devoted itself to a definite policy of reconstruction; to get all the news, readers were forced to take more than one paper. Toward the close of the period newspapers, in spite of party affiliations, had partially ceased bitter attacks which had for- merly been made because of the demands of party rivalry. They had even begun to print items which reflected upon their party; they had banished the former policy of coloring reports lest the truth hurt their candidates: most important of all, they had learned the folly of printing slander against rivals. The evolu- tion ofindependent journalism has ever been slow, but it made a most appreciable advance during the Period of the Reconstruc- tion.
STANDARD SET BY BOWLES
Prominent among the leaders of this new journalism was Samuel Bowles, of The Springfield Republican. It was his aim to create a newspaper "that should stand firmly in the possession of powers of its own; that should be concerned with the passing and not with the past; that should perfectly reflect its age, and yet should be itself no mere reflection; that should control what it seemed only to transcribe and narrate; that should teach with- out assuming the manners of an instructor, and should com- mand the coming times with a voice that had still no sound but its echo of the present." The Republican had been started by his father, who, having learned his trade in Hartford, Connecticut, put a small hand-press and a little type on board a flatboat and went with his wife to Springfield, Massachusetts, where he issued the first number on September 8, 1824. About twenty years later, March 27, 1844, it had commenced daily publication and even before the war it had become one of the most influential papers of the provincial press.
PICRIC JOURNALISM
The political upheavals of the early Reconstruction Period, however, brought a temporary relapse of the bitter personal journalism. Its picric qualities, on the other hand, may have hastened the purification process. New York was no worse than other cities in this respect, but it attracted more attent
