and his associates established the _Evening Post_. The oldest of the
five was the _Daily Gazette_, which had been founded as a weekly in
1725; the _Post_ made six, Dr. Irving’s _Morning Chronicle_, patronized
by Burr, seven, and the _Public Advertiser_ eight. In 1807 the whole
list of city publications was as follows:
Federalist:--_Evening Post_; _Commercial Advertiser_; _Daily
Gazette_; _Weekly Inspector_; and _People’s Friend_.
Clintonian:--_American Citizen_; _Public Advertiser_; and _Bowery
Republican_.
Lewisite (Morgan Lewis was the inheritor of Burr’s
mantle):--_Morning Chronicle_.
Neutral:--_Mercantile Advertiser_; _New York Spy_; _Price Current_.
Literary:--_Monthly Register_; _Ladies’ Weekly Miscellany_; _Weekly
Museum_.
Of the dailies, the _Evening Post_ was the most important; its
scope was the widest, its editorials were the best-written, and its
commercial news was as good as that obtained by Lang or Belden. Yet
even it had, at the beginning of its second year, but 1,104 subscribers
for the daily edition, and 1,632, chiefly out-of-town, for the weekly.
New Yorkers then regarded newspapers as a luxury, not a necessity.
Since a year’s subscription cost $8, or ten days’ wages for a
workingman, the poor simply could not afford it. Thrifty householders
exchanged sheets, and at the taverns they were read to wide circles.
The journal was never sold on the streets, and if Coleman had caught an
urchin peddling it he would have boxed his ears for a fool; whenever a
visitor at the City Hotel, or a merchant particularly pleased by some
long editorial, wished a copy, he not only had to pay the heavy price
of 12½ cents, but had to go to the printer’s room for it. Coleman no
more thought of his circulation as variable from day to day than does
the editor of a country weekly at the present time.
We must remember that the dailies of old New York not only had small
and fixed circulations, but that it was not their editors’ intention
to make them purveyors of news in anything like the modern sense.
Coleman in his prospectus made no promise of enterprise in supplying
intelligence. An editor was glad to give a completer notification of
new auctions or cargoes than any rival, or to be first to strike the
party note upon a political event; but a news “beat” was unknown.
It was said of the _Commercial Advertiser_ that wars might be fought
and won, dynasties rise and fall, quakes and floods ravage the earth,
and it would never mention them; but that if it failed to list a
single ship arrival or sailing, the editor would meditate blowing out
his brains. Several New York newspapers of 1800–1820 were principally
vehicles of political opinion; several were principally organs for
commercial information and advertisements; and some were a mingling of
the two. A modicum of news was thrown in to add variety, and though it
tended to grow greater, even by 1825 it was only a modicum. One great
difficulty was that there was no machinery for news-gathering. Coleman
was his own reporter for local events, and had no money to hire an
assistant; while almost all news from outside was taken from exchanges,
or from private letters whose contents were communicated to him by
friends. The mails were slow and irregular. A still larger difficulty
was that the news sense had been developed neither by editors nor by
the public to whose demands the editors catered.
Illustrations of what would now seem an incredible blindness to
important events might be multiplied indefinitely. A New Yorker
who wishes to find in old files a real account of the first trial
of Fulton’s _Clermont_ will search in vain. No report worthy of
the name was written, the brief newspaper references being meager
and unsatisfactory. Yet there was much interest in Fulton, and the
_Evening Post_ of July 22, sixteen days before the experiment with the
steamboat, did give a good account of his successful effort in the
harbor to use torpedoes. More than twenty years later the _Evening
Post_ carried an advance notice of the opening of the Baltimore and
Ohio Railway, the real beginning of American railroad traffic; but,
like most other papers, it gave no report of the actual occurrence.
