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The Atlanta Daily Intelligencer Covers the Civil War
Confederate newspapers were beset by paper shortages, high ink prices, printers striking for higher pay, faulty telegraphic news service, and subscription prices insufficient to support their operations. But they also had the potential to be politically powerful, and their reporting of information—accurate or biased—shaped perceptions of the Civil War and its trajectory. The Atlanta Daily Intelligencer Covers the Civil War investigates how Atlanta’s most important newspaper reported the Civil War in its news articles, editorial columns, and related items in its issues from April 1861 to April 1865. The authors show how The Intelligencer narrated the war’s important events based on the news it received, at what points the paper (and the Confederate press, generally) got the facts right or wrong based on the authors’ original research on the literature, and how the paper’s editorial columns reflected on those events from an unabashedly pro-Confederate point of view. While their book focuses on The Intelligencer , Stephen Davis and Bill Hendrick also contribute to the scholarship on Confederate newspapers, emphasizing the papers’ role as voices of Confederate patriotism, Southern nationalism, and contributors to wartime public morale. Their well-documented, detailed study adds to our understanding of the relationship between public opinion and misleading propaganda
- GenresHistory
560 pages, Hardcover
Published August 9, 2022
14 people want to read
About the author
Stephen Davis
249 books128 followersStephen Davis is is a rock journalist and biographer, having written numerous bestsellers on rock bands, including the smash hit Hammer of the Gods. He lives in Boston.
Librarians note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Librarians note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
August 22, 2025
I’ve come across books before that focus on how various publications covered the Civil War, and usually they consist mostly of excerpts with a bit of annotation. So I was pleasantly surprised to find that this book is actually a comprehensive narrative history and not just a compilation of newspaper clippings.
The book essentially relates the history of the Civil War through the lens of the Atlanta Daily Intelligencer, telling us what happened, how the newspaper covered it, and what its readers learned and when.
And it turns out that what happened and how the newspaper covered it don’t always align, due in part to technological and logistical limitations, and due in part to the editor’s often overly-optimistic pro-Confederate bias.
Early chapters explain the state of the newspaper business at the time, as advances in telegraphy and printing presses allowed for more timely news and greater distribution. Still, most newspapers lacked the resources to have correspondents on the scene of far-off events, reporting accurately from distant battlefields. So the Intelligencer relied on stringers, letters from soldiers, a nascent press association, and information republished from other newspapers, often with an editor’s note saying the Intelligencer couldn’t vouch for its accuracy.
But accuracy wasn’t always the Intelligencer’s strong point, as its bias often showed in reporting “what it hoped had occurred, rather than what had actually happened.” As the war went on, this tendency grew, as editor John Steele outright refused to believe stories of Confederate setbacks and, eventually, the Confederacy’s defeat.
The newspaper and the book are strongest when focusing on events closer to home. The paper was able to provide comprehensive coverage of events like the Great Locomotive Chase, Atlanta’s role as a key military medical center for battle wounded, and the approach of Gen. Sherman. In an unfortunate twist, though, the Intelligencer missed out on the biggest story of the war for its hometown. By the time Sherman entered Atlanta, the paper’s staff had fled south and resumed publication from the safety of Macon. So once again the paper had to rely on secondary dispatches, this time to cover the fall of Atlanta, instead of being able to bear witness to what was happening in its own city.
The book was co-written by a historian and a journalist, each bringing his own expertise to the project. In general, I felt that the historian’s view often prevailed, as much of the book is a straightforward, blow-by-blow history of the war and less is made of how the paper perceived and reported it.
There are also tantalizingly few references here and there to how the paper reported on everyday matters like the impact of inflation, how civilians coped with the scarcity of resources, and how slave auctions stubbornly continued even as the eradication of the very institution of slavery fast approached. I would have liked to have seen a lot more examples of how the paper covered routine daily events, as opposed to just how the paper reported on the outcomes of battles.
Characteristically, Steele refused to believe Lee had surrendered when word first trickled in, and similarly refused to accept when the war had ended. But once it could no longer be denied, he changed his defiant, belligerent tone to advocate for peace and reconciliation, calling on readers to be humble in defeat and law-abiding under postwar Union occupation.
