Address of the Carriers to the Patrons of the Republican Banner. December 25th, 1861 [caption title]

[Nashville, 1861. Good plus.. Small broadside, approximately 11 x 7.25 inches. Creased along lower edge; ink burn causing a dime-size paper loss at upper right, slightly affecting border, plus a few additional stray ink marks. Later, faint pencil annotations on blank verso. Moderate tanning and dust soiling. A scarce Confederate carrier's address, published on Christmas in Nashville during the first year of the Civil War. The Republican Banner was formed in 1837 from a merger of two other periodicals, and was the first permanent daily newspaper to serve the Nashville area, as well as the first to operate its presses by steam. Tennessee officially seceded from the Union on June 8, 1681, but Nashville surrendered to Gen. Grant's troops on February 23, 1862, whereupon the Republican Banner suspended publication for the remainder of the war. As a result, the present broadside is only carrier's address issued by the paper that is also a Confederate imprint. The text is printed in two colums with in a decorative border, and the title is illustrated with a vignette of a newsboy making a delivery. The verse itself exults in the success of the Confederate rebellion thus far, regaling its reader with the progress of secession and naming the recent battles that were Confederate victories, including Fort Sumter, Bull Run, Bethel, Lexington, Leesburg, Springfield, Oak Hill, and Belmont, due to the supposed righteousness of the Southern cause and its superior fighting spirit:
 
"'Twas Southern valor won the undying name / Of conqueror, o'er the unconquered till that hour. / And when upon Manassas' awful plain / The Federal hordes fled back aghast in woe, / Not courage only heaped the field with slain, / The majesty of right o'erwhelmed the foe."
 
The broadside also mentions, somewhat optimistically, England’s support of the Confederacy, and names specific figures including Generals Lee, Beauregard, Johnson and President Jefferson Davis, among a number of others, as emerging Confederate heroes. Parrish & Willingham record a single copy, at Vanderbilt, and OCLC adds nothing further. A rare example of a Confederate carrier's address.
Parrish & Willingham 6498.