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ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION
Electromagnetic Radiation

Richard Freeman, James King,

and Gregory Lafyatis

1
 3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Richard Freeman, James King, Gregory Lafyatis 2019
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
First Edition published in 2019
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018953425
ISBN 978–0–19–872650–0
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198726500.001.0001
Printed and bound by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
Contents

Part I Introductory Foundations

1 Essentials of Electricity and Magnetism 3
1.1 Maxwell’s static equations in vacuum 3
1.1.1 Electrostatic equations 4
1.1.2 Magnetostatic equations 5
1.1.3 Lorentz force 6
1.2 Maxwell’s static equations in matter 6
1.2.1 Response of material to fields 7
1.2.2 Bound charges and currents 9
1.2.3 Macroscopic fields 10
1.2.4 Polarizability and Susceptibility 11
1.2.5 The canonical constitutive relations 13
1.2.6 Electric fields and free charges in materials 13
1.3 Energy of static charge and current configurations 14
1.3.1 Electrostatic field energy 14
1.3.2 Magnetic field energy 16
1.4 Maxwell’s dynamic equations in vacuum 18
1.4.1 Faraday’s contribution 19
1.4.2 Conservation of charge and the continuity equation 20
1.4.3 Maxwell’s contribution 21
1.5 Maxwell’s dynamic equations in matter 22
1.5.1 Origin of material currents 22
1.6 Plane wave propagation in vacuum 24
1.6.1 Polarization of plane waves 26
1.7 E&M propagation within simple media 29
1.8 Electromagnetic conservation laws 30
1.8.1 Energy density 30
1.8.2 Poynting’s Theorem 31
1.8.3 Linear momentum density 31
1.8.4 Maxwell stress tensor 33
1.9 Radiation in vacuum 34
1.9.1 Field amplitude as a function of distance from the source 35
1.9.2 Decoupling of radiation fields from the source 35
1.9.3 Illustration of coupled and decoupled fields from an accelerated charge 36
Exercises 38
1.10 Discussions 39
vi Contents

2 The Potentials 43
2.1 The magnetic and electric fields in terms of potentials 43
2.2 Gauge considerations 44
2.3 The wave equations prescribing the potentials using the Lorenz gauge 45
2.4 Retarded time 46
2.4.1 Potentials with retarded time 48
2.5 Moments of the retarded potential 49
2.5.1 Potential zones 49
2.5.2 General expansion of the retarded potential 51
Exercises 55
2.6 Discussions 55

Part II Origins of Radiation Fields

3 General Relations between Fields and Sources 63
3.1 Relating retarded potentials to observable fields 63
3.1.1 Spatial derivatives of retarded potentials 65
3.2 Jefimenko’s equations from the retarded potentials 67
3.3 Graphical representation of transverse fields arising from acceleration 69
3.4 Jefimenko’s equations without regard to retarded potentials:
Green Functions 71
3.4.1 Field characteristics 74
3.4.2 Example: fields directly from Jefimenko’s equations 75
Exercises 79
3.5 Discussions 80
4 Fields in Terms of the Multipole Moments of the Source 85
4.1 Multipole radiation using Jefimenko’s equations 85
4.1.1 Approximate spatial dependence 85
4.1.2 Radiation from zeroth order moments 87
4.1.3 Radiation from first order moments 89
4.2 Multipole radiation from the scalar expansion of the vector potential 91
4.2.1 Fields from an electric dipole moment 92
4.2.2 Fields from magnetic dipole moment 94
4.2.3 Fields from electric quadrupole moment 98
4.3 Power radiated in terms of multipole moments of the source 99
4.3.1 Power radiated by electric dipole moment 99
4.3.2 Power radiated by magnetic dipole moment 100
4.3.3 Power radiated by electric quadrupole moment 101
Exercises 103
4.4 Discussions 106
 Contents vii

