The Press Gang

Newspapers and Politics, 1865-1878

Mark Wahlgren Summers

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780807844465, 9780807821404
• eBook ISBN: 9781469644226
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Relations between the press and politicians in modern America have always been contentious. In The Press Gang, Mark Summers tells the story of the first skirmishes in this ongoing battle. Following the Civil War, independent newspapers began to separate themselves from partisan control and assert direct political influence. The first investigative journalists uncovered genuine scandals such as those involving the Tweed Ring, but their standard practices were often sensational, as editors and reporters made their reputations by destroying political figures, not by carefully uncovering the facts. Objectivity as a professional standard scarcely existed. Considering more than ninety different papers, Summers analyzes not only what the press wrote but also what they chose not to write, and he details both how they got the stories and what mistakes they made in reporting them. He #exposes the peculiarly ambivalent relationship of dependence and distaste among reporters and politicians. In exploring the shifting ground between writing the stories and making the news, Summers offers an important contribution to the history of journalism and mid-nineteenth-century politics and uncovers a story that has come to dominate our understanding of government and the media.

Notes

ABBREVIATIONS

CHS	Cincinnati Historical Society
HML	Rutherford B. Hayes Memorial Library, Fremont, Ohio
HSP	Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
ISDAH	Iowa State Department of Archives and History, Des Moines
ISHS	Illinois State Historical Society, Springfield
ISL	Indiana State Library, Indianapolis
LC	Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
LL/IU	Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington
LSU	Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge
MHS	Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston
NHHS	New Hampshire Historical Society, Concord
NYPL	New York Public Library
OHS	Ohio Historical Society, Columbus
SC	Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts
SHC	Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
SML/YU	Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University, New Haven
UP	University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
UV	University of Virginia, Charlottesville

INTRODUCTION

1. Harper’s Weekly, November 7, 1874; see also November 21, 1874. The epigraph is quoted, and titled “Washington Correspondents,” in Washington Sunday Capital, April 23, 1871.

2. Albert Bigelow Paine, Thomas Nast: His Period and His Pictures (New York: Pearson, 1904), 278-81, 295-97.

3. For just such mathematics, see New York Times, October 17, 1874.

4. Harper’s Weekly, November 3, 1866, February 3, 1877. See also July 27, October 26, November 23, 1872, February 28, 1874, April 15, 1876, and, in the backgrounds of “Amphitheatrum Johnsonianum,” March 30, 1867. While seeking to avoid the use of gender-specific language in this book, I have retained the term newspapermen when it applies historically. The plain truth is that women reporters were few, editors even fewer; as will be noted later, women correspondents went not to cover events or news, but to add touches of color to the journals’ account of Washington affairs. There were a few conspicuous exceptions—but, as far as the daily workings of “the press gang” were concerned, it was a man’s world.

5. The same was true in England. See Stephen Koss, The Rise and Fall of the Political Press in Britain: The Nineteenth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981), 135, 154, as well as Punch, February 15, 1856, May 3, 1862, April 17, 1880, August 28, 1886, March 9, 1889, all illustrations in Koss, ibid.

6. See, for example, Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism: A History of Newspapers in the United States through 260 Years, rev. ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1950); Alfred McClung Lee, The Daily Newspaper in America: The Evolution of a Social Instrument (New York: Macmillan, 1937); Thomas C. Leonard, The Power of the Press: The Birth of American Political Reporting (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); Donald A. Ritchie, Press Gallery: Congress and the Washington Correspondents (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991).

Institutional histories, better than most but frustratingly mute on newspaper ideology or news-gathering methods in the nineteenth century, include Thomas H. Baker, The Memphis Commercial Appeal: The History of a Southern Newspaper (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971), John B. McNulty, Older Than the Nation: The Story of the Hartford Courant (Stonington, Conn.: Pequot Press, 1964), Raymond A. Schroth, The Eagle and Brooklyn: A Community Newspaper, 1841-1955 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1974), and Harold A. Williams, The Baltimore Sun, 1837-1987 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1987). There are honorable exceptions, including the works of James L. Crouthamel and a number of studies of the New York Tribune and of Pulitzer’s newspapers, which will be cited later.

7. Characteristic biographies of the younger Bennett include Richard O’Connor, The Scandalous Mr. Bennett (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1962), and Albert Stevens Crockett, When James Gordon Bennett Was Caliph of Bagdad (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1926).

8. Appropriate models might be found in two works in English journalism history: Koss, Rise and Fall of the Political Press, and Lucy Brown, Victorian News and Newspapers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985).

CHAPTER ONE

1. “H. V. R.,” Cincinnati Commercial, February 23, 1871; George Augustus Sala, America Revisited: From the Bay of New York to the Gulf of Mexico, and from Lake Michigan to the Pacific (London: Vizetelly & Co., 1886), 373-74; David Macrae, The Americans at Home: Pen and Ink Sketches of American Men, Manners, and Institutions (Edinburgh: Edmonston & Douglas, 1870), 1:582. Where possible, newspaper articles cited will include their bylines, as has been done above with Horace V. Redfield (“H. V. R.”).

2. Nation, January 28, 1869; Indianapolis News, October 26, 1874; “Rocoligny,” Chicago Times, December 20, 1874; “Horns,” Springfield Republican, February 25 (both quotations), March 15, June 2, 1871. The national distinctions in newspapers were widely noticed on both sides of the Atlantic, and in England the interview continued to be considered a “distinctly shocking American practice” well into the 1880s (though it was not universally backed here, either: see Philadelphia North American, August 12, 1874). See Punch, October 4, 1890; Stephen Koss, The Rise and Fall of the Political Press in Britain: The Nineteenth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981), 70, 125, 342. On the character of the French press, see Theodore Zeldin, France, 1848-1945: Taste & Corruption (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 144-225.

3. By 1871, London alone had 261 newspapers, and there were 120 dailies in the United Kingdom. For more accurate figures, see John Vincent, The Formation of the British Liberal Party, 1857-68 (London: Constable, 1966), 100-101.

4. Peter R. Knights, “‘Competition’ in the U.S. Daily Newspaper Industry, 1865-68,” Journalism Quarterly 45 (Autumn 1968): 473-76; George P. Rowell & Co., American Newspaper Directory Containing Accurate Lists of All the Newspapers and Periodicals Published in the United States and Territories, and the Dominion of Canada and British Colonies of North America (New York: Geo. P. Rowell & Co., 1872), 11-291. Circulation figures were given by the newspaper proprietors, whose modesty about their own success should not be overestimated—nor their honesty. See Ted Curtis Smythe, “The Advertisers’ War to Verify Newspaper Circulation, 1870-1914,” American Journalism 3 (1986): 167-80; Carolyn S. Dyer, “Census Manuscripts and Circulation Data for Mid-19th Century Newspapers,” Journalism History 7 (Summer 1980): 47-48, 67.

5. Ninth Census: Statistics of the Population of the United States (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1872), 482-97; Augustus Maverick, Henry J. Raymond and the New York Press, for Thirty Years (Hartford: A. S. Hale & Co., 1870), 330-32; New York Times, May 22, 1870; Vincent Howard, “The Two Congresses: A Study of the Changing Roles and Relationships of the National Legislature and Washington Report...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Reporters’ Initials and Pseudonyms
• Introduction
• One. The Lords of the Linotype
• Two. All the News That Fits
• Three. News Management Made Easy
• Four. News in Need of Reconstruction
• Five. The Breakup of the Press Gang, 1872-1877
• Epilogue. Final Edition
• Notes
• Bibliography: Newspapers, Magazines, and Manuscript Collections
• Index