From Archival Absence to Digital Presence: (Dis)Covering the 19th-Century Black Press in Ohio

The Demise of the Palladium of Liberty in the end of 1844

The numbers of subscribers and advertisements became noticeably decreasing from the issue on July 10, 1844, and finally the executive committee of the Palladium of Liberty ceased to publish the paper with its last issue on November 13, 1844.

While the list of subscribers diminished, the newspaper encouraged them to pay their dues, especially when Black Ohioans gathered at the State Convention, held in September in Columbus. The editors considered the Convention as an opportunity to ascertain the survival of the Palladium of Liberty: “The delegates to the convention, will procure all the money they can for our paper, from subscribers, and those that wish our paper well.”[i] In addition to the Convention, the executive committee tried to make up the financial deficit by having guest lecturers who donated their time and expertise to the Palladium of Liberty. For example, the newspaper announced Dr. E. R. Lewis’s lecture on Phrenology, adding “The money to be appropriated to the Palladium of Liberty” on the September 25th issue.

In spite of all these efforts, the uncertainty of the newspaper’s future became obvious, as David Jenkins in frustration blamed the subscribers’ failure to pay dues in the issue on October 9, 1844: “We don’t know how long we will be able to continue—we are behind hand with our Printer—if we don’t get what is due us. We have enough out in the hands of our subscribers to go on eighteen months longer. We don’t know why it is our patrons treat us as they do; our patience is almost thread bare.”[ii] In the same issue, the advertisements, if they still remained while many of them had disappeared, ran outdated.

At last, the Palladium of Liberty announced its official delay or tentative cessation of its publication: “We intend to discontinue our paper for a short time, to enable us to make new arrangements, and the course we intend to pursue for the future. We are much embarrassed in the finances of our paper, in consequence of the backwardness of our subscribers. If you intend to pay us now is your time. It will be some few weeks before we shall be able to send you the next number, but don’t forget what you owe us, send it in.”[iii]


[Figure 21. “Delay of Our Paper,” Palladium of Liberty, November 13, 1844, page 3.
https://digital-collections.columbuslibrary.org/digital/collection/african/id/25999/rec/33]

We can read the Palladium of Liberty by a subscriber who saved most of the issues (except the second one) and preserved the newspaper till the year of 1885 when the Ohio Historical Society, now the Ohio History Connection, opened. The story of how the collection was donated to the Society is unknown.
 
[i] Untitled, Palladium of Liberty, September 11, 1844, page 3.
https://digital-collections.columbuslibrary.org/digital/collection/african/id/25977/rec/26
 
[ii] “Our Paper,” Palladium of Liberty, October 9, 1844, page 2.
https://digital-collections.columbuslibrary.org/digital/collection/african/id/25988/rec/30
 
[iii] “Delay of Our Paper,” Palladium of Liberty, November 13, 1844, page 3.
https://digital-collections.columbuslibrary.org/digital/collection/african/id/25999/rec/33
 

This page has paths:

This page references: