took a different attitude toward the bustle of preparations to invade
Canada. When President Madison requested the Governors to place the
militia at his disposal, Coleman applauded the New England executives
who refused. Conjuring up a vision of a harsh military despotism,
he pronounced the President’s action one “highly dangerous to the
liberties of the people, and to our republican form of government.”
In editorial after editorial, moreover, he discouraged recruiting for
Federal regiments. Are you willing, he asked volunteers, “to attempt
foreign conquests while your wives and little ones are left exposed to
an exasperated and unfeeling foe?” As autumn came on, he made the most
of the reports of suffering among underclad troops. He wished no one
to forget that their misery had been caused by “a wretched, incapable,
mob-courting administration, less concerned to provide supplies for
their army than to secure by low intrigue the places they so unworthily
fill.”
It required no little courage to declare that the war was “a great
national calamity,” that it was “clearly unjust,” and that the points
in dispute were not worth the blood and treasure being spent. Two years
previous, when the _Evening Post_ was angrily opposing the impending
conflict, a mob of Democrats had gathered at Martling’s Porter-House,
and just before midnight had attacked the house of Michael Burnham,
part-owner of the journal, smashing his windows, and nearly killing an
infant. Just after the declaration of war occurred the memorable mob
attack upon the Baltimore _Federal Republican_, in which Gen. James
Lingan, a Revolutionary veteran defending the office, was killed, and
Gen. Henry Lee crippled. Jack Binns, in the Philadelphia _Democratic
Press_, proclaimed that it would be only natural if a body of angry
men executed the same summary justice upon the traitorous editor of
the _Evening Post_. For some time anonymous threats poured in upon
Coleman. Among them was one which left him so certain that violence
was actually brewing that he applied to Mayor Clinton for protection;
and the city watch was doubled, special constables were held in
readiness, and a party of armed friends spent the night at Coleman’s
house. Nothing, however, occurred.
Coleman defiantly maintained that his right to free speech was in no
way abridged by the declaration of war, and published a special series
of editorials, highly legalistic in nature, denouncing the Baltimore
outrage. He reminded the Democrats that in intimidating and attacking
the Federalists for their opposition they had short memories. Had they
forgotten their open resistance to the hostilities which the United
States waged against France in 1798? This attitude, fortunately, met
with powerful support. At a great peace mass-meeting in Washington Hall
on Aug. 18, John Jay, Rufus King, Gouverneur Morris, Egbert Benson, and
Richard Varick all assailed the war and asserted the right to outspoken
criticism of it. By this date Coleman’s views had met what seemed to
him the strongest possible confirmation. It had become known early
in August that the British had repealed the Orders in Council, which
were the great cause of the war, and for a moment hopes of peace had
risen high; but Madison immediately rejected the armistice proffered by
the British commander Prevost. The anger of New York and New England
Federalists passed all bounds. “God of truth and mercy!” raged the
_Evening Post_. “Our treasure is to be wasted, our immense frontiers
are to be one scene of devastation, where the merciless savage is to
revel in the blood of defenseless men, women, and children, because
the _form_ of the revocation is not satisfactory to our precise and
critical President!”
The first news of an important military event confirmed Coleman’s
gloomy apprehensions. On Aug. 31 he was able to write a long editorial
upon Hull’s surrender at Detroit in that I-told-you-so spirit which is
an editor’s subtlest joy. He called it disgraceful:
A nation, counting eight millions of souls, deliberating and
planning for a whole winter and spring, and part of a summer, the
invasion and conquest of a neighboring province, at length making
that invasion; and in one month its army retiring--captured--and
captured in a fortified place--captured almost without firing
a gun! Miserably deficient in practical talent must be the
administration which formed the plan of that invasion; or the
army which has thus surrendered must be a gang of more cowardly
poltroons, than ever disgraced a country....
What! March an army _into_ a country where there were not more
than seven or eight hundred soldiers to oppose them, and not make
the army large enough! March them _from_ a country, which is the
granary of the world, and let them famish on the very frontiers for
want of provisions! Issue a gasconading proclamation threatening to
exterminate the enemy, and surrender your whole army to them! If
there be judgment in this people, they will see the utter unfitness
of our rulers for anything beyond management, intrigue, and
electioneering.--They have talents enough to influence a misguided
populace against their best friends; but they cannot protect the
nation from insult and disgrace.
