The Evening Post: A Century of Journalism

by Allan Nevins

The hard-cider, coonskin-cap, log-cabin enthusiasm sickened the Evening Post. The plan, commented Bryant on the Harrison songs, “is to cut us to pieces with A sharp, to lay us prostrate with G flat, to hunt us down with fugues, overrun us with choruses, and bring in Harrison with a grand diapason.” “The accomplishment of drinking hard cider, possessed by one of the candidates for the Presidency,” he later wrote, was the safest the Whigs could urge. “If they were to talk now of his talents, of his opinions, of his public virtues, and of the other qualifications which are commonly supposed to fit a citizen of our republic for the office of its chief magistrate, they would find themselves much embarrassed.” The Whigs, counting upon the reflex of the panic of 1837, and the unpopularity of Van Buren, to elect Harrison, had taken care to commit themselves to no platform. The Evening Post therefore attributed to them all the evil policies they had ever espoused. Was it worth while to shoulder the burden of a high tariff and a costly internal improvement system, to restore the corrupt union of bank and state, to pay the enormous State debts out of the national treasury, and to strengthen Federal power at the expense of the States, all for the sake of having a President who quaffed hard cider?

During the campaign it was hinted by the Evening Post that if chosen, Harrison could not live to the end of his official term. It recorded the fact that when he arrived in Washington, the fatigue of receiving his friends was “so great that he was obliged to forego the usual ceremony of shaking hands with them.” A month later the paper was commenting upon the ghastly contrast between the festivities, pageants, and congratulations which attended his inauguration, and the solemnity and gloom as the plumed hearse carried his body, behind six white horses, to the Congressional burying ground. Because Bryant refused to write panegryrically of the dead President, though he did write respectfully, and because he refrained from using heavy black column rules for mourning, a practice which he called “typographical foppery,” he was violently assailed by the Whig press as a “vampire” and “ghoul.”

Bryant and Parke Godwin naturally hoped for the renomination of Van Buren in 1844, believing that the battle unfairly won by the Whigs in 1840 ought to be fought again on the same field, and with the same well-tried Democratic leader. Bryant told the story of the Santa Fé hunter who used to pat his rifle, carried for forty years, saying: “I believe in it. I know that whenever I fire there is meat.” In midsummer of 1843 he was confident that victory was already assured, the political reaction since 1841 being “without a parallel in the history of the peaceful conduct of affairs in this country.” The Evening Post welcomed the “black tariff” of 1842, the work of the Whig protectionists, as contributing magnificently to this reaction. It was like an overdose of poison; instead of accomplishing its purpose, it would act as an emetic and be rejected at once. But between that date and Polk’s nomination in May, 1844, there arose the questions of Texas and slavery, offering all editors of Bryant’s views the most distressing dilemma.

From a very early date the Evening Post had opposed the annexation of Texas, except under circumstances that would fully satisfy Mexico on one hand, and free soil sentiment on the other. On June 17, 1836, when Texas had just declared its freedom, Bryant asserted that if the United States, under the circumstances, even acknowledged Texan independence, “our government would lose its character for justice and magnanimity with the whole world, and would deserve to be classed with those spoilers of nations whose example we are taught as republicans to detest.” He frequently spoke with satisfaction of the growth of the little republic, noting in 1843 that it had 80,000 people. But when it became evident early the next year that President Tyler was determined to effect its annexation, the newspaper was alarmed. The first rumor that Secretary of State Calhoun had negotiated a secret treaty with Texas, reaching New York in March, threw it into a fever of indignation. Its chief apprehension arose from the fact that the treaty was said to permit slavery in all parts of the new territory save a small corner to which it was uncertain the United States would have any title. This led the Evening Post to call the project “unjust, impolitic, and hostile to the freedom of the human race.”

