Scrapbooks were a common way for people in both the North and the South to process and keep a record of the war. Thus, they provide insights into what people were reading, what they were feeling, and what kinds of information they found important. A personal take on a collective event provides a powerful sense of authenticity.

This authenticity was central to the publication of Confederate Scrap-Book, which boasts the subtitle “Copied from a scrap-book kept by a young girl during and immediately after the war.” Published almost thirty years after the end of the war for a Memorial Bazaar in Richmond, Virginia, this book, though reproduced only in content and not aesthetic, holds on tightly to its provenance as a wartime scrapbook to give it authority. As the dedication notes, the author, Lizzie Cary Daniel (1848-1915), put the publication together with “nothing of my own but the love of ‘soldier and cause’ which prompted the preservation of these clippings in my childhood.” She dedicates it to her father, “himself a faithful soldier and patriot, whose teaching and example have been the inspiration of his children, as his unblemished life is their priceless heritage.”

Within its pages there are news articles, official military and government orders, and popular music and poems from the Confederacy.

]]> AAS Catalog Record]]> This color lithograph published by E. B. & E. C. Kellogg of Hartford, Connecticut, and George Whiting of New York City dates from 1861 or 1862. It is believed to be the first time that the elephant and donkey appear together depicting the Republican and Democratic parties. The phrase “to see the elephant” was a common expression in the mid-nineteenth century and often appears in descriptions of both the gold rush and the Civil War. It is thought to originate with the circus. The large mammals such as lions and elephants were the climax of the circus experience and always appeared toward the end of the performances. When one had seen the elephant then one had seen the entire show. The term then gradually became synonymous with experiencing or seeing it all.

In this image the elephant bedecked in formal attire with accessories festooned with stars and stripes and the U.S. Constitution in his pocket represents the Union. The cannon barrels protruding from his waistcoat, and the multitude of even more cannon and cannon balls behind him, represent the great military prowess of the Northern states. Eventually Abraham Lincoln (1809-65) took on the elephant as his mascot. By his reelection campaign in 1864, trunks and tusks were used in his campaign materials and “the elephant is coming” became his slogan. Republicans have been associated with elephants ever since.

This humorous image also contains Jefferson Davis (1808-89) as a donkey, peering through a monocle at the elephant and his enormous quantity of arms and armaments. Behind him is an army of “jackasses” carrying pitchforks, rakes, brooms, and scythes, which are clearly no match for the North’s cannon. The gallows in the center background of the image portends a bleak future for the Confederacy.

The donkey first became associated with the Democratic Party in the election of 1828, when Andrew Jackson (1767-1845) was depicted to be as stubborn as a jackass. Jackson, however, liked the association and turned the joke around, appropriating the donkey as his mascot and winning the White House over John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) in that contest. Jefferson Davis was a lifelong Democrat, having served as a U.S. representative and senator before becoming president of the Confederacy after the South seceded. The use of the donkey may also refer to the Copperhead Democrats in the North who were more sympathetic to the Southern cause and would eventually even advocate suing for peace during the conflict.

]]> AAS Catalog Record]]> View larger image]]> In colonial America the surest way for a printer to achieve financial stability was to secure government contracts for printing the laws and other official documents. Usually, the government printer also ran his newspaper as a kind of sycophantic “court” gazette. Some government printings, such as proclamations, were important elements of the colonial news media. Official proclamations might announce a new policy or regulation, a day of thanksgiving for a military victory, a denunciation of criminals or rioters, or even the prosecution of the publisher of a seditious newspaper. Proclamations illustrate the blending of print culture and oral culture in the realm of news. They were quite elegantly printed, and copies were posted in conspicuous public places. They were also designed to be read aloud to the gathered citizens of the towns.

This governor’s proclamation is an official announcement regarding the siege of the French fortress of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island. It was printed by John Draper (d. 1762) in Boston, who was the longtime printer to the Massachusetts governor and publisher of the Boston News-Letter. In 1745 Governor William Shirley (1694-1771) was the chief promoter of the Cape Breton expedition, and this broadside proclaims a new recruitment effort by Shirley’s government. The proclamation prominently displays the governor’s name and coat-of-arms. The aim of the proclamation was to spread the news of the government’s recruitment plans throughout the colony. Copies were printed for every military company in Massachusetts, and officers were directed to read the proclamation to their assembled militiamen.

]]> AAS Catalog Record]]> The first newspaper in America south of the Potomac River was the Virginia Gazette, founded by William Parks (1699-1750) in 1736. Parks, who had previously operated a print shop and published a newspaper in Maryland, brought printing to Williamsburg in 1730 and served as public printer to the governor and assembly. The Gazette was a kind of “court” newspaper, modeled on the London Gazette and dedicated to mostly European news and government notices. The paper ceased publication when Parks died in 1750 but was reestablished in 1751 by William Hunter (d. 1761). The official public-printer role of Gazette publishers became more difficult as the political life of Virginia became more fractious in the 1750s. Indeed, for several years in the 1760s and 1770s, two newspapers bearing the name “Virginia Gazette” competed with each other, each promoting a different political interest in the colony.

