100% found this document useful (1 vote)
12 views28 pages

The Making of A Nation in The Balkans Historiography of The Bulgarian Revival Roumen Daskalov Download

The document discusses the book 'The Making of a Nation in the Balkans: Historiography of the Bulgarian Revival' by Roumen Daskalov, which explores the historical context and development of Bulgarian national identity. It also includes links to various other related eBooks on nation-building and identity across different cultures and regions. Additionally, it features a section on 'The Evening Post: A Century of Journalism' by Allan Nevins, detailing the history of this influential newspaper and its role in American journalism.

Uploaded by

okanohamsagx
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
100% found this document useful (1 vote)
12 views28 pages

The Making of A Nation in The Balkans Historiography of The Bulgarian Revival Roumen Daskalov Download

The document discusses the book 'The Making of a Nation in the Balkans: Historiography of the Bulgarian Revival' by Roumen Daskalov, which explores the historical context and development of Bulgarian national identity. It also includes links to various other related eBooks on nation-building and identity across different cultures and regions. Additionally, it features a section on 'The Evening Post: A Century of Journalism' by Allan Nevins, detailing the history of this influential newspaper and its role in American journalism.

Uploaded by

okanohamsagx
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 28

The Making Of A Nation In The Balkans

Historiography Of The Bulgarian Revival Roumen


Daskalov download

https://ebookbell.com/product/the-making-of-a-nation-in-the-
balkans-historiography-of-the-bulgarian-revival-roumen-
daskalov-1394150

Explore and download more ebooks at ebookbell.com


Here are some recommended products that we believe you will be
interested in. You can click the link to download.

The Making Of A Nation In The Balkans Roumen Daskalov

https://ebookbell.com/product/the-making-of-a-nation-in-the-balkans-
roumen-daskalov-51922504

Lumbee Indians In The Jim Crow South Race Identity And The Making Of A
Nation Malinda Maynor Lowery

https://ebookbell.com/product/lumbee-indians-in-the-jim-crow-south-
race-identity-and-the-making-of-a-nation-malinda-maynor-lowery-1644142

In The Name Of The Father Washingtons Legacy Slavery And The Making Of
A Nation Francois Furstenberg

https://ebookbell.com/product/in-the-name-of-the-father-washingtons-
legacy-slavery-and-the-making-of-a-nation-francois-
furstenberg-46349670

Kurdish Identity Islamism And Ottomanism The Making Of A Nation In


Kurdish Journalistic Discourse 18981914 Kurdish Societies Politics And
International Relations Deniz Ekici

https://ebookbell.com/product/kurdish-identity-islamism-and-
ottomanism-the-making-of-a-nation-in-kurdish-journalistic-
discourse-18981914-kurdish-societies-politics-and-international-
relations-deniz-ekici-33360634
The Otherargentina Jews Gender And Sexuality In The Making Of A Modern
Nation Amy K Kaminsky

https://ebookbell.com/product/the-otherargentina-jews-gender-and-
sexuality-in-the-making-of-a-modern-nation-amy-k-kaminsky-25767160

The Otherargentina Jews Gender And Sexuality In The Making Of A Modern


Nation Amy K Kaminsky

https://ebookbell.com/product/the-otherargentina-jews-gender-and-
sexuality-in-the-making-of-a-modern-nation-amy-k-kaminsky-46522354

Building Ukraine From Within A Sociological Institutional And Economic


Analysis Of A Nationstate In The Making Anton Oleinik

https://ebookbell.com/product/building-ukraine-from-within-a-
sociological-institutional-and-economic-analysis-of-a-nationstate-in-
the-making-anton-oleinik-36155576

Nation Building In South Korea Koreans Americans And The Making Of A


Democracy Gregg Brazinsky

https://ebookbell.com/product/nation-building-in-south-korea-koreans-
americans-and-the-making-of-a-democracy-gregg-brazinsky-231854220

Nation Building In South Korea Koreans Americans And The Making Of A


Democracy Hardcover Gregg Brazinsky

https://ebookbell.com/product/nation-building-in-south-korea-koreans-
americans-and-the-making-of-a-democracy-hardcover-gregg-
brazinsky-7360270
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Evening
Post: A Century of Journalism
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the
laws of the country where you are located before using this
eBook.

Title: The Evening Post: A Century of Journalism

Author: Allan Nevins

Release date: July 5, 2019 [eBook #59857]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by ellinora, Charlie Howard, and the Online


Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
(This
file was produced from images generously made
available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EVENING


POST: A CENTURY OF JOURNALISM ***
THE EVENING POST
William Cullen Bryant
Associate Editor, 1826–1829, Editor-in-Chief, 1829–1878
(Two hitherto unpublished portraits)
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
dynasties, 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 the
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 important 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 Evening 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 1881 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 Cullen Bryant,
Parke Godwin, John Bigelow, Carl Schurz, Horace White, Henry
Villard, and E. L. Godkin for giving him access to a wealth of family
papers. Important manuscript material bearing upon William
Coleman 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 Steffens, 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 information 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, president 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:


Depression, Rivalry, and Threatened
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 Newspaper,


1830–1855 207
X. John Bigelow as an Editor of the “Evening
Post” 228

XI. Heated Politics Before the Civil War 242

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 Elections 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 Silver


Craze 496
XXIV. Characteristics of a Fighting Editor: E. L.
Godkin 519

XXV. News, Literature, Music, and Drama


1880–1900 546

XXVI. Horace White, Rollo Ogden, and the


“Evening Post” Since 1900 568

Index 581
ILLUSTRATIONS
William Cullen Bryant Frontispiece
Associate Editor 1826–1829, Editor-
in-Chief, 1829–1878
FACING
PAGE
Alexander Hamilton 26
Chief Founder of the “Evening Post”

