The Daily Comet (Baton Rouge, La.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
740 issues from 1852 to 1856, published in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, digitised for Chronicling America.
Founded as a French trading post in the early 18th century, Baton Rouge was part of the British and later Spanish colony of West Florida from 1763 until 1810, when, as part of the short-lived Republic of West Florida, it was annexed by the United States. In the 19th century, the town developed into the main commercial center on the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Natchez, Mississippi. Surrounded at that time by sugar and cotton plantations, Baton Rouge became the state capital in 1846 through the influence of rural planters desiring a more central location, even though its population was then less than 3,000, many times smaller than the state’s former capital, New Orleans.
Issued in daily and weekly editions, the Comet was one of Baton Rouge’s leading newspapers prior to 1856, when it merged with its competitor, the Baton-Rouge Gazette, to form the Daily and Weekly Gazette and Comet. George A. Pike, brother of prominent Baton Rouge landowner and businessman William S. Pike, founded the Daily Comet in 1850. It and its successor the Morning Comet were published Tuesday through Saturday in four pages and consisted primarily of advertisements that serve as a record of Baton Rouge’s commercial life during the antebellum period. The Weekly Comet, issued on Sundays, was ad-free and offered editorial viewpoints on various political, social, and commercial topics, as well as a wide selection of essays, literature, and poetry. By the mid 1850s, Pike was promoting the…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Baton Rouge, 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