The Evening Post: A Century of Journalism

When Sumter brought the North to its feet as one man, as Lowell wrote, the press and general public believed the war would be brief. The best editorial judgment in New York had...

The first carrier boys of the _Evening Post_ had a city of 60,000, a little larger than Mount Vernon and a little smaller than Passaic of to-day, to traverse. From the pleasant...

The editorship of Horace White was a three years’ interlude (Jan. 1, 1900-Jan. 31, 1903) between the eighteen years of Godkin, and the equally long editorship of Rollo Ogden. It...

One essential qualification of a great editor, a masterful personality, was so distinctively possessed by Mr. Godkin that it may be doubted whether any other American daily sinc...

Editorial pages of a century ago bore no resemblance to those of to-day. Sometimes no editorial at all would be printed; sometimes only a few scrappy paragraphs; sometimes two t...

During all but the hottest months of the year, in the latter part of Grant’s second Administration, men on lower Broadway at about 8:45 every week-day morning might see a venera...

Bryant’s real editorial career dates from 1836, for all that had preceded was mere preparation. He quickly mastered his first discouragement, and throwing aside the idea of beco...

Not long before the war New York’s manners were provincial, and not long afterwards the city felt itself one of the world’s great centers. In twenty years, 1850–70, the populati...

The history of the _Evening Post_ for the decade following the Compromise of 1850 is summarized in the names of its greater political correspondents. Thomas Hart Benton, besides...

Of all the newspapers established as party organs in the time when Federalists and Democrats were struggling for control of the government of the infant republic, but one import...

The infancy of the _Evening Post_ coincided with the rise of the Knickerbocker school of letters, with which its relations were always intimate. Its first editor delighted in hi...

One of the most popular pieces of sculpture the country has ever known, Horatio Greenough’s “Chaunting Cherubs,” was being widely discussed in the early thirties, as was Hiram P...

The three great final battles of Godkin’s editorship were those against the free silver craze, the Spanish War, and the retention of the Philippines. The first was decisively wo...

From Godkin’s utterances upon journalism a small volume might easily be compiled. His ideal of a newspaper was as much English as American, with a good deal that was purely Godk...

For reasons fairly evident Bryant seldom used the _Evening Post_ for the publication of his poems; he was too modest, and the magazines of the day too earnestly besought him for...

Within three years after Bryant’s death his newspaper, still prosperous and well-edited, was suddenly sold, and placed in the hands of the ablest triumvirate ever enlisted by an...

When William Dean Howells summed up Mr. Godkin’s career, he wrote that, influential as were his discussions of national and international issues, his greatest reputation was won...

In 1829 Richard H. Dana, the poet and father of the author of “Two Years Before the Mast,” remarked that “If Bryant must write in a paper to get his bread, I pray God he may get...

Six weeks before Bryant’s death preparations were made, as with a prevision of that event, for the uninterrupted control of the newspaper by his family. A reorganization was for...

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....

No other five months in our history under the Constitution have been so critical as the five between the election of Lincoln and the capture of Sumter. The anger of the South at...

If any one had told Bryant and Godwin in 1865 that within a half dozen years the party which led the crusade against slavery to victory, and which had carried the nation through...

Ten years before the Civil War, New York city had 515,000 people, the population having risen by more than 200,000 in the forties. The northward march of buildings had passed Tw...

In the closing days of 1848 John Bigelow, who like Bryant lived to be called “The First Citizen of the Republic,” became one of the proprietors and editors of the _Evening Post_...

Amid the eulogies which followed Bryant’s death in 1878, a dissenting note was struck by that short-lived illustrated newspaper, the _Daily Graphic_. After a disparaging estimat...

Most of the metropolitan newspapers emerged from the Civil War with increased circulation, and several, like the _Evening Post_, with enhanced prosperity. The circulation was no...

editorials, and he made the intellectual influence of the _Evening Post_ one of the strongest in the nation. He was a great editor. But he could not have gone down into the busy...