I would like to reiterate how intriguing it was to hear the details of the other projects that were presented yesterday. I was particularly interested in the journal of the woman from Maine and her voyages to the South, Cuba, and England. It was also interesting how the idea of upward mobility of the common person was quite prevalent even in this period. The journal of the woman who was anti-slavery up until the point when she visited the Georgia plantation was very revealing of the northern sentiments of the day. It seems to me the attitudes of the northern abolitionists would change as well if they would only see the actual logistics that are involved in the day to day operations of plantations instead of calling upon the few but readily available horror stories of slavery.

I found it interesting to hear the issues people spent time researching and the different topics that their papers, diaries, and journals possessed. These sources are different from sources today because they are not afraid to let you know how they stand on different issues. I felt that Sean's report brought about some interesting ironies in his paper the Southern Enterprise. Their dislike of the Know Nothings and the fact that they shared views with this party on temperance. Another thing that I found interesting was the report on the Lincoln- Douglas debates. The Illinois State Register gave little attention to this issue, but textbooks make this out to be the most important news that was going on at this time.

It was very interesting to hear specifics about the other projects yesterday. I realize that i am glad that i did a 6 month weekly paper. The journals would probably have so much clutter in them that i would lose patience. The daily newspapers would probably spend a lot of ink reporting about nothing. i even saw this in my weekly paper. however, having a weekly allows for more events to happen and have them all reported at once which is extremely beneficial.

there were many interesting things brought up in the presentation. the british woman's experience on the slave plantation. The spill about mormons. being from the southeast, there would not have been many mormons to judge. it was interesting to see how the newspapers played off a stereotype. also, as sean reported, the impact that religion had on his paper.

i really enjoyed researching topics presented by my newspaper. its also interesting to see the roots of the beliefs and stereotypes that i was brought up on. some beliefs still hold true today in sparkle city

It was very interesting to hear about everyone’s research, but two stood out to me the most. Those two presentations were the one by David Gladden and the one by Corey Tant. The reasons these stood out to me was because their newspaper, The Southern Patriot, pretty much was the 1850’s version of my newspaper, The Greenville Republican. Ben Perry’s pro-union paper very much reminded me of the pro union paper that existed in Greenville during the 1820’s – my Greenville Republican.

From reading the common American History textbook, one would think that everyone in the South was in favor of the idea of secession. During the War Between the States, most people in the South probably were in favor of secession (no slave power conspiracy), but David, Corey, and I studied antebellum South Carolina. Antebellum South Carolina didn’t seem like too much of a threat to the Union through the newspapers that were researched by my classmates and I. Although this perception might be due to the own political agendas by the editors of our respective papers, it still shows that there were some Southerners who were Unionists – even in South Carolina. Obviously, something must have happened in the South between the early 1850’s and 1861 to get everybody on board with secession. I believe Ben Perry was much more of a committed Unionist than my editor, Charles W. O’Doyley, and I think Perry’s paper would have been better suited to have the name Greenville Republican, instead of Southern Patriot.

I have found these projects to be very interesting. The presentations on the journals are much different than what I uncovered when I read my newspaper. As a couple of people have commented on, the different experience of history presented by these two different types of sources is very intersting. I agree with Ian about the inportance of the type of paper that you chose for the project. I used a daily paper and my paer was filled with all kinds of information that was of no use to me at all. The thing that was the most suprising to me about these papers was the fact that what we see as important looking back at the past ofter did not seem important at the time. I think Lindsey's paper was a good example of this. She thought the Lincoln Douglas debates would have been a central focus of the paper, but often they were not even mentioned.

I really enjoyed hearing everyone tell about their papes yesterday. It is really cool to see the same stuff popping up all over the place in different cities. Two things that really surprised me, however, was the 15 month congressional elections that paul was talking about and the repeated occurance of concern over the mormans. I just cant imagine an election where the national party essentially changes its appearance as the election goes on to get more votes. In our age of instant gratification, that seems like it would be very frustrating as a political observer.
    I was so surprised that two papers had concerns over the Mormans. For a very small group of people, hundreds of miles away, it seemed to be a very hot topic.

I posted yesterday thinking we had to do it both days. Oh well. I thought that everyone's presentations were once again very interesting. I thought that the topic that most people focused on was the Lincoln-Douglas Republican nomination. It was very cool to learn how different the papers were in terms of their take on Lincoln and Douglas, and who they supported and why. It was also interesting to hear Nathan's take on The Southern Enterprise because that was the same paper I did; so I was wondering what he took away from the paper. I thought that each person, despite having the same time periods came up with interesting and unique takes on the situations at hand during the antebellum period. The difference of opinion and biases that are showed in the papers is so cool, and I enjoyed hearing everyone discuss the special predispositions of their papers.

A common them that I've noticed as people have been talking about their papers the last two days is cadidates bashing other candidates. I've wondered to myself, should it make me feel better that it's not just candidates today that will say anything to make their opponents look bad, since apparently candidate bashing has an old history? yikes!
I was interested to hear what Brittany said today about what she learned about the Charleston Mercury, since we had the same paper, but under different editors and years apart from each other. I thought it was interesting that she found the Mercury to not be very representative of the people in Charleston at first, but then that people started to agree more with its views after Lincolns election, because i found a similar thing during my time period- that at first the people of Charleston weren't in line with nullification as the Mercury was, but over time their opinions changed.
I would have to say that a textbook would probably more accurate than my source, because the Mercury only painted a one sides picture. If I had not looked at any outside sources while writing my paper, I would have thought from reading the Mercury that all of Charleston was completely for nullification. I also would never have known about the first steam engine in America that ran in Charleston during my time period, because the Mercury never wrote an article about it.

