number upon foreign topics. He wrote repeatedly upon the affairs of
Germany, where Bismarck, given a free hand by the fast aging William I,
was asserting the absolute power of the throne, passing anti-Socialist
legislation, and otherwise taking a reactionary course which Schurz
lost no opportunity to denounce. The editor pinned his hope of a better
policy to the Crown Prince, the short-lived and noble-minded Emperor
Frederick. From time to time Schurz would select news from the European
press and illuminate it with his special knowledge. Thus in the summer
of 1883, under the title “A Strange Story,” he wrote upon the trial of
the Jews of a Hungarian hamlet on the charge of sacrificial murder; the
editorial was pure narrative, but its effect was a caustic denunciation
of religious bigotry. When in the fall of 1882 Gottfried Kinkel died,
Schurz characterized his old German comrade as the incarnation of the
vague, impractical idealism of 1848, an idealism that recked nothing of
hard political realities; and his editorial contained a striking bit of
reminiscence:
It was this spirit which seized upon Kinkel, who was then a
professor extraordinary at the University of Bonn, lecturing on
the history of art and literature. He was a poet of note; of an
artistic nature, also, ardent and impatient of restraint. He was
an orator of wonderful fertility of imagination and power of
expression.... He preached advanced democratic ideas, and his
political programme fairly represented the romantic indefiniteness
of the whole revolutionary movement. When the reaction came,
he left his professorship, his wife and children, and, gun in
hand, fought as a private soldier in the insurrectionary army of
Baden. In one of the engagements he was wounded and taken, and
then sentenced to imprisonment for life, put into a penitentiary,
clothed in a convict’s garb, and forced to spin wool--the mere
thought of which touched every heart in Germany. Then he was
brought from the penitentiary to be tried at Cologne for an attempt
upon an arsenal, in which he had taken part--an offense not covered
by the sentence already passed upon him. The court was thronged
with spectators and with soldiers. He defended himself. Before he
had closed his speech, which was like a poem, the judge, the jury,
the spectators, the soldiers, the very gendarmes by his side, were
melting in tears. His wife stood outside the bar, forbidden to
approach him; but when in the agony of grief he called out to her
to come to him, the soldiers involuntarily stepped aside to let her
rush into his arms. It was as if all Germany had looked on and wept
with those who were in the courtroom. Then he was taken back to the
penitentiary and set to wool-spinning again, until in November,
1850, some friends aided him in escaping. Again the popular heart
was stirred in its poetic sympathies. His whole public career
was like the most romantic episode of a romantic time--a fair
representative of the spirit of these days, their heroic devotion
to an ideal, and their indefiniteness of aim.
Some striking editorials by Schurz and Godkin, denouncing the vicious
operations of Jay Gould in connection with the Manhattan Elevated
Railroad, had a dramatic sequel. Gould and his associates, enraged by
them, determined to retaliate by a personal attack upon Schurz. In
pursuance of this purpose, they concocted an ingenious double-barreled
slander, aimed both at Schurz and Henry Villard. In substance, it was
that as Secretary of the Interior Gen. Schurz had prostituted his
rulings to the advancement of Villard’s railway interests, and had been
given his shares in the _Evening Post_ as a reward. Not only was this
piece of mendacity worked up in detail in the _World_, which Jay Gould
controlled, but it found its way into an article by George W. Julian
in the _North American Review_ for March, 1883. Schurz had a short
way with the authors of malicious fabrications. During the Civil War
Gen. Leslie Combs had charged him with cowardice at Chancellorsville,
and he had instantly called Combs a liar and challenged him to a
test of courage in the next battle. Now he blew Julian to pieces in
the _Evening Post_ of the week of March 26. The facts were that the
“restoration” to the Northern Pacific of a forfeited land grant, the
offense charged against Schurz, had been made in accordance with a
ruling by the Attorney-General and not the Secretary of the Interior;
that it was based upon principles applied in the same way to many other
cases; that Henry Villard did not for nearly two years afterward have
any interest in the Northern Pacific; and that, on the contrary, he
was interested in a rival enterprise. It is unnecessary to say that
those who had believed this story in the first place were few and
simple-minded.
