened planter beliefs in white supremacy and the moral inadequacies of the Negro. Editors printed lectures and opinions that supported the view that slavery, no longer a necessary evil as it had been viewed from the 1790s to the first few decades of the 19th century, was a actually a positive good, an institution that benefited owners and slaves alike. The authors of these articles praised enlightened Southern society, denigrated the industrial North, and rationalized their views from every angle, with the support of every perspective imaginable: the Bible, economics, morality, ancient and modern history, pseudoscience and others. Southern journalists demonized the abolitionists and other Northern opponents, misrepresenting their views and blaming the North for slave resistance and economic downturns.

With these changes in mind, we can examine the purposes and methods of the Natchez newspapers from 1800 to 1865.

New publishers and editors often included a mission statement or a note to subscribers, explaining the circumstances that had generated a new periodical or precipitated a change in ownership. Marschalk’s statement for the first issue of the Washington Republican, April 13, 1813, is worth publishing in full:

TO THE PUBLIC.
IT has been customary, (time immemorial) at the commencement of a Newspaper, for the Editor to make an exposition to the public, whose patronage he solicits, of his motives for the undertaking — his political opinions — and, also, to make many promises of the very great superiority his work is to possess over all his compatriots
In complying with this custom, the Editor of the WASHINGTON REPUBLICAN will occupy as little space in the columns of his paper, as the nature of the case will admit.
First, as to his motives — they are the same, he believes, which actuates the generality of mankind, (if they will be as candid in the confession as he is), viz. SELF INTEREST: — this leads him, in the present instance, to hope, that the industrious pursuits of his profession, will not only be rewarded by the approbation and patronage of a generous public — but will do more — enable him to rear, with becoming propriety, a little family, whose only (terrestrial) hope is in him.
As to his political opinions, he claims the right of a free born American — to have them — and to express them (with decency) — but he claims for himself, no greater privilege in the columns of his paper, than he is ready and willing to grant to every individual of the community. — He conceives it very immaterial to enter into a particular detail of his sentiments on the present state of public affairs: — As to the war, in which we are now unfortunately engaged, (for all wars ought to be so considered) — he does most fervently believe, that if ever a nation had JUST CAUSE to wage one, the United States, in the present case, is that nation. To record with care and diligence, the events of the war, as they arise, and as opportunity and resources will permit, will be his principle study; and in every other particular, as it will be his interest, so will it become a duty, to use his every exertion to render the Washington Republican a useful, instructive and interesting journal.
With one positive promise he concludes — viz. that as his press has not been purchased by any party or set of men — no control, except his own shall be exercised over it.

Marschalk’s mission statement begins sarcastically as he assures readers that he will, of course, provide a newspaper superior to all others. With his next point, that he was working in his own interests, Marschalk exhibited a very important motive that Natchez newspapers seldom acknowledged. No one got rich running a frontier newspaper, but a publisher could seek printing contracts and take on other publishing jobs. Apart from the financial rewards, however, a Natchez publisher might be able to gain influence and clout in the political world of Adams County and Mississippi.

The reference to the War of 1812 in the Washington Republican’s mission statement emphasizes that every time period generated its own unique purposes for the newspapers. The War of 1812 seems to have rejuvenated journalism in Natchez. From 1808 to 1812, I can find only a single newspaper in Natchez. The Weekly Chronicle served Natchez from 1808 to 1811, and its news sections relied heavily on international reports that emphasized the exploits of Napoleon. Two newspapers appeared in Natchez after the start of the War of 1812, and both newspapers reported heavily on the struggle with Britain.

Marschalk forcefully asserted his independence with his final remark. Throughout his career, Marschalk prided himself on his independence, but it was not always so important to Natchez journalists. Although Marschalk and Besançon bristled when they had to work under the direction of others, many editors quietly did the work for sometimes anonymous publishers. At times, the identity of an author or publisher became a heated issue in the early newspaper rivalries, particularly in the period before 1820 when Marschalk accused the editor of the Mississippi Republican of being the paid creature of Poindexter.

