Passion was the main stuff of journalism long before the Civil War, the birthplace of modern American journalism. The Press of the American Revolution during the War and before it, was borne of it. Newspapers then were not as we know them today. Weekly advertising mediums they were, but they were primarily opinion pieces designed to protect interests or to provoke the readership. They were propaganda organs in the truest sense. They were virtual flagpoles of ideology from which the editor could.