The New York Herald was a Democrat newspaper. Newspapers in the 19th century could be intensely partisan and high-flown rhetoric was the order of the day. For example, see the differing perceptions of Republican and Democrat newspapers on the Lincoln-Douglas Debates or some of the comments on Bleeding Kansas earlier in the decade.

It was not unusual for even small towns to have multiple newspapers and for cities to have a dozen or more, each representing different political, religious or cultural viewpoints. For example, in St. Louis in 1861 you had the Missouri Republican (pro-slave/Democrat), the Missouri Democrat (Formerly Benton-Democrat, then Republican), the Anzeiger des Westen's, the Westliche Post, and other smaller papers. St. Louis had two major dailies until the mid-1980s: The Post-Dispatch and the Globe-Democrat, both descendents of Civil War era papers.