George Dennison Prentice was born on December 18, 1802 in Connecticut. After graduating from Brown University, Prentice began a career in journalism. In 1830, Prentice relocated to Kentucky to write a biography of Henry Clay, and while in the state, he became editor of the Louisville Journal. Prentice soon became known for his sharp wit and his pointed editorials. Under Prentice's leadership, the Journal rose to national prominence. It became one of the leading Whig periodicals and influenced Whigs, including Abraham Lincoln, throughout the western United States. In the 1850s, the Whig party collapsed, and like many Whigs, Prentice joined the American, or Know-Nothing, Party. On August 6, 1855, during the Kentucky state election, nativist supporters of the American Party in Louisville attacked German and Irish immigrants living in the city. Because of his strong rhetoric in favor of the Know Nothings, Prentice is sometimes considered partly responsible for the violence, which came to be known as the Bloody Monday riots. During the election of 1860, Prentice supported the moderate John Bell, but when Lincoln won the election, Prentice urged southerners to be patient with the incoming administration. Although he was unsuccessful in his efforts to prevent secession in the lower South, Kentuckians listened to Prentice's support for the state's policy of neutrality. Prentice eventually became a staunch Unionist but was often at odds with the Lincoln administration because of emancipation policy and the treatment of Kentuckians by the federal military. Following the Civil War, Prentice continued to publish the Journal, until 1868, when it merged with the Louisville Courier. Prentice briefly worked at the new Courier-Journal but died on January 22, 1870.

Betty Carolyn Congleton, "George Dennison Prentice," in John E. Kleber, ed., The Kentucky Encyclopedia (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1992), 736.