The History of Orange County New York

by Unknown

In 1840 A. A. Bensel began the publication of Middletown's first recorded newspaper venture. He called it the Middletown Courier. It was a weekly paper, democratic in politics. In April, 1846, he removed the entire plant to Kingston, N. Y., where he started the Ulster Democrat.

In 1845, in Newburgh, the Rev. David L. Proudfit began issuing the Christian Instructor, a monthly of thirty-two pages. Two years later he sold it to the Rev. J. B. Dales, who removed it to Philadelphia.

So far as records can be found the first publication to appear in Warwick was an Old School Baptist journal, the Doctrinal Advocate and Monitor. This was in 1845 or 1846, possibly earlier. It was published and probably edited by Elder Jewett. In 1846 it was merged with Elder Gilbert Beebe's Signs of the Times.

Middletown was without a paper from April to July, in 1846. At the latter date John S. Brown began there the publication of the Orange County News. It was neutral in politics, and Mr. Ruttenber says it was hardly deserving the name of a newspaper. It died in 1849, the material being purchased by Gilbert J. Beebe for his new paper.

In August, 1848, Gilbert J. Beebe started in Middletown the publication of the Banner of Liberty. It was issued monthly as a conservative journal—opposing all the modern ideas of reform in politics, in religion, in laws and in temperance. In 1856 it became a weekly, and espoused the cause of the democratic party. In 1856 Mr. Beebe issued the Campaign Banner—a sort of auxiliary to the Banner of Liberty. Both were more or less pro-slavery in all their utterances; the particular limb of the democracy to which they clung being known as "Hunkerism" prior to the Civil War, as "Copperheadish" during and after the Civil War. In ante-bellum days both papers attained a big circulation for those times—"fully 27,000 copies," Mr. Ruttenber says. The Banner of Liberty was taken everywhere in the South and Southwest, and below Mason and Dixon's line it was all-powerful. And even north of that line there were many who swore by the Great Horn Spoon and the Banner of Liberty. The income was great, and had Mr. Beebe been as astute a business man as he was aggressive in polemics, he would have been numbered with the exclusive few of that day known as millionaires. But Gilbert Judson Beebe was a different type of man. Like his venerable father, he had a principle—right or wrong, but right as he saw it—and pelf was powerless against his adamantine purposes.

His father, Elder Gilbert Beebe, was in position to "roll in wealth." He had a great income from his Signs of the Times, and from his writings and books; he had the machinery of his church to manipulate for his own aggrandizement, if he so willed; he was almost an idol wherever the Old School Baptists had an abiding place in this country; but he disdained all sordid allurements, and, armed with his own peculiar interpretation of the Scriptures, he lived frugally and pounded his theorems and theological dogmas for three and four straight hours every Sunday in one of his pulpits, and during the fortnight in the columns of his Signs.

The writer of this knew him well; set type a long time in his office in Orchard street, Middletown; fed his presses; helped get out one of his book of songs and sermons, and always held the venerable editor-preacher in respect if not in absolute awe. Looking back at those days from the year 1908, the writer understands better the magnetism which gave Elder Beebe his great power among the people.

This peculiar personality was not lost in his children. In Gilbert Judson Beebe—who made the Banner of Liberty the most powerful pro-slavery journal for years in ante-bellum days—individuality, aggressiveness, polemics, even the most violent dogmatism, were constantly in evidence. Not only did he wield a most trenchant, bitter pen, ever dipped in the wormwood of invective and the gall of expletives—he was an orator as well; and could work his hearers up to a pitch of frenzy or tears. The writer, yet in his teens, was employed on the Banner of Liberty as a "compositor" for a considerable time, and had much opportunity for learning the characteristics of the man.

The Banner of Liberty lost much of its power when the Civil War boomed its terrors over the land. Its circulation fell off daily, but the editor every week just as religiously sailed into the "Lincoln hirelings" with a venom that came near landing him in Fort Lafayette. The writer was one of those "hirelings," and, while "sticking type" in his office had many doubtless indiscreet arguments with the aggressive editor on the issues of the day. Mr. Beebe seemed rather pleased, not to say amused, at the temerity of the boy-printer, and gave him opportunity to expound his "abolition heresies."