The Daily Dispatch (Richmond [Va.])
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
9,851 issues from 1852 to 1884, published in Richmond, Virginia, digitised for Chronicling America.
Published from 1884 to 1903, the Richmond Dispatch was originally established on October 19, 1850, as the Daily Dispatch by James A. Cowardin and William H. Davis. The Daily Dispatch marked a new era in newspaper publishing in Virginia. Not only was the four-page sheet the first penny paper south of Baltimore, editorially it veered away from the vitriolic political propaganda common to its daily competitors. The Dispatch, instead, offered itself to Richmond’s commercial and industrial elite as the best possible source for local, state, and national news. Cowardin also published a weekly edition of the paper, the Weekly Dispatch and in 1857 began the Semiweekly Dispatch . By 1860, the Daily Dispatch was one of four dailies printed in Richmond, with a circulation equal to that of its three rivals combined.
Though the Daily Dispatch started as nonpartisan, Cowardin, a staunch southern Whig, increasingly included conservative and pro-slavery editorials while advocating the development of local industry as a path to independence at a time of growing sectional tension. Cowardin envisioned the emergence of Richmond as an industrialized city, something akin to New York on the James, but he also believed that slavery was integral to Virginia’s prosperity. Cowardin believed that if Virginia remained in the Union it would continue to be marginalized by its wealthy counterparts in the North and never realize its potential as an industrial powerhouse.
Although the Dispatch was…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Richmond, 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