Baltimore Daily Commercial Archive

The Baltimore Clipper was established by John H. Hewitt & Company on September 7, 1839. John Hill Hewitt was a local writer and editor whose earlier Baltimore Saturday Morning Visiter had the distinction of launching Edgar Allan Poe's literary career. After leaving the newspaper business, Hewitt became a noted author of songs and other musical works. Hewitt sold his interest in the Clipper to his partners, Bull & Tuttle, and was succeeded as editor by Samuel Barnes in 1842.

The four-page Clipper was published every morning, Sundays excluded, and also produced weekly and monthly editions. The Clipper contents included advertisements, market reports, prices and sales of stocks, and the proceedings of Congress, the Maryland state legislature, and the Baltimore city council. It also provided foreign and domestic intelligence, city news, court reports, correspondence, editorials, and works of poetry and fiction.

On November 11, 1844, the title changed to the American Republican and Baltimore Daily Clipper to reflect its status as an organ of the newly formed American Republican (Know-Nothing) party. It pushed a nativist agenda advocating restrictions on immigration. At a time of political tension in Baltimore, its editorial stance condoned mob violence during local elections. The newspaper covered other matters of national interest, including the inauguration of President James K. Polk, the rise of Manifest Destiny, including the annexation of Texas, the Bear Flag revolt and military occupation of California, and the signing of the Oregon Treaty, the Mexican-American War, and the Great Fire of Pittsburgh.

The title returned to the Baltimore Clipper in 1847, and it continued to be published in weekly and monthly editions. During the 1850s, the Clipper maintained its support of Know-Nothingism and celebrated victories by the party, which won elections for Baltimore's mayoral seat and city council. In the 1860 presidential elections, the Clipper, edited by L. A. Whiteley, supported the presidential candidacy of John Bell of the Constitutional Union Party. Whiteley suggested that the election of either a Democrat or Republican would only lead to further discontent over the slavery issue and disunion. Throughout the Civil War, the paper was Republican in politics and supported the administration and reelection of President Abraham Lincoln. William Wales edited the Clipper during the later stages of the war. Wales maintained a conciliatory editorial tone, and in the highly charged aftermath of the Lincoln assassination, the Clipper's coverage helped ease tensions in the city.

Following the Civil War, William Wales & Company gained ownership of the Clipper and changed its name to the Baltimore Daily Commercial. The paper described itself as a "mercantile and political journal...devoted mainly to the growing interests of Maryland" and "independent of cliques or parties." The Commercial had tri-weekly and weekly counterparts. Topics covered by the Daily Commercial included Reconstruction, the abolishment of slavery with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, the passage of the Civil Rights Bill of 1866--previously vetoed by President Andrew Johnson, the Fenian movement, and the European cholera outbreak.

The title of the newspaper changed again to the Daily Commercial in 1867 and then to the Evening Commercial in 1868. The following year, William Wales retired, and the entire establishment was sold at public auction to the Democratic Association of Baltimore. Publication of the Commercial ceased until Dr. William H. Cole and Col. Edward M. Yerger purchased it in 1871 and published the Evening Journal. Following Yerger's sudden death in 1875, the Commercial was sold at auction to Col. Frederick Raine of Der Deutsche Correspondent and discontinued.