In 1844 his eyes had sufficiently recovered to enable him to do regular work, and he obtained employment under Elizur Wright, better known as an insurance actuary than as an editor, but who then conducted “The Chronotype,” an orthodox newspaper, which was a great favorite with the Congregational ministers of New England. Mr. Wright used to enjoy telling how “Dana always had a weakness for giving people with fixed convictions something new to think about,” and how he illustrated this weakness during the absence of his chief by writing strong editorials against the doctrine of a bill. This piece of enterprise involved the editor-in-chief in the labor of writing a personal letter to each of his ministerial subscribers, and to many others explaining how the paper “had been left in charge of a young man without mellow journalistic experience.” Mr. Dana’s compensation was five dollars per week, and at this amount it remained until 1847, when he joined the staff of the New York “Tribune” at ten dollars, a figure which was gradually increased to fifty dollars, which was the highest salary he ever received on the “Tribune.” Many delightful stories are told of the intercourse of Dana and Greeley. The part they took in politics, the fight against slavery, the organization of the Republican Party, Mr. Dana’s loyal support of Greeley’s aspirations for political preferment, all these are a part of the political history of our country. Just before joining the “Tribune” staff Mr. Dana was married to Miss Eunice MacDaniel, of New York. Of his delight in family life no testimony can be stronger than his own words written during a brief interval of leisure: “I have been busy with my children, drawing them about in old Bradley’s one-horse wagon, rowing and sailing with them on the bay and sound, gathering shells on the shore with them, picking cherries, lounging on the grass with the whole tribe about me. There’s no delight like that in a pack of young children of your own.... A house without a baby is inhuman.”
During these busy years Mr. Dana, together with Mr. Ripley, edited “The American Cyclopedia,” a work which is a monument of his care and learning and patient labor; and he also prepared and published a “Household Book of Poetry,” one of the very best collections of its kind, and one which has found its way into a very large number of American homes and contributed in no small measure to further the cause of good literature. In 1862 there came about a radical difference between Mr. Greeley and Mr. Dana as to the proper policy of the “Tribune” in regard to the war. The result was Mr. Dana’s withdrawal from the paper. He was immediately asked by Mr. Stanton to audit a large number of disputed claims in the quartermaster’s office at Cairo. This led to his appointment as Assistant Secretary of War, which position he held until the end of the Rebellion. About one-third of his time during this period was spent with the armies at the front. In this way he served as the confidential agent of the administration, and was once styled by Mr. Lincoln “the eyes of the Government at the front.” His reports were remarkable for their unconventional form, their brevity, and the completeness and accuracy with which they placed Stanton and Lincoln in possession of the exact facts. “Miles of customary military reports,” says a recent writer, “were worth less to Lincoln than half a dozen of Dana’s vivid sentences.”
After the close of the war Mr. Dana spent one year in Chicago as editor of “The Republican.” He had been deceived about the financial basis of the enterprise, and was in no way responsible for its failure. Returning to New York, he organized the company which purchased the old “Sun” property, and started the paper on a long career of success and of influence. He was probably the most independent man who ever managed a great newspaper. He possessed the power of working without that conscious effort which characterizes the activity of most men, and which seems to be the source of so many early break-downs. He was not easily disturbed. At the “Sun” office, they like to tell a doubtful story of the old days when the work of the paper was conducted in four small rooms. The city editor came hurriedly in exclaiming, “Mr. Dana, there’s a man out there with a cocked revolver. He is very much excited. He insists on seeing the editor-in-chief.” “Is he very much excited?” said Mr. Dana, hardly looking up from his work, “if you think it worth the space, ask Amos Cummings if he will kindly see the gentleman and write him up.” A noted sensational clergyman once volunteered to write, under an assumed name, for the “Sun.” He foolishly tried to adapt himself to what he imagined was the irresponsible tone of a Sunday paper, and there can be no doubt that Mr. Dana enjoyed writing in blue pencil across the back of his first article, “This is too wicked.”
During the winter the great editor occupied his house on Madison Avenue and Sixtieth Street, but his summer house was on a little island, two or three miles from Glen Cove, which his wide knowledge of trees and fruits and flowers enabled him to make a singularly delightful spot. In the summer of 1897, when Mr. Dana was approaching his eightieth year, and still continued to manage his great newspaper, surrounded by a corps of trained and efficient men, he was attacked with a serious illness, and passed away on the afternoon of October 17th. It is doubted whether any other man has left his mark more deeply on the nineteenth century than has the famous editor of the “Sun.”
ROSCOE CONKLING.
(THE NEW YORK “SUN,” APRIL 18, 1888.)
HE most picturesque, striking, and original figure of American politics disappears in the death of Roscoe Conkling. Alike powerful and graceful in person, he towered above the masses of men in the elasticity of his talents and the peculiarities and resources of his mental constitution as much as he did in form and bearing. Yet his career cannot be called a great success, and he was not a great man.
But he was an object of great love and admiration to an extraordinary circle of friends, including not alone those who shared his opinions, but many who were utterly opposed to them. He was by nature a zealous partisan, and it was his inclination to doubt the good sense and the disinterestedness of those who were on the other side; but, nevertheless, the strongest instinct of his nature was friendship, and his attachments stood the test of every trial except such as trenched upon his own personality. This he guarded with the swift jealousy of most intense selfhood, and no one could in any way impinge upon it and remain his friend. Then, his resentments were more lasting and more unchangeable than his friendships. This, in our judgment, was the great weakness of the man. Who can say that in his innermost heart Conkling did not deplore it? At any rate, the candid observer who sums up his history must deplore it for him. “And the recording angel, as he wrote it down, dropped a tear upon the word and blotted it out forever.”