A History of the National Intelligencer (review)

BOOK REVIEWS351 Sumter. Yet the value of his diary probably derives less from his accounts of these famous episodes than from the picture of an intelligent, cultivated, and, in some ways, beguiling human being who rushed enthusiastically toward catastrophic civil war and who fervently defended slavery even as he scornfully declared that the growth of Mormonism was "one of the greatest wonders of this enlightened age." Admitting that in his youth he had been a "speculative abolitionist," Ruffin lived to deplore Jefferson and the aid and comfort which he had given to the foes of slavery. More at home spiritually, or perhaps politically is the word, in South Carolina than in Virginia, Ruffin made no secret of his extreme views and rejected the notion of any secret or conspirational approach to the goal of a separate southern nation. The hostile reception that his views and various political writings received in his native state of Virginia vexed him constantly; but, just as certain northern extremists found themselves increasingly applauded in the winter of 1860-61, Ruffin rejoiced to see Virginians, who had consistently opposed disunionism, move toward his position during the later stages of the secession crisis. Ruffin welcomed every development that served to split the nation, from Harper's Ferry to the disruption of the Democratic party. A few days before he participated in the shelling of Sumter, he managed to board a Confederate vessel that sailed near Fort Sumter. Ruffin not only hoped that Major Anderson would open fire on the vessel, thereby "bringing in V[irgini]a & other waiting states," but he confessed: "I greatly coveted the distinction & eclat which I might have acquired if the steamer had been fired upon, & we had refused to yield, & I deemed the danger to be incurred as very trifling." Robert F. Durden Duke University A History of the National Intelligencer. By William E. Ames. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972. Pp. xi, 376. $11.95.) Historical interest in the early American press has focused on papers that emphasized the personal or sensational and thus contributed loudly to the development of modern mass journalism. The reasons for the neglect of the National Intelligencer, the most respected of antebellum papers, are obvious. In format and outlook, the Intelligencer looked backward rather than forward, and its journalism was responsible , moderate, and bland. Because the paper's substantial virtues were subtle rather than strident, William E. Ames' careful and wellresearched study is especially welcome. Ames stresses the shift from a "young and uberai" paper in 1800 to an "old and conservative" one by the 1840s, but the Intelligencer's attitudes and policies remained remarkably constant in its Jeffersonian, Whig, and Unionist phases. Begun in 1800 as the spokesman for the 352civil war history Jeffersonians in the new capital, the paper quickly became the most accurate reporter of Congressional debates, and also offered a quietly partisan defense of administration policy. Ames suggests that Jefferson 's strong distaste for the press during his administration indicated some dissatisfaction with the Intelligencer, but Jefferson's close ties to the paper and its editor make clear that the journal represented his ideals of offering large amounts of information and interpretation of a soberly political sort. Ames tells his story clearly, integrating the political views of the paper with biography of its three editors, Samuel Harrison Smith between 1800 and 1810 and, jointly for almost half a century, Joseph Gales, Jr. and his brother-in-law, William Winston Seaton, between 1810 and 1866. The book offers valuable information on journalistic finance, differences between Jeffersonian and Jacksonian partisan journalism , and especially the political values of intellectual and moderate men in these years. The account is rather rigidly chronological, which contributes to its greatest weakness, a lack of interpretive thrust. For instance, in explaining the change from a "liberal" Jeffersonian paper to a "conservative" anti-Jackson one, Ames lamely credits it to imperviousness to undefined changes going on in the West. Gales and Seaton knew little of the West, Ames says, and "the West they knew was the West of Henry Clay." Ames' material suggests an explanation more interesting than such geographical obfuscation. The editors disliked not democracy but the demagogy that perhaps necessarily came...