The impulse of an American writer in justifying the use of newspapers as historical materials is to adopt an apologetic tone. It is somewhat curious that such should be the case, for newspapers satisfy so many canons of historical evidence. They are contemporary, and, being written without knowledge of the end, cannot bolster any cause without making a plain showing of their intent. Their object is the relation of daily events; and if their relation is colored by honest or dishonest partisanship, this is easily discernible by the critic from the internal evidence and from an easily acquired knowledge of a few external facts. As the journals themselves say, their aim is to print the news; and much of the news is present politics. Moreover, the newspaper itself, its news and editorial columns, its advertisements, is a graphic picture of society.

When Aulard, in his illuminating criticism of Taine, writes that the journals are a very important source of the history of the French Revolution, provided they are revised and checked by one another, the statement seems in accordance with the canons of historical writing; and when he blames Taine for using two journals only and neglecting ten others which he names, the impression on the mind is the same as if Taine were charged with the neglect of evidence of another class. One would hardly attempt to justify Taine by declaring that all journals are inaccurate, partisan, and dishonest, and that the omission was a merit, not a defect. Leaving out of account the greater size and diffuseness of the modern journal, the dictum of Aulard would seem to apply to any period of history.[p84]
Why is it then that some American students fall consciously or unconsciously into an apologetic tone when they attempt to justify the use of newspapers as historical sources? I suppose it is because of the attitude of cultivated society to the newspaper of to-day. Society calls the ordinary newspaper sensational and unreliable; and, if neither, its accounts are so diffuse and badly proportioned as to weary the seeker after the facts of any given transaction. Despite the disfavor into which the American newspaper has fallen in certain circles, I suspect that it has only exaggerated these defects, and that the journals of different democracies have more resemblances than diversities. The newspaper that caters to the “masses” will never suit the “classes,” and the necessity for a large circulation induces it to furnish the sheet which the greatest number of readers desire.

But this does not concern the historian. He does not make his materials. He has to take them as they are. It would undoubtedly render his task easier if all men spoke and wrote everywhere with accuracy and sincerity; but his work would lose much of its interest. Take the newspaper for what it is, a hasty gatherer of facts, a hurried commentator on the same, and it may well constitute a part of historical evidence.

When, in 1887, I began the critical study of the History of the United States from 1850 to 1860, I was struck with the paucity of material which would serve the purpose of an animated narrative. The main facts were to be had in the state papers, the Statutes, the Congressional Globe and documents, the records of national conventions and platforms, and the tabulated results of elections. But there was much less private correspondence than is available for the early history of our country; and, compared with the period of [p85] the Civil War and later, a scarcity of biographies and reminiscences, containing personal letters of high historical value. Since I wrote my first two volumes, much new matter concerning the decade of 1850 to 1860 has been published. The work of the American Historical Association, and of many historical societies, the monographs of advanced university students, have thrown light upon this, as they have upon other periods, with the result that future delvers in this field can hardly be so much struck with the paucity of material as I was twenty-one years ago.

Boy though I was during the decade of 1850 to 1860, I had a vivid remembrance of the part that the newspaper played in politics, and the thought came to me that the best way to arrive at the spirit of the times was to steep my mind in journalistic material; that there was the secret of living over again that decade, as the Abolitionist, the Republican, the Whig, and the Democrat had actually lived in it. In the critical use of such sources, I was helped by the example of von Holst, who employed them freely in his volumes covering the same period, and by the counsel and collaboration of my friend Edward G. Bourne, whose training was in the modern school. For whatever training I had beyond that of self came from the mastery, under the guidance of teachers, of certain general historians belonging to an epoch when power of expression was as much studied as the collecting and sifting of evidence.

While considering my materials, I was struck with a statement cited by Herbert Spencer as an illustration in his “Philosophy of Style”: “A modern newspaper statement, though probably true, if quoted in a book as testimony, would be laughed at; but the letter of a court gossip, if written some centuries ago, is thought good historical evidence.” At about the same time, I noticed that Motley [p86] used as one of his main authorities for the battle of St. Quentin the manuscript of an anonymous writer. From these two circumstances, it was a logical reflection that some historians might make an exaggerated estimate of the value of manuscript material because it reposed in dusty archives and could be utilized only by severe labor and long patience; and that, imbued with this idea, other historians for other periods might neglect the newspaper because of its ready accessibility.

These several considerations justified a belief, arrived at from my preliminary survey of the field, that the use of newspapers as sources for the decade of 1850 to 1860 was desirable. At each step of my pretty thorough study of them, I became more and more convinced that I was on the right track. I found facts in them which I could have found nowhere else. The public meeting is a great factor in the political life of this decade, and is most fully and graphically reported in the press. The newspaper, too, was a vehicle for personal accounts of a quasi-confidential nature, of which I can give a significant example. In an investigation that Edward Bourne made for me during the summer of 1889, he came across in the Boston Courier an inside account of the Whig convention of 1852, showing, more conclusively than I have seen elsewhere, the reason of the failure to unite the conservative Whigs, who were apparently in a majority, on Webster. From collateral evidence we were convinced that it was written by a Massachusetts delegate; and the Springfield Republican, which copied the account, furnished a confirmation of it. It was an interesting story, and I incorporated it in my narrative.

I am well aware that Dr. Dryasdust may ask, What of it? The report of the convention shows that Webster received a very small vote and that Scott was nominated. Why [p87] waste time and words over the “might have been”? I can plead only the human interest in the great Daniel Webster ardently desiring that nomination, Rufus Choate advocating it in sublime oratory, the two antislavery delegates from Massachusetts refusing their votes for Webster, thus preventing a unanimous Massachusetts, and the delegates from Maine, among whom was Webster’s godson William P. Fessenden, coldly refusing their much-needed aid.

General Scott, having received the nomination, made a stumping tour in the autumn through some of the Western States. No accurate account of it is possible without the newspapers, yet it was esteemed a factor in his overwhelming defeat, and the story of it is well worth preserving as data for a discussion of the question, Is it wise for a presidential candidate to make a stumping tour during his electoral campaign?

The story of the formation of the Republican party, and the rise of the Know-nothings, may possibly be written without recourse to the newspapers, but thorough steeping in such material cannot fail to add to the animation and accuracy of the story. In detailed history and biographical books, dates, through mistakes of the writer or printer, are frequently wrong; and when the date was an affair of supreme importance, I have sometimes found a doubt resolved by a reference to the newspaper, which, from its strictly contemporary character, cannot in such a matter lead one astray.

I found the newspapers of value in the correction of logical assumptions, which frequently appear in American historical and biographical books, especially in those written by men who bore a part in public affairs. By a logical assumption, I mean the statement of a seemingly necessary consequence which apparently ought to follow some well-attested fact or [p88] condition. A striking instance of this occurred during the political campaign of 1856, when “bleeding Kansas” was a thrilling catchword used by the Republicans, whose candidate for president was FrÉmont. In a year and a half seven free-state men had been killed in Kansas by the border ruffians, and these outrages, thoroughly ventilated, made excellent campaign ammunition. But the Democrats had a tu quoque argument which ought to have done much towards eliminating this question from the canvass.

On the night of May 24, 1856, five pro-slavery men, living on the Pottawatomie Creek, were deliberately and foully murdered by John Brown and seven of his disciples; and, while this massacre caused profound excitement in Kansas and Missouri, it seems to have had no influence east of the Mississippi River, although the fact was well attested. A Kansas journalist of 1856, writing in 1879, made this logical assumption: “The opposition press both North and South took up the damning tale … of that midnight butchery on the Pottawatomie…. Whole columns of leaders from week to week, with startling headlines, liberally distributed capitals, and frightful exclamation points, filled all the newspapers.” And it was his opinion that, had it not been for this massacre, FrÉmont would have been elected.

But I could not discover that the massacre had any influence on the voters in the pivotal states. I examined, or had examined, the files of the New York Journal of Commerce, New York Herald, Philadelphia Pennsylvanian, Washington Union, and Cleveland Plain Dealer, all Democratic papers except the New York Herald, and I was struck with the fact that substantially no use was made of the massacre as a campaign argument. Yet could anything have been more logical than the assumption that the Democrats would have been equal to their opportunity and spread far [p89] and wide such a story? The facts in the case show therefore that cause and effect in actual American history are not always the same as the statesman may conceive them in his cabinet or the historian in his study.

In the newspapers of 1850 to 1860 many speeches, and many public, and some private, letters of conspicuous public men are printed; these are valuable material for the history of the decade, and their use is in entire accordance with modern historical canons.

I have so far considered the press in its character of a register of facts; but it has a further use for historical purposes, since it is both a representative and guide of public sentiment. Kinglake shows that the Times was the potent influence which induced England to invade the Crimea; Bismarck said in 1877 that the press “was the cause of the last three wars”; Lord Cromer writes, “The people of England as represented by the press insisted on sending General Gordon to the Soudan, and accordingly to the Soudan he was sent;” and it is current talk that the yellow journals brought on the Spanish-American War. Giving these statements due weight, can a historian be justified in neglecting the important influence of the press on public opinion?

As reflecting and leading popular sentiment during the decade of 1850 to 1860, the newspapers of the Northern States were potent. I own that many times one needs no further index to public sentiment than our frequent elections, but in 1854 conditions were peculiar. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise had outraged the North and indicated that a new party must be formed to resist the extension of slavery. In the disorganization of the Democratic party, and the effacement of the Whig, nowhere may the new movement so well be traced as in the news and editorial columns of the newspapers, and in the speeches of [p90] the Northern leaders, many of these indeed being printed nowhere else than in the press. What journals and what journalists there were in those days! Greeley and Dana of the New York Tribune; Bryant and Bigelow of the Evening Post; Raymond of the Times; Webb of the Courier and Enquirer; Bowles of the Springfield Republican; Thurlow Weed of the Albany Journal; Schouler of the Cincinnati Gazette,—all inspired by their opposition to the spread of slavery, wrote with vigor and enthusiasm, representing the ideas of men who had burning thoughts without power of expression, and guiding others who needed the constant iteration of positive opinions to determine their political action.

The main and cross currents which resulted in the formation of the compact Republican party of 1856 have their principal record in the press, and from it, directly or indirectly, must the story be told. Unquestionably the newspapers had greater influence than in an ordinary time, because the question was a moral one and could be concretely put. Was slavery right or wrong? If wrong, should not its extension be stopped? That was the issue, and all the arguments, constitutional and social, turned on that point.

The greatest single journalistic influence was the New York Weekly Tribune which had in 1854 a circulation of 112,000, and many times that number of readers. These readers were of the thorough kind, reading all the news, all the printed speeches and addresses, and all the editorials, and pondering as they read. The questions were discussed in their family circles and with their neighbors, and, as differences arose, the Tribune, always at hand, was consulted and re-read. There being few popular magazines during this decade, the weekly newspaper, in some degree, took their place; and, through this medium, Greeley and his [p91] able coadjutors spoke to the people of New York and of the West, where New England ideas predominated, with a power never before or since known in this country. When Motley was studying the old letters and documents of the sixteenth century in the archives of Brussels, he wrote: “It is something to read the real bona fide signs manual of such fellows as William of Orange, Count Egmont, Alexander Farnese, Philip the Second, Cardinal Granville and the rest of them. It gives a ‘realizing sense,’ as the Americans have it.” I had somewhat of the same feeling as I turned over the pages of the bound volumes of the Weekly Tribune, reading the editorials and letters of Greeley, the articles of Dana and Hildreth. I could recall enough of the time to feel the influence of this political bible, as it was termed, and I can emphatically say that if you want to penetrate into the thoughts, feelings, and ground of decision of the 1,866,000 men who voted for Lincoln in 1860, you should study with care the New York Weekly Tribune.

