As the war progressed, Harper’s Weekly changed from toeing the middle political (or even apolitical) ground to a more outright Union stance. This was also the case for its attitude toward African Americans. By 1863, especially after the Emancipation Proclamation took effect on January 1, the illustrations in Harper’s depicting African Americans began to lose some of their over-caricaturized and stereotyped elements, and began to actively engage with questions about enlisting and educating former slaves. One of the most famous articles about this subject was “A Typical Negro,” which showed before and after images of a slave-cum-soldier named Gordon, with the largest image of the transformation featuring the formerly enslaved man’s back, scarred from past whippings, exposed during a medical examination performed before enlistment. This engraving was based on a widely circulated carte-de-visite of the same. Though the article took a positive outlook on transforming former slaves into soldiers, and very powerfully demonstrated the improvement provided by enlistment through such images, there was still an element of voyeurism and curiosity about the freedmen and their very recent pasts evident in such pieces.

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View image of full page - 2]]> In the 1840s and 1850s, thanks to steam-powered and rotary presses, newspaper dimensions were often enormous. The size of the printing presses, their ability to print evenly over a large surface area, and the speed with which they could print thousands of sheets meant that a four-page newspaper—one large sheet, printed on both sides, and folded once—could carry much more news. In the 1850s, with the development of folding and trimming machinery, a single large sheet could be folded twice and formed into an eight-page paper with smaller pages. This comic drawing by the famous cartoonist and satirist David Claypoole Johnston (1798-1865), which depicts several men sitting around an enormous newspaper all trying to read it at the same time, lampoons both the growing size of newspapers and the eagerness with which they were consumed.

]]> AAS Catalog Record]]> View full issue]]> Although breaking news usually appeared on the interior of colonial newspapers as that side of the paper was generally printed last, this copy of the New-Hampshire Gazette—published by Daniel Fowle (ca. 1715-87)—leads with a front-page breaking news story of the Battles of Lexington and Concord. This account describes the confusion of the early accounts of the battles (“The foregoing is the different Accounts we have receiv’d, but how far and what Part is authentic, Presume not to determine”) and makes references to the “Expresses” carrying news of the engagement. These expresses were fast riders and horses who were sometimes commissioned by the Committees of Correspondences to relay the events as quickly as possible. Publishers often employed post riders as express riders, who would, when not carrying an individual missive, deliver both printed materials as well as letters. Isaiah Thomas, along with fellow printers William Goddard of Baltimore, John Holt of New York, and Thaddeus Burr of Fairfield, Connecticut, established a system of post riders that not only carried their publications but also communications from the various Committees of Correspondence throughout the northern colonies.

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]]> AAS Catalog Record]]> Timothy Paine (1730 – 93) was a wealthy and influential loyalist from Worcester, Massachusetts, connected by marriage to the Chandlers, another wealthy loyalist family. Paine graduated from Harvard and studied law after he was appointed clerk of courts at age twenty. He soon became a mainstay of local government, serving Worcester as assessor, clerk, selectman, and moderator. In 1735 he became justice of peace, in 1757, register of probate, and in 1765, register of deeds. He also served as a special justice of the Superior Court and was active in Boston politics by serving on the Governor’s Council in 1763.

Among the Coercive Acts was the Massachusetts Government Act of 1774, which revoked the colony’s 1691 charter and concentrated political power in the hands of the royal governor, Thomas Gage (1719-87). All government positions that had been elected were now appointed by the governor, including seats in the Governor’s Council, which acted as the upper house of the legislature. Paine was appointed by Gage to the council, and though he neither sought nor wanted this position, he felt he could not refuse it without being disloyal to the king. Throughout the colony, these mandamus councilors, as they were called, were forced to resign their commissions by large gatherings of militia. An article in the third column of the fourth page in the September 5, 1774, issue of the Boston Evening Post described how, to protest the Massachusetts Government Act, the militia gathered in Worcester forced Paine to recant his commission with a public statement of apology.

]]> AAS Catalog Record]]> Although the repeal of the Stamp Act led many to briefly believe the Crown would leave the colonies alone, the institution of the Townshend Acts in 1767 erased that hope. The colonists’ resistance to these acts led to the establishment of British troops in Boston for the purpose of restoring order.

They began arriving in the harbor at the end of September 1768, and almost immediately the leaders of the Boston resistance began working to inform the other colonies of what life was like under military occupation. Chief among the means of doing this was the “Journal of Occurrences,” a series of anonymous news accounts published in the New York Journal from 1768 to 1769, giving a “factual” account of incidents during the occupation. Thought to have perhaps been written by Samuel Adams (1722-1803), or possibly a collaborative group of men, the articles exaggerated the situation for political purposes, depicting the British soldiers as committing a long line of atrocities, assaulting men and raping women with great regularity. In the way of news distribution of the period, the “Journal” was reprinted in many newspapers throughout the colonies, inciting anger toward the British and sympathy for the plight of the Bostonians.

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]]> AAS Catalog Record]]> Just as the temperance movement harnessed the power of the printed word in newspapers, periodicals, tracts, and almanacs to spread statistics and facts about the effects of alcohol, it also utilized printed images. Temperance images were pervasive throughout early nineteenth-century publications as a particularly powerful way to convey the message that alcohol was destructive and should be moderated or—as some believed—prohibited for a healthy, functioning society.

This circa 1832 lithograph by Alexander Rider, based on an original sketch by Thomas Birch (1779-1851), illustrates this trend by depicting opposing scenes of temperance and intemperance. Like many images produced by the temperance movement—which co-opted and adapted the “liberty tree” symbol familiar to many—a tree serves as the central emblem of society and liberty. The image shows the effects of temperance and intemperance on society in a single frame, with the tree providing the contrast point between a healthy society and a society approaching ruin. The right side of the tree appears healthy with strong limbs and full foliage. It sits in fertile soil where grass and other healthy trees and flowers flourish. In contrast, the left side of the tree appears dead and barren. Its limbs are broken, and its branches are nearly absent of vegetation. The surrounding ground appears dry and cracked, and nothing is growing. Something (alcohol) is sapping this environment of its vitality and its ability to produce.

This metaphor is extended in the renderings of the people and structures of the illustration, and it becomes clear that intemperance is the culprit. On the left, a dilapidated structure hosts boisterous men waving bottles on its porch. One inebriated fellow slumps under a sign featuring a pig, suggesting a correlation between the drinking men and the pigs outside the tavern. A family walks away from what was perhaps their pig farm and livelihood, the father with downcast eyes and ragged clothes, a bottle in his hand. He walks separately from his family, the wife neatly but darkly dressed and the reluctant, shoeless child weeping and rubbing its eyes.

In contrast, alcohol appears to be absent on the right side of the illustration. Friends are gathered in small groups, with men and women socializing and eating in the verdant landscape. Across the river, a factory or mill is visible, representing employment and people engaged in fruitful labor. The husband and wife hold hands as they look at each other, and their well-dressed child plays nearby collecting flowers. The absence of alcohol and even the light-colored clothing of the couple suggest that the shadow of intemperance has not fallen on them as it has the family on the left. Temperance has kept this half of society healthy and productive.

]]> AAS Catalog Record]]> So-called “rebels” or “patriots” were not the only ones to use print media to their advantage during the pre-Revolution crisis. In the spring of 1774, loyalists in the shire town of Worcester, Massachusetts, felt that they were being excluded from the political process and that town meetings were being dominated by a rebellious faction that was squelching their views in open discussions and written petitions. To combat their weakened power, these loyalists wrote an open letter voicing their complaints. This letter has since become known as the “Tory Protest.” They sent it to the Tory-leaning Boston newspaper, the Massachusetts Gazette: and the Boston Weekly News-Letter, which, as can be seen here, published it on June 30, 1774. (Worcester would not have its own printing press until the arrival of Isaiah Thomas in April 1775.) This, the oldest newspaper in the colonies and the official voice of the royal government, was now being published by Margaret Draper (1727- ca. 1804), who took over the publication after the death of her husband on June 5, 1774. The loyalists also sent copies of this letter to the royal governor and copied its text into the Worcester town records. At a town meeting held later that summer, the loyalists were further humiliated when the town’s Whigs forced the town clerk, Clark Chandler (1746-1804), to blot out the Tory Protest from the town records by dipping his hand in ink and spreading it across the pages.

The Tory Protest was signed by fifty-two men, many of whom were wealthy landowners and staunch supporters of the royal government. Perhaps most notable among them was James Putnam (1725-89), a prominent lawyer considered one of the finest legal minds in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. John Adams (1735-1836), the future second president of the United States, studied law as an apprentice to Putnam.

The Tory Protest exemplifies the role various media played in the political protests leading up to the Revolution. This was an open letter sent both to prominent public officials and to the “public prints” of influential newspapers. The protest itself also attacked the dissemination of information through the Committees of Correspondence, calling them “a public grievance and nuisance.” The protest further denounced the covenants of non-importation and other written petitions circulated through these committees when it cited “that papers have been lately published, and are now circulating through the province, inviting, and wickedly tempting all persons to sign them; fully implying, if not expressly denouncing the destruction of all, that refuse to subscribe those unlawful combinations, tending directly to sedition, civil war, and rebellion.”

]]> AAS Catalog Record]]> View image of full page]]> Though much of the imagery surrounding African Americans was full of stereotypes and caricatures throughout the war, even in the North, positive depictions of African Americans began to appear more often as the war progressed. Though some unofficial black regiments were formed after the Second Confiscation and Militia Act in July 1862, it was not until after the Emancipation Proclamation took effect on January 1, 1863, that official recruitment of black volunteers began in earnest. With morale low, white volunteer numbers dropping, and an increasing number of African Americans ready to fight, the influx of black troops was a boost for the Union army. The visual culture began to reflect this change by depicting African American soldiers as eager, quick learning, and courageous, evident in these images from the March 14, 1863, issue of Harper’s Weekly. The first shows new African American recruits learning to use rifles, and the second shows a regiment in battle. These illustrations were also accompanied by an article called “Negroes as Soldiers,” which explains the images and includes quotes from officers praising the new recruits.

]]> AAS Catalog Record]]> Aside from advances in printing technology and the development of the steam railroad, the telegraph was the biggest technological influence on news media in antebellum America. From 1844, when the first message was sent by Samuel F. B. Morse (1791-1872) on an experimental line between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, to 1861, when the first transcontinental line was completed, the rapid expansion of the telegraph network revolutionized the distribution of news. Many newspapers began to carry “News by Telegraph” sections.

One of the first national news events directly influenced by the telegraph was the Panic of 1857. Due to a confluence of national and international trends that were already causing economic strain—falling grain prices, United States cotton being undersold, overproduction of goods, overbuilding of railroads—the failure of the New York branch of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company in August 1857 spurred the panic into life. It gained momentum as banks began to put restrictions on transactions. Investors took this as a sign that a larger economic disaster was looming and so began to make poor deals on stock sales or pull out of the stock market altogether. The loss of a ship in September carrying a large shipment of gold bound for eastern banks sealed the deal. By early October, panicked depositors were withdrawing money from banks, and news of bank and business failures and general economic chaos spread instantly throughout the United States via telegraph, further inflaming the panic.

Although the Northeast was hit hardest, the panic extended throughout the country and the resulting depression had global effects. The significant part the telegraph played in the rapid spread of economic news can be seen in this “News by Telegraph” section in the Richmond Whig from October 9. There is news about failures, suspensions, and financial plans in New York, the center of the crisis, but also news from New Orleans, Alexandria, and Philadelphia.

]]> AAS Catalog Record]]> View image of full page]]> This May 6, 1775, issue of John Dixon (d. 1791) and William Hunter’s Virginia Gazette illustrates how news of Lexington and Concord spread throughout the colonies. On the first page in the middle column are extracts of letters from Boston about the battles. As was common practice, the extracts had been lifted directly from another newspaper, in this case Story & Humphreys’s Pennsylvania Mercury, and Universal Advertiser. Story & Humphreys’s had published them in its issue of April 28, 1775, among other letters about Lexington and Concord gathered from several express riders from various locations.

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