History of Journalism in the United States/Chapter 23

by George Henry Payne

CHAPTER XXIII

CIVIL WAR

The fourth estate in war time—Lincoln and newspapers—Trouble with editors—Sympathy for South—Attack on Fort Sumter arouses Northern papers—Greeley ignored—"Forward to Richmond"—Bull Run—Factional differences at North—Malignant papers excluded from mails—"Prayer of Twenty Millions"—Joseph Medill's antagonism to Seward—Downfall of Weed—Tribune office mobbed—Baltimore convention—Two papers suspended—High office promised to Greeley.

That journalism may make war was the opinion of no less an expert on the latter than Bismarck, who declared, in 1877, that the press was "the cause of the last three wars."^[1] The Crimean war was credited to the London Times, while the Spanish- American war has been ascribed to the activities of William Randolph Hearst. On the other hand, war, although it does make news, cannot be said to make for journalism in its larger sense. In the two great American wars with which journalism had much to do, the Fourth Estate did not increase in power during the war; it suffered rather a diminution of influence. Sam Adams, who had so much to do with the struggle leading to the Revolutionary war, was a spent figure after it was over; so, after the Civil war, the men who had cleared the ground for the struggle gave way to those who had distinguished themselves during the conflict, particularly on the field of battle.

The soldier's belief that, in war, editors are less im portant than fighters, is appreciated by no class of men so little as by the editors. In a democracy the latter are still entitled to full freedom of expression, up to the point where they begin to interfere with the waging of the war—the very war which, as a rule, they have been largely instrumental in bringing about. A position subservient to the exigencies of the situation is not easy for them to take, and we see, in the story of the Civil War, how the very leaders of the Fourth Estate who brought about the conditions that made the war inevitable were, because of the political power they still possessed and the frequency with which elections came, a source of embarassment and perplexity to the government.

There is no rule,—there can be no rule,—as to the degree of freedom to be extended to the press in time of war, or as to how much it shall be abridged. In the great European war just ended, we have seen Great Britain,—a country less democratic than America, — through the efforts of Lord Northcliffe, turn out its Prime Minister and change its attitude toward the struggle in which it was engaged. The British form of government made that possible; there is very little doubt that there were several times, in the course of the Civil War, when Lincoln would have been turned out, had this country, in the sixties, been under such a Parliamentary government as England's.

Giving due consideration to the fact that Lincoln's task was that of putting down a rebellion, with a North far from unanimous, while the war of Great Britain was with another race, one outside its borders, the wisdom of our system seems to have amply justified itself. War must be waged by autocratic power, with only such checks as will keep those having tha,t power from using it for any other purpose than waging war. It is generally mitted now that the change which Northcliffe brought about in England was a wise one, but it is not impossible to conceive of an unwise change. The advantage of our system was that, having once committed to Lincoln the conduct of the government, with the power to wage war in its defense, it was not possible to remove him except for actual malfeasance in office,—rage as the Fourth Estate might, and did. The value of the checks that a constitutional government puts on all power, including that of the press, was never more clearly demonstrated or more fully justified.

A study of Lincoln's relations with the newspapers leaves one filled with wonder, as does a study of every aspect of his career, at the gifts with which nature had endowed this great son of American democracy. Whence came his vision? His uncanny overview of the men and problems about him is one of the mysteries of the story of civilized man. There is nothing like it in history; indeed, there is nothing in history like his calm use of all that was usable in the new power that had developed since the war of the Revolution. What was not usable, what was malignant and raging in the Fourth Estate, was calmly allowed to beat itself against the rocks.

The pity was that mere political manipulation kept Lincoln from close and sympathetic touch with the great journalist of his time—Horace Greeley. They should have been understanding friends; probably, but for Weed, they would have been. They had much in common, and the humble origin of both proves that great men are not born and left in the midst of the wilderness; rather are they born in the wilderness and transported by seeming miracles to the exact point where they are needed.

Lincoln's troubles with the editors began immediately after his nomination. Raymond and Weed,—whose futures, not only politically but as journalists, were wrapped up so closely with that of Seward,—suffered greatly in prestige, while the Tribune was given credit for great political sagacity and power. The result was that Raymond, goaded by Greeley's self-satisfaction, made his famous attack,^[2] in which he charged Greeley with having secretly betrayed Seward while pretending to be his friend. Neither Weed nor Raymond would admit that it was the domination of the former that had ruined Seward.

