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ABSTRACT

THAT VILE INVECTIVE:
A HISTORY OF PARTISAN JOURNALISM
IN JACKSON COUNTY 1837-7866

By

Kenneth John Hyatt

Historians have recognized the partisan nature of ante-
bellum American journalism. From the late eighteenth century,
when editors such as Philip Freneau and William Cobbett fought
bitterly during the Federalist--Anti-Federalist struggle, through
the Civil War, in which the Copperhead press practiced a deadly
“fire in the rear" journalism, the party press was supreme. Few
historians, however, have examined in depth partisan journalism
on the local and regional level.

This study has as its setting Jackson County, Michigan.
Few localities were more representative of rural America. Jackson
‘County was sparsely settled in l837 when its first newspaper was
established. By the early 18405, it was the terminal point of a
major railroad line. Thousands of settlers came by rail to seek
their fortunes. Political and religious groups made the county
seat, Jackson, a major center of rallies and conventions. In l854,

one Jackson political rally contributed to the foUnding of the

Kenneth John Wyatt

Republican Party. During the Civil War, Jackson was the location
of a major military camp and the home of Austin Blair, governor of
Michigan.

Every obtainable issue of Jackson County newspapers printed
between l837 and 1866 was examined in this study. References to
other editors, political controversies, comments on major news
stories, and local news of any kind were read closely. Newspaper
accounts, however, were not accepted as a priori evidence of truth.
Stories of major historical events that bore some relationship to
the study were checked against recognized reference works. For
local events, newspaper accounts were revised sometimes after read-
ing letters, official records, family papers, and other newspaper
accounts.

A number of colorful editors emerge in the study. There is

Seymour B. Treadwell, the abolitionist editor of the Michigan Freeman

 

who lost the support of anti-slavery friends for his involvement in
the Liberty Party; Wilbur F. Storey, whose numerous entanglements in
business and politics established him as the most powerful Democratic
editor of Michigan; Charles V. DeLand, whose radical zeal led him to
lay down the pen for a sword; and Baxter L. Carlton, whose merciless
maligning of DeLand pushed local party spirit to its bitterest climax
of the Civil War.

Such editors had their own peculiar vocabulary. George B.
Catlin described it when writing that Storey "dipped his pen in
picric acid." Another editor labeled the partisan language as ”that

vile invective." Most editors condemned in principle the use of

Kenneth John Wyatt

abusive, insulting language. But all were experts in its use when
occasion demanded. Examples in the study support the conclusion
that the partisan words often were not far removed from action. The
military service rendered by editors during the war is offered as
evidence.

Aside from the editorial personalities, there were the news-

papers themselves. The Canadian, a lone issue of which remains, was

 

a folio calling for justice in the Patriot War of the late 18305.

The American or Michigan Freeman of 1839-1841 was the first aboli—

 

tionist newspaper in Michigan. George w. Clark's Michigan Temperance

 

Herald called for abstinance from liquor during the days when grog
shops and drunkenness were a common feature of life in Jackson.

There was Benjamin F. Burnett's Public Sentiment and its weekly

 

denunciations of the Michigan Central Railroad after the arson
conspiracy trials of the early 18505. But the two newspapers that

were to gain lasting importance in Jackson were the Jackson Patriot

 

and the American Citizen. As editors of the two papers struggled
for supremacy in influence and circulation, the stage was set for a
post-Civil War race for news that would continue through a major

newspaper consolidation in 1918.

Accepted by the faculty of the School of Journalism, College
of Communication Arts and Sciences, Michigan State University, in
partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts

degree.

 

Director of T esis

THAT VILE INVECTIVE:
A HISTORY OF PARTISAN JOURNALISM
IN JACKSON COUNTY 1837-1866

By

Kenneth John Wyatt

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

School of Journalism

1976

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Special thanks for assisting during the research stage of
this study are due many persons. Dr. George A. Hough III, my thesis
adviser, was a source of great encouragement. Others whose experience
proved invaluable in seeking out hidden facts and materials are
Mrs. Barbara Moffitt and Mrs. Florence Farrar, librarians at the

Jackson Citizen Patriot library; Jack Daball, director of the

 

Jackson Public Library, and Miss Kitty Frank, library research
assistant; Ed Lehr, photo editor of the Citizen Patriot; and staff
members of the Bentley Historical Library at the University of
Michigan. But without the patient support of my family, much of
the research would have gone undone. To my wife, GiGi, and our

children, Erik and John, I express my most affectionate appreciation.

Ken Wyatt
Jackson, Michigan

August 30, 1976

1'1

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION .........................

Chapter
I.

II.

III.

IV.

THE COMBATANTS ENLIST ................

Jackson's First Newspaper
A Democratic Organ Appears
A Paper for Patriots

The Herald and the Freeman
Editorial Changes

A REFORMING PRESS ....... . ..........

Some Skirmishes on the Decency Front

Seymour B. Treadwell--Abolitionist

The 1840 Presidential Campaign--A Moral Crusade

Some Editorial Casualties

Daniel D. T. Moore, Agricultural Editor

Wilbur F. Storey and the Patriot

Revival and Conversion--Storey's Religious Experience

A TIME FOR ACTION ..................

A Daily Newspaper Is Launched

The 1848 Campaign--Storey Seeks a "Democratic Triumph"
Dorrance and DeLand's Journal of "Busy Life"

The Press Covers a Railroad War

Storey's "Withdrawal Card'I

Bone and Muscle--Burnett's Public Sentiment

A POLITICAL REVOLUTION ................

Genesis of the Fusion Movement

DeLand--the "Chief Promoter"

Cheney and Knickerbocker--Postmaster and I'Bishop"

The Call for a Mass Meeting in Jackson

Under the Oaks

The Campaign of l856--Victories for "Bleeding Kansas"
Jackson Enters a New Era

iii

Page

25

53

83

Chapter Page
V. EDITORS AT WAR .................... 114

DeLand Prepared for War

Other Editors Also Served

The American Citizen Gets "a New Hat"
First Reporter's Byline

The Eagle--"National Not Partisan"
Captain DeLand Again Takes Up the Pen
Colonel of the Sharpshooters

The DeLand-Storey Battle

The Colonel Becomes a Casualty

The End of Hostilities

 

APPENDICES .......................... 152
A. Editorial on "Colonel DeLand" from B. L. Carlton's

Jackson Eagle, 16 July 1864 . . . .......... 152

B. Jackson County Newspapers: 1837 to 1866 ....... 155

BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................... 156

iv

INTRODUCTION

In 1862 Baxter L. Carlton, editor of the Jackson Eagle, came
across a copy of the Massachusetts Spy. He was just as captivated
by the well-known revolutionary-era newspaper then as journalists
would be today. "Such old papers are interesting," he observed.
"They give us an insight into the literary tastes and business pur-
suits of our forefathers, and are specimens of their own immediate
handiwork."

This study is a methodical investigation of such handiwork.
That under consideration was produced during Jackson County's most
colorful journalistic era, roughly from 1837 to 1866, characterized
by a party press that was rarely conciliatory and normally divisive.

There is an inherent difficulty with such an investigation.
It is this: conflict resulted basically from each opposing editor's
claims that his version of a matter was true, while the other editor's
claims were either false or slanted. How then may historical truth
be attained? No less a democratic spokeman than Thomas Jefferson
once wrote, "Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a news-
.paper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that
polluted vehicle." Actually if one is seeking historical truth,
newspaper accounts alone cannot be relied upon for a certain degree
of accuracy. They must be compared with letters, diaries, documents,

histories and other contemporary sources. The end product tends

to be more balanced.

Still, however, the historian of the party press returns to
the perplexing problem of who to believe after other sources have
failed to indicate where truth lies. It is at this point that an
admission is in order: historical truth is not the primary purpose
of this study. It is a desired goal, but not the one that is to
gain validity for the findings. What is of primary importance in
the pages that follow is the overall picture of the party press as
it existed over a century ago in Jackson County. To use an example
from the final chapter, it is not crucial whether Baxter Carlton's
charge of cowardice against Colonel DeLand was merited or not. The
material finding is the given set of circumstances in which the
charge was published. It is to be hoped that readers will find
sufficient information within those circumstances to understand why
the charge was made and how much credibility it deserves.

It should be noted that some history of journalism texts
emphasize that part of the period here under investigation was the
penny press era. That press, with its broad appeal to the masses,
was largely confined to the big cities. Its presence did not rid
the country of the party press. Such visitors as Alexis de Tocque—
ville and Charles Dickens took note of partisan journalism in their
travels in midénineteenth century America. And Frank Luther Mott

wrote in his classic American Journalism, "Up to the time of the

 

Civil War it was . . . the partisan political press that dominated
American journalism."

Jackson County was populated sparsely when its first newspaper

was published in 1837. Within a few years, however, it had risen in
political, economic and religious importance. In 1854 it was the
focus of the great fusion movement that resulted in the forming of
the Republican Party. The strategy of the editors was to control
power for their various parties and factions in all developments.
There is a temptation to make a blanket judgment that such partisanism
was mere pettiness. To do so, however, would be to incur the guilt of
oversimplification. For such "pettiness," it will be seen, editors
took up arms, fought and bled. Whatever criticism may be due the
party press, it produced editors who were more than warriors of the
word. They took their battles seriously.

How well they succeeded gave to this study a natural emphasis
on the federalist-Whig-Republican line of newspapers. Except for

Wilbur F. Storey's years with the Jackson Patriot, there was no

 

period in which Democratic papers were uppermost in power. Charles

V. DeLand exerted a strong influence on the Republican line after
Storey left Jackson. His success enabled the Republicans to have the
first viable daily paper in the county. The party continued to have
the stronger papers over the years. When both lines merged in 1918
to form the Jackson Citizen Patriot, the Democratic heritage was lost.
Almost no back files of the Patriot remain. Nearly all those of the
Citizen remain. The scarcity of Patriot files was a handicap to this
study. It is also mute evidence that partisan sentiment continued to

influence editors into the twentieth century.

CHAPTER I

THE COMBATANTS ENLIST

The facility with which newspapers can be established
produces a multitude of them . . . neither discipline
nor unity of action can be established among so many
combatants, and each one consequently fights under his
own standard.

--A1exis de Tocqueville, 1838

Two fountainhead events in March 1837 inducted Jackson
County, Michigan, into the partisan strife of nineteenth-century
America. On March 7, the Jackson County Board of Supervisors met
in Jacksonburg, established eight years earlier, and authorized the

1

construction of the first county courthouse there. Later in the

month, probably on March 18, the first issue of the Jacksonburg
2

 

Sentinel appeared. The courthouse, which was completed two years

later at a cost of $12,230, was to be the fortress of political

 

1Inventory of the County Archives of Michigan: No. 38
Jackson County (Detroit: Michigan Department of Education, Bureau
of Library Services, 1941), p. 29 (hereafter cited as Inventory).

2Jacksonburg Sentinel, 22 April 1837; also see Douglas C.
McMurtrie, Early Printing in Michigan: 1796-1850 (Chicago: John
Calhoun Club, 19317, p. 282. McMurtrie gives March 25 as the first
date of publication, basing his date on vol. 1, no. 9, dated 20 May
1837. March 18 is probably a more accurate date, since it is based
on the 22 April issue, which is vol. 1, no. 6.

 

 

 

authority in the county. Challenging that authority would be the
Sentinel, and its appearance was a portent of the other newspapers
that would follow--a11 seeking victory for some party, man or cause,
all occasionally storming the fortress. Both events came two months
after Michigan became a state.

Jacksonburg's early inhabitants were a motley sort. They
were generally "poor men, and some of them . . . had failed in busi-
ness in the East." The village was a rough-hewn settlement, filled

3 Later in

with "repulsive habitations,” "grog shops," and disease.
the year, the village would attract the legislature's attention
during a search for a state prison site, a search that began on
March 22 with the governor's appointment of a three-man committee.4
The selection of Jacksonburg as the prison site would bring the
observation that it was only necessary to wall in the town to fur-
nish the facility with inmates.5
Nevertheless, many of the early citizens were well-educated
and intelligent. They came to Michigan mostly from New York and the
New England states, seeking the fortunes that many other settlers of
the western frontier sought. Their political beliefs often reflected
their sectional backgrounds. But in 1837 those beliefs were yet to

be tested in the refining process of a national election. The first

such contest for the new state was three years away. Martin Van

 

3Elijah H. Pilcher, Protestantism in Michigan (Detroit: R. D.
S. Tyler & Co., 1878), p. 359.

 

4Inventory, p. 50.
5Pilcher, p. 359.

Buren, a political disciple of Andrew Jackson, had been elected to
the presidency in 1836, and the entire nation was suffering through
a depression. In Michigan it was the Panic of 1837, with the fold-
ing of wildcat banks sending many into financial distress. Anti-
slavery sentiment was beginning to gain influence since the founding
of the Michigan State Anti-Slavery Society in Ann Arbor the year
before. And plans were being made to develop the interior of the
state, plans that would bring railroads, plank roads, buildings and
prominence to Jackson as a center of great conventions and political

movements.

Jackson's First Newspaper

 

It might almost be said that the written history of Jackson
County begins with its first newspaper. Much happened before the
paper arrived. But most of what is written about the period was
written long after by pioneers wishing to record their memories for
posterity. Few letters, diaries, or other primary materials are
still available. But with the March 18 issue of the Sentinel, a
regularly produced local history appeared.

The Sentinel had its birth in the minds of several community
leaders, probably sometime in 1836. No doubt they were aware of the
benefits of the press. Their own fortunes were tied to the future
of the county. A newspaper was to them, not only a vehicle of
communication, but also a medium through which the virtues of the
new village could be extolled. Throughout the frontier, "pioneers

sent these sheets, filled with propaganda for the new country,

back to the East, where they were effective in keeping up the flow

of emigration."6

William R. DeLand, one of the Sentinel's sponsors, came to

 

Jacksonburg with the first wave a settlers. He was appointed the
first justice of the peace by Lewis Cass, territorial governor, and
later became associate judge of the Circuit Court.7 His son, Charles
Victor DeLand, was to dominate Jackson County journalism from 1849
through the Civil War.

The other backers were Norman Allen, an early village store
proprietor; Russell Blackman, a brother of Horace Blackman, who
founded the village in 1829; Phineas Farrand, a lawyer; and Dr.
Benjamin H. Packard, who in 1834 helped Ann Arbor Methodists obtain
permission to establish a seminary at Spring Arbor, just west of
Jacksonburg.8

The committee offered a bonus to attract a printer. Allen's
brother-in-law, William Hitchcock, was a printer in Vergennes, Vermont.
Although unavailable for the offer, he turned over his correspondence
to a friend, Nicholas Sullivan, who had an office in Vergennes.
Sullivan agreed to the offer and asked for $100 in advance to pay

his family's moving expenses. The printer's older brother, Rev.

William M. Sullivan, was preaching along the Ann Arbor circuit of

 

6Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism, rev. ed. (New York:
MacMillan Co., 1950), p. 282.

7History__of Jackson County (Chicago: Inter-State Publishing
Co., 1881), p. 177 (cited hereafter as Jackson County).

 

 

8Inventory, p. 45.

the Methodist Church at the time. He was dispatched to Vergennes
from Jacksonburg with the money; he promised to return it if his
brother failed to keep his end of the bargain. Another $200 was to
be given Nicholas upon his arrival.9 In late winter the brothers
set out for Michigan. They took a boat from Buffalo, New York, to

10

Detroit, according to a 1927 account. Sullivan's obituary,

however, said that he and the family went by way of Cincinnati,

onio."

Such a course would have made more sense if the brothers'
father still lived in Ohio. A team of horses was sent to Detroit
when the printer arrived there. One account says that Nicholas
brought his own press and type with him. Another says that the

Sentinel's old Ramage press had belonged to the Detroit Gazette,

 

 

which purchased it from an eastern newspaper in 1819. It was sold

to the Ann Arbor Immigrant in 1827, and then to the Sentinel ten
12

 

years later.
Nicholas Sullivan was twenty-two years old when he and his
wife Eliza arrived in Jacksonburg. Born in 1815, he was the son
of William Sullivan of Salem, Virginia. The family moved to Ohio
during Nicholas' boyhood, a change that was made because of the

father's hatred of the pro-slavery sentiment of Virginians.13

 

9Jackson County, p. 421.

 

1”Jackson Citizen Patriot, 24 July 1927.

 

HAmerican Citizen, 2 April 1857.

 

12American Citizen, 4 March 1854.

 

13Jackson County, p. 151.

 

How Nicholas came to live in Vergennes is not known. Local

Vergennes histories contain no reference to his printing office.

In 1839, Nicholas described himself as an "unpretending and undeserv-
ing printer" who came to Jacksonburg "with no recommendation save

"14

our inclination to live by industry. Judging from these words,

Sullivan had little or no experience in newspaper work. He may have
been a job printer.
An office for the Sentinel was set up on the second floor

of a wooden building at the northeast corner of Jackson Street and
the Public Square. When a helper was needed to distribute copies
of the paper, the DeLand boy was chosen. Twenty years later, the
boy was a mature man and editor--the finished product of the training
he began receiving under Sullivan. He recalled his work in the
Sentinel office at the news of Sullivan's death:

We remember well when he [Sullivan] introduced us into his

printing office and with what zest we assumed the position

of "roller boy" and "carrier," one fine morning . . . and

thus aided in executing, and delivered the first number of

the JacksonburgaSentinel . . . The little old office . . .

with its old wooden Ramage press, is indelibly stamped

upon our memory, and while we write, we look upon, and our

arm rests against some of the fixtures of that same old

office, and close beside us is the old "case" where we

first learned our "letters“--relicts [sic] of the departed
past.l5

 

Sullivan and his young "devil" could put out about one hundred copies
of the paper per hour. The press would print a page at a time,

making four impressions necessary to obtain a single copy. Ink was

 

14Jacksonburg Sentinel, 11 September 1839.

 

15American Citizen, 2 April 1857.

 

10

spread with buckskin balls ”the size of a dinner plate."16

Sullivan was the most flexible of the antebellum publishers.
He began printing his Sentinel under the banner of political indepen-
dence, gradually came to avow Whig principles, later printed an
abolition paper, and then spent his last years publishing a Democratic
organ.17 Surrounded by radical political figures, he learned to
accommodate his own skills to the political system sustaining him.
Other Jackson County publishers modified their political views from
time to time, but none so drastically as did Sullivan. In a sense,
he was a forerunner of the modern journalist, whose profession demands
a performance not prejudiced by political or religious views. DeLand,
who developed into a radical foe of slavery and intemperance in later
years, thought his first printing master was "candid, industrious and

"18 The comment

honorable," but that he was "not a brilliant editor.
is probably more of an opinion on the noncommittal nature of Sullivan's
journalism than on his abilities.

The prospectus of the Sentinel is found in the earliest
extant issue, that of April 22, 1837. "The politics of this paper
will not be professedly neutral,” it declared. "Neither will it be

pledged to any Party only so far as that Party supports unadulterated

Democratic Republicanism.” Sullivan hinted that the presidency of

 

16Charles V. DeLand, History of Jackson County (B. F. Bowen,
1903). p. 287.

'7Signai of Liberty, 28 April 1841 to 20 April 1842; Livings-
ton Courier, 10 January 1843 to 25 March 1846; American Freeman,
2 July 1839.

18

 

 

 

DeLand, p. 287.

11

Martin Van Buren did not promise the "greatest possible good'I to

the young nation. ”However,” he added, "we make no prognostics

neither would we excite any unhappy apprehension as it respects the

subsequent history of our country. We leave the future to sing its

own song." Readers were promised a "free discussion of all subjects,"

as long as such discussion supported a governing principle, i.e.,

that "Our country's weal should never be sacrificed to party

interests."19
By autumn, the printer had met his first political resis-

tance. He later wrote that the Democrats voted to withdraw their

20 Whether the boycott resulted in Sullivan's

support of the paper.
embrace of the Whig Party or came about because of his action is a
mystery. On September 30, the Sentinel carried news of a Whig con-
vention to be held in the village on October 4. Among the listed
delegates were Sullivan, William R. DeLand, Norman Allen, and

Phineas Farrand.2]

It may be that Sullivan felt constrained to
sustain the faith of his backers. From henceforth until he left
the village, Sullivan's name and those of the paper's backers were

linked to Whig activities.

 

19JacksonburgSentinel, 22 April 1837.

 

20Jackson Sentinel, 11 September 1839.
21

 

Jacksonburg Sentinel, 30 September 1837.

 

12

A Democratic Organ Appears

 

After the Sentinel openly became a Whig organ, there were
effects in the Democratic camp. "The spirit of partisanship began
to run high, and the Democrats began to take steps to have a paper

22 But the

of their political faith in the county," wrote DeLand.
Democratic organ did not appear right away. Almost as though to

detract from the significance of the Sentinel's completion of its

 

first year of publication, the Michigan Democrat was first issued

 

just ten days prior to the Whig paper's first anniversary, on
March 8, 1838.23 Just as March 1837 was a month of major events,
so was March 1838. On March 3, the state legislature approved the
use of a sixty-acre site in Jacksonburg for the state prison, pro-
viding that the full titles were signed over to the state by the
owners. And on March 22, the state gave final authorization to
build the prison in the village after a model of the penitentiary

24 The prison would later provide the news-

at Auburn, New York.
papers of Jackson with fuel for many an article. It would occasion-
ally be noted that famous visitors, Horace Greeley, for instance,
had passed an afternoon touring the facility while waiting for a

train.25

 

22DeLand, p. 288.

23Jackson County, p. 423.

24Inventory, p. 50.

25American Citizen, 14 January 1858.

 

13

George W. Raney was the Democrat's first publisher. A Penn

 

Yan, New York, man, Raney was a "small, nervous and fussy person."

The battle lines were quickly drawn between the Democrat's office

 

on St. Joseph Street and the Sentinel's office on the Public Square.

 

"Sullivany" and "Raney-ation" were attacked by the respective foes
and "political fire began to fly."26 Little is known of Jackson
County's first year as a two-paper county, except that the Democrat
did not flourish. Both Sullivan and Raney must have battled the
same odds that were common to all pioneer printers. In 1838, there
were only 400 residents in Jacksonburg and a total of about seventy-
five dwellings. That number of residents had doubled by 1839.27
Subscriptions were taken from throughout the county; but mere names
on a subscription list did not guarantee timely payments, or indeed,
payments at all. Pleas for payment were common:

Breathes there a man with soul so dead,

Who never to himself hath said,

Tonight before I go to bed 28
I'll go and pay the printer?

But hackneyed poetry, impassioned pleas and stories of starving
printers' families rarely did much good. Sullivan, for instance,
ran such pleas as advertisements in the Sentinel for six months
after he left it. At first he explained that “the pecuniary embar-

rassments of the subscriber render it absolutely necessary that his

 

26DeLand, p. 288.

27Inventory, p. 63.

28Edson H. Mudge, “The Old-Time Country Newspaperman,"
Michigan History 30 (October l946):754.

14

claims be adjusted with all possible dispatch." Later, he pleaded
for wheat, corn, oats, potatoes, buckwheat and wood as payment.29
His case was not at all unusual; even those printers who managed to
remain in business for longer periods found it necessary to augment

their incomes by operating other businesses or serving in official

positions.

A Paper for Patriots

 

While skirmishes were being fought on the newspaper front
in the village, a war was shaping up in nearby Canada. Called the
”Patriot War,“ it would soon give Jackson County its third newspaper.
The war was really nothing but a series of violent clashes resulting
from widespread dissatisfaction with domestic affairs in Canada.
The Canadian patriots were given moral and military support from
some Americans, who formed secret "Hunter's Lodges" along the border
from Vermont to Michigan. Some federal officials even lent their
support. Others openly advocated a Canadian rebellion. The
declared position of the Van Buren administration was one of neutral-
ity.30
During the summer and fall of 1838, groups of patriots
gathered. Large stores of arms and munitions disappeared from

armories, sometimes as American officials conveniently looked away.

On December 4, between 180 and 240 men, who had gathered near

 

29Jackson Sentinel, 22 January and 30 May 1840.

 

30Silas Farmer, The History of Detroit and Michigan (Detroit:
Silas Farmer & Co., 1884)} pp. 300-303.

 

15

Detroit, marched to the city under Lucius V. Bierce of Akron, Ohio.
They boarded the steamboat Champlain and crossed the river to
Canada, arriving just north of Windsor. After a short march to the
south, they attacked the Windsor military barracks and set fire to
the steamer Ihamg§_docked nearby. There was a brief battle with
Canadian militia; the patriots fled, about a score of them getting
killed during the fight.31
The Battle of Windsor effectively ended the war, although
anti-government sentiment was strong for awhile. Refugees had
poured into Michigan and Ohio throughout the war; one of these
settled in Jackson long enough to publish at least one issue of a
pro-patriot paper. ”The Canadian is edited by a refugee--published
by a Democrat--Printed by a Whig, and read by all the world," was
the hopeful slogan that appeared beneath the paper's masthead. The
only issue known to be in existence is vol. 1, no. 1, published on
January 1, 1839.* The editor's identity can only be guessed at.
Dr. E. A. Theller, a patriot leader who was captured in early 1838,

was released in December. He started the Spirit of 76, or Theller's

 

Daily Republican Advocate, in August 1839. Whether he might have
found time between his release and the establishment of the Spirit

 

31George B. Catlin, The Story of Detroit (Detroit: The
Detroit News, 1923), p. 338.

*-

As frequently happened, the editor of The Canadian forgot
about the year change and so the paper has been catalogued under its
listed date--l January 1838. A careful reading of the content,
however, shows that several incidents referred to occurred during
late 1838, making it apparent that the true date is probably 1 January
1839.

 

16

9f_Z§_in Detroit to publish a paper in Jackson is not known.
Another possibility would be George W. Clark, a Canadian refugee
who founded the Michigan Temperance Herald in December 1838 and
tflien came to Jackson in January. Both Theller and Clark were
reformers and refugees. And both were journalists.
Whoever edited the paper found a safe haven in Jackson.32
'KL_¢at.us unitedly thank high Heaven that we have found a temporary
s helter from the pitiless storm--that there was a land of freedom

33

't:<:> vvhich we could fly for safety," he wrote. Some twenty thousand

1*‘(52‘1F’Lagees had, by then, fled to the western states. A poem, written
f’<:> 3" 'The Canadian in memory of the martyrs, Lount and Matthews,

des cribed the plight of the homeless aliens:

Like the Boreas of winter, oppression is blowing

It rouses our courage and our spirits are mad;

It drives from our country, and thousands are going,
To the land of the free, where thousands have fled.

I cried to the Gods, shall dungeons confine
The true sons of Sparta, who fain would be free;
How long shall they groan in fetters and chains,

How long shall they struggle their freedom to see?34

Even to a casual reader, The Canadian relays a single message:

 

tilial ‘12: the citizens of Canada were the victims of grave injustices.

Thai 3 theme, however, is only politically partisan in the purest

sen Se. A tone of almost religious and holy authority is used.

 

\
-'€3IE! 32The name Jacksonburg was abbreviated to Jackson in January
453'- Inventory, p. 62.

33The Canadian, 1 January l838[9].
34

 

H. R. H., "Canadian Liberty," The Canadian, 1 January 1838[9].

 

17

Unlike any other paper that was to appear in Jackson for the next
thirty years, The Canadian completely lacked both humor and adver-
tising. Its studied pronouncements of human rights and providential
guidance clearly establish the editor's motives. His words are
those of the crusader, the would-be martyr, and the prophet. Iha_
Canadian's evangelical call to arms grimly reminded his readers
that "some of us have felt the shock--some of us have seen our
friends butchered, or wasting away their lives in a damp, dreary
dungeon."35
Despite its total lack of advertising, the paper was surely
intended for continued publication. The editor, in a salutary
letter "to our friends and Brethren The refugees from Canada," gave
his reason for publishing. "We are often told that the Canadians
are not sufficiently informed to merit freedom." Striving to
inform fellow Canadians could not have been accomplished by issuing
a single number of the paper. Furthermore, the editor promised, he
meant "to have our case and our wrongs correctly laid before the
world." He partly accomplished his purpose by publishing a lengthy
letter from the wife of one of the martyrs to the chief justice of
Upper Canada. There were also current news items and an analysis
of the events that led to the Battle of Windsor. There was a single
reference to a future, local event. It was to be a speech on the

Canadian grievances the following Friday night in the court house.36

 

35The Canadian, 1 January l838[9]-

 

36Ibid.

