Fanatics and Fire-Eaters: Newspapers and the Coming of the Civil War

by Ratner, Lorman A.; Teeter, Dwight L., Jr.

• ISBN13: 9780252027871
• ISBN10: 0252027876
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-02-01
• Publisher: Univ of Illinois Pr

Summary

"In the troubled years leading up to the Civil War, newspapers in the North and South presented the arguments for and against slavery, denouncing opposing viewpoints with imagination and vigor." "Although it is impossible to determine the precise effect of the newspapers on their readers, there is no question that they took the temperature of their communities and recorded the rising local agitations, unifying opinions, raising alarms, and cementing prejudices." "Tracing political accounts and diatribes published in northern and southern newspapers from 1856 to the shelling of Fort Sumter in 1861, Ratner and Teeter assert that newspapers, in their desire to be profitable and promote specific agendas, stoked the fires that heated tensions between North and South, and ably demonstrate the power of a fast-growing media to influence both perception and the course of events."--BOOK JACKET.

Author Biography

Dwight L. Teeter, Jr. is a professor of communications and journalism at the University of Tennessee. Lorman A. Ratner is an adjunct professor of history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and professor of history emeritus at the University of Tennessee.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Acknowledgments	xiii
Introduction	1	(6)
The Emergence of a Democratic Press	7	(27)
Impeding Civilization: The Brooks-Sumner Incident	34	(15)
The Dred Scott Decision and a Society of Laws	49	(11)
Kansas and the Lecompton Constitution: Does the Majority Rule?	60	(11)
John Brown's Raid: Violence in a Republican Society	71	(14)
Lincoln's Election: Could a Republican Lead the Republic?	85	(17)
Firing on Fort Sumter: A Republic at War with Itself	102	(15)
Conclusion: The Shattered Republic	117	(4)
Notes	121	(12)
Index	133