If you think news coverage is slanted and Democrats and Republicans are at odds today, you should have been around during the Civil War. My recent York Sunday News column below compares the coverage given the speakers at the November 1863 Gettysburg National Cemetery dedication. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address Not Acclaimed
Passions were running high that spring and summer of 1863. The York Gazette was strongly Democratic in politics, very anti-abolitionist and anti-Lincoln. The destruction by a mob of another Democratic paper in Pennsylvania, the Huntingdon Monitor, didn’t intimidate the Gazette and other Democratic papers into toning down their rhetoric. Instead,
What else was going on in York County in June 1863? Animosity was not limited to the battlefield. Here is another item from the June 2 Democratic paper, the York Gazette: Illegal Arrests in York County S. G. Hildenbrand, a son of Capt. J. N. Hildenbrand, and a resident of
My last post was devoted to the local support, especially that of the York Gazette, of York native General William B. Franklin to be the 1863 Democratic candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania. The Democratic nomination eventually went to Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice George W. Woodward, who lost the fall election
Are you registered to vote? This year April 22 is the deadline for registration to vote in the May 21st Primary Election. If you miss that you need to register by October 7 to vote in the November 5 General Election. While looking at 1938 newspaper microfilm at York County
What do Cecil County, Maryland’s first millionaire; the 1871 candidate for Governor of Maryland and the founder of several steamship companies have to do with a York County native? They are just a few accomplishments of Jacob Tome, born in the Hanover area and raised in Chanceford Township. His fortune,
York attorney and Pennsylvania German poet Henry Lee Fisher was born on November 3, 1822. Looking through his file today, November 3, 2012, at York County Heritage Trust, I found a unpublished poem he wrote on November 3, 1908 (his 86th birthday) for his young grandson. Since the subject is
My last post was a transcription of an April 1913 letter to the editor of the Harrisburg Patriot from Civil War veteran George S. Anderson. He made it plain that he had a low opinion of the Pennsylvania legislators who were pushing for a state pension law. He saw it
Civil War veteran George S. Anderson of Rossville didn’t hesitate to express his opinion of the proposed Pennsylvania State Pension bill, or the legislators who favored it, as can be seen by his letter published April 26, 1913 in the Harrisburg Patriot. Anderson had been a member of Co. H,
During the Civil War “Peace Democrats” were also known as “Copperheads.” There are a couple of explanations for the term applied to those Northern Democrats who opposed the Civil War and wanted to see the country reunited, even if it meant that slavery would continue. Some sources compare them to