Of the breadth of Schurz’s influence there are many evidences. A few
days after he took the editorial chair ex-President Hayes declared to
him: “I must see what you write.... Mrs. Hayes will not forgive me if
she loses anything you write.” The files of his correspondence, kept
in the Congressional Library, indicate that a majority of Congress
subscribed to the daily or semi-weekly _Evening Post_. The Secretary
of the Treasury was glad to supply seven pages of information in his
own handwriting upon a question of the day; and information for news
or editorial use was volunteered to Schurz by a considerable list of
consuls abroad. It was at this time that a young Atlanta lawyer named
Woodrow Wilson contributed a series of articles upon conditions at
the South--“entirely off my own bat,” writes ex-President Wilson. The
_Post_ was read by German-Americans all over the country, and many of
its editorials were reprinted by German-language journals. That Schurz
felt this nation-wide interest as a constant stimulus there can be no
doubt. Always a hard worker, he gave his best energies to the newspaper
in spite of constant demands for public addresses and magazine
articles; he wrote in 1881 that he was at his desk daily from nine to
four-thirty, and in 1883, when the editor of the American Statesmen
Series requested him to finish his volumes on Henry Clay as soon as
possible, he replied that his duties allowed him only parts of two or
three evenings a week.
From the outset many friends of the _Post_ had predicted that an
editorship of “all the talents” would work no better than had the
ministry of that character in England; and the prediction was soon
verified. As Isaac H. Bromley, a humorist on the _Tribune_ said--a
witticism which Godkin sometimes repeated with enjoyment--“there were
too many mules in the same pasture.” Schurz and Godkin had greatly
admired each other before they were associated, and were entirely
congenial in their rather aristocratic intellectualism and their views
on political subjects; but their methods of appealing to the public
were not merely different, but disparate. Schurz employed argument
and calm exposition, while Godkin varied his argument with ridicule,
cutting irony, and even denunciation. There is no doubt that before
long Godkin came to feel that Schurz’s editorials were too narrow in
range, and too arid in the mode of presentation. On the other hand,
Schurz did not always approve of Godkin’s ironic humor, and thought
that he was sometimes too savagely cutting in tone. Neither was
satisfied with the editorial page. Indeed, Godkin’s dissatisfaction
in the late spring of 1883 became so acute that he concluded that the
_Evening Post_ experiment was a failure, that the first impetus of
the change had been lost, and that heroic measures were necessary to
raise the level of the newspaper. He differed greatly from Schurz,
he explained, as to the quality of the editorial writing, and wished
to dismiss one staff member, Robert Burch, and employ in his stead
some one especially good at writing pungent paragraphs. The result
was an arrangement between Godkin and Schurz by which the latter
agreed to relinquish the editorship-in-chief on Aug. 1, when he went
on his summer vacation; with the understanding that if, after another
two years, the dissatisfaction continued, Horace White should take
Godkin’s place at the helm. Schurz duly left for his vacation, Burch
was dismissed, and Joseph Bucklin Bishop, a brilliant young editorial
writer for the _Tribune_, was brought on in his stead.
At this juncture there occurred an event which brought Schurz and
Godkin into abrupt conflict over a question not merely of the manner
and quality of the _Post’s_ editorials, but of its views. Schurz
had always been much more sympathetic with the laboring masses than
Godkin, and in a time of many labor troubles their opinions were
bound to clash. Late in July, 1883, commenced a strike of the railway
telegraphers, which at first threatened a widespread interruption of
communications and transportation. Schurz’s utterances were impartial,
but he had no sooner left than Godkin, as he had a right to do, gave
the _Post_ a tone hostile to the strikers. His view was that in an
industry so vitally connected with the public’s interests, a sudden
crippling cessation of work was not allowable; that a national tribunal
should be set up to decide such controversies, and that when the
decision was once rendered, “general strikes in defiance or evasion of
it should be punishable in some manner.” For this judgment much can be
said, though it is certainly not one that the _Evening Post_ to-day
would defend.
On Aug. 8 Godkin made the _Post_ declare that “the 30,000 or 40,000 men
whom some of our modern corporations employ in telegraphic or railroad
service have to be governed on the same principles as an army.” This
was more than Schurz could bear, and he no sooner read the editorial,
at his summer hotel in the Catskills, than he seized a pen and wrote
Godkin denying that any man has to be “governed” on army principles
save those who voluntarily enlist. “The relations between those who
sell their labor by the day and their employers, whether the latter
be great corporations or single individuals, are simple contract
relations, and it seems to me monstrous to hold that the act of one or
more laboring men ending that contract by stopping their work is, or
should be, considered and treated in any case as desertion from the
army is considered and treated.” He added that he thought Godkin’s
editorial one which would do the _Evening Post_ essential harm, and
cause it to be regarded as a corporation organ. He would publicly
disclaim any share in the responsibility for it did he not abhor the
sensationalism of such a step. Godkin and Schurz were equally positive
and tenacious of any opinion once fully assumed, and there was no issue
from their disagreement except the resignation of one of them. That of
Schurz was formally announced during the autumn. It is a gratifying
fact that whatever temporary ill-feeling subsisted between them almost
immediately disappeared, and was replaced by their former mutual high
esteem. Within a few weeks after his departure Schurz contributed an
editorial to the _Evening Post_ upon Edward Lasker, the German liberal,
and throughout the campaign of 1884 Godkin’s references to Schurz were
warmly cordial.
The regret of the _Evening Post’s_ friends over Schurz’s resignation
was tempered by their sense that a disruption of the original
arrangement was inevitable. Every newspaper has to have a single
ultimate arbiter of its policy. The only exceptions to this rule are
those journals which take no real interest in maintaining a thoughtful,
useful policy. With neither Schurz nor Godkin willing to accept a
subordinate position, with their distinct differences of temperament,
the wonder is that they worked so smoothly for two full years.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
GODKIN, THE MUGWUMP MOVEMENT, AND GROVER CLEVELAND’S CAREER
Edwin Lawrence Godkin was not quite fifty-two when he became
editor-in-chief in 1883, and was in the prime of life, with fifteen
years of vigorous journalistic labor before him. He wrote Charles
Eliot Norton that he had no intention, even if his health permitted,
of staying with the _Evening Post_ more than ten years, but his heart
was enlisted far too keenly in his work and the great causes he
espoused to let him go until failing health made his retirement in 1899
imperative. It is natural that his published letters should emphasize
his joyous sense of a greater freedom as he entered the newspaper
office; his feeling that he was giving himself to a publication which
did not depend absolutely upon his pen and mind as the _Nation_
did, and could have his vacations like other workers. But he felt
also his new responsibilities. He valued the opportunity the _Post_
gave him to impress his opinions daily upon the public; to reach a
wider audience--the _Post’s_ 20,000 buyers as well as the _Nation’s_
10,000; and to give more attention to certain subjects, as municipal
misgovernment. “My notion is, you know,” he wrote W. P. Garrison in
1883, “that the _Evening Post_ ought to make a specialty of being the
paper to which sober-minded people would look at crises of this kind,
instead of hollering and bellering and shouting platitudes like the
_Herald_ and _Times_.”
The independent character of the political course Godkin would steer
had been fully indicated by the volumes of the _Nation_. This weekly,
founded when the last shots of the Civil War were ringing in men’s
ears, had undertaken the fearless discussion of public questions at a
moment that seemed peculiarly unpropitious. The prevalent tendency of
the years after the war, as Godkin said, was a fierce illiberalism,
represented by such leaders as Thaddeus Stevens in the House. The
_Nation_ had at once declared war upon this narrow, rancorous political
spirit, and attempted to substitute progressive and enlightened views.
