Overview

Knights of the Quill offers a unique assessment of war correspondence in Southern newspapers during the American Civil War. The men and women who covered the battles and political developments for Southern newspapers were of a different breed than those who reported the war for the North. They were doctors, lawyers, teachers, editors, and businessmen, nearly all of them with college and professional degrees. Sleeping on beds of snow, dining on raw corn and burned bread, they exhibited a dedication that laid the groundwork for news gathering in the twenty-first century. Objectivity and accuracy became important news values, as shows that Southern war correspondence easily equalled in quality the work produced by reporters for Northern newspapers. With its emphasis on primary sources, the book offers an important and enduring historical perspective on the Civil War and also meets the highest standards of historical scholarship.

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9781557535665

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<p>During the US Civil War, news correspondents in the South often used pen names to avoid enemy detection, and the identities of only a few are known even today. Most were well-educated or professionally trained young adults; many had elite backgrounds. Armed with scraps of paper, pencils, and quill and ink, these correspondents often found themselves on battlefronts and behind enemy lines. McNeely and Schulte (both, emer., Univ. of SouthCarolina) and van Tuyll (Augusta State Univ.) offer biographies of 29 correspondents, 2 of them women, from 8 of the 11 Confederate states. After the war, many of these correspondents became professionals: lawyers, physicians, a state supreme court judge, a secretary of state, a US diplomat, a priest. One of them, Henry Watterson, became an editor and helped rebuild the South. Filling an understudied area of journalism history, the book also discusses several shifts that occurred in 19th-century journalism: it went from offering commentary and rumor to providing facts and truth, i.e., it moved toward professionalism. McNeely, van Tuyll, and Schulte contend that there were few distinctions between Southern journalism and Northern. This informative, well-written volume will be a valuable resource for those interested in both journalism history and the Civil War. Summing Up: Highly recommended. *** All readers.--R. Ray, Mississippi State University Ray, R. CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. 48.11 (July 2011)

<p>During the US Civil War, news correspondents in the South often used pen names to avoid enemy detection, and the identities of only a few are known even today. Most were well-educated or professionally trained young adults; many had elite backgrounds. Armed with scraps of paper, pencils, and quill and ink, these correspondents often found themselves on battlefronts and behind enemy lines. McNeely and Schulte (both, emer., Univ. of SouthCarolina) and van Tuyll (Augusta State Univ.) offer biographies of 29 correspondents, 2 of them women, from 8 of the 11 Confederate states. After the war, many of these correspondents became professionals: lawyers, physicians, a state supreme court judge, a secretary of state, a US diplomat, a priest. One of them, Henry Watterson, became an editor and helped rebuild the South. Filling an understudied area of journalism history, the book also discusses several shifts that occurred in 19th-century journalism: it went from offering commentary and rumor t

Author Information

Patricia G. McNeely, Debra Reddin van Tuyll, and Henry H. Schulte are all former journalists who gave up their pencils and reporters' notebooks for university blackboards and chalk. McNeely and Schulte are both retired from the College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of South Carolina, which is where van Tuyll, a professor at Augusta State University, received her doctorate.

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