WARFARE WITHIN THE OFFICE: PARKE GODWIN’S EDITORSHIP  
Six weeks before Bryant’s death preparations were made, as with a prevision of that event, for the uninterrupted control of the newspaper by his family. A reorganization was forced, under circumstances later to be recounted, upon the business manager, Isaac Henderson. The poet assigned the presidency of the Evening Post Company to Judge John J. Monell, but kept the editorship; Henderson resigned as publisher and was succeeded by his son, Isaac, Jr.; and Parke Godwin became a trustee, resuming his connection as a writer on artistic, scientific, and literary topics. In June, 1878, immediately after the funeral of Bryant, Godwin, his son-in-law, took his place, and was formally named editor in December. His editorship, which endured but three years, affords an opportunity to pause for a survey of the men who made the Evening Post of the seventies, and of the figure believed by many to be trying to unmake it.
The newspaper establishment of which Godwin became head was one which, small and antiquated though it would seem now, had made extraordinary strides since the Civil War. During the conflict it had been housed in a dingy, rickety firetrap on the northwest corner of Liberty and Nassau Streets, where it had its publication office on the first floor, its five small editorial rooms together with the composing room on the third floor, and its presses in the basement. But in 1874–5 Henderson had erected a new and imposing building of ten stories on the corner of Fulton and Broadway, which the Post occupied until 1907. Here the composing rooms, unusually spacious and well-lighted, were on the top floor, the editorial rooms next below, and the offices on the ground floor.
421 It was necessary then to be near the postoffice to ensure the early delivery of mails, and there being no “tickers,” evening papers had also to be near Wall Street. Stock quotations were long printed from the official sheet of the Stock Exchange. A messenger boy was kept waiting for the first copy of this publication, and it was hurried to the newspaper office, there cut into small “takes,” and put into type with all possible speed. In the seventies and early eighties the Post was printed from a huge eight-cylinder press, direct from type which was locked upon the curved cylinders, while men standing in tiers upon each side fed in the paper. The last minutes before the press hour in the composing room, as the managing editor stood over the forms and decided what news should be killed, what used, and what held over, were highly exciting.
As for the staff, though still small, it had been steadily enlarged in the sixties and seventies. The first managing editor was Charles Nordhoff, who came in 1860, when the title was still an innovation, having recently been borrowed from the London Times by the Tribune to apply to Dana. For a generation it signified not a mere manager of the news columns, as it did later, but a man who in the absence of the editor performed all his functions. When Bryant was not in the office, and Godwin did not supply his place, Nordhoff was expected to take charge of the editorial page. The first literary editor, as we have seen, John R. Thompson, was employed in 1868; for a time he was expected also to review some plays, but within a few years the Evening Post had a special musical and dramatic editor in the person of William F. Williams, and by the middle seventies Williams was practically confining himself to music while J. Ranken Towse took over, to its vast improvement, the dramatic criticism. Thus there were three valuable employees doing work which had previously been ill-done or done not at all. As for the news force, when in 1871 William Alexander Linn accepted the position of city editor, he found it to consist, besides himself, of six men. These were the managing422 editor, at this date Charlton Lewis; his assistant, Bronson Howard; the telegraph editor, financial editor, one salaried reporter, and one reporter “on space.”
It would have been impossible to cover the news with this force had there not been a city news association which lent valuable assistance. Even then, in emergencies Linn had sometimes to call upon the bright young men of the composing room to accept assignments, and developed some good journalists in this way. The foreman of the composing room, Dithmar, was a German of rare culture, who with little early schooling had mastered five languages, and whom Bryant sometimes delighted in pitting against pretentious men of small attainments. Indeed, Bryant often discussed poetry, German philosophy, and journalistic problems with him in the most intimate fashion. He maintained an almost tyrannical discipline in his department, sometimes quarreled violently with the managing editor when the latter wanted copy set which would necessitate the killing of matter already in type, and even claimed the right to protest to the editors against their editorial views whenever the latter displeased him. Later he was appointed American consul at Breslau, Germany, and filled the position with credit. One of the compositors whom he recommended to Linn speedily made his mark as a political reporter, and was for more than twenty years the Washington correspondent of the Times.
