The Press and the Presidential Election of 1860

Voters had four candidates to choose from in the presidential election of 1860. The Kentucky press endorsed three of the hopefuls, the winner not among them. The Louisville papers reflected the divisions in the state. The Journal endorsed Constitutional Unionist John Bell; the Courier rallied behind Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge, a Kentuckian; the Democrat lined up with Stephen A. Douglas, the Northern Democrat; and no paper of any consequence (perhaps no paper at all) supported the Republican Lincoln. Bell carried the state, followed by Breckinridge, Douglas, and Lincoln. The war of words over the presidential race became even more heated during the secession crisis. The future of the Union was at stake in the former; Kentucky’s future hung in the balance in the latter.

The Twilight of the Rebel Press

After the August elections, in which the Union Party greatly enhanced its majorities in the Kentucky house and senate, almost all the Confederate newspapers gave up on secession and fully embraced neutrality and peace. Earlier, the rebel editors had scorned neutrality as craven. Now they saw it as their last hope to keep Kentucky from fighting against the Confederacy. The rebel press denounced the establishment of Camp Dick Robinson, but the camp stayed open and symbolized Kentucky’s growing unionism. In September, Confederate and then Union armies invaded Kentucky. The legislature, over Governor Beriah Magoffin’s veto, ordered only the Confederates to leave, thus fully embracing the Union war effort.

Introduction

Historians have devoted considerable ink to Yankee and rebel newspapers published during the Civil War. While they have examined Northern and Southern papers, they have written almost nothing about the press in Kentucky and the other border states. There, the press was unique, in that it operated in a vast region where loyalties were divided to one extent or another. There were Southern sympathizers in the North and unionists in the South. Both groups were minorities in their regions. But in the borderland, and especially in Kentucky, the war divided communities, friends, and families. Most border-state citizens wanted to stick with the old Union, although a vocal minority favored the new Confederacy. Kentucky was mainly pro-Union, but its vocal rebel press made support for the secessionist cause appear stronger than it was.

The Death of the Rebel Press

Kentucky’s Union occupiers suppressed the state’s secessionist papers as treasonous. A few editors were arrested, but most were soon released. Walter Haldeman employed an elaborate ruse to flee to the Confederates at Bowling Green after federal authorities shut down his Louisville Courier. He resurrected the Courier in the Warren County seat but later retreated from Kentucky with the rebel army. The paper reappeared now and again in Confederate territory. Editor Thomas Bell Monroe suspended the Kentucky Statesman, joined the rebel army, and was fatally wounded at Shiloh. The Paducah Herald and Hickman Courier also ceased when their editors donned rebel gray. The Frankfort Yeoman and other papers toned down their secessionism, but the Yeoman’s presses were ultimately stopped too. Other rebel papers faded away and remained silent for the war’s duration.

Neutrality Summer

The secessionists and their allies in the press chafed under neutrality. They charged that the unionists were using neutrality as a cover to build support for entering the war on the Union side. The secessionists suffered another hard blow at the polls on June 20, when unionist candidates won nine of Kentucky’s ten seats in the congressional elections. The Southern sympathizers and their newspaper friends pinned their last hopes on the August elections for the state legislature, in which all 100 house seats and half of the 38 senate seats were on the line. Meanwhile, as chances for a Confederate Kentucky melted in the summer heat, some Confederate papers cooled their secessionist ardor and seemed to acquiesce in neutrality, at least for the time being. Neutrality, they reasoned, was better than fighting for the North. But the secessionists stuck to their argument that the “Black Republicans” would destroy slavery and make African Americans and whites equal in Kentucky. The Union Party won its biggest victory yet in the state elections. Thus emboldened, the unionists supported Camp Dick Robinson, a recruiting station for Union army volunteers in central Kentucky. The state was on the verge of abandoning neutrality and fully embracing the Union war effort.

The Rebel Press, and Some Yankee Papers, Too

Kentucky’s press reflected the deep division in the Bluegrass State in 1860–1861. Many communities had rival pro-Union and pro-Confederate papers. In Louisville, Kentucky’s largest city, the Democrat and the Journal sided with the Union. The latter was the state’s most important unionist organ. The Louisville Courier was Kentucky’s leading Confederate paper. Frankfort, the state capital, was home to the unionist Commonwealth and the secessionist Yeoman. In Lexington, the principal city in the Bluegrass, the state’s wealthiest region, the unionist Observer & Reporter and the Confederate Kentucky Statesman fought a fierce war of words. Most of the pro-Confederate press supported Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge for president in 1860. The Journal and the bulk of the unionist papers backed John Bell, the Constitutional Unionist candidate. The Democrat was for Northern Democrat Stephen A. Douglas. Evidently, no Breckinridge sheets went over to the Union side, but some Bell papers, notably the Cynthiana News and Covington Journal, tilted toward secession. The pro-Douglas Hickman Courier became one of the first Kentucky papers to endorse secession.

The Rebirth of the Old Rebel Press and the Thorny Issue of Censorship in Wartime

Kentucky became intensely pro-Southern after the war, a fact reflected in the rise of the old Confederate press. Some of the papers did not survive the conflict, but many did. Haldeman returned to Louisville and restarted the Courier, which soon had a greater circulation than both the Journal and the Democrat. In 1868 he bought out his rivals. The new paper, the Louisville Courier-Journal, was Democratic and relatively moderate. Its editor was the storied Henry Watterson, a former Confederate soldier and journalist. The Yeoman was back in business, too. Ironically, though, the Statesman’s new owners turned the paper Republican. Other secessionist organs such as the Covington Journal, Cynthiana News, Hickman Courier, and Paducah Herald resumed publication as conservative Democratic organs. Whereas the rebel editors and publishers had represented the minority opinion during the war, they found themselves in step with most Kentuckians afterward. Yet the question remains: was the Lincoln administration justified in suppressing hostile newspapers?

Fort Sumter to Neutrality

From the onset of the secession crisis, the pro-Confederate press misjudged sentiment in Kentucky. By championing a sovereignty convention that they believed would lead to secession, the rebel editors and publishers claimed to be speaking for most citizens. But a majority of Kentuckians never embraced disunion. After the war began, the rebel papers blamed the conflict on Lincoln and clamored more loudly for secession. The editors and publishers figured that in a shooting war between North and South, Kentucky would naturally side with the South. They were wrong again. The state legislature opted for neutrality, a position embraced by nearly every Kentuckian. The rebel papers condemned neutrality as cowardly and foolish. They also stepped up their central argument for secession—that slavery and white supremacy were doomed if the state stayed in the Union. All the while, the Confederate press continued to look toward the August state elections, which it expected—or hoped—would result in a pro-secession legislature.

South Carolina, Secession, and Lincoln’s Inauguration

In declaring Lincoln’s election deplorable yet insufficient grounds for secession, the Breckinridge press mirrored the views of almost all white Kentuckians. Yet the Southern Democratic papers argued that states had the right to leave the Union. In any event, the papers stepped up their criticism of Lincoln and his anti-slavery views and warned the president against using military force against any states that might depart. But after South Carolina and the rest of the Deep South seceded, the pro-Southern press urged the Kentucky General Assembly to call for a sovereignty convention to move the state out of the Union and into the Confederacy. Friends of the Union cobbled together majorities in the Kentucky house and senate, and both chambers rejected disunion.