Blue-Grass Blade (Lexington, Ky.) 188?-19??
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
426 issues from 1886 to 1910, published in Cincinnati, Ohio, digitised for Chronicling America.
The Blue-grass Blade was irregularly published in Lexington, Kentucky, from 1884 through 1910. One of several rare free-thought newspapers in the United States, it was Kentucky’s most controversial turn-of-the-century newspaper by far. According to its irreverent editor, Charles Chilton Moore (1837-1907), the Blade was published on Sundays to give the public thoughtful reading material on a day when it was most needed.
Moore’s editorial voice was outspoken to the extent that he used “I” rather than “we” and touted the paper as “edited by a heathen in the interests of good morals.” The grandson of Barton W. Stone, a founder of the Disciples of Christ, Moore studied at Bethany College in West Virginia and was ordained by noted religious leader Alexander Campbell. Yet, the church’s stand on slavery, an institution Moore adamantly opposed, caused his faith to waiver. Moore’s travels as an itinerant preacher in the mountains of Kentucky, where he observed geological formations that did not jibe with Biblical chronology, further sowed the seeds of disbelief. The final blow struck when Moore was visited by a friend skeptical of the Bible’s inspiration. The men exchanged views for weeks, the ultimate result being Moore’s loss of faith and his friend’s baptism into Christianity. Leaving his church in Versailles, Kentucky, Moore would henceforth devote himself to reason and the Blue-grass Blade.
So opposed was Moore to what he regarded as the mystifications of religion that the…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Cincinnati, 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