SOURCE: Osthaus, Carl R. “From the Old South to the New South: The Editorial Career of William Tappan Thompson of the Savannah Morning News.” The Southern Quarterly 14, no. 3 (April 1976): 237-60.

[In the following essay, Osthaus documents the career of William Tappan Thompson, an influential writer and Savannah journalist who voiced the opinions of conservative, white supremacist, and non-appeasement Southerners throughout the Reconstruction era.]

In 1882 newspapers all over the South reported the death of Colonel William Tappan Thompson, editor of the Savannah Morning News for almost thirty-two years. The New York Times, one of the few Northern papers to put aside the bitterness of sectional discord to pay its respects, regretted the passing of one of the most influential journalists of the South. Thompson's own paper saw in his death the decline of a significant aspect of Southern life. “In many respects,” the paper declared, “he was truly a great man; unassuming, amiable and retiring, yet withal able, fearless, and of well nigh unerring judgment. With him has passed away another of the old school of Southern journalists, whose ranks are, unfortunately, being so rapidly decimated.”¹

Thompson had long been recognized as a spokesman for his adopted city, his state, and the South. As an editor and author, he both reflected and made Southern opinion. Georgians recognized him not only as a genuine colonel (he had served as a militia officer in the Civil War) but as one who possessed those rare, intangible, non-military qualities which William Allen White once labelled “coloneliferous.”² Paradoxically, this Southern gentlemen of the old school was a Northern-born man who first saw the South at age eighteen, owned no plantation, spent much of his life encouraging business development, and publicly declined to fight a duel. The editorial life of Colonel William Tappan Thompson, an unrepentant rebel, provides a case study in the rise of a Solid South and reveals the Old South roots of the New South. It illustrates an essential continuity of nineteenth-century Southern history, especially the continuity in the world outlook of Southerners molded in the antebellum and Civil War era.³ Despite the upheavals of the Civil War, emancipation, and Reconstruction, William Tappan Thompson voiced throughout his long life the essence of editorial policies on race, politics, economic development, and the North set forth daily in the 1850s.

Born in Ohio and apprenticed as a printer's devil in Philadelphia, William Tappan Thompson came to his Savannah editorship by a circuitous route. After travel to Florida as a private secretary, a brief stint in the militia during the Seminole War, and legal study and newspaper work in the office of the famed lawyer, humorist, author, and editor, Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, Thompson turned to a literary career.⁴ His attempts to establish several journals to promote Southern cultural nationalism between 1838 and 1850 failed for lack of public support. Nevertheless, Thompson achieved lasting literary fame in this period by creating the likable Major Jones, an independent-minded, middle class farmer whose activities provided humorous comment on domestic life and customs among “Georgia crackers.” Thompson's Major Jones's Courtship, published in 1843, and other books remained in print for over half a century, but unfortunately the author made little money from them. Regardless of his own unfavorable opinion of his literary career, one fact seems indisputable: the fame of being the creator of the lovable Major Jones greatly increased his authority as editor when he spoke out on affairs of state and nation.⁵

By 1850, when he was thirty-eight years old, Thompson had abandoned his profitless literary career and was ready to begin his thirty-two years' devotion to newspaper work, politics, and public affairs.⁶ While editing a literary journal in Baltimore, Thompson had noticed the success of Arunah Abell's Sun, a cheap, independent, popular daily designed for the interests and pocketbooks of the common man. Thompson, with the financial backing and managerial skills of businessman John M. Cooper, established a similar paper in Savannah, the leading commercial emporium and cotton port for southern Georgia and northern Florida. On January 15, 1850, Editor Thompson brought out the first issue of the Daily Morning News, a “penny press” journal of general and commercial news which was to be inexpensive, politically neutral, and interesting to all parties and classes. Although not literally a penny paper (it cost three cents a day or $5.00 a year), it was much cheaper than other Georgia dailies. More important than cost, it was aimed not at politicians and businessmen but at the total community. The paper was never politically neutral, as it claimed in its first ten years; to be sure, it was the organ of no political party, but as the decade advanced it supported only Democrats and found in Democratic solidarity on Southern principles the protection absolutely essential to Southern civilization.⁷

Savannah, already blessed with a Democratic and a Whig newspaper, now had a vigorous competitor claiming the largest circulation after only three weeks of existence. Thompson's Daily Morning News soon was an established community institution providing an urban and rural people with news crucial to the economic life of a port city: listings of ship arrivals and departures, daily market prices, and announcements of imports and exports. Readers also encountered Thompson's pronouncements on books, planting, European politics, railroads, the cultivation of tea, and any number of things great and small. The News was journalism at its most personal. It expressed Thompson's willingness to write about anything under the sun.⁸

Thompson was an enthusiastic Savannah booster, and the News preached civic pride in almost every issue. On occasion, to be sure, he gently chided Savannah's shortcomings, as befitted a beloved and accepted community scold. Fortunately, as he claimed, Savannah had little need for his scolding, for few cities were as prosperous, beautiful, healthy, and progressive as this rising commercial center on the South Atlantic. The paper's masthead carried an elaborate seal portraying the city's present and future: stacks of cotton bales, and steamships and locomotives smoking profusely.⁹ Amid the bustling economic activity, Thompson mused, Savannah's “beautiful squares, shade trees, and splendid edifices, render it the most attractive spot on earth.”¹⁰

The editor wrote often on the economic needs and prospects of Savannah and the South. He was confident that King cotton would assure prosperity for the indefinite future, but he warned that cotton profits did not always find their way to Southern pockets due to the entrenched positions of shippers and factors, the robberies of the tariff, and the high prices of manufactured goods. The Daily Morning News encouraged the South to organize its own commercial associations, shipping lines, railroads, and home industries in cotton textiles, iron, and lumber.¹¹ Thompson had advocated this course as early as the 1840s. Perhaps a cotton mill in Augusta, which Thompson called the Philadelphia of the South, awakened him to the possibilities of home manufactures. His Major Jones certainly knew that the South must turn to manufacturing if she were to become as rich and powerful as the North.¹² Although Thompson fully enjoyed painting a rosy-hued picture of economic progress toward self-sufficiency and frequently pointed to examples at hand, such as a new Savannah-built steam engine in the Upper Stream Rice Mill,¹³ he made no realistic assessment of the problems and costs of industrialization. There was much talk, a few advances, and great faith that major strides were being made. All in all, his conception of industrialization suggests a purely romantic image of progress, prosperity, and happiness for everybody. But if he failed to foresee the social and economic upheaval inseparable from industrialization, he seems to have been no more myopic than the New South advocates of the 1880s, who espoused a remarkably similar program.

In the 1850s the much-traveled William Tappan Thompson, outsider and self-made man, found a home in Savannah. Although taking pride in his independence, Thompson had courted in his books and newspaper the serious-minded middle class and had received its approval.¹⁴ He moved in the leading political, business, and social circles and acquired many positions of honor and responsibility. He joined with businessmen to guarantee the bonds of the Savannah, Albany, and Gulf Railroad Company; he served as judge at the county fair; he monopolized the city's public printing business for several years; he became chairman of the board of health, and assumed the duties of port warden. Almost a professional committeeman, he was called to serve a variety of causes—soliciting aid for Georgia colonists in Kansas, keeping order at election polls.¹⁵ He was accepted as a city father and probably even as a Southern gentleman. Unfortunately, like most nineteenth-century journalists, he engaged in unseemly verbal brawls with his rivals, which added a note of querulousness and somewhat tarnished his genteel image. In 1855 one such quarrel escalated dangerously when the editor of the Savannah Republican denounced him as a blackguard “whose meanness is equalled only by his cowardice.”¹⁶ Thompson replied in kind but, unconventionally, declined to challenge his antagonist to a duel for reasons of principle and family responsibility.¹⁷ His position did not suffer.

