 |
Home | Search | Browse | About IPO | Staff | Links |
|
Home | Search | Browse | About IPO | Staff | Links |
|
NEWSPAPERS ON THE ILLINOIS FRONTIER James A. Edstrom Historical Research and Narrative
To a great extent, the market for news in frontier Illinois was already glutted. Newspapers in Vincennes to the east (the Indiana Gazette, founded in 1804) and St. Louis to the west (the Missouri Gazette, founded in 1808) were well-equipped to satisfy readers' curiosity about national and international events. Then, too, the means for transporting news and newspapers in the territory were primitive at best. Mail routes connecting Cahokia, Shawneetown, Kaskaskia, and Vienna existed by 1814, but mail delivery was frequently delayed by bad weather that rendered Illinois roads impassable during wet seasons. Additionally, there were serious logistical roadblocks to producing a single newspaper issue in the first place. Raw materials had to be transported from elsewhere, a risky venture even in the best of circumstances. Such freight reached its destination in one of two ways. If hauled overland, it was at the mercy of bad roads and the weather. If it was transported down the Ohio River on flatboats and poled up the Mississippi, its passage depended upon whether the rivers were too high or low for easy navigation; the formation of ice in the winter easily impeded the movement of watercraft. Nevertheless, when Matthew Duncan began publishing the Illinois Herald, he was motivated by several factors. For example, there was the reality that the first newspaper was likely to have at least a temporary monopoly on the publication of laws and legal announcements. In 1810, the territorial legislature had passed a law authorizing the publication of legal advertisements in newspapers in the Louisiana Territory, with "the same force and effect, as if inserted in a newspaper published in this territory. This act... shall continue in force until a newspaper is established and published in this Territory and no longer." Thus Matthew Duncan had a clear incentive for founding the Herald, probably strengthened by gaining a contract to print the territorial laws in 1813, largely through the influence of his friend Governor Ninian Edwards. Political considerations continued to support the Illinois Herald during its first decade. In 1816 Duncan sold the paper to Robert Blackwell and Daniel Pope Cook. Absent for much of 1817, Cook returned to Kaskaskia in late November of that year to begin building a political career. Through the
51
The Edwardsville Advocate, edited by Hooper Warren, was yet another example of a publication controlled by a politician to advance his own agenda in the early statehood period. In all likelihood published by Ninian Edwards, the Advocate fought efforts in 1823-24 to call a new constitutional convention that had the potential for converting Illinois into a slave state. Edwards's rival, Elias Kent Kane, established the Kaskaskia Advocate in opposition. The two newspapers exerted an extraordinary amount of influence over the terms of this debate, which ultimately resulted in Illinois voters rejecting the proposed convention. Those early newspapers contained little material beyond political developments and almost no "human interest" news. Editors relied heavily on newspaper exchanges with other journalists elsewhere in Illinois, in Kentucky and Indiana, and on the Eastern seaboard for news material to fill their own columns; in other words, they borrowed extravagantly from one another. This lack of material rendered many newspapers relatively short-lived, especially when considered in the context of most journals' highly political nature and the financial and logistical difficulties of publishing on the frontier. The 1820s also saw the emergence of newspapers in other newly developing areas of the state. The first title in northern Illinois, the Galena Miners' Journal, appeared in 1828 as Galena was becoming significant for its proximity to the growing water traffic on the Mississippi River; more important, it was in the heart of Illinois' lead-mining region and was quickly becoming a major distributing port for all of the Old Northwest. At about the same time, Sangamon County saw its first newspaper, the Springfield Sangamo Spectator, again edited by Hooper Warren. Nonexistent in 1820, by the time of the 1830 census Sangamon County had the largest population in the state. The locations of newspapers during the 1820s depended largely upon three major factors. One was the size of the local population. Galena and Springfield fall into this category due to their economic and population growth. The second factor was the presence of political power. The relocation of the state capital at Vandalia in 1819 was a strong incentive for the removal of the Intelligencer (by now under the ownership of Illinois's antislavery governor, Edward Coles) from Kaskaskia to Vandalia in 1820. To a lesser extent, Edwardsville provided a similar environment of political power in which newspapers could flourish. The third factor involved easy access to transportation. Located along waterways, Kaskaskia, Galena, and Shawneetown fell into this category. Such proximity gained new importance in 1826, when the first paper mill in neighboring Indiana was erected in Jefferson County, in the southeastern part of the state near the Ohio River. The significance of more ready access to a source of 52
