Military and the Media

The Nineteenth Century

Journalism posed little threat to American troops during the Mexican-American War (1846–48), the first U.S. military action covered by full-time correspondents. Handwritten dispatches describing the combat traveled by ship, train, and horse, with some completing their journey home via the newly installed telegraph service along the Eastern Seaboard. Most took days or weeks to reach the offices of American publications, the only forms of mass communication. Delays provided little chance for a carelessly written item to undermine operational security. Visual reportage also began during the invasion of Mexico but had virtually no impact on public opinion. Photographers made only a handful of daguerreotype images, which measured a few inches square and could not be reproduced. When the American Civil War (1861–65) began, however, much had changed. The telegraph had spread across a 50,000-mile network of lines. Telegraphy allowed eyewitnesses to send battle news across the country at high speed. Furthermore, the handful of combat journalists active during the Mexican-American War had expanded to about 500 by the 1860s. They generally moved easily among the troops, although some officers, including Union General William Tecumseh Sherman, complained about their presence as a security threat. The news they sent home affected morale on both sides, in turn prompting the first widespread wartime censorship in American history when the Union War Department cracked down on military reports filed by telegraph. In order to help shape public opinion, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton censored and delayed publications and briefly jailed journalists who displeased him. The Union army also temporarily shuttered some newspapers.

By the end of the nineteenth century, professional American war correspondents had emerged. Foremost was Richard Harding Davis (1864–1916). He and others considered the late 1890s to be a golden era for wartime journalists as they had great freedom to observe and write, with minimal military restriction. They produced compelling stories that newspapers ran under large headlines. Davis's account of Theodore Roosevelt leading a charge in Cuba during the Spanish-American War (1898) is credited with cementing Roosevelt's image as a man of action and helping launch him toward the White House.

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