Restrictions to Access

No restrictions. Open for research.

Restrictions to Use

No usage restrictions.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the John Swinton Papers, #3193-z, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Purchased from a dealer, December 1955.

Additional Descriptive Resources

A copy of the original finding aid for this collection is filed in folder 1.

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

Processed by: SHC Staff

Encoded by: Noah Huffman, December 2007

Updated by: Kate Stratton and Jodi Berkowitz, July 2010

This collection was rehoused and a summary created with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This finding aid was created with support from NC ECHO.

Diacritics and other special characters have been omitted from this finding aid to facilitate keyword searching in web browsers.

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• American newspapers--History--Civil War, 1861-1865.
• Fort Monroe (Va.)--History--19th century.
• Hamilton, John R., fl. 1863-1865.
• Journalists--United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865.
• New York times--History--Civil War, 1861-1865.
• Swinton, John, 1829-1901.
• United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865--Journalists.
• United States. Army--Journalists.
• Winser, Henry Jacob, 1823-1896.

John Swinton (1829-1901) was a journalist, social reformer, and crusader in the field of labor relations. He was born in Scotland and moved with his parents first to Canada and later to New York, N.Y. He was a journeyman printer, manager of the Lawrence, Kan., Republican, 1856-1857, and studied law and medicine before the Civil War. From 1860 to 1870 he was chief of the editorial staff of the New York Times, having been employed by Henry J. Raymond. He was later connected with the Sun, John Swinton's Paper, a weekly labor journal, and was correspondent for five or six European newspapers.

The collection includes letters received by John Swinton, an editor with the New York Times, from two correspondents with the Union army: John R. Hamilton at City Point, Va.; and Henry Jacob Winser (1823-1896) at Fortress Monroe, Va. These are private letters sent to supplement news dispatches and contain confidential comments about military matters and about the reporters' experiences and methods. Letters discuss troop movements; plans of commanding officers, including Ulysses S. Grant, Philip Sheridan, William Tecumseh Sherman, and Alfred Terry; and events in Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia.