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Political Tension

     By 1870, tensions had not been resolved between whites and blacks, democrats and republicans, and the Union saw fit to interfere in the South when necessary.  In The Weekly Standard, authors made clear through their diction the amount of severity of the partisanship position in North Carolina, labeling the Democratic Party as a “mass of festering rottenness.” (Item #2829)  With strong emotions being publicly shared via the state’s newspapers, it could be inferred that the political relationship between northerners and southerners was not steered toward improvement.  Moreover, in 1871, Washington needed to conduct an investigation of North Carolina and the “southern outrages” that southern Unionists had been reporting.  In The Charlotte Democrat, Holden chose only to publish this investigating committee’s minority findings on the situation, given their democratic background.  Already, an apparent bias appeared on the front page, hoping to persuade North Carolinians in supporting their local political factions.  Without an affirmed knowledge of the committee’s majority finding on the situation in North Carolina, these loyal democrats asserted that “all this is manifestly the result of a plan ‘cut and dried’ by a conspiracy formed of disappointed politicians, who have lost the confidence of their people, and have been cast out of office by the almost unanimous voice of a betrayed and injured constituency.” (Item #2831)  The amount of back-and-forth shared between democrats and republicans served as the backbone of North Carolina newspapers upon the state’s readmission to the Union.  Unable to fully distinguish truth from propaganda, North Carolina citizens were left to interpret the condition of their state based on an increasingly-volatile relationship between northern and southern politicians.  Nonetheless, the newspapers continued to barely incorporate stories of white violence and other forms of racial discrimination that was very much still alive during the Reconstruction era.