Wielding a ready pen, Coleman was apt in literary allusions. His knowledge of law enabled him to write with authority upon legislation, constitutional questions, and practical politics. Unlike his successor Bryant, he mingled freely with men in places of public resort, and kept his ear to the ground. He took an interest in letters and the drama which was quite unknown to other “political editors.” Some pretensions to being an authority upon style he always asserted, and he never tired of correcting the errors of Democratic scribblers. Against certain expressions he made a stubborn battle—for example, against “averse from” instead of “averse to,” and against “over a signature” instead of “under” it; in 1814 he offered $100 for every instance of the last-named phrase in a good author since Clarendon. He was excessively generous, always ready to lend his ear to a pitiful story; Dr. John W. Francis relates that his eyes would moisten over the woes of one of the paper-boys. This kindliness made the columns of the Evening Post always open to charitable or reformative projects. Coleman’s chief faults were three. His style, like Hamilton’s, was diffuse; he sometimes forgot taste and decency in assailing his opponents; and he was a wretched business man. A few years after the journal was founded its money affairs fell into such embarrassment that friends intervened, and an arrangement was made by which Michael Burnham, the printer, became half owner, with entire control of the finances.
II
Contemporary writers from 1801 to 1904, however, seldom spoke of the Evening Post as Coleman’s newspaper; it was usually “Hamilton’s journal” or “Hamilton’s gazette.” Just so had Freneau’s National Gazette a decade before been called “Jefferson’s journal,” so Cheetham’s American Citizen was now sometimes called “Clinton’s journal,” and there was even “Levi Lincoln’s journal,” the Worcester National Aegis, which Attorney-General Lincoln helped support. During 1801 Burr and his partisans were much dissatisfied with Cheetham’s newspaper, and this dissatisfaction came to a head after the spring elections the following year. A group which included Burr, John Swartwout, W. P. Van Ness, Col. William S. Smith, and John Sanford established a paper called the New York Morning Chronicle, and after offering the editorship to Charles Holt, who refused, gave it to Washington Irving’s brother, Dr. Peter Irving, known for his tea-table talents and effeminate manners as “Miss Irving.” The Chronicle was of course for several years called “Burr’s journal.” Just how close was Hamilton’s connection, never openly avowed, with the Evening Post?
The most direct evidence on the subject outside of newspaper files of the period is furnished by the autobiography of Jeremiah Mason, a native of Connecticut, who practiced law in Vermont and New Hampshire alongside Coleman, and became a United States Senator from the latter State. He writes of Coleman:
As a lawyer he was respectable, but his chief excellence consisted in a critical knowledge of the English language, and the adroit management of political discussion. His paper for several years gave the leading tone to the press of the Federal party. His acquaintances were often surprised by the ability of some of his editorial articles, which were supposed to be beyond his depth. Having a convenient opportunity, I asked him who wrote, or aided in writing, those articles. He frankly answered that he made no secret of it; that his paper was set up under the auspices of General Hamilton, and that he assisted him. I then asked, “Does he write in your paper?”—“Never a word.”—“How, then, does he assist?”—His answer was, “Whenever anything occurs on which I feel the want of information I state matters to him, sometimes a note; he appoints a time when I may see him, usually a late hour in the evening. He always keeps himself minutely informed on all political matters. As soon as I see him, he begins in a deliberate manner to dictate and I to note down in shorthand; when he stops, my article is completed.”
There is ample corroboratory proof that Hamilton contributed much to the opinions and expression of the Evening Post, and there is every reason to believe that this is the way he frequently did it. Coleman could readily have taken the dictation in shorthand. Seldom in the thirty-two months between the founding of the Evening Post and the death of Hamilton could the General have found time for deliberate writing. He had one of the largest law practices in the country, and he was the leader of a great party, regarded by a majority of Federalists as the dashing strategist who would yet perhaps make them as powerful as in the days of Washington. Yet that energetic fighter could not be kept out of the columns.
“Those only who were his intimate friends,” wrote Coleman in 1816, “know with what readiness he could apply the faculties of his illuminated mind.” No doubt Coleman resorted for guidance on many nights to Hamilton’s home at 26 Broadway—the editor’s house was a few blocks distant, at 61 Hudson Street—and on not a few week-ends to his country residence, called “The Grange” after the ancestral Hamilton estate in Scotland, which stood on Kingsbridge Road at what is now the corner of 142d Street and Tenth Avenue.
Alexander Hamilton
Chief Founder of the Evening Post.