About Kosciusko chronicle. [volume] (Kosciusko, Miss.) 1846-1872
Kosciusko, Miss. (1846-1872)

Kosciusko Chronicle

Attala County, in central Mississippi, was established in 1833 from land acquired by the United States in 1830 in the final Choctaw cession. With flat terrain and fertile soil, cotton farming was the primary livelihood before and after the Civil War. Although the only navigable waterway was on the county's western border, transportation was facilitated by the nearby Natchez Trace, a military road that ran from Nashville, Tennessee, to Natchez, Mississippi. The county seat of Kosciusko, named after Polish-born Revolutionary War hero, Tadeusz Kosciuszko, was located near several springs.

In 1846, George W. Harlow started his second "whiggish" newspaper in Kosciusko, the four-page weekly Kosciusko Chronicle (1846-72). A staunch supporter of Henry Clay, Harlow had previously edited the Attala Gazette (1841-44?). In the Chronicle's prospectus Harlow identified the impediments facing Kosciusko:". . . [that] the seat of government has not yet been moved to said town-that Big Black [River] has not yet been cleared out . . . --that the Jackson Railroad has not yet been extended on, through Canton, to said town-and more particularly, that at this time there is no newspaper published in said town, through which these projects can be laid before this great people." Harlow proposed to ". . . continue to publish said paper weekly, until these great objects . . . [were] accomplished . . . ." When the Whig Party died in the 1850s, the Chronicle probably shifted its support to the American Party, also known as the "Know-Nothings." After an interruption during the Civil War, by 1866 the Chronicle was operating again under different ownership as a Democratic newspaper, a political affiliation it maintained until its demise in 1872.

The Chronicle carried a typical mix of foreign, national, state, and local news along with general interest stories, advertisements and legal notices. After President James K. Polk declared war on Mexico in May 1846, however, that conflict dominated the coverage. Reports on war-time preparations filled the June 4, 1846 issue: the Congressional bill declaring war, Governor Albert Gallatin Brown's request for 10 companies of volunteers from Mississippi, and a notice to the local Attala Guards about where to meet to be one of those companies.

The January 1, 1866 issue of the Kosciusko Chronicle, one the few extant post-war issues, provides a rare glimpse of life in Mississippi just after the Civil War. The edition included: a "report of affairs in the south" by General Ulysses S. Grant, a copy of the state law "To provide for the support of wounded and disabled soldiers," an announcement of the ratification of the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery in the United States, articles on the conduct and status of freedmen in the county, lists of men pardoned by the Federal government, and a request for information from a mother whose two sons had not returned home from Confederate service.

Provided by: Mississippi Department of Archives and History