Competition among correspondents was fierce. When Washington, D.C., officially confirmed Lee's surrender, one northern newspaper boasted that they'd beaten AP's telegraphic report by 15 minutes. News of the surrender spread across the North within hours to most major cities and was published in the papers the following day.
Telegraph lines, however, were always at the mercy of the weather and cutting by combatants during the war.
Even with the initial reports of the surrender, generally regarded as the end of the war, full detailed accounts were mostly not run in the newspapers until April 14th, the date of Lincoln's assassination.
--Old Secesh
No comments:
Post a Comment