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THE EVENING POST
[Illustration]
[Illustration: WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
Associate Editor, 1826–1829, Editor-in-Chief, 1829–1878
(Two hitherto unpublished portraits)]
THE EVENING POST
A Century of Journalism
ALLAN NEVINS
The journalists are now the true kings and clergy; henceforth
historians, unless they are fools, must write not of Bourbon
dynasties, and Tudors, and Hapsburgs; but of stamped, broadsheet
dynasties, and quite new successive names, according as this or
the other able editor, or combination of able editors, gains the
world’s ear.--_Sartor Resartus._
BONI AND LIVERIGHT
PUBLISHERS : NEW YORK
TO MY MOTHER
_Copyright, 1922, by_
BONI AND LIVERIGHT, INC.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
PREFACE
This volume took its origin in the writer’s belief that a history of
the _Evening Post_ would be interesting not merely as that of one of
the world’s greatest newspapers, but as throwing light on the whole
course of metropolitan journalism in America since 1800, and upon
some important parts of local and national history. In a book of this
kind it is necessary to steer between Scylla and Charybdis. If the
volume were confined to mere office-history, it would interest few;
while a review of all the newspaper’s editorial opinions and all the
interesting news it has printed would be a review of the greater part
of what has happened in the nineteenth century and since. The problem
has been to avoid narrowness on the one hand, padding on the other.
The author has tried to select the most important, interesting, and
illuminating aspects and episodes of the newspaper’s history, and to
treat them with a careful regard for perspective.
The decision to include no footnote references to authorities in a
volume of this character probably requires no defense. In a great
majority of instances the text itself indicates the authority. When an
utterance of the _Evening Post_ on the Dred Scott decision is quoted,
it would assuredly be impertinent to quote the exact date. The author
wishes to say that he has been at pains to ascribe no bit of writing to
a particular editor without making sure that he actually wrote it. When
he names Bryant as the writer of a certain passage, he does so on the
authority of the Bryant papers, or the Parke Godwin papers, or one of
the lives of Bryant, or of indisputable internal evidence. After 1881
a careful record of the writers of the most important _Evening Post_
editorials was kept in the files of the _Nation_.
The author wishes to thank the heirs of William Cullen Bryant, Parke
Godwin, John Bigelow, Carl Schurz, Horace White, Henry Villard, and
E. L. Godkin for giving him access to a wealth of family papers.
Important manuscript material bearing upon William Coleman was
furnished by James Melvin Lee and Mary P. Wells Smith. He is under a
heavy debt to Mr. Robert Bridges, editor of _Scribner’s_; Mr. Norman
Hapgood, editor of _Hearst’s International Magazine_; Mr. H. J. Wright,
editor of the _Globe_; Mr. Rollo Ogden, associate editor of the New
York _Times_; Mr. O. G. Villard, editor of the _Nation_; Mr. Watson
R. Sperry, of the Hartford _Courant_; Mr. Joseph Bucklin Bishop, Mr.
Lincoln Steffens, Mr. R. R. Bowker, and Mr. Frederic Bancroft; the
heirs of Charles Nordhoff and Charlton M. Lewis; and Mr. J. Ranken
Towse, Mr. William Hazen, and Mr. Henry T. Finck of the _Evening Post_,
for information and assistance. He is similarly obliged to the Library
of Congress for aid in examining the papers of Alexander Hamilton and
Carl Schurz. Portions of the manuscript were kindly read by Mr. Edwin
F. Gay, president of the _Evening Post_, who has given constant advice
and encouragement, Mr. Rollo Ogden, and Mr. Simeon Strunsky; and part
of the proofs by Mr. Donald Scott, Mr. O. G. Villard, and Mr. H. J.
Wright.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. HAMILTON AND THE FOUNDING OF THE “EVENING POST” 9
II. THE “EVENING POST” AS LEADER OF THE FEDERALIST PRESS 35
III. THE CITY AND THE “EVENING POST’S” PLACE IN IT 63
IV. LITERATURE AND DRAMA IN THE EARLY “EVENING POST” 96
V. BRYANT BECOMES EDITOR 121
VI. WILLIAM LEGGETT ACTING EDITOR: DEPRESSION, RIVALRY, AND
THREATENED RUIN 139
VII. THE RISE OF THE SLAVERY QUESTION: THE MEXICAN WAR 166
VIII. NEW YORK BECOMES A METROPOLIS: CENTRAL PARK 192
IX. LITERARY ASPECTS OF BRYANT’S NEWSPAPER, 1830–1855 207
X. JOHN BIGELOW AS AN EDITOR OF THE “EVENING POST” 228
XI. HEATED POLITICS BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR 242
XII. THE NEW YORK PRESS AND SOUTHERN SECESSION 267
XIII. THE CRITICAL DAYS OF THE CIVIL WAR 284
XIV. RECONSTRUCTION AND IMPEACHMENT 326
XV. BRYANT AT THE HEIGHT OF HIS FAME AS EDITOR 338
XVI. APARTMENT HOUSES RISE AND TWEED FALLS 364
XVII. INDEPENDENCE IN POLITICS: THE ELECTIONS OF ’72 AND ’76 389
XVIII. TWO REBEL LITERARY EDITORS 406
XIX. WARFARE WITHIN THE OFFICE: PARKE GODWIN’S EDITORSHIP 420
XX. THE VILLARD PURCHASE: CARL SCHURZ EDITOR-IN-CHIEF 438
XXI. GODKIN, THE MUGWUMP MOVEMENT, AND GROVER CLEVELAND’S
CAREER 458
XXII. GODKIN’S WAR WITHOUT QUARTER UPON TAMMANY 476
XXIII. OPPOSING THE SPANISH WAR AND SILVER CRAZE 496
XXIV. CHARACTERISTICS OF A FIGHTING EDITOR: E. L. GODKIN 519
XXV. NEWS, LITERATURE, MUSIC, AND DRAMA 1880–1900 546
XXVI. HORACE WHITE, ROLLO OGDEN, AND THE “EVENING POST”
