First L.A. Newspaper Took Up the Confederates as a Cause
Pro-slavery and hot-tempered, he became an outspoken critic of President Lincoln. He was a Southern sympathizer whose weapon of choice was the city's first newspaper, the Los Angeles Star.
Armed with his printing press and a vision of a pure white society, Hamilton aimed to divide California into two states, one slave and one free.
During the Civil War, the weekly Star's biting attacks on Lincoln got Hamilton and a cohort sent to Alcatraz for sedition, according to author and local historian John W. Robinson....
Hamilton, the paper's longest-serving editor, sold the paper in 1873; it
ceased publication in 1879. Other papers had been founded in the meantime,
including the Evening Express in 1871 and the Evening Herald in 1873. The
Times began publishing in 1881.
Hamilton retired to a 10-acre San Gabriel citrus ranch, where he enjoyed
modest success and served as justice of the peace. He died of asthma in
1891.
"Having faded from public view," Robinson wrote, "his obituary rated but two
lines on Page 7 of the Los Angeles Times."