Two Men, Two Minds: An Examination of the Editorial Commentary of Two Georgia Editors During Sherman's March to the Sea

Sherman’s march to the sea presented Georgia newspaper men with their biggest story of the war: marauding invaders pillaging and burning through the mid-section of the state. As would be expected, these editors jumped on the story, scrambling for information from any source and reporting any information they could lay their hands on. The three most common sources included two of the same ones newspapers had relied on throughout history: newspaper exchanges and eye witness accounts. A third source used in the Civil War was the news service. Of course, one would expect the paper’s politics to be evident in what stories were used and what stories were neglected. Interestingly enough, this was not so for most newspapers in Georgia. Those who were fully behind the idea of a Southern victory and those who were convinced that it was time to lay down the swords and talk peace, for the most part, were amazingly similar in their news reporting. However, there was a divergence in the content and tone of their editorials. This paper will look at how two Georgia newspapers, the Augusta Chronicle and the Macon Telegraph, covered the march as a news story, and what the papers’ editors were saying in their editorial columns. Their papers were chosen for this study because almost all copies of the papers were available from the time period of Sherman’s march and subsequent capture of Savannah, Mid-November through December 22 when Sherman sent his famous telegram to President Abraham Lincoln.