How did an editor get the news that appeared in the newspaper? How did the publishers get the product to the customers? How did these processes change between 1800 and 1865?

For most of this period, newspapers were four pages long and appeared weekly. From the 1830s, some newspapers experimented with publishing more often, and the banners reflect these experiments as the Natchez Courier became the Semi-Weekly Courier or the Daily Courier for a time. The Free Trader also exhibits this trait. Newspapers that published several times a week or daily usually had a weekly edition that published the most important news from the whole week for subscribers who did not feel it necessary to read the paper as often. Newspaper frequency changed, going from weekly to semi-weekly to daily, and back to weekly again, based on the economy.

A comprehensive account of how these newspapers operated would be difficult, probably impossible, to compile, but the editors offered some glimpses into this process through items in the newspapers. Other sources, particularly court documents, also offer a few insights into newsgathering, distribution and the mechanical processes of printing.

The size of the newspapers varied widely through the period. The Free Trader and the Courier of the 1850s were usually large, much larger than the standard newspaper size of today, close to 24” x 28”. On the other hand, the publisher of the relatively modest Ariel provided a newspaper with smaller dimensions than an 8 ½” x 11” sheet of paper. The size of newspapers reflected a number of considerations, including availability, prevailing style and the amount of news. In the first issue of the Washington Republican, Marschalk apologized for the small size of the paper: "The contemplated size of our paper is a royal or (at least) a medium sheet: - when our readers are informed, that no paper of either of those dimensions, can now be had, we trust, further apology for its present form is unnecessary. We confidently expect a supply of large paper, in a short time."

Printing press technology improved during this time as well, and editors followed the latest developments. A front-page 1815 article described the speed and output of a new steam-powered press purchased by the London Times. The new press "performs every part of what Printers understand by the term 'press work' without human labor: except that the sheets of paper are required to be placed on a cylinder & taken off when they have the impression." Noting the cost of the steam press, the article stated that the amount "will be speedily refunded by the savings that will arise from the invention as it allows the discharge of several Pressmen." This steam press scarcely resembles the machinery it replaces, printing 1,100 sheets an hour "with an astonishing clearness and beauty of printing," at a rate five times faster than the old hand-worked press.

Natchez, with circulations way under 1,000, did not need such a press in 1815. Publishers certainly followed the latest developments, however, and the changing look of the newspapers as well as rising circulation through the period indicates that Natchez journalists updated their printing presses when they could.

Editors filled their pages from a number of sources. They used local talent for editorials and some general interest pieces. Some local reporting brought in a few pieces of information. Marschalk mentions in one issue that he will not be in the office on a certain day because he will be covering the court session. The newspapers, as noted earlier, published laws and speeches.

One important method of newsgathering for the entire period involved reprinting articles from other newspapers. Every newspaper in the nation subscribed to a number of other newspapers and simply lifted the most interesting articles. Editors exchanged subscriptions with each other, and the agreement allowed editors to use stories from the publications they received. A randomly chosen issue of the Courier features articles from the National Gazette, the Port Gibson Southerner, the U.S. Gazette, the Louisville Journal, the Columbia Argos (Mississippi), the New York Herald, the Boston Times, the Mobile Advertiser, the New Orleans Bulletin, the New Orleans Bee, the Pittsburgh Advocate, the Cincinnati Post, the Ebensburg, Cambria County Spy (Pennsylvania) and others.

Editors relied on every new batch of newspapers to fill the paper. One earnest notice, from the first issue of the Weekly Chronicle, reflects the apologetic tone of the editor because the latest mails had not arrived in time for inclusion:

We have delayed our publication this day, for the arrival of the mail, under the expectation that it would furnish us something new; but to out great disappointment and mortification, no papers of a recent date were received — We are therefore constrained to give our paper to the world, with less interesting matter than we contemplated. To pledge ourselves to make amends in future, is what might be expected, and what we could promise — But until we command punctuality in the whole line of post offices and mail carriers, and assure our friends that irregularities will no more occur, our promises, like so many others that are made, would never be fulfilled.

