White Cloud Kansas Chief (White Cloud, Kan.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
785 issues from 1857 to 1872, published in White Cloud, Kansas, digitised for Chronicling America.
The White Cloud Kansas Chief (1857-72) and its successor, The Weekly Kansas Chief (1872-1918), were made notable by their founder and editor, Sol (Solomon) Miller, a pioneer of Kansas newspaper publishing. Founded in a time when most newspapers lasted a few years at most, Miller published the Chief for nearly forty years. Shortly after arriving in White Cloud, Kansas Territory, Miller issued the first edition of the White Cloud Kansas Chief on June 4, 1857. The four-page newspaper was published every Thursday. Doniphan County, located in the northeastern corner of the state, was no stranger to the controversy over slavery then engulfing the nation. The Chief‘s Free-State Republican stance was clearly stated in its simple motto, “The Constitution and the Union.”
Miller was the epitome of the frontier editor–outspoken, sometimes humorous, and often vitriolic. The first newspaper in Doniphan County was proslavery and Democratic–the Kansas Constitutionalist, edited by Thomas J. Key. On September 10, 1857, Miller culminated an editorial exchange with Key: “We did not exactly tell the truth about him. We said his name was Thomas Jefferson Key. We beg Thomas Jefferson’s pardon—it should have been Thomas Jack-ass Key! (No insult intended to jack-asses generally.)….Thomas J. Key occupies a position which makes him public property—or rather, a public nuisance—and we intend to take a long pole, with a hook and spike in one end of it, and haul him about and turn him over and hold up…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- White Cloud, Kansas, 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