CHAPTER TWELVE

THE NEW YORK PRESS AND SOUTHERN SECESSION

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 the Republican triumph; the secession of South Carolina before Christmas, followed by the rest of the lower South; the erection of a Southern Confederacy in February, with the choice of Davis as provisional President; the complete paralysis of Buchanan’s government--all this made the months anxious and uncertain beyond any others in the century. Until New Year’s, many people in the North believed that the Southern threats were not to be taken seriously; until February, many believed that the outlook for a peaceful preservation of the Union was bright. Thereafter a large part of the population held that, in Gen. Winfield Scott’s phrase, the erring sisters should be let depart in peace. In this anomalous period a thousand currents of opinion possessed the land, and no one could predict what the next day would bring forth. The time tried the judgment and patriotism of the nation’s newspapers as by fire.

The New York press had at this time asserted a national ascendancy which it slowly lost after the war as the great West increased in population. During December, 1860, the _Herald_ averaged a week-day circulation of 77,107, and a Sunday circulation of 82,656, which it boasted was the largest in the world. The daily circulation of the London _Times_ was 25,000 less. The _Tribune_ boasted on April 10, 1861, that while its daily circulation was 55,000, its weekly circulation was enormous, making the total number of its buyers 287,750. Two-fifths of these were in New York, but it had 26,091 subscribers in Pennsylvania; 24,900 in Ohio; 16,477 in Illinois; 11,968 in Iowa; 11,081 in Indiana, and even in California 5,535. In the South, on the other hand, there was a mere handful of buyers--21 in Mississippi, 23 in South Carolina, 35 in Georgia, and 10 in Florida, against 10,589 in Maine. The _Sun_ had a daily circulation of about 60,000, and the _Times_ of about 35,000. That of the _Evening Post_ was approaching 20,000, while its weekly and semi-weekly issues were widely read in the West. It was in reference to the influence of the _Tribune_, _Times_, and _Evening Post_ that the _Herald_ said, “Without New York journalism there would have been no Republican party.” It had some excuse for its boast regarding the city’s journals (Nov. 8):

Several of them, possessing revenues equal in amount to those of some of the sovereign States, are unapproachable by influences except those of a national policy, and they constitute a congress of intellect in permanent session assembled. The telegraph and the locomotive carry their influences to the remotest corners of the land in a constantly increasing ratio. These, then, are to be the leading powers which are to range parties, and conduct the discussions of the great questions of the generation that is before us. They, and they only, can do it in a catholic and cosmopolitan spirit.... These affect the affairs and hopes of men everywhere.

Lincoln’s election was accepted with unmixed pleasure by the _Evening Post_ and _Tribune_, the _Times_ and the _World_, which saw in it a long-deferred assurance that the popular majority in favor of freedom had at last found a dependable leader. It was accepted with resignation by the three chief opposition newspapers. Bennett’s _Herald_, with a snort of chagrin, reminded good citizens that they should “settle down to their occupations and to discharge the duty which they owe to their families.” The _Journal of Commerce_ remarked that “we have nothing to do but submit,” adding that the conservative majority in both Houses “will check any wayward fancies that may seize the executive, under the influence of his abolition advisers.” The _Express_ deplored, deeply deplored, the result, but formally acquiesced in it, “as under the forms if not in the spirit and intent of the Constitution.” But as the news of the secession movement increased, the differences of opinion grew marked.

Bryant in the _Evening Post_ was anxious that Lincoln should not talk of concessions, nor seem to be frightened by the Southern bluster. He must refuse to parley with disunionists:

If there are any States disposed to question the supremacy of the Constitution, or to assert the incompatibility of our climatic influences and social institutions with the form of government under which we have been hitherto united, now is the time to meet the question and settle it....

Mr. Lincoln cannot say one word or take one step toward concession of any kind without in so far striking at the very foundations upon which our government is based, violating the confidence of his supporters, and converting our victory into a practical defeat.

When the idea of resisting the will of the majority is abandoned in responsible quarters; when every sovereign State shows itself content to abide the issue of a constitutional election, it will be time enough for Mr. Lincoln to enlighten those who need light as to what he will do and what he will not do; and we greatly mistake the man if he will give ear to any proposition designed to convert him into a President not of the whole Union, nor of those who voted for him, but of those who did not.

The _Herald_ was equally insistent that Lincoln should promise concessions; “he should at once give to the world the programme of the policy he will pursue as President, and that policy should be one of conciliation,” it said on Nov. 9. But a special correspondent of the _Post_, interviewing Lincoln in Springfield on Nov. 14, and finding him reading the history of the nullification movement, obtained an assurance that he would make no such sign of weakness. “I know,” he quoted Lincoln as saying, “the justness of my intentions, and the utter groundlessness of the pretended fears of the men who are filling the country with their clamor. If I go into the Presidency, they will find me as I am on record--nothing less, nothing more. My declarations have been made to the world without reservation. They have been repeated; and now, self-respect demands of me and the party that has elected me, that when threatened I should be silent.” The correspondent assured Lincoln’s Eastern friends that nature had endowed him “with that sagacity, honesty, and firmness which made Old Hickory’s the most eminently successful and honorable Administration known to the public.”

When South Carolina carried her threat of secession into execution on Dec. 20, every New York newspaper had already indicated its attitude toward that act. Bryant had done so Nov. 12, in an editorial called “Peaceable Secession an Absurdity.” No government could have a day of assured existence, he wrote, if it tolerated the doctrine of peaceable secession, for it could have no credit or future. “No, if a State secedes it is in rebellion, and the seceders are traitors. Those who are charged with the executive branch of the government are recreant to their oaths if they fail to use all lawful means to put down such rebellion.” The next day he added that “We look to Abraham Lincoln to restore American unity, and make it perpetual.” No one expected Buchanan to do anything, and not a week passed without Bryant or Bigelow calling him a traitor. This insistence that the seceding States be coerced into returning was shared by the _World_, which was on the point of absorbing Webb’s _Courier and Enquirer_, and by the _Times_.

A far less sound view was taken by the _Tribune_, so long the most influential Republican newspaper of the nation. Horace Greeley is often represented as declaring flatly that the South should be allowed to depart in peace. His opinion, while not much more defensible, was decidedly different. Greeley wished to make sure that it was the will of the Southern majority to secede, and not the mere whim of fire-eating leaders. “I have said repeatedly, and here repeat,” he wrote in the _Tribune_ of Jan. 14, “that, if the people of the Slave States, or of the Cotton States alone, really wish to get out of the Union, I am in favor of letting them out so soon as that result can be peacefully and constitutionally attained.... If they will ... take first deliberately by fair vote a ballot of their own citizens, none being coerced nor intimidated, and that vote shall indicate a settled resolve to get out of the Union, I will do all I can to help them out at an early day. I want no States kept in the Union by coercion; but I insist that none shall be coerced out of it....”

But James Gordon Bennett’s _Herald_, James Brooks’s _Express_, Gerard Hallock’s _Journal of Commerce_, and several minor journals, as the _Daily News_ and _Day Book_, were frankly in favor of letting the secessionists proceed without any restraint from the Federal Government. The _Herald_ was much the most important, although the _World_ sneeringly said that every new subscriber meant two cents and a little more contempt for Bennett. It was read everywhere about New York for its full news and its smartness; the caustic observations of Dickens and William H. Russell upon New York journalism were founded principally upon it; and Administration leaders at Washington found its comprehensive dispatches invaluable throughout the war. Maintaining its old levity of tone, the _Herald_ used at this period to speak of the _World_, _Tribune_, and _Times_ as the World, the Flesh, and the Devil. It remarked that Lincoln had once split rails and now he was splitting the Union. It called Greeley “the Hon. Massa Greeley,” and it probably refrained only by a supreme effort from nicknaming Bryant. One of its cardinal tenets was that slavery was really unobjectionable. As the two sections drew near war, it printed a description of slum life in Liverpool, remarking that compared with the English laborer, “the slave lives like a prince.” He had his cabin, neat, clean, and weatherproof; he had his own garden patch, over which he was lord paramount; he was well-fed, well-lodged, well-clothed, and rarely overworked; sleek, happy, contented, enjoying his many holidays with gusto, he lived to a great age. Before the New Year, the _Herald_ had spoken out plainly against coercion. It would bring on “a fratricidal conflict, which will destroy the industrial interests of all sections, and put us back at least a hundred years in the estimation of the civilized world.”

