David Ross Locke: Humor in a Dark Time

Petroleum Vesuvius Nasby, brainchild of satirical newspaperman David Ross Locke, helped the Union sway American sentiment in an anti-slavery direction. Public Domain

David Ross Locke (1833–88), the son of a shoemaker, was born in the small southern New York town of Vestal. Growing up in a working class family, Locke’s educational options were limited. After finishing the fifth grade, he became an apprentice—traditionally a 7-year engagement—in the printing trade for the Cortland Democrat. Sources differ on whether he began his apprenticeship at 10 or 12, or whether he completed the seven years or finished in five. Whichever is the case, Locke began his career as a newspaperman in 1850.

David Ross Locke, known for writing the satirical ramblings of a hypothetical Southerner, P. V. Nasby. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Public Domain

From 1850 to 1852, Locke worked for various newspapers. He first joined the Corning Journal in the small but picturesque town of Corning, New York, located just west of Vestal. His time there was brief before moving to Cleveland and joining the Herald and then The Plain Dealer. He also traveled to the South.

During his time in Cleveland, and especially in the South, Locke’s opinions on slavery and the poor treatment of free blacks (Ohio was a “free state”) only stiffened his resolve. It was a constitution and social perspective he had inherited from his father. This abolitionist mentality would benefit his writing substantially in the near future.

Business and Satire

At the end of his tramping (a journeyman journalist) in 1852, he and his colleague James G. Robinson established a business partnership and moved to Plymouth, Ohio, where they purchased and revived the local newspaper Advertiser. After two years, Locke and Robinson sold the paper and created another partnership with an attorney in Mansfield, Ohio, by the name of Roeliff Brinkerhoff.

Brinkerhoff later volunteered in the Union Army during the Civil War, rose to the rank of colonel, and witnessed the tragic scene play out at Ford’s Theater when President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.

The three purchased the Mansfield Herald in 1855, and the following year Locke and Robinson purchased controlling interest in the Journal located in Bucyrus, Ohio. It was in Bucyrus that Locke married Marthe Bodine and the couple had three boys.

Locke’s gift for writing and business was becoming more prevalent, but never more so than when the Civil War broke out. In March 1861, the month before the Civil War began, he became editor of the Hancock Jeffersonian in Findlay, Ohio, a newspaper he would purchase in November.

It was at this time in March and in this newspaper that Locke let his satirical humor spill over into the pages. Locke created a persona for his column under the pseudonym of “Petroleum Vesuvius Nasby, late pastor uv the Church uv the New Dispensation, Chaplain to his excellency the President, and p. m. at Confederate x roads, kentucky.”

Nasby, and a Famous Reader

Thus began the Nasby Letters, which ran throughout the Civil War and into Reconstruction. Nasby was portrayed as a whisky-loving Copperhead who, with his semi-literate writing, railed against the North by way of the extreme Southern position on the war, slavery, and blacks in American society. His crude and rude arguments and expositories helped Northerners solidify their belief in the Union cause.

Cartoons of Locke's satirical character, Petroleum V. Nasby, were portrayed in the newspapers of the day. Public Domain

When the Union began its draft, Nasby claimed he had been drafted, but soon deserted to the Confederacy. Once in the company of his “nateral frends the soljers uv the sunny south,” he claimed on Nov. 15, 1862 that “The survis uv the Suthrin Confedricy wood be ez pleasant ez any military life cood be, were it not for three things to-wit: 1. We hev nothin to eat. 2. Our clothes is designed more for ornament than use, consistin cheefly uv holes with rags around em―an appropriate summer costume, but rayther airy for this season. 3. Our pay is irregular…For instance. Our regiment hazzent reseevd a cent for 8 months.”

Nasby, being a “late pastor,” often referenced the Bible. In one letter on Sept. 21, 1863, he quoted, in his semi-literate spelling, “Verely I say unto yoo, it is moar blesseder toe give than toe reseeve.” Comically, he concluded that “The inspird riter hed, no dout, the Dimecratic party in his mind’s I, wen he rit them wurds uv wisdom.” Nasby explained that “Wen the Sowth wantid Misoory, we giv it. Wen she wantid a Fugytiv Slaiv Law, we giv it. Wen she wantid Texis, and Kansas, and Nebrasky, we giv it, halleloogy. Wen she wantid Bookannon, we giv it, and wen she demandid Duglisses hed, we giv it, fer it is moar blessider to give ner it is to reseeve…Why shood we giv? Becoz it pays. So long ez the Dimocrisy hed the power uv given all wuz well. The Sowth hevin all it wanted wuz contentid, and everything went on smooth and pleasant like.”

The reach of Locke’s Nasby letters continued to grow, quickly reaching the White House. President Abraham Lincoln soon became one of Locke’s most ardent readers, and definitely his most prestigious. The writer and the president had met before in 1858, but now, as the war raged and Nasby satirically raged against Lincoln and the Union, the two became close, meeting numerous times.

Henry J. Raymond, founder of The New York Times, recalled a moment Nasby came up in conversation with the president. Lincoln asked several visiting politicians and private citizens if they had ever seen the Nasby papers. When they responded in the negative, Raymond recalled Lincoln saying, “There is a chap out in Ohio who has been writing a series of letters in the newspapers over the signature of Petroleum V. Nasby. … I am going to write to ‘Petroleum’ to come down here, and I intend to tell him if he will communicate his talent to me, I will swap places with him!”

Lincoln’s Comic Relief

Lincoln utilized Nasby’s humor to alleviate his depression and understandable concern about the war. Before constructing the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln took the time to read some of Nasby’s latest letters to his cabinet. According to one Civil War journalist, the humorist also helped Lincoln pass the time during the 1864 election. “Lincoln amused the company by reading some of Petroleum V. Nasby’s amiable nonsense while the returns trickled in,” the journalist wrote.

Locke’s satirical work may have been the last thing Lincoln read. On April 14, 1865, Gen. Isham Nicholas Haynie journaled, “At five o’clock this afternoon Governor Oglesby and I called at the White House. Mr. Lincoln was not in, but just as we were going away his carriage, with himself, wife, and Tad drove up. The President called us back. We went into his reception room and had a pleasant humorous hour with him. He read four chapters of Petroleum V. Nasby’s book to us, and continued reading until he was called to dinner about six o’clock, when we left him.”

Four hours after Haynie and Oglesby left Lincoln, the president was assassinated at Ford’s Theater by John Wilkes Booth.

Ford's Theatre remains a historical time capsule of the mid-1800s. The box where President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated is in the center of this photo. Kathleen Cole/CC BY-SA 4.0

Locke’s Friends and Influence

Locke continued writing “The Nasby Letters,” which were ultimately published in multiple volumes. The journalist and satirist was also a close colleague of two other well known humorists of the age, Henry Wheeler Shaw, who wrote under the pseudonym Josh Billings, and Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who wrote under the pseudonym Mark Twain. In fact, in November of 1869, Locke offered Clemens a position at his newspaper The Blade in Toledo, Ohio. Locke, with his business acumen and Nasby column, had increased the readership of The Blade to 200,000. Clemens, however, declined the offer, since he had begun to make a name for himself a few years prior. In the same year Locke made his offer, Twain’s first book “The Innocents Abroad” was published.

A young Samuel Clemens, known today by his pen name, Mark Twain. Public Domain

The same year Locke made his offer to Clemens, Ulysses S. Grant began his first term as president. Grant’s Secretary of the Treasury George S. Boutwell noted the influence of Locke’s satire on the Civil War: “the North had won the war by three forces, the Army, the Navy, and the Nasby Papers.”

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