USA > Kentucky > A history of Kentucky and Kentuckians; the leaders and representative men in commerce, industry and modern activities, Volume I > Part 81
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in population, in literary and educational prog- ress and in manufactures, Lexington had a supremacy over Louisville in which she felt equal pride and security from a tenure dating back to its foundation.' With the exception of the Speakership of the Senate and the office of Lieutenant Governor-filled during the first twelve years by Alexander Scott Bullitt of Jefferson county, and the Speakership of the House-held for the first four years by General Robert Breckinridge of the same county-Louisville had had no other State officers. The Govenors, Lieutenant Govern- ors and Speakers, Judges of the Appelate Court and Attorney-General had all come from Central Kentucky, or counties to the east of Louisville. The same was true of the United State Senators. Even as to members of Congress, Louisville had up to that time, only furnished one in Stephen Ormsby from 1811 to 1817. The great names in civil life which gave prestige to Kentucky had been from else- where. Lexington had a University already famous, together with a law and medical school equally well known for the eminence of its professors and graduates. It had manufac- tories of paper, nails, bagging, hats, rope and woolen fabrics. In Louisville, some progress had been made in the matter of foundries for steamboat machinery, but failure of the Tar- ascons in their effort to utilize the water power of the falls for the manufacture of flour on a large scale, had given a set-back to the establishment of similar industries. Now. however, the outlook was better. The steam- boat, as a vehicle of commerce, was no longer an experiment and Louisville began to feel the good effects of her eligible position as a commercial city. The standing of The Adver- tiser emphasized this and at once attracted attention to its advantages as a business point.
"The founder of the paper was Shadrach Penn. He came from Scott county and orig- inally from Maryland and had had editorial experience before coming to Louisville. He
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was a politician of the Jeffersonian school and during his long service as editor of The Advertiser, adhered strictly to the tenets of his faith. The paper was started as a weekly with five columns of matter to the page. Two pages were given to editorials and other read- ing matter and two to advertisements. The paper on which it was printed was strong and of better texture than that of its predecessors. * On the 27th of January, 1819, it was changed to a semi-weekly and published on Wednesdays and Saturdays with no re- duction in size. Its editorials were generally short with very few local items, but its selec- tions and communications were frequently very long, the latter being chiefly political and generally marked with acrimony. * * In the issue of May 10, 1819, John J. Audubon, the naturalist, then residing in Henderson, Kentucky, advertises for sale his undivided one-half interest in the Henderson Flouring Mill and several choice lots, on account of his proposed visit to Europe. In 1826 The Adver- tiser became a weekly. In 1838, it was pub- lished by Penn and Elliott as a large seven column paper. * The feature which strikes one in looking over all the newspapers of this period is the compactness of the matter, the absence of head-lines, and of any attempt of the sensational. Paper was costly then and no space was wasted."
George D. Prentice, who was later to be- come one of the noted editorial writers of the country, came to Louisville, in the time of Penn, and being of a different political school, the journalistic battles fought by the two were of a thrilling character. Col. Johnston in his Memorial History, writes as follows: "Not- withstanding the fact that Prentice and Penn, for eleven years sustained a fierce and fre- quently personal warfare, all reports tend to show that their social relations were friendly and that, off duty, they were 'hail fellows well met.' In 1841, when Penn removed to St. Louis, Prentice parted with him in an edito-
rial replete with good wishes and an expres- sion of regard. It has been said that Penn left on account of the unequal contest but this is hardly to be accepted as true, after a rivalry so long and so well sustained by one who had for twenty-two years conducted a paper of such merit and influence."