As one State after another passed out of the Union, therefore, a half dozen newspapers, the _Herald_, _Daily News_, _Journal of Commerce_, _Day Book_, _Staats Zeitung_, and _Courrier des États Unis_ were taking an attitude friendly to the South; one, the _Tribune_, simply wrung its hands; and the _Evening Post_, _Times_, and _World_ alone urged severe measures. Jefferson Davis, wrote the _Evening Post_, “knows that secession is a forcible rupture of an established government; he knows that it must, if persisted in, lead to war.” “If our Southern brethren think they can better themselves by going out,” declared Bennett’s _Herald_ on Jan. 17, “in heaven’s name let them go in peace. We cannot keep them by force.”

During January nearly all eyes were fastened upon the various plans for keeping the Union intact by arranging a compromise, and preposterous some of these plans were. The Crittenden Compromise, which proposed making the Missouri line of 36′ 30″ the constitutional boundary between slavery and freedom in the Territories, was brusquely condemned by the _Evening Post_. “In every respect the ... scheme is objectionable, and no Republican who understands the principles of his party, or who is faithful to what he believes the fundamental objects of the Federal Constitution, can assent to it for one moment,” the journal said on Jan. 26. The Republican Party had been established and had just won its great victory upon the principle that slavery should not be extended into any Territory whatever; how could it give it up without committing suicide? In the same issue the _Evening Post_ said that the violent acts of the South, the seizure of forts and arsenals, the drilling of men to prevent arrests, “are treasonable acts, and amount to levying war upon the United States,” while it called Senator Toombs “a blustering and cowardly traitor.” The _Tribune_, which believed that secession was a mere threatening gesture, and that Northern firmness might overawe the rebels and bring them back into the Union, was also against the Crittenden plan. “No compromise, then! No delusive and deluding concessions! No surrender of principle!” exclaimed Greeley on Jan. 18. The next day the _Tribune_ evinced its failure to grasp the situation by remarking that if Major Anderson at Fort Sumter had fired on the rebels when the _Star of the West_ was turned back from his relief, “treason would have been stayed. That act alone would have saved Virginia from plunging into the fatal gulf of rebellion.”

The _Times_ was as firmly against a compromise as the _Evening Post_. Stand by the Union and the Constitution first, wrote Raymond; when their safety is assured, then only can we talk of guarantees for the South. “We would yield nothing whatever to exactions pressed by threats of disunion....” So was the _World_, which said that “It is of no use to mince matters; this rampant cotton rebellion will haul in its horns or we shall have civil war.” The _World_ had its own plan of restoring harmony by extinguishing sectional spirit. It proposed, first, to divest the Federal executive of its overgrown patronage--the office-seekers were always pandering to sectional prejudice; second, to improve the navigation of the Mississippi; third, to construct levees to prevent Mississippi floods; and fourth, to build a Southern Pacific railway. It naïvely said that if these public works “could be adopted as a preventive instead of a remedy, their cost would probably be less than the cost of a civil war.” The _Tribune_ also had a pacification scheme. It suggested that the Federal Government begin the purchase of all the slaves of Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana, about 600,000 in all; to pay not more than $100,000,000, or less than $200 each, for them; and to complete the transaction in, say, 1876.

A petition for the Crittenden compromise circulated by William B. Astor found 140 signatures at the _Herald_ office. By now, indeed, Bennett’s _Herald_ was expressing opinions which seem madness.

After appealing to Lincoln to beg the South to return; after appealing to the Republican Party to repudiate its Chicago platform; after appealing to Congress to pass the Crittenden resolution or submit it to the States, the _Herald_ appealed to the South. On Jan. 4, railing at the imbecility of Congress and the indifference of President-elect Lincoln, it proposed that the Southern States arrange a Constitutional Convention for their own section alone. Let this body adopt amendments to the Constitution embodying guarantees of the return of fugitive slaves, of the validity of the Dred Scott decision, and of universal tolerance of opinion respecting slavery as a social institution. “Let them submit these different amendments to the different Northern States, earnestly inviting their acceptance of them, and assigning a period, similar to that which was appointed for the ratification of the Constitution of 1787, when all States which should have agreed to their proposition should be considered as thenceforth forming the future United States of America.” The whole nation, said the _Herald_, would join such a Union, save New England. Probably the Yankee States would stay out. Good riddance to them. The rest of the country is sick and tired of New England. It has had too much “of the provincial meanness, bigotry, self-conceit, love for ‘isms,’ hypercritical opposition to anything and everything, universal fault-finding, hard bargaining, and systematic home lawlessness ... which are covering their section of the country with odium.”

This was not a shabby offer to the South--to take any conditions it made and kick the Yankees out. But the _Herald_ waxed more generous still. On March 20, a month after the inauguration of Jefferson Davis, it had found the solution of the great problem: let the new Congress, when it met at Lincoln’s call, adopt the Confederate Constitution, and submit it to the nation for ratification by three-fourths of the States. “This would settle the question and restore peace and harmony to a troubled nation, while at the same time every statesman and every man of common sense must admit that the new Constitution is a decided improvement on the old.” The _Herald_ enumerated its merits: the restriction of the President to one six-year term, the budget system of appropriations, the interdiction of internal improvements at the expense of the national treasury, and so on. “Let Mr. Lincoln call Congress together for the purpose, and he will have taken the first step of a statesman since he came to power.” The _Herald_ did not say who it believed should be President under the new constitution, but it could hardly avoid concluding that Jefferson Davis ought to be accepted along with the Confederate system of government. All the while, the _Journal of Commerce_, _Express_, and _News_ were imperturbably declaring that the South should be allowed to depart amicably.

A surprising number of New Yorkers, indeed, sympathized with this hostility to coercion. A meeting of disciples of Mayor Fernando Wood held at Brooke’s Hall on Dec. 15 gives us the key to much of this sentiment. Its chairman said that the city had lost $20,000,000 a month in Southern orders, an estimate which merchants applauded; while the rougher element that later engaged in the Draft Riots adopted with a roar the resolution that, “believing our Southern brethren to be now engaged in the holy cause of American liberty, and trying to roll back the avalanche of Britishism, we extend to them our heartfelt sympathy.” The _Herald_ the same day computed the loss of the North from the “national convulsion” at $478,620,000, explaining that flour had fallen a dollar a barrel, wheat twenty cents a bushel, and many manufactories had suspended, since Lincoln’s election. Mayor Fernando Wood, in his message published Jan. 8, proposed that if disunion took place, New York should declare itself a free city, clinging to its commerce with both sections. Wood was a Philadelphia Quaker by birth, who began life as a cigar-maker, and made his way in politics by a physique so handsome, a personality so fascinating, and a character so unscrupulous that he has been well called the successor of Aaron Burr. The _Evening Post_ remarked that it had always known he was a knave, but it had not before suspected him of being so egregious a fool, and asked whether the city in seceding would take the Hudson River, Long Island Sound, New York Central, and Erie Canal with it--it couldn’t do without them. Even the _Herald_ sneered at his proposal. But William H. Russell, visiting the city, as late as March was shocked by the indifference which prominent citizens showed to the impending catastrophe.

This indifference the _Evening Post_, _Times_, and _Tribune_ were loyally trying to dispel. On Feb. 2, when five States had seceded, the _Evening Post_ warned them that the act meant war. “No one doubts that if the people of those States should transfer them back to Spain or France, the United States would be prepared to recover them at all the hazards of war; and, for the same reason, she will recover them from the hands of any other ‘foreign powers’ under any other names.” A fortnight later Bryant reiterated:

... Our government means no war, and will not, if it can be avoided, shed a drop of blood; if war comes, it must be made by the South; but let the South understand, when it does come, that eighty years of enterprise, of accumulation, and of progress in all the arts of warfare have not been lost upon the North. Cool in temperament, peaceful in its pursuits, loving industry and trade more than fighting, it has yet the old blood of the Saxon in its veins, and will go to battle with the same ponderous and irresistible energy with which it has reared its massive civilization out of the primitive wilderness.

