USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Metropolitan Boston; a modern history; Volume II > Part 24
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47
The "Daily Republican" was published for about a year by Allen Shepard, and on November 1I, 1848, the firm of Wilson, Damrell & Com- pany was formed to take charge of the paper and its weekly and semi- weekly companions. The Wilson of this company was Henry Wilson, who has his place in history as "the Natick cobbler," who reached the United States Senate and the Vice-Presidency. He made the paper the leading organ of the Free Soil party, defending as editor with vigor and skill an advanced position on the reform questions of the time. The daily, however, was continued only about a year. Wilson's losses in this venture amounted to about $7,000. William S. Robinson, writing under his pen-name "Warrington," served the "Republican" for a time, and he claimed in his autobiographical record that during the campaign of 1848 the publishers annoyed him by tempering the vehemence of his editorial utterances. Wilson became the chief owner just at the end of that campaign.
538
METROPOLITAN BOSTON
A life span of twelve years is allotted to the "Boston Daily Mail." The first number was offered to the public on December S, 1841, the last on the final day of 1853. The plan of the publishers, J. N. Bradley & Company, of 16 State Street, was to run off their paper as quickly as possible after the arrival of Harnden's Express and the Southern mail. Thus there was no regular hour for publication, but the "Mail" came out as a rule some time between the morning dailies and the evening papers. All the issues were set up in advance and then all hands joined in the rush to produce the edition as soon as the outside news reached the office. The paper prospered. It soon was claiming a circulation of 18,000. In 1848 it went to three editions. In various respects it was like the "Times." At least once it challenged that lively rival. This was when the several papers of the city were striving to be first on the street after the docking of a Cunarder with accounts of the McLeod inci- dent between England and the United States. From the same office in the campaign years of 1848 was published "The New Crisis," in the inter- est of the Whigs.
From an office in the basement of the Exchange Coffee House, B. Hammatt Norton during six months of 1834 produced his "Boston 12 O'Clock News" as a noontime newspaper. Its chief interest to the student of the history of the Boston press is the advertisement which it carried on April 18: "Wanted, 20 Boys, neatly dressed and of civil deportment, to sell the 'Daily News.' No one need apply except those who intend to engage permanently." There was a demand for twenty more in June. We wish we might know if these were newsboys or car- riers whom the publisher desired to employ.
A working men's paper, published and edited by Charles Douglas, was a feature of the year 1834. It soon disappeared, but the Boston "Daily Reformer" was a sympton of the conditions in the labor world of the time. In the seaport towns of Massachusetts the carpenters and ship caulkers were leading the working men's movement and demanding a ten-hour day.
The story of the "infidel paper" which shocked the city in the 30's is remembered chiefly for what is known as the "Kneeland case." Abner Kneeland edited "The Investigator" for eight years and Horace Seaver for many years thereafter. It was said of Kneeland that in true puritan fashion he reasoned himself from one church into another more liberal until at last he reasoned himself out of any church at all. William Lloyd Garrison interpreted Kneeland's position as that of an orthodox clergy- man who had become a rationalist by way of Unitarianism. In his pros- pectus Kneeland announced that he would "advocate the existence of no being, beings, or things, whether angelic, infernal, or divine, of which the senses of man can take no cognizance." He stood for the abolition of
539
THE PRESS
imprisonment for debt, for the abolition of slavery, and for improvement in the condition of labor. The famous blasphemy trial, which ended in his imprisonment, took place in 1835, but he continued to edit his paper until 1839.
Long before the present "Globe" was projected, Boston had a "Daily Globe," started by Samuel Dexter in 1832. In 1844 Leavitt and Alden gave the city a "Morning Chronicle," as a daily edition of the "Emancipa- tor and Weekly Chronicle"; these papers were designed to serve the Liberty party. In that year also Joseph H. Buckingham undertook to publish the "Boston Daily Tribune" as a Whig journal. There was a "Daily Star" scintillating more or less in the Boston firmament in the early 1840's. None of these papers was of long endurance.
