unblushing than President Grant’s attempt to coerce the Missouri
Republicans to do his will and not their own. No President except
Andrew Johnson has ever so openly tried, by wholesale removals
from office and by the appointment of his favorites, to impose his
“policy” upon the party.
The letters of General Cox, now published, show that in the
practice of the smaller devices of politicians the President has
been no less ready. The Secretary, who came into the Cabinet as
the especial friend and representative of civil service reform, is
forced to leave the Cabinet because the President insists, contrary
to Gen. Cox’s desires, upon letting political committees levy
tribute upon the poor clerks in the Interior Department.
Three days later, under the caption “The President and His Policy,”
the _Post_ joined those organs--the Chicago _Tribune_, Springfield
_Republican_, and Dana’s and Greeley’s journals--which had already
declared war:
He has now been twenty months in office, and if we look back over
the leading and most conspicuous acts of his Administration,
we find only the San Domingo treaty, defeated by those who
would gladly support him in everything right or wise; the gross
interference with the elections in Missouri; and the disgrace--so
far as he could disgrace them--of Mr. Hoar, Mr. Wells, and Mr. Cox.
That is a record of which General Grant will not be proud in those
days of retirement from public life which await him.
The Liberal Republican movement in the East began to assume shape when
the Free Trade League called a conference upon revenue and tariff
reform in New York city for Nov. 22, 1870. It was attended by Bryant,
Schurz, E. L. Godkin, Horace White, Samuel Bowles, Gen. Cox, former
Commissioner Wells, and Charles Francis Adams, with some others. The
first five named represented respectively the _Evening Post_, the
St. Louis _Westliche Post_, the _Nation_, the Chicago _Tribune_, and
the Springfield _Republican_, and the first four are all on the list
of editors of the _Evening Post_. James G. Blaine, the Speaker, was
so disturbed by this conference that he journeyed to Chicago to tell
Horace White that he meant to give the tariff reformers a majority
of the Ways and Means Committee. Meanwhile, in Missouri, Carl Schurz
and B. Gratz Brown had already launched their insurgent movement, and
by a coalition with the Democrats that same month swept the State.
Everywhere the elements in favor of civil service reform, fiscal
reform, low tariff and cleaner government began drawing together.
Just how far should the Liberal Republican movement go? Schurz by
the spring of 1871 was intent upon forming a new party, while men
like Sumner wished to stay within the old party and reform it. The
Chicago _Tribune_, the Springfield _Republican_, and the Cincinnati
_Commercial_ were soon supporting Schurz’s plan, while the _Evening
Post_ and the _Nation_ held back. They were sympathetic with Liberal
Republicanism, but they did not commit themselves to it. Bryant
was as reluctant to give up his Republican allegiance now as he had
been to forsake the Democratic standard in 1844, and he assailed the
Administration without assailing the party. The _Post_ declared in
March, 1871, that the Republican organization was substantially sound;
that it distrusted Grant and the politicians, but knew that the rank
and file had resisted such follies as the deposition of Sumner and
the Santo Domingo treaty. Next month, after the Liberal gathering at
Cincinnati, it defined the movement as intended only “to bring back
the Republican party to sound and constitutional legislation.” It
would have been a dramatic display of independence for the _Post_
to have broken with the regulars, as it was to do in 1884, but the
event showed that it was well it remained lukewarm. When the Liberal
Republicans shipwrecked their reform effort by naming a candidate quite
unacceptable to the _Post_, it could change its attitude instantly from
sympathy to hostility and derision.
E. L. Godkin relates that in the spring of 1864 he was invited to a
breakfast in New York at which he found Wendell Phillips, Bryant, and
one or two other men. Greeley entered and approached the host, who was
standing by the fire talking with Bryant, but the poet ignored his
fellow-editor. “Don’t you know Mr. Greeley?” the host inquired in an
audible whisper. Bryant’s whisper came back more audibly still: “No, I
don’t; he’s a blackguard--he’s a blackguard!”
