Associate Editor 1849–1860.
A few days before election, Samuel J. Tilden, who was supporting Douglas, came into the office of the Evening Post in high excitement. In Bigelow’s room were seated the Collector of the Port, Hiram Barney; the president of the Illinois Central, William H. Osborn, and one of the commissioners of Central Park. They were all confident of Lincoln’s election, and Tilden’s excitement rose as he saw them rejoicing in the certainty. With a repressed anger and dignity that sobered them, he cut short their chaffing by saying: “I would not have the responsibility of William Cullen Bryant and John Bigelow for all the wealth in the sub-treasury. If you have your way, civil war will divide this country, and you will see blood running like water in the streets of this city.” With these words, he left. On Oct. 30 the Evening Post devoted more than six columns to a letter by Tilden, in which he explained why, though long a free-soiler, he had not supported Lincoln. He declared that the Republican Party was a sectional party, that if it ruled at Washington the South would be virtually under foreign domination, and that the Southerners would never yield to its “impracticable and intolerable” policy. The Post replied to but one of his arguments. The Republican Party, it said, was sectional only because it had never been given a fair hearing at the South. But, it added, “We do not propose to review Mr. Tilden’s paper at length to-day; a logical and conclusive answer to all its positions is in the course of preparation, and will appear in the Evening Post just one week from to-morrow afternoon.”
On the day announced, the day after election, the Evening Post published a table of the electoral votes, by which it appeared that Lincoln had a certain majority of thirty-five and a possible majority of forty-two; heading it, “Reply to the Letter of Samuel J. Tilden, Continued and Concluded.” But Tilden’s prophecy was to be realized in a fashion the editors little expected.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE NEW YORK PRESS AND SOUTHERN SECESSION
No other five months in our history under the Constitution have been so critical as the five between the election of Lincoln and the capture of Sumter. The anger of the South at the Republican triumph; the secession of South Carolina before Christmas, followed by the rest of the lower South; the erection of a Southern Confederacy in February, with the choice of Davis as provisional President; the complete paralysis of Buchanan’s government—all this made the months anxious and uncertain beyond any others in the century. Until New Year’s, many people in the North believed that the Southern threats were not to be taken seriously; until February, many believed that the outlook for a peaceful preservation of the Union was bright. Thereafter a large part of the population held that, in Gen. Winfield Scott’s phrase, the erring sisters should be let depart in peace. In this anomalous period a thousand currents of opinion possessed the land, and no one could predict what the next day would bring forth. The time tried the judgment and patriotism of the nation’s newspapers as by fire.
The New York press had at this time asserted a national ascendancy which it slowly lost after the war as the great West increased in population. During December, 1860, the Herald averaged a week-day circulation of 77,107, and a Sunday circulation of 82,656, which it boasted was the largest in the world. The daily circulation of the London Times was 25,000 less. The Tribune boasted on April 10, 1861, that while its daily circulation was 55,000, its weekly circulation was enormous, making the total number of its buyers 287,750. Two-fifths of these were in New York, but it had 26,091 subscribers in Pennsylvania; 24,900 in Ohio; 16,477 in Illinois; 11,968 in Iowa; 11,081 in Indiana, and even in California 5,535. In the South, on the other hand, there was a mere handful of buyers—21 in Mississippi, 23 in South Carolina, 35 in Georgia, and 10 in Florida, against 10,589 in Maine. The Sun had a daily circulation of about 60,000, and the Times of about 35,000. That of the Evening Post was approaching 20,000, while its weekly and semi-weekly issues were widely read in the West. It was in reference to the influence of the Tribune, Times, and Evening Post that the Herald said, “Without New York journalism there would have been no Republican party.” It had some excuse for its boast regarding the city’s journals (Nov. 8):
Several of them, possessing revenues equal in amount to those of some of the sovereign States, are unapproachable by influences except those of a national policy, and they constitute a congress of intellect in permanent session assembled. The telegraph and the locomotive carry their influences to the remotest corners of the land in a constantly increasing ratio. These, then, are to be the leading powers which are to range parties, and conduct the discussions of the great questions of the generation that is before us. They, and they only, can do it in a catholic and cosmopolitan spirit.... These affect the affairs and hopes of men everywhere.
Lincoln’s election was accepted with unmixed pleasure by the Evening Post and Tribune, the Times and the World, which saw in it a long-deferred assurance that the popular majority in favor of freedom had at last found a dependable leader. It was accepted with resignation by the three chief opposition newspapers. Bennett’s Herald, with a snort of chagrin, reminded good citizens that they should “settle down to their occupations and to discharge the duty which they owe to their families.” The Journal of Commerce remarked that “we have nothing to do but submit,” adding that the conservative majority in both Houses “will check any wayward fancies that may seize the executive, under the influence of his abolition advisers.” The Express deplored, deeply deplored, the result, but formally acquiesced in it, “as under the forms if not in the spirit and intent of the Constitution.” But as the news of the secession movement increased, the differences of opinion grew marked.
Bryant in the Evening Post was anxious that Lincoln should not talk of concessions, nor seem to be frightened by the Southern bluster. He must refuse to parley with disunionists: