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Chronicling America
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Newspaper Southern Banner (Holly Springs, Miss.) 1841-1841 Southern banner and conservative

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About Southern Banner (Holly Springs, Miss.) 1841-1841

On the Tennessee border in north-central Mississippi, Marshall County’s gently rolling terrain of well-drained, extremely fertile soil was perfect for growing cotton. In 1850, the area produced more than 30,000 bales of cotton and had the largest population in the state. Known as “the capital of North Mississippi,” Holly Springs, the county seat, was a prosperous antebellum town.

The large Whig following in Holly Springs and the surrounding area supported a party-affiliated newspaper run: the Southern Banner (1839); Holly Springs Banner (1839-40); Conservative, and Holly Springs Banner (1840-41), also known as the Southern Banner and Conservative; and the Southern Banner (1841); all were four-page weeklies. For a few weeks in 1841, Thomas A. Falconer was editor and publisher of the Conservative, and Holly Springs Banner, but a former proprietor soon resumed publication and changed the title to the Southern Banner. Falconer became sole publisher/editor of the Holly Springs Gazette (1841-18??), also a four-page weekly. In the Gazette‘s first issue, dated July 28, 1841, Falconer stated that “this paper will issue from the same press upon which the “Conservative” was formerly printed, and is intended to supersede that paper.” He also specified that “politics will be Harrisonian and not a wild adherence to ultra-Whig doctrines.” Falconer was a staunch states’ rights supporter, a viewpoint that became noticeable in later issues of the Gazette. He next published the Democratic Unionist newspaper, the Mississippi Palladium (1851-52); Falconer died in the 1878 yellow fever epidemic that devastated hard-hit Holly Springs.

All of these papers were quite political, with editorials, letters to the editor, national and state legislative news, Whig political tickets, election results, and coverage of Whig events such as a regional rally announced in the August 3, 1844 Gazette. Other general content included sermons, poetry and stories, anecdotes and jokes, and general advice for farmers. Local educational opportunities, entertainments, legal notices, obituaries, and marriage announcements were also carried. In a rare glimpse into life in antebellum Mississippi, the September 9, 1841 issue of the Holly Springs Gazette printed the corporate laws of the town; statutes covered required community service by males citizens, or their substitutes, for road building; regulation of slaves and free Negroes; duties of the tax collector and treasurer; and fines imposed for shooting firearms in town. In addition to discussing the national and state banking crises, the Banner and Gazette covered north Mississippi’s own banking crisis. In the August 4, 1841 issue of the Holly Springs Gazette, candidate for sheriff, A. C. McEwen, of the Bank of McEwen, King & Co., addressed the citizens of Marshall County: “The failure of the bank originated from releasing the mortgages and failing to effect the transfer [to the Northern Bank].” The banking fiasco caused many stockholders to flee to Texas. Later, news about the Republic of Texas, its border dispute with Mexico and annexation by the United States was a nearly weekly topic in the paper. Sympathy for Texas ran so high that volunteers from the county, listed in the April 15, 1842 issue of the Gazette, left to go ” . . . marching through the prairies of Texas to meet the . . . Mexicans”; however, the next issue, April 22, 1842, reported that they had only made it to New Orleans.

Provided By: Mississippi Department of Archives and History

About this Newspaper

Title

  • Southern Banner (Holly Springs, Miss.) 1841-1841

Other Title

  • Southern banner and conservative

Dates of Publication

  • 1841-1841

Created / Published

  • Holly Springs, Miss. : Edwin Junius Foster, 1841-

Headings

  • -  Holly Springs (Miss.)--Newspapers
  • -  Mississippi--Holly Springs
  • -  United States--Mississippi--Marshall--Holly Springs

Genre

  • Newspapers

Notes

  • -  Weekly
  • -  Vol. 2, no. 12 (June 25, 1841)-
  • -  Ceased in 1841.
  • -  Published as: Southern banner and conservative, July 23-Oct. 22, 1841.
  • -  Archived issues are available in digital format from the Library of Congress Chronicling America online collection.

Call Number/Physical Location

  • Newspaper

Digital Id

Library of Congress Control Number

  • sn87065204

OCLC Number

  • 15278199

ISSN Number

  • 2470-0312

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.

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Cite This Item

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

Chicago citation style:

Southern Banner Holly Springs, Miss. (Holly Springs, MS), Jan. 1 1841. https://www.loc.gov/item/sn87065204/.

APA citation style:

(1841, January 1) Southern Banner Holly Springs, Miss. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/sn87065204/.

MLA citation style:

Southern Banner Holly Springs, Miss. (Holly Springs, MS) 1 Jan. 1841. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/item/sn87065204/.