George D. Prentice
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| George D. Prentice | |
 Sketch of Prentice from an 1875 book
|
|
| Born | December 18, 1802 Preston, Connecticut |
|---|---|
| Died | January 22, 1870 Jefferson County, Kentucky |
| Cause of death | Influenza |
| Occupation | Newspaper Editor |
| Political party | Whig |
George Dennison Prentice was a newspaper editor in Louisville, Kentucky.
Contents |
[edit] Biography
The son of a farmer, Prentice excelled in school and graduated from Brown University in 1823. Following graduation he began contributing to literary periodicals and studied law in Canterbury, Connecticut. Although he joined the bar in that state, he was more interested in literature, and after practicing law briefly he became editor of the Hartford New England Review in 1828.
On the strength of his political writings, he was invited to come to Kentucky to write a campaign biography of Henry Clay, which sold 20,000 copies. Prentice received no money for this work because the publisher went bankrupt. He stayed in Louisville and accepted an offer to co-found the Louisville Journal newspaper in 1830, with the goal of rivaling the then-dominant Louisville Public Advertiser. Prentice soon found himself in an editorial feud with Advertiser publisher Shadrack Penn, which continued until Penn left the city in 1841.
The Journal quickly became popular in Louisville, largely because of Prentice's biting editorials and the savage wit of his replies to detractors. Prentice was a dedicated backer of the Whig Party. In the 1850s, Prentice editorialized in support of the Know-Nothing party and the pro-slavery, anti-Catholic and anti-foreigner movement that reached a hysterical level in the 1850s in many parts of the nation.
In Louisville this culminated in the Bloody Monday riot of 1855, in which 22 people were killed. Just days before the riots, which occurred as mobs tried to prevent Irish and German citizens from voting on election day, Prentice had editorialized against "most pestilent influence of the foreign swarms" loyal to a pope he called "an inflated Italian despot who keeps people kissing his toes all day." According to Archbishop John L. Spalding, Prentice later publicly expressed regret over his role in the riots.[1]
He supported the Union in the 1850s, but disagreed with many of its policies during the Civil War. In 1861 he joined a group that urged Kentucky not to secede from the Union but establish itself as a neutral party in the war. In 1864 he created the famous Sue Mundy character to mock the incompetence of Union General Stephen G. Burbridge, military commander of Kentucky.[2]
After the war Prentice opposed many of the policies of Reconstruction, and his paper was one of the few able to speak out fearlessly against federal rebuilding policies of the time. Prentice remained on board the paper during and after the 1868 merger that created The Courier-Journal. He died of influenza and was buried in Cave Hill Cemetery.
[edit] Legacy
His legacy is generally unfavorable, with an editor from his own paper calling Prentice's writings "raw bigotry" in a 1993 feature on the history of the newspaper. A 1912 statue of Prentice by Alex Baily, displayed in front of the Louisville Free Public Library's main branch, is a source of occasional conflict, due to Prentice's famous anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant rhetoric. A compromise reached at one point involved a new plaque for the statue, describing Prentice's "tarnished legacy".[1]
A Liberty ship, the SS George D. Prentice, was launched in 1943 and remained in service until 1969.
[edit] Notes
- ^ a b Smith, Peter. "Recalling Bloody Monday", The Courier-Journal, 2005-07-30.
- ^ Egerton, Judith. "'She Devil' recalls bloody past", The Courier-Journal, 2006-05-22.
[edit] References
- "Prentice, George Dennison". Encyclopedia of Louisville. (2001).
- Congleton, Betty Carolyn (April 1967). "George D. Prentice: 19th Century Southern Editor". Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 65: 94–119.