The managing editors who succeeded Nordhoff after his resignation in 1871 were all men of distinction. Charlton Lewis, the first, was characterized by Harper’s Weekly when he died as “a college graduate who knew Latin.” As a matter of fact, his versatility, his ability to win distinction in many different fields, was remarkable. He became well known in classical circles by his prodigious labors in producing the Latin Dictionary published under his name, a revision and expansion of Freund’s. He published translations from the German, and at the time of his death he was engaged in writing a commentary upon Dante. It is said that a professor423 of astronomy, chatting with him for an hour upon the science, expressed astonishment later upon being told that Lewis was not an astronomer by profession; the mistake was natural, for Lewis—who had taught both the classics and mathematics at union College—was really proficient in mathematical astronomy. His chief practical success was in the insurance field, where he became one of the greatest authorities upon both the legal and mathematical aspects of insurance; while he is now remembered principally for his almost life-long attention to the problems of charities and corrections. When managing editor of the Post in the early seventies, be induced E. C. Wines to write a series of articles upon prison reform in the various States. Later he became interested in the movement for probation and parole, and for years was president of both the National Prison Association and Prison Association of New York. He made an able managing editor, though he was not wholly liked or trusted by some members of the staff. Mr. Towse writes:
He did not, as I remember, interfere much, if at all, with the general organization, confining himself mainly to the supervision of the editorial page, for which he wrote with his usual fluency, cogency, and eloquence. He produced copy with extraordinary rapidity and neatness, seldom making corrections of any kind. The natural alertness of his intellect was reinforced by an immense amount of varied and precise knowledge, and he impressed every one with a sense of his solid and brilliant competency.
Lewis was followed by Arthur G. Sedgwick, the brother-in-law of Charles Eliot Norton, a brilliant young writer whose promise had been early discerned by E. L. Godkin, and who had now been working for some years with Godkin in the office of the Nation. That fact alone would be a sufficient evidence of his ability and character. As W. C. Brownell wrote years later, Sedgwick’s style was “the acme of well-bred simplicity, argumentative cogency, and as clear as a bell, because he simply never experienced mental confusion.” The editorial page could not have been in better hands than his, but his connection424 with the Post was—at this time—brief. The fourth managing editor was Sidney Howard Gay, who wrote an excellent short life of Madison for the American Statesmen Series, and whose name is linked with Bryant’s by their nominal co-authorship of a four-volume history of the United States. As a matter of fact, Bryant supplied only the introduction and a little early advice, Gay deserving the whole credit for the work. It is badly proportioned, but in large part based upon original research, and readable in style. Gay was not merely an industrious historian, but a capable journalist, who had been trained on the Tribune in association with Greeley, Ripley, and Bayard Taylor.
The most notable of the other employees of the Evening Post in the seventies was Newton F. Whiting, the financial editor, who was followed and esteemed by the financial community as few journalists have ever been. It was far more difficult then than now to obtain a financial editor who could be trusted to abstain rigidly from dabbling in Wall Street and to hold the scales even between rival commercial interests. John Bigelow relates that in the fifties he once spoke of this difficulty at the Press Club to Dana. “Well,” said Dana, “how could you expect to get a man in that department who wouldn’t speculate?”—a rejoinder that Bigelow rightly thought a little shocking. But Whiting filled his position with an integrity that was not only absolute, but never even questioned; and with a quickness of intelligence, soundness of judgment, and scrupulous accuracy that made his death in the fall of 1882 a shock to down-town New York. Had he lived longer he would have become a figure of national prominence. The words of a memorial pamphlet issued in his honor were not a whit exaggerated:
His ability to unravel a difficult situation in Wall Street was remarkable. In the event of a sudden crisis, the facts bearing on it were immediately ascertained and lucidly exposed; and the service thus rendered in the early editorials of the Evening Post has often proved the means of turning a morning of panic into an afternoon of confidence. His service in arresting the progress425 of distrust on such occasions has perhaps never been fully estimated. The widespread feeling of regret in Wall Street on the news of his decease was in no small degree expressive of the loss of a helmsman in whom all had been accustomed to trust.
Becoming financial editor in 1868, it was he who condemned the Federal Government’s interference in the “Black Friday” crisis, when its sudden sale of $4,000,000 in gold in New York city destroyed the plans of Jay Gould and James Fisk, jr., for cornering the gold market. Whiting’s contention was that the importation of gold from Europe and other points would have crushed the corner anyway, and that it was not the Treasury’s business to intervene in a battle between rival gangs of speculators, particularly since it had promised not to sell gold without due notice. He believed in hard money and wrote many of the Post’s editorials against the greenback movement. Being totally opposed to the coinage of silver by the United States so long as other nations declined to co?perate in establishing the double standard upon a permanent basis, for years he daily placarded the depreciation of the standard silver dollar at the head of the Post’s money column—a device that greatly irritated silver men. His rugged strength of character was well set off by a rugged body, for he was broad-shouldered, deep-chested, and an expert horseman, boxer, and wrestler. No man in the office was better liked.
The telegraph editor under Nordhoff was Augustus Maverick, known to all students of journalism by his volume on “Henry J. Raymond and the New York Press”; a good newspaper man, but a swaggering, egotistical fellow, whose Irish hot temper and tendency to domineer over others marked him for a stormy career. He was soon dismissed from the Post for insubordination, he made an unfortunate marriage, and his life had a tragic end. The musical editor, William F. Williams, was for some time also organist of St. George’s Church. Those were the days of Mapleson and Italian opera, when a genuinely critical review would have been thought cruel, and Williams supplied the perfunctory and kindly426 notices wanted by the managers; the distribution of tickets in return was always generous. He was a burly, genial fellow, a veritable Count Fosco in physical appearance, and with something of the indolence which accorded with his flesh. When he found that J. Ranken Towse was keenly interested in the theater, he gladly permitted Towse to represent him upon even highly important occasions; and thus was responsible for the beginnings of dramatic criticism of a high order in the Post.
From one point of view, Parke Godwin will be seen to have succeeded to editorial control of an influential organ, ably equipped and officered, and making from $50,000 to $75,000 a year for its owners. From another point of view, he succeeded to an irrepressible conflict, and the Evening Post was only the arena in which he was to fight to the bitter end with a wary, persistent, and experienced antagonist. The struggle was between the Bryant and Henderson families for possession of the Post; between the counting room and the editorial room for the dictation of its policy. It had covertly begun while Bryant was alive, and now became open.
Isaac Henderson by 1868 was in a well entrenched position. He had one-half of the stock of the newspaper, fifty or even fifty-one shares; he owned the building outright; his son, Isaac, jr., was in training to succeed him as publisher; and his son-in-law, Watson R. Sperry, an able and honorable young graduate of Yale, had become managing editor. It was becoming plain that Henderson wished to acquire unquestioned control, to install Sperry as editor, and make the Evening Post a family possession. What was the character of the man who thus seemed on the point of obtaining “Bryant’s newspaper”?
It would be easy, from the evidence of his enemies, to take too harsh a view of Isaac Henderson. We must remember that standards of political and business morality were low after the Civil War. The fairest judgment is that Henderson was simply an average product of the days which, while they produced Peter Cooper, produced also Jim Fisk, Daniel Drew, and Jay Gould. His constant427 thought was of dollars and cents. On Sundays he was a prominent member of a Brooklyn Methodist church; on weekdays he was intent upon driving the hardest bargain he legitimately could. He built up the Evening Post from a weak and struggling journal into a great property, which in one year of the war divided more than $200,000 in profits; from a $7 a week clerk he became a millionaire. His tastes were mercenary, and he had the sharpness of a Yankee horse-trader, but there is no conclusive evidence that he ever did what the business man of his time would have called a clearly dishonest act. When he undertook to acquire the site of his building, owned by the Old Dutch Church, he made an investigation, found that there was a two-inch strip fronting on Broadway that the church did not own, quietly obtained title to it, and—if we may believe the Evening Telegram of July 29, 1879—in the subsequent negotiations “profited by his discovery in the pleasant sum of $125,000, the largest price ever paid for a lot two inches wide.” At the time many thought such an exploit creditable, and Henderson fitted his time.
Henderson faced his gravest charge when in January, 1864, he was dismissed from the office of Navy Agent in New York on the ground that he had accepted commissions upon contracts let for the government. Gideon Welles’s Diary for the summer of 1864 contains many references to this affair. It states that on one occasion Welles discussed the matter with Lincoln, “who thereupon brought out a correspondence that had taken place between himself and W. C. Bryant. The latter averred that H. was innocent, and denounced Savage, the principal witness against him, because arrested and under bonds. To this the President replied that the character of Savage before his arrest was as good as Henderson’s before he was arrested. He stated that he knew nothing of H.’s alleged malfeasance until brought to his notice by me, in a letter, already written, for his removal; that he inquired of me if I was satisfied he was guilty; that I said he was; and that he then directed, or said to me,428 ‘Go ahead, let him be removed.’” It is a fact that Bryant never wavered in his faith in his partner. The charges had their origin in the malice of Thurlow Weed, who, angered by persistent attacks made upon him by the Evening Post, sought out the information which he believed to justify them, and laid them before Welles. In May, 1865, they came to a trial in the Federal Circuit Court under Judge Nelson. The prosecution brought forward a strong array of legal talent, while Henderson was represented by Judge Pierrepont and Wm. M. Evarts; the case against him utterly broke down, the judge said as much in his charge, and without leaving their seats the jury rendered a verdict of acquittal.
Circumstances, however, inclined many to regard the verdict as one of “Not Proved” only. It is important to note that Parke Godwin, then owner of one-third of the Post, stated in a letter to Bryant, July 31, 1865, his reasons for thinking the charges true:
I infer from a remark made by Mrs. Bryant, on Saturday evening, that she still has confidence in Mr. Henderson, and as I have not, I will tell you why. I will do so in writing, because I have found writing less liable to mistake or misconstruction than what is said by word of mouth.
I. My impressions are quite decided that Mr. H. has been guilty of the malpractices charged upon him by the government, for these reasons: (1) His own clerk (Mr. Blood) admitted the receipt of $70,000 as commissions, and that these were deposited by Mr. Henderson as his own, in his own bank; (2) the prosecuting attorneys, Mr. Noyes, Judge Bosworth, D. S. Dickinson, asserted that over $100,000, as they are able to prove positively, were paid into his office as commissions; Mr. Noyes told me that there could be no doubt of this; (3) other lawyers (Mr. Marbury, for instance) assure me that clients of theirs know of the habits of the office in this respect, and would testify if legally called upon; (4) h............