A total of ninety-eight newspaper titles were published during the 1830s—a nearly sevenfold increase from the previous decade. The number of towns represented by these newspapers increased from six to thirty-four; simultaneously, the state's population tripled. There was a wider scattering of newspapers, reflecting changes in transportation as well as in population; there was also an increase in towns connected by mail routes. A number of towns on the Illinois River had their first newspapers, including Ottawa, Lacon, and Peoria, due in part to a rapid population growth in the area sparked by the construction of the Illinois-Michigan Canal during the latter 1830s. Newspapers also arose in Rock Island, Quincy, and Alton on the Mississippi River. Quincy was one of the fastest-growing areas of the state because of its favorable location and convenient landing site, and its Illinois Bounty Land Register, like the Illinois Herald twenty years before, began publication in part because of the opportunity to gain contracts for public printing. Its original purpose was to publish lists of federal public lands between the Illinois and Mississippi rivers. Alton was strategically located at the confluence of the Illinois and Mississippi rivers and near to St. Louis. There Elijah P. Lovejoy was killed in 1837 because of his antislavery editorials in the Alton Observer. The 1830s also witnessed the publication of the first newspapers in eastern and east central Illinois—in Bloomington, Danville, and Paris. These areas had been more slowly settled than the rest of the state, due largely to a lack of significant waterways and sheltering groves of timber. Most important, however, was the publication in 1833 of the first newspaper in Chicago, John Calhoun's Chicago Democrat. A distant ancestor of today's Chicago Tribune, it was published on a hand press, one sheet at a time. By 1839, the Windy City saw the publication of five newspaper titles, including the first daily in Illinois, the Chicago Daily American. Population and the number of newspapers in the state both continued to increase in the following decade. In 1840 the population of Illinois amounted to just over 476,000; within ten years, it had nearly doubled. Morgan and Sangamon counties were the most populous in 1840, followed by Adams County on the Mississippi River. The center of population was clearly shifting to the north. Increases in population and improvements in transportation meant opportunities for greater human interaction. More interaction meant more change, and more change meant more news and a greater potential for its communication. Newspaper distribution was beginning to reflect these realities in the 1840s, when 278 newspapers from 74 towns appeared. Lines of "newspaper traffic" that paralleled the state's transportation network are evident on a map of Illinois during this decade, especially along rivers and in the northern counties where the first railroads were being built. In particular, Chicago's regional importance is evident in the cluster of towns with newspapers appearing between Chicago and Galena; indeed, for the first time Chicago had the largest number of newspaper titles of any town in Illinois, which is still the case today. Other towns with sizable numbers of newspapers were Springfield (partly due to its new status as state capital), Jacksonville, Quincy, Galena, and Belleville. In the first three decades of statehood, the newspapers of Illinois had been uniformly published in English. With the increase in non-English-speaking immigrants that began in the 1830s, it was only a matter of time before they would begin to express themselves in their own newspapers and in their own native tongues. The first non-English newspaper was a German title, Der Freiheitsbote fur Illinois, which was published in Belleville by Gustave Koerner (later lieutenant governor of Illinois) during the election campaign of 1840. Its publication provided evidence of a growing political awareness
53
There were at least three important technological developments affecting newspapers in Illinois during this decade. One was the mechanization of printing. During the earliest years of newspaper publishing in the state, typesetting had been done entirely by hand. Prompt and timely delivery of the news depended upon the availability of labor and supplies, and quite frequently newspaper copy was obliged to wait while type was being used for other jobs. As a result, "Long John" Wentworth's installation of a power press for the Chicago Democrat in 1843 was an important step in reducing the amount of time required for actual printing. Within twenty years such machinery had largely replaced hand presses, at least in Chicago. The second development was railroad construction in the state, allowing the wider distribution of individual newspapers. Third and most significant was the introduction of the telegraph, allowing the communication of news at great distances and making possible a greater uniformity in reporting, especially through the use of wire services such as the Associated Press, which was founded toward the end of the 1840s.
