editorial of April, 1896, called “Assurance of the Gold Standard,” told
them that on a gold platform they could carry all the States north
of Delaware and the Ohio River, and east of the Mississippi. This
would give them 210 electoral votes, and the ten more needed could
certainly be obtained from Iowa, the Dakotas, and the border States.
Throughout May and June the _Evening Post_ called upon McKinley, who
was almost certain to be the nominee, to declare himself for the gold
standard. He had voted for the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, and had
made alarming utterances in favor of silver coinage as late as the fall
of 1894; hence the editors’ anxiety over his uncertain position, and
their resentment of his talk of making the tariff the chief issue. But
McKinley refused to commit himself. He was assured of a majority of the
Republican Convention if he acted tactfully, and he had no intention
of antagonizing the silver wing of his party before he won the prize.
In his speeches both before and just after the convention he failed to
allude to the free silver issue, while in several he emphasized the
“great American doctrine of protection.”
McKinley’s nomination was therefore received by Godkin and his
associates with hostility. Not since 1860, they wrote, had the
nation so needed a man of strong character and clear views; yet the
Republicans had chosen a trimmer of uncertain mental operations. The
gold plank in the platform was admirable, but it simply emphasized
the fact that McKinley was, at the time he was named, a total misfit.
Nevertheless, Godkin tried to be optimistic:
Nothing marks more clearly than McKinley’s nomination the mistake
of turning nominating conventions into vast exciting crowds, doing
their work under the eyes of a larger crowd, more excited still.
There can be little doubt that the gold in the platform was
forced on the convention by the business men, and that, had the
convention been a deliberative body, McKinley’s unfitness to stand
on any such platform would have been recognized. But the pledges
given by the delegates before they ever met or compared notes, made
it impossible to choose any other. About the platform they were
free, but about the candidate they were tied up, so that they were
compelled to put him astride a body of doctrine with which he had
never been in thorough sympathy. But the formal recognition of the
doctrine by the party at least insures discussion, and encourages
us to hope that there will be no more difficulty in killing the
silver heresy through the country by free debate than there has
been in getting such a collection of politicians as met at St.
Louis to declare for the gold standard.
If the _Evening Post_ was frigid toward McKinley, it was filled with
angry contempt by the nomination of Bryan. He was totally unknown to
the country at large; he had not even been a regular delegate to the
convention; he made a windy speech to the roaring mob of repudiators
which called itself the Democratic party, and was nominated because
he was of the stamp of Tillman and Altgeld, with a more attractive
personality--so ran its verdict. The decadence of the great party of
Jackson, Benton, Tilden, and Cleveland seemed to it confirmed by the
platform, which Horace White pronounced “baser than anything ever
avowed heretofore by a political party in this country outside of the
slavery question.” The free coinage plank, he said, with the silver
dollar really worth 52 cents, meant the repudiation of the half part of
all the debts incurred since 1872, when the gold dollar had been made
the unit of value.
One of the campaign achievements of the _Evening Post_ was truly
spectacular. Immediately after Bryan’s nomination its financial editor,
Mr. A. D. Noyes, began publishing a series of editorials called “A
Free Coinage Catechism.” This question-and-answer presentation of
controversial subjects was a familiar one in the _Evening Post_ ever
since Godkin assumed control, but it was never more effectively used
than in July and August, 1896. Mr. Noyes slashed directly into the
errors of the Democrats, as a single brief excerpt will show:
Q. What is the fundamental contention of the free coinage
advocates? A. That the amount of money in circulation has been
decreasing since the demonetization of silver, and that this
decrease has caused a general fall in prices.
Q. Is it true that the money supply has been decreasing? A. It is
not.
Q. What are the facts? A. So far as the United States is
concerned, there has been an enormous increase. In 1860 the money
in circulation in this country was $442,102,477; in 1872 it was
$738,309,549; by the Treasury bulletin, at the beginning of the
present month of July, it was $1,509,725,200.
Q. What does this show? A. It shows that our money supply has
increased 240 per cent. as compared with 1860, and 104 per cent. as
compared with 1872.
