The Aegis & Intelligencer (Bel Air, Md.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
2,383 issues from 1864 to 1922, published in Bel Air, Maryland, digitised for Chronicling America.
The Southern Aegis, published weekly, was established in 1857 in Bel Air, Maryland, as a pro-southern paper by John Cox. It is an example of the important function local newspapers served in responding to the political debates dividing the country in the years leading up to the Civil War. Cox, who had formerly edited the Harford Gazette and General Advertiser, maintained an editorial tone that was hostile to the Union. For example, in July 1861 he published a disparaging description of a Pennsylvania infantry regiment that passed through Bel Air. Cox also engaged in a spirited editorial contest with the rival Unionist paper in Bel Air, the National American. His partner after 1858 was John Carroll Walsh whose interests were more focused on agricultural and transportation. Ultimately, Cox found northern Maryland to be barren ground for his advocacy of the Confederate cause. In March 1862, he announced his withdrawal from journalism, and sold his interest in the paper to the prominent local lawyer, A.W. Bateman. For the next two years, the paper was known as theSouthern Aegis, and Harford County Intelligencer.
Under Bateman and his successors, the Aegis & Intelligencer assumed a conservative Unionist political stance. Frederick W. Baker published the newspaper in the post-Civil War years (1864-1894) when Bel Air and the surrounding region experienced economic growth due to its emergence as a major center for food canning and distribution. Although Baker’s editorial positions…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Bel Air, Maryland, 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