This 1759 issue of the Virginia Gazette offers a glimpse of a year of dramatic news in both Europe and America: the height of the Seven Years’ War. The first two pages carry war news from a variety of sources in London, Boston, and New York. And this issue even has a poetic elegy to General James Wolfe, who was killed in the momentous Battle of Quebec in September: “Thy Merits, Wolfe, transcend all Human Praise.” Pages 3 and 4 carry the usual official news from Williamsburg, as well as a good deal of advertising. The ads are typical, running the gamut from shipping notices to sundry imported goods to runaway horses. For the modern reader, the ads for slave sales are perhaps the most haunting and most revealing of the nature of eighteenth-century American society, especially in the South. For example, on page 3 one ad begins: “To be SOLD at publick Auction . . . Several choice grown Negroes, Horses, Colts, &tc.”

Click the image below to browse the full issue.

]]> AAS Catalog Record]]> The Boston News-Letter was the first newspaper in America to survive beyond its first issue. Indeed, it survived for seventy-two years as a fixture of the Boston publishing scene. The founding editor and publisher was John Campbell (1653-1728), who was the Boston postmaster. With the arrival of newspapers and letters from abroad and with the chatter of local people picking up their mail, a post office was always a nexus for news. For several years after 1700, Campbell gathered such information and summarized it in a handwritten newsletter. In April 1704, he contracted with local printer Bartholomew Green (1666-1732) to print his newsletter; printing allowed for a wider circulation than was possible with handwritten copies, though for years the circulation rarely exceeded three hundred. Unlike Benjamin Harris, Campbell was a sycophant of the colonial establishment, and he prominently displayed the phrase “Published by Authority” at the top of the first page, exactly like the official London Gazette. Though printing was no longer formally licensed in Massachusetts, Campbell took no chances.

This is the first printed issue of the Boston News-Letter. It suggests what would be the standard format of the American newspaper in the early eighteenth century: a single sheet, printed in two columns, front and back. The News-Letter begins with English and European news culled from London papers, but a smidgen of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Connecticut news is included as well. At the end of the second page, Campbell implores his readers to buy advertising at a “Reasonable Rate,” though newspaper advertising would not bring in much revenue until the nineteenth century.

]]> AAS Catalog Record]]> Getting news by telegraph and railroad was much more difficult for Southern newspapers than Northern papers. This was true in general, but even more so when General Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia crossed the Potomac into Northern territory. The first accounts of the Battle of Gettysburg written by Southern reporters who had actually witnessed the fighting did not appear in the newspapers of Richmond, Savannah, and Augusta until July 21, 22, and 23. As always in journalism, information gaps were filled by rumor. At one point, newspapers reported that Lee was advancing on Baltimore after taking forty thousand Union prisoners. The Richmond Examiner dismissed this account as fantasy: “‘Forty thousand’ is a phrase in telegraphic language equivalent to x in algebra. It means that the reporter does not know how many.” A curious aspect of Civil War journalism was that Southern readers, especially in Richmond, often got Northern newspapers before their own newspapers’ reporters could file their stories. These papers arrived by boat from Baltimore under flags of truce.

This July 21, 1863, edition of the Richmond Daily Dispatch illustrates Southern newspaper journalism after a major battle, in this case, Gettysburg. This issue carries genuine war news from Martinsburg, West Virginia, news that Lee’s army had retreated south across the Potomac. But whether this was a rout or a strategic withdrawal remained unclear. The correspondent suggests that it was Meade’s army, not Lee’s, that was “crippled” at Gettysburg. This issue also carries news, gleaned from the New York Herald, about the draft riots in New York City and about discussions in Washington of purported plans for peace. Perhaps the most telling item in the paper is the Dispatch’s own plea for “Rags! Rags! Rags!” on page 2. Getting rags to make paper was a major ordeal in the South during the Civil War.

]]> AAS Catalog Record]]> One of the few battlefield reporters to cover the Civil War from beginning to end—from Bull Run to the fall of Richmond—was C.C. Coffin (1823-96) of the Boston Journal. After the Battle of Gettysburg, when the outcome was assured by late July 3, 1863, Coffin made his way by horse and train to Baltimore. After telegraphing a quick story to his newspaper, he set out for Boston by rail, writing his main story along the way, and sending bulletins and paragraphs by wire at station stops. When he arrived at the Journal office on July 6, a crowd of anxious Bostonians had gathered to greet him. He finished writing his story for the July 7 edition, then sprawled out on a pile of newspapers in his office and slept for the first time in days. On July 8 he headed back to Pennsylvania to try to catch up with General Meade (1815-72) and the Army of the Potomac.

