The Sun took the setback of Bull Run with better grace than most of the papers—far better than Horace Greeley, who yelled for a truce. It seemed to see that this was only the beginning of a long conflict, which must be fought to the end, regardless of disappointments. On August 15, 1861, it declared:
Let there be but one war. Better it should cost millions of lives than that we should live in hourly dread of wars, contiguous to a people who could make foreign alliances and land armies upon our shores to destroy our liberties.
On the subject of the war’s cost it said:
No more talk of carrying on the war economically! The only economy is to make short and swift work of it, and the people are ready to bear the expense, if it were five hundred millions of dollars, to-day.
This was printed when the war was very young; when no man dreamed that it would cost the Federal government six times five hundred millions.
The Sun’s editorial articles were not without criticism of the conduct of the war. It was one of the many papers that demanded the resignation of Seward at a time when the Secretary of State was generally blamed for what seemed to be the dilly-dallying of the government. Lincoln himself was still regarded as a politician as well as a statesman—a view which was reflected in the Sun’s comment on the preliminary proclamation of emancipation, September 22, 1862:
As the greatest and most momentous act of our nation, from its foundation to the present time, we would rather have seen this step disconnected from all lesser considerations and from party influences.
The inference in this was that Lincoln had deliberately made his great stroke on the eve of the Republican State convention in New York.
The Tribune declared that the proclamation was “the beginning of the end of the rebellion.” “The wisdom of the step is unquestionable,” said the Times; “its necessity indisputable.” The businesslike Herald remarked that it inaugurated “an overwhelming revolution in the system of labour.” The World said that it regretted the proclamation and doubted the President’s power to free the slaves. “We regard it with profound regret,” said the Journal of Commerce. “It is usurpation of power!” shouted the Staats-Zeitung.
Such was the general tone of the New York morning newspapers during the war. Only three—the Sun, the Tribune, and the Times—could be described as out-and-out loyalists. The Sun was for backing up Lincoln whenever it believed him right, and that was most of the time; yet it was free in its criticism of various phases of the conduct of the war.