Same Streets
← All stories

The Morning Glory Fizzle

A group of Vancouver Southern sympathizers attempted to print a campaign paper in Portland, only to have their equipment and their vanity locked away in a safe they couldn't open.

We learn that two of the Seceshers of Vancouver came over to Portland last Friday evening and worked all night in the office of their organ the Advertiser, getting up a campaign paper with the ad captandum title of the Morning Glory. Doubtless this was that 'Glory to be revealed' which they gave notice of some time ago. Mr. Struve, one of the heroes of this enterprise, had a new safe on board of the steamer Vancouver, which he was taking over to his office being an agent of Wells, Fargo Co. Into this safe he put all his papers also the combination to the lock. On his arrival at Vancouver, 'lo! and behold' the key would not open the safe. After working away at the lock till nearly midnight, the job of revealing the Glory was given up, and the six hundred Morning Glorys still repose in their iron coffin. To make the joke still richer, there were two copies left out and they are both in the hands of the Union men. Struve came back to Portland in the night and found the form partly distributed. And so he had five hundred half blown Glorys struck off, and returned to Vancouver righteously 'crestfallen.' The only two copies of the original Glory that did not sink into an untimely grave, are now in the possession of Union men.

“The six hundred Morning Glorys still repose in their iron coffin.”

— Printed in Washington Standard (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1862
Then · 1862164 years apartNow · 2026

Political sabotage and partisan newspapers were fixtures of Civil War-era Pacific Northwest life. This story highlights how the intense passions of the 1860s often devolved into petty, localized comedy—a sharp contrast to the brutal military reports found elsewhere on the same page.

The original page

Washington Standard (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1862-07-19. Library of Congress, Chronicling America.

From readers

No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.

About this story

From
Washington Standard (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, JUL 19, 1862, Page 3
Text
Cleaned up from the page — spelling and layout repaired — not a word-for-word transcription. The page itself is above, for exact wording.
Rights
Public domain
Place
45.63070, -122.67446 · placed automatically
The paper in the Library of Congress catalog ↗