Fanatics and Fire-eaters: Newspapers and the Coming of the Civil War (The History of Media and Communication) - Softcover

Ratner, Lorman A.; Teeter Jr., Dwight L.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0252072219 ISBN 13: 9780252072215

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 2004

Synopsis

In the troubled years leading up to the Civil War, newspapers in the North and South presented the arguments for and against slavery, debated the right to secede, and disputed the Dred Scott decision, denouncing opposing viewpoints with imagination and vigor. Although it is impossible to determine the precise effect of the newspapers on their readers, there is no question that they took the temperature of their communities and recorded the rising local agitations, unifying opinions, raising alarms, and cementing prejudices. Lorman A. Ratner and Dwight Teeter's Fanatics and Fire-Eaters ably demonstrates the power of a fast-growing media to influence both perception and the course of events.

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Review:

"Recommended" Choice

Synopsis:

During the years just before the Civil War, key newspapers in the United States became true mass media for the first time, reaching American society as never before. In Fanatics and Fire-eaters, Lorman A. Ratner and Dwight L. Teeter, Jr., examine how this newly acquired power was used and how it exacerbated festering regional issues -- preeminently the issue of slavery -- as newspapers described and characterized some of the key events preceding the outbreak of the Civil War. Analyzing specific events, from the Brooks-Sumner incident to the attack on Fort Sumter, the authors provide a thorough and colorful background of the descent into war. Tracing political accounts and diatribes published in northern and southern newspapers from 1856 to the shelling of Fort Sumter in 1861, Ratner and Teeter assert that newspapers, in their desire to be profitable and promote specific agendas, stoked the fires that heated tensions between North and South. Fanatics and Fire-eaters examines a time when the press gained greater influence and timeliness because of telegraph lines, steam-driven presses, and faster distribution via railroad networks.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0252072219
• ISBN 13: 9780252072215
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160