William Coleman 102


Editor-in-Chief, 1801–1829

John Bigelow 264


Associate Editor, 1849–1860

Parke Godwin 440


Editor-in-Chief, 1878–1881

Henry Villard 440


Owner, 1881–1900

Carl Schurz 440


Editor-in-Chief, 1881–1883

Horace White 440


Associate Editor, 1881–1899, Editor-
in-Chief, 1900–1903
E. L. Godkin 494
Associate Editor, 1881–1883, Editor-
in-Chief, 1883–1899

Rollo Ogden 548


Editor-in-Chief, 1903–1920

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 Federalists 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, aggressions by the States upon a weak central government,
and national disintegration. Hamilton wrote Gouverneur Morris after
the election, in all seriousness, that the Constitution had become “a
frail and worthless fabric.”
For Hamilton himself, inasmuch as many of his own party
deemed him responsible for the disaster which had overtaken it, the
hour was doubly black. No other leader approached him in brilliance,
but his genius was not unmixed with an erratic quality. He and John
Adams, men of wholly different temperaments, tastes, and habits,
had always instinctively disliked each other; and during Adams’s
Administration the latter had provoked an open breach with
Hamilton, which meant a division of the Federalists into two factions.
Hamilton, stung by Adams’s hostility and in especial by the charge
that he was too Anglophile to be patriotic, had so far lost control of
himself as to commit a capital political blunder. He had written just
before the election of 1800 a bitter analysis of “The Public Conduct
and Character of John Adams,” and though he designed this attack
for confidential circulation only, it soon became public. The
Democrats, their victory already assured, had made the most of it,
and the resentment of Adams’s adherents was intense. The party
schism was widened when it fell to the House of Representatives
early in 1801 to decide the tie for the Presidency between Jefferson
and Burr. Of the two, Hamilton patriotically preferred Jefferson, and
used his influence to persuade the Federalist Representatives to vote
for him. But the New England Federalists, Adams’s friends, opposed
this view, and to Hamilton’s disgust, all the New England States save
Vermont went into Burr’s column.
Hamilton gladly turned in April, 1801, from his pre-occupation
with politics to his law practice. Forty-three years old, with eight
children and a wife to support, with no savings, and ambitious of
building himself a country home on the upper part of Manhattan, he
needed the $12,000 a year which he could earn at the city bar.
When he thought of public affairs, he felt not tired—he was too
intense for that—but chagrined, and misused. After all, the real
causes of Adams’s defeat were the alien and sedition laws, the
persecuting temper of the Administration, its hot and cold policy in
dealing with French outrages, and Adams’s vanity, caprice, and
irascibility. But Hamilton by his pamphlet attack on the President had
seriously damaged his own reputation for generalship. His friend,
Robert Troup, wrote that this misstep had been most unfortunate.
“An opinion has grown out of it, which at present obtains almost
universally, that his character is radically deficient in discretion.
Hence, he is considered as an unfit head of the party.” Hamilton
himself admitted, Troup says, “that his influence with the Federal
party was wholly gone.” He might well think of the assistance a
newspaper would lend in defending himself from the Adams faction,
restoring Federalist prestige, and attacking the triumphant
Democrats.
Hamilton had many local companions in defeat, ready to support
such a journal. Troup himself, and one other close friend, the
cultivated merchant, William W. Woolsey, had been beaten for the
Assembly. A general removal of Federalists from office followed the
overturn. Though President Jefferson proved milder than had been
feared, he made a number of changes, the most notable being that
by which the wealthy Joshua Sands, with a store at 118 Pearl Street,
lost the Collectorship of the Port. As for the new authorities at
Albany, they were merciless. The Council of Appointment was
dominated by young De Witt Clinton, the Governor’s pushing
nephew, and its guillotine worked night and day till every obnoxious
head was off. In place of the tall and dignified Richard Varick, who
had been one of Washington’s secretaries, and to whose public spirit
the American Bible Society, which he founded, is still a monument, it
appointed Edward Livingston to be Mayor. In place of the scholarly
Cadwallader Colden, it made Richard Riker the Attorney-General.
Sylvanus Miller was brought down from Ulster to be Surrogate, and
Ruggles Hubbard from Rensselaer to be Sheriff. The very
Justiceships of the Peace were transferred. The 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 Advertiser, 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, for a sad lack of
vigor was evident from Maine to Charleston. The leading Federalist
newspapers of the 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 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 1800
Hamilton called Oliver Wolcott’s attention 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 falsehoods
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 contributions 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, Hamilton in 1789
encouraged John Fenno, a Boston schoolmaster 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. Hamilton 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 “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
association, 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 Hamiltonian 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, Massachusetts, named William 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 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
Welcome to our website – the perfect destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. We believe that every book holds a new world,
offering opportunities for learning, discovery, and personal growth.
That’s why we are dedicated to bringing you a diverse collection of
books, ranging from classic literature and specialized publications to
self-development guides and children's books.

More than just a book-buying platform, we strive to be a bridge


connecting you with timeless cultural and intellectual values. With an
elegant, user-friendly interface and a smart search system, you can
quickly find the books that best suit your interests. Additionally,
our special promotions and home delivery services help you save time
and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Join us on a journey of knowledge exploration, passion nurturing, and


personal growth every day!

ebookbell.com

You might also like