The book’s epilogue is short, in that the paper survived postwar, but only for a few years. After Steele died, the newspaper’s equipment was sold off to the upstart Atlanta Constitution, which lives on (in merged form) today.
So overall, the book tells the story of the war in a unique way. But if you already know about the war, you have to read a lot of refresher material to get to the unique parts of the book that actually focus on the newspaper itself. That said, there are some diamonds in the rough that make it all worth it - occasionally, and quite effectively, the authors will use the newspaper’s own words to make a strong editorial point of their own. “Every negro in Georgia should have a master,” the paper editorialized. Losing the war would mean that “our property rights would be destroyed” so “we will fight on to maintain (slavery),” the paper maintained. “To those today who contend that the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery,” the authors point out dryly, “we’d advise them to check out the pages of the Atlanta Daily Intelligencer.”
The book essentially relates the history of the Civil War through the lens of the Atlanta Daily Intelligencer, telling us what happened, how the newspaper covered it, and what its readers learned and when.
And it turns out that what happened and how the newspaper covered it don’t always align, due in part to technological and logistical limitations, and due in part to the editor’s often overly-optimistic pro-Confederate bias.
Early chapters explain the state of the newspaper business at the time, as advances in telegraphy and printing presses allowed for more timely news and greater distribution. Still, most newspapers lacked the resources to have correspondents on the scene of far-off events, reporting accurately from distant battlefields. So the Intelligencer relied on stringers, letters from soldiers, a nascent press association, and information republished from other newspapers, often with an editor’s note saying the Intelligencer couldn’t vouch for its accuracy.
But accuracy wasn’t always the Intelligencer’s strong point, as its bias often showed in reporting “what it hoped had occurred, rather than what had actually happened.” As the war went on, this tendency grew, as editor John Steele outright refused to believe stories of Confederate setbacks and, eventually, the Confederacy’s defeat.
The newspaper and the book are strongest when focusing on events closer to home. The paper was able to provide comprehensive coverage of events like the Great Locomotive Chase, Atlanta’s role as a key military medical center for battle wounded, and the approach of Gen. Sherman. In an unfortunate twist, though, the Intelligencer missed out on the biggest story of the war for its hometown. By the time Sherman entered Atlanta, the paper’s staff had fled south and resumed publication from the safety of Macon. So once again the paper had to rely on secondary dispatches, this time to cover the fall of Atlanta, instead of being able to bear witness to what was happening in its own city.
The book was co-written by a historian and a journalist, each bringing his own expertise to the project. In general, I felt that the historian’s view often prevailed, as much of the book is a straightforward, blow-by-blow history of the war and less is made of how the paper perceived and reported it.
There are also tantalizingly few references here and there to how the paper reported on everyday matters like the impact of inflation, how civilians coped with the scarcity of resources, and how slave auctions stubbornly continued even as the eradication of the very institution of slavery fast approached. I would have liked to have seen a lot more examples of how the paper covered routine daily events, as opposed to just how the paper reported on the outcomes of battles.
Characteristically, Steele refused to believe Lee had surrendered when word first trickled in, and similarly refused to accept when the war had ended. But once it could no longer be denied, he changed his defiant, belligerent tone to advocate for peace and reconciliation, calling on readers to be humble in defeat and law-abiding under postwar Union occupation.
The book’s epilogue is short, in that the paper survived postwar, but only for a few years. After Steele died, the newspaper’s equipment was sold off to the upstart Atlanta Constitution, which lives on (in merged form) today.
So overall, the book tells the story of the war in a unique way. But if you already know about the war, you have to read a lot of refresher material to get to the unique parts of the book that actually focus on the newspaper itself. That said, there are some diamonds in the rough that make it all worth it - occasionally, and quite effectively, the authors will use the newspaper’s own words to make a strong editorial point of their own. “Every negro in Georgia should have a master,” the paper editorialized. Losing the war would mean that “our property rights would be destroyed” so “we will fight on to maintain (slavery),” the paper maintained. “To those today who contend that the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery,” the authors point out dryly, “we’d advise them to check out the pages of the Atlanta Daily Intelligencer.”
Displaying 1 of 1 review