The actual treaty, sent to the Senate on April 22 by President Tyler, was assailed with a variety of arguments, but the Evening Post harped chiefly upon the anti-slavery objection. It would inevitably involve the United States in war with Mexico, and cost a huge sum in men and money. The Senate having been elected at a time when no one was thinking of the Texan question, it would be wicked to decide so important an issue affirmatively; there must be some form of national referendum. But above all, the treaty was evil because it would increase the slave population of the nation and bulwark this monstrous Southern institution. It would “keep alive a war more formidable than any to which we are exposed from Great Britain or any other foreign power—we mean the dissensions between the northern and southern regions of the Union. The cause of these dissensions, if the territory of the republic be not enlarged, is gradually losing strength and visibly tending to its extinction, but by the admission of Texas it will be reinforced and perpetuated.” Theodore Sedgwick, Jr., writing under the pen-name “Veto,” was hurriedly impressed into service for a series of articles—admirable articles, too.

The treaty was defeated in the Senate; and then ensued the Presidential campaign of 1844, hinging upon it—the first campaign directly to involve the slavery question.

When the Democratic Convention met at Baltimore on May 27, 1844, it was the fervent hope of the Evening Post and whole northern wing of the party that it would nominate Van Buren. He had publicly declared against immediate annexation of Texas, asserting that it would look like territory-grabbing and intimating that, as the Post had repeatedly said, colossal jobbery by land-speculators was involved. The South was determined that he should not be named. The balloting for a nominee was therefore a decision whether Democracy should stand for or against the extension of slave territory; and because the Southerners were the more aggressive, they won. Van Buren was defeated by the revival of a rule requiring a two-thirds majority, his vote steadily declining, and Polk, a comparatively unknown slave-holder, was named. On May 8 Bryant had said editorially that “the party cannot be rallied, however the politicians may exert themselves,” in favor of an annexationist Southerner. He repeated this warning regarding the candidate on the eve of the convention; “if he declares himself for the annexation of Texas, he will encounter the determined opposition” of the North. It was with unconcealed dismay that the Evening Post chronicled Polk’s nomination. He was a man of handsome talents, manly character, and many sound views, it said, “but like most Southern politicians, is deplorably wrong on the Texas question.”

Should the Evening Post bolt? For a time Bryant considered doing so. But it simply could not accept Clay, the Whig candidate; and admitting that “the fiery and imperious South overrides and silences the North in matters of opinion,” Bryant prepared to make the best of a wretched situation. He explained his stand by saying that on the one hand, he could not possibly assist Clay to win the Presidency and restore the United States Bank; on the other, he did not believe annexation inevitable under Polk. The Democratic platform had declared for annexation “at the earliest practicable moment”; and by emphasizing the word “practicable,” and arguing that it involved all kinds of delays, and the establishment of national good faith precedent to the step, the newspaper tried to argue that it was at least distant.

Bryant’s position was made more tenable when, midway in the campaign, Clay wrote his famous and fatal “Raleigh letter,” in which he said that if annexation could be accomplished without dishonor, war, or injustice, he would be glad to see it. This meant, as thousands of Whigs felt when they stayed from the polls on election day, that there was perhaps little to choose between the candidates.

Yet the Post never quite surrendered its independence, and tried throughout the summer to lead a movement within the party for a proper solution of the Texas question. There were enemies to annexation in Texas itself, it believed; there were enemies throughout the South, even in South Carolina, and the initial enthusiasm for it was beginning to cool. If the Northern Democrats asserted themselves forcibly against it as a party measure, “the day of this scheme, we are fully assured, will soon be over.” In pursuance of this policy, Bryant, Theodore Sedgwick, David Dudley Field, and three other New Yorkers drew up a confidential circular to a number of Democrats of like views, proposing a joint manifesto in opposition to annexation, and a concerted effort to elect anti-annexationist Congressmen. This manifesto appeared in the Evening Post of Aug. 20, and made a considerable impression in New York. But such efforts were in vain. Polk’s election made the entrance of Texas into the Union a certainty, and it was indeed authorized by a joint resolution of Congress the day before he took office. Bryant must have questioned that March whether his newspaper, which had so decisively lost its fight, should not have taken the side of the hated Clay.