The Focus, established in 1826 was in 1831 merged into The Louisville Journal which paper still exists in the Courier-Journal. The object of the founders of the Journal was to fight General Jackson and support Mr. Clay and it fully lived up to this purpose. George D. Prentice, a native of Connecticut, came to the West in 1830 to write the life of Henry Clay. So vigorous was his style, so virile and full of sarcasm were his writings that those responsible for the Journal selected him as its editor and his after career fully justified the selection. He had newspaper experience in his native state and was quite prepared to put on the editorial harness when the oppor- tunity presented. The Journal appeared as a daily, neatly printed and very ably edited. It was in after years derisively termed by the Democrat as the "Whig Bible" and certain it is that every Whig swore by it, while every Democrat swore at it. That was the day of editorial "leaders" which sometimes filled two or more columns of space. The Journal had these, of course, but it had also, short, sharp paragraphs with a sting in every one of them. In his day, there was no competitor to Mr. Prentice as a paragrapher. Not until he had passed from the eyes of men, did his equal in that line of editorial work appear in Kentucky journalism. It is the opinion of the writer and of many other persons, that Emmett G. Logan, so long the editor of the Louisville Times, was the most accomplished editorial paragrapher Kentucky journalism has ever known.
When the coming of Mr. Prentice to Louisville was announced, Shadrach Penn in The Advertiser, gave him a welcome torrid in
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its nature and the forerunner of the war of words these two men were for years to carry on in their respective papers. The Memorial History says in the beginning of The Journal: "Expectation was on tiptoe among all readers of the press, the Democrats confidently expect- ing that it would soon be snuffed out by The Advertiser, and the Whigs nervous with apprehension lest the young editor should not be able to cope successfully with his veteran adversary. The rather ungracious introduc- tion which Penn had given Prentice proved to be of great service to the new leader, for its very asperity was a concession to his formid- able rivalry, and recognized in him a foeman worthy to be combatted. A policy ignoring him and belittling him by silence, would have been more effective. But if it gratified the Democrats, its effect upon the Whigs inured equally to Prentice's advantage. They looked upon him not in his individual capacity, hut as the chosen exponent of their party, the young David selected by him whom they wor- shipped as their great political idol, to over- come with his sling the Goliath who had so long upheld the Democratic banner, and, one by one, vanquished every foe who had been pitted against him. His bearing, under the provocation, was discreet and manly. His re- sentment found vent in no violent rejoinder, but, while meeting Penn's raillery with wit, marked more with pleasantry than acrimony, he addressed himself sedulously to the task which lay before him, that of making The Journal a good newspaper and an efficient or- gan. The times demanded an exhibition of this force rather than that he should make his paper the vehicle of mere personality."
Mr. Prentice continued his strenuous efforts in behalf of the Whig party, though suffering the bitterness of defeat many times. Espe- cially was this true in 1832, when the battle royal was fought between Mr. Clay and Gen- eral Jackson for the Presidency which was won by the latter. Never was Mr. Prentice
more brilliant than in the remarkable cam- paign. Youthful, ardent and personally de- voted to Mr. Clay and his political fortunes, his pen was almost inspired. Mr. Clay re- ceived the vote of Kentucky but Jackson was elected. The Journal never faltered in the face of defeat but was, if possible, more insistent than before in defense of the principles of the Whig party.
The passing years brought the political and finally the armed forces of the country into conflict. The Journal was on the side of the Union and was its chief bulwark of defense south of the Ohio river. Yet there are not lacking those who have declared that Mr. Prentice had a sincere sympathy with the South, though opposing the doctrine of se- cession. As stated elsewhere in this work, he had but two children, both boys. These entered the Confederate army, the younger, Courtland, being killed in battle at Augusta, Kentucky, in September, 1862. The other son, Clarence, as a Major, commanded a body of somewhat irregular cavalry in the Confed- erate army, whose pleasure it was to make mis- erable the lives of the bushwhacking gentry in the mountainous sections of the South.
In 1868, as is related elsewhere, The Journal, was consolidated with the Courier. There- after Mr. Prentice did but little editorial work, his younger and more active associate, Henry Watterson, relieving him of the necessity for writing save when he felt inclined. January 21, 1870, after a brief attack of pneumonia, he passed off the stage on which for so many years he had played only leading parts.
