The Cecil Whig (Elkton, Md.) 1841-Current
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
3,903 issues from 1841 to 1920, published in Elkton, Maryland, digitised for Chronicling America.
Palmer Chamberlain Ricketts founded the Cecil Whig in 1841 when local Whig party supporters in Elkton, Maryland, decided to launch a newspaper in the aftermath of William Henry Harrison’s presidential victory. Published weekly under the founding editor, the Whig attacked its partisan foes with a stridency that ultimately led to physical violence. Ricketts was indicted in 1843 for killing the editor of the rival Cecil Democrat, Amor T. Forwood, after the two had published an increasingly heated and personal series of editorials. Ricketts continued to edit the Whig from his jail cell, and eventually was acquitted after a jury decided he had acted in self-defense.
The Whigs collapsed as a national party in the 1850s, and the Cecil Whig assumed the standard of the Know-Nothing or American Party. The Know-Nothings were anti-Catholic and opposed immigration, but many party adherents also supported the abolition of slavery. Maryland’s Eastern Shore was a center of Know-Nothing support, which resulted in the election of Thomas Holliday Hicks as governor in 1856. The new Republican Party absorbed many Know-Nothing voters, and the Whig became a very strong pro-Union voice under the ownership of Edwin E. Ewing, who replaced Ricketts after the latter’s death in 1860. Ewing sold the Whig in 1876 and moved west to Kansas where he was associated with the Kansas Farmer of Topeka. In 1882, he relocated again to North Carolina where he started the Blue Ridge Enterprise in Highlands, before…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Elkton, 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