The Indianapolis Journal (Indianapolis [Ind.])
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
7,736 issues from 1883 to 1904, published in Indianapolis, Indiana, digitised for Chronicling America.
Indiana state printer John Douglass relocated to Indianapolis, then a town with fewer than 1,000 residents, when the state capital moved there from Corydon in 1825. Douglass purchased a share of the Western Censor and with his partner, Douglass Maguire, changed the title. The Indiana Journal debuted on January 11, 1825. The anti-Jacksonian (later Whig) newspaper advocated government-sponsored internal improvements and protective tariffs to aid Indiana’s agricultural economy.
Beginning in 1839, the Journal appeared more often than once a week,the frequency of publication based upon the schedule of the Indiana General Assembly. Semiweekly, triweekly, and daily editions appeared at different times from 1839 to 1851, as the Journal accommodated more state legislative news. In 1840, Douglass and his new partner, Samuel V. B. Noel, also published the Spirit of ’76 to support William Henry Harrison’s presidential candidacy. Noel became sole owner of the Indianapolis Journal in 1843. He renamed the paper the Indiana State Journal and leased its presses to the noted abolitionist and social reformer Henry Ward Beecher, who published the Indiana Farmer.
John D. Defrees owned and operated the Journal from 1845 to 1854. As a Whig, Defrees criticized the Democratic administration’s conduct of the Mexican-American War and frequently exchanged editorial barbs with the Democratic Indiana State Sentinel. Among the important changes Defrees made to Indiana journalism was installing…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Indianapolis, Indiana, 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