The Western Press.

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CHAPTER XIV.

THE PRESS AT THE WEST.

THE CENTINEL OF THE NORTHWESTERN TERRITORY.-THE FIRST JOURNALIST OF THE Northwest.— NEWSPAPERS IN CINCINNATI.—THE GAZETTE. -CHARLES HAMMOND. -THE FIRST DAILY PAPER. INTRODUCTION OF STEAM.-SYMMES'S HOLE.-HORSE EXPResses.-E. S. THOMAS.-NEWSPAPERS IN CHICAGO.- WONDERFUL PROSPERITY OF JOURNALISM IN OHIO, ILLINOIS, AND INDIANA.-THE OHIO STATESMAN. THE ST. LOUIS REPUBLICAN.-SALE OF THE MISSOURI DEMOCRAT.-THE EARLY DAYS OF THURLOW WEED AND WILLIAM L. STONE.-REMINISCENCES OF NEWSPAPERS.

THE introduction of newspapers in the new settlements of America was at first slow, and as difficult, in the latter part of the eighteenth and in the early part of the nineteenth, as the introduction of printing seemed to have been in the fifteenth century. Sometimes type and ink could not be obtained. Then paper and a press were scarce articles. After these materials were gathered, subscribers were as rare as Diogenes found honest men to be. But all this has since been changed. Steam-boats and railroads have annihilated all these difficulties and troubles, and now the progress of journalism is rapid, and encouraging, and remunerative.

The Post-office and the Press were almost as intimately connected in their relations at the West as at the East when Campbell, the Postmaster of Boston, started the News-Letter. On the 9th of November, 1793, the Centinel of the Northwestern Territory, somewhat of a high-sounding title, was founded in Cincinnati by William Maxwell, who was the second postmaster of that town. This was the first newspaper and the first printing-office established north of the Ohio River, or in what was then called the Northwest. The Centinel was subsequently removed to Chillicothe.

It has been stated that Nathaniel Willis, in establishing the Sciota Gazette at Chillicothe, was the pioneer journalist of the Northwest. Willis, it will be remembered, was one of the publishers of the Chronicle in Boston during the Revolution. After leaving that concern he went to Virginia, and started a paper there in 1793. Then he published a paper at Shepardstown, and another at Martinsburg, familiar places during the Rebellion of 1861-5. The latter paper was called the Potomac Guardian. It was after this period that Mr. Willis drifted into the Northwest with his printing material, and it

was not till 1796 that he issued the Sciota Gazette as the organ of the Territorial government. It is therefore quite evident that William Maxwell must enjoy the title of Father of the Press of the Northwest.

In 1799, another paper, the third in that wild region, was established. Its title was the Western Spy and Hamilton Gazette. The name of this paper was changed in 1823 to that of the National Republican and Ohio Political Register. In November of that year the Independent Press and Freeman's Advocate was united with the Republican. This paper has had among its editors Sol. Smith, since so well known as the actor and manager in St. Louis and elsewhere. His valedictory was characteristic. Stating to his patrons that, "with big tears rolling down his cheeks, and conflicting emotions struggling within his bosom, through the vicissitudes of fate he is constrained to take leave of them," he mentions various persons and parties of whom he must take particular farewell. Under the plea that editors are "lawful game," he gives the conductors of the Gazette, Republican, and Advertiser some hard hits, and then says:

To Cincinnati Bankers.-I have done you some service-I have opened the people's eyes respecting your praiseworthy exertions to benefit community, and there are not now ten in the city who would not rejoice to see you exalted high as your actions have merited.

To the Honorable City Council.-Wear crape on your left arms three weeks in remembrance of me.

Tattlers.-I am such a universal favorite with you that I will not attempt to stop your compassionate tears-let them flow freely-my good creatures.

Editors throughout the U. S.-You must endeavor to elect a President without my assistance.

Sol. Smith died, we believe, in 1869.

On the 9th of December, 1804, the Liberty Hall and Cincinnati Mercury appeared, and was published for eleven years, when it was united with the Gazette, which had been started into life in 1806. The Gazette was one of the most remarkable papers at the West. 1ts first great reputation was acquired while under the editorial management of Charles Hammond. Judge Bouvier declared it to have been one of the best-edited papers in the Western country. It was originally a weekly. One of its most active proprietors was Ephraim Morgan, who left Springfield, Mass., in the early part of this century, and learned to be a printer in the office of the Western Spy, of which he became part owner in 1813. On the reappearance of the Gazette, which was suspended for a time, Morgan, in 1815, sold his interest in the Spy, and purchased a share of the Gazette. About that time, or in 1819, that paper was published as a semi-weeklythe first in Cincinnati.

The West now began to show rapid material development. The Cincinnati press gave us the particulars of the first steam-boat on

Charles Hammond, of the Cincinnati Gazette. 197

the Western waters. The General Pike, one hundred feet keel and twenty-six feet beam, was launched at Cincinnati in the winter of 1819. Her cabin was forty feet long and twenty-five broad. She had fourteen state-rooms and twenty-one side berths, and could accommodate eighty-six passengers.

It was in the Gazette, somewhere about 1820, we believe, that Captain John Clewes Symmes presented his curious theory of the formation of the earth and other planets, and "Symmes's Hole" was as famous then as the more recent astronomical discovery by Secretary Boutwell of the "Hole in the Sky," which he demonstrated with so much clearness on the celebrated impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson.

Isaac C. Burnet, brother of Judge Jacob Burnet, was editor of the Gazette in 1822, and had been such for several years. He sold his interest to Benjamin F. Powers, a brother of Hiram Powers, the sculptor. Powers continued as editor till 1825, when Charles Hammond took his place. Hiram Powers, in a conversation with the Rev. Dr. Bellows, in Florence, in 1868, in giving an account of his life before he went to Italy, said that he "was born in Woodstock, in Vermont. His father was a half blacksmith and a half ox-yoke maker. He lost all the property he had by becoming surety for a friend, and his family came near starving to death, subsisting a whole winter on milk and potatoes. Finally one of his sons picked up education enough to teach school, and migrated to Cincinnati, then a town of 14,000 inhabitants, where he started a newspaper."

There was an effort made to establish a daily paper in Cincinnati in 1826. It was the Commercial Register. Morgan Neville was its editor. It lived six months. In 1828 its original publisher revived it, with Edward Harrison as editor. This second effort expired in three months. One year previously, the Gazette, with a list of one hundred and sixty-four subscribers, made its appearance as a daily paper. This was on the 25th of June, 1827. In 1834, twenty years after its introduction by the London Times, the Gazette introduced the steam power-press in the Northwest. Stephen S. L'Hommedieu, another of the owners of the Gazette, should have the credit of this piece of enterprise. This press, it is said, has since been doing good service in the office of the Dayton (Ohio) Journal.

Charles Hammond, as we have stated, gave the Gazette its first reputation. This was in the early days of Western journalism. His style was strong and vigorous, and sometimes rather rough. He was thoroughly anti-slavery, and opposed the institution on the "other side of the line" amid all the changes in the ownership and management of the paper. His was the master mind in that establishment. He was assisted as editor by William D. Gallagher from

1839 to 1849. Subsequent to Hammond came Judge John C. Wright in the editorial chair of the Gazette. He had been a member of Congress from that district. After Wright, and in 1853, Colonel William Schouler, previously of the Lowell Courier and Journal, and of the Boston Atlas, assumed control of the paper. It had a circulation of 1800 daily, 6000 weekly, and 400 semi-weekly at that time. Some new energy was afterwards infused into the concern. Joseph Glenn and one or two others took the establishment in hand, and Cincinnati grew in newspaper readers. More attention was paid to news. More vigor was thrown into its original articles. We are told that as much was paid in telegraph tolls in 1868 as the entire receipts of the establishment were in 1853. Its aggregate circulation reached 78,000. Its daily circulation was as high as 44,000, although it has since fallen below that figure. The war excitement, of course, had much to do with this prosperity.

men.