In April of the following year, the Weekly Chronicle changed its day of publication from Wednesday to Saturday to accommodate "an alteration in the arrival and departure of the Eastern and Southern Mails."

Later, dispatches arrived by steamboat, and the most interesting items might be placed in the newspaper under a heading like "The Latest from the 'Niagara,'" and, after 1850, Natchez newspapers often contained timely news items headed by "The Latest by Telegraph."

A news-hungry citizen could get his hands on a newspaper in several different ways. Most readers subscribed (and prices varied widely through the antebellum period, from four dollars a year to ten dollars a year, for a four-page weekly newspaper) and the papers were distributed every week by employees of the publisher. Many newspapers available on microfilm have hand-written names above the banner on the first page; these are the names of the subscribers, written from a list that enabled the publisher (or, often, a separate business manager) to keep track of several hundred (or several thousand) subscribers. Citizens who did not subscribe for home delivery had other options. They could subscribe to a reading room — Marschalk operated a reading room in Washinghton and several reading rooms are advertised in the Natchez newspapers — where the customer paid a fee to have access to all the newspapers and books provided by the establishment. Alternately a customer could have access to all the reading material just by paying for coffee or tea during every visit.

Some patrons avoided paying for the newspaper by borrowing or stealing from a neighbor, and many subscribers simply refused to pay the bill at the end of the year. Publishers found several ways to deal with the huge but often necessary loss of revenue from stealing, borrowing, and delinquent subscribers, and these will be described in Chapter Two.

In the early days of the republic, newspapers provided political information to a growing electorate dispersed across the nation from the Atlantic coast across the Appalachians to the Mississippi River. The press of early 19th-cenutry America contained national and foreign events, advertisements for local business concerns and, most importantly, the newspapers functioned as a political forum. As the franchise embraced a greater number of adult white males, the political press became a major conduit for news from the capital, important speeches and opinions on the controversial issues of the day.

The situation of the press in Natchez, a cultural center of Mississippi and the Old Southwest, clearly illustrates the precarious situation of the frontier press between 1800 and about 1835. After 1835 the press stabilized in Natchez as the city lost its frontier character and became a settled community of reputable, if eccentric, planters. New loyalties and pressures changed the views of the people, the role of the press and the character of the region. The transportation and communication revolution certainly played a major role in transforming the area as Natchez took advantage of new technology such as the cotton gin, the steamboat, the railroad, the telegraph and many others. Political factions in Natchez fought over candidates and policies that affected national life. The Democrats dominated the Natchez press, but the Whigs and the Know-Nothings also had their time in the sun.

Most significantly, Cotton became King between 1800 and 1865, but it was really Slavery that took over as the new Master of the Natchez District, just as it dominated the rest of the South. Every aspect of life, including the press, had to be reshaped to promote and flatter Slavery in order to retain its relevancy. From the North, a growing abolitionist movement, taking advantage of some of this advancing technology, made itself heard below the Mason-Dixon line. The South was surprised and hurt by the abolitionist onslaught. And Southerners knew that Slavery was the right thing and that if a fight to the death developed over the issue, they would win merely because they were Southerners.

As Americans noted the middle of the 19th century, the battle over slavery intensified and, within a decade, it would antagonize and unite the South as no other issue ever could. The press and the journalists of Natchez, and of the South as a whole, assumed an important role in shaping the arguments that would eventually sway most Southerners in the spring of 1861. War seemed preferable to peace, by then. After so many decades of propaganda that offered up a version of slavery that benefited black and white alike, and a comforting white superiority complex that exalted the Southern way of life above all others morally, militarily, economically, socially, it is perhaps not surprising that the people of the South could rush into war so blissfully mindless of their own true best interests.

