Thus the nation moved rapidly toward civil war. While the Herald, Journal of Commerce, Express, and Daily News still talked of compromise, actually they had given up hope of it and spent their chief energies in decrying coercion; the first-named having admitted as much in an editorial of Feb. 3 headed “No Compromise Now Except That of a Peaceable Separation.” In fact, all these journals found in the idea of a division much to commend. At the end of January, Bennett’s writers began preaching imperialistic doctrines. “North America is too large for one government,” the Herald reflected on the 24th, “but establish two and they in good time will cover the continent.” The next day, under the title, “Manifest Destiny of the North and South,” it drew an alluring picture of the American conquests that would follow the dissolution of the Union. Inevitably, the Confederacy would subdue Mexico, Cuba, and other Caribbean lands. The United States would conquer Canada. The two great nations would be the most friendly of allies. “Northern troops may yet have to repel invaders of the possessions of slave-holders in Mexico and Venezuela, and our fleet will joyfully aid in dispersing new Spanish armadas on the coast of Cuba. Nor do we doubt that ... under the walls of Quebec, and on the banks of the St. Lawrence, legions from Louisiana, Alabama, and South Carolina will aid us.” This glorious vision of unlimited booty was repeatedly dwelt upon.

The Herald had less Northern influence than its large circulation would seem to imply, and was hearkened to chiefly at the South. Many secessionists, remembering the business and social connections of the South with the metropolis, and the large Democratic majority New York generally gave, believed that the city would assist to divide the North and aid the rebellion. “The New York Herald and New York Evening Express have done much toward disseminating this false theory,” said the New Orleans Picayune later. The Chicago Tribune that summer quoted a Southern visitor as saying “that we of the North can have little or no idea of the pestilent influence which the New York News and other journals of that sort have exerted upon the popular mind of that section.” Probably less harm was done the Union by Bennett’s erratic ideas than by Greeley’s influential opinion that if the South was determined to go, go she ought. Bryant’s editorials in the Evening Post, above those of any other New York journal, expressed an elevated, unwavering, and steadying demand for loyalty to the Constitution. He had no patience with Greeley’s acquiescence in a popular-sovereignty doctrine of secession. He was a far abler writer than any man on the staff of the Times or World, even Raymond. His superior steadfastness and shrewdness of judgment was strikingly illustrated just before the war began.

On April 3, as if by concert, the Tribune and Times published long and emphatic editorials attacking Lincoln for his alleged indecision and inactivity. The Tribune headed its editorial “Come to the Point!” and demanded that a programme be laid down. Greeley apparently cared little what this programme should be. “If the Union is to be maintained at all hazards, let the word be passed along the line that the laws are to be enforced.... If the secession of the Gulf States—and of any more that choose to follow—is to be regarded as a fixed fact, let that be proclaimed, and let the line of revenue collection be established and maintained this side of them.” The Times devoted two columns to “Wanted—A Policy.” The Administration, it said, had fallen so far short of public expectations that the Union was weaker than a month before. Indeed, the Administration had exhibited “a blindness and a stolidity without a parallel in the history of intelligent statesmanship.” Lincoln had “spent time and strength in feeding rapacious and selfish politicians, which should have been bestowed upon saving the Union”; and “we tell him ... that he must go up to a higher level than he has yet reached, before he can see and realize the high duties to which he has been called.” Such utterances lent too much support to the Herald’s constant statements that “the Lincoln Administration is cowardly, mean, and vicious,” its constant references to “the incompetent, ignorant, and desperate ‘Honest Abe.’”

In a crushing editorial next day, Bryant demolished these peevish outbursts. First, he pointed out, it was hard within thirty days to decide what course was best as regarded the seceding States and the wavering border States. The Cabinet was said to be divided, and the most careful reflection, investigation, and debate was necessary for a question so big with the fate of the republic. Second, how could the facile critics know that Lincoln had not fixed upon his policy, but concluded to make it known by execution, not by a windy proclamation? “If Fort Sumter is to be reinforced, should we give the rebels previous notice?” There existed other considerations, as the fact that every day officers in the army and navy were going over to the rebels, and if Lincoln decided upon an energetic course it would be indispensable to be able to count on an energetic execution in every contingency. This answer displayed an admirable patience—a patience of which Bryant might well have had a larger stock in the four years to come.

The first edition of the Evening Post on April 13 carried the news that the bombardment of Fort Sumter had begun, and carried also an editorial written with all Bryant’s high fervor:

This is a day which will be ever memorable in our annals. To-day treason has risen from blustering words to cowardly deeds. Men made reckless by a long life of political gambling—for years cherishing treason next their hearts while swearing fealty to the government—have at last goaded themselves on to murder a small band of faithful soldiers. They have deliberately chosen the issue of battle. To-day, who hesitates in his allegiance is a traitor with them....

To-day the nation looks to the government to put down treason forever.... It will not grudge the men or the money which are needed. We have enjoyed for eighty years the blessings of liberty and constitutional government. It is a small sacrifice we are now to lay upon the altar. In the name of constitutional liberty, in the name of law and order, in the name of all that is dear to freemen, we shall put down treason and restore the supremacy of the Constitution.

The day was one of intense excitement. The Evening Post of Monday, April 15, reported that thousands of eager inquirers had thronged the streets in the neighborhood of the office and packed the counting-room downstairs until there was no room for a single additional person. The successive editions were seized upon madly. At five the first rumor of Sumter’s surrender came over the wires, and at five-thirty it was confirmed. Within a space of seconds rather than minutes the fourth edition, containing the complete news, was being cried on the streets. The Herald next morning sold 135,000 copies, a world’s record. That Monday Bryant’s leading editorial, “The Union, Now and Forever,” took its text in the President’s call for volunteers. “If he calls for only 75,000,” said the Evening Post, “it is because he knows that he can have a million if he needs them.” George Cary Eggleston has said that he and Bryant’s other associates were often amazed to see how calmly he would write an editorial that proved full of intense eloquence, every line blazing. This was such an editorial, ending in a ringing peroration: “‘God speed the President!’ is the voice of millions of determined freemen to-day.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE CRITICAL DAYS OF THE CIVIL WAR

When Sumter brought the North to its feet as one man, as Lowell wrote, the press and general public believed the war would be brief. The best editorial judgment in New York had been that the rebellion could be strangled by a blockade alone. “A half dozen ships of war stationed at the proper points is all that is wanted,” said the Times on Feb. 11, 1861. “In a few months’ time the Southern Confederacy would be completely starved out.” The Tribune, arguing Jan. 22 for closing the Southern ports, had predicted that as a consequence “the South will decline, and finally collapse, in utter humiliation. And this will not result from bloody wars, but from the peaceful operation of the laws of trade.” On the same date the Evening Post remarked that the secession disease required not cautery or the knife, but a little judicious regimen. Uncle Sam might crush the seceding States with ease. “He could devastate every cotton field, and level every seaboard city in less than a year, if he were so foolhardy and malignant as they have shown themselves to be.” It must be remembered that at the time of all these utterances Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas had not yet joined the South. But in his call to arms just after Sumter Bryant allowed himself to boast that every loyal arm was a match for ten traitors. A pathetic Evening Post editorial of June 15, “The Beginning of the End,” following the Confederate evacuation of Harper’s Ferry, predicted that Jefferson Davis meant to make a desperate effort at Manassas, for “his cause is on its last legs, and unless he puts forth a bold stroke now, it is gone.”