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16. French to Bess French, July 26, 1852, BBFFP. Emphasis in original.
17. French to F.O.J. Smith, November 21, 1852, Collection 38, F.O.J. Smith Papers, Collections of the Maine Historical Society. Emphasis in original.
18. Daily Union, June 19, 1852.
19. French to Henry Flagg French, October 10, 1852, BBFFP. For more of French’s electioneering efforts, see French to Pierce, July 15, 23, and August 4, 1852, Franklin Pierce Papers.
20. French to Henry Flagg French, March 13, 1853, BBFFP.
21. Union (Washington), June 15, 1852.
22. Connecticut Courant, July 10, 1852; Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, June 16, 1852; Alexandria Gazette, June 17, 1852.
23. Hawthorne to Horatio Bridge, October 13, 1852, in The Letters, 1843–1853, ed. Thomas Woodson, L. Neal Smith, and Norman Holmes Pearson (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1985), 16:605.
24. Ibid.
25. Pierce received 254 Electoral College votes to Winfield Scott’s 42, and 1,601,474 popular votes to Scott’s 1,386,580. The Free Soil candidate John Hale received 155,825 votes, and Daniel Webster—though dead—received 7,425—perhaps a desperate vote for compromise. Hartnett, “Franklin Pierce,” 121. On Pierce’s election and loyalties, see Landis, Northern Men, 66–84.
26. Nichols, Franklin Pierce, 216.
27. French called the Compromise a compact; July 1, 1855, Witness, 262. On the passage of the act as treachery, see Etcheson, Bleeding Kansas, chapter 1; Miner, Seeding Civil War, chapter 2. On the Kansas-Nebraska Act, generally, see also Malavasic, The F Street Mess; Wunder and Ross, The Nebraska-Kansas Act of 1854; Roy F. Nichols, “The Kansas-Nebraska Act: A Century of Historiography,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 43 (September 1956): 187–212; Varon, Disunion!, 251–66; Landis, Northern Men, 106–121; and Michael Woods’s handy survey, Bleeding Kansas: Slavery, Sectionalism, and Civil War on the Missouri-Kansas Border (New York: Routledge, 2016).
28. French, diary entry, July 1, 1855, 260. See also August 3, 1855, 265.
29. Ibid., March 5, 1854, 249.
30. Ibid., January 29, 1854, 244–45.
31. Landis, Northern Men, 133.
32. For a doughface-centered look at the Kansas-Nebraska debate, see esp. Landis, Northern Men, 106–121.
33. On framing arguments in this debate, see Craig Miner, Seeding Civil War; Hartnett, Democratic Dissent; Gunja SenGupta, For God and Mammon: Evangelicals and Entrepreneurs, Masters and Slaves in Territorial Kansas, 1854–1860 (Athens: University of Georgia, 1996).
34. Macon Weekly Telegraph, May 30, 1854. On press coverage of Kansas, see esp. Miner, Seeding Civil War. As Miner notes, the Kansas debate didn’t break neatly along sectional lines; national party loyalties still had some impact. This held true for the press as well as for Congress.
35. See esp. Michael William Pfau, The Political Style of Conspiracy: Chase, Sumner, and Lincoln (East Lansing: Michigan State University, 2005); Miner, Seeding Civil War.
36. On the press offering the public a “front row seat” to Congress’s conflict and machinations, see Miner, Seeding Civil War, 239–51.
37. On newspaper growth, see John, Spreading the News, 38; Brooke, “To be ‘Read by the Whole People’”; Swift, The Making of an American Senate, 167.
38. On national press exposure of sectional furor, see Ratner and Teeter, Fanatics and Fire-Eaters; Leonard, Power of the Press, 90–96; Miner, Seeding Civil War, 37–39; Schudson, Discovering the News, chapter 3; Pierce, “Networks of Disunion”; Kielbowicz, News in the Mail.
39. See also Miner, Seeding Civil War, 240–41, 246–49.
40. French to F.O.J. Smith, November 21, 1852, Collection 38, F.O.J. Smith Papers, Collections of the Maine Historical Society. Emphasis in original.
41. Samuel Kernell and Gray C. Jacobson, “Congress and the Presidency as News in the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Politics 49 (November 1987): 1016–35.
42. On Washington reporting, see esp. McPherson, “Reporting the Debates”; Essary, Covering Washington; Ritchie, Press Gallery; Culver H. Smith, The Press, Politics, and Patronage; Marbut, News from the Capital; Leonard, Power of the Press, chapter 3; Ames, A History of the National Intelligencer.
43. The Congressional Globe came out weekly, using the type set for the regular Globe. The Register of Debates came out at the end of every session until 1837, when it ceased publication. In 1848, the Senate hired reporters to cover its proceedings; improvements in stenography enabled them to record virtual verbatim accounts. The House followed suit in 1850. Amer, “The Congressional Record.”
44. Baldasty, Commercialization of News, 42–43. The Congressional Record began publication in 1873. Other Washington newspapers, such as the Union and the Telegraph, also served as a kind of record, particularly the paper chosen as the president’s “organ.”
45. French, diary entry, June 19, 1843, Witness, 150.
46. Globe, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., April 9, 1840, 313. To avoid this problem, some reporters printed insults in the first person, indicating that they themselves weren’t responsible for them. For example, the account of an exchange between Eugenius Nisbet (W-GA) and Edward Black (D-GA) shifts into the first person when Black asks if Nesbit is calling him a liar. Ibid., 26th Cong., 2nd Sess., February 18, 1841, 187.
47. For a sense of printing costs, see Smith, Press, Politics, and Patronage, 250–55. See also Robert C. Byrd, The Senate: 1789–1989: Historical Statistics (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1993), 675; idem., “Reporters of Debate and the Congressional Record,” ibid., 311–26; Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Government Management, Information, and Technology of the Committee on Government Reform, House of Representatives, May 24, 1999, No. 106–91, 4; Jenkins and Stewart, Fighting for the Speakership, 48–54. In 1846, Congress began low-bid printing awards. Baldasty, The Commercialization of News in the Nineteenth Century, 42.
48. French to unknown correspondent, March 28, 1836, BBFFP. See also French, diary entry, April 10, 1836, Witness, 64. Emphasis in original.
49. On the inaccuracy of the Globe and Intelligencer, see Alexander, History and Procedure of the House of Representatives, 101; McPherson, “Reporting the Debates”; NYT, April 10, 1860.
50. See for example Globe, 31st Cong., 1st Sess., December 13, 1849, 27.
51. Ibid., 33rd Cong., 1st Sess., June 20 and 21, 1854, 1451, 1466.
52. Ibid., 27th Cong., 3rd Sess., February 27, 1843, 353. See also ibid., 27th Cong. 1st Sess., 1, which explains that the appendix “will contain the long speeches, written out by the members themselves.”
53. Ibid., 28th Cong., 1st Sess., February 21, 1844, 303–304; ibid., January 1844, 534 app.
54. French, diary entry, May 24, 1838, Witness, 86.
55. Ibid., July 17, 1870, 621.
56. Ibid., June 19, 1843, 150. On his reading and writing habits, see for example French to Henry Flagg French, July 3, 1853, BBFFP; French to R. J. Walker, July 31, 1844, BBFFP.
57. Alexandria Gazette, June 17, 1854.
58. Daily National Intelligencer, July 22, 1854. The Intelligencer said the day’s average temperature was 94 degrees. French’s three (!) thermometers—one at the front door, one in his library, and one in the parlor—read higher.
59. French to Henry Flagg French, December 12, 1847. French was irritated by charges in the Whig press and considered not only “pouncing” but libel suits.
60. Sir John Edwin Mason, “Sir Benjamin Brown French,” Proceedings of the Grand Encampment 18th Triennial Session (Davenport, Iowa: Griggs, Watson & Day, 1871), 27 app.
&
nbsp; 61. Adams, diary entry, February 18, 1845, Diary, 12:170. Adams was speaking of his speech the day before.
