Southern periodicals

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Brev. Brig. Gen'l
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Aug 25, 2012
When compared to the free states, the slave states had less periodicals being published. In 1850 the slave states published periodicals including the District of Columbia had a circulation of 92 million as opposed to 333 million in the free states excluding California. So unless Southerners read much less than Northerners, many Southerner were reading periodicals published in the North. The above data includes daily, semi-weekly, weekly, semi-monthly, monthly and quarterly publications. This does not indicate that the slave states had small number of newspapers and magazines (722 to 1893) but they had lower circulation rates. The major Northern newspapers and magazines were much broader in scope than most Southern newspapers and magazines and it would appear that many Southerners reading Northern periodicals.

My question is, did Southerners reading Northern newspapers influence the way Southern thought or viewed the world?
 
When compared to the free states, the slave states had less periodicals being published. In 1850 the slave states published periodicals including the District of Columbia had a circulation of 92 million as opposed to 333 million in the free states excluding California. So unless Southerners read much less than Northerners, many Southerner were reading periodicals published in the North

I'm not getting your figures, or seeing where your conclusion follows your premise. A circulation of 92 million would be several times the population of the United States at the time. And if the circulation of Northern newspapers was about 4 times the circulation of Southern newspapers, that would be roughly in line with the ratio of the free populations of the regions.
 
I think it's more a matter of population density. Many Southern areas were rural and were served by regional papers, rather than local ones.
 
When compared to the free states, the slave states had less periodicals being published. In 1850 the slave states published periodicals including the District of Columbia had a circulation of 92 million as opposed to 333 million in the free states excluding California. So unless Southerners read much less than Northerners, many Southerner were reading periodicals published in the North. The above data includes daily, semi-weekly, weekly, semi-monthly, monthly and quarterly publications. This does not indicate that the slave states had small number of newspapers and magazines (722 to 1893) but they had lower circulation rates. The major Northern newspapers and magazines were much broader in scope than most Southern newspapers and magazines and it would appear that many Southerners reading Northern periodicals.

My question is, did Southerners reading Northern newspapers influence the way Southern thought or viewed the world?

Maybe the Southern/Northern division as far as people's who can afford to read periodical interests goes, is artificial?

Seriously. Individuals in the "North" were not that much different than individuals in the "South". They bought the same stuff. Regardless where it was made. Sub "periodicals" with "whiskey" and you will find out that many "Northerners" were drinking whiskey made in the "South". And really, they did and did not care.
 
Those numbers would include all the newspapers in the big cities, but newspapers found their way all over the country. Most newspapers did not employ correspondents so editors reprinted what they read from papers in other cities.
 
When I do the numbers I see the average Southerner read 14.2 periodicals per year. While his Northern cousin read 17.1 periodicals. So Southerners read 18% less than Northerners. This is not a huge difference, but I have to wonder if Northern periodicals were read in the South, especially the magazines.
 
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We can argue if people in the South read very much. For example the North has 300 book publishing houses while the South had 24 and 10 of these were in Maryland. My assumption is that Southerners read books published in the North, but if you all insist, then few Southerners read books because the number of publishers were so very low.
 
We can argue if people in the South read very much. For example the North has 300 book publishing houses while the South had 24 and 10 of these were in Maryland. My assumption is that Southerners read books published in the North, but if you all insist, then few Southerners read books because the number of publishers were so very low.
There's been a discussion of Southern literacy rates before, and if I recall correctly literary rates were lower in the South (excluding slaves, of course, since for the most part they were not literate). Can you find the literacy rate for white Northerners vs Southerners?
 
There's been a discussion of Southern literacy rates before, and if I recall correctly literary rates were lower in the South (excluding slaves, of course, since for the most part they were not literate). Can you find the literacy rate for white Northerners vs Southerners?

According to North Carolinian Hinton Helper, in his Impending Crisis of the South (pp. 290-291), there were 512 thousand illiterate white adults in the slave states in 1850, versus 422 thousand in the free states. He also cites 704 newspapers and periodicals published in the slave states versus 1790 in the free states. This was in 1850. So again it would appear the number of periodicals was roughly proportionate to the free population. The illiteracy rate in both sections was fairly low, but considerably higher in the slave states.

I doubt many Northern newspapers and periodicals were circulated in the South. Remember that anti-slavery literature was banned from the mail in Southern states, and ANY Northern literature would have been suspect in the eyes of many Southerners.
 
I just discovered something which may shed some light on this. I assume these statistics are coming from the US Federal Census non-population schedules, specifically the Social Statistics schedule, which gives the names and numbers of subscribers for every periodical by county.

In Tennessee for 1860 and the decades around it, many of the non-population records are missing, for example all the industry records before "M." If the researcher is running statistical queries without knowing this, the result is going to be very screwed up. I don't know if the original books are really gone or just gone on Ancestry, but it seems to be a widespread problem at least on Ancestry, as many of the records are missing from the various non-pops in every decade I checked. If for some reason this is an issue affecting whatever database the researcher was working with, and if it's more common in the Southern states, then the analysis is working from incorrect data.
 
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