18

There is silence on The Canadian in other historical sources.
Perhaps the paper suffered the same fate as the Patriot cause.
After the Battle of Windsor the enthusiasm dwindled and reformation

soon brought an end to many of the abuses.

The Herald and the Freeman

 

Jacksonburg was a booming settlement on the threshold of its
third year with a public press. There were two banks, two printing
offices, two drug stores, ten dry-goods stores, about two hundred
dwellings, and religious services being conducted by five denomin-

ations.37

It was not a large community, but it attracted two more
newspapers in 1839. They were the Michigan Temperance Herald and
the American Freeman.

The Temperance Herald was the brainchild of George W. Clark.
Known in later years as the "Liberty Minstrel," Clark was an ener-
getic and eloquent spokesman for the anti-drink cause. A personal
friend of William Lloyd Garrison, Clark met Presidents Martin Van
Buren and Andrew Jackson in their prime. His articles were widely
circulated in the nation's periodicals through the 1880s and he
thrilled large crowds with his singing and lecturing.38

In 1837 Clark found himself in Canada and in sympathy with

the patriots when the Patriot War erupted. A radical reformer, he

refused to defend the Canadian government and was imprisoned.

 

37Jackson County, p. 238.

38George W. Clark Papers, Michigan Historical Collections,
Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

19

He was released late in 1838 and exiled to Michigan. After lecturing

for a while in Washtenaw County, he started the Temperance Herald in

 

Ann Arbor. But the state's first temperance newspaper did not
remain there long. Jackson, a more central location, attracted
Clark. "And [Jackson]," he observed, "furnishing more congenial and
heartily sympathizing friends to the cause, I removed to that
village."39

Nicholas Sullivan recorded in his Sentinel in September

1839 that he had agreed ten months before to print the Temperance

 

Herald.40 That would put the paper's founding about January, which
agrees with the first entry in Clark's account and subscription
book. The entry records a nine-dollar payment made on January 20,

1839, probably to Sullivan, whose name appears at the top of the

page.41

In spite of the support Clark believed he would find in the
village, temperance reform was not always popular. Drinking was an
indispensable pastime on the harsh frontier. And "total abstinance

42 On the

was considered the craziest fanaticism imaginable."
temperance side were the "decency folks," including the evangelicals,
most of the Whigs, the anti-slavery supporters and Sullivan's

Sentinel.

 

39Clark Papers.

40Jackson Sentinel, 11 September 1839.

41Clark Papers.

42Ibid.

20

On February 27, a convention of the Michigan Anti-Slavery
Society was held on a snowy evening in the village. Rev. Mr. Sulli-
van spoke to a small group of stalwarts who had traveled over the
bad roads. He reported on his plans to establish a newspaper
advocating abolition. He said correspondents from around the state
had replied to his letters on the subject with "flattering encourage-
ment." The paper could be established within six weeks, he concluded.43

With the announcement that an abolition paper was to be added
to the village newspaper fraternity, Jackson took on as cosmopolitan
an air as any young village in Michigan. Where else could one find
specialized publications devoted to the great antebellum American
themes of Whiggery, Democratism, temperance and abolition?

The first noticeable effect of the plethora of papers was
the division of the Sullivan brothers on the slavery issue. The two
had gone to Ohio with their parents to get away from slavery in
Virginia. The minister brother's religion was tied heart and soul
to the great moral issues--especially anti-slavery. Nicholas,
however, was not convinced of the wisdom of abolition. He was con-
sidered "friendly to the cause" when it came to publishing the

44

society's news. But soon after the Jackson convention, he took

issue with an abolitionist correspondent, saying, "It is not our

intention to permit our columns to be used in advocating or opposing

"45

the measures and doctrines of ultra abolitionism. Meanwhile,

 

43Jackson Sentinel, 6 March 1839.
44

 

Ibid.

451bid.

21

the minister was calling on "every voter to cast his suffrages in
favor of the bleeding slave, and employ every civil privilege for
his speedy emancipation."46
The news that the proposed paper, to be called the American
Freeman, was to be printed by the Sentinel's press spurred rumors.
Nicholas stoutly denied the village gossip. He acknowledged that
he was rumored to be an abolitionist and not the true editor and
publisher of the paper. Some "mad and ruinous" men had threatened
to withdraw their patronage over the question. "What haughty men,"
he bellowed in his columns. "Wonder if they won't reverse the
current of Grand River!" He then went on record, probably shocking
those who considered him a friend to the abolition cause. "The
present African race in this country are as well situated as they
can possibly be under existing circumstances." He opposed those
who wanted to tie either temperance or abolition to politics. "Of
47

all bondages, deliver us from an enslaved press," he concluded.

By early June the American Freeman had appeared as a semi-

 

monthly organ. Rev. Mr. Sullivan published the paper with his own
money for two months before giving it up. Like Clark, he was a
crusader. He had already felt the sting of persecution when, the
year before, he had attempted to lecture in the village on slavery.

A mob forced him to cease his speaking.48

 

46Jackson Sentinel, 20 March 1839.
47

 

Ibid., 3 April 1839.
48Jackson County, p. 151.

22

The Freeman had been started mostly on faith in human

generosity and divine providence. It is likely that Nicholas made

a generous financial arrangment with his brother to print the paper.
But the minister was somewhat disappointed in his hopes for assis-
tance from those who had written in "flattering encouragement."
Three issues of the Freeman appeared before he gave it up. The
fourth issue, published on August 13, 1839, announced that the paper
would henceforth be under the control of the executive committee of

49 As

the society, which had purchased a press and other equipment.
Rev. Mr. Sullivan was vice president of the executive committee of
the society, he must have had a say in the appointment of the new
editor-~Seymour Boughton Treadwell, a forty—four-year-old abolition-

ist from Rochester, New York.

Editorial Changes

At the Michigan Democrat office another change came late in
the summer. Reuben S. Cheney purchased an interest in the paper.
From then on it was "Raney and Cheney" under the masthead, followed
by the paper's slogan: "THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE IS THE SUPREME LAW
OF THE LAND."50. Cheney eventually purchased the Democrat with Wilbur

F. Storey and established the Jackson Patriot as its successor in

 

1844. His association with Storey during the Patriot years left

Cheney overshadowed; but he was an astute newspaperman in his own

 

49American Freeman, 13 August 1839.
50

 

Michigan Democrat, 15 August 1839.

 

23

right. He served a Democratic readership during the years of the
party's greatest power in Jackson County.

Meanwhile, Nicholas Sullivan was finding that a newspaper-
man's worst enemies may sometimes be those of his own political
camp. He had been opposed by Democrats since late 1837. Since the
spring of 1839 he had been having problems with some persons in his
own Whig party. So on September 11, Sullivan announced to his
readers that he was resigning with that issue. A stock company of
"staunch yeomanry of the city" had purchased the Sentinel, he

reported.51

The next issues carried no names of editors, printers
or publishers. An advertisement in the October 2 issue, however,
directed old subscribers to pay their debts to "Mr. Hitchcock"
while Sullivan was out of the state. This was undoubtedly William
Hitchcock, the brother-in-law of Norman Allen who had earlier turned
down the offer to print the Sentinel. Hitchcock and his partner,
Morgan Spencer Moore, who had followed Treadwell from Rochester,
later suspended the Sentinel and started the Michigan State Gazette
during the political campaign of 1840.52
With Sullivan's departure there came to light a dispute of
several months standing over George W. Clark's Michigan Temperance
flaralg, Ten months before, Sullivan wrote, he had printed six

issues of the paper for Clark. In a warning to "the printers of

Michigan," he wrote that "We are now left with the consoling

 

5‘lJackson Sentinel, 11 September 1839.

52Ibid., 2 October 1839.

24

reflection that in all probability we shall receive nothing for our
services, as he has utterly refused to settle with us by a satis-
factory note or otherwise." Whether Clark settled his debt with
Sullivan is unknown; what is apparent is that the Haralg_continued
to appear for another year.53l
Such were the beginnings of the first village journalists.

Theirs was a time of limited opportunity. Some of them spent hard-
earned life savings trying to make a go of printing the news and
their views. The combined circulation from their several papers
could have been little more than a thousand. They suffered opposi-
tion that sometimes erupted into physical violence. Misunderstanding
of their freedom, rumors and malignment were frequently their portion.
Only Rev. Mr. Sullivan and Treadwell lived the rest of their lives in
Jackson County. The others moved on to seek better fortunes. They
were plagued by transient journeyman printers and runaway "devils"
who would one day breeze into an office and the next be gone. When
Charles V. DeLand wrote the following words at the death of Nicholas
Sullivan he could just as well have been writing today of all the
men who established the press in Jackson County:

And those old subscribers--where are they? Many have gone

to other lands--many have gone to that land to which that

old and tried friend has so lately departed, and a few--but

how few--are about us today; some even remain upon gur_sub-

scription list--these, with us, will call back the memories

of the past, and join in a regret or speak a kindly word in 54
remembrance of the pioneer publisher of Jackson County. . . .

 

53Ibid., 11 September 1839.

54Ibid., 2 April 1857.

CHAPTER II

A REFORMING PRESS

”Reform" held meanings in 1839 which we cannot appreciate
today because in its political sense the word holds a
largely secular meaning for us. But even in a political
sense then, the word loosed inevitable religious connota- 1
tions, especially to a rural public familiar with revivals.

Religion often influenced what appeared in the columns of
early Jackson County newspapers. The subject was not blazoned in
modern headlines, but from religion derived many of the attitudes
that stirred editors to write about political and domestic issues.
There are at least two major reasons for this.

First, Jackson County was considered "very fruitful in
revivals." In the summer of 1837, when Nicholas Sullivan was just
getting established in Jacksonburg, the first county camp meeting
was held near the village of Pulaski. For a week citizens emulated
the tent-dwelling Hebrews of biblical times as they fed daily on
the spiritual bread offered in revival services. A revival was
touched off in nearby Spring Arbor. Another began at Concord, where

"many of the young people were converted to God."2 The revival,

 

1Ronald P. Formisano, The Birth of Mass Political Parties:
lWichigan, 1827-1861 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University
Press, 1971), p. 130.

2Elijah H. Pilcher, Protestantism in Michigan (Detroit:
R. D. S. Tyler & Co., 1878), pp. 366-69.

25

26

with its cycle of sin and salvation, was the llstock answer to
decline and apathy in a local church . . . just as the stock answer
to troubles in the country was the importation of a morally impec-
cable plumed knight in shining armor to lead a great crusade for
spiritual renovation and to throw the rascals out."3 Very often
the editor assumed the role of public evangelist, calling his
readers to repentance from moral or political impurity.

Secondly, religion was stimulating publishing enterprises
throughout the nation prior to the Civil War. Newspapers, magazines,
journals, books and missionary periodicals flourished. The first
religious newspaper had been founded in 1808; by 1833 there were at
least a hundred. Many lasted through the 18605. From 1833 to 1860
they made up the largest group of specialized class periodicals.4
Such papers differed little in appearance from secular papers.
Sullivan's Sentinel carried articles and sermons from some of them,
especially those of the temperance slant. But neither the Sentinel
nor any other county papers of the period could be classed as
strictly religious papers. None were supported by denominational

groups alone. Still the adjective "religious" could be applied to

several of them without straining the word's meaning.

 

3Sidney E. Mead, "Denominationalism: The Shape of Pro-
testantism in America," Church History_23 (December 1954): 309-10,
quoted in Formisano.

 

4Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Ma azines 1741-
1850 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University ress, 1939),
p0 137.

27

Some Skirmishes on the Decency Front

Other than Rev. William Sullivan, the most openly devout of
the early editors was George W. Clark. Reared in Dansville, New
York, he was seventeen when he came under the influence of Rev.
Theodore D. Weld's temperance preaching. Shortly after, he went to
Rochester, where he was converted to faith in Jesus Christ in the
religious awakening stimulated by the noted evangelist, Rev. Charles
G. Finney. There followed a time of preparation for the Christian
ministry. But the need for ministers seemed of less importance to
Clark than did the need for temperance workers. From 1832 on, he
later recalled, "to preach the temperance gospel was my mission."5

Clark and Rev. Mr. Sullivan were kindred hearts in the
matter of moral crusading. They worked clsoely in the short time
both published papers. "Together, abreast, we stemmed the tides
of opposition and obloquy," wrote Clark, "--struggling against the
rum and pro-slavery elements." Joining the pair was the stalwart
Presbyterian minister, Rev. Marcus Harrison.

So with the heavy cannonade from his pulpit and the light
fusilade from our papers and lectures, Satan's camps were
very muchly disturbed . . . Grogshops and their concommit-
tant evils were fearfully prevalent . . . Rowdyism, Sabbath
desecration, gambling, horse racing and fighting were the
order of the day and the nights were made hideous by the
brawls and howlings of the frenzied victims of whiskey.6

At times the skirmishes on the decency front assumed the

proportions of grand comedy. Village pranksters once forced a

 

5Clark Papers.

61bid.

28

domesticated raccoon to guzzle whiskey. As the animal became
inebriated, so did the pranksters. They soon tired of the frolic
and fell asleep. As the tormentors slept, the raccoon awoke and
ran along the shelves of the shop, sending bottle after bottle of
drink to the floor. Clark appreciated the value of the incident
as a temperance tale. "I published the story of his coonship in
the Herald and it went the rounds of the papers," he noted.7

Early in his Jackson stay, Clark spoke one night in the
Session House about the damage being done in the young village by
intemperance. The lecture was a report of an investigation several
temperance workers had made. Toward the end of the presentation,
the pro-whiskey forces doused the lights and tried to capture Clark.
He escaped to Rev. Mr. Harrison's house and warned the minister in
time for both to flee into a cornfield. They spent the night in
hiding there.8

The summer of 1839 was memorable for its July 4 celebrations,
which clearly showed the nature of many of the conflicts between the
reformers and their opponents. The holiday was always an occasion
for public intoxication and revelry. The reformers were more
inclined to celebrate with less emphasis on fanfare than on solemnity
and sobriety. Two days before the holiday, Rev. Mr. Sullivan took

iSsue with the Sentinel and Democrat on the festive preparations:

 

7Clark Papers.

8Ibid.

29

A few more bonfires, a few more reports from the cannon's
throat, and a few more shouts from a thoughtless rabble
equally as senseless, must make the welkin ring before
the guilty inhabitants of this land will open their eyes
upon their inconsistency, their hypocrisy, treachery and
baseness in celebrating a republicanism that crushes

into dust millions of our race.9

Banding together, the reformers planned a Sabbath School
celebration for the holiday. Clark planned their program. He was
to sing, Rev. Mr. Harrison was to speak, and there were to be other
lectures on temperance and abolition.

The eve before the holiday, however, was filled with sinis-
ter preparations by the rabble. They put out their own program,
which the decency folks alleged was "to ridicule ours full of low
blackguard." Seats were collected from the grove in which the
Sabbath School meeting was to be held. They were burned in a bon-
fire in the public square. The villagers were kept awake into the
early hours of the morning by the revelry. In the morning the
Sabbath School folks met in the Session House, where they found an
unpleasant surprise. A Negro who had died a few days earlier had
been disinterred and propped up in the pulpit. Despite the desecra-
tion, the meeting got under way. But the revelry had not ceased.

A whiskey bottle was thrown through a window. And as the congrega-
tion rose to sing a final song, the pranksters stole into the rear

of the building and fired a blank round from a heavily loaded cannon.
The assembly was covered with smoke. Some of the men chased one of

the pranksters into a room and thought they had cornered him.

 

9American Freeman, 2 July 1839.

30

But they found no one inside and it was only later that they
learned that the small-framed man had hidden in a drawer. The
persecution failed to deter the reformers from their purposes, for
"all returned to their homes--more in favor of Sunday Schools and

early religious instruction than ever."10

Seymour B. Treadwell--Abolitioni5t

Moral crusading was encouraged by the arrival of Seymour B.
Treadwell to publish the Freeman. His account of his first Jackson
lecture on August 5, 1839 was given in a letter the next day to his
son, Jerome, who was living in Adrian at the time:

I spoke on the subject of "American Liberties and American
Slavery" in Jackson last evening to a full house and an
attentive audience--I spoke until 1/4 before ten o'clock
and was about to close the meeting with an awkward apology
that I kept the people so long--when my old friend Judge
Moody requested that I say a few words on the subject of
colonization--which I did . . . to the satisfaction of
all--I then took the liberty it being past ten o'clock to
return my thanks to the good people for their patience,
and respectful attention to their humble speaker and closed
the meeting.11

Impressed with Treadwell's abilities, the committee members
of the Michigan Anti-Slavery Society urged him to take the editor-
ship of the Freeman. "They would not take no for an answer," he

wrote. A comfortable home was offered along with other "liberal

 

10DeLand-Crary Papers, Michigan Historical Collections,
gentley Historical Library, University of Michigan; also see Clark
apers.

. HSeymour B. Treadwell to Jerome Treadwell, 6 August 1839,
1n ‘the Treadwell Family Papers, Michigan Historical Collections,
Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

31

encouragement to embark on the philanthrop[ic] enterprise." Tread-
well decided to take the offer and declared that "The Die is cast
(Deo volente) that I go to Jackson to labor for the enslaved and for
our country."12

Treadwell was one of the oldest and most experienced of the
editors of early Jackson County newspapers. Born in Bridgeport,
Connecticut, on June 1, 1795, he was known as a religious man, a
temperance advocate, and above all a fervent abolitionist. After
teaching school and operating a business for several years he pub-
lished a book on slavery in 1838. Its title was the same as that
of his Jackson lecture. He remained in the county until his death
after the Civil War, participating in many of the movements and
conventions that affected pre-war politics. In 1848 he led a hundred
Michigan delegates to the Buffalo, New York, Free Soil Convention.
He was one of the first slate of candidates elected by the new
Republican Party after its 1854 inception in Jackson.13 Throughout
those years he frequently opened his Leoni Township home on "Tiger
14

Tail Road" to runaway slaves.

After his Jackson lecture, Treadwell returned to Rochester

for his wife and family. Within a month he had arrived by boat in

 

'Zibid.

13Isabelle Treadwell Towne, a biographical sketch on Seymour
8. Treadwell, 1795-1867, in the Treadwell Family Papers.

14Treadwell's daughter Isabelle was in her nineties when she
‘visted Jackson for the last time in 1941. She referred to the foot-
sinamping, singing and dancing of the slaves in the Treadwell home.
See the Civil War file, Ella Sharp Museum.

32

Toledo, Ohio, and then continued through adrian on his way to
Jackson. He was joined in his new responsibility by a Rochester
printer--Morgan Spencer Moore. Just what financial arrangements
were made with Moore are not known. Shortly after his arrival in
Jackson he became part of a group that purchased the Sentinel.
DeLand recalled that Moore was "one of the bright, energetic and
stirring young men sent west in 1839 and 1840 by Thurlow Weed and
the Whig syndicate of New York, to establish Whig papers in the
western states."15 Although Moore did not live long in Jackson,
his elder brother spent some time there and later spread the

praises of the growing community in his well-known Moore's Rural

 

New Yorker.

 

When the fifth issue of the Freeman appeared on September
25, 1839, it was re-named the Michigan Freeman. The names of
Treadwell and Moore replaced that of Rev. Mr. Sullivan. In a major
salutory letter in the issue, Treadwell outlined his abolitionist
position. "Freemen! are your own necks prepared for Slavery? If
not, then you must prepare them or become Abolitionists in self-

defence . . . Real Abolitionists will never be Slaves."16

The 1840 Presidential Campaign--A Moral Crusade

Treadwell's crusading was not strictly religious; but it was
always highly moral. This was a quality that was especially apparent

during the 1840 presidential campaign. There was a fervency in

 

'5DeLand, p. 288.

16Michigan Freeman, 25 September 1839.

 

33

political meetings that has been described as "a kind of political
revivalism." The Whigs, whose thinking generally included the idea
of an active providence concerned with the moral regulation of
society, held political picnics resembling camp meetings. Whig
speakers addressed their audiences in an evangelistic style. Their
reforming message was extended to all those "who opposed Democratic
misrule and wanted to cast out the scoundrels," a secular develop-
ment of the Arminian idea that I'whosoever will may be saved."17
Democrats often criticized the religious overtones of the Whig
activities. One observer in Kalamazoo abhorred the Whig efforts to
elect William Henry Harrison "by their blasphemous imitation of the
Holy Supper of our blessed Savior in giving parched corn and hard

'8 The

cider to their devotees saying, 'drink ye all of it.'"
evangelical quality of political communication on a personal level
was such that "If two strangers met each other in the woods, they
could not be together five minutes before they would be discussing
this all absorbing theme."19
The campaign pitted three presidential candidates against
each other on the national level-~Martin Van Buren, the Democratic
president since 1836; William Henry Harrison, the Whigs' Indian-

fighting military hero; and James G. Birney, the Michigan politician

 

17Formisano, p. 133.

18
P. 134.

Detroit Free Press, 19 June 1840, quoted in Formisano,

19A. D. P. Van Buren, "The Log Schoolhouse Era," Michigan
fipneer and Historical Collections 14 (Lansing, 1890): p. 322.

34

adopted by the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society's "Liberty
Party"in April 1840. In Jackson County four papers backed the can-

didates. The Michigan Democrat supported Van Buren; the Jackson

 

Sentinel and then the Michigan State Gazette supported Harrison; and
the Michigan Freeman supported Birney.

Just after the national Liberty Party convention was held
the Michigan Democrat opened the 1840 campaign in Jackson with a
denunciation of "Sullivany." Subtitled "Falsehood retracted," the
article was an attempt to undercut the credibility of the Sentinel.
Raney had already accused the Whig paper of being controlled by

20 Neither was he satisfied that Nicholas

county banking interests.
Sullivan had entirely severed his connection with the paper. In an
apparent attempt to put down the Sentinel for its occasional lapses
of publication due to illness, Raney boasted that "the best writing
ever I done was performed under a severe attack of the ague." The
Sentinel responded with an editorial on "Raney-ation." "Mr. Raney,
don't shake so again next week, or the Horn & Tinpan Democracy
faction may find that in your disappearance they have lost a valuable
commander."2]
One difference highlighted during the election coverage was
the attitudinal one between the editors on the issue of political
organization. On April 25 the Whigs met at the county courthouse

for the I'purpose of a more thorough organization of the Whig Party."22

 

20Jackson Sentinel, 9 October 1839. Since many Whigs were
bankers and conservative financiers, the accusation was not unusual.

21

 

Ibid., 18 April 1840.

22Ibid.

35

Historians have noted the marked anti-party sentiment among party
members. Since many of them were evangelical Protestants "party
in politics resembled Romanism in religion, namely, submission of
individual reason and conscience to central authority."23

There was no such anti-party sentiment among Democrats.
Their organization was considered the "politician's party par
excellence."24 Jackson's Democratic newspaper editors encouraged
party spirit and urged party members to avoid split tickets and to
stand united on election days. Raney had written just before the
1839 state election that it was gratifying to see the "harmony and
good feeling which prevails through the ranks of democracy."25
Such "harmony" was the self-proclaimed trademark of Democrats through
the 1848 election, when the Barnburners split the party.

There was sharp disagreement among the anti-slavery forces
over the issue of organization. In a June 1839 meeting of the
executive committee of the Michigan Anti-Slavery Society, the
resolution was adopted that "moral influence . . . remains the only
appropriate means of accomplishing the Anti-Slavery enterprize." By
October there were rumors that the society planned to nominate can-
didates for the state general election. Treadwell denied the.

rumors, saying, "We repudiate the spirit of party intolerance as but

another name for the spirit of SLAVERY." He urged supporters of

 

23Formisano, p. 79.

24Ibid. , p. 74.

25Michigan Democrat, 15 August 1839.

 

36

anti-slavery to vote for candidates of any party on the basis of
their answers to the questions of "human liberty." By January,
however, the editor was calling political organization a right but

26

not an expediency. Treadwell later wholeheartedly threw his

'support to the Liberty Party, which he helped to organize in a
Jackson convention on August 5, 1840.27
Sometime after May 30 the Sentinel was suspended. Its
successor was the State Gazette, which was issued first on August 13.
Moore and Hitchcock, the publishers, described their new paper as a
"political journal." A prospectus, dated July 21, called for the
"redemption of our country" from the Van Buren administration, words
that in themselves suggest the religiosity of the campaign rhetoric.
"Uncompromising hostility” was what the Gazette promised toward the
administration in power. It supported Harrison, the "poor man's
friend."28 But the foe most bitterly attacked by the Gazette in
its editorials was the Freeman. The Whig editors called the paper
"a miserable loco foco rag of this place." Once Treadwell accused
them of refusing to publish any abolition news. They replied and
wondered if Treadwell, "that slimy editor," was "such an ass as to
believe that we are obliged to publish anything that he or his
friends may choose to write against us . . . as stated in his last

rag."29

 

26Michigan Freeman, 2 July, 23 October 1839, and 15 January

1840.
27Biographical sketch, Treadwell Family Papers.

28

291bid., 10 September 1840.

Michigan State Gazette, 13 August 1840.

 

37

Again and again Treadwell's columns were punctuated by sharp
denunciations of the more party-conscious Whigs and Democrats. On
May 9, 1840, several score of the Tippecanoe boys raised a log cabin

and a liberty pole opposite the Sentinel's office.30 Treadwell

 

criticized the enthusiastic activities a few days later:
While as a people our hands are blood red . . . whether we
resort to the desperate expedient of building log cabins,
marble palaces, or even splendid temples desi ned for the
worship of the most High, it will all be the same in the

eye of Him with whom every one of us will 500 have to do
in this great matter.31

Treadwell had already taken a stand against the Whig ticket,
declaring that "Whoever would vote for Harrison and Tyler, supposing
it would advance the Anti-Slavery cause, any more than to vote for
Mr. Van Buren even, in our opinion, will only mourn their folly when

too late!"32

In the extensive election material in the Freeman
nearly every news item was treated similarly. If there was an angle
by which news could be related to the anti-slavery cause, that angle
was used.

Equally obvious in the campaign conducted by the Freeman was
its spiritual orientation to the issues. Studies of Michigan abol-
itionists show that they were ”actively and intensely religious" and
that they were influenced by the revivalism of the era. Twenty-one

of the top thirty-five leaders were either pastors, deacons or elders.33

 

30Jackson County, p. 320.
31

 

Michigan Freeman, 13 May 1840.
32Ibid., 25 March 1840.

33Formisano, p. 75.

38

Many came out of the Whig Party, which has been called the "Chris-
tian Party, seeking in many ways to regulate a moral society."34
So it was not strange that much of the language used in the paper
was imbued with graphic metaphors and analogies from Old Testament
law and prophecy. The first slogan of the Freeman under the Rev.
Mr. Sullivan was King David's lofty pronouncement: "For the oppres-
sion of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, now will I arise,

saith the Lord."35

The minister continued to write articles for
the paper through the campaign. Later he became one of the
abolitionist Methodists to break away from the church to establish
the Wesleyan Methodist denomination. That coming split was latent
in Rev. Mr. Sullivan's articles in the Freeman. "How much dearer
to us would be Methodism were she untainted with what our great

and good Wesley calls the 'sum of all villainiesl'"36

The Freeman
presented the slavery issue as a paramount concern of the churches
and thus helped elicit widespread support from the denominations.
By 1860 nearly all Protestants, except Episcopalians and Pres-
byterians, had joined the Republican Party.37
Treadwell repeatedly invoked Mosaic judgment on both the

godless and those among the clergy who opposed the organization of

 

34Formisano, p. 8.

