Decade by Decade: History as the Newspapers Told It

History books tell you how things turned out. Newspapers tell you what people knew at the time: the rumour that arrived first, the correction three weeks later, the letter from someone who was there. This series walks through American history one decade at a time, picking out a few of the stories that filled the papers and letting the papers tell them. Each decade has its own page; pick one below.

What is SNEWPapers?

At SNEWPapers we are building the most accurate extraction pipeline for historical newspapers that the world has ever seen. To prove it, we are in the process of extracting the entirety of the Library of Congress' Chronicling America data. You can follow our progress here. We are also building the most advanced AI Super Intelligence Research Assistant (and possibly the first ever) in town for you to dive into the data. Here's how to connect ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Grok to our data.

When we say most accurate, what we mean is the most correctly segmented and highest text quality. Correctly segmented means we have identified individual components on a page or across pages in an issue as being one thing. Nobody has crunched it quite like SNEWPapers.

How we found these

Nobody can read a decade of newspapers, so we started by letting the archive tell us what the big stories were.

Disclaimer: at the time of this writting, we have about 4 million indexed components in our database, or roughly 2% of the Library of Congress, but there's already more than a lifetime of stories to be told from just this. The index is growing daily.

Every article, letter and notice in SNEWPapers is its own record, cut out of the page the way you would clip it with scissors. Each record carries a short written summary of what it's about. For every year from 1736 to 1963 we took the news items (domestic and foreign news, editorials and letters to the editor), turned each summary into a vector that captures its meaning, and clustered them: articles about the same events land close together. We then ranked the clusters the way an editor would judge a big story. Did it run in many of the papers that were printing at the time? Was it concentrated in a few weeks, or spread thinly across the year? Did several papers reprint the same text? That's usually the clearest sign of a story everyone wanted. For this study we analyzed 289,329 items across 228 years.

That only works because each article is clipped on its own. An old newspaper page is a dozen or more unrelated items packed together; in the 1770s the median page holds 15. The longer pieces wander: in that decade about 2/5ths of letters to the editor and 1/3rd of editorials run across two or more columns, and some continue onto the next page. Text taken from a whole page mixes a ship arrival, a runaway notice and half a letter about Parliament into one blob, and that blob is about nothing in particular. You can't find the same story printed in five papers if you can't tell where the story starts and ends.

The clusters pointed us to the stories. Then we read them, picked the pieces that are the most vivid, surprising or human, and added a little background on what was going on at the time.

A caveat on the early decades: few newspapers from them survive in Chronicling America, and we haven't processed every issue yet. The 1730s and 1740s come from a single paper, The Virginia Gazette, which started in 1736, and only 1745 and 1746 survive from the 1740s. The 1750s come from The Virginia Gazette and The New Hampshire Gazette, with a handful from The Pennsylvania Gazette; by 1766 Williamsburg had two rival papers called The Virginia Gazette, and the 1760s draw on both. By the 1770s there are more papers to draw on, including the Massachusetts Spy and, during the war, papers from New York, Connecticut and Boston. So these are the big stories as readers of those papers saw them, which is the point: this is what a reader in Williamsburg or Portsmouth actually got to read.

The decades

We'll add another decade every week.

The 1730s: News from everywhere, by way of London

The first decade of Virginia's first newspaper, nearly all of it news from abroad, months old. Inside: an adventurer crowned King of Corsica, the Porteous riots, Captain Jenkins's ear and the war it named, Georgia's border with Spanish Florida, the Antigua plot and Jamaica's Maroons, Belgrade, Nadir Shah, and George Whitefield.

The 1740s: Louisbourg and the Forty-Five

Only two years of the decade survive in the collection, 1745 and 1746, and they are eventful ones. Inside: New Englanders capture the French fortress of Louisbourg, Fontenoy, Bonnie Prince Charlie's rising from Prestonpans to Culloden, and a plot in Jamaica.

The 1750s: The world war that started in the woods

Britain and France began the decade at peace and ended it having fought a war across four continents, most of it followed by colonial readers a month or two late. Inside: the eleven days Britain lost in 1752, Franklin's lightning, the execution of Admiral Byng, the fall of Fort William Henry, Louisbourg and Ticonderoga, and Quebec.

The 1760s: From victory to the Stamp Act

The decade opened with the colonies proud to be British and closed with boycotts, effigies and troops in Boston. Inside: the siege of Havana, Pontiac's War, the Paxton Boys, the Stamp Act from effigies to bonfires, troops in Boston, and the colonists' foreign heroes, John Wilkes and Pasquale Paoli.