One reason why the press was a better representative of opinion during the years from 1854 to 1860 than now is that there were few, if any, independent journals. The party man read his own newspaper and no other; in that, he found an expression of his own views. And the party newspaper in the main printed only the speeches and arguments of its own side. Greeley on one occasion was asked by John Russell Young, an associate, for permission to reprint a speech of Horatio Seymour in full as a matter of news. “Yes,” Greeley said, “I will print Seymour’s speech when the World will print those of our side.”

Before the war, Charleston was one of the most interesting cities of the country. It was a small aristocratic community, with an air of refinement and distinction. The story of Athens proclaims that a large population is not necessary [p92] to exercise a powerful influence on the world; and, after the election of Lincoln in 1860, the 40,000 people of Charleston, or rather the few patricians who controlled its fate and that of South Carolina, attracted the attention of the whole country. The story of the secession movement of November and December, 1860, cannot be told with correctness and life without frequent references to the Charleston Mercury and the Charleston Courier. The Mercury especially was an index of opinion, and so vivid is its daily chronicle of events that the historian is able to put himself in the place of those ardent South Carolinians and understand their point of view.

For the history of the Civil War, newspapers are not so important. The other material is superabundant, and in choosing from the mass of it, the newspapers, so-far as affairs at the North are concerned, need only be used in special cases, and rarely for matters of fact. The accounts of campaigns and battles, which filled so much of their space, may be ignored, as the best possible authorities for these are the one hundred and twenty-eight volumes of the United States government publication, the “Official Records of the Union and Confederate armies.” The faithful study of the correspondence and the reports in these unique volumes is absolutely essential to a comprehension of the war; and it is a labor of love. When one thinks of the mass of manuscripts students of certain periods of European history have been obliged to read, the American historian is profoundly grateful to his government, that at a cost to itself of nearly three million dollars,¹ it has furnished him this priceless material in neatly printed volumes with excellent indexes. The serious student can generally procure these volumes [p93] gratis through the favor of his congressman; or, failing in this, may purchase the set at a moderate price, so that he is not obliged to go to a public library to consult them.

Next to manuscript material, the physical and mental labor of turning over and reading bound volumes of newspapers is the most severe, and I remember my feeling of relief at being able to divert my attention from what Edward L. Pierce called this back-breaking and eye-destroying labor, much of it in public libraries, to these convenient books in my own private library. A mass of other materials, notably Nicolay and Hay’s contributions, military narratives, biographies, private correspondence, to say nothing of the Congressional publications, render the student fairly independent of the newspapers. But I did myself make, for certain periods, special researches among them to ascertain their influence on public sentiment; and I also found them very useful in my account of the New York draft riots of 1863. It is true the press did not accurately reflect the gloom and sickness of heart at the North after the battle of Chancellorsville, for the reason that many editors wrote for the purpose of keeping up the hopes of their readers. In sum, the student may congratulate himself that a continuous study of the Northern newspapers for the period of the Civil War is unnecessary, for their size and diffuseness are appalling.

But what I have said about the press of the North will not apply to that of the South. Though strenuous efforts have been made, with the diligent coÖperation of Southern men, to secure the utmost possible amount of Confederate material for the “Official Records,” it actually forms only about twenty-nine per cent of the whole matter. Other historical material is also less copious. For example, there is no record of the proceedings of the Confederate Congress, like the [p94] Globe; there are no reports of committees, like that of the Committee on the Conduct of the War; and even the journal of the Congress was kept on loose memoranda, and not written up until after the close of the war. With the exception of this journal, which has been printed by our government, and the “Statutes at Large,” our information of the work of the Confederate Congress comes from the newspapers and some books of biography and recollections. The case of the Southern States was peculiar, because they were so long cut off from intercourse with the outer world, owing to the efficient Federal blockade; and the newspaper in its local news, editorials, and advertisements, is important material for portraying life in the Confederacy during the Civil War. Fortunately for the student, the Southern newspaper was not the same voluminous issue as the Northern, and, if it had not been badly printed, its use would be attended with little difficulty. Owing to the scarcity of paper, many of the newspapers were gradually reduced in size, and in the end were printed on half-sheets, occasionally one on brown paper, and another on wall paper; even the white paper was frequently coarse, and this, with poor type, made the news-sheet itself a daily record of the waning fortunes of the Confederacy.