Sometimes news was deliberately rejected. In 1805 Coleman published
a long series of articles discussing Jefferson’s second inaugural
address, but the address itself he never printed; it being assumed that
interested men could find it in the Democratic press. Again, when
in the autumn of 1812 a gang of robbers entered eight of the largest
stores of the city in succession, during a few days, and took goods
valued at $3,000, the editor made no effort to place the particulars
before his readers; could they not ask the neighborhood gossips? He
contented himself with a warning to the public and to the watch. On
Jan. 10, 1803, early in the evening, the house of a well-to-do tallow
chandler named Willis, in Roosevelt Street, was robbed. Next day
the paper made only a casual allusion to it, naïvely adding: “For
particulars see the advertisement in this evening’s _Post_.” The
obliging Mr. Willis, in advertising a reward, had stated the details of
his loss, which came to $2,500 or $2,600 in cash.
But on other occasions the editor made an earnest but unavailing effort
to procure the news. A single issue of 1826 affords two examples:
private letters in town had brought hints of a duel between Randolph
and Clay, but it proved impossible to verify the reports, while
of a fire that morning in Chambers Street no accurate facts were
ascertainable. In September, 1809, the Common Council dismissed William
Mooney, a Tammany leader, from the superintendency of the almshouse,
and men surmised that the grounds were corruption. A few days later
Coleman published the following notice:
_Information Wanted_:--I have been waiting some days in hopes that
some person would furnish me with facts which led to the disaster
which on Monday last befell the Grand Sachem, who lately presided
over the almshouse. Surely the citizens have a right to be informed
of such things. Will any person, acquainted with the circumstances,
communicate them to the editor?
Unfortunately, no informed person came forward. During the last days of
the War of 1812, commercial firms constantly tried to obtain private
news of the progress of the peace negotiations. There is a pathetic
note of frustration in the _Evening Post’s_ item of Nov. 29, 1814:
“Considering the public entitled to all the information in our power,
we barely mention that there is a London paper of the 28th ult.
in town, which is kept from the public eye at present. We will not
conjecture what the contents are, but merely venture to say that it is
probably something of moment.”
Nor was the news, collected under such great disadvantages, quite as
accurate as news is now required to be. In August, 1805, the evening
papers caused much stir and conjecture in the little city by announcing
that Jefferson had called the Senate together upon important foreign
business. Next day they explained that this false report had originated
with a mischievous young man who had arrived from Philadelphia in
the mail stage, and whose name they would like to learn. Coleman was
somewhat embarrassed two years later to have to state:
We are requested by Mr. Wright to contradict the account published
yesterday of his being lost in crossing the North River.
When in 1810 the town was on tiptoe to learn the President’s January
message to Congress, or as Coleman called it, “the great War-Whoop,”
two conflicting summaries reached the evening papers at once; one
communicated by a gentleman who arrived direct from Washington, and
one obtained through the Philadelphia _Aurora_ from a commercial
express rider. While waiting fuller news, they could only print both
and let readers take their choice. During the spring of 1812, with
war impending, the press was replete with mere gossip and rumor,
sometimes well founded, more often baseless. As late as 1826 there
occurred a striking illustration of the inaccuracy of much that passed
for foreign news, and of the difficulty which truth experienced in
overtaking error. The Greek revolution had broken out in 1821, and the
massacres of Chios and Constantinople, the victory of Marco Bozzaris,
and the death of Byron had kindled a flame of phil-hellenism throughout
America. On April 26, 1826, the Greek stronghold of Missolonghi
was captured. Despite this, late in May there reached New York a
circumstantial account of the relief of Missolonghi, the slaughter
of the Turks, the death of their hated commander Ibrahim, and the
brightening prospect of Greek liberty, all of which the newspapers
spread forth under such captions as “Glorious News From Greece.” Early
in June this was contradicted by the true news. Nevertheless, wrote
Coleman on July 20, “on taking up a late Tennessee newspaper we find
that the ‘Glorious News’ has just reached our western neighbors and
that they are now only beginning to rejoice at the deliverance of
Missolonghi.”
We can most vividly appreciate just how far the early newspapers
succeeded--for the _Evening Post_ was typical of the best sheets--and
how far they failed as purveyors of current information, by listing
the materials presented in a single week chosen at random. In the
seven days May 9–14 inclusive, 1803, Coleman published the following
intelligence:
FOREIGN DOMESTIC
War Rumored Between Britain and Fire in Troy, N. Y.
