The war correspondent from Richmond said he was five miles from the city under attack when he filed this report:
The cars have just been signalled to stop at this point. Parties from the town report that nearly the entire town is destroyed, nearly every house having been perforated by the enemy’s cannonading yesterday. The Post-Office block was fired and burned. The Virginia Bank and the Southern M.E. Church were also burned. A large force of the enemy crossed last night at the town and a severe street fight ensued – our troops retiring and leaving the place in the hands of the enemy.
There is a report that three women were killed by the shelling yesterday, but it lacks confirmation. It is also said that an entire infantry company of ours, on picket duty, was captured this morning. No general fight is going on, but the brisk infantry firing is heard in a northeasterly direction . . .
The report was bylined “From Our Own Reporter” and appeared in the Richmond Dispatch of Dec. 13, 1862. The writer apparently had arrived by train (“the cars”) from Richmond to cover the battle for Fredericksburg.
Now, more than 140 years later, Times-Dispatch reporter Rex Bowman is covering the war in Iraq alongside the 1st Marine Division. An article this month about Bowman’s assignment said he was the first war correspondent for this newspaper since the Civil War. The trade journal Editor & Publisher also picked up on that bit of news.
The article about Bowman’s assignment identified the Civil War correspondent as James Cowardin, publisher of the Dispatch, a parent paper of The Times-Dispatch. Another article, published in the 150th anniversary T-D keepsake edition in October 2000, said, “Cowardin apparently served as a war correspondent for his own paper, filing dispatches under fire.” Neither article cited a source for that information.
Research and inquiries for this column turned up no verification that Cowardin served as a war correspondent for his newspaper. His obituary published in The Daily Dispatch (the name kept changing) on Nov. 22, 1882, mentioned that Cowardin contributed to the writing of the paper during short-handed war years. Most likely his war-related writing was in unsigned commentaries.
Taylor Cowardin of Hanover County, a collateral descendant of James Andrew Cowardin, has conducted extensive research on the family. After an inquiry from me, he replied that he had “checked my records for anything relating to James or his sons writing as correspondents for the Dispatch. I could not find any definitive proof of them acting as correspondents during the war.”
Still, Cowardin was described as a talented writer by Virginius Dabney in his book, “Pistols and Pointed Pens.” Cowardin was known to contribute dispatches to his paper, especially on political issues.
Bylines had not come into common usage in the 1860s, and much newspaper journalism was anonymous.
In his book on Civil War-era newspapers, “Blue & Gray in Black & White,” Brayton Harris wrote that “most articles in most papers were published unsigned or under fanciful nicknames. . . . Richmond correspondent George W. Bagby (also editor of the Southern Literary Messenger, 1860-1864) covered for newspapers in South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana and Georgia under the pseudonyms, respectively, Hermes, Gamma, Malou and Pan.”
Harris found one reason for the absence of bylines in a comment by a New York Tribune editor, who said using a correspondent’s signature “inevitably detracts from the powerful impersonality of a journal.”
No matter who wrote the quoted dispatch from Fredericksburg, the Dispatch of 1861-65 did have one or more war correspondents – and Bowman has the distinction of being the first reporter for the descendant Richmond Times-Dispatch assigned to war coverage since the Civil War.
An historical footnote: James Cowardin, founder as well as publisher of the Dispatch, died 120 years ago at the home of his son, Charles O. Cowardin (then publisher of the Dispatch), at 319 E. Franklin St. The four-story headquarters building of Media General Inc., parent company of The Richmond Times-Dispatch, occupies that land today.
