CHAPTER XVIII

THE NEW YORK DRAFT RIOTS IN 1863--NOTES ON JOURNALISM

One more battle I saw, known as the Draft Riots of 1863. I arrived in New York on the Monday evening, and journeyed south through the city by the light of the Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum in flames; a stray negro or two hanging to a lamp-post here and there. This was the flank movement of the Rebellion; an attempt not only to prevent the enforcement of the draft, which President Lincoln had too long delayed, but to compel the Unionist forces to return northward for the defence of their homes. A mad scheme, yet for near four days New York was in possession of the mob. I never understood why, since a couple of good regiments would at any moment have restored order, as the event showed. For want of them New York had to defend itself, and did it rather clumsily, enduring needless disasters and losses both of property and life.

_The Tribune_ office was marked for destruction but was armed and garrisoned and only once did the mob effect an entrance. Then they swept into the counting-house on the ground floor and {162} made a bonfire of such papers as they found. For a moment there was danger, but the police came up from the Spruce Street station, the rioters fled and the fire was put out. Upstairs in the editorial rooms we knew nothing about it till it was all over. Afterward a better watch was kept. Friends of _The Tribune_ volunteered, and there was no lack of men; nor were the police again careless.

Another rush was stopped by the police in the square. As I sat at my window looking on the City Hall I saw this Rebel effort. But the police broke the solid mass of rioters as cleverly as it could have been done in Paris, where such matters are understood better than anywhere else in the world. Once scattered, these ruffians became easy victims. The police did not spare them. I not only saw, but heard. I heard the tap, tap, of the police clubs on the heads of the fugitives. At each tap a man went down; and he did not always get up again. The street was strewn with the slain.

While these incidents were occurring an effort was made to keep Mr. Greeley away from the office; partly because he was a man of peace, and we thought scenes of violence would be unpleasant to him; partly because he was in danger both in the office and as he came and went. But he would listen to no appeal. The post of danger was the Post of duty, and he stood by the ship. Mr. Greeley's passion for peace sometimes carried him far but never showed itself in an ignoble regard for his personal safety.

Sydney Howard Gay's successor in the {163} managing editorship of _The Tribune_ was Mr. John Russell Young, who brought with him a new life and freshness, and something not very far removed from a genius for journalism: if in the profession of journalism there be room for genius. There is room, at any rate, for originality and for bird's-eye views of things, and for an outlook upon the world which leaves no important point uncovered. There is room for courage and for quickness of perception and for an intuitive knowledge of what is news and what is not. All these qualities Mr. Young had. That the end of his relation with _The Tribune_ was less happy than the beginning offers no reason, to my mind, for denying him the tribute which is his due.

It seems hard to believe that in 1866, in the early summer, the first news of the Austro-Prussian war came to us in New York by ship. But so it was. Mr. Young walked into my room one morning with a slip of paper in his hand from the news bureau at, I think, Quarantine, announcing the Prussian declaration of war, June 18th, and the advance of the Prussian forces. I should like you to take the first steamer to Europe, remarked Mr. Young, and walked out again. It was a Monday. The next steamer was the Cunarder _China_, from Boston to Liverpool via Queenstown, on the Wednesday. I sailed accordingly, and on reaching Queenstown was met by a telegram announcing the Austrian defeat at Sadowa, or, as the Prussians prefer to call it, Königgrätz, July 3rd. The war was over. There were other {164} military operations, but an armistice was agreed to July 22nd, and the preliminaries of peace were signed at Nikolsburg, July 26th.

On the following day, July 27th, 1866, the laying of the new Atlantic cable, the first by which messages from the public were transmitted, was successfully completed by the _Great Eastern_, and on the 28th a friendly message from the Queen was sent to the President of the United States. The President was Mr. Andrew Johnson, and it took him two days to reply. It would have made a difference to us in America if the war news of May and June could have reached us by cable. Even such grave events as Austria's demand for the demobilization of the Prussian Army, so far back as April, and the proceedings in the Federal Diet at Frankfort in June, made no great impression on American opinion. I suppose we were already in that state of patriotic isolation when events in Europe seemed to us like events in an ancient world. The Austro-Prussian conflict was not much more to masses of Americans than the Peloponnesian War. Nor, in truth, did news from abroad by mail ever present itself with the suddenness and authority it derived from the cable. It came by mail in masses. It came by cable with the peremptory brevity which arrested attention. The home telegraph was diffuse. It was the cable which first taught us to condense. A dispatch from London was not, in the beginning, much more than a flash of lightning; and went into print as it came, without being {165} "written up"; and was ten times the more effective.