This prejudice upon Bryant’s part, largely identical with the prejudice
which made him refuse to speak to another editor whose principles and
personality were both offensive to him, Thurlow Weed, had its share in
the _Evening Post’s_ hostility to Greeley when the Liberal Republicans
nominated him for President. Bryant remembered that in 1849 Greeley
had commenced a reply to an editorial in the _Post_ with the words:
“You lie, villain! wilfully, wickedly, basely lie!” It must also be
considered that Greeley’s high tariff views were anathema to the
_Post_, that his readiness to haul down the Union flag at various
critical moments in the Civil War had provoked the indignation of other
editors, and that his extremely radical reconstruction policy had
offended all moderate organs.
The news that the Liberal Republican Convention had nominated Greeley
for President was telegraphed to New York on the evening of May 3,
1872. Bryant next morning was late in reaching the office. A vigorous
discussion was going on, says Mr. J. Ranken Towse, over the character
of the editorial comment to be made. “It was ended suddenly by the
entrance, in hot haste, of Mr. Bryant, who said briefly, ‘I will attend
to that editorial myself,’ and promptly shut himself up in his room.
The resultant article--cool, logical, bitter, but not violent--was
distinctive in its animating spirit of contemptuous scorn, and carried
a sharp sting in its closing assertion that in the case of a candidate
for the highest honor at the disposal of the country, it was essential
that the candidate should be, at least, a gentleman.”
W. A. Linn, long managing editor of the _Evening Post_, saw Bryant a
moment. “Well,” the poet observed with a quiet twinkle, “there are some
good points in Grant’s Administration, after all.”
The news was in every way a shock to the paper. When the Liberal
Republican Convention opened, the _Post_ had been filled with as high
hopes for its success as those entertained by the Chicago _Tribune_,
Cincinnati _Commercial_, or Springfield _Republican_. It had implored
the leaders to make their enterprise “a movement for genuine reform,
and not a mere antagonism to persons and Administrations”; it had
warned them that they must choose a strong man for Presidential
nominee, for the people admired Grant’s strength of personality.
Judge David Davis was not sufficiently a statesman, Gov. B. Gratz
Brown of Missouri lacked experience, and “as for Mr. Greeley, his
nomination would be a deathblow to the reform movement, because he is
the embodiment of centralization and monopoly.” Its favorites were
Charles Francis Adams, Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, and Gov.
John M. Palmer of that State, in the order named. Had either of the
first two been named, upon an acceptable platform, the _Post_ would
have supported him; but not the erratic, simple-minded prophet of
high tariff, Greeley, who, the _Post’s_ special correspondent at the
Convention reported, was pushed forward by a combination of politicians
against the reformers.
Bryant’s editorial was one of two in the _Evening Post_ that day. That
given the leading position, written probably by Charlton M. Lewis, was
entitled “The Fiasco at Cincinnati,” and was just such an editorial as
appeared in dozens of other disheartened newspapers. It declared that
the Convention, so big with promise, had gone the way of many a similar
assemblage, surrendering its lofty principles to the wirepullers.
The _Post’s_ blow from the shoulder was struck by Bryant in the
second column. He gave his editorial the mild title, “Why Mr. Greeley
Should Not Be Supported for the Presidency,” but each of the numbered
paragraphs was vitriolic.
First, said Bryant, Greeley lacked the needed courage, firmness, and
consistency. His course during the Civil War had been one prolonged
wabble, which at its best moments was irresolute, and at its worst
was cowardly. Second, his political associates were so bad that his
administration, if he were elected, could not escape corruption.
Here Bryant referred to such of Greeley’s friends as R. E. Fenton,
the leader of those New York city Republicans, who, leagued with the
Tammany Ring, had done so much to help Tweed do business. The _Times_,
which had exposed Tweed, vigorously insisted upon the same point.
The third objection, wrote Bryant, was that Greeley had no settled
political principles, with one exception, and the fourth was the
exception. “He is a thorough-going, bigoted protectionist, a champion
of one of the most arbitrary and grinding systems of monopoly ever
known in any country.” When in 1870 the duty on pig iron was reduced
from $9 a ton to $7, Greeley had told Grant that he would make it $100
a ton if he could. The fifth objection to Greeley, the climax of the
editorial, lay in “the grossness of his manners,” as Bryant put it.
“With such a head as is on his shoulders, the affairs of the nation
could not, under his direction, be wisely administered; with such
manners as his, they could not be administered with common decorum.” By
this, Bryant did not refer to Greeley’s slovenly dress, nor to his use
of the lie direct, but meant a certain Johnsonian grossness which he
thought Greeley permitted himself in the drawing-room.
Taken as a whole, the editorial was a regrettably extreme attack upon
a man who, if erratic and uncouth, was also the soul of kindliness
and sincerity; and Samuel Bowles was justified in complaining that
the _Post_ showed personal feeling. Yet the fierce and contemptuous
attitude of Bryant by no means stood isolated. The _Times_ that day
called Greeley’s nomination “a sad farce,” said that the first impulse
of every one was to laugh, and declared that “if any one man could
send a great nation to the dogs, that man is Mr. Greeley.” He would
disorganize every department, commit the government to every crude
illusion from Fourierism to vegetarianism, and embroil it with every
foreign country. Schurz was heartsick, and for some time refused to
support the nominee, while the German leaders and newspapers, from
which much had been hoped, were almost unanimously hostile. In a number
of States independents openly repudiated the ticket. E. L. Godkin, of
the _Nation_, was totally disgusted, for he detested Greeley’s high
tariff views. He had written as early as 1863 that Greeley “has no
great grasp of mind, no great political insight,” and now his biting
pen did more than that of any other writer to defeat the candidate.
The _Atlantic Monthly_ promptly fell in behind Grant. Manton Marble of
the _World_ had watched the Cincinnati Convention with a hopefulness
equaling, but differing from, Bryant’s. Now he lashed out at the
Convention’s mistake, stayed with the journal long enough to express
wholehearted dislike of Greeley, and then retired so that the _World_
might give him unenthusiastic support. _Harper’s Weekly_ brought out
the absurdities of Greeley’s candidacy in striking fashion. Thomas
Nast’s cartoons kept the old editor in a ridiculous light week after
week--now devouring, with a wry face, a bowl of boiling porridge
labeled “My own words and deeds,” now at his Chappaqua farm seated
well out on a limb, which he was earnestly sawing off between himself
and the tree. Greeley’s chief assistance in New York, aside from the
_Tribune_, came from Dana and the _Sun_; indeed, Dana had come out
for his eventual nomination as early as 1868, when almost no one was
thinking of it. The other Democratic newspapers, as the _Express_,
climbed rather grumblingly on the Greeley bandwagon; since Bennett’s
death the _Herald_ had not been of their number.
For a time the _Evening Post_, in its intense dissatisfaction with the
candidate, had some hope that another nomination could be effected.
It suggested such an attempt, and that the selection be made by
an assembly of leaders, not left to the “dangerous machinery of a
convention.” The Free Trade League made itself the instrument of this
effort, and called a meeting at Steinway Hall on May 30, to be presided
over by Bryant. Gen. Jacob Cox, ex-Commissioner Wells, and others gave
it their support, but the gathering came to nothing. In June the _Post_
was placed definitely behind Grant. The campaign was dismal for it,
as for all other conscientious journals. It was impossible for even
the _Times_ to be enthusiastic over Grant, or even Dana over Greeley.
The _Evening Post’s_ attitude toward the regular Republican nominee
was precisely that which the Springfield _Republican_ took towards the
Liberal Republican candidate. “Support the ticket, but don’t gush,”
Bowles had telegraphed his subordinates from Cincinnati. How far Bryant
was from abandoning his criticism of the President is evident from an
August editorial entitled “Grant’s Real Character.”
The _Post_ objected to the “Napoleon-Cæsar-Tweed” theory of Grant,
the belief that he was a corrupt man of colossal ambition, egotism,
and determination, but it said nothing more in his defense than
that he was “a plain American citizen, with his average defects, his
average ignorance, his average intelligence, and his average vices and
virtues.” It made fun of his ignorance of political economy--he had
said that the nation could never be poor while it had the gold locked
in the Rockies. It scored his liking for money, gifts, good dinners,
flashy associates, fast horses, and “style.” The _Post_ spoke thus
caustically of Grant because Bryant had no idea of stultifying the
newspaper, even to help beat Greeley; but it did it the more readily
because it knew Greeley had not a chance. The mass of the party was
with Grant, and he received a plurality of three quarters of a million.