The _Times_ was equally emphatic. When the _Journal of Commerce_ argued that two American nations, one free and one slave, might live as cordially together as the Protestant and Catholic parts of Switzerland, the _Tribune_ reminded it that in 1846–7 the Catholic cantons had tried to secede, and the Swiss government had instantly crushed the movement.

Bryant was keenly interested all the while in the formation of Lincoln’s Cabinet. Immediately after Lincoln’s nomination he had written him saying that “I was not without apprehensions that the nomination might fall upon some person encumbered with bad associates, and it was with a sense of relief and infinite satisfaction that I, with thousands of others, heard the news of your nomination.” He was desirous of having Cabinet places given his friends Chase and Gideon Welles, and Parke Godwin prints in his biography the three letters in which he urged the claims of these men and protested against Cameron. He also wrote Lincoln in behalf of a low tariff. But the biography does not contain the letter which Hiram Barney, Collector of the Port, wrote Bryant from Chicago immediately (Jan. 17, 1861) after seeing Lincoln regarding his Cabinet:

I went with Mapes, Opdyke, and Hageboom from Washington to Columbus and Springfield. We saw and conversed freely and fully with Gov. Chase and Mr. Lincoln. Mr. Lincoln received your letter announcing our mission the night previous to our arrival. I thank you for writing it. It was influential, I have no doubt, in procuring for us the favorable reception and hearing which was accorded to us. Mr. Lincoln has invited to his Cabinet only three persons, to wit--Mr. Bates, Mr. Seward, and Mr. Cameron. All these have accepted. In regard to the latter-named, however, Mr. Lincoln became satisfied that he had made a mistake, and wrote him requesting him to withdraw his acceptancy or decline. Mr. Cameron refused to answer the letter and was greatly offended by it. He, however, authorized a mutual friend to telegraph and he did so--that Mr. Cameron would not on any account accept a seat in his Cabinet. Mr. Lincoln has thus a quarrel on his hands which he is anxious to adjust satisfactorily before he proceeds further in his formation of his Cabinet. He is advised from Washington not to conclude further upon the members of his Cabinet until he reaches Washington, which will be probably about the middle of February--and he has concluded to act according to this advice. We tried to change this purpose, but I fear in vain. He has not offered a place to Mr. Chase. He wants and expects to invite him to the Treasury Department. But he fears this will offend Pennsylvania, and he wants to reconcile the Republicans of that State to it before it is settled. He thinks Mr. Chase would be willing to let the matter stand so and leave the option with him (Mr. Lincoln) of taking him when he can do so without embarrassment. He knows that Gov. Chase does not desire to go into the Cabinet and prefers the Senate--but he relies upon Gov. Chase’s patriotism to overcome the objections which arise from this unpleasant state of things.

He wants to take Judd, but this selection will offend some of his friends and he does not decide upon it. Welles of Connecticut is his preference for New England. Blair of Maryland is favorably considered. Dayton will either go into his Cabinet or will have the mission to England or France. One of these missions he intends to give to Cassius M. Clay. Caleb B. Smith of Indiana is urged upon him and he may have to take him instead of Judd. Caleb is almost as objectionable as Cameron, and for similar reasons. He received good naturedly and with some compliments my Cabinet which I gave him in pencil on a slip of paper, rather in joke--as follows:

Lincoln and Judd Seward and Chase Bates and Blair Dayton and Welles

He considers Chase the ablest and best man in America. He is determined that Justice shall be done to all his friends, especially to the Republicans of Democratic antecedents, and Mr. Seward understands that he will not allow the Democratic ... Republicans of New York to be deprived of their full share of influence and patronage under his Administration. He is opposed to all offers of compromise by Republicans which can in the least affect the integrity of the principles as set forth in the Chicago platform.

If he would act now on his own judgment and preferences he would make a good Cabinet not much different from that I have above mentioned. What he will ultimately do after reaching Washington no one, not even himself, can tell. He wants to please and satisfy all his friends.

As this letter indicates, the _Evening Post_ office was one of the chief Eastern centers from which the “Democratic Republicans” in these dark months tried to make their influence felt upon the incoming Administration.

