| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

For Free Press and Equal Rights: Republican Newspapers in the Reconstruction South. By Richard H. Abbott, ed. John W. Quist. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004. xii, 266 pp. $39.95, ISBN 0-8203-2527-9.)

Examining the origins, ideology, and problems of Republican newspapers in the Reconstruction South, the late Richard H. Abbott addresses a neglected topic of Reconstruction history and adds to our understanding of southern Republicanism and journalism history. Often employing a state-by-state analysis, Abbott argues that the Republican press of the Reconstruction South established the public voice of southern Republicanism. Republican newspapers sought to keep voters informed, defend Republican policies and politicians, and build a sense of community and self-esteem among southern Republicans. Republicans founded at least 478 papers from 1861 to 1877; they amounted to approximately 33 percent of all political newspapers in the Reconstruction South. Republicans thus denied Democrats a newspaper monopoly of public life. In an appendix that future historians will find useful, Abbott lists all of these Republican journals, their years of existence, and their current availability. Unfortunately, he does not distinguish between journals owned and operated by whites—the vast majority of Republican Reconstruction newspapers—and those controlled by African Americans.

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