GDG- Re: Meade's pursuit

[Biggsk at aol.com]

Tom Ryan writes:

>>>Peter Wellington Alexander, who was traveling with the ANV  all during the 
Gettysburg Campaign, sent dispatches to his newspaper, the  Savannah 
Republican, that corroborate your findings.  His reporting was  essentially 
straightforward, picturing things pretty much as they  happened.  There is no indication 
that Lee's army suffered permanent  damage or was demoralized as a result of 
what took place at  Gettysburg.>>>
I love PWA (which is how he signed his dispatches) very much and am glad  
that Bill Styple compiled much of his Eastern Theater work for  publication.  I 
find him one of the most accurate of the reporters.   You would not get things 
like "Longstreet Killed" from him like one or two  Northern papers ran for 
Gettysburg.
 
I think we have discussed the press and its reporting for the war and this  
battle before and, like today, you get the good reporters, the bad reporters 
and  the ugly reporters.  PWA, I think stove to be one of the good ones.
 
I have been doing research for an author for the last year on  
Toombs'/Benning's GA Brigade for his book and have been hitting the GA period  newspapers 
very hard, in particular those of Atlanta, Savannah, Macon, Athens  and 
Columbus.  One of the Atlanta papers had a reporter that hung out with  the Georgia 
units of the ANV in 1861 and sent back some great stuff on them in  Virginia.  
He was stolen by one of the Savannah papers for the rest of the  war., but 
Atlanta made up for it with good material from  soldier-correspondents.
 
Another often overlooked source not used by modern historians are the  
casualty reports sent to the papers by regimental adjutants after bigger  battles.  
While I like them best when they list color bearers or color  guard 
casualties, they are fine sources for how badly (or not) a unit was  hurt.
 
By the time I am done with the research for my Georgia Civil War flags book  
I will have been through every period Georgia paper (and there's lots) and 
many  of the post-war papers too.  I am at about 60 per cent for the wartime  
papers now.



<<At some point I plan to write an essay on how the  Southern papers viewed
the Summer of 1863 and then one for how the northern  press did the same.>>

>>  That would be  interesting to read.  Will that be anytime  soon?>>


Probably not as soon as you or I would like - but that remains to be seen  
based on a strong possibility of my being hired by the Tennessee State Museum in 
 July to complete their book on Tennessee's Civil War flags.  If not, then I  
might bump that up.  I would use samplings from several big city, middle  
city and small town papers for each region and see how the reporting was covered  
by them as well as their editorials with regards to the events of July,  
1863.  The small towns might not take so long as they often cited the  bigger 
papers although some, like the Turnwold Countryman of Eatonton, GA were  very good 
in their own right.
 
Believe me, this essay is one that I really want to do as, when I was in  
college in my journalism classes, I was trained to follow the clues and see  
where they lead you, and I have been nicely surprised to find out what I have  
found out - and I think that readers would be too.
 
The same criteria would be done for the North as well.  I was amazed  when I 
was working with the New York Times and NY Herald as well as the  Baltimore 
American as to their take on events in the West.  They covered  them exceedingly 
well and rated them in terms of importance higher up than I  would have 
expected.  One of them reported the effects of the capture of  Ft. Donelson as 
making the London bonds market take a nice jump!  All of  them hailed the taking 
of Vicksburg in glowing terms.
 
We tend to think that folks back then did not get news that quickly.   I have 
been stunned to see how fast news actually traveled back then either by  
telegraph or newspapers being brought from one city to another by train or  
steamboat.  I have also been stunned to learn just how well informed of  world 
events folks really were back then and this was down to the smallest  papers from 
the smallest towns too.
 
Greg Biggs