For all that, Dana must have felt lonely, for at that moment, at any rate, the new chiefs of the Sun’s rivals did not measure up to the heights of their predecessors. To Dana, the trio that had passed were men worthy of his steel, and worthy, each in his own way, of admiration. Toward Greeley, in spite of the circumstances under which Dana left the Tribune, the editor of the Sun showed a kindly spirit; not only in his support of Greeley for the presidency, which may have sprung from Dana’s aversion to Grantism, but in his general attitude toward the brilliant if erratic old man. As for Bennett, Dana frankly believed him to be a great newspaperman, and never hesitated to say so.
What Dana thought of the three may be judged by his editorial article in the Sun on the day after Greeley’s funeral:
In burying Mr. Greeley we bury the third founder of a newspaper which has become famous and wealthy in this city during the last thirty-five years. Mr. Raymond died three years and Mr. Bennett barely six months ago.
These three men were exceedingly unlike each other, yet each of them possessed extraordinary professional talents. Mr. Raymond surpassed both Mr. Bennett and Mr. Greeley in the versatility of his accomplishments, and in facility and smoothness as a writer. But he was less a journalist than either of the other two. Nature had rather intended him for a lawyer, and success as a legislative debater and presiding officer had directed his ambition toward that kind of life.
Mr. Bennett was exclusively a newspaperman. He was equally great as a writer, a wit, and a purveyor of news; and he never showed any desire to leave a profession in which he had made himself rich and formidable.
Horace Greeley delighted to be a maker of newspapers, not so much for the thing itself, though to that he was sincerely attached, as for the sake of promoting doctrines, ideas, and theories in which he was a believer; and his personal ambition, which was very profound and never inoperative, made him wish to be Governor, Legislator, Senator, Cabinet Minister, President, because such elevation seemed to afford the clearest possible evidence that he himself was appreciated and that the cause he espoused had gained the hearts of the people. How incomplete, indeed, would be the triumph of any set of principles if their chief advocate and promoter were to go unrecognized and unhonored!
It is a most impressive circumstance that each of these three great journalists has had to die a tragic and pitiable death. One perished by apoplexy long after midnight in the entrance of his own home; another closed his eyes with no relative near him to perform that last sad office; and the third, broken down by toils, excitements, and sufferings too strong to be borne, breathed his last in a private madhouse. What a lesson to the possessors of power, for these three men were powerful beyond others! What a commentary upon human greatness, for they were rich and great, and were looked upon with envy by thousands who thought themselves less fortunate than they! And amid such startling surprises and such a prodigious conflict of lights and shadows, the curtain falls as the tired actor, crowned with long applause, passes from that which seems to that which is.
Louis J. Jennings succeeded Raymond as the editor of the Times, and acted as such until 1876, when he returned to England, his desk being taken by John Foord. Jennings went into politics in England, and was elected a member of Parliament. He also wrote a life of Gladstone and edited a collection of Lord Randolph Churchill’s speeches.
Bennett was followed in the possession of the Herald by his son and namesake. Whitelaw Reid took Greeley’s place at the head of the Tribune. Dana did not like Reid in those days. In a “Survey of Metropolitan Journalism” which appeared in the editorial columns of the Sun on September 3, 1875—the Sun’s forty-second birthday—Dana dismissed his neighbour of the then “tall tower” with—
We pass the Tribune by. Our opinion of it is well known. It is Jay Gould’s paper, and a disgrace to journalism.