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THE EVENING POST
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William Cullen Bryant
Associate Editor, 1826-1829, Editor-in-Chief, 1829-1878
(Two hitherto unpublished portraits)
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THE EVENING POST
A Century of Journalism
ALLAN NEVINS
The journalists are now the true kings and clergy; henceforth
historians, unless they are fools, must write not of Bourbon dynas-
ties, and Tudors, and Hapsburgs; but of stamped, broadsheet
dynasties, and quite new successive names, according as this or the
other able editor, or combination of able editors, gains tiie world's
ear. — Sartor Resartus,
BONI AND LIVERIGHT
Publishers : New York
TO MY MOTHER
Copyright, 1922, by
BONI AND LiVERIGHT, InC.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
PREFACE
This volume took its origin in the writer's belief that
a history of the Evening Post would be interesting not
merely as that of one of the world's greatest newspapers,
but as throwing light on the whole course of metropolitan
journalism in America since 1800, and upon some im-
portant parts of local and national history. In a book
of this kind it is necessary to steer between Scylla and
Charybdis. If the volume were confined to mere office-
history, it would interest few; while a review of all the
newspaper's editorial opinions and all the interesting
news it has printed would be a review of the greater part
of what has happened in the nineteenth century and since.
The problem has been to avoid narrowness on the one
hand, padding on the other. The author has tried to
select the most important, interesting, and illuminating
aspects and episodes of the newspaper's history, and to
treat them with a careful regard for perspective.
The decision to include no footnote references to
authorities in a volume of this character probably requires
no defense. In a great majority of instances the text itself
indicates the authority. When an utterance of the Eve-
ning Post on the Dred Scott decision is quoted, it would
assuredly be impertinent to quote the exact date. The
author wishes to say that he has been at pains to ascribe
no bit of writing to a particular editor without making
sure that he actually wrote it. When he names Bryant
as the writer of a certain passage, he does so on the
authority of the Bryant papers, or the Parke Godwin
papers, or one of the lives of Bryant, or of indisputable
internal evidence. After 188 1 a careful record of the
writers of the most important Evening Post editorials
was kept in the files of the Nation.
The author wishes to thank the heirs of William CuUen
Bryant, Parke Godwin, John Bigelow, Carl Schurz,
VI
PREFACE
Horace White, Henry Villard, and E. L. Godkin for
giving him access to a wealth of family papers. Im-
portant manuscript material bearing upon William Cole-
man was furnished by James Melvin Lee and Mary P.
Wells Smith. He is under a heavy debt to Mr. Robert
Bridges, editor of Scribner^s; Mr. Norman Hapgood,
editor of Hearst^s International Magazine; Mr. H. J.
Wright, editor of the Globe; Mr. Rollo Ogden, associate
editor of the New York Times; Mr. O. G. Villard, editor
of the Nation; Mr. Watson R. Sperry, of the Hartford
Courant; Mr. Joseph Bucklin Bishop, Mr. Lincoln Stef-
fens, Mr. R. R. Bowker, and Mr. Frederic Bancroft;
the heirs of Charles Nordhoff and Charlton M. Lewis;
and Mr. J. Ranken Towse, Mr. William Hazen, and
Mr. Henry T. Finck of the Evening Post, for informa-
tion and assistance. He is similarly obliged to the
Library of Congress for aid in examining the papers of
Alexander Hamilton and Carl Schurz. Portions of the
manuscript were kindly read by Mr. Edwin F. Gay, presi-
dent of the Evening Post, who has given constant advice
and encouragement, Mr. Rollo Ogden, and Mr. Simeon
Strunsky; and part of the proofs by Mr. Donald Scott,
Mr. O. G. Villard, and Mr. H. J. Wright.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Hamilton and the Founding of the
"Evening Post" 9
II. The "Evening Post" as Leader of
THE Federalist Press .... 35
III. The City and the "Evening Post's"
Place in It 63
IV. Literature and Drama in the Early
"Evening Post" 96
V. Bryant Becomes Editor . . . . 121
VI. William Leggett Acting Editor : De-
pression, Rivalry, and Threat-
ened Ruin 139
VII. The Rise of the Slavery Question:
THE Mexican War 166
VIII. New York Becomes a Metropolis:
Central Park 192
""IX. Literary Aspects of Bryant's News-
paper, 1 830-1 855 207
X. John Bigelow as an Editor of the
"Evening Post" 228
XI. Heated Politics Before the Civil
War 242
vii
viii CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
XII. The New York Press and Southern
Secession 267
XIII. The Critical Days of the Civil War 284
XIV. Reconstruction and Impeachment . 326
XV. Bryant at the Height of His Fame
as Editor 338
XVI. Apartment Houses Rise and Tweed
Falls 364
XVII. Independence in Politics : the Elec-
tions of '72 and '76 389
XVIII. Two Rebel Literary Editors . . . 406
XIX. Warfare Within the Office : Parke
Godwin's Editorship .... 420
XX. The Villard Purchase : Carl Schurz
Editor-in-Chief 438
XXI. GoDKiN, THE Mugwump Movement,
AND Grover Cleveland's Career . 458
XXII. Godkin's War Without Quarter
Upon Tammany 476
XXIII. Opposing the Spanish War and Sil-
ver Craze ....... 496
XXIV. Characteristics of a Fighting Edi-
tor: E. L. Godkin 519
XXV. News, Literature, Music, and
Drama 18 80- 1900 .... 546
XXVI. Horace White, Rollo Ogden, and
THE "Evening Post" Since 1900 . 568
Index 581
ILLUSTRATIONS
William CuUen Bryant Frontispiece
Associate Editor^ 1 826-1 829, Editor-in-Chief j
1829-1878
FACING
PAGE
Alexander Hamilton 26
Chief Founder of the "Evening Post''
William Coleman 102
Editor-in-Chief, 1 801 -1 829
John Bigelow 264
Associate Editor, 1 849-1 860
Parke Godwin 440
Editor-in-Chief, 1878- 1 88 1
Henry Villard 440
Owner, 1881-1900 .
Carl Schurz 440
Editor-in-Chief, 1 881 -1883
Horace White 440
Associate Editor, 188 1 -1 899, Editor-in-Chief,
1900-1903
E. L. Godkin 494
Associate Editor, 1 881- 1883, Editor-in-Chief,
1883-1899
Rollo Ogden 548
Editor-in-Chief, 1903- 1 920
Editorial Council, 1922 570
CHAPTER ONE
HAMILTON AND THE FOUNDING OF THE "EVENING POST"
/
Of all the newspapers established as party organs in
the time when Federalists and Democrats were struggling
for control of the government of the infant republic, but
one important journal survives. It is the oldest daily
in the larger American cities which has kept its name
intact. The Aurora, the Centinel, the American Citizen,
Porcupine^s Gazette, whose pages the generation of
Washington and Adams, Jefferson and Burr, scanned so
carefully, are mere historical shades; but the Evening
Post, founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton and a
group of intimate political lieutenants, for the expression
of Hamilton's views, remains a living link between that
day of national beginnings and our own. ^
The spring of 1801, when plans were laid for issuing
the Evening Post, was the blackest season the Federalists
of New York had yet known. Jefferson was inaugurated
as President on March 4, and the upper as well as the
lower branch of Congress had now become Democratic.
In April the State election was held, and the ticket headed
by gouty old George Clinton won a sweeping victory
over the Federalists, so that at Albany the Democrats
took complete control; the Governorship, Legislature,
and Council of Appointment were theirs. Many Federal-
ists sincerely believed that the nation and State had been
put upon the road to ruin. They were convinced that
the party of Washington, Hamilton, and Adams, which
had built up a vigorous republic out of a ramshackle
Confederation, was the only party of construction; and
that Democracy meant ruin to the public credit, aggres-
sions by the States upon a weak central government, and
national disintegration. Hamilton wrote Gouverneur
9
12 THE EVENING POST
Clerkship of the Circuit Court whose jurisdiction covered
the city was taken from William Coleman and given to
John McKesson. A majority of the people of the city
were Federalists, and they watched all these transfers
with pain.
"^ The local leaders, and especially Hamilton, had for
some time been aware that they lacked an adequate
newspaper organ. Three city journals, the Daily Adver-
tiser, and the Daily Gazette, both morning publications,
and the Commercial Advertiser, an evening paper,
were Federalist in sympathy. But Snowden's Daily
Advertiser, and Lang's Gazette were almost exclusively
given up to commercial news; and while E. Belden's
Commercial Advertiser, which still lives as the Globe,
devoted some attention to politics, it lacked an able
editor to write controversial articles. As the chief
Democratic sheet remarked, "it is too drowsy to be
of service in any cause; it is a powerful opiate." This
Democratic sheet was the American Citizen, edited
by the then noted English refugee and radical, James
Cheetham. He was a slashing and fearless advocate of
Jeffersonian principles, who daily filled from one to two
columns with matter that set all the grocery and hotel
knots talking. Some one as vigorous, but of better
education and taste — Cheetham had once been a hatter
— was needed to expound Hamiltonian doctrines.
It was hoped that this new editor and journal could
give leadership and tone to the whole Federalist press,
^or a sad lack of vigor was evident from Maine to
I Charleston. The leading Federalist newspapers of the
I time, Benjamin Russell's Columbian Centinel in Boston,
the Courant in Hartford, the Gazette of the United
States in Philadelphia, and the Baltimore Federal
Gazette, did not fully meet the wishes of energetic
^federalists. Their conductors did not compare with
the chief Democratic editors : James T. Callender, whom
Adams had thrown into jail; Thomas Paine; B. F. Bache,
Franklin's grandson ; Philip Freneau, and William Duane.
Some agency was needed to rouse them. They should
FOUNDING THE EVENING POST 13
be helped with purse and pen, wrote John Nicholas, a
leading Virginia Federalist, to Hamilton. "They seldom
republish from each other, while on the other hand their
antagonists never get hold of anything, however trivial
in reality, but they make it ring through all their papers
from one end of the continent to the other." In the
summer of 1 800 Hamilton called Oliver Wolcott's atten-
tion to libels printed by the Philadelphia Aurora upon
prominent Federalists, and asked if these outrageous
assaults could not be counteracted. "We may regret but
we can not now prevent the mischief which these false-
hoods produce," replied Wolcott.
The establishment of journals for party purposes had
become, in the dozen years since the Constitution was
ratified, a frequent occurrence, and no political leader
knew more of the process than Hamilton. He had won
his college education in New York by a striking article
in a St. Kitts newspaper. No one needs to be reminded
how in the Revolutionary crisis, when a stripling in Kings
College, he had attracted notice by anonymous contri-
butions to Holt's Journal, nor how in the equally
important crisis of 1787-88 he published his immortal
"Federalist" essays in the Independent Journal. Samuel
Loudon, head of the Independent Journal, used to wait
in Hamilton's study for the sheets as they came from his
pen. To support Washington's Administration, Hamil-
ton in 1789 encouraged John Fenno, a Boston school-
master of literary inclinations, to establish the Gazette
of the United States at the seat of government; and in
1793, when Fenno appealed to Hamilton for $2,000 to
save the journal from ruin, the latter took steps to raise
the sum, making himself responsible for half of it. Hamil-
ton also financially assisted William Cobbett, the best
journalist of his time in England or America, to initiate
his newspaper campaign against the Democratic haters of
England. He, Rufus King, and others in New York
helped provide the capital with which Noah Webster
founded the Minerva in that city In 1793, and he and
King together wrote for it a series of papers, signed
14 THE EVENING POST
"Camillus," upon Jay's Treaty. If Hamilton's unsigned
contributions to the Federalist press from 1790 to 1800
could be Identified, they would form an Important
addition to his works.
It is evident from the published and unpublished
papers of Hamilton that at an early date in 1801, when
he was devoting all his spare time to the hopeless State
campaign, he was giving thought to the problem of
improving the party press. He wrote Senator Bayard
of Delaware a letter upon party policy, to be presented
at the Federalist caucus In Washington on April 20. In
it he gave a prominent place to the necessity for "the
diffusion of Information," both by newspapers and by
pamphlets. He added that "to do this a fund must
be raised," and proposed forming an extensive associa-
tion, each member who could afford it pledging himself
to contribute $5 annually for eight years for publicity.
Hamilton's fingers whenever he was in a tight place
always itched for the pen. Noah Webster had withdrawn
from the Minerva three years previous, while Fenno
had died about the same time, leaving the Gazette of the
United States to a son ; so that Hamilton could no longer
feel at "home In these journals.
But if a Hamiltonlan organ were started, who should
be editor ? Fortunately, this question was easily answered.
To the party motives which Hamilton, Troup, Wolcott,
and other leading Federalists had In setting up such a
journal, at this juncture there was added a motive of
friendship toward an aspirant for an editorial position.
In 1798, there had been admitted to the New York bar a
penniless lawyer of thirty-two from Greenfield, Massa-
chusetts, named WiUIam Coleman. He had come with a
record of two years' service in the Massachusetts House,
an honorary degree from Dartmouth College, and warm
recommendations from Robert Treat Paine, a signer of
the Declaration of Independence who at this time was a
judge of the Massachusetts Supreme Court. After a
brief and unprofitable partnership with Aaron Burr, a
FOUNDING THE EVENING POST 15
misstep which he later declared he should regret to his
dying day, Coleman formed a partnership with John
Wells, a brilliant young Federalist attorney. Wells was
just the man to draw Coleman into intimacy with the
Federalist leaders. He was a graduate of Princeton, a
profound student of the law, was rated by good judges
one of the three or four best speakers of the city, and
was a member of the "Friendly Club," an important
literary society. Governor John Jay offered him a
Justiceship of the Peace, and Hamilton trusted him so
much that. In 1802, he selected him to edit the first careful
edition of The Federalist, for which Hamilton himself
critically examined and revised the papers.
Through Wells, in 1798-99 Coleman came to know
the members of the "Friendly Club," including W. W.
Woolsey, the novelist Charles Brockden Brown, the
dramatist William Dunlap, Anthony Bleecker, and
James Kent, later Chancellor. He had already met
Hamilton, on the latter's trip into New England in 1796,
and now he fell completely under the great man's spell.
In his later life he dated everything from the beginning
of their friendship. The two had much In common
besides their political views, for Coleman possessed a
dashing temper, a quick mind, and a ready bonhomie. In
the spring of 1800, there took place in New York the
famous trial of Levi Weeks, charged with murdering
Gulielma Sands, a young girl, and throwing her body
into one of the Manhattan Company's wells; a trial in
which Hamilton and Burr appeared together for the
defense, and saved Weeks from conviction by a mass of
circumstantial evidence. Coleman, a master of short-
hand. Immediately published a praiseworthy report of
the trial. One of his political enemies admitted that "it
Is everywhere admired for Its arrangement, perspicuity,
and the soundness of judgment it displays." Coleman was
encouraged to plan a volume of reports of decisions In
the State Supreme Court. At that moment the Clerkship
of the Circuit Court fell vacant. Hamilton at once wrote
1 6 THE EVENING POST
Governor John Jay and also Ebenezer Foote, a member
of the Council of Appointment, requesting that the place,
which paid $3,000 a year, be given his friend Coleman.
There was another candidate with a really superior claim,
but he was passed by. Governor Jay announced the result
in the following hitherto unpublished letter to Hamilton :
Mr. Coleman, who was yesterday appointed Clerk of the New
York Circuit, will be the bearer of this. Mr. Skinner was first
nominated — for where character and qualifications for office are
admitted, the candidate whose age, standing, and prior public
service is highest should, I think, take the lead; unless perhaps in
cases peculiarly circumstanced. — Mr. Skinner did not succeed.
Mr. Coleman was then nominated, and the Council, expecting
much from his reports, and considering the office as necessary
to enable him to accomplish that work, advised his appointment.
Mr. Coleman's embarrassments, and whatever appeared to me
necessary to observe respecting the candidates, were mentioned
antecedent to the nomination. My feelings were in Coleman's
favor, and had my judgment been equally so, he would have
suffered less anxiously than he has. I mentioned your opinion in
his favor ; and I wish the appointment may be generally approved.
Ten or eleven of the members recommended Mr. Skinner —
some of them will not be pleased.
I hope Mr. Coleman will be attentive to the reports. Much
expectation has been excited, and disappointment would produce
disgust. It is, I think, essential to him that the work be prosecuted
with diligence, but not with haste; and that they may be such as
they already hope.
But in the general overturn of 1801, Coleman — who
had duly commenced the compilation of the Supreme
Court Law Reports, beginning with 1794, and whose
labors later bore fruit in what is called Coleman and
Caines's Reports — lost his post. He could have resumed
practice with Wells, who also lost his justiceship in the
ten-pound court. But the bar was overcrowded, having
about a hundred members in a city of 60,000, and Cole-
man had starved at it before. While a lawyer in
Greenfield, he had established the first newspaper there,
the Impartial Intelligencer, and had written for it, and
FOUNDING THE EVENING POST 17
he had then half formed an ambition to conduct a news-
paper in New York. Far from having any money of
his own, he had been left deep in debt by his participation
in the unfortunate Yazoo speculation in Georgia lands.
But he knew that the party leaders were thinking of the
need for a better Federalist newspaper, and he stepped
forward to offer his assistance in establishing one.
During the spring Coleman was busy campaigning for
Stephen Van Rensselaer, Fcderahst candidate for Gov-
ernor, who happened to be Hamilton's brother-in-law,
and for the Assembly ticket. The American Citizen
repeatedly commented on his activity; on April 22, it
predicted that this "seller of two-pence halfpenny
pamphlets, this sycophantic messenger of Gen. Hamilton
. . . will at one time or another receive a due reward."
During probably May and June, in consultations among
Hamilton, Wells, Mayor Varick, Troup, Woolsey, a
Commissioner of Bankruptcy named Caleb S. Riggs, and
Coleman, the plan of the Evening Post was drafted.
Woolsey had married a sister of Theodore Dwight, the
editor of the Connecticut Courant at Hartford, and
wished Dwight placed in charge, but he finally acquiesced
in entrusting the new enterprise to Coleman.
A founders' list was secretly circulated among trusty
Federalists, and signers were expected to contribute a
minimum of $100. The initial capital required was
probably not much in excess of $10,000. A Baltimore
newspaper, the Anti-Democrat, was established at this
time by Judge Samuel Chase, Robert Goodloe Harper,
and other Federalists, for $8,000. Hamilton's adherents,
who included almost the whole commercial group of
New York, were wealthy; and Hamilton himself, liberal
to a fault with his large income, probably offered not less
than $1,000. Besides the names already listed, we know
of some other men who contributed, as the merchant,
Samuel Boyd, and the dismissed Collector, Joshua Sands.
Coleman told the poet Bryant, his successor, that Archi-
bald Gracie, one of the richest and most dignified
merchants, had assisted, and a tradition in the family
1 8 THE EVENING POST
has it that the Evening Post was founded at a meeting
in the Gracie home. The American Citizen of the time
declares that a certain auctioneer — perhaps Leonard
Bleecker, perhaps the elder Philip Hone, perhaps James
Byrne — "contributed largely." These men did not
present the money outright, but vested the property in
Coleman, who gav6 his notes in return; unfortunately,
he was never able to meet them, and before 1810 all
his American creditors, as one of his friends states in a
letter of that year, "signed his discharge without receiving
anything." The project was rapidly matured. "In a
moment thousands of dollars were raised," wrote
Cheetham. During the summer of 1801 a fine brick
office was made ready on Pine Street, and about the
beginning of November would-be readers were asked to
enter their subscriptions.
The initial subscribers numbered about 600, and among
the names entered in the journal's first account book,
which was unfortunately lost years ago, were the
following :
Daniel D. Tompkins, i Wall Street
John Jacob Astor, 71 Liberty Street
Garrett H. Striker, 181 Broadway
Henry Doyer, Bowery Lane
Anthony Lispenard, 19 Park Street
Strong Sturges, 13 Oliver Street
Anthony Bleecker, 25 Water Street
Joel and Jonathan Post, Wall and William Streets
Isaac Haviland, 186 Water Street
John McKesson, 82 Broadway
Matthew Clarkson, 26 Pearl Street
Nathaniel L. Sturges, 47 Wall Street
Philip Livingston, Yonkers
Philip Hone, 56 Dey Street
R. Belden, 153 Broadway
Col. Barclay, 142 Greenwich Street
John Cruger, 30 Greenwich Street
Anthony Dey, 19 Cedar Street
Robert Morris, 33 Water Street
Robert Thorne, 2 Coenties slip
FOUNDING THE EVENING POST 19
Isaac Ledyard, 2 Pearl Street
James Carter, 195 Greenwich Street
Cornelius Bogert, 24 Pine Street
Grant Thorburn, 22 Nassau Street
Philip L. Jones, 74 Broadway
Robert Swarthout, 62 Water Street
In the first Issue, Nov. 16, 1801, appeared a pro-
spectus which may have been written by Coleman alone,
but is more likely the product of his collaboration with
Hamilton. Every reader looked first to see what was
said of party affairs. The editor promised to support
Federalism, but without dogmatism or intolerance; he^
declared his belief "that honest and virtuous men are to \
be found In each party'*; and he made It clear that the I
columns would always be open to communications from /
Democrats. Merchants were assured that special atten-
tion would be paid to whatever affected them, and that
the earliest commercial Information, which In those days
meant chiefly arrivals and sailings of ships, would be
obtained. Newspaper exchanges, and current pamphlets,
magazines, and reviews would be searched for whatever
was most Informing and entertaining. Letter-writers
were asked not to enclose their names, a bad rule which
Coleman soon found it expedient to abrogate. Prominent
In the prospectus was the paragraph still carried at the
head of the Evening Post's editorial columns:
The design of this paper is to diffuse among the people correct^
information on all interesting subjects, to inculcate just principles I
in religion, morals, and politics; and to cultivate a taste for sound ]
literature.
An effort \yas actually for a time made to tcich religious
truths. In an early Issue a letter was printed, probably
from some cleric, combating certain atheistic views ex-
pressed by Cheetham's American Citizen; an editorial ar-
ticle soon after was devoted to a discussion of the Revela-
tion of St. John; and Coleman never tired of attacking
the deism of local "Illumlnatl."
In Its opening sentences the prospectus stated that the
10 THE EVENING POST
journal would appear in a dress worthy of the liberal
patronage promised. To modern eyes the first volumes
are cramped, dingy, and uninviting. Each issue consisted
of a single sheet folded once, to make four pages, as
continued to be the case until the middle eighties; a page
measured only 14 by k)]/^ inches; and the conventional
cuts of ships, houses, stoves, furniture, and coiffures
would be disfiguring if they were not quaint. But when
we compare the Evening Post with its contemporaries we
see that the statement was not empty. Editor Callender
remarked that "This newspaper is, beyond all compari-
son, the most elegant piece of workmanship that we have
seen, either in Europe or America." The Gazette of the
United States commented that it was published "in a style
by far superior to that of any other newspaper in the
United States." How could it afford this style? it asked.
Advertisements were the secret, for out of twenty col-
umns, fourteen or fifteen were always filled with the pat-
ronage of Federalist merchants. Few journals then had
more than two full fonts of type, and some were set en-
tirely in minion. Coleman and his printer, a young man
from Hartford named Michael Burnham, had started
with four full fonts of new type beautifully cut; they
used a superior grade of paper; and the arrangement and
use of headings had been carefully studied. Dignity was
then, as always later, emphasized.
Every Saturday a weekly edition, called the Herald^
was sent to distant subscribers, from Boston to Savannah,
with fewer advertisements and at least twice the reading
matter. Noah Webster, in conducting the Minerva, had
been the first New York editor to perceive the economy
and profit in publishing such a journal "for the country"
without recomposition of type, and had himself used the
name Herald. The New York Federalists relied prin-
cipally upon the weekly for a national diffusion of their
views, and with reason, for at an early date in 1802 the
circulation rose above 1600, as against slightly more than .
1 100 for the Evening Post itself. These were respectable
figures for that time.
FOUNDING THE EVENING POST 21
AVhat should the Federalist chieftains, Hamilton, Wol-
cott, King, Gouverneur Morris, and others, make of these
two instruments ? To answer this, we shall have to look
first at the qualifications of "Hamilton's editor," as other
journals called him.
The abilities of Coleman, an interesting type of the best
Federalist editor, were as great as those of any other
American journalist of the time. His formal training
was unusually good for a day in which powerful figures
like Duane, Cheetham, Binns, and Callender were com-
paratively uncultivated men, who wrote with vigor but
without polish or even grammatical correctness. Born
in Boston on Feb. 14, 1766, he was fortunate enough
to be sent to Phillips Andover, the first incorporated
academy in New England, soon after it opened in 1778.
Though he was a poor boy, he had for fellow-pupils the
sons of the best families of the region, including Josiah
Quincy, the future mayor of Boston and president of
Harvard; and for "preceptor" the famous Eliphalet Pear-
son, a master of the harsh type of Keate of Eton or Dr.
Busby of Westminster. Here he gained "a certain ele-
gance of scholarship" in Greek and Latin which, Bryant
tells us, "was reckoned among his qualifications as a
journalist." He formed a taste for reading, and his
editorials bear evidence of his knowledge of all the
standard English authors — Shakespeare, Milton, Hume,
Johnson, Fielding, Smollett, and the eighteenth-century
poets and essayists. Sterne was a favorite with him, and
like all other editors, he knew the "Letters of Junius"
almost by heart. Most Phillips Andover boys went on
to Harvard, but Coleman began the study of law in the
office of Robert Treat Paine, then Attorney-General of
Massachusetts, at Worcester. Nothing is known of his
life there save that he became an intimate friend of the
Rev. Aaron Bancroft, father of the historian George
Bancroft; and that he dropped his books to serve in the
winter march of the militia in 1786 against Shays.
Bryant knew Coleman only in his decHning years, but he
tells us that he was "of that temperament which some
22 THE EVENING POST
physiologists call the sanguine." Hopefulness and energy
were fully evinced In the decade he spent at the bar in
Greenfield, Hampshire County, from 1788 to the end of
1797. He practiced across the Vermont and New
Hampshire lines, made money, showed marked public
spirit, and seemed destined to be more than a well-to-do
squire — to be one of the dignitaries of northwest Massa-
chusetts. The newspaper which he founded at Greenfield
early in 1792, but did not edit, prospered, and under a
changed name Is now the third oldest surviving news-
paper in the State. In the same year Coleman set on foot
a subscription for the town's first fire-engines. He was
active in a movement, which many years later succeeded,
to divide Hampshire County; he set out many of the
fine street-elms; and in 1796 he was one Incorporator of
a company to pipe water into the town. He began train-
ing young men to the bar in his own office. In the Presi-
dential campaign of 1796 he made many speeches, and
his political activity was further exemplified by terms in
the Massachusetts House in 1795 and 1796. He was only
thirty years old when In September of the latter year
he received his honorary degree at Dartmouth. When
he invested his money In the Yazoo Purchase, he believed
that he would make a fortune — a Greenfield contempo-
rary says that he estimated his profits at $30,000. In
the flush of this delusion, he married, and bought a spa-
cious site In the town with a fine view of the Pocumtuck
Hills and Green River Valley, where he commenced the
erection of a house now regarded as one of the finest
specimens of Colonial architecture In the section.
The disaster which overtook Coleman when, at the
close of 1796, the Georgia Legislature annulled the
Yazoo Purchase on the ground that it had been effected
by corruption, he faced without flinching. It was natural
for him, on settling his affairs In 1797, to seek his fortune
in New York. We find It stated by a journalistic opponent
that he had received promises of help from "Mr. Burr
and other leading characters." At any rate, his first
partnership, which he later lamented as "the greatest
FOUNDING THE EVENING POST 23
error of my life," was with Burr, who had just ended
his term in the United States Senate. Coleman later
wrote that his share of the office receipts "came essen-
tially short of affording me a subsistence." One other
man destined to be a famous Federalist editor, Theodore
Dwight, had previously had a similar partnership with
Burr and had dissolved it. Coleman did better when he
joined his fortunes first with Francis Arden, and then with
John Wells. But he was still desperately poor, and his
creditors pressed him. Among those whom he owed
money were Gen. Stephen R. Bradley, of Westminster,
Vt., later a United States Senator, and a friend of Brad-
ley's, Edward Houghton; these two brought suit, and on
Jan. 27, 1 80 1, obtained judgments in a New York court,
the former for $691.71, the latter for $443.67.
Yet under these trying circumstances Coleman's ami-
able deportment, frankness, and activity made him well-
wishers among the best men of the city. He was of
athletic frame, and at this time of robust appearance;
with curling hair and sparkling eyes, he was a figure to
attract attention anywhere. "His manners were kind
and courteous," says Bryant; "he expressed himself in
conversation with fluency, energy, and decision"; and his
enemy Cheetham testifies that "no man knew better how
to get into the good graces of everybody better than
himself." Resolving to demonstrate to the bar the util-
ity of accurate reports of all important cases and deci-
sions, he spared no labor or pains upon his report of the
trial of Levi Weeks; for this little volume of ninety-eight
pages he collated five other notebooks with his own.
In all, Coleman was well fitted to become the leading
Federalist editor of the nation. The Evening Post was
expected by the party chieftains to take a prompt and
vigorous stand on every great public question, and to
voice an opinion which lesser journals could echo. It
was a heavy responsibility. "The people of America
derive their political information chiefly from newspa-
pers," wrote Callender in 1802. "Duane upon one side,
and Coleman upon the other, dictate at this moment the
24 THE EVENING POST
sentiments of perhaps fifty thousand American citizens."
When In 1807 the first journal of the party was estab-
lished at the new capital, Jonathan Findley's Washington
Federalist, its founder, after enumerating all the requi-
sites of an editor, named Coleman as their foremost ex-
emplar. "I cannot, In the field of controversy, vie with
a Coleman." In the summer of 1802 Coleman was nick-
named the "Field-marshal of the Federal Editors" by
his opponent Callender, and the fitting appellation stuck.
Wielding a ready pen, Coleman was apt in literary
allusions. His knowledge of law enabled him to write
with authority upon legislation, constitutional questions,
and practical politics. Unlike his successor Bryant, he
mingled freely with men in places of public resort, and
kept his ear to the ground. He took an interest In
letters and the drama which was quite unknown to other
"political editors." Some pretensions to being an author-
ity upon style he always asserted, and he never tired of
correcting the errors of Democratic scribblers. Against
certain expressions he made a stubborn battle — for exam-
ple, against "averse from" instead of "averse to," and
against "over a signature" Instead of "under" it; In 18 14
he offered $100 for every instance of the last-named
phrase In a good author since Clarendon. He was ex-
cessively generous, always ready to lend his ear to a piti-
ful story; Dr. John W. Francis relates that his eyes
would moisten over the woes of one of the paper-boys.
This kindliness made the columns of the Evening Post
always open to charitable or reformative projects. Cole-
man's chief faults were three. His style, like Hamilton's,
was diffuse; he sometimes forgot taste and decency in
assailing his opponents; and he was a wretched business
man. A few years after the journal was founded its
money affairs fell Into such embarrassment that friends
Intervened, and an arrangement was made by which
Michael Burnham, the printer, became half owner, with
entire control of the finances.
FOUNDING THE EVENING POST 25
II
Contemporary writers from 1801 to 1904, however,
seldom spoke of the Evening Post as Coleman's news-
paper; It was usually ''Hamilton's journal" or "Hamil-
ton's gazette." Just so had Freneau's National Gazette
2i decade before been called "Jefferson's journal," so
Cheetham's American Citizen was now sometimes called
"Clinton's journal," and there was even "Levi Lincoln's
journal," the Worcester National Aegis, which Attorney-
General Lincoln helped support. During 1801 Burr and
his partisans were much dissatisfied with Cheetham's
newspaper, and this dissatisfaction came to a head after
the spring elections the following year. A group which
included Burr, John Swartwout, W. P. Van Ness, Col.
William S. Smith, and John Sanford established a paper
called the New York Morning Chronicle, and after of-
fering the editorship to Charles Holt, who refused, gave
It to Washington Irving's brother, Dr. Peter Irving,
known for his tea-table talents and effeminate manners
as "Miss Irving." The Chronicle was of course for
several years called "Burr's journal." Just how close
was Hamilton's connection, never openly avowed, with
the Evening Post?
The most direct evidence on the subject outside of
newspaper files of the period is furnished by the auto-
biography of Jeremiah Mason, a native of Connecticut,
who practiced law in Vermont and New Hampshire
alongside Coleman, and became a United States Senator
from the latter State. He writes of Coleman:
As a lawyer he was respectable, but his chief excellence con-
sisted in a critical knowledge of the English language, and the
adroit management of political discussion. His paper for several
years gave the leading tone to the press of the Federal party. His
acquaintances were often surprised by the ability of some of his
editorial articles, which were supposed to be beyond his depth.
Having a convenient opportunity, I asked him who wrote, or aided
in writing, those articles. He frankly answered that he made no
secret of it; that his paper was set up under the auspices of
26 THE EVENING POST
General Hamilton, and that he assisted him. I then asked, "Does
he write in your paper?" — "Never a word." — "How, then, does
he assist?" — His answer was, "Whenever anything occurs on
which I feel the want of information I state matters to him, some-
times a note; he appoints a time when I may see him, usually a
late hour in the evening. He always keeps himself minutely
informed on all political matters. As soon as I see him, he begins
in a deliberate manner to dictate and I to note down in short-
hand; when he stops, my article is completed."
( "There Is ample corroboratory proof that Hamilton
contributed much to the opinions and expression of the
Evening Post, and there is every reason to believe that
this is the way he frequently did it. Coleman could read-
Jly have taken the dictation in shorthand. Seldom in the
thirty-two months between the founding of the Evening!
Post and the death of Hamilton could the General have
found time for deliberate writing. He had one of the
largest law practices in the country, and he was the leader
of a great party, regarded by a majority of Federalists
as the dashing strategist who would yet perhaps make
them as powerful as in the days of Washington. Yet
.that energetic fighter could not be kept out of the columns.
' "Those only who were his Intimate friends,'* wrote
Coleman in 1816, "know with what readiness he could
apply the faculties of his illuminated mind." No doubt
Coleman resorted for guidance on many nights to Hamil-
ton's home at 26 Broadway — the editor's house was a
few blocks distant, at 61 Hudson Street — and on not a
few week-ends to his country residence, called "The
Grange" after the ancestral Hamilton estate In Scotland,
which stood on Kingsbridge Road at what Is now the cor-
ner of I42d Street and Tenth Avenue.
From 1 80 1 to 1804 only a single bit of signed writing
from Hamilton's pen appeared in the Evening Post. This
was a communication denying the hoary legend, origi-
nally circulated in derogation of Washington and Lafay-
ette, that at Yorktown Lafayette had ordered Hamilton
to put to death all British prisoners In the redoubt which
he was sent forward to capture, and that he had declined
Alexander Hamilton
Chief Founder of the Evening Post.
(The Hamilton College Statue)
y
FOUNDING THE EVENING POST 27
to obey the Inhumane command. But a much more Im-
portant contribution was hardly concealed. This was a
series of articles upon President Jefferson's first annual
message, written under the signature "Lucius Crassus,"
and published irregularly from Dec. 17, 1801, till April
8, 1802. They were eighteen in all, and not equal to
Hamilton's best work. At one time the series was inter-
rupted by a trip of Hamilton's to Albany, but the editor
explained the delay by saying that he was waiting to let
the distant journals copying the series catch up with back
installments. Before their publication was quite com-
pleted in the Evening Post, Coleman issued them in a
neat pamphlet of 127 pages, with an Introduction by him-
self, for 50 cents.
All other contributions must be sought for upon Inter-
nal evidence, and such evidence can never be conclusive.
No one Is yet certain who wrote some of the essays of
''The Federalist," and it Is impossible to point to unsigned
papers in the Evening Tost and say, "These are Hamil-
ton's." The style might be that of almost any other
cultivated man of legal training; the content might be
that of such other able contributors as Gouverneur Morris
or Oliver Wolcott. It is possible that a long, well-written
article of March 12, 1802, upon Representative Giles's
speech for the repeal of the Judiciary Act Is Hamilton's;
it contains a good deal of information upon the pro-
posals which Hamilton made for indirect taxation when
he was Secretary of the Treasury. It Is possible that
Hamilton dictated part or all of the attack of April 19,
1803, upon the Manhattan Bank founded by De Witt
Clinton's faction, for it contains much sound disquisition
upon the principles of public finance. It is quite possible
that he furnished at least an outline for the article of
July 9, 1803, upon neutrality, which deals in considerable
part with the role he, Knox, and Jefferson played in the
Genet affair; and that he assisted later the same month in
an article upon the funding system, land tax, and national
debt. But it is bootless to pile up such conjectures. The
editorials upon the diplomatic aspects of the Louisiana
28 THE EVENING POST
treaty, the Chase Impeachment, and the navigation of the
Mississippi certainly represented Hamilton's views.
There is abundant evidence that Coleman wished to
do Hamilton personal as well as political service in the
Evening Post. His first opportunity to do this occurred
less than ten days after the founding of the journal, when
on Nov. 24, 1 80 1, it announced the death of Philip,
Hamilton's eldest and most promising son — "murdered,"
said the editor, "in a duel." The attendant circumstances
were obscure, and Coleman spared no labor to inquire
into them and set them forth accurately and tactfully,
correcting the accounts in the Democratic press. It ap-
peared that Philip Hamilton, a youth of twenty, was
sitting with another young man in a box at a performance
of Cumberland's "The West Indian," and that they ex-
changed some jocose remarks upon a Fourth of July
oration made the previous summer by one George I.
Eacker, a Democrat. Eacker overheard them, called
them into the lobby, said that he would not be "insulted
by a set of rascals," and scuffled with them. The two
excitable boys challenged him. Young Hamilton's com-
panion fought first, Sunday morning on the Weehawken
dueling-ground, and no one was injured. On Monday
afternoon the second duel occurred. "Hamilton received
a shot through the body at the first discharge," reported
the Evening Post, "and fell without firing. He was
brought across the ferry to his father's house, where he
languished of the wound until this morning [Tuesday],
when he expired." Coleman took occasion to utter a
shrewd warning against dueling. "Reflections on this
horrid custom must occur to every friend of humanity;
but the voice of an individual or the press must be Inef-
fectual without additional, strong, and pointed legislative
interference. Fashion has placed It upon a footing which
nothing short of this can control." The truth of this
statement had a melancholy illustration within three years.
Coleman also contradicted In detail, using informa-
tion which Hamilton alone could have furnished, a spite-
ful story to the effect that President Washington, when
FOUNDING THE EVENING POST 29
Hamilton was Secretary of the Treasury, used to send
him public papers with the request, ''Dear Hamilton, put
this into style for me," and that Hamilton boasted of
the service. Again, Coleman assured his readers, using
more information from Hamilton, that the letters which
Jefferson wrote as Secretary of State to the British Min-
ister, George Hammond, upon the debts owed to the
British, were given their finishing touches by Hamilton.
When Cheetham and other Clintonians charged Ham-
ilton with having procured Burr a large loan at the
Manhattan Bank — some Democrats were always snif-
fing a coalition between the Federalists and the Burrites —
Coleman placed the story in the ridiculous light it de-
served. However, he steadily refused to dignify the
many grosser slanders uttered against Hamilton by any
notice. After the statesman's death, the editor repeatedly
delivered utterances which he said he had "from Hamil-
ton's own lips," some of them upon matters of great im-
portance; for example, upon the role which Madison
played in the Federal Convention. Coleman in his later
years also professed to be an authority upon the author-
ship of the "Federalist." It appears from the Evening
Post files that Senator Lodge, the editor of Hamilton's
works, is mistaken in believing Coleman the editor of the
1802 edition of that volume — that John Wells edited it;
but Coleman took a keen interest in its publication.
"It is hardly necessary to say that Mr. Coleman, in
difficult cases, consults with Mr. Hamilton," Cheetham
observed in 1802. "Editors must consult superior minds;
it is their business to draw information from the purest
and correctest sources." Coleman never denied such
statements. In the summer of 1802 the Baltimore
American remarked that the Evening Post was "said to
be directly under the controul of Alexander Hamilton."
The editor rejoined that it was "unnecessary to answer
him whether the Evening Post is so much honoured as to
be under the influence of General Hamilton or not," and
went on to imply distinctly that It was. Callender re-
ferred to Coleman as "Hamilton's typographer." It
30 THE EVENING POST
is worth noting that when Charles Pinckney, leader of
the South Carolina Federalists, found that the weekly
Herald was not being regularly received by the Charles-
ton subscribers, he wrote in expostulation not to Coleman
but to Hamilton, asking him to speak to the editor.
Upon the Evening Post, as upon the Federalist party,
the tragic death of Hamilton fell as a stunning blow.
Announcing the calamity on June 13, 1804, Coleman
added that "as soon as our feelings will permit, we shall
deem it a duty to present a sketch of the character of
our ever-to-be lamented patron and best friend." The
press of the nation looked to him. The best report, said
the Fredericktown (Md.) Herald, a Federalist sheet, "is
expected in the Evening Post of Mr. Coleman, than whom
no man perhaps out of the weeping and bereft family
of his illustrious friend can more fervently bewail the
loss." On the day of the funeral the Evening Post was
suspended, the only time in its history that it missed an
issue because of a death, and for a week all its news
columns carried heavy black borders. Unfortunately, the
editor did not redeem his promise of a character sketch,
professing himself too deeply grieved. After devoting
a month to discussion of the duel and its causes, he turned
from "the most awful and afflicting subject that ever
occupied my mind and weighed down my heart" ; he could
write no more "of him whom I can never cease to mourn
as the best of friends, and the greatest and most virtuous
of men."
, Hamilton's family and associates wished a volume com-
p*iled from the various tributes to his memory, and by
Mrs. Hamilton's express wish, the task was entrusted to
Coleman. Before the end of the year he published it
with the title of "Facts and Documents Relative to the
Death of Major-General Hamilton"; a careful and taste-
ful work which not many years ago was reissued in ex-
pensive form. There was some talk then and later of a
more ambitious commission. Thus in 1809 the Provi-
dence American, deploring the fact that no biography of
Hamilton had yet appeared, suggested that Coleman was
FOUNDING THE EVENING POST 31
"the only person qualified." The editor, however, re-
sponded that a gentleman of more leisure, by whom he
meant the Rev. John M. Mason, had already accepted
the undertaking.
Yet the death of its great patron and mentor detracted
less from the vigor of the Evening Post in controversy
than might have been supposed. Coleman from the be-
ginning had been assisted not only by Hamilton but by a
half-dozen of the ablest New Yorkers of Hamiltonian
views. Gouverneur Morris was in the United States
Senate until 1803, but Duane of the Aurora declares that
he found time to contribute to the new journal. It is not
unlikely that three admirably written articles upon the
peace of Amiens, in the last month of 1801, were by him;
the first gave a survey of European affairs, the second
considered the effects of the peace upon American busi-
ness, and the third dealt with its effect upon American
parties. In 1807 he was still writing, for Coleman later
revealed the authorship of two articles he then sent in
upon the Beaumarchais claims. Oliver Wolcott was a
Federal judge when the Evening Post was established,
and later entered business in New York. He also con-
tributed from time to time, though after Hamilton's death
he was gradually converted from Federalism to Democ-
racy. In 1807 he offered Coleman a long editorial article
signed "Camillus." As Coleman ruefully said later, he
was "a man of whose political as well as personal recti-
tude I then entertained so little suspicion that I should
have delivered any article by him directly to the com-
positor without even reading it"; and the editor had it
published without carefully examining it. Its views were
so heretical to Federalists that in 18 14 the Democrats
were still tauntingly reprinting it, and Coleman was still
speaking of the episode with pain.
According to Cheetham, the able merchant, W. W.
Woolsey, whose grandson, Theodore Winthrop, lives in
our literature, appeared now and then in the columns of
the newspaper he had helped found. Ebenezer Foote,
the former State Senator and member of the Council of
32 THE EVENING POST
Appointment, who had helped Coleman obtain his clerk-
ship of the Circuit Court, contributed signed articles.
Rufus King, when he finished his service as Minister to
England In 1803, lent a valuable hand, and as late as
1 8 19 we find him advising Coleman as to the proper edi-
torial treatment of the Florida question. The editor
came to know him sufficiently well to give an intimate char-
acter sketch of him in Delaplaine's Repository, a maga-
zine of the day. Almost Indispensable help was lent by
Coleman's old partner, John Wells, who at times acted
as virtual associate editor, and took charge of the journal
during occasional absences of Coleman. Wells had a
taste for literature and the drama as well as politics, but,
says Coleman, ''he dealt chiefly in the didactic and the
severe."
Of the counsel and assistance of these prominent Fed-
eralists Coleman was proud, but he keenly resented any
imputation that he was their mere tool and mouthpiece..
This accusation was made by Cheetham when the Eve-
ning Post was not a year old:
Mr. Coleman says that to pay a man for writing against the
late Administration was a crime. He will allow that the applica-
tion of the rule will be just when applied to the present Adminis-
tration. We then say that Mr. Coleman receives the wages of
sin; for he is in every sense of the word paid for writing against
the present Administration. The establishment at the head of
which he is, is said not to be his own; it is said to belong to a com-
pany, of which General Hamilton is one. The paper was com-
menced for the avowed purpose of opposing the Administration.
Mr. Coleman, it is believed, receives a yearly salary for writing
for it, and for his wages he is bound to write against the Adminis-
tration, whether the sentiments he pens accord with his own or
not. He runs no risk, he has no responsibility upon his shoulders.
He may, in fact, be called a mere hireling.
Coleman replied :
Cheetham says that the establishment of the Evening Post does
not belong to the editor, but to a company, of which General
Hamilton is one; and that the editor receives a yearly salary for
writing for it. Now, though we do not perceive that this is of
FOUNDING THE EVENING POST 33
much consequence in any way but to the editor's pocket ... we
shall not permit it to pass uncontradicted. We therefore declare
that not one word of it is true. The establishment of the Evening
Post is, and always since its commencement has been, the sole
property of the editor: it does not, nor did it ever, belong to a
company, or to General Hamilton, or to any one else but the
editor; and lastly, the editor is not a hireling, nor has he at any
period of his life received wages for writing.
Not at all discomfited, the Jeffersonlan organ remarked
— and hit near the truth — that the journal had probably
been given to Coleman by the men who were known to
have raised large sums to found it. Certainly Coleman
until after 1804 was hardly a free agent. The distinction
and prosperity of his newspaper depended largely upon
Hamilton's good will. He gladly served the statesman
whom he called "my best earthly friend, my ablest ad-
viser, and my most generous and disinterested patron,"
but he had no real alternative.
Hamilton bequeathed to the Evening Post certain prin^
ciples which guided it for years to come. The Federalist
party In the nation at large gradually crumbled away, \
but fortunately for the Evening Post, It remained power-
ful In New York city until near 1820. Until the close of
the second war with England, a majority of the people
of the city held Hamlltonlan views. The primary object
of Hamilton was to establish a strong national sover-
eignty, victorious over all forms of disintegration. His
financial policy, which embraced insistence upon sound
money, and adequate revenues without dependence either
upon the States or Europe, was made effective while he
was head of the treasury. The commercial policy which
he favored was one which would develop manufacturing,
by a judicious protective tariff, to a parity with agricul-
ture, and make the nation self-sufficient. In foreign af-
fairs, he wished the United States to steer clear of Euro-
pean intrigue, and as he feared French influence more
than British, he tended to be more sympathetic toward
England. The Evening Post hence steadfastly opposed
extreme State Rights ideas, even when some New Eng-
34 THE EVENING POST
land Federalists asserted them in the War of 1 8 12. It
never ceased quoting Hamilton on financial questions,
and its recollection of his tariff views delayed a firm op-
position to protection until Bryant took the helm. It
opposed the identification of America with either party
tin the Napoleonic struggle, but for a variety of reasons
\X supported Great Britain.
CHAPTER TWO
THE EVENING POST AS LEADER OF THE FEDERALIST PRESS
Editorial pages of a century ago bore no resemblance
to those of to-day. Sometimes no editorial at all would be
printed; sometimes only a few scrappy paragraphs; some-
times two thousand words at once. Coleman was no less
addicted than others to those series of numbered edi-
torials which, dragging their slow length along from day
to day, disappeared with Henry Watterson. This was
the hey-day of the pamphlet, and it did not occur to most
newspaper conductors that they could state an opinion on
an important national event in fewer than several issues.
Thus just after the Evening Post was founded, while
Hamilton's eighteen articles upon Jefferson's message
were being slowly run off, six other long editorial articles
were sandwiched upon the repeal of certain discriminatory
duties. The public had hardly finished digesting them
when there ensued six upon the Georgia cession to the
United States. They were followed by a series of twelve
upon Jefferson and Callender. Frequently no effort was
made to give unity to the single Instalment, which began
and ended abruptly. A good many of these long and
ponderous editorials of Jeffersonlan days would have been
soporific had they not made up in shrillness what they
lacked in liveliness.
Our third President and the Evening Post stepped
upon the stage almost simultaneously. "Hamilton's
gazette," said travelers from the South, was to be seen
at Monticello ; while the Evening Post followed Jefferson
with steady hostility as he came forward to play his part,
In the words of a description In its meager news columns :
Dressed in long boots, with tops turned down about the ankles,
like a Virginian buck; overalls of corduroy, faded by frequent
35
36 THE EVENING POST
immersions in soapsuds from a yellow to a dull white; a red,
single-breasted waistcoat; a light brown coat with brass buttons,
both coat and waistcoat quite threadbare; linen very considerably
soiled ; hair uncombed and beard unshaven.
Coleman's most unjustifiable display of party animos-
ity occurred when his promise of fairness in the Evening
Post's prospectus was still fresh in men's minds. In the
summer of 1802 he reprinted from the Richmond Re-
corder the treacherous Callender's attack upon the per-
sonal morals of the President, arousing a storm of protest.
Much of this storm fell upon the head of Hamilton, and
on Sept. 29 Coleman published a statement that Hamilton
had not seen the attack before it appeared. Indeed,
wrote Coleman, Hamilton had been consulted upon only
one of the twelve Jefferson-Callender articles, that one
Involving constitutional questions. When the statesman
saw the accusations, he had expressed regret, for "he
declared his sentiments to be averse to all personalities,
not Immediately connected with public considerations."
But the editor did not take his lesson to heart. From
time to time he Indulged In outbursts against Jefferson
of a character which we can comprehend only when we
recall how outrageously even Washington had been vili-
fied by the opposition press. Coleman was not content
with harping upon Jefferson's actual humiliations and
errors, as his flight before Tarleton in 178 1 and his oppo-
sition to the Constitution In 1788. He accused him of
trying to cheat a friend out of a debt, and repeated the
tale of a black harem. In 1805 he wrote: "There is a
point of profligacy in the line of human impudence, at
which the most disguised heart seems to lose all sensi-
bility to shame; and we congratulate- the American public
that our chief magistrate has so completely arrived at this
enviable point."
However, in most editorials upon national affairs the
Evening Post displayed a breadth and coolness reflecting
the sagacity of the Federalist leaders who helped shape its
policy. From the outset it pressed the FederaHst con-
tention that everything should be done to develop a mer-
THE FEDERALIST PRESS 37
chant marine and a strong navy; the aggressions of the
Barbary pirates being frequently cited to prove the ne-
cessity for the latter. The Gallophile craze of Democratic
circles was attacked week in and week out. When the
claims of the sufferers by French spoliations were sur-
rendered by the Administration, the indignation of the
journal was outspoken. The destruction of most of the
internal revenue system which Hamilton had laboriously
built up was a cause of much beating of the breast. Not
merely did it weaken the Federal Government, said the
Evening Post; the nabob Virginia planter was given his
carriage untaxed, and the Western backwoodsman his
whisky, while the poor Eastern artisan still had to pay
taxes upon his sugar, coffee, and salt. The pretensions of
Gallatin to rival Hamilton as a master of finance were
ridiculed. The repeal of the judiciary act passed under
Adams was opposed as both unconstitutional and inex-
pedient.
But the primary achievement of Jefferson's administra-
tion, the Louisiana purchase, was treated in a tone so
unlike that of other Federalist journals that it is clear
Hamilton guided Coleman's pen. That noisy, artificial
denunciation which went up from most Federalists was
thoroughly discreditable. The Evening Post admitted
that "it is an important acquisition" ; that it was "essen-
tial to the peace and prosperity of our western country" ;
that it opened up "a free and valuable market to our
commercial states" ; and that "it will doubtless give eclat
to Jefferson's Administration." Of course it did its best
to spit into the Democratic soup. It asserted that Jef-
ferson merited little credit for the purchase, since the
fruit was knocked into his lap by the great losses of the
French in the Dominican insurrection, and by the constant
threat of the British to seize Louisiana. This was true,
for Jefferson had set out only to buy an island for a dock-
yard, and had been momentarily bewildered when Napo-
leon offered the whole western domain. No one at that
time understood the real value of the purchase, for Loui-
siana was an untraversed land, believed to be largely
38 THE EVENING POST
desert. Hence it is not surprising to find the Evening Post
asserting that the region was worth nothing for imme-
diate settlement, especially since not one sixteenth the
original area of the republic was yet occupied; and that
its chief use might well be as something to barter for the
Floridas, "obviously of far greater value to us than all
the immensej undefined region west of the river."
The Evening Post could not miss the opportunity to
ridicule Jefferson's characteristic exuberance. The Presi-
dent, in his enthusiastic message to Congress, told of a
tribe of giant Indians, of river bluffs carved into antique
towers, of prairie lands too rich to produce trees, and,
one thousand miles up the Missouri, of a vast saline
mountain, "said to be i8o miles long and 45 in width,
composed of solid rock salt." Coleman descended upon
this last assertion:
Lest, however, the imagination of his friends in Congress might
take a flight to the mountain and find salt trees there, and salt
birds and beasts too, he with the most amiable and infantine
simplicity, adds that there are no trees or even shrubs upon it.
La, who would have thought it? Methinks such a great, huge
mountain of solid, shining salt must make a dreadful glare in a
clear sunshiny day, especially just after a rain. The President
tells them too that "the salt works are pretty numerous," and
that salt is as low as $1.50 a bushel, which is about twice as high
as it can be bought in New York, where we have no salt mountain
at all. . . . We think it would have been no more than fair
in the traveler who informed Mr. Jefferson of this territory of
solid salt, to have added that some leagues to the westward of it
there was an immense lake of molasses, and that between this
lake and the mountain of salt, there was an extensive vale of
hasty pudding, stretching as far as the eye could reach, and kept
in a state of comfortable eatability by the sun's rays, into which
the natives, being all Patagonians, waded knee deep, whenever they
were hungry, and helped themselves to salt with one hand to season
their pudding, and molasses with the other to give it a relish. . . .
Nothing seems wanting this affair in genuine style but for the
House to "decree it with applause."
During Jefferson's second administration the Evening
Post concentrated its fire upon his foreign policy. By
THE FEDERALIST PRESS 39
the begini;Ing of 1807, when Coleman published a long
series of articles reviewing the international situation, the
great struggle raging in Europe was plainly threatening
to involve America. He accused the government of stud-
ied unfriendliness toward Great Britain. He held that
Jefferson had made any agreement with England impos-
sible, first, by dispatching the mediocre Monroe as Min-
ister to London, and second, by causing the passage in the
spring of 1806 of a non-importation measure aimed di-
rectly at the British. Why had the Administration been
so tame toward the Spaniards, who had actually invaded
American soil in the West, and tried to bribe the leading
Kentuckians to be traitors? "Instead of framing a spir-
ited remonstrance to Spain, demanding satisfaction for
the repeated injuries she has done us, Jefferson has been
able to go quietly into his study and amuse himself with
pleasing reveries about the prairie dogs and horned frogs
of the Missouri." Above all, why had the government
been so compliant toward Napoleon?
Napoleon, by the Berlin Decree of November, 1806,
had declared that no ship which touched at an Enghsh
port should be admitted to a port of France or her allies;
the British, by an Order in Council of January, 1807,
had tried to close all French ports to neutrals. Coleman
regarded both acts as outrageous, but centered his attack
upon the Berlin decree. Napoleon, as he said, was the
primary aggressor, and the British step could be palliated
as one of mere retaliation. "Our administration . . .
were bound in duty to their constituents to have imme-
diately sent a spirited remonstrance to Paris against the
Berlin Decree, as being not only a violation of the known
and established law of nations, but a direct and flagrant
breach of the existing treaty between the two countries.
And if such remonstrance failed in obtaining from the
French Government an explicit exception of the United
States from the operation of the Decree, the course that
was formerly adopted by the Federalist administration,
in 1798, should have been again adopted — ships of war
should have been Immediately equipped, and our mer-
40 THE EVENING POST
chantmen permitted to arm for the protection of our
trade." This position Coleman maintained throughout
1807. When the Administration tried to make the
Order in Council more odious by declaring that the
French had not put the Berlin Decree Into effect before
the British acted, the editor flatly contradicted It. He
supported his contradiction by evidence from John B.
Murray, a Federalist merchant who did an Immense ship-
ping business from the foot of Beekman Street, and others
who had suffered from the French seizures.
But worse foreign encroachments were to come. Late
in 1807 news arrived that a fresh British Order in Council
had been issued, requiring all neutral vessels trading at
ports closed to the British to stop at an English port and
pay a duty, and to repeat this stop on the return voyage ;
while from Paris came word that Napoleon had told our
Minister "there should no longer be any such thing as
a neutral nation." Napoleon answered the new British
Order by his Milan Decree, declaring that any ship which
paid a tax in a British port might at any time thereafter
be seized In French waters. It was difficult for an Amer-
ican to say a word for either combatant. Coleman ad-
mitted that the British action "carries something on the
face of it humiliating to our national pride." But he
continued so far as possible to defend the English, and
attacked the French with increasing zeal.
This policy did not cause him to condone the attack of
the Leopard upon the Chesapeake^ which stirred even
Federalist New York as nothing since the surrender of
Cornwallis. It will be recalled that the British Minister
requested the surrender of three men who had deserted
from an English warship Into the Chesapeake; that Jef-
ferson refused; and that the Leopard followed the Chesa-
peake from Hampton Roads out to sea, poured a heavy
fire Into her, compelled her to strike colors, and took the
three men by force. The Evening Post flared up In com-
mon with all other patriotic organs. It condemned the
attack as an indefensible outrage. It demanded prompt
and drastic action, and the editor's one fear was that
THE FEDERALIST PRESS 41
Jefferson would not resent the Injury with proper vigor.
It would be a mistake, wrote Coleman, simply to call upon
the British Government for disavowal of the dastardly
assault, and for trial of the offenders. The British would
grant the disavowal, summon a court martial, and acquit
the guilty naval officers. No, Congress must be convened,
intercourse suspended, an embargo laid, and then, if Eng-
land wished to negotiate, she could humbly send her
envoys to us. In the meantime, the coast should be forti-
fied, and steps should be taken to give the nation frigates
instead of Jefferson's useless gunboats. For weeks Cole-
man harped upon this string:
We entertain respect for Great Britain ; it is the land that gave
birth to our ancestors, and we feel an attachment to the soil that
covers their bones; we venerate her institutions; we look with
anxiety upon the struggle in which she is now engaged for self-
preservation ; we hope she will maintain her independence unin-
jured, and that it will yet be long, very long, before the sun
of her glory will begin his descent to the west with diminished
luster; but we can never behold with a criminal indifference the
ill-judged, the unwarrantable attempts of an unwise ministry to
trench upon the perfect rights of other nations; especially of one
which both interest and inclination strongly unite to render
friendly to her. . . . We shall always stand ready to raise our
feeble voice and call upon the patriotism of our countrymen to
rouse and resist them.
Four years later occurred the encounter between the
President and Little Belt. The former vessel had been
sent out from Annapolis to demand from the Guerriere
the surrender of a seaman whom the British were said
to have impressed. It encountered instead a ship which
showed no colors, and which it overtook just at night-
fall. The unknown craft refused to answer the American
hail; shots were exchanged — both captains later claimed
to have been fired upon first; and at daybreak the Presi-
dent found that it had cut to pieces a little British cor-
vette of half its strength. Again the general excitement
was intense. The Evening Post admitted that people
were too inflamed to listen to a cool discussion of laws
42 THE EVENING POST
and propriety. But in this instance it inclined to the
British view. Not only did Coleman maintain that the
President had been sent out with indefensible orders,
being instructed to reclaim the impressed sailor by force
if necessary; he held that the Little Belt had been justi-
fied in requiring the American ship to reveal its identity
first, inasmuch as the Little Belt was exposed to a surprise
attack by a French cruiser.
As the leading spokesman for the commercial com-
munity in New York, the Evening Post of course bitterly
opposed the embargo. This stoppage of all foreign
trade stunned the city. The day after the news came,
Coleman referred to the universal "uncertainty, apprehen-
sion, dismay, and distress," in which "every one is running
eagerly to his neighbor to inquire after information."
He declared that it would bankrupt the merchants, and
reduce thousands of laboring men to starvation. What!
no more ships to leave any Manhattan slips, no more
barges of grain to drop down the Hudson for foreign
marts, no more droves of hogs and herds of cattle to be
driven through Westchester for slaughtering and con-
signment abroad? The editor hastened to write a sting-
ing article, and then, after consulting leading Federalists,
put it aside in favor of an unsigned series by Rufus King.
It was pointed out that the embargo meant a direct
loss of fifty millions a year, a sum that would build a navy
amply sufficient to protect American rights at sea from
France and Great Britain. The Evening Post painted
a highly colored picture of the ruin of the city's shippers
and wholesalers, the distress of shipwrights, shopkeepers,
clerks, and cartmen, and the despair of Hudson Valley
jfarmers. It ridiculed the notion that the embargo was
a valuable implement for negotiation with England. The
British markets were well supplied, and Britons were
secretly rejoicing that the new American policy gave them
a monopoly of the world's commerce. "Why is the
United States like a pig swimming?" asked Coleman.
"Because it cuts its own throat." The embargo certainly
had no such effect abroad as its sponsors hoped. From
THE FEDERALIST PRESS 43
France It brought only the Bayonne decree, by which
more than two hundred American ships were seized In
French-controlled waters — an outrage of which the
Evening Post made much; In England the shipping and
farming Interests were greatly benefited. As Rufus King
predicted, it not only threw whole business communities
Into bankruptcy, but emptied the national treasury and
depleted the strength of the nation. When the spring
election came on, the Post announced a motto for Fed-
eralists which might have been made into the first Amer-
ican party platform: "No Embargo — No Foreign In-
fluences — No Mystery — Freedom of Debate — Freedom
of Suffrage — Freedom of Navigation and Trade — Lib-
erty and Independence."
Right as the Evening Post and other Federalist sheets
were upon the main issue, they were not always quite fair.
They consistently held that Jefferson was keeping the
object of the embargo secret,
But though this in its operation
May scatter ruin through the nation
And starve the mouth of ragged labor,
Or bankrupt his rich merchant-neighbor,
It must be endured without one moan,
Its causes and object both unknown!
while they never tired of capitalizing Thomas Palne's In-
discreet statement In the Public Advertiser that the em-
bargo was really preparatory to war with England. Yet
it was plain to the blindest that the measure was a des-
perate, almost despairing, effort to avoid war. Again,
the Evening Post accused the South and Southwest of
sheer heartlessness. Jefferson cared not who starved at
the North; he had saved a fortune from his salary, and
could feed his negroes herring as well as hominy. "Who
Is Macon?" demanded Coleman when that leader sup-
ported legislation for preventing violations of the em-
bargo. "A man who lives on the frontier of North Caro-
lina ; who can send out his negroes to provide for him his
venison and his wild turkey; who raises his own hominy
and grows his own cotton by the sweat of his hundred
44 THE EVENING POST
slaves, and who I suppose feels just about as much sym-
pathy for the millions of people in the Eastern States, at
whom he levels his death-doing blow, as the Bashaw of
Tripoli." Yet the South suffered in the long run more
than the North, where manufactures speedily began to
arise, and Jefferson saw his property in Virginia alarm-
ingly impaired.
Until the last the Evening Post struggled against war
with England, but it saw clearly that it was coming. As
early as 1807 its W^ashington correspondent, probably
one of the Federalist Congressmen from New York,
stated that a Cabinet officer had told him that the country
would have to choose between war with England or with
France, and that England would probably be selected.
In 1 8 10 the editor himself wrote that America could not
remain at peace with both belligerents, "and it is very
clear how the country will decide." The journal opposed
the Macon bill in 18 10, permitting importation and ex-
portation only in American bottoms, as involving certain
retaliation from Great Britain. It kept its two or three
short news columns garnished with paragraphs upon the
many American seamen languishing in French prisons
since the Bayonne Decree. Thus in 1808, giving a long
account of the mistreatment of two skippers from the city,
Captains Palmer and Waterman, the editor exclaimed:
"My blood boils in my veins." The next year he re-
produced a pitiful letter from a tar confined at Arras,
compelled to subsist on a franc a day, and burst out:
"Would you rest so silent and tame under a thousandth
part as much from Great Britain? You know you would
not." He wanted an instant rupture of relations with
France. The military tyranny which Napoleon spread
over unwilling nations of Europe was attacked in fitting
terms, and we find the French cruelties in the Peninsular
campaign dwelt upon at length. When in 1808 Napoleon
strengthened his alliance with the Russian Emperor, Cole-
man demanded: "Shall we join the confederacy against
England, the only free and independent nation left in
Europe?"
THE FEDERALIST PRESS 45
There was a fitful gleam of sunshine in 1809, when the
British Minister, Erskine, announced that the Orders in
Council would be withdrawn; but the clouds closed in
again when it appeared that he had exceeded his instruc-
tions. Coleman, examining these instructions at length,
blamed Erskine harshly for this disappointment to Ameri-
can hopes, but not the British Government. Like other
Federahst organs, the Evening Post regarded the dis-
missal of the next British envoy, Jackson, as "frivolous
and unfounded," saying that "no public Minister was ever
so shamefully dealt with." Helped by King and others,
Coleman bestowed great labor upon a series of articles
dealing with the Jackson episode, which he flattered him-
self would have more than ephemeral value. The Secre-
tai^y of State, Robert Smith, gave particular notice to this
series. Coleman rejoiced over the manner in which other
Federalist sheets caught up and echoed his points. The
Boston Repertory^ he said, is "always ready, independent,
correct, and able"; Dwight's Mirror in Connecticut
"shines preeminent"; in New Jersey the Trenton Fed-
eralist was a firm ally; in Philadelphia the United States
Gazette, long alone, was now supported by the Freeman^ s
Journal and the True American, while the Baltimore
Federal Republican and the Virginia Patriot had been
active. All these journals recognized in the Evening Post
the voice of King, Gouverneur Morris, and Col. Varick.
It became evident late in 181 1 that the paper's long
fight was lost. In reply to a war article by Duane, Cole-
man in a paragraph of deep pessimism admitted as much:
We have not, we never had, but one opinion respecting our
public ffairs with Great Britain; no differences will ever be
brought to a termination; no negotiations for that purpose will
ever be seriously entered upon, while Madison, or any other man
in Virginia, is President. All who entertain difFerent views or
different hopes, will find themselves wofully mistaken. And if
war must come, why not the sooner the better? I am free to
confess, that I think a breeze from any quarter is better than that
stagnant and sickly atmosphere which we have breathed so long,
and which must, sooner or later, bring with it pestilence and
46 THE EVENING POST
death. It is the violent storm, the tremendous hurricane, with
hailstone, thunder, and lightning, which cools and purifies the air,
reanimates the face of nature, and restores life to pristine vigor
and health.
There was in this statement almost the force of
prophecy. The war actually had just the benefits it fore-
shadowed. It cleared a sultry, oppressive atmosphere,
brought new and vital forces in national life into play, and
gave Americans a unity and self-confidence they had not
felt before. But this note was of course not struck again.
As the country moved steadily toward war in the spring
of 1812, it was with the Evening Post denouncing Clay,
the chief of the "war hawks," as a liar and demagogue;
accusing the government of deliberate misrepresentation
when it said that the Napoleonic decrees were no longer
being enforced; and calling for public meetings in New
York to protest against the drift to hostilities. When
In April an effort was made to float the "Gallatin Loan,"
Coleman did all that he could to discredit It. There
was no security, he said; the Interest rate, six per cent.,
was too low. "As It will very much depend upon the
filling up of the loan whether we shall or shall not go to
war. It Is evident that no man who Is averse to that
calamity can ever, consistently, lend his assistance to the
government to plunge us into It."
The great majority of men of property In the city
were with the Evening Post In Its opposition; so were
most of the lawyers, the faculty of Columbia College,
the pastors of the leading churches, and professional men
In general. On June 15, four days before the declara-
tion of war, the Evening Post published a memorial of
I protest signed by fifty-six principal merchants, John Jacob
I Astor heading the list. It Is clear that the Evening Post
1 wa s at all times In close touch with commercial sentiment.
' In April It said that the best-informed men in town cal-
culated the amount of American shipping and goods
within British reach abroad, and liable to confiscation, at
$100,000,000. All seaport towns, It added, were exposed
to bombardment and destruction by the British seventy-
THE FEDERALIST PRESS 47
fours. Coleman but expressed the fears of the counting
rooms along lower Broadway and the rich shopkeepers of
Pearl Street when he assured New Yorkers that the
State would be undone. "This portion of the country
will," he warned, "on account of its wealth and the easy
access to it by water, become the seat of war; and our
defenseless situation will subject us, in the case of a few
years war, to a desolation which a half century cannot
II
Twice has the Evening Post opposed with passionate
detestation, from beginning to end, an American war.
The two editors responsible, Coleman and E. L. Godkin,
were as far as D'Artagnan from being weak-kneed pacif-
ists. Both in their youth had shouldered arms ; both were
of Anglo-Irish blood, with a Celtic inclination toward
battle; both went through life joyfully snuffing new frays
from afar. It is well at this point, with Coleman
taking the leadership of all the anti-war journals south of
the Connecticut, to stop a moment to note what were his
personal qualities, as shown in his editorship, and what
the conditions of his work. The old-time journalist did
not speak softly, and carried a big stick. Coleman had as
much need as the rest to learn the use of dueling pistols,
and to know how to graze the libel laws. "He was
naturally courageous," says Bryant, "and having entered
into a dispute, he never sought to decline any of its con-
sequences."
We have noted that when Philip Hamilton was killed,
the editor condemned dueling as barbarous, and called
for a rigid legislation against it. Yet in 1803 he was
himself provoked into a duel. The previous autumn
^Cheetham had in an indirect, cowardly fashion charged
him with the paternity of a mulatto child in Greenfield, a
charge which Coleman had no difficulty in showing utterly
false, but which he resented by a challenge. Cheetham
accepted. News of the impending encounter got abroad,
and Judge Brockholst Livingston immediately issued a
48 THE EVENING POST
bench warrant, compelled the appearance of the two edi-
tors before him, and allowed them to depart only after
they had engaged not to use more deadly weapons than
pen and ink. Unfortunately, one Captain Thompson,
an ardent Democrat, accused Coleman of letting the
secret of the duel escape, and of having been animated
by a cowardly motive. Coleman promptly challenged
the fire-eating captain, and early in the new year the pair
fought in Love Lane, a sequestered road, then well out-
side the city, which followed the present line of Twenty-
first Street between Sixth and Eighth Avenues. It was
dusk of a cold winter's day when they met, with snow
falling and other circumstances uniting, as a second
quaintly observed, to make the affair "uncomfortable."
They fired two shots at ten paces, and then, darkness com-
ing down, moved closer and fired two more. Thompson,
exclaiming "I've got it!" sank mortally wounded into the
arms of his physician. Dr. McLean. He was carried to
his sister's house in town, was laid on the doorstep, the
bell was rung, and the family found him bleeding and near
death. He refused to tell who had shot him, or to give
any evidence whatever regarding the duel, saying that
everything had been honorably done — and his antagonist
must not be molested.
Coleman had repeated encounters of a less serious
character. In the Evening Post of January 12, 1807, he
begged the public to discredit Cheetham's "account of the
fracas on Saturday between Dr. Walker and myself,"
as it was full of errors, but he did not offer the correct
particulars himself. In 18 10 blows were struck when his
vote was challenged and he was insulted at the polls by
a tavern-keeper who said that Coleman could not be a
citizen because he had published the statement, "I had
rather be a dog and bay the moon than own myself an
American." This was a Democratic garbling of a half-
sentence in one of the Post's editorials.
Early in 18 18 the editor published a narrative of the
misconduct of a certain Democrat named Henry B. Ha-
german while travehng as a Judge Advocate up-State.
THE FEDERALIST PRESS 49
Hagerman stopped at a Kingston hotel, kept by an esti-
mable widow, and for some fancied grievance insulted
her so grossly that no newspaper of to-day would print
the details which Coleman laid before the public. On
the evening of April 1 1 Coleman was overtaken by Hager-
man near sunset at the corner of Murray and Church
Streets, and attacked without warning from the rear.
His assailant used the loaded butt of a rawhide whip.
The editor was stunned by the first blow, was repeatedly
struck and kicked as he lay prostrate, and when he stag-
gered to his feet, half blind with blood, was given a still
more savage beating. Public indignation against Hager-
man rose so high that he was hurried to jail for safety,
and not being able to ask for a change of venue, pleaded
for postponement of his trial until it subsided. Two years
to a day after the murderous attack, Coleman was
awarded $4,000 in damages, a huge sum for 1820. But
it was none too large. The editor had been prostrated
for weeks, recurrent strokes of paralysis followed, and
he was never in sound health again.
The physical violence to which editors were then ex-
posed harmonized with a violence of temper and manner
which was far too prominent in journalism, as in politics.
In noting this abusiveness it must be remembered that the
press was the product and mirror of its time. Politics was
conducted with far more scurrility and coarseness than
now, and the newspapers were largely an appendage of
politics. A day of backwoods gouging and fashionable
dueling, of constant fighting between street gangs in all
the large cities, of fisticuffs on the floor of the House of
Representatives, of a low standard of manners every-
where, was not a day for refined newspaper methods. It
took time for editors to learn that hard reasons do more
execution than hard names. Editors, moreover, were
prone to set up medieval conventions; they regarded
themselves as so many knights errant, roaming the land
for battle, no sooner seeing a strange crest than they gal-
loped to shiver lances.
It is usual to quote Coleman's quatrain
50 THE EVENING POST
Lie on, Duane, lie on for pay,
And Cheetham, lie thou too,
More 'gainst truth you cannot say
Than truth can say 'gainst you,
as a bold specimen of the editorial amenities of a cen-
tury ago. But Coleman went far beyond the lie direct
and countercheck quarrelsome. The American public
has always refused to take at face value the epithets which
editors exchange, and doubtless in Jefferson's time it put
a Pickwickian construction upon them. Referring to the
most prominent Democratic editor, Coleman once quoted
Milton's line, "Squat like a toad at the ear of Eve," add-
ing: "I beg the devil's pardon for comparing him in any
shape with Duane." Of Cheetham he said that he was
so habituated to lying that given a choice of truth and
mendacity he invariably preferred the latter, and on an-
other occasion he listed twenty-five lies In a single article
by "the President's unlucky toad-eater."
Coleman thought nothing of referring to Dr. Peter
Irving, head of the Morning Chronicle, as a "malevolent
coxcomb," and to his partner as "a pedant and black-
guard." Other journals fared no better. When the
Public Advertiser, a new Clintonian organ, libeled the
Evening Post, Coleman denounced Its "villainy" and chal-
lenged the "vile reptiles" editing it to produce their evi-
dence. The conductor of the Long Island Star also fell
afoul of the Evening Post. "This Kirk I have always
despised as a flippant, conceited, shallow fellow," wrote
Coleman, "but I did not take him for so great a fool as
his nonsense shows him to be, nor think him so black-
hearted and malignant a calumniator." In 1806 he
termed Samuel H. Smith of the Washington National
Intelligencer, the so-called "court journal" of Jefferson,
"the little monkey." Nine years later, when the era of
good feeling was commencing, he prided himself upon his
repression In speaking of the same able newspaper, in the
columns of which Clay had been glad to appear: "I shall
take no other notice of the charge In that profligate paper
THE FEDERALIST PRESS 51
than to say I have long observed there is no misrepresenta-
tion too base, no violation of truth too palpable, not to
be gladly adopted and circulated by that infamous organ."
Be it said to Coleman's credit that these examples are
the worst to be selected from the files for fifteen years,
during which the issues of the Aurora and American Citi-
zen teemed with such expressions. Moreover, there was
some justification for them. Cheetham, and to a less
extent Duane, were unabashed liars; Peter Irving was so
much of a coxcomb that even his friends called him "sissie
Irving" ; and Kirk certainly was a calumniator. Most
creditable of all to Coleman, he refrained from dastardly
slanders upon the private life of his contemporaries,
whereas they gave him no such consideration. In 1807
he declared his conviction that Duane was in receipt of
French gold, and many years later accused M. M. Noah,
the famous Jewish journalist, of avowing himself open to
a money bribe from the Clintonian faction, but he said
nothing of the conduct of any such man apart from his
editorial office. Yet his own enemies fabricated a story
that he had been dismissed from the Vermont bar be-
cause he had bored a hole in a courthouse ceiling to over-
hear rival counsel, and accused him of illegally convert-
ing the funds of Greenfield neighbors to his own uses.
It is not strange that when the press was filled with
this sort of utterance, libel suits were numerous. Cheet-
ham at the beginning of 1804 had fourteen actions pend-
ing against him, and in 1807 admitted that the total
damages which he had been compelled to pay reached
almost $4,000. Aaron Burr had brought one of these
suits, while ex-Mayor Varick in 1803 had obtained a
judgment of $200. It is evidence of the comparatively
moderate tone of the Evening Post that no suit against
it ever succeeded, though a number were begun. One of
these actions was brought by Robert Macomb, clerk of
the Sessions Court, whom Coleman had accused of taking
illegal fees, and another by a politician named Arcularius.
52 THE EVENING POST
III
When war was actually declared in June, 1812, this
belligerent editor, like most New York merchants, like
four men in five throughout New England, believed that
it meant the bootless ruin of trade and agriculture. It
had come with such final suddenness, he said, that Ameri-
can ships in European waters would almost all be taken
by British cruisers. It was professedly a war for free-
dom of the sea; in reality the shipping States believed, as
Coleman put it, that it grew out of "the Southern anti-
commercial spirit."
De Witt Clinton, the ambitious mayor, who was court-
ing the help of King, John Wells, and the Evening Post
in his aspirations for the Federalist nomination against
Madison that summer, told Coleman that he believed
ninety-nine men in every hundred in the city really were
opposed to the war. The editor was highly sarcastic in
his references to the local Democrats as "fellow subjects
of our loving Emperor Napoleon," and in those to "Mon-
sieurs Gallatin and Madison." For a few weeks, while an
alliance with France was thought a possibility, the £1;^-
ning Post steadily declaimed against it. A war with
Great Britain, fought single-handed, "will be neither a
predatory war nor a bloody war," it said; but if France
sends her squadrons to the American coast, British fleets
will follow, and the seaport towns will suffer. When
Daniel Webster, a young man of thirty almost unknown
outside New Hampshire, delivered a Fourth of July ora-
tion denouncing any cooperation with France, he was
fervently praised.
New Yorkers were fearful of two perils: a British
invasion across the St. Lawrence or Niagara Rivers, and
bombardments by sea. "We are fighting the world's
greatest Power," protested Coleman, "without the means
of annoyance or even defense." He told his readers, in-
correctly, that the frigate Constitution was sent from
Norfolk to Boston with only two rounds of cannonballs;
and correctly, that Fort Niagara, on an "exposed and
THE FEDERALIST PRESS 53
utterly defenseless frontier," had scarcely powder enough
for a Fourth of July salute.
For armaments at sea the Evening Post was always elo-
quent, but it took a different attitude toward the bustle
of preparations to invade Canada. When President
Madison requested the Governors to place the militia at
his disposal, Coleman applauded the New England execu-
tives who refused. Conjuring up a vision of a harsh mili-
tary despotism, he pronounced the President's action one
'^highly dangerous to the liberties of the people, and to
our republican form of government." In editorial after
editorial, moreover, he discouraged recruiting for Fed-
eral regiments. Are you willing, he asked volunteers, "to
attempt foreign conquests while your wives and little ones
are left exposed to an exasperated and unfeeling foe?"
As autumn came on, he made the most of the reports
of suffering among underclad troops. He wished no one
to forget that their misery had been caused by "a
wretched, incapable, mob-courting administration, less
concerned to provide supplies for their army than to se-
cure by low intrigue the places they so unworthily fill."
It required no little courage to declare that the war
was "a great national calamity," that it was "clearly un-
just," and that the points in dispute were not worth the
blood and treasure being spent. Two years previous,
when the Evening Post was angrily opposing the impend-
ing conflict, a mob of Democrats had gathered at Mart-
ling's Porter-House, and just before midnight had at-
tacked the house of Michael Burnham, part-owner of the
journal, smashing his windows, and nearly killing an in-
fant. Just after the declaration of war occurred the
memorable mob attack upon the Baltimore Federal Re-
publican, in which Gen. James Lingan, a Revolutionary
veteran defending the office, was killed, and Gen. Henry
Lee crippled. Jack Binns, in the Philadelphia Demo-
cratic Press, proclaimed that it would be only natural if a
body of angry men executed the same summary justice
upon the traitorous editor of the Evening Post. For
some time anonymous threats poured in upon Coleman.
54 THE EVENING POST
Among them was one which left him so certain that vio-
lence was actually brewing that he applied to Mayor Clin-
ton for protection; and the city watch was doubled,
special constables were held in readiness, and a party of
armed friends spent the night at Coleman's house. Noth-
ing, however, occurred.
Coleman defiantly maintained that his right to free
speech was in no way abridged by the declaration of war,
and published a special series of editorials, highly legal-
istic in nature, denouncing the Baltimore outrage. He
reminded the Democrats that in intimidating and attack-
ing the Federalists for their opposition they had short
memories. Had they forgotten their open resistance to
the hostilities which the United States waged against
France in 1798? This attitude, fortunately, met with
powerful support. At a great peace mass-meeting in
Washington Hall on Aug. 18, John Jay, Rufus King,
Gouverneur Morris, Egbert Benson, and Richard Varick
all assailed the war and asserted the right to outspoken
criticism of it. By this date Coleman's views had met
what seemed to him the strongest possible confirmation.
It had become known early in August that the British
had repealed the Orders in Council, which were the great
cause of the war, and for a moment hopes of peace had
risen high; but Madison immediately rejected the armis-
tice proffered by the British commander Prevost. The
anger of New York and New England Federalists passed
all bounds. "God of truth and mercy I" raged the Eve-
ning Post. "Our treasure is to be wasted, our immense
frontiers are to be one scene of devastation, where the
merciless savage is to revel in the blood of defenseless
men, women, and children, because the form of the
revocation is not satisfactory to our precise and critical
President!"
The first news of an important military event confirmed
Coleman's gloomy apprehensions. On Aug. 31 he was
able to write a long editorial upon Hull's surrender at
Detroit in that I-told-you-so spirit which is an editor's
subtlest joy. He called it disgraceful:
THE FEDERALIST PRESS 55
A nation, counting eight millions of souls, deliberating and
planning for a whole winter and spring, and part of a summer,
the invasion and conquest of a neighboring province, at length
making that invasion; and in one month its army retiring — cap-
tured — and captured in a fortified place — captured almost without
firing a gun! Miserably deficient in practical talent must be the
administration which formed the plan of that invasion; or the
army which has thus surrendered must be a gang of more cow-
ardly poltroons, than ever disgraced a country. . . .
What! March an army into a country where there were not
more than seven or eight hundred soldiers to oppose them, and
not make the army large enough! March them from a country,
which is the granary of the world, and let them famish on the
very frontiers for want of provisions! Issue a gasconading proc-
lamation threatening to exterminate the enemy, and surrender your
whole army to them! If there be judgment in this people, they
will see the utter unfitness of our rulers for anything beyond man-
agement, intrigue, and electioneering. — They have talents enough
to influence a misguided populace against their best friends; but
they cannot protect the nation from insult and disgrace.
Similar attacks upon the Administration's incompe-
tence followed every other reverse. From the early de-
feat at Queenstown Heights to the "Bladensburg Races,"
when an American force fled ignominiously before Cock-
burn's invaders and exposed Washington to capture, the
Evening Post missed no opportunity for harsh criticism.
'*Woe to that nation whose king is a child!" was a favor-
ite quotation of Coleman's. The journal was far from
unpatriotic, and sincerely deplored the several defeats,
but it held the government rigidly responsible for them.
The editor never changed his opinion that, to use his
words in the last year of the war, it was "an unsuccessful
war, ... a war declared without just cause and without
preparation, for the continuance of which no man can
assign a reason, and from the termination of which no man
expects an advantage." And patriotic though Coleman
was, he rejoiced In the failure of the successive efforts to
Invade Canada. He thought conquest In that quarter the
most shameless territory-grabbing. In these utterances
56 THE EVENING POST
we catch the first accents of the Evening! Post's century-
long campaign against "Imperialism." He wrote late in
1814:
Uti Possidetis, or Keep What You've Got. — The Lexington
paper (Kentucky) some time ago, before the British had got pos-
session of Fort Niagara, Michilimackinac, Castine, Moose Island,
etc., etc., about the time when Gen. Wilkinson was to sup **in
Montreal or Heaven," this paper then said if any ministers should
make a treaty on any other basis, than each to keep what they had
got, they ought to have a halter. But then it was my bull and
your cow.
In sharp contrast with these editorials were the exultant
comments of the journal upon the dazzling successes of
the Americans at sea. The Federalists since 1801 had
constantly called for a larger navy. The first-known and
most famous sea-flight of 18 12 was the victory on Aug.
19 of the Constitution over the Guerriere, a vessel with
which a London paper had declared no American ship
could cope. 'We have always contended that on an equal
footing Americans can be whipped by none," cried the
Evening Post. "Man for man and gun for gun, even the
veteran British tars can get no advantage over the Amer-
icans." With a shrewd appreciation of the opportunities
which Perry and McDonough seized. It began to insist
upon a naval force on the lakes. Naturally, It still
taunted the Democrats:
Though very little present benefit is to be expected from the
war, commenced as it has been and carried on as it will be, under
the present administration, yet it may have one good effect; it
will prove that in a contest where the freedom of the seas is the
object, a naval force is much superior to an army on the land. It
will prove, what the Federalists have always advocated, and what
the present ruling party have always opposed, the necessity of a
maritime force to a commercial people.
News came soon after of the capture of the British
sloop Alert by the American frigate Essex, and on Dec. 7
it was known that the United States, commanded by De-
THE FEDERALIST PRESS 57
catur, had taken the Macedonian. "This is the third vic-
tory which has crowned our little naval force with laurels
— may they bloom perennial!" exclaimed Coleman. He
rather ill-naturedly accused the Administration of be-
grudging the seamen, who were mostly Yankees, their
victories. ''Our language is," he concluded, ''give us
commerce and let us alone to protect it. We have ships
and we have men; nor will we go to France for either,
though your Jeffersons may recommend it ever so
warmly."
Nor did the Evening Post fail to take a vigorously
patriotic attitude upon the questions raised by the Hart-
ford Convention. The year 18 14 drew to a close with
the entire coast tightly blockaded by the British, the inva-
sions of Canada all failures, the capitol at Washington in
ashes, the British in possession of northern Maine, and
their hands at last free in Europe. Mr. Madison's war
had ceased to be an offensive war, and had become defen-
sive. The national government, almost without an army,
almost without money, seemed on the point of collapse.
On Dec. 15 there met at Hartford a convention of
delegates from all the New England States, who for three
weeks deliberated in secret; some believed that they were
laying plans to declare all New England — as Nantucket
had already declared herself — neutral, and to throw open
its ports to the British, while others said that they were
plotting secession, and the erection of a Yankee republic.
Coleman at the time had been called to Middletown,
Conn., on business, and proceeded to Hartford to see
some friends. Theodore Dwight, the secretary of the
convention, later stated that the editor tried to gain in-
formal entrance, but this Coleman denied. He never,
even when years afterward the Hartford Convention had
become an object of deep reproach, condemned it. But
upon returning to New York he did express a deprecatory
opinion of it. He commenced by declaring that the up-
roar of the Southerners over this "treasonable" gathering
was as hypocritical as it was groundless. Who were these
canting Virginians who inveighed against separatism and
58 THE EVENING POST
State Rights? The North had not forgotten that when
Jay's treaty arrived, the newspapers of Virginia unani-
mously began to discuss secession. It had not forgotten
that Senator Giles, author of the detestable Conscription
bill which had just failed, had then openly advocated a
dissolution of the Union. Had not Madison maintained,
Lj^n the Virginia Assembly, the abstract right of secession?
But Coleman then proceeded to speak a word of reas-
surance, and another of warning:
What precisely the Convention will do, it would be presump-
tion in any one to predict. . . . But from our personal knowledge
of the gentlemen composing the Convention, it will not be diffi-
cult to pronounce with certainty what they will not do. They
have been selected from the most respectable men in New Eng-
land, distinguished for their prudence, for their wisdom, for their
firmness. . . . We may be justified in saying this respectable
body, with such a president [George Cabot] at their head, will
not do anything rash or precipitate or violent; they will not take
any step but what every man of sound principles, every friend to
social order throughout the Union, will approve. . . . While they
are bent on preserving the rights that are reserved to the States or
the people, from usurpation and abuse, they will take care not to
trench upon those powers which are delegated to the United States
by the Constitution. The vessel at present wears well, and while
there is room to believe that she will go safe about, and there is
sea-room enough to do it in, why should they attempt to throw
her in stays?
The vessel did come safe about. When six weeks later
the news of the treaty of Ghent reached New York late
at night, the city was thrown into such jubilation by the
mere ending of the conflict that no one stopped to inquire
the terms. But Coleman and the other local Federalist
leaders, as they watched the crowds surging up and down
Broadway crying — "A peace! A peace!" knew that the
Democrats had nothing to boast. After a calm Sunday,
the editor presented his views on Monday morning. He
would stake his reputation that when the terms became
known, "it will be found that the government have not
by the negotiation obtained one single avowed object,
THE FEDERALIST PRESS 59
for which they involved the country in this bloody and
expensive war." He enumerated these objects — the stop-
page of impressments, the conquest of Canada, and the
abolition of commercial restrictions. He catalogued the
loss of life, the suffering on every frontier, and the waste
of $150,000,000 in treasure. The one gain that Mr.
Madison had obtained was a second term at $25,000 a
year in a marble executive mansion, gorgeously refur-
nished. But, he concluded, "let the nation rejoice — we
have escaped ruin."
A part of Coleman's disloyalty in the war, as oppo-
sition journals called it, lay in his vindictive pleasure over
every disaster that befell French arms. Editorials on
foreign affairs were rare, and usually ill-informed. But
three months after war was declared the Evening Post
based upon Wellington's victories in Spain the sound pre-
diction that the French forces would soon be compelled
to evacuate the Peninsula altogether. "Bonaparte will
never be emperor of the world," wrote Coleman, with an
eye also upon Russia's hostility; "it will require all his
talents to maintain himself even on the throne of France."
On Dec. 12, 18 12, when news had just reached New York
of the burning of Moscow (Sept. 16-20), leaving Napo-
leon stranded on an ashheap, a really shrewd statement
of his peril appeared:
We have conversed with an intelligent gentleman who resided a
long time in Russia, and about seven years of the time in the
city of Moscow. He informs us that the weather in that country
is generally pleasant till after the first of October, when the frost
sets in, and excessive storms of rain and sleet are experienced, and
continue with very little intermission until about the middle of
December. All the time the roads are so overwhelmed with water
and ice, that traveling is extremely uncomfortable, and many
times quite impracticable. After the middle of December the
snows begin to fall in such quantities that all traveling is entirely
at an end; and the usual communication from town to town is
interrupted for several weeks, the snows sometimes falling to the
depth of eight or ten feet. He thinks, if Bonaparte did not com-
mence his retreat from Moscow by the middle of October, that
6o THE EVENING POST
he will be obliged to winter there; for after that time it will be
impossible for him to get out of Russia. ... If he is obliged to
winter there, the Russians have nothing to do but to cut off his
supplies until about the middle of December, after which time
all travel ceases until spring, and the great army of the north
will be annihilated.
Indeed, it is plain from all the accounts we can collect from
. . . the French papers . . . that the Russians have nothing to
do but to hold out this winter, and their country will be relieved
from its invaders. That they are determined to persevere appears
to be certain ; the destruction of such a city as Moscow is a proof
of that determination, and a sure pledge that they will never sur-
render while they can hold a foot of ground.
Although the defeat of Napoleon at Leipsic meant that
England would thenceforth be able to turn Wellington's
veteran armies against us, Federalist editors rejoiced as
if it had been an American victory. They forgot for
the moment the implications of the event for the war
on this side ; they thought only of the triumph of freedom
over a military despot. "It is the morning dawn of lib-
erty in Europe after a long, a dark, and a dismal night,"
wrote Coleman. "This is the first ray of light which has
visited the eyes of an oppressed people for many years
past. For while Bonaparte remained in power even hope
was dead — nothing but tyranny and oppression could be
expected. And so firm had he fixed himself in his usurped
seat, that it appeared almost out of the power of human
exertions to shake him. . . . New prospects are opening
up on the thinking mind; humanity appears to be near the
end of her sufferings."
The wars in Europe and America over, the old rancors
forgotten, Coleman gladly accepted the era of good feel-
ing. In the spring of 1816 the Evening Post supported
Rufus King in his losing fight for the Governorship. But
from the beginning of the year it had made up its mind
that the Democrats, headed by Monroe, would gain the
Presidency that fall, and it went through the motions of
sustaining King for the higher office — he received only 34
electoral votes against Monroe's 183 — listlessly. Mon-
THE FEDERALIST PRESS 6i
roe's success made of the Federalist party a mere corpse^
over which factions in State politics fought hke hyenas.
Coleman showed no reluctance in admitting the demise,
though he conventionally explained it as resulting from
the Democratic adoption of Federalist principles. When
in 1 8 19 the Aurora attacked Monroe, the Evening Post
actually flew out in the President's defense. It was satis-
fied, wrote the editor, "that, take it all in all, the adminis-
tration of James Monroe is, at this day, more generally
acceptable to all classes of society in the United States,
than that of any other man has ever been, since the days
of Washington/^ Coleman was entertained in 18 19 by
Vice-President Tompkins at the latter's Staten Island
home, and confessed later that he fell quite under the
sway of Tompkins's "great affability" and "his winning
and familiar manner." In short, by 1820 no one would
have been surprised if some prophet had foretold that
the journal of the "Federalist Field-Marshal" would
shortly become the leading Democratic organ in the city.
But while it became half-Democratic, the Evening Post
never ceased to be the spokesman of the best commercial !
sentiment in the city. As such, it opposed, with a bitter \
show of sectional feeling, the Missouri Compromise In \
1820. The question at issue, said Coleman, was nothing \
more or less than "whether they shall or shall not be
allowed to establish a new market for the sale of human I
flesh." When the Virginia Legislature made a veiled /
threat of secession unless Missouri were admitted. Cole- /
man rated the South angrily. They were hypocrites to /
talk about the Hartford Convention; they had been /
cowards when Washington was burned; on John Ran- I
dolph's own statement, they were in constant fear of a I
slave insurrection — these and other "bitter taunts," as /
the Richmond Enquirer called them, proved the force of /
Jefferson's statement that the Missouri controversy was /
like a firebell in the dark. /
But the disintegration of the Federalist party of course
robbed the Evening Post of a great part of Its influence.
It was no longer a sounding board for the best leadership
62 THE EVENING POST
of that party; men no longer recognized In its utterance
the voices of Hamilton's ablest and most energetic suc-
cessors, King, Troup, Jay, Kent, and Morris. It became
merely one of a half dozen journals recognized to have
editors of brains and principle; and in 1816 it was des-
tined to wait just a decade until it began to receive dis-
tinction from a man of something more than brains —
a man of genius.
CHAPTER THREE
THE CITY AND THE "EVENING POST's" PLACE IN IT
The first carrier boys of the Evening Post had a city
of 60,000, a little larger than Mount Vernon and a little
smaller than Passaic of to-day, to traverse. From the
pleasant park at the Battery It was a distance of only
about a mile north to the outskirts of the town. Just
beyond Its fringes, partly surrounded by woods, lay the
Collect or Fresh Water Pond, from which water was
piped to the city, and in which, despite the ordinances,
neighboring housewives occasionally washed the family
garments. There were seven wards, designated, since the
names Out-Ward, Dock-Ward, and so on had been lost,
by numbers. The northern part of the town was the plain,
plebeian part, with much more actual wretchedness and
want In severe winters than New York should have tol-
erated. It was also the stronghold of Democracy, and
the fastest-growing section.
Every one who had any pretensions to gentility man-
aged to crowd south of Reade and Chatham Streets, and
the nearer a merchant or lawyer approached the Battery
the greater were likely to be his claims to social emi-
nence. The mansions that faced Bowling Green, or that,
like Archibald Grade's, looked from State Street over
the bay, many of them graceful with porticoes and pillars,
were called ''Quality Row"; and the neighboring streets
shone In their reflected luster. Many rich citizens, of
course, had suburban seats along the Hudson and East
Rivers. The aristocracy prided Itself upon substantial
virtues and substantial possessions — solid mahogany,
thick cut glass, heavy solid silver sets, old and pure wines,
and old customs. It was made up of almost indistinguish-
able elements of Dutch, English, New England, and
Huguenot blood. The members took no shame from
63
64 THE EVENING POST
their general absorption in mercantile pursuits; and Al-
exander Stewart would himself show you over his ship-
goods establishment at 68 Wall, Robert Lenox would
talk of the 35,000 acres of Genesee Valley land which he
had in hand for sale, one of the Swords brothers would
offer you his newest publication in his Pearl Street book-
shop, and a scion of the De Peyster family, which had
been in business since 1650, would himself sell you one of
his hogsheads of sherry at Murray's Wharf.
Twenty years later the Evening Post declared that
"there is not a city in the world which, in all respects, has
advanced with greater rapidity than the city of New
York." The population had leaped up to 130,000.
"Whichever way we turn, new buildings present them-
selves to our notice. In the upper wards particularly
entire streets of elegant brick buildings have been formed
on sites which only a few years ago were either covered
with marshes, or occupied by a few straggling frame huts
of little or no value." On Canal Street "almost a city
of itself" had sprung up where recently there had been
a stagnant marsh. In Greenwich Village and along the
Bowery two other veritable cities were assuming shape.
Large fortunes had been made by the sale of real estate,
and the prospective opening of the Erie Canal was ac-
centuating the boom. A visitor from Boston, whose
impressions were published In the Evening Post, praised
some of the Broadway stores as showing "more splendor
and magnificence than any I have ever seen," commended
the paving of the north-and-south streets, and showed his
Interest in the city's three show-places, the Museum, Trin-
ity Church, and the new City Hall, with Its rich Turkey
carpets, crimson silk curtains, and eighteen imposing por-
traits of warriors and statesmen. In 1823 a new building
was erected at the corner of Pearl and Flymarket Streets.
The Evening Post listed the objects placed in the corner-
stone — a paper by a local pundit on the supposed North-
men's tower at Newport, a copy of the Plough-Boy, a life
of Dr. Samuel L. Mitchill, the seventh report of the
Bible Society, and some coins. But the journal's chief
THE CITY AND THE POST 6s
interest lay In the amazing cost of the site — $20,500 for
a plot 25 by 40 feet. This, It said, was as striking evi-
dence of the city's growth as the ''twenty elegant ships"
which now plied regularly to Liverpool.
What part had the Evening Post tried to play in this
transformation of a provincial town into a metropolis?
William Cullen Bryant states that when he joined the
journal In 1826, It was "much occupied with matters of
local interest, the sanitary condition of the city, the state
of its streets, its police, Its regulations of various kinds."
That had always been true. No other New York editor
of the time took an interest in civic Improvements that
approached Coleman's.
For the paper's first fifteen years it might have been
questioned whether it viewed with greater dismay the
errors of the Democrats at Washington or the running
at large of great numbers of hogs within the city limits.
New Yorkers of to-day think of the toleration of swine
as characteristic only of the backward Southern towns
described by Mark Twain; but our great-grandfathers
saw them rooting In City Hall Park and basking in Broad-
way and Wall Street. As Coleman told his readers in
1803, they were "a multitude." Some men made a busi-
ness of raising them. One householder of the Fifth
Ward in 1803 had sixty at large; fifteen years later
Coleman knew a colored man who had more than forty.
Whenever, from a diet of dead cats and other gutter
dainties, they threatened to become diseased, they were
hurried to the butcher; with the result that fastidious
people ate no pork. Every one admitted that they were
unsightly, malodorous, and kept the walks filthy, while
every few months a carriage upset over one. But the
poor demanded them, and it was argued they were scaven-
gers. The one restriction, ill-enforced, was that their
noses be ringed to protect the turf.
As late as 1828 Coleman complained that pigs were
met everywhere in the lower part of the city. In his
campaign against them he gave full space to the accidents
they caused. A not untypical mishap occurred in 18 19.
66 THE EVENING POST
An alarm of fire In Maiden Lane brought the firemen
and the usual crowd of boys racing down Broadway with
ropes hauling a fire-engine. As they were at top speed
a large hog darted into their path, the whole line went
down, and the heavy engine passed over several. The
corporation had already passed an ordinance (effective
Jan. I, 1818) making it illegal to let hogs go unpenned,
but it was flagrantly violated. "Although every street
in the city is thronged with hogs, yet none could be found
who were individual owners," said the paper soon after-
ward. When efforts were made to send "hog-carts"
along the Bowery and other infested streets, angry owners
gathered and overset the wagons. In the spring of 1829
three thieves were actually arrested for driving into the
city, collecting fourteen fat shoats from the streets, and
starting for the country; they intended to bring them
back as prime corn-fed country pork. How long, asked
the Evening Post, would the shameful indifference to the
ordinance endure?
It was necessary to keep up an incessant fire of com-
plaint against the wretched street-repair and street-clean-
ing systems of the time. As early as 1803 the Evening
Post declared that the streets should in part be flushed,
and that it would hence be well "if the waterworks were
the property of the public, as was originally intended; and
not of a private company, who are attentive only to their
individual interest." In the summer of 1807 Coleman,
who was fond of a horse and gig, wrote that the Broad-
way road was in "such a state of neglect and ruin that
no one could drive through it after dark but at the hazard
of limbs and life," that after a heavy rain horses sank
up to their girths, and that serious accidents had occurred,
one rider breaking his thigh and another his shoulder-
bone. The ways were then crossed at intervals by open
gutters, sometimes so deep as to be a serious impediment
to traffic; even in front of St. Paul's, in the heart of the
city, Broadway when the Evening Post was founded was
traversed by one almost impassable. A campaign had to
be begun by the press for covered sewers.
THE CITY AND THE POST 67
In 1 8 17 the streets were described as dirtier than at
any other time since "the year of filth," when the British
had evacuated the city after the Revolution. In a sudden
access of energy the next year the authorities set gangs
of twenty to fifty men once a week to attacking the streets
with brooms. A fearful dust was raised, and yet the
roadways were still imperfectly cleaned. Coleman
pointed out that more frequent sweeping by smaller forces
would be better, and that In Boston much of the work
was done at night. In 1823 there came new grumblings
over the filth and garbage. "Notwithstanding the great
extent of the city of London," wrote Coleman, "we
have seldom seen cleaner streets than those of the British
capital. With those of New York the comparison would
be odious." What was chiefly needed he thought to be
plenty of water, and common sewers connecting with every
house. He waxed satirical :
To the Curious: — The collection of filth and manure now
lying in heaps, or which has been heaped in Wall, Pearl, Water,
and Front Streets, near the Coffee-House, and left there, will
astonish those who are fond of the wonderful, and pay them for
the trouble of a walk there.
Sanitary ordinances were few, and apparently hon-
ored rather in the breach than In the observance. The
city was full of unleashed dogs, and whenever in hot
weather a hydrophobia panic occurred — which was every
two or three years — they were slain by the scores. Dur-
ing one season they were dumped by cartloads into a
vacant lot at Broadway and Bleecker Street, and buried
so shallowly that neighboring residents had to keep their
windows shut against the pestilential air. Slaughter-
houses were tolerated In the midst of residential blocks,
and the Evening Post early In the twenties began to call
for their restriction. A correspondent related in 1825
how one butcher had recently purchased a small plot, and
threatened to erect a shambles there unless the owners
of valuable Improvements near by paid him a large bonus
— which they did ; and how when another butcher wished
68 . THE EVENING POST
a piece of property, he put up a slaughterhouse adjoin-
ing it to compel the owner to sell at a low price. The
ordinance against the summer sale of oysters was long
a dead letter. "You can scarcely pass through any one
street in the city," grumbled Coleman, "without running
against a greasy table, with plates of sickly oysters dis-
played, well peppered with dust, and swarms of flies feed-
ing upon them."
"The city of feasts and fevers" a visitor called New
i^ork — "feasts" in reference to the frequent banquets
on turtle, venison, and Madeira, "fevers" in reference to
the epidemics of yellow fever. There was one such epi-
demic in 1803. So great was the exodus that in Septem-
ber the population, which had been above 60,000, was
found to be barely 38,000. "It is notorious," declared
a writer in the Evening Post at this stage, "that notwith-
standing the prevalence of a malignant disease, and when
great exertions are made to check its destroying progress,
the streets of this city are in a most noxious state; and
will continue to increase in putridity, unless we are fa-
vored with some refreshing rains to clear them." The
Evening Post removed its business office to an address
on the outskirts of the city, and Coleman as far as possi-
ble edited it from the country. For a time, as he said,
in most of the town there was "no business, no society,
no means of subsistence even." New Yorkers could only
set their teeth and wait for the frosts.
With Noah Webster during 1803 the Evening Post
conducted a long-winded debate upon yellow fever ; Cole-
man maintaining that it was always imported by some
ship or immigrant, and Webster that it was spontaneously
generated at home. Coleman was right, though of course
absolutely ignorant of the reasons why he was right; and
while the articles, which abound in mutual complaints of
discourtesy, became very tiresome, Coleman's argument
tended to a sound conclusion. He argued that the epi-
demics could be avoided by rigidly quarantining the city.
It was always held contrary to public policy by many
merchants and officials to breathe a word about yellow
THE CITY AND THE POST 69
fever till the last possible moment; for that drove trade
to Boston or Philadelphia. But Coleman never failed
to play the Dr. Stockmarr role courageously.
In 1809, for example, the paper braved the anger of
business men by asserting on July 24 that, despite all
denials, several deaths from the fever had just occurred
in Brooklyn. Though an epidemic was raging in Cuba,
ships from Havana had been allowed to come up from
quarantine within four days of arrival, and had not been
unloaded and cleansed according to the law. On July 28,
by diligent scouting among doctors, Coleman was enabled
to report a death from fever in Cherry Street and another
In Beekman Street. He renewed his charge of mal-
feasance and neglect by the Health Officer at quarantine,
a political appointee who pocketed $15 ,000 a year. Why,
he demanded, were the laws as to the removal of the sick
and the reporting of new cases not enforced? Four days
later Mayor De Witt Clinton by proclamation forbade
intercourse with the village of Brooklyn. At last I ex-
claimed the editor. But why not look to conditions within
Manhattan Itself, and make the ordinary physician obey
the law? "If he does, one of the learned faculty will
set a young cub of a student upon him to tear him In
pieces for alarming the old women; and then there is
another set who declare him a public enemy."
Just ten years later, remarking that "it has hereto-
fore been the practice to stifle, as long as possible, the
intelligence that the yellow fever existed In the city,"
Coleman served notice that if It broke out, as it did in
August, he would advertise the fact. In 1822 there was
a severe pestilence. The first case occurred on July 1 1
in a house on Rector Street, and was Immediately made
known to the Board of Health and to the officer deputed
by law to give the first notice of its appearance. Yet
it was concealed from the public for nearly a month,
deaths occurring all the while, but no precautionary meas-
ures being taken; and before the epidemic ended, late in
October, 388 persons died. The flight of the population
toward the open parts of the island was unprecedented.
70 THE EVENING POST
An immediate agitation was begun by the Evening Post
for a different organization of the Board of Health. By
an act two years previous, it consisted of such persons as
the Common Council should appoint, a phrase which the
Council always construed to mean that it should itself act
as the Board. The members were quite untrained, while
they were too numerous, and too busy with politics. Cole-
man suggested a Board of from five to seven qualified
men, to be nominated by the Mayor and confirmed by
the Council, and a reform actually did soon follow.
An irritant of the time, akin to automobile speedsters
of to-day, lay in the Irish cartmen, who loved a race even
more than a fight, and whom Coleman denounced the
more vigorously because they were Democrats to a man.
The bakers' boys were called "flying Mercuries"; to ex-
cite terror, said the Evening Post in 1805, they partic-
ularly delighted in crashing round a narrow street cor-
ner at a dead gallop, splashing those whom they did not
graze. The journal in 18 17 felt it proper to attack the
practice of riding fast horses home from the blacksmith's
without a bridle. Among the annoyances showing a lack
of due city regulations was the appearance in 1820 of
an ingenious mode of kite-flying. As flown in daytime,
kites had always been admirably calculated to scare
horses. Now they were being sent up at night by hordes
of urchins, said the Evening Post, with a parachute and a
little car affixed, the car containing lighted candles, and
the whole so constructed that it could be separated from
the kite at pleasure. They were miraculously adapted for
setting roofs afire.
Most residential streets must have been fairly quiet;
but they were not sufficiently so to suit the harassed edi-
tor. We find him In 1803 declaiming In order against
the varied noises: "The measured ditty of the young
sweep at daybreak, upon the chimney top ; the tremendous
nasal yell of 'Ye rusk!'; the sonorous horn that gives
dreadful note of 'gingerbread !' ; and the echoing sound of
'HoboyI' at midnight, accompanied with Its never-failing
appeal to more senses than one." These "hoboy gentle-
THE CITY AND THE POST 71
men," whose profession was connected with Mrs. War-
ren's, were still an abomination in 18 16, "bellowing out
their filthy ditties" for two hours after eleven. As late
as 1 8 19, at the flush of dawn every morning, a stage
traversed the whole length of Broadway northward, the
guard merrily blowing his horn as it went and all the
dogs barking. Hucksters, like beggars, seem at all times
to have been troublesome. At any rate, Coleman in
August, 1823, fulminated against them as to be found
on every street and almost at every door, and as offering
^'almost everything that can be named, from a lady's
leghorn hat to a shoestring, from a saddle to a cowskin,
from a gold ring to a jewsharp." Busy householders and
ordinary rent-paying tradesmen held them in equal dislike.
There was little of the moral censor or the preacher
in the early Evening Post. Yet it did not neglect the city's
manners. Temperance sentiment was then weak, but the
journal lamented the excessive number of corner grogger-
ies; for in New York licenses cost but 40 shillings, and
liquor-selling was more extensive than in Boston or Phila-
delphia. In 1 8 10 the Mayor and Excise Commissioners
granted 3,500 licenses, and it was estimated that of the
city's 14,000 families, no less than 2,000 gained a live-
lihood through the drink trade. Their little shops, many
of them in cellars, were reported to exhibit perpetual
scenes of riot and disorder. Six years later a writer in
the Evening Post computed that there were more than
1,500 retail establishments for liquor, and added that it
were better to let loose in the streets 1,500 hungry lions
and tigers. The editor favored a heavy Federal tax to
abate the evil.
The journal had the courage in 18 18 to take a stand
against lotteries, then resorted to not only for private
gain, but to raise capital for bridges, canals, turnpikes,
colleges, and churches. Their abolition would mean a
sacrifice to the Evening Post, for in some periods of pre-
vious years they had furnished one-fifteenth or one-twen-
tieth the whole advertising. But Coleman's heart was
touched by the losses of the poor. "Look at the crowd
72 THE EVENING POST
of poor, ragged wretches that beset the office-keeper's
doors the morning after the day's drawing is over, waiting
with their little slips in their hands, to hear their fate,
and the yesterday's earnings ready to be given to the
harpies that stand gaping for the pittance." He thought
there were two palliatives short of abolition: first, to
price the tickets so high that only people of means would
gamble; and second, as in England, to compel managers
to finish the drawings in a week or ten days, so as to end
the pernicious practice of insuring the fate of tickets.
Three years later, in 1821, an act passed providing that
no new lotteries should be authorized.
The Evening Post said nothing against public execu-
tions, which during the first quarter of the century drew
crowds of thousands; but it did cease at an early date, on
principle, to publish long accounts of them. In June>
1 8 19, it barely mentioned the fact that a great concourse
gathered for the execution in Potter's Field, now Wash-
ington Square, of a negress named Rose Butler for at-
tempted arson, and that the disappointment was keen
when she was respited. Next month her actual hanging
was recorded in five lines. Imprisonment for debt was
repeatedly attacked by the editor.
Little was said by Coleman or any one else against
cock-fighting and other inhuman amusements of the time.
In 1807, however, the Evening Post opened its columns
to a writer who described with indignant reprobation a
bull-baiting which he had just attended. The bull was
worried by dogs until, with one horn broken off, his ears
in shreds, his tongue almost torn out, and his eyes filled
with blood, he stopped fighting and had to be driven away
to save his life. In other cities about 18 15, notably
Philadelphia, a great deal was being said against the
employment of chimney sweeps, a set of dirty, underfed,
uneducated urchins, who suffered from harsh masters and
a dangerous calling. Coleman joined the chorus, and
printed extended accounts of British inventions for the
mechanical cleaning of flues. It is interesting to note that
in 1805 the Evening Post was as willing to give up its
THE CITY AND THE POST 73
revenue from patent medicines as later that from lotteries.
The editor, rendered angry by the death of a little girl
who had taken a worthless nostrum, denounced "the
quack medicines and quack advertisements which . . .
so much distinguish and disgrace the city." Some dally
papers were filled with advertisements of Restoratives,
Essences, Balsams, Lozenges, and Purifiers warranted to
cure all human ills ; and the vendors had begun to publish
in Maiden Lane a weekly organ, the Remembrancer, of
which they distributed five hundred copies free.
Upon the contributions steadily made by invention and
private enterprise to the comfort of the city many com-
ments may be found in the Evening Post. Some of the
most interesting relate to the old sailboat ferries, which
were both slow and dangerous. Repeated accidents oc-
curred early In the century. Following the capsizing of
a Brooklyn ferry one bitter December day In 1803, with
six passengers aboard, Coleman remarked that It was a
notorious fact that such craft were placed In charge of
fellows who were oftener half drunk than sober, and
who, unable themselves to steer, committed the helm to
any one who volunteered. He quoted the opinion of a
competent sailor that in build these boats were the most
dangerous ferries, especially in rough weather, of all he
had seen throughout the world. The Paulus Hook (Jer-
sey City) ferries, when contending against head winds
and strong tides, required three hours to make a passage,
and It was virtually impossible to get a horse and carriage
across the North River. On summer Sundays, when
many wished to go to Hoboken for picnics, and during the
autumn racing on Long Island, prodigious queues would
form at the piers. But on July 18, 18 12, a steam ferry
was set In motion between Manhattan and Paulus Hook
by Robert Fulton. Surpassing all expectations, it proved
able to accommodate six carriages and horses — driven
easily aboard by a floating bridge — and 300 passengers
at one time, and to cross during a calm in fourteen min-
utes, or against the tide In twenty. On July 27 some
1,500 people were ferried across and back; "a proud ex-
74 THE EVENING POST
ample of the genius of our country," said Coleman.
When in the summer of 1807 Fulton's steamboat, the
Clermont, began her regular service between New York
and Albany, the Evening Post was jubilant; he had made
only a few trips before it wanted the mail service trans-
ferred to him. It proudly recorded each new reduction
in the time, until one trip from Albany down was made in
28 hours. Even in October great crowds gathered to
watch the boat start:
Among the thousands who viewed the scene [wrote "New
York" on Oct. 2] permit a spectator to express his gratification at
the sight, this morning, of the steamboat proceeding on her trip
to Albany in a wind and swell of tide which appeared to bid defi-
ance to every attempt to perform the voyage. The Steam Boat ap-
peared to glide as easily and rapidly as though it were calm, and
the machinery was not in the least impeded by the waves of the
Hudson, the wheels moving with their usual velocity and effect.
The experiment of this day removes every doubt of the prac-
ticability of the Steam Boat being able to work in rough weather.
Unfortunately, this particular trip was actually disas-
trous. Leaving the city at 10 a.m., the boat was forced by
the gale and tide to tie up to the bank at noon, staying
there overnight. Next morning, before reaching Tarry-
town, she ran into a small sloop, and one of her paddle-
wheels was torn away. It was 10 o'clock on the morning
of Oct. 4 before she set her stiff and hungry passengers
ashore in Albany. She was immediately withdrawn, and
during the winter was almost completely rebuilt.
The journal appreciatively noticed the opening of
steamship navigation on the Raritan and Delaware Rivers
in 1809, as a means of shortening the trip between New
York and Philadelphia. In March, 18 15, it gave an
account of the first trip through Hell Gate and the Sound
to New Haven. The steamship Fulton left New York
shortly after 5 a. m., and, the weather being bad and the
wood for fuel poor, did not reach her destination till
4:30 that afternoon. Eight or nine hours would ordi-
narily be sufficient. The ease with which Hell Gate,
theretofore thought impassable by steam, was navigated,
THE CITY AND THE POST 75
amazed every one. No less than $90,000 had been spent
on the boat. ''We believe It may with truth be affirmed
that there is not in the world such accommodations
afloat," wrote a correspondent. "Indeed, it is hardly
possible to conceive that anything of the kind can exceed
the Fulton in elegance and convenience."
By the beginning of 18 16 the Evening Post was giving
much space to the possibilities of coal gas as an illumi-
nant. A schoolmaster named Griscom lectured the eve-
ning of Jan. 26 on the light, the audience including the
Mayor, Recorder, many aldermen, and prominent busi-
ness men. He demonstrated the use of gas, argued that
it would cost only half as much as lamps or candles, and
showed that it gave a superior brilliancy without smoke
or odor. At this time, as Coleman emphasized, Lon-
doners had extensively employed coal gas for four or
five years. During the summer of 18 16 a successful trial
was made in Baltimore. At last, seven years later, the
Evening Post was able editorially to direct attention to
the advertisement of the New York Gas Company, which
was just issuing $200,000 worth of stock, and which the
city government had given a franchise for lighting all
the town south of Grand Street for the next thirty years.
But the use of old-fashioned illuminants involved no
such hardships as did the city's exclusive dependence,
when Hamilton's journal began its career, upon wood for
fuel. As regularly as the Hudson froze and snowdrifts
blocked the roads, prices soared. In January, 1806, for
example, hickory rose from the normal price of $3.50 a
load (three loads made a cord) to $7, and some spec-
ulators even tried to get $8. In 1821, after a severe
snowstorm, $5 was charged for a load of oak, and $7.50
for better woods. It was with unusual satisfaction, there-
fore, that In the summer of 1823 the journal said that it
"congratulated the public on the near prospect of this
city being supplied with coal, dug from that immense
range" of potential mines lately discovered in Pennsyl-
vania. The new Schuylkill Coal Company and the Lehigh
Coal and Navigation Company were making preparations
76 THE EVENING POST
to ship the anthracite; and Coleman hoped that the city's
fuel bill of $700,000 or $800,000 would be cut in half.
Little criticism was given the watch or the fire-
men, though neither fully protected the city. In 18 12
the journal very properly attacked the "snug watch-boxes"
in which the police were wont to sit, and demanded that
the men be warmly dressed and kept constantly on patrol.
During 1818 its complaints of the insufficiency of the po-
lice redoubled, and in 1823, when the total annual ex-
pense to the city was $56,000, Coleman asserted that for
almost the whole ward surrounding Coenties Slip, with
many valuable warehouses, there was but one watchman.
The editor, using the adjectives "noisome," "beastly,"
"filthy," spoke of the jail and bridewell in 18 12 as stand-
ing reproaches to New York. He also condemned "the
abominable practises of the marshals, constables, low
attornies, and a number of other wretches" who hung
about the courts and bridewell to prey upon arrested men.
The Evening Post at intervals till 1820 complained of a
lack of inspection in public markets; while with almost
equal regularity it scored the neglect of the Battery, whose
only caretakers were too often the hogs.
The one reform of the time which the paper opposed
was the aldermanic decree in the spring of 1820 that no
more interments should take place south of Canal, Sul-
livan, and Grand Streets. This was good sense; but
Coleman, as a spokesman for the wealthy merchant fam-
ilies, objected because it rendered many family burial
plots or vaults worthless, and because the nearest avail-
able cemeteries were three and a half miles from the city.
II
We have already named the daily newspapers which
existed when Hamilton and his associates established the
Evening Post. The oldest of the five was the Daily
Gazette, which had been founded as a weekly in 1725 ; the
Post made six. Dr. Irving's Morning Chronicle, patron-
ized by Burr, seven, and the Public Advertiser eight. In
1807 the whole list of city publications was as follows:
THE CITY AND THE POST 77
Federalist: — Evening Post; Commercial Advertiser; Daily
Gazette; Weekly Inspector; and People's Friend.
Clintonian: — American Citizen; Public Advertiser; and Bowery
Republican.
Lewisite (Morgan Lewis was the inheritor of Burr's mantle) :
— Morning Chronicle.
Neutral: — Mercantile Advertiser; New York Spy; Price
Current.
Literary: — Monthly Register; Ladies' Weekly Miscellany;
Weekly Museum.
Of the dailies, the Evening Post was the most impor-
tant; its scope was the widest, its editorials were the best-
written, and its commercial news was as good as that
obtained by Lang or Belden. Yet even it had, at the
beginning of its second year, but 1,104 subscribers for
the daily edition, and 1,632, chiefly out-of-town, for the
weekly. New Yorkers then regarded newspapers as a
luxury, not a necessity. Since a year's subscription cost
$8, or ten days' wages for a workingman, the poor simply
could not afford it. Thrifty householders exchanged
sheets, and at the taverns they were read to wide circles.
The journal was never sold on the streets, and if Coleman
had caught an urchin peddling it he would have boxed
his ears for a fool; whenever a visitor at the City Hotel,
or a merchant particularly pleased by some long editorial,
wished a copy, he not only had to pay the heavy price of
iiYz cents, but had to go to the printer's room for it.
Coleman no more thought of his circulation as variable
from day to day than does the editor of a country weekly
at the present time.
We must remember that the dailies of old New York
not only had small and fixed circulations, but that it was
not their editors' intention to make them purveyors of
news in anything like the modern sense. Coleman in his
nrospectus made no promise of enterprise in supplying
mtelligence. An editor was glad to give a completer
notification of new auctions or cargoes than any rival, or
to be first to strike the party note upon a pohtical event;
but a news "beat" was unknown.
78 THE EVENING POST
It was said of the Commercial Advertiser that wars
might be fought and won, dynasties rise and fall, quakes
and floods ravage the earth, and it would never mention
them; but that if it failed to list a single ship arrival or
sailing, the editor would meditate blowing out his brains.
Several New York newspapers of 1 800-1 820 were prin-
cipally vehicles of political opinion; several were princi-
pally organs for commercial information and advertise-
ments ; and some were a mingling of the two. A modicum
of news was thrown in to add variety, and though it
tended to grow greater, even by 1825 it was only a
modicum. One great difficulty was that there was no
machinery for news-gathering. Coleman was his own
reporter for local events, and had no money to hire an
assistant; while almost all news from outside was taken
from exchanges, or from private letters whose contents
were communicated to him by friends. The mails were
slow and irregular. A still larger difficulty was that the
news sense had been developed neither by editors nor by
the public to whose demands the editors catered.
Illustrations of what would now seem an incredible
blindness to important events might be multiplied indefi-
nitely. A New Yorker who wishes to find in old files a
real account of the first trial of Fulton's Clermont will
search in vain. No report worthy of the name was writ-
ten, the brief newspaper references being meager and
unsatisfactory. Yet there was much interest in Fulton,
and the Evening Post of July 22, sixteen days before the
experiment with the steamboat, did give a good account
of his successful effort in the harbor to use torpedoes.
More than twenty years later the Evening Post carried
an advance notice of the opening of the Baltimore and
Ohio Railway, the real beginning of American railroad
traffic; but, like most other papers, it gave no report of
the actual occurrence.
Sometimes news was deliberately rejected. In 1805
Coleman published a long series of articles discussing Jef-
ferson's second inaugural address, but the address itself
he never printed; it being assumed that iii^«rested men
THE CITY AND THE POST 79
could find it in the Democratic press. Again, when in the
autumn of 18 12 a gang of robbers entered eight of the
largest stores of the city in succession, during a few days,
and took goods valued at $3,000, the editor made no
effort to place the particulars before his readers; could
they not ask the neighborhood gossips? He contented
himself with a warning to the public and to the watch.
On Jan. 10, 1803, early in the evening, the house of a
well-to-do tallow chandler named Willis, in Roosevelt
Street, was robbed. Next day the paper made only a
casual allusion to it, naively adding: "For particulars see
the advertisement in this evening's Post/' The obliging
Mr. Willis, in advertising a reward, had stated the de-
tails of his loss, which came to $2,500 or $2,600 in cash.
But on other occasions the editor made an earnest but
unavailing effort to procure the news. A single issue of
1826 affords two examples: private letters in town had
brought hints of a duel between Randolph and Clay, but
it proved impossible to verify the reports, while of a fire
that morning in Chambers Street no accurate facts were
ascertainable. In September, 1809, the Common Council
dismissed William Mooney, a Tammany leader, from the
superintendency of the almshouse, and men surmised that
the grounds were corruption. A few days later Coleman
published the following notice :
Information Wanted: — I have been waiting some days in hopes
that some person would furnish me with facts which led to the
disaster which on Monday last befell the Grand Sachem, who
lately presided over the almshouse. Surely the citizens have a
right to be Informed of such things. Will any person, acquainted
with the circumstances, communicate them to the editor?
Unfortunately, no informed person came forward.
During the last days of the War of 18 12, commercial
firms constantly tried to obtain private news of the prog-
ress of the peace negotiations. There is a pathetic note
of frustration in the Evening Post's item of Nov. 29,
1 8 14: "Considering the public entitled to all the infor-
mation in our power, we barely mention that there is a
go THE EVENING POST
London paper of the 28th ult. in town, which Is kept
from the public eye at present. We will not conjecture
what the contents are, but merely venture to say that it is
probably something of moment."
Nor was the news, collected under such great disad-
vantages, quite as accurate as news is now required to be.
In August, 1805, the evening papers caused much stir and
conjecture in the little city by announcing that Jefferson
had called the Senate together upon important foreign
business. Next day they explained that this false report
had originated with a mischievous young man who had
arrived from Philadelphia in the mail stage, and whose
name they would like to learn. Coleman was somewhat
embarrassed two years later to have to state :
We are requested by Mr. Wright to contradict the account
published yesterday of his being lost in crossing the North River.
When in 18 10 the town was on tiptoe to learn the
President's January message to Congress, or as Coleman
called it, "the great War-Whoop," two conflicting sum-
maries reached the evening papers at once; one communi-
cated by a gentleman who arrived direct from Washing-
ton, and one obtained through the Philadelphia Aurora
from a commercial express rider. While waiting fuller
news, they could only print both and let readers take their
choice. During the spring of 18 12, with war impending,
the press was replete with mere gossip and rumor, some-
times well founded, more often baseless. As late as 1826
there occurred a striking illustration of the inaccuracy of
much that passed for foreign news, and of the difficulty
which truth experienced in overtaking error. The Greek
revolution had broken out in 1821, and the massacres of
Chios and Constantinople, the victory of Marco Boz-
zaris, and the death of Byron had kindled a flame of
phil-hellenism throughout America. On April 26, 1826,
the Greek stronghold of Missolonghi was captured. De-
spite this, late in May there reached New York a cir-
cumstantial account of the relief of Missolonghi, the
slaughter of the Turks, the death of their hated com-
THE CITY AND THE POST 8i
mander Ibrahim, and the brightening prospect of Greek
liberty, all of which the newspapers spread forth under
such captions as "Glorious News From Greece." Early
In June this was contradicted by the true news. Never-
theless, wrote Coleman on July 20, "on taking up a late
Tennessee newspaper we find that the 'Glorious News'
has just reached our western neighbors and that they are
now only beginning to rejoice at the deliverance of
Missolonghl."
We can most vividly appreciate just how far the early
newspapers succeeded — for the Evening Post was typical
of the best sheets — and how far they failed as purveyors
of current Information, by listing the materials presented
in a single week chosen at random. In the seven days
May 9-14 inclusive, 1803, Coleman published the fol-
lowing Intelligence :
FOREIGN DOMESTIC
War Rumored Between Britain and Fire in Troy, N. Y.
France Editor Duane Apologizes for
Monroe Arrives at Havre Libel
French Hunt Haitians With Blood- Cheetham Fined $200 for Libel
hounds Column on Harlem Races
Two Columns on British Penal Re- Paine Publishes Letter from Jef-
form ferson
French Prefect Reaches New Or- Grainger's Record as Postmaster-
leans General
British Give South Africa to Dutch Fire in New York Coach Factory
Demands of Dey of Algiers on Two Benefits at Local Theatre
Powers Election Dispute in Ulster County
More Rumors of Anglo-French Election Incident at Pawling
War Advance Sale of Marshall's
Agrarian Violence in Ireland "Washington"
London Stock-Market Fluctuations XYZ Affair Reviewed
European Trade Rivalries in
Levant
French Troops Concentrate in
Holland
This was absolutely all, and many of these subjects
were treated In only a few lines, and with obvious haziness
and Inexactitude. It is plain that the week's budget did
carry much illumination to the public mind; but it is also
plain that only a tiny part of the world's activities were
being covered, that city news was appallingly neglected,
82 THE EVENING POST
and that a modern journal treating each day hundreds
of subjects would then have been inconceivable.
Yet the press could boast of occasional feats of news
presentation which would do credit to journalism even
now. The political meetings of each party were almost
always well reported by its own party organs. In 1807
Burr's trial was covered for the Evening Post by a special
correspondent whose reports were dry — there was no
description of scene or personages, no attention to empha-
sis, and little direct quotation of counsel or witnesses —
but were also expert, comprehensive, and minute. It
is well known that the greatest of American earthquakes
occurred in 1 8 1 1 In the Missouri and Arkansas country
just west of the Mississippi. The Evening Post was for-
tunate enough to obtain a three-column account of it,
vivid, intelligent, and thrilling, from the pen of an ob-
server who witnessed it from a point near New Madrid.
The special Albany letters were fair ; for years the Eve-
ning Post derived occasional bits of Inside information
from Federalist Congressmen, and made good use of
them; and its London correspondence, which began in
1 8 19 with an account of the Holkham sheep-shearing, was
on a level with much London correspondence of to-day.
One of the most extravagant items in the Evening Post's
first account book is $50 for getting President Madison's
annual message of 1809 to New York by "pony express."
An attempt was made to use carrier pigeons when the
House in 1824 elected J. Q. Adams President, but it
proved a failure.
After the commencement of the War of 18 12, as we
should expect, much more assiduous attention was paid
to news. From five columns, the space allotted rapidly
rose to six, seven, and even eight. Almost always, of
course, it was very late news. Word of the first disaster
of the war, Hull's surrender at Detroit, was published by
the Evening Post on Aug. 31, 18 12. The capitulation
has occurred on the i6th, and the news came by two
routes. An express rider had carried it from Sandusky
to Cleveland, and thence it was brought by a postal car-
THE CITY AND THE POST 83
rier to Warren, Pa., on the 2 2d, so that Pittsburgh had
it on the 23d, and Philadelphia on the night of the 29th.
At the same time it was coming by a southern path. Hull
sent a messenger direct to Washington, who arrived in the
capital on the 28th, and whose dispatches were relayed
northward.
Hard on the heels of this blow came cheering news.
The Constitution met the Guerriere on Aug. 19, and Capt.
Hull's victory was given to the public by Boston papers
of the 31st, and New York papers of Sept. 2. Thus
both the defeat and the victory were known to most
Northerners about a fortnight after they took place. Of
"the fall of Fort Dearborn at Chicagua," on Aug. 15,
the famous massacre. New Yorkers did not learn until
Sept. 24, when a brief dispatch from Buffalo was inserted
in an obscure corner by Coleman. All Washington news
at this time still required two full days for transmission,
and often more. When Madison on Nov. 3, 18 12, sent
a message to Congress at high noon, the Evening Post
announced that it and the Gazette had clubbed together
to pay for a pony express, and that it hoped to issue an
extra with the news the following afternoon. It also
stated that the previous evening an express had passed
through the city towards New England, reputed to be
bearing the substance of the message, and to have trav-
ersed the 340 miles from Washington in nineteen hours.
Next day the editor stated that the express had really
come from Baltimore only, and that it had been paid for
by gamblers to bear the first numbers drawn in the Sus-
quehanna lottery in advance of the mails. These numbers
had been delivered to the gamblers in New York, who
went to the proper offices and took insurance to the
amount of $30,000 against their coming up that day;
but the offices refused payment. It was nearly thirty-
six hours before Madison's message reached New York
from Washington, and it was not printed until Nov. 5.
