Newspapers in Franklin were little different from those in Augusta, but the orientation of the Repository and Transcript as the lead Republican paper set the county apart from its neighbors and from those in the South.

In Franklin two papers represented the political parties there--the Republican Franklin Repository and Transcript and the Democratic Chambersburg Valley Spirit. The Democratic paper followed the national party line, putting forward its rhetoric and news in the community with little subtlety or variation. The Republican paper, by contrast, shaped itself more closely to the local community, linking national party ideas and issues to more local circumstances, personalities, and news. The Democratic paper, for example, reprinted twice as many articles, almost all of them from New York, as did the Republican paper.

With the telegraph linking these communities to larger cities, newspaper editors in both communities turned primarily to New York for information. Editors reprinted far more information from New York papers than from any other source, including Philadelphia or Richmond. Eighteen city newspapers provided copy to editors in Chambersburg and Staunton. The Whig paper in Staunton and the Democratic paper in Chambersburg led their counterparts in reprinting material from other cities both Northern and Southern. The Chambersburg Democratic paper, the Valley Spirit, was the most aggressive reprinter, pulling stories from a wide network of Democratic papers in the North and South. When not using material from New York, Staunton editors turned almost exclusively to the Upper South for material, virtually ignoring Lower South editors.

Distances to Major Institutions (table)

Newspaper Article Reprints by Region (table)

Newspaper Classified Ads by Business Type (table)

Related Historiography

John D. Majewski, A House Dividing: Economic Development in Pennsylvania and Virginia Before the Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge 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).