Top of page

Notice
Welcome to the upgraded Chronicling America site. Please visit the Guide for Researchers for information on using the site.
Chronicling America
National Endowment for the Humanities

Newspaper The Daily Confederate (Raleigh, N.C.) 1864-1865 Confederate

View All Front Pages

About The Daily Confederate (Raleigh, N.C.) 1864-1865

Alexander Maxwell Gorman (1814-1865) published the first issue of the Daily Confederate of Raleigh, North Carolina on January 27, 1864. The newspaper succeeded the Weekly State Journal and Daily State Journal, both of Raleigh, which Gorman bought from John Spelman (1821-1889). In the Confederate‘s debut issue, Gorman assured Journal subscribers that the new title was “but a continuation of the same paper under another title.” Gorman was a veteran of the newspaper business, having worked for the Raleigh Register, and North-Carolina Gazette and served as editor and publisher of the Family Visiter and Spirit of the Age, both of Raleigh. For a brief period, he owned both the Confederate and Spirit of the Age, but he sold the latter by June 1864.

The Daily Confederate published a two-page issue every day except Sunday. The newspaper included the text of Confederate military orders; dispatches from the battlefield; reports of state and Confederate government meetings; columns on such topics as habeas corpus and deserters; and runaway slave advertisements.

Gorman also issued a weekly edition of the newspaper every Wednesday. The Weekly Confederate was four pages and featured many of the longer stories and columns that had run in the daily editions the previous week. The weekly edition included little news from the battlefront.

Gorman had help with his editorial duties. He announced in the February 1, 1864 issue the addition of Duncan Kirkland McRae (1820-1888) to the staff, noting that McRae would “make his debut in the Editorial columns of the Confederate” in the next day’s issue. McRae was an accomplished attorney in North Carolina, had spent one term in the state legislature. During the Civil War, he commanded North Carolina troops as a colonel, though he was injured after just a year and a half of service. He then served North Carolina’s governor as a special envoy to find markets for the state’s cotton and purchased supplies in southern Europe.

Although the Daily Confederate nominally rejected political party affiliation, Gorman and McRae admired Zebulon B. Vance, North Carolina’s governor. The Confederate fiercely engaged Vance’s 1864 challenger, William Woods Holden (1818-1892), editor of a rival Raleigh newspaper, the Semi-Weekly Standard. In a March 5, 1864, column entitled “Dying Notes,” the Confederate denounced the Standard for using “extracts from the Confederate … garbled for the purpose” of intimating partisan hackery by the Confederate. The Confederate retorted that its “helm is steady and its prow” focused on National Independence, noting that Vance was a welcomed passenger while Holden was better off “throw[n] overboard.”

The Confederate devoted substantial coverage to reporting successful engagements by Confederate regiments and the valor of its men. A column that followed the Confederacy’s successful defense of the North Carolina port at Wilmington pleaded, “The individual who is not stirred up to action in view of the dangers gathering over his country must surely be destitute of any elements of true manhood.” A January 5, 1865, report boasts that in the defense of Wilmington, “North Carolina has given another token of her prowess, and Confederate hearts are glad.” On February 29, 1864, Gorman and McRae published an excerpt from purportedly private correspondence, dubbed, “An Inspiring Letter from a Lady.” In it, the author laments on behalf of her eldest brother, a Confederate veteran: “His negroes are gone, his provisions, horses and carts taken; his crockery and cooking utensils broken; his hogs, sheep, cattle, and poultry killed.”

The Confederate also voiced contempt for Federal forces and Union sympathizers, particularly George Mills Joy (1829-1880) and the New Bern Daily Progress. Joy was a printer and a corporal in the 23rd Massachusetts infantry regiment. After the 23rd Massachusetts and other Union forces occupied New Bern in March 1862, troops seized the offices and equipment of the New Bern Progress and began publishing a newspaper under Joy’s leadership. In early 1864, Joy ceased publication of the Daily Progress and introduced the North Carolina Times, also printed in New Bern. That title, too, reflected a pro-Union editorial stance. On March 4, 1864, the Confederate criticized Joy for publishing “insulting, aggrieving advertisements” for the sale of the property of southerners who had been driven from their homes during the Federal occupation.

