Dana And The Sun

071 S86d ;

Stone $5*50

Dana and The Sun

6*
ACC. No. 960908 I

071 S86d

in This Pocket

Books will be issued only on presentation of proper

n 'penalty' for overdue books 2c a day plus cost
n hC Lo S st cards and change of residence must be i
ported promptly.

Public Librarj

Kansas City, Mo
Keep Your Card in This Pocki

_,..,, >nwll_orB OO . K. O . MO

CNVILONt 00 . K. O .

KANSASCITY MO PUBLIC LIBRARY

DANA

AND

CHARLES A. DANA
Editor of The Sun 1868-1897

D A N A

AND

C^NDACE STONE

FORMER INSTRUCTOR, POLITICAL SCIENCE

SCHOOL OF CITIZENSHIP AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS

SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY

WITH FRONTISPIECE

DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
NEWYORK 1938

COPYRIGHT, 1938
BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM
WITHOUT PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHER

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
BY THE VAIL-BALLOU PRESS, INC., BINGHAMTON, N. Y,

TO

The Memory of
MRS. FREDERICK R. HAZARD

INTRODUCTION

SURVEYING the result, the magnitude of Miss Stone's task is evident.
We knew much about Dana, of course. His own "Recollections," the
formal biography by General Wilson, the intimate picture of Dana in
Edward P. Mitchell's memoirs and the narratives by Frank M. O'Brien
and Charles J. Rosebault convey a good idea of the famous editor of
The Sun and his nearly thirty years of virile rule. We knew of Dana's
principles, theories and attempted reforms, of his methods of attack,
of his bitter conflicts waged in an era influenced by the Civil War, by
the evils of Reconstruction and by cold, hard political division.

But Miss Stone has answered a question put by a later generation:
"Just how did Dana go about it?" She has covered the field of Dana's
labors, not merely as gleaner but as reaper; and here the harvest is
gathered in the barn. We learn not only the position of The Sun and
Dana was The Sun from 1868 to 1897 but the exact language it used
in attempting to carry out its purposes. The reader may find diversion
in selecting, if he can, the articles written by Dana himself. But whether
the pen was his, or that of James S. Pike, or Fitz-Henry Warren, or
W. O. Bartlett, or Mr. Mitchell, or Francis P. Church, the mind was
that of Dana in so far as the policies of The Sun on governmental or
political matters were concerned.

With Miss Stone's opinions on Dana's policies and prejudices, both
of which should be viewed against the background of his time, the pres-
ent writer is not deeply concerned. What matters most is that she has
presented by intelligent selection a mass of material highly useful to
the historians of tomorrow; and not alone the historians of journalism
but those who ceaselessly rewrite the story of the United States.

WILLIAM T. DEWART

PREFACE

CHARLES A. DANA and his newspaper have already been treated from
every important point of view but one. A good general biography of
Dana has been published by General James H. Wilson; an excellent
general history of the Sun has been published by Frank M. O'Brien.
Several volumes have been devoted in whole or in part to an account of
the Sun's staff, and of their work under Dana in presenting an excep-
tionally bright and sparkling record of the day's news. The late E. P.
Mitchell, in an urbane and graphic volume of autobiography, has
sketched Dana's personality as seen by his principal editorial assistant.
But no effort has heretofore been made to offer a careful and consecu-
tive analysis of the Sun's editorial policies and utterances as they were
shaped by Dana from 1868 to 1897. For almost thirty years he was one
of the most prominent editors of the nation. He gave to the comment of
his paper on current affairs a special tone; the Sun's attitude was al-
ways strikingly fresh and individual. There seemed a place for a volume
which should summarize the pungent and witty opinions of Dana's
Sun, should try to find what principles lay beneath them, and should
appraise their value to Dana's generation.

That the Sun was a great journal in the news sense that it reported
the day's happenings with a vitality, gaiety, sense for human interest,
and literary polish which no other journal equaled has been generally
admitted; but its editorial page under Dana was and still is regarded
by different observers with very different feelings. Some have admired
its sardonic grace, its dexterous irony, its malicious wit, its flashes of
sheer impudence; they have delighted in its ability to puncture shams
with an epigram, and to relieve public tension by a bit of drollery.
Others have been offended by its levity about solemn matters, its lack
of consistency, and its apparent perversity in taking the wrong side of
some important issues. The author has attempted in this volume to
show both the strength and weakness of Dana's editorial page. There
was much in that page which ought to please everyone; there was much
in it which cannot but grieve judicious readers. But whether it was
right or wrong, and it could sometimes be both on the same question

x PREFACE

within forty-eight hours, it was almost invariably amusing. It is difficult
not to believe that Dana's main purpose was not to make it just this
always incalculable, always individual, frequently a little shocking but
always interesting. His editorial page was never dull. Whatever the
reader may think of this effort to condense its most salient opinions
within two covers, the author must confess that she has greatly en-
joyed the task of going through thirty years of editorial files. It has
often been impossible not to look ahead eagerly to see what Dana would
say next on some topic of burning public interest at that time.

In writing this volume the author has incurred many debts. The
officers of the New York Sun, and most particularly Mr. William T.
Dewart, president of the corporation, and Mr. Frank M. O'Brien, edi-
tor, have been extremely helpful. Publication of the volume has been
made possible by a generous gift from Mr. Dewart; for his interest and
generosity it is difficult to express due gratitude. It is only fair to Mr.
Dewart and Mr. O'Brien to state that neither is responsible for any of
the statements made in this book. Syracuse University made a grant
of money to the author which helped defray a large part of the initial
cost of residence in New York and of research. For this Dr. William E.
Mosher, Director of the School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at
Syracuse University, is especially to be thanked.

The author also wishes to express her gratitude to Allan Nevins,
professor of history at Columbia University, who suggested the subject
to her, and gave her constant aid and advice in writing the book. She
was guided also by Professor Henry Steele Commager of New York
University and Professor John A. Krout of Columbia University. Valu-
able assistance was given in research by M. Ruth Lay ton, Shirley Mer-
rill Cogland and Conrad Lynn. To Miss Layton the author is further
indebted for cataloguing the vast amount of notes taken on the Sun and
for work on the manuscript through all its preliminary stages including
the editing of the first draft. In reading the page proof and in preparing
the bibliography and index the author has received generous assistance
from Gene Phillips. And to many others, including Miss Mary A. Reilly,
Secretary of the History Department, Columbia University, she is
obligated for innumerable services.

The gathering of material for this book was greatly facilitated by the
courtesy of several librarians. To Mr. Louis H. Fox, Chief of the News-
paper Room, New York City Public Library, and to Miss Edith R. Blan-

PREFACE xi

chard, Assistant Librarian, John Hay Memorial Library, Brown Univer-
sity, the author is especially indebted.

It is a distinct pleasure to the author to have this opportunity to thank
Dr. Nevins publicly for all he has done to make possible the production
of Dana and The Sun. Having him as her advisor has made the writing
of this book a privilege. Not only has she had the benefit of his sugges-
tions and criticisms but the tempo at which he works has been contagious
and the example of his scholarship and literary skill a constant inspira-
tion. It is as difficult for her to express the full measure of the admiration
felt for him as it is easy to imagine what Dana and The Sun would have
been had he written it.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I CHARLES A. DANA 1

II DANA RE-CREATES THE Sun . 29

III THE RECONSTRUCTION BOOMERANG . 56

IV "GRANTISM" 90

V SENSATIONAL ATTACKS OF THE Sun 115

VI No KING! No CLOWN! TO RULE THIS TOWN . . . .135

VII CIVIL SERVICE REFORM .. .... ...171

VIII REFORM VERSUS REFORMER . . 194

IX "THE MUGWUMP MOSES" . ... ... 217

X FINANCIAL PROBLEMS 247

XI TARIFF PROBLEMS . ... 277

XII STALWART AND HALFBREED ... 304

XIII AMERICA; FIRST, LAST AND ALWAYS . 323

XIV Sun ECONOMICS . . . 356

XV THE Sun SHINES FOR ALL . 380

BIBLIOGRAPHY .... 405

INDEX 415

CHAPTER I

CHARLES A. DANA

As Charles A. Dana and the New York Sun were inseparable for twenty-
nine years, it is impossible to evaluate the point of view and character
of that paper without a knowledge of its editor's background, training
and experiences. Dana was forty-nine years old when he became editor
of the Sun; he took with him ready-made the ideas, prejudices, and
principles which for the most part shaped its policy and determined its
influence.

When Dana's Sun first brightened the New York sky line on January
27, 1868, nearly every problem and issue confronting the nation had
its source in the Civil War. Out of the conflict had come a prostrate and
embittered South and a victorious but demoralized North, a staggering
public debt, a Negro population converted overnight from slavery to
freedom, strained relations with England and France, business stagna-
tion and unemployment, a protective tariff in place of tariff for revenue
only, a triumphant Republican party and discredited Democratic party,
and a quarrel between President and Congress. How the Sun would ap-
proach these new problems depended primarily upon its editor and
manager.

Four rare experiences, after the age of twenty-one, contributed to the
ideas of Dana as reflected in the editorial pages of the Sun: He lived
for five years among the Transcendentalists at Brook Farm. Then for
eight months he traveled in France and Germany observing the revolu-
tions of 1848-1849. For fifteen years he worked under Greeley on the
Tribune and during the last two years of the Civil War he was military
observer for the Federal Government, a trusted and influential agent of
the Secretary of War.

Charles Anderson Dana was born August 8, 1819, at Hinsdale, New
Hampshire, scion of a lesser branch l of the distinguished Dana family.

1 Based upon statements made by several persons intimately acquainted with the Danas,
and confirmed by a study of the Dana Genealogy.

2 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

His mother was Ann Denison. 2 She died when Charles was nine years
old, leaving four small children who were parceled out among the mem-
bers of the Denison family. Charles was sent to an uncle in Vermont
where he attended the district school, worked on the farm, and studied
Latin. At twelve he was sent to Buffalo, then a small frontier city,
where he clerked in the general store of another uncle. The panic of
1837 ruined his uncle's business, leaving the boy to his own resources.
But he was by no means unresourceful, for he had improved his spare
time while clerking by going on with his Latin, to which he had added
Greek. He had also begun to read English literature, to write verses and
essays; and with the help of friends he had formed a literary society
known as the Coffee Club. With this preparation, with an immense in-
tellectual curiosity and about $200 saved from his meager earnings,
he matriculated at Harvard in 1839. There he spent two happy years
struggling against poverty and responding to the challenge of new
ideas. In 1841, both his eyes and his funds having given out, he left
college to teach school for a year, but never returned. 3 At this point the
study of Dana as a rising young idealist begins.

While Dana was away from college, teaching at Scituate, Mass., the
Rev. George Ripley was launching the Brook Farm experiment at West
Roxbury, Mass. Dana had made his acquaintance at Harvard, where
many were under the influence of the Transcendentalist movement led
by Emerson and others including Ripley. Dana's keen mind was soon
alert to their theories, so different from the Congregationalism on which
he had been brought up. When he had been at Harvard less than a term
he wrote Dr. Austin Flint, one of his Buffalo friends, that he took to
Transcendentalism "rather kindly though I stumble sadly at some no-
tions." The movement he believed "must produce a revolution in pol-
itics, morals and religion, sooner or later . . . and though the immedi-
ate reaction of the mind may be somewhat ultra, it is cheering to know
that a genuine earnest action of some sort is in progress. Even old Har-
vard is feeling it." 4

Dana appears to have gone into Transcendentalism thoroughly and
to have taken a keen interest in the plan of Dr. Ripley to apply its
teaching to daily life by establishing a co-operative community, where

2 A good account of the Denison family can be found in Wilson, James Harrison, The
Life of Charles A Dana. No mention is made of it in the Dictionary of American Biography.

3 See Wilson, for full account of Dana's early years.

4 Wilson, 19.

CHARLES A. DANA 3

intellectual and manual labor were to be combined in ideal proportions.
On November 21, 1840 he again wrote Dr. Flint:

Apropos of Mr. Ripley, he leaves his church on the 1st of January as I
am informed. He is to be one of a society who design to establish themselves
at Concord, or somewhere in the vicinity, and introduce, among themselves
at least, a new order of things. Their object is social reformation, but of the
precise nature of their plans, I am ignorant. Whether the true way to reform
this dead mass society be to separate from it and commence without it,
I am in doubt. The leaders of this movement are Mr. Emerson and Mr. Al-
cott, and those who are usually called Transcendentalists.

With these men are my sympathies. I honor as much as ever their boldness,
freedom, and philanthropy; but I am beginning to regard their philosophy
and theology quite differently. The fact is, as I think, their system is nothing
more nor less than Pantheism. Though the most esoteric of their doctrines
were never communicated to me, I never felt entirely satisfied, even in the
time of my belief in those of theirs which I understood. I feel now an in-
clination to orthodoxy, and am trying to believe the real doctrine of the
trinity. Whether I shall settle down in Episcopacy, Swedenborgianism, or
Goethean indifference to all religion, I know not. My only prayer is, "God
help me."

After all, doctor, speculative opinions and creeds are of little consequence.
The great matter is to get rid of this terrible burden of sin to bring our
thoughts and lives into harmony with the law of God. 5

It is noteworthy that Dana's difference of opinion with the founders
of the new society was restricted to their philosophy and theology. He
admired and eagerly accepted their social aims, radical though they
were. But in the matter of religion, which touched him profoundly, he
clung to orthodoxy rejecting, or at least treating with suspicion, what-
ever seemed visionary or elaborate. Still if men "whose intelligence,
strength, and acuteness" he respected could accept the visionary, he
was willing to give it a trial. In July 1841, he applied to Dr. Ripley for
admission to Brook Farm.

Dr. Ripley's reply, August 4th, could have left no doubt in Dana's
mind as to the nature of the experiment in which he was to participate.

... It is from the young, the energetic, the pure minded, the self-relying,
who have given no hostages to society and who expect and ask but little of it,
that the life-blood of our enterprise is to proceed. So far God has prospered
us. Our present social relations are more truly Christian and democratic than

*Ibid. t 26-27.
Ibid., 30.

4 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

aught I know of elsewhere; and with an unflinching spirit of perseverance,
self-sacrifice, and hope, it will not be long before we shall be able to live in
accordance with the divinest laws of man's nature. 7

Admirers of Dana, who came to know him when Brook Farm was
merely a legend and who would probably have laughed at such an ex-
periment, have found it hard to account for this step in the career of
the aggressive, clear-headed, Assistant Secretary of War and editor of
the New York Sun. To them Dana's letter to his sister soon after he
joined Brook Farm, September 17, 1841, is proof that he still had his
feet on the ground:

... I returned from Buffalo four weeks since, but as my eyes are not
fully restored, although they are considerably improved, I have not returned
to college. I am living with some friends who have associated themselves
together for the purpose of living purely and justly and of acting from higher
principles than the world recognizes. I study but little only as much as my
eyes will permit. I pay for my board by labor upon the farm and by giving
instruction in whatever lies within my capacity. I thought at first of proposing
to come and stay with you, but the excellent society into which I should here
be thrown, and a warm sympathy with the peculiar views of my friends, de-
cided me to come here. 8

Taken literally, this would indicate that Dana went to Brook Farm
because he had weak eyes and because he preferred its society to his
sister's household. His poverty may also have had something to do with
it, 9 though one of his professors at Cambridge had previously written
him not to hesitate to return to Harvard, as he would be provided for
by the college in some way. 10 Doubtless his motives were mixed. He knew
he would find at Brook Farm the mental stimulus that he longed for; he
sympathized with its objects. At the same time, the decision was a practi-
cal solution for various of Dana's immediate problems. He was suffi-
ciently impressed with the financial prospects of Brook Farm to borrow
$1,500 with which to buy three of its shares.

Two years later, under the influence of Albert Brisbane, the Brook
Farm Association, against the wishes of Dana and some other members,
reorganized as a Phalanx based upon the socialistic system advocated

* I bid. ,31.
s Ibid., 31-32.
9 I bid., 33.
1 Ibid., 14.

CHARLES A. DANA 5

by Fourier. 11 His doctrine accorded perfectly with the "dearest wish" of
Ripley's:

... to insure a more natural union between intellectual and manual labor,
than now exists; to combine the thinker and the worker, as far as possible,
in the same individual; to guarantee the highest mental freedom, by provid-
ing all with labor adapted to their tastes and talents, and securing to them the
fruits of their industry; to do away with the necessity of menial services by
opening the benefits of education and the profits of labor to all; and thus
to prepare a society of liberal, intelligent, and cultivated persons, whose re-
lations with each other would permit a more wholesome and simple life than
can be led amidst the pressure of our competitive institutions. 12

For five years Dana worked, laughed, talked and wrote in this atmos-
phere of Transcendental-Fourierism. He taught German and Greek;
helped milk the cows and care for the dairy; contributed articles, first to
the Dial and then the Harbinger; acted as head waiter in the dining-
room and as trustee and secretary-treasurer for the community. He
lived in daily intercourse with Dr. and Mrs. Ripley, John S. Dwight,
Nathaniel Hawthorne, George William Curtis, and Father Hecker, as
well as such humble folk as a valet, a pressman, a baker, farm hands and
domestics. He also became acquainted with Emerson, W. H. Channing,
Margaret Fuller and other guests at the Farm, and with those who sym-
pathized with the experiment at a distance, among them Horace Greeley.
Finally he cemented the bond of loyalty to the society by marrying Eu-
nice Macdaniel, one of its most attractive members.

Of equal importance to Dana's development was his daily practice of
the principles and ideas of the society. He lived in an environment which
dignified labor as much as it exalted learning, and made no social dis-
tinctions between professional workers and laborers provided all met
the test of character. The members combined educational and artistic
pursuits with outdoor work, receiving the same remuneration for either
type of service. 13 Nor were any distinctions made between men and
women in pay or in the management of the community. 14 Later, Dana's
Sun poked fun at Susan B. Anthony and her Women's Rights notions,

11 Swift, Lindsey, Brook Farm, 147; see also Dana's Address on Brook Farm delivered at
the University of Michigan (1895), reprinted in Wilson, 525. Footnoted as Dana, Brook
Farm.

12 Swift, 15-16.
Ibid., $2.

14 Dana, Brook Farm, 528.

6 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

but it also advocated equal pay for men and women for equal work in
a day when this idea was thought radical.

After the association became incorporated as the Brook Farm Phalanx
new members and branches of industry were added, including shoe-
making, carpentry, and work in britannia metal:

. . . Each person chose what he wished to do, what groups he would work
in, and none of the boys and girls tried to shirk. There was more entertain-
ment in doing the duty than in getting away from it. Everyone was not only
ready for his work, but glad to do it, and this brings me to a peculiar feature
of the system ; the person who did the most disagreeable work was the one to
receive special honor and distinction, because he was a servant of the others
and was rendering to his brother a service not pleasant in itself, but which,
in other circumstances, they would render to him. It was this scheme of
social democracy that was one of the most suggestive features. 15

This feature of Brook Farm may account for the Sun's advocacy of
apprenticeship and trade schools, and its opposition to professional edu-
cation for "mechanics" as a sign of snobbish inability to appreciate the
joy and value of manual work. Likewise the Sun's lack of religious preju-
dice under Dana might be traced to these Brook Farm days. Here one
religion was as good as another and creed was of little inportance, for it
was the inner spirit that mattered :

. . . There was a religion at Brook Farm, but it was by no means a re-
ligious community. Spiritual culture, except in the case of particular indi-
viduals, was pursued more as a diversion or a respite from more engrossing
interests. . . . Although there was no dogmatism, and "controversial dis-
cussion was unknown," there is no recorded evidence of any open, bold op-
position to the accepted forms of faith; there was, assuredly, no crudeness or
blatancy in this matter. 30

While living at Brook Farm, Dana had no doubt as to the practical
value of the experiment. Yet fifty years later, he asked, "Is the theory
sound? Is that sort of social reform practicable?"; and answered that he
did not know. 17 But Dana felt that if Brook Farm accomplished nothing
as an attempt to reform society, it did accomplish a great deal of good
to those who took part. 18 He also made it clear that Brook Farm was by

15 Dana, Brook Farm, 532.

10 Swift, 115-116.

17 Dana, Brook Farm, 533-534.

CHARLES A. DANA 7

no means communistic either in its principles or practices. He said, "The
only thing that had the appearance of communism was the common op-
portunity of education and a living at the same time." 19 Although Brook
Farm was called by Dana and others an experiment in socialism it was
not socialistic in the Marxian sense, for it rejected none of the funda-
mental principles of capitalism. As Dana explained it:

. . . the socialism of that day contemplated merely a system of associated
living, of combined households, with joint stock ownership of the joint prop-
erty ; every stockholder to get his share in the profits, which he had helped to
earn, and the share earned by the capital ownership was most repugnant to
the theorists we are speaking of. Individuality and liberty were their cher-
ished objects, and all forms of communism they zealously repudiated. Nor
did the socialism we are considering start from the uneducated or the poor. Its
adherents were the people who had gathered in the fruit of the highest educa-
tion, the fullest knowledge, the highest refinement that was known to Ameri-
can society in those times. 20

This then was the socialism Dana imbibed in his young manhood, en-
larged by association for eight months with Social Democrats, Red Re-
publicans and Socialists abroad. It was radical only in its determination
to extend the principles of eighteenth century agrarian democracy from
the political sphere of mankind to his social and industrial activities, and
in its renunciation of competition in favor of co-operation. Many years
were to elapse before Dana, the Brook Farmer, became Dana of the Sun.
In the meantime America was rapidly changing from a land of horse and
water power to a continent of steam and machinery.

After the Phalanstery at Brook Farm burned down, March 3, 1846,
Dana took his bride to Boston where he was employed by the Daily
Chronotype, at four dollars a week, reading exchanges and editing news.
It was here his acquaintance with Greeley stood him in good stead; for
in February 1847, he secured employment as city editor of the Tribune.
In a short time Dana struck for higher wages. Realizing his worth as a
journalist, Greeley advanced him to fourteen dollars a week, just a dollar
less than his own pay. 21

During the following year the revolution against the government of
Louis Philippe broke out in France. It appeared that a republic might be

19 Ibid., 528.
20 1 bid., 522.
21 Wilson, 61.

8 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

established and many democratic reforms put into effect. Dana was in-
tensely interested. News that the revolution had spread to Germany re-
kindled his early ambition to go there, and in the spring of 1848 he set
sail for Europe. To defray his expenses and support his family, he ar-
ranged with Greeley and four other papers 22 to send a weekly letter. Ac-
cording to Wilson, these letters, though "not absolutely identical . . .
constituted the first syndicate correspondence ever contracted for by any
one either in Europe or America." 23

On July 14, 1848, Dana's first letter to the Tribune was published. He
was announced to the American public by the following comment in a
box at the top of the column:

However many may condemn his undisguised sympathy with the mis-
guided laborers who were driven by their own miseries and the arts of in-
triguers into so dreadful a rebellion, his analysis of the origin and nature of
the conflict must commend itself to the appreciation of all.

Dana was naturally on the side of the Republicans and Social Democrats,
believing passionately that the republican form of government was the
cornerstone of human happiness. In his first letter, he boldly declared:

It is no longer Fourierism or Communism, nor this nor that particular system
which occupies the public mind of France, but it is the general idea of Social
rights and Social Reorganization. Everyone now is more or less a Socialist
except the usurers and traders by nature, and even among them something
of the light has penetrated ... the movement is now only at the beginning
and nothing indicates that the period of convulsive transition is over. The
old Revolution was an awful spectacle of desolation; but from this distance
we can look back and reckon the great good that it accomplished. It destroyed
the old Feudalism and laid foundations of political liberty. The new Revolu-
tion has also its work to do. It is to destroy the moneyed feudalism and lay
the foundation of social liberty. Will it do this without suffering and dis-
turbance? It might have done it, one would say, but the leaders were wanting,
now the probability is it cannot. But through whatever trials France has yet
to pass it would be Atheism to doubt that Providence directs them, and that
the good of Humanity is the end of all. 24

Whether Dana accepted the principle of violent revolution or not, he was
ready to admit that much good might come from it. In his letter of

22 McMichael's Philadelphia America; New York Commercial Advertiser; Harbinger;
Chronotype.
^Life of Dana, 63.
24 Tribune, July 14, 1848.

CHARLES A. DANA 9

August 3, devoted chiefly to a dissertation upon the qualities of Proud-
hon, he distinguished between violent and pacific Socialists:

M. Proudhon belongs to the former; the Fourierists form the prominent
portion of the latter. The one seek to drive society into their mode of thinking ;
they have for allies the misery of the people and the criminal indifference of the
moneyed classes: the other trust to the force of truth and believe that reason
is a better weapon than the sword.- 5

No doubt Dana, having been exposed to Fourierism at Brook Farm,
preferred social change by the process of evolution. But when faced with
an actual situation in France theory quicky gave way to reality:

A large portion of the middle class admit the idea of the elevation of the
working classes . . . but at the same time they retreat from all thought of
responsibility on their part. They say to the workmen: "Poor fellows; you
wish one day to be independent, just as your ancestors were emancipated from
serfdom . . . but you must bring it about for yourselves. To be sure, we
are strong because we have got the fruits of your labor; and you are weak be-
cause they have been taken from you ; but we look out for our interests and
you must look out for yours." To this reasoning the workmen reply with
June insurrections. Thousands are killed on both sides, the workmen are put
down, and shot or transported and so the debate is closed . . . 2G

When the horrors of this insurrection were still fresh in his mind Dana
had written "it would be better" to have "peace and order . . . estab-
lished even at the cost of some disappointment in the recognition of the
principles of Industrial Cooperation." 27 But a month later he not only
regarded resort to violence as unavoidable, but claimed that if used it
would be forced upon the people not by the workers who were demand-
ing reform but by the upper and middle classes, the bourgeoisie, who
were resisting it.

The duration and painfulness of this struggle must depend on the party
that . . . resists the movement. The innovation proceeds from the people;
the resisting party in the bourgeoisie; in '89 that innovation proceeded from
the bourgeoisie and the resisting party was the aristocracy. Kings and nobili-
ties have learned that if thrones are not abandoned and titles surrendered it
is apt to be worse for the obstinate incumbents. But social privileges men
have not learned to yield; the whole field of social rights is an untried arena;

Z5 Ibid., see also Aug. 21, 1848.
~ 6 Ibid., Aug. 7, 1848.
27 Ibid., July 29, 1848.

10 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

the bourgeoisie have as firm a faith in the strength of their cause as the
nobility had in theirs in '89. . . . They regard the people with the same con-
tempt then levelled on themselves. They think the innovation is foolish and
impracticable; just so thought the aristocracy. They think it is anti-social
and barbarous; just so thought the aristocracy; they hate the masses that
cry out against their privileges claiming an emancipation not intelligible to
those holding the power complained of; just so did the aristocracy. 28

At home Dana had been confident that social democracy could be
achieved through industrial co-operation on the Brook Farm principle,
and in his first letter to the Tribune advanced it as the main objective of
the revolution in France.

But as Dana listened to the debates in the National Assembly he swung
farther and farther to the left. 29 No radical Socialist could have been
more scathing in his denunciation of the compromise finally reached, giv-
ing to the worker not a guarantee of the right to labor but the insult of
paternalism and charity:

. . . The clause, as adopted, declares that it is the duty of the Republic,
by paternal assistance, to assure an existence to necessitous citizens, whether
by procuring them Labor within the limits of its Resources, or by furnishing
to those whose families are unable to support them the means of living. This
... is a very different thing from the guaranty of the Right to Labor.

The Right to Labor is the Right to Live. In Savage Society an able bodied
man without an average share of the means of living is an impossibility. . . .
It is only in civilized Society that the Free Citizen, able and willing to work,
is deprived of the opportunity, and his Right to Live, by the exercise of the
faculties that Nature conferred upon him, denied.

What is the end of Society? We are told that it is the protection, happiness,
improvement, perfection of its members. . . . But, unless it assures to all the
opportunity of living by their labor, it falls short of its idea of equality and
leaves thousand upon thousand exposed to the most terrible of chances the
chance of finding themselves too many in the world, without any escape for
their miseries other than the destruction of themselves or Society. . . . Hence
revolutions/' 10

At no time did Dana conceal the fact that his sympathies were with
those who stood for "the guarantee of a subsistence procured by labor,

2* Ibid, Aug 29, 1848.

'-lbid, Aug. 16, 29, Sept. 6, 26, Oct. 3, 1848.

^Ibid., Oct. 11, 1848.

CHARLES A. DANA 11

and a series of institutions to make good that guarantee." 31 Just before
returning to the United States, he repeated:

. . . Through the whole commotion and excitement I have beheld nothing to
shock my faith in the Divine Providence and the sure though gradual develop-
ment of society into noble and happy states. My sympathies were with the
people when they were triumphant, and when their heroism and enthusiasm
commanded the admiration of the world; they have been with them in their
errors and misfortunes ; they are with them still in a hope which outlives de-
feat and forgets disaster/' 2

This is not surprising when one remembers Dana's Brook Farm back-
ground and the fact that he himself had sprung from working people.
But what does interest us is Dana's youthful attitude toward social
revolution. Not only does he justify social revolution, but intimates that
if violence is used it will be the fault of the capitalists. He summarized
the good produced by the revolutions in France, Germany, Austria,
Hungary and Italy in the following terms :

. . . Briefly it consists in the opening wide of the way of progress. In the
putting of society face to face with the questions on which its fate depends,
and in the raising of many minds to solve them. Of positive results it has lit-
tle to show nothing in comparison with the evils by which it has been at-
tended. But all evil is temporary. Good is permanent and renews itself forever.
The carnage of the battlefield disappears, but the liberty thereby achieved
remains for the latest generations. The impulse given to the heart and mind
of Christendom by the year 1848 will wake after its ruins are rebuilt. This
impulse is everywhere in new and more vigorous life, in all countries of
Europe even in England. . . . The basis of the social structure is in-
dustry. If there is wrong in the relations of industry that is, of property
and labor the time will arrive when they must be reformed or the whole
structure will go to pieces. sa

Hating war did not make Dana a pacifist. There were other things
he hated more: European absolutism, American slavery, and human op-
pression in every form. In other words war was justifiable, even glori-
ous, if the end to be attained was just and glorious. And he appeared
to be quicker in justifying it than in discovering ways of accomplishing
the same end by peaceful means. Furthermore, in 1848 he believed a

31 Ibid., Oct. 3, 1848.

32 Ibid., Feb. 13, 1849.
83 /&/</., Feb. 13, 1849.

12 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

war between "LIBERTY" and "DESPOTISM" inevitable, not only be-
tween the Republicans of France and the autocrats of Europe but be-
tween the radicals of industrial democracy and the despots of economic
aristocracy, for the reason that political liberty was only a step in the
path of social democracy. In October he wrote from Paris:

... I have not been arguing in favor of war for the sake of war. God forbid
that any man should be so depraved as that! I have simply attempted to
show that war is inevitable, that it will be a war between France and Russia,
or between Liberty and Despotism. The issue of the war, as I have already
said, can only be in favor of Liberty; first political liberty will be established,
clearing the way for progress, and then will follow equality and fraternity.
All is not attained with the overthrowal of despots, and all the despotism is
not overthrown when the kings are driven from their capitals. From political
to social and industrial freedom, the distance at times seems long, but it is
not too long for humanity. 84

It is apparent at this time that to Dana one of the chief obstacles to
social and industrial freedom was monopoly in business, a form of op-
pression more terrible in its consequences even than war itself.

Monopolies, that oppress whole classes do not come off easily but once off
can never be restored, and whatever the agitation may cost let us remember
this truth, which is too generally overlooked and too easily forgotten, that it
cannot be as destructive, inhuman, and fatal in its consequences as the evil
that occasions it. ... The struggle for freedom may be terrible, but the
stagnation of oppression is more so. The French agitation has its sufferings,
but a return to the old quiet would be worse. 35

Though Dana eventually came to believe that the consolidation of busi-
ness and industry was not only inevitable but desirable, he refused to
accept its logical accompaniment, namely, centralization in government,
denouncing it to the end as vicious bureaucracy, the destroyer alike of
individual freedom and initiative and of local and State rights.

A recapitulation of the opinions grafted upon Dana's Brook Farm
philosophy by his European experience may help to explain his atti-
tude toward subsequent events and bring into relief more sharply the
extent to which age, wealth, power and disillusionment combined to turn
idealism into cynicism and liberalism into reactionary dogmatism.

84 Ibid, Oct. 23, 1848.
85 Ibid., Oct. 18, 1848.

CHARLES A. DANA 13

From the first Dana believed that the Revolutions of 1848 resulting
in the overthrow of Louis Philippe and the establishment of Republican
Government in France were provoked more by social and economic in-
justices than antipathy to Monarchy and were primarily an attempt on
the part of the poverty stricken workers to secure better wages and the
right to labor, greater opportunity for education and more freedom of
religion. He also became convinced that such revolutions were brought
on by the governing classes who grimly clung to their traditional power
refusing to recognize the inevitable progress of civilization.

Dana warmly sympathized with the laboring masses, believing that
they had certain natural rights, such as the right to a job, the right to a
standard of living above the subsistence level, and the right to a social
order which would guarantee security. Added to these were liberty of
conscience, religion, and labor; freedom of opinion, freedom of the press,
free voting and free education. 36 How were these to be secured? By
substituting co-operation for competition. He abhorred the kind of com-
petition that was fostered by selfish individualism. He had come to
Europe imbued with the Brook Farm conception of individualism and
democracy and his experience there only served to strengthen his faith
in co-operation. He also abhorred business monopoly and governmental
centralization, which he believed destroyed individual initiative and re-
sponsibility in both the economic and political spheres.

As a corollary to his developing social faith, he was shocked and dis-
illusioned by the harsh treatment accorded to laboring classes in Eng-
land; also by the failure of Parliament to ameliorate the condition of
Ireland. This disillusionment was turned into bitter resentment during
the Civil War, resulting in the pronounced anti-British policy of the Sun.

Dana regarded war as a necessary evil in the existing stage of human
development. To him it was horrible because of the suffering entailed
but stagnation was worse; and if the cause be just and the purpose
noble, then war was glorious and all honor should be paid to those who
took part in it. So far as can be discovered he made no attempt to justify
defensive as distinguished from offensive war. It was the end that justi-
fied the means, not the character of the struggle. This attitude was re-
flected in the Sun's attitude toward American intervention in Cuba.

From the foregoing summary the future editor of the Sun appears to

80 Wilson, 76.

14 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

have been a flaming radical for the America of his youth, and there was
no reason to anticipate that his connection with the Tribune and his Civil
War experiences would quench his enthusiasm for liberty and social de-
mocracy. Indeed, one would not be surprised, were the youthful Dana
living today, to find him defending the right of Socialists and Commu-
nists to freedom of speech and justifying the use of violence, if neces-
sary, to achieve the final emancipation of the laboring classes.

But when it is remembered that Dana was writing about political,
social, and economic conditions in foreign countries, which had not yet
attained the equality of economic opportunity enjoyed in the United
States; that the contrasts between his own country and those abroad were
bound to convince him still further of the superiority of American in-
stitutions; that in 1848-1849 he was quite satisfied with the Brook Farm
philosophy, by which the reform of society was begun at the top; that
with all his vision neither he, nor anyone else, in 1848 and 1849, had
perceived the transformation to be wrought in America within a single
generation by the Industrial Revolution; when all this is remembered
one might hesitate to predict just how Dana would regulate the Sun dur-
ing a most bewildering period of American history.

Wilson gives the year 1855, six years after his trip to Europe, as mark-
ing the end of Dana's "illusions" regarding social reform. This conclu-
sion is based upon an editorial he wrote for the Tribune announcing the
failure of the North American Phalanx in New Jersey. Dana wrote:

The great practical difficulty in these experiments has been to secure a due
sense of responsibility, and a due vigilance for the common good. The im-
mediate spur of self interest not being directly felt as in the ordinary mode
of life, and the needful amount of food and clothing being tolerably certain, the
mass of the members have not been impelled to work so diligently or to save so
carefully as if everything depended upon the economy of the day, or as if an
employer were overlooking them. Thus a thriftless and careless way of going
on has too often grown up in the association, and while a few have borne more
than their share of the toil and care, others have borne less. The truth is
indisputable that in the association pinching economy can less easily be
practiced than in isolated life. Keep people apart and they can bear privation
and want, if not with facility, without complaint, but bring them into genial
and natural relations, and what was before luxury becomes necessity. They
require to be better fed and better housed, and to have much more leisure
for the social pleasures and opportunities of culture put within their reach.
Between association and poverty there is a natural contradiction, and we
suspect that the former can never be completely realized until the progress of

CHARLES A. DANA 15

science, invention, and industry has endowed society with an abundance of
wealth of every kind, such as we now scarcely imagine. 37

If this be disillusionment it is not without hope, and leaves one convinced
that it required more than the closing of Brook Farm and the failure of
other experiments in democracy to turn Dana from an idealist into a
cynic.

Not long after Dana resumed work on the Tribune the questions of
a transcontinental railroad, protective tariff, and slavery began to crowd
out his interest in social democracy and the European situation. The
Tribune favored the first two as emphatically as it opposed slavery; and
while on all three Greeley and Dana were agreed, they do not appear to
have been motivated by similar principles. Dana believed it was the mani-
fest destiny of the United States to embrace not only North America but
the entire Western Hemisphere. This was to be effected not by aggression
but by natural gravitation. To prepare for this destiny the United States
must be bound together by railroads and have sufficient industries to be
self-sustaining. A coast to coast railroad and a protective tariff thus
appealed powerfully to Dana's sense of Nationalism.

Bound up with the building of a railroad to the Pacific was the problem
of disposing of the Western lands. Dana wanted Congress to encourage
settlement by dividing them into homesteads of 160 acres to be given
free to every citizen who would make certain improvements. He strenu-
ously opposed rewarding ex-soldiers with grants of land as "a great out-
rage on the rights of the people for the benefit of speculators and land
sharks," contending that the soldiers would get neither the land nor
its true value before "the fruits would be gathered and devoured in
Wall Street and in similar patriotic localities." He also believed that such
grants would interfere with a transcontinental railroad. But should the
land bounty bill be passed by Congress he urged it be followed immedi-
ately by an act setting aside alternate sections for the railroad within
five miles on either side, as a source of revenue for its construction. He
justified this subsidy by arguing that the land-grants would be advanta-
geous to all and a profitable investment for the government. The only
hope of financing such a gigantic undertaking was by using "the public
land as a source of capital, coupled with a judicious scheme for the col-
onizing of the region." During the next twelve years, until the project

37 Wilson, 135.

16 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

was guaranteed by Congress in the acts of 1862 and 1864, Dana never
ceased to agitate in its behalf. Yet in less than a decade Dana's Sun was
one of the most merciless critics of railroad corporations grown into
mammoth monopolies of greed and corruption.

In November, 1850, there appeared in the Tribune an editorial on
Free Trade which was echoed and re-echoed in the Sun after Dana took
it over. It divided all advocates of free trade into two classes: "free-
traders by interest and free-traders by theory." The former consisted
"mainly of importers, many of them English, French, or German whose
business is to bring in and sell the greatest quantity of foreign products.
The welfare of the people . . . the development of American resources,
are all nothing to them . . . their only philosophy being to make money,
according to that antique if not venerable principle, 'each for him-
self and the devil take the hindmost.' " They were not only sordidly
selfish but alien in blood and un-American in their pursuits. No true
American would want to be classed with them or read "their organ
[which] is the Journal oj Commerce" The Free-Traders by theory
were misguided idealists, believing "that their practical application must
result in good." From this and other editorials it is obvious that Dana
objected to the theory of free trade primarily because, in his opinion, it
was utterly impractical. The Tribune declared in 1855, in a style that
was to become familiar to Sun readers, "We are Free-Traders, but not
of the school of Calhoun, Jeff Davis, Franklin Pierce, and the National
Era. We are Free-Traders just as we believe in the millennium." 38

The slavery agitation was rapidly becoming crucial. Here was an issue
which fired both Dana's humanitarianism and nationalism. Not only
were human rights at stake but the very existence of the nation. This
later aspect of the slavery controversy was not generally realized in the
beginning. Either it was believed the Southern States would not secede,
or many people, Greeley among them, took the position that secession
might be the best way of settling the slavery issue between the North and
South. It was the evil of the institution that first engaged Dana's atten-
tion. To him slavery was not only immoral but an obstacle to social and
economic progress. He hated it for its stupidity as much as for its in-
humanity. When the merchants of Virginia issued an address objecting
to the training of Negroes for trades, Dana scoffed at their nai've assump-
tion "that a community composed of a servile class on the one hand, and

38 Ibid., 140.

CHARLES A. DANA 17

a free class on the other, can be happy, prosperous, and progressive,"
ridiculing "their talk about equity, justice, the destruction of monopolies
and pure principles of republicanism, they are all ready to tolerate and
even help perpetuate this most monstrous of monopolies, the worst form
of injustice, this utmost of tyrannies." 39

Dana was not an Abolitionist, because he was by nature opposed to
fanaticism in any cause. Furthermore, under the Constitution, a sacred
document in Dana's eyes, the people of the South were entitled to their
slaves. But to the extension of slavery into free territory Dana and all
Free-Soilers were unalterably opposed. Indeed his feelings were so in-
tense as to modify his enthusiasm for Manifest Destiny. Thus we find
the Tribune, although favorable to Cuban independence, opposing the
agitation in the South for the annexation of Cuba, Mexico, and Central
America. On the other hand, the annexation of Canada was encouraged
for it would come into the union as a free area.

After 1854 Dana and Greeley devoted the Tribune to saving Kansas
and Nebraska from the blight of slavery. The interest formerly directed
to revolutions and experiments in behalf of human rights was now con-
centrated upon preserving freedom in the Territories. The doctrine of
popular sovereignty was regarded as a trick and fraud, and all those
who supported it "as deadly enemies, not merely to Kansas and to the
Republican party, but to the principles of American independence the
inalienable rights of man! " The constitutional resistance to slavery was
to triumph by wresting the government at Washington from the slavery-
tainted Democrats and putting it into the hands of the Republican party.
This was the position taken by the Tribune from the moment it aban-
doned the Whig party and espoused Republicanism. Greeley and Dana
helped in the organization of the new party, and the Tribune was its chief
spokesman.

Participation in the free-soil movement proved invaluable to Dana as
future editor of the Sun by bringing him into personal contact with ris-
ing men in the Republican party, including Seward, Chase, Fessenden,
Sumner, and Henry Wilson. Likewise it brought him into direct conflict
with leading Democrats both North and South. Slavery was attacked
through its supporters, a technique characteristic of the Sun later in
dealing with the issues of the Grant-Hayes-Cleveland era. Every dis-
creditable aspect of slavery was emphasized at the expense of Benjamin,

SQ Ibid., 112-113.

18 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

Toombs, Davis, Slidell, Douglas and Breckenridge. Portrayals bearing
Dana's subtle touch effectively pointed out the political and economic
evils of slavery.

The apparent partiality shown the slave-interests by the President
and the Supreme Court impressed upon Dana, as well as the country at
large, the primary importance of Congress. This feeling was reflected
after 1867 in the Sun's attitude toward the executive and judicial
branches of the Government during the stormy days of Reconstruction.
But despite the threat of secession, throughout the decade preceding the
Civil War, Dana manifested little alarm. The idea that one State, or a
handful of States, would care to sacrifice the advantages of the Union to
the extension of slavery seemed preposterous. In June, 1851, while
Greeley was abroad, Dana asked, "What can South Carolina expect to do
in the way of secession on her own account?" 40

That the virus might spread evidently did not occur to him. Possibly
he hoped, in true Sun fashion, to ridicule what he did not like out of ex-
istence. The only references to the subject made in the Tribune from
then on can be attributed to Greeley. Dana's way of treating this issue
was similar to the method employed by the Sun whenever threats of
civil war were heard during the impeachment of Johnson, military recon-
struction, and the Hayes-Tilden controversy. The Sun's policy was either
to ignore the disturbance altogether, or to assure its readers that the crisis
did not exist, or to focus their attention upon other matters with the plea
that they were vastly more important. Why the Sun, which appeared to
flourish on sensationalism and strife, assumed this role can only be a
matter of conjecture.

Greeley was not opposed to secession in principle. To the very end
he preferred it to the extension of slavery or to war. In a number of
editorials he took the position that if the South cared to secede from the
Union she had the right to do so "Erring sisters, depart in peace! " In
fact, he preferred a nation of twenty million free inhabitants to one of
thirty million, a sixth of whom were slaves.

It is probable that Greeley's attitude toward secession prevented Dana
from expressing his own feelings on the subject. He, too, hated war and
slavery but he abhorred secession more than either. Nor did he for a mo-
ment believe that the Southern States had the right to secede. To him
the Union was not only indissoluble but indestructible; this might be
*lbid., 112.

CHARLES A. DANA 19

lefined as the essence of his nationalism. In June, 1852, he delivered a
ecture at Chicago in which he dismissed the idea of emancipation
:hrough violence as chimerical, declaring with confidence: "The United
States will extinguish slavery before slavery can begin to extinguish the
United States." 41

During the three months in which the secession movement came to a
head, the Tribune made a supreme effort to warn the South against the
fatal step and to persuade the North a to stand to our principles; but not
to our armies/ 7 even in the event of secession. Beyond doubt these par-
ticular editorials expressed Greeley's feelings. But once Fort Sumter was
fired upon and Lincoln had called for volunteers, Dana believed there
was no choice, and with all the eloquence he possessed he consecrated the
Tribune to preserving "the territorial integrity and the political unity
of the nation."

By the end of June 1861 the Tribune's battle cry of "Forward to Rich-
mond" reiterated almost daily, had become a national slogan which was
kept up until the defeat of the Union army at Bull Run brought it into
disrepute. It was for years supposed that it was Dana's phrase. 42 This
was not so, but he probably caused its reiteration.

This misfortune did not produce an open rupture between Greeley
and Dana, but their editorials indicated a growing difference in attitude
toward the war. 43 Greeley wanted peace and some form of emancipation
at the first moment, and to attain both would have been willing to end
the war on mild terms. From the first shot Dana wanted to fight until the
heresy of secession had been completely stamped out. To him peace
without victory would have been a lasting humiliation; and in August he
declared:

. . . The only hope of the South, did they but know it, is in their defeat. For
the North, defeat, even though only the qualified disaster that comes through

41 Ibid., 116. According to Wilson the manuscript of this address was in his possession
at the time he wrote the biography of Dana.

42 When the disaster overtook the national army, Greeley made haste to declare, "I wish
to be distinctly understood as not seeking to be relieved from any responsibility for urging
the advance of the Union Army in Virginia, though the precise phrase, 'Forward to Rich-
mond' was not mine, and I would have preferred not to reiterate it. ... Henceforth I bar
all criticism from these columns on army movements . . . Now let the wolves howl on!
I do not believe they can goad me into another personal notice. . . ." Tribune, July 25,
1861.

4a Wilson, 170-171; see also Peck, Harry Thurston, Twenty Years of the Republic, 258.
Peck says, "A violent dispute with Horace Greeley over the latter's unfortunate "On to
Richmond" editorial led to Dana's retirement from the Tribune in 1862."

20 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

compromise and diplomacy, is remediless destruction preceded by years of
bitterest shame. 44

Such divergence was bound to end in a parting of the ways. The personal
relations of the two men, according to Dana, remained as cordial as ever.
But on March 27, 1862, Greeley asked for Dana's resignation. Dana
wrote many years later:

Mr. Greeley never gave a reason for dismissing me, nor did I ever ask for
one. I know, though, that the real explanation was that while he was for peace
I was for war, and that as long as I stayed on the Tribune there was a spirit
there which was not his spirit that he did not like. 45

Shortly after the rupture Dana wrote that Greeley had notified the
trustees of the Tribune that one or the other of them must go. He stated
that when he asked for an explanation Greeley refused to give one,
merely saying it was a a damned lie" and sending "a verbal message" for
him "to remain as a writer of editorials":

. . . but [he] has never been near me since to meet the "damned lie" in per-
son, nor written one word on the subject. I conclude, accordingly, that he is
glad to have me out, and that he really set on foot the secret cabal by which
it was accomplished. And as soon as I get my pay for my shares (ten thou-
sand dollars less than I could have got for them a year ago), I shall be
content. 40

To what extent this incident explains the Sun's future curious attitude
toward Greeley is a matter of deduction. That it immediately altered
Dana's feeling for the Tribune is plain. He wrote, "I have sold all my
interest in the property, and shall be slow to connect myself again with
any establishment where there are twenty masters." 47 Dana was now
nearly forty-three years old and had a wife and several children to sup-
port. He had lost not only a means of livelihood but a career, without
warning and with no reason given. With the country engaged in a long
and bitter war the future was uncertain. Six months later, despite his
services on a special government commission and his work on the Cyclo-
pedia with Dr. Ripley, he was still chafing over his rupture with the

44 Tribune, Aug. 6, 1861.

45 Charles A Dana, Recollections of the Civil War, 1-2. It is not known generally that in
the preparation of these Recollections, Ida M. Tarbell acted as Dana's ghost writer.

46 Wilson, 176, Letter to William Henry Huntington, Apr. 11, 1862.

47 Ibid., 172, Letter to Robert Carter, Apr. 18, 1862.

CHARLES A. DANA 21

Tribune, "For my part I live in the stagnation. Last year I had eight
thousand dollars income. Now I have my salary of forty dollars a week,
and no great hopes of more." 48

But his vigorous and patriotic editorials in the Tribune had brought
Dana to the attention of leading men in every part of the country. In
June, Stanton appointed him on a commission with George S. Boutwell
and Judge Stephen T. Logan, to adjust claims against the Government. 49
Dana formed a high opinion of Boutwell's integrity and ability, while
Boutwell was impressed by Dana's business habits and faculties. 50 But
their friendship did not endure. In later years the Sun never hesitated
to label the policies of Grant's Secretary of the Treasury "financial
quackery" and "Darwinism."

Upon completing this service Dana formed a partnership with Roscoe
Conkling and George W. Chadwick to buy cotton between the Union and
rebel lines. This venture not only laid the basis of a long friendship with
Conkling but brought Dana again to the attention of the Administration.
Though the cotton trade was profitable, he became convinced that it
was strengthening the South by supplying it with food, clothing and am-
munition in exchange for cotton. Dana wrote to Stanton, and then has-
tened to Washington to urge upon Lincoln the importance of restricting
the trade. 51 Impressed by his practical sense and disinterested patriot-
ism Lincoln issued a proclamation placing the cotton trade under the
Treasury Department, and Stanton forbade the army to have anything
more to do with it. 52 Thus Dana was already a man of influence in the
highest council of the land.

Both the President and Stanton were apprehensive about the military
operations in the district of West Tennessee, where Grant was begin-
ning his movements against Vicksburg. Conflicting reports about his
generalship and charges respecting his personal conduct had raised ques-
tions as to his fitness. 53 To ascertain the facts would require a man of
superior intelligence and consummate tact and Dana was selected. While
engaged in this activity, he had unparalleled opportunity to observe
more aspects of the war and acquire a better grasp of the entire military

48 Ibid ,17 4.

40 Dana, Recollections, 11-14.

B0 Boutwell, George S., Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, I, 294.

51 Dana, Recollections, 18-20.

5a Ibid., 20.

53 Wilson, 198-200.

22 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

situation at the North than most men, either on the field or at Wash-
ington.

At his first meeting with Grant, Dana was favorably impressed. He
considered him a "man of simple manners, straightforward, cordial, and
unpretending." 54 But the sketches of Grant's staff which he sent Stanton
make it difficult to understand the Sun's confidence in the General's abil-
ity to surround himself with the best of advisers upon being made Presi-
dent. In one of them, he wrote, "Grant's staff is a curious mixture of
good, bad, and indifferent. As he is neither an organizer nor a disciplin-
arian himself, his staff is naturally a mosaic of accidental elements and
family friends." 55 Here were revealed the qualities which the Sun was
later to denounce as "nepotism," "degrading tastes," and "pig-head-
edness."

Likewise, Dana sent a realistic portrayal of Rawlins, Grant's assistant
adjutant general. "Grant thinks Rawlins a first-rate adjutant general,
but I think this is a mistake. He is too slow, and can't write the English
language correctly without a great deal of careful consideration." 56
After long association with Rawlins, Dana came to regard him more
highly. Despite his slowness, bad grammar, and profanity, the Sun la-
mented his death, saying Grant would have followed a different policy
toward Cuba had the "brave," the "generous" Rawlins stayed to guide
him.

While Dana was reporting the movements of Rosecrans he had his
first meeting with Andrew Johnson. In his recollections of this experi-
ence Johnson is described as "short and stocky," with an appearance of
"great determination" and "the habit of drinking a good deal." Dana
found him "thoroughly in favor of immediate emancipation both as a
matter of moral right and as an indispensable condition of the large im-
migration of industrious freemen which he thought necessary to repeople
and regenerate the States." r>7 Eighteen months later, Dana had a sec-
ond meeting with Johnson, then Vice-President. He had purposely sought
Dana to beseech him to use his "very great influence" to prevent the
Administration from "taking the Confederates back without some con-
ditions or without some punishment." 58 Dana was repelled by his unctu-

54 Dana, Recollections, 15.
85 Ibid., 72-73.

56 Ibid., 73.

57 Ibid., 105, 106.
68 Ibid., 269.

CHARLES A. DANA 23

ous swagger and whispered confidences, punctuated with nudges and
nods. His description of these two encounters indicated how the Sun
would regard President Johnson during the last fateful years of his ad-
ministration.

After the battle of Chickamauga, which Dana regarded as of "deplor-
able importance," distrust of Rosecrans increased. Dana strongly ad-
vised Stanton to make a change in the command and suggested either
Grant or Thomas. r>s) He especially urged Grant. As a result, the General
was appointed to the command of the "Military Division of the Missis-
sippi" with permission to leave Rosecrans at the head of the Department
of the Cumberland, or to assign Thomas to his place." Grant had asked
Stanton's permission to keep Dana with him at Chattanooga. Later he
told Dana that in the belief that Rosecrans would not be able to hold
Chattanooga, he had decided to substitute Thomas as commander of
the Army of the Cumberland. 01 Grant could not have given Dana a
stronger proof of his confidence and respect. Thus in a second major
decision, Dana's judgment had proved the determining factor.

While at Chattanooga Dana witnessed the battle of Missionary Ridge
and Lookout Mountain and made the acquaintance of Sherman and
Sheridan, both of whom he admired intensely. At the invitation of
Sheridan he rode through the army and was struck by the demonstra-
tions of affection shown the General by his men. Thus three years later
when President Johnson removed Sheridan from command of the Fifth
Military District in the South it is not surprising that the Sun came out
in support of the Congressional bill designed to put the control of the
five Reconstruction Commanders directly under General Grant, who was
expected to reinstate the popular war hero. But the Sun's adoration for
Sheridan was turned to vitriol in 1875 by the "brutality" of his "ban-
ditti" dispatch.

When Dana was not at the front or discussing plans with Stanton and
Halleck as Grant's representative, he remained in Washington, doing the
regular work of an Assistant Secretary of War. His duties brought him
into daily contact with Lincoln and Stanton and gave him an oppor-
tunity to become well acquainted with Chase, Seward, and other mem-
bers of the Cabinet. We can readily understand his loyalty to Stanton

59 Ibid., 124.
lbid., 131.

24 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

during the quarrel with President Johnson, for as a War Secretary Dana
regarded him "almost superhuman." He was equally impressed with
Stanton's deep religious feeling and grasp of history. 02

Of Lincoln's Cabinet, Dana considered Seward the first in importance
and found him "an interesting man" with "an optimistic temperament"
and "the most cultivated and comprehensive intellect in the administra-
tion," possessing "what is very rare in a lawyer, a politician, or a states-
man imagination." Although in old age Dana gave as an illustration
of Seward's genius the purchase of Alaska, which "demonstrated more
than anything else his fixed and never-changing idea that all North
America should be united under one government," 63 in 1868 the Sun
was very skeptical of its value except for "snow and ice."

Part of Dana's routine work lay in supervising the accounts of the War
Department, which enabled him to appreciate the staggering cost of
war. 64 Before his eyes he saw the debt increasing by hundreds of thou-
sands daily. It is scarcely to be wondered that his constant refrain in the
Sun was economy, taxation reform, and reduction of the public debt, and
that he cherished a resentment toward the South for forcing this need-
less expense upon the Nation. Another duty was to make contracts for
supplies, a field full of fraud. It was here Dana learned from Watson,
the distinguished patent lawyer for the Government, the technique for
detecting frauds 5 which made the Sun such a terror to grafters in later
years.

During his first stay with the Army of the Potomac he made the
acquaintance of General Winfield Scott Hancock, the Democratic nom-
inee for the Presidency in 1880. Dana had the warmest admiration for
him as a general. He thought him a "splendid fellow, a brilliant man, as
brave as Julius Caesar" 6(5 . . . He had seen Hancock in action at Spot-
sylvania, and after it was over had ridden with Rawlins to the spot
where Hancock's men had fought the fiercest the "Bloody Angle." 7
The ground was thick with dead and wounded, a sight which Dana never
forgot. The Sun could be belligerent, but when partisan rivalry or sec-
tional animosity threatened civil war it always called those who fo-

62 Ibid., 157-158.

63 Ibid., 169.
*lbid. t 161-162.

65 Ibid., 162-164.

66 Ibid., 190.
* Ibid., 196.

CHARLES A. DANA 25

mented such passion "foes" and a "menace" to the country. At Rich-
mond he saw the frightful damage done by fire and the cruel destitution
of the inhabitants, a proof that the horrors of war were not confined to
the battlefield.

In these days Dana first gained an insight into Negro slavery; and
the bravery of the colored troops made a lasting impression on him. He
was also shocked by the contrast between the splendid mansions of the
owners and the miserable hovels in the Negro quarters. 68 Undoubtedly
this experience formed a partial basis for the position taken by the Sun
on Negro suffrage and Negro rule in the South.

Following the surrender of Richmond, President Lincoln discussed
confidentially with Dana his conditions for the restoration of Virginia. 69
The editor of the Sun thus knew directly from Lincoln what his policy
would have been had he lived. But there is little indication that this in-
fluenced Dana's policy. During 1868 he supported the drastic Recon-
struction program of Congress because he believed Grant's election
depended upon this support. After March, 1869, he opposed Grant's Re-
construction policy with equal vigor because he was determined to pre-
vent his re-election in 1872.

When news of Lee's surrender reached Richmond Dana discovered no
sentiment but that of submission to the authority of the Union. Dana was
aware that Grant's generosity was largely responsible for this attitude
on the part of Lee and his men. 70 At Appomattox, Grant had them at his
mercy, and his mercy had been great. Furthermore, Dana knew that
Grant himself believed his terms "of greatest importance toward secur-
ing a thorough peace and undisturbed submission to the government." 71
No wonder the Sun echoed the ringing words of its famous Presidential
nominee, "Let us have Peace," and hailed his election in November, 1868,
as the turning of a new page in American history.

Before Dana laid down his duties as Assistant Secretary of War two
more tasks contributed to his equipment as a public leader. Certain rail-
roads had been taken over by the Government early in the war and put
in charge of the War Department. Upon its close it fell to Dana to ex-
amine their condition and recommend adjustments with the owners. In
almost every instance he found the roads in better condition than when

68 O'Brien, Frank M., The Story oj the Sun, 218.

69 Dana, Recollections, 267.
70 /6wf.,272.

71 Ibid,

26 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

taken over by the Government. 72 Although this experience convinced
Dana that the Government could run the railroads efficiently, this fact
carried little weight with the Sun during the seventies and eighties in
the controversy over railroad regulation and ownership. Already the
Grant Administration had corrupted everything it touched. Why give it
the railroads? Nor would their management be any less corrupt under a
"Fraudulent President" like Hayes. But the indications are that Adam
Smith was more responsible than either Grant or Hayes for the Sun's
attitude toward the railroad problem.

Shortly after Lincoln's assassination President Johnson issued a proc-
lamation accusing Jefferson Davis of complicity in the plot and offering
a reward for his capture. A week later he was incarcerated at Fortress
Monroe. Dana was sent to see that every precaution was taken against
Davis' escape, and to warn his guards against a possible attempt at
suicide. To Wilson, Dana wrote that the prisoner walked "with as
haughty and defiant an air as Lucifer, the Son of Morning, bore after
he was expelled from Heaven." 7S From his reports to Stanton it is plain
that he had little sympathy for the man who had helped bring such dis-
aster upon North and South 74 a sentiment which he carried over into
the Sun.

When Dana completed his war service he was recognized everywhere
as a man of distinction. His influence with Lincoln, Grant, and Stanton
was taken for granted. It can safely be said that most of the Presidential
candidates, cabinet officers, diplomatic and military officials, and mem-
bers of Congress of first importance in the next thirty years were men
whom Dana had known either in his Tribune days or during the war.
The war had left him in debt, but he knew it was not necessary to remain
poor. He had seen politicians engaged in business and business men en-
gaged in politics, both before and during the war, making large for-
tunes while they served their country. Now the war was over the ad-
venture of business or politics made a powerful appeal.

Journalism no longer seemed to offer an adequate field. Dana longed,
as he advised his friend Wilson to do, "to get into the great battle of the
world in some active position." 75 Therefore, it was with reluctance that
he allowed Lyman Trumbull and a group of prominent men in Illinois

vibid., 255-260.

78 Wilson, 364.

74 Dana, Recollections, 284-286.

76 Wilson. 377.

CHARLES A. DANA 27

to persuade him sometime in May, 1865, to take the editorship of a
paper, called the Republican, to be founded in Chicago. 76 Nor would he
have yielded had he not seen an opportunity to recoup his fortunes and
serve his country, as well as a stepping stone to political position. 77 After
the building which housed the Republican was destroyed by fire in Sep-
tember, 1866, Dana returned to New York to examine the possibilities
of starting a new paper. 78

At this time Dana not only adored the hero of Appomattox for his mili-
tary genius, courage, and modesty, but was jealous lest his glory be
diminished by an ill-advised act. While in Washington in December,
1865, he let it be known that he disapproved of the pending Washburne
bill 79 to revive the grade of General of the Armies mainly because he
feared that the public would think Grant himself at the bottom of it. He
also intimated that had he been present at Lee's surrender Grant's terms
would probably have been less generous. Shortly after this Wilson wrote
Dana that he "had discovered signs of a change of feeling toward him at
General Grant's headquarters." 80 Dana replied at once maintaining the
position he had taken and saying that no one but "a fool" would ac-
cuse him of being "unfriendly to the general." 81 Wilson himself believed
that the charges of unfriendliness originated with a "set who disliked
Dana, and sought this means of neutralizing his influence with Grant." 82
But it required more than jealous gossip to destroy the friendship of two
such men. With the first issue of the Sun under Dana the paper was
dedicated to the election of Grant as President; and in 1868 Dana col-
laborated with Wilson in writing a Life oj Grant to be used as a campaign
document.

Dana, who had made and unmade Generals, was to turn with the same
acumen to the equally fascinating game of making and unmaking Presi-
dents, and he had every reason to anticipate the same high degree of
success. In a period when the country drew largely on its military leaders

76 Dana, Recollections, 290.

77 Wilson, 361-362.

78 Publication of the Chicago Daily Republican continued until 1872. A complete file of
the paper during Dana's editorship can be found in the Newberry Library of Chicago.
There are also miscellaneous copies in the Library of Congress, the Wisconsin Historical
Society and the library at Alexandria, La.

Wilson, 373.

80 Ibid.

81 Ibid., 373-374.

82 Ibid., 374,

28 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

for public service Dana's Civil War acquaintanceships proved invaluable
to him as editor of the Sun. He had seen many of the nation's heroes in
their moments of weakness as well as achievement. His position as per-
sonal observer for Lincoln and Stanton had heightened his ability to
judge character, to select the significant fact, and to report what he saw
and heard in clear, concise, vivid language. His war experiences had
also imbued him with a yearning for some field of conspicuous public
service in which success meant wealth and power. Not only was Dana
admirably equipped to run a newspaper; it is no exaggeration to say that
he would have made an excellent diplomatist, cabinet officer, or Con-
gressional leader.

Circumstances forced Dana, for the time being, back into journalism,
but it was political recognition he wanted. And when on the eve of his
inauguration Grant refused to bestow upon him an office worthy of his
abilities, the Sun became his compensation.

CHAPTER II

DANA RE-CREATES THE SUN

THE emblem which appeared in the Sun, January 27, 1868, had under-
gone a change. An eagle no longer brooded over the bright orb rising
behind mountains. Now its beams shone unhampered across the sky. The
change symbolized an internal revolution in the little four-page, two-
cent daily. Charles A. Dana had purchased the New York Sun.

He had not taken this step without thought. After the disaster at
Chicago, he concluded that the most logical place for a paper of the
kind which he planned was New York City. New York had a million
inhabitants, with a million and a quarter more living within twenty-
five miles of Union Square. It was predicted that the metropolitan area
would have a population of nine millions by the close of the century.
It teemed with varied activities. Reformers were carrying on movements
for improved education, temperance, the eight-hour day, and woman
suffrage. Occasionally a disciple of Marx ranted against class oppression.
In Brooklyn, Henry Ward Beecher was the apostle of liberal and hu-
manitarian religion.

The fashionable rich formed a select society with its center on Mur-
ray Hill and Fifth Avenue. They dined at Delmonico's, enjoyed the
Italian Opera at the Academy of Music or attended performances of
Edwin Booth at the Winter Garden Theatre. The Theatre Franqais and
Steinway Hall also provided cultural entertainment, while those who
preferred comic opera and burlesque found diversion at the Fifth Avenue
Opera and the beautiful Olympic on Broadway. The poor dwelt in the
slums and tenements. Their homes had no proper lighting, heating, or
sanitary arrangements. Yet any poor family believed its favorite son
might become as rich as August Belmont or Slippery Dick Connolly;
and while waiting they depended upon ward politicians for relief. All
walked on uncertain sidewalks, littered with filth which polluted the air
even on frosty mornings. The movement of traffic was slow. Streets were
narrow, and horse cars, hacks, broughams, drays and pedestrians milled
about with inadequate police control.

29

30 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

According to the tax books ten men owned one-tenth of the assessed
property of the city, an aggregate of fifty million dollars; one of them,
William B. Astor, being put down as worth $16,000,000. Cornelius
Vanderbilt controlled three important railroad lines. Vanderbilt, Leon-
ard Jerome, Daniel Drew, Jay Gould and James Fisk, Jr., were pow-
ers on Wall Street. Drew and his associates were plundering the Erie
Railroad. The Long Island line was a "murder trap." Alexander T.
Stewart had completed in 1862 his great new department store which
covered one entire block. William M. Tweed was a State Senator and
Street Commissioner, already demanding a 15 per cent share on all
city bills. Peter Sweeny had recently paid $60,000 for his position on
the Board of Aldermen. Judges sold injunctions and legislators traded
or sold their votes.

Horace Greeley was the editor of the Tribune while James Gordon
Bennett edited the Herald. Henry J. Raymond headed the Times;
Manton Marble, the World. The Nestor of the press was William Cullen
Bryant of the Evening Post. Thurlow Weed edited the Commercial
Advertiser. Other papers published in 1868 included the Evening Ex-
press, owned by James and Erastus Brooks; the Journal of Commerce,
edited by David M. Stone; the Evening News by Benjamin Wood; the
Democrat, by Marcus M. Pomeroy. The principal magazines published
in the city were Putnams, Harper's Monthly, Harper's Weekly, the
New York Ledger, the Independent, and the Nation.

Where else could Dana find such a wealth of opportunity? There
were many newspapers, but none which reached the public which he
had in mind. Whether he would be a social reformer, a leader of
progressive opinion, or a successful journalist the opportunity was in
this city. Coming East, he interested his friends, most of them Repub-
licans, in starting a new paper. But just as preliminary steps were about
to be undertaken, the purchase of the Sun was proposed to them and
accepted.

It appeared to be a sound investment. Begun in 1833 by Benjamin
H. Day as a medium through which to advertise his business, the Sun
was later owned by Moses Yale Beach. It had a circulation of 50,000-
60,000, chiefly among the mechanics and small merchants, and had
gained a reputation for independence and honesty. It boasted much
advertising, partly of an objectionable sort. As Dana wrote Gen. Wil-
son, "We pay a large sum for it $175,000 but it gives us at once

DANA RE-CREATES THE SUN 31

a large and profitable business. If you have a thousand dollars at leisure
you had better invest it in the stock of our company, which is increased
to $350,000 in order to pay for this new acquisition." Of this sum about
$220,000 was invested in real estate, which he felt sure would be pro-
ductive independent of the paper. 1

A distinguished group stood behind Dana in this venture. Among
them were William M. Evarts, a leader of the American bar; Senator
Roscoe Conkling and his brother Franklin; Senator Edwin D. Morgan;
George Opdyke, a former mayor; and Cyrus W. Field, of Atlantic cable
fame. 2 A list of the original stockholders was given in the fiftieth anni-
versary issue of the Sun. Those not already mentioned included:

Thomas Hitchcock William H. Webb F. C. Cowdin

Isaac W. England A. B. Cornell Salem H. Wales

Chas. S. Weyman Aug. L. Brown Theron R. Butler

Jno. H. Sherwood David Dows Marshall B. Blake

M. O. Roberts John C. Hamilton A. A. Low

Ed. D. Smith Amos R. Eno Charles E. Butler

F. A. Palmer Freeman Clarke Dorman B. Eaton

S. B. Chittenden Thomas Murphy

On the first day of his long career as a leading American editor,
Dana announced in an editorial "Prospectus" his plans for the future:

Notice is hereby given that the Sun newspaper, with its presses, type, and
fixtures, has become the property of an Association represented by the under-
signed, and including among its prominent stockholders Mr. M. Y. Beach,
recently the exclusive owner of the whole property. It will henceforth be pub-
lished in the building known for the last half century as Tammany Hall, on
the corner of Nassau and Frankfort streets. Its price will remain as heretofore
at two cents a copy, or $6 per annum to mail subscribers. It will be printed in
handsome style, on a folio sheet as at present, but it will contain more news
and other reading matter than it has hitherto given. . . .

The Sun will always have All the News, foreign, domestic, political, social,
literary, scientific, and commercial. It will use enterprise and money freely to
make the best possible newspaper, as well as the cheapest.

It will study condensation, clearness, point and will endeavor to present its
daily photograph of the whole world's doings in the most luminous and lively
manner.

It will not take as long to read the Sun as to read the London Times or Web-

1 Wilson, James H., Life of Charles A. Dana, 378.

2 The SWH, Sept. 3, 1883.

32 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

ster's Dictionary; but when you have read it, you will know about all that has

happened in both hemispheres. . . .

Charles A. Dana
Editor and Manager

In a very short time the success of the new management was indi-
cated by rising circulation. "Professionally I may be called prosperous,"
Dana wrote William Huntington. "Since I have had the Sun, now five
months, it has not failed to make money, and its subscription lists
steadily increase." In the course of this letter he remarked that he had
"revolutionized" the paper.' The word was accurate. The headlines
were now more uniform and regular, although the folio form had been
retained. Old English type had replaced Roman in the title head and
the columns were widened. He had done more than improve the out-
ward appearance of the journal. His intellectual convictions and cul-
tural interests had rapidly been imparted to its pages. It had a new
spirit, too; it was a gaily spunky paper without a trace of modesty.
It was independent, determined, whimsical, and in the early days of
1868 and 1869 not yet malicious. Many an editorial ended with the
slogan "The Sun Shines For All Price Two Cents."

To print a paper of four pages which contained all the news of both
hemispheres required "condensation, clearness and point." To make
such a paper "luminous and lively" required superior writers. From the
first Dana was intensely interested in the organization of his staff. The
exchange man, whose duty it was to read other papers through, perhaps
to collect a verse for its column of "Poems Worth Reading" or to notice
what a paper in Kansas said about the Sun, was always on the lookout
for an unusual bit of writing. Dana, if struck by it, would write its
author, and in the course of time a talented reporter might appear
from the West or South, ready to learn journalism according to Sun
style. This diligent search for suitable men to staff the Sun was carried
on as long as Dana owned the paper. He could not hire each employee
personally, but Chester A. Lord, who became managing editor in 1880
and remained in that position until 1913, selected a large percentage
of the staff according to the precedents which Dana established.

In those days, brilliant young men of good family were not expected
to choose newspaper careers. Journalism dictated irregular hours and
association with people of all types, and provided but a small remuner-

* Wilson, 394,

DANA RE-CREATES THE SUN 33

ation. Law or medicine were more dignified as well as better paid pro-
fessions. But Dana always maintained that there was no calling higher
than that of a journalist. In 1868, the Sun remarked that law and
medicine were crowded. It then continued:

To relieve this rather gloomy prospect several new professions offer them-
selves to the ambitious, among which are journalism and civil engineering. The
former has somewhat declined since the war, but is now as promising a field
to a young man as any other. The influence and position of the press are un-
equalled, and quite as many have been successful in it, in proportion, as in
most professions. 4

Although Dana might have enjoyed a high political office, he always
maintained that his position as a leading journalist was far superior
to most governmental stations. When the Cincinnati Enquirer sug-
gested him for Governor, Dana replied:

The difficulty with this proposition is that Mr. Dana already holds an office
that is not compatible with being Governor of New York State, the office,
namely, of the editor of the Sun. The latter post is infinitely more attractive in
power, independence, usefulness and the constant pleasure and satisfaction of
its exercise. It would be the wildest folly to resign it for an inferior function.

We make Governors here. . . . 5

"What a descent it would be!' 7 Dana exclaimed, when considering Col.
A. K. McClure as a "brilliant Secretary of State." "The truth is," he
continued, "that, except in some immense and unusual patriotic emer-
gency, such as the late civil war afforded, no capable editor can prop-
erly accept any public office except that of President. . . ." 6

The respect with which he treated his own staff endeared him to them.
He valued good work and paid liberally for it. As the fortunes of his
newspaper improved, he raised salaries proportionately. Writing in the
North American Review, Mayo Hazeltine said:

One of Mr. Dana's special titles to the remembrance of his fellow workers
in the newspaper calling is the fact that, more than any other man on either
side of the Atlantic, he raised their vocation to a level with the legal and medi-
cal professions as regards the scale of remuneration. He honored his fellow
craftsmen of the pen, and he compelled the world to honor them. 7

4 Apr. 21, 1868.

5 Aug. 31, 1882.

6 Mar. 1, 1885.

7 O'Brien, Frank M., The Story of the Sun, 426.

34 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

Dana believed the newspaper office was the place to learn journalism.
A statement of this conviction was given in the Sun in 1869:

As the details of legal practice can be nowhere mastered but in a lawyer's
office or in the law courts, so the young journalist, be he ever so well instructed
in what he may consider the theory of his profession must serve his apprentice-
ship in a newspaper office before he can claim to have mastered the art.

Give him a good preliminary education, induce him if possible to write clear
and terse English, and imbue him with honor, magnanimity, and courage. In-
dividual talents, tastes, and temperament will then decide whether he is fitted
to succeed or fail in his profession. 8

He put this belief into practice with his young men, diligently teaching
them their craft and providing opportunity for advancement when it
was merited. So successful was he that in time the Sun became a regular
training school in which young staff-members were taught, not by rule
and precept, but by the example and standard of good writing which
they saw about them. The office was managed in a democratic spirit,
all the writers occupying a room together and no one assuming an air
of superiority. Dana ruled with the vigilance and kindliness of a pater-
nal autocrat. He paid particular attention to the development of style
in young writers, and was strict concerning their expression of ideas.
He did not hesitate to discharge a man for a badly chosen word, al-
though time usually soothed his feelings, or Lord intervened and the
culprit was allowed to remain. He was quick to praise when praise was
warranted. Although Dana proved relentless to his enemies, the staff
knew the warmth of his friendship. If in trouble with the police, or
grappling with a personal problem of unusual dimensions, each knew
he possessed a powerful friend. The result of his respect for the profes-
sion was a strong spirit of comradeship in his staff. Charles Rosebault,
who worked under Dana, has described it as a brotherhood who "glo-
ried in each other's success and cherished to their last days the golden
memories of their association." 9 Will Irwin wrote in the American
Magazine in 1909 that the "gentlemen journalists" of the Sun staff
were known all over the country. "This organization with its peculiar
democracy, its freedom, and its good will of man to man, is probably
the most admirable thing about the New York Sun" It had been com-
pared to a club, but was more like a college, he said. "It has the same

8 Sept. 7, 1869.

9 When Dana was The Sun, 269.

DANA RE-CREATES THE SUN 35

reverence for tradition, the same general good will, the same cohesion
of effort, and the same voluntary acceptance of a certain set of ideals.
'Once a Sun man, always a Sun man, wherever you go.' " 10

The Sun was also called, in no disparaging sense, "the graveyard of
reputations." n This was not because many an employee did not go out
into the world and attain distinction; nor because working in the Sun
office was not an open-sesame to other newspaper positions. It was
rather a comment on the impersonal character of the Sun. In those
days the identity of authors was a guarded secret. Day after day a
staff member might write brilliant editorials or news articles only to
have his achievement referred to in two words: "Dana says." Some
men dreamed of an editorial policy possessing a keener social conscience
and less guided by personal friendships and enmities, 1 - but no matter,
they conformed to the Sun's point of view. Individuality in a writer was
never crushed, distinctive style was cherished, but Dana chose and
moulded the staff to share his own outlook on life, until no reader could
tell which article was the product of Dana's pen. Occasionally Dana
dictated when he felt called upon to do so. When he did it was trenchant
and effective writing. But it was not different in spirit from other arti-
cles on his page, nor superior in style.

No book on the Sun is complete without a glance at those who com-
posed its staff. These colorful personalities are given extensive descrip-
tions in Edward P. Mitchell s Memoirs of an Editor, Frank M.
O'Brien's The Story of The Sun and Charles J. Rosebault's more recent
book, When Dana was The Sun. Excerpts taken from the files of thirty
years and reproduced in this book are the product of their pens; the
policies and program were determined by the editor. It was one of
Dana's greatest achievements that he possessed the ability to harmonize
these individuals of varied talents into a homogeneous and "happy
family." On his staff were multimillionaires and one Communist; law-
yers and piscatorial experts; poets and society men. There were former
diplomats and future Congressmen. It would be impossible to detail
their different aptitudes. Under Dana they were woven into a single
fabric which came forth daily as the Sun.

In the early years the outstanding editorial writer and man closest

10 Jan. 1909.

11 Personal Interviews with Mrs. Edward P. Mitchell.

12 Personal Interviews with a former Secretary in the Sun office.

36 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

to Dana was William 0. Bartlett. He and Dana had met through Secre-
tary Stanton and become warm friends previous to the purchase of the
Sun. Bartlett had been employed in the offices of the Evening Post,
Herald, and Tribune. In 1868 he began work on the Sun and continued
until his death thirteen years later. He was a brilliant lawyer as well as
a powerful writer. He had a knack for phrasemaking, and many of the
quips that were long quoted from the Sun had rolled off his pen. It was
he who made the damaging reference to Hancock's weight in the cam-
paign of 1880, which Mitchell later described as "a stroke of playful-
ness." Bartlett also advised Hancock "to return to the original goose"
the quill that penned the opinion that tariff was a local issue. 1 " "No
King, No Clown to Rule This Town" was Bartlett's slogan, while Wil-
lard Bartlett, his son, first suggested the famous "office cat." Bartlett
earned for the Sun warm admiration and intense hatred.

Aside from these qualities of brilliance and humor, there is no ex-
planation of the invincible friendship which developed between Dana
and Bartlett. It has been spoken of as a "mystery." More likely it is
an index to Dana's character. He probably enjoyed Bartlett for himself
and admired him for his ability. Certainly Bartlett exercised privileges
that no other individual in the office would have dared to assume. In
the younger days of transcendental dreams Dana had written poetry,
some of which had been printed. The "Via Sacra," one of these, ended
with the couplet:

But oh! what is it to imperial Jove
That this poor world refuses all his love?

Mitchell tells us that Bartlett, whose "status exempted him from disci-
pline, found a certain pleasure, half humorously, half affectionately
malicious, in inserting extracts from these early effusions in leading
articles when the editor's back was turned." So Dana might read in his
own paper the next morning:

The White House evidently believes that the gods on high are in anguish over
its insolent defiance of moral principle, "but Oh!" as the poet has beautifully
expressed it,

. . . "what boots it to imperial Jove

that one poor mortal scorns his mighty love?" 14

18 Mitchell, Edward P., Memoirs oj an Editor, 215.
lbid. t 266.

DANA RE-CREATES THE SUN 37

This was certainly an acid test of friendship.

Bartlett also took a keen interest in the Sun's attitude toward mem-
bers of the legal profession. Again and again judges who did not merit
abuse were labeled "ignoramuses" and "tyrants" by the Sun; while
such men as Judge George Barnard were models of perfection. To an
outsider as well as to those in the Sun office, it appeared that he was
using his position to promote himself as a lawyer. 15 The Biter Bit, or
the Robert Macaire of Journalism, a pamphlet inspired by the Sun's
attitude toward Grant and containing many unscrupulous charges, as-
serted: "He [Bartlett] spends most of his time writing puffs for all the
Judges who throw at him and his son, Willard, also a lawyer, the fat
bones of the courts, such as refereeships, receiverships, and street
openings from which Bartlett & Co. have already amassed a fortune."
This accusation was repeated in the New York Times and brought an
angry reply from Bartlett:

In your journal of this day, you copy from an anonymous pamphlet a para-
graph which . . . amounts to a charge . . . that I have been the recipient of
bribes to influence the course of the New York Sun. . . .

No person, apart from the proprietor of the paper, ever paid me a thousandth
part of a mill for any article in the Sun. I never write an article or a line which
I am not ready to put my name to, and to hold myself fully and solely re-
sponsible for. . . .

While I have never sought "influence" in the sense in which it is used
with judges, I have sought acquaintances. ... I do not refer to living Judges
only; but I have endeavored to make myself familiar with Coke, and Holt,
and Hale and Blackstone. 10

The nature of this pamphlet is such that no weight can be attached
to its accusation. But it is hard to believe that the Sun's frequently
perverse opinions on the judiciary, of which we have evidence in the
paper's files, were a matter of pure caprice on Dana's part. If they
were, it was a most improper indulgence for a journalist of such talent.
Dana's friendship for William O. Bartlett was never broken. He was
legal adviser to the Sun, and in time Bartlett & Company took offices
in the same building. The Times sneeringly said it was "convenient."
The friendship was inherited by Willard Bartlett, later Chief Judge
of the New York State Court of Appeals. He had attended New York

15 Rosebault, Charles J , When Dana was The Sun, 177.

16 Feb. 10, 1871.

38 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

University Law School with Elihu Root, and later Root and Bartlett
handled the legal affairs for the Sun. In the seventies, for a short time,
young Bartlett was dramatic critic for the paper. Root frequently went
to the theater with him and together, after the performance, they would
tear the play to pieces over a glass of beer, with the result that many
of his criticisms appeared in Bartlett's reviews in the Sun next day.
Dana's friendship with the Bartletts was to cost him dear when the
Sun refused to support Grover Cleveland. But the editor was capable
both of reckless friendships and reckless hatreds. And he seemed to be
as blind to the faults of those he loved as he was impervious to the virtues
of his enemies.

A happier connection of Dana's was that with Edward P. Mitchell,
although it never possessed the same intimacy as that with Bartlett.
Mitchell's Memoirs suggest that his value as a journalist lay chiefly in
his talent for writing a balanced prose. His editorials in the Sun, while
often displaying the humor of the satirist, were never burdened with
mordant wit. He was sometimes spoken of as the backbone of the
editorial page. 17

Mitchell first came upon the Sun in the exchanges which he received
at the Lewiston Journal in Maine. He was captivated by it, for it
seemed to him that he had discovered something new and admirable
in journalism. He decided to try his chances and submitted an article.
It was in the Sun style, being a personal attack upon a gentleman in
Cincinnati who had been so unlucky as to offend Dana. In later years
Mitchell described it as "childish," but he was delighted to behold it
prominently placed on the editorial page. Mitchell joined the paper in
1875 and remained until after Dana's death. His genius, admired and
respected by Dana and fostered in the congenial atmosphere of the
Sun office, never lost the individuality of his own mind and spirit. Long
association with Dana and deep admiration of his unerring literary
taste and critical ability influenced Mitchell as he in turn, for similar
reasons, influenced those who have followed him as editor of the Sun.
But in the process each man's genius retained its distinctive characteris-
tics.

According to O'Brien, "Mr. Mitchell absorbed his chief's lifetime
belief that the range of public interest was infinite." 18 They were found

17 The American Magazine, Jan., 1909.

18 The Story of The Sun, 406.

DANA RE-CREATES THE SUN 39

in agreement "not only upon the subject of what the reader wishes, but
upon the necessity for preservation in newspapers, as well as in books,
of the ideal of language." 19 He stands with Dana "among the makers
of the Sun who best knew the paper and the intellectual demands of
its readers." 20

When Mitchell joined the Sun he found a veteran who is now re-
membered as the husband of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Henry B. Stanton
must be called an Independent, for his allegiance had been given in
turn to the Democrats, Free-Soilers, Republicans, and Democrats again.
Like his wife, he was an earnest reformer. In 1840 he and Mrs. Stanton
went to Europe to arouse sentiment for the anti-slavery cause. During
those turbulent days he was mobbed it is said at least two hundred
times, but he always managed to escape, and preserved enough energy
to serve some fifteen years on the Sun staff. He was efficient at book
reviews, conversant with the law, and had a full knowledge of politics
having spoken in sixteen Presidential campaigns. It is easy to imagine
that the Sun's erudite discourses on political history and the intricacies
of former Presidential elections were penned by him.

In striking contrast was Francis P. Church, who cared not a whit
for politics of any kind. To Church goes the credit for having written
the most popular editorial of his day and of many days since his death
in 1906. When it was suggested that he reply to a little girl who wrote,
"Please tell me the truth; is there a^ Santa Claus?" he belittled the
suggestion, then with an air of resignation turned and wrote the article
which has since been reprinted millions of times. 21 When he died the
Sun broke its rule of anonymity and disclosed that he was the author.

Another of this galaxy was James S. Pike, formerly Washington
correspondent for the Tribune and Minister to the Netherlands. He and
Dana were old friends; and Pike followed Dana to the Sun. He wrote
several books First Blows of the Civil War; The Restoration of the
Currency; The Financial Crisis; Horace Greeley in 1872 and The Pros-
trate State titles which attest his wide range of interests. A second
editorial writer was General Fitz-Henry Warren, credited with having
invented the unfortunate slogan "Forward to Richmond." In 1869 he
was appointed Minister to Guatemala. He came to the Sun two years

19 Ibid., 407.

20 Ibid., 427.

21 Mitchell, 112.

40 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

later and remained until 1876.

Less conspicuous but even more important to Dana was Mayo W.
Hazeltine. He had graduated in arts and law at Harvard and later
studied at Cambridge University, England. He traveled in Europe,
particularly in Spain, and all that he read or observed he stored in
his memory. His specialties were editorials on international politics and
prodigious book reviews which filled an entire page of the Sunday Sun.
His style and erudition lent the newspaper literary prestige, while his
reviews were considered compulsory reading for those who wished to
keep abreast of literary trends. Joining the Sun in 1878, he remained
literary editor until his death in 1909.

Contemporaneous with Hazeltine was John Swinton, a distinguished
Communist and labor agitator. Mitchell tells us, and we can readily be-
lieve, that he made little impression on the paper and none on its
policies. 2 " He earned his living during the day by writing Sun editorials;
but in the evening he harangued crowds from a soap box, often de-
nouncing Dana as one of the props of capitalism, for whom he prophe-
sied swift retribution with the success of the revolution. Dana rather
enjoyed the situation, and Swinton would inform him the morning after
some particularly ferocious attack that he had certainly given him the
"dickens" the night before. 2 '

Swinton had previously worked on the Times under Henry J. Ray-
mond, taking sole charge of the paper during the editor's absence. He
had been active in the Free Soil controversy, and wrote the "Eulogy
of Henry J. Raymond" and "An Oration on John Brown." He was
adept at short, brilliant paragraphs, and an expert on Central American
affairs. There was a place for him on the Sun despite his radicalism;
and his own articles, written in magazines of that day, are evidence that
he enjoyed his work under Dana. He treasured a note from the editor
running thus: "It seems to me that Dr. McKim's view of hell might
be interesting as a subject of a Sunday leader. P.S.: Hell is not enough
thought of." In his opinion, Dana was a model editor:

I never knew an instance in which he asked any man on his staff to write
otherwise than he thought, or to palter with his conscience, or to compromise

22 1 bid., 225.
23 O'Brien, 260.

DANA RE-CREATES THE SUN 41

in the matter of honor. He despised the scribbling flunkey, the parasite whose
life or conduct was governed by subserviency. 24

Two other editorial writers who deserve mention were Edward M.
Kingsbury and Napoleon Leon Thieblin. The former was a Harvard
man possessed of an exquisite humor, fine wit, and broad literary ap-
preciation. He was particularly effective in brief informal essays.
Thieblin was of French blood although born in Russia. He won a repu-
tation in Europe as a writer for the Pall Mall Gazette under the pen
name of "Azamet Batuk." A versatile man, he was an accomplished
critic of the drama, music, and art, not to mention an interest in foreign
politics and the theory and practice of speculative finance.

The author of the "Mathew Marshall" column, which appeared
every Monday and accounted for a special circulation, was Thomas
Hitchcock. He was a stockholder and treasurer of the Sun company.
Rosebault speaks of him as the most profound writer on finance ever
known to journalism. 2r ' He was also adept as a financier, and quickly
accumulated a fortune. His interest in social life made it fitting that he
should also supervise the column dealing with fashionable activities.
A queer combination he took his meals at a dairy lunch and paid will-
ingly the exorbitant expenses of two polo-playing sons. He wrote a
"Child's Catechism" of Swedenborgianism and a translation of Edward
Van Hartmann's Die Religion des Gcistes. He also composed a strange
volume on the Unhappy Loves of Men of Genius, but rejected most of
the names suggested by his friends on the ground that they were neither
unhappy nor geniuses. It was to Hitchcock that Sheriff Jimmy O'Brien
submitted the Tweed Ring accounts and documents. Dana was away at
that time, and Hitchcock would not assume the responsibility. 20 Evi-
dently he had no great interest in news scoops. Or was William Bartlett,
later counsel for Tweed, again exerting his influence? It would have
been difficult to uphold the innocence of Judge Cardozo and Judge
Barnard, intimately connected with the Tweed Ring, and at the same
time expose its rascalities. The New York Times got the papers and
won the fame of exposing the thieves to the public.

Dana's first managing editor, Amos J. Cummings, was an accom-

24 The Chautauquan, Mar. 1898.

25 When Dana was The Sun, 168.
20 Mitchell, 220.

42 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

plished newspaper man with an unfortunate predilection for profanity.
In earlier days he had worked on the Tribune where the following
order 27 issued by John Russell Young brought a tart reply and a rup-
ture of relations with that paper:

Order No. 756 There is too much profanity in this office.

Order No. 757 Hereafter the political reporter must have his copy in at

10:30 P.M.

The answer:

Order No. 1234567 Everybody knows well that I get most of the political

news out of the Albany Journal, and everybody knows well that the

Journal doesn't get here until eleven o'clock at night, and anybody who knows

anything knows well that asking me to get stuff up at half past ten

is like asking a man to sit on a window sill and dance on the roof at the same
time.

Cummings

This possibly accounts for the abuse which Young received in the
columns of the Sun. Certainly Dana had had no prejudice against Young.
As late as June 8, 1868, he had written a friendly letter suggesting that
Young sell his Washington news to the Sun. "We will write them over
using nothing but the facts," he said. "As there is no competition be-
tween the Tribune and the Sun, I don't see why such an arrangement
would not be advantageous to both." 28 But in 1869 Young was labeled
a "Sneak News Thief." If Cummings was not responsible at least he
must have enjoyed it immensely. In spite of his faults of temper, Cum-
mings had extraordinary talent. He edited, criticized, and corrected
copy with an unerring hand; he devised news scoops which outdistanced
other papers. He was not indifferent to the important, but he was also
sensitive to the trivial. It was he according to Bleyer who "developed the
'human-interest' method of newswriting among the reporters of the
Sun." 29 In time it chafed him to sit at the desk while the world of hap-
penings, funny and pathetic, stirring and drab, went on not far distant
from Printing House Square. He was an excellent reporter, adept at in-
terviews, satire, and interpretation, with a special flair for chronicling
murders. Much of the Sun's rapid rise in circulation was due to this

27 O'Brien, 266.

28 John Russell Young, MSS. Collection, Library of Congress.

29 Bleyer, W. G., Main Currents in the History of American Journalism, 298.

DANA RE-CREATES THE SUN 43

rough but talented writer. 80

Of no less value to Dana was John B. Wood, who also came from the
Tribune. His contribution to a four-page paper was a remarkable in-
stinct for deleting all superfluous words. In some instances the words
ran to several columns, but Dana had promised that the Sun would
"study clearness, condensation and point," and "Doc" Wood put that
principle into practice.

Selah Merrill Clarke, night city editor, came to the paper in 1881. He
executed headlines with a touch of genius. They were concise, accurate,
with an exceptional literary flavor. "Boss" Clarke, as he was familiarly
known, pretended to no talent as a reporter, but he was a good judge of
news value and its presentation. In addition, he possessed such an un-
canny memory that he could tell offhand the exact position and aspect
of buildings and houses throughout the city. On many occasions he
demonstrated an accurate knowledge of news printed in the Sun years
before. Other newspapers made innumerable, fruitless attempts to ob-
tain his services. One paper even proposed to triple the highest salary
which the Sun would pay him, "but Clarke merely grunted and went on
copy reading." 31

Although many who gave ably of their time and talent are not men-
tioned here, one other must be included. His influence was perhaps
mightier than that of the elder Bartlett, and by some was considered
sinister. This was William Mackay Laffan, who came to the Sun staff in
1877. Time has effaced much which would shed light on his character;
while his own reluctance to appear before the public adds to his ob-
scurity. It is certain he was composed of as many antitheses, and as
many good and bad qualities, as Dana himself.

Laffan was a native of Ireland, born in Dublin and educated at Trinity
College and St. Cecilia's School of Medicine. After his arrival in this
country he was city editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, and then
managing editor of the San Francisco Bulletin. Shortly afterward he be-
came owner of both the Daily Bulletin and the Sunday Bulletin in Balti-
more. For a time he acted as passenger agent of the Long Island Rail-
road, which accounted for his subsequent interest in railroads. So far no
employment had entirely satisfied him. In the late seventies he appeared
at the Sun, offending the staff by his unpleasant vacuous stare and af-

80 Rosebault, 167.

31 The American Magazine, Jan. 1909.

44 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

fectation of full dress for evening wear. It was learned that he was the
new dramatic critic. Then successively he was a general writer on art
subjects, business adviser, publisher, general manager, and finally pro-
prietor. He fast became Dana's close friend, and was accorded the
hitherto undreamed-of privilege of walking into the private office un-
announced and without knocking. Their private lunches, alone with the
office cat, were an institution upon which the staff looked with wonder
some with regret.

From the first Laffan 's ability as a writer was unquestionable. Will
Irwin described him as a "pugnacious Irishman whose words carry
darts," best known for his short, sarcastic editorials and a fighting capac-
ity which made newspapers dread to cross swords with the Sun: V2 Al-
though he was not incapable of genial humor, he possessed a wit which
could be unforgivably cruel. As dramatic critic he wrote short, pithy
notices, bitter if warranted, even to the point of smart unkindness. As his
favor with the editor increased he came to supervise departments with
which he had no official connection, and in all his decisions Dana sup-
ported him. It came to be understood that in matters of politics and
finance affecting the paper Laffan must be taken into consideration.

Laffan had diversified interests. Lawyers and politicians sought his
practical advice, while he was the darling of multi-millionaires. He was
on friendly terms with Henry Walters and J. P. Morgan, daily visiting
the latter's office. It may have been that the Sun which accused Cleve-
land of selling bonds illegally to meet the expenses of the government
was supporting the financier rather than the President at the time of
the Morgan bond issue. At any rate, if Laffan was the darling of the
capitalists, the capitalists became increasingly the darlings of the Sun;
while the working men over whom the Sun had once waxed eloquent
determined upon a boycott against the paper, directed by their Central
Labor Union. 33 The method by which Laffan gained the confidence of
the great financiers and railroad magnates was simple. His love and
knowledge of the arts were great, while his opinion on the authenticity
of rare objects was desirable. He was conversant with Oriental ceramics,
particularly porcelains of the kind which Dana collected. Not only was
his knowledge profound, but he himself was an artist. He painted in oils
and water color, modeled in clay, and was dexterous with pencil, dry

32 The American Magazine, Jan. 1909.
83 The Sun, Aug. 30, 1883.

DANA RE-CREATES THE SUN 45

point and etching needle. He and Thomas B. Clarke compiled a monu-
mental catalogue of the Morgan Collection in the Metropolitan Museum
of Art. Laffan also edited a book on "Oriental Porcelain," and was the
author of "American Wood Engravers." His wealthy friends trusted
him implicitly in art matters, and on occasion he was commissioned to
spend millions on collections abroad. There was a phrase, "Laffan's staff
of multi-millionaires," employed by those who did not understand his
connections. 34 Laffan was even more shrewd than the proverbial dealer,
both in his own transactions and in those unselfishly undertaken in the
interest of others.

In addition to his office staff of superb journalists, Dana had an im-
posing list of outside contributors. He never made the mistake of re-
fusing an article merely because its author was yet unrecognized in
literary circles. He read manuscripts personally, accepted them or not
according to their worth, commenting with blue pencil either on their
merit or demerit for the benefit of the author. Once when a prominent
clergyman attempted to prepare a manuscript in "Sun" style, Dana re-
jected it with this marginal note: "This is too damned wicked." 35

The most significant poet of the day though still not recognized as such
by the American public, was Walt Whitman. When Leaves of Grass
first appeared, in 1855, it had shocked, alarmed, startled and, on the
whole, displeased the country. Some pronounced it lewd, others said it
was not poetry.* 6 Upon the publication of the fifth edition, in 1871, the
Sun paid him the tribute which Norton, Thoreau and Burroughs had
dared to bestow many years earlier and which Tennyson, Browning, and
Matthew Arnold had already extended from across the sea:

. . . among poets themselves he will not fail of due recognition ; and the greater
the poet the more cordial will be his admiration for the vigorous and genuine
son of the soil.

This is a new and large sort of thing, no doubt of it. We do not pretend that
it has the soft sentimentalities which constitute the charm of common verse;
but it has other greater qualities, which ought to render it immortal when the
world of common verse is forgotten/ 17

34 Mitchell, 352.

35 O'Brien, 246.

a6 A notable exception to the ridicule and disgust heaped upon Leaves of Grass was Ralph
Waldo Emerson. His letter to Whitman, written July 21, 1855, calling it "the most extraordi-
nary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed" was eventually published
in the New York Tribune at the request of Charles A Dana, then its managing editor.
See Bucke, Richard Maurice, M D., Walt Whitman, 138-139.

y7 Sept. 11, 1871.

46 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

When ten years later a reputable firm published an unexpurgated edition
of Leaves of Grass the Sun's recognition 38 was distinctly encouraging to
Walt Whitman. He wrote a note of appreciation asking that it be shown
to E. P. M., the initials signed to the review. In time he became a con-
tributor.

Another of the Sun's poets was Eugene Field, whom Dana met on a
trip to Denver in 1882. Field was an artist of sensitivity but he could be
cruel. For instance, he would unblushingly credit verses of his own to
the most unlikely persons. An erudite lawyer of great dignity, or a
prominent spiritualist medium might awaken one morning to discover
his signature under a witty verse which he had never previously beheld.
Field did not hesitate to make his close friends the butt of a practical
joke. He was the instigator of a campaign against the estimable Rose
Cleveland, President Cleveland's sister, who was employed as a writer
for Literary Life. That "delectable mush bucket," as Field called it,
utilized Miss Cleveland for advertising purposes, although her ability
was doubtful. Field's remorseless persecution led to the retirement of
the editor and eventually the demise of the magazine. Dana must have
enjoyed Field. He took part in the crusade against Miss Cleveland, de-
voting columns of the Sun to the "deviltry." Field celebrated Dana in
prose and poem. His verses, "The Man Who Worked with Dana on the
New York Sun/' are famous in newspaper circles. "Cy and I," equally
complimentary, hung in manuscript calligraphy on the wall of Dana's
room for many years. 39

"Solitude," written by Ella Wheeler, then unknown, was directed to
the Sun office and accepted. Thus, the lines "Laugh and the world laughs
with you, weep and you weep alone," first appeared in Dana's paper.
H. C. Bunner, editor of Puck, was a contributor of verse. So too were
John Kendrick Bangs, Edgar Fawcett, Cy Warman, George Catlin,
Joaquin Miller, and others who found the Sun friendly to their literary
efforts.

An equally imposing list of novelists and short story writers published
their work in the Sun. Among them Henry James, Robert Louis Steven-
son, and Bret Harte were most prominent. Dana originated the first
literary syndicate, by which the expense of purchasing the best fiction

88 Nov. 19, 1881; Mitchell, 270-271.

89 Mitchell, 144-145.

DANA RE-CREATES THE SUN 47

was shared with papers in other parts of the country. 40 By this clever
arrangement, in common use now, much was obtained that otherwise
would have been too expensive. Among the stories first printed in the Sun
were Kipling's "The Light that Failed," Bret Harte's "Thankful Blos-
soms/ 7 Stevenson's "The Treasure of Franchard," "The Sire de Male-
troit's Door," and many South Sea letters. In addition Mitchell con-
tributed many ingenious tales. 41

From the first Dana was opposed to advertising. He believed in keep-
ing the Sun small, and for a long time it never exceeded the original
four pages. By restricting advertising and eliminating verbiage, he in-
tended to present all the news as well as discussions of literary and po-
litical importance. He wanted the paper to be independent of business
control and impervious to the demands of politicians. The Sun aimed
at a large enough circulation to yield dividends, and looked forward to
the day when it would reject more advertisements than it accepted and
allot those which it printed to definite spacing in accordance with the de-
mands of public interest. "Newspapers," it said, "if they are worth the
taking, really resent the encroachment of advertisers on their space,
which they could readily fill with reading matter of much more general
interest than business announcements. . . . The four pages of the Sun
are really needed by us for the presentation of the news of the day . . .
and the time may come when we shall politely decline to have any of
our space used by advertisers." 4 - The staff was equally contemptuous of
all efforts to disfigure the paper with uninteresting matter. If a good
story came in late, when the journal had been properly made up, Cum-
mings might disdainfully throw out the advertising and insert it. Adver-
tisers were treated with marked brusqueness. Occasionally one would
ask for an interview on politics, or a critical review of his art collection,
believing that his account gave him such a privilege. If he were not re-
fused outright he might find his beautiful collection of paintings or other
objects merely lampooned in the inimitable style of the Sun. Laffan
carried this policy even further. He returned copy to advertisers and
indiscriminately insulted the agents. Rosebault tells us that it was as
though the paper had adopted the motto, "Spite 'em! " 43

40 Ibid., 280.

41 O'Brien, 405.

42 Apr. 3, 1878.

43 When Dana was The Sun, 282-284.

48 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

The break with the Associated Press has been credited to Laffan.
Dana's connection with the organization had been of long standing. In
1847 he had attended the first meeting as a representative of the Tribune,
in company with agents of the New York Herald, Sun, Courier and En-
quirer, Journal of Commerce, and Evening Express, all of whom met at
the Sun office. Dana gave a share of the credit for its original establish-
ment to Moses Yale Beach in a series of articles which he commenced
in 1890 but never finished. 44 There is no record of this first meeting,
although a few copies of the original agreement among members with
autographs of Bennett, Greeley, Dana and others are extant. Some time
after its establishment Dana became President. 45 An examination of
magazine articles of this period and books dealing with Dana's career
has yielded no satisfactory reason for the quarrel which caused him to
throw away a franchise soon to be worth half a million and now unob-
tainable at any price. One ingenious account omits entirely the cause
of the friction but deals with the effect. This was written by Edward
G. Riggs, a member of the Sun staff. 46 According to this story, Dana
calmly announced that he had just torn up his Associated Press fran-
chise, and it would be the duty of the managing editor to procure the
news of the entire world for the next morning edition. Lord soothed the
ruffled feelings of his chief, quieted his fears, and advised him to
go home and attend to his class in Dante. The next morning the Sun
shone as usual with its accustomed news. Dana was pictured, in con-
clusion, as skipping and chuckling with glee while in his exuberance he
clasped Lord around the shoulders and exclaimed, "Chester, you're a
brick, you're a trump. You're the John L. Sullivan of newspaperdom ! "

As a matter of fact, when the break was proposed Lord was aware of
the immense task before him and the financial expenditures involved.
But he was a Sun man. It was to him that credit went for the Sun's ac-
curate election predictions. It was the first paper to inform Blaine of
his defeat in 1884 and the first to inform Cleveland of his victory eight
years later. 47 Lord was cool-headed and methodical, and was in touch
with correspondents upon whom he had occasionally called for contri-
butions in the past. By dint of great effort and expense the routine news
Formerly wired through the Association was brought to the Sun.

44 Wilson, 485.

45 Cosmopolitan Magazine, May, 1897.
40 O'Brien, 375-376.

47 1 bid, 374.

DANA RE-CREATES THE SUN 49

Laffan, who had proposed plans which the Associated Press would
not accept, was now ready to organize a news service which would be
exclusively owned. 48 Thus the Laffan Bureau came into existence. It
procured news from abroad and sold it to various papers in America
which approved of the news as handled by Sun men. The rivalry be-
tween the Associated Press and the Laffan Bureau was intense, and
Sun correspondents were under a ban in many newspaper offices. 49 The
bureau ferreted out some good news which was not received over the
wires of the regular organization, and missed little that was important.
In time, when the paper was purchased by Frank A. Munsey, after
several changes in ownership, it regained the valuable rights of the As-
sociated Press service through amalgamation with the New York Press.
Rosebault thus describes the situation in which Lord had been placed:

Only a practical newspaperman can appreciate the absurdity of this proposal.
While the Sun, like every important newspaper, had its own correspondents in
important centers, like Washington, London, Paris and Berlin, the routine
news even there came through the press associations, which also conveyed the
news from all the rest of the world. Suddenly the managing editor was sum-
moned to find a substitute for the long established, carefully planned and ably-
executed operations of the associations, with their myriads of correspondents
and existing connections with the channels through which news must be ob-
tained! It was preposterous to the extreme, and only a cool-headed, well-
balanced man could have stood up under the strain. 50

As a result of unfortunate political and financial policies Dana, in
the evening of his life, had to watch the descent of the Sun. It still
boasted a larger edition than when he first purchased it, but the cir-
culation had followed the curve of a half moon and now approached
the nether extremity. Dana's last years also saw the end of the era of
personal journalism. One by one his rivals had closed shop, leaving the
demands of the printing press to younger men. Raymond had died in
1869, but not without having demonstrated that New York had a place
for a newspaper which presented " 'all the news of the day from all
parts of the world' without personal or party bias." B1 On his death
E. L. Godkin of the Nation wrote: "In this art of making a good news-
paper, we need hardly say he was the master. The Times under his

4 *When Dana was The Sun, 279.
'"Ibid , 281
lbid, 280
&1 Bleyer, 251.

50 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

management probably came nearer the newspaper of the good time
coming than any other in existence, in this, that it encouraged truthful-
ness the reproduction of facts uncolored by the necessities of a 'cause'
or by the editor's personal feelings among reporters; that it carried
decency, temperance, and moderation into discussion, and banished per-
sonality from it. . . ." 52

Three years later Bennett, who aimed at producing a "lively, saucy
and spicy" journal and succeeded in earning a bad reputation for the
Herald, followed Raymond. One of his contributions to personal jour-
nalism had been the exploitation of intimate details of his own life. All
remembered the announcement of his approaching marriage, with de-
scriptions of the bride, and later of their infant son, James Gordon
Bennett, Jr. 53 The year 1872 also saw the passing of Greeley, whose
name had so long been familiar to every American. He upheld a nobler
tradition than Bennett's. Never had he failed to express his opinions on
political, economic, social, or industrial questions through the editorial
columns of the Tribune. Bryant, the poet-editor of the Evening Post
was no longer able to carry on his part in the profession. Henry Wat-
terson wrote in his Louisville Courier Journal:

Mr. Dana is left alone to tell the tale of old-time journalism in New York.
He, of all his fellow editors of the great metropolis, has passed the period of
middle age; though years apart he is as blithe and nimble as the youngest
of them, . . .

... In a word, Mr. Dana at fifty-three is as vigorous, sinewy, and live as a
young buck of thirty-five or forty.

Then referring to Whitelaw Reid, now advanced to the editorship of the
Tribune, Manton Marble of the World, and Louis Jennings of the
Times, with whom Dana was to be henceforth associated, he continued:

The situation is changed completely, Bennett, Greeley, and Raymond are
dead. Dana and Godkin, both about of an age, stand at the head of New York
journalism ; while Reid, Marble and Jennings, all young men, wear the purple
of a new era.

Will it be an era of reforms? There are signs that it will be. Marble is a re-
cruit. Reid is essentially a man of the world. Jennings is an Englishman. One
would think that these three, led by two ripe scholars and gentlemen like God-
kin and Dana, would alter the character of the old partisan warfare. 54

52 June 24, 1869.

53 Bleyer, 194.

64 O'Brien, 166, 167, 168.

DANA RE-CREATES THE SUN 51

In this same editorial, Watterson stated, "There will never be an end
to the personality of journalism," and with his opinion Dana was in
complete accord. The following editorial, which he penned in defense
of the old order, is so positive and expresses so perfectly the Dana
period in American journalism, that it has often been employed by
authors upon this subject to explain the spirit which then prevailed:

A great deal of twaddle is uttered by some country newspapers just now
over what they call personal journalism. They say that now that Mr. Bennett,
Mr. Raymond and Mr. Greeley are dead, the day for personal journalism is
gone by, and that impersonal journalism in which nobody will ask who is the
editor of a paper or the writer of any class of article, and nobody will care.

Whenever in the newspaper profession a man rises up who is original, strong,
and bold enough to make his opinions a matter of consequence to the public
there will be personal journalism; and whenever newspapers are conducted
only by common-place individuals whose views are of no interest to the world
and of no consequence to anybody there will be nothing but impersonal jour-
nalism.

And this is the essence of the whole question. 55

Watterson and Dana both remained unmoved by the trend toward the
impersonal newspaper. An English author was surprised to discover in
1887 that American editors sometimes "use their papers for exchange
of civilities, as when \Vatterson, of the Louisville Courier Journal, in-
vited Dana of the New York Sun to visit him. 'Come,' he says, 'and see
us, and bring your knitting and stay most all day/ and Mr. Dana re-
grets editorially that he cannot accept." 3t> An amusing example of
personal journalism is offered by Dana's response to A. G. Heckman of
Seville, Ohio, who had asked certain questions:

1. "Has the editor of the Sun ever been a candidate for any State office? If
not, why is it that a man of his intelligence and statesmanship has never been
nominated for Congress and elected too?"

He has never been a candidate for any State office, and we don't know why
he has never been nominated for Congress, except, perhaps, that he never
wanted to be, because he had another job on hand which was more agreeable
and seemed more important.

2. "Did he vote for Grover Cleveland for Governor?"
Yes he did, most certainly. But he only voted once.

3. "What is his age?"

r " r 'Dec 6, 1872.

50 The Eclectic Magazine, Oct. 1887.

52 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

Come, now, that is a delicate question. We decline to respond on that sub-
ject. 67

Another example is equally interesting. Many people believed Dana
was of such a contradictory nature that he supported the Democrats in
his newspaper, but voted the Republican ticket. An accusation by the
Yonkers Statesman gave him the opportunity to deny this assertion:

We are assured by the inspector of elections who received his ballot on Long
Island, at the last fall election, that Mr. Dana, the editor of The Sun, voted the
straight Republican ticket. He somewhat ostentatiously folded his ballot with
the printed side out, as if anxious to have it known how he was voting. The
same gentleman, whom we believe to be entirely reliable, says Mr. Dana has
voted the Republican ticket for several years past.

The same gentleman lies. And now tell us what is his name. 58

Near the end of his career Dana was called upon to speak before dif-
ferent audiences and for the first time set forth some of his ideas on
journalism. In 1888 he addressed the Wisconsin Editorial Association,
saying that he knew of no set of professional rules which could be laid
down as a guide, but thought there were codes of ethics for the lawyer,
the physician and the newspaperman as well. He offered the following
maxims:

Get the news, get all the news, get nothing but the news.

Copy nothing from another publication without perfect credit.

Never print an interview without the knowledge and consent of the party in-
terviewed.

Never print a paid advertisement as news-matter. Let every advertisement
appear as an advertisement; no sailing under false colors.

Never attack the weak or defenceless, either by argument, by invective or by
ridicule, unless there is some absolute public necessity for so doing.

Fight for your opinions but do not believe that they contain the whole truth or
the only truth.

Support your party, if you have one; but do not think all the good men are
in it and all the bad ones outside of it.

Above all, know and believe that humanity is advancing ; that there is progress
in human life and human affairs; and that, as sure as God lives, the future
will be greater and better than the present or the past. S9

In an address at Cornell University, in 1893, Dana added six others:

"Nov. 21, 1882.
68 July 13, 1880.
c O'Brien, 238-239.

DANA RE-CREATES THE SUN 53

Never be in a hurry.

Hold fast to the Constitution.

Stand by the Stars and Stripes. Above all, stand for liberty whatever happens.

A word that is not spoken never does any mischief.

All the goodness of a good egg cannot make up for the badness of a bad one.

If you find you have been wrong, don't fear to say so. 60

Dana thought men of wide education, with a knowledge of both Latin
and Greek, preferable for the work of the journalist. He advised read-
ing Shakespeare and Milton for their eloquence and force. Speaking
before students of Union College in 1893 he urged study of the Bible
as a model of condensation. His mention of the Bible amused the Nation.
Noting that the students greeted his remarks with applause, it com-
mented, "It is a curious thing, by the way, that such a welcome is usually
accorded by believers to the confession of non-believers." 61

Upon reporting Dana said: "I had rather take a young fellow who
knows the "Ajax" of Sophocles, and has read Tacitus, and can scan
every ode of Horace I would rather take him to report a prize-fight or
a spelling match, for instance, than to take one who has never had those
advantages." However, he told an amusing story of a chap who could
not spell four words correctly while his verbs were apt not to agree with
the subject in person or number. "But, he always got the facts so exactly,
and he saw the picturesque, the interesting, the important aspect of it
so vividly, that it was worth another man's while, who possessed the
knowledge of grammar and spelling, to go over the report and write it
out." "Clarity," "vividness," and "interest" were three of his chief re-
quirements for a newspaper. Dana believed the reporter should possess
the ability to grasp the truth of an event which he witnessed as well as
the importance. Condensation practiced in the Sun did not exclude de-
tails; it excluded unnecessary words, repetitions, and superfluous state-
ments. He considered the motto, "Be interesting," an invariable law
for the newspaper.