The "Boston Daily Chronotype" and "The Commonwealth" must have slightly more attention. The former ran from February II, 1846, to January 1, 1851, when it was merged with the latter. Frank B. Sanborn pronounced its editor, Elizur Wright, "one of the most accomplished men who ever sat at an editor's desk in New England." He had removed in his early years from Connecticut to the Western Reserve in Ohio and had grown up in the intensely anti-Slavery community at Hudson. As one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society, he was exposed often to abuse and not seldom to physical peril; during a residence in Brooklyn his house was mobbed and he sought refuge in Boston, under- taking the editorship of the "Chronotype" for the diffusion of his opin- ions. He is said to have been a good French and classical scholar. Examination of the files proves him to have been always a clever and often a brilliant writer. The paper amply justified its motto, "Independ- ent in everything, neutral in nothing," although its tendency was towards the Voting Abolitionists and the "Conscience Whigs." Assertive and positive, the paper with all its wit was not seldom unnecessarily caustic. It glorified in its radicalism. It took up the cudgels for the Free Soilers. It denounced capital punishment and the liquor laws. It advocated reform for the working classes and adopted the water cure. It printed Theodore Parker's sermons verbatim when the popular voice objected to the famous preacher as a heretic. Wright was magnanimous in spite of his strong opinions and freely printed the views of his critics. More-
over, the "Chronotype" was a good newspaper, competing fairly well with its contemporaries in obtaining and printing the news. Its price was increased in 1849 from one cent to ten cents a week. In September, 1850, it started a Sunday edition at two cents a copy. Charles A. Dana, who achieved world celebrity as the editor of "The Sun" in New York, spent some months in the service of Wright. Brook Farm had failed and Dana was glad to accept poorly paid employment, reading exchanges, editing the news, and occasionally substituting for the editor. In after
540
METROPOLITAN BOSTON
years Wright used to relate with glee a story of how, when Dana on a time was in charge, the paper came out "mighty strong against Hell," to the amazement of its readers, for it stood for religious orthodoxy how- ever heretical it might seem politically. Wright had to send a personal letter to every Congregationalist minister in Massachusetts and to many deacons besides, explaining that the slip had been made when the "person in charge was a young man without journalistic experience."
When Wright learned in 1850 that a new Free Soil paper was to be established, he negotiated a merger and the transfer of part of the staff, himself included, to the new publication.
Not only the "Chronotype," but the "Emancipator" and Henry Wil- son's "Republican" were united in the "Boston Commonwealth." It was the successor also of Adams' "Daily Whig." Its projectors contemplated the establishment of a powerful organ to awaken "the conscience of the North, lulled by financial prosperity, to an understanding of the slavery situation," as Mrs. Julia Ward Howe stated the case. Her husband, Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, edited the paper one winter, and she contributed "social and literary criticism."
At that time Dr. Howe's office, upstairs at 50 Bromfield Street, was a meeting place for all the political anti-slavery men of Massachusetts. Joseph Lyman was the first responsible editor of the "Commonwealth," but at different times J. B. Alley, Samuel Downer, and others, had edi- torial control, and Robert Carter, J. D. Baldwin, and William S. Robin- son or "Warrington" were among the assisting editors. Political condi- tions changed and Know Nothingism the paper refused to countenance. "The Commonwealth" in consequence was sold to parties who proposed to found a Maine-law newspaper, as they succeeded in doing, assigning it the name of "The Telegraph," with Richard Hildreth as editor and "Warrington" and Carter as his assistants. But "there was continual strife in the office between the owners and the writers," in particular dur- ing the time when "Warrington," despite what he called "the impudent request" of the owners, went on printing article after article against Governor Gardner and "Gardnerism." Especially did "The Common- wealth" fly its banners while the Anthony Burns case was pending. When the procession marched down State Street to the revenue cutter "Morris" with Burns under guard there were "mourning flags in many windows and six in the windows of the 'Commonwealth' office."
"The Commonwealth" could not endure amidst such internal condi- tions, but in 1862 Dr. Howe called a meeting in his office of the anti- slavery men, out of which grew the Emancipation League, and as the organ of the new society a weekly "Commonwealth" was founded which survived for many years. As a weekly it need not detain us. Its career was distinguished. George L. Stearns was the first year its main prop.
541
THE PRESS
The Rev. Moncure D. Conway served as its first editor. The first issue came out from 22 Bromfield Street on September 6, 1862. That first number contained Sumner's Worcester Convention speech, which is said to have been the first recognition in such form of the great Senator in the city of his birth. What a roster of more or less occasional writers that weekly could advertise-Emerson, Channing, the Alcotts, Thoreau, Howells, William T. Harris, J. J. Piatt, Francis W. Bird, and many more almost as distinguished. Frank B. Sanborn helped edit the weekly and seized every opportunity to obtain the aid of such pens as those knowing that their zeal for "the cause" could be depended upon to reinforce his requisitions. In after years the paper had its vicissitudes until, as Mr. Bird put the fact, "moribund and comatose, at last it sank under the waves of disaster, leaving behind nothing but its long record and its accumulated debts."