The Louisville Democrat, founded in 1843. by Henry C. Pope, was for a long time the idol of the Democrats of Kentucky. It finally passed into the hands of John Harney and his son-in-law, William E. Hughes, who continued its publication until 1868 when it was purchased by the proprietors of the Courier-Journal and passed out of existence. Under the editorship of Mr. Harney, the Dem-
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ocrat justly won and firmly held the affections of the Democrats of Kentucky. It was to them what the Journal was to the Whigs, though its tone and temper were different from that of the latter under the virile Pren- tice. The Democrat espoused the cause of the Union when the war came but its sympathies were Southern as a result of its earlier expe- riences. Though espousing the cause of the Union, the Democrat did not escape the sus- picion of certain persons and it was stated that it barely escaped suspension at the hands of the military authorities. In those days of stress and storm, it was a fortunate man who was not suspected by some one.
The history of modern journalism in Ken- tucky is contained in the story of the life of Walter Newman Haldeman. He was the greatest and most successful publishing jour- nalist the South produced during the whole period of his career, a man of indomitable en- ergy, broad public spirit and catholic mind. When he entered the field of journalism in 1840 he found it occupied by distinguished political editors at the head of widely quoted political journals. It remained for him to in- troduce the invaluable but neglected feature of news, to develop it as fast and as far as the facilities would permit, and when he died he left one of the great newspaper properties of the country, known and quoted everywhere, possessing a commercial value in the millions. Always an ardent leader in the development of his city and state his newspapers were made engines of advertising the advantages of Ken- tucky without money and without price. In the extent of his devotion to every undertak- ing for the public welfare of Louisville he was for many years before his death easily its first citizen and most enterprising force.
Mr. Haldeman was born in Maysville, Ken- tucky, in April, 1821, the oldest child of John Haldeman and Elizabeth Newman, his wife, both of whom were natives of Pennsylvania. On the father's side he traced back to a sturdy
Swiss ancestor, Caspar Haldimand in the town of Thun, Canton Berne, who was born there in 1671. This Caspar was a man of enterprise and vigor, actively operating in the French territory adjacent, as at home, and he was known in French as "Honest Gaspard" and in German as "Honest Caspar." On his moth- er's side, Mr. Haldeman descended from Wal- ter Newman, a Revolutionary soldier of dis- tinction, who was his grandfather, and who died at Newark, Ohio, in 1840. Mr. Halde- man's education was obtained at the seminary of Rand & Richeson in Maysville, the most famous Kentucky school of that day, second only to Transylvania University at Lexington.
Among his classmates were a group of men who earned great local as well as national dis- tinction, among them Thomas H. Nelson, min- ister to Mexico under President Grant; his brother, General William Nelson, U. S. A., who was killed by Gen. Jeff C. Davis, of In- diana, in the Galt House, Louisville, in 1862; William H. Wadsworth, a brilliant lawyer and Congressman from the Maysville district ; Judge E. C. Phister, who served notably on the bench and in Congress; greatest of all, General Ulysses S. Grant, twice President. With the exception of General Grant no mem- ber of that class achieved more distinction or was more useful to his country than Walter Newman Haldeman.
It was in 1837, that, leaving school at the age of sixteen Mr. Haldeman removed with his father to Louisville and found employment as clerk in a mercantile house, branched out by buying a horse and dray and hiring a man to drive it. In three years he had become a clerk in the counting room of the Louisville Journal, of which George D. Prentice was the famous editor and part proprietor. There the train was fired that determined all his future. He remained there from nineteen until he was twenty-two and saw no prospect of advancement. Then it was he borrowed $300, purchased a circulating library and en-
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larged it to a book store and news stand. His place of business was on Fourth street in the very heart of the city's life. Shortly after- ward he bought The Dime, a small newspaper, about on its last legs, and changing its name to The Courier he was first launched upon the career for which he was so admirably and pe- culiarly fitted. He sold the bookstore and concentrated his energy upon the newspaper which soon became a rival of Prentice's Jour- nal by the force of its news value and the public spirit displayed in all local and state enterprises.
