The Cape Girardeau Democrat (Cape Girardeau, Mo.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
509 issues from 1891 to 1901, published in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, digitised for Chronicling America.
The Cape Girardeau Democrat began in 1876 as a weekly newspaper, published every Saturday morning by Benjamin H. Adams. Originally four pages in length, it expanded to eight pages in August 1894. Adams filled the paper with news from the entire Cape Girardeau area which encompasses parts of Missouri, Illinois, and Kentucky. A reader can find news from all three states in each issue, plus editorial tidbits on national and global news.
Despite its title, Adams maintained the Democrat as a Republican-leaning newspaper, but in a July 1898 issue, Adams proclaimed: “We don’t want to have to say anything mean about a Republican but if we have to we will and we will hit hard, too.” As an editor, Adams was an outspoken man who was not against insulting any person running for office, regardless of party affiliation.
The elections were heavily reported for months in the paper, and Adams inevitably came up against resistance at times. Eventually, the newspaperman seemed to have grown tired of the complaints against his political editorials, and on September 10, 1898, he announced his “neutrality,” declaring that “the Democrat is twenty-two years old and it is its own boss. It will hereafter say what it pleases in politics and vote for the candidates that suits it best.” Despite this announcement, the paper continued to throw most of its support behind Republican politicians. Still, there does appear to have been a movement over time toward a more neutral journalistic stance.…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Cape Girardeau, Missouri, 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