I recently had lunch with Paul Bryan Gray, the author of a terrific new book “A Clamor for Equality,” a biography of Francisco P. Ramirez, who edited the Los Angeles Spanish-language weekly El Clamor Publico (1855-1859).

Gray is the subject of an upcoming column, so I won’t say too much about him, but in the course of researching Los Angeles in that era, I discovered that the Los Angeles Star, a four-page weekly published from  1851 to 1864, had been scanned and put online by USC. I thought it would be an interesting change of pace to delve back into Los Angeles in the 1850s-60s. Putting the Huntington Library’s copies of The Star online offers scholars an opportunity to explore a truly rare publication.

Much of the Dec. 27, 1862, issue is devoted to the Battle of Fredericksburg (Dec. 11-15, 1862) and what may surprise some readers is the Star’s clear Southern sympathies.

Also notice the coverage of the California Column, which left Wilmington in a campaign to repel Confederate forces from outposts in the Arizona Territory.