These editorials were immediately issued by the _Evening Post_ in a
sixteen-page pamphlet, and by Sept. 4 a first edition of 1,350,000
copies had been sold. A new edition with two new chapters and other
additional matter was then brought out, and by Nov. 2 the total
sale had reached 1,956,000 copies. Horace White’s pamphlet, “Coin’s
Financial Fool,” continued to sell, and was supplemented by the
publication in leaflet form of a public address which he had made in
Chicago in 1893 upon “The Gold Standard: How It Came Into the World,
and Why It Will Stay.” It can safely be said that the most important
campaign documents issued in behalf of sound money were these by Mr.
Noyes and Mr. White.
Less spectacular, but no less effective, were Horace White’s editorials
throughout the summer. As reprinted by the _Nation_, they reached
editors and other leaders of opinion the land over, and filtered
down to the public by a thousand channels. Godkin wrote upon the
more general political aspects of the campaign, leaving the hard
day-to-day arguing mainly to Mr. White. During the whole campaign the
paper managed to attack Bryan and Democracy without open advocacy
of McKinley and the Republican Party. When McKinley published his
letter of acceptance, the _Post_ wholeheartedly praised its financial
passages, and declared that they defined the one real issue of the
campaign. But its distaste for McKinley’s personality, its aversion
for his high-tariff views, and the repugnant character of the
dominant Republican leaders--Hanna, Platt, Quay, Lodge, Frye, and
others--prevented it from giving more than implied and tacit approval
to his candidacy. Godkin himself voted the Gold Democratic ticket.
The New York press approached nearer to unanimity that summer than in
any Presidential campaign since the era of good feeling. The _Journal_
was Bryan’s one important supporter. When he was nominated, the _World_
turned its back upon him, saying: “Lunacy having dictated the platform,
it was perhaps natural that hysteria should evolve the candidate.”
Though Dana called himself a Democrat, the _Sun_ was more fervently
anti-Bryan than the _Tribune_. Bryan called New York “the heart of
what seems to be the enemy’s country.” His attempt to invade it in
mid-August, when he journeyed 1,500 miles to Madison Square Garden
to be notified of his nomination, was a dismal failure. The night
was one of intense heat, the notification speech of Gov. W. J. Stone
of Missouri was intolerably long, and the very character of Bryan’s
address was a disappointment. He had been expected to display the
eloquence which had so dazzled the Chicago Convention. Instead, he read
from manuscript a long speech on the model of Lincoln’s Cooper Union
Address, dealing in the dry tone of a student with what he imagined to
be economic facts and governmental principles. Many hearers left early.
But the _Post_ explained his failure, not by his refusal to attempt
eloquence, but by the fact that his dreary discourse abounded in “the
most grating self-contradictions, the grossest blunders in matters of
fact, the emptiest platitudes and vaguest assertions”; and by the fact
that while Lincoln had appealed to national honor, the young man from
the Platte argued “the cause of private dishonesty and public disgrace.”
Some newspapers indulged in downright ferocity. The _Journal_ spoke
of the plutocrats, the monopolists, the great corporations, and their
protector Hanna, in characteristic _Journal_ fashion. The _Tribune_
called Bryan a “wretched, addle-pated boy posing in vapid vanity and
mouthing resounding rottenness”; a man “apt ... at lies and forgeries
and blasphemies”; a “puppet in the blood-imbued hands of Altgeld,
the anarchist” and of others who made up a “league of hell.” The
_Sun_ applauded the Yale students who tried to break up a New Haven
speech by Bryan. Even the _Post_ spoke in the harshest tones of those
Western farmers the genuineness of whose hardships no one now denies,
and characterizes the struggle as one between “the great civilizing
forces of the republic” and “the still surviving barbarism bred by
slavery in the South and the reckless spirit of adventure in the mining
camps of the West.” Such overstatements show how intense was Eastern
feeling over the election. Though the _Post’s_ attitude toward McKinley
tempered its rejoicings in the result, it nevertheless hailed it as
“the most impressive vindication of democracy governing according to
law and order that the country has ever seen.”