SINCE 1900 568
INDEX 581
ILLUSTRATIONS
William Cullen Bryant _Frontispiece_
_Associate Editor_ 1826–1829, _Editor-in-Chief_,
1829–1878
FACING
PAGE
Alexander Hamilton 26
_Chief Founder of the “Evening Post”_
William Coleman 102
_Editor-in-Chief_, 1801–1829
John Bigelow 264
_Associate Editor_, 1849–1860
Parke Godwin 440
_Editor-in-Chief_, 1878–1881
Henry Villard 440
_Owner_, 1881–1900
Carl Schurz 440
_Editor-in-Chief_, 1881–1883
Horace White 440
_Associate Editor_, 1881–1899, _Editor-in-Chief_,
1900–1903
E. L. Godkin 494
_Associate Editor_, 1881–1883, _Editor-in-Chief_,
1883–1899
Rollo Ogden 548
_Editor-in-Chief_, 1903–1920
Editorial Council, 1922 570
CHAPTER ONE
HAMILTON AND THE FOUNDING OF THE “EVENING POST”
Of all the newspapers established as party organs in the time when
Federalists and Democrats were struggling for control of the government
of the infant republic, but one important journal survives. It is
the oldest daily in the larger American cities which has kept its
name intact. The _Aurora_, the _Centinel_, the _American Citizen_,
_Porcupine’s Gazette_, whose pages the generation of Washington and
Adams, Jefferson and Burr, scanned so carefully, are mere historical
shades; but the _Evening Post_, founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton
and a group of intimate political lieutenants, for the expression of
Hamilton’s views, remains a living link between that day of national
beginnings and our own.
The spring of 1801, when plans were laid for issuing the _Evening
Post_, was the blackest season the Federalists of New York had yet
known. Jefferson was inaugurated as President on March 4, and the upper
as well as the lower branch of Congress had now become Democratic.
In April the State election was held, and the ticket headed by gouty
old George Clinton won a sweeping victory over the Federalists, so
that at Albany the Democrats took complete control; the Governorship,
Legislature, and Council of Appointment were theirs. Many Federalists
sincerely believed that the nation and State had been put upon the road
to ruin. They were convinced that the party of Washington, Hamilton,
and Adams, which had built up a vigorous republic out of a ramshackle
Confederation, was the only party of construction; and that Democracy
meant ruin to the public credit, aggressions by the States upon a
weak central government, and national disintegration. Hamilton wrote
Gouverneur Morris after the election, in all seriousness, that the
Constitution had become “a frail and worthless fabric.”
For Hamilton himself, inasmuch as many of his own party deemed him
responsible for the disaster which had overtaken it, the hour was
doubly black. No other leader approached him in brilliance, but his
genius was not unmixed with an erratic quality. He and John Adams,
men of wholly different temperaments, tastes, and habits, had always
instinctively disliked each other; and during Adams’s Administration
the latter had provoked an open breach with Hamilton, which meant
a division of the Federalists into two factions. Hamilton, stung
by Adams’s hostility and in especial by the charge that he was too
Anglophile to be patriotic, had so far lost control of himself as to
commit a capital political blunder. He had written just before the
election of 1800 a bitter analysis of “The Public Conduct and Character
of John Adams,” and though he designed this attack for confidential
circulation only, it soon became public. The Democrats, their victory
already assured, had made the most of it, and the resentment of
Adams’s adherents was intense. The party schism was widened when it
fell to the House of Representatives early in 1801 to decide the tie
for the Presidency between Jefferson and Burr. Of the two, Hamilton
patriotically preferred Jefferson, and used his influence to persuade
the Federalist Representatives to vote for him. But the New England
Federalists, Adams’s friends, opposed this view, and to Hamilton’s
disgust, all the New England States save Vermont went into Burr’s
column.
Hamilton gladly turned in April, 1801, from his pre-occupation with
politics to his law practice. Forty-three years old, with eight
children and a wife to support, with no savings, and ambitious of
building himself a country home on the upper part of Manhattan, he
needed the $12,000 a year which he could earn at the city bar. When he
thought of public affairs, he felt not tired--he was too intense for
that--but chagrined, and misused. After all, the real causes of Adams’s
defeat were the alien and sedition laws, the persecuting temper of
the Administration, its hot and cold policy in dealing with French
outrages, and Adams’s vanity, caprice, and irascibility. But Hamilton
by his pamphlet attack on the President had seriously damaged his own
reputation for generalship. His friend, Robert Troup, wrote that this
misstep had been most unfortunate. “An opinion has grown out of it,
which at present obtains almost universally, that his character is
radically deficient in discretion. Hence, he is considered as an unfit
head of the party.” Hamilton himself admitted, Troup says, “that his
influence with the Federal party was wholly gone.” He might well think
of the assistance a newspaper would lend in defending himself from
the Adams faction, restoring Federalist prestige, and attacking the
triumphant Democrats.
Hamilton had many local companions in defeat, ready to support such
a journal. Troup himself, and one other close friend, the cultivated
merchant, William W. Woolsey, had been beaten for the Assembly. A
general removal of Federalists from office followed the overturn.
Though President Jefferson proved milder than had been feared, he made
a number of changes, the most notable being that by which the wealthy
Joshua Sands, with a store at 118 Pearl Street, lost the Collectorship
of the Port. As for the new authorities at Albany, they were merciless.
The Council of Appointment was dominated by young De Witt Clinton, the
Governor’s pushing nephew, and its guillotine worked night and day
till every obnoxious head was off. In place of the tall and dignified
Richard Varick, who had been one of Washington’s secretaries, and to
whose public spirit the American Bible Society, which he founded,
is still a monument, it appointed Edward Livingston to be Mayor. In
place of the scholarly Cadwallader Colden, it made Richard Riker the
Attorney-General. Sylvanus Miller was brought down from Ulster to be
Surrogate, and Ruggles Hubbard from Rensselaer to be Sheriff. The
very Justiceships of the Peace were transferred. The Clerkship of
the Circuit Court whose jurisdiction covered the city was taken from
William Coleman and given to John McKesson. A majority of the people of
the city were Federalists, and they watched all these transfers with
pain.
The local leaders, and especially Hamilton, had for some time been
aware that they lacked an adequate newspaper organ. Three city
journals, the _Daily Advertiser_, and the _Daily Gazette_, both morning
publications, and the _Commercial Advertiser_, an evening paper,
were Federalist in sympathy. But Snowden’s _Daily Advertiser_, and
Lang’s _Gazette_ were almost exclusively given up to commercial news;
and while E. Belden’s _Commercial Advertiser_, which still lives as
the _Globe_, devoted some attention to politics, it lacked an able
editor to write controversial articles. As the chief Democratic sheet
remarked, “it is too drowsy to be of service in any cause; it is a
powerful opiate.” This Democratic sheet was the _American Citizen_,
edited by the then noted English refugee and radical, James Cheetham.
He was a slashing and fearless advocate of Jeffersonian principles,
who daily filled from one to two columns with matter that set all the
grocery and hotel knots talking. Some one as vigorous, but of better
education and taste--Cheetham had once been a hatter--was needed to
expound Hamiltonian doctrines.
It was hoped that this new editor and journal could give leadership and
tone to the whole Federalist press, for a sad lack of vigor was evident
from Maine to Charleston. The leading Federalist newspapers of the
time, Benjamin Russell’s _Columbian Centinel_ in Boston, the _Courant_
in Hartford, the _Gazette of the United States_ in Philadelphia, and
the Baltimore _Federal Gazette_, did not fully meet the wishes of
energetic Federalists. Their conductors did not compare with the chief
Democratic editors: James T. Callender, whom Adams had thrown into
jail; Thomas Paine; B. F. Bache, Franklin’s grandson; Philip Freneau,
and William Duane. Some agency was needed to rouse them. They should
be helped with purse and pen, wrote John Nicholas, a leading Virginia
Federalist, to Hamilton. “They seldom republish from each other, while
on the other hand their antagonists never get hold of anything, however
trivial in reality, but they make it ring through all their papers from
one end of the continent to the other.” In the summer of 1800 Hamilton
called Oliver Wolcott’s attention to libels printed by the Philadelphia
_Aurora_ upon prominent Federalists, and asked if these outrageous
assaults could not be counteracted. “We may regret but we can not now
prevent the mischief which these falsehoods produce,” replied Wolcott.
The establishment of journals for party purposes had become, in the
dozen years since the Constitution was ratified, a frequent occurrence,
and no political leader knew more of the process than Hamilton. He had
won his college education in New York by a striking article in a St.
Kitts newspaper. No one needs to be reminded how in the Revolutionary
crisis, when a stripling in Kings College, he had attracted notice by
anonymous contributions to Holt’s _Journal_, nor how in the equally
important crisis of 1787–88 he published his immortal “Federalist”
essays in the _Independent Journal_. Samuel Loudon, head of the
_Independent Journal_, used to wait in Hamilton’s study for the sheets
as they came from his pen. To support Washington’s Administration,
Hamilton in 1789 encouraged John Fenno, a Boston schoolmaster of
literary inclinations, to establish the _Gazette of the United States_
at the seat of government; and in 1793, when Fenno appealed to Hamilton
for $2,000 to save the journal from ruin, the latter took steps to
raise the sum, making himself responsible for half of it. Hamilton
also financially assisted William Cobbett, the best journalist of his
time in England or America, to initiate his newspaper campaign against
the Democratic haters of England. He, Rufus King, and others in New
York helped provide the capital with which Noah Webster founded the
_Minerva_ in that city in 1793, and he and King together wrote for it a
series of papers, signed “Camillus,” upon Jay’s Treaty. If Hamilton’s
unsigned contributions to the Federalist press from 1790 to 1800 could
be identified, they would form an important addition to his works.