France
Monroe Arrives at Havre Editor Duane Apologizes for
Libel
French Hunt Haitians With Cheetham Fined $200 for Libel
Bloodhounds
Column on Harlem Races
Two Columns on British Penal Reform Paine Publishes Letter
from Jefferson
French Prefect Reaches New Orleans Grainger’s Record as
Postmaster-General
British Give South Africa to Dutch Fire in New York Coach Factory
Demands of Dey of Algiers on Powers Two Benefits at Local Theatre
More Rumors of Anglo-French War Election Dispute in Ulster
County
Agrarian Violence in Ireland Election Incident at Pawling
London Stock-Market Fluctuations Advance Sale of Marshall’s
“Washington”
European Trade Rivalries in XYZ Affair Reviewed
Levant
French Troops Concentrate in
Holland
This was absolutely all, and many of these subjects were treated
in only a few lines, and with obvious haziness and inexactitude.
It is plain that the week’s budget did carry much illumination to
the public mind; but it is also plain that only a tiny part of the
world’s activities were being covered, that city news was appallingly
neglected, and that a modern journal treating each day hundreds of
subjects would then have been inconceivable.
Yet the press could boast of occasional feats of news presentation
which would do credit to journalism even now. The political meetings of
each party were almost always well reported by its own party organs.
In 1807 Burr’s trial was covered for the _Evening Post_ by a special
correspondent whose reports were dry--there was no description of scene
or personages, no attention to emphasis, and little direct quotation
of counsel or witnesses--but were also expert, comprehensive, and
minute. It is well known that the greatest of American earthquakes
occurred in 1811 in the Missouri and Arkansas country just west of
the Mississippi. The _Evening Post_ was fortunate enough to obtain a
three-column account of it, vivid, intelligent, and thrilling, from the
pen of an observer who witnessed it from a point near New Madrid. The
special Albany letters were fair; for years the _Evening Post_ derived
occasional bits of inside information from Federalist Congressmen, and
made good use of them; and its London correspondence, which began in
1819 with an account of the Holkham sheep-shearing, was on a level with
much London correspondence of to-day. One of the most extravagant items
in the _Evening Post’s_ first account book is $50 for getting President
Madison’s annual message of 1809 to New York by “pony express.” An
attempt was made to use carrier pigeons when the House in 1824 elected
J. Q. Adams President, but it proved a failure.
After the commencement of the War of 1812, as we should expect, much
more assiduous attention was paid to news. From five columns, the space
allotted rapidly rose to six, seven, and even eight. Almost always, of
course, it was very late news. Word of the first disaster of the war,
Hull’s surrender at Detroit, was published by the _Evening Post_ on
Aug. 31, 1812. The capitulation has occurred on the 16th, and the news
came by two routes. An express rider had carried it from Sandusky to
Cleveland, and thence it was brought by a postal carrier to Warren,
Pa., on the 22d, so that Pittsburgh had it on the 23d, and Philadelphia
on the night of the 29th. At the same time it was coming by a southern
path. Hull sent a messenger direct to Washington, who arrived in the
capital on the 28th, and whose dispatches were relayed northward.
Hard on the heels of this blow came cheering news. The _Constitution_
met the _Guerriere_ on Aug. 19, and Capt. Hull’s victory was given to
the public by Boston papers of the 31st, and New York papers of Sept.
2. Thus both the defeat and the victory were known to most Northerners
about a fortnight after they took place. Of “the fall of Fort Dearborn
at Chicagua,” on Aug. 15, the famous massacre, New Yorkers did not
learn until Sept. 24, when a brief dispatch from Buffalo was inserted
in an obscure corner by Coleman. All Washington news at this time still
required two full days for transmission, and often more. When Madison
on Nov. 3, 1812, sent a message to Congress at high noon, the _Evening
Post_ announced that it and the _Gazette_ had clubbed together to pay
for a pony express, and that it hoped to issue an extra with the news
the following afternoon. It also stated that the previous evening an
express had passed through the city towards New England, reputed to be
bearing the substance of the message, and to have traversed the 340
miles from Washington in nineteen hours. Next day the editor stated
that the express had really come from Baltimore only, and that it
had been paid for by gamblers to bear the first numbers drawn in the
Susquehanna lottery in advance of the mails. These numbers had been
delivered to the gamblers in New York, who went to the proper offices
and took insurance to the amount of $30,000 against their coming up
that day; but the offices refused payment. It was nearly thirty-six
hours before Madison’s message reached New York from Washington, and it
was not printed until Nov. 5.