35Psa1m 12:5a.

36Michigan Freeman, 12 August 1840.

 

37Floyd Benjamin Streeter, Political Parties in Michigan 1837-

 

186 (Lansing: Michigan Historical Collections, 1918), p. 227.

—

39

the anti-slavery forces into a political party. Such ministers
"are determined . . . to sacrifice the true cause of the slave upon

38 When Pres-

the bloody altar of a pro-slavery party," he charged.
ident Van Buren spoke against naval policies that permitted slaves
to be transported to the United States, Treadwell called the
leader's failure to speak against slavery on the land as "solemn

"39 But when some supporters

and awful mockery before High Heaven.
of the Freeman wanted it converted to a strictly religious paper,
Treadwell, who was the first clerk of the Congregational Church,

replied that "Ogr_religion would lead us to adopt right thaggy_in

4O Enemies of the abolitionists accused

relation to our fellow men."
those in the churches of having "forsaken the preaching of Christ
Crucified, to plead for the oppressed." To this the Freeman devoted
much discussion. Benjamin 1. Mather, the Jackson lawyer who took

over the Temperance Herald after Clark left, made a pertinent speech

 

that Treadwell played on page one of the Freeman's 29 January 1840
issue. "The Christ they speak of, was crucified, to open a door to
our benighted world, for an exhibition of God's Benevolence, and the
cause of benevolence embues men with a spirit which is at war with

all unrighteousness.”4]

 

38Michigan Freeman, 12 August 1840.

39Ibid., 15 January 1840.

40Ibid., 8 April 1840.

4'Ibid., 29 January 1840.

40

As the campaign neared a climax, Treadwell encountered severe
problems. Continued financial probelms had forced the society to
seek twenty-five men to donate $100 each in the spring of 1840 to
keep the paper from being suspended.42 Treadwell gave up his rights
to a salary in insure that the printer was paid. Then in August the
paper lost the society's support altogether.. Treadwell had
increasingly shown an independence in his editorship. He helped
bring the Liberty Party convention to Jackson On August 5 and then
sided with those who organized the party in Michigan. But some of
the society's leaders at the conveniton were opposed to the organiz-
ing so met in a separate session. They denounced the party and

43 Some of the society mem-

withdrew their support of the Freeman.
bers were undoubtedly Whigs and feared that the new party would
divert votes from Harrison. And Treadwell was so anti-Harrison that
he was accused of being a pawn of the'Democrats. Nevertheless, he
campaigned fervently for Birney. He covered the lecture circuit
with the fugitive slave, Henry Bibb, "who, telling his own pathetic
story with the eloquence of simple truth, opened many eyes."44
Although realizing that certain defeat was forecast for
Birney, Treadwell wrote that "throwing away" votes on the candidate

45

was like a farmer scattering good seed upon good ground. His faith

 

42Michigan Freeman, 4 March 1840.

 

43Biographical sketch, Treadwell Family Papers, and Michigan
State Gazette, 3 September 1840.

44

 

Biographical sketch, Ibid.

45Michigan Freeman, 21 October 1840.

41

was prophetic. Although' the party failed to get three hundred
votes from sixteen counties it later merged with other anti-slavery
forces to form the Free Soil Party. The Free Soilers, or Free
Democrats, were the base of the fusion movement of 1854 that
resulted in the founding of the Republican Party at Jackson. Still
the 1840 split between Treadwell and the society cost the Freeman
its support and the Liberty Party much of its potential power. The
editor remarked bitterly several weeks before the election that the
paper would be printed as often as money was available. But, he
added, "While slavery never pays its laborers, abolition should
always."46
It was "Victory and Glorious Triumph" for the Whigs in
November. The Gazette hailed the triumph as one over "corruption
and misrule." Gloating, that great editorial indulgence of vic-
torious editors, was the order of the day. "There was not a single
word in the last Loco Foco Democrat over the way, respecting the
election in this county," the editors noted. "Wonder if the sleepy
editor . . . had received no returns at the time of putting his
paper to press."47 After the final tally the Harrison ticket had
received a majority of 383 votes, its 1,504 leading the 1,121 votes

of the Democrats. Only 294 votes were cast for the Birney ticket.48

 

46Michigan Freeman, 21 October 1840.

47Michigan State Gazette, 12 November 1840.

48Jackson County, p. 317; Streeter, p. 59.

42

Some Editorial Casualties

The Libertyites and Democrats were not the only losers in
the fall of 1840. George W. Clark had been appointed a commissioner
to the Presbyterian General Assembly earlier. When he returned to
Jackson in the fall he was struck by "rampant disease." After two
years of temperance work in the village he was further discouraged
because Jackson was still "demoralized by her grog shops and gross
drinking habits." He despaired of life and decided to abandon the
Temperance Herald. Turning it over to Mather, Clark and his family
returned to New York. The paper was shortly after moved to Mar-
shall.49

With the first of the year came two deaths that robbed the
Gazette of the sweetness of its recent political victory. On January
14, 1841, the heavy black column rules of the paper contained the
news of Moore's death from consumption at the age of twenty-five.

Two months later the new Whig president died in office, leaving a
Democratic vice president in charge of the administration.50

Treadwell continued to struggle along with his Freeman for
several months. On April 28, 1841, the anti-slavery society issued
its new Signal of Liberty, an abolition paper more to the liking of
the anti-party majority of the leadership. Nicholas Sullivan printed
the Signal, which was published in Ann Arbor. Its first issue

carried a letter from Treadwell to the society. He wrote that he

 

49Clark Papers.

50Michigan State Gazette, 14 January, 22 April 1841.

43

was giving up the Freeman because of inadequate support. The
society accepted Treadwell's resignation and suggested that $159.67
be appropriated for the editor's personal expenditures under the

society's employment.5]

By June, however, the money had not been
paid. Treadwell's daughter later wrote that her father never saw
much of the money owed him. He turned to farming to regain his
financial losses.52
Little is known of the next several years of newspaper pub-
lishing. Only scattered copies of the Democrat and Gazette are
available. These provide no continuity. The era was basically one
of Democratic control, with that party's gubernatorial candidates in

the majority in Jackson County through 1854.53

Daniel D. T. Moore, Agricultural Editor

It was a period of less reform journalism than the period of
1839 to 1841. One man who brought a calming influence to the news-
paper field was Daniel D. Tompkins Moore, who stepped into the
Gazette's editorial vacancy left when his brother Morgan died in

54

January. In later years Daniel Moore became editor of Moore's

Rural New Yorker and mayor of Rochester, New York, where the farm

 

5'5igna1 of Liberty, 28 April 1841.

 

52Rev. J. P. Cleveland to Seymour B. Treadwell, 22 June
1841, Treadwell Family Papers; also Mrs. Isabelle Treadwell Towne's
notes, Treadwell Family Papers.

53Inventory, p. 36.

54Michigan State Gazette, 21 January 1841.

 

44

paper was published. After his brother's death, however, Daniel
turned the Gazette away from its former status as a "political
journal." By late summer agricultural news was being featured.

"We . . . prefer, so far as we are qualified, to present our readers

55 But he soon

with a well filled intellectual garden," wrote Moore.
found that the Whigs liked their political news more than the farm-
ing features. After two years Moore retired from the Gazette.
Purchasing a Detroit paper--The Western Farmer--he established an
agricultural journal on February 15, 1843. It was called the
Michigan Farmer and Western Horticulturalist. J. M. Allen became

the new Gazette editor. Moore published the Michigan Farmer nearly
56

 

two years before returning to New York.

Wilbur F. Storey_and the Patriot

While Moore was busy planting the seeds of a "well filled
intellectual garden," there arrived in Jackson a young editor who
would reap a bountiful harvest of victory and occasional notoriety
for the Democracy of Jackson County. Wilbur Fisk Storey came to
the village not to print a newspaper but to study law. From 1842 to
1844 he absorbed all the legal knowledge he could in the home of his

sister, Mary Elizabeth, who was married to a prominent Democrat,

 

55Michigan State Gazette, 5 August 1841.

56J. C. Holmes, "A Sketch of the History of the 'Michigan
Farmer,'" Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections 7 (Lansing,
1886): 99-102.

45

57 At the end of the period the profession in

Fairchild Farrand.
which Storey was to pummel the sensiblities of readers for the next

forty years attracted him to the editorship of the Jackson Patriot.

 

In his twenty-four years Storey had gotten plenty of news-
paper experience. He left his Vermont farm home as a seventeen-

year-old to work for the New York Journal of Commerce after serving

 

a five-year apprenticeship with the Middlebury_(Vermont) Free Press.
Between his New York and Jackson careers he edited papers in La
Porte and Mishawaka, Indiana.58
In the spring of 1844 Storey borrowed some money from his
brother-in-law and joined with Cheney in founding the Patriot some-
time in April. He handled the editorial duties and Cheney, the
business side of the operation. The earliest copies of the Patriot
that are still to be found are from 1847. So very little is known
of the paper's quality before then. But Storey waged a bitter cam-
paign in the 1844 presidential election. He "made the Patriot whoop
so loudly for the candidacy of James K. Polk that his policy presently
brought home the bacon." The "bacon" of course was a political
appointment to the postmastership of Jackson.59 After the election,

Cheney and Storey purchased the office and subscription books of the

Michigan Farmer and printed it at least through April 1845.

 

57Ju5tin E. Walsh, To Print the News and Raise Hell (Chapel
Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1968),
p. 26; and George B. Catlin, "Little Journeys in Journalism," Michigan
History 10 (October 1926): 520.

58Walsh, pp. 12-14.

59mm. p. 519.

46

They also briefly printed the Ingham County Democrat on an auxiliary
press in Mason in 1845.

More than any other early Jackson editor, Storey used his
editorship as a base of power. On the base he actively established
himself as a businessman, politician, church layman and community
leader. His pragmatic philosophy was the antithesis of the single-
mindedness of the earlier editors. His entanglements were many.

But the entanglement that appears the most difficult to
understand in light of Storey's subsequent disdain for religion is
his brief association with the church. The relationship had already
been sealed before Storey's marriage to the daughter of a Congrega-
tionalist minister. The Patriot carried the wedding announcement on
June 22, 1847:

Marriages--In this village, this morning, by the Rev. G. L.

Foster, Wilbur F. Storey, Esq., to Miss Maria P. Isham, all
of Jackson.60

Maria Isham was the daughter of Rev. Warren P. Isham, who
had moved to Jackson in 1844. He had been associated with newspapers
in Ohio and Detroit, where he published an anti-slavery daily for
six months in 1842. That an evangelical minister of the gospel
should agree to a union between his daughter and a Democratic news-
paper editor was remarkable in itself. Evangelicals regarded
Democrats as antagonistic to the great moral issues of the day.
It is doubly unusual that the Rev. Mr. Isham should accept a son-

in-law who had once characterized anti-slavery spokemen as "too

 

60Jackson Patriot, 22 June 1847.

47

6' And yet there is reason

indolent to earn their bread honestly."
to believe that for a time Storey either dishonestly played the
role of a devoted believer in Christ or sincerely committed himself
to the external forms of righteousness adhered to by believers of

the day.

Revival and Conversion--
Storey‘s Religious Experience

Storey's affiliation with the church began while he was
still courting Maria, whom he met in 1846. Early in the fall of
that year prayers for revival became common in all the churches.
The Methodist and Baptist churches combined forces and held a
series of meetings. Plans were made by the Congregational Church
to bring Rev. John T. Avery to preach for two weeks in the spring
of 1847. The gospel message was well received and the church
became the center of a "very extensive revival." Some two hundred
conversions were estimated to have taken place. Rev. Gustavus L.
Foster, pastor of the church, wrote an extensive article about the
revival for the Patriot. He observed that "Professors of religion
were seen everywhere rolling stumbling blocks out of the way so
that the chariot of salvation might pass to every man'sedoor."62
The chariot apparently stopped at the Patriot's office. For in

May Storey professed faith and was numbered with those converts

added to the Congregational Church. Even before the public

 

61Walsh, p. 19.

62Piicher, p. 362, and Jackson Patriot, 20 April 1847.

 

48

affiliation, however, he defended Rev. Mr. Foster when the revival

*came under attack by the Primitive Expounder, a semi-monthly paper

 

that had come to Jackson in May 1846. The Expounder, published by
R. Thornton and J. Billings, had as its "ignoble mission . . . to
cry out in the face of truth, 'there is no hell,"I charged the
minister. Furthermore, it accused "Brother Foster, in his long
meeting," of being assisted by a revivalist preacher who was
reputed to be a murderer. Storey, showing unusual restraint, wrote
that the editors of the Expounder were "entitled to pity rather
than contempt." When he received a letter of apology from the

other paper, Storey wrote that

It would seem impossible that any man of sense could be
made to believe so foolish a lie as that which the editor
says was imposed upon him. The article in the last
Expounder, retracting the statement, exhibits something
of the spirit in which it was first made. The fangs of
the viper are illy concealed.63

Storey's views on moral issues were tempered by his profes-
sion of faith. Speaking of the growth of the Sons of Temperance in
Jackson, Storey boasted that "in reference to moral enterprises,
Jackson has taken the lead in Michigan." Front pages of the Patriot
continued to be given to religious articles, although many of these
were of a controversial nature. Early in 1848 the editor was
elected treasurer of the Jackson County Bible Society. In his

position he was responsible for seeing that society funds went

 

63Jackson Patriot, 20 April 1847.

49

for the distribution of Bibles to the towns and villages of the
county.64
But even in his most pious state, Storey never put aside
his aggressive style of writing. He was outraged following a
Saturday night fire in his church. Arsonists were believed to have
set a bale of hay afire in retaliation for Rev. Mr. Foster's strong
anti-liquor sermons. "Let the door of every rum-shop be closed and
their keepers turned over to some honest employment, or ejected from
a community whose moral atmosphere is tainted by their presence,"
demanded Storey. The statement scandalized state Democrats. The
Detroit Advertiser's editor denounced Storey for making such a
recommendation. But Storey shrugged off the criticism, noting with
some humor that the Detroit editor was widely known for his "emphatic
epithets."65
This morally sensitive Storey continued until a series of
conflicts between political and religious convictions led him to
resign the latter. In August 1848 he wrote a brilliant satire when
state abolitionists met in Jackson to align themselves with the Free
Soil Party, which had just taken Martin Van Buren as its candidate
to the consternation of Democrats. Storey's pastor opened the con-

vention in prayer. Although the minister did not implore a

blessing on the abolitionists, Storey must have been chagrined

 

64Ibid., 20 July 1847, 15 February 1848.

65Ibid., 25 January, 1 February 1848.

50

inwardly at the pastor's participation in the convention, even
though neutrally.66
With the replacement of a Democratic administration by a
Whig one, Storey's postmastership was suddenly lost to a Whig
appointee. He began selling alcohol in his drugstore to make up
for the loss in income. Both his father-in-law and pastor tried
to dissuade him; he refused them both.67
But it was Rev. Mr. Foster's widely circulated sermon on
the Fugitive Slave Law that finally brought a close to Storey's
association with the church in 1850. The minister's call to
"boldly violate the law in case of contact with it" was, in the
editor's mind, clearly out of the realm of the clergy's concern.
“As well might Benedict Arnold have been supported in his treason,"

68 From then on he began attacking the minister

observed Storey.
and all others who spoke out against the law. The Whig editor of

the American Citizen, which succeeded the Gazette in 1849, accused

 

Storey of trying to make an "attrocious, nullifying, wicked and

69 A "stream of abuse" poured upon

anti-Christian law" popular.
the village ministers and the controversy festered like an ugly
sore week after week in the papers. A year later, when Storey

announced his plans to leave the Patriot, his most vicious attack

 

66Jackson Patriot, 22 August 1848.

 

67Walsh, p. 33.

68Jackson Patriot, quoted in American Citizen, 27 November

 

 

1850. 69
American Citizen, 4 December 1850.'

51

was directed at his former pastor, whom he accused of "high treason
against God." He wrote, "A pretended servant of the meek and lowly
Jesus, standing within the portals of the sanctuary of God, actuated
by the most hellish passion dared to tell the people to 'boldly
violate the law.'"70
The careers of Wilbur F. Storey and the early editors of the
abolition and temperance papers illustrate two fundamentally differ-
ent approaches to reform journalism. George W. Clark, the Rev. Mr.
Sullivan and Seymour B. Treadwell were idealists. They stood with-
out the mainstream of their rural society pointing accusing fingers
at what they saw as moral evil. Storey stood within the community
as an involved citizen, tackling the issues as they came to his
attention. The idealists were consistent. Because Storey was
guided by political and economic motives, he was sometimes inconsis-
tent. The earlier editors were devotionalists in faith. Storey was

orthodox,7] a characteristic that political scientists have noted

fosters compartmentalized thinking. Thus it was possible for him

 

7OJackson Patriot, quoted in American Citizen, 17 September

 

 

1851.

713y orthodoxy is meant the adherence to conventional church
doctrine. Charles V. DeLand quoted Storey's creed in 1853: l'lst,
We go for the Church of Jesus Christ; 2nd, the Democratic Party;
3rd, the Legitimate medical Practice; and 4th, Temperance in All
Things." (American Citizen, 27 July 1853.) It is known that Storey
professed faith at one point and renounced it at another. DeLand
wrote that Storey was "turned out of the Congregational Church . . .
for various and 'too numerous to mention' causes." See also Mrs.
Linwood Hubbard Anthus, comp., Cemetery and Church Records of Jack-
son County 1830-1870 (Jackson: Golden Jubilee Project of Sarah
Treat Prudden Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, 1940),
p. 92.

52

to see little conflict between his religious faith and increasing
libertarianism.

During the period of Storey's disenchantment with organized
religion, he hammered away at the theme of preachers "wallowing in
the mire of politics." Having floundered there himself, he was
unwilling for the clergy to do so in the name of God. What infuri-
ated him was the growing impudence of the clergy in adhering to a
we-ought-to-obey-God-rather-than-man principle in political activity.
For it was the Union that was Storey's idol. And it was for the
preservation of the Union that he would during the Civil War despise

both the law of God and man.

CHAPTER III

A TIME FOR ACTION

We may talk about the good old times that will never
return; we may sigh over opportunities neglected, and
advantages thrown aside; we may wail over past errors
and mourn the consequences of our folly, but it helps
us not: the resent is the time for action, as the
future is a time ior hope.

--Char1es V. DeLand, 1852

In 1848 the magnetic telegraph reached Jackson County. Its
effects on the press were dramatic. Within two weeks the first
daily newspaper had appeared. Almost overnight such phrases as,
"By Monday Evening's Mail," were replaced with eye—catchers like,
"From Detroit by Telegraph Expressly for . . . ." Headlines
announcing the latest battles of the Mexican War became common. The
new immediacy and the events of 1848 to 1854 combined to leave in
the various papers a colorful record of a journalism fresh with the
promises of new horizons and afire with the partisan spirit.

But the telegraph's most urgent message was not conveyed
over the wires by Morse code. It was a nonverbal signal that a
rural, farming community carved from the wilderness only eighteen
years earlier had entered a new era of communications. Jackson
County would henceforth be part of a widening world, not merely a

patch of isolated farmland.

53

54

Improvements in transportation laid the foundation for the
new era. When Nicholas Sullivan arrived in 1837 it was by wagon on
the only road available--the Territorial Road--which crossed the
Grand River at its junction with several Indian trails. In December
1841 the first rail line reached the village. For nearly three
years the village was the terminal point of the railroad. Offices,
repair shops and related business attracted thousands of persons

seeking employment.1

The editors found such developments both a
boon to business and a source of news. Throngs of settlers arriv-
ing by rail and improved roads meant more readers and advertisers,
all of which made the period particularly ripe for opportunists.
Jackson had one in 1848 equal to the possibilities. He was Wilbur
F. Storey.

Jackson's primitive, rural setting was a ideal one for
Storey to develop his aggressive newspapermanship. He had known
the competitive penny press of New York City while working for the
Journal of Commerce. Aware of the effects of improved transporta-
tion and communication upon papers there, he was prepared to adapt
such developments to the Jackson Patrigt. He had already weathered

the storms of financial adversity. In 1846 and 1847 he and his

partner, Reuben S. Cheney, defended themselves in civil suits

 

1Jackson County, p. 427.

55

brought against them by creditors.2 They had been involved in two

other publishing enterprises-~the Michigan Farmer and the Ingham

 

County Democrat--both of which proved unprofitable.

The Democrat's founding was a typical instance of Storey's
scheming. In 1845 the state legislature passed a bill that provided
for the delinquent tax sales of the state to be published in Ingham
County. Storey and Cheney, attracted by a $2,000 contract, rushed
some printing equipment to Mason. A few issues of the Democrat were
printed with standing matter from the Patriot. There was no type
with which to set the paper's name, so a brush and ink were used to
paint it on. The pair of editors got the contract and published the
Democrat for a short while.3 But soon, according to a Mason editor
who followed Storey, there was trouble.

' It leaked out that Storey contemplated removing the plant from
Mason as soon as the tax sales were over, whereupon several
indignant Democrats assembled one night and raided the office,

destroying the press and throwing the material into a swamp hole

that then existed in the southeast corner of the courthouse square.4

 

2Jackson County Circuit Court Docket C, cases 393 and 400.
Case 393 is William H. Monroe vs. Wilbur F. Storey and Reuben S. Chen-
ey, 4 May 1846, a civil suit for payment of a two-year-old $130 prom-
isory note. Case 400 is John Summer and Allen Bennett vs. Wilbur F.
Storey and Reuben S. Cheney, 27 February 1847, a suit for payment of
a $600 debt.

3George B. Catlin, "Little Journeys in Journalism--Wilbur F.
Storey," Michigan History_10 (October 1926): p. 519.

4D. B. Harrington to Ingham CountyaNews, 1909, reprinted in
the News' centennial issue on 23 April 1959. Several years after the
incident Harrington recovered some of the equipment from the hole and
still had some of it when the letter was written. His son, Fred B.
Harrington, was unaware of the souvenirs his father claimed to possess.
But, in a personal letter in December 1975, he wrote, "If he dug up
some old type belonging to a democratic Newspaper I can imagine how he
gloated over the fact that burial in the southwest corner of the
courthouse was a fit place for a putrid democratic thing to be."

56

Another set of printing equipment was rushed to Mason and Storey and
Cheney fulfilled their publishing obligation to the state. But

Storey never returned to Mason in person.

A Daily Newspaper is Launched

A potentially greater opportunity presented itself with the
arrival of the telegraph. In June 1847 the first assessment of 10
percent of the stock of the Erie and Michigan Telegraph Company was
called for. Within the next two months the line was expected to
reach Jackson. "Soon the entire south and west will be equally near
us," Storey wrote. Whether subscribers would then support a daily
newspaper was the main question. "Give us 100 subscribers to start
with, and we will make the effort," the partners promised.5

On Thursday, January 13, 1848, the telegraph line reached
Jackson. Twelve days later the Jackson Daily Patriot was introduced.
Storey explained the decision to go daily, noting that the telegraph
would be of little value without a daily newspaper. "Village sub-
scribers will be served at about 'cockcrowing'; as to enable them to
sip the news at the same time that they sip their coffee." As to
whether the daily would succeed in Jackson, Storey,affirmed that "if

that very grave personage, The Public, will do but his [part], a
"6

 

daily paper will pay in Jackson.

Although the partners called their paper a daily, there is

 

5Jackson Patriot, 22 June 1847.

61bid., 25 January 1848, under column dated 18 January.

57

little historical evidence to support its certain categorization as
such. Available issues of the Patriot from the first quarter of
1848 were printed weekly, not daily. The first issue to refer to

the Daily Patriot as a contemporary organ was the January 25 issue.

 

It contained separately dated columns for January 18, 20 and 21.
Each of the columns purported to contain news of that day. For
several weeks the Patriot appeared likewise.

It is clear from the frequent references to the daily that
it was to be printed and distributed each day. Both Whig and Demo-
cratic editors around the state commended the paper. Storey noted
with disgust, however, the "file-biting advice of the Michigan
State Gazette," whose editor recommended that Whigs do "as little
as possible to support the concern." He accused the Gazette's
editor of being blinded by "green-eyed jealousy." "For this grati-
fication of the Gazette, we will state that we have a good number
of whigs on our rapidly increasing subscription list," he added.7

Most historical sources conclude that the Daily Patriot
failed within a few weeks. Storey's biographer sets the date of

8 Whatever actually happened to the

the final issue on February 8.
Patriot, its telegraphic reports suggested the paper's continued
existence through the end of February. On Saturday, February 26,
an extra was issued immediately after the news of John Quincy Adams'

death arrived. The Gazette reported, apparently after the news

 

7Jackson Patriot, 8 February 1848, under column dated 31
January.
8

 

Walsh, p. 32.

58

had been noised about the village, that "We learn by telegraph that
John 0. Adams is dead." Storey was angered that the Whig editor had
"lifted" his telegraphic report. "Our . . . reports are attended
with pretty large expense, which outlay is not particularly for the
benefit of the Gazette," he observed in his next issue.9
The failure of the daily caused some conflict between Storey

and other Democratic editors. In early April the Democratic Free

Press of Lansing published an article implying that the Daily Patriot

 

failed as the result of the Farmers and Mechanics Bank not being re-
chartered. "As one failure sometimes brings another, the daily is

dead," alleged the Free Press. Storey replied that neither he nor

 

Cheney had any "interest, connection or acquaintance with the bank."
As he was prone to do, Storey countered the charges with others.

The Free Press, he wrote, was owned by the Detroit Free Press. The

Detroit paper's editor had recently shown some inconsistency in his

comments on a bill to extend the bank's charter. Storey had pointed
out the inconsistency and thereby incurred the editor's disfavor.

The Free Press editor, he disdainfully wrote, "cannot write three
n10

 

consecutive grammatical sentences.
The failure was not the only adverse circumstance for Storey

that spring. In April his wife gave birth to a daughter; three days

11

later it died. Storey turned his back on the past, however, and

 

9Jackson Patriot, 6 March 1848, under column dated 28 February.

 

10Ibid., 25 April 1848.

HWalsh, p. 32.

59

started taking up fresh challenges. Since the earliest settlement
days Jackson and other communities had been plagued by dirt roads
that were nearly impassable in bad weather. In the late 18405 a
wave of enthusiasm for the plank road swept the area. Storey was
appointed a commissioner to the newly formed Jackson and Michigan
Plank Road Company. A capital stock of $80,000 in $40 shares was

12 But Storey's major challenge was the elec-

to finance the road.
tion of the former territorial governor, Gen. Lewis Cass, to the

presidency of the United States.

The 1848 Campaign--Storey,
Seeks a ”Democratic Triumph"

 

Although unable to use the telegraphic reports for daily
campaign coverage, Storey did use them to attract subscribers in a
cut-rate subscription deal. Fees were slashed from two dollars per
year to fifty cents for the five months remaining before the Novem-
ber election. His goal was "to secure a DEMOCRATIC TRIUMPH."13

The campaign quickly became a personal one with Storey.
George B. Catlin, an early student of Storey's career, believed
that Cass was "perhaps the sole exception" to the supreme contempt

'4 Foremost

that Storey held for all opinions other than his own.
among the objects of that contempt in 1848 were the two political

opponents of Cass.

 

12Jackson Patriot, 17 April 1848.

'3Ibid., 30 May 1848.

14Cat1in, p. 521.

