The Woman Who Published “The Reconstructionist” Was a Firebrand and an Arson Target

I recently read the new book The Impeachers and I came across a newspaper that I never heard of before, The Reconstructionist. Here is what the book’s author author Brenda Wineapple says about the woman who ran the paper:

Jane Grey Swisshelm was sacked from the quartermaster’s office mainly because, since 1865, she’d also been publishing a newspaper, The Reconstructionist, critical of the administration—and staffed by women without regard to color, giving it twice the circulation of any Washington newspaper, Swisshelm had joked early on. A divorcée and single mother, a longtime publisher in Pennsylvania and Minnesota advocating women’s rights, a freelancer for Greeley’s Tribune, and a nurse during the war as well as a clerk in the War Department, where she and Stanton became friends, Swisshelm was small in stature and described by those who hated her as having a face like a hatchet. They hated her because she was intentionally provocative. She’d rented two floors of a building on Tenth Street between N and O Streets, and declared in the prospectus of The Reconstructionist that “liberty is in danger of betrayal.” And liberty’s leading betrayer was Andrew Johnson: “His ambition was and is, to be the hero of Southern chivalry, to restore to slaveholders their lost dominion over their slaves, and to do this he will risk all.” Swisshelm dubbed Johnson’s veto of the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill “the Sumter guns of this second era of the war” and accused Johnson of murdering Lincoln yet again by killing the peace—and the freedmen. [Wineapple, Brenda. The Impeachers (p. 133). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.]

President Johnson wanted the editor fired. According to Wineapple:

But Swisshelm lost more than her job. Her printing press was doused in coal oil and set on fire. Arriving in the nick of time, a servant put out the fire before the entire house went up in flames. Puddles of oil were discovered near the press. “An enemy so reckless is not one to be defied,” Swisshelm said and closed down the paper. [Wineapple, Brenda. The Impeachers (p. 134). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.]

Swisshelm found that union printers would not work for her because it was against union rules to employ women.

Reconstructionist
Saturday, Mar 24, 1866
Washington (DC), DC
Vol: I
Issue: 12
Page: 4

 

The Reconstructionist printed the proceedings of meetings in the Black community. In this article, the paper not only reports the resolutions of the people, it also preserves the song that they sang in celebration of freedom.

Reconstructionist
Saturday, Mar 24, 1866
Washington (DC), DC
Vol: I
Issue: 12
Page: 1

While Swisshelm was dedicated to the rights of African Americans both before and after the Civil War, her views were not uniformly color-blind. During the 1862 Dakota Conflict in Minnesota where she was then living, Swisshelm went from an optimistic view of the Dakota people, to an extremely antagonistic one.  After white women and children were killed by some Dakota, she used her newspaper to call for the “tribe” to be outlawed. She suggested that vigilante killings of Dakota were a legitimate response to the attacks on whites.

Thanks to Tim McKenna for help in learning about the Minnesota aspect of Swisshelm’s life.

Source: Gender and Vigilantism on the Minnesota Frontier: Jane Grey Swisshelm and the U. S.-Dakota Conflict of 1862 by Sylvia D. Hoffert Western Historical Quarterly Vol. 29, No. 3 (Autumn, 1998), pp. 342-362.

 

 

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