The establishment is now owned by an association of six active Its capital stock is $100,000. Its dividend in 1865 was 100 per cent.; in 1866, 50 per cent. ; in 1867, 80 per cent. These dividends were exclusive of salaries paid to the proprietors. What is the cause of this marvelous prosperity? Of course the war had its effect, and enterprise its influence; but the real basis was in the wonderful growth of the West in railroads and population. In 1853 there were 80,000 inhabitants in Cincinnati. In 1870 there were 216,000. This great growth is indicated more clearly by the returns of the Cincinnati journals of the receipts from sales alone for the year ending December 31, 1869, as follows:

Such remarkable facts as these are to be seen in the statistics of every large Western city. All the newspapers had to do, in this state of things, was to keep pace in enterprise with this increase in means and people.

William T. Coggeshall, in speaking of the Cincinnati press, gives the following striking facts:

On the 3d of December 1835, there was published entire in the Gazette; “THE CENTINEL OF THE NORTHWESTERN TERRITORY, Vol, 1, No. 10, issued by William Maxwell at the corner of Front and Sycamore streets, January 11th, 1794," almost 42 years previous. This paper occupied four columns and a quarter of the Gazette, in which there were twenty-eight such columns; therefore the Centinel of 1794 only contained about one seventh as much matter as the Gazette of 1835. The Centinel, gave news from France dated Sept 10th-from Portland, Me., Nov. 11th-from Baltimore Nov. 22d. It was announced in an advertisement that two packet boats would leave Cincinnati for Pittsburgh and return every four weeks alternately. Cincinnati was then four weeks distant from Pittsburgh-in 1835 it was about seven days, and in 1850 it was about 48 hours, by steam, and not over fifteen minutes by telegraph. In the Gazette of Dec. 3rd, 1835, was news from New Or

Newspapers in Cincinnati.

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leans as late as Nov. 12th and from New York as late as Nov. 19th. Papers are now received from New York on the third day after their publication, and the readers of Cincinnati daily journals are by telegraph furnished every morning with important New York, Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia and Washington items, up to ten o'clock on the night previous.

There was another paper of note in Cincinnati called the Inquisitor and Cincinnati Advertiser. It was started on the 23d of June, 1818, by Cooke, Powers, and Penny. In 1819, G. F. Hopkins, of New York, took the place of Cooke and Penny. He was a friend of De Witt Clinton, and, full of that statesman's ideas, advocated internal improvements with vigor. It was through his efforts that grants were obtained for the Ohio, Erie, and Miami Canals. James M. Mason succeeded Hopkins and Powers, and during his régime Moses Dawson became notorious as an editor. He purchased the paper, and changed its name to that of the Advertiser. In 1825 the political status of the newspapers in Cincinnati became defined. The Gazette, under Hammond, was Whig, and the Advertiser, under Dawson, was Democratic. These journals became bitter foes, and the warfare between Hammond and Dawson was a relentless one. Oceans of ink were wasted in the conflict.

Another attractive paper in Cincinnati is the Commercial. It was established in 1845 by Greeley Curtis, although for J. W. S. Browne, now of Memphis, Tennessee, this honor is claimed. These were succeeded by Potter, who in turn was succeeded by Murat Halsted, who is a thoroughly enterprising journalist. In a recent libel-suit its daily circulation was sworn to be 20,000. It cleared, in 1867, a profit of $100,000. This paper was conducted with much tact, ability, and courage. Its correspondence from Washington and elsewhere indicates a true idea of journalism. One of its correspondents at the national capital was placed under arrest, in 1870, for the premature publication of the treaty made by the Joint High Commission of England and the United States.

The Enquirer, the well-known Democratic organ in Cincinnati, is a paying concern, with an excellent daily and weekly circulation. Among the early editors of Cincinnati was E. S. Thomas, a nephew of Isaiah Thomas, in whose office in Worcester he served his apprenticeship. The former edited the City Gazette in Charleston, S. C., from 1809 till 1817. He established the Commercial Daily Advertiser in Cincinnati early in 1829, and was a supporter of Andrew Jackson till toward the close of his final term. Then he nominated John M'Lean for that office. This political movement proving a failure, he retired from the Advertiser. In 1835 he commenced the publication of the Daily Evening Post in the same city, which supported William Henry Harrison for the presidency. In December, 1839, this paper was suspended for want of support.