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Prentice, George Dennison (1802-1870) Louisville daily journal. [Vol. 33, no. 315 (October 2, 1863)]

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Gilder Lehrman Collection #: GLC05959.14.18 Author/Creator: Prentice, George Dennison (1802-1870) Place Written: Louisville, Kentucky. Type: Newspaper Date: 2 October 1863 Pagination: 4 p. ; 68 x 50.5 cm. Order a Copy

An editorial from London theorizes about American arms. A letter to the editor responds to a previous letter generalizing about the nature of Kentuckians. A long report from Chattanooga discusses war efforts there, with a Nashville report of an explosion at the barracks there. An inquiry was made into the death of an imprisoned runaway slave, but found death to be the result of a chill and not a whipping.

During the 1840s the Louisville Daily Journal was the mouthpiece for the Whig party in the West and the South. Editor and founder George Dennison Prentice was one of the South's most powerful editorialists before the Civil war. He liked to satirize the foibles of the Democratic party. He was also the most influential editor who supported the Union cause. His wife was a secessionist and his sons fought for the Confederates. Prentice opposed the Confederacy as well as abolition, and though he castigated Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, he supported the Union cause. The Louisville Daily Journal, printed and published by Prentice, Henderson, & Osborne, competed with a local Confederate paper, the Courier, printed in Bowling Green. Ironically, in 1868, the two papers joined to form The Louisville Courier-Journal. Prentice went on to edit the New England Weekly Review.

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