Evening Editions-Boston had no evening paper when Lynde M. Walter, with the audacity of youth, decided to experiment with one. This "young man of excellent family and education," as his biographers describe him, was born in 1799 in Shelburne, Nova Scotia, in the Tory community where his grandfather, once rector of Trinity Church, Bos- ton, had taken refuge when the British evacuated the city in 1776. At Harvard, in the class of 1817, he was associated with Caleb Cushing, George Bancroft and Samuel J. May. He entered his father's store on Long Wharf, spent four years in mercantile pursuits in Brazil, returned to Boston and started to write miscellaneous articles for Buckingham's "Galaxy" and "Courier," under the signature "T. O.," for Thomas Otway. It was the literary aptitude of Lynde Walter, and not any special interest in the business of journalism, which induced him to found the "Tran- script." He would cover those fields of human interest neglected by the commercial and political dailies. He would cultivate what moderns know as "the light touch." From the "Daily Courier," of Portland, Maine, a paper of nine months' standing at that time, he derived "the hint that led to the establishment of the 'Transcript' as a small-size daily. Having worked out his scheme in his own mind, he made a bargain with Dutton & Wentworth, job printers, and at the time printers for the State, for the production at his expense of a first number.
How queer that initial number looks today. It was a miniature news- paper, its chase measuring nine inches by twelve and a half, four col- umns to a page, four pages in all, with the familiar Old English lettering at the top. The price was placed at four dollars per annum, the lowest yet for Boston and a precursor of the "pennies" soon to appear. The date was Saturday, July 24, 1830, the place of publication 4 Exchange Street. On the first page appeared the cards of the shipping lines, three to New
542
METROPOLITAN BOSTON
York, two to Philadelphia, two to Baltimore, one each to Albany, Charles- ton, Dover, Hartford and Portsmouth. Also the cards, most of them no doubt complimentary insertions, of concerns dealing in beef, candles, cigars, cotton, flour, indigo, lead, lumber, molasses, oats, raisins, rice, sugar, tamarinds, what not. Page 3 carried the Marine Journal, compiled from memoranda from "the facilities afforded by Mr. Topliff of Mer- chants' Hall," and three columns of "ads." Page 4 was filled entirely with advertisements. On Page 2, besides marriage and death notices, items from the police court and the sales of stock, there were three col- umns of editorials. The "Preface" is distinctly interesting. Mr. Walter hopes his evening paper would supply "a deficiency caused by the sur- cease of the 'Bulletin.'" He would not "mingle in the everyday warfare of politics, nor attempt to control public bias in abstract questions of Religion or Morality. .... Whilst we preserve the right of expressing our own opinions we shall not combat with the prejudices of others." The paragraph devoted to a political creed approved the protective tariff, the expenditure of Federal moneys for internal improvements, and the United States bank, and ended thus: "We believe . ... that the union of these States was decreed by the whole people, and cannot be dissolved but by the will of a majority of the whole people, voting each by himself, either personally or by special delegation." As to religion : "We belong to the sect called Protestant Episcopalian," but "we feel that our opinions are liberal ; we hope that our tenets are orthodox. . . . . We hope to be per- mitted to 'pursue the noiseless tenor of our way' without engendering hate or producing acrimony. Personal attack is unworthy of notice; captious acerbity beneath it." Also: "We shall openly seek patronage, but will not cringingly court it." and "Our thoughts are our own and we shall boldly express them." Finally :
We are aware that it is not now the mode to appear in such stinted robes as we have adopted; but we have chosen to set fashion at defiance, and study our own convenience. We therefore beseech the Reader to judge us impartially ;- not by the size of the casket, but by the value of its contents.
We find here also a tribute to William Ellery Channing, and an item about the sale of the library of Mr. Van der Kemp, a sale "which sus- tained the literary reputation of the city." Boston was well aware of itself a century ago.