As a young journalist Joseph Pulitzer looked toward New York as the
city of opportunity. He was most attracted to Dana's luminary and in
1871 wrote a friend, "I read the Sun regularly. In my opinion it is the
most piquant, entertaining, and, without exception, the best newspaper
in the world." 62 This friend might easily have been Dana himself. Five

00 Ibid , 239.

61 Oct. 19, 1893.

02 The Sun, Aug. 24, 1871.

54 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

years later Pulitzer sat in the Sun office. He had come East to speak in
the campaign for Tilden and Hendricks, and incidentally to scrutinize
the newspaper field. At this time he wished to start a German edition of
the Sun in competition with Oswald Ottendorfer's Staats-Zeitung. The
proposed enterprise was not carried out, but Pulitzer became a semi-
editorial correspondent during the electoral dispute of 1876-1877.
Later, in 1878, he was one of its European correspondents. While on
the Sun he was given complete freedom of expression. Nevertheless,
after his purchase of Jay Gould's stock in the World, it was the Sun
which called his manner of presenting news "yellow."

"Yellow" came to apply to the sensational page, the faked interview,
the stolen photograph, trespassing upon private relations, secret cor-
respondence, and other vicious practices. Not only did Pulitzer on the
World indulge in yellow journalism, but William Randolph Hearst,
who purchased the New York Journal in 1895, became adept at the new
sensationalism. In passing, it is interesting to note how the term origi-
nated. The World began a comic sheet which concerned the activities
of the "Yellow Kid." When Hearst established the Journal he hired
Pulitzer's cartoonist. Dana, who from the first had hated their publica-
tions, wrote an editorial in the Sun in which he noted the transfer of the
"Yellow Kid" to its new headquarters, referring to the two papers as
"Yellow Journals" and their style of journalism as the "yellow jour-
nalism." 63

As a moulder of public opinion Dana never ranked with the finest
and greatest American editors, like Greeley, Bryant, and Samuel Bowles.
The fact is this was not his ambition. The Sun was too erratic in its
position upon controversial issues to hold its readers to a steady course
in regard to public policy. On the other hand no editor exerted a greater
influence than Dana in revolutionizing the profession of journalism. In
this field he made a lasting contribution. The Sun style of editorial writ-
ing and news reporting became the envy of the newspaper world.

Because of the colorful manner of presenting the human-interest side
of life and the amount of space given to personal affairs of a sensational
character in the Sun, Dana was accused of introducing yellow jour-
nalism. But the Sun was superior to the yellow journal in its intellectual
qualities, literary standard and presentation of news. It may be said,
however, that it marked a transition between the two eras in journalism:

68 The Living Age, Aug. 27, 1898.

DANA RE-CREATES THE SUN 55

while it greatly contributed to the disrepute of the old-fashioned party
paper, which flourished in the age of the slavery issue, Civil War and Re-
construction, it was at the same time the forerunner of the World and
the Journal.

Naturally the yellow journal was not developed without protest. God-
kin of the Evening Post and the Nation inveighed against its progress.
First he denounced the features of sensationalism and political immo-
rality exemplified by the Sun; later, in the nineties, he turned his atten-
tion to the puerile crudities of the World and Journal** There had
always been a distinct prejudice in conservative circles against the phi-
losophy of the motto "The Sun Shines for All." Vulgar people might
enjoy the details of vice, murder, rape, and the doings of the immoral
fashionable set in London, but some asked if a journal ought not to
educate as well as interest and amuse. This feeling foreshadowed a new
motto, that which Adolph S. Ochs adopted for the New York Times:
"All the News that's fit to Print." Dana answered the protests of his
critics in the following words:

There is a great disposition in some quarters to say that the newspaper ought
to limit the amount of the news that they print; that certain kinds of news
ought not to be published. I do not know how that is. I am not prepared to main-
tain any abstract proposition in that line; but I have always felt that what-
ever the Divine Providence permitted to occur I was not too proud to report. 65

* Nevins, The Evening Post, A Century of Journalism, 549.
G -> O'Brien, 241.

CHAPTER III

THE RECONSTRUCTION BOOMERANG

ON January 27, 1868, the Sun announced that while it would "continue
to be an independent newspaper" and would discuss "public questions
and acts of public men on their merits alone, " it would support Gen.
Grant as its candidate for the Presidency. Dana added, "It will advo-
cate the speedy restoration of the South as needful to revive business
and secure fair wages for labor."

In its second issue the Sun devoted an editorial to three of the most
burning questions arising out of the condition of the South in 1868:
Had the Reconstruction policy of Congress failed and, if so, who was to
blame? Would Negro suffrage lead to Negro supremacy? Should the law
have been passed putting the Military Commanders directly under the
authority of General Grant instead of the President? As the publicly
avowed spokesman of "The great body of non-partisans," it declared
"peace and prosperity as of more consequence than the triumph of any
political party" and demanded "that Reconstruction be speedily com-
pleted, so that the business of the country, North and South, may re-
sume its wonted channels." Failure of the Reconstruction policy was
blamed upon "the omission of the President to convene Congress at the
close of the rebellion, so that a harmonious plan of Reconstruction might
be devised"; and to "the rejection by the South of the proposed Con-
stitutional Amendment." The bill placing the five military districts of
the South directly under Grant's authority was upheld, for, although
opposed as "an abstract principle" to lodging so much power in the
hands of any one man, the Sun believed there was nothing to fear from
Grant for "he dislikes it quite as much as the people do. He does not
covet extraordinary authority." Nor should the General be blamed "for
fomenting the disorders which render this measure a necessity. . . .
Rather let the insurgents, the President, the Congress distribute it among
themselves, assigning to each their due share. His withers are unwrung."
While not committing itself on Negro Suffrage the editorial ridiculed
the fear of "Negro Supremacy" claiming that "a resolute people . . .

56

THE RECONSTRUCTION BOOMERANG 57

will scout the suggestion that five millions of white voters are about to
succumb to eight hundred thousand black voters."

It is evident that the Sun accepted Congressional Reconstruction. So
did the Tribune, which said the measures of Congress were required "to
save four million of our people from virtual slavery, ten more states
from the condition of Kentucky and Maryland and the Union of a
triumph of the principles of the men of the rebellion." But the Times
saw neither warrant nor excuse for such measures, either in actual peril
to the nation or in "fictitious dangers which in the Tribune's fancy
threaten the negro and its own party policy of Reconstruction" l

During the first half of February, 1868, the Sun published frequent
editorials on the quarrel of Johnson and Grant over the War Depart-
ment. All bore the same burden: Johnson deliberately mistates facts
while Grant could not and would not tell a lie. On the sixth the Sun
called Johnson's attempt to ensnare the General in his scheme to get rid
of Stanton "a conspiracy against the Constitution" and intimated the
possibility of impeachment:

One of the principal duties imposed upon the President by the Constitution
is, to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed." We are confident we
utter the opinion of considerate men of all parties in saying, that we have
arrived at a grave and dangerous pass when the President admits that he
tried to persuade the General-in-Chief to violate a law which involves matters
vital to the country, and, when called in question for it, glories in it, and
anathematizes the General for not carrying out an alleged agreement to join
him in a conspiracy against the Constitution.

Yet the Sun advised against the impeachment of Johnson because of
the approaching election, when the President would receive a "public
repudiation at the polls." Indeed, even before that he would be repu-
diated by his own party in the nominating convention. "So soon as the
standard bearers are selected, and the great battle for succession opens
nobody will deem Mr. Johnson of sufficient consequence to waste a
thimbleful of powder on him." 2

When word came that the House of Representatives was considering
the impeachment of Johnson for violating the Tenure of Office Act, the
Sun again advised against it. But when the vote to impeach was actu-
ally taken, it upheld the House. Until May 6 it steadily maintained that

1 The Times, Jan. 28, 1868. Begins with quotation from Tribune given in preceding
sentence.

2 Feb. 12, 1868.

58 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

the President would be convicted; then it began to predict acquittal.
As this prospect became more certain it claimed to have been the first
to estimate the number of votes in Johnson's favor.

Dana scathingly attacked Thaddeus Stevens and the Tribune for
calling the Senators who had decided to vote for acquittal 'Traitors"
and for attempting to coerce them in the name of party loyalty.

. . . These Senators have sworn to try the case according to the law and
the evidence. They have an oath registered in heaven; and we might just as
rightfully waylay the jurors who have rendered a verdict against our interests,
and beat them or murder them, because they have not decided as we wished,
as assail Mr. Fessenden, Mr. Trumbull, and Mr. Grimes in this fashion. We
may disprove their arguments and deplore their action. But we must respect
their honesty and their independence. . . . 3

But such a statement did not indicate a changed attitude toward
Johnson, for the pen of the Sim became even sharper in depicting him.
Dana was not surprised at Johnson's acquittal. The Sun was primarily
concerned with the effect of the trial upon the party that was to elect
Grant to the Presidency. After a brief preamble on the fallibility of
judicial proceedings, Dana thus wrote of the most famous impeachment
trial in American history :

Senators, accustomed to test every public act of their lives by a political
standard, could not in the nature of things be expected to try Andrew Johnson
upon the articles in which the House of Representatives had impeached him
with the same cool impartiality as a judge would hear and decide a case in
which he had not the slightest personal interest. . . . For periods of eight,
ten, and fifteen years, these gentlemen had been engaged in fierce controversies
on the floor of the Senate, dividing strictly upon party lines hundreds of times.
In a case so exclusively political in its essential elements, it would have been
a marvel if they could have risen wholly above all partisan prejudices and im-
pulses immediately and simply on taking an oath to act therein as impartial
judges.

Macaulay, in his celebrated sketch of the trial of Warren Hastings, has said
that impeachment is more of a political than a judicial proceeding, it is the
extreme mode to which parties have resorted at long intervals to rid them-
selves of noxious officials. The case of Mr. Johnson is precisely in point. He
has gone backward upon the party that elevated him to power, waging im-
placable war against it for two years, resisting its policy and thwarting its
measures for the reconstruction of the Union. Throughout this bitter con-
troversy he has been sustained by the Democracy with vigor and passion as

3 May 13,1868.

THE RECONSTRUCTION BOOMERANG 59

he has been opposed by the Republicans. Impeached by one party and tried
by Senators representing both, it is creditable to that tribunal that the pro-
ceedings have exhibited so little of mere partisanship. A calm survey of the
trial from its inception to its termination must bring every fair mind to the
conclusion that the dominant majority in the Senate, urged onward by ex-
treme provocation, have displayed quite as little prejudice and partiality in
passing through this severe ordeal as have their opponents.

From the beginning to the end of the case, Republican Senators have been
divided in opinion on many essential points, and were found on opposite sides
in recording their judgment on the important eleventh article while on the
other hand, from the opening to the close, Democratic Senators have voted
and acted unitedly and solidly as one man. It does not, therefore, become the
triumphant minority to hurl charges of partisan partiality and proscription
at the majority who have barely failed to obtain a two-thirds vote against the
accused. . . . 4

The Tribune held Chief Justice Chase responsible for deciding the
vote of Van Winkle; and the Times claimed the President had bar-
gained for acquittal by offering a change in the Cabinet as the price. 5
The Sun upheld "the lofty and irreproachable character" of Judge
Chase, and ridiculed the statement of the Times:

Some donkey reports that President Johnson is going to reorganize his
Cabinet, and fill it with thorough going Republicans. Also, that he will hence-
forth cease to resist the Congressional plan of Reconstruction. Indeed, it is said
that some of the Senators understood as much from him before they made
up their minds how they should vote.

Whenever these changes really take place, we shall advise our readers to
believe in them not before. 7

From January to June of 1868 the Sun devoted much editorial space
to the various candidates for the forthcoming Presidential nominations.
But despite the importance of Reconstruction and Greenbacks the Sun
had only one editorial, prior to his nomination, on Grant's fitness for
reconstructing the South, and none whatever indicating his position on
finance. Perhaps Grant had no fixed opinions on the subject. At any
rate, Dana knew his readers were convinced a military genius would
attack the problem at the strategic moment. When doubts arose as to
Grant's ability to cope with public affairs, the Sun allayed them by re-

4 May 18, 1868.
r 'May 19, 1868.

6 May 20, 1868.

7 May 19, 1868.

60 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

minding its readers of the General's great prowess on the battlefield
and his finesse in handling Lee. 8

Dana assumed the great mass of voters were more interested in
Grant's moral preparation for the Presidency than his mental. Did
Grant drink? Did he go to church? Had he sprung from plain people
like themselves? What home life did he have? The Sun quoted such re-
spectable journals as the Evening Post and Nation to prove the charge
of drunkenness a ridiculous falsehood. 9 On February 25th it began
printing serially "The Early Life of General Grant," written by his
father for the New York Ledger, from which it selected choice bits for
special commendation.

Of the fifteen or more Democratic candidates editorialized in the Sun,
Chase, Pendleton and Seymour appeared to be Dana's favorites. Begin-
ning in March with a leading editorial on "Judge Chase as a Democratic
Nominee," the Sun featured his candidacy almost daily until May. On
March 17, the Sun said, "With Chase and Grant in the field the Repub-
licans will not care so much which wins, and the Democrats will have
a chance to retrieve their now rather desperate fortunes." Yet Dana by
no means desired Chase's election. This was shown by the Sun's novel
suggestion that George Francis Train be nominated on the ticket with
him as Vice-President: "Such a combination would consolidate and
popularize the Democratic party, avert all dangers of a war of races in
the South, and save the country from the dangers of a corrupt election
by the House of Representatives." 10

The swing to Pendleton, on April 28, was accompanied by a most in-
genious editorial upon "Positive Democrats," that is, upon those who
realized the necessity of placating the Southern voters. "Hence, they
scoff at the idea of nominating a War Democrat as both pusillanimous
and impolitic." It was these Bourbon Democrats who, the Sun claimed,
were controlling the Democratic party, despite the infusion of younger
and more progressive men. Not only was the party in the grip of the
reactionaries but it was divided into "War Democrats" and "Peace
Democrats," "Northern and Southern Democrats," "Confederate poli-
ticians" who must be conciliated, and "Copperhead politicians" who
must be rebuked.

8 Jan. 31, 1868.

9 Mar. 3, 1868.

10 Mar. 21, 1868,

THE RECONSTRUCTION BOOMERANG 61

Asserting repeatedly, though erroneously, that the growth of senti-
ment in the East in favor of Pendleton assured his nomination at the
National Convention, the Sun insisted that his choice would not give
"positive strength" to the Democratic party, and again suggested the
nomination of Judge Chase for President with John T. Hoffman for Vice-
President. This suggestion was reinforced by an editorial devoted to
"Judge Chase and the Democracy." Although opening with an admis-
sion that there was no popular feeling in favor of the Chief Justice, it
urged his nomination on the ground of the invaluable service he had
rendered the Democracy by his opposition to the impeachment against
the President and his influence in securing Johnson's acquittal. 11

Meanwhile the Republicans had nominated Grant by acclamation at
their Chicago Convention:

This was but the recognition and satisfaction of a foregone conclusion.
Long ago he was presented to the American people as a Presidential Candidate
by large numbers of his Countrymen, representing all parties, all classes and
all sections.

He has maintained his independent position amid the conflicts of parties
and the strife of factions; and even now he does not carry the banner of the
Republicans in any distinctive sense, but they rather follow his lead, because
they trust in this patriotism, confide in his wisdom, and believe the prestige of
his great renown can secure victory. . . .

In the midst of wide-spread venality and corruption, no man has ever doubted
his honesty, though he had almost unlimited control over millions of public
money. His administration as General-in-Chief of the army and as Secretary
of War ad interim, is not only marked with eminent ability, but distinguished
for retrenchment and economy. . . .

Ever since the downfall of the rebellion, he has been anxious for the earliest
possible restoration of the insurgent States to their former relations to the
Union. He has deprecated the quarrels between the Executive and Legislative
departments of the Government, which have tended to retard this work. . . .
In this he has exhibited the sterling qualities of a wise and liberal statesman.
If he should be elected to the Presidency, all impartial and unprejudiced men,
whether Radicals or Conservatives, and whether dwelling at the North or the
South would feel that the Union and the Constitution were safe in his
hands. . . , 12

The Sun watched eagerly the proceedings of the Democratic Con-
vention which assembled in New York City on July 4. Although it had

11 May 22, 1868.

12 Ibid,

62 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

predicted as late as May 18 that Horatio Seymour would execute a
coup de main with the help of the Albany Regency, it later appeared
convinced that Pendleton would sweep the gathering. When the nom-
ination of Seymour and Frank P. Blair was announced the Sun said:

We but repeat what we have repeatedly said, when we assert that Gov. Seymour
is the most distinguished member of the Democratic party. Though he was
clearly entitled to its nomination, the extraordinary unanimity with which it
was conferred upon him amid the most intense excitement and unbounded
enthusiasm, must be extremely gratifying to his feelings. . . .

Gen. Blair is a man of fair talents and great force of character. . . .
Though coming of a pure Democratic stock he acted with the Republicans
from the organization of that party down to about the period of the death of
Mr. Lincoln, when his political course became somewhat wayward and fitful. 13

Throughout the campaign the Sun made Blair its special target. On
June 30, he had written a letter to James O. Broadhead which declared
that the "one way to restore the government and the Constitution" was
"for the President-elect to declare the Reconstruction acts null and
void, compel the army to undo its usurpation at the South, disperse the
carpetbag State governments, allow the white people to reorganize their
own governments and elect senators and representatives." Dana never
tired of assailing that letter.

As the campaign progressed the Sun printed voluminous reports of
the alleged outrages perpetrated upon blacks and loyal whites by se-
cret organizations of the South. Although the activities of the Ku Klux
Klan were a result of Negro Suffrage, which the Sun had disapproved,
it now blamed the outraged whites severely. On April 8 it advised that
Gen. Fremont's method of dealing with the bushwhackers, robbers,
murderers, railroad and telegraph destroyers of Missouri be applied to
the Klan. Fremont had first tried the plan of arrest and trial without
success; then he put the State under martial law and authorized those
outlaws "to be caught and shot, not tried. . . . The simple effect was
that . . . after two months of this . . . the whole State was quiet."

Likewise the Sun reiterated the necessity of military rule in the South.
It had regarded with approval the reorganization of the rebel states
into new military districts. This was prompted not only by the turbulence
of the South but the need of carrying it for Grant. The maintenance of

18 July 10, 1868.

THE RECONSTRUCTION BOOMERANG 63

troops was now fully justified by harrowing accounts of the Millican
riot in Texas:

The United States troops on the spot were only twenty in number and . . .
if all other proof were wanting, this single occurrence, by itself, would suf-
ficiently demonstrate the lawless and disorganized condition of Texas, and
the need it has of a strong and energetically administered military govern-
ment. . . .

And when it is further considered that lawlessness of the same kind, though
not to so excessive a degree, prevails in all the Southern States, as the con-
sequence of the disorganization caused by the rebellion, we can see how un-
wise it would be to give over that region at once and unconditionally to the
inhabitants, without assistance from our army. We need to keep troops at the
South for the sake of the Southerners. . . , 14

The trial of Jefferson Davis, scheduled for November, provided ad-
ditional material for attacking the South. In the heat of the campaign
the Sun gave space to a biting prediction that "Jeff Davis will not be
tried,"

There is not enough in the case to pay for trying it. No capital would be made out
of it by anybody. It would be a farce in which the actors would necessarily
render themselves ridiculous.

Why?

Because, in the first place, the war has been a long time over, and to hang a
man for treason committed in waging it would seem something like executing
a man in cold blood, after twenty years of imprisonment. Hanging to be grace-
ful and Christian should be done quickly after the perpetration of the offense. 18

On November 4th, the Sun announced the election of Grant. Readers
were informed of two things they might expect of the President-elect.
One of these was the completion of the work of reconstruction; the
other the pacification of the Southern States:

To both of these he is heartily committed, and the legislative department
of the Government will cordially co-operate with him in attaining these most
desirable objects. . . .

So desirous are all classes of our loyal people to see this long controversy
closed, that should there be any factious resistance to its early settlement, they
will demand that the new Administration effect it, if need be, by the strong
hand. However we confidently look for the interposition of such moderate and

14 July 30, 1868.

15 Oct. IS, 1868.

64 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

conciliatory counsel in the South as will obviate the necessity for carrying
forward the work in any other than the ordinary forms.

Of one thing, however, they may be assured: the Administration of Gen.
Grant, while dealing leniently and equitably with the turbulent elements be-
low the Potomac and the Ohio, will maintain the supremacy of the laws, and
defend the rights of all classes in that section of the Union, at all hazards. 10

Now that Grant had been elected President the Tenure of Office Act
seemed obsolete. Passed to limit the removal power of Johnson, its
retention would be insulting to the superman soon to succeed him. The
Sun declared that

"this act ought to be repealed. The exigency under which it was passed is
about to disappear. Wisely or unwisely, it was adopted as one of a series of
stringent measures to circumscribe the waywardness of a Chief Magistrate
in whom Congress had no confidence. Practically, its operations have been
worse than their failures. . . , 17

This sober second thought of the Sun makes it hard to believe that
Dana had at one time justified the impeachment of a President upon
the constitutionality of this now discredited law.

The new spirit evinced by the Sun did not carry over to universal
amnesty. Johnson's Proclamation of July 3 had been galling even
though Davis was excepted. 18 The President's Christmas Amnesty
"pardoning everybody for being engaged in the rebellion," including
Jeff Davis, pleased Dana less. Consequently the Sun approved the re-
port of the Judiciary Committee stating that not only was there no
occasion for it but that the President had no right to declare it:

The Constitution contains not one word about "amnesty." It says that the
President may grant "pardons" and "reprieves," and by no stretching of inter-
pretation can either of these terms be made to include such an exercise of
royal prerogative as the offering of a wholesale immunity from trial and punish-
ment to offenders not yet condemned by the Courts. 19

The proposed Fifteenth Amendment was the most important act
under discussion in Congress at this time. The Senate Amendment was
more sweeping and drastic than the one proposed in the House, not

16 Nov. 20, 1868.

17 Dec 30,1868.

18 July 4, 1868.
10 Feb. 19, 1868,

THE RECONSTRUCTION BOOMERANG 65

only guaranteeing the privilege of holding office and of voting, but mak-
ing it impossible to deny the elective franchise on the ground of nativ-
ity, property, and education in addition to race, color and creed. The
Sun said:

It is evidently just as necessary to protect the newly enfranchised colored
men of the South from restrictions upon their right of voting as it was to
endow them with that right originally. Without making them voters, a dis-
creet and satisfactory reconstruction of the South was impossible; and the
good order and progress of the Southern States now requires that the political
freedom of the blacks should be guarded against the possibility of overthrow.
This will be sufficiently accomplished by the amendment of the House. The
right to vote being safe, the right to hold office will take care of itself. The
addition of the Senate guaranteeing the latter is superfluous, useless and
mistaken. 20

In his opposition to unqualified universal suffrage Dana had been con-
sistent. Nevertheless, when a few days later the Amendment as adopted
was changed to read: "The rights of the citizens of the United States
to vote shall not be denied on account of race, color or previous condi-
tion of servitude," 21 the Sun gave its wholehearted approval.

Before the first week of the new Administration was over, it was
apparent that Dana's admiration for Grant had undergone a change.
By the end of March, Sun readers were made to feel, as in the days of
Andrew Johnson, that the salvation of the country rested upon the leg-
islative, not the executive branch of the Government. "History tells
us," said the Sun, "as civilization advances, great men become over-
shadowed and disappear." Therefore it was childish of the Tribune to
expect very much of Grant. 2 " Two days later the Sun reverted to its old
position on the Tenure of Office Act, thus proving that its confidence in
Grant had changed to distrust. If already the Sun was too disillusioned
to trust Grant to exercise the removal power, would it have faith in his
ability to handle the complicated problems of Reconstruction?

July 6 and November 30, 1869 were the dates fixed for voting on
new constitutions in Virginia and Mississippi respectively. The disen-
franchising and test oath clauses were to be submitted separately. In
Virginia an active canvass took place between the Conservative party

20 Feb. IS, 1869.

21 Feb. 26, 1869.

22 Mar. 29, 1869.

66 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

and the Radical party, composed of Negroes and white Republicans. The
Conservatives won a sweeping victory. In Mississippi both parties
voted for the constitution and against the objectionable clause; but the
Radicals elected the Governor, members of the State legislature, and
Representatives to Congress. In Texas the constitution was likewise
adopted and the Radical candidate elected Governor. Meantime Vir-
ginia ratified the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments and in De-
cember sent Conservative Representatives to Washington to seek admit-
tance to Congress.

While these events were taking place, a reversal in attitude toward
the old ruling class of the South and the Republican party of the North
crept into the Sun. Its former championship of Carpetbaggers and
Scalawags, changed to an appreciation of the rebel whites and a marked
interest in the political future of the Democratic party. "The money
and brains of the white rebels will be more than a match for the negroes
and scattering white Republicans in the former Slave States. The Dem-
ocrats will have a solid vote in the south . . . and we also doubt
whether a large majority of the Democratic party in the free States
would not prefer Robert E. Lee to Gen. Grant for President today." 23
By July the Sun was vigorously attacking Grant:

We have waited to see what reasons of a broad, national character could
be given by Gen. Grant and the Republican press for the postponement of
the elections in Mississippi and Texas to so late a period as the close of next
November; but we have failed to discover any. This postponement, coming
right upon the heels of the Virginia election, shows a timidity in meeting the
issues involved in the reconstruction policy, which does not augur well for
the Administration. . . .

One of the solid grounds whereon the Republicans base the peculiar re-
construction policy which they applied to the three states of Virginia, Missis-
sippi and Texas, was that the peace of the country demands an early settle-
ment of questions which had so long disturbed the public tranquillity. . . .

We assure Gen. Grant that the sooner he abandons this cowardly and un-
principled line of policy, the better it will be for him and his administration. 24

A year before, when supporting the election of Grant, Dana would have
condoned a policy that would enable Negroes to vote the Republican
ticket.

Despite the Sun's cordiality toward the South it could not forgive

23 Apr. 3, 1869.

24 July 22, 1869.

THE RECONSTRUCTION BOOMERANG 67

Georgia for having forcibly replaced her Negro legislators with inel-
igible whites. Therefore it upheld Congress in refusing to admit her
Representatives until atonement had been made. On December 22,
1869, a law was passed requiring all members of the State legislature
to take oath they were not disqualified to hold office under the Four-
teenth Amendment and declaring that no Negro should be excluded on
account of color. It was also provided that upon application of the Gov-
ernor the President should employ what military force was necessary
to execute the act; - 5 and that Georgia must ratify the Fifteenth Amend-
ment before her Representatives could be admitted to Congress. Two
days before the act was passed the Sun said :

Viewed from one point, the pending legislation by Congress preliminary
to the full restoration of Georgia to the Union might seem to be exacting and
severe. But when examined in the light of the proceedings of her Legislature
in expelling some of its members simply on account of their color, the inter-
position of Congress is both necessary and justifiable. 20

In January, 1870, Congress took up the case of Virginia; and the
Radicals succeeded in tacking new conditions upon her for admission
to the Union. Her recent Conservative victory combined with Georgia's
vote for Seymour and Blair made them fearful lest these States escape
the Republican yoke. Consequently, an act similar to that framed for
Georgia was designed for Virginia and approved January 27. Soon after
this the reconstruction of Virginia was formally completed. In Feb-
ruary, Mississippi and Texas were admitted under the same conditions
as Virginia.

The new provisions which Congress imposed upon Virginia, Missis-
sippi, and Texas required them to word their constitutions so as to
provide a high degree of social equality for the Negro. Dana foresaw
that this would aggravate the race problem rather than solve it:

There are but two things that can hereafter make the agitation of negro
questions a disturbing element in politics, and especially in national contests.
It is the ostentatious attempt on the one hand to confer upon the negro special
privileges, thus inflaming the prejudice of large masses of white citizens;
and, on the other hand, the persistent effort to deprive him of the rights he
has already obtained, thus summoning his friends to the rescue, arousing the

25 Dunning, Wm. A., Reconstruction Political and Economic, 181-182; Woolley, Ed-
win C., The Reconstruction of Georgia, 69.

26 Dec. 20, 1869.

68 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

opposition of that large conservative class who will frown upon efforts to re-
open issues which have once been closed, 27

In North Carolina Governor Holden, taking advantage of exagger-
ated Ku Klux Klan stories to maintain his control, appealed to the
President for authority to use Federal troops. His request was granted.
In the meantime the campaign for a new State legislature was in prog-
ress. The Democrats, aroused to supreme effort by the tactics of Hol-
den, carried the State. Five days later the Sun wrote:

The overwhelming defeat of Gen. Grant's Administration in North Carolina
foreshadows its downfall in all the former slave holding States. For a time
after the war the rule of the carpet baggers in the South was a matter of
necessity. The old dominant class did not take kindly to the new order of
things which sprang from the success of the Union arms. The inroad of a
governing element from the North was the natural result; and that it should
bring in its train a body of adventurers was almost a thing of course. . . .
These corrupt carpet-bag usurpations are the outliving supports of Gen. Grant's
administration. They sustain him by their votes and he maintains them by his
bayonets. Their downfall will herald his overthrow. 28

Perhaps in no way was the Sun's change in attitude toward the South
more striking than in its appeals for magnanimity on the part of the
North. On the ground that "reconstruction ... is settled and out of
the way," it asked:

Is it not time to bury in oblivion the traces of our civil war, and grapple to
our hearts with hooks of steel, as of old, our fellow citizens of the South, whose
errors, great as they were, have been grievously atoned for? . . . No one can
tell how soon this country may be embroiled in a foreign war. When the hour
strikes, we want the hearts of our people to beat with but one response to the
call of patriotism and duty. We want them to kindle in unison again as they
did in those "brave days of old" when Massachusetts and South Carolina went
shoulder to shoulder through the Revolution together. . . . This is the spirit
that a wise forecasting statesmanship would study how to restore. It can never
be regained by reminding each other continually of the bitter antagonisms of
our civil struggle. 29

Already the Sun had caught the glint of the reconstruction boom-
erang starting its backward curve through the four recently redeemed

27 Feb. 11, 1870.

28 Aug. 9, 1870.

29 Nov. 22, 1870.

THE RECONSTRUCTION BOOMERANG 69

States of Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia and North Carolina. The "Solid
South" was beginning to emerge out of the chaos resulting from the sub-
version of patriotism and humanitarianism to the stupidity and lust of
the Grand Old Party. To avert this disaster the Republican party em-
barked upon the phase of Reconstruction known as " Congressional
Tyranny." Congress resorted to two acts: one, passed February 28, 1871,
called "An Act to enforce the rights of citizens of the United States to
vote in the several States of this Union," designated as the Second En-
forcement Act; the other, known as the Ku Klux Klan Act passed April
20, 1871, to enforce the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment. 30

The Sun had denounced the First Enforcement Act as superfluous.
It showed its contempt for the Second Enforcement Act by ignoring it.
But the Ku Klux Klan Act was a fresh grievance. Scoring the message
calling for such legislation as "Grant's Ignorance," the Sun maintained
that the Ku Klux Klan Act was "an unconstitutional and dangerous
measure." Dana used the same arguments against the Act as those ad-
vanced by Senator Lyman Trumbull and Senator Thurman of the Judi-
ciary Committee. But with considerable more asperity the Sun said:

The pretext for the passage of this new bill of pains and penalties is to put
down what are called the Ku Klux outrages. Assume . . . they are as numer-
ous as the advocates of this bill assert, does anybody pretend that they are
committed under and in pursuance of any law passed by any Southern State?
... on the contrary they are violations of the laws of those States. Conse-
quently, the legislation proposed is not justified by the Fourteenth Amend-
ment. 31

The Sun's growing cordiality for the South was also revealed in its
criticism of the President's "qualified" recommendation for amnesty.
By 1871 Dana had come to believe that "if Congress will promptly
give general amnesty to [the Southerners] and the administration will
withdraw its coercive bayonets ... an unprecedented career of pros-
perity lies open" to them. 32

In Louisiana the center of interest was a quarrel between two fac-
tions of the Republican party: one headed by Governor Henry C. War-
moth, the other by S. B. Packard, United States Marshal. Warmoth had

80 Rhodes, James F, History of the United States, VI, 312-313; Dunning, Reconstruc-
tion, 186-187.

81 Mar. 29, 1871.

82 Feb. 4, 1871.

70 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

offended the Radicals by influencing the legislature to remove all dis-
abilities resulting from the war, a measure which boded ill for the con-
tinuance of Republican rule. The Administration's support of Packard
caused the Sun to speak out angrily:

Packard called in the troops to enforce the order of the White House
dictator. There is no wriggling out of the infamous position to which the
facts consign the President. He was at the bottom of the conspiracy to over-
awe and control the Republican State Convention by excluding from its
halls, at the point of the bayonet, every member who hesitated to second
ambitious pretentions. On testimony no stronger than that which convicts
Grant, Judges send criminals to penitentiaries and scaffolds every week in
the year.

. . . never till now has an office-holder who aspired to a renomination so
far abused his authority, and so far presumed on the patience of the people,
as to employ the troops under his command in controlling the proceedings of
a political convention. That this was done by Grant at New Orleans under
false pretences, and through the agency of cringing tools, only adds to his
high-handed crime the lesser and meaner vices of hypocrisy and cowardice. 3 "

In October the Sun made a similar charge against the President in
regard to the election in Texas, where again "the use of troops and can-
non" was being countenanced by the Government at Washington in
order "to carry the approaching election in that State by the Republi-
can governor." When Grant issued his final proclamation affecting South
Carolina the Sun was further aroused. Not only was it "preliminary to
the act of placing the State under martial law" but "it is evident that
the alleged outrages in South Carolina which have been made the pre-
text for Grant's assumption of dictatorial powers are either fictitious or
have been greatly exaggerated for political effect." Hereupon the Sun
gave the facts regarding a number of the "most prominent examples"
of Ku Klux outrages. In practically all the cases cited both the offenders
and the victims were Negroes and the crimes committed were either
personal or social in character, quite removed from questions of polit-
ical or civil rights.

During the summer and fall of 1872 the Sun's interest in Reconstruc-
tion centered largely around the Presidential campaign, and the efforts
being made by Grant to establish a dictatorship under the Enforcement

38 Aug. 15, 1871.

THE RECONSTRUCTION BOOMERANG 71

and Ku Klux acts. This determination was attributed to Grant's "des-
potic nature," and accounted for "his persistent persecution of the
South":

Is it manly and noble in Gen. Grant to play the despot over an oppressed
and down trodden people? These Southern people have their constitutional
rights, even if they have been rebellious. He would not dare threaten such
interference in the case of the State of New York, and why should he do it in
the case of North Carolina, now supposed to be restored to all the constitu-
tional rights belonging to all the States?

As in the campaign of 1868, the eleven States of the old Confed-
eracy were the battle ground, for they held the balance of power in the
Electoral College. The struggle between the Conservatives and Radicals
provided evidence almost daily of Republican determination to carry
the South for Grant. As North Carolina was first to hold her State elec-
tion the canvass was watched with great interest. On July 10, the Sun
gave an excellent description of conditions in the State before and since
Carpetbag rule:

Before the war this State had a debt of about fourteen millions of dollars,
which by a system of venal barefaced and outrageous robberies by authority
of venal Legislatures has been increased to $38,466,619, while total real and
personal valuation of the State is but $1,800,000 over and above the taxation
for the current expense of the State.

... No one could doubt what the result would be with a fair election,
and therefore Grant is filling the State with spies and informers to terrify
the whites into support of his candidates under fear of a new Ku Klux crusade ;
while the enormous sum of $223,000 has been taken from the public treasury
and sent to the United States Marshal under the pretence of paying the ex-
penses of his office formerly covered by $5,000 but in reality for the pur-
pose of corruptly influencing votes in the interest of the Administration.

The barefaced character of the robbery carried on by Grant's supporters in
North Carolina is illustrated by a single fact which no advocate of Grantism
will dare to deny. From the proceeds of bonds voted by the Legislature for
public works to the amount of $26,000,000 of which $16,000,000 is now recog-
nized as binding by the officials at Raleigh, less than fifty thousand dollars
were applied for the improvements contemplated the remainder of this enor-
mous sum was stolen. As the result of their work the people are burdened with
taxation such as is unknown outside of American reconstructed States; and the
young men of the State, utterly discouraged by the aspect of affairs, are leav-
ing by thousands to seek homes elsewhere.

72 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

On August 5 the Sun announced that "the anti-Grantites" had elected
their Governor by from 1,500 to 2,000 majority, five of their eight
members of Congress, and a large majority of the Legislature,
"whereby a Liberal United States Senator will be secured in the place of
Pool, bitter Grantite." Rejoiced by this victory it declared:

This is glory enough for one day, even if North Carolina alone were to be
affected by the result. But when we reflect that it is a State which the admin-
istration confidently claimed by a large majority, and which, if they hope to
make any show at all in the South, they ought to have carried, and that it is
the first State which has had an opportunity to respond to the Baltimore nom-
inations, it is no wonder that the unexpected triumph electrifies the friends
of Greeley, while it fills the minions of Grant with rage and despair.

Three days later this joy was turned to vitriol by the acknowledgment
"from the last returns that Caldwell, the Grant candidate, is elected
Governor of North Carolina," a victory which the Sun believed was due
in a great degree to stupendous frauds.

The Sun continued to give facts and figures in abundance to prove the
incompetence and extravagance of the Carpetbag-Negro governments.
For example, it reported that "Federal officeholders in Texas" were ar-
resting thousands of Democrats and Liberal Republicans" with the
intent of precluding "the possibility of their being at the polls to vote
on election day; that Grantites were also "making arrests in great num-
bers on charges of Ku Kluxism in 1870 and manufacturing evidence to
sustain them"; that during the State election in Texas "E. J. Davis, the
Governor, used every means in his power to provoke the people to riot,
in the hope of finding an excuse for throwing out the vote in anti-Grant
communities." 34 In addition the Sun claimed that Grant Republicans
were stirring up race hatred.

But upon the face of the election returns, November 4, 1872, it ap-
peared that eight out of the eleven old Confederate States preferred
Grant to Greeley. The devastating facts, eloquent appeals, courageous
support, and unflagging efforts of the Sun had been in vain. It is not
surprising that Dana vented his chagrin and disappointment upon the
South:

What will be the effect of all this? Hereafter, Northern and Western states-
men and journalists, and especially Liberal Republicans will either listen with
"Sept. 13, 1872.

THE RECONSTRUCTION BOOMERANG 73

suspicion to harrowing tales of carpetbag oppression or hearken with incredu-
lity to Southern boasts of ability to overthrow negro supremacy. They will be
apt to say: Gentlemen, you had a fair chance to deliver yourself from what
you call a most degrading bondage by giving the electoral votes of your States
to Dr. Greeley, but you preferred that nine and perhaps ten of your sixteen
States should support Gen. Grant. . . . Gentlemen of the Reconstructed
States, you have deliberately made your bed for the coming four years. Lie
down in it if you please ; but pray let us see no more wincing and hear no more
wailing from you.

But if the Southerners, as the Sun itself admitted, were prevented from
exercising their right to vote was it not unfair to chastise them for the
results of the election? It is possible that Dana had never forgiven the
South for seceding and when it disappointed him, his latent resentment
proved stronger than his hatred for Grant. Many times the Sun wavered
between these two animosities.

In 1872 Mississippi voted for National officers only. When her State
election took place the following year the Democrats determined to
join bolting Republicans in an effort to elect James S. Alcorn to the
Governorship. His opponent, Adelbert Ames, was the regular Repub-
lican nominee. This meant a fiercely contested battle, the implications
of which were pointed out by the Sun:

The success of Alcorn in the coming campaign would dash the hopes of many
enterprising gentlemen who are burning with a desire to develop the resources
of Mississippi in the North Carolina and Arkansas fashion.

It is also very generally believed in Mississippi that if Ames should be
elected the old repudiated debt of Jackson's time would be assumed by the
State, the belief being equally prevalent that Gen. Butler, the father-in-law of
Ames, is largely interested in the repudiated bonds issued to the Union and
Planters' bank, which amount to $7,500,000 with over thirty years' accrued
interest. . . .

There is another influence which will be felt in this contest, and that is the
growing dislike of the colored voters for carpetbaggers. The most intelligent
politicians of the Negro race in all the Southern States are beginning to under-
stand that they have been used by unprincipled and designing whites to ad-
vance the most dishonest schemes of personal aggrandizement, and that by
permitting themselves to be so used they have forfeited the good will and
respect of their white neighbors. . . .

Under these circumstances it is not unreasonable to suppose that Alcorn may
succeed in defeating his opponent, notwithstanding that Ames is the son-in-law
of Butler and the recognized representative of Grant in Mississippi. 85

85 Sept. 29, 1873.

74 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

The election of Ames cast the white leaders into despair. Lucius Q.
C. Lamar, who represented Mississippi in Congress, chose the occasion
of Sumner's death to plead for understanding between the two embit-
tered sections. Dana fully appreciated the sincerity and literary beauty
of Lamar 's eulogy, writing:

It was a panegyric touching and wrought in fitting terms of eulogy, and its
scope and teachings a gospel of peace. ... It was a pleading for amity, re-
stored harmony and a reunion of regard rudely ruptured in the angry and bit-
ter strife of hostility. ... As the door of the tomb closes upon the last of
earth, and with the parting farewell, there comes from contention and ravage
the breathings of regret and the lessons of forgiveness and oblivion for past
turbulence and ruthless war. It comes, too, from a genuine representative of
Southern character, frank in manner, quick in impulse, warm in friendship, and
hot in resentment ; and yet without an abiding rancor, which has no relenting
or relief in its choler. 36

When the Civil Rights Bill passed the Senate on May 23, 1874, the
Sun doubted the wisdom of the attempt to legislate individuals into
racial tolerance. It also raised the question of constitutionality. "Fur-
ther than this," declared the Sun, "there are questions of personal right
which follow on this claim of unrestricted meddling by Congress." 37 A
fourth objection to the bill, fully justified by subsequent riots in the
South, was that its enactment would unnecessarily inflame public opin-
ion just as "there is subsidence into quiet." n8

According to the Sun, the outbreaks which soon occurred were a re-
sult of the Civil Rights Bill. Since 1869 Vicksburg had been in control
of Negroes and Carpetbaggers, while whites were taxed almost to the
point of confiscation. A reform group tried to free the city from its
plunderers, but Lieut.-Gov. Davis interfered:

... He undertook to disarm the white militia but the latter refused to give
up their arms unless the same rule was enforced on the colored companies.
Then began the troubles. . . . Emissaries were sent into the country order-
ing the plantation negroes to go into the city and register so as to vote at this
election. Of course they would have no right to vote in a city election, but
since Grant has become the patron of ballot box stuff ers, any description of
election fraud is considered legitimate by the managers of his party. These or-
ders were sent in the name of Davis. Whether he authorized such a use of his

86 May 6, 1874.
37 May 29, 1874.
88 Ibid.

THE RECONSTRUCTION BOOMERANG 75

name we do not know; but there is nothing in his character to render it im-
probable.

The turbulence of armed negroes in the streets of Vicksburg and threats to
burn the city alarmed the white citizens, who armed and thoroughly organized
themselves for defense.

The passage of Butler's Civil Rights Bill early in 1875 intensified the
feeling of animosity. In Mississippi Governor Ames again called upon
Grant to suppress riots in Yazoo City and Clinton, but this time was
refused. The Sun said:

In his two applications for troops, Ames does not even pretend that there
has been any insurrection against the Government of the State, nor does it in
any way appear that they made the least effort to pull his wagon out of the mud
before calling on Hercules for aid. That would not have suited his purpose to
create an excitement on the eve of the fall election.

The whole political power of the State of Mississippi is now and has been
for years in the hands of the carpetbaggers and the negroes. . . . The legis-
lation of the State has been shaped almost exclusively for the advantage of the
negro, and with a vindictive feeling against the native whites. . . . This
atrocious system was encouraged at Washington in the interest of Grant. Troops
and money are supplied upon the demand of an unscrupulous Governor until
the country revolted at such practices, and compelled the Administration to re-
lease its iron grip from the throat of the Southern people/ 9

These facts contributed to an overwhelming victory for the Demo-
crats in the Mississippi election of 1875. No native of the State rejoiced
more truly than the Sun at "The redemption of Mississippi from the
rule of vice and ignorance."

. . . The northern public have not generally appreciated the extent of the
stealing which was going on there, for the reason that its State debt, about
$7,000,000 is small compared with that of other States which have been raided
by the carpetbaggers, yet there is none of the reconstructed States in which
the condition of the whites had been more pitiable. . . . But now, the cheering
news has come that in a most quiet election the Democrats have carried the
State by a sweeping majority and that, too, when the colored vote outnumbers
the whites by about 30,000. 40

In December Congressmen from Mississippi were admitted to the
Democratic House, though Lamar was not admitted to the Senate until
March, 1877. Ames was impeached, but due to the influence of Butler,

89 Sept. 14, 1875.
40 Nov. 4, 1875,

76 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

allowed to resign. The immediate and steady progress of Mississippi
under Home Rule was a powerful indictment of Negro-Carpetbag gov-
ernment.

Arkansas and Louisiana are the "two commonwealths," the Sun de-
clared, "in which President Grant's statesmanship, as exemplified in
his treatment of the reconstructed States, has had ample room to man-
ifest the genius of its author." 41 Powell Clayton, a carpetbagger, was
Governor of Arkansas, and according to the Sun, no attention was paid
"to any laws relating to the elective franchise," but votes were "ad-
mitted or rejected at the polls at the sole discretion of the officers of
elections, who are all members of the Clayton factions." 42

Although under charges of corruption, Clayton was seated in the
United States Senate by his fellow Republicans, an illustration, so Sun
readers were informed, of the degradation to which the Senate had de-
scended. They were also warned that "the extraordinary message which
President Grant sent to the United States Senate" in February, 1874,
indicated that he was planning drastic action in Arkansas:

There is one very significant sentence in his message, "I earnestly ask,"
he says, "that Congress will take definite action in the matter to relieve the
Executive from acting upon the questions which should be decided by the
legislative branch of the Government." This is simply a threat that if Congress
does not pass a prohibitory law to restrain him from committing an act he has
no authority whatever to commit, he will overthrow another State Government
by military force, and then lay all the responsibility upon Congress, as he has
done in the Louisiana case. 43

The President's recognition of Elisha Baxter as Governor came as a
surprise, for he was persona non grata to the Clayton wing of the party
in Arkansas. "In the meantime (Joseph) Brooks, who ran on the Gree-
ley ticket," had "gone over to the Clayton party and had undoubtedly
given satisfactory assurances as to his future behavior."

Under these circumstances it becomes a thing of great importance to them
to eject Baxter from office and put Brooks in his place. The means resorted to
were brief and summary. A snap judgment of ouster was obtained from the
Judge of an inferior court, who assumed to overrule the decision of the Su-
preme Court, and the action of the Legislature. Armed with a copy of this

May 19, 1873.
* 2 Aug. 24, 1872.
48 Feb. 10, 1874,

THE RECONSTRUCTION BOOMERANG 77

judgment, Brooks rushed into the Executive office with a mob of his supporters,
ejected Baxter by force, and took possession of the State buildings. No writ was
ever issued; the authority of the Sheriff was never invoked. The whole pro-
ceeding was utterly lawless. 44

For Grant's intervention in behalf of Baxter, Dana had no word of
praise. "The President could not have done otherwise," the Sun re-
ported, "without confessing the truth that Arkansas had been cheated
out of her electoral vote by frauds which have been perpetuated in that
State with his sanction under the auspices of Senator Clayton."

In a short time Baxter secured the passage of a bill calling for a con-
stitutional convention. The constitution was drafted in July and rati-
fied at the fall elections. At this same time A. H. Garland, a Democrat,
was chosen Governor, and along with him a Democratic legislature and
four Congressmen. Home Rule had been achieved in Arkansas.

In the meantime Congress had appointed a committee headed by
Luke P. Poland to investigate the Baxter-Brooks war. On February
7, 1875, the committee reported that conditions on the whole were sat-
isfactory. The next day Grant sent a special message to Congress an-
nouncing that in his opinion Brooks had been lawfully elected in 1872
and had been illegally deprived of office; and that the adoption of the
new State constitution and establishment of the State government had
been revolutionary. Indirectly he suggested that Brooks be restored to
office until after the Presidential campaign of 1876.

The Sun had no doubt as to Grant's motive. In a leading editorial on
February 11, it said:

Having succeeded in bringing the great body of the Republican party to
approve of his subjugation of Louisiana by the sword, Grant means to try his
hand upon Arkansas soon after Congress adjourns. Having overturned its
State Government with tacit, if not the cordial consent of his party, he will
next on some pretext seize others of the reconstructed States by the throat
and so on.

Grant's ultimate object in all this is plain. He intends to be a candidate for
President in 1876, and he proposes to carry as many States as he can by the
appliance which he has already used so successfully; and then to secure double
sets of electoral votes in sufficient number of other States where he is beaten
at the polls.

On March 2 Congress adopted a resolution guaranteeing Home Rule in

44 May 16, 1874.

78 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

Arkansas; and this was emblazoned in the Sun as "A Rebuke to Boss
Grant."

The suffering in South Carolina under Carpetbag rule was worse in
some respects than that of any other State. In 1873 there were three
times as many blacks as whites in the State legislature, the white Re-
publicans always voting with the Negroes. During the administration of
R. K. Scott and F. J. Moses, every possible method of legislative cor-
ruption was practiced. On January 18, 1873, the Sun graphically de-
scribed the despoliation of the State:

Vast fields of the richest lands of South Carolina lying along the coast
counties are now in weeds, and year by year the prospect grows darker. But
these abandoned plantations, though they have ceased to be productive, do not
escape the tax gatherer and the consequence is a continual succession of sheriff
and tax sales, the land often selling at one dollar or even less per acre. . . .

Meantime a more ragged, worthless, and demoralized set of human beings
cannot probably be found than lazy, thriftless, freedmen who have the su-
preme control of affairs in the State of South Carolina. In their case it appears
quite evident that the exercise of the freedman's privilege has not proved much
of a blessing to them or to their white neighbors either.

Dana was much concerned lest the Senate would seat the carpetbag
Senator-elect, John J. Patterson. On February 27th the Sun announced
that Patterson was to take his seat as Senator, and published the fol-
lowing brief sketch of his meteoric career:

Some three years since, Honest John turned up in South Carolina as naturally
as a turkey buzzard alights near its shambles. ... He was elected on the first
trial and arrested for bribery the same night. The news of his election and his
arrest appeared in all the journals of the country the next morning. He was
bound over to appear for trial before the Circuit Court at Columbia. He still
awaits that trial. ... It remains to be seen whether this man, who has no
single qualification for the office, and who comes to the Senate covered all
over with jobbery and corruption will be permitted to take his seat in that
body without an investigation into the means by which he secured his election.
If he comes in unquestioned, so much the worse for the Senate. 45

Governor Moses had earned the title of "robber Moses/' or "the
great South Carolina thief." So malodorous was his administration that
shrewd white Republicans realized that if they were to win the next
election steps must be taken toward reform. Dana with justifiable cyn-

45 Feb. 27, 1873.

THE RECONSTRUCTION BOOMERANG 79

icism had not the slightest confidence in promises of reform, and as the
1874 campaign was getting under way the Sun declared:

The President's friends are now repeating in this prostrate state the very
game which they successfully played in 1872. ...

This Moses was to lead the party out of the wilderness into which it had
been dragged by Scott and his crew. They shouted reform, retrenchment, and
everything that was good, promised to arraign and punish the thieves, and
bring the State back to its ancient moorings. They succeeded, and the sickening
results are before the public.

And now when indignation is justly excited over the country at enormities
which shock the civilization of the age, the same gang of rascals audaciously
come to the front again, demand a new license to rob the people. . . , 46

Moses was not nominated. Instead, the regular Republican party
named Daniel H. Chamberlain, a carpetbagger from Massachusetts.
His administration proved able but his honesty caused him to lose favor
with his own party. As though Dana feared that one good Republican
Governor might reflect credit upon the Grant policy of Reconstruction
and thus delay Home Rule, Sun readers were reminded that Chamber-
lain, "the present Reform Governor" had helped engineer the seizure
of the Greenville and Columbia Railroad, "One of the most flagrant
schemes of plunder contrived and executed by the robber band who
have ruined South Carolina." 47 Two years later the nomination of Wade
Hampton was greeted by the Sun as proof that the "Democrats of South
Carolina will reject all entangling alliances with the men who have so
long misruled that unhappy State." 48

The election of 1876 was hotly contested. Negro rule had become so
tyrannical that the Democratic whites followed the "Mississippi
plan." 4S) This meant resort to force, which ranged from urgent persua-
sion to violence. The Republicans fabricated stories of their opponents'
outrages for the purpose of swinging doubtful States at the North and
also resorted to force. In October Chamberlain applied for United
States troops and Grant sent a force into the State. Dana anathematized
this "Bayonet Electioneering" as "the first step in the preconcerted
effort to carry the state for the Republicans next month." But, with
characteristic respect for law and order, he wrote, "let the outraged

46 Aug. 3, 1874.

47 June 4, 1875.

48 Aug. 10, 1876.

49 Rhodes, VII, 224.

80 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

people of South Carolina make no movement except at the ballot
box." 50

Both Chamberlain and Hampton claimed the election. Hampton had
a majority on the face of the returns, but the State Board of Canvass-
ers threw out the returns of two counties, Edgefield and Laurend. The
Sun commented: 51

The canvass preceding the recent election in South Carolina was from the
first conducted in such a manner as to render it evident that the authorities
in Washington and Columbia had determined that the Democrats should be de-
feated at all hazards. Although the entire State Government was in the posses-
sion of the Republican party and the State militia was composed altogether of
negroes; and although the blacks largely outnumbered the whites, yet United
States troops were sent into the State for the alleged purpose of preventing the
intimidation of colored voters, but in reality to intimidate those white and col-
ored men who were not inclined to vote for Hayes and Chamberlain. . . , 62

In Louisiana the disputed State election of 1872 had been settled by
the United States army, and William P. Kellogg, Republican, pro-
claimed Governor:

Without an election return from a single parish in Louisiana in their posses-
sion, the board which Durell, the drunken carpet-bag United States Judge,
created, have proclaimed Kellogg to be the new Governor, and the motley crowd
sitting at the Mechanics Institute, a very large share of whom are negroes who
can neither read nor write to be the Legislature. On the other hand, the regular
board, appointed according to law, who have all the returns in their hands,
declare that McEnery was duly elected Governor, and that the body sitting at
Lyceum Hall is the real Legislature. 53

As usual, the Sun had the facts. According to the majority report of
a Senate investigation committee McEnery had been chosen Governor
on the face of the returns. To Dana, the central question was not which
of the two sets of officials occupied the State Capitol, but whether the
National Government should intervene through its courts and army.
While the investigation of the Louisiana case was still under way the
Sun could truthfully boast that:

The Senate committee is verifying all that The Sun has said for a year past

80 Oct. 18, 1876.

61 Nov. 23, 1876.

62 Nov. 24, 1876.

63 Dec. 14, 1872.

THE RECONSTRUCTION BOOMERANG 81

in regard to the utterly rotten condition of politics in the State, and in demon-
stration that there is not a more shameless set of scamps outside the penitentiary
than the venal crowd whereof Kellogg, Packard, Casey and Pinchback are figure
heads. 54

On February 25th Grant sent Congress a special message which made
plain his intention to support the Kellogg government. The result was
four years of political warfare, economic spoliation, and social confu-
sion. The Sun remained loyal to McEnery, regarding the Kellogg ad-
ministration as a spurious Government, resting entirely upon the out-
rageous judicial orders of Durell, the "protection of the President," and
the power of Federal troops. It seldom spoke of Kellogg's government
as other than a usurpation, and referred to Durell as the "drunken
judge."

During April 1873, a series of riots occurred at Colfax, Louisiana, in
which Negroes were burned to death in the court house. This seemed to
justify Grant's support of the Kellogg government. The House sent an
investigating committee headed by Hoar to obtain the facts, and ac-
cording to the Sun General Belknap was "instructed by the President
to proceed to New Orleans and thoroughly investigate the situation."
It appeared that Grant would be exonerated. As a countermove the
Sun reminded the people of the North of the more heinous crime com-
mitted by Kellogg "in setting up an illegal government despite the
majority report of the Senate investigating Committee that McEnery
was elected Governor." BC Before the Committee had reported on the
Colfax massacre, increasing opposition to Kellogg's government made
it apparent that he could be sustained only by armed force. There was
decided opposition in Congress to this. But otherwise a way^must be
found to withdraw the troops without discrediting the Administration.
The Sun could not resist gloating over Grant's dilemma:

Such a heavy load to the party has this Louisiana usurpation become that
many prominent Republicans, who want to live and flourish after Grant is
politically dead and decomposed, are searching around for a way out of this
miserable business. ... But Grant hesitates; and why? The answer is plain.
Judge Durell, Marshal Packard, Brother-in-law Casey, the usurping Kellogg,
poor Pinchback, and the sundry messengers and telegraph operators, know
a great deal too many facts about the original source whence the plan for

"Feb. 5,1873.
" Apr. 28, 1873.

82 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

overthrowing the lawful Government of that State sprang, to make it safe for
Grant and some of his Cabinet to allow the Kellogg fraud to be now set aside. 66

In the meantime Senator Carpenter introduced a bill for a new elec-
tion in Louisiana. The "discreet Republican newspapers" objected, ac-
cording to the Sun, on the ground that such action "would not be con-
stitutional." They proposed instead that Judge Durell be impeached
"for issuing the illegal order by virtue of which McEnery and his Leg-
islature were driven out of the State House and Kellogg and his motley
crowd were put in."

Poor Durell! So they propose to make him the scapegoat of Grant by punish-
ing the inconsiderable agent while the far more guilty principal is allowed to
go free. Doubtless Durell is a weak and worthless fellow. But he is not so weak
and worthless that Grant and Williams and Casey and Kellogg and Packard
combined dare lay their hands upon him unless they first hire him and pay him
to keep his mouth shut while they throttle him with articles of impeach-
ment. . . . And if he is impeached and don't "squeal," rely upon it he has been
hired to keep still. 57

While the North was still aroused over the Colfax massacre, the
Conshatta massacre occurred; and as if to further vindicate the Presi-
dent in policing Louisiana, a riot followed at New Orleans. Barricades
were erected and a battle ensued with the police. The citizens gained
possession of the State House, and Conservative leaders began reor-
ganizing the government. The Administration at Washington again in-
tervened in behalf of Kellogg, and the Conservatives were forced to
drop their arms and prepare to fight the matter out at the ballot box.

The Sun applauded the Conservatives' surrender to Major-General
Emery. This proved, it said, that the uprising was not against the
authority of the United States, but was an act of desperation against
Grantism. Whether the President was "drunk or sober" when he issued
his proclamation "it must stand as law until revoked." For "the misuse
or abuse of this power . . . there is no remedy save impeachment." 58

The Sun's enthusiasm on November 4, 1874 over the revolt against
Grant equaled its joy six years before when he was elected President.
Now the victory of the Democrats was hailed as "the end of Grant and
of Grantism" and "the finishing blow to a third term for Grant." Not

r>6 Jan. 28, 1874.
57 Feb. 16, 1874.
68 Sept. 18, 1874.

THE RECONSTRUCTION BOOMERANG 83

only had Grant's candidates for Governor and Congressmen been
turned out of office in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and
New York, but

Perhaps the most astonishing of all the amazing results is the revolution
which took place in Louisiana on Monday. The Conservatives, as the Opposi-
tion call themselves, elected their State ticket, a decisive majority of the
Legislature, and five of the six Congressmen. In this Congress the delegation
was wholly Republican. The Grant party have now saved only one in the
general wreck. This impressive verdict of an aroused and indignant people is
largely due to the course pursued by the negro voters. They did the business
for Kellogg, Casey, and Packard. It is admitted on all hands that nearly one-
fourth of the negroes voted with the Conservatives. This is the end of Kellogg
and his wretched crew. One-fourth of the active force of the army did not
suffice to save them. Even bayonets could not force carpet-bag rascalities down
the throats of the people.

Victory for the Conservatives at the ballot box did not restore Louisi-
ana to Home Rule. The Kellogg ring made accusations of intimidation
and fraud. Grant ordered Gen. Sheridan to New Orleans to ascertain
the true conditions and assume military control, which he did on Jan-
uary 4, 1875. The next day he wired the President assuring him that he
could preserve peace and referring to certain people of the State as
"banditti." In a second dispatch he elaborated his characterization and
suggested that "If Congress would pass a bill declaring them banditti
they could be tried by a military commission." Belknap assured Sher-
idan of the Administration's complete confidence. When Sheridan's dis-
patches were published a wave of indignation swept over the North.
The Sun helped give it vigorous expression:

We learn from trustworthy sources that it is the purpose of the carpet-
bag authorities in Louisiana to count in the Republican candidates for State
offices with a majority, if not all of the Republicans who ran for Congress, and
a sufficient number of the defeated nominees to the Legislature, to control that
body, and thereby prevent the impeachment of Kellogg and secure the United
States Senator. Grant is in the plot and has agreed to carry it through with
the bayonets of the army! . . . The people should distinctly understand that
this is not a question of the preservation of order in New Orleans, but of con-
spiracy against the property and liberties of the people the chief conspirator
being the President of the United States.

69 Jan. 9, 1876.

84 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

The Sun's attacks upon General Sheridan are striking evidence of Dana's
outraged sensibilities. Dana had long admired Sheridan and, when John-
son removed him from the fifth military reconstruction district, had come
to his defense. Now he put this old friendship aside, condemning Sheri-
dan in sharpest terms.

On January 15 a House Committee declared that the action of the
Kellogg returning board "on the whole was arbitrary, unjust, and in our
opinion illegal." 60 The Sun rightly pronounced the report a "crushing
answer to the misrepresentations and partisanship of the President's
message" to Congress.

In the end, Congress listened with relief to a compromise proposed
by William A. Wheeler. By its terms the Conservatives were given a
majority in the House, the Senate being left Republican. This agree-
ment was accompanied by a resolution of the legislature not to disturb
the Kellogg government during the remainder of its term. As the Sun
well knew, the Wheeler Compromise did not reach the heart of the diffi-
culty in Louisiana. It was accepted semi-officially by the Conservative
members of the legislature, and according to the Sun, was faithfully
observed as long as Kellogg remained in power; but, it did not prevent
Louisiana from becoming a bone of contention in the Hayes-Tilden
dispute.

The nomination of Marshal Packard for Governor in 1876 was re-
garded by Dana as conclusive proof that the Republicans intended to
use the bayonet to carry the State. After accurately predicting the
methods to be used in defeating Tilden in Louisiana, the Sun continued:
"Well, if the supporters of Hayes in the North can afford to carry elec-
tions in the South by such methods, we think the friends of Tilden can
afford to have them." 61 This was followed by a leading editorial upon
the South as a whole:

The proofs multiply that the Republican managers will try to carry four
or five Southern States this fall with the bayonet. The States to which we more
particularly refer are Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and Arkansas. They may
also find it necessary to use the same means to avert defeat in Florida, and even
in South Carolina, in both of which the party is weakened by bitter feuds. 02

60 Rhodes, VII, 114.

61 July 7, 1876.

62 July 19, 1876.

THE RECONSTRUCTION BOOMERANG 85

A week prior to the elections, Sun readers were told that the reason
the Republicans raised the bloody shirt was:

not because the situation demanded it, but simply for the reason that, in
the desperate condition of the Republican party, the leaders thought that to
rekindle animosities smouldering under the ashes of ten years was their dernier
resort in an election wherein the merits were all on the side of the supporters
of Tilden and reform. 63

Dana never for a moment doubted that Tilden had been elected. Im-
mediately after election day the Sun pronounced its verdict:

The States that are now in dispute between the two political parties are
three, namely, Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina; all of them, it will be
noticed Southern States, and all of them since the war in possession of the
Republican party.

There can be no moral doubt how these three States have now voted. They
must all have gone Democratic by ample majorities of the people, because there
is no reason why they should not have shared in that general reaction which
has successively wrested from Republican control all the other Southern States. 64

Later the Governors of these States telegraphed the New York papers
that Hayes had carried them by safe majorities. In the Sun they were
promptly labeled "the three lying governors."

On the face of the returns in Louisiana Tilden had carried the State;
but the returning board gave the electoral vote to Hayes. The board
was made up of the same men who had been condemned by the House
Foster Committee and since 1867 James Madison Wells, its chairman,
"had done the dirty work of Louisiana politics." 5 According to the Sun:

The votes actually cast in that State show a majority of about 7,700 for three
of the Tilden electors, and of about 9,700 for the other five. To give the eight
electoral votes to Hayes it will be necessary for the Kellogg's Returning Board
to throw out parishes enough to reverse the majority of 9,700.

On November 10, forty-eight "visiting Statesmen" were invited by
Grant and Abram S. Hewitt to go to New Orleans to witness the count-
ing of the votes. On the second of December the Board went into secret

63 Oct. 31, 1876.
4 Nov. 11. 1876.
6 fi Rhodes, VII, 231.
Nov. 23, 1876.

86 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

session. Three days before the official count was completed Packard
telegraphed West at Washington: "Democratic boast entirely fallacious.
. . . Have seen Wells who says 'Board will return Hayes sure. Have
no fear.' " 67 But before either Packard's telegram or the decision of the
Board was made known the Sun wrote :

We have no doubt that Mr. Hayes will today receive the eight stolen votes
of Louisiana with entire complacency. They are necessary to his election, and it
is a venerable legal maxim that necessity knows no law. To steal these votes
for Hayes has cost a terrible struggle, and his agents in the transaction deserve
valuable compensation at his hands. 68

The same day at New Orleans the Hayes electors declared his election
by majorities ranging from 4,626 to 4,712.

When Hayes succeeded Grant, March 4, 1877, he inherited the im-
placable hatred of the Sun. From the moment the "Fraudulent Presi-
dent" took office, Dana followed his course with a retributory eye. The
Sun's leading editorial of March 6, 1877 began in characteristic vein:

Mr. Hayes, who has not been elected President of the United States, but who
has twice taken the oath of office, as if to make up by abundant swearing his
essential lack of votes, delivered an inaugural address at Washington yesterday.

In both Hayes' letter of acceptance and inaugural address he
pledged himself to restore Home Rule to the South.

But the Sun insisted Hayes' observations on this subject were noth-
ing but dreary platitudes. His policy was labeled a "scheme" aimed
at the abandonment of the Negro by the Republican party. A little
later a Sun correspondent at Washington described the means by which
the Negro was to be dispensed with by the party; "by bribing with
offices Southern men hitherto regarded as Democrats, and by estab-
lishing an enormous system of corruption in the form of subsidies to
railroads and other enterprises of the kind." 69

In March, 1877, Negro carpetbag rule continued in two States: Louisi-
ana and South Carolina. Of the two, the situation in Louisiana was more
difficult, and before taking action Hayes sent an impartial, bi-partisan
commission of five to New Orleans to ascertain the facts and temper of

67 Rhodes, VII, 232.

8 Dec. 6, 1876.

69 Mar. 15; 13; 1877.

THE RECONSTRUCTION BOOMERANG 87

the people. The Sun was skeptical. Was it necessary to send this "Jobbing
Commission to Louisana?" Mr. Hayes had already "expressed a full
knowledge of the whole complication in his inaugural address, and volun-
tarily pledged himself to prove the only remedy needed by ending the
military intervention which had caused all the trouble." Surely "the
pretext of collecting information ... is too puerile to be worthy of
serious notice." 70

According to instructions given the Commission by Secretary Evarts,
it was plain the President desired to put an end to military intervention
in Louisiana. 71 No one could have been more in sympathy with this pur-
pose than Dana; and yet, because it was Hayes' doing, he could see only
ulterior motives. The object of the Commission, said the Sun, "was to
delay a final settlement of the Louisiana question until a bargain could
be patched up which should conciliate Packard and blunt one of the horns
of Hayes' dilemma." 72

Before the Louisiana Commission reported, Hayes tackled the prob-
lem in South Carolina. Wade Hampton, Democrat, and Chamberlain,
Republican, both claimed election to the Governorship, while two legis-
lative bodies contended for recognition. On March 28, Hayes sum-
moned Hampton and Chamberlain to Washington for a conference.
Less than two weeks later a Presidential order recognized Hampton
as rightful Governor. When this was done, logically the Sun should have
commended Hayes for his courage and accepted with enthusiasm the
restoration of Home Rule in South Carolina. Instead Dana met the
news with an ugly insinuation against Hayes' character:

It is something to say in favor of Daniel H. Chamberlain that he spurned
as he surely did the bribe of a foreign mission offered him by the wonderful
civil service reformer who now occupies the White House. . . . 73

Upon reaching New Orleans the President's Commission found the
Nicholls' government installed in the Odd Fellow's Hall; the Capitol
being occupied by Packard. Nicholls had general public support, while
Packard required an armed force to protect him. On April 20, ten days
after these facts were telegraphed to Hayes, the Federal troops were
withdrawn from the State House and the Packard legislature dispersed.

70 Mar. 28, 1877.

71 Rhodes, VIII, 9.

72 Apr. 7, 1877.

73 Apr. 14, 1877.

88 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

Home rule in the South was an accomplished fact. But there was no re-
joicing in Sun editorials:

The business of finishing up the Packard combination in Louisiana was com-
pleted yesterday, and the Democratic Administration of Nicholls remains as
the only Government of that State.

The question considered by Mr. Hayes and his Commissioners has not been
who was rightfully elected, but simply who had the power to maintain him-
self . . . finding Nicholls to be the stronger in this regard, they withdrew the
troops, and left the Republican governor to his fate. . . .

By letting Packard go down, Hayes confesses that his own claim is founded
upon fraud. 74

Dana's attitude toward the various phases of Reconstruction appears
to have been determined by his hatred for Johnson, Grant and Hayes.
In order to condemn these three Presidents, the Sun contradicted itself
and frequently changed its mind on fundamental issues making it
seem to lose all semblance of principle. But in disinterested devotion to
the welfare of the country as a whole, the Sun was conspicuously con-
sistent in a period when standards of public service were at their lowest
ebb. Whatever personal motives at this time may have animated Dana,
there was one benefit from his course: The Sun told the truth about
Reconstruction under Grant. If readers were made wary by Sun incon-
sistencies, at least their daily reading was, for the most part, an accurate
picture of Southern chaos. Other New York City papers were either
swayed by Republican loyalty or lacked the skill to present the facts
as Dana did. The circulation of the Sun increased during the period,
until it reached its greatest popularity. Undoubtedly Dana made a
splendid contribution to a Northern understanding of the South, al-
though it is debatable whether he, as an individual, felt much of the
sympathy which the Sun called forth.

The Sun fully realized what Republican Reconstruction was doing to
the South and what retribution would follow. Perhaps nowhere can
there be found a more concise and accurate appraisal of the Reconstruc-
tion period than the one given in the Sun on May 4, 1885:

In the North, Republicanism has been in its way a party of principles; in
the South, it has been from first to last only a party of plunder, a conspiracy
of rascals to exploit for their own advantage the ignorance of a race which be-

7 * Apr. 21, 1877.

THE RECONSTRUCTION BOOMERANG 89

lieved in its simplicity that the Republicans of the North had a peculiar claim
to its regard.

The history of the Republican failure in the Southern States must be mel-
ancholy reading to even the staunchest Republican. Never was a great oppor-
tunity more wantonly thrown away. If Wilkes Booth's bullet had missed its
mark, that history might have had a different and more honorable course. A
noble toleration and patience were in Abraham Lincoln, and if he had lived, he
would have labored for the full restoration of the Union, and not merely for
the temporary aggrandizement of his party. The South had no unkindly feel-
ing for him, and he might have done much to give Republicanism a sound and
honest beginning there. But the rabid politicians to whom the work of recon-
struction fell, had little of his magnanimity. The controlling sentiment of the
North was a desire to secure the rights of the colored race. The main idea of
the Republican leaders was to secure the permanent ascendancy of the Repub-
lican party. Some of them were disinterested in their views, but it is none the
less true that the Republicans of the North were adroitly played upon in the
interest of political mercenaries in the South, and so Southern Republicanism
became, to borrow John Randolph's phrase, a combination of the Puritan and
the Blackleg. The Puritanism of the North, in part honestly misled, in part
through excess of party spirit, supported the adventurers who made tools of
the Negro to plunder States, fill their own pockets, and send Administration
Senators and Representatives to Washington. The natural consequences fol-
lowed. Republicanism became identified in the minds of Southerners with dis-
regard of the Constitution, with the most indecent extravagance and dishonesty,
with the supremacy of ignorance, and the degradation of the public service. A
hatred of Republicanism which years may be insufficient to remove, grew up
in States where Republicanism might have made itself respected, if not dom-
inant. The humane sentiment in the North found out that it had been tricked ;
the Republicans were forced to give up every Southern State, and now the last
visible sign of the Republican kleptocracy is about to be swept away.

The moral of this history is plain. It teaches that a party must commend
itself to the moral sense of the people or it can come to no abiding strength
among them. The moment the cordon of Federal bayonets is broken which
supports a party not firmly and naturally rooted in popular respect, that mo-
ment the party falls. The Republican party never tried to win any moral sup-
port in the South. It depended upon frauds at the ballot boxes or upon force.
Its only means of propagandism has been the promise of Federal office. All
that it has gained in twenty years is a reputation that twenty years of good be-
havior cannot make savory.

CHAPTER IV

"GRANTISM"

Grantism is compounded in low greed, obtuse moral sentiment, shoddy dis-
play, the use of public offices for private gain, enriching all your relatives at
the expense of the Government, the ignoring of all the better public opinion,
the conception that high office is a reward and not an obligation imposed-in
fine, that the Government is to be administered in the selfish interest of the gov-
ernors and for their aggrandizement. 1

As we have seen, the Sun about-faced on General Grant with astonish-
ing rapidity. Beginning with hero worship, it turned, in March, 1869, to
mild criticism ; then soon began to indulge in a stream of personal abuse
that reached its greatest volume in the campaign of 1872. After Grant
retired to private life its attacks ceased, except for an occasional gesture
of mock sympathy over his misfortunes and a hypocritical last tribute
by Dana in the payment of his funeral expenses.

Many readers of the Sun and contemporary editors, with some later
historians, 2 believed that this sudden change in attitude was due to an
incident about the time of Grant's inauguration. Dana had been informed
on responsible authority that he was to be made Collector of the Customs
of New York City. 3 He did not receive the anticipated appointment, but
a month later George S. Boutwell wrote him, offering in place of the
profitable collectorship a position of little significance. To Boutwell's
rather apologetic letter Dana sent a courteous and dignified refusal,
in which he expressed regret at his inability to accept, and maintained
that his position as the editor of an independent newspaper was more
suitable to him. Both letter and answer appeared on the pages of the Sun. 4

The press throughout the country accused Dana of "bearing a grudge"
because of his disappointment. To these charges the Sun replied with
quick wit and easy humor, maintaining that if Grant could have had the

1 The Sun, Mar. 8, 1876.

2 Peck, Harry Thurston, Twenty Years of the Republic, 252-265; Oberholtzer, Ellis Pax-
son, A History of the United States, III, 488.

8 Wilson, James Harrison, The Life of Charles A. Dana. 407.
4 Apr. 19, 1869.

90

"GRANTISM" 91

support of the Sun upon the simple condition of giving an office to its
editor, he was a "fool" not to give it. 5 However, the Sun was not always
amused by these charges. Occasionally it gave an explanation for its
loss of faith in Grant. The Sun had not changed; it was, as it always had
been, the same fearless, non-partisan, independent, people's paper. But
Grant, after his elevation to the Presidency, had been affected by "sudden
and enormous prosperity, unbounded flattery, and a childish admira-
tion of wealth and wealthy men." 6 It is impossible to say whether the
Sun's attacks came from personal disappointment or a patriotic desire
for reform. Dana would have strengthened his position if he had not
informed the public of the many services for Grant in return for which
he had received nothing. 7

In February, 1869, Dana, not yet having changed his opinion of
Grant, tried to dispel the apprehensions which the president-elect had
aroused by his secrecy regarding his Cabinet. The Sun remarked, "His
Cabinet is his own affair; he should settle it for himself." 8 On March 6,
Grant's selections were made known. Though disappointed, Dana con-
soled the country with the following remarks:

The first impression caused by this cabinet is one of surprise. It not only
differs entirely from all previous conjectures respecting its composition, but it
departs from the usage of all our former Presidents in the small number of
gentlemen that it contains who enjoy a national reputation as statesmen, trained
by habit to legislative, executive and political affairs. Indeed, while three of its
members, Washburne, Creswell and Cox may be classed as belonging to
this category, there is but one of them, Mr. Washburne, who has for any length
of time performed a conspicuous part upon the political stage. The others are
men of business, chosen because Gen. Grant regards them as eminently fitted
for the duties which he has assigned them. . . . This is a working and not an
ornamental Cabinet. It contains a great deal of business faculty, and compar-
atively little experience in the art and science of politics. 9

Four days later it was apparent that the Sun was losing faith in the
President:

In spite of Gen. Grant's positive declaration to the contrary, he has done
little else for several weeks past than to offer seats in his Cabinet to a great

6 Oct. 7, 1869; Apr. IS, 1869.

6 Apr. 12, 1871.

7 June 20, 1870.

8 Feb. 10, 1869.

9 Mar. 6, 1869,

92 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

number of gentlemen, who, for reasons entirely satisfactory to themselves,
have invariably declined his proffers in spite of all the pressure he could bring
to bear.

The era of Grantism had begun. In a short time the Sun was asserting
that, with the exception of George Boutwell, regarded as late as Novem-
ber, 1869, as the "one successful statesman" of the Administration, Grant
had chosen poorly. Boutwell records that Dana's friendship even with
him was soon broken. When they met, Dana passed him without speak-
ing and not until 1887, after Grant's death, did they resume their friend-
ship. 10

In the opinion of the Sun, Hamilton Fish was the worst cabinet choice.
The Secretary of State, appointed shortly after Washburne resigned,
was approved by the Senate while his telegram of refusal was on its way
from New York to Washington. Yet the Sun asserted that Fish had
sought the appointment and had received it not "because he is fit for it,
but because he gave presents to General Grant." n

Dana further charged that Adolph Borie, chosen Secretary of the
Navy against his own wish and that of many leading Republicans, knew
"that the only reason for asking him to take such an office was that he
had contributed largely toward giving Gen. Grant a house." 12 George M.
Robeson, who soon succeeded Borie, was said to have paid for his ap-
pointment with a gift of five hundred dollars. In reviewing the case,
the Sun concluded that Robeson's appointment was a doubtful compli-
ment to Borie. Since Borie gave five thousand dollars, was "it not dis-
respectful to appoint," as his successor, "a man who gave only five
hundred?" A sharper thrust appeared shortly: "It is announced that
'Mrs. Grant will receive every Tuesday afternoon during the winter,
beginning with Jan. 10.' President Grant will receive anytime and any-
thing whenever anything is offered." 13

Bribery, according to the Sun, was not confined to the Cabinet. Moses
Grinnell and Thomas Murphy purchased their respective appointments
to the New York Custom House through gifts of houses. 14 William D.
Farrand, armed with a present worth $600 and a fine carriage robe, made
a deal through one of the President's many brothers-in-law for the Callao

10 Boutwell, George S., Reminiscenses of Sixty Years in Public Affairs. I, 295.

11 Jan. 8, 1870.

12 Apr. 27, 1869; cf. Hesseltine, William B., Ulysses S. Grant, 160.

13 Jan. 9, 1871.

14 Feb. 22, 1870; Sept. 20, 1871 ; Hesseltine, Grant, 153.

"GRANTISM" 93

Consulate, 15 while Henry D. Cooke traded twenty-five thousand dollars
worth of Seneca Sandstone Stock for the Governorship of the District
of Columbia. 16 The appointment of Chief Justice Waite, according to
the Sun, had been made for the purpose of balancing the Supreme Court
in favor of Jay Cooke & Company. 17

In every instance, Grant the "Great Gift-taker" got something out
of the deal. The Sun gave its version of the method of Grant's appoint-
ments:

Gen. Grant keeps two lists of names always by him, both of which he
consults before making any important appointments; one is a list of con-
tributors to the purchase of his several houses presented to him, and the other
a list of stockholders of The Sun. ... No man, it is said, can receive any ap-
pointment blood and marriage relations excepted unless his name is found
upon the list of the donors to the President, and is not found on the list of the
stockholders of The Sun.

Grant was also accused of finding places of emolument for his father,
brothers, first and second cousins, and his in-laws who seemed to infest
the country. By 1870 the Sun had set up what it called a "Court Regis-
ter." In reply to its appeal for information regarding "any cousin or
brother-in-law" omitted, or inaccurately described, 19 letters were re-
ceived at the Sun office or printed in anti-Grant papers. The register
finally totaled "forty worthless relations/' although the Sun never listed
by name the entire "royal family."

One of the most striking instances of the President's devotion to his
family, the Sun wrote, "is the appointment of B. L. Wymans" whose
wife enjoys the honor "of being an own cousin to the President himself;
accordingly, Wymans was taken from his humble employment, trans-
ported to Newport and made Postmaster." 20 Of our Minister to Guate-
mala, Silas A. Hudson, the Sun said :

He is a cousin of Gen. Grant, was formerly a cattle driver in Oregon, knows
a great deal less of the English language than the law allows, served on Grant's
staff the last two years of the war, is a plucky, rough, ignorant, manly fellow,

15 July 18, 1872.

16 Nov. 27, 1871; cf. Hesseltine, Grant, 280.

17 Jan. 21, 1874.

18 June 17, 1869.

19 Nov. 30, 1870.

20 Oct. 20, 1870.

94 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

about as fit for a foreign mission as a crowbar is for a cambric needle. Nobody
but his cousin would have invented the idea of appointing him. 21

The Rev. M. J. Kramer, whose wife was a sister of Grant, was ap-
pointed United States Consul at Leipzig "in recognition of his relation-
ship to the President." 22 Grant's father, Jesse R. Grant, was retained as
the Postmaster of Covington. The Sun felt the President should be given
a vote of thanks that "Jesse" had not been made a Senator. 23 Other
relatives, the Corbins, the Dents, the Caseys, and the Sharpes, enjoyed
extraordinarily large fees. The Sun reported that when Gen. Robert
Schenck sent a friend to intercede with Grant regarding an inexcusable
appointment in the Internal Revenue Department, the President re-
plied: "I am sorry for Gen. Schenck, but the man he objects to is one of
my second cousins." 24

The diplomats of the Grant Administration were no more pleasing to
Dana than were the cabinet members. Cartoons of our foreign ministers
might be considered reprehensible, but they were fairly accurate 2S and
drawn with skill and wit. These ministers had to be recalled and replaced
by better men whenever some business of state was to be undertaken.
If Dana could have had his way, all would have been immediately dis-
missed, with the exception of our Minister to Paraguay, "where an
American Minister would mean something," but where, under the slack
and lawless system of Grantism "we had no representative." 2G

Contrary to the Sun's expectation, instead of replacing Reverdy
Johnson, our Minister to England, with a man who would "never so far
forget what is his due to the people he represents as to maintain friendly
intercourse with their malignant foes," 2T Grant appointed John Lothrop
Motley, whose conduct was far worse than Johnson's had ever been. He
made so many friendly speeches that it became necessary for the Sun
to remind him that he "should cease talking and commence thinking"; 28
or else he dawdled about London, cultivating the aristocracy, until in
despair Dana was goaded into saying, "such twaddle, such toadyism for

21 Apr. 14, 1869.

22 Sept. 12,1870.

23 Feb. 16, 1870.

24 Oct. 17, 1870.

25 Oberholtzer, II, 222, N, citing Moran's MS. Diary in the Library of Congress.

26 Mar. 28, 1870.

27 Nov. 5, 1868.

28 May 28, 1869.

"GRANTISM" 95

titled people, such power of sophistical buncombe, such indiscretion in
practical affairs could not be matched elsewhere." 29

Far worse than Motley's incapacity was the change in Elihu B.
Washburne, formerly the "very incarnation of retrenchment and econ-
omy." He became a great European tourist and a magnificent spender
of money. Our minister to Austria, John Jay, carried on absurd family
quarrels in order to attract public attention. The Sun was disgusted,
declaring that "it is painful to reflect that President Grant chose such a
man for the Austrian mission in preference to William Cullen Bryant." 81

Our consul-general in Havana, Thomas Biddle, was a "fool" and had
not "sense enough to manage with success the most commonplace af-
fairs. No judicious man would wish to employ him as agent in business
where fifty dollars was at stake . . . his opinion, except perhaps on such
questions as the weather, is worthless, his temper is irritable and capri-
cious, and his actions are apt to be extremely silly." :{2 Gen. Hugh Ewing,
our Minister Resident at the Hague, was intemperate. 33 William A. Pile,
Grant's choice for Brazil, knew no language except English and even
that none too well. 3 * Robert C. Schenck, who followed Motley as Minis-
ter to England, engaged in London in the business of selling the shares
of the Emma Silver Mining Company, "using the influence of his official
dignity to put off those shares upon English buyers. . . ." The fact
that Schenck himself received on credit a large quantity of those shares
in consideration for his services, with a guarantee of dividends, deep-
ened the disgrace that the affair cast upon the Government. 35

With corruption and nepotism widespread in Washington it was not
surprising that rings, frauds, and swindles developed in every depart-
ment of the Government. But before the Sun had time to begin in earnest
its exposures, there occurred an amazing plot to corner the nation's
gold, the culmination of which is known in history as "Black Friday." 36

Jay Gould, the absolute ruler of the Erie Railroad with James Fisk, Jr.,
conceived of a scheme to get still richer by raising the price of gold. An
accompanying high price on wheat would result, thereby inducing the

29 Dec. 17, 1869; Oberholtzer, II, 440-441.
80 Oct 22,1869.

81 Dec. 9, 1869.

8 2 Jan. 13,1870.

33 Jan. 18, 1870.

34 Apr. 16, 1869.

86 Sept. 24, 1869: cf. Adams, Henry, Chapters of Erie and Other Essays, 100-134.

96 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

farmers of the West to transport their grain across the country by way
of the Erie Railroad. At the time Gould and Fisk were hatching this
scheme, the United States Treasury commonly held about 100 millions
of the gold supply of the country and was in the habit of selling about 5
millions each month. The drawback to the daring plan lay in the fact
that Boutwell, as Secretary of the Treasury, was always careful to give
previous notice of these monthly sales. Gould shrewdly saw the desira-
bility of cultivating the acquaintance of the President and interesting
him in raising the price of gold. Accordingly, the two men established
social relations with Grant and his family.

As early as September 3, 1869, the Sun had scented the proposed
conspiracy and was complaining against any combinations to raise the
price of gold. By September 20th, when Gould and Fisk had raised the
price of gold above its normal level, the Sun said, "This is one of the most
immoral and pernicious conspiracies ever contracted in Wall Street.
. . . Combinations which tamper with the circulating medium of a
country are not only demoralizing but criminal. It is the duty of the
Treasury to block the game of this unscrupulous ring." But no action by
the Government was taken until September 24th, "Black Friday." Only
after a panic in Wall Street that ruined hundreds and aroused intense
excitement was a dispatch from Washington received, giving the Gov-
ernment's order to sell four millions of gold.

In the first days following the crisis the Sun exonerated Grant from
complicity in the gold conspiracy, laying at his door no worse error than
indiscretion. It said, "No evidence has been adduced as yet which is
incompatible with his innocence." 37 But it had no sympathy with A. R.
Corbin, Grant's brother-in-law, and believed that Butterfield, the Assist-
ant Treasurer, was deeply involved. It urged the latter's immediate
resignation and suggested that the President should not refill his place
with anyone who had previously given him money or houses. Boutwell,
who believed Butterfield guilty of dishonesty, persuaded Grant to dis-
miss him from office. The Sun then took credit for Butterfield's re-
moval. "We said that Gen. Butterfield must go. He has gone." 38

But the Sun had not said its last word in regard to the President's part
in the gold conspiracy. Either because of his increasing antagonism for

37 Oct. 11, 1869; Rhodes, James F., History of the United States, VI, 256; cf Oberholtzer,
II, 576; Hesseltine, Grant, 179.
88 Oct. 26, 1869.

"GRANTISM" 97

Grant, or because more facts were procured, Dana came to agree with
the World that the President was guilty. In 1871, the Sun stated that
although "President Grant has denied that he had anything to do with
the gold conspiracy, except to break it down, the facts proved in the
case do not bear out his denial ... he still stands before the tribunal
of the people with the guilt of this unparalleled conspiracy upon him." 89
Four months later, in making an attack upon the New York Times for
defending corruption, it concluded a long editorial review of the case
with these words:

... If there is any other view of the affair which can relieve Gen. Grant of
the stain of corruption will someone please lay it before the country? We do
not ask this of the Times. That journal has made out so badly attempting to
explain Grant's nepotism that it cannot be expected to undertake a more serious
case ; but if there be any apology or any evidence which can clear Grant of the
guilt of dishonorable connection with the gold conspiracy they should be brought
forward at once. 40

The President himself, although, in the Sun's opinion, directly or in-
directly responsible for every fraud, was usually too far in the back-
ground to be personally attacked. So the Sun concentrated on the cabi-
net members. For eight years the Navy Department took perhaps the
greatest share of attacks and abuse.

Various editorials described and ridiculed the activities of Grant's first
ill-chosen Secretary of the Navy. 41 According to the Sun, Adolph Borie
put all the work of the department on the shoulders of Admiral Porter,
his assistant, and retained for himself only the hollow title. 42 But, to
Dana's relief, Borie soon left the Cabinet and by June, 1869, George M.
Robeson was appointed in his place. 48 Although his nomination, the
Sun maintained, would elicit general inquiry as to who he might be,
Robeson did possess energy of character. However, the Sun soon began
to discover his faults. He enjoyed sailing in a yacht at the people's ex-
pense while the business of the Navy was managed in a most unsatisfac-
tory manner. Our sailors, instead of being guarded against yellow fever,
were persistently ordered to places where the disease was known to be
raging and kept there until disabled. The Naval Academy, at Admiral

as Sept. 23, 1871; cf. Adams, Henry, Education, 268-272.

4 Jan. 3, 1872.

41 Apr. 26-27, 1869 ; May 28, 1869.

42 June 5, 1869.

43 Oberholtzer, II, 220.

98 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

Porter's direction, continued work on Sunday, which the Sun thought
an offense to the moral and religious sentiment of the country. 44 By
December of Grantism, year one, the Sun demanded that Robeson be
dismissed 45 and that the reckless expenditures of money by the Navy De-
partment be investigated. 40 It charged Grant with responsibility for "the
lawlessness, wastefulness, inefficiency and disorder which make our
Navy Department a joke to Democrats, a shame and peril to Republi-
cans, and a disgrace to all patriotic Americans." 4T

On March 11, 1872, the Sun flatly charged that Robeson had stolen a
vast amount of money from the United States Treasury:

. . . We are not able to say with exactness how much money he has stolen
from the Treasury. But taking the facts already within our knowledge, a rough
calculation shows that his robberies do not amount to less than one million
jour hundred thousand dollars.

One count against Robeson had to do with Ferine Secor & Co., and
Zeno Secor, the builders of the Tecumseh, Mahopac, and Manhattan
vessels constructed during the Civil War. The accounts for the building
of the vessels were closed, payment of claims had been made, and re-
ceipts for payment in full were in existence. The Secretary, however,
"in flagrant violation of the statute which forbade him so to appropriate
a cent/' 48 was "determined to steal ninety-three thousand dollars from
the Treasury under pretence of paying it as an additional allowance upon
the vessels built by the Secors." 49

Such bold charges by the Sun could not but have an effect on contempo-
rary newspapers and on Washington itself. The Albany Evening Times
and the Newark Daily Advertiser maintained that it was unnecessary
to take any notice of the Sun's exposures. 50 But on March 22, 1872, the
Sun triumphantly announced that a Congressional committee, investi-
gating charges against Robeson, had invited Dana to "appear before
it and make any statements likely to lead to a full discovery of all the
facts." Dana feared an unfair investigation and began immediately to
prepare the public for a possible vindication of Robeson. One witness,

44 Nov. 17, 1869.

46 Dec. 24, 1869.

46 Nov. 29, 1869.

^ May 21, 1870.

* 8 Feb. 4, 1873.

40 Mar. 2, 1872.

60 Feb. 27, 1872; Mar. 11, 1872.

"GRANTISM" 99

he asserted, had died and another had been stricken with paralysis by
terror of the Sun's exposures. 51 But, even against odds, the Sun main-
tained that it could prove Robeson guilty and Dana announced his in-
tention of appearing before the committee.

The committee report, partisan that it was, did not convict Robeson
of personal corruption although it censured him for the laxity of his of-
ficial methods. 52 The New York Evening Post remarked that "Secretary
Robeson seems to be open to criticisms in that he reopened a case which
had been settled, and the new claim was settled under his sanction in
an irregular way, but there is no proof of any improper motive on his
part." 53 The Sun claimed that Dana's charges had been maintained ac-
cording to the strict rules of criminal pleading. 54 It said:

$93,000!

Little Robeson Horner sat in a corner

Fingering Treasury pie:
He put in his thumb, and pulled out a plum

And said, "What a sly rogue am I!" r>6

The Sun continued its charges, and three months later presented a de-
tailed list of misappropriations totaling $318,719,580, which it claimed
had all been proved against Robeson. 50 The conclusion of the editorial
was: "It will be remembered that the main facts above set forth have
been proved before a committee made up by Speaker Elaine, and packed
with Robeson's friends, on purpose to whitewash him and save Gen.
Grant from the political damage which could not fail to follow the public
demonstration that these things are so." 57

The Treasury Department was first ruled by George S. Boutwell, a
man without financial training but possessed of personal integrity. 58
Perhaps his knowledge of his unfitness for the post made him first refuse
the appointment and then accept it unwillingly. If he had any misgivings
as to his ability, Dana had not and was quick to inform the public that:

01 Mar. 22, 1872.

B2 O'Brien, Frank M., The Story of the Sun, 304-305.

03 Apr. S, 1872.

54 Apr. 8, 1872.

efltom said: "He [Dana] was obliged to confess that he had no personal knowl-
edge of the truth or falsehood of the charges himself, and could not produce anybody who
had." Apr. 11, 1872.

67 July 26, 1872.

as Rhodes, VI, 238.

100 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

. . . there is no statesman in New England better qualified than Gov. Bout-
well to discharge the onerous function of the Treasury Department. To a mind
of great clearness he unites an extraordinary talent for the details of admin-
istration. His fidelity to every duty and his character for integrity and patriotism
are worthy of the most entire confidence. . . . Should he be appointed, the
people of every section will feel that the most important post in the Cabinet has
been intrusted to one who can be relied upon in every respect.

While Boutwell was in office the Sun never completely abandoned its
high opinion of him. It pointed out that the retrenchment and economy
of the Administration were due "very much to Mr. Boutwell and not
at all to Gen. Grant." It maintained that in view of the company which
he kept Boutwell's virtue was lustrous. It criticized harshly his financial
theories, but not until after he had left the Cabinet did it discover that
he too had been a "fraud."

In 1874 the Sun maintained that Boutwell had been involved in the
Sanborn Contract, discovered under his successor, William A. Richard-
son. According to a provision made by Congress in 1872, the Secretary
of the Treasury was entitled to employ as many as three officials for
the purpose of collecting delinquent customs and internal revenue. Un-
der this provision Richardson, first acting as Assistant Secretary and
later as Secretary, made a contract with John D. Sanborn to collect un-
paid revenue from railroads and other sources. The Sun told the story:

With this man (Sanborn) who had long been known as one of Gen. Butler's
confidential friends and instruments, a contract was made by which he was to
receive for his services one-half of all the money he should collect for the
Government, notwithstanding that the rule of the department, subsequently
adopted, when a general appropriation was made to be used for payment of
unofficial detectives, was that only one tenth of the money recovered should
be paid to the persons recovering it. ...

Being thus armed with a contract from the Treasury Department and with
Mr. Boutwell's letter and having at his back the power and influence of such
men as the principal Treasury officials and his special friend and patron Gen.
Butler, Mr. Sanborn, the new special partner of the United States Government
went to work, employing sub-agents at his discretion. He thus collected some
hundreds of thousands of dollars, of which he quietly robbed one-half. . . . 01

As to Secretary Richardson's part in the scandal, the Sun felt he was
justified in pleading ignorance. His appointment had been wholly im-

00 Dec. 5, 1868.
00 Mar. 5, 1870.
61 Feb. 19, 1874. Cf. Rhodes, VII, 64-66.

"GRANTISM" 101

proper and "his nomination not one fit even for Gen. Grant to make." 62
"Mr. Boutwell is the guilty man. He made the contracts with Sanborn.
He connived with Gen. Butler to put that fraud upon the revenue into
execution." G3 In characterizing Boutwell as Secretary of the Treasury
the Sun maintained, "He failed ignorantly or he failed designedly. He
himself knows which." G4

In 1874, when Benjamin Bristow undertook the duties of the Treasury
Department, the Sun greeted him with relief. "Unless he is interfered
with by the President, it is not too much to hope that he will introduce
real reforms in that abyss of corruption and immorality over which he
has now been appointed." 65 Until he too was dropped in 1876, Secretary
Bristow maintained the respect of the Sun.

The Post Office Department, although shot through with petty fraud,
played a less important part in the Sun's record of corruption than did
the State, 00 Navy, and Treasury departments. A. J. Creswell, Grant's
original appointee to this office, held the position until 1874. The Sun's
analysis of him was damning enough :

Since his entrance into politics Mr. Creswell has been on both sides of every
important issue, and whenever there was a third side, he managed to take that
also . . . in all his checkered career he has never made a mistake and never left
a rising party to join a falling one. 67

Creswell, according to the Sun, attempted an enormous thievery with
Earle, his former law partner, as accomplice. He first made Earle Assist-
ant Postmaster-General and then solicitor of claims against the Post
Office Department. Earle acted as the attorney and Creswell as the
judge. 08 They would have succeeded, had it not been for a few vigilant
Congressmen, in defrauding the Government of $443,000.

According to Dana, the mails were tampered with, letters were opened
and read, and anti-Grant newspapers and documents were not allowed to
circulate through the country. 70 A system of straw bidding was indulged
in, through which Creswell disbursed contracts for mail carriers. By

cs Mar. 18, 1874.

63 Apr. 7, 1874.

G* May 5, 1874.

66 June 4, 1874.

See Chapter XIII.

C7 June 30, 1874.

r>K Feb. 2, 1871.

9 Cf Oberholtzer, III, 70-71.

70 June 25, 1872.

102 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

this means the Postmaster General gave thousands of dollars away,
which as far as the public was concerned might as well have been thrown
in the fire. 71 In addition to these evils Grant and Creswell horrified the
conservative Sun by attempting to get sanction for the government's
taking over the telegraph system throughout the country. 72

But these were minor events compared with the startling story, the
"King of Frauds" that appeared on the front page of the Sun, Septem-
ber 4, 1872. Under flaming headlines, the Sun wrote:

It is the most damaging exhibition of official and private villainy ever laid
bare to the gaze of the world. The Vice-President of the United States, the
Speaker of the House of Representatives, the chosen candidate of a great party
for the second highest office in the gift of the people, the chairman of almost
every important committee in the House of Representatives all of them are
proved by irrefutable evidence to have been bribed.

Thus the famous Credit Mobilier scandal was dropped like a bomb in
the midst of the Grant-Greeley presidential campaign.

On July 1, 1862, and July 2, 1864, Congress passed statutes authoriz-
ing the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad and giving the com-
pany vast grants of public land, a loan of $27,000,000 of Government
bonds and, in addition, certain privileges in regard to issuing securities.
Despite these generous terms it was impossible, due to the uncertain
financial situation following the Civil War, to secure subscribers to the
capital stock in cash. Thereupon, Oakes Ames, Representative from
Massachusetts, organized a construction company called the Credit Mo-
bilier with stock holders almost identical with those of the Union Pacific
company. When some additional legislation was wanted from Congress,
Ames managed to get it through by a liberal distribution of Credit
Mobilier stock to leading Senators and Representatives for about thirty
cents on the dollar in return for which the stock-holders realized a cash
profit of at least $23,000,000. 73

As soon as Congress met, Speaker Elaine called S. S. Cox to the chair
and moved that an investigation be begun. Thereupon Cox appointed an
able committee, including Luke P. Poland of Vermont as chairman,
George W. McCrary, William M. Merrick, and William E. Niblack.
The Sun believed in committees of investigation, although it knew their

71 Oct. 14, 1874.

72 June 25, 1872; Aug. 1,1872.

73 Sept. 5, 1872.

"GRANTISM" 103

ability to overlook vital evidence. One of its witty sayings was: "A Sign
of the times in Washington: 'Whitewashing done here.'" 1 * Hence it
feared that the inquiry was "likely to be squelched or perverted, so that
no earnest exploration of the facts and no thorough going report" could
be made. 75

Although two committee men were Democrats, the Sun was not ap-
peased. Was it not possible that they were already sympathetic toward
the offenders and were appointed for reasons best known to themselves?
When the committee got under way, the Sun asked whether Congress
would do its duty and cleanse its own halls or leave undisturbed in their
chairs men who had done their best to make the titles of Senator and
Representative terms of reproach in the land. 76

The findings of the Poland Committee differed radically from those of
the Sun. Not only did they compute differently the amount of stock dis-
tributed but also the number of Congressmen involved. The Sun wanted
to know how deeply involved Oakes Ames had been in the Sioux City
and Cedar Rapids railroads. "Didn't he give some of his friends a share
in one or both of them?" 77 Although only Oakes Ames, Schuyler Colfax,
James Brooks and James Patterson had been found guilty by the com-
mittee of taking bribes and deserving of expulsion, the Sun condemned
seventeen 78 and set its stamp of disapproval upon the inquiry:

The truth is there has been no investigation in the proper sense. What has come
to light has been brought out in spite of all concerned. To screen, palliate, and
cover up has been the guiding purpose of that committee. Their omissions are
shameful; and their so-called cross examinations specimens of imbecility which
would be amazing, if the design of exculpation had not been patent from the
start. 79

To the members of Congress involved the Sun was merciless. Oakes
Ames, the "Bribester," who professed to be the "scapegoat," was made
the butt of biting sarcasm:

Ascetics are inclined to regard Ames' use in Congress of McCombs' Credit
Mobilier shares as closely akin to bribery. Doubtless the transaction would

74 Apr. 12, 1872.

75 Nov. 4, 1872.

76 Feb. 17,1873.

"This number included George Boutwell whom the Sun exonerated two days after the
original exposure. Sept. 6, 1872.
79 Feb. 18, 1873.

104 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

have been subject to this criticism, except for the beautiful moral philosophy
which guided his conduct "to place things where they will do the most good,
and to so place them that those who receive them will find it for their interest
to look into things." 80

The influence of the Sun's exposure of the Credit Mobilier upon the
Presidential campaign was slight. It came after people had made up
their minds for whom they would vote, and too late to check the momen-
tum of the campaign. The exaggerated reports given by the Greeley
papers made many discount the scandal entirely. Officers up for re-
election lied to the press and public about the part that they, as indi-
viduals, had played in the acceptance of stock. But when the extent of
the fraud was later revealed through Congressional investigation, many
of those who had retained their faith in "the party that saved the Union"
abandoned it. The Sun's influence was important in bringing this about.

The exposure of the Credit Mobilier was only one of the weapons with
which the Sun attempted to dislodge Grant as President. During the
campaign of 1872, it supported Horace Greeley while it labeled Grant
a drunkard with a passion for liquor, a despot harboring the dream of
perpetuating the Grant dynasty. 81 He was anti-Catholic, anti-Negro 82
and anti-Semitic. 83 He had a tendency toward kidnaping, 84 a sympathy
with bigamists, 85 and was himself a heathen, 86 and in addition to all this,
was a boor without humanity, intellect, or courtesy. 87 In his attempt to
blacken Grant's character, Dana exhibited great curiosity concerning
the President's relations with Butler, asserting that they formed "a queer
political enigma which no one less eccentric than Butler or less stolid
than Grant would probably ever be able to find out." 88 But these evils
did not constitute the worst aspects of Grantism. The Sun pretended
that it did not believe in carrying on a political campaign by means of
personal attacks:

The real issue of the campaign is, do the people wish to have reform in the
National Administration, or do they like gift taking, nepotism, the payment of

80 Jan. 11, 1873.

81 June 25, 1872.

82 Apr. 5, 1872.

83 July 24, 1872.

84 June 12, 1872.

85 Aug. 24, 1871.

86 Oct. 30, 1871.

87 June 17, 1872.

88 May 2, 1872; May 9, 1872; Hesseltine refutes the charge that Butler had a hold over
the President; Grant, 365.

"GRANTISM" 105

forged bounty claims, Soscol ranch frauds, bribetaking, the payment of fraud-
ulent navy claims, the concoction of Chorpenning swindles, and the like? 89

Another government scandal was uncovered during the months pre-
ceding Grant's re-election. The "District Ring,' 7 headed by Henry
Cooke, Governor of the District of Columbia and Alexander Shepherd,
Vice-President of the Board of Public Works, were found to have an
interest in the Metropolitan Paving Company, for whose benefit they
raised the assessment of private property in Washington, D.C., and en-
forced very high taxation upon the local taxpayers. Their ultimate ob-
jective, according to the Sun, was to force three-fifths of the owners of
estates and middle-class homes into bankruptcy, in anticipation of
which they had already formed a ring to buy up the property sacrificed
under tax sales. 90

After the Presidential campaign, the District Ring attempted to have
Dana brought to Washington for trial, to answer a charge of libel, but
the courts refused the necessary change of venue, much to Dana's relief. 91
Some time previous to the charge which Shepherd and Cooke made
against the editor, Congress had established a special Police Court in
the District of Columbia. 92 This court was to have a Judge but no jury;
and could try misdemeanors not punishable by the penitentiary. Dana
evidently feared an unfair trial. 93 The case was eventually tried in the
Federal Court for the Southern district of New York and dismissed. 94

"Addition, Division and Silence," the campaign cry in 1872 of all
opposed to the re-election of the Republicans, originated in the Sun.
W. H. Kemble, State Treasurer of Pennsylvania, had been indiscreet
enough in March, 1867, to send the following letter to Titian J. Coffey,
of Washington, D.C.:

Allow me to introduce to you my particular friend, Mr. George C. Evans.
He has a claim of some magnitude that he wishes you to help him in. Put him
through as you would me. He understands addition, division and silence.

This letter appeared in the Sun, June 7, 1872, incorporated in an edi-
torial under the significant title "The Right Man in the Right Place."

se Aug. 16, 1872.

oo July 4, 1872.

9i Cf. Peck, 257-265.

e 2 June 17, 1870.

Cf. O'Brien, 307.

84 The Sun, Dec. 1, 1882.

106 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

After that it was repeated nearly every day until June 28, 1872. Then
the phrase "Addition, Division, and Silence" became a theme on which
the Sun played a thousand variations. Kemble, author of the phrase, was
angered at the notoriety resulting from the reiteration of "Addition,
Division, and Silence" throughout the country. He sued Dana for crimi-
nal libel, and again the editor had to answer for his relentless attacks
upon corruption. He was arrested in Philadelphia and held in $5,000 bail,
which he forfeited rather than stand trial there. The case was not ended
until December, 1882, when Kemble relinquished the suit.

During this period Asa Packer and Daniel J. Morrell invited Dana to
speak at the celebration of the centenary of American Independence. The
Sun printed the invitation and Dana's refusal on the ground that free
speech in Philadelphia was not safe, since the Pennsylvania laws did not
justify the publication of libels based on the truth. He advised these pa-
triotic men to "see to it that the guarantee of free speech, and free print-
ing, for the public good, be not postponed until the second Hundredth
Anniversary of American Independence; but that it be accomplished at
once." 95

Despite the Sun's untiring campaign against Grantism, the voters
re-elected Grant by an overwhelming vote. All Dana's endeavors for
four years seemed to have been in vain. The very people who had most
to lose voted to continue the orgy another four years. In a vein of wither-
ing sarcasm intended to show up the stupidity of the public by proving
the stupidity of their President, the Sun sharply criticized Grant's second
inaugural address : It had the merit of brevity but considering its quality,
should have been more brief. It consisted of disjointed sentences and
confused paragraphs, thrown together heterogenously, like a pudding
stone. His style was not worthy of an intelligent schoolboy ten years old.
But while the address was stupid it was patriotic. His opposition to a
large standing force, naval or military, smacked of statesmanship. Alto-
gether, the address read a good deal like the speech of a sovereign or
an Indian Chief who considered himself the father of the nation, and
imagined that the people derived their happiness and prosperity from
him. 96

The Sun was too pertinacious to give up its anti-Grant struggle, and
was soon actively engaged again in exposure. This time its blows were

95 Feb. 20, 1873.

96 Mar. 5, 1873.

"GRANTISM" 107

directed against the "back-pay-steal." The possibility of a rise in govern-
ment pay had been discussed previous to Grant's first election. 97 But not
until March, 1873, did Congress vote the President, Supreme Court,
Cabinet members, Senators and Representatives as well as other admin-
istrative officers an increase in pay for their services. The measure, intro-
duced by Butler, was made retroactive for two years in its application
to Congressmen.

Grant, Butler and Garfield were flayed by the Sun for their part in the
affair:

The man who is more responsible for the back -salary-robbery than anybody
else is President Grant. He has no moral tone nor any high sense of honor to
restrain him from openly making an urgent effort to have his own salary raised.
He knew just as well as Ben. Butler knew, that it could not be done without
corrupting members of Congress ; and the plainest and easiest methods of doing
this was to allow them to filch five thousand dollars apiece out of the treasury
and call it back pay. . . . But next to Gen. Grant the most culpable man in
Congress in connection with this intolerable swindle is Gen. Garfield of Ohio.
For he is the one man who could have prevented it ; and if he does not know
that he is thus guilty, he is the only man of any prominence in Congress, familiar
with the rules and orders of the House, who does not know it. 98

The Sun took the lead in the popular demand that the "back pay" be
returned to the treasury. In time the feeling in the country became
so strong that many Congressmen were forced to return the $5,000 they
had taken. On January 13, 1874, a bill repealed all the increases except
that of the President and Justices of the Supreme Court. Grant, the
"Great Grabster," the "worst criminal of all," still possessed his extra
salary, much to Dana's disgust.

To the indignant people, the Sun offered its old-fashioned remedy of
the ballot box. No man should be returned to Congress who had taken
part in this fraud, and the Sun published and republished its black list.
As Butler was eager for the Governorship of Massachusetts, the Sun
did all it could to prevent his election:

The life and career of Ben. Butler fitly illustrate Danton's maxim, "Audacity,
more audacity, always audacity. . . ." With it he has become a power in the
party which, while affecting to despise his vulgar practices, yet abjectly accepts
his leadership and bows humbly before his power. Hated by some, condemned

97 Nov. 16, 1868.

98 May IS, 1873.

108 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

by many, and distrusted by all, this bad man, with his crooked ways, foul
methods, distorted mind, and wicked heart, glories in these moral deformities,
flaunts them constantly before the public eye and traffics in them as political
merchandise . . . cowardly by nature, mercenary from habit, and destitute
of one ennobling quality or manly attribute to lift him up above these wretched
characteristics, he is today the leading candidate for the highest honor in en-
lightened and moral Massachusetts."

A public reaction against Grantism was apparent in the elections of
1874. At the October election in Ohio and Indiana the Democrats car-
ried both states. In New York, Samuel Tilden was chosen Governor by a
large majority, while the Democrats were triumphant in Pennsylvania
and Massachusetts. Elated by these results and predicting the impeach-
ment of Grant, the Sun said :

The indignation of the people as expressed through the ballot boxes yesterday
has shivered Grant's administration to atoms. The overthrow is complete and
terrific. . . .

It is impossible to enumerate the names of the great mass of hypocrites, ad-
venturers, and rogues which the work of Monday and Tuesday has put under
the sod never to rise again. 100

The "Salary Grab," despite public condemnation, proved only the
first of a new series of scandals. Secretary Bristow soon uncovered a
whiskey scandal, the ramifications of which were incredible. Distillers,
revenue officers, and high government officials in Washington had formed
a great ring, and became skillful in securing vast sums that belonged
to the Government. Dana stood behind Secretary Bristow on every point;
some of those nearer to him, including Grant, did not do as much. 101
The President's rapid loss of enthusiasm for the inquiry, a revelation that
some of the money illicitly procured had been used for his re-election,
and the complicity of Orville E. Babcock, his private secretary, seemed
to the Sun final proof of the President's guilt. The outcome of Bristow's
attempt to punish all the thieves did not satisfy Dana. He was most indig-
nant over Babcock's exoneration and his temporary restoration to his
place of favor in the White House. 10 -

A new scandal soon caught Dana's attention. William W. Belknap,

90 June 26, 1873.

100 Nov. 4, 1874.

301 Nevins, Allan, Hamilton Fish, 612; Hesseltinc, 378-388.

102 Oberholtzer, III, 150.

"GRANTISM'' 109

once held in respect by the Sun, "in comparison with his associates," 103
was found involved in the sale of post traderships. John S. Evans had
paid Caleb P. Marsh a stipulated sum of money to prevent him from
using influence with the Belknaps to deprive him of his valuable post
at Fort Sill in the Indian territory. In turn, Marsh paid one half of the
fee first to Mrs. Belknap and after her death to the Secretary himself.

"Grant has a Finger in the Pie/' 104 the Sun said. "The connection of
Grant himself with the scandalous traffic in post traderships is plain
enough. He has personally managed the business of blackmailing the
settlers and fleecing the soldiers." 105 Exactly how Grant personally man-
aged the business of blackmailing was neither explained nor proved,
but the effect of the vote to impeach Belknap was to weaken the Republi-
can party.

Blaine and the Mulligan Letters episode which followed close upon
the heels of the Belknap revelations was not as vigorously condemned in
the Sun as some of the other frauds. Nevertheless the Sun included it
among the scandals of Grantism. As Speaker of the House, Blaine had
involved himself in shady railroad transactions. To his discredit he
became little better than a broker of the Little Rock and Fort Smith
Railroad companies, profiting from the sale of bonds to his friends in
Maine. All went smoothly until the failure of the railroad required him
to make good the losses of his friends or meet severe criticism. Two
stronger railway companies took over the failing company and, it was
alleged, came to Blaine's aid financially, undoubtedly with expectation
of future legislative favors.

The Sun considered Blaine's early denials "lame and insincere" and
asked for an investigation. 100 By May 2, a committee of the Judiciary
was already collecting damaging facts. At this critical time, James Mulli-
gan entered the scene with certain incriminating correspondence carried
on between Blaine and Warren Fisher, Jr. Blaine attempted to suppress
the letters and for this act was heartily condemned in the Sun:

James G. Blaine succeeded Colfax as Speaker, and will soon follow him into
exile and disgrace. ... It is now certain that Blaine has been little else than

103 Feb. 23, 1870.

i 4 Mar. 7, 1876.

105 Mar. 19, 1876; cf. Hesseltine, 395-396; Oberholtzer, III, 164.

i May 2; 9, 1876.

110 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

a professional broker, a jobber in legislation, and a beneficiary of the great
lobby scheme. 107

The vindication given Elaine by his Republican associates, many of
whom had themselves been connected with fraud, disgusted Dana. When
Elaine was being considered for the next Presidential nomination, the
Sun burst forth:

There is such a logical propriety, such a fitness of things in fact, that it seems
almost providential. The Republican party is radically, thoroughly, hopelessly
corrupt and Mr. Elaine is just the same as his party. It has no moral sense and
he has no moral sense. . . . The Republican party and James Elaine are well
suited for each other. They are similar in their lives and their downfall should
not be divided. 108

Since the first appearance of Dana's Sun, complaints had been heard
against the white men's unchristian treatment of the Indians. Reserva-
tions had been laid out by the Government, but as the more adventurous
settlers moved toward the Pacific in search of gold or farmland they
were constantly hindered by warlike tribes that proved only a little less
cunning and treacherous than their foes. In January, 1869, Dana, be-
lieving Grant to be in sympathy with a bill passed by the House trans-
ferring the care of Indians from the Department of the Interior to the
War Department, supported the measure. 109

The Indians were not put under the War Department. To meet the
demands of humanitarian groups a commission of ten was appointed
by authority of Congress to secure a more just and humane treatment
of the Indian problem. The members of the commission, according to
the Sun, were "all eminent for business experience and integrity, and
some of them for special acquaintance with the wants of the Indians." 110
Two million dollars was appropriated for the joint use of the Commission
and the Secretary of the Interior to promote the civilization of the tribes
and maintain peace on the Western plains. 111 A number of important su-
perintendentships and agencies were given to Friends, who were known
to deal honestly and kindly with Indians. Upon the advice of the Commis-
sion, other religious sects were invited to share in the "enlightened"

107 June 5, 1876.

108 June 14, 1876; cf. Muzzey, David S., James G. Elaine.

109 Jan. 28, 1869.

110 June 5, 1871.

in Oberholtzer, III, 381.

"GRANTISM" 111

policy of Grant who, for a time, approved of this program.

Although the powers of the Commission were defined as only advisory,
several investigations were begun through its efforts, and several wars
averted or at least postponed. In facing this problem, the Sun was be-
tween the horns of a dilemma. It wished the Government to be fair with
the Indians, but it also wanted every opportunity for the white man. It
once remarked:

The existence of all the Indians that scalp and rob between the Missouri and
the mountains should not be thought of for a moment in comparison with the
importance to the civilized world of keeping the Pacific railroads perfectly safe
to passengers and to freight. 112

But a little later:

The effort now in progress in Washington to establish a territorial government
over what is called the Indian Nation, is simply a bold and direct step to tram-
pling these barriers flat down, and letting a flood of covetous borderers in, to get
by hook or by crook, by force or by fraud, the wonderful lands which have so
inflamed their lust. 113

It desired to preserve the national reputation for honesty and justice
toward the savages, and at the same time take over for the benefit of the
whites the surplus lands and resources of the Indians. This conflict in
attitude was revealed in such statements as, "Let the Government keep
the engagements of its treaties, let it protect the hunting ground of the
Indians, but let the gold and silver of the mountains be got out." 114

In 1870 Red Cloud and Spotted Tail, Sioux chiefs, visited the East to
protest against the usurpation of their territory in the Black Hills. At
Washington they learned that a treaty they had signed in the belief it
was a compact of friendship with the whites, was in reality an agreement
by the Indians to the passage of the Union Pacific Railroad through their
territory. The efforts to entertain the Indian chiefs lavishly that they
might return impressed with the White Man's power was scorned by the
Sun, which thus stated its opinion of our Indian policy:

Which shall prevail the civilized sentiment of the nation, or the barbarous
pleasure of savages too lazy to till the soil, too proud to change their hunter

112 Apr. 16, 1870.
us Apr. 27, 1870.
H4 Apr. 5,1870.

112 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

lives, too insolent to acknowledge the control of the Government? In behalf of
the public interest of the country, we demand that this most important ques-
tion be discussed and settled with other diplomacy and other influences than
strawberries and cream, garlanded with hot-house and open-air flowers. The
Sioux are in blood earnest. ... We pray Gen. Grant to spare us the humilia-
tion of any further effusion of ice cream and candy, upon the peril of a Sioux
outbreak against the Government's military posts of the Northern plains. 115

In October, 1870, Secretary Cox left the Department of the Interior,
and by January of 1872 members of the Indian Commission began to
hand in their resignations. An Indian Ring, whose chief was Perry Fuller,
was able to operate under Columbus Delano, the new Secretary. Long
before the condition of Indian affairs was a prominent issue, the Sun was
publishing interesting accusations. At one time the Ring bought thou-
sands of dollars worth of staples that the Government had appropriated
for the Indians for the price of a few beads and worthless trinkets. On
the sale of these staples to white settlers it made fine profits. 11 " Again, in
order to facilitate the construction of the Kansas Pacific Railroad, some
Indians who had recently settled in Kansas were moved to a less valuable
area in return for empty promises. 117 Money appropriated for the endow-
ment of a school for the benefit of a tribe of Ottawa Indians was used
by the trustees of the fund to build a white university. The Indian
Commission complained but received no co-operation from Delano, and
although Congress passed an act for the relief of the defrauded Indians
in June, 1872, little was done for them.

During its early era of Grant worship the Sun had treated the Indians
with the same intolerance and lack of understanding as did most people.
But as Grantism proceeded, the Sun reversed its policy. Whereas it had
urged their annihilation in 1868, it now declared that it would be the
extreme of inhumanity to put them in the hands of the War Department.
It would be difficult to prove that Dana had any real sympathy with the
Red Man, but he did enjoy exposing all possible frauds under Grant.
When Prof. O. C. Marsh, of Yale University, sent condemnatory reports
back from the Sioux country, the Sun lent its voice to a condemnation of
our "despicable" and "heinous" Indian policy. 118

Professor Marsh complained of the scandalous methods by which the

115 June 10, 1870.

116 July 24, 1872.

117 Nov. 21, 1872.

118 July 17, 1875.

"GRANTISM" 113

Ring contractors and agents managed to steal money and provisions
that Congress had voted for the subsistence of various tribes. Although
his specific charges referred only to the Red Cloud agency, he indicted
the entire Indian Ring. He addressed himself directly to the President
because of his distrust of the Secretary of the Interior. The Sun reported
that Delano and the Indian Commissioners at once "assailed the motives
of Professor Marsh and the other accusers" and attempted to discredit
their testimony instead of investigating the alleged abuses; also that
the Administration was trying to quiet the scandal. A commission of five
was sent to investigate the various agencies during the summer of 1875.
They took great pains to exculpate Delano, but in spite of all their ef-
forts were forced to advise a great number of reforms as well as the
removal of the Red Cloud agency. Before their report could be com-
pleted, Delano resigned.

There were other frauds of less historical importance, to which the
Sun gave space and attention. For most of these it blamed Grant, directly
or indirectly. It accused Attorney-General Williams of malfeasance in
office and of furnishing his house at the expense of the United States. 119
It featured the Department of Interior as the center of dishonest transac-
tions ever since Grant had become President, the Safe Burglary con-
spiracy in Washington as an example of injustice to innocents, and the
Customs House of New York for its notorious mismanagement. It called
Bancroft Davis, Assistant Secretary of State, a "bribetaker"; pictured
Orvill Grant, the President's brother, as always devising ways to get
rich quick; 1L ' and charged Jesse R. Grant, the President's father, with
having had a hand in many a bad deal. 11 ' 1

In 1870, the Sun tried to impugn Grant's integrity and loyalty to John
A. Rawlins:

Can it be true that the subscription of $1,000 which Gen. Grant made last
year to the fund for the family of the late John A. Rawlins was not paid by the
President, but by James Fisk, Jr., with whom he was at that time on terms of
remarkable intimacy? 122

In 1871, it demanded that the President rid himself of this blot upon his
honor and pay back to Jay Gould the one thousand dollars paid on his

5, 1874.
12 Mar. 30, 1875.

121 Mar. 23, 1872.

1 22 Aug 1, 1870; Hesseltine refutes this slander, Grant, 215.

114 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

subscriptions to the Rawlins fund. 123 During the mud-slinging campaign
of 1872 the Sun went to lower depths of vilification. $12,000 was missing
from the Rawlins fund, of which Grant was a trustee. Was it through
some act of the President's "lost in the great Gold speculation"? 124 Only
Dana's hatred for Grant can explain these unjustified libels.

The idea of a third term for Grant and his family was extremely dis-
tressing to the Sun. In 1872 it began to warn the people of Grant's inten-
tion and was still discussing the heinous possibility in 1880. It main-
tained that a third term of Grant meant the reversal of the fundamental
ideas, doctrines and motives that had made the nation great and pros-
perous. It meant the annexation of Mexico, Central America, and the
West Indies, and the construction of an interoccanic canal with the
maintenance of a large standing army. It meant a military despot, a king
and a ruling family. It meant another era of universal jobbery, colossal
stealing, riotous living, social depravity, and the complete deterioration
of public morale. And if Grant were to buy, beg or steal his way once
again to the Presidential chair, the Sun said, the country might as well
make up its mind to have him for ever and ever, for he would never get
out again.

123 Apr. 12, 1871.

124 Oct. 14; 1872.

CHAPTER V

SENSATIONAL ATTACKS OF THE SUN

"MR. GREELEY never puts himself forward, never seeks office; but woe
has befallen those who have overlooked the fact that while he never
sought place, his natural modesty could be so overcome as to induce
him to accept it." 1 Thus wrote the Sun when early in 1868 it began trying
to advance Horace Greeley to governmental office. With never-ceasing
effort, Dana supported him for Secretary of State, Postmaster General,
Minister to England, Minister to China, Minister to Spain, President of
a Commission to San Domingo, member of the Alabama Claims Com-
mission, United States Senator from Virginia, Congressman in New York
State, Governor of New York State, City Comptroller, State Prison In-
spector, Vice-President and President of the United States.

Dana's sincerity in his continuous championship of Greeley was, and
is still, a matter of dispute. But the multiplicity of the offices proposed
and the peculiarity of the Sun's support left no doubt that Dana en-
joyed a joke at Greeley 's expense. Correspondents and contemporary
newspapers accused the Sun of malice. Greeley himself was tortured by
the Sun's constant attentions and begged his friends to refrain from
nominating him for office.

The Sun's attitude toward Greeley during the Presidential campaign
of 1872 2 gives support to the story that Dana once said, "No citizen
in this town can go to bed at night with the certainty that he can fore-
tell the Sun's editorial course the next morning on any given topic." 3
At the same time that it praised Greeley, it published editorials con-
demning him for trivialities. It withdrew its support from him and then
returned it, offering some previously contradicted reason for its former
reluctance to support him. As the Nation remarked, it used every known
mode of recommending a candidate, to the point of urging Irishmen to
vote for a man who had once boarded with an Irish family, paying $2.50

1 Apr. 30, 1868

2 O'Brien, Frank M , The Story of the Sun, 296, 428-430.
8 John A. Cockerill, Cosmopolitan; Oct 1892.

116 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

for board. 4 Some of its "modes of recommendation" were obviously in-
tended to bring Greeley into ridicule.

In the New York State elections of 1869, the Sun advocated Greeley
for Comptroller, calling him the Independent candidate of the Inde-
pendent press. In reality Greeley was nominated through spite by the
State Committee, which resented the Tribune's exposure of corruption
among Republicans in the Assembly. 5 On October 30th, the Sun devoted
every editorial on its page to the election of Greeley; there were forty in
all. It prepared special ballots for Democrats to facilitate a split vote,
giving the Comptrollership to Greeley. It maintained that it paid for
advertising him in his own paper, offering as proof a copy of the re-
ceipted bill from the Tribune* Finally, it gave fifteen "Reasons Why
Mr. Greeley Should be Controller." Republicans, Democrats, Aboli-
tionists, Secessionists, and every other possible economic, social or
national group were all appealed to with equal zeal and plausibility. 7
This jesting appeal might have elected Greeley had each group to whom
the candidate was recommended read only the sentence written for its
eyes.

Unabashed by Greeley's defeat, the Sun said: "With more time and a
thorough organization, we could have elected him." Today we nominate
Horace Greeley for the next Governor of New York. 8 Two days later
appeared the announcement: "The nomination of Mr. Greeley for
Governor is heartily responded to in many quarters. Democrats as well
is Republicans, and men of no party, are for running him and electing
lim. The workingmen are for it. The young men are for it. The Germans
ire for it. The Independent Press is for it. And it will be done! " Simul-
aneously the Sun urged the Democratic party to nominate William M.
Tweed as his opponent !

To the dismay of party managers, the movement to nominate Greeley
or governor gained strength. Influences that had supported him for
itrategic reasons only were withdrawn, and it was intimated that Grant
referred Stewart L. Woodford. 9 In these circumstances the Sun changed
ront and suggested instead that Greeley be made State Prison Inspector.

4 Nov. 4, 1869.

6 Alexander, D. S., A Pol. Hist, of the State of New York, III 225-227

6 Nov. 11, 1869.

7 Oct. 12, 1869.

8 Nov. 4, 1869.

8 Alexander, III, 237.

SENSATIONAL ATTACKS OF THE SUN 117

"It is true he has been mentioned as a candidate for governor," said
the Sun, "but such a nomination is out of the question." As a candidate for
prison inspector, "all Republicans may rely on that noble spirit of self
sacrifice which has marked his whole political career, for his acceptance
of the trust." 10

After the nomination of Woodford, the Sun pretended to be incensed,
declaring that Greeley had been shamefully treated by Grant and the
Republican party. "The defeat of Horace Greeley at Saratoga astonishes
many people, and no one more than the distinguished victim himself. . . .
We think there has been double dealing in the slaughter of the philoso-
pher of Chappaqua in the house of his friends." n The Sun asserted
that Greeley despised the Administration and had been driven to write
an editorial rebuking Grant for his part in the nominations at Saratoga
and demanding an apology. When Greeley replied in the Tribune, the
Sun reprinted his rebuttal under the title "The Republican Elephant." 12

During this period, the Sun kept before the public certain defects in
Greeley's character, which it either pretended to correct by persuasion,
or pardoned with heavy irony. It feigned solicitude concerning his pro-
clivity for swearing, trusting that he would soon begin to resist the evil
within himself. "Why should a good man like Horace Greeley be habitu-
ally a profane swearer?" ir? the Sun inquired. Depicting him as the victim
of insincere flatterers, loose impostors, and sentimental swindlers, it
showed great concern for his indiscreet association with "Free Lovers,"
who, according to the Sun, "for the last few years [have] made the
Tribune their headquarters." 14 It forgave Greeley for allowing his desti-
tute uncle to die in a Wisconsin poorhouse 15 and praised him for having
made Macaulay a Lord. 10

The Sun never doubted Greeley's honesty and related an incident in
which a politician slipped a thousand dollar check into a pocket of the
famous coat: "he immediately paraded it before the public, and said he
wondered what it was for." 17 Yet the Sun professed fear that his political
activity might arouse suspicion and constantly called upon him to come

30 Sept. 6, 1870.

11 Sept. 9, 1870.

12 Sept. 29, 1870.
is May 7, 1870.
n Apr. 19, 1870.
is July 1, 1870.
10 Dec. 17, 1869.
17 Dec. 16, 1870.

118 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

out in the open and declare himself guiltless of corruption. On April 7,
1870, Greeley replied in the Tribune. His letter showed extreme irritation
at Dana's persecution and reaffirmed his political integrity.

The Sun's campaign to make Greeley President began in 1868 and
continued without abatement until November, 1871. During this inter-
val, it announced that since Greeley despised Grant (for if he said he
didn't he was a liar) he was "himself in the field." His tour through the
West in 1870 was reported as "Mr. Greeley 's Bold Stroke for the Presi-
dency." 18

While Dana was giving Greeley this kind of support, an editorial
appeared urging the Democrats to nominate Tweed for President. Thus
for the second time Greeley and Tweed were put on the same level in the
Sun's estimation. It printed the following box at the head of its editorial
columns. 19

FOR PRESIDENT

FARMERS' AND MECHANICS' CANDIDATE
THE GREAT AND GOOD

USEFUL H. GREELEY

OF
Texas and New York

The Lawrence Journal of Kansas wrote: " The New York Sun, whose
editor hates Greeley and always shows it by mock praise, hoists his name
at the head of its column.' " Dana replied, "How does the Lawrence
Journal know that the editor of the Sun 'hates Greeley'? In what way
was our hatred ever manifested? Does it show hatred of Mr. Greeley that
we bring him out as the Farmers' and Mechanics' candidate, and daily
advocate his nomination and election?" 2()

As the presidential year approached the Sun dropped Greeley as its

18 Oct. II, 1870.

19 July 13, 1871.

20 July 4, 1871.

SENSATIONAL ATTACKS OF THE SUN 119

candidate. Two years before a Liberal Republican group had originated
in the West, and increasing unrest was evident among all Republicans
who abhorred the corruption of the Grant Administration. If the liberal
elements were able to choose a candidate acceptable to the Democrats,
Grant might be defeated. As editor of the Tribune, Greeley had spent
his life opposing the Democracy. But, by signing Jefferson Davis's bond
and preferring secession of the Southern States to war, he had earned
the distrust of most Republicans, while gaining few friends in the South.
"If the Republic is to be saved from corruption and robbery," the Sun
wisely concluded, "the work must be done by sharper remedies and more
heroic treatment; and we say it with regret the National Reformers
must rally around some other Presidential candidate than Horace Gree-
ley." 21

In finding a candidate who could rally divergent economic and politi-
cal elements, Dana found the tariff a major stumbling block. While
regular Republicans were for high tariffs, there was a popular demand
for lower duties and the independent anti-Grant Republicans were
largely free traders. Furthermore, a platform had to be drawn up that
Democrats could endorse. As a way around the problem, the Sun soon
suggested Lyman Trumbull for President, a prudent man with a few
theoretical ideas favoring free trade, and Greeley, a high-tariff man, for
Vice-President. "To nominate two such men together," the Sun said,
"is to recognize in the most satisfactory manner the fact that while the
tariff needs reforming, high duties must still be maintained." 22

Two weeks later the Sun reversed its position and announced that
Greeley was the strongest candidate for the Liberal Reformers. It
explained: "The only ground on which, at one time, we felt inclined to
prefer some other candidate to Mr. Greeley was the apprehension that
he might ultimately be led to support Gen. Grant." 23 The preservation of
a high-tariff policy must have outweighed other considerations. In an
effort to conciliate free traders, the Sun remarked that "any crochets
which the President may have in his head on the subject are of little more
practical importance than the color of his hair." 24 And when Greeley re-
ceived the nomination of the Cincinnati convention, the Sun declared,
"We have done our duty in bringing him forward and making him a

21 Nov 28, 1871.

22 Mar. 11, 1872.

23 Mar. 29, 1872.

24 Ibid.

120 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

candidate. It only remains for the people to do theirs and elect him." L>5
The "office-holders/' "personal friends," and "family relations" met
in Philadelphia on June 5th to nominate Grant for a second term. There
was only one delegate who objected, so the Sun reported, and, "as one of
Grant's supporters said to Grant, What business has he here?' He had
no business there, of course; for it was not a meeting of consultation
but a conclave to record a decree." Grant was nominated by a unanimous
vote. One ballot decided the contest for the vice-presidential nomination.
The Sun thought the convention selected Henry Wilson "to spite Mr.
Sumner." 20 Wilson was later dubbed the "Know-Nothing" candidate,
and the Sun used the opportunity to play upon race antagonism during
the campaign.

The Sun argued that the Democrats would decide the election when
they met in Baltimore. If they endorsed Greeley they could probably
defeat Grant, whereas if they chose another candidate, Grant's chances
were vastly improved. Admitting that Greeley's nomination was dis-
tasteful to Democrats, the Sun urged them to consider whether the
perpetuation of the present corrupt dynasty was not the evil of greater
magnitude? 27 The Democratic convention contained many Southern
Democrats of the old school, victimized by carpetbag rule and touched by
Greeley's warm sympathy. These men carried the day and the Liberal
Republican nominations were endorsed. The Sun declared:

We are now going to have a square contest. No side issues and no third
candidate will interfere with the great question whether or not the people ap-
prove of Grant and his system of family and military government and general
plunder. If they like Grant and his peculiarities a majority of them will vote
for him ; if not, they will vote for Greeley. 28

Before the "square contest" got underway, third party movements
had begun to appear. In February the Labor Reformers nominated
Judge David Davis, whom the Sun considered unqualified for important
executive functions. 29 After Judge Davis had refused the nomination, it
said, "Why don't they take up Horace Greeley, the Woodchopper of
Chappaqua? He is not only a working man himself, but has been for

25 May 4, 1872.

26 June 7, 1872.

27 May 9, 1872.

28 July 11, 1872.

29 Feb. 24, 1872.

SENSATIONAL ATTACKS OF THE SUN 121

many years identified with the elevation of Labor." 30 The candidate of
the Prohibition Party was James Black of Pennsylvania. The Sun
ur^ed this group to support the "teetotaller," Horace Greeley, while it
published, at their request, "a red-hot manifesto" in which the accusation
of gross drunkenness was at intervals renewed against Grant. 81 Susan B.
Anthony issued a circular inviting women to vote for Grant. In answer,
the Sun said, "Oh, Susan, Susan, how could you go and do such a thing?
Don't you know that Grant has never done anything to enfranchise
women, and doesn't believe in woman suffrage, and that he thinks of you
and your ideas only as a bore?" 32

From the outset much dissatisfaction with their candidate existed
among Liberal Republicans and Democrats. Shortly after the Cincin-
nati convention a group of two hundred leading Independents met at
Steinway Hall to protest against Greeley 's nomination. However, be-
cause some of them believed it of first importance to defeat Grant, they
did not make any new nominations. 33 A second group, including Edward
Atkinson, William Cullen Bryant, Parke Godwin, and Oswald Otten-
dorfer, met at the Fifth Avenue Hotel and nominated their own Presiden-
tial ticket with William Groesbeck and Frederick Olmstead as candi-
dates. The Sun said:

They are opposed to Grant and opposed to Greeley. They are dissatisfied with
the Cincinnati platform and hostile to that set-up at Philadelphia; and they
are determined not to compromise their own integrity by voting for men they do
not like, or seeming to approve of principles which are not theirs.

The Sun was gratified to announce Olmstead's refusal of their nomina-
tion for Vice-President. It predicted that Groesbeck would also refuse
to stand as the free trader's candidate, for the reason that "in their
exclusive devotion to their own intellectual conceptions they do not
apprehend the vital quality and reach of the issues to be decided in the
election." 34 Judge Brinckerhoff of Ohio published a letter stating he
would vote for neither the "congenital stupidity of Grant nor the pre-
tentious and meddling non-wisdom of Greeley." 35 Gov. Henry A. Wise
of Virginia had already announced that if the "woodchopper" were

<> July 4, 1872.
si Aug. 18,1872.
^ July 22, 1872.
so June 1? 1872 .

34 June 24, 1872.

35 July 1, 1872.

122 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

nominated by the Democrats he would take the stump for Grant. 36

The Sun blamed most of the anti-Greeley feeling on the Democratic
party. Its work was said to be done with sluggish indifference to matters
of pressing necessity, and with considerable incapacity; while charges
of bad faith were not wanting. On August 31, Dana said, there was rea-
son to fear that the Grant managers were getting the better of the Na-
tional Democratic Committee. He advised Augustus Schell, "titular head
of the Committee," to wake up and attend to his duties before it was
too late.

Not the tariff, civil service reform, or the Southern question, accord-
ing to the Sun, presented the real issue. It was first and foremost a con-
test to defeat Grant. Once Greeley had received the nomination, al-
though Dana really believed he was not fit to be President, and said so
later, he supported him with mingled praise and ridicule. Editorials, os-
tensibly in his support, dealt with such subjects as Greeley's devotion
to "an old dried up cow" which he kept on his farm for sentimental rea-
sons; 37 his recent moral reform in regard to his profanity; :i8 Grant's
unwarranted abuse of the architect of the Republican party; and
Greeley's compassion in signing Jefferson Davis's bond. 39 The Sun ap-
pealed to Greeley's admirers to raise him a bronze statue in Printing
House Square. 40

The North Carolina elections in August presaged the downfall of
Greeley. But Dana's championship of Greeley lasted to the end. On
November 1 the Sun rebuked the contemporary press for its attacks upon
Greeley. After a long illness Mrs. Greeley had died:

While there is mourning in the home of Horace Greeley as the stricken
man weeps the loss of his wife, and the children for the mother they will know
no more, cannot the malignity of partisan hatred and falsehood pause for a
moment? Beside that unclosed coffin how brutal, how revolting, some of the
recent caricatures must seem to everyone with a human and not a fiendish
heart. 41

During the campaign Greeley had expended his last reserves of strength
in touring the country and making speeches. The financial affairs of the

36 July 2,1872.
87 May 10, 1872.

38 Aug. 30, 1872.

39 Aug. 1,1872.

40 July 17, 1872.
" Nov. 1, 1872.

SENSATIONAL ATTACKS OF THE SUN 123

Tribune were in a pitiable state and debts were harassing him. He was
still stricken by the death of his wife when he was defeated at the polls.
These disasters combined to break his health and spirit. The Sun gave
daily reports of his condition until November 30th when it announced
his death. On December 5th Dana published his obituary:

The mortal remains of Horace Greeley were interred yesterday. It was a
scene of public mourning. The whole city shared in the funeral ceremonies. Our
people always seemed to cherish toward Mr. Greeley a warmer personal regard
than toward any other distinguished citizen. For more than forty years he had
lived among us a most conspicuous person; and now that death has followed
so swiftly upon his defeat as a candidate for the highest office, and that his
memorable career has closed with a tragic catastrophe, this feeling is warmed
into a tender and respectful affection which forms his best eulogium. . . .

There have been journalists who as such, strictly speaking, have surpassed
him. Minds not devoted to particular doctrines, not absorbed in the advocacy
of cherished ideas, in a word minds that believe little and aim only at the
passing success of a day may easily excel one like his in the preparation of
a mere newspaper. Mr. Greeley was the antipode of all such persons. He was
always absolutely in earnest. His convictions were intense; he had that peculiar
courage, most precious in a great man, which enables him to adhere to his own
line of action despite the excited appeals of friends and menaces of variable pub-
lic opinion; and his constant purpose was to assert his principles, to fight for
them, and present them to the public in a way most likely to give them the hold
upon other minds which they had upon his own. . . .

Horace Greeley delighted to be a maker of newspapers, not so much for the
thing itself, though to that he was sincerely attached, as for the sake of pro-
moting doctrines, ideas, and theories in which he was a believer ; and his personal
ambition, which was very profound and never inoperative, made him wish to be
Governor, Legislator, Senator, Cabinet Minister, President, because such eleva-
tion seemed to afford the clearest possible evidence that he himself was ap-
preciated and the cause he espoused had gained the hearts of the people. How
incomplete, indeed, would be the triumph of any set of principles if their chief
advocate and promoter were to go unrecognized and unhonored! . . , 42

Beautifully written, critical but generous, this tribute, occupying one
entire editorial page, for the first time elevated Greeley in the Sun to
the place of respect which he deserved. Yet Dana could not let the occa-
sion pass without recalling what he believed was Greeley's omnivorous
appetite for office. Was this, perhaps, the way in which Dana justified
the Sun's constant advocacy of Greeley for office? No one who read the
Sun faithfully could believe it was not malicious.

42 Dec. 5, 1872.

124 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

After Greeley's death, a statue of him was considered more seriously
than it had been during his life. When the Louisville Courier- Journal
asked how Greeley should be represented as a writer, a farmer, or a
printer the Sun replied: "Our own idea would be to have the statue
represent Dr. Greeley just as he appeared when addressing the Chamber
of Commerce in Louisville, on finance, on September last. The only real
difficulty is making up the subscription." 43 As the movement took hold
upon the minds of the citizens, an editorial appeared requesting all
people who had paid money to call at the Sun office and get it back.
"Mr. Dana declines to serve on a newly formed committee to raise
another fund for the erection of such a statue." 44 Dana had tormented
Greeley with his plan to build a statue of him while he lived; now he
refused to take part in its erection, although he knew it would have
pleased Greeley to have been so remembered.

It was a very "painful" experience for the Sun to learn who had caused
Greeley 's insanity:

One of the most painful and affecting circumstances in the last days of
Horace Greeley is the fact that the blow which seems to have finally overthrown
his reason was struck by his own assistant in the conduct of the Tribune, . . .
Mr. Whitelaw Reid, who had been intrusted with the control of that journal
while its chief editor was engaged in the Presidential canvass. 45

The Sun then copied from the Tribune the article entitled "Crumbs of
Comfort" that had caused Greeley's "loss of reason." It was, in sub-
stance, an expression of gratitude that needy office-seekers would no
longer infest the offices of the Tribune. With very bad taste, Reid had
permitted the publication of the statement:

It is a source of profound satisfaction to us that office seekers will keep
aloof from a defeated candidate who has not influence enough at Washington or
Albany to get a sweeper appointed under the Sergeant-at-Arms, or a deputy-
sub-assistant temporary clerk into the paste-pot section of the folding room. 46

According to the Sun this article had been read by Greeley with horror
and disgust, and very soon after he had lost his reason. Greeley's in-
sanity seemed to weigh heavily upon Dana's mind. A few years later

43 Nov. 25, 1872.

44 Dec. 18, 1872.

45 Nov. 30, 1872.

46 Nov. 30, 1872; cf. Oberholtzer, E. P., History of the United States, III, 67-68.

SENSATIONAL ATTACKS OF THE SUN 125

in condemning the Times for not having supported Greeley, the Sun
wrote:

Why it is hardly too much to say that if the Times had united with the Sun
and gone for Greeley gone for him early and gone for him strong we might
have had an insane man for the President, to be sure, but we would not have
had Grant. 47

Greeley and Whitelaw Reid were not the only men in the Tribune
office whom the Sun attacked. John Russell Young had been managing
editor before Reid. He was a young man whom Greeley had chosen for
his ability as an editorial writer. He was twenty-seven years old with a
fine future in journalism before him, when the Sun changed his status
from that of an admired journalist to a "Sneak News-Thief."

On April 27, 1869, it published a sensational story of Young's phe-
nomenal rise to the managing editorship of the Tribune and four columns
of incriminating exhibits. The gist of the scandal was that Young had
abused the privileges of the Associated Press by telegraphing dispatches
that were received by the Tribune to the Morning Post, a small paper
in Philadelphia of which he was the proprietor. He had been discovered
by means of fake dispatches which appeared only in the two papers
and a personally signed letter enclosing a cable dispatch to the Post.
These dispatches and letter, according to the Sun, proved that he had
"fleeced and bled" numerous persons, sold the columns of the Tribune,
and betrayed Horace Greeley.

The day the story appeared, Young started a libel suit for $100,000
damages. Two days later, the Sun informed its readers that this libel suit
had increased the circulation "not only of our blood but of our journal,
deeply interests our readers and delights our counsel." 48 It reprinted
the evidence in part and in full. After Young had been driven "almost
crazy" he dropped the suit.

The Sun demanded that Greeley dismiss Young from the Tribune.
Instead, Greeley wrote an article exonerating Young and insisting that
the Sun's charges were not proved. 49 He declared he had read the evidence
on which the Sun based its statements four days before they appeared in
print. 50 If Greeley felt that Young had erred he evidently was not con-
vinced the crime warranted his dismissal. Within a month, however,

47 Jan. 22, 1874.

48 Apr. 29, 1869.

49 May 3, 1869.
60 May 17, 1869.

126 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

Young left the Tribune. 51 Sun readers gathered he had been "kicked
out" for stealing news. 52

For over a decade the Sun continued to persecute Young, making his
friends appear to share its contempt and warning others against him.
Greeley was quoted as having said Young had "sold" him out, a state-
ment he angrily denied. 53 And Bennett, who had appointed Young
Herald correspondent at Vienna, was told that "no journal, no matter
how right it is, can stand the connection with it of such characters as
this sneak news thief." 54 It always spoke of the New York Standard,
started by Young, as "Thieves' Own," maintaining that "of course it was
a Grant paper, and bitterly opposed to Horace Greeley, whom Young
robbed while in his confidence and afterward continually maligned." 5r>
"Our design in publishing the facts," the Sun said in 1 880, was "to protect
our own property against sneak thieves, and to prevent other possible
robberies of the kind, by making punishment of this individual thief
notorious." 5G

Such journalistic mudslinging was a recognized sport in those days.
Certain newspapers regularly vied with each other in their attempt to
publish the most discreditable information about their competitors, fill-
ing their editorial columns with such scandal often to the exclusion of
important political or educational news. The chief offenders included the
Sun, Herald, World, and Tribune. Although the Evening Post, Times,
and Nation were often critical, it would be impossible to find in them the
abuse in which the others indulged. "Liar," "thief," "degenerate," "slan-
derer," were hurled relentlessly back and forth in a manner that the
present-day public would not long endure. The newspaper staff seemed
to enjoy the battles as much as the reading public.

They quarreled frequently over the Associated Press dispatches.
Several, including the Sun and the Tribune, represented the news as com-
ing from their own special correspondent. Arguments ensued in which
each called the other a "liar" for pretending that it had a special cor-
respondent of its own. The Nation became so disgusted that it published
an article rebuking their boasting and lying. 57

51 Presumably May 15th. See Sun, May 22, 1869; also May 18, 19, 20.

52 May 27, 28, 1869.

53 Apr. 8, 1870.

64 May 2, 1873.

65 July 11, 1872.
60 June 10, 1880.
57 Oct. 20, 1870.

SENSATIONAL ATTACKS OF THE SUN 127

Another theme of dispute was circulation. The Sun printed weekly
reports of its sales at the top of its first editorial column and demanded
that the others do likewise. If they refused, it said they were afraid; if
they complied, it said they lied. It maintained that, while the circulation
of the Sun increased, there was a noticeable corresponding decrease in
the Herald 58 and the Times.

The Evening Post, long edited by William Cullen Bryant and taken
over by E. L. Godkin in 1881, and the Nation the Sun characterized as
well meaning but not faultless. There was discrepancy between the
Posfs's news stories and editorials. Said the Sun:

The totally depraved person who edits the news columns of the Evening
Post is getting the better of the stern moralist who runs the editorial page of
our esteemed contemporary. We merely state the facts. The stern moralist
protests in vain, while the other gentleman seizes with avidity and prints with
exultation the revolting details of the London Scandal, as fast as they come by
cable. Can nothing be done to spare the stern moralist this annoyance? Yes,
some common friend if friend or acquaintance they have in common might
arrange for a personal interview between the generalissimo of the news col-
umns and the commander-in-chief of the ethical department, with a view to
a more harmonious management of the two establishments during tidal waves
of foreign filth. Failing in this, the stern moralist might retain his old friend
and former benefactor, Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, to apply to the courts for
an injunction against the publication of immoral matter on the licentious first
page of the Evening Post. 60

Dana's dislike of Godkin is not difficult to understand. In their earlier
days they had views in common and Godkin attended Dana's evening
receptions writing that he "was glad to be invited." G1 But their charac-
ters developed very differently. Intellectual equals and both sensitive to
the evils of their era, each met them in his own way Godkin on principle,
which made him impregnable; Dana by opportunism, which made him
vulnerable, and with bitterness that warped his social vision. Dana knew
that Godkin occupied an enviable position of influence and respect, but
maintained that he was not taken seriously by men of scientific knowl-
edge, that his editorial authority was treated as a joke, and that the

58 Aug. 5, 1869.

M) Oct. 11, 1869

00 Sept. 9, 1885; Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens, 197: J. S. Seymour and Henry J,
Linn, publisher and managing editor, "wanted to build up circulation and business by print-
ing all the news "

61 Rollo Ogden, Life and Letters of Edwin. IflWence Godkin, I, 168.

128 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

Evening Post was held in contempt. He said that all cultivated persons
regarded Godkin as a "stupendous humbug/' a "systematic plagiarist"
with a "congenital defect" that his friend and fellow reformer, Theodore
Roosevelt, had correctly diagnosed when he said: "I do not believe the
editor of the Evening Post has the wish or the power to tell the truth.' " 2
Dana's own position was regarded by many of his contemporaries as in-
ferior to Godkin's. 63 His power lay in a bitter and facile pen.

The Sun was also conscious of the authority wielded by the "priggish
and self complacent" Nation, having discovered as early as 1869 that
"The Nation itself is unsurpassed in its malignity toward politicians who
do not enjoy the sympathy of its select circle of men of culture and influ-
ence." 64 In 1881, after Godkin had become the editor of the Evening
Post and the Nation had been sold to Henry Villard to be made into a
weekly supplement of the Post, the Sun said:

Well, we say it with a sort of disappointment, the Evening Post is heavier,
less original, less entertaining, less readable, than it was before.

And our snappish, conceited, semi-independent, well-informed, literary philo-
sophical and creditable old crony, the Nation, has gone out forever !

There are some changes which are not improvements. Let us devote a moment
or so to our regrets! 65

When the "False Reporting Tribune" had been published by Greeley,
the Sun had charged it with "wilfully misrepresenting" news. After
Greeley's death, Dana pined for the good old days when the Tribune
had for its editor a man of brains and integrity. 66 He accused the Tribune
of being a "stock jobbing organ." Jay Gould and the young editor Reid,
whom the Sun considered utterly incompetent, "banded together to de-
fraud the public" ; 67 and Reid was called a "stoolpigeon," a title as malig-
nant as the term "sneak news-thief" applied to his predecessor. Reid
was characterized as a young fop, a hireling with a brilliant mind that
was neither capable of direction nor competent in a business world,
without practical sense. The collapse of the Tribune was often pre-
dicted. 68

02 Mar. 12, 1890.

03 Personal interview with distinguished editor of contemporary magazine.

64 July 12,1869.

65 July 22, 1881.
60 June 26, 1881.

07 Jan. 19, 1876; cf. Oberholtzer, III, 67-68.
68 Apr. 27, 1876.

SENSATIONAL ATTACKS OF THE SUN 129

The New York Times, according to the Sun in 1889, "fears to face the
truth and hates the facts as an Anarchist hates soap and water." 69 This
was only one of the results of its having a British editor, Louis J. Jen-
nings, with unpatriotic ideas which he forced upon the public. His paper,
the Sun charged, was the organ of the Gold Ring during the lamentable
Black Friday incident. 70 It was biased and unfair in its charges concern-
ing Elaine and the Mulligan Letters episode/ 1 and was a liar when it
claimed the Sun did not begin the exposure of the Tweed Ring. 72 When
the Times reduced its price in 1885 from four cents to two and came into
closer competition with the Sun, the latter paper hesitated out of "jour-
nalistic courtesy" to point out the mistakes. In May of that year, it wrote
what it called "A Few Plain Words":

When the Times reduced its price from four cents to two, it thought it
necessary to lower at the same time the moral standard observed in the selec-
tion of matter for its news columns. It began to cater not accidentally and
episodically, but steadily and in a line of deliberate policy, to the salacious
tastes of those readers who are the better pleased the oftener their newspaper
crosses the boundary separating decency from literature of the sort which the
statutes prohibit and punish in the interest of public morals. . . .

The files of the Times, from the date of its reduction of price, presents a most
revolting and at the same time most melancholy spectacle of perverted enter-
prise, and of self-respect sacrificed to the greeds of immediate gain. Our con-
temporary scoured the country for scandals of the vilest description. It disfig-
ured pages that had previously been comparatively clean with the columns and
columns of so-called news that no self-respecting newspaper in New York would
dream of printing. This is a matter of record and indisputable fact, not merely
of opinion. . . . T3

In contrast to the " Disreputable" Times, the New York World was,
in the Sun's opinion, "dilapidated," "stupid," and "tedious." Under
Manton Marble it was reported to be dying, and later, under Joseph
Pulitzer, it was described as in decay. It manufactured debates in the
Senate, and was the friend of Cuban slavery. In defense the World wrote:
"The Sun has no moral character." And received the reply, "No, the Sun
has not the moral character of a bastard swindler." 74

The Herald according to Dana was equally without principle or

o June 20, 1889.
TO Oct. 12, 1869.
7i Aug. 2, 1884.
"Mar. 27, 1872.
73 May 11, 1885.
Mar. 2, 1870.

130 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

character, and whenever its editor, J^mes Gordon Bennett, Jr., left the
city, the Sun sent hurried calls for him to return and stop the gushings
of his paper. In 1879 it suggested that it would support Bennett for
Mayor if he would come home in time. 75 Other papers and their editors in
New York City and throughout the country received similar attention
in the columns of the Sun, notably Gebrge W. Childs of the Philadelphia
Ledger. His middle name, the Sun insisted, was "Washington," and
to him it attributed all the absurdly sentimental obituary verse car-
ried in his paper. Another victim was Richard Smith of the Cincinnati
Gazette, known to the Sun as "Deacon," and for years depicted as a
"truly great man" who was constantly being betrayed by his unscrupu-
lous partners. As it happened, these partners had at some time offended
Dana and this was his method of retaliating. 70

The treatment given by the Sun to Henry Ward Beecher, pastor of
Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, and the "Free-Lovers" with whom he
was supposed to have kept company, justifies criticism of the Sun as sen-
sational and circulation seeking. In the sixties, religion was one of the
most popular controversial subjects in America and the Sun, like the
Herald under the elder Bennett, was clever enough to cater to the in-
terest in religion. Dana was fairly tolerant toward unorthodox opinions
and took no exception to the liberal views of Beecher. If he preached
against hell, brimstone, and eternal damnation and presented God as a
spiritual conception, the Sun replied:

He is not so much leading public opinion as indicating the current in which
he has had the sagacity to perceive it is already running. As it has happened
many times before in the history of intellectual progress, he comes in at a late
date to profit by the labors of men who have preceded him, and who have suf-
fered martyrdom for prematurely promulgating the views he now advocates
with toleration if not applause. 77

Beecher first became Dana's target for attack when he officiated at
the marriage of the divorced Mrs. Daniel McFarland and Albert D.
Richardson. The Sun's attitude may have been affected by the fact that
Mrs. McFarland and Richardson were both able writers for the Tribune.
The scandal was intensified because the divorced husband shot Richard-
son in the Tribune office, and Richardson elected to marry Mrs.

7C Apr. 9, 1879.

76 Mitchell, E. P., Memoirs of an Editor, 116-117.

77 Oct. 22, 1870.

SENSATIONAL ATTACKS OF THE SUN 131

McFarland on his death bed. That McFarland was morose, and a drink-
ing man who had abused his wife while she lived with him, 78 never tem-
pered the Sun's outraged reports :

The Astor House, in this city, was the scene on Tuesday afternoon of a cere-
mony which seems to us to set at defiance all those sentiments respecting the
relation of marriage which regard it as anything intrinsically superior to pros-
titution. The High Priest of this occasion was Henry Ward Beecher, assisted
by the Rev. Henry M. Field, D.D., and the Rev. O. B. Frothingham. The
parties were Albert D. Richardson, lying, wounded by a pistol shot, upon a
bed of illness, and probably of death, and Mrs. McFarland, alias Mrs. Sage,
whom Richardson some time ag<3 seduced from allegiance to her lawful wedded
husband. . . .

And now, consider, married men of New York, husbands and fathers, by what
frail and brittle tenure your homes are yours. If you fail in your business and
it is said that ninety-five out of one hundred business men at some time fail
then the younger and handsomer face of your widowed neighbor may charm
away your wife; the laws of Indiana will grant a divorce to the fair truant, and
Henry Ward Beecher, with the Rev. Dr. Field, of the New York Evangelist,
standing at his right hand, and the Rev. 0. B. Frothingham to implore a blessing
on the sin, stands ready to marry her to the first libertine who will pay not in
affection, but in gold or greenbacks the price of her frail charms! If it be
said that poverty was not the only crime of McFarland, then rest easy, husbands
and fathers, at least all of you who have uttered one impatient or petulant word!

Yes, it is the pious, the popular, the admired, the reverend Henry Ward

Beecher who comes boldly and even proudly forward, holding by the hand and

leading Lust to her triumph over Religion! Who can read the narrative and not

wish that Plymouth Church were sunk into the ground until the peak of its gable

^should be beneath the surface of the earth! 79

In November, 1872, Victoria Woodhull published in her Weekly a
long and circumstantial account of an alleged liaison between Beecher
and Elizabeth Tilton, the wife of Theodore Tilton, both of whom were
members of Plymouth Church. 80 Thereupon followed a sensational trial,
in which the Sun, as a daily newspaper, played a far from admirable part.
Beecher may have been guilty of illicit relations with the wife of his
friend; but Dana's offense in feeding the public daily details of this
scandal is not minimized by that possibility. Not satisfied with the church
investigation, the Sun demanded that a trial be conducted before a court
and jury. It said:

78 Seitz, Don C, Horace Greeley, 313-314.

Dec. 2, 1869.

80 Hibben, Paxton, Henry Ward Beecher, 283.

132 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

Either Mr. Beecher is an abandoned and adulterous monster, debauching the
women and desolating the homes of his flock, or else Mr. Tilton is guilty of
inventing and circulating a mass of cruel and indecent libels intended solely
to blacken the reputation and destroy the usefulness of Brooklyn's most re-
spected and America's ablest preacher. 81

On August 27, 1874 the verdict of the church committee was given
before a full church in Brooklyn: "We find from the evidence that Rev.
Henry Ward Beecher did not commit adultery. . . ." This, however,
ended the case neither in the Sun, nor the city. During 1875 it published
196 editorials concerning the affair, filling approximately 120 full col-
umns of regular sized newspaper pages printed in extremely small type.
And throughout 1876, there were full editorial reports of the trial, in-
cluding all the evidence given by witnesses.

The Sun waited until February 1875 to pronounce Beecher guilty.
In March of that year it began personal attacks upon him, by which
it intended to drive him from his pulpit. It reported that he preached
sermons of "gush and mush" and called him "odious," "hypocritical,"
"perjurer," "liar," "criminal," "adulterer," "debaucher," and "old grey-
headed seducer." When the verdict of disagreement was rendered, the
Sun considered it a miscarriage of justice. It demanded a new trial and
called upon Beecher to "step down and out." It noticed the anniversaries
of the Beecher case and urged the pastor to unburden his soul with con-
fession that would "right the terrible wrong he has done his friends, his
parishioners and religion itself." 8 ~

In 1878, the Sun published a brief but complete confession by Eliza-
beth Tilton of her guilt with Beecher and wrote: "Henry Ward Beecher
is an adulterer, perjurer, and fraud; and his great genius and Christian
pretences only make his sin the more horrible and revolting." 83 In 1888,
the Sun attacked Herbert F. Beecher, the son of Henry Ward Beecher,
calling him an opium smuggler and saying that there was "scandal after
scandal" in connection with his personal integrity and private life. 84
Dana's Sun outlived Beecher but did not let him rest in death. On the
occasion of the unveiling of a bronze statue of him in Brooklyn in 1891,
it revived the case and rejoiced because only a small number of clergy-
men attended the ceremony. 85

81 July 27, 1874.

82 Jan. 2, 1876.
88 Apr. 16, 1878.

84 Mar. 5, 1888.

85 June 26, 1891.

SENSATIONAL ATTACKS OF THE SUN 133

The Sun also took great delight in making the work of Henry Bergh,
who led the movement for the prevention of cruelty to animals in New
York City, constantly ridiculous to its readers. In the beginning, either
owing to a different staff of editorial writers, or because Dana was less
prone to jest at what was worthwhile, whenever possible the Sun adopted
a course of fairly sincere co-operation with Bergh's efforts. But as soon
as Dana perceived the humorous possibilities of the reform, its policy
changed. In those days, any city that used horse cars presented a heart-
rending picture to a sympathetic animal lover. But according to the Sun,
Bergh thought more of animals than he did of people, an assumption that
led to his constantly being reported in its news columns and editorial
page in comical situations. At one time he was trying to pass laws to
imprison people for killing cats; at another he had struck a child for
pulling a dog's tail; and again he was rubbing the lame legs of a horse
while traffic surged in congestion.

Bergh was sensitive not only to the cruelty practiced upon animals but
also to the strictures of the Board of Health, which became antagonistic
toward him. He was sensitive to the press, which, probably following the
Sun's lead, made him out to be a simpleton. Consequently he was forever
defending himself from the abuse he received and trying to impress upon
the people the necessity of the care of animals. 86

'The Man with the Dirty Mouth," or Joseph G. Cannon, came in for
his share of Sun strokes. A man of strong words, with the bark of the
backwoods still upon him, he had been swept on the Grant wave from
Illinois to the House of Representatives in 1872. 87 He remained there
during a span of fifty years.

In 1890, the Conger Lard Bill was introduced in the House. The tax
which it sought to place on lard was, according to the Sun, devised to
please the farmer by placing burdensome regulation on business. The
opponents of the bill filibustered, breaking the quorum immediately
after the call of the House had been taken. Cannon was provoked into
a resolution ordering the Sergeant-at-Arms to telegraph all members who
were absent without leave. The preamble to the resolution mentioned
by name thirty or forty members who had absented themselves in order
to defeat legislation. 88

Aug 9, 1872.

87 Busbey, L. White, Uncle Joe Cannon, 125.

88 Aug. 27, 1890.

134 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

McAdoo, of New Jersey, called Cannon's preamble an outrageous in-
vasion of personal privileges. When Cannon rose to reply he resorted to
vulgarity which shocked the women in the galleries. His Republican
associates realized his impropriety, and the shrewdest among them urged
him to have it stricken from the record. This was done. 89 But the Sun
told its readers that "Uncle Joe" was the author of a speech too "filthy"
to be reported and that he should be sent home to his constituents satu-
rated with carbolic acid or some other powerful disinfectant. During his
canvass for re-election in the Fifteenth District of Illinois, the Sun
printed only the lower part of Cannon's face as a campaign picture.
Underneath it wrote a scathing indictment, saying, "Let the picture
of the dirty mouth of Joseph G. Cannon be reproduced in the columns of
the local press. Then every constituent whom Cannon's mouth has in-
sulted and humiliated will have a chance to scan its foul outlines."
The Sun continued its attacks upon Cannon. In 1891 it said, "The civil
service reform humbug began in a joke of the late Samuel S. Cox and it
now perishes at the hands, or rather by the mouth, of the Hon. Joseph
G. Cannon of Illinois truly an unworthy beginning and an ignoble
end!" 91

89 Aug. 28, 1890.
00 Sept. 4, 1890.
91 Feb. 16, 1891.

CHAPTER VI

NO KING! NO CLOWN! TO RULE THIS TOWN

ALTHOUGH gifted in ferreting out distant frauds, the Sun seemed short-
sighted when gazing through its own windows into the streets below.
Chicanery at Washington could arouse it to vitriolic anger; graft in New
York felt its irony rather than its wrath. Tammany Hall, having sold
its old home, had laid the cornerstone for a new building July 4, 1867.
There, braves of the Society, led by their Grand Sachem, William M.
Tweed, devised plans of treacherous warfare against the citizens of
New York. 1 By May, 1868, the new building had cost $300,000 and
while no newspaper was aware of the extent of Tammany robberies
already consummated, the Tribune suspiciously remarked: "It is not
the property of this city, though probably paid for out of the public
treasury." "This assertion, 7 ' the Sun replied, "is purely slanderous,
and affords a new evidence of the unscrupulous character of the partisan
press." -

While supporting Grant in 1868, the Sun took time to consider the
Democratic candidate for Governor in New York. He was John Hoff-
man, Tweed's mayor, who, if elected, would provide an indispensable
link in the Ring which was fast closing around the city's treasury. "The
Sun, which if we may venture an original and very striking suggestion
shines for all, has shown particularly for Mr. Hoffman." Arrange-
ments had been made by Tweed to secure a Democratic victory. 3 Al-
though the Republicans won the State legislature, Hoffman was elected
by more than 27,000 votes. This result, the Sun said, had apparently
been accomplished by the exchange of votes in different parts of the
State. "It is quite a rascally sort of political commerce that seems to
have been quite extensively practiced." 4

Hoffman as Governor did not fill all the needs of the Ring. It was
important that a mayor of its selection for New York City should also

1 Alexander, D. S., A Political History of the State of New York, III, 178.

2 May 28, 1868.

8 Alexander, III, 213-214.
4 Nov. 5, 1868.

135

136 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

be in power. On November 18, the Sun was suggesting Peter B. Sweeny,
an able lieutenant of Boss Tweed, for the office. Perhaps his scheming
nature found greater satisfaction in working from behind the scenes.
In any case, he was not nominated. Oakey Hall, socially ambitious,
witty, debonair, clever as a speaker, and equally trusted by Tweed, was
finally presented to the public as Tammany's candidate. The Sun
published a humorous description of him:

Oakey Hall, in full war paint and feathers, with many scalps swinging at his
girdle, and with a bottle of genuine fire water in his pocket is going about every-
where making speeches, dancing the war dance, and rousing the tribes that camp
around the Old Wigwam to resist the onset of the foe. . . . One reason urged
for the election of Sachem Hall ought not to pass unnoticed. It is urged that his
great grandmother was a French woman, and all the French residents in the city
ought to vote for him on that account, whether they are naturalized or not. 5

Upon the election of Hall as mayor and the election of the entire State
ticket for the third time, Tweed and Sweeny went to Albany, presenting
to the legislature "a piebald and ill-digested charter" for New York
City. Joining the cry of disapproval uttered by the New York Times
and Samuel J. Tilden, the Sun said, the day before its passage in the
legislature: "The Tweed charter, while its ostensible purpose is to effect
reforms in our local administration, will really perpetuate the worst
features of the present Ring rule." 7

To combat the new charter, the Sun lent its support to the Young
Democracy, a group of malcontents whom the Sun dignified by the
term "Reform Democracy," encouraging them to pitch overboard
"Squire Sweeny, the Know-Nothing Irishman Hall, Boss Tweed and
the whole Ring." 8 But Boss Tweed, with $1,000,000, defeated them.
According to Dana, the average price of a State Senator was $17,777. 9
Upon the retirement of this legislature the Sun said that it was un-
doubtedly "the most corrupt and infamous body that ever defiled its
halls." 10

By the passage of the Tweed charter the exchequer of the city was
handed over to the thieves. Tweed as Commissioner of Public Works,

6 Nov. 26, 1868.

6 Mar. 30, 1870.

7 Apr. 4, 1870.

8 Feb. 26, 1870.

9 Mar. 30, 1870.

10 Apr. 27, 1870.

NO KING! NO CLOWN! TO RULE THIS TOWN 137

Sweeny as President of the Park Commission, Connolly as Controller,
and Hall as Mayor formed the nucleus of the Ring, while Gov. Hoffman
stood ready to do their bidding. The departments of health and police
passed under their control; and the latter "turned over their property
to themselves under the guise of the New Board." n Tweed, Connolly
and Hall composed an ad interim Board of Audit entrusted with special
power to investigate indebtedness incurred in the city before 1870.
Stealing proceeded on an imperial scale. Ironically viewing the situation,
the Sun proposed Tweed for Governor:

Has the Sun gone back on its friends with whom it fought the great fight of
charter reform and got beaten? Nonsense ! We say that Boss Tweed is the proper
man for the Democracy to run for Governor next fall; and Harry Genet says
so too. The justice of this opinion no discreet politician can dispute. Boss Tweed
is a great man ; rich, generous, without prejudices, spending freely the piles of
money he extracts from the public treasury. 12

When, after the election of 1870, the Tweed forces seemed more
firmly than ever entrenched in the State and New York City govern-
ments, the Sun made a grotesque proposal. It solemnly suggested a
statue to Boss Tweed:

At last we have got it started. New York has been too long without a statue
of Big Six. The politicians are mean and hard to start but we have brought
them to the point of putting up their money. They have appointed a Board of
eight Trustees to receive subscriptions, employ artists, and erect the statue. . . .
When the Board is completed and the Treasurer has given bonds, we shall be
prepared to pay over the funds that have been confided to us for this patriotic
purpose. 13

The Executive Committee of the "Tweed Testimonial Association" met,
according to a news account, and nominated officers, while other men
signified their intention of co-operating. James Sweeny, James O'Brien,
Commissioner Henry Smith, Senators Norton, Creamer, Bradle, Genet,
Scott, Fowler, and others were reported to be interested in honoring
the Tammany chief. 14 Letters with contributions from ten cents to five
dollars were received by the Sun. The location was humorously dis-
cussed: the trustees of the Tweed Monument Fund preferred Central

11 Apr. 12, 1870.

12 Apr. 16, 1870.

1 3 Dec. 22, 1870.

14 Jan. 4, 1871.

138 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

Park, while the Sun favored Tweed Plaza. It was to be the finest bronze
statue in size and execution that the Western Continent might boast
of. 15 However, just as the committee was getting under way, the "Boss"
himself was heard from. With lusty enjoyment of its own joke, the Sun
printed the following:

A GREAT MAN'S MODESTY

THE HONORABLE WILLIAM M. TWEED DECLINES
THE SUN'S STATUE

CHARACTERISTIC LETTER FROM THE GREAT NEW YORK PHILANTHROPIST
HE THINKS THAT VIRTUE SHOULD BE ITS OWN REWARD THE MOST REMARK-
ABLE LETTER EVER WRITTEN BY THE NOBLE BENEFACTOR OF THE PEOPLE.

Special Dispatch to the Sun.

Albany, March 13 Senator Tweed has just addressed the following letter to

Judge Shandley:

I learn that a movement to erect a statue to me in the city of New York is
being seriously pushed by a committee of citizens of which you, Judge Shand-
ley, are the chairman. . . . I most emphatically and decidedly object to it. . . .
I was aware that a newspaper of our city had brought forward the proposition,
but I considered it one of the jocose sensations for which that journal is so
famous. Since I left the city to engage in legislation the proposition appears to
have been taken up by my friends, no doubt in resentment at the supposed
unfriendly motive of the original proposition, and the manner in which it had
been urged.

... I hardly know which is the more absurd, the original proposition or the
grave comments of others, based upon the idea that I have given the movement
countenance. I have been about as much abused as any man in public life; I
can stand abuse, and bear even more than my share; but I have never yet been
charged with being deficient in common sense. 16

But the Sun persevered in urging upon the public a statue to Boss
Tweed, a monument, it declared, which should have as its pedestal a
public hospital to be known as the "Tweed Free Hospital." Such a
hospital, it declared, would cause those who looked upon it to think
only of the "humane purpose of the institution, and of the generosity
of the distinguished philanthropist whose name it bore." 17

1R Mar. 6, 1871.

16 Mar. 14, 1871.

17 Mar. 15, 1871.

NO KING! NO CLOWN! TO RULE THIS TOWN 139

Meanwhile, alarmed by charges in the New York Times and the
pungent cartoons of Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly, the Tammany
robbers prepared to justify their handling of the city's finances. They
invited John Jacob Astor, Moses Taylor, Marshall O. Roberts, and others
to examine the Comptroller's books. 18 When this committee could de-
tect no evidence of knavery, the Times expressed its skepticism. 19 But
the Sun, along with many respectable citizens, accepted the findings of
the committee and later discussed the financial condition of the city
on the basis of its report. 20 Tammany continued to make plans for self-
enrichment when they were interrupted by an important event.

County Auditor James Watson was fatally injured while sleigh-
riding. On his death there were discovered certain accounts dealing with
the widening and straightening of Broadway which placed the Tweed
Ring in an awkward position. 21 But the Sun refused to align itself im-
mediately against the Ring. It accused the Tribune of gross exaggera-
tion and misrepresentation when it asserted that Watson was "trustee
for $9,000,000 on account of property owners who had assigned 'their
claims against the city for damages over to that gentleman in trust to
pay the Ring its share, and to pay to the property owners their share of
the proceeds.' " 22 A comparison between the Times and the Sun during
the early months of 1871, before there was actual proof of the Ring
corruption, is interesting. The following news excerpts, appearing the
same day, each reporting the introduction of the same bill in the State
legislature, fairly exemplify the attitudes of the two papers:

The Sun The Times

MR. TWEED'S LEGISLATURE ALBANY

Senator Tweed introduced a bill au- Senator Tweed gave notice of a bill
thorizing New York to acquire title to authorize the city of New York to
and property in Putnam and West- negotiate for real estate to furnish an
Chester counties for the better supply additional supply of water to the City
of water to New York. Jan. 4, 1871. which means the purchase of Mr.

Tweed's $25,000 lake up the river
which he bought last summer. Jan. 4,
1871.

! Alexander, III, 245.
' e Times, Mar. 2, 1871.
20 Swn, Aug. 8, 1871.

21 Rhodes, James F., History of the United States, VI, 404.

22 Feb. 7, 1871.

140 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

The Times relentlessly continued its attacks upon the Ring, but it
could expect little help from its contemporaries, whose indifference was
purchased through city advertising. 23 The Sun was one of the daily
papers selected to publish the official proceedings of the Corporation
of New York. Others included the Herald, the World, the Staats-Zeit-
ung, the Democrat, the Star, the Express, the Commercial Advertiser
and the News. As the Times continued its condemnation of the Ring, the
Sun set upon it with withering attacks:

Is it true the editor of the Times ... is such a coward that he wears a
coat of mail under his shirt and carries a six shooter in each pocket?

This, is the question of the day, and we are afraid the answer must be that
it is true. It seems the little fellow has written something against Tammany
Hall, and he is silly enough to suppose that he is going to be assaulted. Let him
compose what he calls his mind. He is in no danger of being shot at ; but he is
in great danger of making a greater fool of himself. . . .

A year ago there was a chance of destroying the Tammany Ring. Led by the
Sun, the Young Democracy had revolted. The revolt was powerful and its suc-
cess seemed certain. . . . But the Times was not anxious to overthrow Tam-
many then ; the city advertising satisfied its appetite ; and when with cash and
promises Tweed bought the Republican party in the Legislature, crushing the
Young Democracy with their help, and planting Tammany on firmer founda-
tions than ever, the dull and feeble voice of the Times condoned the transaction
as the paper went on with the corporation advertising. But now this rich boon
is taken from it, it launches out in a noisy hubbub against Tammany, which if
it had any effect at all, would only confirm the power of the Ring. 24

The Times indignantly replied by accusing "Charles Assassin Dana"
not merely of wholesale lying, but of "turning his paper into an instru-
ment of levying blackmail." 25 Such accusations cannot be taken too
seriously since it was still the practice of newspapers to hurl insults at
each other, often with little foundation in truth. The temptation to
believe that the Sun was bribed by advertising to support Tammany
might be strong, had one not known the paper. Having condemned
Tweed while he was entrenched in power, Dana, enjoying the unex-
pected, perverse, malicious and often opposing what was good while he
upheld what was bad, did not need to be bribed to defend Tweed. In-

23 Myers, Gustavus, 232. Myers bases this statement on Document No. 8 (Minutes and
Documents of the Common Council), 215-218; see also Franklin, Allan, The Trail of the
Tiger Tammany, 1789-1928, 77-79.

24 Jan. 30, 1871.

25 Times, Feb. 2, 1871.

NO KING! NO CLOWN! TO RULE THIS TOWN 141

deed, jealous of the Sun's reputation for exposures, he later claimed that
it had been the Sun and not the Times which overthrew the Tweed
Ring. 2 "

The Times received its reward. James O'Brien, a leader of the Young
Democracy, quarreled with the Ring and carried the Comptroller's ac-
counts, in transcript, to Louis Jennings, the only editor whom he be-
lieved would accept them. A little later Matthew O'Rourke, a county
bookkeeper, furnished similar transcripts of fraudulent armory ac-
counts. On July 8, 1871, the Times began publication of the accounts.

Immediately following the Times exposures, the Sun had little com-
ment to make. Its few editorials, comprising some four paragraphs in
all, defended Connolly against accusations that he had not been attend-
ing to business: "He had been in his office attending to his duties all the
while. The taxpayers of the city have no more conscientious and devoted
servant than Mr. Connolly." L>7 But by the end of July the Sun took
cognizance of the evidence that had aroused the city's anger publishing
a sing-song editorial addressed to the Mayor and Comptroller:

Hon. A. Oakey Hall and Mr. Comptroller Connolly, what have you to say in
reply to the very serious charges and accusations preferred against you, and
maintained and repeated from day to day, by the New York Times?

The charges are most grave. They are made with circumstance and particu-
larity. Can you meet them? Can you refute them? We have waited long and
patiently for your response.

Have you anything in substance and in truth why sentence should not be
pronounced against you?

What say you?

We are reluctant to condemn slow to believe.

What say you?

We must and will be true to the people. Have you anything to say?

If you have, let us hear from you today.

We have waited and the impatient public have waited long enough. 28

The Times showed up the Ring so clearly that all journals and public-
minded citizens finally joined in condemning their rascalities. There had
been theft in the rental of armories, in the plans for the Viaduct Rail-
way, in the construction of the courthouse, and in every project ad-
vanced by Tweed and his satellites. In September a mass-meeting in

20 Mar. 27, 1872.

27 July 15, 1871.

28 July 31, 1871.

142 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

Cooper Union created the Committee of Seventy, charging it with the
prosecution of the criminals. Connolly, suspecting the desire of the Ring
to make him a scapegoat, turned over his office to Andrew H. Green,
whom he appointed deputy comptroller. Although praising Tilden and
the Democratic investigations, the Sun had no use for "hypocritical re-
formers" who for "partisan ends" met in Cooper Union. One of them
was the Sun's old friend "Bed Bug" Roosevelt, who had run against
Martin T. McMahon for Assemblyman in the Fourth District. To the
Sun his very presence condemned the Committee of Seventy. Thence-
forth Dana devoted himself to demanding the resignation of Roosevelt.
Among typical headlines were "Satan Denouncing Sin: Robert B.
Roosevelt," "Why Doesn't He Resign?" "Wash Your Own Hands
First," and "How Mr. Roosevelt Got Sent to Congress by Tammany
Hall." In less than two weeks, forty short editorials were written on
the subject. 29

Ring members were soon fleeing. The West Side saw a hurried sale of
real estate, property being offered below market value, providing, wrote
the Sun, "cash could be paid before Wednesday, the day on which the
European steamers sail." 30 Tweed was still a candidate for State Sena-
tor, although the Sun felt itself authorized to state: "The Hon. William
M. Tweed is no longer a candidate for Governor." 31 His arrest was
imminent. With the aid of the experienced lawyer, Charles O'Conor,
proofs were accumulated. Tilden, in a patient investigation of the Broad-
way Bank accounts, discovered vital evidence. The Sun on October 27
published the following:

Notwithstanding the drizzling rain, groups of politicians stood in the Park
on the steps of the City Hall nearly all day yesterday, discussing the Sun's latest
exposures of the Ring's villainies. The general opinion was that the end was nigh.

The figures in the Sun, said a seedy politician, a tall, well-dressed clerk in the
Department of Public Works it was lunch time u are as plain as the nose on
your face. You can read and understand 'em."

"Tweed's hands are clean," said the other. "It's Watson and Garvey. One's
dead and the other's run away and they'll never know the truth."

Next day, the Sun recorded the arrest of Tweed.

Meanwhile the Democratic State Convention had assembled at Roch-

29 Sept. 17, 1871-Oct. 2, 1871.

80 Sept. 19, 1871.

81 Sept. 21, 1871.

NO KING! NO CLOWN! TO RULE THIS TOWN 143

ester, where it excluded the Reform delegation from New York City.
"Not because/' the Sun said, "a large majority of the Convention did
not cordially approve of their opinions and purposes but because they
could show no valid claim to admission." 32 Supporting the Democratic
candidates, praising Tilden, condemning the New York Times, and
maliciously inquiring, "How many of the Committee of Seventy are
secretly interested in hiding the robberies they are appointed to de-
tect?" 3<<i the Sun half covertly supported Tammany until it was com-
pletely overthrown by the fall elections of 1871. In a congratulatory
editorial on the victory for which it had neither worked nor expressed
any desire, the Sun wrote: "By a common uprising of honest and pa-
triotic men this city was yesterday redeemed from the sway of an
oligarchy of thieves. . . . The good work was achieved by a combina-
tion of citizens hitherto identified with opposing political parties, join-
ing together to save the Republic." R4

"Honest" John Kelly soon ruled in Tweed's place. With the aid of
Tilden and other Democratic leaders he quickly reorganized Tammany,
enlarging its general committee and making tactful appointments which
recognized various dissenting groups. 3r> The Sun supported this "re-
formed Tammany," which entered the fall elections of 1872 with Abra-
ham Lawrence as its mayoralty candidate. Dana urged that it nomi-
nate the great merchant, Alexander T. Stewart, but Kelly had other
plans.

"Vote the Whole Tammany Ticket" was the campaign cry during the
fall of 1872. Quickly relegating James O'Brien, the candidate of the
Apollo Hall Democracy, to obscurity, the Sun concentrated its effort upon
the defeat of Lawrence's chief opponent, William F. Havemeyer, who had
been nominated by the Committee of Seventy and endorsed by the
Republicans. 30 Calling him a "bitter partisan," it also said he had aided
and abetted a "pernicious sectarian appeal." "He is utterly unfit," it
wrote, "at his age and in his condition to be Mayor of this great city." 37
If there were a riot, New York City would be ransacked, pillaged, and
burned while Havemeyer was making up his mind what to do about it.

82 Oct. 7, 1871.

33 Sept. 28, 1871.

34 Nov. 8, 1871.
3 Myers, 253.
36 June 1, 1872.
87 Oct. 19, 1872.

144 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

It posed the question: "Query: How much mind has the old gentleman
left to make up?" 38 This was the year of Grant's Republican triumph,
and both Lawrence and the Democratic nominee for Governor, Francis
Kernan (whom the Sun also supported) were defeated. Havemeyer, ac-
cording to the news columns of the Sun, received 6,000 majority. 39

The new mayor was cast in a mould which could please neither the
Sun nor John Kelly. Havemeyer's championship of two police commis-
sioners, Oliver Charlick and Hugh Gardner, who were too vigorous in
performing their duty to achieve popularity, led to a quarrel with the
Tammany Boss. Although the Sun admitted that "as a Police Commis-
sioner Mr. Charlick has done more to suppress the vice of gambling
than any of his predecessors, or any other man who ever lived in this
city/' it related that when he had been ill, prayers were offered all over
Long Island that he might not recover. 40

These two police commissioners removed one Sheridan from office, an
election inspector who was "a notorious corrupter of the ballot box." "In-
stead of being arraigned and punished they should have been commended
and rewarded," Dana said. But since they had failed to give written
notice of their act, as the law commanded, they were prosecuted at the in-
stigation of Kelly. By a verdict of the Supreme Court, which the Sun
called untenable, their places were vacated. 41

When Havemeyer reappointed the police commissioners, Kelly at-
tempted to bring new indictments against them. "It is not because
they are guilty," the Sun said, "it is because they were reappointed by
Mayor Havemeyer": 42

The great mistake of Mayor Havemeyer is that he will not be the slave of
either Tammany Hall or the Custom House. If he were willing to be run either
by John Kelly or Tom Murphy he might be a thousand times the dunderhead
that he is and commit worse follies and blunders than he has ever committed,
and yet pass with the people for the same square headed citizen and pious Meth-
odist as before. 43

Soon the Sun was wondering when Governor Dix would remove Mayor
Havemeyer. "That would be an interesting occurrence for such a dull,

38 Oct. 23, 1872.

89 Nov. 6, 1872 ; cf. Alexander, III, 302.

40 July 9, 1874.

*i July 7, 1874.

42 July 13, 1874.

43 July 11, 1874.

NO KING! NO CLOWN! TO RULE THIS TOWN 145

uninteresting time as this. Mr. Havemeyer might be much more useful
as a martyr than he is as a Mayor." 44

Upon Havemeyer's appointment of Richard Croker as marshal, in
compliance with Kelly's expressed wish, a torrent of reproach was
heaped upon him. Believing himself tricked by Kelly, and stung by
public censure, Havemeyer attempted to prove the unworthy character
of the Tammany Boss and of Kelly's friend, John Morrissey. In a
letter published September 18, 1874, he said:

"I am going not only to charge but to prove, beyond any possibility of doubt,
that you are one of the most consummate hypocrites that the people of this city
have ever had in their midst ... the combination between you and Morrissey
to rule this city with absolute power will be so clearly shown, by an iron clad
statement of figures and facts, to be the alliance of a gambler and a hypocrite
that every reader will perceive at once its danger and its disgrace to our city."

Kelly replied in the Sun of the same date that the Mayor's alleged dis-
coveries were the "weak and malicious offshoots of his Honor's vindic-
tiveness." Three days later the Sun took up Kelly, saying that no man
in the city had a better reputation, but unless he immediately defended
himself from the Mayor's charges doubt would be cast upon his char-
acter. When his reply appeared Dana commended it. In contrast to the
Mayor's "serio-comic chapter of political history," John Kelly's defense
was "a sharp statistical document, which will be read with interest." 45
Kelly brought action for libel against Mayor Havemeyer, quoting in
the complaint the charges that he (Kelly) had falsified the statistics of
crime while Sheriff, had committed petty larceny and perjured himself,
had collected money on false vouchers, and through fraud had com-
mitted the crimes of which William M. Tweed was convicted. 46 Have-
meyer's sudden death on the day the trial was to begin left the evidence
against Kelly unpublished. The Sun said of the dead Mayor:

It would have been well for his fame had he died two years ago. He was a
man of honest intention, and never defrauded another of a cent; but his
mind was crotchety, and upon the obstinacy by his purpose no light could
even be brought to bear. But his death will revive kindness toward him,
and all will regret his swift and appalling demise. 47

44 July 24, 1874.

45 Oct. 1,1874.

46 Oct. 9, 1874.

47 Dec. 1, 1874.

146 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

Tilden became Governor on January 1, 1875. On March 18, he sent
a message to the legislature which revealed vast fraud in the construc-
tion of state canals. It was, in the Sun's words, "a bombshell in the camp
of those slippery politicians of both parties, who for years past have
made our hundreds of miles of artificial water communication the means
of plundering the treasury and filling their pockets." 48 The Governor
at once incurred John Kelly's hostility. Only his hold upon the public
enabled him to nominate candidates worthy of support when the Demo-
crats met in the fall of 1875. The Sun supported the ticket. It believed
that the principal figures, John Bigelow for Secretary of State, Lucius
Robinson for Comptroller, and Charles S. Fairchild for Attorney-
General, eminently merited election. And while upholding Tilden's
nominees for State offices, Dana carried on an animated campaign to
discredit Boss Kelly. Morrissey, having broken with Kelly, joined the
Irving Hall Democracy where all anti-Tammany elements were wel-
come, and announced that he would run for the Senate from the Fourth
District. The Sun encouraged him, seizing the occasion for a few re-
marks upon Whitelaw Reid of the Tribune:

Jay Gould's stool pigeon is in a bad way because John Morrissey is a gambler.
How black the pot always seems to the kettle! But who took the millions from
the Erie Railway? Who bought the Tribune and hired a young editor to concoct
stock-gambling lies for him? Surely, it was not John Morrissey. John Morrissey
had no stool pigeon to entice the simple into his nets. He never stole, nor does
he act the part of a high-minded editor while all the time working for a stock
gambler. He does not seek refuge from assault behind the policy of silence, but
stands up manfully and makes a square fight with his adversaries. He is not a
stool pigeon, nor does he wear the yoke of John Kelly. Oh, that he could give
a little of his backbone to the young editor, now bent in servile and disgraceful
toils. 49

The Democratic state ticket won a narrow victory in the November
elections. Still the Sun attacked John Kelly and his organization. "Tam-
many had become odious in the city, the Senate, and the Nation," it
said. "It has saddled itself upon the Democratic party." Sell Tammany
Hall for a hotel, a theater, a church or a dry goods store, it urged; con-
sign the played-out wooden Indian over the portals to ashes. 50

Next spring, as the time approached for the Democrats to hold their

48 Apr. 1, 1875.

49 Oct. 29, 1875.
60 Nov. 5, 1875.

NO KING! NO CLOWN! TO RULE THIS TOWN 147

State convention, Dana reminded them how at the last election "the
blunders, the stubbornness, the narrow, mistaken views, and the proscrip-
tive spirit which controlled Tammany Hall" would have overwhelmed
the Democracy had it not been for "the extraordinary vitality of the
reforming ideas" of Gov. Tilden. Therefore the way to "relieve the
party of its greatest danger" was to determine "the delegates of Tam-
many Hall shall not be received as representing the Democracy of
this city." ni

Indeed, although the eyes of the National Democracy were turned
toward Tilden, John Kelly and the canal plunderers had no desire to
see him in the White House, where with the presidential powers he
might relegate them to a well-merited oblivion. When the State con-
vention met in Utica the opposition to Tilden was strong. Only after
the exclusion of a Morrissey delegation, did the Governor receive the
endorsement for President from the State of New York.

The election in 1876 of the Democratic candidate for governor,
Lucius Robinson, left the Tilden forces still in control at Albany. Tilden
himself had revealed little strength of character in the disputed election.
Nevertheless his old supporters tenaciously clung to his leadership, fear-
ing that all hope of reform must be abandoned if Tammany were al-
lowed to reign supreme. In 1877 they advocated renomination of the
State officers who had been elected under Tilden; but Kelly and his
friends preferred their own candidates and resisted the proposal. The
Sun called a renomination of all the existing officials "fatuous." Such a
step, it added, would injure Tilden himself. "The enemies of Gov.
Tilden are saying that he is in favor of the renomination of the present
State officers. He has been the object of many well-directed and vigor-
ous assaults; but this one is the most formidable that he has ever en-
countered." r> -

The Democratic State convention met in October. Its composition
was determined by a resolution, which took control out of the hands of
the old-ticket men, secured the ejection of anti-Tammany delegates, and
provided a method by which the new ticket men could permanently
organize the body in their interest. This made it clear a new ticket would
be nominated. 53 In the ensuing campaign the Sun was neutral, but after

51 Apr. 4, 1876.
62 Sept. 9, 1877.
'"Oct. 4, 1877.

148 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

the Democratic victories it resumed its war on Tammany.

Political interest in New York City in 1878 centered chiefly in the
mayoralty campaign. It was certain that "Honest" John Kelly, check-
mated in State politics, would try to gain control of the metropolis. The
Sun was quick to see this and resist the danger. In late September it
began an animated and superbly clever campaign to defeat "King" Kelly
and drive from New York City his one-man power:

It seems to have been all hail, King John, at Syracuse yesterday.

This is all very well for the King.

But how about the people?

There may be a sweet by and by for them. 54

From that day on Kelly was "King," but not without the proverbial
court jester. John Foley, a leader in the New York City Reform As-
sociation, became his "Clown." The Clown had a gold pen with which
he provided jokes for the populace, and amused the King while the
people toiled and sweated to meet their taxes. Going from business men
to banker, the Clown obtained the signatures of a large number of men
who agreed to meet in the Fifth Avenue Hotel and elect their own
mayor; but the entire meeting was in reality in the "interests of Tam-
many." The Clown offered five names from whom a candidate should
be chosen, but "let any one of these candidates be elected and the real
mayor of the city will be Mr. John Kelly." 5 The slogan of the Sun
became :

No King! No Clown!
To rule this Town.

The Sun suggested that some illustrated contemporary get up a cut
descriptive of the reign of the King and Clown:

It should represent an average New York citizen with a ring in his nose and
a chain attached in the hand of Mr. John Kelly; and following would be another
average citizen, with a like ring in his nose and a chain attached led by Mr.
John Foley. They should be headed for a polling place, over which in large
letters should stare the inscription: "Vote the Tammany Ticket!"

The Sun urged the coalition of anti-Tammany forces throughout the
city that a people's ticket might be presented in opposition to the pre-

54 Sept. 26, 1878.
05 Oct. 7, 1878.
66 Oct. 24, 1878.

NO KING! NO CLOWN! TO RULE THIS TOWN 149

vailing one-man power. "The present week will tell the story," it said.
"Long live the people deposed be the King!" 57 Then suddenly fear
seized upon the Sun lest the Republican managers support Tammany
Hall by running a straight Republican ticket for local offices. "And what
will our esteemed contemporary the New York Times say to it?" 58
The Times replied:

, . . the danger is daily diminishing of either State or city Republican man-
agers being guilty of the combined folly and rascality of doing the work of
Tammany Hall by refusing to combine with Democrats opposed to that organi-
zation of tricksters and plunderers. Should we be mistaken, we can assure the
Sun that sincere Republicans have so little liking for being used in the interests
of John Kelly, that they will refuse to vote for any "straight" party ticket
for local offices. 50

When Tammany chose its ticket, the Sun commented :

The King and Clown met together with the King's Council last evening and
put in nomination for Mayor the most objectionable man included in the list
of five from which the Clown recently offered to the freemen of New York
permission to choose their mayor. Mr. Schell is probably the only real Indian
among the sachems of the Tammany society. He was found here by the first
whites who settled on the Island of Manhattan, and at that early period was
seeking office.

The King and Clown have made the issue before the people very square and
very direct. They have presented a ticket which has nothing to recommend it
except that it is the wish of the King and the Clown that it should be elected. The
nominations are an open challenge to the people a direct challenge to measure
the strength with their King and Clown. 60

The day after Tammany nominated Augustus Schell, the Sun re-
ported that Edward Cooper would probably be the anti-Tammany
candidate. When the nomination was assured the Sun paid Cooper its
highest compliment: "He is a Democrat, in the high, and true sense of
the term." The New York Times said:

Let no Republican be frightened by the shallow pretense that a vote for
Cooper is a vote for Tilden. What has got to be settled on Tuesday is not who
shall control the Democratic party in this State, but who shall control the

"Oct. 14, 1878.

68 Oct. 12, 1878.

60 New York Times, Oct. 14, 1878.

? Oct. 20, 1878.

150 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

forty millions a year of public money. That is the issue between Cooper, the
people's candidate, and Schell, the candidate of Kelly. G1

Until election day the Sun continued to ridicule "King" Kelly and
"Clown" Foley. Kelly was the Comptroller, not because of the office
he held, but "because he controls everything." ()L> "A king by divine
right, he condescends, out of his great goodness and generosity, to offer
them a worthy candidate." 3

Tammany Down with its King and Clown

Rise up, O People! " 4

The election of the entire anti-Tammany ticket brought general con-
gratulation from the press for deliverance from the rule of Tammany.

The newspapers could not let it remain undecided as to which of them
was responsible for the overthrow of Kelly. In the flush of victory the
Times and the Sun forgot their usual enmity. The Times said it was the
Sun and the Staats-Zcitung which had been foremost in the defeat of the
"King," while the Sun claimed the glorious victory had been achieved
through the Times and the World. All spoke contemptuously of the
Herald's part. Boss Kelly blamed his ignominious defeat on Dana, say-
ing in a speech before Tammany:

The New York Sun from the very beginning of the canvass has misrepresented
the condition of political affairs and the editor of that paper deserves as he
had falsified and misrepresented the real issues of this canvass he deserves
the condemnation and execration of the people for the injury he has done them.

It is said that that paper had a very large circulation, therefore we can under-
stand how easy it is for the people who are busily engaged in business, and whose
time is absorbed in managing their own private affairs, to be misled by state-
ments published in such a paper as the New York Sun. He, in his paper, a short
time ago had the word "Fraud" printed over the forehead of President Hayes.
In order that he may be understood in the future he should have the word
"Slanderer" written on his forehead that his name may go down to infamy as one
of the press of this country who has been of more real injury to the people than
can be compensated by any good he has ever done to them as an editor. 05

Kelly's remarks were followed by the production on the platform of a
large caricature of Dana bearing the word, "slanderer."

61 New York Times, Nov. 3, 1878.

62 Oct. 21, 1878.
03 Nov. 1, 1878.

64 Oct. 28, 1878

65 New York Herald, Nov. 6, 1878; Sun, Nov. 7, 1878.

NO KING! NO CLOWN! TO RULE THIS TOWN 151

Bolting the Democratic State convention in 1879, because of his dis-
like of Lucius Robinson's renomination, Kelly set himself up as an in-
dependent gubernatorial candidate of Tammany. Naturally his candi-
dacy benefited the Republican nominee, Alonzo B. Cornell; it was
nothing but an attempt at revenge. When he went on a speaking tour up-
State the Sun described him as follows :

It is evident, from all the accounts of Mr. Kelly's proceedings in the interior
of the State, that while the Republicans exert themselves to get audiences for
him, the people generally flock to see him mostly from motives of curiosity, as
boys rush to see a bison. As soon as he begins one of his dull speeches, destitute
as they are of either wit or logic, a large part of the audience incontinently leave
the hall.

We see no remedy for Mr. Kelly but for him to give peremptory "orders"
such as he feels he has a right to give that every person who once enters the
hall shall stay until the meeting is over.

Possibly the country people might obey his "orders" more obsequiously than
the Governor of the State did. 06

Kelly's conduct inspired rumors of a growing alliance between Tam-
many and the Cornell managers. Several newspapers said that the action
of the two Republican police commissioners, who championed Tam-
many's right to its share of poll inspectors, pointed unmistakably to a
bargain, since it gave Tammany and the Republicans power to select a
chairman at each poll. The Sun upheld Tammany's right to at least one-
half of the Democratic commissioners, but said the entire controversy
showed that no honesty of official action was expected by any party;
while the only noticeable difference between Democrats of the past and
Democrats of the present was: "Tweed paid money Oakey Hall kept
his while the Robinson-Tilden party put everything on the pretense
of principle." G7

In 1880, being refused admission to the State convention, Kelly again
set up a a side show" assembling his own group in Shakespeare Hall
where it passed resolutions opposing the convention's endorsement of
Tilden for President. Later at the national Democratic convention Kelly
and his delegates were excluded by a two-thirds majority, but their
threats helped destroy whatever chances Tilden had of the nomina-
tion, the prize going to Hancock. Kelly was even more successful in in-

66 Oct. 16, 1879.
07 Oct. 4, 1879.

152 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

financing the choice of the mayoralty candidate. He agreed to take one
from a list of several possibilities submitted by Irving Hall, his choice
to receive the combined Irving Hall-Tammany nomination. This ar-
rangement evoked an outburst from the Sun:

After all that has been said and sung, we have a king to rule this town. To add
a clown would be superfluous, as the king answers, in one person, the purposes
of both.

... If a man wants to run for the office of Mayor with any prospect of suc-
cess, he has to be branded, like an ox, J. K. and to wear a collar, like a dog,
with J. K. stamped upon it to show who owns him.

King and Clown

Ruling the Town. 68

The Irving Hall list included the wealthy merchant, William R.
Grace, a Catholic, whom Kelly immediately selected. "Mr. Grace should
command the united support of the entire Democracy," the Sun wrote
on the day after Grace's nomination. But it was an unfortunate choice.
A note soon appeared in the municipal campaign far more bitter than
any in the national contest. The Herald objected to Grace because he
was a Catholic. This aroused Kelly who resorted to a salacious attack
upon James Gordon Bennett which he caused to be published in the
New York Express. "This cannot be regarded as an attack upon the
New York Herald alone," Dana said. "It must be looked upon as an
attack upon the liberty of the whole American press." GJ) Although he
declared that "one man has the same right to be a Catholic that another
has to be a Protestant," he promptly withdrew his support from Grace,
stating the position of the Sun in the following editorial:

There are two grounds on which a distrust of the Catholic has widely prevailed
among the Protestants. They relate to the free schools and free press. It has
been apprehended that if the Catholics should obtain absolute control of the
government of this city, an attempt would follow on their part to weaken the
free schools and to curtail the freedom of the press.

This distrust may be merely a groundless prejudice . . . but the important
feature of the matter is its public aspect. Is it to be understood that every journal
in this city that sees fit to disapprove of the election of a candidate of a particu-
lar faith to office is to be silenced by some means, however atrocious, however
foul?

Mr. Kelly wields today a tremendous power over the city of New York; a

68 Oct. 18, 1880.

69 Oct. 20, 1880.

NO KING/ NO CLOWN! TO RULE THIS TOWN 153

power never before equalled in the hands of one man; a power which, this very
occurrence warns us, cannot safely be intrusted to anyone. We have no unkind
or unfriendly feeling toward him ; nor objection to his holding office the office
of comptroller or any other for which he is qualified ; but we warn him that if
he attempts to lay so much as the weight of his little finger on the Freedom of
the Press his sceptre will crumble to dust in his hold, and his now strong right
hand will fall limp and powerless by his side. 70

When the Republicans carried New York State, thus electing Garfield
over Hancock, and it became plain that Grace's candidacy was largely
responsible for the Democratic defeat in both State and Nation, the
World suggested that perhaps the Sun could shed some light on the
mystery of Democratic defeat. The Sun believed that it could, and
published an editorial headed, "John Kelly Did it." 71 This statement,
which told only the obvious truth, was reiterated for many days.

The Sun justly felt the need for a new Tammany which would not
bear the odium of an alliance with human slavery at one date and with
gigantic frauds at another. Irving Hall could not fill the place. The Sun
said that Irving Hall had proved "nothing better than a second huckster
shop, with a little greater appearance of respectability than Tammany,
and a newer sign, but open for trade," 72 . . . Dana was tired of drum-
ming up recruits for the Democratic party only to have them led at the
end of four long years "not to victory, but into a ditch by a blundering
political manipulator." 73 Mayor Cooper's action in refusing to appoint
Kelly to the comptrollership was therefore greeted with approval.

Finally a Committee of Fifty was appointed to take over the work
of reorganization and later a Committee of One Hundred appeared, led
by Abram S. Hewitt, William C. Whitney and others. Thus the County
Democracy was formed. The new organization fast gained form and
strength. 74 By September the Sun recognized three competing factions,
each of whom would want regular representation in the State conven-
tion: Tammany, Irving Hall and the County Democracy. The last
named, said the Sun, "will base their claims on high and imposing
grounds. They doubtless have a large constituency behind them. But,
after all, the mass of the county Democrats seem to regard the County

70 Oct. 31, 1880.

71 Nov. 6, 1880.

72 Nov. 8, 1880.
78 Nov. 5, 1880.

74 Alexander, III, 483-^84; see also Myers, 261.

154 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

Democracy as only another anti-Tammany organization, a sort of suc-
cessor of Irving Hall. Yet if they are determined that the party shall be
successful in the fall, they will find a way to accomplish it." 75 Mean-
while it urged all Tammanyites to carry "the odium of their participa-
tion over to the Republican convention where they properly be-
longed." 76

The Democratic convention gave the party in New York State a new
aspect. Both Tammany and Irving Hall delegates were rejected, while
the County Democracy received full representation. This was made
possible because upstate Democrats were weary of the annual conflicts
between rival factions and the defeat of Hancock had obliterated their
own discords. Daniel E. Manning, who had been brought forward in
Tilden's war against the Tweed Ring, played a prominent part in the
convention; David B. Hill was chairman. The Sun felt new hope for the
Democrats in the City and State.

At the elections, although the Republican candidate for Secretary of
State, Joseph B. Carr, defeated William Purcell on the Democratic
ticket, both houses of the legislature were placed in the hands of the
Democrats. The County Democracy, in spite of the opposition of Tam-
many and Irving Hall, carried New York County by several thousand
majority, securing four of the seven senators, twelve of the twenty-four
assemblymen, and twelve of the twenty-two aldermen. It was evident
that many of Kelly's former adherents had joined the County De-
mocracy, with which some prominent Tammany leaders were already
affiliated.

The Sun praised the new organization: "This body is formed upon
the right basis. It comes from the people, and leaves the control in their
hands." But Dana was dubious of its future:

It had not the sanction either of the State Convention or of the State Con-
stitution. As it is, it has only added another faction to the number of Democratic
factions previously existing. It is undoubtedly more respectable and, from its
popular nature, more truly Democratic than either of its competitors; but it
does not accomplish the great end of combining all Democrats in one united,
harmonious, and efficient party. 77

75 Sept. 11, 1881.

76 Oct. 4, 1881.

77 Nov. 11, 1881.

NO KING! NO CLOWN! TO RULE THIS TOWN 155

The Tammany Tiger soon revived. Kelly proceeded to Albany, where
with three senators and eight assemblymen he could hold the balance of
power. Not until the Democrats had agreed to placate him with chair-
manships, representation on committees, a share of offices, and the ex-
clusion of John C. Jacobs from the Presidency of the Senate was the
Assembly able to choose its speaker. A fortnight later, claiming they
had failed in their part of the agreement, Kelly deserted the Democrats
to help the Republicans modify the rules of the Senate. To the amaze-
ment of the anti-Tammany forces Kelly was suddenly stronger than
before. The Sun charged that he was no longer a Democrat, but a Re-
publican. "Nothing has happened for years," it said, "which should so
much encourage every sincere Democrat as the open transfer of John
Kelly and his followers to the ranks of the Republicans." 78

The Republican incumbent as governor, Alonzo B. Cornell, elected
in 1879, was destined to become the victim of a leader of his own party.
Having refused to lend more than passive support to Conkling during
the Senatorial campaign which resulted in his final defeat, he further
incensed the Stalwart leader by courageously refusing to approve legisla-
tion in the interest of Jay Gould. Cornell, who wanted to be renomi-
nated, had made the mistake of accepting the coalition between Tam-
many and Republicans in the legislature, causing the Sun to criticize the
Cornell-Kelly union. 79 At the convention the Half-Breed strength which
supported Cornell was abruptly shattered by the appearance of a forged
letter which resulted in a complete change in the complexion of the
State Committee. In consequence, Charles J. Folger, Secretary of the
Treasury, was nominated to carry the stigma of Republican chicanery. 80
Many disgusted Republicans urged the Democrats to nominate a man
for whom they could cast a ballot without sacrifice of principle.

Eleven days before the Democrats met in convention the Sun noticed
that Grover Cleveland, Mayor of Buffalo, was being considered as a
gubernatorial candidate by papers in the western counties. It offered
this observation: "The fact that he is a bachelor, though forty years
old and handsome, must especially weigh against him. We dare say he
might make an excellent candidate for Lieutenant-Governor, even now,

78 Feb. 23, 1882.

79 Feb. 22, 1882.

80 Sept. 23, 1882.

156 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

but for the higher office he should be required to wait until after he
is married." 81 At the convention Tammany let it be known that it
wanted Roswell P. Flower, while the Tilden group emphatically pre-
ferred Henry W. Slocum. Neither candidate was acceptable to the
County Democracy. Cleveland's strength lay in his disassociation with
any faction and his reputation as the "veto-mayor" of Buffalo. After
balloting twice the convention suddenly nominated Cleveland, with
David B. Hill in second place on the ticket.

In the days that followed Dana gave Cleveland sincere support. "No
one can study the record of his career since he has held office in Buffalo
without being convinced that he possesses those highest qualities of a
public man, sound principle of administrative duty, luminous intelli-
gence, and courage to do what is right, no matter who may be pleased
or displeased thereby," s ' 2 said the Sun. It further praised his letter of
acceptance as plain and practical, saying that in contrast to the Re-
publican candidate, Mr. Cleveland had not obtained his nomination by
forged proxies, corrupt bargaining or trickery. 83

Probably no newspaper anticipated the actual results of November 7,
1882. The majority given Cleveland was more than double that given
to Tilden in 1874. "This tremendous result," the Sun wrote, "has been
effected by the throwing of Democratic ballots with Grover Cleveland's
name printed upon them; not by the withholding of Republican ballots
bearing the name of Folger." The rebellion against Stalwart trickery had
been statewide. In New York City, where the Citizens Committee, with
Republican support, had nominated Allan Campbell for mayor, the
Democratic victory had swept the Tammany candidate into office.

It would have been astonishing had the Sun not changed its attitude
toward Cleveland. All who would naturally become his adherents were
its sworn enemies. Reformers, Mugwumps, "disappointed office seek-
ers," "hypocrites" and "shams" would rally around the new Governor.
It scarcely seems necessary, considering the character of Cleveland and
the character of the Sun, to explain its steadily increasing hostility
toward him. But some writers have recalled that the Sun was bitterly
hostile to Greeley, who dismissed Dana from the Tribune office, and to
Grant who did not name Dana Collector of the Port, and have sought a

81 Sept. 13, 1882.

82 Sept. 30, 1882.

83 Oct. 10, 1882.

NO KING! NO CLOWN! TO RULE THIS TOWN 157

special and selfish motive for Dana's attitude toward Cleveland.

According to Alexander K. McClure, Dana had written a personal
letter to Cleveland asking the appointment of his friend, Colonel Frank-
lin Bartlett, to the position of Adjutant General:

His chief purpose was to give a position on the staff to his son, Paul Dana,
who is now his successor in the editorial chair. Cleveland received that letter as
he received thousands of other letters recommending appointments, instead of
recognizing the claim Mr. Dana had upon him for the courtesy of an answer.
. . . When it became known that Dana felt aggrieved at the Governor, some
mutual friend intervened and proposed to Cleveland that he should invite Dana
to dine with some acquaintances at the Executive Mansion. To this Cleveland
readily assented. Dana was informed that Cleveland would tender such an in-
vitation if it would be accepted and promptly assented. Cleveland then became
involved in the pressing duties of the Legislature and allowed the session to
close without extending the promised and expected invitation to Dana. . . .
Dana naturally assumed that Cleveland had given him deliberate affront and
Cleveland could make no satisfactory explanation. 84

The story that Dana asked for the appointment is true; while the belief
that his change in attitude toward the Governor resulted from the fancied
snub is supported by the appearance in the Sun on December llth of an
item naming the men chosen by Cleveland as his staff, together with the
following paragraph which reads like a veiled threat:

Governor-elect Cleveland will run a gauntlet of National Guard critics today
when his appointments of staff officers are read, and perhaps he will get a fore-
taste of the unpleasant side of office holding. These appointments are among
the least important he will have to make, but they sometimes give a Governor
not the least of his troubles. The gentlemen who are willing to fill these orna-
mental offices are many, and the places are few. 85

Next day the Sun said, "We fear that Brother Cleveland is less gifted
with good sense than people have been led to suppose. It is a pity
rather. 7 ' Before the month passed it resorted to a facetious analogy:
"There is still wisdom in the proverb which advised against buying a
pig in a poke." The Sun's offensive against Grover Cleveland had begun.
Soon after Cleveland's inauguration he came into conflict with Tam-

84 McClure, A. D., Our Presidents, 314; see also 312-315. That this incident contributed
to Dana's attitude toward Cleveland is believed by Mitchell, E. P., Memoirs of an Editor,
327-329; Nevins, Allan, Cleveland, 148; Peck, Henry, Twenty Years of the Republic, 263-
264.

86 Dec. 11, 1882.

158 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

many by his veto of the Five Cent Fare bill, a measure sponsored in
the Senate by Boss Kelly's henchman, Thomas Grady. It appealed to
citizens not only because of their dislike for Jay Gould who controlled
the elevated roads, but because they preferred to ride for five cents in-
stead of ten cents. "We see no reason why the Governor should be ex-
pected to refuse his signature," 8G the Sun said. But the measure was
unconstitutional and as the Governor explained, against the interests
of rapid transit which thus far the State had been at great pains to
encourage. In view of its unconstitutionality, the Sun joined other
papers in upholding Cleveland's act. 87 Tammany was displeased with
Cleveland on still other grounds. The Tiger was getting thin, few ap-
pointments had been given it, and its every design seemed to meet an
untimely end. Patronage and spoils were taken from it by Cleveland's
measure placing harbor masters on salaries, thus depriving them of
exorbitant fees collected without legal warrant. By April it was clear
that the policy carried out by the Governor in the immigration de-
partment was to be applied to all branches of the State Governments.

Tammany had co-operated to the extent of passing a bill which placed
the immigration department under a single commissioner to be appointed
by the Governor. But when, with the authority granted him, Cleveland
chose William H. Murtha for commissioner, Tammany Senators joined
with the Republicans to prevent his nomination being confirmed. The
Sun claimed that they did this "chiefly because he f Murtha] would not
promise them any share in the patronage of the office." It added:

It seems probable, indeed, that Tammany Hall has blocked the way to an
important reform which every good citizen and true Democrat ought to favor.
Nevertheless, we believe that even the opposition of that faction might have
been overcome by the simple force of character of a Governor, if we had one,
whose ability and political sagacity fitted him to be a leader. 88

The legislature adjourned in the throes of a deadlock, leaving Mur-
tha's nomination unconfirmed, quarantine commissioners, port wardens
and harbor masters unappointed. But before it went home it had re-
ceived a message from Cleveland in which he plainly stated his indigna-
tion at the churlish and greedy conduct of the Senate majority. The Sun

86 Feb. 17, 1883.

87 Mar. 3, 1883.

88 May 6, 1883.

NO KING! NO CLOWN! TO RULE THIS TOWN 159

entitled it "The Governor's Mistake." 89 Believing that Cleveland would
have been justified, if as a plain citizen and Democrat he had expressed
his contempt for the legislature, it regretted that his indignation had
been set forth in an official document:

To illustrate the impropriety of the Governor's course, let us suppose that the
Senate had seen fit to send him a similar communication questioning his motives,
for example, in making some of the appointments which he has made. Suppose
the Senate had charged him with an "overweening greed for patronage" in caus-
ing Mr. John A. McCall, the new Superintendent of Insurance, to appoint an
unknown deputy from Buffalo. Would such a communication be the respectful
treatment which one department of the State government should show another?
But if the Senate, as such, has no right to impugn the motives of the Governor
what right has the Governor, as such, to impugn the motives of the Senate? 90

In October, Cleveland wrote Kelly a letter in which he expressed his
desire that Senator Grady, the pliant tool of the Boss, be not returned
to the Senate. After the press published this frank communication, the
Sun took occasion to refer to it now and then as that "unaccountable
letter."

The second year of Cleveland's term found young Theodore Roose-
velt, an enthusiast for reform, again in the legislature, where he had
already given hint of his boundless energy in tracking down graft. The
combination of Cleveland in the executive mansion and Roosevelt as
Assembly leader, working hand in hand, was destined to produce good.
But the Sun pointed out the supposedly partisan character of Roose-
velt's activities in such statements as the following:

SMART

Investigating a Democratic Commissioner of Public Works in this city.

Investigating our Democratic Sheriff.

Investigating our Democratic Registrar who has been in office less than a
month.

We do not notice that any Republican office-holders are undergoing investi-
gation. 91

Having been appointed chairman of the Committee on Cities, Roose-
velt went to work in a way which Harper's Weekly said caused the

89 May 13, 1883.

90 May 6, 1883.

91 Jan. 30, 1884.

160 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

older members of the legislature to tremble. First, he wanted to put
enough power directly into the hands of the Mayor of New York to free
him from boss rule. To effect this he drew up legislation denying the
Aldermen, notoriously the creatures of Kelly, the right to confirm
mayoralty appointments. To prove that the Mayor was unfit for such in-
dependence, the Sun declared that Mayor Edson had achieved his office
through a promise to nominate three Tammany commissioners and
divide the remainder of his patronage equally between Tammany
and the County Democracy. But regardless of opposition, Cleveland
promptly signed the two bills which aimed at this reform and, in addi-
tion, a third which eliminated blackmail and introduced economy in
various county offices.

When all eyes were thus turned toward the Governor, Cleveland
opened himself to the attacks of his enemies, and even the suspicion of
friends, by vetoing the Tenure-of-Office Act. This legislation authorized
the Mayor of New York to appoint the Registrar and Commissioner of
Public Works, and was intended to remove from office a political lieu-
tenant of Manning, Hubert O. Thompson, who, investigation had
shown, was inefficient, extravagant, and corrupt. Cleveland penned the
veto because the bill was so poorly constructed that it would not neces-
sarily cause Thompson's removal, beside being inconsistent, defective,
and shabby. 02 The Sun regarded the bill simply as a piece of "political
hostility." 93 In editorials preceding and following the investigation of
the department of public works, it upheld Thompson.

Hill, succeeding Cleveland as Governor in 1885, soon made the State
aware of his caliber. Greedy for patronage, he vetoed the census bill,
recommending instead the appointment of census enumerators by
county clerks. His other vetoes, attitude toward civil service, and his
course in general caused the Times to repudiate him as a party leader.
It declared he had not only forfeited all hope of Independent support
but alienated even the disinterested and high-minded of his own party.
"The Mugwumps/' commented the Sun, "abuse Governor Hill because
he is a Democrat. The old Republican leaven is still working beneath
the Mugwump crust." 94

Although the County Democracy hoped to outwit the ambitious Hill

82 Kevins, 142.

03 May 15, 1884.

04 May 29, 1885.

NO KING! NO CLOWN! TO RULE THIS TOWN 161

with such a candidate as Edward Cooper or Abram Hewitt, it was found
at the convention that Hill had builded well. To the delight of Dana,
he became a leader of the opposition to the Cleveland organization.
With Irving Hall and Tammany swinging into line, his nomination was
easily effected. The dark spots in Hill's past, brought into light during
the campaign, were explained in the Sun as distorted imaginings of the
Mugwump mind. Six months after Hill was elected Governor, Kelly
died. The Sun, which had become more friendly to him after Hill's
appearance, said:

The death of John Kelly was not unexpected, but it affects the mind with the
sincerest sense of a public loss. For the last ten years Mr. Kelly was perhaps
the most influential inhabitant of a solid foundation of disinterestedness and of
devotion to the public welfare. He was always a Democrat. . . , 95

The new power in Tammany, Richard Croker, began his career in
characteristic fashion. Perceiving the influence magnetic Henry George
exerted over labor, Croker attempted to bribe him with "fat fees" and a
good office to quit his agitation. When George could not be bought off,
Croker determined to destroy his leadership. Thus Tammany leaders
agreed to the nomination of Abram S. Hewitt, of the County Democ-
racy, for Mayor.

The Sun had not considered Hewitt a fit candidate for Governor one
year previous. But it supported him now for Mayor. During the cam-
paign it compared Hewitt favorably with George and with Theodore
Roosevelt, who had been nominated by the Republicans :

Mr. George is the most brilliant and plausible writer of the three, an acute
reasoner and popular orator. Mr. Roosevelt is a painstaking historian, a spirited
and indomitable politician, a mighty hunter and the handsomest man of the
three, in his own style. Mr. Hewitt is a cyclopedia of knowledge, the head of a
great business, who has come to riches without wronging any man, and has
always been both just and generous to his workingmen ; at once a student and
a man of affairs. He is somewhat impulsive and cannot sleep well; but New
York wants the most wideawake man she can get. Though an enthusiast he
doesn't arouse as much fiery enthusiasm as Mr. George, but he has more solid
staying power. Mr. Roosevelt has a better constitution than Mr. Hewitt, but
this advantage is perhaps more than set off by the fact that the younger candi-
date is supported by the Committee of One Hundred. 96

95 June 2, 1886.
06 Oct. 17, 1886.

162 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

There was an increasing mistrust of Hill. Those who favored Cleve-
land hoped he would not be renominated for Governor in 1888; but the
Sun said Hill should be nominated for President. 97 When the investi-
gations of the J. Sloat Fassett committee showed that he had played a
treacherous part in the building of the City Aqueduct, Dana declared
that these charges never touched him, that they were nothing but
noise. 98 For all the support given Hill this year, Dana could not whole-
heartedly support Hugh Grant, Croker's candidate for Mayor of New
York. So the Sun advised its readers to vote for the re-election of Hewitt.

When Hewitt was beaten, the Sun blamed not so much the opposition
of Tammany Hall as the support of the Times, and of the Evening Post.
These papers had put him, said the Sun, in a a notorious Voter's Direc-
tory as a good man who would stand the Mugwump test of political
'independence' and piled a load on 'Father Abram's' back heavy enough
to crush the gallant old runner down before he got within sight of the
winning post." 99

With the first real Tammany Mayor since the days of Tweed, Croker
came into his own. By April, 1889, the Boss was chosen City Chamber-
lain with a salary of $25,000 a year. It was the same office Sweeny had
held. "We commend this appointment/' the Sun said, "Mr. Croker is
capable; he is honest; he is faithful to the Constitution. . . . The office
upon which Mr. Croker enters has long existed. It is ancient, respecta-
ble, lucrative, and useless." 10

The Tammany thieves were soon hampered by further exposures. Ac-
cording to the Sun, "the investigation which the Fassett committee are
now conducting has, as everyone understands, for its objective point
the discrediting of Mayor Grant with the voters who have given by their
suffrages such frequent and flattering testimony of their confidence in
his courage and probity." Dana was ready to censure those who were
proved corrupt, but he heartily deplored the methods of the investigat-
ing committee. Under the title "A Disorderly Investigation," the Sun
sympathized with Mayor Grant, whom it said the examiner had insulted.
The people of New York were not in the least concerned whether one or
the other of the combatants were in the right, according to Dana, but
they were concerned "in having an important legislative investigation

07 Mar. 7, 1888.
98 Apr. 13, 1888.
90 Nov. 7, 1888.
100 Apr. 10, 1889.

NO KING! NO CLOWN! TO RULE THIS TOWN 163

conducted with decorum and decency." 101

Blackmailing, favoritism, and corruption were revealed, but the Sun
set forth reasons for supporting Tammany in the next elections: "It
is not to be forgotten that a very large body of Democrats, even while
not sharing the view of Tammany leaders in respect to municipal ques-
tions, have come to regard Tammany Hall as the only trustworthy con-
servator of real Democracy in New York City." It dilated upon Tam-
many's courageous battle against the proposed property qualification
for voting; its battle against Know-Nothingism, and its "honorable"
resistance to the civil service. According to the Sun, Tammany further
added to its glory by taking a stand against the proposed educational
test to accompany manhood suffrage. 102 By concentrating attention on
these points, Dana sought to minimize the evidence of corruption within
the organization. But he was not successful.

Citizens were incensed at the dishonesty in their government. Min-
isters pleaded for a reform movement. The Sun reported: "A lot of sly
old politicians who pretend to be non-partisan within the limits of the
city of New York, and a lot of guileless parsons whose tongues are
stronger than their heads in the matter of politics, are engaged in trying
to persuade the citizens of this town that its municipal Government is
singularly inefficient, extravagant, and corrupt." lo:i The candidate of
the reform People's Municipal League was Francis M. Scott, who had
an ideal record. But the Sun said: "He is a bumptious, elbowing, though
moderate fellow, who has lived on politics for several years past and
fared much better than he could have done in his profession as a law-
yer." It added: "The great city of New York would be a dismal place if
this Pharisaical gang could accomplish their purpose." 104

Simultaneously Dana eulogized Grant, who was renominated by
Croker, and said of the Tammany slate: "An emotional and wavering
cry for reform, or for another set of fellows in their places is all that is
heard against them." The Municipal League had felt certain of winning,
but national politics contributed to a Democratic victory. "Now that
this emotional and hysterical canvass is over," commented the Sun, "we
suggest to the deluded but honest-minded citizens engaged in it to take
a fair look at the city government and see how good it is. ... Its re-

i 01 Mar. 21, 1890.
102 May 6, 1890.
108 Oct. 28, 1890.
104 Oct. 11, 1890.

164 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

election carries with it promises of still further usefulness of the highest
public benefit." lor>

On the morning of February 14, 1892, Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst
awakened his congregation in the Methodist Square Church with what
he called "The First Gun of the Campaign." 10(i It was directed against
the police and their relations with Tammany Hall, liquor interests, and
criminals. The Sun reported that Parkhurst had preached a sermon in
which he denounced "the Mayor and those associated with him in ad-
ministering the affairs of this municipality as 'polluted harpies' that,
under pretence of governing the city, are feeding day and night on its
'quivering vitals' and as a 'lying, perjured, rum-soaked, and libidinous
lot.' " Mayor Grant was characterized as "a monster and not a man,"
and an official careless of the public interests and false to his oath.
Either, the Sun said, he spoke from knowledge and with precise facts
to support his charges, "or he is a vile liar and slanderer who should be
driven from the Christian pulpit and subjected by the civil law to the
criminal punishment he deserves." 107

Dana went further. He thought it not sufficient that the Grand Jury
make a presentment to the public designed as a rebuke to Dr. Parkhurst
for his sermon of February 14th. The Sun demanded that the District
Attorney refuse to allow "his cause to be passed by with simple exposure
and reprimand. Dr. Parkhurst should be indicted," it said, "tried, and
convicted as the slanderer he is." Undaunted, Parkhurst reiterated his
attacks and defended his sermon. This time he was wise enough to pro-
cure proof of his charges. Having criticized the Evening Post and the
New York Times for their sympathy with the vice crusade, the Sun
now resorted to sensational attacks upon the ministers. To Parkhurst's
appeal for money to aid investigations, it replied:

When he visited several vicious resorts after midnight, a few weeks ago, under
the pretence that he was an old reprobate from the West, he was obliged to pay
a large price to the wretched women who received him in order to induce them
to make shameful and shameless exposures of themselves in his presence. Nor
has he denied that he went to further expense to inflame them with wine, so that
they might be more unguarded in their disgraceful behavior.

Of course, therefore, if Dr. Parkhurst is to keep up this sort of detective work,
visiting in turn all the disreputable haunts in the town, it will cost a "great deal

106 Nov. 5, 1890.

106 Parkhurst, C. H., Our Fight with Tammany, 8.

i 7 Feb. 17, 1892.

