Page:History of American Journalism.djvu/214

 trated in the following editorial by James Hall, the editor of The Illinois Gazette, in 1821 :

After a lapse of several weeks (three months to be exact) we are now enabled to resume the publication of our sheet. Paper (the want of which has been the cause of the late interruption) was shipped for us early last fall, on board a boat bound for St. Louis to which place, owing probably to the forgetfulness of the Master, it was carried and has but just now come to hand. . . . High and low water it seems are equally our enemies the one is sure to delay the arrival of some article necessary to the prosecution of our labors, while the other hurries some- thing of which we stand in the most pressing need, down the current beyond our reach.

PARTY ORGANS IN ARKANSAS

Journalism began in Arkansas when William E. Woodruff printed at the Post of Arkansas the first number of The Arkan- sas Gazette on November 20, 1819. A native of Long Island, he had arrived at the Post on October 30, 1819, from Franklin, Tennessee, bringing with him by canoes and dug-outs a press and some type. Being the Printer to the Territory he ceased to bring out The Gazette at the Post on November 24, 1821, and went to Little Rock, which had been made the Capital. Here he revived his paper on December 29, 1821, and continued it as the official organ of the State until 1833. That year he refused to let The Arkansas Gazette be simply a mouthpiece for Governor Pope. Woodruff, like most of the early editors in the West, had political aspirations and used his newspaper to help in their achievement, but when elected State Treasurer in October, 1836, he sold his paper to Cole & Spooner. The latter soon retired, and going to Hartford, joined the staff of The Courant; the former continued The Gazette until about 1840, when, for political and other reasons, he had to withdraw from the paper, which came again to Woodruff, its former owner. Three years later he sold it to Benjamin J. Bordon, who changed it from a Demo- cratic to a Whig paper. Chagrined at this change in policy of The Arkansas Gazette, Woodruff started, with the help of John E. Knight, in 1846, The Arkansas Democrat. Four years later the two papers were combined under the title, The Gazette and Democrat. The paper was eventually sold to Captain Columbus