ABSTRACT
The epitome of the disenfranchised press of the Civil War era, Douglass pitted advocacy-based journalism against the hybrid political–commercial journalism of the more widely circulated commercial newspapers. With the advent of digital technologies, twenty-first-century archivists have catalogued with measurable success the volumes of material published in the major and widely circulated newspapers of the Civil War era. Abolitionist newspapers, among the strongest voices in the minority press, had existed for decades before the war began, with the death of a particular anti-slavery editor in many ways providing their impetus. Voices of minority newspapers resonated more loudly in support of Abraham Lincoln's bold manoeuvres. With the number of black newspapers increasing immediately after the war, previously marginalized voices increased in representation. While the abolitionist and African-American presses were the loudest of the dissenting voices in American journalism of the Civil War, other minority voices were interested in Lincoln as a major topic as well.
