Of course I am not the only Trans-Mississippi historian to note the importance of newspapers. William Garrett Piston and Richard W. Hatcher III commented in the preface of Wilson’s Creek: The Second Battle of the Civil War and the Men Who Fought It, “By reading each issue between April and November 1861 of every newspaper in Missouri, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Iowa, and Kansas for which copies are now extant, we uncovered a substantial number of letters, most of which have never been used by historians. Because the war was new, these letters contain a wealth of detail on soldier life often absent from later writings. Combined with extant material located in archives, they paint a vivid portrait of the battle and the men who fought in it” (p. xv).
Oftentimes Civil War era newspapers may be found on microfilm; some have been digitized and placed on the internet. Archives, historical societies, public libraries, and university libraries are prime places to find newspapers on microfilm. As an example, the Thomas J. Harrison Public Library in my community has all available
What are some of the dangers involved in using newspapers as a primary source? I'm thinking mostly of "partisan" papers, as here in Kansas papers often acted as the mouthpiece of a certain politician or faction - we had "Governor Carney's paper" or "Pro-Lane papers."
ReplyDeleteWhat are some of the hints that what you're reading may be placed primarily for the objective of making a political point rather than "Just the Facts"?
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ReplyDeleteI am a huge fan of newspapers myself, and find them invaluable while studying the Texas homefront. Over the years I have read my fair share, and have excerpted articles which are now posted on my university website, http://uttyler.edu/vbetts/newspapers_intro.htm. I have pulled some articles into topical files and left the others in title, then chronological order, searchable by a basic search engine. I think of it as an index to perhaps help others locate information in originals or microfilm more efficiently.
ReplyDeleteVicki Betts
"El Borak" has raised some excellent questions in his comment, and I hope that other readers will weigh in with some tips as well. Nineteenth century newspapers as you mention in your question made no attempt to be non-partisan. By today’s standards such newspapers are shockingly unprofessional! The good news about this is that the particular prejudice of Civil War newspapers is so obvious; it is easy to tell the political viewpoint of papers from that era. Thus, in the North it is easy to tell which newspapers were pro-administration and which ones were obviously anti-Lincoln. Although I have not read the book yet, I have read that Larry Tagg made splendid use of anti-Lincoln newspapers in The Unpopular Mr. Lincoln: The Story of America’s Most Reviled President (Savas Beatie, 2009). Newspaper articles about politics are helpful for getting a feel for the emotions and concerns of the time. Mixed in with these type of articles, though, are other items that are much more objective. These would include casualty lists, lists of prisoners of war, men who have died of disease, etc. Information like this was what I found most helpful when I wrote my regimental history. It is a good idea to read several issues of a particular newspaper when doing research to get a good feel for the slant of that particular publication. Also keep in mind that newspapers could change their biases as the war progressed. For example, newspapers being printed in New Orleans before the Union occupation had a significantly different slant that the issues that were published after occupation. So, newspapers are of great value as long as you keep in mind that they are a mix of partisan and non-partisan material.
ReplyDeleteVicki has done much work in transcribing newspaper excerpts and creating her topical files. I have looked at her website a number of times and have found it quite useful and interesting.
ReplyDeleteThanks! I just wish that more issues of my hometown (Tyler, TX) newspaper had survived. Curses on the fire that destroyed the office morgue in 1910, before the advent of microfilm!
ReplyDeleteI used newspapers rather extensively for the article I did for _The Seventh Star of the Confederacy: Texas During the Civil War_ that came out this spring. In looking for ways that Texas families got assistance, I found that newspapers gave voice to some people that didn't have the leisure to write journals. One of my issues with period newspapers, however, was determining if letters to the editors were truly written by women, or were written by editors posing as women. I guess I'll never know for sure. However, it was interesting to see the voice women acquired during the war that I didn't see in the 1860 newspapers.
Do you know of any overall listing of digitized Civil War newspapers, particularly ones that are available for free on the internet? I have tried to compile a list at http://libguides.uttyler.edu/content.php?pid=33095&sid=244280 but with the many projects in progress, it is hard to maintain. If anyone knows any additional titles, would you please post their locations?
Have you ever attended the conference on the 19th Century Press at the University of Tennessee--Chattanooga, held each fall? I went one year and was really impressed with the different approach to studying historical newspapers taken by journalism faculty and students. I had always looked at text alone, not article placement as a tool of communicating and article counting as a research tool.
Vicki Betts
Some of the men from Company D of the 28th Texas Cavalry were from Smith County, and I too missed those issues of the Tyler newspaper.You highlight an interesting problem concerning authorship of letters to the editor that researchers should be aware of. I suppose in a way we experience a similar issue with the internet today. Your idea to compile a listing of Civil War era newspapers available for free on the internet is a great one; I would like to see your list but the link you provided did not work (I may have entered it incorrectly). It is helpful to see how researchers in other fields use resources; I was not familiar with the importance of article placement or article counting---I'll have to look into that!
ReplyDeleteLet me try that link again. My American Civil War libguide is at
ReplyDeletehttp://libguides.uttyler.edu/content.php?pid=33095
Just click on the tab for Newspapers. I would love for our library to have subscriptions to historic newspaper databases, but we just can't justify it with our small history department.
I certainly can't claim to have found all of the newspaper titles on my own--I've worked off of lists compiled by other librarians and added titles sent to me or which are announced on Cliopatria or other blogs.
If you ever need any local assistance for Smith County, Texas, during the war, including Camp Ford POW camp, please don't hesitate to ask! I'm currently working through the military records on Footnote.com with a couple of projects in mind, particularly the interaction of the Tyler quartermaster and commissary departments with the local community. To do that I'm annotating records statewide. It has been interesting to see the supplies heading out of the Bonham area going north into the Indian Territory.
Vicki Betts
Your newspaper listing is a very helpful one--saw some newspapers included that I did not realize were available online. By the way, the "Virginia Gazette" [1736-1780] is also available online for free. The web address is research.history.org/DigitalLibrary/BrowseVG.cfm
ReplyDeleteYour mention of records that document supplies being moved into the Indian Territory sound interesting. Which collection or collections contain those documents?
They appear in the Confederate Citizens and Business File, a huge collection of microfilm which has been digitized on Footnote.com. Unfortunately, Footnote has only indexed this file by state, which is still more than they were when on microfilm, i.e. only alphabetical by name of person selling. If a name file included more than one state, Footnote.com usually indexed only by the first state mentioned, which can hide a lot.
ReplyDeleteI have gone through all of the names indexed to Texas and annotated town, fort or camp, quartermaster, commissary, other names, and many topics, such as medical supplies, Enfields, blankets, etc. The files are mostly vouchers for goods and services, including hauling supplies or women sewing uniforms, but may also include correspondence. Footnote.com also gives you the option to highlight particular documents, so I've highlighted documents ranging from an account of the burning of Ft. Davis, to accounts by a federal deserter sent to infiltrate a Unionist plot in Smith County, Texas (and many more.)
Footnote.com also has all of the Confederate military records, and I am currently going through the "Officers" file, picking out Texas QMs, ACS, surgeons, ordnance officers, paymasters, ADCs, AAAGs, and other paper pushers. Footnote keeps count of the number of annotations that you do, and I am pushing 95,000, done over the past year and a half. All of the indexing that I'm doing remains online for others to use. I've already found correspondence that I've used in a published article, another letter will be cited in Victoria Bynum's upcoming book, and the Fort Davis account was previously unknown to the historian out there.
It is a pay service, but just a few trips to Dallas or Hillsboro (TX) to see the military records microfilm would pay for an annual personal subscription. Plus, there's more in Footnote than just these two types of Civil War files, and much MUCH more than just Civil War. Many of their files are being added through special arrangements with the National Archives.
I could go on and on, but just consider me a satisfied customer.
Vicki Betts
Thank you so much for highlighting the "Confederate Citizens and Business File," a collection that admittedly I had never heard of before. There is much work to be done still on the details of how armies were supplied--particularly here in the Trans-Mississippi. It is a very important topic but one that lacks the glamor to attract much attention. I feel tired after reading how many annotations that you have done! Hopefully, scholars have been making use of those for their research projects.
ReplyDelete