Confederate newspapers were beset by troubles: paper shortages, high ink
prices, printers striking for higher pay, faulty telegraphic news
service, and subscription prices insufficient to support their
operations. But they also had the potential to be politically powerful,
and their reporting of information--accurate or biased--shaped
perceptions of the Civil War and its trajectory.
The Atlanta Daily Intelligencer Covers the Civil War investigates
how Atlanta's most important newspaper reported the Civil War in its
news articles, editorial columns, and related items in its issues from
April 1861 to April 1865. The authors show how The Intelligencer
narrated the war's important events based on the news it received, at
what points the paper (and the Confederate press, generally) got the
facts right or wrong based on the authors' original research on the
literature, and how the paper's editorial columns reflected on those
events from an unabashedly pro-Confederate point of view.
While their book focuses on The Intelligencer, Stephen Davis and Bill
Hendrick also contribute to the scholarship on Confederate newspapers,
emphasizing the papers' role as voices of Confederate patriotism,
Southern nationalism, and contributors to wartime public morale. Their
well-documented, detailed study adds to our understanding of the
relationship between public opinion and misleading propaganda
