The Louisiana Democrat (Alexandria, La.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
1,669 issues from 1859 to 1903, published in Alexandria, Louisiana, digitised for Chronicling America.
The Louisiana Democrat was founded as the Western Democrat in 1845 in Alexandria, the seat of Rapides Parish, a cotton- and timber-producing parish in central Louisiana. Its first editor was David Martin. Although no early copies survive, as a partisan newspaper the Louisiana Democrat would have opposed the Whig Party and its leader, Henry Clay, whose attempts to block the acquisition of Texas angered many Louisianans. The earliest extant copies, dated 1859, continue to discuss westward expansion, with particular attention given to the activities of the Free Soil Party and abolitionists.
By 1859, Edmund W. Halsey (ca. 1823-1891), a New Yorker educated in Kentucky, had become the paper’s editor. He was succeeded in 1860 by Mercer Canfield (1828-1864), who remained editor for only a few months, and then by Eugene Rene Biossat (1819-1880). Few copies of the Louisiana Democrat survive from the Civil War era, but publication appears to have continued without interruption until 1864 when Alexandria was occupied and burned by Union forces during the Red River campaign. At least two issues from this period were printed on ledger paper or wallpaper.
Regular publication had resumed by June 1865. Biossat changed the four-page weekly (and briefly biweekly and triweekly) paper’s motto from “The Love of Country is the Love of God” to “The World is Governed too Much.” He frequently reported on the Louisiana State Seminary (the forerunner of Louisiana State University), which was located…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Alexandria, Louisiana, United States
- Language
- English
- Collection
- Chronicling America
- Licence or status
- None stated by the archive
- Rights
- The Library of Congress believes that the newspapers in Chronicling America are in the public domain or have no known copyright restrictions. Newspapers published in the United States more than 95 years ago are in the public domain in their entirety.
- Credit
- Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities
- Who can read it
- Teens profiles and older (placed by Invisible Network from what the archive says; archives give no ratings)
- Archive
- Library of Congress