The South-Western (Shreveport, La.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
550 issues from 1854 to 1870, published in Shreveport, Louisiana, digitised for Chronicling America.
The South-Western was founded in 1852 in Shreveport, Louisiana, an important cotton-shipping center near the state’s border with Texas and Arkansas. Its original purpose was to support the election of Whig Party presidential candidate Winfield Scott. Lewis Dillard (1794-1864), formerly of the New Orleans Native American, was its first publisher and editor. Following Scott’s defeat, Dillard criticized the incoming administration of President Franklin Pierce. The same scene played out in 1856, when Dillard endorsed former Whig president Millard Fillmore (now running on the Know-Nothing or American Party ticket) and then embarked on a campaign of attacking the election’s winner, Democrat James Buchanan.
Published under an emblem of the American flag bearing the motto “Our Country and Our Party,” the South-Western strongly opposed Southern secession. In the election of 1860, it followed the majority of Shreveport’s voters in supporting Constitutional Union Party candidate John Bell, who sought to avoid disunion over the issue of slavery. Shortly after Louisiana seceded from the Union in January 1861, Dillard reluctantly removed the paper’s flag and motto.
Pre-Civil War editorials focused on discrediting the administrations of Presidents Pierce and Buchanan. Other topics of discussion included the Free Soil and Know-Nothing movements. Fiction, poetry, and advertisements for local business and schools were typically printed on the first page. News of steamboats, the basis of…
- Genres
- Westerns, News
- Published in
- Shreveport, 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