CHAPTER FOURTEEN
RECONSTRUCTION AND IMPEACHMENT
Most of the metropolitan newspapers emerged from the Civil War with increased circulation, and several, like the Evening Post, with enhanced prosperity. The circulation was not high by present standards: when peace was declared the Sun was printing about 50,000 copies, the Times about 35,000, and the Evening Post about 20,000. But the influence of the New York press has never been larger, for four great journalists were then at the height of their reputation. Raymond of the Times had four more years to live, Bennett of the Herald and Greeley of the Tribune had seven, and Bryant, the oldest editor of all, thirteen. The younger generation was not quite yet needed—not until 1868 did Dana join the Sun, and Whitelaw Reid the Tribune.
When the problems of reconstruction presented themselves, everybody knew where the large group of Democratic journals would stand. The Herald, the World, the Express, and the Daily News, loyal to the grand old party of Polk and Buchanan, would urge the restoration of the Southern States to their former standing as quickly and gently as possible. The only real curiosity was as to the Evening Post, Times, and Tribune.
Having held the radical views of Chase and Sumner in the war, having constantly demanded more energy in its prosecution, the Evening Post might have been expected to advocate severity toward the South. For a time there were indications that it would do so. When Lincoln, just before his death, declared in favor of encouraging and perfecting the new State governments already set up in the South, saying “We shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it,” Bryant was doubtful. “But if it should happen that these eggs are cockatrice’s eggs, what then?” he demanded. For some months after Appomattox the Post expressed its wish that “traitors” like Jefferson Davis, Hunter, Benjamin, Wigfall, and Wise could be brought to trial; it was not necessary to put them to death—they could be pardoned if condemned—but justice demanded a stern arraignment.
Yet it soon became evident that the Evening Post’s influence would be on the side of moderation and leniency. Bryant’s fine obituary editorial on Lincoln struck this note clearly. He spoke of Lincoln’s gentle policies:
How skillfully he had avoided and postponed needless troubles, the ease and tranquillity of our return from a time of passionate conflict to a time of serene repose is a proof; how wisely he had contrived to put off the suggestions of an extreme or fanatical zeal everybody has been ready to acknowledge, for Mr. Lincoln brought to his high office no prejudice of section, no personal resentments, no unkind or bitter feelings of hatred, and throughout the trying time of his Administration he has never uttered one rancorous word toward the South....
The whole nation mourns the death of its President, but no part of it ought to mourn that death more keenly than our brothers of the South, who had more to expect from his clemency and sense of justice than from any other man who could succeed to his position. The insanity of the assassination, indeed, if it was instigated by the rebels, appears in the stronger light when we reflect on the generosity and tenderness with which he was disposed to close up the war, to bury its feuds, to heal over its wounds, and to restore to all parts of the nation that good feeling which once prevailed, and which ought to prevail again. Let us pray God that those who come after him may imitate his virtues and imbibe the spirit of his goodness.
The stand taken by Bryant’s friend Chase, the poet’s natural generosity, and the reports of a desire for reconciliation sent by Southern correspondents, caused the paper to assume an unflinching advocacy of President Johnson’s mild policy, and to attack the harsh measures of Congress. In this attitude the Times was with it. The Tribune took the other side vehemently, and, in a more reasonable way, it was espoused by the city’s three great weekly organs of opinion, E. L. Godkin’s Nation, Harper’s Weekly, and the Independent, from which Henry Ward Beecher, disagreeing with Theodore Tilton’s severe views, soon resigned.
Into the Evening Post’s opinions upon the whole kaleidoscopic succession of bills and acts bearing upon reconstruction, from 1865 to 1868, it is impossible to go in detail. Its fundamental doctrine was fully outlined as early as May 2, 1865. The two great objects, it affirmed, were to depart as little as possible from the old-established principles of State government, and “to do nothing for revenge, nothing in the mere spirit of proscription.” It believed that a convention should be called in each State to annul the ordinance of secession, and, by writing a new State Constitution, to repudiate the rebel debt, guarantee the negroes equal civil rights, and regulate the elective franchise according to immutable principles of certain application, discarding all arbitrary and capricious rules. The States should also ratify the anti-slavery amendment of the Federal Constitution by popular vote. “As soon as the political power has thus been regularly reconstituted the State, as a matter of course, resumes her relations to the Union, elects members of Congress, and stands in all respects on a footing with the States” of the North.
Urging this policy, Bryant and the Evening Post wished to end military rule at the South as quickly as possible, while the Congressional radicals, led by Wade and Thaddeus Stevens, like the Tribune and Nation, regarded its indefinite continuance as necessary. The Evening Post held that the illiterate negroes were unfit to vote and should be required to pass through a probationary period; it wished the Southern ballot based upon an educational test. The Tribune and the Sun supported full negro suffrage. When the first Southern States sent Representatives to Congress the Evening Post, like the Times and World, wished them admitted. The World, indeed, bitterly assailed the “rump” Congress which barred them. The Evening Post, Times, and World supported Johnson’s veto of the Freedmen’s Bureau bill, while the Tribune wrung its hands over such journalistic depravity.