Adirondack partisan newspapers in 1858

Like-minded editors of southern Adirondack newspapers in 1858 were bitter over the lack of support for local partisan Democrat journalism as the new Republican Party was taking root in the region.

Debut Republican presidential candidate John Fremont had carried Warren and Washington counties in 1856.

“In one of the richest towns, we have but two subscribers, and one of them is a deadhead,” chided a Sandy Hill Herald editorial , reprinted Feb. 9, 1858 in The Glen’s Falls Republican, a Democrat newspaper established before the founding of the Republican Party. “We don’t complain because Democrats don’t take our paper; if they do not think it worth two cents a week, we don’t want them to take it.”

The editorial was in reaction to news that The Elizabethtown Post, the only Democrat newspaper in Essex County at the time, was ceasing publication.

“The Post was a good and reliable Democrat paper, and it is a shame that it has been starved out,” the Herald editorialized. “It is a fact that there is no use of disguising that Democrats do not support their party papers as well as Republicans do.”

The Glen’s Falls Republican chimed in with its own pitch for local support.

“The above remarks have proved true in our short editorial life. There is scarcely a Democrat in this (Warren) county who would make the extra effort to sustain his party press. To this there are some honorable exceptions, but the great mass appear to care no more for their county paper than one printed in Boston or Philadelphia.”

The Glen’s Falls Republican cried poverty in a separate Feb. 9, 1858 editorial.

“The denizens of this county seem to consider an Editor a sort of nondescript animal, with senses like other beings, but not of sufficient acuteness to need stimulus to keep them in play. In other words, that they need nothing to eat! … So poor have we got by continued fasting that our figure has long since ceased to cast even an apology for a shadow! — Our feet are shoeless, our head hatless, our back coatless, and our pedal extremities almost pantoonless! We lived on saw-dust pudding until the cold weather shut up the saw mills and now we are compelled to forego even that luxury.”