It had questioned the wisdom of the impeachment of Andrew Johnson. It
had been ten years in advance of public opinion in its attacks upon
that demagogic politician, Ben Butler. It had been one of the first
Republican organs to denounce the carpet-bag régime at the South, and
to assail President Grant for his failures. In 1876 occurred its most
serious collision with a considerable body of readers; it condemned
the Southern frauds which gave Hayes the Presidency, and called his
induction into office a “most deplorable and debauching enterprise,”
this course costing it 3,000 subscribers. Godkin inclined in his
sympathies to the Republican party, but he would not hesitate to break
from it upon any question of principle.
When Godkin assumed the helm of the _Evening Post_, he had a shrewd
suspicion that the Presidential campaign about to open would present
a fundamental question of principle. As he wrote long after, James G.
Blaine’s audacity, good humor, horror of rebel brigadiers, and contempt
for reformers made his nomination sooner or later inevitable, and such
a nomination in Godkin’s eyes presented a moral question of the first
magnitude. No American newspaper has ever conducted a more effective
campaign fight than that which the _Evening Post_ waged in 1884. It was
a fight not only against Blaine, but in behalf of the one contemporary
American statesman whom Godkin, in his long journalistic career after
1865, highly admired.
Of reformers like Godkin, Blaine wrote in advance of his nomination:
“They are noisy, but not numerous; pharisaical, but not practical;
ambitious, but not wise; pretentious, but not powerful.” The _Evening
Post’s_ opinion of Blaine was equally frank. It believed that the
Mulligan letters, published in 1876, convicted Blaine of prostituting
his office as a member of Congress and Speaker in order to make
money in various Western railways, and of lying in a vain effort to
conceal the fact. It added as lesser counts against him that in his
twelve years in the House he had never performed a single service for
good government, and had done it much disservice, as by his covert
opposition to civil service reform, and his defense of the spoliation
of the public lands; that in all his public appearances he had been
sensational, theatrical, and a lover of notoriety; and that while
Secretary of State under Garfield “he plunged into spoils, and wallowed
in them for three months, like a rhinoceros in an African pool, using
every office he could lay his hands on for the reward of his henchmen
and hangers-on, without shame or scruple.” But its central objection
was always that he had sold his official power and influence.
The great “Mugwump” bolt from the Republican party as soon as Blaine
was nominated took with it many influential Eastern journals--_Harper’s
Weekly_, the New York _Times_, the Boston _Herald_, the Boston
_Advertiser_, and the Springfield _Republican_--but it took no other
pen like Godkin’s. Long in advance of the convention, he and Schurz had
warned the Republican leaders that Blaine’s nomination would disrupt
the party. The _Evening Post_ pointed out in November, 1883, that the
next election would probably be close, and that New York, where the
voters were more independent than anywhere else, would certainly be the
pivotal State. The election of 1876 had hung upon several artificial
decisions in the South; that of 1884 would be likely to hang upon the
judgment of a small body of thoughtful, impartial voters. On April
23, 1884, a rich New Jersey Congressman named William Walter Phelps
published an article defending Blaine, to which Godkin immediately
replied in a long and elaborate review of “Mr. Blaine’s Railroad
Transactions.” Thereafter the paper kept up a drum-fire upon the
“tattooed man.”
How could the campaign be most effectively conducted? Godkin saw that
of the arsenal of weapons available, the parallel column could be used
with the most telling force. The attack, in the first place, must be
focussed upon the Republican candidate. No one cared about the rival
platforms. As for the general character of the two parties, most voters
believed the Republican party to be superior, and Godkin himself would
have thought so had not its jobbing, corrupt element, as he said,
gradually “come to a head, in the fashion of a tumor, in Mr. James G.
Blaine.” How could Blaine’s weaknesses be most clearly exposed? By his
own letters, made public through Mulligan, which stripped his dealings
as a Congressman with the Little Rock & Fort Smith, the Union Pacific,
and the Northern Pacific interests, and by his own speeches defending
these transactions. Adroit though he was, Blaine in his panicky efforts
at self-justification had repeatedly contradicted both himself and the
admitted facts. This, with all its implications, could be concisely
proved by the parallel columns.