It is evident from the published and unpublished papers of Hamilton
that at an early date in 1801, when he was devoting all his spare time
to the hopeless State campaign, he was giving thought to the problem
of improving the party press. He wrote Senator Bayard of Delaware a
letter upon party policy, to be presented at the Federalist caucus
in Washington on April 20. In it he gave a prominent place to the
necessity for “the diffusion of information,” both by newspapers and
by pamphlets. He added that “to do this a fund must be raised,” and
proposed forming an extensive association, each member who could afford
it pledging himself to contribute $5 annually for eight years for
publicity. Hamilton’s fingers whenever he was in a tight place always
itched for the pen. Noah Webster had withdrawn from the _Minerva_ three
years previous, while Fenno had died about the same time, leaving the
_Gazette of the United States_ to a son; so that Hamilton could no
longer feel at home in these journals.
But if a Hamiltonian organ were started, who should be editor?
Fortunately, this question was easily answered. To the party motives
which Hamilton, Troup, Wolcott, and other leading Federalists had in
setting up such a journal, at this juncture there was added a motive of
friendship toward an aspirant for an editorial position. In 1798, there
had been admitted to the New York bar a penniless lawyer of thirty-two
from Greenfield, Massachusetts, named William Coleman. He had come
with a record of two years’ service in the Massachusetts House, an
honorary degree from Dartmouth College, and warm recommendations from
Robert Treat Paine, a signer of the Declaration of Independence who
at this time was a judge of the Massachusetts Supreme Court. After
a brief and unprofitable partnership with Aaron Burr, a misstep
which he later declared he should regret to his dying day, Coleman
formed a partnership with John Wells, a brilliant young Federalist
attorney. Wells was just the man to draw Coleman into intimacy with
the Federalist leaders. He was a graduate of Princeton, a profound
student of the law, was rated by good judges one of the three or four
best speakers of the city, and was a member of the “Friendly Club,” an
important literary society. Governor John Jay offered him a Justiceship
of the Peace, and Hamilton trusted him so much that, in 1802, he
selected him to edit the first careful edition of _The Federalist_, for
which Hamilton himself critically examined and revised the papers.
Through Wells, in 1798–99 Coleman came to know the members of the
“Friendly Club,” including W. W. Woolsey, the novelist Charles Brockden
Brown, the dramatist William Dunlap, Anthony Bleecker, and James Kent,
later Chancellor. He had already met Hamilton, on the latter’s trip
into New England in 1796, and now he fell completely under the great
man’s spell. In his later life he dated everything from the beginning
of their friendship. The two had much in common besides their political
views, for Coleman possessed a dashing temper, a quick mind, and a
ready bonhomie. In the spring of 1800, there took place in New York the
famous trial of Levi Weeks, charged with murdering Gulielma Sands, a
young girl, and throwing her body into one of the Manhattan Company’s
wells; a trial in which Hamilton and Burr appeared together for the
defense, and saved Weeks from conviction by a mass of circumstantial
evidence. Coleman, a master of shorthand, immediately published a
praiseworthy report of the trial. One of his political enemies admitted
that “it is everywhere admired for its arrangement, perspicuity, and
the soundness of judgment it displays.” Coleman was encouraged to plan
a volume of reports of decisions in the State Supreme Court. At that
moment the Clerkship of the Circuit Court fell vacant. Hamilton at
once wrote Governor John Jay and also Ebenezer Foote, a member of the
Council of Appointment, requesting that the place, which paid $3,000 a
year, be given his friend Coleman. There was another candidate with a
really superior claim, but he was passed by. Governor Jay announced the
result in the following hitherto unpublished letter to Hamilton:
Mr. Coleman, who was yesterday appointed Clerk of the New York
Circuit, will be the bearer of this. Mr. Skinner was first
nominated--for where character and qualifications for office are
admitted, the candidate whose age, standing, and prior public
service is highest should, I think, take the lead; unless perhaps
in cases peculiarly circumstanced.--Mr. Skinner did not succeed.
Mr. Coleman was then nominated, and the Council, expecting much
from his reports, and considering the office as necessary to
enable him to accomplish that work, advised his appointment. Mr.
Coleman’s embarrassments, and whatever appeared to me necessary to
observe respecting the candidates, were mentioned antecedent to
the nomination. My feelings were in Coleman’s favor, and had my
judgment been equally so, he would have suffered less anxiously
than he has. I mentioned your opinion in his favor; and I wish the
appointment may be generally approved. Ten or eleven of the members
recommended Mr. Skinner--some of them will not be pleased.
I hope Mr. Coleman will be attentive to the reports. Much
expectation has been excited, and disappointment would produce
disgust. It is, I think, essential to him that the work be
prosecuted with diligence, but not with haste; and that they may be
such as they already hope.
But in the general overturn of 1801, Coleman--who had duly commenced
the compilation of the Supreme Court Law Reports, beginning with
1794, and whose labors later bore fruit in what is called Coleman
and Caines’s Reports--lost his post. He could have resumed practice
with Wells, who also lost his justiceship in the ten-pound court.
But the bar was overcrowded, having about a hundred members in a
city of 60,000, and Coleman had starved at it before. While a lawyer
in Greenfield, he had established the first newspaper there, the
_Impartial Intelligencer_, and had written for it, and he had then
half formed an ambition to conduct a newspaper in New York. Far from
having any money of his own, he had been left deep in debt by his
participation in the unfortunate Yazoo speculation in Georgia lands.
But he knew that the party leaders were thinking of the need for a
better Federalist newspaper, and he stepped forward to offer his
assistance in establishing one.
