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This article is from the Encyclopedia of North Carolina edited by William S. Powell. Copyright © 2006 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher. For personal use and not for further distribution. Please submit permission requests for other use directly to the publisher.

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Confederate Imprintsfront cover of the first dixie reader by mrs. m. b. moore, 1864. north carolina collection, university of north carolina at chapel hill library.

by David A. Norris, 2006

During the Civil War, printing in North Carolina, as well as in the other Confederate states, was severely restricted by the shortage of manpower and supplies. North Carolina had 74 newspapers in 1860 but fewer than half that number by 1864. The state printed legislative, executive, and supreme court documents, as well as recruiting broadsides. Some private printing dealt with politics in the form of pamphlets or campaign broadsides. Religious works counted for a great percentage of North Carolina's Confederate imprints.

Blum's Farmers' and Planters' Almanac, published by l. V. and E. T. Blum of Salem, and Turner's North Carolina Almanac, published by Henry D. Turner at the Raleigh Register printing plant, managed to continue throughout the war years. Other surviving imprints relate to hospitals and medicine.

The Greensboro firm of Sterling, Campbell, and Albright printed numerous schoolbooks, as did the Raleigh firm of Branson and Farrar, but only a few works of new fiction appeared in the state. Hester and Other Poems (1861), by Theophilus H. Hill (1836-1901) of North Carolina, was the first book published under the Confederate States' newly established copyright law.

Some sheet music and a few music books, or "songsters," were also produced in North Carolina.

References:

Karen C. Carroll, "Sterling, Campbell, and Albright, Textbook Publishers, 1861-1865," NCHR 63 (april 1986).

H. G. Jones and Julius H. Avant, Union List of North Carolina Newspapers, 1751-1900 (1963).

T. Michael Parrish and Robert M. Willingham Jr., Confederate Imprints: A Bibliography of Southern Publications from Secession to Surrender (1984)

Subjects: 
Civil War (1861-1865)
Newspapers and magazines
Authors: 
Norris, David A.
From: 
Encyclopedia of North Carolina, University of North Carolina Press.

1 January 2006 | Norris, David A.