By Richard Gorby

Early in 1863, President Lincoln established the Arizona Territory by signing it into law.

By March 1864 the territorial officers had been appointed and told that they could pick the new capital.

Tucson, the biggest and almost the only town, was the obvious choice, but the officers, all Republican and Union followers, could not stomach the large number of Democrats and Confederate sympathizers in Tucson, so they moved north and west, deciding finally on the beautiful area around Granite Creek. By May, the new town site had been laid out and Prescott had been named the capital of the territory.

Within two weeks, territorial secretary Richard McCormick’s newspaper, The Arizona Miner, had moved from Fort Whipple where its new building was quickly built. This was the first building on the plaza and was located on Montezuma Street, the next door north of today’s Galloping Goose gift store.

Twenty-three-year-old Tisdale A. Hand was the editor. He was a New Englander with strong Union sympathies that he freely expressed in the Miner, to the outrage of one, Lott Thrift, a miner and native of Virginia. Thrift regarded any Union sympathizers as a mortal enemy. He pulled a fun on Hand and told him to go for his.

When Hand replied that he never carried a pistol, Thrift pulled another pistol from his belt, cocked it and placed it beside the editor, begging him to grab and fire it. Hand declined, stating that he was not a gunfighter. Lott Thrift leveled the pistol, then slowly replace it in his belt, stating, “_no credit to kill a Yankee editor,” and left.

Tisdale Hand left Prescott shortly after this incident to seek new employment in the East, “Where disagreement with editorial policy is fought with letters to the editor.”

Ex-Governor McCormick managed to keep the Miner afloat until 1867, when he sold the paper to John Huguenot Marion.

And who was John Marion?

At age 16, John left his St. Louis home for the California goldfields.  To support himself he found work as a “printer’s devil” at newspapers in Oroville, Butte County, and Marysville.

After two years he returned to St. Louis. He worked for the St. Louis Republican, where in two years he learned his printing trade, as well as a smattering of journalistic technique.

Hearing so much about the great money to be made in western mining, Marion, now 20, returned to California and soon moved on to investigate reports of a new ore strike near Prescott, Ariz.

He mined, not far from the newly designated territorial capital.  At least once, when he and a small group of miners were working not far from Prescott, they found themselves surrounded by “Apaches,” and he faced down the hostile Indians.

Bob Groom, a member of the party, relates that Marion had repeatedly cautioned the men to keep their guns handy. When Marion realized their situation, he reached for his weapon. A cupful of water poured out of the barrel - he was the butt of an ill-timed practical joke - and his language was more forceful than elegant.

Unarmed, Marion and Groom confronted the Indians, persuaded them of the party’s peaceful purposes, and the “Apaches” moved on. Marion traveled over much of Arizona hunting gold that, he wrote later, “was not found.” On his return to Prescott, he set a few sticks of type for the infant newspaper, The Miner.

Newspapering, he found, was more his style than gold seeking.

Marion’s mining had apparently not been prosperous. However, he prospered to the extent that he was able to buy the Arizona Miner, but his new property could scarcely be considered a plum – subscription price was $6.50. Paid circulation numbered 75.

Marion was said to be a mild-mannered, homely man who spoke in a monotone. But when it came to writing, fire arose from his pen, and he quickly made it known that in a town where all the territorial officers were Republican, he was a Democrat.

The Arizona Miner of Sept. 21, 1867 reported: “In accordance with a time-honored and necessary custom, we today address the readers of the Miner, for the purpose of informing them what they are entitled to know, that is: What shall be the future course of this paper? To which we answer, in all truth and earnestness, that, while under our control, it will fearlessly, but in a respectful and dignified manner, advocate the ancient and time-honored principles of the grand, liberty-defending Democratic Party.

“Believing, honestly, that the practices of the party in power have been and are subversive of that freedom which is the birthright of every free, white, American citizen, we shall labor, with whatever our Maker has vouchsafed us, to cripple the monster that has grown fat on the misfortunes of our country.

“Its leaders, in conjunction with a few mad caps of the South, created, nursed and fanned into a hellish flame an unnatural civil war. In which millions of American fell victim and drenched their native soil with precious blood, leaving behind the wives, mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers to lament their violent and unnecessary action.

“And for what good purpose has all this been done? What wrongs to right? What vital tenets to defend? Echo answers, none! It was a war for blood, for plunder, and for the exaltation of the black, monkey-faced Ethiopian over the poor white men of both section of the country. Besides which, it has saddled upon the country a load of debt that fairly makes the bones of the tax-payers crack under the pressure of the greenback, bondholding, black anaconda which has coiled itself around the Nation.”

To be continued next week.

(Richard Gorby is a long-time volunteer at the Sharlot Hall Museum Archives and a frequent contributor to Days Past.)