declared that “the general impression is that the case is essentially
prejudged, and that Mr. Johnson will be removed by the Senate.” This
was the opinion of all the city’s organs, from the radical _Nation_
on the one side to the _World_ on the other. The _World_, in fact,
made an appeal for a fund of $10,000,000, with which to bribe those
Senators who could hardly hope for reëlection anyhow; and while this
was a bit of humor--the _Tribune_ alone took it seriously--its point
lay in the _World’s_ conviction that the Republican Senators were all
so prejudiced that only millions could win over a few of them. Like
the _Nation_, the _Post_ devoted an editorial to a scrutiny of the
qualifications of Benjamin Wade, who as President pro tem. of the
Senate would succeed Johnson. Bryant admitted Wade’s honesty, courage,
and frankness, but regretted that in impetuosity, narrowness, and
prejudice he would be too much like the man he replaced. His manners,
too, must be mended, for he recalled a Scotch lady’s remark: “Our Jock
sweers awfu’, but nae doot it’s a great set-off to conversation.”
As the trial progressed the _Evening Post_ was gratified to find
that the case was much less nearly prejudged than it had supposed.
Disappointed by the lack of eloquence on both sides, it was pleased
by the efficiency of Evarts, Stanbery, and others of the President’s
counsel in displaying the strength of their case. They made it plain
that Johnson’s intention in dismissing Stanton had not been to defy
Congress and the law wantonly, but to obtain a judicial test of the
Tenure of Office Act. They showed also that some anti-Johnson Senators
had, while the Act was pending, expounded the view that it did not
protect men held over from Lincoln’s Cabinet, like Stanton. The _Post_
on April 22 credited the Senate with having dealt fairly with the
accused and having admitted all the evidence in his favor.
The breakdown of the case against Johnson was gall and wormwood to
the more bitter newspaper partisans of Congress. Theodore Tilton’s
_Independent_ read Chief Justice Chase, who impartially presided
over the trial, out of the party. The _Tribune_ was trembling for
“the very existence of the government.” Never noted for gentleness
of retort, it now accused Horatio Seymour of “gigantic, deliberate,
atrocious lies”; the _Herald_ of “falsehoods”; the _World_ of “dodges
and prevarications”; and the _Times_ and _Post_ again of being
“copperhead.” The _Times_ remonstrated. Pointing out that Greeley was
to preside at the Dickens dinner, as the representative of the American
press, it said that he should remember that it was not in the dignity
of a gentleman to use the word “liar.” Greeley replied that the truth
was not a question of taste, but of flat morality, and that he would
never be mealy-mouthed in its defense.
The seven Republican Senators who finally determined to vote against
conviction were Fessenden, Lyman Trumbull, Henderson, Fowler, Van
Winkle, Grimes, and Ross. It is the belief of all later historians
that their courageous and just action is one of the finest episodes
of the sordid reconstruction period. But a storm of anger broke upon
them in Washington. It was on May 16 that the voting began. Four days
earlier the _Tribune_, flying into a panic, declared that a hundred
men had been under pay in Washington since the trial began to cry down
impeachment and bet against conviction. It accused Lyman Trumbull of
being to blame, and insinuated that his motives were venal: “but a few
weeks ago he was paid $5,000 for arguing the constitutionality of the
Reconstruction laws.... Republicans ask to-night what the guerdon is
for defending the President in the impeachment trial.” Let President
Johnson, the incarnation of Treason and Slavery, be acquitted, it
added, and he becomes King; as yet he could be removed by law, but
“your next attempt will be a revolution.” Next day, May 13, the
_Tribune_ headed an editorial attack upon Senator Grimes, who had
defended Johnson, “Judas’s Thirty Reasons,” and concluded: “We have had
Benedict Arnold, Aaron Burr, Jefferson Davis, and now we have James W.
Grimes!” It categorically accused Senator Fowler of accepting a bribe,
and it called Henderson and Ross suspect.
