"Did the Southern Press Have a Negative Effect" Topic

…on the Confederate War Effort?

"Two incidents stand out in my mind. Both of these had a truly negative impact, and are prime examples of why newsmen are treated so dimissively by modern high commands.

The first is the effect that the Southern Press had on the mind of one of it's foremost soldiers, General Albert Sidney Johnston.

Many have noted that Johnston's reputation existed as only a rumour outside of collegues like Jefferson Davis. But, his undoubted sucess in rallying William O. Butler's division of volunteers at Monteray in 1846 certainly impressed a certain Captain Joseph Hooker, so Johnston certainly had admirers outside of Davis's circle, on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line. A.S. Johnston's appointment as Commander of "Confederate Department No. 2", (i.e. Parts of Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Missouri, Kansas and Indian Territory) seemed to Davis that Johnston was "the only man who seemed equal to it." The press agreed…at first. They called him "The Lion of the West"…"

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No effect on soldier morale since most of them could not read. Nor could their family back home. Newspaper articles were meant to affect politics.

You may want to rethink the belief that most confederate soldiers were unable to read. Civil War armies were the most literate in history to that time. More than 90 percent of white Union soldiers and more than 80 percent of Confederate soldiers were literate, and most of them wrote frequent letters to families and friends.

archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/m/mcpherson-comrades.html#:~:text=Civil%20War%20armies%20were%20the,letters%20to%20families%20and%20friends.

The AWI soldiers were also quite literate.