This July 7 edition of the Boston Journal includes some of Coffin’s telegraphic bulletins on page 1 and his main story on page 4. The material in this issue illustrates the range of Civil War newspaper journalism. The single large sheet, folded once to make four pages, is typical. Advertising is prominent on pages 1 and 3. During the war the Journal published two editions per day, morning and evening. Wire news usually consisted of short pieces under a general headline, such as “Latest by Telegraph,” and a stack of subheadings. In this issue, a potpourri of facts and rumors have been collected from Harrisburg, Fredericksburg, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. On page 2, breaking news from the Union victory at Vicksburg also appears. Telegraph briefs were typically written in the terse style and present-perfect tense that we still associate with news bulletins: “Gen. Meade has telegraphed that Lee is retreating.” Coffin’s main story, however, is literary journalism. Writing in the romantic style he learned from Victor Hugo and other authors, Coffin seeks to draw his readers into the experience of battle. Page 4 also includes two other staples of Civil War journalism: a long editorial on military strategy and a woodcut map of the Gettysburg battlefield.

]]> AAS Catalog Record]]> The national Sunday school movement, like other religious and reform movements in the early nineteenth century, was fundamentally a publishing enterprise. The goal was to organize and support Sunday schools, but the chief means to that end was the production and distribution of books and periodicals as cheaply as possible. The publications of the Sunday school societies were always religious in character, but the societies’ schools also taught basic literacy, especially in the new settlements of the trans-Appalachian west. Though the books and periodicals were not news media, per se, they helped to teach world geography and American history, which contextualized the news of the day. And they did engage with some current public issues, notably temperance.

The Massachusetts Sabbath School Society was formed in 1832 as an orthodox Congregational organization. At first it was affiliated with the nondenominational American Sunday School Union but split from that group in 1839 in order to preserve the doctrinal integrity of its publications and schools. The Truant Boy, however, is not a doctrinal tract; it is essentially a temperance tract. The narrator is a school teacher dealing with a sad, troublesome child. It turns out that the child’s mother is a hopeless alcoholic who eventually drinks herself to death. Like many temperance publications of the time, this one offers a glimpse into the distillery business as well as a sentimental story—declared to be entirely true, not fictional—about degradation and eventual salvation.

]]> AAS Catalog Record]]> This illustration depicts an American Tract Society (ATS) colporteur at work. The term “colporteur” was coined in eighteenth-century France as a name for itinerant peddlers of books, especially religious books. In America, the term came to be closely associated with the traveling agents of the ATS. The ATS, founded in 1825 in New York City, was a pioneering, multidenominational religious publisher. For decades the society flooded the nation with religious tracts, newspapers, books, almanacs, children’s periodicals, and other publications. In 1850 ATS colporteurs visited 505,422 families, sold nearly half a million volumes, and gave away 35 million pages of books and tracts.

Like many institutions with national reach, the ATS in the 1850s was nearly wrecked by the issue of slavery. Some Northerners wanted the society to publish tracts denouncing the sin of slavery; nearly all Southerners wanted no mention of slavery at all. After the Civil War the ATS was gradually displaced by denominational publishers, but during its heyday it was one of the largest publishing houses in America.

Other publishers used itinerant peddlers as well, but what set ATS colporteurs apart from others was that they were paid by salary instead of by commission on sales, and they were encouraged to give away tracts and books for free as well as to sell them. This was an important distinction. It meant that ATS colporteurs were not incentivized to stay in more prosperous areas, where people had the money to buy books. It meant that the society’s managers, in theory at least, could do what they believed they were called to do: place religious materials into the hands of every man, woman, and child in America. This was an extravagant and ultimately forlorn hope. It was the dream of universal mass media, somewhat before its time.

]]> AAS Catalog Record]]> Throughout the colonial period, almanacs were the best-selling product of the American press. The almanac was one of the first imprints of the Cambridge Press—the first press in British North America—in the 1640s; by the 1760s tens of thousands of copies of almanacs were printed every year by a dozen different printers. Boston’s Nathaniel Ames Almanack alone had a circulation of fifty to sixty thousand. American almanacs shared many characteristics with their British counterparts. All featured monthly calendars, with information on tides, sun and moon rises, movements of the planets, and vague weather forecasts. They also typically carried a variety of lists: court meeting dates, information on roads and mileage, and chronologies of public events and “memorable occurrences.” Almanacs helped readers organize the flow of their daily lives, especially since most colonial-era diaries were written into almanacs.

A very popular and highly profitable almanac was Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s, first printed in 1732. Poor Richard’s is remembered as the depository of Franklin’s famous proverbs and aphorisms. Most of these, however, were copied from other sources; in filling the empty spaces in his almanacs with nuggets of wisdom, Franklin was following the conventions of the genre. But as with all his work of borrowing and editing, Franklin had a knack for rewriting with charm and wit. This 1739 issue has a humorous introduction spoofing the weather forecasts in almanacs and extolling the virtues of mixing serious wisdom with amusing trifles. In a satirical essay at the end on almanacs predicting disease outbreaks, Franklin writes: “THIS Year the Stone-blind shall see but very little; the Deaf shall hear but poorly; and the Dumb shan’t speak very plain.” And tucked into the margins of each month’s calendar page are the famous and not-so-famous aphorisms, including “He that falls in love with himself, will have no Rivals.”

Click the image below to browse the almanac.

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