During the spring Coleman was busy campaigning for Stephen Van
Rensselaer, Federalist candidate for Governor, who happened to be
Hamilton’s brother-in-law, and for the Assembly ticket. The _American
Citizen_ repeatedly commented on his activity; on April 22, it
predicted that this “seller of two-pence halfpenny pamphlets, this
sycophantic messenger of Gen. Hamilton ... will at one time or another
receive a due reward.” During probably May and June, in consultations
among Hamilton, Wells, Mayor Varick, Troup, Woolsey, a Commissioner of
Bankruptcy named Caleb S. Riggs, and Coleman, the plan of the _Evening
Post_ was drafted. Woolsey had married a sister of Theodore Dwight,
the editor of the _Connecticut Courant_ at Hartford, and wished Dwight
placed in charge, but he finally acquiesced in entrusting the new
enterprise to Coleman.
A founders’ list was secretly circulated among trusty Federalists, and
signers were expected to contribute a minimum of $100. The initial
capital required was probably not much in excess of $10,000. A
Baltimore newspaper, the _Anti-Democrat_, was established at this time
by Judge Samuel Chase, Robert Goodloe Harper, and other Federalists,
for $8,000. Hamilton’s adherents, who included almost the whole
commercial group of New York, were wealthy; and Hamilton himself,
liberal to a fault with his large income, probably offered not less
than $1,000. Besides the names already listed, we know of some other
men who contributed, as the merchant, Samuel Boyd, and the dismissed
Collector, Joshua Sands. Coleman told the poet Bryant, his successor,
that Archibald Gracie, one of the richest and most dignified merchants,
had assisted, and a tradition in the family has it that the _Evening
Post_ was founded at a meeting in the Gracie home. The _American
Citizen_ of the time declares that a certain auctioneer--perhaps
Leonard Bleecker, perhaps the elder Philip Hone, perhaps James
Byrne--“contributed largely.” These men did not present the money
outright, but vested the property in Coleman, who gave his notes in
return; unfortunately, he was never able to meet them, and before 1810
all his American creditors, as one of his friends states in a letter
of that year, “signed his discharge without receiving anything.” The
project was rapidly matured. “In a moment thousands of dollars were
raised,” wrote Cheetham. During the summer of 1801 a fine brick office
was made ready on Pine Street, and about the beginning of November
would-be readers were asked to enter their subscriptions.
The initial subscribers numbered about 600, and among the names entered
in the journal’s first account book, which was unfortunately lost years
ago, were the following:
Daniel D. Tompkins, 1 Wall Street
John Jacob Astor, 71 Liberty Street
Garrett H. Striker, 181 Broadway
Henry Doyer, Bowery Lane
Anthony Lispenard, 19 Park Street
Strong Sturges, 13 Oliver Street
Anthony Bleecker, 25 Water Street
Joel and Jonathan Post, Wall and William Streets
Isaac Haviland, 186 Water Street
John McKesson, 82 Broadway
Matthew Clarkson, 26 Pearl Street
Nathaniel L. Sturges, 47 Wall Street
Philip Livingston, Yonkers
Philip Hone, 56 Dey Street
R. Belden, 153 Broadway
Col. Barclay, 142 Greenwich Street
John Cruger, 30 Greenwich Street
Anthony Dey, 19 Cedar Street
Robert Morris, 33 Water Street
Robert Thorne, 2 Coenties slip
Isaac Ledyard, 2 Pearl Street
James Carter, 195 Greenwich Street
Cornelius Bogert, 24 Pine Street
Grant Thorburn, 22 Nassau Street
Philip L. Jones, 74 Broadway
Robert Swarthout, 62 Water Street
In the first issue, Nov. 16, 1801, appeared a prospectus which may have
been written by Coleman alone, but is more likely the product of his
collaboration with Hamilton. Every reader looked first to see what was
said of party affairs. The editor promised to support Federalism, but
without dogmatism or intolerance; he declared his belief “that honest
and virtuous men are to be found in each party”; and he made it clear
that the columns would always be open to communications from Democrats.
Merchants were assured that special attention would be paid to whatever
affected them, and that the earliest commercial information, which
in those days meant chiefly arrivals and sailings of ships, would
be obtained. Newspaper exchanges, and current pamphlets, magazines,
and reviews would be searched for whatever was most informing and
entertaining. Letter-writers were asked not to enclose their names, a
bad rule which Coleman soon found it expedient to abrogate. Prominent
in the prospectus was the paragraph still carried at the head of the
_Evening Post’s_ editorial columns:
The design of this paper is to diffuse among the people correct
information on all interesting subjects, to inculcate just
principles in religion, morals, and politics; and to cultivate a
taste for sound literature.
An effort was actually for a time made to teach religious truths. In an
early issue a letter was printed, probably from some cleric, combating
certain atheistic views expressed by Cheetham’s _American Citizen_;
an editorial article soon after was devoted to a discussion of the
Revelation of St. John; and Coleman never tired of attacking the deism
of local “illuminati.”
