Waite, Campbell W.

Born: 1832-07-12 New York

Died: 1904-02-14 Evanston, Illinois

Flourished: Sycamore, Illinois

Campbell W. Waite established the anti-slavery newspaper True Republican in 1857, selling it a year later while remaining its editor. He supported Abraham Lincoln's candidacy for U.S. Senate in the 1858 Federal Election. The True Republican lauded Lincoln's "House Divided" speech at the 1858 Illinois Republican Convention in its June 22 issue and printed the entire speech on June 29, writing that the speech was "one of the ablest speeches ever delivered upon any subject." In 1859, Waite was partnered with Thomas J. Pickett at the Rock Island Register.

After the outbreak of the American Civil War, Waite joined the armed services, enlisting as a battalion adjutant in the Eighth Illinois Cavalry on September 18, 1861. He resigned on February 17, 1862. Waite never married.

Cook County, Illinois, U.S., Deaths Index, 1878-1922 (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2011); U.S., Passport Applications, 1795-1925 (Lehi, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2007); Illinois Civil War Muster and Descriptive Rolls , Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; Henry L. Boies, History of DeKalb County, Illinois (Chicago: O. P. Bassett, 1868), 421; Nancy M. Beasley, The Underground Railroad in DeKalb County, Illinois (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2013), 8, 157-58, 168; The True Republican (Sycamore, IL), 22 June 1858, 2:7; 29 June 1858, 2:2, 3-5.