As Mr. Towse adds, probably Bryant, now too old to be much in the office, never knew the precise truth of this affair; and if he did, may have thought that his interference would be bootless, and would only intensify the irritation of the episode. But we can see why men jocularly called Henderson “the wicked partner,” and the Post a Spenlow and Jorkins establishment.
Parke Godwin maintained his attitude of constant suspicion toward the paper’s publisher. Two years after the sale of his third share of the Post, he obtained evidence which convinced him, as he wrote Bryant, that he had been overreached by Henderson “to the extent of one hundred thousand dollars at least.” His efforts to institute an inquiry came to nothing, and he ended them by sending the poet a solemn note of warning: “I regard Mr. Henderson as a far-seeing and adroit rogue; his design from the beginning has been and still is to get exclusive possession of the Evening Post, at much less than its real value, which I expected to prove was much more nearly a million than half a million dollars” (July, 1870). Early in the seventies he took charge of the Post for various short periods, and what he then observed increased his apprehensions, or, as Henderson’s defenders would say, his prejudices. At the beginning of 1878 he prevailed upon Bryant to have an investigation of the newspaper’s finances made by Judge Monell, and the result was the reorganization already chronicled.
In brief, Judge Monell’s inquiries showed that very large sums were owed to Bryant by Henderson, and that for a long period Henderson’s private financial affairs, which had been subjected to a severe strain by his erection of the new building, had not been properly separated from those of the Evening Post. Had it not been for these disclosures, the astute business manager would undoubtedly have been able to step forward soon after Bryant’s death and take control. But he could not immediately meet his debts to the Bryant family, and was forced to consent to an arrangement which wrecked whatever plans in that direction he may have laid. Henderson owned fifty shares, Bryant forty-eight, Julia Bryant one, and Judge Monell one. Under the new arrangement Henderson pledged thirty of his shares to Bryant as security for his debts, and twenty to Parke Godwin, who reëntered the company, while Bryant also pledged twenty shares to Godwin. The Board of Trustees was so constituted that the position of the Bryant family was made secure. Henderson intended to move heaven and earth to redeem his shares; but, wrote Judge Monell in an opinion for the family, even if he did that “he cannot change the direction nor regain control. This can only be done by persons holding a majority of the stock.”
Godwin when made editor was regarded as one of the ablest and most experienced journalists in New York. Far behind him were the youthful, enthusiastic days of the forties, when he had been an ardent apostle of Fourierism, had applauded the Brook Farm experiment, helping edit the organ of that community, the Harbinger, and had advised his friend Charles A. Dana that it was possible for a young journalist to cultivate high thinking and high ambitions in New York on $1,000 a year. He had worked like a Trojan then on the Post, and had made several unsuccessful ventures into the magazine field. Far behind him were the pinched years of the fifties when, having temporarily left the Post, he was associate editor of the struggling Putnam’s Magazine, and gave it national reputation by his vigorous assaults upon the slavery forces and President Pierce. It was with a touch of bitterness that he had complained in 1860, when he rejoined the Evening Post, that the latter had never paid him more than $50 a week. But, purchasing Bigelow’s share of the paper at a bargain, its Civil War profits made him rich.
The editorial writing done by Godwin had not the eloquence or finish of Bryant’s, but it showed an equal grasp of political principles, and a better understanding of economic problems. He was a real scholar, the author of many books, able to appeal to cultivated audiences. His legal, literary, and historical studies gave him a distinct advantage over the ordinary journalist of the time, not college bred and too busy for wide reading. Young Henry Watterson justly wrote of him in 1871, when he had temporarily left his profession again:
It is a thousand pities that a man of Parke Godwin’s strength of mind and strength of principle is by any chance or cause cut off from his proper sphere of usefulness and power, the press of New York. He has a clearer head and less gush than Greeley, and he is hardly any lazier than Manton Marble, though older; he writes with as much dash and point as Hurlburt, and his knowledge of the practice of journalism is not inferior to that of Greeley and Nordhoff. No leading writer of the day makes more impression on the public mind than he could make, and in losing him along with Hudson the journals of the great metropolis are real and not apparent sufferers. Godwin is eminently a leader-writer, and whenever he goes to work on a newspaper the addition is sure to be felt forthwith.
Unfortunately, he was now sixty-two, and well beyond his prime, while the defect of which Watterson speaks, his laziness, had grown upon him. In the past he had been noted for his editorial aggressiveness, and the most “radical” of the Post’s utterances in the Civil War are attributable to him. It was once said that, in the Evening Post office in the seventies, “he was a lion in a den of Daniels.” George Cary Eggleston, who worked with him when he was editor 1878–1881, tells us that “he knew how to say strong things in a strong way. He could wield the rapier of subtle sarcasm, and the bludgeon of denunciation with an equally skilful hand. Sometimes he brought even a trip-hammer into play with startling effect.” Eggleston cites an incident which happened during Sarah Bernhardt’s first visit to New York in 1880. A sensational clergyman, who always denounced the theater as the gateway of hell, sent the Evening Post a vehement protest against the space it was giving Mme. Bernhardt, whom he characterized as a woman of immoral character and dissolute conduct. This letter he headed, “Quite Enough of Sara Bernhardt.” Godwin was enraged. He instantly penned an editorial answer, which he entitled “Quite Enough of Blank”—Blank being the clergyman’s name, used in full. Pointing out that Mme. Bernhardt had asked for American attention solely as an artist, that the Post had treated her only in that light, and that the charge that she was immoral was totally without supporting evidence anyway, he demolished the luckless cleric. But Eggleston deplores “a certain constitutional indolence” of Godwin’s as depriving the world of the fruits of his ripest powers, and this fault was now evident. He went much into society, he sometimes wrote his editorials in bed in the morning and sent them down by messenger, and sometimes a promised editorial did not appear.
Upon all the public issues which had importance during Godwin’s editorship the position of the Post had already been well fixed. It had been an advocate of civil service reform early in the sixties, at a time when even well-informed men, like Henry Adams in a conversation with E. L. Godkin, spoke of it only as “something Prussian.” It had urged an early resumption of specie payments, had bitterly opposed the Bland Act of 1878 for the coinage of two to four million dollars’ worth of silver monthly, saying that it was “a public disgrace,” and had resisted the greenback party. It was deeply suspicious of pensions legislation, and had applauded Grant’s veto of the bounty bill. It had early decided that Blaine was “one of our superfluous statesmen,” and that the sooner he was discarded, the better. It had said in 1875 that the Granger movement promised to leave behind it a valuable legacy of general railway legislation “which, tested by practice, will afford us a foundation for our future legislation on questions of transportation.” Year in and year out it asked for a lower tariff—a tariff for revenue only—and attacked all other forms of subsidy for private enterprises. Godwin had no momentous decisions to make.
It was by no means a foregone conclusion in 1880 that the Post would support the Republican ticket, for in advance of the Republican Convention it showed itself equally hostile to Grant (whom the Times was advocating) and to Blaine (the Tribune’s favorite). But as soon as word came of Garfield’s nomination, it hailed it as “a grand result,” and “a glorious escape from Grant and Blaine.” Of Gen. Hancock, the Democratic nominee, the Post remarked that his only recommendation was his military record, and that his party proposed to fill the Presidential chair with the uniform of a major-general, a sword, and a pair of spurs.
During the final months of 1879, and throughout 1880, Godwin and Henderson met and spoke to each other with grave, cold courtesy. They even consulted with each other. But beneath the surface their mutual hostility never slackened, and their associates knew they were at daggers drawn. The crisis could not long be delayed.