[3][4] According to another account, a journalist in the eastern United States had written a series of articles about celebrities called "charcoal sketches," and Pomeroy imitated these in a more extravagant manner, describing Wisconsin personalities and dubbing his articles "brick-dust sketches.

[2] However, he became a Copperhead, and in an editorial he called Abraham Lincoln "fungus from the corrupt womb of bigotry and fanaticism" and a "worse tyrant and more inhuman butcher than has existed since the days of Nero....

The man who votes for Lincoln now is a traitor and murderer.... And if he is elected to misgovern for another four years, we trust some bold hand will pierce his heart with dagger point for the public good.

During the 1880s he employed African-American journalist George Edwin Taylor as city editor of Pomeroy's Democrat.

In July of 1891, he visited Logan County, West Virginia and interviewed William Anderson "Devil Anse" Hatfield.