NO KING! NO CLOWN! TO RULE THIS TOWN 165

of money" as he says: but we do not see why the citizens of New York should
be called upon to pay for such a gratification of his morbid curiosity. 108

The "Great Police Shake Up" in April was merely a bluff on the part
of the Tammany machine to quiet things, and the new Police Inspector,
Thomas Byrnes, a coarse, bluff individual, had no intention of reform.
While the Sun apologetically admitted that the changes in the Police
Department were "in part" provoked by the wholesale charges of cor-
ruption, "the main motive," it claimed, was "of course improvement
in the efficiency of the department"; then added: "The new arrange-
ment indicates also that the Democratic government of New York is
an efficient government for the lawless. If any improvement results
from it, the happy consequences will be a further proof of the advan-
tages to this town of Democratic unity." 109

Dana tried to prevent the appearance of an anti-Tammany ticket in
the municipal elections that year by insisting that, "In New York there
is now no anti-Tammany Democracy which amounts to anything." "A
ticket in opposition to Tammany might attract the support of blather-
skite preachers like Dixon, and procure the favor of the infamous par-
son, Parkhurst; but it would not get more than five or six thousand
votes at most." no

The Democratic victory of 1892 encouraged Croker and Hill. Early
the next year they determined to elect William Sulzer Speaker of the
Assembly and Edward Murphy, Jr., United States Senator, and re-
appoint Isaac H. Maynard to the Court of Appeals. With Sulzer, control
of legislation in Albany would be facilitated; while Murphy could be
relied upon in Washington. Although his unfitness was well known,
Dana commended him, saying, "Personally Mr. Murphy is a man of
rather distinguished presence, of a certain courtly finish and formality
of manner, and the address acquired by those who have enjoyed the
advantages of education." "Mr. Murphy may be expected to be heard
from in a manner to put at rest all question of his ability to represent
the principles of his party and the people of his State." ni

Meanwhile efforts were being made to conciliate the President-elect,
who was too well aware of Murphy's character. But Cleveland made it

lOR Mar. 31, 1892.
10! Apr. 21, 1892.
""Oct. 2, 1892.
131 Jan. 1, 1893.

166 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

publicly known that he did not approve of Hill's choice. "The normal
responsibility devolving upon the Democrats who meet in legislative
caucus tonight," said the Sun on January 10, 1893, "has been greatly
enlarged through the unfortunate success of President-elect Cleveland's
too influential advisors in getting him to inaugurate a Presidential cru-
sade against a certain Senatorial candidate." Dana asserted that Mur-
phy must be used to vindicate the constitutional provision that Senators
in Congress shall be chosen by the legislatures of the States they repre-
sent. 11 - After his election, the Sun commented: "It is to be hoped de-
voutly that hereafter no President-elect will ever impose upon any im-
portant division of his party the unavoidable duty of administering to
him a manifest rebuke." 113

The growing indignation and disgust of New Yorkers with Tammany,
fed by the disclosures of Parkhurst's Society for the Prevention of
Crime, resulted in a Republican victory in the 1893 elections. On Jan-
uary 25, 1894, the Chamber of Commerce passed a resolution asking
for an investigation of the Police Department. 114 Shortly an investigat-
ing committee, with Clarence Lexow as chairman, was appointed by the
Republican Senate. It arrived in New York the first day of February.

The Sun described this committee as composed "of experts from the
sugar bushes of Herkimer, the lumber camps of Franklin, the hopyards
of Oneida county, and from other localities somewhat remote from the
metropolis." Its arrival was pronounced "an unwarranted and unneces-
sary but not gratuitous invasion." 115 Parkhurst himself was wary of
the committee, believing that secret political influences were at work
and that it had come "not to investigate the Police Department but to
investigate our investigation of it." 11G Two days after the committee
began taking evidence the Sun wrote :

We violate no confidence in declaring that the Lexow Committee which, like
the wild man of Borneo in the familiar college song "has just come to town,"
with William A. Sutherland as its guide, has two objects in view. Its first and
primary object is partisan. The Republicans have not been carrying any elec-
tions in New York since control of the Legislature passed from their hands into
the hands of the Democrats. For a considerable time the election officials ap-

112 Jan. 10, 1893.
118 Jan. 11, 1893.

114 Parkhurst, 240.

115 Feb. 3, 1894.

116 Parkhurst, 245-247.

NO KING! NO CLOWN! TO RULE THIS TOWN 167

pointed to represent the interests of the Republican minority here have been, as
the Republican leaders aver, either lukewarm or treacherous; and wherever an
investigation has been made, evidences of untrustworthiness have appeared.
. . . The hope of the Lexow Committee, and of those directing its movements,
is that sufficient evidence may be adduced to discredit the loyalty of the Repub-
lican organization in New York city, and thereby to push forward the so-called
bi-partisan bill, which proposed to restore to the Police Board the even division
of commissioners which existed prior to 1889. . . .

The second and remote object of the Lexow investigating committee is to give
Tom Platt's opponents in the Union League Club, the City Club, the Parkhurst
Society, the Chamber of Commerce, and elsewhere, an opportunity to justify
the reckless and wholesale charges which, without specifications or details, they
have made against the Police Department and against its administration by the
present Commissioners. That is quite another matter, but if the accusing parties
will step forward to the Captain's office and formulate their charges, we violate
no confidence in saying that the Lexow committee will listen to them and give
them such heed as they deserve." n7

The Sun scarcely mentioned the shocking disclosures made by the
Committee. But on September 7th, the organization of the Committee
of Seventy to overthrow Tammany was featured on its front page. It
was referred to as a "Gathering of the Discontented." Several letters
read at this "noisy meeting" were published in full, including Ex-Mayor
Hewitt's addressed to Gustav H. Schwab in which he declared "the only
issue in the coming election is whether the city shall continue to be
governed by Tammany Hall." He saw no opportunity for reform if it
were.

On September 29, a leading editorial calling for "A Straight Fight"
between the two major parties advised the Republicans against fusing
with the Committee of Seventy and other anti-Tammany forces on the
ground that "the nomination of some Mugwump or guerilla Democrat
or non-descript political misfit" for Mayor, will leave a clear field "for
the success of the regular Democratic municipal ticket." The rumored
candidacy of Ex-Mayor Grace elicited an enthusiastic leading editorial:

Let Tammany Hall nominate William Rowderow Grace for Mayor, and a
great piece of political wisdom will be manifested.

No Republican can beat him, and the success of the State ticket will be
mightily promoted thereby.

Go in, Tammany, and win! 118

117 Mar. 11, 1894.

118 Oct. 8, 1894.

168 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

Tammany was "not over-anxious for the Grace alliance." Mayor Gil-
roy asserted that the organization was more interested in the State elec-
tion. 110 The day this announcement was made the Sun jeered at the Re-
publicans for trying to promote the candidacy of Strong on the grounds
of his philanthropy. Voters will not be influenced, it declared, by such
"collateral considerations/' for the "office of the Mayor of New York
is not an eleemosynary post." But Grace decided to endorse Strong and
forced "his rebellious faction" to accept the entire ticket of the Com-
mittee of Seventy. "The action of the Grace Democracy," the Sun de-
clared, "leaves Tammany Hall no other course than to name a straight
ticket." 12

Tammany named two equally respected men to oppose the fusion
candidate: Nathan Straus for Mayor and Frederick Smyth for Re-
corder. Dana immediately announced that he would not support Straus,
for "he has already as a city officer proved himself unfit for public of-
fice." In the same editorial Strong was again attacked for "his ostenta-
tious charities." 121

At no time did Dana discuss the true issues of the election. A typical
Sun editorial during the campaign was:

For Mayor of New York

Hugh Jackson Grant
Platform: He knows the Ropes! 11>2

But ten days before the election Sun readers were told in a two and a
half column editorial that the only issue of the campaign centered in the
controversy over the building of subway lines. All citizens were implored
to vote against Strong.

A short editorial greeted the overthrow of Tammany by the election
of Strong on the reform ticket.

If he is only a lucky bubble of an overwhelming popular wave he will soon
show the truth in office and collapse. If he is really a man of original understand-
ing and force, and able of his own resources to direct the city's affairs ... no
one will win greater glory from office holding than he, and every one will wish
him well.

But has he got sense? That is the great question. 123

119 Oct. 9, 1894.

120 Oct. 10, 1894.

121 Oct. 12, 1894.

122 Oct. 20, 1894.

123 Nov. 7, 1894.

NO KING! NO CLOWN! TO RULE THIS TOWN 169

On the same page there followed a vigorous attack upon the processes
of the Lexow investigation. The testimony as to extortion and black-
mail, the Sun reasonably declared, "has come chiefly from men and
women of a character which awakens reasonable doubts of their stories.
Moreover, it was brought out without the restraints of the rules of
evidence established in legal proceedings, and without the criticisms of
cross-examination and objections of opposing counsel."

And then the Sun succinctly expressed its philosophy in regard to
Tammany corruption:

We have just closed a campaign in which many of the clergy and great num-
bers of good people, men and women, have been engaged because of the horror
excited in them by the exposure of the practical working of this under-spread
system. Now that the particular campaign is over, why should these moral re-
formers proceed with their movement? They have not reached the seat of the
disease but have only dealt with some of the symptoms. The seat is not in Tam-
many Hall but in the low moral tone of the society where many conspicuous
church members, and men looked up to as exemplars of truth and righteousness,
have not hesitated to pay bribes, and to make themselves confederates of the
police in spreading such corruption and social demoralization.

On the other hand, Dana was fully aware of the evils of Tammany.
Had he not referred to Boss Tweed as "a great man; rich, generous,
without prejudice, spending freely the piles of money he extracts from
the public treasury"? But with a circulation in the beginning of only
fifty to sixty thousand copies a day, largely among the mechanics and
small merchants, 124 Dana did not care to lose that preponderant ele-
ment of the Sun's readers who were Tammany adherents. Furthermore,
he frankly considered the open perfidy of Tammany less harmful than
the secret connivance of the Republicans in New York and their cor-
ruption at Washington. In the Sim's tireless warfare against the greater
evil Dana depended upon the ill-gotten success of the Democracy in
New York. And so to purify the land at its fountain-head he was willing
to tolerate the well of corruption at home. As usual such compromise has
a price. Had Dana come out boldly against the rascality of Tammany it
is not improbable that his battle cry of "Turn the Rascals Out" directed
against the Republicans in national campaigns might have accomplished
his purpose at least it would have sounded more convincing. But if
too shrewd a newspaper man to risk the popularity of the Sun by alienat-

124 Wilson, James H , Life of Dana, 378.

170 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

ing its allies Dana was also too honest to pretend he was blind. Thus he
used for his weapon a good-natured satire which very likely opened the
eyes of some who would not have read his paper had it come out vigor-
ously against Tammany. While this strategy failed to attain its larger
moral and political objective it made the Sun successful commercially.

When Dana became established financially he no longer hesitated to
attack Tammany openly. But he was usually guided by expediency.
Thus he stroked the Tiger for a purpose. In Dana's hands, Tammany
was an instrument to assist in the election of Tilden, promote Hill, or
to disparage Cleveland. Even in the famous municipal election of 1878
there was little said in the Sun to offend the sensibilities of its Tammany
readers. The unrivaled skill and energy of the paper was directed to
punish the avowed foe of the Tilden Democrats, John Kelly, not to
expose the rottenness of his organization. Knowing this, the Sun's bril-
liant "No King No Clown" campaign is the conspicuous exception to
Dana's long-time policy of holding his fire against the Sachems of Tam-
many Hall.

CHAPTER VII

CIVIL SERVICE REFORM

THERE were many crudities and defects in the American political system
of Dana's day. But the reformative impulse had always been strong,
and in 1868 men were bending their efforts to correct abuses. Thomas
Allen Jenckes was the first in America to attack the spoils system with
practical vigor. 1 He was a Representative from Rhode Island who had
advocated civil service reform since his appearance in Congress in 1863.
In May, 1868, Jenckes championed a bill which would have introduced
the best features of the civil service laws of China, Prussia, France and
England. Praising his recommendations, the Sun took its first stand on
the momentous question. 2 Endorsing competitive examinations and pro-
motions by merit, it said:

It was not the purpose of the founders of the republic that every change in
the party holding power should be followed by the instant dismissal of every
man in the civil service of the Government, nor was their practise of that sort.
There is no good reason why, when the Republicans or the Democrats carry an
election they should turn out every experienced and skillful clerk of the oppo-
site party, and supply his place with an incompetent or untrained man of their
own party. If Mr. Jenckes can succeed in setting bounds to the range of party in
this direction he will render a service to his country which ought to win for him
a perpetual harvest of admiration and gratitude. 8

And again:

As soon as honest, respectable men, not politicians can be assured that if
they will prepare themselves for public service they are likely to get appoint-
ments, and once appointed to keep their places as long as they faithfully and
honestly do their work, that of itself will elevate the character of applicants for
the situations, and give us the pick of the best instead of the worst material. . . .
It is to be hoped Mr. Jenckes' bill becomes a law. 4

1 Fish, Carl Russell, The Civil Service and Patronage, 211.

2 May IS; June 11; Oct. 15, 1868; Jan. 5, 1869.
8 Oct. 15, 1868.

4 Jan. 5, 1869.

172 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

While Grant was President-elect, and during the early part of his
Administration, civil service reformers believed that he was their sin-
cere and earnest friend. 5 George William Curtis rejoiced, "At last, thank
God, we have got a President whom trading politicians did not elect,
and who is no more afraid of them than he was of rebels." (>> But before
Curtis had spoken these words, Dana was completely disillusioned about
Grant, and his staff were searching their extensive vocabularies to find
words with which to describe his failure. With Dana's change toward
Grant, he shifted his position on civil service reform. There was no
written avowal that he considered his support of the Jenckes Bill mis-
taken, but he began to find proposals for improving the civil service
impractical, especially when they were inspired by Grant. For instance:

Senator Wilson proposes to prohibit by severe penalties the levying of assess-
ments for political purposes upon the employees of the Government. This is a
wise measure, worthy of the high character and profound moral perception of
the distinguished Senator. If it were possible to carry out such a reform in every
department of public affairs, the country would gain immensely by it; but so
long as such assessments are levied in every state and in every locality by the
managers of politics, will not the party which prohibits them be left at a com-
parative disadvantage? 7

And, two days later:

Gen. Grant's anxiety for the reform of the civil service is curiously illustrated
in the appointments which he has made. ... He declares emphatically that
he wishes the proposed reform to apply not only to the clerks of the Depart-
ments, but to the persons appointed to office with the consent of the Senate. By
whom are the persons appointed if not by the President? 8

Through the efforts of Jenckes and Senator Trumbull a provision was
written into an Appropriation Act authorizing the President "to pre-
scribe such rules and regulations for the admission of persons into the
civil service as will best promote the efficiency thereof," and to appoint
a commission to draw up rules for ascertaining the fitness of each can-
didate. 9 Grant appointed an advisory board, headed by George William
Curtis. The board recommended rules to bring political assessments to

6 Fish, 212.

6 Curtis, George William, Orations and Addresses, II, 12

7 Dec. 10, 1870.

8 Dec. 12, 1870.

Rhodes, J. F., A History of the United States, VI, 387.

CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 173

an end and put the service on the basis of competitive examinations.
Its report was presented December 18, 1871, and next day the President
announced to Congress that the rules of the commission would go into
effect the following January. Calling this a "crude and bastard" scheme,
the Sun attempted to show how civil service reform could be approached
from the "right end":

It is not a competitive examination that is needed to protect the appointing
power. The question of fitness and unfitness is easily solved by the ordinary ma-
chinery of official life. It is not ignorance as to who is fit and unfit, that gives us
incompetent officials ; it is the want of disposition to appoint those who are best
fitted, and to retain them when found, that occasions the mischief our civil serv-
ice suffers. 10

When the Sun said, "The true reform of the civil service must consist
first of all in reforming the President," n it revealed an important fac-
tor in Dana's opposition. Grant actually had no faith in the system he
was pretending to support. The distribution of spoils continued under
him with little abatement, so that Curtis shortly became thoroughly
disappointed and withdrew. Sun editorials became increasingly cynical.

In 1872 Horace Greeley stood on the first national platform which
contained a plank for civil service reform. Four years later the Demo-
cratic platform called for reform, but Tilden did not take a positive
stand on the issue. Supporting him, the Sun urged the necessity of a
change in personnel, saying it would be President Tilden's first duty to
appoint new heads for all the departments. The only reform practicable
was to "turn them out and put fit men in their places."

In 1869 the Sun had praised Carl Schurz's activities as Minister to
Spain and his service in the Civil War, and with apparent sincerity
added, "we shall watch his career with interest, sympathy, and confi-
dence." 12 Seven years later, when Schurz supported Hayes, the Sun
showed a distinct change in attitude. No longer was Schurz depicted a
splendid character in political life; but as a misguided fool. As Secre-
tary of the Interior, he promulgated sound rules for the department and
put them into execution. 13 The Sun spoke only of his failure to effect
reform and his hypocrisy as a reformer. After describing the pollution

10 Jan. 20, 1872.
" Feb. 7, 1872.

12 July 15, 1869.

1 3 Oberholtzer, E. P., A History of the United States, III, 339.

174 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

of the Interior Department that existed previous to Schurz's appoint-
ment, it wrote:

What has Mr. Schurz done to illustrate his fine theories, and to put in prac-
tice the reforms which he has professed so vehemently?

He has begun by retaining in office the whole crew of collusion ists and job-
bers ... he has invented or more properly adopted from the European bu-
reaucracy, a set of rules by which these men are to perpetuate themselves in
power and to exclude all chance of appointment for merit from outside. 14

Unrestrained wrath for the "crime of 1876" seemed to govern Dana's
treatment of Hayes and his Administration. The Sun scornfully referred
to Hayes' interest in civil service reform as "hypocritical pretensions"
and liked to dig up instances of political opportunism in his appoint-
ments. For instance, it charged that the President's attempt to replace
the Customs officials in New York City with more dependable men was
a purely political maneuver. It declared that the nomination of Theo-
dore Roosevelt, Sr., as collector, in place of Chester A. Arthur, was
intended to serve as a "slap square in the face of Roscoe Conkling," ir>
and that the Senate would do no wrong if it rejected the whole list. 10
The President's persistency in reappointing Edwin A. Merritt and Silas
W. Burt to the Customhouse, after the Senate rejected their names,
was explained as pure factional warfare. "The suspension of Arthur and
Cornell," said the Sun, "is a blow aimed directly at Mr. Conkling by
Hayes, Sherman and Evarts. They are bent on his defeat and, therefore,
at this critical point in the Senatorial canvass they throw the apple of
discord into the campaign." 17

In an editorial entitled "Nobody Pleased," the Sun cited both Conk-
ling and Curtis as disapproving the Hayes policy:

Mr. Conkling's views of Mr. Hayes 7 Administration are too well known to re-
quire any new exposition at the present time. Mr. Curtis does not seem to fall
a bit behind his rival in the thoroughness of his contempt for the powers that be
at Washington. In Harper's Weekly, which is known to express on all occasions
his political sentiments, Mr. Curtis arraigns the Administration on the grave
charges of inconsistency and an utter want of principle. After setting forth
clearly the two opposing views which prevail in the Republican party on the
subject of the civil service, Mr. Curtis proceeds to criticise with great severity

14 Apr. 25, 1877.

15 Oct. 16, 1877.

16 Oct. 14, 1877.

17 July 12, 1878.

CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 175

the contradiction involved in the nomination recently made for officers of Cus-
toms in this city. He says: a To select a Collector in accordance with the first
view, and a Surveyor and a Naval officer in accordance with the second, is to sat-
isfy nobody, because it is an action which shows no consistent principle." Thus
according to the testimony of the leaders of the two divisions comprising the
great Republican party of this State, we have at present an unprincipled Admin-
istration at Washington. 18

President Garfield was elected on a platform which called for civil
service reform, "thorough, radical, and complete." But the Sun was not
convinced. In an editorial entitled "Hypocritical and Ridiculous in Both
Parties," it pointed out that the fondness of a party for this reform
increased in proportion to its distance from an opportunity to put it
into practice:

Garfield was elected, and not one man throughout the United States with a
solitary exception, was found to adhere to the doctrine which the whole Whig
party had been preaching. On the contrary, the very men who had been most
conspicuous in advocating this doctrine were earliest most imperious, and most
persistent in their demands for appointment. In fact, in the short space of a
single month these cormorants for office had literally worried the life out of the
poor old gentleman they had elected. He found no peace from these civil service
reformers except in the grave.

Hayes was nothing if not a civil service reformer. Under him public officers
were not to be allowed to interfere in elections. Yet what did we see recently
under this pious civil service reformer, who professed so much? What but all
the Departments of Government almost stopped while the clerks went home to
Ohio to carry the State for the Republicans!

We say therefore, that the pretensions of both parties as civil service reform-
ers seem to us equally hypocritical and ridiculous. 19

The tragic death of Garfield in 1881 at the hands of a disappointed
office-seeker aroused public opinion in favor of civil service reform.
This was reflected in New York State, where Erastus Brooks proposed
a civil service reform bill for adoption by the legislature. Its main fea-
tures were a civil service commission of three to administer the law, the
holding of competitive examinations and rules forbidding partisan ac-
tivity among office holders. Dana greeted it with scorn and entitled an
editorial on the subject, "Putting on the Cast Off Clothing of the Re-
publican Party":

i 8 Nov. 13, 1877.
10 Nov. 26, 1880.

176 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

In one sense every intelligent and patriotic citizen is in favor of civil service
reform; that is, in favor of constantly and always improving the civil service
and making it as nearly perfect as possible. How can anyone be opposed to that?
It is impossible.

But civil service reform as now used in politics has acquired a specific mean-
ing, and has become a technical phrase. It means making the tenure of subordi-
nates in the executive department of the Government, long, fixed, and secure.
It means life tenure in office, though this is cloaked by the term ^during good
behavior. . . ."

Mr. Hayes professed this kind of civil service reform, as many other Republi-
cans have done; but no Republican leader seems to have seriously thought of
carrying it into practice; while Mr. Conkling and other bold Republicans openly
repudiate it.

Does Mr. Brooks seriously propose to clothe the strong, robust, confident
Democracy in the condemned and cast-off duds of the Republicans? 20

But when the bill was actually passed, the Sun was moved to a sym-
pathetic partisan pride: "A Democratic legislature in the Democratic
State of New York seems to have tried a bolder experiment in civil
service reform than the Republicans have yet attempted in any state." - 1

National reformers met the challenge with equal haste. Curtis, Eaton,
Hayes, and others issued a circular in which they attributed Garfield's
assassination to "abuses and dangers of patronage in the civil service."
They called for public meetings on the subject. Dana's dislike of these
men contributed to the asperity with which he denounced the "logic of
cranks":

The miserable politicians who invented the phrases "Garfield Republican"
and "Guiteau Republican" were not quicker to make capital out of the assassi-
nation than the civil service reform theorists.

Under the American system of rotation in office the public service is open
to ten million citizens. The so-called reformers would close it to all except a
class of about one hundred thousand perpetual and professional officeholders.
To their ears the hinges of the universe will continue to creak until this thing
is done. Until it is done, nothing evil can befall us which will not be explained
by the "abuses and dangers of patronage in the civil service."

Guiteau was a disappointed office seeker and he shot Garfield; therefore,
he shot Garfield because he was a disappointed office seeker. That is the logic
of this interesting band of civil service reformers, now increased in number by
the accession of the infamous R. B. Hayes. Guiteau was a disappointed commu-
nist and he shot Garfield; he shot Garfield because he had belonged to the
Oneida concern. Guiteau was a disappointed brother of Plymouth Church and

20 Jan. 9, 1881.

21 July 28, 1883.

CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 177

he shot Garfield; he shot him because he had sat under Henry Ward Beecher's
preaching. . . .

If Guiteau's office seeking has any bearing on the crime, it is to make it more
extraordinary, not to account for it. When the assassin conceived the deed, he
was still hoping for office. From the office seeker's point of view he did the
craziest thing imaginable when he made up his mind to murder the man on
whom his hopes depended. He shot the President, not because he was an office
seeker, but in spite of that fact. 2 -

In 1882 an effort was being made to push through Congress the Pen-
dleton Bill, providing for a civil service commission, competitive exam-
inations and prohibiting political assessments upon officeholders. State
elections registered approval of such a reform, while President Arthur
gave it his support.

A series of Sun editorials on the Pendleton Bill are illuminating.
"Abuses in the Civil Service/' appearing December 14th, was based
upon a speech by Senator Pendleton. The first sentence clearly expressed
Dana's fear that the measure would assist the Republicans to retain
their office. "Of the extent to which the money wrung from the tax-
payers has been illegally and scandalously squandered in the executive
departments, no adequate conception can be formed until the party
which has been in power for more than twenty years is compelled to let
go its grip upon the Federal Administration." Nevertheless, the Sun was
much more favorably disposed toward Pendleton than it had ever been
toward reformers, and its comments were far from bitter:

The noteworthy feature of this speech was the stress laid on an argument
of which little use has heretofore been made. A change in our administrative
system has been urged mainly on the ground that, unless the tenure of office is
made permanent, it will always prove impracticable to prevent the assessment of
officeholders for political purposes. If civil service reformers have, to some ex-
tent, succeeded in gaining the popular ear, it is because the people are unwilling
that the whole body of Federal functionaries, whose salaries are paid by the
whole people irrespective of parties, shall be treated as a political machine to
be manipulated exclusively in the interest of the party in power. . . .

This is the chief argument of the civil service reformers but Senator Pendle-
ton had another argument, namely, that "in his judgment, one of the chief rec-
ommendations of the proposed reform in the civil service was the saving of the
public money which it would inevitably entail." He proceeds to illustrate by
examples how, under the present system, there is a constant pressure from poli-
ticians upon the departments to make appointments, and a corresponding pres-

22 Oct. 17, 1881.

178 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

sure by the heads of departments upon their subordinates to devise pretexts
for taking on new men. . . .

On December 16th, an editorial was devoted to exposing the "Re-
publican politicians" and their "sudden enthusiasm for permanent ten-
ure of office." How partisan the reform seemed to Dana is evident in
this statement:

What Republican politicians understand by a reform of the civil service is a
system which would give the whole body of existing officeholders, every one of
whom belongs to their own party, an indefeasible title to go on drawing salaries
from the public purse, while as to such vacancies in the lowest grade of offices
as may from time to time occur, Republicans have an equal opportunity of
filling them. That their object is to deprive the Democratic party, which consti-
tutes a majority of the people, of any connection with the Federal civil service
outside of the right to compete for vacant posts of a low grade is conclusively
attested by the Kasson bill, which strips the President of the power of removal,
merely authorizing him to prefer charges and bring to trial an incompetent or
offensive officeholder. This provision is due, of course, to the apprehension,
roused by the November elections, that the next President may be chosen by
the Democratic party; and the aim is to paralyze the executive authority by
making the multitude of agents through whom it must be exercised entirely in-
dependent of their ostensible head. In brief, what Republicans of the Kasson
type mean by reform is that they are in, and meant to stay in.

The same monstrous assertion was made by Mr. Hoar, when he defiantly
announced on Thursday in the Senate that "the civil service is made up now,
and always will be, of adherents of one political party," and that the Demo-
cratic party is now called upon to "certify its patriotism and its fitness to take
charge of the Government" by pledging itself beforehand not to disturb Repub-
lican officeholders. So much at least may be said for this extraordinary affirma-
tion, that it helps us to comprehend why the Pendleton bill commends itself to
the Senator from Massachusetts.

One amendment proposed to the bill by Senator Pugh was to strike
out the provision that entrance to the civil service should be limited to
the lowest grade, and to let offices of every class be thrown open to
competition on the part of all citizens. This amendment was considered
sound and necessary by the Sun, but its approval was as partisan as
were its criticisms of the Pendleton Bill:

What Democrats want is a fair start. They do not accept the axiom which
Mr. Hoar had the incredible assurance to lay down, that the civil service, now
and always, must be made up of adherents of one political party. Neither are
they satisfied with Mr. Pendleton 's proposition, which would give the mem-

CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 179

bers of a party now forming a large majority of the American people an equal
right to compete only for the lowest grade of posts, while the minority party
would remain impregnably established in the official strongholds. And if they
assent to the proposal that nobody should be disturbed for political reasons,
have they not a right to demand that as the first step to an equitable reform,
every existing officeholder shall prove his right to draw a salary by beating all
competitors in an examination to which every citizen of the United States shall
be admissible? That is what we understood Senator Brown to aim at by his
amendment, and we shall watch with curiosity its reception at the hands of the
Republican politicians who of late have affected so much zeal for reform. 23

The Senate vote on the Pugh amendment disclosed a rampant parti-
sanship. All the Republicans opposed it and all the Democrats with one
exception supported it. This aroused the cynicism of the Sun, which
regarded it as final proof of "the real motives of many sham converts
to reform":

Republican as well as Democratic Senators knew that the proposed change
in the Pendleton project meant a genuine and trenchant, instead of mock reform.
They knew that it would meet the strongest objections to the present system by
so far reducing the number of employees in all departments as to get rid of super-
numeraries, and by compelling every functionary to submit to a test of his
qualifications in competition not only with his fellow officeholders, but with out-
side candidates. It is true that if these provisions were included in the new
scheme a good many superiluous Republicans would at once lose their salaries,
and that now and then a Republican in the middle and higher grades as well
as the lower category of the service might have to give way to a Democrat who
proved himself a fitter man. But that is just what the reformers want, if there
is anything but gammon in their talk about the waste of public money in
unnecessary salaries, and their demand that offices shall be allotted according
to desert without reference to political opinions. Accordingly the Republican
Senators, taking, no doubt, their cue from such astute and zealous reformers as
Mr. Hoar, had not a word to say about the purpose or the merits of the Pugh
amendment, but when the time came to deal with it in earnest they quietly and
unanimously voted it down. 24

From this time the Sun had no use for the bill, and an editorial which
appeared four days later was entitled "The Pendleton Sham."

During this debate, two questions had become intensely interesting
to both Republicans and Democrats: had Thomas Jefferson initiated the
spoils system, and did Andrew Jackson say "To the Victors belong the

2 Dec. 16, 1882.
24 Dec. 25, 1882.

180 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

Spoils"? The Sun claimed that Alexander Hamilton had inaugurated the
spoils system:

Jefferson found it in full operation in the Treasury Department when he
entered the Cabinet of Washington, and it reached its full development in all
the departments under John Adams. It consisted of a multiplication of offices
and the creation of useless patronage, dispensed to personal favorites and politi-
cal partisans. This is the spoils system truly defined of which Mr. Hamilton was
the author.

Mr. Jefferson reversed the Federalist principle upon which Hamilton and
Adams proceeded, and the first Democratic Administration was the first and
greatest reform Administration. It abolished two-thirds of the civil list. It cut
off every needless office. It reduced expenditure and diminished taxes. . . .

This was and is true civil service reform. We have tried the Federalist plan a
long while, under Grant and Hayes and Garfield, and nobody seems pleased
with the result. Why not make a change, and try the Jefferson plan, as our
fathers did in 1800? L>5

Nor did the Sun believe that, "To the Victors belong the Spoils" ex-
pressed "an opinion ever held" by Jackson. "It is an adaption from
a speech of Mr. Marcy on the nomination of Mr. Van Buren to be
Minister of England; inoffensive enough with the context, but caught
up by partisan malice at the time, and made to do duty ever since as a
charge against the Jackson Administration."

Dana's ardent belief in the two-party system may have contributed
to his coldness to civil service reform. A quotation from an editorial
written in 1882 is sufficient to show how sincerely the Sun upheld party
activity:

We think it follows from the very nature of our Constitution that so long as
the relations between the Federal Government and the constituent States are
defined by that instrument, it is, and always will be, our supreme interest to have
two parties representing two great counter tendencies, to wit, the segregative
and the cohesive, and the two great principles of centralization and of local self
government, which it is the capital object of our organic law to maintain in
equilibrium. . . , 26

Under the provisions of the Pendleton Bill, as it was passed, the
President could extend the rules or provide exemption from them. Ar-
thur was willing to give it a fair trial and appointed Eaton chairman of
the Commission. The Sun was vastly amused at this. Mr. Eaton had

25 July 30, 1881.
20 Mar. 1,1882.

CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 181

drafted the bill, now he was to be "given an office." This justified the
belief of an opponent, who called it a "bill to create an office for Mr.
Dorman B. Eaton." "If this appointment is made and Mr. Dorman B.
Eaton accepts the office and enters upon its duties without further
preliminaries, it appears to us," the Sun said, "that what is called the
cause of Civil Service Reform will receive a tremendous blow a shock
from the effects of which the cause may not recover for years and
years." - 7

Mr. Eaton is well known as an advocate of civil service reform, so called at
all times and in all places. He is a man with whom the President can have no
persona] sympathy. We doubt whether he will get along pleasantly with his asso-
ciates. Verbosity and dogmatism are not likely to conciliate others who may
not possess his knowledge of the subject in hand.

We observe that Mr. Eaton has already manifested an unfriendly spirit
toward the other members of the Commission. He told a Times reporter that he
knew nothing about Mr. Thoman and was not sure that he knew anything
about Mr. Gregory. "I did think," he added, "that a man who has not been
named would be appointed." He also remarked that if the gentlemen chosen
were lacking in experience the Commission would have great trouble in getting
to work.

As to Messrs. Gregory and Thoman, it is nothing against them that they are
not yet so well known as Wiggins, the weather prophet. If they happen to dis-
agree with Dorman B. Eaton they may soon acquire distinction enough.

The Civil Service Commission is not likely to be a tribunal of conciliation. 28

Although in 1883 Arthur pronounced the law successful, 29 the Sun
devoted many editorials to proving it a gross failure. Accusing Eaton of
confusing his own functions with those of Congress, it called the civil
service rules "rubbish." ;!0 Its chief ground for criticism was the reten-
tion in office of the creatures who had fed at the public crib during
Grantism. Its remedy was the complete overthrow of the Republican
party and all its "hangers-on":

Mr. Eaton, Mr. Pendleton, Mr. Raum, and the machine politicians who have
put on the cloak of reform, want this venal crew kept in office, on the ground
that they have had experience and are familiar with the conduct of public
affairs. On the other hand, we want them turned out neck and heels as the first
indispensable step toward the purification of the public service.

27 Feb. 19, 1883.

28 Feb. 22, 1883.

29 Fish, 222.

80 May 5, 1883.

182 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

There can be no substantial improvement until the Republican machine
which has run the Government for twenty-two years, in war and in peace, shall
be overthrown and cast out. To that supreme object every effort of patriotism
ought to be directed. All other issues are of no importance beside it. Candidates
count for nothing compared with this one great need of the country. The man
most sure to win the victory would be taken without regard to locality, provided
only that he will make a fitting leader for a great political and moral revolution. ;u

The Republican nomination of Elaine for President in 1884 spurred
the Independents into a concerted protest against political evils. Upon
these men the Sun fastened the name Mugwumps. Their leaders in-
cluded some of the most progressive and cultured men in America and
yet they appear in the Sun clothed with ridicule: Schurz, the "utter
failure" and "well dressed humbug"; "Larry" Godkin, the "stern mor-
alist," "congenital liar" and "plagiarist"; George Jones, the "snobbish"
and "blackmailing" British editor of the Times; Beecher, the "licen-
tious greyheaded old seducer"; Bristow, as "fit for a public career as a
good preacher for an engineering job"; and Curtis, the one "forlorn
hope" of civil service reform these and many more had supported
Cleveland during his term as Governor of New York State and wished
him made President and leader of their moral crusade. They were char-
acterized as follows :

The Philadelphia Bulletin considers the fastidious Dude who wouldn't go to
a theater where the seats were cheap as the typical contemporary American snob.

But a more objectionable variety of snob than this asinine Philadelphian
dude is the political snob. He is a creature generated by Mugwumpism, and as
the Evening Post, his dry nurse, describes him, "is essentially a solitary animal,"
with a morbid dread of being regarded as anything else except highly respect-
able. Above all things he avoids association with "the boys" and flies instinc-
tively from any political candidate who makes himself so popular that he is
called by a nickname, as so many of the greatest of the world's leaders have
been called. He would as soon think of parting his hair elsewhere than in the
middle as of voting for the "Bobs," "Mikes," and "Pats" of politics; and it is
enough for him that some people speak of the Democratic candidate for Gover-
nor as "Dave" Hill. Vote for a Dave? Impossible!

He is very anxious to cast a "clean ballot" all by himself, and wants it gen-
erally understood that he has none of the enthusiastic devotion to party mani-
fested by the ungenteel public. He speaks of filthy places fit only for the vulgar,
and for Tammany Hall especially he has unutterable loathing. The thought
that the "common people" are in the majority and have as much right to vote
as he has almost driven him into exile. He would have the polls fumigated and

31 June 14, 1883.

CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 183

perfumed before he entered to deposit his dainty ballot containing the names
of candidates "with whom a gentleman could associate, you know." At any rate,
as the Evening Post, his spokesman, explains, there is "the only place" where he
cares to meet politicians or have anything to do with them; for the political
snob looks on a politician as a low character in whose company he must not be
seen by his fellow snobs.

Is not this variety of snob, then, more contemptible than the Bulletin's
idiot? 82

The Mugwumps were "icebergs" with "frost-bitten" followers. They
were "snobs" and "Pharisees" with a "holier-than-thou" attitude. They
were called "windbags" or any other name that served to ridicule them.
The Sun urged its readers to forego both Cleveland and Elaine and put
Benjamin Butler in the White House:

In these days of sentimentality and humbug it is delightful to find a fellow
cool-headed enough and manly enough to declare the old fashioned doctrine.
This is what Gen. Butler did in his Chicago speech. "I want change of offices,"
said Gen. Butler, "in order to counteract the great tendency of these times to
cast in aristocratic life offices."

This (ouches the very heart of the question. The proposition that men shall
be appointed to office as the result of examinations in book learning, and that
they shall remain in office during life, is a proposition that ought to be speedily
broken down and turned out. We don't want an aristocracy of office holders in
this country/' 3

After helping effect Cleveland's election, the Mugwumps were appre-
hensive lest he fail to carry on the cause of civil service reform and were
eager to hear some word of promise from the new President. He reas-
sured them with a Christmas day letter, saying he believed in the
Pendleton Act and would observe it in "good faith and without eva-
sion." 34 The letter was on the copy desk of the Sun office, ready to go
to press. A breeze caught and carried it to some unknown spot. Because
of Dana's attitude toward Cleveland, it was thought he had suppressed
the letter. He explained his predicament to Willard Bartlett. "Oh, say
that the office cat ate it up," Bartlett replied. 35 Dana dictated the fol-
lowing editorial:

We are frequently obliged to deplore the circumstance that the Sun is not
invariably conducted in a manner to please those of our esteemed contempo-

32 Oct 18, 1885.

33 July 24, 1884.

3 *Nevms, Allan, Cleveland, 200-201.

S5 O'Brien, Frank M., The Story of the Sun, 287.

184 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

raries that do not happen to agree with us in opinion ; but, sad as it is, we cannot
always help it.

Here are the Evening Post and the New York Times, both seasonably exer-
cised because the Sun happened to publish Mr. Cleveland's letter on the civil
service question on Wednesday, and not on Tuesday. The more profound of the
two journals accounts for the fact on the hypothesis that we are afraid, and
were "let into the astonishing journalistic blunder of trying to suppress it."

This is a new conception worthy of its origin. The Sun is not usually suspected
of being afraid of Mr. Cleveland's publications; and we solemnly declare that,
so far as we can remember, we never tried to suppress a public document that
came from a President.

Since the Evening Post and the Times take interest in the conduct of the Sun,
we beg to assure them that it was only through an accident that Mr. Cleveland's
letter was not published by us on Tuesday. The assistant editor, who had charge
of it, lost the copy from his desk, either by some person taking it or by the
wind blowing it away, or the office cat eating it up; and that is all there is of it.

In the name of the Prophet, Fudge! 36

The possibility that an "office-cat" had eaten the President's letter
on civil service caused much amusement. It was a lucky witticism that
caught and held the public interest. Newspapers all over the country
wrote of the cat. The Graphic portrayed him with one eye bandaged
and so "infuriated the cat" that he straightway "dilacerated" the pic-
ture. His habits were detailed :

He takes a keen delight in hunting for essays on civil service reform, and
will play with them, if he has time, for hours. They are so pretty that he hates
to kill them, but duty is duty. Clumsy and awkward English he springs at with
indescribable quickness and ferocity but he won't eat it. He simply tears it up.
He can't stand everything. . . .

Many of our esteemed contemporaries are furnishing their offices with cats,
but they can never hope to have the equal of the Sun's venerable polyphage.
He is a cat of genius. 37

One of the first tests of Cleveland's sincerity toward civil service re-
form was the case of Henry G. Pearson, Republican postmaster of New
York City. His term expired March 21, 1885, but he had proved his
efficiency. Would Cleveland reappoint him? Said the Sun:

If Mr. Cleveland determines to reappoint Mr. Pearson doubtless it will be
pleasing to the Independent Republicans; but it may fail to please a good many
Democrats, who at the same time do not disparage Mr. Pearson's qualifica-
tions. . . .

80 Jan. 1, 1885.
87 Jan. 12,1885.

CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 185

The sensible view of the case is that Mr. Pearson has had the office for the
regular period. He was appointed for a certain term, and his term will soon be
out. Here comes in the great Democratic principle of rotation. Let him step
aside and let some other good man, who is also a Democrat, be put in his place.
... He was not created to enjoy a monopoly of the New York Post Office
forever. <;s

But the reformers won the issue, for Pearson was reappointed. The
Sun commented: "Pearson is appointed because the Mugwumps de-
manded it, and the Mugwumps carried the election. To the Victors be-
long the Spoils!" 39

In the fall of 1885, Eaton resigned as Chairman of the Civil Service
Commission, and soon afterward Cleveland asked for the resignations
of Commissioners Gregory and Thoman. The Sun treated these men
with characteristic ridicule:

A Washington correspondent of our esteemed neighbor, the Tribune, avers
that the Hon. Dorman B. Eaton, Chief Crank of the Crank Civil Service Com-
mission, has for some time been pining to resign, and, indeed, has actually re-
signed. Feeling, however, that the common weal would be attacked with blind
staggers if he failed to look after it until the constitutionality of the Civil Service
law has been settled or unsettled he has kindly consented to remain for yet a
few days.

With the care of the suit to test the constitutionality of that law, the general
supervision of the United States, and a lot of exhausted Mugwumps setting up
signals of distress on the New York Custom House, the remaining official days
of the Scourge of Syntax are likely to be full of trouble. It was injudicious in
him not to insist that his resignation should resign.

"It is given out," says the Tribune, ''that Mr. Eaton is in need of rest, and
purposes to seek recreation abroad." And, of a verity, Mr. Eaton doesn't need
rest from his labors half so much as the country needs a rest from Mr. Eaton.

Let him go abroad and delight his soul with those aristocratic and barnacled
civil services which he loves, but the transplantation of which to this benighted
democratic country does not and cannot thrive. We wish this gloomy but re-
spectable demophobist nothing but well. Doubtless he has done "the best he
knew how," but while the Crank Commission lasts it is desirable that it should
have at its head some person who knows how better than Mr. Eaton seems to
know.

It is believed in Washington that if the Commission are not heartily sustained,
they will all resign. That would be the best thing they can ever do but Gregory
and Thoman ought not to be allowed to resign. They are somewhat offensive,
utterly incompetent, and scarcely up to par intellectually. They should not

38 Mar 14, 1885.

39 Apr. 2, 1885.

186 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

be allowed to choose their own time for resignation. Their resignation ought to
be exacted at once. They are ripe for removal. 40

At this time, David B. Hill, whose actions belied any pretensions to
civil service reform, was politically active in New York State. The Sun
supported Hill and in doing so came out openly for the Tammany ma-
chine. In September, 1885, it praised a resolution by Tammany which
stated that ''recent legislation had tended to diminish and restrict the
authority of officers chosen by the people to appoint, promote, and re-
move their own subordinates":

The most ardent supporter of the existing Civil Service Act will not deny
that such is its tendency. Instead of permitting the appointing power to choose
from among all the persons in the country competent to perform the duties of
a given office, it restricts the choice to four persons selected by some one else. No
one outside of this group of four can be appointed. The diminution of authority
which such a limitation involves has hardly been appreciated until now except
by careful students of the legislation in question. It is opposed to the spirit of
the Constitution, if not to the letter of that instrument, and is certainly unwise
as a matter of public policy, even if it should turn out to be valid as a matter
of law. . . .

The one of these Tammany resolutions is undoubtedly in harmony with the
feeling of the great mass of voters in this State, whether they be Democrats or
Republicans. The latter may deem it expedient to refrain from expressing their
true opinion on the subject just now, but they are adverse to the Etonian system
all the same. This is not at all because the average elector is indifferent to the
efficiency of the civil service, as the Mugwumps are so fond of assuming, but
because they recognize almost by instinct the anti-American character of the
competitive examination scheme as a means of selecting the best men for office.
They know that if that had been the only path into the public service Abraham
Lincoln would never have been President of the United States, and Ulysses S.
Grant would never have commanded the Union armies. If such a system would
keep the best men out of great places, it is likely to keep the best men out of
small ones.

The Etonian system must go ! 41

In reviewing Cleveland's Administration Curtis said in 1887, "It
would be a great wrong to the cause of which the League is the author-
ized national representative if it did not plainly and emphatically de-
clare that it does not regard the Administration, however worthy of
respect and confidence for many reasons, as in any strict sense of the
words a civil service reform Administration. Yet under this Adminis-

40 Sept. 22, 1885.

41 Sept. 14, 1885.

CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 187

tration much has been gained for reform." 42 Less than a year later the
Sun stated:

Civil service reform is just what it was three years ago, with the exception of a
few alterations in the civil service rules. But it is demonstrated that the whole
business has no important body of supporters. The principle that to the victors
belong the spoils has, after a slight struggle, maintained itself under the present
Administration. . . , 48

Referring to mistakes which Cleveland had "manfully and gloriously"
corrected at its insistence, the Sun said: "The Chinese theory of civil
service appointment had been definitely abandoned to innocuous desue-
tude, glory to Grover! The Sun has been right and Mr. Cleveland has
been wrong but in time he put himself in the right. . . ." 44

In the campaign of 1888 the Sun supported Cleveland. Its sincerity
was questioned by correspondents who wrote asking the reason for
this about-face. One declared that in 1884 he had favored the election
of Cleveland and voted for him, but at that time the Sun differed en-
tirely from his opinion. Now, four years later, this correspondent was
prepared to oppose his re-election at all hazards, and to his great sur-
prise the Sun was praising Cleveland. The Sun explained, "He is much
more of a Democrat than he was before he kicked the civil service
humbug overboard ; we are convinced that he is since then a much better
President for the country than Mr. Blaine would make; so that we hold
it is better to keep the Democrats in power with Mr. Cleveland at the
wheel than to bring in the Republicans." 45

The Sun's reasons for opposing Harrison in this campaign included
one of great importance to reformers:

In a speech delivered nearly six years ago Benjamin Harrison expressed
himself in these words: "I assure you I am an advocate of Civil Service Reform."
He should be beaten for this utterance if for nothing else.

The people of this country are able to govern themselves without any Chinese
rules and examinations in their politics. 46

After Harrison's election the Sun entitled an editorial, "The Clean
Sweep Coming." Asserting that the Democrats would not whine when

2 Curtis, Orations and Addresses, II, 351.

3 Mar. 2, 1888.

4 Sept. 5, 1888.

5 Jan. 30, 1888.
July 6, 1888.

188 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

Harrison proceeded to turn them out and put Republicans in, it looked
forward eagerly to 1892, when the situation would be reversed and there
could not be the "slightest objection, moral, sentimental, or chivalric,
to another clean sweep of a more satisfactory character." Indeed, the
Sun was so enamored of this doctrine that it ended various editorials,
"To the victors belong the spoils." 47

The Sun now considered the Mugwumps extinct. As a matter of fact
they no longer had the strength which their united support of Cleveland
had given them in 1884. The Sun reported that a strange bird, thought
by a Yale naturalist to be a variety of Noddy, had been "bagged" in
Connecticut. "It appears," it continued, "it is not a common Noddy,
(Anoiis Stolidus) but the Mugwump or Fool Bird (Answer Mug-
wumpiensis). So rare have these birds become that they ought to be
protected by the game laws as a curiosity." 48 Again rejoicing over the
disappearance of the Mugwumps, the Sun reviewed the history of their
famous name:

It is now time to recall and revive to honor a good word gone wrong. We
reintroduce our old favorite and protege, the mugwump, with a little m. For
two hundred years it had slumbered in the pages of John Eliot's Indian Bible.
We roused it to life, and civilization clasped rapturously to its bosom this child
of the aborigines. In the United States, especially, a country rich in leaders,
captains, big chiefs, and bosses, the word mugwump became as popular as it was
convenient. The dwellers by the Mississippi called it the mugwump river. Bos-
ton called her then unconquered Sullivan "the fistic mugwump." We were
justly proud of our restoration and rehabilitation of a fine old word, which all
the world welcomed.

Then came a time when the word was degraded. Capitalized and specialized,
it was used as the derisive nickname of a breed of political swelled heads. The
innocent word mugwump lost its reputation on account of the insane caperings
of the Mugwump with a big M.

But now the word Mugwump survives only in the catalogues of political
curiosities and extinct species of freaks. The thing it named is dead, deader than
the ramphorhyncus or the clod. Mugwump with the big M belongs to the dead
languages. 49

With Cleveland out of the Presidency, the Sun looked forward to
happier days for the political parties. Although Harrison had said in

47 Nov. 16, 1888.

48 June 7, 1889.

49 Nov. 21, 1888.

CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 189

his inaugural speech that public officers would be expected to enforce the
civil service law "fully and without evasion" and that he himself hoped
to do "something more to advance the reform of civil service/' the Sun
was more interested in another statement which it reported as coming
from Harrison at this time: "Honorable party service will certainly
not be esteemed by me as a disqualification for public office." 50 This
means, the Sun explained, that the country will have a Republican and
not a Mugwump Administration. "And it is better for Republicans and
Democrats alike that it should not be a hybrid." 51

The Sun soon came to the conclusion that President Harrison was
"no more of a civil service reformer than Thomas C. Platt." 52 He re-
moved from office Pearson, the efficient postmaster whom Garfield had
appointed and Cleveland reappointed. J. S. Clarkson of Iowa, First As-
sistant Postmaster General and an opponent of the reform, was accused
of having boasted: "I have changed 31,000 out of 55,000 fourth class
postmasters and I expect to change 10,000 more before I finally
quit!" r "' { In writing of the "high morality" of the Mugwumps the Sun
pretended to denounce Clarkson for his activities: "Democrats and Re-
publicans like the Hon. James S. Clarkson ... are sinners who must
be turned from the errors of their ways or be denounced. The concep-
tion that civil service reform is virtue and the spoils system vice explains
the anxiety of the reformers to enlist the clergy on their side." 54 The
Sun also denounced Harrison on the charge of nepotism, urging him to
"abandon . . . the attempt to establish his family relatives and his
close personal friends in important and lucrative office." 55

During 1889, charges were brought against Charles Lyman, by far
the strongest of the three Civil Service Commissioners appointed by
Cleveland. He was accused of having given a position to a relative with-
out examination. In addition, it was said that this relative had made a
copy of the examination papers, and sold the copy. The Sun regarded his
published reply to these charges as "practically a confession that he is
an unfit man to hold office":

50 Mar. 5, 1889.

51 Mar. 18, 1891.

52 July 20, 1889.

63 Rhodes, VIII, 331.

64 Oct. 6, 1889.
55 June 6, 1890.

190 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

The time has come when Congress must thoroughly investigate the practical
operations of the so-called Civil Service Law as administered by the Civil
Service Commission. If the hypocrisy of its workings has equalled the humbug
of the open pretensions of its advocates and supporters the light ought to be
let in. 56

Prior to this investigation, which found nothing to discredit the Com-
mission, 57 Harrison had appointed Theodore Roosevelt as commissioner.
According to the Sun, he had previously cared nothing about civil service
reform, but he assumed his duties with characteristic energy, to Dana's
disgust:

The professional civil service reformers have not been able to take much
comfort in Gen. Harrison so far. They quote his fine words on civil service re-
form when he was a Senator, and bitterly reflect that fine words butter no par-
snips now that he is President. In short, they chew the cud of discontent, and
rage inwardly. But not every one. Theodore Roosevelt is an exception. To be
sure he has not been a Chinese civil service reformer very long. Indeed, he was
hardly heard of as such until his recent appointment as a member of the United
States Civil Service Commission. Yet now he is as hearty as the Heartiest.

But like all doctrinal reformers, he expects a great deal from the people;
and one of the things which he seems to expect is that the people will believe
him when he asserts that President Harrison has been faithful to his pledges in
regard to the Civil Service system. This is too much.

No, Theodore! You have been an earnest Republican. . . . But anyone who
thinks that President Harrison's course in respect to appointments and removals
has been guided by the star of an anti-political civil service is either wilfully or
woefully ignorant. 58

In 1889 the demand for Government jobs far outran the supply and
the civil service laws galled more than ever. The Sun took up the cry for
its repeal and attempted to prove that it wouldn't work, it hadn't
worked, and couldn't work. It considered two men who attempted to
steal the examination papers in the Boston post office " victims" of the
Civil Service Act. "How much of this stealing of examination papers is
there?" the Sun asked. Claiming that there was a good deal of fraud, it
continued: "On the whole 1889 seems to be a great year for broken
China. Spoilsmen with bricks which they don't even take the trouble
to hide under their coats are close to the business and bosom of Benja-
min Harrison." 59

86 Oct. 9, 1889.
6 ? Fish, 224.
08 July 20, 1889.
w May 20, 1889.

CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 191

When some pleased reformers labeled the President a Mugwump, the
Sun asked, "Who has dared to call Gen. Harrison by such an ill-omened
and ridiculous name? What crank, what addle-brain, what pulp pate, or
what humorist has dared to so libel a well-meaning Hoosier politician?"

The whir and rattle of the Republican machine are heard from Eastport to
where rolls the Oregon. The most thorough-going and determined spoilsmen
of the party, which has made the distribution of the spoils a study and a science,
are working the axe and the crib-ticket for all they are worth. 60

Toward the end of his Administration what the Sun called the "wicked
accusation" that Harrison favored the Mugwumps became more fre-
quent. Speaking in April, 1892, Curtis said, ". . . the reform law has
been as faithfully observed as by the preceding administration, and the
scope of the reformed service has been greatly enlarged ... it is plain
that the beneficent flame of reform of which I spoke is in no danger of
extinction." 61

Once again "Old Perpetual" became President. Cleveland, whom the
Sun had been recently advocating for civil service commissioner, 62
proved the country's "insanity" by his elevation to the White House. He
took with him the hopes of many civil service reformers, ancl in his
inaugural address commended the good accomplished by the reform and
the further usefulness it promised. 03 The Sun depicted the plight of
Republican reformers: -

The hottest civil service reformers to be found anywhere now are the Republi-
can hold-overs. They began to clutch at civil service reform on the Wednesday
after Tuesday after the first Monday of last November, and their clutch has
tightened and the wistful appeal in their eyes has grown more piteous every day
since. Before the election they hated civil service and despised it, for it seemed
to them a trick to keep Democrats in office. Since the election they worship
civil service as a means of keeping Republicans in office, and they long to be
tucked safely away in the shade of the Chinese dragon's wings. . . . Without a
wink or tremor of an eyelash, the reformers tell us that it is of the greatest im-
portance that the Government Printing Office should be included within the
protecting civil service rules. To take this great establishment out of politics is
a duty.

Is it so, sweet innocence? Your eye teeth are absolutely uncut, aren't they?
All you are thinking of is the fulfillment of a high and holy duty, isn't it?

60 Apr 4, 1889.

fij Curtis, Orations and Addresses, II, 504.

6 - Apr. 3, 1892.

03 Mar. 5, 1893.

192 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

From the first, the Sun expressed faith that Cleveland had deserted
the Mugwumps, and had come to see the true light: "He appoints peo-
ple," the Sun said in March, not because they were his friends or enemies
but because he thinks their appointment will conduce to the strength of
the Democratic Party." 4 It was true that many changes were made
during Cleveland's second Administration. Josiah Quincy, Assistant
Secretary of State, replaced Republicans with Democrats with great
rapidity, and the Treasury, Interior and Post-office departments felt
the office seekers' onslaught. 65 In December, 1895, the Sun defined with
unqualified approval the position of the Democratic party on civil service
reform :

In the last Democratic national platform, adopted at Chicago, is a declara-
tion in favor of "honest reform of the civil service," and there is where the De-
mocracy stands today. It is in favor of honest reform, including the abolition
of the enormous abuses which the Republicans have introduced ; but it is against
the system of competitive examinations and non-partisan appointments. It be-
lieves that when the people vote to change the administration of the Govern-
ment, they mean that the change shall be thorough and that no fantastic or
personal obstacles shall avail to stop reform. . . . There are doubtless Demo-
crats who believe in competitive examinations and non-partisan appointments ;
but the vast and overpowering majority of the party utterly reject this new-
fangled contrivance, and adhere to the ideas of Jefferson, Jackson, and Tilden. 68

Nevertheless, by the end of Cleveland's second term civil service re-
form had made impressive strides. Order after order, culminating in the
"blanket order" of May 6, 1896, had extended the classified list. In ad-
dition, Cleveland had given the Commissioners warmer co-operation
than Harrison, not only retaining Theodore Roosevelt but appointing
John Proctor. The Sun refused to admit this progress or to join the
forces of reform. Convinced with some reason that neither party wanted
its opponents to reap the rewards of election, convinced that the popular
mind rebelled against this "humbug righteous" dogma, the Sun still
preached the doctrine of the spoils system.

Dana's stand, explained as it was with a pungent wit, must have had
much influence among the masses of Democratic and Republican poli-
ticians. A writer in 1888 remarked of the Sun: "There is however one
principle which it never deserts it is for the spoils system first, last

64 Mar. 27, 1893.

65 Rhodes, VIII, 411-412.

66 Dec. 4, 1895.

CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 193

and all the time." CT Liberal thinkers, such as Godkin and Cleveland, of
course looked upon the Sun as pernicious. William Dudley Foulke notes
the Sun's amusing report that a certain Mugwump convention in In-
diana "was held when Swift called up Foulke over the telephone and
they decided upon the resolutions and candidates." Foulke admitted it
was a good deal that way, yet he knew the Sun was exaggerating and the
reformers were far from politicians. 68 Ida Tarbell read the Sun because
it amused her and she wanted to know what Dana had to say, even
though she chose the Evening Post and Nation as a guide. 69

Although few, if any, of the arguments used by the Sun against civil
service would be regarded as valid today, many of the weaknesses in
the system which it pointed out are still apparent. Dana was emphati-
cally in favor of reforming the public service, but he was decidedly
opposed to reforming it in the interest of any party or individual to whom
he was opposed. During the Administrations of Grant and Hayes he
feared, not without ample cause, that civil service reform would be used
to fasten the grip of the Republican party upon the country. He feared
it would be used by Cleveland to strengthen his personal popularity
with the Mugwumps at the expense of the Democratic party. Over-
whelmed and blinded by the magnitude of corruption on the one hand
and by the hypocrisy of reformers on the other, he thought it more prac-
tical to entrust the efficiency of the public service to rotation in office
every four or eight years.

e 7 The Writer, Sept. 1888.

08 Fighting the Spoilsmen, 13.

69 Personal Interview.

CHAPTER VIII

REFORM VERSUS REFORMER

APART from reforms sought within the Governmental structure, there
were many demands for social and cultural improvement in Dana's day.
There were, for instance, the Suffragists demanding the political and
economic emancipation of women. After the Civil War they intensified
their activities, but they were generally treated with ridicule, indiffer-
ence or fanatical opposition.

In discussing the proposition that women are of equal intelligence
with men, the Sun took a progressive stand for 1868. It commented upon
an experiment in England testing the intelligence of men and women
teachers, in which no difference in capacity was found between the
sexes on the same subjects, what difference there was being in favor of
the girls and especially in mathematics! "The truth is," it said, "that
equal training will generally produce more equal results as between the
two sexes than is commonly supposed, except when physical weakness
intervenes in the point of endurance." 1

The Sun considered the higher education of women a necessity. In
1868 it advocated an evening high school for girls, suggesting that the
free academy, which was being abandoned for the new College of the
City of New York, be fitted up for use as a women's college:

Thousands of young women in the city have to depend upon their own exertion
for their daily bread. . . .

In this great city of New York no distinction should exist in providing means
for the proper education of our people. The advantages so fully bestowed upon
our young men to aid them in fighting the great battle of life should be extended
to the girls also. We earnestly hope that before another winter has rolled by, we
shall have the pleasure of announcing the establishment of a College and Eve-
ning High School for the young women of our city. 2

The Sun applauded each step in the advance of women's rights in Eu-
rope and the United States. When the Christian Register, a Unitarian

1 Mar. 5, 1868.

2 Feb. 21, 1868.

194

REFORM VERSUS REFORMER 195

paper, made the statement, "Women will always prefer to work in the
less conspicuous offices of the ministry," the Sun replied:

In other words, she will do the humbler portion of the labor, and some man or
men will carry off the honors and the rewards. The same principle of paying
women less money than men for the same services is to be applied in the church
as in the school-room. This is unjust, and if it is ever to be reformed there can
be no better place to begin than among the Unitarian societies of Essex county,
a people second to none in the world in freedom of thought and intellectual
cultured

The Sun attacked President Dwight for his refusal to admit three women
applicants to the Columbia Law School since no objection had been
made to them on account of age, education or character. "If the women's
suffrage movement ever succeeds," the Sun said, "it will be as a result
of just such injustice as that which President Dwight regards it as his
duty to show toward women seeking the benefits of his institution." 4

Yet before ten years had elapsed the Sun had completely reversed its
position. In 1876 it published an editorial entitled, "Shall Boys and Girls
Go to School Together?" The presidents of six leading colleges were in
controversy over the matter at a convention in Boston. It was argued
that the moral atmosphere of a boys' school was not a fitting one for
girls and also that the physical condition of girls would prevent them
from entering into competition with boys in the high schools:

The Hon. Charles Francis Adams opposes co-education, but thinks there is
craze enough in favor of it to force it into our educational system, where it will
remain until some shocking scandal frightens the community back into the
European system of separate schools.

As to the educating the sexes together we are inclined to agree with Mr.
Adams/'

The Sun had advanced the idea of co-educational schools and then
repudiated it. Later it denounced a proposed college for women, using
a stock argument against it, namely that women's health would be
endangered :

A Mr. Carey has presented a report showing the increase in the employment
of female labor in the past ten years. He also pointed out simultaneous increases

3 Mar. 30, 1869.

4 Oct. 7, 1869.

5 Nov. 10, 1876.

196 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

in the number of women attending institutions of higher learning.

We cannot agree with Mr. Carey, however, that this education is altogether
advantageous to women. "Let our women feel their intellectual power, and
hold them back if you can," he exclaims. But, unfortunately, very much of the
education he extoles is not adapted to the wants of women and to their mental
and physical conditions. It is usually too general, whereas they need specific
instruction to fit them to engage with men in the contest for livelihood. Our
Normal College, for instance, drives the girls too hard, and even then turns them
out prepared for no other calling than that of teaching, a calling already over-
crowded. It is not lack of intellectual power which handicaps women in the race
for employment, but their physical limitations and their lack of special train-
ing for particular work for which there is a demand. 6

Although the suffrage movement was concerned with equal rights for
women in education and industry, its real objective was political eman-
cipation. Given the ballot, the Suffragists believed other rights could be
secured. This was the cause to which their magazine was primarily dedi-
cated, a cause which Dana treated with tolerance and occasional humor.
In 1868, the Sun made sly fun of an article in the magazine "Revolu-
tion" by Elizabeth Cady Stanton 7 which reported a recent convocation
of the Women Suffragists, where various candidates for the Presidency
had been appraised :

Of Gen. Grant, she says, the women complain that he has no small talk,
and the men that he has no tall talk, both of which objections are undoubtedly
well founded.

To Chief Justice Chase one lady objected at this meeting that he had no
heart ; he was cold as a clam, and the women could never go to him with their
sorrows and expect to see a tear in his eye. Besides, the Chief Justice has had
his name taken from the Advisory Committee of the Women's Franchise Asso-
ciation, where it stood with such men as Ben. Wade, Gratz Brown, and Judge
Underwood.

Colfax is a great favorite with the ladies because he always had something
gracious or amusing to say and isn't all the time thinking how he looks. 8

Other ridiculous statements were attributed to the women. One was
quoted as saying that "Fessenden looked out of humor with the world";
another, "that he had some milk of kindness flowing in his veins." All
agreed that Ben. Wade was substantially "sound and good"; but "that
he needed polishing up, and a new set of teeth." The Sun's article was

6 Nov. 23, 1884.

7 Anthony, Susan B., History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. I, Chap. II

8 Feb. 21, 1868.

REFORM VERSUS REFORMER 197

apparently intended to show that women were unable to discuss presi-
dential candidates on any but sentimental and personal grounds. But it
was mild criticism of the Women Suffragists, who were far more used
to being called "hyenas," "cats," "crowing hens," "bold wantons" or
"unsexed females." 9 To Dana's credit, the Sun never indulged in this
type of ribaldry.

At another time we find the Sun defending woman suffrage and calling
men selfish and cowardly for their general opposition:

They cherish a fear, which they think is well grounded, that if the women
are allowed to vote they will first deprive the men of the right of holding office,
and then take away the suffrage from them. The women cannot be enfranchised
with safety to the rights of men, is their belief. Hence they are resolved to op-
pose this great political change. Shame upon such cowardice and selfishness! 10

In defense of Mrs. Stanton, who refuted the argument that women could
not attend to their homes and take an active part in politics, the Sun
reminded its readers that Mrs. Stanton had seven babies to look after.
"No doubt," it said, "she would make a better legislator than most of
the men who now monopolize the office." ll Today this seems a mild
statement, but in 1868 it was almost revolutionary. Assertions of this
kind explain why the Sun was sometimes called a radical paper.

When the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments were
drafted, the Women Suffragists made an effort to have the term "uni-
versal suffrage" substituted for "manhood suffrage." They had done
much for the emancipation of the Negro. They now expected assistance
from Abolitionists in the enfranchisement of women, both white and
black; but the leading Abolitionists, fearing that Negro suffrage would
be endangered, refused to assist them. The Democrats were more will-
ing, and aided them by presenting petitions and franking documents,
for which service they were frequently called hypocrites. Nevertheless,
the Suffragists were glad to profit by their help, saying the "hypocrisy
of the Democrats serves us a better purpose in the present emergency
than does the treachery of the Republicans." 12 The Sun treated the
proposals of extreme Democrats to adopt suffrage for both Negroes and
women with philosophic calm :

9 Anthony, IV, Preface xxviii.

10 May 14, 1868.
" May 15, 1868.

12 Anthony, II, 322.

198 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

These proposals would seem to be in perfect accordance with the fundamental
principles of the party; but we fancy it will be a long while before they are
recognized as an essential part of the regular platform. The more advanced
thinkers may adopt them very soon, but the Democracy as a whole will be
more slow and cautious. 13

In 1872, Susan B. Anthony determined to vote and issued a circular
inviting her sister Suffragists to accompany her to the polls. Her purpose
was to secure an interpretation of the Constitutional clause upon citi-
zenship and voting. She was immediately arrested, whereupon many
papers came to her defense, 14 none more nobly than the New York Sun:

The arrest of the fifteen women of Rochester, and the imprisonment of the
renowned Miss Susan B. Anthony, for voting at the November election, afford
a curious illustration of the extent to which the United States Government is
stretching its hand in these matters. If these women violated any law at all
by voting, it was clearly a statute of the State. It is only by an overstrained con-
struction of the XIV and XV Amendments that the National Government can
force its long finger into the Rochester case at all.

But so it is. Eager to crowd in and regulate the elections at every poll in
the Union, the power at Washington strikes down a whole State government
in Louisiana, and holds to bail a handful of women in New York. Nothing can
escape its eye or elude its grasp. It can soar high; it can stoop low. It can
enjoin a Governor in New Orleans ; it can jug a woman in Rochester. . . .

By the by, we advise Miss Anthony not to go to jail. Perhaps she feels that
she deserves some punishment for voting for Gen. Grant; but it is a bailable
offence. " Going to prison for the good of the cause" may do for poetry, but it
becomes very prosaic when reduced to practice. Let Miss Anthony enter into
bonds, adjust her spectacles, face her accusers, and argue her own case. 15

Susan Anthony's trial opened in Canandaigua, N.Y. on the 18th of
June under Judge Hunt, who had already penned his decision. 1(; The
case for each side was formally presented and the Judge then directed
the jury to issue a verdict of guilty. A motion for a new trial was denied.
One juryman said, "The verdict of guilty would not have been mine
could I have spoken, nor should I have been alone. There were others
who thought as I did, but we could not speak." 17 Dana arose in wrath.
In a leading editorial on June 23, 1873, entitled, "The Conduct of Judge

13 Apr 10, 1868

14 New York Commercial Advertiser; Rochester Democrat; Rochester Chronicle; Syra-
cuse Standard; Rochester Union and Advertiser.

15 Jan. 4, 1873.

16 Anthony, II, 647.

17 Ibid., 689.

REFORM VERSUS REFORMER 199

Hunt in the Trial of Susan B. Anthony/' the Sun inveighed against what
it considered one of the most degrading aspects of Grantism:

Miss Susan B. Anthony was arraigned before Judge Hunt, charged under the
statute with illegal voting. To this accusation she pleaded not guilty, and, as
the legal phrase is, "put herself upon her country," that is, demanded trial
by jury.

The ri^ht of trial by jury Judge Hunt might have known if he had not
forgotten his Blackstone is a right of traditional and precious value; and if
the "learned" Judge had found time to learn the Constitution of the United
States, as many school children are wisely compelled to do nowadays, he would
have known that it is secured by that all-controlling instrument "to the ac-
cused" in all criminal prosecutions.

Judge Hunt allowed the jury to be impanelled and sworn, and to hear the
evidence; but when the case had reached the point of rendering of the verdict,
he directed a verdict of guilty! . . .

This offence of Judge Hunt is of too grave a nature, of too pernicious practi-
cal consequence to be disregarded or to be passed over lightly. It concerns every
man and woman living, and every child born or to be born, in the United States.

It overthrows civil liberty in the United States. Blot out the right of trial
by jury from the Constitution of the United States, as he has now done in
principle and practice, and nothing remains in that instrument worth preserving,
for it is the hook on which all the other vital civil rights hang. 18

As the years went by woman suffrage gained ground; some States
considered laws and prominent men in public life took up the cause. In
1883, the Sun described the odium which had been attached to the move-
ment:

A quarter of a century ago people generally assumed that a male advocate
of woman suffrage was either a long-haired and wild-eyed type of social agitator
or a pestilent radical with a sneaking free-love purpose, and no regard what-
ever for what was most sacred in the home and in religion, or most venerated by
the decent and respectable. At best he was sure to be an abolitionist, a name
by which few men in those days liked to be called in this free republic.

The advocate of woman's suffrage a generation ago, in fine, was popularly
pictured as a social and political nondescript, a bran bread philosopher, a rag-
ing infidel, whose fit and chosen associates among women were only the short-
haired members of the sisterhood in Bloomer costumes who shrieked from plat-
forms while their husbands were at home looking after the babies and sweeping
out the house.

What a change has taken place since then! 19

"June 23, 1873.
" Apr. 8, 1883.

200 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

Nevertheless, the Sun opposed a woman's suffrage amendment to the
New York State constitution:

It is manifest that nine women out of ten ; nay, ninety-nine out of a hundred,
do not care to vote. They do not ask for the privilege. It must be thrust upon
them, if it is granted at all. Even where they have been allowed to vote for
school offices, for instance, they have generally neglected the opportunity, at
least in the older States, though they may have conquered their aversion in a
Western territory, where women suffrage was tried.

It will be hard to excite men's zeal in behalf of an innovation for which
those for whose benefit it is proposed do not ask, which they do not want, to
which in truth, they are pretty generally opposed. 20

In the eighties the Sun gave statistics to prove not only the indiffer-
ence of women to the ballot, but their actual "repugnance to voting." 21
The Suffragists had found it easier to convince men of their rights than
to inspire their own sex. It is possible that Dana's change in attitude
was based upon observation. Had women shown more enthusiasm for
political freedom, perhaps the Sun would have supported them. It is
more likely the shift was a manifestation of Dana's growing conserva-
tism. By 1885, the Sun was scornful of the claim that women voters
would elevate the morals of the country, insisting that by nature they
were unsuited for political life. The Sun said that the introduction of
women voters would bring in "new envies and jealousies, and a kind of
spitefulness which is peculiarly feminine." 22 It further argued at the
time of the proposed admission of Wyoming as a woman suffrage State:

Women do not vote because there is not necessity for voting. Their legal
rights are protected, their interests promoted, their influence acknowledged,
and their wishes complied with, by the ballot in the hands of father, husband,
brother, or son as the case may be. If it were not so, the demand for female
suffrage would have a sound basis, and the demand for it would be indeed
resistless. 23

Another cause into which reformers entered with zeal was the move-
ment for temperance. The Sun took its first stand on this question in
January, 1868. Liquor interests in the State were anxious to repeal the
excise law, under the operation of which more than $2,000,000 had been
collected for licenses and fines during a period of thirteen months. Ac-

20 Ibid.

21 Jan. 6, 1884; May 12, 1884; June 14, 1884.

22 Jan. 11, 1885.

23 Dec. 14, 1891.

REFORM VERSUS REFORMER 201

cording to the Excise Commissioners, the cost of collecting this had been
somewhat less than three per cent of the sum. The Sun remarked:

It is hard to believe that under a system less severe, or under the old system
revived, anything like this sum could be realized ; and it is as certain as anything
can be that with the municipal government in control, the cost of collection
would nearly equal the amount collected. The lion's share of this money went
to the sinking funds of Brooklyn and New York ; but a considerable sum ac-
crued to the Commissioners of Charities and Corrections, the common schools
of Richmond and Queens counties, the New York Inebriate Asylum, and the
Inebriate Asylum for Kings county. This is certainly a judicious application
of the money derived from this source. If the tendency of the dram shops is
to promote disease, destitution and suffering, it is just that they should be made
to appease at least a portion of the ills they inflict. 24

The Sun advised trade unions to start a temperance reform among their
members, "drunkenness being the cause of more distress than all the
oppressions of capital put together." 25 Next day it spoke of the need
for the inebriate asylum "now in process of erection on Ward's Island"
where habitual drunkards might be sent "for a period long enough to
wean them, if possible, from the thraldom of intemperance," or at least
"temporarily prevent them from further self debasement." 20 Speak-
ing of a debate in the British Parliament in which it was argued that
conditions in Ireland were improving "because the consumption of
spirits, 'which is the best test of a people's prosperity' was increasing
among them," the Sun said, "A great consumption of spirits is not a
blessing but a curse to a country; and Ireland would be infinitely better
off today if not a drop of liquor could be procured in all her borders." 27
Dana believed in temperance but not in prohibition. In answer to
Mrs. Stanton's prophecy that women, when they became enfranchised,
would vote out the rum holes the Sun said, "The people of the State of
Massachusetts, after an experience of three years, have made up their
minds that rum holes cannot be 'voted down'; and the same would be
the result of every other attempt to forcibly suppress vice." 28 This posi-
tion was maintained by the Sun for the next thirty years.

Of the practical unwisdom of legislation prohibiting the use of intoxicating
drinks, under all circumstances, it is hardly necessary for us to speak. The at-

24 Jan. 29, 1868.

25 Feb. 20, 1868.

26 Jan. 29, 1868.

27 Feb. 20, 1868.

28 Feb. 21, 1868.

202 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

tempt to enforce such legislation has recently been made in Massachusetts, with
such an overwhelming demonstration of failure, that many strong temperance
men have abandoned its advocacy.

Unless stealing, and murder, and arson for instance were regarded by nearly
everybody as deserving of punishment, it would be in vain to pass laws and
provide courts and policemen to restrain the commission of those crimes. In
point of fact, it is overwhelming public opinion against them which prevents
their being committed and not tenets of law.

But while at present, three out of four of our citizens are more or less ac-
customed to drink wine, beer, whiskey, and other liquids of that sort, a law to
restrain them from doing so would be like the law against taking over seven
per cent per annum for the use of money, nothing but an instrument by which
means the dishonest men could plunder those who gave them the opportunity. ~ 9

The Prohibition party nominated its first national ticket in 1872.
The Sun was only too willing to inform the temperance forces of Grant's
drinking habits:

Administration newspapers declare that Dr. Greeley's temperance principles
will throw a large body of voters over to Grant. They thus virtually declare
that a President who gets drunk occasionally is more acceptable to the nation
than one who drinks no intoxicating liquor. Since the temperance issue is thus
gratuitously lugged into the campaign by the supporters of the Administration,
we must of course take Horace Greeley and Useless S. Grant as represent-
ing the two sides of the question.

With the cold water farmer of Chappaqua in the White House, Gen. Butler
will never have an opportunity to denounce the President for habitual intoxi-
cation. Gen. Butler can never accuse Dr. Greeley of staggering homeward from
Gen. Sheridan's headquarters on Sunday morning, and requiring the entire
sidewalk for navigation, when the streets are filled with churchgoers. President
Greeley will never call upon Senator Sumner in a maudlin state of drunken-
ness, and endeavor to lobby through the Senate a San Domingo swindle under
the impression that Mr. Sumner is Chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

If the Administration wants to make an issue on these points, the people will
probably accept it. In that case, however, the Philadelphia Convention might
do well to drop Schuyler Colfax, the Son of Temperance, and take the Hon.
Zach Chandler of Michigan as its candidate for Vice-President. 31

In 1876, the Prohibitionists again nominated a ticket, this time
headed by Green Chy Smith. The Sun had little to say concerning the
activities of the party. Its longest comment upon the subject was a

29 June 4, 1869.

80 Colvin, David L., Prohibition in the United States, Chan V

81 May 18, 1872.

REFORM VERSUS REFORMER 203

satirical editorial entitled, "The Temperance Folk and the Tribune
Rum Shop." 82

Seven years later the Sun quoted Neal Dow, the well known prohibi-
tionist leader, who assured a questioner that the laws against liquor in
Maine were a "great success" and the assertions made to the contrary
"an old lie, invented by unscrupulous men in the liquor interests." It
rebuked the gentleman who had asked the question for his naivete:

For accurate and impartial information he could not have gone to a worse
quarter than the venerable father of the prohibitory system. He might as well
ask the inventor of a perpetual motion machine whether the machine was likely
to work when finished.

In this same editorial the Sun pointed out the different ways in which
the prohibitory laws of Maine were circumvented, naming six channels
through which the people of the State received their liquor supply
open saloons, hotel bar-rooms, grocers, druggists, railroads, steamboats
and express companies:

It appears to be a colossal mistake to assume that all the traffic in liquor
in Maine has been driven into obscure hiding places behind disreputable doors
into dens and shanties whose stock in trade as Mr. Dingley says "consists
of a few concealed bottles or kegs." And yet the defenders of the prohibitory
system almost invariably base their arguments and assertion upon the very as-
sumption reenforced by imperfect statistics and a painful inability or unwill-
ingness to open their eyes to the true conditions of things in their own state. 33

The Sun reiterated its belief in high license on different occasions
during 1884 when John P. St. John ran as presidential candidate of the
Prohibition party. Such statements as the following show how clearly de-
fined its position was:

Neither now nor at any time is prohibition feasible. It cannot be enforced,
while experience shows that high licenses are practicable and that they work

well. 34

The Republican party is pledged to submit to the people the question of tee-
total prohibition; but the high license system is much more rational and much
better suited to this imperfect world. 35

High license is the true solution of the liquor question. 30

32 Aug. 8, 1876.
83 Mar. 11, 1883.
8 * Feb. 20, 1884.
85 Feb. 3, 1884.
30 May 8, 1884.

204 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

Its reasons for favoring high license were: thus far this method has
been the only effective one of regulating the liquor traffic; high license
reduces other taxes; the expense of maintaining public order is de-
creased. The Sun also asserted that under licensing, the liquor business
was controlled by men whose interests induced them to assist in enforc-
ing the laws, so that both those who drank and those who refrained were
better protected. 37

In 1886, an editorial appeared on Elaine and prohibition:

In his speeches during the Maine campaign Mr. Elaine gave a good deal
of attention to the Prohibitionists. They helped beat him in 1884 and they
started out a few months ago with apparently more vigor than ever. Mr. Elaine
evidently feared that their opposition would be dangerous to the Republican
party. The Prohibitionists themselves were filled with the idea that they had
the Republican party where its wool was short. The election has for the pres-
ent put it out of their power to cause the Republicans alarm. The display of
Prohibition weakness in States where a showing of strength was expected will
not be regarded by the enthusiasts of the party as a discouraging sign. Nothing
can discourage them. . . .

Decidedly our friends, the Prohibitionists, are of less political importance
than they have supposed, but that need not prevent them from hammering
away at the old nail. 38

Eut when the Prohibition vote was tallied in December it was discovered
that it had increased over the vote two years before:

Late information swells the Prohibitionist totals to dimensions of unexpected
magnitude. Instead of any decline in interest, any signs of weakening as a po-
litical organization, we find enormous gains almost everywhere for the Pro-
hibitionists.

The Voice is confident that the aggregate vote cast last month by the Prohibi-
tionists will not fall much below 300,000 in the United States. St. John's vote
for President (in 1884)) was only 150,268.

All this amounts to saying that the Prohibitionists voting strength has
doubled in two years, a fact sufficiently remarkable to engage the attention of all
students of the political situation.

These men mean business. 39

In March, 1888 the Sun said that, in spite of activity and persistency,
the Prohibitionists' prospects of holding the political balance of power

37 Apr. 4, 1885; Sept. 11, 1885.

38 Nov. 11, 1886.
30 Dec. 10, 1886.

REFORM VERSUS REFORMER 205

were not as great as they had seemed. It declared that in 1884 many
people who could not support Elaine, and would not support Cleveland,
had voted the Temperance ticket. Furthermore, it declared, "Their pros-
perity, like that of the rest of the community, is interested in the con-
tinuance of protection, and should the election turn upon a life-and-
death struggle between Protection and Free Trade, they would cease to
be Prohibitionists, and vote as Protectionists." 40

In the Presidential campaign of 1888 the Sun, with characteristic
ingenuity, attempted to influence the voters against Cleveland, by say-
ing that although he had always drunk like a common being, he had
finally abandoned the habit, "at the solicitation of his beautiful and ac-
complished wife." The Buffalo Democrat took exception to the Sun's
remarks, saying, "In simple plain words, the Sun lies. It has not only
said an untruth but it has said it knowingly and purposely to do injury
to Cleveland." Whereupon the Sun innocently replied, "Certainly there
is nothing in this that can be injurious to Mr. Cleveland, not even among
fanatical guzzling German beer drinkers. On the contrary it is in our
judgment most creditable to him." 41

The Prohibitionists polled a heavier vote in 1888 than in any pre-
vious year, showing an increase of 98,136 over 1884. But the Sun
believed that the only state in which they had exerted a controlling
influence was Connecticut. "As to the general result, it was not affected
by the Prohibitionist canvass. Really the Prohibitionists are not in poli-
tics. This is the case in a nutshell." 42

The Sun also took an interest in the progress of temperance reform
in various states. In 1869, noting a statute passed by the "fanatics" of
Massachusetts, it declared there was no reason for expecting this newly-
restored prohibitory law to produce any better results in the future
than in the past. 43 It grieved that Rhode Island had become so excited
over the subject as to amend its constitution: "The experience of the
State and the growth of the liquor traffic under the stimulus of prohibi-
tion affords a lesson and a warning to other commonwealths where crank
reformers have the floor." 44 It reported that some of the Texas Prohibi-
tionists, taking the law into their own hands, were trying to promote

4 Mar. 19, 1888.

41 July 11, 1888.

42 Dec. 14, 1888.

43 July 2, 1869.
** Mar. 13, 1889.

206 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

temperance reform by lynching saloon keepers. 46 In 1889, the Sun
awaited anxiously the rejection of the prohibition amendment in Penn-
sylvania, heralding the event with gratification when it occurred. 40 It
sarcastically congratulated New Jersey for a bill prohibiting the growth
of any crop from which intoxicating drinks could be made. "This, as we
have often insisted, is the only logical course for the Prohibitionists to
take, although they are not yet logical enough to take it. Beer must be
fought in the hops, and cider shut out by prohibiting apple trees." 47

Problems of education, religion, and national morals were treated
extensively in the Sun. On the first of these Dana had fixed convictions,
emanating from the New England precept that in a democracy all per-
sons, whether rich or poor, should receive a free education. They were
to receive this education for the purpose of voting intelligently and tak-
ing part in their own government. The Sun was anxious that emphasis
be put upon primary and grammar schools even if the benefits of higher
education be sacrificed. It feared that if taxes were diverted to the main-
tenance of colleges it would be at the expense of the elementary educa-
tion. This idea was expressed in 1884 as follows:

The people will not grudge the money which goes to the building and main-
tenance of primary and grammar schools. Our school system is defective if any
child in the city who desires to enjoy its advantages is not able to get in-
struction. But the burden is heavy, and the people who bear it will demand that
the Board of Education shall only spend money which goes for the general
benefit.

That is, our School Commissioners must stop their colleges and their fancy
schools, their ornamental teaching, and their educational experiments, and
devote their money to the simple and practical education required by the chil-
dren who frequent the primary and grammar schools. If they should do that
they would have enough annually from their present allowance to meet the
current demands for more school room. 48

The Sun believed that educating children of the rich and poor together
inculcated democracy and, therefore, encouraged parents to devote
themselves to the perfection of the public schools. Numerous editorials
were written asserting their superiority over private institutions. A typ-
ical one dealt specifically with New York City schools:

45 Jan. 11, 1888.

46 June 20, 1889.

47 Feb. 10, 1888.
* 8 Sept. 11, 1884.

REFORM VERSUS REFORMER 207

Our free schools educate the vast majority of the children of New York. A
comparatively small number go to private schools, at which a tuition fee is
charged, and these schools as a rule are really not so good as those provided
by the people without charge. There are many of them scattered over the
city, but parents complain that it is hard to find one where the training is
thorough and the discipline strict and healthy. The masters are, in many cases,
too anxious to make money to do their work as it ought to be done, while in
the public schools there is no such temptation to a vicious indulgence. 49

The Sun believed in higher education only for the few, who because
of inclination were capable of receiving from a University something
besides a "smattering of Latin, Greek and abstract philosophy." It
thought that the problem of educating the talented man who could not
afford a college education should be met by spending $10,000 a year
on scholarships at Columbia or New York University rather than ap-
propriating $1,000,000 annually for a free institution. "New York," it
said, "is a great commercial and manufacturing center, and its interests
require not scholars but merchants and artisans. If the city is going to
spend money for the purpose of gratuitously educating its children in
more than the necessary rudiments of knowledge, it should train ma-
chinists, engineers, architects, and inventors." Therefore, "let it teach
boys how to keep books, and transact business so that they may be
productive members of society":

Culture and refinement are good things, but they ought not to be sought at
the expense of a man's bread and butter. A person who is too poor to pay for a
college education is too poor to take it as a gift, unless he has some immediate
prospect of making it available in the University, or as a lawyer or teacher,
or in some similar occupation, for which, we venture to say, most of our free
college graduates have little taste.

Convert this college into a business high school, and keep it where it is now,
at an expense of about thirty thousand dollars a year, and it may be tolerated.
But these schemes to take vast sums out of the pockets of the taxpayers to
make it a great and useless concern, can only lead the people to have it pulled
down. 50

The tendency toward national encroachment upon state or municipal
supervision of education was consistently resisted by the Sun. Mr. Sum-
ner's plan to provide schools for the Negroes caused it to write, "We
presume Congress will do nothing of the sort." 51 In 1870, it remarked

40 Sept. 5, 1878.
* Apr. 6, 1868.
fi iFeb. 11, 1870.

208 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

upon an "absurd bill" introduced by Hoar to establish "what he calls"
a national system of education.- 12 Two years later it attacked the pro-
posal to establish a National University:

A bill to set apart 10,000,000 acres of public land for the purpose of main-
taining a National University has been introduced into the House of Repre-
sentatives by Mr. McCrary of Iowa. The plan and government of the institution
are reserved for future legislation, which it is to be hoped will be rendered un-
necessary by the prompt defeat of the first step toward it. There are more than
enough colleges and universities already in existence in the country, and such
a one as Mr. McCrary has in view would be nothing more than an asylum
for useless officeholders. 53

This view it steadily maintained. In 1889, it said:

It is the business of a free government to mind its own business. The busi-
ness of the Government of the United States is to discharge the powers and the
duties granted to it by the States. To teach boys and men is not one of those
duties. Local grants and private benefactions are sufficient for the purpose of
education. It is the privilege of Americans as yet that they are self edu-
cated. That is, they owe their education to themselves or to town, county, or
State taxation. That the Federal Government should become the paymaster, and
so the inspirer of professors of history and political economy, and the inter-
pretators of the Constitution, and the science of taxation is not to be borne. 54

The Sun heartily deprecated honorary degrees, which "no amount of
learning and acquirements suffices to obtain unless the good will or
favor of a college faculty be first obtained." 5n Dana was horrified that
Grant was given an honorary degree when all knew that a man who
"writes about 'results hanging on a state/ and about 'former pre-
cedents,' is an ignoramous who has no longer an occasion to wish with
Dogberry. 'Oh, that I had been written down an ass.' " 5(> "What non-
sense!" the Sun exclaimed when Governor Seymour was awarded the
degree of Doctor of Literature. "A thousand years ago, when learned
men were few, a doctor's diploma had a meaning; but now it is nothing
but a toy ... an obsolete and ridiculous ceremony, more honored in
the breach than in the observance." 57

52 Mar. 3, 1870.
58 Jan. 1, 1872.
54 Apr. 4, 1889.
"June 21, 1869.
86 May 16, 1872.
57 Aug. 8, 1870.

REFORM VERSUS REFORMER 209

The attitude of the Sun toward religion was less clearly defined than
that toward education. It appeared orthodox or unorthodox, liberal or
conservative, according to the occasion. After discussing pros and cons
in the controversies over religion instruction, it usually came to the con-
clusion that there were ample opportunities for religious training out-
side the public school. In 1877, the New Haven Board of Education dis-
continued religious exercises. Commenting upon this, the Sun said that
since citizens of all beliefs were taxed equally, "all these citizens have
an equal right to their privileges for their children." It continued:

As a matter of fact the American community is made up of Protestants,
Roman Catholics, Israelites, Spiritualists, skeptics, and infidels, all of whom
are equally taxed for the common schools and have equal rights in them. A
majority of Protestants in a town have no more right to shut up Bob Ingersoll
to a choice between having his boy compelled to listen to daily selections from
the Bible, than a majority of Ingersollian unbelievers would have to shut up
Brother Talmage for instance to a choice between having his boy compelled
to listen daily to selections from Tom Paine and keeping him out of the pub-
lic school. 08

Extremely intolerant of agnosticism and atheism, the Sun once ad-
vised that Robert G. Ingersoll be done away with. The only office which
the press ought to perform, it said, is to help "exterminate such a moral
pestilence, or hang the moral carrion in chains upon a cross beam as
an enemy of society and the destroyer of all that is held holy in this life
and the life to come." no Perhaps Dana attacked Ingersoll because he had
recently supported Elaine. The Sun said, "A man who disbelieves in
God might well believe in Elaine." Its ferocity may have been caused
by political considerations, but Dana's tolerance never included un-
believers. Occasionally Sun editorials struck notes of deep religious
faith. Once it said, "One of the most valuable lessons which Americans
can find in the life of Washington is his deep, sincere, and earnest re-
gard for all that concerns the worship of God. . . ." 01 At another time
the Sun ridiculed a pastor who believed God had spared him while in
battle, and wondered what view the man would take who had been blown
to pieces in his stead. 02

Dec. 10, 1877.
Aug. 26, 1877.
<">Aug. 26, 1877.
ei Sept. 27, 1869.
62 May 9, 1888.

210 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

E. P. Mitchell's interest in spiritualism was reflected in numerous
editorials. Sects such as Theosophy, Divine Healing, and Christian
Science were catalogued as "clap trap." We now know that Mitchell
investigated claims to spiritualistic phenomena time and again, but
found no convincing evidence of supernaturalism. The Sun declared
that, "Of course such practical results as it achieves are mere illustra-
tions of the power of mind over matter; of the imagination over the
actual and material, but it is now pushed to an extreme of perilous
fanaticism." G3 The Sun depicted Christian Science as the vice of re-
ligious women whose beliefs had been shattered by modern discussion.
"They like it because it is nonsense, mystery, jugglery, and a jumble
of philosophical abstractions which they are powerless to reduce to
order." (i4 There was some truth underlying Christian Science since
much of illness can be conquered by will power. But, said the Sun, the
Christian Science teacher, "no matter how earnest and sincere he may
be at the start, is bound to degenerate into a quack, a charlatan, or a
dangerous fanatic." 5

The Sun championed Catholicism and consequently circulated in
many Irish Catholic homes. In 1868 an editorial entitled "America as
the Seat of the Papacy," welcomed the idea of Pope Pius IX establish-
ing his home in America. "He will exchange," the Sun wrote, "a terri-
tory which he holds rather like a besieged fortress than as the peaceful
asylum in which the successor of St. Peter ought to dwell, for the re-
freshing airs and vivifying waters of a Democracy in the New World." GG

At the time of the Orangemen riots, July 12, 1871, Catholics were
criticized for their attacks upon parading Irish Protestants. The Sun
came to their defense, declaring that the Irish justified no such conduct,
and from the Archbishop down all had forbidden and denounced it:

They have spoken out boldly, like good men and good Christians and the
members of their Church sympathize with them. We do not doubt that the
Irish Catholics of this city would, if necessary, turn out under arms to de-
fend the right of Orangemen to walk through the streets with their banners and
music. It is only the grog-shop and bar-room ruffians, men with no religion
and no principles of any kind, who would attempt to kill or maim the Irish
Protestants. Good Catholics all repudiate and hate such brutal wickedness. 67

63 Sept. 16, 1888.

64 June 1, 1890.

65 Sept. 7, 1889.

66 Apr. 9, 1868.

67 July 13, 1871.

REFORM VERSUS REFORMER 211

The Sun defended the Catholics against the charge that their church
was a dangerous political power, maintaining that they had never at-
tempted to introduce religion into politics, had carefully abstained from
interfering with elections, and had never refused to support a candidate
for office on the ground that he was a Protestant. As the result of this
continued championship, Dana was accused of fostering the doctrines
of Romanism to the extent of showing ill will toward the Protestant
faith. The Sun answered by saying that its purpose was to foster a grow-
ing spirit of good will between peoples of all faiths:

The time is at hand when the Christian Church must forget its divisions and
overcome its old animosities in order to combine to resist the assaults of mod-
ern unbelief, which does not wage war against any particular system of theology,
but raises its hand against the foundations of all theology and all revealed reli-
gion. Thus assailed from without as never before in Christian history, the
Church begins to feel the necessity of union within, and of alliance between its
different branches which shall replace the old internecine feuds. . . , 68

In 1891 the Sun answered the question, "Should a Catholic be nom-
inated for President?" in the affirmative. In such an event, it said, he
would be nominated as a statesman and party man, not as a Catholic.
"We do not think that the religion of the candidate would do him such
harm in a political sense as to render his nomination unadvisable for
fear of his being defeated on religious grounds in the election." U9

Although ministers of different faiths were attacked in the columns
of the paper for their personal conduct and the "humbugs," such as
Divine Healers, Mormons, and Spiritualists, were amply ridiculed, the
Sun never favored one faith above the other. It discussed Moham-
medanism, 70 Buddhism 71 and other non-Christian groups without prej-
udice. Shortly before he died, Dana affirmed that he did not believe in
an after life. 72 He must have gradually given up his early orthodoxy,
replacing it with personal values based upon his own moral and spiritual
experience. From Sun editorials one might conclude that Dana had an
abiding faith in a divine wisdom, and a great respect for the beneficent
influence of religion, but was aware that even in this field the "hypo-
crites" and "charlatans" intruded.

68 Dec. 13, 1884.
9 Aug 14, 1891.

70 May 22, 1869.

71 Nov. 26, 1869.

72 Wilson, James H., Life of Dana, 451-452.

212 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

The Sun was progressive in its attitude toward the all-important
question of Sunday recreation. It urged opening the libraries on Sunday
afternoon, a proposal which created strong opposition in the sixties. It
asserted that an opportunity would be offered for young men and the
poor to busy themselves in useful ways in the public library. Before
Beecher was implicated in a personal scandal, it praised him for the
introduction of public lectures "on something else than religious topics
at his Bethel on Sunday evenings." It said,

. . . Encouraged by this example, a number of our best citizens have put
into circulation a petition asking that the Mercantile Library reading room in
Clinton Hall may be kept open on all holidays, including Sundays, from 2 to
10P.M. . . .

It may be argued with great force that the institution of the Sabbath is
for man's benefit, and is not intended to be a means of his punishment. It is
a beneficent provision to give rest from wearisome toil one day out of the
seven, and if that rest is secured, the purpose of the institution is, so far as the
terms creating it are concerned, fully attained. There is no express or implied
obligation as to how the time shall be spent, and any recreation or amusements
innocent on other days are equally innocent on Sunday. Nor is it necessary
that all should take their Sabbath on the same day. The staunchest Puritan
allows that ministers, and sextons, and organists, and choir singers, and Sunday
school teachers shall labor on Sunday, while others enjoy the benefits of their
labors. . . .

Then there are some positive benefits likely to arise from the proposed
measure which go far to outweigh any fancied doubts as to its propriety. The
class of people whom it would directly benefit is a large one, and exposed to
peculiar temptations to vice. It is composed chiefly of the young men from the
country, strangers among us, to whom Sunday under our present system is a
dreary waste of idle time, almost compelling them to frequent the haunts of
dissipation for amusement. Living in crowded boarding houses, with a few or
none of the comforts of home, they are ready for anything which promises them
a lew hours relief from the intolerable monotony of perfect idleness. 73

In later years, when the Sun spoke of the correct way to spend Sun-
day, it asserted that the day should be an occasion of "recuperation of
mind and body for spiritual edification and strengthening." It exhorted
everybody to put the day to the best use of his intellect, and said "A care-
ful and thoughtful perusal of the Sun is the best beginning of the day." 74
It had harsh criticisms for certain other literature; for instance, few

Mar. 23, 1869.
74 Jan. 2, 1877.

REFORM VERSUS REFORMER 213

of the New York City journals, daily, weekly, or religious were fit to
be taken into decent families. "They are sapping the very foundations
of morality, the rising generation is familiarized by them with crime in
its most heroic and seductive form till the evil threatens to lead to the
gravest results." 75 The Sun also disapproved of foul speech, not only
the "blasphemy" of Horace Greeley but of any other man who swore,
of President Johnson for the language used in his speeches as well as
the language used by his opponents. "Let it be distinctively under-
stood," the Sun wrote, "that everyone from the President down, who
thus disgraces himself by unbecoming language or behavior shall meet
with universal and indignant reprobation. . . ." 7G

The Sun disapproved of betting although it did not believe laws to
prohibit it would prove effective. 77 It abhorred drinking, especially
among fashionable women and the aristocratic classes of England, if
we judge by the amount of space devoted to this topic. It told astonish-
ing facts about "fashionable women" who passed as respectable mem-
bers of society but whose physicians alone knew their dreadful secrets
of alcoholic indulgence 78 or opium eating. 79 As for bigamy and pros-
titution the Sun was shocked, yet refused to support Dr. Parkhurst in
his moral crusade in New York City. The laws of marriage and divorce
were discussed in full. In 1884, the Sun agreed with Mrs. Stan ton, who
believed marriage should be protected by license. 80 In 1888, when Gov.
Hill refused to sign a bill requiring marriage licenses in the State of
New York, it maintained there was an evil far more serious than easy
marrying, "It is the discouragement of matrimony." 81 It agreed that
divorces should be handled with the utmost delicacy saying, "We can-
not afford to be too careful of the feelings of the persons who are un-
fortunate enough to have to resort to the divorce courts." 82 At the
same time it objected to a law protecting the secrecy of divorces. "In
this country there should be no secrecy in regard to the manner in which
any operation of the Government is conducted." 83 It opposed all

Feb. 14, 1868.
70 May 5, 1868.
"Dec. 2,1888.
78 Aug. 25, 1876.
70 Oct. 22, 1890.
so Sept. 13, 1884.

81 Apr. 29, 1888.

82 Jan. 13, 1884.

83 Oct. 14, 1889.

214 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

attempts made to secure uniform divorce legislation throughout the
states. 84 It condemned birth control and all "obscene literature and
advertisements pertaining to it." 85 The Sun was as opposed to laws pre-
venting public hanging as it was opposed to capital punishment. If
people were to be hung, executed or guillotined it advocated that it be
made public so that all could remember the event. If capital punishment
was necessary it preferred gas to the guillotine as a substitute for hang-
ing. In 1888, it said:

The most awful work done by society is this killing of men for the satisfaction
of justice, and therefore if it is done at all it should be known to society in all
its horrible details, so that an execution may be always an impressive event in
the minds of the whole public. If such publicity is dangerous and demoralizing,
the remedy is not in the secrecy of executions proposed by these cranky Com-
missioners, but in the abolition of capital punishment altogether. As to the
shock to humanity, too, it is not in the method of killing, but in the killing itself,
whatever the method. 86

Dana really had little faith in human nature and the Sun once shrewdly
remarked, "When vice gets stupid and dull there is a chance for
virtue." 87

The Sun was concerned over housing arrangements, sanitary condi-
tions, bathing provisions, and safety devices. In 1872 it ran a series of
editorials exposing the slums of New York and exhorting the people to
eliminate unhealthy surroundings as a preventative against disease.
One of the early remedies suggested was co-operative stores and co-
operative housekeeping. 88 In 1879, it reported:

The sketches that have been given in the Sun of scenes that have come under
the eyes of our reporters disclose enough pity in the hardest heart. The streets,
sidewalks, and walls of houses became so intensely heated by each day's ac-
tion of the sun's rays that no place could be found as refuge from the fierce
caloric. Think of a block of brick and stone, five stories high, with a front of
one hundred feet, inhabited by over one hundred families. Its entrance and
passages badly constructed, pestilential waste papers which admit the death
loaded odors of sinks and sewers. No air can be admitted through window or
door that has not been saturated with moisture obtained from filthy street or
cellar, and this must be breathed over and over again, combined with the ef-

84 Oct. 12, 1891.

85 Oct. 2, 1874.

86 Jan. 19, 1888.

87 Apr. 24, 1868.

88 May 1, 1868.

REFORM VERSUS REFORMER 215

fluvia arising from human beings whose soiled clothing is saturated with per-
spiration.

The mortality from the effects of the heat has been fearful, and numbers
who have not died have been permanently injured, while many were recovering
from sick beds were again prostrated. Such troubles form a portion of the lot
of man, and may be expected as long as he inhabits the earth; but that they
should be mitigated and as far as possible averted by wise customs and laws,
is a requirement of humanity and civilization that cannot be unheeded with
impunity by any nation or city.

After portraying these horrors, the Sun proposed the establishment of
cottages outside of New York where workers might live with respect-
able home accommodations. 89 For this reason it advocated cheaper
transportation in and out of the industrial sections. At another time,
it suggested that the owners of buildings be required by law to make
proper repairs and abate all nuisances at once. 00 The shallow philosophy
of the day was frequently reflected in Dana's failure to propose more
fundamental economic reforms for the abuses which he described with
such compassion.

Noting a plan in England which had for its goal putting all matters
relating to the public health under the control of a single Minister, the
Sun said:

The United States and the State of New York especially might in this in-
stance, well take a pattern after England. The threatened visitation of cholera
in the early part of the fall excited the Health authorities of this city to
measures of prevention. A few of the streets received a cleansing and the Street
Contractor Major Brown, was soundly rated for his neglect of duty. But Mul-
berry Street, Park Street, and a number of other down-town thoroughfares,
still remain, however, in their old filthy condition. Even on these frosty days
the sense of smell is offended by the exhalations from the refuse deposited in
the reeking gutters. If we desire to prevent a heavy death rate in the coming
spring, prompt and effective measures must at once be employed. 91

But when a bill proposing the disposal of garbage outside the twenty
mile limit, was introduced into the New York Assembly in 1888 the
Sun strongly opposed the measure on the ground that "by this bill
shores which are now clean, sweet and beautiful, would be deluged
with filth and perhaps impregnated with disease." 92

89 July 12, 1872.
eo July 16, 1872.
ei Jan. 1, 1872.
02 May 6, 1888.

216 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

These questions of education, religion, manners, morals, housing,
and general sanitation were the every day problems in the lives of
Sun readers. They were of importance in the growing culture of a
large city; and in Dana's paper they were presented dramatically, in-
terestingly, humorously and unsparingly.

CHAPTER IX

"THE MUGWUMP MOSES"

THE Mugwumps have only one prophet, and he is stuffed, said the
Sun in scrutinizing the record of Grover Cleveland. 1 But in 1884, the
Independents who withdrew from the abyss of fraud into which our
Civil War had plunged us were not afraid of ugly prophecies. "The
self-elected Republican bosses of Democracy," 2 Dana called them;
but among the Mugwumps were men of principle and courage. George
William Curtis, Henry Ward Beecher, Andrew D. White of Cornell,
Charles W. Eliot of Harvard and Lawrence Godkin of the Evening
Post and many more became the Mugwumps of the 'eighties who es-
corted Cleveland to the White House. If their candidate were "stuffed,"
he had proved the quality of stuffing by his record while governor of
New York.

With the exception of Lincoln, Dana considered Chester A. Arthur
the best Republican President between 1861 and 1897. 3 But although
his service had been dignified and honorable, political jealousy and
business depression forbade his nomination for President in 1884. 4
There was one sail toward which the Republican winds blew, James
G. Blaine. A few days before the Chicago Republican convention the
Sun expressed delight at the prospect of his nomination. And why not?
All discerning Democrats might welcome such a blunder in the camp
of their opponents. But although his past career was repellent to many
Republicans, the convention early in June enthusiastically nominated
him. Sun "notes on the platform" ran:

The Republican Party has not triumphed in six successive Presidential
elections.

The Republican Party did not save the Union.

The Republican Party has not cared a continental for the elevation of labor.

The Republican Party has not responded, either quickly or tardily, to the
demand of the people for purity in legislation.

1 Mar. 18, 1891.

2 Dec. 11,1884.

3 May 21, 1884.

4 Muzzey, David S., James G. Blaine, 256-263.

217

218 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

Nor for integrity and accountability in all departments of the Government.
The Republican Party is a fraud, and the same old platform lies are made to
do service again this year of grace and hope. 5

Thenceforth Elaine had a new title. He was "Jingo G. Elaine from
Maine" and soon the "Mulligan Guards" were much in evidence. The
Sun thought that Mulligan should be the Vice-Presidential nominee in
place of John A. Logan. To give the ticket a loftier moral tone, the
Sun proposed the slogan "Elaine and Booty": "These words burn
through every inscription on their campaign banners, to the shame and
mortification of honest and independent Republicans everywhere." 6
When the Worcester Spy refused to bolt, the Sun remarked that "Our
solemn contemporary ... has left off making faces at Brother Elaine,
fixes its sad gaze upon the main chance once more, and talks like a
little man":

. . . Let the competent ears of all unterrified Republicans drink in its words;
for through this Worcester telephone speaks the cracked voice of George
Frisbie Hoar.

And this is his message: "Every Post Office in this State will be in the hands of
Democrats next summer if we falter now." Could a more truly Republican
rallying cry be devised? But it might be put into fewer words. It ought to read:
"Keep the rascals in."

. . . The love of plunder is the great band which holds the Republican party
together. . . . The nomination of Elaine has fired the hopes of all the enemies
of honest government, the survivors of the gang which waxed fat under Grant,
the wreckers of the Treasury under Hayes and Garfield, Star Routers, land
thieves, pension thieves, all who have got rich or expect to get rich under
Republican rule. 7

The Sun was opposed to Elaine, "not alone on account of his char-
acter, but still more on account of his narrow, bigoted and sectional
policy, which has been persisted in through a long series of years for
ends purely partisan, thus arraying one part of the population of our
country against the other." K It called him a "sensational politician," 9
saying he believed that Americans needed a little stirring up. If elected,
he would restore the Navy to its former strength and increase the

6 June 6, 1884.

6 July 20, 1884.

7 June 28, 1884.

8 Oct. 19, 1884.

9 June 7, 1884.

"THE MUGWUMP MOSES" 219

army to at least one hundred thousand men. If he did not plunge the
country into terrible war, he would at least succeed in breaking off
friendly relations with all the powers in the world before he had been
in office one year:

He says himself that he is as harmless as a suckling dove, but you cannot
always believe what Brother Elaine says . . . "we seek the conquest of peace"
says Brother Blaine ...

From what is known of him it is not unfair to guess that Brother Elaine's
preferences as to the color of his foreign policy are like those of a fireman
in regard to the hue of his favorite "machine." "I don't care a rap what color
you paint the old tub as long as you paint her blood-red." 10

E. P. Mitchell said that Dana really loved Elaine. 11 It is possible
that he did. Certainly he preferred the politician to the reformer.
Nevertheless, the Sun declared that rather than support him it would
"quit work, burn up our pen, and leave to other and perhaps rasher
heads the ... defense of popular self-government." 12

As for the Democrats, Samuel J. Tilden was no longer in the politi-
cal picture. Two years earlier the Sun had announced his retirement,
saying, "Henceforth, his interest in politics is that of a student and a
philosopher. ... In the volume that records the annals of the nine-
teenth century no page will bear any American name that is greater
or brighter than that of Samuel J. Tilden." 13 Now Dana insisted that
"although he has been spoken of in connection with the Presidency
twenty times where any other man is only spoken of once," he would
refuse. 14 Tilden died in 1886 and with him passed from the annals of
the Sun a friend whom Dana must have loved as deeply as he hated
any enemy.

In 1883, the Sun carried on an animated campaign for the nomina-
tion of William S. Holman of Indiana, whose name has merited inclu-
sion in historical reviews of this election. 15 It praised him as the
keeper of ancient and immortal principles of Democracy, 16 and as an
American much like Lincoln in the "integrity, fairness, firmness, as-

iAug 1, 1884.

11 Memoirs of an Editor, 306.

12 June 29, 1884.

1 3 Sept. 14, 1882.

15 Chirk, Champi My Quarter Century oj American Politics, II, 56, mentions Dana's sup-
port of Holman.
iDec. 29, 1883.

220 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

tuteness, and patriotism of his character." 17 When contemporaries
grew suspicious that the Sun was preparing the way for a dark horse
Dana admitted the fact. When the Times asserted that "Holman was
practically trained to death" by the Sun, it drew the retort: "Is Mr.
Holman any less distinguished than he was before the Sun published
to the people the history of his public services? . . . Has the Sun
done any harm to him? Did it even injure his good looks when it
published what was thought to be his portrait?" 18 In December, 1883,
the Sun had dropped his candidacy, explaining that u such a man as
Holman ought not to be nominated to be defeated. For that use in-
ferior timber will answer." 19

All who read the Sun knew whom it meant by "inferior timber."
While Cleveland was Governor of New York, the Sun had not spared
scathing comments upon his obesity, dullness, and moral humbug.
Newspapers charged that Dana felt personal spite because Cleveland
had refused to appoint a friend of his to office. The Sun partially de-
nied this:

Mr. Dana recommended the appointment of Mr. Franklin Bartlett, an ac-
complished lawyer of this city, to the office of which our contemporary speaks.
So also, we believe, did all the Judges of the higher courts in New York and
Brooklyn, except a few with whom Mr. Bartlett did not happen to be personally
acquainted.

Subsequently the information reached Mr. Dana that the Governor-elect had
expressed his willingness to make the appointment, unless someone applied for
the place who had greater political claim than Mr. Bartlett.

We thought then, and we think now, that the standard thus announced was
not such as should control a reform Governor in the administration of his office.
We were disposed to think that we had probably elected a mere politician after
all a man who proposed to regard political claims rather than personal fitness.
The idea was unpleasant, of course, but the facts forced it upon us, and we
then knew nothing of the selection which Mr. Cleveland had actually made,
or that it might not accord with our recommendation.

But if anybody supposes that the course of this newspaper toward the person
who happens to be Governor of the State of New York could be changed or made
more favorable than a fair and unbiased consideration of his public acts would
warrant, by the appointment of any friend of ours or all our friends to office,
he is woefully in error. This establishment is not subject to mortgage in that
manner. 20

17 Sept. 14, 1883.

18 Feb. 16, 1884.

19 Dec. 29, 1883.

20 Jan. 9, 1883.

"THE MUGWUMP MOSES" 221

If personal animosity did not actually determine Dana's attitude
toward Cleveland, it is safe to conclude that it was at least a contribut-
ing factor. The fact that Cleveland was a reformer, admired by the
Mugwumps, lowered him still further in Dana's estimation. The two
men, each with his own faults and virtues, were of antagonistic tem-
peraments. It may be impossible to justify Dana in his treatment of
Cleveland, but it is easy to see how he was irritated by Cleveland's
moral emphasis, serious intent, and inflexibility of purpose.

In January, 1883, the Sun labeled rumors of Cleveland's possible
nomination "Nonsense Run Wild." It did not think the Democratic
candidate should be selected by Half-Breed influence, or his nomina-
tion based upon the ignorance of the people. 21 Besides, there was grave
doubt whether a man who had refused to shrink at the Tiger's growls
and taken no pains to placate the Irish, could carry New York State.
But, said the Sun, "We hope to support the candidate of the Democ-
racy when the time comes. Even a crank like Frank Kurd would be
preferable to any Republican we can now think of." 22

The Sun believed that Thomas F. Bayard would be a far stronger
candidate than Grover Cleveland in New York or elsewhere. "If qual-
ity is what we look for, Bayard is infinitely preferable; and if availa-
bility be the test, there is, in our judgment, a vast advantage in taking
Bayard." 23 Another whom the Sun preferred to Cleveland was Ros-
well P. Flower. Though not "so handsome as our obese Governor," at
least he was "sound in finance and in religion" 24 and would be likely
to have as many New York delegates to the party's national conven-
tion. The Sun's first choice for the nomination was Samuel G. Ran-
dall. 25

In April, 1884, the Sun was aware that Cleveland's New York
friends were moving with energy. It discussed at length the relation
between the friends of Tilden and those of Cleveland, making it appear
that there was political disharmony in the party. 26 It proved by vari-
ous devices that Cleveland was not a Democrat and that it was not
Tammany Hall alone which made up the opposition; "it does not even

21 Jan. 5,1883.

22 May 1, 1884.

23 June 18, 1884.

24 May 14, 1884.

25 Apr. 28, July 3, 1884.

26 July 4, 1884.

222 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

represent one-half of it." 27 This was all to no avail. In Chicago, Tam-
many's opposition stimulated the Western delegates, and on July 12th
the Sun was forced to admit: "Cleveland is It." Although Dana had said
that if either Cleveland or Flower were nominated, "The Sun would be
devoted to securing his entire success." 2 * Nevertheless it was certain
that Cleveland could not expect Dana's support.

