The Pen Makes a Good Sword: John Forsyth of the Mobile Register

Notes

Introduction 1. Mobile Daily Commercial Register, 11 Dec. 1837. (Note that during John Forsyth ’s long association with the Register, given various mergers and reorganizations, its name went through several changes. In chronological order, it was called the Mobile Daily Commercial Register and Patriot, the Mobile Register and Journal, the Mobile Daily Register, and the Mobile Daily Advertiser and Register. Hereafter, the paper will be cited as the Mobile Register.) See also New York Times, 3 May 1877; Mobile Register, 11 Dec. 1837; and Carl R. Osthaus, Partisans of the Southern Press: Editorial Spokesmen of the Nineteenth Century (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1994), 1. Throughout this work the word “Democracy” is used in its nineteenth-century connotation—to refer to a political party. 2. J. Mills Thornton, III, Politics and Power in a Slave Society (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978), 40. 3. Avery O. Craven, The Growth of Southern Nationalism, 1848–1861 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana University Press, 1953), 275; Brayton Harris, Blue and Gray in Black and White: Newspapers in the Civil War (Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 1999), ix; Atlanta Constitution, 4 May 1877; and Osthaus, Partisans, 1, 11, and 4. 4. See Michael W. Fitzgerald, Urban Emancipation: Popular Politics in Reconstruction Mobile, 1860–1890 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002). 5. Mobile Register, 11 Dec. 1837. Chapter 1 1. Jeannie Forsyth Jeffries, A History of the Forsyth Family (Indianapolis, Ind.: William H. Burford, 1920), 49. 2. George Washington, General Orders, 11 Sept. 1779, George Washington Papers , Series 3g, letter book 4, Library of Congress (it should be noted that Lee was acquitted “with honor” on all eight charges); and George Washington to Robert Forsyth , 5 Sept. 1779, George Washington Papers, Series 3b, letter book 9, Library of Congress. Notes 3. Annals of the Congress of the United States, 1789–1824, 1st Cong., 1st sess., 87–89; and 3rd Cong., 1st sess., 74. 4. For biographical sketches of John Forsyth Sr., see Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography, 11 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1959), 3: 533–35; John E. Findling, Dictionary of American Diplomatic History (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980), 174; and Samuel Flagg Bemis, ed., The American Secretaries of States and Their Diplomacy, 18 vols. (New York: Pageant Book Co., 1958–70), 4: 301–43. There are several valuable (undated) newspaper clippings that contain biographical sketches of John Forsyth Sr. in the John Forsyth Papers, Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia, Athens. 5. Alvin Laroy Duckett, John Forsyth, Political Tactician (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1962), 5–6. 6. Ibid., 10. 7. Bemis, American Secretaries of States, 302. 8. Johnson and Malone, Dictionary of American Biography, 533. For a complete account of John Forsyth Sr.’s foreign tenure, see Duckett, John Forsyth, 42–80. 9. James F. Cook, Governors of Georgia (Huntsville, Ala.: Strode Publishing, 1979), 113. 10. Ibid., 114; Johnson and Malone, Dictionary of American Biography, 534; Duckett , John Forsyth, 162; and Speech of the Hon. John Forsyth of Georgia on the Subject of the Removal of the Public Deposits. Delivered in the Senate of the United States, January, 1834 (Washington, D.C.: F. P . Blair, 1834), 22. 11. Findling, Dictionary of American Diplomatic History, 174; and Johnson and Malone, Dictionary of American Biography, 534–35. 12. See Duckett, John Forsyth, 198–202; and Johnson and Malone, Dictionary of American Biography, 535. 13. Findling, Dictionary of American Diplomatic History, 174; Duckett, John Forsyth, 185–87; and John Forsyth, Address to the People of Georgia (n.p., 1840), 4. 14. B. F. Riley, Makers and Romance of Alabama History (n.p., n.d.), 87. Note that hereafter, any reference to John Forsyth, unless otherwise speci¤ed, refers to John Forsyth Jr. 15. Luther N. Steward Jr., “John Forsyth,” Alabama Review 14 (Apr. 1961): 99; and Duckett, John Forsyth, 182. See also Andrew Jackson to John Forsyth [Sr.], 29 Sept. 1835, Appointment Papers of the Department of State: Applications and Recommendations for Public Of¤ce, 1829–1836, National Archives. 16. As the Mobile Register reached anniversaries and milestones, it printed various histories. See, for example, “Ourselves at 75,” Mobile Register 31 Jan. 1895, “History of the Register,” Mobile Register, 2 Sept. 1907, and “A History of the Mobile Register,” Mobile Register, 30 June 2002. It is interesting to note that the various accounts over the years disagree as to when the Register originated. Notice that the 1895 article celebrates the 75th anniversary of the paper...