The Ohio Press in the Civil War

Robert S. Harper, former newspaper man and now public information officer of the Ohio Historical Society, is the author of several books, including Lincoln and the Press. This book won for the author the Sigma Delta Chi national award for research in journalism, the citation of the Lincoln Foundation for "The Best Lincoln Book of the Year" and the grand medal of the Ohioana Library. It was the History Club book-of-themonth choice for August, 1951. He has written extensively on Lincoln and the Civil War for the magazines and is now engaged in writing a TV telementary on the Civil War and another book on Abraham Lincoln. The Ohio Press in the Civil War ROBERT S. HARPER the union was falling apart. Half a dozen states had seceded, and others were preparing to foUow. President Buchanan was accepting the resignations of members of his Democratic Cabinet as they "went south" with the cotton states. Out in Springfield, Abraham Lincoln was packing his trunks and addressing them with his own hand, "A. Lincoln, White House, Washington." In Columbus, Ohio's capital, an eight-page weekly newspaper caUed the Crtns appeared on the streets. Volume I, Number 1, was largely devoted to an explanation of purpose, signed by the editor, Samuel Medary. The date was January 31, 1861. In a page one editorial, Medary boldly exposed his purpose in founding the newspaper. After asking himself the question, "Has the South any reason to complain?" he wrote: "Yes, we think it has, and it is our duty to state it." But unanswered even today is the reason why he thought it was his "duty" to state the South's real grievances. He did add, as an afterthought, this tickler: "I have a great many reasons for pubUshing this paper, as wiU more clearly appear to my readers as it progresses." 221 222ROBERT S. HARPER Medary, born in Montgomery Square, Pennsylvania, in 1801, came on the Ohio scene at the age of twenty-six as a school teacher at Batavia, in the river hiU-country. He boarded with the Simpson famUy, whose daughter was Mrs. Jesse R. Grant, mother of a then four-year-old boy, known now to history as Ulysses S. Grant. More interested in politics than in teaching, Medary established a little weekly paper at Batavia, called it the Ohio Sun, and campaigned furiously for Jackson. Two years later he became a member of the Ohio House of Representatives, and two years after that he went to the state Senate. He then bought the weekly Western Hemisphere in Columbus, and the paper became the Ohio Statesman, the "voice of Democracy" in the capital. He was chairman of the Ohio delegation in the Democratic convention that nominated Polk for President. As editor of the Democratic "organ" at Columbus, Medary exerted wide political influence, but a pronounced proclivity for indulging in low personalities and bitter invective with any one who disagreed with him made many enemies. For instance, Medary would have had a place in Pierce's Cabinet had not William Allen blocked the appointment. Medary vainly sought the U.S. senatorship in 1854, but two years later his star began to rise again when he served as temporary chairman of the Democratic National Convention that nominated Buchanan at Cincinnati. President Buchanan appointed him governor of Minnesota Territory and later governor of Kansas Territory, with an interval between in which he was Columbus postmaster. Out of a job in December of 1860, he returned to Columbus and began to plan the Crisis. The Crisis was not much of a newspaper in the true sense of the word. It had no news service, either wire or mail. It carried no advertising of any kind, and its only public source of income was yearly subscriptions, two doUars per year. Medary, a prodigious worker, "got out" the paper with scissors, a paste pot, and a pen filled with venom. He was opposed to the war, to Lincoln, and to the Republican Party. He argued that slavery was constitutional and abolition was not. His family did not wholly share his views; he had a son and a son-in-law in the Union Army. He...