The Courier-Journal having come to represent all three of the English dailies of the city the public began to rebel. It could not see that instead of three newspapers of the third or fourth class Louisville was given one newspaper of the first class; that instead of dividing the local patronage in three inadequate portions, wasted upon a triple competition, this patronage was combined, enabling the one newspaper to engage in a more equal competition with the newspapers of such rival and larger cities as Cincinnati and St. Louis; and that one of the contracting parties needing an editor, the other a publisher, in coming together the two were able to put their trained faculties to the best account.
Nevertheless, during thirty-five years Mr. Haldeman and I labored side by side, not the least difference having arisen between us. The attacks to which we were subjected from time to time drew us together the closer. These attacks were sometimes irritating and sometimes comical, but they had one characteristic feature: Each started out apparently under a high state of excitement. Each seemed to have some profound cause of grief, to be animated by implacable hate and to aim at nothing short of annihilation. Frequently the assailants would lie in wait to see how the Courier-Journal's cat was going to jump, in order that they might take the other side; and invariably, even if the Courier-Journal stood for the reforms they affected to stand for, they began a system of misrepresentation and abuse. In no instance did they attain any success.
Only once, during the Free Silver craze of 1896, and the dark and tragic days that followed it the three or four succeeding years, the paper having stood, as it had stood during the Greenback craze, for sound money, was the property in danger. It cost more of labor and patience to save it from destruction than it had cost to create it thirty years before. Happily Mr. Haldeman lived to see the rescue complete, the tide turned and the future safe.
VI
A newspaper, like a woman, must not only be honest, but must seem to be honest; acts of levity, loose unbecoming expressions or behavior--though never so innocent--tending in the one and in the other to lower reputation and discredit character. During my career I have proceeded under a confident belief in this principle of newspaper ethics and an unfailing recognition of its mandates. I truly believe that next after business integrity in newspaper management comes disinterestedness in the public service, and next after disinterestedness come moderation and intelligence, cleanliness and good feeling, in dealing with affairs and its readers.
From that blessed Sunday morning, November 8, 1868, to this good day, I have known no other life and had no other aim. Those were indeed parlous times. It was an era of transition. Upon the field of battle, after four years of deadly but unequal combat, the North had vanquished the South. The victor stood like a giant, with blood aflame, eyes dilate and hands uplifted again to strike. The victim lay prostrate. Save self-respect and manhood all was lost. Clasping its memories to its bosom the South sank helpless amid the wreck of its fortunes, whilst the North, the benign influence of the great Lincoln withdrawn, proceeded to decide its fate. To this ghastly end had come slavery and secession, and all the pomp, pride and circumstance of the Confederacy. To this bitter end had come the soldiership of Lee and Jackson and Johnston and the myriads of brave men who followed them.
The single Constitutional barrier that had stood between the people of the stricken section and political extinction was about to be removed by the exit of Andrew Johnson from the White House. In his place a man of blood and iron--for such was the estimate at that time placed upon Grant--had been elected President. The Republicans in Congress, checked for a time by Johnson, were at length to have entire sway under Thaddeus Stevens. Reconstruction was to be thorough and merciless. To meet these conditions was the first requirement of the Courier-Journal, a newspaper conducted by outlawed rebels and published on the sectional border line. The task was not an easy one.
There is never a cause so weak that it does not stir into ill-timed activity some wild, unpractical zealots who imagine it strong. There is never a cause so just but that the malevolent and the mercenary will seek to trade upon it. The South was helpless; the one thing needful was to get it on its feet, and though the bravest and the wisest saw this plainly enough there came to the front--particularly in Kentucky--a small but noisy body of politicians who had only worked themselves into a state of war when it was too late, and who with more or less of aggression, insisted that "the states lately in rebellion" still had rights, which they were able to maintain and which the North could be forced to respect.
I was of a different opinion. It seemed to me that whatever of right might exist the South was at the mercy of the North; that the radical party led by Stevens and Wade dominated the North and could dictate its own terms; and that the shortest way round lay in that course which was best calculated to disarm radicalism by an intelligent appeal to the business interests and conservative elements of Northern society, supported by a domestic policy of justice alike to whites and blacks.
Though the institution of African slavery was gone the negro continued the subject of savage contention. I urged that he be taken out of the arena of agitation, and my way of taking him out was to concede him his legal and civil rights. The lately ratified Constitutional Amendments, I contended, were the real Treaty of Peace between the North and South. The recognition of these Amendments in good faith by the white people of the South was indispensable to that perfect peace which was desired by the best people of both sections. The political emancipation of the blacks was essential to the moral emancipation of the whites. With the disappearence of the negro question as cause of agitation, I argued, radicalism of the intense, proscriptive sort would die out; the liberty-loving, patriotic people of the North would assert themselves; and, this one obstacle to a better understanding removed, the restoration of Constitutional Government would follow, being a matter of momentous concern to the body of the people both North and South.