The newspapers of the city did not go out of their way to extend the right hand of fellowship to this interloper. The only paper that men- tioned the "Transcript" at all was the "Commentator." The "Gazette" refused to exchange. The new editorial aspirant in his second issue, on Monday, July 7, made some remarks on the coldness of this reception. There may have been some special significance in what he said :
543
THE PRESS
We mean that the "Transcript" shall have an editorial department. We shall not conceal ourself behind the shield of correspondents, nor trust our safety to our silence. We hope to replenish our columns with something more exhilarating than distilled rain water, but shall carefully avoid all admixture of wormwood or verjuice.
Clearly "young Mr. Walter" could transform his quill into a cudgel on occasion. There was a third issue next day, but it contained a notice of suspension until an actual canvass of the city should provide definite information as to the number of subscribers who might support the new publication. On August 28 the paper did reappear with the same editor and the same printers. This number was devoted exclusively to the celebrated speech of Daniel Webster at the Knapp murder trial in Salem. Lynde Walter must have had the instincts of the newspaper man. He went to Salem to "take down" what was expected to be a great plea. His record was not verbatim, but it has been accepted as the most complete and exact report of what the famous orator said. That issue of the little paper contained no editorials and no advertising. A single line across the bottom of the first page expressed editorial regrets for what should have been claimed as a real exploit of journalism. Next day came an issue of the usual sort; only once since has the "Transcript" missed a number, and the exception was made in memory of the founder. Let us note in passing that much in the manner of today such papers as the "Adver- tiser" and the "Courier" skimped their reports of ordinary news events to make room for detailed accounts of the trial of John Francis Knapp and his accomplices for the murder of Captain Joseph White. A sensa- tional case in those days engaged public attention quite as much as today. However, the new daily never pandered to sensationalism, and in 1836, when the papers of New York were devoting many columns a day to reports of the sensational trial of Richard P. Robinson for the murder of Helen Jewett, the Boston paper refused to print the testimony, saying : "We shall not occupy our columns with a report of this testimony, as it is not only very voluminous, but is unmeet for every eye, and may be purchased by those who have an appetite for such garbage of penny newsmen for a cent."
For twelve years Lynde Walter was editor of the "Transcript." There were enlargements in 1840 and 1842, but to his regret, for he enjoyed hearing his paper called "the little daily." From the outset the idea was to make the "Transcript" distinctively a Boston paper. The independence of the editor is indicated by his treatment of William Lloyd Garrison, who already had seen the inside of a Baltimore prison. He came to Bos- ton as an agitator. The "Transcript" had not shown any special disposi- tion to befriend the negro. But while Garrison, with unlimited pluck and no money at all, was trying to place his views before the public, the "Transcript," even in its first year, permitted communications signed
544
METROPOLITAN BOSTON
"W. L. G." to appear in its pages, and in an editorial besought a respect- ful hearing for the Garrisonian Gospel. It was a bold stand for a new paper with a conservative constituency which regarded Garrison as a fanatic and a disturber of the peace.
In 1840, Mr. Walter went to the Baltimore convention which nom- inated William Henry Harrison for the Presidency, and returned home in bad health. For several years he was not able to come to the office of his paper. The work there was done by Dr. Joseph Palmer. When it became unbearably painful for the editor to use a pen his sister came to his aid as an amanuensis. After a time she tried her own hand at writing original articles, submitting them to her bed-ridden brother without dis- closing their authorship. The death of Lynde Walter occurred on July 24, 1842, twelve years to a day from the publication of the first issue of his paper. Publication was omitted on the day of his funeral. Dr. Palmer now retired, and Miss Cornelia W. Walter, later Mrs. William B. Richards, assumed the full responsibility of editorship. Her brother died ignorant of the fact that she had been writing his editorials. He used to say : "No woman can conduct a daily paper."
Miss Walter defied that dictum and became probably the first woman editor in the United States. The senior owner, Mr. Dutton, assured her that he and all the others connected with the paper would "obey orders." She appears to have done all her work at home, seldom or never going to the office. It is understood that certain of her relatives and friends held her conduct to be unlady-like and removed her name from their visiting lists. She did her work well. Hers was the pen of a ready writer. She read easily several languages. She had been thoroughly trained, all unconsciously, by her brother. She conducted the "Transcript" for five years and the paper prospered.
On the resignation of Miss Walter, in 1847, shortly before her mar- riage, she was succeeded as editor by Epes Sargent, known then as an author and poet, remembered now for his stirring song, "A Life on the Ocean Wave." Competition for news and business was becoming always more brisk, yet in Sargent's time there devolved on himself and a single assistant all the labor of the "intellectual department." It often hap- pened that in the midst of a leader they must hurry out to cover a fire. In 1849 the paper assumed the six-column form, and in 1850 there was installed a new Hoe press with a capacity of 5,000 copies an hour. But the "Transcript" remained the family paper its founder had planned. In a special sense also it strove to be a literary paper, as might have been expected from the editing of the compiler of such an anthology as "The Standard Speaker." While covering political events of importance with neutral fairness the paper did not seek to play the "political game."
545
THE PRESS
In February, 1853, Daniel N. Haskell succeeded Sargent. Meantime, in 1847, one of the original publishers, Mr. Wentworth, had died, but his family kept that interest in the paper for nine years more. There was then a settlement which gave the sole proprietorship to William Henry Dutton, and presently the firm assumed the style Dutton & Son. Haskell retained the now well-established policies of his predecessors. He was a good business man with sound judgment and decided opinions. Like all editors he had his counsellors, one of whom was Thomas Starr King, who wrote a great deal for the paper and whose descriptive articles on the White Mountains are one of his claims to more than casual fame. A member of the editorial staff whose name was then well known and now is not forgotten was Edwin P. Whipple, about whom a later incumbent of the same sanctum has discoursed in agreeable terms. Whipple was a trained writer, employed to "ballast the editorial page with something like real leaders." His head seemed "much too large to be supported on so slender and slight a frame." His eyes "always seemed to be on the point of starting from their sockets." But those eyes were "tremendously effective" once the first shock of their oddity had worn off. He wrote in the "big bow wow" fashion of the time, making his style "as near like Macaulay as he could," and he "could be quite grandly cumulative and epigrammatic at once." To Whipple is attributed one of the most delightful jocosities in the history of Boston journalism. The "Tran- script" rejoiced in the large number of contributions which were volun- teered from the outside and used gratuitously. Whipple used to open his mail with the remark, "Let us see what the neighbors have sent in this morning." His much-quoted epigram was to the effect that the "Tran- script" was "edited by Divine Providence."
Haskell stayed until the fall of 1874, his administration having cov- ered an intensely interesting period with the War for the Union as its great epic. The cables brought Europe into intimate touch with America. The Great West captured the imagination of the East. New mechanical appliances were making the journalism of the 40's and the 50's quite obsolete. The "Transcript" could not sustain itself much longer as the "little daily." ` Its circulation multiplied. Its staff doubled and redoubled. It had to be enlarged. On October 1, 1866, it took the form of the eight- column sheet. Valuable service was done for it by many vigorous writ- ers in those troubled days. The Rev. Thomas B. Fox wrote much in valiant defense of the cause of the North. In the Reconstruction era the paper vigorously advocated a "strong" policy in the South which should guarantee supremacy in the seceding States to those who had been loyal to the Union.
More than once in forty years the paper had outgrown its plant. It had removed from Exchange Street on May 5, 1845, to 35 Congress Met. Bos .- 35
546
METROPOLITAN BOSTON
Street, whence it came to the present Newspaper Row and established itself on March 26, 1860, at 92, now 328, Washington Street, where now is the "Globe" office. A few years later the owners built a new home for their paper on Milk Street, next to the corner of Washington. Proudly the "Transcript," "little" no longer, moved into it. Came the night of November 9, 1872, and the awful Sunday that followed, the time of the great Boston fire. Nothing of value belonging to the "Transcript" was saved except the books of the accountants and the precious files of the paper itself. Moreover more than half the insurance proved to be worth- less. The "Transcript" must need go back to its old place, this time as the guest of the "Globe." From Monday, November 10, 1872, to January II, 1873, the paper was issued from the old address. Of necessity it had to be reduced to a paper of four seven-column pages. Thence the paper removed to temporary quarters in Court Avenue, there to resume its larger form, and there it remained until it could occupy again a new building, constructed partly on the ground of the old plant, at the corner of Washington and Milk streets, a very valuable site. In the campaign of 1874-an exciting contest in which William Gaston, Democrat, and advo- cate of a license system, opposed Thomas Talbot, Republican and Prohi- bitionist-Mr. Haskell took a strenuous part. But the reaction assumed the form of pneumonia and he died on November 13. William Henry Dutton, the younger, but forty years of age, fell a victim to the same dis- ease on March 1, 1875, and his father survived the double blow only until April 15.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.