About

Elias Yulee published the first issue of the Georgia Expositor on October 23, 1875 out of his offices on 143 Bay Street in Savannah, Georgia. Originally intended to be titled the Protestant Expositor, Yulee strongly believed America to be a protestant country, and he frequently cited the works of English politician William Ewart Gladstone. In the Georgia Expositor’s first issue, Yulee dedicated a full, six-column, page to salutatory statements in which he warned against the threat of Roman Catholicism, established his support for the Democratic Party, and wrote against the gold standard. Yulee explained in that issue that “the question of papal influence in our country will become an all absorbing interest and override every other issue.” The Expositor, which was sold at J. H. Estill’s News Depots, circulated weekly for about a year before low subscription rates force the paper’s suspension. During its brief run, Yulee’s paper gained some notoriety, and the Savannah Morning News referred to it as a “radical organ” when reporting the newspaper’s cessation in an October 3, 1876 issue. On December 13, 1876, Captain J. G. M. Medlock, former editor of the Sandersville Herald, purchased Yulee’s defunct printing operation and moved to Swainsboro to establish the Swainsboro Herald.