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The Campaign Age was a
Democratic campaign newspaper published on behalf of George B.
McClellan who ran against Abraham Lincoln in the 1864 presidential
election.
The paper was published in
Philadelphia on 13 consecutive Thursdays, beginning on August 18,
1864, two weeks before the Democratic Convention in Chicago nominated
McClellan and his running mate George H. Pendleton. The
publisher, Glossbrenner and Welch, also published The Philadelphia
Age, a daily and a weekly newspaper.
As a result, The Campaign
Age had access to The Philadelphia Age's resources, and
carried up-to-date news of the War, obtained from a wide variety of
domestic newspaper in the North and South, as well as from
London. It also covered Pennsylvania politics in some detail.
Lincoln was scorned for his
policies of "emancipation, confiscation, subjugation and
extermination," as well as for "social and political
equality for the negro." The Union Party was referred to as
the Abolitionist Party. Considerable space was spent on
explaining and defending McClellan's war record. The last issue
dated Thursday, November 10, also contained a Friday update from The
Philadelphia Age, giving election result highlights including
Lincoln's triumph in Pennsylvania. Probably not coincidentally,
it was not on the front page.
While the 52 large pages (20
x 29 inches) did report on speeches (as did other campaign
newspapers), they contained much better information on the war itself,
both current and prior (defending McClellan). Cartoons were
non-existent and humor per se was minimal, but the content is
exceptionally interesting overall.
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