Similar attacks upon the Administration’s incompetence followed every
other reverse. From the early defeat at Queenstown Heights to the
“Bladensburg Races,” when an American force fled ignominiously before
Cockburn’s invaders and exposed Washington to capture, the _Evening
Post_ missed no opportunity for harsh criticism. “Woe to that nation
whose king is a child!” was a favorite quotation of Coleman’s. The
journal was far from unpatriotic, and sincerely deplored the several
defeats, but it held the government rigidly responsible for them.
The editor never changed his opinion that, to use his words in the
last year of the war, it was “an unsuccessful war, ... a war declared
without just cause and without preparation, for the continuance of
which no man can assign a reason, and from the termination of which
no man expects an advantage.” And patriotic though Coleman was, he
rejoiced in the failure of the successive efforts to invade Canada. He
thought conquest in that quarter the most shameless territory-grabbing.
In these utterances we catch the first accents of the _Evening Post’s_
century-long campaign against “imperialism.” He wrote late in 1814:
_Uti Possidetis, or Keep What You’ve Got._--The Lexington paper
(Kentucky) some time ago, before the British had got possession of
Fort Niagara, Michilimackinac, Castine, Moose Island, etc., etc.,
about the time when Gen. Wilkinson was to sup “in Montreal or
Heaven,” this paper then said if any ministers should make a treaty
on any other basis, than each to keep what they had got, they ought
to have a halter. But then it was _my_ bull and _your_ cow.
In sharp contrast with these editorials were the exultant comments of
the journal upon the dazzling successes of the Americans at sea. The
Federalists since 1801 had constantly called for a larger navy. The
first-known and most famous sea-fight of 1812 was the victory on Aug.
19 of the _Constitution_ over the _Guerriere_, a vessel with which a
London paper had declared no American ship could cope. “We have always
contended that on an equal footing Americans can be whipped by none,”
cried the _Evening Post_. “Man for man and gun for gun, even the
veteran British tars can get no advantage over the Americans.” With
a shrewd appreciation of the opportunities which Perry and McDonough
seized, it began to insist upon a naval force on the lakes. Naturally,
it still taunted the Democrats:
Though very little present benefit is to be expected from the war,
commenced as it _has been_ and carried on as it _will be_, under
the present administration, yet it may have one good effect; it
will prove that in a contest where the _freedom of the seas_ is the
object, a naval force is much superior to an army on the land. It
will prove, what the Federalists have always advocated, and what
the present ruling party have always opposed, the necessity of a
maritime force to a commercial people.
News came soon after of the capture of the British sloop _Alert_ by
the American frigate _Essex_, and on Dec. 7 it was known that the
_United States_, commanded by Decatur, had taken the _Macedonian_.
“This is the third victory which has crowned our little naval force
with laurels--may they bloom perennial!” exclaimed Coleman. He rather
ill-naturedly accused the Administration of begrudging the seamen, who
were mostly Yankees, their victories. “Our language is,” he concluded,
“give us commerce and let us alone to protect it. We have ships and we
have men; nor will we go to France for either, though your Jeffersons
may recommend it ever so warmly.”
Nor did the _Evening Post_ fail to take a vigorously patriotic attitude
upon the questions raised by the Hartford Convention. The year 1814
drew to a close with the entire coast tightly blockaded by the British,
the invasions of Canada all failures, the capitol at Washington in
ashes, the British in possession of northern Maine, and their hands at
last free in Europe. Mr. Madison’s war had ceased to be an offensive
war, and had become defensive. The national government, almost without
an army, almost without money, seemed on the point of collapse. On
Dec. 15 there met at Hartford a convention of delegates from all the
New England States, who for three weeks deliberated in secret; some
believed that they were laying plans to declare all New England--as
Nantucket had already declared herself--neutral, and to throw open
its ports to the British, while others said that they were plotting
secession, and the erection of a Yankee republic.
Coleman at the time had been called to Middletown, Conn., on business,
and proceeded to Hartford to see some friends. Theodore Dwight, the
secretary of the convention, later stated that the editor tried to
gain informal entrance, but this Coleman denied. He never, even when
years afterward the Hartford Convention had become an object of deep
reproach, condemned it. But upon returning to New York he did express a
deprecatory opinion of it. He commenced by declaring that the uproar of
the Southerners over this “treasonable” gathering was as hypocritical
as it was groundless. Who were these canting Virginians who inveighed
against separatism and State Rights? The North had not forgotten that
when Jay’s treaty arrived, the newspapers of Virginia unanimously
began to discuss secession. It had not forgotten that Senator Giles,
author of the detestable Conscription bill which had just failed, had
then openly advocated a dissolution of the Union. Had not Madison
maintained, in the Virginia Assembly, the abstract right of secession?
But Coleman then proceeded to speak a word of reassurance, and another
of warning:
What precisely the Convention will do, it would be presumption
in any one to predict.... But from our personal knowledge of the
gentlemen composing the Convention, it will not be difficult
to pronounce with certainty what they will not do. They have
been selected from the most respectable men in New England,
distinguished for their prudence, for their wisdom, for their
firmness.... We may be justified in saying this respectable body,
with such a president [George Cabot] at their head, will not do
anything rash or precipitate or violent; they will not take any
step but what every man of sound principles, every friend to social
order throughout the Union, will approve.... While they are bent
on preserving the rights that are reserved to the States or the
people, from usurpation and abuse, they will take care not to
trench upon those powers which are delegated to the United States
by the Constitution. The vessel at present _wears_ well, and while
there is room to believe that she will _go safe about_, and there
is sea-room enough to do it in, why should they attempt to throw
her _in stays_?
The vessel did come safe about. When six weeks later the news of
the treaty of Ghent reached New York late at night, the city was
thrown into such jubilation by the mere ending of the conflict that
no one stopped to inquire the terms. But Coleman and the other local
Federalist leaders, as they watched the crowds surging up and down
Broadway crying--“A peace! A peace!” knew that the Democrats had
nothing to boast. After a calm Sunday, the editor presented his views
on Monday morning. He would stake his reputation that when the terms
became known, “it will be found that the government have not by the
negotiation obtained one single avowed object, for which they involved
the country in this bloody and expensive war.” He enumerated these
objects--the stoppage of impressments, the conquest of Canada, and
the abolition of commercial restrictions. He catalogued the loss of
life, the suffering on every frontier, and the waste of $150,000,000
in treasure. The one gain that Mr. Madison had obtained was a second
term at $25,000 a year in a marble executive mansion, gorgeously
refurnished. But, he concluded, “let the nation rejoice--we have
escaped ruin.”
A part of Coleman’s disloyalty in the war, as opposition journals
called it, lay in his vindictive pleasure over every disaster that
befell French arms. Editorials on foreign affairs were rare, and
usually ill-informed. But three months after war was declared the
_Evening Post_ based upon Wellington’s victories in Spain the sound
prediction that the French forces would soon be compelled to evacuate
the Peninsula altogether. “Bonaparte will never be emperor of the
world,” wrote Coleman, with an eye also upon Russia’s hostility; “it
will require all his talents to maintain himself even on the throne
of France.” On Dec. 12, 1812, when news had just reached New York of
the burning of Moscow (Sept. 16–20), leaving Napoleon stranded on an
ashheap, a really shrewd statement of his peril appeared:
We have conversed with an intelligent gentleman who resided a
long time in Russia, and about seven years of the time in the
city of Moscow. He informs us that the weather in that country is
generally pleasant till after the first of October, when the frost
sets in, and excessive storms of rain and sleet are experienced,
and continue with very little intermission until about the middle
of December. All the time the roads are so overwhelmed with water
and ice, that traveling is extremely uncomfortable, and many times
quite impracticable. After the middle of December the snows begin
to fall in such quantities that all traveling is entirely at an
end; and the usual communication from town to town is interrupted
for several weeks, the snows sometimes falling to the depth of
eight or ten feet. He thinks, if Bonaparte did not commence his
retreat from Moscow by the middle of October, that he will be
obliged to winter there; for after that time it will be impossible
for him to get out of Russia.... If he is obliged to winter there,
the Russians have nothing to do but to cut off his supplies until
about the middle of December, after which time all travel ceases
until spring, and the great army of the north will be annihilated.
Indeed, it is plain from all the accounts we can collect from ...
the French papers ... that the Russians have nothing to do but
to hold out this winter, and their country will be relieved from
its invaders. That they are determined to persevere appears to
be certain; the destruction of such a city as Moscow is a proof
of that determination, and a sure pledge that they will never
surrender while they can hold a foot of ground.
Although the defeat of Napoleon at Leipsic meant that England would
thenceforth be able to turn Wellington’s veteran armies against us,
Federalist editors rejoiced as if it had been an American victory. They
forgot for the moment the implications of the event for the war on
this side; they thought only of the triumph of freedom over a military
despot. “It is the morning dawn of liberty in Europe after a long, a
dark, and a dismal night,” wrote Coleman. “This is the first ray of
light which has visited the eyes of an oppressed people for many years
past. For while Bonaparte remained in power even hope was dead--nothing
but tyranny and oppression could be expected. And so firm had he fixed
himself in his usurped seat, that it appeared almost out of the power
of human exertions to shake him.... New prospects are opening up on the
thinking mind; humanity appears to be near the end of her sufferings.”
The wars in Europe and America over, the old rancors forgotten,
Coleman gladly accepted the era of good feeling. In the spring of 1816
the _Evening Post_ supported Rufus King in his losing fight for the
Governorship. But from the beginning of the year it had made up its
mind that the Democrats, headed by Monroe, would gain the Presidency
that fall, and it went through the motions of sustaining King for the
higher office--he received only 34 electoral votes against Monroe’s
183--listlessly. Monroe’s success made of the Federalist party a mere
corpse, over which factions in State politics fought like hyenas.
Coleman showed no reluctance in admitting the demise, though he
conventionally explained it as resulting from the Democratic adoption
of Federalist principles. When in 1819 the _Aurora_ attacked Monroe,
the _Evening Post_ actually flew out in the President’s defense. It
was satisfied, wrote the editor, “that, take it all in all, _the
administration of James Monroe is, at this day, more generally
acceptable to all classes of society in the United States, than that of
any other man has ever been, since the days of Washington_.” Coleman
was entertained in 1819 by Vice-President Tompkins at the latter’s
Staten Island home, and confessed later that he fell quite under the
sway of Tompkins’s “great affability” and “his winning and familiar
manner.” In short, by 1820 no one would have been surprised if some
prophet had foretold that the journal of the “Federalist Field-Marshal”
would shortly become the leading Democratic organ in the city.
But while it became half-Democratic, the _Evening Post_ never ceased
to be the spokesman of the best commercial sentiment in the city. As
such, it opposed, with a bitter show of sectional feeling, the Missouri
Compromise in 1820. The question at issue, said Coleman, was nothing
more or less than “whether they shall or shall not be allowed to
establish a new market for the sale of human flesh.” When the Virginia
Legislature made a veiled threat of secession unless Missouri were
admitted, Coleman rated the South angrily. They were hypocrites to talk
about the Hartford Convention; they had been cowards when Washington
was burned; on John Randolph’s own statement, they were in constant
fear of a slave insurrection--these and other “bitter taunts,” as
the Richmond _Enquirer_ called them, proved the force of Jefferson’s
statement that the Missouri controversy was like a firebell in the dark.
But the disintegration of the Federalist party of course robbed the
_Evening Post_ of a great part of its influence. It was no longer a
sounding board for the best leadership of that party; men no longer
recognized in its utterance the voices of Hamilton’s ablest and most
energetic successors, King, Troup, Jay, Kent, and Morris. It became
merely one of a half dozen journals recognized to have editors of
brains and principle; and in 1816 it was destined to wait just a decade
until it began to receive distinction from a man of something more than
brains--a man of genius.
