Newspapers

Well, this has been eating at me for a day, so I decided to start a new thread. I guess we all have pet peeves... Well, this is one of mine.

To which Cash replied

You totally missed my point, which is what I'd like to explain, so I did as I promised and I'm starting a new thread, rather than hijack the other.

My reply will follow.

Ah, but... you didn’t say that the press had no love for the slaves, you said they “didn’t consider them important.” That’s two separate things. Had you said love I would have come back with Frederick Douglass, who was a newspaper editor, and I might also throw in William Lloyd Garrison for good measure.

Douglass wanted full equal rights for the negro. I can't think of many people who would be more empathetic, compassionate, or have as much love toward those in bondage than a former slave himself. Despite Garrison's ceasing the publication of The Liberator, and his resignation from the American Abolitionist Society in 1865, he continued to lecture for civil rights for the African American.

But the point is, abolitionist editors, whether they just sought the basic freedoms of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for the slave, or the more radical full equal rights, they still felt the slaves important enough to risk their presses and even their lives (i.e. Elijah Lovejoy) for the slave.

I just don't believe one can say that "the papers [which I see as being all inclusive] of the time didn't consider [the 4.5 million slaves], important..." We haven't even touched on papers printed out of the Confederacy, where slavery was not only considered important, but vital to the economy. Of course the term important can be interpreted different ways just depending on who it is who's being referred to. The thing is, almost anything can be made into a word game.

I guess somehow I found Cash's pet peeve when I referenced to Kentucky in the previous thread. But I have my pet peeves when it comes to lumping all papers in the era as feeling the same way regarding the African American.