The Evening Post

“ Charles Dudley Warner wrote at the same time in the Hartford Press: “The Evening Post is the most fearless and rigidly honest paper in the country, and its ability is equal to its moral worth. Some of its ordinary editorials are magnificent specimens of English.” A chorus of praise was aroused by the enlargement of the journal this year. “The Evening Post, we think, is the best newspaper in the United States,” remarked the Elmira Advertiser; the New Bedford Standard spoke of “the best paper in the United States, the Evening Post” ”

“ The Evening Post reported that at the end of Lincoln’s speech the audience arose almost to a man, and expressed its approbation by the most enthusiastic applause, the waving of handkerchiefs and hats, and repeated cheers. ”

“ Probably there are not more than half a dozen pens in all Park Row and four of them are on The Evening Post.
We find the difference in spirit not so great. There is a great deal about the terrific strain of newspaper work and how a brutal city editor will drive a finely tempered reporter until he has had the best of his brains and then toss him aside like a withered violet. ”

“ The sixpenny journals, the Evening Post, Commercial Advertiser, Courier, Journal of Commerce, and Express, perforce learned much from the Herald about news-gathering. Years later the Evening Post described the new spirit of enterprise which had seized upon journalism by the early forties:
In those days expresses were run on election nights, and in times of great excitement the Herald and Tribune raced locomotive engines against each other in order to get the earliest news ”

“ 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 since the Civil War has been so much the expression of a single mind and character as the Evening Post from 1883 to 1899. ”

“ It is the oldest daily in the larger American cities which has kept its name intact. The Aurora, the Centinel, the American Citizen, Porcupine’s Gazette, whose pages the generation of Washington and Adams, Jefferson and Burr, scanned so carefully, are mere historical shades; but the Evening Post, founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton and a group of intimate political lieutenants, for the expression of Hamilton’s views, remains a living link between that day of national beginnings and our own. ”

“ Herald, a Federalist sheet, “is expected in the Evening Post of Mr. Coleman, than whom no man perhaps out of the weeping and bereft family of his illustrious friend can more fervently bewail the loss.” On the day of the funeral the Evening Post was suspended, the only time in its history that it missed an issue because of a death, and for a week all its news columns carried heavy black borders. Unfortunately, the editor did not redeem his promise of a character sketch, professing himself too deeply grieved. ”

“ In accordance with this conception of my functions, I always held the news idea in mind. I was alert to secure advance sheets of important books, in order that the Evening Post might be the first of newspapers to tell readers about them.
Usually the publishers were ready and eager to give the Evening Post these opportunities, though the literary editors of some morning newspapers bitterly complained of what they regarded as favoritism when I was able to anticipate them. On one very notable occasion, however, great pains were taken by the publishers to avoid all [218] grounds of complaint. ”

“ The Civil War was the heroic age of American press enterprise, and while the Evening Post conducted a less extensive war establishment than the Herald, Tribune, or Times—the Herald spent $500,000 on its correspondence—Nordhoff saw that it maintained a creditable position. ”

“ Firmness equally tempered with good feeling is what we want—not generosity with twitches of firmness now and then.” W. H. Furness, the noted Philadelphia minister, sent another unsolicited tribute in the heat of the war, saying that he valued the Tribune, but was particularly grateful for the sound, calm vision of the Evening Post, and that “it stands in my esteem at the head of the American press. It is cheering that there is abroad such an educator of the public mind.” Caleb Cushing wrote (1868) :
You may regard it as quite superfluous for me to speak in commendation of the Evening Post ”

“ The great majority of men of property in the city were with the Evening Post in its opposition; so were most of the lawyers, the faculty of Columbia College, the pastors of the leading churches, and professional men in general. On June 15, four days before the declaration of war, the Evening Post published a memorial of protest signed by fifty-six principal merchants, John Jacob Astor heading the list. ”

