Mass MeDIA AND THE POWER OF INFLUENCE

1. Mass MeDIA AND THE POWER OF INFLUENCE Unlike modern society, media during the Civil War was primarily communicated via newspapers. These are not like the newspapers of today’s world, which at the very least try to cover up any bias they contained,but rather more like the political news television stations with obvious dispositions. These papers would heckle anyone or anything that disagreed with their particular views and were never shy in attacking Presidents, generals, or the staffs of either. The power of some of these papers oftentimes reflected the feeling of the people,which not only help those in power keep in touch with the pulse of their country, but also influenced certain decisions made by those with authority. The power of the media over the common solider, the home front, and the political arena’s of both the North and Southwas a constant and impactful force throughout the war. The Civil War, being a war of momentum, depended on the willingness of the people to fight for a cause for any amount of time. “No one understood that better than Abraham Lincoln. ‘Public sentiment is everything,’ he averred.’ ‘With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed.” (Bogus) While few ordinary Americans knewthe power that media held, especially in shaping public sentiment, one former Congressman, O. J. Smith, realized that the monopolistic wire service in America “could send or withhold such news as [it] chose, and thus shape the public sentiment at will. [This gave them] more power to make and unmake presidents than either party.” (Bogus 878) For this reason, Lincoln and his Administration did their utmost to control the income of news that arrived from the battlefield. “By managing the release of wartime news, overseeing telegraphy, and influencing the wire service, the administration could dominate the provision of timely hard news to the public. This would still be done through the nation’s newspaper, but over the heads of their editors.” (Bogus 875) With the power of the press under some semblance of control, the President was able to regulate the speed with which public sentiment about the war swung. This control of the mainstream media not only showed Lincoln’s just fear of its power, but also his cunning in using it as a tool. While there were a myriad of reasons why Lee invaded in the Fall of 1862, one of the more prominent was the supposed leverage a Southern army on Northern soil would have on the upcoming elections. The pendulum of war had swung wildly in favor of the South at this point with victory at 2nd Manassas as well as the rejection of the Peninsular Campaign. With the Northern armies in disarray and licking their wounds, the people of the North had lost their confident optimism. After a year of mostly defeats, some began to wonder if the war could ever be won, or if they should elect some of the peace democrats to office to negotiate a secession to the fighting. This idea was further perpetuated even among Southern papers. “The Richmond Dispatch believed that in the North ‘there is a large and powerful body of citizens who are bitterly opposed to the present war.’” (McPherson) The effect of media here once again becomes apparent. The idea that the North was divided could not have come about as a commonly agreed upon idea without a major means of mass communication. While opposition to the continuation of the war had certainly grown by 1862, by no means was it strong enough to elect enough Senators who would vote for peace to end the war. One of the greatest effects of media that gave it a vast amount of power to influence the common American on the home front was the introduction of pictures from the battlefield. A picture can speak a thousand words, but to the hopeful millions who sat at home waiting to hear news of the great Union victory, the pictures were a stark reminder that the war would not be so easily won. These pictures brought the war home to their audience, so much so that “the snapshot [became] its notion of adequacy, the equivalent of having been there.” (representations) Now those on the home front could put images a dead and bloated corpses with the tragic casualty figures and staggering defeats. As one photographer at the time wrote, “the photographs represent actuality; better than the hand of a fallible human artist the ‘honest sunshine’ provides at least ‘some conception of what a repulsive, brutal, sickening, hideous thing’ war is.” (representations) This led to the question, is it worth the cost? Is the price of abolition, or Union, or whatever people were fighting for in the North, worth the cost of such horrible bloodshed? These pictures would do much more than any casualty list in convincing Northerners that it was not. Although history does indeed show us that the Union was worth the cost, the pictures of Antietam and other such battles played a large role in the reason why many states swung toward democratic control.