Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/412

 396 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

name the words National Banner. No. I of Vol. I, having a Chicago imprint, appeared in May, 1862; the last number issued at Chicago came out in December of that year; and then the headquarters were again located in its place of origin at the national capital.

The National Banner was a sixteen-page journal "devoted to art, literature, music, general intelligence, and the country." The objects of the venture, as framed more fully by Miss Delphine P. Baker, the proprietor, and proclaimed through a standing announcement, were in part, as follows:

First, to create a patriotic fund for the relief of disabled soldiers and their families ; second, to diffuse a high-toned moral literature throughout the land ; and, third, to bind with the golden chain of love all hearts together in one grand, glorious national cause.

The National Banner held out a novel inducement to prospective subscribers in the form of a promise that a good part of their payments would be turned over directly to "the patriotic fund." Still, the dominant interest aroused by the contents of the peri- odical was of a literary nature. A leading feature from month to month was a continued story entitled " Olula : A Romance of the West." Among the contributors mentioned, in announce- ments frequently made, were George D. Prentice, Benjamin F. Taylor, James Grant Wilson, Horace Greeley, James W. Shea- han, and William Mathews. Although sounding the new national note, the periodical paraded its contributions from "the most eminent northwestern clergymen," and paid special attention to literary efforts designed for the western section of the country.

II. PERIODICAL LITERATURE FOLLOWING THE WAR

"Born of the prairie and the wave the blue sea and the green A city of the Occident, Chicago lay between.

" I hear the tramp of multitudes who said the map was wrong They drew the net of longitude and brought it right along, And swung a great meridian line across the Foundling's breast, And the city of the Occident was neither East nor West."

Benj. F. Taylor, in the Lakeside Monthly, October, 1873.

The effect of the Civil War in lessening sectional antagonism throughout the North, especially the sectionalism of West versus