The accelerating development of the railroad in Illinois during the 1850s was decisive in sparking newspaper growth throughout the state, especially in the east central region that had been one of the last areas of settlement. Whereas in the 1840s there were no towns with newspapers between Joliet in Will County and Charleston in Coles County, during the following decade newspapers sprang up in Kankakee, Watseka, Gibson City, and Champaign-Urbana. A map of Illinois newspapers in the 1850s clearly demonstrates that their development follows the paths of both the new railroads and the telegraph lines. The 1850s likewise saw an increase in the number and variety of ethnic newspapers that paralleled the growing importance of immigrant groups in Illinois. German newspapers were again predominant, serving towns with substantial German populations such as Belleville, Freeport, and Cairo. Illinois had been originally settled by French pioneers in the seventeenth century, but it was not until the 1850s that the first newspaper titles in that language appeared in Chicago and Kankakee. There was also a sizable community of French immigrants in 54
Beginning in the 1860s the average frequency of Illinois newspapers—that is, how often a newspaper was published (daily, weekly, semiweekly, etc.)—steadily increased. Much of this continued to result from the coming of the telegraph and the railroad and the increase in volume of available news, but a good part stemmed from technological changes in the printing industry. Perhaps the most important development involved the type of paper used for newsprint. For centuries, paper had been manufactured primarily from cloth fibers— what is known today as "rag-content" paper. It was both sturdy and expensive. Such newsprint at the beginning of the 1860s cost as much as twenty-five cents per pound. It was during this period that paper made from wood-pulp made its first commercial appearance. The first documented use of such paper in a newspaper was in the Boston Weekly Journal of January 14,1863; by 1867, it was mass-produced by machine. Because wood-pulp paper sold for about eight cents a pound, it easily replaced rag-content paper as the industry standard, despite some initial reluctance on the part of newspaper publishers. They considered wood-pulp paper to be shoddy and of inferior quality, but upon discovering its good printing qualities and lower cost, they quickly overcame their prejudices. As a result, newspapers were able to appear more frequently. Increasing the number of issues meant multiplying the amount of news and thus the quantity of information. A publisher who could do so and maintain his subscriber base had the potential for greater profitability. During the 1860s ethnic newspapers were firmly established as an alternative voice for Illinois' immigrant population. There were twenty-six German-language titles throughout the state, most of them in Chicago and Belleville, with the rest in Carlyle (Clinton County), Highland (Madison County), Effingham, La Salle, Ottawa, Bloomington, Mascoutah (St. Clair County), Springfield, and Freeport. There were three Swedish newspapers serving Chicago, Rockford, and Galva (Henry County). Rockford also boasted the first Norwegian newspaper, Skandinaven, which began in 1866. Finally, a developing Italian community in Chicago was served briefly by a newspaper that began in 1867 as L'Unione italiana and later became ll messaggiere italiano dell'ouest. Illinois in 1870 was a vastly different place from what it had been in 1814. At that earlier date, Illinois Territory had been populated by just over twelve thousand souls scattered sparingly over frontier settlements largely concentrated in the south and south-west. By 1870 the Prairie State boasted more than 2.5 million residents liberally distributed throughout 102 counties, with particular
55
The development of newspapers in Illinois during the frontier period mirrored those changes. Whereas in the period 1814 to 1819 there had been a mere six titles, all concentrated in the southwestern part of the state, during the decade of the 1860s there were 724 newspaper titles published in every region of Illinois—an increase of 12,000%. Waxing and prospering with the growth and development of Illinois, newspapers shared in the fortunes and maturation that were the lot of a young state possessing abundant resources, a wide-ranging transportation network, and a dynamic, diverse population.