Part III Electromagnetism and Special Relativity

5 Introduction to Special Relativity 113
5.1 Historical introduction–1666 to 1905 115
5.1.1 The nature of space and time 115
5.1.2 The nature of light 117
5.1.3 Michelson–Morley experiments 121
5.2 Einstein and the Lorentz transformation 121
5.2.1 Einstein’s approach 122
5.2.2 The Lorentz transformation: covariance among inertial frames 125
5.3 The invariant interval and the geometry of space-time 130
5.3.1 Minkowski space-time diagrams 131
5.3.2 Physical consequences of special relativity 135
5.4 Vector space concepts 139
5.4.1 Contravariant and covariant vectors 141
5.4.2 The metric tensor 148
5.4.3 Generation of other 4-vectors and 4-tensors 149
5.5 Some important general 4-vectors 150
5.5.1 The 4-gradient operator 151
5.5.2 The 4-vector velocity 153
5.5.3 The 4-vector momentum 154
5.5.4 The 4-vector force 157
5.6 Some important “E&M” 4-vectors 159
5.6.1 The 4-wavevector 159
5.6.2 The 4-current density 161
5.6.3 The 4-potential (in Lorenz Gauge) 161
5.7 Other covariant and invariant quantities 162
5.7.1 The angular momentum 4-tensor 162
5.7.2 Space-time volume 163
5.7.3 Space-time delta function 164
5.8 Summary of 4-vector results 164
5.9 Maxwell’s equations and special relativity 165
5.9.1 Manifest covariance of Maxwell’s equations 165
5.9.2 The electromagnetic field tensor 166
5.9.3 Simple field transformation examples 169
5.10 The Einstein stress-energy tensor 173
Exercises 175
5.11 Discussions 176
6 Radiation from Charges Moving at Relativistic Velocities 184
6.1 Lienard–Wiechert potentials 185
6.1.1 Derivation by integral transform 187
6.1.2 Derivation by geometric construction 188
viii Contents

6.2 Radiation fields from a single charge undergoing acceleration 190

6.2.1 Moving charge general field characteristics 195
6.3 Power radiated from an accelerated charge 196
6.3.1 Low velocities and classical Larmor’s formula 197
6.3.2 Radiated power for relativistic particles 198
6.4 Acceleration parallel and perpendicular to velocity 200
6.4.1 Angular distribution for acceleration  to velocity 200
6.4.2 Angular distribution for acceleration ⊥ to velocity 202
6.4.3 Total radiated power for acceleration  and ⊥ to velocity 203
6.5 Spectral distribution of radiation from an accelerated charge 205
6.6 Synchrotron radiation 209
6.7 Fields from a single charge moving with constant velocity 214
6.7.1 Parametrization of the fields 218
6.7.2 Spectral energy density of the fields 220
6.7.3 Number of photons associated with fields of a passing charge 222
6.8 Bremsstrahlung 223
Exercises 227
6.9 Discussions 228
7 Relativistic Electrodynamics 229
7.1 Dynamics using action principles: Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics 229
7.1.1 Concept of action 230
7.2 Relativistic mechanics of single point-like particles 234
7.2.1 The relativistic mechanics of a free particle 234
7.2.2 Free particle canonical 4-momentum 236
7.2.3 Free particle angular momentum 4-tensor 237
7.2.4 A charged particle in an external electromagnetic field 239
7.3 The action principle description of the electromagnetic field 243
7.3.1 Equations of motion 245
7.3.2 Lagrangian density function 247
7.3.3 Recovery of Maxwell’s equations 249
7.3.4 Gauge invariance 250
7.3.5 The Proca Lagrangian 252
7.4 The Hamiltonian density and canonical stress-energy tensor 254
7.4.1 From the Maxwell stress tensor to the 4D stress-energy tensor 254
7.4.2 Hamiltonian density: the “00” canonical stress-energy tensor component 255
7.4.3 Canonical stress-energy tensor and conservation laws 256
7.4.4 Canonical electromagnetic stress-energy tensor 257
7.4.5 Symmetric electromagnetic stress-energy tensor 258
7.4.6 Angular momentum density of fields 259
7.4.7 Electromagnetic stress-energy tensor including source terms 261
Exercises 261
7.5 Discussions 263
 Contents ix

8 Field Reactions to Moving Charges 267

8.1 Electromagnetic field masses 268
8.2 Field reaction as a self-force 269
8.2.1 Lorentz calculation of the self-force 270
8.2.2 Some qualitative arguments for the self-force 274
8.3 Abraham–Lorentz formula and the equations of motion 276
8.3.1 The equations of motion 278
8.3.2 Landau–Lifshitz approximation 282
8.3.3 Characteristic time 283
8.4 The 4/3 problem, instability, and relativity 284
8.5 Infinite mass of the Abraham–Lorentz model 291
Exercises 294
8.6 Discussions 296

