Without money, family, friends, or any of the usual supports by which men are helped into eminence, Mr. Greeley won his place of influence and distinction by the sheer force of his intellectual ability and the determination of his character. By good natural abilities, by industry, by temperance, by sympathy with what is noblest and best in human nature, and by earnest purpose, the ignorant, friendless, unknown printer’s boy of a few years since became the powerful and famous journalist, whose words went forth to the ends of the earth, affecting the destinies of all mankind.
II
An entirely different question was posed by the election of 1876—the question whether the long friendship of Bryant and the former sub-editors for Samuel J. Tilden should carry the Evening Post over to the Democratic side. The decision finally made is of peculiar interest, for it shows how little Bryant was inclined to let personal considerations sway him upon any public question.
Early in the thirties, while Bryant and other editors were wrangling over the Bank, an ardent Democrat from New Lebanon, N. Y., named Elam Tilden, visited the Evening Post, and introduced his son Samuel, a boy in roundabouts. Bryant often spoke in later years of the impression made on him by the youth’s precocity, handsome features, and cultivated speech. A few years later young Tilden studied at New York University, and improved his acquaintance with the poet. When in the fall of 1841 Bryant made one of his country excursions, he chose New Lebanon for headquarters, and visited the Tilden family. The ties between Tilden and the Post were much strengthened after 1848, when Bigelow became junior editor. We have seen that they were acquainted as young lawyers, and Bigelow was State prison inspector at the same time that Tilden began his political career in the Assembly. Tilden frequently visited the Post and discussed political topics, it was there that he published an explanation of his stand in the campaign of 1860, and it was with the freedom of an old friend that he told Bigelow that he and Bryant shared the blood-guilt of the conflict.
After the war his visits were less frequent. But he made the Evening Post his mouthpiece when, in 1871–2, he, ex-Mayor Havemeyer, and Andrew H. Green pushed home the fight against the Tweed Ring. The Post always credited Tilden with being the chief agent in proving the actual guilt of Tweed’s lieutenants. During the spring of 1873 an acrimonious controversy was carried on between Tilden and the Times, turning in the main upon a new Charter proposed at Albany, which Tilden attacked and the Times defended. Tilden used the Post for the publication of his letters, and Bryant editorially supported him.
As Governor, Tilden invited Bryant in the early weeks of 1875 to pay him a visit at the Executive Mansion, and the editor accepted. Both branches of the Legislature tendered Bryant a public reception, the first time that the State had paid such an honor to any man of letters. At a dinner party on Tilden’s birthday, Bryant, in toasting the Governor, said that the public would not be displeased if his present position proved a stepping-stone to the Presidency. At all times the Post, like other New York papers, expressed golden opinions of Tilden’s administration, and in especial of his attacks upon the “Canal Ring,” a bi-partisan organization which had gained huge sums through fraudulent contracts for the repair of the State canals.
It was therefore natural that when in 1876 the election of a successor to Grant approached, Tilden’s friends had a strong hope that Bryant and the Evening Post would lend the Governor their support. The newspaper gave no advance hint of its attitude. When Hayes was nominated by the Republicans on June 16, it, like all other independent journals, was pleased. Its overshadowing fear had been that Blaine, whom it detested as dishonest, would be named, and it saw in Hayes as good a man as its own previous favorite, Bristow of Kentucky. While some sneered at the nomination as negative and weak, the Post predicted that it would “turn out to be positive and strong.” On the other hand, it thought the platform poor. It called the civil service plank platitudinous and empty, and the currency plank, which temporized with regard to specie resumption, worse still.
Nor did the Evening Post immediately commit itself after the Democratic Convention. Over Tilden’s nomination it rejoiced even more than over that of Hayes. It recognized his sterling integrity and zeal as a reformer and was delighted that he had beaten both Tammany and the mediocre Western aspirants, Senator Thurman and Gov. Hendricks. But it did not openly pronounce for him, and its comment upon the Democratic platform maintained a careful impartiality. “In respect to financial reform their position is worse than that of the Republicans; in respect to a reform of the civil service they offer nothing better; in respect to revenue reform they have done better.” The decision was left until after the 4th of July.
All the influence of Bigelow, who sometimes still wrote editorials for the Post, was in favor of Tilden. He was the candidate’s campaign manager, and would be Secretary of State if Tilden won. So was all the influence of Parke Godwin, Bryant’s son-in-law and formerly a part owner. Bryant’s own friendship for Tilden weighed heavily in the balance. But the decision was not, as the public supposed, Bryant’s alone. Some years earlier the Evening Post had been reorganized as a joint stock company, and Bryant held exactly half, not a majority, of the shares. The other half were owned by Isaac Henderson, the able, smooth-tongued, rubicund business manager, who had been a partner since the early fifties, and whose influence as Bryant became older gradually extended outside the business office to the editorial rooms. His one anxiety for the Evening Post was that it should pay fat dividends, and he was no more scrupulous as to the means than the business managers of other newspapers. Mr. J. Ranken Towse tells us how distinct by 1876 was the influence he exerted upon the editorial policy:
It was not often that legitimate exception could be taken to its utterances, but as much could not be said of its unaccountable reticences. For some of these there may have been a good and sufficient reason, at which I cannot even guess, but there were others which could be understood only too easily. The simple fact is that William Cullen Bryant, though editor-in-chief and half owner, was by no means in absolute control of the paper. Between the counting room and the editorial department there was a constant, silent, irrepressible conflict, not to say antagonism—for I have always been convinced that the limits of it were defined by some sort of agreement, written or tacit—whenever the question at issue was one of direct commercial profit, which often acted as a bar to the candid discussion of inconvenient topics.