Late in the fall occurred an interesting example of the
constant conflict of that day between rumor and fact.
Gen. Stephen Van Rensselaer sacrificed a force of 900
84 THE EVENING POST
men at Queenstown Heights, just across the Niagara
River, on Oct. 13. Seven days later the Evening Post
in a column headed "postscript" gave the city its first
intimation that a battle had occurred. Just as the paper
at two o'clock was going to press, it said, the Albany boat
had come in with word from Geneva that an army surgeon
had arrived there from Buffalo, and had reported a great
American victory — the capture of Queenstown and 1,500
prisoners. But the steamer also brought a rival report
from the Canandaigua Repository of a disaster, in which
hundreds had been killed and hundreds captured. The
city could only wait and fear as the following day passed
without news. Finally, on the afternoon of the 22d, the
Albany steamboat hove in sight again, and a great crowd
thronging the pier was aghast to learn that Van Rens-
selaer had lost a battle and a small army.
In the closing days of the war this episode was re-
versed, the rumor of bad news being followed by a
truthful report of good. On Jan. 20, 18 15, the whole
city was in suspense as to the fate of New Orleans.
Nothing had been heard from Louisiana for a month,
and three mails were overdue, which boded ill, for every
one knew that Sir Edward Pakenham and his 16,000
British veterans were ready to move upon the place. "It
is generally believed here that if an attack has been
made on Orleans, the city has fallen," said the Evening
Post. "But some doubt whether the British, having the
perfect command of all the waters about the city, and
having it in their power to command the river above, will
not resort to a more bloodless, but a certain method of
reducing the city." On Jan. 23 the Evening Post pub-
lished some inconclusive information received in a letter
from a New Orleans judge, dated just before the pre-
liminary and indecisive battle of Dec. 23. "We have
cause of apprehension," Coleman wrote, "that to-mor-
row's mail will bring tidings of the winding up of the
catastrophe." New Yorkers were particularly concerned
because city merchants owned a great part of the $3,200,-
000 worth of cotton stored in New Orleans. But a week,
THE CITY AND THE POST 85
ten days, and two weeks passed while little news was
procured and the tension grew steadily greater. Finally,
on the morning of Feb. 6, three mails were received at
once, with New Orleans letters bearing dates as late as
Jan. 13, five days after Jackson had bloodily repulsed
Packenham. The tidings fell upon New York with a
tremendous shock of surprise and joy, and the Evening
Post hastened to publish them In two columns and with
Its closest approach to the yet uninvented headline.
Under the stress of war the first news with conscious
color, pathos, and strong human Interest began to be
written. The earliest account filled with human touches
dealt with an Incident of the privateering of which New
York harbor was a busy center. The privateer Franklin,
two months after hostilities began, returned from the
Nova Scotia coast with a strange prize — an old, crazy,
black-sided fishing schooner of thirty-eight tons, less than
half the size of a good Hudson River market boat. Cole-
man, going aboard, found the owner a fine gray-haired
woman, a widow. The little craft was her all. Wrapped
In a rusty black coat as tattered as Its sails, "she cried as
If her heart would break" while she told the editor how
she had left four children behind her and had pleaded with
her captor not to be taken so far from home. It need not
be said that the publicity Coleman gave to this incident
helped persuade the captain of the privateer that honor
obliged him to send the fisherwoman back.
Two years later occurred an incident the humorous
values of which the Evening Post did not miss. Mr.
Wise, part-proprietor of the Museum in New York, with
a mixture of patriotic and business motives, had an ex-
tensive panorama painted of the glorious Yankee naval
victories of 18 12 and 18 13. Having got all the New
York sixpences that he could with it, he packed it up
together with the lamps and other fixtures for its exhibi-
tion, and a valuable hand-organ, and set sail for Charles-
ton to show It there. On the second day out from Sandy
Hook, the British frigate Forth captured -the vessel.
86 THE EVENING POST
Greatly amused, the commander promptly set the pano-
rama up for inspection :
So valuable did the captain of the Forth consider his prize, that
in the evening of the day he made his capture, he illuminated his
ships with the lamps belonging to the panorama, and kept up a
merry tune upon the organ. In the course of their merriment
they asked Mr. Wise if it could play Yankee Doodle. Upon his
answering in the affirmative, they immediately set the organ to
that tune, and in a sailor step made the decks shake. The captain
of the Forth said he intended to take the paintings to Halifax
and make a fortune by exhibiting them.
But, remarked Coleman patriotically:
The frigate President, we understand, is preparing for a cruise
now under the command of Decatur, and if they will have a little
patience we will furnish another historical subject for their
amusement.
As the war drew near its close, sometimes even ten
columns of news were furnished, and on several occasions,
as that of Gen. Hull's trial, a one-sheet supplement was
issued. The first cartoon in the Evening Post was evoked
on April i8, 1812, by the act of Congress cutting off
foreign trade by land. It showed two large tree-trunks
in close juxtaposition, one labeled "Embargo" and the
other "Non-Importation Act," with a fat snake held
immovable between them; from the snake's mouth were
issuing the words, "What's the matter now?" and from
its tail the answer, "I can't get out!" Such wit was
about equal to that of the second cartoon, on April 25,
1 8 14, which showed a terrapin (the Embargo was often
called "the terrapin policy") flat upon its back, expiring
as Madison stabbed it with a saber, but still clinging to the
President with claws and teeth. Below was some dog-
gerel expressing the determination of the terrapin to hold
on until it dragged Madison down and slew him. Evi-
dently readers were obtuse, for the next day appeared a
solemn "Explanation of the emblematic figures in yester-
day's paper." But as yet neither news nor cartoons were
THE CITY AND THE POST 87
published on the first page, which was sacred, as in Eng-
lish papers of to-day, to advertisements.
Except for one advance intimation, the news of peace
might have been as unexpected as that of the victory of
New Orleans. This intimation came on Feb. 9, in a
curiously roundabout manner. A privateer cruising in
British waters captured a prize which bore London news-
papers dating to Nov. 28, and carried them to Salem,
Mass., whence their contents were reprinted all over the
North. They contained the speech of the Prince Regent
on Nov. II, and the proceedings of the Commons imme-
diately afterwards, holding out hope for a prompt ending
of the war.
The news of peace itself electrified the city two days
later, reaching it by the British sloop Favorite, which
bore one of the secretaries of the American legation in
London, at eight o'clock on Saturday evening. No jour-
nal was so indecorous as to issue a special Sunday edition,
but on Monday the Evening Post contained a full account
of the delirium of rejoicing with which the intelligence
was greeted. Nearly every window in the principal streets
was illuminated, and Broadway was filled with laughing,
huzzaing, exalted people, carrying torches or candles, and
jamming the way for two hours. On Tuesday the Even-
ing Post recorded that sugar had fallen from $26 a hun-
dred-weight to $12.50, tea from $2.25 a pound to $1, and
tin from $80 a box to $25, while specie, which had been
at 22 per cent, premium, was now only at 2 per cent., and
six per cent. Government stock had risen from 76 to 86.
The wharves were an animated scene, ship advertisements
were pouring In, and "it is really wonderful to see the
change produced in a few hours in the City of New York."
And what of the Napoleonic wars? All European
news was then obtained from files of foreign papers, some
of which came to New York journals direct, and some
of which were supplied by merchants and shippers. It
was usual, whenever a packet arrived with a fresh batch,
to cut the domestic news to a few paragraphs, stop any
series of editorial articles in hand, and for several days
88 THE EVENING POST
fill the columns with extracts and summaries. Though
In 1812 a ship came from Belfast in the remarkable time
of twenty-two days, forty days was the average from
London or Liverpool, and European news was hence
from one to two months late. Sometimes a traveler, and
frequently a ship-captain, brought news by word of mouth.
A detailed account from the London prints of Napo-
leon's marriage at Vienna was not published by the
Evening Post till ten weeks after the event. Wellington
stormed Badajos on April 7, 18 12, and the Evening Post
announced the fact on June 1 1, or more than two months
later; while the battle of Salamanca that summer, where
Wellington ''beat forty thousand In forty minutes," was
not known for sixty-six days, the news coming in part
through a traveler who arrived from Cadiz at Salem,
and was interviewed by a correspondent there. It was
the middle of October when the armies of Napoleon and
the Allies took position for the battle of Leipsic, and
Coleman was not able to publish his three-column sum-
mary from a London paper till just after New Year's.
When the description of the battle of Toulouse came in,
there occurred an office tragedy:
Here ought to follow an account of a great battle between Lord
Wellington and Soult [explained Coleman after an abrupt break
in the news], and other selections amounting to about two col-
umns, but It being necessary to get it set up abroad, the boy in
bringing it home blundered down in the street, and threw the types
into irretrievable confusion. It will be given to-morrow.
After that wily and selfish old invalid Bourbon, Louis
XVIII, given his crown by the Allies, visited London In
state, a spectator sent a vivid account of his triumphal
passage up Piccadilly to the Evening Post. Louis had
passed so near that this tourist could have touched him.
"He is very corpulent, with a round face, dark eyes,
prominent features, the character of countenance much
like that of the portraits of the other Louises; a pleasant
face; his eyes were suffused with tears." Then came
the Hundred Days; and the greatest European news of
all was thus introduced on Aug. 2, 1815 :
THE CITY AND THE POST 89
IMPORTANT
We received from our correspondent at Boston, by this morn-
ing's mail, the following important news, which we hasten to lay
before our readers:
From Our Correspondent,
Office of the Boston Daily Advertiser,
July3i, 1815.
A gentleman has just arrived in town from a vessel which he
left in the harbor, bringing London dates from June 24. The
principal article is an official dispatch of Lord Wellington's, dated
Waterloo, June 19, giving a detailed account of a general engage-
ment.
There followed Wellington's succinct dispatch. Its
modesty of tone misled many New York supporters of
Napoleon, who made heavy bets that Wellington had
really been drubbed, and who when fuller news came
had to pay them.
Even In the third decade of the century news of every
kind was unconscionably slow. The Evening Post of
June 20, 1825, came out late because the presses had been
held till the last minute In the vain hope of giving par-
ticulars of the dedication of the Bunker Hill monument
on the 17th; the steamboat from New London having
arrived without any Intelligence. Only on the next day
was a narrative carried, and though It filled four columns,
it contained no extracts from Webster's oration.
One year later one of the most Impressive coincidences
in our history afforded a striking illustration of the long
wait forced upon each section of the United States for
Information from outside Its borders. The fiftieth anni-
versary of the Declaration of Independence was cele-
brated with fervor In every hamlet and city, though In
New York a storm of wind and rain Interfered with the
ceremonies. Every American thought of the two aged ex-
Presldents, one the author of the Declaration, the other
the radical patriot who had done most to forward It in
Congress. At i o'clock In the afternoon Jefferson died
at Montlcello. At 6 o'clock John Adams, after remark-
90 THE EVENING POST
ing that every report of the celebratory cannon had added
five minutes to his life, passed away at Quincy. Which
news would reach New York first? The Evening Post
published the death of Adams on the seventh, and the
demise of Jefferson on the eighth. Then began to come
evidence that the two circles of intelligence were more
and more overlapping each other, and, on the tenth, Cole-
man commented :
The newspapers of the North and East are filled with remarks
upon the death of John Adams, while those from the South are
equally filled with the obsequies of Jefferson, neither section having
yet heard of the loss sustained by the other. How much is the
surprise at each extremity of the country destined to be increased
by the information which is now traveling from the South to the
North, and from the North to the South! Last evening, in all
probability, President Adams heard of the death of his father; at
about the same moment news of the decease of Jefferson must
have reached Quincy.
To a large proportion of subscribers — the wholesalers,
retailers, auctioneers, shippers, and manufacturers — the
most interesting news was generally to be found in the
column headed "Evening Post Marine List," and in
the advertisements. The shipping news was at this time
collected with the utmost attention to accuracy and
completeness, for it was as much one of the journal's
grounds for claiming a superior position as its financial
news became after the Civil War. A special employee
obtained it from the custom house, counting rooms, and
wharves, and regularly gathered some dozens or even
scores of such items as the following:
CLEARED, Brig Caroline, Lee, TenerifFe, by N. L. and G.
Griswold; schrs. Miranda, Sayre, St. Augustine, by the captains,
Linnet, Paterson, Shelburne, by do.
ARRIVED, The schr. Red-Bird, Walker, in 12 days from
Washington, N. C, with 447 bbl. of naval stores, 700 bushels
of corn, for Mr. Gardiner, of Rhode Island. Spoke, five leagues
from the capes of Virginia, the schr. Farmer's Daughter, 24 days
from Port Morant for Marblehead, the captain informed that he
saw a large ship under jury masts, standing in for Havanna;
THE CITY AND THE POST 91
being about two leagues distant; supposed to be English. At the
same time, a brig to leeward, with her main-top-masts gone and
both pumps agoing; she had black sides and supposed to be an
eastern brig, & was making for Havanna.
Sloop Harriet, Lynds, 60 days from Jamaica, with rum, to
George Pratt. Captain L. has experienced the most distressing
weather, and his crew would have starved had it not been for
supplies received from 3 vessels which he fell in with. On the
5th of Nov. he met with the schr. Goliath, Pinkham (arrived at
this port), then out 35 days; and though Captain P. was then
short, and on allowance, he humanely divided, as it were, his
last mouthful with Captain Lynds. Nov. 10, in lat. 33, fell in
with the bark Calliope, 46 days from Kingston for Norfolk —
gave her some water, and received some bread and beef. Nov. 14,
in lat. 36, got some bread from the ship Lovina, 18 days from
Savannah for Philadelphia.
Then, as now, advertisements were the principal sup-
port of newspapers, though they yielded a revenue that
seems pitiful by modern standards. Until some years
after Coleman died in 1828, merchants paid $40 a year
for the privilege of advertising, a subscription being
thrown in. It was left to their sense of fairness not to
present advertisements of undue length, and ^'display ads"
were of course unknown. The monthly rate was $3.50,
four Insertions could be had for a dollar, and one for
fifty cents. A study of the first ledger of the Evening
Post, for the years 1 801-1804, shows that the largest
receipts from a single firm were $276.49, from Bronson
and Chauncey. The publishers, T. and J. Swords, paid
in eighteen months $157.55 — they were destined to be
good customers of the Evening Post for decades. But
nearly all the accounts were for small amounts. James
Roosevelt, the wealthy Pearl Street merchant, paid $57.37
between the beginning of 1802 and Nov. 16, 1803;
Minturn and Barker, representing two families long
prominent in business, paid $39.55 In the same period;
and Robert Lenox paid $91.50. This ledger is a virtual
directory of all important business and professional men
of the city, in which we meet entries of payments for sub-
scriptions by Hamilton, Burr, Rufus King, Oliver Wol-
92 THE EVENING POST
cott, Brockholst Livingston, Morgan Lewis, and many
other notables.
Ordinarily, from 1801 to 1825, of the twenty short
columns all but four or five were devoted to advertise-
ments. Shipping, auctions, wholesale^ stores (seldom re-
tail), lotteries, legal notices, and the theater furnished
most of the patronage, but the range of advertising was
surprising. In 1802 we find such insertions as these:
ST. CROIX RUM. — 50 puncheons, just arrived per the brig
Harriet, from St. Croix, now landing at Schermerhorn's Wharf.
For sale by CURRIE & WHITNEY, 47 Front Street.
FOR SALE.— A likely Negro Wench, 16 years old— sold for
no fault. For terms, enquire of WILLIAM LEAYCROFT,
109 Liberty Street.
TAKE NOTICE
LOTTERY TICKETS to be had at the Book and Stationery
Store of NAPHTALI JUDAH, No. 84 Maiden-Lane. Tick-
ets in the Lottery No. i, for the encouragement of Literature —
$25, the highest prize — for sale in Halves, Quarters, and Eighth
Parts. The Lottery will positively commence drawing in this
city on the first Tuesday in February next. Owing to the great
demand for Tickets, they will rise from the present price of six
dollars and a half, in a few days.
Editor Coleman would have lifted his brows had he
been told that within a little more than a century St.
Croix rum, lotteries to encourage literature, and the sale
of likely negro wenches would all be outlawed.
The circulation of the Evening Post rose only slowly,
and like all the other New York newspapers of the time,
until after the War of 18 12 it found the struggle for
existence a harsh one. At the beginning of 1804 the
whole group, except the youngest and weakest, Irving's
Morning Chronicle, concerted to raise their yearly sub-
scription price from $8 to $10; this meaning, in the in-
stance of Coleman's journal, the difference between
$9,600 and $12,000 a year. The reason alleged was the
heavy increase in the cost of labor and materials. Jour-
neymen printers, recently paid $6 a week, were now ask-
THE CITY AND THE POST 93
Ing $8; the falthfuUest clerk and most dogged collector
In town could once have been had for $300 a year, and
now any such employee wanted $400; while paper had
risen until it cost the editor $7,000 to $8,000 a year. The
Gazette and the Mercantile Advertiser caused much ill-
feeling when they immediately broke faith and reverted
to the $8 rate, but Coleman stood by his guns. To help
in holding his subscribers, he advanced his printing hour
from four p. m. to two. Year after year there was
a slight increase in the daily circulation, though it hardly
kept pace with the growth of population; in 18 15 it
stood at 1,580 copies daily, and in 1820 at 1,843.
Arrears long cost New York editors thp same sleepless
nights which they cost the owners of some ill-managed
country journals to-day. City residents paid regularly,
for they could be reached through the ten-pound court
if they did not; but in 1805 Coleman despairingly af-
firmed that "not one In a hundred" of the subscribers to
the semi-weekly were prompt. In some centers, as Bos-
ton, from $500 to $1,000 was due the Post and Herald,
and in Kingston, Canada, more than $60 was owed
merely for postage. "The loss that arises from neglected
arrearages would amount to not less than 30 per cent.,"
lamented the editor. It was necessary to send a col-
lector up through New York and New England to Upper
Canada, stopping for money all along the mail routes.
When Michael Burnham took charge, on Nov. 16,
1806, business affairs were greatly systematized; a fact
of which we find evidence both in the disappearance of
complaints of arrears, and in the ledgers and a curious old
account book, 1 801-18 10. These accounts throw much
light on mechanical details. A frequent charge for
"skins" presumably refers to the buckskins which were
cut and rolled into balls, soaked in ink, and then used by
the printers' devils to pound the forms and thus ink the
type. Almost daily charges appear for candles and quill
pens. The journal seems to have paid many of the ex-
penses of apprentices, for there are numerous entries for
"cloathing" and for board at $3 a week. Coleman drew
94 THE EVENING POST
upon the till occasionally, as is shown by an item of
May 25, 1809: "Boots for Mr. Coleman, $10." But all
the improvements that Burnham made in the business
management did not save Coleman at times before 18 10
from half-resolving to let the Evening Post die and to
return to the bar again; in the year named, when he was
trying to arrange his English debts, he confessed such a
hesitation. When Duane of the Aurora charged that the
Federalist newspapers in seaport towns were bribed "by
support in the form of mercantile advertisements*^ to
oppose all Jefferson's measures, Coleman bitterly replied
that Federalist merchants actually neglected their press.
Taking up a copy of the chief Federalist organ in Phila-
delphia, and one of the chief neutral journal there, he
found six ship advertisements in the former and forty in
the latter; while "on a particular day not long since
the New York Gazette had eighty-five new advertise-
ments, the Mercantile Advertiser sixty-one, and the Eve-
ning Post nine."
But after the Embargo and the war the skies slowly
brightened, not so much because of the growing circula-
tion as because of the more remunerative advertisements.
It was not the $40-a-year advertising that paid, but the
single "ads" inserted at the new rate of 75 cents a
"square." There were now many more of these. Be-
cause of the rapid growth of the city a brisk trade had
sprung up in Brooklyn and Manhattan real estate, which
by 1820 often engrossed from one-eighth to one-fourth
the whole paper. Steamboats had come, and from Capt.
Vanderbilt's little Nautilus, which left Whitehall daily
for Staten Island at 10, 3, and 6:30, charging twenty-five
cents a trip, to the big Chancellor Livingston running to
Albany, and the boat Franklin, which offered excursions
to Sandy Hook, with a green turtle dinner, for $2, all
were advertising. Competing stage-coach lines were
eager to impress the public with their speedy schedules;
advertising that you could leave the City Hotel at 2 p. m.,
packed six inside and eight outside a gaudily painted
THE CITY AND THE POST 95
vehicle, and be at Judd's Tavern In Philadelphia at 5 a. m.
the next day.
Competition continued keen, for while weak news-
papers died, new journals were constantly being estab-
lished. The most important of these were Charles Holt's
Columbian, established in 1808 as a Clintonian sheet; the
National Advocate, founded in 18 13 and edited for a
time by Henry Wheaton, later known as a diplomat, who
supported Madison; and the American, an evening journal
first published in the spring of 1 8 19, and edited by Charles
King, later president of Columbia College. But the Eve-
ning Post kept well to the front, as is shown by a table
of comparative circulations in May, 18 16:
Mercantile Advertiser, 2000 Gardiner's Courier, 980
Daily Gazette, 1750 Columbian, 825
Evening Post, 1600 National Advocate, 875
Commercial Advertiser, 1200
The circulation of the Mercantile Advertiser, we are
told by Thurlow Weed, who was then working on the
Courier, was considered enormous. It seldom had more
than one and a half or two columns of news, while Lang's
Gazette frequently carried only a half column; so that
the Evening Post was clearly the leading newspaper.
People in the early twenties regarded it as a well estab-
lished institution. Its editor had become one of the
lesser notables of the city, like Dr. Hosack and Dr.
MItchill; and we are informed by a contemporary that
he "was pronounced by his advocates a field-marshal in
literature, as well as politics." Poor as the newspapers of
that time seem by modern standards, the Evening Post
when compared with the London Times or the London
Morning Post (for which Lamb and Coleridge wrote)
was not discreditable to New York; it was not so well
written, but it was as large and as energetic in news-
gathering and editorial utterance.
CHAPTER FOUR
LITERATURE AND DRAMA IN THE EARLY '^EVENING POST"
The infancy of the Evening Post coincided with the
rise of the Knickerbocker school of letters, with which its
relations were always intimate. Its first editor delighted
in his old age to speak of his friendship with Irving, Hal-
leck, Drake, and Paulding; while the second editor, Bry-
ant, escaped inclusion with the Knickerbockers only by
the fact that his poetry is too individual and independent
to fit into any school at all.
A mellow atmosphere hangs over the literary annals
of New York early in the last century. We think of
young Irving wandering past the stoops of quaint gabled
houses, where the last representatives of the old Dutch
burghers puffed their long clay pipes; or taking country
walks within view of the broad Tappan Zee and the sum-
mer-flushed Catskills, halting whenever he could get a
good wife to favor him with her version of the legends
of the countryside. We think of that brilliant rainbow
which Halleck stopped to admire one summer evening
in front of a coffee-house near Columbia College, ex-
claiming: "If I could have my wish, it should be to lie
in the lap of that rainbow and read Tom Campbell" ; of
Paulding, Henry Brevoort, and others of the "nine worth-
ies" holding high revel in "Cockloft Hall" on the out-
skirts of Newark; and of Drake, the handsomest young
man in town, like Keats studying medicine and poetry,
and like Keats dying of consumption. We think of how
the young men of the city were less interested in the news
of Jena and Trafalgar than that Moore and Jeffrey had
been arrested for fighting a duel, that Mr. Campbell had
improved the leisure given him by a government pension
by writing "Gertrude of Wyoming," and that "The Lay
of the Last Minstrel" was the work of a Scotch border
sheriff.
96
LITERATURE AND DRAMA 97
When the first Evening Post was laid on six hundred
doorsteps and counters, New York was almost ready to
assert her temporary primacy in literature. Irving was
studying law downtown in the office of Brockholst Livings-
ton; Paulding, four and a half years older, was living with
his sister, Mrs. William Irving; Cooper was at school
with an Englishman in Albany; Halleck was a child of
eleven playing about the Guilford Green. Bryant at Cum-
mington had not yet begun his juvenile scribblings, but
would soon do so. Charles Brockden Brown had just re-
turned to the city from a summer excursion, and was
watching the sale of the second part of "Arthur Mervyn."
Coleman sometimes met him at the homes of John Wells
and Anthony Bleecker. The few Americans who paid any
attention to letters had till now kept their gaze chiefly
upon New England and Philadelphia. Dwight, the presi-
dent of Yale, had just finished revising Watts's Psalms,
Joel Barlow, after shining abroad as a diplomat and mak-
ing a fortune in speculation, was living in state in Paris,
and Trumbull, another of the Hartford Wits, had just
become a Connecticut judge. Nothing better than the
unreadable "Columbiad" of Barlow and Dwight's "Trav-
els" was now to be expected from this trio. But in New
York by 1805, though there was as yet little pure litera-
ture, there was an intellectual and semi-literary atmos-
phere. In addition to the young Knickerbockers, men-
tion should be made of Tom Paine, dividing his last
days, in debt, dirt, and dissipation, between New York
and New Rochelle; and Philip Freneau, who frequently
came over from his New Jersey seat.
Washington Irving made his first appearance in the
Morning Chronicle, his brother's journal, where at nine-
teen he published his "Jonathan Oldstyle" papers.
Nearly five years later he, his brother William, and his
brother-in-law, Paulding, collaborated upon the "Sal-
magundi Papers," issued in leaflet form "upon hot-pressed
vellum paper, as that is held in highest estimation for
buckling up young ladies' hair." The twenty numbers,
full of whimsy, mock seriousness, and light satire, de-
98 THE EVENING POST
lighted Coleman not as literature but as journalism. He
saw that his long editorials attacking Jefferson's measures
for coast defense were flimsy weapons compared with the
humorous "Plans for Defending Our Harbor," which
he copied in full, saying that it "hits off admirably some of
the late philosophical, economical plans which our phi-
losophical, economical administration seems to be intent
on our adopting." The Evening Post termed the whole
series "the pleasant observations of one who is a legiti-
mate descendant of Rabelais, and a true member of the
Butler, Swift, and Sterne family." Irving perhaps re-
called this praise when the time came to announce his
next work.
The clever expedient by which announcement and ad-
vertisement were joined is familiar to all readers of the
"Knickerbocker History of New York." Irving handed
to Coleman for publication in the Evening Post of Oct.
26, 1809, the following notice:
Distressing
Left his lodgings some time since, and has not since been heard
of, a small elderly gentleman, dressed in an old black coat and
cocked hat, by the name of Knickerbocker. As there are some
reasons for believing he is not entirely in his right mind, and as
great anxiety is entertained about him, any information concern-
ing him, left either at the Columbian Hotel, Mulberry Street, or
at the office of this paper, will be thankfully received.
P. S. Printers of newspapers would be aiding the cause of
humanity in giving an insertion to the above.
Such notices were then not infrequent. An authentic
account has been preserved of how, some years later, the
Evening Post saved the life of a Vermonter named
Stephen Bourne by publishing an appeal for information
regarding the whereabouts of an eccentric fellow named
Colvin, who had disappeared and of whose murder
Bourne had just been convicted upon circumstantial evi-
dence. This appeal was read aloud in one of the New
York hotels. It occurred to one of the guests that his
brother-in-law in New Jersey had a hired man whose de-
LITERATURE AND DRAMA 99
scrlption answered to that given of Colvin; identification
followed; and Bourne was released to fire a cannon at a
general celebration of his deliverance. The news of
Knickerbocker's disappearance caused much concern, and
a city officer took under advisement the propriety of
offering a reward.
Within a fortnight a letter was published in the Eve-
ning Post which described the appearance of Knicker-
bocker trudging wearledly north from Kingsbridge. Two
days later appeared in the Post an announcement by Seth
Handaside, proprietor of the Columbian Hotel, that "a
very curious kind of a written book" had been found in
the room of Mr. Diedrich Knickerbocker, and that if he
did not return to pay his bill, it would be disposed of to
satisfy the charges. A preliminary advertisement of the
two volumes of the Knickerbocker "History" was printed
in the Evening Post of Nov. 28, by Innskeep and Brad-
ford, with the price — $3.
Because the Evening Post circulated among the most
intelligent people of the city, and because it had never
forgotten that one object stated in its prospectus was
"to cultivate a taste for sound literature," it was chosen
by Drake and Halleck as the medium for the most famous
series of satirical poems, the "Biglow Papers" excepted,
in American literature.
Year in and year out, the Evening Post kept a space
at the head of its news columns open for the best verse it
could obtain. Just a month after it was established it
plumed itself upon the publication of an original poem
by the coarse but lively English satirist, "Peter Pindar"
(Dr. John Wolcot), with whom Coleman corresponded.
Wolcot is best remembered for verses ridiculing George
III, and for his witticism that though George was a good
subject for him, he was a poor subject to George. His
contribution for Coleman, however, was not satiric, but
a jejune three-stanza "Ode to the Lark." In 1803 the
editor obtained a poem from the banker-poet Samuel
Rogers, then regarded as a luminary of the first magni-
tude. A year later he had the distinction of receiving
100 THE EVENING POST
from the august hand of Thomas Moore himself, who
was on a tour through America, a manuscript poem, which
was published In the Evening Post of July 9 without a
title, and may be found In Moore's works under the head-
ing, "Lines Written on Leaving Philadelphia." Unfor-
tunately, Coleman had to accompany the publication with
an apology; for though Moore had requested that the
verses, which express his gratitude for his reception in
Philadelphia, be withheld until Joseph Dennle could print
them In his Portfolio there, Coleman had indiscreetly lent
a copy to friends, and they had become such public prop-
erty that there was no reason for keeping them longer
out of the Post.
Much verse was also clipped from English periodicals
and new English books, and it Is creditable to Coleman's
taste that Wolfe's "Burial of Sir John Moore" and
Byron's stanzas on Waterloo were reprinted immediately
after their first publication. He received vast quantities
of indifferent American verse, signed with assumed names
— "Mercutio," "Sedley," "Puck," and "Paridel"— to-
gether with some respectable nature poetry by "Mat-
thew Bramble." In 1820-21 there were contributions
from John Pierpont, the author of "Airs of Palestine,"
and Samuel Woodworth and George P. Morris, two
minor Knickerbockers whose names are kept alive by
"The Old Oaken Bucket" and "Woodman, Spare That
Tree." We may be sure that keen young men like Hal-
leck and Drake kept their eyes upon this poetical corner
of the Evening Post, and Indeed, Halleck apeared in it
as early as the fall of 18 18. He had come to town seven
years previous, had taken a place in the counting room
of Jacob Barker, a leading banker and merchant, had
become intimate with Drake and attended his wedding,
and had written many and published one or two songs.
He frequently revisited his boyhood home at Guilford,
Conn., and during a passage up the Sound one fine autumn
evening he mentally composed the stanzas entitled "Twi-
light." Immediately upon his return to New York he
sent the verses anonymously to the Evening Post; and
LITERATURE AND DRAMA loi
though Coleman was exceedingly fastidious in his literary
tastes, he gave the lines to the printer after a single read-
ing. This was one of the first two poems which Halleck
placed in his collected writings.
On a crisp March evening the next year readers who
opened the Evening Post at their tea-table saw in a promi-
nent position among the few news items the following
acknowledgement :
Lines addressed to "Ennui" by "Croaker" are received, and
shall have a place tomorrow. They are the production of genius
and taste. A personal acquaintance with the author would be
gratifying to the editor.
The next day, March lo, the position of honor was
given up to the poem. "We have received two more po-
etic crackers of merit from our unknown correspondent,
*Croaker,' " wrote Coleman, "which shall appear, all in
good time. But we must husband them. His promise to
furnish us with a few more similar trifles, though he tells
us we must expect an occasional touch at ourselves or
party, is received with a welcome and a smile." And
on March ii, Croaker's lines, "On Presenting the Free-
dom of the City to a Great General" — Jackson had just
received that honor — were accompanied with another
appeal:
Is it not possible that we can have a personal and confidential
interview with our friend "Croaker," at some time and place he
will name? If he declines, will he inform me how he may be
addressed by letter? In the meantime, whatever may happen
(he, at least, will, before long, understand me), I expect from
him discretion.
Succeeding issues showed that the connection between
Croaker and the Evening Post had become fixed and that
the city was in for whole series of skits on men, manners,
and events. On March 12 was printed the poem called
"The Secret Mine Sprung at a Late Supper," dealing
with a recent political episode; next day it was followed
by verses, "To Mr. Potter, the Ventriloquist," then a
102 THE EVENING POST
popular performer; on the 15th there appeared "To Mr.
Simpson," addressed to the manager of the city's chief
theater; and on the i6th two poems were printed at once.
Most of the Knickerbocker art was imitative, and the
Croaker poems were In a vein which had been much ex-
ploited In England. "Peter Pindar," George Colman
the younger, whose humorous poems entitled "Broad
Grins" had run through edition after edition, Tom
Moore, and those kings of parody, Horatio and James
Smith, were the models whom Croaker and Co. con-
sciously or unconsciously followed. The moment was a
happy one for such bold and witty thrusts. Had they
appeared when party feeling was running high before or
during the war, they would have given mortal offense;
but the tolerance accompanying the political era of good
feeling robbed them of any sting. From Coleman's ef-
forts to arrange an Interview with the authors, we may
surmise that he feared some other editor would share the
prize, and that he had suggestions for further squibs. His
literary discernment was never better evinced than by his
enthusiastic reception of the first Croaker contribution.
A dull editor would have passed over the lines to ennui —
which were only a facile expression of weariness with
the new books by Lady Morgan and Mordecal M. Noah,
the Edinburgh Review, Gen. Jackson's reception, Clin-
ton's political prospects, and the Erie Canal plans — with-
out perceiving their unusual qualities; a careless editor
would have printed them without asking for more. Cole-
man saw the possibility of indefinitely extending the
satires.
The origin of the poems had been purely casual. Hal-
leck and Drake, the former now a prosperous and
trusted aid of old Jacob Barker's, the latter a full-fledged
physician recently returned from Europe, happened in
their romantic attachment to spend a leisurely Sunday
morning with a mutual acquaintance. As a diversion,
Drake wrote several stanzas upon ennui, and Halleck
capped them. They decided to send them to Coleman,
and, if he would not publish them, to Mordecal N. Noah,
William Coleman
Editor-in-Chief 1801-1829.
LITERATURE AND DRAMA 103
the Jewish journalist who had recently become editor of
the Democratic National Advocate. Drake, returning
to his home, also sent Coleman the two additional "crack-
ers" which he acknowledged. The name "Croaker" then
carried as distinct a meaning as would Dick Deadeye or
Sherlock Holmes to-day, being that of the confirmed old
grumbler In Goldsmith's "Good-Natured Man." Cole-
man's request for a meeting was granted by the poets,
who, as Halleck told his biographer, James Grant Wil-
son, one evening knocked at the editor's door on Hudson
Street:
They were ushered into the parlor, the editor soon entered, the
young poets expressed a desire for a few minutes' strictly private
conversation with him, and the door being closed and locked, Dr.
Drake said — "I am Croaker, and this gentleman, sir, is Croaker,
Jr." Coleman stared at the young men with indescribable and
unaffected astonishment, — at length exclaiming: "My God, I
had no idea that we had such talents in America!" Halleck, with
his characteristic modesty, was disposed to give Drake all the
credit; but as it chanced that Coleman alluded in particularly
glowing terms to one of the Croakers that was wholly his, he was
forced to be silent, and the delighted editor continued in a strain
of compliment and eulogy that put them both to the blush. Before
taking their leave, the poets bound Coleman over to the most
profound secrecy, and arranged a plan of sending him the MS.,
and of receiving the proofs, in a manner that would avoid the
least possibility of the secret of their connection with the Evening
Post being discovered. The poems were copied from the originals
by LangstafF [an apothecary friend], that their handwriting
should not divulge the secret, and were either sent through the
mails, or taken to the Evening Post office by Benjamin R.
Winthrop.
The poems now followed in quick succession. On
March 17 there was a sly skit upon the surgeon-general,
Samuel Mitchill, the best-known — and most self-impor-
tant — physician and scientist In the city, and a man noted
in the history of Columbia College; the next day an ad-
dress to John Minshull, a prominent merchant; on March
19 a poem of general theme, "The Man Who Frets"; on
104 THE EVENING POST
March 20 and 25, verses upon Manager Simpson of the
Park Theater again; and on March 23 lines "To John
Lang, Esq.," the sturdy old editor of the Gazette. An
apostrophe "To Domestic Peace" and "A Lament for
Great Ones Departed" also appeared in March, as did
two complimentary epistles in verse to the authors, se-
lected by Coleman from "the multitude of imitators that
the popularity of Croaker has produced." One writer
spoke of Croaker and Co. as "the wits of the day and
the pride of the age," while the other credited them with
making "all Gotham at thy dashes stare." There was
a pause early in April while Drake was out of town,
and Coleman confessed that "on account of the public,
we begin to be a little impatient." But the series re-
commenced on April 8, and by May i, when a poem to
William Cobbett, the eminent English journalist, then
sojourning on Long Island, appeared, twenty-one had been
printed. One Croaker contribution had meanwhile come
out in Noah's National Advocate. After another pause,
on May 29 the Evening Post published the gem of the
whole collection, Drake's "The American Flag," with the
final quatrain written by Halleck. Coleman prefaced this
famous patriotic lyric with the remark that it was one
of those poems which, as Sir Philip Sidney said of the
old ballad of Chevy Chase, stir the heart like a trumpet.
It might more truly be said that, with its blare of sound
and pomp of imagery, it stirs the hearer like a full brass
band. Probably not even Coleman realized how many
generations of schoolboys would declaim :
When freedom from her mountain height,
Unfurled her standard to the air,
She tore the azure robe of night,
And set the stars of glory there!
The success of the "Salmagundi Papers" did not com-
pare in immediacy or extent with that of the Croaker
poems. Copies of the Evening Post, which now had 2,000
subscribers, passed from hand to hand. In homes, book-
Stores, coffee-houses, taverns, and on the street corners
LITERATURE AND DRAMA 105
every one, as Halleck wrote his sister on April i, was
soon discussing the skits. "We have had the pleasure of
seeing and of hearing ourselves praised, puffed, eulogized,
execrated, and threatened as much as any writers since
the days of Junius," he informed her. "The whole town
has talked of nothing else for three weeks past, and every
newspaper has done us the honor to mention us in some
way, either of praise or censure, but all united in owning
our talents and genius." The two young men, unused to
seeing themselves in print, were tremendously elated.
Once upon receiving a proof of some stanzas from the
Evening Post, Drake laid his cheek down upon the lines
and, with beaming eyes, exclaimed to his fellow-poet:
"O, Halleck, isn't this happiness !" Most of the Croaker
series, which was virtually concluded in June, though two
poems now generally bracketed with them appeared in
1 82 1, were too much the product of joint labor to be
assigned to one writer or the other; the theme suggested
itself, and both would elaborate it.
The newspapers received dozens of replies or imita-
tions, Coleman once showing Halleck a sheaf of fifteen
that had come in during a single morning. In spite of
their local subjects, many of the poems were reprinted all
over the North, and as far south as Washington. Wood-
worth, who himself wrote not a little on New York
affairs, successfully begged a contribution from Halleck
for his magazine. It may be mentioned that Coleman
took some liberties with the series. To one he prefixed
a humorous letter, in another he inserted a couplet, and
in a third he altered the overworked name Chloe to
Julia.
To modern readers the allusions to persons and events
have lost their wit, and the historical interest they have
gained is only partial compensation. We find little humor
in the contretemps which occurred when Gen. Jackson,
entertained by the city leaders, and already a Presidential
possibility, threw the dinner into confusion by toasting De
Witt Clinton, who as a former Federalist was heartily
hated by many New York Democrats. Hence those
io6 THE EVENING POST
numbers seem the freshest which are most general in
theme. The "Ode to Fortune" is better than the lines
"To Simon," who was caterer at fashionable balls and
weddings. "The Man Who Frets" is more interesting
than "To Capt. Seaman Weeks," who was leading an in-
dependent political movement against Tammany. Only
here and there are jests that we still appreciate, as the
advice to the theatrical manager to discharge his come-
dians and hire the side-splitting legislators at Albany,
and satire still comprehensible, as the verses upon Trum-
bull's florid Revolutionary paintings, which now hang in
the national Capitol:
Go on, great painter! dare be dull —
No longer after Nature dangle;
Call rectilinear beautiful ;
Find grace and freedom in an angle;
Pour on the red, the green, the yellow,
"Paint till a horse may mire upon it,"
And while I've strength to write or bellow,
I'll sound your praises in a sonnet.
But the skits are almost a catalogue of the worthies of
the town. The prominent merchants were represented
by such names as Henry Cruger, Nathaniel Prime, John
K. Beekman, and John Jacob Astor. The politicians —
Henry Meigs, who voted for admitting Missouri, Clinton,
Morgan Lewis, Rufus King, and others — -had more atten-
tion than any other group. Croaker had much fun at the
expense of the chief hotel-keepers: Abraham Martling,
owner of the Tammany Hall Hotel, and a political figure
of importance, William Niblo, whose restaurant at Wil-
liam and Pine Streets was popular, and Cato Alexander,
to whose tavern on the postroad four miles out all the
young bucks made summer excursions. The stage folk
received generous space, among them James W. Wallack
and Miss Catherine Lesugg, later Mrs. James Hackett,
whose family names were to figure so prominently in
American theatrical history. Fifty years later James
Hackett himself contributed to the Evening Post an
LITERATURE AND DRAMA 107
interesting chapter of reminiscences of Halleck, recalling
how they had first become friends when they were both
admirers of the blooming Miss Lesugg, then fresh from
England, and how they maintained the friendship till
Halleck's death. Even the editors — Coleman, Lang,
Woodworth, "whose Chronicle died broken-hearted," and
Spooner of Brooklyn — were not spared by Croaker.
Newspapers, however, usually establish a literary rep-
utation not by original poetry, but by literary criticism,
and we may well stop to examine the Evening Post^s rec-
ord in this field. It was slightly handicapped by the fact
that between 1801 and the appearance of "The Spy" in
1 82 1 there was virtually nothing worth criticizing.
Charles Brockden Brown had finished his career as a
novelist before the Evening Post was fairly launched.
Irving was silent after his publication of the Knicker-
bocker "History" until the first part of "The Sketch-
Book" appeared in 18 19. In verse almost nothing but
that marvelous piece of boyish inspiration, "Thanatop-
sis," is now remembreed. Patriotic Americans of the day,
like Coleman, made a painful effort to believe that Alls-
ton's "Sylphs of the Seasons," Paine's "Juvenile Poems,"
Mrs. Sigourney's "Moral Pieces," and Pierpont's "Airs
of Palestine" were very nearly as good as the literature
coming from the pens of Byron, Coleridge, Scott, Words-
worth, Keats, and Shelley; but the pretense was a ghastly
mockery.
Most of the early book notices in the Evening Post
were of two useful kinds : they were either an examination
of political pamphlets for party ends, or a gutting of new
books of travel, biography, and history for their news
value. From the very commencement of the journal,
many columns of matter were furnished by the various
pamphlets called forth by Vice-President Burr's attempted
suppression of John Wood's "History of the Administra-
tion of John Adams" ; for this internecine warfare among
Democrats delighted all Federalists. In the first days of
1803 pamphlets upon the annexation of Louisiana began
to demand selection and comment. Then came pamphlets
io8 THE EVENING POST
upon the embargo, non-intercourse, impressment, and the
conduct of the British minister, Jackson. The original
publication of the very effective pamphlet by a "New
England Farmer" upon "Mr. Madison's War" was in
installments in the Evening Post during the summer of
1 8 1 2. Gouverneur Morris inspired the newspaper's care-
ful attention to the Erie Canal question; one evidence of
its interest in the subject was a series of articles in the
spring of 1807, reviewing the writings of "Agricola"
upon it.
The books which were gutted were sometimes exceed-
ingly interesting. Thus in 18 16 Coleman published copi-
ous extracts from James Simpson's "Visit to Flanders,"
a vivid account of Waterloo and other battlefields as they
appeared the month after Napoleon's defeat. In 18 17
much was made of Cadwallader Colden's "Life of Ful-
ton," and two years later of M. M. Noah's entertaining
"Travels in England, France, Spain, and the Barbary
States." The extracts from O'Meara's memoirs of Na-
poleon, printed in 1822, led Coleman into an attack upon
Napoleon's jailer at St. Helena, Sir Hudson Lowe; and
when Col. Wm. L. Stone of the Commercial Advertiser
came to Lowe's defense, an animated controversy fol-
lowed.
It was part of Coleman's editorial creed to beat the
big drum for American letters. Most of the Knicker-
bocker writers were themselves really provincial in liter-
ary matters, keeping always a nervous and envious eye
upon England; for it was the period when, as Lowell puts
it, we thought Englishmen's thought, and with English
salt on her tail our wild eagle was caught. This pro-
vincialism frequently expressed itself in an insistence that
America was, not America, but a bigger England, and
that the Hudson was not the Hudson, but a nobler
Thames. Coleman thought it his duty to encourage native
literature, and the amount of fifth-rate verse that was
given patriotic praise in the Evening Post is dismaying.
The ode of Robert Treat Paine, jr., "Rule New Eng-
land," was commended with a warmth that owed some-
LITERATURE AND DRAMA 109
thing to Coleman's intimacy with the elder Paine. Per-
sonal considerations also had their share In the flattering
notice of Winthrop Sargent's "Boston" the next year.
Coleman was one of the few who has ever closed Peter
Quince's "Parnassian Shop" "with Impressions favorable
to the young author." In 1805 he was struck by the
"Democracy Unveiled" of Thomas Green Fessenden, a
poetaster who had got some notice by writing a success-
ful book while Imprisoned for debt in Fleet Street, Lon-
don. Francis Arden received favorable mention for a
translation of Ovid, while another very minor bard, Rich-
ard B. Davis, who before his premature death had been
a friend of Irving and Paulding, was generously praised
In 1807. The Post published a review of Plerpont's
"Airs of Palestine" by Henry Brevoort, Irvlng's bosom
friend, and pronounced it indispensable to any American
library. It thought Halleck's amusing satire on a New
York merchant family In society, "Fanny," a better poem
than Byron's "Beppo," whose verse It Imitated. Byron's
popularity at this time was such that when his "Mazeppa"
was published in England, a copy was hurried to Phila-
delphia by the fast ship Helen, was placed In the printer's
hands at 2 p. m., and twenty-two hours later the volumes
were issuing from the press complete and being rushed
to the bookstores.
But there were a few books that live. After Brockden
Brown's death in 18 10, we find repeated mention of him,
"amiable and beloved by all his acquaintances," by Cole-
man. "Wieland" the editor thought worthy of his
powers; and he remarked of "Ormond" that the reason
why it was formal and uninteresting was, as he personally
knew, that It was "written by stinted tasks of so many
pages a day, and sent to the printer without correction or
revision, or even reading over, till It came back to him in
proof." One of Coleman's last contributions to the Eve-
ning Post was a short notice of a new set of Brown. He
singled out for remark the fact that the novelist seldom
troubled to give minute descriptions of sensible objects.
"These he generally dispatches with a few brief and bold
no THE EVENING POST
touches, and bends his whole strength to the speculative
parts of the work, to follow out trains of reflection and
the analysis of feelings." In 1806 the Evening Post car-
ried a half dozen articles upon Noah Webster's new
octavo dictionary of the English language, condemning it
as to definitions, orthography, and orthoepy, and quarrel-
ing violently with some of Webster's grammatical and
etymological opinions. The reviewer accused Webster of
grossly misrepresenting the views of the English lexicog-
rapher Walker. Webster replied in two long and forcible
articles, compelling the reviewer to admit some mistakes.
Irving's career was closely followed by the Post. It
defended his Knickerbocker "History" against the em-
battled Dutch families, led by Gulian C. Verplanck, who
charged that he had defamed them. When the first part
of "The Sketch Book" appeared, a prompt review was
contributed by "a literary friend," probably Brevoort or
Paulding. Warmly eulogistic, it is still discriminating. It
commended Irving for his "grace of style; the rich, warm
tone of benevolent feeling; the freely-flowing vein of
hearty and happy humor, and the fine-eyed spirit of ob-
servation, sustained by an enlightened understanding, and
regulated by a perception or fitness — a tact — wonderfully
quick and sure." It declared "Rip Van Winkle" the
masterpiece of the collection. "For that comic spirit
which is without any infusion of gall, which delights in
what is ludicrous rather than what is ridiculous (for its
laughter is not mixed with contempt), which seeks its
gratification in the eccentricities of a simple, unrefined
state of society, rather than in the vicious follies of arti-
ficial life; for the vividness and truth, with which Rip's
character is drawn, and the state of society in the village
where he lived, is depicted; and for the graceful ease with
which it is told, the story of Rip Van Winkle has few
competitors." Unfortunately, Coleman added a footnote
in which he stated his personal opinion that "Rip Van
Winkle" lacked probability, and that the poetical tale of
"The Wife" was superior.
Six weeks later the second part of "The Sketch Book"
LITERATURE AND DRAMA iii
was reviewed with equal taste by apparently the same
hand — that of some one who knew how hard Irving was
hit by the death of his fiancee, and his circumstances
abroad. At the beginning of 1823 Coleman himself
wrote two long articles in praise of the new "Brace-
bridge Hall," declaring that he had undertaken the
task of rescuing it "from the rude and ill-natured treat-
ment of some of our American critics"; the Literary Re-
pository and two newspapers of Philadelphia and Balti-
more having assailed it. One reason for its ill-natured
reception, he thought, was the high charge made for the
American edition, and another the kindly view it took of
British life and manners. He showed no little acquaint-
ance with Irving's personal affairs, and probably had
seen some of his letters home. One epistle, written late
in 1 8 19, and telling of the essayist's acquaintanceships in
London, had been copied out by Mrs. Hoffman, mother
of Irving's dead sweetheart, for the Evening Post,
Those were the days in which Sydney Smith's taunt,
"Who reads an American book?" struck home. In 1820
Coleman recorded with pride that the rage for new
publications was so great that "not a day passes but
the press is delivered of two or more"; though he re-
ferred to magazines as well as books. On Sept. 4, 1823,
he boasted that such value was becoming attached to
American literature in Great Britain that its republica-
tion was profitable. A Scotch publisher had begun issu-
ing selections from Irving, Brooks, Percival, and others
in a miscellany circulated from Edinburgh. "Our sun
has certainly arisen, and one day, we predict, it will beam
as bright as it does, or ever did, in the Old World; and
the Americans who may arise in future ages will not have
to blush on hearing their classics named with the great-
est of antiquity."
More space was consistently given by the Evening Post
to reviews of plays than to book notices. In fact, the
keen interest of New Yorkers in the theater had produced
very competent dramatic criticism before the newspaper
was founded. William Dunlap, the famous manager-
112 THE EVENING POST
playwright of the time, tells us that in 1796 there was
organized in the city a little group of critics, including
Dr. Peter Irving, Charles Adams, son of John Adams,
Samuel Jones, William Cutting, and John Wells, the law-
partner of Coleman. They would take turns writing a
criticism of the evening's play, and meet next day to dis-
cuss and revise it before handing it to one of the news-
papers. Their meetings had ended before 1801, but
after the Evening Post began publication several of the
group, and especially Wells, wrote much for the new
journal.
The theater was the more prominent in Old New York
because the variety of public entertainments in and just
after 1803 was small. Those with a literary turn of
mind might drop in at the Shakespeare Gallery on Park
Street, which afforded a "belles lettres lounge" — that is,
a table laden with newspapers and magazines of the day,
and soft seats in a well-lighted room, for $1.50 a year.
Those with scientific tastes could go to the Museum on
Broadway, with its curiosities ranging from mastodon
bones to a representation of Gen. Butler being toma-
hawked by the Osages, and another of Mrs. Rawllngs and
her six infants at a birth. There was a thin stream of
entertainers — magicians, who were approved because
their illusions taught the young to beware of wily rogues;
ventriloquists, balloonists, rare at first and objects of
supreme Interest, exhibitors of lions and tapirs, and novel-
ties like the Eskimo whom a sea captain brought to town
and who gave aquatic exhibitions on the Hudson. In
summer the public had several open-air amusement places.
One named Vauxhall was situated near the top of the
Bowery, offering music, fireworks, and refreshments. An-
other was the Columbian Gardens, and the most ambitious
was the Mt. Vernon Gardens. In winter, one of the chief
fashionable events was the annual concert of the Philhar-
monic Society, held impressively at Tontine Hall on
Broadway, and consisting half of instrumental music, half
of vocal solos from now forgotten operas like the "Siege
of Belgrade." About New Year's began the select
LITERATURE AND DRAMA 113
dances of the City Assembly, in the assembly rooms in
William Street. Here young ladies made their debut,
the finest gowns were exhibited, and the bucks showed a
skill acquired at the dancing school of M. Lalliet.
This list of amusements comes near being exhaustive,
and the Park Theater was always the center of attrac-
tion. The building, fronting on Park Row, had been
completed in 1798 at a cost placed by the Evening Post
— no doubt an overestimate — at $130,500. The charge
was $1 for box seats, of which there were at first three
full circle tiers, and after 1807 four; 75 cents to the pit,
and 50 cents to the gallery. Early in the century per-
formances began at 6:30, and at 9:30; the first play was
usually followed by a farcical after-piece. Washington
Irving as a lad used to pretend to go to bed after prayers,
descend to the ground by way of the roof of a woodshed,
and slip away to see this final performance. The Evening
Post gives us a good deal of information about the man-
agement of the theater, which was under Dunlap until
1808, and then under Cooper and Price. In its first
issue Dunlap appealed to his patrons against the dan-
gerous practice of "smoaking," saying that the use of
cigars was a constant topic for ridicule by European trav-
elers. From Coleman's later comments we learn that
no woman would for a moment have thought of sitting
anywhere but in the boxes, and that no gentleman would
have shared the gallery with the rough crowd that filled
it. Even the pit, with its dirty, broken floor, its backless
benches, and its incursions of rats from crannies under
the stage, would now be considered hardly tolerable.
About the entrance there always clustered a set of idle
boys and disorderly adults who, when spectators left
during an intermission or before the after-piece, set up
a clamor for the return checks. Efforts to stop the
gift or sale of these checks were in general futile. The
interior was renovated in 1807, enlargements were made
to give a total of 2,372 seats, patent lamps were installed,
and a room above the lobby was fitted up as a bar and
114 THE EVENING POST
restaurant. Still further improvements were made in
1809.
The independent and severe criticisms of the acting
which appeared in the Evening Post, and to a lesser extent
in Irving's Morning Chronicle^ were not at first relished-
by theatrical folk. The names of the actors and actresses,
Cooper, Fennell, Hallam, Turnbull, Mrs. Johnson, and
so on are now all but forgotten. In Boston in 1802
dramatic criticism was written largely by performers
themselves, who sat up till an early hour to insure proper
newspaper notices, and in Charleston the same practice
had been known. In all cities most actors held that no
one was really competent to serve as a critic unless he was
familiar with the performances at the two great London
theaters. So irritated did the dramatic guild become that
in January, 1802, there was produced at the theater a
satire upon the Evening Post reviews, written by Fennell
and called "The Wheel of Truth." It was designed to
show one Littlewit, a newspaper critic, in a ludicrous and
foolish light. He was represented as finding fault with
Stuart's portrait of Washington because by the footrule
the head was a half-inch too long, and with a certain book
because for the same price he could buy one twice as
heavy. Coleman answered this attack in ^vt columns
published in two issues, which was five columns more than
it deserved. He, Wells, and Anthony Bleecker continued
reviewing, and a contemporary writer records that he
"aimed to settle all criticism by his individual verdict."
Upon most of the plays there was little to say, for
they were long familiar to readers and theater-goers.
Shakespeare was given year in and year out, a full dozen
of his dramas. Others of the Elizabethans, including
Ben Jonson, Marlowe ("The Jew of Malta"), Massin-
ger, Middleton, and Beaumont and Fletcher, were occa-
sionally seen. Otway's "Venice Preserved" was some-
thing of a favorite. The comedies of Sheridan, Gold-
smith, and Fielding had regular representations. George
Colman's plays, especially "John Bull," were highly pop-
ular, John Home's "Douglas" was always sure of a house,
LITERATURE AND DRAMA 115
and for the first two decades of the century Kotzebue
was much played and admired; while many of Scott's
novels and poems were dramatized. The Evening Post
said of the first performance of "Marmion," in 1 8 1 2, that
it "presents a chef-d'oeuvre of melodramatic excellence."
In William Dunlap at first, and later in M. M. Noah,
New York had its own rather crude dramatists. When
the latter's patriotic play, "She Would be a Soldier; or,
The Plains of Chippewa," was presented in 18 19, Cole-
man spoke of it coldly, suggesting that the plot had been
inspired by the French tale of "Lindor et Clara, ou la
Fille Soldat," and admitting only that "it is not deficient
in interest." But he applauded Noah's "Siege of Tripoli"
next year as deserving what it met, "a greater degree of
success than we ever recollect to have attended an ori-
ginal piece on our stage." Its vivacity, its martial ardor,
its declamation, he thought calculated to arouse a high
and manly patriotism. Nearly the whole of the criticisms,
however, had to be given up not to plays, but to perform-
ers and interpretations of parts.
It was only toward the end of Coleman's long editor-
ship that the first brilliant chapter in the history of the
New York stage began. The actor of greatest note be-
fore the War of 18 12 was George Frederick Cooke, who
was warmly applauded by the Evening Post in a run which
began at the Park Theater in November, 18 10, and who
lies buried in St. Paul's churchyard. It is interesting to
note that during the war English stage-folk, for most
of the actors and actresses of the day were English,
continued to play before admiring audiences. An engage-
ment which the manager had made with Philip Kemble
was suspended; but the Evening Post announced in
August, 18 12, when fighting was general, that the well-
known London actor Holman and his daughter had just
sailed, and they had a successful New York engagement
that autumn. The Evening Post in 18 19 greatly admired
the English singer and actor Phillipps, and Coleman's
praise helped to bring him $9,900 gross in six benefit
nights. It had a warm word for Catherine Lesugg and
ii6 THE EVENING POST
for James W. Wallack, when they made their New York
debut in September, 1818. But the first great dramatic
event at the Park Theater was the initial American ap-
pearance, on Nov. 29, 1820, of Edmund Kean in "Richard
III."
Kean was in his early thirties, and for a half dozen
years, since his first triumphant season at Drury Lane
in 1 8 14, New York had been hearing of his magnificent
powers. Coleman went to the theater that autumn night
suspicious that most of his reputation had been acquired
by stage trickery and appeals to the groundlings. He
saw a man below the middle stature, and heard a voice
thin and grating in its upper tones. "But," admitted the
editor, "he had not finished his soliloquy before our preju-
dices gave way, and we saw the most complete actor, in
our judgment, that ever appeared on our boards." The
eyes were wonderfully expressive and commanding, and
in its lower register the voice, said Coleman, "strikes
with electric force upon the nerves, and at times chills
the very blood." He declared, in an enthusiasm which
recalls Coleridge's remark that seeing Kean play was
like reading Shakespeare by lightning flashes:
We had been induced to suppose that it was only in the more
important scenes that we should see Kean's superiority, and that
the lighter passages would, in theatrical phrase, be walked over.
Far otherwise; he gave to what has heretofore seemed the most
trivial, an interest and effect never by us imagined. The most
striking point he made in the whole play (for we cannot notice
the many minor beauties he exhibited) was his manner of waking
and starting from his couch, with the cry of "Give me a horse —
bind up my wounds! Have mercy, heaven! Ha, soft, 'twas but
a dream." . . . This, with all that followed, was so admirable;
bespeaking a soul, so harrowed up by remorse, so loaded with his
guilt, as gave such an awful and impressive lesson to youth, that
no one who witnessed it can ever forget it.
When Kean played in "The Merchant of Venice," ac-
cording to the Evening Post, the audience hung so breath-
less upon him that "when it was almost impossible to
LITERATURE AND DRAMA 117
restrain loud bursts of delight, a kind of general 'hush I'
was whispered from every part." Many thought that his
best role was Sir Giles Overreach, and an anonymous
critic In the Evening Post said so. Coleman wrote that
the effect he produced as King Lear was Indescribable:
Strong emotions even to tears were excited in ail parts of the
house ; nor were they confined to the female part of the audience.
It could not be otherwise. Who could remain callous to the
appearance of a feeble old monarch, upwards of fourscore years,
staggering under decrepitude and overwhelmed with misfortunes,
attended with aberration of mind which ends in downright mad-
ness? Such a representation was given with perfect fidelity by
Mr. Kean. His plaintive tones were heard from the bottom of
a broken heart, and completed the picture of human woe. Nature,
writhing under the poignancy of her feeling, and finding no ut-
terance in words or tears, found a vent at length for her inde-
scribable sensations in a spontaneous, idiotic laugh. The impres-
sion made upon all who were present, will never be forgotten.
His dreadful imprecations upon his daughters, his solemn appeals
to heaven, struck the soul with awe.
On the final night, Dec. 28, according to the report in
the Evening Post, the theater rang with unprecedented
plaudits, and at the close the audience rose by common
Impulse and cheered Kean three times three.
But when Kean returned to New York in 1825 he was
greeted with a storm of mixed applause and anger — his
first night was the night of the famous "Kean Riot." In
1 82 1 he had accepted a summer engagement in Boston,
and on the third night, finding the theater almost empty
because of the heat, refused to go on with the play,
thereby giving great offense. Moreover, after his return
to England, reports of his flagrant Immorality reached
America. When the Commercial Advertiser heard of his
second tour. It denounced him as a shameless "scoundrel"
and "libertine." Coleman, however, was eager to defend
him. The Park Theater opened on Kean's first night,
Nov. 14, at 5 130, and It was at once filled with a crowd
of more than 2,000. Seven-eighths, according to the Eve-
ning Post, were eager to hear Kean, but about one hun-
ii8 THE EVENING POST
dred, many of them Bostonlans, made up an organized
opposition. The moment the actor stepped forward, the
groans, hisses, and shouts of "Off KeanI" mingled with
the clapping and the cheers of his friends, were deafening.
The play proceeded amid a continued uproar. Some
few scenes In the fourth and fifth acts were heard, but
the others. Including all in which Kean appeared, were
given in dumb show. The actor tried repeatedly to
address the audience, but In vain. At one point he was
struck In the chest by an orange. One interrupter was
put out by the Infuriated audience, and fights occurred in
various parts of the pit, with damage to benches and
furniture.
It would be pleasant to say that the Evening Post
roundly denounced this disgraceful scene, but It rebuked
It only mildly. Fortunately, the outrage was not re-
peated. Kean Issued a mollifying address, the Bostonlans
went home, and a reaction ensued. As the Evening Post
records, every one of his houses was filled to overflowing,
and when he took his benefit night on Feb. 25, 1826, upon
leaving, his receipts were $1,800 clear.
Compared with that of Kean, the debut of Junius
Brutus Booth, made in "Richard III" on the night of
Oct. 5, 1 82 1, attracted little attention. He came to the
city a perfect stranger, and slowly made his way. When
Edwin Forrest appeared at the New York Theater, in
the Bowery, In the autumn of 1826, the Evening Post
pronounced this American-born actor as good as any
but the very foremost Englishmen — "irresistibly Impos-
ing," indeed. But the only engagement comparable with
Kean^s was that of Macready, who made his bow on
Oct. 3, 1826, as VIrglnius In the well-known tragedy of
that name by Knowles. He was greeted so enthusiasti-
cally that he was disconcerted, and many thought him no
better than their old favorite. Cooper. But on the sec-
ond night, when he Impersonated Macbeth, his genius was
perceived. Coleman wrote that he had never seen the
role embodied so consistently. "There was a unity in
his conception of character, which made the development
LITERATURE AND DRAMA 119
of Macbeth's feelings and prompting motives . . . per-
fectly Intelligible, from hfs first Interview with the weird
sisters to the final overthrow of all his hopes, and his des-
perate conflict with Macduff."
The New York which Macready visited in 1826 was
no longer a city of one playhouse, though when people
spoke of ''the theatre" they still always meant that on
Park Row. The people could now support more than
one star and one company at a time. Macready finished
his October engagement on the 20th, and was immediately
followed by Mr. and Mrs. James K. Hackett, In the first
American performance of "The Comedy of Errors." At
the Chatham Theater, Junius Brutus Booth was playing
Shakespeare; on the 25th he gave "Othello," with James
Wallack as lago. Mrs. Gilbert at the New York Thea-
ter, a brand-new edifice in the Bowery, seating 3,000 spec-
tators, was presenting "Much Ado About Nothing."
She was succeeded the next month by Forrest In a reper-
tory of plays. The Evening Post that spring had sur-
prised many by stating that the profits of the Chatham
Theater the previous season had been $23,000, and the
gross receipts $75,000. Of the former sum "The Lady
of the Lake" alone, a play with musical numbers inter-
spersed, had yielded $10,000. The newspaper was de-
lighted when the Hacketts received, on their three bene-
fit nights In "The Comedy of Errors," a total of $3,500.
This was actually $1,100 more than the balloonist,
Eugene Robertson, took one afternoon that month when
he floated from Castle Garden to Elizabeth, N. J., in
the presence of a crowd estimated at more than 40,000.
The day when the Evening Post should have a musical
editor was as far distant as that when it should give to
sports more than a semi-annual paragraph or two upon
the races. But Coleman enthusiastically reviewed the
first Italian opera offered in the city — a performance
of Rossini's "Barber of Seville" at the New York Thea-
ter on Nov. 29, 1825. The fashion of the town turned
out to see this Italian troupe, headed by Seiior Garcia,
on every Tuesday and Saturday during the middle of the
I20 THE EVENING POST
winter; paying $2 for box seats and $i for the pit. "In
what language shall we speak of an entertainment so
novel in this country?" asked the editor:
All have obtained a general idea of the opera by report. But
report can give but a faint idea of it. Until it is seen, it will
never be believed that a play can be conducted in recitative or
singing and yet appear nearly as natural as the ordinary drama.
We were last night surprised, delighted, enchanted ; and such were
the feelings of all who witnessed the performance. The repeated
plaudits with which the theater rang were unequivocal, unaffected
bursts of rapture.
Would American taste approve of the opera? "We pre-
dict," Coleman ventured, "that it will never hereafter
dispense with it."
M
CHAPTER FIVE
BRYANT BECOMES EDITOR OF THE "EVENING POST
?»
In 1829 Richard H. Dana, the poet and father of the
author of "Two Years Before the Mast," remarked that
"If Bryant must write in a paper to get his bread, I pray
God he may get a bellyful." Bryant had entered the
office of the Evening Post in the summer of 1826, half
by accident and without any intention of making journal-
ism his profession; yet he was to remain there fifty-two
years, till the very day he received his death-stroke. No
other great figure in American literature save Dr. Frank-
lin has such a record as a publicist. How did it happen
that the foremost poet in America, already known as such
by "Thanatopsis" and "To a Waterfowl," became the
"junior editor" of the Evening Post in Coleman's de-
clining years?
The young poet-lawyer had come to New York city
from Great Barrington, Mass., at the beginning of 1825,
when he was but thirty years old, brought thither by
Henry D. Sedgwick and Gulian C. Verplanck, two citi-
zens of substance and influence who had been struck by
the genius shown in his first volume of verse. The Sedg-
wicks were a well-known Berkshire family. Catharine
M. Sedgwick, later modestly famous as a novelist, was the
first to make Bryant's acquaintance, and had strongly
commended the struggling barrister to her older brother
Henry, who was a leader at the New York bar. With
neither his profession nor with life in a small town was
Bryant contented ; and the applause which had been given
to "Thanatopsis" in the North American Review, to
"The Ages" when he read it before the Phi Beta Kappa
Society at Harvard, and to his first thin volume in 1821,
seemed to justify his hopes for a metropolitan literary
career. "The time is peculiarly propitious," Henry Sedg-
121
i
122 T15F EVENING POST
wick urged him from New York; "the Athenaeum, just
Instituted, Is exciting a sort of literary rage, and It Is pro-
posed to set up a journal In connection with It." If his
pen did not yield a full living, he could make an additional
sum by giving lessons to foreigners In the English lan-
guage and literature. Bryant willingly yielded. Leaving
his wife and baby behind, he settled in a boarding house
that spring, and became one of the two editors of the
monthly New York Review, the first number of which
appeared in June, 1825.
His arrival to reside In New York had attracted gen-
eral notice. To all discerning lovers of literature In the
city, and they were many, his best poems were well known.
Verplanck had given his first volume a cordial review in
the New York American, and when he had made a pre-
liminary visit to the city In 1824 the Evening Post had
reprinted "Thanatopsis" with a warm word of praise.
At the homes of Sedgwick and Verplanck, the former
a sort of Holland House for New York, Bryant was at
once made acquainted with Fitzgreene Halleck and J. G.
Perclval, with the aspiring young poets Hillhouse and
Robert Sands, with the artists S. B. F. Morse and Dunlap,
with Chancellor Kent and President Duer of Columbia.
We may be sure that Coleman, who was proud of his
friendship with Brockden Brown and Irving, did not fail
to seek out the young New Englander who had come from
near his former home, and whose poem "Green River"
celebrated a stream that Coleman knew well. On Nov.
16, 1825, the Evening Post republished from the New
York Review Bryant's "The Death of the Flowers," on
March 3, 1826, It took from a magazine his "To a
Cloud," and on June 11 It reprinted "The Song of Pit-
cairn's Island"; while various flattering references were
made to his work.
Yet Bryant's position was a precarious and anxious one.
He wrote his friend Dana that, relieved as he was to
get out of his "shabby" profession as a lawyer, in which
he had been shocked by a bad miscarriage of justice and
by the petty wrangles in which he was involved, he was
BRYANT BECOMES EDITOR 123
not sure that he had found a better. Reviewing books
was not the most congenial of employments. His salary
was at first $1,000 a year; but the Review drooped, and
after an effort had been made to bolster it up by amal-
gamation with two other periodicals, Bryant found him-
self in the early summer of 1826 co-editor of the United
States Review and Literary Gazette, with a quarter
ownership and a salary of only $500. His confidence in
his ability to live by his pen was so shaken that he ob-
tained a permit to practice law in the city courts, and was
actually associated with Henry Sedgwick in a case.
At this juncture, in the middle of June, William Cole-
man was thrown from his gig by a runaway horse. It
was for a time doubted whether he would recover, and
as he was confined to his room for ten weeks, it was nec-
essary to find some one to assist his son on the Evening
Post. A temporary position was offered Bryant, and
Verplanck and others earnestly counselled him to take it.
''The establishment is an extremely lucrative one,'* wrote
Bryant. "It is owned by two individuals — Mr. Coleman
and Mr. Burnham. The profits are estimated at about
thirty thousand dollars a year — fifteen to each proprietor.
This is better than poetry and magazines."
Throughout July Bryant was busy upon the Evening
Post; on Aug. 2 he wrote an account of the Columbia
Commencement for it, criticizing the young speakers for
confusing "will" and "shall"; and on Aug. 12 he fur-
nished It two brief poetic translations, from Clement
Marot and Dante, neither of which is Included In his col-
lected works. Immediately thereafter he set out on a
trip to Boston, to bear to Richard H. Dana also an offer
from the Evening Post of a permanent place on Its staff,
which Dana, after some hesitation, refused. This trip
was made possible by Coleman's renewed attention to
the journal. The poet's absence gave the Evening Post
an opportunity to speak highly of Bryant, whom it now
considered a full staff-member. On Aug. 21-22 it re-
published his poem "The Two Graves" from the United
States Review, writing of the accomplished author as one
124 THE EVENING POST
to whom, "by the general assent of the enlightened por-
tion of his countrymen
'The lyre and laurels both are given
With all the trophies of triumphant day.' "
Another evidence of the high esteem in which the news-
paper held Bryant appeared when on Sept. 5 it translated
from the Revue Encyclopedique of Paris a flattering no-
tice of "the exquisite and finished beauty of the little
poems from the pen of W. C. Bryant." The French
magazine credited "the poet of the Green River" with
having destroyed "the too commonly received opinion that
the moral and physical features of the New World are too
cold and serene for the glorious visions of poetry." In
October Coleman spoke of the editors of the United
States Review as "men whose labors heretofore have
contributed so much to the elevation of the American
character in the republic of letters" ; and he reprinted
Bryant's "Mary Magdalene." The poet returned from
Boston via Cummington, and brought his wife with him
to live.
It was made clear to readers that fall that there was
a new and vigorous hand in the management of the jour-
nal. Coleman's steady loss of health had been accom-
panied by a decline in the strength of his editorial utter-
ances. Moreover, he was an editor of the old school that
had passed away with the era of good feeling, and that
was now out of place. He liked to fight over old battles
— he debated the Hartford Convention with Theodore
Dwight, and the Florida Purchase with the National Ad-
vocate. His newspaper was neither Whig nor Democrat,
but might best be described as a Federalist sheet quali-
fied by a mild attachment to Andrew Jackson. In the
Presidential election of 1824 it had supported Crawford
simply because Coleman hated John Quincy Adams as
a traitor to Federalism. It was prosperous, for Michael
Burnham, still an active man, saw to that. It had im-
proved in many respects. In 18 16 it had been enlarged to
offer six columns to the page, instead of five, or twenty-
BRYANT BECOMES EDITOR 125
four in all, and the amount of miscellaneous matter had
increased; a short time earlier It had begun printing two
editions, one at two and the other at four p. m. ; in May,
1 8 19, It had used its first news illustration, a rough draw-
ing of "the velocipede, or swift-walker" ; and In January,
18 17, it had begun to make a very rare use of the first
page for news. But the journal tended too much to look
backward, not forward.
Bryant's son-in-law and biographer, Parke Godwin,
states that in the years 1826-29 we can trace his labors
in the Evening Post in longer and better book reviews,
more attention to art, clearer characterizations of public
men, and frequent suggestions of reform In city affairs.
This is in part misleading. The frequent suggestions for
local improvements were an old feature of the journal,
and did not become more numerous. Characterizations
of public men were not often written nor were they
important. More books were noticed, especially those of
Bliss & White and the young firm of Harpers, because
there were more books — the Post remarked that in the
last three months of 1825 no less than 233 volumes had
come from the American press, apart from periodicals, of
which 137 were original American works; but mere no-
tices were furnished, not reviews. More than once
Bryant, who unmistakably penned these notices, apolo-
gizes for their brevity and sketchiness by saying that he
had not had time to do more than glance through the
book in hand. However, the frequency of these notices,
and the Inclusion of much literary gossip and book an-
nouncements, gave the newspaper an increased literary
flavor.
There was, as Godwin says, more news of art, for
Bryant was Interested in painting, and supplied long criti-
cal descriptions of new canvases by Dunlap and Wash- -
ington Allston, both his friends. There was an increased
amount of news about Columbia College and those pro-
fessors, Anthon, Da Ponte, and Henry J. Anderson,
whom Bryant knew well. The English magazines and
newspapers were read more diligently, and interesting
126 THE EVENING POST
items from them grew in number. Bryant took in charge
the filling of the upper left-hand corner of the news-
page with poetry, and we see fresher and better verse
there — verse by Thomas Hood, Bishop Heber, Hartley
Coleridge, and other Englishmen who preceded Tenny-
son and Browning. The poet wrote some fresh little
essays; as editor of the United States Review, for exam-
ple, he had compiled a curious article from an old colonial
file of the New York Gazette, and he made another on the
same topic equally curious, for the Evening Post. A
few of the essays were satirical — e.g., one of April 23,
1828, dealing with the fashion of indiscriminate puffery
that had grown up in dramatic criticism.
Between 1826 and his departure upon a trip to Europe
in June, 1834, Bryant — with one exception to be noted
later — wrote no signed verse for the Evening Post, re-
serving his few productions, since he was too busy for
much poetical composition, for the magazines and an-
nuals. But several effusions from his pen can nevertheless
be identified. In the first two months of 1829 the town
was much interested by the courageous woman lecturer,
one of the first of the long line which has struggled to
enlarge woman's sphere. Miss Fanny Wright. Bryant,
as his letters show, wrote the rather scornful ode to this
free-thinking disciple of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin,
which appeared in the issue of Jan. ^ :
Thou wonder of the age, from whom
Religion waits her final doom,
Her quiet death, her euthanasia,
Thou in whose eloquence and bloom
The age beholds a new Aspasia!
* * * * * ♦
O 'tis a glorious sight for us.
The gaping throng, to see thee thus
The light of dawning truth dispense.
While Col. Stone, the learn'd and brave,
The press's Atlas, mild but grave.
Hangs on the words that leave thy mouth,
Slaking his intellectual drouth,
BRYANT BECOMES EDITOR 127
In that rich stream of eloquence,
And notes thy teachings, to repeat
Their wisdom in his classic sheet . . .
Another bit of verse, a short political satire (March 25,
1831), is identifiable by the fact that it is signed "Q,"
the initial Bryant used for dramatic criticism, and that it
is marked as his in the files presented by the Evening Post
to the Lenox Collection. Called "The Bee in the Tar
Barrel," it represents the buzzings of the National
Gazette — Henry Clay's organ in New York — over the
tariff, the removal of the Cherokees, and other current
topics :
I heard a bee, on a summer day.
Brisk, and busy, and ripe for quarrel —
Bustling, and buzzing, and bouncing away,
In the fragrant depths of an old tar-barrel.
Do you ask what his buzzing was all about?
Oh, he was wondrous shrewd and critical.
'Twas sport to hear him scold and flout,
And the topics he chose were all political . . .
Bryant also is probably to be credited with several of
the last New Year's addresses of the carriers, long
rhymed reviews of the year's events which were then ex-
pected annually. He could have tossed off more easily
than any one else in the oflfice such hexameters as the
following (Jan. 2, 1829) :
Since New Year's day came last about,
The Emperor Nicholas sent out
A potent army, full of fight,
Cossack, and Pole, and Muscovite,
To give the Turks a castigation.
Such as they ne'er had since creation.
They passed the Pruth in fine condition,
And meeting no great opposition.
They thought to make their winter quarters
By Hellespont's resounding waters . . .
There are frequently unsigned poems of a serious char-
128 THE EVENING POST
acter In the Evening Post during these years, but nine in
ten are so poor that it is Impossible to believe that Bryant
wrote them. Now and then occurs one which might be
his; such, for example, are the translations of lyrics from
the German of Glelm which appeared on Nov. 13,
1827, and Dec. 2, 1828. Bryant did not claim all of
his poems in even the United States Review; it has been
assumed of these, and it may be assumed of any lost in
the Evening Post files, that they were not worth claiming.
As a young man, Bryant took his journalistic duties
light-heartedly, and one of his distinctive contributions
lay in his literary hoaxes. He and his close friend Robert
C. Sands, a talented young assistant of Col. Stone in
editing the Commercial Advertiser, delighted in them.
"Did you see a learned article in the Evening Post the
other day about Pope Alexander VI and Caesar Borgia?"
he wrote Gulian Verplanck, then a Congressman In Wash-
ington. "Matt. Patterson undertook to be saucy in the
Commercial as to a Latin quotation in It, so we — i.e.,
Sands and myself — sent him on a fool's errand." The
editor of the Commercial h3,d corrected the Evening
Post^s Latin, and Bryant had replied as follows, inventing
the authority he cited :
As to the Latin of the phrase, "Vides, mi fili, quam parva sapi-
entia guhernatur mundusi' he affirms that it is not good. He says
that it should be, "Vides, mi fili, quantilla sapientia regitur
mundus." He adds, however, that it was not said by any of the
Popes, but by some great statesman, whose name he does not give,
probably because he does not know it. As to the correctness of the
Latin, that is no business of ours. ... If any of the Popes spoke
bad Latin, two or three hundred years before we were born, it
should be recollected that it was not in our power to* help it. As
to the fact of the phrase being made use of by one of the Popes,
we will only say to the writer in the Commercial, that if he will
consult the work entitled Virorum Illustrium Reliquice, collected
by the learned Reisch and published at the Hague, by John and
Daniel Steucker, in 1650, a work well known to scholars, he will
find that the words, as we have quoted them, were addressed by
Pope Alexander VI to his son Caesar Borgia.
BRYANT BECOMES EDITOR 129
Upon a more elaborate hoax Bryant and Sands were
assisted by Professors Anderson and Da Ponte — "a very
learned jeu d'esprit," he called It. It was a long letter
to the Evening Post signed John Smith, in which they
took a familiar couplet and translated it through all the
principal tongues, ancient and modern, even into several
Indian languages. It is hard to believe that these erudite
quips had a large audience; but Bryant's ode to Fanny
Wright was much admired, and was generally attributed
to Halleck, until that gentleman disclaimed it. In these ^^
high-spirited productions we see a side of Bryant that
largely disappeared under his growing cares and the dig-
nity that increased with his celebrity. We see the Bryant
who used to meet with Verplanck and Sands at the house
of the latter's father in the hamlet of Hoboken, and
make it ring with declamation and uproarious laughter.
We see the poet-editor who used to throw off all anxieties
and go for long walks, studying nature or chatting with
companions, and who once at an evening party apologized
for his fatigue by explaining that he had .covered the
road from Haverstraw to New York, nearly forty miles,
that day. Bryant had his fun-loving side, and the few
men whom he found closely congenial had no reason to
complain of his coldness, as others often did. "^-^
But the new editor's most effective impress upon the fl/^
Evening Post was in its political and economic utterances, j
The journal had already inclined toward a low-tariff '
policy, for the commercial community of New York op-
posed protection; but its editorials upon this subject, as
upon many others, were feeble. Bryant in the year
1822-24 had been led by his friends the Sedgwicks to
study the British economists, Adam Smith, Thornton, and
Ricardo, and the debates upon tariff questions prominent
in Parliament about 1820. Theodore Sedgwick was a pro- 1
nounced advocate of free trade, and completely converted^]
Bryant. From the young man's convictions upon this l^^^^
subject flowed his attachment to Jackson as an opponent \
of protection and monopoly, and his intense dislike of 1
Clay, the leading advocate of the so-called American (
130 THE EVENING POST
tariff system. He had once been a Federalist, and as a
boy had written a hot Federalist poem, "The Embargo,"
but his free-trade views now fast made him an ardent
Democrat. His sympathies in commercial legislation
were not with his native New England, but with the
South.
Martin Van Buren writes in his Autobiography regard-
ing the "American" or protective tariff theories that "To
the very exposition of the system and the persistent as-
saults upon its injustice, and impolicy by the New York
Evening Post, the country is more indebted for its final
overthrow, in this State [New York] at least, than to
any other single influence." This was true. Bryant,
who was to oppose protection till his death in 1878, lost
no time in 1826 in aligning the journal against the legis-
lation then proposed for higher duties upon woolens. He
^aracterized the act of 1824 as "our last and worst"
tariff, and that autumn supported his friend Verplanck,
with C. C. Cambreleng and Jeromus Johnson, for city
seats in Congress as "the avowed opponents of restric-
tive and prohibitory laws." On Nov. 16 he wrote con-
cerning the woolens bill:
From 1 81 5 to the present day the demands of ouf manufac-
turers have been incessant ; and the more bounty they receive, the
more exorbitant their claims. It is time that they should be
taught to wait, as other branches of industry do, for that revival
of trade which can alone give them relief. ... If the woolen
manufactures have grown with unnatural rapidity during the last
ten years, no legislativjc remedy can be applied ; it is an evil which
in every branch of industry periodically finds its own remedy.
All acquainted with the subject know that our manufacturing is
our most profitable branch of industry, and we trust Congress
will no longer continue to pamper capitalists so highly favored by
circumstances.
Almost alone among the Northern newspapers — the
Providence Journal was its most important ally — the
^Evening Post unsuccessfully combated the tariff of 1828.
The newspaper ascribed to it the Paterson textile strike
of I828, and predicted that these industrial outbreaks
BRYANT BECOMES EDITOR 131
would yet equal the Manchester and Birmingham riots.
In 1830 it asked where were the busy thousands who had
once been employed in the city's shipyards, along the
docks, or in establishments for fitting out vessels. A
few half-idle men were left; the rest, thanks to the tariff,
were "in the miserable abodes of poverty, or in the
poorhouse." John Jacob Astor early in 1831 asked for
a higher duty upon furs, declaring that he was undersold
in the Eastern market by British traders who possessed
an advantage in dealing with the Indians. The blankets,
strouds, and garments which the savages liked were not
made in the United States, but had to be imported from
England and to pay a heavy duty, so that the Canadian
fur agents could offer much more than the Americans for
pelts. The Evening Post pounced upon this as an argu-
ment not for a tariff upon furs, but for abating the tariff
on blankets and clothing.
Naturally, in 1828 the Post supported Jackson against
J. Q. Adams for the Presidency, Bryant adding new rea-
sons to those Coleman had used against Adams four
years earlier. He represented the section that clamored
for protection, while Jackson was for a lower tariff.
Under the urgings of Senator Rufus King a decade be^
fore, the Post had said hard things about Jackson, but
now it praised him for his long public service, for his
Roman strength of will, and for his clearsighted political
tenets. When he became President, it supported his
Indian policy; it urged him on, as we shall see later, in
his determination to crush the United States Bank. The
tariff act of 1832, carrying a moderate reduction of du-
ties, it naturally applauded. It was a compromise bill^
Bryant admitted. "Yet a large majority of the friends
of free trade are satisfied with it, because although not
what they would have it, it is still a positive good, it
simplifies the collection of the revenue, it removes many
of the embarrassments in the way of the fair trader, it
diminishes the temptation to smuggling, and it is an ap-
proach, if nothing more, to a fair and equal system of
duties."
[/
132 THE EVENING POST
While giving the Evening Post a clear-cut, courageous
tariff policy, Bryant did much else with the editorial page.
Early in 1827 he came out with a far more ringing de-
nunciation of lotteries than it had before printed, and in
August he induced It to announce that It would accept no
more advertisements relating directly or indirectly to
* {tickets in them. During the same year, following a num-
ber of business failures in the city, he wrote in advocacy
of a comprehensive national bankruptcy act, such as was
not passed till near the end of the century. To his sur-
prise, merchants frowned on the proposal, and the Eve-
ning Post was left, in his expressive words, "like a public
actor who believes he has just said something highly to
the purpose, and looks around for applause, but meets
only hisses." Later, In 1837, ^^^ Buren formerly recom-
mended a general bankruptcy law to Congress, but again
It met with no favor. A number of steamboat accidents
caused the journal to press for legislation punishing crim-
inal carelessness and manslaughter by fitting penitentiary
sentences. It took up with zeal, following Jackson's
Inaugural message, the Administration's campaign against
the policy of national aid to internal Improvements, for
Bryant regarded such gifts to special local and political
interests as an evil almost as great as protective tariff.
When the first rumblings of nullification were heard
from South Carolina in 1829, the Evening Post refused
to follow those newspapers which treated the subject
flippantly. "Every man of common sense must know
that if but a single stave Is withdrawn from the barrel,
it inevitably tumbles to pieces," Bryant warned his read-
ers; "and that whatever be the dimensions of the stave
withdrawn, the catastrophe Is equally sure and fatal." It
was impossible for the journal not to sympathize with
the hot-tempered South Carolinians who wanted to de-
stroy the application of the tariff of 1828 to their State.
It thought that Col. Hayne was no more wrong about
the Constitution than the turncoat Webster was wrong
about the tariff; but It warned Calhoun's and Hayne's
followers that their project was "insane" :
BRYANT BECOMES EDITOR 133
It is the destiny of all republics to be agitated occasionally by
the desperate plans of disappointed and ambitious men, resolved
to rule or ruin. Such might succeed with a corrupt people, but
not in our intelligent and free land. Public opinion has indig-
nantly rejected every proposition to dismember our confederacy,
and has pronounced a just judgment on those who prefer them-
selves to their country — we have already among us more than
one blasted monument of selfish ambition. The wreck of our
republic is not yet at hand — the people's devotion to the Union
is invincible, and the same verdict awaits every man, whether of
the North, the South, the East, or the West, who would dare to
violate its integrity. (Aug. 29, 1832.)
Whether applauding Jackson as he sternly recalled
South Carolina to Its senses, or attacking the protection-
ist doctrines, Bryant tried to open his editorials with
a flash of humor or an apposite story. When the
American delayed a twelvemonth In apologizing for an
Insult to Jackson, he told the anecdote of the worthy
widow whose husband had been dead for seven years and
who declared that she could stand It no longer. The
opponent who sighed for the time when the Administra-
tion would go into a state of "retiracy" reminded him
of the Irishman who had rushed for a map when he
learned that Napoleon had taken Umbrage. An ex-
change with a discourteous antagonist recalled the mem-
ber of the House of Commons who, having said that a
colleague was not fit to carry guts to a bear, and being
required to apologize, stated: 'T retract — you are fit to
carry guts to a bear." During 1831 many Americans
were boasting of having known Louis Philippe when he
was an expatriate in this country; and in rebuke to their
snobbery, the editor spoke of the man who was proud of
having been noticed by a king — the king had said, ''Get
out of my way, you scoundrel!" Bryant wrote laboriously,
not fluently, and made so many corrections that his copy
\vas often almost illegible; but he wrote with polish.
Coleman's health after his runaway accident steadily
failed. He had wholly lost the use of his lower limbs, and
Bryant tells us that his appearance was remarkable. ''He
134 THE EVENING POST
was of a full make, with a broad chest, muscular arms,
which he wielded lightly and easily, and a deep-toned
voice; but his legs dangled like strings." The National
Journal of July, 1827, commented upon his declining
strength, in April and June, 1828, Evening Post readers
were told that he was confined to his home, and on July
14, 1829, he died. Bryant instantly became, what he had
previously been in all but name, editor-in-chief. Some as-
sistance was needed, for Coleman's son, though a man of
literary tastes, did not wish to enter the office. In 1827 a
share in the newspaper had been offered to Robert Sands,
but after some hesitation he had declined it. Now an edi-
torial position, and the opportunity of becoming part
owner, was tendered William Leggett, a spirited young
reformer who had been connected with the Morning
Chronicle, and more recently had been editor of a frail
weekly called the Critic, the final numbers of which he
had not only written but set up, printed, and delivered
himself. He gladly accepted.
Within four and a half years of coming to the city
a literary adventurer, Bryant had thus become editor of
one of its oldest and most prosperous journals. He had
done this not because he had an inborn tendency to jour-
nalism, not because he wished to make a newspaper the
sounding board for certain ideas or doctrines, but chiefly
because he could not live by pure literature, and because
the bar, for which he was in many ways well equipped,
\ did not please him. But he did bring to the newspaper
I great ability and high ideals. No American editor of im-
l portance had made such use of the editorial page as he
I began to make. He had a love of freedom, a sense of
Ijustice, and a shrewd judgment of men and affairs, which
his retiring nature debarred him from bringing into play
in any other way. As an editor, this shy, unsocial man
could work at arm's length for the benefit of the people
and nation, and except at arm's length he could have had
no public career at all. He was willing to toil hard in his
chosen calling, and for many years to push poetry, though
upon poetry alone he relied for enduring fame, into a
BRYANT BECOMES EDITOR 135
secondary position. He had a keen sense of the dignity
that should belong to his profession, and by word as well
as example preached against that use of epithet and
insult which was then common in it. In one of his early
essays he deplored the character of many journalists:
Yet the vocation of a newspaper editor is a useful and indis- / ^
pensable, and, if rightly exercised, a noble vocation. It possesses j
this essential element of dignity — that they who are engaged in it
are occupied with questions of the highest importance to the hap-
piness of mankind. We cannot see, for our part, why it should
not attract men of the first talents and the most exalted virtues.
Why should not the discussions of the daily press demand as
strong reasoning powers, as large and comprehensive ideas, as pro- '■
found an acquaintance with principles, eloquence as commanding,
and a style of argument as manly and elevated, as the debates of ,
the Senate?
Once established in full charge of the Evening Post,
with a capable lieutenant, he was able to make rapid, far-
reaching, and profitable improvements In the form of the
journal. In 1829 it was still closely akin to the Evening
Post of 1 80 1 — four pages of six columns each, much
smaller than newspaper pages of to-day, dingily printed
and ineffectively made up. When he left for Europe
five years later the four pages had seven columns each,
and were much larger than present-day pages — great
blanket papers. Old John Randolph of Roanoke wrote
Bryant complaining that these expansive sheets crinkled
so badly in the mail that he had to have his housekeeper
iron them out. But the results of the enlargement were
an enhanced revenue from advertisements, and a rise of
the subscription list, at $10 a year, above 2,000. In
1834 the management boasted that the journal had never
been in a more prosperous condition, and that not three
other papers in the city were so productive. The whole
number of employees, including those in the mechanical
departments, was then thirty.
When Bryant wrote his wife in 1826 that the Evening
Post's profits were $30,000 a year, he overestimated
136 THE EVENING POST
them; Its gross receipts were only that much. But
Bryant's share In the newspaper, which was at first
one-eighth, which In 1830 became one-fourth. In 1832
was one-third of seven-eighths, and In 1833 was a full
third, sufficed to free him from all money cares at once,
and within a short time to make him prosperous. The
journal's books were balanced each year on Nov. 16, the
anniversary of Its founding. On that date In 1829, it
was found that the net profits were $10,544, of which
Bryant's one-eighth made $1,318.04. The next year the
net profits had risen to $13,466, and Bryant's quarter
share was $3,366.51. In 1831 there was a further in-
crease to $14,429, making Bryant's income $3,507.24.
A heavy slump occurred the following twelvemonth, cut-
ting the net profits to $10,220, and the poet's share to
$2,980.99, but this was only temporary. For the half-
year alone ending May 16, 1833 — the figures for the full
year are lost — the profits were $6,000.35, making Bry-
ant's Income for six months exactly $2,000; and for the
full year which closed Nov. 16, 1834, his one-third share
yielded no less than $4,646.20. In those days an income
of $4,000 or above was handsome, and Bryant was able
to sail In the summer of 1834 with a full purse.
The literary world, however, looked with cold dis-
approval upon Bryant's entrance into the newspaper field,
which it believed was occupied by cheap political con-
troversialists, and thought offered an atmosphere hostile
to poetry. It found confirmation for this attitude in the
marked slackening of Bryant's productiveness as a poet.
Of the whole quantity of verse which he wrote during his
long lifetime, about 13,000 lines, approximately one-
third had been composed before 1829. During 1830 he
wrote but thirty lines, during 1831 but sixty, in 1832 only
two hundred and twenty-two, and in 1833 apparently
none at all; nor was his verse of this period in his best
vein. He was too completely occupied in mastering his
new calling to cultivate the muse.
"Would that Mr. Bryant was employed in writing
poetry . . . and sending back his thoughts to the streams
BRYANT BECOMES EDITOR 137
and mountains which his young eyes were familiar with,
and from which he drank his first inspiration!" lamented
a writer in the New England Magazine for 1831. *'But
alas I he is busied about far other things, and what he is
writing, is as little like poetry, as Gen. Jackson Is like
Apollo." This writer had called on the editor in his little
Pine Street office. "He is a man rather under the middle
height than otherwise, with bright blue eyes and an ample
forehead, but not very distinguished either in face or
person," we are told. "His manners are quiet and unas-
suming, and marked with a slight dash of diffidence; and
his conversation (when he does converse, for he is more
used to thinking than talking), is remarkably free from
pretension, and is characterized by good sense rather than
genius." Why could he not have remained a lawyer in
Great Barrlngton, amid his Berkshire hills and brooks?
We cannot close this notice without again expressing our sor-
row at the nature of Mr. Bryant's present occupation, and that a
man capable of writing poetry to make so many hearts throb, and
so many eyes glisten with delight, should be lending himself to
an employment in which the greater the success the more occasion
there is for regret, for it must arise from the exertion of those
very qualities which we are least willing a poet should possess.
" 'Tis strange, 'tis passing strange, 'tis pitiful, that" he should
hang up his own cunning harp upon the willows, and take to
blowing a brazen and discordant trumpet in the ranks of faction.
An early number of the Southern Literary Messenger
regretted that Bryant was to be found "dashing in the
political vortex" with those who "engage In party squab-
bles." The New York Courier and Enquirer, In an ut-
terance of 1832 which is to be discounted because of
editorial jealousy, remarked that "he has embarked in
a pursuit not suited to his genius and utterly at variance
with all his studies and habits of mind. We wish him
a better fate than can ever be his while doomed to follow
a business for which he has not a solitary qualification,
and compelled to give utterance to sentiments he most
cordially despises."
138 THE EVENING POST
To a certain extent Bryant agreed with these writers.
I He did not believe journalism an unworthy or undigni-
! fied occupation. In the Evening Post of July 30, 1830,
I he gave reasons for holding the contrary opinion, descant-
ing upon the value of the opportunity to guide the think-
Vjing of thousands. "In combating error in all shapes and
disguises," he wrote, it was ample compensation for an
editor's trials "to perceive that you are understood by the
intelligent, and appreciated by the candid, and that truth
and correct principles are gradually extending their sway
through your efforts." But he had no attachment as yet
to the editorial career, he wanted with all his heart to
have leisure for pure literature, and he meant to get out
of the newspaper office as quickly and finally as possible.
He bracketed it with the law as a "wrangling profes-
sion," and talked of being chained to the oar. Always
fond of travel, he escaped from his desk after 1830 as
much as he possibly could. In January, 1832, he took a
trip to Washington, making the establishment of a reg-
ular Washington correspondence his excuse, and had a
conversation of three quarters of an hour there with
Jackson. That spring he made an excursion to Illinois,
to visit his brothers. During the summer of 1833 he went
to Montreal and Quebec. When he took passage abroad
on June 24, 1834, he hoped that the business capacity of
Michael Burnham and the editorial capacity of William
Leggett would make anything but intermittent attention
by him to the Evening Post thenceforth unnecessary. "I
have been employed long enough with the management of
a daily newspaper, and desire leisure for literary occupa-
tions that I love better," he later wrote his brother. "It
was not my intention when I went to Europe to return to
the business of conducting a newspaper." He hoped that
his third share would support him.
How these expectations were suddenly wrecked, and
how Bryant was brought back by harsh necessity to res-
cue the Evening Post from ruin, is a dramatic story.
CHAPTER SIX
WILLIAM LEGGETT ACTING EDITOR; DEPRESSION, RIVALRY,
AND THREATENED RUIN
One of the most popular pieces of sculpture the country
has ever known, Horatio Greenough's "Chaunting Cher-
ubs," was being widely discussed in the early thirties, as
was Hiram Powers's ''Greek Slave," a little later. In a
witty moment the Courier and Enquirer christened Bryant
and William Leggett, for Leggett also wrote poetry, "the
chaunting cherubs of the Evening PostJ' The name had
outward appropriateness, but it would really have been
more fitting to call Leggett a spouting volcano.
While Bryant controlled the journal, it abstained from
any harsh abuse of other journals. His rule was to notice
no personal attacks, and to make none in retaliation.
Only once in fifty years did he, passing in the street an
editorial adversary who had given him the lie direct, lose
control of himself. The diarist Philip Hone tells the
story under date of April 20, 1831 :
While I was shaving this morning at eight o'clock, I witnessed
from the front window an encounter In the street nearly opposite,
between William C. Bryant and William L. Stone; the former
one of the editors of the Evening Post, and the latter editor of the
Commercial Advertiser. The former commenced the attack by
striking Stone over the head with a cowskin; after a few blows
the men closed, and the whip was wrested from Bryant and car-
ried off by Stone. When I saw them first, two younger persons
were engaged, but soon discontinued their fight.
The next day Bryant made a public statement of this
incident, pointing out the gross provocation that he had
received, but apologizing to his readers for having taken
the law into his own hands. Particularly as there de-
veloped some doubt whether Col. Stone was the author
139
140 THE EVENING POST
of the attack, he could never hear the matter referred to
without showing his chagrin and regret.
But Bryant had no sooner left the office for Europe
than it became plain that Leggett had no such scruples.
In one brief paragraph he managed to call the editor of
the Star a wretch, liar, coward, and a vile purchased tool
who would do anything for money. The "venomous
drivel" of the Commercial Advertiser might sometimes
require notice, he wrote a few days later, but his con-
tempt for the editor was "so supreme that to us, per-
sonally, he is as if he were not — a perfect non-entity."
In the autumn Assembly campaign Leggett shotted his
guns, and on Sept. 23 and 24 let off broadsides that shook
the town. He accused the Daily Advertiser of "a vile
untruth" ; he called the editor of the American a
"detestable caitiff," a "craven wretch, spotted with
all kinds of vices," and "a hireling slave and public
incendiary"; while he characterized the Courier and
Enquirer as a blustering, bullying sheet, reeking with
falsehood, pandering to the vulgar, profligate, im-
pudent, inane, and inciting men to riot and bloodshed.
On Sept. 26 Leggett was able to fill a column with
answers. "The editor is deranged," said the American;
he should be "committed to Bedlam," averred the
Gazette; "a writ de lunatico^^ is needed, chimed in the
Courier; this, said the Star, "is too true to make a jest
of"; and the Boston Atlas professed horror at "the fero-
cious, mad, and bloody words of this desperate print."
Leggett was not deranged, but simply in full fighting
trim, and showing the defects of his really sterling vir-
tues. By sheer slashing vigor as a political writer he
achieved in a half dozen years upon the Evening Post
a permanent fame as a reformer and controversialist.
Whittier, in his essays, compares Leggett with Hampden
and Vane, and declares that "no one has labored more
perseveringly, or, in the end, more successfully, to bring
the practice of American democracy into conformity with
its professions." His poetical tribute to "the bold re-
former" and his "free and honest thought, the angel ut-
LEGGETT ACTING EDITOR 141
terance of an upright mind," is better known. Theodore
Sedgwick, Jr., believed that but for Leggett's untimely
end he might have made one of the greatest names in
American history. Bryant's memorial tribute :
The words of fire that from his pen
Were flung upon the fervid page,
Still move, still shake the hearts of men,
Amid a cold and coward age,
was no exaggeration, but true for the whole generation
which followed Leggett's death. The editor's political
writings were perhaps the most potent force in shaping
the ideas of democracy held by Walt Whitman, who in
1847 wrote of the necessity of following the doctrines of
the "great Jefferson and the glorious Leggett," and who
in his old age spoke to Horace Traubel of his high admira-
tion for him. A recent historical writer has said that
Leggett was "one of the most sincere and briUiant apos-
tles of democracy that America has ever known."
When Leggett became junior editor of the Evening
Post he was known solely as a writer of essays, stories,
and verse. He was a New Yorker by birth, but had been
educated at Georgetown, D. C, had been given a taste
of Illinois prairie life in his later youth, and had entered
the navy as a midshipman at the age of twenty, resigning
six years later because of the overbearing conduct of his
commander. A volume of his poems, "Leisure Hours
at Sea," and some tales of pioneer and sailor life which
he published in annuals and magazines, gave him a suffi-
cient reputation to enable him to found his weekly mis-
cellany, the Critic. He stipulated with Bryant that he
should not be required to write upon political topics, "on
which he had no settled opinions, and for which he had
no taste" ; but within a few months he found himself
almost wholly devoted to them. Bryant imbued him
with his own ardent free-trade doctrines, and his own
warm admiration for Jackson and Jacksonian measures.
He was eight years younger than the senior editor. His
associates describe him as a man of middle stature, com-
142 THE EVENING POST
pact frame, great endurance, and a constitution naturally
strong, but somewhat impaired by an attack of the yellow
fever while serving with the United States squadron
in the West Indies. His naval training had given him
a dignified bearing, his address was easy, and his affability
and mildness of manner surprised those who had known
him only by his fiery writings. He was fond of study;
and his ability to write fluently in his crowded, littered
back room on Pine Street, the crash of the presses in his
ear, amid a thousand distractions, amazed everybody.
Bryant and Leggett had now labored together five
years, 1 829-1 834. The chief local occurrence in this
period was the great cholera epidemic of 1832, causing an
exodus from the city which the Evening Post of August 6
estimated at above 100,000. The two editors worked
manfully, though perhaps hardly candidly, to allay the
panic. Although the first case appeared on June 26, so
late as July 13 they maintained that there was no epi-
demic, in the strict sense of the word; and ten days later
they denied with vehemence the allegation of the Courier
and Enquirer, which was exaggerating the plague, that
two Evening Post employees had died of cholera.
Throughout the great war over the Bank of the United
States the Evening Post had stood by the President.
Jackson appealed to the loyalty of Bryant and Leggett
in equal degree, but differently. To Leggett he was "the
man of the people," a son of the frontier, a democrat
from heel to crown. In Bryant he awakened the same
admiration that he aroused in Irving, Cooper, Bancroft,
and in Landor abroad: admiration for his adventurous
heroism, his unspotted honesty, his simplicity, his stern
directness, his tenacity in pressing forward to his goal.
One had to be either the wholehearted admirer of "Old
Hickory" or his wholehearted opponent, and as early as
Jackson Day in 1828 Bryant had become the former,
writing for a dinner at Masonic Hall an ode which, ac-
cording to Verplanck, threw Van Buren into ecstasies.
Not a single measure of Jackson's, not even his wholesale
removals from office under the spoils system, was cen-
LEGGETT ACTING EDITOR 143
sured by the Evening Post, and by 1832, after the end of
nullification, it was hailing him as "the man destined to
stand in history by the side of Washington, the one
bearing the proud title of the Father of his Country, the
other the scarcely less illustrious one of Preserver of the
Union."
All Jackson's charges against the Bank — that it was
a source of political corruption, that it was monopolistic,
that it was hostile to popular interests and dangerous to
the government, that it was unsafely managed — were
echoed by Bryant and Leggett. Probably only the accu-
sation that it had gone into politics was fully warranted,
but the Evening Post pressed them all. Speaking of the
Bank's "enormous powers" and "its barefaced bribery
and corruption," it applauded Jackson's veto of the bill
to recharter it, and his withdrawal In 1833 of the gov-
ernment deposits in it. When the Bank curtailed its loans
to meet the withdrawal of these deposits, the editors
thought that It was trying to coerce the people and gov-
ernment, by threatening a panic, into yielding. "The
object of the Bank is to create a pressure for money,
to impair the confidence of business men In each other,
and to keep the community at large in a state of great
uncertainty and confusion, in the hope that men will at
last say, 'let us have the Bank rechartered, rather than
that . . . the whole country should be thrown Into dis-
tress.' " The alliance of the chief statesmen in Congress
on behalf of the Bank drew from the journal three inter-
esting characterizations (March 31, 1834) :
Clay: — . . . The parent and champion of the tariff and in-
ternal improvements ; of a system directly opposed to the interests
and prosperity of every merchant in the United States, and calcu-
lated and devised for the purpose of organizing an extensive and
widespread scheme through which the different portions of the
United States might be bought up in detail. ... By assuming the
power of dissipating the public revenue in local improvements,
by which one portion of the community would be benefited at
the expense of many others. Congress acquired the means of in-
fluencing and controlling the politics of every State in the Union,
144 THE EVENING POST
and of establishing a rigid, invincible consolidated government.
By assuming the power of protecting any class or portion of the
industry of this country, by bounties in the shape of high duties
on foreign importations, they placed the labor and industry of
the people entirely at their own disposal, and usurped the preroga-
tive of dispensing all the blessings of Providence at pleasure. . . .
It is against this great system for making the rich richer, the
poor poorer, and thus creating those enormous disproportions of
wealth which are always the forerunner of the loss of freedom;
it is against this great plan of making the resources of the General
Government the means of obtaining the control of the States by
an adroit species of political bribery, that General Jackson has
arrayed himself. . . . He has arrested the one by his influence,
the other by his veto.
Calhoun: — Reflecting and honest men may perhaps wonder to
see this strange alliance between the man by whom the tariff was
begotten, nurtured, and brought to a monstrous maturity, and
him who carried his State to the verge of rebellion in opposition
to that very system. By his means and influence, this great
Union was all but dissolved, and in all probability would at this
moment lie shattered into fragments, had it not been for the
energetic and prompt patriotism of the stern old man who then
said, "The Union — it must be preserved." Even at this moment
Mr. Calhoun . . . still threatens to separate South Carolina
from the confederacy, if she is not suffered to remain in it with
the privilege of a veto on the laws of the Union.
Webster: — Without firmness, consistency, or political courage
to be a leader, except in one small section of the Union, he seems
to crow to any good purpose only on his own dunghill, and is a
much greater fowl in his own barnyard than anywhere else. He
is a good speaker at the bar and in the House; but he is a much
greater lawyer than statesman, and far more expert in detailing
old arguments than fruitful in inventing new ones. He is not
what we should call a great man, much less a great politician;
and we should go so far as to question the power of his intellect,
did it not occasionally disclose itself in a rich exuberance of con-
tradictory opinions. A man who can argue so well on both sides
of a question cannot be totally destitute of genius.
And here these three gentlemen, who agree in no one single
principle, who own no one single feeling in common, except that
of hatred to the old hero of New Orleans, stand battling side by
side. The author and champion of the tariff, and the man who
on every occasion denounced it as a violation of the Constitution;
LEGGETT ACTING EDITOR 145
the oracle of nullification and the oracle of consolidation ; the trio
of antipathies ; the union of contradiction ; the consistency of incon-
sistencies; the coalition of oil, vinegar, and mustard; the dressing
in which the great political salad is to be served up to the people.
In this aggressive writing we see Leggett's pen; and it
was only after Bryant left the Evening Post in his sole
charge that It entered upon Its hottest fighting. The first
episode, Its defense of abolitionists In the right of free
speech, was highly creditable to it.
The abolitionists had begun to arouse popular resent-
ment In New York so early as 1833; on Oct. 2 of that
year, a meeting of the "friends of immediate abolition"
at Clinton Hall had been broken up by a tumultuous
crowd, which adjourned to Tammany Hall and there de-
nounced the agitators. Lewis Tappan, head of one of
the largest silk houses In the city, and for a short time
after 1827 editor of the Journal of Commerce; his
brother Arthur Tappan; Joshua Leavitt, the Rev. Dr.
F. F. Cox, the Rev. Mr. Ludlow, and several other
Protestant clergymen made up a constellation only less
active than that formed In Boston by William Lloyd
Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Samuel J. May, and John
Plerpont. During the spring of 1834 these men con-
tinued their speechmaking, and Ludlow and Cox went
so far as to appeal to all Northern negroes for support,
and to defend Intermarriage between whites and blacks-
Few New Yorkers then regarded Southern slavery as a
national shame, and almost none had any patience with
abolition. Most of the press denounced the movement
emphatically; the Evening Post refused to do this, though
It called It wild and visionary.
On July 7 some negroes repaired to the Chatham
Street Chapel for a belated celebration of the Fourth,
and at the same time the Sacred Music Society met there
for practice, claiming a prior right of occupancy. Pa-
triotism and music were forgotten in the ensuing melee.
The Evening Post had felt that trouble was brewing, and
it raised a warning voice :
The story is told in the morning papers in very inflammatory
146 THE EVENING POST
language, and the whole blame Is cast upon the negroes; yet it
seems to us, from those very statements themselves, that, as usual,
there was fault on both sides, and especially on that of the whites.
It seems to us, also, that those who are opposed to the absurd
and mad schemes of the immediate abolitionists, use means against
that scheme which are neither just nor politic. We have noticed
a great many tirades of late, in certain prints, the object of which
appears to be to excite the public mind to strong hostility to the
negroes generally, and to the devisers of the immediate emancipa-
tion plan, and not merely to the particular measure represented.
This community is too apt to run into excitements ; and those who
are now trying to get up an excitement against the negroes will
have much to answer for, should their efforts be successful. . . .
Other journals, especially the Courier and Enquirer,
continued their provocative utterances and called for
public meetings to protest against the abolition move-
ment. The result was that disturbances occurred on the
night of Wednesday, the ninth, and reached their climax
on Friday In scenes not equaled until the Draft Riots,
r "At an hour after dark on Friday, Lewis Tappan's store
\ was attacked and its windows were broken. At ten
t o'clock the mob broke in the doors of Dr. Cox's church
on Laight Street, and demolished Its interior, after which
it made a rush for his home on Charlton Street, but found
it picketed by the police and retired. The next objective
was Mr. Ludlow's church on Spring Street, which was
half demolished, together with the Session House next
door. Thereupon the rioters made for the principal
negro quarter of the town, in the region about Five
Points. The Five Points has figured on some of the
blackest pages of New York's history. It was here that
fourteen negroes were burned In 1740 during the so-called
Negro Insurrection; here the Seventh Regiment was
called out in 1857 ^^ quell a riot; here the "Dead Rab-
bits" later fought the "Bowery Boys," and here stood
the notorious Old Brewery that the Five Points Mission
displaced. But it never saw more panic and outrage than
on that night. The St. Philip's African Episcopal Church
in Centre Street and a negro church in Anthony Street
LEGGETT ACTING EDITOR 147
were left mere battered shells by the mob ; a negro school-
house In Orange Street was wrecked; and twenty houses
were wholly or partly destroyed, and much of the contents
stolen. Innocent negroes were beaten into unconscious-
ness. The colored people by hundreds fled northward
into the open fields. Just before midnight infantry and
cavalry arrived, but took no punitive measures. The
Evening Post called for unremitting severity:
Let them be fired upon, if they dare collect together again to
prosecute their infamous designs. Let those who make the first
movement toward sedition be shot down like dogs — and thus teach
to their infatuated followers a lesson which no milder course
seems sufficient to inculcate. This is no time for expostulation or
remonstrance. . . . We would recommend that the whole mili-
tary force of the city be called out, that large detachments be
stationed wherever any ground exists to anticipate tumultuary
movements, that smaller bodies patrol the streets in every part of
the city, and that the troops be directed to fire upon the first dis-
orderly assemblage that refuses to disperse at the bidding of law-
ful authority.
The Posfs uncompromising stand was thoroughly un-
popular — unpopular with not merely the ignorant, but
with m ost business men. A Boston journal noted that
"the EveningFost was the only daily paper in that city
which condemned the riots with manly denunciation, with-
out a single sneering allusion to the abolitionists, and in
return for this manifestation of a love of law and order,
the Courier assailed the Post as a promoter of the plan
of parti-colored amalgamation, and strongly hinted that
the mob ought to direct its vengeance against that office.'*
This was true. The Courier and Enquirer had said that
Editor Leggett, who had dared defend the vile abolition-
ists, richly deserved the severest castlgatlon which had
been planned for those who would make their daughters
the paramours of the negro.
In the summer of 1835 Leggett showed even greater
courage upon the same subject. The postmaster of
Charleston, S. C, had refused to deliver abolitionist let-
ters and documents upon the ground that they were incen-
^
H^ THE EVENING POST
diary and insurrectionary, and on Aug. 4 Postmaster-
General Kendall upheld him in a letter stating that by
no act or order would he aid in giving circulation to
documents of the kind barred. It must be remembered
that the Evening Post had thus far stood by Jackson's
I administration in every particular. It must also be re-
j membered that Leggett at this time thoroughly disap-
y \ proved of the abolition movement as untimely and im-
practicable. But he saw in Kendall's measure a bureau-
cratic censorship In its most odious and arbitrary form,
and he called the action an outrage :
Neither the general postoffice, nor the general government it-
self, possesses any power to prohibit the transportation by mail of
abolition tracts. On the contrary, it is the bounden duty of the
government to protect the abolitionists in their constitutional right
of free discussion ; and opposed, sincerely and zealously as we are,
to their doctrinces and practices, we should be still more opposed
to any infringement of their political or civil rights. If the gov-
ernment once begins to discriminate as to what is orthodox and
what heterodox in opinion, what is safe and what unsafe in
tendency, farewell, a long farewell, to our freedom.
Only three of the really influential newspapers of the
land declined to admit that Kendall had either done right,
or had simply chosen the lesser of two evils : the Boston
Courier, edited by J. T. Buckingham, the Cincinnati
Gazette, edited by Charles Hammond, and the Post.
Unpopular as was the Evening Post's defense of free
, speech, Its stand upon financial and economic questions
was far more heartily detested. It rapidly ceased, after
its first attacks upon the Bank, to hold its old position as
a representative of the city's commercial Interests. It is
rue that some rich New Yorkers felt a jealousy of the
Bank because it belonged to Philadelphia, while others
stood loyally with the Democratic Party in denouncing it.
But Gulian Verplanck and Ogden Hoffman, close friends
of the Post, were typical of many who went over to the
Bank's side. Not a few business men affiliated with Tam-
many joined the ranks of Jackson's enemies. Historical
^
LEGGETT ACTING EDITOR 149
opinion inclines to the view that Jackson did not have
a sufficient case against the Bank, which was a salutary
institution, and certainly New York commercial circles
believed this. A majority of the voters were with Jack-
son. Thurlow Weed told a friend that all of Webster's
unanswerable arguments for the Bank would not win one-
tenth the ballots won by two sentences in Jackson's veto
message relating to European stockholders and wicked
special privilege. But It was not the mass of poor voters
on which a sixpenny journal like the Evening Post relied
for sustenance, but upon the professional and business
men.
Leggett's cardinal conviction, expressed with a fire and
energy then unequaled In journalism, was that the great
enemy of democracy Is monopoly. He hated and assailed
all special Incorporations, for In those days they usually
carried very special privileges. Charters were obtained
by wire-pulling and legislative corruption, he said, to put
a few men, as the ferry-owners in New York City, in a
position where they could gouge the public. He wished
banking placed upon such a basis that legislative Incor-
poration, exclusive in nature, would not be needed. He
wanted all franchises abolished, and would have forbid-
den any grant to a company of the exclusive right to build
a turnpike, canal, railroad, or water-system between two
given points. He objected even to the incorporation of
colleges and churches, quoting Adam Smith to show that
his views upon this head were less eccentric than they
seemed. Joint stock partnerships, he believed, would
meet all business necessities. The Legislature should
pass one general law, which will allow any set of men,
who choose to associate together for any purpose, to form
themselves into that convenient kind of partnership
known by the name of incorporation"; so that any group
would be permitted freely to form an Insurance company,
a bank, or a college granting degrees. This, of course,
would not exclude governmental supervision. Although
there were then grave abuses in monopolistic incorpora-
tion, Leggett pushed his doctrine quite too far,
I50 THE EVENING POST
Equality was Leggett's watchword. Those were the
days when State Legislatures were abolishing the last
property restrictions upon suffrage, and vitriolic was the
wrath which the Evening Post poured upon all who op-
posed the movement. The whole period it pictured as a
battle between men and money; between "silk-stocking,
morocco-booted, high-living, white-gloved gentlemen, to
be tracked only by the marks of their carriage wheels,"
and hardworking freemen. It objected to the theory that
the state was an aggregation of social strata, one above
the other, and maintained that all useful citizens should
fare alike. Upon the word "useful," in Carlylean vein,
it insisted, for they must be "producers." Tariffs, inter-
nal improvements at the expense of State and nation, and
special incorporations, were violations of equality; while
the spirit of speculation was condemned as creating a
"paper aristocracy." On Dec. 6, 1834, Leggett vindi-
cated the right of the laboring classes to unite in trade
unions, a right then widely denied. It is clear that his
ultra-democratic crusade was essentially an accompani-
ment of the rise of a new industrialism. It had its af-
finities with the frontier equalitarianism personified by
Jackson, but Its primary aim was the protection of the
toiling urban masses.
^ Leggett was upon firm ground when In 1835 he began
to attack the inflation, gambling, and business unsound-
ness of which every day afforded fresh proofs. There
was grotesque speculation in Southern cotton lands, Maine
timber. New York and Philadelphia real estate, and the
Western lands enhanced in value by the Erie Canal.
Capital was abundant, prices were rising, and every one
seemed to be getting rich. Most Northern States were
undertaking costly Internal improvements with a reck-
less faith in the future. Leggett looked with two-fold
alarm and indignation upon the flood of paper money
then pouring from small banks all over the country. De-
preciated paper, in the first place, was used to lower the
real wages of mechanics; in the second place, he main-
tained that the grant to State banks of the power to issue
LEGGETT ACTING EDITOR 151
bills placed the measure of value in the hands of specula-
tors, to be extended or contracted according to their own
selfish wishes. On Dec. 24, 1834, just before the Legis-
lature met, the Evening Post published an appeal to Gov.
Marcy. The banknotes, it said, were driving specie out
of circulation, and causing a fever of reckless speculation.
"Already our merchants are importing largely. Stocks
have risen in value, and land is selling at extravagant
rates. Everything begins to wear the highly-prosperous
aspect which foretokens commercial revulsion." It rec-
ommended that the State should forbid the issue of any
banknotes for less than $5.
"For these views," Leggett wrote in March, "we have
been bitterly reviled." On June 20, 1835, the Post pub-
lished a striking editorial entitled "Out of Debt," in allu-
sion to the current boast that the nation owed no one.
On the contrary, it stated, the people "are plunging
deeper and deeper into the bottomless pit of unredeemed
and irredeemable obligations." It estimated that the six
hundred banks of the nation had issued paper in excess of
$200,000,000. "Who will pay the piper for all this
political and speculative dancing?" The panic of 1837
gave the answer.
By his ringing editorials, written day after day at
white heat, a really noble series, Leggett became the
prophet of the Loco-Foco party, which arose as a radical
wing of the New York Democracy and lived only two
years, 1835-37. The origin of the name is a familiar
story. On Oct. 25, 1835, a meeting was held at Tam-
many Hall to nominate a Congressman ; the conservative
Democrats named their man in accordance with a pre-
arranged plan, put out the lights, and went home; the
anti-monopoly radicals produced tallow candles from their
pockets, lit them with loco-foco matches, and nominated
a rival candidate. Leggett was not an active politician.
But the Loco-Foco mass-meetings of the two ensuing
years, and their two State conventions, enunciated the
same equalitarian doctrines which Leggett had begun to
preach in 1834.
152 THE EVENING POST
Not only those whose interests were affected by Leg-
gett's anti-monopoly, anti-speculation, anti-aristocracy
crusade, but many other staid, moderate men, were horri-
fied by it. He was charged with Utopianism, agrarianism,
Fanny-Wrightism, Jacobinism, and Jack Cade-ism. His
writings were said to set class against class, and to
threaten the nation with anarchy. Gov. William M.
Marcy called Leggett a ''knave." The advance of the
Loco-Foco movement was likened to the great fire and the
great cholera plague of these years. When Chief Justice
Marshall died in the summer of 1835, Leggett unspar-
ingly assailed him and Hamilton as men who had tried "to
change the character ~gf~ th e " government from popular
to monarchical," and to destroy "the great principle of
human liberty." Marshall was regarded by most prop-
ertied New Yorkers as the very sheet-anchor of the Con-
stitution, and for them to see him denounced as a man who
had always strengthened government at the expense of
the people was too much. Ex-Mayor Philip Hone was
handed that editorial on an Albany steamboat by Charles
King, and dropped the journal with the vehement ejacula-
tion, "Infamous!" "This is absolutely a species of im-
piety for which I want words to express my abhorrence,"
he entered in his diary.
For the courage, the eloquence, and the burning sin-
cerity of Leggett's brief editorship we must heartily ad-
mire him; but it cannot be denied that he made the
Evening Post, for the first and last time in its career,
extravagant. He was public-spirited in all that he wrote ;
his prophecy of a financial crash was shrewd; in defend-
ing the abolitionists against persecution he was in advance
of his generation; and his comments upon many minor
questions of the day were sound. But the newspaper
lacked balance, and its influence was perhaps not so great
as when Bryant had been at hand to exercise a restraint
upon Leggett. Such an impetuous man could not spare
his own health. Almost daily the Evening Post had car-
ried an editorial of from 1,000 to 2,000 words. On Oct.
15, 1835, these utterances broke abruptly off, and it
LEGGETT ACTING EDITOR 153
became known that Leggett was gravely 111 of a bilious
fever. His place was temporarily supplied by Theodore
Sedgwick, Jr., and then by Charles Mason, an able lawyer
of the city. Bryant, loitering along the Rhine, had hastily
to be recalled.
Although Leggett had boasted the previous May that
the Evening Post had more subscribers than ever before
and an undiminished revenue from advertisements, its
condition was rapidly declining when the editor fell ill.
For this there were a number of reasons. Leggett's
radicalism had offended many sober mercantile adver-
tisers. He, like some other editors, had objected to
blackening the newspaper's pages with the small conven-
tional cuts of ships and houses used to draw attention
to advertisements, and had thereby lost patronage. After
the death of Michael Burnham, in the summer of 1835^
the business management had fallen to a scamp named
Hanna, who was generally drunk and always insolent.
Warning symptoms of the approaching panic were In the
air, money becoming so tight late in 1835 ^^^^ reputable
mercantile firms could not discount their notes a year
ahead for less than 30 per cent. Leggett, finally, had
offended valuable government friends. As he •wrote
(Sept. 5, 1835):
We once expressed dislike ... of the undignified tone of one
of Mr. Woodberry's official letters, as Secretary of the Treasury,
to Nicholas Biddle ; and the Treasury advertisements were thence-
forward withheld. The Secretary of the Navy, having acted with
gross partiality in regard to a matter recently tried by a naval
court-martial, we had the temerity to censure his conduct; and
of course we could look for no further countenance from that
quarter. The Navy Commissioners, being Post-Captains, . . .
have taken in high dudgeon our inquiry into the oppression and
tyranny practised by their order; and "stop our advertisements!"
is the word of command established in such cases. When the
Evening Post exposed the duplicity of Samuel Swartwout, the
Collector of the Port, it at once lost all further support from the
Custom House. And now, having censured the doctrines of Mr.
Kendall and the practice of Mr. Gouverneur, the postoffice adver-
tising is withdrawn, of course.
154 THE EVENING POST
II
While Bryant was in Europe, while the Evening Post
in the spring of 1835 was beginning its abrupt plunge
toward financial disaster, there occurred the simultaneous
birth of the New York Herald and a new journalism.
Its immediate effect upon the Post was small; its effect
in the long run upon all newspapers was profound. It
was to not only a half-wrecked Evening Post, but to revo-
lutionized journalistic conditions, that Bryant returned
from Heidelberg.
When Bryant and Leggett had taken full charge of the
Evening Post in 1829, the New York newspapers were a
quarrelsome group of sixpenny dailies, some political,
some commercial, and in their news features all slow,
dull, and half-filled by modern standards. The best-
known morning journal was the Courier and Enquirer,
of which the editor and after a year the sole proprietor
was James Watson Webb, a rich, hot-tempered, exceed-
ingly handsome young man of twenty-seven, as mercurial
as any Southerner, with a native taste for fighting which
had been developed by his West Point education and some
years in the army. Webb knew the use of the sword,
pistol, and cane decidedly better than that of the pen.
The Evening Post well characterized him as "a fussy,
blustering, quarrelsome fellow." He repeatedly assaulted
fellow-editors in the street; he repeatedly journeyed to
Washington or Albany to tweak somebody's nose or ex-
change shots; and while our envoy to Brazil he wanted
to kill the British Minister there. When in the early
thirties Congressman Cilley of Maine charged him with
taking a bribe, and refused to accept Webb's challenge
on the ground that the latter was no gentleman, the im-
petuous editor persuaded his second to challenge and
kill Cilley. Ten years later Webb provoked Congressman
Thomas F. Marshall, of Kentucky, by coarse attacks, into
fighting a duel, and was sentenced to two years in the
State prison. Greeley and many others of note signed
LEGGETT ACTING EDITOR 155
a petition for a pardon, which Bryant indignantly op-
posed, but Gov. Seward granted it.
Chief among the Courier^s morning rivals was the
Journal of Commerce, founded in 1827 as an advocate of
the introduction of religion into business affairs, which
went into the hands of David Hale and Gerard Hallock
after the abolitionist silk merchant, Tappan, gave it up.
It refused to advertise theaters and other amusement-
places, and was considered a little fanatical, but it showed
extraordinary enterprise for that day in news-gathering.
In 1828 it stationed a swift craft off Sandy Hook to Inter-
cept incoming ships and bring the first European news up
the harbor, and It subsequently arranged a relay of fast
horses from Philadelphia to bring the Congressional de-
bates a day in advance of Its competitors. Webb followed
the example, extending the pony relay to Washington, and
spending from $15,000 to $20,000 a year on his clipper
boats. Some episodes of this rivalry are amusing. After
the fall of Warsaw in the Polish war, the Courier and
Enquirer, to punish its competitors for news-stealing,
printed a small edition denying — upon the strength of
dispatches by the ship Ajax — the reported fall, and saw
that copies reached the doorstep of all morning journals.
There was no such arrival as the Ajax. Several news-
papers reprinted the bogus news without credit, the Jour-
nal of Commerce doing so In its country but not its city
edition; and great was the Courier's sarcastic glee.
Though Webb was too explosive, too dissipated, and
too slender In ability to be a great editor, he had the
money to obtain able lieutenants. One was the Jewish
journalist M. M. Noah, who had edited the National
Advocate In Coleman's day, and written patriotic dramas.
In 1825, conceiving that the time had come for the "res-
toration of the Jews," Noah had appeared at Grand
Island, near Buffalo, In the insignia of one of the Hebrew
monarchs, and dedicated It as the future Jerusalem and
capital of the Jewish nation, calling It Ararat in honor
of the original Noah. Disillusioned In this project, Noah
bought a share in the Courier in 1831, and in 1832 re-
156 THE EVENING POST
signed It. Another worker on the Courier was Charles
King; James K. Paulding contributed; and In the forties
It obtained Henry J. Raymond's services. But the most
notable of Its writers when the year 1829 ended was a
smart young Scotchman named James Gordon Bennett,
who, after knocking about from Boston to Charleston in
various employments — he had even essayed to open a
commercial school In New York — had made a shining suc-
cess In 1828 as Washington correspondent for Webb.
Bennett, at this time highly studious, had examined in
the Congressional Library one day a copy of Horace Wal-
pole's letters, and at once began to imitate them In his
correspondence, making it lively, full of gossip, and even
vulgarly frank in descriptions of men of the day. Some
Washington ladles were said to be Indebted to Bennett's
glowing pen-pictures for their hosbands. He was active
In other capacities for the journal — he reported the
White-Crowlnshleld murder trial In Salem, Mass., wrote
editorials, squibs, and amusing articles of sorts; and Webb
showed how fundamentally lacking he was in editorial
discernment when he never let Bennett receive more than
$12 a week. In 1832 the homely, thrifty youngster from
Banffshire left the Courier.
Others among the eleven dailies were the Commercial
Advertiser, the Daily Advertiser, and the Star, the last-
named being the Post's closest rival In evening circula-
tion. Much attention was attracted to the Daily Adver-
tiser in 1835 by the Washington letters of Erastus
Brooks, a young man who wrote as brightly as Bennett
but more soberly. The following year he and his brother
James founded the Express, also a sixpenny paper, which
succeeded against heavy obstacles. Compared with Lon-
don, the New York field was overcrowded, and no jour-
nal had many subscribers; the Courier was vastly proud
when it printed 3,500 copies a day. Newspapers were
sold over the counter at the place of publication, and at a
few hotels and coffeehouses, but not on the streets; the
first employment of newsboys excited indignation, and
was denounced as leading them into vice. Advertising
LEGGETT ACTING EDITOR 157
rates continued ridiculously small. The Evening Post
and its contemporaries still made the time-honored charge
of $40, with a subscription thrown in, for Indefinite space;
the first insertion of a ''square," 8 to 16 lines, cost seven-
ty-five cents, the second and third twenty-five, and later
insertions eighteen and three-fourths cents. When the
daily advertising of the Courier (apart from yearly in-
sertions) reached $55, that sum was thought remarkable.
The harbinger of the new journalism was Benjam in
H. Day , a former compositor for the Evening Post, who
in September, 1833, began Issuing the first penny news-
paper with sufficient strength to survive, th e Sun . The
idea of this innovation came from London, which had
possessed its Illustrated Penny Magazine since 1830,
sold In huge quantities In New York and other American
cities; Bryant had often praised It as an Instrument for
educating the poor. The Sun began with a circulation of
300, which it rapidly Increased, until after "the publication
of the famous "moon hoax" In 1835 It boasted the largest
circulation In the world; three years later It distributed
38,000 copies daily. Not until the Civil War did It raise
Its price above one cent, and it continued to be read by
the poor almost exclusively. It was not a political force,
for It voiced no energetic editorial opinions, nor was it
a better purveyor of Intelligence than Its neighbors. It
showed no more enterprise In news-collecting. Its corre-
spondence was Inferior, and Its appeal, apart from Its
cheapness and special features, lay In its great volume of
help-wanted advertisements.
The new journalism therefore had Its real beginning
when, on May 6, 1835, in a cellar In Wall Street — not
a basement, but a cellar — Rer|nptt p^f-ab|j<thpH the Herald .
He had fifteen years' experience, five hundred dollars,
two chairs, and a dry-goods box. It also was a penny
paper. But its distinction rested upon the fact that it
embodied four original Ideas In journalism. The first,
and most important, was the necessity of a thorough
search for all the news. The second was that fixed prin-
158 THE EVENING POST
ciples are dangerous, and that It is most profitable to be
on the winning side. Bennett felt with Hosea Biglow that
A merciful Providence fashioned us hollow
In order thet we might our princerples swallow.
