Abstract

 

Burton, Crompton B.

E.W. Scripps School of Journalism

Ohio University

 

“Another Copperhead Lie”: Marcellus Emery and the Bangor Union and Democrat

 

         James Gordon Bennett, Horace Greeley and Henry Raymond enjoy significant

 

notoriety for their impact upon the newspaper industry during the American Civil

 

War. As publishers of great influence in major metropolitan population centers, their

 

work and their triumph are well-documented. Less well-known are the publishers and

 

editors whose southern sympathies placed them among the ranks of the notorious and

 

consigned them to a place in history or national memory that fails to recall their stand

 

against threats to First Amendment rights of a free press. Instead, critics’ portrayal of

 

treasonous editorials and disloyal interpretation of the political and military aspects of

 

the conflict have survived to brand them as unworthy of significant study or analysis to date.

 

            This study seeks to explore the nature of historical perspective that comes

 

as a byproduct of the institutional literature of the victors and portrays the plight and

 

toil of so-called “Copperhead” editors based upon readily available documentation and

 

record. Going beyond those perspectives, the paper also seeks to uncover the experience

 

of a heretofore obscure champion of the Confederate cause in the northern reaches of the

 

Union. The story of Marcellus Emery is significant and deserving of more than passing

 

reference in the columns of his competition for what it tells us of dissent and the struggle to find a

 

forum for opposing views and the risks associated with the intolerance of divergent opinion.