Factionalism in Pre-Civil War Georgia Journalism
![[Engraving of] Geo[rge] M. Troup / J.C. Buttre](/images/111/full/!800,800/0/default.jpg)
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Engravings of Georgia Governors George M. Troup and John Clark. The two were political rivals in the early nineteenth century and factional parties and newspapers in Georgia formed around the beliefs of their followers.
Courtesy of Hargrett Library, Keith Read Collection.
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Macon Georgia Telegraph endorsement of Democratic Party presidential candidate, Martin Van Buren. The Telegraph's rival the Georgia Messenger endorsed the Whig candidate, William Henry Harrison. The two papers competed politically and financially in the decades prior to the Civil War, before eventually merging in 1869.
Courtesy of Georgia Newspaper Project, Georgia Historic Newspapers.
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Georgia Messenger endorsement of Whig Party presidential candidate, William Henry Harrison. The Messenger's rival the Macon Telegraph endorsed the Democratic candidate, Martin Van Buren. The two papers competed politically and financially in the decades prior to the Civil War, before eventually merging in 1869.
Courtesy of Georgia Newspaper Project, Georgia Historic Newspapers.
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Political advertisements were common in Georgia's antebellum newspapers. This notice promoting a barbecue held by the Clarke County Democratic Party was published in the October 3, 1844, issue of the Southern Banner, a Democratic-leaning newspaper in Athens, Georgia.
Courtesy of Georgia Newspaper Project, Georgia Historic Newspapers.
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An editorial from the January 22, 1861, issue of the Southern Recorder in Milledgeville. The paper supported remaining in the Union, but when Georgia voted to secede, the editor called for unity among Georgians.
Courtesy of Georgia Newspaper Project, Georgia Historic Newspapers.
In early nineteenth-century Georgia, political factions were split behind two feuding politicians, George Troup and John Clark. The Troupite faction consisted largely of planters and aristocrats, while the Clarkite faction had support from small farmers and frontier settlers. Along this divide, rival newspapers formed in Georgia's larger cities, reflecting the state’s bitter political environment. At the state capital in Milledgeville, the Troup-affiliated Southern Recorder opposed the Clark leanings of the Federal Union. In Macon, the Georgia Messenger was the Troupite paper and the Macon Telegraph aligned with the Clarkites; similar journalistic divisions existed in Columbus, Savannah, and Augusta. These politically aligned papers publicized the bitter and sometimes violent confrontations between the factions, which, by the 1840s, had aligned with national parties: the Clark faction aligning with the Democratic Party and the Troup faction aligning with the Whig Party. The divisions between papers and parties were often blurred in Georgia, but by 1861, the press had abandoned much of their political animosities and supported Georgia’s secession from the Union to protect the institution of slavery.