The Evening Post: A Century of Journalism

by Allan Nevins

But its chief indignation was reserved for the war press, and especially for the Journal and World. These newspapers presented a curious study. From the files of the Evening Post it would hardly have been gathered that the nation was laboring under marked excitement, but from the editorials, pictures, and lurid headlines of the other two it appeared that the people were at fever heat.

“The Worst Insult to the United States in Its History,” was the heading the Journal gave De Lome’s letter. For days thereafter nearly every headline contained the word “war.” “Spain Makes War on the Journal by Seizing the Yacht Buccaneer,” ran one, this being Hearst’s news-boat at Havana. “Threatening Moves by Both Spain and the United States—We Send Another War Vessel to Join Maine at Sea,” followed it next day. After the catastrophe to the Maine the Journal made the welkin ring. “The Warship Maine Was Split in Two by an Enemy’s Secret Infernal Machine!” it trumpeted. “Officers and Men at Key West Describe the Mysterious Rending of the Vessel, and Say It Was Done by Design and Not by Accident—Captain Sigsbee Practically Declares That His Ship Was Blown Up by a Mine or Torpedo.” 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, “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 World also knew positively within a few hours that the Maine was blown up by Spanish treachery. When Secretary Long pleaded for patience, it exposed him in a glaring indictment: “Long’s Exoneration of Spain Nets Senatorial Clique $20,000,000.” That is, it accused Senators of playing the market. On the same page a news-story demanded a whole bank of headlines. “‘Send Maine Away!’ Begged a Stranger at Our Consulate—Every Day for a Week a Mysterious Elderly Spaniard Offered That Warning, But It Was Unheeded, for He Was Deemed a Crank.” It had the same iteration as the Journal. Thus on March 4 its headlines ran, “Torpedo Blew Up the Maine, High Spanish Officer Says—If His Story Is True, It Verifies the World Correspondent’s Earliest News.” On March 12 it announced: “Full and Convincing Proof That the Maine Was Destroyed Exactly as the World Exclusively and Authoritatively Told Three Days After the Disaster.”

The Journal and World were the two New York newspapers then preëminent for their illustrations. The former specialized in pictures of “How the Maine Actually Looks, Wrecked by Spanish Treachery.” It had drawings of dead bodies, “vultures hovering over their grim feast”; piles of coffins; divers among the tangled wreckage; starving reconcentrados; the Vizcaya in New York harbor; Mayor Van Wyck insulting the Vizcaya’s captain at City Hall; big guns being mounted on American forts; of troops drilling; and a “frenzy on the stock exchange, realizing the imminence of war.” More than a month before war was declared the Journal plastered its first page with an announcement of its “War Fleet, Correspondents, and Artists,” these including Julian Hawthorne, James Creelman, Alfred Henry Lewis, and Frederic Remington. The World was notable for cartoons, the prevailing theme of which was Uncle Sam kicking Spain out of Cuba into the Atlantic.

Mr. Godkin’s opinion of the newspaper jingoes was only a little more savage than that of many other sober men. When a Journal reporter just before war began fabricated an interview with Roosevelt, then Assistant Secretary of the Navy, the latter seized the opportunity for a frank statement of his estimate of the paper. When the same sheet asked ex-President Cleveland to serve on a committee to erect a monument to the Maine heroes, Mr. Cleveland wired back: “I decline to allow my sorrow for those who died on the Maine to be perverted to an advertising scheme for the New York Journal.” Godkin was brutally frank. “A yellow journal office is probably the nearest approach, in atmosphere, to hell, existing in any Christian state,” he wrote. This press he deemed a totally irresponsible force, without the restraint of conscience, law, or the police. It treated war, he said, as a prize fight, and begat in hundreds of thousands of the class which enjoys prize-fights an eager desire to read about it. “These hundreds of thousands write to their Congressmen clamoring for war, as the Romans used to clamor for panem et circenses, and as the timid and quiet are generally attending only too closely to their business, the Congressman concludes that if he, too, does not shout for war, he will lose his seat.... Our cheap press to-day speaks in tones never before heard out of Paris. It urges upon ignorant people schemes more savage, disregard of either policy, or justice, or experience more complete, than the modern world has witnessed since the French Revolution.”