60

General Zachary Taylor was the Whig candidate. "Old Rough
and Ready" had been nominated mainly as a figure-head. He considered
himself non-political but had once said that, had he voted in 1844,
it would have been for Henry Clay, the Whig presidential candidate.
To Storey, the fact that Whigs, who had proclaimed their allegiance
to the Wilmot Proviso, were now supporting a candidate "who buys and
sells negroes like cattle in the market" was ludicrous. Such turn-
about Whigs, he wrote, “are rotten at heart--their moral sensibil-
ities are putrified. We have . . . a few of this sort in this
village--men who profess to be honest, aye, religious men--but they
are not honest--they go about with a lie in their teeth."15

Martin Van Buren, the former president who had been rejected
by the Democrats in 1844 because of his stand on the Texas annexation,
entered the field in July. The "Barnburners," anti-slavery Democrats
of New York, nominated him first. Storey wondered, "Who, with half
an eye, does not see the grossest hypocrisy in this bolting movement?"
He charged the Barnburners with using catchwords such as "free soil"
and "free speech" to make their desertion of the party seem somewhat
merited. In August, Van Buren was chosen to bear the standard for
the Free Soil Party at a Buffalo, New York, convention of Barnburners,
disenchanted Whigs and abolitionists. Storey had predicted before
that the delegates "will have work to look into each others faces
without laughing . . . if they do not quarrel like kilkenny cats, it

will be because there is but 'one idea' in the whole assembly."

 

15Jackson Patriot, 13 June 1848.

61

For Van Buren, Storey wrote, that one idea was revenge over his 1844
rejection.16
The Patriot's pages in the next several months were full of

the biting, political satire at which Storey was so adept. After the
Buffalo Convention, state abolitionists met in the Jackson courthouse
to consider whether to align themselves with the Free Soilers. Two
brilliant articles followed in the Patriot. One was entitled
"Marriage Extraordinary!" and reported the convention in a marital
metaphor. In it the "dark 'Gemman'* Abolition" was married to the
"Free Soil Filly." The second article, entitled "Obituary Extra-
ordinary," likewise dealt with the death of the state Liberty Party:

Died in this village, On Thursday last, of the "summer com-

plaint" and strangulation, the great humbug, one idea State

Abolition Party . . . The deceased had frequently visited

this place for his health, but on his return here since the

Buffalo Convention, he became very weak and feeble, and all

anticipated his fearful end. At the . . . convention he

partook injudiciously of some "sour grapes" . . . His gag;

stitution not being very strong, an available fever seized

it . . . The fever raged for a number of days--then a ter-

rible bowel complaint, causing the most excruciating pain,

and finally strangulation, by taking too much of the Homeo-

pathic medicine, called "free soil," "free speech" and "free

labor" . . . The business of the deceased--of humbugging the
people--will be continued by "Father Treadwell" . . . .17

Storey's incisive barbs also pricked other editors. When the
New York Tribune mentioned that the Patriot's columns were.contrOlled
by Barnburners, Storey jovially responded, "Ha! ha! ha! Well, that's

funny. We will give [Horace] Greeley credit for one thing--he can

 

'5Jackson Patriot, 25 Ju1y 1848.
17

 

Ibid., 22 August 1848.

*
Solecism for gentleman.

62

tell more lies in the same space than any other man on the contin-

ent." When the Michigan State Gazette deserted the Whig Party to

 

become a Free Soil organ, Storey reported, "We understand the Whigs
are to have a new paper here in the course of next week, and they
say they will give the Free Soilers Ellick! Fun ahead!" After the

new paper appeared under the name of the Michigan State Journal in

 

late September, Storey noted, "The first two numbers give evidence
of ability and dignity, characteristics never claimed for its pre-
decessor." He later charged the Gazette with printing large num-
bers of bogus Democratic ballots and circulating them around the
county--"for the purpose of defrauding the voters."18
As the campaign neared a finish, Storey provided his readers

with extensive biographic material, analyses and advice on voting.

Label headlines were prominently displayed in the October 31 issue:

LOOK OUT FOR SPLIT TICKETS

 

GUARD AGAINST ALL ROORBACKS

 

BEWARE OF ALL BARGAINS19

But the unanimous support of Cass by all twenty-nine Democratic

papers in Michigan failed to gain the presidency for the general.20

 

18Ibid., 8, 29 August, 10 October, 21 November 1848.

19Ibid., 31 October 1848.

20Streeter, p. 100.

63

Storey's post-election issue was subdued in tone. He simply con-

cluded that "the little peninsula has covered herself with honor."21

Immediately after the election the State Journal was sold to
22

 

a pair of Lansing editors. The Gazette continued to appear for a
few months, and in April, reported the Patriot, "after a long,
lingering complaint, has finally yielded up the ghost--kicked the

bucket."23 The failures of the State Journal and the Gazette left

 

Jackson with only one newspaper for the first time since the Jack-

sonburg Sentinel held the field from March 1837 to March 1838.

Dorrance and DeLand's Journal
of "BusyLife'I

 

Then on August 15, 1849, a veteran of the Michigan State

 

Journal issued the first number of a new weekly. He was twenty-
one-year-old Albert A. Dorrance. His new Whig paper was the
American Citizen, "A Miscellaneous Family Journal--A Map of Busy
Life.“ It was printed in an office on the second floor of the
Porter Block, on the east side of the courthouse. Dorrance, as the
head of "Dorrance Co. & Proprietors," explained in his prospectus

the demise of the State Journal. "As the age of the paper increased,

our labors increased . . . the novelty of journalism to the

 

21Jackson Patriot, 7 November 1848.

22Ibid., 12 December 1848; also see DeLand, p. 289.

23Ibid., 24 April 1849.

64

uninitiated had become tiresome . . . after a single struggle it
went down."24
Since Dorrance was a Whig and had purchased the equipment
from the defunct Gazette, there were soon charges that his Citizen
was just a continuation of the older paper. He finally published
an agreement between himself and the former Gazette publishers--
Hitchcock and Allen--in which it was declared they were "in no wise
connected" with the Citizen. At the same time, Dorrance announced
that Charles V. DeLand, who had helped him to establish the Citizen,
was to become a full partner.25
Both Dorrance and DeLand were of respected pioneer stock.
Dorrance was born in Orleans County, New York, as one of eleven
children. One of his forebears was the commander of the fort at
Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania at the time of the infamous "Wyoming
Massacre" and had died a hero's death. Dorrance had been orphaned
early. But he managed to put himself through the collegiate insti-
tute at Brockport, New York. In the spring of 1848 he arrived in
Detroit as a western correspondent with Greeley's New York Tribune.

From Detroit he went to Jackson to work for the State Gazette.

.When the paper went Free Soil, he joined Henry Frink's State Jour-
26

 

nal.

DeLand was brought to Jackson as a three-year-old in 1830.

 

24American Citizen, 15 August 1849.
25

 

Ibid., 28 November 1849.

26Coldwater Courier, 12 February 1908.

 

65

His father, William R. DeLand, was a relative of the Blackman family
that helped to settle Jacksonburg. When the Blackmans wrote asking
the DeLands to join them in the venture, the family prayed over the
matter and decided to go. They left their North Brookfield, Massa-
chusetts, home in a covered wagon with "Michigan" lettered on the
sides. Charles spent a childhood amid Indians and pioneers. Then
in 1837 he began serving as an apprentice under Nicholas Sullivan.
Four years later he became a journeyman printer. Reared in a home
that was a gathering place for Whigs, he soon became involved in
political activies. From 1840 on, he used his printer's skills in
Whig campaigns. When the State Journal was established, he joined
its staff. He and Dorrance were the only experienced newspapermen
with the paper.27
Both men were idealistic and inclined toward literary pur-
suits. In early 1851 they helped put out four manuscript issues of
the "Olive Branch," a small publication that dealt with a range of
philosophical and literary topics. Their articles reveal a romantic
bent rarely evident in their Citizen.28
From the first issue of the Citizen, the editors' puritan-
ical idealism was in sharp contrast to the bold libertarianism of

Storey's Patriot. The contrast was deeper than political ideology.

There was ill feeling between Storey and DeLand. Conflict between

 

27Mrs. w. F. Clarke, Jackson Citizen Patriot, 7 Ju1y 1929;
and DeLand, p. 439.

28Olive Branch, 3, 9 February and 2, 17 March 1851, four
manuscript issues in the Michigan Historical Collection, Bentley
Historical Library, University of Michigan.

 

66

the two continued after Storey left Jackson. In 1863, shortly after
Storey's Chicago Times had been suspended briefly for caustic
attacks on the Lincoln administration, DeLand used martial law to
prevent the circulation of the 11mg; in the Chicago prison camp he
was commanding.29
The major event during the Citizen's first year was the May
1850 election of delegates to the Constitutional Convention, held
that summer in Lansing. Candidates from the Whig, Free Soil and
Democratic parties were nominated to provide five Jackson County
delegates. Austin Blair, the Jackson lawyer who later served as
Michigan's Civil War governor, was nominated by both Whigs and Free
Soilers. Storey ran against him on the Democratic ticket. Dorrance
and DeLand branded the editor :1 "soulless hypocrite--alike devoid
of principle and honor." They predicted that, if elected, Storey
would attempt to "fasten still stronger upon the people and their
treasury the under-ground system of the public suckers--which have
already reduced our farmers to poverty by onerous taxes."30
Storey beat Blair. In a post-election issue of the Patriot
he criticized the lawyer's dual candidacy in an article entitled,
"Corruption Wins Not More Than Honesty." DeLand and Dorrance
answered Storey's criticism by accusing him of printing bogus Whig

'tickets with his own name listed as a Whig candidate. Furthermore,

reported the Citizen, "He did all he could-~both with money and

 

29For an account of the incident, see pp. 137-139 below.

30American Citizen, 1 May 1850.

67

otherwise, to impose that ticket on the Whig Party . . . He made
use of whiskey when it could be done, in order first to get men
drunk that they might more appropriately vote for him." The Whig
editors suggested that it was “probably on account of his terrible
honesty" that fifty Democrats struck Storey's name off the Democratic
ticket. "He is no stranger here . . . we sincerely advise him not to
preach-~it would be sufficient to bring even the religion of Christ
into contempt."3]
In his first issue, Dorrance had promised to be "always
avoiding that vile invective, which is too characteristic of news—
papers." As the convention got under way in Lansing, however, the
Citizen's articles became bitter and caustic in response to news of
Storey's activities as a delegate. On June 20 Storey offered a
resolution to have the laws published by one newspaper in each
county, the newspaper to be designated by the secretary of state.
The Citizen saw the move as an attempt to entrench the party press
at the expense of the taxpayer and reported that wiser heads had
voted the resolution down. Another time Storey, irritated that
Governor John S. Barry had helped defeat another of his resolutions,
made a motion to bar the chief executive from the convention. The
Citizen's response to such action set the tone for much of the
‘future coverage: "When the vile constituents of which he [Storey]

is composed, shall have lost their individuality, and have mingled

 

31American Citizen, 15 May 1850.

 

68

in the common dust, they may possibly become elevated to a place in
our contempt."32

Though a thoroughly secular newspaper, the Citizen continued
in the reform tradition of the Michigan Freeman, the Michigan Temper-

ance Herald and to some extent the Jackson Sentinel. Dorrance and

 

DeLand held a radical temperance stand, which brought them some of
the same kind of persecution that came to the early reformers.

33 under the

"Feeling was so high that on the Fourth of July 1851,
guise of celebrating the day, the whiskey party bombarded the office,
then in the older Porter block, with fire balls, and burned it out."
Nearly half of the type was ruined and the loss was estimated to be
between $150 and $200. For several weeks the paper was but a half-
sheet. By August the Citizen was able to resume its full-size
appearance for the start of the second year of publication. But it
was necessary to move the office to the east side of the Public
Square. The new facilities proved inadequate when winter came.
DeLand wrote in December that "the wind whistles through our apart-
ment at such a rate that an overcoat is necessarily essential to
comfort." The office was moved again in January 1851, this time to

the new Brick Block on Main Street.34

 

32American Citizen, 18 September 1850; also see Journal of
the Constitutional Convention of the State of Michigan 1850 (Lansing:
RT’W. Ingals, state printer, 1850).

33DeLand, p. 289. The actual date of the fire was 10 July
1850 as reported by DeLand in his 10 July 1850 issue of the American
.Citizen.

 

34American Citizen, 12 December 1850.

69

The Press Covers a Railroad War

 

Before 1850 had ended, a $150,000 fire at the Michigan
Central Railroad Company depot in Detroit brought to a head the
virtual state of war that had existed for several years between a
group of eastern Jackson County men and the railroad company.
Nearly fifty residents of Grass Lake, Leoni and Michigan Center were
arrested on conspiracy charges of arson in early 1851. For the next
three years the trial and fate of the defendents was the major news
story in the county. Charles Hirschfeld, whose book on the trial is
considered an authoritative account, called the entire railroad war
and trial a "snapshot of mid-nineteenth century America when it was
not posing for a textbook illustration against a backdrop of quaint
propriety."35

Careful readers of Jackson newspapers knew months and even

years before that trouble was brewing. When the Jackson-Kalamazoo

line was still under state control, Storey wrote of a common problem:

Jackson is a favorite point with Commissioner Comstock, we
think. Train after train of empty cars have recently passed

us going to Marshall, and on Sunday seven returned empty to
Albion, there being no more freight at Marshall. At Jackson
40,000 bushels of wheat await shipment. . . O. C. Comstock

Jr. is no more fit for commissioner than the devil is for 36
paradise. Them's the sentiments of the people of this county.

The Michigan Central purchased the line in 1846 for two mil-

lion dollars. The line was upgraded, expanded and put on a

 

fif

35Charles Hirschfeld, The Great Railroad Conspiracy (The
Michigan State College Press, 1953), p. 4.

 

36Jackson County, p. 322.

7O

profitable basis. Railroad officials, however, made many enemies.
Farmers were especially angered by the company's refusal to fully

compensate them for livestock killed by trains.37

Fires, shootings
and derailments were common occurrences along the railroad.

Since the sale of the railroad to the Michigan Central,
Storey had tended to be more sympathetic to the company's progres-
sive methods than to the farmers' lawless ways. It had after all
been a Democratic state legislature that had chartered the company.
In October 1847 some Calhoun County foes of the railroad had
derailed a locomotive and two cars, burying the engineer under the
engine with scalding water pouring on him. He lived an hour and a
half. Storey wrote, "What can be thought of a creature in human
shape, who, to obtain revenge for fancied wrong, will thus jeopar-

5?"38 He viewed

dize the lives of several hundred innocent person
the opposition as but another instance of "higher law" civil dis-
obedience. After the Detroit fire, which had been preceded by a
smaller one in a railroad woodpile just east of Jackson, Storey

wrote that

By the way, Leoni would be a good place to start a church
upon the "higher law” doctrine. There would be plenty of
working members.--The railroad track could be torn up
every night, and flour enough might be stolen to support
the church and pay the minister.39

 

37Hirschfeid, pp. 3-4.

38Jackson Patriot, 19 October 1847.

 

39American Citizen, 27 November 1850.

71

The Citizen sang a different tune. Dorrance had accused the
Detroit papers in his first issue of subservience to the railroad.

They were, he noted, "a fair specimin of touch pocket nicety, The

 

company incurs large printing bills." The Citizen was not accused
of such sycophancy. Its position was that the railroad was an
"iron-humbug-monster monopoly." The Palmyra-Jackson line, which had
been abandoned for years, was the only line that could break the
monopoly, the Citizen declared. Its extension would connect Jackson
to the southern rail lines and thereby allay the problems of delayed
mail, inequal rates and the rail monopoly.40
Just before the Detroit fire, DeLand took control of the
Citizen and Dorrance left the paper. If anything, DeLand's stand on
the rail controversy made the Citizen a harsher critic of the rail-
road than before. He stated that he supported peaceful non-conformity
to the law in cases of "higher law.” As a fellow member of Storey's
church, he wrote that "We are sorry to see a church member reviling
the Bible and its teachings as Storey is constantly doing.--Probably
the motto of this worthy is 'Charity endureth all things,’ and he
wishes to know how much the church can endure in this case."41
On April 18, 1851, a train carrying Detroit sheriff's
deputies rolled through Jackson County. Stopping at Grass Lake,

Leoni and Michigan Center, the deputies arrested thirty-three per-

sons. Indictments, it was later learned, were handed down against

 

40American Citizen, 15 August, 7 November 1849.

 

4'Ibid., 27 November 1850 and 23 April 1851.

72

forty-six persons. The action followed a lengthy investigation
conducted with railroad money and spies.

At first the Citizen published mainly reports from the
Detroit papers on the arrests and arraignments. DeLand wrote that
he would be ready to say "Amen" to the sentences if the defendants
were proven guilty of the charges. But he was anxious that a fair

. trial be held. He elicited one quick apology from the Detroit Free

 

Press after that paper reported that "arrangements are being made

for the arrest of the balance of the county." The Free Press

 

explained, somewhat unconvincingly, that the word "county" should
have read "company." DeLand criticized such blunders and the "many
extravagant expressions and . . . disclosures which have proved too
much for the gullibility of anyone acquainted with the matter." In
one instance Abel F. Fitch, a wealthy Michigan Center landowner and
the leader of the defendants, was accused of several illegalities
outside the realm of the railroad trial. "We are sure if Capt.
Fitch had caused the railroad directors or any of their tools to be
arrested," wrote DeLand, "no such horrifying 'disclosures' would be
given to the world." The Citizen never published such articles and
would only allude to their content.42
The Patriot's position on the arrests was at first discreet.

'Storey made no charges himself. He did publish an article--without

comment--from the Rochester Republican, which accused Fitch of

 

plotting to blow up trains. Elias Gage, a Columbia Township man,

 

42American Citizen, 30 April, 7 and 14 May 1851.

73

angrily responded to the article in a letter to DeLand, inquiring,
"Why is it that every press and public avenue to, and communication
with the people is mum, or closed? . . . Are they afraid,--or bribed,
or softening the word, bggght_by this company?" Gage predicted that
the Patriot's usefulness would wane and that the public would see
"its editor and proprietor doomed to eternal banishment up Salt
River."43

As the trial progressed, both the Patriot and Citizen pub-
lished the entire trial proceedings. Some issues were so full of
the transcript that there was no other news--only advertising. And
DeLand even requested the indulgence of his advertisers for the lack
of space he was able to provide them.

Stories of the deplorable prison conditions in Detroit,
where the defendants were kept, excited public sympathy. To many
persons, the trial seemed to be a farce. Spies and convicted crim-
inals testified against the defendants. There were charges and
counter-charges of perjury. Storey grew more outspoken and criti-
cized those who "encourage violence and disorder" by vindiCating
the characters of the alleged conspirators. He argued against "any
step which shall tend to excite infractions of tag," But his
critics resurrected an old scandal that had occurred in the Jackson
Post Office while he was postmaster. Storey's clerk had taken some

money but had, as Storey replied, paid his debt. Still, the

 

43American Citizen, 28 May 1851.

 

74

publicizing of the incident probably diminished the influence of
the law-and-order editor.44
Abel Fitch's death in prison in August inflamed public
sentiment in Jackson County. Rev. Gustavus Foster, Congregational
minister, preached Fitch's funeral sermon, which was published on
the Citizen's front page. His comments, inconclusive as to the
guilt or innocence of Fitch, nevertheless labeled the death as
"without any order.” ". . . However overawed by the power of con-
centrated wealth--it is a fact that individuals, as well as corpor-
ations, have rights. . . ." he said. An indignation meeting was
held in the courthouse on August 30 with the result that a mass
meeting was planned for September 13. DeLand reported that five
thousand citizens met at the latter meeting and heard read a letter
from Fitch and a two-hour speech by Austin Blair. DeLand was con-
gratulated publicly for his "manly and independent course in relation

to the railroad trials."45

Storey's "Withdrawal Card"

About the time of the mass meeting, Storey--in an article
billed as his "withdrawal card“--announced his departure from the
Patriot. He hinted that one of the reasons was the "objects to be
vaccomplished in commenting upon certain judicial proceedings now in

progress, in the columns of the abolition Whig-organ" In bowing out

 

44American Citizen, 18 June and 9 and 16 July 1851.

 

45Ibid., 3 and 17 September 1851.

75

of the newspaper field Storey affirmed that the past success of the
local Democrats "is attributable to the vigilance with which he (the
undersigned) has guarded that party against all iaagea, and preserved
it in parity)!" DeLand, obviously unimpressed, replied that the
Patriot was filled with "whole columns of fabrication and twaddle."
To Storey's expressed faith in the Detroit judicial system, DeLand
wrote that he had no such delusions of human infallibility. "We
plainly charge that the late editor of the Patriot did seek to make
it [the trial] a political issue," he concluded. Storey had pre-
viously denied DeLand's assertion that he was an apologist for the
railroad. He conceded at his withdrawal that there had undoubtedly
been "some very bad management" in the railroad. But those who kept
the issues of the past alive were "scarcely less guilty than he who
places the obstruction upon the railroad track or applies the
incendiary torch," he charged.46
Soon after, the trial ended. The jury acquitted all but
twelve men. DeLand did not receive the verdicts enthusiastically.
His only comment on the outcome was an allusion to the "many grave
and serious questions for believing that truth and justice has [sic]
been cheated in their prey."47 Coverage of the event dropped off
sharply after the end of the trial. There were occasional articles
'from other papers criticizing Rev. Mr. Foster's funeral sermon and

more letters protesting the Patriot's pro-railroad coverage.

 

46American Citizen, 17 September 1851.

 

47Ibid., 1 October 1851.

76

But for all practical purposes the railroad trial was ignored for
the next year. Cheney joined Storey in selling his share of the
Patriot and the paper was taken over by Joseph L. Titus, who had

gained his newspaper experience working for the Freeman's Journal
48

 

in Cooperstown, New York.
DeLand published a spectacular 1852 "New Year's Address" on
January 7, 1852. In it he made poetic references to both the

railroad trial and to Storey:

Another year has rolled around,

And still within this growing town,

My steps, each week, kind patrons, friends,
Have hied to you with CITIZEN.

Nor have they failed to trace you out--

To tell you what the world's about;

To bring a tale of joy or woe,

Tell how in wisdom man may grow,

Of wars and battles, horrid strife,

And reckless sacrifice of life;

Of Conspiracies, horrid! black!

For tearing up a Railroad track!

(But think, had truth her story told,

A deeper plot she would unfold,

To grind the poor, humble the rich,

Which crushed beneath its power, a Fitch;)
Of patriots true--of heroes bold,

Who fought for Freedom as their goal;

Of great men's greatness; their defects,
Their strifes, their speeches, their respects,
As shifting with the popular breeze,

Their pliant sails are trimmed to please--
How the PATRIOT, changing hands,

Tacks round to suit the varied clans

Whose Storey runs a counter way

To what the Loco masses say.49

 

48William Stocking, "Prominent Newspaper Men in Michigan,"
Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections 38 (Lansing, 1915);
p. 61.

 

 

49American Citizen, 7 January 1852.

77

But the dazzling, graphic display was the prelude to a quiet year.
A cold winter left "everything . . . in a congealed state, not even
excepting ideas." P. T. Barnum's menagerie excited the community
during an August visit to Jackson. A new soda fountain in Webb and
Butler's Store offered soda and lemonade for the first time in the
fall. Daniel Webster's death was given coverage reserved for the
legendary. Franklin Pierce, whom the Citizen called "the embodiment
of loco—focoism," beat the Whig candidate, Winfield Scott, in the
presidential election. But Democrats in Jackson County suffered
major defeats. And DeLand closed 1852 with a resolve to start con—
centrating on "busy life" news rather than political controversies.50
Then in early 1853 two major newspaper events occurred

within days of each other. On February 3, Wilbur F. Storey took

over his new post as editor of the Detroit Free Press, which the

 

conservative Democrats entrusted to him because of his aggressive

editorship in Jackson. The news reopened the DeLand-Storey feud.

DeLand wrote that Storey, after the Democratic defeats in the fall

of 1852, had experienced an "attack of constipation of the (polit-

ical) bowels." He moved to Detroit, wrote DeLand, and appeared

I'clothed in editorial snapishness, and essayed to try his old games
n51

over. Once again anti-Storey articles became common in the

'Citizen.

 

50American Citizen, 21 January, 2 June, 1 September, 27
October and 2 December 1852.

51

 

Ibid., 16 March 1853.

78

One of Storey's final acts before leaving Jackson was to
investigate the acquitted defendants for the railroad and recommend

52 He concluded that the

that the company pay indemnities to them.
effect of such an action would be "salutary." His own mellowing
attitude toward the defendants was paralleled by DeLand's changing
attitude toward the company. By March the Whig editor had agreed
to publish a "favorable article or two" in the Citizen for the sum

of fifty dollars.53

Hirschfeld cites other evidence to assert that
the entire railroad issue was being de-fused for political reasons.
Some of the central figures of the prosecution and defense in the

trial were becoming involved in the fusion movement that would soon

result in the forming of the Republican Party.

Bone and Muscle--Burnett's Public Sentiment

But one man had not forgotten the hot days spent in squalid
prison cells, the multiplied perjuries or the martyr Fitch. He was
Benjamin F. Burnett, one of the Grass Lake defendants in the trial
who had been acquitted. The railroad men called him "the judge" in
reference to his sharp legal mind, gained in his years as a country
lawyer. In mid-January Burnett issued the first number of his Egbljg_

Sentiment. A semi-monthly paper at first, it was printed over

 

52Wilbur F. Storey to James F. Joy, 12 January 1853, in the
Joy Manuscripts, Michigan Historical Collections, cited in Hirsch-
feld, p. 108.

53Senator Moses A. McNaughton to James F. Joys 23 February
and 15 March 1853, in Joy Manuscripts, Michigan Historical Collec-
tion, cited in Hirschfeld, p. 108.

 

79

Arnold & Jean's Store at Grass Lake. To all appearances the paper
was a typical general-interest paper. Its elaborate type had
originally been cast in France and then imported to print the
Michigan Essay, the Detroit paper that was the first published

in the Northwest Territory.54

But inside the front page, on which
were general articles, were jammed articles accusing the railroad
of conspiracy, injustices and hideous crimes against the Jackson
County men. Burnett candidly wrote of his mission:

We have been questioned a 1,000 times, since our first

issue, if we were not afraid that Brooks would send us

to prison, for daring to speak in the manner that we did

of them, and their kingdom . . . God is our refuge, and

he has given us bone and muscle, to use in our defence

. . Our little sheet shall speak fearlessly in this and
all other wrongs.55

By March Burnett was getting enough response to begin issu-

ing the paper weekly. Another two weeks and he boasted of 1,000
subscriptions. His barbed words stung the sensibilities of the rail-
road officials but delighted others with such queries as whether
"the shed blood of . . . poor murdered Abel F. Fitch, has increased
or diminished the value of the stock of said road, to the psalm
singing, Sabbath breaking stockholders thereof?" When the railroad
threatened to bring suit for libel, Burnett wrote, "Dare that

notorious blood-stained, liberty stealing, court bribing, horse

thief protecting, impious one-man power, do any such thing?"

 

54Ingham County News, 23 April 1959. The News' editor pur-
chased the type from the Public Sentiment.

55Pub1ic Sentiment, 1 February 1853.

 

80

No suit was forthcoming.56 Violence was suggested in another
threat. It came in a letter from H. M. Dixon, a pro-railroad
deputy sheriff of Calhoun County. Burnett called him a spy and

"loafer extraordinary," but printed the letter:

I have seen several copyes of a Paper which I believe you
claim to be Editor of and Stimulating your Sitizens to acts
of violence on the Central RailRoad I woul Say to you for
your own Safty that you had Better make your Journal a
Political Sheet . . . I have no hesitation in Saying to you
that if Leona Grass Lake or Michigan Center commit any more
Depredations on this Road that your dam Institution will be
closed upp and the rest of your neighbors Pirats together
with your Self will share the same fate you have Preached
the higher law for Some time and you will git it unless you
reef your Sails Soon.57

In the next issue Burnett wrote that he had gotten another
letter from Dixon in reply to Burnett's comments on the first letter.
Dixon enclosed a dollar for a subscription to the Sentiment. Burnett
apologized for comparing Dixon to Brooks, a railroad official who
58

had never paid for a subscription to the paper.