Lincoln’s inaugural address was warmly applauded by the _Evening Post_. Bryant had seen the President-elect at the Astor House as he passed through New York, and taken new faith in him. “Admirable as the inaugural address is in all its parts--convincing in argument, concise and pithy in manner and simple in style--the generous and conciliatory tone is the most admirable,” the poet wrote. “Mr. Lincoln thoroughly refutes the theory of secession. He points out its follies and warns the disaffected districts against its consequences, but he does so in the kindly, pitying manner of a father who reasons with an erring child.” On inauguration day the _Evening Post_ had again predicted war with the rebels, and again declared that “the Unionists of our States will arise and deal them the destruction they deserve.” The _Tribune_ regarded the message in the same way. It especially praised “the tone of almost tenderness,” below which Lincoln’s iron determination was evident. The message would carry to twenty millions the tidings that the Federal Government still lived, “with a _Man_ at the head of it.” The _World_ and _Times_ spoke in similar terms.

But the secessionist press abused this noble state paper roundly. The _Herald_, which had been praising Buchanan as a wise and just statesman, and attacking Lincoln as an incompetent, said that the new President might almost as well have told his audience a funny story and let it go. His speech was a body of vague generalities artfully designed to allow its readers to make whatever interpretations they pleased. “It is neither candid nor statesmanlike; nor does it possess any essential of dignity or patriotism. It would have caused a Washington to mourn, and would have inspired Jefferson, Madison, or Jackson with contempt.” Gerard Hallock in the _Journal of Commerce_ involved himself in a neat contradiction, writing: “The President puts forth earnest professions of love for the Union, and places justly and properly much stress upon his duty to preserve it and execute the laws. But he commits the practical error of setting up the theory of an unbroken Union, against the stubborn fact of a divided and dissevered one.” Why, asked Bryant, was it “just” for the President to dwell upon his duty to preserve the Union, and yet “a practical error” to do so?

Thus the nation moved rapidly toward civil war. While the _Herald_, _Journal of Commerce_, _Express_, and _Daily News_ still talked of compromise, actually they had given up hope of it and spent their chief energies in decrying coercion; the first-named having admitted as much in an editorial of Feb. 3 headed “No Compromise Now Except That of a Peaceable Separation.” In fact, all these journals found in the idea of a division much to commend. At the end of January, Bennett’s writers began preaching imperialistic doctrines. “North America is too large for one government,” the _Herald_ reflected on the 24th, “but establish two and they in good time will cover the continent.” The next day, under the title, “Manifest Destiny of the North and South,” it drew an alluring picture of the American conquests that would follow the dissolution of the Union. Inevitably, the Confederacy would subdue Mexico, Cuba, and other Caribbean lands. The United States would conquer Canada. The two great nations would be the most friendly of allies. “Northern troops may yet have to repel invaders of the possessions of slave-holders in Mexico and Venezuela, and our fleet will joyfully aid in dispersing new Spanish armadas on the coast of Cuba. Nor do we doubt that ... under the walls of Quebec, and on the banks of the St. Lawrence, legions from Louisiana, Alabama, and South Carolina will aid us.” This glorious vision of unlimited booty was repeatedly dwelt upon.

The _Herald_ had less Northern influence than its large circulation would seem to imply, and was hearkened to chiefly at the South. Many secessionists, remembering the business and social connections of the South with the metropolis, and the large Democratic majority New York generally gave, believed that the city would assist to divide the North and aid the rebellion. “The New York _Herald_ and New York _Evening Express_ have done much toward disseminating this false theory,” said the New Orleans _Picayune_ later. The Chicago _Tribune_ that summer quoted a Southern visitor as saying “that we of the North can have little or no idea of the pestilent influence which the New York _News_ and other journals of that sort have exerted upon the popular mind of that section.” Probably less harm was done the Union by Bennett’s erratic ideas than by Greeley’s influential opinion that if the South was determined to go, go she ought. Bryant’s editorials in the _Evening Post_, above those of any other New York journal, expressed an elevated, unwavering, and steadying demand for loyalty to the Constitution. He had no patience with Greeley’s acquiescence in a popular-sovereignty doctrine of secession. He was a far abler writer than any man on the staff of the _Times_ or _World_, even Raymond. His superior steadfastness and shrewdness of judgment was strikingly illustrated just before the war began.

