Learning from the Press: Newspaper Accounts of the Battle of Mill Springs

Newspapers provide an important primary source for learning more about events, people, and places in real time. Details were often printed from eyewitness accounts who shared their personal experiences. Students of historical events can learn a lot from simply reading the headlines and delving into the articles to find unique facts they otherwise might not read in secondary sources.

The Battle of Mill Springs was an important military and political victor for the Union and a morale boost to the northern people. This victory, coupled with the capture of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson one month later, enabled the US armies to begin moving deeper in the Confederacy. The press grabbed onto this victory and soldiers began to sending letters home to their local newspapers highlighting their own regiment's battlefield exploits, many times as the detriment of other state units which caused open animosities in the army's ranks.

Like news organizations today, each newspaper generally leaned in one political direction or another during the American Civil War. Pro-Republican versus pro-Democrat editors wielded their pens as weapons of war in the battle for the headlines pushing their agendas as well. Officers, enlisted men, and civilians who identified in a particular political ideology reported events to their favorite papers.

Researchers looking at these newspapers should take each article, report, and soldier's letter one at a time, matching each unique perspective with other documented sources to come up with a general basis for events they are looking at.