Part IV Radiation in Materials

9 Properties of Electromagnetic Radiation in Materials 303
9.1 Polarization, magnetization, and current density 304
9.2 A practical convention for material response 306
9.3 E&M propagation within simple media 307
9.4 Frequency dependence 310
9.4.1 ω → ∞ 310
9.4.2 ω → 0 312
9.4.3 Plane waves versus diffusion 313
9.4.4 Transient response in a conductor 316
9.4.5 Temporal wave-packet 317
9.4.6 Group velocity versus phase velocity 319
9.4.7 Pulse broadening 320
9.5 Plane waves at interfaces 322
9.5.1 Boundaries 322
9.5.2 Fresnel transmission and reflection amplitude coefficients 325
9.5.3 Total internal reflection 328
9.5.4 Fresnel transmission and reflection intensity coefficients 332
9.5.5 Fresnel transmission and reflection: vacuum/material interface 333
9.6 Some practical applications 335
9.6.1 The two-surface problem 335
9.6.2 Lossy dielectrics and metals 338
9.7 Frequency and time domain polarization response to the fields 339
9.7.1 Example 342
9.8 Kramers–Kronig relationships 343
9.9 Measuring the response of matter to fields 346
9.9.1 Measuring the optical constants of a material 347
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x Contents

9.9.2 Single frequency measurements 348

9.9.3 Spectral measurements 355
Exercises 358
9.10 Discussions 360
10 Models of Electromagnetic Response of Materials 366
10.1 Classical models of Drude and Lorentz 366
10.1.1 The Drude model of free electrons 368
10.1.2 The lorentz model of bound electrons 370
10.1.3 The combined model: Lorentz–Drude 374
10.1.4 Lorentz and Drude model response functions 375
10.2 Lorentz insulators 376
10.2.1 Multiple binding frequencies 383
10.3 Drude metals and plasmas 384
10.4 Measuring the Lorentz–drude response of matter to fields 388
10.4.1 Single frequency measurements 388
10.4.2 Dual polarization Fresnel reflectivity measurement 389
10.4.3 Broadband measurements and response models 391
Exercises 394
11 Scattering of Electromagnetic Radiation in Materials 398
11.1 Scattering 398
11.2 Scattering by dielectric small particles 402
11.2.1 Scattering by a free electron: Thomson scattering 404
11.2.2 Scattering by a harmonically bound electron 405
11.2.3 Scattering near resonance 407
11.2.4 Plasmon resonance 408
11.3 Integral equations, the Born approximation and optical theorem 411
11.3.1 Scalar theory 413
11.3.2 Vector theory 417
11.4 Partial wave analysis 423
11.4.1 Scalar theory 424
11.4.2 Vector partial wave analysis 429
11.4.3 Solution of scattering from a homogeneous sphere: Mie scattering 438
11.5 Some results 443
11.5.1 The long wavelength limit 443
11.5.2 Scattering off dielectric spheres: water droplets 445
Exercises 455
11.6 Discussions 456
12 Diffraction and the Propagation of Light 467
12.1 Diffraction 467
12.2 Geometric optics and the eikonal equation 470
12.3 Kirchhoff’s diffraction theory 471
 Contents xi

12.3.1 Kirchhoff’s integral theorem 471

12.3.2 Kirchhoff’s diffraction theory: boundary conditions 473
12.3.3 Alternate boundary conditions: Rayleigh–Sommerfeld diffraction 475
12.3.4 Babinet’s principle 479
12.3.5 Fresnel approximation 481
12.3.6 Fraunhofer (far-field) diffraction 483
12.3.7 Fresnel diffraction of rectangular slit: the near-field 485
12.4 The angular spectrum representation 488
12.4.1 Gaussian beams 491
12.4.2 Fourier optics (far-field) 495
12.4.3 Tight focusing of fields 496
12.4.4 Diffraction limits on microscopy 506
Exercises 514
12.5 Discussions 516
13 Radiation Fields in Constrained Environments 523
13.1 Constrained environments 523
13.2 Mode counting: the density of electromagnetic modes in space 527
13.3 Thermal radiation 530
13.4 Casimir forces 532
13.5 Spontaneous emission: the Einstein A and B coefficients 537
13.6 Microwave cavities 540
13.7 Microwave waveguides 543
13.7.1 General features of waveguides 543
13.7.2 Rectangular conducting waveguides 545
13.7.3 Transmission lines and coaxial cables: TEM modes 546
13.8 One-dimensional optical waveguides: the ray optic picture 548
13.8.1 The three-layer planar waveguide: the wave solutions of Maxwell’s equations 553
13.8.2 Fiber optics: the step-index circular waveguide 557
13.8.3 Higher order modes, single mode fibers, and dispersion 562
13.9 Photonic crystals 565
Exercises 571
13.10 Discussions 572
A Vector Multipole Expansion of the Fields 583
A.1 Vector spherical harmonics 583
A.1.1 VSH expansion of general radiation fields 584
A.2 Multipole expansion of electromagnetic radiation 584
A.2.1 Non-homogeneous field wave equations 584
A.2.2 VSH expansion of the field wave equations 585
A.2.3 Parity considerations 587
A.2.4 Multipole expansion in a source-free region 588
A.3 Multipole radiation: energy and angular momentum 589
A.3.1 Energy density and the Poynting vector 589
xii Contents

