Harold Holzer

One editor during the Civil War got a grievous message to meet his brothers corpse, only to find out that the telegraph operator had garbled the message to meet his living brother's CORPS.

Feeling its power, one Civil War paper trumpeted that Milton and Homer were for another age but for this one was the New York Herald.

A female war correspondent so popular that she had some credibility in saying she controlled half of her newspaper's circulation approached General Winfield Scott during the Mexican War with information that could help him. He was unwilling to get help from someone in petticoats.

The author says that though the Mexican War wound down, the interpretation of it was just beginning.

President-elect Lincoln to his confidants: "The people of the South do not know us. They are not allowed to receive Republican papers down there.

The press-savy Lincoln looked not to the future, but to the past.

We need to know not only what is done but what is purposed and said by those who shape the destines of states and realms." Horace Greeley

Lincoln said his spiky hair had "a way of getting up in the world".

Superficial and emotional subject might sway undecided voters.

The mid-19th century was noted for a partisan, rather than a consensus press, but this partisanship was able to turn out voters consistently.

I have not done enough for effect." Horace Greeley

James Gordon Bennett said he aimed to be, "serious in my aims but full of frolic in my means.

Public sentiment is everything, said Lincoln. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.

Only a writer "with Bennett's craft and brass could manage to praise and insult his readers at the same time.

Lincoln on a desire to hear Horace Greeley speak: "In print, every one of his words seems to weigh about a ton.

At times, said the founder of the Chicago Tribune, Lincoln seemed to reach into the clouds and take out the thunderbolts.

The author said Frederick Douglass described himself as a "graduate" of slavery with the marks of his diploma on his back.

The infant New York Times boasted that no newspaper printing what was really worth reading ever perished for lack of readers.