“ We cannot see, for our part, why it should not attract men of the first talents and the most exalted virtues. Why should not the discussions of the daily press demand as strong reasoning powers, as large and comprehensive ideas, as profound an acquaintance with principles, eloquence as commanding, and a style of argument as manly and elevated, as the debates of the Senate? ”

“ The whole aspect of the humbler press has changed within these few years. Unquestionably the people have changed. Visit, if you can, the interior of that marvellous human machine, the General Post-Office, on a Friday evening, from half-past five to six o'clock. Look with awe upon the tons of newspapers that are crowding in to be distributed through the habitable globe. Think silently how potent a power is this for good or for evil. ”

“ If any managing editor could claim the credit which has to be given an overturned sleigh and a jealous ex-sheriff, he would be immortal. Why, when the Evening Post and Tribune had been attacking385 the régime of graft for years, did they not cut into the tumor? We may lay part of the blame on journalistic timidity, and the lack at that time of a tradition of investigative enterprise in journalism ”

“ The Evening Post was anxious to do President Sparks justice. It admitted his industry and conscientious devotion, shown in the labor he had spent at the thirteen capitals of the original States, wherever else he could find Revolutionary papers, and in the public offices of London and Paris. It recognized that the demand for absolutely literal transcriptions was a new one in the field of scholarship. But to this demand the controversy gave a decided impetus. ”

“ All that I can say on the subject is to declare with the utmost sincerity that not a single morning has arisen without my forming the resolution to write before the evening, and that not a single evening post-bell has rang without sounding the alarm to my conscience. In the mean time, days, hours and weeks have imperceptibly rolled away: a perpetual hurry and long days of Parliamentary business, the whole world coming to town at once, and a great deal of occupation at home relative to my History, which will come out some time after Christmas. ”

“ It need not be said that the Paris correspondence which E. L. Godkin, later editor, furnished in 1862, offered the shrewdest and clearest view of French opinion published in any American newspaper. There was a large group of occasional correspondents at various points along the wide fighting line. The Evening Post profited, in a way that it was quite impossible for the Herald to do, from the kindness of loyal Union men of prominence who came into contact with great events or figures, and without thought of remuneration wrote to Bryant. ”

“ But the editor’s fears that he would stand alone were at once dissipated. The World lost no time in denouncing the belligerent message as “A Great Blunder,” and so did the Journal of Commerce. Among prominent Democratic newspapers which took their stand with the Evening Post were the Charleston News and Courier, Wilmington Every Evening, Memphis Commercial, and Louisville Post. The Cleveland Plain Dealer summed up the view of a multitude of thoughtful men in a little jest: “Teacher:—Johnny, now tell us what we learn from the Monroe Doctrine. ”

“ Newspaper exchanges, and current pamphlets, magazines, and reviews would be searched for whatever was most informing and entertaining. Letter-writers were asked not to enclose their names, a bad rule which Coleman soon found it expedient to abrogate. Prominent in the prospectus was the paragraph still carried at the head of the Evening Post’s editorial columns:
The design of this paper is to diffuse among the people correct information on all interesting subjects, to inculcate just principles in religion, morals, and politics ”

“ I am letting the World speak for itself merely as an example of what many splendid newspapers have accomplished as leaders in public movements. The New York Evening Post is another example, it having long led popular demand for vocational guidance and control. ”

“ By good natural abilities, by industry, by temperance, by sympathy with what is noblest and best in human nature, and by earnest purpose, the ignorant, friendless, unknown printer’s boy of a few years since became the powerful and famous journalist, whose words went forth to the ends of the earth, affecting the destinies of all mankind.
II
An entirely different question was posed by the election of 1876—the question whether the long friendship of Bryant and the former sub-editors for Samuel J. Tilden should carry the Evening Post over to the Democratic side. ”

“ It was his business to be censorious—to make the Nation, as Charles Dudley Warner said, “the weekly judgment day.” But as Howells writes, practically he was one of the most hopeful of men, for he was always striving to make a bad world better. He deeply resented the charge that the Evening Post was merely a destructive critic, and used to challenge any one to cite an instance in which it had exposed an evil without suggesting a remedy. ”