The third was the value of editorial audacity — that is,
of Impudence, mockery, and Mephlstophelian persiflage
— for Bennett had seen In Boston that the saucy. Indecor-
ous Galaxy had been universally abused, and universally
read. The fourth idea embodied in the Herald was the
value of audacity In the news; of unconventlonality, vul-
garity, and sensationalism.
Above all, Bennett gave New York city the news, with
a comprehensiveness, promptness, and accuracy till then
undreamed of. At first, compelled by poverty to do all
the work himself, and unable to hire his first reporter for
more than three months, he found the task hard. But
within five weeks (June 13) he began publishing a daily
financial article, something that Bryant, Col. Stone, Webb,
and Hallock had not thought of, although thousands
were just as keenly interested In the exchange then as
now. From one to four every business afternoon, having
labored In his cellar since five in the morning, Bennett was
making the rounds of the business offices, collecting stock-
tables and gossip. Local intelligence began to be thor-
oughly gathered. Incomparably the best reports of the
great fire of December, 1835, are to be found in the
Herald. He was the first editor to open a bureau of
foreign correspondence in Europe, something that Bryant
might well have done. He soon went the Courier and
Journal of Commerce one better by keeping his clipper
off Montauk Point, and running a special train the length
of Long Island with the European newspapers. A Herald
reporter, notebook in hand, began to be seen in precincts
which had never known a journalist. In 1839 Bennett
made bold to report the proceedings of church sects at
their annual meetings, and though the denominational
officers were at first Indignant, they became mollified when
they saw their names in print. Important trials were for
LEGGETT ACTING EDITOR 159
the first time followed in detail, and Important public
speeches reproduced In their entirety. The Interview was
invented.
This "picture of the world" was served up with a
sauce. Bennett had no reverence and no taste. He an-
nounced his own forthcoming marriage In 1840 in appal-
ling headlines : "To the Readers of the Herald — Declara-
tion of Love — Caught at Last — Going to be Married- —
New Movement In Civilization." The. Herald was not
a year old before it was ridiculing republican Institutions,
and in shocking terms assailing the Catholic Church,
the Pope, and the doctrine of transubstantlatlon. When
the Erie Railroad began its infamous early career, Bryant
attacked the schemes of the speculators with great effect,
and helped stop the first effort of the promoters to sack
the State treasury. The Herald^s comment was brief
and characteristic: "The New York and Erie Railroad
is to break ground in a few days. We hope they will
break nothing else." James Parton quotes one of Ben-
nett's Impudent paragraphs as representative. "Great
trouble among the Presbyterians just now. The question
in dispute Is, whether or not a man can do anything to-
ward saving his own soul." In even the few and brief
book-notices this tone was maintained. Reviewing an
Annual Register which told him that there were 1,492
rogues in the State Prison, Bennett added: "And God
only knows how many out of prison, preying upon the
community, in the shape of gamblers, blacklegs, specula-
tors, and politicians."
By the prominence It gave to crimes of violence, di-
vorces, and seduction, and by its bold personal gossip,
the Herald fully earned the name of a "sensation jour-
nal." Most of the other newspapers, the magazines, and
the Catholic and Protestant pulpits, denounced It roundly.
The Evening Post did not mention It by name, but in 1839
condemned "the nauseous practice which some of our
journals have imitated from the London press of adopting
a light and profligate tone in the daily reports of in-
stances of crime, depravity, and intemperance which fall
i6o THE EVENING POST
under the eye of our municipal police, making them the
subject of elaborate witticisms, and spicing them with gross
allusions." The Herald's cynical contempt for consistent
principles increased the dislike with which it was viewed.
In general it was Hunker Democratic, and built up a
large Southern following, but It supported Harrison In
1840 and Taylor in 1848. The English traveler, Edward
Dicey, said that it had but two standing rules, one to
support the existing Administration, the other to attack
the land of Bennett's birth. Dicey found that as late
as Civil War times Bennett was barred from society, and
that when he went to stay at a watering place near New
York, the other guests at the hotel told the landlord that
he must choose between the editor's patronage and their
own — and Bennett left.
But upon Bennett's success was largely founded that
of other great morning newspapers of the next decades.
*'It would be worth my while, sir, to give a million dol-
lars," said Henry J. Raymond, "If the devil would come
and tell me every evening, as he does Bennett, what the
people of New York would like to read about next morn-
ing." The Stm was given new life when It passed into
the hands of Moses Y. Beach In 1838. Greeley, with a
capital of $1,000, founded the Tribune In April, 1841,
to meet the need for a penny paper of Whig allegiance.
The sixpenny journals, the Evening Post, Commercial
Advertiser, Courier, Journal of Commerce, and Express,
perforce learned much from the Herald about news-gath-
ering. Years later the Evening Post described the new
spirit of enterprise which had seized upon journalism by
the early forties:
In those days expresses were run on election nights, and in times
of great excitement the Herald and Tribune raced locomotive
engines against each other in order to get the earliest news; on
one occasion, we remember, the sharp reporter engaged for the
Tribune "appropriating" an engine which was waiting, under
steam, for the use of the opposition agent, and so beating the
Herald at its own game. . . . Nor was the competition confined
to enterprises like these. For want of the boundless facilities now
LEGGETT ACTING EDITOR i6i
afforded by the organized enterprises of the newspaper offices,
there were curious experiments in unexpected directions ; type was
set on board of North River steamboats by corps of printers, who
had a speech ready for the press in New York soon after its deliv-
ery in Albany; carrier pigeons, carefully trained, flew from Hali-
fax or Boston with the latest news from Europe tucked under
their wings, and delivered their charge to their trainer in his room
near Wall Street; an adventurous person, known at the time by
the mysterious title of "the man in the glazed cap," made a voy-
age across the Atlantic in a common pilot boat twenty years ago,
secretly and with only three or four companions, in the interest
of two or three journals which determined to "beat" the others
in their arrangements for obtaining early news from abroad.
Charles H. Levermore twenty years ago expressed re-
gret in the American Historical Review that the revolu-
tion in journalism had been wrought by the unprincipled
Bennett, and not by a man of such education, taste, and
high-mlndedness as Bryant, whose name would assure
the standards of his newspaper. The best journalist and
worst editor in the country, Parton called Bennett, deplor-
ing the fact that during the Civil War neither the Times,
Tribune nor World could reduce the "bad, good Herald,'^
which Lincoln read, to a second rank. Parke Godwin,
writing upon Bennett's death In 1872 In the Evening
Post, refused him the title of a great journalist even,
stating that he was a great news-vender. "What he said
from day to day was said merely to produce a sensation,
to raise a laugh, or to confirm a vulgar prejudice; and so
far as he had any Influence at all as a writer, it was one
that debased and corrupted the community in which his
paper was read. He did more to vulgarize the tone of
the press In this country than any man ever before con-
nected with it; and the worst caricatures that the genius
of Balzac, Dickens, and Thackeray has given us of the
low, slang-whanging, dissolute, and unprincipled Bohe-
mian, of the Lousteaus, Jefferson Bricks, and Capt. Shan-
dons of the journalistic profession, fall to depict what
Bennett actually was." But his journal was read as no
other had been. Men concealed it when they saw a
1 62 THE EVENING POST
friend approaching it, but they bought it and examined
every column.
Bryant had neither the necessary inclinations nor apti-
tudes to accomplish such a revolution. When he started
home from Germany he left his family there, meaning
soon to return. Upon learning how straitened was the
condition of the Evening Post, he became temporarily dis-
heartened. Within two months he wrote Dana that he
earnestly hoped that "the day will come when I may
retire without danger of starving, and give myself to
occupations that I like better." Near the end of the year
he informed his brother John in Illinois that he thought
of removing thither with $3,ooo-$5,ooo for a new home.
The best journalist Is not m^de from a man who is thus
lukewarm In his work. Moreover, even had Bryant
thrown himself heart and soul into his calling, his literary
tastes, his retiring temper, his keen sense of dignity, his
fame as a poet, would have prevented his breaking new
ground as Bennett did. He had no equal before Greeley,
and no superior later, in writing editorials, and he made
the Intellectual influence of the Evening Post one of the
strongest in the nation. He was a great editor. But he
could not have gone down Into the busy 'Change with his
pencil as Bennett did; he could not have attended meet-
ings, visited theaters, and mingled with common men in
offices and on street corners, with Bennett's constancy
of purpose.
The Evening Post had as much news as some sixpenny
rivals, but it sadly needed the Herald's stimulus. Its re-
ports of the great fire of 1835 were partly original,
partly taken from the Express. When the Astor
House was opened the following summer, an exciting
event. It clipped its report from the Daily Advertiser —
and even the latter had but one meager paragraph.
Probably the most striking instance of its deficiency oc-
curred in December, 1829, the month that Chancellor
Lansing disappeared from the city streets — the greatest
mystery of the kind in New York political history. The
Post's only account was left by Lansing's friends :
LEGGETT ACTING EDITOR 163
Notice. — On Saturday evening, the 12th instant, Chancellor
Lansing, of Albany, arrived in this city, and put up at the City
Hotel ; he breakfasted and dined there. Shortly after dinner he
retired to his room and wrote for a short time, and about the hour
that the persons intending to go to Albany usually leave the Hotel,
he was observed to leave his room. He has not been seen or
heard of since that time. He left his trunk, cane, etc., in his
room. His friends in this city have heard this morning from
Albany that he has not returned home.
It is supposed that he had written a letter to Albany and that
he had intended to put it on board the steamboat that left here for
that place at five o'clock that afternoon. He had made an engage-
ment to take tea at six o'clock that evening with Mr. Robert
Ray, of this city, who resides at No. 29 Marketfield Street.
He was dressed in black, and wore powder in his hair. He
was a man of a large and muscular frame of body, and about five
feet nine inches in height. He was upwards of seventy-six years
of age. He was in good health, and has never been known to
have been affected by any mental aberration. Any intelligence
concerning him will be most gratefully acknowledged by his
afflicted friends and family, if left for them, at the bar of the
City Hotel.
No effort whatever was made to push an inquiry Into
this mystery, which a generation later would have made
the press ring for weeks.
Ill
Bryant resumed his editorial chair In the Pine Street
office on Feb. 16, 1836, and set heroically to work to
restore the Evening Post. The net profits that year fell
to $5,671.15, and In the panic year follov^Ing to $3,242.-
76. Leggett was only slowly convalescing at his New
Rochelle home, and the editor was assisted by Mason
till the end of May, when he obtained the services of
Henry J. Anderson, professor of mathematics at Colum-
bia. He took a large furnished room on Fourth Street,
and was accustomed to be In his office at seven o'clock
In the morning. There was no money to hire many help-
ers, and until 1840 three men did practically all the writ-
ing. Bryant wrote the editorials and literary notices;
his chief assistant, first Anderson and then Parke God-
1 64 THE EVENING POST
win, clipped exchanges, furnished dramatic criticism, and
contributed short editorial paragraphs; and another man
acted as general reporter. Ship news was gathered by
pilots in the common employ of the evening papers.
Yet in this moment of adversity occurred one of those
displays of liberalism and enlightened judgment which
are the special glory of the Evening Post. After Leg-
gett's illness, Theodore Sedgwick, Jr., had written an
editorial (Nov. 14, 1835) arguing against the attitude of
condemnation which nearly all employers then took to-
ward labor unions, which were just beginning to find im-
perfect shape. He affirmed that the whole body social
was interested in promoting the objects of these unions —
in diminishing the hours of labor and increasing the wages
of the mechanics. The laboring masses, under the prin-
ciple of universal suffrage, held the government in their
hands, and would exercise their power wisely only if they
had education and prosperity. This was not the case:
''compelled to labor the extremest amount that nature can
endure, and receiving for that excessive labor a compen-
sation which makes year after year of excessive toil nec-
essary to obtain independence, what leisure have they to
devote to the acquisition of . . . knowledge ...?'*
Bryant felt precisely as Leggett and Sedgwick did on this
subject. At the end of May, 1836, twenty-one journey-
men tailors who had formed a union were indicted for a
conspiracy injurious to trade and commerce, and after a
three days' trial in the court of Oyer and Terminer, Judge
Edwards charged the jury to find them guilty. Bryant
immediately (May 31) attacked him:
We do not admit, until we have further examined the question,
that the law is as laid down by the Judge ; but if it be, the sooner
such a tyrannical and wicked law is abrogated the better. His
doctrine has. it is true, a decision of the Supreme Court in its
favor; but the reasoning by which he attempts to show the pro-
priety of that decision is of the weakest possible texture. The
idea that arrangements and combinations for certain rates of
wages are injurious to trade and commerce, is as absurd as the
LEGGETT ACTING EDITOR 165
idea that the current prices of the markets, which are always the
result of understandings and combinations, are injurious.
The next day the tailors were heavily fined. The
Evening Post, declaring this monstrous, showed its
wicked absurdity in a series of clear expositions. It had
been made criminal for the working classes to settle
among themselves the price of their own property ! Ac-
cording to Judge Edwards, the owners of the packets,
who had agreed upon $140 as the standard fare to Liver-
pool, were criminals; so were the editors, who had agreed
upon $10 for a yearly subscription; so were the butchers
and bakers. The very price current was evidence of
conspiracy. Bryant recalled the fact that in England
the Tories themselves had expunged the laws against
labor unions from the statute books twelve years before.
*'Can anything be imagined more abhorrent to every sen-
timent of generosity and justice, than the law which
arms the rich with the legal right to fix, by assize, the
wages of the poor? If this is not slavery, we have for-
gotten its definition. Strike the right of associating for
the sale of labor from the privileges of a freeman, and
you may as well bind him to a master, or ascribe him to
the soil."
Other newspapers, of which the Journal of Commerce
and the American were the most prominent, took the side
of Judge Edwards. For a time the excitement was in-
tense. A mass-meeting of mechanics, which the Evening
Post declared the largest ever seen in the city, was held
in City Hall Park on the evening of June 13 ; and Bryant
continued his editorials at intervals for a month.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE RISE OF THE SLAVERY QUESTION; THE MEXICAN WAR
Bryant's real editorial career dates from 1836, for all
that had preceded was mere preparation. He quickly
mastered his first discouragement, and throwing aside the
Idea of becoming an Illinois farmer or lawyer, devoted
himself to the Evening Post as the work, poetry apart,
of his life. We catch a new and determined note in his
letters by 1837, when he was laboring like a born jour-
nalist at his desk from seven to four daily, and, says his
assistant, was so impatient of interruption that he often
seemed irascible. He was so fully occupied, he wrote
Dana in February, "that if there is anything of the Pega-
sus In me, I am too much exhausted to use my wings." In
an unpublished note to his wife, who had returned in the
fall of 1836, he declared: "I have enough to do, both with
the business part of the paper and the management of it
as editor, to keep me constantly busy. I must see that
the Evening Post does not suffer by these hard times, and
I must take that part in the great controversies now
going on which is expected of it."
He still longed for literary leisure. But he coura-
geously stuck to his post, writing Dana in June, 1838, that
his editorial labors were as heavy as he could endure
with a proper regard to his health, and that he managed
to maintain his strength only by the greatest simplicity
of diet, renouncing tea, coffee, and animal food, and by
frequent walks of a half day to two days in the country.
By this date, he said, he could look back rejoicing that
he had never yielded to the temptation of giving up the
newspaper.
Leggett did not return. He had borrowed so much
of Mrs. Coleman's part of the dividend in the last year
of his connection with the paper that she compelled him,
166
THE MEXICAN WAR 167
by legal steps, to surrender his third share of the Evening
Post to her; and Bryant would not give him that freedom
for vehement writing which he wished. In December,
1836, he established the Plaindealer, a short-lived weekly
to which the Evening Post made many complimentary
references. But his health continued bad, and on May 29,
1839, just after President Van Buren had offered him
the post of confidential agent in Central America in the
belief that a sea voyage would benefit him, he died.
His place was supplied in part by chance. During the
summer of 1836 Parke Godwin, a briefless barrister of
only twenty, a graduate of Princeton, was compelled to
remove to a cheaper boarding-house, and went to one
at 316 Fourth Street, kept by a native of Great Barring-
ton, Mass. He was introduced one evening to a new-
comer, a middle-aged man of medium height, spare figure,
and clean-shaven, severe face. His gentle manner, pure
English, and musical voice were as distinctive as his large
head and bright eyes. "A certain air of abstractedness
made you set him down as a scholar whose thoughts were
wandering away to his books; and yet the deep lines
about his mouth told of struggle either with himself or
with the world. No one would have supposed that there
was any fun in him, but, when a lively turn was given
to some remark, the upper part of his face, particularly
the eyes, gleamed with a singular radiance, and a short,
quick, staccato, but hearty laugh acknowledged the hu-
morous perception." • On public affairs this stranger spoke
with keen insight and great decision. That evening God-
win was told that he was the poet Bryant. For some
months, till after Mrs. Bryant's return, the two were
thrown much together, without increasing their acquaint-
ance. Bryant's greeting to strangers was chilly, he never
prolonged a conversation, he was fond of solitary walks,
and he spent his evenings alone in his room. Godwin
was therefore much surprised when one day the editor
remarked: '*My assistant, Mr. Ulshoeffer, is going to
Cuba for his health; how would you like to take his
place?" The young lawyer, after demurring that he had
i68 THE EVENING POST
had no experience, went to try it — and stayed, with in-
termissions, more than forty years.
"Every editorial of Bryant's opens with a stale joke
and closes with a fresh lie," growled a Whig in these
years. It was part of the change from Leggett's slashing
directness to Bryant's suavity that the latter prefaced
most political articles with an apposite illustration drawn
from his wide reading. When the Albany Journal,
Thurlow Weed's newspaper, was arguing the self-evident
proposition that the State should not buy the Ithaca &
Oswego Railway, he told the story of the perspiring attor-
ney who was interrupted by the judge in a long harangue :
"Brother Plowden, why do you labor so? The Court
is with you." The effrontery of a Whig politician caught
in a bit of rascality inspired an editorial which opened
with the grave plea of a thievish Indian at the bar:
"Yes, I stole the powder horn, but it is white man's law
that you must prove it." Again, with more dignity,
Bryant began an article on the Bank with a reference to
Virgil's episode of Nisus and Euryalus.
In 1839 Webster's friends professed great indignation
because the orator had been called a "myrmidon." The
myrmidons, Bryant remarked, were soldiers who fought
under Achilles at Troy, and the opprobrium of being
called one was much that of being called a hussar or
lancer. The wrath of Webster's defenders seemed to
him like Dame Quickly's:
Falstaff: "Go to, you are a woman, go."
Hostess: "Who, I? I defy thee, I was never called so in mine
own house before."
But, he added, there was one important difference between
Webster and a myrmidon. He had never heard of the
high-tariff friends of a myrmidon making up a purse of
$65,000 for services well done. Bryant was always mas-
ter of a grave humor. When another journal assailed
him, he wrote: "There is an honest shoemaker living on
the Mergellina, at Naples, on the right hand as you
THE MEXICAN WAR 169
go towards Pozzioli, whose little dog comes out every
morning and barks at Vesuvius."
Bryant had need of this persuasive tact, for in
1836 the following of the Evening Post consisted chiefly
of workmen, who could not buy it, and of the
young enthusiasts who polled a city vote of only 2,712
that fall for the Loco-Foco ticket. The policy was not
changed. The paper continued to attack special bank-
ing incorporations, and in 1838 had the satisfaction of
seeing a general State banking law passed. '""It kept up
its fire against the judicial doctrine that trade unions were
conspiracies against trade, and sa\v it rapidly disintegrate
and vanish. During 1837 it was able^ to point to the
panic as an exact fulfillment of its predictions. By 1840
it was clear that it had said not a word too much when
it attacked the craze for State internal improvements as
not only making for political corruption and favoritism
between localities, but as leading to financial ruin. Gov.
Seward that year declared that New York had been
misled into a number of impractical and profitless pro-
jects. Gov. Grayson of Maryland called for heavy direct
taxes as the only means of averting disgraceful bank-
ruptcy, and Gov. Porter, of Pennsylvania, said that his
State had been loaded with a multitude of undertakings
that it could neither prosecute, sell, nor abandon. This
proved its old contention, said the Post, that ''the moment
we admit that the Legislature may engage in local enter-
prises, it is beset at once by swarms of schemers." In
1837 Bryant asked for the repeal of the usury laws, but
in this he was not years, but generations, ahead of his
time.
As a personal friend of Van Buren, Bryant had been
among the first to applaud the movement for his nomina-
tion, and he warmly championed him throughout the
campaign of 1836. At the South the Evening Post was
for some time declared to be Little Van's chosen organ
for addressing the public, much to the President's em-
barrassment; for the Posfs views on the growing anti-
slavery movement were not his. Van Buren's greatest
lyo THE EVENING POST
measure, the sub-treasury plan, was stubbornly opposed
by the bankers and most other representatives of capital
in New York. It ended the distribution of national mon-
eys among the State banks, where Federal funds had been
kept since 1833, and it was a terrible blow to them. The
Evening Post had consistently stood for a divorce of
the government and the banks, and it supported the sub-
treasury scheme through all its vicissitudes. It had al-
ways opposed the division of the surplus revenue among
the States, and in applauding Van Buren's determination
to stop it the paper again aroused the wrath of the busi-
ness community in New York. But upon certain other
issues it crossed swords with the President.
II
Bryant, like EUery Channing, J. Q. Adams, Whittier,
Wendell Phillips, and Salmon P. Chase, took up the fight
for free speech and found that it rapidly led him into the
battle for free soil. In January, 1836, Ex-President
Adams began in the House of Representatives his heroic
contest with the Southerners for the unchecked reception
of abolitionist petitions there, and in May the "gag"
resolution against these petitions was passed. Bryant's
indignation was scorching. He wrote upon the speech of
a New York Senator (April 21 ) :
Mr. Tallmadge has done well in vindicating the right of indi-
viduals to address Congress on any matter within its province.
... This is something, at a time when the Governor of one
State demands of another that free discussion on a particular sub-
ject shall be made a crime by law, and when a Senator of the
Republic, and a pretended champion of liberty, rises in his place
and proposes a censorship of the press more servile, more tyranni-
cal, more arbitrary, than subsists in any other country. It is a
prudent counsel also that Mr. Tallmadge gives to the South —
to beware of increasing the zeal, of swelling the ranks and multi-
plying the friends, of the Abolitionists by attempting to exclude
them from the common rights of citizens. . . . Yet it seems to
us that Mr. Tallmadge . . . might have gone a little further.
It seems to us that ... he should have protested with somewhat
THE MEXICAN WAR 171
more energy and zeal against the attempt to shackle the expres-
sion of opinion. It is no time to use honeyed words when the
liberty of speech is endangered. ... If the tyrannical doctrines
and measures of Mr. Calhoun can be carried into effect, there is
an end to liberty in this country; but carried into effect they can-
not be. It is too late an age to copy the policy of Henry VIII;
we lie too far in the Occident to imitate the despotic rule of Austria.
The spirit of our people has been too long accustomed to freedom
to bear the restraint which is sought to be put upon it. Discus-
sion will be like the Greek fire, which blazed the fiercer for the
water thrown upon it; and if the stake be set and. the faggets
ready, there will be candidates for martyrdom.
When in August of this year a meeting in Cincinnati \
resolved to silence J. G. Birney's abolitionist press by
violence, the Evening Post used similar words. No
tyranny in any part of the world was more absolute or
frightful than such mob tyranny. "So far as we are con-
cerned, we are resolved that this despotism shall neither
be submitted to nor encouraged. . . . We are resolved
that the subject of slavery shall be, as it ever has been, as
free a subject for discussion, and argument, and declama-
tion, as the difference between whiggism and democracy,
or the difference between Armlnlans and Calvinists."
This was at a time when the right of Abolitionists to con-
tinue their agitation was denied from some of the most
influential New York pulpits, when the great majority of
citizens had no tolerance for them, and when newspapers
like Bennett's Herald and Hallock's Journal of Com-
merce, both pro-slavery, gave them nothing but contempt
and denunciation. When Elijah P. Lovejoy was mur-
dered at Alton, 111., by a mob, there were Influential New
Yorkers who believed that he had received his deserts,
but Bryant cried out In horror. Without free tongues
and free pens, the nation would fall into despotism
or anarchy. "We approve, then, we applaud — we would
consecrate, if we could, to universal honor — the conduct
of those who bled In this gallant defense of the freedom
of the press. Whether they erred or not in their opinions,
they did not err in the conviction of their right, as citi-
172 THE EVENING POST
zens of a democratic State, to express them; nor did
they err in defending their rights with an obstinacy which
yielded only to death."
Before 1840 Bryant had enrolled himself among those
who held that the spread of slavery must be stopped.
President Van Buren had pledged himself to veto any
bill for emancipating the slaves in the District of Colum-
bia. Although the plan of freeing the District slaves was
abominated by most people in New York city, and even
J. Q. Adams would not vote in favor of it in 1836, the
Evening Post attacked and derided Van Buren's pledge.
When this reform was included in the Compromise of
1850, it boasted that New Yorkers had been converted
to an advocacy of it as overwhelming as their opposition
a dozen years earlier. During 1839 a considerable stir
was produced in the city by the Armistad affair. A num-
ber of Africans sold as slaves in Cuba being transported
from Havana to Principe on the schooner Armistad, rose,
took possession of the craft, and compelled those of the
crew whom they had not killed to steer the vessel, as
they believed, to Africa. It was brought into Long
Island Sound instead, and the negroes were seized as
criminals. Bryant asked his friend Theodore Sedgwick,
Jr., to investigate the law, and the latter came to the
conclusion, which he expounded at length in the Evening
Post, that the blacks could not be held. They had gained
their freedom, he said, and were heroes and not malefac-
tors. Secretary of State Forsythe and Attorney-General
Grundy did all they could to vindicate the claim of the
Spanish Minister to the negroes, but the courts upheld
Sedgwick's view of the issue, and they were liberated.
Every conscientious Democratic journal of the North
was faced by a common embarrassment in the decade
1 840-1 850, when a dominance over the Democratic party
was steadily established by advocates of the extension of
slavery. If, like the Herald or Journal of Commerce or
Express, they were friendly to the South in defiance of
conscience, they felt no difficulty. But the Evening Post
believed slavery a curse. What could it do when Polk
THE MEXICAN WAR 173
(vas nominated In 1844 by its own party upon a platform
favorable to this vicious Institution, and when the Demo-
cratic leaders carried the nation Into the Mexican War
with the effect, If not the calculated purpose, of adding
to the slaveowners' domain? Bryant did not wish to
abandon the great party which stood for low tariff, oppo-
sition to the squandering of public money on Internal
improvements, and a decisive separation between the
government and banking. He could only do in 1 844 what
Greeley and the Tribune did in 1848, when Taylor, whom
the Tribune distrusted, was nominated by the Whigs;
stick to his party, reconcile his feelings as best he could
with his party allegiance, and labor to improve the party
from within.
The picturesque log-cabin campaign of 1840 offered
no perplexities to the Evening Post, It still looked upon
President Van Buren with satisfaction, and wished him
reelected. Like Its opponent the Tribune, it was glad
that Harrison had beaten Henry Clay for the Whig
nomination, but that was in no degree because it re-
spected Harrison. It regarded the retired farmer and
Indian fighter of North Bend, Ohio, as all Democratic
organs regarded him, a nonentity. What title had
this feeble villager of nearly seventy, whose last
public office had been the clerkship of a county court,
to the Presidency? No one has ever thought Harrison
a great statesman, and any undue severity on the part
of the Evening Post may be attributed to the warmth of
the campaign. It called him "a silly and conceited old
man whose irregularities of life have enfeebled his
originally feeble faculties, and who is as helpless in the
hands of his party as the idols of a savage tribe we have
somewhere read of, who are flogged when they do not
listen to the prayers of their people for rain." At the
beginning of March It declared that Harrison might be
elected, but that the most sinister figure in his party
would direct his policies; "Harrison may be the nominal
chief magistrate, but Clay will be the Charles Martel, the
Mayor of the Palace."
174 THE EVENING POST
The hard-cider, coonskin-cap, log-cabin enthusiasm
sickened the Evening Post. The plan, commented Bryant
on the Harrison songs, "is to cut us to pieces with A
sharp, to lay us prostrate with G flat, to hunt us down
with fugues, overrun us with choruses, and bring in Har-
rison with a grand diapason." "The accomplishment of
drinking hard cider, possessed by one of the candidates
for the Presidency," he later wrote, was the safest the
Whigs could urge. "If they were to talk now of his
talents, of his opinions, of his public virtues, and of the
other qualifications which are commonly supposed to fit a
citizen of our republic for the office of its chief magis-
trate, they would find themselves much embarrassed."
The Whigs, counting upon the reflex of the panic of 1837,
and the unpopularity of Van Buren, to elect Harrison,
had taken care to commit themselves to no platform.
The Evening Post therefore attributed to them all the
evil policies they had ever espoused. Was it worth while
to shoulder the burden of a high tariff and a costly inter-
nal improvement system, to restore the corrupt union of
bank and state, to pay the enormous State debts out of
the national treasury, and to strengthen Federal power
at the expense of the States, all for the sake of having a
President who quaffed hard cider?
During the campaign it was hinted by the Evening
Post that if chosen, Harrison could not live to the end
of his official term. It recorded the fact that when he
arrived in Washington, the fatigue of receiving his
friends was "so great that he was obliged to forego the
usual ceremony of shaking hands with them." A month
later the paper was commenting upon the ghastly con-
trast between the festivities, pageants, and congratula-
tions which attended his inauguration, and the solemnity
and gloom as the plumed hearse carried his body, behind
six white horses, to the Congressional burying ground.
Because Bryant refused to write panegryrically of the
dead President, though he did write respectfully, and
because he refrained from using heavy black column rules
for mourning, a practice which he called "typographical
)
THE MEXICAN WAR 175
foppery," he was violently assailed by the Whig press
as a "vampire" and ''ghoul."
Bryant and Parke Godwin naturally hoped for the
renomination of Van Buren in 1844, believing that the
battle unfairly won by the Whigs in 1840 ought to be
fought again on the same field, and with the same well-
tried Democratic leader. Bryant told the story of the
Santa Fe hunter who used to pat his rifle, carried for
forty years, saying: "I believe In it. I know that when-
ever I fire there Is meat." In midsummer of 1843 he
was confident that victory was already assured, the politi-
cal reaction since 1841 being "without a parallel In the
history of the peaceful conduct of affairs In this country."
The Evening Post welcomed the "black tariff" of 1842,
the work of the Whig protectionists, as contributing
magnificently to this reaction. It was like an overdose
of poison; instead of accomplishing its purpose, it would
act as an emetic and be rejected at once. But between
that date and Polk's nomination In May, 1844, there
arose the questions of Texas and slavery, offering all
editors of Bryant's views the most distressing dilemma.
From a very early date the Evening Post had opposed
the annexation of Texas, except under circumstances that
would fully satisfy Mexico on one hand, and free soil
sentiment on the other. On June 17, 1836, when Texas
had just declared its freedom, Bryant asserted that If
the United States, under the circumstances, even acknowl-
edged Texan independence, "our government would lose"
Its character for justice and magnanimity with the whole
world, and would deserve to be classed with those spoilers
of nations whose example we are taught as republicans
to detest." He frequently spoke with satisfaction of the
growth of the little republic, noting in 1843 that it had
80,000 people. But when it became evident early the
next year that President Tyler was determined to effect
its annexation, the newspaper was alarmed. The first
rumor that Secretary of State Calhoun had negotiated a
secret treaty with Texas, reaching New York in March,
threw It Into a fever of indignation. Its chief apprehen-
176 THE EVENING POST
sion arose from the fact that the treaty was said to per-
mit slavery in all parts of the new territory save a small
corner to which it was uncertain the United States would
have any title. This led the Evening Post to call the
project "unjust, impolitic, and hostile to the freedom of
the human race."
The actual treaty, sent to the Senate on April 22 by
President Tyler, was assailed with a variety of argu-
ments, but the Evening Post harped chiefly upon the anti-
slavery objection. It would inevitably involve the United
States in war with Mexico, and cost a huge sum in men
and money. The Senate having been elected at a time
when no one was thinking of the Texan question, it would
be wicked to decide so important an issue affirmatively;
there must be some form of national referendum. But
above all, the treaty was evil because it would increase
the slave population of the nation and bulwark this
monstrous Southern institution. It would "keep alive
a war more formidable than any to which we are exposed
from Great Britain or any other foreign power — we
mean the dissensions between the northern and southern
regions of the Union. The cause of these dissensions, if
the territory of the republic be not enlarged, is gradu-
ally losing strength and visibly tending to its extinction,
but by the admission of Texas it will be reinforced and
perpetuated." Theodore Sedgwick, Jr., writing under
the pen-name "Veto," was hurriedly impressed into
service for a series of articles — admirable articles, too.
The treaty was defeated in the Senate; and then ensued
the Presidential campaign of 1844, hinging upon it — the
first campaign directly to involve the slavery question.
When the Democratic Convention met at Baltimore on
May 27, 1844, it was the fervent hope of the Evening
Post and whole northern wing of the party that it would
nominate Van Buren. He had publicly declared against
immediate annexation of Texas, asserting that it would
look like territory-grabbing and intimating that, as the
Post had repeatedly said, colossal jobbery by land-specu-
lators was involved. The South was determined that he
THE MEXICAN WAR 177
should not be named. The balloting for a nominee was
therefore a decision whether Democracy should stand
for or against the extension of slave territory; and be-
cause the Southerners were the more aggressive, they
won. Van Buren was defeated by the revival of a rule
requiring a two-thirds majority, his vote steadily declin-
ing, and Polk, a comparatively unknown slave-holder,
was named. On May 8 Bryant had said editorially that
"the party cannot be rallied, however the politicians may
exert themselves," In favor of an annexationist South-
erner. He repeated this warning regarding the candi-
date on the eve of the convention; "If he declares himself
for the annexation of Texas, he will encounter the de-
termined opposition" of the North. It was with uncon-
cealed dismay that the Evening Post chronicled Polk's
nomination. He was a man of handsome talents, manly
character, and many sound views, it said, "but like most
Southern politicians, is deplorably wrong on the Texas
question."
Should the Evening Post bolt? For a time Bryant
considered doing so. But it simply could not accept Clay,
the Whig candidate; and admitting that "the fiery and
Imperious South overrides and silences the North in mat-
ters of opinion," Bryant prepared to make the best of
a wretched situation. He explained his stand by saying
that on the one hand, he could not possibly assist Clay
to win the Presidency and restore the United States Bank;
on the other, he did not believe annexation Inevitable
under Polk. The Democratic platform had declared for
annexation "at the earliest practicable moment"; and by
emphasizing the word "practicable," and arguing that
it involved all kinds of delays, and the establishment of
national good faith precedent to the step, the newspaper
tried to argue that It was at least distant.
Bryant's position was made more tenable when, mid-
way in the campaign, Clay wrote his famous and fatal
"Raleigh letter," in which he said that if annexation
could be accomplished without dishonor, war, or injustice,
he would be glad to see it. This meant, as thousands of
178 THE EVENING POST
Whigs felt when they stayed from the polls on election
day, that there was perhaps little to choose between the
candidates.
Yet the Post never quite surrendered its independence,
and tried throughout the summer to lead a movement
within the party for ?i proper solution of the Texas ques-
tion. There were e:.cmies to annexation in Texas itself,
it believed; there were enemies throughout the South,
even in South Carolina, and the initial enthusiasm for it
was beginning to cool. If the Northern Democrats as-
serted themselves forcibly against it as a party measure,
"the day of this scheme, we are fully assured, will soon
be over." In pursuance of this policy, Bryant, Theodore
Sedgwick, David Dudley Field, and three other New
Yorkers drew up a confidential circular to a number of
Democrats of like views, proposing a joint manifesto in
opposition to annexation, and a concerted effort to elect
anti-annexationist Congressmen. This manifesto ap-
peared in the Evening Post of Aug. 20, and made a
considerable impression in New York. But such efforts
were in vain. Polk's election made the entrance of Texas
into the Union a certainty, and it was indeed authorized
by a joint resolution of Congress the day before he took
office. Bryant must have questioned that March whether
his newspaper, which had so decisively lost its fight,
should not have taken the side of the hated Clay.
The final protests against annexation did not commit
the Post to any opposition to the Mexican War. That
conflict did not begin for more than two years, until
April, 1 846 ; and the events of the interim convinced
Bryant that Mexico rather than America was responsible
for it. Polk acted pacifically, and the poet's friend, Ban-
croft, then Secretary of the Navy, wrote him that "we
were driven reluctantly to war." Mexico had, the
Evening Post believed, committed numberless aggressions
upon American interests, while after severing diplomatic
relations, she would not renew them except on impossible
terms. The journal affirmed its belief (May 13, 1846)
in "the inconsistency of a war of invasion and conquest
THE MEXICAN WAR 179
with the character of our government and the ends for
which Providence has manifestly raised up our republic."
It said then and when peace had come that the nation
would yet hold to a fearful responsibility the Southerners
who had precipitated the annexation and the war for the
perpetuation of slavery. But it did not think that the
weak and violent Mexican government had a right to
the perpetual allegiance of Texans, or to menace our ter-
ritory after the annexation. Whereas every one of sense
had opposed a war with England over the Oregon ques-
tion, Bryant wrote, only one or two newspapers were
attacking this collision. Writing that "we approve of
such demonstrations of vigor as shall convince Mexico
that we are in earnest," the editor favored a resolute
prosecution of the struggle.
Ill
While the Evening Post was establishing a militant
free-soil position, its news features were improving. The
office force remained pitifully small. In addition to
Bryant, his assistant, Parke Godwin, and a reporter, at
the end of 1843 room was made for a commercial editor,
who supplied information on the markets, wrote upon
business affairs, and supervised the marine intelligence;
these four made up the staff. The paper was enlarged in
1840, going from seven columns to eight and lengthening
its page, while in 1842 commenced the issuance of a
weekly Evening Post, in addition to the semi-weekly —
a profitable innovation. It was wonderful that so few
men could do so much. In the fact that they did we have
the explanation of a little note Mrs. Bryant wrote to
Mrs. William Ware, wife of the author of "Zenobia,"
in the late thirties: "Mr. Bryant has gone to his office.
You cannot think how distressed I am about his working
so hard. He gets up as soon as it is light, takes a mouth-
ful to eat, — it cannot be called a breakfast, for it is often
only what the Germans call a 'stick of bread' ; occasionally
the milkman comes in season for him to get some bread
and milk. As yet, his health is good, but I fear that his
i8o THE EVENING POST
constitution is not strong enough for such intense labor."
Occasionally a little help was lent by outsiders — James K.
Paulding as well as Sedgwick contributed editorials early
in the forties; but it was little.
Year by year the local news improved. Bryant had at
first objected to reports of criminal cases on moral
grounds, but he now took the sensible view that to have
the light let in upon evil assisted in combating it. As
early as 1836 he had the famous murder of Helen Jewett
covered in detail. Another of his early prejudices was
against the reporting of lectures by which many literary
men of the day made part of their living, on the ground
that if the report was faithful, it tended to prevent a
repetition of the lecture, but even while he voiced this
opinion, in 1841, he was giving a comprehensive sum-
mary of Emerson's addresses. Beginning in 1845, the
Evening Post published a daily column with the heading,
"City Intelligence," which was often a queer melange of
news and editorial comment, for it discussed urgent
municipal needs — the improvement of the Tombs, the
adoption of mechanical street sweepers, the substitution
of a paid fire department for the volunteer system, and
so on. The headings for a typical Monday in 1848 run
thus:
Confusion Among the Judges (Six courts met at 10 a. m., at
City Hall, with only four rooms among them).
Foul Affair at Sea (The brig Colonel Taylor arrives, and re-
ports that its mate at sea threw a sailor overboard).
Removal of the Telegraph Offices (Albany and Buffalo Com-
pany removes to 16 Wall Street).
Case of Mme. Restel (Developments in a murder case).
Fires — A Child Burnt to Death (The week-end conflagrations
totalled eleven, a modest list. At one in Leroy Street nine houses
had been burnt ; at one in Thirteenth Street a child and six horses
had been killed).
City Statistics (The last year saw 1,823 new buildings erected;
the city had 327 licensed omnibuses, 3,780 taverns and saloons, 168
junkshops, and 681 charcoal peddlers).
And so the column continued through police news,
THE MEXICAN WAR i8i
theater puffs, and notices of academy commencements,
until it ended just above an advertisement of Sands's
Sarsaparilla and the Balsam of Wild Cherry, glowingly
recommended by testimonials.
But the chief improvement in the news was wrought
by special correspondence, which early in the forties at-
tained a surprising extent and finish. By various means,
including advertising for correspondents, Bryant built up
a staff of contributors that covered every part of the
nation. In 1 841-2 each week during the sessions of Con-
gress brought letters from two men, "Z" and "Very,"
while during the legislative session there were two Albany
correspondents, "L" and "Publius." Every important
State capital north of Richmond had its contributor. In
the first week of 1842, for example, appeared letters from
Springfield, III., Providence, R. I., and Detroit, Mich. A
Paris correspondent wrote regularly over the initials
"A. v.," and a London correspondent signed much more
frequent articles "O. P. Q."
This London correspondence ran to great length. Into
one typical article, printed on March 14, 1842, "O. P. Q."
crowded an account of the royal christening, at which
the future Edward VII "was got back to the Castle with-
out squalling"; the Dublin elections; Macready's experi-
ment at Drury Lane Theater, where for the first time the
pit seats had been "provided with backs, and, together
with the boxes, numbered, and a ticket given to the occu-
pant, who thus keeps his seat throughout the evening";
of Adelaide Kemble's singing at Covent Garden; of
Douglas Jerrold's new comedy, "Prisoners of War" ; and
of the new books, including Mrs. Trollope's "Blue Belles
of England"; the whole concluding with some gossip
about a ruler in whom Americans were more interested
than in President Tyler :
It is said that the Queen still continues staunch Whig; that she
is civil, but laconic, to the Tories; and that pleasant old Lord Mel-
bourne's easy chair, in which he used to take his after-dinner nap
when he dined at the palace, is still kept for his use alone, being
\
1 82 THE EVENING POST
wheeled out of the closet when he dines there, and wheeled back
when he takes his departure.
Her majesty and her husband appear to go on as comfortably
as if they lived in a cottage (ornee) untroubled with crowns and
royal christenings. Prince Albert is a good deal liked for the
sensible and unassuming manner in which he has heretofore con-
ducted himself. At the Mayor's dinner, the other day, he said
he began to feel himself "quite at home." One of the papers
remarks: *'Of course he does; what respectable man, living two
years in the most comfortable house, with a charming young wife,
a rising family, good shooting, and the general esteem, could feel
otherwise than at home?"
The most striking feature in newspaper correspondence
of the forties was the prominence given mere travel.
Americans were more curious about their expanding and
fast-filling land than now, and the expense and hardship
of travel made its vicarious enjoyment greater. Two
midsummer months In 1843 afford a representative view
of this side of the newspaper. Bryant concluded his cor-
respondence written during a trip to South Carolina and
Florida, describing Charleston Harbor, a plantation corn-
shucking, negro songs, alligators, tobacco-chewing, and
the reminders of the Seminole War. From another cor-
ner of the Union an unsigned letter of 3,000 words de-
scribed an Interesting trip through wilder Michigan.
Bryant, returning north, contributed from Keene, N. H.,
and Addison County, Vt., a description of scenery In those
two States. From Columbus, O., some one wrote of his
journey thither by way of the Great Lakes. In August
a correspondent at Saratoga waxed loquacious. He nar-
rated some Incidents he had observed of J. Q. Adams's
tour In upper New York; pictured Martin Van Buren so-
journing at the Springs, "as round, plump, and happy as
a partridge," and said to be looking for a wife; and
sketched N. P. Willis, at a ball there, "surrounded by
bevies of literary loungers and dilettanti, who look up
to him with equal respect for the fashionable cut of his
coat and the exceeding gracefulness of his writings."
Bryant wrote letters from all his foreign tours — those
of 1834-6, 1845-6, 1849, 1852-3, and 1857-8; while
THE MEXICAN WAR 183
others of the staff who traveled did the same. In 1834
the Evening Post published a series of letters from South
American ports, written anonymously by a naval officer
on an American warship ; while for twenty years regular
correspondence was furnished by a resident of Buenos
Aires. When Commodore Biddle sailed into Yeddo Bay
the summer of 1846 to try to establish treaty relations
with Japan, an officer of his squadron sent the Post a
highly interesting account of their chill reception. The
vessels were surrounded with hundreds of armed boats
from the day their arrival produced consternation upon
land; they had been supplied with water, wood, poultry,
and vegetables, free; but the authorities had peremptorily
refused any further intercourse. Two years later both
the Paris and Berlin correspondents wrote vivid descrip-
tions of the revolutionary uprisings of that year, the
former being in the thick of the fighting on the Boule-
vards. Special correspondence in the early fifties came
even from Siam. But we can best give an impression
of the wealth of this mailed matter by summarizing it for
a single month (August, 1850) :
From Washington and Albany, continuous correspondence;
from Toronto, three articles, on Dominion politics and railways;
from Montreal, letter on a great fire there and sentiment toward
America; from London, letters by Wm. H. Maxwell and "XYZ"
on Peel's last speech, California gold fever, African trade, stock
prices, corn laws, sorrow over President Taylor's death, etc. ;
Paris correspondence on dinner to President Louis Napoleon and
shouts of **Vive I'Empereur !"; Boston, letters on Massachusetts
politics and sad case of Dr. Webster, awaiting execution after
having confessed his murder; New Haven, four articles on Yale
Commencement, President Woolsey's oration, and a scientific con-
vention; Chicago, the cholera, the Illinois canal, and crops;
Rochester, the Erie Railroad and the "Rochester rappings"; Brat-
tleboro and White Mountains, descriptions of summer excursions ;
Chester County, Pa., home life of Senator James Cooper, a hated
traitor to free-soil principles; Berkshire Valley, charms of the
Housatonic.
The world's first war to be thoroughly and graphically
1 84 THE EVENING POST
treated in the daily newspapers was, not the Crimean
War in which William H. Russell won his fame, but the
Mexican War. It was George Wilkins Kendall, a
Yankee from New Hampshire who had helped found the
New Orleans Picayune nine years earlier, who made the
chief individual reputation as a correspondent. Cam-
paigning first with Gen. Zachary Taylor on the Rio
Grande, and then joining Winfield Scott on the latter's
dangerous and triumphant march from Vera Cruz to
Mexico City, always in the thick of the fighting, once
wounded, organizing a wonderfully effective combination
of courier and steamboat service, Kendall gave the
Picayune by far the best current history of a war that
journalism in any land had seen. The New Orleans
Delta, the Baltimore Sun, the New York Herald, and, at
a slight remove, the Evening Post, followed the fighting
with admirable enterprise.
News of the war came to the East through two main
channels. The greater part of it was brought from the
border (i. e., from Brownsville or Matamoras) or from
Vera Cruz to New Orleans or Pensacola, and thence
overland northward; a smaller part came in on the long
Santa Fe trail to St. Louis. Thus on Christmas Day,
1846, Col. Doniphan, at the head of a force of confident
Missourians, defeated a Mexican detachment in the little
skirmish of Brazitos, near El Paso. A company of
traders from Santa Fe brought the news into Inde-
pendence, Missouri, on Feb. 15, and the local news-writer
there wrote a dispatch which was printed in the St. Louis
Republic on the 26th. The Evening Post copied it on
March 8, long after most of Doniphan's seven wounded
men had forgotten their injuries. El Paso had been
captured from the Mexicans on Dec. 27, and the fact
was known in New York on March 10.
The delay in obtaining the news of Buena Vista gave
rise to disheartening rumors. The battle which made "Old
Rough and Ready" a national idol and the next President
of the United States was fought on Feb. 23, 1847, ^^^
for a month thereafter the gloomiest reports appeared
THE MEXICAN WAR 185
in the press. After the middle of March Washington
and New York were confused and alarmed by vague dis-
patches from the Southwest; on March 21 President Polk
received a detailed account of Taylor's perilous position,
menaced by a force three times as large as his own, and
New York heard of It Immediately afterward. On the
evening of the twenty-second the messages to Washing-
ton had "Taylor completely cut off by an overwhelming
force of the enemy," but no word of fighting. The
Evening Post of March 30 carried Its first news of a
definite disaster. It republished from the New Orleans
Delta a dispatch, brought by ship, stating "that Gen.
Taylor was attacked at Agua Nueva and fell back, in
good order, to the vicinity of Saltillo; here he was again
attacked by Santa Anna, and a sharp engagement ensued
in which Gtn. Taylor was victorious, continuing his re-
treat In good order. Gen. Taylor fell back to Monterey,
where he arrived in safety." Read between the lines,
this meant a humiliating defeat. Every one was prepared
to credit it, and it was partly corroborated by more
meager news carried In the New Orleans Bulletin.
Nevertheless, the Post uttered a shrewd caution
against believing the reports. It was justified the follow-
ing day when copies of the New Orleans Mercury ar-
rived, dated March 23, bearing the full tidings of Tay-
lor's victory against crushing odds. The false rumors
had filtered out through Tampico and Vera Cruz; the
truth was brought by army messengers to Monterey, who
had to make a detour of hundreds of miles to evade
Mexican guerillas. When It reached Washington it
found the politicians fiercely debating who was respon-
sible for so weakening Taylor's army as to enable Santa
Anna to smash it; when it reached New York It found the
people depressed and Indignant; and when It got to Bos-
ton on April i, many denounced it as an April Fool's joke.
As the war continued the dispatches came more rap-
idly. The Baltimore Sun early established an express of
sixty blooded horses overland from New Orleans, and
when It was in effective operation newspapers and letters
1 86 THE EVENING POST
were carried over the route in six days. This made it
possible to have newsboys on Broadway shouting the
capture of Vera Cruz a fortnight after it occurred. As
Scott pushed inland toward Mexico City, dispatches from
him were retarded, for marauding Mexicans made his
line of communications with the sea unsafe. Kendall
used to start his express riders from the army at mid-
night, and he chose men who knew the country perfectly;
but several were captured and others killed. Neverthe-
less, the Evening Post could publish the news of Cerro
Gordo, fought on April i8, on May 7; the news of the
capture of Mexico City, which occurred on Sept. 14, on
Oct. 4, or less than three weeks after the event.
Three correspondents in the field furnished the Evening
Post with letters — Lieut. Nathaniel Niles, an Illinois
soldier with Gen. Taylor; "M. R." with Scott, and "B"
at Matamoras. The last gave a striking history of the
rapid Americanization of this Mexican town, telling how
the inhabitants reaped a golden fortune and how Taylor's
soldiers chafed under their enforced stay. "M. R." con-
tributed a picture of the taking of Vera Cruz, in which
he carried a rifle. But Niles was the most active and the
best writer. When the New Orleans papers, with their
advantage of position, tried to give all the credit of
Buena Vista to the Mississippi troops (commanded by
Jefferson Davis) and to the Kentuckians, Niles flatly con-
tradicted them. The Indiana and Illinois men, he said,
deserved quite as much praise. His account of the de-
cisive moment at Buena Vista, when the attack of the
Mexicans had been finally and bloodily repulsed, is worth
quoting :
At length, about three o'clock p. m., we saw the Mexican force
in our rear begin to falter and retrace their steps, under the well-
directed shot of our ranks of marksmen, and the artillery still
pouring its iron death-bolts into their right. Their lancers, who
had taken refuge behind their infantry, and there watched the
progress of the fight, made one desperate charge to turn the for-
tunes of the day by breaking the line of Indiana and Mississippi.
But the cool, steady volunteers sent them with carnage and con-
THE MEXICAN WAR 187
fusion to Santa Ana, on the plain above, with the report that
our reserve was 5,000 strong, and filled all the ravines in our
rear. The retreat of their infantry, which paused for a moment,
was now hastened by the repulse of the lancers, but still under a
galling fire. They marched back in excellent order. While mak-
ing their toilsome and bloody way back, Santa Ana practised a
ruse to which any French or English officer would have scorned
to resort. He exhibited a flag of truce, and sent it across the
plain to our right, where stood our generals.
When the Second Indiana, under Col. Bowles, fled
from the field after the first Mexican onset upon the
American left, leaving the way to Taylor's rear open,
some one suggested — says NUes — a retreat. "Retreat I"
exclaimed Taylor; "No; I will charge them with the bay-
onet." Nlles reported many human Incidents of the war,
and dwelt upon the barbarity of the Mexicans :
They generally killed and plundered, even of their clothes, all
whom the current of battle threw into their hands. We, on the
contrary, saved the lives of all who threw down their arms, and
relieved the wants of the wounded, even in the midst of battle.
I have seen the young American volunteer, when bullets were
flying around him, kneel beside a wounded Mexican and let him
drink out of his canteen. In one heap of wounded Mexicans we
came upon a groaning man, whom an Illinois soldier raised and
gave water. We had gone only a few steps past when the soldier
thus helped twisted himself upon his elbow and shot our man
through the back dead; three or four volleys instantly repaid this
treachery.
The first intimation of the revolution In news-gathering
which occurred In the middle forties was furnished Eve-
ning Post readers In the Issue of May 27, 1844, when
the Washington correspondent told of Morse's successful
experiment with the telegraph two days earlier. "What
Is the news In Washington?" was the question asked from
Baltimore, where the Democratic National Convention
was about to meet. "Van Buren stock Is rising," came
the answer. On May 31 the correspondent sent another
brief mention of
1 88 THE EVENING POST
MORSE'S TELEGRAPH.— This wonderful invention or
discovery of a new means of transmitting intelligence, is in full
and perfectly successful operation. Mr. Morse is the magician
at the end of the line, and an assistant who does not spell with
perfect correctness officiates.
There have arrived numerous telegraphic dispatches since the
meeting of the Convention at Baltimore at nine o'clock this morn-
ing. By one we are informed of the nomination of Mr. George M.
Dallas, of Philadelphia, for Vice-President.
All the New York newspapers, the Herald leading,
shortly had a column of telegraphic news, and from that
in the Evening Post we can trace the steady extension of
the wires. In the early spring of 1846 communication
was opened between New York and Philadelphia. When
war was declared, April 24, the line to Washington was
incomplete, not having been finished between Baltimore
and Philadelphia, but the gap was soon closed. The
fastest carriage of news between the capital and New
York, 220 miles, had been that of Harrison's inaugural
message, weighty with its Roman consuls and Greek gen-
erals, in eleven hours; now eleven minutes sufficed. By
the middle of September, when the line to Buffalo was
complete, the country had 1,200 miles of telegraph, reach-
ing above Boston towards Portland, to Washington on
the south, and to Harrisburg on the west.
During 1847 the expansion of the telegraphic system
amazed all who did not stop to think how much simpler
and cheaper the installation of a line was than the build-
ing of a road. By March it had reached Pittsburgh on
the west, and by September, Petersburg on the south.
The next month saw it in Cincinnati and Louisville, and
that fall the Evening Post printed telegraph news of a
Cincinnati flood which made 5,000 homeless. In its New
Year's message the journal congratulated its readers upon
such progress that "the moment a dispatch arrives at
New Orleans from our armies in Mexico its contents are
known on the borders of the northern lakes." The next
year Florida alone of the States east of the Mississippi
was untouched by it. When the President's message
THE MEXICAN WAR 189
opening Congress in December, 1848, was transmitted to
St. Louis, the Evening Post remarked that "the idea of a
document filling twelve entire pages of the Washington
Union appearing in a city nearly one thousand miles from
Washington, twenty-four hours after its delivery, is al-
most beyond belief." Christopher Pearse Cranch con-
tributed a poem to the Post upon the marvel:
The world of the Past was an Infant;
It knew not the speech of today,
When giants sit talking from mountain to sea,
And the cities are wizards, who say :
The kingdom of magic is ours;
We touch a small clicking machine,
And the lands of the East hear the lands of the West
With never a bar between.
Ten years after the opening of the first American tele-
graph line Bryant made some caustic remarks in the
Evening Post upon "The Slow-Coach System in Europe."
For many months, it transpired, the Allies in the Crimean
War had possessed a continuous telegraph line from Lon-
don to the battle front. It had been demonstrated that
dispatches sufficient to fill two columns of the London
Times might be sent over it in two hours; yet the French
and British publics had been obliged to wait two weeks
for full details of the fall of Sebastopol, simply because
the Allied authorities did not organize a competent tele-
graphic staff.
IV
In this decade of rapid changes, 1 840-1 850, Bryant
began to reap the fruits of his courage, persistency, tact,
and industry. The hostility of the mercantile community
had lessened as the Bank question receded and the cor-
rectness of the Post's warnings against inflation and
speculation was proved by the great panic. On March
30, 1840, Bryant editorially rejoiced that "the prejudices
against it, with which its enemies had labored so vehe-
mently to poison the minds of men of business, have been
gradually overcome." The pressure of advertisements
190 THE EVENING POST
forced the enlargement of the sheet in this year. The
weekly edition which it began issuing at New Year's,
1842, was the only Democratic weekly In New York, and
at $2 a year rapidly obtained an extensive circulation. In
competition with sixpenny evening papers like the Jour-
nal of Commerce and penny papers like the Daily News,
the Post held its own. It took Its share In all the busi-
ness enterprises of the press, as when in 1849-50, at the
height of the gold fever, it published a special ^'Evening
Post for California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands"
just before every important sailing for the Pacific. Bry-
ant's sagacity kept the expenses low, and his ability kept
the editorial page easily the best, save for Greeley's, in
the city.
It was a reflection of the new Evening Post prosperity
when Bryant wrote his brother early in 1843 * ^'Congrat-
ulate me I There is a probability of my becoming a land-
holder In New York I I have made a bargain for about
forty acres of solid earth at Hempstead Harbor, on the
north shore of Long Island." He referred to the Ros-
lyn homestead at which thereafter he was to spend so
much of his time. Between 1839 ^^^ 1840 the gross
earnings of the journal rose from $28,355.29 to $44,-
194.93, and they never thereafter dropped to the danger
point. In 1850 It was calculated that for the preceding
ten years the average annual gross receipts had been
$37,360, and that the average annual dividends had been
$9,776.44. Of this Bryant's share until 1848 was one-
half, and thereafter two-fifths, so that he enjoyed an
ample income; while towards the end of the decade the
profits of the job printing oflfice were a tidy sum.
Nor was there so much drudgery In the office as when
he had first returned in 1836. Parke Godwin draws an
Interesting picture of the editor's life at this period. He
liked to take a week of fine summer weather from the
office and spend it in excursions to the Palisades, the
Delaware Water Gap, the Catskills, or the Berkshires,
sometimes alone, sometimes with another good walker.
Bryant's appreciative descriptions of these scenes did
THE MEXICAN WAR 191
much to raise the public esteem of them. At the office
there were many entertaining visitors. Cooper always
called when he was in town, and the contrast between the
novelist and the poet was striking: "Cooper, burly,
brusque, and boisterous, like a bluff sailor, always bring-
ing a breeze of quarrel with him; Mr. Bryant, shy, mod-
est, and delicate as a woman — they seemed little fitted
for friendship." Yet warm friends they were. John L.
Stephens, who had won a reputation by his travels in
Arabia, Nubia, and Central America, and whose books
were in considerable vogue, frequently came, "a small,
sharp, nervous man," and talked of his adventures. A
more magnetic personality was that of Audubon, whose
tall, athletic figure, Indian-bronzed face, bright eyes,
eagle nose, and long white hair attracted the eyes of every
worker. He, too, loved to tell of his exploits in the wilds,
and his experiences in the salons of Europe. Bancroft,
who liked Bryant's Jacksonian zeal as much as he did
his poetry, and William Gilmore Simms, author of "The
Yemassee," occasionally paid a visit, while Godwin be-
lieved he remembered seeing Edgar Allan Poe "once or
twice, to utter nothing, but to look his reverence out of
wonderful lustrous eyes."
CHAPTER EIGHT
NEW YORK BECOMES A METROPOLIS; CENTRAL PARK
Ten years before the Civil War, New York city had
515,000 people, the population having risen by more
than 200,000 in the forties. The northward march of
buildings had passed Twenty-third Street, and the ex-
treme northern boundary could now be placed at Thirty-
fourth, though there were many empty districts south
of that line. Madison Square had just been laid out.
The nineteenth and twentieth wards were added within
a twelvemonth. Broadway was now more than four miles
long from the Battery to the open country, and along its
course as far as Bleecker Street old residences were being
ripped apart in clouds of dust to make way for stores.
The year 1850 was that in which the time-worn City
Hotel disappeared, and in which the Astor Place Opera
House was remodeled for business uses. Canal Street
was extended, and Dey Street widened. Almost before
men realized it the old transportation facilities had be-
come inadequate, and in 1852-3 the Third Avenue and
Sixth Avenue horse railways began to carry passengers.
With the whole lower part of town engrossed by trade,
with more well-to-do New Yorkers fleeing northward year
by year for light and air, the city in 1852 undertook the
grading of Fifth Avenue from Thirty-fourth Street to
Forty-fifth. The New York which thrilled to Jenny
Lind's singing and turned out a quarter of a million
people to watch the military procession marking Presi-
dent Taylor's funeral, was a New York that had sud-
denly bloomed into a metropolis.
In this thriving city, larger than Buffalo to-day, there
was not a single open-air recreation ground worthy of the
name. Dickens had remarked in 1842 that New York's
summer climate was such that it would throw a man into
192
NEW YORK A METROPOLIS 193
a fever merely to think what the streets would be but
for the daily breezes from the bay. It was a smoky city
— Bryant had written in the Evening Post of 1832 a
striking description of its unwonted brightness when the
cholera stopped nearly all industry — and it was ill-
cleaned. The city directories, indeed, listed nineteen
parks. But a number, as Five Points Park, Duane Park,
and Abingdon Square, were merely places where the
street intersections were a little wider than usual. Others,
like Hudson Square and Gramercy Park, were private
property, and still others, like the Bowling Green, were
padlocked. The whole park area was only about one
hundred and seventy acres, and the grounds open to the
public did not exceed one hundred acres; while the largest
single park, the Battery, contained only twenty-one.
The first proposal for a large uptown park was made
by Bryant in the Evening Post, and that journal was the
sturdiest of the fighters for what eventually became Cen-
tral Park. It was a bold proposal, for which public senti-
ment could only slowly be aroused. In Edward H. Hall's
scholarly history of Central Park, published by the Amer-
ican Scenic and Historic Preservation Society in 191 1,
the plan is said to have originated with Andrew J. Down-
ing, editor of the monthly Horticulturist, in a letter con-
tributed to that magazine in 1849. Charles H. Haswell,
in his "Reminiscences of an Octogenarian," also gives
Downing the credit, saying that he merits a statue from
the city. But the real originator was the poet-editor. In
1836, Parke Godwin, taking frequent rambles with him,
found him emphatically expressing the opinion that the
city should reserve as a park the finest area of woodland
remaining there, since in a few years it would be too late.
Five full years before Downing's letter, on a hot July
day in 1844, Bryant made a walking trip over the middle
of Manhattan to examine the adaptability of a certain
large tract for park purposes. Upon his return, he wrote
for the issue of July 3, 1844, his proposal, heading it
"A New Park."
The city the afternoon this article appeared was
194 THE EVENING POST
streaming out to spend the Fourth at neighboring points.
Some, wrote Bryant, would go to shady retreats in the
country; some would refresh themselves by excursions to
the seashore on Staten Island or the river front at Ho-
boken. "If the public authorities, who expend so much
of our money in laying out the city, would do what is in
their power, they might give our vast population an ex-
tensive pleasure ground for shade and recreation in these
sultry afternoons, which we might reach without going
out of town." Where? He answered:
On the road to Harlem, between Sixty-eighth Street on the
south, and Seventy-seventh on the north, and extending from
Third Avenue to the East River, is a tract of beautiful woodland,
comprising sixty or seventy acres, thickly covered with old trees,
intermingled with a variety of shrubs. The surface is varied in
a very striking and picturesque manner, with craggy eminences,
and hollows, and a little stream runs through the midst. The
swift tides of the East River sweep its rocky shores, and the fresh
breeze of the bay comes in, on every warm summer afternoon,
over the restless waters. The trees are of almost every species
that grows in our woods — the different varieties of ash, the birch,
the beech, the linden, the mulberry, the tulip tree, and others;
the azalea, the kalmia, and other flowering shrubs are in bloom
here in their season, and the ground in spring is gay with flowers.
There never was a finer situation for the public garden of a great
city. Nothing is wanting but to cut winding paths through it,
leaving the woods as they now are, and introducing here and
there a jet from the Croton aqueduct, the streams from which
would make their own waterfalls over the rocks, and keep the
brooks running through the place always fresh and full. . . .
If any of our brethren of the public press should see fit to sup-
port this project, we are ready to resign in their favor any claim
to the credit of originally suggesting it.
Bryant referred to the beauty and utility of Regent's
Park in London, the Alameda in Madrid, the Champs
Elysees in Paris, and the Prater in Vienna. By the offi-
cial plan for New York, drawn up in 1807, an area of
two hundred and forty acres had been reserved between
Twenty-third and Thirty-fourth Streets, and Third and
Seventh Avenues, to be called the Parade ; this, however,
NEW YORK A METROPOLIS 195
had been reduced by degrees to the six or seven acres
of Madison Square. At the beginning of the century
any one had been able to walk in a half hour from his
home to the open fields, but it now seemed that all Man-
hattan would soon be covered with brick and mortar.
The editor's proposal was not for the area now in-
cluded in Central Park, and was for a comparatively
small tract, though Bryant had understated its size — it
contained about one hundred and sixty acres, against eight
hundred and forty-three in Central Park to-day. But it
would be a magnificent park compared with any then
existing, and the suggestion was sufficient to open a dis-
cussion. Jones's Wood, as the tract was called, was the
last remnant of the primeval forest on the East River,
as wild as when the Dutch had settled on the island. It
was the subject of many a tale and tradition connected
with the infant days of the colony, and was reputed to
have been the favorite resort of pirates who descended
through Hell Gate and landed there to bury their treas-
ure and hold their revels. The first John Jones purchased
It when it was called the "Louvre Farm," in 1803, and a
son by the same name succeeded him. In time it became
a favorite nutting and fishing ground. Anglers would sit
In the shade of its rocky bluffs and overhanging elms and
cast their lines into the deep waters of the East River,
while in autumn boys would wander through its recesses
clubbing the branches above. "What a place of delight
Jones's Wood used to be in the olden days!" exclaimed
"Felix Oldboy" in the eighties.
Nor was It long until Bryant himself suggested the
alternative scheme for a central park. From time to
time he recurred editorially to the subject, now expa-
tiating upon the ever-increasing need for a city breathing
place, now pointing to what European cities had done.
In 1845 h^ was in England. From London he wrote
(June 24) a glowing description of the fresh and ver-
durous expanse of Hyde Park, St. James' Park, Kensing-
ton Gardens, and Regent's Park, and in this letter he
spoke of a "central" reservation in New York:
196 THE EVENING POST
These parks have been called the lungs of London, and so im-
portant are they regarded to the public health and the happiness
of the people, that I believe a proposal to dispense with some part
of their extent, and cover it with streets and houses, would be
regarded in much the same manner as a proposal to hang every
tenth man in London. . . .
The population of your city, increasing with such prodigious
rapidity; your sultry summers, and the corrupt atmosphere gen-
erated in hot and crowded streets, make it a cause of regret that
in laying out New York, no preparation was made, while it was
yet practicable, for a range of parks and public gardens along the
central part of the island or elsewhere, to remain perpetually for
the refreshment and recreation of the citizens during the torrid
heats of the warm season. There are yet unoccupied lands on the
island which might, I suppose, be procured for the purpose, and
which, on account of their rocky and uneven surface, might be
laid out into surpassingly beautiful pleasure-grounds; but while
we are discussing the subject the advancing population of the city
is sweeping over them and covering them from our reach.
The Evening Post repeatedly pressed the park project.
Its editors had the more faith in it, they said, because
while New Yorkers were somewhat slow in adopting
plain and homely reforms, they were likely to engage
eagerly In any scheme which wore an air of magnificence.
They wouldn't take the trouble to keep the streets clean,
but they would spend millions to brfhg a river into the
city through the Croton aqueduct, forty miles long. They
wouldn't sweep Broadway, but they would cover Black-
well's Island with stately buildings, some of them not
needed. Bryant had in this way prepared the ground
when Downing, In 1849, also writing from London and
using many of Bryant's arguments, published his appeal
In the Horticulturist. Downing, like the poet, had no
clear or fixed Idea of the limits that should be assigned
the new park. The fundamental requirements, he said,
were that it should be just above the limits of building,
should be spacious, and should be reserved while the land
was yet easily obtainable. Downlng's letter, followed in
1850 by an admirable series of articles, attracted much
attention. But thanks chiefly to Bryant, the subject was
NEW YORK A METROPOLIS 197
now familiar to all interested In city improvement. In
1850 Fernando Wood ran for Mayor against Ambrose
C. KIngsland, and both warmly advocated the establish-
ment of a park. KIngsland, who was supported by the
Evening Post, was elected, and on May 5, 185 1, sent the
Common Council a message recommending "the purchase
and laying out of a park on a scale which will be worthy
of the city," but not indicating a definite site.
The fight was now well begun; and when opposition
appeared to the park project in toto, the Evening Post
naturally felt that upon it lay the chief responsibility for
defending the compalgn. The Journal of Commerce
attacked the scheme, declaring that the cost to the tax-
payer would be tremendous, that New York city already
owned park lands worth $8,386,000, and that the cool
waters and green country surrounding the city made more
unnecessary. The Post's answer was contemptuous. As
for the cost, the money spent would, like that laid out
upon the Croton water system, be an economy in the end.
"Every investment of capital that renders the city more
healthy, convenient, and beautiful, attracts both strangers
and residents, and leads to a liberal patronage of every
department of trade." The fact that the city already had
eight million dollars worth of park area had nothing to
do with the question. The argument was as absurd as
it would be to compute the area covered by the city
streets, estimate their value, and make that a reason for
narrowing the Bowery or Broadway. London and Paris,
like New York, had waters and a green surrounding
country within easy reach, but no Londoner or Parisian
would dispense with his parks.
Mayor Kingsland's message was referred to a com-
mittee of the Council, which recommended that Jones's
Wood be selected, and the Council, adopting this recom-
mendation, applied to the Legislature for a law to author-
ize the establishment of the park. In July, 1851, the
Legislature responded by passing a measure to allow the
city to take possession of Jones's Wood.
But by this time it was believed by many citizens that
the 160-acre stretch upon the East River would be insuf-
198 THE EVENING POST
ficient, and that the "range of parks and public gardens
along the central part of the island" which Bryant had
suggested In 1845 would be preferable. Downing de-
serves great credit for his Insistence that Jones's Wood
would be "only a child's playground." London, he
pointed out, already possessed parks aggregating 6,000
acres, and New York should now acquire at least 500.
Such a tract "may be selected between Thirty-ninth street
and the Harlem River, including a varied surface of land,
a good deal of which is yet waste area. ... In that
area there would be space enough to have broad reaches
of park and pleasure-ground, with a real feeling of the
beauty and breadth of green fields, the perfume and
freshness of nature." The Common Council was im-
pressed, and in August appointed a committee to ascer-
tain whether "some other site" was best.
By the autumn of 1851 three main parties had taken
shape upon the question. A large and influential body
of business men wanted no park whatever; a considerable
group of citizens would be satisfied with Jones's Wood
alone; and a growing number wished a great central park.
The Evening Post wgs for taking both sites. "There is
now ample room and verge enough upon the Island for
two parks," wrote Bryant, "whereas, if the matter is
delayed for a few years, there will hardly be a space left
for one." Having again and again expressed its hopes
with regard to Jones's Woods, it now published glowing
descriptions of the Central Park area. There was no
part of the island, it said, better adapted to the purpose.
"The elevation in some parts rising to the height of one
hundred and forty feet above tidewater, and the valleys
in other parts being some forty feet below the grading
of the streets, a richly diversified surface Is presented, to
which a great variety of ornamental and picturesque
effects may easily be given." The valleys abounded in
springs and streams, which could quickly be converted into
artificial lakes, while the Croton aqueduct could supply
water for fountains.
By the efforts of leading citizens, City Hall, and the
NEW YORK A METROPOLIS 199
friendly part of the press, the Legislature in the summer
of 1853 was induced to sanction the creation of both
parks, passing two separate bills. This filled those who
opposed any park at all with rage. Admit the possibility
of two huge pleasure grounds, aggregating perhaps more
than a thousand acres? "What is it, in effect," demanded
the Journal of Commerce, "but a law or laws to drive our
population more and more over to Brooklyn, Williams-
burgh, Staten Island, Jersey City, etc., by creating a bar-
rier half a mile to two miles wide, north and south, and
occupying half the island east and west, over which popu-
lation cannot conveniently pass? If ever these projects
should be carried into effect, they will cost our citizens
millions of dollars. . . . Small parks would be a public
blessing; and might be as numerous as the health and com-
fort of our citizens would require, but a perpetual edict of
desolation against two and one half square miles of this
small island, might better come from the bitterest enemies
of our city than from its friends." On the contrary, re-
plied the Evening Post, the park would dissuade residents
of Manhattan, made desperate by the congestion, dirt, and
noise of the streets, from removing to greener and more
spacious districts like Brooklyn and New Brighton. Even
after the parks were created, the island would offer room
for four or five million people. The same sort of skeptics
had assailed the Croton project.
Nor did the Journal of Commerce lack help. In 1854
Mayor Jacob Westervelt spoke with hostility In his an-
nual message of the two park projects. The Central
Park enactment, he said, reserved six hundred acres In
the center of the Island, "toward which the flood of popu-
lation is rapidly pouring"; while Its limits embraced "an
area vastly more extensive than is required for the pur-
pose, and deprives the citizens of the use of land for
building purposes, much of which cannot be judiciously
spared." As for Jones's Wood, It ought not to be taken
at all. "The shore on the margin of this park is gen-
erally bold, affording a depth of water invaluable for
commercial purposes." The Evening Post denied that
200 THE EVENING POST
the tide of population was setting toward the center of
the island, saying that it moved fastest up the Hudson
and East Rivers — an historical fact. The waterfront
of Jones's Wood was probably not more than one two-
hundredth of the island's whole margin. "Can we have
no fresh air, no green trees, no agreeable walks and
drives, that Smith may have more houses to let, and
Brown and Co. have less distance to go to their ware-
houses and ships?"
The endeavor to save Jones's Wood failed in 1854,
and for a time it seemed likely that the proposed area of
Central Park would be decidedly reduced. A member of
the State Senate that year introduced a bill for slicing
one-sixth off each side of the park on Fifth Avenue and
Eighth Avenue, for shortening it at both ends, and for
"interspersing the park into suitable squares connecting
with each other but on which, or parts of which, family
edifices may be erected." This, as the Evening Post said,
was simply a scheme to destroy the park. It could under-
stand "that the eye accustomed to look upon the dollar
as the only attractive object in this world, would not find
the beauty of a park 'materially lessened' when behold-
ing it covered with rent-paying brick and mortar; but the
idea of 'public recreation' among dwelling houses, in open
spaces like Union and Washington Squares ... is too
absurd." When hearings were held this same month (Jan-
uary, 1854), upon Mayor Westervelt's proposals for
curtailing Central Park, the advocates of the original
limits seemed to be weakening. The Mayor's supporters
desired a park of about one-third the area originally pro-
posed, and presented a petition with several thousand
signatures. The chief spokesman for the opposite side,
Samuel B. Ruggles, indicated his willingness to consent
to a less drastic reduction, making the park extend
from Sixth Avenue to Eighth, or from Fifth to Seventh,
instead of from Fifth to Eighth. But against any weak-
ening whatever of the plan as it stood the Evening Post
protested energetically. In the heart of London were
more than 1,500 acres of park, it said, which would com-
NEW YORK A METROPOLIS 201
mand high prices for building lots, yet New York job-
bers grumbled over sparing 700. The people owed it
"to the thousands coming after them, who will before
many years make this city the first in the world in point
of size, to bequeath them pleasure grounds commensurate
with its greatness."
The struggle continued until, in February, 1856, fol-
lowing a favorable court decision, Bryant could congrat-
ulate the city that it had been won, and that the land-
scaping of Central Park might begin within a few
months. This was eleven years after his original pro-
posal. He, more than any one else, deserves to be called
the father of the idea; though Downing's labors in pro-
moting it were quite as great as his.
II
These were years in which much had to be said of the
defects of the municipal services, and especially of the
police. When the forties began there was no force for
the prevention of crime, and only a small, underpaid
watch for making arrests. Theodore Sedgwick, Jr., re-
marked in the Evening Post of September, 1841, upon
"the frequency of atrocious crimes" ; why was it "that
brutal crimes, murders, and rapes have suddenly become
so common?" The answer, he thought, was that New
Yorkers elected their city administrations for their views
upon national questions, not because they would furnish
efficient government. It was then held shocking that in
less than two years, 1838-9, there had been six murders
in the city and no convictions. On the Fourth of July in
1842 a German named Rosseler, who kept a quiet beer
garden on Twenty-first Street, ejected some ruffians from
it; and two days later they returned, burnt his house,
destroyed his property, and almost killed a neighbor
whom they mistook for him. The Evening Post was
moved to demand "a police which has eyes and ears for
all these enormities, and hands to seize the offenders."
Just a week before Mayor Morris called upon the Legis-
202 THE EVENING POST
lature (May 29, 1843) ^" ^^s annual message to provide
an adequate police, Bryant penned another protest:
We maintain a body of watchmen, but they are of no earthly
use, except here and there to put an end to a street brawl, and
sometimes to pick up a drunken man and take him to the watch
house. In some cases, they have been suspected of being in a
league with the robbers. At present, we hear of a new case of
housebreaking about as often as every other day. Within a few
days past, in one neighborhood in the upper part of town, two
houses have been broken into and plundered, and an attempt has
been made to set fire to another.
Of course there will be no end to this evil, until there is a
reform in the police regulations — until a police of better organiza-
tion and more efficiency shall be introduced. Our city swarms
with daring and ingenious rogues, many of whom have been
driven from the Old World, and who find no difficulty in exercising
their vocation here with perfect impunity.
"Our city, with its great population and vast extent,
can hardly be said to have a police," wrote the editor
again in the following February. But immediately after
the election of James Harper, the publisher, as Mayor,
a force of 200 patrolmen was organized, a number soon
increased to 800. When Mayor William V. Brady in
1847 proposed abolishing them and restoring the watch
system, the newspaper was amazed. The night watch-
men had never arrested any one when it was avoidable,
for every arrest meant that the officer lost half of the
next day from his usual work testifying at the trial. The
watch had never stopped a public disturbance — the aboli-
tion and flour riots had destroyed property that would
have supported a police force several years; but the
police had quelled several incipient outbreaks. The
Evening Post was not for abolishing, but for improving
the new force. One of the reforms it sought was the
clothing of the men in distinctive uniforms. As it ex-
plained again and again, a uniformed policeman could
be seen from a distance and accosted for information or
help; he would be obeyed by rowdies when a policeman
out of uniform would lack authority; and he could not
NEW YORK A METROPOLIS 203
loiter in corner groggeries. This salutary improvement
was finally effected in the fall of 1853.
As for the fire department, New York depended upon
the volunteer system from the time the Evening Post
was founded until 1865, and at no date after Bryant's
return from Europe in 1836 had his journal any patience
with it. There was never any difficulty in making the
force large enough; when abolished, it consisted of 125
different hose, engine, and ladder companies. The objec-
tion was to its personnel. Gangs of desperate young
blackguards, said the Post at the beginning of 1840,
assembled nightly near the engine-houses, devoted them-
selves to ribaldry, drinking, fighting, and buffoonery, and
not infrequently were guilty of riots, robbery, and as-
saults upon women. They levied forced contributions
upon storekeepers to buy liquor and pay their fines when-
ever they were jailed. At conflagrations they carried off
whatever movables were spared by the flames. The vol-
unteer system, collecting these ruflians in various ca-
pacities, gave them the opportunity to gratify their rest-
less love of excitement, destroyed their fitness for reg-
ular employment, and rapidly made them confirmed
drunkards. The clanship engendered by the hostility of
the different companies led to bloody street fights. What
should be done? The Evening Post recommended "the
prohibition of the volunteer system by penal enactments" ;
and if the city could not support a paid force, the aban-
donment of the field to the insurance companies.
In September, 1841, the Evening Post was again vig-
orously denouncing "the desperate scoundrels nourished
by the. fire department." These denunciations it had
ample opportunity to keep up month by month, for the
frequency of incendiarism and of street affrays among
the volunteer companies was appalling. The best com-
panies were ill-equipped, since not until 1856, after ob-
stinate opposition, were really powerful fire engines intro-
duced from Cincinnati. The regular firemen were accom-
panied by a swarm of "runners" and irregular assistants,
many of them known to be guilty of arson. Whenever
204 THE EVENING POST
two rival companies wished a trial of skill, a fire was
sure to break out in a convenient place. The subscrip-
tions for funds circulated among shopkeepers and house-
holders were little better than blackmail, for it was well
known that those who withheld contributions were
peculiarly liable to fires. In their deadly feuds the com-
panies, fighting with hammers, axes, knives, and pistols,
furnished the morgue and the hospitals with dozens of
subjects a year. Thieves frequently started conflagra-
tions. We read in the Evening Post just after the de-
struction of Metropolitan Hall (1854) :
At the fire on Saturday night, about half of the goods that were
thrown out of the windows of the La Farge Hotel, it has been
estimated, were carried away by thieves. The inmates of the
Bond Street House, who were obliged suddenly to decamp, found
afterwards that their rooms had been rifled, and all the valuables
which they left behind carried away. . . .
There is no city in the world where the thefts committed at
fires are so many and so considerable as with us. The rogues
have an organization which brings them in an instant to the
spot, the goods are passed rapidly from hand to hand, and dis-
appear forever. A large fire is a windfall to the whole tribe.
Cincinnati the previous year, as the Post said, had
substituted a paid fire department for the volunteer sys-
tem. It was disgraceful for New York to depend on a
violent, licentious body which was educating the city's
youth in turbulence and rowdiness and was often worse
than useless when the firebell sounded. The insurance
companies at this time kept eighty men, at a cost of
$30,000, to guard against fires, and many merchants and
families employed private watchmen. But relief did not
come for more than a decade.
Similar complaints rose constantly from the Evening
Post regarding the foulness of the streets. It said in the
early forties that they ought to be swept daily, as they
were in London and Paris, and by machinery; that with
New York's hot summer climate and the popular habit
of throwing offal into the gutters, it was intolerable to
NEW YORK A METROPOLIS 205
have them cleaned only every two or three days. In 1846
it called the neglect "scandalous," the dust and odors
''Insufferable." The reason why horse-brooms were not
employed was that the use of manual labor gave employ-
ment to gangs whose votes the ward-heelers wanted at
election time; but really no men need be thrown out of
work — they could be set to repairing the broken pave-
ments. When the Crystal Palace exhibition was held in
New York in 1853, the British section contained two
street-sweeping machines, one of which not only gathered
together but loaded the dirt. The machines, it was true,
could not vote, but by their use, according to the Evening
Posfs calculations, the cost of cleaning New York might
be reduced from $330,000 a year to between $50,000
and $90,000. Next year Bryant gave publicity to the
experiment of John W. Genin, a Broadway merchant,
who collected $2,000 from his business neighbors, ob-
tained horse-brooms, and at an expense of $450 a week,
for a month, made Broadway from Bowling Green to
Union Square look like "a new-scrubbed kitchen floor."
Not until the end of the thirties did allegations of
corruption in the city government become frequent in
Bryant's editorial columns. In August, 1843, we find
the Evening Post beginning the complaints against the
Charter which it was to maintain without interruption
until the early seventies. It believed and continued to
believe that the two boards of aldermen and assistant
aldermen, soon nicknamed "the forty thieves," had too
much power. "They are at once our municipal legisla-
ture and our municipal executive; in part also, they are
our municipal judiciary; they are the directors of the city
finances; they are the fountain of patronage; they are all
this for the greatest commercial city in the western
world." Their government it held to be always expensive
and arbitrary, often inefficient, and sometimes dishonest.
The Post supported an abortive effort to amend the
Charter in 1846, and in 1853, after Azariah Flagg as
Controller had stripped some flagrant extravagance and
grafting, it gave its voice to another movement which
2o6 THE EVENING POST
proved successful. Tweed was at this time an alderman.
The newspaper charged the body of which he was a
member with selling city property and valuable franchises
for nominal prices, and then by its control of the courts
quashing all efforts at prosecution. When by a smashing
popular vote (June 7, 1853) the new Charter was car-
ried, abolishing the Board of Assistant Aldermen, and
excluding the aldermen from sitting In the courts of
Oyer and Terminer and of the Sessions, the Post said
that "a more significant and humiliating rebuke was never
administered upon a body of public officers in this State
before." It little thought then that the corruption of
the past was but a trifle to the corruption coming.
Bryant's place as the foremost citizen of the lusty
young metropolis was by 1850 becoming secure. He,
Irving, and Cooper were universally regarded as the
country's greatest literary men. Irving was passing his
final placid years at Sunnyslde; Cooper on Otsego Lake,
one of the most quarrelsome men in the country, was near
the end of his stormy career. The city heard of them
only occasionally. But Bryant was in the prime of life,
seen almost daily on the streets, and heard upon every
passing question. In the late forties he began to be known
as a speaker upon public occasions. He delivered his
eulogy upon the artist Cole in 1848 with much nervous-
ness, but by 185 1, when he presided over the press ban-
quet to Kossuth, he had acquired self-confidence and ease.
Thereafter he was In constant demand for addresses to
all kinds of audiences — literary groups, the New York
Historical Society, the Scotch when they celebrated the
centenary of Burns's birth, the Germans In their Schiller
celebration, and so on. His Increasing prestige In the
city was naturally reflected upon the Evening Post.
CHAPTER NINE
LITERARY ASPECTS OF BRYANT's NEWSPAPER, 183O-1855
For reasons fairly evident Bryant seldom used the
Evening Post for the publication of his poems; he was
too modest, and the magazines of the day too earnestly
besought him for whatever he might write. In 1832 he
brought out "The Prairies" In It, and In 1841 "The
Painted Cup" — that was all in early years. He had no
time for literary essays, even had he felt the Post the
place for them. As for the new books, no one yet
thought that dallies should give them more than brief
notices; moreover, Bryant disrelished book-reviewing, a
task against which he had protested while a magazine
editor, and he never quite trusted his judgment upon new
volumes of poetry. The Evening Post had less literary
distinction in his early editorship than might be sup-
posed; but it had much literary interest.
The most interesting book comments of the thirties
were upon British travels In America. England did not
like It when Hawthorne, in "Our Old Home," called the
British matron beefy. The United States did not like
Dickens's portrait of Col. Jefferson Brick, praising the
ennobling institution of nigger slavery; of Prof. Mulllt,
who at the last election had repudiated his father for
voting the wrong ticket; and Gen. Fladdock, who halted
his denunciation of British pride to snub Martin Chuzzle-
wit when he learned that Martin had come in the steer-
age. At that period the United States was as sensitive
as a callow youth. "We people of the Universal Yankee
Nation," remarked the Evening Post In 1833, "much as
we may affect to despise the strictures of such travelers
as Fearon, Capt. Roos, Basil Hall, and Mrs. Trollope,
are yet mightily impatient under their censure, and mani-
fest on the appearance of each successive book about our
207
/ -
208 THE EVENING POST
country a great anxiety to get hold of It and devour its
contents."
Most Americans joined in indiscriminating complaints
over the animadversions of the British travelers. A few
were inclined to applaud the less extreme criticism in the
hope that the sound portions might be taken to heart.
Bryant thought that the country had been "far too sen-
sitive" to Basil Hall, calling that naval traveler *'a good
sort of prejudiced English gentleman, who saw things in
a pretty fair light for a prejudiced man." He had a high
opinion of parts of Miss Martineau's travels, though he.
wrote his wife that she had been given a wrong Impres-
sion in some particulars by Dr. Karl Pollen and the nar-
row-minded Boston abolitionists. Twice he asked Eve-
ning Post readers (1832-3) to remember that although
Mrs. Trollope might be shrewish, she was also shrewd,
and that if she had exaggerated some of the national
foibles, she had sketched others accurately. In her ''Do-
mestic Manners of the Americans," he believed, "there
was really a good deal to repay curiosity. That work,
notwithstanding all its misrepresentations, exaggerations,
and prejudices, was a very clever and spirited production,
and contained a deal of truth which, however unpalatable,
has at least proved of useful tendency." He called Capt.
Marryat's "Diary in America" a "blackguard book,"
more flippant than profound, and deplored the fact that
Charles Augustus Murray's "Travels in America," which
was Issued at the same time (1839), and was the work of
"a well-disposed, candid, gentlemanly sort of person,"
would not have one-tenth the sale. An excerpt from the
dramatic criticism of the Evening Post in September,
1832, shows how effective Mrs. Trollope actually was in
improving our manners. At a performance by Fanny
Kemble, a gentleman, between acts, assumed a sprawling
position upon a box railing:
Hissings arose, and then bleatings, and then imitations of the
lowing of cattle; still the unconscious disturber pursued his chat
— still the offending fragment of his coat-tail hung over the side.
LITERARY ASPECTS— 1 830-1 855 209
At last there was a laugh, and cries of ''Trollope! Trollope!
Trollope!" with roars of laughter, still more loud and general.
But the most important visit of a foreigner after
Lafayette's was the American tour of Dickens in the
early months of 1842. It is of special interest In the
history of the Evening Post as marking the active begin-
ning of a campaign In which It took the leading part
among American dailies — the campaign for international
copyright, lasting a full half century.
"The popularity of Mr. Dickens as a novelist throws
almost all other contemporary popularity Into the shade,"
the Evening Post had exclaimed on March 31, 1839,
when each successive Installment of "Nicholas NIckleby"
was being received with unprecedented enthusiasm in
America. "His humor Is frequently broad farce, and
his horrors are often exaggerated, extravagant, and im-
probable; but he still has so much humor, and so much
pathos, that his defects are overlooked." His striking
originality the paper also praised. In 1840-41 came the
"Old Curiosity Shop," which, as the Post noted, was
issued in numbers as rapidly as the text could be brought
overseas, and caught up In Boston, New York, and Phila-
delphia by piratical publishers. When Dickens spoke at
a public dinner In Boston he recalled how from all parts
of America, from cities and frontier, he had received
letters about Little Nell. There were few educated
Americans who were not acquainted with these books, or
with the earlier "Pickwick" or "Oliver Twist"; and the
news that this genius of thirty was to visit the country
sent a thrill throughout it.
Before the end of January, 1842, readers of the Eve-
ning Post and other New York papers learned how Dick-
ens had reached Halifax and been given a reception in
the Parliament House. A few days after, the Post pub-
lished an account of his welcome in Boston. He was at
the Tremont House, the halls and environs of which
were crowded; one distinguished caller followed another;
whenever he went out to see the sights, or the theater,
he was given an ovation; and deputations were arriving
210 THE EVENING POST
with Invitations from distant cities and towns. "Mr.
Dickens, we fear, is made too much a lion for his own
comfort," observed the paper, and repeated the warning
next day. On Feb. 2 it gave nearly an eighth of its read-
ing matter to an account of plans for the great Boz Ball,
as laid at a public meeting at the Astor House, presided
over by Mayor Robert H. Morris. The Park Theater
was to be converted into a ballroom, and its alcoves fitted
up into representations of the Old Curiosity Shop's cor-
ners, in which scenes from Dickens's novels might be illus-
trated. On Feb. 7 there appeared an account of the cere-
monial Dickens dinner in Boston, with the happy speech
of Mayor Quincy. An invitation to a public dinner in
New York, signed among others by Bryant and Theodore
Sedgwick, had meanwhile been dispatched to Dickens.
The Boz Ball on the fourteenth was, said the Evening
Post in an account that was half news, half editorial,
"one of the most magnificent that has ever been given in
this city. The gorgeousness of the decorations and the
splendor of the dresses, no less than the immense throng,
glittering with silks and jewels, contributed to the show
and impressiveness of the occasion. It is estimated that
nearly 3,000 people were present, all richly dressed and
sparkling with animation." Dickens's letters bear this
out — "from the roof to the floor, the theater was dec-
orated magnificently; and the light, glitter, glare, noise,
and cheering baffle my descriptive powers." The great
crowd made dancing an ordeal, but the novehst and his
wife remained until they were almost too tired to stand.
Some of the newspapers drew heavily upon the imagina-
tion in their personal references to Dickens. They told
how, while a charming young man, bright-eyed, spark-
ling with gayety and life, his freedom of manner shocked
a few fashionable people ; how he could never have moved
in such fine society in England; and how he was "appar-
ently thunderstruck" by the magnificence about him. The
Evening Post confined its personal observations to the
statement that Dickens wore black, "with a gay vest,"
and that his wife appeared in a white figured Irish tab-
LITERARY ASPECTS— 1 830-1 855 211
inet trimmed with mazarine blue flowers, with a wreath
of the same color about her head, and pearl necklace and
earrings. It described the tableaux in full — Mr. Leo
Hunter's fancy dress party, the middle-aged lady in the
hotel room that Pickwick invaded, Mr. and Mrs. Manta-
lini in Ralph Nickleby's office, the Stranger and Barnaby
Rudge, and so on.
The Boz Dinner, at which Bryant was a leading figure,
received no less than three columns, crowding out all
editorial matter — pretty good evidence that Bryant him.-
self wrote the report. Washington Irving presided, and
made a few halting remarks, toasting Dickens as the guest
of the nation. *'There," he said as he took his seat
(Bryant of course did not mention this), "I told you I
should break down, and I've done it." The Evening
Post gave a full transcript of Dickens's speech, much of
which was a tribute to Irving, and which concluded with
a reference to the presence of Bryant and Halleck as
making appropriate a toast to American literature. The
dinner closed with a storm of applause for the sentiment,
"The Works of Our Guest — Like Oliver Twist, We Ask
for More"; and the Evening Post was soon reporting
Dickens's reception in Washington.
Some observers were puzzled by the enthusiasm of
Dickens's reception, and the Courrier des Etats Unis
tried to account for it by several theories : first, because
Americans were eager to refute the accusation that they
cared nothing for art and everything for money; second,
because they supposed Dickens was taking notes, and
wished to conciliate his opinion; and third, because the
austere Puritanism of America, restraining the people
from many ordinary enjoyments, made them seize upon
such occasions as a vent for their natural love of ex-
citement.
Bryant admitted that there was force in the third part
of this explanation, but in the Evening Post he took the
simpler view that the cordiality originated in the main
from a sincere admiration for the novelist's genius. He
pointed out that Dickens's excellences were of a kind that
t^
./
2 12 THE EVENING POST
appealed to all classes, from the stableboy to the states-
man. "His intimate knowledge of character, his famili-
arity with the language and experience of low life, his
genuine humor, his narrative power, and the cheerfulness
of his philosophy, are traits that impress themselves upon
minds of every description." But his higher traits were
such as particularly recommended him to Americans.
"His sympathies seek out that class with whom American
y institutions and laws sympathize most strongly. He has
found subjects of thrilling interest in the passions, suf-
ferings, and virtues of the mass." For itself, while re-
gretting a certain excess of fervor in Dickens's welcome,
the Evening Post regarded it as a healthy token. "We
have so long been accustomed to seeing the homage of
the multitude paid to men of mere titles, or military
chieftains, that we have grown tired of it. We are glad
to see the mind asserting its supremacy — to find its rights
generally recognized. We rejoice that a young man,
without birth, wealth, title, or a sword, whose only claims
to distinction are in his intellect and heart, is received
with a feeling that was formerly rendered only to con-
querors and kings."
Dickens's visit was not merely for pleasure or observa-
tion, and in his endeavors to promote the cause of inter-
national copyright legislation the Post was already keenly
interested. As early as 1810 Coleman, under the head-
ing, "Imposition," had attacked the pirating of "Travels
in the Northern Part of the United States," by Edward
A. Kendall, an Englishman whom Coleman knew, as not
only "a trespass upon the rights of the author," but a
fraud upon the public, since the edition was mutilated.
In 1826 he or Bryant had commented acridly upon the
appearance of a Cambridge edition of Mrs. Barbauld's
poems at the same time that the New York publishers,
G. and C. Carvill, brought out an authorized edition the
'profits of which went to the author's heirs. Miss Mar-
tineau, sojourning in America in 1836, had taken up the
question with Bryant. Upon returning home she had
sent him a copy of a petition by many English writers,
LITERARY ASPECTS— 1 830-1 855 213
Including Dickens and Carlyle, to Congress, together with
copies of brief letters by Wordsworth, Miss Edgeworth,
Lord Brougham, and others Indorsing It; and It was pub-
lished with hearty commendation In the Evening Post.
The question was one In which Bryant, like Cooper
and Irving, had a selfish as well as altruistic Interest. All
American authors were trying to sell their wares to pub-
lishers and readers who could get English books with-
out payment of royalty. Each of Dickens's works, as It
appeared, was snapped up and placed on the market for
twenty-five cents or less. ''Barnaby Rudge," during his
tour of this country, was advertised In the Evening Post
as available, complete, In two Issues of the New fVorld,
for a total cost of sixteen and one-fourth cents. The
next week It was Issued under one cover for twenty-five
cents. The novels of Bulwer, Disraeli, and AInsworth
were presented In the same way, as was the poetry of
Hood and Tennyson. Napier's "Peninsular War" was
advertised In the Post In 1844 by J. S. Redfield in nine
volumes at a quarter dollar apiece, and MUman's edition
of Gibbon, with his notes copyright in England, by Har-
pers In fifteen parts at the same price.
In his speech at the Boston dinner "Boz" boldly set
forth the injustice which he believed the lack of an Amer-
ican international copyright law was doing English
writers. Several Boston journals were offended, while
the paper-makers belonging to the ''Home League" in
New York met to express opposition to any new copy-
right legislation. Bryant at once (on Feb. 11) took
Dickens's side in the Evening Post. If the American
laws allowed every foreigner to be robbed of his money
and baggage the moment he landed, he wrote, and closed
the courts to his claims for redress, the nation would be
condemned as a den of thieves. "When we deny a
stranger the same right to the profits of his own writings
as we give to our citizens, we commit this very injustice;
the only difference is that we limit the robbery to one
kind of property."
At the New York dinner Dickens advanced the same
214 THE EVENING POST
subject in a few words. *'I claim that justice be done;
and I prefer the claim as one who has a right to speak
and be heard," the Evening Post quoted him. He break-
fasted with Bryant and Halleck, and was entertained at
the poet's home, where he probably spoke to him in pri-
vate and received assurances of the Post*s support. On
May 9 there appeared a letter from Dickens "To the
Editor of the Evening Post'^ dated April 30 at Niagara
Falls, in which he repeated his appeal. With it he en-
closed a short letter from Carlyle, wherein the Scotch-
man thanked him because "We learn by the newspapers
that you everywhere in America stir up the question of
international copyright, and thereby awaken huge dis-
sonance where else all were triumphant unison for you."
He also enclosed a much longer address "To the Amer-
ican People," signed by Bulwer, Campbell, Tennyson,
Talfourd, Hood, Leigh Hunt, Hallam, Sydney Smith,
Rogers, Forster, and Barry Cornwall. This eminent
group pointed out that the lack of an international copy-
right agreement was a serious injury to American au-
thors, who had to compete on unfair terms with the Brit-
ish; and it argued that the supply of standard English
books in a cheap form would not really be diminished by
such copyright legislation. Books were sold at a high
or low price not because they were copyrighted or un-
copyrighted, but in proportion as they obtained few or
many readers; and the educational system of the United
States guaranteed a large reading public.
Bryant reinforced these letters with an editorial, re-
markable as an expression of confidence in the brilliant
future of American letters. It was a mistake, he main-
tained, to suppose that in the absence of an international
copyright agreement the United States had wholly the
best of the situation:
Within the last year, the number of books written by Ameri-
can authors, which have been successful in Britain, is greater than
that of foreign works which have been successful in this country.
Robertson's work on Palestine, Stephens's Travels in Central
LITERARY ASPECTS— 1830-1855 215
America, Catlin's book on North American Indians, Cooper's
Deerslayer, the last volume of Bancroft's American history, sev-
eral works prepared by Anthon for the schools — here is a list of
American works republished in England within the year for which
we should be puzzled to find an equivalent in works written in
England within the same time, and republished here. Our emi-
nent authors are still engaged in their literary labors. Cooper
within a fortnight past has published a work stamped with all the
vigor of his faculties, Prescott is occupied in writing the History
of Peru, Bancroft is engaged in continuing the annals of his native
country, Sparks is still employed in his valuable historical labors,
and Stephens is pushing his researches in Central America, with
a view of giving their results to the world. We were told, the
other day, of a work prepared for the press by Washington Irving,
which would have appeared ere this but for the difficulties in the
way of securing a copyright for it in England, as well as here.
He drew an Inspiring picture of the effect of the suc-
cess of these authors in raising up aspirants for literary
fame. Irving had just told him, he wrote, "that if Amer-
ican literature continued to make the same progress as it
had done for twenty years past, the day was not very
far distant when the greater number of books designed
for readers of the English language would be produced
in America."
The editor continued his unavailing efforts for a sound
copyright law year after year, decade after decade. He
took pains to do justice to the opposition, recognizing
that it was by no means all mercenary, and that econo-
mists like Matthew Carey advanced arguments worthy
of examination. When Dickens published a letter (July
14, 1842) in the London Morning Chronicle, asserting
that the barrier to the reform in America was the in-
fluence of "the editors and proprietors of newspapers
almost exclusively devoted to the republication of popu-
lar English works," and that they were "for the most
part men of very low attainments, and of more than in-
different reputation," Bryant hastened in the Evening
Post to call this a misrepresentation. He knew many sin-
cere and respectable men who condemned the interna-
tional copyright proposals from the best of motives. But
2i6 THE EVENING POST
the cru§ade was always near his heart. When in 1843 ^
petition for the needed law was presented to Congress
by ninety-seven firms and persons engaged in the book
trade, he supported it, and he did the same when ten
years later five New York publishers addressed Secre-
tary of State Everett in behalf of a copyright treaty with
Great Britain. At this time he believed that the chief
obstacle was the simple Indifference of Congressmen;
that they did not comprehend the question, nor try to
comprehend it, because no party advantage or disad-
vantage was connected with it.
In the thirties and forties book-reviewing, in the strict
sense of the phrase, was almost unknown in the New
York daily press. The chief exceptions to the rule were
furnished by Edgar Allan Poe, who in the middle forties
contributed some genuine criticism to N. P. Willis's
Mirror and other journals, and by Margaret Fuller.
Miss Fuller, writing in the Tribune for more than a year
and a half preceding her visit to Europe In 1846, per-
formed a signal service to American letters by her courage
and acuteness, for her criticism of Longfellow as too
foreign in his themes and of Lowell as too imitative had
a salutary effect upon those poets. But Poe and Mar-
garet Fuller were passing meteors In New York journal-
ism. Until George Ripley and John BIgelow joined the
Tribune and Evening Post respectively in 1849 niere
hasty notices were given most books.
The newspaper most conspicuously in a position to
pronounce upon new volumes was the Evening Post, for
the literary judgment of Bryant and Parke Godwin was
excellent. But Bryant had no ambition to be known as a
critic. Apart from his shrewd but not deeply penetra-
tive discourses upon Irving, Cooper, Verplanck, and Hal-
leck, he wrote only a half-dozen extensive literary essays,
the best known being his really fine "Poets and Poetry
of the English Language," with its insistence upon a
"luminous style." Moreover, so straitened were the
paper's circumstances and so small In consequence was its
staff, that he and Godwin had no time for reading and
LITERARY ASPECTS— 1 830-1 855 217
reviewing. "I see the outside of almost every book that
Is published, but I read little that Is new," runs a letter
of Bryant's to Dana In 1837. Frank avowal was fre-
quently made that a formal review was not within the
Evening Post's powers. The notice of Cooper's "Wyan-
dotte" (1843) opened with the remark that "we have
not had time to read It, but we are Informed by the pref-
ace. . . ." Five years later Bryant wrote of J. T. Head-
ley's "Cromwell" : "We have not time In the midst of
the continual hurry In which those are Involved who
write for a dally newspaper, to examine the work with
any minuteness; this will be done doubtless by professed
critics."
Slight as were the Post's comments upon most bodks,
a particular interest attaches to those upon current vol-
umes of poetry, for Bryant wrote them; his associate,
John Bigelow, has expressed surprise that Parke Godwin,
In his biography, did not collect them. In the "Fable
for Critics," Lowell speaks of Bryant's "Iceolation," and
biographers of both Longfellow and Poe have accused
him of indifference to these younger poets. There is
much evidence, however, as in Bryant's admiring letter
to Longfellow In 1846, that the charge is unfair; and a
study of the Evening Post files Indicates that its editor
carefully followed the work of his juniors in poetry, was
glad to bring It to public notice, and was a good deal
more prone to over-praise than to underrate it. Bryant
was the dean among American poets, the first to gain
fame, and regarded by Griswold, Walt Whitman, and
many others as the best of them; as the Bryant Festival
In 1864 showed, in which Holmes, Lowell, Emerson, and
Whittler participated, they all looked up to him.
Longfellow was the next eldest of the truly great
poets. In the pages of the United States Review in the
twenties some of his earliest poems are found side by
side with Bryant's. In later life he acknowledged to
Bryant how much he owed the latter: "When I look
back upon my early years, I cannot but smile to see how
much in them is really yours. It was an involuntary Imita-
v^
2i8 THE EVENING POST
tion, which I most readily confess." Bryant was Inter-
ested In his career long before he had published a volume
of verse, and took care In the Evening Post to give his
first two books, the prose "Outre Mer" (1835) and
"Hyperion" (1839) ^ue praise. Of the former he said
that it "Is very gracefully written, the style is delightful,
the descriptions are graphic, and the sketches of char-
acter have often an agreeable vein of quiet humor." The
latter was treated a little less warmly. The romance is
"tinged with peculiarities derived from the author's fond-
ness for German literature," Bryant wrote, and its strain
of deeper reflection "now and then passes into the grand
dimness of German speculation." The story was slight,
and had little attraction for those who wished a narrative
of crowded incident. But the verdict as a whole was
favorable: "upon the slender thread of his narrative the
author has hung a tissue of agreeable sketches of the dif-
ferent parts of Germany, supposed to be visited by the
hero, delineations of character, and reflections upon
morals and literature."
The Evening Post's review of Longfellow's first vol-
ume of poems, "Voices of the Night" (1839; signed J.
Q. D.) was short but flattering. It quoted the purest
poetry of the little book:
I heard the trailing garments of the night
Sweep through her marble halls !
and its criticism emphasized the two youthful qualities
which should have been most emphasized, simplicity and
freshness. "These voices of the night breathe a sweet
and gentle music, such as befits the time when the moon
is up, and all the air Is clear, and soft, and still. The
original poems in the volume are characterized by the
truest simplicity of thought and style; the thin veil of
mysticism which is thrown over some of them adds only
grace to the picture, without tantalizing the eye." Long-
fellow's second volume, the "Poems on Slavery" (1842),
came as a shock to a society as yet not inured to anti-
slavery doctrines. The editors of Graham's Magazine
LITERARY ASPECTS— 1830-1855 219
wrote the author that the word "slavery" was never
allowed to appear in a Philadelphia magazine, and that
the publisher objected to have even the title of the book
mentioned in his pages. Till a later date Harper's in
New York similarly objected to mention of the slavery
question. But Bryant quoted "The Slave's Dream" in
full, and said of the sheaf: "They have all the charac-
teristics of Longfellow's later poems, adding to the grace
and harmony of his earlier, a vein of deeper and stronger
feeling, maturer thought, bolder imagery, and a more
suggestive manner."
Thus the successive issues of Longellow's verse were
all hailed with kindly appreciation. When "Ballads and
Other Poems" appeared, Bryant praised (Jan. 10, 1842)
the "grace and melody" with which the author handled
hexameters in a translation from Tegner, and the "noble
and affecting simplicity" of the result, while he pro-
nounced the miscellaneous poems beautiful. "Evan-
geline," four years later, inspired the publication in the
Post of an anonymous burlesque imitation, next the ed-
itorial columns, which it is almost certain is Bryant's.
He wrote such humorous trifles till his latest years, and
he accompanied this with some remarks upon German
hexametric verse, with which he was thoroughly familiar.
Dated "in the ante-temperance period of our history," it
showed old Tom Robinson seated in his elbow chair :
Red was the old man's nose, with frequent potations of cider,
Made still redder by walking that day in the teeth of the north
wind.
Warmth from the blazing fire had heightened the tinge of its
scarlet ;
While at each broad red flash from the hearth it seemed to grow
redder.
"Jemmy, my boy," he said, and turned to a tow-headed urchin,
"Bring your poor uncle a mug of cider up from the cellar."
Straightway rose from the chimney nook the obedient Jemmy . . .
Took from the cupboard shelves a mug of mighty dimensions,
Opened the cellar door, and down the cellarway vanished.
Soon he came back with the mighty vessel brimming and sparkling,
^^
220 THE EVENING POST
Full and fresh, the old man took it and raised it with both hands,
Drained the whole at a draught, and handed it, dripping and
empty,
Back to the boy, and winking hard with both eyes as he did it,
Stretched out his legs to the fire, while his nose grew redder and
redder.
When "The Seaside and the Fireside" was published
In 1850, Bryant gave especial praise to "The Building of
the Ship," in many ways the best poem Longfellow ever
wrote. An unpoetlcal subject; but "the author treats it
with as much grace of imagery as If it were a fairy tale,
and finds in It ample matter suggestive of beautiful trains
of thought." He quoted the fervent closing apostrophe
to the nation threatened by civil war, "Sail on, O Union,
strong and great!"; and by accident, in the adjoining
column, part of the Post's Washington correspondence,
lay a paragraph describing the sensation aroused by the
secessionist manifesto of Cllngman, a fire-eating North
Carolina Congressman. Of "Hiawatha" in 1855 Bry-
ant said:
A long poem, founded on the traditions of the American
aborigines, and their modes of life, is a somewhat hazardous experi-
ment. Longfellow, however, has acquitted himself quite as well
as we had expected. The habits of the Indians are gracefully ideal-
ized in his verses, and we recognize the author of "Evangeline"
in the tenderness of the thoughts, the richness of the imagery,
and the flow of the numbers. ... A love story is interwoven
with the poem, and the narrative of Hiawatha's wooing is beauti-
fully and fancifully related. The canto of The Ghosts is wrought
up with a fine supernatural effect, and the mysterious departure
of Hiawatha, with which the poem closes, after the appearance
of the first rhessenger of the Christian gospel among his country-
men, is well imagined.
Lowell's first two volumes of poems were moderately
commended. "There are fine veins of thought in Lowell's
verse, with frequently a fresh and vigorous expression,"
Bryant remarked of the second (Feb. 12, 1848). For
Emerson there was a more glowing word of praise. He
V is "a brilliant writer, both in prose and verse, though
LITERARY ASPECTS— 1 830-1 855 221
perhaps, as a poet, too reflective, too subjective, the mod-
ern metaphysician would call It, to suit the popular taste,"
Bryant commented in the Post of Jan. 4, 1847, when
Emerson's first collection was Issued. "His little address
In verse to the humble bee Is, however, one of the finest
things of the sort — a better poem, in our estimation, than
Anacreon's famous ode to the cicada." Whittier's verse,
he thought In 1843, writing of "Lays of My Home,"
"grows better and better. With no abatement of poetic
enthusiasm, his style becomes more manly, and his vein
of thought richer and deeper." References to Poe, ante-
rior to the obituary of Oct. 9, 1849, which Bryant did
not write, for he was then abroad, and which called him
a "genius" and "an Industrious, original, and brilliant
writer," are few. The Evening Post had remarked in
1845 that he was at least within a "t" of being a poet,
and had followed his lectures that year at the Society
Library. The Express on April 18 stated that he had
discoursed at length upon the poets, and criticized his
views. At this the Post professed amazement, for its
reporter had distinctly heard Poe postpone the lecture;
had he delivered it exclusively to the Express?
It Is pleasant to record that Nathaniel Hawthorne's
genius was recognized and forcibly described. Not al-
ways promptly, but always emphatically, the Evening Post
recommended "The Scarlet Letter," "TwIce^Told Tales,"
"The House of Seven Gables," and other books to its
readers. It expressed the hope in 185 1 that the success
of the first-named "will awaken him to the consciousness
of what he seems to have been writing in ignorance of,
that the public is an important party, not only to the
author's fame, but to his usefulness." It thought that
much as he had accomplished, he had not yet done justice
to his powers. Two years later it congratulated him
upon the leisure that his appointment as consul at Liver-
pool should afford, and recalling that he was just at the
age when Walter Scott first appeared as a novelist, said
that it saw no reason why the latter half of Hawthorne's
life might not be equally brilliant. Unfortunately, the
V^
222 THE EVENING POST
romancer had but eleven more years to live. To quote
three short comments upon books by other great prose
authors, one of which appeared in 1842, another in 1849,
and the third in 1850, will show the general character of
such notices, and illustrate how little criticism was given :
THE DEERSLAYER, or THE FIRST WAR PATH,
Cooper's last novel, is one of his finest productions. In the wild
forest where the scene is laid, and in the wild life of the New
York hunters of the last century and their savage neighbors, his
genius finds the aliment of its finest strength. The work is, as
he observes, the first act in the life of Leatherstocking, though
written last, and it exhibits this singular being, one of the most
strongly marked and most interesting creatures of fiction, in his
early youth, fresh from his education among the Delawares, and
now for the first time employing in war the weapon which had
gained him a reputation as a hunter. The narrative is one of
intense interest from beginning to close, and the characters of
the various personages with whom the hero of the story is associ-
ated, are drawn with perhaps more skill, and a deeper knowledge
of human nature, than in most of the author's previous novels.
THE CALIFORNIA AND OREGON TRAIL, by Francis
Parkman, is a pleasant book relating adventures and wanderings
in the western wilderness, and describing the life of the western
hunters and the Indian tribes. It will give those who are about
to make the journey across the Rocky Mountains a good idea of
the country lying between us and the regions on the Pacific Coast,
and of the savage people who roam over it.
EMERSON'S REPRESENTATIVE MEN.— We have re-
ceived from J. Wiley, of this city, Emerson's Seven Lectures on
Representative Men, just published by Phillips, Sampson, and
Company, of Boston. The work is strongly marked by the char-
acteristics of the author — brilliant coruscations of thought, instead
of a quiet, steady blaze — an avoidance of everything like a coher-
ent system of opinions — a large range of comparison and illustra-
tion, with an occasional haziness of metaphysical conception, in
which the reader is apt to lose his way. These lectures are occu-
pied with the delineation of the characters of half a dozen of the
greatest men that ever lived, each of whom Mr. Emerson makes
the representative and exponent of a certain class. One of these
LITERARY ASPECTS— 1 830-1 855 223
great men is Plato, on whose intellectual character the author
expatiates like one who is truly in love with his subject.
It was deemed Incumbent upon the Evening Post to
print at least this much concerning every noteworthy
American book, but It recognized no duty as regarded
English works. Sometimes a volume, like Carlyle's
"Chartism," would receive a column and a half, while
sometimes Important productions would get never a
word. The Evening Post's criticism of Dickens's "Amer-
ican Notes" Is given by Parke Godwin In his life of
Bryant — a criticism praising some of the novelist's fault-
finding and taking exception chiefly to his remarks on
American newspapers. "Martin Chuzzlewit" was re-
viewed In 1843, ^^^ the American scenes were pronounced
a failure for two reasons. "In the first place, the author
knows very little about us, and In the second place, the
desire of being vehemently satirical seems to unfit him
for what he wishes to do, and takes from him his wonted
humor and Invention." But no later work by Dickens,
up to the Civil War, seems to have been noticed.
Yet with all Its shortcomings, the Evening Post main-
tained a literary tone. In part this arose from the pure
English and the alluslveness of Bryant's editorial style;
In part from the unusual attention paid to magazines and
book news ; and In part from the fact that literary people
were attracted to It because Bryant was its editor. When
G. P. R. James and Martin Tupper visited America, they
published original verse In It. Miss Catharine Sedgwick,
the novelist, sent it travel sketches in 1841 and later.
During the years 1834-41 Cooper published many letters
in the Evening Post upon his various libel suits and other
personal matters, and at one time had Bryant's journal
actively enlisted on his side. "Cooper, you know," Bry-
ant explained to Dana In a letter of Nov. 26, 1838, "has
published another novel, entitled "Home as Found,"
rather satirical I believe on American manners. A notice
of it appeared in the Courier newspaper of this city, a
very malignant notice Indeed, containing some stories
about Cooper's private conversations. Cooper arrived
224 THE EVENING POST
in town about the time the article was published, and an-
swered it by a short letter to the Evening Post, in which
he gave notice that he should prosecute the publishers of
the paper. It is a favorite doctrine with him just now
that the newspapers tell more lies than truths, and he
has undertaken to reform the practice, so far as what
they say respects him personally." Webb's attack was
said to have been occasioned by Cooper's having cut his
acquaintance. The Evening Post denounced it as pro-
ceeding from personal pique, "grossly malignant," and
"swaggering and silly" ; and in the spring of 1841 Cooper
sent the Post reams of controversial material.
Walt Whitman earned Bryant's grateful notice by his
journalistic activities in Brooklyn in behalf of the "Barn-
burner" Democracy, and was praised for his tales in the
Democratic Review, one of which the Evening Post re-
printed (1842). During 1851 he contributed five arti-
cles. The first, called "Something About Art and Brook-
lyn Artists," eulogized the paintings of several obscure
men, and the second, "A Letter From Brooklyn," told of
the changes across the East River — how Bergen Hill
was nearly leveled, a huge tract had been reclaimed from
the sea near the Atlantic Dock, and Fifth Avenue was
still unpaved and neglected. Whitman went down to the
eastern end of Long Island that summer, for, as he wrote
the Post, "I . . . like it far better than I could ever like
Saratoga or Newport." In two June letters from
Paumanok he described the joy of bathing in the clear,
cold water, derided the stiff ceremoniousness of city
boarders, gave some good advice to boarding-house
keepers, and depicted two old natives of Marion and
Rocky Point, "Uncle Dan'l" and "Aunt Rebby." Upon
his return he sent a rather rhapsodic description of the
opera at Castle Garden, with Bettini singing. It does
not appear that Bryant had any personal interest in
Whitman, and it was unfortunate that no effort was made
to extend his brief connection.
Something should be said about the Evening Post's
miscellaneous columns, a wallet into which was thrown
LITERARY ASPECTS— 1 830-1 855 225
a wide assortment of reprinted selections. Now it was
a chapter of Lord Londonderry's Travels; now Ellery
Channing's reminiscences of his father; now an article
from Fraser^s on old French poetry; now a chapter from
Cooper's "Wing and Wing"; now Tennyson's ''Godiva,"
Longfellow's "Spanish Student," or Spence's anecdotes
of Pope. Much might be said also of its reports of liter-
ary lectures, the course by Emerson upon "The Times" in
the spring of 1842 and Holmes's course upon modern
poetry in the fall of 1853 being especially well covered.
Emerson was an earnest but not popular speaker, and
the writer for the Post, either Bryant or Parke Godwin,
was at first cold to him. But within a few days he was
remarking that the addresses grew upon one's admira-
tion. "Emerson convinces you that he is a man accus-
tomed to profound and original thought, and not dis-
posed, as at the outset you are inclined to suspect, to
play with and baffle the intellects of his readers. He is
eminently sincere and direct, strongly convinced of his
own views, and anxious to present them in an earnest and
striking manner." Parke Godwin himself early in the
fifties became a lyceum star, along with Holmes, Curtis,
Greeley, Horace Mann, Orvllle Dewey, and others.
As for drama, the most important appearances oc-
curred, and the most important criticism was written,
while Leggett was one of the editors. Leggett, as Abram
C. Dayton tells us in "Last Days of Knickerbocker Life,"
was regarded as the especial champion of Edwin For-
rest, who had made his debut in 1826, and who was a
warm favorite with the "Bowery Boys" and all other
lovers of florid, stentorian acting. Certainly Leggett
praised him highly and constantly in the Evening Post.
In 1834 a gold medal was presented Forrest by a com-
mittee including Bryant and Leggett, who recalled in the
newspaper how he had come to the city quite unknown,
and had given the first electrifying demonstration of his
powers when he consented, as an act of kindness to a
poor actor, to appear at a benefit as Othello.
When on Sept. 18, 1832, Charles Kemble made his
226 THE EVENING POST
first American appearance as Hamlet, he was honored
with the longest dramatic criticism in the journal's his-
tory, almost three and a half columns. His towering,
manly form, his Roman face, and his histrionic ability
impressed Leggett, who thought that while he did not
have the flashes of dazzling brilliance that Kean had, his
grace, ease, and elegance almost atoned for the lack, and
would have a good effect upon American acting. Fanny
Kemble made her bow the following night, and was at
once hailed as displaying "an intensity and truth never,
we believe, yet exhibited by an actress in America, cer-
tainly never by one so young." Later, after seeing the
two in more performances, Leggett concluded that they
were admirable in comedy, but uneven in tragedy.
Bryant's interest in the theater was mainly a literary
interest, yet he seems to have been the writer of a series
of editorials in 1847, arguing for an American theater.
He spoke of the new Broadway Theater, and the sailing
of the manager to England to engage talent. Why sup-
ply the new stage from abroad? protested the Evening
Post. *'Is it to be merely a house of call for such foreign
artists as may find it agreeable or profitable to visit us, at
such times as they may chance to select? Or is it to be
an American establishment of the highest class, with a
well-selected and thoroughly trained company perma-
nently employed, varied by star engagements as a bril-
liant relief to the sober background, and enlivened, from
time to time, by ability from abroad? Does it, in a word,
propose to go on the old beaten track so often condemned,
or to draw a line for a new period ... ?" Bryant had
no use for provincialism in any form.
But when the sentiment of Forrest's supporters for an
"American" theater led them in May, 1849, while their
hero was playing at the Broadway House, to attack the
English tragedian Macready at the Astor Place Opera
House in a bloody riot, the Evening Post had to condemn
their conduct. Its liking for Forrest himself was much
cooled a year after, when, following his separation from
his wife, he attacked the author N. P. Willis with a whip
LITERARY ASPECTS— 1 830-1 855 227
on Washington Square. Two days later Forrest met
Bryant and Parke Godwin walking down Broadway, and
furiously demanded who had written the Evening Post's
report of the assault, in which Forrest was said to have
struck Willis from behind. Godwin, who thoroughly
sympathized with Mrs. Forrest in her quarrel with her
husband, replied that he was the author. The actor then
turned upon him ferociously, said that the report was a
d — d lie from beginning to end, that he would hold God-
win responsible for several things, and that he had told
Godwin that he meant to cane Willis. *'I repHed," God-
win later testified, ''that these were not just the terms
that he used, and that he told me formerly that he meant
to cut his damned heart out; to which Mr. Forrest mut-
tered something in reply. . . ." So much for the man-
ners of the fifties.
CHAPTER TEN
JOHN BIGELOW AS AN EDITOR OF THE ''EVENING POST"
In the closing days of 1848 John BIgelow, who like
Bryant lived to be called "The First Citizen of the Re-
public," became one of the proprietors and editors of the
Evening Post. His official connection with it lasted eleven
years, when he graduated from it into that diplomatic
field in which he won his chief fame; but his real con-
nection might be said to have been lifelong. Bigelow's
protracted career was one of great variety and interest.
He lived in the lifetime of George III, Napoleon, and
every President except Washington, dying in 191 1. His
first prominence was given him by the Evening Post, and
.thereafter he was always a landmark in New York life.
John Jay Chapman wrote inyi9io that he "stands as a
monument of old-fashioned sterling culture and accom-
plishment — a sort of beacon to the present age of igno-
rance and pretence, and to *a land where all things are
forgotten.' " His wide culture is attested by the variety
of his books — a biography of Franklin and a work on
Gladstone in the Civil War; a treatise on MoHnos the
quietlst, and another on sleep; a history of "France and
the Confederate Navy" and a biography of Tilden. It
has fallen to few of our ministers to France to be so
useful as he. He was prominent in almost every great
civic undertaking in New York during the last half cen-
tury of his life. Withal, his fine presence, simple dig-
nity, and courtesy made him a model American gentle-
man.
It was with good reason that Bryant requested him to
become an associate. His views were just those of the
Evening Post. He was an old-school Democrat, but a
devoted free-soiler. He was such a confirmed hater of
protection that in later years he called it "a dogma in a
228
JOHN BIGELOW AS AN EDITOR 229
republic fit only for a highwayman, a fool, or a drunk-
ard," and that he wanted absolute free trade, not merely
"revision downward." He liked the pen; from his first ,
admission to the bar, he tells us, there was never a time
when he had not material before him for the study of
some subject on which he Intended to write. In 1841, at
the age of twenty-three, he contributed an article to the
New York Review upon Roman lawyers, and followed it
with essays In the Democratic Review. His taste for the
society of Intellectual men early showed Itself, and like
Lord Clarendon, "he was never so content with himself
as when he found himself the meanest man In the com-
pany." He finished his law studies In the office of Theo-
dore Sedgwick, Jr., where he first met Bryant; he became
intimate with Professor Da Ponte, another of Bryant's
friends, and he saw much of Fitzgreene Halleck.
Bigelow had been born in Bristol, later Maiden, N. Y.,
in 1 8 17, where his father had a farm, a country store,
and several sloops plying on the Hudson. His was a
good Presbyterian family, of Connecticut stock, pros-
perous enough to send Bigelow first to an academy at
Troy, and then successively to Washington College (later
Trinity) In Hartford, and to Union College. While
studying law In New York, he had the good fortune to
join a club of estimable young men (1838) called The
Column, many of whose members later became founders
of the Century Association; to this body Wm. M.
Evarts was admitted In 1840, and Parke Godwin in 1841.
Another influential friend whom Bigelow made in 1837-8
was Samuel J. Tilden, then a young lawyer living with
an aunt on Fifth Avenue. Tilden often wearied Bigelow
by his talk on practical politics and other subjects In
which the latter had no interest, but their relations soon
ripened into a cordial friendship. In 1844 these two,
with a veteran journalist named John L. O'Sullivan, con-
ducted for a time a low-priced Democratic campaign
sheet for the purpose of helping elect Silas Wright as
Governor. Probably as a reward for this service. Gov.
Wright appointed Bigelow one of the ^\t inspectors of
230 THE EVENING POST
Sing Sing Prison, at which it had become necessary to
check notorious abuses; and when Bigelow and his asso-
ciates stopped the use of bludgeons they were accused of
^'coddling" the prisoners as all later reformers have been.
During 1845 young Bigelow wrote many editorials for
the Evening Post advocating the calling of a State Con-
stitutional Convention, and asking for changes in the
judiciary which that body actually made. In the spring
of 1847 Bryant, wishing to train some one to succeed
him, asked the young man to enter the office, but did not
make an acceptable offer. A year and a half later he
renewed the proposal through Tilden, saying that he
would give a liberal compensation, and that when one of
the partners, William G. Boggs, who had charge of the
publishing, retired, he might come into the firm. Bige-
low was pleased. "But," he told Tilden, "I might as
well say to you here at once that I should not think it
worth while to consider for a moment any proposition
to enter the Evening Post office on a salary. Unless they
want me in the firm, they don't want me enough to with-
draw me from my profession." This was a wise refusal
to give up his independence. The result was that after
negotiations of several weeks, Boggs was induced to
retire at once. Bigelow purchased three and one-tenth
shares of the Evening Post (there were ten in all) and
two shares of the job office, for $15,000, taking posses-
sion as of the date Nov. 16, 1848; later, at a cost of
$2,100, he increased his holdings to a full third. He had
very little money saved, and none which he could spare,
but he persuaded the large-hearted lawyer, Charles
O'Conor, to endorse his note for $2,500, while he be-
came indebted to Wm. C. Bryant & Co. for the rest.
Like Bryant, Bigelow was glad to escape from law into
journalism. "I have never for one instant looked back
upon my former employment," his unpublished journal
runs, "but with regret for the time lost in it. I do not
mean that all my time was lost; on the contrary, I am
satisfied that my discipline at the bar gives me important
advantages over most of my associates in the editorial
JOHN BIGELOW AS AN EDITOR 231
calling. But I was not progressing mentally for the last
two years of my practice, though I did in professional
position." Financially, the exchange was a fortunate one.
At once BIgelow showed marked journalistic aptitude.
He brought a lightness of touch to his writing that was
as valuable as his cultivation and good judgment. One
early evidence of this was a weekly series of interviews
with a "Jersey ferryman," purporting to be snatches of
political gossip which this illiterate but shrewd fellow
picked up from Congressmen, Governors, and other pub-
lic men whom he carried over the river. It enabled BIge-
low to give readers the benefit of Inside Information ob-
tained from Tllden, O'Conor, John Van Buren, Charles
Sumner (a constant correspondent of Bigelow's), and the
free-soil leaders generally. His enterprise was equally
marked. In 1850, nettled by the assertion of slavery
men that since the British Emancipation Act the Island
of Jamaica had relapsed into barbarism, he spent three
weeks there making observations, and wrote an admirable
series of letters to the Evening Post. This refutation of
the slavery arguments attracted attention In England.
Early In 1854, when it was necessary to give shape to the
Inchoate elements of the Republican party by finding a
candidate, he wrote a campaign biography of Fremont
in installments for the Evening Post, the first chapter of
which Jessie Benton Fremont contributed. During the
winter of 1852-4 he was In Haiti, studying the capacity
of the negro for self-government, and again sending the
Evening Post valuable correspondence. His book upon
Jamaica was for some time considered the best In print,
and his life of Fremont sold about 40,000 copies.
Early In 1851 BIgelow began publishing a series of
random papers called "Nuces LIterarlae," signed "Friar
Lubin," In which he commenced one of the most famous
historical controversies of the time — the controversy
with Jared Sparks over the latter's methods of editing.
President Sparks of Harvard had issued In 1834-7 (re-
dated 1842) his twelve-volume "Life and Writings of
George Washington," the fruit of years of research at
232 THE EVENING POST
home and abroad. In the fifth of the "Nuces LIterariae''
(Feb. 12), BIgelow remarked that he had been greatly
surprised while comparing some original letters by
George Washington with the copies given by Sparks. He
had heard, he said, that Hallam — Hallam had chatted
with Bryant In England In 1845 — had commented upon
the discrepancy between Jared Spark's version of the
letters, and other versions. To test the alleged Inac-
curacies, BIgelow had produced the recently pubHshed
correspondence of Joseph Reed, at one time Washing-
ton's secretary, and long his Intimate friend. Comparing
the letters in Sparks's set with the same letters in the two
volumes by Reed's grandson, "to my utter surprise I
found every one had been altered, in what seemed to me
important particulars. I found that he had not only
attempted to correct the probable oversights and blun-
ders of General Washington, but he had undertaken to
Improve his style and chasten his language; nay, he had
In some Instances gone so far as to change his meaning,
and to make him the author of sentiments precisely the
opposite of what he Intended to write."
BIgelow proceeded, in this paper and a longer one a
few days later, to state his charges in detail, alleging
scores of discrepancies. It was the sort of task he liked.
Later, while Minister to France, he came Into possession
of the MS. of Franklin's autobiography, and by careful
examination found that more than 1,200 changes had
been made In the text of the book, as published by Frank-
lin's grandson, and that the last eight pages, equal in
value to any eight preceding, had been wholly omitted.
He published the first authentic edition of the classic, and
he later brought out an edition of Franklin's complete
writings which superseded Sparks's earlier collection.
Now he alleged that when Washington had written that
a certain sum "will be but a fleabite to our demands,"
Sparks had dressed this up into "totally Inadequate."
Washington, he said, had referred to the "dirty, mer-
cenary spirit" of the Connecticut troops, and to "our
rascally privateersmen," and Sparks had left out "dirty"
JOHN BIGELOW AS AN EDITOR 233
and ''rascally." Washington put down, "he has wrote
... to see," and Sparks had made It, "He has written
... to ascertain." Washington referred to "Old Put,"
and Sparks translated this into "Gen. Putnam." "The
Ministry durst not have gone on," declared Washington,
and this appeared, "would not have dared to go on."
When the commander wrote that he had "everything but
the thing ready," Sparks left out "but the thing," by which
Washington had meant powder.
President Sparks was ill, but the Cambridge Chronicle
answered for him. Would not Washington have cor-
rected his correspondence for the press, it asked, if he
had known it was to be published? Bigelow answered
that this was no reason why Sparks should interpose
between the great man and admiring later generations.