Matthew K. McClure Activity 1
Main Ideas Between 1814 and 1870 Illinois was transformed from a backward frontier territory to a state increasingly interconnected through a lattice of communication and transportation lines. During that same time, the state's population grew dramatically from 12,282 in 1810 to 2,539,891 in 1870. This growth was mirrored by the Illinois newspaper industry, which responded not only to the growth of the state's population, but also to its migration northward—especially in and near Chicago. Transportation communication also began to tie the state together and vied with newspapers for the dissemination of information. The following activity is designed to assist students in understanding the evolution of Illinois newspaper history in the frontier period. Connection with the Curriculum Illinois geography is only touched upon at the secondary level, and this is an opportunity to link geography with state history meaningfully. Teaching Level Grades 7-12 Materials for Each Student • Newspapers maps for 1820-29; 1830-39; 1840-49; and 1850-59 Objectives for Each Student • Students learn to read and use thematic maps and draw inferences from spatial information. 56
SUGGESTIONS FOR TEARCHING THE LESSON Make multiple "safe" copies of the maps. Opening the Lesson Have students examine the 1820-29 map. What factors including historical events influenced the following locations of pioneer newspapers? Vandalia, Kaskaskia, Springfield, Edwardsville, Galena, Old Shawneetown Developing the Lesson Students will draw in the Mississippi River, Ohio River, Lake Michigan, and National Road.
Concluding the Lesson
• Have students examine the 1830-39 map. • Where do most of the new newspapers appear? A key internal improvement was created in the 1830-39 decade: the Illinois and Michigan Canal. Toward what city does much of central Illinois appear increasingly focused? • Have students examine the 1850-59 map and a current railway map of Illinois, such as in Illinois Atlas and Gazeteer (Freeport, Maine: DeLorme Mapping, 1991) or similar atlas class set. Have students trace the route of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, Gateway Western (nee-Gulf, Mobile & Ohio, nee-Alton Route, Chicago and North Western [west line], and Burlington Northern [nee-Chicago, Burlington, & Quincy]) routes. By the 1850s what city is clearly the transportation center of the spokes? What role did railways and railway traffic likely have on newspapers? Assessing the Lesson This could be done both qualitatively in accuracy of responses and through depth of inferences made in either written and/or verbal contributions.
57
58
59
60
Activity 2 Overview Main Ideas Local, county, and state government has often influenced history in Illinois. Illinois has had its share of both political brilliance and buffoonery. Connection with the Curriculum The activities could be used to teach Illinois history, U. S. history, and government. Teaching Level Grades 11-12 Materials for Each Student Sheet for time line Objectives for Each Student Students often have difficulty in tying together local, state, and/or regional events to larger national events and issues. A time line provides a visual and meaningful link between these concepts. Use of scale, understanding chronology, and developing relationships between seemingly unrelated ideas are emphasized.
Opening the Lesson Note how newspapers have long declared their political purposes and agendas through their titles. For example, William Lloyd Garrison's Liberator is immediately reflective of its abolitionist origin and readership. Developing the Lesson Create an 1820-1860 time line. Record newspaper names as they appeared chronological and thematically are along the top and keystate/national/local events are placed along the bottom. See example above.
• Give students the Illinois newspaper names and have the students research the motivation behind the key national events and research connecting local and/or state events. For example: • States' rights vs. supremacy of the federal government • Whig Party, nullification crisis, Democratic Party, Dred Scott decision • Important societal movements • Second Great Awakening, temperance movement, abolitionism, Underground Railroad • Have students examine the evolution of names from the 1830s to the 1860s. Discuss what is the greatest influence on newspaper names in Illinois during this time period. Assessing the Lesson Assess the accurate use of chronological order for all events, a consistent and appropriate scale on the time line, and that all events and dates are clearly recorded.