The sectional discord in the nation progressively absorbed the attention of the Daily Morning News. Since the late 1830s Thompson had been sensitive to Southern grievances against Northern wrongs. Again and again he had argued that Northerners had no business tampering with slavery. Adept at arguing the traditional defenses of slavery, Thompson generally treated slaves and black people humorously or indulgently, but he heaped abuse on agitators who would foment discord.¹⁸ Thompson had little tolerance for freedom of the press or speech where antislavery agitation was concerned. Undoubtedly everyone was entitled to his opinions, he wrote, “but opinions antagonistical to the interests and dangerous to the peace of the community, had better be held strictly as the private property of their possessors and not obtruded on those whom they are sure to offend and irritate.”¹⁹

Sectional antagonisms extended to every aspect of the Southern way of life, and Thompson was sensitive to every criticism. He warned that the South was being conquered economically: cotton wealth chiefly benefited the Northern traders and manufacturers; Northern coastal vessels dominated the South's trade, and Northern books subverted the Southern mind.²⁰ Georgia, he wrote in 1847, “is the greatest cotton growing state in the Union, and to her Cotton is Massachusetts mainly indebted for what she is worth. If she would return to Georgia all that she had made by manufacturing her produce and carrying it to market, and trading with her, with interest on it, Georgia would this day be able to buy Massachusetts, and yet have enough to live on.”²¹ He advocated sending Southern boys to Southern schools and rejoiced in 1860 at the fulfillment of the grand dream of a university of the South. In all things the South was to rely on her natural greatness and harmonious social system to serve as a model of order and civility to the rancorous, greedy, money-minded Yankees.²² While arraigning the North, he paradoxically found nothing wrong with imitating the North's economic successes.

Thompson lamented the steady erosion of Southern political strength and the corresponding increase of abolitionism and Northern aggression. The Compromise of 1850, interpreted by him as a Southern defeat, was even more intolerable because it was passed in part by Southern votes and defended by Southern presses. To Thompson that great crisis of mid-century tested the ability of Northerners to check their own fanatics and proved that the South's security depended upon her internal unity.²³ The continuing struggle over slavery destroyed Thompson's own political independence and drove him into the Democratic Party, the bulwark of Northern and Southern conservatives who held “correct” constitutional views of Southern rights. Editor Thompson found in the Pierce Administration security against tampering with the Fugitive Slave Act or slavery in the District of Columbia despite the new antislavery ammunition supplied by Uncle Tom's Cabin.²⁴ As late as 1856 Thompson was Pierce's champion: “We could not and cannot participate in the act of striking down the strongest arm uplifted in the defense of Southern rights and Southern honor.”²⁵ Still, Buchanan's victory was entirely acceptable if it rolled back the tide of sectionalism. But what was the meaning of these electoral victories if the South continued to lose political power and the North trampled upon her rights? Despite strenuous efforts to save Kansas for slavery (and Thompson did his share in sounding the alarm and collecting Georgia money for proslavery settlers), Northern aggression claimed yet another territory. The Kansas crisis was a time for plain speaking: “Even the most conservative of the South must view a large majority of the people of the North as enemies,” said Thompson.²⁶ Northern hegemony was now apparent. What if the Democratic Party should cease to protect Southern rights? What if it were no longer able?²⁷ Thompson's nightmare came true in 1859 and 1860. With the rise of the “Black Republicans” and John Brown's raid, the crisis was upon the nation. Thompson reported one-half the country arming against slave uprisings, and he predicted future raids like Brown's. The triumph of the Black Republicans, especially when they captured Connecticut in April 1860, dispelled his hope of a Northern reaction against the fanatical incendiarism at Harpers Ferry. Would the Democratic Party still stand on Southern principles? Apparently not, as the triumph of popular sovereignty in 1860 showed. Thompson decided that the only conceivable response was a withdrawal of Southern delegates from the tainted party and a call for unity in defense of the South.²⁸

Thompson's demand for unity became even more urgent once hostilities had commenced. The Solid South, conceived in the prewar decade, was born in secession and civil war. Having boosted his city and defended the South throughout his editorial career, Thompson was wonderfully suited for explaining the Confederate cause, bolstering morale, preaching nationalism, and convincing all of the necessity of united resistance. Damning Yankees and Yankee atrocities—especially emancipation—he found Southern heroes by the regiment and division; they were the common soldiers who fought for principle and for their homes. Like women's virtue or Southern honor, brave soldiers were eternal verities never to be questioned. General Lee, like George Washington, championed the rights of man.²⁹ Of Jefferson Davis he said: “How gratifying, how assuring in a crisis like this, to feel that we have a Chief Magistrate who inspires the confidence, the respect and love of a unanimous people.”³⁰ How could such a people lose—a unique people with their own superior social and labor system? The possibility of defeat seldom surfaced in the paper; Thompson always found some favorable interpretation of military reverses. The fall of Atlanta, for example, was serious but not fatal. Sherman actually gained little because he held no ground; he was merely passing through.³¹ There seems to have been no conscious attempt to deceive. The Daily Morning News proclaimed Braxton Bragg's Kentucky campaign in 1862 a signal success; when the truth became known, Thompson demanded an accounting, for abuses of public confidence were inexcusable. “The Yankee policy of falsification is unworthy of our people and our cause.”³²

When the divisiveness of competing and uncooperative Confederate and state governments handicapped the war effort, Thompson, perhaps the leading editor in a state noted for its jealous regard of its rights, raised his voice for harmony and conciliation. He walked a middle path between Governor Brown and President Davis, arguing that despite Brown's posturing and obstructionism the breach was not irreparable. One must be loyal both to states rights and to Confederate nationalism. Thompson defended Davis against Georgia critics, writing again and again that to attack Davis, an able administrator and competent military authority, only aided the enemy. The people must sacrifice for the army; without unity and harmony the cause was hopeless.³³

As the war inexorably approached its conclusion, Editor Thompson became bitter. Despite his extreme dismay at the attempt to turn slaves into Confederate soldiers, his devotion to the cause and his hatred of the Yankee never wavered. Reunion was unthinkable: “None but the veriest craven that ever disgraced human nature could entertain for one moment the thought of reunion. The blood of our patriot heroes, slain while fighting for Southern Independence, would cry from the ground against such humiliation and disgrace.”³⁴ To forestall those Georgians who were discussing peace, Thompson felt compelled to explain “Why we are fighting.”

This is a people's war, involving the social, civil and political rights of all classes; their liberties and pursuits of happiness. We are fighting for the supremacy of the white race; the right of self government; to save our children from vassalage, from infamy and ruin. We fight for the recollections of the past; and until the last armed man expires; until our Confederacy stands before the world, redeemed; a monument of glory, admiration, and the praise of mankind.³⁵

As Sherman's army moved further into Georgia, the Daily Morning News changed hands. The new proprietors prudently demanded a policy leaning toward reunion on face-saving terms. On November 1, 1864, a new editor took charge of the political editorials and Thompson was assigned to the news and other departments.³⁶ Less than two months later Savannah fell. Thompson, refusing to remain in an occupied city, resigned his sinecure as militia colonel and marched off to fight as a private with General Joseph Johnston's army.³⁷ He would prove by example what he had urged by precept—continuing resistance to Yankee tyranny.

