Bloodied American troops take possesion of the Mexican fortress of Chapultepec in 1847.

While Revolutionary War-era newspapers published news of battles, the information usually was second-hand and often inaccurate. By the early 1800s, however, journalists were daring to venture out on the battlefield and see for themselves what was happening.

The first-ever war correspondent may have been Louisiana newspaper editor and publisher James Bradford, who covered the War of 1812 by enlisting in Gen. Andrew Jackson's army. By the Mexican War of 1846-48, newspapers such as the Baltimore Sun had figured out how to utilize horseback couriers and steamboats to get the latest war news back to their readers, often before military couriers were able to inform the White House of what was happening.

George Wilkins Kendall of the New Orleans Picayune, who had been captured and imprisoned in a Mexican leper colony during his coverage of the Texans' earlier rebellion against Mexico, rode into battle with U.S. forces on the Rio Grande and actually captured an enemy battle flag. He followed Gen. Winfield Scott on the invasion of Mexico, and was wounded in the knee in the assault on Chapultepec.

By the 1850s American correspondents even were covering wars overseas. In 1859, Henry J. Raymond, one of the founders of the New York Times, and the paper's Paris correspondent, W. E. Johnston, witnessed the Battle of Solferino, one of the key moments in the struggle for Italian unification, and published an account in the Times 10 days before any other newspaper got the story.