Perhaps the best retort was that of the _Times_, in an editorial
debating the question who was the most colossal criminal of the
century, and concluding that Senator Ross closely resembled
Sennacherib. But a serious answer was necessary, and a dozen indignant
journals, including the _Nation_ and _Harper’s Weekly_, replied to this
temporarily misguided oracle of a half-million readers. The _Post’s_
editorial of May 13 was headed, “Coercing a Court”; and in it and
an editorial of the next day it graphically described the pressure
brought to bear upon the independent Senators, and condemned the
attacks against them as undermining both the impartiality of judicial
tribunals, and the principle that an accused man shall be believed
innocent until proved guilty. It anticipated the verdict of history:
With whom is the sober second thought of the people most likely to
agree--with the _Tribune_ and Gen. Butler, or with such men as
Trumbull, Grimes, Fessenden, and Henderson? It is plain that these
gentlemen perform a duty in many ways painful to themselves; they
are driven reluctantly to act in opposition to their own wishes;
their verdict is given in favor of a man whom they consider unwise,
and whose occupancy of the Presidential chair they believe has
brought evils upon the country. Is it not honorable to them that
their sense of justice and duty impels them to disappoint the
demands of their party?
A scene of eager excitement and tension presented itself outside the
office of every evening newspaper in New York on May 16, crowds packing
the space before the bulletin boards. The vote was thirty-five for
conviction and nineteen for acquittal, or one less than the number
needed to depose the President. The _Evening Post_ was outraged by the
fact that the first vote was taken on the eleventh impeachment article,
that being considered the strongest and the impeachment managers
fearing the moral effect of a defeat on the weak early articles; and
by the Senate’s immediate adjournment for ten days, which the _Post_
believed a maneuver to permit more pressure to be brought upon the
seven independent Senators. “The verdict of acquittal gives general
satisfaction,” it said; “it is felt that a conviction, under the
circumstances, would have had no moral force, and would only have
injured the party....” Like every other decent organ, it condemned as
“disgraceful” Senator Wade’s vote against Johnson and in favor of his
own elevation to the Presidency, cast at a time when he and others
believed that a single ballot would sway the issue. For that act the
public never quite forgave Wade.
The _Times_, _Herald_, and _World_ equally rejoiced in the acquittal,
and the _Sun_ accepted it with a milder approval. The _Nation_
found “several reasons” for regretting it, and the _Tribune_ was
inconsolable. But the anger of the radicals was more intense than
long-lived. In 1884 one of the editors of the _Evening Post_, Horace
White, was attending the Chicago Convention which nominated Blaine.
The name of ex-Senator Henderson was reported for the permanent
chairmanship. “The assembled multitude,” wrote White, “knew at once the
significance of the nomination, and gave cheer after cheer of applause
and approval. It was the sign that all was forgiven on both sides.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
BRYANT AT THE HEIGHT OF HIS FAME AS EDITOR
During all but the hottest months of the year, in the latter part of
Grant’s second Administration, men on lower Broadway at about 8:45
every week-day morning might see a venerable figure come rapidly down
toward Fulton Street. The aged pedestrian was slender and just above
the middle height, but was given an impressive aspect by his heavy
white beard and the long hoary hair that swept his shoulders. As he
passed, it could be seen that his brow was bald; that his forehead was
projecting, though not massive; that the deep-set eyes which peered
from beneath his bushy brows were remarkably penetrating and observant,
and that his features were rugged but benignant. He had a scholar’s
stoop, but appeared wiry and vigorous far beyond his years. People
glanced at him with respectful recognition--his was, as Tennyson said
of Wellington, the good gray head that all men knew. On Fulton Street
he turned into a tall, new building, and those who watched might see
that, disdaining the elevator, he began rapidly climbing the stairs.
This was William Cullen Bryant, at eighty still devoting four hours
daily to the _Evening Post_.
Bryant had long since become the most distinguished resident of
the city, referred to and honored as its first citizen. In civic,
charitable, and social movements his name was given precedence over
those of men like William M. Evarts or Henry Ward Beecher. On every
great public occasion an effort was made to obtain his attendance as
the representative of all that was choicest in literary, artistic,
and professional life. When the artist Cole, and the authors Cooper,
Irving, Verplanck, and Halleck died, he was chosen to deliver memorial
discourses of that kind in which the French excel; he was the chief
speaker at the dedication of the Morse, Shakespeare, Scott, Goethe, and
Mazzini monuments in Central Park; and he presided over the testimonial
benefit given Charlotte Cushman when she was about to retire from
the stage, which occasioned one of the most notable assemblages ever
brought into a modern theater. No New York meeting in behalf of free
trade, sound money, or civil service reform was complete without his
presence or a message from him. This high position was his because he
was not merely a great poet, but a great publicist.
