Lincoln's America 2.0

Edward L. Ayers

Matthew Pinsker's extremely useful essay alerts us to, among other things, digital sources that promise fresh ways to understand Abraham Lincoln. Thanks to the work of dedicated scholars and librarians, we also find ourselves in possession of millions of digital words, statistics, and images about the America in which Lincoln lived. The challenge now is to find meaning, coherence, and pattern in that abundance.	1
For most people at the time, far from battles or capitals, the Civil War arrived in long gray columns of text. A new system of telegraph stations, railroads, and press organizations spread words with unprecedented speed and in enormous quantity. Reports from the battlefield poured out in brief messages and long torrents, editorials commenting on every event and utterance. Even generals and presidents understood the shape and meaning of the Civil War through print. Newspapers expressed and molded public opinion daily, and Lincoln realized fully how much this public opinion mattered. "Public sentiment is every thing," he said. "With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed. Whoever moulds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes, or pronounces judicial decisions."1	2
The bland appearance of unadorned nineteenth-century newspapers belies the passions within. No matter how passionate they might be, however, no matter how unique the situation might appear, people returned time and again to key words to express themselves. The subjects people wrote about, the words they habitually paired, the ideals they named, the slurs they cast—all bore strong patterns. Those patterns are as distinct as fingerprints.	3
The availability of newspapers in digital form offers the opportunity to explore public opinion with a thoroughness and precision impossible just a few years ago. Historians at the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond, led by Robert K. Nelson, are building tools that provide exciting new perspectives to anyone who knows the rudimentary techniques of searching on the World Wide Web. The four newspapers of the Valley of the Shadow Project, a long-established digital archive, provide a convenient way to experiment. These papers represented Republicans and Democrats in the North and unionists and secessionists in the South before, during, and after the Civil War in two counties. A broad comparison with other publications in digital form—the New York Times, Harper's Weekly, and the Richmond Dispatch—shows that the general patterns of the Valley of the Shadow newspapers also characterized major publications of both the Union and the Confederacy.2	4
The most commonly used words in these four Northern and Southern newspapers between April 1861 and April 1865 show how thoroughly the war trumped every other concern. (See figures 1[a] and 1[b].) Northerners talked of "rebels" and Southerners talked of the "enemy," but otherwise white Northerners and white Southerners spoke in remarkably consistent and similar vocabularies. In some ways, Northern Republicans and Northern Democrats differed from one another more than Northerners and Southerners did.	5
Figure 1(a). The words most commonly used in articles that contain the word "people" in the two Northern papers in the Valley of the Shadow Project, April 1861 through April 1865. The larger a word appears on these lists, the more frequently the word appears in each newspaper.   . . . There are about 1032 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.