In this day and age, newspapers rarely print fiction. Of course, there is the occasional magical story written by a third grade class that appears every once a week in the Arts and Entertainment section of the paper, but for the most part, fictional stories of real substance are not published in newspapers anymore. This was not the case in the 1800's. Appearing in The Valley Star each week was...
In late 1881, writers for The Mobile Register were frustrated with the federal government, as were many citizens of the area. The newspaper's editor wrote that Strobach, an Austrian who had been appointed to oversee the Federal patronage of Alabama, should not be trusted to this office. The newspaper claimed that he came to the United States originally as hostler to Prince Salm-Salm....
After the Civil War, political machines exerted strong control over Lousianna politics. Louis Wiltz, the Democrat who defeated Judge Taylor Beattie for the governorship in 1879, died in office in October of 1881. Wiltz was a French creole of German ancestry, who experienced great success in the Lousianna business world and became vice-president of the Louisianna State National bank before being...
Edward F Stokes refused to pay the poll tax required for voting purposes in South Carolina. He claimed that such a tax was a debt, making imprisonment upon his refusal to pay a violation of Commonwealth organic law. Nonetheless, Judge Hawthorne found him guilty and offered him the choice of a fine of five dollars and costs or thirty days in jail. Stokes appealed the decision, and it was brought...
Railroads were essential modes of development in Texas, a state which retained its frontier status while others turned to a manufacturing economy. After the Civil War, efforts were renewed to construct a southern transcontinental railroad. In order to do so, the Texas and Pacific Railway Company, which had received a federal charter in 1871, was granted permission to build tracks from Marshall,...
On October 2, 1881, Mrs. Harding, the wife of a upstanding black man, was initially denied access to the ladies car on the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad. She ordered the assistance of General Manager Thomas, who promptly ordered that a separate car be arranged for her. Harding refused to enter the separate car and filed a law suit against the company. Later that afternoon, a black organist,...
Joel Johnson, a well-known citizen of Baldwin County, Alabama, was riding quietly along a public road near Sibley's Mill. Unexpectedly, an African American hiding behind a tree shot Johnson in the head, stunning him and throwing him from his horse. The black man then shot him twice more, first in the wrist and again in the side. Taking him for dead, the assailant dragged Johnson three-hundred...
NO ALCOHOL SALES ON SUNDAY signs popped up everywhere after July 8, 1861 when an ordinance prohibiting the sale of liquor on Sunday passed. The Richmond Daily Examiner reported that the city council of Richmond now required that Hotel-keepers, restaurant owners, beer saloons, or any place that sells spirits, beer, or cider must close every day at ten o'clock at night and may not open at all...
Sally Garland Young Rambin struggled to write to her sister because of a sore eye, which she had gotten from the family that her husband had brought to the plantation. He had brought them to help pick the cotton crop that a young man had cultivated on their land but had not picked. Rambin's sore eye and the negligent young man were the least of the Rambins' worries, however. Rambin wrote...
On August 22, Perry Munson, a black man of Ouachita Parish in Lousianna, was murdered by an unknown mob. His death was one of many lynchings in the late 19th century that signified the rise of racial violence in the South. <br />Similarly, on June 30, police arrested Seab Marjam, a black man, on the Georgia railroad at Stone Mountain for attempted rape of a white woman. The article states,...