CHAPTER THREE
THE CITY AND THE “EVENING POST’S” PLACE IN IT
The first carrier boys of the _Evening Post_ had a city of 60,000,
a little larger than Mount Vernon and a little smaller than Passaic
of to-day, to traverse. From the pleasant park at the Battery it was
a distance of only about a mile north to the outskirts of the town.
Just beyond its fringes, partly surrounded by woods, lay the Collect
or Fresh Water Pond, from which water was piped to the city, and in
which, despite the ordinances, neighboring housewives occasionally
washed the family garments. There were seven wards, designated, since
the names Out-Ward, Dock-Ward, and so on had been lost, by numbers.
The northern part of the town was the plain, plebeian part, with much
more actual wretchedness and want in severe winters than New York
should have tolerated. It was also the stronghold of Democracy, and the
fastest-growing section.
Every one who had any pretensions to gentility managed to crowd south
of Reade and Chatham Streets, and the nearer a merchant or lawyer
approached the Battery the greater were likely to be his claims to
social eminence. The mansions that faced Bowling Green, or that, like
Archibald Gracie’s, looked from State Street over the bay, many of
them graceful with porticoes and pillars, were called “Quality Row”;
and the neighboring streets shone in their reflected luster. Many
rich citizens, of course, had suburban seats along the Hudson and
East Rivers. The aristocracy prided itself upon substantial virtues
and substantial possessions--solid mahogany, thick cut glass, heavy
solid silver sets, old and pure wines, and old customs. It was made up
of almost indistinguishable elements of Dutch, English, New England,
and Huguenot blood. The members took no shame from their general
absorption in mercantile pursuits; and Alexander Stewart would himself
show you over his ship-goods establishment at 68 Wall, Robert Lenox
would talk of the 35,000 acres of Genesee Valley land which he had in
hand for sale, one of the Swords brothers would offer you his newest
publication in his Pearl Street bookshop, and a scion of the De Peyster
family, which had been in business since 1650, would himself sell you
one of his hogsheads of sherry at Murray’s Wharf.
Twenty years later the _Evening Post_ declared that “there is not a
city in the world which, in all respects, has advanced with greater
rapidity than the city of New York.” The population had leaped up to
130,000. “Whichever way we turn, new buildings present themselves to
our notice. In the upper wards particularly entire streets of elegant
brick buildings have been formed on sites which only a few years ago
were either covered with marshes, or occupied by a few straggling
frame huts of little or no value.” On Canal Street “almost a city of
itself” had sprung up where recently there had been a stagnant marsh.
In Greenwich Village and along the Bowery two other veritable cities
were assuming shape. Large fortunes had been made by the sale of real
estate, and the prospective opening of the Erie Canal was accentuating
the boom. A visitor from Boston, whose impressions were published in
the _Evening Post_, praised some of the Broadway stores as showing
“more splendor and magnificence than any I have ever seen,” commended
the paving of the north-and-south streets, and showed his interest in
the city’s three show-places, the Museum, Trinity Church, and the new
City Hall, with its rich Turkey carpets, crimson silk curtains, and
eighteen imposing portraits of warriors and statesmen. In 1823 a new
building was erected at the corner of Pearl and Flymarket Streets. The
_Evening Post_ listed the objects placed in the cornerstone--a paper by
a local pundit on the supposed Northmen’s tower at Newport, a copy of
the _Plough-Boy_, a life of Dr. Samuel L. Mitchill, the seventh report
of the Bible Society, and some coins. But the journal’s chief interest
lay in the amazing cost of the site--$20,500 for a plot 25 by 40 feet.
This, it said, was as striking evidence of the city’s growth as the
“twenty elegant ships” which now plied regularly to Liverpool.
What part had the _Evening Post_ tried to play in this transformation
of a provincial town into a metropolis? William Cullen Bryant states
that when he joined the journal in 1826, it was “much occupied with
matters of local interest, the sanitary condition of the city, the
state of its streets, its police, its regulations of various kinds.”
That had always been true. No other New York editor of the time took an
interest in civic improvements that approached Coleman’s.