The Evening Post: A Century of Journalism

by Allan Nevins

It was because the Tribune was so confident of an easy victory that it raised the cry, “On to Richmond!” in June and early July. Simply because it shared the same confidence, the Evening Post, with greater wisdom, pleaded for deliberation and care, and carried editorials with such headings as “Patience!” (July 1). After the advance began, it thought that Jefferson Davis ought to be captured within a month (July 17).

When upon this over-confidence fell the shock of the rout at Bull Run, the Post felt it necessary to hearten the North by minimizing the defeat. There was no need to labor the moral that the war was going to be long and hard, and Bryant was worried lest the public should be depressed. Frederic Law Olmsted wrote him that “although it is not best to say it publicly, you should know, at least, that the retreat was generally of the worst character, and is already in its results most disastrous.” The Post harped for some time upon the lesson of the need for better discipline and officers. But it also tried to maintain that Manassas was the Sebastopol of the rebels, a powerful natural position; that “in any fair, open, hand-to-hand fight, the Union troops are too much for the seceders”; and even that the moral effect of the battle would be in the North’s favor. Greeley felt the same impulse when, under the reaction from his “On to Richmond!” mischief, he promised that the Tribune would cease nagging the army, and devote itself to inspiriting the public.

As soon as they perceived that the war would be bitter, the editors of the Post took their stand with what the historian Rhodes calls the radical party of the North; the party of Secretary Chase, Senators Trumbull and Sumner, and Gen. Carl Schurz. The paper’s Washington correspondent early (May 3) divided the Cabinet into radicals—Welles, Chase, Blair—and conservatives—Seward, Bates, and Smith. The radicals wanted the war prosecuted with intense energy, no thought of compromise, and no particular regard for the feelings of the border States and Northern Democrats. Always ardent, sometimes precipitate, they disliked the cautious Seward, and sometimes lost patience with Lincoln himself. In the end their policies were usually adopted, but Lincoln’s wisdom lay in not adopting them prematurely; as Schurz admitted in 1864, when he wrote a schoolmate that he had often thought Lincoln wrong, but in the end had always found him right.

Much of the radicalism of Bryant and Parke Godwin was quite sound. In the first month the Evening Post published no fewer than four editorials asking for a hurried and strict blockade of the South, and prophesying that it would “put an end to the rebellion more quickly than any other plan of action.” On July 20 it anticipated Ericsson by asking for ironclads, recalling that Robert L. Stevens had begun building a floating armored battery under an act of Congress passed in 1842, but had never finished it. The paper thought that “half a dozen thoroughly shot-proof gunboats, of light draft,” could silence Forts Sumter, Pulaski, and Jackson, or better still, run past them and dominate Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans. It asked for a national draft on July 9, 1862, nine months before Congress passed a law for one. Lincoln’s early policy was to free and protect all Southern negroes who, having been employed in the military service of the Confederacy, came within the lines of the Northern commands, but this did not satisfy Bryant. On Dec. 6, 1861, he asked Congress to confiscate the property of the rebels, appoint State commissioners of forfeiture to take charge of it, and as fast as negroes came within Northern reach, make them freemen.

Bryant was in direct communication with radical officials in Washington and radical commanders in the field. He corresponded with Secretary Chase; Gen. James Wadsworth and Gen. E. A. Hitchcock wrote him startlingly frank letters; and he heard regularly from Consul-General Bigelow in Paris. The slowness with which the war dragged on was deplored by the Evening Post even as it was deplored by Chase, Schurz, and Sumner. The paper did not criticize Lincoln with the signal lack of judgment Greeley often showed, much less with the rancorous hostility of Bennett’s Herald or the now Democratic World. But by the middle of September, 1861, it was censuring him for the reluctance with which he signed the Confiscation Act, and reminding him that “his official position is in the lead, and not in the rear.” On Oct. 11 it published an editorial, “Playing With War,” in which it criticized the Administration for lukewarmness and declared that the public wanted active measures; “the more energetic, the more effective these measures, the more telling the blow, the more they will applaud.”

These complaints, the complaints of a large party all over the North and of an able Congressional group, redoubled as the first half of 1862 passed with almost no news from Virginia but that of disasters. On July 8 the Post asked three sharp questions. Why had enlistments been stopped three or four months earlier—for Stanton, believing success at hand, had foolishly halted the recruiting on April 3? Why had the militia of the loyal States never, since the war began, been reorganized, drilled, and armed? And why had no great arsenals of munitions been collected? “We have been sluggish in our preparations and timid in our execution,” the paper admonished Washington. “Let us change all this.” Such complaints were natural and useful in the dark hour when McClellan’s army recoiled after bloody fighting from its first advance on Richmond. Bryant also did well to press his attacks upon corruption in government contracts, and political favoritism in military appointments. When this month Congress authorized the use of negroes in camp service and trench digging, he reasonably found fault with the Administration for its slowness in acting upon the authorization.

But Bryant’s “radicalism” was not commendable when he complained of the delay in emancipating the slaves; of the prominence of Northern Democrats, not hostile to slavery, in the army and at Washington; and of the consideration given border State sentiment. Had Lincoln acted rashly in the early months of the war, he would have forced Kentucky and Missouri into the arms of the South, and he thought (Sept. 22, 1861) that “to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game.” Had he made haste to emancipate the slaves, he would irretrievably have offended powerful elements in the North and the Border States which were willing to fight for the Union, but not to fight against slavery. Military historians have generally condemned Lincoln’s interference with McClellan’s plans in the early spring of 1862, an interference into which he was forced by such pressure as Bryant was exerting. The Evening Post was unjust to Lincoln when it explained (July 7, 1862) why the people suspected him of indecision. “He has trusted too much to his subordinates; he has not been sufficiently peremptory with them, either with his generals or his Secretaries; and his whole Administration has been marked by a certain tone of languor and want of earnestness which has not corresponded with the wishes of the people.” It was unjust when it spoke again (July 23) of Lincoln’s “slumbers,” and of the “drowsy influence of border State opiates.”

In condemning the military incapacity of the Union generals in the East the newspaper was upon firmer ground. McClellan became commander of the Army of the Potomac immediately after Bull Run, and was made commander-in-chief of all the armies on Nov. 1, 1861. As the new year arrived without any movement, Bryant began grumbling over the idea held by many officers “that the wisest way of conducting the war is to weary out the South with delays.” He argued that if the North did not show more energy, France or England might eventually interfere. “If we understand the case,” he wrote caustically on Feb. 6, “Gen. McClellan has infinite claims upon our gratitude for the discipline which he has given to the army, but that discipline is still too imperfect to warrant any movement.” He pointed out that the enemy was relying upon this inefficiency, and was so confident of the situation in Virginia that Beauregard had just been dispatched to reinforce the Confederate army in the West. A few days later Bryant received a letter which Gen. Wadsworth wrote him from camp, denouncing McClellan roundly:

I repeat the conclusion intimated in my last letter. The commander-in-chief is almost inconceivably incompetent, or he has his own plans—widely different from those entertained by the people of the North—of putting down this Rebellion. I have just read the gloomy reports from Europe, threatening intervention, etc. In my despair, I write in the faint hope of arousing our Press to speak out what is in the hearts of ninety-nine one hundredths of the army, and nine-tenths of the country—the commander-in-chief is incompetent or disloyal. I have come slowly to this conclusion. No man greeted his appointment more cordially than I did. There is not the shadow of any personal feeling in my conviction. I have nothing personal to complain of. I must again caution you, that all this is strictly confidential.

Wadsworth reiterated this opinion all spring, while Bryant heard from Gen. John Pope and Gen. Hitchcock in the same vein. It was not until May 5 that McClellan fought his first battle, though he had held command since the preceding July. The Evening Post was full of hope in the Peninsular campaign that followed, warning McClellan not to overestimate the enemy’s forces, and that “hitherto our great fault has been that we have not followed up our successes.” Its dejection was proportionately great when in the first days of July the campaign ended in failure, and McClellan withdrew his army from the position he had reached immediately in front of Richmond. The disgust of the radicals with McClellan was now complete, and the Post was as eloquent as the Tribune or Times in attacking him. On July 3 it mournfully remarked that “while the cause cannot perhaps be defeated even by incompetence,” it could be gravely imperilled. “We have suffered long enough from inaction and overcaution. Henceforth we must have action.... If it be asked who is the best man, we can only say that it is Mr. Lincoln’s business to know, but bitter experience has taught us that Gen. McClellan is not.” Lincoln was admonished that he must open his eyes without a moment’s delay to the exigency, dismiss every slothful or imbecile leader, infuse energy and unity into his Cabinet, and recruit new armies. It was now that the Post began asking for conscription, while it gave a ringing endorsement to Lincoln’s call for “three hundred thousand more.”