Who were these editors, publishers and journalists who so faithfully filled the role of slave propagandists? What processes changed the nature of Natchez and the nature of the Natchez press in this period? What incidents and personalities can illuminate the forces that led so tragically, and perhaps so inevitably, to a bloody War Between the States? How did the press portray and manipulate politics, economics and culture to support and glorify the "covenant with death," to ignore the reality of its brutishness, and to dress it up as an institution blessed by God?

With the background provided in this chapter, we can begin to examine the journalists, their newspapers and these themes, and perhaps we can take a stab at answering these complex questions.

RECONSTRUCTION JUNCTION

2005-03-05T14:28:00.000-08:00

OR, HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE KLAN

"POLITICAL MUSHROOMS" AND "ALIENS TO THE COMMONWEALTH":
WAS THE RECONSTRUCTION PRESS OF NATCHEZ
THE FOX NEWS OF THE 1860s?

In The Tragic Era, Claude Bowers offered a biased and virtually mythical retelling of the Reconstruction period that glorified the brave and patient Southerners as it condemned the greedy Yankees and their willing dupes, the lazy freedmen. Bowers described Republican leadership of generally being "brutal, hypocritical and corrupt." They treated the Constitution as a doormat, and the Supreme Court was treated with "ineffable contempt." In the Bowers version of Reconstruction, "the Southern people literally were put to the torture" and "historians have shrunk from the unhappy task of showing us the torture chambers."

The same book describes the formation of the Klan as an understandable effort to lighten the mood during that unhappy Christmas Eve of 1865 right after the war. "Let's start something to break the monotony and cheer up our mothers and girls. Let's start a club of some kind."

Other influential books by scholars such as William Dunning and future president Woodrow Wilson also promoted the White Supremacist myth and would provide similar examples. For a hundred years or more, these myths, — based on Southern rationalizations and racist interpretations — formed the basis of the mainstream view of Reconstruction. In general, the myth goes something like this: Immediately after the Civil War, the white people of the South earnestly sought to cooperate with the victorious North. Realizing that the freedmen could not survive on their own because of their obvious inferiority (as ordained by God), the Southerners had to impose the Black Codes to protect all Southerners, black and white, from the anarchy that would result from black equality. Arrogant (and greedy) Northerners exploited the gullibility of the freedmen and negated the new governments, imposed Congressional Reconstruction, defrauded the innocent Southerners and encouraged the unruly blacks to commit impudent acts. Carpetbaggers were the scum of the North, ignorant and illiterate and interested only in the riches they could extort from the South with the help of the Union Army and its unruly black regiments. The Ku Klux Klan emerged merely as a defensive organization, to protect white women and children from the violent blacks. Incidents of violence by the Klan were greatly exaggerated, and those few excesses that did happen should be attributed to poor white trash pretending to be the Klan.

In 21st-century America, we may again be watching as a new mythology slowly develops, a world where an ex-alcoholic Republican president who went AWOL during the Vietnam War and frequently refuses to deny drug use in his youth can be portrayed as a morally superior politician, even compared to Winston Churchill. His opponent’s combat service can be cynically twisted into an exercise in cowardice, his participation in a protest movement — actually trying to enjoy the alleged rights he fought for in Vietnam — was twisted in a clearly dishonest manner into a "betrayal" of the troops. Media critics claim that Rupert Murdoch’s much-maligned Fox News has endured a certain amount of criticism for its role in current divisions in the political environment. Fox News, according to its detractors, has employed a number of tactics to distort the news and push its far right-wing agenda. Conservatives have far more exposure, and liberals are always portrayed in the worst possible light, with few effective forums for rebuttal. The critics of Fox News claim that, at its worst, the organization repeatedly distorts events, leaves out material that does not support the right-wing agenda, and expresses its opinions as facts for the benefit of a conservative audience that happily gobbles it up uncritically.

Though Fox News is the first organ of broadcast journalism to be sensationalist and partisan to such a degree, print journalism has a long history of such bias and partisanship. The press in the early years of the republic usually divided into two main factions, with frequent reorganizations as parties fell apart and the citizens of the nations reconsidered their loyalty. The South, especially after 1830, tended to have a press that was particularly biased as the newspapers became a major weapon in the war of words over slavery. The enslavement of the black man was a good thing, the white people of the South were bravely and unselfishly caring for the helpless negro as part of God’s divine plan. Every event had to be rationalized and interpreted to support this point of view.

The War Between the States changed a lot of things in the dynamics of political power, but the Southern press remained devoted to white supremacy, and their coverage of the events of Reconstruction are marked by distortion, omission, exaggeration and falsification to support several views necessary to the white Southern worldview. An examination of the Natchez newspapers reveals an early distribution of the falsehoods that would become the myths of Reconstruction, notoriously popularized for a later generation by the film Birth of a Nation.

In the preface to The Tragic Era, Dunning stated: "In the effort to re-create the atmosphere and temper of the times, I have made free use of the newspapers of the times.” Certainly, the newspapers, and the news media in general, are a potent force for manipulation and information. The Natchez press, like most Southern newspapers from 1865 to 1877, played its part in creating the myths of Reconstruction.
Before the war, two major papers had operated in Natchez, rivals for almost thirty years. One of these papers, the Democratic Mississippi Free Trade, folded during the war and was not revived. The other paper, The Natchez Courier, was published sporadically during the war, and it was even operated by the US military during the Union occupation. Giles Hillyer, who had edited the Courier for over ten years before the war, returned to the paper after serving as an officer in the Confederate army. The voters of Mississippi sent Hillyer to the legislature in the new Mississippi government in 1865, where he distinguished himself as an advocate of the Black Code. He proposed that the freedmen should not be allowed to own land because "nests of negro colonies would at once be formed round every city, town and village, whose occupants would alone be supported by theft or other crime." Under Hillyer, the Courier would often vilify and denigrate the freedmen, and deny that they could ever be citizens. Hillyer’s failing health forced him to give up the Courier in 1868, and he died in Vicksburg in 1871. The Courier died the same year, as the new owners could not make it profitable.

Fabius Mead started the Natchez Democrat in the fall of 1865, and this paper enjoyed considerably more success. It is still published today, even though it has changed its editorial policies since 1865. Mead sold the Democrat to Paul Botto and J.W. Lambert early in 1866, and these two men operated the major newspaper that reflected and shaped the opinions of Natchez through Reconstruction and into the 1880s. Like Hillyer, Botto had served in the Confederate Army and was active in politics. Both men served as delegates from Adams County to the state convention in Jackson in 1866. Also serving in the same delegation were W.W.W. Wood, who had edited the Free Trader in 1861 just before its demise, and Thomas Grafton, who would later be listed as assistant editor for the Democrat.

The Democrat has been the major source for my study the Reconstruction press of Natchez. William Harris in The Day of the Carpetbagger cited an editorial by "the moderate editor of the Natchez Democrat." As I read these articles, I do not find it comforting that these statements are from a moderate Mississippi newspaper, and I doubt that the freedmen found it comforting at all.

The Natchez press continuously employed insulting or degrading language to refer to the freedmen. "Why don’t they rekonstruct the niggers if they are goin to?" asked columnist Bill Arp. "I’ll bet a possum that some of ‘em steal my wood this winter or freeze to death."

An editorial from January 1866 claims "the negro is now like the school boy, just released from the restraint of school; he finds himself free and must have his play." The same editorial predicts "the child is already born who will behold the last negro in the state of Mississippi." The blacks are "a race recognized by the American people and the highest tribunal in the land to be an INFERIOR RACE of beings."