On the other hand, many Republicans deserted Elaine. Harper's
Weekly transferred its affections to Cleveland. The Nation, the Eve-
ning Post, the Times, the Herald and Puck, as well as a number of
New England papers, now turned their backs on their own party.
"Jingo Elaine" is a "corrupt politician," who represents all the "po-
litical demoralization of a corrupted and debauched party," 2J) the Sun
said; and for once the Mugwumps were in accord. Harper's Weekly
wrote: "The election of Grover Cleveland, who, as Governor of the
State of New York, has evinced the executive qualities of a sagacious
unpartisan statesman, would promise the objects for which the Republi-
can party has contended." The Sun scornfully replied:

The objects for which the Republican party has contended, are not, in our
opinion, those which the Democracy is organized to promote, in our opinion
an executive officer, elected as the representative of a party, has no right to be
unpartisan. . . .

Every free government must depend for continuance upon the vigor and fidel-
ity of the political parties in which its citizens are divided. . . . No public
officer has any right to change his party and remain in office. A private citizen
may change his political principles whenever he becomes convinced that they
are unsound, and may leave his party; but not so a public officer.

Mr. Cleveland may be unsatisfactory as a Democrat, but Mr. Elaine is not
an honest man. 80

The Times, with Mugwump enthusiasm, published a number of
previously undiscovered Mulligan letters. The Sun immediately ques-
tioned their authenticity not as a defense of the Republican candi-
date, but in defense of accurate journalism:

An examination of the Record suggested solely by a desire to ascertain the
exact truth, and certainly with no purpose on our part to manufacture a de-
fense for Mr. Elaine against the Times "important accusations," satisfied us

27 June 29, 1884.

28 June 9, 1884.

29 June 12, 1884.

80 July 19, 1884; July 4, 1884.

"THE MUGWUMP MOSES" 223

that the "suppressed" Mulligan letters were all accounted for. A similar ex-
amination, we think, will satisfy any candid person that there is nothing in the
Times charge. That newspaper has been misled into a wholly false position
either by its bias against Elaine or by heedlessness which is simply amazing. 81

The Springfield Republican justly remarked: "But what a spectacle to
see the Sun trying to bleach the spots in Mr. Elaine's record!" 32
Others, whom the Sun called "donkeys," took somewhat the same po-
sition. As the strength and zeal of the Mugwumps grew impressive, the
Sun became more violent in its attacks upon Cleveland. The Galveston
Daily News even suggested that "the Democratic National Commit-
tee should appoint a Commission to investigate Editor Dana's griev-
ance against Grover Cleveland." 33

Unable to support either of the major parties, or Governor John P.
St. John of Kansas, candidate of the Prohibitionists, the Sun turned
to the recently defeated candidate for Governor in Massachusetts,
Eenjamin F. Butler. His career was notorious. He had engaged in cor-
rupt deals during the Civil War and later advocated hanging Jefferson
Davis and Lee as traitors. He believed God had removed Abraham
Lincoln that the proper punishment might be administered to the au-
thors of the rebellion. In vindictive speeches he urged the impeach-
ment of Andrew Johnson. He had led the fight against good measures
and men with such indefatigable energy that the term "Butlerism"
was coined to express such a tendency. 34 As the Sun remarked in 1883,
he was "not an ideal character by any means," but when it compared
him with his opponents, Butler loomed up "like an antique hero in
comparison." ;i5 Even before his nomination, the Sun had shown its
inclination to support him. On May 30th, it said:

General Ben. Butler is one of the squarest men in the world and the freest
from humbug. He is willing to be President, and he says so to everybody who
asks him. He has opinions of his own, and he avows them like a man. Some of
them are popular and some are not; but this makes no difference to Butler. For
instance, he is in favor of a tariff which shall bestow special protection upon
agricultural interests; and he likewise wants protection for American man-
ufacturers.

81 Aug 2, 1884.

32 June 15, 1884.

33 Aug 5, 1884.

3 * Obcrholtzer, E. P., History of the United States, I, 395; 414; 461; Rhodes, James F.,
History of the United States, V, 312-313.
35 Oct. 3, 1883.

224 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

He has been nominated by the anti-monopolists and the Greenbackers, but
probably will not be nominated by the Democrats because he has too many
enemies among them . . . and yet we here record our opinion that Butler
would make a stronger candidate and a better President than several of the
more orthodox and regular Democratic statesmen.

Although its edition fell about 69,000 in weekly circulation during
the 1884 campaign and many more readers threatened to seek con-
genial opinions elsewhere, the Sun refused to be "bulldozed" 30 into
forsaking the odious Butler. It tried to appeal to the working classes by
calling Cleveland a candidate who was "notoriously hostile to Ameri-
can labor":

This year [the Democratic Party] insulted every laboring man by naming as
its candidate for President a man notoriously the foe of labor. Not only has
Grover Cleveland never shown the slightest sympathy, but he has shown hatred
for it, and has steadily opposed many measures for its relief that have come
before him. ... He is known to be in favor of measures which would only
result in the disturbance of industry, and the impoverishment of labor. 37

Furthermore, it informed all laborers that a "vote for Cleveland is
a vote for England" and appealed to prejudices against our "heredi-
tary foe." 38

Before the campaign had progressed far the personal life of each
candidate was brought out for an airing. Accusations against Blaine
were quickly denied and accepted as untrue by the Sun. But those
against Cleveland were given more attention. 3!> The Buffalo Evening
Telegraph was first to print a story that Cleveland had had a son born
out of wedlock to one Maria Halpin. The Sun at the beginning dis-
missed this, saying, "No accusations produced without legal proof after
the nomination of a candidate are worth a copper; and the publication
of such accusations is a scandal of itself." 40 But, while the Sun con-
tinued to express hope that Cleveland would clear himself of all im-
putations, the tone of its editorials came to exceed all bounds of pro-
priety. It spoke of a Presidential candidate proving himself a "coarse
debauchee who might bring his harlots to Washington and hire lodgings
for them convenient to the White House," and referred to animals

86 July 26, 1884.

87 Oct 29, 30, 1884.

88 Oct. 31, 1884.

39 Sept. 9, 1884.

40 July 25, 1884.

"THE MUGWUMP MOSES" 225

instead of men. 41 When Cleveland himself admitted the story, it at-
tacked the Mugwumps for daring to support a man revealed as "un-
worthy of regard, low in his associations, leprous with immorality,
perfidious, whose name was loathsome in the nostrils of every virtuous
woman and upright man who knew him." 42 It published an affadavit
which described the pitiful case of Maria Halpin. 43

The Sun also reprinted a report of the hanging of two murderers
which Cleveland had performed while Sheriff, although a short time
before it had denounced the Herald as "mean and base" for attempt-
ing to bring Cleveland into contempt "because he has at some time
done some work that is despised by aristocrats" 44 When the Chicago
News ventured that Cleveland had merely performed an obnoxious
duty, the Sun replied, "Obnoxious! Not at all. He liked it. It gave him
an opportunity of saving a few dollars. Besides, it was not his sworn
duty. He did it from choice. Money is a great thing with a mean man." 45

Since the Republican and Democratic platforms were similar in
respect to civil service reform and tariff, 46 the campaign was waged
on the merits of the individuals whose duty it would be to put the re-
forms into effect. The Sun advised its readers to vote for Butler as
the man best able to reform "the abuses of this long period of Re-
publican rule," and to restore "simple, economical, and popular methods
of Jefferson and Madison." 4T

As the returns came in and the New York State vote was being
determined the Sun variously analyzed the results. If Cleveland were
elected he would owe his triumph to the Republicans "the Demo-
cratic party has still to elect a candidate representing Democratic
principles." 4H William H. Vanderbilt and Jay Gould had desired the
election of Cleveland because they "put their money where they
thought it would do the most good to them." 49 Six days before the
election, a "Silurian or early Paleozoic bigot, the Rev. Samuel D.
Burchard by name, completed the alliteration that swelled in his

41 Aug 7, 1884.

2 Oct. 19, 1884.

3 Oct. 31, 1884.

4 July 17, 1884.

5 Sept. 12, 1884.

Rhodes VIII, 228.

7 Sept. 27, 1884.

8 Nov. 5, 1884.

9 Ibid.

226 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

foolish mouth by presenting Mr. Elaine as the enemy of 'Rum, Ro-
manism, and Rebellion!' " 50 It was a handful of Stalwarts that did it.
They remembered Elaine's assault upon Conkling and voted to make
the account square. 51 On November 8th, the Sun announced with cer-
tainty that it was the people who did it, "not because they like Cleve-
land," but because they believed he would be safer than Elaine. While
many papers were asserting that Elaine had been elected, and fear was
expressed least the return should be manipulated to his advantage, the
Sun bulletin board bore the announcement that Cleveland had won.

Although the Sun considered Cleveland's inaugural speech neither
original nor brilliant, it approved of the principles set forth: economy,
retrenchment, reorganization and trenchant reform. 52 The Cabinet was
praised. The Sun declared Thomas F. Bayard, Secretary of State, a
gentleman whose fitness no one could question. Daniel Manning was
a man of judgment, moderation, dignity and power, whom the Presi-
dent was fortunate in securing for Secretary of the Treasury. Lucius
Q. C. Lamar, a man of genius and the first Southerner in a high post
since the Civil War, was welcomed by the Sun as Secretary of the
Interior. The new Attorney-General, A. H. Garland, although objec-
tionable because he was a "Federalist" rather than a "Jeffersonian,"
was an able lawyer. William C. Whitney, William E. Endicott, and
William F. Vilas, appointed to head the Navy Department, War De-
partment, and Post Office, were commendable. 'This is a solid and
competent cabinet," the Sun said. 53

The question of appointments soon obtruded itself, for the Inde-
pendents were anxious that Cleveland conform to the principles of
civil service reform. On the other hand, Democrats were eager for
spoils. Whenever Cleveland made an appointment that met with the
Mugwumps' approval, the Sun consoled with the Democrats; and
whenever an appointment particularly pleased his party, it jeered at
the Mugwumps. In June, 1885, the Sun stated:

The Independent Republicans have lost no opportunity to impress upon the
President the necessity of trying their kind of reform. He on his part has per-
haps not unnaturally wished to show that he is not unmindful of his obligation

60 Nov. 7, 1884.
51 Nov. 8, 1884.
62 Mar. 4, 1885.
68 Mar. 3, 1885.

"THE MUGWUMP MOSES" 227

to them. He has paid that obligation by the appointment of a few Republicans
of acknowledged efficiency and inoffensive partisanship. But he has not for-
gotten that his paramount obligation is to the Democratic party, and that
his obligation will not be satisfied till his Administration is all Democratic.
Some discontent has been caused by the apparent slowness with which the
displacement of Republican office holders was carried on, but, slow or fast,
the work is getting done. Day by day, Republicans are going out and Demo-
crats are coming in. If the President has at any time hesitated about his policy,
the reflection of his own powerlessness without the Democracy at his back, has
been enough to convince him which way he should go. The Independent Re-
publicans are pleasant people, but there are not enough of them to induce him
to follow them to his undoing. 54

Some accomplishments by the administration Dana sincerely ap-
proved, even if he were loath to give Cleveland credit for them. Among
these was the reorganization and improvement of our "Roach-
Robberson" Navy. Under Arthur, William E. Chandler had taken
charge of the building of four ships which were left as a legacy to the
Democrats. Although it was claimed the vessels surpassed every ex-
pectation, the new Secretary of the Navy appointed a commission of
experts to investigate. The Sun said, "the exact truth in regard to the
Dolphin's unseaworthiness, lack of speed, absurd design, and generally
faulty construction which has been made clear to the country is due
solely to Secretary Whitney's strong will and honest purpose." 55 Since
the Navy was now in efficient hands, the Sun encouraged appropria-
tions from Congress although for years past it had opposed going be-
yond "actual immediate requirements of the service." The Sun greeted
new policies in regard to land grants, railroad privileges and Indian
territories with as much pleasure as it did the exposure of past Repub-
lican frauds.

The Sun's praise of the administration caused derisive laughter
among editors who could not believe that Dana was sincere. The
Philadelphia Record remarked, "The Sun seems to shape its political
course on the assumptions both erroneous that Mr. Cleveland has
a very short memory and very long ears." The Sun replied, "Our
highly esteemed contemporary, which speaks with such authority
when it discusses the milking qualities of Holstein cows, sometimes
falls into error when it branches out into more complicated subjects":

64 June 3, 1885.
June 18, 1885.

228 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

The Sun is an independent journal of Democratic principles, and its constant
aim is to gain for those principles a greater hold upon the minds of the people.
Mr. Cleveland is the temporary tenant of executive power, and the power is
enormous. We shall treat him fairly and generously, and our criticism shall
always be on the broad Democratic scale. Moreover, we hold it proper in every
case to take the most favorable view of any public act either of the President
or of any other executive officer who professes to be governed by Democratic
ideas. 56

While Dana was forced to give Cleveland a grudging respect, there
was a more malicious reason for the Sun's attitude. David B. Hill was
running for Governor of New York State. The Mugwumps would have
nothing to do with him, but Dana seemed to love Hill not only because
he was Cleveland's political antagonist but because his machine
methods disgusted the Mugwumps. To reconcile Cleveland Democrats
to the State ticket, the Sim attempted to prove that both Tilden and
the President favored Hill. It said, "Mr. Tilden's deliberate approval
has been set upon the candidacy of Mr. Hill. His substantial token of
good will, in the form of a handsome contribution to the needful
expenses of the Democratic canvass, has been accompanied with words
of esteem, of cheer, of confidence, which should be familiar in the
mouths of the voters of the State next Tuesday. 1 ' r ' T To prove Cleve-
land's friendliness, it printed the following:

The President has contributed a thousand dollars to the Democratic State
campaign fund.

The President is coming home to vote for David B. Hill.

Nevertheless, those who assume to be friends of the President insist that he
does not favor Hill's election and that his interest would be promoted by Mr.
Hill's defeat.

We prefer to judge Mr. Cleveland by his own acts/' 8

The Sun looked upon Hill's success as a triumph/' 9 It considered
the victory an intimation to Federal and State executives of how the
people wanted their government conducted/ 10 The Mugwumps were
inclined to feel that the President's policy would not undergo any
change. But the Sun said, "We should not wonder if Mr. Cleveland,

56 June 11, 1885.
67 Oct. 31, 1885.
58 Nov. 2, 1885.
B9 Ibid.
60 Nov. 7, 1885.

"THE MUGWUMP MOSES" 229

coinciden tally with the fall elections, had shed a part, at least, of his
thin spring and summer coat of Mugwumpism." G1

Allegations of fraud in the Attorney General's office gave Dana a
weapon with which to openly attack the Administration. It was learned
that Garland was promoting the Pan-Electric Company and, accord-
ing to the Sun, a suit was begun in the name of the United States
against the Bell Telephone Company to obtain priority rights to a
patent. As a stockholder of Pan-Electric Garland would be made
wealthy if it won its claim to the patent. Cleveland peremptorily re-
voked the suit when it was first put under way, but Secretary Lamar
who took charge of the affair, decided that it should be pressed, giving
point to the Sun's indignation. The Sun pointed out that Cox, Car-
lisle, and Hewitt, all Democratic Congressmen, had refused Pan-
Electric stock, because "it was not consistent with their ideas of public
duty to receive such a gift." r ' 2 The u fraud" was compared to that of
the "Credit Mobilier," although Garland was later exonerated by a
majority vote after a Congressional investigation. That Garland did
not see fit to leave office aroused Dana's scorn:

If the Democracy is to be saved, the whole Pan-Electric gang and all Pan-
Electric proceedings must be eliminated. Mr. Garland must go; he allowed
the Department of Justice to be prostituted for his private advantage. Mr.
Goode must go. Mr. Lamar must go. A number of other high officials must go;
they are all deep in Pan-Electric stock books. 03

By August, 1886, "Public Office is a Public Trust" had become,
"Public Office is a Pan-Electric trust." 4

Meanwhile the Sun had seized upon the controversy between the
silver and gold forces in order to further disparage Cleveland. Dana
explained the President's efforts to maintain the gold standard as the
fanaticism of a superstitious worshiper of gold; while the steps
which he took with Secretary of the Treasury Manning to avert panic
earned him the title of "alarmist." When the tariff question was in-
troduced, the Sun was delighted at every indication that Cleveland
was a free trader. In reality Dana was far more sympathetic with the
Randall high tariff faction than with Carlisle and Cleveland. On this

fil Nov. 8, 1885.
n - Feb 4, 1886.
03 Feb. 11, 1886.
g. 16, 1886.

230 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

issue the Sun could attack Cleveland without hypocrisy.

It was known the President would deal with tariff in his annual
message of 1887. Cleveland had previously declared that "such of
our citizens as have built up large and important industries under
present conditions should not be suddenly and to their injury deprived
of advantages to which they have adopted their business." The Sun
replied, "The only difference between that proposition and the doc-
trine of the avowed and uncompromising free traders was that it
counseled sufficient patience to let the great tariff industries of the
present sink out of existence slowly instead of cutting their throats
on the spot." 05 Cleveland's message of 1887 was called a "Turning
Point" and described in the Sun as "the most remarkable and in some
respects the most important document that he had produced since his
political career began." Enumerating its salient points, the Sun said
that the President had estimated the enormous surplus to be accumu-
lated at the end of the fiscal year, and had urged Congress to reduce
taxation "to the necessary expenses of an economic administration of
the Government." "Mr. Cleveland's advice square and short is that
in attempting this reduction Congress should let the internal taxes
alone and make the whole reduction by cutting down the customs
tariff." 66 The Sun exultantly noted that this seemed to give the Re-
publicans "exactly the issue which they have been striving to obtain
and have maneuvered for during the past two years; on this issue
they are confident of winning the great struggle of next year." 1 '' 7

Since the President had previously stated that he was opposed to
a second term, Dana assumed that he did not wish the nomination. If
he accepted it, the Sun said, he will reveal himself as either "the most
conceited politician of the century, or the most selfishly ambitious." 68
When Cleveland's admirers answered that a longer time was necessary
to accomplish the aims of the Administration, the Sun jeered: "Four
years of office and the work for which he was elected only half done!
What an insulting suggestion." 9

In the Presidential campaign of 1888 the Sun pretended to support
the "united Democracy" and Cleveland, but Dana devoted his efforts to

65 Dec. 4, 1887.

66 Dec. 7, 1887.

67 Dec. 11, 1887.

68 Feb. 9, 1888.
09 Feb. 11, 1888.

"THE MUGWUMP MOSES" 231

the nomination and to the election of Hill if possible to the Presidency,
if not, to the Governorship of New York. In April the Sun remarked,
"as the fact becomes more clearly understood that Gov. Hill is steadily
becoming more prominent as a possible nominee of the national De-
mocracy for the next election, the Republican and Mugwump organs
are getting their batteries ready." 70 But the hope that Hill might receive
the nomination for President was dispelled when the State Convention
met and agreed to present Cleveland as the candidate of the Empire
State.

This meant that Hill would undoubtedly run again for Governor.
Curiously enough the Sun, perhaps Hill's most conspicuous ally, did
not appear to welcome the possibility, for in August it tactfully pointed
the way for another candidate saying, "A great number of respectable
gentlemen of the Democratic faith are looking to William C. Whitney as
the man for whom they expect to vote for governor, provided Governor
Hill should decide to retire." 70a

But even before the State convention met the Sun was concentrating
its energies upon his renomination, insisting it would strengthen the Na-
tional Democratic ticket. "Why are you in favor of it then?" the Times
inquired. "Jones, This is Why," the Sun replied after the nomination was
made: "The one man manifestly commissioned by political destiny to
save the battle was David Bennet Hill. Nobody but a born fool or a
Jones-Godkin Mugwump could by any conceivable fault of vision fail
to perceive that fact."

"Hill is as sound as steel and as true as gold. His manly declarations that
the friends of Hill are also the friends of Cleveland in this fight, his ringing
reminder to the country that the Democracy of New York stands united and
indivisible, shows that the party made no mistake in choosing its standard
bearer. Hill brings to Cleveland ten times as many votes as the Times and
the Post and their dupes can succeed in turning away to Miller and Harrison.

"And yet this is just the result that both Mr. George Jones of the Times
and Mr Tarry' Godkin of the Evening Post have done their feeble utmost
to prevent They hate Gov. Hill with all the hatred of sneaks who have lied
about an honest man persistently and unavailingly. They would beat him if
they could even if Cleveland went to the dogs. The knife is in Jones s hands,
ready to strike down Cleveland in order to get at Hill's back." 70b

70 Apr. 13, 1888.
70aAug. 28, 1888.
70b Sept. 19, 1888.

232 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

While the Sun pursued its two-faced policy, the Republicans were
polishing their weapons. Elaine wrote from abroad that he would not
be their candidate. The Sun's comment contained an insinuation
against Cleveland. Elaine, it said, "possesses an elevation of ambition
and patriotic devotion to his party which forbids him to subject it to
the risk of defeat for the mere purpose of a personal gratification for
himself." 71 The nomination finally went to Benjamin Harrison. He
was a man with neither the moral strength of Cleveland nor the mag-
netism of Elaine, and yet a "gentleman" of whom the Sun said, "no
one need believe that he is an insignificant politician." 7 - The Repub-
lican candidate asked that personalities be avoided and himself em-
phasized the issue of protection.

When the New Haven Register called its support of Cleveland
"neither sincere nor earnest," the Sun, not in the least perturbed, re-
plied under the caption "The One Reason Why":

If the Sun does not like Mr. Cleveland personally it is simply in the same
state of mind as every prominent Democrat and every sensible Democratic
newspaper in the country.

Mr. Cleveland lives in the peculiar situation of not having in all this broad
land one single devoted, earnest, cordial, personal friend. There is not one
man who can truly and comprehensively say that he likes Mr. Cleveland. Such
is the effect of the President's personal character and manners upon those
who come in contact with him; and those who come in closest contact with
him are those who like him least.

Why is it since nobody likes Mr. Cleveland personally that all Democrats
support him? Why is it that the Sun supports him? The reason is plain and
no one can give any other reason. He is the candidate of the Democracy, nom-
inated unanimously. That is why we advocate his election, and nobody has any
other reason for advocating it. 73

On the strength of this "one reason" the Sun implored Butler "to vote
for Cleveland and Thurman in spite of their free trade platform,"
declaring, "The fight over free trade and protection is of the passing
hour, and Butler has the right side of it; but Democracy will remain
when that fight is forgotten. Let him come with us and join the ranks
of Democracy." 74 It exhorted recalcitrant Democrats to "Stand by

71 Feb. 14, 1888; see also Feb. 18, 1888.

72 June 26, 1888.

73 Oct. 10, 1888.

74 Sept. 7, 1888.

"THE MUGWUMP MOSES" 233

the Democracy" regardless of the tariff issue: "Vote for protectionist
members of Congress. Rebuke the errors of the Democracy in that
way if you think it ... is your duty. But don't go over to the Re-
publicans." 75

It was difficult to know from the Sun editorials exactly what posi-
tion the Democrats took on the tariff. At times their platform was
labelled "free trade," at others, a masterpiece of "political attraction
to the protectionists, a work of extraordinary astuteness, constructed
with such marvelous ingenuity that every faction can claim it as its
own." 7(> Cleveland, likewise, was presented either as a free trader or
a protectionist depending upon the Sun's mood. The party, if not its
leader, was said to be the victim of a few "cranks" and "professors"
who made their living spreading free trade propaganda. 77 Not only
would they lead their party to defeat in 1888, but, the Sun predicted,
"they are perfectly willing to lead it to defeat again":

. . . they are perfectly willing to keep on educating public sentiment with
a view to free trade in 1892 and if not in 1892, then in 1896 or 1900. They are
the fellows that defeat does not discourage, rebuke does not disconcert, anni-
hilation does not silence.

The Democracy has other work ahead than the education of public sentiment
toward free trade. The tariff question gets a hearing only in the total absence of
issues that fill the imagination and stir the soul. There will be sterner work for
the Democratic opposition for the next four years. 78

It is difficult not to believe that Dana rejoiced over the defeat of
Cleveland. It was accomplished by Democratic mismanagement, Re-
publican energy, the activity of business interests dependent on the
tariff, the British bugaboo, and the candidacy of Hill in New York.
But the Sun declared that the "architects of Democratic disaster"
were Cleveland and his free traders. Under a heading "The Democratic
Defeat-Courage," the Sun said:

When a party deliberately buries out of sight the principles on which it was
founded, and of which it has been the custodian for a century; when it sends
some of its best men to the rear ; when it surrenders the management of its
affairs to a syndicate of cracked intellects and theorists-enthusiasts with just

75 AUK 6, 1888.
June 16, 1888.
77 Aug 17, 1888.
7 Nov. 9, 1888.

234 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

enough shrewdness to half disguise their ultimate purpose; when it abandons
politics in the same sense, and makes itself an engine for the propagation of
a theory in short, when it goes in for an educational canvass, somebody is
bound to be educated.

This is what happened yesterday.

The great mass of the Democracy, sound to the core, loyal as ever to the
essential and eternal truths of its creed, is the victim of the educational cam-
paign. It has been educated with a vengeance and at a tremendous cost. 70

After the election, with the support of the Democracy no longer at
stake, Dana seemed to feel more free to criticize Cleveland. "The
people of New York have shown their contempt for Mugwumpery in
a very emphatic way," the Sun said: "whom Mugwumps supported
they have rejected, and whom the Mugwumps reviled they have hon-
ored." 80 It published a few lines entitled, "A New Song":
What's the matter with the Democracy?

It's beaten.
Who beat it?

Grover Cleveland. 81

The Sun kept a careful watch upon Cleveland's activities from the
moment he left the White House. Even before this, it had accused him
of using his official authority to promote a land speculation in that
part of Washington in which he owned property. 82 The Sun main-
tained over and over that the Empire State could never again be in-
duced to give its support to Cleveland, and that without New York
he could not receive the Democratic nomination in 1892:

The New York Democrats have tried Cleveland and do not want to have
any more of him. The Democracy would now be stronger, more united and more
aggressive if his Administration had never been. His empty pretensions, his
superficial and narrow abilities, his vast ignorance, his perpetual cant, his
almost inconceivable political principle, can never recommend him to the De-
mocracy of New York. 83

With the Democratic party led by Hill and the Republican party
by Platt, Dana delighted in the predicament of New York reformers.

79 Nov. 7, 1888.

80 Nov. 8, 1888.

81 Nov. 13, 1888.

82 Feb. 22, 1889.
88 June 21, 1889.

"THE MUGWUMP MOSES" 235

From the point of view of the Mugwumps, "the choice as between the
two party leaders is a hard one. In fact there is no choice." The fre-
quency of the Sun's attacks upon the Mugwumps from 1889 to 1892
suggests that in spite of its contempt, Dana regarded them a deciding
factor in the success or defeat of Cleveland or Hill. Also it could use
them as a butt for its wit. The following is an example of the Sun's
levity:

Mugwump's Disease that strange and distressing mental malady which
makes its victims see in the obese and by no means prepossessing figure of the
Claimant the quintessence of physical, intellectual, and moral perfection.

As Malebrace saw everything in God, so the victim of Mugwump's Disease
sees everything in the Claimant.

If he announces with his oracular ponderosity that two and two make four,
the Mugwump eyes bulge with admiration and the Mugwump knees are loosened
in reverential awe. "What a great mind!" say the sick men, hot with their
hallucinations. "What an acute mathematician! Not Newton, Leibnitz, or
Laplace has ever enriched science with so mighty a discovery."

Worst of all, the disease seems to be incurable. Its progress is rapid, and
the acute, chronic, and the helpless stage is quickly reached. 84

It was evident in April, 1890, that the tariff and surplus would pro-
vide issues for the fall Congressional elections. The Sun was inspired
by a "vision of Tissue Reform" and suggested a ticket, headed by
Cleveland and Ernest Schweninger, "the genius who cured Prince Bis-
marck of pernicious obesity," together on a platform: "Reduce the
Surplus." 8f) In September, it advised people to stop talking about
the tariff, for the subject had "grown stale, flat and unprofitable." 86
The Sun published two letters of Cleveland's, one on the tariff and the
other to the Capital Laundry, complimenting it on its service. Of
the two, it said, the latter was much more logical, straightforward and
manly. It suggested that the "Stuffed Prophet" should write more on
the laundry question and less on tariff reform." 87

Between the McKinley tariff and the Silver Purchase Act, which had
merely whetted the craving for unlimited silver coinage, the Sun be-
lieved that "no political schemer was ever confronted with a more
distressing dilemma" than Cleveland:

84 Nov. 26, 1890.

85 Apr. 14, 1890.
80 Sept. 30, 1890.
87 Sept. 9, 1891.

236 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

The currency issue both underlies and overlaps the tariff issue. In its far-
reaching consequences upon the personal fortunes of every voter in the United
States, the settlement of this question, one way or another is incalculably more
important than any readjustment of customs duties or any revision of tariff
schedules that can be possible for the next ten years. 88

Nor would Cleveland be able to dodge the issue, as his Free Trade
friends would like him to do, for the sake of his own political future.
He had already committed himself ''distinctly and irrevocably" against
the further coinage of silver in his letter of February 24, 1885. There-
fore, if "he swallows his own words for the sake of votes at the
South and West, he will become at once the object of abuse and op-
position from the mouths and pens of the very Mugwumps who are at
present so useful to him as his devoutest worshippers and noisiest sup-
porters." 80 To help him out of his dilemma the Free Traders were
constructing a silver toboggan, "down which it is hoped their Prophet
can slip without knocking the stuffing out of him, safely into the
Democratic camp":

. . . The start waits only on his bid for the nomination by a retraction of
his silver sentiments, with a satisfactory statement of their revolution, and a
gasteropodous adoration of the new light.

It should come pretty soon. If Mr. Cleveland would continue his disturbance
of Democratic progress he must change his coat, or his sole upholders, the
Free Traders, will drop him. . . . The upset cannot be executed too quickly. 1 '

The Sun was jubilant over the prospect that Cleveland would tumble
off the toboggan slide. At one time it was reminding the country of
his former declaration against the Bland-Allison law; at another re-
joicing that the silver question had made "impossible the election
by a Democratic National Convention of a candidate opposed to
silver"; 91 and at all times convinced that if Cleveland ever broke
his "masterly silence" on the silver controversy it would be "to further
his personal ambition."

In February Cleveland wrote his most famous anti-silver letter. It
was as straight to the point as that of 1885, leaving no doubt that he
was unalterably opposed to the further purchase and coinage of silver.

88 Jan. 9, 1891.

89 Ibid.

90 Dec. 5, 1890.
01 Jan. 16, 1891.

"THE MUGWUMP MOSES" 237

The Sun entitled it, "Stuffed Prophecies Concerning Silver," and at-
tempted to prove that he was hedging:

The peril, then, in Mr. Cleveland's present view, is not in a liberal extension
of the silver currency for "we have demonstrated the usefulness of such an in-
crease." It is in "free, unlimited, and independent silver coinage" that he sniffs
disaster.

Who demonstrated the usefulness of such an increase? In his letter just after
election and at a time when Mr. Cleveland had nothing to gain by dissimilation
or mendacity, he declared his opinion that nothing could avert a tremendous
and universal disaster except the absolute suspension of the purchase and coin-
age of silver.

True to the last to his destiny, Grover Cleveland dares only to be a stuffed
Daniel on the Silver question. 92

The incident had focused attention upon the 1892 campaign. The
Sun said, "the silver question leaves the Democracy substantially
united. The Republican party, on the other hand, is divided by what
may prove to be a very serious division. 7 ' 93 The second statement was
true; the first was anything but accurate. In New York the lines be-
tween the Hill and Cleveland factions were drawn more tightly than
ever after the second silver letter. 94

When in January, 1891, it was rumored that Governor Hill wanted
to become a Senator, the Sun was at first opposed, fearing that it
would prevent him from becoming President. But when Hill exhibited
firmness in his intention, Dana loyally came to his side, still deter-
mined not to "withhold any exertion" to make him the Democratic
candidate for the Presidency in 1892. 95 Meanwhile Cleveland was
aroused by Hill's maneuvering and determined to come out against
him. By January, 1892, all knew that it would be Cleveland or Hill
against the Republican candidate. In April, the Sun published a warn-
ing:

In 1888 the Democratic party went crazy for tariff reform, and trotted into
the mud behind the elephantine economist of the Mugwumps. Licking No. 1.

In 1891 the Ohio Democrats, sticking to the same old tariff reforms as pro-
pounded by the same old corpulent Cobden, became unprotected mats for
Major William McKinley, Jr., and their Republican party to wipe their feet on.

02 Feb. 13, 1891.

3 Jan. 16, 1891.

94 Nevins, Allan, Cleveland, 476-479.

o 5 Jan. 22, 1891.

238 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

Licking No. 2.

In 1892 the Rhode Island Democrats took up the same old howl and fight
for the same old tariff reform and the same old sarcotic dervish. Licking No. 3

Hasn't the Democratic party had enough of this sort of thing? The sarcotic
dervish is whirling to the empty houses. Is it impolite to suggest that tariff re-
form, too, has not been what the managers of theatres call a drau ing attraction ?

It will pay the Democratic party to throw away its season ticket to defeat."

In May the Sun reported Harrison's "brilliant raid into the heart of
the enemy's country" as it followed his campaign journey across Penn-
sylvania and into Western New York:

His speeches to wayside crowds have been exceedingly happy in point of
conception and expression. They maintain the high standard of rear-platform
oratory established by Gen. Harrison during former electioneering tours. Noth-
ing could be further from the cyclopedia pattern, and nothing could be sweeter
in their way than these little compounds of patriotic sentiment, good, earnest,
and moral citizenship, lovely appreciation, and personal simplicity and friend-
liness, all stewed in syrup. The general has served them out from an apparently
inexhaustible stock in reserve, always fresh, always varied, never cloying to the
appetite.

It is a singular psychological quality that enables this gentleman, who cannot
discourse privately to an audience of one, two, or half a dozen individuals
without chilling their very gizzards, and who is not strong in rhetoric addressed
to great and important audiences, to charm the hearts of such citizens as gather
by scores of hundreds at country railroad stations to see the second-term
train go by! 97

The Republican National Convention assembled on June 7th at
Minneapolis. The Sun warned them that whatever the merits of Har-
rison, "his popularity is of such a peculiar reserved sort that he may
be said to help most the side which he is not on." 98 Although many
influential Republicans agreed, their hostility was suppressed for po-
litical reasons. The Sun described Harrison's nomination as the result
of his own persistent seeking and use of official influence." 9 While the
Minneapolis Convention was in session, it noted that New York, Penn-
sylvania, and Ohio had voted against Harrison's renomination, as well
as the silver states, now shaken in their allegiance to the Republicans.
"Federal officeholders may nominate, but they cannot elect Presidents

96 Apr. 10, 1892.

97 May 31, 1892.

98 May 16, 1892.
"June 11, 1892.

"THE MUGWUMP MOSES" 239

of the United States. The Democrats know that!" It was generally
conceded a good year for a Democratic success.

In New York State, the attempt to send a solid delegation in favor
of Hill to the Democratic National Convention aroused the Mugwumps.
No sooner had the machine men met and declared Hill their candidate
than the "anti-snappers" began preparations to send a delegation of
their own. Although it could not be officially credited, it would argue
well for the sentiment in New York State. The early or "snap" con-
vention was a political blunder on the part of Hill, but Dana sup-
ported it without stint. Reporting that the "Skulker of 1890" was
"shamelessly favoring the Mugwump attack upon the regular Democ-
racy" and thus upon Hill, the Sun asserted that this display of in-
dignation was nothing more than "a last attempt to rally the faithful
around the colossal convexity of Grover Cleveland." 10 Although
Hill's candidacy was doomed to failure, the Sun continued to sing his
praises. Not until the National Convention made its decision did the
Sun again start its journey through the devious paths which it had
pursued while supporting the Democracy under Cleveland.

Is it not strange that Dana, essentially antagonistic to the Demo-
cratic doctrines upon the tariff and silver questions, and bitterly de-
testing Cleveland, should have supported the party? But the Sun was
never daunted by inconsistencies; and to explain its apparently in-
explicable stand seized upon the Force Bill. This measure was ad-
vocated by Republicans determined to secure the Negro vote. Accord-
ing to Henry Cabot Lodge, it was "intended to guard Congressional
elections in every part of the country where it may be demanded." 101
The bill passed the House but was stopped in the Senate. While the
attempt to secure the complete political emancipation of the Negro
had some theoretical justice, the manner in which the bill was pressed
aroused sectional and racial passions. Chagrin lingered in the hearts
of Southern veterans, and suspicion of former "rebels" in the North.
Cleveland had been unable to return the Southern battle-flags when
Adjutant-General Richard C. Drum proposed the step. At that time,
the Sun quoted General Fairchild of Wisconsin as saying, "May God
palsy the hand that wrote that order! And may God palsy the brain that
conceived it, and may God palsy the tongue that dictated it! !." When

100 Feb. 22,1892.

101 Rhodes VIII, 360.

240 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

the order was revoked Dana said spitefully, "Mr. Cleveland did right to
pause and abate somewhat of his habitual obstinacy as he considered
these things." 102

The Democratic party had inserted a plank in its platform condemn-
ing the Force Bill. And now the Sun took the side of the South, which
in this instance was identical with the side of the Democrats. "No
force bill! No Negro domination!" it trumpeted: "Better vote for the
liberty and the white government of the Southern States, even if the
candidate were the Devil himself, rather than consent to the election
of respectable Benjamin Harrison with a Force Bill in his pocket." 103

In its anxiety to secure the election of Cleveland, the Sun now
denied that he was a "Stuffed Prophet." "There is no stuffed prophet;
while the Force Bill and Negro Domination threaten nothing else is
to be thought of." 104 The other problems to be determined were of
deepest interest to the American people, but the Sun practically
ignored them.

In the West and South, the Populist party, derisively called "some
people's party" in the Sun, was gaining momentum. This group, rep-
resenting dissatisfied workers and farmers, demanded the unlimited
coinage of silver, a graduated income tax, postal savings banks and
governmental ownership of railroads, telephones and telegraphs. 1 "'"' In
July, 1892, they met in Omaha and nominated James B. Weaver of
Iowa for President. Weaver described the party as an "awakened"
people, who came forth with the mission "to restore to our Govern-
ment its original function, that of securing to all of its citizens, the
weak as well as the mighty, the unmolested enjoyment of their in-
alienable rights." 1()0 Under the title, "The Third Party a Force Bill
Party," Dana declared: "No white Southerner can vote the third party
ticket in November without voting for a Force Bill. ... If he has
made up his mind to betray to that extent the welfare of his own
people, he might as well deposit in the ballot box a vote for Harrison
and Reed." 107

102 June 17, 1887.

103 June 24, 1892.

104 July 9, 1892.

10fi Rhodes VIII, 385.

106 Nov. 20, 1892.

107 Oct. 8, 1892.

'THE MUGWUMP MOSES" 241

Various factors contributed to the extraordinary victory of the
Democrats in 1892. The labor agitation, dissatisfaction with the Har-
rison administration, and even the Populist movement had drawn
votes from the Republicans in the West. 108 The Sun attributed the
great triumph to David Bennett Hill, the Force Bill, and by indirec-
tion to itself. In reality the nomination of Cleveland had left Hill
dispirited and rebellious, while many Tammany men were openly hos-
tile. Forced eventually to support Cleveland or repudiate his party,
Hill chose the former, declaring he was still a Democrat. 100 At first
Dana gave him much credit. Later he maintained that "The central
and decisive cause of the Democratic victory in the South, in New
York and in Connecticut was the Force Bill. It was the Force Bill
that prevented a division of the Democracy into hostile economic
wings, unified it, and carried it to glorious success/' no

By implication the Sun belittled the service rendered by the Demo-
cratic candidate in the election by labeling it "Grover Cleveland's
Luck":

Let none of the fools who, through some mysterious purpose of Providence,
conduct so many of our unimportant newspapers, imagine that the above
heading contains anything of criticism respecting Mr. Cleveland. All problems
that might give occasion for doubt or fault finding have been solved. The man
who has twice been elected President of the United States, as he has, cannot
be considered as an ordinary person; and yet no one can deny that whatever
his other qualifications may be, his luck is something unusual, portentous,
supreme, but the greatest point of luck discerned in his extraordinary career
is only now dawning upon the horizon, and has not yet made itself visible to
the masses of men. 111

Of the cabinet members chosen by the new President, Dana was
most delighted with Hoke Smith, Secretary of the Interior. The reason
lay in his obscurity and the euphonious sound made by pronouncing
his name rapidly: "Hoax Myth/' The Sun pretended to believe that
there was no such individual. "Now suppose," it said, "Mr. Cleveland
had decided to give Fake Yarn a place in his cabinet.' 7 112 In reality

8 Nevins, 506.

09 Ibid., 498.

10 Dec. 6, 1892.
n Fe>. 28, 1893.
J-Mar. 3, 1893.

242 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

Secretary Smith was an able Cabinet officer and filled his position
faithfully, 113 but the editorial page of the Sun could not resist its own
joke.

A similar sarcasm was spent upon lesser appointees. The choice of
James B. Eustis for Minister to France was heralded as "A Spoilsman
Sent to Paris." Since he had been a merciless critic of Cleveland's first
administration, the Sun thought the President had shown "rare magna-
nimity of admitting his own mistakes." 114 It greeted the appointment
of the somewhat pompous Thomas F. Bayard as "Ambassador of the
United States to the Court of Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain
and the Empress of India." It suggested that the salaries of these men
be increased immediately." nr> When some of Cleveland's more po-
litical appointments disappointed the Mugwumps, the Sun was de-
lighted and reproved Godkin for his criticism:

"Public office is a public trust" has given place to the "trough" idea, says
the Post. Public office is a public trough for the Democrats, and the Mugwump
pretensions of the late Mugwump idol have been flipped out. . . .

Mr. Cleveland's schooldays are over. He is a graduate and a Democrat. 110

The nature of the emasculated Wilson Tariff Bill and its provision
for an income tax gave Dana two open avenues through which to
direct his editorial wrath. In speaking of it, the Sun appealed to
emotions rather than logic. A similar treatment was given to the ap-
pearance of Coxey's army, which marched across the country to de-
mand that an issue of five hundred million dollars in Treasury notes
be given to the unemployed for improving the highway. A corre-
spondent from Massillon asked the Sun to apply serious criticism
to the purpose of this movement. It replied that "A City that has
seen the Wilson Bill and the Income Tax Bill is not to be disturbed
by an incursion of common cranks." 117 The Sun maintained that
Cleveland was responsible for the ideas of Coxey and his followers:
They were but the pupils of the master who had taught them the few
should be taxed for the benefit of the many; they had heard of the

113 Nevins, 514.

114 Mar. 22, 1893.

115 Mar. 31, 1893.

116 Nov. 3, 1893.

117 Mar. 16, 1894.

"THE MUGWUMP MOSES" 243

income tax of the Cleveland Commonweal and came on expecting to
be helped. Dana suggested that the President prepare a special mes-
sage proposing for the relief of tramps "a small tax upon corporations
and estates having a net annual income of more than $4,000." It said,
"We are surprised to see the master snubbing the scholar. The Coxey
movement is perhaps the greatest compliment that has ever been paid
to Mr. Cleveland's economic and political wisdom." 118 If this were
his greatest compliment, it proved a fiasco. Coxey's army arrived with
its number greatly depleted and was arrested in Washington for minor
offenses.

All such disturbances were laid at the door of the President. Al-
though E. P. Mitchell claims that Dana's attitude toward Cleveland
changed to admiration, 119 Sun editorials convince one that this was
wishful thinking on the part of Mitchell whose admiration of Cleve-
land was genuine.

When the great Pullman Strike of 1894 occurred, something stronger
than dislike of Cleveland directed the Sun's editorial policy. As in the
Venezuela dispute, its editorials vibrated with patriotic intensity. Dana
called upon all Americans to sustain the President and rally around
the flag. This seemed somewhat unnecessary when Attorney-General
Olney had procured the necessary injunctions and the President had
ordered troops to Chicago. Calm discussion and accurate reporting
might have served to quiet the passions of the nation and to secure
greater justice.

In a small town near Chicago, workers of the Pullman Palace Car
Company were subsisting on starvation wages. A series of cuts had
reduced their pay while company-house rents remained the same. Al-
though the workers were afraid of their employers, they were goaded
into asking that either rents be reduced or wages increased. Three of
the deputation that asked for relief were discharged and as a result
a large number of employees registered their indignation in strike.
The faithful were thereupon laid off and the company closed shop.

Under the leadership of Eugene V. Debs, the American Railway
Union came to the defense of the strikers. In answer to the company's
refusal to arbitrate, a strike was scheduled against all Pullman cars

118 May 1, 1894.

H9 Memoirs of an Editor, 333; 327-334.

244 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

and went into effect on June 26th. It was not until it appeared that the
strike might be successful that the Sun gave it editorial prominence
under the caption: The Public Be Damned!

The facts in the American Railway Union's tie up of all roads desiring to
continue their sleeping-car service are as simple to understand as a child could
wish; and there is one feature in this contest which, we believe, has never in
a like degree distinguished any other.

The Pullman Company and its employees disagreed on wages, the former
saying that, on account of the lack of orders, they could not keep the shops
open unless at reduced wages. The employees replied that this proposition was
not acceptable, and they refused to work on the proposed terms. Thereupon
the Pullman shops were closed. The Pullman Company ceased to work, and
that completes the record of events in Pullman.

What happens? At the request of the former employees of Pullman the new
railway trade union takes all the roads it can lay its hands on by the throat,
and deprives the public, no matter how numerous or remote, of the use of
sleeping cars a use practically amounting to a necessity- not with the pri-
mary purpose of compelling the Pullman Company to pay their employees
more wages, or to substitute its striking employees for others taken in their
places, but to force the company to go to work!

The Pullman Company desires temporarily to go out of business, to take
a vacation; but it must be compelled, says the Railway Union, to labor against
its will. The principle that when a man, desiring not to do work which is
disagreeable to him, could not be driven to labor against his will, either by the
lash of a slave-driver on his back or by the duress of law inflicted upon his
person, has never been denied before. In a free country so long as any one did
not break the common rules of society, he has retained the right to make of
his life what he could and to enjoy the blessings of liberty.

Now, however, this principle is repudiated by the Railway Union, and the
reverse of it is made to stand out so clear and naked that a man can read it
running. Never has there been a strike more offensive in its underlying spirit
than this tie up of sleeping cars. Its principle is so intolerable to any citizen
who can spare a moment for a calm examination of it, that proving the Pullman
Company the worst set of devils in existence could not impair its demerits.

So far as the public is concerned in this impossible crusade, the members
of the American Railway Union have been led by the unprincipled and sense-
less chiefs who have gained their confidence into an attitude which bluntly
and without compromise says, "Let the public be damned! " 12

In the course of time the Sun made a number of different assump-
tions and explanations in regard to the strike. It first declared that the
workers were not striking to compel the company to pay their em-
ployees more wages, but to force the company to open its shops. Later

120 June 29, 1894.

"THE MUGWUMP MOSES" 245

it contended that the strike represented an organized attempt by the
Union to assert its power and to take over the control of railroads and
all public means of travel. Claiming that the "Hellhounds of Anarchy"
were maliciously interfering with transportation, not to gain the de-
sired wage, but eventually to set themselves up as dictators the Sun
declared :

He [Debs] has hoisted a new flag, the flag of the American Railway Union,
and while Debs' flag is aloft the flag of the American Union has to come down.
The Debs' flag will come down permanently when the people who smiled at
Coxey, and finally all members of trade unions, come to see that the American
Railway Union is an effort organized on an unprecedented scale and with ab-
solute clearness of aim against the law and against all established public in-
terest and conveniences. It is the American Railway Union against the
country. 1J1

A third stand taken by the Sun was a perversion of truth and lends
itself to a correct evaluation of Dana's attitude. The Corporation held
undivided surplus profits of about twenty-five millions, and with a
capital of thirty-six millions had distributed over two and a half mil-
lions in dividends during 1893. 1 The Sun maintained that since
"Pullman has solemnly declared that the last car contract carried out
by him involved a loss," the strikers had no right to force the company
to continue work. 1 - 3 A paper adept at ferreting out private correspond-
ence, letters from presidents to their laundries, and the inside story of
every fraud and scandal, must have known the actual profits of such
a wealthy and well-known organization as the Pullman Company.
Laffan, who was not only in the confidence of many millionaires but
was himself intensely interested in railroad operation, certainly knew
this if Dana did not.

With far less enthusiasm the Sun sustained the President in the
Armor Plate controversy. After making an investigation of frauds al-
leged to have been practiced by Carnegie, Phipps and Company,
Cleveland lowered the fine levied upon them. He did this because he
believed fraud had been the result of poor management rather than
intent on the part of the company. While complimenting Cleveland,
Dana appears to have had more faith in Carnegie:

i- 1 July 3, 1894.
12 - Ncvins, 611
J^July 10, 1894.

246 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

A plausible theory which would make the heads of the Carnegie Company
accomplices in the production of inferior goods, with the poorest prospect of
not being found out, is beyond our ability to imagine. ... It cannot be that a
concern of this sort could be run on principles of fraud, particularly when deal-
ing with such a hard driving customer as the Government of the United
States. 124

The fear that Cleveland might desire a third term consumed Dana.
Through February and March of 1896 the Sun frequently demanded
that the President state that he was not going to be a candidate. Al-
though it said that Cleveland would have no chance whatsoever to
receive the nomination, it believed he cherished the "vainglorious idea
that he was worthy of distinction beyond Washington, beyond Jeffer-
son, beyond Andrew Jackson and that it is his intention to bring about
his own nomination for a third term, if the thing can be done." LL>r>
When in June Cleveland declared that he did not wish the nomination
and would not accept it, the Sun quickly accused him of insincerity. 120

As one looks back over the period from 1882 when Cleveland was
nominated for Governor of New York State until his last day as
President of the United States, it seems amazing that Dana should
have kept up the fight against him with such determination and zeal.
Especially is this true when it is realized how accurately Cleveland
represented many of Dana's convictions. Their only real disagreement
was on the tariff. Contradictions brought about by hatred and friend-
ship could never hide the fact that Dana believed in gold and the main-
tenance of the gold standard, reform, retrenchment, economy, and
America first and last. The very fact that Cleveland was independent,
honest, fearless, and respected made it harder to assail him. To dis-
credit a great military hero with a most unheroic civil reputation like
Grant was mere play for the Sun; to discredit a high-minded eccentric
like Greeley was sheer sport, and to keep a man like Hayes down was
easy. But to belittle and besmirch a man of Cleveland's caliber re-
quired all the ingenuity and finesse the Sun could exercise. In this
contest with Cleveland it may be said that the Sun outshone itself.

124 July 26, 1894.

125 Apr. 17, 1896.
128 June 18, 1896.

CHAPTER X

FINANCIAL PROBLEMS

IN the post Civil War period Dana stood consistently with the con-
servative hard-money interests of the East. It is doubtful if he did
so out of self-interest. When the war was over he was a debtor and
his sympathies had always been with the oppressed. But he believed
that fiat money could become a national addiction, as devastating to
the poor as the rich. Nothing could persuade him that a promise to
pay a dollar was equivalent to the dollar itself. And those who tried
to make the debt ridden farmers and workers think so were dema-
gogues.

Dana had a congenial post in an enterprise which promised financial
success from the first. He could and did take a broad view of the
fiscal problems facing the country. The stockholders of the Sun were
moneyed men, but there is no reason to believe that Dana had any
more consideration for their pocketbooks than for their politics. He
was guided rather by accepted economic axioms transferred from an
agrarian society and applied with sublime faith to the rapidly develop-
ing industrial capitalism: Personal thrift and hard work were the key
to success. Poverty and hard times were due to laziness, incompetence,
and dishonesty both public and private. Necessary social changes
could be brought about by reforming the individual and putting trust-
worthy men in office. Individual enterprise should be encouraged not
directed or restricted. The function of the government was to operate
the national machine according to the constitution and not to assume
responsibility for the welfare of those whom it governed. Invisible
laws determined the working of economic forces. There was no such
thing as a managed currency or compensated dollar to meet the rise
and fall in the price of gold and commodities. Gold was an absolute
standard of value. Silver had value only if kept at a parity with gold.
Prices were regulated by the law of supply and demand. Foreign debts
and investments, being settled in gold, made it an obligatory standard
for all nations. Therefore, the credit and prestige of the United States

247

248 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

demanded the resumption of specie payments at the earliest date con-
sistent with national well being. Likewise the promise of the govern-
ment to redeem its legal tenders in gold and to pay all bonds in coin
unless otherwise stipulated was a sacred obligation. These were con-
victions of principle with Dana, principles that put him squarely on
the side of the moneyed interests who had everything to lose if specie
payments were not resumed.

Ruthless as the Sun could be in its treatment of individuals, it was
always ready in the early days to compromise with the masses. Be-
tween the demand for more greenbacks on the one hand and the re-
sumption of specie payments on the other, Dana let his readers know
that he accepted the legal tenders already in circulation as a perma-
nent addition to the currency, and instead of advocating their can-
cellation urged they be converted at the option of the holder into gold
bearing bonds. Such a measure accompanied by a policy of rigid
economy in national expenditures and a revision of the tax system
would enable the Government to resume specie payments and pay off
the public debt in the natural course of events.

Although one suspects that Dana's attacks upon the Resumption Act
were accentuated by his detestation of Sherman and Hayes, all his
chief objections to it have been sustained by later historians. The act
was clumsy and was a compromise between sound and rash financial
principles. Even Sherman's friends doubted its feasibility. In the two
years following its passage casual readers might have thought that
Dana had repudiated resumption altogether. He realized this and took
occasion from time to time to assure them that his attacks were di-
rected against the Act not against resumption. Indeed, his convictions
were so strong that when the silver forces and Greenbackers, united
to repeal the Act, he instantly came to its rescue. At the same time he
bitterly assailed what he regarded as a new and insidious attempt to
further inflate the currency by adding to it a mass of depreciated silver
dollars.

The course of the Sun from 1868 to 1880 leads to three conclusions:
that Dana's alignment with the conservative financiers of the East
was not due to any conscious desire to promote the interest of the
creditor class at the expense of debtors; that his opposition to the
Resumption Act, vindictive as it seemed at the time, was based on
honest conviction and not personal enmity; and that nothing could

FINANCIAL PROBLEMS 249

induce him to abandon the gold standard in favor of silver or to place
his trust in any leader identified with the Greenback movement.

Paying the national debt in gold was only one tenet in Dana's fi-
nancial creed. Rigid self-denying economy and adherence to a system
of taxation scaled to the diminishing indebtedness were equally im-
portant. Consequently the first issue of the Sun was pledged to "ad-
vocate retrenchment and economy in the public expenditures and the
reduction of the crushing burden of taxation." 1

A large part of the Sun's crusade against waste was prompted by
the fraud and corruption which permeated the Government at Wash-
ington. Money needed to pay the debts and expenses of the Govern-
ment was being used to line the pockets of swindlers and ringsters
often with the knowledge, if not connivance, of high officials:

The Washington Ring, the Military Ring, the Indian Ring, a Syndicate Ring,
the Custom House Ring, the Railroad Ring, the Sanborn and Jayne Rings, the
Carpet-bagger's Ring, the Memphis-El Paso Ring, and others like them, have
all revolved around the White House, and found support there whenever their
grasp on the Treasury was threatened, either by direct spoken or written orders
from the President or through his confidential agent, Babcock, who has stepped
from poverty in 1869 to wealth in 1875. 2

Throughout Dana's editorship no instance of waste, no form of
fraud or corruption, no dubious financial measure escaped his thrifty
eye. Every conceivable form of economy was urged upon city, State,
and Federal authorities. 3 Every expense account from funerals for
Congressmen to bills for public inquiries was picked to pieces and
found to be padded, fraudulent, costly, pretentious or extravagant. 4
Every kind of appropriation, whether for works of art or paving the
streets of New York, for pensions or for the police department, for
erecting Federal buildings, repairing forts or remodeling the navy,
was carefully scrutinized, and if the facts warranted it, denounced as
plunder, jobbery, humbug, deliberate fraud, atrocious or exhorbitant. 5
The River and Harbor Bills of 1882 and 1883, and of 1889 and 1890,
were called madness, steals, and log rolling politics; while the "mon-

1 Jan 27, 1868.

2 Feb. 2, 1875.

3 Jan. 27, Feb. 9; 19, 1869; Jan. 24, 1879.

4 Feb. 1, 1884.

r 'Feb 7; 19; 1868, Jan. 27, Mar 26, Apr. 4, 1876; Jan. 23, 1877; Feb. 19, 1878; July
8, 20, 1882, Apr. 7, Dec. 21, 25, 1884; Aug 21, 1885; Sept. 4, 1888; Dec. 4, 1890.

250 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

strous record of the billion dollar force-and-fraud Congress" of Har-
rison's Administration was compared to "the looting that precedes
evacuation." 6 Among the absurd or excessive expenses to be drasti-
cally reduced were those for the army, navy, and civil service. 7 Among
institutions or services the Sun wished abolished altogether as "ex-
pensive luxuries/' "useless" or "unnecessary," were City College, West
Point, street cleaners, franking privileges, and the diplomatic service. 8
In the Sun's view, depressions were caused either by spending too
much money, or by spending too little on productive goods, or spend-
ing it for useless and expensive luxuries from abroad." Strikes were
caused by overtaxation, due to waste and extravagance; 10 while debts,
municipal, State, and National were piling higher day by day. 31

The Sun repeatedly urged the reduction of the army to the "smallest
possible force for protection." Dana believed 20,000 men in excess of
the country's needs, and asked first to have the number cut to 12,500
and later to 10,000. In 1876, the Sun asserted: "A reduction to 12,500
soldiers, or one-half the present army, would economize seventeen or
eighteen million annually." 1L> Sun editorials concluded in large print:
REDUCE THE ARMY TO TEN THOUSAND MEN. In February
1877, it announced that the "West Point military family" was schem-
ing "to increase the army to 156,000 men, and was determined to
fight the decrease of numbers/and/diminution of its pay." In reply
to this intolerable and preposterous plan ... let the people say, "RE-
DUCE THE ARMY TO 10,000 MEN!" 13 The Sun denounced the
army as a "privileged class."

The trouble about the size of the army, is that the war left as one of its
evil legacies a hungry taste on the part of a large number of officers and their
families and relatives for an elegant and genteel support by the Government.
They love the idleness of army life, its ease, its irresponsibility, its high-toned
distinction, its certainty. They will not let go their hold on it. They are deter-
mined to maintain a large standing army and belong to it until they die. 14

6 Dec. 1,1890; June 25, 1891.

7 Feb. 25, Mar. 4, May 3, July 1, 1876; Apr. 7, 14, 1877; Apr. 19, 1878; Apr 16, 22, 1884.

8 Mar. 19, May 12, June 18, July 20, 1869; Feb. 4, 1876; Jan. 23, 1877; Feb 9, 1878;
Apr. 13, 1884; May 5, 1888.

9 Sept. 23, 24, Nov. 12, 1873; June 20, 1878; Apr. 6, 1884

10 June 3, 27, 1882.

11 Nov. 1, 1873; June 10, 1876; Dec. 1, 1884; Jan. 24, 1879.

12 May 23, 1876.
18 Feb. 9, 1877.
i*Apr. 7, 1877.

FINANCIAL PROBLEMS 251

Forts were called "pretty toys for Uncle Sam to spend money on, and
to tickle the imagination of the people with." 15

In 1877 "our wretched navy," according to the Sun, consisted on
paper of sixty-seven steamers, twenty-three sailing vessels, twenty-
three ironclads, two torpedo boats, one ferry boat and twenty-six tug-
boats.' 1 "It would not be easy to pick out from the whole number, the
little tugboats excepted, any vessels really adapted to modern naval
necessities. . . ." 10 But this fact did not disturb the Sun.

In truth, we have no occasion for a powerful navy, and it is a waste of
money to undertake to build one up. If we are ever called on to defend our
coasts we shall have to do it by torpedoes, and ships will render us little help.
Therefore, if Congress has any money to spend on naval improvements let it
lay it out on comparatively inexpensive torpedoes, rather than on enormously
costly \essels. 17

It remains to say a few words of the Sun's opinions upon taxation,
and upon the extent to which the high wartime levies should be con-
tinued in order to pay off the heavy load of national debt. This was
a subject of the greatest importance, and engendered much bitter
feeling.

The post-war burden on the taxpayer was indeed heavy. In May,
1869, the Sun stated that the Federal levies, direct and indirect,
yielded annually about $350,000,000. If a Treasury surplus should
appear, it urged adopting the English system "of devoting it not to the
liquidation of any part of the public debt, but to the reduction or
abolition of some particular tax." This suggestion was prompted by
the fact that "our customs tariff and our scheme of internal taxation
distribute their burdens unequally among the various branches of
industry and bear with cruel injustice upon the middling and laboring
classes." The Sun claimed the debt would not be materially reduced
for years to come and therefore the effort should be not so much to
pay it off as to cut down the annual expenditures necessary to dis-
charge the interest and meet the current demands of the Government. 18

Certain kinds of taxes, Dana believed, should be abolished alto-
gether. Among these was the income tax which he considered uncon-

15 Apr. 4, 1876.
in Apr 19, 1878.
" Apr. 21, 1878.
18 May 5, 1869.

252 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

stitutional. According to the Sun, the income tax was a direct tax, and
hence "must be laid and apportioned, not according to the income of
the individuals in the different States of the Union, but according to
the population of each State, so that each shall pay no more in propor-
tion to the number of its inhabitants than another." In addition, the
Sun justly criticized the constant fraud and evasion, and the incom-
petent methods of administering the law:

. . . the tax on incomes, unequal and inquisitional as it is, will never be
abolished until everybody liable to it is made to pay it without exception. At
present so many get off that the groans of the few who have to walk up to
the Assessors office and settle are scarcely heard . . . there is a good reason
for those who do pay the tax to grumble at the numerous class who equally
with them ought to pay it, but who, by frequently changing their residences,
or by living in hotels or boarding houses, or perhaps by a timely trip to Europe,
succeed year after year in avoiding it. ...

There is a fair, open contest, it is said, between citizens and the Government
as to how much tax the farmer shall pay, and if the agents of the latter are
negligent or unskilful in conducting the tithe, the Government must stand
the loss. . . . 10

Other Sun arguments against the income tax were less plausible. For
instance: that the publicity given to the returns was contrary to Ameri-
can ideals of privacy; and that the burden fell upon the poor rather
than the rich.- The Sun rejoiced when in 1872 this "odious" tax was
repealed.

The Sun also denounced any levy which embodied the "unequal"
and "evasive" features of the income tax, such as taxation of personal
property and corporate investments; or taxes which tends to discour-
age thrift, such as that on saving bank deposits. 21 The taxing of bonds
was attacked as a step toward repudiation, while the internal revenue
taxes were always opposed. Among the taxes most approved by the Sun
were the tariff and the tax on real estate. It also applauded the tax on
railroads, which "oppresses nobody and yields to the Treasury seven
millions a year." 23

Thus by tax reform the Sun meant abolition of the income tax;

19 Apr. 6, 1869.

20 July 3, 1870.

21 Mar. 25, 1868.

22 Feb 26, Mar. 6, May 9, 1868.

23 May 30, 1870.

FINANCIAL PROBLEMS 253

maintenance of the real estate taxes; abolition of personal property
taxes; and education of Congress to the superiority of tariff levies over
internal revenue taxation.

Between July, 1870, and July, 1872, two portentous clouds appeared
on the tariff horizon: the growing hostility on the part of Western
farmers to existing duties, and the growing surplus in the revenue.
"After paying all appropriations and all interest on the public debt,"
there remained "about $100,000,000, a sum greatly in excess of any
requirement of the sinking fund." ~ 4 Reformers in both parties joined
the Liberal Republicans in advocating a thorough reduction of the
tariff. Dana deplored the surplus, but he insisted the country was suf-
fering from excessive and obnoxious internal revenue taxes. He asked
for an immediate reduction of taxation and the abolition of the income
tax. It was the duty of Congress, the Sun declared, not only to repeal
that, but to take off $30,000,000 of other taxes without delay.

In June, 1870, when the Secretary of the Treasury anounced that
during May he had reduced the debt by more than $14,000,000, the
Sun greeted this intelligence with dismay:

. . . when we reflect that this money has been wrung from the people by
enormous taxation, weighing upon them in the midst of universal depression of
business, when we remember that manufacturies are stagnant and agriculture
unproductive ; that the wages of labor are declining and that very few business
men are paying their expenses, our pride over the reduction of the public debt
is much diminished. No doubt, if a system of universal confiscation were in-
troduced, the public debt might all be paid off before the next New Year's day;
and the present burdensome taxes are nothing but confiscation somewhat amelio-
rated and disguised. 25

It maintained that the distress of Western farmers, as well as Eastern
depression, was caused not by high tariff but by high taxes, due to a
too rapid payment of the debt. Thus the Sun began to extol the virtues
of national indebtedness, claiming it was a guard "against extravagant
appropriations and a warning against war."

Dana continued to predict that reducing the public debt without re-
ducing taxes would lead to new forms of financial quackery and even-
tual bankruptcy. Boutwell was quoted as saying that due to the large
revenue the public credit had improved any paper currency materially

2 *Taussig, F. W., Tariff History of the United States, 180-181.
26 June 3, 1870.

254 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

appreciated in value; and that the preservation of the national credit
was of the highest importance since every business and financial under-
taking rests upon it. The Sun replied: "A thrifty nation is a better
guarantee of the value of its securities than one taxed to bank-
ruptcy." 26 Horace Greeley rejoiced over the payment of the debt,
expressing a hope that it might be entirely wiped out in twenty years.
"Yes/ 7 snorted the Sun, "and every man in business in the United
States would be wiped out with it; the poor would be ground down in
poverty; and all the property in the country would belong to a few
stony-souled men." 27

However faithless to the gold standard Dana proved to be after
1880, he remained steadfast to economy and taxation reform to the
very end. Not even the repeated declarations of its most hated Presi-
dents in favor of retrenchment and reduction of taxes could shake the
Sun's devotion. In fact it went so far upon one occasion as to praise
Cleveland for practicing economy in public expenditures. But for the
most part the Sun kept up a running fire of criticism upon the ex-
travagances of the various administrations, and the absurdities, in-
equalities and injustice of the tax system. While some of its recom-
mendations were extreme or fanciful and others were based more upon
personal prejudices than economic principles, its objections to main-
taining the burdensome war time taxes to hasten the payment of the
national debt were sound and most praiseworthy.

During 1877-78 the Sun repeatedly warned Congress that the
Bland-Allison Act would drive away gold and thus lead to a forced
contraction of the currency. It exhorted the laborer not to be deceived
by this new form of inflation, as "the introduction of the silver dollar
will diminish the value of his saving bank deposits, and compel him to
strike for advanced wages in order to live as comfortably as he is liv-
ing now." It pointed out that merchants and manufacturers were op-
posed to the remonetization of silver because it would "throw the
currency into worse confusion than it is in now," and tend "to increase
the prices on raw materials just as much as those upon manufactured
goods." According to the Sun, the only people who would benefit from
the act, besides the silver mine owners, were "members of Congress
and their friends who are loaded down with Western city lots and

26 Mar. 6, 1871.

27 Apr. 4, 1871.

FINANCIAL PROBLEMS 255

prairie farms mortgaged for all they are worth, and more too." 28

In 1880 and again in 1883, it was observed that as silver dollars
piled up in the surplus, gold began to disappear. The Treasurer warned
Congress that the twenty-five million or more of silver dollars, coined
annually, were not liked for ordinary commercial purposes. In 1884
and 1885, they were no longer in demand. Increased production of
goods, bo-gun in 1879, had outrun purchasing power and the people
were experiencing the twinges of machine-made prosperity, bringing
them by 1885 to the verge of poverty in the midst of abundance. 29 In
addition, Europe not only sold more goods to the United States than
she bought, but sold heavy installments of her American securities as
well. Furthermore, the payment of customs duties in silver was making
it extremely difficult to maintain the gold reserve of $100,000,000 for
the redemption of Greenbacks.

In 1885, it was evident that the gold reserve was threatened. The
policy of buying silver with gold had diminished the treasury surplus
to some $1 5,000,000 while the supply of silver had increased to $71,-
000,000. Many held the Bland Law responsible, among them President-
elect Cleveland already known as a hard money man. It was believed
in Washington that the new administration would have to suspend
specie payments, 30 but Dana refused to join in the "silver scare." The
Sun declared there was no immediate danger, as it would take at least
three years for silver to replace gold, and even so a silver standard
would very likely produce temporary prosperity.

Yet on February 16, 1885, there appeared in the Sun an editorial
which in one breath condemned the Bland-Allison Act and, for the
first time, defended the silver dollars created by it. Favorite terms
formerly applied to silver such as the "clipped dollar," "the eighty-five
cent-dollar," "the light-weight dollar" seemed to be resented. Pre-
viously Dana had denounced it as a "cheat," saying that the only
"honest dollar" was composed of "a certain fixed quantity of gold,"
and assuring producers and laborers that they would be the men bene-
fited above all others by the return to the "good honest gold dollar."
Now it maintained that the assertion "that workers for wages will be

28 Jan. 10, 1878. , . , . L

The hardship and suffering caused by the depression was frequently discussed in the
Sun, but it was restricted almost entirely to New York City and was not as severe as the-
Panics of 1873 and 1879 Noyes, Alex. D., Forty Years of American Finance, 96-97.
a Nevins, Allan, Cleveland, 201-202.

256 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

the chief sufferers from the silver dollar" was "absurd and disingenu-
ous." In defense of this reversal, the Sun said that it was an insult to
the intelligence of the American working-men to suppose "they can be
fooled into taking eighty-five cents for one hundred cents worth of
labor"; also that contracts were protected because a silver dollar
"worth only eighty-five one hundredths of a gold dollar now" is "equal
in value to the whole dollar of former days." Therefore, "the injustice
of paying a debt with it is technical and not real." On the other hand,
"gold has so risen in value that payment in it involves injustice." Not
only had "the production of gold been diminishing," it is being used
more and more for other purposes, with the result that ^prices of com-
modities are lowered wherever the gold standard is maintained," thus
augmenting "the quantity of the products of labor used to discharge
money debts." The Sun concluded:

Whatever may be the reason of it, nobody can deny that prices of most
staple articles are lower now than they were formerly. . . . Much of the de-
cline, no doubt, is due to increased production and improved processes of man-
ufacture, but the fact remains that eighty-five or even eighty-three cents in
gold will buy more food, clothing, and other articles of daily use than a dollar
in gold would have bought in 1878. This being so, the man who lent gold then,
and gets it back now is really getting back more value than he parted with. It
is true that the law awards it to him, but if in the course of time the law should
award him only the equivalent of what he lent, he could not complain of being
treated unfairly.

Unless, too, some change is made in the law under which the silver dollar is
now coined, the transition from a gold to a silver standard will be slow and
gradual. In the meanwhile most, if not all, existing contracts will have been ter-
minated, and plenty of opportunity will be given to renew them upon any basis
that may be mutually satisfactory. ni

When soon afterward Cleveland frankly forced the issue by urging
upon Congress the repeal of the Bland-Allison Law, Dana came out un-
equivocally in support of silver, declaring that the salvation of the
country depended upon "adopting the silver standard and giving up all
efforts to maintain gold." 32 The only explanation for this reversal in
financial policy is that it enabled Dana to discredit Cleveland's ad-
ministration with more facility. Otherwise, why did Dana's champion-
ship of silver begin just as Cleveland took up the cudgel for gold?

31 Feb 16, 1885.
^ Mar. 1, 1885.

FINANCIAL PROBLEMS 257

And why were the Sun editorials advocating silver often contradictory,
and sometimes ridiculous?

One of the fetishes of the gold fanatics, according to Dana, was the
sanctity of the Treasury reserve. The Sun claimed they had deluded
themselves into believing that if the reserve fell below $100,000,000,
silver demons would be let loose. With a note of serene maliciousness
the Sun announced on May 18, 1885, that the surplus of $115,398,922
was rapidly decreasing:

By the first of August, therefore or at least the first of September, the Secre-
tary will have to choose between trenching upon his pet $100,000,000 gold re-
serve and the payment of interest on the public debt and of the ordinary ex-
penses of the Government in silver dollars. The probability is that he will adopt
the latter alternative, his example will necessarily be followed by the banks,
and by the people, the greenbacks themselves will soon have to be redeemed
in silver, and we shall witness at last the much dreaded supremacy of the sil-
ver standard.

As to the effect of this probable suspension of gold payments and the sub-
stitution of silver, we repeat what we have said often before. The change will
not be a calamity that many suppose it will be. It will not cause a financial
panic nor a collapse in business. On the contrary, judging by the results of
the suspension of gold payments in 1862, it is much more likely to revive in-
dustry and stimulate speculation. 33

In March Secretary Manning discontinued the redemption of bonds,
thus allowing the Federal revenues to accumulate; and wherever pos-
sible disbursements were paid in greenbacks instead of gold or silver
certificates. In July, he appealed to New York bankers to turn gold
into the Treasury by exchanging it for fractional silver coin. An ar-
rangement was also made with the New York Clearing House not to
draw upon the Treasury's supply of gold and if possible to augment it.
As a result of these timely measures, aided by an improvemet in eco-
nomic conditions, the gold reserve was built up to $151,000,000. 34 To
the Sun the steps taken to protect the Treasury were unjustifiable. 35

The Sun was incensed that "the superstitious worship of gold" led
the President and his Secretary "to move heaven and earth and to
throw the financial world into alarm for the purpose of maintaining
payments exclusively in gold." 36 When the Times and the Herald an-
as May 18,1885.
3*Nevins, 268; Noyes, 104-105.
" July 15, 1885.
8 Ibid.

258 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

nounced that gold payments were required "by act of Congress" in
January, 1875, the Sun retorted, "in our copy of the act reference to
the word is 'coin' not 'gold.' " 37 On the strength of this ambiguous act
Treasurer Jordon had set aside "this sum of gold in his monthly state-
ments as available for none but redemption purposes." The only
authorization the Sun could find for such a policy was an amendment
to the act of July 12, 1882, providing "that the Secretary of the Treas-
ury may in his discretion suspend the issue of such [gold] certificates"
whenever the amount of gold in the Treasury fell below $100,000,000."
After "diligent search" through the Congressional record the Sun
learned that the purpose of the amendment was to protect the reserve
from too heavy withdrawals for issuing gold certificates; also that
whenever the reserve was overdrawn it should be replenished solely
" 'by receipts from customs duties.' " 38 In other words, according to the
Sun f the Secretary of the Treasury had no authority to protect the re-
serve from being depleted by the coinage of silver, or to replenish it by
selling bonds to obtain the necessary gold. His only legal recourse was
to suspend further issues of gold certificates and pray for better tariff
revenues.

The adroitness of the Sun's arguments against the gold reserve were
surpassed only by its defense of the silver standard. It grieved Dana
to have the silver dollar called "mutilated and dishonest," and to see it
blamed for the fluctuations and decline in price level:

The efforts made both in Europe and in the United States to maintain gold
as the standard of value, notwithstanding the increased and increasing pur-
chasing power of the metal, have resulted in a widespread depression of prices,
and of a consequent check to the activity and volume of trade. ... In our
opinion there will be no end to this state of affairs until either the rise in the
value of gold has come to a stop or the gold standard is abandoned for one
more stable. . . .

The supply of silver may, indeed be diminishing somewhat, but its price,
compared with that of gold, shows that the rate of diminution is far less than
that of gold. The prompt adoption of silver as a standard instead of gold would
therefore arrest the decline in prices to a great extent, and palliate, if it did not
cure, the evil of dull trade. 39

87 July 16, 1885.

88 July 19, 188S.

89 June 13, 1885.

FINANCIAL PROBLEMS 259

Later, the assertions by "the Journal of Commerce and those whose
opinions it echoes" that silver would eventually "enable debtors to
cheat their creditors" not only brought the Sun flying to the defense of
silver, but put it squarely on the side of the debtor class as opposed to
the moneyed interests. The real cheats, Dana declared, were those who
insisted upon being paid in dearer money than they had loaned. "It is
the extortion which the maintenance of the gold standard enables
creditors to practice upon debtors which is the real reason why that
standard finds favor in the eyes of the moneyed man." Thus the poor
man was to be crushed by "this engine of oppression" in order to main-
tain the gold standard for the benefit of the rich. To carry out this
purpose the Secretary of the Treasury had organized "a conspiracy
with our bank Presidents." At one time the Sun accused the conspira-
tors of trying to make "silver [dollars] unpopular" by forcing their
circulation upon the public in place of the more convenient one and two
dollar bills; 40 and at another time of attempting to "nullify" the
Bland-Allison Act. 41

Although on September 28, 1885, the Sun felt it was unlikely that
the Bland-Allison Act would be repealed, it was pessimistic as to the
future. There was every reason to believe that mankind would be for-
ever burdened with the gold standard. Those who malign silver, "with
their transparent falsehoods and fallacies"

. . . will certainly defeat, then and for the next two years, any legislation en-
larging the coinage of silver. The result will be that we shall remain as we are
now, under the dominion of the gold standard, with its constantly increasing
power over life and labor. At the rate of $30,000,000 a year it will take ten
years to bring our silver coinage up to $500,000,000 which is the amount needed
to displace our present stock of $500,000,000 of gold. In this stand of things
prudent men will prefer money to goods, and to sell rather than to buy. If the
purchasing power of gold goes on increasing as it has done during the past ten
years, the bulk of the property in the country which is pledged for debts will
pass into the hands of creditors. The bonds of our great railroad corporations,
for example, already in many cases amount to more than the value of the roads,
and the fall in the price of railroad stocks will go on until they reach zero. Labor,
too, which at present, owing to the fact that the number of skilled artisans has
not increased so rapidly as the supply of commodities, and that it is well organ-
ized to resist reductions of wages, has not yet suffered directly. But, with the

* Sept. 10; 2, 188S.
July 15, 1885.

260 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

natural increase of population and the steadily diminishing opportunities for the
profitable investment of capital, wages will have to come down to the level
fixed by the merciless gold standard. The prospect may be pleasant to bankers
and owners of money generally, although they lose more by low rates of in-
terest than they gain by low prices; but to the rest of the world it is rather
gloomy. 42

Proposals for adopting the double standard were regarded as danger-
ous if not absolutely impossible. Bimetallism, either national or inter-
national, while "very plausible and fascinating," was founded upon a
"fiction." 43 It was beyond human laws to make "a given weight of
coined silver equal in value to a given weight in gold coin." The only
way greenbacks and silver were kept equal in value to gold was "the
practical convertibility of both into gold dollars." But to maintain this
equality they had to be restricted in volume. Bimetallism is attainable
only by a fiction namely, subordinating one metal and making it
convertible into the other. "Unrestricted coinage of both metals would
end eventually either in silver monometallism or in gold monometallism,"
depending upon which was the cheaper to produce.

The sending of Manton Marble abroad in behalf of international
bimetallism was therefore looked upon with disfavor. In November the
Sun reported that Marble had failed:

Under instructions from President Cleveland, Mr. Marble conferred with the
principal Governments of Europe upon the subject of establishing a common
fixed ratio between the gold and silver standards of monetary value, and found
that none of them would consent to it. This was known to be the fact before,
but we suppose the President desired to have formal proof of it in order to
satisfy doubting Congressmen.

It being thus apparent that international bimetallism is out of the question,
and it being equally apparent that bimetallism in individual countries is im-
possible, the people of the United States will soon be called upon to decide
which of the two metals silver or gold they will adopt as their monetary
standard. . . .

The production of gold is diminishing year by year, while more and more of
it is used in the arts, and its exchangeable value is constantly increasing. The
production of silver, is, on the other hand, increasing, though not so rapidly
as that of the great staples of industry, but still rapidly enough to make it far
less oppressive than gold as a standard of value. Justice, therefore, and our com-
mercial interests combine to recommend that silver be adopted and gold dis-

42 Sept. 28, 1885.

43 Aug. 17, 1885; Nov. 7, 1885.

FINANCIAL PROBLEMS 261

carded until the course of events shall reverse the present relations of the two
standards. 44

In little less than a year the Sun had boldly put itself on record
against the maintenance of the gold reserve and in favor of coinage of
silver to the extreme limit of the Bland Law. It seems clear that this
was a pose on Dana's part. It was contrary to all that he had said in
the past and all that he would say after Cleveland left political life; it
belied the underlying philosophy which guided Dana in most of his
decisions; and in time of real crisis this stand was repudiated. The Sun
boasted that it upheld silver in the interest of the common people:

Whatever we have said in behalf of silver money has been from honest con-
viction and directly against our own pecuniary interest. We know very well
that the establishment of the silver standard besides being unpopular with
creditors and bondholders, will lead to higher prices for paper and other sup-
plies, higher wages for our employees, and larger returns from sales and sub-
scriptions. But we also know that it is demanded by justice and good policy,
and will in the end promote the prosperity of the country. We have therefore
faithfully presented the arguments in its favor, and have defended it from un-
founded censure. If the country shall ultimately decide against it, we shall cheer-
fully acquiesce in the decision and accept the resulting benefit to our own cash
account ; but in the meanwhile we will do our duty regardless of consequences. 45

Early in Harison's administration the demand for unlimited coinage
of silver was renewed, resulting in the passage of the Sherman Silver
Purchase Act on July 14, 1890. This measure originated in the ill-
advised promise of the Republican platform to do something for silver.
William Windom, Harrison's Secretary of the Treasury, believed that
statesmanship required catering to the "overwhelming preponderance
of public sentiment" which demands that "both silver and gold be
utilized" as money. 40 His special plan was rejected; and in its place a
new measure, the Sherman Bill, emerged. After meeting many modi-
fications during its passage through Congress, it was finally passed. It
required the Treasury to purchase 4,500,000 ounces of silver bullion
monthly, or if less, as much as should be offered. The bullion was to
be paid for in legal tender notes redeemable in either gold or silver at
the Secretary's discretion, in accordance with the "established policy of

44 Nov. 10, 1885.
** Jan 12, 1886.
4 Rhodes, James F , History of the United States, VIII, 353-354; Noyes, 142-144.

262 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

the United States to maintain the two metals on a parity with each
other upon the present legal ratio or such ratio as may be provided
by law. 47 This last clause, the work of Sherman, was interpreted by the
Silver Senators as a total abandonment of the double standard and a
triumph of gold. Although its meaning was confused, Eastern Senators
believed that whenever the Treasury should be forced to make a choice
between gold and silver, the noteholder was entitled to receive which-
ever coin he desired.

In view of the Sun's rabid championship of silver since Cleveland's
public commitment to the gold standard in 1885, it is interesting to
read its comment upon the Silver Purchase Act. Calling it "another
triumph for John Sherman," in which neither "the free coinage men
of the West" nor "the conservative Republicans of the East" were en-
tirely satisfied, the Sun welcomed it as offering a truce:

On the whole, it may be said that the extreme silver men have the more cause
for exultation. For a long time a good many Eastern public men have been
hostile to silver, more from prejudice than from study of the subject. They have
had the notion that silver meant wild cat speculations and financial disturbance.
Time has clarified their judgment, and they have at least been brought to admit
that the country is not going to the deuce on account of additions to the volume
of silver currency. . . . This is the chief value of the passage of the bill to the
Westerner. It commits the Republican party to silver to a less extent, indeed,
than the West wishes, but to a far greater extent than the Eastern Republicans
have hitherto desired. As far as the Republican party is concerned, silver has
nothing to fear. . . .

Of course the settlement is only provisional. The silver issue is scotched, not
killed. 48

In less than six months after the passage of the Silver Purchase Act
the Westerners were again demanding the free and unlimited coinage
of silver. The Sun met their threats with only a murmur of protest. In
December, 1890, it admonished Congress that this was not the time
to consider the free coinage of silver:

We warn Congress, in the interests of the general business of the country,
against playing with edged tools. The unlimited coinage of silver had better
be put aside.

What is imperatively necessary, if Congress would not incur the gravest re-
sponsibility, is a prompt and emphatic declaration of the Government policy

47 Noyes, 149.

48 July 14, 1890.

FINANCIAL PROBLEMS 263

regarding silver. If it is proposed to buy the existing silver surplus of 10,000,000
ounces or so, and then proceed to the free coinage of American silver, well and
good. It may not be the wisest thing to do, but it will do no harm. Above 1 all
things let it be known promptly and decisively one way or the other, what it is
proposed to do." 19

Despite its warnings to Congressmen, the Sun proceeded to manipulate
the silver question in a way that won the approval of Silverites both
South and West. It soon quoted several newspapers concerning its con-
tributions to "one of the most important topics of the day":

The Sun gets on the right side once in a while. It is the only paper in New
York that favors the free coinage of silver. Atlanta Journal.

Of all the great newspapers of the East, the Sun enjoys the distinction of
having been the most persistent and determined champion of the silver dollar
and free coinage. All honor to the Sun for that. South Bend Times.

Southern papers should bear in mind that it is infinitely to the credit of the
Sun that it is the only New York daily that advocates the free coinage of silver.
Augusta Chronicle.

We listen to these remarks of friendship with pleasure. . . . The Sun is for
the Democracy first, last, and always. 50

Although the Sun was facile and capricious, its change back to gold
in 1895-96 was more gradual than its swing to silver in 1885. Cleve-
land was soon to retire, thus eliminating the necessity of ridiculing a
hard money President. Even more important, the Populists had taken
up the cry of free silver, while their increasing numbers threatened the
old Democracy. When it came to a real test, Dana stood with the Re-
publicans on the gold standard. Early in 1892, it was apparent that the
Sun's enthusiasm for the silver standard was cooling; the reason being
"there are much more important questions than the silver question in
our opinion." C1

A few days before Cleveland took office the Philadelphia & Reading
Railroad went bankrupt, sending a premonition of disaster over the
nation. A tariff change was thought imminent and business paused.
When Harrison left the White House the Treasury was in a most un-
healthy condition. Huge appropriations and needless extravagance had
depleted the reserves, while the gold supply hovered perilously near to
the statutory minimum. In May the National Cordage Company failed,

* Dec. 13, 1890.
60 Jan. 24, 1891.
"Mar. 30, 1892.

264 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

precipitating a stock market collapse. The Panic of 1893 had arrived.

The financial problem was more perplexing than ever. The Sherman
Act, providing for the purchase of practically the entire output of the
American silver mines, threatened the gold standard. In the crisis, it
was fast aiding the enormous outflow of gold to foreign countries. The
President and Secretary had two intentions: they wished to augment
the gold reserve, and to repeal the Silver Act of 1890.

Cleveland called an extra session of Congress to convene early in
August. The Sun pointed out that since neither party had dared to
stand decisively for or against the silver cause in 1892, there would be
much confusion. Each Senator would take that side which commended
itself to his judgment or which he believed in accord with the prevailing
sentiment of his State. n - It was Cleveland, not his party, who had taken
a stand against free coinage and for maintaining the gold standard.
Democrats were doubtful on the subject. The Sun, which had come out
early in February in favor of repeal, spent its time while the bill was
being discussed, giving advice and criticizing Democratic leaders who
spoke in favor of silver.

On October 30, the day the repeal was passed, the Treasury gold
reserve amounted to $84,000,000. By January 18, 1894, it had fallen
to 69,000,000, with every prospect of falling still lower before the end
of the fiscal year. 58 The situation was critical. Yet when Secretary
Carlisle appealed to Congress for permission to sell bonds for gold and
later for authorization to float a three per cent bond issue, he was told
that if the supply of gold ran out he could use silver to redeem the
silver certificates. r ' 4 In other words, Congress intended to force the
Government to adopt the silver standard.

On January 17, 1894, without saying more to Congress, Carlisle ef-
fected a bond sale of $50,000,000. "Secretary Carlisle is entirely right/'
said the Sun, "in seeking to get from Congress power to provide for the
immediate necessities of the Treasury by the issue of bonds." On the
other hand, it characterized his proposal that the Resumption Act be
amended to facilitate the sale of bonds for maintaining the gold reserve
as "curiously crooked and roundabout."

A month after this the House retaliated by passing the Bland Bill re-

52 Oct. 21, 1893.

B3 Noyes, 204-209; Nevins, 596-597.

54 Jan. 17, 1894.

FINANCIAL PROBLEMS 265

quiring the coinage of the silver seigniorage and other loose bullion in
the Treasury. It was quickly approved by the Senate and sent to the
President. It meant the addition of only $55,000,000 silver dollars to
the currency, a sum so small that nothing but the principle involved
stood against it.

It was directly in violation of the President's avowed declaration in
respect to gold and his attempts to stabilize the currency. But to many
of his supporters the coining of so few silver dollars seemed a trivial
price to pay for placating the aggrieved silverites. Dana informed
Cleveland that he could either veto the bill "on its merits, and face the
consequences like a man"; or "approve the measure on its merits, and
face the consequences calmly like a man." 55 After much speculation,
the Sun announced on March 30 that the President had vetoed the bill:

Altogether the message will meet with the approval of conservative financiers
in this section of the country, although it is not likely that it will satisfy the
advocates of free silver coinage and other currency inflationists here or else-
where.

Exactly why the Sun felt called upon to commend Cleveland for his
veto is a matter of conjecture. The next day a leading editorial said:

Of course the President was sincere in his desire to block the Bland Seignior-
age bill. He showed his sincerity by vetoing the bill.

The veto was an act of political courage, creditable to the President. Nobody
doubts the sincerity of Mr. Cleveland's convictions in any case where his mind
is made up, or his readiness to face the music when the situation is politically
unpleasant to him.

The Sun had continued its arguments against the income tax ever
since its repeal in 1872 ; and the Wilson Tariff Bill, incorporating an in-
come tax measure, provoked its wrath. In 1894, the imminence of this
"overt act of communism," seemed to make Dana forget his most valid
objection that the tax was unconstitutional. Cleveland's approval of
the measure may have added to the Sun's vigor in denouncing it. But
the reasons given by the journal were numerous: It asserted that this
was "legislation calculated to engender classes in this country, to array
one section against another, or to encroach upon the fiscal resources
reserved and needed for the support of the State governments." The

BR Mar. 17, 1894.

266 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

Sun repeated the statement of Senator Manderson, of Nebraska, that
the income tax was "the first step toward the creation of a privileged
few constituting a moneyed aristocracy, which, contributing from their
abundant revenues to the support of the Government, will rule it, or
essay to rule it." The Sun pointed out that the richer classes in Prussia,
Sweden and other European countries were content to bear extra bur-
dens because they were conceded a share in the government in pro-
portion to their contribution. It also believed that the passage of an
income tax would deter Southern progress:

The South needs all the capital it can get for the development of its natural
resources, the improvement of its means of communication, and the expansion
of its industries. In the South is to be seen the stronghold of the socialistic
movement against wealth, if it lays by its old conservative traditions and joins
the frenzied ranters who seek to punish and proscribe the rich, it will do so at
its own expense and to its own loss. Capital cannot be expected to engage freely
in a region where socialistic notions of property prevail. Under such conditions
the South may be able to get capital, but only at an increased rate of interest,
proportionate to the risk; and thus in striving to fine and injure the rich, it
will be fining itself and injuring itself/' 7

In 1895 the constitutionality of the income tax was tested before the
Supreme Court. The decision in Pollock vs. Farmers Trust Company,
declaring the measure unconstitutional, received unbounded praise
from the Sun, while those who had dissented were scorned and ridi-
culed :

The incontrovertible fact that a tax on land is a direct tax and therefore
impossible for the American people to exact except after apportionment by
population has been so declared, in the face of insidious and powerful influences
which threatened to pull down the Supreme Court into a whirlpool of legal and
intellectual sophistry that would have stamped it forever after as the pusil-
lanimous and impotent slave of every popular clamor loud enough to make
itself heard. . . .

There is no time to fret at the increased discrimination about property, or
the increased perplexities of the Federal tax office, which flow from the Supreme
Court decision.

Let us thank God that we have still a Supreme Court capable of defending the
Constitution and holding its supreme law inviolate, even against the most

50 July 2, 1894.
87 May 2, 1894.

FINANCIAL PROBLEMS 267

powerful and most vicious assault on its stability which recklessness and con-
tempt for America's democratic institutions can combine to produce. 58

The controversy over the income tax widened the breach between
the Sun and those forces which claimed to be working in the interest
of the common people. A growing affinity between the advocates of the
income tax and the silverites was apparent. Altogether circumstances
were converging to force the Sun to renounce its silver convictions. In
October, 1894, after calling the free coinage of silver merely a "substi-
tute for the silver standard," it pleaded guilty to nearly ten years of
perjury by confessing:

The truth is that the restoration of the silver standard is a scheme for robbing
creditors for the benefit of debtors and for nothing else. Nor would it affect
creditors alone. Every earner of wages would, until after much striking and
struggling he had got his wages raised, be able to buy only half as much of
the articles he consumes in daily life as he buys now; and every savings bank
depositor would find his little accumulation of savings practically cut in half.
1 f this wrong is to be perpetrated let it be done without disguise, by reducing
the value of the gold dollar, and not under the cloak of restoring the free coinage
of silver." 9

Despite this admission Dana continued to attack Cleveland's financial
policy. However, criticisms were no longer directed against the main-
tenance of the gold standard, but against the methods employed to
preserve it.

The bond issue, floated in January, 1894, had barely tided the Treas-
ury over ten months. The depression, delay in passing the Wilson tariff,
and the fact that gold was exported in large quantities combined to
deplete the gold reserve. Of the $100,000,000 in the Treasury only
some $60,000,000 was in gold. It was evident that a second bond issue
would be inescapable. On November 24, the entire $50,000,000 issue
of bonds was awarded to a single syndicate, which actually lost on the
transaction. Ten weeks after this bond sale, the same causes again
operated to sink the reserve below the minimum.

Faced with increasing unemployment and renewed Congressional
demands for free coinage of silver, the financial powers again lost con-
fidence in the Government. Gold for shipment or hoarding continued

68 Apr. 14, 1895.
Oct. 2, 1894.

268 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

to be drawn from the Treasury. Congress would do nothing to assist
in the maintenance of gold and both home and foreign markets con-
cluded that the preservation of the public credit was no longer pos-
sible. Late in January, when the outlook was blackest, Dana informed
the country that "under the pretense of 'maintaining the gold reserve'
Mr. Cleveland's Administration" had "illegally borrowed about $116,-
000,000 up to the present time":

Another illegal issue of bonds is imminent, the pretext being that the gold
reserve has gone down again about to the point to which it has sunk just before
the second illegal loan in November last. . . .

Bond sales for revenue! That is the policy of Grover Cleveland and his sole
achievement.

Such is the record of the mouther of promises and the shifty borrower of
cash wherewith to cover the failure of performance ; the shameless breaker of
pledges and malicious maker of debts!

The President's special message of January 28 asked for legislation
to meet the deficit in the gold reserve. 61 He urged that the Treasury be
authorized to redeem and cancel $500,000,000 in greenbacks and Sher-
man Silver Act notes as fast as they were presented. Calling this "a
futile message" the Sun explained it as a proposition by which the na-
tional banks would reap $15,000,000 interest in gold every year for
fifty years, or a total of $750,000,000 in return for supplying the
country with $500,000,000 in paper money. This seemed a poor bar-
gain, considering that the country was getting its paper money "for
nothing except the loss of interest on the comparatively small amount
of gold needed for a redemption fund."

The naked statement of this scheme is sufficient to insure its rejection by
Congress without debate, and by the entire body of our citizens except perhaps
national bank stockholders and national bank officers. 62

When in response to the President's message William M. Springer
introduced a bill, Dana proposed his appointment as Minister to
Mexico. 63 No bill embodying Cleveland's suggestion could be made law
with the West more determined each day that the country should aban-
don the gold standard.

60 Jan. 25, 1895.
01 Nevins, 657.

62 Jan. 29, 1895.

63 Feb. 18, 1895.

FINANCIAL PROBLEMS 269

Early in February it was obvious that the Government would not
be able to pay its obligations in gold much longer. The flotation of an-
other bond issue at public subscription appeared impossible. Although
the idea of a private sale was repugnant to both Cleveland and Carlisle
circumstances compelled them to enter into negotiations with J. P.
Morgan and August Belmont. On February 8 an agreement was
reached which brought the gold reserve up to $107,550,000, netting
Morgan and Belmont about seven million dollars. 64

The Sun had pronounced the first two bond issues "illegal," al-
though conducted by open sales. The emergency, generally regarded
as acute, had been called a "pretext." But at last Dana's underlying
faith in the gold standard and his ingrained conservatism proved
stronger than the satisfaction derived from obstructing Cleveland.
After discussing whether or not the law of 1862, giving the Secretary
of the Treasury the right to purchase "coin with any bonds or notes of
the United States upon such terms as he may deem advantageous to the
public interest," was still in force, the Sun concluded that in an emer-
gency it would be "ungracious" to raise the question:

When a building is on fire it is no time to dispute about the source where
water can be drawn to extinguish it, nor the form of the engine employed. It
is apparent that the Treasury needs the gold which the President is obtaining
for it, and all patriotic citizens will sustain his act. 65

Later it defended Morgan, Cleveland, and the United States against
the attacks of the "depraved" New York World:

The blackmailing hand of the New York World is as quick to bury its soiled
nails in the national credit as in the throat of a corporation, or the private life
of an individual. For nearly a week the World has intimated that President
Cleveland's course in the recent bond transaction was influenced by a "con-
sideration." It is charged that he had a dishonest, dishonorable, and immoral
motive in fixing the price of the bond issue. The World is depraved. It is an of-
fense against the people and the country, and it should be unspeakable to all
decent men.

If there is a name in mercantile life that stands for high principle and un-
blemished honor, it is that of J. Pierpont Morgan. In respect of steadfast probity
and absolute rectitude of method Mr. Morgan's career is looked upon with
pride by every merchant in the United States. His share in the transaction
whereby the Treasury has acquired the gold it needed, whereby the country's

* Noyes, 234-240.
eo Feb. 9, 1895.

270 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

credit has been reaffirmed, whereby he and the great banking powers of the
world have had their lawful profit, that share is unimpeachable. And the rela-
tion thereto of the President of the United States is likewise beyond reproach.
The aspersions that are cast upon it by the World are an imputation against the
national honor. 66

The Morgan bonds gave the Treasury but brief security. By August,
"prudent financiers'' were discussing the probability of a fresh issue.
The Sun announced that gold continued to be exported. The reserve
had been reduced below the statutory minimum and was falling more
than a million dollars per day. 07 With malicious delight Dana told the
people that their precious $ 100,000,000 was an arbitrary number and
gleefully described the position into which the President had been
thrust. "Everything depends upon the pleasure of the Administration.
It can sell bonds or it can refuse to sell them, just as it chooses." On
the one hand, if it did not sell them, its gold reserve would decrease as
it had done in 1894, Eastern people would take fright and hold the
Administration responsible. On the other hand, if it did sell them, the
public debt would be increased and if the bonded debt increased op-
position would be equally aroused/' 8

In January, 1896, just a decade after dedicating itself to the disin-
terested service of the silver cause, the Sim wrote as follows of its
former allies:

The past ten years of free silver agitation shows that its triumphs have been
confined to the mouths of a few free silver men. We have been told, from first
to last, that the South was hot for silver; that the West was burning for it; the
entire country was frantic for it, with the exception of a little patch touching
the Atlantic coast north of Delaware. All humbug.

With trifling exceptions, free silver has been swept from the field of battle
every time it ventured there. All that it has been able to do has been to talk.
It has been beaten out of sight every time, and conclusively. Not a State in
the Union, barring perhaps Mississippi or Utah, could be carried today for free
silver. The mortification that must follow this fact has no doubt stimulated the
silver men in the Senate to make a last desperate stand in vindication of them-
selves. They have been repudiated by the country on all sides. They are without
following and without authority to disturb us further with their theory. But
they have the votes in the Senate and they propose to use them. They hold the
fort; and what shall we do about it?

66 Feb. 23, 1895.
67 Nevins, 685.
68 Aug. 14, 1895.

FINANCIAL PROBLEMS 271

It is for the country to lash these modern free lances with the truth. They are
buccaneers for their own vanity. They are using the commissions given to them
by their constituents for purposes which their constituencies condemn. Let them
hear from the public, soon and with emphasis. 89

All doubts as to the Sun's renewed allegiance to the gold standard
were dispelled during the campaign of 1896. Early in May, discussing
Levi P. Morton and William McKinley for the Republican nomination,
the Sun plainly indicated its choice:

Governor Morton continues to typify the soundest financial doctrine and the
sanest impulses of the Republicanism of today. The exact difference between
Morton and McKinley can be told in a few words. Seventeen years ago Morton's
advice to the party, from the floor of Congress, was this:

"Retain and maintain a gold standard."

That is where he has stood ever since, and that is where he stands now. Six
years ago Major McKinley thus expressed on the floor of Congress the shallow
wish which is now the chief source of financial disturbance:

U I want the double standard." 70

Even when McKinley was nominated on a platform pledging the
maintenance of the gold standard and a protective tariff system a plat-
form which Dana called "unassailable" it still refused to accept him,
saying:

... An amiable, engaging, showy, but rather shifty commonplace^ like
McKinley often reaches public distinction; but personality or individual
achievement hasn't drawn to him the sentiment which has made his nomination
possible with an irresistible majority in the Republican National Convention.
The fortunes of a name has given him the unrivalled prestige of representing,
beyond any other Republican, the reverse of the disastrous, aimless, and utterly
un-American politics of Grover Cleveland. Men like Thomas B. Reed and Levi
P. Morton, McKinley 's superiors in both mind and character, have lost in the
lottery and McKinley has won. Clevelandism has made McKinley, and we jnay
be thankful that in the violence of the reaction it has made nothing worse. 71

Although Dana had helped prepare the way for a silver apostle,
Bryan's emergence overwhelmed him with anxiety and disgust:

The Chicago candidate is the Hon. William Jacobin Bryan of Nebraska, a
youthful rhetorician of winning manners and melodious voice, just one year past

69 Jan. 10, 1896.

70 May 2, 1896

71 June 19, 1896.

272 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

the minimum of the Presidential age.

This nomination is the outcome of no preliminary scheming. It is purely ac-
cidental and emotional. Mr. Bryan, having captivated the fancy of the crazy
crowd by a speech in which the brutalities and ferocities of Tillman's well-
known harangue were paraphrased in more elegant diction, with some of the
graces of oratory, and in a voice audible in every part of the Convention hall.

Just as during the French Revolution one demagogue swiftly supplanted
another in the affections of the mob and for a time held the supreme place of
power, so the revolutionists and repudiators of the Chicago Assembly or Con-
vention have with bewildering rapidity transferred their allegiance through a
succession of Populist favorites. Altgeld, Bland, Tillman, Br\an, have been in
turn the heroes of the hour. It was the lot of the boy oratoi of the Platte to
charm the imaginations of the revolutionists and repudiates during the hour
immediately preceding the balloting. He made himself heard , he said nothing
unpleasant to the ears of Populism, or discordant with the platform; and the
Convention made him its candidate for President !

This is the most effective illustration possible of the Government by ill-
regulated emotion and fickle passion which we should have if the Chicago idea
ever prevailed at the polls. It is an awful warning to the people of the country. 72

Two days later Sun readers learned more about William Jacobin
Bryan:

The shallow and hysterical emotion which nominated him on the strength of
a few chromos of speech cannot last, and will not be felt outside of the Conven-
tion. He may continue to appear to himself what Governor Stone of Missouri
painted him, in pig molasses, the night of his nomination, u a splendid leader,
beautiful as Apollo, intellectual beyond comparison, a great orator, a great
scholar,' 1 but the people are not selecting candidates on account of their loveli-
ness of face and figure, and of Mr. Bryan's intellectual equipment they are capa-
ble of forming their own opinions. The gifts of oratory and scholarship, pro-
vided he possessed either to an extent calculated to impress the sane and the
well-educated, would not count. The questions the people will ask are: "Who is
he?" "What has he done?"

And they will find out that he is a glib young lawyer, who has practised poli-
tics instead of his profession, and has once lapsed, with no cheerful results, into
journalism. His public career consists in having served two terms in Congress,
with no other conspicuity than what he attained by an occasional empty and
rhetorical speech, such as filled the Populists and Anarchists with rapture last
Friday. Though a member of the Ways and Means Committee during both
terms, he never caused himself to be regarded as an important personage in it
or in the House. In the Fifty-third Congress he helped force the income tax,
filched from his friends and allies, the Populists, upon the Democratic party,
but he was not the original nor a notable person in the scheme. In short, it was

July 11, 1896.

FINANCIAL PROBLEMS 273

by means of his speeches outside, his irresponsible, free-silver harangues, and
not by his efficiency in Congress, two or three years as a radical talker, who has
coquetted with the Populists and was well regarded by them. Of judgment, of
administrative ability, of knowledge of affairs, of any essential quality of states-
manship, or any qualities whatever except a fluent tongue and a sufficiency of
self-assurance, he has never shown a trace, so far as his brief and obscure
career can be followed. If he were a candidate on the best of platforms, he would
be only a sonorous nullity. He remains a sonorous nullity on about as bad a plat-
form as can be conceived.

Mr. Bryan may feel tolerably certain that the people will be careful about
selecting the next President. 73

No longer was the Sun the stormy petrel of the Democracy. Hence-
forth, its main purpose was to secure the election of McKinley:

The cause of honest money and the defeat of repudiation in other words
the success or defeat of McKinley cannot be subordinated to any question of
Democratic organization or regularity. It is the duty of every American to join
the forces of the strongest and most hopeful opponent of the Populist Conven-
tion at Chicago. And the Ohio candidate is the man.

Patriots must follow McKinley against the enemies of the republic who come
from the prairies, as though he were the regular commander for defense against
an enemy from over the sea. 74

Fearing that Cleveland would be nominated should the sound-money
Democrats bolt the Bryan ticket, the Sun sharpened its attacks upon
him, mustering out all its old arguments against a third term. 75 But
Dana had again misjudged Cleveland. Early in September the "re-
generated Democracy" at Indianapolis registered its "magnificent . . .
protest" against "the assults of the revolutionists" by nominating Gen.
Palmer and Gen. Buckner on a gold platform. This was hailed in the
Sun as "A Splendid Ticket Don't Vote for It." 76

Most of the Sun's editorial space during the campaign was devoted
to personal attacks upon Bryan, in which the "new and regenerated"
McKinley was made to shine by comparison with "the shallow, shifty,
unscrupulous, and vulgar adventurer" from Omaha, Nebraska. 77 It
urged its readers to forget "the McKinley of the past" in this great
crusade against "recreant Democrats and Republicans," "Populists" and

7a july 13, 1896.

July 15, 1896.

75 May 23, 1896; July 6, 1896.

70 Sept. 5, 1896.

77 Nov. 2, 1896.

274 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

"Anarchy." It is for this "New McKinley," "this second McKinley
... if you please, that the Sun asks patriotic Americans to vote with-
out regard for party nomenclature." 78

The famous "Sixteen to One" issue played little part in the Sun's
columns. It was explained on one occasion as "the inflationist's attempt
to give respectability to their highwayman demand" that silver "be re-
adopted as the standard." 70 But for the most part readers were told
"to stop bothering / their / heads about the figures 16 to 1" and "to leave
the gold standard out of the question, for there is no direct issue upon
it." The only "real issue" was silver.

The Sun had broken clearly and decisively with the Democratic
party. It was no longer the Democracy of Jefferson, Jackson, and Til-
den. For over twenty-five years its readers had been advised and
implored to vote the Democratic ticket. Even though the Sun had re-
served the right to abuse and insult its candidates, Dana had consist-
ently maintained that the Democracy was less extravagant, less cor-
ruptible, less hypocritical, and more honest in its principles than the
Republican party. Now in a signed editorial he wrote:

Some personal response seems to be due to the numerous friends who have
sought from me an expression of my individual opinion as to the duty in the
present political campaign of those who adhere to the principles which hitherto
have characterized the Democratic party.

The declaration of notions adopted in the name of the Democracy by the
Chicago Convention is for the most part so hostile to the doctrines which have
prevailed in the Democratic party in the past, as to demand its rejection by all
those who would not abandon the Democracy's essential ideas and best tra-
ditions. 80

The sweeping election of McKinley and Hobart on November 3
was greeted in the Sun as evidence that the country had warned the
promoters of revolution to keep their hands off American institutions
and voted to maintain the nation's honor. Calling Bryan a "smashed
musical doll," the Sun predicted that the country was on the way to
prosperity, that a period of good business and good wages had begun. 81

There seems to be no logical explanation for the Sun's change in
attitude on the silver question. Cleveland had wounded Dana's pride

78 July 17, 1896.

79 July IS, 1896.
8< > Aug. 6, 1896.

81 Nov. 16, 18, 1896.

FINANCIAL PROBLEMS 275

and was by nature repellent to him. Had he championed silver Dana
would undoubtedly have remained loyal to the gold standard. This is
self evident to a reader of the Sun from 1885 to 1897. But other factors
entered in. Dana's philosophy remained unchanged. And when it was
rejected or failed to function he blamed the rank and file not the
system. Also during this period Dana had become rich and the Sun an
instrument of power. He had made a host of enemies. Because of his
ruthlessness in dealing with individuals and his opportunism in public
affairs he was disliked by many of the group to which he belonged by
breeding and social position. The boorish and rugged Cleveland was
accepted and admired where he was spurned. Perhaps this made Dana
value all the more the friendship of men like Laffan and the Bartletts,
privileged to know the delightful and generous side of his nature.

In his advocacy of the silver standard Dana seldom used the argu-
ments of those who looked to its adoption as the solution for their eco-
nomic ills. They were motivated by a self-interest with which Dana
was in no way identified. But while he extolled the benefits to accrue to
the workers and debtor classes he never failed to make it clear that a
silver standard would injure the vested interests including the Sun itself.
While this sounded altruistic it injured the cause of free silver. Like-
wise his arguments against bimetallism were more damaging to silver
than gold. Yet this was so skillfully done that the Sun was hailed the
country over as the great protagonist of the silver forces in the East.
It is also indicative of Dana's insincerity that whenever it appeared
the Silverites might win out, the Sun advised waiting; and in 1893 it
strongly urged the repeal of the Silver Purchase Act.

As a matter of fact, there was nothing in common between Dana
and the discontented elements who clamored for cheap money and an
income tax. Had he been guided by fundamental principles calling for
a new social order there might have been a similarity in point of view.
Lacking this, Dana failed completely to comprehend the application
of the far-sighted objectives of the Populist leader to the problems of
the day. As Populism developed in strength the Sun became a red-
baiter. And when the Populists took up the Silver issue it turned with
loathing upon the Silverites.

Dana's attacks upon the superstitious worship of the gold standard
and his arguments in favor of what today would be called a "compen-
sated" silver dollar were shrewd, and based upon carefully thought out

276 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

monetary principles. But respect for the Sun's position is lessened by
the evidence that Dana's reasoning was largely inspired by animosity
against Cleveland. The same may be said for Dana's repudiation of the
silver cause and return to the gold standard, which was probably the
best policy for the country at the time. Here again the Sun's appeal
was not to logic and facts but to dread of Populism and contempt for
Bryan.

Knowing Dana's dislike of McKinley, one cannot help wondering
what the position of the Sun would have been in the campaign of 1896
had the Democrats nominated David B. Hill on a Silver Standard plat-
form.

CHAPTER XI

TARIFF PROBLEMS

DURING the Civil War the United States shifted from a low to a high
tariff policy. For years prior Dana had pointed out in the Tribune the
fallacies of free trade and the advantages of protective tariff. In doing
so, he did not attempt to demolish economic arguments of the Free
Traders with principles governing protection. His approach was emo-
tional. He saw clearly the possibilities for national development with
the opening of the West, the building of transcontinental railroads and
the settlement of vast stretches of unoccupied land. The abundance of
natural resources ready for exploitation, the enormous influx of immi-
grants, and the need of railroad builders and homesteaders was bound
to increase the demand for manufactured goods. Either it would be
supplied by the factories of Europe or by home manufacturers.

With the annexation of Canada, Mexico and other adjacent territory,
which Dana believed the manifest destiny of America, he saw no reason
why the United States could not eventually become a self -sufficient na-
tion. To accomplish this, home industries must be encouraged by guaran-
tees of protection against foreign competition. We must keep the Ameri-
can market for American goods and send our surplus abroad. In this
way the United States would become powerful and economically in-
dependent, able to sustain herself against foreign competition and ag-
gression. It was in such sentiments as these that Dana's desire for a
high protective tariff was rooted. Free traders were either aliens at
heart or soft in mind.

But it was dire necessity for increased revenue, not wholesale agree-
ment with Dana's views, that forced Congress to increase Customs
duties during the Civil War to a level even beyond his expectations.
And when the war was over, it was evident they must be continued in
order to pay the gigantic debt incurred. 1 Thus the tariff problem was
inextricably bound up with the payment of the war debt and the tax
system in general. Dana had positive views on both points. The debts

1 Tarbell, Ida M., The Tariff in Our Times, 26.

277

278 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

must be paid in full and in specie as promised; and the tax system must
be reformed so as to throw the burden of taxation upon import duties.
The tariff provided a steady revenue in gold, it was easy to collect, and
free from the abuses of income and other internal revenue taxes.

By the close of the war the tariff was more popular than any other
form of taxation. Not only had manufacturers come to depend upon it
to swell their profits but workers in general were deluded into thinking
the tariff tax was paid by foreigners. They believed that without it
factories would close and the home market would be ^vamped with
cheaper agricultural and manufactured goods from abroad. The free
trader's plan of geographic specialization, the fact that exports must be
paid for with imports, and the inducement the protective system gave
for cheating the Government were regarded as purely theoretical or
untrue by the majority of Americans. Thus in 1866, when a readjustment
of the debt made it possible to reduce taxes by $85,000.000, people in
general preferred to have the reduction applied to internal taxes rather
than custom duties. 2

We do not know Dana's sentiments regarding the Wool Bill of 1867,
engineered through Congress by the promoter for the National Associa-
tion of Wool Manufacturers. Its passage proved the effectiveness of
lobbies. 3 The Lake Superior Copper interests then asked similar favors
of Congress in July, 1868. They at once encountered strong opposition;
for if the duty of 2 5 per cent on copper ore were granted it would seriously
injure or destroy various subsidiary industries, including ship-building,
which depended upon the cheaper copper from abroad.

