When Memphis was captured the "Appeal" would have been suppressed, as the "Avalanche" was, had it been there. But when it became evident that Memphis would fall, Mr. S. C. Toof (later a well-known book publisher) who was then connected with the "Appeal," packed up the press and other equipment and shipped them to Grenada, Mississippi, where Mr. B. F. Dill, editor of the paper, continued to bring it out. When Grenada was threatened, a few months later, Mr. Dill moved with his newspaper equipment to Birmingham, where for a second time he resumed publication. His next move was to Atlanta. There, when he could not get news-print, he used wallpaper, or any sort of paper he could lay his hands on. When Sherman took Atlanta the "Appeal" moved again, this time to Columbus, Georgia, where, at last, it was captured, and its press destroyed. Wherever it went it remained the "Memphis Daily Appeal," with correspondents in all southern armies. No wonder a paper with such vitality as that, has survived and become great!
Poor Memphis! After the War she had Reconstruction to contend with; after Reconstruction, financial difficulties; after that, pestilence. In 1873, when the population of the city was about 40,000, and there had been a long period of hard times, yellow fever broke out. The condition of the city was exceedingly unsanitary, and after the pestilence had passed, was allowed to remain so, though at that time the origin of yellow fever was, of course, not known, and it was assumed that the disease resulted from lack of proper sanitation.
In 1878 there was another yellow fever epidemic. The first case developed August 2, but the news was suppressed until the middle of the month, by which time a number of cases had come down. The day after the news became known 22 new cases were reported. Terror spread through the town. Hordes of people tried to flee at once. Families left their houses with the doors wide open and silver standing on the sideboards. People flocked to the trains; when they could not get seats they stood in the aisles or clambered onto the roofs of the cars; if they could not get in at car doors they climbed in through the windows, and sometimes, when the father of a family was refused admittance to a crowded car, he would force a way in for his wife and children at the pistol's point.
In the first week of the panic there were 1,500 cases, with an average of ten deaths daily; in the next week, 3,000 cases with fifty deaths daily, and so on into September during which month there was an average of 8,000 to 10,000 cases with about two hundred deaths a day.
Not every one fled, however. Leading citizens remained, forming a relief committee, and some brave helpers came from outside. Thus the sick and needy were attended to, though of course many of the volunteers contracted the disease and perished.
Added to the epidemic there was, as so often happens in such circumstances, an outbreak of thievery and other crime, which had to be put down. It is related that in the height of the epidemic hardly any one was seen upon the streets save an occasional nurse, doctor, or other member of the relief committee; household pets starved to death or fled the city; among the newspapers the staffs were so reduced that only two or three men were left in each office, and in the case of the "Appeal," but one, that one Colonel J. M. Keating, the proprietor, who stuck to Memphis and for a time wrote, set up and printed the paper without assistance, feeling that refugees must have news from the city.
The next year the epidemic came again, but in less violent form, there being, this time, but 2,000 cases. However the effect was cumulative. Memphis dropped from a city of nearly 50,000 to one of 20,000 and the reputation of the place was such that a bill was proposed in Congress to purchase the ground on which the city stood and utterly destroy it as unfit for human habitation.
Stricken as she was, however, Memphis "came back." A great campaign for sanitation was begun; city sewage-disposal was installed, and after a few years, artesian wells were bored for a new water supply. And though, as we now know, yellow fever does not come from the same sources as typhoid, nevertheless the new sanitary measures did greatly reduce the city's death rate.
Memphis, like all other cities, has her troubles now and then, but since the great pestilence there has never been a real disaster. The city has grown and thriven. Indeed, she had become so used to growing fast that when, in 1910, the Federal census gave her but 131,000, she indignantly demanded a recount, for she had been talking to herself, and had convinced herself that she had a great many more than that number of inhabitants. However, the census was taken again, and the first count proved accurate.