Staunton newspapers bore visual and textual markings of slavery, as they regularly contained ads for runaway slaves, slave agents, and slave sales.

Newspapers brought much of the information to local communities and helped create and sustain the networks. Typically, these papers were weeklies with four or eight page formats. In Augusta, two papers competed for advertisers and subscribers--the Whig-oriented Staunton Spectator and the Democratic Staunton Republican Vindicator. The Whig paper reprinted twice as many articles from Southern newspapers as did the Democratic paper and drew most of them from Richmond.

The woodcut of a runaway slave with a stick and sack slung over the shoulder marked nearly every issue of each paper in Augusta County, a recurrent symbol of slave resistance. Agents brokered the sale, hire, movement, and delivery of human chattel, much as they facilitated similar dealings in cattle and other property. Indeed, many "general agents" in Staunton offered a range of services: "Thomas J. Bagby, General Agent, For Hiring Negroes, Renting Houses, and Collecting Claims." (Spectator, Jan. 31, 1860)

Newspaper Article Reprints by Region (table)

Staunton Spectator, A Sensible Negro, September 25, 1860

Staunton Spectator, The Late Slave Murder Case, October 16, 1860

Related Historiography

Glenn C. Altschuler and Stuart M. Blumin, Rude Republic: Americans and Their Politics in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).

William H. Pease and Jane H. Pease, The Web of Progress: Private Values and Public Styles in Boston and Charleston, 1828-1843 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985).