The 1770s: Revolution, as it was reported

From the Boston Massacre to Saratoga, as the news reached readers in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Virginia and beyond. Inside: the Massacre, the Regulators, the Somerset case, a royal scandal in Denmark, the Gaspee, the Tea Party, Lexington and Bunker Hill, Lord Dunmore's Virginia, the Declaration, Trenton and Saratoga.

The 1780s: From Yorktown to the Constitution

From the war's lowest point to President Washington, as the papers multiplied from a few weeklies to New York dailies and the first paper west of the Appalachians. Inside: the Gordon Riots, Arnold and André, Yorktown, the Asgill affair, the peace, Washington going home, the first balloon flights, the Barbary corsairs, Shays' Rebellion, the Constitution, the grand federal processions, the first inauguration, and the Bastille.

The 1790s: A new government in a world at war

The first decade of the federal government, as the argument over the French Revolution split the country and its newspapers into parties. Inside: Franklin's funeral, the war for the Ohio country, the rising in Saint-Domingue, the execution of Louis XVI, Citizen Genet, the yellow fever, the fall of Robespierre, the Whiskey Rebellion, Jay's Treaty, Bonaparte in Italy, the Farewell Address, the XYZ Affair, the Sedition Act, the Constellation, and the death of Washington.

The 1800s: Jefferson's America

The Republicans take power and the papers change sides, while Napoleon fights Europe and the United States tries to trade its way through the war. Inside: the deadlocked election, Callender and Sally Hemings, Toussaint Louverture, the Louisiana Purchase, the burning of the Philadelphia, the Hamilton–Burr duel, Trafalgar, Austerlitz, Lewis and Clark, Burr's conspiracy, the Chesapeake, Fulton's torpedo and steamboat, the end of the slave trade, and the Embargo.

The 1810s: The War of 1812 and the year without a summer

A second war with Britain, told battle by battle as the news came in, and then a strange peace: a summer that never came, a sea serpent, a bank panic and the first great fight over slavery in the West. Inside: Tippecanoe, the Richmond theatre fire, the New Madrid earthquakes, the declaration of war, Old Ironsides, Moscow, "Don't give up the ship," the burning of Washington, the first printings of the Star-Spangled Banner, New Orleans, the peace, Waterloo, 1816, the Gloucester sea serpent, the Panic of 1819, and Missouri.

The 1820s: Lafayette's return and the rise of Jackson

The world crowds the front page, the old revolutionaries take their bows, and a new, louder politics arrives with Andrew Jackson. Inside: Queen Caroline's trial, Jackson in Florida, Denmark Vesey, Scio and the Greek fire ships, the Caribbean pirates, the Monroe Doctrine, Byron's death, Lafayette's tour, the corrupt bargain, the Erie Canal, Ararat, Adams and Jefferson's last Fourth of July, the Kentucky Tragedy, the Morgan affair, the first stone of the B&O, the coffin handbills, Rachel Jackson, and the people's inauguration.

The 1830s: The Union, the Bank and the mob

Jackson fights South Carolina and the Bank, the penny papers arrive, and crowds take the law into their own hands. Inside: Webster's reply to Hayne, the July Revolution, the Salem murder, Nat Turner, Black Hawk, cholera, the Bank veto, nullification, the night the stars fell, the Charlestown convent, the riots of 1834, the first attempt on a President, the moon hoax, the great New York fire, the Alamo and San Jacinto, the Panic of 1837, Lovejoy, the Cilley duel, the Cherokee removal, and the Amistad.

The 1840s: War, gold and the end of the world

The country takes Texas, Oregon and half of Mexico, a wire outruns the mail, and the decade ends in a rush for California. Inside: the log cabin campaign, Harrison's death, the Creole, the Dorr Rebellion, the Somers hangings, the Millerites, the Peacemaker, Morse's telegraph, the Kensington riots, Joseph Smith at Carthage, Jackson's death, the Irish famine, the war with Mexico, ether, 1848 in Europe, women's rights, gold, cholera and the Astor Place riot.

The 1850s: The house divides

A compromise meant to settle slavery for good comes apart year by year, while the country sings along with Jenny Lind and wires itself to Europe. Inside: the Compromise of 1850, the Parkman murder, Jenny Lind, Christiana, Uncle Tom's Cabin, yellow fever, Perry in Japan, Kansas–Nebraska, Anthony Burns, the Arctic, Bleeding Kansas, the caning of Sumner, Dred Scott, the Panic of 1857, the Central America, the Atlantic cable, Lincoln and Douglas, Sickles, and John Brown.

The 1860s: The war

The country splits, fights for four years, loses its president and tries to rebuild itself, and the papers on both sides print the same telegrams under opposite headlines. Inside: Lincoln's election, secession, the two inaugurals, Fort Sumter, Bull Run, Fort Donelson and Shiloh, the Monitor and the Merrimac, Antietam, emancipation, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, the draft riots, the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln's re-election, Sherman, Appomattox, the assassination, the Sultana, Reconstruction, Alaska, impeachment, the last spike, and Black Friday.

The 1870s: Fire, panic and the end of Reconstruction

Chicago burns, the banks fail, the railroad men strike and the Army fights the Sioux, the Modocs and the Nez Perce, while the papers feast on scandal and Reconstruction is traded away for the presidency. Inside: the Fifteenth Amendment, Sedan, Paris, the Chicago fire, the Tweed Ring, Yellowstone, Stanley and Livingstone, Greeley, Susan B. Anthony, the Modoc War, the Panic of 1873, the women's crusade, Charley Ross, Beecher and Tilton, the White League, the Centennial, Custer, Deadwood and Northfield, the disputed election, the great strike, the Nez Perce, Edison, and yellow fever.

The 1880s: Bombs, bridges and the race around the world

The cable brings the world to the breakfast table within a day or two, from a Czar blown up in St. Petersburg to a killer in Whitechapel who signs his letters, while at home the bridges go up, the clocks are reset and the land rush is on. Inside: the Czar, Garfield and Guiteau, Jesse James, Jumbo, Chinese exclusion, Phoenix Park, the Brooklyn Bridge, Krakatoa, standard time, Blaine and Cleveland, Gordon at Khartoum, Riel, Grant, Haymarket, the Charleston earthquake, Geronimo, the Statue of Liberty, the blizzards, Whitechapel, Oklahoma, Johnstown, and Nellie Bly.

The 1890s: Hard times and a splendid little war

The worst depression the country had known, an army of the unemployed on the Capitol steps, the steelworkers and the railroad men beaten, and then a hundred days of war that ended with an empire. Inside: Wounded Knee, the New Orleans lynching, Homestead, Lizzie Borden, cholera, Hawaii, the World's Fair, the panic of 1893, the Sea Islands hurricane, Coxey's army, Pullman, China and Japan, Armenia, X-rays, the cross of gold, Cuba, the Klondike, the Maine, Manila Bay, Santiago, the Philippines, Dreyfus, and the Boers.

The 1900s: Oil, flight and the Square Deal

The new century opens with the legations besieged in Peking and a president shot in Buffalo, and ends with two men claiming the North Pole and an airplane over the English Channel. Inside: the Boxers, Galveston, Queen Victoria, Carrie Nation, Spindletop, McKinley, Mont Pelée, the coal strike, Panama, the Iroquois Theater, Port Arthur, the General Slocum, Bloody Sunday, Tsushima, San Francisco, Thaw and White, Haywood, the panic of 1907, Springfield, the Wright brothers, Messina, the North Pole, and the Cherry mine.

The 1910s: The war, the flu and the Red Summer

The Titanic goes down, a student's pistol in Sarajevo starts a war that America joins three years late, and the decade ends with an influenza that killed more Americans than the fighting and a summer of race riots. Inside: Halley's comet, Johnson and Jeffries, Crippen, the Los Angeles Times, the Triangle fire, Madero, the Titanic, Roosevelt shot, Leo Frank, August 1914, the Panama Canal, Ludlow, the Lusitania, Villa, the Easter Rising, polio, America goes to war, Russia, Halifax, the influenza, the Armistice, Versailles, and Chicago.

The 1920s: Lindbergh, Scopes and the crash

Prohibition begins, a mob burns Greenwood in Tulsa, and a lone pilot flies to Paris before the decade ends in the worst week Wall Street had ever had. Inside: women vote, Ponzi, the Wall Street bomb, Tulsa, Blair Mountain, Dempsey and Carpentier, Herrin, Tutankhamun, Harding dies, the Tokyo earthquake, the beer hall putsch, Teapot Dome, Leopold and Loeb, the serum run to Nome, the Scopes trial, the Shenandoah, Gertrude Ederle, the Mississippi flood, Lindbergh, Sacco and Vanzetti, the Italia, the Okeechobee hurricane, and the crash.

The 1930s: Dust, Dillinger and the coming of war

Roosevelt tells a country with its banks closed that it has nothing to fear but fear itself, the plains blow away in dust, and Europe goes to war again. Inside: Scottsboro, Post and Gatty, the Lindbergh baby, the Bonus Army, Hitler, the inauguration, beer and repeal, San Jose, Dillinger, the Hauptmann trial, the dust bowl, Huey Long, Spain, Jesse Owens, the abdication, the 1937 flood, Flint, the Hindenburg, Amelia Earhart, Joe Louis, Wrong Way Corrigan, Munich, and war.