When Greeley’s insanity and death followed so tragically upon his
humiliating defeat, the _Evening Post_ made belated amends for its
campaign severity. Its obituary editorial of Nov. 30 was marked by a
generosity which it might well have shown earlier:
Without money, family, friends, or any of the usual supports by
which men are helped into eminence, Mr. Greeley won his place of
influence and distinction by the sheer force of his intellectual
ability and the determination of his character. By good natural
abilities, by industry, by temperance, by sympathy with what is
noblest and best in human nature, and by earnest purpose, the
ignorant, friendless, unknown printer’s boy of a few years since
became the powerful and famous journalist, whose words went forth
to the ends of the earth, affecting the destinies of all mankind.
II
An entirely different question was posed by the election of 1876--the
question whether the long friendship of Bryant and the former
sub-editors for Samuel J. Tilden should carry the _Evening Post_ over
to the Democratic side. The decision finally made is of peculiar
interest, for it shows how little Bryant was inclined to let personal
considerations sway him upon any public question.
Early in the thirties, while Bryant and other editors were wrangling
over the Bank, an ardent Democrat from New Lebanon, N. Y., named Elam
Tilden, visited the _Evening Post_, and introduced his son Samuel, a
boy in roundabouts. Bryant often spoke in later years of the impression
made on him by the youth’s precocity, handsome features, and cultivated
speech. A few years later young Tilden studied at New York University,
and improved his acquaintance with the poet. When in the fall of
1841 Bryant made one of his country excursions, he chose New Lebanon
for headquarters, and visited the Tilden family. The ties between
Tilden and the _Post_ were much strengthened after 1848, when Bigelow
became junior editor. We have seen that they were acquainted as young
lawyers, and Bigelow was State prison inspector at the same time that
Tilden began his political career in the Assembly. Tilden frequently
visited the _Post_ and discussed political topics, it was there that he
published an explanation of his stand in the campaign of 1860, and it
was with the freedom of an old friend that he told Bigelow that he and
Bryant shared the blood-guilt of the conflict.
After the war his visits were less frequent. But he made the _Evening
Post_ his mouthpiece when, in 1871–2, he, ex-Mayor Havemeyer, and
Andrew H. Green pushed home the fight against the Tweed Ring. The
_Post_ always credited Tilden with being the chief agent in proving
the actual guilt of Tweed’s lieutenants. During the spring of 1873 an
acrimonious controversy was carried on between Tilden and the _Times_,
turning in the main upon a new Charter proposed at Albany, which Tilden
attacked and the _Times_ defended. Tilden used the _Post_ for the
publication of his letters, and Bryant editorially supported him.
As Governor, Tilden invited Bryant in the early weeks of 1875 to pay
him a visit at the Executive Mansion, and the editor accepted. Both
branches of the Legislature tendered Bryant a public reception, the
first time that the State had paid such an honor to any man of letters.
At a dinner party on Tilden’s birthday, Bryant, in toasting the
Governor, said that the public would not be displeased if his present
position proved a stepping-stone to the Presidency. At all times the
_Post_, like other New York papers, expressed golden opinions of
Tilden’s administration, and in especial of his attacks upon the “Canal
Ring,” a bi-partisan organization which had gained huge sums through
fraudulent contracts for the repair of the State canals.
It was therefore natural that when in 1876 the election of a successor
to Grant approached, Tilden’s friends had a strong hope that Bryant and
the _Evening Post_ would lend the Governor their support. The newspaper
gave no advance hint of its attitude. When Hayes was nominated by the
Republicans on June 16, it, like all other independent journals, was
pleased. Its overshadowing fear had been that Blaine, whom it detested
as dishonest, would be named, and it saw in Hayes as good a man as its
own previous favorite, Bristow of Kentucky. While some sneered at the
nomination as negative and weak, the _Post_ predicted that it would
“turn out to be positive and strong.” On the other hand, it thought
the platform poor. It called the civil service plank platitudinous and
empty, and the currency plank, which temporized with regard to specie
resumption, worse still.
Nor did the _Evening Post_ immediately commit itself after the
Democratic Convention. Over Tilden’s nomination it rejoiced even more
than over that of Hayes. It recognized his sterling integrity and zeal
as a reformer and was delighted that he had beaten both Tammany and the
mediocre Western aspirants, Senator Thurman and Gov. Hendricks. But it
did not openly pronounce for him, and its comment upon the Democratic
platform maintained a careful impartiality. “In respect to financial
reform their position is worse than that of the Republicans; in respect
to a reform of the civil service they offer nothing better; in respect
to revenue reform they have done better.” The decision was left until
after the 4th of July.
All the influence of Bigelow, who sometimes still wrote editorials for
the _Post_, was in favor of Tilden. He was the candidate’s campaign
manager, and would be Secretary of State if Tilden won. So was all
the influence of Parke Godwin, Bryant’s son-in-law and formerly a
part owner. Bryant’s own friendship for Tilden weighed heavily in the
balance. But the decision was not, as the public supposed, Bryant’s
alone. Some years earlier the _Evening Post_ had been reorganized as
a joint stock company, and Bryant held exactly half, not a majority,
of the shares. The other half were owned by Isaac Henderson, the able,
smooth-tongued, rubicund business manager, who had been a partner since
the early fifties, and whose influence as Bryant became older gradually
extended outside the business office to the editorial rooms. His one
anxiety for the _Evening Post_ was that it should pay fat dividends,
and he was no more scrupulous as to the means than the business
managers of other newspapers. Mr. J. Ranken Towse tells us how distinct
by 1876 was the influence he exerted upon the editorial policy:
It was not often that legitimate exception could be taken to its
utterances, but as much could not be said of its unaccountable
reticences. For some of these there may have been a good and
sufficient reason, at which I cannot even guess, but there were
others which could be understood only too easily. The simple
fact is that William Cullen Bryant, though editor-in-chief and
half owner, was by no means in absolute control of the paper.
Between the counting room and the editorial department there
was a constant, silent, irrepressible conflict, not to say
antagonism--for I have always been convinced that the limits of it
were defined by some sort of agreement, written or tacit--whenever
the question at issue was one of direct commercial profit, which
often acted as a bar to the candid discussion of inconvenient
topics.
When on June 29 the _Post_ printed its warm but noncommittal praise
of Tilden’s nomination, Henderson, who knew that commercial sentiment
in New York was in favor of the Republicans, came upstairs and was
closeted with Bryant in a long discussion of editorial policy. The
next important editorial utterance, July 5, was an angry attack upon
the Democratic platform. The Democratic Party was condemned for
its “knavish” indifference to sound currency, and was represented
as an unsafe organization to be given charge of Southern affairs
while they remained so unsettled. On July 6 the _Post_ remarked that
the hard-money Tilden, running in 1876 upon a soft-money platform,
presented an exact parallel to the high-tariff Greeley running in 1872
upon a low-tariff platform; that “the two canvasses are alike in their
treachery, their evasiveness, their shameless surrender of principle.”
On July 10 it declared fully for Hayes.
Bigelow and Parke Godwin have published a number of Bryant’s letters
relating to this stand by the _Evening Post_. One is his refusal of
Tilden’s request that he let his name head the ticket of Democratic
electors. Another is his letter to J. C. Derby explaining that,
while he believed Tilden a truer statesman than Hayes, he thought
the Republican principles, especially with regard to sound money and
the merit system, so much superior that it was impossible to detach
the _Evening Post_ from the party that had won the Civil War. He
implied that his control of the paper was complete, and said that its
utterances had suited him in everything except some details; while
Henderson explicitly stated to the somewhat incredulous Derby that this
was true. But Bigelow’s and Godwin’s own letters of the time have not
been printed, and they show a strong belief that Bryant did not make
the _Post’s_ decision. It is sufficient to quote one by Bigelow, dated
Albany, July 14:
The principal result of my talk with Henderson was to satisfy me
that--[Bigelow simply made a long, wavy line]. The rest I will tell
you when I see you.
I can hardly trust myself to talk about the _Post_. I hope to be
spared the necessity of writing about it. But the _Evening Post_
that you and I have known and honored, which educated us and
through which we have educated others in political science, I fear
no longer exists. The paper which bears its name is no more our
_Evening Post_ than the present _Commercial Advertiser_ is the
sheet once edited under that name by Col. Stone. I only wish Mr.
Bryant had his name stricken out of it.