About The weekly independent. [volume] (Aberdeen, Miss) 1848-1853
Aberdeen, Miss (1848-1853)

The Weekly Independent and Weekly Conservative

Monroe County was created in 1821 from ancestral Chickasaw lands on the Alabama border in northeast Mississippi. The terrain varied from fertile black prairie suitable for cotton growing in the west to heavily timbered red hills and sandy clay soils in the east. A trading post on the Tombigbee River founded by a Scotsman, Aberdeen was incorporated in 1837 and became the county seat in 1849.

The earliest newspaper in Aberdeen was a Whig run, the Aberdeen Whig and North Mississippi Advocate (1838-39) and the Aberdeen Whig (1839?). Later, the four-page Weekly Independent (1848-53), also known as the Independent, took over the dissemination of Whig news in the county. Its founder was Andrew Marschalk, Jr., son of the first printer in the state, Andrew Marschalk, Sr., who came to the Mississippi territory in 1797. The Weekly Conservative (1854-60), published on Saturdays, succeeded the Independent. The motto of both the Independent and the Conservative was "We hold the maxim no less applicable to Public than Private Affairs, that 'Honesty is the best Policy."

The Independent and the Conservative opposed Democratic perspectives on national and state news in the years preceding the Civil War. Highly partisan, both papers offered political news that included biographies and speeches of favored politicians, editorials extolling the virtues of the Whig Party and supporting Whig presidential candidate Zachary Taylor, national and state legislative news, and coverage of local Whig meetings and candidates’ announcements. As the Whig Party dissolved in the 1850s, many of its members turned to the American Party which the Weekly Conservative came to support, publishing its political platform in the June 6, 1855 issue. Non-political local news covered in these papers included upcoming church sermons, information about local organizations such as the March 18, 1848 notice in the Independent regarding the establishment of a Sons of Temperance chapter, some legal notices, and advertisements, many for businesses in nearby Mobile, Alabama. Information of use to local planters was also published, such as the Independent's May 6, 1848 report of a meeting about the removal of a bridge on the Tombigbee River that obstructed river traffic. Other content included general interest items, foreign and national news, commercial and market news, poetry, and newspaper prospectuses.

Provided by: Mississippi Department of Archives and History