Jerks in History

[Rob Wick]

Given that the Louisville Journal was an anti-slavery paper, their stance is not surprising.

As for the Wilmington paper, their main point can be summarized by this comment. "As was expected, the affair has been a perfect Godsend to the Abolitionists, and they evidently intend to make the most of it." Their "denouncing" of Brooks was their view that he should have attacked Sumner outside of the Senate chamber. "Mr. Brooks should have sought a different time and place for his meeting with Sumner. But, to attack him in the Senate Chamber and chastise him, while the latter was unprepared and in a defenceless position, was unjustifiable. Granting that the prevocation was sufficient, he has yet given a good handle for the Northern people to seize, in denunciation of his course, and deprived the South of the opportunity of justification."

As for the Nashville papers, their name says it all.

All three were affiliated with the American Party, or the Know Nothings as they were better known. According to Anthony Gene Carey in "Too Southern to Be Americans: Proslavery Politics and the Failure of the Know-Nothing Party in Georgia, 1854–1856" in Civil War History (1995) 41: 22–40, the American party in the South "was composed chiefly of ex-Whigs looking for a vehicle to fight the dominant Democratic Party and worried about both the pro-slavery extremism of the Democrats and the emergence of the anti-slavery Republican party in the North. In the South as a whole the American Party was strongest among former Unionist Whigs. States-rightist Whigs shunned it, enabling the Democrats to win most of the South. Whigs supported the American Party because of their desire to defeat the Democrats, their unionist sentiment, their anti-immigrant attitudes, and the Know-Nothing neutrality on the slavery issue."

So while they certainly are Southern in name, their politics were obviously anti-Brooks.

Best
Rob