In his answer to Raymond, Greeley avowed that his writings in the Tribune were sufficient evidence of his belief that Seward could not be nominated. With reference to his having betrayed the candidate, he called on Seward to produce his letter of six years before, stating that Seward had been showing this letter to other people. He asserted that, as he had not kept a copy of the letter, he had a right to have it back, in order that he might publish it. Seward took his time about complying with Greeley's request, but finally the letter was turned over to Thurlow Weed.

The outcome of this bitter controversy was that Lincoln had, in New York, a divided house. While all parties to the controversy were loyal in the highest degree, there was such division in the councils as gave the leader of his party many anxious and disturbing moments. The secession of South Carolina found Lincoln's advisors hopelessly at sea, and Greeley went so far that he declared: "If the Cotton States shall become satisfied that they can do better out of the Union than in it, we insist on letting them go in peace. The right to secede may be a revolutionary one, but it exists nevertheless. When any considerable section of our Union shall deliberately resolve to go out we shall resist all coercive measures designed to keep it in. We hope never to live in a Republic where one section is pinned to the other by bayonets."

"If the Cotton States, unitedly and earnestly, wish to withdraw peacefully from the Union," he said again, "we think they should and would be allowed to go. Any attempt to compel them by force to remain would be contrary to the principles enunciated in the immortal Declaration of Independence, contrary to the fundamental ideas on which human liberty is based."^[3]

Giving strength to this wrong counsel, the Mayor of New York City, Fernando Wood, proposed to make New York a free city. An important meeting, at which were present John A. Dix, William B. Astor, Charles O'Connor and others, was held for the purpose of seeing that the South was "treated fairly"—further evidence of what slender support the new president was receiving from the city which had had so much to do with his nomination and election, and with the issues that elected him.

The newspapers of New York then had,—what they now have not,—an influence throughout the country; an influence which they lost gradually, as the great western cities began to develop after the war. None of them was very helpful to Lincoln between his election and his inauguration; in fact, one day after the fall of Fort Sumter, the Sun prodded the Herald on its friendliness for the South, and declared that if its publisher had not hung out an American flag there would not have been another issue of the paper. The Herald was also charged with having had in its office a full set of Confederate colors, "ready to fling to the breeze of treason which it and the mayor hoped to raise in this city."

The firing on Fort Sumter brought a much-needed realization of the seriousness of the situation, and put an end to the sympathy for the Southern cause. The Southern papers viewed with bitter anger and disgust this boldness of front on the part of journals and politicians formerly considered neutral, if not friendly. The Charleston Mercury called the roll of the statesmen whom the South had counted friends. "Where," it asked, "are Fillmore, Van Buren, Cochrane, McKeon, Weed, Dix, Dickinson and Barnard, of New York, in the bloody crusade proposed by President Lincoln against the South? Unheard of in their dignified retirement, or hounding on the fanatic warfare, or themselves joining 'the noble army of martyrs for liberty' marching on the South."

"The proposition to subjugate," said the Richmond Examiner, "comes from the metropolis of the North's boasted conservatism, even from the largest beneficiary of Southern wealth—New York City."

Meanwhile Lincoln had taken Seward into his Cabinet, and James Watson Webb, another bitter enemy of Greeley, had been offered the post of Minister to Constantinople. Rejecting that, he had been made Ambassador to Brazil. Greeley was left without political recognition, and his temper was such that he could not but be unhappy, especially considering that, only a few months before, he had been proclaimed as the man who had brought about Lincoln's nomination.

He was indeed "a power without the government," left to fight the struggle in his own way. While his editorials in November and December, 1860, doubtless had much to do with alienating Lincoln from him, the fact that his bitterest enemy stood between him and the Presi dent was the real hindrance to a better understanding.

