A Beautiful Smiler Came in Our Midst
As the quarrel of North and South reached its climax in the "secession winter" of 1860, Indiana politico Richard W. Thompson sent his son a warning from the capital that later generations would echo. No news from Washington was good news, he wrote; at least, none of it was fit to be trusted. "The 'correspondents' . . . are, as a class, altogether unreliable. They manufacture all sorts of stories--all for the purpose of magnifying their own importance & making their papers sell." How simple life would be if they could be ignored, but that was impossible. No men did more to shape public opinion. "They have such a share of influence over the public mind that they can write a man up or down, just as they think best for their own interest. The politicians are completely subject to them, and the two classes have brought the government to the very verge of ruin." 1
Politicians had winced beneath the lash of the press gang before the war, and they had made reporters wince on occasion,
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