Wherever federal forces triumphed, the Confederate press fell silent or quickly donned new Union dress. Thompson's paper, erstwhile voice of Southern nationalism and resistance, became a Unionist sheet edited by Samuel W. Mason, a young New England newspaperman who had most recently managed an army and navy paper in Port Royal, South Carolina.³⁸ Mason moved into the Daily Morning News office and, with equipment from his Palmetto Herald, resurrected Savannah's once leading newspaper on January 11, 1865, with the announcement that the Savannah Daily Herald had been established on the ruins of the old Savannah News, “a fire-eating sheet with a worm-eaten office.”³⁹ The paper cheered on the federal forces in the last few months of the war and attacked secession, arguing that the masses had been seduced into an unconscionable folly. Mason was particularly critical of the Southern press and the spirit of resistance, a “sort of trash with which the Confederate journalists, or the Confederate leaders who contol the journals, have found it necessary to dose their people, in order to stimulate that morbid animosity to ‘the Yankees’. …”⁴⁰

But what policy should the paper pursue with the coming of peace? Mason had invested time and money in his Southern venture and arranged for financial settlement, consummated one year later, with the whilom owners of the Daily Morning News. Having no intention of leaving, Mason determined to win mass support for his paper. Peace, conciliation, and a rapid restoration of the Union soon emerged as his policies. On the most vital issue of the day, the freedmen, the Savannah Daily Herald adopted a cautious position: “Labor they must, of course, and the sooner they are disabused of the false ideas of their new position the better for themselves, for the South, for our whole country, and for the cause of liberty and human equality throughout the world.”⁴¹

Even before the cessation of hostilities Mason revealed the malleability of his political attitudes and the pragmatism of his Southern adjustment by imploring in the Savannah Daily Herald: Colonel Thompson, won't you please come home?⁴² Consequently, on August 17, 1865, the paper's masthead welcomed a new staff member: William Tappan Thompson was now assistant editor. Why Thompson joined a paper controlled by his enemies and previously critical of the cause he loved remains unknown. Most certainly he was in dire financial straits. Perhaps he saw in his old journal, now fast recanting its recent heresies, a vehicle for rebuilding and restoring his beloved South. Nothing is known about his editorial arrangements with Mason, whether Mason in fact directed the editorial policy or merely the business establishment.⁴³

Between August and December 1865, Mason's and Thompson's paper urged conciliation and a rapid reentry into the Union, yet it never surrendered any essential principles, and by December it had become much more critical of Federal policies. Perhaps the paper reveals the divided mind of the South as well as the divided mind and authority of its editorial staff. The paper urged the election of true yet moderate Southern men acceptable to Congressional Republicans. It claimed that the South was loyal and that freedmen were fully protected in their rights as long as they recognized their duty to labor. It urged the rebel leaders to take the loyalty oaths and obtain pardons. Although the editors never surrendered any deeply held Southern beliefs, they occasionally printed pieces critical of the South—articles on the atrocities at Andersonville and the failures of Southern education—which were all the more glaring when compared with Nothern achievements. But above all the Savannah Daily Herald urged a speedy readmission and no tampering with race relations. The South had complied with President Johnson's terms; the South was ready for readmission on a policy of conciliation, not confiscation; freedom, not imprisonment of rebels; and reunion on the principles of the Constitution, not reconstruction by the whims of partisan congressmen. But when Congress passed a joint resolution to create a committee of fifteen to consider readmission, the hope of early reentry was crushed and the “malignant purposes of the dominant faction” were revealed.”⁴⁴

The Savannah Daily Herald protested every move to change the status of blacks, seeing in demands for full civil rights and suffrage for blacks a Republican plot for political dominance rather than guarantees of Southern loyalty. Tampering with race relations was unnatural; the Freedmen's Bureau was a moral and social evil. A radical cabal of Congressmen trampled upon the Constitution; party tyrants, the worst of them Thaddeus Stevens, were the most atrocious men ever to wield power.⁴⁵ By mid-1866 William Tappan Thompson had redeemed his paper despite Mason's continued ownership. And in December, as Congress prepared the Fourteenth Amendment, the Daily News and Herald demanded Southern intransigence. The South had accepted the verdict of war, it reasoned, but to demand a change in its social fabric or pattern of government would impose an unnatural and impossible rejection of the South's heritage. “… we will not dishonor the memories and trample upon the blood of those who fell before Richmond, who conquered at Chancellorsville, who waded so calmly through the fire at Gettysburg.” The South was desolate and powerless; it could not resist, but neither would it comply. History revealed that tyrannical governments were short-lived; the Radical Congress would soon expire amid the universal execrations of an oppressed people.⁴⁶ The Savannah Daily Herald, like its ancestor, the Daily Morning News, was once again a voice of resistance.

In mid-1867 Samuel Mason sold a half interest in the paper to J. Holbrook Estill, a Savannah businessman and a much honored Confederate soldier; and one year later Estill bought out Mason's remaining interest. Colonel Thompson now received title to the position he had held for some time: editor-in-chief. Estill restored an approximation of the old name, the Savannah Morning News, announcing that the paper, as always, would advocate the doctrine of white supremacy and uncompromising opposition to those who would ruin the country by violating the Constitution.⁴⁷

In his old age William Tappan Thompson was fondly remembered as the voice of resistance during the dark days of Reconstruction. The sincerity of this tribute is unquestioned; Thompson stood out, even among the voices screaming for resistance. Politics—the triumph of Democrats over Radical Republicans—became the Savannah Morning News's overriding concern. Ignoring the trend of modern urban journals in the North, Thompson's paper reverted to the style of prewar political journals. Rallying the forces of resistance and flaying the South's enemies superseded the news-gathering functions of the paper. Completely committed to his cause, Thompson never concerned himself about accuracy in his political reportage.

The Savannah Morning News printed every report or rumor of Radical outrages. All the news was slanted; the editor referred to his political opponents only in terms of scurrilous abuse. Thompson's editorial billingsgate was unusually virulent even for a period when newspaper quarrels were least inhibited by good taste. An overweight ally of the hated Radical regime was always mentioned as “Fatty” Harris, who did things “emfatically.” An abusive Republican editor, John W. Forney of Philadelphia, was “Pimp” Forney, and General Sheridan was a “stupid ass.” Thompson contemptuously dismissed the militant black leader, A. A. Bradley, as “the Wahoo of the Coons.”⁴⁸ Thompson decried carpetbaggers everywhere, corrupting the political process and looting the public treasury. Hounded out of the North for rascality, these miscreants pounced on the spoils with the unerring instinct of carrion crows.⁴⁹ Thompson particularly loathed Governor Rufus Bullock, a renegade Southerner totally dependent on black votes, and Clarke Swayze, editor of a dirty Radical sheet, who stood for everything odious, infamous, and contemptible.⁵⁰