The Sentiment's sense of mission was reminiscent of the old

 

Canadian of the Patriot War. Both papers assumed a tone of exalted
authority in their different wars against the unrighteousness of
big government and big business. The Canadian's martyrs were Lount

and Matthews; the Sentiment's were Fitch and the other defendants

 

who had died in prison. There was a frontier elegy for the Canadians

and there was another for Fitch, entitled "Lines on the Death of

 

56Pubiic Sentiment. (15) April and 2 May 1853-

 

57Ibid., (15) May 1853.

58Ibid., 1 June 1853.

81

A. F. Fitch," supposedly written by a brother of the martyr.

. No more he'll feel oppression '5 rod;
His hope and trust was in his God
Deep hidden things will come to light 59
The judge of all the earth doth right. . . .

Burnett published his paper as though he were commissioned to bring
to light those "hidden things." Thus he continued for a year and a
half, not fearing to take on corporate giants, politicians and every
other newspaper in the world single-handedly.
By the end of 1853 Burnett had begun to alienate DeLand, who
had been one of the staunchest anti-railroad editors. The Whig
editor took Burnett to task for his increasing personal attacks on
some Whig political figures. Burnett seemed a bit stung by the
reproof as he noted that "we are at present laboring under the dread-
ful calamity of having offended the presiding genius of the 'Jackson
Citizen.’ The time was when 'Br. Vic' proclaimed the truth in regard
to said trials, but Rail Road influence has crooked his nose of late."
Burnett advised DeLand to throw away his free rail pass and quit
accepting railroad favors.60
DeLand wrote a letter of rebuttal accusing Burnett of not
refuting DeLand's original charges and of hiding his failure to do
so in a personal attack on DeLand himself. But "Br. Vic" neatly

sidestepped Burnett's allegations also. "It shows how small a thing

a little jealousy can magnify to momentous-like proportions," he wrote.

 

59Public Sentiment, (15) May 1853.

 

60Ibid., 10 December 1853.

82

But Burnett realized he had perhaps overstated his original criticism
of the Whig leaders. He apologized if he had been misunderstood and
then restated his position.61
Before the Sentiment faded away, most of the remaining
prisoners in Jackson Prison were pardoned. Hirschfeld concluded
that "despite or even because of his dogmatic one-tracked sensation-
alism, he [Burnett] did perhaps as much as anyone to bring about

this end."62

A few weeks before Burnett ceased publishing his paper,
he made his parting prophecy. "Notwithstanding the masterly silence
of the Press on these proceedings, the day WILL COME when the cry for
justice . . . will ring out upon the public ear in tones of wild and

thrilling character."63

Burnett was right, but about the wrong
cause. By 1854 it was not the cause of the martyred conspirators
that excited public sentiment, but that of the thousands of enslaved

human beings in the great American southland.

 

6'Charles V. DeLand to Benjamin F. Burnett, 12 December 1853,
published in the Public Sentiment, 20 December 1853.

62

 

Hirschfeld, p. 105.

63Public Sentiment, 1 May 1854.

 

CHAPTER IV

A POLITICAL REVOLUTION

While the South, swollen with pride and drunk with power
of her slaveholding triumph was reveling in victory, a
staccato telegraph instrument in the nation's capital was
flashing the news that the [Missouri] Compromise had been
repealed to every state in the Union. With latent fatal-
ity it was flashing the message to the cities and towns
of Michigan where twelve newspapers, long foreseeing and
forearming against precisely this event, had laid mines
for a political revolution destined to shake the nation
but kill slavery forever.

--Jackson Citizen Patriot,

7 July 1929*

Between 1852 and 1854 the issue of slavery continued to
divide both Whigs and Democrats, finally bringing about what DeLand
called a "great revolution in public sentiment." Old-line Whigs
were soundly defeated in the 1852 national election. In Jackson
County the Democrats also felt the sting of election losses. The

revolution came as anti-slavery Whigs, Democrats and abolitionists

 

*

Editors of the paper gained the help of staff members of
ten other papers in compiling this seventy-fifth anniversary edition
of the Republican Party's founding in Jackson on July 6, 1854. An
‘ extensive search of the files of the papers' predecessors of 1854
was conducted. Among the conclusions of the study was that twelve
papers were largely instrumental in focusing public attention on the
need for a fusion of anti-slavery forces. The twelve were the
Detroit Tribune, Marshall Statesman, Grand Rapids Eagle, Kalamazoo
Telegraph, Adrian Expositor, (Jackson) American Citizen, Hillsdale
Standard, Pontiac Gazette, Saginaw Enterprise, (Flint) Michigan
Citizen, Constantine Mercury, and Jonesville Gazette.

 

83

84

found that what they believed in was more important that what polit-
ical banner they believed it under.

But even so vital an issue as slavery was just an arsenal of
explosive ideas until public passions were ignited. This was done
by the editors of the anti-slavery newspaper press in 1854.

Primitive but influential, the press in Michigan was well
established by the early 18505. The Detroit Advertiser published
statistics in January 1854 that estimated the aggregate annual cir-
culation of the state papers to be over 3.25 million. There were

eighty-three papers, which the Advertiser categorized into six kinds

 

of organs. There were six dailies, two tri-weeklies, two semi-
weeklies, sixty-five weeklies, seven monthlies and one quarterly.
It was estimated that as many as a quarter of a million persons

1 At the same time, the American press

read the papers each week.
was undergoing a period of growth as the population increased two
and a third times between 1833 and 1860, public education stimulated
the literacy rate, oil lamps in the 18305 and 18405 made it easier
to read, public affairs interest grew and the prices of many papers
dropped because of improved presses and paper making.2
Two of the sixty-five weeklies in 1854 were the American
Citizen and the Jackson Patriot. DeLand's Citizen gained most by
the political changes in Jackson County. He had invested $280 in

the organ in 1849. By 1853 the investment had risen to $4,000 with

 

1cited by American Citizen, 20 January 1854.

 

2Mott, American Journalism, p. 304.

85

the acquisition of a new Northrup Cylinder power press.3 DeLand's
coverage of the railroad conspiracy trial was cited by Storey as one
reason for the latter's decision to leave the Patriot, a concession
that enhanced DeLand's standing with the Whig newspaper fraternity.
By 1854 DeLand was recognized as a competent editor, a loyal friend
to moral and political reform and a ruthless enemy of the "loco foco"
Democracy.

But there were personal tragedies in DeLand's life. On
June 29, 1853, his older sister Samanthe died at the age of twenty-
nine. Her obituary was filled with pathos and melancholy. On July
5 his younger brother, Francis Herbert DeLand, died of scarlet fever.
A nephew died about the same time. But the heaviest blow came a
short time later. Harriet P. Carder, to whom he had been wed just
eight months before, died "very suddenly" on July 20. "A sister--
a brother--a nephew, cut down:--Was that not enough?" asked the
editor. VNo,--a loved and loving wife must be the next victim of
the transfixing shaft."4 The Citizen's columns seemed to reflect
the editor's despair and he complained bitterly that no one was
interested in the paper's success. While there should have been
two thousand subscribers, there were only six hundred. "The life
of an editor, especially of a local country editor, is a checquered

one," he wrote, "marred by strong and varying tides, fluctuating

 

3American Citizen, 25 August 1859 and 31 August 1853.

4Ibid., 27 Ju1y 1853.

86

gales, dangerous whirlpools, reefs and shoals, unknown to any other
profession."5
DeLand's fortunes, however, were to rise dramatically in the
following months, culminating on July 6, 1854 with the founding of
the Republican Party in Jackson. His role in the party's birth and
the roles of other editors were far different from those that journal-
ists since have viewed as ideal. While journalists now are committed
to non-participatory roles in the news events which they cover, the
very opposite was the case in 1854. Editors of the party press era
viewed their roles as informational, persuasive and participatory.

Some, like Storey, flatly claimed credit for party victories in

their readership areas.

Genesis of the Fusion Movement

A series of developments triggered the events in the summer
of 1854. Foremost was the introduction of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill,
which was to organize the territories and permit citizens there to
determine whether slavery would be adopted under a doctrine of
popular sovereignty. This effectively would repeal the 1820 Missouri
Compromise and take from Congress the power to legislate where
slavery might exist. With the prospect of popular sovereignty before
them, settlers rushed into the territory from both free and slave
states. There were raids on some of the anti-slave settlements.

Suddenly "Border Ruffianism" and "Bleeding Kansas" became standing

 

5American Citizen, 15 February 1854.

87

headlines in many newspapers.

Since the Whig defeat of 1852 leading editors of the party
had been corresponding. DeLand recalled: "I was at that time
editor of the Jackson Citizen, and distinctly remember the circular

letters of the National Intelligencer, Albany Journal and other

 

leading papers, asking the expression of all Whig editors as to the
situation."6
In this atmosphere of uncertainty in party directions,
DeLand got several other Michigan editors to meet in Jackson in
February 1854. Their major concern was the impending pro-slavery
legislation. Could it be defeated? If so, how? The answer to the
problem, they believed, was to consolidate all the‘anti-slavery”
factions into a new party or movement. To present the idea, a com-
mittee of three was named. They were to attend the state Free Soil
Democrat Convention, which had already been called for February 22
in Jackson, and present the proposal to leaders of the party.7
DeLand wrote almost nothing in his Citizen of the editors'
activities. On February 8 he wrote generally of the "no more slave
territory" principle: "This is not a question of party, but a

great fundamental principle of freedom, justice and humanity, a

tenet of truth, law and legal right which is sought to be tampered

 

6Livingstone's History of the Republican Party, vol. 1.
(Detroit: Wm. Livingstone, publisher, 1900), p. 20.

7Ibid., p. 21. The three were George A. Fitch of the
Kalamazoo Gazette, Henry Barnes of the Detroit Tribune, and
Zéphaniah B. Knight of the Pontiac Gazette.

 

 

 

88

with and down-trod."8

On February 15 the Citizen announced the
Free Soil convention. DeLand wrote that organizers would do well

to avoid the narrow-minded conservatism of the paSt:

"One ideaism" has too long been an incUbus upon liberal
anti-slavery sentiment and action, which should be shaken
off. The present Nebraska-Kansas scheme warns the north
of its danger, and an effort should now be made to consol-
idate all the moral, sympathetic and political power of the
State, in opposition to the further inroads of the institu-
tion . . . such responsibility rests upon the Convention

. on the 22 inst.9

On the eve before the convention DeLand, the three committee-
men and some other editors met with the Free Soil leaders in the
office of Austin Blair, Jackson County prosecutor and a foe of
slavery. The proposal for a fusion convention was discussed. It
was received well by the Free Soilers, but no action was taken.

Party leaders decided to continue with their plans to nominate can-
didates for state offices on the morrow and to pass resolutions
against the Kansas-Nebraska Bill.10

Snow covered the streets of Jackson the afternoon of the
cOnvention. In the courthouse the air was warmed by the presence
of some three hundred hearty anti-slavery leaders. They were

encouraged by newspaper stories of an enthusiastic anti-Nebraska

rally held in Detroit four days earlier. In Jackson, a full slate

 

8American Citizen, 8 February 1854.

9Ibid., 15 February 1854.

10DeLand, p. 167; and Streeter, p. 187.

89

of candidates was proposed and resolutions were adopted. The visit-
ing editors opposed the nominations, arguing that the action would
make a fusion movement more difficult to organize. The slate was
adopted; the central committee, however, was authorized to withdraw
the party ticket should any feasible proposal for a fusion be made.
A mass meeting was to be called in that event. The Free Democrats
would then "act with any new organization they [the committee] may
designate or deem advisable."H
One of the speakers at the convention was Seymour B. Tread-
well, the former editor of the Michigan Freeman who was slurred by
Storey as "Father Treadwell.’I He was nominated as the Free Soil
candidate for Commissioner of Land. The nomination was the final
honor for Treadwell's extensive work in the anti-slavery movement.
In July his nomination would be confirmed in the Republican Party
convention. He would then be successfully elected to the office
that fall. It would be Treadwell's first election to a political

office.

DeLand--the "Chief Promoter"

From the first, DeLand was the "chief promoter of the con-

ferences held by the leading Whigs, and also of the conferences of

n12

editors held in his own office. Five days after the February 22

 

HDeLand, p. 168.

12William Stocking, ed., Under the Oaks (Detroit: Detroit
Tribune, 1904), p. 29.

 

9O

convention Treadwell, Blair and others called for a Jackson County
meeting the next Friday evening in the courthouse. At seven o'clock
the meeting was convened. Treadwell was elected president and
Blair spoke "at length" on the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. Afterward a
committee presented a set of resolutions which DeLand and others
discussed. The resolutions were unanimously adopted. The Missouri
Compromise was affirmed and the doctrine of popular sovereignty
rejected.13
It was also shortly after February 22 that DeLand spoke
privately with Kinsley S. Bingham, the Free Soil nominee for gover-
nor. Bingham was willing to withdraw his own candidacy in the
interests of a fusion. He suggested too that a conference of anti-
Nebraska editors might be helpful. He and DeLand went to Detroit
and conferred with others. An editors' meeting was called in March
as a result. Held in the offices of the Detroit Tribune, the meet-
ing did not prove to be encouraging. Some Whig editors were reluc-
tant to give up the party. There was "considerable apathy, even
some misgivings." But Joseph Warren, editor of the Tribune,
enthusiastically endorsed fusion. And DeLand stood firmly with
Warren.14

There were at this time three major foes to fusion in the

journalistic community. There were the "outraged screechings of

 

13DeLand, p. 169.

14William Stocking, "Prominent Newspaper Men in Michigan,"
Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections 39 (Lansing, 1915):
p. 160.

 

91

the [Detroit] Advertiser," which opposed Warren's call for unity
under a single anti-slavery ticket; the "brilliant casuistry Of

Wilbur F. Storey" and his Detroit Free Press, the major Democratic

 

organ; and the Detroit Free Democrat's demand that Whigs be absorbed
15

 

within the ranks of the Free Soilers' party organization. DeLand
threw himself wholeheartedly into the task of winning advocates for
fusion. He attended anti-Nebraska meetings and used his "personal
influence to bring reluctant Whigs into line."16
Between train trips to scattered places for anti-Nebraska
meetings, DeLand waged an intense campaign with his Citizen. His
editorials were interwoven with the Kansas-Nebraska controversy, the
Maine Liquor Law and the influence of the clergy in politics. Titus
declared in his Patriot that morality was not the proper concern Of
legislation and that it was the right of the people to determine
whether they would live with or without slavery. DeLand called the
Patriot's arguments on such issues "a vast amount of twattle." He
accused Titus of maintaining that "'modern Democracy' is a better
code of morals than the Christian religion, and that a rabid and
scurrilous newspaper a better family book than the Bible." If the
Patriot's laissez-faire philosophy was extended, he wondered, "what
is there to prevent it falling back to the birthday of the Constitu-

tion itself?"17

 

15Jackson Citizen Patriot, 7 July 1929.

 

16Stocking, "Prominent Newspaper Men," p. 160.

17American Citizen, 12 and 19 April 1854, 1 March 1854.

 

92

Cheney and Knickerbocker--
SPostmaster and “Bishop"

In mid-April there was an editorial change at the Patriot.
Titus left his post. Reuben S. Cheney, who had been named post-
master of Jackson the year before, became publisher of the Patriot
again. He was joined by George A. Knickerbocker, who took over the
editorial duties.18

Cheney was described by DeLand as a "very smooth, pleasant
and plausable man." But Cheney's powerful position as publisher
and postmaster intensified the partisan conflict. Ordinarily the
postal advertising of newly arrived letters was given to the paper
with the most circulation. Under the previous postmaster, a Whig,
the Citizen had won the advertising from the Patriot by eleven
subscriptions. When Cheney became postmaster, he awarded the adver-
tising to the Patriot, which he had helped Storey to establish in
the 18405. He made the award on the untested assumption that the
Patriot's circulation was greater than the Citizen's. Curt notes
and challenges were exchanged between the two offices. At one
point the Patriot's editor, then Titus, challenged DeLand to a
public comparison of circulation figures. But the matter was never
resolved.19

When Cheney became publisher of the Patriot in 1854, news-

paper relations worsened. In the spring DeLand ordered some copies

 

18American Citizen, 12 April 1854.

 

'9Ibid., 27 July 1853.

93

of an anti-Nebraska speech by a United States senator. Somehow the
copies disappeared at the Jackson Post Office. DeLand re-ordered
them, was sent three hundred copies, but only received fifty-two.
Under the law he was permitted to forward the individual copies to
separate addresses on the congressional frank that brought them to
him. Instead Cheney charged him ten cents postage for each copy.
The alleged Post Office irregularities continued under Cheney's
administration for several years. Once, the Citizen charged, Cheney
refused to allow postal patrons to pick up copies of the Citizen in
the Post Office. DeLand then arranged for his customers to get
their papers at a "private P.O." But it was not until April 1859
that Cheney was ousted. Before the ouster, DeLand wrote that "the
United States postal system is no longer public property; it is
simply an engine of the slave power."20
But DeLand's most articulate enemy prior to the fusion move-
ment's convention in July was Knickerbocker. In an editorial
entitled "Law and Gospel" the latter attacked the "political clergy."
DeLand replied in a satirical piece in which he welcomed "A New
Bishop in Michigan." The "bishop” was Knickerbocker. DeLand called
him "Editor of the Jackson Patriot, and 'Defender of the Faith' of
Judge Whiskey, Attorney for Nebraska Bill, fiddler-master-General
. to the Hunker Clique, Bishop of Michigan and professor of Pastoral

Theology for all the ministers of Michigan."21

 

20American Citizen, 1 January 1857, 22 April 1858, 7 April

1859.

2'Ibid., 26 April 1854.

94

is
Judging from DeLand's references to him, Knickerbocker was
a young man. He particularly galled the Citizen's editor by print-
ing weekly letters from an anonymous contributor. The communications
were decidely critical of DeLand, who, it was alleged, "Being
ostensably [sic] an editor . . . fancies himself a MAN, and of some
consequence. If monkey grimaces, bar-room brawling, black-guarding
and lying, make a man, then I suppose he is one." No quarter was
given; one of DeLand's sharpest responses to the Patriot editor was
in the same issue that reported the death of Mrs. Knickerbocker from
consumption.22
On the issues being debated by the advocates of fusion,

Knickerbocker was unequivocal:

The mongrel opposition of whigs, priests and free-soilers:

may howl over it, and about it as much as they choose; this

principle, of popular sovereignty, in the territories, must

eventually commend itself to the good sense and Republican-

ism of the people. Democrats should not allow themselves

to be deceived as to the character . . . of the leaders of

the opposition:-—they are Pirates on the high seas of pol-

itics, who do not sail under the flag of any permanent

party organization, because such organizations do not fur-

nish the means of gratifying their unreasonable personal
ambition.23

DeLand used the appellation of "Bishop" in nearly every
reference to Knickerbocker. Once he cited Genesis 49:14:
"Issacher [sic] is a strong ass couching between two burdens."

The scriptural reference was the germ for this observation:

 

22American Citizen, 15 March 1854.

 

23Ibid., 17 May 1854.

95

The editor of the Patriot and the Free Press are trying
to load the Democratic Party with the whiskey traffic on
one side, and the Nebraska bill on the other, which is,
we think, a bigger load than it can carry; but we think
it is about to try it. It has got the Rev. Geo. A.
Knickerbocker, Bishop, &c., to lead it, With Brother
Storey to apply the "vis a tergo" with his boot, and

the probability is that the poor beast will try to get
up and carry the load. Poor Issacher!!24

The Call for a Mass Meeting_in Jackson

In May the tempo of events sharply accelerated. On May 10
DeLand was appointed chairman of the Jackson County Temperance Com-
mittee at the semi-annual state temperance society meeting in

Tecumseh.25

He helped to plan a June 20 mass temperance meeting for
Jackson, the significance of which was yet to be known.

On May 21 a thousand persons met in Kalamazoo to withdraw
the Free Soil ticket. The action was due to the assurance editors
had received on February 22 that if a feasible plan for fusion was
adopted, the ticket would be withdrawn. Fusion now seemed likely.
Although not a Free Soiler, DeLand was named to the resolution com-
mittee. Treadwell and other leaders spoke. A committee of sixteen
men then was given the responsibility of seeing that fusion took
place. The only remaining event was the nearly certain passage of
the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. Isaac P. Christiancy of Monroe was named
~ chairman of the committee and DeLand, secretary. They were to meet

in Detroit two days later.26

 

24American Citizen, 26 April 1854.

251bid., 24 May 1854.

26DeLand, p. 171.

96

On the next day, however, the Missouri Compromise was
repealed. When the committee met on May 23, definite plans were
made for a convention in Jackson on July 6. The opening words of
the convention call enunciated in emphatic terms the fusionists'
complaint. "A great wrong has been perpetrated. The slave power
of this county has triumphed. Liberty is trampled under foot. The
Missouri Compromise . . . has been violated, and a vast territory
dedicated to freedom, has been opened to slavery." The call was
published the next day in the daily papers. DeLand was authorized
to have a thousand copies printed in circular form to be mailed
throughout the state. His letter, enclosed with the call, indicated

some of the practical work in which DeLand was engaged:

JACKSON MICH., June 1, 1854

Dear Sir: Enclosed find call for a public mass meeting
in this city July 6th next, with the attached sheet for
signatures. Please have the same circulated and signed,
and published (names included) in your local paper, and
send copy to the secretary of the committee. When not
so printed, mail petition to us with as little delay as
possible.

Isaac P. Christiancy, Chairman
C. V. DeLand, Secretary 27

Caught up in a whirlwind of activity, DeLand turned his
"office, business and the 'quill'" over to DeWitt C. Smith, who had

28

married DeLand's youngest sister, Lucy, on February 21. Smith

kept up the intense editorializing with the other pro-fusion papers.

 

27DeLand, p. 174.

28American Citizen, 31 May 1854, 22 February 1854.

 

97

On June 14, he published an analysis of the coming convention, noting
that
We lay aside [the] trophies of the "Old Guard" in an honored
grave and under a new name, or without a name, take such
action as would put an effectual check upon the aggressive

spirit of the slave power, and hold up our national ensign

to the world's gaze, unstained by the blood of a single slave.29

Smith gave the Patriot little attention; instead he concentrated on
the die-hard Whigs who still refused to unit with Free Democrats.
Meanwhile, DeLand was printing and mailing circulars through-
out Michigan. Some were even sent to prominent men in the East--men
like William H. Seward, Thurlow Weed and Horace Greeley.30
A key part of the fusionists' strategy was to prevent the
nomination of a separate temperance society ticket. Such a ticket
well could dilute the strength of the fusion politically since many
of those who endorsed the temperance cause also stood with the
anti-slave forces. On June 20 DeLand attended the temperance con-
vention in Jackson with the goal of helping to prevent a separate
nomination. Although a member of the committee on resolutions, he
was unable to persuade the temperance folks to support fusion.
Instead they resolved "that our votes shall express our sentiments."
Nevertheless there was no separate ticket adopted. Delegates were
urged to vote for those men of any party who supported legislation

favorable to temperance.3]

 

29American Citizen, 14 June 1854.

 

30DeLand, p. 181.

31American Citizen, 28 June 1854.

 

98

Under the Oaks

 

By July 1 petitions from the circulars and letters DeLand
had mailed were pouring into the Jackson Post Office. There were
over nine thousand signatures on the petitions. During the final
week of June Jackson's own anti-Nebraska forces had prepared them—
selves for the mass meeting. Committees were formed and arrange-
ments made for transporation, lodging and meeting facilities.
DeLand served on the general committee of arrangements. Dorrance,
his ex-partner, was on the finance committee.32

Then on July 5 the fusionists began to arrive. Benjamin F.

Burnett, the maverick editor of the Public Sentiment, called the

 

whole affair "one great, grand menagerie . . . the great throat

trial, at which 3,000 politicians are going to swallow 7,000; or

.n33

'wice wersa. Storey's description was shorter, but more to the

point. He called the delegates "a body of unmitigated abolitionists

34

and disunionists." But for whatever reasons, the delegates came--

"not as Free Soil Democrats, or Whigs, or Abolitionists or as Pro-

hibitionists but as readers of the public press."35
By nine o'clock the morning of the sixth there were, by some

estimates, some three thousand strangers in town. DeLand recalled

that it was "a most beautiful-day, bright and sunshiny, but not

 

3ZDeLand, p. 174.

33Pubiic Sentiment, 1 July 1854.

 

34Catlin, "Little Journeys," p. 522.

35Jackson Citizen Patriot, 7 July 1929.

 

99

. 36
exce551vely warm."

The Jackson Brass Band was on duty; its mar-
tial airs enlivened the crowd. It was a day of such import that
Smith did not publish the Citizen as planned; instead he waited a
day so that he could put out the paper with the rest of the big-
city dailies.

The Republican Party was born as the result of action taken
at the meeting. Politicians delivered their speeches, huddled in
small groups in the oak grove of "Morgan's Forty" to hammer out
resolutions; but the true revolution in public sentiment had
already been accomplished in the primitive, but effective, news-
paper campaign. Even the name of the party came from newspapermen,
if their own accounts are believed. DeLand's recollection was that
Zephaniah Knight, editor of the Pontiac Gazette, suggested the
name "Republican" during the February convention. Other sugges-
tions were received in correspondence with the returned petitions.
DeLand turned all of them over to the committee on resolutions
before July 6. -During the committee's deliberations that day,
Knight made the motion that the name "Republican" be entered in
the blank space for the party name. Eleven members supported the
name; five others voted for the designation "Union Party."37

Although the major work of the press in the party's found-

ing was completed, the challenge of getting the Republican nominees

 

36DeLand, p. 175.

37Stocking, "Oaks," p. 55. Other sources credit Horace
Greeley, George A. Fitch or Joseph Warren with first suggesting
the name for the part.

lOO

elected in November remained. Separatist Whigs held their final
convention in October at Marshall; they found, however, that Repub-

lican Whigs were in control.38

The death-knell for the Whigs,_
which Storey had hope for in 1848, had finally been sounded.
Opponents of the Republican or Independent (as it was at
first widely called) Party candidates fought their best to defeat
the new party. Treadwell's brief editorship of the Michigan Free-
man, from 1839-1841, permitted an attack on his candidacy for the

Commissioner of Land Office. The Ypsilanti Sentinel incorrectly

 

accused him of having edited the Freeman's successor, the Signal

of Liberty, which was called a "most meanly slanderous and lying
sheet." DeWitt C. Smith agreed with the Sentinel's assessment of
the abolitionist paper; he added that it was "not fit to kindle
fires within an American's home." He added, however, that Treadwell

39 Treadwell was elected

had never been associated with the paper.
in a contest that resulted in widespread Republican victories.
Smith, who had been nominated by the new party to run for the
county clerk's office, was one of three Republicans to win county
offices.4O
DeLand's fortunes had peaked with the establishment of the
new party. In spite of his efforts, however, party leaders did not

nominate him for an office. So he returned to the Citizen when

 

38Stocking, Ibid., p. 59.

39American Citizen, 6 September 1854.

 

40Jackson County, p. 325.

101

Smith left it to give full time to his new position. DeLand con-
tinued fighting pro-slavery forces in the following years. In 1855
he was elected official reporter of the first Republican state
legislature. From 1857 to 1859 he was clerk in the House of Repre-
sentatives. He served in other posts with local government. And
in 1860 he was given a strong mandate by the voters of the Twelfth
District in his election to the state senate.41
The year 1855 was a quiet one for the editor. There were
few controversies and no major elections. Early in the year his
parents gave five hundred dollars to his younger brother James to
invest in the Citizen. James became a junior partner and proved
an asset especially when Charles was attending legislative sessions
in Lansing. The two planned to increase business by printing the
Messenger of Truth, a religious paper edited by C. P. Russell, and
the Michigan Central B . . . ., a literary and temperance paper
edited by Dewitt C. Smith.42
In May, Charles was married again. This time he took as
his wife Ruby Kellogg Taylor. The Patriot's comments were full of

antipathy for the young editor who had worked so hard to defeat

the Democrats:

We understand "Little Vic'I . . . has married a "school
marm." We have urged, for sometime, that the idiot be
sent to a woman's school. If the "school marm" can

learn him decency and the ordinary civilities of life,

 

4'DeLand, p. 299.

