The Abbeville Bulletin Archive

The short-lived weekly Abbeville Bulletin (July-August 1865) offers a glimpse into a community adapting to new realities under challenging circumstances. In the early 1860s, the white citizens of Abbeville County (then Abbeville District), South Carolina, had enthusiastically rallied in support of the secessionist cause. During the Civil War, they paid a heavy price. At least 349 out of a total of 11,516 white men in Abbeville were killed in combat (the numbers of those who were injured or who died due to inadequate medical treatments were undoubtedly much higher).

When Hugh Wilson established the Abbeville Bulletin, the leading weekly newspapers the Abbeville Press and Abbeville Banner had both suspended publication, leaving a gap in news reporting in the community. Wilson relied extensively on other South Carolina newspapers including the Columbia Daily Phoenix, Greenville Patriot and Mountaineer, and Newberry Weekly Herald for news items. He published only six issues of the Abbeville Bulletin, four of which have survived.

Evidence of the end of the Civil War permeated the pages of the Abbeville Bulletin. The August 10, 1865 issue carried general orders from the U.S. military provisional government and a proclamation by South Carolina’s provisional governor James L. Orr. The August 25, 1865 issue contained reports on taxes levied by military authorities on bakeries, dry goods dealers, restaurants, and saloons in Charleston. It also included a table of values in gold for Confederate notes, a reminder that the former Confederate states had suffered an economic as well as a military loss.

On August 31, 1865, Hugh Wilson announced that he and his business partner William Augustus Lee were resuming publication of the Abbeville Press. The Abbeville Bulletin was to be immediately discontinued. Wilson and Lee would later combine the Abbeville Press with the Abbeville Banner to create the Abbeville Press and Banner, which has continued through several title changes into the present. The Abbeville Bulletin, by contrast, remains an interesting footnote in the history of newspaper publishing in Abbeville.