For Thompson the real issue of Reconstruction was white supremacy. Although blacks held only a small number of offices, the very existence of black voters and officeholders defiled his world and suggested the imminent dissolution of the bonds of society. He hated the Radicals, but the real victims of this hatred would be the black masses who would remain in Georgia seeking an accommodation with their white neighbors. Thompson's hysteria, disseminated daily in his paper, made equitable arrangements more difficult. In a frenzy, he warned that the Radicals had organized the blacks for the political control of the whites. Black crime—especially assaults upon whites—was rampant, and warnings of armed uprisings to take food and provisions now that the freedmen disdained work rang through the columns of the Savannah Morning News.⁵¹ “All over the South,” he wrote, “the negroes, whenever any fancied wrong is done them, assemble at a given signal, usually the rolling of a drum, and commit, or are fully prepared to commit deeds of blood or lawless violence.” In Texas, Thompson cried, the blacks are running wild: “The barbarism of their native country is rapidly coming upon them, and that Fetichism or Obi worship of Congo, is taking the place of the Christian religion. … These are of the race of men who, by the action of a Radical Congress, have been made masters of the South.”⁵²

Savannahians read that the white South was betrayed, persecuted, insulted and given over to the atrocities of a savage race. The only conceivable course, declared the Savannah Morning News, was either to submit to the ‘rude sense of justice’ of the savage hordes … or relying upon the right, justice and duty of self defense, … take prompt and efficient steps for the protection of our lives and property, our homes and families.”⁵³ Thompson reported with approval how Savannah's gardeners and farmers, subject to constant depredations by black vagabonds, had organized their own police force for self-protection. Nowhere did Thompson publicly advocate violence, yet his tolerance of vigilante action was obvious. Toward the Ku Klux Klan he was occasionally ambivalent, but usually complimentary. “It appears that the association, which we are informed is powerful in numbers, is simply a charitable, social institution, with, perhaps, a view to mutual aid and protection in these disordered times, but is entirely peaceful and law-abiding in character.” Rather inconsistently, Thompson concluded this article by reprinting a Tennessee papers' account of a midnight raid by the Klan. It scared “old niggers and young niggers, big niggers and little niggers, and niggers of every shade, hue, shape, and complexion.” In the next issue the colonel suggested that the murder of a notorious Columbus Radical (although probably by his own partisans, Thompson intimated) should cause Radicals to reflect upon public sentiment in the South.⁵⁴ From 1868 through 1872 the Savannah Morning News generally defended the Klan, sympathized with its aims, and attributed some of the worst violence to a Negro Klan or to Radicals themselves.

To save the republic and white civilization, once again Thompson urged Southern unity within the Democratic Party. Realizing the South's lowly state within the party's councils, Thompson demanded only that Northern Democrats nominate in 1868 a candidate pledged to constitutionalism and white supremacy.⁵⁵ Democratic defeat in that year did not at all suggest the necessity of compromise. The South would still resist.

Thompson despised anything that smelled of appeasement. Opposing all Radical programs for Reconstruction, he consistently urged the rejection of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Georgia constitution of 1868, the Fifteenth Amendment, and the reseating of the black legislators who had been expelled from the state legislature by Georgia's Democrats in 1868. Thompson proclaimed that the Fifteenth Amendment, which had been forced upon the people by fraud, illegal votes, and the bayonet, would never be regarded as legitimate or morally binding.⁵⁶

Georgia's recalcitrance forced Congress to exert its strength and, in early 1869, it placed the state once again under military rule. It now required the expulsion of legislators ineligible for office under the terms of the Fourteenth Amendment, the reseating of the expelled black legislators, and, as the price of readmission, the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment. Again, and with mounting desperation, Thompson urged defiance. He asked all white legislators to resign and thereby deny the legislature a quorum. This would force another election in which, he felt certain, Georgians would elect white men who could meet the eligibility requirements for office but who would refuse other congressional demands. When all opposition proved futile, he still resisted, preferring congressional despotism and military occupation to the self-abasement and disgrace of compliance.⁵⁷

The incorrigibility of Thompson and the Savannah Morning News helps explain the rapid demise of radicalism in Georgia. Better attuned to practical affairs than Thompson, Georgians took his spirit but rejected his tactical advice and soon found effective expedients. Even during the “nightmare” of Radical rule in 1868, the Democrats had a majority in the state legislature.⁵⁸ Placed once again under military rule, the legislature, against Thompson's advice, complied with congressional demands, and the state was readmitted in July 1870. In December of that year the Democrats once again captured the legislature and then moved to impeach the Radical Republican governor, Rufus Bullock. Preferring resignation to impeachment, Bullock vacated his office in October 1871 and the state was finally redeemed in December 1871 with the election of a Democratic governor. Pleased but wary, Thompson preached continued vigilance, since radicalism still dominated the federal government and menaced the South.⁵⁹

Georgia Democrats had triumphed because they had remained united and true to principle (with some notable exceptions, chief of which was Joe Brown). Thompson was shocked to discover that in their hour of triumph some Georgians were talking of a new departure—of an attempt to win national office by linking up with dissident Republicans on a platform of reconciliation and honest government. Thompson, like many others, was not ready for reconciliation in 1872, especially if it implied the recognition of the legitimacy of Radical Reconstruction measures. In that year the Liberal Republicans forced the issue when they officially split with Grant and the Radicals and nominated Horace Greeley for president.⁶⁰ How would Georgia Democrats respond? Thompson steadfastly rejected the siren call of expediency as the Democratic Convention approached. Better to suffer an honest Democratic defeat, he trumpeted, than be found in the camp of the pink-eyed philosopher whose triumph would inaugurate the reign of communism, free love, social equality of races, and miscegenation.⁶¹ When the convention endorsed Greeley, many Georgia Democrats gagged. Bourbon types like Alexander Stephens rejected coalition altogether, likening the choice between Greeley and Grant to one between hamlock and strychnine.⁶² Thompson was stunned into silence—but only briefly! On July 20 he summarized the unhappy situation of the Georgia Democrats, but announced no decision of his own. Nine days later the editor took his stand. Without enthusiasm, without huzzahs, Thompson endorsed the decision of the convention because he wanted to defeat Grantism and Radicalism, but he grumbled that a more objectionable candidate could scarcely be found.⁶³ Thompson admitted no surrender of principle; he still stood for the unity of the Democratic Party, white supremacy, constitutional government and states rights, and opposition to Radicalism. “While we support Mr. Greeley as a matter of expediency, and earnestly desire his election, we have never proposed for a single instant to forsake the time-honored principles of the Jeffersonian Democracy. … We have no intention of being drawn into any nondescript organization that may spring up after the 5th of November.”⁶⁴ On election day Thompson urged the solemn duty of voting against flagrant usurpation, corruption and misrule.⁶⁵

The Savannah Morning News's postmortem on Greeley's ignominious defeat stated the obvious: the Democrats had blundered in nominating Greeley. The Democrats, Thompson admitted, had bowed to expediency but had never accepted Greeley's past record or the more obnoxious of his political principles. Their nominee had promised reform, forebearance, justice, and honest administration of government. They had accepted these promises while remaining true to their party and to their principles.⁶⁶

Four years later, the Hayes-Tilden presidential contest revealed that Thompson's dedication to Democratic unity and the politics of resistance had not changed. “The truth is,” wrote Thompson, “the South supports the Democratic nomination for the reason it cannot hope for fair play in the Union until another party has obtained control of the administration and the spirit of Radicalism has been forever crushed. It is time, the South is solid, and will remain so until it shall have become safe for her to divide her vote.”⁶⁷ White Savannah went mad with joy when the first returns showed a Democratic victory, but within days joy turned to outrage when the Republicans declared Hayes the victor by claiming all the disputed electoral votes. A conspiracy was under way, screamed the Savannah Morning News; fraudulent manipulation of voters was rife and treasonable acts would yet destroy the sanctity of the ballot box.⁶⁸ As the electoral commission went to work, it became clear that Hayes would be counted in. Concerning the dual returns in Florida, the Savannah Morning News chorused: “Sing a song of six-pence, / A Board full of sin / Four scaly Radicals / Counting Hayes in.”⁶⁹