A.3.2 Momentum density and angular momentum density 591

A.4 Multipole fields from vector harmonic expansion 594
A.4.1 Multipole expansion including sources 594
A.4.2 The small source approximation: near and far zones 598

References 613
Index 617
Part I
Introductory Foundations
Essentials of Electricity
and Magnetism 1
1.1 Maxwell’s static
equations in vacuum 3

• Review of Maxwell’s steady-state equations in vacuum 1.2 Maxwell’s static

equations in matter 6
• Modifications of Maxwell’s steady-state equations in the pres-
1.3 Energy of static
ence of matter: electric and magnetic polarization charge and
• Generalization of Maxwell’s equations in the presence of time current configurations 14
varying sources leading to a causal unification of fields in the 1.4 Maxwell’s dynamic
form of additional sources equations
in vacuum 18
• Origin of electromagnetic radiation directly from time-
1.5 Maxwell’s dynamic
dependent Maxwell’s equations and the response of materials equations
to electromagnetic radiation in matter 22

• Electromagnetic conservation laws, including electromag- 1.6 Plane wave propagation

in vacuum 24
netic energy, momentum and angular momentum
1.7 E&M propagation
within simple media 29
1.8 Electromagnetic
conservation laws 30
1.1 Maxwell’s static equations 1.9 Radiation in vacuum 34
in vacuum 1.10 Discussions 39

Maxwell’s equations are the foundational equations of classical elec-

tromagnetic phenomena. They are comprised of four 1st order linear
partial differential equations and are essentially statements that define
the electric and magnetic vector fields (e.g., specify their divergence
and curl) in terms of specific boundary conditions and electric charge
and current distributions. The mathematical origins of Maxwell’s
equations can be found in the basic inverse square laws of electro-
statics and magnetostatics, which were mainly formulated in the late
eighteenth through early nineteenth centuries, but far from exclusively,
through the observations and work of Coulomb, Ampere, Biot, and
Savart. When coupled with Faraday’s concept of a field and the
general mathematical theorems of Gauss, Laplace, and Poisson, we
begin to see the formal modern description of electric and magnetic
phenomena–at least for steady-state conditions in vacuum.

Electromagnetic Radiation. Richard Freeman, James King, Gregory Lafyatis,

Oxford University Press (2019). © Richard Freeman, James King, Gregory Lafyatis.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198726500.001.0001
4 1 Essentials of Electricity and Magnetism

1.1.1 Electrostatic equations

The integral form of the law of electrostatics or Coulomb’s law is:

1 ρ ( r o − r)
r ) (
E (
ro) = dV (1.1)
4π εo r o − r|3
|

where the position vectors r and ro refer to the source and observer
locations, respectively, and ρ is the (static) charge density. We note
from this equation a number of important features: first, the static
electric field falls off as the inverse square of the distance to the
observer and is proportional to the charge density; second, a contri-
bution to the field at ro due to an element of charge ρ (
r ) dV will point
along R = ro − r, the direction from source to observer, with a polarity
dependent on the charge sign; and third, the field E ( r o ) is a linear
vector superposition of contributions from charge elements integrated
over all space, independent of time. If we now look at the divergence
taken with respect to ro of this field,

1 ρ (
ro)
∇ · E (
ro) = ρ (
r ) δ (
r o − r) dV = (1.2)
εo εo

where we have used ∇ · (R̂/R2 ) = 4π δ(R).  This is the differential form

of what is known as Gauss’ law and is equivalent to Coulomb’s law.
It is the first of Maxwell’s equations. In this form, we see that any
divergence in the field is local to and proportional to the charge density.
In its integral form, which can be directly obtained from Eq. 1.2 using
the divergence theorem, it states that the integral of the E field over
an arbitrary closed surface is equal to the charge enclosed within that
surface divided by εo . Noting that R/R  3 = −∇(1/R), Eq. 1.1 can be
rewritten as a gradient

−1 ρ (r)
E (
ro) = ∇ dV = −∇φ (
ro) (1.3)
4π εo |
r o − r|

where φ (r o ) is the scalar potential. Because in general the curl of a

gradient vanishes, it follows from Eq. 1.3 that

∇ × E (
ro) = 0 (1.4)

which is the second of the two electrostatic Maxwell’s equations and

states that electrostatic fields are irrotational (curlless) everywhere.
The integral form of Eq. 1.4, which can be directly obtained using
Stokes’s theorem, states that the line integral of the E field around an
arbitrary closed curve is zero, thus confirming its status as a gradient.
 1.1 Maxwell’s static equations in vacuum 5

Because the curl of a gradient is always zero, Eqs. 1.2 and 1.4 can
be more compactly expressed in terms of φ as ∇ 2 φ = ρ/εo (Poisson’s
equation) or ∇ 2 φ = 0 (Laplace’s equation) in charge free regions.

1.1.2 Magnetostatic equations

The integral form of the law of magnetostatics or the Biot–Savart
law is:
 
μo r ) × (
J ( r o − r)
B (
ro) = dV (1.5)
4π r o − r|3
|

where, as before, the distance and direction from a source element to

the observation point is represented by R = ro − r but the source is
now a distribution of steady-state current density elements, J ( r ) dV ,
each contributing to B ( r o ) an amount proportional to J (
r ), in the
direction, J (
r ) × (
r o − r), given by the right-hand rule. Also, as with
the electric field, the static magnetic field (due to each current element)
falls off as the inverse square of the distance. Following, analogously,
the electrostatic development of Section 1.1.1 to obtain a differential
form, we consider the curl of B
  
μo ro − r
∇ × B (
ro) = ∇ × J (
r)× dV (1.6)
4π r o − r|3
|

which, with some manipulation (see Discussion 1.1), can be written


∇ × B (
r o ) = μo J ( r o − r) dV = μo J (
r ) δ ( r) (1.7)

where, again, we have used ∇ · (R̂/R2 ) = 4π δ(R). This is the differen-

tial form of what is known as Ampere’s law and is equivalent to the
Biot–Savart law. It is the third of Maxwell’s equations. The integral
form of Eq. 1.7, which can be directly obtained using Stokes’s theorem,
states that the line integral of the B field around an arbitrary closed
curve is equal to the current enclosed by that curve multiplied by μo . 1 Expand the divergence of the integrand

To obtain the fourth differential form of Maxwell’s equations under of Eq. 1.6
steady-state conditions in the absence of matter, we take the divergence  
ro − r ro − r   
∇· J (
r )× = · ∇×J (
r)
of Eq. 1.5 to obtain1 r o − r|3
| r o − r|3
|
 
ro − r
−J (r)· ∇ ×
∇ · B (
ro) = 0 (1.8) r o − r|3
|

where the first term vanishes because the J

which is the second of the two magnetostatic Maxwell’s equations is not a function of the observer coordinates.

and states that magnetostatic fields are solenoidal (divergenceless) For the second term, we again note that RR3 =
everywhere. The integral form of Eq. 1.8, which can be directly −∇ R1 and the curl of a gradient vanishes.
6 1 Essentials of Electricity and Magnetism

obtained using the divergence theorem, states that the surface integral
of the normal component of B field around an arbitrary closed surface
is zero. Because B has no divergence value, it can be written as the curl
 This vector field, known as the “vector potential”,
of another field, A.
is analogous to the scalar potential, φ, encountered in electrostatics.
So, continuing in close analogy with electrostatics, we are tempted to
write Eqs. 1.7 and 1.8 in terms of a single second order differential
equation of the potential such as the Poisson or Laplace equations.
Thus, we note that much like writing E as −∇φ automatically satisfies
∇ × E = 0 and turns ∇ · E = ρ/εo into the Poisson equation, writing B
as ∇ × A automatically
  satisfies
 ∇ · B = 0 and turns ∇ × B = μo J into
∇ × ∇ × A = ∇ ∇ · A − ∇ 2 A = μo J.  This is a more compact way
of expressing Eqs. 1.7 and 1.8. In summary, Maxwell’s equations for
steady state and in the absence of matter are:

∇ · E = ρ/εo (1.9)
∇ × E = 0 (1.10)
∇ × B = μo J (1.11)
∇ · B = 0 (1.12)

1.1.3 Lorentz force

The effects of magnetic and electric fields on a charge q were given
their modern form by Lorentz in 1892, building on the work of Thom-
son’s (1881)2 and Heaviside’s (1889)3 extrapolations of Maxwell’s
exposition of his equations (1865):

F = q[E + v × B]
 (1.13)

This description of the total force on a charge in the presence of

external fields E and B has been so well verified experimentally, even
2 Thomson, J. J. On the electric and
for charge velocities approaching the speed of light, that it is used as
an empirical definition of E and B at any space-time point when q, F,
 v
magnetic effects produced by the motion
of electrified bodies. Philosophical Maga-
are known. 4
zine, 11, 229–249, https://doi.org/10.1080/
14786448108627008 (1881).
3 Heaviside, Oliver. On the electromag-

netic effects due to the motion of electri-

fication through a dielectric. Philosophical 1.2 Maxwell’s static equations in matter
Magazine 324 (April 1889).
4 The relativistic formulation of Eq. 1.13

is the same, with the proviso that the force is Within matter, where there are charges that respond to external fields
related to the velocity by by moving freely, or charges bound to other charged objects that
d orient or displace in response to external fields, Maxwell’s equations
F = (γmv)

dt become exceedingly difficult to solve exactly. It is useful then, when
 1.2 Maxwell’s static equations in matter 7

working with fields in matter, to divide the problem conceptually into

microscopic and macroscopic fields with the microscopic fields, in a
sense, being the true yet practically intractable fields in all their grainy
detail, while the macroscopic fields are spatial and temporal averages
of the micro-fields over regions and times that are microscopically
large yet macroscopically small. In this subsection it will be shown that
the response of matter to applied fields generally results in so-called
“bound” sources of charge and current density and for materials with
a component of free electrons, an additional source of “free” current.
While this will modify the two inhomogenous Maxwell’s equations, it
will, in the steady-state case, leave unaffected the two homogeneous
equations. As a consequence of this, we can immediately see that
the macroscopic versions of the two homogeneous equations will be
identical to the microscopic versions. That is,

∇ × E = 0 and ∇ · B = 0 (1.14)

1.2.1 Response of material to fields

Polarization, either electric P (
r ) or magnetic M (
r ), is defined macro-
scopically as dipole moment per unit volume and its existence within
a material is a result of the local alignment of atomic or molecular
electric p or magnetic m  dipole moments within a macroscopically
small but microscopically large volume about the evaluation point, r.
This alignment can be permanently frozen into the material as in the
case of ferromagnets and the less often encountered electric analogs
known as electrets. Alignment of dipoles resulting in polarization is,
however, more commonly a response to the presence of electric and
magnetic fields. Two basic types of dipole response have been found:
Either pre-existing dipole moments are rotated into alignment by the
fields or dipole moments are induced by the applied fields within
the material. A well known example of the first type of response to
electric fields occurs within water because the positive and negative
charge centers of the “polar” H2 O molecule are intrinsically separate.
Similarly, the pre-existing magnetic atomic dipoles (due to unpaired
electrons) within paramagnetic materials will align with an applied
magnetic field. The second type of response in which dipole moments
are induced occurs in all materials but is most noticeable within “non-
polar” materials devoid of pre-existing dipoles. A classical picture of
such a material response to an electric field is that of neutral atoms with
initially overlapping positive (nuclear) and negative (electron) charge
centers that, upon application of the field, get stretched in opposite
directions to the mechanical limits of their bonds, thus forming electric
dipole moments. The induction of magnetic dipole moments by a
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members were quite untrained, while they were too numerous, and
too busy with politics. Coleman 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 excite terror, said the Evening Post in 1805, they
particularly delighted in crashing round a narrow street corner at a
dead gallop, splashing those whom they did not graze. The journal
in 1817 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 editor. 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 ‘Hoboy!’ at
midnight, accompanied with its never-failing appeal to more senses
than one.” These “hoboy gentlemen,” whose profession was
connected with Mrs. Warren’s, were still an abomination in 1816,
“bellowing out their filthy ditties” for two hours after eleven. As late
as 1819, 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 groggeries; for in New York licenses cost but 40
shillings, and liquor-selling was more extensive than in Boston or
Philadelphia. In 1810 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 livelihood 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 1818 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 previous years they had furnished one-fifteenth or one-
twentieth the whole advertising. But Coleman’s heart was touched
by the losses of the poor. “Look at the crowd 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 executions, 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, 1819, it barely mentioned the fact that a
great concourse gathered for the execution in Potter’s Field, now
Washington Square, of a negress named Rose Butler for attempted
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 1815, 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 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 daily 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 comments 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 occurred 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 (Jersey 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,
1812, 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 minutes, or against the tide in twenty. On
July 27 some 1,500 people were ferried across and back; “a proud
example 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 transferred 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 defiance to every attempt to perform the voyage. The
Steam Boat appeared 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 practicability of the Steam Boat being able
to work in rough weather.

