Four Years in Rebel Capitals / An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death

by T. C. De Leon

These papers were far ahead of those of the South—except in very rare instances—in their machinery for collecting news and gossip; for making up a taking whole; and in the no less important knowledge of manipulating their circulation and advertising patronage. The newspaper system of the North had been reduced to a science. Its great object was to pay; and to accomplish this it must force its circulation in numbers and in radius, and must become the medium of communicating with far distant points. Great competition—application of il faut bien vivre—drove the drones from the field and only the real workers were allowed to live.

In the South the case was entirely different. Even in the large cities, newspapers were content with a local circulation; they had a little-varying clientele which looked upon them as infallible; and their object was to consider and digest ideas, rather than to propagate, or manufacture them.

The deep and universal interest in questions immediately preceding the war, somewhat changed in the scope of the southern press. People in all sections had intense anxiety to know what others, in different sections, felt on vital questions that agitated them; and papers were thus forced, as it were, into becoming the medium for interchange of sentiment.

An examination of the leading journals of the South at this period will show that—whatever their mismanagement and want of business success—there was no lack of ability in their editorial columns. Such organs as the New Orleans Delta, Mobile Advertiser, Charleston Mercury and Richmond Examiner and Whig might have taken rank alongside of the best-edited papers of the country. Their literary ability was, perhaps, greater than that of the North; their discussions of the questions of the hour were clear, strong and scholarly, and possessed, besides, the invaluable quality of honest conviction. Unlike the press of the North, the southern journals were not hampered by any business interests; they were unbiased, unbought and free to say what they thought and felt. And say it they did, in the boldest and plainest of language.

Nowhere on the globe was the freedom of the press more thoroughly vindicated than in the Southern States of America. And during the whole course of the war, criticisms of men and measures were constant and outspoken. So much so, indeed, that in many instances the operations of the Government were embarrassed, or the action of a department commander seriously hampered, by hostile criticism in a paper. In naval operations, and the workings of the Conscript Law, especially was this freedom felt to be injurious; and though it sprang from the perfectly pure motive of doing the best for the cause—though the smallest southern journal, printed on straw paper and with worn-out type, was above purchase, or hush money—still it might have been better at times had gag-law been applied.

For, with a large proportion of the population of different sections gathered in huge army communities, their different newspapers reached the camps and were eagerly devoured. Violent and hostile criticisms of Government—even expositions of glaring abuses—were worse than useless unless they could be remedied; and when these came to be the text of camp-talk, they naturally made the soldiers think somewhat as they did.

Now, the greatest difficulty with that variously-constituted army, was to make its individuals the perfect machines—unthinking, unreasoning, only obeying—to which the perfect soldier must be reduced. "Johnny Reb" would think; and not infrequently, he would talk. The newspapers gave him aid and comfort in both breaches of discipline; and in some instances, their influence against the conscription and impressments was seriously felt in the interior. Still these hostilities had their origin in honest conviction; and abuses were held up to the light, that the Government might be made to see and correct them.

The newspapers but reflected the ideas of some of the clearest thinkers in the land; and they recorded the real and true history of public opinion during the war. In their columns is to be found the only really correct and indicative "map of busy life, its fluctuations and its vast concerns" in the South, during her days of darkness and of trial.

These papers held their own bravely for a time, and fought hard against scarcity of labor, material and patronage—against the depreciation of currency and their innumerable other difficulties. Little by little their numbers decreased; then only the principal dailies of the cities were left, and these began to print upon straw paper, wall papering—on any material that could be procured. Cramped in means, curtailed in size, and dingy in appearance, their publishers still struggled bravely on for the freedom of the press and the freedom of the South.

Periodical literature—as the vast flood of illustrated and unillustrated monthlies and weeklies that swept over the North was misnamed—was unknown in the South. She had but few weeklies; and these were sturdy and heavy country papers—relating more to farming than to national matters. Else they were the weekly editions of the city papers, intended for country consumption. Few monthly magazines—save educational, religious, or statistical ventures, intended for certain limited classes, were ever born in the South; and most of those few lived weakly and not long.