Thompson almost immediately spotted the Republican Party's attempts to gain Democratic acquiescence and ensure Hayes's triumph by wooing Southern Democrats. The colonel ridiculed the thought of Southern collaboration: “Even suspicion of this would doom a Southern politician to everlasting infamy.”⁷⁰ Thompson was whistling past the graveyard, for many Southern politicians, among them Georgia's own Benjamin H. Hill, were ready to bargain. Viewing themselves as realists and fearing possible violence, they found tangible political and economic inducements to cooperate irresistible.⁷¹ The Savannah Morning News boldly espoused precisely the extremism they wanted to allay: Southern Democrats, Thompson boasted, would “be false to their manhood, to honor and principle if they did not hold themselves ready and willing … to resist, if need be, force with force, the attempt to inaugurate a military despotism on the ruins of the Republic.”⁷² Perhaps there was a bit of theatrical posturing as well as anger, frustration, and pride in such a statement, but Thompson was deadly serious about obstructing the inauguration of His Fraudulency, Returning Board Hayes, by a filibuster to prevent the counting of the returns in Congress.⁷³ But promises and compromises triumphed over the obstructionism of the bitter-enders; Southern congressmen had no taste for another constitutional crisis fraught with the possibilities of violence when the blandishments of the pork barrel beckoned.

The months after the presidential election of 1876 brought an easing of tensions. The Hayes Administration refused to support the three remaining Radical regimes, and home rule became a reality throughout the South. With kind words for the South, Hayes appointed a Southerner as Postmaster General and traveled from Louisville to Atlanta speaking of reconciliation. At first the editor of the Savannah Morning News was unforgiving. He referred frequently to the fraudulent election and styled the Southern cabinet officer an erring brother and repentant sinner.⁷⁴ Nevertheless, Thompson recognized Radicalism's defeat throughout the South and Hayes's rejection of the Radical wing of his own party. Furthermore, he grudgingly welcomed the easing of tensions.⁷⁵ When Hayes arrived in Atlanta in September 1877, Thompson praised the correct and hospitable reception accorded the President by Governor Alfred Colquitt. Thompson hoped that Georgians had sufficiently impressed Hayes so that in the future he would abjure Radicalism and never again favor bayonet rule in a peaceful and law-abiding land.⁷⁶ There was nothing wrong with reconciliation on Southern terms.

As Thompson's years increased he found a secure place in the hearts of Georgians. His paper's circulation led all rivals in Savannah, and probably in the state, until the success of the Atlanta Constitution under Henry Grady. The Savannah Morning News added new equipment and hired experienced newspapermen, among whom was Joel Chandler Harris, author of a popular column of news and humor between 1870 and 1876.⁷⁷ In 1874 the Atlanta Herald, greeting the veteran editor's sojourn at a local hotel, said: “The Colonel holds his own well. He is one of the most genial gentlemen, as well as one of the most capable and industrious journalists of the Georgia press.”⁷⁸ The political battles of Reconstruction had added new laurels to his reputation. Thompson stood high in the Democratic Party's councils in Chatham County, and the Savannah Morning News office served as a focal point for Democratic rallies. In 1868 Thompson was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, and in 1877 he helped write the new state constitution.⁷⁹ He busied himself in Savannah's social and business organizations: he was a Mason and a corporal of the Savannah Volunteer Guards (seemingly quite a comedown for the colonel). In 1880 there was even a Thompson boom for a vacant congressional seat. Although he was defeated by the political enemies whom he had accumulated over the years, the vigorous press support for his nomination reflected his popularity. Said the Augusta Chronicle and Constitutionalist at this time: “For years and years Col. Thompson, bearing his pen proudly and as heroically as ever gallant soldier bore a sword, has fought the good fight of Democracy and liberty; and to him the whole people of the State owe, in a large degree, the blessed privilege of local self government that they now enjoy.”⁸⁰

Despite his obvious concern for the South's political fate, elder statesman Thompson never neglected the local affairs of Savannah. He was still the community booster, conscience, and scold. He praised his city beautiful, urged more liberal salaries for Savannah's efficient and devoted teacher, and complained about Georgians' going north to summer resorts when Savannah offered the potential for wonderful seaside vacations.⁸¹ He tactfully balanced praise for Savannah's achievements—for example, its quick cotton sales and better prices—with mild criticism of a few public oversights—for example, the neglect of Savannah's harbor facilities.⁸² Thompson took pains to portray Savannah as a healthy seaport city, although he also stressed the need for a vigilant public health board and public sanitation policies. Unfortunately, his campaign for public health was often submerged by his denials that Savannah had a health problem. In the disastrous yellow fever epidemic of 1876, for example, Thompson, fearing damage to the city's reputation and commerce, suppressed early reports of the pestilence and thereby deceived his fellow citizens, many of whom were prepared to flee at the first sign of contagion.⁸³

Perhaps no task appeared more sacred to the Savannah Morning New's editor than honoring the memory of the Confederacy. Thompson spoke solemn and kindly words on the passing of illustrious Confederates and sought to hallow their noble cause and brave victories. He especially praised the “holy work of decorating soldiers' graves.”⁸⁴ Although loyalty to the Confederate cause would never be displaced, another allegiance worthy of commemoration stirred memories on July 4, 1876, the Centennial of American freedom. For the first time in sixteen years the Savannah Morning News discovered businesses and residences flying the flag “which was so gallantly and chivalrously upheld by Southern heroes one hundred years ago, and which … will yet wave over a great, full and prosperous country.”⁸⁵ Clearly sectional tensions were beginning to diminish by the mid-1870s, partly because they blocked cooperative efforts toward economic development; the power of the dollar reinforced the humanitarian sentiments of those who wanted a united and peaceful country. As usual, the common feeling was reflected in the writing of William Tappan Thompson.

Although racial friction declined in Georgia after redemption, the black threat, as Thompson perceived it, did not entirely disappear. Talk of a social equality bill was disturbing, and in 1872 some Savannah blacks protested streetcar segregation. Thompson announced that “respectable” blacks, whose existence he had recognized even in the dark days of “the terror,” refused to force themselves where they were not wanted; it was the low, vicious class that knew no such propriety. Thompson suggested that the agitators' names be recorded and that white people refuse to employ them.⁸⁶ But on the whole, race relations were less rancorous because the fear of Negro rule had ended with redemption. Even though blacks still voted, Thompson could afford to be more tolerant; his city was no longer “beniggered,”⁸⁷ and rents in the social fabric were being repaired. Although reports of black crime remained standard fare, humorous stories and satire replaced the hysterical warnings of doom. Blacks had always been happy in the South, Thompson wrote, and the villainous Negroes who had been such a problem in the late 1860s and early 1870s had learned the error of their ways or had moved elsewhere. Increasingly Thompson praised black educational efforts and the efforts of white citizens who responded to their educational needs. The Savannah Morning News reported Negro parades and social activities, even noting noncommittally the parading of black militia companies commemorating the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment.⁸⁸ In 1876 Thompson praised those blacks who endorsed the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, since here was evidence that blacks accepted white Southerners as their natural, political leaders. When black men of the Brahmin Club serenaded the Savannah Morning News office, the editor beamed, “The compliment evinces the sentiments entertained for the Morning News by the respectable class of colored people.”⁸⁹