The Confederate‘s run was short. Gorman died of an undisclosed illness on January 24, 1865. McRae mourned the death of his colleague in the newspaper January 30, 1865 issue, asking readers to forgive the paper for lacking the “neatness of appearance which has hitherto characterized [it.]” On February 9, 1865, following an unsuccessful plea to the Confederate Joint Stock Publishing Company to help find a replacement for Gorman, McRae began issuing a daily call for an “associate Editor and general business manager and superintendent.”

The Confederate suffered frustrations wrought by war, as well. On March 9, 1865, McRae announced that the paper would suspend shipment of its weekly and tri-weekly subscriptions until further notice, citing “derangement of the mails, brought about by the impressment of trains for Government transportation.” The paper remained in press under McRae’s leadership (though the A. M. Gorman & Co. proprietary name still adorned the masthead) until spring of 1865.

Provided By: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library, Chapel Hill, NC

About this Newspaper

Title

  • The Daily Confederate (Raleigh, N.C.) 1864-1865

Other Title

  • Confederate

Dates of Publication

  • 1864-1865

Created / Published

  • Raleigh, N.C. : A.M. Gorman & Co., 1864-

Headings

  • -  Confederate States of America--Newspapers
  • -  Raleigh (N.C.)--Newspapers
  • -  North Carolina--Raleigh
  • -  United States--Confederate States of America
  • -  United States--North Carolina--Wake--Raleigh

Genre

  • Newspapers

Notes

  • -  Daily (except Sunday)
  • -  Vol. 1, no. 1 (Jan. 26, 1864)- = old ser., v. 5-
  • -  Ceased in 1865.
  • -  Available on microfilm from North Carolina Dept. of Archives and History, Div. of Archives and Manuscripts.
  • -  Archived issues are available in digital format from the Library of Congress Chronicling America online collection.
  • -  Weekly ed.: Weekly confederate (Raleigh, N.C.), 1864-1865.
  • -  Triweekly ed.: Confederate (Raleigh, N.C. : Triweekly), 1864.

Medium

  • volumes ; 60 cm

Call Number/Physical Location

  • Newspaper

Digital Id

Library of Congress Control Number

  • sn83025813

OCLC Number

  • 9817024

ISSN Number

  • 2474-0799

Preceding Titles

Additional Metadata Formats

Availability

Rights & Access

The Library of Congress believes that the newspapers in Chronicling America are in the public domain or have no known copyright restrictions. Newspapers published in the United States more than 95 years ago are in the public domain in their entirety. Any newspapers in Chronicling America that were published less than 95 years ago are also believed to be in the public domain, but may contain some copyrighted third party materials. Researchers using newspapers published less than 95 years ago should be alert for modern content (for example, registered and renewed for copyright and published with notice) that may be copyrighted. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item.

The NEH awardee responsible for producing each digital object is presented in the Chronicling America page display, below the page image – e.g. Image produced by the Library of Congress. For more information on current NDNP awardees, see https://www.loc.gov/ndnp/listawardees.html.

For more information on Library of Congress policies and disclaimers regarding rights and reproductions, see https://www.loc.gov/homepage/legal.html

Cite This Item

Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.

Chicago citation style:

The Daily Confederate Raleigh, N.C. 1864 to 1865. (Raleigh, NC), Jan. 1 1864. https://www.loc.gov/item/sn83025813/.

APA citation style:

(1864, January 1) The Daily Confederate Raleigh, N.C. 1864 to 1865. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/sn83025813/.

MLA citation style:

The Daily Confederate Raleigh, N.C. 1864 to 1865. (Raleigh, NC) 1 Jan. 1864. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/item/sn83025813/.