Washington did not send his letters to the press, but to
friends and subordinates, and it was necessary to an ac-
curate estimate of the man that we learn his faults of
grammar and temper. "It is a great comfort for un-
pretending and humble men like the most of us, to know
that the world's heroes are not so perfect in all their
proportions as to defy imitation, and discourage the
aspirations of the less mature or less fortunate."
The eminent president of Harvard maintained his
silence, though the Evening Post recurred to the subject.
In June, for example, it mentioned approvingly a project
for a new edition of Washington's writings, asserting that
"The authority of Sparks as an editor and historian may
be considered as entirely destroyed by the criticism" of
Bigelow. Early in 1852 it reviewed the sixth volume of
Lord Mahon's History of England, the author of which
censured Sparks severely upon the ground that "he has
printed no part of the correspondence precisely as Wash-
ington wrote it; but has greatly altered and, as he thinks,
corrected and embellished It." At last, faced by Lord
Mahon as well as Bigelow, President Sparks replied.
On April 2, 3, and 6, 1852, three long letters by him,
later issued in pamphlet form, were published in the Eve-
ning Post, explaining the exact principles on which he had
234 THE EVENING POST
worked as an editor. "I deny," he said, "that any part
of this charge is true In any sense, which can authorize
the censures bestowed by these writers, or raise a sus-
picion of the editor's fidelity and fairness."
It was an effective, though not a complete, answer that
he made. He was able to show that at least one flagrant
error in reprinting a letter was not his, but that of Reed's
grandson. He showed that many of the alleged garblings
were not real, but arose from the fact that Washington's
original letters as sent out, and the copies which his sec-
retaries transcribed Into his letter-books, differed. Wash-
ington himself had revised the manuscript of his corre-
spondence during the French war, making numerous
erasures, interlineations, and corrections; and which
could now be called the genuine text? As Sparks ex-
plained, the omissions over which Bigelow had grumbled
were unavoidable because of the necessity of compressing
material for thirty or forty volumes Into twelve. But he
did admit taking certain editorial liberties which would
now be thought improper. "It would certainly be
strange," he wrote, "if an editor should undertake to
prepare for the press a collection of manuscript letters,
many of them hastily written, without a thought that they
would ever be published, and should not at the same time
regard it as a solemn duty to correct obvious slips of the
pen, occasional inaccuracies of expression, and manifest
faults of grammar. . . ."
The Evening Post was anxious to do President Sparks
justice. It admitted his industry and conscientious devo-
tion, shown in the labor he had spent at the thirteen cap-
itals of the original States, wherever else he could find
Revolutionary papers, and in the public oflices of London
and Paris. It recognized that the demand for absolutely
literal transcriptions was a new one in the field of schol-
arship. But to this demand the controversy gave a de-
cided impetus.
Bigelow scored another success when he obtained for
the Post most of Thomas Hart Benton's "Thirty Years'
View" in advance of its issue in book form. No more
JOHN BIGELOW AS AN EDITOR 235
effective feature in the middle fifties could have been
imagined. Benton had been the choice of many for the
Presidency in 1852; his great contemporaries in Con-
gress, Calhoun, Clay, and Webster, were now dead, and
men were eager to learn secret details of the disputes
and intrigues in which they had been concerned; his pe-
culiar uprightness, his energy, and his long public expe-
rience had given him a commanding influence. He sent
the chapters of his book in advance to the Evening Post
because he, like It, had been a devoted Jacksonlan, a low-
tariff man, and a hater of the Bank, and was now at one
with it in its free-soil views. From BIgelow's private
papers we learn that the original arrangement (July,
1853) was that he should supply an Installment weekly,
and be paid $10 a column. So wide was the interest In
the work that Appleton's first edition of the first volume,
in 1854, was 30,000 copies. It aroused much pungent
editorial comment, of which a single Instance will suflice.
An Installment of the second volume which the Evening
Post published in June, 1855, asserted that Calhoun was
favorable to the Missouri Compromise when It passed,
and that for the first twenty years following he found no
constitutional defects In It. The Richmond Enquirer
denied this, entitling the recollections "Historic Calum-
nies," and declaring:
Instead of devoting the few remaining years of an ill-spent life
to the penitential offices of truth and charity, Col. Benton expends
his almost inexhaustible energies in a paroxysm of fiendish passion ;
and when he should be imploring mercy for his manifold sins, in
rearing upon the grave of a political opponent a monument to his
own undying hate and reckless mendacity.
But the Evening Post, with the aid, among others, of
former Secretary of State John M. Clayton, had no diffi-
culty in proving Benton right.
These were years In which the business management of
the newspaper began to feel markedly the hostility of the
South. Its utterances against slavery were so biting and
persistent that no one below Mason's and Dixon's line
236 THE EVENING POST
would advertise In it, and many Southern buyers boy--
cotted New York merchants who patronized it. "Thou-
sands of little merchants and traders In New York City,"
as Bigelow later said, "jealous of the rivalry of the other
more prosperous houses advertising with us, were In the
habit of reporting them In the South, and In that way
our advertising columns were made very barren." New
Englanders of la^rge resources were equally offended by
the paper's low-tariff views. Bigelow's business acumen,
reinforcing Bryant's, was very much needed.
Among his first acts was the reorganization of the job
printing office. The Income from this branch of the
establishment, the first half year of BIgelow's assistant-
editorship, was but $1,812.52, and for the last half year
of i860 It was $7,295. This revolution was wrought by
increasing the equipment, hiring a new foreman, and
opening up new sources of business. When Bigelow be-
came a partner the higher courts had adopted the rule
that all cases reaching them on appeal should be printed.
He had an extensive acquaintance among judges and law-
yers, whom he gave to understand that the Evening Post
would do legal printing more satisfactorily than most job
offices, and that It would always have the work done on
time. Very shortly it was In command of virtually all
the legal printing, and a great deal of other business
came with the current. So competent was the supervision
exercised by the foreman and bookkeeper that neither
Bryant nor Bigelow, after the start was made, spent a
total of three days' time in this office, which was earning
them $10,000 a year or more.
An equally important change was the removal In 1850
from the cramped quarters on Pine Street to a larger
building on the northwest corner of Nassau and Liberty
Streets. The old property had afforded room for only a
hand press, which was operated by a powerful negro.
Since the daily circulation in 1848 was but about 2,000
copies, the black could turn off the edition without ex-
haustion. In the new home it was able to have a large
power press. At first an effort was made to operate it
JOHN BIGELOW AS AN EDITOR 237
with one of the ''caloric" engines which Ericsson had in-
vented in 1835 and more recently perfected, but this was
found inadequate, and one of Hoe's new "lightning" en-
gines was installed. Inasmuch as the circulation steadily
rose, as the size of the newspaper was increased, and as
the weekly, following in the footsteps of Greeley's
Weekly Tribune, became an important property, the im-
proved press facilities were an absolute necessity.
But Bigelow's chief service to the counting room lay
in his insistence upon an absolute change of business man-
agement. When the new building was purchased, the
man who had succeeded Boggs as publisher, a practical
printer of no education named Timothy A. Howe, was
entrusted with refitting it, and his incompetence soon be-
came plain. A belief that his general business capacity
was small had been growing upon Bigelow, and he finally
resolved that the existing state of affairs must end:
I sent word to Mr. Howe [Bigelow said late in life in an inter-
view with Mr. Oswald Garrison Villard] that I wished he would
meet me in Mr. Bryant's office at such an hour the following
day, and when we met there, I said to them both that the business
below stairs was not conducted to my satisfaction; that I did not
see any prospect of its amendment under existing arrangements,
and I felt that we needed another man in that department. That,
if I remained in the concern, there must be another one in that
department; that I did not wish to crowd Mr. Howe out, but I
did not propose to stay in with him conducting the business, and
that I was ready to name the figures at which I would either buy
his share or sell my own if he was ready to do the same, but that
it was the only condition upon which I could stay in. Well, Mr.
Bryant did not look up at all — he hung his head. Howe was as
pale as a sheet, and he stammered a little and looked at Mr.
Bryant to see whether there was any comfort there, but he did
not find any. After a few remarks in which I repeated my
story. . . . Howe said, "Very well, I see that Mr. Bryant is with
you in the matter, and I will go. . . . "
The result was that Isaac Henderson, who had come
to the Evening Post in May, 1839, as a clerk at $7 a
week, was placed in charge of the business side of the
238 THE EVENING POST
paper; and In May, 1854, he bought one-third of it, of
the building, and of the job office. He paid $17,083.33,
agreeing further to give Howe six per cent, of the semi-
annual dividends for the next five years. Whatever Hen-
derson's faults, lack of shrewdness and industry was not
among them. He pushed the circulation higher and
higher, and was so capable in attracting advertisers that
even during the panic of 1857 the columns were crowded.
In June, 1858, the combined circulation of daily, weekly,
and semi-weekly was 12,334 copies and was rapidly grow-
ing. "I never before knew what it was to have more
money than I wanted to spend," Bigelow wrote his chief,
who was then abroad. Cooper & Hewitt had stopped
their advertising in consequence of articles about the
shaky credit of the Atlantic Telegraph and the Illinois
Central Railroad, in which this firm had large sums in-
vested, but the Post could afford to laugh at that. The
dividends for the year 1848 for the first time surpassed
$45,000, and this golden prosperity was rapidly enhanced
in 1859. y
"A single circumstance will perhaps enable you to form
as good an idea of how we stand as a sheet full of statis-
tics," Bryant wrote Bigelow on April 11, 1859. "Mr.
Henderson puts on a severe look in which satisfaction is
mingled with resignation, and says quietly, 'The Evening
Post is prosperous — very prosperous.' "
Indeed, Bigelow's investment of 1848-9 proved the
cornerstone of a snug fortune. In i860, a campaign year
in which the circulation boomed again, the net income
was no less than $68,774.23. That is, his share of the
profits — he now owned a full third — was very de-
cidedly more than the $17,100 which his part of the
newspaper had cost him. Immediately after the election
he offered Parke Godwin, who was seeking a place in the
customs service, his interest in the newspaper for a price,
as finally agreed upon, of $111,460 — a bargain; and
since he was willing to take a small cash payment, God-
win eagerly accepted. Bigelow later gave three reasons
for his sudden decision to leave the Evening Post. By
JOHN BIGELOW AS AN EDITOR 239
the election of Lincoln the great free-soil cause seemed to
have triumphed, and he felt that there was no public
movement urgently needing his pen; he wanted leisure
for deliberate literary work; and he believed that from a
dozen years of journalism he had received all the intel-
lectual nourishment it could give him. "In the twelve
years that I had spent on the paper," he wrote, "I had
managed to pay out of its earnings what it had cost me;
I had lived very comfortably; I had purchased a country
place of considerable value; I had had two trips to the
West Indies, to which I devoted five or six months, and a
tour in Europe with all my family, of nineteen months;
and was able to retire with a property which could not
be fairly valued at less than $175,000."
But before Bigelow severed his connection with the
Evening Post he attempted one highly interesting service;
he tried, with temporary success, to obtain the French
critic Sainte-Beuve as a literary correspondent. He was
in Europe from the last days of 1858 until the late spring
of i860. In his unpublished journal for Jan. 24, i860,
when he was staying in Paris, he records that he went at
one o'clock to see Sainte-Beuve "and to conclude an agree-
ment partially negotiated" on behalf of the newspaper.
The great Frenchman, fifty-six years old, was at the
height of his fame, having just been made commander
of the Legion of Honor. If the rate of pay he was
willing to consider from the Evening Post seems small,
we must remember that he was busy with his "Causeries
du Lundi" for the Moniteur, and that he probably
thought he could re-use this material for the American
journal. Bigelow ofiered him 125 francs, or about $25,
for each letter, stipulating that Sainte-Beuve should pay
the translator, who, Bigelow thought, ought to accept $5.
Sainte-Beuve had already written and mailed his first
letter, and he made no immediate demur to these terms.
Next day, however, he wrote that his inquiries had con-
vinced him that no good translator would do the work
for less than $10, and that he could not go on. Bigelow
at once increased his offer to $30 a letter, of which $20
240 THE EVENING POST
was to go to Salnte-Beuve, but the critic persisted in his
refusal. The compensation, he said, was adequate, but
he was too old for such a burden as this would impose.
Sainte-Beuve's letter, filling two and a half columns
with its 5,500 words, had meanwhile appeared in the
Evening Post, under the heading "Literary Matters in
France.*' The greater part was devoted to a beautifully
written and fine critical disquisition upon the recently
published correspondence of Beranger, but prefixed to
this were several paragraphs of general comment.
"French literature for some years past has produced
nothing very new or brilliant," he wrote, "especially in
the department of poetry. . . . But in the department
of history, political and literary, and in that of erudition,
good books and meritorious monographs have been writ-
ten." Political events since 1848, he explained, had
thrown many men into a retirement favorable to literary
pursuits — Villemain, Guizot, Remusat, and Victor
Cousin. In closing he alluded to the loss the Institut de
France had suffered in Macaulay, and added: "The
death of the illustrious Prescott had already deprived the
same learned body of a corresponding member. It is
thought that America will also provide the member to be
named as Prescott's successor {primo avulso non deficit
alter), and we are informed that some influential mem-
bers of that academy have thought of Mr. Motley, whose
admirable historical work has been recently introduced
here by M. Guizot."
The article was not signed, and was not appreciated
by a public which cared nothing about Beranger. Bryant
grasped this general indifference. He wrote Bigelow
that the letter was too long, and that Americans were not
sufficiently familiar with French authors to have that
craving for anecdotes of their lives, conversation, and
correspondence which they had in the case of the dis-
tinguished names of English literature. He always dis-
trusted an article his wife would not read, he said, and
she would not read this. Probably short letters of not
more than 2,000 words, sent not oftener than monthly,
JOHN BIGELOW AS AN EDITOR 241
and dealing with topics of wide Interest, would —
especially If signed by Salnte-Beuve — have been highly
successful; it was unfortunate that BIgelow, when Sainte-
Beuve Indicated his reluctance to accept the heavy burden
of long essays, did not suggest this solution. But the
Civil War was at hand, and the columns of the paper
were soon crowded to bursting.
BIgelow was appointed consul at Paris by President
Lincoln soon after leaving the Evening Post, and in 1864
became Minister to France. From Paris during the war
he wrote assiduously to Bryant, and was able to supply
much information of editorial value regarding the French
and British attitude toward the North. After returning
to the United States, until Bryant's death, he not infre-
quently contributed to the editorial page, and twice re-
fused an active connection with it. In 1880 he wrote
Parke Godwin, then editor, making inquiries regarding
the purchase of a share in the paper, with a view to
becoming its head, but did not push them. His loss at a
time of national crisis was keenly felt by the Evening
Post, but his place was ably supplied by Parke Godwin
and a newcomer, Charles Nordhoff.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
HEATED POLITICS BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR
The history of the Evening Post for the decade fol-
lowing the Compromise of 1850 is summarized in the
names of its greater political correspondents. Thomas
Hart Benton, besides contributing much of his "Thirty
Years' View," sent Bryant occasional memoranda for
editorial use. Gideon Welles began contributing in 1848,
when he was a bureau chief in the Navy Department,
and Salmon P. Chase sent occasional unsigned contribu-
tions, and more frequent comments or suggestions. Both
Benton and Welles had been as ardent Jacksonian Demo-
crats as Bryant, and both were free-soilers; while Welles
and Chase became founders, of the Republican Party in
Connecticut and Ohio respectively. The Evening Post,
in other words, remained Democratic till early in Pierce's
administration it found that Democracy was simply
dancing to the pipings of the slavery nabobs, when it gave
all its support to the rising Republican movement. It is
evidence of its zeal in the new cause that Sumner, more
an abolitionist than a free-soiler, became an ardent ad-
mirer of the paper. He wrote Bigelow expressing his
"sincere delight" in it, saying that its political arguments
"fascinate as well as convince." It was upon his recom-
mendation that William S. Thayer, a brilliant young
Harvard man, was employed, and became in the years
1856-60 the Washington correspondent whom the anti-
slavery statesmen liked and trusted most.
In the sultry, ominous decade before the Civil War
storm, there is a long list of events upon which the opin-
ions of any great journal are of interest. What did the
Evening Post think in 1850 of Webster's Seventh of
March speech? How in 1852 did it regard the dismal
contest between Pierce and Winfield Scott? What esti-
242
HEATED POLITICS— 1 850-1 860 243
mate did it place upon "Uncle Tom's Cabin"? What
in 1856 did it say of Brooks's assault upon Sumner, and
of the fierce Buchanan-Fremont contest; and what the
next year of the Dred Scott decision? How did Bryant
express himself upon the crimes and martyrdom of "Os-
awatomie" Brown? Readers of an old file of news-
papers for those tense years have a sense of sitting at a
drama, waiting the approach of a catastrophe which they
perfectly foresee, but which the players hope to the last
will be avoided.
Bryant in the campaign of 1848 had bolted from the
regular Democratic ticket along with the other ''Barn-
burners" of New York. The nickname referred to the
Dutchman who burned his barn to exterminate the rats,
for they were accused of trying to destroy the party to
get rid of slavery in the territories. It was impossible
for the Evening Post to support the regulars' nominee,
Lewis Cass, who had expressed pro-slavery views, or the
Whig nominee. Gen. Zachary Taylor, who owned four
hundred slaves. It predicted in June that Taylor would
be elected by an enormous majority, and bitterly taunted
Polk and the other pro-slavery Democrats because their
Texan policy had given the Whigs, headed by the hero
of Buena Vista, the Presidency. Its attitude was hostile
to both the parties, but particularly to that which had
betrayed the ideals of Jackson and Benton. The Barn-
burners nominated their candidate for the Presidency,
Van Buren, at an enthusiastic August convention on the
shores of Lake Erie, in Buffalo. The leaders were Bry-
ant, Chase, Charles Francis Adams, Joshua R. Giddings,
Preston King — an intimate friend of Bigelow's — and Da-
vid Dudley Field. All these men knew they had no
chance of victory, and Bryant frankly said as much. But
the trumpet-blast of the convention, "We inscribe on our
banner Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, and Free
Men," was echoed and reechoed by the Evening Post till
the day of election. The final appeal, on the day that
300,000 voters cast their ballots for Van Buren, shows
how militant its position was:
244 THE EVENING POST
Shall the great republic of the western hemisphere, the greatest
which has yet blessed the anxious hope of nations, to which the
ej^es of millions, now engaged in a desperate struggle for emanci-
pation in Europe, turn as their only encouragement and solace,
the republic which was founded by Washington and nourished
into vigor by Jei¥erson and Jackson — shall this republic make itself
a byword and a reproach wherever its name is heard? Shall the
United States no longer be known as the home of the free and
the asylum of the oppressed, but as the hope of the slave and the
oppressor of the poor?
All good men have an interest in answering these questions.
But above all others, the laboring man has a deeper interest. The
greatest disgrace inflicted upon labor is inflicted by the institution
of slavery. Those who support it — we mean the negro-owners,
or the negro-drivers of the South — openly declare that he who
works with his hands is on the level with the slave. They can-
not think otherwise, so long as they are educated under the influ-
ence of this dreadful injustice. It perverts all the true relations
of society, and corrupts every humane and generous sentiment.
Welles published in the Evening Post after the election
an unsigned article denouncing the tyranny of party
allegiance, but Bryant's journal did not yet forsake De-
mocracy. As a Democratic organ still It boasted that It
published the party's widest-circulated weekly paper. As
a Democratic organ It remarked of Polk, when he went
out of office In 1849, ^^at "such Presidents as he are only
accidents, and two such accidents are not at all likely to be
visited upon a single miserable generation" — an assertion
which Pierce and Buchanan soon confuted. Bennett's
Herald, with Its Instinct for the winning side, having
climbed on the Taylor bandwagon, the Evening Post was
for some years the only Democratic newspaper In this
great Democratic city.
As a free-soil Democratic organ It opposed the Com-
promise of 1850, finding a peculiar relish In attacking any
proposal originated by Clay, and supported by the equally
distasteful Whig and protectionist, Webster. Like Chase
and Welles, Bryant and BIgelow saw the plain objections
to any compromise. The crisis had been precipitated by
the demand for the admission of California, and the
HEATED POLITICS— 1 850-1 860 245
question was whether this admission should be purchased
by large concessions to the South, or — as the Evening
Post maintained — demanded as a right. The chief
proposals of Clay were that California should be ad-
mitted as free territory, that Territorial Governments
be erected In the rest of the Mexican cession without any
restriction upon slavery, that the slave trade be pro-
hibited In the District of Columbia, and that a new and
atrociously-framed law for the return of fugitive slaves
be enacted.
Clay's action was courageous. Bryant wrote that he
could not refuse admiration for his boldness In grappling
thus frankly with a subject so full of difficulties, and that
his statesmanlike directness contrasted refreshingly with
the timidity of the Administration. But he called the
Compromise a blanket poultice, to heal Rve wounds at
once, when the common sense method was to dress each
sore separately; and he opposed any effort to coax the
free States Into abandonment of a single principle. Be-
sides Bryant's and BIgelow's editorials, the Evening Post
published a 5,000 word argument by William Jay, son of
John Jay, and called upon Its readers to sign petitions.
It specifically objected to the provision that Utah and
New Mexico should be organized without any restriction
against slavery, for this meant an abandonment of the
Wilmot Proviso, which It had always supported. Some
Northern advocates of the Compromise argued that the
region was not adapted to plantations and that slavery
would not be transferred thither anyway; but this view
the Post derided, quoting Southern members of Congress
to the contrary. It was equally opposed to the Fugitive
Slave Act. When Calhoun argued that the South was
being "suffocated," it showed that the occupied land in
the slave States was about 280 million acres, and the un-
occupied land about 395 million, while the whole area
of the free States was only about 291 million acres.
Webster's Seventh of March speech in behalf of the
Compromise aroused savage Indignation among his Bos-
ton admirers, but It did not surprise the Evening Post.
246 THE EVENING POST
The Washington correspondent wrote of the stir of satis-
faction among the listening Southern Senators, of the
gleam of exultation that played over the quizzical visage
of Foote of Virginia. But Bryant had expected Web-
ster's volte-face:
It was as natural to suppose that he would do this, as that he
would abandon, in the manner he has done, the doctrines of free
trade, once maintained by him in their fullest extent, and, taking
the money of the Eastern mill-owners, enrol himself as the cham-
pion of protection for the rest of his life. . . .
Mr. Webster stands before the public as a man who has deserted
the cause which he lately defended, deserted it under circum-
stances which force upon him the imputation of a sordid motive,
deserted it when his apostasy was desired by the Administration,
and immediately after an office had been conferred upon his son,
to say nothing of what has been done by the Administration for
his other relatives. It is but little more than two years since he
declared himself the firmest of friends to the Wilmot Proviso,
professing himself its original and invariable champion, and claim-
ing its principles as Whig doctrine.
Such aspersions upon Webster's motives were as unfair
as Whittier's bitter lament and denunciation in the poem
*'Ichabod," but the same righteous anger dictated both.
As a hoax, the Evening Post published in its issue of May
21 glaring headlines, proclaiming: "GREAT MEET-
ING IN BOSTON I !— Tremendous Excitement— DAN-
IEL WEBSTER— Out in Favor of— Applying the Pro-
viso to All the Territories I ! — No Compromise in Mas-
sachusetts! 1 1" The news story below was an account
from Niles^s Register of Dec. ii, 1819, when the Mis-
souri Compromise was pending, of Webster's speech at
an anti-slavery meeting in Boston, in which he asserted
that it was the constitutional duty of Congress to prohibit
slavery in all territory not included in the thirteen original
States. It strikingly exhibited the orator's inconsistency.
The pro-slavery Commercial was angry, declaring that
many New Yorkers had not noted the date 18 19 and had
been deceived. Clay's measures, following the death of
President Taylor, were passed by Congress, but to the
HEATED POLITICS— 1 850-1 860 247
end the Evening Post protested that no permanent com-
promise was possible. The issue was whether a slave-
holding minority should have a share of the new terri-
tories equal to that of the anti-slavery majority. The
answer was yes or no, for there could be no middle
ground. ''If an association is composed of twenty mem-
bers and five insist upon having an equal voice in its af-
fairs with the other fifteen, what compromise can there
be? You must either grant what they ask or deny it."
It was not until the ambitious Douglas, in 1854, intro-
duced the Kansas-Nebraska bill, and Pierce brought his
Administration behind the measure, that the Evening
Post found it impossible to continue its connection with
the Democratic Party. The horror with which Bryant
and Bigelow looked upon this enactment Is easily under-
stood. They had expected the great valley of the Platte
as a matter of course to be settled as free soil, since it
lay north of the Missouri Compromise line, 36' 30". It
had been taken for granted, when proposals had been
made to erect territories there, that slavery had once
for all been excluded. But now Douglas, maintaining
that the people in such regions should exercise their own
choice for or against slavery, proposed to nullify the
Missouri Compromise, and to create two territories, in
which there should be no restrictions as to slavery, and
in which the people should be perfectly free to regulate
their "domestic institutions" as they saw fit. It was a
body-blow to the North.
Franklin Pierce, a handsome, dashing young man of
whose views no one knew very much, had been supported
by the Evening Post in 1852, against Winfield Scott.
James Ford Rhodes remarks that *'The argument of the
Post, that the Democratic candidate and platform were
really more favorable to liberty than the Whig, was
somewhat strained; the editor failed to look the situation
squarely in the face." He was, however, acting in per-
fect harmony with the prominent New York Democrats
who had, four years previously, bolted the regular nom-
ination. Van Buren and his son, Preston King, Benton,
248 THE EVENING POST
Cambreleng, and most of the paper's other free-soil
friends were willing to take a chance upon Pierce. But
he had not been in office four months before the Evening
Post suspected his pro-slavery tendencies, and began to
eye him with disfavor and alarm. Its utterances moved
the Washington Union on July 5, 1853, ^"^ the Rich-
mond Enquirer nine days later, to read it out of the
Democratic party. "The Evening Post and the Buffalo
Republic belong to that class of hangers-on to the Demo-
cratic party who sail under Democratic colors, but who
are in reality the worst enemies of the party. They are
abolitionists in fact," said the first-named sheet. The
Enquirer wanted such newspapers to begone. "It is time
that they should be spurned with indignation and scorn
as the instruments and echoes of the worst factions of the
day." Now, in February, 1854, when Pierce made it
clear that he was supporting Douglas's plan for repu-
diating the Missouri Compromise, the Evening Post
turned short and became the enemy of Democracy. An
occasional Washington correspondent wrote with scorn
of the renegade son of New Hampshire:
It was reception day. We walked in unheralded, and soon
found ourselves in the reception room, where Mr. Pierce was
talking with a bevy of ladies. Immediately on seeing us he ap-
proached, received us very politely, and introduced us to Mrs.
Pierce. The President impressed me better than I had expected,
and better than most of his pictures. He had whitened out to the
true complexion of a parlor knight — pale and soft looking.
Though not what I should call elegant, his manners are easy and
agreeable. He is more meek in appearance than he is usually
represented, as might be expected of a man who has submitted
to be drawn into the position of tail to Senator Douglas's kite.
. . . The President evidently feels the Presidency thrilling every
nerve and coursing every vein. He is so delighted with it that
he is palpably falling into the delusion of supposing himself a
possible successor to himself ! Could fond self-conceit go further ?
Setting aside the inherent impossibility of the thing, on account
of the inevitable discoveries which his elevation has involved; his
mad and wicked adhesion to the Nebraska perfidy will settle his
chances (Feb. 13).
HEATED POLITICS— 1 850-1 860 249
The columns of the paper show that a great popular
uprising was occurring in New York. It had recently
contrasted the crowded, applauding houses, witnessing
''Uncle Tom's Cabin" at the Chatham Street Theater,
with the mob gathered at the Chatham Street Chapel in
1834 to attack negroes and abolitionists. In January,
1854, a great mass-meeting was held at the Tabernacle
to protest against the Douglas bill. Bryant pointed out
that it was composed of merchants, bankers, and profes-
sional men who had hitherto stubbornly opposed the abo-
litionist movement and had supported the Compromise
of 1850. He noted also that the 80,000 Germans of the
city were unanimous, like most other immigrant groups,
for keeping the West open to free labor. The Staats
Zeitung had supported Lewis Cass in 1848, the Com-
promise in 1850, and Pierce in 1852, yet now it was de-
cidedly against the Pierce Administration, as were the
three other German dailies.
Early on a March morning the Kansas-Nebraska Bill
passed the Senate, amid the boom of cannon fired by
Southern enthusiasts. When Chase walked down the
Capitol steps he said to Sumner: "They celebrate a pres-
ent victory, but the echoes they awake shall never rest
until slavery itself shall die." From that moment the
Evening Post treated slavery as a serpent upon which the
nation must set its heel, and Democracy as its ally :
The President has taken a course by which the greater part
of this dishonor is concentrated upon the Democratic Party.
Upon him and his Administration, and upon all the northern
friends of the Nebraska Bill in Congress, and upon the Democratic
Party who gave the present executive his power of mischief, the
people will visit this great political sin of the day. . . . The result
is inevitable; Seward is in the ascendancy in this State and the
North generally ; the Democratic Party has lost its moral strength
in the free States; it is stripped of the respect of the people by the
misconduct of those who claim to be its leaders, and whatever
boast we may make of our excellent maxims of legislation and
policy in regard to other questions, the deed of yesterday puts us
in a minority for years to come. . . .
250 THE EVENING POST
The admission of slavery into Nebraska is the preparation for
yet other measures having in view the aggrandizement of the slave
power — the wresting of Cuba from Spain to make several addi-
tional slave States; the creation of yet other slave States, in the
territory acquired from Mexico, and the renewal of the African
slave trade. These things are contemplated ; the Southern journals
already speak of them as familiarly and flippantly as they do of
an ordinary appropriation bill, and who shall say they are not
already at our door?
The bitterness and militancy of the Evening Post
thenceforth increased day by day. The recapture of the
slave Burns in Boston during the summer of 1854, the
slave whom Thomas Wentworth Higginson tried at the
head of a mob to rescue, and who was marched to the
wharf by platoons of soldiers and police through a crowd
of fifty thousand hissing people, moved the Evening Post
to call the Fugitive Slave law "the most ruffianly act ever
authorized by a deliberative assembly." Month after
month it exhorted the North to send emigrants to Kan-
sas and Nebraska to uphold the free-soil cause. It in-
vited Southerners to stay at their own watering-places in
summer. It taunted the South with its lack of literature
and culture, declaring that the only Southern book yet
written which would not perish was Benton's "Thirty
Years' View," a free-soiler's work. In the State election
of 1855 it supported the Repubhcan ticket, and when
"Prince" John Van Buren attacked it for doing so, it
assailed him in turn as the "degenerate son" of a great
father. As 1855 closed with fresh news every day of
bloodshed in the territories, the paper cried its encourage-
ment to those who fought for free soil :
Every liberal sentiment — the love of freedom, the hatred of
oppression, the detestation of fraud, the abhorrence of wrong
cloaked under the guise of law — every feeling of the human heart
which does not counsel cowardly submission and the purchase of
present safety as the price of future evils, takes part with the resi-
dents of Kansas. They may commit imprudent acts, they may
be rash . . . but their cause is a great and righteous cause, and
we must stand by it to the last.
HEATED POLITICS— 1 850-1 860 251
It was a foregone conclusion at the beginning of 1856
that the Evening Post would lend energetic assistance to
the half-organized Republican party. During the pre-
vious summer and autumn it had devoted several edito-
rials to the disintegration of the Whig party in both sec-
tions, and to that of the Democratic party at the North.
The time had come, it said, when the old party names
meant nothing upon the principal issues, and it welcomed
the formation of a new party of definite tenets. Bige-
low, more impetuous than Bryant, made the Evening Post
an energetic champion of Fremont more than a month
before the Republicans nominated him for the Presi-
dency. Even the Tribune was held back until later by
the doubts of Greeley's lieutenant. Pike, so that the Post
was one of the first powerful Northern sheets for him.
To BIgelow It was that Nathaniel P. Banks, just elected
Speaker of the House and the foremost advocate of
Fremont, addressed himself when he came to New York
city in February, 1856. Banks sensibly held that some
one was needed to typify free-soil principles, and that the
people would never join a party en masse until a man
stood at the head of It; while he believed that Fremont
was the ideal chieftain. It happened that Fremont was
then at the Metropolitan Hotel, on the site of Niblo's
Garden, and Banks took BIgelow to call. The sub-editor
was favorably impressed. He gathered a conference of
free-soil leaders at his home, including the venerable
Frank P. Blair, well remembered as a member of Jack-
son's kitchen cabinet; Samuel J. Tilden; Edwin P. Mor-
gan, later Governor and Senator; and Edward Miller.
All save Tilden favored Fremont, and Blair, at Bigelow's
instance, undertook to obtain Senator Benton's endorse-
ment of his son-in-law. As early as April 10, 1856, the
Evening Post's editorials showed a marked leaning
toward him, and on May 18 (he was nominated on
June 19) It began publishing his biography.
Throughout that campaign the Evening Post, the Trib-
une, Times, Courier, and the German press of the city
battled against the "Buchaneers," represented by the
252 THE EVENING POST
Journal of Commerce, Commercial, Express, and Daily
News. Bigelow offered two prizes of $ioo each for the
best campaign songs in English and German, and the Post
made special low subscription rates. When Fremont was
defeated that fall, it consoled itself not only by the start-
ling strength the Republicans displayed, polling 1,341,-
264 votes, against 1,838,169 for Buchanan, but by the
stinging defeat which Pierce, Cass, and Douglas, so sub-
servient to the South, saw their friends suffer in New
Hampshire, Michigan, and Illinois. Bryant exulted:
We have at least laid the basis of a formidable and well-organ-
ized party, in opposition to the spread of slavery — that scheme
which is the scandal of the country and the age. In those States
of the Union which have now given such large majorities for Fre-
mont, public opinion, which till lately has been shuffling and un-
decided in regard to the slavery question, is now clear, fixed, and
resolute. If we look back to 1848, when we conducted a Presi-
dential election on this very ground of opposition to the spread
of slavery, we shall see that we have made immense strides
towards the ascendancy which, if there be any grounds to hope
for the perpetuity of free institutions, is yet to be ours. We were
then comparatively weak, we are now strong; we then counted
our thousands, we now count our millions; we could then point
to our respectable minorities in a few States, we now point to
State after State. . . . The cause is not going back — it is going
rapidly forward; the free-soil party of 1848 is the nucleus of the
Republican party of 1856; but with what accessions of numbers,
of moral power, of influence, not merely in public assemblies, but
at the domestic fireside!
The Evening Post was now as firmly a "black Repub-
lican" organ as the Tribune, and far more radical in tone
than Henry J. Raymond's Times. When in May, 1856,
Brooks of South Carolina beat Sumner into Insensibility
at his desk in the Senate Chamber, it saw in the episode
no mere flash of Southern hotheadedness, but evidence
of a deep and consistent menace. It was a "base assault,"
a bit of "cowardly brutality." "Are we, too, slaves —
slaves for life, a target for their brutal blows, when we
HEATED POLITICS— 1 850-1 860 253
do not comport ourselves to please them?" But Bryant
looked below the symptom to its cause :
Violence reigns in the streets of Washington . . . violence has
now found its way into the Senate chamber. Violence lies in wait
on all the navigable rivers and all the railways of Missouri, to
obstruct those who pass from the free States into Kansas. Vio-
lence overhangs the frontiers of that territory like a storm-cloud
charged with hail and lightning. Violence has carried election
after election in that territory. ... In short, violence is the
order of the day; the North is to be pushed to the wall by it,
and this plot will succeed if the people of the free States are as
apathetic as the slaveholders are insolent.
Already the Evening Post had fitful glimpses of the
furnace into which this violence was leading. Under the
heading, "A Short Method with DIsunionlsts," Bryant
( Sept. 26, 1855) had said that secession must be throttled
as Jackson throttled It in South Carolina. The news-
paper already regarded slavery as an evil to be stamped
out altogether, though It did not quite say so. Gov.
Wise of Virginia deplored the failure to open up Cali-
fornia as a slave market. Bryant explained this by point-
ing out that the natural increase of Virginia's black popu-
lation exceeded 23,000 souls a year, which at $1,000 each
came to more than $23,000,000. The annual production
of wheat in Virginia had by the last census been worth
only $11,000,000. Since the extension of the slave mar-
ket to Texas had doubled the price of negroes, It was no
wonder that Virginia wished It pushed to the Pacific.
"Such a state of things may be very proper If the duty
and destiny of this great country are to breed slaves and
hunt runaway human cattle. But how Incompatible with
a genuine Christian civilization ! How it moves the pride
and curls the lip of European despotism ! How it strikes
down the power and crushes the hopes of the struggling
friends of freedom all over the world!"
The excitement produced by the Dred Scott decision in
March, 1857, is evinced by the fact that upon eight suc-
cessive days the Evening Post devoted a leading or an
254 THE EVENING POST
important editorial to Chief Justice Taney's opinion. It
was not unexpected : the paper had uttered angry words
In 1855 over a decision by a lower court foreshadowing
It. But, opening all Territories North and South to
slavery, it seemed Intolerable. Bryant, on the point of
sailing for Europe, took the view that in fact it was so
intolerable the American people would never accept its
practical implications. He believed the opinion of the
court so superficial and shallow that It would be respected
nowhere, and compared Chief Justice Taney's legal
knowledge disparagingly with that shown by a colored
keeper of an oyster cellar In Baltimore who had corrected
some of his historical misinformation. Northerners re-
garded the situation with the greater alarm because
Buchanan's Administration, just entering office, was en-
tirely committed to the slavery party, the President ac-
cepting Southern Cabinet members like Howell Cobb of
Georgia and Jacob Thompson of Mississippi as his chief
advisers. Bryant hinted his suspicion of a treasonable
conspiracy between Chief Justice Taney and these South-
ern leaders. A new eloquence was animating the words
in which he wrote of slavery;
Hereafter, if this decision shall stand for law, slavery, instead
of being what the people of the slave States have hitherto called
it, their peculiar institution, is a Federal institution, the com-
mon patrimony and shame of all the States, those which flaunt
the title of free, as well as those which accept the stigma of being
the Land of Bondage ; hereafter, wherever our jurisdiction extends,
it carries with it the chain and the scourge — wherever our flag
floats, it is the flag of slavery. If so, that flag should have the
light of the stars and the streaks of running red erased from it;
it should be dyed black, and its device should be the whip and
the fetter.
Are we to accept, without question, these new readings of the
Constitution — to sit down contentedly under this disgrace — to
admit that the Constitution was never before rightly understood,
even by those who framed it — to consent that hereafter it shall
be the slaveholders' instead of the freemen's Constitution ? Never !
Never ! We hold that the provisions of the Constitution, so far as
they regard slavery, are now just what they were when it was
HEATED POLITICS— 1 850-1 860 2SS
framed, and that no trick of interpretation can change them. The
people of the free States will insist on the old impartial construction
of the Constitution, adopted in calmer times — the construction
given it by Washington and his contemporaries, instead of that
invented by modern politicians in Congress and adopted by modern
politicians on the bench.
But In the territory of Kansas the decision for freedom
was already being made by force of arms. Bryant and
BIgelow had never ceased urging the dispatch of North-
ern settlers and breech-loading rifles to the Western
plains. The poet had written his brother (Feb. 15,
1856) that the city was alive with the excitement of the
Kansas news, and subscribing liberally to the Emigrants'
Aid Society. "The companies of emigrants will be sent
forward as soon as the rivers and lakes are opened — In
March, If possible — and by the first of May there will
be several thousand more free-state settlers In Kansas
than there now are. Of course they will go well armed.'*
After election day that fall he had proposed that the
Republican campaign organization be kept functioning
to speed the flow of settlers. The Tribune was simul-
taneously declaring that "The duty of the people of the
free States Is to send more true men, more Sharpens rifles,
and more howitzers to Kansas." Henry Ward Beecher,
attending a meeting at which a deacon asked arms for
seventy-nine men, declared that a Sharpe's rifle was a
greater moral agency than the Bible, and that Plymouth
Church would furnish half the guns required; whence
the familiar nickname, "Beecher's Bibles." Even Henry
J. Raymond and the Times, In spite of their policy of not
hurting Southern sensibilities, saw that the Issue on the
Platte must be fought out.
A letter from Osawatomie, Kansas, gave a vivid pic-
ture In the Evening Post of July 14, 1856, of the perils
of the free-soil settlement there, and asked for funds suf-
ficient to keep thirty or forty horsemen In the field, well
mounted and armed with breechloading rifles, Colt's re-
volvers, and sabers. Other pleas were backed by ed-
itorials. A month after the Dred Scott decision a cor-
256 THE EVENING POST
respondent writing from Leavenworth told how the
North had rallied to meet the crisis. "Emigration to
Kansas and Nebraska has now set in with wonderful
vigor, and such force as none have anticipated. Every
train from Boston and New York to St. Louis is crowded
to excess. More boats are running on the Missouri
River than ever before, yet all are crowded. Ihave been
nearly a week on the river and have slept on the cabin
floor every night, with some hundred of other bed- or
rather floor-fellows, being unable to get a stateroom. It
is estimated that 7,000 Kansas emigrants have landed at
Kansas City since the opening of navigation, and thou-
sands more have gone on to Wyandotte, Quindaro, Leav-
enworth, etc. . . . And still they come. A single party
of a thousand persons was expected in St. Louis last
Tuesday." The later correspondence had an equally
confident note, which was justified when in October the
free-soilers swept the Territorial election.
When the pro-slavery legislators that autumn, faced
with the loss of their control, hastily drew up the Le-
compton Constitution, providing for the establishment
and perpetuation of slavery, the Evening Post attacked
them angrily. Its fear was that the Buchanan Adminis-
tration would induce Congress, which was Democratic in
both branches, to admit Kansas under this illegal instru-
ment. Thayer, its Washington correspondent, wrote that
the Administration leaders were employing bribery to
that end. The protests of the Evening Post day in and
day out contributed to the overwhelming Northern senti-
.ment which made this fraud impossible.
While the Herald, Journal of Commerce, and Express
were filled with horror by John Brown's raid at Harper's
Ferry in the closing days of 1859, the Evening Post
pointed to it as a just retribution upon the South for its
own crimes. Douglas believed and said that the raid
was the natural result of the teachings of the Republican
party; Bryant believed it the natural result of that South-
ern violence which he had excoriated after Brooks's as-
sault upon Sumner. His editorials almost recall John
HEATED POLITICS— 1 850-1 860 ^^57
Brown's own favorite text: "Without the shedding of \
blood, there is no remission of sins." Of course, he con-
demned the lawlessness of the act, but he did not believe
Brown solely responsible :
Passion does not reason; but if Brown reasoned and desired ,
to give a public motive to his personal rancors, he probably said
to himself that "the slave drivers had tried to put down freedom
in Kansas by force of arms, and he would try to put down slavery !
by the same means." Thus the bloody instructions which they I
taught return to plague the inventors. They gave, for the first
time in the history of the United States, an example of the resort ^
to arms to carry out political schemes, and, dreadful as the retalia-
tion is which Brown has initiated, must take their share of the
responsibility. They must remember that they accustomed men,
in their Kansas forays, to the idea of using arms against their
political opponents, that by their crimes and outrages they drove
hundreds to madness, and that the feelings of bitterness and
revenge thus generated have since rankled in the heart. Brown
has made himself an organ of these in a fearfully significant way.
The evident terror many Southerners had of a slave
insurrection filled Bryant with scorn. Buchanan wished
to acquire Cuban and northern Mexico, and Southern
newspapers wished Africa opened and new millions of
blacks poured in; slavery was a blessed institution, and
we could not have too much of itl "But while they
speak the tocsin sounds, the blacks are in arms, their
houses are in flames, their wives and children driven into
exile or killed, and a furious servile war stretches its
horrors over years. That is the blessed institution you
ask us to foster, and spread, and worship, and for the
sake of which you even spout your impotent threats
against the grand edifice of the Union!" Pending the
trial there was much interest in Brown's carpet-bag. The
Evening Post said that its incendiary contents were prob-
ably Washington's will, emancipating his slaves; his let-
ter of 1786 to Lafayette expressing hope that slavery
would be abolished; Jefferson's Notes on Virginia, de-
ploring slavery; his project of 1785 for emancipating the
slaves; and similar documents by Patrick Henry, John
258 THE EVENING POST
Randolph, and Monroe. Bryant's utterance when John
Brown was hanged recalls that of our other great men
of letters. Emerson spoke of Brown as "that new saint
awaiting his martyrdom"; Thoreau called him "an angel
of light"; Longfellow jotted in his diary, "The date of
a new revolution, quite as much needed as the old one."
Bryant wrote ;
. . . History, forgetting the errors of his judgment in the con-
templation of his unfaltering courage, of his dignified and manly
deportment in the face of death, and of the nobleness of his aims,
will record his name among those of its martyrs and heroes.
Meanwhile, a new figure had arisen in the West. Like
most other New York journals the Evening Post had
Instantly perceived the significance of the Lincoln-
Douglas debates of 1858. When they began it remarked
that Illinois was the theater of the most momentous con-
test, whether one considered the eminence of the con-
testants or the consequences which might result from it,
that had occurred in any State canvass since Silas
Wright's defeat for Governor in 1846. When they
closed it remarked (Oct. 18) : "No man of this genera-
tion has grown more rapidly before the country than
Mr. Lincoln in this canvass."
At first the paper's reports of the Lincoln-Douglas
addresses were taken from the Chicago press, but it soon
had its own correspondent, Chester P. Dewey, following
the debaters. This writer knew Lincoln's capacity.
"Poor, unfriended, uneducated, a day laborer, he has dis-
tanced all these disadvantages, and in the profession of
the law has risen steadily to a competence, and to the
position of an intelligent, shrewd, and well-balanced
man," ran his characterization. "Familiarly known as
'Long Abe,' he is a popular speaker, and a cautious,
thoughtful politician, capable of taking a high position as
a statesman and legislator." He described the enthusi-
asm with which Lincoln's supporters at Ottawa carried
him from the grounds on their shoulders. He related
how at Jonesboro, in the southern extremity of the State,
HEATED POLITICS— 1 850-1 860 259
where the crowd was overwhelmingly Democratic, Doug-
las came to the grounds escorted by a band and a cheer-
ing crowd, amid the discharges of a brass cannon, while
Lincoln arrived with only a few friends ; how when Lin-
coln arose "a faint cheer was elicited, followed by de-
risive laughter from the Douglas men" ; but how he quite
won his audience.
It Is Interesting to note that this correspondent grasped
the full importance of the Freeport debate, where Lin-
coln asked Douglas whether the people of a territory
could themselves exclude slavery from it. To answer
"no" meant that Douglas repudiated his doctrine of
squatter sovereignty, and to answer "yes" meant that he
alienated the South. On Sept. 5 the Evening Post had
published a long editorial in which it concluded that
Douglas was likely to be the Southern candidate in i860.
Just two days later its correspondent foretold the effect
of Douglas's fatal "yes" at Freeport:
It was very evident that Mr. Douglas was cornered by the
questions put to him by Mr. Lincoln. He claimed to be the up-
holder of the Dred Scott decision, and also of popular sovereignty.
He was asked to reconcile the two. . . .
When the Freeport speech of Mr. Douglas shall go forth to
all the land, and be read by the men of Georgia and South Caro-
lina, their eyes will doubtless open. Can they . . . abet a man
who avows these revolutionary sentiments and endorses the right
to self-government of the people of a territory? . . . How would
he appear uttering this treason of popular sovereignty at a South
Carolina barbecue?
Lincoln had been anxious to visit New York, and on
Feb. 27, i860, through the invitation of the Young Men's
Central Republican Union, he made his great speech at
Cooper Institute. Bryant presided. The poet had met
Lincoln nearly thirty years before, when, on his first visit
to Illinois, he had encountered a company of volunteers
going forward to the Black Hawk War, and had been at-
tracted by the racy, original conversation of the uncouth
young captain ; but this meeting he had forgotten. James
26o THE EVENING POST
A. Briggs, who made all the business arrangements for
Lincoln's speech, later told In the Evening Post (Aug.
1 6, 1867) some Interesting facts concerning the occasion.
It was Briggs who personally asked Bryant to preside.
The fame of the Westerner had, although the jealous
Times, a Seward organ, spoke of him as merely ''a law-
yer who had some local reputation In Illinois," Impressed
every one. In Its two Issues preceding the 27th the Even-
ing Post published prominent announcements of Lincoln's
arrival and of the meeting, and promised "a powerful
assault upon the policy and principles of the pro-slavery
party, and an able vindication of the Republican creed.**
The hall was well filled. According to Briggs, the tickets
were twenty-five cents each, and the receipts, in spite of
many free admissions, $367, or just $17 In excess of the
expenses, of which the fee to Lincoln represented $200.
As the Tribune said, since the days of Clay and Webster
no man had spoken to a larger body of the city's culture
and intellect.
Bryant, in his brief introductory speech, said that it
was a grateful office to present such an eminent Western
citizen; that "these children of the West form a living
bulwark against the advance of slavery, and from them
is recruited the vanguard of the mighty armies of liberty"
(loud applause) ; and that he had only to pronounce the
name of the great champion of Republicanism in Illinois,
who would have won the victory two years before but for
an unjust apportionment law, to secure the profoundest
attention. The Evening Post reported that at the end
of Lincoln's speech the audience arose almost to a man,
and expressed its approbation by the most enthusiastic
applause, the waving of handkerchiefs and hats, and re-
peated cheers. It reproduced the address In full, saying
editorially that when It had such a speech It was tempted
to wish its columns indefinitely elastic, emphasizing Lin-
coln's principal points, and praising highly the logic of the
argument. Its mastery of clear and impressive statement,
and the originality of the closing passages. Briggs tells us
that Lincoln read this eulogistic editorial:
HEATED POLITICS— 1 850-1 860 261
After the return of Mr. Lincoln to New York from the East,
where he had made several speeches, he said to me: *'I have seen
what all the New York papers said about that thing of mine in
the Cooper Institute, with tjhe exception of the New York Evening
Post, and I would like to know what Mr. Bryant thought of it" ;
and he then added: "It is worth a visit from Springfield, Illinois,
to New York to make the acquaintance of such a man as William
Cullen Bryant." At Mr. Lincoln's request I sent him a copy
of the Evening Post, with a notice of his lecture.
Raymond and the Times, when the Republican na-
tional convention met in Chicago on May 16, i860, were
ardently for Seward — Indeed, Thurlow Weed and Ray-
mond were Seward's chief lieutenants there. Greeley,
had he been able to make the nomination himself, would
have chosen Bates of Missouri first, and anybody to beat
Seward second. Bryant, up to the time of the Cooper
Union speech, had supported Chase for the nomination,
but he knew that his chances were slight and he now
leaned toward Lincoln — for he also was anxious to see
Seward beaten. The Evening Post's dislike of Seward
dated from 1853, when it had declared (Nov. 2) that
his friends in the Whig Party and a Democratic faction
had formed a corrupt combination to plunder the State
treasury through contracts. Its bitterness against him
had steadily Increased during the years of his close asso-
ciation with the political boss, Thurlow Weed. No one be-
lieved that Seward was dishonest, but thousands thought
that Weed's methods were detestable, and that Seward's
intimacy with men who schemed for public grants was
altogether too close. References to the connection be-
tween "Seward's chances" and "New York street rail-
roads" had become common in 1859. Bryant wrote his
associate Bigelow on Dec. 14 that, much as Seward had
been hurt by the misconstruction of his phrase "the irre-
pressible conflict," he had been damaged more in New
York by something else. "I mean the project of Thur-
low Weed to give charters for a set of city railways, for
which those who receive them are to furnish a fund of
from four to six hundred thousand dollars, to be ex-
262 THE EVENING POST
pended for the Republican cause in the next Presidential
election." He added on Feb. 20:
Mr. Seward is not without his chance of a nomination, though
some of your friends here affirm that he has none. He is him-
self, I hear, very confident of getting it. While the John Brown
excitement continued, his prospects improved, for he was the best-
abused man of his party — now that he is let alone, his stock de-
clines again and people talk of other men. For my part I do
not see that he is more of a representative man than a score of
others in our party. The great difficulty which I have in regard
to him is this, that by the election of a Republican President the
slavery qiiestion is settled, and that with Seward for President,
it will be the greatest good luck, a special and undeserved favor
of Providence, if every honest Democrat of the Republican party
be not driven into the opposition within a twelvemonths after
he enters the White House. There are bitter execrations of Weed
and his friends passing from mouth to mouth among the old radi-
cal Democrats of the Republican party here.
Bigelow, writing home from London (March 20),
saw in Lincoln the only hope of the party. He had no
use for Seward; he had even less for Bates — "an old
Clay Whig from Missouri . . . who has been for two
years or more the candidate of Erastus Brooks and Gov.
Hunt, who is not only not a Republican but who is put for-
ward liecause he is not a Republican, and whom the
Tribune recommends because he can get some votes that
a straight-out Republican cannot get." Moreover, Bige-
low saw "no possibility of nominating Fessenden, or
Chase, or Banks, or any such man"; and he knew that
unless the right kind of Republican was elected the fight
was lost.
Lincoln's nomination was therefore hailed with more
real gratification by the Post than by any other great East-
ern newspaper. It saw in him one who would call forth
the enthusiasm of his party, and the attachment of inde-
pendent voters. The popular approval had already been
surprising in its volume and gusto. "The Convention
could have made no choice, we think, which, along with
so many demonstrations of ardent approval, would have
HEATED POLITICS— 1 850.1 860 263
been met with so few expressions of dissent." It paused
to point out the two reasons for Seward's defeat. The
first was the convention's opinion, with which it was in-
clined to agree, that he could not be elected, because he
could not have carried Pennsylvania, Douglas would have
beaten him in Illinois, and he was weak in Ohio, Indiana,
and Vermont; the second lay in the distrust of his warm-
est political friends excited by the corruption of the two
last New York legislatures. At this time there was
much talk about ''representative men," and the Post,
after naming a few, remarked that Lincoln surpassed
them all as a personification of the distinctive genius of
our country and its Institutions. "Whatever is peculiar
in the history and development of America, whatever is
foremost in its civilization, whatever Is good in its social
and political structure, finds its best expression in the
career of such men as Abraham Lincoln."
A vignette of Lincoln by one of Bryant's friends then
travehng in the West, George Opdyke, was immediately
printed to disprove the current story that he dwelt in "the
lowest hoosier style" :
I found Mr. Lincoln living in a handsome, but not pretentious,
double two-story frame house, having a wide hall running
through the center, with parlors on both sides, neatly but not
ostentatiously furnished. It was just such a dwelling as a majority
of the well-to-do residents of these fine western towns occupy.
Everything about it had a look of comfort and independence. The
library I remarked in passing, particularly, and I was pleased to
see long rows of books, which told of the scholarly tastes and cul-
ture of the family.
Lincoln received us with great, and to me surprising, urbanity.
I had seen him before in New York, and brought with me an im-
pression of his awkward and ungainly manner; but in his own
house, where he doubtless feels himself freer than in the strange
New York circles, Lincoln had thrown this off, and appeared easy,
if not graceful. He is, as you know, a tall lank man, with a long
neck, and his ordinary movements are unusually angular, even
out west. As soon, however, as he gets interested in conversa-
tion, his face lights up, and his attitudes and gestures assume a
certain dignity and impressiveness. His conversation is fluent,
264 THE EVENING POST
agreeable, and polite. You see at once from it that he is a man
of decided and original character. His views are all his own ;
such as he has worked out from a patient and varied scrutiny of
life, and not such as he has obtained from others. Yet he cannot
be called opinionated. He listens to others like one eager to
learn. And his replies evince at the same time both modesty and
self-reliance. I should say that sound common sense was the
principal quality of his mind, although at times a striking phrase
or word reveals a peculiar vein of thought.
At first, it is Interesting to note, the Evening Post was
not only all confidence In Lincoln's election, but all con-
tempt for the Southern threats of secession If he won.
Until that fall It held to a short-sighted view that the
secession talk was a mere repetition of the old Southern
attempt, made so often since nullification days, to bully
the North as a spoiled child bullies Its nurse. This con-
fidence, which the Times and Tribune fully shared, was
not assumed for campaign reasons. The stock market
sustained It, and Bryant pointed to the midsummer ad-
vance In security prices as showing that business was not
alarmed. A correspondent wrote from Newport on Aug.
23 that visitors from all parts of the South were there,
but no fire-eating disunlonlsts among them; "they deplore
the election of Lincoln, while they regard It as almost a
certainty, but scout the Idea of secession or rebellion as a
necessary consequence of It." For years the North had
listened to bullying, blustering, and threats from the
South, and It had grown too much used to menaces.
But In the final fortnight of the campaign the news-
paper began to perceive that there was a sullen reality
behind these fulmlnatlons. On Oct. 20 we find the first
editorial to treat secession earnestly, one declaring that
no government could parley with men In arms against Its
authority, and that like Napoleon dealing with the Insur-
rectlonarles of Paris, the United States "must fire cannon
balls and not blank cartridges." On Oct. 29 it charged
the existence of a definite secession conspiracy. Its au-
thors were Howell Cobb and other ofl^icers high in the
Administration; moreover, it declared, "the eggs of the
John Bigelow
Associate Editor 1849-1860.
HEATED POLITICS— 1850-1860 265
conspiracy now hatching were laid four years ago, in the
Cincinnati Convention." Bigelow at that time, a close
observer at Cincinnati of the scenes amid which Buchanan
was nominated, had declared (June 13, 1856) that the
nomination was purchased from the South by a promise
from one of Buchanan's lieutenants, Col. Samuel Black,
that if a radical Republican should be elected his suc-
cessor in i860, then Buchanan would do nothing to inter-
fere with the secession of the Southern States.
A few days before election, Samuel J. Tilden, who
was supporting Douglas, came into the office of the
Evening Post in high excitement. In Bigelow's room
were seated the Collector of the Port, Hiram Barney;
the president of the Illinois Central, William H. Osborn,
and one of the commissioners of Central Park. They
were all confident of Lincoln's election, and Tilden's
excitement rose as he saw them rejoicing in the certainty.
With a repressed anger and dignity that sobered them,
he cut short their chaffing by saying: "I would not have
the responsibility of William Cullen Bryant and John
Bigelow for all the wealth in the sub-treasury. II you
have your way, civil war will divide this country, and
you will see blood running like water in the streets of
this city." With these words, he left. On Oct. 30 the
Evening Post devoted more than six columns to a letter
by Tilden, in which he explained why, though long a free-
soiler, he had not supported Lincoln. He declared that
the Republican Party was a sectional party, that if it
ruled at Washington the South would be virtually
under foreign domination, and that the Southerners
would never yield to its "impracticable and intolerable"
policy. The Post replied to but one of his arguments.
The Republican Party, it said, was sectional only because
it had never been given a fair hearing at the South. But,
it added, "We do not propose to review Mr. Tilden's
paper at length to-day; a logical and conclusive answer
to all its positions is in the course of preparation, and
will appear in the Evening Post just one week from to-
morrow afternoon."
ii66 THE EVENING POST
On the day announced, the day after election, the
Evening Post published a table of the electoral votes, by
which it appeared that Lincoln had a certain majority of
thirty-five and a possible majority of forty-two; heading
it, "Reply to the Letter of Samuel J. Tilden, Continued
and Concluded." But Tilden's prophecy was to be
realized in a fashion the editors little expected.
y
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE NEW YORK PRESS AND SOUTHERN SECESSION
No Other five months in our history under the Con-
stitution have been so critical as the five between the
election of Lincoln and the capture of Sumter. The anger
of the South at the Republican triumph; the secession of
South Carolina before Christmas, followed by the rest
of the lower South; the erection of a Southern Confed-
eracy in February, with the choice of Davis as provisional
President; the complete paralysis of Buchanan's govern-
ment — all this made the months anxious and uncertain
beyond any others in the century. Until New Year's,
many people in the North believed that the Southern
threats were not to be taken seriously; until February,
many believed that the outlook for a peaceful preserva-
tion of the Union was bright. Thereafter a large part
of the population held that, in Gen. Winfield Scott's
phrase, the erring sisters should be let depart in peace.
In this anomalous period a thousand currents of opinion
possessed the land, and no one could predict what the
next day would bring forth. The time tried the judg-
ment and patriotism of the nation's newspapers as by fire.
The New York press had at this time asserted a
national ascendancy which it slowly lost after the war as
the great West increased in population. During Decem-
ber, i860, the Herald averaged a week-day circulation
of 77,107, and a Sunday circulation of 82,656, which it
boasted was the largest in the world. The daily circula-
tion of the London Times was 25,000 less. The Tribune
boasted on April 10, 1861, that while its daily circula-
tion was 55,000, its weekly circulation was enormous,
making the total number of its buyers 287,750. Two-
fifths of these were in New York, but it had 26,091 sub-
scribers in Pennsylvania; 24,900 in Ohio; 16,477 ^^
268 THE EVENING POST
Illinois; 11,968 in Iowa; 11,081 in Indiana, and even in
California 5,535. In the South, on the other hand, there
was a mere handful of buyers — 21 in Mississippi, 23
in South Carolina, 35 in Georgia, and 10 in Florida,
against 10,589 in Maine. The Sun had a d^ily circula-
tion of about 60,000, and the Times of about 35,000.
That of the Evening Post was approaching 20,000, while
its weekly and semi-weekly issues were widely read in the
West. It was in reference to the influence of the Tribune,
Times, and Evening Post that the Herald said, ''With-
out New York journalism there would have been no Re-
publican party." It had some excuse for its boast regard-
ing the city's journals (Nov. 8) :
Several of them, possessing revenues equal in amount to those
of some of the sovereign States, are unapproachable by influences
except those of a national policy, and they constitute a congress
of intellect in permanent session assembled. The telegraph and
the locomotive carry their influences to the remotest corners of
the land in a constantly increasing ratio. These, then, are to be
the leading powers which are to range parties, and conduct the
discussions of the great questions of the generation that is before
us. They, and they only, can do it in a catholic and cosmopolitan
spirit . . . These affect the affairs and hopes of men everywhere.
Lincoln's election was accepted with unmixed pleasure
by the Evening Post and Tribune, the Times and the
World, which saw in it a long-deferred assurance that the
popular majority in favor of freedom had at last found
a dependable leader. It was accepted with resignation
by the three chief opposition newspapers. Bennett's
Herald, with a snort of chagrin, reminded good citizens
that they should "settle down to their occupations and to
discharge the duty which they owe to their families."
The Journal of Commerce remarked that "we have noth-
ing to do but submit," adding that the conservative ma-
jority in both Houses "will check any wayward fancies
that may seize the executive, under the influence of his
abolition advisers." The Express deplored, deeply de-
plored, the re^ylt, but formally acquiesced in it, "as under
SOUTHERN SECESSION 269
the forms If not in the spirit and intent of the Constitu-
tion." But as the news of the secession movement In-
creased, the differences of opinion grew marked.
Bryant In the Evening Post was anxious that Lincoln
should not talk of concessions, nor seem to be frightened
by the Southern bluster. He must refuse to parley with
disunionists :
If there are any States disposed to question the supremacy of
the Constitution, or to assert the incompatibility of our climatic
influences and social institutions with the form of government
under which we have been hitherto united, now is the time to
meet the question and settle it. . . .
Mr. Lincoln cannot say one word or take one step toward con-
cession of any kind without in so far striking at the very founda-
tions upon which our government is based, violating the confidence
of his supporters, and converting our victory into a practical
defeat.
AVhen the idea of resisting the will of the majority is abandoned
in responsible quarters; when every sovereign State shows itself
content to abide the issue of a constitutional election, it will be
time enough for Mr. Lincoln to enlighten those who need light
as to what he will do and what he will not do ; and we greatly
mistake the man if he will give ear to any proposition designed to
convert him into a President not of the whole Union, nor of those
who voted for him, but of those who did not.
The Herald was equally insistent that Lincoln should
promise concessions; "he should at once give to the world
the programme of the policy he will pursue as President,
and that policy should be one of conciliation," It said on
Nov. 9. But a special correspondent of the Post, inter-
viewing Lincoln in Springfield on Nov. 14, and finding
him reading the history of the nullification movement, ob-
tained an assurance that he would make no such sign of
weakness. "I know," he quoted Lincoln as saying, "the
justness of my intentions, and the utter groundlessness of
the pretended fears of the men who are filling the coun-
try with their clamor. If I go Into the Presidency, they
will find me as I am on record — nothing less, nothing
more. My declarations have been made to the world
i^o THE EVENING POST
without reservation. They have been repeated; and now,
self-respect demands of me and the party that has elected
me, that when threatened I should be silent." The cor-
respondent assured Lincoln's Eastern friends that nature
had endowed him "with that sagacity, honesty, and firm-
ness which made Old Hickory's the most eminently suc-
cessful and honorable Administration known to the
public."
When South Carolina carried her threat of secession
into execution on Dec. 20, every New York newspaper
had already Indicated Its attitude toward that act. Bry-
ant had done so Nov. 12, in an editorial called "Peace-
able Secession an Absurdity." No government could
have a day of assured existence, he wrote, if it tolerated
the doctrine of peaceable secession, for It could have no
credit or future. "No, if a State secedes It Is in rebellion,
and the seceders are traitors. Those who are charged
with the executive branch of the government are recreant
to their oaths if they fail to use all lawful means to put
down such rebellion." The next day he added that "We
look to Abraham Lincoln to restore American unity, and
make it perpetual." No one expected Buchanan to do
anything, and not a week passed without Bryant or Bige-
low calling him a traitor. This Insistence that the seced-
ing States be coerced Into returning was shared by the
World, which was on the point of absorbing Webb's
Courier and Eqtiirer, and by the Times.
A far less sound view was taken by the Tribune, so
long the most Influential Republican newspaper of the
nation. Horace Greeley is often represented as declar-
ing flatly that the South should be allowed to depart In
peace. His opinion, while not much more defensible, was
decidedly different. Greeley wished to make sure that It
was the will of the Southern majority to secede, and not
the mere whim of fire-eating leaders. "I have said re-
peatedly, and here repeat," he wrote In the Tribune of
Jan. 14, "that, if the people of the Slave States, or of the
Cotton States alone, really wish to get out of the Union,
I am in favor of letting them out so soon as that result
SOUTHERN SECESSION 271
can be peacefully and constitutionally attained. ... If
they win . . . take first deliberately by fair vote a ballot
of their own citizens, none being coerced nor Intimidated,
and that vote shall Indicate a settled resolve to get out of
the Union, I will do all I can to help them out at an early
day. I want no States kept In the Union by coercion; but
I Insist that none shall be coerced out of it. . . ."
But James Gordon Bennett's Herald, James Brooks's
Express, Gerard Hallock's Journal of Commerce, and
several minor journals, as the Daily News and Day Book,
were frankly in favor of letting the secessionists proceed
without any restraint from the Federal Government. The
Herald was much the most Important, although the
World sneeringly said that every new subscriber meant
two cents and a little more contempt for Bennett. It was
read everywhere about New York for its full news and
its smartness; the caustic observations of Dickens and
William H. Russell upon New York journalism were
founded principally upon it; and Administration leaders
at Washington found its comprehensive dispatches inval-
uable throughout the war. Maintaining Its old levity of
tone, the Herald used at this period to speak of the
World, Tribune, and Times as the World, the Flesh, and
the Devil. It remarked that Lincoln had once split rails
and now he was splitting the Union. It called Greeley
"the Hon. Massa Greeley," and it probably refrained
only by a supreme effort from nicknaming Bryant. One
of its cardinal tenets was that slavery was really unob-
jectionable. As the two sections drew near war, it
printed a description of slum life in Liverpool, remarking
that compared with the English laborer, "the slave Tives
like a prince." He had his cabin, neat, clean, and weather-
proof ; he had his own garden patch, over which he was
lord paramount; he was well-fed, well-lodged, well-
clothed, and rarely overworked; sleek, happy, contented,
enjoying his many holidays with gusto, he lived to a great
age. Before the New Year, the Herald had spoken out
plainly against coercion. It would bring on a "a frat-
ricidal conflict, which will destroy the industrial interests
272 THE EVENING POST
of all sections, and put us back at least a hundred years
in the estimation of the civilized world."
As one State after another passed out of the Union,
therefore, a half dozen newspapers, the Herald, Daily
News, Journal of Commerce, Day Book, Staats Zeitung,
and Coiirrier des Etats Unis were taking an attitude
friendly to the South ; one, the Tribune, simply wrung its
hands; and the Evening Post, Times, and World alone
urged severe measures. Jefferson Davis, wrote the Eve-
ning Post, "knows that secession is a forcible rupture of
an established government; he knows that it must, if per-
sisted in, lead to war." "If our Southern brethren think
they can better themselves by going out," declared Ben-
nett's Herald on Jan. 17, "in heaven's name let them go
in peace. We cannot keep them by force."
During January nearly all eyes were fastened upon
the various plans for keeping the Union intact by ar-
ranging a compromise, and preposterous some of these
plans were. The Crittenden Compromise, which pro-
posed making the Missouri line of 36' 30" the constitu-
tional boundary between slavery and freedom in the Ter-
ritories, was brusquely condemned by the Evening Post.
"In every respect the . . . scheme is objectionable, and
no Republican who understands the principles of his
party, or who is faithful to what he believes the funda-
mental objects of the Federal Constitution, can assent to
it for one moment," the journal said on Jan. 26. The
Republican Party had been established and had just won
its great victory upon the principle that slavery should
not be extended into any Territory whatever; how could
it give it up without committing suicide? In the same
issue the Evening Post said that the violent acts of the
South, the seizure of forts and arsenals, the drilling of
men to prevent arrests, "are treasonable acts, and amount
to levying war upon the United States," while it called
Senator Toombs "a blustering and cowardly traitor."
The Tribune, which believed that secession was a mere
threatening gesture, and that Northern firmness might
overawe the rebels and bring them back into the Union,
SOUTHERN SECESSION 273
was also against the Crittenden plan. *'No compromise,
then! No delusive and deluding concessions! No sur-
render of principle !" exclaimed Greeley on Jan. 18. The
next day the Tribune evinced its failure to grasp the situ-
ation by remarking that if Major Anderson at Fort Sum-
ter had fired on the rebels when the Star of the West was
turned back from his relief, "treason would have been
stayed. That act alone would have saved Virginia from
plunging into the fatal gulf of rebellion."
The Times was as firmly against a compromise as the
Evening Post. Stand by the Union and the Constitution
first, wrote Raymond; when their safety is assured, then
only can we talk of guarantees for the South. "We would
yield nothing whatever to exactions pressed by threats of
disunion. . . ." So was the World, which said that "It
is of no use to mince matters; this rampant cotton rebel-
lion will haul in its horns or we shall have civil war."
The World had its own plan of restoring harmony by
extinguishing sectional spirit. It proposed, first, to divest
the Federal executive of its overgrown patronage — the
office-seekers were always pandering to sectional preju-
dice; second, to improve the navigation of the Missis-
sippi; third, to construct levees to prevent Mississippi
floods; and fourth, to build a Southern Pacific railway.
It naively said that if these public works "could be
adopted as a preventive instead of a remedy, their cost
would probably be less than the cost of a civil war." The
Tribune also had a pacification scheme. It suggested that
the Federal Government begin the purchase of all the
slaves of Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, Arkansas,
Texas, and Louisiana, about 600,000 in all; to pay not
more than $100,000,000, or less than $200 each, for
them; and to complete the transaction in, say, 1876.
A petition for the Crittenden compromise circulated
by William B. Astor found 140 signatures at the Herald
office. By now, indeed, Bennett's Herald was expressing
opinions which seem madness.
After appealing to Lincoln to beg the South to return;
after appealing to the Republican Party to repudiate its
274 THE EVENING POST
Chicago platform; after appealing to Congress to pass
the Crittenden resolution or submit it to the States, the
Herald appealed to the South. On Jan. 4, railing at the
imbecility of Congress and the indifference of President-
elect Lincoln, it proposed that the Southern States ar-
range a Constitutional Convention for their own section
alone. Let this body adopt amendments to the Constitu-
tion embodying guarantees of the return of fugitive
slaves, of the validity of the Dred Scott decision, and of
universal tolerance of opinion respecting slavery as a
social institution. "Let them submit these different
amendments to the different Northern States, earnestly
inviting their acceptance of them, and assigning a period,
similar to that which was appointed for the ratification of
the Constitution of 1787, when all States which should
have agreed to their proposition should be considered as
thenceforth forming the future United States of Amer-
ica." The whole nation, said the Herald, would join
such a Union, save New England. Probably the Yankee
States would stay out. Good riddance to them. The
rest of the country is sick and tired of New England. It
has had too much "of the provincial meanness, bigotry,
self-conceit, love for 'isms,' hypercritical opposition to
anything and everything, universal fault-finding, hard
bargaining, and systematic home lawlessness . . . which
are covering their section of the country with odium."
This was not a shabby offer to the South — to take any
conditions It made and kick the Yankees out. But the
Herald waxed more generous still. On March 20, a
month after the inauguration of Jefferson Davis, it had
found the solution of the great problem : let the new Con-
gress, when it met at Lincoln's call, adopt the Confed-
erate Constitution, and submit It to the nation for ratifica-
tion by three-fourths of the States. "This would settle
the question and restore peace and harmony to a troubled
nation, while at the same time every statesman and every
man of common sense must admit that the new Constitu-
tion is a decided improvement on the old." The Herald
enumerated its merits : the restriction of the President to
SOUTHERN SECESSION 275
one six-year term, the budget system of appropriations,
the Interdiction of Internal Improvements at the expense
of the national treasury, and so on. "Let Mr. Lincoln
call Congress together for the purpose, and he will have
taken the first step of a statesman since he came to
power." The Herald did not say who It believed should
be President under the new constitution, but It could
hardly avoid concluding that Jefferson Davis ought to
be accepted along with the Confederate system of gov-
ernment. All the while, the Journal of Commerce, Ex-
press, and News were imperturbably declaring that the
South should be allowed to depart amicably.
A surprising number of New Yorkers, Indeed, sym-
pathized with this hostility to coercion. A meeting of
disciples of Mayor Fernando Wood held at Brooke's
Hall on Dec. 15 gives us the key to much of this senti-
ment. Its chairman said that the city had lost $20,000,-
000 a month in Southern orders, an estimate which mer-
chants applauded; while the rougher element that later
engaged in the Draft Riots adopted with a roar the res-
olution that, "believing our Southern brethren to be now
engaged in the holy cause of American liberty, and try-
ing to roll back the avalanche of Britishism, we extend to
them our heartfelt sympathy." The Herald the same
day computed the loss of the North from the "national
convulsion" at $478,620,000, explaining that flour had
fallen a dollar a barrel, wheat twenty cents a bushel, and
many manufactories had suspended, since Lincoln's elec-
tion. Mayor Fernando Wood, In his message published
Jan. 8, proposed that If disunion took place. New York
should declare itself a free city, clinging to its commerce
with both sections. Wood was a Philadelphia Quaker by
birth, who began life as a cigar-maker, and made his way
In politics by a physique so handsome, a personality so
fascinating, and a character so unscrupulous that he has
been well called the successor of Aaron Burr. The Eve-
ning Post remarked that It had always known he was a
knave, but it had not before suspected him of being so
egregious a fool, and asked whether the city in seceding
276 THE EVENING POST
would take the Hudson River, Long Island Sound, New
York Central, and Erie Canal with It — It couldn^t do
without them. Even the Herald sneered at his proposal.
But William H. Russell, visiting the city, as late as March
was shocked by the Indifference which prominent citizens
showed to the Impending catastrophe.
This Indifference the Evening Post, Times, and Tribune
were loyally trying to dispel. On Feb. 2, when five States
had seceded, the Evening Post warned them that the act
meant war. "No one doubts that If the people of those
States should transfer them back to Spain or France, the
United States would be prepared to recover them at all
the hazards of war; and, for the same reason, she will
recover them from the hands of any other 'foreign
powers' under any other names." A fortnight later Bry-
ant reiterated:
. . . Our government means no war, and will not, if it can
be avoided, shed a drop of blood; If war comes, it must be made
by the South; but let the South understand, when it does come,
that eighty years of enterprise, of accumulation, and of progress
in all the arts of warfare have not been lost upon the North.
Cool in temperament, peaceful in its pursuits, loving industry and
trade more than fighting, it has yet the old blood of the Saxon
in its veins, and will go to battle with the same ponderous and
irresistible energy^ with which it has reared its massive civiliza-
tion out of the primitive wilderness.
The Times was equally emphatic. When the Journal
of Commerce argued that two American nations, one free
and one slave, might live as cordially together as the
Protestant and Catholic parts of Switzerland, the Trib-
une reminded It that In 1846-7 the Catholic cantons had
tried to secede, and the Swiss government had instantly
crushed the movement.
Bryant was keenly Interested all the while In the forma-
tion of Lincoln's Cabinet. Immediately after Lincoln's
nomination he had written him saying that "I was not
without apprehensions that the nomination might fall
upon some person encumbered with bad associates, and it
was with a sense of relief and infinite satisfaction that I,
SOUTHERN SECESSION 277
with thousands of others, heard the news of your nom-
ination." He was desirous of having Cabinet places
given his friends Chase and Gideon Welles, and Parke
Godwin prints in his biography the three letters In which
he urged the claims of these men and protested against
Cameron. He also wrote Lincoln in behalf of a low
tariff. But the biography does not contain the letter
which Hiram Barney, Collector of the Port, wrote Bryant
from Chicago Immediately (Jan. 17, 1861) after seeing
Lincoln regarding his Cabinet:
I went with Mapes, Opdyke, and Hageboom from Washington
to Columbus and Springfield. We saw and conversed freely and
fully with Gov. Chase and Mr. Lincoln. Mr. Lincoln received
your letter announcing our mission the night previous to our
arrival. I thank you for writing it. It was influential, I have
no doubt, in procuring for us the favorable reception and hearing
which was accorded to us. Mr. Lincoln has invited to his Cabinet
only three persons, to wit — Mr. Bates, Mr. Seward, and Mr.
Cameron. All these have accepted. In regard to the latter-
named, however, Mr. Lincoln became satisfied that he had made
a mistake, and wrote him requesting him to withdraw his ac-
ceptancy or decline. Mr. Cameron refused to answer the letter
and was greatly offended by it. He, however, authorized a mutual
friend to telegraph and he did so — that Mr. Cameron would not
on any account accept a seat in his Cabinet. Mr. Lincoln has
thus a quarrel on his hands which he is anxious to adjust satis-
factorily before he proceeds further in his formation of his Cabinet.
He is advised from Washington not to conclude further upon the
members of his Cabinet until he reaches Washington, which will
be probably about the middle of February — and he has concluded
to act according to this advice. We tried to change this purpose,
but I fear in vain. He has not offered a place to Mr. Chase. He
wants and expects to invite him to the Treasury Department.
But he fears this will offend Pennsylvania, and he wants to recon-
cile the Republicans of that State to it before it is settled. He
thinks Mr. Chase would be willing to let the matter stand so and
leave the option with him (Mr. Lincoln) of taking him when he
can do so without embarrassment. He knows that Gov. Chase
does not desire to go into the Cabinet and prefers the Senate —
but he relies upon Gov. Chase's patriotism to overcome the objec-
tions which arise from this unpleasant state of things.
278 THE EVENING POST
He wants to take Judd, but this selection will offend some of
his friends and he does not decide upon it. Welles of Connecticut
is his preference for New England. Blair of Maryland is favor-
ably considered. Dayton will either go into his Cabinet or will
have the mission to England or France. One of these missions
he intends to give to Cassius M. Clay. Caleb B. Smith of Indiana
is urged upon him and he may have to take him instead of Judd.
Caleb is almost as objectionable as Cameron, and for similar rea-
sons. He received good naturedly and with some compliments
my Cabinet which I gave him in pencil on a slip of paper, rather
in joke — as follows:
Lincoln and Judd Bates and Blair
Seward and Chase Dayton and Welles
He considers Chase the ablest and best man in America. He is
determined that Justice shall be done to all his friends, especially
to the Republicans of Democratic antecedents, and Mr. Seward
understands that he will not allow the Democratic . . . Re-
publicans of New York to be deprived of their full share of influ-
ence and patronage under his Administration. He is opposed to
all offers of compromise by Republicans which can in the least
affect the integrity of the principles as set forth in the Chicago
platform.
If he would act now on his own judgment and preferences he
would make a good Cabinet not much different from that I have
above mentioned. What he will ultimately do after reaching
Washington no one, not even himself, can tell. He wants to
please and satisfy all his friends.
As this letter Indicates, the Evening Post office was one
of the chief Eastern centers from which the "Democratic
Republicans" in these dark months tried to make their
influence felt upon the incoming Administration.
Lincoln's inaugural address was warmly applauded by
the Evening Post. Bryant had seen the President-elect
at the Astor House as he passed through New York, and
taken new faith in him. "Admirable as the inaugural ad-
dress is In all its parts — convincing in argument, concise
and pithy in manner and simple in style — the generous and
conciliatory tone is the most admirable," the poet wrote.
"Mr. Lincoln thoroughly refutes the theory of secession.
He points out its follies and warns the disaffected dis-
SOUTHERN SECESSION 279
tricts against Its consequences, but he does so In the kindly,
pitying manner of a father who reasons with an erring
child." On inauguration day the Evening Post had again
predicted war with the rebels, and again declared that
"the Unionists of our States will arise and deal them the
destruction they deserve." The Tribune regarded the
message In the same way. It especially praised "the tone
of almost tenderness," below which Lincoln's iron deter-
mination was evident. The message would carry to
twenty millions the tidings that the Federal Government
still lived, "with a Man at the head of it." The World
and Times spoke In similar terms.
But the secessionist press abused this noble state paper
roundly. The Herald, which had been praising Buchanan
as a wise and just statesman, and attacking Lincoln as an
incompetent, said that the new President might almost
as well have told his audience a funny story and let it go.
His speech was a body of vague generalities artfully de-
signed to allow its readers to make whatever interpreta-
tions they pleased. "It Is neither candid nor statesman-
like; nor does it possess any essential of dignity or patri-
otism. It would have caused a Washington to mourn,
and would have inspired Jefferson, Madison, or Jackson
with contempt." Gerard Hallock in the Journal of Com-
merce involved himself In a neat contradiction, writing:
"The President puts forth earnest professions of love
for the Union, and places justly and properly much stress
upon his duty to preserve it and execute the laws. But
he commits the practical error of setting up the theory
of an unbroken Union, against the stubborn fact of a
divided and dissevered one." Why, asked Bryant, was
it "just" for the President to dwell upon his duty to pre-
serve the Union, and yet "a practical error" to do so?
Thus the nation moved rapidly toward civil war.
While the Herald, Journal of Commerce, Express, and
Daily News still talked of compromise, actually they had
given up hope of it and spent their chief energies in de-
crying coercion ; the first-named having admitted as much
in an editorial of Feb. 3 headed "No Compromise Now
28o THE EVENING POST
Except That of a Peaceable Separation." In fact, all
these journals found In the Idea of a division much to
commend. At the end of January, Bennett's writers
began preaching Imperialistic doctrines. *'North Amer-
ica Is too large for one government," the Herald reflected
on the 24th, "but establish two and they In good time will
cover the continent." The next day, under the title,
"Manifest Destiny of the North and South," It drew an
alluring picture of the American conquests that would
follow the dissolution of the Union. Inevitably, the Con-
federacy would subdue Mexico, Cuba, and other Carib-
bean lands. The United States would conquer Canada.
The two great nations would be the most friendly of
allies. "Northern troops may yet have to repel invaders
of the possessions of slave-holders in Mexico and Vene-
zuela, and our fleet will joyfully aid In dispersing new
Spanish armadas on the coast of Cuba. Nor do we
doubt that . . . under the walls of Quebec, and on the
banks of the St. Lawrence, legions from Louisiana, Ala-
bama, and South Carolina will aid us." This glorious
vision of unlimited booty was repeatedly dwelt upon.
The Herald had less Northern influence than Its large
circulation would seem to Imply, and was hearkened to
chiefly at the South. Many secessionists, remembering
the business and social connections of the South with the
metropolis, and the large Democratic majority New York
generally gave, believed that the city would assist to
divide the North and aid the rebellion. "The New York
Herald and New York Evening Express have done much
toward disseminating this false theory," said the New
Orleans Picayune later. The Chicago Tribune that sum-
mer quoted a Southern visitor as saying "that we of the
North can have little or no idea of the pestilent Influence
which the New York News and other journals of that
sort have exerted upon the popular mind of that section."
Probably less harm was done the Union by Bennett's
erratic Ideas than by Greeley's Influential opinion that if
the South was determined to go, go she ought. Bryant's
editorials in the Evening Post, above those of any other
SOUTHERN SECESSION 281
New York journal, expressed an elevated, unwavering,
and steadying demand for loyalty to the Constitution.
He had no patience with Greeley's acquiescence In a pop-
ular-sovereignty doctrine of secession. He was a far
abler writer than any man on the staff of the Times or
World, even Raymond. His superior steadfastness and
shrewdness of judgment was strikingly Illustrated just
before the war began.
On April 3, as If by concert, the Tribune and Times
published long and emphatic editorials attacking Lincoln
for his alleged Indecision and Inactivity. The Tribune
headed Its editorial "Come to the Point!" and demanded
that a programme be laid down. Greeley apparently
cared little what this programme should be. "If the
Union is to be maintained at all hazards, let the word
be passed along the line that the laws are to be enforced.
. . . If the secession of the Gulf States — and of any
more that choose to follow — Is to be regarded as a fixed
fact, let that be proclaimed, and let the line of revenue
collection be established and maintained this side of
them." The Times devoted two columns to "Wanted —
A Policy." The Administration, it said, had fallen so
far short of public expectations that the Union was
weaker than a month before. Indeed, the Administration
had exhibited "a blindness and a stolidity without a paral-
lel In the history of intelligent statesmanship." Lincoln
had "spent time and strength in feeding rapacious and
selfish politicians, which should have been bestowed upon
saving the Union"; and "we tell him , . . that he must
go up to a higher level than he has yet reached, before he
can see and realize the high duties to which he has been
called." Such utterances lent too much support to the
Herald's constant statements that "the Lincoln Adminis-
tration is cowardly, mean, and vicious," its constant ref-
erences to "the incompetent, ignorant, and desperate
'Honest Abe.' "
In a crushing editorial next day, Bryant demolished
these peevish outbursts. First, he pointed out, it was
hard within thirty days to decide what course was best
282 THE EVENING POST
as regarded the seceding States and the wavering border
States. The Cabinet was said to be divided, and the
most careful reflection, Investigation, and debate was
necessary for a question so big with the fate of the repub-
lic. Second, how could the facile critics know that Lin-
coln had not fixed upon his policy, but concluded to make
It known by execution, not by a windy proclamation? *'If
Fort Sumter Is to be reinforced, should we give the rebels
previous notice?" There existed other considerations,
as the fact that every day officers in the army and navy
were going over to the rebels, and if Lincoln decided upon
an energetic course It would be indispensable to be able
to count on an energetic execution in every contingency.
This answer displayed an admirable patience — a patience
of which Bryant might well have had a larger stock in the
four years to come.
The first edition of the Evening Post on April 13 car-
ried the news that the bombardment of Fort Sumter had
begun, and carried also an editorial written with all Bry-
ant's high fervor:
This is a day which will be ever memorable in our annals. To-
day treason has risen from blustering words to cowardly deeds.
Men made reckless by a long life of political gambling — for years
cherishing treason next their hearts while swearing fealty to the
government — have at last goaded themselves on to murder a
small band of faithful soldiers. They have deliberately chosen the
issue of battle. To-day, who hesitates in his allegiance is a traitor
with them. . . .
To-day the nation looks to the government to put down treason
forever. ... It will not grudge the men or the money which
are needed. We have enjoyed for eighty years the blessings of
liberty and constitutional government. It is a small sacrifice we
are now to lay upon the altar. In the name of constitutional
liberty, in the name of law and order, in the name of all that is
dear to freemen, we shall put down treason and restore the
supremacy of the Constitution.
The day was one of intense excitement. The Evening
Post of Monday, April 15, reported that thousands of
eager inquirers had thronged the streets in the neighbor-
SOUTHERN SECESSION 283
hood of the office and packed the counting-room down-
stairs until there was no room for a single additional per-
son. The successive editions were seized upon madly.
At five the first rumor of Sumter^s surrender came over
the wires, and at five-thirty it was confirmed. Within a
space of seconds rather than minutes the fourth edition,
containing the complete news, was being cried on the
streets. The Herald next morning sold 135,000 copies,
a world's record. That Monday Bryant's leading edito-
rial, "The Union, Now and Forever," took its text in the
President's call for volunteers. "If he calls for only
75,000," said the Evening Post, "it is because he knows
that he can have a million if he needs them." George
Gary Eggleston has said that he and Bryant's other asso-
ciates were often amazed to see how calmly he would
write an editorial that proved full of intense eloquence,
every line blazing. This was such an editorial, ending in
a ringing peroration: " 'God speed the President I' is the
voice of millions of determined freemen to-day."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE CRITICAL DAYS OF THE CIVIL WAR
When Sumter brought the North to Its feet as one
man, as Lowell wrote, the press and general public be-
lieved the war would be brief. The best editorial judg-
ment in New York had been that the rebellion could be
strangled by a blockade alone. "A half dozen ships of
war stationed at the proper points is all that Is wanted,"
said the Times on Feb. ii, 1861. "In a few months' time
the Southern Confederacy would be completely starved
out." The Tribune, arguing Jan. 22 for closing the
Southern ports, had predicted that as a consequence "the
South will decline, and finally collapse. In utter humilia-
tion. And this will not result from bloody wars, but
from the peaceful operation of the laws of trade." On
the same date the Evening Post remarked that the seces-
sion disease required not cautery or the knife, but a little
judicious regimen. Uncle Sam might crush the seceding
States with ease. "He could devastate every cotton field,
and level every seaboard city In less than a year. If he
were so foolhardy and malignant as they have shown
themselves to be." It must be remembered that at the
time of all these utterances Virginia, North Carolina,
Tennessee, and Arkansas had not yet joined the South.
But In his call to arms just after Sumter Bryant allowed
himself to boast that every loyal arm was a match for ten
traitors. A pathetic Evening Post editorial of June 15,
"The Beginning of the End," following the Confederate
evacuation of Harper's Ferry, predicted that Jeflferson
Davis meant to make a desperate effort at Manassas, for
"his cause is on Its last legs, and unless he puts forth a
bold stroke now, It Is gone."
It was because the Tribune was so confident of an easy
victory that It raised the cry, "On to Richmond I" in
284
THE CIVIL WAR 285
June and early July. Simply because it shared the same
confidence, the Evening Post, with greater wisdom,
pleaded for deliberation and care, and carried editorials
with such headings as "Patience I'' (July i). After the
advance began, it thought that Jefferson Davis ought to
be captured within a month (July 17).
When upon this over-confidence fell the shock of the
rout at Bull Run, the Post felt it necessary to hearten the
North by minimizing the defeat. There was no need to
labor the moral that the war was going to be long and
hard, and Bryant was worried lest the public should be
depressed. Frederic Law Olmsted wrote him that "al-
though it is not best to say it publicly, you should know,
at least, that the retreat was generally of the worst char-
acter, and is already in its results most disastrous." The
Post harped for some time upon the lesson of the need
for better discipline and officers. But it also tried to main-
tain that Manassas was the Sebastopol of the rebels, a
powerful natural position; that "in any fair, open, hand-
to-hand fight, the Union troops are too much for the
seceders" ; and even that the moral effect of the battle
would be in the North's favor. Greeley felt the same
impulse when, under the reaction from his "On to Rich-
mond!" mischief, he promised that the Tribune would
cease nagging the army, and devote itself to inspiriting the
public.
As soon as they perceived that the war would be bitter,
the editors of the Post took their stand with what the
historian Rhodes calls the radical party of the North;
the party of Secretary Chase, Senators Trumbull and
Sumner, and Gen. Carl Schurz. The paper's Washing-
ton correspondent early (May 3) divided the Cabinet
into radicals — Welles, Chase, Blair — and conservatives
— Seward, Bates, and Smith. The radicals wanted the
war prosecuted with intense energy, no thought of com-
promise, and no particular regard for the feelings of the
border States and Northern Democrats. Always ardent,
sometimes precipitate, they disliked the cautious Seward,
and sometimes lost patience with Lincoln himself. In
286 THE EVENING POST
the end their policies were usually adopted, but Lincoln's
wisdom lay in not adopting them prematurely; as Schurz
admitted in 1864, when he wrote a schoolmate that he
had often thought Lincoln wrong, but in the end had
always found him right.
Much of the radicalism of Bryant and Parke Godwin
was quite sound. In the first month the Evening Post
published- HQ^ fewer than four editorials asking for a
hurried and strict blockade of the South, and prophesying
that it would "put an end to the rebeUion more quickly
than any other plan of action." On July 20 it anticipated
Ericsson by asking for ironclads, recalling that Robert L.
Stevens had begun building a floating armored battery
under an act of Congress passed in 1842, but had never
finished it. The paper thought that ''half a dozen thor-
oughly shot-proof gunboats, of light draft," could silence
Forts Sumter, Pulaski, and Jackson, or better still, run
past them and dominate Charleston, Savannah, and New
Orleans. It asked for a national draft on July 9, 1862,
nine months before Congress passed a law for one. Lin-
coln's early policy was to free and protect all Southern
negroes who, having been employed in the military service
of the Confederacy, came within the lines of the Northern
commands, but this did not satisfy Bryant. On Dec. 6,
1 861, he asked Congress to confiscate the property of the
rebels, appoint State commissioners of forfeiture to take
charge of it, and as fast as negroes came within Northern
reach, make them freemen.
Bryant was in direct communication with radical offi-
cials in Washington and radical commanders in the field.
He corresponded with Secretary Chase; Gen. James
Wadsworth and Gen. E. A. Hitchcock wrote him start-
ingly frank letters; and he heard regularly from Consul-
General Bigelow in Paris. The slowness with which the
war dragged on was deplored by the Evening Post even
as it was deplored by Chase, Schurz, and Sumner. The
paper did not criticize Lincoln with the signal lack of
judgment Greeley often showed, much less with the ran-
corous hostility of Bennett's Herald or the now Demo-
THE CIVIL WAR 287
cratic World. But by the middle of September, 1861,
it was censuring him for the reluctance with which he ^^
signed the Confiscation Act, and reminding him that "his
official position is in the lead, and not in the rear." On
Oct. 1 1 it published an editorial, "Playing With War,"
in which it criticized the Administration for lukewarm-
ness and declared that the public wanted active meas-
ures; "the more energetic, the more effective these meas-
ures, the more telling the blow, the more they will
applaud."
These complaints, the complaints of a large party all
over the North and of an able Congressional group, re-
doubled as the first half of 1862 passed with almost no
news from Virginia but that of disasters. On July 8
the Post asked three sharp questions. Why had enlist-
ments been stopped three or four months earlier — for
Stanton, believing success at hand, had foolishly halted
the recruiting on April 3 ? Why had the militia of the
loyal States never, since the war began, been reorganized,
drilled, and armed? And why had no great arsenals of ^
munitions been collected? "We have been sluggish in our
preparations and timid in our execution," the paper ad-
monished Washington. "Let us change all this." Such
complaints were natural and useful in the dark hour
when McClellan's army recoiled after bloody fighting
from its first advance on Richmond. Bryant also did well
to press his attacks upon corruption in government con-
tracts, and political favoritism in military appointments.
When this month Congress authorized the use of negroes
in camp service and trench digging, he reasonably found
fault with the Administration for its slowness in acting
upon the authorization.
But Bryant's "radicalism" was not commendable when
he complained of the delay in emancipating the slaves;
of the prominence of Northern Democrats, not hostile
to slavery, in the army and at Washington; and of the
consideration given border State sentiment. Had Lin-
coln acted rashly in the early months of the war, he would
have forced Kentucky and Missouri into the arms of the
2 88 THE EVENING POST
South, and he thought (Sept. 22, 1861) that "to lose
Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game."
Had he made haste to emancipate the slaves, he would
irretrievably have offended powerful elements in the
North and the Border States which were willing to fight
for the Union, but not to fight against slavery. Military
historians have generally condemned Lincoln's interfer-
ence with McClellan's plans in the early spring of 1862,
an interference into which he was forced by such pressure
as Bryant was exerting. The Evening Post was unjust to
Lincoln when it explained (July 7, 1862) why the people
suspected him of indecision. "He has trusted too much
to his subordinates; he has not been sufficiently peremp-
tory with them, either with his generals or his Secretaries;
and his whole Administration has been marked by a cer-
tain tone of languor and want of earnestness which has
not corresponded with the wishes of the people." It was
unjust when it spoke again (July 23) of Lincoln's "slum-
bers," and of the "drowsy influence of border State
opiates."
In condemning the military Incapacity of the Union
generals in the East the newspaper was upon firmer
ground. McClellan became commander of the Army of
the Potomac immediately after Bull Run, and was made
commander-in-chief of all the armies on Nov. i, 1861.
As the new year arrived without any movement, Bryant
began grumbling over the idea held by many officers
"that the wisest way of conducting the war is to weary
out the South with delays." He argued that if the North
did not show more energy, France or England might even-
tually interfere. "If we understand the case," he wrote
caustically on Feb. 6, "Gen. McClellan has infinite claims
upon our gratitude for the discipline which he has given
to the army, but that discipline Is still too Imperfect to
warrant any movement." He pointed out that the enemy
was relying upon this Inefficiency, and was so confident
of the situation in Virginia that Beauregard had just
been dispatched to reinforce the Confederate army in the
West. A few days later Bryant received a letter which
THE CIVIL WAR 289
Gen. Wadsworth wrote him from camp, denouncing Mc-
Clellan roundly:
I repeat the conclusion intimated in my last letter. The com-
mander-in-chief is almost inconceivably incompetent, or he has
his own plans — widely different from those entertained by the
people of the North — of putting dovv^n this Rebellion. I have just
read the gloomy reports from Europe, threatening intervention,
etc. In my despair, I write in the faint hope of arousing our
Press to speak out what is in the hearts of ninety-nine one hun-
dredths of the army, and nine-tenths of the country — the com-
mander-in-chief is incompetent or disloyal. I have come slowly
to this conclusion. No man greeted his appointment more cor-
dially than I did. There is not the shadow of any personal feeling
in my conviction. I have nothing personal to complain of. I must
again caution you, that all this is strictly confidential.
Wadsworth reiterated this opinion all spring, while
Bryant heard from Gen. John Pope and Gen. Hitchcock
in the same vein. It was not until May 5 that McClellan
fought his first battle, though he had held command since
the preceding July. The Evening Post was full of hope
in the Peninsular campaign that followed, warning Mc-
Clellan not to overestimate the enemy's forces, and that
"hitherto our great fault has been that we have not fol-
lowed up our successes." Its dejection was proportion-
ately great when in the first days of July the campaign
ended in failure, and McClellan withdrew his army from
the position he had reached immediately in front of Rich-
mond. The disgust of the radicals with McClellan was
now complete, and the Post was as eloquent as the
Tribune or Times in attacking him. On July 3 it mourn-
fully remarked that "while the cause cannot perhaps be
defeated even by incompetence," it could be gravely im-
perilled. "We have suffered long enough from inaction
and overcaution. Henceforth we must have action. . . .
If it be asked who is the best man, we can only say that
it is Mr. Lincoln's business to know, but bitter experience
has taught us that Gen. McClellan is not." Lincoln was
admonished that he must open his eyes without a mo-
ment's delay to the exigency, dismiss every slothful or
290 THE EVENING POST
imbecile leader, infuse energy and unity into his Cabinet,
and recruit new armies. It was now that the Post began
asking for conscription, while it gave a ringing endorse-
ment to Lincoln's call for "three hundred thousand more."
The Herald, incapable of blaming a Democrat like
McClellan, in July attacked Stanton for the army's fail-
ure, but the Evening Post showed that McClellan him-
self had said that he had more than enough troops to
take Richmond. The Chicago Tribune later accused
it of injustice to Lincoln in saying that McClellan should
have been dismissed earlier, since Lincoln could not do
so without offending loyal Democrats. That, rejoined the
Post, is precisely the ground for our objection to Mc-
Clellan; he was retained for political, not military,
reasons.
These July days were the days in which Lincoln grew
thin and haggard, Seward was sent upon a circuit of the
North to arouse public men in support of the new enlist-
ment programme, and Lowell wrote, "I don't see how
we are to be saved but by a miracle." Who should suc-
ceed McClellan? Chase and Welles believed that the
best general in view for the eastern command was John
Pope, whose victory at Island No. lo had given him
national fame; and Bryant and Godwin, who had had
some personal contact with Pope, agreed. He was called
east and given the Army of Virginia. The chief com-
mand, however, went to Halleck, whom the Evening Post
distrusted as much as Welles did, and had already (July
23) described as slower and less enterprising than
McClellan.
To Halleck the Evening Post said that his motto must
be that of the Athenian orator, action — action — action.
The country wanted a Marshal Vorwarts; should its
historians have none to record but General Trenches,
General Strategy, or General Let-Escape? A few days
later (Aug. 19) it pubHshed an editorial headed "On-
ward! Onward!" "The one essential element in our
military movements now is celerity," it urged. "Prompt-
ness in filling up the ranks already thinned by the war,
THE CIVIL WAR 291
promptness In organizing and sending forward new regi-
ments, promptness In moving on the enemy." Bryant
had written Lincoln protesting against the sluggishness
of military operations, and under pressure from other
radicals, early in August the editor visited Washington
to remonstrate. Mayor Opdyke, President Charles King
of Columbia, and many other Influential New Yorkers
went at about the same time for the same purpose. Bry-
ant tells us that he had a long talk with Lincoln, "in
which I expressed myself plainly and without reserve,
though courteously. He bore It well, and I must say that
I left him with a perfect conviction of the excellence of
his intentions and the singleness of his purposes, though
with sorrow for his indecision." A movement immedi-
ately began in New York to organize the radicals under
a local committee.
In their editorials on military policy Bryant, Parke
Godwin, and Charles Nordhoff were guided by officers
who wrote from the field or whom they met in the city;
and their comments were remarkably sound. At this
moment, for example, the Evening Post sensibly ridiculed
the talk of a rebel army 200,000 strong. It repeatedly
expressed a conviction that never, neither at Manassas,
Yorktown, or Richmond, had the enemy been superior.
"There is excellent reason to believe that the rebels
never had more than 40,000 men at Manassas; It is
a notorious fact that when McClellan arrived on the
Peninsula, there were not 10,000 men at Yorktown. At
Fair Oaks Sumner's corps and Casey's division repulsed
the whole rebel army. ... A close examination of the
battles before Richmond proves that the rebels never
fought more than 15,000 to 25,000 men there on any one
day." McClellan, it thought, had been frightened by
Idle fears. But when Pope failed more ignominiously
than McClellan, and was soundly drubbed at the second
battle of Bull Run (Aug. 30, 1862), the Evening Post
did not confine itself to military topics. It fell again
into its unjustifiable censure of Lincoln. The President
was honest, devoted, and determined —
292 THE EVENING POST
and yet the effect of his management has been such that, with
all his personal popularity, in spite of the general confidence in his
good intentions, and in spite of the ability and energy of several
of his advisers, a large part of the nation is utterly discouraged
and despondent. Many intelligent and even vrise persons, indeed,
do not scruple to express their suspicions that treachery lurks in
the highest quarters, and that either in the army or in the Cabinet
purposes are entertained which are equivalent to treason.
All this has grown out of the weakness and vacillation of the
Administration, which itself has grown out of Mr. Lincoln's own
want of decision and purpose. We pretend to no state secrets,
but we have been told, upon what we deem good authority, that
no such thing as a continued, unitary, deliberate Administration
exists; that the President's brave willingness to take all responsi-
bility has quite neutralized the idea of a conjoint responsibility;
and that orders of the highest importance are issued and move-
ments commanded, which Cabinet officers learn of as other people
do, or, what is worse, which the Cabinet officers disapprove and
protest against. Each Cabinet officer, again, controls his own de-
partment pretty much as he pleases, without consultation with the
President or with his coadjutors. (Sept. 15, 1862.)
At this juncture the Times and World were vehemently
demanding a drastic change of Cabinet officers; and in
Washington Congressional sentiment was shaping Itself
toward the crisis of December, when a Senatorial caucus
demanded the resignation of the conservative Seward.
The Herald, panic-stricken, was telling McClellan that
he was "master of the situation" — that Is, he might be
dictator; and calling upon him "to Insist upon the modifi-
cation and reconstruction of the Cabinet." It was not
unnatural for Bryant to give way to his old fear that the
Administration would "fight battles to produce a com-
promise Instead of a victory."
As befitted such a warlike journal, the Evening Post
had Its own strategic plan, which It first outlined Oct.
5, 1 86 1, and thenceforth expounded every few weeks
until the closing campaigns. Briefly, it held that there
was no Important object In the capture of Richmond;
that the indispensable aim was to destroy the Confederate
armies, not to take cities. The Southern capital could
THE CIVIL WAR 293
be easily removed to Knoxvllle, Petersburg, or Mont-
gomery. Except In so far as was Involved In opening the
Mississippi and applying the blockade, It opposed the
"anaconda plan" of Scott and McClellan, the plan of
attacking with a half dozen armies from a half dozen
sides. The rebels. It pointed out, had the advantage of
Inside lines and could rapidly shift their forces to defeat
one Federal onslaught after another. The true strategy
was for the Union itself to seize the Inside lines. This
could be done by concentrating its heaviest forces in
those great Appalachian valleys which ran south through
Virginia and Tennessee Into the heart of the Confederacy.
The population was In large part friendly; the Ohio
River offered a base of supplies; the flanks could be se-
cured by guarding the passes or gaps; and as the Union
armies moved southward in the Tennessee and Shenan-
doah Valleys, they could force the evacuation of the bor-
der States. From the valleys they could fall at will upon
Virginia, upon North Carolina, upon Georgia, upon Mis-
sissippi, and could rend the Confederacy in twain.
But the good and bad sides of the Evening Post's
radicalism were best exhibited In Its eagerness for eman-
cipation. It was a noble object for which to contend, yet
no one doubts that Lincoln was right In his long hesita-
tion, and In declaring to Greeley so late as the summer of
1862 that his paramount object was to save the Union,
and not either to save or destroy slavery.
Even in the month of Bull Run the Evening Post,
while rebuking a New England minister who asked for a
national declaration in favor of emancipation, believed
that the conflict, "though not a war directly aimed at the
release of the slave, must Indirectly work out the result
In many ways." When Fremont Issued his hasty proc-
lamation of September, 1861, liberating all slaves in
Missouri, which Lincoln sensibly revoked, the Post called
it "the most popular act of the war," and was much of-
fended by the President. By October it was dropping the
uncertainty of tone in which it had spgken of the sub-
ject. Early that month It said that if It became neces-
294 THE EVENING POST
sary to extinguish slavery In order to put down the rebel-
lion, it must be given no mercy; a few days later it de-
manded the release of all captured slaves and their
enlistment as cooks, trench-diggers, and other auxiliaries ;
while on Sept. 25 It virtually called for emancipation.
The paper believed that It "would change the whole
aspect of the war, bring to our side a host of new aUIes,
call off the attention of the rebels from their present plan,
and hasten the period of their subjugation." Bryant
wrote just before Thanksgiving upon the probable great
result of the war; and "that the extinction of slavery
will form a part of it," he declared, "we have not the
shadow of a doubt."
During the first half of 1862 a considerable part of
the Post's criticism of Lincoln sprang from Its impatience
over his reluctance to free the slaves. This was the
attitude of Sumner, of Thaddeus Stevens, of Carl Schurz,
of Greeley in the Tribune and nearly all the Tribune's
great constituency; most of Bryant's friends took It, and
many, as Lydia Maria Child, wrote requesting editorial
pleas for emancipation. It is an interesting coincidence,
that on the very day, July 22, 1862, that Lincoln read
his emancipation proclamation to the Cabinet, and upon
Seward's suggestion put it aside, the Evening Post's lead-
ing editorial was an impassioned plea for such a docu-
ment. Lincoln was only waiting for a victory, that his
proclamation might seem to be supported by a military
success. Possibly Bryant learned this from his friend
Chase. At any rate, although the Evening Post was bit-
terly grieved by McClellan's failure to win a decisive
victory at Antletam In September, and wrote angrily that
such drawn battles were "not war but murder; butchery
which fills all right-minded men with horror," it knew
that emancipation might follow Lee's retreat from Mary-
land soil. Just after the battle Bryant wrote an edi-
torial (Sept. 17) called, "While the Iron is Hot." There
are crucial junctures, he said, when great blows must be
struck at great evils. Such a juncture had arrived; "a
proclamation of freedom by martial law would be hailed,
THE CIVIL WAR 295
we believe, by an almost universal shout of joy In all the
loyal States, as the death knell of the rebellion." Just
a week later the Evening Post was rejoicing over the
President's announcement of his forthcoming proclama-
tion:
It puts us right before Europe; it brings us back to our tradi-
tions; it animates our soldiers with the same spirit which led our
forefathers to victory under Washington; they are fighting to-
day, as the Revolutionary patriots fought, in the interests of the
human race, for human rights. . . .
There was a lesson for all radicals In the resentment
which, at even that late date, many Northern newspapers
showed over the President's act. The Journal of Com-
merce had ''only anticipations of evil from It," and be-
lieved that an Immense majority of Northerners would
view it with profound regret. The Herald predicted that
it would ruin the white laborers of the West by bringing
the negroes north to compete with them. The World
held that It was nugatory — the South would have to be
whipped before It could be given any effect. The Courrier
des Etats Unis had deplored many errors since the re-
public "began rolling down the slope which promises to
land It In the abyss," but It thought this blunder the most
wanton and complete. What would such papers and the
great body of citizens they represented have said six
months earlier?
Another and highly praiseworthy evidence of the "radi-
calism" of the Evening Post was Its eagerness for a far-
reaching system of taxation, and for having the financial
conduct of the war kept as strictly as possible upon a
sound-money basis. Having been active In obtaining
Chase's appointment to the Treasury, Bryant felt a spe-
cial solicitude for that department. During the latter
half of 1 86 1 he repeatedly urged Congress to tax to the
limit. He believed that the government should be able
to pay for the war by heavy taxes, supplemented by the
sale of long-term bonds, and only as a final resource
should Issue Treasury notes payable on demand. It was
296 THE EVENING POST
a disappointment to the paper that Chase took no early
steps for the development of an appropriate tax system.
A remarkable editorial of Feb. i, 1862, pictured the
wealth of the nation : the universal possession of property,
the high per capita prosperity, the bursting granaries,
the rich output of precious metals. It recalled the fact
that three times the national debt contracted in great
wars had been wiped out, while in the thirties the treasury
overflowed until men racked their brains with plans for
spending the superfluity. Never was a nation more cheer-
fully inclined to accept high taxes; "the general feeling
is one of impatience that Congress is so slow in perform-
ing this necessary duty."
As early as Jan. 15 the Evening Post had uttered Its
first warning against a reliance upon paper money. Nat-
urally, the passage of the greenback legislation of Feb.
25, 1862, for the issue of $150,000,000 In legal-tender
notes, dismayed It. It believed the law grossly unconsti-
tutional, and was certain that it would be disastrous in
effect. Secretary Chase wrote to Bryant, on Feb. 4,
arguing for the bill, but in vain. "Your feelings of re-
pugnance to the legal-tender clause can hardly be greater
than my own," said Chase; "but I am convinced that, as
a temporary measure, It Is Indispensably necessary." He
thought that a minority of the people would not sustain
the notes unless they were made a tender for debt, and
that this minority could control the majority to all prac-
tical intents. But the Evening Post, like all the other
New York journals save two, opposed the bill to the last.
Bryant did not believe that the measure could be tempo-
rary, as Chase put it. In an editorial called "A Deluge
at Hand," he compared the law to the first breach made
in one of the Holland dikes :
In all the examples which the world has seen, the evil of an
irredeemable paper currency runs its course as certainly as the
smallpox or any other disease. The first effects are of such a
nature that the remedy is never applied ; there is no disposition to
apply it. The inflation of the currency pleases a large class of
THE CIVIL WAR 297
persons by a rise of prices and an extraordinary activity in busi-
ness. People buy to sell at higher prices; property passes rapidly
from hand to hand ; fortunes are made ; the community is delirious
with speculation. At such a time suppose Mr. Chase to step in
and say: "My friends, this fun has been going on long enough;
you must be tired by this time of speculation. Let us repeal the
legal-tender clause in the Treasury-note bill and return to specie
payments." What sort of reception would this proposal meet ?
His prophecy was fulfilled. Successive Issues of legal-
tender notes followed, until the total reached $450,000,-
000; prices soared, and the cost of the war was im-
mensely enhanced; and at one time $39 in gold would buy
$100 in currency. The Evening! Post, it may be added,
was the first newspaper to suggest the issue of interest-
bearing banknotes as an expedient for the gradual con-
traction of the currency, a measure Congress adopted
in March, 1863.
Meanwhile, the Northern armies failed to make prog-
ress. When in December, 1862, the criminally incom-
petent Burnside attacked Lee's entrenched army at
Fredericksburg, and was flung back with the loss of
nearly 13,000 men, an outburst of anger came from the
whole New York press. "The Late Massacre" was the
heading the Evening Post gave its editorial of Dec. 18,
in which, three days after Burnside fell back, it could not
understand why he was not already removed. "How
long is such intolerable and wicked blundering to con-
tinue ? What does the President wait for ? We hear that
a great, a horrible crime has been committed; we do not
hear that those guilty of it are under arrest; we do not
hear even that they are to be removed from the places of
trust which they have shown themselves so incapable
to fill." The Democratic press, led by the Herald, de-
manded the reinstatement of McClellan, while the radical
press wanted an entirely new general. Once more, like
the Tribune, Herald, and World, the Evening Post
blamed Lincoln for his generals' mistakes. "The Presi-
dent has required too little from his agents; his good
nature has led him to be less strict toward them than
298 THE EVENING POST
he ought to be, while at the same time his confidence in
himself and his advisers has led him, unfortunately, to
deny himself that general counsel of the nation by which
he might have benefited had he kept up confidential rela-
tions between himself and the people." Yet it had praised
the choice of Burnside, calling him an energetic, calm,
and judicious leader, who had the prestige of success in
his favor.
As the spring campaign of 1863 opened, the Post re-
flected the renewed hopefulness of the North. It was not
pleased by the selection of Hooker to be the new com-
mander, but it was encouraged by his rapid reorganization
of the army and restoration of fighting discipline. The
new advance had the old result — disaster. On May 7,
lamenting Hooker's ignominious defeat at Chancellors-
ville, the Evening Post condemned his strategy as incom-
prehensible. It was quite right in its general verdict,
and in a number of specific criticisms, as when it said that
the disposition of the forces under Sedgwick had been
insane. But we can hardly say as much of its censure
of Hooker and the Administration for an alleged failure
to use the needed reserves. There were 60,000 men
among the Washington defenses, it declared, who might
have been replaced by militia and thrown into the battle.
As a matter of fact. Hooker had failed to employ 35,000
fresh troops right at hand; his army was large enough,
and much too large for his capacity to handle it. It fell
back across the Rappahannock, and the stage was set
for Lee's descent upon Pennsylvania.
Rhodes states that "by the rniddle of June (1863) the
movements of Lee in Virginia warned the North of the
approaching invasion" that culminated at Gettysburg.
But the readers of the Evening Post were warned of it by
a column editorial on May 21, two weeks before Lee took
his first preliminary steps. That such a prophecy could
be made shows how conversant with the military situa-
tion the great New York journals were kept by their
war correspondents, their files of Southern newspapers,
and their high official advisers. Bryant wrote that he
THE CIVIL WAR 299
believed Jefferson Davis was preparing his last desperate
stroke, In the knowledge that Grant might soon wrest
the whole Mississippi from him, that there would be
more Union cavalry raids like Stoneman's and Grierson's,
and that even If the Confederacy beat off another attack
like Hooker's, It would prove a Pyrrhic victory:
There are unmistakable indications that Davis is quietly with-
drawing troops from the outlying camps along' the seacoasts to
reinforce Lee, which movement will be continued, we think, until
that general has a command of 150,000 to 200,000 men. As soon
as it is ready Lee will move, we conjecture, not in the direction
of Washington, but of the Shenandoah Valley, with a view to
crossing the Potomac somewhere between Martinsburg and Cum-
berland. It will be easy for him ... to defend his flanks . . .
and to maintain also uninterrupted communications with Staunton
and the Central Virginia railway. The valley itself is filled with
rapidly ripening harvests, and once upon the river supplies may
be got from Pennsylvania.
The editorial proposed either the occupation of the
Shenandoah in force, or a new attack on Lee, and advised
the Maryland and Pennsylvania authorities to fortify
their towns and raise fresh bodies of troops.
When the Invasion actually began, parts of the North
were frightened, but the Evening Post was almost glee-
ful. On June 17, when news came that the first Con-
federates were across the Potomac, it expressed the hope
that Lee would push on so that he might be cut off and
destroyed. Ten days later, when the rebels had reached
Carlisle, Pa., It was jubilant: "It is time for the nation
to rise; the great occasion has come, and now. If we had
prepared ourselves for It, and had collected and drilled
reserve forces, we might end the rebellion in a month.'*
On June 29, two days before the battle began, it con-
gratulated Meade on an unsurpassed military opportu-
nity, and urged three considerations upon him. He should
Insist that Washington help and not embarrass him, he
should ask for all the reserves available, "and then, hav-
ing given battle in due time, let him avoid the mistake
of McClellan at Antietam, by pursuing the enemy until
300 THE EVENING POST
he Is completely overthrown." That the chance for
pursuit would come the Post never doubted.
The close of the three days' struggle at Gettysburg left
Bryant confident that the turning point of the war had
been passed. "There is every reason to hope that the
rebel army of Virginia will never recross the Potomac
as an army," he said on July 6; but whether Lee
crossed it or not, "the rebellion has received a staggering
blow, from which it would scarcely seem possible for
it to recover." The next day he insisted that the rebels
be followed at once and destroyed, but in his exultation
he accepted philosophically Meade's failure to advance.
II
At this moment of rejoicing over Gettysburg and Vicks-
burg the city was horrified and humiliated by the Draft
Riots, a sharp reminder that the home front was only
less important than the battle front. Of this fact the
Evening Post had never lost sight. Bryant's editorials
always held in view the necessity of sustaining the spirits
of the North. For every "radical" utterance criticizing
the Administration's faults there were ten exhorting the
people to support its central aims. In the first months
of the war he published two martial lyrics, one addressed
to European enemies who hoped for the ruin of the re-
public, and one a plea for enlistment:
Few, few were they whose swords of old
Won the fair land in which we dwell ;
But we are many, we who hold
The grim resolve to guard it well.
Strike, for that broad and goodly land,
Blow after blow, till men shall see
That Might and Right move hand in hand,
And glorious must their triumph be !
It was natural for New York city to have a lusty anti-
war press when the struggle for the Union began. It had
been Democratic since Jackson's time, and remained
Democratic during the Civil War. Its social connections
THE CIVIL WAR 301
with the South had always been close, while till i860 its
merchants and bankers had stronger business ties with the
South than with the West. After the war began many
Southern sympathizers, refugees from the border States,
settled in the city.
But the capture of Fort Sumter turned all that indif-
ference to the secession movement which William H.
Russell had noted a few weeks earlier into a passionate
enthusiasm of the majority for the Federal cause. At
3 p. m. on April 18, the day the first troops passed
through New York southward, an excited crowd gath-
ered before the Express office and demanded a display
of the American flag. It surged up Park Row and made
the same demand of the Day Book and Daily News (the
latter Fernando Wood's organ), and thence poured down
Nassau Street and Broadway to the Journal of Commerce
building, which also hurried out a flag. Already the
Herald had decorated its windows with bunting. The
Monday after Sumter, Bennett had braved popular feel-
ing with another demand for peace, but now he hurried
to Washington, pledged his support of the Union to
President Lincoln, and saw that beginning with the Her-
ald for April 17, that policy was adopted.
Unfortunately, the tone of the pro-slavery press con-
tinued so objectionable that on Aug. 22, 1861, the post-
oflice forbade mail transportation to the Journal of Com-
merce, Day Book, Daily News, Freeman's Journal, and
Brooklyn Eagle, all ^wt of which had been presented by
a Federal Grand Jury. The Daily News was suppressed
in New Jersey by the Federal Marshal. Gerard Hal-
lock of the Journal of Commerce, complaining of threats
of violence and an organized movement to cut off his sub-
scribers and advertising, sold his interest to David Stone
and Wm. C. Prime, and the paper became less offensive.
The Day Book permanently and the Daily News tempo-
rarily ceased publication. The foreign-language press
also failed to show due patriotism, many French citizens
in August signing a petition for the suppression of the
Courrier des Etats Unis as disloyal, and the Westchester
302 THE EVENING POST
grand jury presenting the Staats-Zeitung and National-
Zeitiing as disseminators of treason. The Worlds chang-
ing hands, became under the able Manton Marble, who
had recently been an employee of the Post, a leader of the
''copperhead" press.
There is no need to quote from the World, Daily News,
and Journal of Commerce to show how, boldly when they
dared, covertly when they did not, they continued to at-
tack the Union cause. Their methods were defined by
the Evening Post of May 20, 1863, in a "Recipe for a
Democratic Paper," which may be briefly summarized:
(i) Magnify all rebel successes and minimize all Federal vic-
tories; if the South loses 18,000 men say 8,000 men, and if the
North loses 1 1,000 say 21,000.
(2) Calumniate all energetic generals like Sherman, Grant,
and Rosecrans; call worthless leaders like Halleck and Pope the
master generals of the age.
(3) Whenever the Union suffers a reverse, declare that the
nation is weary of this slow war ; and ask how long this fratricidal
conflict will be allowed to continue.
(4) Expatiate upon the bankruptcies, high prices, stock jobbers,
gouging profiteers and "shoddy men."
(5) Abuse Lincoln and the Cabinet in two ways: say they are
weak, timid, vacillating, and incompetent; and that they are
tyrannous, harsh, and despotic.
(6) Protest vehemently against "nigger" brigadiers, and the
atrocity of arming the slaves against their masters.
(7) Don't advise open resistance to the draft. But clamor
against it in detail; suggest doubts of its constitutionality; de-
nounce the $300 clause; say that it makes an odious distinction
between rich and poor ; and refer learnedly to the military autoc-
racies of France and Prussia.
The copperhead politicians were as active as the cop-
perhead press. At their head was Mayor Wood, who
ran for reelection in the fall of 1861 and was opposed by
Bryant's friend George Opdyke. Called a blackguard by
the Tribune and a miscreant by the Evening Post, Wood
based his campaign upon denunciation of the abolitionists
THE CIVIL WAR 303
and appeals to racial prejudice. In a speech reported by
the Post of Nov. 29 he declared that Lincoln had brought
the nation to the verge of ruin, that the negro-philes
would prosecute the war as long as they could share the
money spent upon it, and that "they will get Irishmen
and Germans to fill up the regiments under the idea that
they will themselves remain at home to divide the plun-
der." Just before election day the Post gave part of its
editorial page to the following bit of drama :
FERNANDO IN A PORTER HOUSE
AN OCCURRENCE UP-TOWN ,* NOT A FANCY SKETCH
(Scene: A porter house in the 2 2d ward. Proprietor behind
the counter. Behind him a row of bottles, etc. Enter Fernando
and a voter.)
Fernando: Good morning, my dear friend. Please let me
and my friend have something to drink. (Glasses are set before
them and a decanter. They help themselves. Fernando throws
a double eagle upon the counter, waving away the offer to give
back change.) You will support me, I suppose?
Proprietor (quietly depositing the money in the till): "Yes, I
shall support you for the State prison. You have been up for a
place there, I believe.
Fernando (going out and coming back): By the way, you did
not mean what you said just now?
Proprietor: Yes, I did mean just that. You deserve State
prison and would have gone there three years ago if you had not
cheated the law.
Fernando: Will you give me my change?
Proprietor: No, I will not. I want it to show my neighbors
how you tried to influence my vote.
(Exit Fernando, crestfallen)
Opdyke, with the first war enthusiasm behind him,
won the Mayoralty election from the egregious Wood.
But the strength of the Democrats, which in large degree
meant the strength of the anti-war party, was thereafter
triumphant in every election till Grant took Richmond.
The State and Congressional campaign of 1862, coming
during the dark period after the Peninsular campaign
and the drawn battle of Antietam, aroused the Evening
304 THE EVENING POST
Post, Times and Tribune to great exertions. Horatio
Seymour, the "submissionist" candidate, contested the
Governorship with Gen. James Wadsworth. His
speeches, wrote Bryant, have a direct tendency to dis-
courage our loyal troops and sustain the hopes of the
South. The Post denied his echo of the World^s and
Herald* s statements that the Administration was a fail-
ure. "It has been a grand and brilliant success. History
will so account it." Lincoln, predicted the Post, need
only give rein to the Northern determination, and his
name "will stand on the future annals of his country
illustrated by a renown as pure and undying as that of
George Washington." But Seymour easily won, obtain-
ing 54,2^3 votes in New York city against 22,523 given
Wadsworth; and the Democrats swept the Congressional
districts, including one in which they had nominated Fer-
nando Wood.
One factor in this result, said the Evening Post, was
the alarm many had taken at the threat of the draft.
The World played upon this alarm, and both it and the
Herald attacked the emancipation proclamation as a
change in the objects of the war; to which Bryant re-
plied that the Revolution had begun to assert the rights
of the Colonies within the British Empire, and had
shortly become a war to take them out of it. Bryant
in the spring of 1863 characterized the Express as an
organ "which has called repeatedly upon the mob to oust
the regular government at Washington, and upon the
army to proclaim McClellan its chief at all hazards";
while the Journal of Commerce, he said, "has always de-
nounced the war, and even now argues . . . that the
allegiance of the citizens is due to the State, and not to
the Federal Government." Some of the most promi-
nent men of the city — Tilden, James Brooks, S. F. B.
Morse, August Belmont, David E. Wheeler, and others
— met at Delmonico's on Feb. 6, 1863, and formed a plan
for circulating copperhead doctrines, or, as they put it,
for "the diffusion of knowledge"; whence the Post nick-
named them "diffusionists."
THE CIVIL WAR 305
When the Draft Act was enforced throughout the
North just after Gettysburg, disorders occurred in widely
scattered centers; and it was inevitable that they should
be gravest in New York. Not merely did the city con-
tain many half disloyal Americans of native birth. It
was full of a class of Irishmen who had proved especially
responsive to the demagogues opposing the war. Clashes
between the Irish and negroes had been common for a
decade. In August, 1862, a mob in Brooklyn attacked
a factory in which blacks were working, and tried to set
It afire with the negroes inside. Similar riots, the Post
remarked, had disgraced several Western cities. "In
every case Irish laborers have been incited to take part
in these lawless attempts; and the cunning ringleaders
and originators of these mutinies, who are not Irishmen,
have thus sought to kill two birds with one stone — to ex-
cite a strong popular prejudice against the Irish, while
they used them to wreak their spite against the blacks."
The copperhead press in the early July days preceding
the first drawing of draft numbers was filled with abuse
of conscription. The Herald, to be sure, which professed
neutrality between the "niggerhead" press (the Evening
Post, Times, and Tribune) and the copperhead papers,
advocated the draft as a means of hastening Union vic-
tory, though it abused Lincoln as a nincompoop. But the
World spoke of Lincoln's "wanton exercise of arbitrary
powers," and predicted that if the war was carried on
to enforce the emancipation proclamation a million men,
not three hundred thousand, would have to be conscripted.
"A measure," it said of the Draft act, "which could not
have been ventured upon in England even in those dark
days when the press-gang filled the English ships of war
with slaves . . . was thrust into the statute books, as
one might say, almost by force." The Daily News ap-
plauded the speeches at a city peace meeting on July 9,
where one orator had declared: "The Administration
now feels itself in want of more men to replace those It
has slaughtered, and to aid it in upholding Its despotism,
and for this purpose has ordered the conscription."
3o6 THE EVENING POST
On July II, 1863, the draft began, and on the 13th,
Monday, when an effort was made to renew it, the rioting
commenced. The first disturbances occurred at the draft
headquarters on the corner of Third Avenue and Forty-
sixth Street, which were sacked about noon; the disorders
grew much worse on Tuesday, and were not entirely sup-
pressed until Thursday. The story of the four days of
bloodshed need not be rehearsed in detail, but the Evening
Post files afford certain new lights upon it. The historian
Rhodes, in his account, draws upon the files of the Trib-
une, Times, World, Herald, and Post as sources, but
only upon the issues of the week of the riot. Ten days
later (July 23) an 8,000 word history of the riot ap-
peared in the Evening Post, a close-knit, graphic narra-
tive, apparently written by Charles Nordhoff, who had
been an eye-witness of much of it.
Nordhoff makes it clear that the mob was against not
merely the draft, but the war. "Seymour's our man";
"Seymour's for us"; "Yis, and Wood too"; "It's Davis
and Seymour and Wood," were expressions heard at
every turn. "Cheers for Jeff Davis were as common as
brickbats." Above all, Nordhoff was convinced that the
mob had intelligent leaders outside of Its own ranks.
The nucleus of the mob was a gang of about fifty rough
fellows who at nine o'clock In the morning began prowling
along the East River wharves In the Grand Street neigh-
borhood, picking up recruits. As the crowd grew In size
it entered foundries and factories for more men. "It Is
absolutely certain that there was no planning or directing
head among the acting ringleaders. No one could follow
or watch them without seeing that they were Instigated;
though by whom it was Impossible to tell. They were
men themselves incapable of self-direction; men of the
lowest order and of the most brutal passions — and at that
doubly Infuriated by rum." Immediately the destruction
of the Third Avenue draft headquarters was complete,
the mob split Into three parts, which at once sought three
Important objectives, a fact which Nordhoff regarded as
proving outside leadership.
THE CIVIL WAR 307
One of the three mobs destroyed the Armory on Sec-
ond Avenue at Twenty-First Street — this was on Monday
at four p. m. ; a second simultaneously demolished the
draft office at Broadway and Twenty-ninth Street; and
a third, the largest, sacked and burnt the Colored Orphan
Asylum on Fifth Avenue. Meanwhile, small groups had
begun hunting down negroes and clubbing them to death.
Nordhoff describes a scene during the burning of the
Colored Orphan Asylum:
Opposite the Reservoir stood a knot of gentlemen, strangers to
each other. Said one of them, a timid, clerical-looking man:
''What are we coming to? Is this to go on? Whose family
and dwelling is safe?"
"How long is this to last?" asked another — who might have
been a merchant.
"I will tell you how long," replied a third, who looked like a
Tammany alderman, but as respectably dressed as either of the
others, and buttoning up his coat to his chin defiantly: "Just as
long as you enact unjust laws."
The rioting, Nordhoff believed, might have been ended
the first day by determined military forces. While ruf-
fians at the Orphan Asylum were crying, "Kill the little
devils!" a steady attack by a small armed force would
have routed them. "The rioters evidently expected such
an attack, and at one time, frightened by a squabble on
their outskirts between a few firemen and a gang abusing
a bystander, actually took to their heels, but returned to
their work with cries of derision." The first charge was
made by the police just after 4 p. m. at the La Farge
Hotel, and the rioters ran like sheep, leaving about thirty
dead or wounded. Nordhoff's observation that the pillag-
ing was done mainly by women and boys, who took two
hours to carry 300 iron bedsteads from the Orphan Asy-
lum, was borne out by a news item printed by the Post
during the riots:
HOW A HOUSE IS SACKED
Having witnessed the proceedings of the rioters on several
occasions ... we describe them for the benefit of our readers.
3o8 THE EVENING POST
On yesterday afternoon about six o'clock they visited the resi-
dence of a gentleman in Twenty-ninth Street. A few stragglers
appeared on the scene, consisting mainly of women and children.
Two or three men then demanded and gained admittance, while
their number was largely increased on the outside. One elderly
gentleman was found who had liberty to leave. Then commenced
indiscriminate plunder. This was carried on mostly by old men,
women and children, while the ''men of muscle" stood guard.
Every article was appropriated, the carriers often bending under
their burden. Women and children, hatless and shoeless, marched
off having in their possession the most costly of fabrics, some of
them broken and unfit for use.
To this wanton destruction of private property the neighbors
and the many visitors drawn to the spot were silent spectators. A
word of remonstrance cost a life. Two gentlemen, we are in-
formed, paid the penalty yesterday for expressing their righteous
indignation. . . .
An hour later, in another visit, we saw the crowd engaged in
breaking the sashes and carrying off the fragments of woodwork.
Nordhoff gave high praise to the city police and the
United States troops, but thought the State militia mis-
erably ineffective, and the firemen often allies of the mob.
He ascertained that the rioters' casualties were much
higher than the public believed, and estimated that 400
to 500 lives were lost. "A continuous stream of funerals
flows across the East River, and graves are dug privately
within the knowledge of the police here and there."
Just how much basis there was for the Evening Post's
view that the mob was not spontaneous, but instigated
by disloyalist leaders of brains, it is impossible to say.
On the second day "a distinguished and sagacious Demo-
crat," Bryant wrote editorially, visited the office to warn
him that the riots "had a firmer basis and a more fixed
object than we imagined." But it is certain that the
copperhead press seemed to cheer on the mob even while
it denounced it. Thus the World on Tuesday spoke of
the rioters as possessed "with a burning sense of wrong
toward the government," and though it appealed to them
to stop, asked: "Does any man wonder that poor men
refuse to be forced into a war mismanaged almost into
THE CIVIL WAR 309
hopelessness, perverted almost into partisanship?" The
Evening Post was particularly incensed by the Herald's
references to the riots as a "popular" outbreak, and that
of the Daily News to "the people fired on by United
States soldiers." Not the people. It said; "a small band
of cutthroats, pickpockets, and robbers." It wanted the
miscreants given an abundance of grape and canister with-
out delay, and declared that an officer who had used
blank cartridges ought to be shot. To this the Herald
made its usual impudent kind of rejoinder. Aren't the
members of the mob people, It asked? They have arms,
legs, and five senses; "their Intelligence is low, but it is
at least equal to that of the editors of the niggerhead
organs."
Ill
News of the complete victory at VIcksburg, arriving In
New York at the same time that it became evident Meade
was not vigorously following up his repulse of Lee at
Gettysburg, brought home to the East the superiority
of Grant as a commander. That superiority the Evening
Post had begun to recognize as early as Feb. 14, 1862,
when it had contrasted his capture of Fort Donelson, In
a sea of mud, using men half trained and half supplied,
with McClellan's Inaction In Virginia. "A capable, clear-
headed general," it said, who knew that where there Is a
will there is a way. After Corinth the paper hailed
Grant (Oct. 8, 1862) as the one general "able not only
to shake the tree, but to pick up the fruit." When by a
brilliantly bold campaign he invested VIcksburg, It used
precisely the comparison that John Fiske used years later
In his history of the Mississippi Valley In the Civil War:
"The dispatches from the Southwest read like the bul-
letins of the young conqueror of Italy when he first
awakened the world to the fact that a new and unprece-
dented military genius had sprung upon the stage."
Sober history doubts whether Lincoln actually said that
if he knew what whisky Grant used he would send other
generals a barrel; but the Evening Post almost said It.
310 THE EVENING POST
Just after the surrender of Vicksburg it published (July
8) a defense of Grant from the charge that he drank
heavily. It recalled the many evidences of his single-
mindedness, alertness, and decision,and the fact that he
had gained more victories and prisoners than any other
commander. "If any one after this," it concluded, "still
believes that Grant is a drunkard, we advise him to per-
suade the Government to place none but drunkards in
important commands."
Years later the Evening Post related that while Grant
lay before Vicksburg, a letter from a prominent West-
erner assured the editors that the general and his staff
had once gone from Springfield to Cairo in the car of
the president of the Illinois Central, and that almost the
whole party had got drunk. Grant worst of all. By a
coincidence, while this letter was under discussion Presi-
dent Osborne of the Illinois Central entered the office.
He characterized it as a malignant falsehood. "Grant
and his staff did go down to Cairo in the President's car,"
he said; "I took them down myself, and selected that
car because it had conveniences for working, eating, and
sleeping on the way. We had dinner in the car, at which
wine was served to such as desired it. I asked Grant
what he would drink; he answered, a cup of tea, and this
I made for him myself. Nobody was drunk on the car,
and to my certain knowledge Grant tasted no liquid but
tea and water."
After Grant was made commander-in-chief in March,
1864, and took charge in the East, the Evening Post
was confident that victory was at hand. This faith in-
creased during the summer. Bryant wrote Bigelow on
June 15 that the North ought certainly to bring the war
to an end within the year, at least so far as concerned all
great military operations. On Sept. 3, just after Grant
had asked for 100,000 additional men, he said editorially
that if he were given them, peace might be won by Thanks-
giving. The next day, when news had come that Sherman
had captured Atlanta, the paper renewed the prophecy
of an early triumph, changing the date, however, to
THE CIVIL WAR 311
Christmas. It no longer grumbled over military nervous-
ness and dllatorlness. It was disturbed by the state of
the currency, which was making the public debt twice what
It should have been; but Its chief fear was that the men
at the North In favor of a premature peace would rob the
Union of the fruits of Its bloody struggle.
As early as December, 1862, and January, 1863,
Greeley had begun In the Tribune a movement for ending
the war by foreign mediation between North and South.
The following month Napoleon III actually made an
offer of mediation, which Lincoln Immediately refused.
Advance news of It had been sent Bryant by BIgelow.,
and the Post was ready to speak vigorously against It.
Greeley In July, 1864, again tried to Initiate peace nego-
tiations, and asked Lincoln to arrange a conference at
Niagara with two Confederate "ambassadors" who were
reported to be there, telling him that "our bleeding,
bankrupt, almost dying country longs for peace, shudders
at the prospect of fresh conscriptions, of further devasta-
tions, and of new rivers of human blood." The attitude
of the Evening Post was contemptuous. "No," wrote
Bryant as Greeley bought his ticket to Niagara, "the most
effective peace meetings yet held are those which Grant
assembled In front of VIcksburg, which Meade conducted
on the Pennsylvania plains, which Rosecrans now pre-
sides over near Tullahoma ; their thundering cannons are
the most eloquent orators, and the bullet which wings
its way to the enemy ranks the true olive branch."
There was some fear for the moment that the Times
would join the Tribune In its readiness for peace without
victory. Bryant wrote his wife on Sept. 7, 1864, that he
had a good deal of political news which he could not put
in his letter. "I wrote a protest against treating with the
Rebel Government, which you will have seen in the paper.
... I was told from the best authority that Mr. Lincoln
was considering whether he should not appoint commis-
sioners for the purpose, and I afterwards heard that
Raymond of the Times had been in Washington to per-
suade Mr. Lincoln to take the step, and was wiUIng him-
312 THE EVENING POST
self to be one of the commissioners." Bryant's 1,500
word editorial, "No Negotiations With the Rebel Gov-
ernment," anticipated the arguments of Lincoln's mes-
sage to Congress in December opposing any parley.
At this moment the Democratic party was carrying on
its campaign for the Presidency upon a platform which
declared the war a failure, and asserted that an armistice
should be sought at the first practicable opportunity. It
is true that McClellan, the party's candidate, had re-
pudiated these planks. But when he did so, Fernando
Wood had wanted at once to repudiate McClellan, saying
that the platform was sound, and that the Democrats
should call their Chicago Convention together again to
seek a man who would stand upon it. The Daily News,
edited by his brother Benjamin Wood, similarly upheld
the platform. So did the World, which went to shocking
lengths In attacking Lincoln; not content with calling his
Administration ignorant and incompetent, it cast Imputa-
tions upon his personal honesty, while In a phrase that
became temporarily famous It remarked that the White
House was "full of Infamy." According to the World,
the war could and should be stopped instantly. The
South was ready to reenter the Union If only Lincoln
would cancel his outrageous emancipation proclamation.
"Are unknown thousands of wives yet to become widows,
and unknown tens of thousands of children to become
orphans, that Mr. Lincoln's positive violations of solemn
pledges may be assumed by the people as their own?"
Manton Marble argued throughout the campaign for an
armistice, a convention of all the States, and an effort to
conclude peace upon the basis of union and slavery.
Emancipation, he asserted, meant "industrial disorganiza-
tion, social chaos, negro equality, and the nameless hor-
rors of a civil war."
In this election the Evening Post maintained a straight
course. Early in the year Bryant had Inclined to doubt,
as did Beecher, Greeley, Thaddeus Stevens, George W.
Julian, and a majority of Congress, whether Lincoln's re-
nominatlon would be wise. This was a reflection In part
THE CIVIL WAR 313
of his impatient "radicalism," In part of his attachment
to Chase; and on March 25, 1864, he made one of many
prominent Union men who wrote the Republican Execu-
tive Committee suggesting a postponement of the Con-
vention until September. But no hint of this doubt en-
tered the columns of the Evening Post. It never spoke
of any other possible nomination than Lincoln's. Indeed,
every one soon saw that the choice was inevitable, and
Bryant cast whatever hesitation he felt, which was not
much, behind him. "It was done In obedience to the
public voice," he wrote BIgelow June 15, "a powerful
vis a tergo pushed on the politicians whether willing or
unwilling. I do not, for my part, doubt of his reelec-
tion." By this time the Evening Post was ready to admit
that the President had made fewer errors and seen more
clearly than It had supposed. It wrote (Sept. 20) :
He has gained wisdom by experience. Every year has seen
our cause more successful ; every year has seen abler generals, more
skillful leaders, called to the head ; every year has seen fewer errors,
greater ability, greater energy, in the administration of affairs.
The timid McClellan has been superseded by Grant, the do-
nothing Buell by Sherman ; wherever a man has shown con-
spicuous merit he has been called forward; political and military
rivalries have been as far as possible banished from the field and
from the national councils. . . . While Mr. Lincoln stays in
power, this healthy and beneficial state of things will con-
tinue. . . .
Throughout the campaign Pafke Godwin did much
public speaking. During October the Post published a
weekly campaign newspaper addressed particularly to
laboring men, which had an enormous circulation at
one cent a copy; the edition the first week was 50,000.
In Its local result the election justified the labors of the
copperhead press, for McClellan carried New York city
by a vote double Lincoln's — 78,746 to 36,673. But the
national result showed how totally unrepresentative this
anti-war press was of any extensive Northern sentiment.
It proved that Bryant had been right in declaring in the
Post of March 16, 1863, when Greeley and the Tribune
314 THE EVENING POST
actually said the nation should give up if the campaign
then beginning failed:
It certainly is remarkable how unable the newspapers of the
country, even those of the largest circulation, have been to divert
the public mind from a fixed determination to put down the
rebellion by every possible means, and to allow no pause in the
war until the integrity of the Union is assured. One class of
journals has labored to show. that the war for the Union is hope-
less; the people have never believed them. One class has called
for a revolutionary leader ; the call has only excited a little aston-
ishment, the people being satisfied to prosecute the war under the
legal and constitutional authorities.
The last effort at a premature armistice, that made
by the venerable Francis P. Blair, culminating in the
Hampton Roads conference between Lincoln and Vice-
President A. H. Stephens, was treated by the Evening
Post like previous efforts. Blair was an old friend, but
under the caption, "Fools' Errands," Bryant wrote (Jan.
lo, 1865) that his gratuitous diplomacy might do much
harm. "No, our best peacemakers yet are Grant, Sheri-
dan, Thomas, Sherman, and Farragut, and the black-
mouthed bulldogs by which they enforce their pretensions
over more than half of what was once an 'impregnable'
part of rebeldom." The final peace, the peace made by
the black-mouthed bulldogs, was greeted by the Post
three months later in fervent terms :
GLORY TO THE LORD OF HOSTS
The great" day, so long and anxiously awaited, for which we
have struggled through four years of bloody war, which has so
often . . . dawned only to go down in clouds of gloom; the day
of the virtual overthrow of the rebellion, of the triumph of con-
stitutional order and of universal liberty, — of the success of the
nation against its parts, and of a humane and beneficent civiliza-
tion over a relic of barbarism that had been blindly allowed to
remain as a blot on its scutcheon — the day of PEACE has finally
come. . . .
Glory, then to the Lord of Hosts, who hath given us this final
victory! Thanks, heartfelt and eternal, to the brave and noble
THE CIVIL WAR 315
men by land and sea, officers and soldiers, who by their labors,
their courage and sufferings, their blood and their lives, have won
it for us. And a gratitude no less deep and earnest to that majestic,
devoted, and glorious American people, who through all these years
of trial have kept true to their faith in themselves and their
institutions. . . .
IV
Throughout the Civil War the news pages were in
charge of one of the most picturesque and able men ever
employed by the paper, Charles Nordhoff. It was a
trying position. O. W. Holmes wrote an essay in 1861
called "Bread and Newspapers," in which he described
the state of mind in which the North lived, waiting but
from one edition to another. The Civil War was the
heroic age of American press enterprise, and while the
Evening Post conducted a less extensive war establish-
ment than the Her aid j Tribune, or Times — the Herald
spent $500,000 on its correspondence — Nordhoff saw
that it maintained a creditable position. He stepped into
the office just after Bigelow's departure, in 1861. Along
with Bigelow the Post had just lost William M. Thayer.
This young man, after a brilliant ten years partly in New
York, partly as the only correspondent with the Walker
filibustering expedition in Nicaragua, and partly in Wash-
ington, had quarreled with Isaac Henderson, while at the
same time his health failed; and he was glad to be ap-
pointed consul at Alexandria. Nordhoff's chief assistant
in gathering news became Augustus Maverick, a veteran
newspaper man previously with the Times.
Nordhoff, though only thirty years old in 1831, had
already passed through enough adventure to fill an active
lifetime. He was born in Prussia, where his father was
a wealthy liberal who had served in Blucher's army and
had later set up a school at Erwitte. Compelled for
political reasons to leave, the elder Nordhoff gathered to-
gether all his funds, about $50,000, and reached America
in 1834. The family went to the Mississippi Valley, and
for a time lived an anomalous life, eating in the wilder-
ness from rich silver and drinking imported German
3i6 THE EVENING POST
mineral water. The boy was left an orphan at the age
of nine, and was reared by the Rev. Wllhelm Nast of the
Methodist Church in Cincinnati. Revolting against the
rigid ecclesiastical discipline to which he was subjected,
believing that his health was suffering from indoors work,
and longing for the adventures at sea of which he had
read in Marryat and Cooper, in 1844 he ran away.
Hundreds of thousands of American boys in the last
half century have read the three books in which Nordhoff
graphically relates his experiences aboard men of war,
merchant ships, a whaler, and a cod-fishing boat. The
story of how he went to sea is an interesting illustration
of his pluck and persistence. He had $25, two extra
shirts, and an extra pair of socks when he left Cincinnati,
and his money took him to Baltimore. At every vessel
to which he applied he was met by the same rebuff : "Ship
you, you little scamp? Not I; we won't carry runaway
boys. Clear out!" Undaunted, he went on to Phila-
delphia, and found a place on the Sun as printer's devil,
at $2-4 a week and his board. He confided his ambition
to no one, but every Saturday afternoon he was down
among the shipping, looking for a place. Finally he heard
that the Frigate Columbus, 74 guns, was about to sail
under Commodore BIddle for the Far East, and sought
a berth — again in vain. Still undiscouraged, he induced
the editor of the Sun, to whose home he daily took a
bundle of proofs, to introduce him to Commodore Elliot.
The editor's note ran, "Please give him a talking to," and
the gruff officer scolded the boy roundly for wanting to
ruin his life, described the dissolute, brutalizing existence
of most sailors, and flatly refused him a place. But Nord-
hoff returned daily until the Commodore yielded.
The boy soon realized that the sailor's life had little
of the romance that Cooper gave it, but he showed both
his grit and shrewdness when with a distinct literary
intention he made the most of it. He went around the
world in the Columbus, and was discharged at Norfolk
in 1848; for several years he worked in the merchant
marine, visiting Europe, Asia, South America, Australia,
THE CIVIL WAR 317
and the South Sea islands; sailing from Sag Harbor in a
whaler which cruised in the Indian Ocean, he deserted at
the Seychelles, and for a time supported himself as a
boatman in Mauritius; and he finished his eight years at
sea by a brief period with the Cape Cod fishermen. All
the while he was busy collecting material for his books,
losing no opportunity to share new sights and experiences,
and pumping his mates for their stories. He wrote his
three volumes to give a common-sense picture of a life
which he believed had been unduly romanticized; and
his pictures of flogging in the navy, of dysentery and
cholera aboard a frigate, of the degradation of the naval
discipline, of the danger and hardship met on a merchant
craft, and of the intolerable monotony of whale-hutvtin^,
^arry out the purpose. It was good preliminary training
for a reporter and editor. In 1853 he entered journal-
ism, first on the Philadelphia Register and later on the
Indianapolis Sentinel, meanwhile writing the sea books,
which gave him such a reputation that in 1853 George W.
Curtis recommended him to Harper's as an editorial
worker.
Bigelow in the closing days of i860 made an arrange-
ment with Brantz Meyer, a Baltimore writer of some
reputation, to go South for $50 a week and his expenses
to do special reporting. He wrote R. B. Rhett, editor
of the Charleston Mercury , asking whether it would be
safe for Meyer to attend the secession convention in
Charleston, and Rhett assured him that "no agent or
representative of the Evening Post would be safe in com-
ing here"; "he would certainly be tarred and feathered
and made to leave the State, as the mildest possible treat-
ment"; "he would come with his life in his hand, and
would probably be hung." Nevertheless, the Post did
have unsigned correspondence from Charleston and other
Southern cities during the days the secession movement
was ripening. When war began, Nordhoff hurriedly
whipped a corps of special writers into shape. He re-
quested Henry M. Alden, later editor of Harper's to go
to the Virginia front, but Alden's health was too precari-
3i8 THE EVENING POST
ous to permit him to face the hardships which other
young literary men like E. C. Stedman were undertaking.
William C. Church, a rising young journalist, who later
established the Army and Navy Journal and the Galaxy y
was obtained. Philip Ripley made another of the staff,
and Walter F. Williams was soon sending admirable
letters from the field.
Repeatedly during the war the Post scored notable
"beats." Church was with the joint military and naval
expedition under Sherman and Dupont that captured Port
Royal, and sent the Evening Post the first account pub-
lished at the North. The best picture of the battle of
Pittsburgh Landing in any newspaper was one contributed
the Post by a member of Halleck's staff. The most
graphic running account of Sherman's march to the sea
was also that furnished the paper by Major George Nich-
ols, who was on Sherman's staff, and who later reworked
his letters — in which It has been well said the style Is
photographic, with a touch of national music In the sen-
tences — Into a book. When John Wilkes Booth was
killed In the burning Virginia barn by Sergeant Boston
Corbett, Nordhoff obtained Corbett's exclusive story of
the event — an absorbing three-quarters column of close
print. It need not be said that the Paris correspondence
which E. L. Godkin, later editor, furnished in 1862, of-
fered the shrewdest and clearest view of French opinion
published In any American newspaper. There was a
large group of occasional correspondents at various
points along the wide fighting line. The Evening Post
profited. In a way that It was quite impossible for the
Herald to do, from the kindness of loyal Union men of
prominence who came Into contact with great events or
figures, and without thought of remuneration wrote to
Bryant. A long and highly Interesting article embodying
personal reminiscences of Lincoln, for example, was con-
tributed a few weeks after the assassination by R. C.
McCormick, then well known in New York political cir-
cles. There were frequent bits like the following from a
THE CIVIL WAR 319
New Yorker who had seen Grant at City Point (Aug. 5,
1864):
"General," I remarked, "the people of New York now feel that
there is one at the head of our armies in whom they can repose
the fullest confidence."
"Yes," he interrupted, "there is a man in the West in whom
they can repose the utmost confidence, General Sherman. He is
an able, upright, honorable, unambitious man. We lost another
one of like character a few days ago. General McPherson."
One reporter for the Post^ a young Vermonter named
S. S. Boyce, became intimate with the United States Mar-
shal in New York, and distinguished himself by important
detective service against disloyalists. The Marshal once
handed him a letter taken upon a captured blockade run-
ner, mailed from New York and giving the Southern au-
thorities the time of the sailing of the Newbern expedi-
tion. It carried no New York address, but within a
fortnight Boyce had tracked down the writer of the
letter, and some months later witnessed his hanging.
Many traditions long survived in the office of Nord-
hoff's energy, courage, shrewdness, and impassivity in
moments of excitement. He was a man of the world, and
his sense for news was amazing. Expected to contribute
to the editorial page as well as manage the news staff, he
would seat himself at his desk and write with unresting
hand, meanwhile puffing a black cigar so furiously that
he could hardly see his sheet through the smoke. A
bluff seamanlike quality was always distinguishable about
him; he walked with a sailor's roll, and used nautical
terms with unconscious frequency. His executive ability,
geniality, fearlessness, and intense hatred of anything
equivocal or underhanded, made the staff love him. Mr.
J. Ranken Towse, who knew him after the war, says that
"he had a comprehensive grasp of essential knowledge, a
great store of common sense, a rare faculty of penetrating
insight, and a huge scorn for prevarication or double-
dealing. A mistake due to ignorance or carelessness he
could and often did overlook, but anything in the nature
320 THE EVENING POST
of a shuffling excuse roused him to flaming ire. He was
impetuous and irascible, but naturally generous and ten-
der-hearted."
During the Draft Riots Nordhoff connected a hose with
the steam-boiler in the basement and gave public notice
that any assailant would meet a scalding reception. He
had not only the Evening Post property to protect, but a
score of wounded soldiers in a temporary hospital fitted
up on an upper floor. The strain under wihch he lived
in the war days was intense, and he used to spend the
summer nights on a small sailboat which he kept on the
Brooklyn waterfront, for he could sleep more soundly
drifting about the bay than on shore. Yet he managed to
find time to contribute to the newspaper's atmosphere of
literary sociability. Paul Du Chaillu had become his
friend when, as a worker at Harper's, he helped put some
of Du Chaillu's books into good English, and a story
survives of how Du Chaillu and Nordhoff once took pos-
session of the restaurant stove across the street from the
Evening Post, and taught the cook to broil bananas — the
first bananas ever eaten cooked in the city. Nordhoff's
impress was visible everywhere in the paper of those
years, and its marked prosperity was in large degree
traceable to his energy. The local reporting was better
than ever before, and we are tempted to discern his own
hand in the frequent human-interest paragraphs, of which
one may be given as a specimen:
AN INCIDENT IN THE CARS
In a car on a railroad which runs into New York, a few morn-
ings ago, a scene occurred which will not soon be forgotten by the
witnesses of it. A person dressed as a gentleman, speaking to a
friend across the car, said: "Well, I hope the war may last six
months longer. In the last six months IVe made a hundred thou-
sand dollars — six months more and I shall have enough."
A lady sat behind the speaker, and . . . when he was done she
tapped him on the shoulder and said to him: "Sir, I had two
sons — one was killed at Fredericksburg; the other was killed at
Murfreesboro."
She was silent a moment and so were all around who heard her.
Then, overcome by her indignation, she suddenly slapped the
THE CIVIL WAR 321
Speculator, first on one cheek and then on the other, and before
he could say a word, the passengers sitting near, who had wit-
nessed the whole affair, seized him and pushed him hurriedly out
of the car, as not fit to ride with decent people.
The Government censorship of news early became a
painful and difficult question to all journals. Repeatedly
during the war Northern papers allowed news to leak to
the enemy which should have been kept strictly secret, and
the Evening Post early recognized this danger. When
Gtn. McClellan in August, 1861, drew up his gentlemen's
agreement with the press, the Post hoped that all editors
would acquiesce in It, and attacked the Baltimore secession
newspapers for giving the South Important news. Two
months later it blamed the Herald and Commercial Ad-
vertiser for twice having given prominence to articles
they should have suppressed. Sherman as early as the
summer of 1862 raged violently at the press In his private
letters for writing some generals up and others down,
and the Post had already (Feb. 27) commented upon
the same abuse. The Herald In March, 1862, prema-
turely published the news of Banks's passage of the Po-
tomac, to the great Indignation of the Post, which had
suppressed It the day before. But Nordhoff himself
erred in September, when his publication of some "con-
traband" facts about the strength of the forces at New-
bern brought a protest from Gen. Foster. No other mis-
take of the sort was made, and this one did not compare
with the blunders of other New York journals. Early
In 1863 a Herald correspondent, having foolishly printed
the substance of some confidential orders, was convicted
and sentenced to six months hard labor In the Quarter-
master's Department. In November, 1864, the Times
brought an angry protest from Grant by stating Sher-
man's exact strength and his programme In the coming
march to the sea. The Tribune early the next year, in-
forming its readers that Sherman was heading for Golds-
boro, enabled Gen. Hardee on the Confederate side to
fight a heavy battle which Sherman had hoped to avoid;
322 THE EVENING POST
and the hero of the great march later refused to speak
to Greeley.
But the Evening Post repeatedly protested against the
undue severity of the censorship, just as it protested
against improper interferences with personal liberty in
other spheres. It complained that the rules laid down
by Stanton and the field commanders were often capri-
cious, and that by holding up harmless news they bred
harmful rumors.
Thus on Sept. i, 1862, New York was highly excited
all afternoon by a canard that Pope had been pushed
back to Alexandria and was being beaten by the Con-
federates within sight of Washington. Why? asked the
Evening Post next day. It was because Stanton wanted
all the correspondents kept away from the front, and the
public was at the mercy of every rogue or coward who
started a false report. The terrible disaster of Freder-
icksburg was concealed by the censorship in the most inex-
cusable way. The battle was fought on Saturday, the
13th of December. On the 14th and 15th there was no
news; on the i6th the Post carried the bare statement that
the army had recrossed the Rapphannock, which it opti-
mistically interpreted as meaning that the heavy rains
had swollen the river and imperilled the communications.
On the 17th it knew that Burnside's forces had been flung
back with terrible slaughter four days before, and it
joined the chorus of the New York press in denouncing
the official secrecy. The first authentic news of this bat-
tle was sent the Tribune by a future owner of the Evening
Post, Henry Villard, who obtained it by an heroic all-
night ride, and bringing it to Washington, evaded Stan-
ton's order by sending it north by railway messenger.
Similar secrecy attended the early stages of the battle
of Chancellorsville, causing needless agony of mind at
the North and profiting only the stock-jobbers. Just be-
fore Gettysburg rumors were afloat of a heavy blow to
Hooker. C. C. Carleton, said the Post, tried to wire his
Boston paper, "Do not accept sensation dispatches," but
the telegraph censor brusquely canceled this sensible mes-
THE CIVIL WAR 323
sage. The Philadelphia editors and correspondents long
surpassed all others in the picturesqueness of their lies,
and the Post called attention to some of their master-
pieces — e. g., their circumstantial story of the capture of
Richmond by Gen. Keyes in 1862 — as made possible by
the censor's concealment of the real facts. Nordhoff
complained that some of the paper's dispatches filed in
the morning at 10 130 did not reach New York till 5 p. m.,
simply because the censor was out of his office or negli-
gent. The worst count in the indictment, however, was
that some great bankers got news of the battles by cipher,
and used it in speculation while the people remained
ignorant of the actual events.
With the Civil War came the first plentiful use of
headlines in the Evening Post, usually placed on page
three, where the telegraphic news was used. In those
days verbs in headlines were conspicuous chiefly by their
absence; but the writer knew his business. When the
bombardment of Sumter began he summarized the whole
significance of the event in his first two words : "CIVIL
WAR — BOMBARDMENT OF FORT SUMTER—
A DAY'S FIGHTING." After Bull Run he tried to
save the feelings of New Yorkers by tactful phrasing:
"RETROGRADE MOVEMENT OF OUR ARMY I
—GEN. McDowell falling back on
WASHINGTON— OUR LOSS 2,500 to 3,000." And
the two most important headlines of the whole war were
admirable in their simple fitness. It would be impossible
to improve upon the first three words used on April 15,
"AN APPALLING CALAMITY — ASSASSINA-
TION OF THE PRESIDENT— MR. LINCOLN
SHOT IN FORD'S THEATRE IN WASHING-
TON"; or upon the first three of April 10, "THE
GLORIOUS CONSUMMATION— THE REBEL-
LION ENDED— SURRENDER OF LEE."
Throughout the war the Evening Post was as distin-
guished for one feature — its poetry — as the Herald was
for its admirable maps. Every writer of verse took in-
spiration from the conflict, and sent it to the only news-
324 THE EVENING POST
paper conducted by a great poet. A few days after Sum-
ter surrendered, the editors declared that if poetry could
win the war, they already had enough to do it. Four
years later, on April 13, 1865, they remarked that "we
have received verses in celebration of the late victories
enough to fill four or five columns of our paper."
Among the first war poems published by the Evening
Post were two of genuine distinction, R. H. Stoddard's
stirring call to war, "Men of the North and West," and
Christopher Cranch's stanzas, "The Burial of Our Flag" :
O who are they that troop along, and whither do they go?
Why move they thus with measured tread, while funeral trumpets
blow ? —
Why gather round that open grave in mockery of woe?
They stand together on the brink — they shovel in the clod —
But what is that they bury deep ? — ^Why trample they the sod ?
Why hurry they so fast away without a prayer to God?
It was no corpse of friend or foe. I saw a flag uproUed —
The golden stars, the gleaming stripes were gathered fold on fold,
And lowered into the hollow grave to rot beneath the mould.
Then up they hoisted all around, on towers, and hills, and crags.
The emblem of their traitorous schemes — their base disunion flags.
That very night there blew a wind that tore them all to rags !
And one that flaunted bravest by the storm was swept away.
And hurled upon the grave in which our country's banner lay —
Where, soaked with rain and stained with mud, they found it the
next day.
From out the North a Power comes forth — a patient power too
long —
The spirit of the great free air — a tempest swift and strong;
The living burial of our flag — he will not brook that wrong.
The stars of heaven shall gild her still — her stripes like rainbows
gleam ;
Her billowy folds, like surging clouds, o'er North and South shall
stream.
She is not dead, she lifts her head, she takes the morning's beam!
THE CIVIL WAR 325
Much verse came from writers of the rank of Alice
and Phoebe Cary, who published nearly all their war
poems in the Post. Mrs. R. H. Stoddard, still remem-
bered as a novelist, wrote unfinished but sincere and touch-
ing poetry. Miles O'Reilly, whom Walt Whitman found
the most popular writer of war verse among the troops,
contributed repeatedly. Thomas Wentworth Higginson,
leading his black troops in South Carolina, and recalling
Bryant's "Song of Marion's Men," sent his graceful
"Song from the Camp." Park Benjamin wrote much in
the early years of the war, and before its close Helen
Hunt Jackson began to appear in the Evening Post's
pages. One of the most stirring songs of the conflict,
"We are coming. Father Abraham, three hundred thou-
sand more," originally appeared in the Evening Post of
July 16, 1862. Unsigned, many supposed it was the
editor's. At a large Boston meeting the next night,
Josiah Quincy read it as "the latest poem written by
Mr. Wm. C. Bryant." Its actual author was John S.
Gibbons, who for a time was financial editor of the Post,
and wrote two volumes on banking.
Bryant himself published two hymns in the journal,
"The Earth Is Full of Thy Riches" (1863) and "Thou
Hast Put All Things Under His Feet" (1865). But
the finest poetical contribution which he ever made to it
was his "Death of Lincoln" :
O slow to smite, and swift to spare,
Gentle and merciful and just!
which first saw the light in the Evening Post of April
20, 1865.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
RECONSTRUCTION AND IMPEACHMENT
Most of the metropolitan newspapers emerged from
the Civil War with increased circulation, and several, like
the Evening Post, with enhanced prosperity. The cir-
culation was not high by present standards : when peace
was declared the Sun was printing about 50,000 copies,
the Times about 35,000, and the Evening Post about
20,000. But the influence of the New York press has
never been larger, for four great journalists were then
at the height of their reputation. Raymond of the Times
had four more years to live, Bennett of the Herald and
Greeley of the Tribune had seven, and Bryant, the oldest
editor of all, thirteen. The younger generation was not
quite yet needed — not until 1868 did Dana join the
Sun, and Whitelaw Reid the Tribune.
When the problems of reconstruction presented them-
selves, everybody knew where the large group of Demo-
cratic journals would stand. The Herald, the World,
the Express, and the Daily News, loyal to the grand old
party of Polk and Buchanan, would urge the restoration
of the Southern States to their former standing as quickly
and gently as possible. The only real curiosity was as
to the Evening Post, Times, and Tribune.
Having held the radical views of Chase and Sumner In
the war, having constantly demanded more energy In its
prosecution, the Evening Post might have been expected
to advocate severity toward the South. For a time there
were indications that It would do so. When Lincoln,
just before his death, declared in favor of encouraging
and perfecting the new State governments already set up
In the South, saying "We shall sooner have the fowl by
hatching the egg than by smashing It," Bryant was doubt-
ful. ' "But if it should happen that these eggs are cocka-
326
RECONSTRUCTION AND IMPEACHMENT 327
trice's eggs, what then?" he demanded. For some months
after Appomattox the Post expressed Its wish that
"traitors" Hke Jefferson Davis, Hunter, Benjamin, Wig-
fall, and Wise could be brought to trial; It was not neces-
sary to put them to death — they could be pardoned if
condemned — but justice demanded a stern arraignment.
Yet It soon became evident that the Evening Pastes
Influence would be on the side of moderation and leniency.
Bryant's fine obituary editorial on Lincoln struck this
note clearly. He spoke of Lincoln's gentle policies :
How skillfully he had avoided and postponed needless troubles,
the ease and tranquillity of our return from a time of passionate
conflict to a time of serene repose is a proof ; how wisely he had
contrived to put off the suggestions of an extreme or fanatical
zeal everybody has been ready to acknowledge, for Mr. Lincoln
brought to his high office no prejudice of section, no personal
resentments, no unkind or bitter feelings of hatred, and throughout
the trying time of his Administration he has never uttered one
rancorous word toward the South. . . .
The whole nation mourns the death of its President, but no
part of it ought to mourn that death more keenly than our
brothers of the South, who had more to expect from his clemency
and sense of justice than from any other man who could succeed
to his position. The insanity of the assassination, indeed, if it was
instigated by the rebels, appears in the stronger light when we
reflect on the generosity and tenderness with which he was dis-
posed to close up the war, to bury its feuds, to heal over its
wounds, and to restore to all parts of the nation that good feeling
which once prevailed, and which ought to prevail again. Let us
pray God that those who come after him may imitate his virtues
and imbibe the spirit of his goodness.
The stand taken by Bryant's friend Chase, the poet's
natural generosity, and the reports of a desire for recon-
ciliation sent by Southern correspondents, caused the
paper to assume an unflinching advocacy of President
Johnson's mild policy, and to attack the harsh measures
of Congress. In this attitude the Times was with it.
The Tribune took the other side vehemently, and, in a
more reasonable way. It was espoused by the city's three
great weekly organs of opinion, E. L. Godkin's Nation,
328 THE EVENING POST
Harper* s Weekly, and the Independent^ from which
Henry Ward Beecher, disagreeing with Theodore Til-
ton's severe views, soon resigned.
Into the Evening Post^s opinions upon the whole kalei-
doscopic succession of bills and acts bearing upon recon-
struction, from 1865 to 1868, it is impossible to go in
detail. Its fundamental doctrine was fully outlined as
early as May 2, 1865. The two great objects, it affirmed,
were to depart as little as possible from the old-estab-
lished principles of State government, and "to do nothing
for revenge, nothing in the mere spirit of proscription."
It believed that a convention should be called in each
State to annul the ordinance of secession, and, by
writing a new State Constitution, to repudiate the rebel
debt, guarantee the negroes equal civil rights, and reg-
ulate the elective franchise according to immutable prin-
ciples of certain application, discarding all arbitrary and
capricious rules. The States should also ratify the anti-
slavery amendment of the Federal Constitution by popu-
lar vote. "As soon as the political power has thus been
regularly reconstituted the State, as a matter of course,
resumes her relations to the Union, elects members of
Congress, and stands in all respects on a footing with
the States" of the North.
Urging this policy, Bryant and the Evening Post
wished to end military rule at the South as quickly as pos-
sible, while the Congressional radicals, led by Wade and
Thaddeus Stevens, like the Tribune and Nation, regarded
its indefinite continuance as necessary. The Evening Post
held that the illiterate negroes were unfit to vote and
should be required to pass through a probationary pe-
riod; It wished the Southern ballot based upon an edu-
cational test. The Tribune and the Sun supported full
negro suffrage. When the first Southern States sent Rep-
resentatives to Congress the Evening Post, like the Times
and World, wished them admitted. The World, indeed,
bitterly assailed the "rump" Congress which barred them.
The Evening Post, Times, and World supported John-
RECONSTRUCTION AND IMPEACHMENT 329
son's veto of the Freedmen's Bureau bill, while the Trib-
une wrung its hands over such journalistic depravity.
There was some justification In the objection of Har-
per's Weekly that the Post was too "optimistic." Bryant
appealed to the South to be magnanimous to the negro,
and to set to work to educate him and make him the
white man's equal. He was sure that "with their healthy
native constitution, their long training to labor, their
quick imitative faculties, their new motives to enterprise,
the freedmen will grow into a most useful class." The
Post underrated the enormous difficulties of the racial
problem at the South. But its course was wisdom and
humanity itself when compared with that of the Con-
gressional extremists who insisted upon confiscation and
disfranchisement. The Tribune, . following these ex-
tremists, called the Post and Times "copperhead," an
epithet which came with ill grace from a paper with the
Tribune's war record. Greeley made an able defense of
his policy In an address in Richmond In May, 1867, but
the Tribune tended in the hands of his lieutenants to be
more radical than Greeley himself.
In supporting Johnson, all the moderates found their
chief enemy in Johnson himself. When he took the oath
of office as Vice-President the authentic reports of his
intoxication had caused the Evening Post to demand that
he either resign or formally apologize to the nation. A
year later, when he made an abusive speech saying that
his opponents Sumner and Stevens had tried "to incite
assassination," the journal again called for an apology
to the people. The Post supported the Civil Rights bill
of 1866, guaranteeing the negro equality before the law
with the whites. When Johnson vetoed it, Bryant wrote
in a hitherto unpublished letter to his daughter :
The general feeling In favor of that bill is exceedingly strong,
and the President probably did not know what he was doing when
he returned it to Congress. He has been very silent since, as if
the check of passing the bill notwithstanding his objections had
stunned him. Mr. Bancroft says that he' must have got some
small lawyer to write his veto message, and Gen. Dix thinks that
330 THE EVENING POST
the trouble at Washington lessens the eligibility of the President
for a second term of office. So you see that those who supported
Johnson's first veto fall off now. Poor Raymond seemed in great
perplexity to know which way to turn. He supported the veto,
but his paper commended it but faintly and admitted that some-
thing ought to be done from the standpoint of the rights of Amer-
ican citizenship when denied by the States.
When President Johnson removed the Governor of
Louisiana that summer, the Evening Post condemned his
act as unconstitutional. It was outraged by his dismissal
of officeholders to influence the Congressional elections
of 1866. His "swing around the circle," the famous
speaking tour to Chicago and back in the early fall of
1866, in which he lost all sense of dignity, talked of
hanging Thad Stevens, and abused his opponents as "foul
whelps of sin," completely disgusted the Post. "It is a
melancholy reflection," it said, "to those who have found
it their duty to support that policy [Johnson's], that their
most damaging opponent is the President, and that he
makes a judicious course so hateful to the people that no
argument is listened to. . . ." It marveled at his skill
"to do the wrong thing at the wrong time, to displease
everybody, and to delay that which everybody would be
glad to have over." Moreover, as news arrived of wide-
spread outrages against the negroes in the South, the
Post's attitude toward that section grew less gentle.
Ratify the Fourteenth Amendment, the Evening Post
urged the South in the summer of 1866; It is the only
way to hasten sane reconstruction. When the Southern-
ers, already denying the negroes their due place at the
polls and in the courts, deliberately rejected the amend-
ment, it was ready to give them a stlffer dose. In Feb-
ruary, 1867, it pronounced in favor of the great Recon-
struction Act, which divided the ten Southern States into
five military districts, and undertook to guarantee the
negro's rights by force. That Is, the abuses perpetrated
made It swing toward the Congressional standpoint — ^just
as general Northern sentiment swung.
But when Congress determined to Impeach President
RECONSTRUCTION AND IMPEACHMENT 331
Johnson, the protest of the Evening Post was as Instant
as that of the Times or Sun. The principal charges were
based upon the President's alleged violations of the Ten-
ure of Office Act, which prohibited him from dismissing
civil officers without the consent of the Senate. When
this Act was passed in July, 1867, the Post had called it
a silly and mischievous attempt to make the President as
powerless as the Mayor of New York, and had regarded
it as unconstitutional. The early talk of impeachment it
rebuked as threatening "a Mexican madness." Naturally,
then, when Johnson defied Congress by dismissing Secre-
tary Stanton without consulting the Senate, the editors
took the view that his intention was merely to bring the
act before the courts, and that he should not be im-
peached unless he persisted in further dismissals after the
Supreme Court had decided against him. They had
already written (Dec. 2) that the impeachment talk did
not carry with it the public sense of justice, without
which it must recoil upon the heads of its promoters, and
that Congress had enough useful constructive work to
do to keep it busy.
When impeachment was actually voted, the Post's
comment was sorrowful rather than angry. "It is a
quarrel in which there is really no very great substance,'*
it said. "It is one that might easily have been avoided,
and may be easily brought to an end."
This was the view of the Sun^ which had just passed
under the control of Dana, and which declared the im-
peachment "far too serious an undertaking for the facts
and evidence in the case." It was likewise the opinion
of the Times, which asked: "Must the President be pun-
ished for maintaining the authority of the Constitution
against an invalid law?" The position of the World
had its humorous aspects. So long as it had considered ^
Johnson a Republican, it had found no abuse of him too
violent. Even in June, 1865, it had called him "a drunken
boor," "an insolent, vulgar, low-bred brute," and a man
"not so respectable as Caligula's horse." Now, telling
its readers that Congress was attempting to remove the
332 THE EVENING POST
President "In the personal interest of Edwin M. Stanton,"
it could not be sufficiently impassioned in his defense.
Mayor Hoffman voiced the same Democratic sentiment
in saying that the impeachers of Johnson and the as-
sassins of Lincoln would be equally infamous in history.
But the joy of the Tribune was unbounded, and in its
references to the President it ran the gamut of denuncia-
tion, from "the Great Accidency" and "this bold, bad,
malignant man" to "traitor." Its peroration of one
ringing column editorial is a gem of its kind: "He is an
aching tooth in the national jaw, a screeching infant in
a crowded lecture room; and there can be no peace nor
comfort until he is out." The Nation, originally opposed
to impeachment, now approved it with only less gusto.
Every one thought Johnson either a fool or a knave, its
editor wrote, and his disappearance from the national
stage would be a heartfelt relief to all. Harper* s Weekly,
assailing Johnson for treachery to the party, hoped that
he would sink fast and forever into oblivion.
A contribution to calmness in the first moment of ex-
citement was made by the Evening Post in an editorial
entitled "What the People Think." There was no sus-
tained perturbation, it believed; that sensitive barometer,
the gold market, had quickly become as steady as ever.
There was even a feeling of rehef. Thinking of the
solemnity of the constitutional process of impeachment,
men were glad that the vindictive fight between the Presi-
dent and Congress "is now carried out of the political
arena and into a higher place." The general public, in-
cluding many Democrats, held that the President had
acted wrongly, even if not in a degree deserving impeach-
ment. But every one was saying that there must be no
violence, and the trial must be quick, while there was an
equally universal hope that, whatever its outcome. Con-
gress would emerge with its fury vented and in a more
reasonable state of mind.
At the outset the Evening Post and the Times were
irritated by two assertions of the anti-Johnson radicals.
The first was that the President might and should be
RECONSTRUCTION AND IMPEACHMENT 333
suspended from office pending the outcome of the trial.
Not only was there no constitutional warrant for such
action, wrote Bryant, but the question had been discussed
in the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and it had
voted that Congress should have no such power of sus-
pension. The Tribune held also that if the Senate, sit-
ting as a High Court upon the President's disobedience
to the Tenure of Office Act, declared the act unconstitu-
tional, then Its decision became forever binding. The
Supreme Court would have no authority to pass upon the
constitutionality of the act, and If it presumed to do so
and to differ from the High Court, Congress would be
justified In Impeaching or removing the judges. This was
too much for the Nation as well as the Evening Post, and
Godkin promptly demolished the assertion. It should
be said that Greeley at this time was absent in the West,
and the Tribune was under the charge of John Russell
Young, whose harshness Greeley later disapproved.
On Feb. 27, three days after the impeachment, the
Evening Post declared that "the general impression is
that the case is essentially prejudged, and that Mr. John-
son will be removed by the Senate." This was the opin-
ion of all the city's organs, from the radical Nation on
the one side to the World on the other. The World, in
fact, made an appeal for a fund of $10,000,000, with
which to bribe those Senators who could hardly hope for
reelection anyhow; and while this was a bit of humor — the
Tribune alone took It seriously — Its point lay in the
World's conviction that the Republican Senators were
all so prejudiced that only millions could win over a few
of them. Like the Nation, the Post devoted an editorial
to a scrutiny of the qualifications of Benjamin Wade,
who as President pro tem. of the Senate would succeed
Johnson. Bryant admitted Wade's honesty, courage, and
frankness, but regretted that in impetuosity, narrowness,
and prejudice he would be too much like the man he
replaced. His manners, too, must be mended, for he
recalled a Scotch lady's remark: "Our Jock sweers awfu',
but nae doot it's a great set-off to conversation."
334 THE EVENING POST
As the trial progressed the Evening Post was gratified
to find that the case was much less nearly prejudged than
it had supposed. Disappointed by the lack of eloquence
on both sides, it was pleased by the efficiency of Evarts,
Stanbery, and others of the President's counsel in dis-
playing the strength of their case. They made it plain
that Johnson's intention in dismissing Stanton had not
been to defy Congress and the law wantonly, but to ob-
tain a judicial test of the Tenure of Office Act. They
showed also that some anti-Johnson Senators had, while
the Act was pending, expounded the view that it did not
protect men held over from Lincoln's Cabinet, like Stan-
ton. The Post on April 22 credited the Senate with hav-
ing dealt fairly with the accused and having admitted all
the evidence in his favor.
The breakdown of the case against Johnson was gall
and wormwood to the more bitter newspaper partisans of
Congress. Theodore Tilton's Independent read Chief
Justice Chase, who impartially presided over the trial,
out of the party. The Tribune was trembling for "the
very existence of the government." Never noted for
gentleness of retort, it now accused Horatio Seymour of
"gigantic, deliberate, atrocious lies"; the Herald of
"falsehoods"; the World of "dodges and prevarica-
tions"; and the Times and Post again of being "copper-
head." The Times remonstrated. Pointing out that
Greeley was to preside at the Dickens dinner, as the rep-
resentative of the American press, it said that he should
remember that it was not in the dignity of a gentleman
to use the word "liar." Greeley replied that the truth
was not a question of taste, but of flat morality, and that
he would never be mealy-mouthed in its defense.
The seven Republican Senators who finally determined
to vote against conviction were Fessenden, Lyman Trum-
bull, Henderson, Fowler, Van Winkle, Grimes, and Ross.
It is the belief of all later historians that their courageous
and just action is one of the finest episodes of the sordid
reconstruction period. But a storm of anger broke upon
RECONSTRUCTION AND IMPEACHMENT 335
them In Washington. It was on May 16 that the voting
began. Four days earlier the Tribune, flying into a panic,
declared that a hundred men had been under pay in
Washington since the trial began to cry down impeach-
ment and bet against conviction. It accused Lyman
Trumbull of being to blame, and insinuated that his
motives were venal: ''but a few weeks ago he was paid
$5,000 for arguing the constitutionality of the Recon-
struction laws. . . . Republicans ask to-night what the
guerdon is for defending the President in the impeach-
ment trial." Let President Johnson, the incarnation
of Treason and Slavery, be acquitted, it added, and he
becomes King; as yet he could be removed by law, but
''your next attempt will be a revolution." Next day, May
13, the Tribune headed an editorial attack upon Senator
Grimes, who had defended Johnson, "Judas's Thirty Rea-
sons," and concluded: "We have had Benedict Arnold,
Aaron Burr, Jefferson Davis, and now we have James W.
Grimes!" It categorically accused Senator Fowler of
accepting a bribe, and it called Henderson and Ross
suspect.
Perhaps the best retort was that of the Times, in an
editorial debating the question who was the most colossal
criminal of the century, and concluding that Senator Ross
closely resembled Sennacherib. But a serious answer was
necessary, and a dozen Indignant journals, including the
Nation and Harper^ s Weekly, replied to this temporarily
misguided oracle of a half-million readers. The Posfs
editorial of May 13 was headed, "Coercing a Court";
and in It and an editorial of the next day it graphically
described the pressure brought to bear upon the Inde-
pendent Senators, and condemned the attacks against
them as undermining both the impartiality of judicial
tribunals, and the principle that an accused man shall be
believed innocent until proved guilty. It anticipated the
verdict of history:
With whom is the sober second thought of the people most
likely to agree — with the Tribune and Gen. Butler, or with such
336 THE EVENING POST
men as Trumbull, Grimes, Fessenden, and Henderson? It is
plain that these gentlemen perform a duty in many ways painful
to themselves; they are driven reluctantly to act in opposition to
their own wishes ; their verdict is given in favor of a man whom
they consider unwise, and whose occupancy of the Presidential
chair they believe has brought evils upon the country. Is it not
honorable to them that their sense of justice and duty impels them
to disappoint the demands of their party?
A scene of eager excitement and tension presented itself
outside the office of every evening newspaper in New York
on May i6, crowds packing the space before the bulletin
boards. The vote was thirty-five for conviction and nine-
teen for acquittal, or one less than the number needed to
depose the President. The Evening Post was outraged
by the fact that the first vote was taken on the eleventh
impeachment article, that being considered the strongest
and the impeachment managers fearing the moral effect
of a defeat on the weak early articles; and by the Senate's
immediate adjournment for ten days, which the Post
believed a maneuver to permit more pressure to be
brought upon the seven Independent Senators. "The
verdict of acquittal gives general satisfaction," it said;
*'it is felt that a conviction, under the circumstances,
would have had no moral force, and would only have
injured the party. . . ." Like every other decent organ,
it condemned as "disgraceful" Senator Wade's vote
against Johnson and In favor of his own elevation to the
Presidency, cast at a time when he and others believed
that a single ballot would sway the Issue. For that act the
public never quite forgave Wade.
The Times, Herald, and World equally rejoiced In the
acquittal, and the Sun accepted it with a milder approval.
The Nation found "several reasons" for regretting it,
and the Tribune was Inconsolable. But the anger of the
radicals was more Intense than long-lived. In 1884 one
of the editors of the Evening Post, Horace White, was
attending the Chicago Convention which nominated
RECONSTRUCTION AND IMPEACHMENT 337
Blaine. The name of ex-Senator Henderson was re-
ported for the permanent chairmanship. "The as-
sembled multitude," wrote White, "knew at once the sig-
nificance of the nomination, and gave cheer after cheer
of applause and approval. It was the sign that all was
forgiven on both sides."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
BRYANT AT THE HEIGHT OF HIS FAME AS EDITOR
During all but the hottest months of the year, In the
latter part of Grant's second Administration, men on
lower Broadway at about 8 145 every week-day morning
might see a venerable figure come rapidly down toward
Fulton Street. The aged pedestrian was slender and just
above the middle height, but was given an impressive
aspect by his heavy white beard and the long hoary hair
that swept his shoulders. As he passed. It could be seen
that his brow was bald; that his forehead was projecting,
though not massive; that the deep-set eyes which peered
from beneath his bushy brows were remarkably pene-
trating and observant, and that his features were rugged
but benignant. He had a scholar's stoop, but appeared
wiry and vigorous far beyond his years. People glanced
at him with respectful recognition — his was, as Tennyson
said of Wellington, the good gray head that all men
knew. On Fulton Street he turned into a tall, new build-
ing, and those who watched might see that, disdaining the
elevator, he began rapidly climbing the stairs. This was
William CuUen Bryant, at eighty still devoting four hours
daily to the Evening Post.
Bryant had long since become the most distinguished
resident of the city, referred to and honored as Its first
citizen. In civic, charitable, and social movements his
name was given precedence over those of men like Wil-
liam M. Evarts or Henry Ward Beecher. On every great
public occasion an effort was made to obtain his attend-
ance as the representative of all that was choicest in lit-
erary, artistic, and professional life. When the artist
Cole, and the authors Cooper, Irving, Verplanck, and
Halleck died, he was chosen to deliver memorial dis-
courses of that kind in which the French excel; he was
338
BRYANT AS EDITOR 339
the chief speaker at the dedication of the Morse, Shakes-
peare, Scott, Goethe, and Mazzini monuments in Central
Park; and he presided over the testimonial benefit given
Charlotte Cushman when she was about to retire from
the stage, which occasioned one of the most notable as-
semblages ever brought into a modern theater. No New
York meeting in behalf of free trade, sound money, or
civil service reform was complete without his presence
or a message from him. This high position was his be-
cause he was not merely a great poet, but a great publicist.
On Nov. 5, 1864, when Bryant had just attained his
seventieth birthday, a celebration was held at the Cen-
tury Club, of which he had been one of the earliest mem-
bers. The historian Bancroft presided, and among the
speakers were Emerson, Holmes, R. H. Stoddard, Julia
Ward Howe, R. H. Dana, jr., and WiUiam M. Evarts;
while poems were received from Whittier and Lowell.
The editor as well as the poet was honored. Mrs. Howe
recited :
... at his forge he wrought two-fold,
On the iron shield of freedom, and the poet's links of gold.
while Lowell's well-known verses, "On Board the Sev-
enty-six," referred to his editorial words of cheer during
the gloomy early days of the Civil War. A little more
than three years later (Jan. 30, 1868), a dinner was
tendered Bryant at Delmonico's as president of the
American Free Trade League. Speeches were made in
his honor by David Dudley Field, Parke Godwin, John D.
Van Buren, and others, and letters read from Emerson
and Gerrit Smith. Again, on Nov. 3, 1874, when Bryant
became eighty years old, he was quietly finishing a fore-
noon's work in the Evening Post office when a deputation
of friends entered to congratulate him. That evening
there was another celebration at the Century Club, at
which a commemorative vase — now in the Metropolitan
Museum — was given Bryant, while a simultaneous cele-
bration was held in Chicago by the Literary Club of
that city.
340 THE EVENING POST
In the dozen years following Sumter, and especially In
the Civil War years when It pressed Its demand for ener-
getic prosecution of the struggle, the Evening Post was
at the height of Its Influence under Bryant. "The clear
and able political leaders have been of more service to the
government In this war than some of Its armies," said
LittelVs Living Age In 1862. Charles Dudley Warner
wrote at the same time In the Hartford Press : "The
Evening Post Is the most fearless and rigidly honest paper
In the country, and Its ability Is equal to Its moral worth.
Some of Its ordinary editorials are magnificent specimens
of English." A chorus of praise was aroused by the en-
largement of the journal this year. ^^The Evening Post,
we think. Is the best newspaper In the United States,"
remarked the Elmlra Advertiser; the New Bedford
Standard spoke of "the best paper In the United States,
the Evening Post^^; the Kennebec Journal said that "All
things considered. It comes the nearest to our Idea of what
a metropolitan journal should be of any publication In
the country"; and the Christian Enquirer testified that
"the course of the Evening Post during the war has been
above all praise — firm, bold, patriotic, and wise."
Similar tributes were paid the newspaper by a remark-
able array of public men. In 1840 James K. Paulding
wrote from Washington to console It for defeat In the
Presidential election : "The manner In which the Evening
Post is conducted, Its stern and sober dignity, and its free-
dom from the base fury and still baser falsehoods, with
which so many newspapers are debauched and disgraced,
makes me proud to remember that I have a humble claim
to be associated with its honors." Sumner was constant
In his praise In the fifties. Judge William Kent, son of
the great Chancellor, not merely thought it the best
American daily, but In 1857 proposed that he purchase a
share In It and become one of the editors, a proposal
which Isaac Henderson discouraged. William Jay In
1862 wrote Bryant, paying tribute to Its "powerful and
beneficial influence." Charles Eliot Norton begged the
following year "to express my hearty sympathy with the
BRYANT AS EDITOR 34i
principles maintained by the Evening Post at this time,
and my admiration for the ability with which they are sus-
tained." A little later Lowell wrote Bryant that he was
a subscriber. ''I am particularly pleased with the course
of the Evening Post on reconstruction. Firmness equally
tempered with good feeling Is what we want — not gen-
erosity with twitches of firmness now and then." W. H.
Furness, the noted Philadelphia minister, sent another
unsolicited tribute In the heat of the war, saying that he
valued the Tribune, but was particularly grateful for the
sound, calm vision of the Evening Post, and that "It
stands in my esteem at the head of the American press.
It is cheering that there Is abroad such an educator of
the public mind." Caleb Gushing wrote (1868) :
You may regard it as quite superfluous for me to speak in com-
mendation of the Evening Post; but inasmuch as, at one period, I
had reason to think and to assert that its language was occasionally
overharsh to me, I desire to say, for my own satisfaction, not
yours, with how great instruction and pleasure at present I read
it every day, and with what daily increasing estimation of its
superior dignity, fairness, wisdom, and truth.
Even abroad the paper was well known. Bigelow In-
formed Bryant In 1864 that an Englishman had told him
he thought It the best newspaper in the world. John
Stuart Mill wrote Parke Godwin the following year that
he was a regular reader of it through the kindness of
Frederick Barnard, later President of Columbia, who
thought It the best American daily, and that he had
formed a high opinion of it.
If we ask what qualities made Bryant a great editor,
we must place mere industry high on the list. Within a
few years after his return to the prostrate Post In 1836
he had shaken off his distaste for the profession, and ac-
quired a zest for it. From 1836 to 1866 he labored as
hard upon his journal as If he had never written a line of
verse — as the hardworking Greeley and Bennett did
upon theirs. Always up In summer at five. In winter at
five-thirty, he was frequently at his desk at seven, and
342 THE EVENING POST
seldom later than eight. His principal concern, the edito-
rial page, was In itself a day's work. He took In hand
during this period nearly all the leading editorials. They
were consistently longer than editorials of to-day, not In-
frequently in the fifties and sixties reaching i,6oo words,
sometimes i,8oo; and Bryant, conscious of his reputation,
wrote with painful care. "As Dr. Johnson said of his
talk," he once told BIgelow, "I always write my best.**
But In his first forty years as editor Bryant also at-
tended to a multitude of business and executive details.
This was of course true In the thirties and forties, when
the Evening Post was a struggling journal with a staii of
three or four writers; but his unpublished papers show
it almost equally true later. In his late fifties we find
him carefully discussing by letter with John BIgelow
whether the commercial reporter should get more than
$900 a year; hiring the foreign correspondents, and re-
sentful when the Tribune stole one of the best, SIgnora
Jesse White Mario; and taking a keen interest in the
fluctuations of advertising. We find him complaining of
the dally squabble between the editorial room and adver-
tising department, with the sturdy German head of the
composing room, Henry DIthmar, parrying all attempts
to displace advertisements by reading matter (i860).
He was laying plans as the Civil War storm arose to get
out a third edition, to occupy the same ground as the
third edition of the Express, and considering ways and
means of putting the first edition on the street in time to
beat the Commercial. He kept a watchful eye upon all
employees, now meting out praise and blame to the
Washington and Albany correspondents, and now de-
ciding Indulgently what should be done with an office boy
who was caught carrying of[ a dozen review copies of
new books. When it grew necessary to enlarge the Post
he knew just what It would cost to alter the "turtles,"
and just why the Importers and wholesalers preferred a
journal of four blanket-size pages to one of eight smaller
pages.
He had to answer an enormous correspondence, a task
BRYANT AS EDITOR 343
conscientiously performed. A hurried message to Dlth-
mar Is preserved: "Enclosed is the lady's communica-
tion. I have looked two hours for It. Put It in and get
me out of trouble." He received a multitude of visitors.
A note to his wife in 185 1 remarks, "I was run down
yesterday" — arriving to write a leader, he had been in-
terrupted by five Important and several lesser visitors.
Sometimes the burden upon him was excessive. It was
so after 1836, just before Bigelow came in the late for-
ties, and at intervals later, such as early in i860, when
Bigelow was in Europe, Thayer was sick, Godwin was
laid up with rheumatic fever, and Bryant had a sty into
the bargain.
His Industry was made possible by the fact that he had
an admirable constitution, which he was at pains to pre-
serve, and by his wise insistence upon recreation. In his
early manhood he was a vegetarian. A letter of 1871
describing his mode of life shows by what a careful regi-
men he preserved his bodily and mental vigor. He still
rose between four-thirty and five-thirty, according to sea-
son. While half-dressed, he spent a half hour in calis-
thenics with a pair of dumbbells, a light pole, a horizontal
bar, and a chair. After bathing, he breakfasted on some
cereal — hominy, wheat grits, or oatmeal — and milk, with
baked apples in summer, and sometimes buckwheat cakes.
He never touched tea or coffee. After breakfast, when
in town, he walked three miles down to the Evening Post
office, and doing his morning's work, returned, "always
walking, whatever be the weather or the state of the
streets." In the country he divided his time between
literary work and outdoor employments. When in the
city he made but two meals a day, and in the country
three, although the middle meal consisted only of a little
bread and butter, with possibly some fruit; the meat or
fish that he took at dinner was in very sparing quantities.
In later manhood he made it a rule to avoid every kind
of literary occupation in the evening, finding that it inter-
fered with his sleep; while he went to bed in town as
early as ten, and in the country still earlier. A short
344 THE EVENING POST
time before his death, when he was eighty-three, Bigelow
asked him if he had not reduced his period of morning
gymnastics. "Not the width of your thumb-nail," was
his reply.
Bryant found his most congenial recreation not In the
theater or society, but country employments. When
youth passed Into middle age he still liked all-day or
week-end rambles up the Hudson or in the Catskills.
After the purchase of his Roslyn home in 1842 he seldom
failed, from April to October, to spend two or three days
a week resting, gardening, draining, planning, and writing
there. His most charming letters show him visiting his
pigs and chickens, picking strawberries, treating children
to his cherries, superintending the pruning, and bathing
In the Sound when the tide met the grass.
The editor viewed his calling as a jealous mistress, de-
clining all suggestions of public office or any other diver-
sion from it. In 1861 It was rumored that Lincoln
wished to appoint him Minister to Spain, and the Post
promptly disposed of the suggestion that he would ac-
cept. "Those who are acquainted with Mr. Bryant
know," it said, "that there Is no public office from that
of the Presidency of the United States downward which
he would not regard it as a misfortune to take. They
know that he has expected no offer of any post from the
government, and would take none If offered." Grant also
would have given him an important diplomatic position
had he been ready to receive it. In 1872 it was thought
necessary to publish the following tactful
CARD FROM MR. BRYANT
Certain journals of this city have lately spoken of me as one
ambitious of being nominated for the Presidency of the United
States. The idea is absurd enough, not only on account of my
advanced age, but of my unfitness in various respects for the labors
of so eminent a post. I do not, however, object to the discussion
of my deficiencies on any other ground than that it is altogether
superfluous, since it is impossible that I should receive any formal
BRYANT AS EDITOR 345
nomination, and equally impossible, if it were offered, that I
should commit the folly of accepting it.
New York, July 8, 1872. wm. c. bryant.
He avoided those controversial by-ways into which
Greeley, as In his debate with Henry J. Raymond upon
Socialism, so eagerly rushed. In i860 the country's fore-
most economist, Henry C. Carey, challenged him to a
joint discussion of the tariff, and the Post replied that
Bryant never accepted such invitations. "His duties as
a journalist and a commentator on the events of the day
and the various Interesting questions which they suggest,
leave him no time for a sparring match with Mr. Carey
. . .; and he has no ambition to distinguish himself as a
public disputant. His business Is to enforce Important
political truths, and to refute what seem to him errors,
just as the occasions arise. ..." A time more malapro-
pos for a long tariff debate could hardly have been
selected.
It was part of Bryant's creed that the profession to
which he devoted his life should be treated as one of
elevated dignity. When he died the Associated Press
declared. In the preamble to its resolutions of respect,
that "he redeemed, as far as one man could do so, the
journalism of his early days from the offensive practice
of personal discussion, often ending in duels, and at times
In death, and placed It upon the broad foundation of that
tolerance for others which Is inseparable from free dis-
cussion and true self-respect." In 1837 a hare-brained
fellow named Holland, connected with a short-lived
journal called the Times, challenged him to a duel be-
cause he had asserted that the Times was a mere tool in
the hands of Senator Nathaniel P. Tallmadge. Bryant
pocketed the challenge, and told Its bearer that every-
thing must take its turn; that Holland had already been
termed a scoundrel by Leggett, and he could not take up
the new quarrel till the old one was settled. Year by
year the Evening Post refused to be drawn into offensive
personalities. In 1832, when the Courier and Enquirer
assailed it, Bryant wrote that "we shall never so far lose
346 THE EVENING POST
sight of a proper sense of our own dignity, or of respect
for our readers, as to make incidents in the private life
of any political opponent a subject of discussion or re-
proach." Ten years later he was about to reply to an
article in the Plebeian, but on looking at it a second time,
"we were repelled from our purpose by the personalities
which it contains." In 1863 a scurrilous attack on Bige-
low and Thayer by the TVorld drew the same curt state-
ment.
How scrupulous Bryant was in his fifty years' editor-
ship two incidents will illustrate. In the spring of 1859
a bill was pending at Albany to increase the compensa-
tion paid for legal advertisements, which was unfairly
low. All the newspapers urged it, and the Evening Posfs
correspondent, one Wilder, proved a perfect Hercules
of a lobbyist. "Yet," Bryant wrote Bigelow, "I was un-
comfortable all the while at the idea of having a bill
before the Legislature from which, if it passed, I would
derive a personal advantage, and I was quite relieved
when I saw that it was defeated." Some years earlier
the London Examiner published a complimentary article
regarding Bigelow's book upon Jamaica, of which he had
about a hundred copies that he was eager to sell. He
asked Bryant if he would be guilty of an impropriety in
republishing the notice. "No," Bryant said hesitatingly,
looking up from his desk, "no, not as the world goes."
"But," persisted Bigelow, "how as the Evening Post
goes?" "Why," rejoined the poet, "I never did such a
thing. I have had a good many pleasant things said
about me, but I never republished one of them in the
Evening Post.'* It need not be said that Bigelow aban-
doned his plan.
Bryant brought to his editorship a culture such as
American journalism had not seen before, and has not
since seen surpassed. A writer in Eraser's Magazine in
1855 niade sport of the ignorance of American news-
papers. He cited the Herald's statement, in a criticism
of Racine's "Phedre," that "the language is written in
what we call blank verse"; and its translation of a tag
BRYANT AS EDITOR 347
from Virgil: *'Adsum qui feci; he or me must perish."
His sweeping criticism was unjust to a profession which
already enlisted men like Richard Hildreth, Richard
Grant White, and George Ripley, but Bryant, with his
international reputation, was the most shining exception
to it. His readers thought nothing of seeing an editorial
on the United States Bank begin with an allusion to the
episode of Nisus and Euryalus in Virgil, some story
drawn from the legal lore he had mastered at the bar,
or an apt quotation from the wide range of English
poetry. His allusions and illustrations were always deft.
"Like the misshapen dwarf in the 'Lay of the Last
Minstrel,' " he said of the anti-Jacksonians in 1833, "they
wave their lean arms on high and run to and fro cry-
ing, 'Lost! Lost! Lost!' " When Cass objected to any
"temporary" measures regarding slavery in the terri-
tories, Bryant simply retold the story of Swift's servant,
who did not clean his master's shoes because they would
soon be dirty again; whereupon the Dean punished him
by making him go without breakfast, because he would
soon be hungry again.
The editor read assiduously. His wide acquaintance
with the most intellectual men of New York kept him
conversant with the latest ideas in every field. Above
all, at a time when few journalists went abroad, his many
trips to Europe supplied him with a constant fund of sug-
gestions for civic and other improvements. These ranged
from penny postage to street cleaning machines, from
apartment houses to police uniforms, and from Central
Park to the nickel five-cent piece, which, in imitation of
a German coin, he was one of the first to advocate.
Bryant's insistence upon purity of diction was such
that John Bigelow believed thaF~in all his writings for
the Post fewer blemishes could be found than in the first
ten numbers of the Spectator. His sensitiveness as to lit-
erary form was fully developed when he joined the paper.
On May 11, 1827, he published in it a paragraph on
affectations of expression, condemning such barbarisms
in current newspapers as "consolate." The most famous
348 THE EVENING POST
evidence of his love of precision was his index expurga-
torius. This was less extensive than it was sometimes
represented to be, containing but eighty-six words or
phrases; and as Bryant told George Gary Eggleston, it
was for the guidance only of immature staff writers, and
might sometimes be overstepped. It includes inflated
words like inaugurate for begin, misemployed words like
mutual for common, and along with some terms now used
without hesitation, others universally condemned :
Above and over (for more than) ; Artiste (for artist) ; As-
pirant; Authoress; Beat (for defeat) ; Bagging (for capturing) ;
Balance (for remainder) ; Banquet (for dinner or supper) ; Bogus;
Casket (for coffin) ; Claimed (for asserted) ; Commence (for be-
gin) ; Collided; Compete; Cortege (for procession); Cotem-
porary (for contemporary) ; Couple (for two) ; Darkey (for
negro) ; Day before yesterday (for the day before yesterday) ;
Debut; Decease; Democracy (applied to a political party); De-
velop (for expose) ; Devouring element (for fire) ; Donate; Em-
ployee; Enacted (for acted) ; Endorse (for approve) ; En Route;
"Esq."; Graduate (for is graduated); Gents (for gentlemen);
Hon. House (for House of Representatives) ; Humbug; Inau-
gurate (for begin) ; In our midst; Item (for particle, extract, or
paragraph) ; Is being done, and all passives of this form; Jeop-
ardise; Jubilant (for rejoicing) ; Juvenile (for boy) ; Lady (for
wife) ; Last (for latest) ; Lengthy (for long) ; Leniency (for len-
ity) ; Loafer; Loan or loaned (for lend or lent) ; Located; Ma-
jority (relating to places or circumstances, for most) ; Mrs. Presi-
dent, Mrs. Governor, Mrs. General, and all similar titles ; Mutual
(for common); Official (for officer); Ovation; On yesterday;
Over his signature; Pants (for pantaloons) ; Parties (for persons) ;
Partially (for partly) ; Past two weeks (for last two weeks, and
all similar expressions relating to a definite time) ; Poetess; Por-
tion (for part) ; Posted (for informed) ; Progress (for advance) ;
Quite (prefixed to good, large, etc.) ; Raid (for attack) ; Realized
(for obtained) ; Reliable (for trustworthy) ; Rendition (for per-
formance) ; Repudiate (for reject) ; Retire (as an active verb) ;
Rev. (for the Rev.) ; Role (for part) ; Roughs; Rowdies; Secesh;
Sensation (for noteworthy event) ; Standpoint (for point of
view) ; Start (in the sense of setting out) ; State (for say) ; Tal-
ent (for talents or ability); Talented; Tapis; The deceased;
War (for dispute).
BRYANT AS EDITOR 349
Bryant was frequently called upon to decide nice ques-
tions of English, which he did with care ; during the Civil
War he took time, in answer to a query regarding the
superlative, to dig up ancient Instances like Milton's "vlr-
tuousest, discreetest, best." He has recorded his judg-
ment that from newspaper writing a man's style gains in
clearness and fluency, but Is likely to become loose, diffuse,
and stuffed with bad diction. He always insisted upon
simplicity as the sole foundation of a fine style. Once
the Post received a letter from a servant girl so clear and
precise that Bryant had her sought out to learn how she
could write so well. She explained that she used no ex-
pression of whose meaning she was not certain; that if
at first she did so, she later struck it out and substituted
a simpler word or phrase. Bryant held this procedure
to be a model for reporters.
Parke Godwin, writing Charles A. Dana in 1845 ^^^^
the best all-round editor In America was Greeley, added
that Bryant "is by all odds the most varied and beautiful
writer." He here touched one of Bryant's most dis-
tinctive merits as an editor. Bryant could not argue with
more force than Greeley, or with the incisiveness and
point of E. L. Godkin; but when moved by a great event,
he wrote with an eloquence which no other editor ever
attempted. The springs that fed his poetry fed this mas-
tery of elevated prose. Any one who will study the fine
rhetorical effects of his first great poem, "Thanatopsis,"
or of one of his last, "The Flood of Years," will under-
stand what effects he sometimes wrought in the editorial
columns of the Evening Post. Opening soberly though
on a high plane, his more impassioned editorials would
rise to a splendid climax. He did not use his grand style
too frequently, but during the Civil War he employed it
again and again. Thus he wrote July 6, 1863, upon the
"three glorious days" at VIcksburg and Gettysburg:
Many a gallant spirit lies silent forever on the bloody field;
many peaceful homes are instantly made desolate; our hearts go
forth in sorrow to the fallen and in condolence to the bereaved;
but this is the eternal glory of those who have perished, as of
i^
\/
350 THE EVENING POST
those who mourn their deaths, that they have given their lives in
the noblest cause in which man was ever called to suffer. They
have died for a country which is worthy of the blood of its cit-
izens; for the integrity and honor of a government in which the
dearest rights of millions are involved; and for the great prin-
ciples of human freedom and human justice, in which the world
and ages to come are deeply interested. Nowhere else could they
have earned a more glorious renown, for nowhere else could they
have contributed a better service to humanity.
Again, we find him hailing the doom of the Confed-
eracy (Dec. 5, 1864) :
In the tone of that pristine rebel whom the great poet makes
to exclaim, "Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven," these
proud and insolent spirits disdained to brook their fate, and flew
to revolt. A new slave empire, a new semi-tropical nation, a
grand aristocracy of white masters, was to be built around the Gulf
of Mexico, our western Mediterranean, but alas for these dreams
of ambition, the throne of Maximilian casts its shadow over one
end of their prospective dominion, and the tread of Sherman's
soldiers shakes the other into dust.
But the foundation of Bryant's power as an editor lay
simply In his soundness of judgment, and his unwavering
courage In maintaining It. The greatest peril of the pro-
fession, he wrote In 185 1, "Is the strong temptation which
It sets before men, to betray the cause of truth to public
opinion, and to fall In with what are supposed to be the
views held by a contemporaneous majority, which are
sometimes perfectly right and sometimes grossly wrong."
That peril was greater In Bryant's day than now, for the
comparative smallness and homogeneity of the reading
public made It more dangerous to incur the general dis-
pleasure. He never yielded in the slightest degree to
it; and the number of Instances In which his view of public
questions became the view taken by history Is remark-
able. The Evening Post's defense of trade unions, and
of the abolitionists' right to free use of the malls and to
free speech, are memorable illustrations. Just before the
Civil War began Bryant ran over in the Post a Hst of Its
measures, at first opposed by the majority, but later ac-
BRYANT AS EDITOR 351
cepted as sound. It was for many years the only power-
ful journal north of the Potomac which pleaded for a
low tariff. It resisted the internal Improvement system,
advocated the sub-treasury system, and defended the right
of petition. It successfully opposed the assumption of
State debts by the national government. It was one of
the earliest and most earnest advocates of cheaper post-
age rates, already partly realized. When the Fugitive
Slave law had been proposed. It had denounced It as an
Infringement of the rights of the States, though most
Northerners regarded it with Indifference or approbation.
As for the great slavery question In general, Bryant had
already written just after Lincoln's election:
We take this occasion to congratulate the old friends of the
Evening Post, who have read it for the last score of years or
thereabouts, on this new triumph of the principles which it main-
tains. The Wilmot Proviso is now consecrated as a part of the
national public policy by this election ; but earlier than the Wil-
mot Proviso was the opposition of our journal to the enlargement
of slavery. It began with the first whisper of the scheme to an-
nex Texas to the American Union, and it has been steadily main-
tained from that moment till now, when the right and justice of
our cause is proclaimed in a general election by the mighty voice
of a larger part of thirty millions of people.
Freedom, democracy — to these two principles every
utterance of the Evening Post in its fifty years under
Bryant was referred. Other journals might think of the
day only and let the morrow take care of itself, but he
was solicitous that each Issue should fit into the exposi-
tion of a policy good for the year and the decade. ''He
looked upon the journal which he conducted," wrote his
last managing editor, Robert Burch, "as a conscientious
statesman looks upon the official trust which has been
committed to him, or the work which he has undertaken —
not with a view to do what Is to be done to-day in the
easiest or most brilliant way, but so to do it that it may
tell upon what Is to be done to-morrow, and all other days,
until the worthiest object of journalism is achieved. This
352 THE EVENING POST
is the most useful journalism; and first and last, it is the
most effective and influential."
In his method of work, combining remarkable efficiency
with a remarkable amount of disorder, Bryant was a true
newspaper man. His desk, a large one used after him by
Parke Godwin and Carl Schurz, was kept piled with
litter — books, manuscripts, pamphlets, documents, and
stranded memoranda; a little square being left in the
middle where he could place writing materials and do his
work. Once when Bryant went to Europe, says Bigelow,
"I thought, I am going to clean house, and I did, and
found all sorts of old newspapers, old contributions, let-
ters, etc., etc." When the poet returned and saw his
desk cleared, he demanded an explanation. Bigelow,
giving it, perceived instantly that his little housecleaning
had been an error. "I saw by his expression that I was
trespassing. He did not make any remark, but his silence
was a very severe rebuke. He did not like it at all that
he could not have his old papers just as he had left them."
Indeed, he was attached to a large number of homely but
familiar objects. Among these was a pen-knife with
which he used to trim both his quill pen and his finger
nails. He owned an old blue cotton umbrella that he
always insisted upon carrying. When he was departing
for Mexico, his daughter replaced it with a handsome
new one, but he missed it and refused the exchange.
It was Bryant's habit to write for the Post on the backs
of circulars, letters received, and rejected manuscripts,
for he held that it was shameful to waste the least scrap
of useful material, since it represented men's time and
labor. It is curious, in looking over his papers, to find
what these scraps were; a letter to Lincoln, for example,
was copied off from the back of a wine merchant's cir-
cular, offering Moet champagne at $12 the case. Yet he
was really the soul of carefulness. His copy often went
up to the printer a mass of interlineations and corrections;
he never sent a letter away without first making a rough
draft. Throughout his life he made it a rule to write
everything for the Post in the oflUce, never at home, and
BRYANT AS EDITOR 353
even when an additional task was laid upon him, as when
he wrote a sketch of the journal's history in 185 1, he
refused to do it elsewhere. This was a wise husbanding
of his nervous energy; but his family recalls that he and
Parke Godwin often discussed the paper's affairs at night.
No head of a newspaper was ever more considerate of
his subordinates than Bryant, who had but one serious
quarrel with an associate, and that was soon bridged over.
Bigelow tells us that "he never rebuked me; he never
criticized me." In looking over Bigelow's proofs, he
would sometimes say, "Had not this word better be
changed for that or the other? Does that phrase express
all or more than you mean, or as clearly as you wish it
to?" Even this gentle correction was rare. Another
worker tells us that it was Bryant's habit, whenever he
wished to speak to any one in the office, to go to the desk
of the man rather than call him in. When John R.
Thompson, the Southern poet, became literary editor just
after the Civil War, Bryant knew how ardently he had
sympathized with the Confederacy, and personally saw
that he was given no book to review that would hurt his
feelings. We have noted how he refused to say a word
against the inefficient business manager of the Post early
in the fifties, though recognizing his incompetence. He
never wavered in his loyalty to Isaac Henderson when
the latter was under fire in connection with Civil War
contracts, and beyond doubt remained sincerely convinced
that Henderson had done no wrong.
In the office, as outside of it, in fact, Bryant was a
thorough democrat. During his travels in England,
while staying at the home of a business man, he was once
invited to dine with a country gentleman near by, and
accepted in the belief that, as a matter of course, his host
had also been invited. When he learned that this was not
true, and that his host, being in trade, never thought of
entering the gentleman's house, Bryant angrily canceled
his acceptance. The incident made so disagreeable an
impression upon him that he shortened his stay in the
country. Similarly, when Dickens first visited New York,
354 THE EVENING POST
a rich old Knickerbocker who had never theretofore taken
the slightest notice of Bryant asked him to his house to
meet the young novelist; and Bryant declined/ telling a
friend that he would never be a stool-pigeon to attract
fine birds of passage. In all relations with others Bryant
^ thought of the man, not of his rank, money, or reputation.
The poverty-stricken, invalid Thompson became one of
the intimates of his home soon after he joined the Posty
and the editor showed a much higher regard for the
rugged head of the composing-room, Dithmar, than for
many a general or millionaire. When the Post moved
to its new building in 1875, Bryant rarely occupied the
handsome office fitted up for him there, with Its fine view
of the harbor, preferring a humble chair and desk in a
corner of the composing room upstairs, where he was free
from boresome callers.
"In his intercourse with his co-laborers and sub-
ordinates," wrote Parke Godwin, "the Impression pro-
duced by Mr. Bryant, after a certain reticence, which
diffused an atmosphere of coldness about him, was broken
through, was that of his extreme simplicity and sincerity
of character. He was as transparent as the day, as guile-
less as a child, and as clear in his integrity as the crystal
that has no flaw nor crack." The coldness was but a
mask, and Bryant's own feelings often threw It off. En-
tering the office one day, he told In a self-accusing way
how, walking down-town, he had smashed a kite that a
small boy dragged across his face, without paying the
urchin for it ; he reproached himself deeply. George Gary
Eggleston, who worked beside him three or four years,
says that "I found him not only warm in his human sym-
pathies, but even passionate." Sometimes he would do
something almost boyish. Once he was standing by a
form around which the printers were gathered, hurriedly
preparing It for the press. A word was spoken which
suggested some stanzas from Cowley, and Bryant, lock-
ing his hands before him, repeated the verses with re-
markable force and expression, while the printers paused
and listened. Then he recovered himself with a start, a
BRYANT AS EDITOR 355
look of embarrassment overspread his face, and — to
change the subject — he turned to the casement around the
elevator, tapped It, and said: "There is very little wood
there to make trouble in case of fire."
He was wont to impress upon his associates the desira-
bility of acting as courteously toward men and women
of the outside world as possible. Bigelow says that he
used to cite the example of Dr. Bartlett, editor of the
Albion, whose rule was "never to write anything of any
one which would make it unpleasant to meet him the
following day at dinner." When Martin F. Tupper was
about to visit the Philadelphia Exposition of 1876,
Eggleston wrote a playful editorial about him, which the
managing editor received with some apprehension, for he
knew that Tupper had once entertained Bryant in Eng-
land. It was decided to show Bryant the manuscript.
The editor read it with evident amusement, but remarked :
"I heartily wish you had printed this without saying a
word to me about it, for then, when Mr. Tupper becomes
my guest, as he will if he comes to America, I could have
explained to him that the thing was done without my
knowledge by one of the flippant young men of my staff.
Now that you have brought the matter to my attention,
I can make no excuse." The article was not published.
He disliked to rebuff unwelcome visitors. "It is a posi-
tive fact," writes the veteran dramatic editor of the
Evening Post, Mr. J. Ranken Towse, "that he not infre-
quently preferred to escape them by passing through a
back door opening into the composing room, and descend-
ing thence to the ground floor by means of the freight
elevator. Sometimes he sent for me and asked me to rid
him of the visitors. This I did easily and unscrupulously.
Thus, in addition to my regular duties — I was then city
editor — I became a sort of amateur Cerberus." When
the widow of John Hackett, a, young woman of striking
beauty but no stage experience, resolved to play Lady
Macbeth, she visited the Post, and although Mr. Towse
tried to dissuade her, she induced Bryant to make a half-
promise to deliver an introductory speech at her first
356 THE EVENING POST
appearance. Bryant uneasily confessed this to Mr.
Towse, who warned him plainly of the false position in
which he would be left when her debut proved a failure,
as it was certain to do. When Mr. Towse offered to
extricate him by dismissing Mrs. Hackett upon her next
call, the poet eagerly assented.
It should be said that Bryant could be very blunt on
occasion, and had no hesitancy in offending those he dis-
liked. There were some men to whom he would never
speak. Thurlow Weed, who for a time edited the World,
was one. Once when they were together at an evening
party a friend insisted that he must be allowed to intro-
duce them; finally Bryant half arose from his chair, and
then sank back, saying, "Not yet — not yet I" When he
concluded that a man in public life had done wrong, he
followed him to the end of his career with unbending
aversion. In the warfare over the United States Bank,
he conceived a fierce hatred of Nicholas Biddle ; and when
Biddle died, far from taking a nil nisi honum attitude, he
expressed deep regret that he had not died in jail. His
judgment so angered Philip Hone that he wrote of
Bryant in his famous Diary as a "black-hearted mis-
anthrope," saying : "This is the first instance I have known
of the vampire of party spirit seizing the lifeless body of
its victim before its interment, and exhibiting its bloody
claws to the view of mourning relatives." As well expect
honey from the rattle-snake as poetry from such a man,
he added.
It must also be remembered that Bryant was always
severely dignified. If he never commanded a subordinate
to do anything, but always requested it, he knew that his
request was a command. He always addressed others
with the prefix "Mr.," and no one, not even Bigelow or
his son-in-law Parke Godwin, omitted the word in ad-
dressing him. When Dom Pedro of Brazil visited the
Evening Post, Bryant did not greet the popular Emperor
in the hall, but waited to receive him at his desk; and
he called a junior to show Dom Pedro the press room.
A certain testlness grew upon the editor in his later
BRYANT AS EDITOR 357
years, though it was never more than momentary. He
was especially sensitive to any suggestion that he was
losing his bodily vigor. Not only would he climb the
stairs to his ninth-floor ofiice, but he would now and then
seize the frame of his door, and show his abihty to "chin"
it repeatedly. Once, when he fell in Broadway, he
sharply rebuffed a gentleman who stepped up and asked,
"Are you hurt, Mr. Bryant?" — and he was a little
ashamed of it later. Mr. Towse once saw him consult-
ing the city directory, his face showing plainly that the
print was too fine for his eyes. Forgetting Bryant's pride
in using no spectacles, he inquired, "Cannot I help you,
Mr. Bryant?" The poet instantly rejoined, "No, sir!"
with the angry tone of an insulted man, flung the book
on a table, and walked swiftly from the room. Mr.
Towse also tells us that if you asked Bryant a question,
you were wise to accept his answer as final. "I was not
long in finding that out. There had been an argument
over the correct spelling of the word 'peddler.' As he
was at his desk, I referred the matter to him. 'I shall
have to write it,' he said, 'to make sure. It is often only
by the look of it that I can decide whether a word is
rightly spelled.' He wrote the word in several ways and
finally selected the form in which I have given it. I
thanked him and asked him whether either of the other
spellings was permissible. He turned on me like a flash
and said angrily, 'I thought you asked me how to spell
it?'"
Such incidents were an evidence of Bryant's increasing
age. Though he lived to be eighty-three, he gave his
strength to the Evening Post till the very day he was
stricken down. The only sustained series of editorials y
which he wrote after his final visit to Europe in 1867
was a series upon reciprocity in trade, but he still con-
tributed many occasional leaders upon questions of the
day. He was accustomed to come down in the morning,
and whether he wrote an editorial or not, to read all the
proofs with care and frequently to make heavy correc-
tions. "He would pass through the editorial rooms with
358 THE EVENING POST
a cheery good morning," says Eggleston; "he would sit
down by one's desk and talk if there was aught to talk
about; or, if asked a question while passing, would stand
while answering it, and frequently would relate some
anecdote suggested by the question or offer some apt
quotation." Hawthorne, who had seen him abroad, spoke
of him as "at once alert and infirm," and with "a weary
look upon his face, as if he were tired of seeing things and
doing things, though with certainly enough energy still
to see and do, if need were." Yet the vigor and fire with
which he treated topics of the day, if they seemed really
pressing topics to him, was not a whit abated.
It is the testimony of more than one co-worker that
his last day in the office, the day he delivered the address
at the unveiling of the Mazzini statue, showed him worn
and depressed. He went into Eggleston's room, and
asked the latter's opinion upon two poems sent him by
an acquaintance. Eggleston said they were poor stuff.
"I supposed so," Bryant said sadly; "and now I suppose
I shall have to write to her on the subject. People expect
too much of me — altogether too much." He chatted also
with Watson R. Sperry, the managing editor, who pro-
cured a book of reference from the Evening Post library
for him. He was as tranquil and physically as strong as
ever, but there was a tension in his voice. Finally, says
Sperry, "he said to me that it was quite unfair to ask a
man of his age to make a public address. There was a
petulance and a pathos in his tone which I had never heard
before." A few hours later, after speaking bareheaded
in the sun, he collapsed on the steps of Gen. James Wil-
son's home.
Bryant's work for the Post must not be thought of as
consisting wholly of editorial writing and management.
He filled literally hundreds of its columns with his letters
of travel, which covered each of his six trips to Europe,
and his tours to the South and the Northwest, and which
ultimately were collected into three volumes. The letters
are not literature, but good journalism. Bigelow once
wrote Bryant that "they are very much liked by the class
BRYANT AS EDITOR 359
— of course, not the largest — who can appreciate them,
and are of great value to the paper. I like them none
the less because they are very different from the style of
correspondence which ordinarily finds its way into news-
papers from abroad." By this Bigelow meant that they
did not depend upon important events, adventure, or gos-
sip. Their interest lay in a careful observation of scenery
and society which often caused them to be widely copied.
In the early days the poet wrote reviews and reports of
important lectures. His signed poems in the Post did not
aggregate a dozen, but they were supplemented by un-
signed light verse, of which a good specimen is the poem
on "Bully" Brooks, Sumner's assailant, to be found in
Godwin's biography (II, 92). Brooks had been chal-
lenged to a duel in Canada by Anson Burlingame:
To Canada, Brooks was asked to go;
To waste of powder a pound or so;
He sighed as he answered, No, no, no,
They might take my life on the way, you know.
For I am afraid, afraid, afraid,
Bully Brooks is afraid. . . .
Bryant reaped a generous material reward for his
labors — the Evening Post made him by far the richest
poet the country has had. He possessed a competence
and more by i860, for he had shared equally with Bige-
low in profits that enabled the latter, after only twelve
years with the paper, to retire worth more than $175,000.
The Post's business history in the Civil War is sum-
marized in the statement that its dividends reached 80
per cent, upon the capital invested, and that at the close
of the struggle its value was commonly estimated at
$1,000,000.
It made Bryant, with Parke Godwin and Isaac Hender-
son, wealthy while some other New York journals were
scarcely paying expenses. The Tribune in October, 1861,
said that the circulation of American dailies was larger
than ever, but many had been forced into bankruptcy.
*'We doubt that a single daily in this city has paid its
36o THE EVENING POST
expenses throughout the last four months, or that a dozen
in the Union have done so." The receipts of the Tribune
in 1864 were $747,501, and its expenses were $735,751,
the nominal profit not sufficing to pay for the deprecia-
tion of the plant. The chief reason for the embarrass-
ment of the morning papers was the enormous cost of
paper, especially as the war neared its close. The
Tribune's paper bill during 1864 was $426,000, whereas
in 1 86 1 it would not have been more than $200,000 for
the same circulation. In the space of only four months,
April to July, 1864, the combination of paper-makers in
the Eastern States advanced the price from fifteen cents
a pound to twenty-seven cents. The Times in 1863 im-
ported paper from Belgium at seven and a half cents.
The position of the Post was fortunate in that it used
much less paper than the Herald or Tribune — it was still
a four-page paper, while they had eight or twelve pages,
though of course smaller — while at the beginning of the
war it charged three cents a copy, and they only two.
Later the prices of all the journals advanced; the
Evening Post in 1862 going to four cents a copy and from
$9 a year to $10, and in 1864 to five cents a copy and $12
a year.
Just how high the war-time circulation became we do
not know. In April, 1861, it exceeded 20,000, and it
steadily increased, the demand growing so heavy the first
battle summer that whenever important news came it was
necessary to issue many copies printed on one side of the
sheet alone. To obviate this, in 1862 the journal in-
stalled "the largest and most efficient eight-cylinder news-
paper press that has ever been constructed," at a cost of
nearly $50,000. We know that in 1864 the total revenue
from sales and subscriptions of the daily reached $250,-
000. Advertising, moreover, had become so extensive
that frequently six pages instead of four had to be printed,
and they had swollen to enormous size. All of the evening
papers were still "blanket sheets," and one or two morn-
ing papers, the most prominent being the Sun, long re-
mained so. At the close of the war the dimensions of
BRYANT AS EDITOR 361
the unfolded Evening Post were 30^ by 52 inches — it
was not a journal for use in such subways as the Evening
Post was already advocating. No newspaper so large,
the Post boasted, had ever attained so wide a circulation.
Huge as it was, and devoting from 20 to 25 of its 40 col-
umns to advertising, it had constantly to exclude adver-
tisements. The advertising receipts of the Herald in
1865 reached $662,192; of the Tribune, $301,841; of
the Times, $284,412; and of the Evening Post, which
stood high above the World or Sun, and easily led the
evening papers, $222,715.
Bryant, who in the late thirties would probably have
sold his interest in the Post for a few thousands clear,
thus by 1866 had grown rich far beyond any wish or ex- \^
pectation on his part. He lived very simply; a man who
would rather walk than drive, who preferred oatmeal to
any procurable dainty, and whose most lavish entertain-
ment was to have the Rev. Dr. Henry Bellows or some
other well-loved friend spend a week-end at Roslyn, could
not do otherwise. The chief outward signs of his wealth
were that he acquired, besides his little estate at Roslyn, a
town house, and the ancestral homestead at Cummington,
Mass. ; while he unostentatiously gave large sums in
charity. President Mark Hopkins of Williams College,
acknowledging a check from Bryant, wrote that it was a
queer world in which poets were able to be lavish philan-
thropists. It was because of his large gifts that he was
able to contradict with some asperity a stranger who
wrote him criticizing his tariff views, and denouncing him
as a plutocrat because he was said to be worth more than
$500,000. Bryant replied, in a hitherto unpublished
note:
I am as much for free trade as yourself. The Evening Post has
been all along known as an advocate for absolute free trade
between nations, and for the support of government by direct
taxation. But as the state of public opinion leaves no hope of this,
the Evening Post for the present cooperates with those who seek a
reduction of the tariff to a simple revenue standard with no view
leading to protection. That is as much as we can now get and
362 THE EVENING POST
the Evening Post is for taking it. As we cannot go by a single
jump from the bottom of the stairs to the top, we take the
first step.
Your estimate of the property I possess is greatly exaggerated.
You intimate that I ought to be a second Zaccheus. How do you
know I am not? You have no knowledge of how much of my
income, such as it is, goes to public objects, and to the poor. Nor
is it my business to inform you. I have for the greater part of
my life been in narrow circumstances, yet never repined on that
account, and although I have been prospering of late, it is not
my fault, for I never made haste to be rich. You see therefore
that you have administered reproof without knowing, or probably
caring, whether there was any occasion for it or not.
(Dec. 14, 1870.)
Bryant began his journalistic career in poverty and dis-
couragement, his literary friends jeering at him for
exchanging the dignified profession of the law for the
jangling, vulgar newspaper calling. He made It pay
richly in money, and above all In honor and influence.
No man of his time did more, and only three, Greeley,
Raymond, and the elder Bowles, did so much, to elevate
the press In public esteem. "If our newspapers have risen
above the level on which they stood when Dickens and
Trollope held them up to the scorn of Europe," said the
Brooklyn Times when he died, "It Is because they have
been wise enough to profit by the lesson set by William
Cullen Bryant." He had often crossed pens with the
Journal of Commerce and the World. The former spoke
of him as "an editor whose example has been uniformly
ennobling," and said that "journalism will never Improve
so much that It may not safely pattern by Bryant." "His
long and honorable career," said the latter, "had put Into
his hands that mysterious Influence called weight of char-
acter." Not a few journals, like the Philadelphia Ledger,
and some Individuals, like John D. Van Buren, ranked
the editor above the poet.
When George W. Curtis dehvered his commemorative
address In New York before an audience which included
President Hayes and members of his Cabinet, he paid his
warmest tribute to Bryant as the journalist. "The fact
BRYANT AS EDITOR 363
is no such man ever sat before or since in the editorial
chair," a critic has just written in the Cambridge History
of American Literature; "in no other has there been such
culture, scholarship, wisdom, dignity, moral idealism.
Was it all in Greeley ? In Dana ? What those fifty years
may have meant as an influence on the American press
. . . the layman may only guess."
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
APARTMENT HOUSES RISE AND TWEED FALLS
Not long before the war New York's manners were
provincial, and not long afterwards the city felt Itself
one of the world's great centers. In twenty years, 1850-
70, the population grew from a half million to a million.
Such large groups were enriched by war contracts, the rise
of real estate, and the nation-wide business expansion that
the Increase In luxury struck every observer. A Four
Hundred was taking shape, rich shops were arising, the
opera was growing more and more gilded; In 1868, said
the Evening Post, the receipts of the score of theaters
reached $3,165,000. The Post that year listed ten of
the richest men In order — Wm. B. Astor, believed to be
worth $75,000,000; A. T. Stewart, Wm. C. Rhinelander,
Peter and Robert Goelet, James Lenox, Peter Lorlllard,
John D. Wolfe, M. M. Hendricks, Rufus M. Lord, and
C. V. S. Roosevelt. Their wealth, It told them, had
become so great that If they tried they could accomplish
enormous benefits for New York — they could sweep away
the debasing tenement house system, or shatter the Tam-
many Ring; and the people believed that public services
were the best if not the only justification for such wealth.
The growth In population emphasized the desirability
of many diverse improvements. At the beginning of 1867
the Evening Post was demanding a great art gallery, such
as we now have In the Metropolitan Museum, and point-
ing to European collections as models, while later the
same year it urged a zoological garden like London's,
there being as yet none In all America. It and the Tribune
together In 1871 asked for a single large public library.
Th:re were several small ones — the Astor^ the Mercan-
tile, the Society Library, and the unfinished Lenox
Library — but none was "public" In the sense that it circu-
364
APARTMENT HOUSES AND TWEED z^s
lated books free, while the city would obviously benefit
from the union of some of the larger collections. Having
been the first to propose Central Park, Bryant applauded
the creation of Prospect Park in Brooklyn, for which
ground was broken in 1866. Theodore Thomas, who
had begun to organize his orchestra early in the war, and
immediately afterwards had opened his "summer night"
concerts, issued a call through the newspaper for a sup-
porting fund of $20,000. In several editorials in the
spring of 1868, the first entitled ''Can a City Be
Planned?", the Evening Post suggested that a board of
engineers be named to lay out a city plan, determining
which areas should be used for retail trade, manufactures,
and residence. It was an Age of Innocence in many ways
— people wondered at the first concrete sidewalk, laid
from Park Row to Murray Street in 1868 ; they were just
learning the use of safe deposit vaults, and elevators were
curiosities ; but it was an age of progress.
The problem which most pressed upon New York after
Appomattox, as after the World War, was housing.
Building had stopped during the conflict, and its resump-
tion was slow, but Manhattan had kept on growing at
the rate of 30,000 people a year. In the winter of 1866-7
the Evening Post pronounced New York the most costly
place of residence on earth. "Houses are so scarce that
landlords see tenants running around, like pigs in the
land of Cockaigne, with knives and forks in their backs,
begging to be eaten; it is a favor to get a decent house
at a preposterous rent — at almost any sum, in fact; and
we know of families living comfortably in Europe from
the rent of a house on one of the favorite avenues." That
spring a great open-air mass meeting was held in protest,
and petitions were sent the Legislature for a law basing
rents upon the assessed valuation. Those of moderate
means suffered more than the rich or the poor tenement
dwellers. "Bank clerks, bookkeepers, and salesmen are
compelled to go to New Jersey, Staten Island, Long
Island, or Westchester to secure attractive and comfort-
able homes," said the Post. "New York is practically
366 THE EVENING POST
losing the best part of its population." The practice of
sub-letting parts of single houses waxed common.
From this demand for housing there arose an unprece-
dented real estate boom. Thousands of homes were
placed on the market at high prices, and land auctions
took place daily. The Evening Post reported that lots
in Manhattan and Brooklyn were eagerly bought at
unheard-of rates. The neighborhoods of Central and
Prospect Parks had become popular for residences, while
merchants were purchasing sites for stores on Union
Square and Fifth Avenue. Lots that fronted upon what
Is now Central Park West had sold In 1850 for a few
hundred dollars apiece, and in i860 for from $2,000 to
$3,000, but in 1867 they were bringing from $8,000 to
$15,000. High up on the East Side, at 91st Street, lots
now sold at $3,000. When Bay Ridge Terrace was
created In 1868 the journal commented upon the rapid
growth of that fine part of Brooklyn, which It had already
noted to be spreading eastward rapidly. Brownsville and
East New York before the war had been quiet farming
communities, but now the former had a hundred houses,
and the latter had grown with a rush to 5,000 souls.
The northward march of business, causing the demoli-
tion of hundreds of old residences. Increased the need for
new residential construction. When Ex-Mayor Opdyke's
house on Fifth Avenue near Sixteenth Street was sold to
James A. Hearn & Son in 1867 for $105,000, and a mil-
liner established herself on the Avenue at Twenty-second
Street, the Evening Post devoted an editorial to the trans-
formation. It predicted that all Fifth Avenue to Twenty-
third Street would soon be engrossed by business, the new
Fifth Avenue Hotel having given the movement impetus.
Higher up, residential property had reached amazing
prices. A brownstone house at Thirtieth Street had just
been purchased for $114,000, while P. T. Barnum had
bought one at the corner of Thirty-ninth for $80,000. A
fine light brownstone mansion on the corner of Fortieth,
building for W. H. Vanderbllt, would cost at least
$80,000, the stable and lot included. At Forty-third
APARTMENT HOUSES AND TWEED 367
Street a wealthy Jewish congregation was building a
synagogue at an outlay of fully $700,000, while ten blocks
farther up, where St. Thomas's was about to be erected,
$100,000 had been offered and refused for a plot 100 by
125 feet. Seven houses with brownstone fronts had just
been finished on the west side of the Avenue, between
Forty-third and Forty-fourth, and were so finely fur-
nished that the front doors had cost $700 each, and the
staircases $4,000.
The most serious aspect of the housing shortage was
that as yet respectable New Yorkers knew but two modes
of residence : one must either take a full single house, or
consent to a dismal boarding house. The apartment
building was known only to travelers in Europe, and was
mistrusted as not being adapted to American indi-
viduahsm.
The possibility of utilizing the multiple-unit type of
housing, however, was unceasingly expounded by the
Evening Post from the time peace returned, for the edi-
tors had lived in the "Continental flat" abroad. An early
editorial (Feb. 6, 1866) was called "How to Gain
Room."
It has been suggested frequently that tenement houses scientifi-
cally built would be profitable in New York, and a great boon to
the working people. But they would be no less an advantage to
the wealthier classes, and we wonder that the attempt has not
been made first in the best part of town, and with houses calcu-
lated to accommodate families of the wealthier citizens, at a some-
what more moderate rent than is attainable now.
Many a family which now occupies a whole house uptown
would be content to rent a floor, suitably fitted up after the man-
ner of the houses of Paris and other European cities. Such an
arrangement would spare the women of the family the endless
and often painful toil of going up and downstairs, from the
kitchen to the top of a three-storied house, three or four times a
day. It would be far more convenient, and the rents might well
make a considerable saving.
The inertia of New Yorkers was to blame, the Post
said a little later. "Such a thing as hiring a suite of rooms
368 THE EVENING POST
and having meals sent in from a restaurant at a fixed and
moderate charge is, we believe, almost if not quite
unknown here. As for the 'flats' in which thousands of
families conveniently and comfortably keep house in
France and Germany, they require an arrangement of
house architecture not known to our builders." In the
summer of 1867, when the congestion was at its worst,
the editors gave publicity to the design of an architect for
an apartment house for the "middling classes." Upon
two ordinary city lots, 20 by 100 feet, he proposed
erecting a four-story building, containing eight distinct
suites of rooms, all as completely isolated from each other
as though they were detached houses. There was to be
a central stairs, each landing giving entrance to two
homes; but every visitor would have to ring below for
admission precisely as at the front door of any other
houses. Each suite was to contain a parlor, dining room,
four bedrooms, bath, and kitchen. For some time the
newspaper carried on a veritable crusade.
When the first apartment house was ready, in 1870,
one designed by Richard M. Hunt and erected at 142
East Eighteenth Street, the Evening Post rejoiced in it
as the harbinger of a new housing era. It was said to be
better than most of those in Paris, though the Post
thought it lacking in light and ventilation. Each of the
sixteen suites had six rooms and a bath, and rents ranged
from $1,500 on the lower floors to $1,080 on the upper —
G. P. Putnam, the publisher, and others of means lived
in it. There was no elevator, but a dumbwaiter enabled
the tenants to bring coal up from the basement. The
close of 1870 saw the new movement in full swing, with
eight houses built or building, and a strong demand for
more.
An apartment house on Forty-eighth Street boasted a
porter, who lighted the halls, removed garbage, and sent
up fuel; the rents were only $40 to $75 a month. A
block of flats overlooking Central Park from the east at
Sixty-eighth Street gave each tenant eight rooms and a
bath, elevator service, black walnut floors, and his own
APARTMENT HOUSES AND TWEED 369
kitchen range and hot water heater for $75 to $150.
The most pretentious house, however, was building at
Fifth Avenue and Madison Square. It was costing a
round million, and was to be 125 feet high. *'Each suite
will have ten rooms, four closets, and eight washbowls,"
announced the Evening Post, and rents were to run from
$2,000 to $3,000 a year. The journal advised builders
to install elevators, and charge as much for the upper as
for lower floors.
For several years a marked prejudice against flats per-
sisted. Most New Yorkers believed that In this land of
democratic sociability it would be impossible to isolate
the apartments and obtain privacy, and that they would
soon sink to the level of tenements. The Post did its
share in ridiculing these fears, and in pointing out the
ugliness of the monotonous blocks of brownstone houses.
It denied the common remark, "No house is big enough
for two families." But as it later said, one of the car-
dinal reasons for the rapid dissipation of the prejudice
and popular success of the apartment houses was the
building, in the first instance, of costly structures as
pioneers in the movement.
By 1874 it thought that the new houses "m^y now be
considered almost perfect." The Haight Buildings at
Fifteenth Street and Fifth Avenue, offered thirty flats
at $2,000 to $3,000 a year each, with an elevator, an
Internal telegraph, and a restaurant. Among the notables
living here were Henry M. Field, the traveler; Col. W. C.
Church, editor of the Galaxy; Prof. Youmans, founder of
the Popular Science Monthly, and the Spanish Consul.
But the last word In luxury was an apartment building
In Fifty-sixth Street, where "the whole house Is warmed
by steam, and hot water is supplied to all the tenants at
the expense of the owner." The paper's prediction that
ten-story houses with elevators would be more popular
than smaller buildings had been completely justified.
Even before the rise of the apartment house came the
first sharp attacks upon tenement evils. New York City
had no lack of this particular kind of multiple-family
370 THE EVENING POST
dwelling, for in 1864 they numbered 15,511, and housed
486,000 persons. They were far from being what we
mean by tenements to-day: not until about 1879 was the
first tenement house of the now familiar type, five, six,
or more stories high, erected. The earlier buildings
were comparatively low barracks, many of them con-
verted mansions, shops, and stables, and others "rear
houses" in the back yards of old mansions; all without
airshafts, and with no complete provision for separating
families. The Evening Post fitly called them "The
Modern Upas," for they breathed upon the city the
poisons of cholera, typhus, smallpox, and crime. As
early as April, i860, six years before the first legislative
inquiry into the housing of the poor, the editors had
called shocked attention to police records showing that
some 18,000 New Yorkers were veritable troglodytes,
dwellers in cellars. It spoke out at the same time against
the horrible congestion of the slums. One "rear house"
on Mulberry Street had 222 persons huddled together;
in Cow Bay, one of the colored quarters, one house held
230 persons; while the notorious Old Brewery at Five
Points had sheltered 215 people before it burned. In
the Sixth Ward, surrounding the Five Points, sixty-three
small structures housed 4,721 persons.
An indignant editorial attack upon the deplorable
tenement-house conditions appeared in the Evening Post
six months after Lee's surrender, inspired by a report
of the Citizens' Association. Half the people of New
York lived in tenements, and on the East Side they were
packed in at the rate of 220,000 to the square mile. The
Post estimated that more than 25,000 dwelt in unfit
cellars, shanties, or stable-lofts. Of the 15,000 tene-
ments, almost 4,000 had no connection with the sewers.
One in three was a perpetual "fever nest," in which
typhus was endemic, while not one in fifteen was what
a tenement house ought to be. A single "fever nest" on
East Seventeenth Street, almost within a stone's throw
of the Mayor's home, had sent thirty-five typhus patients
during 1864 to the municipal fever hospital, while nearly
APARTMENT HOUSES AND TWEED 371
a hundred more had been treated in the building. The
public, repeated the Post early in 1867, was astonished
to awake from the war to the vast extent of the tenement
system, the immense numbers inhabiting such places, and
the horrid evils of filthiness, immorality, and sickness
engendered by them. "No man has a right to establish
a nest of fever and vice in the city," it said, arguing for
new laws and a government agency to regulate the con-
struction and use of tenements.
Simultaneously, the newspaper kept up its old com-
plaints, dating from Coleman's day, of the lack of due
sanitary regulations and activity. Slaughter-houses con-
tinued to abound, there being twenty-three in the north-
ern half of the Twentieth Ward alone, some of them
draining blood and other refuse for long distances
through open sewers. In Forty-sixth Street on the
East Side, a single neighborhood was blessed with one
slaughter-house, six tripe, three sausage, and two bone-
boiling establishments, and inj the summer was almost
uninhabitable (Sept. 2, 1865). A little later the Post
took notice of the nastiness of the harbor. Many sewers
emptied into the slips and under the piers, and there
being no movement of the water, the sewage decayed
until it had to be dredged out. These facts help explain
an editorial of 1866 defining the typhus area block by
block. It extended in irregular strips from the Battery
up the West Side to Cortlandt Street, and up the East
Side to Thirty-sixth. Smallpox was endemic through-
out a rectangle bounded by Broadway, the Bowery,
Chambers, and Bleecker, and in so many additional spots
in the lower part of the city that a man could hardly get
to his work downtown without crossing infected areas.
In the spring of 1867 the Legislature hesitatingly
passed the first act to regulate the erection and manage-
ment of tenements. Though it was, as the Evening Post
said, "much less stringent and particular" than the Eng-
lish laws on which it was modeled, it placed important
powers in the city Board of Health organized shortly
before, for which the Post had also struggled. All ten-
372 THE EVENING POST
ants of cellars were required to vacate them unless they
could obtain special permits, and within two years the
Post was rejoicing over a drastic order for the cutting
of 46,000 windows In Interior rooms. Of course this
legislation was only a beginning. In 1878-79 we find
the Evening Post vigorously agitating for Its extension,
and publishing articles upon "The Homes of the Poor"
which give a horrifying picture of Mulberry Court and
other slum sections. Half of the city's 125,000 children
lived In tenements, and nine-tenths of the deaths among
children occurred there. In May, 1878, the "Evening
Post Fresh-Air Fund" was founded for the purpose of
sending slum children to country homes for summer rest
and recreation. The business office collected and dis-
bursed the money raised by almost dally appeals In the
newspaper, and the Rev. WlUard Parsons took charge
of the work of finding farmers to take the children,
and of transporting them. Some years later the Tribune
took over the Fresh-Air Fund, and still maintains It. In
1879, after a mass-meeting upon the tenement problem
at Cooper Union, addressed among others by Parke
Godwin, then editor of the Evening Post, new regulatory
legislation was passed at Albany.
Every one saw that evils In housing could not be cor-
rected without expanding the city's area, and In the decade
after the Civil War the city press paid little more atten-
tion to them than to the twin perplexity of transporta-
tion. The first^talk of a subway had been heard in the
early fifties, and was thin talk Indeed, although the Lon-
don underground railway dates from 1853. The Evening
Post used to boast that It had been the first journal to
propose a steam subway, Bryant having brought the idea
home from England. But the real solution of the transit
problem, for a period which had no electric traction, lay
In the elevated railways which Col. Robert L. Stevens
had suggested as long before as 1831. The need. grew
more and more urgent. When the war ended, transpor-
tation was furnished by the horse railways and by eight
omnibus companies. The horse-cars were slowly driving
APARTMENT HOUSES AND TWEED 373
the buses out of business, the great Consolidated Com-
pany, which operated a half-dozen lines, having gone
bankrupt in 1864; but there remained 250 of the vehicles,
or enough to impede other traffic seriously. The capital
invested in them was $1,600,000, for each had six $200
horses, while wages and stabling costs had risen fast.
To find room for the growing population, and to ease
the streets of their intolerable burden — these were the
two chief arguments for rapid transit. As the Evening
Post said in the closing days of 1864, the most desirable
parts of the island, the sections abreast of and above
Central Park, were largely given up to pigs, ducks,
shanty-squatters, and filth. A railroad under Broadway,
it thought, would soon change all that. "When a mer-
chant can go to Central Park in fifteen minutes he will
not hesitate to live in Seventieth or Eightieth Street;
and a resident of One Hundredth Street could reach the
business section of the city as quickly by the underground
railway as those who live In Twentieth Street do now."
Better live in Yonkers than Harlem, it remarked later.
As for the streets, it declared In 1866: "Broadway Is
simply intolerable to the man who Is in a hurry; he must
creep along with the crowd, no matter how cold it Is; he
crosses the street at the risk of his life; and when he jour-
neys up and down in an omnibus, he wonders at the skill
with which a wheeled vehicle is made so perfectly
uncomfortable."
A multitude of suggestions for better transit had been
brought forward by this time. Some men proposed one
or several subways; the Evening Post modestly thought
that five were needed, several beginning at the Battery
and the rest at Canal Street, and all running to the Har-
lem. Others favored elevated roads mounted on single
pillars in the streets, and still others called for such roads
running over the housetops. Sunken railways in the
middle of certain streets were proposed, and one power-
ful intellect devised a scheme for two railways, one on
each side of Broadway, running "through the cellars" I
To lessen the traffic congestion in Broadway, a college
374 THE EVENING POST
professor suggested that the city buy the ground floor
of all buildings for a space ten or twelve feet deep on
each side, and form an arcade there for foot passengers,
yielding the entire street to vehicles. Another professor
thought that horses should be banished altogether, and
the freight and passenger traffic in Broadway restricted
to steam trains. To all the plans objections were made,
and were frequently as wonderful in their way. Thus
Engineer Craven of the Croton Board demonstrated at
length in February, 1866, that no subway could ever be
built, because it would interfere with the water supply;
and even the Post called his argument "a knockdown
blow."
In the spring of 1867 the Evening Post was regarding
hopefully two schemes before the Legislature, one for
a "three-tier railroad" (subway, surface, and elevated),
and one for a metropolitan underground line. In 1868
the Legislature actually authorized a steam subway from
City Hall to Forty-second Street, the incorporators of
which included such substantial men as William B. Ogden,
William E. Dodge, and Henry W. Slocum, but the enter-
prise did nothing more than demonstrate the immediate
impracticability of the plan. Three years later the Post
had swung to the sensible view that an elevated would be
better than a subway, for it had been shown that the
latter would cost $30,000,000, and no one was ready to
invest. Elevated construction had then already begun,
and when Bryant died in 1878 there were four lines.
Subordinate to the two main subjects of housing and
transit, a great variety of comments upon city affairs can
be found in the post-bellum columns of the newspaper.
One of the most frequent topics of editorial complaint in
the years 1866-68 was the dirty and broken condition of
the streets, which New York was paying a former Tam-
many Judge, James R. Whiting, $500,000 a year to
neglect. Just before the war the Post had contended
energetically for the introduction of sweeping machines,
and now it objected to the contract system. Some city
officer, it held, should be responsible. It anticipated Col.
APARTMENT HOUSES AND TWEED 375
George F. Waring when it suggested that the city might
well "engage an army officer used to drilling and handling
a large number of men and accustomed to discipline, and
put the streets in his charge, with a simple injunction to
keep them clean, constantly, under all circumstances."
Early in the seventies we find the paper defending Henry
Bergh, founder of the S. P. C. A., against journals which
attacked his efforts to protect dumb animals as fanatical;
applauding (February, 1873) the first stirrings of the
movement to unite New York and Brooklyn under one
government; and raising an agonized outcry over the
postoffice which Mullet, the supervising architect of
the Treasury, was building at City Hall Park.
That greater city toward which public-spirited men
then looked was sketched in an editorial of 1867 entitled
"New York in 19 — ." The Evening Post hoped that
before the twentieth century was far advanced Central
Park would be really central, and the upper part of the
island as populous as the lower. Brooklyn would have
been united governmentally with New York, and phys-
ically by several bridges thrown across the East River.
There should be a great railway station in the heart of
the city, near the chief hotels, and freight stations only
on its borders. Retail trade would be scattered, and "the
Stewarts of that day will be found on broad, clean cross
streets near the Central Park"; while spacious markets
would have supplanted "the filthy sheds" in which pro-
visions were then sold. "The streets of New York will
be no longer rough and dirty; they will be covered with
a smooth pavement like that . . . now laid on a part of
Nassau Street or covered with asphaltum, like some of
the pavements of Paris." Whoever wrote the editorial
might to-day call this much of the prophecy fairly real-
ized. But he went on to picture an adequate system of
tenements, comfortable, sanitary, and cheap, managed
by public-spirited corporations; a rapid transit system
sufficient for all needs; and a shore line equipped with
fine piers and basins, modern warehouses, and the best
376 THE EVENING POST
loading and unloading apparatus — all of which still be-
longs to a Utopian vision.
II
The most important municipal questions, however,
arose from Tammany politics ; and the city which was so
sluggish and blundering in sheltering itself and trans-
porting itself was more so in governing itself. The his-
tory of the most memorable years of New York's ad-
ministration was condensed by the Evening Post in the
seventies Into a short municipal epic:
In eighteen hundred and seventy
The Charter was purchased by W. M. T.
By eighteen hundred and seventy-one
The Tweed Ring's stealing had all been done.
By eighteen hundred and seventy-two
The amount of the stealing the people knew.
By eighteen hundred and seventy-three
Most of the thieves had decided to flee.
In eighteen hundred and seventy-four
Tweed was allowed his freedom no more.
This epic starts, as it should. In medtas res. An enor-
mous amount of stealing had been done before 1870, and
the disclosures of the summer of 1871 were by no means
so unexpected as we are likely to think. When A. Oakey
Hall was elected Mayor in 1868 on the Tammany ticket.
Intelligent citizens knew that there existed a Ring of dual
character — a corrupt combination of leading Democratic
politicians in New York, and a corrupt alliance between
them and Republicans at Albany. They knew that the
city Ring regularly levied tribute on accounts for sup-
plies, construction, and repairs; and that its head was
William M. Tweed, with Peter B. Sweeney, the Cham-
berlain, and Richard B. Connolly, the Controller, com-
pleting its guiding triumvirate. No paper had Insisted
so constantly upon these facts as the Post. It may claim
to have been the leader in the fight against the Ring until
the close of 1870, when, with the resignation of Charles
APARTMENT HOUSES AND TWEED 377
Nordhoff as managing editor, it relaxed its efforts, and (
the Times stepped to the front. ^
Tweed was a familiar figure to all interested in city-
affairs — an enormous, bulky personage, his apparent pon-
derosity belied by his firm, swift step and his piercing eyes,
grim lips, and sharp nose. He was a man of inexhaust-
ible energy, a fighter as fresh at midnight as^ at noon.
From his little private office on Duane Street, where a
faded sign proclaimed him an attorney-at-law, he would
sally out on an Instant's notice to City Hall, to Albany,
or to some ward headquarters where a revolt was brew-
ing, and assert his authority with despotic effectiveness.
By his untiring activity, his imposing physique, and his
combination of cruelty, shrewdness, and audacity, he had
risen in fifteen years from his original calling of chair-
maker to be a multi-millionaire and dictator of the city.
The oflice on which he chiefly founded this success was
his seat on the County Board of Supervisors, which he
held continuously after 1857.
His lieutenant, Sweeney, or "the Squire," was later
called by an Aldermanic Committee '*the most despicable
and dangerous, because the best educated and most cun-
ning of the entire gang." Nast's cartoons have made us
familiar with his villainous look — his low forehead,
heavy brows, thick lips, and bushy hair. Yet he was
quiet, retiring, cold, averse to mingling with the crowd
or with other politicians, and In a measure cultured; he
was a ready writer, his mental operations were keen and
quick, and he was held in awe by the Tammany satellites,
whom he would pass In the street without recognizing by
even a nod. Connolly was the most respectable of the
three In appearance, looking, with his trim black broad-
cloth, close-shaven face, and high, narrow forehead, the
very part of a business or municipal treasurer. He was
really an Ignorant Irish-born bookkeeper, who brought to
the Ring plenty of low cunning, the product of a mixture
of cowardice and greed, and the quadruple-entry system
of bookkeeping which It found so useful.
As early as the municipal election of 1863, when the
378 THE EVENING POST
Evening Post supported Orison Blunt as a reform can-
didate against the nauseous F. I. A. Boole, the editors
were denouncing "that army of scamps which has so long
fattened upon the city treasury." The paper clearly un-
derstood how the Ring had originated. For ten years
preceding the war, the Republicans had exercised gen-
eral control of the State government, and the Democrats
of the city. The Legislature step by step had reduced the
powers of the municipality by entrusting them to State
boards and commissions. As a climax to this process. In
1857, it established the powerful New York County
Board of Supervisors, a State body composed of six Re-
publicans and six Democrats. But the grafters of the
two parties conspired to defeat these Ill-planned efforts
at reform, and by i860 discerning men saw that the net
result of the transfer of authority had been simply to
create two centers of corruption Instead of one, and to
implicate both parties. Tweed and his fellow-Demo-
crats on the Board of Supervisors quickly gained control
by bribing one of the Republicans, and at Albany —
a bargain [said the Evening Post of Aug. 12, 1871] was made
between the most prominent factions in the two parties, the Seward-
Weed Republicans and the Tammany Democrats, by which the
offices were divided between them, and all direct or personal
responsibility for official conduct was destroyed. Tammany man-
aged the city vote, in accordance with this bargain ; Mr. A. Oakey
Hall, the counsel of the combination, drew up the laws which
were needed to carry it out; Mr. Thurlow Weed and his lobby
friends passed them through the Legislature, and the New York
Times gave them all the respectability they could get from its
hearty support, in the name of the Republican party.
Immediately after the war the Evening Post asked
for a new Charter as the best cure for the evil. The city
should again be allowed to rule itself, the editors be-
lieved, and this self-government should be exercised
through one party, which could be made to answer
directly for all acts of the municipal authorities. "Make
the Democratic party clearly responsible in this city for
all its misgovernment, corruption, and waste, and the
APARTMENT HOUSES AND TWEED 379
people would drive it from power in less than three
years." The existing Charter had four great defects,
said the Post in January, 1867: the lack of home rule,
the division of the city legislature into two bodies, which
impeded business, the failure to withdraw all executive
functions from these bodies, and the fact that the Mayor
had little real authority- or responsibility. "All the suc-
cessive changes since 1830 have been made upon the
same principle of limiting or withdrawing powers that
are abused, instead of enforcing an effective responsibility
for the abuse. This policy . . . has produced the evils
which it feared. Never was the administration so inef-
fective, never was there so much corruption, and never
were the people so little interested in choosing their offi-
cers with any hope that one class or set will do better
than another."
The charges made by the paper were all general — no
guilty men or departments were specified. But it had a
pretty clear conception of the extent of the stealing. In
April, 1867, it alleged that the city was being robbed of
hundreds of thousands in "the monstrous court house
swindle" ; robbed by the politicians in collusion with the
twenty horse railways of the city, of which only three
paid the full license tax imposed by law; robbed in the
cleaning and repair of the streets; and robbed in the
renting and sale of the city's real estate. In April, 1868,
it estimated that the Ring during the previous year had
made a half million upon the contracts for the building,
repair, and furnishing of the city armories. The failure
to name the criminals arose from the inability of even
so able a managing editor as Nordhoff to trace the pecula-
tions. Since the district attorney, sheriff, courts, alder-
men, and even the Legislature were under the Ring's in-
fluence, the secrecy of its transactions seemed impene-
trable. Give the city a new government, was the view of
the Posty and reform, though not necessarily punishment
of the criminals, would follow. "Is New York a col-
ony?" was the title of an editorial in June, 1867. More-
over, the paper was the less concerned to be specific in
38o THE EVENING POST
that it believed mere general denunciation of the Ring
was having a much greater effect than was the case.
''Thieves Growing Desperate," ran another editorial
caption of April, 1868 :
The vampires of the city treasury are well aware of the grow-
ing determination of the people to make away with them. They
must choose between two alternatives. They must either aim at
prolonging their privilege of plunder by moderating and disguising
their use of it, or they must steal so enormously for the short time
remaining as to compensate them for soon losing their chance.
If Tweed saw this utterance, he must have dropped a
contemptuous chuckle over it. He was quite resolved to
steal "enormously," but the "short time" which the Post
gave him proved a good three years. Far from being
desperate, the Ring was just getting its hand in. The
graft on the armories, which the Post accurately esti-
mated at already a half million, ultimately reached three
millions, and the graft on the courthouse, which the paper
had put at hundreds of thousands, rose steadily until it
totaled $9,000,000. Tweed was attaining more and
more power as the year 1869 opened. He had just been
elected to the State Senate, and could now personally
superintend every item of the Ring's machinations at
Albany, while his friend A. Oakey Hall was just taking
his seat as Mayor.
The Evening Post was quite likely right in its conten-
tion that a new and truly good Charter would even at
this date have awakened a new interest in city affairs, and
a spasm of reform; but a good Charter it was impossible
to get. With his usual shrewdness, Tweed at once pre-
pared to use the movement for a better form of city gov-
ernment to make his position secure.
When the legislative session of January, 1870, began
— the first Legislature in twenty-four years to be con-
trolled by the Democrats — it was generally agreed that
the city would be given another Charter. The Tweed
Ring was preparing one; the Young Democrats, an unsav-
ory group who opposed Tweed on strictly selfish grounds,
APARTMENT HOUSES AND TWEED 381
were preparing one; and the reform element represented
by the Union League Club, the Evening Post, the Trib-
une, and the World, wanted one. "The true democratic
doctrine of city government," insisted the Post, "is that
power ought to be simple, responsibility undivided and
direct." The proposed Charter of the anti-Ring Dem-
ocrats, the so-called "huckleberry Charter" of the "hay-
loft-and-cheesepress" up-Staters, was defeated. Then,
at the beginning of February, Tweed and Sweeney sud-
denly sprang their own instrument, and made it clear that
they would push it rapidly through. It was patently
vicious. As early as Feb. 3, the Evening Post attached
it sharply. It pointed out that it embodied none of that
simplification of powers and responsibility which the
Post had long advocated; that too many city departments
would be governed by boards, not single heads; that the
Common Council retained its executive functions; and
that the four-year term which it gave the Mayor and his
lieutenants was, under the circumstances, dangerous.
But four days later a far more powerful attack was
published. The Evening Post would in any event have
kept up its campaign with growing vigor, but it had found
an unexpected helper and adviser in Samuel J. Tilden.
Bryant later wrote :
It was in February of the year 1870 that Samuel J. Tilden
came and desired an interview with the senior editor. . . . He
seemed moved from his usual calm and quiet demeanour. His
errand, he said, related to the Charter which Tweed and his crea-
tures were trying to get enacted into law. If that should happen,
it would give the city, with all the powers of its government, into
the hands of men who felt no restraint of conscience and who
would plunder it without stint. The city would be ruined, he
said, if this Charter, conceived with a special design to make
speculation easy, passed, and it was altogether important that the
Evening Post should resist its passage with all the power of argu-
ment which it possessed, and prevent it if possible. He then, with
his usual perspicacity, pointed out the contrivances for misusing
the public funds which were embodied in the bill. . . . The
Evening Post did not require Mr. Tilden's exhortations to oppose
382 THE EVENING POST
the bill, but we proceeded, by the help of the additional light
given us, to hold up the Charter to the severest censure.
The Post in a series of editorials absolutely riddled the
Tweed Charter. It aimed its main fire, however, at the
heart of the document — its creation of a Board of Spe-
cial Audit with financial powers so huge that millions
could be stolen by the mere nod of four or five men, and
so well entrenched that only by new State legislation
could these men be reached. This Board was to be com-
posed of the Mayor, Controller, Chamberlain, and Pres-
idents of the Supervisors and Aldermen, so that Tweed,
Oakey Hall, and Connolly were certain of places on it.
It would seem that those who ran might have read the
perils concealed in the Tweed Charter; while the bribery
employed to pass it was so colossal that it is hard to
understand how it was even temporarily concealed. It
is believed that a million was spent in corrupting legis-
lators; the chairman of the conference committee on the
Charter admitted later that he took $10,000; and it was
shown that Tweed bought five Republican Senators for
$40,000 each. Yet many of the best people of New
York looked on complacently while the Republicans
joined hands with the Democrats, and the Charter
passed both houses by enormous majorities.
The Evening Post was powerfully aided in combating
this iniquity by Manton Marble of the World and Dana
of the Sun. The Tribune was upon the same side, though
Greeley did not fail to indulge his unsurpassed faculty
for wabbling; he went to Albany and said that if he
could not get the Charter amended, he would take it as
it was, while his journal continued attacking it. The
Union League Club energetically opposed it. But the
Citizens Association, under the universally esteemed
Peter Cooper, was convinced that the Ring had become
conservative, and would now stop stealing and take the
side of the taxpayers. The Times, with similar blind-
ness, hailed the passage of the Tweed Charter as a signal
victory for reform, saying (April 6) :
APARTMENT HOUSES AND TWEED 383
If it shall be put into operation by Mayor Hall, with that
regard for the general welfare which we have reason to anticipate,
we feel sure that our citizens will have reason to count yester-
day's work in the Legislature as most salutary and important.
And Tweed saw that Oakey Hall lost no time In ap-
pointing him head of the Department of Public Works,
and otherwise putting It Into operation.
Indeed, the Boss now stood at the apex of his career.
One of his creatures, John T. Hoffman, was Governor,
another was Mayor, and he, Hall, and Connolly formed
a majority of the Board of Special Audit, with authority,
as the Post said, "to do almost what they please." Al-
most penniless ten years before, Tweed now had a for-
tune of more than $3,000,000, and his career had entered
upon a period of dazzling splendor. He acquired a fine
mansion at Fifth Avenue and Forty-fourth Street, and
at his summer home at Greenwich, Conn., the very stalls
of his horses were mahogany. He had flashing equipages
and gave glittering dinners; he and his retainers fitted
up the Amerlcus Club, In Greenwich, where each member
had a private room. In princely style; and when his daugh-
ter was married that summer her gown cost $4,000 and
she received gifts worth $100,000. The voters most
Impressed by all this were the poor voters among whom
In winter Tweed scattered gifts of coal, provisions, and
money. The Ring did not forget Its family connections.
Not even President Grant, remarked the Post, had such
a taste for nepotism. One of Tweed's sons was Assistant
District Attorney and another was Commissioner of
Riverside Drive; while four of Sweeney's relatives had
fat places.
As Samuel J. TUden later sarcastically noted, the
Times was unlucky enough on May 5, 1870, to boast of
"reforms made possible by the recent legislation at Al-
bany." That May 5 was the day on which the Board
of Special Audit ordered payment of $6,312,500 on the
Court House, ninety per cent, of It graft.
But such barefaced looting of the city as had now been
carried on for years could not be continued without arous-
384 THE EVENING POST
ing public anger, and the storm soon burst. The share
of graft which the Ring exacted from public contractors
had already been shoved up to 85 per cent. The frauds
perpetrated in the city election of May 17, 1870, were
so flagrant that observers gasped. A suspicion that the
city's debts were rising by leaps and bounds grew into
conviction. The Evening Post and Tribune continued
their warnings and attacks, and early in the fall the Times
fully joined them.
How long these assaults would have continued essen-
tially futile, had it not been for a dramatic episode, it is
hard to say. This episode grew out of the fact that the
Ring, being greedy, made enemies in its own camp. One
of the chief was James O'Brien, who was sheriff 1867-70,
and had a large personal following. O'Brien distributed
his money lavishly while he held office, and retired from
a post worth $100,000 a year as poor as when he entered
it. To recompense himself, he presented a claim for
$200,000 to the Board of Special Audit, and this body,
which did not fear him now that he was out of office,
rejected it. Tweed knew that it was a mistake, but was
overruled. It happened that in December, 1870, the
County Auditor, a loyal servant to Tweed, was fatally
injured in a sleigh accident, and as a result of some trans-
fers which followed, one of O'Brien's friends obtained a
position in the County Bookkeeper's office. There he
discovered the bogus accounts used in stealing millions
during the erection of the Courthouse, and placed tran-
scripts of them in O'Brien^s hands. In vengeful spirit,
the ex-sheriff in the early summer of 1871 brought them to
the office of the latest recruit to the anti-Tweed ranks,
the Times, and the Times made admirable use of them.