On Nov. 5, 1864, when Bryant had just attained his seventieth birthday,
a celebration was held at the Century Club, of which he had been one
of the earliest members. The historian Bancroft presided, and among
the speakers were Emerson, Holmes, R. H. Stoddard, Julia Ward Howe,
R. H. Dana, jr., and William M. Evarts; while poems were received from
Whittier and Lowell. The editor as well as the poet was honored. Mrs.
Howe recited:
... at his forge he wrought two-fold,
On the iron shield of freedom, and the poet’s links of gold.
while Lowell’s well-known verses, “On Board the Seventy-six,” referred
to his editorial words of cheer during the gloomy early days of the
Civil War. A little more than three years later (Jan. 30, 1868), a
dinner was tendered Bryant at Delmonico’s as president of the American
Free Trade League. Speeches were made in his honor by David Dudley
Field, Parke Godwin, John D. Van Buren, and others, and letters read
from Emerson and Gerrit Smith. Again, on Nov. 3, 1874, when Bryant
became eighty years old, he was quietly finishing a forenoon’s work
in the _Evening Post_ office when a deputation of friends entered to
congratulate him. That evening there was another celebration at the
Century Club, at which a commemorative vase--now in the Metropolitan
Museum--was given Bryant, while a simultaneous celebration was held in
Chicago by the Literary Club of that city.
In the dozen years following Sumter, and especially in the Civil War
years when it pressed its demand for energetic prosecution of the
struggle, the _Evening Post_ was at the height of its influence under
Bryant. “The clear and able political leaders have been of more service
to the government in this war than some of its armies,” said _Littell’s
Living Age_ in 1862. Charles Dudley Warner wrote at the same time in
the Hartford _Press_: “The _Evening Post_ is the most fearless and
rigidly honest paper in the country, and its ability is equal to its
moral worth. Some of its ordinary editorials are magnificent specimens
of English.” A chorus of praise was aroused by the enlargement of
the journal this year. “_The Evening Post_, we think, is the best
newspaper in the United States,” remarked the Elmira _Advertiser_; the
New Bedford _Standard_ spoke of “the best paper in the United States,
the _Evening Post_”; the Kennebec _Journal_ said that “All things
considered, it comes the nearest to our idea of what a metropolitan
journal should be of any publication in the country”; and the
_Christian Enquirer_ testified that “the course of the _Evening Post_
during the war has been above all praise--firm, bold, patriotic, and
wise.”
Similar tributes were paid the newspaper by a remarkable array of
public men. In 1840 James K. Paulding wrote from Washington to console
it for defeat in the Presidential election: “The manner in which the
_Evening Post_ is conducted, its stern and sober dignity, and its
freedom from the base fury and still baser falsehoods, with which
so many newspapers are debauched and disgraced, makes me proud to
remember that I have a humble claim to be associated with its honors.”
Sumner was constant in his praise in the fifties. Judge William Kent,
son of the great Chancellor, not merely thought it the best American
daily, but in 1857 proposed that he purchase a share in it and become
one of the editors, a proposal which Isaac Henderson discouraged.
William Jay in 1862 wrote Bryant, paying tribute to its “powerful and
beneficial influence.” Charles Eliot Norton begged the following year
“to express my hearty sympathy with the principles maintained by the
_Evening Post_ at this time, and my admiration for the ability with
which they are sustained.” A little later Lowell wrote Bryant that he
was a subscriber. “I am particularly pleased with the course of the
_Evening Post_ on reconstruction. Firmness equally tempered with good
feeling is what we want--not generosity with twitches of firmness now
and then.” W. H. Furness, the noted Philadelphia minister, sent another
unsolicited tribute in the heat of the war, saying that he valued the
_Tribune_, but was particularly grateful for the sound, calm vision of
the _Evening Post_, and that “it stands in my esteem at the head of the
American press. It is cheering that there is abroad such an educator of
the public mind.” Caleb Cushing wrote (1868):
You may regard it as quite superfluous for me to speak in
commendation of the _Evening Post_; but inasmuch as, at one
period, I had reason to think and to assert that its language
was occasionally overharsh to me, I desire to say, for my own
satisfaction, not yours, with how great instruction and pleasure
at present I read it every day, and with what daily increasing
estimation of its superior dignity, fairness, wisdom, and truth.
Even abroad the paper was well known. Bigelow informed Bryant in 1864
that an Englishman had told him he thought it the best newspaper in the
world. John Stuart Mill wrote Parke Godwin the following year that he
was a regular reader of it through the kindness of Frederick Barnard,
later President of Columbia, who thought it the best American daily,
and that he had formed a high opinion of it.
If we ask what qualities made Bryant a great editor, we must place
mere industry high on the list. Within a few years after his return to
the prostrate _Post_ in 1836 he had shaken off his distaste for the
profession, and acquired a zest for it. From 1836 to 1866 he labored as
hard upon his journal as if he had never written a line of verse--as
the hardworking Greeley and Bennett did upon theirs. Always up in
summer at five, in winter at five-thirty, he was frequently at his desk
at seven, and seldom later than eight. His principal concern, the
editorial page, was in itself a day’s work. He took in hand during this
period nearly all the leading editorials. They were consistently longer
than editorials of to-day, not infrequently in the fifties and sixties
reaching 1,600 words, sometimes 1,800; and Bryant, conscious of his
reputation, wrote with painful care. “As Dr. Johnson said of his talk,”
he once told Bigelow, “I always write _my best_.”
But in his first forty years as editor Bryant also attended to a
multitude of business and executive details. This was of course true
in the thirties and forties, when the _Evening Post_ was a struggling
journal with a staff of three or four writers; but his unpublished
papers show it almost equally true later. In his late fifties we
find him carefully discussing by letter with John Bigelow whether
the commercial reporter should get more than $900 a year; hiring the
foreign correspondents, and resentful when the _Tribune_ stole one
of the best, Signora Jesse White Mario; and taking a keen interest
in the fluctuations of advertising. We find him complaining of the
daily squabble between the editorial room and advertising department,
with the sturdy German head of the composing room, Henry Dithmar,
parrying all attempts to displace advertisements by reading matter
(1860). He was laying plans as the Civil War storm arose to get out a
third edition, to occupy the same ground as the third edition of the
_Express_, and considering ways and means of putting the first edition
on the street in time to beat the _Commercial_. He kept a watchful eye
upon all employees, now meting out praise and blame to the Washington
and Albany correspondents, and now deciding indulgently what should
be done with an office boy who was caught carrying off a dozen review
copies of new books. When it grew necessary to enlarge the _Post_ he
knew just what it would cost to alter the “turtles,” and just why the
importers and wholesalers preferred a journal of four blanket-size
pages to one of eight smaller pages.
He had to answer an enormous correspondence, a task conscientiously
performed. A hurried message to Dithmar is preserved: “Enclosed is the
lady’s communication. I have looked two hours for it. Put it in and get
me out of trouble.” He received a multitude of visitors. A note to his
wife in 1851 remarks, “I was run down yesterday”--arriving to write a
leader, he had been interrupted by five important and several lesser
visitors. Sometimes the burden upon him was excessive. It was so after
1836, just before Bigelow came in the late forties, and at intervals
later, such as early in 1860, when Bigelow was in Europe, Thayer was
sick, Godwin was laid up with rheumatic fever, and Bryant had a sty
into the bargain.
His industry was made possible by the fact that he had an admirable
constitution, which he was at pains to preserve, and by his wise
insistence upon recreation. In his early manhood he was a vegetarian.
A letter of 1871 describing his mode of life shows by what a careful
regimen he preserved his bodily and mental vigor. He still rose between
four-thirty and five-thirty, according to season. While half-dressed,
he spent a half hour in calisthenics with a pair of dumbbells, a light
pole, a horizontal bar, and a chair. After bathing, he breakfasted on
some cereal--hominy, wheat grits, or oatmeal--and milk, with baked
apples in summer, and sometimes buckwheat cakes. He never touched tea
or coffee. After breakfast, when in town, he walked three miles down
to the _Evening Post_ office, and doing his morning’s work, returned,
“always walking, whatever be the weather or the state of the streets.”
