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  • The Pen Makes a Good Sword: John Forsyth of the Mobile Register
  • Ford Risley
The Pen Makes a Good Sword: John Forsyth of the Mobile Register. By Lonnie A. Burnett. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006. Pp. 248. Cloth, $37.50.)

John Forsyth Jr. was one of the best known newspaper editors of the Civil [End Page 390] War–era South. For forty years, the Georgia native editorialized about many of the pivotal issues that confronted the nation as it split apart, fought a tragic war, and then sought to rebuild. As a mayor, state legislator, U.S. minister to Mexico, and Confederate peace commissioner, Forsyth also took part in many of the events he wrote about.

Lonnie A. Burnett provides an insightful picture of Forsyth in his biography of the outspoken and contentious editor. Forsyth’s father was a member of Congress, governor of Georgia, and secretary of state during the Jackson and Van Buren administrations. Many assumed that the young Forsyth would follow his father into public service and, indeed, he was appointed a U.S. attorney for Alabama. But soon after moving to Mobile, Forsyth and a partner purchased the Mobile Commercial Register and Patriot, one of five daily newspapers in the city.

Newspapers were partisan political weapons, and Forsyth vigorously wielded the Register on behalf of the Democratic Party. He campaigned for Martin Van Buren during the election of 1840 and became an opposition editor after the Democrat lost. After his father died, Forsyth spent twelve years back in Georgia, where he owned the Columbus Times and served as postmaster of the city. While in Georgia, the editor became an outspoken advocate for secession. “Better disunion with our honor bright and our rights secure than union without either,” he wrote in one editorial (49).

Forsyth returned to Mobile in 1853 and soon began penning editorials again for the Register. He supported the Pierce administration and was rewarded by being appointed U.S. minister to Mexico in 1856. But Forsyth’s outspokenness made him a poor diplomat, and he lasted just two years. Forsyth bucked the southern mainstream by supporting Stephen A. Douglas during the critical election of 1860. However, after Abraham Lincoln’s election, the editor closed ranks with secessionists and supported Alabama leaving the Union.

Confederate president Jefferson Davis appointed Forsyth to a three-man peace commission. The overture failed, and Forsyth returned to Mobile convinced that the Lincoln administration wanted war with the South. Like the vast majority of southern newspapers, the Register heartily supported the Confederate war effort, creating false hopes of military success to the very end. After the war, Forsyth argued that the country should “let Southern men, Black and White take care of themselves” (157). But as the reality of Reconstruction set in, the Register became increasingly racist in its attacks on the freedmen, and the newspaper repeatedly threatened potential black [End Page 391] voters. Forsyth lived to see the South “redeemed,” and the Register reveled in the news.

Burnett takes an laudable, evenhanded approach in evaluating the journalistic and public service career of Forsyth. He shows how the editor became an outspoken secessionist but surprisingly supported Douglas even in the face of widespread criticism. Burnett carefully examines his controversial stint as a diplomat, providing little doubt as to why he was a failure. He also displays how Forsyth, always the loyal southerner, vigorously supported the war and just as actively fought reconstruction.

Burnett mistakenly assumes an understanding of the era’s partisan press, giving rather short shrift to the subject. Otherwise, he provides important context for the issues he examines. His outstanding biography of Forsyth is valuable for understanding the critically important role that newspaper editors played as spokesmen and leaders of the region.

Ford Risley
Penn State University
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