The Capital is a newspaper that was published weekly in Washington, D.C. from March 12, 1871 through June of 1889. Donn Piatt, of Ohio (Piatt Castles in Logan County) served as editor from 1871-1879 and wrote some of the editorials. This digital version of The Capital includes every issue published in volumes 1-9, from March 12, 1871 through February 22, 1880.
The Capital, a Washington D.C. weekly newspaper founded by Donn Piatt in 1871, is a primary record of the American Reconstruction Period, one of the most momentous periods of U.S. history, when the nation sought to reconcile the trauma and devastation of the Civil War. Journalist, legislator and Civil War veteran (attaining the rank of colonel), as a publisher Donn Piatt exercised an undisguised, negative point of view toward the political corruptions within the Grant administration. Piatt did not limit his sardonic commentary to the executive branch, but attacked Congress, the judicial system, religion, civic impropriety, fraud and other social follies. Although The Capital would always remain an outlet for Piatt’s non-partisan excoriations and trenchant humor, it also published essays, stories and poems by prominent contemporary writers such as Bret Harte, Harriet Prescott Spofford, Celia Logan, “Mrs. Grundy,” and Sarah Piatt (wife of Donn Piatt’s cousin, John James Piatt).
The Capital is an outstanding resource for the study of close to a decade of American culture from the highest levels of government and business to the everyday observations of life on the streets of Washington.
Donn Piatt: His Work and His Ways by Charles Grant Miller (Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co., 1893) can be accessed via Google Books. A circulating copy is available at The Ohio State University Libraries: http://library.ohio-state.edu/record=b1535709~S7
A more recent publication on Piatt is the book by Peter Bridges, Donn Piatt: Gadfly of the Gilded Age (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2012). An e-book is available through Project MUSE.
The Guide to the Sarah M. B. Piatt Research Collection at The Ohio State University can be accessed at: http://library.osu.edu/finding-aids/rarebooks/piatt.php
Funding for digitization and online presentation of The Capital was provided by the Ohio State University Libraries. The project was a collaboration between the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, the Libraries’ Preservation and Reformatting Department, and The Mac-A-Cheek Foundation at Piatt Castles. The digital images were scanned from original print issues held at Piatt Castles and generously loaned for this project. Occasional torn pages were supplemented by scans of microfilm versions purchased from the Library of Congress. Digital Imaging of both the print and microfilm versions was performed by Backstage Library Works. The searchable online archive was engineered by Olive Software, Inc.
High resolution TIFF files for the project were retained by Rare Books and Manuscripts. Please contact us at rarebooks@osu.edu with any questions about the project or requests for publishable images.
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