In its opening sentences the prospectus stated that the journal
would appear in a dress worthy of the liberal patronage promised. To
modern eyes the first volumes are cramped, dingy, and uninviting. Each
issue consisted of a single sheet folded once, to make four pages, as
continued to be the case until the middle eighties; a page measured
only 14 by 19½ inches; and the conventional cuts of ships, houses,
stoves, furniture, and coiffures would be disfiguring if they were not
quaint. But when we compare the _Evening Post_ with its contemporaries
we see that the statement was not empty. Editor Callender remarked
that “This newspaper is, beyond all comparison, the most elegant piece
of workmanship that we have seen, either in Europe or America.” The
_Gazette of the United States_ commented that it was published “in a
style by far superior to that of any other newspaper in the United
States.” How could it afford this style? it asked. Advertisements
were the secret, for out of twenty columns, fourteen or fifteen
were always filled with the patronage of Federalist merchants. Few
journals then had more than two full fonts of type, and some were
set entirely in minion. Coleman and his printer, a young man from
Hartford named Michael Burnham, had started with four full fonts of
new type beautifully cut; they used a superior grade of paper; and the
arrangement and use of headings had been carefully studied. Dignity was
then, as always later, emphasized.
Every Saturday a weekly edition, called the _Herald_, was sent to
distant subscribers, from Boston to Savannah, with fewer advertisements
and at least twice the reading matter. Noah Webster, in conducting the
_Minerva_, had been the first New York editor to perceive the economy
and profit in publishing such a journal “for the country” without
recomposition of type, and had himself used the name _Herald_. The New
York Federalists relied principally upon the weekly for a national
diffusion of their views, and with reason, for at an early date in 1802
the circulation rose above 1600, as against slightly more than 1100
for the _Evening Post_ itself. These were respectable figures for that
time.
What should the Federalist chieftains, Hamilton, Wolcott, King,
Gouverneur Morris, and others, make of these two instruments? To answer
this, we shall have to look first at the qualifications of “Hamilton’s
editor,” as other journals called him.
The abilities of Coleman, an interesting type of the best Federalist
editor, were as great as those of any other American journalist of
the time. His formal training was unusually good for a day in which
powerful figures like Duane, Cheetham, Binns, and Callender were
comparatively uncultivated men, who wrote with vigor but without
polish or even grammatical correctness. Born in Boston on Feb. 14,
1766, he was fortunate enough to be sent to Phillips Andover, the
first incorporated academy in New England, soon after it opened in
1778. Though he was a poor boy, he had for fellow-pupils the sons of
the best families of the region, including Josiah Quincy, the future
mayor of Boston and president of Harvard; and for “preceptor” the
famous Eliphalet Pearson, a master of the harsh type of Keate of Eton
or Dr. Busby of Westminster. Here he gained “a certain elegance of
scholarship” in Greek and Latin which, Bryant tells us, “was reckoned
among his qualifications as a journalist.” He formed a taste for
reading, and his editorials bear evidence of his knowledge of all the
standard English authors--Shakespeare, Milton, Hume, Johnson, Fielding,
Smollett, and the eighteenth-century poets and essayists. Sterne was a
favorite with him, and like all other editors, he knew the “Letters of
Junius” almost by heart. Most Phillips Andover boys went on to Harvard,
but Coleman began the study of law in the office of Robert Treat Paine,
then Attorney-General of Massachusetts, at Worcester. Nothing is known
of his life there save that he became an intimate friend of the Rev.
Aaron Bancroft, father of the historian George Bancroft; and that he
dropped his books to serve in the winter march of the militia in 1786
against Shays.
Bryant knew Coleman only in his declining years, but he tells us
that he was “of that temperament which some physiologists call the
sanguine.” Hopefulness and energy were fully evinced in the decade he
spent at the bar in Greenfield, Hampshire County, from 1788 to the end
of 1797. He practiced across the Vermont and New Hampshire lines, made
money, showed marked public spirit, and seemed destined to be more
than a well-to-do squire--to be one of the dignitaries of northwest
Massachusetts. The newspaper which he founded at Greenfield early in
1792, but did not edit, prospered, and under a changed name is now
the third oldest surviving newspaper in the State. In the same year
Coleman set on foot a subscription for the town’s first fire-engines.
He was active in a movement, which many years later succeeded, to
divide Hampshire County; he set out many of the fine street-elms; and
in 1796 he was one incorporator of a company to pipe water into the
town. He began training young men to the bar in his own office. In the
Presidential campaign of 1796 he made many speeches, and his political
activity was further exemplified by terms in the Massachusetts House
in 1795 and 1796. He was only thirty years old when in September of
the latter year he received his honorary degree at Dartmouth. When he
invested his money in the Yazoo Purchase, he believed that he would
make a fortune--a Greenfield contemporary says that he estimated his
profits at $30,000. In the flush of this delusion, he married, and
bought a spacious site in the town with a fine view of the Pocumtuck
Hills and Green River Valley, where he commenced the erection of
a house now regarded as one of the finest specimens of Colonial
architecture in the section.
The disaster which overtook Coleman when, at the close of 1796, the
Georgia Legislature annulled the Yazoo Purchase on the ground that it
had been effected by corruption, he faced without flinching. It was
natural for him, on settling his affairs in 1797, to seek his fortune
in New York. We find it stated by a journalistic opponent that he had
received promises of help from “Mr. Burr and other leading characters.”
At any rate, his first partnership, which he later lamented as “the
greatest error of my life,” was with Burr, who had just ended his term
in the United States Senate. Coleman later wrote that his share of the
office receipts “came essentially short of affording me a subsistence.”
One other man destined to be a famous Federalist editor, Theodore
Dwight, had previously had a similar partnership with Burr and had
dissolved it. Coleman did better when he joined his fortunes first with
Francis Arden, and then with John Wells. But he was still desperately
poor, and his creditors pressed him. Among those whom he owed money
were Gen. Stephen R. Bradley, of Westminster, Vt., later a United
States Senator, and a friend of Bradley’s, Edward Houghton; these two
brought suit, and on Jan. 27, 1801, obtained judgments in a New York
court, the former for $691.71, the latter for $443.67.
