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Significant Civil War battles were fought in Claiborne County, in southwestern Mississippi, as part of Union General Ulysses S. Grant's successful 1863 campaign to capture the Mississippi River port, Vicksburg. Six months after the Civil War ended, Francis Marschalk, a third-generation Mississippi printer, established the four-page, Democratic Weekly Standard in Port Gibson, the county seat. James Mason, a former publisher of the Democratic Southern Reveille (1857-61), edited the Weekly Standard. Shortly after Marschalk renamed the paper the Port Gibson Standard in 1867, he became the editor as well as proprietor. About ten years later, Marschalk left Port Gibson, eventually ending up as publisher of a newspaper in Longview, Texas.

Content in the Weekly Standard typically included foreign, national, state, and local news. Poetry and "general intelligence" were featured regularly as were local announcements and advertisements; legal notices were scarce. Reminiscences of Civil War battles, speeches of prominent politicians, and state legislation also appeared. The Weekly Standard was published during the first years of the Reconstruction period (1865-67), while Andrew Johnson was president. Its contents reflected the turmoil in war-torn Claiborne County at that time. Editorials and letters to the editor, while sometimes offering a conciliatory posture, were more often defiant, maintaining that the Southern states had committed no crime "... in seeking ... a redress of grievances which had so long been a cause of justifiable complaint." Reprinted editorials often expressed an antagonistic point of view regarding Negro suffrage, other rights of freedmen, and the federal legislation enacted to protect those rights. Calls for the establishment of a militia and announcements of meetings to discuss regulations for employing former slaves highlighted local attempts to restore order. An editorial in the May 5, 1866 issue of the Weekly Standard expressed frustration with the entire situation: "... while the President would restore us to our wonted position in the councils of the nation, he lacks both the power, and we regret to say, the vim essential to the occasion." Congressional mandated Reconstruction would last until 1877.

Provided by: Mississippi Department of Archives and History