II
The one great doctrine that the _Evening Post_ has maintained as
insistently as its low-tariff stand is its opposition to any artificial
extension of American sovereignty. From Coleman’s protests against
Jackson’s high-handed invasion of the Floridas to Mr. Ogden’s protest
against the purchase of the Danish West Indies, this position has been
unfalteringly sustained. Bryant was among the first to oppose the
annexation of Texas, denounced Walker’s filibusterers as “desperadoes”
and “pirates,” and could not condemn too fiercely the Southern projects
for acquiring Cuba in the fifties. When Seward purchased Alaska, he
opposed that act; for, as he said, many Congressmen advocated it not
because they felt they were getting anything of value, but because it
was a blow at the prestige of Great Britain and a precaution against
the growth of her Pacific power. The basis of the _Evening Post’s_
scathing attacks on President Grant’s effort to annex Santo Domingo
was its belief that the Anglo-Saxon rule of a Latin and negro people
would be contrary to all traditions of the republic, and a complete
evil for both countries.
The attitude of the paper toward conquest and military adventure was
the same no matter what country was involved. Bryant could never see
anything in the Crimean War but a useless and inexcusable sea of
blood and misery. When the threat of the Franco-Prussian War first
appeared, the _Evening Post_ held that if the ambition of the French
to dictate boundaries and sovereigns to Europe was to go on retarding
civilization till it met an effectual check, now was the time to
check it. Like every other American newspaper, the _Post_ had been
embittered against Napoleon III by his interference in Mexico and other
acts of hostility toward the United States. The receipt of the news
of Sedan was the signal for an impromptu celebration in the editorial
rooms. Nevertheless, Bryant and his sub-editors warned Germany
against annexation as a “barbarous custom,” saying that she should
let Napoleon III be the last European ruler who aspired to govern by
force an unwilling and subjugated people. They also warned her against
militarism, which had been the curse of France. “It is for united
Germany to say that this wrong shall no longer continue; and the way
to say it is to disband, as soon as peace is won, those huge armies
which have done such mighty deeds, and thus declare to the world that
Germany, like America, means peace; and has no fear, because it intends
no wrong.”
But if Bryant was always vigorous in denouncing armed aggression,
Godkin was always savage. His hatred of national truculence colored his
earliest public utterances. It inspired his indignant letters to the
London _Daily News_ upon the Trent Affair in 1861, when the tone of the
British press and Foreign Office seemed to him needlessly offensive.
The attitude he took in the _Nation_ toward Dominican annexation and
the designs of many Americans upon Cuba in the seventies was one of
trenchant hostility. When he became editor of the _Evening Post_, not a
year passed without fresh criticism of this spirit. His attacks upon
British military adventures were as freely expressed. When Gordon was
killed at Khartum, he wrote with the utmost bitterness of the whole
Sudan tragedy--the British Jingo demand for destruction of the Mahdi,
its collision with the really admirable spirit of Arab nationalism,
the waste of hundreds of millions, the death of hundreds of brave
Britons and thousands of brave Arabs. “There is a powerful passage in
De Maistre, apropos of war,” he concluded, “describing the loathing and
disgust which would be excited in the human breast by the spectacle
of tens of thousands of cats meeting in a great plain, and scratching
and biting each other till half their number were dead and mangled. To
beings superior to man, conflicts like this in the Sudan must have much
the same look of grotesque horror.”
By 1894 Mr. Godkin was convinced that the spirit of jingoism was
growing more and more rampant the world over. The Continent was
divided between the Dual and Triple Alliances. The desire to grab
territory had infected even Italy. That country had emerged from the
struggle for unification one of the poorest in Europe, with taxation
at the last limit of endurance. She badly needed reforms in education,
administration, and communication. Yet she hastened to establish an
army of 600,000, and a navy of a dozen battleships, and to hunt up
some African natives to subjugate like other nations. The result of
her efforts to assume a protectorate over Abyssinia was a series of
defeats, heavy loss in men, the overthrow of the Crispi Ministry, and
reduction to the verge of bankruptcy. “It is no longer sufficient for
a people to be happy, peaceful, industrious, well-educated, lightly
taxed,” tauntingly wrote Godkin. “It must have somebody afraid of it.
What does a nation amount to if nobody is afraid of it? Not a _fico
secco_, as King Humbert would say.” England was clearly headed for
war in South Africa. But what grieved Mr. Godkin most was the evident
desire of many Americans, the Hearsts and Lodges leading them, to fight
somebody. In February, 1896, he wrote upon this phenomenon under the
title “National Insanity,” comparing it to the recurrent disposition of
some men to get drunk in spite of reason.