From the very first. Greeley felt that things were not moving properly at the capital, and he was not the only one. "Something seems not right with Scott," wrote Count Gurowski. "Is he too old or too much of a Virginian, or a hero on a small scale? . . . Scott is against entering Virginia, against taking Baltimore, against punishing traitors. Strange, strange!"^[4]

Greeley's fear that the war might not be properly conducted by men whom he disliked led to a series of articles calling for action. These appeals culminated in the Tribune's voicing what was described as the Nation's warcry: "Forward to Richmond! "This appeared on June 27, 1861, a four-line, triple-leaded leader, printed in small capitals, entitled "The Nation's War-Cry." It was as mandatory as it was conspicuous: "Forward to Richmond! Forward to Richmond! The Rebel Congress must not be allowed to meet there on the 20th of July!"

It seemed strange that Greeley, who only a short time before, had shown so conciliatory a spirit about secession, should now be so suspicious of others. "Do you pretend to know more about military affairs than General Scott? ask a few knaves, whom a great many simpletons know no better than to echo. No, Sirs! we know very little of the art of war, and General Scott a great deal. The real question—which the above is asked only to shuffle out of sight—is this: Does General Scott contemplate the same ends, and is he animated by like impulses and purposes, with the great body of the loyal, liberty-loving people of this country? Does he want the Rebels routed, or would he prefer to have them conciliated? "^[5]

Lincoln finally gave way, and ordered General Mc Dowell,—who had, in the vicinity of Bull Run, 30,000 men, of whom only i,6oO were regulars, however,—to move forward, with the result that the North sufiFered the shock of losing the first battle of the Civil War. This calamity, however, was not without its advantages, for it aroused the free states to the fact that a stern conflict confronted them.

Greeley paid, in many ways, for the Tribune's part in bringing about the battle of Bull Run. James Gordon Bennett suggested that he be tried for murder, and a bitter newspaper war ensued. The four important papers, edited by four of the most influential editors in the country—Greeley, Bennett, Raymond, and Bryant—were more bitterly opposed to one another than to the South. Despite their differences, they were all loyal, which was not true of some few minor papers.

The Federal grand jury for the southern district of New York suggested that some of these other New York papers should be indicted. "Their conduct is, of course, condemned and abhorred by all loyal men, but the grand jury will be glad to learn from the Court that they are also subject to indictment and condign punishment."^[6]

The bitterness between the Northern factions—Greeley on one side, and Weed, Seward and Raymond on the other—was intensified by the fact that Weed and Seward believed that, by putting the slave issue to the rear, a compromise might be effected with the Sputh, or at least with the border states.

Senator Sumner in Congress, and Secretary Chase in the Cabinet, backed the policy of Gfeeley, who now became the outspoken oracle of what was known as the radical element at the North. While this faction was critical of Lincoln in the beginning, it was critical mainly because it was suspicious of the influence of Weed and Seward, and because it was keenly sensitive to the fact that the former was susceptible to material considerations. Additional strength was given to these critics by the fact that Weed had made himself unpopular in the West, after Lincoln's nomination, by his insulting refusal to entertain the suggestion that Seward might take second place on the ticket.

The loyalty of these radicals, however, could never be questioned, nor could they be confounded with another group of critics, virulent and malignant, such as were referred to in the charge of the grand jury, quoted above. Some of these papers the postmaster had excluded from the mails, the action calling forth bitter denunciation from editors who had, but a few years before, chortled with glee when Jackson's Postmaster-General, Amos Kendall, had excluded anti-slavery papers from the mail. On the whole, the number of papers affected by the restrictions imposed by Lincoln and his cabinet, in time of war, never equaled the number that had suffered interference, in a time of peace, under Jackson and his pro-slavery postmaster, Kendall.

The intense feeling on the part of both radicals and conservatives as to the emancipation of the slaves was reflected in Congress, with the radicals in the ascendant. It was then that Greeley, urged on by his friends,—who believed that a blow must be struck—wrote and printed his famous "Prayer of Twenty Millions," an editorial signed by himself and addressed to Abraham Lincoln.

