Spirit of the Age (Woodstock, Vt.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
1,790 issues from 1845 to 1913, published in Woodstock, Vermont, digitised for Chronicling America.
A group from Woodstock, Vermont, who hoped for a Democratic victory in the 1840 presidential election started the Spirit of the Age to campaign for the incumbent, Martin Van Buren. Although Van Buren lost the election, for 73 years theAge served as “a strong opposition journal, constantly alive to the duty of prodding the party in power,” according to the Burlington Weekly Free Press. With support from Vermont’s Democratic Party, thefour-page weekly maintained a small but consistent base of faithful subscribers in Windsor County. From the 1870s through the early 1900s, the four-page weekly paper expanded its circulation to nearby counties with the Orange County Democrat, issued from West Randolph, and the Democrat and Courier, issued from Rutland.
The strong personalities of the five men who served as the Age’s publishers and editors were largely responsible for its longevity as a minority opposition paper. Charles G. Eastman ran the paper from 1840 to 1845, when he became the editor of the Vermont Patriot in Montpelier. Eastman changed the paper’s name to Woodstock Age in 1844, but under his successor, Edgar A. Kimball, the paper again appeared as Spirit of the Age. When Kimball left to fight in the Mexican War in 1847, Edward M. Brown took over as editor and publisher. Brown operated the paper until 1860, when he moved to Montpelier to operate the Vermont Patriot after Charles Eastman’s death. William D. McMaster directed the paper for almost half of its existence, from…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Woodstock, Vermont, 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