The paternalism that characterized the days of slavery never leaves the white Southerners, and they continue to play the victim, the wronged party, and pretend to be doing the freedmen a favor when they agree to hire them again, even after they have dared to consort with Northerners who have filled their heads with silly ideas of equality, as in this editorial from Novermber 18, 1867, titled "To the Colored People":

The negroes will now have an opportunity to look back and see what they have done, and how much they have been profited or injured by the leaders whom they have so blindly followed. Sometimes of late, when we have thought of the determined obstinacy, amounting almost to dogged sullenness, which the colored people of this county (with but very few honorable exceptions) have displayed in putting away from them every particle of good advice offered them by the newspapers and the well disposed people of the county, and the avidity with which they have embraced the seditious and turbulent teachings of a score or more of political mushrooms who have been nurtured into noxious growth among us, we have been almost tempted to harbor ill will against the negro. But then, when we considered their ignorance, their former conditioned, their conduct and disposition in times past, and thought of their now utter helplessness, we have been, and now are, disposed to view the negroes, as the mere unwitting instruments in the hands of unprincipled spoil-seekers, men who pursue their devilish designs with an energy and recklessness almost unparalleled — men whose utter disregard of honor, right and justice, would, in times of good government, render them fit subjects for the gallows.

The Natchez newspapers sadly show no desire for compromise or humanity in addressing the rights of the liberated black man. The writer of this editorial from September 1866 justifies the Black Code, and dishonestly tries to clarify that natural rights are all that are secured by the Constitution and the Thirteenth Amendment:

It is argued that though the negro has no political rights and is not a part of the body politic, he has natural and personal rights which involve every political right but that of voting. He may, by his personal and natural rights, own real estate, may sue and be sued, may marry, may own any kind of personal property, and, in short, is precisely upon the level of a citizen in all but one little matter. Why, then, was it necessary for the legislature to make an express law giving him the right to appear in the courts, to marry lawfully, & c.?

The fact is, the free negro is a stranger and an alien to the commonwealth, and has, strictly, no legal rights except those given him by law. He has the natural and personal right to bear such arms as nature gave him, and no law attempts to deprive him of them. The State has the right to protect every one of its members, and if it is believed to be dangerous to allow negroes to carry deadly weapons it is the duty of the State to prohibit it.

Blacks in government are also subjected to more than their share of ridicule. "As legislatures, their ignorance can only breed corruption, and of the eighty-four colored lawmakers of South Carolina, two-thirds could hardly read or write their own names." And an item from October 1868 pretends to offer up an actual transcript highlighting "Our Colored Rulers," with some comic Sambo dialect helpfully provided, in the Georgia Assembly: "Mr. Clower (negro) took the stump to inaugurate some new ideas. 'Mr. Speaker, dis is a constitutional question. I never thought I’d ever be a lawyer but I’m here studyin' law in de Legislatur hall. I learns law here. You want to turn us out on de same principles dat you used to turn us out o’ de kitchen. Black color is de puttiest color in de world. Why do you war black close? Because you know, gemmen, it’s de puttiest color.'"

On the subject of the carpetbaggers, the Natchez newspapers continuously published negative articles about the corruption of Northern politicians and businessmen who had come to the South, offering exaggerated and fabricated versions of well-known figures like Governor Holden of North Carolina and Louisiana governor David Warmoth. A Natchez figure not so well known is George St. Clair Hussey, who managed the city’s board of health, very successfully, according to William C. Harris. The Natchez Democrat, however, reprinted an article from an Iowa newspaper that accused Hussey of many crimes and indiscretions. Hussy had been "shorn of his clerical robes in [the Lutheran] church an account of his alleged intrigues with lewd women" and later he was "the agent of certain swindling companies." He swindles $600 to start a newspaper in Keokuk, Iowa, another failed effort, and as justice of the peace, he stole the school fund. In Chicago, posing as a Bible salesman, he defrauded a Methodist publishing house of $900, and during the war, he ran a fake charity ostensibly to help the displaced former slaves of Memphis, but he sold the clothes he had collected to a dealer in St. Louis, and set up a saloon and bawdy house in Memphis.

