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If you think the journalism culture wars are heated nowadays, I have news for you. Local journalism was even more divisive 170 years ago. Let me tell you some stories from early-day Eugene that will curl your hair.
First, a little background. The first printing press in the American West began churning out newspapers in Oregon City in 1846. In 1859 Oregon became the 33rd state of the Union — a fact that actually helped split the Union, because Oregon tilted the balance of slave-free states in favor of the North.
By the Presidential election of 1860 Oregon had a population of just 50,000 — but we already had 19 newspapers. Eugene, with a population of 1,000, had two rival papers, at each other’s throats.
Abraham Lincoln had won a scant 36% of the Oregon vote in that election, but he had carried the state nonetheless, because Democrats split their vote between two candidates. Lincoln lost Lane County in a landslide, largely because Senator Joseph Lane of Oregon was the vice presidential candidate running against him. Joe Lane was a local hero who had defused the Rogue River Indian War with diplomacy.
One of Lane’s proteges was C.H. Miller, a wannabe Eugene poet who later became famous as Joaquin Miller. In the depths of the Civil War Miller bought Eugene’s pro-South newspaper, the Democratic Register. Miller had earned $3,000 riding a pony express route in Idaho. He spent most of that fortune on what seemed a very risky investment ― a newspaper. Oregon journalism was not for the faint of heart.
After Lincoln’s party won the midterm elections of 1862, the rival Republican newspaper in Eugene wrote,
“UNION TRIUMPH. The ignorant mass of deluded followers of low party hacks and designing, unprincipled political hucksters are at last foiled in the county of Lane, and decently and triumphantly defeated. While the Union arms are gloriously triumphant in the Atlantic States and Mississippi Valley, we have with unfeigned joy to record a less magnificent, but not less glorious triumph of Union votes in Oregon. Lane County has at last concluded to right about face, and march to the music of the Union. As soon as it was ascertained that we had carried Lane County by a Union majority of 60 votes . . . it was determined to celebrate . . . ”
Wait a minute – Republicans won Lane County by just 60 votes? That’s hardly a landslide.
Miller responded in his Democratic Register with a plea to end the Civil War altogether:
“Alas! Our country revels in the intoxication of blood! News reaches us of a great battle. The Administration has won the victory, at least so we must publish; the eager people inquire how many killed? We answer thousands; they are wild with delight. Their minds have drunk the most baneful poison to the moral man” — the intoxication of blood.
In reply Asahel Bush, the editor of Salem’s Oregon Statesman, commented,
“The name of the miscreant and traitor who uttered the above quotation is C.H. Miller. As soon as his one-horse paper is busted up he will be found skedaddling to the Southern Confederacy.”
Finally Miller was roused to retaliate in kind.“Traitor do you say? You cowardly, perjured, lantern-jawed, green-eyed Yankee. Scream ‘traitor’ because a man dares to hope for the return of the peace and prosperity of our country? Go, humble your ‘diminished head’ in gunny sack and ashes, for no other penance can save the perjured villain that bestrides the editorial tripod of the Statesman.”
After the war, Miller went to London and republished his Wild West poems there to wild acclaim. His poetry introduced the world to the concept of cowboys and Indians. England hailed him as the “Byron of the Rockies” and the “Poet of the Sierras.” Hearing this, the editor of the Albany Democrat wrote,
“C.H. Miller, ex-editor of the Eugene Register, and ex-County Judge of Grant County, has published a book of poems and become a man of fame in London. The fact makes us think no more of Miller, but much less of the Londoners.”
These are just words, you say – early Oregon journalism was a battle of words.
If you believe that, why is there no college on Eugene’s College Hill? Today the University of Oregon is east of downtown, but College Hill is to the south. In the 1850s the pro-South Kentucky Baptists had built Columbia College on that hill. One night their school was burned to the ground by a secret pro-North group, the Union University Association. When the Baptists rebuilt, the vigilantes burned it down again.
Columbia College’s president, M.J. Ryan, was convinced the arson was inspired by Henry Kincaid, editor of Eugene’s Republican newspaper. Ryan loaded his revolver, found Kincaid downtown in Belshaw’s drugstore, and shot him across a glass case at a distance of eight feet.
He missed. Ryan fled to the Confederacy, where he became a colonel and was killed in the first battle of the Civil War.
Oh, you say, but that’s only in Eugene.
No. In 1871 the editors of Roseburg’s two rival newspapers, the Ensign and the Plaindealer, met for a shootout in downtown Roseburg. No one died, but they were both wounded.
A hundred years ago you could get rich by owning a newspaper. The editor of the Oregonian, Henry Pittock, built a mansion in 1914 that’s still a tourist attraction in the Portland hills. In those days everyone read the morning paper at breakfast. Anything that happened by noon was sure to appear in the afternoon paper. Journalism was such a glamorous career that Superman chose it as his day job. Kids didn’t dream of becoming astronauts. They dreamed of becoming ace reporters getting the scoop.
Then came television. Radio news had weakened the afternoon dailies, but the CBS Evening News killed them. By the end of the 1950s almost every American household had a TV. Morning newspapers survived only because no one wanted to watch television at breakfast.
Throughout Oregon, afternoon papers began merging with their morning rivals. That’s why most print newspaper names are hyphenated. The Eugene Daily Guard joined the Morning Register in 1930 and eventually switched to a morning format. Other mergers created the Corvallis Gazette-Times, the Albany Democrat-Herald, and the Roseburg News-Review. Salem’s afternoon daily, the Capital Journal held out until 1980 before merging with the morning Oregon Statesman. My father, J. Wesley Sullivan, was the last editor of the Statesman and the first of the newly combined Statesman-Journal.
In his day my father considered the front page to be every good citizen’s morning briefing. He’d pack that page with 15 or 20 articles that he thought everybody should read. Pretty much everyone did.
The people of Oregon are no longer on the same page because we don’t read the same front page anymore. This is both good and bad. It’s great that our information sources are as diverse as we are. But it’s sad that we’ve lost common ground.
Oregon journalism may seem divisive now, but it’s been worse. Journalists face challenges, but that’s nothing new. The one constant I’ve found is that the news is always bad. No – I didn’t mean that. The one constant is that people really, really want to know the news.
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