Dayton Daily Empire (Dayton [Ohio])
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
1,148 issues from 1859 to 1865, published in Dayton, Ohio, digitised for Chronicling America.
In Dayton, the seat of Montgomery County, Ohio, Copperheads and Republicans alike looked to partisan newspapers for a statement of their ideals and goals during the Civil War. The Copperhead champion in Dayton was the Daily Empire, an old-line Democratic organ, which represented the anti-abolition and anti-war position and which accused the Lincoln administration of violating the Constitution. The Empire notoriously clashed with Dayton’s Republican paper, the Daily Journal, with which it would engage in a fierce war of words that at times triggered violent outbreaks in the community.
The Dayton Daily Empire is said to have been founded in 1844 and was published by Daniel C. Fitch and George W. Clason. In addition to appearing as a daily edition, it was also issued as the Evening Empire, Weekly Empire, and the Tri-Weekly Empire. In 1847, the Empire passed into the hands of Clement Laird Vallandingham, a famous Copperhead congressman and a leader of the Democratic Party. Vallandingham edited the paper until 1849 when he disposed of his interest. A rapid succession of men followed in his footsteps through the 1850s, all echoing Southern demands for protection of slavery in the states and territories. In April of 1860, ownership of the Empire passed to the I. R. Kelly & Company and John Frederick Bollmeyer, who had left his position in the Treasury Department to become its editor, apparently as an agent of President James Buchanan.
Bollmeyer would remain editor for slightly…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Dayton, Ohio, 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