Yet under these trying circumstances Coleman’s amiable deportment,
frankness, and activity made him well-wishers among the best men
of the city. He was of athletic frame, and at this time of robust
appearance; with curling hair and sparkling eyes, he was a figure to
attract attention anywhere. “His manners were kind and courteous,” says
Bryant; “he expressed himself in conversation with fluency, energy, and
decision”; and his enemy Cheetham testifies that “no man knew better
how to get into the good graces of everybody better than himself.”
Resolving to demonstrate to the bar the utility of accurate reports
of all important cases and decisions, he spared no labor or pains
upon his report of the trial of Levi Weeks; for this little volume of
ninety-eight pages he collated five other notebooks with his own.
In all, Coleman was well fitted to become the leading Federalist
editor of the nation. The _Evening Post_ was expected by the party
chieftains to take a prompt and vigorous stand on every great public
question, and to voice an opinion which lesser journals could echo.
It was a heavy responsibility. “The people of America derive their
political information chiefly from newspapers,” wrote Callender in
1802. “Duane upon one side, and Coleman upon the other, dictate at this
moment the sentiments of perhaps fifty thousand American citizens.”
When in 1807 the first journal of the party was established at the
new capital, Jonathan Findley’s Washington _Federalist_, its founder,
after enumerating all the requisites of an editor, named Coleman as
their foremost exemplar. “I cannot, in the field of controversy, vie
with a Coleman.” In the summer of 1802 Coleman was nicknamed the
“Field-marshal of the Federal Editors” by his opponent Callender, and
the fitting appellation stuck.
Wielding a ready pen, Coleman was apt in literary allusions. His
knowledge of law enabled him to write with authority upon legislation,
constitutional questions, and practical politics. Unlike his successor
Bryant, he mingled freely with men in places of public resort, and kept
his ear to the ground. He took an interest in letters and the drama
which was quite unknown to other “political editors.” Some pretensions
to being an authority upon style he always asserted, and he never tired
of correcting the errors of Democratic scribblers. Against certain
expressions he made a stubborn battle--for example, against “averse
from” instead of “averse to,” and against “over a signature” instead
of “under” it; in 1814 he offered $100 for every instance of the
last-named phrase in a good author since Clarendon. He was excessively
generous, always ready to lend his ear to a pitiful story; Dr. John
W. Francis relates that his eyes would moisten over the woes of one
of the paper-boys. This kindliness made the columns of the _Evening
Post_ always open to charitable or reformative projects. Coleman’s
chief faults were three. His style, like Hamilton’s, was diffuse; he
sometimes forgot taste and decency in assailing his opponents; and he
was a wretched business man. A few years after the journal was founded
its money affairs fell into such embarrassment that friends intervened,
and an arrangement was made by which Michael Burnham, the printer,
became half owner, with entire control of the finances.
II
Contemporary writers from 1801 to 1904, however, seldom spoke of the
_Evening Post_ as Coleman’s newspaper; it was usually “Hamilton’s
journal” or “Hamilton’s gazette.” Just so had Freneau’s _National
Gazette_ a decade before been called “Jefferson’s journal,” so
Cheetham’s _American Citizen_ was now sometimes called “Clinton’s
journal,” and there was even “Levi Lincoln’s journal,” the Worcester
_National Aegis_, which Attorney-General Lincoln helped support. During
1801 Burr and his partisans were much dissatisfied with Cheetham’s
newspaper, and this dissatisfaction came to a head after the spring
elections the following year. A group which included Burr, John
Swartwout, W. P. Van Ness, Col. William S. Smith, and John Sanford
established a paper called the New York _Morning Chronicle_, and after
offering the editorship to Charles Holt, who refused, gave it to
Washington Irving’s brother, Dr. Peter Irving, known for his tea-table
talents and effeminate manners as “Miss Irving.” The _Chronicle_ was of
course for several years called “Burr’s journal.” Just how close was
Hamilton’s connection, never openly avowed, with the _Evening Post_?
The most direct evidence on the subject outside of newspaper files
of the period is furnished by the autobiography of Jeremiah Mason, a
native of Connecticut, who practiced law in Vermont and New Hampshire
alongside Coleman, and became a United States Senator from the latter
State. He writes of Coleman:
As a lawyer he was respectable, but his chief excellence consisted
in a critical knowledge of the English language, and the adroit
management of political discussion. His paper for several years
gave the leading tone to the press of the Federal party. His
acquaintances were often surprised by the ability of some of his
editorial articles, which were supposed to be beyond his depth.
Having a convenient opportunity, I asked him who wrote, or aided in
writing, those articles. He frankly answered that he made no secret
of it; that his paper was set up under the auspices of General
Hamilton, and that he assisted him. I then asked, “Does he write in
your paper?”--“Never a word.”--“How, then, does he assist?”--His
answer was, “Whenever anything occurs on which I feel the want of
information I state matters to him, sometimes a note; he appoints
a time when I may see him, usually a late hour in the evening. He
always keeps himself minutely informed on all political matters.
As soon as I see him, he begins in a deliberate manner to dictate
and I to note down in shorthand; when he stops, my article is
completed.”