62. Leonard, Power of the Press, 78–80; McPherson, “Reporting the Debates,” 144; Ritchie, Press Gallery, 24.
63. Late in his career, Webster favored the New York Times reporter Henry Raymond: “Nobody could ever report my speeches, to make them appear so well as he.” Webster to Simeon Draper, undated [post-1851], Henry J. Raymond Papers, NYPL. In 1830, Webster asked the Intelligencer editor Joseph Gales to record a speech, then spent a month revising it for print. Benjamin Perley Poore, Perley’s Reminiscences, 1:116–18; McPherson, “Reporting the Debates,” 145. See also Raymond’s notes of a conversation with Webster, probably in late 1847 or early 1848, outlining in advance an argument that Webster delivered to the U.S. Supreme Court on January 27, 1848, concerning Rhode Island’s Dorr Rebellion. Notes, undated, Henry J. Raymond Papers, NYPL. Thomas Hart Benton did the same with reporters. John Wentworth, Congressional Reminiscences: Adams, Benton, Calhoun, Clay, and Webster, an Address: Delivered at Central Music Hall, Thursday Eve., March 16, 1882, Before the Chicago Historical Society (Chicago: Fergus Printing Company, 1882), 47–48.
64. Globe, 31st Cong., 1st Sess., March 25, 1850, 592. See also Ritchie, Press Gallery, 24; George F. Hoar, Autobiography of Seventy Years, 2 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1903), 144.
65. Adams, diary entry, March 6–17, 1835, Diary, 9:216–20; ibid., December 13, 1831, 8:437.
66. Benton-Foote Report, 56. Similarly, Adams referred a reporter for the Boston Atlas to the Intelligencer; Adams, diary entry, October 16, 1837, Diary, 9:414.
67. Globe, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., April 2 and 9, 1840, 301, 313–14. The footnote is dated April 10, 1840. See also ibid., May 1, 1840, 372.
68. Ibid., March 31, 1840, 297; McPherson, “Reporting the Debates,” 145. Thompson was part of a Whig attack on the Globe, along with Edward Stanly (W-NC), William Graves (W-KY), and William Bond (W-OH) in the House, and Henry Clay (W-KY) in the Senate.
69. Gobright, Recollections of Men and Things, 402; Gobright became a Globe reporter in the winter of 1840. See esp. John Nerone, Violence Against the Press: Policing the Public Sphere (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); Ford Risley, Abolition and the Press: The Moral Struggle Against Slavery (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University, 2008), esp. chapter 3.
70. Gobright, Recollection of Men and Things, 401–402.
71. Thompson is barely reported between March 31 and May 1, 1840; see for example Globe, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., 297, 370–71.
72. Ibid., May 1, 1840, 371.
73. Globe, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., January 18, 1840, 128; McPherson, “Reporting the Debates,” 145.
74. Baldasty, Commercialization of News, 48–49.
75. Ibid., 42–43, 49.
76. Ibid., 42–43; Leonard, Power of the Press, 92–95; Ratner and Teeter, Fanatics and Fire-Eaters, 8–33.
77. New York Herald, April 13, 1860.
78. Hazel Dicken-Garcia, Journalistic Standards in Nineteenth-Century America (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), 98, 175–78; Ratner and Teeter, Fanatics and Fire-Eaters, 21.
79. David Outlaw to Emily Outlaw, February 18, 1850, DOP.
80. New-York Tribune, May 10, 1854.
81. Washington Sentinel, May 12, 1854; Daily Union (Washington), May 14, 1854. There was much ranting by Southern congressmen as well. See for example Globe, 33rd Cong., 1st Sess., June 8, 1854, 1363.
82. Pike, First Blows of the Civil War: The Ten Years of Preliminary Conflict in the United States, from 1850 to 1860 (New York: American News, 1879), 230–33. On Pike, see Ritchie, Press Gallery, 46–54.
83. Ohio State Journal, May 16, 1854.
84. On Campbell, see William E. Gienapp, The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852–1856 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 242; Robert J. Zalimas, Jr., “‘Contest MY Seat Sir!’: Lewis D. Campbell, Clement L. Vallandigham, and the Election of 1856,” Ohio History Journal (Winter–Spring 1997): 5–30.
85. Globe, 33rd Cong., 1st Sess., May 11–12, 1854, 1854; Coldwater (Mich.) Sentinel, May 19, 1854; Manufacturers’ and Farmers’ Journal, May 15, 1854; Morrison, Slavery and the American West, 153–54.
