View of progress by the regional American periodicals of the early 1850s (on materials of the Library of Congress electronic database “Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers”)

Abstract

Views of “American progress” by the regional U.S. newspapers of the early 1850-s are analyzed in the article. The Library of Congress electronic database “Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers” is used. As its materials reveal, some printed mass media, mostly Democratic, associated “American progress” with Manifest Destiny, with the territorial expansion of the United States, and with the attacks on the so-called “Old Fogies”. The theme of slavery in the North American republic was not raised in this context. Other periodicals, mainly Whig, spoke for “reasonable progress”, inner reforms. “The Anti-Slavery Bugle”, the abolitionist newspaper, which was published in Ohio, linked progress to the solution of the problem of “peculiar institution”, to the women right’s movement, to the intellectual achievements. On the whole, the materials of the electronic database show that at this period local papers were well informed about political discussions in Washington and New York. Estimates of “American progress” were affected to the great extent by party and political persuasions of the editors and authors, as well as by their attitude towards the debates about the role and place of youths in politics, in public life.