If you are an American Civil War Historian or just have Civil War veterans on your family tree, don’t limit your research to just newspapers which were published during the war years or Ken Burns’ videos, expand your horizons.
Civil War news or information about the war was a big draw used by editors to sell their product and as I mentioned on another blog, the editor’s main job was to sell newspapers.
Many years after the war, newspapers continued to run items about the war and frequently would run biographical pieces about the people who fought in the war.
A good example of “the civil war sells papers” is the ”Weekly Chronicle a newspaper of Bluffton, Indiana which was published on January 6, 1887”

Note that they have biographical sketches about dead and living generals (living at that time), personal insights into commanders of the war and even statistics about the prisoners of war. These items were of course on the last page of the paper but they were put there to draw customers. Todays local newspapers draw in customers by publishing items about pop stars but don’t have such in-depth reports on the war we are fighting. For of those who forgot, we are still fighting in Afghanistan.
Thank You.
To View the Original item,[the item is to the right of this link]
Select Weekly Chronicle in box below:
Bluffton, Indiana |
Weekly Chronicle January 6, 1887 |
I have been browsing online more than three hours today, yet I never found any interesting article like yours. It is pretty worth enough for me. Personally, if all web owners and bloggers made as good content as you did, the net would be a lot more useful than ever before.
I enjoy, cause I found just what I was looking for.
You have ended my four day long hunt! God Bless you man. Have a great day.
Bye