Book description
Henry Watterson, editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal during the
tumultuous decades between the Civil War and World War I, was one of
the most influential and widely read journalists in American history.
At the height of his fame in the early twentieth century, Watterson
was so well known that his name and image were used to sell cigars and
whiskey. A major player in American politics for more than fifty
years, Watterson personally knew nearly every president from Andrew
Jackson to Woodrow Wilson. Though he always refused to run, the
renowned editor was frequently touted as a candidate for the U. S.
Senate, the Kentucky governor's office, and even the White House.
Shortly after his arrival in Louisville in 1868, Watterson merged
competing interests and formed the Courier-Journal, quickly
establishing it as the paper of record in Kentucky, a central promoter
of economic development in the New South, and a prominent voice on the
national political stage. An avowed Democrat in an era when newspapers
were openly aligned with political parties, Watterson adopted a
defiant independence within the Democratic Party and challenged the
Democrats' consensus opinions as much as he reinforced them. In the
first new study of Watterson's historical significance in more than
fifty years, Daniel S. Margolies traces the development of Watterson's
political and economic positions and his transformation from a
strident Confederate newspaper editor into an admirer of Lincoln, a
powerful voice of sectional reconciliation, and the nation's premier
advocate of free trade. Henry Watterson and the New South provides the
first study of Watterson's unique attempt to guide regional and
national discussions of foreign affairs. Margolies details Watterson's
quest to solve the sovereignty problems of the 1870s and to quell the
economic and social upheavals of the 1890s through an expansive empire
of free trade. Watterson's political and editorial contemporaries
variously advocated free silverism, protectionism, and isolationism,
but he rejected their narrow focus and maintained that the best way to
improve the South's fortunes was to expand its economic activities to
a truly global scale. Watterson's New Departure in foreign affairs was
an often contradictory program of decentralized home rule and overseas
imperialism, but he remained steadfast in his vision of a prosperous
and independent South within an American economic empire of unfettered
free trade. Watterson thus helped to bring about the eventual
bipartisan embrace of globalization that came to define America's
relationship with the rest of the world in the twentieth century.
Margolies' groundbreaking analysis shows how Watterson's authoritative
command of the nation's most divisive issues, his rhetorical zeal, and
his willingness to stand against the tide of conventional wisdom made
him a national icon.
""Margolies develops his thesis convincingly and
readably. His use of the Watterson papers at the Library of Congress
is masterful, along with a long list of other primary documents.
Watterson is lifted from the role of an important editor of his time
to one with wide ranging contacts, reach, potential influence, and a
generally consistent intellectual position that demanded attention, if
not agreement."" -- Wallace B. Eberhard, Journalism History
Daniel S. Margolies is assistant professor of history at Virginia
Wesleyan College.