After the Venezuela Affair, the eagerness of these jingoes for a war
turned toward Spain as an object. The Cubans had renewed their revolt
in February, 1895, and fought so well that by the end of the next year
they controlled three-fourths of the inland country. The cruelty of the
struggle shocked Americans, while our heavy Cuban investments and trade
gave us a pecuniary interest in the island. When it was proposed in
Congress that the Cubans be recognized as belligerents (March, 1896),
Godkin regarded this as evidence that Cleveland’s Venezuela message had
turned the thoughts of Congressmen toward baiting other nations. “He
suggested to a body of idle, ignorant, lazy, and not very scrupulous
men an exciting game, which involved no labor and promised lots of fun,
and would be likely to furnish them with the means of annoying and
embarrassing him.” Recognition was out of the question, for the Cubans
had no capital, no government, and no army but guerrilla bands. These
facts A. G. Sedgwick demonstrated in “A Cuban Catechism.” However, a
number of incidents showed that American feeling was really growing.
Princeton students that spring hanged the boy heir to the Spanish
throne in effigy, miners in Leadville burnt a Spanish flag in the
street, and Senator Morgan of Alabama tried in June to lash Congress
into excitement over the American citizens who had been roughly treated
by the Spanish authorities in Cuba.
At no time did the _Evening Post_ conceal the fact that American
interference might become necessary. Civil war in Cuba could not
continue indefinitely; if the island were not pacified within a
reasonable period, the United States would be justified in demanding
a new policy on the part of Spain. Nor did it at any time conceal its
indignation at Weyler’s inhumane policy of herding the Cuban peasantry
into the Spanish lines, and at other Spanish mistakes. Late in 1897
Spain offered Cuba a form of autonomy, but on careful examination,
the _Post_ pronounced it a hollow cheat. The great essentials of
government were kept in Spanish hands, and only a pretty plaything
was extended. When Weyler was replaced by Blanco, who was sent out
to pursue conciliation, the paper predicted that he would fail as
generations before Alexander of Parma had failed when sent by Philip II
to replace the bloody Alva in the low countries. No man, it said, could
rule Cuba with a sword in one hand and an olive branch in the other. On
Sept. 18, 1897, our Minister at Madrid tendered the friendly offices
of the United States, and hinted that if the rebellion continued,
President McKinley would take serious action. The _Post_ spoke
approvingly:
This, it is important to recall, is the historic American position,
and is the only rational and justifiable way of dealing with
an affair which, in any aspect, is deplorable and thick with
embarrassments. No longer ago than President Cleveland’s message of
Dec. 7, 1896, interference on the lines indicated was distinctly
foreshadowed, and he was but taking his stand where President Grant
had taken his in 1874 and 1875. With our foreign affairs then in
the careful hands of Hamilton Fish, interference with Spain on
the ground of the prolonged rebellion in Cuba was yet distinctly
intimated. In his annual message of Dec. 7, 1874, Gen. Grant
referred to the continuance of the “deplorable strife in Cuba,”
then of six years’ duration, and said that “positive steps on the
part of other Powers” might become “a matter of self-necessity.”
But the _Evening Post_ believed such interference should be peaceful.
As the year 1898 opened, it was confident that war could be avoided.
It knew that the Cubans would keep on fighting, and that Spain, nearly
bankrupt, her soldiers dispirited, could not suppress the rebellion.
But it thought that patient, friendly pressure by the United States
upon Spain would force her to recognize the facts and give the Cubans
a government that would satisfy them. When in February the _Journal_
published a letter by the Spanish Minister, Dupuy de Lome, calling
McKinley a cheap politician and caterer to the rabble, Godkin credited
most Americans with taking the incident good-naturedly--with finding
De Lome’s mortification and immediate resignation a source of amusement
rather than anger. A few days later (Feb. 15) the destruction of
the Maine, with the loss of 226 lives, caused a wave of horror and
indignation, unparalleled since Fort Sumter, to sweep the country.
Even yet, however, the _Post_ could point with gratification to the
steadiness of the general public, and its willingness to suspend
judgment till an inquiry was made. The attitude of both Capt. Sigsbee
of the Maine and President McKinley it pronounced admirable, as it did
that of many important newspapers:
The danger was that something rash would be done in the first
confused moments. When once we began to think quietly about the
affair, the rest was easy. It was at once evident that the chances
were enormously in favor of the theory that the blowing up of the
Maine was due to accident. But suppose it were shown that she was
destroyed by foul play ... what would that prove? That we should
instantly declare war against Spain? By no means. It is simply
inconceivable that the Spanish authorities in Cuba, high or low,
could have countenanced any plot to destroy the Maine. Make them
out as wicked as you please, they are not lunatics....