It was with reference to such journalism that the Times, which this year went to the one-cent basis of the World and Journal, spoke of itself as a paper which does not “soil the breakfast table.” Godkin argued that the public, by purchasing the yellow sheets, made itself the accomplice of their jingo editors. The Journal struck back at him and Bennett of the Herald. It was not surprised, it said, by the abuse it received from editors who either lived in Europe, or, being native there, came to this country too late in life to absorb the spirit of American institutions; these men were unfitted to gauge the trend and force of national opinion, and were un-American in their instincts, while the Journal, with its million buyers a day, was an American paper for the American people.

Until just before the declaration of war, Godkin tried to cling to his faith in McKinley’s steadfastness. On April 5 he wrote: “He has, with a firmness for which we confess we did not give him credit, retained the Cuban matter in his own hands, and has made no concealment of his belief that he could settle it, if left alone, by peaceful methods.” The editor believed that America could justly demand of Spain an immediate armistice, relief of the reconcentrados, and an offer of genuine autonomy to the Cubans. It appeared in the early days of April that Premier Sagasta was willing to concede as much, and Godkin thought this offered a bridge to assured peace. Why not accept the Spanish Ministry’s concessions, he wrote April 9 and later, and give a fair trial to their autonomy? What reason had we to make a further demand for the withdrawal of all Spanish troops? And if we did demand it, how could we expect Spain to accede until the Cortes met on April 25, since only the Cortes had power to surrender Spanish territory? It was true that the Cubans refused an armistice and autonomy. But, argued Godkin, they did so only because they counted on dragging us into the war upon the margin between autonomy and absolute independence. And what a pitiful margin that was! No one believed that the Cubans were ready for absolute independence, for like the Central American peoples, they would be turbulent and unstable, requiring constant oversight. Then why not leave them under the Spanish flag so long as they had the healthy substance, even though not the name, of freedom?

Mr. Godkin did not give up hope even when, on April 11, McKinley sent Congress his war message, asking that he be empowered to use the armed forces of the United States “to secure a full and final termination of hostilities between the Government of Spain and the people of Cuba.” He took the view that this was not equivalent to a use of our armed forces against Spain—that it meant only that McKinley was going to insist upon a truce. The Evening Post seized upon the fact that McKinley had advised against recognition of the Cuban Republic, and upon his hopeful words regarding Queen Isabel’s proclamation of an armistice, as proof that the door to peace was not closed. In fact, many sober men hoped for days after this message that McKinley would somehow avert a collision with Spain. Howells says that on one of these warm April nights he walked down the street with Godkin, the two talking gloomily of the outlook, and that as they parted, Godkin shook off his fears with a quick, “O, well, there isn’t going to be any war, after all.” But Spain at once severed diplomatic relations, the United States declared a blockade of Cuba, and the die was cast. A few mornings after Godkin’s talk with Howells, the jingo press gloated over the capture of a poor little Spanish schooner, whose captain and owner wept to find his all confiscated.

Not until later was it revealed that when he sent his war message to Congress, President McKinley failed to inform it of the full scope and definiteness of the Spanish concessions regarding Cuba. Of this failure two views may be taken. One is that he knew no reliance could be placed upon Spain’s good faith, and that she could not end the intolerable state of affairs in the island if she tried. The other is that McKinley was guilty of duplicity all along; that he had played a waiting game until preparations could be made for war and the public mind accustomed to it, and then willingly let the advocates of intervention have their way. Godkin and the Post took the second view, and in later days spoke of the President’s conduct in this crisis with scorn.

Yet the newspaper, applauded though it was in its protestant attitude by the intellectual group which Howells, Carl Schurz, Charles Eliot Norton, and Charles Francis Adams represented, rallied to support the war. Since it had come, it hoped it would be short and decisive. Before hostilities began, it had said much regarding the unpreparedness of the nation, and the certainty of graft in conducting the conflict. But now it urged the energetic prosecution of the contest, praised the martial ardor of American youth, and commended the military and naval policies of the Administration. Mr. Godkin had no petty rancor and no lack of patriotism. Other journals were lavish of faultfinding, but no criticism found its way into the Evening Post until practically all fighting was ended.