Digital Extra: The Journal's 175th Anniversary

07.21.2004

1888. Republicans: Party's over for the Journal

After the death of U.S. Sen. Henry Anthony, The Journal reorganized as a corporation, and began to break from the Republican Party. A June 3, 1885, editorial announcing the transition hinted that the paper was leaning toward independence.

The paper provoked Republicans the next several years, including the exposure of an alleged pay-for-votes scheme. In 1887, the U.S. House of Representatives declared vacant the seat of Rhode Island Republican Rep. William A. Pirce, due to problems in Pirce's election.

The Journal wrote on Jan. 26, 1887, that "Pirce's nomination in 1884 was a most flagrant example of the vicious methods of the machine, and his election, confessedly as the reward for political work which, in polite euphemism only, may be called legitimate . . ."

State Republicans grew tired of the criticism, and decided in 1888 to kick the paper out of the party. On the day of the Republican convention, May 3, 1888, The Journal wrote that an "excommunication" ceremony was planned for that night.

In a speech to the convention, Pirce, the ousted congressman, complained that The Journal had been criticizing Republicans. "If you want your children to read the slang and stuff that is spread in there all the time, you can have it," Pirce said. "You can have that filthy literature in another sense, but this is the filthiest where they attack and slander our best men all the time."

The convention resolved that The Providence Journal had "long since ceased to represent the Republican party of this State."

The Journal the next day recounted the Republicans' numerous complaints against the paper. "This is a formidable list of political crimes," The Journal wrote in an editorial, "and the worst of it is that they are all true."