On his return to America Stanton studied law with his father-in-law, Daniel Cady. After his admission to the bar he practised in Boston, but he returned to New York and politics in 1847. He left the Democratic party to become one of the founders of the Republican party.
Dana met Stanton when the latter was a writer for the Tribune, and when Dana came into the control of the Sun he secured the veteran as a contributor. Stanton knew politics from A to Z, and his brief articles, filled with political wisdom and often salted with his dry humour, were just the class of matter that Dana wanted for the editorial page. Stanton was also a capable reviewer of books. He wrote for the Sun from 1868 until his death in 1887. Henry Ward Beecher said of him:
“I think Stanton has all the elements of old John Adams—able, staunch, patriotic, full of principle, and always unpopular. He lacks that sense of other people’s opinions which keeps a man from running against them.”
John Swinton was one of the few of Dana’s men who might be described as a “character.” He lived a double intellectual life, writing conservative articles in his newspaper hours and making socialistic speeches when he was off duty. Yet it was a double life without duplicity, for there was no concealment in it, no hypocrisy, and no harm. When he had finished his day in the office of the Sun, perhaps at writing some instructive paragraphs about the possibilities of American trade in Nicaragua, he would take off his skull-cap, place a black soft hat on his gray head, and go forth to dilate on the advantages of super-Fourierism to some sympathetic audience of socialists.
There was a story in the office that one evening Mr. Swinton, making a speech at a socialistic gathering, referred hotly to the editor of the Sun as one of the props of a false form of government, and added that “some day two old men will come rolling down the steps of the Sun office,” and that at the bottom of the steps he, Swinton, would be on top.
This may be of a piece with the story about Mr. Dana and the man with the revolver; but the young men in the reporters’ room liked to tell it to younger men. It probably had its basis in the fact that on the morning after a particularly ferocious assault on capital, John Swinton would poke his head into Mr. Dana’s room to tell him how he had given him the dickens the night before—information which tickled Mr. Dana immensely. And Dana never went to the bottom of the Sun stairs except on his own sturdy legs.
Swinton was a Scotsman, born in Haddingtonshire in 1830. He emigrated to Canada as a boy, learned the printer’s trade, and worked at the case in New York. After travels all over the country, he lived for a time in Charleston, South Carolina, and there acquired an abhorrence for slavery. He went to Kansas and took part in the Free Soil contest, but returned to New York in 1857 and began the study of medicine.
While so engaged he contributed articles to the New York Times, and Henry J. Raymond, who liked his work, took him as an editorial writer. He was the managing editor of the Times during the Civil War, and had sole charge during Raymond’s absences. At the end of the war Swinton’s health caused him to resign from the managing editorship, but he continued to write for the editorial page. He went to work on the Sun about 1877.
His specialty was paragraphs. Dana liked men who could do anything, but he also preferred that every man should have some specialty. Swinton had the imagination and the light touch of the skilful weaver of small items. Also, he was much interested in Central America, and his knowledge of that region was of frequent use to the Sun.
Swinton left the Sun in 1883 to give his whole time to John Swinton’s Paper, a weekly journal in which he expounded his labour-reform and other political views. He was the author of many pamphlets and several books, including a “Eulogy of Henry J. Raymond” and an “Oration on John Brown.”