It would be pleasant for historians of journalism to
record that one of the great New York newspapers itself
conducted an investigation into Tweed's looting of the
city and fully exposed him. If any managing editor could
claim the credit which has to be given an overturned sleigh
and a jealous ex-sheriff, he would be immortal. Why,
when the Evening Post and Tribune had been attacking
APARTMENT HOUSES AND TWEED 385
the regime of graft for years, did they not cut into the
tumor? We may lay part of the blame on journalistic
timidity, and the lack at that time of a tradition of inves-
tigative enterprise in journalism; but the chief answer
lies in the care with which the Ring guarded its secrets.
It had seemed for a moment the previous fall to invite
inquiry. Connolly, with a parade of injured virtue, asked
six-eminent business men — William B. Astor, Moses
Taylor, Marshall O. Roberts, and others — to inspect his
books, and these six, who commanded public confidence,
had reported on Nov. i "that the financial affairs of the
city, under the charge of the Controller, are administered
in a correct and faithful manner." But the Ring's real
misdeeds were kept under cover.
The vigor with which the Post attacked the Ring slack-
ened during the early months of 1871. Bryant was en-
grossed in his translations from Homer. Nordhoff quar-
reled with Isaac Henderson over what the latter thought
the undue violence of his denunciation of Tweed, was
offered a long vacation with pay on the understanding
that he should look for another place, and resigned the
managing editorship to Charlton Lewis, who for a time
was more cautious of utterance. But by the ist of July
we find the Evening Post as vehement as ever.
It was particularly aroused against the Ring by the
bloody Orange Riot of July 12, 1871, one of the most
disgraceful of the city's outbreaks. The previous year
an unprovoked attack had been made upon an Orange
picnic at Elm Park by some Irish Catholics who broke
down the fence, assailed men, women, and children with
revolvers and stones, killed thre'e outright, wounded
eleven mortally, and seriously injured forty or fifty. The
Orangemen in 1871 prepared to celebrate Boyne Day by
a parade, as they had a perfect right to do, and by July
10 it was rumored that the hooligans meant to attack
them again. That day the Post published a warning
editorial, saying the city authorities must prepare to quell
the mob "by the quickest means." But Mayor Hall and
Superintendent of Police Kelso issued orders that the
386 THE EVENING POST
police should disperse, not the assailants, but the Orange
procession; and this made the Post furious. It meant
that the Tammany Ring, ''with a cynical contempt for
law and order, have taken the part of the mob." Very
properly, Gov. Hoffman overruled Mayor Hall, and
directed that the Orangemen be protected In any lawful
assemblage. On the 12th the parade formed, and began
its march under a strong escort of police and militia. The
more turbulent Irish element was out in force, lining the
route threateningly. As the parade passed along Eighth
Avenue near Twenty-sixth Street, a shot was fired by an
Irishman from a second story window at the Ninth Regi-
ment, and was the signal for other shots and a shower
of brickbats and stones. The order to fire was given,
the Eighty-fourth Regiment — according to the Post —
was the first to respond, and before the mob was dis-
persed the street was full of the dead and dying. The
Evening Post had nothing but praise for the militia,
nothing but abuse for the city government. Bryant
penned a ringing editorial upon Tweed :
New York, like every great city, contains a certain number of
idle, ignorant, and lawless people. But these classes are not dan-
gerous to our peace, either by their numbers or by their organiza-
tion. They are dangerous and injurious only because they are
the tools of Tweed, Sweeney, Oakey Hall, Connolly, and the
Ring of corruptionists of whom these four persons are the leaders.
Depose the Tammany Ring and all danger from the "dangerous
classes" will cease. It is because these know themselves to be
supported by the Ring, because they are employed when they want
employment, salaried when they are idle, succored when they
commit petty crimes, pardoned when they are convicted, and flat-
tered at all times by the Tammany Ring, that they have become
so audacious and restless. . . .
The Tammany Ring purposely panders to the worst and most
dangerous elements and passions of our population. It cares
nothing for liberty, nothing for the rights of the citizen, nothing
for the public peace, for law and order; it cares only to fasten
itself upon the city, and chooses to use, for that end, the most
corrupt and demoralizing means, and the most lawless and dan-
gerous part of our population. It is the Head of the Mob. It
APARTMENT HOUSES AND TWEED 387
rules by, and through, and for the Mob; and unless it is struck
down New York has not yet seen the worst part of its history.
It was soon struck down. The Times began the ver-
batim publication of O'Brien's evidence on July 22, 1871,
with a masterly analysis of It. The Evening Post^s edito-
rial that afternoon took the view that the Times^s evi-
dence was In all probability valid to the last figure, that
the Ring could not disprove it, and that It made the
refusal of the authorities to show their accounts intol-
erable. During the seven days that the Times required
for publishing all of O'Brien's transcripts the Post car-
ried half a dozen editorials pressing this opinion.
However, the "secret accounts" so courageously
brought out by the Times offered little more than the
starting point of the exposure. They consisted of the
dates and amounts of certain payments by Controller
Connolly, their objects, and the names of the men who
received them. The enormous sums disbursed, taken in
connection with the brevity of the time, the Inadequacy of
the objects, and the recurrence of the same names as re-
cipients, made the public certain that the Ring had stolen
on a colossal scale. A single carpenter, for example, had
been paid $360,000 for one month's repairs on the new
Courthouse. But as yet there was no legal proof against
any one official. There was no evidence, sufficient to sus-
tain a civil or criminal action, which disclosed the prin-
cipals behind the bogus accounts. Moreover, redress
could not be sought from the Aldermen, who were allies
of the Ring, and powerless under the new Charter any-
way; from the District Attorney, who was Tweed's
friend; from the grand juries, which were packed; or
from the Legislature, which was not in session. Tweed
might well exclaim, "What are you going to do about it?"
The Times, the Post, and other papers could do no
more than continue their attacks on the Ring, call for
exhibition of the city's books, and express their faith that
in the November election punishment would be made
certain by the choice of a reform Legislature and a zeal-
388 THE EVENING POST
ous Attorney-General. Several journals did less. The
World, for example, was so far misled by Democratic
partisanship as to assume an attitude of apology for the
Ring. But the work of the Times and O'Brien bore its
first fruit when on Sept. 4 a great city mass-meeting was
held at which a Committee of Seventy was appointed;
and a more important result followed ten days later when
Controller Connolly, after an interview with Tilden,
turned traitor to the Ring, and tried to save himself by
resigning and deputing the reformer, Andrew H. Green,
to take his place.
For the fight was won, as the Evening Post recognized,
when the party of good government gained the Control-
ler's books. Tilden obtained the legal opinion of Charles
O'Conor, whose name carried the greatest weight, af-
firming the right of Mr. Green to hold the office, and
gave it to the Evening Post of Sept. 18 for exclusive pub-
lication. It caused Mayor Hall to abandon instantly his
intention of trying to eject Mr. Green. With the Con-
trollership in their hands, the reformers were able to
protect the city records from destruction, to undertake
their careful examination, and to find the clues to judicial
proofs lying in the Broadway Bank and elsewhere — clues
of which Tilden made admirable use. "New York will
carry down through the memory and history of the com-
ing years," said the Post, "the fact that Mr. Tilden
threw a flood of light into the widened breach of this
fortress of fraud, and that he and Mr. Havemeyer, as
the only means of saving the city from bankruptcy, thrust
perforce . . . Mr. Andrew H. Green, whom they knew
to be of stern and honest stuff, into the charge of the
depleted treasury." It was only a few months before
the leading Ring members were in jail or exile.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
INDEPENDENCE IN POLITICS: THE ELECTIONS OF
'72 AND '76
If any one had told Bryant and Godwin In 1865 that
within a half dozen years the party which led the crusade
against slavery to victory, and which had carried the
nation through the furnace of the war, would seem intol-
erable to many for its moral laxity and inefficiency, he
would not have been believed. It was then the party of
youthful idealism, of enthusiasm in a great moral cause,
of vigorous achievement. Yet in 1872 the Evening Post
all but abandoned the Republican banner — it would have
done so had the reform elements found a fit leader; and
in 1876 the temptation to secede was presented In a new
and equally strong form. Though It stayed with the
party. In neither campaign did the paper surrender a jot
of its Independence, and In neither did It give the Repub-
licans enthusiastic support.
There was but one tenable position In the election of
1868 for a journal which had supported Lincoln and the
Union throughout the war — to follow Grant; for the
Democrats could not be trusted with Reconstruction,
while they offended all believers In sound finance by pro-
posing to pay the war bonds In greenbacks. The Evening
Post declared Itself for Grant on Dec. 2, 1867, and pub-
lished frequent editorials advocating his nomination until
It took place six months later. It expressed a whole-
hearted faith In his courage, patient good temper, admin-
istrative energy, and judgment of subordinates. This
belief was shared by others as discerning as Bryant.
Lowell Informed Leslie Stephen that Grant had always
chosen able lieutenants, that he was not pliable, and that
he would make good use of his opportunity to be an
independent President.
389
390 THE EVENING POST
The cordiality of the Evening Post for Grant was in-
creased by its distaste for his Democratic rival. Bryant
wrote to his friend Salmon P. Chase before the Demo-
cratic Convention, urging him to take a receptive atti-
tude, and Chase replied hopefully; but it was Horatio
Seymour who obtained the nomination, and for Seymour
the Post had only contempt. A mere local politician, it
termed him; it recalled how as the "copperhead" Gov-
ernor of New York he had displayed a plentiful lack of
both dignity and sagacity, and it believed him a weak
creature, who would be controlled by dangerous men like
George H. Pendleton and Francis Blair.
The Times was heartily for Grant, and so was the
Sun, Charles A. Dana helping write the campaign biog-
raphy of him. The Tribune was of course loyally Repub-
lican. It had to forget a good many rash — though, as it
proved, too nearly true — words of the previous year,
when, irritated by Grant's loyalty to President Johnson,
it had said that his prominence in politics was due merely
to "the dazzling and seductive splendor of military
fame," and that he would make "a timid, hesitating, un-
sympathetic President." But the Tribune was used to
retracting impolitic judgments, and was soon fighting
with the JVorld in that hammer and tongs style of which
Greeley and Manton Marble were masters.
The disillusionment that followed so rapidly upon
Grant's inauguration was bitter to the whole of the
decent Republican press. It is one of the most creditable
chapters in American journalism that so many news-
papers — Greeley's Tribune, Horace White's Chicago
Tribune, Samuel Bowles's Springfield Republican, Murat
Halstead's Cincinnati Commercial, and the Evening Post
— had the courage to assert their independence of the
Republican party when it fell into unworthy hands.
Grant's failure was more bitter to the Evening Post, the
Springfield Republican, and other low-tariff journals than
it was to the high-tariff New York Tribune; it was more
painful to the Evening Post and other organs which ad-
vocated a mild Southern policy than to the Nation, which
ELECTIONS OF '72 AND '76 391
advocated a fairly severe one. But they all took a pro-
testant attitude which was far in advance of that of the
general public.
All administrations begin with a sort of political honey-
moon, in which every one gives the new President a fair
field, and criticism is temporarily reserved. For some
months the Post tried hard to believe that Grant was
destined to solve satisfactorily all the problems be-
queathed him by Andrew Johnson. It praised his inau-
gural speech highly. The principal task before him, it
declared, was to get rid of the bummers, camp-followers,
and contractors :
The first and especial work which Gen. Grant undertakes is
to clear the government of those who take its money without
giving an equivalent; lobbyists, railway projectors, speculators in
grants of every form, whisky thieves, revenue swindlers, gold
sharks, and the whole train of useless and costly hangers-on.
These men are no longer an outside band of robbers who are
unimportant enough to be disregarded. They have grow^n to be
a great power ; if united, perhaps they would be the greatest polit-
ical power in the land. It is a work scarcely second to that of
destroying Lee's army itself, to destroy the system of plunder
which now threatens our institutions. (Feb. 9, 1869.)
The task second in importance, the Evening Post be-
lieved, was a sharp reduction in the wartime tariff, which
David A. Wells, Special Commissioner of Revenue, had
just shown to be miraculously effective in making the rich
richer and the poor poorer. Under it, said Bryant, the
pig-iron manufacturers doubled their capital annually,
while the workmen lived worse than before; one of the
two companies which enjoyed a monopoly of salt had
earned $4,600,000 on a capital of $600,000 in seven
years; and the lumber companies, Canadian competition
being shut out, were piling up enormous fortunes while
housing grew ever costlier. The Post demanded also a
revision of the uneconomic wartime revenue system, un-
der which 16,000 different articles were taxed; they
might advantageously be reduced to fewer than 200. It
asked for measures paving the way to a resumption of
392 THE EVENING POST
specie payments, such as the accumulation of a large gold
reserve in the Treasury, and the passage of legislation
authorizing contracts to pay in gold. Railway jobbery,
involving the wasteful distribution of the national do-
main, should be stopped, while civil service reform was
prominent in the Evening Post programme. Of course,
it wished military rule in the South brought to an end as
speedily as possible, and the States placed upon their old
footing.
But all of Bryant's and Parke Godwin's high expecta-
tions failed. The Post thought Grant's Cabinet weak,
and was especially shocked by his choice of the protec-
tionist George S. Boutwell to be Secretary of the Treas-
ury. It was equally offended by the selection of Elihu
Washburne to be Minister to France, and Gen. Daniel
Sickles to Spain — Spanish relations then being highly
important on account of Cuba. There was no change
in the tariff until 1870, when a new act reduced the duties
on only one important protected commodity, pig iron,
while it increased them on a half dozen. The revenue
system was left in its complex iniquity. Secretary Bout-
well did nothing effective to bring the nation back to a
specie basis, while the Evening Post sharply condemned
his action in the ''Black Friday" crisis (September, 1869)
in selling $4,000,000 worth of gold without notice, and
thus breaking the corner in gold which Jay Gould and
James Fisk, jr., were trying to build up. This, it said,
was taking sides unnecessarily in a battle between two
sets of gamblers, when the Treasury had always before
acted on the principle that all sales of gold should be
public, with ample advance notice of the amounts to be
sold, and should be ordered solely upon public grounds,
without reference to speculation. Reconstruction, going
from bad to worse, was by 1870 a confused mixture of
grasping carpet-baggers, downtrodden whites, corrupt
Legislatures, and ignorant, poverty-stricken negro voters.
Grant's one marked display of energy had been in an
effort to force the annexation of Santo Domingo, a meas-
ure which the Post abominated.
ELECTIONS OF '72 AND '76 393
Two months after Grant's administration began, the
Chicago Tribune harshly attacked him. The Post then
pleaded for patience, but by midsummer of 1870 it was
growing restive.
The last straw for the Evening Post was Grant's dis-
missal of his two ablest Cabinet members. He asked for
the resignation of Attorney-General Ebenezer Hoar in
June, 1870, sacrificing him for the votes of Southern
Senators promised in behalf of the Santo Domingo treaty.
Four months later. Gen. Jacob Cox was forced out of the
Interior Department simply because the politicians
wished to raid it for spoils. Already Sumner had been
deprived, by Grant's orders, of the chairmanship of the
Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, a slap in the
face to the great body of liberal and intellectual North-
erners who had admired Sumner ever since he had come
forward as an anti-slavery leader. The dismissal of
Motley from the post of Minister to England in the fall
of 1870 angered Bryant, as it did all other American men
of letters. When Secretary Cox resigned, the Post
headed its editorial (Oct. 31, 1870) : "General Grant's
Unconditional Surrender" — meaning his surrender to the
politicians:
Not even Buchanan's interference in Kansas was more gross
and unblushing than President Grant's attempt to coerce the Mis-
souri Republicans to do his will and not their own. No President
except Andrew Johnson has ever so openly tried, by wholesale
removals from office and by the appointment of his favorites, to
impose his "policy" upon the party.
The letters of General Cox, now published, show that in the
practice of the smaller devices of politicians the President has
been no less ready. The Secretary, who came into the Cabinet
as the especial friend and representative of civil service reform,
is forced to leave the Cabinet because the President insists, con-
trary to Gen. Cox's desires, upon letting political committees levy
tribute upon the poor clerks in the Interior Department.
Three days later, under the caption "The President
and His Policy," the Post joined those organs — the Chi-
394 THE EVENING POST
cago Tribune, Springfield Republican, and Dana's and
Greeley's journals — which had already declared war:
He has now been twenty months in office, and if we look back
over the leading and most conspicuous acts of his Administration,
we find only the San Domingo treaty, defeated by those who
would gladly support him in everything right or wise; the gross
interference with the elections in Missouri ; and the disgrace —
so far as he could disgrace them — of Mr. Hoar, Mr. Wells, and
Mr. Cox. That is a record of which General Grant will not be
proud in those days of retirement from public life which await him.
The Liberal Republican movement in the East began
to assume shape when the Free Trade League called a
conference upon revenue and tariff reform in New York
city for Nov. 22, 1870. It was attended by Bryant,
Schurz, E. L. Godkin, Horace White, Samuel Bowles,
Gen. Cox, former Commissioner Wells, and Charles
Francis Adams, with some others. The first five named
represented respectively the Evening Post, the St. Louis
JVestliche Post, the Nation, the Chicago Tribune, and the
Springfield Republican, and the first four are all on the
list of editors of the Evening Post. James G. Blaine,
the Speaker, was so disturbed by this conference that he
journeyed to Chicago to tell Horace White that he meant
to give the tariff reformers a majority of the Ways and
Means Committee. Meanwhile, in Missouri, Carl Schurz
and B. Gratz Brown had already launched their insur-
gent movement, and by a coalition with the Democrats
that same month swept the State. Everywhere the ele-
ments in favor of civil service reform, fiscal reform, low
tariff and cleaner government began drawing together.
Just how far should the Liberal Republican movement
go? Schurz by the spring of 1871 was intent upon form-
ing a new party, while men like Sumner wished to stay
within the old party and reform it. The Chicago Trib-
une, the Springfield Republican, and the Cincinnati Com-
mercial were soon supporting Schurz's plan, while the
Evening Post and the Nation held back. They were sym-
pathetic with Liberal Republicanism, but they did not
ELECTIONS OF '72 AND '76 395
commit themselves to It. Bryant was as reluctant to give
up his Republican allegiance now as he had been to for-
sake the Democratic standard in 1844, and he assailed
the Administration without assailing the party. The Post
declared in March, 1871, that the Republican organiza-
tion was substantially sound; that it distrusted Grant and
the politicians, but knew that the rank and file had
resisted such follies as the deposition of Sumner and the
Santo Domingo treaty. Next month, after the Liberal
gathering at Cincinnati, it defined the movement as in-
tended only "to bring back the Republican party to sound
and constitutional legislation." It would have been a
dramatic display of independence for the Post to have
broken with the regulars, as it was to do in 1884, but
the event showed that it was well it remained lukewarm.
When the Liberal Republicans shipwrecked their reform
effort by naming a candidate quite unacceptable to the
Post, it could change its attitude Instantly from sympathy
to hostility and derision.
E. L. Godkin relates that in the spring of 1864 he
was Invited to a breakfast In New York at which he
found Wendell Phillips, Bryant, and one or two other
men. Greeley entered and approached the host, who
was standing by the fire talking with Bryant, but the poet
ignored his fellow-editor. "Don't you know Mr. Gree-
ley?" the host inquired in an audible whisper. Bryant's
whisper came back more audibly still: "No, I don't; he's
a blackguard — he's a blackguard I"
This prejudice upon Bryant's part, largely identical
with the prejudice which made him refuse to speak to
another editor whose principles and personality were both
offensive to him, Thurlow Weed, had Its share In the
Evening Pastes hostility to Greeley when the Liberal
Republicans nominated him for President. Bryant re-
membered that In 1849 Greeley had commenced a reply to
an editorial in the Post with the words: "You lie, vil-
lain! wilfully, wickedly, basely lie!" It must also be con-
sidered that Greeley's high tariff views were anathema to
the Post, that his readiness to haul down the Union flag
396 THE EVENING POST
at various critical moments In the Civil War had pro-
voked the Indignation of other editors, and that his ex-
tremely radical reconstruction policy had offended all
moderate organs.
The news that the Liberal Republican Convention had
nominated Greeley for President was telegraphed to New
York on the evening of May 3, 1 872. Bryant next morn-
ing was late in reaching the office. A vigorous discussion
was going on, says Mr. J. Ranken Towse, over the char-
acter of the editorial comment to be made. "It was
ended suddenly by the entrance, in hot haste, of Mr.
Bryant, who said briefly, 'I will attend to that editorial
myself,' and promptly shut himself up in his room. The
resultant article — cool, logical, bitter, but not violent —
was distinctive In its animating spirit of contemptuous
scorn, and carried a sharp sting In Its closing assertion
that in the case of a candidate for the highest honor at
the disposal of the country, It was essential that the can-
didate should be, at least, a gentleman."
W. A. Linn, long managing editor of the Evening
Post, saw Bryant a moment. "Well," the poet observed
with a quiet twinkle, "there are some good points In
Grant's Administration, after all."
The news was in every way a shock to the paper.
When the Liberal Republican Convention opened, the
Post had been filled with as high hopes for its success as
those entertained by the Chicago Tribune, Cincinnati
Commercial, or Springfield Republican. It had Implored
the leaders to make their enterprise "a movement for gen-
uine reform, and not a mere antagonism to persons- and
Administrations"; it had warned them that they must
choose a strong man for Presidential nominee, for the
people admired Grant's strength of personality. Judge
David Davis was not sufficiently a statesman. Gov. B.
Gratz Brown of Missouri lacked experience, and "as for
Mr. Greeley, his nomination would be a deathblow to
the reform movement, because he Is the embodiment of
centralization and monopoly." Its favorites were Charles
Francis Adams, Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, and
ELECTIONS OF '72 AND '76 397
Gov. John M. Palmer of that State, in the order named.
Had either of the first two been named, upon an accept-
able platform, the Post would have supported him; but
not the erratic, simple-minded prophet of high tariff,
Greeley, who, the Post^s special correspondent at the Con-
vention reported, was pushed forward by a combination
of politicians against the reformers.
Bryant's editorial was one of two in the Evening Post
that day. That given the leading position, written prob-
ably by Charlton M. Lewis, was entitled "The Fiasco at
Cincinnati," and was just such an editorial as appeared
In dozens of other disheartened newspapers. It declared
that the Convention, so big with promise, had gone the
way of many a similar assemblage, surrendering Its lofty
principles to the wirepullers. The Post*s blow from the
shoulder was struck by Bryant in the second column. He
gave his editorial the mild title, "Why Mr. Greeley
Should Not Be Supported for the Presidency," but each
of the numbered paragraphs was vitriolic.
First, said Bryant, Greeley lacked the needed courage,
firmness, and consistency. His course during the Civil
War had been one prolonged wabble, which at its best
moments was irresolute, and at Its worst was cowardly.
Second, his political associates were so bad that his ad-
ministration, If he were elected, could not escape corrup-
tion. Here Bryant referred to such of Greeley's friends
as R. E. Fenton, the leader of those New York city Re-
publicans, who, leagued with the Tammany Ring, had
done so much to help Tweed do business. The Times,
which had exposed Tweed, vigorously insisted upon the
same point. The third objection, wrote Bryant, was that
Greeley had no settled political principles, with one ex-
ception, and the fourth was the exception. "He is a
thorough-going, bigoted protectionist, a champion of one
of the most arbitrary and grinding systems of monopoly
ever known in any country." When in 1870 the duty
on pig Iron was reduced from $9 a ton to $7, Greeley
had told Grant that he would make it $100 a ton If he
could. The fifth objection to Greeley, the climax of the
398 THE EVENING POST
editorial, lay in "the grossness of his manners," as Bry-
ant put it. "With such a head as is on his shoulders, the
affairs of the nation could not, under his direction, be
wisely administered; with such manners as his, they could
not be administered with common decorum." By this,
Bryant did not refer to Greeley's slovenly dress, nor to
his use of the lie direct, but meant a certain Johnsonian
grossness which he thought Greeley permitted himself in
the drawing-room.
Taken as a whole, the editorial was a regrettably ex-
treme attack upon a man who, if erratic and uncouth,
was also the soul of kindliness and sincerity; and Samuel
Bowles was justified in complaining that the Post showed
personal feeling. Yet the fierce and contemptuous atti-
tude of Bryant by no means stood isolated. The Times
that day called Greeley's nomination "a sad farce," said
that the first impulse of every one was to laugh, and de-
clared that "if any one man could send a great nation to
the dogs, that man is Mr. Greeley." He would disor-
ganize every department, commit the government to
every crude illusion from Fourierism to vegetarian-
ism, and embroil it with every foreign country. Schurz
was heartsick, and for some time refused to support the
nominee, while the German leaders and newspapers, from
which much had been hoped, were almost unanimously
hostile. In a number of States independents openly repu-
diated the ticket. E. L. Godkin, of the Nation, was
totally disgusted, for he detested Greeley's high tariff
views. He had written as early as 1863 that Greeley
"has no great grasp of mind, no great political insight,"
and now his biting pen did more than that of any other
writer to defeat the candidate.
The Atlantic Monthly promptly fell in behind Grant.
Manton Marble of the World had watched the Cincin-
nati Convention with a hopefulness equaling, but differ-
ing from, Bryant's. Now he lashed out at the Conven-
tion's mistake, stayed with the journal long enough to
express wholehearted dislike of Greeley, and then retired
so that the World might give him unenthusiastic support.
ELECTIONS OF '72 AND '76 399
Harper^ s Weekly brought out the absurdities of Gree-
ley's candidacy in striking fashion. Thomas Nast's
cartoons kept the old editor In a ridiculous light week
after week — now devouring, with a wry face, a bowl of
boiling porridge labeled ''My own words and deeds,"
now at his Chappaqua farm seated well out on a limb,
which he was earnestly sawing off between himself and
the tree. Greeley's chief assistance in New York, aside
from the Tribune, came from Dana and the Sun; indeed,
Dana had come out for his eventual nomination as early
as 1868, when almost no one was thinking of it. The
other Democratic newspapers, as the Express, climbed
rather grumblingly on the Greeley bandwagon; since
Bennett's death the Herald had not been of their number.
For a time the Evening Post, in its intense dissatisfac-
tion with the candidate, had some hope that another
nomination could be effected. It suggested such an at-
tempt, and that the selection be made by an assembly of
leaders, not left to the "dangerous machinery of a con-
vention." The Free Trade League made itself the In-
strument of this effort, and called a meeting at Stein-
way Hall on May 30, to be presided over by Bryant.
Gen. Jacob Cox, ex-Commissioner Wells, and others gave
it their support, but the gathering came to nothing. In
June the Post was placed definitely behind Grant. The
campaign was dismal for it, as for all other conscientious
journals. It was impossible for even the Times to be
enthusiastic over Grant, or even Dana over Greeley. The
Evening Post^s attitude toward the regular Republican
nominee was precisely that which the Springfield Republi-
can took towards the Liberal Republican candidate.
"Support the ticket, but don't gush," Bowles had tele-
graphed his subordinates from Cincinnati. How far
Bryant was from abandoning his criticism of the Presi-
dent is evident from an August editorial entitled "Grant's
Real Character."
The Post objected to the "Napoleon-Caesar-Tweed"
theory of Grant, the belief that he was a corrupt man of
colossal ambition, egotism, and determination, but it said
400 THE EVENING POST
nothing more in his defense than that he was "a plain
American citizen, with his average defects, his average
ignorance, his average intelligence, and his average vices
and virtues." It made fun of his ignorance of political
economy — he had said that the nation could never be
poor while it had the gold locked in the Rockies. It
scored his liking for money, gifts, good dinners, flashy
associates, fast horses, and "style." The Post spoke
thus caustically of Grant because Bryant had no idea of
stultifying the newspaper, even to help beat Greeley;
but it did it the more readily because it knew Greeley had
not a chance. The mass of the party was with Grant,
and he received a plurality of three quarters of a million.
When Greeley's insanity and death followed so trag-
ically upon his humiliating defeat, the Evening Post made
belated amends for its campaign severity. Its obituary
editorial of Nov. 30 was marked by a generosity which it
might well have shown earlier:
Without money, family, friends, or any of the usual supports
by which men are helped into eminence, Mr. Greeley won his
place of influence and distinction by the sheer force of his intel-
lectual ability and the determination of his character. By good
natural abilities, by industry, by temperance, by sympathy with
what is noblest and best in human nature, and by earnest purpose,
the ignorant, friendless, unknown printer's boy of a few years
since became the powerful and famous journalist, whose words
went forth to the ends of the earth, affecting the destinies of all
mankind.
II
An entirely different question was posed by the election
of 1876 — the question whether the long friendship of
Bryant and the former sub-editors for Samuel J. Tilden
should carry the Evening Post over to the Democratic
side. The decision finally made is of peculiar interest,
for it shows how little Bryant was inclined to let per-
sonal considerations sway him upon any public question.
Early in the thirties, while Bryant and other editors
were wrangling over the Bank, an ardent Democrat from
ELECTIONS OF '72 AND '76 401
New Lebanon, N. Y., named Elam Tilden, visited the
Evening Post, and Introduced his son Samuel, a boy In
roundabouts. Bryant often spoke In later years of the
Impression made on him by the youth's precocity, hand-
some features, and cultivated speech. A few years later
young Tilden studied at New York University, and Im-
proved his acquaintance with the poet. When In the fall
of 1 84 1 Bryant made one of his country excursions, he
chose New Lebanon for headquarters, and visited the
Tilden family. The ties between Tilden and the Post
were much strengthened after 1848, when BIgelow be-
came junior editor. We have seen that they were ac-
quainted as young lawyers, and BIgelow was State prison
Inspector at the same time that Tilden began his political
career In the Assembly. Tilden frequently visited the
Post and discussed political topics. It was there that he
published an explanation of his stand In the campaign of
i860, and It was with the freedom of an old friend that
he told BIgelow that he and Bryant shared the blood-
guilt of the conflict.
After the war his visits were less frequent. But he
made the Evening Post his mouthpiece when. In 187 1-2,
he, ex-Mayor Havemeyer, and Andrew H. Green pushed
home the fight against the Tweed Ring. The Post al-
ways credited Tilden with being the chief agent in prov-
ing the actual guilt of Tweed's lieutenants. During the
spring of 1873 an acrimonious controversy was carried
on between Tilden and the Times, turning In the main
upon a new Charter proposed at Albany, which Tilden
attacked and the Times defended. Tilden used the Post
for the publication of his letters, and Bryant editorially
supported him.
As Governor, Tilden Invited Bryant in the early weeks
of 1875 to pay him a visit at the Executive Mansion, and
the editor accepted. Both branches of the Legislature
tendered Bryant a public reception, the first time that the
State had paid such an honor to any man of letters. At
a dinner party on Tilden's birthday, Bryant, in toasting
the Governor, said that the public would not be displeased
402 THE EVENING POST
if his present position proved a stepping-stone to the
Presidency. At all times the Post, like other New York
papers, expressed golden opinions of Tilden's adminis-
tration, and in especial of his attacks upon the "Canal
Ring," a bi-partisan organization which had gained huge
sums through fraudulent contracts for the repair of the
State canals.
It was therefore natural that when in 1876 the election
of a successor to Grant approached, Tilden's friends had
a strong hope that Bryant and the Evening Post would
lend the Governor their support. The newspaper gave
no advance hint of its attitude. When Hayes was nom-
inated by the Republicans on June 16, it, like all other
independent journals, was pleased. Its overshadowing
fear had been that Blaine, whom it detested as dishonest,
would be named, and it saw in Hayes as good a man as
its own previous favorite, Bristow of Kentucky. While
some sneered at the nomination as negative and weak,
the Post predicted that it would "turn out to be positive
and strong." On the other hand, it thought the platform
poor. It called the civil service plank platitudinous and
empty, and the currency plank, which temporized with
regard to specie resumption, worse still.
Nor did the Evening Post immediately commit itself
after the Democratic Convention. Over Tilden's nom-
ination it rejoiced even more than over that of Hayes.
It recognized his sterling integrity and zeal as a reformer
and was delighted that he had beaten both Tammany and
the mediocre Western aspirants. Senator Thurman and
Gov. Hendricks. But it did not openly pronounce for
him, and its comment upon the Democratic platform
maintained a careful impartiality. "In respect to finan-
cial reform their position is worse than that of the Re-
publicans; in respect to a reform of the civil service they
offer nothing better; in respect to revenue reform they
have done better." The decision was left until after the
4th of July.
All the influence of Bigelow, who sometimes still wrote
editorials for the Post^ was in favor of Tilden. He was
ELECTIONS OF '72 AND '76 403
the candidate's campaign manager, and would be Secre-
tary of State If Tilden won. So was all the influence of
Parke Godwin, Bryant's son-in-law and formerly a part
owner. Bryant's own friendship for TUden weighed
heavily in the balance. But the decision was not, as the
public supposed, Bryant's alone. Some years earlier the
Evening Post had been reorganized as a joint stock com-
pany, and Bryant held exactly half, not a majority, of
the shares. The other half were owned by Isaac Hender-
son, the able, smooth-tongued, rubicund business manager,
who had been a partner since the early fifties, and whose
influence as Bryant became older gradually extended out-
side the business oflice to the editorial rooms. His one
anxiety for the Evening Post was that it should pay fat
dividends, and he was no more scrupulous as to the means
than the business managers of other newspapers. Mr.
J. Ranken Towse tells us how distinct by 1876 was the
influence he exerted upon the editorial poHcy:
It was not often that legitimate exception could be taken to its
utterances, but as much could not be said of its unaccountable
reticences. For some of these there may have been a good and
sufficient reason, at which I cannot even guess, but there were
others which could be understood only too easily. The simple
fact is that William CuUen Bryant, though editor-in-chief and half
owner, was by no means in absolute control of the paper. Be-
tween the counting room and the editorial department there was
a constant, silent, irrepressible conflict, not to say antagonism —
for I have always been convinced that the limits of it were defined
by some sort of agreement, written or tacit — whenever the ques-
tion at issue was one of direct commercial profit, which often
acted as a bar to the candid discussion of inconvenient topics.
When on June 29 the Post printed its warm but non-
committal praise of Tllden's nomination, Henderson,
who knew that commercial sentiment in New York was
in favor of the Republicans, came upstairs and was clos-
eted with Bryant in a long discussion of editorial policy.
The next important editorial utterance, July 5, was an
angry attack upon the Democratic platform. The Demo-
cratic Party was condemned for its ^'knavish" Indifference
404 THE EVENING POST
to sound currency, and was represented as an unsafe
organization to be given charge of Southern affairs while
they remained so unsettled. On July 6 the Post remarked
that the hard-money Tilden, running in 1876 upon a soft-
money platform, presented an exact parallel to the high-
tariff Greeley running in 1872 upon a low-tariff plat-
form; that "the two canvasses are alike in their teachery,
their evasiveness, their shameless surrender of principle."
On July 10 it declared fully for Hayes.
Bigelow and Parke Godwin have published a number
of Bryant's letters relating to this stand by the Evening
Post. One is his refusal of Tilden's request that he let
his name head the ticket of Democratic electors. Another
is his letter to J. C. Derby explaining that, while he be-
lieved Tilden a truer statesman than Hayes, he thought
the Republican principles, especially with regard to sound
money and the merit system, so much superior that it was
impossible to detach the Evening Post from the party
that had won the Civil War. He implied that his con-
trol of the paper was complete, and said that its utter-
ances had suited him in everything except some details;
while Henderson explicitly stated to the somewhat in-
credulous Derby that this was true. But Bigelow's and
Godwin's own letters of the time have not been printed,
and they show a strong belief that Bryant did not make
the Post's decision. It is sufficient to quote one by Bige-
low, dated Albany, July 14:
The principal result of my talk with Henderson was to satisfy
me that — [Bigelow simply made a long, wavy line]. The rest
I will tell you when I see you.
In can hardly trust myself to talk about the Post. I hope to
be spared the necessity of writing about it. But the Evening Post
that you and I have known and honored, which educated us and
through which we have educated others in political science, I fear
no longer exists. The paper which bears its name is no more our
Evening Post than the present Commercial Advertiser is the sheet
once edited under that name by Col. Stone. I only wish Mr.
Bryant had his name stricken out of it.
Allowance must be made for Bigelow's chagrin. The
ELECTIONS OF '72 AND '76 405
probability is that Bryant at the end of June was waver-
ing; that Henderson advanced his arguments respectfully
but firmly; and that Bryant of his own free will placed
the Evening Post behind Hayes. After all, his old asso-
ciates in attacking Grant, the Liberal Republican lead-
ers, flocked back to the G. O. P. He had the resumption
of specie payments close to his heart, and was alarmed by
the soft-money convictions of western Democrats; he
feared the shock to hopes of civil service reform if a
horde of oflice-hungry Democrats poured into Washing-
ton; and the recent conduct of the Democratic House
gave him reason to think they would do little for tariff
reduction. It was perfectly logical for the journal to
stand with the party which it had helped found and had
ever since supported, while it would have been hard to
find a logical justification for leaving it. Throughout the
campaign it stood by Hayes, though with very moderate
zeal, and it rejoiced when the Electoral Commission gave
him the Presidency. Bryant later wrote that he had
never before felt so little interest in a contest for the
Presidency. No one ever knew for whom he voted on
election day, for, saying with a smile that the ballot was
a secret institution, he always refused to tell; Bigelow
believed that he voted for neither candidate.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
TWO REBEL LITERARY EDITORS
Amid the eulogies which followed Bryant's -death In
1878, a dissenting note was struck by that short-lived
Illustrated newspaper, the Daily Graphic. After a dis-
paraging estimate of his poetry, It remarked that he, as
one of our most celebrated literary men, should have
made the Evening Post the country's leading critical au-
thority. *'It utterly failed to become such an authority.
Indeed, It would be hard to say what benefits the exist-
ence of the Evening Post has conferred upon literature.
We say this in all kindness, and with a full knowledge
that there were difficulties In the way of creating a lit-
erary journal. ..."
There was force In this statement of an opportunity
missed, though the Graphic exaggerated the Posfs de-
ficiencies, and failed to consider whether they might not
be due to lack of public appreciation of anything better.
The truth Is that till 1881 there was no American news-
paper whose literary criticism would now be considered
of high standards. This is said with due respect to
George Ripley, who after years at Harvard, at Brook
farm, and in the ministry which made him personally in-
timate with most of the New England authors, joined
the Tribune in 1849 ^^^ remained in its harness until
his death. He gave himself up to literary criticism with
an industry equaled In our journalistic history by that
of W. P. Garrison alone. He began as a man of wide
culture; he was so devoted to study and research that
in time there were few subjects upon which he could not
supply facts and ideas of his own; he was conscientious,
unprejudiced, and accustomed to refer to first principles.
Tyndall wrote that he had "the grasp of a philosopher
and the good taste of a gentleman." His reviews were
406
TWO LITERARY EDITORS 407
easily the best In any American journal, and he had some
assistance from Bayard Taylor, John Hay, and other
able men. But he was too mild, while he had no thought
of sending each new book to a specialist.
Through simple Inattention, no regular chair was estab-
lished for a literary editor by the Post till after the Civil
War. In August, i860, young William Dean Howells
applied for such a place, bearing a letter from James T.
Fields of the Atlantic, who said: "He chooses the Post
of all papers In the Union, and if you get him for your
literary work, etc., you will get a lad who will be worth
his weight, etc., etc., etc." BIgelow's sagacity for once
failed him, and Howells was turned away. Later an ap-
plication from Park Benjamin was rejected. There was
little room for reviews during the war, and little Inclina-
tion on the part of the public to think of pure literature.
But when Bryant returned from his last trip to Europe
and settled down to translate Homer he finally saw the
need for such an editor.
In April, 1867, there reached New York from the
South a slight, gaunt man of forty-three, the emaciation of
whose face was partly concealed by his heavy beard, but
who was as clearly in bad health as in reduced circum-
stances. He was received with honor by the city's grow-
ing colony of former Confederates. This was John R.
Thompson, who had edited the Southern Literary Mes-
senger for thirteen years previous to the war. He was
employed by Albion, a weekly devoted to English inter-
ests, and then by its feeble successor. Every Afternoon.
Meanwhile, E. C. Stedman had introduced him to Bryant,
while Bryant's old friend, William Gilmore SImms, wrote
recommending him to notice and assistance. In May,
1868, he was appointed literary editor of the Evening
Post, a position which he held five years.
Thompson's training seemed admirable for the place.
He had proved himself one of the ablest conductors of
the Southern Literary Messenger, which Poe had edited
before him. He gave it not only his personal services
without return, but spent his small patrimony to keep it
4o8 THE EVENING POST
alive. Frank R. Stockton and Donald G. Mitchell among
Northern authors received their first recognition from
him, while the small band of Southern literary men re-
garded the magazine as their section's chief exponent.
When In 1859, at John P. Kennedy's suggestion, he sought
the llbrarlanship of the Peabody Institute In Baltimore,
Longfellow and Edward Everett were among those who
wrote recommending him. During the war, while for a
time Virginia's Assistant Secretary of State and later edi-
tor of the Richmond Record, he was a kind of laureate
of the Confederacy, his spirited verses following many
.military events of Importance. "Ashby," "The Burial
of Latane," and "Lee to the Rear" are known by every
Southern schoolboy, while "Music In Camp" Is In every
anthology of historical verse. In 1864 he escaped to
England on a blockade runner to carry on publicity for
the South, and not only worked on the Index, a Confed-
erate organ, but contributed to Blackwood's, Punch, the
Standard, and other periodicals. He was a frequent vis-
itor at Carlyle's home in Cheyne Row, and is mentioned
In Carlyle's "Reminiscences" , Tennyson entertained him
several times at Farrlngford, and he knew Bulwer, Kings-
ley, and Thackeray.
He soon became one of the best-liked men on the Post
staff. He wrote the extensive review of the first volume
of Bryant's translation of the Iliad in February, 1870,
and that of the second that summer; and Bryant came to
have him much at his home. There was no more charm-
ing conversationalist In New York society. "He had
read so variously, observed so minutely, and retained
so tenaciously the results of his reading and observation,"
Bryant wrote later In the Post, "that he was never at a
loss for a topic and never failed to Invest what he was
speaking of with a rare and original interest. His fund
of anecdote was almost Inexhaustible, and his ability to
illustrate any subject by apt quotation no less remark-
able." John Esten Cooke thought him an unexcelled
story-teller, and R. H. Stoddard has agreed.
He was a rebel to be loved, we are told by Watson R.
TWO LITERARY EDITORS 409
Sperry, later managing editor. "A lot of tall, straggling
Virginia gentlemen, ex-soldiers, I fancy, all of them, be-
gan to visit the office. Mr. Thompson had a big man's
beard, a delicate body, and a sensitive, feminine nature.
He was a bit punctilious, but kindness itself." His care-
ful attention to dress, verging on foppishness, was less
out of place in Bryant's office than it would have been
in Greeley's or Dana's. J. Ranken Towse speaks of his
personal charm, a reflection of his experience in the best
Richmond and London circles. "Though not a marvel
of erudition or critical genius, he was a pleasant, culti-
vated gentleman, refined in taste and manner, genial,
humorous, and abundantly capable."
Unfortunately, Thompson added little to the Pastes
literary reputation. In large part this was because of
his wretched health, for he steadily wasted away with
consumption, was much out of the office, and maintained
his energy only by following his doctor's orders to take
large doses of whisky. Early in 1872 his condition was
so bad that when Bryant set out for Cuba, the Bahamas,
and Mexico, he took Thompson along to escape the rigor
of winter. Thompson, moreover, was an essayist and
poet rather than a critic. He prepared a book upon his
European experiences which was in the bindery of Derby ^
& Jackson when fire destroyed it; and his letters of travel
on various vacation tours, with some editorial essays,
were his best work for the paper. His most famous
poem, the translation of Nadaud's '^Carcassone," was
written in the Evening Post office — ''the unfinished manu-
script was kicking around on his desk for several days,"
says Sperry — but published in Lippincott^s; its popularity
rather irritated him.
Even had his health been sound and his critical faculties
the best, Thompson could not have made the Post a good
literary organ in the present-day sense. It did not want /
critical or analytic reviews. An entertaining summary
or paraphrase would appeal far more to the general
reader. Moreover, there was a feeling that American
literature was a delicate organism, which needed petting
4IO THE EVENING POST
and might have Its spirit broken by harsh words. Mr.
Towse justly says of Thompson: "His condemnation was
apt to be expressed in terms of modified praise. He
confined himself largely to what was explanatory or de-
scriptive, though his articles were written fluently and
elegantly, were interesting, and had a news, if no great
descriptive value." Bryant reviewed many of the younger
poets with the same benignancy with which Howells used
to review young novelists in the Easy Chair. The first
Important volumes of which Thompson wrote notices
were the concluding volumes of Froude's England, King-
lake's Crimean War, and Motley's United Netherlands,
Raphael Pumpelly's travels, Mark Twain's "Innocents
Abroad," and Miss Alcott's "Little Women." The no-
tices consisted of scissors work and tepid comment.
During the years just after the war, Indeed, the Post's
columns were singularly devoid of permanent literary in-
terest. The Cary sisters. Miles O'Reilly, and Helen
Hunt Jackson contributed verse, and there were various
occasional poems, like E. C. Stedman's "Crete" (1867)
and Holmes's Harvard dinner poem of 1866. Samuel
Osgood, for years a prominent minister at the Unitarian
Church of the Messiah (Bryant's church), and a vol-
uminous writer on historical and religious topics, printed
many essays. Charles Lanman contributed his interesting
recollections of two famous Washington editors. Gales
and Seaton, of the National Intelligencer, and there were
others of the same small caliber.
The most noteworthy contributions were those, almost
the last of his long career, from Bryant's own pen. The
aged poet, after the death of his wife and the conclusion
of his translations from Homer, wrote fewer editorials,
and many of these at the request of friends, in support of
a worthy charity or civic movement. But he did like to
write short essays for the editorial page, often printed
in minion, on topics ranging from macaronic verse to his-
tory and politics. Despite what Hazlitt says of the prose
style of poets, that of Bryant was always of unmistakable
distinction. When he took such a subject as the beauties
TWO LITERARY EDITORS 411
of winter as seen at Roslyn (January, 1873), the result
was worthy of permanent preservation:
A light but continuous rain fell on Saturday and froze on
everything it touched, and wetted the snow only enough to change
it on the trees from white to the clearest and most brilliant crys-
tal. So overloaded were they with their icy diamonds that tall
cedars bent themselves like nodding plumes, and pines and hem-
locks bowed down like tents of cloth of silver over the snowy
carpet underneath. The russet leaves of the beeches shone out
like frozen leaves of gold, and trunks and boughs and twigs of
deciduous trees were as if they had been enameled with melted
glass from their very roots to the most delicate extremities. On
Sunday morning the sun shone out upon such a landscape as this,
to light up, but not to melt, the silvery sheen and the diamond
sparkle which winter had sprinkled over all outdoors. One who
breathed the exhilaration of the air of that day, and looked upon
its wonderful beauty, could hardly find it in the heart to regret
the destruction that it caused. But all day long the overloaded
trees yielded to the weight of ice, and one who listened could hear
in every direction, like the discharge of infantry, the crashing of
the falling branches. In some cases whole trees were stripped,
leaving only the shattered trunk, a torn and broken shaft with
all its glory strewn upon the snow.
Early in 1873 it became evident that Thompson's con-
dition was desperate. The Post in February, upon the
advice of his physician, sent him to Colorado, a step
which proved a mistake. He became rapidly worse,
started back on April 17, reached the city in a dying
state, and passed away at Isaac Henderson's home on
April 30. His funeral in New York was attended by
Bryant, Stedman, Richard Watson Gilder, Gen. Pryor,
Whitelaw Reid, R. H. Stoddard (whom he made his
literary executor, but who did nothing with his manu-
scripts) and others of prominence; while in Richmond on
the same day a meeting was held in his honor by the
pulpit, bar, and press in the House of Delegates. His
last incomplete review was of the poems of a Southerner,
Henry Timrod. Not until 1920 were his own poems
collected in a volume sponsored by his alma mater, the
University of Virginia.
412 THE EVENING POST
For some time his place was left unsupplied while
Bryant searched for a successor; for the editor had come
to the belated conclusion that the literary editorship
should be the most important place of its kind in America.
While the search was going on, in 1875, the year the
Post moved into the fine Bryant Building which Hender-
son built for it at a cost of $750,000, George Gary
Eggleston joined the staff.
Eggleston was a successful young author of thirty-five,
though by no means so famous as his elder brother Ed-
ward Eggleston, whose "Hoosier Schoolmaster," appear-
ing in book form in 1872, had sold 20,000 copies within
a year. He had crowded into these thirty-five years as
much experience as many active men get in a lifetime.
Born in Indiana, educated in Virginia, a soldier through-
out the war in the Confederate army, later a practicing
lawyer in Illinois and Mississippi, he had come, to Brook-
lyn and in 1870 became an editorial writer on Theodore
Tilton's Brooklyn Union. Soon afterward he and Ed-
ward Eggleston took joint charge of Hearth and Home,
and began putting life into that moribund publication.
It was in this effort that Edward Eggleston seized upon
his brother's experiences as a schoolmaster at RIker's
Ridge, Indiana, as a basis for his famous novel. The
two were on the high road to success when the magazine
was purchased, and both took to free lancing. George
Gary Eggleston settled down to writing boys' books and
magazine articles in an orchard-framed farmhouse in
New Jersey. He had already published, first In the
Atlantic and then in book form, one of the most graphic
of Southern war volumes, "A Rebel's Recollections,"
which had been warmly received.
Unfortunately, while at work in his cottage he was
swindled out of all his savings by a scoundrelly publisher,
and hurried to New York to seek editorial work again.
He felt honored to be associated with Bryant; he liked
the uncompromising dignity of the Evening Post. It
was, he used to say, the completest realization of the
ideal of the old Pall Mall Gazette — a newspaper con-
TWO LITERARY EDITORS 413
ducted by gentlemen, for gentlemen. His work consisted
of assisting Bryant, Sidney Howard Gay, Parke Godwin,
and Watson R. Sperry in writing editorials, and was con-
genial. Incidentally, he helped Bryant in his search for
a literary editor. He wrote Thomas Bailey Aldrich, set-
ting forth the dignity of the position, the attractive sal-
ary, and the pleasant nature of the work; all of which
Aldrich acknowledged, replying: "But, my dear Eggles-
ton, what can the paper offer to compensate one for hav-
ing to live in New York?"
While affairs were in this posture, Bryant one day
entered the Post library and began clambering about on
a step-ladder, searching the shelves. Eggleston, from his
little den opening off the larger room, saw him hunting,
and suggested that he might be able to help find the in-
formation wanted. "I think not," answered Bryant in
his curt, cold way, and then added, taking down still
another volume: "I'm looking for a line that I ought
to know where to find, but do not." Asking Bryant for
the substance of the quotation, Eggleston was fortunately
able to recognize it as a half-forgotten passage in Cow-
ley. He seized the office copy of Cowley, turned to the
page, and laid it open in Bryant's hand. The poet seemed
surprised, and lost all interest in the quotation.. "How,"
he demanded, "do you happen to know anything about
Cowley?"
Eggleston explained that as a youth upon a Virginia
plantation, seized by an overmastering thirst for litera-
ture, he had read the books in the libraries of all the
old mansions in the county. Bryant settled himself in-
terestedly in a chair of Eggleston's room. The young
man's half-written editorial for the morrow lay unfinished
on the desk, but Bryant never heeded it. For two hours
he questioned Eggleston as a candidate for the Ph.D.
degree in English is now questioned at his oral examina-
tion; inquiring as to his preferences, dislikes, and knowl-
edge of books and authors, and making him defend his
opinions. Then he abruptly said "Good afternoon."
Just before noon the next day the managing editor
414 THE EVENING POST
entered Eggleston's room with an expression of mingled
Irritation and amusement. Mr. Bryant had just been in,
he reported. "He walked into my office and said to me,
'Mr. Sperry, I have appointed Mr. Eggleston literary
editor. Good morning, Mr. Sperry,' and walked out
again."
Eggleston's literary editorship, which endured until
the Post changed hands in 1881, was more energetic and
fruitful than that of the half-invalid Thompson, partly
because he had more money to spend. He was an am-
bitious, vigorous young man, who knew most of the chief
literary figures of the time — Howells, Mark Twain, Bret
Harte, Stockton, and others met when he edited Hearth
and Home. In this Indian summer of the old Post, before
Carl Schurz and E. L. Godkin took it over, there was
another outburst of poetry in its pages. It published
/ Bryant's "Christmas In 1875" and his "Centennial Hymn,
\y^ 1876"; Whittler's poem to the memory of Halleck a
year later; and E. C. Stedman's "Hawthorne." Charles
Follen Adams, author of the "Leedle Yawcob Strauss"
poems, contributed repeatedly. It Is interesting to find
verse written by A. A. Adee while he was secretary of
legation In Madrid; by William Roscoe Thayer; by Ed-
gar Fawcett, the satirical novelist; by the late F. W.
Gunsaulus, Chicago's most famous preacher; by Edward
Eggleston and Agnes Reppller. There were also Inter-
esting prose contributions. E. P. Roe wrote upon —
gardening! Benton J. Lossing sent some historical ar-
ticles in his last years; and W. O. Stoddard, who had
been Lincoln's secretary during the Civil War, con-
\ tributed both prose and verse. Bret Harte for a time
' had a connection with the Post, which enabled him to
appear regularly for his pay, though his writing was most
irregular; his work is not identifiable.
The literary correspondence of the journal was greatly
strengthened. Regular letters were sent from Boston by
George Parsons Lathrop, Hawthorne's son-in-law, who
during part of this period was assistant-editor of the
v^ Atlantic, and well known for his books. His report
TWO LITERARY EDITORS 415
(Feb. 27, 1878) of Emerson's long-awaited delivery of
his lecture on "The Fortune of the Republic" — the sun-
light streaming through a window of Old South upon
the speaker's face, his manuscript placed on the flag
draping the pulpit, a distinguished audience hanging on
his words — was a fine bit of writing. Elie Reclus, the
eminent French geographer, wrote upon French litera-
ture, as did Edward King, while there were Italian and
London correspondents. From various American hands
came gossip about rising literary men of the day, like
the following vignette of a young lecturer named John
Fiske :
His vast learning is appalling to the ordinary man. . . . His
mind is so clear that it is said he never copies his manuscript.
He writes slowly — the right thought following its predecessor with
unerring precision, the fit word dropping into its place ; and with
this enviable faculty of composition, of understanding thoroughly,
and putting on paper just as he has in mind what he sees so
clearly, he works right on, far into the night, scarcely feeling
the need which most writers have of mental rest. He is so delib-
erate and to be relied on that once seeing the man, and knowing
his diligence and habits of investigation and method of writing,
you cannot entertain a doubt that he will accomplish whatever
he sets himself to do. . . .
He is of a very simple and sincere nature ; and of Saxon com-
plexion and hair. . . . He has a rosy face, auburn beard and
hair — the latter in short, crisp curls — and brown eyes as round
as marbles, which, seen through the glasses he always wears, seem
to have just looked up from some absorbing study and to be
scarcely yet ready to take in the common scenes of life. His is
not a changeful countenance, but of the same calm, self-reliant
expression on all occasions, as if he took the world philosophically
and was always in good humor with it. He is solid, inclined to
the sluggish in build and motion, and is slow of utterance, speak-
ing in measured phrases with his teeth half shut.
But the standard of literary criticism was very little
raised by Eggleston. Some light is thrown upon his aims
by his rejoinder to a fellow Virginian, E. S. Nadal, who
in the Atlantic in 1877 accused newspaper critics of yield-
ing to pressure from the advertisers, and of refusing to
41 6 THE EVENING POST
treat harshly writers they personally knew. Eggleston
indignantly denied both allegations, remarking that he
had reviewed "several thousands of good and bad books"
without thought of advertising or personal friendship.
He added that Nadal had mistaken the function of the
newspaper literary critic. It could not be so elevated,
analytic, and rigid as magazine reviewing. The news-
paper writer's chief business was not to point out faults,
but "to tell newspaper readers what books are published,
and what sort of book each of them is, so that the reader
may decide for himself what books to buy. His work is
not so much criticism as description. It is in the nature
of news and comment upon news, and the newspaper
reviewer rightly omits much in the way of adverse
criticism." Eggleston's successor proved how utterly
fallacious was this statement.
In accordance with it, we find the great majority of
volumes — travels like Burnaby's "Ride to Khiva,"
biographies like Mrs. Charles Kingsley's "Letters and
Memorials" of her husband, histories like Symonds's
"Renaissance in Italy" — merely scissored and summar-
ized. Eggleston plumed himself upon being the first to
give a thorough account, thought quite uncritical, of the
most important books. Thus Elie Reclus in 1877 sent the
Post a scoop upon Hugo's new "History of a Crime";
and a few months later it was delighted to give, in a
column and a half, the first resume of Schliemann's story
of his discoveries at Mycenae. Eggleston was alert to
obtain advance sheets of new books, and the morning
newspapers complained that the publishers made him a
favorite. When Tennyson's "Harold" was issued late
in 1876, there was no previous announcement, and a copy
was sent all American and British literary editors precisely
at noon. The Evening Post reviews for that day were
already in the forms, and only an hour remained before
the first edition went to press. But Eggleston resolved
to anticipate the morning papers, enlisted Foreman Dith-
mar of the composing room, hurriedly prepared two col-
umns of quotation and comment, and had them in type
TWO LITERARY EDITORS 417
ready for the front page within his time-limit. This ex-
ploit, in which it is hard to share his pride, reminds us
of the story of Hugo's "Legend of the Ages" reaching
the Tribune office just before Bayard Taylor left for the
night, and of how Taylor within fifteen hours finished an
"exhaustive" review, Including translations of five poems.
Nevertheless, from time to time a genuinely critical bit
of writing emerged in the Post. The reviews of
Howells's "A Foregone Conclusion" In 1875 and of
Henry James's "The American" In 1877, both apprecia-
tive, would do credit to any literary journal to-day. Parke
Godwin wrote solid historical criticism. The paper was
sufficiently discriminating to prefer the best of Constance
Fenimore Woolson to the second-best of Bret Harte. Its
worst misstep, shared by almost every other American
journal, was Its low estimate of "Tom Sawyer" In 1877.
It thought the first half passable — "fairly entitled to rank
with Mr. Aldrich's 'Story of a Bad Boy' " — but the sec-
ond half poor, and It issued the grave warning: "Cer-
tainly It will be in the last degree unsafe to put the book
Into the hands of Imitative youth."
The subject of International copyright had been re-
opened In 1867 by an article In the Atlantic, and the re-
publication of Henry C. Carey's hostile essays; but a
bill failed In Congress In 1868 and another In 1871.
Bryant saw that the Evening Post kept up Its campaign
for a reform. Some publishers, led by Putnam's and J. R.
Osgood & Co., were for a liberal law, but others, like
Harper & Brothers, stood opposed; while the type-
founders, paper-makers, and binders throughout the
Union were hostile. Carey's school held that Inter-
national copyright would produce a centralized monopoly
of bookmaking, and included many booksellers of the
Middle and Western States who complained that the
bulk of English reprints were already monopolized by
four or five Eastern firms. Carey also thought that the
best way of giving an author his due would be simply to
compel payment of a royalty to him. But the Post in
1877 took the view that the chief obstacle to international
41 8 THE EVENING POST
copyright lay in the conviction of many manufacturers
and farmers of the West that the patent system was un-
economic and Injurious, and their Inchnation to regard
copyright as a kind of patent.
From Eggleston we learn nearly as much of Bryant in
his editorial capacity as from BIgelow and Parke Godwin.
Bryant regarded anonymous criticism, he told Eggleston,
*'as a thing quite as despicable, unmanly, and cowardly
as an anonymous letter." Eggleston's own notices were
unsigned, but Bryant had given prominence to the fact
that he was literary editor, sending every publisher an
announcement, and it was the rule that contributed
criticism should bear at least an initial. Once when
Eggleston was about to publish an anonymous review by
R. H. Stoddard, Bryant's Indignant objections were with
difficulty silenced. According to the literary editor,
Bryant's printed Index expurgatorlus by no means in-
cluded all the words to which he objected; he tried to rule
out "numerous" for "many,"" "people" for "persons,"
"monthly" for "monthly magazine," and so on. He was
accustomed to refer to Johnson's dictionary as an author-
ity instead of later works. Eggleston recalls the vigor of
Bryant's literary prejudices, one of them apparently
evinced by his refusal to have the least share in the un-
veiling of the Poe monument in Baltimore.
Yet he lays emphasis upon Bryant'j^ unwillingness to
deal severely with fellow poets. The old editor said he
had always found it possible to say something good about
the writings of the poorest — to praise some line, some
epithet, at least. Once Eggleston in despair showed him
a volume of which it was Impossible to commend a single
word. Bryant admitted that It was idiotic; he admitted
that even the cover was an affront to taste; but, he said,
looking at it with an expression of total disgust, "You
can commend the publishers for putting it on well." This
was one expression of Bryant's innate gentleness. He
was seriously distressed when some scribbler of verse on
one occasion caught up a single commendatory phrase
in Eggleston's unfavorable review, and asked Bryant to
TWO LITERARY EDITORS 419
allow him to use that phrase as an advertisement, with
Bryant's own name attached. Eggleston answered the
appeal, and did it forcibly. The poet would change his
"day" at the office, or would work in the composing room,
to avoid bores, but he never would be impolite to them.
Once, indeed, a literary hack pestered him all morning
in an effort to obtain the material for articles to publish
upon Bryant when he died. Bryant came in obviously
disturbed, and said to Eggleston in his mild way: "I tried
to be patient, but I fear I was rude to him at the last.
There seemed to be no other way of getting rid of him."
CHAPTER NINETEEN
WARFARE WITHIN THE OFFICE : PARKE GODWIN'S
EDITORSHIP
Six weeks before Bryant's death preparations were
made, as with a prevision of that event, for the uninter-
rupted control of the newspaper by his family. A re-
organization was forced, under circumstances later to be
recounted, upon the business manager, Isaac Henderson.
The poet assigned the presidency of the Evening Post
Company to Judge John J. Monell, but kept the editor-
ship ; Henderson resigned as publisher and was succeeded
by his son, Isaac, Jr. ; and Parke Godwin became a trus-
tee, resuming his connection a^ a writer on artistic, scien-
tific, and literary topics. In June, 1878, immediately
after the funeral of Bryant, Godwin, his son-in-law, took
his place, and was formally named editor in December.
His editorship, which endured but three years, affords an
opportunity to pause for a survey of the men who made
the Evening Post of the seventies, and of the figure be-
lieved by many to be trying to unmake it.
The newspaper establishment of which Godwin became
head was one which, small and antiquated though it would
seem now, had made extraordinary strides since the Civil
War. During the conflict it had been housed in a dingy,
rickety firetrap on the northwest corner of Liberty and
Nassau Streets, where it had its publication office on the
first floor, its five small editorial rooms together with the
composing room on the third floor, and its presses In the
basement. But in 1874-5 Henderson had erected a new
and imposing building of ten stories on the corner of
Fulton and Broadway, which the Post occupied until
1907. Here the composing rooms, unusually spacious
and well-lighted, were on the top floor, the editorial
rooms next below, and the oflices on the ground floor.
420
GODWIN'S EDITORSHIP 421
It was necessary then to be near the postoffice to en-
sure the early delivery of malls, and there being no
"tickers," evening papers had also to be near Wall
Street. Stock quotations were long printed from the
official sheet of the Stock Exchange. A messenger boy
was kept waiting for the first copy of this publication,
and it was hurried to the newspaper office, there cut into
small "takes," and put into type with all possible speed.
In the seventies and early eighties the Post was printed
from a huge eight-cylinder press, direct from type which
was locked upon the curved cylinders, while men standing
in tiers upon each side fed in the paper. The last min-
utes before the press hour in the composing room, as the
managing editor stood over the forms and decided what
news should be killed, what used, and what held over,
were highly exciting.
As for the staff, though still small, it had been steadily
enlarged in the sixties and seventies. The first managing
editor was Charles Nordhoff, who came in i860, when
the title was still an innovation, having recently been bor-
rowed from the London Times by the Tribune to apply
to Dana. For a generation it signified not a mere man-
ager of the news columns, as it did later, but a man who
in the absence of the editor performed all his functions.
When Bryant was not in the office, and Godwin did not
supply his place, Nordhoff was expected to take charge
of the editorial page. The first literary editor, as we
have seen, John R. Thompson, was employed in 1868;
for a time he was expected also to review some plays, but
within a few years the Evening Post had a special musical
and dramatic editor in the person of William F. Williams,
and by the middle seventies Williams was practically con-
fining himself to music while J. Ranken Towse took over,
to its vast improvement, the dramatic criticism. Thus
there were three valuable employees doing work which
had previously been ill-done or done not at all. As for
the news force, when in 1871 William Alexander Linn
accepted the position of city editor, he found it to con-
sist, besides himself, of six men. These were the man-
422 THE EVENING POST
aging editor, at this date Charlton Lewis; his assistant,
Bronson Howard; the telegraph editor, financial editor,
one salaried reporter, and one reporter "on space."
It would have been impossible to cover the news with
this force had there not been a city news association
which lent valuable assistance. Even then, in emergencies
Linn had sometimes to call upon the bright young men
of the composing room to accept assignments, and de-
veloped some good journalists in this way. The foreman
of the composing room, Dithmar, was a German of rare
culture, who with little early schooling had mastered hvc
languages, and whom Bryant sometimes delighted In pit-
ting against pretentious men of small attainments. In-
deed, Bryant often discussed poetry, German philosophy,
and journalistic problems with him In the most intimate
fashion. He maintained an almost tyrannical discipline
in his department, sometimes quarreled violently with the
managing editor when the latter wanted copy set which
would necessitate the killing of matter already In type,
and even claimed the right to protest to the editors
against their editorial views whenever the latter dis-
pleased him. Later he was appointed American consul at
Breslau, Germany, and filled the position with credit.
One of the compositors whom he recommended to Linn
speedily made his mark as a political reporter, and was
for more than twenty years the Washington correspond-
ent of the Times.
The managing editors who succeeded Nordhoff after
his resignation in 1871 were all men of distinction. Charl-
ton Lewis, the first, was characterized by Harper's
Weekly when he died as "a college graduate who knew
Latin." As a matter of fact, his versatility, his ablhty
to win distinction in many different fields, was remark-
able. He became well known in classical circles by his
prodigious labors in producing the Latin Dictionary pub-
lished under his name, a revision and expansion of
Freund's. He published translations from the German,
and at the time of his death he was engaged in writing
a commentary upon Dante. It is said that a professor
GODWIN^S EDITORSHIP 423
of astronomy, chatting with him for an hour upon the
science, expressed astonishment later upon being told that
Lewis was not an astronomer by profession; the mistake
was natural, for Lewis — who had taught both the classics
and mathematics at Union College — was really proficient
in mathematical astronomy. His chief practical success
was in the insurance field, where he became one of the
greatest authorities upon both the legal and mathematical
aspects of insurance; while he is now remembered prin-
cipally for his almost life-long attention to the problems
of charities and corrections. When managing editor of
the Post in the early seventies, he induced E. C. Wines
to write a series of articles upon prison reform in the
various States. Later he became interested in the move-
ment for probation and parole, and for years was presi-
dent of both the National Prison Association and Prison
Association of New York. He made an able managing
editor, though he was not wholly liked or trusted by some
members of the staff. Mr. Towse writes :
He did not, as I remember, interfere much, if at ail, with the
general organization, confining himself mainly to the supervision
of the editorial page, for which he wrote with his usual fluency,
cogency, and eloquence. He produced copy with extraordinary
rapidity and neatness, seldom making corrections of any kind.
The natural alertness of his intellect was reinforced by an im-
mense amount of varied and precise knowledge, and he impressed
every one with a sense of his solid and brilliant competency.
Lewis was followed by Arthur G. Sedgwick, the
brother-in-law of Charles Eliot Norton, a brilliant young
writer whose promise had been early discerned by E. L.
Godkin, and who had now been working for some years
with Godkin in the office of the Nation. That fact alone
would be a sufficient evidence of his ability and character.
As W. C. Brownell wrote years later, Sedgwick's style
was "the acme of well-bred simplicity, argumentative
cogency, and as clear as a bell, because he simply never
experienced mental confusion." The editorial page could
not have been in better hands than his, but his connection
424 THE EVENING POST
with the Post was — at this time — brief. The fourth
managing editor was Sidney Howard Gay, who wrote
an excellent short life of Madison for the American
Statesmen Series, and whose name Is linked with Bryant's
by their nominal co-authorship of a four-volume history
of the United States. As a matter of fact, Bryant sup-
plied only the Introduction and a little early advice. Gay
deserving the whole credit for the work. It Is badly
proportioned, but In large part based upon original re-
search, and readable In style. Gay was not merely an
Industrious historian, but a capable journalist, who had
been trained on the Tribune In association with Greeley,
Ripley, and Bayard Taylor.
The most notable of the other employees of the Eve-
ning Post In the seventies was Newton F. Whiting, the
financial editor, who was followed and esteemed by the
financial community as few journalists have ever been.
It was far more difficult then than now to obtain a finan-
cial editor who could be trusted to abstain rigidly from
dabbling In Wall Street and to hold the scales even
between rival commercial Interests. John BIgelow relates
that in the fifties he once spoke of this difficulty at the
Press Club to Dana. "Well," said Dana, "how could
you expect to get a man in that department who wouldn't
speculate?" — a rejoinder that BIgelow rightly thought a
little shocking. But Whiting filled his position with an
integrity that was not only absolute, but never even ques-
tioned; and with a quickness of Intelligence, soundness of
judgment, and scrupulous accuracy that made his death
In the fall of 1882 a shock to down-town New York. Had
he lived longer he would have become a figure of national
prominence. The words of a memorial pamphlet Issued
In his honor were not a whit exaggerated:
His ability to unravel a difficult situation in Wall Street was
remarkable. In the event of a sudden crisis, the facts bearing
on it were immediately ascertained and lucidly exposed; and the
service thus rendered in the early editorials of the Evening Post
has often proved the means of turning a morning of panic into
an afternoon of confidence. His service in arresting the progress
GODWIN'S EDITORSHIP 425
of distrust on such occasions has perhaps never been fully esti-
mated. The widespread feeling of regret in Wall Street on the
news of his decease was in no small degree expressive of the loss
of a helmsman in whom all had been accustomed to trust.
Becoming financial editor In 1868, It was he who con-
demned the Federal Government's interference In the
''Black Friday" crisis, when Its sudden sale of $4,000,000
in gold In New York city destroyed the plans of Jay Gould
and James FIsk, jr., for cornering the gold market.
Whiting's contention was that the importation of gold
from Europe and other points would have crushed the
corner anyway, and that It was not the Treasury's busi-
ness to Intervene in a battle between rival gangs of spec-
ulators, particularly since It had promised not to sell gold
without due notice. He believed In hard money and wrote
many of the Post's editorials against the greenback move-
ment. Being totally opposed to the coinage of silver by
the United States so long as other nations declined to co-
operate in establishing the double standard upon a
permanent basis, for years he daily placarded the depre-
ciation of the standard silver dollar at the head of the
Post's money column — a device that greatly irritated
silver men. His rugged strength of character was well
set off by a rugged body, for he was broad-shouldered,
deep-chested, and an expert horseman, boxer, and
wrestler. No man in the office was better liked.
The telegraph editor under Nordhoff was Augustus
Maverick, known to all students of journalism by his
volume on "Henry J. Raymond and th~e New York
Press" ; a good newspaper man, but a swaggering, egotis-
tical fellow, whose Irish hot temper and tendency to
domineer over others marked him for a stormy career.
He was soon dismissed from the Post for insubordina-
tion, he made an unfortunate marriage, and his life had
a tragic end. The musical editor, William F. Williams,
was for some time also organist of St. George's Church.
Those were the days of Mapleson and Italian opera,
when a genuinely critical review would have been thought
cruel, and Williams supplied the perfunctory and kindly
426 THE EVENING POST
notices wanted by the managers ; the distribution of tickets
in return was always generous. He was a burly, genial
fellow, a veritable Count Fosco in physical appearance,
and with something of the Indolence which accorded with
his flesh. When he found that J. Ranken Towse was
keenly Interested in the theater, he gladly permitted
Towse to represent him upon even highly important occa-
sions; and thus was responsible for the beginnings of
dramatic criticism of a high order in the Post.
From one point of view, Parke Godwin will be seen to
have succeeded to editorial control of an influential organ,
ably equipped and officered, and making from $50,000
to $75,000 a year for its owners. From another point of
view, he succeeded to an irrepressible conflict, and the
Evening Post was only the arena In which he was to fight
to the bitter end with a wary, persistent, and experienced
antagonist. The struggle was between the Bryant and
Henderson families for possession of the Post; between
the counting room and the editorial room for the dicta-
tion of its policy. It had covertly begun while Bryant
was alive, and now became open.
Isaac Henderson by 1868 was in a well entrenched
position. He had one-half of the stock of the newspaper,
fifty or even fifty-one shares; he owned the building out-
right; his son, Isaac, jr., was in training to succeed him
as publisher; and his son-in-law, Watson R. Sperry, an
able and honorable young graduate of Yale, had become
managing editor. It was becoming plain that Henderson
wished to acquire unquestioned control, to install Sperry
as editor, and make the Evening Post a family possession.
What was the character of the man who thus seemed on
the point of obtaining "Bryant's newspaper"?
It would be easy, from the evidence of his enemies, to
take too harsh a view of Isaac Henderson. We must
remember that standards of political and business moral-
ity were low after the Civil War. The fairest judgment
is that Henderson was simply an average product of the
days which, while they produced Peter Cooper, produced
also Jim Fisk, Daniel Drew, and Jay Gould. His con-
GODWIN'S EDITORSHIP 427
stant thought was of dollars and cents. On Sundays he
was a prominent member of a Brooklyn Methodist
church ; on weekdays he was intent upon driving the hard-
est bargain he legitimately could. He built up the Eve-
ning Post from a weak and struggling journal Into a great
property, which in one year of the war divided more
than $200,000 in profits; from a $7 a week clerk he be-
came a millionaire. His tastes were mercenary, and he
had the sharpness of a Yankee horse-trader, but there is
no conclusive evidence that he ever did what the business
man of his time would have called a clearly dishonest
act. When he undertook to acquire the site of his build-
ing, owned by the Old Dutch Church, he made an investi-
gation, found that there was a two-inch strip fronting on
Broadway that the church did not own, quietly obtained
title to it, and — if we may believe the Evening Telegram
of July 29, 1879 — in the subsequent negotiations
"profited by his discovery in the pleasant sum of $125,-
000, the largest price ever paid for a lot two inches wide."
At the time many thought such an exploit creditable, and
Henderson fitted his time.
Henderson faced his gravest charge when in January,
1864, he was dismissed from the office of Navy Agent in
New York on the ground that he had accepted commis-
sions upon contracts let for the government. Gideon
Welles's Diary for the summer of 1864 contains many
references to this affair. It states that on one occasion
Welles discussed the matter with Lincoln, "who there-
upon brought out a correspondence that had taken place
between himself and W. C. Bryant. The latter averred
that H. was innocent, and denounced Savage, the prin-
cipal witness against him, because arrested and under
bonds. To this the President replied that the character
of Savage before his arrest was as good as Henderson's
before he was arrested. He stated that he knew nothing
of H.'s alleged malfeasance until brought to his notice
by me, in a letter, already written, for his removal; that
he inquired of me if I was satisfied he was guilty; that
I said he was; and that he then directed, or said to me,
428 THE EVENING POST
'Go ahead, let him be removed.' " It Is a fact that Bryant
never wavered In his faith In his partner. The charges
had their origin In the malice of Thurlow Weed, who,
angered by persistent attacks made upon him by the
Evening Post, sought out the Information which he be-
lieved to justify them, and laid them before Welles. In
May, 1865, they came to a trial in the Federal Circuit
Court under Judge Nelson. The prosecution brought
forward a strong array of legal talent, while Henderson
was represented by Judge Pierrepont and Wm. M.
Evarts; the case against him utterly broke down, the
judge said as much in his charge, and without leaving
their seats the jury rendered a verdict of acquittal.
Circumstances, however, inclined many to regard the
verdict as one of "Not Proved"- only. It is important
to note that Parke Godwin, then owner of one-third of the
Post, stated in a letter to Bryant, July 31, 1865, his
reasons for thinking the charges true:
I infer from a remark made by Mrs. Bryant, on Saturday even-
ing, that she still has confidence in Mr. Henderson, and as I have
not, I will tell you why. I will do so in writing, because I have
found writing less liable to mistake or misconstruction than what
is said by word of mouth.
I. My impressions are quite decided that Mr. H. has been
guilty of the malpractices charged upon him by the government,
for these reasons: (i) His own clerk (Mr. Blood) admitted the
receipt of $70,000 as commissions, and that these were deposited
by Mr. Henderson as his own, in his own bank; (2) the prose-
cuting attorneys, Mr. Noyes, Judge Bosworth, D. S. Dickinson,
asserted that over $100,000, as they are able to prove positively,
were paid into his office as commissions; Mr. Noyes told me that
there could be no doubt of this; (3) other lawyers (Mr. Mar-
bury, for instance) assure me that clients of theirs know of the
habits of the office in this respect, and would testify if legally
called upon; (4) his private bank account shows very large trans-
actions, which are said to correspond singularly v^^ith the entries
in the books of the contractors implicated with him.
II. Supposing him not guilty, the efforts he made and was
willing to make to screen himself from prosecution, were to say
the least singular ; but they were more than that ; they were of a
GODWIN'S EDITORSHIP 429
kind no upright citizen could resort to or sanction. He tried to
tamper with the Grand Jury, he tried to buy up the District
Attorney, he "secured," as D. D. told me, the petit jury, and
he was negotiating, at the time the trial came on, to purchase
Fox. These are things difficult to reconcile with any supposition
of the man's integrity or honor.
III. Admitting him, however, to be wholly innocent, his posi-
tion before the public has become such that it is a source of the
most serious mortification and embarrassment to the conductors
of the Evening Post. We cannot brand a defaulter, condemn
peculation, urge official economy, or get into any sort of contro-
versy with other journals, without having the charges against
Henderson, which nine tenths of the public believe to be true,
flung in our faces. Not once, but two dozen times, I have been
shut up by a rejoinder of this sort. Mr. Nordhoff has felt this, in
his private intercourse as well as in a public way, to such an extent
that he has told me peremptorily and positively that he would
not continue in the paper if Mr. Henderson retained an active
part in connection with it. Now, it seems to me that if there
were any feeling of delicacy in Mr. Henderson, any regard for
the sensitiveness of others, any care for the reputation and inde-
pendence of the paper, he would be willing to relieve us of this
most injurious and unpleasant predicament.
IV. I will add, that I am not satisfied with his management
of our business affairs; he gives them very little of his attention,
though he pretends to do so ; he is largely and constantly engaged
in outside speculations, in grain, provisions, etc. ; and in one
instance, as our books show, he has given himself a fictitious credit
of $7,000, which was irregular. . . .
Whether commissions were actually taken none can
now say; the essential fact is that the man who was to be
editor of the Post had thus early made up his mind to
distrust and detest the tall, florid publisher of the paper.
Godwin actually proposed to Henderson at this date
that the latter sell out to William Dorsheimer, a well-
known lawyer, later lieutenant-governor, who was willing
to buy, but Henderson naturally refused to leave under
fire. Godwin ultimately consented to stay with the Post
until Bryant had refreshed himself from his Civil War
labors by a European trip; but in 1868 he sold his third
share to Bryant and Henderson for $200,000, and gladly
430 THE EVENING POST
left the office for the time being. Nordhoff remained
longer, but with unabated dislike for Henderson, and at
the crisis of the Tweed fight, as we have seen, thought
It necessary to resign. Most of the editorial employees
of the Post disliked the publisher. He practiced a penny-
pinching economy. The building superintendent was re-
quired to send up a dally statement of the coal used. Ill-
paid workers, coming Into his office to ask for more wages,
would state their case and then note that his eyes were
fixed suggestively upon the maxim, one of many framed
on the walls, "Learn to Labor and to Wait." But Bryant
seems never to have lost his confidence In him. Every
one agrees that one of Henderson's best traits was an
almost boyish admiration and deference for Bryant, and
that he would never do anything to offend the poet.
By the middle seventies the Civil War charges against
Henderson were largely forgotten. The danger to be
apprehended from his activities and ambition was not
that the Evening Post would be brought under dishonest
management, but simply that It would be brought under
a management which thought first and always of money-
making, steered its course for the greatest patronage, and
shrank from such self-sacrificing independence as the
paper had displayed in the Bank war or the early stages
of the slavery struggle. Henderson never thought of
it as a sternly Impartial guide of public opinion; he
thought of it as a producer of revenue. His whole later
record as a publisher, as Bryant aged, shows this.
The seventies were the hey-day of the "reading notice,"
and in printing veiled advertisements the Post only fol-
lowed nearly all other newspapers. Washington Gladden
left the Independent, the leading religious weekly of the
day, recently edited by Beecher and Tllton, In 1871, be-
cause no fewer than three departments — an Insurance
Department, a Financial Department, and a department
of "Publishers' Notices" — were so edited and printed
that, though pure advertising at $1 a line, they appeared
to a majority of readers as editorial matter. These ad-
vertising items were frequently quoted in other journals
GODWIN'S EDITORSHIP 431
as utterances of the Independent. The Times as late as
1886 was placed in an embarrassing position by divulgence
of the fact that it had received $1,200 from the Bell
Telephone Company for publishing an advertisement
which many readers would take to be an editorial. No
"reading notices" ever appeared in the editorial columns
of the Post, and Whiting would Instantly have resigned
had an effort been made to place one In the financial
columns; but they were discreditably frequent in the news
pages. Occasionally a string of them would emerge under
the heading, "Shopping Notes"; at Christmas they were
prominently displayed on the front page as "Holiday
Notices"; and sometimes the unwary reader would com-
mence what looked like a poem and find it ending:
Ye who with languor droop and fade,
Or ye whom fiercer illness thrills;
Call the blest compound to your aid —
Trust to Brandreth's precious pills.
But where the influence of the business office was seen
in Its most pernicious form was in efforts to muzzle the
treatment of the news and to color editorial opinion.
W. G. Boggs, now a tall, thin, white-haired old man, was
the advertising manager, with a wide and intimate ac-
quaintance among commercial men and politicians, and
with an endless succession of axes to grind. "He was
the most familiar representative of the publication in the
editorial rooms," says Mr. Towse, "and manifested a
special Interest In the suppression of any paragraph, or
allusion, that might offend the dispensers of political ad-
vertising, which in those days was an important source
of revenue." Tammany gave much printing to the
Post's job office until 1871. Henderson himself almost
never interfered — Mr. Sperry recalls only one harmless
instance during his managing editorship. But in 1872
a dramatic incident lit up the situation as by a bolt of
lightning. Arthur G. Sedgwick had just become man-
aging editor, giving the editorial page new strength. At
this time there was much talk of maladministration and
432 THE EVENING POST
graft in the Parks Department. One day Sedgwick, chat-
ting with J. Ranken Towse upon the subject, remarked
that although the rascality was clear, there appeared no
indication in it of connivance by the Commissioner, Van
Nort. Towse dissented, saying that the man was hand
in glove with Tammany, and must be fully cognizant of
all that was going on. He suggested that Van Nort had
escaped suspicion because he was a social favorite, su-
perior in manners and culture to most politicians, and
because he had used his advertising patronage in a man-
ner to please all New York papers. To enforce his argu-
ment, he directed Sedgwick's attention to a number of
highly suspicious transactions. Sedgwick, he states:
saw the points promptly, and bade me write an editorial para-
graph embodying them and demanding explanations. I told him
it would be as much as my place was worth to write such an
article. He replied, somewhat hotly, that he, not I, was respon-
sible for the editorial page, and peremptorily told me to write as
he had directed. So I furnished the paragraph, which, to the best
of my recollection, was largely an enumeration of undeniable facts
for which Van Nort, as the head of his department, was officially
responsible, and which he ought to be ready to explain. It was
put into type and printed as an editorial in the first edition. The
paper was scarcely off the press when the expected storm broke.
Mr. Henderson, ordinarily cold and self-restrained, passed hur-
riedly through my room in a state of manifest excitement, with
an early copy of the edition in his hand. Entering the adjoining
room of Mr. Sedgwick, he denounced my unlucky article, and
demanded its instant suppression. A brief but heated altercation
followed ; Henderson insisting that the article was scandalous and
libelous, and must be withdrawn, and Sedgwick asserting his sole
authority in the matter and declaring that, so long as he was
managing editor, the article would remain as it stood. Finally
Henderson withdrew, but meanwhile the press had been stopped,
and the objectionable paragraph removed from the form. Before
the afternoon was over Sedgwick handed in his resignation and
returned to the service of the Nation.
As Mr. Towse adds, probably Bryant, now too old to
be much in the office, never knew the precise truth of this
affair; and If he did, may have thought that his inter-
GODWIN'S EDITORSHIP 433
ference would be bootless, and would only intensify the
irritation of the episode. But we can see why men
jocularly called Henderson "the wicked partner," and the
Post a Spenlow and Jorkins establishment.
Parke Godwin maintained his attitude of constant sus-
picion toward the paper's publisher. Two years after
the sale of his third share of the Post, he obtained evi-
dence which convinced him, as he wrote Bryant, that he
had been overreached by Henderson "to the extent of one
hundred thousand dollars at least." His efforts to insti-
tute an inquiry came to nothing, and he ended them by
sending the poet a solemn note of warning; "I regard
Mr. Henderson as a far-seeing and adroit rogue; his
design from the beginning has been and still is to get
exclusive possession of the Evening Post, at much less
than its real value, which I expected to prove was much
more nearly a million than half a million dollars" (July,
1870). Early in the seventies he took charge of the Post
for various short periods, and what he then observed in-
creased his apprehensions, or, as Henderson's defenders
would say, his prejudices. At the beginning of 1878 he
prevailed upon Bryant to have an investigation of the
newspaper's finances made by Judge Monell, and the
result was the reorganization already chronicled.
In brief. Judge Monell's inquiries showed that very
large sums were owed to Bryant by Henderson, and that
for a long period Henderson's private financial affairs,
which had been subjected to a severe strain by his erec-
tion of the new building, had not been properly separated
from those of the Evening Post, Had it not been for
these disclosures, the astute business manager would un-
doubtedly have been able to step forward soon after
Bryant's death and take control. But he could not im-
mediately meet his debts to the Bryant family, and was
forced to consent to an arrangement which wrecked what-
ever plans in that direction he may have laid. Henderson
owned fifty shares, Bryant forty-eight, Julia Bryant one,
and Judge Monell one. Under the new arrangement
Henderson pledged thirty of his shares to Bryant as se-
434 THE EVENING POST
curity for his debts, and twenty to Parke Godwin, who
reentered the company, while Bryant also pledged twenty
shares to Godwin. The Board of Trustees was so consti-
tuted that the position of the Bryant family was made
secure. Henderson intended to move heaven and earth
to redeem his shares; but, wrote Judge Monell in an opin-
ion for the family, even if he did that "he cannot change
the direction nor regain control. This can only be done
by persons holding a majority of the stock."
Godwin when made editor was regarded as one of the
ablest and most experienced journalists in New York.
Far behind him were the youthful, enthusiastic days of
the forties, when he had been an ardent apostle of Four-
ierism, had applauded the Brook Farm experiment, help-
ing edit the organ of that community, the Harbinger,
and had advised his friend Charles A. Dana that it was
possible for a young journalist to cultivate high thinking
and high ambitions in New York on $i,ooo a year. He
had worked like a Trojan then on the Post, and had made
several unsuccessful ventures into the magazine field. Far
behind him were the pinched years of the fifties when,
having temporarily left the Post, he was associate editor
of the struggling Putnam's Magazine, and gave it na-
tional reputation by his vigorous assaults upon the slavery
forces and President Pierce. It was with a touch of bit-
terness that he had complained in i860, when he rejoined
the Evening Post, that the latter had never paid him more
than $50 a week. But, purchasing Bigelow's share of the
paper at a bargain, its Civil War profits made him rich.
The editorial writing done by Godwin had not the
eloquence or finish of Bryant's, but it showed an equal
grasp of political principles, and a better understanding
of economic problems. He was a real scholar, the author
of many books, able to appeal to cultivated audiences.
His legal, literary, and historical studies gave him a dis-
tinct advantage over the ordinary journalist of the time,
not college bred and too busy for wide reading. Young
Henry Watterson justly wrote of him in 1871, when he
had temporarily left his profession again:
GODWIN'S EDITORSHIP 435
It is a thousand pities that a man of Parke Godwin's strength
of mind and strength of principle is by any chance or cause cut
of? from his proper sphere of usefulness and power, the press of
New York. He has a clearer head and less gush than Greeley,
and he is hardly any lazier than Manton Marble, though older;
he writes with as much dash and point as Hurlburt, and his knowl-
edge of the practice of journalism is not inferior to that of Greeley
and Nordhoff. No leading writer of the day makes more impres-
sion on the public mind than he could make, and in losing him
along with Hudson the journals of the great metropolis are real
and not apparent sufferers. Godwin is eminently a leader-writer,
and whenever he goes to work on a newspaper the addition is sure
to be felt forthwith.
Unfortunately, he was now sixty-two, and well beyond
his prime, while the defect of which Watterson speaks,
his laziness, had grown upon him. In the past he had
been noted for his editorial aggressiveness, and the most
"radical" of the Posfs utterances In the Civil War are
attributable to him. It was once said that, in the Evening
Post office In the seventies, "he was a Hon in a den of
Daniels." George Gary Eggleston, who worked with
him when he was editor 1878-188 1, tells us that "he
knew how to say strong things in a strong way. He could
wield the rapier of subtle sarcasm, and the bludgeon of
denunciation with an equally skilful hand. Sometimes he
brought even a trip-hammer into play with startling ef-
fect." Eggleston cites an Incident which happened during
Sarah Bernhardt's first visit to New York In 1880. A
sensational clergyman, who always denounced the theater
as the gateway of hell, sent the Evening Post a vehement
protest against the space It was giving Mme. Bernhardt,
whom he characterized as a woman of immoral charac-
ter and dissolute conduct. This letter he headed, "Quite
Enough of Sara Bernhardt." Godwin was enraged.
He Instantly penned an editorial answer, which he en-
titled "Quite Enough of Blank" — Blank being the clergy-
man's name, used In full. Pointing out that Mme. Bern-
hardt had asked for American attention solely as an art-
ist, that the Post had treated her only In that light, and
436 THE EVENING POST
that the charge that she was Immoral was totally with-
out supporting evidence anyway, he demolished the luck-
less cleric. But Eggleston deplores "a certain constitu-
tional indolence" of Godwin's as depriving the world of
the fruits of his ripest powers, and this fault was now evi-
dent. He went much into society, he sometimes wrote
his editorials in bed in the morning and sent them down
by messenger, and sometimes a promised editorial did not
appear.
Upon all the public issues which had importance during
Godwin's editorship the position of the Post had already
been well fixed. It had been an advocate of civil service
reform early in the sixties, at a time when even well-
informed men, like Henry Adams in a conversation with
E. L. Godkin, spoke of it only as "something Prussian."
It had urged an early resumption of specie payments, had
bitterly opposed the Bland Act of 1878 for the coinage
of two to four million dollars' worth of silver monthly,
saying that it was "a public disgrace," and had resisted
the greenback party. It was deeply suspicious of pen-
sions legislation, and had applauded Grant's veto of the
bounty bill. It had early decided that Blaine was "one
of our superfluous statesmen," and that the sooner he
was discarded, the better. It had said in 1875 that the
Granger movement promised to leave behind it a valu-
able legacy of general railway legislation "which, tested
by practice, will afford us a foundation for our future
legislation on questions of transportation." Year in and
year out it asked for a lower tariff — a tariff for revenue
only — and attacked all other forms of subsidy for pri-
vate enterprises. Godwin had no momentous decisions
to make.
It was by no means a foregone conclusion in 1880 that
the Post would support the Republican ticket, for in
advance of the Republican Convention it showed itself
equally hostile to Grant (whom tke Times was advocat-
ing) and to Blaine (the Tribune^ s favorite). But as
soon as word came of Garfield's nomination, it hailed it
as "a grand result," and "a glorious escape from Grant
GODWIN'S EDITORSHIP 437
and Blaine." Of Gen. Hancock, the Democratic nominee,
the Post remarked that his only recommendation was his
military record, and that his party proposed to fill the
Presidential chair with the uniform of a major-general,
a sword, and a pair of spurs.
During the final months of 1879, and throughout 1880,
Godwin and Henderson met and spoke to each other with
grave, cold courtesy. They even consulted with each
other. But beneath the surface their mutual hostility
never slackened, and their associates knew they were at
daggers drawn. The crisis could not long be delayed.
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE VILLARD PURCHASE : CARL SCHURZ EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Within three years after Bryant's death his news-
paper, still prosperous and well-edited, was suddenly sold,
and placed in the hands of the ablest triumvirate ever en-
listed by an American daily. The transfer was announced
in the Issue of May 25, 188 1 :
The Evening Post has passed under the control of Mr. Carl
Schurz, Mr. Horace White, and Mr. E. L. Godkin, who yes-
terday completed the purchase of a large majority of its stock.
To-morrow Mr. Schurz will assume the editorial direction of the
journal.
It was generally known that the real buyer was Henry
Villard, but for several weeks this fact was not only con-
cealed, but for some reason was explicitly denied both by
the Post and Mr. Villard. On July i there appeared a
supplementary announcement :
Beginning with the next number the Nation will be issued as
the weekly edition of the New York Evening Post.
It will retain the name and have the same editorial management
as heretofore, and an increased stafE of contributors, but its con-
tents will in the main have already appeared in the Evening Post.
This consolidation will considerably enlarge the field and raise
the character of the Evening Post's literary criticism and news.
It will also add to its staff of literary contributors the very remark-
able list of writers in every department with which readers of the
Nation have long been familiar.
To few Interested in the Post could its sale have been a
surprise. It is true that Parke Godwin had many reasons,
sentimental and practical, for continuing his editorship
and maintaining the Bryant family's half-ownership. He
appreciated the argument which John Bigelow addressed
to him when he talked of giving both up. "Bethink you,"
438
CARL SCHURZ 439
wrote Bigelow, "that now and for the first time In your
long career of journalism you have absolute control of a
paper of traditional respectability and authority, in which
you can say just what you please on all subjects." His
two sons seemed Interested in making journalism their
career. He had an able staff, several of whom — as the
financial editor Whiting, the literary editor Eggleston,
and the dramatic editor Towse — were unexcelled In their
departments, while two valuable additions, Robert Burch
and Robert Bridges (later editor of Scribner's) had been
made to the news room. But Parke Godwin was sixty-
five this year. He had undertaken the writing of Bryant's
life In two volumes, and the editing of the poet's works
in four more, while he wished to complete his history of
France, begun before the war. He believed that it would
be well for his family, after his death, to have its money
Invested in a less precarious enterprise than a newspaper.
Above all, his relations with Isaac Henderson had now
come to a breaking point.
An open quarrel between them in the spring of 1881
ended In a clear assertion by Godwin of his right to con-
trol the editorial policy. He thought for the moment of
bringing Edward H. Clement, a young Boston journalist,
later well known for his editorship and regeneration of
the Transcript, to be his associate. But at this juncture
he accidentally discovered that Henderson was negotiat-
ing for the sale of his half of the Evening Post to some
prominent capitalist, and leaped to the conclusion that
the man was Jay Gould. In this he was doubtless mis-
taken. But he was deeply alarmed by the thought that
the Bryant family might be associated with a notorious
gambler and manipulator, whose object would have been
to make the Post a disreputable organ of his schemes.
Almost simultaneously he learned from Carl Schurz,
then in the last months of his service as Secretary of the
Interior, that he, Horace White, and Henry Villard were
searching for a daily. Into which they were prepared to
put a considerable amount of capital, and that they were
negotiating with the owners of the Commercial AdveV'
440 THE EVENING POST
tiser, but would prefer the Evening Post. Godwin, given
a month to consider, consulted his most judicious friends
— Samuel J. Tilden, Joseph H. Choate, President Gar-
field, and others — who all advised him to dispose of the
paper. Choate told him that Henderson had come to
his office for legal advice as to the possibility of somehow
destroying Godwin's control. -With great reluctance, the
Bryant heirs concluded to sell. The paper was then
earning $50,000 a year, and Horace White finally agreed
to the payment of $450,000 for the family's half, which
carried control of the board of trustees. For a time
Henderson was disinclined to sell the other half, but with
the aid of Godwin, to whom Henderson was still in debt,
he was soon brought to yield.
How did Henry Villard come to purchase the Evening
Post? He was at this time midway in his amazing career
as a railway builder. Eight years before, when known
only as a young German-American who had proved him-
self one of the ablest and most daring of the Civil War
correspondents, he had become the American representa-
tive of a Protective Committee of German bondholders
at Frankfort. This body, and a similar one which he
soon joined, had large holdings in Western railways,
which Villard had been asked to supervise. Thus
launched into finance, by his ability, energy, and deter-
mination he had soon made a large fortune. His first
extensive undertakings were in the Pacific Northwest,
where another son of the Palatinate, John Jacob Astor,
had carved out a career before him; and his success with
the Oregon & California Railroad, and Oregon Rail-
way & Navigation Company emboldened him in 1881-
83 to undertake and carry through the completion of the
Northern Pacific. His interest in his original profession,
and a wish to devote his money to some large public end,
led him while busiest with this great undertaking to con-
ceive the plan of buying a metropolitan paper and giving
it the ablest editors procurable.
Horace White, who was connected in New York with
Mr. Villard's business enterprises, and was ready to re-
Parke Godwin
Editor-in-Chief 1878-1881.
Henry Villard,
Owner 1881-1900.
Horace White,
Associate Editor 1881-1899,
Editor-in-Chief 1900-1903.
Carl Schurz,
Editor-in-Chief 1881-1883
CARL SGHURZ 44 1
enter journalism, undoubtedly shared in this conception.
When Godwin's half of the Post had been purchased, and
Schurz had consented to become editor-in-chief, E. L.
Godkin was approached with the offer of an editorship
and a share of the stock. He wisely refused to consider
the proposal till Henderson's withdrawal was assured,
and then accepted it, writing Charles Eliot Norton that
he did so because he was weary of the unlntermlttent work
involved in the conduct of the Nation, because he knew
that, being forty-nine, his vivacity and energy must de-
cline, and the value of the Nation suffer proportionately,
and because he wished to make more money during the
few working years left to him. The Nation, in fact, was
a struggling publication. It was bought by the proprie-
tors of the Evening Post, Its price was reduced to $3 a
year, and Wendell Phillips Garrison, its literary editor,
who was Vlllard's brother-in-law, went with It to the
Evening Post to take charge of its weekly issuance.
The new owner and three new editors had long
regarded the Evening Post with high respect. Villard
in 1857 h^d applied at Its office for work, being out of
employment and almost penniless; and upon his offering
to go to India to report the Sepoy Mutiny, Bigelow had
offered him $20 for every letter he wrote from that
country. His political ideas had been Identical with the
Post's — for example, he had been a Liberal Republican
In 1872, but had refused to follow Greeley. Godkin had
contributed to the Evening Post in the fifties upon such
topics as the death of the old East India Company, and
we have seen that he furnished correspondence from
Paris in 1862. Like his friend Norton, he had long
acknowledged the paper's peculiar elevation. Horace
White had contributed in the late seventies upon the
silver question. Schurz had known It as a loyal ally In
his efforts for a civil service law, sound money, and
reform within the Republican party, while it Is interest-
ing to note that under Bryant It had said that he was the
strongest man in the Senate.
Each of the three editors had his own title to distinc-
442 THE EVENING POST
tlon, and each had won his special public following. Carl
Schurz had been constantly in the public eye since he lent
valuable assistance to Lincoln in the campaign of i860.
The German-Americans, indeed, had known of him much
earlier, for as a youth in Germany, aflame with revolu-
tionary zeal, his military services in the uprising of 1848,
and his subsequent romantic rescue of Gottfried Kinkel
from the fortress at Spandau, had made him famous.
In 1858, writing Kinkel from Milwaukee, he wondered
a little over his steady rise In reputation, modestly ex-
plaining it as due to American curiosity in "a German
who, as they declare, speaks English better than they do,
and also has the advantage over their native politicians
of possessing a passable knowledge of European con-
ditions." It was, of course, really due to appreciation of
his eloquence, versatility, mental power, and enthusiasm
for liberal principles. He has admitted that he was in-
expressibly gratified by the salvos of applause with which
he was greeted In the Chicago Convention of i860. For
his platform advocacy of Lincoln he was rewarded with
the post of Minister to Spain, which he early resigned to
buckle on his sword. Then came his sterling service first
as a brigadier-general and later as major-general, when
he fought at Chancellorsville, Chattanooga, and Gettys-
burg. His investigative trip through the South in 1865
for President Johnson, and refusal to suppress his report
because it did not support Johnson's views, drew national
attention to his aggressive independence. Six years In
the Senate, where he was unrivaled for his discussions of
finance, and four years as Secretary of the Interior, had
added to his fame as a man of broad views, high motives,
and unshakable courage. By 1881 he was recognized as,
next to Hamilton and Gallatin, our greatest foreign-born
statesman.
Godkin also had a national following — a following of
Intellectual liberals, especially strong In university and
professional circles, marshaled by the Nation since he
founded It in 1865. He had, as Lowell said, made him-
self "a Power." In the ability with which the weekly
CARL SCHURZ 443
discussed politics and social questions, the trenchancy of
its style, and the soundness of its literary criticism, it was
unapproached by anything else in American — James
Bryce thought also in British — journalism. The masses
who knew Schurz well had hardly heard of it; but no man
of cultivation who tried to keep abreast of the times
neglected it, and because it was digested by newspaper
editors all over the Union, Godkin's influence was deep
and wide. James Ford Rhodes gives an illustration of
this influence just after the Nation became practically the
weekly Evening Post. "Passing a part of the winter of
1886 in a hotel at Thomasville, Ga., it chanced that
among the hundred or more guests there were eight or
ten of us who regularly received the Nation by post.
Ordinarily it arrived in the Friday noon train from
Savannah, and when we came from our midday dinner
into the hotel oflice, there, in our respective boxes, easily
seen, and from their peculiar form recognized by every
one, were our copies of the Nation. Occasionally the
papers missed connections at Savannah, and our Nations
did not arrive till after supper. It used to be said by
certain scoffers that if a discussion of political questions
came up In the afternoon of one of those days of dis-
appointment, we readers were mum; but in the late eve-
ning, after having digested our political pabulum, we
were ready to join issue with any antagonist."
As for Horace White, he was best known in the Middle
West, where he had entered journalism In 1854 as a re-
porter for the Chicago Daily Journal, Four years later,
after much activity in behalf of the free soil movement in
Kansas, during which he even removed to the Territory
himself and went through the preliminary form of taking
up a claim, he reported the Lincoln-Douglas debates for
the Chicago Press and Tribune. His reminiscences of
those weeks of Intimate contact with Lincoln fill many
pages of Herndon's life of the President, and constitute
one of Its most interesting chapters. During the war he
was Washington correspondent of the Chicago Tribune,
secretary for a time to Stanton, and organizer with A, S.
444 THE EVENING POST
Hill and Henry Villard of a news agency in competition
with the Associated Press. After it, for nearly a decade,
he was editor and one of the principal proprietors of the
Tribune, which under him was far more liberal than it
has ever been since. But he was valuable to the Evening
Post chiefly because he had devoted himself for years to
study of the theory of banking and finance, on which his
articles and pamphlets had already made him a recog-
nized authority.
It was thus an editorship of "all the talents" that was
installed in the Evening Post just before Garfield was
shot. Schurz was specially equipped to discuss politics,
the range of problems he had met while Secretary of the
Interior, and German affairs; White was perhaps the best
writer available on the tariff, railways, silver question,
and banking; while Godkin held an unrivaled pen for
general social and political topics. By birth they were
German, American, and British, but Schurz and Godkin
were really cosmopolites, citizens of the world. Their
practical experience had covered a surprising range. We
are likely to forget, for example, that Schurz had once
made a living by teaching German in London, and had
farmed in Wisconsin, while Godkin had been a war cor-
respondent in the Crimea, and admitted to the New
York bar. In their fundamental idealism the three men
were wholly alike. Schurz's political record and God-
kin's Nation were monuments to it. They were one in
wishing to make the Post the champion of sound money,
a low tariff, civil service reform, clean and independent
politics, and international peace. Henry Villard with
rare generosity assumed financial responsibility for the
paper, but made the editors wholly independent by
placing it in the hands of three trustees — Ex-Gov.
Bristow, Ex-Commissioner David A. Wells, and Horace
White.
II
The selection of Schurz to be editor-in-chief was more
than a tribute to his station as a public man. Of the
three, he had the most varied journalistic experience. As
CARL SCHURZ 445
a young man In Germany he had helped Kinkel edit the
Bonner Zeitiing. After the Civil War he became head
of the Washington Bureau of the New York Tribune,
and took an Instant liking both to journalism and the men
engaged In it — in his reminiscences he draws a sharp con-
trast between their high principles and the low sense of
honor among Washington officeholders. He soon
accepted the editorship of the Detroit Post, a new jour-
nal, urged upon him by Senator Zechariah Chandler, and
in 1867 became editor and part owner of the St. Louis
WestUche Post, a place desirable because It brought him
Into association with Dr. Emil Preetorius and other Ger-
man-Americans of congenial views. When the date of
his leaving the Secretaryship of the Interior approached
in 188 1, he had received several offers of editorial posi-
tions. Rudolph Blankenburg, later Mayor of Philadel-
phia, wrote that there was crying need of a good daily in
that city, and that he and other business men would found
one if Schurz would take charge. The statement was
published in St. Louis that a new daily was about to be
established there under Schurz. But Schurz himself
would have been the last to lay emphasis upon his mere
practical experience — he had no taste for financial or
news management, and it appears that neither the Detroit
Post nor JVestUche Post was financially prosperous under
him. His qualifications for the chief editorship were of
a different and much rarer kind.
His ability as a writer shows a mingling of high merits
with a few distinct shortcomings. Since his "Reminis-
cences" will live as long as any work of its kind and time,
no less for its style than Its fascinating story, since his
essay on Lincoln is an admitted classic, it is unnecessary
to say that he was a master of the pen. He has interest-
ingly related how he taught himself to write English on
first coming to America. At the start he made It a prac-
tice to read his daily newspaper from beginning to end;
then he proceeded to English novels — "The Vicar of
Wakefield," Scott, Dickens, and Thackeray; and he fol-
lowed them with Macaulay's essays and Blackstone's
446 THE EVENING POST
commentaries, particularly admiring the terse, clear style
of the latter. Finally he read Shakespeare's plays, going
through their enormous vocabulary with the utmost con-
scientiousness. At the same time he practiced turning
the Letters of Junius, which he thought brilliant, into
German, and back again into English. The result was
that soon he not merely wrote, but thought equally well
in English or German, and much preferred English for
certain purposes, as public speaking and political discus-
sion. Schurz's speeches were among the most eloquent
delivered in his generation. One of the oldest Senators
said that his address of February, 1872, was the best he
had ever heard in the upper chamber; his Brooklyn speech
of 1884 against Blaine ranks with the greatest of Ameri-
can campaign orations; and his utterances upon tariff and
civil service reform were read by millions.
Yet Schurz fell just short of being a great editorial
writer. He used a battle-axe, at once sharp and crush-
ing, but he could not vary It with the play of the rapier,
as E. L. Godkin could. His directness, clarity, and
force were marked, but his writings were lacking in
humor, metaphor, and allusion. Devoting himself to
large political questions, he had no time to observe in-
teresting minor social phenomena, so that his work lacked*
relief. No one could excel him in argument or exposition
upon subjects with which he was familiar, but he could
not relieve his discussions from a reproach of dryness.
Of the mind and character behind the pen, almost
nothing can be said except in praise. All his life he had
been a zealot for liberalism. He had thrown himself
into the revolutionary movement of '48 with an ardor
not a whit boyish, on coming to America he had Instantly
enlisted against slavery, and he was still an enthusiast
for reform. Grover Cleveland once spoke of his career
as teaching "the lesson of moral courage, of intelligent
and conscientious patriotism, of independent political
thought, of unselfish political affiliation, and of constant
political vigilance." He was for sound money from
greenback days to the settlement of the free silver Issue;
CARL SCHURZ 447
he was a combatant against "imperialism" from Grant's
attempted annexation of Domingo to Roosevelt's seizure
of Panama. When Secretary of the Interior he enforced
the merit system, yet unembodled In any law, in
his department, requiring competitive examinations for
clerkships. His one fault was that In his intentness on
his own subject he sometimes lost perspective, and be-
came indifferent to equally important aims of others.
It has been said that as Lord Halifax made the term
"trimmer" honorable In England, Schurz made that of
party turncoat honorable in America. His obedience to
principle was so unswerving that he was heedless of
allegiance to groups or individuals. He was for Seward
In i860, but fell in Instantly behind Lincoln; supported
President Johnson's reconstruction policy till his trip
South In 1865, and then followed Sumner; was for Grant
in 1869, and one of the earliest leaders against him in
1870-71; warmly commended some of Roosevelt's acts
and condemned more; was one of Bryan's sternest oppo-
nents in 1896, and made a speaking tour for him in 1900.
The independence exhibited in this adherence to convic-
tion was In the highest degree creditable. His sense of
personal rectitude was so keen and sensitive that he could
not bear to do anything for mere "expediency." It can
only be said that he was sometimes a little too positive
that he was right, a little Intolerant of others. His
indignation when Roosevelt and Lodge in 1884 followed
Blaine, whom they suspected of being dishonest, would
have been less intense had he seen that there Is really
something to be said for party regularity under such
circumstances.
Yet he was no impracticable Idealist, but a man with a
shrewd grasp of affairs. Mark Twain declared that he
made it a rule, when in doubt In politics, to follow
Schurz, saying to himself, "He's as safe as Ben Thorn-
burgh" — a famous Mississippi pilot. When his collected
papers were published, they showed that throughout his
long life he had possessed remarkable prescience. He
wrote Kinkel in 1856 that Buchanan's Administration
448 THE EVENING POST
would end the old Democratic party, that the contest
with slavery would not be settled without powder, and
that the North would win. In 1858 he predicted that
there would be a war, and that he would fight in it. In
1864 he ventured to assert, before the election, that "In
fifty years, perhaps much sooner, Lincoln's name will be
inscribed close to Washington's on this American repub-
lic's roll of honor. And there it will remain for all time."
No one saw farther into the reconstruction question than
he. Much of what we now call conservation, especially
of forests, dates from Schurz's far-sighted pioneer work
as Secretary of the Interior.
Humor is almost indispensable to an editor, and Schurz
had little of it, but in compensation he was sustained by
a better trait. Every one perceived the gallant quality of
the man, but his intimates alone understood what a deep
poetic vein fed it. Howells says that at first he was a
little awed by the revolutionist, general, statesman, and
editor. "But underneath them all, and in his heart of
hearts, I was always divining him poet. He had lived one
of the greatest and most beautiful romances, and you
could not be in his presence without knowing it, unless
you were particularly blind and deaf. It kindled in his
eyes; it trembled in his clear, keen, yet gentle voice; it
shone in his smile; it sounded in his laugh, which his
youth never died out of." No more unselfish man ever
moved actively in American affairs. A sentence from a
letter to Kinkel strikes the keynote to his life : "To have
aims that lie outside ourselves and our immediate circle
is a great thing, and well worth the sacrifice."
Schurz, Godkin, and White made only two important
changes in the form of the Post, both dictated by its
union with the Nation. It was still, like the Sun of that
time, like several great Paris dailies to-day, a four-page
sheet; except that on Saturday Parke Godwin had insti-
tuted a two-page supplement, containing book notices,
essays, fictional sketches, and other miscellaneous matter.
This was now utilized for the book reviews written by the
Nation's unrivaled staff of contributors — Lowell, Bryce,
CARL SCHURZ 449
Parkman, W. C. Brownell, Henry Adams, John Fiske,
Charles Eliot Norton, and a long list of experts in every
field. The space thus afforded was inadequate, and it
became necessary to print many reviews during the week
opposite the editorials, so that the Post acquired a much
more literary flavor. Under Bryant and Godwin edi-
torials had been variable in length, and nearly all headed.
Now they were standardized into two forms ; long headed
articles, of 800 to 1,200 words each, of which two or three
were printed daily, and seven to ten paragraphs of 100-
250 words each, without captions. The brevier type
was sometimes lifted direct into the forms of the Nation.
In the office Schurz was called "the General." His
subordinates found him genial, kindly, and appreciative,
though his manner had a touch of military strictness. He
left the news, financial, literary, and dramatic depart-
ments almost wholly to their various heads, but bent a
watchful eye upon the musical criticism — he was an ex-
pert musician. Against only one change in the paper's
discipline were there any protests. W. P. Garrison, the
son of the great Abolitionist, hastened to abolish the
"filthy habit" of smoking in the oflices, a rule that caused
incalculable anguish among some of the veteran news-
paper men; it is said that George Cary Eggleston's early
resignation was partly due to it. Schurz probably con-
sented on the ground of the fire-hazard.
A few stories have come down showing "the General"
as he worked, his tall form bent short-sightedly over his
pad in a little space that he would grub out from the
accumulated chaos of papers and letters on his desk. The
famous Sullivan-Ryan prize-fight occurred in February,
1882, and when the first dispatches arrived, Linn, the
news-editor, hurried to consult Schurz, telling him that
under Bryant the Post had always thrown such news into
the waste-basket. This was the fact: when the McCool-
Jones fight occurred in 1867, the paper had suppressed
a column from the Associated Press, and mentioned the
"revolting" affair only in a short, tart editorial. But
Schurz eagerly read the dispatches. "Mr, Linn," he
450 THE EVENING POST
ordered, "publish a brief result of each round, and head
it, 'Brutal Prize-Fight'; and," he added with a twinkle,
"let me see a copy on each round as soon as it comes in."
Linn commented on returning to his desk, "The General
is an old fighter himself." This, however, was an un-
usual display of humor on Schurz's part. There existed
from the Civil War until 1918 a daily feature on the edi-
torial page called "Newspaper Waifs," consisting of sev-
eral sticksful of jokes clipped from various sources. It
was always popular; in 1894, after Godkin's denuncia-
tion of his Venezuela message, Cleveland was asked
whether he still read the Evening Post, and replied, "Yes
— I read the waifs." Schurz insisted on seeing the copy
for the feature; and, to keep it alive, the managing editor
found it necessary to include daily a half dozen poor and
obvious jokes with the good ones. With unerring eye,
glancing down the column, Schurz would o.k. the poor
quips and cancel most of the others.
The majority of Schurz's editorials naturally dealt with
party politics and the affairs of the Federal Government.
The assassination of Garfield (July 2, 1881) and the
succession of Arthur to the Presidency, awakened much
apprehension among editors of liberal views, which the
Evening Post shared. For some time it found President
Arthur's conduct reassuring, but it soon had occasion to
condemn a number of his appointments — notably his nom-
ination of Roscoe Conkling to the Supreme Bench, which
Conkling declined, and his selection of Wm. E. Chandler
to be Secretary of the Navy — as evidence that he was
introducing the methods of the New York machine into
national politics. Garfield's death made the question of
the Presidency in 1884 important, and during 1883 the
Post uttered frequent monitions that the nomination of
Blaine would disrupt the Republican party and lead to
defeat. A characteristic utterance by Schurz in July,
1883, contained some shrewd observations on party char-
acter as it appeared just a year before the campaign. The
essential difference between the Democrats and Repub-
licans, he wrote, was that the former had sterling leaders
CARL SCHURZ 45 1
but a wrongheaded rank and file, while the latter had
many pernicious leaders but a sound general body. Men
like Cleveland, Bayard, Vilas, and Hewitt believed in
civil service reform and hard money, while men like
Blaine, Conkling, Arthur, and Wm. Walter Phelps be-
lieved in spoils and a high tariff; but the great mass of
Democrats would try to drag the leaders down to their
own level, while the mass of Republicans — so Schurz
hoped — would turn their backs on Blaine and Arthur.
Early in 1883, when the question of Federal aid to the
common schools was raised, an issue still important,
Schurz wrote disapproving it, as an interference with the
functions and self-reliance of the States. He had the
[gratification of hailing the Pendleton Civil Service Act,
the first great step toward fulfillment of a reform on
which he somehow found time to lecture as well as write.
He defended the Chinese against unfair legislation in
California, and argued constantly for a fairer policy
toward the Indians. Perhaps his most important edi-
torials were several in the latter half of 1882 arguing
for an executive budget, beyond doubt the first elaborate
demand for this reform made by any American editor.
He wrote (August, 1882) :
It is obvious how much in the way of bringing order out of chaos
would be accomplished by introducing the practice of having a
complete budget of necessary expenditures, and of the taxation
required to cover them, prepared by the executive branch of the
government, and submitted to Congress at the beginning of each
session. What we have now is merely the estimates of the dif-
ferent departments of the amounts of money they want. What
is needed is, aside from the grouping together of these amounts,
showing the total sum required by the government for the year,
a clear statement of the different kinds of existing taxes, with their
yield, and the opinion of the Executive as to what taxes will best
subserve the purpose, what taxes may be cut down or abolished,
and so on. A clear summing up in a statement of this kind would
be sure to attract the attention and to reach the understanding of
every intelligent taxpayer. . . ,
By far the most interesting of Schurz's editorials, how-
452 THE EVENING POST
ever, were a number upon foreign topics. He wrote re-
peatedly upon the affairs of Germany, where Bismarck,
given a free hand by the fast aging William I, was as-
serting the absolute power of the throne, passing antl-
Soclallst legislation, and otherwise taking a reactionary
course which Schurz lost no opportunity to denounce.
The editor pinned his hope of a better policy to the Crown
Prince, the short-lived and noble-minded Emperor Fred-
erick. From time to time Schurz would select news from
the European press and illuminate it with his special
knowledge. Thus In the summer of 1883, under the title
"A Strange Story," he wrote upon the trial of the Jews
of a Hungarian hamlet on the charge of sacrificial
murder; the editorial was pure narrative, but its effect
was a caustic denunciation of religious bigotry. When in
the fall of 1882 Gottfried Kinkel died, Schurz character-
ized his old German comrade as the incarnation of the
vague, impractical idealism of 1848, an idealism that
recked nothing of hard political realities; and his editorial
contained a striking bit of reminiscence :
It was this spirit which seized upon Kinkel, who was then a
professor extraordinary at the University of Bonn, lecturing on
the history of art and literature. He was a poet of note; of an
artistic nature, also, ardent and impatient of restraint. He was
an orator of wonderful fertility of imagination and power of
expression. . . , He preached advanced democratic ideas, and
his political programme fairly represented the romantic indefinite-
ness of the whole revolutionary movement. When the reaction
came, he left his professorship, his wife and children, and, gun in
hand, fought as a private soldier in the insurrectionary army of
Baden. In one of the engagements he was wounded and taken,
and then sentenced to imprisonment for life, put into a peniten-
tiary, clothed in a convict's garb, and forced to spin wool — the
mere thought of which touched every heart in Germany. Then
he was brought from the penitentiary to be tried at Cologne for
an attempt upon an arsenal, in which he had taken part — an
offense not covered by the sentence already passed upon him. The
court was thronged with spectators and with soldiers. He de-
fended himself. Before he had closed his speech, which was like a
poem, the judge, the jury, the spectators, the soldiers, the very
CARL SCHURZ 453
gendarmes by his side, were melting in tears. His wife stood
outside the bar, forbidden to approach him; but when in the
agony of grief he called out to her to come to him, the soldiers
involuntarily stepped aside to let her rush into his arms. It was
as if all Germany had looked on and wept with those who were
in the courtroom. Then he was taken back to the penitentiary
and set to wool-spinning again, until in November, 1850, some
friends aided him in escaping. Again the popular heart was
stirred in its poetic sympathies. His whole public career was
like the most romantic episode of a romantic time — a fair repre-
sentative of the spirit of these days, their heroic devotion to an
ideal, and their indefiniteness of aim.
Some striking editorials by Schurz and Godkin, de-
nouncing the vicious operations of Jay Gould in connec-
tion with the Manhattan Elevated Railroad, had a dra-
matic sequel. Gould and his associates, enraged by them,
determined to retaliate by a personal attack upon Schurz.
In pursuance of this purpose, they concocted an ingenious
double-barreled slander, aimed both at Schurz and Henry
Villard. In substance, It was that as Secretary of the
Interior Gen. Schurz had prostituted his rulings to the
advancement of Villard's railway interests, and had been
given his shares in the Evening Post as a reward. Not
only was this piece of mendacity worked up In detail In
the World, which Jay Gould controlled, but it found Its
way Into an article by George W. Julian In the North
American Review for March, 1883. Schurz had a short
way with the authors of malicious fabrications. During
the Civil War Gen. Leslie Combs had charged him with
cowardice at Chancellorsville, and he had instantly called
Combs a liar and challenged him to a test of courage in
the next battle. Now he blew Julian to pieces In the
Evening Post of the week of March 26. The facts were
that the "restoration" to the Northern Pacific of a for-
feited land grant, the offense charged against Schurz,
had been made in accordance with a ruling by the At-
torney-General and not the Secretary of the Interior;
that It was based upon principles applied in the same way
to many other cases; that Henry Villard did not for
454 THE EVENING POST
nearly two years afterward have any Interest In the
Northern Pacific; and that, on the contrary, he was In-
terested in a rival enterprise. It is unnecessary to say
that those who had beheved this story in the first place
were few and simple-minded.
Of the breadth of Schurz's influence there are many
evidences. A few days after he took the editorial chair
ex-President Hayes declared to him: "I must see what
you write. . . . Mrs. Hayes will not forgive me If she
loses anything you write." The files of his correspond-
ence, kept in the Congressional Library, indicate that a
majority of Congress subscribed to the daily or semi-
weekly Evening Post. The Secretary of the Treasury
was glad to supply seven pages of information in his own
handwriting upon a question of the day; and information
for news or editorial use was volunteered to Schurz by a
considerable list of consuls abroad. It was at this time
that a young Atlanta lawyer named Woodrow Wilson
contributed a series of articles upon conditions at the
South — "entirely off my own bat," writes ex-President
Wilson. The Post was read by German-Americans all
over the country, and many of Its editorials were re-
printed by German-language journals. That Schurz felt
this nation-wide Interest as a constant stimulus there can
be no doubt. Always a hard worker, he gave his best
energies to the newspaper in spite of constant demands
for public addresses and magazine articles; he wrote In
1 88 1 that he was at his desk daily from nine to four-
thirty, and in 1883, when the editor of the American
Statesmen Series requested him to finish his volumes on
Henry Clay as soon as possible, he replied that his duties
allowed him only parts of two or three evenings a week.
From the outset many friends of the Post had predicted
that an editorship of "all the talents" would work no
better than had the ministry of that character In Eng-
land; and the prediction was soon verified. As Isaac H.
Bromley, a humorist on the Tribune said — a witticism
which Godkin sometimes repeated with enjoyment —
"there were too many mules in the same pasture."
CARL SCHURZ 455
Schurz and Godkin had greatly admired each other before
they were associated, and were entirely congenial in their
rather aristocratic intellectualism and their views on
political subjects; but their methods of appealing to the
public were not merely different, but disparate. Schurz
employed argument and calm exposition, while Godkin
varied his argument with ridicule, cutting irony, and even
denunciation. There is no doubt that before long God-
kin came to feel that Schurz's editorials were too narrow
in range, and too arid in the mode of presentation. On
the other hand, Schurz did not always approve of God-
kin's ironic humor, and thought that he was sometimes
too savagely cutting in tone. Neither was satisfied with
the editorial page. Indeed, Godkin's dissatisfaction in
the late spring of 1883 became so acute that he concluded
that the Evening Post experiment was a failure, that the
first impetus of the change had been lost, and that heroic
measures were necessary to raise the level of the news-
paper. He differed greatly from Schurz, he explained,
as to the quality of the editorial writing, and wished to
dismiss one staff member, Robert Burch, and employ in
his stead some one especially good at writing pungent
paragraphs. The result was an arrangement between
Godkin and Schurz by which the latter agreed to relin-
quish the editorship-in-chief on Aug. i, when he went on
his summer vacation; with the understanding that if,
after another two years, the dissatisfaction continued,
Horace White should take Godkin's place at the helm.
Schurz duly left for his vacation, Burch was dismissed,
and Joseph Bucklin Bishop, a brilliant young editorial
writer for the Tribune, was brought on in his stead.
At this juncture there occurred an event which brought
Schurz and Godkin into abrupt conflict over a question
not merely of the manner and quality of the Post's edi-
torials, but of its views. Schurz had always been much
more sympathetic with the laboring masses than Godkin,
and in a time of many labor troubles their opinions were
bound to clash. Late in July, 1883, commenced a strike
of the railway telegraphers, which at first threatened a
456 THE EVENING POST
widespread Interruption of communications and trans-
portation. Schurz's utterances were impartial, but he had
no sooner left than Godkin, as he had a right to do, gave
the Post a tone hostile to the strikers. His view was
that In an Industry so vitally connected with the public's
Interests, a sudden crippling cessation of work was not
allowable; that a national tribunal should be set up to
decide such controversies, and that when the decision was
once rendered, "general strikes In defiance or evasion of
It should be punishable in some manner." For this judg-
ment much can be said, though it is certainly not one that
the Evening Post to-day would defend.
On Aug. 8 Godkin made the Post declare that "the
30,000 or 40,000 men whom some of our modern corpora-
tions employ in telegraphic or railroad service have to be
governed on the same principles as an army." This was
more than Schurz could bear, and he no sooner read the
editorial, at his summer hotel In the Catskills, than he
seized a pen and wrote Godkin denying that any man has
to be "governed" on army principles save those who vol-
untarily enlist. "The relations between those who sell
their labor by the day and their employers, whether the
latter be great corporations or single individuals, are
simple contract relations, and it seems to me monstrous
to hold that the act of one or more laboring men ending
that contract by stopping their work is, or should be,
considered and treated in any case as desertion from the
army Is considered and treated." He added that he
thought Godkin's editorial one which would do the Eve-
ning Post essential harm, and cause it to be regarded as
a corporation organ. He would publicly disclaim any
share in the responsibility for it did he not abhor the sen-
sationalism of such a step. Godkin and Schurz were
equally positive and tenacious of any opinion once fully
assumed, and there was no Issue from their disagreement
except the resignation of one of them. That of Schurz
was formally announced during the autumn. It Is a grat-
ifying fact that whatever temporary ill-feeling subsisted
between them almost immediately disappeared, and was
CARL SCHURZ 457
replaced by their former mutual high esteem. Within a
few weeks after his departure Schurz contributed an edi-
torial to the Evening Post upon Edward Lasker, the
German liberal, and throughout the campaign of 1884
Godkin's references to Schurz were warmly cordial.
The regret of the Evening Post's friends over Schurz's
resignation was tempered by their sense that a disruption
of the original arrangement was inevitable. Every news-
paper has to have a single ultimate arbiter of its policy.
The only exceptions to this rule are those journals which
take no real interest in maintaining a thoughtful, useful
policy. With neither Schurz nor Godkin willing to accept
a subordinate position, with their distinct differences of
temperament, the wonder is that they worked so smoothly
for two full years.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
GODKIN, THE MUGWUMP MOVEMENT, AND GROVER CLEVE-
LAND'S CAREER
Edv^in Lawrence Godkin was not quite fifty-two
when he became editor-in-chief in 1883, and was in the
prime of life, with fifteen years of vigorous journalistic
labor before him. He wrote Charles Eliot Norton that
he had no intention, even if his health permitted, of stay-
ing with the Evening Post more than ten years, but his
heart was enlisted far too keenly in his work and the
great causes he espoused to let him go until failing health
made his retirement in 1899 imperative. It is natural
that his published letters should emphasize his joyous
sense of a greater freedom as he entered the newspaper
office; his feeling that he was giving himself to a publica-
tion which did not depend absolutely upon his pen and
mind as the Nation did, and could have his vacations like
other workers. But he felt also his new responsibilities.
He valued the opportunity the Post gave him to impress
his opinions daily upon the public; to reach a wider audi-
ence — the Post's 20,000 buyers as well as the Nation's
10,000; and to give more attention to certain subjects,
as municipal misgovernment. "My notion is, you know,"
he wrote W. P. Garrison in 1883, "that the Evening Post
ought to make a specialty of being the paper to which
sober-minded people would look at crises of this kind,
instead of hollering and bellering and shouting platitudes
like the Herald and Times.''
The independent character of the political course God-
kin would steer had been fully indicated by the volumes
of the Nation. This weekly, founded when the last shots
of the Civil War were ringing in men's ears, had under-
taken the fearless discussion of public questions at a
moment that seemed peculiarly unpropitious. The prev-
458
MUGWUMP MOVEMENT 459
alent tendency of the years after the war, as Godkln
said, was a fierce ilHberalism, represented by such leaders
as Thaddeus Stevens in the House. The Nation had at
once declared war upon this narrow, rancorous political
spirit, and attempted to substitute progressive and en-
lightened views. It had questioned the wisdom of the
impeachment of Andrew Johnson. It had been ten years
in advance of public opinion in its attacks upon that
demagogic politician, Ben Butler. It had been one of the
first Republican organs to denounce the carpet-bag regime
at the South, and to assail President Grant for his fail-
ures. In 1876 occurred its most serious collision with a
considerable body of readers; it condemned the Southern
frauds which gave Hayes the Presidency, and called his
induction into office a "most deplorable and debauching
enterprise," this course costing it 3,000 subscribers. God-
kin Inclined In his sympathies to the Republican party,
but he would not hesitate to break from it upon any
question of principle.
When Godkln assumed the helm of the Evening Post,
he had a shrewd suspicion that the Presidential campaign
about to open would present a fundamental question of
principle. As he wrote long after, James G. Blaine's
audacity, good humor, horror of rebel brigadiers, and
contempt for reformers made his nomination sooner or
later inevitable, and such a nomination In Godkin's eyes
presented a moral question of the first magnitude. No
American newspaper has ever conducted a more effective
campaign fight than that which the Evening Post waged
in 1884. It was a fight not only against Blaine, but In
behalf of the one contemporary American statesman
whom Godkln, In his long journalistic career after 1865,
highly admired.
Of reformers like Godkln, Blaine wrote in advance of
his nomination: "They are noisy, but not numerous;
Pharisaical, but not practical; ambitious, but not wise;
pretentious, but not powerful." The Evening Post's
opinion of Blaine was equally frank. It believed that the
Mulligan letters, published in 1876, convicted Blaine of
46o THE EVENING POST
prostituting his office as a member of Congress and
Speaker in order to make money in various Western rail-
ways, and of lying in a vain effort to conceal the fact. It
added as lesser counts against him that in his twelve
years in the House he had never performed a single serv-
ice for good government, and had done it much disservice,
as by his covert opposition to civil service reform, and
his defense of the spoliation of the public lands; that in
all his public appearances he had been sensational,
theatrical, and a lover of notoriety; and that while Secre-
tary of State under Garfield "he plunged into spoils, and
wallowed in them for three months, like a rhinoceros in
an African pool, using every office he could lay his hands
on for the reward of his henchmen and hangers-on, with-
out shame or scruple." But its central objection was
always that he had sold his official power and influence.
The great "Mugwump" bolt from the Republican
party as soon as Blaine was nominated took with it many
influential Eastern journals — Harpe/s Weekly, the New
York Times, the Boston Herald, the Boston Advertiser,
and the Springfield Republican — but it took no other pen
like Godkin's. Long in advance of the convention, he
and Schurz had warned the Republican leaders that
Blaine's nomination would disrupt the party. The Eve-
ning Post pointed out in November, 1883, that the next
election would probably be close, and that New York,
where the voters were more independent than anywhere
else, would certainly be the pivotal State. The election
of 1876 had hung upon several artificial decisions in the
South; that of 1884 would be likely to hang upon the
judgment of a small body of thoughtful, impartial voters.
On April 23, 1884, a rich New Jersey Congressman
named William Walter Phelps published an article de-
fending Blaine, to which Godkin immediately replied in a
long and elaborate review of "Mr. Blaine's Railroad
Transactions." Thereafter the paper kept up a drum-
fire upon the "tattooed man."
How could the campaign be most effectively conducted?
Godkin saw that of the arsenal of weapons available,
MUGWUMP MOVEMENT
461
the parallel column could be used with the most telling
force. The attack, in the first place, must be focussed
upon the Republican candidate. No one cared about the
rival platforms. As for the general character of the two
parties, most voters believed the Republican party to be
superior, and Godkin himself would have thought so had
not its jobbing, corrupt element, as he said, gradually
"come to a head, in the fashion of a tumor, in Mr. James
G. Blaine." How could Blaine's weaknesses be most
clearly exposed? By his own letters, made public through
Mulligan, which stripped his dealings as a Congress-
man with the Little Rock & Fort Smith, the Union
Pacific, and the Northern Pacific interests, and by his
own speeches defending these transactions. Adroit
though he was, Blaine in his panicky efforts at self-justi-
fication had repeatedly contradicted both himself and the
admitted facts. This, with all its implications, could be
concisely proved by the parallel columns.
Not all these contradictions were immediately evident.
By the end of September, just after Mulligan had pub-
lished a new group of Blaine letters, Godkin and his asso-
ciates, Horace White, Joseph Bucklin Bishop, and A. G.
Sedgwick, had detected a half dozen. By November
they had raised the total to ten. Reprinted day after day,
they had a value that will be evident from a couple of
examples :
BLAINE LIE NO. 5
"My whole connection with the road
has been open as the day. If there had
been anything to conceal about it, I
should never have touched it. Wherever
concealment is advisable, avoidance is ad-
visable, and 1 do not know any better test
to apply to the honor and fairness of a
business transaction." — Mr. Blaine's
speech in Congress, April 24, 1876.
"I want you to send me a letter such
as the enclosed draft. . . . Regard this
letter as strictly confidential. Do not
show it to anyone. If you can't get the
letter written in season for the nine
o'clock mail to New York, please be sure
to mail it during the night. . . . Sin-
cerely, J. G. B. (Burn this letter)" —
Blaine to Fisher, April 16, 1876.
BLAINE LIE NO. 9 [iN PART]
"Third. — I do not own and never did
own an acre of coal land or any other kind
of land in the Hocking Valley or in any
other part of Ohio. My letter to the
Hon, Hezekiah Bundy in July last on this
same subject was accurately true.
Very truly yours,
J. G. Blaine."
(Letter to the Hon. Wm. McKinley,
dated Belleaire, Ohio, Oct. 4, 1884.)
"Boston, Dec. 15, 1880.
"Received of James G. Blaine, $25,-
180.50, being payment in full for one
share in the association formed for the
purchase of lands known as the Hope
Furnace Tract, situated in Vinton and
Athens Counties, Ohio. This receipt to
be exchanged for a certificate when pre-
pared.
J. N. Denison, Agent."
462
THE EVENING POST
One particularly notable use of the parallel columns
was in contradiction of Blaine's statement that subsequent
to his purchase of the bonds of the Fort Smith railroad,
only one act of Congress had been passed applying to the
line, and that merely to rectify a previous mistake in legis-
lation. The fact was, as the paper showed, that the act
repealed the proviso that the railway's grant of public
lands should not be sold for more than $2.50 an acre,
thus adding to the value of its securities.
The deadly parallel columns were applied to careless
campaign speakers for Blaine. They were repeatedly
used against the leading Blaine newspapers, the New
York Tribune, Philadelphia Press, Chicago Tribune, and
Cincinnati Commercial. A happy stroke, for example,
exhibited their efforts to ignore the second batch of Mulli-
gan letters:
BLAINE'S OWN VIEW OF THE LETTERS
"There is not a word in the letters
which is not entirely consistent with the
most scrupulous integrity and honor. I
hope that every Republican paper in the
United States will republish them in
full." — Mr. Blaine's interview with the
Kennebec Journal, Sept. 15, 1884.
EARLY VIEWS OF HIS ORGANS
The Tribune, Sept. 15, 1884, sup-
pressed all the letters and had no com-
ments.
The Boston Journal, Sept. 15, 1884,
suppressed nine letters, gave misleading
summaries of many of them, and com-
mented not at all upon the suppressed
ones.
The Philadelphia Press, Sept. 15, 1884,
published the letters in a part of its edi-
tion only, and had no comment.
For the unprecedented scandal-mongering of this cam-
paign, which Godkin called fit for a tenement stairway,
the Evening Post and other decent newspapers felt only
disgust. But when the vicious elements in Buffalo which
had learned to hate Cleveland as a reform Mayor and
Governor revealed the fact that, as a young man, he had
once formed an illicit connection, the Post felt it neces-
sary to treat the charge in detail and place it in its true
importance. A large number of clergymen, suffrage
leaders, and others hastened to declare that no man with
an illegitimate child could be supported for the Presi-
dency. Considering Blaine's character, this seemed to the
Post both ridiculous and vicious. Which was better fitted
to be President, a man once unchaste, as Franklin, Web-
ster, and Jefferson had been, or a man who sold his official
MUGWUMP MOVEMENT 463
power for money? Godkin argued that in a statesman
official probity was all important, while an early lapse in
personal morals was of minor significance:
"Weil, but," we shall be asked, "does not the charge against
Cleveland, as you yourselves state and admit it, disqualify him, in
your estimation, for the Presidency of the United Stages?" We
answer frankly: "Yes, if his opponent be free from this stain,
and as good a man in all other ways." We should like to see
candidates for the Presidency models of all the virtues, pure as the
Know and steadfast as the eternal hills. But when the alternative
is a man of whom the Buffalo Express, a. political opponent, said
immediately after his nomination, "that the people of Buffalo had
known him as one of their worthiest citizens, one of their man-
liest men, faithful to his clients, faithful to his friends, and faith-
ful to every public trust" ... a good son and good brother, and
unmarried in order that he might be the better son and brother,
against whom nothing can be said except that he has not been
proof against one of the most powerful temptations by which
human nature is assailed; or, on the other hand, a man convicted
out of his own mouth of having publicly lied in order to hide his
jobbery in office, of having offered his judicial decisions as a sign
of his possible usefulness to railroad speculators in case they paid
him his price, of trading in charters which had been benefited by
legislation in which he took part, and of having broken his word
of honor in order to destroy documentary evidence of his corrup-
tion — a man who has accumulated a fortune in a few years on the
salary of a Congressman — then we say emphatically no — ten
thousand times no.
A public office like the Presidency was not a reward
for a blameless private life, insisted Godkin, but a heavy
duty and responsibility, to be given only to a statesman
of ability and official integrity. Schurz pointed out that
Hamilton, the founder of the Post, was once placed in a
position where he had to remain silent concerning a slur
upon his honesty in office, or confess to an offense like
Cleveland's; and he hesitated not an instant to clear his
public honor at this cost to private reputation. The ar-
ticles of the Evening Post and Nation powerfully con-
duced to right thinking on this subject.
The abuse visited upon the Evening Post in this cam-
464 THE EVENING POST
paign was the greatest since the slavery struggle. The
Chicago Tribune said that "it was a natural instinct of
servility to the great corporations that has bound it with
hoops of steel to Cleveland's cause" ; a remarkable charge
in view of the fact that Jay Gould, H. H. Rogers, Cyrus
W. Field, Russell Sage, H. D. Armour, and other cor-
poration heads supported Blaine, and by their dinner with
him at Delmonico's just before election — "Belshazzar's
Feast" — did not a little to defeat him. "The Evening
Post has finally gone down so low," remarked the Pough-
keepsie Eagle in September, "that it lies about itself."
The Harrisburgh Telegraph published an attack by
Bryant upon Jefferson as proof that the Post had always
been addicted to malevolent personalities; not mentioning
the fact that Bryant had written these verses in 1803, ^t
the age of nine, twenty-three years before he joined the
Post. The New York Tribune turned Godkin's state-
ment, "Cleveland's virtues are those which bind human
^society together," into "Cleveland's sins are of the sort
which bind society together," and repeatedly printed it in
this form. As for Dana's Sun, it continually called the
Post "stupid"; but Dana this year was proving his own
brilliance by supporting the farcical Greenback candidacy
of Ben Butler, who polled 3,500 votes in New York city.
On the other hand, the paper received a steady stream
of congratulatory letters. Henry Ward Beecher wrote
in September that the editorials were clear, honest, and
weighty. "How any one who has read them can vote
for Blaine passes my comprehension. They ought to be
circulated over the whole land as one of the best cam-
paign documents. They stand in striking contrast with
the inefficient speeches of Hawley, Hoard, and Dawes,
and the essays and letters of Mead, Bliss & Co. Allow
me to say that the Evening Post has never stood higher
in its long and honorable life than now. It may almost
be called the ideal family newspaper." As a matter of
fact, the editorials were circulated as campaign docu-
ments. Godkin's articles on Blaine's railway transactions
sold 20,000 copies in pamphlet form before Sept. 20,
MUGWUMP MOVEMENT 465
when a revised edition appeared. In October the Post
Issued a pamphlet called "The Young Men's Party,'* by-
Col. T. W. Higginson, and another which embraced a
reply to George Bliss and the table of ten Blaine false-
hoods. In the closing days of the campaign the paper
received subscriptions of $1,000 a week for the Inde-
pendent Campaign Fund. Godkin maintained his fierce
editorial attacks to the last moment, and did not fail
to make the most of the "Rum-Romanism-Rebellion" in-
discretion of the Rev. Mr. Burchard, saying that Blaine
had given "tacit assent" to this insult against Catholicism.
The fight was by no means won with the closing of the
polls on election day, Nov. 4. Early next morning every
one knew that Cleveland had carried the South, New
Jersey, Connecticut, and Indiana, that his election was
assured if he had carried New York, and that New York
was doubtful. The fVorld claimed the Empire State for
the Democrats, and the Sun conceded it to them, but the
Tribune declared that Blaine had won. The Pastes head-
lines that afternoon ran: "Cleveland Probably Elected —
213 Electoral Votes for Him — New York In Cleveland
Column" ; while the editorial declared simply that, with
the returns very backward, the indications were that
Cleveland had a safe majority. Crowds all day filled
the streets In front of the bulletin boards, and for a time
there was a threat of rioting against Jay Gould and the
Western Union Telegraph officers, who were accused of
delaying and tampering with the returns In the Interest of
Blaine. With an audacity born of their memory of 1876,
the Republicans continued to claim the victory all day
Thursday the 6th. The Tribune footed up the county
returns for New York as giving Blaine a plurality of
1,166, but the addition was inaccurate — they really gave
Cleveland a plurality of 128 I The Associated Press,
whose returns were Inexcusably fragmentary and late,
gave Cleveland 1,057 plurality, and the Post, with its
own dispatches from every county save one, 1,378 — the
official figure being later given as 1,149. The excited
Mail and Express made the same blunder as the Tribune,
466 THE EVENING POST
claiming New York for Blaine when Its own Inaccurately
added table of counties gave Cleveland a plurality of
4,000. At two a. m. on the 7th the Associated Press
announced Cleveland's election, and Godkin was able to
write : ♦
At daylight this morning everybody conceded Cleveland's elec-
tion save the TributiCj which remains in doubt. If it persists in
declaring Blaine elected there will be two inauguration cere-
monies on March 4, one of Cleveland in Washington and one of
Blaine on the steps of the Tribune building, the oath of office
being administered by William Walter Phelps.
II
Gur one American President whose dislike of news-
papers In general could be called Intense was Cleveland.
He deeply resented the mud-slinging In which they had
Indulged against both himself and Blaine during his first
campaign; and when he married In 1886, he was outraged
by the manner in which a crowd of correspondents fol-
lowed him into the Maryland hills on his honeymoon,
occupied points of vantage, and spied upon him with
field-glasses. Late that year he spoke of the "silly, mean,
and cowardly lies" of the press, and of the "ghoulish
glee" with which it desecrated every sacred relation of
private life, an utterance which Mr. Godkin emphasized
by editorial endorsement, for no editor ever hated news-
^ paper mendacity and sensationalism more than Godkin.
Cleveland's hottest wrath was reserved for Dana's Sun,
which professed to believe that he culled his speeches
from an encyclopedia, and that Miss Cleveland wrote
his messages to Congress; when in 1890 the Sun made
some offensive reference to his corpulence, Mr. Cleve-
land expressed his feelings without restraint. But he
made one exception In his general dislike. He read the
^ Evening Post faithfully, respected its views, and had a
high regard for Mr. Godkin, whom he knew personally.
His friendliness had ample reason, for the Post sup-
ported almost every act of his first administration. It
praised his early observance, in spirit and letter, of the
MUGWUMP MOVEMENT 467
Civil Service law, and his courageous veto of vicious little
pension bills. Above all, It maintained that his adminis-
tration was an Invaluable demonstration that the unity
of the nation was real, that It was no longer necessary
for one section and party to monopolize political power.
One New Yorker, the day after Cleveland's election, had
offered In a fit of rage and despair to sell Godkin his
securities for fifty cents on the dollar. Some men had
believed that the tariff would be wrecked overnight, and
that the Confederacy would return "to the saddle" and
compel the North to pay an indemnity of billions in settle-
ment of Civil War damages. From this nightmare, which
disposed men to put up with all sorts of Republican cor-
ruption, a Democratic administration had been necessary
to rescue the country.
Mr. Godkin never called Cleveland brilliant, and ^
praised him rather for an honest obstructiveness, balking
the schemes of raiders, visionaries, and predatory Inter-
ests, than for marked constructive abilities. Like the
other "Mugwump" organs, the Evening Post wa.s offended
In 1887-88 by his apparent acquiescence In several raids
upon the civil service by spoilsmen. In April, 1889, It
accused the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. J.
H. Maynard, of bringing heavy pressure to bear upon
the New York Custom House for the dismissal of capable
Republicans. Maynard denied the charge in a hot tele-
gram; the Evening Post appealed to the Senate Com-
mittee upon the Civil Service to come to New York and
investigate; and it did so, sustaining the Posfs charges
in their entirety. But Mr. Godkin never forgot the con-
sideration which Cleveland later urged in defending him-
self: "You know the things in which I yielded; but no
one save myself can ever know the things which I re-
sisted." The President, said the Evening Post, had fallen (^
short of his promises, but had done far more than any
predecessor. "No man, for example, who has filled the
Presidential chair since Jackson's day would have listened
for one moment to the suggestion that the New York
Post Office should be taken out of politics, or would have
468
THE EVENING POSl
kept the Custom House In its present comparatively neu-
tral condition, or postponed the removal of the great
bulk of officers to the end of their terms, or extended in
any degree the application of the rules, or have so steadily
used his veto to oppose Congressional jobbery and ex-
travagance. No one, too, has kept the White House
and its purlieus so free from the small scandals which
worked so much disgrace in the days of Grant, Hayes,
Garfield, and Arthur."
In 1888 the Post showed genuine enthusiasm in advo-
cating the election of Cleveland over Benjamin Harrison.
His courageous message in favor of a low tariff in De-
cember, 1887, which did so much to ensure his defeat the
next fall, met the views of the editors precisely. The
Republicans declared in their platform for maintenance
of the existing tariff, but for a reduction in the internal
revenue taxes, and Godkin labeled them the party of
"high clothes and cheap whisky." A sharp attack was
?nade upon Harrison's Congressional record — "the advo-
cate of centralization, the defender of reckless pension
schemes, the friend of Hennepin Canal jobs." Once
more, but moderately, parallel columns were employed;
MURAT HALSTEAD (rEP.)
"The bottom truth about Cleveland is
that he may have been a Copperhead, for
he is of about that grade of snake, but
he has been too ignorant all his life to be
an intelligent member of any political
party."
HUGH m'cULLOCH (rEP.)
"I have watched Mr. Cleveland's Ad-
ministration very carefully, and I con-
sider it to have been marked with signal
ability and uprightness."
Cleveland's defeat the Evening Post attributed in part,
It Is Interesting to note, to the folly of the New York
Democrats In nominating David B. Hill for Governor,
a choice which disgusted Independent voters. "Naturally,
Harrison's administration confirmed by a half dozen acts
the paper's loyalty to the ex-President. The choice of
Blaine to be Secretary of State, the McKInley Tariff
Act, the Service Pensions Act of 1890, and the Sherman
Silver-Purchase Act seemed to the editors, and to a great
body of Intelligent and thoughtful citizens, to be so many
milestones on a road of perversity and danger. The
reckless way in which our foreign relations were handled,
MUGWUMP MOVEMENT 469
as we shall see later, aroused grave apprehensions In Mr.
Godkin. At the moment when the disgust of the Evening
Post with the Republican Party was deepest, In February,
1 89 1, Cleveland's famous letter In opposition to the free
coinage of silver, characterizing It as a ''dangerous and
reckless experiment," was published. All his enemies,
Dana at their head, thought that by this courageous act
he had destroyed himself politically. So did many Demo-
crats. "Again," wrote Godkin, "the shrewd politicians
sat down on the party stoop and wept, and prepared sor-
rowfully to nominate a first-class juggler in the person
of David B. Hill, who was to show the wretched Mug-
wumps how much better it was to be able to keep six balls
In the air than to be able to show the absurdity of a fluc-
tuating currency."
But Cleveland's uncompromising stroke filled the Eve-
ning Post with joy. It had feared the Democratic Party
was rushing down a steep place to destruction by accepting
an alliance with these silver enthusiasts who were trying
to debase the currency. Now It had faith in the willing-
ness of the party rank and file to respond to the ex-
President's unflinching words. As it turned out, the news-
paper was right. The people recognized the voice of a
real statesman, and the scheming bosses who had rejoiced
at his supposed political suicide, found that he had at
once rescued the party from a ruinous coalition with the
Populists, and made his own renomlnatlon Inevitable.
In the canvass which followed this renomlnatlon, the
Evening Post found It unnecessary to say much about the
silver question, so completely had Cleveland knocked It
out of the campaign, and it centered Its attention upon the
McKInley Tariff. That wages had fallen in many in-
dustries, that prices of many groups of commodities had
risen, and that a hundred "tariff trusts" had attained new
vigor behind the McKInley bulwark, was shown in a long
series of editorial articles. Lowell had already, while
the McKInley Act was pending, published anonymously
in the Evening Post a satirical poem upon the argument
that higher rates were needed to protect our "infant in-
470 THE EVENING POST
dustrles." When Cleveland was decisively reelected that
November, Godkin traced his victory primarily to the
effect his anti-tariff message of 1887 ^^^ ^^^ anti-free-
silver letter of 1891 had produced upon men:
Mr. Cleveland's triumph to-day has been largely due to the
young voters who have come on the stage since the reign of pas-
sion and prejudice came to an end and the era of discussion has
opened. If the last canvass has consisted largely of appeals to
reason, to facts, to the lessons of human experience ... it is to
Mr. Cleveland, let us tell them, that they owe it. But they are
indebted to him for something far more valuable than even this —
for an example of splendid courage in the defense and assertion
of honestly formed opinions; of Roman constancy under defeat,
and of patient reliance on the power of deliberation and persuasion
on the American people. Nothing is more Important, in these
days of boodle, of indifference, of cheap bellicose patriotism, than
that this confidence in the might of common sense and sound doc-
trine and free speech should be kept alive.
No one reading this editorial would have believed
that within little more than three years Mr. Godkin would
turn savagely upon the man whose fine qualities he thus
praised. Mr. Godkin would not have believed it. Cleve-
land's second administration began well, and his policy
was particularly liked by the Post in that field of foreign
relations in which the break was to come. He withdrew
the treaty for the annexation of Hawaii, which Godkin
had opposed. He protected American rights in Cuba,
but maintained strict American neutrality in the war
Spain was waging there. When Great Britain put in a
claim of damages against Nicaragua, and landed marines
to collect the money, Cleveland acted with admirable dis-
cretion and tact. His belligerent Venezuelan message
of December, 1895, indeed, was almost a flash out of a
clear sky.
To understand the consternation with which Godkin
received this message, which seemed to presage certain
war with England, It must be appreciated how much he
abhorred jingoism and war. When Crimean correspond-
ent for the London Daily News he had described the
MUGWUMP MOVEMENT 471
horrors of the battlefields with indignation; and the suf-
fering back of the lines — "the great ocean of misery which
war has caused to roll over the heads of mankind ever
since wars began" — he thought even more heartrending.
He was no pacifist: a war in a good cause, like the war of
the North to extinguish slavery and disunion, he ap-
proved. But wars merely to vindicate what some one
fancied to be "national honor" he abominated as the
worst relic of savagery ;
Jingoism is, in fact, like Indian readiness for war, simply
another name for imperfect civilization. It is a simple outburst
like negro-burning, lynching, and jail-breaking, of the imperfectly
subdued barbarous instincts of an earlier time. To get men to
abandon fighting as the chief and most honorable business of
their lives, and the only respectable way of ending disputes, has
been the main work of modern civilization ; and what hard work
it has been, one has only to read a little Froissart or Joinville
to sec.
We must also appreciate that Cleveland's act seemed
to Godkin a base surrender to jingo elements in American
politics which he had hitherlo been opposing. As we
have said, the Evening Post had lamented what it thought
the defiant tone of Harrison's foreign policy. This it
attributed to Blaine's desire to be a "brilliant" Secretary
of State. When he held that position under Garfield, he
had promptly embroiled the United States with Chile,
and it had fallen to President Arthur to appoint a new
Secretary and extricate the nation. Seven years later he
had returned, and what had he done? He had made an
effort to exercise the right of search on British vessels in
the Bering Sea, had filled Harrison's administration with
the resulting controversy, and had maneuvered the United
States into a position In which it was defeated In arbitra-
tion proceedings. Since Cleveland's inauguration the
editors of the Evening Post had constantly deplored the
bellicose talk indulged in by a considerable group of Re-
publicans. Henry Cabot Lodge In the spring of 1895
had predicted a war in Europe, hinted that we might be
drawn into it, and said that the British fortifications at
472 THE EVENING POST
Halifax, Bermuda, Kingston, and Esqulmault "threaten
us." The same month Senator Frye, at Bridgeport, had
called for a strong navy, and declared: "We [the Re-
publicans] will show people a foreign policy that is Amer-
ican in every fiber, and hoist the American flag on what-
ever island we think best, and no hand shall ever pull it
down." Senator Cullom wanted Cuba instantly annexed.
Godkin was justified in writing (Feb. 13, 1895) :
The number of men and officials in this country who are now
mad to fight somebody is appalling. Navy officers dream of war
and talk and lecture about it incessantly. The Senate debates are
filled with predictions of impending war and with talk of pre-
paring for it at once. With the country under the necessity for the
most stringent economy, appropriations of $12,000,000 for battle-
ships are urged upon Congress, not because we need them now,
but because we shall need them "in the next great war." Most
truculent and bloodthirsty of all, the Jingo editors keep up a din
day after day about the way we could cripple one country's fleet
and destroy another's commerce, and fill the heads of boys and
silly men with the idea that war is the normal state of a civilized
country.
To the early stages of the controversy between Ven-
ezuela and England over the western boundary of British
Guiana neither the Evening! Post nor any other journal
paid close attention. Mr. Godkin did not think that the
Monroe Doctrine could properly be stretched to cover
American interference in the quarrel; and when Secretary
Olney asked Great Britain to submit the dispute to arbi-
tration, and Lord Salisbury refused, Godkm defended
Salisbury's action upon the ground that we had tended to
prejudge the case in Venezuela's favor. As yet the editor
was not disturbed, trusting the President implicitly. But
suddenly, on Dec. 17, 1895, Cleveland sent Congress a
message asking for the appointment of a commission to
determine the boundary, and stating that it would be the
duty of the United States "to resist by every means in its
power, as a wilful aggression upon its rights and Inter-
ests," the taking by Great Britain of any lands that the
commission assigned to Venezuela.
MUGWUMP MOVEMENT 473
*'I was thunderstruck," Godkin wrote Charles Eliot
Norton. He described the week that followed as "the
most anxious I have known in my career." For the first
three days the United States seemed to rise in unanimous
support of Cleveland. Republican newspapers like the
Tribune, which had never said a good word for him,
rushed to his assistance. The editor saw so much jingo-
ism among even Intelligent people, he said, "that the pros-
pect which seemed to open itself before me was a long
fight against a half-crazed public, under a load of abuse,
and the discredit of foreign birth, etc., etc." ; but he never
hesitated.
The first afternoon there was time to write only a para-
graph editorial expressing consternation at the doctrine
that the United States should "assert such ownership of
the American hemisphere as will enable us to trace all the
boundary lines on it to our own satisfaction in defiance
of the rest of the world." On the second day the Evening
Post devoted both its column editorials to the subject.
The first, "Mr. Cleveland's Coup d'Etat," drew a strik-
ing contrast between war, with all It involved of suffering,
loss, and moral deterioration, and the triviality of the
possible cause, a wrangle about an obscure boundary line.
The second reviewed the Venezuela correspondence, and
attempting to refute Cleveland's arguments, said that his
message "humiliates us by Its self-contradictions," and
characterized his proposal for a boundary commission as
"ludicrously Insulting and illogical."
In later issues the Evening Post mingled invective with
calm, sound argument. It tried to show that Salisbury's
claims In British Guiana had been, in the main, supported
by Incontestable evidence. It traced the history of our
relations with Venezuela, and demonstrated that the little
republic had missed few opportunities to treat us in-
solently. It declared that a commission of inquiry might
be proper, but that it was indefensible to create one as
a hostile proceeding, with a threat of war behind it.
Months earlier, during the Nicaragua dispute, the Eve-
ning Post had issued in pamphlet form an essay by John
474 THE EVENING POST
Bassett Moore upon the Monroe Doctrine, showing that
it gave the United States no right of Interference In such
affairs, and this It now sold In large quantities. Godkin
unfortunately prejudiced his case by two errors — he failed
to allow for the strong sentiment of most Americans In
favor of a flexible Interpretation of the Doctrine, and he
unjustly hinted that Cleveland was eyeing a third term.
But the editor's fears that he would stand alone were
at once dissipated. The World lost no time In denouncing
the belligerent message as "A Great Blunder," and so did
the Journal of Commerce. Among prominent Democratic
newspapers which took their stand with the Evening Post
were the Charleston News and Courier, Wilmington
Every Evening, Memphis Commercial, and Louisville
Post. The Cleveland Plain Dealer summed up the view
of a multitude of thoughtful men in a little jest: ''Teach-
er: — Johnny, now tell us what we learn from the Monroe
Doctrine. Johnny: — That the other fellow's wrong."
Prof. J. W. Burgess of Columbia contributed to the
Evening Post a column article, in which he said: '*0n the
whole, I have never read a more arrogant demand than
that now set up by President Cleveland and Secretary
Olney, in all diplomatic history." Half a dozen times
In the next fortnight the Post filled one or two columns
with letters of congratulation and support. Its circula-
tion rose materially. ''In fact," wrote Godkin when it
was all over, with a touch of his eternal irony, "our course
has proved the greatest success I have ever had and ever
known in journalism."
As every one knows, Lord Salisbury finally accepted
arbitration, and the result was that the British obtained
practically all the territory for which they had contended.
The peaceful ending of the episode, and the gratification
of the public over the President's assertion of the national
dignity, as most men viewed It, left Cleveland with in-
creased prestige. The editors of the Evening Post never
changed their opinion, but the incident, of course, did
not materially shake their esteem of Cleveland. When
MUGWUMP MOVEMENT 475
he went out of office, the newspaper reviewed his eight
years as the most satisfactory since the Civil War, praised
his plain speech, courage, and honesty highly, and de-
clared that he had made "a deeper mark upon the history
of his time than any save the greatest of his predeces-
sors."
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
GODKIN's war without quarter upon TAMMANY
When William Dean Howells summed up Mr. God-
kin's career, he wrote that, influential as were his dis-
cussions of national and international issues, his greatest
reputation was won by his assaults upon the indecent cor-
ruption of the government of New York city. "For a
long series of years he cried aloud and spared not; his
burning wit, his crushing invective, his biting sarcasm,
his amusing irony, his pitiless logic, were all devoted to
the extermination of the rascality by nature and rascals
by name who misruled that hapless clty,^here they in-
deed afterwards changed their name but not their na-
ture." In this contest, Howells believed, he became "not
only a great New York journalist, but distinctively the
greatest, since he was more singly devoted to civic affairs
than any other great New York journalist ever was."
The only contemporary editor whose prominence equaled
his own, Charles A. Dana, aligned himself for the most
part upon the Tammany side.
Howells thought that the editor wore himself out
while apparently accomplishing little, because the people
tired of the contest before he did. But Mr. Godkin had
the pleasure in 1895 of writing the preface to a volume
called "The Triumph of Reform," which really chronicled
a temporary triumph — that following the Lexow investi-
gation; while he powerfully aided in the slow arousal o{
the public conscience which has made each renewal of the
city's misgovernment a little less bad. He enjoyed the
struggle, as he enjoyed all hot fighting, an unusual num-
ber of amusing episodes gave zest to it, and there Is no
evidence that he felt discouraged at the end.
When in 1884 Godkin first began treating municipal
affairs in the Evening Post with his usual aggressive style,
476
GODKIN'S WAR UPON TAMMANY 477
the city had biennial elections and the certainty that a
Democratic Mayor would always be chosen. None but
a Democrat had been elected since 1872, and none was
to be elected until 1894, a state of things which a number
of Republican bosslets — "Johnny" O'Brien, "Mike"
Cregan, "Barney" BIglin, "Jake" Hess, and "Steve"
French — regarded with complacency because they shared
the Tammany pickings. The essential question was alX^
ways whether the Mayor should be a Tammany Demo- )
crat or a Democrat representing the reform wing (the
County Democracy), and in the determination of this the
willingness or unwillingness of the Republican rank and
file to join hands with the reform Democrats was always
a leading factor. In every election in the eighties the
Republican bosslets put their own ticket into the field, thus
drawing the fire of non-partisan reformers like Mr. God-
kin, but sometimes the majority of Republicans could be
brought behind what was really a coalition nomination.
At the outset, in 1884, occurred one of the most grat-
ifying surprises in the whole history of New York poli-
tics — the election of William R. Grace, a reform Demo-
crat, over the Tammany candidate, a disreputable poli-
tician named Hugh J. Grant. The victory was the more
unexpected because it was generally believed that John
Kelly, the Tammany chieftain who had succeeded Tweed,
had made an infamous compact with the Blaine Repub-
licans, by which they were to trade votes and give the
State to Blaine and the city to Grant. Kelly had always
disliked Cleveland. Just before the election Thomas A.
Hendricks, who was running for the Vice-Presidency with
Cleveland, made a thousand-mile journey from Indiana
to hold a protracted night conference with Kelly, and
many have held that he succeeded in winning him over to
support the national ticket. But Godkin refused to ac-
cept this explanation of the result. Kelly had failed to
deliver the vote, he wrote, because Grace was an honored
Catholic who drew many Irish Democrats away from
Grant, while Republicans by thousands had voted for
Blaine and Grace when they were expected to vote for
478 THE EVENING POST
Blaine and Grant. Kelly, though the most stolid of men,
was confined to his house for weeks by nervous depression,
and soon retired. His downfall inspired Godkin to utter
a prophecy which time, bringing Richard Croker to the
front, partly belied:
We doubt if the city will ever again be afflicted with a boss who
will be Kelly's equal in ability and power. There will, of course,
be other bosses, but they will be of a different kind. They must
possess qualities which will enable them to rule under the new
conditions which will prevail after Jan. i next. Kelly succeeded
Tweed, and for a time was almost his equal in power, but he was
a different boss from Tweed. He was never personally corrupt.
He arranged **fat things for the boj^s," and put into our local
offices and into the Legislature about the worst succession of polit-
ical speculators and strikers that the city has ever been called
upon to endure. He stole nothing himself, but he enabled others
to steal with great freedom. His power rested mainly upon his
standing as a good Catholic. Connected by marriage with the
very head of the church in this country, he was able to command
that blind obedience of his followers which exists only within
the pale of the church. ... He had a lecture upon some topic
of church interest which he delivered in aid of all kinds of the
Church's charities. . . .
Two years later another happy ending crowned the
famous three-cornered campaign between Theodore
Roosevelt (Rep.), Henry George (Labor), and Abram
S. Hewitt (United Democrat) — the choice of Hewitt.
The Evening Post was surprised when Tammany joined
with the County Democracy behind Hewitt, a man of the
highest reputation. The Times and Tribune supported
Roosevelt, but Mr. Godkin contended that he could not
be elected, and that every vote for him simply gave a
larger chance of victory to Henry George. He was justi-
fied by the result, Hewitt polling 90,552 votes, George
68,110, and Roosevelt only 60,435. I" 1884 the Post
had first published a "Voters' Directory," short biograph-
ical sketches of the candidates, and its characterizations
of the three party leaders this autumn are still of interest:
GODKIN'S WAR UPON TAMMANY 479
ABRAM S. HEWITT (United Dem.)— Has served con-
tinuously in Congress, with the exception of one term, since 1874;
is a large iron manufacturer, and is distinguished for his generous
dealing with his employees; is a high authority upon politico-eco-
nomic subjects, and a thoroughly trained public man in all
respects ; declares that he was nominated without pledges. . . .
THEODORE ROOSEVELT (Rep.)— Is twenty-eight years
of age ; served three terms in the Assembly, where he was of great
service in securing reform legislation for this city; it was through
his labors at the head of a committee of investigation that the
"fee system" was abolished and other evils exposed and corrected ;
he went to the Chicago Convention openly and strongly opposed
to Mr. Blaine's nomination because of his bad personal record,
but subsequently consented to support him.
HENRY GEORGE (Labor.)— Is best known as the author
of "Progress and Poverty," of which the leading idea is that all
property should be confiscated by the State through the taxing
power, without compensation to the owners; is the candidate of
Socialists, boycotters, etc.; has declared since his nomination that
if he were elected "there would be no more policemen acting as
censors," that he "will loosen the bonds of the police and make
them servants of the people" ; that the horse cars "ought to be as
free as air" to the public; and that the "French Revolution is
about to repeat itself here."
Unfortunately, in 1888 Hewitt was defeated by the
old Tammany favorite, ''Hughie" Grant, and the cor-
ruptionists returned to their former power and spoils.
Worst of all. Grant's election was accepted without alarm,
and even with satisfaction, by the educated classes. The
new Mayor, an Ignorant and unprincipled son of a saloon-
keeper, was given "social recognition," aslced to dinner
in the best circles, and opened a ball with Mrs. Astor.
When he said, "If I don't prove a good Mayor, it will
be because I don't know how," this remark was repeated
as If It were a gem of aphoristic wisdom. Harper^s
Weekly, which with the help of the cartoonist Nast had
done so much to drive Tweed from power, yielded to this
folly, and (July 13, 1889) published a long article ex-
tolling a "New Tammany," with high alms, which it said
was governed by a "big four" consisting of Richard
48d THE EVENING POST
Croker, Mayor Grant, Thomas F. Gilroy, and Bourke
Cockran. The article declared that Croker was pre-
eminent for "his political sagacity, political honesty,
great knowledge of individuals, and spotless personal
integrity." It described Grant as "well-educated,"
"shrewd and far-seeing," remarkable for "personal hon-
esty and trustworthiness," and "entirely fearless." Gil-
roy was praised as "a genial, pleasant, obliging man,"
who was "remarkably gifted with business ability." In
short, the brilliancy and integrity of Tammany were pic-
tured as startling.
Every one at the time was thinking of the projected
World Columbian Exposition, and many New Yorkers
were bent upon making Central Park or some other part
of the city its site. Mayor Grant lost no opportunity to
increase his prestige by frequent conferences upon the
subject with admiring business men.
Watching this madness with disgust, as the year 1890
— that of another city election — opened, the Evening Post
resolved to make a stand against it even if it had to do so
single-handed. It had- never ceased to maintain that
Mayor Grant was illiterate, that all his associations from
youth up had been low, that his administration as sheriff
had been so loose and corrupt that a grand jury had re-
buked it by a scathing presentment, and that his appoint-
ments had been wretched. The men he put in office were
of the worst Tammany type. Moreover, it ridiculed the
idea that there could be a "New Tammany," arguing that
the character of the organization made it impossible for
it to change without committing suicide; that it neces-
sarily drew its support from the criminal and semi-crim-
inal population of the city, and from levies upon vice, so
that if this were cut off it would wither. "The society,"
wrote Godkin, "is simply an organization of clever ad-
venturers, most of them in some degree criminal, for the
control of the ignorant and vicious vote of the city in an
attack upon the property of the taxpayers. There is not
a particle of politics in the concern any more than in any
combination of Western brigands to 'hold up' a railroad
GODKIN'S WAR UPON TAMMANY 481
train and get the express packages. Its sole object Is J
plunder in any form which will not attract immediate^
notice from the police."
How could this fact be pressed home to the conscious-
ness of the citizens? Mr. Godkin, Horace White, Joseph
Bucklin Bishop, and the managing editor resolved upon
a thorough-going biographical exposure of the real char-
acter of the men who constituted Tammany. They felt
that while decent New Yorkers knew In a general way
that some of the district leaders and their henchmen were
low in character and morals, they did not appreciate just
how noisome was the gulf of boodle, vice, ignorance, and
crime out of which these men emerged. They determined
to probe that gulf, to give the city a whiff of Its fumes,
and to show how the Tammany organizers reeked with
Its slime.
On April 3, 1890, therefore, the Evening Post pub-
lished In nine columns of close print biographical sketches
of the twenty-seven members of the Tammany Executive
Committee, Including the "big four" of the "New Tam-
many." This document, which In ensuing months sold In
tens of thousands of copies as a pamphlet. Is a perma-
nently valuable contribution to New York's political and
social history. It abounds In a miscellany of roguery rich
enough to outfit a picaresque novelist. At the head of the
list came Mayor Grant, whom the Post accused of divid-
ing, while sheriff, Illegal fees with an auctioneer aggre-
gating $42,497, and of taking illegal "extra compensa-
tion" fees. Under the name of John Scannell, the Post
printed details of the murder which this district leader
had committed In a basement poolroom, and showed how
he had planned it^ for two y ears, though he was acquitted
on the ground of "emotional Insajiity." Another district ^
leader was shown to'Fe^n accused murderer, and several
more to have committed notoriously brutal assaults. A
scandal in certain asphalt contracts let by Thomas F.
Gilroy, now the Commissioner of Public Works, had al-
ready been exposed by the Post, and the facts were re-
peated. Several committeemen were declared at one time
482 THE EVENING POST
to have received stolen goods, and several more to have
kept disorderly houses. . The newspaper described a
saloon once kept by "Barney" Martin, one of Grant's ap-
pointees, as the resort for the most distinguished pro-
fessors of the art of acquiring other people's property
in the country.
Written with sparkle and gusto, these- biographical
sketches abound in interesting anecdotes. The biography
of "Georgie" Plunkett tells us that a friend remarked:
"You say Georgie is rich? He ought to be; he never
missed an opportunity." We are told that H. D. Pur-
roy's secessionist element in Tammany was known as the
Hoy Purroy. The sketch of John Reilly states that he
had been nominated for Assistant Alderman while still
living in Ireland, through the efforts of "me brother
Barney," a Manhattan saloonkeeper. It was recalled
that when a protest had been made to Sheriff Grant by
his friends against the appointment of "Barney" Martin
to some post. Grant had made an indignant reply: "What
do youse fellows want? Do yez want to break up the
organization?" Summing up, the Evening Post listed the
Executive Committee as follows:
Professional politicians, 27 ; convicted murderer, i ; acquitted
of murder, i ; convicted of felonious assault, i ; professional gam-
blers, 4 ; former dive-keepers, 5 ; liquor dealers, 4 ; former liquor-
dealers, 5 ; sons of liquor-dealers, 3 ; former pugilists, 3 ; former
toughs, 4; members of Tweed gang, 6; officeholders, 17.
The sensation produced by this publication was pro-
found. Within a few days the Evening Post reprinted
dehghted comments from half of the important news-
papers of the East. As for Tammany, its disturbance and
outcry led Godkin to compare the inquiry by the news-
paper with the introduction of a ferret into a cellar. You
knew the rats were there, but until the ferret appeared
you didn't know where. "When they become aware of his
presence out they scuttle, from the coal hole, the ash
barrel, the garbage can, the woodpile, brown and black,
big and little, squealing and showing their teeth," The
GODKIN'S WAR UPON TAMMANY 483
three things a Tammany leader most dreaded, he con-
cluded, were, In the ascending order of repulslveness, the
penitentiary, honest Industry, and biography.
Immediately two of the men favored with biographies
began suits for criminal libel. One was "Barney" Mar-
tin, the other Judge "Pete" MItchel, who had been de-
scribed by the Evening Post as a "nominal" lawyer, a
"thug," a "tough," and a one-time adviser In a keno game.
Bourke Cockran, their voluble attorney, known for his
eloquence as the Tammany Chrysostom, began what God-
kin called "a minatory flux like the rush of Croton through
a water-gate." The Evening Post^s answer to the libel
suits was to add two more counts to Its charges against
"Pete" MItchel, saying that at one time he had received
stolen goods and at another had been a partner In a rum-
shop with a murderer named Sharkey. Within a week
(April 29) the grand jury dismissed the two suits against
the Post, evidence of the unassailable solidity of its
charges. Once more there was an outburst of congratula-
tion from the press of the country, the paper in one Issue
reprinting editorials from other journals In Boston, Pitts-
field, Springfield, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Portland,
Me., and Milwaukee.
While these suits were pending (one was soon after
revived, and four in all were vainly brought) Tammany
did its utmost to make them an annoyance to Mr. Godkin,
serving summons after summons at the most Inconvenient
hours possible. He was arrested three times In one day,
to the great delight of Dana. But only once did his
persecutors really succeed in vexing him. A policeman
came with a summons at an early hour one Sunday morn-
ing, when Mr. Godkin was looking after the welfare of
some guests. With characteristic impulsiveness, he gave
the officer $5 to leave and come back a little later. His
enemies at once saw their opportunity. Godkin the re-
former bribing an officer of the law to evade arrest I
Next morning, when he came down to work and found his
associates somewhat staggered by the printed reports, he
was puzzled, and did not really understand the situation
484 THE EVENING POST
until he lunched with some other reform workers at noon.
But of course an explanation was easily given the public.
The Evening Post hastened to follow up its first
biographies with an exposure of the Tammany Commit-
tee on Organization, numbering 1,070 members, of whom
it found 161 to be rumsellers, 133 criminal rumsellers
(that is, open after hours or on Sundays), and 235 with-
out specified occupation or not in the city directory, a
suspicious circumstance, since professional gamblers never
had an assigned occupation. In the weeks just before
election there was published a searching examination of
the Tammany General Committee, numbering 4,564 men,
of whom no fewer than 654 were rumsellers, 565 crim-
inal rumsellers, and 1,266 not in the directory, most of
them for good reasons. Detailed biographies of the most
despicable committeemen were printed, of which one of
the shortest may be extracted:
ELEVENTH DISTRICT.— Classed among the rumsellers
of this district is August Heckler, familiarly known as "Gus."
While the nominal proprietor of the rumshop called "The Bohe-
mia" at No. 1257 Broadway, he recently obtained much notoriety
by turning the upper stories of the building into what for the
sake of decency is called by him a hotel. For this his liquor
license was taken away, and so far as can be learned there are
now no intoxicating liquors sold on the premises. The hotel,
which is a most disorderly house, still flourishes, however, while
Heckler is "on the road" selling a brand of champagne. Tech-
nically, Heckler cannot be classed among the criminal rumsellers;
yet he is a good deal worse than most of them.
Heckler made a personal call upon Mr. Godkin, and
assured him that his hotel was respectable, whereupon
the editor called in the efficient reporters who gathered
material for the biographies, and proved that it was not.
So far as that fall's election went, the Evening Pastes
labors were in vain. Because 30,000 registered Repub-
licans, jealous of the reform Democrats, stayed from the
polls. Mayor Grant beat the anti-Tammany nominee,
Francis M. Scott, by a vote of 116,000 to 94,000. Not
only that, but two years later, in 1892, Thomas F. Gilroy,
GODKIN'S WAR UPON TAMMANY 485
called "a business candidate," was easily elected to suc-
ceed Grant. Before his term was well advanced it was
generally admitted that Tammany had become so well
entrenched behind the offices that It would be useless to
elect a reform Mayor without legislation which would
enable him to dismiss nearly all the city officials.
Nevertheless, the spade-work of Mr. Godkin had been
so well done that the idea of a ''New Tammany" was
now laughed at, and the organization was regarded with
thorough suspicion by decent elements. His campaign
in 1890 brought him letters from Eastman Johnson,
Bishop Potter, S. G. Ward, Charles Loring Brace, Gen.
Wm. F. Smith, and other public-spirited men. The city
began to awake. Other newspapers, notably the World
early in 1894, imitated the Post by publishing Tammany -
biographies which stung the grafters to the quick. On
April 4, 1892, the City Club was organized with a Board
of Trustees which Included men deeply interested in the
reformation of the city government, the most prominent
being James C. Carter, R. Fulton Cutting, W. Bayard
Cutting, August Belmont, and William J. Schieffelin.
With the special encouragement of the City Club, more
than two-score local Good Government Clubs were
shortly founded (Carl Schurz helped establish one among
the German- Americans) and although Dana of the Sun
contemptuously nicknamed them "Goo-Goos," they ex-
erted an important educational influence. There was
ample basis for suspicion of the city rulers under both
Grant and Gllroy. Mayor Grant had sworn In 1888 that
two years earlier Croker was "very poor Indeed." But
by the end of 1893 he had invested $250,000 in a stock-
farm, $103,000 in race-horses, $80,000 in a Fifth Avenue
mansion, and drove about In carriages costing $1,700.
The Post further stated that Croker paid $12,000 a year
to a jockey, and $5,000 to the manager of his stock farm,
and that on a trip to the Pacific Coast early in 1894 he
made the journey in a private car costing $50 a day.
Where did he get the money? Godkin harped continually
upon the outrageous appointments made under both
486 THE EVENING POST
Mayors. Thus when In December, 1890, Patrick DIvver
was appointed a police justice at $8,000 a year, the Post
reprinted his biography :
PATRICK DIVVER.— Commonly called "Paddy," is the
Tammany leader in the Second Assembly District. He is the
keeper of a sailors' boarding house, and is the proprietor, or has
interests, in several liquor saloons. He is an ex-member of the
Board of Aldermen, a race-track frequenter, and the friend and
confidant of gamblers. He is on terms of intimacy with "Johnny"
Matthews and "Jake" Shipsey, two members of the sporting and
gambling fraternity, whose particular methods of gaining a
livelihood are unknown to the frequenters of Paddy Divver's and
other rumshops on Park Row, where they are generally to be
found.
Within three years, said the Post In 1894, DIvver was
reputed to be worth $200,000. Among the many other
unfit appointments were those of "Barney" Martin, "Joe"
Koch, and "Tom" Graham to the police courts, and of
"Mike" Daly, John J. Scannell, and "Andy" W^hlte to
Important municipal offices. In 1892-93 the Evening
Post, Times, and World repeatedly challenged the meth-
ods of conducting the public business In the Building De-
partment, Dock Department, and Street Cleaning Bureau,
and In the latter part of 1893 the City Club began collect-
ing evidence of corruption from top to bottom In the
Police Department. This corruption. Indeed, was almost
a matter of common knowledge, for repeated charges
were made against police captains, and the bipartisan
Police Commission of four shielded the men In the most
audacious way. The Insurrection of virtue, as Theodore
Roosevelt called It, reached a head during 1 892-1 893 In
the charges of Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst, minister of the
Madison Square Presbyterian Church, that the police
system was battening upon an extensive blackmail system.
The response was Immediate; business men and others
came to Dr. Parkhurst with evidence that was Incontest-
able ; the City Club began demanding an Investigation by
the Legislature; and Harper^ s Weekly, which had de-
fended Tammany a few years earlier, published early in
GODKIN'S WAR UPON TAMMANY 487
January, 1894, a cartoon which recalled Nast In the
Tweed days. Entitled "Tammany's Tax on Crime," it
showed a line of saloon-keepers, criminals and prostitutes
passing before a cashier's desk in which stood the dummy
figure of a policeman, with Boss Croker crouching behind
it and stretching forth his hand for the "contributions."
From the public uproar grew the Lexow Inquiry.
For Mr. Clarence Lexow, the Senator who offered at
Albany the resolution for an investigating committee and
became its chairman, the Evening Post had no respect.
It called him "a young country lawyer of very moderate
abilities residing at Nyack, N. Y., and dabbling more or
less in politics under the guidance of the rather mediocre
understanding of Mr. T. C. Piatt," and it believed his
interest in the inquiry was as lukewarm as Piatt's own.
But it earnestly supported the movement for the inquiry,
was disappointed when the committee failed to secure
Choate for counsel, and, when Gov. Flower vetoed the ap-
propriation of $25,000 for its work on the ground that it
was a partisan body, said that it knew no precedent for
such a gross abuse of the executive power save Gov. Hill's
veto of the appropriation for the similar Fassett Com-
mittee. The State Chamber of Commerce came to the
rescue by advancing $17,500 to cover the committee's ex-
penses, and John W. Goff, assisted by Frank Moss and
Wm. Travers Jerome, proved an admirable counsel.
By the middle of June, 1894, the inquiry had driven
one of the four Police Commissioners, John McClave, to
resignation and flight. It had been disclosed that the
police force had a well-determined tariff of charges for
its protection of various criminal trades and practices
within the city. Each disorderly house was expected to
pay an "initiation fee" of $500 to every new police cap-
tain placed in charge of the district, and $50 a month
thereafter, besides a contribution to the captain's "Christ-
mas present." One keeper of such a house testified that
he had been charged $750 within three months. Concert
saloons, without a city license, had to pay $50 a month
to the captain, while the regular tariff for saloons em-
488 THE EVENING POST
ploying waitresses, and operating without a license, ran
from $15 to $25 a month. It Is not surprising that the
fact was elicited that one captain had paid $15,000 for
appointment to his post. For the privilege of selling on
Sunday all saloons regularly paid the ward men — the
name then given a petty officer — $5. Whenever the In-
spector of the excise department found a saloon without
a city license, he got $5 for overlooking the fact. Tickets
to Tammany "chowder parties," usually distributed
among disorderly houses and saloons In blocks of five,
were $5 each, and It was gross bad manners to send any
back. The push-cart men were expected to pay $3 a
week from their pitiful earnings, and the ward-men had
miscellaneous sources of tribute which made an appoint-
ment to the force worth $300.
Every steamship line landing cargoes at the port had
to pay heavy blackmail charges at every stage of Its busi-
ness, and to every official — police, dock, and custom-
house — connected with Tammany. The agent of the
French Line displayed pitiable embarrassment when
called upon to explain an Item of $500 ^'payes a qui le
droit." All merchants who wished to use the sidewalks
to display or handle goods paid $25 to $50 annually, it
being customary to put this In an envelope and leave it
somewherje to be called for. Men who rented their prem-
ises for polling booths had to divide the money with the
police. But much worse than such grafting as this was
the evidence that the police, instead of repressing pure
criminality, were actually encouraging It as a source of
revenue. Thus green-goods swindlers were allowed to do
business on payment of $50 a month to the police cap-
tain, policy-gamblers had the same privilege, and receivers
of stolen goods shared with the detectives. As a climax,
to quote the Post, "Mr. Goff showed us a police justice
sitting on the bench, and not merely shielding a regular
practitioner of abortion from punishment, but conniving
with him in his guilt."
The news pages, following the Inquiry closely, showed
GODKIN'S WAR UPON TAMMANY 489
how the early bravado of the police force changed within
a few weeks to panic :
That which has altered the feelings of the police [wrote a
reporter June 16] is the fact that the committee has entered re-
cesses of the corruption system which were believed to be unap-
proachable. So long as the despised lowest class of criminals was
the one drawn upon for witnesses, there was felt little alarm. It
was reasoned that the records of the persons sworn would crush
the force of their testimony. . . . But when the ''better class"
women and the professional criminal, like George Appo, began to
squeal, danger was foreseen. Women in the "tenderloin" and
other more pretentious districts have been treated fairly from a
police standpoint. Where they have paid for protection they got
it, or, according to the blackmailers, are supposed to have received
it. If there was any abuse of the police power it was not author-
ized, and must have been the indiscretion of the wardman or the
individual patrolman. It was meant that the "ladies," as they
are uniformly called, should be justly and squarely dealt with.
An)rway, it is a shock to the guilty to learn that women like "Eva
Bell," who has been protected for years in Thirty-sixth Street,
should give the game away and peach as she did on Friday.
Worse than the fickleness of the women is the weakening of
the criminal and the gambler to the men who watch such lines
of defense give way. Appo, it is said, however, has been ill-
treated, has a grievance, and these are taken in account as reasons
for his having "thrown down" his fellows.
Mr. Godkin insisted that the source of the corruption
was in the higher ranks of the Tammany hierarchy, and
In the Impracticable administration of the police by a
bipartisan board of four Instead of a single Commis-
sioner. The reporters declared that the best elements of
the force also held Its heads to blame:
These men complain chiefly that the political phase of the mat-
ter is not more urgently bored into. They say that the conduct
of the commissioners for years has been such as to poison a patrol-
man from the time he first applies for admission to the force. The
payment for appointment, the reputation of the politicians in the
Board, the uses made of him by his executive superiors in their
private schemes, and by the Commissioners, directly and indirectly,
for their partisan purposes, together with the general moral tone
490 THE EVENING POST
of the force and the work, all tend to teach him how he is to do
for himself when he can. There ... is daily disappointment that
the higher evils are not kept in view.
So far as Immediate remedial legislation was con-
cerned, the Lexow Inquiry produced less effect than had
been hoped. Boss Piatt controlled the Republican Legis-
lature, and had a strong Influence upon Gov. Levi P.
Morton, who succeeded Flower; and Piatt declared that
to put the police under a single Commissioner would be
"revolution." When the Committee made Its report In
January, 1895, the Evening Post joined with Dr. Park-
hurst In ridiculing its recommendations, which Included
retention of the bipartisan, four-headed Police Commis-
sion. Godkin drew a scathing picture of Lexow as he
"sneaked off to Piatt's express office, and engaged In a
dirty little Intrigue for the defeat of the reform move-
ment, and tossed his little head In the air and sniffed at
all the leading men In the city, and abused reformers In
general, and went to work under Piatt's direction to con-
coct a few little bills to secure for Piatt a few little
offices." The Legislature refused to put the police under
a single head. It passed enactments making possible the
reformation of the police court bench, and the reorgani-
zation of the pubhc school system, but In other fields In
which the reformers had expected changes It refused
to act.
The real triumph of reform came In the municipal
election In 1894. Tammany, trying to brazen out the
Lexow revelations, first nominated Nathan Straus, one
of the worst Park Commissioners the city ever had, the
chief abettor In 1892 of a scheme to ruin Central Park
by putting a race-track In It; but he declined, and the
nomination was given "Hughie" Grant, who had begun
the process of filling the city offices with the criminals
and seml-crlmlnals who adorned them. The reform
Democrats and reform Republicans held a meeting in
Madison Square Garden and selected a Committee of
Seventy to conduct their campaign, this body nominating
GODKIN'S WAR UPON TAMMANY 49 ^
William M. Strong for Mayor and John W. Goff for
Recorder. Its choice struck the Evening Post as
admirable, not only because Strong was a man of high
character, a successful citizen, and well known to the
public, but because he was a Republican. The next-
Governor and Legislature, wrote Godkin, with accurate
anticipation of the fact, would be Republican, and while
a Republican administration in New York city might not
be able to get from Gov. Morton and Boss Piatt all that
was desired, they would certainly get more than any
Democrat. "A Democratic Mayor would probably not
be allowed to make a single removal or appointment
except such as came to him under the present Charter,
and we should continue to wallow In our present quag-
mire until the next Presidential election, and then might
well bid farewell to all thought of city reform." Decent
citizens this time were fully aroused. They went to the
polls in such numbers that, although Tammany mustered
108,000 votes, Strong and Goff had a majority of over
45,000. It was an impressive demonstration, wrote Mr.
Godkin, of the power of non-partisanship :
The Committee of Seventy have shown, more conspicuously
than ever before, the power which, even in this city of many
nationalities and creeds, lies in the union of good people. We
believe the Good Government clubs are doing invaluable work in
turning the lesson to account. They are spreading the non-partisan
(not bi-partisan) view of city affairs. It is especially important
that they should hammer it into the brains of the young, for the
men who have conducted this campaign against Tammany will
be gone from the stage in twenty years, as the men of 1871 are
now, and in about twenty years Tammany regains its old
strength. Tammany will surely come again, unless young and
old get into the way of looking at the city as they look at their
bank, and think no more about the Mayor's politics than they
think about the politics of the cashier who keeps their accounts.
All the well-governed cities of the world are governed on this
business plan, all the badly governed on the other.
The plan of going down among the rank and file of Tammany
with books and pamphlets, and University Settlements, and popu-
lar lectures, we know has merit. It is a work of humanity and
492 THE EVENING POST
civilization which is always in order. But they deceive them-
selves who think the city can be saved by any such missionary
work. What Tammany offers to the ignorant and poor is always
something more palpable and succulent than enlightenment, or
free reading rooms, or cheap coffee. It can never be met and van-
quished except by union among the honest, industrious, and intel-
ligent. These are now in a majority and have always been in a
majority. A great commercial city like New York could not
exist and prosper if they were not in a majority. Whenever they
cease to be in a majority, capital and labor will both begin to
move away from Manhattan Island.
The splendid achievements of Mayor Strong's reform
administration need not be rehearsed in detail. Col.
George E. Waring was appointed head of the Street
Cleaning Department, and before he had been at work
a fortnight the Evening Post commented on the change
he had wrought. When people saw gangs of able-bodied
sweepers and shovelers working like Trojans under
bosses, instead of groups of infirm and decrepit creatures
leaning upon their Implements and talking politics, they
rubbed their eyes. Snow actually vanished over night;
trucks were no longer stabled In the streets to shelter
vice; and the accidents to horses from nails and rubbish
strikingly diminished. Warlng's most competent prede-
cessor had cleaned 53 miles of street daily In 1888,
whereas Waring cleaned 433 miles from once to five
times dally. Theodore Roosevelt was made President
of the Police Commission, with results familiar to every
one. A new Board of Education, after falling to procure
President Daniel Colt Gllman of Johns Hopkins, chose
William H. Maxwell to be the energetic Superintendent
of the Schools ; while In Mayor Strong's first year fourteen
new school buildings were finished, and the salaries of
teachers were materially raised. The police courts were
reorganized, the Mayor taking pains to choose the best
magistrates available. The City College, cramped into
small quarters on Twenty-third Street, was given an
adequate site on the heights overlooking Harlem, the
GODKIN'S WAR UPON TAMMANY 493
Metropolitan Museum was enlarged, bridges were built
over the Harlem, and the parks were much more care-
fully tended. The administration made blunders, but It
was one of the best New York has ever had.
For this great revolt of 1894 and Its fruits, Mr. God-
kin gave equal credit to the foolish audacity of the Tam-
many yahoos and "the persistence and pluck with which
Dr. Parkhurst stuck to the police. It was his splendid
bulldog obstinacy In holding on to them which really
made the first clear Impression on the public mind." Dr.
Parkhurst will always remain the hero of the uprising.
But many who were foremost in the struggle thought at
the time that Godkin himself should be bracketed with
the fighting pastor, and publicly or privately said so.
Dr. Parkhurst just after the election expressed his warm
gratitude to the editor. This was all very well, wrote
Col. George E. Waring; "but Parkhurst don't know, as
do those who have watched your course during all the
years of your work here, to what an extent you alone are
to be credited with the maintaining, among the leaders of
the community, of the spirit which at last made Parkhurst
and his work possible. I have known in my short life no
equal example of persistent, vigorous, aggressive virtue
receiving the reward of such crowning success." Fred-
erick Keppel wrote In the same terms: "Both Dr. Park-
hurst and Mr. Goff deserve the public honors that have
been heaped upon them; but long before these gentlemen
were ever publicly heard of (and unfalteringly ever
since) your journal has fought against corruption and
wrong with a power and vigor which certainly has done
more than any other single influence to bring about the
magnificent result of last election day." Wayne Mac-
Veagh and President Gilman expressed themselves with
equal enthusiasm. Dr. W. R. Huntington suggested
statues to Dr. Parkhurst and Mr. Godkin overlooking
Tammany Hall.
The strength of this sentiment led a month after the
election to the presentation to Mr. Godkin of a loving
494 THE EVENING POST
cup, the speech on the occasion being delivered by Bishop
Henry C. Potter. The subscription was made by a list
of women, and the cup testified to their "grateful recog-
nition of fearless and unfaltering services to the city of
New York."
The two chief municipal issues in which Godkin was
interested after 1894, the creation of Greater New York
under a charter drafted in 1896, and the election of its
first Mayor in 1897, both resulted in defeats for his
views. He opposed consolidation as premature. His
belief was that if the separate governments of New York
and Brooklyn were both corrupt, as they had been with
few intermissions for a long generation, their union would
simply present a harder problem for reformers, and fat-
ter jobs and more boodle for the bosses. Moreover, he
knew that the guiding hand in the formation of a Charter
Commission and the legislative approval of its work
would be Piatt's. But the Piatt and Croker machines
agreed in supporting the consolidation programme, and
many of the reform element stood behind it, so that it
was easily made effective. The result of the ensuing
mayoralty campaign of 1897 was not long in doubt. On
the Tammany side there was one candidate, Robert Van
Wyck, and opposing him there appeared three. The
Citizens' Union was formed that spring, and its efforts
led to the nomination of Seth Low, well known as succes-
sively Mayor of Brooklyn and President of Columbia
University — an admirable choice; the Piatt Republicans
nominated Gen. B. F. Tracy; and the Bryan Democrats
put forward Henry George. Van Wyck received 233,997
votes, while Low, his nearest rival, obtained only
151,540.
This result seemed a stunning reaction from the great
victory of 1894. Van Wyck made a clean sweep of
Mayor Strong's efficient departmental heads, and when
Devery became chief of police the city ran "wide open."
Yet in the moment of defeat Godkin did not lose heart,
pointing out that Van Wyck's three antagonists combined
E. L. GODKIN
Associate Editor 1881-1883, Editor-in-Chief 1883-1899.
GODKIN'S WAR UPON TAMMANY 495
had a larger vote than he. "Four years is a long time to
wait, undoubtedly, for another attack on Tammany," the
Post said, "but in those four years Tammany will be fur-
nishing us with plenty of ammunition, and Republicans
will be seeing and thinking, and the Citizens' Union will
be learning how to fight."
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
FREE SILVER, THE SPANISH WAR, AND IMPERIALISM
The three great final battles of Godkin's editorship
were those against the free silver craze, the Spanish War,
and the retention of the Philippines. The first was de-
cisively won, but the decisive loss of the other two cast
a shadow over Mr. Godkin's last days. "American ideals
were the intellectuil food of my youth, and to see America
converted into a senseless. Old World conqueror, embit-
ters my age," he wrote a friend in May, 1899. In all
three struggles the E "ning Post took the same aggres-
sive leadership as In i .e Mugwump campaigns against
Blaine and In Godkin's fifteen years of war upon Tam-
many.
The portents of the free silver uprising first became
alarming to the Evening Post In 1890. The Sherman
Silver Purchase Act of that year It roundly attacked, and
Horace White and the other editors always regarded it
as the chief cause of the panic of 1893. As he pointed
out, It added nearly $200,000,000 to the fiat money of
the country, alarmed men at home and abroad regard-
ing the ability of the United States to redeem its obliga-
tions in gold upon demand, caused the steady withdrawal
of capital from the country, and decreased business con-
fidence and increased money rates until failures took place
on every hand. The Post's detestation of the Sherman
Act was Increased by the fact that It was passed by a
nefarious combination of silver men and supporters of
the McKInley Tariff, a measure which the Post equally
abominated. For some years in the nineties the silver
danger seemed the greater because Republicans flirted
with it as coyly as Democrats. In 1894 both Speaker
Reed and Senator Lodge proposed to force silver upon
the world by high discriminating tariffs against nations
496
SPANISH WAR AND SILVER 497
which refused to adopt bimetallism. Lodge, in fact, left
the Evening Post aghast by introducing a demagogic
resolution in the Senate for applying this policy against
England.
Late in 1894 the reception given ^'Coin's Financial
School" showed how irresistibly the free silver question
was thrusting itself into the political foreground. This
famous pamphlet, by W. H. Harvey, related how a
"smooth little financier" of Chicago named Coin, struck
by the rural distress and business depression, opened a
school of finance in the Art Institute in May, 1894. His
lectures and colloquies continued six days. At first only
young men were present, but the audience increased until
it included statesmen, professors, bank presidents, and
others of note, many of them — ,us Lyman J. Gage and
J. Laurence Laughlin — designated by name. When they
interrupted Coin, he quickly silenced them by his incisive
logic and superior knowledge. In the end, completely
converted, the company tendered him a glittering recep-
tion at the Palmer House. The pamphlet was illustrated
by coarse woodcuts. One showed silver a beautiful
woman decapitated by her enemies; another depicted
America as a cow which the farmers were laboriously
feeding while a fat capitalist milked her; a third repre-
sented the gold standard by a man hobbling on one leg.
Coin had made the utmost of his ability to ask the ques-
tions as well as answer them. As Horace White said,
his discussion with Prof. Laughlin was equaled by
nothing save the debate in Rabelais upon the question
whether a chimera ruminating in a vacuum devoureth
second intentions. The booklet was full of deceptive
analogies. For example, when asked if Government
coinage of depreciated silver would really make it worth
a dollar in gold. Coin replied: "Certainly; if the Govern-
ment bought 100,000 horses, wouldn't the price go up?"
This retort was set off with a woodcut of a horse.
No man in the country, not even Prof. W. G. Sumner,
was so well equipped to answer Coin as Horace White.
The "comic publication," as the Post called it, would
498 THE EVENING POST
have been unworthy of attention had its influence not
been tremendous. Silver miners, mortgage-ridden farm-
ers, small shopkeepers and workmen, were everywhere
soon studying it, making its specious arguments their own,
and convincing themselves that an Eastern plutocracy
had committed "the crime of '73" — the demonetization
of silver — in order to depress the prices of crops and
labor. By March, 1895, it was impossible to ignore the
booklet. In a series of twelve articles Mr. White exposed
its many misstatements and fallacies. Coin asserted that
silver was "demonetized secretly" in 1873, whereas the
discussion had been full and open. He said that the sil-
ver dollar was the monetary unit of the United States
1 792-1 873, when it was actually so only from 1783 to
1792. He stated that the United States was the first
nation to demonetize silver, whereas Germany had closed
her mints to silver except for small coins in 187 1. As for
the horse-buying illustration, Mr. White showed that
when in 1890 the Government began buying 4,500,000
ounces of silver each month, the price actually fell because
the supply increased also. He discussed in detail the
greenback question. Coin's queer delusion that the country
had never been prosperous since 1873, and the supposed
"English octopus" that had fastened gold upon the world.
With some revision, his articles appeared early in 1895
as a pamphlet entitled "Coin's Financial Fool," and were
distributed in large numbers by the Reform Club at fifteen
cents a hundred.
At the beginning of 1896 the Evening Post welcomed
the signs that a great national battle over free silver was
coming. The result, it predicted, would be the same that
had crowned the greenback contest. "A sharp division
between those who want an honest dollar and those who
do not is on all accounts to be desired," it said on April
10. "A year's discussion of the principles that enter into
this question is the best possible preparation of the public
mind for the presidential campaign of 1896." It knew
that the sharp division would have to be a division be-
tween the two great parties. As the isolation of Cleve-
SPANISH WAR AND SILVER 499
land and other gold men in the Democrat party, and the
ascendancy of silverltes like Bland and Tillman, became
more emphatic, it frankly pinned its hopes to the
Republicans.
To them it promised victory if only they refused to
^'straddle." An editorial of April, 1896, called "Assur-
ance of the Gold Standard," told them that on a gold
platform they could carry all the States north of Dela-
ware and the Ohio River, and east of the Mississippi.
This would give them 210 electoral votes, and the ten
more needed could certainly be obtained from Iowa, the
Dakotas, and the border States. Throughout May and
June the Evening Post called upon McKinley, who was
almost certain to be the nominee, to declare himself for
the gold standard. He had voted for the Sherman Silver
Purchase Act, and had made alarming utterances in favor
of silver coinage as late as the fall of 1894; hence the
editors' anxiety over his uncertain position, and their
resentment of his talk of making the tariff the chief issue.
But McKinley refused to commit himself. He was
assured of a majority of the Republican Convention if he
acted tactfully, and he had no intention of antagonizing
the silver wing of his party before he won the prize. In
his speeches both before and just after the convention he
failed to allude to the free silver issue, while in several
he emphasized the "great American doctrine of pro-
tection."
McKinley's nomination was therefore received by God-
kin and his associates with hostility. Not since i860, they
wrote, had the nation so needed a man of strong character
and clear views; yet the Republicans had chosen a trim-
mer of uncertain mental operations. The gold plank in
the platform was admirable, but it simply emphasized the
fact that McKinley was, at the time he was named, a total
misfit. Nevertheless, Godkin tried to be optimistic:
Nothing marks more clearly than McKinley's nomination the
mistake of turning nominating conventions into vast exciting
crowds, doing their work under the eyes of a larger crowd, more
excited still. There can be little doubt that the gold in the plat-
500 THE feVENING POST
form was forced on the convention by the business men, and that,
had the convention been a deliberative body, McKinley's unfit-
ness to stand on any such platform would have been recognized.
But the pledges given by the delegates before they ever met or
compared notes, made it impossible to choose any other. About
the platform they were free, but about the candidate they were tied
up, so that they were compelled to put him astride a body of doc-
trine with which he had never been in thorough sympathy. But
the formal recognition of the doctrine by the party at least insures
discussion, and encourages us to hope that there will be no more
difficulty in killing the silver heresy through the country by free
debate than there has been in getting such a collection of politicians
as met at St. Louis to declare for the gold standard.
If the Evening Post was frigid toward McKinley, it
was filled with angry contempt by the nomination of
Bryan. He was totally unknown to the country at large ;
he had not even been a regular delegate to the conven-
tion; he made a windy speech to the roaring mob of
repudiators which called itself the Democratic party, and
was nominated because he was of the stamp of Tillman
and Altgeld, with a more attractive personality — so ran
its verdict. The decadence of the great party of Jackson,
Benton, Tilden, and Cleveland seemed to it confirmed by
the platform, which Horace White pronounced "baser
than anything ever avowed heretofore by a political party
in this country outside of the slavery question." The free
coinage plank, he said, with the silver dollar really worth
52 cents, meant the repudiation of the half part of all the
debts incurred since 1872, when the gold dollar had been
made the unit of value.
One of the campaign achievements of the Evening Post
was truly spectacular. Immediately after Bryan's nomi-
nation its financial editor, Mr. A. D. Noyes, began pub-
lishing a series of editorials called "A Free Coinage
Catechism." This question-and-answer presentation of
controversial subjects was a familiar one in the Evening
Post ever since Godkin assumed control, but it was never
more effectively used than in July and August, 1 896. Mr.
SPANISH WAR AN6 SILVER 501
Noyes slashed directly into the errors of the Democrats,
as a single brief excerpt will show :
Q. What is the fundamental contention of the free coinage
advocates ? A. That the amount of money in circulation has been
decreasing since the demonetization of silver, and that this de-
crease has caused a general fall in prices.
Q. Is ft true that the money supply has been decreasing? A.
It Is not.
Q. What are the facts? A. So far as the United States is con-
cerned, there has been an enormous increase. In i860 the money
in circulation in this country was $442,102,477; in 1872 it was
$738,309,549; by the Treasury bulletin, at the beginning of the
present month of July, it was $1,509,725,200.
Q. What does this show? A. It shows that our money supply
has increased 240 per cent, as compared with i860, and 104 per
cent, as compared with 1872.
These editorials were Immediately Issued by the Eve-
ning Post in a sixteen-page pamphlet, and by Sept. 4
a first edition of 1,350,000 copies had been sold. A
new edition with two new chapters and other additional
matter was then brought out, and by Nov. 2 the total sale
had reached 1,956,000 copies. Horace White's pam-
phlet, '^Coin's Financial Fool," continued to sell, and was
supplemented by the publication In leaflet form of a public
address which he had made In Chicago In 1893 upon *'The
Gold Standard : How It Came Into the World, and Why
It Will Stay." It can safely be said that the most impor-
tant campaign documents Issued In behalf of sound money
were these by Mr. Noyes and Mr. White.
Less spectacular, but no less effective, were Horace
White's editorials throughout the summer. As reprinted
by the Nation, they reached editors and other leaders of
opinion the land over, and filtered down to the public by
a thousand channels. Godkin wrote upon the more gen-
eral political aspects of the campaign, leaving the hard
day-to-day arguing mainly to Mr. White. During the
whole campaign the paper managed to attack Bryan and
Democracy without open advocacy of McKInley and the
Republican Party. When McKInley published his letter
502 THE EVENING POST
of acceptance, the Post wholeheartedly praised its finan-
cial passages, and declared that they defined the one real
issue of the campaign. But its distaste for McKInley's
personality, Its aversion for his high-tariff views, and the
repugnant character of the dominant Republican leaders
— Hanna, Piatt, Quay, Lodge, Frye, and others — pre-
vented it from giving more than implied and tacit
approval to his candidacy. Godkin himself voted the
Gold Democratic ticket.
The New York press approached nearer to unanimity
that summer than in any Presidential campaign since the
era of good feeling. The Journal was Bryan's one im-
portant supporter. When he was nominated, the World
turned its back upon him, saying: "Lunacy having dictated
the platform. It was perhaps natural that hysteria should
evolve the candidate." Though Dana called himself a
Democrat, the Sun was more fervently anti-Bryan than
the Tribune. Bryan called New York "the heart of what
seems to be the enemy's country." His attempt to Invade
it in mid- August, when he journeyed 1,500 miles to Madi-
son Square Garden to be notified of his nomination, was
a dismal failure. The night was one of intense heat, the
notification speech of Gov. W. J. Stone of Missouri was
intolerably long, and the very character of Bryan's
address was a disappointment. He had been expected to
display the eloquence^ which had so dazzled the Chicago
Convention. Instead, he read from manuscript a long
speech on the model of Lincoln's Cooper Union Address,
dealing in the dry tone of a student with what he imagined
to be economic facts and governmental principles. Many
hearers left early. But the Post explained his failure, not
by his refusal to attempt eloquence, but by the fact that
his dreary discourse abounded in "the most grating self-
contradictions, the grossest blunders In matters of fact,
the emptiest platitudes and vaguest assertions" ; and by
the fact that while Lincoln had appealed to national
honor, the young man from the Platte argued "the cause
of private dishonesty and public disgrace."
Some newspapers indulged In downright ferocity. The
SPANISH WAR AND SILVER 503
Journal spoke of the plutocrats, the monopolists, the
great corporations, and their protector Hanna, in charac-
teristic Journal fashion. The Tribune called Bryan a
"wretched, addle-pated boy posing in vapid vanity and
mouthing resounding rottenness"; a man "apt ... at
lies and forgeries and blasphemies"; a "puppet In the
blood-Imbued hands of Altgeld, the anarchist" and of
others who made up a "league of hell." The Sun
applauded the Yale students who tried to break up a New
Haven speech by Bryan. Even the Post spoke in the
harshest tones of those Western farmers the genuineness
of whose hardships no one now denies, and characterizes
the struggle as one between "the great civilizing forces of
the republic" and "the still surviving barbarism bred by
slavery in the South and the reckless spirit of adventure in
the mining camps of the West." Such overstatements
show how Intense was Eastern feeling over the election.
Though the Post^s attitude toward McKInley tempered
Its rejoicings in the result, it nevertheless hailed It as "the
most impressive vindication of democracy governing ac-
cording to law and order that the country has ever seen."
II
The one great doctrine that the Evening Post has main-
tained as insistently as its low-tariff stand Is its opposition
to any artificial extension of American sovereignty. From
Coleman's protests against Jackson's high-handed inva-
sion of the Floridas to Mr. Ogden's protest against the
purchase of the Danish West Indies, this position has
been unfalteringly sustained. Bryant was among the first
to oppose the annexation of Texas, denounced Walker's
fillbusterers as "desperadoes" and "pirates," and could
not condemn too fiercely the Southern projects for acquir-
ing Cuba in the fifties. When Seward purchased Alaska,
he opposed that act; for, as he said, many Congressmen
advocated it not because they felt they were getting any-
thing of value, but because it was a blow at the prestige
of Great Britain and a precaution against the growth of
her Pacific power. The basis of the Evening Post's scath-
504 THE EVENING POST
ing attacks on President Grant's effort to annex Santo
Domingo was Its belief that the Anglo-Saxon rule of a
Latin and negro people would be contrary to all traditions
of the republic, and a complete evil for both countries.
The attitude of the paper toward conquest and military
adventure was the same no matter what country was in-
volved. Bryant could never see anything in the Crimean
War but a useless and Inexcusable sea of blood and misery.
When the threat of the Franco-Prussian War first ap-
peared, the Evening Post held that if the ambition of the
French to dictate boundaries and sovereigns to Europe
was to go on retarding civilization till it met an effectual
check, now was the time to check it. Like every other
American newspaper, the Post had been embittered
against Napoleon III by his interference in Mexico and
other acts of hostility toward the United States. The
receipt of the news of Sedan was the signal for an im-
promptu celebration In the editorial rooms. Nevertheless,
Bryant and his sub-editors warned Germany against an-
nexation as a "barbarous custom," saying that she should
let Napoleon III be the last European ruler who aspired
to govern by force an unwilling and subjugated people.
They also warned her against militarism, which had been
the curse of France. "It Is for united Germany to say
that this wrong shall no longer continue ; and the way to
say It Is to disband, as soon as peace is won, those huge
armies which have done such mighty deeds, and thus de-
clare to the world that Germany, like America, means
peace; and has no fear, because it intends no wrong."
But if Bryant was always vigorous in denouncing armed
aggression, Godkin was always savage. His hatred of na-
tional truculence colored his earliest public utterances. It
inspired his indignant letters to the London Daily News
upon the Trent Affair In 1861, when the tone of the Brit-
ish press and Foreign Office seemed to him needlessly
offensive. The attitude he took in the Nation toward
Dominican annexation and the designs of many Americans
upon Cuba in the seventies was one of trenchant hostility.
When he became editor of the Evening Post, not a year
. SPANISH WAR AND SILVER 505
passed without fresh criticism of this spirit. His at-
tacks upon British military adventures were as freely
expressed. When Gordon was killed at Khartum, he
wrote with the utmost bitterness of the whole Sudan
tragedy — the British Jingo demand for destruction of the
Mahdi, its collision with the really admirable spirit of
Arab nationalism, the waste of hundreds of millions, the
death of hundreds of brave Britons and thousands of
brave Arabs. "There is a powerful passage in De Mais-
tre, apropos of war," he concluded, " describing the loath-
ing and disgust which would be excited in the human
breast by the spectacle of tens of thousands of cats meet-
ing in a great plain, and scratching and biting each other
till half their number were dead and mangled. To beings
superior to man, conflicts like this in the Sudan must have
much the same look of grotesque horror."
By 1894 Mr. Godkin was convinced that the spirit of
jingoism was growing more and more rampant the world
over. The Continent was divided between the Dual and
Triple Alliances. The desire to grab territory had in-
fected even Italy. That country had emerged from the
struggle for unification one of the poorest in Europe, with
taxation at the last limit of endurance. She badly needed
reforms in education, administration, and communication.
Yet she hastened to establish an army of 600,000, and a
navy of a dozen battleships, and to hunt up some African
natives to subjugate like other nations. The result of her
efforts to assume a protectorate over Abyssinia was a
series of defeats, heavy loss in men, the overthrow of the
Crispi Ministry, and reduction to the verge of bankruptcy.
"It is no longer sufficient for a people to be happy, peace-
ful, industrious, well-educated, lightly taxed," tauntingly
wrote Godkin. "It must have somebody afraid of it.
What does a nation amount to if nobody is afraid of it?
Not a jico secco, as King Humbert would say." England
was clearly headed for war in South Africa. But what
grieved Mr. Godkin most was the evident desire of many
Americans, the Hearsts and Lodges leading them, to fight
somebody. In February, 1896, he wrote upon this phe-
5o6 THE EVENING POST
nomenon under the' tltl^ "National Insanity," comparing
it to the recurrent disposition of some men to get drunk
in spite of reason.
After the Venezuela Affair, the eagerness of these jin-
goes for a war turned toward Spain as an object. The
Cubans had renewed their revolt in February, 1895, and
fought so well that by the end of the next year they con-
trolled three-fourths of the inland country. The cruelty
of the struggle shocked Americans, while our heavy Cu-
ban investments and trade gave us a pecuniary interest in
the island. When it was proposed in Congress that the
Cubans be recognized as belligerents (March, 1896),
Godkin regarded this as evidence that Cleveland's Vene-
zuela message had turned the thoughts of Congressmen
toward baiting other nations. "He suggested to a body
of idle, ignorant, lazy, and not very scrupulous men an
exciting game, which involved no labor and promised lots
of fun, and would be likely to furnish them with the means
of annoying and embarrassing him." Recognition was
out of the question, for the Cubans had no capital, no gov-
ernment, and no army but guerrilla bands. These facts
A. G. Sedgwick demonstrated in "A Cuban Catechism."
However, a number of incidents showed that American
feeling was really growing. Princeton students that
spring hanged the boy heir to the Spanish throne in effigy,
miners in Leadville burnt a Spanish flag in the street, and
Senator Morgan of Alabama tried in June to lash Con-
gress into excitement over the American citizens who had
been roughly treated by the Spanish authorities in Cuba.
At no time did the Evening Post conceal the fact that
American interference might become necessary. Civil
war in Cuba could not continue indefinitely; if the island
were not pacified within a reasonable period, the United
States would be justified in demanding a new policy on the
part of Spain. Nor did it at any time conceal its indigna-
tion at Weyler's inhumane policy of herding the Cuban
peasantry into the Spanish lines, and at other Spanish
mistakes. Late in 1897 Spain offered Cuba a form of
autonomy, but on careful examination, the Post pro-
SPANISH WAR AND SILVER 507
nounced It a hollow cheat. The 'great essentials of gov-
ernment were kept In Spanish hands, and only a pretty
plaything was extended. When Weyler was replaced by
Blanco, who was sent out to pursue conciliation, the paper
predicted that he would fall as generations before Alex-
ander of Parma had failed when sent by Philip II to
replace the bloody Alva In the low countries. No man, It
said, could rule Cuba with a sword In one hand and an
olive branch In the other. On Sept. 18, 1897, our Min-
ister at Madrid tendered the friendly offices of the United
States, and hinted that If the rebellion continued. Presi-
dent McKInley would take serious action. The Post
spoke approvingly :
This, it is important to recall, is the historic American position,
and is the only rational and justifiable way of dealing with an
affair which, in any aspect, is deplorable and thick with embar-
rassments. No longer ago than President Cleveland's message of
Dec. 7, 1896, interference on the lines indicated was distinctly
foreshadowed, and he was but taking his stand where President
Grant had taken his in 1874 and 1875. With our foreign affairs
then in the careful hands of Hamilton Fish, interference with
Spain on the ground of the prolonged rebellion in Cuba was yet
distinctly intimated. In his annual message of Dec. 7, 1874,
Gen. Grant referred to the continuance of the "deplorable strife
in Cuba," then of six years' duration, and said that "positive steps
on the part of other Powers" might become /'a matter of self-
necessity."
But the Evening Post believed such interference should
be peaceful. As the year 1898 opened. It was confident
that war could be avoided. It knew that the Cubans
would keep on fighting, and that Spain, nearly bankrupt,
her soldiers dispirited, could not suppress the rebellion.
But it thought that patient, friendly pressure by the
United States upon Spain would force her to recognize
the facts and give the Cubans a government that would
satisfy them. When In February the Journal published a
letter by the Spanish Minister, Dupuy de Lome, calling
McKInley a cheap politician and caterer to the rabble,
Godkin credited most Americans with taking the incident
5o8 THE EVENING POST
good-naturedly — with finding De Lome's mortification
and immediate resignation a source of amusement rather
than anger. A few days later (Feb. 15) the destruction
of the Maine, with the loss of 226 lives, caused a wave
of horror and indignation, unparalleled since Fort Sum-
ter, to sweep the country. Even yet, however, the Post
could point with gratification to the steadiness of the
general public, and its willingness to suspend judgment till
an inquiry was made. The attitude of both Capt. Sigsbee
of the Maine and President McKinley it pronounced ad-
mirable, as it did that of many important newspapers:
The danger was that something rash would be done in the first
confused moments. When once we began to think quietly about
the afiFair, the rest was easy. It was at once evident that the
chances were enormously in favor of the theory that the blowing
up of the Maine was due to accident. But suppose it were shown
that she was destroyed by foul play . . . what would that prove?
That we should instantly declare war against Spain? By no
means. It is simply inconceivable that the Spanish authorities in
Cuba, high or low, could have countenanced any plot to destroy
the Maine. Make them out as wicked as you please, they are not
lunatics. ...
The first effect, then, of this shocking calamity upon the nation
has been salutary. It has discovered in us a reserve of sanity, of
calmness, of poise, and weight, which is worth more than all our
navy. If we are able to display these qualities throughout, the
world will think better of us and our self-respect will be height-
ened ; and, despite the Jingoes, it is better to have foreign nations
admire us than dread us, better to be conscious of strength of
character than of strength of muscle.
One exception to this steadiness of opinion was fur-
nished by a large Congressional group. When early in
March Congress debated resolutions declaring Cuba a
belligerent, Mr. Godkin characterized the debate as one
that Americans could not read without humiliation.
Many Republican Congressmen frankly looked to war for
partisan advantage. Representative Grosvenor of Ohio
said that it would be a Republican war, and that it offered
the most brilliant opportunity that any Administration
SPANISH WAR AND SILVER 509
had seen since Lincoln "to establish itself and its party in
the praise and honor and glory of a mighty people." Sena-
tor Hale echoed him. Senator Piatt said there would be
one great compensation for the loss of life and treasure —
"it would prevent the Democratic party from going into
the next Presidential campaign with Tree Cuba' and Tree
Silver' emblazoned on its banner." Until war was de-
clared on April 25, the Post consistently praised President
McKinley in one column, and assailed Congress in the
next.
But its chief indignation was reserved for the war
press, and especially for the Journal and World. These
newspapers presented a curious study. From the files of
the Evening Post it would hardly have been gathered that
the nation was laboring under marked excitement, but
from the editorials, pictures, and lurid headlines of the
other two it appeared that the people were at fever heat.
"The Worst Insult to the United States in Its History,"
was the heading the Journal gave De Lome's letter. For
days thereafter nearly every headline contained the word
"war." "Spain Makes War on the Journal by Seizing
the Yacht Buccaneer," ran one, this being Hearst's news-
boat at Havana. "Threatening Moves by Both Spain and
the United States — We Send Another War Vessel to Join
Maine at Sea," followed it next day. After the catas-
trophe to the Maine the Journal made the welkin ring.
"The Warship Maine Was Split in Two by an Enemy's
Secret Infernal Machine!" it trumpeted. "Officers and
Men at Key West Describe the Mysterious Rending of
the Vessel, and Say It Was Done by Design and Not by
Accident — Captain Sigsbee Practically Declares That His
Ship Was Blown Up by a Mine or Torpedo." These
were the first page headlines on the 17th. Inside were
ribbon headlines running across the next half dozen pages.
"Belief in Havana That the Maine Was Anchored Over
a Mine" ; "Foreign Nations Shocked by the Belief in
Spanish Treachery" ; "War Probable if Spaniards Blew
Up American Warship" ; "Let the Cabinet Soon Avenge
the Slaughtered Sailors." Next day the Journal blared,
510 THE EVENING POST
^The Whole Country Thrills With the War Fever/'
while It reported a poll of both houses showing an over-
whelming sentiment In favor of Immediate Intervention.
The World also knew positively within a few hours
that the Maine was blown up by Spanish treachery. When
Secretary Long pleaded for patience, It exposed him In
a glaring indictment: "Long's Exoneration of Spain Nets
Senatorial Clique $20,000,000." That Is, it accused Sen-
ators of playing the market. Oil the same page a news-
story demanded a whole bank of headlines. " 'Send
Maine Away!' Begged a Stranger at Our Consulate —
Every Day for a Week a Mysterious Elderly Spaniard
Offered That Warning, But It Was Unheeded, for He
Was Deemed a Crank." It had the same Iteration as the
Journal. Thus on March 4 its headlines ran, "Torpedo
Blew Up the Maine, High Spanish Officer Says — If His
Story Is True, It Verifies the World Correspondent's
Earliest News." On March 12 It announced: "Full and
Convincing Proof That the Maine Was Destroyed Ex-
actly as the World Exclusively and Authoritatively Told
Three Days After the Disaster."
The Journal and JVorld were the two New York news-
papers then preeminent for their Illustrations. The
former specialized In pictures of "How the Maine Actu-
ally Looks, Wrecked by Spanish Treachery." It had
drawings of dead bodies, "vultures hovering over their
grim feast"; piles of coffins; divers among the tangled
wreckage; starving reconcentrados; the VIzcaya In New
York harbor; Mayor Van Wyck Insulting the VIzcaya's
captain at City Hall; big guns being mounted on Ameri-
can forts; of troops drilling; and a "frenzy on the stock
exchange, realizing the Imminence of war." More than
a month before war was declared the Journal plastered
Its first page with an announcement of its "War Fleet,
Correspondents, and Artists," these including Julian
Hawthorne, James Creelman, Alfred Henry Lewis, and
Frederic Remington. The World was notable for car-
toons, the prevailing theme of which was Uncle Sam
kicking Spain out of Cuba into the Atlantic.
SPANISH WAR AND SILVER 511
Mr. Godkln's opinion of the newspaper jingoes was
only a little more savage than that of many other sober
men. When a Journal reporter just before war began
fabricated an interview with Roosevelt, then Assistant
Secretary of the Navy, the latter seized the opportunity
for a frank statement of his estimate of the paper. When
the same sheet asked ex-President Cleveland to serve on
a committee to erect a monument to the Maine heroes,
Mr. Cleveland wired back: "I decline to allow my sor-
row for those who died on the Maine to be perverted to
an advertising scheme for the New York Journal/* God-
kin was brutally frank. "A yellow journal office is prob-
ably the nearest approach, in atmosphere, to hell, existing
in any Christian state," he wrote. This press he deemed
a totally irresponsible force, without the restraint of con-
science, law, or the police. It treated war, he said, as a
prize fight, and begat in hundreds of thousands of the
class which enjoys prize-fights an eager desire to read
about it. "These hundreds of thousands write to their
Congressmen clamoring for war, as the Romans used to
clamor for panem et circenses, and as the timid and quiet
are generally attending only too closely to their business,
the Congressman concludes that if he, too, does not shout
for war, he will lose his seat. . . . Our cheap press to-day
speaks in tones never before heard out of Paris. It urges
upon ignorant people schemes more savage, disregard of
either policy, or justice, or experience more complete, than
the modern world has witnessed since the French Revo-
lution."
It was with reference to such journalism that the
Times, which this year went to the one-cent basis of the
JVorld and Journal, spoke of itself as a paper which does
not "soil the breakfast table." Godkin argued that the
public, by purchasing the yellow sheets, made itself the
accomplice of their jingo editors. The Journal struck
back at him and Bennett of the Herald. It was not sur-
prised, it said, by the abuse it received from editors who
either lived in Europe, or, being native there, came to this
country too late in life to absorb the spirit of American
512 THE EVENING POST
institutions; these men were unfitted to gauge the trend
and force of national opinion, and were un-American in
their instincts, while the Journal, with its million buyers a
day, was an American paper for the American people.
Until just before the declaration of war, Godkin tried
to cling to his faith in McKinley's steadfastness. On
April 5 he wrote : "He has, with a firmness for which we
confess we did not give him credit, retained the Cuban
matter in his own hands, and has made no concealment of
his belief that he could settle it, if left alone, by peaceful
methods." The editor believed that America could justly
demand of Spain an immediate armistice, relief of the
reconcentrados, and an offer of genuine autonomy to the
Cubans. It appeared in the early days of April that
Premier Sagasta was willing to concede as much, and
Godkin thought this offered a bridge to assured peace.
Why not accept the Spanish Ministry's concessions, he
wrote April 9 and later, and give a fair trial to their
autonomy? What reason had we to make a further de-
mand for the withdrawal of all Spanish troops? And if
we did demand it, how could we expect Spain to accede
until the Cortes met on April 25, since only the Cortes
had power to surrender Spanish territory? It was true
that the Cubans refused an armistice and autonomy. But,
argued Godkin, they did so only because they counted on
dragging us into the war upon the margin between auton-
omy and absolute independence. And what a pitiful mar-
gin that was! No one believed that the Cubans were
ready for absolute independence, for like the Central
American peoples, they would be turbulent and unstable,
requiring constant oversight. Then why not leave them
under the Spanish flag so long as they had the healthy
substance, even though not the name, of freedom?
Mr. Godkin did not give up hope even when, on April
II, McKinley sent Congress his war message, asking that
he be empowered to use the armed forces of the United
States "to secure a full and final termination of hostilities
between the Government of Spain and the people of
Cuba." He took the view that this was not equivalent to
SPANISH WAR AND SILVER 513
a use of our armed forces against Spain — that it meant
only that McKinley was going to insist upon a truce. The
Evening Post seized upon the fact that McKinley had
advised against recognition of the Cuban Republic, and
upon his hopeful words regarding Queen Isabel's procla-
mation of an armistice, as proof that the door to peace
was not closed. In fact, many sober men hoped for days
after this message that McKinley would somehow avert
a collision with Spain. Howells says that on one of these
warm April nights he walked down the street with God-
kin, the two talking gloomily of the outlook, and that as
they parted, Godkin shook off his fears with a quick, ''O,
well, there isn't going to be any war, after all." But Spain
at once severed diplomatic relations, the United States
declared a blockade of Cuba, and the die was cast. A
few mornings after Godkin's talk with Howells, the jingo
press gloated over the capture of a poor little Spanish
schooner, whose captain and owner wept to find his all
confiscated.
Not until later was it revealed that when he sent his
war message to Congress, President McKinley failed to
inform it of the full scope and definiteness of the Spanish
concessions regarding Cuba. Of this failure two views
may be taken. One is that he knew no reliance could be
placed upon Spain's good faith, and that she could not
end the intolerable state of affairs in the island if she tried.
The other is that McKinley was guilty of duplicity all
along; that he had played a waiting game until prepara-
tions could be made for war and the public mind accus-
tomed to it, and then willingly let the advocates of inter-
vention have their way. Godkin and the Post took the
second view, and in later days spoke of the President's
conduct in this crisis with scorn.
Yet the newspaper, applauded though it was in its prot-
estant attitude by the intellectual group which Howells,
Carl Schurz, Charles Eliot Norton, and Charles Francis
Adams represented, rallied to support the war. Since it
had come, it hoped it would be short and decisive. Before
514 THE EVENING POST
hostilities began, it had said much regarding the unpre-
paredness of the nation, and the certainty of graft in con-
ducting the conflict. But now it urged the energetic prose-
cution of the contest, praised the martial ardor of Ameri-
can youth, and commended the military and naval policies
of the Administration. Mr. Godkin had no petty rancor
and no lack of patriotism. Other journals were lavish of
faultfinding, but no criticism found its way into the Eve^
ning Post until practically all fighting was ended.
To the series of victories which began with Dewey's
exploit at Manila, the Post rose with fitting enthusiasm.
It called the Santiago campaign, when it ended on July 15,
a brilliant impromptu. Who would have thought two
months earlier that a triumph of such magnitude would so
soon be won? Then the flower of the Spanish navy had
lain in the harbor, and a Spanish force estimated at
20,000 to 35,000 held the well-fortified city; but in less
than two months the fleet had been destroyed, the city
taken, and the army made prisoners, all with a loss of less
than 300 American lives. The Post paid a due tribute to
the valor of American fighting men :
Lieut. Hobson deprecated the cheers that welcomed him back
to the American lines. "Any of you would have done it." Very
likely. We know that practically every man on the fleet offered
to go with him when volunteers were called for. Such high ap-
peals to bravery and duty command their own response. But the
men below — the engineers, exposed to death without being able
to strike a blow; the stokers, whose enemy is the cruel heat in
which they have to work — where does their heroism come in ? Of
course, in the same self-forgetful devotion to their duty which
marks some world-resounding deed of an officer like Hobson.
That was a frightful detail of the Spanish flight to ruin — the
officers having to stand over gunners and stokers with drawn pis-
tols to keep them to their task. Ships on which that was neces-
sary were evidently beaten in advance. Contrast the state of
things on the Oregon, in her long voyage against time from the
Pacific. Captain Clark reported that even the stokers worked
till they fainted in the fire-room, and then would fight to go back
as soon as they recovered consciousness. To hurry up coaling, the
officers threw ofi their coats and slaved like navvies. There we
SPANISH WAR AND SILVER 5^5
see the spirit of heroism pervading a ship from captain to coal-
heaver ; and it is that which makes the navy invincible.
Ill
As summer ended, however, and the cessation of fight-
ing gave the country an opportunity to ask Itself what
it should do with Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines,
the continuity of the Evening Post's policy became plain.
For one thing. It now felt able to state Its frank opinion
that the war had been criminally unnecessary. Gtn.
Woodford, our last Minister at Madrid, and Congress-
man Boutelle made speeches at a Boston dinner on Oct.
28 in which they both virtually said as much. In all its
references to the conflict after midsummer the paper made
clear its conviction that it was "due solely to the combina-
tion of a sensational and unscrupulous press with an
equally reckless and unscrupulous majority in Congress
and a weak executive in the White House." But the chief
energies of the Post were devoted to opposing the designs
of those who wanted to annex the Philippines and Cuba,
or at least the former. When the war was impending, it
had dreaded the loss in life and money much less than the
deterioration which might be produced in the national
fiber, and had predicted the possible transformation of
America Into an international swaggerer. Now Godkin
saw indisputable evidence that the European virus of im-
perialism, economic and political, was entering our veins.
"Manifest Destiny" was the argument used against the
Evening Post, Springfield Republican, Senators Hoar,
Hale, and Spooner, Carl Schurz, and the other leaders in
the struggle against annexations. What would you do
with the Philippines? they were asked. Since they were
in our hands, could we abandon them without thought of
their future? "As matters now stand," answered the
Evening Post on Oct. i, 1898, "having possession of
Manila, we should do what we could to make Spain give
the Philippines a better government or hand them over
to the lawful owners — the inhabitants." The whole
American theory of government was opposed to alien rule.
5i6 THE EVENING POST
We could never incorporate the Philippines in the Union
— this argument the Post had also used against annexing
Hawaii — and it was a total reversal of national policy to
acquire territory that could not be incorporated. Reply-
ing to the contention that the Filipinos might be unable to
erect a good government, the Post asked if New York
and Pennsylvania under Piatt and Quay had one.
The chief assertions of the Evening Post, some of them
since validated and some invalidated by time, are worth
noting seriatim. It feared that the cost of subjugating,
garrisoning and governing the Philippines would be
heavy. It pointed out that in the management of inferior
peoples — the negro slaves, Indians, Chinese — had lain
the source of our chief national troubles. Our Federal
authorities had always shown marked incapacity for gov-
erning such wards, as their "century of dishonor" in deal-
ing with the Indians, and wretched treatment of the freed-
men during Reconstruction proved. The American Gov-
ernment had been erected to provide for the welfare and
liberty of the American nation alone, and if we undertook
in a spirit of expansion to carry benefits to every mis-
governed race with which we came in accidental contact,
we would soon be in trouble in every part of the globe.
The Post believed that half the talk of Duty and Destiny
was raised by people on the make, who wanted their trade
to follow the flag. The name of the United States, it
asserted, had been great because it stood for peaceful
industry, contempt for the military adventures of Europe,
and the right of every separate people to liberty; its in-
fluence had furnished the chief hope for disarmament, and
now was it to be thrown away for the pride of possessing
"subjects" ? Above all, Godkin apprehended the effect of
expansion on our national character. The great question,
as Bishop Potter put it, was not what we should do with
the Philippines, but what the Philippines would do with us.
So intense was the Post's feeling that it virtually op-
posed Theodore Roosevelt when the fall of 1898 he ran
for the Governorship against the Tammany candidate
Van Wyck. Ordinarily, it would have supported him en-
SPANISH WAR AND SILVER 517
thuslastically in such a contest, but Roosevelt's annexa-
tionist speeches led it to declare that Tammany control
would be a local and temporary evil, while any encourage-
ment to imperialism would be national and irrevocable.
Early in 1899 the Posfs correspondents in Manila warned
it that, as one wrote, "the United States must make up
their minds either to fight for these islands or to give them
up." Just before the peace treaty, carrying annexation
of the islands, was ratified, occurred Aguinaldo's attempt
to rush the American lines at Manila. Godkin declared
that we had paid $20,000,000 simply for a right to con-
quer, adding bitterly :
We have apparently rushed into this business with as little
preparation or forethought as into the Cuban War. We got
hold of the notion that it would be a good thing to annex 1,200
islands at the other end of the world, simply because we won a
naval victory over a feeble Power in the harbor of one of them,
and because people like Griggs of New Jersey wanted some
"glory." We then went to work to buy i ,200 islands without any/\
knowledge of their extent, population, climate, production, or of
the feelings, wishes, or capacity of the inhabitants. We did not
even know their number. While in this state of ignorance, far
from trying to conciliate them, assure them of our good inten-
tions, disarm their suspicions of us — men of a different race, Ian- \
guage, and religion, of whom they had only recently heard — we I
issued one of the most contemptuous and insulting proclamations 1
a conqueror has ever issued, announcing to them that their most 1
hated and secular enemy had sold them to us, and that if they /
did not submit quietly to the sale we should kill them freely. ^
It was now impossible to advocate immediate and com-
plete evacuation, and during the spring of 1899 the Post
suggested another solution. It proposed that instead of
administering the islands as a possession, we content our-
selves with setting up a protectorate, allowing the Filipino
republic to function under our general oversight. The
islanders were willing to accept this, for they knew they
could not stand alone against the voracity of Europe. We
could send them schoolteachers, sanitary experts, mission-
aries, and government advisers, but we would not have
5i8 THE EVENING POST
to crush their spirit before we began helping them, and
would be their friends, not their conquerors. Godkin
was shocked by the lighthearted irresponsibility of the
annexationists. "The one thing which will prevent expan-
sion being a disgrace, is a permanent colonial civil serv-
ice," he wrote a friend, "but who is doing a thing or say-
ing a word about it?"
While the controversy over the Philippines was at its
hottest, in the spring of 1899, Mr. Godkin left for Eu-
rope, where he had spent every summer but one since
1 89 1. In 1897 he had received his D. C. L. at Oxford,
and in 1898 an honorary degree at Cambridge, but this
year the alarming state of his health was his sole reason
for sailing. The warnings of the doctors in Paris and
Vichy were so earnest that he resolved to give up his con-
nection with the Evening Post, His formal withdrawal
took place Jan. i, 1900, but though he was home in New
York by the beginning of the preceding October, he con-
tributed only advice and an "occasional roar," as Henry
James put it, to the Post thereafter. It was a depressing
moment for him to lay down his pen. The United States
seemed to have caught the infection of the Old World
fever that he feared. His native country was busy crush-
ing the Boer republics. The political condition of the
nation, the State, and the city, with Mark Hanna, Piatt
and Quigg, Croker and Sheehan at the height of their
power, was such as to make the editor feel that the forces
against which he had battled were too strong to defeat.
But as Charles Eliot Norton wrote him, he had earned
the right to leave the field. "When the work of this cen-
tury is summed up, what you have done for the good old
cause of civilization, the cause which is always defeated,
but always after defeat taking more advanced position
than before — what you have done for this cause will
count for much."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHARACTERISTICS OF A FIGHTING EDITOR: E. L. GODKIN
One essential qualification of a great editor, a master-
ful personality, was so distinctively possessed by Mr.
Godkin that it may be doubted whether any other Amer-
ican daily since the Civil War has been so much the ex-
pression of a single mind and character as the Evening!
Post from 1883 to 1899. The frequent statement that
he was an incomparable leader-writer, but not an all-
round journalist, has an element of truth, but is highly
misleading. The editorial page was wholly his own, for
he determined its policies, molded the ideas of his fellow-
editors, and by force of example gave several of them —
as a great editor always will — some characteristics of
his style. The news pages he accorded only distant over-
sight, and one of his city editors doubts whether he reg-
ularly read more than the first page and the page opposite
the editorials. Yet every cub reporter grasped Godkin's
clear-cut ideas of what a newspaper should be, and strove
to contribute his mite to the realization of the editor's
ideals. There was no other journal resembling It, and
its dignity, integrity, thoughtfulness, scholarly accuracy,
and pride of intellect were the reflection of Godkin's own
traits. We may say that while Godkin did not pay close
daily attention to any part of his journal save the edi-
torials, the news writers, the financial writers, the critics,
and the business department all paid close attention to
Mr. Godkin's views regarding their work; they would
no more have thought of standing counter to them than
of stepping in front of an Alpine avalanche.
The soul of the paper, its editorial page, was the
product of a morning editorial conference which in its
highly developed character Mr. Godkin was the first to
give New York journalism. Upon the Post of Bryant's
519
520 ' THE EVENING POST
day, and upon the Tribune under Greeley and his succes-
sive managing editors, consultation had been brief, and
the assignment of editorial topics hasty. The elder Ben-
nett had been wont to give Herald writers their subjects
for the day as so many orders. But the necessity of treat-
ing ten or twelve different editorial topics in each issue
of the Post after 1881, and Mr. Godkin's solicitude that
each topic be treated just right, made an elaborate con-
ference imperative. At about nine the editorial staff
gathered in a circle of chairs in Mr. Godkin's room,
having mastered the morning papers, and a businesslike
discussion filled forty minutes.
Every writer was encouraged to propose his own theme
for a paragraph or column editorial, and to speak freely
upon themes raised by others. But Mr. Godkin had a
merciless way with unsound or commonplace Ideas. When
some one started a subject, he would pounce upon him
with "What would you say about It?" and an intensely
searching glance. It was a trying moment. If the junior
editor had nothing worth while to say, Godkin would cut
across his flounderlngs with "O, there's nothing In that,"
or "We said that the other day," or "O, everybody sees
that" — emphasizing the statement with a sharp gesture
or a swing in his chair. "Sometimes, after an interested
attention for a few seconds," writes Mr. Bishop, "a
quick, searching question would be put that went through
the subject like a knife through a toy balloon, leaving
complete and utter collapse."
However, proportionately great was the reward of
the fortunate man who had an original idea, or a new
way of presenting an old one. Mr. Godkin's eye would
kindle with interest, he would lean forward alertly, and
catching up the theme, he would perhaps begin to enlarge
it by ideas of his own, search Its depths with penetrating
inquiries, and reveal such possibilities In It that the
original speaker had the feeling of having stumbled over
a concealed diamond. If the chief, as was usually the
fact, was provided with his own topic for the day, the
proposer bore his discovery off in triumph. If not, he
A FIGHTING EDITOR 521
sometimes had to surrender it. "The chances were ten
to the dozen," says Mr. Bishop, "that Mr. Godkin would
become so delighted with the development of the subject,
so intoxicated with the intellectual pleasures of the treat-
ment, that he would say, with a serene smile of perfect
enjoyment, Til write on that.' "
The editorial page represented work done not leisurely,
but under the highest pressure. Articles of twelve hun-
dred words, dealing informatively, thoughtfully, and in
compressed style with some subject perhaps quite un-
expected until that morning, had to be completed in
about an hour and three-quarters. Taken, often without
change, into the Nation, they withstood the test of sub-
mission to the most scholarly and exacting audience in
America. The pace was not for the muddleheaded. But
no one on the staff could hope to write quite like Mr. God-
kin — with his wealth of ideas, ability to see a dozen rela-
tionships in a subject where the ordinary man saw one,
and concise, pithy, and graphic style. Lowell told him,
"You always say what I would have said — if I had only
thought of it." In the correction of proofs the whole staff
was expected to join. Godkin was far from being the
most approachable of editors, but to any suggestion that
there was a defect in his idea or expression he turned a
ready ear. Indeed, if a fellow-editor believed that a
phrase or sentence was obscure, he would usually alter it
whether he agreed or not, arguing that what one man in
the office found faulty might seem so to a large body out-
side. The editorial page which thus appeared in its final
form at two o'clock was an embodiment of the wisdom of
the whole editorial group, Mr. Godkin dominating.
Brusque and cold though he often seemed to those who
did not know him well, Godkin to the other editors was
essentially a lovable man. He exacted a high standard
of performance, his temper was highly mercurial, he was
often abrupt in manner; but the recollection of his asso-
ciates is that he gave the office an atmosphere of geniality.
He delighted in jest. He would repeat with great gusto
the story that staff meetings opened with a distribution
-^
522 THE EVENING POST
of Cobden Club gold, or — it was said after the Venezuela
episode — with a singing of "God Save the Queen." His
fun was of an intellectual kind, but he never failed to find
subjects for it. Frequently the editorial conference would
break up in a gale of merriment. Norton once wrote
him, when the Nation* s troubles were giving him sleepless
nights, that he would rather see the weekly perish than
have its editor lose his jocularity, and Godkin wrote back:
"I shall keep my laugh. Don't be afraid." Indeed, his
letters contain any number of references to laughter, and
with intimates it was often uproarious. He told Howells
that his youth was "harrowed with laughter." When
Howells worked beside him for three months in the
Nation office the novelist-to-be found that "we were of a
like temperament in the willingness to laugh and make
laugh." If anything in the day's news particularly apt
for Howells's special department turned up, they would
talk it over, "and he did not mind turning away from
his own manuscript and listening to what I had written,
if the subject had offered any chance for fun. Then his
laugh, his Irish laugh, hailed my luck with it, or his honest
English misgiving expressed itself in a criticism which I
had to own just."
Men who read Godkin's caustic denunciation of some
wrong-doer, who admired the keen thrust with which he
punctured a bit of hypocrisy, sometimes assumed that he
was sour and censorious. Such readers failed to realize
that he had a dual nature; that what excited his wrath
and scorn often excited his risibilities also. "First would
come the savage characterization, then the peal of laugh-
ter," writes Mr. Ogden. He had a tongue for humorous
phrases, an eye for humorous images, and a marked love
for comic exaggeration. After his retirement in 1899,
when some people were chattering about his pessimism,
the weekly articles he contributed for a time over his in-
itials to the Evening Post abounded in amusing sentences
and vivacious anecdotes. Reviewing his labors for civil
service reform, he recalled how when he. Congressman
Jenckes, and Henry Villard held the first meeting on the
A FIGHTING EDITOR 523
subject In New York, he was appointed to draft resolu-
tions; that the proposer was unable to read his hasty
handwriting; and that "more unhappily still, when I was
asked to take his place, I could not read It either!"
Writing of McKinley's amateur statesmanship, he told
of the youth who, asked whether he could play the piano,
replied that "he did not know, for he had never tried."
Discussing Capt. Mahan's treatment of war as possessing
benefits as well as evils, he was reminded of the French
Deputy who did not want to lose the anarchist votes
scattered through his district: "My friends," he said,
"there Is a great deal of good In anarchy; only we must
not abuse it." Incessant bits like these reveal the fun-
loving nature, the overflowing spirits, of the man.
Mr. Godkln's marked social proclivities enlarged his
Influence and enriched his writing. The readiness with
which, on coming to America, he made friends among the
most distinguished men of Cambridge, Boston, and New
York was only less remarkable than the long Intimacy he
enjoyed with some of the finest minds of England and this
country — with Lowell and Norton, Bryce and Henry
James, Gladstone and Parkman, McKIm and Olmsted.
He was a genial host, a witty, diverting, and brIUiant
guest. Mr. Ogden gives an Instance of the way in which
his personal charm and full mind surprised some who
thought of him as a narrow, savage moralist of the edi-
torial page. At the Century Club one night he was seated
at the long dinner table with a man he knew and another
who was a stranger. The latter had never seen Mr.
Godkin but had taken a violent dislike to his writings.
Without an introduction, the talk was free and genial,
and Godkin was in his happiest vein. When the editor
had left the room, the stranger Inquired as to his identity.
"Is that Mr. Godkin?" he exclaimed in surprise. "Then
I'll never say another word against him as long as I live."
Godkin worked with great intensity — as he himself once
said, "almost dangerously hard." His gusto and en-
thusiasm, especially in times of crisis like a Presidential or
Tammany campaign, gave him an extraordinary absorp-
524 THE EVENING POST
tion in his work. Yet he found time to see and talk with
a surprising number of people worth seeing — authors,
reformers, politicians, college professors, the best lawyers
of the city, and many more.
A journal of twenty-two days of his life (November,
1870) shows what a multiplicity of public meetings, din-
ners, calls, and club evenings interspersed his toil. A half
dozen times he dined or breakfasted out or entertained
to dinner, thus seeing among others Bryant, Ripley,
Charles Loring Brace, and H. M. Field. He was also
at the public dinner of the Mercantile Library Associa-
tion, where he spoke for the press, and of the Free
Traders at Delmonico's where he saw A. T. Stewart,
Peter Cooper, H. C. Potter, Stewart L. Woodford, Gen.
McDowell, and David A. Wells. He went to a civil
service meeting at Yale, where there was a tea-party in
his honor, and not only made a speech but "met all the
big-bugs." Once he lunched with Henry and Charles
Francis Adams. He records going in torrents of rain
to a night meeting of revenue reformers, while he at-
tended a lecture by A. J. Mundella, and chatted there
with G. W. Curtis. Repeatedly he speaks of being at the
Century Club and seeing a long list of acquaintances —
Lord Walter Campbell, Judge Daly, Gen. Howard, Wil-
liam E. Dodge, H. C. Potter, and Cyrus Field. He called
upon Horace White, then in the city from Chicago, and
at the Nation office received calls from Carl Schurz and
Schuyler Colfax, the latter coming while he was out. This
was nearly a dozen years before he became one of the
editors of the Evening Post, but he always maintained a
similar activity. What it meant to his editorial work is
self-evident. As one of his junior editors, Mr. Bishop,
says, all was grist to his mill. "A casual quip in conversa-
tion, the latest good story, a sentence from a new book,
a fresh bit of political slang — all these found lodgment
in his mind, and just at the proper place they would ap-
pear in his writing."
Godkin had little patience for mere office routine, and
as he grew older took advantage of the liberty which an
A FIGHTING EDITOR 525
evening paper often gives its editor for leaving early.
His dislike for bores played a large part in this. As he
humorously said, he saw nobody before one, and at one
he went home. Of his refusal to tolerate callers who
abused his time and temper, there are some amusing
stories. A dull or offensive man would be ushered in, the
editor would endure him for a while, and then upon the
heels of a muffled explosion, the caller would emerge,
red with confusion and anger, and hurriedly make for the
elevator. Mr. H. J. Wright, as city editor, once intro-
duced a gentleman of prominence, with an extensive
knowledge of municipal affairs. After a long and inter-
esting chat, Godkin asked, ''How is it I never met such a
well-informed man before ?" A few days later the gentle-
man called again, seated himself with assurance in Mr.
Godkin's room, and began to repeat himself, a thing the
editor abominated. Hearing a confusion of voices, Mr.
Wright hurried into the hall to find Godkin angrily
shooing the interrupter out of the building.
Mr. Godkin and Horace White gathered around them
an editorial staff of high ability. From the outset they
had the services of Arthur G. Sedgwick, who was assistant
editor from 1881 to 1885, and later not only contributed
irregularly at all times, but during one summer worked
in the office in Godkin's absence. He was a writer of
strong mental grasp and individuality of style, who
furnished editorials and book-reviews on an amazing
variety of topics, and had the knack of illuminating and
making interesting everything he touched. His education
as a lawyer — he had been co-editor with Oliver Wendell
Holmes, later Justice of the Supreme Court, of the Amer-
can Law Review — stood him in good stead in discussions
of government and politics, he wrote much on belles
lettres, and he was only less able than Godkin himself in
treating modes and manners. When Godkin was a be-
ginning editor he found it difficult, as he wrote Olmsted,
to get an associate "to do the work of gossiping agreeably
on manners, lager beer, etc., and who will bind himself
to do it, whether he feels like it or not." Sedgwick was
526 ' THE EVENING POST
just the man for the light, keen treatment of social topics.
He had a discerning eye and a quick sense of humor.
Many of his editorials were as good as the short essays
of the same type which Curtis and Howells contributed
to the Easy Chair of Harper' s, and had more than local
and temporary fame. For example, In March, 1883, he
wrote one on the dude which, reprinted all over the
country, did much to familiarize this London music-hall
term. It traced the lineage of the dude from the dandy,
fop, and swell; it carefully distinguished him from these
earlier types by his intense correctness, contrasting with
their display; It described his appearance in great detail;
it explained why he had arisen at just that moment; and
it closed with a grave warning to all dudes to be on guard
against the chief menace to their sober conservatism —
they must not wear white spats.
Joseph Bucklln Bishop, later well known as secretary
of the Isthmian Commission and authorized editor of
Roosevelt's letters, joined the Post the summer of 1883,
and remained with it until 1900, when he became chief
of the Globe's editorial staff. He also commanded a wide
range of subjects, though he dealt much more with politics
than Sedgwick, and he wrote with a great deal of God-
kin's own point. To Bishop belongs the credit for
originating the Voters' Directory In 1884, still a valued
campaign feature of the Post, while he had a principal
hand in the campaign biographies which were so effective
against Tammany. E. P. Clark was brought from the
Springfield Republican into the office when Sedgwick left
in the mid-eighties, and until after the end of the century
his Industrious hand was In constant evidence. He had
the most nearly colorless style of the staff, but his full
knowledge and accuracy in handling governmental and
economic topics were Invaluable.
The first contributions to the Post by Mr. Rollo Ogden
were printed in 188 1, and during the next three years he
wrote frequently from Mexico City. His assistance in-
creased after he came to New York in 1887, and In 1891
he became assistant editor and one of the pillars of the
A FIGHTING EDITOR 527
newspaper. Besides his attention to national and inter-
national politics, he gave the columns a much more liter-
ary flavor than they had had even when Sedgwick was
present. There were, in addition, several writers of a
briefer connection. Early in the eighties some articles
exposing the defects of the Tenth Census were furnished
by John C. Rose, a Baltimore attorney, and during a
number of summers he joined the office staff; a Federal
attorneyship, followed by elevation to the Federal bench,
ended his connection. David M. Means, another attorney
and a one-time professor at Middlebury College, helped
during many years for short periods. The editorial col-
umns were always open to experts in various fields who
wished to contribute. Among those who occasionally fur-
nished leaders in the eighties and nineties were future
college presidents like A. T. Hadley and E. J. James,
scientists like Simon Newcomb and A. F. Bandelier, and
scholars like H. H. Boyesen and Worthington C. Ford.
The rank and file of the city room regarded Mr. God-
kin as a remote deity, though he was on a familiar footing
with the managing editors. Learned and Linn, and of
frank intimacy with the city editor, H. J. Wright. "I
used to see him come into the office occasionally," writes
Norman Hapgood, "with very much the same emotion
that I might have now if I saw Lloyd George walk past
me." Godkin frequently rode up in the elevator with
reporters, but never spoke to them, and did not know
most of them by sight. Mr. Wright gives two examples
of his utter indifference to a performance of special merit
in the news columns. In the early days of the litigation
over the interstate commerce commission, there was a
hearing in New York involving intricate law points and
the rather obscure rights of the carrier, attended by some
of New York's most eminent lawyers, including Godkin's
friends Choate and James C. Carter. Norman Hapgood,
a new recruit, was assigned the difficult task of covering
it, and wrote a column and a half a day for the whole
week. When the hearing closed, Choate sent Godkin a
note congratulating him upon the Post's reports, and say-
528 THE EVENING POST
ing that few lawyers could have comprehended the argu-
ments so fully, and still fewer have summarized them so
well. "Upon this deserved encomium," says Mr. Wright,
"Godkin offered no comment, nor did he Inquire as to the
reporter's Identity." Again, a prominent New Yorker
wrote the editor praising a brief account of the descent
of an awe-inspiring thunderstorm, and recording his
pleasure that the news columns showed the same literary
qualities as the editorial page. Godkin had not read the
news story, did not read it, and did not ask for the
writer's name.
One element in this was Godkin's assumption that, as
a matter of course, the news pages would meet a high
standard; but a larger element was sheer Indifference to
the reporters. The editorial page was preeminently the
most important part of the newspaper to him. Absorbed
in the ideas he spread upon it, and naturally of an aloof
temperament, he was not interested in subordinates else-
where. That he was very far from being an unapprecia-
tlve man his editorial associates alone knew. They re-
ceived cordial notes of congratulation from him, all the
more prized because rare, for any specially meritorious
work; and whenever a literary review particularly struck
him, he made a point of asking for the writer's name.
Mr. Towse, the dramatic critic, recalls receiving formal
commendation from Godkin twice or thrice. One occa-
sion was early in the eighties, when Henry Irving opened
in a Shakespearean role In Philadelphia. All the dramatic
critics were taken over by courtesy of the theater, enter-
tained in Philadelphia, and given seats at the perform-
ance; and most of them remained at a Philadelphia hotel
overnight. Mr. Towse returned to New York on a mid-
night train, took a cold bath, wrote a criticism of nearly
two columns, and visiting the office at dawn, had It put
into type. Proofs were ready when the editors arrived,
and Godkin was so pleased that he for once unbent and
sent an appreciative note.
Once in the nineties, Godkin even praised the reporters,
though not for anything they had written. It happened
A FIGHTING EDITOR 529
that a grand jury refused an Indictment in a political
case, under circumstances that pointed to collusion be-
tween several jurors and the accused politician. Godkin
gave utterance to these suspicions, showed that several
jurymen were of evil character, and declared that one
had been the proprietor of a low dive in which a shooting
brawl had occurred. The juror promptly had him in-
dicted for criminal libel, and when counsel undertook the
case, they found that no legal proof existed of the alleged
brawl. In desperation, Godkin appealed to the head of
the Byrnes Detective Bureau, a personal friend, for help,
and Byrnes made a thorough investigation of the juror's
past, without avail. He urged the editor to compromise
the case, and offered his help for that purpose. Mean-
while, the Evening Post reporters had been ransacking
the loft of the old Mott Street police headquarters, where
station house blotters were stored. At the end of a seven
days' search, they found an entry telling of the shooting
affray. The entry was photographed, Godkin appeared
before another grand jury, waved the photograph in the
face of the district attorney, and was vindicated. "His
appreciation of the work done by the city staff was ex-
pressed that day with Irish enthusiasm," says Mr.
Wright.
On the other hand, Godkin was quick — even savagely
so — to descend upon any man whose writing did not
accord with his positive ideas regarding good journalism.
His severity In dealing with an error of fact, proportion,
or taste grew out of his rapt intensity In his own work.
He pushed blunderers out of his way less because he was
tactless — though he was often that — than because he was
engrossed in hewing to the line. Lincoln Steffens, one
of the best newspaper men New York ever had, happened
to write a simple account of a music teacher's death under
distressing circumstances, which appeared on the first
page. Godkin read it, leaped to the conclusion that It
smacked of the sensationalism he was always denouncing,
and declared that Steffens ought to be instantly dismissed.
Mr. Wright protested, and the controversy brought in
530 THE EVENING POST
Mr. Garrison, who roundly asserted that the story was
not only permissible, but admirable — whereupon Godkin
yielded. Some remarkable work by Hapgood in report-
ing the meetings of the illiterate Board of Education at-
tracted Godkin's eye and editorial notice; but the one
message he sent Hapgood was that he wanted him to
confine himself to narration and description, avoiding
comment. New York has never had a more expert music
critic than Mr. Finck, but Godkin sometimes censured
him severely for what he thought intemperate writing.
Godkin would have been a greater journalist had he
taken a broad and human interest in other departments of
the newspaper than his own; and the Evening Post might
have had a different history. It would have been less
open to the reproach leveled against it, of being rather
a magazine than a newspaper. Its circulation, instead of
hovering uncertainly between 14,000 and 20,000, might
have become extensive. The stone wall that was kept
standing between editorial rooms and news rooms was
good for neither. Mr. Godkin's lack of broad cordiality
and interest was not felt by those in daily contact with
him, but it was often felt by those at the outer desks.
Any newspaper must suffer if departmental members
work as some did on the Post, to avoid censure and not
to gain praise, for in such work there can be no initiative.
There were employees who, in making decisions, would
take no chance of doing anything the editor would not
like, and were hence hostile to any innovation. ''What I
did not like and still resent somewhat," says Lincoln
Steffens, "is that he objected to individuality in report-
ing." The newspaper was made too much for Godkin,
too little for outside readers.
II
Yet Godkin's defects as a general journalist only throw
into clearer relief his distinction as a molder of opinion.
The Evening Post was quite enough of a newspaper to
be a vehicle for his editorial page, and for him that suf-
ficed. He had no wish to appeal directly to several hun-
A FIGHTING EDITOR 531
dred thousand subscribers, to reach the ear of the masses,
as Greeley had done. Nothing could have persuaded him
to write down to the level of education and intelligence
which a huge audience would have possessed. Editorial
utterances could be quoted to show that he thought a
daily was better when it appealed to comparatively small
and select groups. In 1889 he deplored the nation-wide
movement for reducing newspaper prices, and said that
the Times and Tribune had been better at four cents than
they were at two. Godkin spoke to the cultivated few — ^
to university scholars, authors, clergymen, lawyers,
physicians, and college graduates generally. Though at
the farthest remove from pedantry or stiffness, his writ-
ing, polished, allusive, with a keen wit or irony playing
across it, required a cultured understanding for its full
appreciation. Addressing himself to this narrow con-
stituency, he had an influence easily the greatest of its
kind in the history of our journalism.
Foremost among the qualities which gave him this
power, his friend of many years. Prof. A. V. Dicey,
placed his gift of appositeness, or instinctive discernment
of the question of the moment. He had this gift as clearly
as Greeley, or Cobbett. His editorial page was kept
constantly focussed upon the changing issues of the time.
Godkin had no desire to be a voice crying in the wilder-
ness, and knew that his influence would be lost if he wrote
about international arbitration when men were thinking
of the tariff. Prof. Dicey failed to add that he often
helped powerfully toward putting an issue in the fore-
ground. In 1890 he made Tammany a burning public
question months before the city campaign; the Post was
the first paper to show, in the early nineties, that a con-
test between jingoes and lovers of peace was taking
shape; and he insisted that the free silver battle must be
fought out when many Republican politicians were sneak-
ing off the field. He knew how the public mind was mov-
ing before the public did. Supplementary to his gift
for appositeness was his great skill in reiteration. No
small part of the power of the Evening Post and Nation
532 THE EVENING POST
was simply a powef of attrition. Once convinced of the
justice of a position, he was always, though with unfail-
ing originality and freshness, harping upon it. This, of
course, was one of the Post's irritating qualities for those
who disagreed.
To the treatment of all subjects he brought a compre-
hensive and cosmopolitan knowledge of the world. He
knew more than any other American editor about Europe
because his personal knowledge of Europe ranged from
Belfast, where he had been educated, to the Bosporus.
He had lived in Paris, and written a youthful history of
Hungary; when Bryce edited the Liberal Party's "Hand-
book of Home Rule," he was the only writer allotted two
articles in it; he had many correspondents abroad, and
in his later years spent long periods there. In this
country he had seen much of ante-bellum and post-bellum
society. Though a constant student, he learned only less
from his intercourse with men of distinction, from Boston
to Washington, than from books. His acquisitions re-
garding government, international affairs, politics, eco-
nomics, and law gave him a clear advantage over even
journalists like John Hay and Whitelaw Reid. On the
other hand, he was handicapped by knowing compara-
tively little of the great common people, the unintellectual
workers, from whose ranks Greeley, Bennett, and Ray-
mond sprang. His Irish humor and sociability gave him
some friends among them, but only a few.
Of his style it is easy to form a misapprehension. It
was incisive, graphic, and pithy. But at all times it was
simple, without the least straining for effect; he indulged
in no rhetoric, he did not excel in epigram, as did Dana,
and he had no desire to be brilliant in the sense of merely
clever. It is true that one can easily find epigrams and
witty flashes. On one occasion of much waving of the
bloody shirt, he spoke of the rumors that there would be
another war between North and South, the former led by
Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan, the latter by Tom, Dick,
and Harry. "There are reports from Washington," he
wrote the fall of 1898, "that Hanna has told Duty to tell
A FIGHTING EDITOR 533
Destiny to tell the President to keep the Philippines. We
doubt it. We believe Destiny will lie low and say nothing
till after election." He could condense an editorial into
a single sentence. When Henry George, an ardent advo-
cate of the confiscation of landed property, traveled in
Ireland in the eighties, Godkin wrote : ''A spark is in it-
self a harmless, pretty, and even useful thing, but a spark
in a powder magazine is mischief in its most malignant
form." But the prevailing tone of his writings has been
well said to be that "of an accomplished gentleman con-
versing with a set of intimates at his club." The thought-
ful, neatly-put flow of argument or exposition was con-
stantly lighted up by humor, and often varied by irony
or invective.
The humor was always spontaneous, and could be
either genial or scorching. He had a remarkable faculty
for humorous imagery. It was the most natural thing
in the world for him to compare the Tammany panic over
the Evening Post biographies with the introduction of a
ferret into a rat cellar. Sometimes the image was
elaborate. Thus, to show the folly of saddling the Presi-
dent with the appointment of thousands of postmasters,
he wrote of "The President as Sheik," comparing him
with the Arab chief who sat under the big tree outside the
city gate, ordering the bazaar thief to jail, hearing what
the widow said of the knavish baker, and giving the good
public official a robe of honor. When Cleveland's friends
explained his Venezuela message by the theory that he
was forestalling a warlike message by Congress, Godkin
remarked: "Foreseeing that Congress would shortly get
drunk, he determined by way of cure to anticipate their
bout by one of his own, feeling that his own recovery
would be speedier and less costly than theirs. But the
result was that they joined in his carouse, and they both
went to work to smash the national furniture and
crockery."
Of his unequalled gift for compressing a homily into a
humorous or ironical paragraph two examples will suf-
fice, both written with typical gusto :
534 THE EVENING POST
The scenes attending the burial of the late Jesse James on
Thursday, at Kearney, Mo., were very affecting. Crowds of
people flocked together from all parts of the State to get a last
sight of the dead bandit, who had done so much to enable them
to lead what they call in Boston **fuH" lives. Mrs. Samuels,
Jesse's rriother, was on the ground early, and talked without
reserve to everyone. Her conversation naturally, under the cir-
cumstances, was colored with deep religious feeling, and she said
to a reporter, who in his shy way ventured to express his sym-
pathy with her bereavement, "I knew it had to come ; but my dear
boy Jesse is better off in heaven today than he would be here with
us" — a sentiment from which no one will be likely to dissent.
The officiating clergyman with much tact avoided dwelling on the
life and character of the deceased, and improved the occasion by
enlarging upon Jesse's chance of future improvement in Paradise,
in a manner that would probably have struck Mr. James himself
as rather mawkish. The widespread belief in the West that he
has gone straight to heaven is a touching indication of the general
softening of religious doctrines. (April, 1882.)
The anarchists had a picnic on Sunday at Weehawken Heights
. . . An entrance fee of 25 cents was required to gain admission to
the picnic. A practical anarchist came along and attempted to
enter without paying the fee. Some accounts say that he was a
policeman in citizens' clothes, but this is immaterial from the
anarchists' point of view, however important it may be in a
Jersey court of justice. True anarchy required that the man
should enter without paying, especially if there was any regula-
tion requiring pay. Taking toll at the gate is only one of the
forms of law and order which anarchy rails at and seeks to
abolish. . . . The gatekeeper called for help and some of his
minions came forward w^ith pickets hastily torn from the fence,
and began beating the practical man over the head. Then the
crowd outside began to throw stones at the crowd inside, and the
latter retorted in kind. A few pistols were fired, and one boy
was shot through the hand. The meeting was a great success in
the way of promoting practical anarchy, the rioting being pro-
tracted to a late hour in the afternoon. Anarchy, like charity,
should always begin at home. (June, 1887.)
As these paragraphs suggest, Godkin was a master of
that two-edged editorial weapon, irony, which in clumsy
hands may mortally wound the user. But his most superb
A FIGHTING EDITOR 535
writing was that In which he delivered a straightforward
attack upon some evil Institution or person. His Irish
sense for epithet enabled him to pierce the hide of the
toughest pachyderms In Tammany; his caustic character-
ization could make an ordinary opponent wither up like
a leaf touched with vitriol. One of his younger associates
once found a man of prominence sick In bed from the pain
and mortification an attack by Godkin had given him.
When Don Piatt asked the elder Bowles to define the
essential qualities of an editor, the latter replied, "Brains
and ugliness," meaning by the last word love of combat.
Godkin had a truly Celtic zest for battle. Mr. Bishop
declares that nothing Interested him more than what he
called ''journalistic rows." Great was his delight, for
example, when the Times and Sun clashed over an ex-
ploring expedition the former sent to Alaska, the Sun
remarking that it was appropriate to name a certain
river after Editor Jones of the Times because it was
preternaturally shallow and muddy, and discolored the
sea for miles from its mouth, and the Times attacking
Dana for "the calculated malice of splenetic age." God-
kin had an irresistible desire to mingle in such shindies.
Once in, he would read all the harsh criticism offered of
him, and fairly radiating his pleasure, would say : "What
a delightful lot they are ! We must stir them up again I"
His gusto in attacking Tammany was evident to every
reader. In each Presidential election he carried the war
into the enemy's country with a rush, and printed three
editorials attacking the other candidate to every one ad-
vocating his own. On one of his return trips from Europe
he and the other passengers of the Normanna were held
in quarantine because of a cholera scare and finally car-
ried down to Fire Island for a prolonged stay under con-
ditions of great discomfort. His letters to the Evening
Post were delightfully scorching, he kept up the attack
till the quarantine officers were panic-stricken, and he
demolished their last defense in an article In the North
American Review that is a masterpiece of destructiveness.
Godkin was at pains to state his belief that attacks
536 THE EVENING POST
upon any evil should be as concrete and personal as pos-
sible. As he said, there was no point in writing flowery
descriptions of the Upright Judge, or indignant denuncia-
tions of Judicial Corruption. The proper course was
to show by book and chapter the misdeeds or incompe-
tence of Tammany judges like Maynard, Barnard, and
Cardozo, and chase them from the bench. For one per-
son Interested In an assault on poor quarantine regula-
tions, -ten would be Interested in an assault on Dr. Jenkins,
the quarantine head. Godkin had his own Ananias Club.
His attacks on the Knights of Labor always included some
hearty thrusts at their chief, Powderly. His hatred of
the pensions grabbing led him to make a close investiga-
tion of the record of the most notorious grabber of all,
Corporal Tanner, the man who said, "God help the
Surplus!" when he became Pensions Commissioner. The
editor took prodigious pleasure In exposing Tanner as a
noisy fellow who had lost his leg from a stray shot while,
a straggler from his regiment, he was lying under an
apple tree reading In what he thought a safe place.
Godkin was well aware that both his humor and his
belligerency sometimes carried him beyond the mark.
More than once he assigned a topic to a subordinate,
saying, 'Td do it, but I don't trust my discretion." In
the heat of the Blaine campaign he wrote a paragraph
stating a charge that was quite unfounded, and went
home; luckily his associates saw It early, recognized that
It would damage their cause, and substituted another
before the forms closed. Next day Godkin was effusive
In his gratitude. It is recalled that once the editorial
staff objected stubbornly to part of one of his editorials,
and after protracted argument, he consented to delete It.
When the next edition appeared with the offending
passage still there, he was excited and furious, and called
the foreman of the composing room down to explain why
his orders for killing it had not been obeyed. The fore-
man protested that he had received no such orders. Know-
ing associates at once went to Mr. Godkin's desk, and
found that he had written them out and absently tossed
A FIGHTING EDITOR 537
them Into the waste basket. But Godkln's occasional
excesses of temper were the defect of a rare virtue. A
capacity for righteous anger like his Is all too uncommon
in journalism, the pulpit, or public life generally. Roose-
velt never forgave Godkin for the unvarying contempt
and bitterness, the unwearied bluntness of accusation,
with which he wrote of Quay; but who that knows what
Quay was would say that the editor showed a jot too
much harshness?
Godkin was reared In the faith of Manchester Liber-
alism, and his main principles were of that school to the
end. At his college (Queens', Belfast), he tells us, "John
Stuart Mill was our prophet, and Grote and Bentham
were our daily food. In fact, the late Neilson Hancock,
who was our professor of political economy and juris-
prudence, made Bentham his textbook. ... I and my
friends were filled with the teachings of the laissez-faire
school and had no doubt that its recent triumph in the
abolition of the Corn Laws was sure to lead to wider
ones in other countries."
When he came to America, he brought with him all the
rooted opposition of the Manchester school to protection
and state subsidy. He shared not only Mill's and Cob-
den's belief in free trade, but their detestation of war,
reenforced by his own Crimean experiences. Like Mill,
he was a warm advocate of colonial autonomy and the
general spread of political freedom. In his last years,
he declared that he had always believed "that the Irish
people should learn self-government in the way In which
the English have learned it, and the Americans have
learned It; in which, only, any race can learn it — by prac-
ticing it." He was long a believer in minority or propor-
tional representation, naming It in 1870 as one of the
three great objects of the Nation. Another of these ob-
jects, civil service reform, he took up just after the Civil
War, struck by the contrast between our corrupt and in-
competent administrative system and the efficient, experi-
enced British civil service. The introduction of the
Australian ballot, the enactment of better election laws,
53S THE EVENING POST
the reform of municipal government, were prominently
pushed forward by Godkln. He thoroughly agreed with
the Manchester jealousy of government interference in
economic and industrial affairs, holding that unless re-
quired by some great and general good, it was a certain
evil.
These were Godkin's principles, and by principles he
always steered his course. Greeley often did not know
his own mind, Bennett and Dana had little regard for
principle, but Godkin always held fixed objects before
him.. A contemporary historian, Harry Thurston Peck, in
^'Twenty Years of the Republic," writes: "It is not too
much to say that nearly all the most important questions
of American pohtical history from 1881 to 1896 got their
first public hearing largely through the influence of Mr.
Godkin." That is an exaggeration, but an exaggeration
made possible by his tenacious championship of a dozen
causes at a time when general opinion was interested but
skeptical. To be sure, the ingrained nature of some of
his principal doctrines was a limitation. It prevented him
from being a powerfully original thinker in the field of
government and politics. He taught our intellectual pub-
lic lessons which he had learned from the more advanced
practice and thought of Great Britain, and far beyond
that he did not go. But this limitation can easily be ex-
aggerated. He was an omnivorous reader, his curiosity
In new ideas and movements was intense, and he had a
really open mind.
In most ways he kept quite abreast of the times, and
in some well ahead of it. He looked much farther than
the ordinary liberal into the relationship between power-
ful nations and the weaker or inferior peoples, for he per-
ceived the affinities between economic conquest and politi-
cal conquest. His editorials upon intervention In Egypt
in 1882 show that he had no patience with the view that
one government might bully another to protect the in-
vestments of its nationals. He did believe that British
intervention was justified upon other grounds, and always
maintained that Cromer's rule there, like English rule
A FIGHTING EDITOR 539
in India, was a boon to the native and the world. But in
Africa, Asia, and in Cuba, he was always angered by any
evidence that selfish interests — traders, coal concession-
aires, investors — were using a strong government as a
catspaw to menace or subvert a weak one.
His writings upon capitalism show a steady develop-
ment of ideas. He objected to demagoguish attacks upon
Capital, a word which he disliked, saying that if people
called it Savings they would have fewer misconceptions.
But he was no more inclined to defend abuses by capital
than abuses by labor. He argued for the creation of the
Interstate Commerce Commission in his first year with
the Post. He was more and more alarmed by the trusts,
both as instruments of economic oppression, and as dan-
gerous influences upon the government. He wanted evil
combinations sharply attacked and broken up — not "reg-
ulated" — to prevent monopoly, and in later years much
of his zeal in attacking the high tariff sprang from his
conviction that it and the trusts Were mutual supports.
No one inveighed more constantly than he against ill-
gotten wealth, or against the abuse of money power. His
editorial on the death of Peter Cooper, who used to boast
that he never made a dollar he could not take up to the
Great White Throne, was one of a long series of argu-
ments for a public sentiment that would distinguish be-
tween honest success and dishonest "success," between
Peter Cooper and Jay Gould. The chief peril to the re-
public, he wrote in 1886, was worship of wealth:
It is here that our greatest danger lies. The popular hero 'to-
day, whom our young men in cities most admire and would
soonest imitate, is neither the saint, the sage, the scholar, the
soldier, nor the statesman, but the successful stock-gambler.
Stocks and bonds are the commonest of our dinner-table topics.
The man we show with most pride to foreigners is the man who
has made most millions. Our wisest men are those who can
draw the biggest checks; and — what is worst of all — there is a
growing tendency to believe that everybody is entitled to what-
ever he can buy, from the Presidency down to a street-railroad
franchise.
540 THE EVENING POST
Godkin was a keen-eyed social observer, discussing
thoughtfully a multitude of topics affecting the daily life
and culture of the people. He did not believe in prohi-
bition, arguing throughout his editorship against the
Maine law. But he did recognize in the saloon an'
enormous evil, politically and socially, he wanted it les-
sened by high licenses, and utterances could be quoted
which suggest that he might ultimately have accepted
even prohibition as better than the saloon's continuance.
He disbelieved in woman suffrage for two principal rea-
sons, because he feared it would further debase the gov-
ernment of our large cities, and because the great ma-
jority of women in his day were indifferent to it. On
social abuses of all kinds he used the lash unsparingly.
His campaign against public spitting, upon grounds of
sanitation as well as cleanliness, was potent in abolishing
the spittoon. For years he kept up a vigorous effort to
shame the South out of its tolerant attitude toward homi-
cide. He had been shocked by this attitude when he
traveled in the South in 1856-57, and the war and Re-
construction had made it worse. His method was char-
acteristic. Every time one Southerner shot another be-
cause of a quarrel over a dog, or a rail fence, or a hasty
word — which was every few days — he wrote an editorial
paragraph recounting the circumstances, with ironic com-
ment. He dwelt upon the bloody details, the "gloom"
that pervaded the community, and the certainty that
nothing would be done to bring the murderer to trial.
For several years early in the eighties this campaign gave
the editorial page of the Post a decided mortuary flavor.
Part of the Southern press was enraged, declaring that
the Post was maliciously attempting to prevent emigra-
tion southward; but it got below the skin of the section
with salutary effect.
Certain of Godkin's utterances upon labor problems
show the unfortunate effect of part of his early training.
They had not only the fallacies of the laissez faire posi-
tion, but were harshly put. He had a way of speaking of
workmen, when they displeased hini) as ^'ignorant,'*
A FIGHTING EDITOR 541
*'Idle," "reckless," indicting them en masse. In 1887,
writing contemptuously of a strike "of coalheavers, long-
shoremen, and the like," he spoke of the men who respond
to labor agitators as "a large, passionate, ignorant, and
through their ignorance, very discontented and uncom-
fortable constituency." For years in the eighties, when
labor was struggling toward effective organization, he
declared that its agitators were producing a cowardice
among politicians, ministers, and philanthropists like that
the slavery leaders produced before the Civil War. He
was one of those who thought the early career of Prof.
Richard T. Ely dangerously incendiary. He repeatedly
denied that strikers had the right to post pickets around
an employer's premises. He denied them the right to
accuse an employer of paying an unjust wage, or taking
an undue share of profits, saying that a strike should be
regarded as "a simple failure of business men to agree
to a bargain" (May, 1886). Labor was guilty of many
crimes and abuses, from dynamiting to boycotts, in those
days. But it would be hard to find a more unfair state-
ment of the labor movement, 1 876-1 896, than Godkin
wrote in the latter year (Sept. 2) :
Labor as a ^'question" was twenty years ago new in America.
... It gradually grew in political and social importance. Pol-
iticians began to preach that employers were great rascals if they
did not allow laborers to stay in their service on their own terms.
They were backed up by a swarm of "ethical" economists and
clergymen all over the country, who found something hideously
wrong in the existing state of society, and proclaimed the obliga-
tion, not simply of the employer, but of the state and society, to
do all sorts of nice things for the laborer; to carry him about for
nothing, to pay him for his labor what he should judge to be
sufficient, to provide all sorts of comforts and luxuries for him at
the public expense, on what was called "broad public grounds."
This insanity raged for several years. It was preached from thou-
sands of pulpits. "Papers" were read on it at all sorts of clubs,
societies, and reunions, showing the wrongs done to the manual
laborer by everybody else. Under its influence Powderly and his
Knights of Labor grew into a great power. . . .
This particular "craze" lasted till the Chicago riots of 1893,
542 THE EVENING POST
and the appearance on the scene of Altgeld as the Governor of a
great State. People then saw the fruits of their teaching. Large
bodies of ignorant and thoughtless men had believed it and acted
on it. In order to settle a small dispute between a sleeping car
company and its men, they determined to suspend locomotion
throughout the business regions of a great nation. They believed
they were in the right. If the account given of labor by the clergy-
men and ethical economists were true, they had the right to do
what they were doing. For some days the government of the
United States seemed to be suspended. But when one courageous
man stepped to the front, and said this nonsense should cease, it
suddenly stopped. The sermons and "papers" and ethical economy
stopped too.
Godkin rejoiced when the Knights of Labor dis-
integrated, and said nothing in praise of the work it did
in clearing the ground for the A. F. of L., or in hastening
the eight-hour day, the abolition of contract labor, and
the establishment of labor bureaus. A similar want of
sympathy was evident in much he wrote of the farmers.
In fact, he imbibed with his British training a strong
consciousness of class, which made him speak of manual
workers and small tradesmen as inferiors. An editorial
deprecating a liberal education for children of the poor,
easily accessible in files of the Nation (Dec. 23, 1886)
is a curious example of his inability to understand the
American denial of any permanent class lines. As a
good liberal, he believed that labor must be strongly or-
ganized, but if he had any real feeling for it, it seldom
appeared. He was a philosophic democrat, but not a
practical democrat. His editorials, joined with certain
well-known personal traits — his great care in dress, his
fastidiousness in food, his intellectual aloofness — led
many to think him a snob; a term that was misleading,
for no one was less a respecter of persons. They in-
spired the well-known verses of McCready Sykes, be-
ginning :
Godkin the righteous, known of old,
Priest of the nation's moral health,
Within whose Post we daily read
The Gospel of the Rights of Wealth.
A FIGHTING EDITOR 543
In denying that Godkin was a pessimist, we must not
deny that he was sometimes atrabilious. Scattered
through his letters are remarks that indicate moods of
deep discouragement. "I am tired of having to be con-
tinually hopeful," he wrote after the election of 1897, and
again in 1899: ''Our present political condition is repulsive
to me." It was his business to be censorious — to make the
Nation, as Charles Dudley Warner said, "the weekly
judgment, day." But as Howells writes, practically he
was one of the most hopeful of men, for he was always
striving to make a bad world better. He deeply resented
the charge that the Evening Post was merely a destructive
critic, and used to challenge any one to cite an instance in
which it had exposed an evil without suggesting a remedy. ^ ""
The commotion following the death of Garfield brought
from him a notable expression of faith in our national
stability. He recalled that the same calamity had oc-
curred before, when the country was in the midst of the
greatest convulsion of the century, with a million troops
under arms, a colossal debt, and terrible problems await-
ing solution; that a stubborn, uneducated man had be-
come President, and for three years had quarreled vio-
lently with Congress; and yet that all had ended prosper-
ously. Mr. Bishop was surprised on election day, in 1884,
to see the calm serenity with which Godkin awaited the
result of the Blaine-Cleveland contest, but Godkin re-
marked, with intense conviction: "I have been sitting ]
here for twenty years and more, placing faith in the /
American people, and they have never gone back on me (
yet, and I do not believe they will now." He himself / ^f
used to laugh at the talk of his pessimism, remarking that \ oJ
when he lived in Cambridge, people said that he and \
Norton were accustomed to sit at night and talk until at \
about 2 a. m. the gloom would get so thick that all the I
dogs in town would start howling. — ^
In the reminiscences that death prevented him from
expanding, he made a brief survey of contemporary Amer-
ican civilization in a tone anything but discouraged. He
believed that in government the United States had lost
544 THE EVENING POST
ground. The people cared less about politics, were less
instructed regarding administration, and had allowed
themselves to become the tools of the bosses; while the
old race of great statesmen had died out. He also thought
that the press had ceased to have much influence on opin-
ion, and that the pulpit had become singularly demagogic.
On the other hand, he declared that the advance of higher
education, qualitatively and quantitatively, was without a
parallel in all previous world history. "And," he added,
"the progress of the nation generally in all the arts, ex-
cept that of government, in literature, in commerce, in
invention, is something unprecedented, and becomes daily
more astonishing."
As to the character and extent of Godkin's influence
there is no uncertainty. Exerted directly upon the leaders
of opinion, it was felt indirectly by the whole population.
All over the country he convinced isolated and outstanding
men, who in turn diffused his views throughout their own
communities. No man who once fell under the sway of
his powerful pen, even those whom he intensely irritated,
could quite shake it off. One eminent New Yorker was
T heard to call the Post "that pessimistic, malignant, and
malevolent sheet — which no good citizen ever goes to bed
without reading!" The thinking young men of the col-
leges, and many outside them, accepted his utterances as
an almost infallible guide. No public man was indifferent
to them. The Evening Post and Nation long exercised
a peculiar sway in newspaper oflfices from Maine to Cali-
fornia. Gov. David B. Hill remarked to a secretary
during the fight Godkin was waging against his machine :
"I don't care anything about the handful of Mugwumps
who read it in New York City. The trouble with the
damned sheet is that every editor in New York State
reads it!" It was a Western editor who said that only a
bold newspaper made up its mind on any new issue till it
saw what the Post had to say. "For years," a Baltimore
friend wrote Godkin in 1899, "I have noticed your edi-
torials reappearing unacknowledged, a little changed and
somewhat diluted, but still with their original integrity
A FIGHTING EDITOR 545
not entirely removed from them, in the columns of other
papers — a course of Po5/-and-water not equal to the
strong meat from which the decoction was made, but still
wholesome. . . ." Henry Holt wrote the editor on his
retirement that he had taught the country more than any
other man in it. The same tribute was paid him by Wil-
liam James: ''To my generation, his was certainly the
towering influence in all thought concerning public affairs,
and indirectly his influence has certainly been more per-
vasive than that of any other writer of the generation,
for he influenced other writers who never quoted him, and
determined the whole current of discussion."
Such verdicts, from such men, might be multiplied to
a wearisome length. The finest spirits of the time recog-
nized in Godkin, though they often disagreed with him,
though the disagreement might sometimes be violent, the
most inspiring force in American journalism.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
NEWS, LITERATURE, MUSIC, AND DRAMA, 1880-I9OO
From Godkln's utterances upon journalism a small
volume might easily be compiled. His ideal of a news-
paper was as much English as American, with a good deal
that was purely Godkinian superadded. He disliked
headlines, even when not garish, and valued the headline
merely as an aid to reference. He insisted upon absolute
accuracy. Not only did he believe, quite properly, that
comment had no place in a news story, but he thought any
attempt at literary effects out of place there — that in-
formation was the one essential. Recognizing that accu-
racy often requires expert knowledge, he always insisted
that this could be got by paying for it. Absolute integrity
in every department was of course presupposed. Murat
Halstead in 1889 told the Wisconsin Press Association
that he saw no objection if readers "should find out that
the advertiser occasionally dictates the editorials." "No
objection at all to that," rejoined Godkin; "the objection
is when they don't find it out."
During the eighties Dana and the Sun represented to
Godkin nearly all that was evil in New York journalism,
and the exchanges between the two editors were often
bitter. Neither appreciated the other's qualities. Every-
one remembers Mrs. Frederick P. Bellamy's explanation
of the depravity of New York: "What can you expect
~~^ of a city in which every morning the Stm makes vice at-
tractive, and every night the Post makes virtue odious?"
Dana found Godkin the one antagonist who could make
him wince, and struck back hard. He persisted in calling
the editor "Larry." He never tired of exaggerating the
Post's staidness. When it changed its form in 1887, he
wrote that it would now be dull in sixteen pages instead
of eight. After one of the East River bridges was
546
NEWS, LITERATURE, MUSIC, DRAMA 547
opened, he described the testing of the structure at length ;
how wagons of stone, trucks of metal, and ponderous
engines were trundled across It, and finally, as the supreme
burden, a cart bearing a copy of the Evening Post. When
S. J. Randall died, and the Post spoke of his corrupting
influence upon Congress, Dana seized the opportunity to
characterize Godkin as "a scurrilous editor known to the
police courts of this town as a libeler of the living, and
who Is known now as a defamer of the dead."
What Godkin principally objected to in the Sun, of
course, was Dana's cynical defense of evils and his opposi-<
tion to a long list of good causes. Supposedly a Demo-
crat, Dana conceived a violent and Irrational dislike of
Cleveland, did his best in 1884 to defeat him, and later
never missed an opportunity to attack him as the "Stuffed
Prophet" or ''Perpetual Candidate." Supposedly a friend
of decency In the city, for twenty years he was Tammany's
staunchest champion, a supporter In turn of Tweed's as-
sociates, of Boss Kelly, of Grant and Gllroy, and of
Croker. Standing for civil service reform In 1876, later
he attacked and ridiculed reform measures unmercifully.
Every attempt to Improve politics elicited a burst of de-
rision from him. The perversity of his course, its lack of
principle, Godkin repeatedly exposed in columns of ex-
tracts from the Sun headed "Semper Fidells."
But he objected In almost equal degree to the Sun*s
news columns — to the space they gave crime and scandal.
Dana used to say that whatever God allowed to happen
he would allow to be printed, and talked of giving a full
picture of society. How far this creed carried him, and
how caustically Godkin censured It, may be seen from
one E'y^wfw^Poj/ paragraph (Sept. 28, 1886) :
The first page of our enterprising contemporary, the Sun, to-
day was an interesting picture of American society. The first
column was devoted to the trial of a minister for immorality, to
differences between a man named Lynch and his wife, to a rape
in a vacant lot, and a suicide. The second was half given to a
fire and the death of a blind newsdealer, the other half to politics.
The third was given up to foreign news and politics, but half the
548 THE EVENING POST
fourth was taken up with murder in a buggy and the escape of
two convicts. The fifth was wholly devoted to a very paying
scandal about Lord Lonsdale and Miss Violet Cameron, and a
small item about another Lord Lonsdale and twenty-four chorus
girls. In the remaining two, we find the disappearance of one
Sniffers, a divorce, two pugilistic items, half a column of the horse-
whipping of a reporter by a girl, the discovery of her lover in
jail by Miss Miller, the arrest of a small swindler, and a few
other trifles. As a microcosm, the page is not often surpassed. . . .
As Godkin said, the news of the most sensational
papers gave ah essentially false picture of American so-
ciety. Any one who read it as a well-proportioned picture
of what was happening in New York would believe that
every evening about 10,000 betrayed servant girls, horse-
whipped faithless lovers, and the same number of drunken
husbands murdered wives in tenement houses; and that
the bulk of the population was daily occupied in getting
at the details of such cases, and wanted explanatory illus-
trations to help it, such as diagrams showing just where
the servant girl stood when she struck the first blow. In
a true picture, such incidents would get a few lines.
But when sensational news was obtained by inventing
it, or exaggerating small episodes, or heartless intrusion
into private affairs, Godkin's indignation was much
greater. His opinion of this phase of journalism was
precisely that which Howells expresses of Bartley Hub-
bard's unscrupulous news-gathering in "A Modern In-
stance." In June, 1886, he paid his respects to "those
delightful creatures who lurked behind fences and hid in
the bushes two weeks ago, watching the house" where
Cleveland was passing his honeymoon. More than one
New York journal at that time would fabricate interviews
with men its reporters could not reach. One remedy for
the current abuses, Godkin thought, lay in stringent en-
forcement of the laws for libel. In 1893 an invented
scandal about a Toronto lady and gentleman resulted in
the payment of $14,537 damages by three New York
papers, and Godkin declared that it was a public service
for injured persons thus to bring suit. On another occa-
RoLLO Ogden
Editor-in-Chief 1903-1920.
NEWS, LITERATURE, MUSIC, DRAMA 549
sion he wrote: "Some of the most highly paid laborers
of our time are lying newspaper reporters and correspond-
ents, men who make no pretense of telling the truth, and
would smile if you reproached them with not doing so."
In the nineties Godkin's distaste for the Sun's news was
forgotten in his more intense reprobation of the so-called
yellow press, the old World and Journal. He thought
that their sensational attention to crime and immorality
was shocking, that they were much more careless of truth
than the Sun, and that their pictures and cartoons showed
a new defect — the defect of puerility. They did go for
a time to startling lengths. "The note of the press to-day
which most needs changing is childishness," wrote God-
kin in May, 1896. "The pictures are childish; the intelli-
gence is mainly for boys and girls. . . . The observations
on public as distinguished from purely party affairs are
quite juvenile." When a number of city clubs and public
libraries excluded the World and Journal from their read-
ing rooms, Godkin applauded, holding that the new sen-
sationalism could be stopped only by a vigorous public
sentiment. He was deeply concerned, like many other
sober men, over the intellectual effect of the cheap, widely
read yellow sheets. They were making it impossible for
the masses to read anything very long on any subject, he
said, and to read anything, long or short, on any serious
subject. They fed the people brief thrillers about shoot-
ings and assaults, titbits of scandal, bogus interviews, and
comic aspects of every institution from Christianity down;
and when the attention grew jaded, they offered pictures
for tired minds. In this there was much truth, though the
history of the World shows what an enormous force for
good lay in the new journalism.
The sober news pages of the Evening Post were the
product of a small force — never in Godkin's day more
than a half-dozen full-time reporters. But it was a re-
markably efficient, well-managed force. During the nine-
ties in particular it reached a very high level of enterprise.
The managing editor from 1891 to the end of the decade
W4S William A. Linn, who had succeeded James E.
550 THE EVENING POST
Learned. Linn had been with the Tribune from 1868 to
1 87 1, and with the Post ever since, and had remarkable
knowledge of his craft. His city editor from 1892 to
1898 was H. J. Wright, who was born in Scotland, gradu-
ated at New York University, and had worked on the
Commercial Advertiser. These two found several capa-
ble men in the city room, added others, and infused an
unusual esprit de corps In them. Wright's vigor was in-
fectious; he showed, says Norman Hapgood, "a great
deal of tolerance, hard work, and enthusiasm, and a liking
for intelligences of many kinds around him."
The three most remarkable reporters of these years
were Lincoln Steffens, Norman Hapgood, and W. L.
RIardon, two of whom have made their mark In the
higher reaches of journalism. Riardon was the political
reporter. He had been trained for the Catholic priest-
hood, but weakness for drink and a talent for news-
writing had derailed him. He was a member of Tam-
many Hall, and invaluable in getting material for assaults
upon It. Yet his perfect accuracy and fairness shielded
him from any resentment in that quarter. "He has to
earn a living like the rest of us," Croker would say when-
ever a particularly biting story about Tammany appeared
in the Post. One of his merits was that he never failed
to bring home news; if there was nothing in the assign-
ment he went to cover, he would get a story as good' or
better somewhere else. Moreover, he never wrote him-
self out. On Friday, when a special column was often
needed for Saturday's enlarged paper, Riardon could al-
ways be counted on to have something worth while up his
sleeve.
Steffens, a young Callfornian, who had studied In Ger-
many and France, joined the staff on the recommendation
of Mr. Bishop in 1892, and after some special reporting
on rapid transit, was given a year In Wall Street at
the beginning of the panic. When first sent down there,
the regular Wall Street reporter being abroad, he asked
for references to three or four leading bankers. "Calling
on them," he tells us, "I explained the predicament of the
NEWS, LITERATURE, MUSIC, DRAMA 551
Post and my utter ignorance of finance and business. But
I said that, if they would coach me from day to day, I
would read up, study, work, and I promised in return for
the trouble I might put them to, I would report even the
most sensational happenings quietly and carefully. The
agreement was made; I took the job, and though that
had not been my purpose, the effect of the bankers' in-
terest in me was that we had many, many beats." Later
he was assigned to Police Headquarters at the height of
the excitement over the Lexow Inquiry. His work in
following the new Police Commission, of which Roosevelt
was chairman, was of peculiar value to the public. This
four-headed commission was always deadlocking. The
obstructiveness of one member was such that the Mayor
attempted his removal, but the Governor interfered to
prevent it. Steffens for the Post and Jacob Riis for the
Sun laid full reports of the Board's activities before the
public, and brought a great deal of public sentiment to
bear behind Roosevelt. Steffens was a born newspaper
man, sharply observant, vivid in description, full of
humor, and with a thorough knowledge of the town.
Of his rapidity and capacity Norman Hapgood fur-
nishes an interesting illustration. One day the 17-story
Ireland building collapsed:
It fell down just about three-quarters of an hour before we
went to press. There was nobody in the office except me. Mr.
Wright was in despair. This was before I had developed, rather
suddenly, into a reporter. As far as a story of this kind went,
I was in the sub-cub stage. Nevetheless, Mr. Wright had to
send me. When I reached the scene of the disaster, I saw Stef-
fens talking to somebody concerned — I think two or three police-
men. I went up to him and in quite a leisurely way asked him
what information he had. He had come to know me, and be
rather amused by my detached ways, so he smiled slightly, never
thought of answering me, and went on with his work. I got a
few points, went back to the office, and turned in about one stick
of inconsequential detail. About five or ten minutes before press
time, Steffens called up on the telephone. When he heard of the
disaster he had not taken the trouble to phone Mr. Wright, but
552 THE EVENING POST
went direct to the spot. The paper was held fifteen or twenty
minutes, and in less than half an hour's dictation by phone Stef-
fens had covered the catastrophe, given all its drama, told every-
thing in an orderly, expert manner, and not missed a detail. There
was not a morning paper that had an account as good.
Hapgood began on space, making about $12 a week at
first; but he soon developed into the best general reporter
Mr. Wright ever knew. He could write shorthand, and
was particularly effective in taking interviews, addresses,
and trial reports in the English style. He, and every other
reporter, found that the absolute trustworthiness of the
paper made men of affairs willing to give it news they
denied to other dailies. The treatment of one "beat"
which he procured is a happy illustration of the Post*s
studious avoidance of anything that would seem noisy.
He was well acquainted with some of the leaders of the
Salvation Army, and at the time when the public was most
interested in the question whether Ballington Booth was
going to break with his father, Hapgood received abso-
lute knowledge that he was. Turning in a story on the
general situation, he inserted a short paragraph in the
middle giving this statement. Mr. Wright was tempted
to pick it out and put it at the head of the column. Then
he laughed, said he would leave it where it was, and called
attention to it only by a minor headline.
During the Spanish War the Post had a creditable
quota of correspondents with the Cuban forces. A. G.
Robinson sent accounts of camp life at Jacksonville and
Key West; Franklin Clarkin was with Sampson's fleet
and later in the Santiago trenches; and John Bass was
also at Santiago. The most remarkable of the lot, how-
ever, was E. G. Bellairs, as he called himself, who got
into Cuba at Nuevitas aboard a blockade-runner from the
Bahamas, and was soon sending up remarkable accounts
of his adventures among the insurgents. He fell sick,
his servant dug a grave for him and departed, and he was
rescued by an old woman who fed him miraculous steaks
and meat jellies — miraculous, that is, until he observed
that his mule had disappeared. Bellairs was dismissed
NEWS, LITERATURE, MUSIC, DRAMA 553
for cause, and It later turned out that his name was an
alias, covering a criminal record ; but he had high merits
as a correspondent. The Associated Press promptly em-
ployed him. The Post showed Its customary quietness
when Sampson destroyed Cervera's fleet. That event oc-
curred Sunday, July 3, and the morning papers on the
Fourth had very meager news; but the day being a legal
holiday, the Post refused to Issue any edition. Later it
had full and prompt correspondence from the Philippines,
a spot in which Its editors were keenly Interested.
Much of the Evening Post's news value was always
furnished by certain unrivaled special features — unrivaled
not only In New York, but the whole country. Per-
haps the chief, and certainly the most effective in main-
taining the circulation, was the financial department.
Alexander Dana Noyes, who came from the Commercial
Advertiser to be financial editor in 1891, and held that
post till 1920, gave new credit to Whiting's pages, and
ably supplemented Horace White In the editorial discus-
sion of financial questions. As far west as Chicago, and
as far south as Atlanta his columns were looked to daily
as the best on industry and finance printed.
A position of equal preeminence was held by the Eve-
ning Post's literary department, the record of which repays
examination in detail. Falling heir in 1881 to the literary
editor and traditions of the Nation, the Post became the
first American newspaper to publish book criticism thaJ:
was consistently expert, discriminating, and of high liter-
ary quality. James Bryce doubted whether there was any
criticism in the world as good as the old Nation's. By
188 1 some of the greatest of Godkin's original contribu-
tors, as Henry James and Lowell, were no longer writing
for it. BCit in spite of such defections, the list was im-
pressively weighty and comprehensive, and the Post had
every worthy book reviewed by an authority in the field
in which it lay. In fact, the dominant tone of its literary
pages was authorltativeness — it was not clever, it was not
newsy, but It was definitive.
In large part this meant that the reviewing was by
554 THE EVENING POST
university scholars, and the academic tone of the writing,
In the best sense of the word, had much to do with the
esteem for the Evening Post in academic circles. People
who wanted bright belletrlstic literary pages were dis-
appointed. Glancing down the roster of reviewers in the
eighties, we find only two men known as novelists or writ-
ers of light essays, Joel Chandler Harris and Edward
Eggleston. There was a decided deficiency in news of
literary personalities, and discussions of current Hterary
movements. But all the great institutions of learning
were ably represented. It is sufficient to take Harvard as
an example. Her contributors included:
Alexander Agassiz, H. P. Bowditch, Edward Channing, Fran-
cis J. Child, Ephraim Emerton, C. H. Grandgent, J. B. Green-
ough, Albert Bushnell Hart, William James, Charles R. Lanman,
Charles Eliot Norton, George H. Palmer, Josiah Royce, N. S.
Shaler, F. W. Taussig, J. D. Whitney, Justin Winsor.
Outside the universities, we find among the reviewers
the names of historians like Parkman, Henry Adams,
Henry C. Lea, John C. Ropes, and John Fiske; a number
of men in the Federal service, like the archaeologist A. F.
Bandelier, the astronomer Simon Newcomb, Henry Gan-
nett, and J. R. Soley ; and writers of reputation in various
fields like George E. Woodberry, T. W. HIgglnson, W.
C. Brownell, Kenyon Cox, Brander Matthews, H. H.
Furness, and Angelo Heilprln. The fare was not suffi-
ciently varied by light and elegant features — one rule was
not to accept any poetry — but it was of the best possible
quality.
The Hterary editor from 1881 to 1903 was Wendell
Phillips Garrison, who had been with the Nation since Its
founding In 1865, and had early taken charge of the
reviews. His name Is indissolubly linked with Godkln's.
"If anything goes wrong with you, I will retire into a
monastery," the editor wrote in 1883. "You are the one
steady and constant man I have ever had to do with."
He is not remembered, like R. H. Hutton of the London
Spectator, the only literary editor of the time superior to
NEWS, LITERATURE, MUSIC, DRAMA 555
him, for permanently valuable literary criticism. His
distinction lay in his keen judgment in selecting reviewers,
his ability to inspire them, his careful scholarship, and
his skill in making homogeneous the work sent to him.
Both to his associates in the office and distant contribu-
tors, Garrison was endeared by his tact and charm. When
writing to reviewers, he was wont to include some per-
sonal word of friendship, often whimsical, which drew
the recipients into an intimate circle. He thus built up a
great family of Evening Post and Nation writers, from
the Pacific Coast to St. Petersburg, more than two hun-
dred of whom joined on the fortieth anniversary of his
entrance upon journalism in presenting him a silver vase,
inscribed by Goldwin Smith. Whenever Godkin caused a
storm in the office. Garrison was expected to restore calm.
A single example of his constant thoughtfulness may be
given. H. T. Finck, the Post's music critic, while travel-
ing in Switzerland one summer, was attacked in Berne by
typhoid fever, and sent to the University Hospital. Gar-
rison heard of his plight, immediately ascertained that the
Nation had a subscriber in Berne, a wealthy cheese ex-
porter, and wrote this gentleman of Mr. Finck's illness.
The result was that the critic spent his convalescence In
the subscriber's home.
By his tact and high ideals. Garrison made the learned
world of the United States feel that the book pages of the
Evening Post and Nation were a cooperative enterprise,
which all scholars should take pride In keeping at the
highest possible level. Their labors were scrupulously
supplemented by his own, for his scholarship was rare
and his exactness almost painful. He would send a tele-
gram to settle the question of a hyphen. An authority
upon punctuation and syllabication, he prepared the mate-
rials for an exhaustive treatise upon them, parts of which
were printed in a memorial volume in 1908. Until May,
1888, much of the Impeccable accuracy of the literary col-
umns was attributable to the aid furnished by Michael
Heilprin, a truly noble scholar who had been driven from
Hungary by the collapse of the revolution of 1848-49, and
556 THE EVENING POST
who just before the Civil War had connected himself with
Appleton's Cyclopaedia. He not only wrote many articles
for the Post and Nation, but placed his marvelous schol-
arship at their service in the revision and proof-reading
of articles by others. He had a reading-knowledge of
eighteen languages. Taking a dictionary of dates, he
could run his eye down the page and make corrections by
the half-dozen. He could give the time and place of every
battle and engagement in the Civil War, and "say his
popes" without stumbling, a feat which even Macaulay
declined to attempt. In history, biography, geography,
and literature he commanded facts literally by the ten
thousand.
One of the most striking traits of Evening Post criti-
cism was the unity of tone which Garrison gave it. All
reviews and nearly all general articles were anonymous.
Godkin and Garrison held that an article by a named
writer was not appreciated on its merits; that if he was
famous, the veriest twaddle from his pen was devoured,
while if he was obscure, nothing he wrote was read. The
reviewers hence felt no temptation to air personal idio-
syncrasies, and were the more ready to assume the Post's
general point of view. Mr. Garrison chose his reviewer
with the greatest care, and left him almost perfect free-
dom to say what he thought, secure in his discretion. For
reasons of space he frequently had to use the blue pencil
drastically, but though he called himself The Butcher he
used it with tact.
When the Evening Post had a special titbit in the lit-
erary columns its rule of anonymity must have seemed a
disadvantage. Thus in 1883 it published an article upon
the death of Trollope, which even then would have made
a greater impression upon readers had they known that
its author was James Bryce. Bryce described the creator
of Mrs. Proudie from personal acquaintance — "a genial,
hearty, vigorous man, a typical Englishman in his face,
his talk, his ideas, his tastes. His large eyes, which looked
larger behind his large spectacles, were full of good-
humored life and force ; and though he was not witty nor
NEWS, LITERATURE, MUSIC, DRAMA 557
brilliant in conversation, he was what is called very good
company, having traveled widely, known all sorts of
people, and formed positive views on nearly every subject,
which he was always ready to promulgate and maintain.
There was not much novelty in them . . . but they were
worth listening to for their solid sense, and you enjoyed
the ardor with which he threw himself into a discussion."
He had, Bryce added, no successor. Howells and James,
though true artists, had not yet laid hold upon the general
public; Miss Broughton's fine promise had not ripened;
and "Mr. George Meredith, a strong and peculiar genius,
who has a great fascination for those who will take the
pains to follow him, remains unknown to the vast majority
of novel readers."
When Gladstone died, Bryce's review of his career in
the Post was signed. But it was regrettable that, after
the demise of Darwin, the editors did not sign his name
to his very interesting personal sketch of the great
scientist:
I saw him at his home in Down last summer, and could not
remember to have ever before seen him so bright, so cheerful, so
full of talk. Feeble as his health had long been, he looked younger
than his age, and had a freshness, an alertness of mind and eye,
an interest in all passing affairs, which one seldom sees in men
who are well past seventy. It was hard to believe that one was
in the presence of so great and splendid a genius, for his manner
was simple and natural as a child's. He did not speak with any
air of authority, much less dogmatism, even on his own topics;
and on other subjects, politics for instance, he talked as one who
was only anxious to hear what others had to say and resolve his
own doubts. One remark struck particularly the two friends who
had come to see him. He mentioned that Mr. Gladstone had,
some months before, while spending a Sunday in the neighbor-
hood, walked over to call on him ; and speaking with lively admira-
tion of the Prime Minister's powers, he added : **It was delight-
ful to see so great a man so simple and natural. He talked to
us as one of ourselves; you would never have known what he
was." We looked at one another, and thought that there were
other great men of whom this was no less true, and in whom such
self -forgetful simplicity was no less beautiful.
558 THE EVENING POST
Nearly all the Posfs obituary essays upon great Amer-
ican authors — Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, Mrs.
Stowe, and others — came from the chatty and interesting
if not highly acute pen of Thomas Wentworth Higginson.
The Paris correspondent was Auguste Laugel, who fur-
nished a dozen letters every half-year upon politics and
literature. Much English correspondence came from the
noted jurist and Oxford teacher, A. V. Dicey, who re-
viewed many of the important English histories, biog-
raphies, and political works before they were published
in America. Occasional long reviews were furnished by
other Englishmen, as Leslie Stephen and Alfred Russell
Wallace.
The best appraisals of current fiction were those con-
tributed in the eighties by W. C. Brownell, whose esti-
mates of important books like Henry James' "Portrait of
a Lady" were almost perfect in their sanity, penetration,
and literary grace. Unfortunately, he wrote rarely, and
most reviews came from less distinguished hands. The
Evening Post was always fervent in its admiration of
Henry James's earlier manner, and it never took a patron-
izing tone toward Mark Twain, but it was long a bit sus-
picious of Howells, admitting his power but regarding his
work as ugly. Brownell enthusiastically described "The
Portrait of a Lady" as superior in moral quality to
George Eliot, but the reviewers of Howells disliked his
realism. The verdict upon "Silas Lapham" was that,
except in its fine literary form, the novel had no beauty.
"There is no inspiration for any one in the character of
Silas Lapham. It rouses no tender or elevating emotion,
stirs no thrill of sympathy, suggests no ideal of conduct,
no notion that the world at large is or can be less ugly
than Lapham himself. If it is to be conceded that Mr.
Howells and his school are great artists in the highest
reaches of their art, then the language is in sore need of
words to define Sir Walter Scott and Thackeray." How-
ever, the writer admitted that the portrait of Lapham had
a vividness and completeness unapproached in contem-
porary English fiction.
NEWS, LITERATURE, MUSIC, DRAMA 559
The essays and reviews of widest Interest were prob-
ably those upon distinctly literary topics, and here the
pens of George L. KIttredge, Thomas R. Lounsbury,
Basil L. GUdersleeve, Charles Eliot Norton, and George
E. Woodberry were especially In evidence. They wrote
with charm upon a wide variety of books, and frequently
with a special knowledge and Interpretative Insight that
made their essays almost permanently significant. The
most active reviewer of history and political biography
was Gen. Jacob D. Cox, the works he treated ranging
from the massive histories by Rhodes and Von Hoist to
lives of minor Civil War leaders. Cox himself wrote
several books on the rebellion, and after the death of
John C. Ropes — also a contributor — was easily the high-
est American authority upon Its battles and strategy. Two
other historians who assisted were Lea and Goldwin
Smith. Wm. Graham Sumner wrote much on economics.
It Is evident that the Evening Post's literary strength
counted as a marked addition to its new value. Some
books are not news, but most are; and if in no other
American journal was there so little news of sensation, in
none was there so much news of Ideas. An outstanding
review like that which J. D. Cox wrote of Bryce's "Amer-
ican Commonwealth" or Gamaliel Bradford of Woodrow
Wilson's "Congressional Government" was news in the
best sense. From all the important foreign capitals, not
merely London and Paris, came constant news of the new
publications, new Intellectual movements, and new events
In letters, art, and science. Until her death that remark-
able Englishwoman, Jessie White Mario, wrote from
Italy. The first American news of the production of
Ibsen's "Ghosts" and the stir it caused was furnished in
a long letter from Berlin In January, 1887, by C. H.
Genung. Perhaps the outstanding illustration of this
alertness of the Evening Post to intellectual news is its
clear reflection throughout the eighties of the discovery
of Russian literature by the Western world. It and the
Nation did far more than all other periodicals combined
to introduce Turgenev, Tolstoy, Gogol, and Dostoievsky
S6o THE EVENING POST
to the American public. As it remarked in 1886, when it
published articles upon "Anna Karenina," "Childhood
and Youth," "Crime and Punishment," and "The Insulted
and Injured," the appearance of this new literature re-
called the wonder of English readers when, in the time of
Scott and Coleridge, German literature was first opened
to them. Isabel Hapgood was long the St. Petersburg
correspondent, while Auguste Laugel was in personal
communication with not only De Vogue and other stu-
dents of Russian letters, but with Turgenev.
The campaign which Bryant had carried on for an in-
ternational copyright law was tirelessly maintained by
Godkin and Garrison. After a time it appeared that
cheap piracy was about to accomplish what argument had
never done ; that the disreputable pirates were ruining the
business of respectable piracy, as carried on by Harper's
and others. The latter paid a popular English author for
the right to issue an authorized version, but within a week
some printer who had paid nothing might be out with a
cheaper edition which displaced the other. More and
more publishers, therefore, joined in the crusade. Late
in Arthur's Administration the judiciary committee of the
House reported that the justice of an international copy-
right law was unquestionable, and Arthur, in his last an-
nual message, urged the subject upon the attention of Con-
gress. But as Godkin wrote, some clergyman was always
ready to start up and announce that books were a prop-
erty that God had meant to be stolen, and that It was only
an oversight that they had not been excepted by name
from the Ten Commandments; while some Western paper
was always ready to prove that a copyright bill held a
hidden villainy in behalf of the pampered noblemen who
wrote and published books in England.
Godkin, growing deeply Interested as the eighties
passed, wrote with a vehemence which George Haven
Putnam describes as invaluable in Impressing most
thoughtful citizens and legislators, but which actually
antagonized some others, and which ultimately led to a
cause celehre. Prominent among the opponents of Inter-
NEWS, LITERATURE, MUSIC, DRAMA 561
national copyright was the Rev. Dr. Isaac K. Funk, a
leader of the Methodists and Prohibitionists, who gradu-
ally built up the great publishing business of Funk & Wag-
nails. Dr. Funk mistakenly came to believe that a ma-
jority of Godkln's blows were aimed at his head, and he
resented the fact that among all the exponents of piracy
he should be singled out as a shining mark. In due time
the editor, commenting on Funk's alleged piracy of an
Important English work, rather overstepped the mark
and laid himself open to legal counterattack. Dr. Funk
promptly brought suit for defamation and injury in the
amount of $250,000. There was some consternation at
the Evening Post office, where Godkln's attack was
deemed legally Indefensible, and Joseph H. Choate, who
was retained to defend the editor, shared It. Indeed, he
told Mr. Godkin that he could hardly expect to bring him
off scot-free, but would try to hold the penalty to a nom-
inal sum.
But by characteristic adroitness and audacity, es-
pecially In cross-examining Dr. Funk, Choate made his
conduct of the case a notable triumph. Mr. Godkln's
attacks had extended over a number of years. Never-
theless, Choate showed that during all this time Dr. Funk
had repeatedly been asked to officiate in Methodist pul-
pits, that he had been honored by his denomination in
other ways, that the Prohibitionists had nominated him
for Congress and the Governorship, and that It was not
Improbable that he would some day receive their nom-
ination for the Presidency. All these honors had come
at the time when the attacks by the Post had been most
intense.
"Now," said Choate to Dr. Funk, "now, sir, will you
please make clear to his honor, and to the gentlemen of
the jury, just in what manner your character and your
relations with your friends and your associates and the
public at large have suffered Injury from the so-called
brutal attacks of my client?" To this challenge Dr.
Funk did not know how to reply. In his final address to
the jury Choate carried the war into the enemy's territory
562 THE EVENING POST
with staggering effect. It happened that Dean Farrar's
life of Christ had been first brought out here in an author-
ized edition by E. P. Button & Co., and had immedi-
ately been pirated by Dr. Funk, although Dutton's had
paid the author a substantial sum. "I have never been
a doctor of divinity," remarked Choate; "I never expect
to be one. I cannot tell, therefore, just how a doctor of
divinity feels; but to me, an outsider and a layman, there
is something incongruous in the idea of a doctor of
divinity going into business for gain and beginning his
operations by stealing the Life of his Saviour." Partly
because of the lack of evidence of any real injury to Dr.
Funk, partly because of Choate's shrewd thrust, the jury's
verdict was in favor of Godkin, and the costs were
assessed upon Dr. Funk.
The ultimate partial victory for international copy-
right in March, 1891, just as Congress was ending its
session, left the Evening Post dissatisfied. It admitted
that the law was a triumph for honesty, and that it put
an end to the Algerine system of fostering the national
intelhgence. *'But if we said that it was a measure to
be proud of, we should be going far beyond the truth.
The obligation under which it places the foreign author
of having his book 'manufactured' in this country, as a
condition of protection for it, is a piece of tariff bar-
barism which is enough to make one hang one's head."
Unfortunately, the manufacturing clause, after thirty
years, is still retained in our copyright legislation.
Mr. Towse's promotion from a reportership to the
dramatic editorship was no accident, for by training and
taste he was admirably fitted for the position. He had
been taken regularly to the theater from his eighth birth-
day, had seen Charles Kean play, and recalls a perform-
ance at the old Adelphi in London in April, 1853. ^s a
boy he was a constant and sometimes surreptitious at-
tendant in the pit of the Old Drury, Haymarket, and
other theaters. The Haymarket at the time was the
recognized home of polite comedy in London, and there
Mr. Towse saw admirable performances of Shakespeare,
NEWS, LITERATURE, MUSIC, DRAMA 563
Sheridan, and Goldsmith, as well as E. A. Sothern as
Lord Dundreary before the part had been made the
piece of broad buffoonery which it later became in Amer-
ica. The Adelphi was the home of melodrama, well
played. But the performances which made the chief im-
pression upon the boy were those of the famous actor-
manager Samuel Phelps, who in the fifties and early six-
ties raised Sadler's Wells Theater, in the shabby and
despised suburb of Islington, into a famous shrine of
dramatic art, and who later appeared in other London
theaters. Phelps is pronounced by Mr. Towse to have
been beyond doubt the most versatile actor of the nine-
teenth century.
The outstanding merits of the London stage of this
period lay in the fact that it rested upon the old stock
companies, in which the standards of acting were far
more uniformly high than those which obtained after the
introduction of the star system. The actors and actresses
had been reared in a school of hard work, small pay, and
rigid insistence upon the difference between a mere per-
formance and a characterization. All had served a long
apprenticeship, and gained such a comprehensive knowl-
edge of their craft that they knew how to acquit them-
selves creditably in comedy, tragedy, or melodrama. Mr.
Towse recalls their striking diversity and authority of
gesture, their distinction of speech, their easy adaptation
of manner to the character, and remarkable power of
emotional expression. Versatility was unescapable. At
Sadler's Wells, for instance, all Shakespeare's plays ex-
cept two were produced during Phelps's seventeen years
of management, along with the other Elizabethan
dramatists, and many plays by later or contemporary
authors — Colman, Sheridan, Goldsmith, Knowles, Bul-
wer, and so on; there being a change of bill at least twice
or thrice a week.
When Mr. Towse began to review plays for the Eve-
ning Post in the early seventies, he found in New York
still several very flourishing stock companies, though the
theater was rapidly entering upon a transition to the star-
564 THE EVENING POST
and-circult system. Their proficiency was like that of the
British companies, although, being fewer, they did not
supply so many all-round actors. A number of the best
of the players had disappeared or were disappearing.
James K. Hackett, Junius Brutus Booth, and J. W. Wal-
lack were gone, Edwin Forrest and Charlotte Cushman
were meditating their farewells, and Edwin Booth was
in a period of temporary eclipse. The speculative man-
ager, almost wholly ignorant of anything about the
theater but its money-making possibilities, was beginning
to arise and foreshadow the day when he would make the
typical New York production one in which one or two
fairly able players would be supported by a parcel of
supernumeraries.
But the performances at Wallack's in the seventies and
eighties were found by Mr. Towse to compare favorably
with those given by the Haymarket company in London.
He saw John Gilbert in a number of striking character-
izations, notably Sir Harcourt Courtly, Sir Peter Teazle,
and Sir Anthony Absolute, while Lester Wallack played
admirably in other parts; and two other performers of
note were Charles and Rose Coghlan. Augustin Daly's
company gave many brilliant, if uneven, performances in
the late seventies and early eighties, and included a num-
ber of players of trained skill: Charles Fisher, Fanny
Davenport, John Drew, Mrs. G. H. Gilbert, Ada Rehan,
and others. When "Romeo and Juliet" was presented
in 1877, with Adelaide Neilson as Juliet, Mr. Towse gave
her at once a place among the very great Juliets. The
Union Square Company was almost wholly limited to
melodrama, but within that field it was the best in the
country, and probably in the world. With it Clara
Morris achieved some remarkable successes. In later
years Mr. Towse recalls her as playing with Tommaso
Salvini, whom he thinks ''not only incomparably the
greatest actor and artist I have ever seen, but one who
has never had an equal, probably, since the days of
Garrick."
It is by the standards thus acquired in studying the old
NEWS, LITERATURE, MUSIC, DRAMA ^6s
British and American stock companies that Mr. Towse
has measured the present-day stage — standards of the
utmost severity, which he believes show a steady and
lamentable fall in the general level of acting. He has
always been ready to admit the high merit of a good
many, and the genius of a few, stars; but from the time
of Edwin Booth, who encouraged the star system by his
failure to insist upon good supporting casts, until to-day,
he has condemned the indifference shown to the sub-
ordinate roles. The lack of taste and artistic conscience
among most of the managers of our time he equally de-
plores. His standards of criticism are severe from not
only the histrionic and literary standpoints, but from the
moral standpoint. Convinced that the theater is one of
the most important educational Influences, good or bad,
within the resources of modern civilization, he Insists upon
drawing a clear line between Inspiring and ennobling
plays, and vicious plays. No other critic In England or
America has a background of experience approaching Mr.
Towse's, and none writes with more responsibility and
weight.
Mr. FInck, on the other hand, has had the advantage
of finding New York's music improving from decade to
decade, until the city is one of the world's greatest music
centers. When he joined the Evening Post, operatic
singers and audiences were divided into two hostile camps,
the Italian and German — both accepting the French as
allies. Companies which gave German opera sneered at
the Italian; companies which, like Mapleson's at the
Academy of Music, gave Italian opera. Ignored all Ger-
mans save those who, like Gluck and Mozart, wrote more
or less In the Italian mariner. The revolution which
erased this narrow hostility was effected, in the main, by
the growth of Wagner's popularity among operatic per-
formers until It became irresistible.
From the beginning Mr. Finck was a champion of the
German opera which Mapleson systematically slighted.
During the summer of 1882 he sent the Post from Bay-
reuth a series of highly interesting letters upon the Wag-
S66 THE EVENING POST
ner performances there. He described old Wagner,
almost seventy, as busy half the day overseeing the pro-
ductions; pleased as a child whenever the effects were
especially fine, and once even shouting to Frau Cosima
across the whole auditorium, "You see, my dear little
wife, that we can get up something together, after all."
Mr. Finck poked fun unmercifully at the more florid
Italian operas, and assisted greatly in driving pieces like
Bellini's "La Sonnambula" from the stage. In October,
1883, he was able to hail the opening of the new Metro-
politan, with a company that, including Campanini and
Mme. Nilsson, was willing to do full justice to the Ger-
mans; and when in the spring of 1887 he reviewed the
third season of German opera, he could rejoice that of
sixty-two performances Wagper had received thirty-two.
Conservative and dignified though it was, in every di-
rection the Evening Post had a marked growth during
the eighties and nineties. It found its first sporting editor
in Charles Pike Sawyer, who joined the staff in the spring
of 1886. It soon had a real estate editor. Its steady
expansion led to the abandonment, on Oct. 31, 1887, of
the folio shape in which it had always appeared since
1 80 1. The blanket sheet was unmanageable; it could
not be stereotyped, so that the printing had to be done
direct from the locked type ; and it gave too little space.
As Godkin said, the change was a contribution to the anti-
profanity movement. The sturdiness of the Post is
evinced by the fact that in occasional years its profits
were large, and that for the whole period the balance
was decidedly upon the right side of the ledger; from
1881 to 191 5, the net profits on the capital invested were
about two per cent, a year. This was in spite of the fact
that Henry Villard did not expect it to be a money-
making business, the fact that its business managers were
not aggressive, and the fact that Mr. Godkin's editorial
fearlessness and bluntness inevitably made enemies. Near
the end of his editorship, Godkin's attacks upon the small-
ness of the hundred-dollar tariff exemption for travelers
returning from abroad involved him in a dispute with
NEWS, LITERATURE, MUSIC, DRAMA 567
mercantile Interests In New York. He made some un-
tactful remarks concerning small tradesmen, and the re-
sult was a boycott of the paper. Involving most of the
department stores, which cost it large sums. Henry Vil-
lard accepted this blow in an admirable spirit, and It was
determined that it would not be allowed to hamper the
management in any of its activities.
Mr. Godkin once said he had never known any other
man capable of the generosity Mr. Villard showed with
the Evening Post. The owner never sought to Influence
the paper; he rarely entered the office unless Invited; and
he submitted without a word to attacks by the financial
editor upon his railway policies. Throughout his life and
for years after his death Mrs. Villard, who became the
owner, upheld the editors even when Mr. Godkin assailed
causes near her heart, like woman suffrage, and made
large financial sacrifices to sustain the paper.
Taking Its editorial page, Its criticism, and its news
together, the Evening Post of the period under review
was quite Indispensable to New Yorkers of culture. One
was as certain to see It in any home of intelligence and
means as he was certain to find a set of Shakespeare. It
Is interesting to note how our writers have singled it out
as an essential piece of furniture In any household of re-
finement. Edith Wharton shows us old Mr. van der
Luyden immersed at his Skuyterscliff mansion In the Eve-
ning Post; Joseph Hergesheimer lays It beside the study
of Beethoven and the Tanagra figurine on Howat Penny's
study table. The news was not superabundant, but it was
well proportioned and thoroughly reliable. The financial
columns were without an equal. The criticism of books,
drama, music, and art was the best in the country. The
editorial views might seem congenial or repugnant, but
one simply had to know what Mr. Godkin was saying.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
HORACE WHITE, ROLLO OGDEN, AND THE "EVENING
post" SINCE 1900
The editorship of Horace White was a three years' in-
terlude (Jan. I, 1900-Jan. 31, 1903) between the eighteen
years of Godkin, and the equally long editorship of Rollo
Ogden. Its outstanding feature was the campaign of
1900, during which the Evening Post faced the two major
parties In a plague-on-both-your-houses spirit. It was
impossible for It to support either McKInley or Bryan.
But It did applaud Bryan's anti-imperialist speeches, and
from them and the Democratic platform plank on the
Philippines It expected the greatest good. "They will
put one-half the people of the United States in a high
school to learn the principles of free government," wrote
Horace White, "as a class learns a lesson by repetition
and observation." In other words, believing that the
Democratic Party had possessed no definite Ideas regard-
ing the Philippines previous to the Kansas City Conven-
tion, the Post hoped that the campaign would Imbue it
with a lasting set of principles on the subject. That hope
has been justified. After Bryan defined imperialism as
the paramount issue, the paper — which knew his op-
ponent would win — more and more Implied that a vote
for him would be a healthy vote of protest.
The decisiveness of McKInley's victory showed that
the people were quite unconvinced of the views of Bryan
and the Evening Post regarding our Philippine policy.
It happened that Carl Schurz had made a tour of the
West shortly before the election, speaking against im-
perialism, and on his return had visited the Evening Post
confident that Bryan would carry a long list of States
there. The day after election Joseph BuckPn Bishop
argued In the editorial conference that the Post should
568
THE "EVENING POST" SINCE 1900 569
treat the result frankly, and abstain from any pretense
that the anti-imperialist cause had not been hard hit. The
editorial which he wrote harmonized with this view.
About noon Schurz came in, eager to learn what the edi-
tors thought of the election, and was shocked when he
read Bishop's editorial. Towering over the younger
man, and shaking his finger in Bishop's face, he declared
in his severest tones: "You admit too much — you admit
too much I" "Too much what?" demanded the irritated
Bishop. "Too much truth?"
But the Evening Post of course no more surrendered
its position upon the Philippine question than upon the
tariff. It took the view that the islands should be freed
as soon as a stable government could be erected, and it
believed then, as it believes still, that the Republican idea
of a stable government is altogether too exacting. That
American troops should be sent to the other side of the
world to impose American rule upon an unwilling people
seemed to it horrible. Horace White warmly approved
of President McKinley's and John Hay's liberal attitude
toward China in the Boxer troubles, and their insistence
upon the open door and Chinese integrity. The same
liberal principles seemed to him to condemn the employ-
ment of a hundred -thousand men and a hundred million
dollars a year to subjugate the Filipinos; give them a
definite promise of independence, he held, and the fighting
might stop.
When Mr. White resigned, in accordance with his
original intention of remaining editor but a short period,
it was a foregone conclusion that his successor would be
Mr. Ogden. A power in the Evening Post office since he
entered it in 1891, Mr. Ogden had come to take a leading
share in the guidance of policy and the writing of the
important editorials. Of his long, exceedingly able, and
fruitful editorship, one comparable only with Godkin's
and Bryant's in the history of the paper, it is too soon to
write in detail. But its main outlines may be roughly
indicated. I;
In national politics the Evening Post continued inde-
570 THE EVENING POST
pendent, with the leaning towards the Democratic Party
which its low-tariff and anti-imperialist tenets naturally
gave it. The only occasions since 1884 when it has not
supported the Democratic ticket are the three occasions
on which Bryan ran. In 1904 it was with Parker against
Roosevelt, and in 19 12 and 19 16 it was with Wilson.
In international affairs it remained the champion of peace
and of fair play for the weaker nations, with that special
regard for friendship with England which has animated
it since 1801. It was always to be found arrayed against
Jthe Piatt and Barnes machines in State politics, and
against Tammany in the city. Upon some large domestic
questions its policy changed — it early became an advocate
of woman's suffrage, and in due time a supporter of na-
tional prohibition; while upon other domestic questions,
as the negro question, it grew much more aggressive and
insistent.
Much of the energy with which the Evening Post op-
posed Roosevelt in 1904 was due to its hot indignation
over the steps by which, the previous fall, he had gained
a right of way for the Panama Canal by hastening to
confirm the separation of Panama from Colombia. Mr.
Ogden's attacks upon that high-handed act were stinging.
Whether or not American agents had intrigued to bring
about Panama's secession, the Evening Post thought it
shameful, in view of our protests in the Civil War against
European recognition of the Confederacy, to be so pre-
cipitate in recognizing Panama. "Our policy is now the
humiliating one of treating a pitifully feeble nation as we
should never dream of dealing with even a second-class
Power," wrote Mr. Ogden; ''of giving a friendly republic
a blow in the face without waiting for either explanation
or protest; of going far beyond the diplomatic require-
ments of the situation, and that with indecent haste — and
all for what? To aid a struggling people? . . . No,
but just for a handful of silver, just for a commercial
advantage. . . ." On one occasion he published as an
editorial, without comment, the Bible passage relating
to Naboth's vineyard.
THE '^EVENING POST" SINCE 1900 571
Toward the seven years of Roosevelt's Presidency the
attitude of the Evening Post had to be a constant alterna-
tion of hostility and friendliness. It disliked his love of
excitement and sensation, but liked his energy. It at-
tacked his demands for a big army and navy, but admired
his brilliant conclusion of peace between Russia and
Japan. It believed him Indifferent to constitutional and
legal methods, censuring his tendency to ride rough-shod
over Congress and curse the courts; but It valued his
ability to get things done, and recognized the Immense
constructive achievement of his administration — his work
for conservation and Irrigation, his railway rate legisla-
tion, his pursuit of land thieves, postal thieves, and rebate-
granting railways, his successful fight In the Northern
Securities case. Above all, it recognized in him an
awakener of the national conscience :
A great upheaval of moral sentiment took place during his
administration. He was not the sole cause of it, but he utilized
it and furthered it mightily. An account of stewardship of the
rich \vas vigorously demanded. Business dishonesty was held up
to abhorrence. Corporation rottenness was probed. All this, in
spite of excesses of denunciation and legislation, was highly salu-
tary. It was full time that people who had been mismanaging
corporations and exploiting the public were called sharply to book.
. . . The quickening of the national conscience, the rousing of
a people long dead in trespasses and sins, with such concrete results
as the reform of the insurance companies and the restrictions upon
predatory public service corporations, is a service the value of
which can scarcely be overlooked. (March, 1909.)
Having been outraged by the McKInley tariff and done
its best to further the political revolt which that measure
produced, having been equally denunciatory of the Ding-
ley tariff, the Evening Post hoped In 1909 for a genuine
revision downward. Throughout the campaign of 1908
It had regretted the lukewarmness of Taft's utterances on
this subject. The day after his election Mr. Ogden gave
him a grave warning, which now appears as a prophecy
justified:
572 THE EVENING POST
To Mr. Taft we look for the fulfillment of those solemn
promises — particularly for reform of the tariff — to which he and
his party are committed. Notwithstanding the returns from the
polls, there is widespread dissatisfaction with the recklessness and
extravagance which have been encouraged by twelve years of
unbroken Republican ascendency. . . . More menacing yet has
been the open alliance between the protected manufacturers and
the Republican politicians for the exploitation of the farmers and
the vast mass of consumers. It is not conceivable that this sinister
partnership can continue as in the past. The new and radical
element which is gaining control of the Republican organization
in the west will fight the stolid stand-patters like Aldrich and
Cannon, and it may be set down as a certainty that if Mr. Taft
does not join with them in the task of setting the Republican
house in order and in casting the money-changers out of the
temple, some man of foresight and power will come forward to
wage the battle in behalf of the people. The great cause will pro-
duce the champion, as it produced Lincoln, and later Cleveland.
The Taft administration was but a month old when the
Evening Post warned it again that the Payne-Aldrlch
bill contained provisions that would drive it from power
unless the President intervened vigorously to remove
them. When DoUiver led the attack of the West upon
the tricks and robberies of the bill, charging that hoggish
manufacturers had obtained permission from Aldrich to
write their own tariff clauses, the editors rejoiced that
never before had the public been so awake to greed and
dishonesty of protection. When it found that its appeals
to Taft to take action were in vain, it was totally dis-
gusted with the President. His Winona speech it thought
indefensible. Like the rest of the country, it soon dis-
covered that he had marked deficiencies for his great
office. In its view, Taft was wrong in the Ballinger affair,
and in his initial advocacy of the remission of Panama
tolls. He was not merely a poor politician, in the sense
that he could not keep an effective party following, but
he lacked foresight and energy. "He has shown himself
devoid of the higher imagination in public affairs, too
little prescient, without the touch of quick sympathy and
popular quality which would have enabled him to take
THE ''EVENING POST" SINCE 1900 573
arms against a sea of troubles," wrote Mr. Ogden as the
administration ended.
Yet the Evening Post did not believe that Taft's ad-
ministration was the black betrayal and wretched failure
which many said in 19 12 it was. The country had many
services to thank him for, it said, and his reputation would
certainly benefit by the lapse of time. As between Taft
and Roosevelt in 19 12, it decidedly preferred Taft. In
an editorial as the year 191 1 closed, "A Square Deal for
Taft," it accused the former President of hitting below
the belt. "Roosevelt is deliberately allowing himself to
be used against the President, and allowing it ambigu-
ously, equivocally, and not in the honorable and manly
fashion which he has been forever advocating. . . .
Why does he not frankly state the grounds of his opposi-
tion to Taft?" When Roosevelt did throw his hat into
the ring, the editors deemed his cause in many respects
weak. They felt that his denunciation of Taft was
malignantly overdone. Recognizing many fine qualities
in the Progressive movement, they believed that no new
party could come into being without some one compelling
moral or economic issue; that a program of all the vir-
tues might be attractive, but did not afford a sound politi-
cal basis, at least when coupled with the fortunes of an
ambitious self-seeker. Parts of the Roosevelt program,
notably his proposal for the recall of judicial decisions,
and his plan for regulating the trusts by commission,
struck the Post as thoroughly unsound.
Supporting Woodrow Wilson throughout the 19 12
campaign, the Evening Post also supported almost all the ^
measures of his first administration. The Federal Re-
serve Act and the Underwood tariff it hailed as reforms
of the first magnitude. The various acts for the better
use and protection of our national domain met its ap-
proval. While several influential New York newspapers
attacked Wilson's policy of "watchful waiting" in Mex-
ican affairs, the Post held it both wise and courageous, and
regretted only the temporary interruption of it by our
attack upon Vera Cruz. The editors welcomed the Jones
574 THE EVENING POST
Act for a larger measure of Philippine autonomy, thought
well of Bryan's *'cooling-off treaties," and were grateful
for the President's veto of the literacy test bill. Indeed,
the paper's support would have been unhesitatingly given
to President Wilson at the beginning of the campaign of
19 1 6 had his opponent been a less able man than Hughes,
and had it not been deeply offended that midsummer by
the surrender of the President and Congress to the threat
of a great railway^trike, and their enactment of the
eight-hour day law/ As it was, shortly before November
I the Evening Post came out for Wilson's reelection.
The opening of the Great War was a stunning surprise
to the Evening Post, as to all America. But it was less
completely taken unawares than were some papers which
had failed to watch minutely the drift of affairs in Europe.
On July 27, in an editorial analyzing the bellicose con-
tents of a number of German and Austrian papers — the
Hamburg Fremdenblatt, the Deutsches Volkshlatt, the
Neues Wiener Tagehlatt, the Reichspost, and the Neue
Freie Presse of Vienna — it gave a remarkably accurate
view, under the title "War Madness," of what was going
on under the surface in Europe. When Germany entered
Belgium its condemnation was instant. "By this action
Germany has shown herself ready to lift an outlaw hand
against the whole of Western Europe." The paper did
not know whether Germany directly caused and desired
the war; but it believed that she indirectly caused it, and
that she failed to prevent it when she might easily have
done so. Before fighting had fairly commenced it ven-
tured upon a prophecy which the fate of three thrones has
fully justified:
The human mind cannot yet begin to grasp the consequences.
One of them, however, seems plainly written in the book of the
future. It is that, after this most awful and most wicked of all
wars is over, the power of life and death over millions of men,
the right to decree the ruin of industry and commerce and finance,
with untold human misery stalking through the land like "a
plague, will be taken away from three men. No safe prediction
of actual results of battle can be made. Dynasties may crumble
THE "EVENING POST" SINCE 1900 575
before all is done, empires change their form of government. But
whatever happens, Europe — humanity — v^^ill not settle back into
a position enabling three Emperors to give, on their individual
choice or whim, the signal for destruction and massacre.
The whole course of the war only confirmed the Eve-
ning Posfs original view that the side of right and justice
was the Allied side. When the Lusitania was sunk, Mr.
Ogden's indictment of ''The Outlaw German Govern-
ment" was one of the most stirring editorials that ever
appeared in the Evening Post or Nation; an editorial
which asked the American people to show themselves "too
firmly planted on right to be hysterical, and too determined
on obtaining justice to bluster," but which expressed con-
fidence that the true and righteous judgments of the Lord
would yet be visited upon the German war leaders. When
President Wilson asked the American people to be neutral
in thought and word, the Evening Post declared that our
moral sentiment could not be neutral — that it must be
with England and France. The Allied infringements
upon our rights In the enforcement of the blockade It at-
tacked, but It constantly emphasized the fact that Ger-
many's violations of International law were far graver.
In that they affected life and liberty, not merely property.
Long hoping that American participation In the war
could be honorably avoided, the Evening Post did not
want peace at any price. It regarded war as a lesser
calamity than the defeat of the Allies, or than supine
submission to Germany's unrestricted submarine activity.
When that activity was announced It was plain that we
should soon be Involved In the conflict, and the editors
followed Mr. Wilson's course with general. If not perfect,
approval. In the difficult days of the crisis. The Pres-
ident's address to Congress asking for a declaration of
war was warmly praised by the Evening Post, as placing
our national motives and objects upon the most elevated
plane. "All told," It said on April 3, "Americans may
take satisfaction In the fact that they enter the war only
after the display of the greatest patience by the govern-
576 THE EVENING POST
ment, only after grievous and repeated wrongs, and upon
the highest possible grounds. There can be no doubt
that the country will respond instantly to the President's
leadership." The Evening Post was not for restricted,
but complete participation in the conflict. It early took
issue with the administration and with dominant public
sentiment in opposing the raising of the army by draft,
holding that any appearance of forced military service
was un-American, that a volunteer army would show a
superior spirit, and that while conscription might become
necessary later, it should be postponed until our tradi-
tional method of recruiting failed to bring enough men.
But the Evening Post accepted the draft loyally, and gave
its workings the cordial praise they deserved. From the
beginning of the war it looked forward eagerly to the
establishment of a world organization to preserve inter-
national peace everywhere; and in 19 19 and 1920 it was
among the staunchest advocates of the League of
Nations.
Mr. Ogden had the assistance throughout his editor-
ship of a staff as able as that which Mr. Godkin had
gathered about him. Frank Jewett Mather, jr., served as
an editorial writer from 1900 to the close of 1906, and
as he says, gradually specialized in writing upon European
politics and art criticism. Oswald Garrison Villard, son
of Henry Villard, was called into the office from the
Philadelphia Press in 1897, and remained one of the
most active of the editorial writers until 19 17. A bril-
liant young man from Wisconsin, Philip L. Allen, whose
premature death was a loss to journalism, advanced rung
by rung, and was an editorial writer from 1904 to 1908.
Simeon Strunsky joined the staff in 1906. Three years
later Dr. Fabian Franklin, long professor of mathematics
at Johns Hopkins, and from 1895 to 1906 editor of the
Baltimore Sun, became associate editor; and Royal J.
Davis entered the circle in 19 10. Paul Elmer More, who
was literary editor of the Evening Post after 1903, and
became editor of the Nation in 1909, contributed to the
editorial page; and there was a considerable list of men
THE ''EVENING POST" SINCE 1900 577
who served for short periods, especially in summers —
Stuart P. Sherman, Hutchins Hapgood, Walter B. Pit-
kin, H. Parker Willis, and others.
As the editorial staff existed when the European War
began, its members constituted a group of comprehensive
tastes and abilities. Mr. Ogden decided all questions of
policy, wrote almost all the leading political editorials,
and in addition ranged over a wide field of social and
literary comment, treating everything with an incisive,
pungent style peculiarly his own. Dr. Franklin wrote
upon economic subjects with unfailing sureness, treated
educational and scientific topics with the authority of a
scholar, and was masterly in exploding any fallacy which
for the moment had assumed importance, and the detec-
tion of which required the combination of strong common
sense and logical subtlety. /Mr. Villard was interested
in a wide range of humanitarian subjects, having made
the Post, for example, an outstanding champion of the
negro race, while he paid special attention to military and
naval affairs. I International politics was left very largely
to Simeon Strunsky, whose pen was also indispensable in
the humorous or satiric treatment of current subjects,
and whose knowledge was encyclopaedic. Mr. Noyes con-
tinued to write regularly upon financial topics, while Mr.
Davis — who was also literary editor, 19 14-1920 — had
given special attention to certain phases of politics.
In its news department the Evening Post had suffered
a heavy blow in 1897, when the city editor, H. J. Wright,
became editor of the Commercial Advertiser, and took
with him Norman Hapgood and Lincoln Steffens. But
it quickly recovered, and under a series of managing
editors — O. G. Villard, Hammond Lamont, H. J. Lea-
royd, E. G. Lowry, J. P. Gavit, and the present head,
Charles McD. Puckette — has continued steadily to im-
prove. The list of reporters since the beginning of the
century contains many names known outside the news-
paper world. Among them are Burton J. Hendrick, Nor-
man Duncan, Freeman Tilden, and Lawrence Perry as
authors; A. E. Thomas and Bayard Veiller as play*
578 THE EVENING POST
Wrights; George Henry Payne, Ralph Graves, and Arthur
Warner as editors; and Rheta Chllde Dorr, Walter
Arndt, and Robert E. MacAlarney. The Washington
correspondence has always maintained a high degree of
excellence. The Washington bureau was In charge of
Francis E. Leupp from 1889 to 1904, when he was ap-
pointed Commissioner of Indian Affairs; he was suc-
ceeded by E. G. Lowry, J. P. Gavit, and then by David
Lawrence, two of whose exploits — his "scoop" on
Bryan's resignation, and his remarkable prediction of the
States which would give Wilson the Presidency in 19 16 —
made a considerable noise in their time. The present
correspondents are Mark Sullivan and Harold Phelps
Stoi^es.
[J^he war brought a series of rapid changes in the own-
ership and management of the Evening Post. The finan-
cial control of the paper had long been in the hands of
Mr. Villard, who for more than fifteen years was presi-
dent of the company, and had given unremitting attention
to the maintenance of its high business standards, as well
as to the Improvement of Its news and other features. At
the end of July, 19 17, Mr. Villard gave an option for the
purchase of his share of the paper to his associates, and
a few days later it was announced that Mr. Thomas W.
Lamont had bought it; thus terminating the long and
public-spirited proprietorship by the Villard famllyj
Friends of the paper must ever be grateful to Mr. Lamont
for carrying It through the next few years of excessive
wartime costs. He placed Mr. Edwin F. Gay, widely
known as the dean of the Harvard Graduate School of
Business Administration (1908-19), in charge in Janu-
ary, 1920, as president of the Evening Post Company;
and two years later, in the first days of 1922, the owner-
ship of the Post passed Into the hands of a syndicate or-
ganized by Mr. Gay. Meanwhile, early in 1920 Mr.
Ogden had resigned the editorship, and Mr. Strunsky
took charge of the editorial page.
With the marked broadening of the newspaper in the
last two years, and the innovations in its form, its readers
THE "EVENING POST" SINCE 1900 579
are as familiar as they are with the fact that Its essential
spirit Is unaltered. The connection with the Nation hav-
ing ceased In 19 17, Its editorial page has abandoned the
narrow columns and long series of uncaptloned editorial
paragraphs which had marked It since 188 1. The liter-
ary pages passed In 1920 Into the hands of Mr. Henry S.
Canby, who has made thd Evening Post Literary Review
esteemed from the Atlantic to the Pacific as easily the
foremost publication of Its kind in Americal? The volume
of news has been greatly Increased, fresh departments
have been added, Illustrations given their proper place,
and the appeal of the paper broadened without lowering
its standards. In a period not favorable to Increase of
circulation, that of the Evening Post has risen, under Mr.
Gay, to the highest point In its history.
But it is the old Evening Post still; a newspaper which,
with a history one of the longest and richest In American
journalism, has from generation to generation preserved
the same sterling character. The objects of Its con-
ductors may be easily stated. They wish to keep it as
public-spirited as the Evening Post of Hamilton and
Coleman; as ardent In defense of democracy and the op-
pressed as the Evening Po5^ of Leggett; as dignified, ele-
vated, and fearless as the Evening Post of Bryant, Bige-
low, and Godwin; as keen, intellectual, and aggressive as
the Evening Post of Godkin and Schurz, Ogden and
Horace White; and to add what they can to this noble
record.
4
(\ _...
V
INDEX
Abolitionists, E. P. defends, 145-148
Abyssinia, 505
Adams, Charles, 112
Adams, Charles FoUen, contributes, 414
Adams, Charles Francis, Sr., 243, 394,
S13
Adams, Henry, 449, 554
Adams, John, 9, 10; death, 89, 90
Adams, J. Q., 82, 124, 131; and "gag"
resolution, 170, 182.
Adee, A. A., 414
Advertisements, see Evening Post
Advertiser, Boston, 460
Alaska, purchased, 503
Albion, The 355, 407
Alden, H. M., 317, 318
Aldrich, T. B., offered literary editorship,
413. 417
AUston, Washington, 107, 125
Altgeld, J. P., SCO, S02, 542
American Citizen, The, 9, 12, 18, i
27
9, 25,
"American Flag, The," 104
"American Notes," Dickens's, 223
Anderson, Henry J., 125, 127; on staff,
163
Anderson, Major Robert, 273
Anthon, Prof. Charles, 125
Antietam, Battle of, 294
Apartment houses introduced, 367ff.
Appomattox, 314, 323
Armistad Affair, 172
Army and Navy Journal, The, 3r8
Arthur, Chester A., 450, 451
Arden, Francis, 23, 109
Arndt, Walter T., 578
Arrears, of subscriptions, 93
Asphalt, E. P. advocates, 37s
Aster, John Jacob, 18, 46, 106, 131
Astor, William B., 273, 364, 385
Astor House, opened, 162
Astor Library, 364
Astor Place riot, 226
Atlanta captured, 310
Aurora, Philadelphia, 9, 13, 31, So, 94
Audubon, John J., visits E. P., 191
Australian ballot, advocated, 537
"Ballads and Other Poems" (Longfel-
low's), 219
Ballinger Affair, 572
Baltimore Convention, in 1844, 176, 177
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad opened, 78
Bancroft, George, 178, 191, 215, 329, 339
Bandelier, A. F., contributes, 527, 554
Banks, N. P., 251, 321
Barker, Jacob, 100
Barnard, Frederick, 341
Barnard, Judge, 536
Barnburners, E. P. joins, 243
Barney, Hiram, 265, 277
Barnum, P. T., 366
Beecher, Henry Ward, 255, 312, 328, 338;
praises E. P., 464
Bellairs, E. G., correspondent, 552, 553
Bellamy, Mrs. Frederick P., quoted, 546
Belmont, August, 304, 485
Bellows, Dr. Henry, 361
Belshazzar's Feast, 464
Benjamin, Judah P., 327
Benjamin, Park, contributes, 325
Bennett, James Gordon, early career, 156;
revolutionizes New York journalism,
i57ff. ; social ostracism of, 160; later
mention, 244, 27 iff., 286, 326, 537
Bennett, James Gordon, Jr., 511
Benson, Egbert, 54
Benton, Thomas Hart, contributes, 234,
235, 242, 247, 251
Beranger, 240, 241
Bergh, Henry, E. P. defends, 375
Berlin Decree, 39
Bernhardt, Sarah, 435
Biddle, Commodore James, 183
Biddle, Nicholas, 153, 356
Bigelow, John, 216; career, 228; char-
acter, 228, 229; becomes part owner
and editor, 230; political activity, 231;
controversy with Sparks, 231-234; ob-
tains Benton's book, 235; business acu-
men, 236-240; and Sainte-Beuve, 239,
240; Minister to France, 241, 286,
311, 313. 341-343; his "Jamaica,"
346; on Bryant's style, 347; as Bry-
ant's associate, 352, 358, 359; as Til-
den's friend, 400-405 ; later mentions,
424, 438, 439
Binns, John, 21, 53
Binney, J. G., 171
Bishop, Joseph Bucklin, joins E. P., 455;
and Mugwump campaign, 461; and the
fight against Tammany, 481; as asso-
ciate editor, 526; on election of 1900,
568, 569
Bismarck, 452
Black Friday, 392, 425
Bladensburg, 55
Blaine, James G., 394, 446, 447; E. P.
attacks, 450; campaign of 1884, 459-
466; Secretary of State, 468, 471, 472
Blair, Francis P., 251, 314
Blair, Montgomery, Postmaster-General,
285
Bland Act, E. P. attacks, 436
Bland, Richard, silver leader, 499
Blankenburg, Rudolph, writes Schurz,
445
Bleecker, Anthony, 15, 18, 97, 114
Bleecker, Leonard, 18
Bliss & White, 125
Blockade of South, 284, 286
Blunt, Orison, runs for Mayor, 378
Board of Health organized, 371
Boggs, W. G., part owner, employee, 230,
231, 431
Book-reviews, early, 107-111; 1830-1855,
207, 2i6ff.; 1865-1881, 406-419; 1881-
1901, 553-560
Boole, F. I. A., Tammany leader, 378
Booth, Edwin, and star system, 565
681
582
INDEX
Booth, John Wilkes, death, 318
Booth, Junius Brutus, his debut, 118;
career ends, 564
Boutelle, Representative, Charles A., on
Spanish War, 515
Boutwell, George S., as Secretary of
Treasury, 392
Bowles, Samuel, 362; and Liberal Re-
publican movement, 394-400
Boyce, S. S., reporter, 319
Boyesen, H. H., contributes, 527
Brace, Charles Loring, 485, 524
"Bracebridge Hall," Irving's, reviewed,
III
Bradford, Gamaliel, contributes, 559
Bradley, Gen. Stephen T., 23
"Bramble, Matthew," contributes, 100
Brevoort, Henry, contributes, 95, 109,
no
Bridges, Robert, on staff, 439
Briggs, James A., on Lincoln at Cooper
Union, 260
Bristow, Ex-Gov. Benj. H., trustee, 444
Bronson & Chauncey, 91
Brooklyn, 224, 365; union with New
York, 494
Brooks, James and Erastus, found the
Express, 156; later careers, 262, 271,
304
Brooks, Preston S., assaults Sumner,
252, 359
Brown, Charles Brockden, 15; works re-
viewed, 109, no
Brown, John, at Harper's Ferry, 256-258
Brownell, W. C, 449, 554. SS8
Bryce, James, 443, 448, 523, 532, 553;
as a contributor, 556, 557, 559
Bryan, Wm. J., and campaign of 1896,
500-503; and campaign of 1900, 568,
569; as Secretary of State, 574
Bryant, William Cullen, acquaintance
with Coleman, 21-23, 96, 97; comes
to New York, 121; associate editor
E. P., 122; early labors on E. P.,
125-133; becomes editor-in-chief, 134;
in Europe, 138; returns in 1836, 163;
rescues E. P. from failure, 166-169;
free speech and free soil, 170-173; in
campaign of 1840 and Mexican War,
173-179; travels, 182, 183; buys Ros-
lyn, 190; literary friends, 191; advo-
cates Central Park, 192-201; begins
fight for international copyright, 211-
216; literary judgments, 216-224;
asks Bigelow to join E. P., 230; anti-
slavery utterances, 242-266; ardent
supporter of Union and emancipation
in Civil War, 267-315; mild recon-
struction views, 326-337; character as
an editor, 338-359; becomes rich, 359-
362; influence, 362, 363; and Tweed
Ring, 386, 387; in elections of 1872
and 1876, 389-405; death, 420
Bryant, Mrs. W. C., on Bryant's over-
work, 179.
Bryant Building, 412
Buckingham, J. T., defends free speech,
148
Budget, executive, 451
Buell, General, 313
Bull Run, battle of, 284, 285, 323; second
battle of, 291
Burch, Robert, managing editor, 351, 455
Burnham, Michael, 125, 138
Burns, the slave, 250
Burnside, Gen. Ambrose, 297, 298, 322
Burr, Aaron, 9, 10, 25, 39, 51, 107
Butler, Benj. F., 459, 464
Calhoun, John C., E. P. characterizes,
21, 29, 35
Callender, J. T., 12, 20, 36
Cameron, Simon, in Lincoln's Cabinet,
277, 278
Canby, Henry Seidel, 579
Carey, Matthew, on international copy-
right, 215, 417
Carleton, C. C, 322
Carrier-pigeons, early use of, 82; later
use, 161
Carter, James C, 485, 524
Cartoons, first, 86
Cass, Lewis, £. P. opposes for President,
243, 247
Censorship, Civil War, 321-323
Central Park, E. P. champions, 193-201
Cervera defeated, 553
Chancellorsville, battle of, 298, 322
Charter, agitation for a reform, 205, 206;
Tweed charter, 378-388; reform char-
ters, 401, 494
Chase, Salmon P., contributes, 242, 243;
in Lincoln's Cabinet, 277, 278; a
"radical," 285; corresponds with Bry-
ant, 286, 290; financial policies, 295-
297. 313; on reconstruction, 327, 334;
for Presidency, 390
Chatham Street chapel, riot at, 145
Chandler, William E., 450
Cheetham, James, 12, 21, 25, 29, 31, 32,
48, 50, 51, 81
Child, Lydia Maria, 294
Chinese question, 451
Choate Joseph H., 440, 527, 561, 562
Cholera epidemic of 1832, 142
"Christmas in 1875," 414
Church, W. C, 318, 369
Civil Rights bill, E. P. advocates, 329.
Civil service reform, E. P. champions,
391, 393. 405, 436, 451. 466-468, 522,
.523, 547
Civil War, 267, 325
Civil War poetry in E. P., 323-325
Clark, E. P., associate edit<Jr, 526
Clarkin, Franklin, war correspondent, 552
Clay, Henry, 46, 50, 127; E. P. charac-
terizes, 143, 173; "Raleigh letter,"
177; Compromise of 1850, 244-247,
454, 537
Cleveland, Grover, on Schurz, 446, 450,
451; E. P. supports in 1884, 462-466;
as President, 466-468; re-election, 469,
470; and Venezuela affair, 470-475;
and silver, 498, 499; and New York
Journal, 511
Cobb, Howell, 254, 264
Cobbett, William, 13, 104
Cockran, Bourke, and Tammany, 480-495
Coghlan, Charles and Rose, 564
Colden, Cadwallader, 11, 108
Cole, Thomas, 338
Coleman, William, early career, 14-17;
becomes editor-in-chief, 17-20; charac-
ter, 21-24; relations with Hamilton,
25-34; Federalist views, 39-47; meth-
ods as editor, 46-51; in War of 181 2,
52-62; comments on city affairs, 63-
76; and "Croaker" poets, 101-105;
dramatic tastes, 112-120; death, 133,
134
Colored Orphan Asylum, burned, 307
Columbian, the New York, 95
Commercial, New York, 128, 246, 252,
342
INDEX
583
Commercial, Cincinnati, 390, 462
Commercial Advertiser, New York, 12,
77, 95, 108, 117, 128, 321, 404, 439,
440, 550
Committee of Seventy, in Tweed Affair,
388
Concrete sidewalks, first in New York,
36s
Conkling, Roscoe, 450, 451
Connolly, Richard B., in Tweed Affair,
376-388
Conservation, 448
Constitution, frigate, 52, 53, 83
Cooke, George Frederick, 115
Cooper, Fenimore, visits E. P., 190, 191;
last years, 206, 215, 216; E. P. on
"Deerslayer," 222; contributes to
E. P., 223, 224, 225; mentioned, 338
Cooper, Peter, 524, 539
Copyright, international, E. P. contends
for, 209, 212-216, 417, 418, 560-562
Corbett, Sergeant Boston, contributes, 318
Courier and Enquirer, New York, 137,
146; assails E. P., 147, 154; news
enterprise, 155; attacks Cooper, 223;
supports Fremont, 251; absorbed by
World, 270
Courrier des Etats Unis, on Dickens,
211; on secession, 272; on emancipa-
tion, 295; a "copperhead" paper, 301
Cox, Dr. F. F., abolitionist, 145
Cox, Gen. Jacob, 393, 394. 399, 559-
Cox, Kenyon, contributes, 554
Cranch, Christopher Pearse, contributes,
189, 324
Crawford, W. C, supported in 1824, 124
Crime in New York in 1839, 192
Crimean War, news of, 189; 504
Crittenden Compromise, 272-274
"Croaker" poems, 100-107
Croker, Richard, 478, 480, 494, 518, 550
Croton Aqueduct, 194, 196, 197
Cruger, Henry, 106
Crystal Palace, 205
Cushing, Caleb, 341
Cushman, Charlotte, benefit for, 339;
retires, 564
Cuba, war in, 506-515; E. P. opposes
annexation of, Si5ff.
Curtis, George W., 362, 524
Cutting, R. Fulton, and W. Bayard, 485
Daily Advertiser, New York, 12
Daily Gazette, New York, 12, 76, 93, 94,
95, 104
Daily Graphic, New York, 406.
Daily News, New York, 252; on seces-
sion, 271-283; mob threatens, 301;
"copperhead," 302ff. ; calls war a fail-
ure, 312; on reconstruction, 326
Daly, Augustin, his stock company, 564
Dana, Charles A., 326; on impeachment,
33iff., 349, 363; on Tweed Charter,
382; supports Grant, 390; supports
Greeley, 399, 434; campaign of 1884,
464ff. ; and Cleveland, 466, 469; a
Tammany adherent, 476, 485; and
free silver, 502; epigrams, 532: lack
of principle, 538; character as editor,
546, 547
Dana, R. H., Sr., 121, 123, 162, 166,
216, 223
Dana, R. H., Jr., 339
Danish West Indies, annexation of, 503
Darwin, Charles, Bryce upon, 557
Davenport, Fanny, 564
Davis, Jefferson, 272, 274, 299, 306, 327
Davis, R. B., 109
Davis, Royal J., literary editor, editorial
writer, 576, 577
Day, Benjamin H., founds Sun, 157.
Day Book, New York, on secession, 271-
283; mob threatens, 301
Decatur, Stephen, 86
"Deerslayer, The," reviewed, 222
De Lome, Dupuy, dismissed, 507, 508
Delta, New Orleans, 184, 185
Democratic Review, 224, 229
Dennie, Joseph, 100
Dewey, Chester P., correspondent, 258
Dewey, Orville, 225
Dewey, Admiral George, at Manila, 514
Dicey, A. V., on Godkin, 531; a con-
tributor, 558
Dicey, Edward, on J. G. Bennett, 160
Dickens, Charles, 192, 207; visit in 1842,
209ff. ; E. P. upon, 223, 353
District of Columbia, emancipation in,
172
Dithmar, Henry, foreman, 342, 343, 354,
422
Dix, John A., 329
Dodge, William E., 374
DoUiver, Senator Jonathan P., 472
Dom Pedro, Emperor, visits E. P., 356
Dorr, Rheta Childe, 578
Douglas, Stephen A., E. P. attacks,
247ff. ; debate with Lincoln, 258ff.
Downing, A. J., and Central Park, 193,
196
Draft Riots, 300, 305ff.
Drake, Joseph Rodman, 96; contributes
"Croaker" poems, 100-107
Drama, in early E. P., 111-119; before
Civil War, 226, 227; after Civil War,
421; under J. R. Towse, 562-565
Dred Scott decision, 2S4ff.
Drew, John, 564
Duane, William, as editor, 12, 21, 23, 31,
50, 51, 94
Du Chaillu, 320
Duncan, Norman, 577
Dunlap, William, 15, iii, 113, 114, 125
Dupont, Admiral S. F., 318
Dwight, Theodore, as Federalist editor,
17, 23, 45, 57, 124
Eacker, George L., fights Hamilton's son,
28
Eggleston, Edward, 412; contributes,
414, 554
Eggleston, George Gary, 348; on Bryant,
354-358; as literary editor, 412-419;
on Parke Godwin, 435; resigns, 449
Elevated railways, movement for, 372ff.
Elevators, first, 365
Electoral Commission of 1876, 405
Emancipation, 293-295
Embargo, 42-44, 46
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, lectures reported,
180, 225; E. P. upon, 221-223, 339;
"Fortune of the Republic," 415
Enquirer, Richmond, 235, 248
Ericsson, John, and E. P. press, 237',
and Civil War, 286
Erie Railway, early career, 159
Evarts, William M., 229, 334, 338, 339,
428
Evening Post, weekly, begins in 1842, 179
Evening Post, The, see table of contents:
Advertisements in, 72, 73; 91-92, 94,
135, 153, 238, 360, 361, 430, 431, 567
Circulation of, 18, 20, 77, 92, 93, 189,
584
INDEX
Evening Post — Continued
237. 338, 268, 326, 359, 360, 361,
474, 530
Finances of, 92-95, 123, 124, 135, 136,
153, 190, 236, 238, 239, 359-362,
426, 427, 433, 566, 567
News pages, 78-90, 125, 179, 180-189,
316-323, 421-426, 546-566
Express, New York, 221, 252, 256; views
of secession, 267-283; mob threatens,
301; on reconstruction, 326ff.; 342;
in election of 1872, 399
Farragut, David, 314
Fawcett, Edgar, contributes, 414
Federal aid to schools, 451
Fenton, R. E., 397
Fessenden, T. G., 109
Fessenden, W. P., 334
Field, Cyrus W., 464, 524
Field, D. D., 178, 243, 339
Field, Henry M., 364, 524
Fields, James T., 407
Finck, Henry T., 530; on W. P. Gar-
rison, 555; as musical editor, 565, 566
Firemen, New York, 76; in forties and
fifties, 202-204
Fisk, James, 392
Fiske, John, 309, 415, 449; contributes,
.554
Five Points in New York history, 146,
370
Flagg, Azariah, as controller, 205
Foote, Ebenezer, 16, 31, 32
Ford, W. C, 527
Forrest, Edwin, debut, 118; Leggett
upon, 225; Parke Godwin quarrels
witli, 226, 227; retires, 564
Fort Dearborn massacre, 83
Fort Donelson, 309
Fourteenth Amendment, 330
Fowler, Senator G.S., 334. 335
Francis, Dr. John W., 24
Franco-Prussian War, 504
Franklin, Dr. Fabian, assistant editor,
^ 576, 577
Fraser's Magazine on American Press, 346
Fredericksburg, battle of, 297, 322
Freedmen's Bureau Bill, 329
Freeman's Journal, 301
Free Silver, 425, 446, 469; E. P. cam-
paign against, 496-503
Free Soil Party, E. P. supports, 243, 244
Fremont, Jessie Benton, 231
Fremont, John C, 231; E. P. supports
in 1856, 251, 252; defeated, 252;
emancipation proclamation, 293
Freneau, Philip, 97
"Friar Lubin," 231
Fugitive Slave Law, 351
Fuller, Margaret, as critic, 215
Fulton, Robert, 73, 74, 78
Funk, Dr. I. K., and international copy-
right, 561, 562
Furness, H. H., contributes, 554
Furness, W. H., 341
Galaxy, The, 318, 369
Gallatin, Albert, 37, 46
Gannett, Henry, contributes, 554
Garfield, James A., E. P. supports for
President, 436, 437; mentioned, 440;
450
Garrison, W. L., 145
Garrison, W. P., literary editor, 441, 447,
458, 530; character and work, 554-556
Gavit, John Palmer, 577, 578
Gay, Edwin F., President Evening Post
Company, 578, 579
Gay, Sidney Howard, managing editor,
413. 424
Genung, C. H., contributes, 559
George, Henry, political career, 478, 479,
494» 533
Germany, Schurz on, 452; Franco-Prus-
sian War, 504; war with, 574-576
Gettysburg, battle of, 298-300, 322
Ghent, treaty of, 58, 59, 87
Gibbons, John S., writes war-song, 325
Giddings, Joshua, 243
Gilbert, Mrs. C. H., 564
Gilbert, John, 564
Gilder, Richard Watson, 411
Gildersleeve, Basil, contributes, 559
Gilman, Daniel Coit, 492, 493
Gilroy, Thomas F., Tammany career of,
480-495 passim.
Gladden, Washington, and reading notices,
430
Gladstone, W. E,, 523, 557
Goelet, Peter and R. H., 364
Godkin, E. L., Paris correspondent, 318;
on reconstruction, 327fl. ; and Liberal
Republican movement, 394-400; asso-
ciate editor E. P., 43SS.; career, 442,
443; quarrel with Schurz, 454-457;
editor-in-chief, 457, 458; campaign of
1884, 459, 466; and Cleveland's Ad-
ministration, 466-470; and Venezuela
affair, 470-475; war upon Tammany,
476-495; fight against free silver, 496-
503; Spanish war and Philippines,
5 03-5 18; resignation, 518; character,
519-543; influence, 543-545; ideal of
a newspaper, 546-550; dispute with
merchants, 566, 567
Goff, John W., and city reform, 487ff.
Godwin, Parke, on Bryant, 125; on J. G.
Bennett, 161; joins E. P., 163, 164,
167, 168; as Bryant's associate, 179;
on Bryant's habits, 190, 191; lectures,
225, 229; buys share of E. P., 238,
291. 313, 339. 343; on Bryant as edi-
tor, 349, 352, 353, 354; newspaper
profits, 359; 392; in Hayes-Tildcn
campaign, 403!?.; 413; trustee of E. P.,
420; editor-in-chief, 420, 426-437;
early career, 434, 435; sells E. P.,
438-440, 448
Gordon, "Chinese," 505
Gould, Jay, 392, 439, 453, 464, 465
Grace, W. R., runs for Mayor, 477
Gracie, Archibald, a founder, 17, 18,
63
Graham's Magazine, 218
Granger movement, 436
Grant, Hugh J., and city politics, 477-495
passim.
Grant, U. S., 299, 302; E. P. praises
military career, 309!?.; 313, 319; E.P.
supports in 1868, 389; attacks, 389-
395 ; for re-election, 395-400; 459
Graves, Ralph, 578
Greeley, Horace, founds Tribune, 160;
lectures, 225, 261; on secession, 270,
271, 273; on Bull Run, 285, 322; on
reconstruction, 326, 329, 334; debates
with Raymond, 345, 349; influence,
362; on Tweed Charter, 382, 390;
candidate for Presidency, 395-40o;
Watterson upon, 435; mentioned, 538
}reen, Andrew H., and Tweed Ring, 388,
401
Greenback movement, 425
Grimes, James W., 334. 335
Griswold, R. W., 217
Gunsaulus, F. W., 414
INDEX
585
Hackett, James, 106, 107, 119
Hackett, James K., 564
Hackett, Mrs. John, 355, 356
Hadley, A. T., contributes, 527
Hagerman, H. B., 48, 49
Hale, David, 155
Hall, A. Oakey, and Tweed Ring, 378-
388
Hall, Capt. Basil, E. P. defends, 207,
208
Hallam, Henry, on Sparks, 232
Halleck, FitzGreene, 96, 97; "Croaker"
poems, 100-107, 108, 216, 338
Hallock, Gerard, 271, 279, 301
Halstead, Murat, 390, 546
Hamilton, Alexander, in campaign of
1800, 9-11; interest in press, 12-15;
befriends Coleman, 14-17; helps found
E. P., 17-19; helps conduct E. P.,
25-34; deprecates attack on Jeflferson,
36; death, 30.
Hamilton, Philip, killed in duel, 28
Hammond, Charles, defends free speech,
148
Hampton Roads Conference, 314
Hancock, Winfield S., for Presidency, 437
Hapgood, Isabel, contributes, 560
Hapgood, Hutchins, 577
Hapgood, Norman, reporter, 527, 528,
550, 552. 577
Harper, Mayor James, 202
Harpers, publishers, 125, 219, 417
Harper's Weekly, on reconstruction,
327S.; on Greeley, 399; on Mug-
wump movement, 460; on the "New
Tammany," 479, 480
Harris, Joel Chandler, 554
Harrison, W. H., E. P. attacks, 173, 174
Harrison, Benjamin, 468
Harte, Bret, on staff, 414
Hartford Convention, 57, 58
Harvey, W. H., 497ff.
Haswell, Chas. H., on Central Park, 193
Havemeyer, Mayor, 401
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, E. P. upon, 221;
upon Bryant, 358
Hay, John, 407, 532, 569
Hayes, Rutherford B., 362; E. P. sup-
ports, 402-405; reads E. P., 454; Na-
tion on, 4SQ.
Hearth and Home, 412, 414
Headley, J. T., 217
Headlines, Civil War, 323
Heilprin, Angelo, 554
Heilprin, Michael, 555, 556
Henderson, Isaac, joins E. P., 237, 238,
340; Bryant's loyalty to, 353; grows
rich, 359; quarrels with Nordhoff, 385;
in Hayes-Tilden campaign, 403-405,
411; builds Bryant building, 412, 420;
resigns as publisher, 420; struggle
with Parke Godwin, 426-437; Civil
War charges against, 427, 428; char-
acter, 427; sells E. P., 439, 440
Henderson, Isaac, Jr., 420, 426
Henderson, Senator John B., 334-337
Hendrick, Burton J., 577
Hendricks, M. M., 364
Herald (weekly edition of E. P.), 20,
30, 93
Herald, New York, founded, 157; early
character, isSff.; pro-slavery, 171;
news enterprise, 184, 188; supports
Taylor, 244, 256; secession views,
267-283; attacks Lincoln, 286; and
Stanton, 290; and Lincoln's Cabinet,
292; on emancipation, 295ff. ; mob
threatens, 301; on draft, 305; on
Draft Riots, 309; and censorship, 321;
war maps, 323; on reconstruction, 326-
337f 346, 360; advertising in 1865,
361; 458; on Spanish War, 511
Hergesheimer, Joseph, 567
Hewitt, Abram S., 478, 479
"Hiawatha" reviewed, 220
Hildreth, Richard, 346
Hill, David B., 468, 469, 544
Hoar, Gen. Ebenezer, 393
Hobson, R. P., 514
Hoffman, Ogden, 148
Hogs, in New York, 65, 66
Holmes, O. W., lectures reported, 225;
quoted, 315, 339
Holt, Charles, 25, 95
Holt, Henry, on Godkin, 545
Hone, Philip, 18
Hone, Philip, Jr., diary quoted, 139, 152,
356
Hooker, Gen. Joseph, 298, 322
Horse-railways in New York, 192, 372,
373
Hosack, Dr., 95
Housing crisis of 1864-66, 365ff.
Howard, Bronson, on staff, 422
Howe, Timothy, 237
Howe, Julia Ward, tribute to Bryant,
339
Howells, W. D., applies for work, 407;
novels reviewed, 417, 557, 558; on
Schurz, 448; on Godkin, 476, 513, 522,
543
Hull's surrender, 55, 82, 83
Hunt, Richard M., architect, 368
Huntington, Dr. W. R., 493
"Hyperion," E. P. upon, 218
Independent, on reconstruction, 328ff. ;
and reading notices, 430
Index Expurgatorius, Bryant's, 348
Indian question, 451
Internal improvement system, E. P. at-
tacks, 351
Irving, Dr. Peter, 25, 50, 51, 97, 112
Irving, Washington, 97-99i ^07; his
books criticized, no, in, 206; at
Dickens dinner, 211; mentioned, 316,
338
Irving, William, 97
Italy, and Abyssinia, 505
James, E. J. contributes, 527
James, Henry, books reviewed, 417, 518,
523, 557 558
James, William, 545
Jay, John, 16, 54, 62
Jay, William, contributes, 245, 340
Jackson, Andrew, loi; supported for
Presidency, 131; administration, 142,
143-
Jackson, H. H., contributes, 325, 410.
Jefferson, Thomas, election of 1800, 10,
27; E. P. attacks, 36-43; death, 89, 90
Jerome, Wm. Travers, 487ff.
Jewett, Helen, murder of, 180
Jingoism, Godkin attacks, 470-472, 51 iff.
Johnson, Andrew, reconstruction and im-
peachment, 327-337; Nation upon, 459
Job-Printing Office, 236
"Jonathan Oldstyle Papers," 97, 98
Jones's Wood, park scheme for, 194-
201
Journal, New York, and Bryan campaign,
502, 503; and Spanish War, 509-515;
Godkin upon, S49ff.
586
INDEX
Journal of Commerce, New York, 145,
15s; pro-slavery, 171; opposes Central
Park, 199, 200; supports Buchanan,
252, 256; secession views, 267-283;
on emancipation, 295; mob threatens,
301; "copperhead" tendency, 302!?.;
on Bryant, 362; on Venezuela affair,
474
Journalism, revolution in New York in
thirties, i54fl.
Julian, George W., 453
Kansas, war in, 253, 25sff.
Kansas-Nebraska bill, 247-250.
Kean, Charles, acting reviewed, 116-
ii8, 562
Kelly, Boss John, 477, 478
Kemble, Charles and Fanny, their act-
ing, 225, 226
Kendall, Amos, censors mails, 148; pen-
alizes E. P., 153
Kendall, E. A., 212
Kendall, G. W., reports Mexican War,
i84fiF.
Kent, Judge William, 340
King, Charles, 95, 152, 156, 291
King, Edward, 415
King, Preston, 243, 247
King, Rufus, 13; contributes, 42, 43,
45, 52, 54, 60, 106, 131
Kingsland, Mayor A. C, 197
Kittredge, George L,, contributes, 559
Knickerbocker School, 96, 97
"Knickerbocker History," advertised in
E. P., 98, 99
Kossuth, visits America, 206
Labor, 163-165, 540, 542
Labor, Knights of, Godkin attacks, 541,
542
Lamont, Hammond, 577
Lament, Thomas W., owner of E. P.,
578
Lang, John, 12, 104
Lanrnan, Charles, contributes, 410
Lansing, Chancdlor, disappearance of,
162, 163
Lathrop, George Parsons, Boston corre-
spondent, 414, 415
Laugel, AuRUste, 558, 560
Lawrence, David, 578
Lea, Henry C., 554. 559
Learned, J. E,, managing editor, 527,
549. 550
Learoyd, H. J., 577
Leavitt, Joshua, 145
Ledger, Philadelphia, 362
Lee, General Robert E., 298-300; 323
Lee, General Henry, 53
Leggett, Wm., becomes assistant editor,
134; made acting editor, 138; violent
language, 140; character, 140-142; last
days and death, 166, 167; dramatic
criticism, 225, 346
Lenox, James, 364
Lenox Library, 364
Lenox, Robert, 64, 91
Lesugg, Catherine, 106, 107, 115
Leupp, Francis E., Washington corre-
spondent, 578
Levermore, C. H., on J. G. Bennett, 161
Lewis, Charlton M., 385, 397, 421;
character and career, 422, 423
Lewis, Morgan, yj., 106
Lexow, Clarence, and city reform, 487!!.
Libel, Godkin on, 548, 549
Liberal Republican Movement, 394-400
Lind, Jenny, 192
Lingan, Gen. James, 53
Linn, Wm. Alexander, city editor, 421,
449. 450, 527, 549. 550
Literary Review, the, 579
Littell's Living Age, on E. P., 340
Loco-foco movement, E. P. promotes,
15 iff. ; vote 169
Lodge, Henry C., 447; as jingo, 471, 47a,
496, 497, 502, 504
Log-cabin campaign, disgusts E. P., 173-
174
Longfellow, H. W., Bryant's opinion of,
217-220, 225, 408
Lord, Rufus M., 364
Lorrilard, Peter, 364
Lossing, B. J., contributes, 414
Lotteries, hostility of E. P. to, 71, J2,
Louisiana Purchase, E. P. upon, 37, 38
Lounsbury, T. R., 559
Lovejoy, Elijah P., murder of, 171
Low, Seth, 494
Lowell, J. R., on Bryant, 217; Bryant's
opinion of, 220, 221; mentioned, 339,
389, 442, 448, 469, 521, 523
Lowry, E. G., 577, 578
"Lucius Crassus," letters of, 27
Ludlow, Rev. Mr., 145, 146
Lusitania, sinking of, 575
MacAlarney, Robert E., 578
Macready, W. C, acting reviewed, 118,
119; riot, 226
MacVeagh, Wayne, congratulates God-
kin, 493
Madison, James, attacked, 52-59; E. P.
supports, 61; his messages, 82, 83
Madison Square, laid out, 192, 195
Mahon, Lord, and Sparks controversy,
233
Mail and Express, New York, 465
Maine, destruction of, 5o8ff.
Managing editorship, creation of, 421
Mapleson, James Henry, 425, 556
Marble, Manton, 302, 312, 382, 390,
435
Marcy, Gov. W. M., 151; assails Leg-
gett, 152
Mario, Jessie White, 342, 559
Mark Twain, on Schurz, 447
Marryat, Capt., Frederick, E. P. criti-
cizes, 208
Marshall, John, E. P. attacks, 152
Martineau, Harriet, Bryant's opinion of,
208, 212
"Martin Chuzzlewit," 223
Mason, Charles, edits E. P., 153, 163
Mather, Frank Jewett, Jr., 576
Matthews, Brander, contributes, 554
Maverick, Augustus, 425
Maynard, J. H., 467
Maxwell, Wm. H., beads schools, 492
McKinley, William, and free silver cam-
paign, 499-503; and Spanish War, 505-
515. 523; and Boxer rebellion, 569
Meade, Gen. George Gordon, 299, 300
Means, David M., on staff, 527
Mercantile Advertiser, New York, 93,
94
Mercantile Library, 364
Metropolitan Museum, E. P. calls for,
364; enlarged, 493
Meyer, Brantz, correspondent, 317
Mexico, war with, 179, 180; news of
war with, 183,187; intervention under
Wilson, 573, 574
Milan Decree, 40
Mill, John Stuart, praises E. P., 341
INDEX
587
Minshull, John, 103
Minturn & Barker, 91
Missolonghi, news of, 80, 81
Missouri Compromise, 61
Mitchell, Donald G., 408
Mitchill, Dr. Samuel Latham, 64, 95,
103
Monell, Judge John J., president Evening
Post Company, 420; inquires into busi-
ness affairs, 433, 434
Monroe, James, 39
Mooney, William, 79
Moore, Thomas, contributes, 100, 102
Moore, John Bassett, 474
More, Paul Elmer, 576
Morning Chronicle, New York, 25, 76,
77, 92
Morgan, E. P., 251
Morris, Clara, 564
Morris, George P., 100
Morris, Gouverneur, 10; contributes, 27,
31, 45, 54, 108
Morse, S. F. B., invents telegraph,
187-189, 304
Morton, Levi P., 490, 491
Moscow, burning of, 59, 60
Moss, Frank, and city reform, 487ff.
Motley, J. L., dismissed by Grant, 393
Mugwump movement, 459-466
Mullet, Abram B., 375
Mulligan letters, 459-466
Mulberry Court described, 372
Murray, Charles Augustus, E. P. de-
fends, 208
Musical criticism, 421, 449, 565, 566
Nadal, E. S., on newspaper reviewing,
415, 416
Napoleonic Wars, 34, 39-44. 59. 60;
news of, 87, 88
Napoleon III, 504
Nast, Thomas, 377, 399
National Advocate, New York, 95, 124
National- Zeitung, New York, 302
Nation, New York, on reconstruction,
327fi.; on Liberal Republican Move-
ment, 390-400 passim; connected with
E. P., 438ff. ; political views, 458, 459;
influence, 543, 545; separated from
E. P., 578
Neilson, Adelaide, 564
Newbern, attack on, 321
Newcomb, Simon, contributes, 527, 554
New England Magazine, criticises Bry-
ant, 137
New Madrid earthquake, 82
"Newspaper waifs," 450
New Orleans, battle of, 84, 85
New York city, description in i8oi,
63ff. ; hogs, 6s, 66; street -cleaning,
67; health, 68-70; morals, 70-72;
amusements, 72, 73; transit, 73; coal
and gas, 75, 76; police, 76; burials,
76; growth to 1850, 192; parks, 192-
201; crime, 201; police, 202; fire de-
partment 1840-65, 202-204; street
cleaning, 204, 205 ; corruption in fif-
ties, 205, 206; and Draft Riots, 30off. ;
growth after Civil War, 364, 365;
housing difficulties, 365-371; health
after Civil War, 369-372; rapid tran-
sit, 372-375; and the Tweed Ring,
376-388; municipal misgovernment and
reform, 476-495; improvements under
Mayor Strong, 492, 493; creation of
Greater New York, 494.
New York Review, 122, 229
Nichols, Major George, contributes, 318
Niles, Nathaniel, correspondent, 186,
187
Noah, M. M., 51, 102, 108, 114; joins
Courier and Enquirer, 155
Nordhoff, Charles, 241, 291; Draft
Riots reported by, 306-309; career, 315-
317; as managing editor, 317-323;
quarrels with Henderson, 385, 421,
4-29
Northern Securities Case, 571
Norton, Charles Eliot, 340, 449, 458,
513. 518, 522, 543; contributes, 559
Noyes, Alexander Dana, and free sil-
ver campaign, 500-503; as financial
editor, 553
Nullification, 132, 133
O'Brien, James, 384, 387
O'Conor, Charles, 230, 231
Ogden, RoUo, 503, 523; as associate
editor, 526, 527; as editor-in-chief,
569-578; resigns, 578
Ogden, Wm. B., 374
Olmsted, F. L., 523
Olney, Richard B., 472ff.
Opera, first in New York, 119, 120
Opdyke, George, 263, 291, 303, 366
Orange Riot of 1871, 385-387
"Oregon Trail, The" (Parkman's), E. P.
reviews, 222
O'Reilly, Miles, contributes, 325, 410
Orders in Council, 39, 40; repealed, 54
Osborne, W. H., 265, 310
Osgood, J. R. & Co., 417
Osgood, Samuel, contributes, 410
"Outre-Mer," E. P. on, 218
Paine, Robert Treat, 21
Paine, Robert Treat, Jr., 107, 108
Paine, Thomas, 12, 43, 97
Panama, seizure of, 447, 570
Parkhurst Rev. Charles H., 486ff.
Parkman, Francis, 222, 449, 523, 554
Parks, growth of in New York, 192-
201
Park Theater, 113, 114
Parsons, Rev. Willard, 372
Parton, James, on J. G. Bennett, 159,
160
Paulding, J. K., 96, 97, no, 156; con-
tributes, 180; on E. P., 340
Payne-Aldrich Tariff, 572
Payne, George Henry, 578
Peck, Harry Thurston, quoted, 538
Pensions legislation, E. P. opposes, 436,
468
Percival, J. G., in
Perry, Lawrence, 577
Phelps, Wra. Walter, 451, 460-466
Philippines, E. P. opposes annexation,
S15-518
Picayune, New Orleans, 184, 280
Pierce, Franklin, E. P. supports in 1852,
247; attacks, 248, 249
Pierpont, John, 100, 107
Pinckney, Charles, 30
"Pindar, Peter," 99, 102
Pitkin, Walter B., 577
Pittsburgh Landing, battle of, 318
Piatt, T. C, 490, 491, 494, 502, 509,
516, S18
Poe, E. A., visits E. P., 190; 216; E. P.
upon, 221, 407, 418
Police, New York, 76; in forties, 201,
203; under Tammany, 1885-1895, 487-
490
588
INDEX
Polk, James K., E. P. supports, 172,
173, ^77, 178; E. P. attacks, 244
Pope, Gen. John, 290, 291, 302
Popular Science Monthly, 369
Populists, 469
Port Royal, capture of, 318
Post, Detroit, 44S
Postage, cheaper, E. P. advocates, 351
Potter, Bishop H, C, 485, 494. 5^6,
524
Powderly, T. V., and Knights of Labor,
536
President and Little Belt, 41
Press, Philadelphia, 462
Prize-fights, 449
Prime, Nathaniel, 106
Prospect Park, 365, 366
Public Advertiser, New York, 50, 76,
Public Library, E. P. asks for consoli-
dated, 364, 36s
Puckette, Charles McD., 577
Putnam, George Haven, 560
Putnam, G. P., 368
Putnam's, 417
Putnam's Magazine, 434
Quay, Matthew S., 502, 516, 537
Queenstown, battle of, 83, 84
"Quince, Peter," reviewed, 109
Randall, S. J., E. P. on, 547
Randolph, John, 61, 135
Rapid Transit, 372ff.
Raymond, Henry J., editor of the Times,
252, 255, 261, 281, 311, 326, 345.
362, 425
"Reading-Notices, 430, 431
Reclus, Elie, 415, 416
Reconstruction, see Chapter Fourteen
Reed, T. B., 496
Rehan, Ada, 564
Reid, Whitelaw, 326, 411, 532
Repplier, Agnes, contributes, 414
"Representative Men" reviewed, 222
Republican, Springfield, in campaign of
1872, 390-400; in Mugwump move-
ment, 46off.; and Philippines, 515
Rhett, R. B. 317
Rhinelander, Wm. C, 364
Rhodes, James Ford, quoted, 247, 298,
306, 443
Riardon, W. L., reporter, 5 5 off.
Riggs, Caleb S., 17
Riis, Jacob, 551
Ripley, George, literary editor the
Tribune, 216, 347, 406, 407
Ripley, Philip, war correspondent, 318
Robinson, A. G., war correspondent,
SS2
Roe, E. P., contributes, 414
Rogers, Samuel, contributes, 99
Ropes, John C, contributes, 554, 559
Rose, John C, on staff, 527
Roosevelt, C. V. S., 364
Roosevelt, James, 91
Roosevelt, Theodore, 447; in city poli-
tics, 478, 479, 486; Police Commis-
sioner, 492, 551; opinion of Journal,
611; runs for Governor, 516; on
way, 537; E. P. opposes in 1904, 570;
and Panama, 570; his Presidency, 571;
and Taft, 573
Ross, Senator James, 334, 335
Roslyn, Bryant purchases home at, 190;
life at, 342, 411
"Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion," 465
Russell, Wm. H., war correspondent,
184, 276, 301
Russian literature introduced, 559, 560
Salvini, Tommaso, 564
Soley, J. R., contributes, 554
Society Library, 364
South African War, 505 ^
Southern Literary Messenger, criticizes
Bryant, 137; J. R. Thompson edits,
407
Sparks, Jared, Bigelow's controversy
with, 231-234
Spain, war with, 506-515
Specie resumption, E. P. advocates, 391,
392, 436
Speculation, E. P. attacks era of, i3off.
Sperry, Watson R., managing editor,
368, 408, 409, 413, 414, 426, 431
Staats-Zeitung, New York, opposes
Pierce, 249; on secession, 272-283;
a copperhead sheet, 302
Stanton, Secretary, 322, 331-334
Stedman, E. C, 318, 407; contributes,
410, 411, 414
Steffens, Lincoln, reporter, 529, 530,
SSoff., 577
Stephen, Leslie, contributes, 558
Stephens, Alexander H., 314
Stephens, John L., 191, 214
Stewart, Alexander, 64
Stockton, Frank R., 408
Stoddard, R. H., contributes, 324, 339,
408, 411, 418
Stoddard, Mrs. R. H., contributes, 325
Stoddard, W. O., contributes, 414
Stone, Col. Wm. L., 108, 126, 128,
404
Straus, Nathan, 490
Street-cleaning, in fifties, 204, 205
Strong, Wm. M., and city reform, 491-
493
Strunsky, Simeon, 576-578
Subways, movement for, 372ff
Sub-treasury system, 351
Sumner, Charles, friend of E. P., 231,
242, 285, 286, 340, 393
Sumner, Wm. Graham, contributes, 559
Sun, Baltimore, in Mexican War, 184,
185
Suri, New York, founded, 157; circula-
tion in i860, 268; in 1865, 326; on
reconstruction, 326-337; advertising in
1865, 61; on Tweed Charter, 382; on
Greeley, 399; in Mugwump campaign,
4645.; and Cleveland, 466; and free
silver, 502, 503, 535; character as
newspaper under Dana, 546-548, 551
Sweeney, Peter B., and Tweed affair,
376-388
Swords, T. and J., 64, 91
Sykes, McCready, quoted, 542
Sagasta, Premier, and Cuban War,
Si2ff
Safe-deposit vaults, first in New York,
365
Sainte-Beuve contributes to E. P., 239,
240
Salisbury, Lord, and Venezuela affair,
472ff.
"Salmagundi Papers,"^ 97
Sands, Joshua, 11, 17
Sands, Robert, 128, 134
Santiago campaign, 514
Santo Domingo, annexation attOTOpted,
^ 392, 393. 395. 447, $04
Sargent, Winthrop, 109
INDEX
589
Sawyer, Charles Pike, sporting editor,
S66
Scnurz, Carl, 285, 286; and Liberal
Republican movement, 394-400; be-
comes editor-in-chief, 438ff.; career,
441-445; character, 445-448; as editor,
448-457, 463, 485; on Spanish War,
513; on Philippines, 515, 568, 569
Schieffelin, Wm. J., and city reform,
48s
Scott, Francis M., 484
Scott, Winfield, in Mexican War, 184-
186; E. P. opposes for President, 247
Sedgwick, A. G., as managing editor,
423, 424, 431-433; as associate editor,
461, 506, 525, 526.
Sedgwick, Catharine, contributes, 233
Sedgwick, Henry D., 121, 123, 129;
helps edit E. P., 153, 164; con-
tributes, 172, 176, 178, 210
"Seaside and Fireside," Longfellow's,
reviewed, 219
"Seventh of March Speech," Webster's,
245, 246
Seward, Wm, H., 155, 261-263; in Lin-
coln's Cabinet, 277, 278; a "conserva-
tive," 285, 290, 294
Seymour, Horatio, 304, 306, 334, 390
"Shakespeare Gallery," 112
Sherman Silver Act, 468, 496, 499
Sherman, Stuart P., on staff, 577
Sherman, W. T., 302, 310, 313, 318,
319. 321
Shipping news, 90, 91
Sickles, Gen. Daniel, 392
Sigourney, Mrs., 107
Simms, Wm. Gillmore, 191, 407
Simpson, Manager, 102, 104
"Sketch Book," reviewed, no
Slocum, Henry W., 374
Smith, Gerrit, 339
Slavery, rise of the question, i45flf.,
i7off.; in 1850-1860, 242-283
Taft, William Howard, E. P. supports
in 1908, 571; his Presidency, 571-573
Tallmadge, Senator Nathaniel P., on
free speech, 170
Tappan, Lewis and Arthur, abolition-
ists, 145, 146, 155
Tammany, 79, 205, 206; and Tweed
Affair, 364-388; Godkin's war upon,
476-495
Taney, Chief Justice Roger B., attacked,
254
Tanner, Corporal, 536
Tariff policy of E. P., 34, 129-131, 175,
228, 229, 361, 362, 391, 436, 468-470,
Taylor, Gen. Zachary, in Mexican War,
184-186; E. P. opposes for President,
243; funeral, 192
Taylor, Bayard, 407, 417
Telegraph introduced, 187-189
Telegraphers' strike of 1883, 455, 456
Tenure of Office Act, E. P. opposes,
331-334
Texas, annexation opposed, 175-179
Thayer, William Roscoe, contributes, 414
Thayer, W. S., Washington correspond-
ent, 242, 256, 315, 342
"Thirty Years' View," published in
E. P., 235, 250
Thomas, Gen. George H., 314
Thomas, A. E., 577
Thomas, Theodore, 365
Thompson, Captain, in duel with Cole-
man, 48
Thompson, Jacob, 254
Thompson, John R., literary editor, 353,
354, 407-411
Tilden, Samuel J., friendship with Bige-
low, 228-231, 251; opposes Lincoln,
265, 266; a "copperhead," 304; and
Tweed Affair, 383-388, 401; as Gover-
nor, 401, 402; candidate for Presi-
dency, 402-405, 440
Tillman, Ben, 499, 500
Tilton, Theodore, 328, 334, 412
Times, Brooklyn, on Bryant, 362
Times, New York, supports Fremont,
251, 252; slavery attitude, 255;
Seward organ, 26off. ; 264; view of
secession, 267-283 passim; criticises
Lincoln's Cabinet, 292; "niggerhead,"
305; and peace, 311; war censorship,
321; circulation in 1865, 326; on re-
construction, 326-337; 360; exposes
Tweed, 384-388; supports Grant,
39off.; attacks Tilden, 40 iff.; 422;
431, 436, 454, 458; in Mugwump
movement, 46off.; and Tammany, 486;
535-
"Tom Sawyer" reviewed, 417.
Tompkins, Daniel D., 61
Towse, J. Ranken, on Bryant, 355, 356,
357; on Bryant's imperfect control of
E. P., 403; on John R. Thompson,
410; becomes dramatic editor, 421,
426; on Charlton Lewis, 423; on W. G.
Boggs, 431; exposes Van Nort, 432,
433; as dramatic editor, 562-565.
Tracy, Gen. B. F., 494
Tribune, New York, foimded, 160; sup-
ports Zachary Taylor, 173; supports
Fremont, 251, 252, 260; for Bates
in i860, 261; 264; views of seces-
sion, 267-283; on emancipation, 294;
criticises Lincoln, 297; a "niggerhead"
sheet, 305; and censorship, 321, 322;
on reconstruction, 326-337 passim; 342;
business history in Civil War, 359,
360; advertising in 1865, 361; takes
over Fresh Air Fund, 372; on Tweed
Charter, 382; in campaign of 1872,
39off. ; 436, 445; in campaign of 1884,
462-466; and Bryan campaign, 502,
503
Tribune, Chicago, 280, 290, 390, 393,
394. 462
Trollope, Anthony, Bryce upon, 556, 557
TroUope, Mrs., 181; E. P. defends, 208,
209
Troup, Robert, 11, 14, 17, 62
Trumbull, Lyman, 285, 334
Trusts, 539
Tupper, Martin F,, 223, 355
Tweed, W. M., emerges, 206; his career,
376-388
Typhus in New York, 37off.
Tyler, President, E. P. attacks, 175, 176
"Uncle Tom's Cabin," 249
Union, Brooklyn, 412
Union League Club, 382
Union, Washington, 248
Unions, Trade, defended by E. P., 164,
165
United States Bank, hostility of E. P.
to, 131, 142, 143, 168
United States Review, 123
Van Buren, John, 247, 250, 339, 362
Van Buren, Martin, on JS. P. tariff pol-
icy, 130; befriends Leggett, 167; E. P.
supports, 169, 170; on slavery, 172,
590
INDEX
Van Buren, Martin — Continued
174; renomination asked, 175, 176,
182; supported in 1848, 243, 247
Vanderbilt, Commodore, 94
Vanderbilt, W. H., 336
Van Wyck, Augustus, 516
Van Wyck, Robert, 494, 510
Varick, Richard, 11, 17, 45, 51, 54
Vauxhall, 112
Veiller, Bayard, 577
Venezuela affair, 470-475
Verplanck, Gulian C, no, 121, 130;
disagrees with B. P., 148, 216, 338
Vicksburg, capture of, 300, 309
Victoria, Queen, 181, 182
Villard, Henry, Civil War correspondent,
332; purchases B. P., 438; his career,
440, 441; relations with Schurz, 453,
454, 522; and B. P. finances, 566; his
unselfishness, 567
Villard, Mrs. Henry, her ownership, 567
Villard, O. G., interviews Bigelow, 237;
joins staff, 576; as one of the editors,
577; president of Bvening Post Com-
pany, 578; sells B. P., 578.
"Voices of the Night," E. P. on, 218
Wade, Benjamin, and reconstruction,
328; and impeachment, 333ff-
Wadsworth, Gen. James, 286, 289, 304
Wagner, Richard, H. T. Finck upon,
565, 566
Walker's Filibusterers, 503
Wallace, Alfred Russell, contributes, 558
Wallack's Theater, 564
Wallack, James W., 106, 115, 564
Wallack, Lester, 564
Ware, Mrs. William, 179
Waring, Col. George E., 492
War of 1812, JS. P. opposes, 44ff-; views
of, 82-87.
Warner, Arthur, 578
Warner, Charles Dudley, on E. P., 340;
on Nation, 543
Washburne, Elihu, 392
Waterloo, news of, 89
Watterson, Henry, 35, 434, 435
"We Are Coming, Father Abraham,"
published by E. P., 325
Webb, James Watson, character as edi-
tor, 154, 224
Webster, Daniel, 52, 89; B. P. charac-
terizes, 144; tariff stand condemned,
168; on Compromise of 1850, 244-247
Webster, Noah, 13, 14, 20; Dictionary
reviewed, no
Weed, Thurlow, 95, i49. 168, 261, 356,
378, 428
Weeks, Capt. Seaman, 106
Welles, Gideon, contributes, 242; in Lin-
coln's Cabinet, 277, 278; a "radical,"
285; 290; on Henderson, 427, 428
Wellington, Lord, 88, 89
Wells, David A., 391, 394, 399; trustee
of B. P., 444; mentioned, 524
Wells, John, friend to Coleman, 15-17,
23. 29, 32, 52, 97, 112, 114
Weyler, in Cuba, 506, 507
Westervelt, Mayor Jacob, opposes Cen-
tral Park, 199, 200
Westliche Post, St. Louis, 445
Wharton, Edith, 567
Wheaton, Henry, 95
Whiting, James R., 374
Whiting, Newton F., financial editor,
424, 42s
Whitman, Walt, on Bryant, 217; con-
tributes, 224
White, Horace, 337; and Liberal Repub-
lican movement, 390-400; becomes as-
sociate editor, 438ff. ; career, 443, 444;
trustee of B. P., 444, 461; and war
upon Tammany, 481; and fight against
free silver, 496-503; 524; editor-in-
chief, 368, 569
Whittier, John Greenleaf, Bryant upon,
221, 239; contributes, 414
Wilder, Dr. A. P., Albany correspondent,
346
Wilmot Proviso, JS. P. supports, 247, 351.
Williams, Walter, 318
Williams, William F., 421, 425, 426
Willis, H. Parker, 577
Willis, N. P., 182, 227
Wilson, Gen. James Grant, 358
Wilson, Woodrow, contributes, 454;
B. P. supports in 19 12 and 19 16, 570;
his Presidency, 573, 574
Wines, E. C, contributes, 423
Winona Speech, Taft's, 572
Wise, Gov. Henry A., 253, 327
Wolcot, Dr. John, contributes, 99
Wolcott, Oliver, 13, 14; contributes, 27,
31
Wolfe, John D., 364
Wood, Fernando, 275, 301-306
Woodberry, George E., contributes, 554,
559
Woodford, Gen. Stewart L., 515, 524
Woodworth, Samuel, 100, 105, 107
Woolsey, W. W., 11, 17; contributes,
31
World, New York, views of secession,
267-283; attacks Lincoln, 287; and
Lincoln's Cabinet, 292; on Emancipa-
tion, 295; "copperhead," 3oiff. ; on
draft riots, 308; wants war stopped,
312; on reconstruction, 326-337; at-
tacks Bigelow and Thayer, 346, 356;
advertising in 1865, 361; on Bryant,
362; on Tweed Charter, 382; supports
Seymour, 390; on Greeley's candidacy,
398-400; on Henry Villard, 453, 454;
465; on Venezuela, 474; and Tam-
many, 485, 486; and free silver, 502,
503; and Spanish war, 509-515; E. L.
Godkin upon, 549ff.
World War, the, 574-576
Wright, Fanny, 126
Wright, H. J., on Godkin, 525-529 pas-
sim; as city editor, 55off. ; becomes
editor of Commercial Advertiser, 577
Wright, Silas, 229, 258
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