61
Significant Illinois newspapers in twenty-year increments.
62 Activity 3
Main Ideas Illinois had a strong abolitionist movement, and it also had a sizable pro-slavery populace. Following Illinois' admission to the Union as a free state in 1818, considerable discussion occurred concerning amending the state constitution to include slavery. Connection with the Curriculum The activities can be used to teach Illinois history and U.S. history. Teaching Level Grades 7-12 Materials for Each Student One copy of the Illinois Gazette editorial, June 14, 1823 Objectives for Each Student Each student is to analyze and evaluate an editorial for its relationship to history and events.
Opening the Lesson Students need exposure to and practice with primary source readings rather than edited or compiled copies, which sometimes alter the author's meaning and original intent. Model an editorial using a current one found in a local paper. This could be especially interesting to introduce and discuss if the editorial is on a student-oriented topic such as the recent change in Illinois driver's licenses for those under the age of eighteen.
Developing the Lesson
Extending the Lesson Have students develop a newspaper front page reflecting the newspaper's political agenda. Include the following in this paper:
• Major news story
Students could share their newspaper in class; they provide an understanding for both sides of an emotional and political issue such as slavery. Assessing the Lesson Assess any editorial bias and rationale for or against slavery in Illinois. 63
Illinoi's Gazette editorial from June 14, 1823: The People in this part of the state ... in common with others in all parts of the state, desire an amendment of the constitution wherein it has been found defective, and many ... are in favor of the introduction of slavery, either absolute, as it exists at present in the slave-holding states, or in a limited degree — that is to say, to exist until the children born after its admission shall arrive at a certain age, to be fixed by the constitution.
64 Activity 4 Overview Main Ideas The Chicago Press and Tribune and the Chicago Times printed all seven of the presidential debates between Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln held between August 21 and October 15, 1858—a first in American political coverage by newspapers. Each man often referred by memory to the words of the other, usually with widely varying degrees of accuracy. The complete transcripts of these two papers allowed the attendees and general public alike to judge for themselves the authenticity of each man's references to the words of the other. The Lincoln-Douglas debates have almost a mythical lore within Illinois. However, the actual content of the speeches needs to be examined first-hand by students to understand how the two men differed. Connection with the Curriculum The activities can be used to teach Illinois and U.S. history and U.S. government. Teaching Level Grades 9-12 Materials for Each Student Activity sheet containing both Lincoln's actual words and Douglas' references to them. Objectives for Each Student Students are to evaluate the two primary sources and the accuracy of newspapers reporting political speeches.
Opening the Lesson • Distribute Activity Sheet 4 Developing the Lesson • Have students read silently or aloud only the portion of the opening speech given by Stephen A. Douglas on October 15, 1858. Have the class note what major points Douglas made about Lincoln's philosophy on slavery and the future of the Union. Are the points notably different than Lincoln's actual words or intention? • Have the students take that speech and Lincoln's actual words home and work on the following questions for the next day's discussion: 1. Engage the class in a discussion of how a newspaper reporter or John Q. Public, who heard and knew only of Douglas's response, might have had an entirely different idea of Lincoln's words and how this might influence his reader's understanding and perhaps voting tendencies. 2. Have students write an article summarizing Lincoln's opinion found in his speech from a specific viewpoint. Remember that in many cities such as Quincy and Edwardsville, competing newspapers would often bias their coverage according to political leanings. For example, in Quincy the Daily Democrat might have had a considerably different perspective than the Quincy Daily Whig. Students could use Douglas's actual paraphrasing of Lincoln's words as a model. Extending the Lesson Many excerpts of the Lincoln-Douglas debates can be found on the Internet. Students could be assigned to find how the two men's views differed on a variety of issues and how each man often misquoted the other in the debates. Explain why an adversary's report might differ from the opponents actual words. Also, a current issue in the paper could be examined and the authencity of the paper in its reporting and paraphrasing could be compared to that of valid web sites or other media that emphasize reliable reporting. Assessing the Lesson Teachers should look for accuracy in student's attempts to report from specific political viewpoints.