The provisions of this bill appeared in fine type on the front page of
the Sun. 4 No further mention of it was made until after it was passed
over Johnson's veto in February, 1869. Dana then denounced it, not
because he was opposed to protection on principle, but for fear that the
excesses of protection would bring the system into discredit:

This bill is running the protective system into the ground. What is more,
Congress knows it. What is worse, Congress will not vote its convictions. It
votes what it knows it ought not to vote. ... Is the reproach forever to be
made that our Congressmen cannot give good, wholesome conscientious votes on
public measures, such as their judgment dictates because of some such wretched
reasons as prevailed in this instance? The Copper interest of Michigan is a

2 Tarbell, 29.

3 Ibid., 44.

4 July 2, 1868.

TARIFF PROBLEMS 279

purely local and selfish interest, like the coal, and perhaps we might add the
iron interest of Pennsylvania though we reserve ourselves as to the latter
and clamor for higher duties, thinking they will supply a falling market. But
the increased duty merely tends to destroy the market they now have, and
many of the men who vote in favor of raising the duty know it. The friends of
protection ought to have clearer views not only of their duty but of their inter-
ests, if they do not want to see, some day, the whole fabric go overboard. 5

When it came to interfering in behalf of American shipping the Sun
was willing that Congress should manipulate the tariff in either direction
to prevent its further decline. Here Dana's national pride was involved.
This was brought out in an editorial commenting on the testimony of
shipping men before a Congressional Committee:

They all agree that the amount of tonnage of American vessels engaged in
foreign commerce has fallen off greatly since the beginning of the late war; but
when it comes to assigning reasons for this state of things, and suggesting a
remedy for it, they are anything but unanimous. The ship-builders say that at
present it costs too much to build ships here, but that if the duties and internal
revenue taxes on the materials employed could be either taken off directly, or
a drawback allowed to counter-balance them, they could build ships better and
cheaper than their European rivals and thus restore the former preponderance
of America on the ocean. The ship-owners, on the other hand, say that the dear-
ness of American ships is the result of the higher wages paid to American me-
chanics and their remedy would be to repeal the laws which at present discrim-
inate against foreign built ships, and allow such ships, when owned by American
citizens, to be put on the same footing with ships built here. One party in a
word wants free trade in the materials for ships, while the other wants free trade
in ships themselves.

Between these two rival interests the patriotic American will have little
difficulty in choosing on which to bestow his sympathies. If it be possible by
reducing duties and taxes, to enable American shipbuilders to successfully
compete with those of Europe, he would beyond all question prefer to adopt that
policy rather than to let foreign-built ships come in and deprive American me-
chanics of employment. However plausible may be the theories of free traders,
they cannot conceal the fact that the destruction of the ship-building business on
this side of the Atlantic, as far as it has gone, is a national calamity; and if it
were to go still further, so that our coasting vessels and even our ferry boats
should be built abroad, it would greatly cripple our national strength. If any-
thing is to be done, let us give up all attempt to collect revenue from the wood,
metal and rigging of ships, and see if that will not restore life to our now idle
shipyards. . . . 6

B The Sun, Feb. 26, 1869.

c Oct. 18, 1869; see also, Apr. 28, 1870.

280 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

So far, the Sun's advocacy of protective tariff appeared to be motivated
by concern for the growth and prestige of the United States and a desire
to obtain sufficient Federal revenues. Dana had no special interests to
protect. But his economic convictions put him on the side of those who
did have. For the most part he appeared blind to the fact that the system
fostered the very monopoly in business and corruption in government
which he so genuinely deplored.

In 1870, a tariff-reduction measure was introduced into Congress.
While it was under discussion the Sun said that ''indirect taxation through
the Custom House is preferable to direct taxation through the revenue
officer," being "the easiest collected, the easiest borne, the most cheer-
fully paid, and . . . accompanied by the least fraud.' 1 7 When huge
revenues were needed, it continued, people are not interested in "the
abstract right or wrong of free trade and protection." * "There is noth-
ing," it declared, "but the coarse selfishness of special interests to be
guarded against; and this can be done without any breaking of heads
or violent personal attacks arising from heated partisanship." " It main-
tained that when national expenditures were light it might be possible
to apply "the doctrines of free trade," but not in the existing condition
of the national debt: 10

. . . We have a national debt of $2,400,000,000 the interest on which is $120,-
000,000 gold annually. In addition we have an expensive Administration to sup-
port. The nation requires to meet its obligations an income of $ 3 00, 000, 000 at
least. Shall this be raised by internal taxes or customs duties? Which the people
prefer is no doubtful question. They emphatically hate the former and submit
patiently to the latter. Therefore we must, whether we are free-traders or pro-
tectionists, levy on the average from forty to fifty per cent on all imported goods,
That being a necessity which for many years to come cannot be avoided or
changed, what nonsense to suppose that there can be any popular agitation or
excitement on the subject of protection and free trade. 11

Ten days before, it had said, "Of course all material used by our
manufacturers must, as far as possible, be exempt from duty; but with
regard to every kind of commodity the only question should be; What
will it bear?" 12 This was definitely a protectionist principle. Conse-

7 Mar. 25, 1870.

8 Apr. 30, 1870.
Apr. 5, 1870.
1 Ibid.

n Apr. 30, 1870.
12 Mar. 25, 1870.

TARIFF PROBLEMS 281

quently Dana was incensed at the proposal to reduce the tariff on "articles
of universal consumption/' such as tea, coffee, and sugar. He regarded
the protectionist slogan of a "Free breakfast table/' just beginning to be
popularized, as pure sentimentality:

The sentimental idea of exempting commodities like tea and coffee, because
they are so generally used, is contrary to the first principles of common sense.
The very universality of their use renders their taxation a matter of justice
and sound policy, since thereby the tax is the most evenly distributed, and falls
alike upon every citizen. Still more should luxuries like wines, liquors, and
tobacco be taxed, and as heavily as possible, because the consumers of them are
able and willing to pay. 13

Later the Sun criticized the tariff reduction bill because it offered no
encouragement to the ship-building industry, "of which the country was
formerly so proud." 14 And on April 30, it declared that "people at large
take no sort of interest in the proposed issue." By way of proof it quoted
the Tribune: " 'The dullness of the debate on the tariff bill indicates that
general interest is no longer felt in it and that to all intents and purposes
it is a lost measure.' " As it turned out, the half-hearted measure adopted
on July 14, 1870, fully justified both journals. Although it reduced the
internal revenue taxes and left the customs duties practically as they
were, 15 it failed even to please the Sun. It disappointed the tariff re-
formers and Western farmers still more.

These groups attributed the growing surplus in the treasury and the
economic hardships of the West and South to the exorbitant tariff duties.
Leaders of the Liberal Republican movement called for a thorough re-
duction of the tariff. The Sun deplored the surplus, but insisted that the
country was suffering from excessive internal revenue taxes. It also
maintained that the distress of Western farmers and the depression in
the East were caused not by high tariff but by high taxes necessitated
by the too rapid payment of the public debt.

Dana refused to believe that the revenue reformers were seriously
intent on lowering the tariff. On November 7, 1870, he wrote:

Some of the papers are talking about a new political party, with revenue re-
form as the main if not the only plank in its platform ... the Evening Post,
Governor Brown and Senator Schurz of Missouri are mentioned as leading in

is Mar. 25, 1870.
i* Apr. 28, 1870.

i f 'Taussig, F. W., The Tariff History of the United States, 178-179; Rhodes, James F.,
History of the United States, VI, 279-280.

282 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

this new movement. ... It would be a great satisfaction to the minds of prac-
tical men if parties could be exactly divided upon the question of the tariff. For
the last half century it has been the subject of constant and animated discus-
sion . . . but it has never yet been squarely voted upon in any national elec-
tion ... in fact, the Revenue Reform movement is nothing but a symptom
of that general revolt and universal derangement which President Grant's fam-
ily government, incapacity and silly blundering have produced in the whole Re-
publican body. Professing to aim at a reduction of the tariff and the approxima-
tion of our whole system of taxation to free-trade principles, the real object of
this movement is to overthrow Grant.

It is so manifest that free trade is out of the question as long as the country
is burdened with a vast debt and compelled to raise an enormous revenue, re-
quiring at least an average of forty per cent duties upon all imports, that no
sensible man can talk in earnest of adopting free trade. 16

The subtleties of this editorial almost defy analysis. Giving to them
the most obvious interpretation the editorial reveals four points of
strategy: to prevent the tariff from becoming an issue in the presidential
campaign of 1872 ; to induce the reformers to direct their energies against
Grantism; to show the impossibility of adopting free trade; and to pro-
tect American manufacturers. This remained the Sun's program until
the close of the Grant-Greeley Campaign. The nomination of the pro-
tectionist Greeley by the Liberal Republican party and later his endorse-
ment by the Democrats dove-tailed perfectly with Sun objectives. 17

After the election was over many Democrats were suffering qualms
of remorse for having voted for a Protectionist, or were smarting from
the taunts of those who preferred to shut their eyes and vote for Grant
rather than to stultify their convictions and vote for Greeley. To soothe
them, the Sun refuted the World's assertion that free trade was a cardinal
tenet of the Democratic creed, declaring that Jackson had been a staunch
Protectionist and there had "never been . . . a Democratic candidate
for President who avowed himself a free trader." 1S Later it quoted Jef-
ferson as calling the "internal tax" an "infernal tax." But the fiasco of
the Liberal Republicans, coupled with the general satisfaction with the
Acts of 1872, caused the subject to recede into the background for at
least a decade.

One of the great problems of the time was the temptation to pay off
the national debt more rapidly than was desirable. 19 In two years, 1878-

16 Nov. 7, 1870.

17 Taussig, 189.

18 Nov. 11, 1872.

19 Noyes, Alexander D., Forty Years of American Finance, 88.

TARIFF PROBLEMS 283

1880, it was reduced by almost $100,000,000. 20 With bonds selling at a
premium, this was expensive; furthermore, it enabled bondholders to
profit at the expense of taxpayers. The Sun favored lower taxes, prefer-
ably by a drastic reduction of the internal revenue schedules. Already
there was a movement in Congress for revision of the tariff, but this the
Sun thought less desirable. Dana wrote:

Under the present policy of the Government the surplus for the year
ending June 30, 1880, was $90,000,000 and for the current year will be
$100,000,000. . . .

The measure which will naturally most commend itself to the sense of the
nation is the reduction of taxation and the prolongation, at a reduced interest,
of the funded debt. The taxes the removal of which would cause the least dis-
turbance to industry are those now collected by the Internal Revenue Depart-
ment, which, last year, were $61,000,000 on spirits, $39,000,000 on tobacco,
$13,000,000 on fermented liquors, $7,500,000 on banks and bankers, making a
total of $124,000,000. If all these were abolished, the nation's revenue would,
with the reduction of its interest account and the natural increase of its cus-
toms duties, still equal its expenditures, and an unnecessary army of officehold-
ers and spies would be got rid of. Or, if it were thought desirable to diminish
the duties on any class of imported articles, the tax on spirits could be retained
at such a rate as would make up the difference. 21

But the Sun could not eradicate the popular idea that the root of the
surplus problem lay in the tariff system. Even protectionists like Dawes
of Massachusetts were not adverse to a reasonable and non-partisan
adjustment of duties. 22

In May, 1880, William M. Eaton, Democratic Senator from Con-
necticut, introduced a bill providing for a tariff commission of nine,
appointed by the President from civil life, to investigate the revision of
the existing tariff upon a scale of justice to all interests. 23 This passed
the Senate but was not acted upon in the House. In his first annual mes-
sage President Arthur revived the bill by giving it a qualified approval.
Early in May, 1882, Congress passed it and on the 15th it was signed
by the President. 24

In proposing the Commission Senator Eaton had hoped to divorce the
tariff question from politics. 25 But the debates in Congress indicated that

-Stanwood, Edward, American Tariff Controversies, II, 202.

21 May 30, 1881.

2a Rhodes, VIII, 169.

2s Stan wood, II, 202.

2 *Stanwood, II, 202-203; Rhodes, VIII, 171.

2 Rhodes, VIII, 171-172.

284 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

it was regarded as a protectionist measure. 20 Many Democrats agreed
with Senator Coke of Texas that a Commission appointed by a Republi-
can President would merely whitewash the high tariff system ; and that
Congress should not relinquish its duty to provide for the revenues of
the Government. 27 The Sun agreed, calling this u a wise opinion." 2H
Later the Commission itself was attacked as a strong protectionist body.
The Sun endorsed this accusation also:

The Tariff Commission which Congress proposes to institute is merely a
device to put off all revision of the tariff and keep duties just where they are.
When the Commission has been organized and has spent its time and the public
money in arriving at its conclusions, does anybody suppose that Congress will
take any of them without thorough examination and protracted debate? "

Later the Sun denounced the bill passed by the Senate creating the tariff
Commission as "a delusive project." This proved only too true. But, it
was not due to lack of effort on the part of President Arthur to find men
qualified to serve on the Commission. William A. Wheeler declined, as
did other prominent men."" In the end it was necessary to go into the
strongholds of the protected interests by making John L. Hayes, Secre-
tary of the National Association of W T ool Manufacturers chairman/"' 1

Before the Commission was fully made up, readers of the Sun knew
how scornfully it regarded the plan. Nevertheless, they must have been
unprepared for the philippic which was now directed not so much against
the Commissioners as against the protective system itself:

This Commission is nothing but a trick of legislation to prevent any
thorough revision of the tariff during the present Administration. That fact is
written plainly between the lines of the law, and it was disclosed in the debate
while the bill was pending.

Four years of assured postponement are estimated to be worth four or five
hundred millions to the parties interested in maintaining the present duties.
They could well afford to pay largely for any contrivance of delay; and the Com-
mission was invented and was put through for that object only, while the in-
ventors of it, and their agents, and their lobby of ex-Congressmen, were pro-
fessing a great willingness to have the tariff revised!

28 /6id,169.

27 Ibid , 169-170.

28 Dec. 21, 1881.

29 Feb. 10, 1882.

30 Stanwood, II, 203.

31 Ibid., 204.

TARIFF PROBLEMS 285

All the information that any Commission can possibly collect is within reach
of the Committee on Ways and Means. At last it must come from the census
reports, from the Bureau of Statistics, and from other official sources. The bulk
of this information, in a multitude of forms, was developed in the long debate
on the Commission bill, which though able, disclosed nothing that has not been
known ever since the tariff was originally discussed in Congress, except the appli-
cation of old principles to new experience.

The Committee of Ways and Means, with a decided majority of extreme
protectionists, headed by William D. Kelly, and with the power to report
a bill at any time, did not abdicate their functions and adopt this strategic
scheme without a full knowledge of what they were doing. They could not have
framed a measure which could possibly pass Congress that would give to the
monopolists the profits and advantages that the existing system secures to them.

The tariff created by the exigencies of the war, when it was indispensable
to collect enormous revenue to meet the daily outlay, is maintained in full vigor,
The excessive income derived from this oppressive taxation, and from the
odious internal revenue laws, has gathered into the Treasury a surplus of one
hundred and fifty millions of dollars as the prize for contending Rings and
jobbers and plunderers of every degree. 32

This expose of the protective tariff system must have made Sun readers
doubt their senses. Instead of the Tariff being merely a convenient, neces-
sary, and fair method of raising revenue, it was now a diabolical device
by which monopolies reaped exorbitant profit from the helpless public.
Had the Sun turned reformer? Or was this another instance where it
saw the reform needed but refused to be reformer? What Senator Eaton
had regarded purely as an economic policy had suddenly been converted
into a moral problem of far-reaching social consequences. The Sun was
never afraid to speak the truth. Why then had it not suggested drastic
tariff reform a year earlier?

The Sun's opinion was generally shared by tariff reformers. The Com-
missioners were believed to be not only tools of "special interest," but
men of slight ability/ 53 Consequently the recommendations presented
in their report to Congress, December 4, 1882, came as a complete sur-
prise. 34 They called for reductions averaging from 20 to 25 percent. 35

The Sun completely ignored the Report of the Tariff Commission on
its editorial page, although it praised President Arthur's message and

E P., History of the United States, IV, 145-146.

a* Rhodes VIII, 174.

Ibid., 175; Stanwood, II, 206.

286 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

the Treasury report which accompanied it. 30 Readers would have sup-
posed that it was the Secretary of the Treasury who "earnestly recom-
mends a careful revision of the tariff, with a view to substantial reduc-
tion," rather than the Tariff Commissioners/' 17 The next day's editorial,
"Whiskey and Tobacco/' was likewise devoted exclusively to the recom-
mendations of the President and the Treasury upon the internal revenue
taxes:

The Secretary of the Treasury advises that the internal revenue taxes on
spirits, beer and tobacco be maintained; the President advises that the tax on
spirits alone be maintained and all others abolished.

The advice of Gen. Arthur is much wiser than that of Judge Folger.

For our part, we think the whole internal revenue system is an abomination.
We would wipe it out altogether, and go back to the mode of supporting the Fed-
eral Government which was in use before the war. But if any of these hateful
taxes is to be preserved, it is clearly that on spirits.

Not till the third day was the tariff discussed, and then only to prove that
if all internal revenue taxes save those on spirits were abolished, as they
should be, it would be impossible to "reduce the tariff at the same time."
Therefore, Congress would be wise if it "abolishes the whole of the in-
ternal revenue system with the exception mentioned, and leaves to an-
other Congress the task of revising the tariff to rational and practicable
proportions." 38

The protectionists had no intention of entrusting the tariff revision to
the Democrats who would control the next House. They agreed with the
Sun that the shrewd course was to reduce taxation by abolishing internal
revenue duties rather than lowering the tariff. Consequently the tariff
act adopted at the eleventh hour on March 3, 1883, left all the inequali-
ties, incongruities, and excessive rates of the existing tariff intact, while
making drastic reductions in the internal revenue taxes. 39

The Sun had followed the disagreements of the "tariff doctors" in
Congress with derisive relish; offering advice on "how to settle the
tariff" and predicting that "no real relief is to be expected." 40 It scored
the Republicans roundly for their tariff bill, pointing out that it differed
materially from the one recommended by the Tariff Commission:

"Dec. 5, 1882.

Ibid.

ss Dec. 7, 1882.

ae Rhodes, III, 179; n. 179.

40 Jan. 29; Feb. 8; Feb. 14; 1883.

TARIFF PROBLEMS 287

Whose fault is it if there shall be no tariff legislation at this session? . . .

At the last moment the Republican managers bring in a scheme, which has
been well described as a bill "to reduce the revenue by increasing taxation," and
they have tried to drive it through by a forcible process, which would break down
all the safeguards of liberty and gag free speech.

Mr. Carlisle in his recent speech said: "If that Commission had prepared and
reported a bill, or if the Committee of Ways and Means had prepared and re-
ported a bill, making an average reduction of even twenty per cent, in the rates
justly and equitably apportioned among all the articles subject to duty so as to
make an actual reduction of taxation to that extent, I would have given it my
support ; and I believe it safe to say that every advocate of revenue reform on
this side of the House would have done the same thing." ...

This fair proposition opens the door to a settlement of the vexed question,
and would insure, if adopted, a release from agitation for years to come. . . .
But there is little hope that the majority will be wise enough to improve the
opportunity. 41

A week later the Sun drew upon statistics to show that "under the opera-
tion of the present iniquitous tariff and the internal revenue abomina-
tion" the average rate of taxation in the fiscal year just ending was
"over seven dollars" per capita. Yet "the cry for relief" has attracted
"no notice from the party which has had the power to grant a remedy."
"Now, on the eve of an expiring Congress . . . none of the three" bills 42
under consideration "gives substantial relief to the sufferers who need
it most": "Hence the situation may be summed up briefly and conclu-
sively: The bills before Congress reduce some of the present duties, but
in every important instance they increase taxation.

On the day the bill became law it was not mentioned in the Sun. Two
weeks later appeared an editorial on "Free Trade in Politics," telling the
revenue reformers that their labors were useless:

It is by no means improbable that the next election of President may turn
upon the question of free trade or protection. The Republicans mean to have
it so if they can; and there are plenty of Democrats who wish to accommodate

From the beginning we should all know that the decision would be against
our gallant and uncompromising free traders; but nevertheless, their struggle
would possess the peculiar charm that always belongs to the efforts of clever

<2 These%hree' bills were Merrill's report from the Senate Finance Committee, the bill
introduced into the House by the Ways and Means Committee and the one recommended
by the Tariff Commission.

48 Feb. 14, 1883.

288 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

and earnest men contending against heavy odds and fighting a battle that is sure
to end in their defeat. . . , 44

And the Sun shortly inquired if the tariff battle should be continued
when "our free trade friends . . . know as well as everybody else that
there is no present possibility of changing the tariff. . . Before any
such change can be effected, there must be a Democratic Senate and a
Democratic President/ 7 But was there to be no relief from excessive
taxation? 4r> The Sun ended with the conclusion which it consistently
maintained for almost thirty years: ". . . the revenues necessary for
the support of the Government and the payment of the public debt
should be derived exclusively from duties upon imports "

On April 18, 1883, the Sun summarized its doctrine on the tariff
under the following points:

I. Let the tariff be for revenue. It will then be protective also.
II. Let the revenue tariff be the only source of revenue.

III. Let all internal taxes be abolished at once, except onh the tax on spirits.

IV. Let the tax on spirits be retained only to meet the necessity of means
to pay arrearages of pensions. When those arrearages are provided for let the
spirit tax be likewise abolished.

These "harmonius principles" were repeated over and over, but the
Sun was not very convincing. Dana must have known that a tariff for
revenue is not necessarily a protective tariff. If the tariff were to be the
sole means of revenue, as the Sun advocated, it was bound to foster the
very monopolies which it condemned. Whenever low tariff journals at-
tempted to draw the Sun into a discussion of the broad economic aspects
of the question they were assured that it too believed in free trade, just
as it believed in universal peace, in abolishing armies and navies, or in
a system of society "free from poverty, free from police, and free from
jails." While such "Utopian" ends were not "fantastic," they could be
attained only "by a very slow and gradual revolution." To Dana, be-
lieving in "entire freedom of trade as in every other kind of freedom,"
other objectives seemed "more immediately desirable." 4<i

Once more, Dana's logic was not very convincing. While free traders
were willing to help on the "gradual revolution," which he claimed de-

44 Mar. 17, 1883.

45 Mar. 26, 1883.

46 May 5, 1882.

TARIFF PROBLEMS 289

sirable and inevitable, the Sun was not. Its whole course had been in-
consistent. Just after the war, when the first steps were being taken to
treat the tariff as an economic problem, the Sun had condemned the
viciousness of the entire protective system but had nevertheless insisted
it must be maintained. Then after denouncing the tariff bill of 1883, it
advised the Democrats not to attempt another measure, but to see how
the act worked out, knowing full well that it would not correct one evil.
It is not surprising that some Sun readers were confused. Yet when a
correspondent asked, "Why, when you claim to be independent, ... do
you persistently dodge the tariff question?" Its only reply was:

We do not discuss the tariff because, as a theoretical question, there is noth-
ing new to be said concerning it, while as a practical question there is nothing
at all to be said at present. The existing tariff has got to stand in its main
features until experience shows what it will produce. The idea of any radical
change in it until its results are demonstrated is a preposterous idea, and we do
not wish to waste time and labor upon that which can have no consequence. 47

Perhaps the chief factor in the Sun's capriciousness in regard to tariff
reduction was its conviction that while the country could prosper under
an "iniquitous tariff" system it would perish under an iniquitous politi-
cal system. The Republican party, the party of Grantism and Fraud,
must be turned out of office; but this could never be accomplished so
long as the Democrats sacrificed their chances on the altar of free trade.
The campaign of 1880 had settled that point. 48 In other words, the
tariff issue was regarded primarily from the standpoint of political ex-
pediency.

In 1883, and early in 1884, the Sun bent all its energy to preventing
the Democratic party from falling into the Republican "trap" "of mak-
ing the tariff an issue in the Presidential campaign." 49 It interpreted
John Sherman's frank disgust with the Act of 1883, and his desire to
have the tariff question submitted to a national referendum, as a ruse
to defeat the Democrats:

This would suit them very much better than the issue of reform, of
expelling the rascals who now run riot in every department of the Government,
of driving away the blood suckers that feed upon the Treasury of the country,

47 Oct. 3, 1883.

4 Oct. 20, 1880; July 1, 1884.

49 May 31, 1883.

Sherman's Recollections, II, 845 ; 852 ; 861-862.

290 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

of making the whole Administration honest and decent.

If the Republicans could select for themselves the battle ground of 1884,
they would have a much better chance of winning and perpetuating their own
tenure of power, than they could possibly have when the ground is chosen by the
people, wearied and disgusted by Republican corruption in every branch of
the public service.

Mr. Sherman is a smart politician, and he has some reason to count upon
the fact that in the Democratic party, as in every other, there is a proportion
of foolish and hot-headed men; but we do not think he will be gratified in this
matter.

The great and overtopping issue is clearing out the den of thieves. 51

Among the "foolish and hot-headed men" in the Democratic House
were Carlisle and Morrison. The Sun said indignantly that both "have
attempted to narrow the party's creed to the issue of the tariff." "This
would be a fatal step for the party because of the large number who em-
brace the broad principles of Democracy but are as opposed to an un-
compromising stand for Free Trade as opposed to protection." r>2 The
determination of the Free Traders to read the protectionists out of the
party inspired the Sun to a parable upon the dog that started for Chicago
with a tin can tied to its tail :

. . . They fared along together, not without considerable discomfort and
apprehension on the part of the head of the procession. The tin can being
empty, made much noise as it rattled over the rubble; and at last the dog,
slightly turning his head, remarked in a mildly remonstrating voice, "It strikes
me you are a good deal of a nuisance on an expedition of this sort," whereupon
the tin can reddened almost to the color of the tomatoes it had formerly con-
tained, and retorted with some heat, "The sooner the break comes the better, I
hereby read you out of the Animal Kingdom! " f>3

The protectionist element in the Democratic party was probably not
as strong as the Sun made out. Yet in 1893-1895, when both Houses
and the President were Democratic, there was enough sentiment in the
party to prevent any genuine reduction. The Sun pointed to this group
in its efforts to prevent the Democrats from making the tariff an issue in
1884. Later it pointed to them as evidence that the Democracy was by
inheritance and practice a protectionist party. 54 The existence of a pro-
tectionist clique among the Democrats was an excuse for supporting the

01 June 19, 1883.
62 Jan. 29, 1884.
B3 Mar. 21, 1884.
64 Aug. 4, 1884.

TARIFF PROBLEMS 291

party in the Presidential campaign of 1888 and at the same time con-
demning Cleveland's Free Trade Manifesto.

On February 4, 1884, Morrison introduced his bill calling for a
horizontal reduction of the tariff. The Sun viewed it with suspicion and
scorn: "Is it a revenue only bill? No. Is it a protectionist bill? No. Is it
a bill for principle? No. Well, then, what is it. It looks like a bill of
trickery; but let us wait and see." 5r ' The bill met strong resistance in
the House from Democrats as well as Republicans. Both sides criticized
the plan of horizontal reduction by a straight cut of 20 per cent on all
import duties. Such a plan, declared the Sun, fails to pay "the slightest
heed to what has been so fiercely denounced as the irregularities, the
inequalities, and the injustices of the Tariff." r ' Furthermore, it did not
touch "on the problem of internal revenue," a most serious defect. 57
Even Watterson called it the "horizontal deception" bill; 58 and the Sun
predicted that if it should pass its "only practical result would be a
pretty severe horizontal reduction of the Democratic vote next Novem-
ber." Later, when the bill met defeat at the hands of Randall, the Sun
regarded this as conclusive proof that if the Democratic party should
make the next Presidential fight on that question it would be beaten.

In March, 1884, J. Sterling Morton, of the Democratic National Com-
mittee, asked the Sun "to show why tariff for revenue only will not be
a good Democratic platform plank." It replied without hesitation:

Our great objection to the platform which Mr. Morton proposes is that
it is not possible with it to win the election of 1884, or that of 1888. It would
divide the party which is the worst thing that could happen to it on the eve of
an election. 00

Although the Democrats dropped the free trade issue, adopting instead
a tariff plank G1 in every way acceptable to the Sun, they made the "mon-
strous blunder" of nominating Grover Cleveland for President. 02 Dana's
desire to chastise the Republicans was equalled only by his determina-
tion to defeat the Mugwump Moses. He was pictured to Sun readers as

Feb. 5, 1884.
Apr. 7, 1884.
87 Apr. IS, 1884.
Apr. 7, 1884.
59 May 6, 1884.
00 May 13, 1884.

6 2 Stanwdod, II, 222-223; The Sun, July 12, 1884.

292 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

a free trader in disguise 63 and an enemy of the working people. 04

Now that Dana could no longer look to the Democrats to purge the
nation of Republican corruption, he turned to the candidate of the here-
tofore ridiculed Greenback party as the only standard-bearer fit to carry
its banner of "Reform." This party, which had not the intelligence to
distinguish between the promise to pay a dollar and the dollar itself,
which deceived working people with its false theories regarding inflation,
which had been reported declining in 1879 and "dying" in 1882, <J<r> had
unexpectedly revived in time to be of service in the Sun's crusade for
the defeat of Cleveland and the reform of everything except the tariff:

There is one candidate for the Presidency whose election would tear up these
evils root and branch. Under his hands, reform would be real, effective, and re-
sistless; and the name of this man is Benjamin F. Butler. 00

The recognition of the protective principle in the tariff plank of the
Democratic platform, coupled with Cleveland's unwillingness to discuss
the subject, removed it as a practical issue from the campaign. Yet the
Sun kept trying to force Cleveland to commit himself as Hancock had
done, and insisted to the very end that the tariff was the "decisive
question." G7 Dana wrote just before the election:

... It would seem impossible that the control of this country should be taken
at this election, and without greater agitation and preparation than we have
witnessed, out of the hands of those who favor protection, and placed with those
whose avowed purpose is to convert our present policy into a system of free
trade. We think Grover Cleveland is beaten. 08

The defeat of the Morrison bill and Cleveland's seeming lack of in-
terest in the tariff question silenced for the time being the controversy
over free trade. The void was quickly filled by the reappearance of the
silver issue. The disappearing Treasury reserve, the decreasing revenue
receipts, the alarming scarcity of gold, and the commercial distress
caused by the minor panic of 1884 again forced the question upon public
attention.

A return to temporary prosperity in 1886 rapidly swelled the Customs

68 Jan. 29, 1884.

64 Sept. 25; Sept. 28; Oct. 11, 1884.

65 Nov. 18, 1879.

66 Aug. 16, 1884.

67 Oct. 28, 1884.

TARIFF PROBLEMS 293

receipts and revived the tariff issue. A surplus again accumulated and
again was seized upon by tariff reformers to support their arguments
for a reduction in duties. The Mugwumps, especially, were opposed to
what they considered a merciless spoliation of the poor. Big capitalists
were highly protected, monopolies flourished, business interests con-
trolled Congress, and the poor paid a premium on the barest necessities
of life. Pressure from both sides of the controversy, within the ranks of
the Democrats and without, was brought to bear upon President Cleve-
land.

Despite the approach of his campaign for re-election, Cleveland de-
voted his entire annual message of 1887 to the need of Tariff reform. 69
Although his statements regarding the redundancy of the revenue were
an indictment of the protective system, he stated clearly that he was
pleading neither for nor against any particular doctrine. It was "a con-
dition" which confronted the nation and not "a theory' 7 ; one requiring
the immediate reduction of the tariff. 70 "The President," declared the
Sun, "deserves credit for the plainness of his speech. Nobody can accuse
him of hedging, or haggling, or juggling with words." 71 Considering the
strength of the forces of industry, the differences within his own party,
the approaching elections, his step was bold, indeed. It was also foolish,
declared the Sun. 12

But there were Democrats in Congress who were more interested in
"conditions" confronting the country than immediate political advan-
tage. Carlisle had appointed Roger Q. Mills, an evowed free trader,
chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means. All his party as-
sociates on the Committee were in favor of gradual tariff reduction for
the benefit of the people without regard to the manufacturing interests.
The measure eventually framed, known as the Mills' Bill, was reported
to the House on April 2, 1888. By its provisions raw materials were
transferred to the free list, ad valorem duties were substituted for specific
duties, and protective duties in general were reduced. 73 Debate con-
tinued at intervals from the middle of April to July 19, and together with
Cleveland's tariff message inspired the Sun to variations of its favorite
theme: the superiority of reducing the surplus by abolishing the internal

09 Stanwood, II, 226.

70 Ibid., 227-228.

71 Dec. 2, 1887.

72 Ibid.; See also, Jan. 1, 1888.

73 Stanwood, II, 230-234.

294 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

revenue taxes. Later when a proposal for internal revenue reduction was
appended as "the tail to Mills' kite/' the Sun said: ". . . It gives some
steadiness to the whole construction, but when the kite comes down, the
tail will come with it. Begin with the internal revenue. Experiment with
the customs duties afterward, if necessary." 74 Consequently the Randall
Bill which "begins at the right end . . . with the internal revenue" was
regarded as "an honest measure of surplus reduction." 75 The provision
of the Mills' Bill placing certain kinds of manufactured lumber on the
free list and reducing the duties upon wool and iron were pronounced
"political insanity." "These three industries," the Sun asserted, "give
employment [in New York State! to 120,000 voters, and the wages
paid them amount annually to $75,000,000." 70

Toward the end of May Dana was gratified to learn that some Demo-
crats in the House were "reforming the Mills' tariff" by taking many
articles away from the free list.

It must be very astonishing to Mr. Mills ... to find that so many Demo-
cratic Congressmen who are free traders on general principles are ardent pro-
tectionists when it comes to reforming those parts of the tariff which directly
and pecuniarily concern themselves and their constituents. . . , 77

The Sun encouraged every defection from low tariff which manifested
itself within the Democracy. The revenue reformers, it claimed, did not
represent the true sentiments of the rank and file within the party. When
Carlisle was reported as saying "the Democracy do not believe in free
trade," the Sun asked:

Does this faithfully describe the situation?

We believe that it does, at least until a more powerful revolution than any yet
apparent shall have mastered the Democratic party.

But an absolutely conclusive denial would be the abandonment of the Mills
bill in the House and the adoption of such a plan as has been proposed by the
Hon. Sam Randall. . . , 78

When the Mills Bill finally passed the House, the Sun warned the
Democrats that its provision for free wool would be regarded by the
country at large as the main plank in the party platform for the coming

7 *Mar. 8, 1888.

75 Mar. 12, 1888.

76 Apr. 10, 1888; see also, Apr. 23, June 20, 1888.

77 May 28, 1888.

78 June 30, 1888.

TARIFF PROBLEMS 295

campaign. "There will have to be a tremendous materialization and
vivification of the spirit of Democracy to support the specific gravity of
a platform such as that," 79 it jeered.

The counter tariff bill being prepared by the Republicans in the
Senate 8() received the hearty support of the Sun:

We have proposed that the Democrats in Congress should take the Senate
Republicans at their word, and adopt and pass the Senate Tariff Bill, as the
only immediately practicable measure of revenue reduction. . . .

Some say that the adoption of the Senate bill would be political cowardice
and inconsistency; some say it would be political suicide. The truth is that for
weeks the wisdom of the course now recommended by the Sun has been recog-
nized by Democratic leaders eminent for sagacity and for unswerving loyalty
to the party's interests.

The argument for the adoption of the Senate bill is doubly strong in view
of the fact that the measure promises a more extensive and certain reduction
of revenue than the Mills bill, and with much less disturbance to the interests of
the American producers and manufacturers. 81

Despite the Sun's admonition, the Mills Bill was one of the major
issues in the presidential campaign of 1888. The Democrats stood
squarely upon it while it was scathingly denounced by McKinley in the
name of the Republican party. On the eve of the election the Sun wrote:

The difference between Mr. Mills and the protectionists is that, while they
think that protection raises wages, and in the case of this country particularly
that it makes the workingman substantially better off than he would be without
it Mr Mills holds that the true secret of raising wages is to establish free trade.
'This is an intelligible issue, but, if it is to be settled by the evidence of ex-
perience, Mr. Mills will have to give it up. If there is a country in existence
where the laboring man, with all his troubles is so well to do as in this pro-
tected country, it is in some region of the globe which is as yet unknown and
unexplored. 8 -

The Senate did not act upon the Mills Bill until after the election, then
passed a substitute bill of their own. As the two Houses could not agree
the session ended without any tariff legislation." 3 Discussion lasted until
the end of January, 1889, and was closely followed in the Sun. Cleveland s
defeat at the polls had enabled it to tell the Democrats repeatedly how

70 July 22, 1888.

so Tarbell, 168-180.

si Oct. 12, 1888.

82 jsjov 1 1888.

as Stanwood, II, 240-242 ; Rhodes, VIII, 318.

296 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

foolish they had been not to take its advice and drop the Mills Bill. If
the party would concentrate upon abolishing the internal revenue system
and leave the free trade issue alone it would not only serve the interests
of the country but the Democracy as well. Certainly the Free Traders
had demonstrated the folly of their ideas. All tariff reformers, so it told
its readers, were free traders sailing "under false colors":

Aware that free trade is detested by a majorty of the American people, they
go before the people not in their real character as enemies of protection but
in the milder guise as tariff reformers. They have seldom the courage to de-
clare on the stump the full extent of their views, or to admit that their real
aim is to reform the tariff altogether by striking all the protection out of it. 84

When Harrison came into power, the new Ways and Means Com-
mittee set to work under William McKinley to remove the word "cheap"
from the American vocabulary by framing a tariff measure that would
enrich all at the expense of the foreigner. 85 The Sun was greatly disap-
pointed that of the $60,000,000 annual reduction in the revenue proposed
by the bill "only from 17 million to 19 million" was to be taken from in-
ternal revenue taxes, which as a matter of fact contributed more to the
surplus proportionately than the customs duties and for that reason
"should be the principal object of attack." But after all, said the Sun,
"it makes no practical difference" whether it "would reduce the revenue
by sixty millions or increase it by twelve":

. . . The bill is for buncombe. It will be put forward next week to make a show
of redeeming a Convention pledge, not with a serious view to passing it and
settling the tariff question. The Republican leaders are equipped with heads too
long and broad to desire a settlement of the tariff question before the Presi-
dential election of 1892. 86

As debate on the new tariff bill dragged, the Sun became impatient.
Dana did not admire McKinley, nor fully trust him. In July, 1890, he
was characterized in a leading editorial as the "real friend of free trade"
because of his proposal to remove the tariff on sugar :

To cut off what was supposed at the time to be a source of superfluous rev-
enue, Mr. McKinley proposed to make sugar free, without gaining any com-
pensating benefit for American industry.

84 Feb. 24, 1889.

85 Rhodes, VIII, 346-348.

86 Apr. 12, 1890.

TARIFF PROBLEMS 297

That is the free trade principle tariff for revenue only and larger or smaller
duties according to the amount of revenue, needed for the support of the
government. 87

Two months later, still more irritated, the Sun said;

The people are weary of the old balderdash. Tariff reform fades away in the
presence of the new and living issues which have come forward since the meeting
of Congress. The Republican orators who will defend and the Democratic orators
who will denounce the Republican policy of revolution and centralization will
not fail to attract and move their audiences.

This is 1890 and not 1888; and the spouters about tariff, and nothing but the
tariff, belong to the department of ancient history. 88

In October, 1890, when the McKinley Bill was practically completed,
the Sun predicted it might "prove a more effectual argument against the
Republicans than all the statistics and eloquence of the tariff spouters":

. . . The price of living has undoubtedly advanced. This rise of price applies,
to be sure, to some articles which are not affected by that bill. . . . But, be the
causes what they may, there is an increased cost of goods as an actual fact
which the Republicans must explain. . . .

Political economists will explain the fact by saying that a boom has come,
and is still coming in trade and manufacture, and optimists may predict that
everybody is going to make money. Unfortunately for the Republicans there is
hardly time enough before November for the new manufactories to go up, or
for a rise of wages to correspond with the rise of prices. . . .

... if every man who finds that he has got to pay more for his goods next
winter than he paid last winter should vote against the Republican party, great
might be the fall thereof. At any rate the Democrats have a plausible and per-
haps an effectual argument in the rise of prices. So have the Republicans, but
have they time enough to make their argument good? A small pinch of the
pocketbook makes a great howl. 89

The prediction of the Sun came true. The people went to the polls in
November to register dissatisfaction with the Republican party. This
was the year of the "Billion dollar force and fraud Congress," which
provided a shocking illustration of the evils of a surplus revenue. The
McKinley Tariff of 1890 extended the protective system considerably
beyond the limits imposed to meet the emergency of the Civil War. The
high wages and good times promised by the act had not materialized, a

87 July 28, 1890.

88 Sept. 30, 1890.
Oct. 17, 1890.

298 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

fact which greatly strengthened the arguments of Democrats against
it. There was also much public antagonism toward trusts and monopolies,
which the Democrats and Populists attributed to the tariff. While one
side grew excited over pauper wages, monster trusts, and bloated
capitalists, the other waxed sentimental over protection to American
industries, the American laborer and the American standard of living. 00
Although the Sun stood firmly by its protective principles during the
campaign, after it was over, it accused McKinley of formulating his
plea for tariff revision with the "mathematical precision of a school
teacher," saying: "There was no touch of the imagination in Congress-
man McKinley's academic list of duties upon foreign imports. His final
schedules assumed a sort of cast iron aspect which, at the first contempla-
tion, seemed to be more repellent than attractive." 91

Democratic victory was regarded as a popular mandate for tariff re-
form, but Congress gave its first attention to repeal of the Silver Pur-
chase Act. It was not until November, 1893, that a tariff measure
drafted under William L. Wilson, was presented. By no means the dream
of a Free Trader, had it been enacted as originally drawn up, a distinct
change would have been affected in our general tariff policy. 92 Reduc-
tions were made in many schedules; most raw materials were placed
on the free list. The Sun pronounced it a "fraud, an infamy and an in-
sult"; 93 and while it was being considered in the House, published a
series of attacks. It declared that since the measure had put the natural
products of Canada on the free list, it had robbed the Annexationists of
their strongest argument. "We get nothing, and give everything," it
argued. "It is the American miners, lumbermen, fishermen, and farmers
who will have to foot the bill." 4 The bill was a "hybrid," being neither
protection nor free trade, and thus insulting to the Democracy. But
since the Democrats had a majority of nearly two to one in the House,
it passed with reasonable alacrity.

The Senate was to be its death chamber. Here it was given a frigid
welcome even by Cleveland's own party. The silver controversy had been
especially divisive in the Senate, while high tariff lobbyists had long
been at work. Senator Hill, angry at the President for his course in New

80 Taussig, 286.
i Nov. 10, 1892.
02 Taussig, 289.
08 Nov. 29, 1893.
94 Nov. 30, 1893.

TARIFF PROBLEMS 299

York State appointments, intended to put every obstacle in its way;
and like the Sun, asserted that the income tax provision was a "Populist"
measure. Drastic amendments were applied both while the bill was in
committee and after it was brought before the Senate on February 2,
1894. During the next five months some six hundred changes were made
in favor of various interests. And then in an emasculated condition it was
sent back to the House.

The President wished to improve the bill and if possible secure its
passage. He wrote a letter to Wilson early in July, urging the importance
of admitting raw materials free, especially coal and iron, and stating
that for the House to approve the Senate bill in its present form would
be an act of "party perfidy and party dishonor." 9r> Consequently when
four weeks later the House was obliged to take the bill practically as it
was or fail altogether the Sun greeted its passage as " Perfidy Day in
the House," saying:

The House having thus surrendered and accepted the party dishonor that
follows party perfidy, and having asserted its doubtful claim to the possession
of the Tariff bill and its right to pass the same and send it directly to the Presi-
dent, if Mr. Cleveland, in his turn, should take a hand in the perfidy and ac-
cept his share of the dishonor by signing the bill he has denounced, or by other-
wise permitting it to become a law, on what issue will the Democracy go into the
campaign soon to open for the control of the Fifty-fourth Congress

God preserve the party that goes to the people with such a record of perfidy,
such a confession of dishonor. 96

From its first public appearance on November 27, 1893, until it be-
came a law without the President's signature, the Sun pursued it. One
would think to read his editorials, that Dana was the avenging angel
of a tariff for revenue-only-cult. No more effective way of killing the bill
could have been devised. The country, as the Sun knew, had a right to
expect a drastic reduction of the tariff and an equal right to denounce,
if not reject outright, the Senate travesty. Although Dana's chief griev-
ance was the income tax provision and the retention of internal revenue
taxes, he displayed indignation chiefly over its failure to provide the
country with a tariff for revenue only. Democrats, the Sun advised, should
"take the Wilson bill and wring its scurvy neck. Make a bill for an honest
and uniform tariff for revenue only." 7 In April, the Sun declared that

or > Nevins, Allan, Cleveland, 581.
96 Aug. 14, 1894.
7 Jan. 19, 1894.

300 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

"the most absurd of all follies" was the notion that the Wilson Bill would
"bring rest to the country's business and restore prosperity," 8 "Instead
of embodying the simple and all-settling principle of constitutional force
expressed in a tariff for revenue only it is a cranky and eccentric
absurdity." "

Before long the Sun was resorting to the "Red" bogey. The Wilson Bill
was "not for a tariff for revenue only," but "a measure for the promotion
of the anti-Democratic, anti-American communistic spirit which has
created the party known as Populist":

Explanation full and unmistakable of the shocking failure of the Democracy
on the one hand and this revolutionary betrayal of the country into the pre-
liminaries of communism on the other, is found in the last Executive message
from the White House. They are both directly and solely attributable to Grover
Cleveland. 100

This referred to Cleveland's approval of the income tax provision, con-
strued by the Sun as proof that he had betrayed the Democratic party
to the Populists.

After Cleveland allowed the bill to become a law without his signature,
the Sun headed an editorial "Vetoed":

Yesterday, August 27, 1894, President Cleveland vetoed the Democracy's
fundamental law. It was the only thing he vetoed. A bill continuing and per-
petuating unconstitutional protection in its most odious form, with the Populist
income tax added, passed at the same time into the statutes with his knowledge
and consent.

The perfidy is accomplished and the dishonor is complete, Grover Cleveland
has vetoed the Democratic platform. 101

Passage of the Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act brought only disaster to the
Cleveland Administration. People who had looked to the President for
genuine tariff reform felt they had been betrayed. Others, who rejoiced
that the Act had failed to revise the tariff, blamed it for the diminishing
gold reserve. The fall elections of 1894 resulted in a Republican Congress.
"The author of the Wilson bill," said the Sun f "has been defeated for re-

98 Apr 11, 1894.

99 Ibid.

100 May 20, 1894.
301 Aug. 28, 1894.

TARIFF PROBLEMS 301

election, and a large number of Congressmen who favored the income
tax will remain at home." 102

Late in November the Treasury resorted to a second bond issue. The
delay in passing the Wilson Tariff Act had helped to deplete the gold
reserve; the insufficient revenue yielded by it was to contribute to still
a third crisis. Dana was indignant, and as usual took out his resent-
ment on the President rather than those responsible for the iniquities
of the Wilson Act:

If Grover Cleveland had been an honest man, and if his political friends in
Congress had also been honest, we should have had today a tariff for revenue
only. We should then have had revenue enough, and there would not be a
featherweight of strain on the finances of the United States. If now these gen-
tlemen should experience reform and become honest, they would confess their
fault before night was over, and begin on the morrow to make the revenue fit
the expenses ; and the deficiency which is now playing the devil with us, would
disappear.

It is our absolute conviction that the tariff could be reformed immediately
so as to accomplish this result ; and we believe that the performance would be as
magnificent for the regeneration of American politics as the fraud of a tariff for
deficiency has proved disgraceful and damaging. 103

Throughout the remaining months of Cleveland's Administration Dana
used the Wilson-Gorman Act, without doubt one of the President's
sorest disappointments, as a means of making his life miserable. The
Sun maintained that under the "bewildering absurdity" known as the
Wilson tariff, there had been a "total deficit in the revenue" of "nearly
$200,000,000," with a deficit of "over $60,000,000 promised for the
fiscal year ending in June, 1897. This was the "bankruptcy" tariff pre-
pared by the Cleveland Administration "even after Secretary Carlisle
had petitioned Congress in 1894 for funds to make good the deficit in
the revenue then existing":

Nevertheless, that period has seen a certain number of philosophers howling
for currency reform as the country's only deliverance, (with) the Hon. Grover
Cleveland, the author of the deficit, maintaining that the $262,000,000 of
Cleveland bonds represented nothing but a glorious defense of the gold stand-
ard, and, at the close, the New York Chamber of Commerce to give Mr. Cleve-
land a dinner to celebrate his greatness and virtue as a public man.

An intelligent foreigner, contemplating the sober Mugwump reception of

i 2 Nov. 7, 1894.
i 3 Feb. 2, 1895.

302 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

these crude absurdities, might conclude that the American people had turned
a somersault and had not yet got back to their feet. In the words of the coster-
monger who saw his apples kicked all over the street, 'There ain't no bloody
word fer it." 104

From the McKinley Administration the Sun anticipated "an honest
tariff" and "sufficient revenue for the needs of the Government." lor>
To the Republicans there was just one cause for the adverse economic
conditions of the past three years: the failure of the tariff act of 1894
to provide an adequate revenue. Congress set to work to remedy this
defect. The result was the Dingley Tariff Act approved July 24, 1897.
As might be expected, it was a thoroughly protective measure.

While it was being discussed the Sun made frequent invidious com-
parisons between it and the Wilson-Gorman Act, reminding the Demo-
crats that at last they had an opportunity "to purify themselves of the
taint of Wilsonism" by helping to pass a "tariff of their professions and
their love." "The duty proposed on tea, for instance, is in itself enough
to put the stigma of shame upon the Wilson abortion, and to command
the support of every Democrat, Mugwump, or Cuckoo who supported
the Indianapolis platform in 1896." 10C When it was being amended in
the Senate the Sun felt that its supporters yielded too much to the Sena-
tors who "smacked of Bryanism," insisting that if "the Republican
control" had been complete "the bill would have been less extreme in its
protection and more effective for the raising of the revenue." 107 Never-
theless, upon its passage it was hailed as being the first tariff bill "in the
history of American legislation" over which there was complete "una-
nimity among the business men of the Union." Being "satisfactory to
every body," it was safe to assume that the tariff issue "as a main and
primary cause of separation between national parties in different sec-
tions of the Union has been set aside for many years to come." 108

The Dingley Act was the first tariff measure to which the Sun gave
enthusiastic approval. It was passed frankly as a high protective measure
with no desire or pretense of being anything else, thus appealing power-
fully to Dana's ruthless honesty. Furthermore, it gratified his national-
ism.

10 * Feb. 7, 1897.
106 Feb. 25, 1897.
106 May 6, 1897.
10T July 9, 1897.
108 July 25, 1897.

TARIFF PROBLEMS 303

^ In respect to Cleveland, Dana's personal antipathies and tariff con-
victions were not divided. But when it came to supporting the Democratic
party on a tariff for revenue platform the Sun had to resort to journalistic
acrobatics in its efforts to discredit the party of Grant and Hayes and
high protection. To do this it intimated at one time that the country
was not interested in the question, or that reform of corruption was the
issue; and at another time that the party of Jefferson and Jackson was
traditionally opposed to free trade and the internal revenue system,
or that the majority of Democrats really believed in protection when
it came to actual practice.

Except for its continued support of the Democratic party the tariff
policy of the Sun was fairly consistent. Dana preferred to twist the
principles and practices of the Democracy rather than to twist his
tariff convictions to fit the party. This illustrates a striking character-
istic of Dana's. As illogical and insincere as it appeared on the surface
for the Sun, an advocate of high tariff and hard money, to support
the Democratic instead of the Republican party and at the same time
repudiate Cleveland, there was no other course for it to follow and
remain true to Dana's animosities, enthusiasms and convictions. At no
time was Dana willing to sacrifice his personal friendships and hatreds
to the virtue or reward of political consistency. And not once did he
allow his ardent devotion to high tariff lead him into supporting the
party of protection which he believed had defrauded and debauched
the American people. Rather he attempted to educate the Democratic
party to his particular principles claiming that it was honest even if
mistaken in its economic doctrines. It was merely incidental that in
doing so, Dana could be consistent to his dislike of Cleveland. The fact
that he reversed the Sun's position on the silver-gold controversy to
avenge himself upon the Mugwump Moses, merely proves the point.
It was not until Cleveland was out of political life and the Democracy
had fallen prey to Bryanism that Dana's economic and political con-
victions were merged.

CHAPTER XII

STALWART AND HALFBREED

AT the end of its protracted struggle to wrest the country from Grantism
and all that the word implied, the New York Sun faced the presidential
year of 1876 with new hope. It said the Republican party had become
"tyrannical," "parasitic/' and "morally decayed/' and it was time for
the Democrats to take the reins. "Turn them out/' it told its readers.
"The worst Democratic Administration will be better than the best one
the Republican party can give us." 1

Of potential Republican candidates, the Sun soon relegated to politi-
cal limbo Benjamin H. Bristow, Hamilton Fish and Oliver P. Morton.
Roscoe Conkling, received a few sarcastic compliments. He was a fa-
vorite of Grant, and must therefore have the nomination. He was a
party member who "kept step to the music, and marched up to the
standard every time." The Sun said, ". . . he has made no speech
throughout this whole period, cast no vote, supported or opposed no
measure, except with reference to the success, and harmony, and the
efficiency of the party, and its prolonged tenure of power." 2 A ticket
with Conkling at the head would "please the regular old-fashioned party
men, the friends of Grant, of Shepherd, of Delano, of Williams, of
San Domingo and of Secor Robberson! " 3 As for Elaine, the Sun would
have rejoiced in his nomination, "for we deem it necessary to the wel-
fare of the country that the Republican Party should be overthrown;
and there is no possible candidate whose nomination would render such
an overthrow more certain than James Blaine." 4

Conkling and Blaine each had political strength, but their personal
animosity prevented either from supporting the other. In April, the Sun
predicted that Rutherford B. Hayes would be a compromise candidate.
On May 9th it declared, "Each of the celebrated aspirants would rather
have him than either of their immediate rivals. ... He is a man of

1 June 12, 1876.

2 Feb. 1, 1876.

8 May 24, 1876.
4 May 26, 1876.

304

STALWART AND HALFBREED 305

talent, he is a gentleman, he is rich and independent, he served with
credit through the war. . . ." The day after its prophecy was fulfilled,
Dana wrote:

It is Hayes of Ohio not Elaine, or Conkling, or any of the other nomi-
nees . . . Hayes is a man whose weakness and unimportance are his principal
recommendations to the Republican party.

He is a man who, in the Presidency, would run the machine in as easy and
as unobjectionable a way as he could; but would run it in the old rut; and this
is about the worst thing than can be said of any man who desires to become the
successor of Grant. . . . 5

On the Democratic side, the Sun focused its attention upon Samuel
Tilden, whom it considered eminently fitted to win the national prize.
Although the Sun had opposed Tilden's nomination for Governor be-
cause of his "crotchety nature" and numerous enemies, 6 it had come
to believe the success of the Democratic party was dependent upon
him. It pointed out to Tilden the path of the expert politician: "go
slow" in prosecuting the Canal Ring; make friends rather than enemies.
It praised his speeches as concise, pointed and vigorous. 7 It affirmed
that its own advocacy did not arise from personal regard for Tilden,
but "from an earnest desire, born of conviction, to see the Government
restored to the simplicity and integrity of the time of Jefferson." 8 When
Tilden won the Democratic nomination on June 29, Dana heartily ap-
proved of the "good day's work."

The Sun minimized the currency question, reminding the people that
both Tilden and Hayes stood for sound money. It said Tilden would
clean out the civil service. The crucial issue for the people was reform,
which Tilden personified. However, it characterized the Democratic
platform in a way that was scarcely complimentary:

The platform is an elastic platform, suited to any colored spectacles that
a man wants to look through at it. It is intended to be like the suspenders
which the auctioneer cried in these words: "Long enough for any man and short
enough for any body." It was intended to suit Democrats of different States
holding diametrically opposite doctrines. For such a purpose we do not see how
it could have been better devised. It is like the restaurant in California, where

6 June 17, 1876.

6 Aug. 27, 1876.

7 Jan. 1, 1876.

8 June 19, 1876.

306 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

you could have beef steak, veal, or venison, whichever you ordered, but all cut
from the round of a yearling bull. 9

The Civil War had left the South chaotic; an analysis of the election
by Republicans and Democrats centered on the voting in the recon-
structed States. Would Grant continue his "extraordinary policy of
fraud and intimidation and put Hayes in office?' 7 The Sun reported that
a prominent Republican, admitting that Tilden would probably be
chosen, said: "before he shall be inaugurated the streets of the capital
will run with blood." But it ridiculed these threats of resistance:

Now that the election of Mr. Tilden is assured beyond any doubt the Re-
publican managers who cannot bear to loose their grip on the treasury or to
have exposed their still concealed rascalities and robberies begin to threaten
resistance to his inauguration. They employ the language and breathe the fanat-
ical and foolish spirit of the most violent class of the secessionists of 1861. . . .

We advise these people to keep cool and not to let their angry passions rise.
It will be hard to resist the inevitable result which is now foreshadowed. Samuel
J. Tilden will be elected. . . . 10

When the result of the election was announced the Sun asserted un-
qualifiedly that Tilden was victorious. Other papers in New York City,
however, announced the victory of Hayes. 11 The facts that seemed to
the Sun most effective in proving that Tilden had rightfully won the
election were that he received a plurality of more than a quarter of a
million of the popular vote, and needed the electoral votes of only one
of the three disputed States, whereas Hayes needed the votes of all three.
Sun readers were assured that South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana
had been originally carried for Tilden, and that only Republican fraud
could reverse the decisions. "The governors of the states," the Sun soon
declared, "have shown themselves during the past week to be the three
most impudent liars in the country." 12

Dana justified the action of the Governor of Oregon, in throwing out
one of its three electors for ineligibility and substituting a Democrat
instead, on the ground that in the other three disputed states, where
enough votes were taken to elect Tilden and then thrown out, the Gov-

9 July 4, 1876.

10 Oct. 31, 1876.

"New York Times; Herald; Nov. 8, 1876; Cf. Nevins, Allan, Abram S. Hewitt, 320.
12 Nov. IS, 1876.

STALWART AND HALFBREED 307

ernor's decision had been accepted as final. Similar action elsewhere,
he argued, might be justifiable and even commendable as forcing the
settlement of so serious a question of jurisdiction. 13

When the official count of the Returning Boards gave Hayes 185
electoral votes and Tilden 184, the Democrats were deeply aroused,
and threats were made that Hayes would never be inaugurated. 14 The
Sun exhorted the people to keep cool: "The weapons by which the
conspiracy can alone be safely and surely resisted are moral weapons
appeals to the conscience, the judgment and the patriotism of the
people. . . ." lr> It denounced Grant for bringing troops to Washington
and interpreted his message to Gen. Sherman as condoning the Re-
publican fraud. It urged people to let their remonstrances flow into
Congress against the President to whose eyes "bloodshed may not be
wholly uncongenial." 3G

There were two sets of votes from the four disputed states. Accord-
ing to the Constitution, "The President of the Senate and the House
of Representatives shall open all the certificates and all the certificates
shall be counted." The Sun held that this did not give the President of
the Senate the ministerial duty of deciding which votes to count. But
many Republicans planned that Ferry, President of the Senate, should
open the votes in the presence of the Senate and the House (the House
not to be allowed to have any voice in the counting). "For this scheme,
the Republican party and the statesmen of that party so far stand re-
sponsible. The consummation of their purpose means the end of govern-
ment by the people through elections. . . ," 17

Since there was, in the opinion of the Sun, nothing to compromise,
it looked upon the Joint Compromise Committee, created by Congress,
as worthless and continued to advocate a settlement of the difficulty
through counting the votes by agents of both houses:

If we cannot have it ascertained by the concurrent action of the two houses
of Congress, without a sacrificing of their constitutional functions . . . then
our institutions have indeed broken down; then the Statue of Liberty has fallen,
and "bloody treason triumphs over us"; then through the technicality of the

13 Nov 29, 1876.

i* Alexander, D. S., A Political History of the State of New York, III, 350-351.

1 Dec. 11,' 1876; Cf. Rhodes, James F., Hhtory of the United States, VII, 246; Hesseltine,
William B., Ulvsses S. Grant, 412-422.
17 Dec. 12, 1876.

308 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

letter that killeth the truth the popular will cannot prevail and we are at the
mercy of any set of men who can perpetrate frauds under the form of law. 18

The bill devised by the Compromise Committee was duly reported.
The electoral commission which it outlined consisting of five senators,
five representatives and five Justices of the Supreme Court, four to be
named and one to be selected, received a grudging approval: "This
project is not perfect, and is open to various objections, but taken as
a whole, it is perhaps the best that could be obtained, and has the great
merit of insuring peace." 19 As long as the fifth judge might be inde-
pendent of either party, the Sun and the Democrats were acquiescent,
but when on Jan. 25, 1877, Judge David Davis was selected as Senator
of Illinois, and when it became apparent that Joseph Bradley, a Re-
publican, would be the fifth arbitrator, the Sun lost hope: "Joe Bradley
our President Maker! To this complexion we have come at last! " 20

After this disaster, the Sun declared that the Commission was un-
constitutional :

What powers, then, does this Commission possess? No power under the Con-
stitution, for the Constitution does not contemplate the existence of such a
body; no powers under the law, for the law creating it is clearly unconstitutional.
There is just one power which this tribunal possesses ; that is the power to ad-
journ sine die. The sooner that is done the better. The sooner the judges of the
Supreme Court return to the bench, and to the discharge of their proper duties
the more respect from the American bar and the American people, which has
hitherto attended them, will they be able to carry back with them. 21

The outcry against the Commission came too late. The bill had been
passed by both houses and on the 29th of January was signed by the
President. One by one the disputed states were adjudged to Hayes. The
triumph of the Republicans was complete. Unable to accept the verdict,
the Sun printed on its editorial page, "These are the days of humiliation,
shame and mourning for every patriotic American. A man whom the
people rejected at the polls has been declared President of the United
States through processes of fraud. A cheat is to sit in the seat of
George Washington." Appearing with a deep black border to signify
its grief, it further declared: "Let every upright citizen gird himself

18 Dec. 23, 1876.

19 Jan. 24, 1877.

20 Jan. 31, 1877.

21 Feb. 9, 1877.

STALWART AND HALFBREED 309

up for the work of redressing this monstrous crime. No truce with the
guilty conspirators! No rest for them and no mercy till their political
punishment and destruction are complete!" 22

The Sim approved the resolution of the House made "in accordance
with the recommendation of the Sun" 2P> to the effect that Samuel J.
Tilden was legally elected President and Thomas A. Hendricks Vice-
President. It quickly plunged into the problem of how the country should
treat a President who had never been elected. It advised all people to
let him severely alone, to stay away from his inauguration, to take no
part in his receptions, to decline invitations to his dinners, and to coldly
regard him whenever he appeared in public. "He should be made to
feel it daily and hourly that he is only tolerated, and is nothing more
than a fraudulent President." 24

A picture of Hayes with F-R-A-U-D inscribed across his brow ap-
peared on May 14th and again the next day when Hayes visited
New York, to remind him and the people of the "Crime of 1876." The
hard times during the first two years under a President "who was never
elected" were attributed to the Hayes fraud. 25 Not only was the Presi-
dent a fraud, but every department under him and every official re-
sponsible to him was called a fraud. Our foreign policy was conducted
without scruples of conscience or honor, since a man who did not hesi-
tate to become our fraudulent president could "have no qualms of
conscience about robbing a neighbor." 20 "Hayesism makes Grantism
seem respectable, almost admirable," the Sun announced on the day
Hayes took office. 27

The cabinet chosen by Hayes was considered unlikely to satisfy loyal
Republicans, but admirable from the point of view of an Independent:

. John Sherman of Ohio is the ruling spirit, and the most experienced pol-
itician is Richard W. Thompson of Indiana. The latter is to be Secretary to the
Navy. He is an immense improvement on Secor Robeson.

Mr. Evarts we all know. . . . Andrew Johnson appointed him Attorney-
General near the end of his term in return for defending him in the impeachment

22 Mar. 3, 1877.

23 Mar. 5, 1877.
s* Feb. 25, 1877.
26 May IS, 1878.

2" An y at 7 t'empt 'has been made to convey the difference in temper and tone of the Sun
between the eras of "Grantism" and "Hayesism " During Grantism the vituperation and
malicious humor is tinged more with wit and less with venom.

310 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

trial; and now the Fraudulent President appoints him Secretary of State. He
has never been active as a Republican, and not long ago made an energetic
speech at the Cooper Institute against the Louisiana frauds then perpetrated.
Now he has argued before the Electoral Commission that still greater frauds
ought not to be investigated and has helped Mr. Hayes to get into office by
means of these frauds. His appointment to be Secretary of State under such
circumstances may not be agreeable to the Republicans of New York ; but the
propriety of it, we think, will not be disputed elsewhere.

It is well that Mr. Schurz is nominated for Secretary of the Interior. Against
this nomination the leaders of the Republican party have made a determined
opposition, some of them threatening to reject it in the Senate Mr. Hayes, how-
ever, has held out against their menaces, and he will be widely complimented on
this manifestation of firmness. If Mr. Schurz should be confirmed, it will be
interesting to see him employ his literary and rhetorical talents in commend-
ing to the country hereafter, and especially to the young men, those processes
of cheating in election through bribery, forgery, and fraud, without which he
could not now have been nominated as a member of the Fraudulent Cabinet.
We dare say, too, he will not require the clerks in his department should he
have one when the time comes around to pay political assessments for any
future election, or be dismissed; but if Zach Chandler had not been of different
stuff, Schurz would never have got the present official compliment.

Mr. Key of Tennessee, nominated for Postmaster-General is a Democrat, and
has never been anything else. . . . He is a man of moderate ability and limited
influence. His appointment is an illustration of the proposed new policy toward
the South. Let Mr. Hayes have credit for thus rising above his party.

Gen. Devens of Massachusetts was originally a Webster Whig, then a Demo-
crat and then a Republican. . . . Mr. Hayes has taken him for Attorney-
General. . . . It is a respectable, not a brilliant nomination. He is not a bril-
liant lawyer. 28

Dana's expression of approval was apparently based upon a shrewd
political calculation. He knew that Conkling had hoped for an appoint-
ment. His friends had even urged Hayes to make him Secretary of State.
Furthermore the choice of Evarts was a direct affront. Dana used the
Sun to promote the disaffection within the Republican party, saying,
"It is not to be supposed that such a party, with such a history, will
look on in passive obedience while Mr. Hayes uses the power of the Ad-
ministration to reverse its ancient doctrines and its traditional policy." 28
By September, 1877, its Utica correspondent reported that Conkling
regarded "Hayes' presence at the head of the administration as a thing

28 Mar. 8, 1877.

29 Apr. 14, 1877.

STALWART AND HALFBREED 311

of fraud, and upon this fraud he means to make war." 30 This delighted
the Sun.

As time went on, the Sun criticized the quality of Hayes' cabinet.
It asserted that Evarts first favored free trade and then protective
tariffs; that settled principles and positive convictions form "no part
of his intellectual baggage." 31 He was reported extraordinarily sensi-
tive to the opinion of Roscoe Conkling and his friends. When Evarts
declared that the people were tired of politics running the National
Government, the Sun agreed that the people were tired of the sort of
politics he represented. 32

Carl Schurz, the Sun believed, was a sentimental enthusiast, living
upon fine spun theories and accomplishing nothing real. "When he ac-
cepted office as a recompense for his service in the Presidential Cam-
paign, Mr. Schurz sacrificed whatever fair reputation he may previously
have enjoyed." :53 Sherman was confused as to the financial situation
and went about his work in a blundering, muddle-headed way. "Ancient
Mariner" Thompson, while wasteful of time in attention to details of
navy tailoring, was accorded respect in that he did not show the patient
fidelity in waiting on Hayes at county fairs that "Lawyer" Evarts and
"Erring Brother" Key evinced. "Last summer, for example, he was off
on a junketing tour on the briny deep, along the shores between Norfolk
and Portsmouth, while his brethren were listening to Hayes' weak jokes
and measuring prize pumpkins at agricultural fairs." 34

That Hayes meant what he said about civil service reform the Sun
never believed. It cried, "What Hayes and Schurz and the rest of the
fraudulent administration mean by civil service reform is to put their
own political friends in office and foist them on their successors for
life." 3r> Dana was contemptuous of Hayes' executive order of June 22
upon the civil service, and ridiculed especially the demand that office-
holders should not take part in the management of political organiza-
tions, caucuses, conventions, or campaigns. It asserted that "the Presi-
dent, de jacto" had no constitutional or legal right to control the leisure
hours of Federal employees and advised no man in the country "to

JO Sept 11, 1877.

si Sept 6, 1877.

32 Sept 19, 1877.

- { Oct 10, 1877; Cf Fuess, Claude, Carl Schurz.

34 May 25, 1879.

80 Mar. 16, 1877.

312 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

consider the President in making up his mind whether he will go to a
political caucus or not." ;{ Hayes partially proposed to enslave about
eighty thousand citizens, mostly white, by his obnoxious order against
any part in political life. "Eunuchs are eunuchs, whether they be one
or many; whether they voluntarily submit to welcome such or not.
How many for the sake of the office will consent to resign their man-
hood and be made the eunuchs of the Administration. We shall see! " 37
Many of Hayes' appointments were listed by the Sun as election debts,
like that of Edwin M. Stoughton of New York as Minister to England/' 58
Others were conscience debts, such as the appointment of Senator
Morton's son as Treasury Agent at the Fur Seal Island of St. Paul
and St. George in Alaska:

Mr. Hayes has unbounded faith in the power of office to buy toleration for his
Fraudulent Administration. Finding the great Senator Morton sulking, and
almost ready to break into open denunciation of the President dc jacto as strut-
ting about in stolen feathers and spitting on the thieves who stole them for him,
Mr. Hayes began immediately to appease him with offices and plunder. 9

Dana denounced Hayes' appointment to the Treasury Department of
a long list of Southerners who had been active in placing Louisiana,
South Carolina, and Florida in the Haves' column in 1876-77. 4()
Thoroughly convinced of Hayes' insincerity, the Sun remarked, "The
weakness, hypocrisy, and imbecility of Hayes have been plentifully
shown in his sham civil service reform." 41

When on May 17, 1878, the Democratic House passed the Potter
resolution for the investigation of Hayes' title, the Sun demanded a
thorough inquiry, devoting almost its entire editorial page to the subject
during the last two weeks of May. It claimed that no man of sense cared
whether the President was Tilden or Hayes; but everyone wished to
see in the Wliite House the man elected by the people. In October, 1878,
the Tribune began publication of a series of dispatches which plainly
showed that Democrats had attempted bribery in the Southern States.
At first the Sun refused to believe in the authenticity of the telegrams.

8 July 4, 1877.

87 July 19, 1877.

88 Oct. 16, 1877.

89 Mar. 26, 1877.

40 July 21, 1878.

41 Mar. 5, 1878.

STALWART AND HALFBREED 313

When facts became indisputable, it decided that "after all" there was
not "so very much to the cipher telegrams":

Certain Republican officials were willing to sell out. The Democrats did not
buy for lack of funds, the practical result was the same; the purchase was not
made. . . .

Now the real gist of the matter all lies in the question whether the Republicans
bought or not. On that point the only light shed by the cipher telegrams is in
the establishment of the fact that those having the power to make the returns
one way or the other were ready for a trade. The Republicans got the office,
and there are very strong reasons for believing they did not get it for nothing. 42

Hayes' personal character did not escape the censure of the Sun,
although, unlike Grant, he was not the subject of insinuations regarding
his morals. Finding it difficult to prove intemperance or other vices on
the part of the dignified and refined gentleman who occupied the Presi-
dency, the Sun at first made fun of him and his friends because of their
"ladies tea parties." In the second year, it printed an editorial entitled,
"A Social Triumph for Hayes," accusing him of going on a spree:

For two or three clays past Mr. Hayes and his family, including Webb P.
and Birchard Hayes, have been in Philadelphia. The family party was accom-
panied by Honest John Sherman, Gen. Devens and Carl Schurz, the last named
having so far recovered from his recent illness, caused by an excessive use of
green tea, that he is able to travel short distances by carefully guarding his
nerves against exciting scenes and sounds.

The entertainment provided by the citizens of Philadelphia for the President
and his fraudulent hangers-on seems to have been devised with reference to
the state of Carl Schurz's nerves. . . . The . . . visitors were treated to a sail
down the river on an excursion steamboat. In deference to the alleged temper-
ance views of Mr. Hayes and Webb P. Hayes, several baskets of wine were
ordered away by the managing committee; but when the steamboat was off
Chester, that adroit patriot and sincere friend of the flag, Mr. Johnny Roach,
sent a small boat ashore after champagne. In the sly language of the reporter
who accompanied the party, Mr. Johnny Roach's thoughtfulness was "appre-
ciatively understood," from which we infer that the remainder of the voyage
was nothing more or less than a mild orgy. 43

In 1885 the Sun alleged that Hayes, now an "ex-fraud," was actively
engaged in the "gin" business, adding that the only surprising fact was

42 Dec. 5, 1878.

43 Apr. 27, 1878.

314 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

that he had allowed the property to stand in his own name. Later the
Sun published a report of the sale of the "Hayes Gin Mill" for $41,000
but hastened to deny its accuracy, saying: "Whoever heard of Hayes
selling anything from a hydro-sulphuretted hen's egg down to his
good name and personal honor for a copper less than its market
value." 44 It reprinted the discovery by the Chicago News that the
"saloon which he pretended to sell was not the only disreputable property
he owned in that town." 45 So abusive did the Sun become that news-
papers throughout the country were shocked. The Boston Herald asked
if it were not about time the Sun let Hayes alone. Dana replied:

No; not yet. So long as new facts, such as those which are now coming out,
throw additional light on the mental and moral deformities of his character,
it is best that they should have the widest publicity. This, for two reasons:
First, because they vindicate the truth and justice of the Sun's original estimate
of the man; and, secondly, because they render more complete and lifelike the
portrait that will be transmitted to future generations the portrait of one of
the most conspicuous and at the same time one of the most despicable figures
in American history. 46

The Sun was adept at personal abuse. Asserting that after leaving the
White House, Hayes busied himself in chicken raising instead of at-
tending to pressing public affairs, the Sun nicknamed him "Hen-House
Hayes." When he and Mrs. Hayes left the White House they were re-
ported as taking the silver and linen as well as the furniture, leaving
"Poor President Garfield" to refurnish the place. The "impropriety" of
Hayes' course upon the death of Thomas A. Hendricks brought forth
a number of scathing editorials. His telegram of sympathy to Mrs. Hen-
dricks was treated as an attempt to obtain public attention by "hypo-
critical condolence with the widow of one of the men whom he de-
frauded." 47 Hayes' attendance at the funeral was described:

The volunteered presence of Rutherford B. Hayes at the grave of Thomas A.
Hendricks today is a spectacle which the country might well have been spared.
Is it possible that the man is utterly destitute of shame? Does he dare to force
his way to the front rank of the mourners who follow the dead statesman to the
tomb, wearing on his false face the counterfeit of their sincere grief? The inso-
lence of such hypocrisy is inexpressible. We should think that the despised

44 June 3, 1885.

45 June 14, 188S.

46 Ibid.

47 Nov. 30, 1885.

STALWART AND HALFBREED 315

wretch would tremble with fear lest the dead himself would speak and say:
"Back, fraud! Stand not with those who loved and honored me." 48

Aspersions upon Hayes' character were combined from time to time
with witticisms regarding his social diversions:

That irrepressible patriot, Mr. Henry C. Bowen, celebrated the last Fourth
of July by fetching Mr. and Mrs. R. B. Hayes all the way from Fremont, Ohio,
at considerable expense, and exhibiting them to his neighbors and admirers in
the town of Woodstock. Mr. Hayes delivered an oration which not a single
newspaper in the United States of America took the trouble to print.

From the Putnam Patriot, published near Woodstock, we learn how Mr.
Henry C. Bowen and Mr. R. B. Hayes amused themselves after the Fourth. On
Thursday afternoon Mr. Hayes swam in Roseland Lake. He did not sink to the
bottom. A body of Hayes' specific gravity would float in alcohol.

Later in the afternoon Mr. Henry C. Bowen and Mr. R. B. Hayes witnessed
the performance of the Wabaquassett Club at polo. In the intervals of rest
between the heats Mr. Hayes "was seen rolling upon the ground beneath the
hackmatacks." This is nothing new. Hayes has crawled and rolled in the dirt
ever since 1876.

On Friday afternoon, Mr. and Mrs. Hayes, with Mr. and Mrs. Bowen and a
large party of ladies and gentlemen, rode to the lake for a bath. "This," contin-
ues the Putnam Patriot, was a notable and enjoyable occasion. Mr. and Mrs.
Hayes soon had on bathing dresses, and the whole party were in a most hilarious
mood. At one time all joined hands and danced round and round, singing, "You
nor we, nor anyone knows how oats, peas, beans, and barley grows, ripen and
are gathered in." The roars of laughter "could be distinctly heard on the top of
Mount Eliot and even half a mile across the lake." This noise was unseemly.

That same day Mr. Henry C. Bowen and Mr. R. B. Hayes visited Putnam's
Cave in Pomfret. Mr. Hayes got down on his hands and knees, we are told, and
"put his head into the dark and rocky retreat of the wicked old wolf as far as was
practicable." He hauled it out again mighty quickly. A small snake, coiled near
the entrance of the cave, raised its head and began to hiss. The Fraud need not
have been afraid. No snake that squirms and hisses would bite Hayes. 49

To the Sun's gratification, the Elaine and Conkling factions of the
Republican party were at odds with Hayes during his Administration.
A series of rapid vetoes during April, May and June of 1879 had un-
fortunate political consequences. The first of these was an appropriation
bill with a clause attached by the Democrats, repealing the law for
Federal supervision of the polls. For this veto, according to the Sun,
the Stalwarts forgave Hayes, "granted absolution, and welcomed him

48 Dec. 1, 1885.

49 July 23, 1883.

316 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

back without killing the fatted calf." On May 12th he vetoed a bill
which incorporated the free election principle; and on May 29th, the
legislative, judicial and executive appropriation bill bearing a rider on
the same issue. The Sun said, "The veto of the Legislative bill warmed
the hearts of Chandler, Logan, Blaine and their associates, and every-
thing looked lovely for a perfect reunion."

Finally the army bill was passed with a less drastic rider to soothe
the Democrats, and Hayes signed it. The Sun reported that "Mr. Conk-
ling was unreserved in denouncing the act among his friends, and de-
clared that the latter bill only differed from the first in that it acted
temporarily and would have to be renewed, while the original restriction
would have operated permanently." With this event the two factions
returned to their sulky animosity. 50

Conkling had earned the contempt of the Sun by his advocacy of the
Electoral Compromise Committee in 1876. Now, as Dana saw Cameron
of Pennsylvania and Logan of Illinois uniting with the New York Senator
in a conspiracy to "set the will of the people at defiance and re-elect
Ulysses S. Grant," he was further aroused against him. Noting with
satisfaction the appearance of the first anti-third term organization,
the Sun urged that every county should speedily organize such a club. 51
With alacrity it revived old scandals of Grantism 52 and in every way
worked to destroy Grant sentiment.

A speech by Conkling before the Republican State Convention at
Utica, in which he proposed the unit rule for the delegates to the National
Convention, struck the Sun as remarkable rather "for its shallowness
and sophistry than for ability or eloquence." His contention that if the
delegates were not to vote as a unit, they would be comparable to "a
regiment or a company going into battle; in place of all firing together,
every man fires when he pleases and where he pleases," elicited the
answer that Conkling knew "it was only by the exercise of despotism
like that which rules armies that the nomination of Grant could be car-
ried." 53 After the State Convention, the Sun concluded that Conkling
was a liar and a knave who had induced the Republican party to stultify
itself, and "like a well-trained dog obeys a circus clown, to roll itself
in the mud at his command. . . ." "Never," it said, "did Southern

60 July S, 1879.
81 Jan. 8, 1880.
"Jan. 21, 1880.
88 Feb. 28, 1880.

STALWART AND HALFBREED 317

taskmaster lord it more despotically over the field hands on a cotton
plantation than did Roscoe Conkling yesterday over his well-dressed
but mean-spirited, white-livered Republican followers at Utica." 54

Early the following May evidence of Republican dissension appeared
in a letter written by Senator Robertson to the Albany Evening Journal.
He claimed that disregarding the instructions of the Utica Convention,
he should "vote first, last, and all the time in the Chicago Convention
for James G. Elaine, the candidate preferred by the Republicans in his
district." 5r ' Senator Robertson's letter was followed by speeches of
other delegates equally defiant. "All this stirred Albany to its political
center yesterday, and in the interchange of opinion and purpose it was
elicited that at least twenty of New York's delegation are in revolt
against the Utica Convention's instructions." 5G Meanwhile J. D. Cam-
eron, in Pennsylvania, attempted similar tactics to carry his State, but
with less success. The Philadelphia Times was elated at the outcome
of the Republican State Convention, pronouncing it "The end of the
third-term folly."

The Sun predicted a contentious national convention: "The friends
of the several rival candidates who at first bowed in meek submission
to the Grant dictation now wear a bold front, and promise to dispute
every inch of ground until a nomination is finally reached." 57 Recall-
ing that Conkling's animosity to Elaine was caused by "the Maine
Senator, having, on some occasion, characterized the Senator from New
York as a Turkey Gobbler," the Sun said, "One thing is certain: the
'gobble, gobble, gobble' of a turkey is not so senseless as Mr. Conkling's
untrue and fulsome eulogy of Grant's administration in his speech
nominating that gentleman as a third term candidate." 58 When Gar-
field and Arthur were nominated, the Sun rejoiced that Grant had been
defeated:

The most important feature of the proceedings at Chicago is the defeat of
Grant Through all coming time his name will remain associated with the
attempt to change the form of our free Government to a monarchy; and this
must ever dim and tarnish the renown of his military career.

May 8%8 8 8 8 0; Alexander III, 437; According to Alexander the Repubncans who refused
to accept the unit-rule were labelled by the machine Republicans, "Half-Breeds
60 May 7, 1880.
" May 14, 1880.
es June 6, 1880.

318 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

It is hardly likely that another attempt at a third term and imperialism will
be made in this country for a hundred years.
Thank God! 59

To the new presidential candidate Dana was not precisely compli-
mentary. Garfield's name had been intimately connected with the " Credit
Mobilier," "Salary Grab" and the "De Golyer" pavement transaction.
The Sun said, "when they fired cannon in the City Hall Park over the
nomination of Garfield yesterday, the smoke rose in the air in the form
of rings." 60

The attitude of Stalwart Republicans toward Garfield was examined
with care. It was announced in the Sun that Conkling, Elaine, and Logan
had been conspicuous for their absence at the first ratification meeting
in Washington, Logan finally being "fished out of the crowd, where he
had been from curiosity and with no intention of taking part in the
proceedings." 61 In time Conkling accepted the party decision. The Sun
attributed his change of attitude to a visit paid by leading Stalwarts
to the home of the Presidential nominee in Mentor, Ohio, where a bargain
was made :

Mr. Elaine was probably the only sincere opponent of Grant on the list of
Presidential candidates at Chicago. He has been left out in the cold. He was not
represented at the conference or included in the bargain between Garfield,
Grant, Conkling, Cameron and Logan at Mentor. Neither were the people.' 1 -

On November 4th, the day of Garfield's election, the following edi-
torial appeared:

The sectional issue elected Garfield.
Who made the sectional issue?
Roscoe Conkling.

Who emphasized and pressed that issue in the campaign?
Roscoe Conkling and General Grant.
Were they zealous from the beginning?

By no means. Their zeal was kindled suddenly, some time after the nomina-
tion at Chicago.

What is the explanation of this?
Time will show. Undoubtedly such an arrangement was made as Conkling

B9 June 9, 1880.

60 Ibid.

61 Aug. 14, 1880.

62 Oct. 17, 1880.

STALWART AND HALFBREED 319

and Grant believed would increase Grant's chances for a Third Term.
We may look for the development of the plot in the future.

The Sun greeted the news that Elaine was booked for Secretary of
State with a non-committal "Well! Well!" and waited expectantly for
repercussions from the Conklingites. Those who believed that New
York's 35 electoral votes had chosen Garfield were eager for the spoils.
According to the Sun, they believed offices had been promised, but they
distrusted Garfield. An attempt to place a New York "machine" Re-
publican in the cabinet met with difficulties. Elaine had the ear of the
President and did not intend that the "third termers" should weaken
his interests and plans for the following Presidential Campaign. The
appointment of Levi P. Morton or Charles J. Folger as Secretary of
the Treasury would have pleased Conkling, but it was politically im-
possible.

Thomas L. James, chosen as Attorney-General, was nominally a
Stalwart but far too independent to please the Conkling faction. The
Sun said that Garfield had committed a breach of trust in this selection.
Soon after the President had been inaugurated, the names of five
New York Stalwarts were sent to the Senate for various offices. But,
this encouraging intelligence was soon overshadowed by the appoint-
ment of Judge William H. Robertson, a Half-Breed, to the Collector-
ship of the Port of New York. Robertson had been the chief, perhaps
the ablest, opponent of Conkling in the New York Republican organi-
zation. The Sun maliciously remarked: "The nosegay has been removed
from Senator Conkling's desk, and the skunk-cabbage which has been
thrust in its place does not smell as sweet. But what can the Senator do?
What will the Senator do?" 3

The Sun continued its part in the comedy by encouraging and ap-
plauding the Republican quarrel. It urged the appointment of Robertson
to some other fine office in New York State, saying the President could
not honorably overlook his claim. It expressed dismay that Garfield
could soberly contemplate a plan for making an implacable enemy of
Conkling. Lastly, it pointed out that if Conkling did not receive a
rebuke, Blaine must. All in all, declared the Sun, it would be wise for
the Democrats to take advantage of this dissension among the leading
Republicans. 04 While urging Conkling to fight against the appointment

fi Mar. 24, 1881.
6 * Jan. 28, 1881.

320 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

of Robertson, "or the days of his glory would be over," it criticized him
for holding up the Senate's pursuit of more important duties. 05 While
it pointed out to the upper chamber the ignominy of not upholding the
principle of "Senatorial courtesy," it encouraged the President not to
withdraw the nominations, as that would be an abandonment of execu-
tive functions at the dictation of Conkling. 00 Meanwhile it irritated the
Stalwarts by gloating over Elaine's influence on Garfield :

It is pleasant to be informed that Mr. Elaine had nothing whatever to do
with Judge Robertson's appointment. Oh, no; nothing; why should he have
anything to do with it? What should he care? It is nothing to him.

Poor Elaine! He is a little lamb, and would like to be out in the pastures,
verdant as himself, climbing the rocks and skipping about with the other little
lambs, if only he was not shut up in that horrid, dingy old State Department.
He to have anything to do with the appointment of judge Robertson' Never!
He scorns the imputation. It was the cat, or Gail Hamilton, that did it.

We sincerely believe that Mr. Elaine had more to do with the matter than
he would have' had if he himself had been President of the United States in his
own name. 67

The President's withdrawal of the five original New York appointees
was a grave mistake, according to the Sun, while the Senate's con-
firmation of Robertson was "childish" and "weak." (58 Nor did the abrupt
resignation of Conkling and Thomas Platt, his brother Senator, elicit
any sympathy. After a careful analysis of their letters in explanation
of the act, dealing "almost wholly with the conduct of Garfield respect-
ing the nomination of Mr. Robertson to the collectorship," (5t) the Sun
concluded that the two Senators were at fault, and was at a loss to
imagine what glory or credit they expected to reap from striking their
colors and making an ignominious retreat. 70

With the intention of perpetuating the quarrel between Garfield and
the Stalwarts, the Sun began a campaign to re-elect Conkling, saying
that the legislature should promptly and decisively return him to the
Senate. "What becomes of Platt," it added, "is of very little conse-
quence." 71 The Sun's attitude toward Platt had been scornful since he

65 Apr. 13, 1881.

66 Ibid.

07 Apr. 3, 1881.

68 May 7, 1881 ; On May 6, the Sun had said Garfield was a "smart man" for the same
reason.

69 May 17, 1881.

70 May 21, 1881.

71 May 18, 1881.

STALWART AND HALFBREED 321

was elected to the Senate. It had inquired, "Who is Mr. Platt but an
expressman?"; 72 it pointed out that Platt had been nominated merely
to gratify a whim of Roscoe Conkling. 73 In urging the re-election of
Conkling, the Sun reminded its readers that it had opposed his zealous
effort to elect Grant to a third term, and had criticized his unmanly
conduct during the Electoral dispute of 1876. Nevertheless, it con-
tended that the Republicans should now return him to the Senate:

This should be done above all to rebuke President Garfield. That personage
has set on foot in this matter a system of combined bribery and intimidation.
He has, on the one hand, threatened Senators with punishment should they
refuse to obey his will; and on the other hand, he has held up before them a
promise of reward, in the distribution of offices should they comply. The threat
and bribery are alike indecent and pernicious. 74

Yet from the first it doubted whether Conkling could achieve re-
election. The President had the advantage of being in office and his
Secretary of State "knew something about practical politics." The Sun
said, "Mr. Conkling's machine has been all powerful in that State; but
we shall be able to judge of its real force when it meets another machine
running in an opposite direction on the same track." 75

The New York World published a denial by Garfield that he had
made any promises to Stalwarts in order to influence their vote. The
Sun reminded its readers that Garfield 's denial in the Credit Mobilier
scandal did not represent the truth. 76 To the claim that Garfield did
not even know Senator Strahan, to whom the Sun said he had offered
the Marshalship of Southern New York as a bribe, it retorted, "When
the articles of impeachment are drawn up should they not include an
article charging imbecility to administer the office of President?" 77

While the contest at Albany was in progress, and the Sun was ad-
vocating the impeachment of Garfield, the country was shocked by the
President's assassination at the hands of an office-seeker:

James A. Garfield, President of the United States, was shot and mortally
wounded by an insane assassin, at the Baltimore depot in Washington, at about
10 o'clock yesterday morning. He was removed to the White House, where

"Jan. 12,1881.

73 Ibid.

74 May 18, 1881.
7& May 26, 1881.

76 June 23, 1881.

77 June 3, 1881.

322 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

he remains at the point of death. . . .

No event since the assassination of Abraham Lincoln has created such a
shock. The sensation of profound sorrow is universal. The American people
have but one heart today, and it is overwhelmed with grief at this sudden, unex-
pected, and tragic striking down of the Chief Executive Magistrate.

Fortunately, deplorable as this terrible event is, and although it will be
attended by important personal consequences, the death of Gen. Gar field will
have no political significance. It was not the work of a party or of a faction,
but was perpetrated by one man, who is understood to have been in a state
of mental aberration at the time. 78

The accusations that leading Stalwarts, including the Vice-President
and Conkling, had motivated the shooting was severely condemned
by the Sun. In an editorial entitled, "Shameful" it rebuked the con-
temporary press for giving credence to such a rumor. 79 But although
the Sun claimed that the press, including the Tribune, were putting the
responsibility for the crime upon the Stalwarts, those papers were really
expressing their indignation at the harassment to which a second Presi-
dent of the United States had been subjected to by personal jealousies.
This was the general feeling throughout the country, and the New York
legislature responded to it by leaving Conkling and Platt at home.

78 Ibid.

79 July 4, 1881.

CHAPTER XIII

AMERICA; FIRST, LAST AND ALWAYS

OUR "weak," "cowardly," "anti-American," "swindling" foreign policy,
pursued with "sterility of ideas," "absence of manly spirit," and "in-
difference to American principles," l was conducted between 1868 and
1876 by a number of interesting men. When "stupid" President Johnson,
"long-winded" Secretary of State Seward, and the "pro-British" Charles
Francis Adams passed into history, Sun readers were introduced to a
new set of villains. They were headed by "Useless S. Grant." At his
right hand was "Don" Hamilton Fish, with his son-in-law, Sidney Web-
ster, who was attorney for the government of Spain. The chairman of
the Foreign Relations Committee, Charles Sumner, was "vain and fanci-
ful." The Assistant Secretary of State was "bribe-taking" Bancroft
Davis, and all our ministers and diplomats were "toadying charlatans."

According to the Sun, "perfidious" England was in worse estate. It
was a decaying monarchy whose sovereigns for a century and a half
had been shadows. Since Elizabeth, only two great rulers had governed
England William of Nassau, a foreigner, and Oliver Cromwell, a
plebian. The Stuarts had been obstinate and treacherous; Anne had
been honest but stupid. The first two Georges, "unable to speak intelli-
gent English," had loved nothing so much as punch and fat women.
George III had been shrouded in a pall of lunacy and George IV was a
heartless seducer. William the IV was so crazy that once when reading
a speech from the throne he hurled his coronet at the peers and hailed
them as "my peacocks." As for Queen Victoria, she was virtuous and
amiable but had no more to do with the Government than one of her
maids of honor. 2 The Prince of Wales was a "rake." Gladstone wasted
his energy upon effete literature, and pursued the foreign policy of a
"heathen shopkeeper." 3 And Jewish "Dizzy" had recently gotten drunk
during a debate in the House of Commons. 4

It was necessary that the United States and Great Britain come to

1 Mar. 29, 1870.

2 Mar. 31, 1868.
8 Dec. 18, 1869.

* May 5, 1868. 323

324 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

terms. Adams had pressed our claims for damages caused by the Ala-
bama and other confederate cruisers. 5 "While the United States were
tugging at each other's throats in a great Civil War, England took ad-
vantage of the emergency to fit out piratical craft to destroy our com-
merce. She drove our flag from the ocean; she defied our ability to
protect it; and laughed at our calamities; she predicted our downfall."
No settlement had been reached in May, 1868, when Adams resigned:

Mr. Charles Francis Adams is to come home from England, and we presume
nobody is very sorry about it. It is the universal feeling that he has not properly
represented the United States ; . . . while Mr. Adams is a gentleman of wealth
and cultivation, he has inherited some of the failings of his family, such as un-
steadiness in political opinions, coldness of manner, and too careful regard for
his own interests, which forbid his ever gaining a hold upon the affections of the
people. 7

England knew she had set an unfortunate precedent in the Alabama
affair. Should she become involved in war her merchant marine would
be open to attack by ships quickly constructed in America Lord Stanley,
urging a settlement of the dispute before the House of Commons, said:
"England has nothing to gain by keeping it open, and something to
gain by closing it." Dana replied, "Talk is talk, but money buys the
molasses." 8 Reverdy Johnson, our new Minister, found the time aus-
picious for treaty making and the Johnson-Clarendon convention pro-
viding for a settlement of claims was concluded. But the Sim disapproved
of Johnson. He had so far forgotten his position as to shake hands with
Laird, who had constructed the Alabama, and had made dinner speeches
with little thought of public opinion in America. Therefore Dana had
no regrets when his treaty was almost unanimously rejected by the
Senate.

Meanwhile Sumner added fuel to the antagonism between the two
countries. Before the Senate voted he eloquently presented the "massive
grievance under which our country suffered." e America gloried in his
words and universally praised them. But Dana considered Sumner's
speech a "childish display," not because he regretted its temper how-

B Latane, John Holladay, A History of American Foreign Policy, 430-431.

6 Mar. 10, 1868.

7 Feb. 13, 1868: The Sun published the compliments extended to Adams by the London
Standard on the front page, Feb. 8, 1868.

8 Mar. 14, 1868.

9 Rhodes, James F., History of the United States, VI, 337.

AMERICA; FIRST, LAST AND ALWAYS 325

ever. On the contrary, he thought Sumner had expressed the "most
unanimous and deepest" feeling of Americans. But Dana had no desire
to see destroyed the precedent England had set in recognizing the bellig-
erent rights of the Confederacy. The early recognition of these was
not to be lightly disregarded, with Ireland seeking her independence and
sympathetic Fenians lurking on the Canadian border. Collect claims
from Great Britain we must; but, if necessary, we could wait and col-
lect them according to the rule she has laid down. Therefore Dana
joined a few clear-sighted Americans in condemning Sumner's speech:

Indeed, it demands what no Government can submit to without humiliation,
and what we ourselves cannot insist upon without giving a tacit pledge that we
are willing to be governed hereafter by the same restriction upon our national
action that in this instance we seek to apply to our adversary. But who supposes
we are going to yield now or hereafter to an offensive limitation upon our sense
of propriety as to the time when we shall recognize a rebellion in any country
as entitled to the rights of a belligerent? This is a matter that belongs to our own
discretion entirely; and it is unbecoming in Mr. Sumner to lay great stress,
as he does, upon the fact that England prematurely recognized the confederacy;
and his undertaking to mix up this proceeding in a claim for damages, we regard
as childish. 10

The claims enumerated by Sumner totaled the amazing sum of
$2,125,000,000. 11 As this was too large to be paid in money, people in
this country looked covetously toward the northern border. Indeed, the
Sun maintained it had yet to hear a valid or convincing argument against
the annexation of Canada. Members of the Provincial and Dominion
Parliaments were sufficiently corrupt to enter into immediate compe-
tition with the best which the United States could offer. In swindling
railroad concerns the Canadians were fully our equals. 12

Dana deeply sympathized with the Fenian movement, and was so
bold as to suggest that Ireland be annexed. "The Irish people would
then know that they would soon be governed by a legislature and execu-
tive of their own choice, and conspiracy and Fenianism would at once
come to an end." A group of Fenians had attempted to invade Canada.
This evidence of ill-will convinced him that the only peaceful solution
of the Anglo-American problem was the withdrawal of the English flag

10 May 4, 1869.

11 Rhodes, VI, 339.

12 j u ly 17, 1869.

1 3 Feb. 28, 1868.

326 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

from this hemisphere. The Sun maintained that the Canadians were
unhappy under their present rulers: "Their fisheries, mining, agriculture
and manufactures will never flourish as they might until their pictur-
esque land, with its beautiful bays, lakes, and forests, finds shelter be-
neath the broad and powerful wings of the American eagle. " 14

Cuba in the tropics was as alluring as Canada in the North provid-
ing the United States should annex her before her war for independence
devastated the island. Previous to Grant's inauguration the Sun had
written: "We are confident that President Grant and the new Secretary
of State will be found to be earnest adherents of that great and fruitful
principle which declares that it is not wholesome or desirable that
European powers should continue to rule America any longer than is
necessary." 15

Day by day the Sun reported "horrors and atrocities" committed
upon the Cubans, whose cause of complaint against Spain was "the
same as ours against England in 1776, namely taxation without repre-
sentation." 1G It urged that Grant "direct our Minister at Madrid to
interpose an energetic protest against such horrible massacres." 17 In
addition, Dana was incensed by violations of the rights of American
citizens. "They are everywhere suspected of sympathy with the insur-
rection, and doubtless in many cases justly, and are treated with great
severity by the authorities." The Sun suggested we immediately send
a naval force sufficient to protect their rights and interests. 18

In New York City, the Sun encouraged the activities of the Cuban
junta. 19 Filibustering parties left our shores with ammunition for the
insurgents, speeded on their way by the Sun, although the Government
tried to prevent their departure. 20 When rebuked for upholding the
right of Americans to furnish firearms to a people not yet recognized
as belligerents, the Sun replied:

But how are we to find out that they are for the use of the Cubans? ... It
strikes us that this is none of our business; and that while arms and ammunition
are freely exported hence every week for the Spaniards to kill the Cubans with,
we need not prevent the sending of those articles to the ports of other nations,

14 Feb. 8, 1868.

15 Feb. 3, 1869.
' Ibid.

37 Mar. 25, 1869.
i Feb. 18, 1869.
1 July 21, 1869.
20 April 24, 1869.

AMERICA; FIRST, LAST AND ALWAYS 327

even if those ports should happen to be somewhere in the West Indies. More
than this, let us say that we have no more right to prevent such shipments in
the one case than in the other. 21

The Sun attacked the "pro-Spanish" activities of Grant and the "mas-
terly inactivity" of Fish at every opportunity. Its prejudice against the
Secretary originated in the belief that he had secured his office in return
for "one thousand dollars in greenbacks, which he gave to the President
a short time before he received the appointment." 22 On the other hand,
Dana upheld Daniel Sickles, whose service in the Army was character-
ized by the Nation as "a refuge from disgrace." 23 The Sun said:

Wisely selected, as we believe, by the President to represent the United States
at this critical period at the court of Spain, his approaching departure for his im-
portant mission was selected by his fellow-citizens of all parties to testify to his
eminent public services and sacrifices to the nation, rendered at a time when the
destinies of his country were menaced with most deadly peril. Whatever may
have been the antecedents of General Sickles anterior to the war, his eminent
and conspicuous patriotism have since fully atoned for the errors of the past. 24

In September, the Sun announced that we would recognize the inde-
pendence of Cuba about October 1st. This must have been surprising
news to Secretary Fish. According to the Sun, negotiations had been
forced upon the State department by a rising sympathy for the Cubans.
Therefore Sickles had taken a proposal to Madrid by which Spain should
recognize the independence of Cuba in return for an indemnity in bonds,
guaranteed by the United States and paid by the Cuban Government.
In addition he was authorized to intimate that the United States was
about to grant belligerent rights to the insurgents. The Sun declared:
"If these terms are not at once accepted by the Spanish Government,
the United States will without further delay recognize the independence
of Cuba." 2: >

Dana believed that Spain would come to terms, for he thought the
Spanish Government badly in need of money. "Why then refuse a few
million for what they must otherwise soon surrender without any con-
sideration at all?" On the other hand, there were reasons to think the
Cubans might refuse. "And how foolish they would be if they should

21 May 24, 1869.

22 Jan 13, 1870.

23 Oberholtzer, E. P., History of the United States, II, 222.

24 May 22, 1869.

25 Aug. 3, 1869.

328 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

agree to an armistice with an enemy who is almost on the point of ex-
haustion, and who will soon be obliged to abandon the field?"

It is even more probable that our Congress will reject the proposed guaranty
of Cuban bonds. Why should we pay fifty millions for Cuba, or agree to do so
in any contingency? ...

There was a way of treating the Cuban question which would have been
worthy of the occasion and of this country. It was to support the revolution
which the Cubans began so nobly by proclaiming the emancipation of six hun-
dred thousand slaves a fact without precedent in the history of revolutions.
That policy would have been in harmony with the antecedents and the honor
of the United States. But Mr. Fish's scheme to force a people who, in the midst
of the world's indifference, without any effective friendship anywhere, and with
unexampled difficulties and suffering, have brought their cause within sight of
victory, into a practical submission to those they have overcome, is not credit-
able to the statesmen who have devised it, and is destined to a merited and con-
spicuous failure. 26

When the Spanish Government submitted counter terms unacceptable
to this country, the Sun said:

Gen. Sickles was further directed to inform the Spanish Government that the
United States were not anxious to mediate between the parties, and that as
Spain seemed unwilling to consider any practicable terms, the attempt to mediate
might be regarded as abandoned. This leaves no negotiations on foot, but does
not withdraw the notice that on or about the 1st of October the United States
Government would be compelled by the state of public opinion in this country to
recognize the independence of Cuba. This is still in force, and is morally obliga-
tory upon Gen. Grant's administration. 27

Dana did not intend that Sickles should be held responsible for un-
successful negotiations. He informed the Evening Post that "Gen. Sickles
has not been at fault" and that the "only fault and it is certainly a
great and glaring fault proceeds from Mr. Secretary Fish at Washing-
ton." 28

As the Sun had predicted, Grant favored the cause of Cuba. Influenced
by Rawlins, he signed a proclamation on August 19, 1869, according
belligerent rights to the Cuban insurgents. This seemed premature as
their warfare consisted mainly of guerilla operations, ambushes, mas-
sacres and the burning of estates. 29 Consequently Fish, after signing

2Aug. 3, 1869.

27 Sept. 29, 1869.

28 Nov. IS, 1869.

* Oberholtzer II, 248

AMERICA; FIRST, LAST AND ALWAYS 329

the document, caused it to be deposited in a safe where it remained. In
the meantime Rawlins died, and Grant became interested in other af-
fairs. 30 Later the Sun said, "While the brave, the generous, the sagacious
Rawlins was alive, there was hope for Cuba." 81

Guided by Fish, Grant declared in his message of December, 1869,
that while sympathizing with "all people struggling for liberty and self
government" it was "due to our honor" to abstain from enforcing our
views upon unwilling nations." To the Sun, this was the "weakest and
most objectionable" part of the message:

These expressions of barren sympathy for the struggling Cubans are of little
value in the face of the fact that the Administration has done all in its power to
check the effective expression of the national sympathies of the people, and to
prevent the Cubans from receiving that material aid which would have amply
sufficed long ago to have settled the matter satisfactorily, and to have added
another free State to the glorious cluster of American democracies. 82

Such papers as the Times and World feared that if Grant took steps
to recognize Cuba, this would justify Great Britain's conduct toward
us during the Civil War and hinder a settlement of the Alabama claims. 33
The Sun asked, "By what right would England open her hypocritical
lips, or put forth grasping hands in such an exigency England, that
for two centuries has been filibustering over the wide world, bullying
the weak and wheedling the strong, in search of remote territories to
annex to her dominions?"

Let her keep on her side of the Atlantic, or, if she would intermeddle with
affairs in the West Indies, let her perform an honest and creditable act by ceding
to the United States the island of Jamaica in discharge of our Alabama claims,
lest in some opportune moment, after we have obtained Cuba, we levy upon
her whole West India possessions in payment of our righteous demands. 34

To support its Cuban policy the Sun conceded that "on a strict, techni-
cal construction of international law," England was probably justified
in recognizing the Confederacy as a belligerent, or even as an independ-
ent nation. "Our quarrel with her rests purely upon moral grounds,"
it said. "We maintain that her action was unfriendly, and showed a bad

SQ Ibid. t II, 248; Rhodes, VI, 346.
si Mar. 5, 1870.
82 Dec. 7, 1869.
88 Apr. 13, 1869.
* Apr. 6, 1869.

330 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

feeling toward us on her part; but we never have contended that it was
unlawful. If we had done so, self-respect would have obliged us to go to
war with her at all hazards." 3r>

The Sun was certain that it was the hand of the "feeble Fish" that
led the Administration into its un-American foreign policy, and "se-
duced President Grant." Its suspicions were strengthened by the fact
that Sidney Webster, the Secretary's son-in-law, "has been acting as
counsel for the Spanish Government:"

What we have urged, and what we do contend is, that it is highly indelicate
and improper for Mr. Fish to occupy the position of Secretary of State, pursuing
a course extremely hostile to Cuba, while at the same time the Spanish Govern-
ment is pouring money into the pockets of his son-in-law, and, as it were, into
the lap of his own family. The circumstances are suspicious/' 6

Actually there is abundant evidence that Webster never discussed Span-
ish questions with Fish.

The Sun's hostility to Senator Sumner was increased by his speech
in Massachusetts in September, 1869, against the recognition of Cuban
independence. It concluded that the country would be better off with-
out the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and
headed an editorial, "Mr. Sumner Ought to Retire":

It is to the last degree important that the head of that committee, at the
present juncture, should be a man of calm common sense, and imbued with
advanced American ideas on the subject of international law and the extension
of the Republic. Of all our conspicuous statesmen, Mr. Sumner is one of the most
deficient in these characteristics ... he made a speech on the Alabama treaty
which over-flowed with glittering rhetoric, but was so destitute of sound maxims
of law as to excite the contempt of the well trained publicists of P^ngland while
on the subject of individual liberty and constitutional government in Cuba he
has traduced her struggling patriots, has virtually championed the cause of
slavery and the slave trade in the island, and has debased his position by at-
tempting to stem the current of popular feeling in this country, which sets so
strongly in favor of Cuban independence. 37

On June 17, 1870, the Sun published a resolution passed by the House
"that the President is hereby authorized to remonstrate against the
barbarous manner in which the war in Cuba has been conducted. . . ."

85 Apr. 13, 1869.
36 Jan. 13, 1870.
87 Dec. 14, 1869.

AMERICA; FIRST, LAST AND ALWAYS 331

No action on the resolution was ever taken. Its force was diminished by
a message to Congress prepared by Fish, in which Grant reiterated
the causes against the recognition of Cuban independence. Before many
days had passed the Sun made a discovery which explained Grant's
message of June 13th, as well as other activities of the administration:

... the plan for the purchase of Cuba by a ring of speculators, some of whom
are in Havana, some in Madrid, and some in Washington, had been maturing
... the main feature of this plan was first proposed to Burlingame by Gen.
Prim himself through the Spanish Minister to China a Ring was fully organ-
ized for the sale of Cuba to third parties, and its subsequent sale to the United
States, and for the division among the members of the Ring of sixteen millions
of dollars as commissions on the transaction. . . .

The members of this Ring include Sidney Webster, Mr. Fish's son-in-law,
and Bancroft Davis, now Mr. Fish's Assistant Secretary of State, who was once
bribed with sixty thousand dollars to defraud the Erie Railway Company. . . .
And it was the power of this expected money, secretly executed through such
creatures as Webster and Davis, and openly through Hamilton Fish that finally
brought President Grant after a fortnight's struggle of resistance to sign this
astonishing message on the 13th of June last against Cuba all to prevent action
by Congress in favor of Cuban freedom until this great conspiracy against the
honor of the United States could be successfully consummated, and the money
be paid and pocketed. 38

All the Sim's accusations against Fish were unfounded. In time not only
the country, but Grant himself came to look upon the course of the
Secretary who chose to "stand or fall" on the Cuban question, as one
of wisdom and courage.

In the summer of 1869, Grant turned his attention to San Domingo.
Baez headed the Republic, and, finding it difficult to subdue the in-
surrectionists on the island, was willing to sell it to America. The profits
of annexation were to be divided by the men who achieved it, a good
share going to Baez. Grant sent Orville E. Babcock to look over the
Bay of Samana for a coaling station. Babcock returned with a project
for a treaty. 31 ' Fish, who had not been previously consulted, felt^ com-
promised and offered his resignation, but yielded out of friendship for
Grant. In return he was allowed to carry out his Cuban and British
policies. 40 Had Fish resigned, the Sun would have been delighted. Dana
was in the habit of announcing his resignation, and hastened to do so

38 July 9, 1870.

39 Rhodes, VI, 341-348.
4 Ibid., 348-349.

332 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

in the present case. But events obliged the Sun to admit that "Don
Hamilton Fish, our Spanish Secretary of State, has abandoned the idea
of resigning his office and intends to stick. This he does in compliance
with the dictates of his own tastes, which are in favor of holding office,
and with the desires of President Grant." 41

Before Babcock had returned from his second expedition, the Sun
said:

We understand that the conditions of annexation have been fully agreed upon
between Gen. Babcock, a confidential officer of Gen. Grant's staff, acting on the
part of the President, and the authorities of St. Domingo. . . .

It is to the credit of Gen. Grant that he has thus taken up the policy of
that statesman, Seward, and is carrying out his plan by adding the rich and im-
portant island to the United States ; for of course the annexation of the Spanish
part of Hayti must soon be followed by that of the French portion . . . and
it needs no prophet to assure us that long before the dawn of the twentieth cen-
tury, the banner of American unity will be respected as the national standard
through all the Antilles. 42

As a matter of fact Babcock had completed two treaties. He had ar-
ranged for the annexation of the Republic and for the lease of the Bay
of Samana. While he was there the United States Naval officers had
placed the American flag over the bay; Admiral Poor had threatened
the Haytian Government; and American ships had been used to convoy
Baez's troops. In addition the United States was to protect San Do-
mingo from Haytian or other foreign intervention while arrangements
were being completed. 43 When the Sun learned the terms of the treaty,
by which this Government should pay $1,500,000 to liquidate the Do-
minican debt, 44 and also of the "swindling" character of the an-
nexation, its interest rapidly declined. It finally denounced the treaty
outright:

It is true that the Baez Government is desirous of annexation ; so are the large
property-holders of the island the traders and the foreign residents there;
but it is by no means certain that the mass of the Dominican people have any
such desire. At all events, before the project is consummated, the vote of the
natives at large should be taken, and for the returns we should not rely on the
local officials, but send trustworthy commissioners to register the votes and see

41 Jan. 23, 1871.

42 Nov. 12, 1869.

48 Oberholtzer, II, 231.
44 Rhodes, VI, 349.

AMERICA; FIRST, LAST AND ALWAYS 333

that no compulsion is exercised on the people.

In the contest that may follow the annexation dishonestly consummated, the
Dominicans will have the sympathy of all nations that sympathy which men
instinctively feel for the weaker party and covert aid from the European pow-
ers whose policy they would be maintaining. ...

It is quite certain that our people wish to do what is right in this matter; but
then the Administration the Administration that truckles so disgracefully to
Spain may think to balance the account by acts of tyranny toward the Domin-
icans; or perhaps somebody's brother, or father, or son-in-law may wish to
make a little money out of the affair. Considering Mr. Fish's foreign policy so
far, nothing which he may do in that respect can astonish anyone. 45

When the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations made a majority
report adverse to the ratification of the treaty, 46 the Sun declared that
"All honest American citizens will be delighted to hear that the fraudu-
lent scheme for annexing St. Domingo without the consent of its people
is likely to be defeated." 47 Grant was justly criticized for his personal
solicitation of Senators. The arguments which he used were answered
in the Sun as follows:

Grant: That it will tend to the extirpation of slavery.

The Sun: Slavery was extirpated in St. Domingo long before it was abolished

in the United States.

Grant: That if we don't take St. Domingo, some European power will.
The Sun: This is a bugbear created for the occasion. England and France have

today more West India colonies than they want.
Grant: That St. Domingo is a weak power.
The Sun: This is a highwayman's argument.
Grant: That it commands the Caribbean Sea.
The Sun: This is a geographical error.

In conclusion the Sun said, "This St. Domingo annexation business will
only be remembered in history as an impudent fraud, in which a well-
meaning but indolent and weak President allowed himself to be en-
tangled." 48 J . .

On June 30th the Senate rejected the treaty. Sumner talked so freely
against the manner in which it had been negotiated that he won the
respect of the Sun, which tendered him the "thanks of the country.

Jan. 25, 1870.
40 Rhodes, VI, 349.

