Pro-Southern Newspaper Destroyed by Bloomington Mob-- Part 1

From the September 19th Bloomington (Il) Pantagraph "Mob destroyed Bloomington's pro-South newspaper in 1862" by Bill Kemp, Archivist/Librarian of McLean Museum of History.

This is one of those interesting sidebars to the Civil War that you don't usually hear about.

Back in the early 1860s, Bloomington had three newspapers.

The Pantagraph, which still exists, was a daily paper firmly behind the new Republican Party and its main competitor was the the moderate weekly Illinois Statesman, the voice of northern Democrats. The two papers frequently clashed, but the Statesman supported the Republican war effort.

However, the Bloomington Times, was described as "a rabidly pro-southern, anti-Lincoln, anti-war" weekly published by Benjamin F Snow and D. Josiah Snow. They were originally from Maryland and arrived in Bloomington in the early 1850s.

One of their sisters became Bloomington's first librarian and Benjamin taught Latin at Wesleyan University.

They began publishing the Times in 1855 and for the next seven years "excelled inthe art of printed provocation."

Stop the Presses!! More Coming!! --Old B-Runner