Even the crises of Reconstruction politics never obliterated Thompson's concern for Southern economic development. Ever since the 1850s he had preached industrial and commercial expansion. Except for 1866 and 1867, years of doubt and disappointment, the paper of Colonel Thompson persistently portrayed the South as a prosperous and bountiful land. No New South advocate of the 1880s ever sounded more hopeful about development than the Savannah Morning New's editor. To be sure, difficulties existed, but they were due to the scourge of war and the subsequent disruption of the labor force and were fast being overcome. By 1868 the paper perceived the beginning of an economic revival which, one year later, was in full swing. Agricultural reports were encouraging, trade was increasing, and railroads, which the Savannah Morning News always pushed, were opening new markets.⁹⁰

Savannah's and the South's prosperity was dependent upon cotton, and in this sense cotton was still king but no longer an absolute monarch. Thompson urged the South to end its devotion to one crop; it should grow more grain and pay careful attention to animal husbandry. He recommended crop diversification as a way of limiting overproduction and bolstering cotton prices.⁹¹ He also called for the development of manufacturing to make the South rich and independent and cheered the construction of every new cotton mill and workshop. The best place to manufacture cotton, he repeated, was where it was grown.⁹² New businesses, especially in lumber and naval stores, should be supported. The Colonel was particularly pleased by the introduction of Georgia fruits and vegetables to Northern markets in the mid-1870s.⁹³

The Colonel happily reprinted laudatory articles from Northern journals which drove home the message of Southern opportunities and successes. The Boston Commercial, and advocate of Southern industry, wrote that the same economic conditions existed in the South as in the West: cheap labor and cheap stock. “At various points in the South, several mills are in operation rolling up such profits as Northern manufacturers have been strangers to.”⁹⁴ The Colonel was also impressed with the New York Bulletin's opinion that English capitalists were ready to pour their wealth into the South, a section which would consequently absorb a large part of the nation's cotton manufacturing interests.⁹⁵

Because Thompson demanded a self-sufficient South, he was somewhat ambivalent about the entry of Northern capital. Prewar diatribes against Yankee middlemen and shippers and the robberies of the tariff were not easily forgotten. New England money, he once wrote, had dominated the country for years, and in 1872 he reported vague rumors of efforts by Northern financiers to control Southern railroads. Still, the South needed capital. Thompson always welcomed English investors, and from time to time even befriended Northern capitalists who would benefit the South as well as themselves.⁹⁶

It was the shortage of labor rather than of capital that really worried Thompson. The Savannah Morning News, like the South in general, turned to the only possible source of new labor: immigration. Repeating a policy advocated in the 1850s, Thomspon welcomed European laborers willing to make Savannah their home and encouraged the state to employ labor agents and launch a publicity campaign.⁹⁷ The importation of Chinese coolies gave Thompson many problems. At first, he doubted the wisdom of introducing still another “alien race,” but then he suddenly discovered that the Chinese were first-class laborers. Perhaps he spoke without much evidence or reflection, since two years later he reversed himself again. The “Chinese” or “Mouse-eyed Mongolian” was a failure as a cotton picker. “Between the trained barbarian and the untrained pagan, the Southern people chose the former—a choice which was received by Cuffee with a gorgeous smile of satisfaction as he wended his way carelessly afield.”⁹⁸ Nevertheless the black man had better watch out, for he could yet be replaced, perhaps by Swedes.⁹⁹ Thompson continued to champion European immigration and report every experiment, however feeble, to import foreign white labor.

Essentially Thompson's economic goals in the 1870s were the same as those of the New South advocates in the 1880s and 1890s. Of course he found it easier to set goals and urge action than to offer practical solutions to the more refractory problems, but in this he resembled his successors as well.¹⁰⁰ For Thompson, political hatreds, of course, forbade an open imitation of the North or supplication for its aid, and throughout the first half of the 1870s reconciliation seemed far off. Yet Thompson's economic policies reveal that the Old South editor, the unrepentant rebel, and the Reconstruction intransigent was a New South missionary from the beginning.

After the return of home rule everywhere in the South in 1877, William Tappan Thompson was able to spend his last years as spokesman for the conservative, business-oriented, upper-middle-class Democrats who dominated Georgia politics until the 1890s. Now he spoke for victorious politicians who dreamed of a Solid South dedicated to railroad ventures, low taxation, and government encouragement of business.¹⁰¹

Thompson's absorption by the Democratic Party establishment was complete. In the factional conflicts of his last years he was the mouthpiece of the majority. In 1880 the Colonel threw himself into the effort to reelect Governor and former Major General Alfred H. Colquitt, the conservative nominee of a large majority of the Democratic Party. Thompson fired salvo after salvo at the insurgent Democrats, whom he accused of splitting the party—a heresy he had fought for thirty years. The rival gubernatorial candidate gently ridiculed the irate editor in speaking to a large rally in Savannah:

Colonel Thompson is our political adviser, a sort of Lord Chamberlain. I have been reared under his political teachings, and considered my political views were well grounded, but I am becoming a little shaky. … He charges us with being seceders, because we would not bow down and give up our rights and yield to the majority. … The majority don't need protection, but the minority is entitled to protection, and is accorded it in the organic law of governments.¹⁰²

Colquitt's resounding victory in October reaffirmed Thompson's faith in the future of the Democratic Party and the South.¹⁰³

The aging editor of 1880 may have seemed far removed from the youthful, almost lighthearted author of Major Jones's Courtship.¹⁰⁴ He had put away entertaining stories of middle Georgia and had gone forth to battle for his city, his state, and the South. The bitterness of his resistance to Reconstruction revealed that the experience of war and occupation had scarred him deeply. But on closer look, continuity is more striking than change in William Tappan Thompson's career. White supremacy remained his creed. In politics he believed in the unity of the South and the sanctity of the Democratic Party (the latter having been desecrated only once, in the secession crisis, when the Northern Democrats had turned their backs on Southern needs). In economics he stressed progress and self-sufficiency for the South. Specifically this meant reaping the full profit from cotton production, but also developing industry and new, complementary sources of wealth to ensure independence from the North. And always he defended the South, its peculiar ways, unique civilization, and glorious attempt at independence. On the essential issues—issues which defined the South—the Old South editor, voice of the Confederacy, unregenerate rebel, and New South advocate was remarkably consistent.

Notes

1. Savannah Morning News, March 25, 1882, p. 2; New York Times, March 25, 1882, p. 5. In the two weeks following Thompson's death, the Savannah Morning News reprinted scores of obituaries.

   Between 1850 and 1882 Thompson's paper had four different titles. Up to 1865 it was the Daily Morning News (DMN). Between 1865 and 1868 it was the Savannah Daily Herald (SDH) and, for a brief period, the Daily News and Herald (DNH). In late 1868 the title was changed to Savannah Morning News (SMN).

2. For William Allen White's coining of the word “coloneliferous,” see Edwin Emery, The Press and America, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1962), p. 364.

3. In his classic work, The Mind of the South, W. J. Cash developed the theme that the mind of the South is continuous with the past. For a more cautious and dissenting approach to this subject, see C. Vann Woodward's “The Elusive Mind of the South,” in his American Counterpoint (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1964).

4. Dictionary of American Biography, IX, 479-480; Henry Prentice Miller, “Life and Works of William Tappan Thompson,” unpubl. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1942, pp. 1-14, 17-27.