Late in the fall occurred an interesting example of the constant
conflict of that day between rumor and fact. Gen. Stephen Van
Rensselaer sacrificed a force of 900 men at Queenstown Heights,
just across the Niagara River, on Oct. 13. Seven days later the
_Evening Post_ in a column headed “postscript” gave the city its first
intimation that a battle had occurred. Just as the paper at two o’clock
was going to press, it said, the Albany boat had come in with word
from Geneva that an army surgeon had arrived there from Buffalo, and
had reported a great American victory--the capture of Queenstown and
1,500 prisoners. But the steamer also brought a rival report from the
Canandaigua _Repository_ of a disaster, in which hundreds had been
killed and hundreds captured. The city could only wait and fear as
the following day passed without news. Finally, on the afternoon of
the 22d, the Albany steamboat hove in sight again, and a great crowd
thronging the pier was aghast to learn that Van Rensselaer had lost a
battle and a small army.
In the closing days of the war this episode was reversed, the rumor
of bad news being followed by a truthful report of good. On Jan. 20,
1815, the whole city was in suspense as to the fate of New Orleans.
Nothing had been heard from Louisiana for a month, and three mails were
overdue, which boded ill, for every one knew that Sir Edward Pakenham
and his 16,000 British veterans were ready to move upon the place. “It
is generally believed here that if an attack has been made on Orleans,
the city has fallen,” said the _Evening Post_. “But some doubt whether
the British, having the perfect command of all the waters about the
city, and having it in their power to command the river above, will not
resort to a more bloodless, but a certain method of reducing the city.”
On Jan. 23 the _Evening Post_ published some inconclusive information
received in a letter from a New Orleans judge, dated just before
the preliminary and indecisive battle of Dec. 23. “We have cause of
apprehension,” Coleman wrote, “that to-morrow’s mail will bring tidings
of the winding up of the catastrophe.” New Yorkers were particularly
concerned because city merchants owned a great part of the $3,200,000
worth of cotton stored in New Orleans. But a week, ten days, and
two weeks passed while little news was procured and the tension grew
steadily greater. Finally, on the morning of Feb. 6, three mails were
received at once, with New Orleans letters bearing dates as late as
Jan. 13, five days after Jackson had bloodily repulsed Packenham. The
tidings fell upon New York with a tremendous shock of surprise and joy,
and the _Evening Post_ hastened to publish them in two columns and with
its closest approach to the yet uninvented headline.
Under the stress of war the first news with conscious color, pathos,
and strong human interest began to be written. The earliest account
filled with human touches dealt with an incident of the privateering of
which New York harbor was a busy center. The privateer Franklin, two
months after hostilities began, returned from the Nova Scotia coast
with a strange prize--an old, crazy, black-sided fishing schooner of
thirty-eight tons, less than half the size of a good Hudson River
market boat. Coleman, going aboard, found the owner a fine gray-haired
woman, a widow. The little craft was her all. Wrapped in a rusty black
coat as tattered as its sails, “she cried as if her heart would break”
while she told the editor how she had left four children behind her and
had pleaded with her captor not to be taken so far from home. It need
not be said that the publicity Coleman gave to this incident helped
persuade the captain of the privateer that honor obliged him to send
the fisherwoman back.
