Knoxville Register

Knoxville Register
TypeWeekly (1816–1861)[1]
Daily (1861–1863)
FormatBroadsheet
Founder(s)Frederick S. Heiskell and Hugh L. Brown[1]
PublisherFrederick S. Heiskell (1816–1837), Hugh L. Brown (1816–1829), W.B.A. Ramsey (1837–1839), Robert Craighead (1837–1839), James C. Moses (1839–1849), John L. Moses (1847–1849), John Miller McKee (1849–1855), J.B.L. Kinslow (1855–1857), C.A. Rice (1856–1857), J.F.J. Lewis (1859), George Bradfield (1859–1860), J. Austin Sperry (1861–1864)[1]
EditorHugh L. Brown (1816–1829), Frederick Heiskell (1816–1837), W.B.A. Ramsey (1835–1839), Thomas William Humes (1840), James C. Moses (1841–1849), John L. Moses (1847–1849), John Miller McKee(1849–1855), John M. Fleming(1855–1857), George Bradfield (1859–1861), J. Austin Sperry (1861–1864), William Malone (1864)[1]
Political alignmentWhig(1836–1859)[2]
Democratic (1859–1864)[2]
LanguageEnglish
Ceased publication1864[1]
HeadquartersKnoxville, Tennessee (1816–1863)
Atlanta, Georgia (1863)
Bristol, Tennessee (1864)[1]
OCLC number11035625

The Knoxville Register was an American newspaper published primarily in Knoxville, Tennessee, during the 19th century. Founded in 1816, the paper was East Tennessee's dominant newspaper until 1863,[3] when its pro-secession editor, Jacob Austin Sperry (1823–1896), was forced to flee advancing Union forces at the height of the Civil War.[2] Sperry continued to sporadically publish the Register in Atlanta, and later Bristol, until he was finally captured by Union forces in December 1864.[1][4]

Frederick S. Heiskell (1786–1882), who had worked briefly for Knoxville's first newspaper, the Knoxville Gazette, cofounded the Register along with his brother-in-law, Hugh Brown. The Register initially supported the policies of Andrew Jackson, but became a primarily Whig sheet in 1836, when it snubbed Jackson's handpicked presidential successor, Martin Van Buren, in favor of local favorite Hugh Lawson White. In 1849, polemical editor William G. Brownlow moved his paper, the Whig, to Knoxville, and a rivalry developed between the two papers that lasted until the Civil War.[5][6]

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Cite error: The named reference loc was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ a b c William Rule, Standard History of Knoxville, Tennessee (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Company, 1900; reprinted by Kessinger Books, 2010), pp. 314-317.
  3. ^ Glenn Himebaugh, Publishing. Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture, 2002. Retrieved: 7 November 2010.
  4. ^ Robert McKenzie, Lincolnites and Rebels: A Divided Town in the American Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 53, 81, 103, 120, 196-197.
  5. ^ East Tennessee Historical Society, Lucile Deaderick (ed.), Heart of the Valley: A History of Knoxville, Tennessee (Knoxville, Tenn.: East Tennessee Historical Society, 1976), pp. 15, 294-296, 661.
  6. ^ William G. Brownlow, Sketches of the Rise, Progress, and Decline of Secession (Philadelphia: G.W. Childs, 1862), pp. 215-216, 343, 356.