65
Stephen A. Douglas's opening speech at Alton on October 15,1858: "The principal points in that speech of Mr. Lincoln's were: First, that this government could not endure permanently divided into free and slave States [sic], as our fathers made it; that they must all become free or all become slave; all become one thing or all become the other, — otherwise this Union could not continue to exist." Abraham Lincoln's actual words in accepting the Republican nomination, just before the first Lincoln-Douglas debates beginning on August 21, 1858: "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -I do not expect the house to fall— but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.
66 Activity 5
Main Ideas These activities can be used in U. S. history and Illinois geography classes. Connection with the Curriculum It is critical to know the earliest settlements in Illinois and how vital these early towns were to understanding the history of the state's first newspapers. Teaching Level Grades 5-9 Materials for Each Student Copies of the blank Illinois county map. One master copy follows this lesson. One or more overhead copies may also prove useful. Objectives for Each Student Students locate and identify the earliest mail routes and understand the influence new ideas and technology would have on the dissemination of information via newspaper.
Opening the Lesson Ask students what connection there might be between mail routes and newspapers. Would newspapers gain from being on mail routes or might the mail be considered competition?
Developing the Lesson
Concluding the Lesson Students should notice a distinct chronological evolution developed; mail came first, followed by canals, railroads, and telegraph. What now parallels almost all of these routes in the twentieth century's building phase? Assessing the Lesson Illustrate the evolution from mail through telegraph by teaching it directly. Another way is to have students develop overheads with rail routes and telegraph routes highlighted.
67
68
Many newspapers in the 1840s reflected the times quite directly. The following are selected newspapers by decades: 1820s AND 1830s:
1850s
1860s
Why have most papers today moved away from demonstrative titles and taken more formal, apolitical status? With a hard copy of a local newspaper, compare local advertisers—not mass inserts found in papers everywhere, i.e. KMart—with those of a major city newspaper. What differences are most noticeable in what is advertised and how it is advertised?
69 Activity 6
Industrialization is one of the core units in U.S.history. Link some of the earliest inventions with the development of the state. Teaching Level Grades 6-9 Materials for Each Student List of earliest telegraph lines in Illinois and Illinois county map (see Activity Sheet 5). Objectives for Each Student Students are to understand the relationship between paths of development along key communication routes and their impact on towns and ultimately, newspapers.
Opening the Lesson The telegraph revolutionized communication much the same way that the telephone did some forty years later and internet e-mail does today. Ask students what was the fastest form of communication before the telegraph. What limitations did distance and geography set on communication and the availability of news? Thus, how might nearly instantaneous communication change these factors forever?
Developing the Lesson
Concluding the Lesson
Communications have been both complementary and competitive to newspapers in Illinois and around the world. In many ways, the newspaper has represented just one step on the evolutionary and revolutionary path of data collection and dissemination. Newspapers' high point came in the early-twentieth century. Following newspapers in communications were radio, microwave towers, television, and satellites. How have these significant developments in communications before the Internet and World Wide Web both aided newspapers in their collection of information and at the same time made newspapers less needed than ever? A few examples of alternative communications include:
Assessing the Lesson Using the Internet, visit the Chicago Tribune's website at www.Chicago.tribune.com. Compare the front-page stories and organization of the paper's body and individual pages with that found in one's local paper. In what ways are the two papers similar and different, other than location. What motivates local citizens to buy local papers if big city papers seemingly have so many advantages?
70
1846 Racine -to- Chicago -to- Michigan City, Indiana 1850
Chicago -to- Chillicothe
71 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
