Civil War military censors tried to control the news

Union fleet passing Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip below New Orleans.

The Civil War marked the first time military leaders used electrical communication to fight a war.

Military officials in both the North and the South also realized that the news reports coming over the telegraph could give the enemy valuable information about the disposition of troops.

As might have been expected, military officials began trying to control telegraph transmissions.

The Mobile Advertiser and Register had trouble getting the news out to the rest of the South when a federal naval squadron under Capt. David G. Farragut battled its way up the Mississippi River past forts Jackson and St. Philip on the night of the April 24, 1862.

Telegraph operators in New Orleans quickly flashed the news to Mobile where the Register reported that the South’s largest city lay open to the federal fleet. Military censor at Mobile, over the Register’s protest, attempted to block transmission of the news elsewhere. Every report had to be shown to the general in command in Mobile before it was put into type. Such censorship remained a problem throughout the war.

What stories of the Press Register can you share?

One corner of The Mobile Press Register in the days before computers.
From left: Mignon Kilday, Gordon Tatum and Sylvia Hart

I wrote two columns for The Mobile Press Register as part of its 200th anniversary series titled “We Were There.”

In the first, I recalled the afternoon of June 30, 1981, when I encountered a hostage situation in the office of then-Mobile Mayor Robert Doyle, who was being held at gunpoint by a former policeman. I agreed to talk to the disgruntled man and became a hostage myself. You can read the story here.

The second column focuses on colorful newsroom personalities of the past century. Read it here.

Do you have a story you would like to share?

Press Register begins '200 Years in 20 Days'

The Mobile Press Register as it was when I was there 1979-94.

In case you haven’t seen it, The Mobile Press Register is marking the 200^th anniversary of the newspaper with a series of features called "200 Years in 20 Days."

The series includes the news, sports and entertainment events that have occurred since 1813. The first installments today include stories about the events that led up to Mobile being acquired by the United States from the Spanish and the massacre at Fort Mims during the Creek War of 1813-14.

The series also will include “We Were There” features in which current and former employees and other writers provide their first-person accounts of reporting on some of the top news stories of the last 50 years. I’m one of those the paper has asked to write a first-person account. It will appear sometime by the end of the month.

I am looking forward to reading the other accounts by former colleagues and by MPR staffers I never knew.

I, too, am looking to former staffers to include their stories here. If you have a suggestion for a post, then please contact me.

Register's battlefield reporters suffered with Confederate troops

To cover news from Civil War battlefields, The Mobile Register equipped reporters with a horse,

spyglass, writing materials and other materials they needed for the field.

Peter W. Alexander

A reporter faced many hardships. He spent most of the day observing a battle then wrote his report and filed it at the nearest telegraph station or railhead, often traveling many miles to do so. Then he headed back to the battlefield and maybe rest before beginning another day.

Suffering along with Confederate troops made the Register’s correspondents sensitive to the needs of the ordinary soldier. Peter W. Alexander in one of his letters to the Register told of how the troops in Virginia left the banks of the James River fighting pitched battles and then marched to another battlefield to once again face the enemy: “And let it always be remembered to their honor, that the men who performed this wonderful feat,

one-fifth of them were barefooted, one-half of them in rags, and the whole of them half famished.”

Alexander, who used the pen name “P. W. A.,” was the South's best known war correspondent. You can read more of his reports as well as those of other Southern reporters on the website Dispatches from Dixie, where the images on this post came from.

Civil War-era editor largely remembered for poem

The poem “The Bivouac Of The Dead,” which appears at all U.S. national cemeteries, was written by

an editor of The Mobile Register, Theodore O’Hara.

O’Hara wrote the poem in memory of the Kentucky troops killed in the Mexican War.

O’Hara came to the Register in 1856 after President Franklin Pierce appointed Register owner John Forsyth to replace James Gadsden as U.S. minister to Mexico. The colorful, but highly erratic and alcoholic O’Hara wrote editorials in Forsyth’s absence.

With the outbreak of the Civil War, O’Hara raised a company called the Mobile Light Dragoons. Its members elected him company captain, but O’Hara then joined the 12th Alabama Volunteer Infantry where he rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel.

He later served on the staff of General Albert Sidney Johnston and General John Breckenridge. Civil War blogger David A. Powell has written on his Chickamauga Blog about a myth that has grown up about O’Hara being at the Battle of Chickamauga.

After the war, O'Hara became a merchant in the cotton business in Columbus, Georgia, until wiped out by a fire. He retired to a friend's plantation in Alabama where he died in 1873 from malaria. The following year, his remains were re-interred in the cemetery in Frankfort, Kentucky.

If you want to know more about O’Hara, read Theodore O'Hara: Poet Soldier Of Old South written by Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes Jr. and Thomas Clayton Ware.

Compare impact of telegraph with impact of Internet

This being the 150th anniversary of Civil War, it is a good time compare the impact of the telegraph in the 1860s with the impact of the Internet today on newspapering.

By the time the Civil War started, many newspapers, including the Register, had been using the telegraph for nearly 15 years to gather news. But the war greatly expanded its use. The war also marked the first time military leaders used electrical communication.

The Register organized one of the Confederacy’s best systems of special correspondence by both telegraph and mail, as well as a special express for news outside the Confederacy. The Register sent correspondents called “specials” to every major field of battle. The specials usually transmitted their stories by telegraph.

Without a doubt the telegraph helped the Register gather the increasing amount of news about the war. For example, the front page of the Register before the war had been reserved for advertising, but war news began to push all other matter aside.

But the telegraph, unlike the Internet, didn’t do anything to help newspapers distribute the news. Newspapers couldn’t deliver their news to their readers over the telegraph.

Many journalism historians hold that the telegraph inspired a telegraphic news style. The heavy expense of telegraph tolls, the traditional view says, forced reporters to be concise and led to the rise of the summary news lead.

But a new book by David Hochfelder, The Telegraph in America, 1832-1920, says there was no telegraphic news style. He points out that most newspaper editors rewrote the copy reporters telegraphed to them into longer and more detailed stories.

What about the Internet’s impact on writing? Is there an Internet news style?

When cutting-edge technology for newspapers meant a pair of sharp scissors

During the early 1800s, cutting-edge technology for newspapers meant a pair of sharp scissors.

The most significant source of news for the Register came from other newspapers with which the Register exchanged subscriptions. The most important sources, often just called the exchanges, included mostly

American Antiquarian Society

Eastern newspapers that arrived by the latest mail.

The Register, like most other newspapers, depended on its exchanges for important information from the economic and political centers of New York, Boston and Washington and the major cities of Europe.

Often derided as “scissors and pastepot journalism,” this highly organized system of gathering news had its own set of rules and understandings among editors. One of those understandings was that editors were to give credit to the source newspapers.

When the editor of The St. Stephens Halcyon violated that rule, the Register chided that “To the Halcyon, our debt of gratitude is easily paid—the only notice it has condescended to take of us, is to copy about a column and a half from us without giving the usual credit.”

The Register complained that it took two days’ labor to collect the information from about 300 pages and arrange the matter for publication.