April and May of 1865 were eventful months in American history. On April 3, the Confederates evacuated Richmond; on the 9th, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox; on the 14th (Good Friday), John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Lincoln at Ford's Theater in Washington; on the 26th, Booth was tracked down to a barn in Virgina and killed by a sergeant, who was quoted as saying, "calling on God to execute justice, I fired" (some accounts say Booth killed himself); and on April 10, in no doubt the least of all these events, Jefferson Davis was captured at Irwinville, Ga.
Perhaps because it is the least of these and many events leading to that date in 1865, little has been said of Davis's capture and its coverage by the press. But that coverage not only tells us about news and newspapers of 1865, it reveals flaws we recognize in modern times after frenzied bursts of coverage of some emotional event. Coverage of Davis's capture illustrates how the press fuels speculation by reporting misinformation and rumor and even creating stories, inflames public passions about conspiracy, and allows its emotional involvement to lead it to seek justice and perhaps vengeance.
Davis's flight and capture in many papers, the Hartford Courant, for example, was covered in a frenzy of emotion, speculation, and frustration. Davis was seen almost solely in terms of April's events, especially the assassination of Lincoln. Reporters and editors at the Courant and other newspapers refused to believe that Lincoln's death was not plotted by Davis and promised time and again to provide evidence to that effect. Although the evidence never came, Davis was portrayed as satanic - a monstrous assassin, cowardly assassination plotter, looter of banks, and common thief. From the assassination of Lincoln until after the capture of Davis, news reports and comments went from flatly accusing Davis of the assassination and other planned atrocities to speculating the extent of his involvement, for they offered no doubt that he was involved in all of it. For about two weeks at the end of April and the beginning of May, news reports provided wildly varying estimates about how many people traveled with the escaping Davis and how much "stolen" money they carried. But the intense emotion and hatred could not be sustained.
Perhaps the reading public did not see Davis as the devil portrayed by the press or, at the end of a long and devestating war and after the assassination of their president, people grew tired of the bitterness. In the end, rather than treat him as a devil, editors and reporters resorted to portraying him as a clown, a leader fallen so low that he was captured sneaking out of camp in petticoats and crinoline, an insult aimed directly at his manhood and character and one gleefully reported throughout the country. That little of what was reported was true (or that much was exaggerated) emphasizes the danger then and now - of news organizations so caught up in the events and people they are covering, so caught up, in this case, in rumors and speculations of conspiracy and the need for justice or vengeance that they create their own story, missing the one playing out before them.
Last updated: November 24, 1997
comments to: commdept@cecasun.utc.edu
