[M11] “What is the Citizen Soldier?,” The Citizen Soldier, July 19, 1843

WHAT IS THE CITIZEN SOLDIER?—You mistake the character of our paper.  You think that because the “Citizen Soldier” is a military paper, no literary matter can find a place in its columns, no general news can give variety to its pages, no piquant satire can spice its paragraphs.

All a mistake.  Our paper is a military paper.  Its grand object is the cause of our citizen soldiery, the elevation of the military character of our yeomanry, the reformation of all military abuses, and the thorough and entire re-organization of our militia system.

How shall we accomplish this object?  By making our sheet a dull, dry, tasteless combination of cast-off military lore, worn-out statistics, and long-winded pieces of declamation, called “leading articles?”

No.  That is not our plan.  We wish our paper to go into the heart of the family circle, to be a dweller in the sanctity of the household, a welcome messenger to the country fireside; in short, a journal of polite literature, piquant satire, and military lore.

We wish to make our paper a favorite with the ladies.  Their influence in society is secret and silent, but effectual when devoted to good purposes, terrible when misdirected for the accomplishment of evil.  Our first page is devoted to the ladies.  We have been at some pains to adorn this part of our paper with select and original revolutionary stories, from the pens of our best writers, as well as tales of a more domestic and quiet character.

The literary matter of our paper challenges comparison with any journal in the land.  The inside of the paper is occupied by military matter, in defence and in explanation of our principles, and now and then we season this part of the paper with a little spice of satire, intended for the cloud of literary humbugs who swarm in the corrupt atmosphere of Philadelphia literature.

We have made these gentry feel uncomfortable already—we intend to expose their plagiarisms, picture their silly pretensions to the character of “American literati,” while we pray God to save us from the deadly sin of making a mock of innate imbecility.

Our success has been almost unprecedented.  The citizen soldier is noticed from north to south, and although, unlike certain literary abortions of this city, it does not give utterance to the paltry untruth of “100,000 subscribers,” yet it still commands a large circulation, and is eagerly and extensively read.

Its circulation is increasing.  A few disappointed and chagrined advocates of the “eye-sore” of West Point, have, it is true, sent us an indignant “stop my paper;” true it is, a man way off in Tioga county has discontinued the “Soldier,” because we didn’t like grey uniform for volunteer costume, and whereas his company, yclept the Jenkinsville Topknots, are arrayed in sober grey; true it is, that here and there some pompous general whose military lore is confined to a knowledge of the price of a first-rate pair of epaulettes, or the component parts of a good apple-toddy, has, in great wrath and anger, refused to “lift the Soldier,” yet still we live and flourish, and intend to do so, while the Lord spares us strength to wield a pen, or scratch a syllable.