I've found the presentations over the past two days to be very informative. I researched a set of letters, so I liked being able to hear about the newspaper projects. A lot has been said on here about the merits of journals vs. newspapers and personally I think they both have the ability to offer something unique to history. Yes, newspapers are more representative of a community's thoughts and feelings, but I think the journals/diaries/letters allow a reader to become more personally involved in the story. This is an aspect that is very lacking in most textbooks.
As far as Dr. Benson's questions are concerned, I think that there is no truly unbiased account of history, nor do I think there should be. Textbooks are as close as we'll get to being unbiased and I feel that most do an adequate job of relaying basic facts. When you get to newspapers, journals, and diaries,though, they should be biased-how else would you be able to understand how people were feeling? History is about more than just dates and events, its about how those dates and events affected people's way of life. Listening to the presentations, it was obvious that most of the newspapers presented did just that.
All in all, I thought the presentations and projects were very good.

I really thought that everyones presentations were done very well. It seemed like everyone really got into their papers and thought it out. One of the more interesting ideas was from Rusty's, when he said that kind of like today, the people were looking to the newspaper to get away from everything, and take it for its entertainment value. Also, how in some Southern paper that were thought to be pro-union turned their thought completely around once the firing on Fort Sumter occurred.

Listening to the discussion of the different papers and journal topics that each student researched, I was struck by the diversity on partisan viewpoints of the same events of each newspaper. Each newspaper seemed to have it's own distinct perspective on the events, even though the party to which it was affiliated only varied slightly. For instance, we had the strong secessionists, Democrats, moderate Democrats, Unionists, and Abolitionists to name some. I also found the differing viewpoints on the Lincoln-Douglas campaigns to be very informative, since I, myself, did my own research on the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Although the information concerning these two characters happened after the debates of 1858, the same party politics still played and influential part and I was able to gain a broader insight into the events that followed my own topic.

Well, lucky me, I get to post on both days. Hey, maybe I'll post again after the last 3 go tomorrow.

I thought the presentations today were good. I found it interesting that the Richmond Whig went from unionist to confederate very quickly. In the National Era, the editors praised the founding (I think--maybe it was just the stance) of the Whig, until it went pro-Taylor. The way papers could switch from one alignment to another overnight is amazing to me. We love the Union!--BANG--Those evil northerners!, all in no time. Sure, its a process that starts earlier, but the transformation happens to quickly--really cool, I must say. The changes are justified I guess by the fact that they come in response to alteration of circumstances: the status quo changes, and the papers adapt. I just wonder if the readers got confused when it happened. And was the purpose of it more to convince readers to abandon the old view or to get back at those that (the newspapers felt) had betrayed them?

I thought that it was really interesting to read a women's diary, and then listen to all the presentations about the newspapers. The woman that wrote my diary was so oblivious to everything going on around her that it was strange to research the time period and remember that things actually did happen in that period. The two sources (diaries and newspapers) each contribute such different factors to history. In theory, diaries give a more personal view of issues, while newspapers are supposed to give "just the facts." But, after listening to the presentations, it becomes apparent that often times those roles are reversed. Most newspapers seemed to lean to one side of the political spectrum and were far from neutral, while many of the diaries gave a broader view of the issue.
I really liked hearing about other women's diaries and comparing them to mine. I found that the woman that i studied was a lot less involved in the "political" world than many of the women, and i wonder if it had to do with the time period, her residence, or the community around her. Or maybe it was all three. She seemed a lot more concerned about her friends and family than she did about how politics were affecting her life, but then again she also had fewer issues to deal with directly, such as slaves.
Overall, i think everyone did a great job. And how happy is everyone that this paper is finally finished!!!

Edited by author 11-20-2002 10:33 AM
It has been educational (interesting has been used far too much) to hear about all of these newspapers sources and how so much and so little changed over the course of the years leading up to the Civil War. One of the things that these presentations made me wonder is what would happen if newspapers today had such an obvious bias on the issues. I do believe as it was mentioned in class at one point in time, that having a less obvious bias sells more newspapers. Today, instead we have TV and radio for Democrats and Republicans to duke it out. Like Paul, I also found it interesting that papers changed their views at the drop of a hat (or a fort). John's Richmond Whig and Advertiser was pro-Unionist and all of the sudden Fort Sumter happens and Lincoln is the great Satan. A bit of an overreaction in my view, but great stuff nonetheless. Overall, everyone did a great job on their projects.

I think its really cool that we have the opportunity to talk about our research and discuss topics relating to our papers in class. It really helped me get a sense of things going on nationally at that time. I must say that the conversations have been entertaining to say the least, especially Ian's "Southern Candy." It's really cool to hear both sides of the story, as we hear from Whig and Democratic papers from both the North and South. Andy had a unique opportunity, I believe, as he had Leslie's Illustrated Journal to report on. Political cartoons have always been my favorite, and it seems like that's exactly what Andy had to work with. I found it interesting what John said about the Union and Whig advison from Jan -June 1861. He said that it started off quite Unionist, and after the election of Lincoln, became pro-secession. It was also neat to hear form those who read personal diaries and journals. Getting personal accounts is always a wonderful tool in understanding history. I really enjoyed this assignment and feel that I learned a ton from it. Great job everybody!

Edited by author 11-20-2002 11:47 AM
I found it interesting how diverse the different newspapers and publications such as Frank Leslie's were. My research was based on a diary, so there wasn't much variation there, just the thoughts and events of one person. In my secondary sources, I mainly utilized other books, mostly about the author of the diary, but now I wonder how the perspective of my paper might have changed had I chosen to also use some newspapers and other publications like that from the time period. Also, props to everyone who researched from a newspaper, because I know how much time and effort that took to read issue after issue and gather enough information!