On April 3, as if by concert, the _Tribune_ and _Times_ published long and emphatic editorials attacking Lincoln for his alleged indecision and inactivity. The _Tribune_ headed its editorial “Come to the Point!” and demanded that a programme be laid down. Greeley apparently cared little what this programme should be. “If the Union is to be maintained at all hazards, let the word be passed along the line that the laws are to be enforced.... If the secession of the Gulf States--and of any more that choose to follow--is to be regarded as a fixed fact, let that be proclaimed, and let the line of revenue collection be established and maintained this side of them.” The _Times_ devoted two columns to “Wanted--A Policy.” The Administration, it said, had fallen so far short of public expectations that the Union was weaker than a month before. Indeed, the Administration had exhibited “a blindness and a stolidity without a parallel in the history of intelligent statesmanship.” Lincoln had “spent time and strength in feeding rapacious and selfish politicians, which should have been bestowed upon saving the Union”; and “we tell him ... that he must go up to a higher level than he has yet reached, before he can see and realize the high duties to which he has been called.” Such utterances lent too much support to the _Herald’s_ constant statements that “the Lincoln Administration is cowardly, mean, and vicious,” its constant references to “the incompetent, ignorant, and desperate ‘Honest Abe.’”

In a crushing editorial next day, Bryant demolished these peevish outbursts. First, he pointed out, it was hard within thirty days to decide what course was best as regarded the seceding States and the wavering border States. The Cabinet was said to be divided, and the most careful reflection, investigation, and debate was necessary for a question so big with the fate of the republic. Second, how could the facile critics know that Lincoln had not fixed upon his policy, but concluded to make it known by execution, not by a windy proclamation? “If Fort Sumter is to be reinforced, should we give the rebels previous notice?” There existed other considerations, as the fact that every day officers in the army and navy were going over to the rebels, and if Lincoln decided upon an energetic course it would be indispensable to be able to count on an energetic execution in every contingency. This answer displayed an admirable patience--a patience of which Bryant might well have had a larger stock in the four years to come.

The first edition of the _Evening Post_ on April 13 carried the news that the bombardment of Fort Sumter had begun, and carried also an editorial written with all Bryant’s high fervor:

This is a day which will be ever memorable in our annals. To-day treason has risen from blustering words to cowardly deeds. Men made reckless by a long life of political gambling--for years cherishing treason next their hearts while swearing fealty to the government--have at last goaded themselves on to murder a small band of faithful soldiers. They have deliberately chosen the issue of battle. To-day, who hesitates in his allegiance is a traitor with them....

To-day the nation looks to the government to put down treason forever.... It will not grudge the men or the money which are needed. We have enjoyed for eighty years the blessings of liberty and constitutional government. It is a small sacrifice we are now to lay upon the altar. In the name of constitutional liberty, in the name of law and order, in the name of all that is dear to freemen, we shall put down treason and restore the supremacy of the Constitution.

The day was one of intense excitement. The _Evening Post_ of Monday, April 15, reported that thousands of eager inquirers had thronged the streets in the neighborhood of the office and packed the counting-room downstairs until there was no room for a single additional person. The successive editions were seized upon madly. At five the first rumor of Sumter’s surrender came over the wires, and at five-thirty it was confirmed. Within a space of seconds rather than minutes the fourth edition, containing the complete news, was being cried on the streets. The _Herald_ next morning sold 135,000 copies, a world’s record. That Monday Bryant’s leading editorial, “The Union, Now and Forever,” took its text in the President’s call for volunteers. “If he calls for only 75,000,” said the _Evening Post_, “it is because he knows that he can have a million if he needs them.” George Cary Eggleston has said that he and Bryant’s other associates were often amazed to see how calmly he would write an editorial that proved full of intense eloquence, every line blazing. This was such an editorial, ending in a ringing peroration: “‘God speed the President!’ is the voice of millions of determined freemen to-day.”