Transcriber’s Note
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THE EVENING POST
William Cullen Bryant
Associate Editor, 1826–1829, Editor-in-Chief, 1829–1878
(Two hitherto unpublished portraits)
THE EVENING POST
A Century of Journalism
ALLAN NEVINS
The journalists are now the true kings and clergy; henceforthhistorians, unless they are fools, must write not of Bourbon dynasties,and Tudors, and Hapsburgs; but of stamped, broadsheetdynasties, and quite new successive names, according as this or theother able editor, or combination of able editors, gains the world’sear.—Sartor Resartus.
BONI AND LIVERIGHT
Publishers : New York
TO MY MOTHER
Copyright, 1922, by
Boni and Liveright, Inc.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
v
PREFACE
This volume took its origin in the writer’s belief thata history of the Evening Post would be interesting notmerely as that of one of the world’s greatest newspapers,but as throwing light on the whole course of metropolitanjournalism in America since 1800, and upon some importantparts of local and national history. In a bookof this kind it is necessary to steer between Scylla andCharybdis. If the volume were confined to mere office-history,it would interest few; while a review of all thenewspaper’s editorial opinions and all the interestingnews it has printed would be a review of the greater partof what has happened in the nineteenth century and since.The problem has been to avoid narrowness on the onehand, padding on the other. The author has tried toselect the most important, interesting, and illuminatingaspects and episodes of the newspaper’s history, and totreat them with a careful regard for perspective.
The decision to include no footnote references toauthorities in a volume of this character probably requiresno defense. In a great majority of instances the text itselfindicates the authority. When an utterance of the EveningPost on the Dred Scott decision is quoted, it wouldassuredly be impertinent to quote the exact date. Theauthor wishes to say that he has been at pains to ascribeno bit of writing to a particular editor without makingsure that he actually wrote it. When he names Bryantas the writer of a certain passage, he does so on theauthority of the Bryant papers, or the Parke Godwinpapers, or one of the lives of Bryant, or of indisputableinternal evidence. After 1881 a careful record of thewriters of the m