Tussling in type
During the Civil War, rivaling Little Rock papers fought for ideological supremacy, survival
2024 brings the 160th anniversary of a Little Rock newspaper feud between two pro-Union editors. The editors were Dr. Cincinnatus Valentine “C.V.” Meador of the National Democrat and Calvin Comins Bliss of the Unconditional Union.
Bliss and the Unconditional Union may get slightly more attention here because his rise to prominence in Arkansas politics and journalism was meteoric.
My research on Bliss has been aided invaluably by my friend Harrison Hudson. We spent hours one summer at the Arkansas State Archives poring over Bliss’ letters and other records, five boxes of them. Recently, our research led us to Oakland & Fraternal Historic Cemetery Park at 2101 Barber St. in eastern Little Rock, to visit his grave.
On one of the higher hills in the cemetery, overlooking downtown, we studied the headstones of Bliss and six of his kin, and then just as we began strolling through the cemetery — surprise! — we found Meador’s monument a mere 25 feet away. (Truly. I came back to the cemetery with a tape measure a few days later.)
I’ll share more about Bliss and Meador, but first a little about newspapering in Arkansas during the Civil War. Newspapers suffered greatly during the war in terms of supplies and personnel — newsprint was precious, editors and printers enlisted in the military.
When the war began in 1861, some 30 to 40 newspapers operated in the state. By mid-1862, about 10 remained. Only one newspaper, the Washington Telegraph in Hempstead County, managed to publish throughout the war.
Meador was born Feb. 10, 1830, in Kentucky. In August 1860, he started the short-lived National Democrat as an organ for the Stephen Douglas-Herschel Johnson presidential ticket. The paper was printed in the office of Little Rock’s True Democrat newspaper. (Meador later subbed as editor at another short-lived paper, the Daily State Journal, while its editor, Thomas C. Peek, was away on military duty.)
When Meador was not editing, he was practicing medicine. A January 1861 advertisement in the True Democrat stated: “Dr. C.V. Meador … will give professional attention to surgical cases, diseases of the eye and ear, diseases of females, and eruptive diseases of the skin, of all descriptions.”
A week earlier, in what could be interpreted as a gratuitous and gruesome overture to an advertiser, a True Democrat item attested to the doctor’s surgical skills:
“In passing the office of Dr. Meador, near the State House, on Monday last we called to witness the amputation of the hand of an unfortunate man by the name of Prince, from Hempstead county.” The writer stated the patient was doing well and went on to say that a Hot Springs man whose leg
Meador had amputated also was getting well. “The Doctor’s knives cut as keen as his quill, and in retiring from the editorial sanctum he will be welcomed to the chamber of suffering humanity.”
UNION OCCUPATION
The Civil War broke out in April 1861. Two years and five months later, on Sept. 10, 1863, Union troops took control of Little Rock, shutting down the True Democrat and the town’s other newspaper, the Arkansas Gazette, under the Union Confiscation Act. The act allowed for property owned or sold by Confederate sympathizers since July 1862 to be considered abandoned and under federal control, although it could be leased by loyalists.
According to “The Arkansas Gazette: The Early Years, 1819-1866,” by Margaret Ross, one of the Union officers in charge, Brig. Gen. John Wynn Davidson, sent a message to the Gazette’s current owner, C.C. Danley, asking him to continue the paper as a Union publication. Danley declined, saying he would “make a better federal prisoner than a federal editor.”
Straightaway, a new paper, the National Union, began publishing out of the Gazette offices. It apparently did not please Davidson, and lasted only one issue.
Meador resurrected the National Democrat, operating out of the True Democrat offices.
UNCONDITIONAL UNION
Enter Calvin Bliss. Born Dec. 22, 1823, in Vermont, he came to Arkansas in the early 1850s, settling first in Helena where, among other enterprises, he bought and sold real estate. By the start of the war, he and his family had moved to Batesville, where he owned a 56-acre farm and continued in real estate.
Despite living in a secessionist state, Bliss remained loyal to the Union, even serving for about a year, early in the war, as a first lieutenant in the volunteer First Battalion, Arkansas Union Infantry.
Now, with Union troops occupying Little Rock, he took advantage of the situation. In January 1864, he was a delegate to a constitutional convention aimed at establishing a Unionist state government. At the same convention, Bliss was named provisional lieutenant governor, a newly created position. On March 14, the new constitution was ratified, and Bliss was elected lieutenant governor.
Meanwhile, another Unionist newspaper emerged. The Unconditional Union, with William Meade Fishback and T.D.W. Yonley as editors and publishers, was established in January 1864. It was printed at the Gazette offices. However, around April 1, Danley took an oath of allegiance and regained control of his property, and then he booted Fishback and Yonley from the Gazette quarters.
Seeing more opportunities, Bliss bought controlling interest in the office and real estate of the True Democrat. Writes Ross: “Meador had no inkling of any of this, and was not at the True Democrat office when Bliss took possession of it on April 9. Meador was furious at being done out of the best equipped printing office south of St. Louis.”
