Vaughan, John C.

Born: 1808-XX-XX South Carolina

Flourished: Chicago, Illinois

John C. Vaughan was a lawyer, newspaper editor, politician, and anti-slavery advocate. In the 1840s, Vaughan became the assistant editor of Cassius M. Clay’s anti-slavery newspaper, The True American. When Clay left the paper to fight in the Mexican War, Vaughan edited The True American, continuing in that role until ceasing publishing of The True American in October 1846. In June 1847, he began editing and publishing the Louisville Examiner, another anti-slavery paper and the successor to The True American. Vaughan continued to edit and publish the Examiner until December 1849, when lack of financial support forced Vaughan to end publication. Vaughan moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he traveled alongside Salmon P. Chase lecturing on the evils of slavery. After an unsuccessful bid to win election to the U.S. Senate, Vaughan purchased the True Democrat. In 1850, Vaughan was living in Cleveland, Ohio’s Second Ward and owned real property valued at $10,000. He remained editor of the True Democrat until Joseph Medill purchased the paper and merged it with his Forest City to become the Cleveland Leader. He remained with the Leader until 1857, when he joined Medill and Charles H. Ray in becoming a partner in the Chicago Tribune. In 1856, Vaughan was among the founders of the national Republican Party. Vaughan edited the Tribune until 1857, when he moved to the Kansas Territory to assist the Free Soil movement and edit the Leavenworth Times. He remained editor of the Times through the Civil War.

'Medill, Joseph," The National Cyclopædia of American Biography (New York: James T. White, 1898), 1:131; "Ray, Charles H.," The National Cyclopædia of American Biography (New York: James T. White, 1897), 7:551; David B. Sachsman, S. Kittrell Rushing, and Debra Reddin Van Tuyll, The Civil War and the Press (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2000), 118; Shirley Gill Pettus, "The Antecedents of the Civil War in Kentucky 1848-1860" (Master's Thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1924), 25; John McKivigan, Forgotten Firebrand: James Redpath and the Making of Nineteenth-Century America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008), 204, n51; D. W. Wilder, The Annals of Kansas, New Edition 1541-1885 (Topeka, KA.: T. Dwight Thacher, 1886), 111, 197; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Ward 2, Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, OH, 188; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Ward 4, Leavenworth, Leavenworth County, KS Terr., 168; New-York Tribune, 8 September 1884, 1:1-2.