5. Ibid.; John Donald Wade, Augustus Baldwin Longstreet (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1969), pp. 165-167, 194-195; Gertrude Gilmer, “A Critique of Certain Georgia Antebellum Literary Magazines arranged Chronologically, and a Checklist,” Georgia Historical Quarterly, XVIII (December 1934), 305; Henry Prentice Miller, “The Background and Significance of Major Jones's Courtship,” Georgia Historical Quarterly, XXX (December 1946), 267-268, 295. The other “Major Jones” books were Major Jones's Chronicles of Pineville (1843) and Major Jones's Sketches of Travel (1848).

6. WTT [William Tappan Thompson] to Salem Dutcher, October 16, 1866, in Miller, “Life and Works,” pp. 28-29.

7. Ibid., p. 29; F. D. Lee and J. L. Agnew, Historical Record of the City of Savannah (Savannah: J. H. Estill, 1869), p. 194; Louis T. Griffith and John E. Talmadge, Georgia Journalism, 1763-1950 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1951), p. 47; DMN, Jan. 15, 1850, p. 2, in Works Projects Administration, Annals of Savannah, 1850; DMN, July 1, 1856, p. 2, ibid., 1856, p. 206. Hereafter the newspaper digest, Works Project Administration, Annals of Savannah, will be referred to as A. Because a complete file of DMN was not available to me for most of the prewar period, I relied upon the newspaper digest. In comparing the digest with the newspaper for the Reconstruction period and later, I always found the digest's summaries to be accurate.

8. See Annals for the 1850s.

9. See DMN, 1858, 1864, and probably earlier.

10. DMN, Dec. 20, 1856, p. 2 (A, 1856, p. 241).

11. DMN, 1850: Aug. 23, p. 2; Oct. 18, p. 2; Oct. 22, p. 2 (A, 1850, p. 42); DMN, July 22, 1853, p. 2 (A, 1853, p. 297); DMN, 1856: June 27, p. 2; Dec. 16, p. 2 (A, 1856, pp. 63, 67); DMN, June 1, 1860, p. 1.

12. Miller, “Life and Works,” pp. 9-10, 117.

13. DMN, Aug. 30, 1853, p. 2 (A, 1853, p. 170).

14. Miller, “Life and Works,” p. 18.

15. DMN, Nov. 2, 1855, p. 2 (A, 1855, p. 73); DMN, 1856: Sept. 3, p. 2; Oct. 13, p. 2; Oct. 29, p. 2 (A, 1856, pp. 61, 84, 65); DMN, 1857: June 8, p. 2; July 2, p. 2 (A, 1857, pp. 59, 36); DMN, Oct. 7, 1858, p. 1; DMN, 1859: Jan. 12, p. 1; Nov. 26, p. 2 (A, 1859, pp. 40, 197).

16. Savannah Republican, Jan. 17, 1855, p. 2. For the long background to the controversy, see DMN, Feb. 3, 1853, p. 2 (A, 1853, p. 223).

17. Miller, “Life and Works,” p. 35.

18. DMN, April 25, 1853, p. 2 (A, 1853, p. 1); DMN, 1856: Jan. 8, p. 1; Aug. 4, p. 1; Aug. 20 and 23, p. 2; Oct. 23, p. 2; Nov. 15, p. 2 (A, 1856, pp. 249, 204, 253, 205).

19. DMN, Aug. 14, 1850, p. 2 (A, 1850).

20. DMN, 1856: Jan. 22, p. 2; Sept. 5, p. 1 (A, 1856, pp. 250, 3).

21. [Augustus Baldwin Longstreet], A Voice from the South: Comprising Letters from Georgia to Massachusetts and to the Southern States, with Introduction by William Tappan Thompson (Baltimore: Western Continent Press, 1847), p. 6.

22. DMN, March 29, 1853, p. 2 (A, 1853, p. 66); DMN, Oct. 13, 1856, p. 2 (A, 1856, p. 84); DMN, March 10, 1860, p. 1 (A, 1860, p. 29).

23. DMN, 1850: April 22, p. 2; Sept. 24, p. 2; Nov. 19, p. 2 (A, 1850, p. 43).

24. DMN, 1853: March 11, p. 1; April 21, p. 1 (A, 1853, pp. 336, 1).

25. DMN, May 31, 1856, p. 2 (A, 1856, p. 223).

26. DMN, 1856: Jan. 22, p. 2; Feb. 6, p. 2; Nov. 18, p. 2 (A, 1856, pp. 250, 1, 85).

27. DMN, Feb. 12, 1856, p. 2 (A, 1856, p. 201).

28. DMN, 1860: Jan. 4, p. 2; April 4, pp. 1, 2; April 10, p. 1; May 7, p. 2; May 8, p. 2; May 9, p. 2; May 10, p. 1; May 17, p. 2 (A, 1860, pp. 1, 2, 31, 37, 53, 123, 129, 139).

29. DMN, 1862: May 15, p. 1; June 7, p. 2; Nov. 19, p. 2 (A, 1862, pp. 80, 31, 274); DMN, Dec. 1, 1863, p. 2 (A, 1863, p. 212).

30. DMN, May 3, 1861, p. 2 (A, 1861, p. 305).

31. DMN, 1864: Sept. 5, p. 2; Dec. 6, p. 1 (A, 1864, pp. 158, 165).

32. DMN, 1862: April 12, p. 1; April 24, 26, 28, p. 1; Oct. 18, p. 2; Oct. 21, p. 2 (A, 1862, pp. 264, 29, 41, 272).

33. DMN, 1862: March 29, p. 1; Nov. 26, 27, p. 2 (A, 1862, pp. 263, 275-276); DMN, 1863: March 16, p. 2; Sept. 12, p. 2; Sept. 29, p. 2; Oct. 7, p. 1; Nov. 2, p. 2 (A, 1863, pp. 66, 229, 210, 222, 222).

34. DMN, Feb. 7, 1862, p. 2 (A, 1862, p. 261); DMN, Oct. 15, 1864, p. 2 (A, 1864, p. 145).

35. DMN, Oct 14, 1864, p. 2 (A, 1864, p. 162).

36. DMN, Nov. 1, 1864, p. 1 (A, 1864, p. 148).

37. SMN, March 25, 1882, p. 2.

38. Rabun Lee Brantley, Georgia Journalism of the Civil War Period (Nashville: George Peabody College for Teachers, 1929), pp. 72-74.

39. Ibid.

40. SDH, 1865: Jan. 24, p. 2; Feb. 1, p. 2; March 22, p. 2; March 25, p. 4 (A, 1865, pp. 322, 312, 326).

41. SDH, 1865: May 23, p. 2; June 6, p. 2; Aug. 12, p. 2; Sept. 7, p. 2 (A, 1865, pp. 334, 307, 403, 404); Brantley, Georgia Journalism, p. 23.

42. SDH, March 24, 1865, p. 4 (A, 1865, p. 418).

43. Miller, “Life and Works,” p. 35.

44. SDH, 1865: Sept. 18, p. 2; Oct. 13, p. 2; Nov. 18, p. 2; Nov. 22, p. 2; Dec. 21, p. 2 (A, 1865, pp. 83, 126, 306, 310, 82); SDH, 1866: Feb. 10, p. 1: Feb. 19, p. 2; March 20, p. 2, May 12, p. 1; Aug. 25, p. 2 (A, 1866, pp. 461, 463, 439, 484[frac12], 507).