42Mrs. Mary DeLand to Samanthe DeLand, April 1855, personal
files of Gaylord DeLand of Napoleon, Michigan.

102

she will accomplish what his "mama" has been unable to do
for some twenty-five years.43

With such antagonism, it was little wonder that such sentiments as

the following were expressed in the pages of the Citizen:

Toil, Toil, Toil!

What a weary life is mine,

Wasting the precious midnight oil,
In leader column and line;

Working from morn till night,
Working from night till morn,
Oh! Why was the steam press made?

Or why was the editor born? 44

In June one of the Democratic victims of the first Republi-
can victories of 1854 assumed the editorial responsibilities of the
Patriot. He was Joseph M. Griswold, who had lost the county clerk
race by only ninety votes to DeWitt C. Smith. Griswold was twenty-
seven when he joined the Patriot. He penned his first editorial
with some humility, appealing "to the brethren of the quill" for
"those considerations which ability and experience extend to the

novice."45

He was less abusive than his predecessor, Knickerbocker.
This may have been due to his upbringing. His father was the Rev-
erend Horace Griswold, who was pastor of the First Baptist Church
of Swainsville (now Brooklyn) from 1835 to 1837. After attending

an academy, Griswold joined the staff of the Madison Observer in

 

Forestville, New York. He returned to Michigan in 1846 and farmed

 

43Jackson Patriot, 23 May 1855.

44American Citizen, 27 June 1855.

45Jackson Patriot, 6 June 1855.

103

his father's homestead. In the years following his editorship of

the Patriot, he was to own half interest in the Michigan State

 

Journal of Lansing, serve as a war correspondent for Storey's

Chicago Times, and then join the Detroit Free Press after the Civil
46

 

 

War.

The Campaign of 1856--
Victories for 1'BTeeding Kansas"

 

 

Neither Griswold nor James DeLand remained for long as
partners with the publishers of their respective papers. DeLand
was not listed with his elder brother as joint owner after October
1855. Griswold left the Patriot in May of 1856. Afterward "Young
Vic" and Reuben S. Cheney were left to publish their papers. And
as the 1856 presidential campaign got under way, the two verbal
pugilists traded many a punch in their columns.

The year 1856 was the first great national test of the
Republican Party. A national convention was held in Philadelphia
on June 17. It resulted in the nomination of John C. Fremont as
the party's candidate for president. His opponents in the campaign
were James Buchanan,Democrat, and Millard Fillmore of the Know-
Nothing Party. The political contest in Michigan rivaled that of
1840 for excitement and gimmickry. Gen. Lewis Cass, the powerful
state Democrat, realized that his political future was at stake.
He labored to regain the power lost in 1854 to the Republicans.

There were political medals and slogans such as "The Rocky Mountains

 

46Jackson County, p. 797.

104

Echo Back Fremont" or "Our Flag Trampled Upon." Torchlight parades
and mass rallies were also popular.

"Free Soil, Free Men and Fremont" was the battle cry of one
Republican meeting in September. DeLand reported that there were
eight thousand persons at the event. A "grand procession" from
Grass Lake, Napoleon and Leoni included brass bands, thirty-two
mounted men in colorful uniforms and a string of wagons a mile

long.47

The Patriot ridiculed the rally, calling it a "fusion
fizzle" in which there were more like eight hundred personse present,
half of them under voting age. Cheney saw little humor in the
banners that adorned the wagons. One read, "Lewis Cass, the Jackass
in a Lion's Skin," he noted.48
One Wednesday night the local Democrats celebrated party
victories in other states by holding a torch-light procession.
Some of the marchers carried their torches inside transparencies.
These were decorated with political drawings. One ridiculed the
Republican slogan, "Bleeding Kansas," showing "two fighting buck
niggers, from one of which the blood is flowing freely," the
Patriot reported.49 DeLand penned a powerful satire on the proces-
sion and subsequent revelry, which he reviled as the "Grand African

Democratic Panorama of Cass, Harman, Storey & Co." A highlight of

the festivities, he wrote, was a "sickly rocket" that rose about

 

47American Citizen, 11 September 1856.

 

48Jackson Patriot, 10 September 1856.

 

49Ibid., 22 October 1856.

105

sixty feet into the air, where it exploded with the sound "resembling
a collision between a rotten pumpkin and a rickety bog-trough."50
When the Republicans celebrated their local victories the
night of the election, Cheney described the festivities with no less
a satirical effect than DeLand's article on the torchlight procession.
The Patriot article was under the head, "Elevate the Darkey."
Present at the celebration were Austin Blair, Seymour B. Treadwell,
Doctor Ira C. Backus and others. Spirits were high as the victori-
ous candidates were carried about the "Fusion Club Room" on the
backs of their fellows. Finally, in a spontaneous burst of enthusi-

asm, the "negro Williams" was hoisted onto Doctor Backus' back.

The Republicans joined merrily in singing:

We'll elevate the darkey,
du da, du da!

According to the Patriot, the doctor soon tired of the fun and
Williams climbed off his back. "Dat was de first time [I] eber rode
on Ass," were the words attributed to him by Cheney.5]
Republicans lost the national election. But the loss was
considered a moral victory. All but five of the free states were
carried and those that went for Buchanan did so by relatively small
margins. In Michigan, Zachariah Chandler began what was to be a

long and distinguished career in the United States Senate. He

replaced General Cass. The Republican victory in Jackson County

 

50American Citizen, 30 October 1856.

 

5lJackson Patriot, 5 November 1856.

 

106

was complete. DeLand's headlines were reminiscent of those carried

in Storey's Patriot in 1848:

JACKSON COUNTY ALL RIGHT

 

DAN HIBBARD'S NIGGERS AT A DISCOUNT

 

RUBE CHEENEY HAS GONE TO SALT LAKE

 

JACKSON COUNTY, THE VERY SODOM AND GOMORRAH OF
MODERN DEMOCRACY, HAS BEEN REDEEMED

Never one to allow political foes to rest in peace after a sound
defeat, DeLand wrote:
The lies and villifications of the Border Ruffian press
of the State has been crammed down the throats of their
editors till they are completely fleeted (!) and con-
founded. Storey is so full of WOOL he can hardly breathe.

The Jackson Patriot is for sale, editor, physic and all,
MIGHTY CHEAP. 52

There was little that Cheney could say in response. He
swallowed his pride and admitted, "It is unnecessary to go into
details! We are whipped." Nevertheless, he posed some sharp
questions to the opposition. Treadwell, he charged, had offered
forty of his several thousand acres of land to some German Demo-

crats if they would work for the Republicans. Other Republicans

 

5?American Citizen, 6 November 1856.

 

107

offered five dollars a vote to Democrats, Cheney added. "Where did
it all come from? For months prior to the election, hypocritical
Priests, and swindling demagogues have been begging for bleeding
Kansas." The irony, he alleged, was that the money went not to

"bleeding Kansas," but to pay for a Republican political campaign.53

Jackson Enters a New Era

Jackson entered into a new era with the arrival of 1857.
Early in the year the state legislature authorized the village's
incorporation as a city. The newspapers reflected the demise of
the old village-mindedness with an increasing emphasis on local
news, business trends, crime, and civic pride. Several major fires
threatened the city's buildings, so one of the major concerns was
the reorganization of the fire department. The Citizen supported
the reorganization, one reason being the paper's own near-destruction
by fire in 1850 and another being the obvious loss of advertising
revenue from businesses struck by fire. The reorganization brought
the purchase of two new fire engines.54
The new businesses in Jackson had enabled DeLand to add an
extra column of news content the year before; occasionally ad supple-

ments were published. In the early summer of 1857 DeLand announced

his purchase of new type from the Cincinnati Type Foundry. Later he

 

53Jackson Patriot, 5 November 1856.

54Jackson County, p. 499.

108

hired a new printer, William H. Campbell of Buffalo, New York.55

At the Patriot, Cheney made his final exit from the paper in
September. T. H. Bouton, who DeLand called a "very clever fellow"
from St. Joseph County, purchased the paper. Later Bouton's brother,
G. S. Bouton, joined the Patriot, which was operated under the firm
name, T. F. & G. S. Bouton, well into the 18605.56

Another editorial departure in 1857 marked the end of Jack-
son's village newspaper era. On March 21 Nicholas Sullivan died of

consumption in Howell, nearly twenty years to the day that he

established the Jacksonburg_Sentinel. DeLand compared Sullivan's

 

arrival in Jacksonburg with his press to the "sunlight after a long
and dreary storm"; his departure was "like the summer's setting sun."57
In the autumn a call was published in the Citizen and other
area papers for the Press Convention of Michigan. It was to be
held in Jackson on October 8. Editors had frequently met for
political purposes in the past; but this meeting was to be different.
Editors of all political persuasions were to meet for the common goal
of establishing rules of business practice. In the Citizen's same
issue, DeLand announced that he and the Bouton brothers had agreed
to adopt uniform rates of advertising. It was a cooperative gesture
unlike any other that had been made in twenty years of the Jackson

County party.press.58

 

55American Citizen, 18 June, 3 September 1857.

56Jackson County, p. 422.

57American Citizen, 2 April 1857.

 

58Ibid., 17 September 1857.

109

Thirty-three editors attended the convention. Henry Barnes
was elected president after DeLand called the meeting to order.
Bouton was elected secretary. The editors called their organization
the Michigan Press Association. Among the resolutions they adopted
were those calling for advance payments of transient and foreign
advertisements, an end to advertising patent medicines, and a halt
to the hiring of runaway apprentices and incompetent journeymen.

The theme of the conference was the commonality of financial prob-
lems. DeLand observed that the papers had been "almost fatally
injured by an indiscriminate credit system."59

The press was but one of society's institutions that faced
financial chaos in late 1857. Disturbing accounts of bank failures
and business losses were commonly reported. A guard at the Jackson
Prison wrote in his diary about the time of the press convention
that I'I never since I can remember knew of such a time as the pres-
ent . . . A good many large manufacturing establishments have dis-
charged their operations throwing hundreds out of employment."60
There were few encouraging signs in the business news the rest of
the winter. DeLand's personal life was struck by tragedy again on
January 18, 1858. His wife, whom he had married three years earlier,

61

died of consumption at the age of twenty-eight. The editor had

little time in which to indulge in self pity. A major story about

 

59American Citizen, 15 October 1957.

 

60Ella Sharp Museum files.

61Cemetery and Church Records, p. 47.

 

110

the same time was the journey to Toledo, Ohio, made by some thirteen
hundred Jackson citizens on the occasion of the joining of Toledo
and Jackson by direct rail line. And Horace Greeley, famed editor
of the New York Tribune who had encouraged the founding of the
Republican Party in l854, spent a day in Jackson. He visited the
prison and left on the 3:20 p.m. train.6_2
Then came the spring revivals. They had come at roughly ten
year intervals--in 1837, 1847 and now 1858. DeLand wrote that
"certainly there is a necessity for such an awakening if we can
judge anything from the standard of morals and religion prevalent
in this country." For a time there were morning prayer meetings
being held daily in all of the churches. DeLand spoke warmly of
"that old religious feeling" once again being present in the com-
munity.63
In spite of his second wife's death and the sometimes som-
ber character of "that old religious feeling," DeLand was not without
humor. The letters of Abe Spike Smith began appearing in the
Citizen in the spring. To newspaper readers reared on the visual ,{
humor of comic strips, the appeal of the letters may not be fully
appreciated. A "hillbilly" of the first order, Abe's fractured
grammar, droll understatements and dry wit struck a responsive

chord in a day of crackerbox politics. Abe's letters Were a weekly

feature in the Citizen. Purportedly, he was a "demerkrat."

 

62American Citizen, 14 January 1858.

63Ibid., 18 March 1858.

111

But his alliance with the political body was only a nominal one
really intended to ridicule the party.

The Bouton brothers discerned the strategy and accused
DeLand of penning the letters himself. Abe responded to the accus-
ation in a letter to DeLand, writing, ". . . if he [editor of the
Patriot] sed ynn_was the orthor of my_letters he told an all fired
lie an ngat_lie tan arter awl ive dun for the demerkrat party up
tew jaxon." After taking a few verbal pokes at "that Patriot feller,"
Abe instructed DeLand, "If ennabody sends a challenge fur me tew
fite a dewel to your offis, tell em ter wate till ime lected tew

64 In the city elections later in the year, the "Post

Kongris."
Office Clicque" was trounced. Abe, the Citizen reported, "don't
come to town by way of the graveyard."65
The decade's final year was characterized by more of the

personal vindictiveness that had been the hallmark of the papers
since 1854. Both the editors and their readers were aware of the
situation. A Brooklyn reader, "G.P.G.," complained in a letter to
the Citizen that "the old fashioned way of conducting political
campaigns, by reason and argument, have departed from our opponents

. . Lieing, fighting, betting, bluffing and attacking personal
n66

character . . . are the means used by the prominent locos.

Whenever personal attacks were examined in the press they were

 

64American Citizen, 17 June 1858.

 

65Ibid., 4 November 1858.

66Ibid., 14 August 1856.

112

usually condemned in principle. There was a common notion of good
ethics in the matter. Griswold, in his salutory editorial to

readers of the Patriot in 1855, wrote:

We recognize the courtesy which should govern gentlemen
as the rules of editorial relations. What an editor
utters through his paper, is a proper subject of crit-
icism: but the editor himself is no more the subject
of personal attack than any other citizen. 67

DeLand had been through so many partisan skirmishes by 1859
that he seldom reminded anyone of such an ethical concept. When the
Patriot referred to that "cursed Villain DeLand," the Citizen's edi-
tor replied that he would rather have that "nick-name" used in the
Patriot than his true name. "We consider our name as a pretty good
one--Charles is a very clever as well as common name, and ngtnn_is
as pithy as it is significant." He desired that his "good" name not
be printed in a paper that "slobbers out a dose of defamation."68

In a reflective editorial in his tenth anniversary issue,
DeLand wrote that he had never brought suit against anyone, but
that he had been sued twice. He had invested $280 at the paper's
inception and thousands since. In 1858 his circulation had averaged
l,O49--still below what he believed it should be. But as to the
political, moral and secular tone of the Citizen, he wrote, "It is

just what we want it to be.--we always aim to please ourselves first,

and the public next."69 It had been a harsh decade; the deaths of

 

67Jackson Patriot, 6 June 1855.

68American Citizen, 4 August 1859.

 

69Ibid., 25 August 1859.

113

two wives had deprived him of companionship that might have mellowed
him. But harsher days were ahead. For the future held battles that
would prove far more deadly than any DeLand had yet fought.

CHAPTER V

EDITORS AT WAR

. Now is the most terrible suspense; man holds his
breath; in a second a thousand thoughts flit through
his mind, another, all memories of the past are forgot-
ten, fears for the future dispelled. One dream alone
possesses the true soldier, and that is to do or die.

--Col. Charles V. DeLand

It is a Sunday evening in early autumn, September 22, 1861.
The city of Jackson, Michigan, lies in relative quiet and security
far to the north of battlefields where thousands are dying in the
first months of a great and bloody war. A church bell tolls above
the noise of the city; its tones reach pastoral fields on the out-
skirts of the city. But this evening there is little need for a
bell, especially one to call worshippers to the First Congregational
Church.

At an early hour the sanctuary is filled. Well over a
hundred of Jackson County's finest young and middle-aged men have
filed silently into the foremost pews. All are clothed in the
uniform of the Union Army. Most are members of the Jackson County
Rifles, a company raised over the past two weeks by Capt. Charles V.
DeLand. Others are with the Blair Cadets, a company still being
recruited. Both units are to leave at 3 p.m. Monday to join the

Ninth Michigan Regiment in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

114

115

Rev. John Monteith Jr., pastor of the church, stands behind
the pulpit and looks at the men before him. Their friends, families
and lovers are also present, and all are aware of the significance
of the service. Some of the young soldiers will not return from the
battlefields. The minister announces his text. It is from Deut. 20:8:
"What man is there that is fearful and fainthearted? Let him go and
return unto his house, lest his brethren's heart faint as well as
his heart." The sermon is "full of sentiments, of the noblest pat-
riotism and the purest love of country,“ reports the American Citizen.
Mr. Monteith speaks of battlefield situations that turn the bravest
soldiers' hearts to mud. He expresses his longing to serve the
Union. If the war worsens, he says, he plans to "go anyway" in
spite of his congregation's countervailing advice.

There is applause and a benediction ends the service.

Soldiers file out as the rest of the audience members respectfully
stand.1

On Monday the Blair Cadets are given an enthusiastic send-
off at the Michigan Central Railroad depot. There is insufficient
room on the train for the Jackson County Rifles; they leave the

next day at 7 a.m.2

 

1American Citizen, 26 September 1861.

 

2Ibid.

116

DeLand Prepared for War

For DeLand the departure is momentous. It is consistent
with everything he has written for twelve years as editor of the
Citizen. In early 1854 he had foreseen the present possibilities

before the founding of the Republican Party:

. . To the South, let it be said, beware how you reck-
lessly presume upon the forbearance of your neighbors.
You may unloose a plague that shall scourge you and your
system of slavery from the face of the Union forever . . .
We of the North desire no reopening of these old issues,
but if the battle must come, our blows must fall on the
side of freedom. 3

In November 1860 DeLand was elected state senator from the
Twelfth District. It was the same general election in which Abraham
Lincoln was elected president, and Austin Blair, governor of Michigan.
From January 2 to March 16, 1861, DeLand's voice was heard in the
legislative session as a leader of the radical Republicans. He
chaired the committee on the division of towns and counties and
served on the finance committee and printing committee.

He quickly earned a reputation for his unyielding stand on
the preservation of the Union. On January 31, he was appointed to
a three-man committee to consider a call for the February 4 National
Peace Convention in Washington, D.C. The call had been issued by
the Virginia General Assembly. Its purpose was to draw together
both free and slave state leaders to work out a reconciliation. But

it was the goal of the slave state leaders to gain concessions in

 

3American Citizen, 8 February 1854.

117

the convention.

The committee proposed a resolution declining to send any
delegates to the convention. DeLand, in his extended opinion, wrote
that the only problems between slave and non-slave states would be
solved

. by a speedy return of the dissatisfied states to
their full and proper allegiance to the Constitution and
the Government, and the submission of their grievances to

the arbitration of the Congress of the United States--the

only proper and legally constituted tribunal to settle
such differences.4

The resolution was not adopted; another was proposed in
which delegates would be sent to the convention, but with certain
limitations. A fight between those for and against the compromise
resolution continued for several days. Eventually time ran out;

neither resolution was adopted.

~ On April 15, Governor Blair was ordered by the War Depart-
ment to raise a regiment of men for immediate service. The order
was later extended to May 20, and the governor called the legisla-
ture into an extra session on May 7. It was adjourned four days
later.5

Just after the April 15 call to arms, DeLand established
what was to be Jackson's first viable daily newspaper. The 23111

Citizen was a small folio with only three columns. There were

few local items in it. Most of the news was about the rebellion

 

4Journal of the Senate of the State of Michigan 1861 (Lan-
sing: Hosmer & Kerr, Printers to the State, 1861), p. 249. -

5Journal of the Senate of the State of Michigan: Extra
Session of 1861 (Lansing: John A. Kerr & Co.,llBGl), p. 3.

118

of the southern states. Throughout the summer DeLand offered his
readers the latest telegraphic dispatches from the battle fronts.
The paper ceased publication in late August.*

It was the war that enabled DeLand to publish the daily.
But the thirty-three-year-old editor was not contented with having
reached the apex of his publishing career. To fight a verbal war
behind battle lines where men were dying for their beliefs was un-
thinkable. Reports of fierce struggles appeared regularly in his
columns, only to frustrate DeLand the more. It was clear that the
front lines of partisan conflict had moved from the pages of the
nation's newspapers to places such as Bull Run.

Consequently, in September DeLand turned his business over
to Peter J. Avery, a lawyer.6 He began raising his company of
troops and bade his readers farewell in a September 12 editorial.
"In thus bidding you adieu," he wrote, "we intend it should be a
final farewell. Not that we shall ever again resume the business
of printing or editing a newspaper--we hope and intend to be for—
ever excused therefrom."

Avery's first editorial, published in the same issue,

referred to the paper's change in management. "Its able and worthy

 

*DeLand wrote in his 1903 history that he published the
Daily Citizen from June to September. One extant copy of the paper,

however, indicates that he was probably publishing the daily in late
April. The issue is dated 9 May 1861, and is labeled "VOL. 1.," "NO.

19." The difference is attributable to the more than forty-year
time lapse between the time of publication of the daily and time
that DeLand sat down to write about it.

6
P. J. Avery and M. V. Bentley, second party, DeLand-Crary Papers.

Lease agreement between Charles V. DeLand, first party, and

119

editor has become a soldier; he has laid aside the pen which has so
long sparkled on the pages of this paper, and girded on the sword."
Avery saw the change, not as a reversal of occupations, but as a
move into a kindred work. "The Pen and the Sword," he wrote, "if

"0t twin-born, are strikingly alike."7

Other Editors Also Served

 

DeLand was not the only editor of Jackson County to exchange
the pen for the sword. Reuben S. Cheney was a first Lieutenant with
the Blair Cadets. He left Jackson the day before DeLand. For
several months he wrote colorful letters of military life and the
battle of Port Royal, South Carolina. He was later promoted to the
rank of captain. But in April 1862 he resigned his commission
because of ill health. DeWitt C. Smith served first with the Third
Cavalry and then with the Ninth Cavalry from September 7, 1861,
until his disability discharge three years later as a major. And
William W. VanAntwerp, who was to become co-owner of the Jackson
Patriot at the end of the war, was cited for gallant and meritorious
service in the Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia campaigns. He was
made a brevet major in the United States Volunteers.8

James O'Donnell, however, was probably the most lucid and

brilliant<yfthe editors who wrote of first-hand experiences. Born

 

7American Citizen, 12 September 1861.

8Jno. Robertson, comp., Michigan in the War (Lansing: W. 5.
George & Co., 1882), pp. 795, 932, 811 and 952.

120

on March 25, 1840, in Norwalk, Connecticut, he was brought to
Michigan by his parents in 1848. Until 1854 he worked in an east—
side grocery store in Jackson. Then he became an apprentice in the
Jackson Patriot office and remained there for two years. When the
apprenticeship was completed, he set out for the West and did not
return to Jackson until 1861.9

After Governor Blair issued his first call for troops in
April, O'Donnell was one of the first to enlist. His letter of

inquiry was received by then-captain William H. Withington:

Jackson Mich April 1861

To the officer member
of the Jackson Greys

I desire to become a member of your company and if
elected will conform to the constitution and by laws of

same. 10
James O'Donnell

On May 1 the twenty-one-year-old private and his unit joined
the First Infantry. By the end of the month, he wrote, the troops
had met the enemy. In a May 20 letter he described the previous
night's march out of Washington, D.C., into Alexandria, Virginia.
The letter reflects the youthful idealism common among soldiers

before they had engaged in major battles.

 

9DeLand, pp. 441-44; and American Biographical History of
Eminent and Self-Made Men: Michigan Volume (Cincinnati,thio:
Western Biographical Publishing Co., 1878), p. 76.

10James O'Donnell, letter dated April 1861, in Gen. William
H. Withington papers, Ella Sharp Museum.

121

The night was cool and pleasant, and the moon shone out
clear and bright upon the scene. You can imagine what

a splendid sight it was to see 3,000 bayonets glistening
in the moonlight, and to feel that those bayonets were
borne aloft by brave hands, to defend the glorious old
stars and stripes.H

In Alexandria, O'Donnell became the brigade printer. He and

a former Detroit Free Press employee printed the Sentinel, described

 

as a "good Union paper." The two newspapermen also were responsible

for printing regimental orders and bills.12

In late July the slaughter at Bull Run dulled the edge of
O'Donnell's battlefield idealism. Writing to G. S. Bouton, he
recalled some of the vivid scenes in his mind:

In the midst of the battle the field was terrible to look
at . . . the groans of the wounded and the piteous cries
for water were awful to hear . . . when on the field we
had a terrible thirst, and water, thick with mud, was
greedily drank. 13

O'Donnell revealed a coolness to the role of the press in
the same letter. He resented the public spurring of military com-
manders to reach their strategic goals. The commanders, who were
anxious to win public favor, sometimes went against military judg-
ment to do so. "If your people of the North would hush your cries

of 'Forward to Richmond,‘ etc, etc, you would render an inestemable
favor to the army," he wrote.14

11James O'Donnell, letter of 19 May 1861, quoted in Jackson
County, p. 345.

12True Citizen, 24 and 31 October 1861.

13James O'Donnell to G. S. Bouton, 25 July 1861, quoted in
Jackson County, p. 404.

14

 

 

Ibid.

122

The American Citizen Gets "a New Hat"

At the end of his three-month enlistment, O'Donnell was dis-
charged. He began work in DeLand's Citizen office and remained
there while recruiting for the regiment. In October the first of
several reorganizational changes was made. First the paper's name

was changed from the American Citizen to the True Citizen. "The

 

American Citizen with a new cap on its head" was Avery's description.
The former name had been adopted when being an American meant one was
loyal to the government, he explained. But the southern states'
rebellion had created "degrees of excellence." The new motto was
to be, "Our Whole Country Forever."15
The next change was the addition of a partner. M. V. Bent-
ley, who was to handle the business of the Citizeg had spent four
years with the Romeo Argus. Before that he was with the Albjgg_
Herald, O'Donnell was given the responsibility for the local news.
It appeared under the standing head "Local Matters."16
Politically the paper remained true to the Republican
Party. Avery, however, was not radical. He had nothing but con-
tempt for the "old Abolition Party." Of it he wrote: "Women's
rights men and the old abolition fogies, are a harmless set of old
noodles, whose one-idea frenzy never worked out anything nor ever

will, but nervous spasms in the poor creatures' systems."17

 

15True Citizen, 16 October 1861.

16Ibid., 19 December 1861.

17American Citizen, 10 October 1861.

123

A part of the reorganization involved the tentative estab-
lishment of a daily. DeLand's had lapsed with his departure in
September. Avery estimated that there were two hundred copies of
Detroit dailies being sold each day in Jackson. He challenged the
city fathers on the absence of a daily in the city. "Towns become
cities when a daily paper signalizes their municipal manhood, and
not before," he wrote.18

On December 12 the daily appeared. In his prospectus,
Avery cited three reasons for the venture: (1) postal delivery
schedules were delaying the arrival of the Detroit dailies; (2)
Jackson's importance in the state was only superseded by Detroit;
and (3) a daily would be good for Jackson property owners.

Grassroots support for the paper did not come, though.

In spite of daily telegraphic dispatches, rave reviews by other
editors, and a canvass of Jackson to determine the feasibility of
the venture, it failed in January. A notice appeared in the
Citizen on January 29 saying that all daily subscribers' names were

being transferred to the weekly subscription lists.19

First Reporter's Byline

 

Nevertheless, the influences of big-city journalism were
having their impact on Jackson. In February the first known

local reporter's byline appeared. It was over a long article by

 

18True Citizen, 21 November 1861.

191bid., 29 January 1862.

124

O'Donnell on the return of his former commanding officer, Capt.
William H. Withington. The officer had been captured at Bull Run
and was now back after months of imprisonment. A tri-level headline

went with the story and byline:

LIFE AMONG THE REBELS

 

Six Months a Prisoner of War

 

Narration of the Experiences of Capt. W. H. Withington

 

Reported for the Citizen by James O'Donnell20
The account included a background narrative and the story of
Withington's imprisonment as told before some seven hundred persons
in Jackson Hall. Avery placed the story on page one across six of
seven columns. Until O'Donnell's article, the reporter was an
unknown figure in Jackson journalism. The only signed articles were
occasional editorials. Stephen R. Fiske, a Civil War historian of

the press, described the situation in an 1863 magazine article:

Obscurity and oblivion are . . . the legitimate inheritance
of our modern reporters . . . Readers of newspapers remark:
"The Herald says so-and-so, this morning"; or else: "Mr.
Greeley has a fine article in to-day's Tribune" . . . In
both cases the fact that there is such a person as the
reporter is practically ignored. 21

 

20Ibid., 19 February 1862.

