Gerard Hallock and David Hale, partners in the JOC, were opponents of slavery but also critics of Abolitionists, and they decried the tactics of the war wing of the Republican Party.
After the American Civil War broke out in 1861, the US Postmaster General suspended the paper's mail privileges, effectively interrupting its publication, on grounds of "disloyalty."
The paper lost ground to its competitors, including the Daily Commercial Bulletin, founded in 1865 and owned by William Dodsworth, a friend of Stone's.
The merged paper benefited enormously from the Commercial's new presses and linotype machines, each of which could replace three or four men setting type by hand, one letter at a time.
The JOC's profits boomed during World War I with a sharp increase in advertising and circulation related to the wartime industrial expansion.
Then in 1921, the Dodsworths sold the paper to William C. Reick, who acquired it with money put up by Charles A. Stoneham, the wealthy owner of racehorses and the New York Giants.
After Reick died in 1924, Stoneham appointed a new front man, Raphael Govin, who pushed the JOC into more sports coverage.
Willis, who had become editor-in-chief of the JOC in 1919, watched with alarm as the paper's profits began to dwindle, when everyone else in the Roaring Twenties was making money.
On Saturday, October 20, 1973, as the Yom Kippur War raged, the world learned that Arab nations would be suspending the supply of oil to the United States.
Containerized shipping made traditional breakbulk ports obsolete and provided the means for Asia's export boom, which changed the world's economic map.
The JOC never missed a day of publication, even on February 26, 1993, when a terrorist bomb detonated in the garage under the World Trade Center, killing six people.
It became increasingly apparent that a print newspaper with a worldwide readership faced a struggle to keep its readers up-to-date on breaking news.
In 2001, The Economist sold the JOC to Commonwealth Business Media, the New Jersey–based publisher of Pacific Shipper, Canadian Sailings, and a number of railroad and trucking directories.
The new owners had long-standing connections with the transportation industry, having previously owned Traffic World, another magazine acquired with its purchase of the JOC Group.
The Journal of Commerce became a part of the UBM Global Trade group, focusing on serving professional communities engaged in commercial sea, rail and road transportation and logistics worldwide.
The JOC introduced a redesigned, comprehensive editorial product that uses data from PIERS: The Port Import/Export Reporting Service to enhance news stories to offer a variety of Web tools that will complement its move to a digital environment with real-time focus, and provide more analysis and market-oriented content.
The combined publication integrates the trucking, rail transport, express and domestic-focused logistics coverage of Traffic World with the international, US Customs, container shipping, intermodal and breakbulk focus of The Journal of Commerce titles.