“ The circulation of the Mercantile Advertiser, we are told by Thurlow Weed, who was then working on the Courier, was considered enormous. It seldom had more than one and a half or two columns of news, while Lang’s Gazette frequently carried only a half column; so that the Evening Post was clearly the leading newspaper. People in the early twenties regarded it as a well established institution. Its editor had become one of the lesser notables of the city, like Dr. ”

“ Of course, there are exceptional cases, and I have some of these in mind, but for the most part I can perceive no essential difference between the best stories in the Saturday Evening Post and the best stories in Harper's Magazine for example. The difference that every one feels, and that exists, is one of emphasis rather than of type. ”

“ They ought to be circulated over the whole land as one of the best campaign documents. They stand in striking contrast with the inefficient speeches of Hawley, Hoard, and Dawes, and the essays and letters of Mead, Bliss & Co. Allow me to say that the Evening Post has never stood higher in its long and honorable life than now. It may almost be called the ideal family newspaper.” As a matter of fact, the editorials were circulated as campaign documents. Godkin’s articles on Blaine’s railway transactions sold 20,000 copies in pamphlet form before Sept. ”

“ These were the first page headlines on the 17th. Inside were ribbon headlines running across the next half dozen pages. “Belief in Havana That the Maine Was Anchored Over a Mine”; “Foreign Nations Shocked by the Belief in Spanish Treachery”; “War Probable if Spaniards Blew Up American Warship”; “Let the Cabinet Soon Avenge the Slaughtered Sailors.” Next day the Journal blared,510 “The Whole Country Thrills With the War Fever,” while it reported a poll of both houses showing an overwhelming sentiment in favor of immediate intervention. ”

“ The paper was enlarged in 1840, going from seven columns to eight and lengthening its page, while in 1842 commenced the issuance of a weekly Evening Post, in addition to the semi-weekly—a profitable innovation. It was wonderful that so few men could do so much. In the fact that they did we have the explanation of a little note Mrs. Bryant wrote to Mrs. William Ware, wife of the author of “Zenobia,” in the late thirties: “Mr. ”

“ As he wends his way homeward, he meets a citizen who has for once for some reason arisen at what seems to him an unholy hour of the morning.
“Good morning,” says the citizen, “what in the world are you doing up so early?”
“Oh,” says the night editor, “we newspaper men have to rise real early in order to get the paper out by breakfast time.”
“To be sure, to be sure,” says the citizen. “I never thought of that!”
(Houston Daily Post, Sunday morning, March 29, 1896.) ”

“ For the daily hunt the canoe was moored where the jungle met the river, but every evening at early sunset the camp was made at the edge of some broad, sandy playa as far from the forest as possible. Long before camping the Tacanas had kept a shrewd lookout for recent signs of savages, and after chattering among themselves would indicate a playa that seemed proper and secure. The savages, primitive and nomadic, scarcely more than animals, offered no menace by daylight, but in the darkness lies their opportunity. ”

“ But I am chiefly conscious to-night of the debt of gratitude we all owe to the press. The newspaper—say what you will of it—is the immediate recorder and interpreter of life. Morning and evening it offers us that perpetual stimulus which makes the zest of living. Be your interests what they may, though you abstract your mind from the tumult of affairs and devote it to art or science, you cannot open a news [Pg 683] paper without the sensation of laying your hand upon the throbbing pulse of the world. ”

“ The deep sapphire of the sea rippling under the brisk evening breeze, the turquoise heaven that swept down to the horizon softly shifting against the sapphire contrast to a mystery of fragile green, the field of battle boiling and eddying in the mellow orange glow of the long rays of the setting sun and bursting into masses of iridescent spray made a noble setting worthy of the cause, and in it eighty tons of mother-love and devotion measuring itself in horse-power and foot-tons was slowly drooping under the hail from a slim, glittering, iridescent arc. ”