2IStephen R. Fiske, "Gentlemen of the Press," Harpers New
Monthly Magazine 26 (February 1863): p. 361.

125

The war had another effect on the press in Jackson County.
Initially, at least, there was an abeyance of partisan strife. Even

Wilbur F. Storey's Chicago Times supported the Lincoln administration

 

until the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. In Jackson, editors
believed it was their patriotic duty to support the war effort. But
by March 1862, nearly a year after the beginning of hostilities, the
patriotic fervor was wearing thin. Avery complained that "the truly
loyal citizen will consider patriotism everything--partisanism
nothing." Local Democrats, he charged, were "incapable of rising
above the most grovelling partisanship, or even of divesting them-

selves of sympathy for traitors."22

The Eagle--"National Not Partisan"

Almost as though in answer to Avery's complaint, Jackson's
readers were given an independent newspaper three days later. The

Jackson Eagle was started by Baxter L. Carlton and was to be "nation-

 

al not partisan." Carlton was born in West Middlebury, New York, on
June 3, 1839. He began his newspaper career at age thirteen. He
later worked for his brother Monroe, who established the Nile;
Enguirer in Michigan before the Civil War. In 1857 Baxter came to
Jackson. He worked for both the Patriot and Citizen. In 1861 he
helped DeLand publish the Daily Citizen. It was young Carlton's

job to get telegraphic reports from the Michigan Central Railroad

 

22True Citizen, 26 March 1862.

 

126

passenger station each morning.23

When Avery received his first copy of the Eagle, he commended
its editor:
We like this independence of the press of the vile partisan-
ship of the past; it is the only tenable position any honest
and patriotic paper can take . . . It certainly would have
indicated a very meagre intellect, had the editor tied the
Eagle to the tail of the kite of either the broken down so-

called democratic factions, to flutter in the wind for the
entertainment of the old hacks.24

In spite of his good intentions, however, Carlton would not
remain independent. A year later he was to be branded a "copperhead"
and worse. His opposition to the Republican administration and his
accusations against DeLand, his former boss, would bring partisan-
ship to its bitterest climax by the end of the war.

Soon after the Eagle_was established, there was another
change in the ownership of the Citizen. James S. DeLand, who once
before had owned part of the Citizen, now purchased Avery's interest.
He and Bentley thereby became co-partners. James DeLand had grown
up in the Citizen office under the editorial supervision of his
older brother Charles. At least part of the time he worked with
Carlton.

Immediately DeLand and Bentley changed the paper's name

again. It was now to be the Jackson Weekly Citizen. Its editors

promised, "This is the last change likely to occur in this

 

 

23Jackson County, p. 605; and Charles Moore, Histor of Mich-
igan, 5 vols. (Chicago, Ill.: Lewis Publishing Co., 1915), 2:878.
24True Citizen, 2 April 1862.

127

establishment for some time."25

James DeLand may not have been the
brilliant editor his brother was. But under his editorship the
Citizen again assumed some of the radical character for which it had
been known. When the "Black Democracy badly whipped" the Republicans
in spring city elections, James charged that "whiskey flowed pro-
fusely." His slighting reference to G. S. Bouton of the Patriot

was ". . . the cheap editor of the semi-secesh organ of this city."
But he generally ignored the Patriot and once apologized after
writing of the other paper. "We hope the semisecesh scribs up

street will pardon us for noticing anything they may have said or

done," he wrote.26

Captain DeLand Again Takes Up the Pen

Meanwhile, James' elder brother was keeping up a steady flow
of correspondence from the south. At first there was little mili-
tary action to report. Captain DeLand and his troops spent a cold
winter encamped at West Point, Kentucky, where the water "felt,
tasted and looked like mud." Measles was a problem and half of his
men were unfit for duty because of it. But, he added, "The only
accident recorded is the tearing of Lieut. Purdy's pants while
"27

spanning a ravine.

The captain and his men moved into Tennessee when spring

 

25True Citizen, 23 April 1862.

 

26Ibid.

271bid., 21 November 1861.

128

arrived. Headquarters was at Murfreesboro. There DeLand had his
first experience with the southern civilian populace. Sedition was
blatantly preached, he found. July Fourth was considered a "negro
holiday." And the only persons glad to see the federal troops were
the slaves. "We are surrounded on all sides with a set of perfect
demons," he wrote.28
While in Murfreesboro. Captain DeLand wearied of the local
press. In May he began investigating the possibility of starting
his own paper. Job printing costs were too high there. So he
borrowed some type and purchased paper from Louisville. Soon he
put out the first issue of the Union Volunteer. The Citizen later
reported that the captain "now preaches to the heathen 'secesh' on

"29 In his souvenir edi-

a paper printed by members of his company.
tion, DeLand wrote that he and the other company members "have
taken opportunity of the liesure moments from duty to publish this
modest sheet, to refresh the minds of friends at home, and to
awaken thought away in old Michigan . . . as an index of Yankee

enterprise."30

The paper served for part of the summer before
some heavy fighting dissipated the "moments of liesure" and thereby
caused the paper to cease.

One of the captain's recurring themes in letters to family

and friends was Wilbur F. Storey. The reason was twofold. For one

 

28Jackson Weekly Citizen, 30 April 1862.

 

291bid., 14 May 1862.

30Ibid., 21 May 1862.

129

thing, DeLand had a hatred for the "grand mogul of Michigan democ-
racy" that derived from Storey's Michigan days. Then too it was
impossible for any editor in the nation to ignore Storey's "fire in
the rear" brand of editorials. After reading one such piece, DeLand
warned, "When the people of Chicago and the West know Wilbur F.
Storey as we of Michigan do, they will believe not one word he may
write or say, as it relates to political matters."31

The captain was not alone in his comments on Storey. Jack-
son papers carried articles on the Chicago editor as frequently as
there was cause to do so, which was often. Even old Abe Spike Smith,
the homespun correspondent whose letters enlivened DeLand's ante-

bellum Citizen, was aroused enough to renew his correspondence. He

wrote to the Citizen, charging that

Latter day dimmerkrats in this part uv the world hev no
Bible morn the Chicago Times nor nuthin to swere by
except the fre pres nor nuthin tew lie by but the pat-
rot . . . I no these fellers and Storey tew, fur I was a
gud dimmerkrat onst but theyre so degraded now ime almost
a-shamed to own it. 32

On July 13 Captain DeLand's brief leadership of the Jackson
County Rifles came to an end. He was taken prisoner during a night
attack by confederate troops under the command of Gen. Nathan B.
Forrest. 'Col. William W. Duffield of the Ninth Regiment reported to
superiors that Captain DeLand deserved "especial notice for cool and

gallant conduct throughout the action, and the fearless manner in

 

3'True Citizen, 16 April 1862.

32Jackson Weekly Citizen, 9 July 1862.

 

130

which he led his company as skirmishers in pursuit of the enemy
when repulsed."33

Six days later, DeLand's parents still were unaware of his
capture. His mother began a letter with fond hopes that Governor
Blair might promote her son. "Father says you will not come [home]
at all unless the Govener [sic] gives you something higher than

Major.--we think you ought to have a Colonel's commission." At the

end of the letter, however, she abruptly added the following message:

0 Victor. I have just received the dreadful news that

you are all killed or captured--I do not know if you are
alive. I thought I could fly to you--must you lie in a

Southern Prison--may the Lord be with you and take care

of you wherever you are. 34

But the captain was not to remain for long in captivity. In
mid-October he was paroled from Libby Prison in Georgia. He arrived
back in Jackson just in time to address a large Republican campaign
rally in Jackson Hall. He told of the night attack in which he was
taken captive and of the months in prison. A year ago, he told his
audience, he had departed from Jackson a Republican. Tonight, he
added, he was an abolitionist.35

Just before the captain's return, there had been some move-

ment toward compromise and conciliation between Democrats and Repub-

licans. A new party was envisioned. It would seek only "loyalty

 

33Michigan in the War, p. 298.

 

34Mrs. Mary Deland to Charles V. DeLand, 19 July 1862, DeLand-
Crary Papers.

35Jackson Weekly‘Citizen, 22 October 1862.

 

131

and devotion to the Union."36

The Citizen facetiously christened
the party a "Surprise Party," since its demise was "surprisingly
near." "The Union Party," as the movement was called, fizzled after
the election. The Citizen said that Michigan had repudiated the

"fire in the rear unionism."37

Colonel of the Sharpshooters

Captain DeLand scarcely could have returned at a more oppor—
tune time. Governor Blair had just been asked by the War Department
to provide more troops. Blair asked DeLand to raise a regiment of
Sharpshooters in mid-November. By December the captain's exchange
was complete and he was promoted to the rank of colonel. On January

38 Always one to throw him-

1, 1863, he began raising the regiment.
self intensely into a task, DeLand poured two thousand dollars of
his own funds into the effort before recruitment was completed.
While in Jackson, the colonel spent some time working in his
old office. The short stay caused a brief furor. The incident
stemmed from an obituary the colonel wrote on the death of one of
his men with the Jackson County Rifles. A lawyer, who was related

to the young man, came into the Citizen office one day in February.

Seeing the colonel there, he asked that DeLand write the item.

 

36Jackson Weekly Citizen, 17 September 1862.

 

37Ibid., 5 November 1862.

38Ibid., 26 November 1862; also see Aaron T. Bliss, Record
of Service of Michigan Volunteers in the Civil War 1861-1865 vol. 44
(Kalamazoo: Ihling Bros. & Everhard, 1903), p. 27.

 

132

While DeLand was occupied doing so, the lawyer apparently picked up
a circular that was to be published the next day in the Citizen for

the Jackson County Republican Committee.39

The next day the circu-
lar was published instead in the Patriot, or, as the Citizen called
the Democratic paper, the "Jackass Patent." The incident itself
was minor. But it brought a fresh rash of anti-DeLand charges.
The chief accusation was that the colonel still owned the Citizen
and, as such, controlled what was published in it. A denial was
published in the Citizen. The colonel, retorted James DeLand, had
not owned "a single dollar in the office, nor has he since Sept. l,
1861."40

The controversy also brought the first of many charges that
the Patriot was a traitorous "Copperhead“ organ. In its discussion
of the term, the Citizen noted that a Copperhead strikes without
warning, seeks dark places (such as the "secret committee room of
the Diffusion Society”), and is called "chunkhead" because of its
thick skull. The Citizen concluded that "There is a remarkable fit-
ness in the name--let the traitors be called 'Copperheads.'"4]

After one such editorial, the Patriot replied that the ser-

pent Moses had lifted up in the wilderness for the healing of the

Israelites was probably a copperhead. The Citizen commented,

 

 

39Jackson WeeklyaCitizen, 11 February 1863.
401bid., 25 February 1863.
41

Ibid.

133

We shouldn't wonder. Moses was an old abolitionist, who
led his people out [sic] bondage; and if there were any
copperheads in those days, it would be just his style to
suspend them. We hope Abraham will follow his example,
and select the most brazen serpent of the modern copper-
heads and lift them upon a gibbet that the people may
look upon his righteous punishment [and be] healed.

Because Carlton had maintained his stated object of indepen-
dence in publishing the Eagle, there had been no major fights between
it and either the Patriot or Citizen. But in the spring of 1863 he
openly aligned himself with a political party. At the same time he
was pitted against a fellow newspaperman. It came about during the
city elections. O'Donnell was the Republican candidate for city
recorder; Carlton was the Democratic candidate for the same office.
The outcome was close. O'Donnell bested Carlton by fifteen votes--

537 to 522.43

It was the first public contest between the two; it
was not to be the last. It remained, however, for several events
of the next two years to entangle Carlton in a web of partisanship
from which he would not be able to extricate himself.

The first was Colonel DeLand's brief military exploit with
his Sharpshooters in July. Recruitment was nearly finished on the
seventh, and the regiment left Dearborn with about four hundred men.
DeLand's orders were to intercept Morgan's Raiders in southern

Indiana, where the rebel forces had been plundering the countryside.

From July 12-14 the Sharpshooters chased the larger rebel force from

 

42Jackson WeeklyaCitizen, 20 May 1863.

 

43Jackson County, p. 493.

134

one town to another. The raiders finally fled into Ohio and
escaped.44
The successful operation was lauded in the Republican press.
But the Patriot and Eagle_were cynical. The Eagle_said that DeLand's
method of showing gallantry was to capture an enemy's body servant,

'45 The

"provided he is an American citizen of African descent.‘
remark was in response to the Detroit papers' praise of the sharp-
shooters' capture of Morgan's servant, a black man. Furthermore,
the Eagle-charged, DeLand was the author of a series of articles
currently being published by the Citizen. The articles were un-
signed, but were said to be from the paper's Detroit correspondent.
They were critical of state Democrats. The Eagle also accused the
colonel of being involved in politics and of making "bitter partisan
speeches."46
Such charges were not unusual; DeLand had made many enemies
as an editor. But the Citizen's editors doubted that the Eagle's
charges had been penned by Carlton. Perhaps, they speculated, James

47 Wood was a Democrat

C. Wood was the real author of the editorial.
and had been Jackson's first mayor.
Soon both the Eagle and the Citizen were speculating about

who had written unsigned editorials in the other's paper. Carlton

 

44Michigan in the War, p. 544.

 

45Jackson Eagle, 25 July 1863.
46

 

Ibid., 1 August 1863.
47Jackson Weekly Citizen, 29 July 1863.

135

charged that, besides Bentley and James DeLand, several radical
Republicans were penning articles for the Citizen. Among those
named were Governor Blair, Seymour B. Treadwell and, of course, the
colonel.48
A denial appeared in the Citizen. Calling the Eagle's
charges "unjust and contemptible," the editors replied that the
colonel was back in Dearborn, "to the discomfiture of every Copper-
head in Michigan." And unless "unflinching loyalty to the flag,
and a cordial hatred to copperheadism can be called politics," the
editors argued, the colonel was not guilty of engaging in political

activity while a military officer.49

The DeLand-Storey Battle

The unnamed correspondent from Detroit suspected that the
sudden wave of anti-DeLand editorials might be a backlash against
the colonel by friends of Wilbur F. Storey.50

The possibility was not so far-fetched. One of the Citizen's
anonymous articles, which DeLand was accused of penning, described

Storey as a man

. who has not drawn a ure breath for many years,--
a man whose breath notorious y, has been mixed and
tainted and polluted with the breath of prostitutes and
abandoned women for a long time . . . a man who delights

 

48Jackson Eagle, 1 August 1863.

49Jackson Weekly Citizen, 29 July 1863.

501bid., 5 August 1863.

136

in editorial associates whose breaths are as tainted as
his own . . . From top to bottom--from man to monster
(excepting always printers) his establishment is one 5]
extensive cesspool of impurity, treason and immorality.

An incident the month before had been the immediate reason
for the above words. On June 3 Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside, commander
of the Department of Ohio (which included troops in Illinois),

ordered Storey's Chicago Times shut down. The action followed

 

months of editorials in which Storey all but advocated the over-
throw of the government. President Lincoln ordered Burnside's
order rescinded after two days.

Reaction to the suppression was especially acute in Jackson.
“Had Gen. Burnside . . . suppressed 'Wilbur F. Storey,'" suggested
the Citizen, "we believe the pareat root of Copperheadism would have
been severed and then the branch would naturally die." The Citizen
did not, however, advocate muzzling the press. The matter should
have been decided in the courts, the editors opined. "Who will say
that the multiplied provocations did not demand the heroic remedy to
which he [Burnside] resorted?"52

Such suggestions angered local boosters of the Iimea and
might have been a contributing factor to the anti-DeLand articles.
If not, then the colonel soon provided sufficient fuel for the fiery
criticism.

On August 16 the Sharpshooters, by now at full strength,

 

5'Jackson Weekly Citizen, 22 July 1863.

521bid., 20 June 1863.

 

137

were ordered to Camp Douglas outside Chicago.53

DeLand was appointed
commandant of the camp, which was to lodge several thousand rebel
prisoners. His predecessor had been delegated with the responsibil-

ity of padlocking the Chicago Times' offices in June.

 

The sharpshooters arrived on Monday evening, August 17.
Storey immediately sent a reporter to get the regiment's roster for
publication. The newsman was unable to get the list; it was the
first of several obstacles to Storey's newsgathering.54 In the next
few days, more than three thousand prisoners, mostly from Morgan's
Raiders, were interned in the camp. On August 21 Colonel DeLand
established martial law. Nearly a week later the Iimea reported one

result of the action:

DeLand, not he of saleratus notoriety, but an article thus
named, and temporarily in command of Camp Douglas, near
this city, has excluded THE CHICAGO TIMES from circulation
in this camp, while permitting the abolition newspapers of
the city free circulation. It (DeLand) was formerly editor
of an unknown sheet in Jackson, Michigan, and obsequious in
performing the dirty work for Blair, the abolition Governor
in that State and a resident of that village, whence its
commission and title of Colonel.

Will General Ammen please instruct it to the effect
that soldiers shall be permitted to make their own selec-
tions of newspapers? We regret that we are compelled to
trouble him with this request, but this fledgling, who is
as guiltless of active service in the field as it is desti-
tute of capacity, is annoying the soldiers by its "fantastic
tricks" in its new office of censor. 55

Back in Jackson Carlton quoted the editorial almost verbatim.

 

53Michigan in the War, p. 544.

54Chicago Times, 19 August 1863.

 

55Ibid., 27 August 1863.

138

He observed that "charging upon the newsboys is less damaging than
charging on the rebels."56
This was not the first, nor was it the last, time that the
Iime§_was similarly prevented from circulating. In January the
Chicago Board of Trade had banned the paper from its reading room
and Iimea reporters from the building. In February Gen. Stephen A.
Hurlbut forbade the sale of the paper in the Department of Tennessee.
The Iime§_also was not allowed to be distributed along the Galena

and Chicago Union Railroad.57

 

Storey's diatribe did little good; the paper was still not
allowed in Camp Douglas a month later. And Time; reporters found
they were unwelcome at the camp, while abolition reporters were
given special privileges.58

In mid-September there began appearing a series of articles

on the camp. Among the headlines were these:

AFFAIRS AT CAMP DOUGLAS

 

Extraordinary Disclosures Concerning
the Attempts of Prisoners to
Escape

 

The Guards Bribed

 

56Jackson Eagle, 29 August 1863.

57Walsh, p. 170.

58Chicago Times, 14 September 1863.

 

 

 

 

139

Colonel DeLand was accused of "extraordinary peculiarities"
in his management of the camp. "Does the commandant of the camp
find his position a great pecuniary success?" asked the Iimeg,
Guards were said to permit escapes for a bribe; when the escapee
got outside the camp, however, another guard privy to the scheme
would arrest him, the Iime§_said. There were other "exposes" of
homosexuality between a guard and a Negro, "A DARING EXPLOIT" in
which twenty-four Confederate prisoners tunneled under the prison
walls, "Alleged Atrocious Treatment of Prisoners," and "A DISAS-
TROUS CONFLAGRATION" in which the north part of the camp was

destroyed by fire.59

At least some of the charges were later shown ‘
to be false; Storey claimed that his reporters had been fed false
information by abolition papers interested in discrediting the Iimeg.
DeLand and Storey almost certainly never met while DeLand
was at the camp. They despised each other too much for such civil-
ities. Their confrontation, however, had all the elements of high
drama. DeLand--his sense of personal power strengthened by a full
regiment of men--stood as a monolith against the paragon of Copper—
head journalism. And Storey--his unlimited sense of civil liberty
affronted--demanded as a petulent child the restoration of his

paper to free distribution in the camp. It was a case of two

immovable objects meeting head-on. Storey was rarely thwarted in

 

59Chicangimes, 14 September, 18 October, 15 November, and
5 December 1863.

 

 

140

his deliberate goal, which was "to print the news, and raise hell."60
DeLand was described by his daughter as "forceful, often vindictive
. and absolutely fearless in attacking what he considered detri-

"51 If Wilbur F. Storey ever met an

mental to the general welfare.
editor-foe equal to his own tough obstinacy, that man was Charles V.
DeLand.

The Iimeg gained further notoriety in Jackson through the
Camp Douglas episode. Carlton was criticized for failing to repudi--
ate the Chicago paper. The Citizen named the Ijmg§_"patron saint"
for the Copperheads and said, "We leave [Carlton] crawling on his

62 Furthermore,

belly, in the coppery slime of his superiors."
claimed the Citizen, Carlton had betrayed his independence by accept-
ing money for a new press from pro-slavery forces. "We submit, that
as Judas Iscariot received only thirty pieces of silver for betray-
ing the Savior, you have received too much for turning traitor to
your country's cause, though you have done about the dirtiest work
a newspaper ever descended to."63
There was little said of the Patriot. The Citizen's editorial

policy toward the other paper had been summed up the previous year,

 

60Catlin, "Little Journeys . . .", p. 521; and William Stock-
ing, "Prominent Newspaper Men in Michigan," Michigan Pioneer and
Historical Collections 39 (Lansing, 1915): p. 156.

61Mrs. W. F. Clarke, in article for a special edition of the
Jackson Citizen Patriot published on the seventy-fifth anniversary of
the founding of the Republican Party, 7 July 1929.

62Jackson Weekly Citizen, 12 December 1863.

 

63Ibid., 23 December 1863.

141

when it had apologized for having anything at all to say of the
Patriot. Rarely did it break that policy. When the Patriot called
on the president for "Light to guide us out of the great darkness,"
the Citizen suggested that the paper rather call on Jefferson Davis.
"Father Abraham has no hand in your darkness and can give you no
light, except the legal light of LIBERTY, which your benighted soul

can't appreciate."64

Neither was there mention of a change in
ownership at the Patriot. The Bouton brothers sold their interest
in the paper to J. W. Higgs and a man named Chapin. The new
editors were to publish the paper through July 1865.65

Early in 1864 the Bentley-DeLand editorial team announced it
was giving up the Citizen. James DeLand joined his brother's sharp-
shooters and was to go through some of the fiercest fighting of the
war. He and Bentley sold the paper to J. H. McCauley of Chambers-
burg, Tennessee.66 For the next few weeks, however, the paper was
to be under the supervision of O'Donnell. McCauley was said to be
involved in business that would keep him from Jackson for a month.

In the interim O'Donnelland Carlton carried on a bitter feud.
In response to one attack on him, O'Donnell called Carlton "a con-
temptible liar and a dirty scoundrel! This is personal. We may be

found at the office from seven in the morning till six in the evening."67

 

64Jackson Weekly Citizen, 23 December 1863.

65Jackson County, p. 422.

66Jackson Weekly Citizen, 13 January 1864.

671bid., 10 February 1864.

 

142

When McCauley arrived in Jackson, it was only to publish the
Citizen for a few weeks. By May 28 the Citizen's publisher was
listed as O'Donnell. McCauley announced at his departure that cir-

cumstances had forced hhn to abandon his editorial plans.68

The Colonel Becomes a Casualty

Meanwhile, Colonel DeLand's troops had found camp duty to be
tedious. When they would be engaged in battles with the enemy, they
were spending all their time guarding prisoners. On March 8 the

Detroit Advertiser and Tribune reported that the colonel had requested
69

 

a change from the monotony. The request was approved and the
sharpshooters left Chicago on March 17 for Annapolis, Maryland.

Soon monotony was dissipated. From May 5-14 the sharp-
shooters were engaged in heavy fighting in the Battle of the Wilder-
ness and at Spottsylvania Courthouse. More than a hundred of them
were wounded and thirty-four were killed. Four more were reported
missing.70

Rumors soon began to filter back to Jackson. The colonel
was said to be among the wounded. He had been struck down twice on
May 12, a day described in one military report as a "fearful and

bloody day." Capt. Levant C. Rhines, one of the company commanders,

 

68Jackson Weekly Citizen, 18 May 1864.

69Detroit Advertiser and Tribune, 8 March 1864, cited in
Helen H. Ellis, A Guide to the Material in Detroit Newapapers 1861-
1866 (Lansing: Michigan Civil War Centennial Observance Commission,
1865), p. 221. ‘ ' ‘ ” '

70Michjgan in the War, p. 545.

 

 

143

assumed command.

On June 17 Rhines was fatally wounded before Petersburg.
Before his death, however, he sent a letter to friends back home.
The letter, part of which was published in the Patriot and Eagle,
included some bitter words. Rhines alleged that Colonel DeLand
"left in the hour of battle, and never returned except to look _
over the brow of a hill, about 30 yards in the rear of the regi-
ment."71 The letter was the more poignant because Rhines had been
buried in Spring Arbor two weeks before the letter was published.72

Carlton couched the dead officer's words within a caustic
editorial about the colonel. He proposed what was termed "COL.

DeLand's Last Speech!" It was: "I had rather be a LIVING COWARD
than a DEAD HERO!"73 To make matters worse for the colonel, the

 

'71Jackson Patriot, quoted in Jackson Eagle. 15 July 1854-

72Jackson Weekly Citizen, 5 July 1864.

73Jackson Eagle, 16 July 1864; see Appendix A for full text
of editorial; also see The War of the Rebellion. Official Records
of the Union and Confederate Armies v61. 36, series 1, part 1 (Wash-
ington, D.C." Government Printing Office), pp. 972-975, for DeLand's
official report. It was dated May 26, 1864, and was written in a
Washington hospital where the officer was being treated for battle
wounds. It is understandable, given the confusion of the battle of
May 12, that Captain Rhines might have assumed that the colonel fled
the field during a crucial charge. The colonel reported that he was
granted permission from the commanding general to retire from the
field at the end of the day. At 8 p.m., however, a charge was
ordered, and the colonel reported that he joined his men as it was
being readied. Amidst "murderous fire" the men advanced rapidly.
The colonel was struck down twice by shells. For two days he
remained in command before his wounds became too painful to bear.
Permission was granted for him to go to a hospital, which he did.
Later, when the colonel's absence was the subject of a military com-
mission's probe, rumors held that he was charged with cowardice,
which he never was.

 

 

144

Eagle_reported that Deland was to be tried by court-martial for
being absent from his unit over sixty days.

O'Donnell showed more restraint. "We cannot join with the
Patriot and the Eagla_in their efforts to prejudge the case of Col.
DeLand," he wrote. Both papers were engaging in outright specula-
tion, he added. The colonel was no longer a political official; nor
was he associated with the party press. The speculation might well
wound the feelings of the officer's family besides.74

And yet O'Donnell was not against publishing the facts,
hard though they be, when punishment was merited. One of DeLand's
relatives, Capt. Hooker A. DeLand, had been found guilty of leaving
his company of sharpshooters at Spottsylvania and again at North
Anna. O'Donnell published the general order itemizing the captain's
punishment: he was to be cashiered with the loss of pay and allow-
ances, his shoulder straps and buttons cut off, his sword broken
before his regiment, and he was to be confined to hard labor at the
Dry Tortugas.75

As to the colonel's case, observed O'Donnell, "If he shall
be found guilty of the charge of cowardice, he has no friend in
this community who would seek to screen him from punishment."76

Carlton's obloquy continued in his next issue as he answered

O'Donnell's arguments. Calling the colonel a "conceited,

 

74Jackson Weekly Citizen, 20 July 1864.

 

75Ibid.

76Ibid.

145

small-minded blackguard," he wrote, I'DeLand, for years, has abused
and villified every prominent political opponent in this county.
Did he regard the feelings of their family and friends? Not in the
least." Carlton added that he had not printed anything about the
matter until the rumors had been widespread.77
On July 27, both DeLand brothers were in the news. James

had been breveted second lieutenant for meritorious service. He

had been wounded on July 11 in the trenches before Petersburg.

 

The colonel, it had just been learned, had been hospitalized in
Washington, D.C., Fredericksburg, and Annapolis with his wounds

78 What no one in Jackson knew yet was that the

from Spottsylvania.
colonel had by this time returned to his regiment, stood court-
martial, and been acquitted of the charge. Three days later rumors
of the acquittal reached Jackson. "We trust he will wipe out his
cowardly conduct by brave acts," wrote Carlton.79
On July 30 the acquittal was officially approved. The same
day, the colonel was again wounded, this time during an assault
before Petersburg, where the regiment was entrenched. It was not
until several days later that news of either event reached Jackson.
When it did, it came by letter from the colonel. Lying flat on his

back with artillery fire overhead, he penned a short letter to

O'Donnell, copying his exoneration on the back:

 

77Jackson Eagle, 23 July 1864.

 

78Jackson Weekly Citizen, 27 July 1864.

 

79Jackson Eagle, 30 July 1864.

 

 

146

War Dept.
Adjud. General's Office
Washington, D.C., July 30, 1864

Sir:

The proceedings of the Military Commission instituted
by General Orders No. 33, Headquarters 3rd Division, 9th
Army Corps, in the case of Col. C. V. DeLand of your Reg—
iment has been examined and approved by the Secretary of
War.

Thomas M. Vincent, Major, 80
Assistant Adjutant General

In his letter, DeLand wrote that "the whole thing is now
clear, clean & settled. All there is left of the slander is Gov.

n81 He

Blair's opinion that I drink, swear & spree it too strong.
mentioned the July 30 fight, explaining that his men "got nicely
whipped--that's the English of it." The wound he had received was
a "pretty hard scrape" that trimmed his sidewhiskers a bit. But
the colonel was not half so disturbed about the battles before
Petersburg as he was over the trouble in Jackson. "I am going to

prosecute the Eagle and Patriot," he wrote. "Lying has got to stop

in Jackson. They must back up all_they say or back square down, or
82

 

fight. The thing has gone too far for a joke."

 

8OCol. Charles V. DeLand to James O'Donnell, [early] August
1864, DeLand-Crary Papers. .

811bid. The breach between Blair and DeLand continued after
the war. When Blair deserted the Republican Party in 1872, DeLand
wrote a caustic letter to him. In it he congratulated the former
governor for the verdict the people of Michigan had rendered on his
"unmitigated lies," a reference to Blair's failure in the general
election. See Charles V. DeLand to Austin Blair, 7 November 1872,
DeLand-Crary Papers.

82DeLand to O'Donnell.

147

There was good reason for such worry. Even the publication
of the colonel's exoneration did not settle the matter. Carlton
argued that several returning soldiers from the sharpshooters con-
firmed that DeLand was a coward. The court-martial only cleared him
with the support of three or four officers, he alleged. "We do not
believe he will ever return to Jackson."83 .

Carlton was partly correct. DeLand did not return to Jack-
son for several years. After the war he moved to Saginaw, where he
published newspapers and participated in political activities until
the early 18805. Then he returned to the newspaper he helped estab-
lish in 1849. For the rest of the century he was an editorial
writer with the Citizen.

The excoriation of the colonel during the Civil War was the
low point of twenty-five years of the partisan press in Jackson
County. Never had such a sustained effort been made to discredit a
public figure. Without relying on verified reports, rumors from the
battle front were published with the most severe denunciations of
the colonel. His most bitter pill must have been to be in a posi-
tion in which no speedy response could be made to the charges. For
years he had answered epithet with epithet. The best he was able to
do while a military officer was to maintain a steady correspondence
with his Republican editorial friends.

At the end of the summer of 1864 he was again captured. He

was exchanged early in 1865. James, his brother, had been severely

 

83Jackson Eagle, 6 August 1864.

148

wounded in the arm and was hospitalized in Washington, D. C. There
the colonel kept a bedside vigil for weeks as James recovered.

During the recovery period Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. Colonel
DeLand, his partisan spirit undimmed, wrote home that "Slavery, trea-
son and the Democratic party all died & were cursed and eternally
damned with that fatal shot at that fatal hour when Lincoln was made

from a man into a martyr."84

The End of Hostilities

 

After the assassination, a whole new era shaped the press

of Jackson County into a mold of relative independence. O'Donnell
had accomplished in the spring of 1865 what most of his predecessors
had wanted--the establishment of a full-size, viable newspaper pub-
lished daily. It was to last this time. More than any other editor,
O'Donnell escorted the local press out of the age of partisanship
into a modern age. If the new look was somewhat sensational--well,
that was another problem. Political motives ceased, however, to be
the prime reason for publishing a Jackson paper. O'Donnell urged
his readers to provide more local news:

A shocking murder, a heart-rending calamity, a daring

robbery, two or three rows, a destructive fire, several

cases of drunkenness, a base seduction, a number of acci-

dents, another elopement, some public improvements, la-

mentable suicide, heavy defalcation, more pocket-picking,

a few puffs, and some correspondence . . .--Can't someone

get up an excitement and give us a chance to entertain
our readers with the full particulars? 85

 

84Charles V. DeLand to Mr. and Mrs. William R. DeLand, 19
April 1865, DeLand-Crary Papers.

85Jackson Daily Citizen, 15 April 1865.

149

The old invectives continued in common use for months as the
bitterness of the war remained. Republicans accused Democratic
"Copperheads" of bringing about the president's death. "It is a
cold-blooded charge," responded Carlton. There were likewise
divisions over the hanging of the conspirators. O'Donnell wrote,
"Madly have they sown the wind; now let them reap the whirlwhind."86
Carlton argued, "No refined person can have any sympathy with the
head and heart that can sanction such brutality."87

But even in the midst of the post-war turmoil, editors began
to compete on more of a business level than an ideological one.
O'Donnell argued the merits of going to his office for job printing
rather than to the Eagle's. Six power presses were running day and
night with four men to a press, he noted. The Daily Citizen was
said to be the second largest daily in the state outside of Detroit.
To lure business advertisements and subscribers, the Citizen carried
the "full particulars" of a shocking adultery court case in May.

In the fall the diary of John Ransom, former Citizen compositor
imprisoned at Andersonville during the war, began appearing in
article form. O'Donnell described his paper as "Republican in
principle, not violently partizen, but firm and independent in
tone." He added that he hoped to merit the respect of all.88

Whatever minor differences had kept the Eagle and Patriot

apart were dissolved after the war. Early in 1866 Carlton and

 

86Jackson Daily_Citizen, 21 April 1865.
87Jackson Eagle, 15 July 1865.
88Jackson Daily Citizen, 29 and 30 May, 17 October 1865.

 

150

William W. VanAntwerp, the Patriot's new editor, had a brief feud

over a fire that nearly burned the Eagla_office to the ground.

Then as suddenly as the feud had developed, it was over. The two

editors consolidated their papers and became partners of the Jagk;

son Patriot. It was entirely a business move. Carlton announced

to his readers that his sole concern was that the Democratic reader-

ship not be split.89
What Jackson County editors were realizing was expressed by

James Parton in a North American Review article published about the

same time as the Eagle-Patriot merger. He wrote,

. . The mere fact that a newspaper supports a political
party in its editorial columns does not materially injure
its business, provided its partisanship is not allowed to
invade or influence the news. But every journalist knows
that the party aims of an editor do usually injure and
limit his paper as a vehicle of news. 90

Partisan journalism in Jackson County is the story of noble
goals and ignoble failure. Even as editors tried to avoid "that
vile invective," they were drawn into its swirling vortex. Person-
alities inevitably became involved; reputations were smeared and
assassinated. Editors grew obtuse and incapable of responding to
reason when it violated their ironclad beliefs. Principles were
the external justifications for the most outragedus personal

attacks; selfish ambition was often the true reason. Perhaps it

 

89Jackson Eagle, 10 March 1866.

 

90James Parton, I'The New York Herald," North American Review
102 (April 1866): p. 409.

 

151

was historical justice that the vituperative disposition of a
generation of editors was largely spent by the end of the war. By

pen and the sword, many issues of the past had been fatally wounded.

APPENDICES

Appendix A

Editorial on "Colonel DeLand" from B. L. Carlton's
Jackson Eagle, 16 July 1864*

Our readers, of course, are acquainted with the gallant Col.
DeLand! He was once the editor and proprietor of the Citizen. He
was always remarkably brave and patriotic! So brave and patriotic,
indeed, that the Republicans elected him a Senator from this county.
The ability and wisdom which he displayed in the State Senate, and
his great talent as an editor, have only been excelled by his
military exploits!

The gallant Colonel first distinguished himself, as Captain,
by being taken prisoner at Murfreesborough. So gallant was he on
the surrender, that the eagles were placed on his shoulders, and he
was soon thereafter commanding the First Michigan Sharpshooters. In
that honorable position, he again covered himself with glory, by
causing an old man at Dearborn to be seized, insulting and abusing
him, compelling him to take the oath of allegiance, and then writing
to the Citizen a glowing account of the glorious transaction! He
next distinguished himself by getting in sight of the Morgan raiders,
and--by a brilliant strategical combination-~seizing a poor darkey,
bringing him home in triumph, and declaring that it was Morgan's body
servant. This achievement he duly glorified in the columns of the
Citizen. He next distinguished himself at Camp Douglas, by suppres-
sing the Chicago Times within the camp, and threatening to gobble up
the editor and other Democrats, and try them as he did the old man
at Dearborn. He smelt gunpowder ahead, however, and his nerves
refused to perform the work!

We next hear of this brave officer in the Army of the Poto-
mac. His regiment is drawn up in the line of battle qgite a distance

 

*

The editorial given here in its entirey is perhaps the most
extreme example of partisan journalism found in Jackson newspapers
before 1966. Its use here is illustrative; it is not intended as
evidence of cowardice in the case of Colonel DeLand. As was noted
in the body of this study, the charge against him was dismissed by a
military commission. Neither is the editorial intended to slant the
integrity of Baxter L. Carlton. Both men lived to spend many years
of productive life in Jackson after the bitterness of the war.

152

153

in the rear! The gallant Colonel, overflowing with patriotism,
steps in front of his command, draws his sword and holds it in one
hand, and the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution in
the other, and with a clear musical voice serenely repeats a portion
of his speech in the Senate in 1861, as follows:

"When the two sections"--North and South--"do meet in such
conflict, I would present the sword in one hand, and holding in
the other the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, I
would say, SUBMIT OR DIE!"

The hurrahs of his brave boys had hardly died away, and the
Colonel had scarcely sheathed his sword and pocketed the Declaration
of Independence and the Constitution, when an orderly from Gen.
Wilcox directed him to move his regiment immediately to the front.
The rebels were hard pressing us and assistance was needed to repel
the insolent foe.

This unlooked for event took away the breath of the eloquent
Colonel, but recovering somewhat he gave the order to advance, and
the regiment sprang forward with a cheer, led by----Major Rhines!
The gallant Colonel was left behind with chattering teeth and trem-
bling knees, and a feeling of general "goneness" pervading his
entire system. The actual amount of bravery exhibited by him on
this occasion may be determined by the following letter from Major
Rhines taken from the Patriot of this week:

 

Army of the Potomac, May 21, 1864.

At present I am in command of the regiment, COL. DELAND
HAVING LEFT IN THE HOUR OF BATTLE, and never returned, except to
look over the brow of a hill, about thirty_rods in the rear of the

regiment!

Since the foregoing letter was written Major Rhines has
fallen with his face to the foe, bravely defending the flag of our
common country. Where is DeLand? "That sword," we presume, is in
the hands of Gen. Wilcox, and the sneaking poltroon who dishonored
it, is probably lying about Washington, drawing his pay. He expects
that Chandler will clear him of the charges of cowardice.

 

It is with mortification that we are compelled to publish
these facts. DeLand has not only disgraced the county but the State.
The Michigan Sharpshooters were a fine body of men but they had no
confidence in their Colonel. They knew him to be an insolent
braggard.

This case is one among ten thousand which demonstrates that
these noisy and abusive politicians are contemptible cowards. No
one in the State, unless it be the editors of the Advertiser and
Tribune of Detroit, has been more abusive of Democrats--stigmatizing
them as cowards, copperheads and traitors--than this same Col. De-
Land. Not many months since, it is said, he boasted he had six
hundred bayonets ready to pierce the hearts of Northern copperheads.

154

It is only such poltroons that use such language. A brave and loyal
man scorns such insolent swagger. It belongs only to the man who
seeks to cover up his cowardice by the abuse of others.

We are not disappointed in DeLand. His position was obtained
not because he possessed any merit, but in consequence of his doing
the dirty work of a political clique in this city. He has been of
no service whatever to the country, and has been kept out of danger
as long as possible to advance party interests. Such men are loud
in their professions of patriotism, boast of their prowess in pub-
lic places, and are on the sick list, or behind some tree or hill,
in the hour of danger. These perilous times are showing them up,
and when they find their level, Lincoln and his parasites, will be
cordially despised by the entire people.

Excitement and extremes throw into power just such men--
weak, vascillating, cowardly and corrupt. The return to sanity by
the people will as suddenly hurl them from power. But the injury
they have inflicted upon the county can never be repaired.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Collections and Papers

DeLand-Crary Papers. Michigan Historical Collection, Bentley
Library, University of Michigan.
Contains some of the most valuable letters, documents
and photographs relating to C01. C. V. DeLand. His Civil
War letters are especially notable.

DeLand family papers and photographs. Gaylord DeLand of Napoleon.
These items are primarily those relating to James S.
DeLand, the colonel's younger brother.

Dorrance family papers and photographs. George Dorrance of Jackson.

Frank, Kitty. Manuscript history and chronology of Jackson news-
papers. Jackson Public Library.
Miss Frank, daughter of a Jackson Patriot editor of the
turn of the century, has researched city directories and
other sources for her compilation.

 

George W. Clark Papers. Michigan Historical Collection, Bentley
Library, University of Michigan.
This is the only known collection of Clark memorabilia.
It consists of newspaper and magazine clippings pasted on
the pages of Clark's subscription book for the Michigan
Temperance Herald.

 

Historical Document File. Jackson Citizen Patriot library.
Contains a reprOduction ofithe earliest known issue of
the Jacksonburngentinel and several original copies of the
Jackson Citizen.

Jackson County Newspaper File. Jackson County Library.
Besides clippings pertinent to the subject, the file has
a listing of all known county newspapers and the locations
of their back files.

Jackson (City) Newspaper File. Jackson Public Library.

Includes a typewritten copy of the biographical sketch
of Seymour B. Treadwell.

156

157

Treadwell Family Papers. Michigan Historical Collection, Bentley
Library, University of Michigan.

Dozens of letters from and to Seymour B. Treadwell are
contained in these papers. Some relate to his decision to
edit the American Freeman; others provide insight into his
activities with the Liberty Party.

 

William H. Withington file. Ella Sharp Museum Archives.
Of special interest is a letter of enlistment from
James O'Donnell written to "the officer member of the
Jackson Greys."

William W. VanAntwerp military records. Civil War file. Ella
Sharp Museum Archives.

Historical Works

 

American Biographical History_of Eminent and Self-Made Men: Michigan
Volume. Cincinnati, Ohio: Western Biographical"Publishing
Co., 1878.

Carleton, Monroe G. The Lineage of the Carletons. Grass Lake,
Mich., 1896.

This work was written by Baxter L. Carlton's elder
brother (who, by the way, preferred the additional "e" in
the last name). The book includes pictures of a middle-aged
Baxter Carlton and his Jackson home.

 

Catlin, George B. The Story of Detroit. Detroit: Detroit News, 1923.

 

Coggeshall, William T. The Newspaper Record. Philadelphia, Pa.:
Lay & Brother, 1856.

 

DeLand, Col. Charles V. History of Jackson County. Jackson, Mich.:
B. F. Bowen, 1903.
The colonel's history is rich in personal recollections.
But it suffers from name and date errors. Since the work
was written mostly from memory in the final years of the
colonel's life, the errors are understandable.

de Tocqueville, Alexis. Democragy in America. 2 vols. Trans. by
Henry Reeve with reviSion by Francis Bowen. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1946.

0011, Louis W. A Historypof the Newspapers of Ann Arbor 1829-1920.
Detroit: Wayne State UniversityEPress, 1959.

 

158

Dorrance, Albert A. The Dorrance Family in the United States.
Coldwater, Mich.: W. C. Bailey, 1901.

Farmer, Silas. The History of Detroit and Michigan. Detroit:
Silas Farmer 8*Co., 1884.

Foreman, Edward R., comp. Publican Fund Series no. 6. Rochester,
N. Y.: Rochester Historical Society, 1927.
Provides some information on the career of Daniel D.
T. Moore, editor of the Michigan State Gazette and Michigan
Farmer in the early 18405.

 

Formisano, Ronald P. Mass Political Parties: Michigan 1827-1861.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971.

Since Formisano relied heavily upon contemporary news-

paper accounts, his study was particularly useful. There

are frequent references to Jackson editors and newspapers.

Haney, Bill. From Spirit Lake to Grass Lake. Grass Lake, Mich.:
New Press, 1971.
Contains a popular and absorbing account of the rail-
road conspiracy trial. Undocumented.

Hirschfeld, Charles. The Great Railroad Conspiracy. The Michigan
State College Press, 1953.
Hirschfeld is the recognized authority on the rail war
and conspiracy trial. Fully documented, his work provides
a look at the efforts of Wilbur F. Storey and Charles V.
DeLand to soothe tempers and assuage bitterness after the
trial.

History_of Jackson County. Chicago: Inter-State Publishing Co.,
1881.
More accurate than DeLand's history. It was written
after extensive interviews with pioneers.

 

Lanman, Charles. The Red Book of Michigan. Detroit: E. B. Smith
& Co., 1871.

Livingstone, William. History of the Republican Part . 2 vols.
Detroit: Wm. Livingstone, publisher, 1900.
An important source about editors' involvement in the
forming of the Republican Party.

McMurtrie, Douglas C. Early Printing_jn Michigan 1796-1850.
Chicago: John Calhoun Club, 1931.
Contains some minor errors in the section on Jackson
newspapers. It is useful, however, in tracing transient
editors from one paper to another.

159

Moore, Charles. History of Michigan. 4 vols. Chicago: Lewis
Publishing Co., 1915.

Mott, Frank Luther. American Journalism. New York: The Macmillan
Co., 1941; rev. ed., 1950.

 

Pilcher, Elijah H., D. D. Protestantism in Michigan. Detroit:
R.D.S. Tyler & Co., 1878.
Rev. Dr. Pilcher was one of the earliest clergymen to
preach in Jackson. His recollections of village life are
colored by a radical temperance viewpoint.

 

Portrait and Bipgraphical Album of Jackson County. Chicago:
Chapman Bros., 1890.

Salmon, Lucy M. The Newspaper and the Historian. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1923.

 

Starr, Louis M. Reporting the Civil War. Introduction by Allan
Nevins. New York: Crowell-Collier Publishing Co., 1954;
Collier Books, 1962.

Stocking, William, ed. Under the Oaks. Detroit: Detroit Tribune,
1904.

Streeter, Floyd Benjamin. Political Parties in Michigan 1837-1860.
Lansing: Michigan Historical Commission, 1918.
Numerous references to editors show the close partisan
relationships that existed between editors and party leaders.

Walsh, Justin E. To Print the News and Raise Hell! Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1968.
The exhaustive research evident in this study of Storey's
life was an invaluable tool in taking a closer look at his
Jackson career.

 

Interviews and Letters

 

Crary, Hon. Robert Jr. Thirteenth District Court, Jackson, Mich.
Interview, 29 September 1975.
The judge is a descendent of the DeLand family through
marriage. He was able to provide several leads and family
stories told of Colonel DeLand.

DeLand, Gaylord. Napoleon, Mich. Interview, 18 September 1975 and
31 July 1976.
Gaylord DeLand is the grandson of the colonel's brother
James. He is probably the closest familial link to the
brothers. Besides offering his knowledge of the family, he

160

permitted the perusal of family papers and photographs in
his keeping.

Frank, Kitty. Jackson Public Library. Multiple interviews, 1975-76.

Harrington, Fred 8. Personal letter, December 1975.
Mr. Harrington's father was a contemporary of Wilbur F.
Storey.

Rohrabacher, Mrs. Albert. Personal letters, 18 August and 23 Septem-
ber 1975.
Mrs. Rohrabacher offered more clues to the Howell career
of Nicholas Sullivan than could be followed for this study.

Schmottman, Mrs. Lois C. Jackson, Mich. Interviews, 1976.
Mrs. Schmottman recalled her uncle, Baxter L. Carlton,
with vividness. She permitted some rare family papers and
photographs to be examined at length.

Magazines and Periodicals

Applegate, Tom S. "A History of the Press of Michigan." Michi an
Pioneer and Historical Collections 6 (Lansing, 1883): 62-98.

Bishop, Levi. "Recollections of the Patriot War of 1838-39 [1837-38]
on the Frontier." Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections

 

12 (Lansing, 1908): 414-424.

"Branch County Pioneer Sketches: A. A. Dorrance." Goldwater Courier,
12 February 1908.

 

Catlin, George B. "Little Journeys in Journalism." Michigan History
10 (Lansing, 1926): 145-47.

 

Fiske, Stephen R. "Gentlemen of the Press." Harpers New Monthly
Magazine 26 (February, 1863): 361-67.

 

Fitzgerald, John W. "Early Country Newspaper Publishers." Michigan
History 9 (Lansing, 1925): 58-71.

Holmes, J. C. "A Sketch of the History of the Michigan Farmer."
Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections 7 (Lansing, 1884):
99-102.

Little, Henry. "Fifty Years Ago." Michigan Pioneer and Historical
Collections 3 (Lansing, 1903)? 509-12.

 

 

Mudge, Edson H. "The Old-Time Country Newspaperman." Michigan His-
tory 3O (Lansing, 1946): 754-58.

 

161

Quinby, William E. "Reminiscences of Michigan Journalism." Michigan
Pioneer and Historical Collections 30 (Lansing, 1906): 507-17.

Parton, James. "The New York Herald." North American Review 102
(April, 1866): 373-419.

Sagendorph, Kent. "Achievement Under the Oaks." Your Freedom Festi-
yal, Jackson: Jackson Printing Co., 1954, pp. 25-321
This article, although undocumented, was thoroughly
researched. It provided several leads in the study of
Editorial participation in the founding of the Republican
arty.

Stocking, William. "Joseph Warren--Litt1e Journeys in Journalism."
Michigan History_22 (Lansing, 1938): 403-8.

Stocking, William. "Prominent Newspaper Men in Michigan." Michi an
Pioneer and Historical Collections 39 (Lansing, 1915): 155-73.

Newapapers

 

American Citizen, August 1849 to August 1864, also known variously as
the True Citizen and Jackson Weekly Citizen. Microfilm in
the Jackson CTthen Patriot library andEthe Jackson Public
Library. Scattered original copies in the Jackson Public
Library.

 

American Freeman, June-July 1839. Continued into 1841 as Michigan
Freeman. Original copies available in the Michigan Historical
Collections, Bentley Library, University of Michigan.

Canadian, The, 1 January 1838 (1839), only number available. Michigan
Historical Collections, Bentley Library, University of Michigan.

Chicago Times, August-December 1863.

Jackson Citizen Patriot, 7 July 1927. ,

This edition commemorated the seventy-fifth anniversary
of the founding of the Republican Party. It contains a num-
ber of articles pertaining to editors of the time. Available
on microfilm in Jackson Public Library and in original form
at the Jackson Citizen Patriot library.

Jackson Daily_Citizen, March 1865-1866. Microfilm available in
Citizen Patriot library.

Jackson Eagle, April 1862-March 1866. Microfilm available in Jackson
Public Library.

162

Jackson Patriot, April 1844-1866. Scattered original copies avail-
able in Bentley Library and Ella Sharp Archives. Microfilm
available for two periods between 1847 and 1857.

 

Jackson(burg) Sentinel, March 1837 to May 1840. Scattered original
copies available. Microfilm at the Michigan State Library.

Michigan Democrat, March 1838 to 1844. Some original copies and
clippings in the Bentley Library.

Michigan Farmer and Western Horticulturalist, February 1843 to 1845.
Bound copies available 1n the Michigan State University
library.

Michigan State Gazette, August 1840 to June 1849. First volume
available on microfilm at the Michigan State Library.
Scattered issues and clippings in other collections.

 

Public Sentiment, January 1853 to August 1854. Bound volumes in
Bentley Library.

Official Reports and Papers

 

Bliss, Aaron T. Record of Service of Michigan Volunteers in the
Civil War 1861:1865 vol. 44. Kalamazoo: Ihling Bros. &
Everhard, 1904.

 

 

Jackson County Circuit Court, Criminal Docket C, case 393, John
Summer and Allen Bennett vs. Wilbur F. Storey and Reuben
S. Cheney, filed 27 February 1847; and case 400, William
H. Monroe vs. Wilbur F. Storey and Reuben S. Cheney, filed
4 May 1846.

Journal of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Michigan
1850. Lansing: R. W. Ingals, State printer, 1850.

Journal of the Senate of the State of Michigan 1861. Lansing:
Hosmer & Kerr, Printers to the State, 1861.

Journal of the Senate of the State of Michigan: Extra Session of
1861. Lansing: John A. Kerr & Co., 1861.

 

Report of the Proceedipgs and Debates of the Convention to Revise
the ConstitutTon of the State of Michigan. Lansing:
R. W. Ingals, 1850.

 

 

Robertson, Jno., comp. Michigan in the War. Lansing: W. S. George
& Co., 1882.
This work was especially helpful in establishing dates
and engagements of the First Michigan Sharpshooters.

 

163

U. S° War Department, military records of Col. Charles V. DeLand,
including his discharge on Adjutant General Special Orders
No. 57, para. 40, 4 February 1865; and the muster-in roll
of the First Michigan Sharpshooters, Adjutant General Order
No. 21, 1 October 1863.

War of the Rebellion. Official Records of the Union and Confederate
Armies. E128 vols. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing
Office, 1880-1901.

Reference Works

Alden, Edwin. American Newspaper Catalogue. Cincinnati, Ohio:
Edwin Alden & Bro.Ts Advertising Agency, 1882.

Anthus, Mrs. Linnwood Hubbard, comp. "Jackson County Vital Statis-
tics 1820-1870." Jackson, Mich.: Sarah Treat Prudden
Chapter, Daughters of American Revolution, 1940. (Typewritten.)
This work is a compilation from various primary sources of
birth, marriage and death dates. It also lists membership
lists of the main churches.

Brown, Elizabeth R. A Union List of Newspapers Published in Michigan
Based on the Principal Newspaper Collections in the State
with Notes Concernin Papers Not Located. Ann Arbor: Univer-
sity of MiCthan, 1954.

Some of the listings in this work are no longer accurate.
But it still remains the most exhaustive listing of Jackson
County newspapers available.

Ellis, Helen H. A Guide to the Material in Detroit Newspapers 1861-
1866. Lansing: Michigan Civil War Centennial Observance
Commission, 1965.

Contains an index of war correspondents and the names
they were known by in the papers. There are references to
Colonel DeLand.

Gregory, Winifred, comp. American Newspapers 1821-1936. New York:
H. W. Wilson Co., 1937.

 

Inventory of the County Archives of Michigan: No. 38 Jackson County.
Detroit: Michigan—Historical Records SurveyEProject, 1941.

Michigan Newspapers on Microfilm. Lansing: Michigan Department of
Education, Bureau of’Library Services, 1969.

 

164

Thomas, James M., comp. Jackson City Directory, Jackson: Carlton
& VanAntwerp, 1869.
Contains a history of Jackson and various references to
newspapers. Also of interest are the advertisements for the
newspapers.

 

Treadwell, Seymour Boughton. American Liberties and American Slavery.
Boston: Weeks, Jordan & Co., 1838; reprint ed}, Miami,
Florida: Mnemosyne Publishing Inc., 1969.

Typed and Printed in the U.S.A.
Professional Thesis Preparation
Cliff and Paula Haughey

144 Maplewood Drive

'- '4 East Lansing, Michigan 48823

 
 

Telephone (517) 337-1 527