Volume 38, No. 10 – October 2025
Website: www.CivilWarRoundTablePalmBeach.org

The President’s Message:

I hope that everyone got through the extremely hot summer that we had in Florida.  Our next meeting will be on Wednesday, October 8^th at 7:00PM at the Lake Clarke Shores Town Hall.  Our topic will be “Would You Enlist in the Army During the Civil War.”  I look forward to seeing everyone at the meeting.

Gerridine LaRovere

October 3, 2025 Topic:

The last meeting we had was on June 11, 2025.  The newsletter from that meeting is on the website.  Because it was not possible to fit that into a  three page printed document and include this new material, this short newsletter is being published instead.  The following story was put together by Gerridine.

In 1857, Fletcher Harper, of Harper and Brother Publishing, launched Harper’s Weekly.  It was an illustrated newspaper that sold for five cents a copy, and capitalized on the popularity of illustrated newspapers that originated in England.  The public saw woodcut engravings of news events in the age before printing photographs was available.  The newspaper was published each Saturday, had a national circulation and borrowed from the successful format of the well-established Harper’s Monthly Magazine.  Serialized novels by popular contemporary authors such as Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins were featured.  Collins was an English author.  His books The Woman in White and The Moonstone established many of the ground rules of the modern detective novel and procedural detective stories.

At Fletcher Harper’s direction the newspaper, now selling at an inflated wartime price of six cents an issue, kept an unflagging, pro-Union, pro-war policy throughout the Civil War.  Through its graphics, most Federal servicemen were depicted as noble martyrs and heroes and most Confederates as flea-bitten villains.  The newspaper served as propaganda for the Union cause.  The paper featured cartoons and jokes that were extremely racist and ethnocentric by today’s standards.  In 1862, George William Curtis became the editor.  He was a writer, reformer, speaker, and civil rights supporter.

Harper’s Weekly contributed to the history of the Civil War with its art.  News artist Alfred R. Waud, Henry Mosler, and Theodore Davis aided in building Harper’s reputation for graphic art. News artist, Winslow Homer, won personal recognition for his fine art.  Thomas Nast who later joined the newspaper brought the paper national note for his caricatures of corrupt New York City Mayor William Marcy “Boss” Tweed.  A two-page spread published in 1862 depicted Confederate defenses at Yorktown, Virginia and giving the location, strength, and position of Union units caused a problem with the Federal government.  Union Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton who was an advocate of censorship ordered the publication of the newspaper totally suspended.  Fletcher Harper used his diplomatic skills to reverse the order.

The paper’s popularity eclipsed its nearest rival, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper.  The paper had growth until the 1870’s.  With the advent of photography, people’s taste changed.  In 1916, the newspaper was absorbed by a publication called The Independent.