On April 10, 1865, the head-lines were sprinkled with American flags and cuts of Columbia, and the types carried the welcome news for which the North had waited for four long years:
OUR NATION REDEEMED—SURRENDER OF LEE AND HIS WHOLE ARMY—THE TERMS—OFFICERS AND MEN PAROLED AND TOLD TO GO HOME—THE COUNTRY WILD WITH JOY, ETC., ETC., ETC.
The “etc., etc., etc.,” suggests that the head-writer was too wild with joy to go into more details.
It was not until May, 1862, that the Sun abandoned the ancient custom of giving a large part of the first page to advertising. This reform came late, perhaps because Moses S. Beach was out of the Sun in the early months of the war.
On August 6, 1860, the control of the paper had passed from Mr. Beach to Archibald M. Morrison, a rich young man of religious fervour, who was prompted by other religious enthusiasts to get the Sun and use it for evangelical purposes. Mr. Morrison gave Mr. Beach one hundred thousand dollars for the good-will of the paper, and agreed to pay a rental for the material. Mr. Beach retained the ownership of the building, of the presses, and, indeed, of every piece of type.
The new proprietors of the Sun held a prayer-meeting at noon every day in the editorial rooms. They also injected a bit of religion into the columns by printing on the first page reports of prayer-meetings in the Sailors’ Home and of the doings of missionaries in Syria and elsewhere. In spite of the new spirit that pervaded the office, however, it was still possible for the unregenerate old subscriber to find some little space devoted to the fistic clashes of Heenan and Morrissey. Flies are not caught with vinegar.
The new management made a sort of department paper of the Sun, the front page being divided with the headings “Financial,” “Religious,” “Criminal,” “Calamities,” “Foreign Items,” “Business Items,” and “Miscellaneous.” It was not a bad newspaper, and it was quite possible that some business men would prefer it to the Beach kind of sheet; but it is certain that the advertisers were not attracted and that some readers were repelled. One of the latter climbed the stairs of the building at Fulton and Nassau Streets early one morning and nailed to the door of the editorial rooms a placard which read: “Be ye not righteous overmuch!”
During the Morrison régime the Sun refused to accept advertisements on Sunday. Of course, the printers worked on Sunday night, getting out Monday’s paper, but that was something else. The Sun went so far (July 23, 1861) as to urge that the Union generals should be forbidden to attack the enemy on Sundays. “Our troops must have rest, and need the Sabbath,” it said.
William C. Church, one of the rising young newspapermen of New York, was induced to become the publisher under the Sun’s new management. He was only twenty-four years old, but he had had a good deal of newspaper experience in assisting his father, the Rev. Pharcellus Church, to edit and publish the New York Chronicle. After a few weeks in the Sun office, however, Mr. Church saw that the paper, though daily treated with evangelical serum, was not likely to be a howling success; and on December 10, 1860, four months after he took hold as publisher, it was announced that Mr. Church had “withdrawn from the publication of the Sun for the purpose of spending some months in European travel and correspondence for the paper.”
Mr. Church wrote a few letters from Europe, but when the Civil War started he hurried home and went with the joint military and naval expedition headed by General T. W. Sherman and Admiral S. F. Dupont. He was present at the capture of Port Royal, and wrote for the Evening Post the first account of it that appeared in the North. Later he acted as a war-correspondent of the Times, writing under the pseudonym “Pierrepont.” In October, 1862, he was appointed a captain of volunteers, and toward the close of the war he received the brevets of major and lieutenant-colonel.