Not all these contradictions were immediately evident. By the end of
September, just after Mulligan had published a new group of Blaine
letters, Godkin and his associates, Horace White, Joseph Bucklin
Bishop, and A. G. Sedgwick, had detected a half dozen. By November they
had raised the total to ten. Reprinted day after day, they had a value
that will be evident from a couple of examples:
BLAINE LIE NO. 5
“My whole connection with | “I want you to send me a
the road has been open as | letter such as the enclosed
the day. If there had been | draft.... Regard this letter
anything to conceal about it, | as strictly confidential. Do
I should never have touched | not show it to anyone. If you
it. Wherever concealment | can’t get the letter written
is advisable, avoidance is | in season for the nine o’clock
advisable, and I do not know | mail to New York, please be
any better test to apply to | sure to mail it during the
the honor and fairness of a | night.... Sincerely, J. G. B.
business transaction.”--Mr. | (Burn this letter)”--Blaine to
Blaine’s speech in Congress, | Fisher, April 16, 1876.
April 24, 1876. |
BLAINE LIE NO. 9 [IN PART]
|
“Third.--I do not own and | “BOSTON, Dec. 15, 1880.
never did own an acre of coal |
land or any other kind of land | “Received of James G. Blaine,
in the Hocking Valley or in | $25,180.50, being payment in
any other part of Ohio. My | full for one share in the
letter to the Hon. Hezekiah | association formed for the
Bundy in July last _on this | purchase of lands known as the
same subject_ was accurately | Hope Furnace Tract, situated
true. | in Vinton and Athens Counties,
| Ohio. This receipt to be
Very truly yours, | exchanged for a certificate
J. G. BLAINE.” | when prepared.
|
(Letter to the Hon. Wm. | J. N. DENISON, Agent.”
McKinley, dated Belleaire, |
Ohio, Oct. 4, 1884.) |
One particularly notable use of the parallel columns was in
contradiction of Blaine’s statement that subsequent to his purchase
of the bonds of the Fort Smith railroad, only one act of Congress had
been passed applying to the line, and that merely to rectify a previous
mistake in legislation. The fact was, as the paper showed, that the act
repealed the proviso that the railway’s grant of public lands should
not be sold for more than $2.50 an acre, thus adding to the value of
its securities.
The deadly parallel columns were applied to careless campaign speakers
for Blaine. They were repeatedly used against the leading Blaine
newspapers, the New York _Tribune_, Philadelphia _Press_, Chicago
_Tribune_, and Cincinnati _Commercial_. A happy stroke, for example,
exhibited their efforts to ignore the second batch of Mulligan letters:
BLAINE’S OWN VIEW OF THE LETTERS | EARLY VIEWS OF HIS ORGANS
|
“There is not a word in the | The _Tribune_, Sept. 15, 1884,
letters which is not entirely | suppressed all the letters and
consistent with the most | had no comments.
scrupulous integrity and |
honor. I hope that every | The Boston _Journal_, Sept.
Republican paper in the United | 15, 1884, suppressed nine
States will republish them in | letters, gave misleading
full.”--Mr. Blaine’s interview | summaries of many of them, and
with the Kennebec _Journal_, | commented not at all upon the
Sept. 15, 1884. | suppressed ones.
|
| The Philadelphia _Press_,
| Sept. 15, 1884, published the
| letters in a part of its edition
| only, and had no comment.
For the unprecedented scandal-mongering of this campaign, which Godkin
called fit for a tenement stairway, the _Evening Post_ and other decent
newspapers felt only disgust. But when the vicious elements in Buffalo
which had learned to hate Cleveland as a reform Mayor and Governor
revealed the fact that, as a young man, he had once formed an illicit
connection, the _Post_ felt it necessary to treat the charge in detail
and place it in its true importance. A large number of clergymen,
suffrage leaders, and others hastened to declare that no man with an
illegitimate child could be supported for the Presidency. Considering
Blaine’s character, this seemed to the _Post_ both ridiculous and
vicious. Which was better fitted to be President, a man once unchaste,
as Franklin, Webster, and Jefferson had been, or a man who sold his
official power for money? Godkin argued that in a statesman official
probity was all important, while an early lapse in personal morals was
of minor significance: