Except for one advance intimation, the news of peace might have been as unexpected as that of the victory of New Orleans. This intimation came on Feb. 9, in a curiously roundabout manner. A privateer cruising in British waters captured a prize which bore London newspapers dating to Nov. 28, and carried them to Salem, Mass., whence their contents were reprinted all over the North. They contained the speech of the Prince Regent on Nov. 11, and the proceedings of the Commons immediately afterwards, holding out hope for a prompt ending of the war.
The news of peace itself electrified the city two days later, reaching it by the British sloop Favorite, which bore one of the secretaries of the American legation in London, at eight o’clock on Saturday evening. No journal was so indecorous as to issue a special Sunday edition, but on Monday the Evening Post contained a full account of the delirium of rejoicing with which the intelligence was greeted. Nearly every window in the principal streets was illuminated, and Broadway was filled with laughing, huzzaing, exalted people, carrying torches or candles, and jamming the way for two hours. On Tuesday the Evening Post recorded that sugar had fallen from $26 a hundred-weight to $12.50, tea from $2.25 a pound to $1, and tin from $80 a box to $25, while specie, which had been at 22 per cent. premium, was now only at 2 per cent., and six per cent. Government stock had risen from 76 to 86. The wharves were an animated scene, ship advertisements were pouring in, and “it is really wonderful to see the change produced in a few hours in the City of New York.”
And what of the Napoleonic wars? All European news was then obtained from files of foreign papers, some of which came to New York journals direct, and some of which were supplied by merchants and shippers. It was usual, whenever a packet arrived with a fresh batch, to cut the domestic news to a few paragraphs, stop any series of editorial articles in hand, and for several days fill the columns with extracts and summaries. Though in 1812 a ship came from Belfast in the remarkable time of twenty-two days, forty days was the average from London or Liverpool, and European news was hence from one to two months late. Sometimes a traveler, and frequently a ship-captain, brought news by word of mouth.
A detailed account from the London prints of Napoleon’s marriage at Vienna was not published by the Evening Post till ten weeks after the event. Wellington stormed Badajos on April 7, 1812, and the Evening Post announced the fact on June 11, or more than two months later; while the battle of Salamanca that summer, where Wellington “beat forty thousand in forty minutes,” was not known for sixty-six days, the news coming in part through a traveler who arrived from Cadiz at Salem, and was interviewed by a correspondent there. It was the middle of October when the armies of Napoleon and the Allies took position for the battle of Leipsic, and Coleman was not able to publish his three-column summary from a London paper till just after New Year’s. When the description of the battle of Toulouse came in, there occurred an office tragedy:
Here ought to follow an account of a great battle between Lord Wellington and Soult [explained Coleman after an abrupt break in the news], and other selections amounting to about two columns, but it being necessary to get it set up abroad, the boy in bringing it home blundered down in the street, and threw the types into irretrievable confusion. It will be given to-morrow.
After that wily and selfish old invalid Bourbon, Louis XVIII, given his crown by the Allies, visited London in state, a spectator sent a vivid account of his triumphal passage up Piccadilly to the Evening Post. Louis had passed so near that this tourist could have touched him. “He is very corpulent, with a round face, dark eyes, prominent features, the character of countenance much like that of the portraits of the other Louises; a pleasant face; his eyes were suffused with tears.” Then came the Hundred Days; and the greatest European news of all was thus introduced on Aug. 2, 1815:
IMPORTANT
We received from our correspondent at Boston, by this morning’s mail, the following important news, which we hasten to lay before our readers:
From Our Correspondent,
Office of the Boston Daily Advertiser,July 31, 1815.
A gentleman has just arrived in town from a vessel which he left in the harbor, bringing London dates from June 24. The principal article is an official dispatch of Lord Wellington’s, dated Waterloo, June 19, giving a detailed account of a general engagement.
There followed Wellington’s succinct dispatch. Its modesty of tone misled many New York supporters of Napoleon, who made heavy bets that Wellington had really been drubbed, and who when fuller news came had to pay them.
Even in the third decade of the century news of every kind was unconscionably slow. The Evening Post of June 20, 1825, came out late because the presses had been held till the last minute in the vain hope of giving particulars of the dedication of the Bunker Hill monument on the 17th; the steamboat from New London having arrived without any intelligence. Only on the next day was a narrative carried, and though it filled four columns, it contained no extracts from Webster’s oration.
One year later one of the most impressive coincidences in our history afforded a striking illustration of the long wait forced upon each section of the United States for information from outside its borders. The fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence was celebrated with fervor in every hamlet and city, though in New York a storm of wind and rain interfered with the ceremonies. Every American thought of the two aged ex-Presidents, one the author of the Declaration, the other the radical patriot who had done most to forward it in Congress. At 1 o’clock in the afternoon Jefferson died at Monticello. At 6 o’clock John Adams, after remarking that every report of the celebratory cannon had added five minutes to his life, passed away at Quincy. Which news would reach New York first? The Evening Post published the death of Adams on the seventh, and the demise of Jefferson on the eighth. Then began to come evidence that the two circles of intelligence were more and more overlapping each other, and, on the tenth, Coleman commented: