New Orleans Daily Crescent ([New Orleans, La.])

• 1852–1866
• Newspaper

Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.

3,338 issues from 1852 to 1866, published in New Orleans, Louisiana, digitised for Chronicling America.

In 1848, Alexander H. Hayes (d. 1866) and J. E. “Sam” McClure, both formerly of the New Orleans Daily Delta, founded the Daily Crescent, a newspaper best known for its association with the poet Walt Whitman, who co-edited the paper but was fired after a few months because of his antislavery views, and William Walker, the famous filibuster who in the 1850s led several private military expeditions to Central America in an attempt to establish an English-speaking, slaveholding empire. Reorganized as the New Orleans Daily Crescent in 1850 under the management of John Wesley Crockett (1807-1852), a son Davy Crockett, the paper was purchased in 1854 by New Jersey native James Oscar Nixon (1822-1891). Nixon had moved to Louisiana as a teenager and worked in the clothing business. During the Civil War, he served as a lieutenant colonel of a Louisiana cavalry regiment, was taken prisoner, and then paroled to the home of his brother, a prominent banker in New Jersey. In his absence, publication of his newspapers was suspended by military order following the Federal capture of New Orleans; it did not resume until October 1865.

In the 1850s, the Crescent carried local, national, and international news of a miscellaneous nature. Although it discussed politics, including arguments over slavery (it was strongly proslavery), it also advertised itself as a “family paper,” carrying fiction, poetry, and essays. With the outbreak of the Civil War, reporting focused heavily on military…

Genres

News

Published in

New Orleans, 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