Illinois newspaper directory. History of the Illinois press association

Illinois Newspaper Directory and Historyyears. The first was the primitive, or pioneer period. This began with September, 1814,when, according to the best authority, the first paper published in the State was establishedat_ Kaskaskia, the Territorial capital, and extended to 1840. The name of thispaper was the Illinois Herald, and its founder was Matthew Duncan, a brother of JosephDuncan, afterwards a member of Congress and Governor of the State. The period whichit initiated was one of crude methods, limited resources, small subscription lists and aconstant struggle to 'make both ends meet.' It began with the close of our last warwith England, when, with the return of peace and the promise of protection from thesavages, immigration began to set in to the Western States. It included the organizationof the Territory as a State the struggles with the Indians who still occupy the northernportion of the State, the founding of towns and cities and the creation of new counties,so that we now have 102, where, at the time of the admission of the State into theUnion, there were but 15. It also included the bitter contest over the admission ofMissouri as a slave State, the attempt four years later (which happily proved unsuccessful)to prepare the way for making Illinois a slave State, by calling a convention torevise the State Constitution, the craze on the internal improvement question and thedepression which followed the failure of that scheme and the financial revulsion of 1837.It was a period of rapid development, great hopes and widespread disaster."The second period began with a political revolution in the nation, and was attendedwith the revival of immigration and the gradual return of prosperity to the businessand industries of the State. It saw the introduction of the electric telegraph for thetransmission of news and a vast improvement in the methods of printing. It also sawthe second struggle over the Missouri Compromise, the contest between the forces offreedom and slavery for the possession of the soil of Kansas which followed anothergreat financial revulsion in 1857, and ended with the most stupendous war of moderntimes from which the friends of freedom and Union emerged triumphant. It was aperiod of invention, of intense agitation and great public danger; but it purified thenation as by fire, and prepared the way for the renovation which was to follow."The third period has been one of restoration. It was fitly ushered in by the returnof peace, after the war of the rebellion, and has been chiefly distinguished by therebuilding of the prosperity and happiness of the Nation and shattered States. Comparedwith other epochs, it has been the 'golden era' of Illinois journalism. I do notmean that, during this period, the newspapers have been, uniformly and without exception,prosperous, any more than other branches of business; but the demand for newsduring the war period gave an impulse to journalism, which has resulted in achievementsgreater than in any other similar period since the discovery of the art of printing.It is fitting that this Association should have had its organization with the dawningof such a period, and it is fitting that, at its close, you should celebrate its jubilee."One of the earliest allusions to the state of literary intelligence in Illinois andthe periodicals, which circulated among its people, with which I have met, is to befound in a letter by Morris Birkbeck, one of the founders of the 'English Settlement,'in Edwards county, in 1817, addressed to the celebrated and eccentric William Cobbett.In the course of his versatile and erratic career, Cobbett had spent several stormy yearsin this country, when he returned to England bearing with him the bones of ThomasPaine, to pursue an equally stormy career in his native land. Coming a second time tothe United States, he made this visit the occasion for a characteristically venomousattack on Birkbeck, in the interest of some land company in Pennsylvania which hadsuffered by the diversion of foreign immigration to Illinois. In this attack, he paintedthe condition of the English Colony in Edwards county in particularly lurid colors.Mr. Birkbeck wrote a scathing reply, addressed to a friend in England, in which he said:94