It puts us right before Europe; it brings us back to our traditions; it animates our soldiers with the same spirit which led our forefathers to victory under Washington; they are fighting today, as the Revolutionary patriots fought, in the interests of the human race, for human rights....
There was a lesson for all radicals in the resentment which, at even that late date, many Northern newspapers showed over the President’s act. The Journal of Commerce had “only anticipations of evil from it,” and believed that an immense majority of Northerners would view it with profound regret. The Herald predicted that it would ruin the white laborers of the West by bringing the negroes north to compete with them. The World held that it was nugatory—the South would have to be whipped before it could be given any effect. The Courrier des Etats Unis had deplored many errors since the republic “began rolling down the slope which promises to land it in the abyss,” but it thought this blunder the most wanton and complete. What would such papers and the great body of citizens they represented have said six months earlier?
Another and highly praiseworthy evidence of the “radicalism” of the Evening Post was its eagerness for a far-reaching system of taxation, and for having the financial conduct of the war kept as strictly as possible upon a sound-money basis. Having been active in obtaining Chase’s appointment to the Treasury, Bryant felt a special solicitude for that department. During the latter half of 1861 he repeatedly urged Congress to tax to the limit. He believed that the government should be able to pay for the war by heavy taxes, supplemented by the sale of long-term bonds, and only as a final resource should issue Treasury notes payable on demand. It was a disappointment to the paper that Chase took no early steps for the development of an appropriate tax system. A remarkable editorial of Feb. 1, 1862, pictured the wealth of the nation: the universal possession of property, the high per capita prosperity, the bursting granaries, the rich output of precious metals. It recalled the fact that three times the national debt contracted in great wars had been wiped out, while in the thirties the treasury overflowed until men racked their brains with plans for spending the superfluity. Never was a nation more cheerfully inclined to accept high taxes; “the general feeling is one of impatience that Congress is so slow in performing this necessary duty.”
As early as Jan. 15 the Evening Post had uttered its first warning against a reliance upon paper money. Naturally, the passage of the greenback legislation of Feb. 25, 1862, for the issue of $150,000,000 in legal-tender notes, dismayed it. It believed the law grossly unconstitutional, and was certain that it would be disastrous in effect. Secretary Chase wrote to Bryant, on Feb. 4, arguing for the bill, but in vain. “Your feelings of repugnance to the legal-tender clause can hardly be greater than my own,” said Chase; “but I am convinced that, as a temporary measure, it is indispensably necessary.” He thought that a minority of the people would not sustain the notes unless they were made a tender for debt, and that this minority could control the majority to all practical intents. But the Evening Post, like all the other New York journals save two, opposed the bill to the last. Bryant did not believe that the measure could be temporary, as Chase put it. In an editorial called “A Deluge at Hand,” he compared the law to the first breach made in one of the Holland dikes:
In all the examples which the world has seen, the evil of an irredeemable paper currency runs its course as certainly as the smallpox or any other disease. The first effects are of such a nature that the remedy is never applied; there is no disposition to apply it. The inflation of the currency pleases a large class of persons by a rise of prices and an extraordinary activity in business. People buy to sell at higher prices; property passes rapidly from hand to hand; fortunes are made; the community is delirious with speculation. At such a time suppose Mr. Chase to step in and say: “My friends, this fun has been going on long enough; you must be tired by this time of speculation. Let us repeal the legal-tender clause in the Treasury-note bill and return to specie payments.” What sort of reception would this proposal meet?
His prophecy was fulfilled. Successive issues of legal-tender notes followed, until the total reached $450,000,000; prices soared, and the cost of the war was immensely enhanced; and at one time $39 in gold would buy $100 in currency. The Evening Post, it may be added, was the first newspaper to suggest the issue of interest-bearing banknotes as an expedient for the gradual contraction of the currency, a measure Congress adopted in March, 1863.
Meanwhile, the Northern armies failed to make progress. When in December, 1862, the criminally incompetent Burnside attacked Lee’s entrenched army at Fredericksburg, and was flung back with the loss of nearly 13,000 men, an outburst of anger came from the whole New York press. “The Late Massacre” was the heading the Evening Post gave its editorial of Dec. 18, in which, three days after Burnside fell back, it could not understand why he was not already removed. “How long is such intolerable and wicked blundering to continue? What does the President wait for? We hear that a great, a horrible crime has been committed; we do not hear that those guilty of it are under arrest; we do not hear even that they are to be removed from the places of trust which they have shown themselves so incapable to fill.” The Democratic press, led by the Herald, demanded the reinstatement of McClellan, while the radical press wanted an entirely new general. Once more, like the Tribune, Herald, and World, the Evening Post blamed Lincoln for his generals’ mistakes. “The President has required too little from his agents; his good nature has led him to be less strict toward them than he ought to be, while at the same time his confidence in himself and his advisers has led him, unfortunately, to deny himself that general counsel of the nation by which he might have benefited had he kept up confidential relations between himself and the people.” Yet it had praised the choice of Burnside, calling him an energetic, calm, and judicious leader, who had the prestige of success in his favor.
As the spring campaign of 1863 opened, the Post reflected the renewed hopefulness of the North. It was not pleased by the selection of Hooker to be the new commander, but it was encouraged by his rapid reorganization of the army and restoration of fighting discipline. The new advance had the old result—disaster. On May 7, lamenting Hooker’s ignominious defeat at Chancellorsville, the Evening Post condemned his strategy as incomprehensible. It was quite right in its general verdict, and in a number of specific criticisms, as when it said that the disposition of the forces under Sedgwick had been insane. But we can hardly say as much of its censure of Hooker and the Administration for an alleged failure to use the needed reserves. There were 60,000 men among the Washington defenses, it declared, who might have been replaced by militia and thrown into the battle. As a matter of fact, Hooker had failed to employ 35,000 fresh troops right at hand; his army was large enough, and much too large for his capacity to handle it. It fell back across the Rappahannock, and the stage was set for Lee’s descent upon Pennsylvania.
Rhodes states that “by the middle of June (1863) the movements of Lee in Virginia warned the North of the approaching invasion” that culminated at Gettysburg. But the readers of the Evening Post were warned of it by a column editorial on May 21, two weeks before Lee took his first preliminary steps. That such a prophecy could be made shows how conversant with the military situation the great New York journals were kept by their war correspondents, their files of Southern newspapers, and their high official advisers. Bryant wrote that he believed Jefferson Davis was preparing his last desperate stroke, in the knowledge that Grant might soon wrest the whole Mississippi from him, that there would be more Union cavalry raids like Stoneman’s and Grierson’s, and that even if the Confederacy beat off another attack like Hooker’s, it would prove a Pyrrhic victory:
There are unmistakable indications that Davis is quietly withdrawing troops from the outlying camps along the seacoasts to reinforce Lee, which movement will be continued, we think, until that general has a command of 150,000 to 200,000 men. As soon as it is ready Lee will move, we conjecture, not in the direction of Washington, but of the Shenandoah Valley, with a view to crossing the Potomac somewhere between Martinsburg and Cumberland. It will be easy for him ... to defend his flanks ... and to maintain also uninterrupted communications with Staunton and the Central Virginia railway. The valley itself is filled with rapidly ripening harvests, and once upon the river supplies may be got from Pennsylvania.