The "prayer"—a signed, three-column editorial, heavily leaded,—began by stating that those who had assisted in making Lincoln President expected from him enforcement of the laws, and that the President had been remiss in the discharge of his "official and imperative auty with regard to the emancipation provisions of the new Confiscation Act. These provisions were designed to fight Slavery with Liberty. They prescribe that men loyal to the Union and willing to shed their blood in her behalf shall no longer be held, with the Nation's consent, in bondage to persistent malignant traitors, who for twenty years have been plotting and for sixteen months have been fighting to divide and destroy our country."

He complained that the President had given too much consideration to the advice of "fossil politicians." "The Union cause has suffered and is now suffering immensely, from mistaken deference to Rebel Slavery."^[7]

"I close, as I began, with the statement that what an immense majority of the Loyal Millions of your countrymen require of you is a frank, declared, unqualified, ungrudging execution of the laws of the land, more especially of the Confiscation Act. That act gives freedom to the slaves of Rebels coming within our lines, or whom these lines may at any time inclose,—we ask you to render it due obedience by publicly requiring all your subordinates to recognize and obey it. The Rebels are everywhere using the late anti-negro riots in the North, as they have long used your officers' treatment of negroes in the South, to convince the slaves that they have nothing to hope for from a Union success,—that we mean in that case to sell them into bitterer bondage to defray the cost of the war. Let them impress this as a truth on the great mass of their ignorant and credulous bondmen, and the Union will never be restored—never. We cannot conquer Ten Millions of people united in solid phalanx against us, powerfully aided by Northern sympathizers and European allies. We must have scouts, guides, spies, cooks, teamsters, diggers and choppers from the Blacks of the South, whether we allow them to fight for us or not, or we shall be baffled and repelled. As one of the millions who would gladly have avoided this struggle at any sacrifice but that of Principle and Honor, but who now feel that the triumph of the Union is indispensable not only to the existence of our country but to the wellbeing of mankind, I entreat you to render a hearty and unequivocal obedience to the law of the land."

The appeal attracted so much attention that Lincoln replied to it himself in the National Intelligencer:

"I would save the Union. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more when I shall believe doing more will help the cause."^[8]

At the meeting of the Cabinet on July 22, 1862, Seward opposed the Emancipation Proclamation; Weed, who had just returned from London, backed up the opinion of Seward; Raymond, who had made the Times the organ of the President, was always for the suppression of the slavery question. The Herald, the only other journal of " weight in New York, was against anything that Greeley was for. It was, in fact, a Democratic organ when it possibly could be without being absolutely disloyal.

Greeley was not the only one dissatisfied 'with conditions. "The Union is in awful peril," wrote Joseph Medill, of the Chicago Tribune,—whose power and influence were increasing,—to Schuyler Colfax. "We have fought for 'Union and Slavery' for sixteen months. The crisis has come at last. One or the other must be given up, both cannot endure. We as a nation have rowed against Niagara's stream, but have drifted steadily toward the chasm, and the roar of the cataract can be heard by all but the wilfully deaf. The Governors have petitioned the President, and he has consented to receive three hundred thousand more volunteers. But they will not. come. Tell the President he must call louder. He must either touch the popular heart by calling on men to fight for ' Union and Liberty,' or he must resort to conscription, and draft his recruits. Tell him not to be deceived. He needs these recruits now. If he adopts the former policy, a million men will obey the summons. But he must give us freedom-loving generals to lead them."^[9]

A later criticism, also written by Medill to Colfax andintended to be transmitted to Lincoln, shows great bitterness toward Seward: "McClellan in the field and Seward in the Cabinet have been the evil spirits that have brought pur grand cause to the very brink of death. Seward must be got out of the Cabinet. He is Lincoln's evil genius. He has been President de facto, and has kept a sponge saturated with chloroform to Uncle Abe's nose all the while, except one or two brief spells, during which rational intervals Lincoln removed Buell, issued the Eman cipation Proclamation, and discharged McClellan. Smith is a cipher on the right hand of the Seward integer—by himself, nothing but a doughface. Bates is a fossil of the Silurian era—red sandstone, at least—and should never have been quarried out of the rocks in which he was imbedded. Blair was thrown into a retrograde position by the unfortunate quarrel of his brother Frank with Fremont. There must be a reorganization of the Cabinet; Seward, Smith and Bates must go out."^[10]

Greeley was right, and his success as the moral voice of the North was soon to be demonstrated in a way that he could scarcely have anticipated,—by the downfall of Thurlow Weed, his former partner, but now his bitter enemy.

