Marcus M. Pomeroy


Marcus M. "Brick" Pomeroy was a La Crosse, Wisconsin newspaperman, editor of the La Crosse Democrat from 1860 to 1869, then editor of Pomeroy's Democrat from 1869-1887. During the American Civil War he was a Copperhead, who in an editorial called Abraham Lincoln "fungus from the corrupt womb of bigotry and fanaticism" and a "worse tyrant and more inhuman butcher than has existed since the days of Nero.... The man who votes for Lincoln now is a traitor and murderer.... And if he is elected to misgovern for another four years, we trust some bold hand will pierce his heart with dagger point for the public good."
In later years, he became a leader of the Greenback Party and the People's Party/Union Labor Party of Wisconsin. During the 1880s he employed African-American journalist George Edwin Taylor as city editor of Pomeroy's Democrat. It claimed to have the largest circulation of any political newspaper in the country.