The Unconditional Union then began operating out of the True Democrat office, and soon Bliss was listed as the paper’s editor and proprietor.
Meador consequently rented space at the Gazette quarters and resumed publishing the National Democrat.
ANTAGONISTS
“Rivalry between the National Democrat and the Unconditional Union had been keen from the beginning, mostly because of political differences,” Ross writes, “but after Bliss became proprietor of the Unconditional Union, it became a grim battle for survival. The newspaper business at Little Rock had never been less profitable, and probably neither paper was self-sustaining.”
As for those political differences, Meador’s views represented those of Peace Democrats, also known as Copperheads. This faction, according to Ross, “was more conservative, its members favoring a negotiated peace, a policy of kindness and conciliation that would make it easier for rebels to return to their old loyalty, and a system of gradual emancipation.”
Bliss represented Radical Republicans. “They wanted a total destruction of the South’s economic and political power,” according to Ross, “and believed it could be accomplished only by fighting the war until the last rebel was crushed in defeat, by adoption of punitive policies toward the rebellious states after their surrender, and by permanent, nationwide abolition of slavery without delay.”
Editorial sniping between the weekly papers quickly commenced.
On April 23, Meador wrote: “This fellow Bliss … during my absence from the printing office, accompanied by a guard of soldiers, made a forcible entry and holds it without notice served on me, or any explanation of the procedure. Until the right of possession to the National Democrat office be settled by lawful authority, I will lease my paper from the Gazette office.”
The doctor added that Bliss “must have … little confidence in himself, and endeavors to obtain by stealth the reputation of the ‘National Democrat.’ I have no connection with Bliss, nor has he any right or title to the office.”
The National Democrat regularly carried a notice on Page 2 stating: “The National Democrat Printing and Job Office has been removed to the Gazette building. We have no connection with the concern now squatted in the True Democrat office. Our friends will please bear this in mind, and inform strangers of the fact, so they may not call at the wrong place and be ‘taken in.’”
Meador’s nicknames for Bliss and his publication included the “Imperfect Bliss” and the “Ill-Conditioned Union.” Bliss often referred to Meador as the “late Confederate surgeon” or the “Rebel surgeon.”
The editors’ language grew especially caustic in the summer of ’64.
For five issues, July 21 to August 18, Bliss reprinted excerpts of a letter from the True Democrat that Meador had written early in the war to support Confederates fighting in Missouri. Here’s one excerpt: “What would our citizens do if the abolition army should invade our state? Each man capable and loyal to his country would rush to his own defense with the best weapons and supplies possible.”
Just below the initial publication of the excerpts, Bliss added a paragraph that read: “Will not each federal officer, who is in the habit of associating with the editor of the National Democrat, cut out the extracts we have made from his letter … and give them a careful reading every time they take a drink of his whiskey, or furnish him government work to do!”
Bliss ended the Aug. 18 excerpt installment this way: “The Rebel Surgeon as he was in 1862 differs very little from Meador as he is in 1864.”
Among Meador’s retorts was an Aug. 13 item in which the doctor not only questioned Bliss’s allegiance but — horrors! — his manliness.
“His latest opprobrious term for me is ‘whipped rebel,’ a very unfortunate one for him. He is about the worstwhipped rebel in the state.”
The surgeon continued to needle Bliss by alleging he had been “whipped by a woman. … If a woman picks up a broom when he is in the room, he begins to tremble; if she points it at him, he slinks for the door like a ‘yaller dorg’ caught purloining.” (Yes, ma’am, he wrote “yaller dorg.”)
SAID AND BURIED
The war of words ended abruptly.
On May 9, 1865, Meador announced his decision to retire from the National Democrat and enter politics, seeking to fill the unexpired term of 2nd District Congressman A.A.C. Rogers. The next day, Danley resumed publishing the Gazette, and the National Democrat was no more. Meador’s congressional bid would be unsuccessful.
Meador’s life after the war included serving as president of the Pulaski County Medical Society in 1873, plus starting and quickly suspending publication of two newspapers: another National Democrat in 1874 in Hot Springs and the Arkansas Union in Little Rock in 1880.
Bliss’ newspaper career burned out in early 1866. Literally. He was in Washington, D.C., to see Congress convene when he got word that his newspaper office had gone up in flames. He suspected arson but could never prove it. He continued as lieutenant governor until yet another new state constitution nullified the office in 1868.
Meador’s life after the war included continuing his medical practice in Little Rock, plus starting and quickly suspending publication of two newspapers: the National Democrat in 1874 in Hot Springs and the Arkansas Union in Little Rock in 1880.
Meador died in 1883, aged 53; Bliss in 1891, aged 67.
I have visited Bliss’s grave probably a dozen times. It always seems remarkably peaceful here, despite the occasional roar of a jet taking off at Clinton National Airport to the east and the drone of traffic on Interstate 30 to the west. The peace seems even more remarkable now, knowing that Bliss’ onetime nemesis rests in eternal repose less than 10 yards away. Sonny Rhodes is a retired journalism professor who likes to walk and visit old cemeteries.