| Summary Note | The DAILY TRUE DEMOCRAT began as the True Democrat, a weekly published in N. OLMSTED, OH, in 1846. From its first daily issue of 12 Jan. 1847, however, it carried a Cleveland dateline. Founded as an organ of the antislavery Whigs by Edward Stowe Hamlin, the paper supported Martin Van Buren, the candidate of the Free-Soil Democrats, for president in 1848. Hamlin left midway in the campaign, leaving the Daily True Democrat in the hands of T. Gillman Turner. With the aid of JAS. A. BRIGGS as editor, Turner continued the Daily True Democrat for nearly a year before turning it over to Thos. Brown in June 1849. Although Brown maintained the paper's Free-Soil principles, he also succeeded in making it less of a political and more a general sheet in the next 4 years between national elections. John Champion Vaughan, a reformed southern slaveholder, was appointed editor. Under the administration of Mayor WM. CASE, the Daily True Democrat was designated "Official Paper of the City." A new partner, Bostonian Geo. Bradburn, joined Brown and Vaughan to form an editorial triumvirate in Sept. 1851. New investors headed by H. C. Gray of Painesville took over the paper in May 1853, and on 15 Oct. 1853 it was merged with Joseph Medill's DAILY FOREST CITY to form the Daily Forest City Democrat. Gray, Medill, and EDWIN COWLES, who had printed the Daily True Democrat, were listed as publishers of the combined paper. Gray withdrew in favor of the latter two the following February, and the paper was rechristened the Cleveland Morning Leader on 16 Mar. 1854.
|