The news that the Liberal Republican Convention had nominated Greeley for President was telegraphed to New York on the evening of May 3, 1872. Bryant next morning was late in reaching the office. A vigorous discussion was going on, says Mr. J. Ranken Towse, over the character of the editorial comment to be made. “It was ended suddenly by the entrance, in hot haste, of Mr. Bryant, who said briefly, ‘I will attend to that editorial myself,’ and promptly shut himself up in his room. The resultant article—cool, logical, bitter, but not violent—was distinctive in its animating spirit of contemptuous scorn, and carried a sharp sting in its closing assertion that in the case of a candidate for the highest honor at the disposal of the country, it was essential that the candidate should be, at least, a gentleman.”
W. A. Linn, long managing editor of the Evening Post, saw Bryant a moment. “Well,” the poet observed with a quiet twinkle, “there are some good points in Grant’s Administration, after all.”
The news was in every way a shock to the paper. When the Liberal Republican Convention opened, the Post had been filled with as high hopes for its success as those entertained by the Chicago Tribune, Cincinnati Commercial, or Springfield Republican. It had implored the leaders to make their enterprise “a movement for genuine reform, and not a mere antagonism to persons and Administrations”; it had warned them that they must choose a strong man for Presidential nominee, for the people admired Grant’s strength of personality. Judge David Davis was not sufficiently a statesman, Gov. B. Gratz Brown of Missouri lacked experience, and “as for Mr. Greeley, his nomination would be a deathblow to the reform movement, because he is the embodiment of centralization and monopoly.” Its favorites were Charles Francis Adams, Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, and Gov. John M. Palmer of that State, in the order named. Had either of the first two been named, upon an acceptable platform, the Post would have supported him; but not the erratic, simple-minded prophet of high tariff, Greeley, who, the Post’s special correspondent at the Convention reported, was pushed forward by a combination of politicians against the reformers.
Bryant’s editorial was one of two in the Evening Post that day. That given the leading position, written probably by Charlton M. Lewis, was entitled “The Fiasco at Cincinnati,” and was just such an editorial as appeared in dozens of other disheartened newspapers. It declared that the Convention, so big with promise, had gone the way of many a similar assemblage, surrendering its lofty principles to the wirepullers. The Post’s blow from the shoulder was struck by Bryant in the second column. He gave his editorial the mild title, “Why Mr. Greeley Should Not Be Supported for the Presidency,” but each of the numbered paragraphs was vitriolic.
First, said Bryant, Greeley lacked the needed courage, firmness, and consistency. His course during the Civil War had been one prolonged wabble, which at its best moments was irresolute, and at its worst was cowardly. Second, his political associates were so bad that his administration, if he were elected, could not escape corruption. Here Bryant referred to such of Greeley’s friends as R. E. Fenton, the leader of those New York city Republicans, who, leagued with the Tammany Ring, had done so much to help Tweed do business. The Times, which had exposed Tweed, vigorously insisted upon the same point. The third objection, wrote Bryant, was that Greeley had no settled political principles, with one exception, and the fourth was the exception. “He is a thorough-going, bigoted protectionist, a champion of one of the most arbitrary and grinding systems of monopoly ever known in any country.” When in 1870 the duty on pig iron was reduced from $9 a ton to $7, Greeley had told Grant that he would make it $100 a ton if he could. The fifth objection to Greeley, the climax of the editorial, lay in “the grossness of his manners,” as Bryant put it. “With such a head as is on his shoulders, the affairs of the nation could not, under his direction, be wisely administered; with such manners as his, they could not be administered with common decorum.” By this, Bryant did not refer to Greeley’s slovenly dress, nor to his use of the lie direct, but meant a certain Johnsonian grossness which he thought Greeley permitted himself in the drawing-room.
Taken as a whole, the editorial was a regrettably extreme attack upon a man who, if erratic and uncouth, was also the soul of kindliness and sincerity; and Samuel Bowles was justified in complaining that the Post showed personal feeling. Yet the fierce and contemptuous attitude of Bryant by no means stood isolated. The Times that day called Greeley’s nomination “a sad farce,” said that the first impulse of every one was to laugh, and declared that “if any one man could send a great nation to the dogs, that man is Mr. Greeley.” He would disorganize every department, commit the government to every crude illusion from Fourierism to vegetarianism, and embroil it with every foreign country. Schurz was heartsick, and for some time refused to support the nominee, while the German leaders and newspapers, from which much had been hoped, were almost unanimously hostile. In a number of States independents openly repudiated the ticket. E. L. Godkin, of the Nation, was totally disgusted, for he detested Greeley’s high tariff views. He had written as early as 1863 that Greeley “has no great grasp of mind, no great political insight,” and now his biting pen did more than that of any other writer to defeat the candidate.
The Atlantic Monthly promptly fell in behind Grant. Manton Marble of the World had watched the Cincinnati Convention with a hopefulness equaling, but differing from, Bryant’s. Now he lashed out at the Convention’s mistake, stayed with the journal long enough to express wholehearted dislike of Greeley, and then retired so that the World might give him unenthusiastic support. Harper’s Weekly brought out the absurdities of Greeley’s candidacy in striking fashion. Thomas Nast’s cartoons kept the old editor in a ridiculous light week after week—now devouring, with a wry face, a bowl of boiling porridge labeled “My own words and deeds,” now at his Chappaqua farm seated well out on a limb, which he was earnestly sawing off between himself and the tree. Greeley’s chief assistance in New York, aside from the Tribune, came from Dana and the Sun; indeed, Dana had come out for his eventual nomination as early as 1868, when almost no one was thinking of it. The other Democratic newspapers, as the Express, climbed rather grumblingly on the Greeley bandwagon; since Bennett’s death the Herald had not been of their number.
For a time the Evening Post, in its intense dissatisfaction with the candidate, had some hope that another nomination could be effected. It suggested such an attempt, and that the selection be made by an assembly of leaders, not left to the “dangerous machinery of a convention.” The Free Trade League made itself the instrument of this effort, and called a meeting at Steinway Hall on May 30, to be presided over by Bryant. Gen. Jacob Cox, ex-Commissioner Wells, and others gave it their support, but the gathering came to nothing. In June the Post was placed definitely behind Grant. The campaign was dismal for it, as for all other conscientious journals. It was impossible for even the Times to be enthusiastic over Grant, or even Dana over Greeley. The Evening Post’s attitude toward the regular Republican nominee was precisely that which the Springfield Republican took towards the Liberal Republican candidate. “Support the ticket, but don’t gush,” Bowles had telegraphed his subordinates from Cincinnati. How far Bryant was from abandoning his criticism of the President is evident from an August editorial entitled “Grant’s Real Character.”
The Post objected to the “Napoleon-Cæsar-Tweed” theory of Grant, the belief that he was a corrupt man of colossal ambition, egotism, and determination, but it said nothing more in his defense than that he was “a plain American citizen, with his average defects, his average ignorance, his average intelligence, and his average vices and virtues.” It made fun of his ignorance of political economy—he had said that the nation could never be poor while it had the gold locked in the Rockies. It scored his liking for money, gifts, good dinners, flashy associates, fast horses, and “style.” The Post spoke thus caustically of Grant because Bryant had no idea of stultifying the newspaper, even to help beat Greeley; but it did it the more readily because it knew Greeley had not a chance. The mass of the party was with Grant, and he received a plurality of three quarters of a million.
When Greeley’s insanity and death followed so tragically upon his humiliating defeat, the Evening Post made belated amends for its campaign severity. Its obituary editorial of Nov. 30 was marked by a generosity which it might well have shown earlier: