Franc Paul was looking for an opportunity. The 30-year-old was serving as clerk of the Tennessee Senate when Nashville was evacuated in February 1862 and Gov. Isham G. Harris ordered him to remove Tennessee’s archives to Chattanooga for safe-keeping. Now that the task was accomplished, Paul found himself a man without a job.
Prior to the war, Chattanooga had two newspapers, the Confederate-leaning Advertiser and the Union-leaning Gazette. War closed them and mid-1862 saw Chattanooga without a source for news. Paul saw his opportunity. He got the idea that Chattanooga was the “very point at which to establish a journal for circulation in the army.”
He had printing experience, having once worked for well-known East Tennessee editor, “Parson” Brownlow. He got encouragement from James Warner, a merchant who had moved to Chattanooga in 1853 and had served as mayor in 1861. They had worked together at a Nashville newspaper, and Warner, knowing the city’s need for news, encouraged the undertaking.
Paul obtained the printing plant of the Advertiser and on Aug. 1, 1862, the inaugural issue of the Chattanooga Daily Rebel hit the city’s streets. Fortunately for Paul, Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg was concentrating his army in the area, giving the Rebel a ready audience. Initially, it cost 10 cents a copy with a month’s subscription being $1 in advance. No subscription was taken for longer than a month.
The pages of the Rebel were a mixture of local matters, advertisements, military matters, and news obtained from other widespread newspapers (a common practice of the time). Thus a typical issue might find liberal quotation from the London Times, New York Times, or Richmond Enquirer alongside notices for the hire of slaves; advertisements for Chattanooga schools such as Aldehoff’s and the Cumberland Church; local residences available on the market; coal for sale by a Running Water firm; and other news and business notices of a 19th-century city.