Edgefield Advertiser (Edgefield, S.C.) 1836-Current
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
3,451 issues from 1836 to 1927, published in Edgefield, South Carolina, digitised for Chronicling America.
The weekly Edgefield Advertiser (1836-present) holds the distinction of being the oldest continuously running newspaper in South Carolina. For much of its existence, the Advertiser has served as a barometer of the influence of agrarian elites on government and society in South Carolina. Its editors have at times vigorously defended some of the most divisive issues in this nation’s history–nullification, secession, segregation, slavery, and states’ rights–as have many Edgefield politicians, including Preston Smith Brooks, Martin Witherspoon Gary, Benjamin “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman, and in the 20th century, United States Senator Strom Thurmond. The Edgefield Advertiser has influenced the tenor of the discussion of issues in South Carolina for almost two centuries.
Throughout the 19th century, Edgefield District was one of the major cotton-producing areas in South Carolina. The plantation economy shaped society, with slaves comprising a majority of the area’s inhabitants and a few families controlling much of the wealth. Perhaps unsurprisingly, no Republican newspapers, either white or African American-owned, sprang up in Edgefield during the Reconstruction era (1865-77). In 1868, Edgefield became a county (later partitioned into Aiken, Greenwood, McCormick, and Saluda Counties). In 1876, Edgefield’s white leaders enacted the “Edgefield Plan” to disfranchise African Americans and reestablish white Democratic control over the state through intimidation and violence, culminating…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Edgefield, South Carolina, 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