Two years later occurred an incident the humorous values of which the
_Evening Post_ did not miss. Mr. Wise, part-proprietor of the Museum
in New York, with a mixture of patriotic and business motives, had an
extensive panorama painted of the glorious Yankee naval victories of
1812 and 1813. Having got all the New York sixpences that he could with
it, he packed it up together with the lamps and other fixtures for its
exhibition, and a valuable hand-organ, and set sail for Charleston
to show it there. On the second day out from Sandy Hook, the British
frigate _Forth_ captured the vessel. Greatly amused, the commander
promptly set the panorama up for inspection:
So valuable did the captain of the Forth consider his prize, that
in the evening of the day he made his capture, he illuminated his
ships with the lamps belonging to the panorama, and kept up a merry
tune upon the organ. In the course of their merriment they asked
Mr. Wise if it could play Yankee Doodle. Upon his answering in the
affirmative, they immediately set the organ to that tune, and in
a sailor step made the decks shake. The captain of the Forth said
he intended to take the paintings to Halifax and make a fortune by
exhibiting them.
But, remarked Coleman patriotically:
The frigate President, we understand, is preparing for a cruise
now under the command of Decatur, and if they will have a little
patience we will furnish another historical subject for their
amusement.
As the war drew near its close, sometimes even ten columns of news were
furnished, and on several occasions, as that of Gen. Hull’s trial, a
one-sheet supplement was issued. The first cartoon in the _Evening
Post_ was evoked on April 18, 1812, by the act of Congress cutting
off foreign trade by land. It showed two large tree-trunks in close
juxtaposition, one labeled “Embargo” and the other “Non-Importation
Act,” with a fat snake held immovable between them; from the snake’s
mouth were issuing the words, “What’s the matter now?” and from its
tail the answer, “I can’t get out!” Such wit was about equal to that
of the second cartoon, on April 25, 1814, which showed a terrapin (the
Embargo was often called “the terrapin policy”) flat upon its back,
expiring as Madison stabbed it with a saber, but still clinging to the
President with claws and teeth. Below was some doggerel expressing the
determination of the terrapin to hold on until it dragged Madison down
and slew him. Evidently readers were obtuse, for the next day appeared
a solemn “Explanation of the emblematic figures in yesterday’s paper.”
But as yet neither news nor cartoons were published on the first page,
which was sacred, as in English papers of to-day, to advertisements.
Except for one advance intimation, the news of peace might have been as
unexpected as that of the victory of New Orleans. This intimation came
on Feb. 9, in a curiously roundabout manner. A privateer cruising in
British waters captured a prize which bore London newspapers dating to
Nov. 28, and carried them to Salem, Mass., whence their contents were
reprinted all over the North. They contained the speech of the Prince
Regent on Nov. 11, and the proceedings of the Commons immediately
afterwards, holding out hope for a prompt ending of the war.
The news of peace itself electrified the city two days later, reaching
it by the British sloop _Favorite_, which bore one of the secretaries
of the American legation in London, at eight o’clock on Saturday
evening. No journal was so indecorous as to issue a special Sunday
edition, but on Monday the _Evening Post_ contained a full account of
the delirium of rejoicing with which the intelligence was greeted.
Nearly every window in the principal streets was illuminated, and
Broadway was filled with laughing, huzzaing, exalted people, carrying
torches or candles, and jamming the way for two hours. On Tuesday the
_Evening Post_ recorded that sugar had fallen from $26 a hundred-weight
to $12.50, tea from $2.25 a pound to $1, and tin from $80 a box to $25,
while specie, which had been at 22 per cent. premium, was now only at 2
per cent., and six per cent. Government stock had risen from 76 to 86.
The wharves were an animated scene, ship advertisements were pouring
in, and “it is really wonderful to see the change produced in a few
hours in the City of New York.”
And what of the Napoleonic wars? All European news was then obtained
from files of foreign papers, some of which came to New York journals
direct, and some of which were supplied by merchants and shippers.
It was usual, whenever a packet arrived with a fresh batch, to cut
the domestic news to a few paragraphs, stop any series of editorial
articles in hand, and for several days fill the columns with extracts
and summaries. Though in 1812 a ship came from Belfast in the
remarkable time of twenty-two days, forty days was the average from
London or Liverpool, and European news was hence from one to two months
late. Sometimes a traveler, and frequently a ship-captain, brought news
by word of mouth.