American Civil War Newspapers



The goal of the American Civil War Newspapers database (launched by Virginia Tech) is to select a representative group of journals to index, with digital images of the newspapers themselves, for use by students and scholars. The newspapers selected will be a representative sampling of Union and Confederate, urban and small town, Eastern and Western, pro– and anti–administration.

The first newspaper available in the collection is the Macon Daily Telegraph (Georgia).

“One of the great features of the Telegraph is that through most of the war it actually managed to live up to its title as a “daily” paper. Like all Confederate newspapers, it reflected the hardships of war. The pages got smaller in size and number. Its type became worn and dull, and sometimes illegible. As hard times and scarce cash reduced the number of advertisers, some advertisements ran almost indefinitely just to fill column inches, while a scarcity of news, labor shortages, and limited type, also often led to the same articles appearing in several consecutive issues. On two or three occasions in 1864 and 1865 when Union cavalry raiders came close to Macon, the paper did not publish at all, though it always resumed operations when the threat passed.

Best of all, however, the Telegraph represented views and opinions, and news coverage, beyond the often parochial dominant influence of the Richmond, Virginia press. Its interests extended from Atlantic to Mississippi, and it reprinted substantial material from other Deep South Confederate journals, some of whose issues are no longer extant. And by being at a remove from the national capital, its pages often reflected the divisions within Confederate society more eloquently”

Do keep checking back to see what other newspapers will be added.

Related resources re the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies and the American Civil War Manuscript Guides (Virginia Tech).

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