Success did not come over night. He was to serve his apprenticeship and pass through trials that would have disheartened the com- mon man. He had various partners; he was persuaded to take one at the instance of Henry Clay and John J. Crittenden, only to learn that political ownerships were deadly to newspa- pers. Failure was imminent once, but letting the partner out he applied himself single handed to the problem and not only saved the day but put the paper on a paying basis. On September 18, 1861, The Courier was seized by Gen. Robert Anderson, of Fort Sumter fame, for its secession opinions. Mr. Halde- man in order to escape arrest by the military authorities fled to Bowling Green, Kentucky, where, under the protection of Gen. Albert Sydney Johnston and Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner, he immediately resumed publication. When Bowling Green was evacuated he went along with the Confederate forces and with a "handful of type and a cider press" as the say- ing is, continued to publish it in a wagon until it found a home at Nashville. It was then called The Louisville-Bowling Green-Nashville Courier, the first instance on record of the hyphenated newspaper name. It became im- mediately famous in both sections and the demand for it was so great it could not be sup- plied. When Nashville was finally evacuated the publication had to cease for lack of mate- rial and a publication office.
When the war was over Mr. Haldeman found himself without means but with a rep- utation as a publisher that could be turned into credit. He made his way back to Louisville and on December 4, 1865, The Courier ap- peared once more on the streets, The Journal had its indomitable rival again to face and from that day to this not fires nor floods have caused it to miss an issue. From that new be- ginning it was successful.
In less than three years the intense business rivalry between The Courier and The Journal was to cease. On November 8, 1868, ap- peared The Courier-Journal, the two papers having been consolidated by agreement over- night, without previous notice, and to the great surprise of the public. Both papers were fa- mous, but the competition was too costly to be supported by the community of that day. Agreeing that valor in such a contest lay in dis- cretion, the consolidation was effected in a few hours, with Mr. Haldeman as publisher, George D. Prentice and Henry Watterson as editors.
Thus begun that long and remarkable col- laboration between Mr. Haldeman and Mr. Watterson, that was to continue without jeal- ousy or disagreement for forty years and re- sulted in the establishment of The Courier- Journal as a newspaper of international im- portance, with an equipment for news service equal to that of the great metropolitan papers of the country, among which it ranked. It quickly took its place as one of the great po- litical influences in the task of rebuilding the South after the wreck of the war. No news- paper ever performed greater services for a country in moulding opinion, pointing out the opportunities of development and encouraging every movement that made for the re-estab- lishment and enriching of the section.
Mr. Haldeman possessed in splendid meas- ure the inborn many-sided genius of the pub- lishing journalist. From his first venture in 1840 until his death. more than sixty years
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later, the extraordinary vigor of his mind and body and purpose was unabated and uncon- querable. The publishing journalist is like the military commander-in-chief, who may be neither of the cavalry nor the infantry, or the artillery, but who yet directs all of them. The publishing journalist may not himself write great articles or do any one of the many things required to be greatly done, in order to make a great newspaper but he must be able to write the articles through others and know them when they are written ; he must conceive and direct the great feats of tact and energy in- volved in obtaining and presenting important news of all kinds and he must be able to rec- ognize the true value of the work when per- formed. In proportion as he has this capac- ity he becomes a great journalist.
Mr. Haldeman was a forceful and pungent writer of editorials on occasion; he had writ- ten news in every department of his newspa- pers ; but, in addition, and what is of even more importance, he knew by a penetrating instinct. that never failed him, exactly what was news. what the readers of every active class wanted to know and therefore he felt the value of news. More than this, he had the counting room instinct to handle and direct the business detail of the mechanical production and the selling of the paper when produced, for with- out this no newspaper can succeed. No prop- erty is more "perishable" than news, or more hazardous than a newspaper, and in order to be successful the publisher must find and serve every day the largest number of people with the latest, most accurate and most varied in- formation. The one instinct necessary, there- fore, for a great journalist is that of a keen and insatiable curiosity with respect to what is happening. This represents in itself the combined insatiate curiosity of the whole pub- lic with respect to everything that is happen- ing. Mr. Haldeman had that instinct natur- ally and he developed it to penetrate to the greatest affairs of the world as to the smallest Vol. I-36.
affairs of the community. It was as active when he passed from the scene as if age could not stale or custom wither its infinite variety.