Hussey sued publishers Botto and Lambert for libel, but the case was dismissed. Maybe the allegations against Hussey were true, but so many of the criminal portraits of more prominent carpetbaggers can easily proven to be false that we have to cautious about accepting the validity of the Democrat’s attack on Hussey. In May 1868, the Democrat reprinted an article from the St. Louis Republican entitled "Carpet Baggers" that had some harsh words for the Northern Republicans: "From this city alone, there has gone forth a full battalion of needy adventurers to try their fortunes in the new dominion of Niggerdom. In every instance these men were played out at home – unable to obtain a livelihood here ... and so badly off in points of moral character as to make their removal from our midst a cause for hearty rejoicing." Among the individuals targeted is David Warmoth, "fraudulently elected Governor of Louisiana by the negro vote," according to the article. A number of accusations are leveled at Warmoth, including "Treasury defalcations." Current’s Those Terrible Carpetbaggers sets the record straight on Warmoth, citing specific exaggerations of his enemies. The same book largely clears North Carolina governor Holden, whose impeachment the Democrat reported on gleefully. So it is understandable if the modern historian casts a dubious eye on passages that claim "there is a total prostration, a growing antipathy to the Government, a feeling, rapidly gaining ground, of unutterable loathing of the North, in the ten magnificent States no controlled by the Freedman’s Bureau and presumptuous shoulder-straps. In those States to be intelligent and human is to be proscribed."

At the same time these newspapers slandered the carpetbaggers, they denied or minimized the crimes of the Ku Klux Klan. The Democrat quotes the editor of the New York Times, who toured the South in the spring of 1871. "A diligent search for the Ku-Klux organization was not productive of success, yet that some such thing exists no sane man can deny ... the good citizens of Georgia are as ignorant of such an organization, and as much opposed to such lawless societies, if there be such, as President Grant, Mr. Greeley, or Reverend H.W. Beecher ... Every true Southerner scorns entering any such secret club ... and he is now willing to unite with honest men everywhere in sustaining a union of co-equal States under the Constitution."

In April, the Democrat published a statement from the Grand Cyclops of the Georgia Ku Klux Klan "repudiating the notices of a vindictive character that have been issued in the name of that mysterious brotherhood." The Ku Klux Klan is characterized as "peaceful and charitable in it objects" and many actions have been perpetrated by "a few abject but evil-minded men here and there" who "gladly lend the aid of their vicious faculties in perverting the usages of the Klan (of which they really know nothing) into a weapon for the perpetration of designs as pernicious as they are reprehensible." In that same month — April 1868 — the Democrat published an article on the Klan taken from the Memphis Bulletin that provided some information on the organization and initiation rituals of the Klan and, most importantly, offered a few words on the Klan’s mission: "The object of this organization is for the purpose of protecting the people of the South from the band of murderers and robbers now preying upon them, even to the last resort — assassination — and we pledge ourselves one to the other that nothing shall be allowed to deviate us from this noble object."

In October 1868, the Democrat reported "the worst Ku Klux outrage we ever heard of" as an incident at a Grant speech where an Irishman wanted to hear more when the candidate had finished. "Say more, say more," he shouted. The Radicals thought he was shouting, "Seymour," the name of the Democratic candidate. They called him an "infernal Irish Copperhead" and "fell upon him and beat the poor fellow almost to death before he could explain what he meant." Another Ku-Klux "outrage" was reported in April of 1871, when "a steamboat captain would ... not allow Fred. Douglass to sit at the table ... The story is that because Fred couldn’t eat, the Commission wouldn’t, and the party arrived half-starved at the Federal City."

The Democrat continued its dismissive nature of the Klan with this short item from 1871: "As a natural result of the discovery by Dr. Davis, of the Iuka Gazette, that there were one hundred and fifty thousand bloody Ku-Klux in a cave in Tishomingo, we are now informed that there are in Jackson several agents of fertilizing firms making contracts for the early delivery of dead Radicals and negro children in lots of a thousand or more." I assume they were just funning. Ha ha.

I searched the available issues of the Democrat in vain for recognition of the real violence in Jackson County, Florida, where almost 200 blacks and Republicans were murdered in a three-year period, or the violence in Kemper County in Mississippi on the Alabama border where 35 blacks were killed from 1896 to 1871. In December of 1869, the Democrat acknowledged a single death in Kemper County, that of Joshua Ball, but claimed he was "shot by the negro Ku Klux."

How is Fox News like the Reconstruction press? Its critics charge that Fox News has a point of view that it puts across using many of the same tactics I have just described as typical of the Reconstruction press. They say that Fox News is often very selective in what it chooses to report. Fox News reported extensively on negative aspects of John Kerry’s Vietnam service even though their sources were, in the view of media critics have since been largely discredited. But Fox News seldom reports on the many allegations of corruption among Iraq contractors with suspiciously close ties to the administration, or other stories that may portray Republicans in a bad light. Critics also charge that the organization also emphasizes stories that indicate hostility to religion or to combat soldiers, even if Fox has to exaggerate or falsify the events to make the point.

Fox News also fabricates events, such as fake news story on its Web site that quoted Kerry bragging about his manicure and his hair. It never happened and the story was quickly removed. Fox News has also edited video of Howard Dean, removing several seconds from a Dean statement to make it appear that he was accusing the Bush administration of purposely planning the September 11 attacks.

Fox News has been accused of presenting the president as a great statesman, ignoring his barely passable command of the English language at the same time it rationalizes his frequent difficulties with the truth. Many Democrats and liberals feel the entire Administration frequently gets a pass. Legitimate criticism of the president is always characterized as whining or treason. On Fox News, it is perfectly acceptable to equate any presidential critic as an ally of Osama bin Laden or North Korea. False statements from commentators are passed off as opinion, if they are challenged at all.

The legacy of the Reconstruction myth should be plainly visible to us all. Blacks were quickly deprived of the rights they had gained during Congressional Reconstruction and Jim Crow ruled the South until the 1960s. The myths of Reconstruction, the glorification of the Klan, the denigration of the blacks and the Republicans provided justifications for violence and repression for a century. Second-class citizenship for such a large group of people weakened the South, and ultimately the entire country, because of the energy devoted to forcefully acquire that which is self-evident; that all men are created equal. Across the entire country, this suspicion remains, and we are the weaker for it.

If the critics are correct, what shall be the legacy of the lies and distortions of Fox News? At best they will continue and probably increase the polarization of this country, as the audience for Fox News continues to believe so many lies that demonize those who oppose the Bush administration. This element of society that opposes the Bush administration can only become more suspicious of every word that emanates from Fox News and every motive of the politicians who benefit from Fox News, which they view as a Republican propaganda machine. The long term legacy of these suspicions is not comforting to contemplate in the best frame of mind. A truly pessimistic observer of this trend will surely fear for the future of America if Fox News continues on a course that is viewed by a large segment of society as inflammatory and dishonest.

Bibliography
Primary Sources
Government Documents

Natchez Courthouse Records Project, Chancery and Circuit Court Records, 1867 -1868

Newspapers

Natchez Courier
Natchez Democrat

Secondary Sources

Books

Bowers, Claude G. The Tragic Era: The Revolution after Lincoln. Cambridge, MA: The Riverside Press, 1929.
Current, Richard Nelson. Those Terrible Carpetbaggers: A Reinterpretation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Dunning, William A. Essays on the Civil War and Reconstruction and Related Topics. Originally published in 1897. Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1971.
Garner, James W. Reconstruction in Mississippi. Originally published in 1901. Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1964.
Harris, William C. The Day of the Carpetbagger. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1979.
Harris, William C. Presidential Reconstruction in Mississippi. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1967.
Randel, William Peirce. The Ku Klux Klan: A Century of Infamy. Philadelphia: Chilton Books, 1965.
Stampp, Kenneth. The Era of Reconstruction, 1865-1877. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1975.
Wilson, Woodrow. A History of the American People. Originally published in 1901. New York: Wm. H. Wise & Co., 1931.