47 Mar. 16, 1870.

48 June 3, 1870.
4 July 2, 1870.

334 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

But Grant continued with "pig-headed obstinacy" to push the "foul
and odius San Domingo job." Although Congress refused to commit
itself to annexation, it gave him permission to appoint three commis-
sioners to investigate conditions on the island. The Sun commented:
"[They] are said to have agreed to make a report in fax or of annexing
that so-called Republic to the United States. This is a matter of
course." no

But when the commissioners brought back their favorable report,
it was impossible to obtain a two-thirds vote in the Senate or even a
majority in the House. In August the Sun said:

The President never did a wiser thing than when he apparently gave up the
whole job; but his recent action in soliciting private subscriptions to pay the
usurper Baez $150,000 and thus keep open the negotiation for the purchase
shows that he was not sincere, and that nothing short of his retirement to pri-
vate life will end his efforts to consummate the project/ 11

As a review of the San Domingo "swindle," the Sun published the
following editorial :

... the Ring first commenced operations in the guise of the Great American
West India Company. Its office was in this city at 5 Pine Street. Its officers
were Fabens, Cazneau, Kimball, Currier and others of San Domingo notoriety.
They managed to sell $160,000 worth of stock, and then closed their doors in
the faces of the purchasers. None of the outside stockholders ever got their
money back. . . .

While the sharpers were raising money through the sale of their copper stock
in New York, they had already scented a large stake in the Treasury of the
United States. This they proposed to gain through a lease of the Bay of Samana
to the Government or through the annexation of San Domingo. . .

Mr. Seward treated the scheme with scorn. He was willing, however, to lease
the Bay of Samana, and sent a commissioner to Baez with power to make the
lease. The commissioner found the New York sharpers on the spot ready to put
the money into their pockets, and he reported the fact to Mr. Seward. Thereupon
the Secretary abandoned the whole thing, and after that nobody dared whisper
annexation to him.

As soon as General Grant was inaugurated as President he seems to have
become an associate in this swindle and its most active agent. He sent Gen. Bab-
cock to San Domingo and leased the Bay of Samana for ten years at an annual
rent of $150,000 in gold. . . , 02

00 Mar. 23, 1871.

01 Aug. 4, 1871.
&2 Mar. 31, 1873.

AMERICA; FIRST, LAST AND ALWAYS 335

Sumner's last speech against the Dominican affair had revealed the
antagonism which existed between himself and Grant. When the Forty-
Second Congress met his name was not on the list prepared by the Re-
publican caucus. The Senate majority was in favor of dropping him.
The Sun demanded that they "restore Mr. Sumner," because he was
the "fittest man for the office":

And why is such a man now sacrificed by the Republican majority of the
Senate, the most of whom rose to their present positions after he had won fame
in the public councils? The avowed reason is that he differs with Gen. Grant
on the subject of the annexation of San Domingo to the United States.

This great wrong to Mr. Sumner may not elevate him to the Presidency, but
it will certainly put an end to the public career of Gen. Grant on the 4th of
March, 1872/' J

The Sun was less charitable to Motley, the Minister to Great Britain,
whom Grant asked to resign as a result of his quarrel with Sumner over
San Domingo. It called him "useless" and said that his whole case was
marked from first to last by striking and even ludicrous features:

The denouement of Mr. Motley's career as Minister to England is one of the
most curious and instructive incidents in our diplomatic history. . . .

We believe him fully when he says he tried his best to follow the instructions
of his government. But, really, the truth must be confessed; he did not know
enough to do it. ...

The President should not have appointed him. The Senate should not have
confirmed him. He was not a fit man for the post/' 1

In the fall of 1870, the Sun urged Senator Morton, whom it believed
would be our new minister to England, to proceed directly to that coun-
try and take up his duties. Motley had remained there until peremptorily
removed in December. This was no time for tarrying, the Sun said. If
the Alabama claims were ever to be settled it must be "now or never":

England is distracted at home by popular upheavings and by the unsettled
and disturbed state of Ireland. Abroad she has no friends save the Sultan of
Turkey. Her selfishness has disgusted all mankind, and it is difficult to say
whether the masses of the British people are more irritated against their ruling
classes, or the masses of the nations against the British Government.

Closely pressed by Russia in the East, England should be now made to pay us
a handsome indemnity for her ravages upon our commerce, or take the risk of

63 Mar. 10, 1871.

64 Jan. 12, 1871.

336 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

our coalition with the Czar in destroying her prestige in the Orient and her
empire in India. 55

However uneasy, Great Britain refused to submit the subject of
Canadian independence to the popular vote of the Dominion. Fish pro-
ceeded with negotiations, asking only for an expression of regret on
the part of England, an acceptable declaration of principles of maritime
neutrality, and the payment of claims/"' Through the aid of John Rose
a more amiable correspondence was begun. It was soon agreed that the
differences should be submitted to a Joint High Commission, which
should provide a mode of settlement and the machinery therefor. An-
nouncing this, the Sun said that "it is almost certain that the ultimate
effect of the High Commission created by Queen Victoria and Gen. Grant
will be a considerable loss to the American treasury.' 1 r ' 7 A few days
later it took a more hopeful view:

It is quite evident that England, in consenting to send over here half a dozen
able men, several of them specialists in the Alabama Controversy, to settle the
differences between the two nations, has committed herself to an adjustment
favorable to the American claims. The most active minded, an astute of the
foreign diplomatists at Washington, held that the concession of the Commission
involves all other concessions.

The British Government is fully aware of what is expected here; and, in de-
termining to have such a Commission, it has made up its mind to close all out-
standing controversies in a manner satisfactory to the United States.

But while the way is thus clear for a general squaring of existing accounts,
there are important future contingencies to be provided for also. Among these
is an agreement upon the course the two countries will hereafter take in regard
to future Alabama cases, and the consideration of existing defects in the laws
for the enforcement of international obligations. But more important than these
is the question of future Fenian raids upon the Canadian dominion. How are
new complications arising out of this fruitful source of irritation and embarrass-
ment to be hereafter avoided? It seems impossible to attain this important object
in any way but one. This is by final and complete separation of the Dominion
from the parent government. 58

By the Washington Treaty of May 24, 1871, a tribunal to settle the
American claim for damages was agreed upon. When the arbitrators

55 Sept. 28, 1870.

66 Feb. IS, 1871.

67 Ibid.

58 Feb. 24, 1871.

AMERICA; FIRST, LAST AND ALWAYS 337

met at Geneva, Bancroft Davis presented the Case of the United States.
He was one of Dana's pet anathemas. As the Albany Times said:

One of the most curious incidents of the journalism of the period is the per-
sistent manner in which the New York Sun iterates and reiterates, day after day,
and month after month, the charge against J. C. Bancroft Davis, that he be-
trayed the interests of the Erie Railroad Company, while he was one of its
Directors, for a bribe of $60,000 and that he is consequently unfit to hold any
office of trust. . . / >y

Various correspondents criticized this unjust treatment of Davis. One
man called the Sun's accusations "very bad taste, in fact ungentle-
manly." Other readers said it went too far in its vindictive feeling
and that the alleged evidences of Davis 's dishonesty which were quoted
did not sustain the charges. But Dana only attacked Davis more bit-
terly than ever. 01

Davis revived the indirect claims that Sumner had so forcibly pre-
sented. Again Great Britain was aroused to wrath, with which the Sun
sympathized:

It is a well settled principle both of English and American law that remote and
consequential damages cannot be recovered; . . . this sound rule of law and
policy has been disregarded. The Administration has proceeded like a village
pettifogger, who crowds into his complaint everything that he can conceive
against the adverse party, adding to what is just and well founded a thousand
things which he knows to be unjust and absurd, but which he thinks will lend
to it an appearance of additional importance. 62

The attempt to revive the indirect claims threatened to prevent a
settlement. But since both countries were anxious to make terms, the
arbitration was finally pushed to a successful conclusion. The United
States was awarded $15,500,000 in gold for damages done by the
Alabama, Florida, and Shenandoah. A few years later the Sun made some
strange and absurd charges :

The secret history of the treaty for the settlement of the Alabama Claims is
yet to be written. Many grave scandals connected with that matter have long
been floating about Washington. It is believed that large sums of money were
then placed where they would do the most good and that high social elements

69 Oct. 1, 1870.
00 Aug. 29, 1870.
iSept. 12, 1870.
2 Feb. 10, 1872.

338 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

were enlisted in this service at the capital, never before suspected of diplomatic
or other jobbery.

Schenck was one of the Commissioners, and knows all about the appliances
that were used to consummate a bargain, in which this government disgrace-
fully retreated from all its original demands, consented to cat humble pie, and
surrendered to Great Britain principles that the United States had always
asserted in connection with the duties of neutrals in time of war. . . .

For his services on this occasion, Schenck was rewarded with the mission to
St. James. . . . OJ

Another matter which the Sun claimed that Secretary of State Fish
handled without courage or intelligence was the case of the Virg'mius.
This steamer, flying the American flag was conveying men and arms to
the rebels in Cuba. Sighting her off Jamaica, Spaniards captured her and
towed her into the port of Santiago, where they shot her captain and
many of her crew and passengers. Fish attempted to secure the release of
those prisoners who remained alive, the return of the Virg'mius and suit-
able reparations. But Sickles, Minister at Madrid, lacked diplomatic
ability and it was necessary to transfer the negotiations to Washington.
The Virginius was eventually returned to the United States, and the sur-
vivors conveyed to New York. But because the owners had obtained their
American papers through perjury, the salute to the flag, demanded by
Fish, was dispensed with. 01 Dana scored the failure of the Secretary of
State to do his duty:

... it is interesting to contrast the threats with which Mr. Fish sets out
with the contemptible satisfaction he secures. For instance, on November 6, he
telegraphed to Gen. Sickles that "ample reparations will be demanded if Ameri-
can citizens have been wrongfully executed . . ."

And yet after all this, American citizens have been wrongfully executed and
no reparation has been obtained; while the restoration of the Virginius was per-
formed at a place and under circumstances that only aggravate the original
insult. And even the ceremony of saluting the flag has not been required because
evidence procured in behalf of Spain at great expense by Mr. Fish's son-in-law
was held by a venal Attorney-General sufficient to overthrow the character of
the Virginius and to brand her owner with perjury, although he had not been
allowed to be present and hear the rebuttal of this evidence. . . .

The sum of the whole matter is that fifty-three men, snatched from the deck
of an American vessel, which "Spain had no right to capture on the high seas"
were, to use Mr. Fish's own words, "brutally and barbarously murdered"; and

63 Feb. 8, 1876.

64 Latane, 500.

AMERICA; FIRST, LAST AND ALWAYS 339

that neither reparation, indemnity, nor any guarantee for the future has been
exacted. 05

As a result of the affair, Sickles resigned and Caleb Cushing, a man
of learning and distinction, was sent to Madrid to take his place. Dana
considered the change distinctly for the worse:

It is not surprising that the appointment of Mr. Caleb Cushing as Minister
to Spain should have been hailed by the Spanish newspapers in Cuba which
applauded the capture of the Virginius and the murder of her crew, as one emi-
nently fit to be made, nor that the righteous soul of Burriel should have been
gladdened by it. It is only fair to say that Mr. Cushing is eminently worthy of
all the admiration and confidence that those journals and that butcher can
lavish on him. If not exactly fit to be trusted by his own country, he is just
the kind of a man that a foreign nation, on the eve of a quarrel with it, would
choose. ...

Mr. Cushing is a conspicuous case of a man without principles and convic-
tions. ...

Since the accession of Grant to the Presidency Mr. Cushing has been a sort of
backstairs counselor of the Administration, and more particular of the Depart-
ment of State. He has furnished dispatches and opinions to order, for all of
which he has been paid handsomely, and is said to be enormously rich. . . . 60

Throughout the remainder of Grant's Administration Dana champi-
oned the cause of Cuba. Stories of Mexican raids and the robbery and
murder of American citizens along the border were reported, convincing
Dana that Mexico also should be annexed. But "the Administration
seems to look upon these outrages with comparative indifference," said
the Sun. Had we not a weak Government, its first step would be to extend
protection to all our citizens. 07 Yet Dana accused Grant of plotting a
war with Mexico, not only to satisfy his anti-Catholic feelings but to
assist in his third term drive. 68

On June 1, 1877, President Hayes was obliged to direct General Ord
to pursue Mexicans who invaded our territory. The Sun complained as
bitterly of the "excessive activity" of the Hayes Administration as it
had of the "comparative indifference" of Grant. Hayes, it said, was anx-
ious to bring on a war for the benefit of a ring of annexationists :

fls Jan. 7, 1874.
60 Jan. 8, 1874
07 Apr. 28, 1875.
es Jan. 5, 1876.

340 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

. . . Hayes, discarding any guise of moderation, is raiding into Mexican
towns and laying hands upon Mexican civil authorities. His raiders are now
apparently ordered to go everywhere . . . ; if opposed they are to sweep the
Mexican troops from their path.

Such outrages are without precedent in our history as a nation. Playing into
the hands of the Annexation Ring and the Bogus Claim Ring, Mr. Hayes' con-
duct is directly calculated to force war upon Mexico, as if with the view of
wrenching from her five or six of her border states. . . .

Are the people ready for Hayes' war of annexation? 9

After the recognition of President Porfirio Diaz, the raids continued.
The Sun said that most of these troubles were "fabricated for effect, and
to excite prejudice in order to promote a sinister and selfish policy." It
also accused Secretary Evarts of using Mexico as a political card to be
played as a "desperate lead." "They will not scruple to bring on a war,
for they believe that any war, no matter what the cause, must be popular
at this time; that the prospect of acquiring territory will divert attention
from the Great Fraud; and that Hayes will gain popularity at the South
if he emulates the example of Polk and acquires another slice of Mexican
territory." 70 It urged Congress to investigate and to condemn Hayes
for his policy.

The career of Elaine as Secretary of State under Garfield was short
and, according to Dana, would have been better had it been shorter.
"The more we learn of Mr. Blame's performance during his occupation
of the State Department, the less reason we see for regretting that his
tenure of office was brief." 71 The Sun assumed that Elaine had a pre-
dilection for suppressing correspondence. Upon his retirement it accused
him of holding back certain diplomatic dispatches and adroitly selecting
others which would exhibit his conduct in the Peruvian controversy in
the most favorable light. 72

On November 29, 1881, Elaine had extended to the Latin-American
republics an invitation to a general congress, November, 1882, for the
purpose of discussing the methods of preventing war. "Our people have
reasons to severely condemn the general policy announced in the circular
letter by which the Spanish American republics were invited to take part
in a conference at Washington," the Sun said. The reasons advanced
would lead one to believe that all of Dana's dreams of expansion and

69 Aug. 22, 1878.

70 Sept. 9, 1878.

71 Jan. 17, 1882.

72 Dec. 14, 1881.

AMERICA; FIRST, LAST AND ALWAYS 341

industrial penetration had been dropped, and that he had become an
isolationist. The Sun said later that the call for the Pan-American Con-
gress "contemplated a species of confederacy and protectorate which
would have plunged us into serious complications, and might have ulti-
mately led to annexation, a result which nobody in this country desires."
No Spanish-American republic except Chile would be a desirable ac-
quisition "and Chili has been permanently alienated by the Minister
whom Mr. Blaine saw fit to send to Lima."

Yet the Sun remained as anxious for expansion as ever. In an editorial
"Annexation the True Remedy," it again set forth reasons why Canada
should become part of the United States. Complaining of the growing in-
difference to the Dominion, it continued:

But that indifference will soon be changed into deep and active interest when
the conditions are altered, that is when Canada obtains admission to the Union,
as it must some day, we shall look with pride on our new Northern States, and
watch their development with affectionate solicitude.

The argument which Mr. Goldwin Smith used for the removal of the tariff
is a strong argument for the union of the two countries for the annexation of
Canada to the United States. They "not only lie close to each other, they project
into each other; they are dovetailed together." Nature demands that they
should be one, and their common interests enforce the demand. 73

The Sun was proud that America was the refuge of oppressed peoples,
It welcomed all races, including the Japanese and Chinese. When Dana
became editor, the "heathen Chinese" were already antagonizing people
on the Pacific Coast. To those who viewed the continuance of immigra-
tion under the Burlingame Treaty distrustfully, the Sun replied that they
lacked judgment:

The essence of wealth of this country is its skilled labor, and no addition to
that labor can result in anything but benefit to the community. For every pro-
ducer of one commodity becomes a consumer of many other commodities and
the more he earns by his own toil the more he has to spend m buying the prod-
ucts of the toil of others. 74

It advanced other arguments. "Before we proceed to decide whether
or not we will permit the Chinese to settle among us, we had better first
consider whether we have the moral right to do so." 75 It also believed

73 Mar. 31, 1884.

74 June 1,1869.

75 July 12, 1869.

342 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

that the South might find advantages in an influx of Chinese labor. Dana
pointed out the inconsistency of the United States, if, while eager for the
privileges of residing, traveling and trading in China, we adopted a
policy of restriction in this country. 70

What Dana's attitude toward this problem might have been had he
lived in San Francisco is indicated by a Sun statement that the influx of
European workers into "this port" will, "ere long greatly reduce the
existing rates of wages, which are now considered too small, unless some
system of emigration from this city can be devised." 7T Distance from
the problem was not conducive to an understanding and for the most
part East and West disagreed on the subject.

Subsequently a commission was sent to China to secure a modification
of the Burlingame Treaty, and in Arthur's Administration a bill was
passed restricting the immigration of skilled and unskilled Chinese labor
for ten years. This inaugurated a new policy in America and a gradual
change in attitude of the Eastern press accompanied it. More frequent
mention of imported Communism, Anarchism and undesirables appeared
in the Sun. Although Dana argued against certain immigration bills,
calling them "fraudulent," "ineffective," or "humbugs," he came to be-
lieve that the influx of foreigners was against the interest of American
labor.

When Ferdinand de Lesseps' plan for building a canal was made
known in Paris, the New Granada agreement, now binding upon Colom-
bia, and the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty were reviewed to determine their
exact meaning. Early in 1880, Congress asked Hayes for all correspond-
ence on Isthmian transit. 78 It was the President's opinion that either the
canal should be under American control or there should be no canal. 70
The Sun argued that this was a foolish attitude:

If the commercial world has come to the conclusion that a ship canal across
the Isthmus of Darien is necessary, that canal must sooner or later be con-
structed. If we say to the world, "No canal shall be constructed which we do
not control," will not the great commercial nations reply: "Very well then,
construct the canal. We want a canal. The commerce of the world demands it;
our interests demand it; progress demands it. You cannot play the dog in the
manger. If you think that you must control the canal, go right ahead and dig it.

76 July 22, 1869.

77 June 9, 1869.

Latane, 306-322 ; Oberholtzer, IV, 706-715.
Oberholtzer, IV, 716; Latane, 518.

AMERICA; FIRST, LAST AND ALWAYS 343

All we ask is to be allowed to share its commercial advantages on equal terms.
All we want is to shorten ocean voyages and lessen their risks. If you want
any advantages of a different sort, we don't know that we shall object. But the
canal we must have, and you must either construct it or allow somebody else
to do it."

It also asserted that no great power would seek to quarrel with
America. "France, Germany, and Great Britain will cheerfully recognize
our right to guard our interests in the Isthmus, and will readily admit
the force of our claims consequent upon our proximity to the locality,"
but they would never allow us to stand in the way of commercial prog-
ress. 80

In May, 1880, the House Foreign Committee reported a joint resolu-
tion for the abrogation of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. The Sun said it
was well it should be annulled "if Congress is too indolent or ignorant to
reprove its violations by Mr. R. B. Hayes." It reported that the President
"by a petty trick" proposed to trace titles to footholds on the Isthmus
through alleged private owners, and said he was seeking "to hurt the
de Lesseps canal by a mysterious counter movement." He was prying into
all parts of the Chiriqui lagoon, sounding, surveying and landing with-
out consulting the local authorities or informing them of his purpose. 81
The Sun reported that Ernest Diechman, Minister to Colombia, had
set out for Bogota carrying "explanations which would remove all ob-
stacles to the annexation of Colombian territory." But since he succeeded
"in creating an impression considerably more unfavorable than the one
he was deputed to dispel" such hope must be abandoned. 82

It was thought the de Lessep project would be finished in eight years
and much interest was aroused in this country. Blaine sent Great Britain
a statement of our position which entirely disregarded the Clayton-Bul-
wer Treaty. She answered reminding us of the agreement. Later Secre-
tary Frelinghuysen reiterated the arguments set forth by his predecessor:
the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty was a contract for the accomplishment of a
specific purpose; Great Britain had herself violated it in taking posses-
sion of British Honduras therefore the treaty was void. Furthermore,
he invoked the Monroe Doctrine. 83 On June 7, 1882, the Sun joyfully
announced that the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty had been repudiated in the

so Apr. 8, 1880.
si May 9, 1880.

82 May 19, 1880.

83 Latane, 323-524.

344 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

United States. Evidently, in Dana's opinion, the sanctity of a treaty de-
pended upon who violated it:

Mr. Elaine, whose imperfect knowledge of international law and diplomatic
history was demonstrated by his action in the South American embroilment and
the Guatemala boundary question, committed the blunder of admitting in one
of his dispatches, the present validity of the convention negotiated by Mr. Clay-
ton and Sir Henry Bulwer in 1850, while he urged the Britisli Government to
consent to a modification of its provisions. This was a grave mistake for it left
us without a remedy, provided Lord Granville, as probably he would do, should
reject Mr. Elaine's proposition. A more careful examination of the text of the
convention above named, of the circumstances under which it was concluded,
and of the action of the British Government under it, has convinced the present
Administration that the obligations of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty are no longer
binding on us, and that it is our true policy to clearly and firmly proclaim the
fact.

A little later the Frelinghuysen-Savala Treaty with Nicaragua was
drafted, under which the Clayton-Bulwer agreement was deliberately
violated. Dana opposed this, however; probably because it was intended
to benefit a group of Americans who had organized the Maritime Canal
Company in which U. S. Grant was interested. When Cleveland came into
office in 1885 he withdrew the treaty from the Senate on the grounds
that it would bring us into "entangling alliances with foreign states."
The Sun said, "Thanks to Mr. Bayard, and the great majority of the
Democratic Senators, the Nicaragua Canal Treaty in its present sus-
picious form, may be looked upon as dead." H4

In discussing the necessity of Government aid to de Lesseps the Sun
said, "France will be almost irresistibly impelled to seek a degree of
control over the Isthmus of Panama which would be counter to our
national interests and our treaty rights." It added that one fact was
certain America would never allow the French flag to fly over
Panama. 8n England became the largest stockholder in the Suez Canal
and what England did under Beaconsfield, "France may do tomorrow
under Boulanger." "Our Congress had not a day to lose." 8G In 1889,
the Sun praised President Harrison for the stand which he took against
any French control of the Isthmian channel:

84 Jan. 31, 1885.

85 May 2, 1888.

86 Jan. 9, 1889.

AMERICA; FIRST, LAST AND ALWAYS 345

How well timed was the reference to the Panama Canal in Mr. Harrison's
inaugural address is made clear by Thursday's proceedings in the French Cham-
ber of Deputies. The new President declared that we could not permit a Euro-
pean Government to assume such relations to an American interoceanic water-
way as would tend to the assertion of control. . . , 87

The fisheries articles of the Treaty of Washington were abrogated in
1885 and American fisherman no longer had the privilege of inshore
fishing, bait-purchasing and trans-shipment of cargoes which they had
previously enjoyed. 88 Once more the Sun's solution was the annexation
of Canada. It reminded its readers "that in all the great crises of our
history, England has been our most active, aggressive, and dangerous
enemy!" 85> At another time it said that England was alarmed for the
future of Canada, but refused to accept the only possible remedy for
"the dry rot from which it is suffering." "Canada must come into the
American Union or starve out in the cold." 5)0

Cleveland and his Secretary of State planned to negotiate a treaty
with England. Canada and Great Britain were willing to co-operate.
Therefore, despite the opposition of New England leaders, a joint com-
mission was arranged. Men, cognizant of the fishing problems and ac-
quainted with international law were appointed. By February, 1888,
the Chamberlain-Bayard Treaty had been drafted. But before it had
gone to the Senate, where it was to be rejected, the Sun attacked Cleve-
land's part in its making:

The small matter of the Commercial rights of the fishermen of Marblehead
and Gloucester . . . ceased to trouble an Executive whose prophetic vision
grasped the whole future of a continent.

The object of the President's pet scheme of a joint commission was no longer
to settle the fishery dispute. It was to negotiate a broad and lasting treaty of
reciprocity or commercial union with Canada. ...

With this loftier object in view, nothing more was said about the specific com-
mercial rights of the fishermen. ...

But meanwhile President Cleveland had apparently discovered that the cher-
ished vision of a reciprocal free trade treaty was not to be realized. The tariff
was a matter which must be settled by Congress, not by the Executive . .
This cold fact was what interfered with the plan of Mr. Cleveland and Sir

87 Mar 10, 1889.

* Nevins, Allan, Grover Cleveland, 405.

Feb. 26, 1888.

90 Apr. 6, 1888.

346 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

Charles Tupper to overhaul the entire commercial relations of the two countries.
And in reaching at the shadow of reciprocity the actual bone of the fishermen's
rights has been dropped into the depths. The surrender has been made in vain. 91

Two days after the Chamberlain-Bayard Treaty was defeated, Cleve-
land sent Congress a message in which he recommended legislative action
conferring upon the Executive power to suspend the operation of regula-
tions permitting the transit of goods, wares, and merchandise in bond
between the United States and Canada. 92 The Sun interpreted this mes-
sage as a belligerent step, deliberately taken against Canada for the
purpose of putting "the nose of the cocky Dominion upon the grind-
stone." It praised the message. 03

Toward the end of Cleveland's first term, Congress passed an act
authorizing the President to invite the Latin-American republics to a
Conference in Washington in October, 1889. When the time came, Har-
rison was President and Elaine Secretary of State. Choosing between
the "pro-British" Cleveland and the Anglophobe, Blaine, the Sun pre-
ferred the latter. Blaine, it announced, "would pursue a bold, original
definite policy, popular with the American nation, appealing strongly
to imagination and sentiment, and securing results of permanent value."
"In what direction will our flag first move northward into Canada,
southward across the Rio Grande or to some of the Antilles, or west-
ward over the ocean which, in ten or twenty years, will be the highway
of a new and great American commerce?" 4

Blaine welcomed the delegates on October 2, 1889. The conference
proposed a treaty for freer commercial relations and the settlement of
all difficulties by conciliation and arbitration. When its work was con-
cluded, the Sun said, "The time is far distant when even partial reci-
procity between the countries of this hemisphere as regards the free
interchange of their respective products may be expected. So, too, the
establishment of a common monetary system will follow rather than pre-
cede the creation of more intimate relations." 5 After the McKinley Bill
was passed, incorporating reciprocity provisions, the Sun was more
optimistic but as usual it was guided by nationalism:

91 Apr. 24, 1888.
92 Nevins, Cleveland, 412.

93 Aug. 24, 1888.

94 Nov. 14, 1889.

95 Apr. 21, 1890.

AMERICA; FIRST, LAST AND ALWAYS 347

The full purpose and ultimate significance of the reciprocity programme con-
ceived by Mr. Elaine did not at first reveal themselves to the public mind. Even
the commercial and industrial advantages derivable from such a policy were
not instantly and clearly appreciated. Still less has the political significance of
the scheme, the most capacious ever formed by an American statesman since
Thomas Jefferson planned the purchase of Louisiana, been at once distinctly
recognized. Yet a little reflection must convince us that under the guidance of
Secretary Elaine we have entered on a course whose fixed and by no means dis-
tant goal is the acquirement for the United States of not only commercial but
political ascendance throughout the Western hemisphere. 96

Under Elaine the United States was given an opportunity to annex the
Hawaiian Islands. The owners of rich sugar plantations there found their
profits cut by the McKinley Tariff Act and wanted to benefit from the
American bounty. They instigated a revolution and succeeded in de-
posing Queen Liliuokalani. The American Minister, John Stevens, did
all in his power to assist the overthrow by recognizing the Provisional
Government while the Queen was in her palace, by raising the American
flag and proclaiming an American protectorate. The Sun said that
Stevens had only done, in the interest of Hawaiian peace and order, what
presently must have been done in the name of a wise and patriotic policy
by our Government at Washington. 97 It exerted its influence to effect-
ing the annexation of Hawaii :

Mr. Elaine lived almost to see the day when the question of the ultimate pos-
session of the Sandwich Island, the key to the North Pacific, must be promptly
decided by the action or apathy of our government. . . .

The question presented to Congress by the arrival of the Hawaiian delegates
is not a question of partisan politics but of national opportunity and manifest
destiny. 98

The Sun pointed out that it would be as easy to frame a "satisfactory
and constitutional government" for Hawaii "as a part of the United
States" as it had been "in the case of the District of Columbia or Alaska."
"The character of the population of Hawaii, therefore, has nothing to
do with the question presented to Congress." " It dwelt upon the superi-
ority of Hawaii over Pearl Harbor as a repair and coaling station for

oe May 9, 1891.
07 Feb. 11, 1893.
os Jan. 30, 1893.
oo Feb. 7, 1893.

348 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

American ships, especially in time of war. 100 It quoted Capt. A. T.
Mahan, one of the "foremost of American experts in naval strategy,"
to prove that Hawaii was indispensable to the success of the navy in
case of conflict in the Far East. Then it added:

. . . but incomparably more important is the general principle which the
American people, through no desire of their own, are called upon to settle for
all time. This country is suddenly brought to the parting of the ways, and must
choose between them. One leads to a restricted, the other to a broad and lofty
destiny. . . .

Indeed, the very fact that the islands might be seized by a possible enemy
constitutes so serious a menace to our Pacific coast and our Pacific trade, that
this, although a negative and hypothetical consideration, should be enough to
decide the pending question. . . . 1()1

But the irregular way in which the United States had assisted the
insurgents had immediately provoked criticism. In answer to the pro-
tests of the Evening Post, the Sun said, "That Mugwump organ is always
opposed to any policy of procedure which expresses the American senti-
ment and tends to strengthen it." "The respect rather than the good will
of foreign powers is what we want." 101>

Cleveland, opposed to the annexation of Hawaii, sent James H. Blount
to obtain accurate information regarding the causes of revolution and
report the facts of the case. 1()>! Upon his arrival in Hawaii he discovered
the flag still flying and United States Marines on duty. The Sun soon
reported :

The flag is down and the quasi protectorate established at the time of the
revolution by Minister Stevens on his own responsibility is at an end.

But is it likewise true that the President's mind is made up to defeat annexa-
tion if he can, and that the repudiation of Mr. Stevens' act is only an incident in
the execution of a predetermined and fixed policy adverse to the ultimate ac-
quisition of these islands by the United States? . . .

How the present Administration could do otherwise than order the flag down
is not clearly apparent. Minister Stevens' unauthorized act, which the ceremony
of April 1, repudiated, had previously been disavowed even by Gen. Harrison's
administration. . . .

But although the flag, which never ought to have been raised in the manner
employed by Mr. Stevens, is down again, and although the marines . . . are
aboard ship again, the American protectorate, in fact, remains. ... It applies

100 peb 4, 1893

101 Mar. 1, 1893.

102 Feb. 2, 1893.

103 Nevins, Cleveland, 552-553.

AMERICA; FIRST, LAST AND ALWAYS 349

to every foreign power. "Hands Off" is the Cleveland policy as conveyed by
Mr. Blount. If this is not protection, what is! 1(H

Cleveland and Secretary Gresham concluded that the treaty should
be abandoned and efforts were made to reinstate the Queen. It was a
decision much against public sentiment; and the Sun, asking how Cleve-
land expressed the sympathy of true Americans for a people struggling
for political emancipation, answered:

By holding the representatives of the new Republic in suspense and ignorance
of his intentions, until he had perfected in secret a plan for the destruction of
their Republican Government, and had issued orders for the restoration of the
monarchy they had overthrown and then by thrusting back upon that people
the dethroned Queen, saying: "Take her, your legitimate ruler, or be shot down
by American guns." 1<ir>

The predicament into which the President thrust himself by his
"Hawaiian performance" (that is, by his futile expressions of a desire
for the restoration of the Queen) delighted Dana. But Cleveland's
"ridiculous" moral sympathy for the colored potentate, who had spoken
of revenging herself by decapitations, was not as funny as his final re-
solve to place the matter in the hands of Congress:

There is a Malvolio-like complacency blended with a lofty compassion in
Mr. Cleveland's announcement to Congress that he is inclined to treat leniently
the present rulers of Hawaii and their supporters, when they capitulate, because,
"though not entitled to extreme sympathy, they have been led to their present
predicament of revolt against the Government of the Queen" by Mr. Stevens.

Isn't it awful, this "predicament of revolt" against a Queen? Mr. Cleveland s
own predicament of trying to restore a throne, and being forced to back down,
is nothing in comparison.

The American people owe little to Mr. Cleveland for his Hawaiian perform-
ance, yet they are indebted to him for some additional knowledge of Queen
Liliu'okalani. It appears from his message that the reason why he has not yet
restored this esteemed contemporary to power, is because she would not agree to
be merciful to the misguided people who dethroned her! That is the kind of
Queen she is; and it was for this savage potentate that Mr. Cleveland has-been
trying to put down a Government, which, as Admiral Skerrett declared, before
he was superseded, has given Hawaii the best rule it ever had. This is the out-
come of Mr. Cleveland's misuse of his authority as President up to the present
time; and it causes him to plume himself on "honor, integrity and morality.

10* Apr. 15, 1893.
105 NOV. 13, 1893.
loo Dec. 21, 1893.

350 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

In a more serious vein, the Sun said, "Nothing was needed to complete
the history of the Policy of Infamy but a direct, definite, and formal
confession from the President of the United States, of his complicity in
the plot to overthrow a friendly Government in diplomatic relations with
our own, and to re-establish a rotten monarchy in the Hawaiian Islands."
Dana advised impeachment. 107

In an editorial entitled "Shame on the Administration!" the Sun an-
nounced that although the new Government was firmly established, Mr.
Cleveland refused to recognize it because of his "personal spite and
stubbornness." 108 One week later it reversed this announcement, and
congratulated Charles A. Boutelle for his success "in forcing the admini-
stration into a tardy and ungracious recognition of the Hawaiian Re-
public." When in 1897, the treaty for the annexation of Hawaii was
signed and its ratification seemed assured, the Sun exclaimed, "All hail,
Hawaii! All honor to President McKinley!" 1U5>

When the settlement of the Venezuela dispute was pending Dana
again advised his familiar remedy : annex the territory. 1 ] " But he evinced
greater interest in the question as to whether or not America had a right
to invoke the Monroe Doctrine in disputes between South American
countries. In 1870, the Sun had said that Monroe's statement had been
"a harmless little swagger, indicating nothing." nl But in March, 1895,
it asked :

Will it be said that we are not parties to the quarrel, and have no business to
interpose? We must, then, abjure the Monroe Doctrine, which was originally
promulgated, and has ever since been asserted, upon grounds identical with
those presented by the actual high-handed aggression on a sister American re-
public. It was because the European powers united in the Holy Alliance were
disposed to aid Spain to recover her revolted American colonies that President
Monroe in 1823 made the memorable declaration. . . , 112

Venezuela, unable to defend herself against Great Britain, asked for
arbitration. In February, 1895, the Sun announced that " the resolution
passed by the House recommending the settlement of the boundary dis-

07 Jan. 9, 1895.

08 Aug 7, 1894.

09 June 17, 1897. Dana continued to advocate ratification of the treaty until July 25
when Congress adjourned without taking any action. Sun, Jul. 14, 16, 17, 18, 20, 24, 1897.

10 Mar 6, 1895.
" Dec. 7, 1870.
12 Mar. 12, 1895.

AMERICA; FIRST, LAST AND ALWAYS 351

pute between British Guiana and Venezuela by a resort to arbitration,
contains sound advice to England." 113

The Sim's advice to fall back upon the Monroe Doctrine was to be
carried out. After the death of Gresham, Richard Olney had continued
the drafting of a statement on the Venezuela affair. The message, eventu-
ally sent to Lord Salisbury, intimated that separation by distance and
water made "any permanent political union between a European and
an American state unnatural and inexpedient." It defined the Monroe
Doctrine in a broader sense than ever before and stated that the United
States had come to the point where it must interfere. It demanded a defi-
nite decision as to whether Great Britain would or would not submit the
dispute to impartial arbitration. Lord Salisbury replied November 26,
refusing either to accept the new interpretation given the Monroe Doc-
trine or to submit the matter to arbitration.

In his message of December 17, 1895, Cleveland maintained that if
the Monroe Doctrine was valid in any sense, it applied to all European
attempts to extend their system of government on this continent. He
claimed Great Britain should have submitted the dispute to arbitration,
but since she had not done so, it was the duty of the United States to
determine the true boundary line. He asked Congress for authority to
appoint a commission. He was fully alive to the responsibility incurred
and the consequences that might follow. 134

Dana was delighted and entitled a leading editorial "Venezuela and
War." Stating that "no jingo has overstepped the mark now toed by the
Hon. Grover Cleveland," the Sun continued:

Probably the situation presented in President Cleveland's message to Con-
gress on the question of Venezuela will lose its seeds of conflict before any actual
clash between the United States and England.

If the eccentric statesman . . . who now occupies the White House had
dealt with the Venezuela affair from the beginning in the creditable spirit shown
in his message it is a question whether the situation would not now be satisfac-
tory and without danger of war. We cannot say. ...

Mr. Cleveland has borrowed a new uniform, but all the same it is the Ameri-
can uniform, and the country will follow the man who wears it. For the Monroe
Doctrine, as enunciated in the President's message, the people of the United
States are solid and enthusiastic. And the continuation of this interesting and
important business by the Admininstration will be watched and sustained with

11* Jones, Robert L., History of the Foreign Policy of the United States, 478-479 , Kevins,
Cleveland, 639-641 ; Latane, 479-488.

352 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

an unfaltering spirit of pride and determination to uphold the interests of the
United States.

Let the good work go on! 116

Congress hastened to sanction the commission. But within less than a
month the Sun recorded that "Numerous English observers and their
friends, our Mugwumps, have made an immense display of highly moral
indignation over the alleged bellicosity of President Cleveland's mes-
sage." 116 Dana seemed as pleased with this state of affairs as he was
with the message itself.

"Why England Has Come Down" titled an editorial, explaining the
change which took place in British sentiment. The English had no more
desire for war with this country than did Cleveland's critics in America.
But the Sun claimed the change in attitude was due primarily to the
stand taken by Cleveland and Olney of our will and purpose to enforce
the Monroe Doctrine against British aggression "even to the extremity
of war." Dana gave most of the credit to Olney:

Here is a gentleman, regarded until quite recently as a shrewd corporation
lawyer and an expert at lawn tennis, who suddenly develops qualities such as
mark the heroes of whom nations are proud. He has attempted and achieved
the thing that seemed impossible. He has reversed the whole foreign policy of the
Administration. He has blotted out the ignominy of his predecessor's record of
subservience and surrender. . . .

He has mastered a will that was supposed to break every time before bending,
and with no beating of drums, but, we are sure with the profound inner satis-
faction, has marched the President back into the American camp, where the
headquarters of an American President properly are. 117

Before a final report was made by the commission, the United States
and Great Britain agreed upon a treaty which bound the two nations to
refer all their disputes for the next five years to a tribunal or arbitration.
In January, 1897, Cleveland submitted the Olney-Pauncefote Treaty
to the Senate with a message of approval. 118 England accepted it with
alacrity. The Mugwumps led a spirited campaign of approval, but not
Dana's Sun.

Blatantly contradicting itself, the Sun said that arbitration "is not
the ideal achievement of statemanship," and that the theory of arbitra-

115 Dec. 18, 1895.

116 Jan. 10, 1896.

117 Jan. 9, 1896.

118 Nevins, Cleveland, 719.

AMERICA; FIRST, LAST AND ALWAYS 353

tion afforded "no guarantee of practical justice." It believed that "war
between the two countries is scarcely conceivable," 119 and inquired if
this were Olney's bribe tendered "to induce Lord Salisbury to arbitrate
England's controversy with Venezuela." 12 It was "consummately self-
ish" on the part of the President and his Secretary to attempt to get
the measure of "superficial and sentimental" glory too hastily given,
while "their successors would reap the shame of its failure." 121 After
the Senate had "finished the melancholy process of amending the Olney-
Pauncefote Treaty," the Sun said: "As now left for the final vote on
ratification or rejection the Olney-Pauncefote Treaty is practically noth-
ing more than a declaration, in treaty form, that the United States will
in the future arbitrate with Great Britain when it is disposed so to do." 122

Six weeks later it was defeated. The Sun justified the Senate's action
on the ground that the compact was "full of dangers to American inter-
ests." Nor was there the slightest prospect, it thought, that the attempt
to make a general arbitration treaty between England and America
would be renewed, "for a time at least." 123 Democratic satisfaction that
Dana supported Cleveland in the Venezuela dispute with "ungrudging
praise" 1L ' 4 was lessened by his hostility toward the spirit of conciliation
which grew out of it.

Dana never relinquished his dream of annexing Canada and Cuba.
The "decline" of Canada under British rule was discussed at intervals
as long as he edited the Sun. The cause of Cuba received greater space.
Failing to promote aggressive action against Spain, the Sun advocated
the purchase of Cuba in 1888. In 1895, the outbreak of a new and final
revolution on the island brought the subject into prominence.

All the reasons which had caused this country to be interested in the
revolution of 1868 still operated. The Sun asked, "Why should these
people ... be taxed to the amount of millions of dollars every year
for the enrichment of Spain? Why should their aspirations for liberty
under a republic be crushed, generation after generation?"

These things are anomalous. They are immoral and cruel. Their existence
ought not to be protracted. . . .

"o Jan. 13, 1897.
i* Jan. 21, 1897.

121 Jan. 23, 1897.

1 22 Apr. 2, 1897.

1 23 May 12, 1897.

124 Mitchell, E. P., Memoirs of an Editor, 330.

354 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

At the opening of our century there were ominous manifestations there. In
recent years there have been outbreaks again and again; and now, once more,
we have news of an uprising and of encounters with the Spanish troops and of
the hurried preparations of the Spanish authorities for a serious conflict.

That Cuba is bound to be free we have not a doubt. It cannot be held in per-
petual bondage by Spain. . . . 12S

In July, 1895, Cleveland issued a proclamation which admitted a
state of rebellion on the island, but did not recognize the belligerent
status of the insurgents. The coast was patrolled for filibusters and
every attempt was made to maintain neutrality. The Sun urged that some
official reply be given to the present Spanish program of "butchery and
blood." 12G It continually informed its readers that the insurgents were
on the point of victory.

In April, Congress adopted a concurrent resolution recognizing Cuban
belligerency. "Yet ten to one/' the Sun said, "the division of this vote
doesn't adequately represent the feelings of Americans. They are for
Cuba's deliverance from the tyranny of Spain by one thousand to
one." 127 The Sun regretted that it was not a joint resolution. "Then
our recognition of the Cubans as belligerents would have become a
fact. For every additional day that such recognition is delayed there is
a grievous addition to the crimes against humanity perpetrated by the
Spaniards." 1<2S

Cleveland's last annual message reviewed the case. He maintained that
this Government was in no way anxious to interfere in the rights and
interests of Spain, but if the conflict were not terminated the United
States would be forced to take action. 129 This was editorialized in the
Sun as "The President's Programme Postponement and Escape"
which it called, "postponement till tbe McKinley kalends, so far as the
Cleveland Administration is concerned." 13

Public sympathy with Cuba increased. Soon after the President's
message, the Cameron resolution was reported from the Committee on
Foreign Affairs. 131 It declared that the independence of the Republic of
Cuba "is hereby acknowledged by the United States of America." 132

125 Feb. 28, 1895.

126 Sept. 21, 1895.

127 Apr. 7, 1896.
"8 Apr. 19, 1896.
129 Jones, 312.
i 80 Dec. 8, 1896.
l Dec. 9, 1896.
" 2 Dec. 11, 1896.

AMERICA; FIRST, LAST AND ALWAYS 355

Then came a coup by Olney. In an emphatic statement he informed a
newspaper interviewer what such a resolution meant. The response ac-
corded him in the press was almost unanimously against the resolution.
The Sun explained Olney's action as intended to delay the passage of a
joint resolution, which Cleveland would never sign. "Impeachment would
be impractical/' it added, "even if Congress were disposed to waste am-
munition on dead ducks." 133

The Presidential campaign of 1896 tended to focus interest else-
where and when McKinley assumed office there was hope of a peaceful
settlement. 134 But Dana must have seen the trend. In May, the Sun
anticipated that "The freeing of Cuba from the curse of her oppressive
and exhausting transatlantic domination will form a chapter of the most
shining order in the annals of American Presidents." 135

Dana died in October, 1897, but not without winning the Cubans
deepest love and gratitude. Three days after his death the Council of the
Cuban Revolutionary Party issued an appeal to all friends of Cuba to
attend a memorial meeting at Chickering Hall, and caused the following
statement to be published in the paper that was no longer Dana's Sun:

The death of Charles A. Dana is for the Cubans a national loss. We mourn
him as we should mourn one of the gallant soldiers of our republic. Faithful and
tireless in his advocacy of our sacred cause, since our first great revolution
against Spain in 1868, time and age never abated his love for Cuba. His mighty
pen was always at the service of our struggling people. 136

Cuba became free and her independence was established. In an in-
terior town called Camaguey stands the Charles A. Dana Plaza, named
in honor of the American editor who so ably championed the cause of
Cuban freedom. Mitchell tells us that "Mr. Dana's wide range of in-
terests covered during one time, or another of his career, many and
various enthusiasms of partisanship, affection or hatred. His services
to the Cuban liberties were real and unselfish." 187

las Dec. 23, 1896.
13* Jones, 313.
8 May 18, 1897.

m Pamphlet! July, 1915, on the occasion of a "Farewell Dinner to the Old Sun Building

CHAPTER XIV

SUN ECONOMICS

IN 1868 a quarrel between Cornelius Vanderbilt and Daniel Drew for
possession of the Erie Railroad indicated a trend toward monopoly.
Dana went so far as to suggest that if the Erie Railroad should become
a Vanderbilt machine for levying tribute the State should run a parallel
competing line as a "perpetual guaranty against railroad monopoly." 1
This was the nearest Dana's Sun ever came to advocating state owner-
ship of public utilities. By 1869, when the last rail of the Union Pacific
was laid, his paper had taken on new characteristics which endeared
it to journalists and lowered it in the estimation of conservative and high-
minded people.

The Sun approved of the Government's liberal assistance to the Union
Pacific and Central Pacific Companies. It pointed out that the land along
the rails had doubled in value, being worth more than it otherwise would
have been for fifty years." But the accomplishment definitely marked
the new era. The cry was for "vaster and vaster combinations" and Dana
saw the necessity of measures to prevent selfish ownership of capital. In
1869 he argued that "if we make as many new roads as possible along
the great line of eastward and westward travel, it will eventually render
it impossible for them all to be combined under a single head." >{ Was it
possible the mighty Sun would prove unable to gear its economic philos-
ophy to the high-powered machine age upon which the United States
was entering?

Serious evils attended the rapid business expansion. Railroad barons
needed capital for construction and neglected the completed roads and
stockholders. The New York Central, with gross earnings of some 12
millions or 14 millions of dollars annually, could divide barely six per
cent per annum upon a capital of 24 million; the Erie, earning about the
same in gross, for the past two years had made no dividends upon its
common stock and now required some $8,000,000 fresh capital for re-

1 Mar. 23, 1868.

2 May 8, 1869.

3 Feb. 9, 1869.

SUN ECONOMICS 357

pairs. Others were reported in a similar condition. The Sun asked
"whether this process is ever to stop, and whether our roads will ever
be able to close their construction accounts and defray the cost of re-
newals out of current earnings without absorbing the whole of them?" 4
Outrageous examples of watered capital could be cited. "Managers as-
sume that their only duty is to make all the money they possibly can for
themselves and their shareholders, and that the public are sheep to be
shorn for their advantage." r ' State and National legislatures were being
corrupted by rich corporations and combinations. The time would come
when no man could be certain whether "the legislature runs the railroads
or the railroads the legislature." The Sun predicted a "great fight be-
tween the people and the mighty railway corporations." 7

When energy outran available capital, application for loans was made,
to which England eagerly responded. Big banking houses in this country
undertook the sale of bonds and assisted in the promotion of the roads.
One of these was Jay Cooke & Co. which financed the Northern Pacific.
It was a highly respected firm, holding the investments of widows,
orphans, clergymen, farmers, and people of moderate means. 8 But in
January, 1873, the Herald reported that Jay Cooke & Co. was unable to
pay its debts. The Sun replied that "there must be a mistake about it." 9
But the Herald was not mistaken. Jay Cooke was struggling against
terrific odds. Pools, syndicates, and popular subscriptions failed to secure
additional capital. He sought aid from the Government, but the recent
Credit Mobilier disclosures made this impossible. The capital and credit
of the firm were encroached upon. On September 18, Jay Cooke & Co.
failed. The First National Bank at Washington, headed by Henry D.
Cooke, followed suit. This catastrophe was announced in a leading Sun
editorial which said:

It is long since we had such a financial storm as now rages. But when it
clears off the air will be more wholesome. There will be less reckless speculation ;
fewer railroads will be built on credit alone; and let us hope that Credit
Mobiliers, plundering Rings, official corruption, bribe giving and present taking
will be things of the past only. 10

4 Mar. 19, 1868.

Apr. 22, 1871.

Feb. 21, 1871.

7 Feb. 28, 1871.

Sept. 19, 1873; Oct. 18, 1873.

Jan. 15, 1873

iSept. 19, 1873.

358 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

By the twentieth the storm was worse than had been at first supposed.
Jay Cooke was represented as saying that his London house would stand,
but it was feared that he was mistaken. "We ourselves experience a
strong reluctance to reflect upon him with severity," said the Sun. But
Dana yielded to the public clamor and condemned Jay Cooke and all
his works:

Mr. Cooke was originally a clever advertiser. Mr. Chase, when he became
Secretary of the Treasury, availed himself of Cooke's tact at advertising to float
the early loans required by the Government. He soon thought proper to make
terms with Cooke which afforded him an opportunity to make, in the aggregate,
enormous profits. The arrangement, though like a thousand other objectionable
things, tolerated during the war, would have been speedily investigated and
broken up had it been first entered upon in time of peace. But even Mr. Chase,
with all his statesmanship, relaxed his principles fearfully in the actual adminis-
tration of the Treasury Department. The very foundation principles of finance
principles which, out of regard to his permanent reputation, he felt obliged
when he became Chief Justice judicially to affirm, he at one time lost
sight of. ...

The relations between Jay Cooke & Co. and the Treasury Department became
of such a character as should never be permitted to exist between a banking
house and a department of the Government, because they were incompatible
with official integrity and purity. Persons holding valid claims against the Gov-
ernment found it far the easiest and quickest way to realize on them to make
sale of them at any required discount and deduction to some one connected
with Cooke's national bank, just over the way, opposite to the Treasury
building. . . .

Mr. Cooke's business was a mushroom and a poisonous outgrowth of the war,
and it is fitting that it should perish. His influence in politics and legislation was
pernicious. 11

In spite of hopes and palliatives the financial crisis continued, soon
penetrating every commercial artery of the country. From each state
came news of the stoppage of mills, plants, mines and factories. Hun-
dreds of thousands of able, industrious people, skilled in their voca-
tions, were deprived of employment. Men and women were compelled
to subsist upon their former savings or the charity of others. The Sun
said it was in "the legislation of the Republican party and in its ad-
ministration of the Government that we must look" 1L> for the origin of
the misfortunes.

Proposals were made for postal savings banks to protect the earnings

11 Sept. 22, 1873.

12 Oct. 30, 1873.

SUN ECONOMICS 359

of the poor. Some believed it was the duty of the Government to help
the weaker members of society in still more direct ways. The Sun vigor-
ously opposed all such proposals, objecting to their paternalism and
the implication that the people were unable to take care of themselves.
But one of Dana's greatest and most legitimate fears was the corrup-
tion of the National Government. He saw no reason for entrusting
further responsibilities to an administration which failed to perform
with honesty those already under its jurisdiction. 13

During this period Westerners were becoming more and more angry
at the railroad owners who had brought settlers into their region,
thereby increasing production and lowering prices. They were embit-
tered, too, against the Government for having granted large tracts of
fruitful land to corporations. On the Pacific Railroad alone the Sun
reported that over fifty million of acres had been squandered. 14 Farm-
ers were oppressed by high freight rates, extorted, so they believed, to
pay dividends on watered stock. Thus the Granges became politically
active. One of their objects was to secure reasonable rates for farm
products. In general they advocated State control, though some called
for national regulation.

The Sun had two attitudes toward the Grangers, although Dana at
heart disapproved of them. When he wished to present their movement
as evidence of an uprising against the Grant Administration, the Sun
called them "sober, solid citizens of every shade of political opinion,
farmers, planters, and agricultural laborers." lf) But when the Sun dis-
cussed the Grangers in connection with the railroads they were Com-
munists, Anarchists, or "dangerous trash."

The Grangers obtained legislation for the control of railroads in
several Western States. The laws were challenged by the corporations
and carried to the Supreme Court, which, in five cases, upheld the
rights of States to regulate commerce within their borders. 16 The Sun
thought the decisions pointed a bitter lesson: u The moment a busi-
ness which, in the beginning, was private grows to any considerable pro-
portions, those who established it lose their right to manage it as they
please." 17

"Oct. 15, 1873.
i 4 Oct. 8, 1873.
I B Oct. 14, 1874.
ie 94 U.S., 113-181.
* 7 Mar. 4, 1877.

360 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

Nevertheless, Dana still hated monopoly. The Sun denounced it as
the "grandest kind of larceny to take the property of the farmers and
give it to railroad kings or to manufacturers." 18 But the only con-
structive remedy it offered was the encouragement of competitive busi-
ness. Occasionally it appealed to the human heart, but Dana really had
little faith in man's essential goodness. A philosophical editorial in
1870 recognized and mourned the death of unselfish patriotism among
rich citizens :

The idea that their country, or the community in which they live, has any
claims upon them, seems to be scouted as chimerical. They icgard it as their
right to be protected; or at least let alone, while they pile dollar upon dollar;
and they think that when they have paid grudgingly and unwillingly, and
with every effort to diminish the amount the taxes levied upon them, they have
done all that can be required of them. Their talents, their skill, and their time
they regard as exempt from assessment, and they value money more than the
thanks and approval of their fellow citizens. 10

No interests were affected more severely than the railroads by the
depression following 1873. Excessive competition caused rate wars,
reduction of incomes, and loss of dividends. - >0 In the early summer of
1877, several companies declared a wage cut. This provoked strikes
involving ten states, with scenes of great violence in some. Six found
it necessary to call upon Hayes for assistance. The pages of the Sun
were devoted to strike news. At first it sympathized with the strikers,
although it deprecated violence. In New York City, a protest meeting
was held in Tompkins Square. Many people questioned the wisdom of
allowing such a gathering for the strike had severely disturbed the
public, but the Sun championed the right of free speech:

The authorities have done right in allowing the meeting at Tompkins Square
tonight. The people have a right to assemble peaceably to discuss questions of
interest. . . , 21

Justus Schwab, the noted Communist, led this meeting. He stated
his views for publication and among them was the principle "That
the Government immediately take control, own and operate the rail-

18 Feb. 24, 1874.
10 Nov. 25, 1870.

20 July 24, 1877.

21 July 25, 1877.

SUN ECONOMICS 361

roads." Later the Sun accused the Ohio Republicans of adopting his
Communistic principles at their State Convention:

Against this American method of liberty and free individual or associate
action, the Communists raise the demand that the Government should be made
omnipotent, a vast, all-regulating central agency, running all railroads, fixing
wages, legislating about everything, interfering in all business, and directing
every man what he shall do and how he shall do it. ... Our American Social-
ists propose to go a good deal further than the French system and to make the
control of the Government this omnipotent, all owning, all managing des-
potism apply to all the business relations of men. In fact, they want to super-
cede the laws of God and nature altogether, and put in their place a tyrannical
political machine which would leave nothing either of the semblance or sub-
stance of liberty. 22

In an editorial upon the great strikes of 1877 the Sun pointed out
that the Governors of both West Virginia and Maryland were under
the influence of corporations. Further criticizing their action in asking
for Federal assistance, it said that if at the outset they had called
representatives of the strikers and of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad,
and insisted that the rights of each should be fully determined, the
trouble would have been nipped in the bud. 23 Although a temporary eco-
nomic improvement began in 1878, and general prosperity returned, in
some fields the depression continued throughout the eighties.

In March, 1883, Karl Marx died. Although the Sun was opposed to his
philosophy in every practical regard, to the philosopher, Dana was gen-
erous and highly appreciative. He wrote an admirable editorial on the
great leader:

On Thursday died, almost unnoticed, a man who is likely to be remembered
quite as long as any of the generals, statesmen, and diplomatists whose recent
disappearance from the stage of public life has been widely chronicled. The So-
cialist movement of our time is a phenomenon too vast and imposing to be in-
separably associated with the name and achievement of any individual reformer
For its fundamental impulse and general direction we must look to the central
laws and inherent imperfections of our social system. But if the title of prophet
and protagonist belongs to any of its promoters, it would, by the consent of all
intelligent observers, be awarded to Karl Marx. Others like Bakumn, diverted
for a time the attention and confidence of part of the European proletariat, or
like Lasalle, played for a brief season a more brilliant part; but in him, sooner
or later, workingmen throughout the world recognized their authentic guide

--Aug. 7, 1877.
-''July 30, 1877.

362 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

and veritable commander. Karl Marx is dead, but the work to which he gave
his life survived him in the respect commanded by the claims of labor, in the
hope which he imparted, in the spirit of unity and organization which he substi-
tuted for aimless, discordant, and abortive struggle.

Karl Marx was by far the best-known, most influential and intellectually the
ablest of those Kathedcr-Socializten, or highly educated reformers, who in Ger-
many have scrutinized the assumptions and deductions of the orthodox political
economists from a new point of view, and who defend their novel doctrines with
a display of knowledge and ingenuity that captivate the student and compel
the deference and admiration of their opponents. He was by no means a vain
or self-assertive man, but he might with perfect truth have uttered the vaunt
ascribed to Lasalle, that he came to the discussion of social problems armed with
all the learning of his time . . . although he expended his energies for forty
years on the practical object of organizing the proletariat, and in the endless
correspondence and fugitive writing which such a task entailed, he was yet able
to begin, and bring far toward completion, one work of comprehensive scope
and abiding value "Das Kapilal" in which the relations of capital and labor
are discussed with extraordinary penetration and breadth of view, and in which
due weight is given to considerations overlooked by most economists, but
fraught with momentous import to the stability of existing communities and wel-
fare of mankind. The appearance of this book unquestionably constituted an
epoch in the history of the age-long struggle between wealth and work, between
Jacob and Esau, the heirs of the stored-up gains of preceding generations and
their disinherited brethren. It is in this book mentioned that he clearly indicates
the limitations which in the interest of society itself should be imposed upon the
working of the iron law of wages the correlation of supply and demand, which,
unrelaxed and uncontrolled, must always tend to lower a workman's earnings to
a bare subsistence, and thus chain the great majority of the human race in
grinding and hopeless slavery. In the same treatise is examined the principle of
individual ownership which lies at the root of our social system, and to which
not only its refinement, its luxury, and splendor, but much of its want and
misery and crime, may be directly traced. . . .

It is true that the International Society which he founded and for some time
personally directed has been virtually broken up, but the habit of co-operative
effort which he instilled has transformed the laboring masses throughout Europe
into a coherent, resolute, and mighty social force. They to whom his life was
devoted are not likely to forget the watchword in which he summed up the
lessons of experience and pointed out the harsh remedy. "Proletarians," he
said, "have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Let
therefore the proletarians of all countries combine with one another! " 24

This sympathetic analysis of Marx's philosophy measures the heights
to which the Sun might have climbed had not its commercial success
depended upon reflecting the thoughts of the masses who read it. Writ-

2 * Mar. 16, 1883.

SUN ECONOMICS 363

ten no doubt to please a few whose thinking was more advanced than
that of most Sun readers, it stands in marked contrast to the hundreds
of other editorials upholding the most extreme doctrines of laissez-
faire, individual ownership, and private profits.

Dana's belief in the doctrines of laissez-faire and individualism was
emphatically stated in his comment on a pamphlet called the "Next
Step of Progress." The author, John H. Keyser, maintained that the
Government was the parent of all its lawful subjects and responsible
for their education, employment, food, clothes, and shelter. The Sun
replied :

The Government is not the parent of the people; the people are the authors
of the Government. The purpose for which government is instituted is to secure
to all men the inalienable rights with which they are endowed by their creator,
namely, 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." The Government has noth-
ing to do with giving employment to individual citizens or withholding from
them food, clothes, or shelter. That is no part of its functions. Its business is to
maintain order through the enforcement of law, and to avoid all other interfer-
ence with the liberty and occupations of men. Mr. Keyser's notion of a paternal
despotic government is utterly unreasonable and entirely opposed to the theory
and policy of this republic. 25

The spread of socialistic doctrines added to labor unrest. Wages
were low in 1883 and workers were beginning to realize the advantage
of a united protest. A series of strikes was begun against the Western
Union Telegraph Company, in which Jay Gould was a controlling
stockholder. The operators formed a trade organization. The Sun said
that according to the strikers' statement, the immediate reason for the
strike was that the companies would not recognize the representatives
whom the union sent to negotiate with employers. It then defended
capital :

But why would they not recognize them? Because they were not known to be
representatives. There was no evidence that they had been empowered by the
Telegraphers' Brotherhood to represent them, and to supervise their relations
toward the telegraph companies. The fact had hitherto been held in mystery,
and the appearance of the representatives formed the first public declaration
that they bore such a character.

If the Telegraphers' Brotherhood, instead of conducting their affairs in se-
crecy, had been public and open in their actions, they might not at once have

25 Feb. 12, 1885.

364 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

succeeded in obtaining what they demanded from the telegraph companies, but
they certainly would not have been turned away with a refusal to admit the
fact that their representatives were really authorized. 26

The Sun recognized the right of employees to quit work on the
ground that compensation was insufficient; it did not accord them the
privilege of preventing other men from filling the vacated positions.
It said, "The striking telegraphers are clearly in the wrong when they
seek to interfere with the operators employed on the railroads, in the
discharge of their customary duties, in order by such interference to
promote the success of the existing strike." ~ 7

In all these problems the Sun aligned itself with business interests.
This was increasingly noticeable in the late eighties and nineties. Many
laboring people read the Sun, but those engaged in the labor struggle
grew contemptuous. The Providence Journal said:

The Sun will probably consider that it has been treated with ingratitude by
the Central Labor Union, which has resolved to boycott it, considering the fer-
vent manner in which it has occasionally championed the rights of the working-
men, albeit it may have avoided any interference between its philanthropy and
its interest in this respect as shrewdly as Gov. Butler ... in this case the
resolution of the Central Labor Union will not amount to a flea bite to the Sun,
but only make its organization ridiculous, while its members will probably buy
as many copies of the condemned newspaper as they have before been in the
habit of doing. 28

The last clause sounds as if the Sun had put the words into the mouth
of its defender. But it is significant as revealing the extent to which a
neighboring journal and a labor union valued the Sun's championship
of workingmen.

In the twenty-five years after 1860 the United States took its first
really long steps from an agrarian democracy to an industrial autoc-
racy. But the Sun remained constant to its laissez-faire philosophy
that the way to fight monopolies was to increase the number of cam-
petitive forces. In 1883, it greeted with enthusiasm a plan for the
duplication of telegraph lines, to be built by the telegraph strikers and
various commercial bodies :

26 July 26, 1883.

27 July 31, 1883.

28 Aug. 30, 1883.

SUN ECONOMICS 365

Then the public will be well served, because each company will endeavor to
outdo its competitors in the accuracy with which it transmits messages as well
as in the reasonable rate of its charges.

Judging by the present indications, the strikers will not be able to bring the
Western Union or the Baltimore and Ohio to their terms; but they may render
a great service to the public by establishing their own lines and conducting them
on genuine cooperative principles. Once more we wish them entire success in
this enterprise.- 9

The fact that scientific knowledge made it possible to supply ma-
terials more cheaply and efficiently through monopoly did not seem to
impress Dana. Nor did he consider that possibly the telegraph workers
were suffering from too much competition rather than too large mo-
nopolies. But his advocacy of a co-operatively built, owned, and con-
trolled telegraph system as a foil to monopolies was far-sighted in view
of the later rapid growth of the co-operative movement in this country
and abroad. Whether Dana would have had the telegraph workers
apply the Rochdale principles of co-operation is not known. Undoubt-
edly he was far more influenced by his experience with Brook-Farm
co-operation than by the movement in England. The objective of the
one was social democracy applied to industry as well as government
as a means of liberalizing and humanizing capitalism; the result of the
other is the gradual socialization of capitalism.

To Dana co-operative enterprise voluntarily carried on by private
individuals was vastly different from Government ownership or control
of public utilities. His hostility to the latter was clearly revealed in his
attitude toward the set of resolutions adopted by the Executive Com-
mittee of the Board of Trade and Transportation. Among the "ab-
surdities" propounded was the "propriety and necessity of the Postal
Department at once constructing a system of telegraph lines upon the
plan proposed by the bill introduced in Congress ... or by the pur-
chasing of existing lines at a cost not to exceed the expense of dupli-
cating them." "It is wonderful," said the Sun, "how Communistic
views will get hold of ignorant men." :i

The year 1886 brought news of strikes, lockouts, and boycotts from
every section of the country. In February attention was devoted to
disturbances among drivers, conductors, and stablemen of street-car

- y july 29, 1883.
80 July 25, 1883.

366 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

railroads. 81 Letter carriers went to Washington to plead with the De-
partment of Justice to be included among eight-hour-day workers. 32
Bookkeepers and office clerks formed unions. 33 The same year wit-
nessed the greatest strength and popularity of the Knights of Labor.
Organized as a secret society in 1869, it boasted, seventeen years later,
a membership of more than 700,000 industrial workers. Terence V.
Powderly, its Grand Master, was a power in the labor world.

In 1885 Powderly had succeeded in securing Jay Gould's personal
promise not to discharge workers for striking. And in March, 1886, ten
thousand men led by the Knights, struck on the railroad lines of the
Gould Southwestern system. About five thousand more were neces-
sarily laid off. The Sun reported strikes in the bituminous mines of
Pennsylvania, while the streetcar employees in Pittsburg "expect to get
what they ask for without striking." It noted that the ^thousands of
strikers in all parts of the country are conducting themselves with
dignity and moderation and the almost entire absence of disorder is a
noteworthy feature of the great labor movement." ;M This kind of ap-
proval was characteristic. As long as strikes were quietly conducted
and did not violate the Constitution, damage property, or interfere
with other citizens, the Sun took the side of the workers. This was
usually only so long as public opinion supported them. It was a policy
that contributed to the success of Dana's paper.

The Sun held neither the Government nor Society responsible for
conditions which bred strikes. These were the personal problems of
capital and labor. Therefore the public should not be made to suffer in
their solution, nor the peace and safety of the country be endangered.
It was opposed to independent political activity on the part of organ-
ized labor, chiefly because of its devotion to the two party system.
Workers could redress their grievances by voting for honest Demo-
crats. Up to 1886 the Knights of Labor had been a model organization
from the Sun's point of view. It had opposed violence, refused to form
a political party, and as a rule resorted to arbitration. But the influx
of unskilled laborers, coupled with prevailing economic stress, intro-
duced a new spirit into their activities; and the Sun sounded a note of
warning:

81 Feb. 5, 1886.

82 Feb. 7, 1886.
88 Feb. 20, 1886.
84 Mar. 11, 1886.

SUN ECONOMICS 367

The victories won by the Knights of Labor, and the new contests in which the
powerful organization is almost every day engaging, make its future course a
matter for much interesting speculation. . . . Will its leaders go forward with
increasing caution and moderation as the growing strength of the order makes
its action more momentous? 85

The great railroad strikes of 1886 took place in the states of Missouri,
Texas, Arkansas and Illinois, but the blockade of freight affected the
entire nation. On March 12th, the Sun reported that the engineers had
agreed to haul freight trains, but when the attempt was made, they
concluded to side with the striking Knights. The following day two
attempts to send freight trains from the Southwest to St. Louis were
defeated. It proved impossible to employ new workingmen. Peace pro-
posals were rejected by the employers. Repeated failures to start trains,
general suffering, and the apparent endlessness of the strike began to
turn public sympathy against the employees. This was first shown in
the Sun of March 24th:

. . . there is danger that success may turn the heads of the Knights of Labor
and of the organizations they influence. While we uphold and stand by their
fundamental purpose, we deprecate the excesses into which they may be lead,
and we warn them against the injustice into which they may be betrayed. It
cannot be allowed in this country that a man who employs labor shall not him-
self select it and control it, free from dictation as to the individual persons whom
he shall employ. Such a rule would be intolerable in its operation and effect, and,
while it might benefit a few, it would afford to the many a license and occasion
of abuse that would be fatal to all business discipline. Nor can it be allowed
that an industrial organization of a protective character shall usurp the great
powers of government, and levy war on all business under the pretext of attend-
ing to its own.

The next day an editorial openly condemned the Knights of Labor.

When the strike terminated in a compromise the Sun posed the ques-
tion: who had settled it? Had it been Gould, H. M. Hoxie, who man-
aged the road, or Powderly and Martin Irons of the Knights of Labor?
It answered as follows:

Each and all of them helped. Perhaps one or two of them did more than the
others. But the great power in bringing the strike to an end was the overpower-
ing and universal sentiment that it ought to end. As soon as trains shall have
begun to run regularly again, there will be just as universal a sentiment that

SB Mar. 12, 1886.

368 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

the employees of the railroad no longer strikers, must have fair treatment.

It is better to be an employee with public sentiment in your favor than to be
on strike. 36

Labor unrest continued during April. Rumors were current that
anarchistic ideas, instilled by foreigners, were rife among the workers;
that strikes were being fomented not to better conditions but to over-
throw the Government. Various theories were advanced as to the
cause and cure of the distress. The Sun asserted that there was "no
reason to presume that the present economic difficulties are cause for
alarm for our social institutions." 37 Two days later it announced that
forty-thousand workmen were on strike in Chicago for an eight-hour
work day. On the same page appeared the following editorial:

The proposition of the laboring men to limit the working day to eight hours
forms one of the grandest exhibitions of human generosity and self-denial that
has ever been recorded. It is a deliberate offer of those who are employed to
cut off one-fifth of their own capital, their labor, in order that the mass of the
unemployed greater now than ever and threatened with enormous increase
may be furnished with the opportunity to earn a living. We remember nothing
like this in history.

On the other hand, the idea which is entertained in some places that all at
once the wage-paying industries of the country can give the present day's pay
for eight hours of labor, is the supremest folly that can be conceived of. That
would be equivalent to a generous advance in wages of twenty-five per cent
for those who are already working, and, to the amount now paid as wages, there
would have to be added the sum needed to pay twenty-five per cent more la-
borers.

Such a sudden and immense burden could not be placed on our industries
without so crushing them to the ground that but a small portion of them
could ever rise again. Probably no other agency could be devised which would
be more disastrous to the interests of the community in which the workingmen
fortn nine-tenths of the population.

At the McCormick Reaper Works a collision occurred between police-
men and workers. In protest, resentful people gathered in Haymarket
Square where speakers denounced capitalism. The audience was dis-
persing in orderly fashion when a squad of policemen came down upon
them. Some unknown person threw a bomb, killing seven officers. Three
men were immediately arrested and held on charges of murder. More

86 Apr. 1,1886.
37 Apr. 30. 1886.

SUN ECONOMICS 369

arrests followed for the same offense. The Sun pleaded for "short,
sharp and decisive" action:

The miscreants who come here with bombs and dynamite, and with the
avowed purpose of killing those who do not please them should be dealt with in
the sternest and most relentless manner.

In such a contest as that which has been provoked at Chicago, where the
crazy fools who are advocating the slaughter alike of peaceful citizens and offi-
cers of the law, have attempted to execute their ferocious purpose, there is but
one thing to be done: They must be put down with the strong hand instantly,
and afterward those who remain alive must be tried and must have justice, but
not mercy!

So much for the "crazy Socialists." As for the effects of the riot on
the labor movement, the Sun predicted that it would "strengthen among
the organized workmen the opposition to all violent measures for the
attaining of their ends."

They will be calmer, if not less determined, more distrustful than ever of
the advice of hot-headed agitators, and more inclined to listen to the counsel of
leaders who appeal to their reason.

If employers also keep their heads cool, the contest between labor and
capital will proceed without uproar, and will end in a settlement advantageous
to both/' 8

When news arrived that the "anarchists" were to be executed for
their crimes the Sun exultantly declared: "Let Them Hang":

The best intelligence that has been printed in many a day, wholesome and
cheering to all who respect law and order and love their country, is that which
comes from Chicago. Seven murderous and frantic scoundrels, men envenomed
against all law, all reason, all decency, and the peace and welfare of a civilized
people, are to be extirpated on the gallows for the murders of which they are
guilty. The law they defied will be justified in their execution, and a prompt,
stern, and necessary warning will be afforded to a class of exotic criminals for
whom there is no room in this land. 39

The case was appealed in the Supreme Court of Illinois, which con-
firmed the judgment and ordered the executions to take place on
November 11, 1887. The Sun defended the decision and congratulated
Governor Oglesby for refusing to stay the sentence. Six years later

88 May 6, 1886.
80 Aug, 21, 1886.

370 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

when Governor Altgeld, to the horror and indignation of "The respect-
able citizens of Illinois," courageously pardoned two of the men sen-
tenced to life imprisonment, he was denounced in the Sun as the
"friend of the Anarchists." 40

The Sun analyzed the cause of such strike disturbances: Wages were
better in 1886 than they had ever been before, but laborers felt the
"screw of contraction" turning. They knew the time was approaching
when the struggle of the many against the few would reduce wages
lower and lower. Instead of intelligent relief they were "left to the
blind working of natural forces" a strange contention for the Sun,
considering its championship of laisscz jairc. The best solution Dana
could suggest was that men await the appearance of some new re-
source, such as the discovery of gold, to regenerate business. 41

By 1886, many workers had determined to enter the political arena
and wrest the rights denied them by capital. Simultaneously Congress
began to discuss a permanent board of labor arbitration. Both reme-
dies were opposed in the Sun. A labor party might be radical in nature,
opposed to laisscz fairc. It was also convinced the workers would be
diverted from their original objectives and become the pawn of po-
litical ambition. 41 ' In April, Cleveland advised setting up a board for
voluntary arbitration in labor disputes. 4a To the Sun this was an en-
croachment of national upon State rights, and a scheme to extend the
functions of the Government. 44 An arbitration bill was drawn up, pro-
viding for the settlement of each dispute by a board made up of em-
ployers and employees selected for that purpose. The Sun considered
it unfair to the railroad owners, because while it did not require any
witness "to disclose the secrets or produce the records of proceedings
of any labor organization" of which he was an officer or member, it
allowed the arbitrators to compel the "production of books and papers
of railroad companies." ^

The long controversy over Federal regulation of interstate com-
merce led to the introduction of a bill in 1886. "It is noticeable," the
Sun remarked, "that some Senators and Representatives are anxious

40 Oct. 12, 1893.

41 Apr. 26, 1886.

42 Mar. 10, 1886.

48 Nevins, Cleveland, 349.
44 Apr. 26, 1886.
"Apr. 5, 1886.

SUN ECONOMICS 371

to have the bill passed, not because they have any faith in it, but be-
cause they think the public wants some measure of railroad regulation
enacted." It went on:

The present bill should it become a law, seems likely to result in one or two
things either it will not be enforced, or if it is severely enforced, it will work
disaster to the railroads and to the public.

It is unfortunate that the beginning of Federal interference with railroads
should be made too emphatic. A mere advisory commission composed of experts
would have been preferable.

1 he main reason why the Government should not without due deliberation
enter upon the regulation of railroads is that such a step will be accepted by
many, and perhaps not unreasonably, as the first step toward Federal control
and ownership of the railroads. We hope that it is a long way yet to such
abandonment of democratic principle. 40

All pretense of supporting the Interstate Commerce bill was dropped
the following January. The Sim declared itself in favor of the regula-
tion of interstate commerce, but not in favor of the bill proposed.

Disregarding the question of its constitutionality, the Sun criticized
the bill for its defective language. The first section exempted from
the operation of the act every railroad corporation whose road lay
wholly in one State, except in instances when the property transported
was shipped to or from a foreign country:

While there is great ambiguity about other parts of the bill there is none
about this proviso. Must we not infer indeed, is not the inference unavoid-
able that the reading is accidental, and that u for, to or from a foreign country,
from or to any State, etc!" we should read u to or from a foreign country or
from or to any State, etc.! ?"

The second section prohibited discriminatory rates by common car-
riers: "whether that carrier make the rate for the service performed
wholly on its own road, or accept the rate as its proportion of a
through rate made by a combination of carriers, for transportation
over a series of roads of which said carrier's road is one":

How are the railroads to comply with such a law, assuming that it will become
law? In such a condition of uncertainty as that in which these provisions are
plunged what are they to do? Are they to work under it as a law and obey it

4(1 Dec. 19, 1886

372 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

according to the best light that they can obtain, only to find after a year or so
that they have read it wrongly and incurred enormous and fatal liabilities and
penalties? 47

Agitation against Government regulation of the railroads had not
ended before agitation against anti-trust laws was taken up in the Sun.
The Herald had described a trust as "a combination of capitalists to
control the market" and establish monopoly by crushing out opposi-
tion and preventing competition. One might have expected the Sun to
have confirmed this statement, but instead it asked:

Admitting that a trust is a bad thing because it prevents competition in busi-
ness, is not a trade union or any other society of laboring men, formed to regu-
late wages and prevent competition, likewise a bad thing? And if combinations
of capitalists ought to be condemned and restricted by law, ou^ht not the com-
binations of laboring men to be subjected to a similar repressive process? 48

Anti-trust resolutions were introduced into the Hou>e in January,
1888. Eventually two investigation committees were appointed, one
by the New York Legislature and one by Congress, to investigate
"great industrial and commercial combinations." The Senate Law
committee reported a valuable document, giving in detail its investiga-
tion of trusts, which was published in Albany. But the Sun expected
little good from this report. Admitting that it regarded competition as
a natural corrective of social errors and imperfections, it did not have
"unquestioning faith" in the universal efficacy of legislation:

Now while, as we have said, we cherish a profound faith in the principle of
competition on which our present society is based, we will not now affirm that
it is the only practicable principle, and that the attempt of the workingmen
to set it aside and to control the labor market against it through the power
of their organization is a noxious and anti-social undertaking which ought to
be put down and defeated ... if such combinations of capitalists are wrong
and if free and unrestricted competition must be maintained among the rich
through the operation of a penal statute, how can Mr. Arnold and his associates
allow combinations to destroy competition or to be justified, encouraged and
protected by the law when they are formed by people who labor with their
hands? B0

7 Jan. 30, 1887.
48 Apr. 26, 1888.
* 9 Feb. 22, 1888.
60 Mar. 17, 1888.

SUN ECONOMICS 373

In 1889 and 1890 the rise of new farmer organizations went on
apace. In Oregon a great movement combined Labor Unions. Knights,
Prohibitionists, and Grangers. r>1 In Michigan 75,000 joined the Pa-
trons of Husbandry/'- Two great Alliances, the Southern and North-
western, were formed. Simultaneously, labor unions declared war upon
concentrated capital and the products of monopoly: long hours, in-
adequate wages, unemployment and economic insecurity. Among these
were the American Federation of Labor, the Brotherhood of Railroad
Firemen, National Mutual Aid Association of Railroad Switchmen,
and the Knights where they had not been absorbed by other unions
or combined with agrarian groups. The newest and most striking
phenomena of modern society, commented the Sun, were the organiza-
tion of workers and the organization of trusts.

In August, 1888, an anti-trust bill was introduced in the Senate by
Reagan. The Sun called it the greatest "humbug" of the hour, declar-
ing trusts were "natural and regular" and immune to law:

Against this new and enlarged form of commercial partnerships ordinary leg-
islation is pretty sure to be powerless, because in itself the thing is consistent
with the principles of civilization.

Just as laboring people have the right to form unions to keep up and regulate
their wages, so merchants and manufacturers have the right to form trusts to
keep up and regulate the prices of merchandise.

Liberty is the true law for all. If a trust makes very much money other trusts
will rise up to compete with it. A big capital may be requisite, but the experi-
ence of this country demonstrates that where there is free competition, the thing
will be done. 53

Just as the cure for the evils of monopoly was more monopolies, so now
the cure for trusts was more trusts. The Sun claimed that the grocers'
trust would regulate and combat the sugar trust and thus free com-
petition would be preserved. 54 Announcing the formation of a Beef
Trust in Lancaster County, Nebraska, it cheered on the "good work"
and said "May the Better Trust Win!" The absurdity of the Sun's
economic solutions seemed sometimes to amuse Dana.

The presidential campaign of 1888 made an issue of the subject.
Both the Republican and Democratic platforms opposed trusts and

BI Aug 23, 1889
B - Dec. 31, 1889.
:t Aug. 26, 1888.
Sept. 26, 1888.

374 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

both candidates condemned them in their letters accepting the nomina-
tions. According to the Sun, they failed entirely "to comprehend that
great partnerships formed a new and natural departure in the develop-
ment of modern civilization, and that the business of a philosopher
and a statesman should be first to examine and understand, leaving
the denunciation and repression, if it should finally be found neces-
sary, to be considered afterward." It added:

Of the two, however, while equally ignorant with Gen. Hanison, Cleveland
is more dogmatic and positive, and, finally, he makes a great blunder from which
Harrison is saved. He refers to the law against conspiracies \Mthout reflecting
that, with the progress of society, this law has of necessity undei none changes of
the most profound and far-reaching character, especially in regard to the enor-
mous combinations of workingmen which distinguish the present day and the
unprecedented Labor Trusts which they have so widely established. r>:>

December, 1889, witnessed two important events. Senator Sherman
introduced an anti-trust bill which was sent to the Senate Committee
on Finance, and St. Louis was the scene of the annual convention of
the Southern Alliance. At the same time there met in that city dele-
gates from the Northwestern Alliance, the National Colored Farmers
Alliance, the Farmers Mutual Benefit Association and the Knights of
Labor. Concurrent resolutions asked for free coinage of silver; aboli-
tion of national banks; government ownership of railroad and tele-
graph; ownership of land by Americans only; prohibition of trading
in grain futures; and limitation of state and national revenues to
legitimate expenses. A resolution of the Southern Alliance advocated
the sub-treasury plan, by which, the Government, in effect would sub-
sidize agriculture. 58

During the early months of 1890, Congress debated anti-trust legis-
lation. The Sun said there were a dozen and a half bills before Con-
gress and "plenty more in the brains of statesmen seeking popularity":

^ As most of these bills provide that persons who enter into a trust or com-
bination for increasing the price or controlling the production of any article
shall be guilty of a misdeameanor it seems natural to suppose that the authors
of the measure in question regard trusts as evil things and persons who par-
ticipate in them as wrongdoers. It seems, however, that certain trusts and com-
binations are excepted from the prohibition. . . .

65 Nov. 13, 1888.

56 Hacker, Louis M. and Kendrick, Benjamin B., The United States Since 1865, 299-300.

SUN ECONOMICS 375

Thus Senator George's bill excepts combinations made by laborers to increase
their wages or diminish their hours of labor, or by farmers to increase the price
of agricultural products. . . , 57

Meanwhile, the farmers were turning to political action for redress
of their grievances. In August, the Sun announced the Alliances were
moving "squarely against the otherwise excellent chances for a Demo-
cratic majority in the next Congress." 58 In November it reported that
the "frenzy" was over, but elections told a different story. Alliance
candidates had been elected to the National Congress and several
State legislatures. Their program, which they at once began to feed
into legislative hoppers included crop control and aid to mortgage
debtors. These were denounced by the Sun as dishonest. 59 In one short
paragraph it described the Alliance program as "paternalistic," "mad-
ness," "indefensible," "rank nationalism," "selfish," "repugnant" and
"silly." (: "

Soon after the elections of 1890, a second Alliance convention was
scheduled at Ocala, Florida. Its program was anticipated with interest,
since it was believed it would affect the legislation of the Fifty-Second
Congress/ 51 The platform proved similar to that adopted the previous
year at St. Louis, with three important exceptions. The sub-treasury
plan was extended, saddling the Government with further responsi-
bilities; tariff revision was demanded; and the word control was sub-
stituted for ownership of railroads and telegraphs. After this Dana
became increasingly antagonistic toward farmer and labor organiza-
tions.

The formal launching of the People's party took place in the cam-
paign of 1892. Its chief planks were financial reform, an income tax,
Government ownership of railroads and telegraphs, and the elimina-
tion of corporate and foreign ownership of land. According to the Sun,
the Populists were "excited and encouraged by their demonstrations
of numerical strength at the election." Their phenomenal success
evoked the admiration of even the antagonistic, and it was clear that
the Democratic party was feeling their influence. 6 - The off-year elec-

" Feb. 23, 1890.
f)S AUR 10, 1890.
Gnpcb 10, 1891.

00 July 30, 1891

01 Dec 2, 1890
0:1 Dec. 11, 1892.

376 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

tion showed a gain of forty-two per cent over the populist vote of
1892. The Sun blamed the results upon Cleveland:

To get at the primary cause of this country's revolutionary return to the
dominion of the Republicans, we must first look at the part played in the elec-
tion by the Populists. Populism is a mixture of Socialism and insanity. It is
either hostile and repugnant to the spirit of this Democratic land, or it is foreign
to it. We have not reached the intellectual or political degradation at which
Populism can prosper. How great a factor it has been in producing the recent
election, will be seen from a study of national politics as it is revealed after
less than two years' control by an Administration, which has dealt to public
confidence the blow of repudiating the Democratic principles it stood for when
elected, and of setting up un-American and inflammatory Populistic standards in
their stead. 63

While the Populists prepared for a final victory in the coming presi-
dential campaign, three important Supreme Court cases were decided.
The Sun did not comment on the Sugar Trust Case (U.S. v. E. C.
Knight Company), the decision which hamstrung the prosecution of
monopoly. But two years later, when the United States v. the Trans-
Missouri Freight Association was decided in such a way as to uphold
the Anti-Trust Act, it published the following editorial:

What the Sun has always maintained, that there is no essential difference be-
tween a trust and any other form of partnership, is pronounced to be the fact
by the Supreme Court of the United States. The blow at trusts strikes every-
thing.

Every partnership, from the lowest to the highest, is put beneath the ban
of the Sherman Anti-Trust Law. Poor Honest John! That his name should
typify the pinnacle of demagogy in the law of the United States! ... If two
boss blacksmiths are independently on the verge of starvation, and they agree
to combine their shops, one becoming the abler man's journeyman, the law will
forbid the agreement as in restraint of trade.

Between the union of the blacksmiths and the consolidation of various man-
ufacturing companies into one great corporation like the Sugar Company, there
is no difference. It is needless to illustrate with other examples.

. . . The Sherman Anti-Trust Law was put among our statutes solely for
political purposes, with a tricky expectation that it would amount to nothing,
or with reckless disregard of its power for damage. Demagogues made these
laws, and when it pleases the Supreme Court to construe them as it has in the
Trans-Missouri case, the mischief is apparent. 04

68 Nov. 8, 1894.
64 Mar. 31, 1897.

SUN ECONOMICS 377

In May, 1895, the income tax was declared unconstitutional. Al-
though the Supreme Court had held the Civil War income tax con-
stitutional, the 1894 law was tested in the Pollock v. Farmer's Trust
Company Case. Since the Sun considered the income tax a "populist
and Communist and pseudo-Democratic conspiracy to strike at the
accumulation of property," there was little doubt how it would handle
this decision. "Thank Heaven, the Danger is Past!" it exulted. "The
wave of socialistic revolution has gone far, but it breaks at the foot
of the ultimate bulwark set up for the protection of our liberties. Five
to four, the court stands like a rock." 65 In another editorial of this
same date, the Sun reminded its readers with "just pride" that "never
for an instant" had it swerved in its warfare upon this "odious and
unconstitutional impost." Its opposition to the income tax was one of
the few constant factors in the Sun. Dana was proud that "the ablest,
most upright, and most independent journals of the country" had
shared in the effort to remove the "deadly incubus." It is true that
the Tribune considered the case important in maintaining the Con-
stitution against the fury of "ignorant class hatred" and withstanding
the threatening communistic revolution. 00 But neither the Evening
Post 7 nor the World shared this opinion. The latter set forth an elo-
quent plea for justice without advocating any sensational ways of
obtaining it. 08

Journals in New York City generally agreed that the Supreme Court
was justified in finding Eugene V. Debs guilty of contempt for vio-
lating an injunction sued out under the Sherman-Anti-Trust Law.
The Tribune was delighted with the decision. 69 The World approved
of it, but thought there were forces of evil more ominous to liberty
than' the unfortunate Debs. 70 In the Sun's opinion the routing of
"Anarchists" was a supreme achievement:

The impression of Mr. Eugene Debs that he was a bigger man than Uncle
Sam has received a severe shock from the decision of the Supreme Court of the
United States delivered on Monday.

That decision, reached unanimously by the Justices goes far beyond the

05 May 21, 1895.

60 The Tribune, May 21, 1895.

07 The Evening Post, May 20, 1895.

The World, May 21, 1895.

00 The Tribune, May 29, 1895.

The World, May 29, 1895.

378 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

matter of the personal interests of Debs and his seven fellow officers of the
American Railway Union. They will now have to go to jail and serve out the
sentences imposed. . . .

What chiefly concerns the people in this case is the declaration of the highest
tribunal that the rights and interests of the whole country shall not be at the
mercy of Anarchists, through any theory of a lack of power in the Federal Gov-
ernment for its own preservation.

The decisions rendered by the highest court of the country against the odious
income tax and against Debs and his fellow plotters will make the month of
May, 1895, memorable for the judicial safeguards it has furnished to American
institutions and the rights of the people. 71

This was a far cry from Dana's warm defense of Proudhon's theories
and the activities of the French and German revolutionists of 1848.
Had Dana lost the radical liberalism of his younger days? Or had it
merely receded to the point of ultra-conservatism in the wake of the
stupendous changes which revolutionized the United States in his later
years?

The America in which Dana had lived at Brook Farm and had
gained his journalistic experience, and which he had served with such
distinction during the Civil War was a miniature, bucolic Arcadia
compared to the vast industrial nation which so swiftly emerged in
the three decades after he took over the Sun.

For all the radicalism of his youth Dana had never actually ques-
tioned the sancity of private property, the intrinsic value of the profit
motive, the efficacy of free competition or the soundness of the laissez-
faire doctrine of no Government interference in business. On the other
hand he was opposed to Free Trade; and he never altogether lost his
faith in the principles of co-operation voluntarily entered into by people
of similar views and occupations. In time he accepted the phenomenon
of large scale industry as the inevitable result of scientific development.
Consequently the Sun refused to join in the hue and cry against trusts.
Correct their evils by organizing more trusts; and may the better trust
win was Dana's motto.

Thus, while Dana's social sensitivity, keen sense of justice, fine
sensibilities and rare intellectual gifts made him quick to detect and
to resent abuses of the capitalistic system, his life-long adherence to
rugged individualism caused him both to glorify the material wealth

71 May 29, 1895.

SUN ECONOMICS 379

and progress which it created and to leave untouched the roots of the
economic problems and personal suffering resulting from it. It may be
said that for thirty years the Sun championed the very forces which
embittered Dana's heart and limited his outlook.

CHAPTER XV

THE SUN SHINES FOR ALL

FOR years the Sun printed its circulation at the top of its editorial
page, and often chatted of the causes which reduced or increased its
edition. When in 1885, the Journalist remarked that ' k every paper
that publishes figures at the head of its column lies," Dana proposed
to "put up a thousand dollars on condition that the writer in the Jour-
nalist should do the same." He was eager to have a committee com-
posed of such journalists as Sinclair Tousey, President of the American
News Company, David M. Stone, editor of the Journal of Commerce,
and Whitelaw Reid of the Tribune investigate tfee question:

They shall have full access to the Sun office and the Sun's hooks, and the
writer of the Journalist shall have the right to be present. They shall look into
our affairs during the last five years, and if they find that the figures of our
circulation, which we have published, have at any time been false, our thousand
dollars shall be paid over to the Press Charity Fund. . . .*

The Sun did tell the truth about its circulation. 2 It never hesitated to
let it be known when vast numbers of people, indignant at its policy,
pre-emptorily canceled their subscriptions. Nor did it hesitate to an-
nounce the fact whenever rapid gains were made or extra copies sold.
The extent of Dana's influence can not be measured until it is
known how many people read the Sun. When Dana took over the
paper in January, 1868, some 50,000 copies were being sold daily. A
month later, with one Hoe and two Bullock presses, the Sun could de-
liver more than 200,000 copies in one morning. However, "enormous"
as it boasted that its daily edition was, it had not yet become neces-
sary to use them all at once. "We are looking forward, however, to
the time when even this amount of machinery will be insufficient to
supply the demand for the Sun, which shines for all." 8

lApr. 26, 188S.

2 Wilson, J. H., Life of Charles A. Dana, 378; O'Brien, F. M., The Story of the Sun, 228,
269, 300.

8 Feb. 29, 1868.

380

THE SUN SHINES FOR ALL 381

Its circulation was climbing. Under Dana's skilful hand the first
two months of 1869 showed an increase of 8,000 copies, and the Sun
remarked :

The public will do well to notice the fact that the Sun is already officially
proved to have in the city of New York a larger circulation than any other
journal. This is demonstrated by the publication twice a week in our columns
of the list of letters not called for at the Post Office. That list is required by
law to be inserted in the newspaper having the largest circulation in the city, and
in compliance with that provision it regularly appears in the Sun. 4

The Evening Telegram published a wood engraving which depicted
Dana racing with the editors of the Tribune and Times on velocipedes.
Dana was in the lead, Greeley was close behind, and George Jones
was nearly capsizing. 5 In the spring of 1869, the Sun asserted that it
"can claim to have the largest circulation of any of the morning
papers, for today it amounts to sixty-three thousand."

A tabulation shows clearly the rate of increase during this period:

September 12, 1869 64,000

Octobers, 1869 70,000

October 12, 1869 72,900

October 14, 1869 . 73,900

December 15, 1869 . 79,900

December 21, 1869 80,000

Different factors contributed. The new and competent staff, under
Dana's guidance, was introducing New York City to a "luminous and
lively" newspaper. Then too, far be it from Dana to blue pencil the acts of
the Almighty: What God allowed to happen, the Sun thought fit to
print. He was creating an "interesting" paper! On July 27, 1870, the
following notice appeared:

... we have more than trebled our circulation till it is now equal to that of
all the four-cent fogy morning blanket sheets combined, while we have been
enabled to advance our advertising rates from 25 cents to 40 cents per line. The
Sun today is the most successful newspaper in the world while its future is
illimitable.

By March, 1870, the circulation of the Sun had reached ninety
thousand daily copies. Thus in a short time it had gained the front

4 Feb. 11,1869.
6 Feb. 15, 1869.
o May 28, 1869.

382 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

rank of New York newspapers, standing beside the Herald, Tribune,
and the Times J During the Orange Riots its circulation soared. Not
only was the whole city in commotion, but the Sun was the friend of
Irish Catholics, and many judiciously complimentary articles were writ-
ten about them.

By 1874 the Sun's average daily circulation exceeded 100,000. But
during January, February and March of 1875, its usual record did
not appear. Rosebault tells us that the anti-Beecher campaign cost
Dana considerable circulation. 8 When the tabulation was resumed, al-
though the Sun was at the height of its attacks upon Beecher, no
loss of circulation was evident. But Rosebault's statement is undoubt-
edly accurate. By April, 1875, accusations against Beecher were less
shocking and some believed that he was guilty. During 1876 the daily
circulation began ascending. This was due primarily to the exciting
presidential election. On November 8, the most critical day of the
Hayes-Tilden controversy, 220,000 copies of the Sun were sold "a
circulation never before paralleled or approached in the experience of
any daily newspaper in the United States." u

The drop after the presidential election was unexpectedly great, and
in 1877 the expected pick-up did not occur. During the week of the
great railroad riots there was a noticeable demand for the Sun. But
1877 as well as 1878 definitely showed the results of Dana's scur-
rilous attacks upon Hayes. The Sun printed the following tabulation
and editorial:

Date Daily Average

April 1876 . . 131,287

Aug. 1876 .... . 131,433

Dec. 1876 . . . 109,257

April 1877 104,470

Aug. 1877 . ... 107,664

Dec. 1877 .. 103,030

April 1878 . ... 112,215

Aug. 1878 113,735

Dec. 1878 . . 116,008

7 Bleyer, W. G., Main Currents in the History of American Journalism, 299.

8 When Dana Was the Sun, 216.
6 Nov. 9, 1876.

THE SUN SHINES FOR ALL 383

It will be observed that after November, 1876, after the conspiracy of
Fraud had begun to carry out its plot for setting aside the overwhelming verdict
of the country in favor of Tilden and against Hayes, the circulation of the Sun
declined many thousands daily. This was a period of great moral and business
depression throughout the country, and all our newspapers experienced its
blighting effects, so disastrous to all commercial enterprise. The public was in a
sort of stupor, from which it stood in desperate need of arousing. The heaviest
blow our constitutional privileges had ever received was about to be inflicted
upon them. . . .

Throughout the year 1877 the circulation of the Sun was at a comparatively
low average, running from 102,304 in June, the lowest, up to 112,203 in Feb-
ruary, the highest. The political and business depression continued to weigh on
the spirits of the country, and it was during this year that the worst ills of hard
times and the sorest consequences of the perfected Electoral Conspiracy were
felt. During the first quarter of the present year the same causes operated in-
juriously on our circulation, but with the month of April it took a new start, and
up to the end of September, when it stood at 116,084, it made pretty steady
progress. . . .

Summing up the figures for the two years and nine months we find the cir-
culation of the Sun in 1876 averaged 127,716, in 1877, 106,922, and in the nine
months of 1878 has averaged 111,050. . . . 10

Between 1879 and 1881 the Sun maintained a circulation of between
seven and nine hundred thousand weekly copies. In 1881 it rose to
a million copies per week. This was maintained throughout 1882,
when the circulation was at a higher point than ever before. The fluc-
tuations above the average circulation indicated that Sun readers were
most affected by politics:

1872 Grant-Greeley 64,000

1876 Tilden-Hayes 94,000

1 880 Garfield-Hancock 87,000

1872 October elections - 16,000

1876 October elections . 24,000

1880 October elections . 23,000

Readers were also devoted to sports. Walking matches increased the
Sun's edition from 20,000 to 40,000 copies. International sports on
this side of the ocean were beneficial, but if held abroad no difference
could be noted. A prize fight between Sullivan and Ryan in February,
1881, raised the Sun's average daily circulation that month by 11,000.

10 Oct. 10, 1878.

384 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

From three thousand to fifteen thousand people who did not sub-
scribe to the Sun purchased it if a hanging occurred in the immediate
neighborhood of the city, while the death of celebrated people by
natural causes commanded less attention. Scarcely one thousand extra
persons cared when Napoleon III died in January, 1873, and no one
was interested in the death of Commodore Vanderbilt or Alexander
T. Stewart. When the latter's will was published, interest revived
slightly. The deaths of Pope Pius IX and William M. Tweed had
their effect. On the first occasion a difference of 4,000 may be noted,
and on the second, 5,000. GarfiekTs death, due to the unusual and
tragic circumstances, caused an appreciable difference. The following
table lists the events of greatest interest during the twenty-eight days
when the circulation was the highest: n

1871 July 13 Orange riots 192,224

1872 Nov. 6 Presidential election, Grant-Greeley 159,583

1873 Nov. 5 New York State and City elections 158,247

1874 Nov. A Congressional and State elections 166,24Q

1875 Nov. 3 State and City elections 177,588

1876 Sept. 25 The Hell Gate Blast 159,700
Oct. 11 October elections, Presidential year 159,369
Nov. 8 Presidential election, Hayes-Tilden 222,390
Nov. 9 Second day after election 158,751
Nov. 10 Third day after election 156,565

1877 July 25 Railroad strikes and riots 156,565
July 26 Railroad strikes and riots 152,764

1878 Nov. 6 City elections, defeat of Tammany 156,255

1879 Sept. 28 Last day of walking match . 155,370

1879 Nov. 5 State and City elections 155,010

1880 Nov. 3 Presidential election, Garfield-Hancock 206,974

1881 July 3 Garfield assassination 176,093
July 4 Second day after assassination 165,303
July 5 Third day 158,912
July 6 Fourth day 156,913
Sept. 20 Garfield 's death 212,525
Sept. 2 1 Second day after Garfield's death 1 80,2 1 5
Sept. 22 Third day 156,264
Sept. 27 Garfield's burial 170,365
Nov. 9 State elections . 170,547

1882 Feb. 1 Potter building fire 153,780
Mar. 5 Last day walking match 167,515

11 Oct. 13, 1883.

THE SUN SHINES FOR ALL 385

One reason for the Sun's large circulation was that it sold for two
cents. Other dailies, including the Times, Herald, and Tribune, cost
four cents. But in May, 1883 Joseph Pulitzer took over the World,
and in a short time demonstrated that he was a formidable competitor.
In September, 1883, the Times cut its price in half and before a week
passed the Herald and Tribune followed suit. Correspondingly a drop
from 150,000 to 98,000 occurred in the Sun. This was partly due,
during the last of the year, to the usual decline after a presidential
election. Dana claimed that "The Sun continued to shine for all,"
but this drop really marked the end of the Sun's supremacy.

The Blaine, Cleveland, and Butler campaign was even more dis-
astrous than attacks upon the Hayes' Administration. But Dana paid
not the slightest attention. He continued to bombard the Democratic
nominee with charge after charge which antagonized his readers.
Meanwhile, his support of Butler intensified their revulsion. The
Evening Post reported: "The Sun has, by its own figures, lost about
69,000 in weekly circulation between July 14 and September 15. That
it should boldly publish these figures is a high proof of the editors'
courage and candor." r2 But the time came when the circulation was
no longer recorded. The Nation said, "The Sun has lost its readers
because it has lost its character. Its old patrons have given it up be-
cause they have become disgusted with its political course." 18

Dana's attacks on persons, from boiler inspectors to Presidents,
were as clever as they were scurrilous. The consequence was not only
a decrease in readers but a long list of enemies. Grant, for example,
strongly condemned the Sun. The way in which Dana answered him
should have been a warning to all who were tempted to defend them-
selves :

It pains us to say the President's reference to the Sun was incorrect as well
as wanton. Spitting against the luminary of the day is doubtless a harmless
practice so far as the luminary is concerned, but the poor lunatic who indulges
in it is liable to make of himself an unseemly spectacle. It is not agreeable to
see a President in the business. The first gentleman of the land ought to be
intellectually, if not morally, above it. We were astonished therefore, at the
unmannerly and inconsequential squirt which the President made at us in
the course of his frightful mouthing against Gary. He there said that Gary's

12 Sept. 23, 1884.

18 Ibid., July 15, 1886.

386 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

speech "was more bitter in its personality and falsehood than anything he
had ever seen in the New York Sun!"

Continuing with a statement that the Sun had never, in all its history,
indulged in aimless or unnecessary personalities, Dana threatened
Grant with an exposure of a moral nature:

If on the other hand, the President has been guilty of licentious practices of a
private nature which affected him alone, and inflicted no corresponding evil
upon the public, the Sun has borne no testimony and made no comment in
regard to them. . . .

The Sun will not abandon its mission of regeneration. The President may
expect new alarms and other exposures, as the public good requires them. We
hear the mutterings of a fierce storm gathering over his stronghold a storm
which no rogue will think of escaping by taking refuge with his wonted patron
a storm before which even Grant will cower at last, helpless and dumb. 14

Greeley was goaded into self-defense by the Sun's hypocritical cham-
pionship. Another conspicuous victim was that of our Consul-General
to Alexandria, Egypt, while Grant was President. The following letter
appeared over his signature in the Sun:

Sir: Why in the name of God can't the Sun leave me alone? I never in any
manner injured you except it is in being a friend of John Young's and a "nephew
of Gen. Butler." Well, there are crimes far worse than those. You sought me
yourself; I was polite to you, or tried to be. If I failed, it was a fault inherent,
and not intentional.

I am not, I never was a "Spanish agent," I never saw a Cuban bond, genuine
or counterfeit. God knows I have no "Spanish gold," or indeed any other
kind. . . .

Why should the Pyramids look with astonishment on the appointment of
Gen. Butler's nephew to the land of the Pharaohs, any more than if it had been
yourself in lieu of the New York Appraisership? I am of average intelligence
and education, at least I know the amenities and proprieties which obtain among
gentlemen all over the world, and what is better, I observe them. You allude to
me and write of me as though I were an Algerine pirate or a Greek brigand.

By God, you'll drive me into enmity towards you by your wanton persecu-
tions. . . .

I am seven thousand miles away, and I am not a public man. If you can't
speak kindly or friendly, or even impartially of me, let me alone. 15

Truly, Geo. Butler, Consul General

14 Apr. 11, 1874.

15 Aug. 18, 1870.

THE SUN SHINES FOR ALL 387

In reply to this "irate correspondent," the Sun said:

Either an Algerine pirate or a Greek brigandin the estimation of New York
today would be a gentleman as compared with a friend of the Sneak News
Thief, John Russell Young. . . . First, let us rebuke the Consul General for
his shocking profanity. Profanity is a wicked habit. He should get rid of it,
because it is wicked. 10

Two months later the State Department caused the following state-
ment to be published:

Washington, B.C. Oct. 21. Mr. Butler, Consul-General at Alexandria, has
informed the Department of State that he has seen in the New York Sun a letter
over his signature, addressed to the editor of that paper, which letter he stig-
matizes as a forgery. He represents that a private letter of his, and marked as
such, has been surreptitiously obtained, the address and official signature forged,
and the text garbled; and that has been made the basis of the publication to
which reference is made.

The Sun replied that the original letter, in Butler's handwriting, was
in its office.

John Russell Young dealt with Dana in a more dignified manner.
In explaining why Greeley had not received his just desserts in political
life the Sun had assumed that one of the causes operating against him
was Young's representation that "all Greeley wanted of the Adminis-
tration was the appointment of Major General Hiram Wallbridge to
be Collector." Something of Young's character is evident from his
brief note:

The information upon which this is written is erroneous. I have made no
"representations" to the Administration in reference to Mr. Greeley or Gen.
Walbridge. Indeed, to make any " representation" on behalf of Mr. Greeley
would have been an impertinence to that gentleman of which I could not be
guilty. 17

O'Donovan Rossa, a New York State politician, defended himself in
the following letter which appeared under the scornful caption "Mr.
O'Donovan Rossa's Confession":

Sir: You are quite at liberty to say anything you please as to where I go, whom
I meet, and what propositions are made to me. . . . But when you come to

1 Aug. 18, 1870.
17 Apr. 14, 1869.

388 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

speak my thoughts when you say, "Rossa thinks he can control the Irish
vote for Grant!" you say something that is unjust as regards my assumptions
or presumptions. Rossa thinks he cannot control the Irish vote for anyone. He
has reason to know that the Irish vote is controlled by tricksters, ...

If the Sun will please tell me what Irish national interest, consistent with our
duty as American citizens, is at stake between the election of Grant and
Greeley, I will understand the appeal to Irish feelings. Up to this I see the
question as purely an American one, and I would scorn to drag the name of
Ireland into it. 18

The Washington and Albany correspondence in the Sun was full
of malicious gossip and invention. Often its ordinary reporting was in-
accurate, as is proved by numerous letters of correction. For instance:
William Dorsheimer sent the Sun a corrected copy of an address, since
sentiments had been attributed to him "which I did not utter, but
which I disavow and reject." 19 Alexander Troupe of the Saturday
Evening Union informed the Sun that Governor English had not been
drunk or under the influence of liquor when he entered the New Haven
House. 20 Even Theodore Roosevelt wrote to correct the Sun's asser-
tion that he was opposed to the restriction of immigration. 21 He told
Henry Cabot Lodge in a private letter, "To my horror the Sun yester-
day put me down as opposed to the restriction of immigration; this
being the way they had construed an ardent appeal of mine to the
labor union men to restrict it." 22 Schuyler Colfax wrote the Tribune
the following statement:

So far from the statement being true which has been so widely published
and credited to the New York Sun, that I " smoked five or six strong cigars
that day on an empty stomach," I smoked but one, just after breakfast, six hours
before the attack.

I have had three previous attacks of vertigo (two while speaking), and
have been warned by medical friends of the peril of a more dangerous
attack. . . .

To this the Sun replied that since all the facts had been obtained
directly from Colfax's physician, the Sun must be right and Colfax
mistaken. 23

18 Aug. 2,1872.

19 July 8, 1879.
2 Aug. 17,1872.

21 Jan. 30, 1897.

22 Selections from the Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge.
V. I, 251.

23 June 9, 1871.

THE SUN SHINES FOR ALL 389

With a long list of "irate" correspondents, one might expect the
Sun to show resentment, but Dana always enjoyed a shindy. A typical
letter and reply may be cited:

Sir: As a constant reader of your paper, I would suggest that you publish a

little less Greeley and more general news, or I shall be compelled to drop your

paper altogether.

Yours, M. Martin, 117 West Twelfth Street

Mr. M. Martin, 117 West Twelfth street, if there be such a man, is respectfully

advised to drop the Sun at once and never look at another copy, much less buy

or borrow one. It is evidently not suited to such a hopeless case as him. 24

This vilification of respectable persons made many despise Dana.
Henry Adams wrote: "Charles A. Dana had made the Sun a very
successful as well as a very amusing paper but had hurt his own
social position in doing so; and Adams knew himself well enough to
know that he could never please himself and Dana too; with the best
intentions he must always fail as a blackguard, and at that time a
strong dash of blackguardism was life to the Sun." 25 The Nation
was horrified to have Dana include James Russell Lowell on its roll
of "ignoramuses," because Lowell asked his Government "for instruc-
tions as to the length of residence in his native country necessary to
exhaust the American citizenship of a naturalized citizen." It thought
an apology should be made to Lowell. 20 In 1880 some of the Sun's
contemporaries contemptuously referred to the Sun as a "mud sling-
ing machine." Dana thought them mistaken:

In the first place, the Sun is not a machine; it is a newspaper, as any one
may see by looking at it. To be sure it is printed by machinery, and it has to be
printed in that manner, on account of the vast number of copies which must
be furnished for the use of our multitude of readers.

As to slinging, it is something we do not understand at all. We never slang.
If the attention of our Republican contemporaries had not been diverted from
Biblical truth by one of their own numbers known as Bob Ingersoll, they
would remember that it was David, afterward King of Israel, who slang, and
it was not mud that he slang, but a stone ; and that stone smote Goliath the
Philistine in the forehead, so that he fell upon his face to the earth, and was
killed.

Having before us this grand example of the efficacy of stones, it would seem

2 July 12, 1872.

25 Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, 244.

20 The Nation, June 8, 1882.

390 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

to us preposterous to sling mud, if we were going to sling anything. Besides,
we have no mud to speak of, and certainly none to spare at present. 27

When Dana first took over the Sun, Grant was the hero of the na-
tion, and his attacks upon the hero enraged Republicans almost be-
yond endurance. They were unwilling to believe that Grant was in
any way implicated in the Black Friday Affair. Although Dana did
not at first accuse Grant of dishonest intentions, the Sun said that he
had no right to have his name connected with such an evil plot against
the people. In these same years Dana was publishing ridiculous stories
concerning Greeley's activities in Albany, insinuating that he influ-
enced legislation. Furthermore, the circulation of the Sun was mount-
ing, and aroused jealousy. These facts influenced the publication of
a pamphlet entitled "The Biter Bit." Using as its basis an unfortunate
experience of Dana's hiring a man who accepted money while acting
as Albany Correspondent, the authors of the pamphlet wrote what pur-
ported to be a "narrative of some of the blackmailing operations of
Charles A. Dana's Sun" They dared not sign it, but Dana believed
he knew who was responsible:

James B. Mix, blackmailer; A. M. Soteldo, Jr., self-acknowledged scoundrel;
Horace Greeley, philanthropist; and John Russell Young, convicted news thief,
are responsible for an anonymous pamphlet of sixty nine pages, the product
of a malicious but feeble disposition to injure the Sun. It is difficult to tell
what this pamphlet means to charge. Its coward authors do not dare to make
distinct accusations. I do, however, meet any insinuations which it may convey,
or may be intended to convey, to the minds of the readers, in regard to the
integrity and purity of the Sun by the following explicit and unqualified dec-
laration.

I never received or agreed to accept, or was promised a dollar or a penny,
or any other valuable consideration from any person or source whatever, directly
or indirectly, to influence the course of the Sun on any subject or in any
manner. . . .

Particular comment has been made on a certain article relating to the great
gold conspiracy, and entitled "the Welchers in Wall Street." That article would
have been printed but for the fact that before the paper went to press I dis-
covered that the parties whom it attacked were of merely secondary importance,
that the President of the United States was in the conspiracy, and as any
sensible man would do I determined to go for the higher game. Accordingly I
directed that article to be omitted and it was by a mere blunder in the printing
office that it was printed in a smaller portion of the next morning's edition.

27 June 30, 1880.

THE SUN SHINES FOR ALL 391

Whoever says that I ever received anything for suppressing that article is a liar.

boteldo was one of the Albany correspondents of the Sun last winter. He is a
bright, vivacious, vain, weak and silly fellow. It is very difficult to tell whether
he is now sane or insane. He came to me some time since in company with
Thomas C. Acton, and made a voluntary confession that he had corruptly
received money while in Albany. He seemed very penitent indeed, almost heart-
broken at the enormity of his own treacherous dereliction. He avowed to me
that if I would forgive him that he would never offend again. Mr. Acton ex-
pressed the opinion that Soteldo would keep this promise. I felt unwilling to
destroy the young man, not only on his own account, but also on account of his
aged father. He has now destroyed himself.

Mr. Greeley is a Universalist, and believes that nobody will ever go to Hell,
or he could not have been tempted to stand godfather to the anonymous libel
of two scoundrels and one thief. 28

Lee claims that the "Biter Bit" did not shake the confidence of Dana's
friends, "nor did it affect Dana's own confidence in Amos Cummings
or Isaac England or any of the other subordinates who came over to
the Sun from the Tribune and were incidentally assailed in this scur-
rilous pamphlet." 29 But Godkin must have believed the accusations
were true. In 1869, he wrote: "The Sun, Dana's paper, has been rival-
ing the New York Herald, in its worst days, in ribaldry, falsehood,
indecency, levity, and dishonesty championing Judge Barnard for
instance, and levying blackmail, to the horror of Dana's friends. He
is now an object of general execration. I think I have never seen such
nearly unanimous condemnation of a rascal, which is a good sign." 30
This was Godkin 's honest opinion, but he was mistaken as to Dana's
blackmailing operations. Friends of the editor, such as William Bart-
lett, might support corrupt judges, but no one paid Dana for influ-
ence in the Sun. Blinded by loyalities, he was often misled, but he
never accepted bribes of any description.

