The Republican (Springfield, Massachusetts)
Springfield Republican, 1865
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| City | Springfield, Massachusetts |
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| ISSN | 1941-529X |
The Republican is a newspaper based in Springfield, Massachusetts. It is owned by Newhouse Newspapers, a division of Advance Publications. It played important roles in the United States Republican Party's founding, Charles Dow's career, and the invention of the honorific "Ms."
Established by Samuel Bowles II in 1824 as a rural weekly, it was converted into a daily in 1844. From the beginning it had a focus on local news. As rapidly as possible its news-gathering was extended until within a few years its columns contained departments of items from every town and hamlet along the Connecticut Valley, as well as from Springfield. It achieved national renown in the 19th century under the tenure of Samuel Bowles III, a legacy that was passed to his son, Samuel Bowles IV.
In 1855, Bowles III called for the founding of a new party that would abolish slavery. He suggested the name "Republican". Once abolitionists founded a party by this name, The Republican became one if its most unrelenting supporters.
Bowles III believed that the newspaper should be a power in the moral, religious, and literary, as well as the political life of the community, and he tried to make his paper fulfill those functions. With the aid of J. G. Holland and others who joined the staff the paper attained excellent literary quality and a high moral tone. Its opinions soon reached all New England, and after the formation of the Republican party they extended far beyond the limits of any section.
During the controversies affecting slavery and resulting in the American Civil War, Bowles supported, in general, the Whig and Republican parties, but in the period of Reconstruction under President Ulysses S. Grant, his paper represented anti-administration or Liberal Republican opinions, while in the disputed election of 1876 it favored the claims of Samuel J. Tilden, and subsequently became independent in politics. It endorsed the Democratic candidate for president in every modern election except the 2008 election, in which it endorsed John McCain, but it went back and endorsed Barack Obama in the 2012 election.
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