The Loyal Publication Society was founded in 1863, during a time when the Union Army had suffered many reverses in the Civil War.
The purpose of the society was to bolster public support for the Union effort, by disseminating pro-Union news articles and editorials to newspapers around the country.
These two organizations were similar to the Union Leagues that cropped up throughout the North, in that they provided civilians an opportunity to support the war effort.
In Boston, the members included Charles Eliot Norton, the Harvard professor and prominent cultural critic, John Murray Forbes, a railroad magnate, and James Bradley Thayer, who was to become one of the country's foremost legal scholars.
As the war progressed, the societies began to write and publish their own broadsides, which included contributions from well-known persons such as Robert Dale Owen.