Although the Sun's irate correspondents were numerous, they were
not one quarter of those whom the Sun abused. Everyone connected
with the Grant Administration; everyone who took part in the Hayes
fraud; everyone near or dear to Horace Greeley; everyone who sup-
ported Cleveland and joined the Mugwumps, as well as many odd
characters whom the Sun found reason to persecute, were treated as
if they were the most stupid, ridiculous, or despicable freaks. There

28 Jan. 6, 1871.

29 Lee, James Melvin, History of American Journalism, 326-327.

80 Ogden, Rollo, Life and Letters of Edwin Lawrence Godkin, VI, 305.

392 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

were two reasons why they accepted such base characterizations in
silence: if they complained it inspired the Sun to further persecution;
and they knew the force of its invective was minimized by its lack
of discrimination. Had the Sun, with its wide circulation, confined its
attacks to scoundrels, it might easily have driven them from decent
society. Samuel W. McCall, writing the Life of Thomas Brackett
Reed, makes this point. When Reed was being considered for Speaker,
the Sun spoke of him as "an overgrown boy, who has not mastered
the rudiments of the manual." McCall explains in a footnote; "The
same dispatch impartially castigated all the other candidates." 31 To-
day this technique of abuse would not be tolerated. For a long time
the Sun was not found in the libraries of the leading clubs in New
York City or in the homes of well educated persons. For many years
it was not allowed in the Century, pre-eminently the club of cultivated
men. 82 But Dana did not edit a cheap newspaper. He was a genius
whose ability outshone his unscrupulousness ; and it has been said
that those who scorned to read the Sun in public, did so in private. 33
Dana's influence upon journalists of his day was enormous. Every-
where the newspaper man discovered his newspaper. Its financial suc-
cess appealed to the striving editor, its daring to the cub reporter, its
style, condensation, and brilliant literary qualities to the editor. Ex-
cerpts from hundreds of editorials which appeared in contemporary
papers testify eloquently to the homage Dana received:

The delicate task of gaining new intellectual clientage while retaining the
adhesion of the masses who have long looked to the Sun for light and warmth
required the hand of a master, and is performed by nothing less. The Sun is now
what cheap papers seldom are or dear ones either for that matter really
well-written. 34

The popular paper of the century is the New York Sun. Thoroughly inde-
pendent, argus eyed, justly critical, paralyzing to evil doers in its rebukes
scathing in its attacks and fearless in its exposures. 85

The ablest and most trenchant editorials in America are found in the New
York Sun. 36

Every newspaper office, no matter what its politics, feels the day incomplete

81 p, 94.

.!? R j? b * ult ' -i 8 ^ P C OI 1 Interviews with publisher of contemporary magazine and
with a distinguished scholar and writer who knew Dana well *feac *u

83 Personal Interviews, Ibid.

84 Round Table, Mar. 7, 1868.

85 The Aurora, Jan. 17, 1877.
80 The Reporter, Jan. 17, 1877.

THE SUN SHINES FOR ALL 393

which fails to bring with it the Sun, and every newspaper man will join the Sun
in its own admiration of itself as a strong and striking figure in modern
journalism. 37

The Sun is the best edited and the most thoroughly interesting paper in the
United States. 88

There is but one newspaper in the United States, and that is the New York
Sun. In this opinion I am not alone, but in company with every newspaper in the
country. . . .

It is a great paper, the Sun, and while occasionally wrong it is yet the paragon
of papers in this country, if not in the world. 39

Admirers of the Sun sometimes went too far even for Dana. When
the Boston Evening Star wrote, "The editor tries always to be fair
and just in his criticisms, and does not use the columns of his paper
to make personal attacks upon those who chance to differ with
him . . . ," it was placed in the Sun under the caption "Is This A Just
Opinion?" 40

It has been suggested that a paper with the character of the Sun
might not exert any political influence. Might not people read it only
because it was entertaining? Would they not go to more serious and
less biased sources for political direction? Contemporary journals did
did not believe this; they were convinced that the Sun exerted a tre-
mendous influence although they differed in estimating its value and
character.

Dana's most important exposure was the Credit Mobilier, which
appeared shortly before the elections of 1872. That it did not affect
Grant's re-election is attributed by Rhodes to the already prevalent
disposition to vote for Grant. 41 Oberholtzer is inclined to discredit the
journal for its low moral standards and minimize the value of its dis-
closures on that basis. Moreover, as he writes, the Sun negatived the
effect of its exposures by an insincere support of Greeley, Grant's only
opponent.

The course of the Sun during Hayes' presidency repelled many in-
telligent readers. They were not aroused to impeach him as Dana ad-
vised. On the contrary, the exaggerated attacks made friends for
Hayes. Hayes was actually complimented by the low opinion of the

8 7 Albany Evening Journal, Sept. 6, 1883.
38 Washington Post, May 19, 1885.
80 Toledo Journal, May 28, 1889.

4i Rhodes,' James F., History of the United States, VII, 1-2.

394 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

Sun. After leaving the White House, he wrote in his diary, "I am still
honored with the hatred and persistent attacks of the New York
Sun, the Philadelphia Times, S. J. Randall, and a small number of
followers in various parts of the country. Their course proves that a
good deal was done during my administration which was worthy of
admiration." 42 But one of Hayes' biographers, attests to the extent of
the Sun's influence. One of Dana's less offensive jokes on the "ex-
fraud" was that after leaving the White House, he devoted his energy
to chicken-raising at Spiegel Grove instead of attending to good causes.
More than thirty years after these stories appeared, Williams records
that they were still believed. "An eminent and worthy Republican
leader," he says, "who had been candidate for Governor of one of the
greatest States of the Union, amazed the author, as he was about to be-
gin the writing of this chapter, with a humiliating confession of his ac-
ceptance of the base and baseless fiction of the Sun." 4:i

At least two journals gave the Sun credit for the final defeat of
"Secor Robberson" when his home district refused to return him to
Congress in 1882:

No single agent did more to compass the defeat of Robeson than the Sun.

That paper has special reasons for being proud of the overthrow of what it
termed "the penitentiary candidate." Every believer in pure methods and pure
men in politics is under obligation to the Sun for its labors in that behalf. 44

While the awards are being made for meritorious service during the late
campaign, the public will be sure to accord great credit to the Sun for the part
it played in compassing the defeat of Secor Robeson. The Sun was persistent in
exposing every venal act of his, and its determined fight against him, bristling
with evidence of his venality and corruption, did more to expose him to his
constituents and secure his defeat than all else. 45

It is practically impossible to determine the extent to which a single
newspaper may or may not influence a presidential campaign. This
was particularly true of the Sun because of the contradictions in its
support of candidates and issues. From the time it turned against
Grant in 1869 until the campaign of 1896, its burning purpose, so it
appeared, was to rid the country of Republican rule. Yet the kind
of support given Greeley made him ridiculous in the eyes of the voters.

42 Williams Charles R., The Life of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, II N 429; Oct 23 1881
Williams, II. 431.

44 Nov. 14, 1882, Macon Telegraph and Messenger.

45 Boston Evening Star, Nov. 14, 1882.

THE SUN SHINES FOR ALL 395

In 1876 the only year in which the Sun gave serious support to both
the Democratic party and its candidate, Tilden received a majority of
the popular votes. What part the Sun played in effecting this result
it is impossible to determine. But the country was thoroughly dis-
gusted by Republican corruption, a feeling which the Sun hed helped
to engender. That Dana was genuinely devoted to Tilden and thor-
oughly convinced that Hayes was a fraud is well substantiated. Yet
when the time came in 1880, to rebuke the Republican party, the Sun
forfeited the opportunity for a joke. Its gibe at Hancock's personal
appearance made him a laughing stock, and did more, in the estima-
tion of Champ Clark, to defeat him than his own ill-advised talk about
the tariff. 46 A similar opinion was expressed by the Albany Evening
Journal:

The Sun is doubtless the most widely read of American newspapers. In some
lines it is very influential, too, for its simple allusion to a Presidential candidate
as a good man weighing 250 pounds, once on a time is held by many to have
changed the result of a national election. People do not dare to think what would
have happened had the Sun spoken of that unhappy candidate as a bad man. 47

In 1872, the Sun had done more than any other journal to drive
home the fact that James A. Gar field was badly implicated in the
Credit Mobilier scandal. Yet now it helped make him President with
a smart remark.

In 1884, when word was received that Cleveland had been nomi-
nated for President, Dana paced the floor, his face the picture of hard
concentration. Striking one fist into his open palm, he declared, "It
isn't Cleveland. It can't be Cleveland. It shan't be Cleveland." 48 Here
was an opportunity to clean out the den of Republican thieves and
carry the Democratic party to victory on the Sun's platform of reform.
But Dana hated the ponderous virtues of New York's reform governor,
and for the second time refused to support the candidate of his party.
Instead he supported Butler, for the purpose, so some critics main-
tain, of electing Blaine. Although the Sun entered the campaign with
characteristic energy, its influence, as measured by results, was nil.
It proved that Sun readers would not countenance such an editorial
travesty on public morality. Thousands preferred to cancel their sub-

40 My Quarter Century of Politics, 180.

47 Sept. 6, 1883.

48 Rosebault, Charles J., When Dana Was the Sun, 221.

396 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

scriptions. In the State of New York Butler received less than seven-
teen thousand votes; in the nation, only 175,300. A journal of the day
remarked: "Side shows do not pay. Butler, despite the powerful sup-
port of the Sun polls only 15,000 in this State. This is a ridiculous
undertaking." 49 On the other hand the American Protectionist, which
considered the Sun the most powerful daily newspaper in America,
said had it not been for Dana's work in the campaign, Cleveland's
plurality might have been much larger than it was. "Under the cir-
cumstances," it believed "Mr. Blaine made a wonderful run in this
city and State." 50

The Sun's attacks upon Cleveland were as absurd and vindictive as
any upon Grant or Hayes, and were more malicious. It made a practice
of praising Cleveland for those acts which it believed would alienate
him from his supporters. In 1887 it insisted that:

In writing the famous Fellows letter, declaring himself distinctly in favor
of the election of the celebrated Democratic candidate for District attorney
of this city, Mr. Cleveland undoubtedly made a conspicuous concession to the
Democratic political machine on the spoils basis that is to say, to the United
Democracy of New York. This at once excited a remarkable degree of disgust
and distrust among the Mugwumps; and they have condemned and criticized
and even reviled Brother Cleveland in a loud, active, and bitter fashion.

The Nation sarcastically remarked that this was as near to the truth
as Dana usually came. It then stated that when Cleveland understood
the kind of candidate Fellows was, he immediately recalled the letter,
saying that had he known the facts he could not possibly have written
it. 51

The Nation accused the Sun of playing a much slyer game in 1888
than in 1884, when it had "tried to elect Blaine." Dana's name, so it
said, was "hissed at the County Democracy and Tammany Hall," yet
he continued to say one word for Cleveland and Thurman and three
against them in every issue of the paper. It pointed out that the Sun's
self-appointed function as spokesman for the Democracy caused its
frequent prediction that the Democrats would have a close fight to
be quoted by Republican papers as "important Democratic admis-
sions/' to the great injury of the party. On the other hand it said:

49 The Hour, Nov. 8, 1884.

60 Nov. 24, 1884

51 The Nation, Dec. 1, 1887.

THE SUN SHINES FOR ALL 397

Few things calculated to injure the Democratic ticket escape the editorial
eye or fail to get into the Sun's columns but it is very rarely that a sign of
defection from the Republican ticket and platform like, the Chicago Tribune
article for example, find the light there. r>5!

Several attacks upon Cleveland were acutally revolting. Perhaps
the worst that ever appeared in the Sun was Dana's reply to an in-
terview which the ex-President gave a reporter on the World. It was
entitled "Remarks to a Cowardly Liar":

To provoke sympathy for himself, Mr. Cleveland deliberately drags the
name of his wife into an interview intended for publication, charging the Sun
with an offense which, if the charge is true, ought to render this newspaper
odious to every gentleman on Manhattan Island, to every honorable man who
respects womanhood. The charge is false, and Mr. Cleveland knew it was false
when he uttered it. There is but one answer we care to make. We invite Mr.
Cleveland to point to a line or a word that ever appeared in the Sun concerning
the good woman whose name he thus degrades, which justifies directly or in-
directly, the statement contained in the paragraph quoted above. If he cannot
do that and he cannot we invite the attention of the community to the por-
trait of a selfish poltroon, an unworthy husband, about whose conduct in this
affair nothing can be said by any person of sensitive perception that will not
leave on the coarse and swollen face peeping from behind the edge of his wife s
garments, a red mark like the sting of a whip lash/' 3

It was true that Dana had never openly maligned Mrs. Cleveland,
but it was more than doubtful that Cleveland had accused him of it.
Dana must have believed the interview in the World authentic, but the
Nation said it was faked. A month later the Sun referred to a conspiracy
"to relieve Mr. Cleveland at the sacrifice of the honorable man who
had told the truth in his report of the interview." The Nation said, "Most
people who had been led to believe that they had been called 'dirty liar
and thief ' would be glad to know no such term had been applied. Not
so Dana! He rejoices to believe they were applied to him. He hugs
them " 54 The Sun continued trying to provoke Cleveland into a state-
ment as to whether or not the Sun had spoken ill of Mrs. Cleveland and
if so what it was it had said. Yet despite the Sun's attacks over a period
of ten years, which were redoubled in 1892, Cleveland was twice elected

**lbid., July 5, 1888.

6 3 Apr. 18, 1890.

04 The Nation, April 24, 1890.

398 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

President. It is doubtful if anyone believed that Dana's attacks were
not motivated by personal animosity.

The Sun called itself the champion of the working classes. But while
its criticisms of their oppressors could be trenchant and its appeals
poignant, the corrective measures which it advocated lacked vigor. Its
virtues and faults in this respect are evident in the following editorial:

Among the White Slaves of New York perhaps there are no greater sufferers,
or a more cruelly oppressed class of human beings, than the hoop-skirt factory
girls. In some of the manufactories the girls are obliged tu hold the tin clamps
or spangles in their mouths while performing the operation of spangling. By a
dexterous sleight of hand, tongue, and lips together, the tins are conveyed
almost instantaneously one by one, from the mouth to the spot where they are
needed under the spangling machine. When these girls first enter the factory
and begin this branch of the work it is more than a week before the tongue
and lips become sufficiently indurated to enable them to perform the operation
without the intensest pain arising from the laceration caused by the sharp
pointed edges of the tins, eating and speaking becoming almost impossible. . . .
We were told by the foreman that the girls there worked fourteen hours a day,
and, in times of press, eighteen hours. . . . Upon being asked if they could
continue working long at that rate, /the foreman/ coolly replied, "They wear
out in about two years. 1 '

. . . Among the many charities in New York, is it not singular that a Home
of Rest for Worn out Workwomen has never been suggested? Two or three
weeks, or a few months, would restore the exhausted powers of nature, and give
time for seeking new employment. 55

The solution offered for this evil is almost as shocking as the portrayal
of it. Fourteen to eighteen hours of employment in labor which inca-
pacitated working women demanded radical correction. Dana wanted
a home of rest. Had he been willing to carry on a crusade in behalf of
the exploited factory worker such as the Tribune carried on against
slave labor, some improvement might have been effected. But Dana's
crusading spirit was turned to vindicating his wounded pride. The Sun's
superb talents were directed against individuals and political corruption.
Consequently measures designed to deal directly with the cause of social
and economic problems were designated as "humbug" and those who
advocated them as visionaries and hypocrites. Thus the Sun, quick to
detect evil and cry for reform, canceled its influence by ridiculing many
of those who were devoted to bringing it about.

55 July 13, 1870.

THE SUN SHINES FOR ALL 399

The Sun's attitude toward organized labor provides a striking ex-
ample of the way in which it minimized its influence. It upheld the right
of workers to strike, but whenever they did so, condemned them for
picketing, rioting, or anarchistic tendencies. Its stand against violence
would have been admirable had it been applied to both sides. It sup-
ported arbitration only in theory. Any law which tended to correct
abuses by the intervention of the Government, it opposed. The Knights
of Labor thought the Sun the most contemptible of all newspapers. 56

On the tariff and on national finance the Sun blunted its influence
by too frequent contradictions. This was due, not to insufficient knowl-
edge of the subject or to lack of factual information, but to emotional
factors. In supporting or opposing tariff and financial measures, Dana
was guided quite as much, by his interpretation of motives and the
emotions aroused thereby as by his grasp of the principles involved.
Likewise his own proposals and advice in respect to tariff and finance
were as often the product of preconceived ideas, personal grudges, or
animosities as of knowledge, sound judgment or statesmanship.

There were times when these emotions enabled him to render the
public a valuable service. A conspicuous illustration is afforded by his
position upon Reconstruction. The Sun, prior to March, 1869, shows
what its attitude toward the South might have been, had Dana retained
his admiration for Grant and the Republican party, or had it devolved
upon him, in some official capacity, to assist in carrying out the Re-
construction policy of Congress. Disillusionment with Grant opened
Dana's eyes and turned him into a skeptic. Instead of giving counte-
nance to stories of "Southern Outrages," as the Sun had done in 1868,
it questioned them and often discovered that they were false or exag-
gerated. Dana told the truth about the corruption, extravagance, and
ignorance of the Negro-Carpetbag-Scalawag Governments and the inter-
vention of the Federal authorities in behalf of local Republican ma-
chines. Instead of denouncing Southern leaders for ingratitude as it had
done prior to March, 1869, the Sun praised their courage and forbear-
ance and called upon the North to put an end to Grant's bayonet rule.
When Dana told his readers that his condemnation of Reconstruction
and Grantism would one day be vindicated, he predicted well.

In his foreign policy, Dana deprecated war, but was not above dema-
gogic appeals to mass sentiment. The Sun encouraged Fenian raids

eo May 21, 1887.

400 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

into Canada, sneered at all that was British, applauded unworthy pro-
posals for injuring England, and supported Cleveland in his vulnerable
Venezuela message. The country escaped war with England, but not
with Spain. Thirty years of consistent agitation for Cuban independ-
ence, coupled with an uninterrupted propaganda against all that was
Spanish, must have done much to make the conflict certain. Here, as
in all other foreign fields, the Sun was nationalistic, jingoistic, and
imperialistic.

In various policies which sprang from this nationlism, the Sun con-
tradicted itself. On one occasion it insisted that the United States must
adhere to a self-denying policy in avoiding annexation of Nicauragua
because we maintained friendly relations with that Government; but
on another it urged the overthrow of the Hawaiian Government, with
which we had no quarrel. The Nation commented that its policy toward
Nicaragua was a graceful admission that it had been wrong in its stand
regarding Hawaii." Undoubtedly Dana imparted some of his selfish
Americanism to his readers. But in one direction he met no success.
There is little evidence that his crusade for the annexation of Canada
ever received serious support; while the change in relations between
the United States and Great Britain following the Venezuelan dispute
rapidly broke down the anti-British sentiment fostered by the Sun,

Thus while the Sun's criticisms were carried to thousands of readers
by an enormous circulation there is little indication that its editorial
policy ever significantly influenced the course of events. Why then did
the Sun have so many readers? One reason lay in the richness, pun-
gency, and variety of its humor. It made people laugh even while they
condemned. No two cents provided so much amusement, malicious or
good natured, depending upon the taste and disposition of the reader.
People liked jokes at the expense of public men, witty indignation or
scorn directed at public measures and events. There was also much
humor that was free from spite. When in 1890 Chicago completed an
assembly hall for the use of meat-packers grandly referred to as the
"auditorium" the Sun suggested it be named "Choiropolagora":

There is nothing mysterious or fraudulent about Choiropolagora. It doesn't
even need a Bostonian to explain that this proposed name for Chicago's big hall
signified "a place of assembly for citizens more or less directly concerned in
transactions in pork, either alive or slaughtered."

67 The Nation, June 1, 1893.

THE SUN SHINES FOR ALL 401

That is the beauty of the Greek. How could so much that is truly description
of the big hall be compressed into fourteen letters, except by falling back on that
language? Besides, the word is vocally superb, and yet not difficult to pronounce.
Its resonant syllables would roll forth by installments from the lips of the
Chicago citizens like the reverberations of the wave beats on Lake Michigan in
its wildest mood. . . . And, whispered low and softly, how musical the syl-
lables' "I have tickets tonight for the Boss Minstrels at the Choiropolagora."
Why, the invitation would strike the maiden's left ear like a zephyr wafted all
the way from the isles where burning Sappho loved and sang/' 8

A great deal of the Sun's popularity was due to its mirror-like quality.
It reflected the ideas and emotions of its readers. It flattered them and
aroused their patriotism. Its religious tolerance, again, excited the
loyalty of minority and non-Protestant sects. Its solicitous interest in
domestic and personal problems made it welcome in the average home.
Likewise the people who were socially and critically minded read the
Sun. One reader, who accepted the Evening Post and Nation as her
political guides, told the author that she read the Sun every day as a
corrective to her Mugwump righteousness because she wanted to know
what Dana had to say and knew it would both challenge and amuse her. 59

The Nation believed that the Sun greatly increased its circulation
in 1885 by printing the so-called obscenities of W. T. Stead's famous
revelations of the traffic in women in the Pall Mall Gazette, and could
not help wondering if the accumulated profit was enough to compensate
for the putting of "filthy reading matter" in the hands of young per-
sons/' Sensationalism in the Sun was a factor in its popularity, its
circulation, and its demoralizing influence. Many articles were sensa-
tional in themselves, and many became sensational in the hands of a
Sun reporter. Trials of ministers for immorality, opium eaters, family
quarrels, rapes, murders, and suicides abounded. The Nation once
scathingly computed the space devoted on a particular day to this kind
of reporting. An insignificant amount was left for political and foreign
news. "As a microcosm the page is not often surpassed and must inter-
est foreign students of American manners," it commented. 61

In discussing the influence of the press, the Nation published the
following paragraph soon after Dana had died:

68 Jan. 8, 1890.

69 Personal Interview with Ida M. Tarbell.
o The Nation, July 23, 1885.

01 Ibid., Sept. 20, 1886.

402 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

. . . one paper struck out on the novel line of abusing and ridiculing everybody
whom the community considered good or respectable, highly eulogizing the
persons whom the community considered criminal or depraved, and treating
most of the subjects which the community considered serious as good jokes, or
fit subjects for ridicule. The success of this was great for twenty-five years.
The paper circulated among thousands of people, passing for grave and de-
cent, who enjoyed its paradoxes, its satire, and found its indifference to truth
amusing; and the editor was invited to at least one college to lecture to the
students on "Journalism/' and preserved a reputation for wit, scholarship, and
general editorial '"greatness." A generation grew up under his influence which
naturally learned to doubt the value of everything but money, the sincerity
of all reformers, and the utility of patriotism for anything but war. 02

A similar attitude was taken by The Critic, which declared that Dana's
paper "exerted a more pernicious influence than any other American
journal published within the memory of living men." (53 This opinion
is shared by a distinguished commentator and former editor who told
the author that he considered Dana the most unscrupulous man in
American journalism. He thought him absolutely cynical, without po-
litical principle, and armed with a diabolical pen. 01

Willard Grovesnor Bleyer, however, is more generous. In his opinion
Dana was guided politically by what he considered the best interests of
the country. While he admits that the Sun subordinated informative
news to amusing matter, thus tending to lower newspaper standards,
he seems to feel that Dana did some constructive work.' >r>

But Dana would not have been disconcerted in the least by comments
like these. Had he been living to reply he might easily have written, as
he did in 1881:

The Sun shines, as always for all, big and little, mean and gracious, contented
and unhappy, Republican and Democratic, depraved and virtuous, intelligent
and obtuse. The Sun's light is for mankind and womankind of every sort; but
its genial warmth is for the good, while it pours hot discomfort on the blister-
ing backs of the persistently wicked.

The Sun of 1868 was a newspaper of a new kind. It discarded many of the
forms and a multitude of the superfluous words and phrases of ancient journal-
ism. It undertook to report in a fresh, succinct, unconventional way all the
news of the world, omitting no event of human interest and commenting upon

62 /&*</, Nov. 25, 1897.

63 The Critic, Oct. 23, 1897.

64 Personal interview with Oswald Garrison Villard.

C5 Main Currents in the History oj American Journalism, 302.

THE SUN SHINES FOR ALL 403

affairs with the freshness of absolute independence. The success of this experi-
ment was the success of the Sun.

But the pen of the editor has been laid down. As the nineteenth
century drew to its close those in the old Sun building were saddened
by the absence of one whom they had loved as a master and friend. In
June, 1897, Dana began to feel unwell. He finally resigned himself to
an incurable malady with which he was afflicted, and waited for death
in the house which, during his life, had been a refuge from the clang
of the presses. On October 18, 1897, in compliance with his previous
instructions, there appeared two lines at the head of the editorial
column :

Charles Anderson Dana, Editor of
The Sun, died yesterday afternoon.

But he had achieved his goal: the Sun had set a new standard in jour-
nalism. It had also served as the medium of Dana's animosities, loyal-
ties and prejudices. Although he craved recognition of his work, he
cared not a rap whether people acclaimed or criticized his ideas. This fact
should be borne in mind in evaluating the Sun as an organ of public
opinion. It is doubtful if Dana cared to influence his readers in regard to
public affairs one-tenth part as much as he wanted them to read and
enjoy the Sun because they appreciated its merits as a newspaper.

In this ambition he met with singular success. Tens of thousands
who remained loyal to Grant, forgot the Crime of 1876, admired
Cleveland, spurned Tammany, refused to consider the annexation of
Canada, adhered consistently to the Gold Standard, tariff for revenue
only and civil service reform read the Sun every day for the sheer en-
joyment it gave them. It was like a tonic: often bitter, seldom pleasing,
but always refreshing. They laughed at its pungent wit; admired its
withering attacks upon those in high places; found its inconsistencies
entertaining, even if exasperating; were thrilled or horrified by its
sensational human-interest stories; delighted in its amazing vocabulary
and beautifully written prose, no matter how trivial or serious the
subject.

In the Sun's office journalism was pursued as an art for art's sake.
The Sun was created not manufactured. Dana did not ask, does the

66 Nov. 4, 1881.

404 DANA AND THE NEW YORK SUN

Sun exert an influence for good or bad, but rather has it made a con-
tribution to the profession of journalism. This was the tribute he
coveted most and the one he most deserved. Bein^ instinctively an
artist he could only give expression to what he truly believed and felt
however perverse and blameworthy the Sun's editorials appeared to
others. Nor did he hesitate to break with "the most imperative rule"
of the old journalism, "that editorial writing shall be free from the
characteristics of the writer," by declaring: "This is ruinous to good
writing, and damaging to the sincerity of writers. ... If we choose to
glow or cry out in indignation, we do so, and we are not a bit frightened
at the sound of our own voice." G7

Despite the criticism heaped upon Dana by leading journalists, both
past and present, his genius as a newspaperman is not only acknowl-
edged today, but was recognized by many of the foremost rivals and
critics of the Sun among his contemporaries. In 1865 Samuel Bowles
called Dana "one of the most eclectic of American scholars, one of the
most executive of American minds." G8 Henry Watterson wrote in his
paper of Dana in 1873: "he . . . has performed with the Sun, a feat
in modern journalism that entitles him to the stag-horns laid down at
the death of James Gordon Bennett. Mr. Dana is no less a writer and
scholar than an editor." 69

Through the forty years since 1897 the Sun spirit has proven un-
quenchable. The secret of the Sun's success did not die with Dana. It
has lived in the fact that he had attracted to the Sun exceptionally
talented men of similar standards, but as highly individualized as
himself. Dana had no desire to produce hybrids of himself or to graft
the talents of others to his own. The Sun office was not a nursery, but
a training school. And in this school there was no standardized Dana
formula to perish with him. In the blending of talents which he per-
fected, individual identity was surrendered to create a lasting journalistic
tradition.

67 O'Brien, 302-303.

08 Across the Continent, 3.

69 O'Brien, 294.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

EXPLANATORY NOTE

By far the major portion of the material for this book has been drawn from
the files of the New York Sun during Dana's editorship, January, 1868 to
October, 1897. The first two and last chapters are based largely on biographies
and magazine articles about Dana, histories of the Sun and contemporary news-
papers, together with books on journalism and the outstanding journalists of
Dana's day.

A few standard histories covering this period and numerous monographs,
biographies, autobiographies, reminiscences and memoirs were read for the
purpose of comparing the day to day picture of individuals, happenings and
ideas presented in the Sun with the facts and opinions advanced by both con-
temporary writers and later historians. Likewise the files of the New York
Tribune, Times, World, Herald and Evening Post were examined for compari-
son on a number of highly controversial issues.

In addition all current periodicals from the year 1868 to the present were
carefully searched for articles on or reference to Dana and the Sun. Of these
the following were most helpful:
The American Magazine. January, 1909.
Atlantic Monthly. July, 1874.
The Book Buyer. February, 1899.

The Bookman. November, 1895; February, 1902; December, 1904
The Chatauquan. June, 1895; June, 1896; March, 1898; April, 1898; July,
1899.

October, 1892; November, 1894; May, 1897; De-
cember, 1897.
The Critic. September 3, 1887; October 23, 1897.
Current Literature. May, 1901.
The Eclectic Magazine. October, 1887.
The Forum. August, 1893.

Harper's New Monthly Magazine. December, 1871; August, 1894.
The Independent. January 18, 1900.
Journal of Social Science. December, 1899

Lippincott's Monthly Magazine. August, 1871 ; November, 1892.
The Living Age. August 27, 1898.

Munsey-sMagazine. January, 1892; November, 1900.

406 BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Nation. 1868, December 31; 1869, November 4; 1870, February 3, Oc-
tober 20, November 17; 1872, April 11 ; 1880, October 21 ; 1882, June 8;
1884, February 14, October 14; 1885, March 5, June 8, July 23; 1886,
January 28, July 15, September 30, October 7; 1887, December 1; 1888,
October 4; 1890, April 24; 1893, June 1, October 19; 1897, January 21,
November 25.

New England Magazine. May, 1903.

The Nineteenth Century. July, 1892.

The North American Review. October, 1872.

Our Day. April, 1895.

The Quarterly Illustrator. 1892, October, November and December.

Time. January, 1887.

Westminster Review. September, 1887.

The Writer. June, 1887; September, 1888.

Another source of valuable material came from two or three people who had

known Dana personally and read the Sun and from others who remembered

what they had heard about him and his paper. Information obtained in this

way has, by special request, been treated as confidential unless specific permis-
sion was given to footnote its source.

REFERENCE WORKS

American Annual Cyclopaedia. 1872.

N. W. Ayer and Son's Directory of Newspapers and Periodicals. Philadelphia.

1880-1935.
Congressional Record.

Dictionary of American Biography. New York. 1930.
Encyclopaedia Americana.

Lalor, Cyclopedia of Political Science (3 vols.). New York. 1890.
National Cyclopaedia of American Biography. New York. 1898.
Pooles Index to Periodical Literature. 1802-1907.
Readers Guide.

Rowell's American Newspaper Directory.
United States Reports, Supreme Court.

GENERAL WORKS

Abbott, Edith. Women in industry. New York. 1913.

Adams, Charles F. Chapters of Erie. Boston. 1871. Charles Francis Adams.

Boston. 1900.
Adams, Henry. The education of Henry Adams. Boston. 1927. Historical

Essays. New York. 1891.

Adams, T. S. and Sumner, Helen L. Labor problems. New York. 1905.
Alexander, D. S. Four famous New Yorkers. New York. 1923. A political

history of the State of New York, III. New York. 1923.
Anthony, Susan B. A history of woman suffrage, II. New York. 1922.
Badeau, Adam. Grant in peace. Hartford. 1887.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 407

Baehr, Harry W. The New York Tribune since the Civil War. New York. 1936.

Bancroft, Frederick. The life of William H. Seward. (2 vols.). New York. 1900.

Barnes, Thurlow Weed. Life of Thurlow Weed, including his autobiography
and a memoir. Cambridge. 1884.

Beale, Howard K. The critical year: a study of Andrew Jackson and recon-
struction. New York. 1930.

Beard, Charles A. Contemporary American history, 1877-1913. New York.
1914.

Beard, Mary R. A short history of the American labor movement. New York.
1924.

Benton, Joel. Greeley on Lincoln, with Mr. Greeley's letters to Charles A. Dana
and a lady friend. New York. 1893.

Bigelow, John. Life of Samuel J. Tilden. (2 vols.). New York. 1885.

Blaine, James G. Twenty years of Congress: from Lincoln to Garfield. (2 vols.).
Norwich, Conn. 1884.

Bleyer, Willard G. Main currents in the history of American journalism. Cam-
bridge. 1927.

Bogart, E. L. An economic history of the United States. New York. 1922.

Boutwell, George S. Reminiscences of sixty years in public affairs. (2 vols.).
New York. 1902.

Bowers, Claude G. The tragic era: the revolution after Lincoln. Cambridge.
1929.

Bowles, Samuel. Across the continent. Springfield, Mass. 1865.

Bradford, Gamaliel. Portraits of American authors. II. Walt Whitman. (The
Bookman, Vol. XLII. September, 1915 to February, 1916.)

Brisbane, Redelia. Albert Brisbane: a mental biography with a character study.
Boston. 1893.

Bruce, H. Addington. Woman in the making of America. Boston. 1913.

Bryan, William J. The first battle: a story of the campaign of 1896. Chicago.
1925.

Bryce, James Bryce. The American commonwealth. London. 1888.

Buck, Solon J. The agrarian crusade. New Haven. 1920. The granger move-
ment. Cambridge. 1913.

Bucke, Richard Maurice. Walt Whitman. Philadelphia. 1883.

Burgess, J. W. The administration of President Hayes. New York. 1906. Re-
construction and the Constitution, 1866-1876. New York. 1902.

Burroughs, John. Whitman: a study. Boston. 1896.

Busbey, L. White. Uncle Joe Cannon. New York. 1927.

Butler, Benjamin F. Autobiography and personal reminiscences. Boston. 1892.

Cabot, James Elliot. Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson. (2 vols.). Boston. 1887.

Calhoun, Arthur W. A social history of the American family from colonial times
to the present. Cleveland. 1919.

Carlton, F. T. The history and problems of organized labor. Boston. 1920.

Carnegie, Andrew. Autobiography. New York. 1920.

Carpenter, Edward. Days with Walt Whitman. New York. 1920.

Cary, Edward. George William Curtis. Cambridge. 1900.

408 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Chadsey, Charles Ernest. The struggle between President Johnson and Con-
gress over reconstruction. New York. 1896.

Chapman, Charles E. A history of the Cuban republic. New York. 1927.

Cherrington, Ernest H. The evolution of prohibition in the United States of
America. Westerville, Ohio. 1920.

Church, William Conant. Ulysses S. Grant and the period of national preser-
vation and reconstruction.

Clark, Champ. My quarter century of American politics. (2 vols.). New York.
1921.

Cleveland, Grover. Presidential problems. New York. 1904.

Codman, John Thomas. Brook Farm: historic and personal memoirs. Boston.
1894.

Coggeshall, William T. The newspaper record. Philadelphia. 1856.

Coleman, Charles H. The election of 1868: the democratic effort to regain
control. New York. 1933.

Coleman, McAlister. Eugene V. Debs: a man unafraid. New York. 1930.

Colvin, David L. Prohibition in the United States. New York. 1926.

Commager, Henry Steele. Theodore Parker. Boston. 193b. Documents of
American history. (2 vols.). New York. 1935.

Conger, Arthur L. The rise of U. S. Grant. New York. 1931.

Conkling, Alfred R. The life and letters of Roscoe Conkling. New York. 1889.

Cooke, George Willis. John Sullivan Dwight, Brookfarmer, editor and critic
of music. Boston. 1898.

Coolidge, Louis A. Ulysses S. Grant. Cambridge. 1918.

Cox, Samuel S. Three decades of federal legislation, 1855-1885. Providence,
R. I. 1886.

Cubberley, E. P. Public education in the United States. Boston. 1919.

Curtis, F. The republican party: a history of its fifty years' existence, 1854-
1904. (2 vols.). New York. 1904.

Curtis, George William. Orations and addresses. (3 vols.). New York. 1894.

Dana, Charles A. Recollections of the Civil War. New York. 1898. Household
book of poetry. New York. 1858.

Dana, Charles A. and Wilson, J. H. The life of Ulysses S. Grant. Chicago, 1868.

Davis, Elmer. History of the New York Times. New York. 1921.

Davis, J. C. Bancroft. Mr. Fish and the Alabama claims: a chapter in diplo-
matic history. Cambridge. 1893.

Davis, William Watson. The Civil War and reconstruction in Florida. New
York. 1913.

Depew, Chauncey M. My memories of eighty years. New York. 1922.

Dexter, E. G. A history of education in the United States. New York. 1900.

Dewey, Davis Rich. Financial history of the United States. New York. 1922.
National problems, 1887-1897. New York. 1907.

Dewitt, D. M. The impeachment and trial of Andrew Johnson. New York. 1903.

Dorchester, Daniel. The liquor problem in all ages. New York. 1888.

DuBois, W. E. B. Black reconstruction in America. New York. 1935.

Dunning, W. A. Reconstruction political and economic, 1865-1877. New York.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 409

1907. Essays on the Civil War and reconstruction. New York. 1931.

Eaton, Dorman B. Articles on the Spoils system, etc., in Lalor Cyclopaedia of
Political Science, I.

Eckenrode, H. J. Rutherford B. Hayes: a statesman of reunion. New York.
1930.

Ely, Richard T. The labor movement in America. New York. 1886.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Transcendentalism and other essays. New York. 1886.

Fahrney, Ralph R. Horace Greeley and the Tribune. Iowa City. 1936.

Faulkner, H. N. American economic history. New York. 1924.

Fertig, James Walter. The secession and reconstruction of Tennessee. Chicago.
1898.

Ficklen, J. R. History of reconstruction in Louisiana. New Orleans. 1902.

Fine, Nathan. Labor and farmer parties in the United States, 1828-1928.
New York. 1928.

Fish, Carl Russell. American diplomacy. New York. 1924.-The civil serv-
ice and patronage. London. 1905.

Fleming, Walter L. Civil War and reconstruction in Alabama. New York. 1905.
The sequel of Appomattox. New Haven. 1909.

Foster, J. W. A century of American diplomacy. Boston. 1900.

Foulke, William Dudley. Fighting the spoilsmen, reminiscence of the civil serv-
ice reform movement. New York. 1919.

Franklin, Allan. The trail of the tiger. New York. 1928.

Frothingham, O. B. George Ripley. Boston. 1882. Transcendentalism in New
England. New York. 1876.

Fuess, Claude Moore. Carl Schurz, reformer. New York. 1932.

Fuller, Robert H. Jubilee Jim, the life of Colonel James Fiske, Jr. New
York. 1928.

Garner, J. W. Reconstruction in Mississsippi. New York. 1901.

George, Henry. Progress and poverty. New York. 1905.

George, Henry, Jr. Life of Henry George. New York. 1900.

Goddard, Harold Clarke. Studies in New England Transcendentalism. New
York. 1908.

Godkin, Edwin L. Problems of modern democracy: political and economic es-
says. New York. 1896. Reflections and comments. New York. 1895.

Gorham, George C. Life and public service of Edwin M. Stanton. (2 vols.).

GosneU, S Harold F. Boss Platt and his New York machine Chicago. 1924.
Grant, Jesse R. In the days of my father, General Grant. New York 1925.
Grant Ulysses S. Personal memoirs of U. S. Grant. (2 vols.). New York, 1886.
Greele'y Horace. The autobiography of Horace Greeley, or recollections of a

busy life. New York. 1872.

Green Horace. General Grant's last stand. New York. 1936.
Hacker Louis M. and Kendrick, Benjamin B. The United States since 1865.

HallisteT 0J. Life of Schuyler Coif ax. New York, 1886.

Hamilton, Gail. Biography of James G. Blame. Norwich, Conn. 1895.

410 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hamilton, Joseph G. de Roulhac. Reconstruction in North Carolina. New York.

1914.

Harper, Ida H. The life and work of Susan B. Anthony, including public ad-
dresses, her own letters and many from her contemporaries during fifty

years. (3 vols.). Indianapolis. 1908.
Hart, Albert Bushnell. American history told by contemporaries, IV. New

York. 1929. Salmon P. Chase. Boston. 1909.
Harvey, William Hope. Coin's financial school. Chicago. 1894.
Haworth, Paul L. The Hayes-Tilden disputed presidential election of 1876.

Indianapolis. 1927. The United States in our own times, 1865-1920.

New York. 1920.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Blithedale romance. Cambridge. 1 883.
Haynes, Fred E. James Baird Weaver. Iowa City. 1919. Social politics in the

United States. New York. 1924. Third party movements since the Civil

War. Iowa City. 1916.

Hendrick, Burton Jesse. The age of big business. New Haven. 1921.
Hepburn, A. B. History of coinage and currency in the United States, and the

perennial contest for sound money. New York. 1903.
Hesseltine, William B. Ulysses S. Grant, politician. New York 1935.
Hibben, Paxton. Henry Ward Beecher. New York. 1927. The peerless leader,

William Jennings Bryan. New York. 1929.
Hicks, John Donald. The populist revolt: a history of the farmers' alliance

and the peoples party. Minneapolis. 1931.

Hill, Benjamin H. Jr. Benjamin H. Hill's life and speeches. Atlanta, Ga. 1893.
Hillquit, Morris. History of socialism in the United States. New York. 1903.
Hoar, George F. Autobiography of seventy years. (2 vols.) . New York. 1905.
Hosmer, James Kendall. Outcome of the Civil W T ar. New York. 1907.
Hough, Emerson. The passing of the frontier. New Haven. 1918.
Howe, George F. Chester A. Arthur. New York. 1934.
Humphrey, Seth K. The Indian dispossessed. Boston. 1905.
Johnson, Andrew. Trial of Andrew Johnson. (3 vols.). Washington. 1868.
Johnston, Alexander. American political history. (Edited and supplemented by

James A. Woodburn.) New York. 1905. The life of Thaddeus Stevens.

Indianapolis. 1913.

Jones, Henry Ford. The Cleveland era. Oxford. 1921.
Jones, Robert L. History of the foreign policy of the United States. New York.

1933.
Keyser, John H. Next step of progress: how to break monopoly. New York.

1884.

Knox, Thomas. Life and work of Henry Ward Beecher. Hartford. 1887.
Latane, John H. A history of American foreign policy. New York. 1927.

From isolation to leadership. New York. 1918.

Lee, James Melvin, History of American journalism. New York. 1923.
Leonard, John W. History of the City of Greater New York. 1909.
Lester, J. C. and Wilson, D. L. Ku Klux Klan: its origin, growth and disband-

ment. Nashville, Tenn. 1884.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 411

Lewis, Austin. The rise of the American proletariat. Chicago. 1907.
Lingley, C. R. and Foley, A. R. Since the Civil War. New York. 1935.
Lippincott, Isaac. Economic development of the United States. New York.

1921.

Lloyd, Henry D. Wealth against commonwealth. New York. 1898.
Lodge, Henry Cabot. Selections from the correspondence of Theodore Roose-

velt and Henry Cabot Lodge, 1884-1918. (2 vols.). New York. 1925.
Lonn, Ella. Reconstruction in Louisiana after 1868. New York. 1918.
Merriam, C. Edward. A history of American political theories. New York.

1906. American political ideas: studies in the development of Amer-

ican political thought, 1865-1917. New York. 1920.
Merriam, George Spring. The life and times of Samuel Bowles. (2 vols.). New

York. 1885.

Mitchell, Edward P. Memoirs of an editor. New York. 1924.
Mitchell, Wesley Clair. A history of the greenbacks with special reference to

the economic consequences of their issue, 1862-1865. Chicago. 1903.
Moody, John. Masters of capital. New Haven. 1919. The railroad builders.

New Haven. 1919.

Morrow, Honore W. The father of little women. Boston. 1927.
Mott, H. S. The history of the Erie. New York. 1900.
Muzzey, David S. James G. Blaine. New York. 1934.
Myers, Gustavus. The history of Tammany Hall. New York. 1917.
McCall, Samuel W. The life of Thomas Brackett Reed. Cambridge. 1914.

Thaddeus Stevens. Boston. 1899.
McClure, Alexander K. Recollections of a half century. Salem, Mass. 1902.

Our Presidents and how we make them. New York. 1902.
McCulloch, Hugh. Men and measures of half a century. New York. 1900.
McElroy, Robert. Grover Cleveland, the man and the statesman. New York.

1923.
McKee, Thomas Hudson. The national conventions and platforms of all polit-

ical parties, 1789 to 1905. Baltimore. 1906.
McPherson, Edward. Handbook of politics, 1868 to 1894. Washington. 1868-

1894. Political history of the United States during period of reconstruc-

tion, 1865-1870. Washington. 1880. , ~ XT

Nevins, Allan. Abram S. Hewitt: with some account of Peter Cooper. New

York 1935 American press opinion. Boston. 1928. The emergence

of modern America, 1865-1878. New York. 1927.-The Evening Post: a

century of journalism. New York. 1924. Grover Cleveland. New York.

1 93 2 . Hamilton Fish. New York. 1936.
Nordhuff, Charles. The cotton states in the spring and summer of 1875. New

Norton, r Chlr 8 les Eliot. "A Leaf of Grass" from Shady Hill . Boston. 1927.
Noyes, Alexander Dana. Forty years of American finance. New York 1907
Oberholtzer Ellis P A history of the United States since the Civil War I-V.
^ Cooke, financier of the Civil War. Philadelphia.

1907.

412 BIBLIOGRAPHY

O'Brien, Frank M. The story of The Sun. New York. 1918.

Odell, George C. D. Annals of the New York stage. New York. 1936.

Ogden, Rollo. Life and letters of Edwin Lawrence Godkin. (2 vols.). New

York. 1907.

ONeal, James. The workers in American history. St. Louis. 1912.
Orth, Samuel P. The armies of labor. New Haven. 1919. The boss and the

machine. New Haven. 1919.
Paine, Albert Bigelow. Thomas Nast, his period and his pictures. New York.

1904.

Parkhurst, Charles Henry. Our fight with Tammany. New York. 1895.
Parrington, Vernon L. Main currents of American thought. New York. 1930.
Paxson, Fred L. The last American frontier. New York. 1910.
Payne, George Henry. History of journalism in the United States. New York.

1920.
Peck, Henry Thurston. Twenty years of the republic, 1885-1905. New York.

1906.

Pierce, Edward Lillie. Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner. Boston. 1877-93.
Pierce, P. S. The Freedmen's bureau. Iowa City. 1904.
Pike, J. S. The prostrate state. New York. 1935.

Platt, Thomas C. Autobiography of Thomas Collier Platt. New York. 1910.
Powderly, T. V. Thirty years of labor. Columbus, Ohio. 1890.
Pringle, Henry F. Theodore Roosevelt: a biography. New York. 1931.
Ramsdell, Charles William. Reconstruction in Texas. New York. 1910.
Reynolds, J. S. Reconstruction in South Carolina, 1865-77. New York. 1905.
Rhodes, James Ford. History of the United States, V-VIII. New York. 1906.
Rosebault, Charles J. When Dana was The Sun. New York. 1931.
Ross, Earle D. Horace Greeley and the West. Cedar Rapids. 1933.
Schlesinger, Arthur Meier. Political and social history of the United States,

1829-1925. New York. 1925.
Schuckers, Jacob William. The life and public services of Samuel Portland

Chase. New York. 1874.

Schurz, Carl. The reminiscences of Carl Schurz. (3 vols.). New York. 1909.
Schwab, J. C. The Confederate States of America. New York. 1901.
Sears, John Vander Zee. My friends at Brook Farm. New York. 1912.
Sedgwick, Henry D. Jr. Father Hecker. Boston. 1900.

Seitz, Don Carlos. Horace Greeley, founder of the New York Tribune. In-
dianapolis. 1926. Joseph Pulitzer: his life and letters. New York. 1924.
Sheridan, Philip Henry. Personal memoirs. (2 vols.). New York. 1888.
Sherman, John. Recollections of forty years in the House, Senate and Cabinet,

an autobiography. (2 vols.). New York. 1895.
Smith, Arthur. Commodore Vanderbilt. New York. 1927.
Sparks, Edwin Erie. National developments, 1877-1885. New York. 1907.
Squire, Belle. The woman movement in America. Chicago. 1911.
Stanwood, Edward. American tariff controversies in the nineteenth century.
(2 vols.). Boston. 1903.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 413

Staples, Thomas Starling. Reconstruction in Arkansas. 1862-1871. New York.

1923.
Steffens, Lincoln. The autobiography of Lincoln Steffens. (2 vols.). New York.

1931.
Stoddard, Theodore Lothrop. Master of Manhattan, the life of Richard

Croker. New York. 1931.

Stryker, Lloyd Paul. Andrew Johnson. New York. 1929.
Swift, Lindsay. Brook Farm, its members, scholars and visitors. New York.

1900.
Tarbell, Ida. The nationalizing of business, 1878-1891. New York. 1936.

The tariff in our times. New York. 1911.

Taussig, F. W. The tariff history of the United States. New York. 1914.
Thomas, Harrison Cook. The return of the democratic party to power in 1884.

New York. 1919.

Thompson, Clara Mildred. Reconstruction in Georgia; economic, social, politi-
cal, 1865-1872. New York. 1915.

Thompson, Holland. The new south; economic and social. New York. 1914.
Thorndike, Rachel Sherman. The Sherman letters. New York. 1894.
Thwing, Charles F. A history of education in the United States since the Civil

War. Boston. 1910.

Tyler, Lyon G. Parties and patronage in the United States. New York. 1891.
Villard, Oswald Garrison. The press today. New York. 1930. Some news-
papers and newspaper men. New York. 1923.
Vincent, Henry. The story of the commonweal. Chicago. 1894.
Watterson, Henry. Marse Henry Watterson, an autobiography. (2 vols.). New

York. 1919.

Welles, Gideon. Diary of Gideon Welles. (3 vols.). Boston. 1911.
Wells, David A. Recent economic changes. New York. 1889.
Werner, Morris R. Tammany Hall. New York. 1928.
White, Andrew Dickson. Autobiography of Andrew D. White. (2 vols.). New

York. 1905.

White, Horace. The life of Lyman Trumbull. Cambridge. 1933.
Williams, Charles Richard. The life of Rutherford Birchard Hayes. (2 vols.).

Cambridge. 1914.
Williams, George Washington. History of the Negro race in America, 1849,

1891. (2 vols.). New York. 1883.
Wilson, James Grant. The memorial history of the City of New York from the

first settlement to the year 1892, III-IV. New York. 1893.
Wilson, James H. The life of Charles A. Dana. New York. 1907. The life of

John A. Rawlins. New York. 1916. m

Wilson, Jennie L. The legal and political status of women in the United States.

Cedar Rapids, Iowa. 1912.
Woodburn, James Albert. The American republic and its government New

York. 1916. Political parties and party problems in the United States.

New York. 1903.

414 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Woolley, Edwin C. The reconstruction of Georgia. New York. 1901.
Woolley, J. G. and Johnson, William E. Temperance progress of the century.

Philadelphia. 1903.

Wright, Philip Green and Elizabeth Q. Elizur Wright. Chicago. 1937.
Young, John Russell. MSS collection, library of Congress.

INDEX

Academy of Music, 29
Acton, Thomas C., 391
Adams, Charles Francis, 195; Minister to

England, 323; 324
Adams, Henry, 389
"Ajax" of Sophocles, S3
Alabama, Confederate cruiser, 324, 337
Albany Regency, 62

Alcorn, James S., gubernatorial nominee, 73
Altgcld, John, 360
American Federation of Labor, 373
American Magazine, 34
American Wood Engravers, by William M.

Laffan, 45
Ames, Adelbert, Republican nominee for

Governor of Mississippi, 73; elected, 74;

calls upon Grant to suppress riots, 75;

impeachment and resignation, 75-76
Ames, Cakes, 102, 103
Anne, Queen of England, 323
Anthony, Susan B., 5, 121; trial, 198
Apollo Hall Democracy, 143
Armor Plate controversy, 245
Arnold, Matthew, 45
Arthur, Chester A., tariff commission, 284;

nominated for Vice-President, 317; 342
Associated Press, origin, 48; privileges

abused by John Russel Young, 125;

quarrel over dispatch, 126
Astor, John Jacob, 139
Astor, William B., 30
Atkinson, Edward, 121

Babcock, Orville E., 108, 249

Baez, head of San Domingo Republic, 331,

332, 334

Bakunin, Michael, 361
Bangs, John Kendrick, contributor to Sun,

46

Barnard, George C., 37, 41
Bartlett, Franklin, appointment requested

of Cleveland by Dana, 157; 220

Bartlett, Willard, originator of "Office Cat,"
36; friendship for Dana, 37; friendship
with Elihu Root, 38

Bartlett, William O., editorial writer, 35-
36, 37; lawyer, knack for phrase-making,
36; legal adviser to Sun, 37; counsel for
Tweed, 41 ; 391

Baxter, Elisha, quarrel with Brooks over
Governorship of Arkansas, 76-77

Bayard, Thomas F., 221; Secretary of
State, 226; Ambassador to England, 242;
344, 345

Beach, Moses Yale, sells Sun to Dana, 30;
helps organize the Associated Press, 48

Beecher, Henry Ward, apostle of humani-
tarian religion, 29; pastor of Plymouth
Church, 130; trial, 131-132; 212

Beecher, Herbert F., son of Henry Ward
Beecher, 132

Belknap, William W., 81, 83, 108, 109

Belmont, August, 29; bond issue, 269

Benjamin, J. P., 17

Bennett, James Gordon, editor, the Herald,
30; original member of Associated Press,
48; contribution to personal journalism,
50; 51, 130, 152

Bergh, Henry, 133

Bible, recommended by Dana, 53

Biddle, Thomas, Consul-General in Ha-
vana, 95

Bigelow, John, 146

Biter Bit, or the Robert Macaire of Journ-
alism, a pamphlet accusing members of
Sun staff of accepting bribes, 37, 390-391

Black, James, 121

"Black Friday," 95, 129, 390

Blaine, James G., first informed by Sun of
his defeat in 1884, 48; Speaker of the
House, 99; 102; the Mulligan Letters,
109-110; 129; deserted by Republicans,
222; praised by Sun, 232; 304, 305; op-
Hayes, 315; 318; Secretary of

415

poses

416

INDEX

State, 319; 320; 340-341; 343, 344; 346,
347

Blair, Frank P., Vice Presidential nominee,
letter to Broadhead, 62 ; 67

Blake, Marshall B., original stockholder of
Sun, 31

Bleyer, Willard Grosvenor, on Dana, 402

Blount, James H., 348, 349

Booth, Edwin, 29

Booth, Wilkes, 89

Borie, Adolph, Secretary of Navy, 92; 97

Boutelle, Charles A., 350

Boutwell, George S., on commission with
Dana to adjust claims against govern-
ment, 21; 90; Secretary of Treasury, 96,
99; involved in Sanborn contracts, 100-
101; on the public credit, 253-254

Bowen, Henry C., 315

Bowles, Samuel, compared with Dana, 54

Bradley, Joseph, in Hayes-Tilden contro-
versy, 308

Breckenridge, J. C., 18

Brinckerhoff, Judge, of Ohio, 121

Brisbane, Albert, influences Brook Farm
Association, 4-5

Bristow, Benjamin, Secretary of the Treas-
ury, 101; 108; 304

Broadhead, James O , letter from Frank
P. Blair, 62

Brook Farm, 1 ; reorganizes as a Phalanx,
4-5; adds new industries, 6; failure to
reform society, 6-7; compared to com-
munism, Phalanstery burns, 7

Brooks, Erastus, owner of Evening Express,
30; civil service bill, 175

Brooks, James, owner of Evening Express,
30

Brooks, James, Congressman, guilty of cor-
ruption, 103

Brooks, Joseph, quarrel with Baxter over
Governorship of Arkansas, 76-77

Brotherhood of Railroad Firemen, 373

Brown, August L., original stockholder of
Sun, 31

Browning, Robert, 45

Bryan, William J., nomination for Presi-
dency, 271-273

Bryant, William Cullen, nestor of the press,
30; 50; compared with Dana, 54; 95,
121; editor of Evening Post, 127

Buckner, Simon B., 273

Bull Run, defeat of Union Army, 19

Bulletin, San Francisco, 43

Burchard, Samuel D., 225

Burlingame Treaty, 341, 342

Burner, H. C., editor of Puck, contributor
to Sun, 46

Burroughs, John, 45

Butler, Benjamin, father-in-law of Adelbert
Ames, 73, 75; 100; 104; 127; supported
by Sun, 292; 395-396

Butler, Charles E , original stockholder of
Sun, 31

Butler, George, Consul General, 386-387

Butler, Theron R., original stockholder of
Sun, 31

Butterfield, Daniel, Assistant Treasurer, in-
volved in Gold Conspiracy, 96

Byrnes, Thomas, Police Inspector, 165

Caesar, Julius, 24

Caldwell, Governor, of North Carolina,

72
Camaguey, Cuba, names Plaza for Dana,

355

Cameron, J. D., 316-317
Campbell, Allan, Republican nominee for

Mayor, 156
Canada, annexation advocated, 17, 326,

345, 353, independence of, 336
Cannon, Joseph G , 133, 134
Cardoza, Albert, 41
Carlisle, John G , refuses Pan Electric

stock, 229, 290; petitions Congress for

funds, 301
Carpetbaggers, 66, 68; rule in South, 71-

72; in Vicksburg, 74; in Arkansas, 76-

77; in South Carolina, 78, 86; 120
Carr, Joseph B , Republican candidate for

Secretary of State, 154
Cathn, George, contributor to Sun, 46
Central America, annexation demanded by

Southern slave holders, 17
Central Pacific Railroad, assisted by Gov-
ernment, 356
Century Club, 392
Chadwick, George W., forms partnership

with Dana, 21
Chamberlain, Daniel H., Governor of

INDEX

417

South Carolina, 79; election dispute, 80;
87

Chamberlain-Bayard Treaty, 345

Chandler, William E., shipbuilder, 227;
316

Chandler, Zach, 310

Channing, William H , a visitor to Brook
Farm, 5

Charlick, Oliver, 144

Chase, Salmon P , 17, 23; character upheld
by Sun, 59, Presidential candidacy fea-
tured by Sun, 60, 61 ; 196

Chickamauga, Battle of, 23

Chickering Hall, memorial service for Dana,
355

Childs, George W., editor of Philadelphia
Ledger, 130

"Child's Catechism" of Swedenborgianism,
by Thomas Hitchcock, 41

Chinese immigration, restriction of, 342

Chittenden, S. B , original stockholder of
Sun, 31

Chronicle, San Francisco, 43

Church, Francis P., author of the editorial
on Santa Claus, 39

Civil Rights Bill, opposed by Sun, 74 ; pas-
sage, 75

Clarendon, Lord, British Prime Minister,
324

Clark, Champ, 395

Clarke, Freeman, original stockholder of
Sun, 31

Clarke, Selah Merrill, night city editor on
Sun, 43

Clarke, Thomas B , collaborates with Wil-
liam M Laffan on catalogue of Morgan
collection, 45

Clarkson, J S , 189

Clayton, Powell, Governor of Arkansas,
76, 77

Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, 342-344

Cleveland, Grover, 17, 38, 44; first in-
formed by Sun of his victory in 1892,
48; Mayor of Buffalo, 155; supported
by Sun in gubernatorial campaign, 156;
refuses request for appointment of Bart-
lett, 157; vetoes Five Cent Fare Bill, 158;
letter to Kelly, 159; 165; on Civil Serv-
ice reform, 183, 191; retains Roosevelt,
192; attitude toward Sun, 193; 222; on

tariff, 229-230; supported by Sun, 232;
as Free Trader, 233; defeat, 233-234; on
currency, 235-237; 240; third term pos-
sibility, 246; praised for economy, 254;
255, 256, 260; 261; 262; 263; 264; ap-
proval of income tax, 265 ; 267 ; on gold
reserve deficit, 268; Morgan bond issue,
269, 271; 273, 274, 275, 276; tariff, 291-
293; on Wilson Bill, 299-301; 344; 345-
346; 348, 349, 350; 351, 352; 354, 355;
labor arbitration, 370; 396-397

Coffey, Titian J., 105

Coke, Richard, tariff commission, 284

Colfax, Schuyler, 103; 109; 196; 388

Colfax Massacre, 81, 82

College of the City of New York, abolition
advocated, 250

Commercial Advertiser, edited by Thurlow
Weed, 30, 140

Committee of Seventy, creation of, 142 ;
143, 167, 168

Conger Lard Bill, 133

Conkling, Franklin, original stockholder of
Sun, 31

Conkling, Roscoe, forms partnership with
Dana, 21, original stockholder of Sun,
31, 155; Elaine's attack upon, 226, 304,
305; on Hayes Administration, 310-311;
315-317, 318; 319, resignation of, 320;
321, 322

Connolly, Richard B , "slippery Dick," 29 ;
137, 141, 142

Conshatta Massacre, 82

Cooke, Henry D., Governor of District of
Columbia, 93 ; in "District Ring" scandal,
105; failure of, 357

Cooke, Jay, 93; failure of, 357-358

Cooper, Edward S., anti-Tammany candi-
date for Mayor, 149; refusal to appoint
Kelly, 153; 161

Cooper Union, mass meeting creates Com-
mittee of Seventy, 142

Corbin, A. R, 94; 96

Cornell, Alonzo B., original stockholder of
Sun, 31; 151; 155

Cornell University, addressed by Dana, 52-
53

County Democracy, formation, 153; repre-
sentation in Democratic convention, 154;
156

418

INDEX

Courier and Enquirer, helps organize the
Associated Press, 48

Courier Journal, Louisville, 50, 124

Cowdin, F. C., original stockholder of Sun,
31

Cox, Samuel S., in Grant's Cabinet, 91, 102,
112; refuses Pan Electric stock, 229

Creamer, Thomas J., 137

Credit Mobilier, 102-104; 318, 321; 393

Creswell, A. J., in Grant's Cabinet, 91; 101,
102

Croker, Richard, appointed by Havemeyer
as marshal, 145 ; power in Tammany, 161 ;
appointed as City Chamberlain, 162 ; 165

Cromwell, Oliver, 323

Cuba, annexation demanded by Southern
slave holders, 17; 22; struggle for inde-
pendence, 326-328; 353-355; Cuban
Revolutionary Party holds memorial
service in honor of Dana, 355

Cumberland, Army of, Thomas as Com-
mander, 23

Cummings, Amos J., first managing editor
of Dana's Sun, 41 ; developed human in-
terest method of news writing among Sun
reporters, 42; effect of writing on circu-
lation of Sun, 42-43 ; on advertising, 47

Curtis, George William, an associate of
Dana at Brook Farm, 5 ; on Civil Service
Commission, 173, on Garfield's assassina-
tion, 176

Cushing, Caleb, 339

"Cy and I," by Eugene Field, 46

Daily Advertiser, Newark, 98
Daily Bulletin, published in Baltimore, 43
Daily Chronotype, Dana employed by, 7
Daily News, Galveston, criticises Sun, 223
Daily Republican, Chicago, edited by Dana,

27

Dana, Charles A., early life, 1-2 ; interest in
Transcendentalism, 2; applies for ad-
mission to Brook Farm, 3; letter to his
sister explaining why he joined, invests in
Brook Farm, 4; life and duties at Brook
Farm, 5; Brook Farm as experiment in
social reform, 6-7; employed by Daily
Chronotype, becomes city editor of the
Tribune, 7; foreign correspondent during
revolutions of 1848 in France and Ger-

many, 8; letters to Tribune, 8-12; reca-
pitulation of European experience, 13-14;
on failure of North American Phalanx in
New Jersey, 14; on devotion of Tribune
to transcontinental railroad, protective
tariff and slavery, 15 ; on various issues of
slavery controversy, 16-17, 18, 19; accused
of originating Tribune slogan, "Forward
to Richmond," 19; on rupture with
Greeley, 19, 19n.43, 20-21; appointed
by Stanton on commission, on cotton
trade between Union and Rebel lines, 2 1 ;
selected by Lincoln and Stanton to ob-
serve Grant, 21 , impressions of Grant and
his staff, 22 ; meetings with Andrew
Johnson, 22-23; recommendation to re-
place Rosecrans, 23 ; at Missionary Ridge
and Lookout Mountain with Sherman and
Sheridan, 23 ; duties in Washington as
Assistant Secretary of War, 23-24; learns
from Lincoln his policy for restoration of
Virginia, 25, at close of Civil War, 26;
venture with Chicago Republican, 26-27;
value of Civil War acquaintanceships and
experiences, 27-28, revolutionizes appear-
ance of Sun, 29; reasons for starting
paper in New York, 29-30, editorial
"Prospectus," 31-32; success and charac-
ter of paper in first year, care in selecting
staff, 32, attitude toward journalism, 32-
33 ; management of Sun office, 34 , blends
different aptitudes of staff, 35 , attracts to
Sun imposing list of contributors, 45-46;
joins Field in bedeviling Miss Cleveland,
46, originates first literary syndicate, 46-
47; opposed to advertising, 47, relations
with Associated Press, 48-49 ; survives old
editorial associates, 49-50, his defense of
personal journalism, 51-52, on profes-
sional rules for journalism, 52-53 , moulder
of public opinion, 54, revolutionizes pro-
fession of journalism, 54-55 ; on Johnson's
acquittal, 60; on letter from Blair to
Broadhead, 62 , on Tenure of Office Act,
64 ; change in attitude toward Grant, 65 ;
on social equality for Negroes, 67-68, on
the First and Second Enforcement Acts,
the Ku Klux Klan Act and general
amnesty, 69; on South 's support of Grant,
72-73; on Lamar's eulogy of Charles

INDEX

419

Dana, Charles A. (continued)

Sumner, 74; on the Brooks-Baxter feud,
77; opposed to seating of John J. Patter-
son in Senate, 78; criticises Government
in South Carolina, 79-80 ; opposes Federal
intervention in Louisiana, 80; condemns
General Sheridan, 84; assures readers of
Tilden's election, 85; begins bitter perse-
cution of Hayes, 86-87; attitude toward
Reconstruction, 88; refuses appointment
to New York Customs Department, 90;
on Grant's appointments, 91-92, 94-95;
charges Grant with nepotism, 93-94; on
Gold Conspiracy, 95-97; accuses Robeson
of Treasury fraud, 98-99; on Sanborn
contracts, 100-101; 104, sued by District
Ring for libel, 105 ; sued by W. H. Kemble,
106; on the Whiskey scandal, 108, on
Blaine and the Mulligan letters, 109-110;
on the Administration's Indian policy,
110-113; on the Rawlins fund, 114; du-
bious championship of Greeley, 115-123;
on Greeley's insanity, 124; libel suit by
John R. Young, 125-126; dislike of God-
kin, 127-128; on the Beecher trial, 131-
132, ridicules work of Henry Bergh, 133,
attacks upon Joe Cannon, 133-134; de-
fends Tweed, 140 ; claims credit for over-
throw of Tweed, 141; commends Kelly's
reply to Havemeyer's charges, 145; car-
ries on campaign to discredit Boss Kelly,
146; blamed by Kelly for defeat, 150;
withdraws support from Grace, 152; feels
need for new Tammany, 153; supports
Cleveland for Governor, 156; request for
appointment of Bartlett refused by Cleve-
land, 157; supports re-election of Hewitt,
162; on Dr. Parkhurst's Reform cam-
paign, 164; defends Tammany, 165;
opposes Straus' candidacy, 168; change
toward Grant, 172-173; on Hayes, 174;
on the Brooks Bill, 175; makes fun of
Suffragettes, 196; on trial of Susan B.
Anthony, 198; opposes income tax, 251-
252; supports silver standard, 256 ff; de-
fends debtor class, 259; attacks main-
tenance of gold standard as conspiracy,
259-260; regards bimetallism as "fiction,"
260; gives reasons for upholding silver
standard, 261; calls Silver Purchase Act

a compromise, 262; opposes demand for
unlimited coinage of silver, 262-263; on
bond issues, 268; on diminishing gold re-
serve, 270; on McKinley's nomination,
271; on Bryan's nomination, 271-273;
breaks with Democratic party, 274;
financial inconsistencies, 274-276; on free
trade, 277 ; on Wool Bill, 278 ; on shipping,
279; on protective tariff, 280-297; on
Hayes appointments, 310-312; on Gar-
field's nomination, 318; approves General
Sickle's appointment to Spain, 327; an-
nounces Fish's resignation, 331-332;
criticises handling of Virginius affair, 338-
339; denounces Caleb Cushing, 339; urges
annexation of Mexico, 339; change in at-
titude toward immigration, 342 ; rejoices
over repudiation of Clayton-Bulwer
Treaty, 344; on Hawaiian policy of
Cleveland and McKinley, 350; on Ven-
ezuela, 350-352; on Olney-Pauncefote
Treaty, 353-354, advocates annexation of
Canada and Cuba, 353-354; honored by
Cubans, 355, economic theories, 378-379;
influence, 380, 392-393, on Reconstruc-
tion, 399; foreign policy, 399; death of,
403 ; evaluation of, 404

Dana, Paul, son of Dana, 157

Danton, Dana quotes from, 107

Davis, Bancroft, Assistant Secretary of
State, 113; 323; 331, 337

Davis, David, refuses nomination of Labor
Reformers, 120; Senator of Illinois, 308

Davis, E. J , Governor of Texas, 72

Davis, Jefferson, 18, incarcerated at For-
tress Monroe, 26; 63; 64; 119, 122

Dawes, Henry L., protectionist, 283

Day, Benjamin H., founder of the Sun, 30

Debs, Eugene V., 243-245, guilty of con-
tempt, 377

Delano, Columbus, Secretary of Interior,
112; resignation, 113; 304

De Lesseps, Ferdinand, 342, 343, 344

Delmonico's Restaurant, 29

Democrat, New York, edited by Marcus M.
Pomeroy, 30; 140

Democrats, National Convention of 1868,
61-62; free trade, 291; nominate Cleve-
land, 291

Denison, Ann, mother of Dana, 2

420

INDEX

Devens, Charles, Attorney General, 310, 313

Dial, contributed to by Dana, 5

Diaz, Porfirio, 340

Diechman, Ernest, Minister to Colombia,
343

Dingley, Nelson, Jr., 203

Dingley Act, 302

Disraeli, Benjamin, 323

"District Ring," 105

Dix, John A., Governor of New York, 144

Dorsheimer, William, 388

Douglas, Stephen A., 18

Dow, Neal, 203

Dows, David, original stockholder of Sun,
31

Drew, Daniel, 30; 356

Durell, E H., 80, 81; impeachment pro-
posed, 82

Dwight, John S , at Brook Farm, 5

Dwight, Timothy, 195

Early Life of General Grant, reprinted in
Sun, 60

Eaton, Dorman B., original stockholder of
Sun, 31; on Garfield's assassination, 176;
resigns from Commission, 185; on Cleve-
land's Administration, 186-187

Eaton, William M., tariff bill, 283-284

Edson, Franklin, Mayor of New York, 160

Elizabeth, Queen of England, 323

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, visitor to Brook
Farm, 5

Emma Silver Mining Company, 95

Endicott, William E , 226

England, Isaac W , original stockholder of
Sun, 31

Eno, Amos R., original stockholder of Sun,
31

Enquirer, Cincinnati, suggests Dana for
Governor, 33

Erie Railroad, plundered by Drew and asso-
ciates, 30, 95; 146; earnings, 356

Eustis, James B., Minister to France, 242

Evangelist, New York, 131

Evans, George C., 105

Evans, John S., 109

Evarts, William M., original stockholder of
Sun, 31; 87; Secretary of State, 309-310;
311; 340

Evening Express, owned by James and

Erastus Brooks, 30; helps organize Asso-
ciated Press, 48

Evening Journal, Albany, 395

Evening News, edited by Benjamin Wood,
30

Evening Post, New York, 30; 36; 50; 60,
99; 126; edited by William Cullen Bry-
ant, 127, 328; 348

Evening Star, Boston, 393

Evening Times, Albany, 98

Ewing, Hugh, Resident Minister at the
Hague, 95

Express, New York, 140

Fairchild, Charles S., 146

Farrand, William D , 92

Fawcett, Edgar, contributor to Sun, 46

Fenians, attempt to invade Canada, 325

Ferry, Thomas W , President of Senate, 307

Fessenden, W P., 17; 58, Suffragists on, 196

Field, Cyrus W., original stockholder of Sun,
31

Field, Eugene, contributor to Sun, 46

Field, Henry M, 131

Fifteenth Amendment, 64, 65, 67

Fifth Avenue Hotel, 121; 148

Fifth Avenue Opera, 29

Finances, Sun's financial creed and policy
(1868-1880), 246-249; crusade against
waste, 249-251 ; policy regarding taxation,
251-253; 265-266, reduction of surplus
revenue, 253, payment of public debt,
253; economy and taxation reform, 254;
Bland-Allison Act, 254-255, the silver
scare, 255, gold reserve threatened, 255;
257; bimetallism, 260-261, bond issues,
264, 267, 269, 270

Financial Crisis, by James S Pike, 39

First Blows of the Civil War, by James S.
Pike, 39

First Enforcement Act, 69 , 70

Fish, Hamilton, Secretary of State, 92, 304,
323, 327, 328-329; 330, 331, 332; 336;
338

Fisher, Warren, Jr , 109

Fisk, James, Jr., 30; in Gold Conspiracy,
95-96; 113

Five Cent Fare Bill, 158

Flint, Dr. Austin, letters from Dana, 2-3

Florida, Confederate cruiser, 337

INDEX

421

Flower, Roswell P., 156; 221, 222

Foley, John, "Clown" to "King" Kelly, 148

Folger, Charles J., Secretary of Treasury,
155; 319

Force Bill, 239-241

Foreign Affairs, Alabama claims, 324-325;
329, 335-338, Cuban policy, 328-329, 331,
San Domingo, 331-334; Virginius affair,
338; Latin American Policy, 340-341,
346-347; Panama Canal, 342-345; Cana-
dian fisheries dispute, 345; policy toward
Hawaii, 347-350; Venezuela dispute, 350-
353

Fourier, Frangois M. Charles, socialist sys-
tem adopted at Brook Farm, 4-5

Fowler, Joseph S , 137

Free-Soilers, 17

Free-Traders, 16

Frelinghuysen, Frederick T , Secretary of
State, on the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, 343,
344

Fremont, John C , 62

Frothingham, O B , 131

Fuller, Margaret, visitor to Brook Farm, 5

Fuller, Perry, 112

Fassett, J Sloat, 162

Gardner, Hugh, 144

Garfield, James A, 107, 153; on civil serv-
ice, 172; 314, nominated for president,
317; attitude of Stalwarts toward, 318;
appointment of Robertson, 319-320, as-
sassination, 321-322, 340; 384, 395

Garland, A H , Governor of Arkansas, 77;
Attorney General, 226; Pan Electric
Fraud, 229

Gazette, Cincinnati, 130

George, Henry, candidate for Mayor, 161

George III, of England, 323

George IV, of England, 323

Gladstone, William E , 323

Godkin, Edwin Lawrence, on Raymond, 49-
50, on yellow journalism, 54; takes over
Evening Post, 127, 128, attitude toward
Sun, 193; 391

Godwin, Parke, 121

Gould, Jay, 30, sells stock in World to Jo-
seph Pulitzer, 54 ; in Gold Conspiracy, 95-
96, 113; 128, 146; 155; Five Cent Fare
Bill, 158; supports Cleveland, 225

Grace, William R., 152 ; rumored candidacy,
167-168

Grady, Thomas, sponsors Five Cent Fare
Bill, 158

Granges, 359

Grant, Hugh Jackson, Mayor of New York
City, 162 ; supported by Sun, 168

Grant, Jesse R., father of U. S. Grant, 94;
113

Grant, Orvill, brother of U. S. Grant, 113

Grant, Ulysses S, 17; prepares to move
against Vicksburg, 21 ; appointed to Com-
mand of Military Division of the Missis-
sippi, 23; generosity at Appomattox, 25;
26; Life of Grant, by Dana and James H.
Wilson, 27; 28; supported by Sun, 56;
quarrel with Johnson, 57; 58; 59; accusa-
tions of drunkenness repudiated by Sun,
60; nomination praised by Sun, 61; 62;
election, 63, 64; 68; defence of Packard
denounced by Sun, 70; 71; election of
1872, 72; 73; called upon by Governor
Ames to suppress riots in Louisiana, 75;
criticised by Sun for Reconstruction pol-
icy in Arkansas, 76; intervenes in behalf
of Baxter, 77, sends Federal force into
South Carolina, 79 , supports Kellogg Gov-
ernment in Louisiana, 81; 82; orders
Sheridan to assume military control in
New Orleans, 83; 85, succeeded by
Hayes, 86; 88, appointments, 91-92, 94-
95, charges of nepotism by Sun, 93-94;
in Gold Conspiracy, 95-97; 98; 99; 100,
102, 104, 105; second inaugural address
criticised by Sun, 106; in "Salary Grab,"
107; in whiskey scandal, 108, 109; Indian
policy, 110-113; possibility of third term,
114; 119; 120, 121; 156; on civil service,
172; 196; 282; 317; 318, 323; 326, 327;
330; 331; 334; 336; 339, condemns Sun,
385; 390

Grant, Mrs Ulysses S , 92

"Grantism," defined by Sun, 90; 98; 104;
106; 108; 109

Greeley, Horace, 1; a Brook Farm sympa-
thizer, 5 ; 7 ; agreement with Dana on is-
sues, 15; on secession, 16, 17, 18; 19; as-
sumes responsibility for slogan "Forward
to Richmond," 19n.42; attitude toward
War compared with Dana's, 19; asks for

422

INDEX

Dana's resignation, 20; 30; original mem-
ber of Associated Press, 48; contribution
to journalism, 50; 51; compared with
Dana, 54; 72; 73; Sun's dubious cham-
pionship, 115-122; death, 123; proposed
statue, 124; 125; 126; 128; 156; on civil
service, 173; "blasphemy" of, 213; re-
joices over payment of debt, 254; 282;
386; 390-391

Greeley, Mrs. Horace, death, 122

Green, Andrew H., 142

Greenbacks, 59; 292

Greenville and Columbia Railroad, 79

Gresham, Walter Q., Secretary of State, on
Hawaii, 349; 351

Grimes, J. W., 58

Grinnell, Moses, appointment to New York
Customs House, 92

Groesbeck, William, presidential nominee,
121

Half-Breeds, 155; 319

Hall, Oakley, Tammany mayor, 136; 141;
151

Halleck, H. W, 23

Halpin, Maria, 224-225

Hamilton, John C., original stockholder of
Sun, 31

Hampton, Wade, gubernatorial nominee in
South Carolina, 79; election dispute, 80;
87

Hancock, Winfield Scott, 24 ; made fun of in
Sun, 36; 153

Harbinger, contributed to by Dana, 5

Harper's Monthly, 30

Harper's Weekly, 30; 139; 159

Harrison, Benjamin, on civil service, 188 ff;
nominated for president, 232 ; supported
by Sun, 238-239; billion dollar Congress,
250; 261, 263; tariff, 296; 344-345; 346;
348

Harte, Bret, contributor to Sun, 46

Hastings, Warren, 58

Havemeyer, William F., nominee of the
Committee of Seventy, 143; 144; letter to
Kelly, 145

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, at Brook Farm, 5

Hayes, Birchard, 313

Hayes, John L., chairman of tariff commis-
sion, 284

Hayes, Rutherford B., 17; 18; 26; dispute
over election, 84-85; election declared, 86;
ascertains facts of Negro Carpetbag rule,
86-87; upholds the Nicholl's government
in Louisiana, 88; Customs appointments,
174; on Garfield's assassination, 176; 248;
candidacy predicted, 304-305; contro-
versy with Tilden over presidency, 306-
309; appointments, 310-312; personal
attacks, 313-315; 339-340; on Panama
Canal, 342, 343; effect of Sun's attacks,
393-394

Hayes, Webb P., 313

Hazeltine, Mayo W., article on Dana in
North American Review, 33; with the
Sun (1878-1909), 40

Hearst, William Randolph, adept at sensa-
tionalism, 54

Hecker, Father Isaac Thomas, at Brook
Farm, 5

Hederman, A G , questions the Sun, 51

Hendricks, Thomas A., 54, 309, death,
314

Herald, Boston, on criticism of Hayes, 314

Herald, New York, 30; helps organize the
Associated Press, 48; reputation, 50; 126;
circulation, 127; estimate of, 129-130;
140; on gold payments, 257-258; on
trusts, 372; 382; cost, 385

Hewitt, Abram S., 85; on Committee of
One Hundred, 153; candidate for Mayor,
161; on Committee of Seventy, 167; re-
fuses stock, 229

Hill, David B., Chairman of Democratic
convention, 154; Lieutenant Governor,
156; Governor, 160, 165; 166; 186; 228;
231; 234; senatorial ambitions, 237;
239; bolts party, 241; 276; on tariff, 298-
299

Hitchcock, Thomas, original stockholder of
Sun, 31; author of "Mathew Marshall"
column in Sun, 41

Hoar, George F., investigates riots in Colfax,
La, 81; 218

Hoffman, John T., suggested for Vice
Presidency by Sun, 61 ; Governor of New
York, 135; 137

Holden, W. W., Governor of North Caro-
lina, 68

Homestead Acts of 1862 and 1864, 16

INDEX

423

Horace Greeley in 1872, by James S. Pike,

39

Horace, Odes of, S3

Hudson, Silas A., Minister to Guatemala, 93
Hunt, Judge, 198-199
Kurd, Frank, 221

Income tax, declared unconstitutional, 377;

Evening Post on, 377; World on, 377
Independent, 30
Indian Ring, 112-113
Ingersoll, Robert, 209
Irving Hall Democracy, 146; 152; compared

with Tammany, 153
Irwin, Will, on Sun staff, 34-35 ; 44

Jackson, Andrew, 73, 274

Jacobs, John C., 155

James, Henry, contributor to Sun, 46

James, Thomas L., Attorney General, 319

Jay, John, Minister to Austria, 95

Jefferson, Thomas, 274; 347

Jenckes, Thomas Allan, 171; Jenckes Bill,
171-172

Jennings, Louis, editor of the Times, 50;
129; 141

Jerome, Leonard, 30

Johnson, Andrew, 18; Dana's first meeting
with, 22 ; views on emancipation and re-
construction, 22-23; accuses Jefferson
Davis, 26; Sun advises against impeach-
ment, 57; acquittal, 58; 61; 64; 65; 84;
88; profanity of, 213; 309; 323

Johnson, Reverdy, Minister to England, 94 ;
convention with Clarendon, 324

Journal, Lewiston, 38

Journal, New York, indulges in yellow
journalism, 54, 55

Journal, Providence, answers Sun, 364

Journal of Commerce, edited by David M.
Stone, 30; helps organize the Associated
Press, 48; on silver, 259

Kansas Pacific Railroad, 112

Kellogg, William P., Governor of Louisiana,

80; election opposed by Sun, 81; 82; 83;

84
Kelly, John, reorganizes Tammany, 143;

letter from Havemeyer, 145; 146; op-

poses Tilden, 147; dubbed "King," 148;
149; overthrow of, ISO; independent can-
didate of Tammany, 151; deserts Demo-
crats, 155; letter from Cleveland, 159;
death of, 161

Kelly, William D., 285

Kemble, W H., 105, 106

Kernan, Francis, Democratic nominee for
Governor, 144

Key, D. M., Postmaster General, 310; 311

Keyser, John H., 363

Kingsbury, Edward M., editorial writer on
Sun, education and style of writing, 41

Knights of Labor, strength, 366 ; strikes, 367 ;
in Oregon, 373; convention, 374

Kramer, Reverend M. J., United States
Consul at Leipzig, 94

Ku Klux Klan, Sun reports activities, 62 ;
Ku Klux Klan Act opposed by Dana, 69 ;
71; 72

Labor Reformers, nominate Judge David
Davis for President, 120

Laffan, William Mackay, on Sun staff, ca-
reer, 43; ability as writer, 44; literary
productions, 45; on advertising, 47; re-
sponsible for Sun's break with the Asso-
ciated Press, 48, 49; organizes the Laffan
Bureau, 49; 275

Laird, John, 324

Lake Superior Copper interests, 278

Lamar, Lucius Q., eulogy on death of Charles
Sumner, 74; 75; 226; United States vs.
Bell Telephone Company, 229

Lawrence, Abraham, Tammany mayoralty
candidate, 143; 144

Lawrence Journal, 118

Leaves of Grass, reviewed by Sun, 45-46

Ledger, New York, 30, 60

Ledger, Philadelphia, 130

Lee, Robert E., attitude after Appomattox,
25; 66

Lexow Committee, 166

"Light that Failed," by Rudyard Kipling,
first printed in Sun, 47

Liliuokalani, Queen of Hawaii, 347

Lincoln, Abraham, 19; on cotton trade, 21;
discusses with Dana restoration of Vir-
ginia, 25 ; assassination of, 26; 28; 89; 322

Literary Life, 46

424

INDEX

Lodge, Henry Cabot, 239; letter from
Roosevelt, 388

Logan, John A., 218; 316, 318

Logan, Stephen T., on commission with
Dana, 21

Long Island Railroad, 30, 43

Lookout Mountain, battle of, 23

Lord, Chester A., managing editor of Sun,
32 ; makes Sun independent of the Asso-
ciated Press, 48, 49

Low, A. A., original stockholder of Sun, 31

Lowell, James Russell, called "ignoramus"
by Sun, 389

Lyman, Charles, 180

McCall, Samuel W., 392
McClure, Alexander K., 33; 157
McCrary, George W., 102
McFarland, Daniel, 131
McFarland, Mrs Daniel, 130, 131
McKinley, William, 271, 273, 274, 276; on

Mills Bill, 295; on tariff, 296; 350, 354,

355

McKinley Tariff Act, 296-298; 346, 347
McMahon, Martin T., 142
Macauley, Thomas, 58; 117
Macdaniel, Eunice, member of Brook Farm

society, marries Dana, 5
Mahan, Captain A. T., 348
Mahopac, vessel, 98
"Man Who Worked with Dana on the New

York Sun," by Eugene Field, 46
Manderson, Charles F., views on income tax,

266

Manhattan, vessel, 98

Manifest Destiny, Dana's view of, 15; mod-
ified by slavery controversy, 17
Manning, Daniel E., 154; 160; in Cabinet,

226; and gold standard, 229; discontinues

redemption of bonds, 250
Marble, Manton, editor, the World, 30; 50;

confers with European governments on

bimetallism, 260
Marsh, Caleb P., 109
Marsh, O. C., report on Sioux Indians, 112-

113

Marx, Karl, 29; obituary, 361-362
Maynard, Isaac H., 165
Merrick, William M., 102
Metropolitan Museum, 45

Mexico, annexation opposed by Tribune, 17

Miller, Joaquim, contributor to Sun t 46

Millican riot, 63

Mills, Roger Q., tariff, 292-293

Mills Bill, 294-296

Milton, John, Dana advises reading, 53

Missionary Ridge, battle of, 23

Mississippi, Military Division of, 23

Mitchell, Edward P., author of Memoirs of
an Editor, 35; on Dana's friendship for
William Bartlett, 36; influence on Sun,
38-39; 47; interest in spiritualism, 210; on
Dana and Blaine, 219; on Dana and
Cleveland, 243; on Dana's devotion to
Cuban freedom, 355

Mix, James B., 390

Monroe Doctrine, 343; 350, 351, 352

Monroe, Fortress, 26

Morgan Collection, in the Metropolitan
Museum, 45

Morgan, Edwin D., original stockholder of
Sun, 31

Morgan, J P., friendship with Laffan, 44;
bond issue, 269

Morrell, Daniel J., 106

Morrison, W R., 290; tariff bill, 291, 292

Morrissey, John, 145 , break with Kelly, 146 ;
147

Morton, J. Sterling, 291

Morton, Levi P., 271; 319; 335

Morton, Oliver P., 304; 312

Moses, F. J., Governor of South Carolina,
78; loses nomination, 79

Motley, John Lothrop, Minister to England,
94; 335

Mugwumps, 156; 160; 167; membership,
217; attacks by Sun, 234-235, tariff, 293

Mulligan, James, Blaine and the "Mulligan
letters," 109; 218

Munsey, Frank A., purchases the Sun, 49

Murphy, Edward, Jr., 165

Murphy, Thomas, original stockholder of
Swn, 31 ; appointment to New York Cus-
toms House, 92 ; 144

Murtha, William H., appointed as Commis-
sioner of Immigration, 158

Napoleon III, death, 384
Nast, Thomas, cartoon in Harper's Weekly,
139

INDEX

425

Nation, 30; tribute to Raymond, 49-50; 54;
amused by Dana's reference to the Bible,
53; 60; 115; 126, 127; sold to Henry Vil-
lard, 128; characterization of Sickles, 327

National Cordage Company, 263-264

National Association of Wool Manufac-
turers, 278

Negro Rule, in Vicksburg, 74 ; 76 ; in South
Carolina, 79; 86

Negro Suffrage, 56; 62

New Granada agreement, 342

New York Central Railroad, earnings, 356

News, Chicago, 314

News, New York, 140

"Next Step of Progress," by John H. Keyser,
363

Niblack, William E., 102

North American Review, 33

Northern Alliance, formation, 373

Northern Pacific Railroad, financing of, 357

Norton, Charles Eliot, 45

Oberholtzer, Ellis P., 393

O'Brien, Frank M , author of The Story of

the Sun, 35 ; on Mitchell's contribution to

the Sun, 38-39

O'Brien, James, 137; leader of Young De-
mocracy, 141; candidate of Apollo Hall

Democracy, 143
O'Brien, James, sheriff, offers Tweed Ring

accounts to Sun, 41
Ochs, Adolph S., 55

O'Conor, Charles, lawyer in Tweed case, 142
Olmstead, Frederick, 121
Olney, Richard, Secretary of State, 351, 352,

353, 355

Olney-Paunccfote Treaty, 352, 353
Olympic Theatre, 29
Opdyke, George, original stockholder of

Sun, 31

Ord, E O. C., 339
Oriental Porcelain, edited by William M.

Laffan, 45

Orli, William A., Minister to Brazil, 95
O'Rourke, Matthew, 141
Ottendorfer, Oswald, editor, Staats-Zeitung,

54, 121

Pacific Railroad, land grants, 359
Packard, S. B., 69; defense by Administra-

tion denounced by Sun, 70; 81, 82, 83;
gubernatorial nominee, 84; 86, 87, 88

Packer, Asa, 106

Palmer, F. A., original stockholder of Sun,
31

Palmer, John M., 273

Pan American Congress, 341 ; 346-347

Pan Electric Fraud, 229

Parkhurst, Charles H., campaign against
Tammany Hall, 164, 166, 213

Patriot, Putnam, 315

Patrons of Husbandry, 373

Patterson, James, 103

Patterson, John J., Senator from South
Carolina, 78

Pauncefote, Sir Julian, 352, 353

Pearson, Henry G., Postmaster of New York
City, 184-185; removed by Harrison, 189

Pendleton, George H., presidential candi-
date, 60, 61, 62

Pendleton Bill, 177 ff

People's Party, see Populist Party

Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, bank-
ruptcy, 263

Philippe, Louis, revolution against, 7-8

Pike, James S., on Sun staff, 39

Platt, Thomas, 167; 234; 320, 321, 322

Plymouth Church, Henry Ward Beecher,
pastor, 130, 131

Poland, Luke P , investigates the Baxter-
Brooks war, 77; 102

Pollock vs. Farmers Trust Company, in-
come tax case, 266

Pomeroy, Marcus M., editor, Democrat, 30

Pope Pius IX, 384

Populist Party, 240; 263, 275, 276; 375

Potomac, Army of, 24

Powderly, Terence V., 366

Press, New York, amalgamation with Sun,
48

Proctor, John, 192

Prohibition Party, 121; candidates, 202;
203; vote, 204

Prostrate State, by James S. Pike, 39

Pugh Amendment, 179

Pulitzer, Joseph, tribute to Sun, becomes
correspondent for Sun, purchases Jay
Gould's stock in World, 54; takes over
World, 385

Pullman Strike, 243-245

426

INDEX

Purcell, William, 154
Putnam's Magazine, 30

Quincy, Josiah, 192

Railroads, strikes, 367; regulation of, 372

Randall Bill, 294

Randall, S. J., 394

Randolph, John, quotation from, 89

Rawlins, J. A., 22; 113, 114; 328-329
Raymond, Henry J., editor, the Times, 30,
49-50, 51

Reagan, John H , anti-trust bill, 373

Reconstruction, Congressional policy, rea-
sons for failure, 56; attitude of press, 57;
Johnson-Grant quarrel, 58; impeachment
trial, 57-59; military rule in South, 62;
Ku Klux Klan outrages, 62 ; Millican riot,
63 ; Grant's policy predicted, 63 ; John-
son's amnesty proclamation, 64 ; Fifteenth
Amendment, 64-65 ; reversal in Sun's at-
titude toward South, 66, 68, 69; First and
Second Enforcement Acts, 69; Georgia,
67; racial equality for Negroes, 67-68;
Ku Klux Klan Act, 69; Louisiana, 70, 80-
82, 83-86; North Carolina, 71, 72; results
of Grant-Greeley election in Ex-Confed-
erate States, 72, 73; Mississippi, 73, 74,
75-76, 84, Civil Rights Bill, 74; Arkansas,
76; 78, 84, Alabama, 84; Florida, 84,
Hayes-Tilden election dispute, 84-86;
Dana's attitude summarized, 88, Sun's
appraisal of Congressional Reconstruc-
tion, 88-89

Red Cloud, Sioux Chief, 111, 113

Reed, Thomas Brackett, 271; 392

Reid, Whitelaw, editor of Tribune, 50, 124,
125, 128, 146, 380

Religion des Getstes, by Edward Van Hart-
mann, 41

Republican, organization of party assisted
by Greeley and Dana, 17; National Con-
vention of 1868, 61 ; Liberal Republicans,
119, 120

Republican, Springfield, criticises Sun, 223

Restoration of the Currency, by James S.
Pike, 39

Resumption Act, attacked, 248

Richardson, Albert D., 130, 131

Richardson, William A., 100

Richmond, damaged by fire, 25

Riggs, Edward G., on Dana's break with

Associated Press, 48
Ripley, Reverend George, launches Brook

Farm experiment, 2; letter to Dana, 3-4;

in accord with doctrine of Fourier, 5 ;

collaboration on Cyclopedia, 21
Ripley, Mrs. George, at Brook Farm, 5
River and Harbor Bills, condemned, 249
Roach, Johnny, 313

Robberson, Secor, see Robeson, George W.
Roberts, Marshall O., original stockholder

of Sun, 31; 139
Robertson, William H., Collector of Port,

319, 320
Robeson, George W., "Secor Robberson,"

Secretary of Navy, 92, 97, 304, 309; Sun

given credit for defeat of, 394
Robinson, Lucius, 146; Governor of New

York, 147; renomination, 151
Roosevelt, Robert B., 142
Roosevelt, Theodore, Dana quotes, 128; in

legislature, 159; candidate for Mayor,

161; 388
Rose, John, 336
Rosebault, Charles J., describes brotherhood

of Sun staff, 34; author of When Dana

was The Sun, 35; on Laffan, 47; on Sun's

break with the Associated Press, 49; 383
Rosecrans, W. S , movements reported by

Dana, 22 ; incurs Dana's distrust at Chick-

amauga, 23
Rossa, O'Donovan, 387-388

Salary Grab, 107-108; 318

Salisbury, Lord, 351, 352, 353

Sanborn, John D , contracts, 100-101

Scalawags, 66 See Reconstruction

Schell, Augustus, 122; 149

Schenck, Robert, 94; Minister to England,
95; 338

Schurz, Carl, Secretary of Interior, 310, 311,
313

Schwab, Gustav H , letter from Hewitt, 167

Schwab, Justus, Communist, on Govern-
ment ownership of railroads, 360-361

Scott, Francis M , candidate of People's
Municipal League, 163

Scott, John, 137

Scott, R. K., 78

INDEX

427

Second Enforcement Act, 69, 70

Secor, Ferine, 98

Secor, Zeno, 98

Seward, W. H., 17; 23; purchase of Alaska
approved by Dana, 24; as Secretary of
State, 323, 332

Seymour, Horatio, presidential candidate,
60, 62; 67; 208

Shakespeare, William, Dana advises reading,
S3

Shenandoah, Confederate cruiser, 337

Shepherd, Alexander, 105, 304

Sheridan, Philip H , 23 ; in New Orleans, 83

Sherman, John, 248; 261, 262; Act of 1883,
289-290; in Hayes' Cabinet, 309, 311,
313; 374

Sherman, William T., 23

Sherwood, John H., original stockholder of
Sun, 31

"Sire de Maletroit's Door," by R. L. Steven-
son, first printed in Sun, 47

Sickles, Daniel, Minister to Spain, 327,
328

Slidell, John, 18

Slocum, Henry W , 156

Smith, Adam, 26

Smith, E D , original stockholder of Sun,
31

Smith, Goldwin, 34

Smith, Green Clay, 203

Smith, Henry, 137

Smith, Hoke, Secretary of Interior, 241-242

Smith, Richard, editor of Cincinnati Ga-
zette, 130

Smyth, Frederick, Tammany candidate for
Recorder, 168

"Solitude," by Ella Wheeler, first published
in Sun, 46

Sophocles, 53

Soteldo, A M , Jr , 390-391

Southern Alliance, formation, 373, conven-
tion, 375

Spotted Tail, Sioux Chief, 111

Springer, William M., 268

St. John, John P., 203; Prohibitionist can-
didate, 223

Staats-Zcitung, 140, 150

Stalwarts, 156; 315; attitude toward Gar-
field, 318; appointments, 319, 320, 321;
322

Standard, New York, 126

Stanley, Lord, 324

Stanton, Edwin M., 21; 23; 26; 28; 57

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, on presidential
candidates, 196; on temperance, 201; on
marriage licenses, 213

Stanton, Henry B., reformer and veteran
on Sun staff, 39

Star, New York, 140

Statesman, Yonkers, 52

Stead, W. T., 401

Stein way Hall, 29; 121

Stevens, John, American Minister to Ha-
waii, 347, 348

Stevens, Thaddeus, 58

Stevenson, Robert Louis, contributor to
Sun, 46

Stewart, Alexander T , 30 ; urged for Tam-
many mayoralty candidate, 143 ; 384

Stone, David M., editor, Journal oj Com-
merce, 30; 380

Stoughton, Edwin M , Minister to England,
312

Straus, Nathan, Tammany mayoralty can-
didate, 168

Strikes of 1886, 366-368

Sullivan, John L , 48

Sullivan vs Ryan, 383

Sulzer, William, 165

Sumner, Charles, 17, 74, 120; Chairman of
Foreign Relations Committee, 323; 324-
325; 330, 335

Sumter, Fort, 19

Sun, New York, under Dana, on conditions
confronting nation, 1 , as influenced by
Dana's Brook Farm experience, 5-6; re-
echoes Tribune pre-civil war editorials
attacking Free Trade, 16; attitude toward
government and threats of civil war, 18;
curious attitude toward Greeley explained,
20, attacks Boutwell's policies, 21; early
confidence in Grant, 22; attitude toward
Sheridan, 23; reflects Dana's experiences
as Assistant Secretary of War, 24-25; op-
poses government control of railroads, 26;
hostility to Jefferson Davis, 26; dedicates
first issue to election of Grant, 27; be-
comes Dana's compensation, 28; emblem
changed by Dana, 29; reputation, circu-
lation, character of advertising when pur-

428

INDEX

Sun, New York (continued)

chased by Dana, 30; organization of staff,
32 ; training school for young journalists,
34; "graveyard of reputations," 35; up-
holds Judge Barnard, 37; boycotted by
Central Labor Union, 44; pays Walt
Whitman tribute, 45-46 ; encourages poets
and novelists, 46-47; policy in regard to
advertising, 47; accurate election predic-
tions, 48; regains rights of Associated
Press service, 49; criticised by Godkin,
55 , on policy of Congressional Recon-
struction, on impeachment of Johnson,
57; on Johnson's acquittal, 58-59; on
Grant's character and ability, 59-60; urges
nomination of Judge Chase, 61 ; on nomi-
nation of Seymour and Blair, on Ku Klux
Klan, 62; on Millican not, 63, advocates
repeal of Tenure of Office Act, on Christ-
mas Amnesty, 64; approves Fifteenth
Amendment, 65, on the ruling class of
the South, 66; upholds Congress in regard
to Georgia, 66-67 , appeals for magnanim-
ity on part of North, 68 ; on Enforcement
and Ku Klux Klan Acts, 69; on election^
in New Orleans, Texas and South Caro-
lina, 70, on Carpetbag rule in South, 71-
72; backs Alcorn in gubernatorial cam-
paign, 73; opposes Civil Rights Bill,
74-75; criticises Grant's Reconstruction
policy, 75; on Arkansas, 76-78, on the
despoliation of South Carolina, 78-79, on
disputed elections in South Carolina and
Louisiana, 80-82 ; on Sheridan's "ban-
ditti" dispatches, 83-84, increase in cir-
culation, 88; appraisal of Republican Re-
construction, 88; on Grant's failure to
appoint Dana Collector of the Customs,
90; on the Credit Mobilier scandal, 102-
104, on District Ring scandal, 105; "Ad-
dition, Division and Silence," 105-106; on
the Salary Grab, 107-108; on a third
term for Grant, 114; mud slinging among
newspapers, 126-130; sensationalism in
the Beecher-Tilton trial, 131-132; on
Tweed Ring, 135-136, proposes statue to
Boss Tweed, 137-138; criticised by Times
for upholding Ring, 139-140; supports
"reformed" Tammany, 143; advocates re-
moval of Havemeyer, 144; on death of

Havemeyer, 145; supports Democratic
State ticket of 1875, 146; "no King! no
Clown !" campaign, 148-152 ; blames Kelly
for Democratic defeat, 153; on County
Democracy, 154; begins offensive against
Cleveland, 157 ; upholds veto of Five Cent
Fare Bill, 158; on Theodore Roosevelt as
assembly leader, 159, on death of John
Kelly, 161; commends appointment of
Croker, 162; on administration of Hugh
Grant, 162-164, on Lexow Committee,
166-168; on overthrow of Tammany, 168;
on Civil Service, 173ff; on Hayes' Cus-
toms policy, 174-175; on Garfield's Civil
Service platform, 175, Pendleton Bill,
177 ff; on Eaton, 181, on the Mugwumps,
182 ff, Cleveland's administration, 187;
on Harrison, 188-189 ; on Theodore Roose-
velt, 190, on women's rights; 194 ff, on
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 197, 201; on
Susan B Anthony, 198-199, on temper-
ance, 200-206, temperance opinions of
presidential candidates, 202 , quotes Dow,
203 ; Blaine and prohibition, 204, 205 ; on
education, 206-208, on Ingersoll, 209;
on Christian Science, 210, Mohammedan-
ism, 211; Sunday recreation, 212, pro-
fanity, 213; capital punishment, 214;
housing reform, 214-215, opposes Elaine's
nomination, 217-219; on William Hoi-
man, 219-220, Mulligan Letters, 222-223;
supports Butler, 223-225, approves Cleve-
land's cabinet, 226, on the gold standard,
229; on Blaine, 232; Cleveland's defeat,
233-234; Mugwumpery, 234-235, Cleve-
land and currency, 235-236, supports
Harrison, 238-239; supports David Hill,
241, 242, on Pullman Strike, 243-245; on
proposed third term, 246, on payment of
public debt, 253-254, criticises Bland-
Allison Act, 254-255; defends the silver
dollar, 255-256, announces decrease of
gold reserve, 257; on attempts of Treas-
ury Department to maintain gold stand-
ard, 257-258; spokesman of free silver,
263; repeal of Silver Act, 264; Carlisle's
bond sale, 264, veto of Bland Seigniorage
Act, 265; lauds income tax decision, 266-
267; renounces silver convictions, 267; on
deficit in gold reserve, 268 ; on Morgan

INDEX

429

Sun, New York (continued)

Bond sale, 269, defends Morgan, 269-270;
renounces silver allies, 270-271; prefers
nomination of Morton to McKinley, 271;
urges McKinley 's election, 273-274; on
nomination of Palmer and Buckner, 273 ;
assails Bryan, 273-274; on Free Trade,
282; national debt, 282-283; Tariff Com-
mission, 284-286; on Sherman, 289-290;
J. Sterling Morton, 291 ; supports Butler,
212, Randall Bill, 294; Wilson Bill, 299-
300, Wilson-Gorman Act, 302; Dmgley
Act, 302, compares Tilden and Hayes,
304-305; announces victory of Tilden,
306, on Hayes-Tilden controversy, 307-
313, personal attacks on Hayes, 313-315;
on Hayes' vetoes, 315-316; on defeat of
Grant for third term, 317-318; on Gar-
field's appointments, 319-320, on assas-
sination of Garfield, 321-322; on United
States foreign policy, 1868-1876, 323-324;
urges recognition of Cuban independence,
326-328, 329-331, 339-340, 353-354; on
San Domingo, 332-334, denounces Mot-
ley, 335, urges settlement of Alabama
claims, 336-338; Elaine's Latin American
policy criticised, 340-341 , attitude toward
immigration, 341-342, on Panama Canal,
342-345 ; on Chamberlain-Bayard Treaty,
345-346, on Hawaii, 341-350, on Monroe
Doctrine, 350; on Cuba, 353-355, on rail-
road ownership, 356, on Jay Cooke, 358;
Grangers, 359, strikes of 1877, 361, on
Karl Marx, 361-362; on unions, 363-364;
strikes of 1886, 366-370; Interstate Com-
merce Bill, 370-372; laissez faire, 363-
365, railroads, 371-372; anti-trust laws,
372 ; Cleveland's labor policy, 374, George
Bill, 375 , farmer organizations, 375; labor
organizations, 375, Populists, 375-376;
income tax, 377; circulation, 380-386;
anti-Beecher campaign, 382 ; sports, 383 ;
deaths, 384; cost, 385, answers Grant,
385-386, on Greeley, 386, 390, 391; at-
tacks George Butler, 386 ; reporting, 388 ;
on Lowell, 389 , "The Biter Bit," 390-391 ;
attacks Young, 390, castigates Reed, 392 ;
attacks Ha>es, 393-394; supports Tilden,
395 , on reform, 398 ; organized labor, 399 ,
tariff, 399, national finance, 399, nation-

alism, 399-400; popularity, 401; sensa-
tionalism, 401

Sunday Bulletin, published in Baltimore, 43

Supreme Court of the United States, partial
to slave interests, 18; income tax deci-
sions, 266

Sutherland, William A., on Lexow Commit-
tee, 166

Sweeny, James, 137

Sweeny, Peter B., 30; 136, 137

Swinton, John, Communist and labor agita-
tor, editorial writer for Sun, 40-41

Tacitus, 53

Tammany Hall, new building, 135; 140;
142, reformed, 143; 146, 147; "no King,
no Clown," 149, compared with Irving
Hall, 153, 154, 167, overthrow, Ib8

Tarbell, Ida M , ghost writer for Dana's
Recollections of the Civil War, 20, n 45;
193

Tariff, 1; Tribune attacks Free Trade, 16;
Democratic stand, 233, Wilson Bill, 265,
267; Dana's views regarding, 277-278;
Wool Bill 01 1867, 278, Copper Act de-
nounced by Dana, 278-279, in behalf of
American shipping, 279; measure of 1870,
Sun advocates restriction of internal rev-
enue to tariff reduction, 280, 286; "free
breakfast table," 281, demands of West-
ern farmers and Liberal Republicans, 281-
282 , Jackson's and Jefferson's views
quoted by Sun, 282 , relation to payment
of public debt, 283 ; appointment of Tariff
Commission, 283-285; 286; Act of 1883,
286-287, 289; Free Trade, 287-288; Sun's
tariff doctrine, 288; issue in campaign of
1884, 289-290, 291, 292; Morrison Bill,
291, 292; Cleveland's tariff message of
1887, 293; Mills Bill, 293-296; McKinley
Bill, 296-298; Wilson Bill, income tax
provision, 298-300; results of Wilson-
Gorman Act, 300-302 ; Dingley Act, 302 ;
Sun's policy summarized, 303

Taylor, Moses, 139

Tecumseh, vessel, 98

Tennyson, Alfred Lord, 45

Tenure of Office Act, repeal advocated by
Sun, 64; Cleveland vetoes, 160

430

INDEX

"Thankful Blossoms," by Bret Harte, first
published in Sun, 47

Theatre Francis, 29

Thieblin, Napoleon Leon, editorial writer
on Sun, 41

Thompson, Hubert 0., 160

Thompson, Richard W., Secretary of Navy,
309-311

Thoreau, Henry, 45

Thurman, Allen G., 69; supported by Sun,
232

Tilden, Samuel J., 18, 54; dispute over elec-
tion, 84-85, 307-309, 312; 108; 136; 142,
143; becomes Governor, 146; 147; 149;
156; on Civil Service, 173; 274; wins
Democratic nomination, 305; victory an-
nounced, 306

Tilton, Elizabeth, in Beecher trial, 131-132

Tilton, Theodore, suit against Henry Ward
Beecher, 131-132

Times, Albany, on Sun's attitude toward
Bancroft Davis, 337

Times, New York, 30 ; accuses William Bart-
lett, 41 ; praised by Nation, 49-50; adopts
slogan: "All the News that's Fit to Print,"
55; on congressional Reconstruction, 57;
accuses President Johnson, 59; 97; 125;
126; circulation, 127; estimate of, 129; on
Tweed Ring, 139-141; 143; 149; repudi-
ates Hill as party leader, 160; prints Mulli-
gan letters, 222; on gold payments, 257-
258; on Cuba, 329; 382; cost, 385

Times, Philadelphia, 317; 394

Toombs, Robert, 18

Tousey, Sinclair, President of the American
News Company, 380

Train, George Francis, suggested by Sun for
Vice President, 60

Transcendentalism, 1

"Treasure of Franchard," by Robert Louis
Stevenson, printed in Sun, 47

Tribune, New York, 1 ; Dana becomes city
editor, 7; letters from Dana on revolu-
tions of 1848, 8-12; advocates transcon-
tinental railroad and protective tariff, op-
poses slavery, 15; on Manifest Destiny,
17; warns South against secession, 19; re-
iteration of "Forward to Richmond," 19;
20, 21, 26, 30, 43 ; helps organize the Asso-
ciated Press, 48; 50; accepts Congressional

Reconstruction, 57 ; 58; accuses Chief Jus-
tice Chase, 59; 65; 116, 117, 118, 119, 123,
124, 125, 126, 128; Richardson shot in
office, 130; 135, 139, 146; on bribery
in disputed presidency, 312; circulation,
382; cost, 385

Troupe, Alexander, 388

Trumbull, Lyman, persuades Dana to ac-
cept editorship of the Chicago Republi-
can, 26-27; 58; 69; 119; 172

Tweed, William M., 116, 118; 135, 136; pro-
posed statue, 137-138; 139; arrest of, 142;
145, 384

Tweed Ring, corruption of, 135-137; at-
tacks by Times, 140; overthrow of, 141-
142

Unhappy Loves of Men of Genius, by

Thomas Hitchcock, 41
Union College, addressed by Dana, 53
Union Pacific Railroad, 102; 111; assisted

by Government, 356

Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 30; 356; 384

Vanderbilt, William H., 225

Van Winkle, P. G., 58

Victoria, Queen of England, 323; 336

Vilas, William F., Postmaster General, 226

Villard, Henry, buys the Nation, 128

Virginius affair, 338

Wade, Ben, 196

Waite, M. R., Chief Justice of Supreme

Court, 93
Wales, Salem H., original stockholder of

Sun, 31
Walters, Henry, friendship with William

Laffan, 44

Warman, Cy, contributor to Sun, 46
Warmoth, Henry C., quarrel with Packard,

69-70
Warren, Fitz-Henry, General, Minister to

Guatemala, 39; with the Sun, 39-40
Washburne, Elihu B., member of Grant's

Cabinet, 91; 95

Washington, George, 209; 308
Watson, James, 139

INDEX

431

Watterson, Henry, tribute to Dana and
Godkin, 50; on the personality of jour-
nalism, 51; on tariff bill, 291

Weaver, James B., 240

Webb, William H., original stockholder of
Sun, 31

Webster, Sidney, 323; 330; 331

Weed, Thurlow, editor, Commercial Adver-
tiser, 30

Wells, James Madison, 85, 86

West Point, abolition advocated, 250

Weyman, Charles A., original stockholder
of Sun, 31

Wheeler, Ella, contributor to Sun, 46

Wheeler, William A., proposes compromise
in Louisiana Legislature dispute, 84; 284

Whig Party, 17

Whitman, Walt, shocks American public,
45; ability recognized by Dana, 45, n.35;
acknowledges Sun's recognition, 46

Whitney, William C., on Committee of One
Hundred, 153; Secretary of Navy, 226;
praised by Sun, 227; possible candidate
for Governor, 231

William of Nassau, 323

William IV, 323

Williams, George H., Attorney General,
113; 304

Wilson, Henry, 17; 120

Wilson, James H., on Dana's letters on revo-

lutions in Germany and France, 8; 14; 26;

collaborates with Dana in writing Life of

Grant, 27

Wilson, William L., tariff bill, 242, 298, 299
Wilson-Gorman Act, 300-302
Windom, William, Secretary of Treasury,

261

Winter Garden Theatre, 29
Wisconsin Editorial Association, addressed

by Dana, 52

Wise, Henry A., Governor of Virginia, 121
Wood, Benjamin, editor, Evening News, 30
Wood, John B., "Doc" Wood, came to Sun

from Tribune, 43
Woodford, Steward L., 116, 117
Woodhull, Victoria, publishes account of

alleged Beecher-Tilton liaison, 131
World, New York, 30; 50; indulges in yel-
low journalism, 54, 55; 97; 126; estimate

of, 129; 140; on Morgan bond sale, 269;

on Cuba, 329
Wymans, B. L., 93

"Yellow" Journalism, origin of term, 54
"Yellow Kid," first featured in the World, 54
Young, John Russel, dismisses Cummings
from Tribune, labeled in Sun as "Sneak
News Thief," 42 ; libel suit against Dana,
125-126; 384; 390
Young Democracy, 136; 140; 141

C 2

1 34 632