The first effect, then, of this shocking calamity upon the nation
has been salutary. It has discovered in us a reserve of sanity,
of calmness, of poise, and weight, which is worth more than all
our navy. If we are able to display these qualities throughout,
the world will think better of us and our self-respect will be
heightened; and, despite the Jingoes, it is better to have foreign
nations admire us than dread us, better to be conscious of strength
of character than of strength of muscle.
One exception to this steadiness of opinion was furnished by a large
Congressional group. When early in March Congress debated resolutions
declaring Cuba a belligerent, Mr. Godkin characterized the debate
as one that Americans could not read without humiliation. Many
Republican Congressmen frankly looked to war for partisan advantage.
Representative Grosvenor of Ohio said that it would be a Republican
war, and that it offered the most brilliant opportunity that any
Administration had seen since Lincoln “to establish itself and
its party in the praise and honor and glory of a mighty people.”
Senator Hale echoed him. Senator Platt said there would be one great
compensation for the loss of life and treasure--“it would prevent the
Democratic party from going into the next Presidential campaign with
‘Free Cuba’ and ‘Free Silver’ emblazoned on its banner.” Until war
was declared on April 25, the _Post_ consistently praised President
McKinley in one column, and assailed Congress in the next.
But its chief indignation was reserved for the war press, and
especially for the _Journal_ and _World_. These newspapers presented
a curious study. From the files of the _Evening Post_ it would
hardly have been gathered that the nation was laboring under marked
excitement, but from the editorials, pictures, and lurid headlines of
the other two it appeared that the people were at fever heat.
“The Worst Insult to the United States in Its History,” was the heading
the _Journal_ gave De Lome’s letter. For days thereafter nearly every
headline contained the word “war.” “Spain Makes War on the _Journal_ by
Seizing the Yacht Buccaneer,” ran one, this being Hearst’s news-boat at
Havana. “Threatening Moves by Both Spain and the United States--We Send
Another War Vessel to Join Maine at Sea,” followed it next day. After
the catastrophe to the Maine the _Journal_ made the welkin ring. “The
Warship Maine Was Split in Two by an Enemy’s Secret Infernal Machine!”
it trumpeted. “Officers and Men at Key West Describe the Mysterious
Rending of the Vessel, and Say It Was Done by Design and Not by
Accident--Captain Sigsbee Practically Declares That His Ship Was Blown
Up by a Mine or Torpedo.” These were the first page headlines on the
17th. Inside were ribbon headlines running across the next half dozen
pages. “Belief in Havana That the Maine Was Anchored Over a Mine”;
“Foreign Nations Shocked by the Belief in Spanish Treachery”; “War
Probable if Spaniards Blew Up American Warship”; “Let the Cabinet Soon
Avenge the Slaughtered Sailors.” Next day the _Journal_ blared, “The
Whole Country Thrills With the War Fever,” while it reported a poll of
both houses showing an overwhelming sentiment in favor of immediate
intervention.
The _World_ also knew positively within a few hours that the Maine
was blown up by Spanish treachery. When Secretary Long pleaded for
patience, it exposed him in a glaring indictment: “Long’s Exoneration
of Spain Nets Senatorial Clique $20,000,000.” That is, it accused
Senators of playing the market. On the same page a news-story demanded
a whole bank of headlines. “‘Send Maine Away!’ Begged a Stranger at Our
Consulate--Every Day for a Week a Mysterious Elderly Spaniard Offered
That Warning, But It Was Unheeded, for He Was Deemed a Crank.” It had
the same iteration as the _Journal_. Thus on March 4 its headlines ran,
“Torpedo Blew Up the Maine, High Spanish Officer Says--If His Story
Is True, It Verifies the _World_ Correspondent’s Earliest News.” On
March 12 it announced: “Full and Convincing Proof That the Maine Was
Destroyed Exactly as the _World_ Exclusively and Authoritatively Told
Three Days After the Disaster.”