'Extortion-The Soldier'

Large circuit newspapers, like Harper’s Weekly, did promote the voice of the soldier but through regulated stories, poems, and illustrations, published through each of the issues. The Harper’s Weekly used their voices to inspire the home front to create support for the war. The more local southern-based papers, such as the Wilmington Daily Journal, gave soldiers more freedom to speak to the public. Wilmington Daily Journal’s article titled “Extortion-The Soldier,” is a tremendous example of how the paper allowed soldiers to communicate to the community around them. The column is a reprinting of a letter sent in to the daily, and goes into detail of the upcoming “soldier’s election” and the issue of “soldier extortion.” The anonymous soldier