Lexington Gazette (Lexington, Va.)

• 1898–1912
• Newspaper

Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.

777 issues from 1898 to 1912, published in Lexington, Virginia, digitised for Chronicling America.

The Rockbridge County paper, founded in 1869, traces its origins to the Union, a weekly Democratic paper founded in 1832. Three years later, the Union became the Lexington Gazette , which under the editorship of Cornelius C. Baldwin quickly became known as a paper with “no sympathy whatever with the ‘States Rights party.’” By 1840 the Gazette was renamed the Lexington Gazette and Rockbridge Farmer, deftly targeting the township as well as the county’s considerable agricultural population. In 1853, with Alphonso Smith as editor, the title reverted to the more straightforward Gazette. The paper supported the American, or Know-Nothing, Party, a short-lived political movement intent on stemming the tide of Irish Catholic immigrants. In the South, party members were often far more anxious about both the pro-slavery extremism of the Democrats and rapid growth of the anti-slavery Republicans and concerned by the speed with which events were whirling out of control.

With the outbreak of the Civil War, the Gazette weathered paper shortages, worn type, and economic hardship. It was reduced to quarto size, the number of pages went from four to two, and it appeared just twice monthly. In June 1864, the Gazette suspended publication altogether, as Union troops then occupying Lexington scattered the paper’s type into the street. Later resurrected as the Gazette and Banner, the weekly was edited by former Confederate colonel Samuel H. Letcher.

In 1871, publisher Major John J. Lafferty…

Genres

News

Published in

Lexington, Virginia, 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