In December 2017, Ed Ayers spoke to the Atlanta Civil War Round Table on the subject of “War and Reconstruction.” He discussed, inter alia, the Valley of the Shadow Project (http://valley.lib.virginia.edu), a digital archive that houses a remarkably rich store of Civil War-era documents from Augusta County, Va., and Franklin County, Penn.* Both communities lie in the Great Appalachian Valley and both featured prominently in the war which (in the view of the denizens of Augusta County) placed, for a time, an international border between the two communities.
Newspapers. Census tax records. Diaries. Letters. Courthouse records. Statistics. Soldiers’ records. Veterans’ records. Maps. Images. All there, all accessible online, and all free.
I dove in. I selected two events from immediately before the war, John Brown’s Raid in October 1859 and the election of Abraham Lincoln thirteen months later, and perused the newspapers published just after the events occurred. As Yogi Berra said, you can observe a lot by watching. I watched the newspapers and this is what I observed. First, the raid on Harper’s Ferry.
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“Qui facit per alium, facit per se,” reads the headline in the Staunton Vindicator on Oct. 21, 1859. A person who acts through another person does the deed himself. John Brown was “a humble instrument of the great, who, after the dirty work is done, never fail to thrust aside the poor devils; and so shield themselves from blame.” Like many others in the South, Staunton’s editors blame anti-slavery politicians for the insurrection. William Seward and Joshua Giddings earn specific mention.
Along with the opinion come rapid fire reports taken from various sources telling the readers who, what, when, where, and why, from the first report by the railroad’s mail agent and early speculation about the raiders’ motives, to the storming of the “fort” by the marines, and an account of the wounded John Brown speaking freely about his aims.
On Oct. 28 there is follow up. It is reported that papers found on Brown prove the “existence of a widespread conspiracy at the North for the forcible suppression of Southern slavery.” The paper expresses the hope that Virginia’s governor would seek extradition
of the conspirators and “demand them of the states in which they reside.” “Qui facit per alium, facit per se.”
Further north in the Great Valley, on Oct. 26, the Franklin Repository in Chambersburg reports on the raid. This edition gives little space to the factual details of the event, but does offer a firm opinion on where to lay the blame, in an editorial relayed
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not permit the spread of slavery to the territories, but where the institution exists, it is protected by the Constitution. The Nov. 14 edition tells us that an increase in the protective tariff will save jobs and help the “poor man, desirous of employment” and “foster every branch of American industry against ruinous foreign competition.”
And the South will calm down. “After Abraham Lincoln has taken hold of the Ship of State… for a year or two, by that time the fear of our affrighted Southern brethren will have become allayed – their shattered nerves will have become settled and calm.”
Well, Yogi said some other things too, like “Predictions are hard to make, especially about the future.” The reader is invited to check out the Nov. 1862 editions of the Vindicator, the Spectator, the Spirit, and the Repository to learn how “settled and calm” things were two years after Lincoln’s election—and 21 months into the administration of Jefferson Davis.
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Next time we will look at some 1864 newspapers, and see what they had to say about the war at that stage. We will also test the Valley Project’s search feature and examine some diaries and letters.
*Ayers has written two books that draw on this resource, In the Presence of Mine Enemies (2003) and The Thin Light of Freedom (2017). The latter was reviewed in the April 2018 issue of Civil War News.
