How a Newspaper Revolution Sparked Protesters and Influencers: Disinformation and the Civil War. How the most divided period in the history of U.S. democracy – the mid-1800s – coincided with a ...

The London American, a newspaper founded by Auburn’s John Adams Knight, brought news of the American Civil War to British readers, who often sympathized with the Confederacy.

It took 16 years to develop from the introduction of the telegraph to the Civil War. Undoubtedly, the fight over slavery caused that conflict, but the newspapers fed it, amplified it, exaggerated it.