Like all great men Mr. Haldeman was marked by strong simplicity and directness of character and methods. He went boldly into every undertaking and concentrated all his energies to accomplish the result. Such men invariably attract to themselves strong men as lieutenants. Mr. ITakdleman began publishing in the days when there was no telegraph, no organization to secure news, and when the chief means of communication was the mail and the fastest distribution was by river steamers. Seeing the advantages of the latter he organized a service of quick delivery of Southern and Eastern papers by steamer and these were met and the news of other sections quickly obtained. He also developed the mail service correspondence from other centers and was a pioneer in special correspondence in the West and South. There is no doubt that his unconquerable energy in the search for news led the way to much development in the postal and express services, of which the general public received the greatest share of benefits. Beginning with small means and having to make his resources stretch to the utmost, his enterprise increased with what it fed upon and up to the last day of his active service, a few days before his death, he hesitated at no ex- pense or effort to obtain important news and give it to the public.
A man of remarkable personal traits he was a great leader and power in Louisville, though he seldom appeared in public. He surrounded himself with a large following of loyal jour- nalists and many of the most successful men on the modern press in the largest cities of the country got their early training and oppor- tunities under his direction, until the Courier- Journal came to be a sort of university of journalism. Democratic in his bearing, his private office was an "open house" to every- body. from the humblest newsboy who had a
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request to prefer, to the highest cabinet min- ister. He had time for everybody and his op- erations were directed by characteristic short nervous notes of instruction and suggestion jotted down during conversations or between times and quickly dispatched. He had little patience with incompetency but was highly tolerant of ability and energy and rewarded it wherever he found it.
No citizen of Louisville ever contributed more to public enterprise, and to public and private charity than he. His purse was open to every undertaking that had a fighting chance to win or attract attention to the city. For many years in every movement that had any promise his was the spirit and the material treasury that supported and pushed it forward. When he died in the fullness and ripeness of years and service the public display of sorrow and respect was ample testimony that there had passed away the First Citizen of Louis- ville.
The name Henry Watterson means journal- ism wherever that word is spoken. For nearly fifty years he has stood at the very head of all newspaper writers in the United States and today there is none to be his parallel. Years ago there was the most brilliant coterie of men editing newspapers that this or any other country has known. Horace Greeley, Charles A. Dana and Whitelaw Reid in New York; Samuel Bowles at Springfield, Massa- chusetts; Murat Halstead in Cincinnati; Jo- seph Medill of Chicago, and Henry Watter- son of Louisville, by no means the least of these who were giants all. Of that illustrious body of men but two are living in 1911. Mr. Watterson and Mr. Reid, the latter now and for many years, the Ambassador of the United States at the Court of St. James. Mr. Reid having left the editor's chair for diplomatic honors, Mr. Watterson is the sole living repre- sentative of the strong body of newspaper men who in 1872 rallied about the standard of Mr. Greeley in the hopeless effort to elect him to
the Presidency. Henry Watterson was born in Washington City, February 16, 1840, his father, the Hon. Harvey M. Watterson, being then a member of Congress from the Tennes- see district formerly represented by James K. Polk, who left Congress to become Governor of his state and subsequently President of the United States. Mr. Watterson enjoyed the distinction of being the youngest member of the House in the first Congress in which he served. In consequence of defective vision, the education of Henry Watterson was largely received from private tutors, though he passed four years in an academy in Philadelphia and narrowly escaped being a poet and musician, an injury to one of his hands interfering with . his musical training. This was providential as after events proved. Mr. Watterson's fu- ture was determined by Fate which, operating along lines of easy resistance, led him to news- paper work. His father was a journalist or as he would prefer to have it said, was a news- paper man. The son, following the bent of his father's mind, was the editor of a school paper in his early youth and even then made "The Ciceronian" different from and a little better than other papers of its kind. Joining his father in Tennessee after the ending of his school days, he was owner and editor of his own paper, The New Era, taking yet another step towards that high eminence in the news- paper world he was destined to attain. He was then, as now, a Democrat and the boyish pen wrote soul-stirring appeals to the Demo- cratic hosts. His first editorial, a bugle call to party arms, was copied by a Nashville paper and from that into the Democratic press of the Nation. He was then but sixteen years old, but had taken his first step that led to Fame and Henry Watterson's bugle calls have been sounding in the ears of all the people since that time, save in the interval when he devoted his time and talents to "breaking up the Government" in 1861-5. At eighteen he was in New York writing for Harper's I'eek-
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