86. Campbell to Pike, May 14, 1854, in Pike, First Blows of the Civil War, 230. For an example of such resolves, see “THE VOICE OF NEW YORK!,” Massachusetts Spy, May 17, 1854.
87. Washburn to Pike, May 13, 1854, in Pike, First Blows of the Civil War, 226.
88. Ohioans Campbell, Joshua Giddings, and Salmon Chase also did some stirring up, launching a statewide campaign for an anti-Nebraska “Convention of the People” that they hoped “the people” would be willing to call. Chase to William Schouler, May 25, 1855, in Reinhard H. Luthin, “Salmon P. Chase’s Political Career Before the Civil War,” Mississippi Historical Review 29 (March 1943): 517–40, quote on 524.
89. Gienapp, Origins of the Republican Party, 242.
90. Ohio State Journal, November 25, 1854. Campbell won 2,463 votes in Butler County, 2,414 votes in Preble County, and 4,181 votes in Montgomery County, giving him a total of 9,058 votes; Democrat Clement Vallandigham won 2,755 votes, 966 votes, and 2,772 votes respectively, giving him a total of 6,493 votes. See also Morrison, Slavery and the American West, 155–56; Potter, Impending Crisis, 175–76.
91. Hudson, Journalism in the United States, 522–73.
92. On letter-writers, see Timothy E. Cook, “Senators and Reporters Revisited,” in Loomis, Esteemed Colleagues, 169–72; Ritchie, Press Gallery, 20–32 and passim; Wilmer, Our Press Gang; Essary, Covering Washington, 22–26; Miner, Seeding Civil War, 378–79. On a later period, see Ralph M. McKenzie, Washington Correspondents Past and Present: Brief Sketches of the Rank and File (New York: Newspaperdom, 1903). Congressmen were hard put to tell reporters from letter-writers. Globe, 28th Cong., 1st Sess., January 26, 1844, 194; Hinds’ Precedents, vol. 5, chapter 148, section 7306–308.
93. “Congressional Manners,” NYT, April 10, 1860.
94. For a glance at this correlation, see Frank Luther Mott, “Facetious News Writing, 1833–1883,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 29 (June 1942): 35–54.
95. “Nominis in Umbra” [French], dateline February 23, 1838, Chicago Democrat, BBFFP.
96. For congressional venting about letter-writers, see for example Globe, 28th Cong., 2nd Sess., March 3, 1845, 388; ibid., 23rd Cong., 1st Sess., March 31, 1834, 280.
97. James Green (D-MO) was speaking. Ibid., 35th Cong., 2nd Sess., January 25, 1859, 574. See also “Black Cats in the Gallery—How Does the Herald Obtain News,” New York Herald, January 26, 1859. A year later, members joked about “black cats” when discussing a leak. Globe, 36th Cong., 1st Sess., January 12, 1860, 430; New York Herald, January 13, 1860. For a search, see for example Globe, 36th Cong., 1st Sess., January 12, 1860, 430.
98. Through his close connection with the Philadelphia Press editor John W. Forney, Secretary of State (and future president) James Buchanan (D-PA)—a former newspaperman himself—wrote occasional letters. Forney, Public Men, 195. When Buchanan was blamed for leaking a copy of the Mexican Treaty to the press through the Herald’s letter-writer, President Polk thought that the controversy would teach him “a profitable lesson, and that is that it is dangerous to have any connection or intercourse with the unprincipled letter writers at Washington.” Diary entry, March 27, 1848, Diary of James K. Polk, 3:410. Buchanan also wrote letters attacking Benton during debate over the admission of Oregon. Meigs, Life of Benton (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1904), 300–301.
99. New-York Daily Tribune, May 15, 1854
. See for example Trenton State Gazette, May 15, 1854; Albany Evening Journal, May 15, 1854; Ohio State Journal, May 23, 1854.
100. New-York Daily Tribune, May 15, 1854.
101. See for example Ohio State Journal, May 17–18, 1854.
102. Globe, 33rd Cong., 1st Sess., May 19, 1854, 1230.
103. Daily Union (Washington), May 12, 1854.
104. Richmond Whig, May 16, 1854.
105. On the strengthening of popular belief of a Slave Power conspiracy in the 1850s, see esp. Pfau, Political Style of Conspiracy, 1–45; Miner, Seeding Civil War.