Benjamin Bannan

The Miners' Journal reflected Bannan's belief in the Whig and then Republican ideology with which he closely identified.

Bannan's connection to the anthracite Coal Region of Pennsylvania affected his political affiliation and career, as he advocated tariff protection for US industry and internal improvements.

To align with his political affiliation, Bannan ran the Miners' Journal as a "leading Whig, nativist, and Republican newspaper".

[3] Bannan was an advocate of what historian Eric Foner has dubbed the "free labor ideology" of the nineteenth century.

Labor, then, "embraced all producers of wealth", an economy centered on independent farms and small shops, rather than factories.

Bannan saw the possibility for upward mobility by starting as a laborer, moving to a miner and finally taking the next step to a property holder.

A large portion of Irish Catholic miners (especially in Cass Township) had been named for fulfilling the quota of the draft by Bannan.

Secretary of War Edwin Stanton directed troops dispatched to Schuylkill County to enforce the draft.

Bannan then returned with a large number of affidavits "proving" that the quota of Cass Township had been filled by volunteers, chiefly by men connected with the mines who had enlisted from the towns or cities where companies or regiments were being formed.