In the country he divided his time between literary work and outdoor
employments. When in the city he made but two meals a day, and in the
country three, although the middle meal consisted only of a little
bread and butter, with possibly some fruit; the meat or fish that he
took at dinner was in very sparing quantities. In later manhood he made
it a rule to avoid every kind of literary occupation in the evening,
finding that it interfered with his sleep; while he went to bed in
town as early as ten, and in the country still earlier. A short time
before his death, when he was eighty-three, Bigelow asked him if he had
not reduced his period of morning gymnastics. “Not the width of your
thumb-nail,” was his reply.
Bryant found his most congenial recreation not in the theater or
society, but country employments. When youth passed into middle age
he still liked all-day or week-end rambles up the Hudson or in the
Catskills. After the purchase of his Roslyn home in 1842 he seldom
failed, from April to October, to spend two or three days a week
resting, gardening, draining, planning, and writing there. His most
charming letters show him visiting his pigs and chickens, picking
strawberries, treating children to his cherries, superintending the
pruning, and bathing in the Sound when the tide met the grass.
The editor viewed his calling as a jealous mistress, declining all
suggestions of public office or any other diversion from it. In 1861 it
was rumored that Lincoln wished to appoint him Minister to Spain, and
the _Post_ promptly disposed of the suggestion that he would accept.
“Those who are acquainted with Mr. Bryant know,” it said, “that there
is no public office from that of the Presidency of the United States
downward which he would not regard it as a misfortune to take. They
know that he has expected no offer of any post from the government,
and would take none if offered.” Grant also would have given him an
important diplomatic position had he been ready to receive it. In 1872
it was thought necessary to publish the following tactful
CARD FROM MR. BRYANT
Certain journals of this city have lately spoken of me as one
ambitious of being nominated for the Presidency of the United
States. The idea is absurd enough, not only on account of my
advanced age, but of my unfitness in various respects for the
labors of so eminent a post. I do not, however, object to the
discussion of my deficiencies on any other ground than that it
is altogether superfluous, since it is impossible that I should
receive any formal nomination, and equally impossible, if it were
offered, that I should commit the folly of accepting it.
WM. C. BRYANT.
New York, July 8, 1872.
He avoided those controversial by-ways into which Greeley, as in his
debate with Henry J. Raymond upon Socialism, so eagerly rushed. In
1860 the country’s foremost economist, Henry C. Carey, challenged
him to a joint discussion of the tariff, and the _Post_ replied that
Bryant never accepted such invitations. “His duties as a journalist
and a commentator on the events of the day and the various interesting
questions which they suggest, leave him no time for a sparring match
with Mr. Carey ...; and he has no ambition to distinguish himself as
a public disputant. His business is to enforce important political
truths, and to refute what seem to him errors, just as the occasions
arise....” A time more malapropos for a long tariff debate could hardly
have been selected.
It was part of Bryant’s creed that the profession to which he devoted
his life should be treated as one of elevated dignity. When he died
the Associated Press declared, in the preamble to its resolutions
of respect, that “he redeemed, as far as one man could do so, the
journalism of his early days from the offensive practice of personal
discussion, often ending in duels, and at times in death, and placed
it upon the broad foundation of that tolerance for others which is
inseparable from free discussion and true self-respect.” In 1837 a
hare-brained fellow named Holland, connected with a short-lived journal
called the _Times_, challenged him to a duel because he had asserted
that the _Times_ was a mere tool in the hands of Senator Nathaniel P.
Tallmadge. Bryant pocketed the challenge, and told its bearer that
everything must take its turn; that Holland had already been termed a
scoundrel by Leggett, and he could not take up the new quarrel till
the old one was settled. Year by year the _Evening Post_ refused to
be drawn into offensive personalities. In 1832, when the _Courier_
and _Enquirer_ assailed it, Bryant wrote that “we shall never so far
lose sight of a proper sense of our own dignity, or of respect for
our readers, as to make incidents in the private life of any political
opponent a subject of discussion or reproach.” Ten years later he was
about to reply to an article in the _Plebeian_, but on looking at it a
second time, “we were repelled from our purpose by the personalities
which it contains.” In 1863 a scurrilous attack on Bigelow and Thayer
by the _World_ drew the same curt statement.