I had gone on from London to Berlin, and it was in Berlin that the news came of a break in the peace negotiations and the sudden arrest of the homeward march of the Prussian troops which had begun August 1st. I sent a dispatch to _The Tribune_ announcing this, and hinting at the renewal of hostilities as a possible consequence. The news came from a source which was a guarantee of its truth; and true it was. But the diplomatic difficulty was soon adjusted and again the Prussian columns flowed steadily northward. This message, which for the moment was sufficiently startling, was, I think, the first news dispatch which went by cable. It ran to near one hundred words, and the cost of it was just short of £100, or $500. The rate from London to New York was then twenty shillings a word. We wasted no words at that price.

Mr. Weaver was then manager of the Anglo-American Telegraph Company, a man who thought it good policy to coerce the public. He understood much about cable business; not much about human nature. He considered himself, and for the time being he was, at the head of a monopoly. People who desired to send messages by cable to America must do so upon his terms or not at all. It never seemed to occur to him that there might be such a thing as a prohibitory rate, or that a business could not be developed to the greatest advantage by driving away customers. He was {166} quite happy if he could wring an extra sovereign from the sender. He thought it a good stroke to compel each sender of a message to add the word "London" to his signature. It was another twenty shillings in the treasury of the company.

Mr. Weaver enacted many vexatious restrictive laws the discredit of which fell in great measure upon Mr. Cyrus Field and other directors of the Anglo-American Telegraph Company. It was Mr. Weaver's business to make rules. It was the business of the public to obey them. At that time there was between the public and the Anglo-American company no direct intercourse. We were obliged to hand in our messages over the counter of one of the two inland telegraph companies, which between them had a monopoly; the British and Magnetic and the Electric. Mr. Weaver sat in solitary state in Telegraph Street. You approached his office as you would approach a shrine; a temple of some far-off deity. During the next few years I had often to discuss matters with Mr. Weaver, whose regulations embarrassed and delayed Press messages. He was opposed to all concessions to the Press. He framed a code under which Press messages at a reduced rate were dealt with as he chose. He would give us no assurance as to when he would begin or when complete the transmission of such messages. He would interrupt the transmission of them in a purely arbitrary way, so that the first half of a message might reach New York for next {167} morning's paper and the last half for the day after.

At last there came a crisis. I had filed an account of the Oxford-Harvard four-oared race from Putney to Mortlake, a column and a half long, in good time for next day's _Tribune_. It did not appear till the day following. I had gone with it myself to the City, and handed in my dispatch over the counter of the British and Magnetic office in Threadneedle Street. The office of the Anglo-American was but two minutes distant. My inquiries about the delay were met with civil evasions. The Anglo- people said they sent on the dispatch as soon as they got it. The British and Magnetic people said it had been forwarded to the Anglo- "in the ordinary course of business." Under that specious phrase lurked the mischief. It came out after much pressure that, in the ordinary course of business and by a rule of the Magnetic Company, every dispatch for the cable must be copied before it was sent on to the Anglo-. The staff in attendance when I committed my message to the Magnetic consisted of a boy at the counter. It was his duty to copy the dispatch when not otherwise engaged. He completed his copy early the next morning. This was finally admitted. I then saw Mr. Weaver and put all I had to say into two sentences. First, the delayed dispatch would not be paid for, since it was the Anglo- which made itself responsible for the delay by refusing to receive the message direct from the sender. Second, unless this rule was abolished {168} I would notify _The Tribune_ that it was useless to forward messages from London, and advise the editor to direct their discontinuance.

Then came a curious thing. Mr. Weaver having reflected on this ultimatum for some thirty seconds, said:

"Mr. Smalley, I will agree to your proposal on one condition--that you tell nobody you are allowed to hand in your messages to us. We do not intend to alter our rule. We make an exception in your case."

I do not suppose Mr. Weaver was aware that he was giving me a great advantage or that he meant to give it. But, although the copying regulation of the Magnetic was abolished, direct access to the Anglo- was a great security and a great saving of precious time. It was to mean in the following year of 1870 that dispatches could be sent through to New York as filed, and in time for the regular morning issue, which otherwise would have arrived, in whole or in part, late. It was one among several causes to which was due the success of _The Tribune_ in the early months of the Franco-German War. The fact did not become known in the world of journalism till some time in the late autumn of 1870. In February, 1870, the British Government had taken over the inland telegraphs, and with them the duty of receiving transatlantic dispatches. The Government could have enforced the old rule had it chosen, but it did not choose. The executive officer of the Post Office was Mr. Scudamore, secretary to the {169} Postmaster-General, who had no good-will to the Press and none to me. Probably he knew nothing about the matter. But since 1870 the cable offices have all been thrown open, or special offices opened for the receipt of messages, and you may now file cable messages for America in any Post Office or any cable office. The English postal telegraph service is wonderfully good--far better than any telegraph service in America--but I should never file a Press message in a postal office if within reach of a cable office.

All this is highly technical and I suppose of no interest to anybody but journalists and telegraph managers. But there are other experiences which I hope may be found worth reading by a less select audience.

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