There is ample corroboratory proof that Hamilton contributed much to
the opinions and expression of the _Evening Post_, and there is every
reason to believe that this is the way he frequently did it. Coleman
could readily have taken the dictation in shorthand. Seldom in the
thirty-two months between the founding of the _Evening Post_ and the
death of Hamilton could the General have found time for deliberate
writing. He had one of the largest law practices in the country, and he
was the leader of a great party, regarded by a majority of Federalists
as the dashing strategist who would yet perhaps make them as powerful
as in the days of Washington. Yet that energetic fighter could not be
kept out of the columns.
“Those only who were his intimate friends,” wrote Coleman in 1816,
“know with what readiness he could apply the faculties of his
illuminated mind.” No doubt Coleman resorted for guidance on many
nights to Hamilton’s home at 26 Broadway--the editor’s house was a few
blocks distant, at 61 Hudson Street--and on not a few week-ends to his
country residence, called “The Grange” after the ancestral Hamilton
estate in Scotland, which stood on Kingsbridge Road at what is now the
corner of 142d Street and Tenth Avenue.
[Illustration: ALEXANDER HAMILTON
Chief Founder of the _Evening Post_.
(The Hamilton College Statue)]
From 1801 to 1804 only a single bit of signed writing from Hamilton’s
pen appeared in the _Evening Post_. This was a communication denying
the hoary legend, originally circulated in derogation of Washington and
Lafayette, that at Yorktown Lafayette had ordered Hamilton to put to
death all British prisoners in the redoubt which he was sent forward
to capture, and that he had declined to obey the inhumane command.
But a much more important contribution was hardly concealed. This was
a series of articles upon President Jefferson’s first annual message,
written under the signature “Lucius Crassus,” and published irregularly
from Dec. 17, 1801, till April 8, 1802. They were eighteen in all,
and not equal to Hamilton’s best work. At one time the series was
interrupted by a trip of Hamilton’s to Albany, but the editor explained
the delay by saying that he was waiting to let the distant journals
copying the series catch up with back installments. Before their
publication was quite completed in the _Evening Post_, Coleman issued
them in a neat pamphlet of 127 pages, with an introduction by himself,
for 50 cents.
All other contributions must be sought for upon internal evidence,
and such evidence can never be conclusive. No one is yet certain who
wrote some of the essays of “The Federalist,” and it is impossible to
point to unsigned papers in the _Evening Post_ and say, “These are
Hamilton’s.” The style might be that of almost any other cultivated
man of legal training; the content might be that of such other
able contributors as Gouverneur Morris or Oliver Wolcott. It is
possible that a long, well-written article of March 12, 1802, upon
Representative Giles’s speech for the repeal of the Judiciary Act is
Hamilton’s; it contains a good deal of information upon the proposals
which Hamilton made for indirect taxation when he was Secretary of the
Treasury. It is possible that Hamilton dictated part or all of the
attack of April 19, 1803, upon the Manhattan Bank founded by De Witt
Clinton’s faction, for it contains much sound disquisition upon the
principles of public finance. It is quite possible that he furnished
at least an outline for the article of July 9, 1803, upon neutrality,
which deals in considerable part with the rôle he, Knox, and Jefferson
played in the Genet affair; and that he assisted later the same month
in an article upon the funding system, land tax, and national debt. But
it is bootless to pile up such conjectures. The editorials upon the
diplomatic aspects of the Louisiana treaty, the Chase impeachment,
and the navigation of the Mississippi certainly represented Hamilton’s
views.
There is abundant evidence that Coleman wished to do Hamilton personal
as well as political service in the _Evening Post_. His first
opportunity to do this occurred less than ten days after the founding
of the journal, when on Nov. 24, 1801, it announced the death of
Philip, Hamilton’s eldest and most promising son--“murdered,” said
the editor, “in a duel.” The attendant circumstances were obscure,
and Coleman spared no labor to inquire into them and set them forth
accurately and tactfully, correcting the accounts in the Democratic
press. It appeared that Philip Hamilton, a youth of twenty, was sitting
with another young man in a box at a performance of Cumberland’s “The
West Indian,” and that they exchanged some jocose remarks upon a Fourth
of July oration made the previous summer by one George I. Eacker, a
Democrat. Eacker overheard them, called them into the lobby, said
that he would not be “insulted by a set of rascals,” and scuffled
with them. The two excitable boys challenged him. Young Hamilton’s
companion fought first, Sunday morning on the Weehawken dueling-ground,
and no one was injured. On Monday afternoon the second duel occurred.
“Hamilton received a shot through the body at the first discharge,”
reported the _Evening Post_, “and fell without firing. He was brought
across the ferry to his father’s house, where he languished of the
wound until this morning [Tuesday], when he expired.” Coleman took
occasion to utter a shrewd warning against dueling. “Reflections
on this horrid custom must occur to every friend of humanity; but
the voice of an individual or the press must be ineffectual without
additional, strong, and pointed legislative interference. Fashion has
placed it upon a footing which nothing short of this can control.” The
truth of this statement had a melancholy illustration within three
years.
Coleman also contradicted in detail, using information which Hamilton
alone could have furnished, a spiteful story to the effect that
President Washington, when Hamilton was Secretary of the Treasury,
used to send him public papers with the request, “Dear Hamilton, put
this into style for me,” and that Hamilton boasted of the service.
Again, Coleman assured his readers, using more information from
Hamilton, that the letters which Jefferson wrote as Secretary of State
to the British Minister, George Hammond, upon the debts owed to the
British, were given their finishing touches by Hamilton.