In 1863 Greeley and Weed, in a stiff battle in the New York Legislature, backed opposing candidates for the U. S. Senate. Weed succeeded in electing Edwin D. Morgan, with the assistance of Morgan's money, but announced, practically at the same time, his withdrawal from the Albany Evening Journal. He was rich and independent, but, although at the time of his retirement he had spent thirty years in building up a powerful political machine, he was so unpopular throughout the state that he was obliged to give up his long-cherished idea of removing to a farm near Rochester, there to spend his last days. So hostile was the feeling toward him in that section that he abandoned this idea and settled in New York City.

Commenting on this change in Weed's political fortunes, Greeley took the opportunity to compare the statements previously made by Weed and Raymond about his own ambitions:

"Let it pass whether or not the editor of the Tribune has been intensely ambitious for office. It would have been a blessed thing for the country if the editor of the Journal (Weed) had been impelled by the same passion. For avarice is more ignoble than ambition, and the craving for jobs has a more corrupting influence, alike on the individual and the public, than aspiration to office."^[11]

He was a good hater, was Horace Greeley.

With so bitter a journalistic rival as Bennett on one side, such sharp and unrelenting party rivals as Weed and Raymond on another, and the anti-Union journals constituting a third point of attack, it was not surprising that, when the draft riots came, Greeley and his office were war centers. On July 13, 1863, the office of the Tribune was attacked; the rioters forced an entrance, threw books and papers out of the window and set fire to the place. The police charged, dispersing the mob with a number of cracked skulls, and managed to put out the fire.

One of Greeley's many enemies started the rumor that during the excitement he had sought refuge under a table in a restaurant. His reply to the slur was characteristic. He stated that, against the advice of many friends, who had warned him of the danger of attack and the peril of life in which he stood, he had gone as usual to his office. At the usual time for his evening meal he left his office by the main entrance, "went over to Windust's eating house for his dinner, passing through a howling mob for nearly the entire distance and was recognized by several of them." The next day he returned to the office, "now being armed," and was at his desk every day that week. And whoever "asserted that he at any time 'was hiding under Windust's table' was a branded liar and villain."

Near the completion of Lincoln's first term, when the time arrived for the nomination of his successor, it was observable that he had not, among all his so-called journalistic supporters, a real friend. Although Seward was loyal. Weed sulked in his camp over some petty appointment. In order to bring him back into the field, the President was obliged to write him a humble and somewhat apologetic letter.

"I have been brought to fear recently," the President wrote, with characteristic tenderness, "that somehow, by commission or omission, I have caused you some degree of pain. I have never entertained an unkind feeling or a disparaging thought towards you; and if I have said or done anything which has been construed into such unkindness or disparagement, it has been misconstrued." ^[12]

From Greeley, who had become to a large extent a party leader, Lincoln could expect little. Weed, as well as Greeley, praised General U. S. Grant, insinuating that he might possibly be a candidate to succeed Lincoln, but when the convention assembled at Baltimore, on June 7, 1864, the opposition had weakened. The platform, agreeable to both conservatives and radicals, was written by Henry J. Raymond, who reached, at this convention, the zenith of his power and influence.^[13]

The development of a presidential boom for Horatio Seymour resulted in Bennett's veering once more toward the Democratic party, though he had been a merciless critic of Seymour as Governor. One reads the speeches and letters of the Democratic governor with amazement at the man's stupidity and bad manners. The only political platform that men Uke Seymour had was the veryhonest criticism of Lincoln by men of the type of Greeley. Unfortunately for himself, Seymour never realized that men like Greeley and Raymond, or even Weed, while they might be led into disagreeing with Lincoln, would be utterly unable to associate with the "copperheadism" of Seymour.

On May 18, 1864, the World and the Journal of Commerce printed the bogus proclamation of Joseph Howard, Jr. Both papers were immediately suspended, and not allowed to resume until Monday, May 23rd, when Manton Marble, the editor of the World, in a three-column editorial, upbraided the President. Howard had been city editor of the Times, and, when arrested, was at his desk as city editor of the Brooklyn Eagle. Seymour at once endeavored to make political capital out of the suspension of the two papers, by ordering the District Attorney to arrest all those who had entered the offices of either paper.

