The Memphis Appeal (Memphis, Tenn.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
1,067 issues from 1886 to 1889, published in Memphis, Tennessee, digitised for Chronicling America.
About 15 years after Memphis, Tennessee, was founded, Henry Van Pelt printed the first issue of a weekly newspaper, the Memphis Appeal, in 1841. His printing office was his home, a ramshackle wood cottage on the banks of the Wolf River. Van Pelt printed the Appeal on single sheets, an unimpressive newspaper serving the muddy Mississippi River town. Beginning in 1847, it became known as the Memphis Daily Appeal. The paper grew with Memphis and passed into new ownership, becoming a Confederate paper with the onset of the Civil War. Editor Benjamin Dill and his wife, America “Carolina,” and printer John R. McClanahan became part of American newspaper lore when they refused to be censored or silenced during the Union occupation of Memphis. In June 1862, Dill and McClanahan moved their paper 100 miles south, to Grenada, Mississippi.
With the Appeal’s offices vacant, a special order was issued for J.K. Davisson of the 24th Indiana Volunteers to take possession of the offices and publish a Union paper for the city. The first issue of the Memphis Union Appeal was printed on July 2, 1862. After a few weeks, Samuel Sawyer took over as publisher and changed the title to the Daily Union Appeal. The last extant issue dates from August 30, 1862, and it is not known how long (or if) the paper survived after this date. The “original” Confederate Memphis Daily Appeal, however, proved to be resilient in the face of adversity.
Soon dubbed the “Moving Appeal,” the Memphis Daily Appeal moved…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Memphis, Tennessee, 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