Unfortunately, this particular trip was actually disastrous. 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 Tarrytown, 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,
1815, 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 ordinarily be sufficient. The ease with which Hell
Gate, theretofore thought impassable by steam, was navigated,
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 1816 the Evening Post was giving much
space to the possibilities of coal gas as an illuminant. A schoolmaster
named Griscom lectured the evening of Jan. 26 on the light, the
audience including the Mayor, Recorder, many aldermen, and
prominent business 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, Londoners had extensively
employed coal gas for four or five years. During the summer of 1816
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 speculators
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, therefore, 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 Pennsylvania. The new Schuylkill
Coal Company and the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company were
making preparations 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 firemen, though
neither fully protected the city. In 1812 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 police redoubled, and in 1823, when the total annual expense
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 1812
as standing 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, Sullivan, and Grand Streets. This
was good sense; but Coleman, as a spokesman for the wealthy
merchant families, objected because it rendered many family burial
plots or vaults worthless, and because the nearest available
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,
patronized by Burr, seven, and the Public Advertiser eight. In 1807
the whole list of city publications was as follows:

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 important; 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 12½ 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 prospectus made no promise of
enterprise in supplying intelligence. 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 political event; but a news
“beat” was unknown.
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 1800–1820 were
principally vehicles of political opinion; several were principally
organs for commercial information and advertisements; 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 indefinitely. 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
written, 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 Jefferson’s second
inaugural address, but the address itself he never printed; it being
assumed that interested men could find it in the Democratic press.
Again, when in the autumn of 1812 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, naïvely
adding: “For particulars see the advertisement in this evening’s
Post.” The obliging Mr. Willis, in advertising a reward, had stated the
details 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 1812, commercial firms constantly tried to obtain
private news of the progress of the peace negotiations. There is a
pathetic note of frustration in the Evening Post’s item of Nov. 29,
1814: “Considering the public entitled to all the information in our
power, we barely mention that there is a 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 disadvantages,
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 1810 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 summaries reached the evening papers
at once; one communicated by a gentleman who arrived direct from
Washington, 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
1812, with war impending, the press was replete with mere gossip
and rumor, sometimes 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 Bozzaris, 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. Despite this, late in
May there reached New York a circumstantial account of the relief of
Missolonghi, the slaughter of the Turks, the death of their hated
commander 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. Nevertheless, 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 Missolonghi.”
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 following intelligence:

FOREIGN DOMESTIC
War Rumored Between Fire in Troy, N. Y.
Britain and France
Monroe Arrives at Editor Duane
Havre Apologizes for Libel
French Hunt Haitians Cheetham Fined $200
With Bloodhounds for Libel
Column on Harlem
Races
Two Columns on Paine Publishes Letter
British Penal from Jefferson
Reform
French Prefect Grainger’s Record as
Reaches New Postmaster-General
Orleans
British Give South Fire in New York Coach
Africa to Dutch Factory
Demands of Dey of Two Benefits at Local
Algiers on Powers Theatre
More Rumors of Election Dispute in
Anglo-French War Ulster County
 Agrarian Violence in Election Incident at
Ireland Pawling
London Stock-Market Advance Sale of
Fluctuations Marshall’s
“Washington”
European Trade XYZ Affair Reviewed
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, 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
emphasis, 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 1811 in the
Missouri and Arkansas country just west of the Mississippi. The
Evening Post was fortunate enough to obtain a three-column
account of it, vivid, intelligent, and thrilling, from the pen of an
observer who witnessed it from a point near New Madrid. The
special Albany letters were fair; for years the Evening Post derived
occasional bits of inside information from Federalist Congressmen,
and made good use of them; and its London correspondence, which
began in 1819 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 1812, 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, 1812. The capitulation has occurred on
the 16th, 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 carrier to Warren, Pa., on the 22d, 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, 1812, 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 traversed
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 Susquehanna 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 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 Rensselaer had lost a battle and a small army.
In the closing days of the war this episode was reversed, the
rumor of bad news being followed by a truthful report of good. On
Jan. 20, 1815, 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 published some inconclusive information received in a
letter from a New Orleans judge, dated just before the preliminary
and indecisive battle of Dec. 23. “We have cause of apprehension,”
Coleman wrote, “that to-morrow’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, 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. Coleman, 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 extensive panorama painted of the glorious Yankee
naval victories of 1812 and 1813. 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 exhibition, and a valuable hand-
organ, and set sail for Charleston to show it there. On the second
day out from Sandy Hook, the British frigate Forth captured the
vessel. Greatly amused, the commander promptly set the panorama
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 18, 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, 1814,
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 doggerel expressing the determination of the terrapin to
hold on until it dragged Madison down and slew him. Evidently
readers were obtuse, for the next day appeared a solemn
“Explanation of the emblematic figures in yesterday’s paper.” But as
yet neither news nor cartoons were published on the first page,
which was sacred, as in English 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 newspapers 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. 11, and the
proceedings of the Commons immediately 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 journal 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 Evening Post recorded that sugar had
fallen from $26 a hundred-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 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 Napoleon’s
marriage at Vienna was not published by the Evening Post till ten
weeks after the event. Wellington stormed Badajos on April 7, 1812,
and the Evening Post announced the fact on June 11, 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 summary 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 columns, 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:

IMPORTANT

We received from our correspondent at Boston, by this

morning’s mail, the following important news, which we
hasten to lay before our readers:
From Our Correspondent,
Office of the Boston Daily Advertiser,
July 31, 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 engagement.

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 particulars 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 anniversary of the Declaration of Independence
was celebrated 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-Presidents, one the author of
the Declaration, the other the radical patriot who had done most to
forward it in Congress. At 1 o’clock in the afternoon Jefferson died at
Monticello. At 6 o’clock John Adams, after remarking 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, Coleman 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; 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 support 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 1801–1804, 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
subscriptions by Hamilton, Burr, Rufus King, Oliver Wolcott,
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 advertisements. Shipping, auctions,
wholesale stores (seldom retail), 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. Tickets in
the Lottery No. 1, 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
1812 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
subscription price from $8 to $10; this meaning, in the instance 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. Journeymen printers, recently paid $6 a week, were
now asking $8; the faithfullest 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 1815 it stood at 1,580 copies daily, and in 1820 at 1,843.
 Arrears long cost New York editors the 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 affirmed that “not one in a hundred” of the subscribers
to the semi-weekly were prompt. In some centers, as Boston, 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 collector
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, 1801–1810. 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 expenses of apprentices, for there are numerous entries for
“cloathing” and for board at $3 a week. Coleman drew 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 1810
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 Philadelphia, 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 advertisements, the
Mercantile Advertiser sixty-one, and the Evening Post nine.”
But after the Embargo and the war the skies slowly brightened,
not so much because of the growing circulation 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. Because
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 vehicle, and be at Judd’s
Tavern in Philadelphia at 5 a. m. the next day.
Competition continued keen, for while weak newspapers died,
new journals were constantly being established. The most important
of these were Charles Holt’s Columbian, established in 1808 as a
Clintonian sheet; the National Advocate, founded in 1813 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 1819, and edited by Charles King, later
president of Columbia College. But the Evening Post kept well to the
front, as is shown by a table of comparative circulations in May,
1816:
Mercantile Advertiser, 2000
Daily Gazette, 1750
Evening Post, 1600
Gardiner’s Courier, 980
 Columbian, 825
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
established 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, Halleck, Drake, and Paulding; while the
second editor, Bryant, 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 summer-
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,
exclaiming: “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 worthies” holding high revel in “Cockloft
Hall” on the outskirts 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
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