45. DNH, 1866: April 2, p. 2; May 12, p. 2; May 22, p. 2; Aug. 1, p. 2 (A, 1866, pp. 120, 484[frac12], 490, 502).

46. DNH, Dec. 17, 1866, p. 2 (A, 1866, p. 516).

47. DNH, 1868: June 27, p. 2; July 22, p. 3; Sept. 7, p. 2; SMN, Sept. 28, 1868, p. 2; Brantley, Georgia Journalism, pp. 72-74; Lee and Agnew, Historical Record … Savannah, p. 195; Isaac W. Avery, The History of the State of Georgia (1881; rpt. New York: AMS Press, 1972), p. 612. Ill Health forced Mason to sell his interest in the paper, and before the year ended he was dead.

48. SMN, Nov. 7, 1871, p. 2.

49. DNH, April 1, 1868, p. 2; SMN, Feb. 12, 1869.

50. SMN, April 19, 1869, p. 2; Jan. 3, 1870, p. 1; Jan. 17, 1870, p. 2.

51. DNH, 1868: April 15, p. 2; April 24, p. 2; June 2, p. 1; July 8, p. 3; Aug. 27, p.2.

52. DNH, 1868: Feb. 15, p. 2; July 22, p. 3.

53. DMN, July 8, 1868, p. 3; SMN, Dec. 31, 1868, p. 2

54. DNH, 1868: April 2, p. 2; April 3, p. 2; April 4, p. 2; Aug. 1, p. 2; SMN, Dec. 7, 1868, p. 2.

55. DMN, 1868: June 1 and 8, p. 2.

56. SMN, 1869: June 22, p. 2; July 22, p. 2; 1870: Jan. 6, p. 2; Jan. 10, p. 4.

57. SMN, 1869: Oct. 29, p. 2; Dec. 8, p. 2; Dec. 14, p. 2; Dec. 23, p.2; Dec. 24, p.2.

58. John Hope Franklin, Reconstruction After the Civil War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), pp. 128-133.

59. E. Merton Coulter, Georgia, A Short History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1933), p. 376

60. SMN, 1871: July 1, p. 2; July 5, p. 2.

61. SMN, 1872: July 1, p. 2; July 4, p. 2.

62. SMN, May 15, 1872, p. 2; William Gillette, “Election of 1872,” in History of American Presidential Elections 1789-1968, ed. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Fred L. Israel (New York: Chelsea Howard Publishers, 1971), II, 1318.

63. SMN, 1872: July 20, p. 2; July 29, p. 2.

64. SMN, Oct. 22, 1872, p. 2.

65. SMN, Nov. 5, 1872, p. 2.

66. SMN, 1872: Nov. 6, p. 2; Nov. 16, p. 2.

67. SMN, Oct. 14, 1876, p. 2.

68. SMN, 1876: Nov. 9, p. 3; Nov. 16, p. 2.

69. SMN, Jan. 2, 1877, p. 1.

70. SMN, Jan. 1, 1877, pp. 1, 2.

71. SMN, Dec. 25, 1876, pp. 1, 2; Jan. 4, 1877, p. 2.

72. SMN, Jan. 6, 1877, p. 2.

73. SMN, 1877: Feb. 22, p. 2; Feb. 23, p. 1.

74. SMN, 1877: April 30, p. 2; Sept. 22, p. 1; Sept. 24, p. 1; Sept 27, p. 2.

75. SMN, Sept. 11, 1877, p. 2

76. SMN, 1877: Sept. 24, p. 2; Dec. 4, p. 2.

77. Paul M. Cousins, Joel Chandler Harris (Baton Rouge: Louisiana University Press, 1968), pp. 81, 85; Donald Davidson, ed., Selected Essays and Other Writings of John Donald Wade (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1966), p. 96; Julia Collier Harris, The Life and Letters of Joel Chandler Harris (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1918), pp. 93-95.

78. Quoted in SMN, Sept. 15, 1874, p. 3.

79. DNH, June 6, 1868, p. 2.

80. See the endorsement of Atlanta Constitution in SMN, Jan. 18, 1879, p. 1; and in the issue of Jan. 20, 1879, the endorsements of Thomasville Times, Quitman Free Press, Albany Advertiser, and Macon Central Georgia Weekly. The endorsement of Philadelphia Record is in SMN, Aug. 30, 1880, p. 3.

81. SMN, June 5, 1872, p. 3; June 11, 1876, p. 3; July 16, 1876, p. 3.

82. SMN, June 1, 1869, p. 3; Dec. 13, 1872, p. 3; March 1, 1876, p. 2.

83. SMN, Aug. 4, 1869, p. 2; Aug. 13, 1876, p. 3; Sept. 2, 1876, p. 3.

84. SMN, April 27, 1876, p. 3.

85. SMN, July 6, 1876, p. 3.

86. SMN, 1872: Feb 3, p. 2; July 27, p. 3; July 29, p. 3; Aug. 5, p. 3.

87. This word appeared in SMN. It is unknown whether it was commonly used by white supremacists in the Reconstruction years.

88. DNH, March 21, 1868, p. 2; SMN, July 8, 1869, p. 2; Oct. 19, 1872, p. 2; Oct. 23, 1876, p. 2; 1880: March 11, p. 3; March 21, p. 3; May 20, p. 3; Aug. 28, p. 3.

89. SMN, Oct. 2, 1875, p. 2; Aug. 3, 1876, p. 3.

90. SDH, 1865: June 26, p. 2; Aug. 9, p. 4; Nov. 14, p. 3; Nov. 17, p. 2 (A, 1865, pp. 67, 41, 70, 41); DNH, 1868: Feb. 25, p. 2: May 9, p. 2. See also Annals, 1866 and 1867 and passim.

91. DNH, 1868: Jan. 4, p. 2; Jan. 6, p. 2; March 14, p. 2; SMN, 1869: Jan. 20, p. 2; Feb. 16, pp. 2, 3; Jan. 1, 1876, p. 2; Jan. 22, 1880, p.2.

92. SMN, 1872: Feb. 27, p. 3; April 9, p. 3; July 8, pp. 2, 3; Feb. 12, 1880, p. 2.

93. SMN, Jan. 16, 1872, p. 3; 1876: April 21, p. 3; April 26, p. 2; May 14, p. 3; 1880: May 2, p. 3; July 30, p. 3; Sept. 7, p. 2.

94. Quoted in SMN, Feb. 12, 1869, p. 2.

95. Quoted in SMN, Dec. 10, 1869, p. 1.

96. DNH, Jan. 28, 1868, p. 2; SMN, Oct. 5, 1868, p. 2; 1869: Jan. 9, p. 2; Dec. 10, p. 1; Dec. 16, 1872, p. 2.

97. SDH, Feb. 22, 1866, p. 2 (A, 1866, p. 464).

98. DNH, Jan. 14, 1868, p. 2; SMN, July 7, 1869, p. 2; July 7, 1871, p. 2; Feb. 24, 1872, p. 3.

99. SMN, July 7, 1871, p. 2.

100. For a good discussion of the ideas of the New South advocates, see Paul M. Gaston, The New South Creed (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970).

101. SMN, Sept. 30, 1880, p. 1. See also Coulter, Georgia, A Short History, pp. 383-385.

102. SMN, Aug. 20, 1880, p. 3.

103. SMN, Oct. 6, 1880, p. 2.

104. In 1867 Thompson had received the SMN proprietor's blessing to tour Europe gathering material for stories on Major Jones's travels abroad, but nothing came of this trip. Perhaps the humorous spark of the 1840s had been played out; perhaps the task seemed too frivolous in the dark days of Reconstruction.