ABSTRACT
The libertarian media aired bad news as well as good, including violence in “Bleeding Kansas” during the 1850s and the terrorism of William Clarke Quantrill, a renegade Confederate soldier who sacked Lawrence, Kansas, on August 21, 1863. The adversarial give-and-take between editor and letter writer raised readers’ consciousness and built consensus. Readers valued descriptions of opportunities for free blacks in Canada, where some 40,000 runaway slaves made new lives.
