[1] Launched as a Federalist weekly on September 21, 1805, its founder McDowell sold the paper in 1832, to George W. Bowman, a Jacksonian Democrat[2] who supported James Buchanan, a fellow Pennsylvanian Democrat.
[3] Early on, the paper developed a reputation for fanning the flames of racial hatred.
[4][5] During the Civil War, they lamented that the Fugitive Slave Act was not being enforced in Pennsylvania.
[6] Bowman in turn sold the operation to Benjamin Franklin Meyers in August 1857.
Myers, a disciple of Stephen Douglas and supporter of Buchanan, was hailed by his contemporaries as a gifted literary stylist with a "trenchant pen",[7] though more recent evaluations have noted that his vitriolic editorials and articles vilifying Lincoln and abolition "make for difficult reading today.