In the history of Reconstruction the historian may be to a large extent independent of the daily newspaper. For the work of reconstruction was done by Congress, and Congress had the full support of the Northern people, as was shown by the continuous large Republican majority which was maintained. The debates, the reports, and the acts of Congress are essential, and little else is required except whatever private correspondence may be accessible. Congress represented public sentiment of the North, and if one desires newspaper opinion, one may find it in many pithy [p95] expressions on the floor of the House or the Senate. For the congressman and the senator are industrious newspaper readers. They are apt to read some able New York journal which speaks for their party, and the congressman will read the daily and weekly newspapers of his district, and the senator the prominent ones of his state which belong to his party.

For the period which covered Reconstruction, from 1865 to 1877, I used the Nation to a large extent. Its bound volumes are convenient to handle in one’s own library, and its summary of events is useful in itself, and as giving leads to the investigation of other material. Frequently its editorials have spoken for the sober sense of the people with amazing success. As a constant reader of the Nation since 1866, I have felt the fascination of Godkin, and have been consciously on guard against it. I tried not to be led away by his incisive statements and sometimes uncharitable judgments. But whatever may be thought of his bias, he had an honest mind, and was incapable of knowingly making a false statement; and this, with his other qualities, makes his journal excellent historical material. After considering with great care some friendly criticism, I can truly say that I have no apology to make for the extent to which I used the Nation.

Recurring now to the point with which I began this discussion,—that learned prejudice against employing newspapers as historical material,—I wish to add that, like all other evidence, they must be used with care and skepticism, as one good authority is undoubtedly better than a dozen poor ones. An anecdote I heard years ago has been useful to me in weighing different historical evidence. A Pennsylvania-Dutch justice of the peace in one of the interior townships of Ohio had a man arraigned before him for [p96] stealing a pig. One witness swore that he distinctly saw the theft committed; eight swore that they never saw the accused steal a pig, and the verdict was worthy of Dogberry. “I discharge the accused,” said the justice. “The testimony of eight men is certainly worth more than the testimony of one.”

Private and confidential correspondence is highly valuable historical material, for such utterances are less constrained and more sincere than public declarations; but all men cannot be rated alike. Some men have lied as freely in private letters as in public speeches; therefore the historian must get at the character of the man who has written the letter and the influences surrounding him; these factors must count in any satisfactory estimate of his accuracy and truth. The newspaper must be subjected to similar tests. For example, to test an article or public letter written by Greeley or Godkin, the general situation, the surrounding influences, and the individual bias must be taken into account, and, when allowance is made for these circumstances, as well as for the public character of the utterance, it may be used for historical evidence. For the history of the last half of the nineteenth century just such material—the material of the fourth estate—must be used. Neglect of it would be like neglect of the third estate in the history of France for the eighteenth century.

In the United States we have not, politically speaking, either the first or second estates, but we have the third and fourth estates with an intimate connection between the two. Lord Cromer said, when writing of the sending of Gordon to the Soudan, “Newspaper government has certain disadvantages;” and this he emphasized by quoting a wise remark of Sir George Cornewall Lewis, “Anonymous authorship places the public under the direction of guides who [p97] have no sense of personal responsibility.” Nevertheless this newspaper government must be reckoned with. The duty of the historian is, not to decide if the newspapers are as good as they ought to be, but to measure their influence on the present, and to recognize their importance as an ample and contemporary record of the past.