Again Greeley wrote to Dana:
You are getting everybody to curse me. I am too sick to be out of bed, too crazy to sleep, and am surrounded by horrors.... I can bear the responsibilities that belong to me, but you heap a load on me that will kill me.
With all Dana’s editorial work—and he and Greeley made the Tribune the most powerful paper of the fifties, with a million readers—he found time for the purely literary. He translated and published a volume of German stories and legends under the title “The Black Ant.” He edited a book of views of remarkable places and objects in all countries. In 1857 was published his “Household Book of Poetry,” still a standard work of reference. He was criticised for omitting Poe from the first edition, and at the next printing he added “The Raven,” “The Bells,” and “Annabel Lee.” Poe and Cooper were among the literary gods whom Dana refused to worship in his youth, but in later life he changed his opinion of the poet.
With George Ripley, his friend in Harvard, at Brook Farm, and in the Tribune office, Dana prepared the “New American Encyclopedia,” which was published between 1858 and 1863. It was a huge undertaking and a success. Dana and Ripley carefully revised it ten years afterward. In 1882, with Rossiter Johnson, Dana edited and published a collection of verse under the title “Fifty Perfect Poems.”
Although Dana persisted that the Union must not fall, Greeley still believed, as late as December, 1860, that it would “not be found practical to coerce” the threatening States into subjection. When war actually came, however, Greeley at last adopted the policy of “No compromise, no concessions to traitors.”
The Tribune’s cry, “Forward to Richmond!” sounded from May, 1861, until Bull Run, was generally attributed to Dana. Greeley himself made it plain that it was not his:
I wish to be distinctly understood as not seeking to be relieved from any responsibility for urging the advance of the Union army in Virginia, though the precise phrase, “Forward to Richmond!” was not mine, and I would have preferred not to reiterate it. Henceforth I bar all criticism in these columns on army movements. Now let the wolves howl on! I do not believe they can goad me into another personal letter.
As a matter of fact, “Forward to Richmond!” was phrased by Fitz-Henry Warren, then head of the Tribune’s correspondence staff in Washington. He came from Iowa, where in his youth he was editor of the Burlington Hawkeye. He resigned from the Tribune late in 1861 to take command of the First Iowa Cavalry, which he organized. In 1862 he became a brigadier-general, and he was later brevetted a major-general. In 1869 he was the American minister to Guatemala. From being one of the men around Greeley he became one of the men with Dana, and in 1875–1876 he did Washington correspondence for the Sun, and wrote many editorial articles for it.
In 1861 Dana was an active advocate of Greeley’s candidacy for the United States Senate, and almost got him nominated. If Greeley had gone to the Senate, Dana might have continued on the Tribune; but it became evident, before the war was a year old, that one newspaper was no longer large enough for both men. The sprightly, aggressive, unhesitating, and practical Dana, and the ambitious, but eccentric and somewhat visionary Greeley found their paths diverging. The circumstances under which they parted were thus described by Dana in a letter to a friend:
On Thursday, March 27, I was notified that Mr. Greeley had given the stockholders notice that I must leave, or he would, and that they wanted me to leave accordingly. No cause of dissatisfaction being alleged, and H. G. having been of late more confidential and friendly than ever, not once having said anything betokening disaffection to me, I sent a friend to him to ascertain if it was true, or if some misunderstanding was at the bottom of it. My friend came and reported that it was true, and that H. G. was immovable.