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Starting a newspaper in the nineteenth century was a risky business, and this was especially true in the Civil War South where invading armies, spiraling inflation, and conscription laws were constant threats to physical facilities, financial success, and manpower. Despite this, North Carolina Governor Zebulon B. Vance and the state's Conservative political party found the money and the will to establish a new daily to support the his re-election bid in 1864. Campaign papers were common in the 1800s, but while most shut down following an election, the Conservative continued to publish after Vance won. Records and archives document how it was financed, equipped, and staffed, providing an unprecedented glimpse into what it took to start a newspaper not only in the nineteenth century but during America's bloodiest war.

Whether they stayed home to keep the newspaper presses running or tramped off to the front lines, southern printers provided essential labor for the Confiderate cause during the Civil War. Around three-quarters of the South's printers served in the Confederate army, leaving only a handful of men at home to produce newspapers, which, was the only medium where citizens could learn about the progress of the war. Most printers of the Civil War period, though, due to the un-public nature of their jobs, have remained largely invisible to history. This article presents a demographic analysis of a handful of Confederate printers and examines the nature of their work, both at home and in the military. The window into the backshop that this provides will give readers a better understanding of the role, the function, and the experiences of southern newspapers during the Civil War.

Sunshine laws are supposed to be an invention of the twentieth century, but at least one press access case moved through the South Carolina courts in the middle of the nineteenth century. The case was the product of the party disruptions of the midcentury when the Whigs collapsed and the Know Nothings took political primacy in many places. One of those places was Columbia, South Carolina, where Robert W. Gibbes Sr. was editor of the South Carolinian. Gibbes was many things--an editor, a physician, a former Columbia mayor, a college professor, a rabble rouser, and a journalist. He was also not a man with the patience for the political machinations of the period. So, when the new Know Nothing mayor banned Gibbes from covering city council meetings, so as to privilege the Know Nothing newspaper, Gibbes took an "I'll show you" approach to resolving the issue. He decided to provoke an incident that would give him reason to sue the mayor for access to council meetings. He succeeded in provoking the mayor, filing and winning his lawsuit. With his winnings, he had a silver chalice, lined with gold, made and engraved with the First Amendment on one side and a statement regarding the inviolate nature of the amendment on the other. (See "Artifact" on Page 238.) Radically conservative antebellum South Carolina would not on first glance appear to be the sort of venue for this sunshine case, perhaps the first in American history. Given the nature of Southern society and its expectations of men, Southerners' daily experience with what it meant to lose one's freedom, and the state of national and local politics, it stands to reason that a Southern editor would be the vanguard in the struggle for journalistic access to government information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]