McClellan was nominated, and Bennett was inclined to support him. Lincoln wrote privately to Bennett and asked him to accept the mission to France. The editor declined the offer, but his vanity was tickled; the Herald slowly veered about and, before the campaign was over, was advocating Lincoln's election.^[14] It was at this time that Greeley made his Quixotic trip to Niagara Falls, to negotiate with the ambassadors of Jefferson Davis. Although the futility of this was evident,—to no one so much as to Lincoln—the trip was good for Greeley, as the offer of the mission to France was good for Bennett.

A month before the election, Greeley and Weed were of the opinion that Lincoln could not avoid defeat, and Raymond wrote to the President that his stand on the slavery question was affecting his chances of success.^[15] The importance of this statement,—the crime of it, from a political point of view—is that it was made by the Chairman of the Republican National Executive Committee.

But Lincoln stood firm, despite his editorial advisors and detractors; he wrote Grant to "hang on like a bulldog and keep choking and chewing" and, in September, the tide turned. The nation was thrilled by Sheridan's defeat of Early, and Grant was able to proclaim that "The rebels have now in their ranks their last man."^[16] The spirit of the North responded to the eloquence of George William Curtis, the young editor of Harper's Weekly, who, referring to the farewell speech of Alexander Stephens on his retirement from public life in 1859, said:

"Listen to Mr. Stephens in the summer sunshine six years ago. 'There is not now a spot of the public territory of the United States over which the national flag floats where slavery is excluded by the law of Congress, and the highest tribunal of the land has decided that Congress has no power to make such a law. At this time there is not a ripple upon the surface. The country was never in a profounder quiet.' Do you comprehend the terrible significance of those words? He stops; he sits down. The summer sun sets over the fields of Georgia. Good-night, Mr. Stephens—a long good-night. Look out from your window—how calm it is! Upon the Missionary Ridge, upon Lookout Mountain, upon the heights of Dalton, upon the spires of Atlanta, silence and solitude; the peace of the Southern policy of slavery and death. But look! Hark! Through the great five years before you a light is shining—a sound is ringing. It is the gleam of Sherman's bayonets, it is the roar of Grant's guns, it is the red daybreak and wild morning music of peace indeed, the peace of national life and liberty."^[17]

Lincoln was swept into office with 179 electoral votes to 21 for McClellan, but the record of New York was not one of which its citizens should feel proud. In a total of 730,821 votes, Lincoln had only 6,749 more than McClellan. At the same election Raymond went to Congress,—to his own surprise, it was said,—carrying by 386 a Tammany Hall district that in 1862 had given a Democratic majority of 2,000. "It was the greatest victory of the year," says Alexander, "and in the end led to the saddest event of his life."

The election was to have brought to Greeley, also, the reward that he craved. Lincoln had sent word to him, during the campaign, that in the event of his re-election, Seward would probably go to England as Ambassador; in that event, "Greeley would make an admirable successor to Benjamin Franklin, the first Posmaster General."

Shortly after the inauguration, Greeley sent a messenger to the President, to remind him of his suggestion of the previous fall. The messenger arrived in Washington the morning after John Wilkes Booth had fired the fatal shot.^[18]

1. Rhodes, Essays, 89.
2. New York Times, May 25, 1860.
3. New York Tribune, November 9th and 26th, 1860.
4. Gurozvski's Diary, i, 35.
5. Tribune, July i, 1861.
6. Appleton's Encyclopedia, iv, 1861, 329.
7. New York Tribune, August 20, 1862.
8. Lincoln's Works, ii, 227.
9. Hollister, Life of Schuyler Colfax, 186.
10. Hollister, Life of Schuyler Colfax, 186,
11. New York Tribune, December 12, 1862.
12. Barnes, Life of Thurlow Weed, ii, 440.
13. Alexander, iii, 95.
14. McClure, 80.
15. Nicolay-Hay, ix, 218.
16. Alexander, iii, 120.
17. Gary, G. W. Curtis. 186.
18. Alexander, iii, 126.