George D. Prentice

Infobox Person
name = George D. Prentice


imagesize = 200px
caption = Sketch of Prentice from an 1875 book
birth_name =
birth_date = December 18 1802
birth_place = Preston, Connecticut
death_date = January 22, 1870
death_place = Jefferson County, Kentucky
death_cause = Influenza
residence =
employer =
occupation = Newspaper Editor
party = Whig

George Dennison Prentice was a newspaper editor in Louisville, Kentucky.

Biography

The son of a farmer, Prentice excelled in school and graduated from Brown University in 1823. Following graduation he began contributing to literary periodicals and studied law in Canterbury, Connecticut. Although he joined the bar in that state, he was more interested in literature, and after practicing law briefly he became editor of the "Hartford New England Review" in 1828.

On the strength of his political writings, he was invited to come to Kentucky to write a campaign biography of Henry Clay, which sold 20,000 copies. Prentice received no money for this work because the publisher went bankrupt. He stayed in Louisville and accepted an offer to co-found the "Louisville Journal" newspaper in 1830, with the goal of rivaling the then-dominant "Louisville Public Advertiser". Prentice soon found himself in an editorial feud with "Advertiser" publisher Shadrack Penn, which continued until Penn left the city in 1841.

The "Journal" quickly became popular in Louisville, largely because of Prentice's biting editorials and the savage wit of his replies to detractors. Prentice was a dedicated backer of the Whig Party. In the 1850s, Prentice editorialized in support of the Know-Nothing party and the pro-slavery, anti-Catholic and anti-foreigner movement that reached a hysterical level in the 1850s in many parts of the nation.

In Louisville this culminated in the Bloody Monday riot of 1855, in which 22 people were killed. Just days before the riots, which occurred as mobs tried to prevent Irish and German citizens from voting on election day, Prentice had editorialized against "most pestilent influence of the foreign swarms" loyal to a pope he called "an inflated Italian despot who keeps people kissing his toes all day." According to Archbishop John L. Spalding, Prentice later publicly expressed regret over his role in the riots.cite news |publisher="The Courier-Journal" |title=Recalling Bloody Monday |date=2005-07-30 |author=Smith, Peter]

He supported the Union in the 1850s, but disagreed with many of its policies during the Civil War. In 1861 he joined a group that urged Kentucky not to secede from the Union but establish itself as a neutral party in the war. In 1864 he created the famous Sue Mundy character to mock the incompetence of Union General Stephen G. Burbridge, military commander of Kentucky. [cite news |title='She Devil' recalls bloody past |publisher="The Courier-Journal" |date=2006-05-22 |author=Egerton, Judith]

After the war Prentice opposed many of the policies of Reconstruction, and his paper was one of the few able to speak out fearlessly against federal rebuilding policies of the time. Prentice remained on board the paper during and after the 1868 merger that created "The Courier-Journal". He died of influenza and was buried in Cave Hill Cemetery.

Legacy

His legacy is generally unfavorable, with an editor from his own paper calling Prentice's writings "raw bigotry" in a 1993 feature on the history of the newspaper. A 1912 statue of Prentice by Alex Baily, displayed in front of the Louisville Free Public Library's main branch, is a source of occasional conflict, due to Prentice's famous anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant rhetoric. A compromise reached at one point involved a new plaque for the statue, describing Prentice's "tarnished legacy".

A Liberty ship, the "SS George D. Prentice", was launched in 1943 and remained in service until 1969.

Notes

References

*cite encyclopedia|encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of Louisville|title=Prentice, George Dennison|year=2001
*cite journal|title=George D. Prentice: 19th Century Southern Editor|author=Congleton, Betty Carolyn|journal=Register of the Kentucky Historical Society|year=1967|month=April|volume=65|pages=94–119

ee also

*Louisville in the American Civil War