Category Archives: Minnesota History

A Golden Age of Journalism and Politics?

It is often supposed that there was a “Golden Age” in which journalism, politics, and the law were marked with civility. The problem with this theory, however, is identifying exactly when this supposed Golden Age exited. We can safely rule out 1851, as evidenced by an incident involving James Goodhue, the editor of the Minnesota Pioneer, Minnesota’s first newspaper, which still exists in the form of the
Pioneer Press.

James Goodhue

James Goodhue

This incident began with the publication of an editorial in the January 16, 1851, of the Pioneer. In that editorial, editor James Goodhue was highly critical of U.S. Marshal Alexander Mitchell, and Supreme Court Justice David Cooper.  Of Cooper, the editorial stated:

He is not only a miserable drunkard, who habitually gets so drunk as to feel upward for the ground, but he also spends days and nights and Sunday, playing cards in groceries. He is lost to all sense of decency and self respect. Off the Bench he is a beast, and on the Bench he is an ass, stuffed with arrogance, self conceit and a ridiculous affectation of dignity. . . .  On his passage up the Minnesota river last summer, paying such attentions to a certain California widow on board, as a sot well could pay, he not only kept drunk, but when the boat returned to Fort Snelling, and the news there met him, of the death of his wife in Pennsylvania, he was so shamefully inebriated, that the awful intelligence scarely aroused him.

Justice David Cooper

Supreme Court Justice David Cooper

An advance copy of the paper found its way to on January 15 to Joseph Cooper, the younger brother of the judge. He confronted Goodhue on the street with his fists, and both men drew guns. The Sheriff of Ramsey County, along with some bystanders, managed to initially break up the fight. The younger Cooper, however, managed to charge Goodhue with a knife and stab him in the stomach. Goodhue also managed to break free and shot Cooper in the groin.

No charges were pursued by either man, and Goodhue recovered from his wounds after being confined to his bed for several weeks. Joseph Cooper, on the other hand, was said to have died some two or three months later, “his death being hastened by the pistol wound he had received”.

Justice Cooper’s term expired in 1853. He remained in Minnesota practicing law until 1864, when he moved to Nevada Territory. He is said to have died “in darkness” in an inebriate asylum in Salt Lake City.



References:

Holcombe, et al, Minnesota in Three Centuries, Vol. 2, pp. 449-50 (1908).

Memoir of Judge David Cooper

Hage, Newspapers on the Minnesota Frontier, pp. 35-38 (1967).

Marray, Recollections of Early Territorial Days and Legislation, Collections of the Minnesota Historical Society Vol. 12, p. 103, 113 (1908)

Elliott, The Supreme Court of Minnesota, The Green Bag, Vol. 4, pp. 113, 118 (1892).

The Bomb Shell of Fort Ripley, Minnesota

Bomb Shell Newspaper, 1854

The Bomb Shell, an almost forgotten piece of journalism history.

If you’ve looked at my hectograph page, you might have guessed that I’ve always been intrigued by primitive printing methods.  As that page shows, you can whip up a little printing press in the kitchen.  According to Wikipedia (unfortunately, no sources are cited for the assertion), a hectograph was used by allied prisoners of war in World War 2 to make documents for a planned escape attempt.

A more laborious method was employed by three soldiers at Fort Ripley, Minnesota Territory, in the summer of 1854, when they published their newspaper the Bomb Shell.  According to its masthead, the Bomb Shell is the handiwork of R. Pollock, the “Bombardier”, H. Nugent, the “Gunner”, and C. Herman, the “Powder Monkey”.  It bears the motto, “the Earth’s a shell, thrown from old nature’s mortar.”  The prospectus issue indicates a subscription rate of 50 cents per year, but there’s no indication that any issues other than the first, dated July 28, 1854, were ever dispatched from that mortar.

This newspaper is unique in that it was produced with hand-carved type.  These early proto-bloggers didn’t let the lack of technology stand in their way.  With a pocket knife, they carved out the type, set it by hand, and printed their own newspaper.  According to its first issue, “the appearance of the BOMB-SHELL before the public may be as unexpected and to some as unwelcome as its prototype.”  It goes on to say, however, that the new paper “shall be as harmless as the egg of the turtle dove and except in defense of the innocent, will never be charged with explosive matter.”

The editor of another Minnesota newspaper described it thus:

Its contents are lively, and entertaining but it is not on that account only, we desire to see “Bomb Shell” succeed. To the eyes, it is an uncouth, ill-printed, muddy-looking sheet, and every letter in it is larger than those in a child’s Primer–but all these drawbacks are more than compensated for, by the knowledge that all the letters and furniture used in setting up the paper, were made by one of the soldiers in the Fort, his principal tool to work with, being a small pocket knife. Those who know how necessary it is to accurately square and level types, to make them serviceable at all, will readily agree with us that this is a wonderful exercise of skill, patience, and ingenuity.

Minnesota Democrat, August 23, 1854, reprinted in Douglas C. McMurtrie, “The Printing Press Moves Westward,” Minnesota History, Vol. 15, No. 1, p. 24 (Mar. 1934) (available online).

I know there is one copy of the Bomb Shell in the collections of the Minnesota Historical Society, but it’s unfortunately not available online. In addition to the article cited above, the Bomb Shell is also referenced in Newspapers on the Minnesota Frontier by George Hage.