The Power For Sanity: Selected Editorials of William Cullen Bryant, 1829-61

William Cullen Bryant

Published by Fordham University Press 1994

The Power For Sanity

Selected Editorials of William Cullen Bryant, 1829-61

William Cullen Bryant

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823296231

Overview
Contents

About this book

At his death in 1878 William Cullen Bryant had been, for fifty-one years, the chief editor and a principal owner of the New York Evening Post. The paper had been started in 1801 by lawyer William Coleman in association with the Federalist political Alexander Hamilton. In 1826, Coleman hired Bryant as a reporter. Although Coleman may have engaged his services because of his growing distinction as a poet, Bryant was also by then an experienced writer of prose, having published more than fifty critical and familiar essays. He had been both editor of and most frequent writer for the monthly New York Review and the United State Review, and was known widely for his lectures on poetry before the New York Athenaeum. By the time he assumed the direction of the Evening Post after Coleman's death in 1829 he had proved himself, in three annual volumes of the holiday gift book The Talisman, to be proficient in a wit and irony soon reflected in his editorials.

Bryant brought the conservative journal to the support of the Democratic Party of President Andrew Jackson, and held it thereafter to liberal principles, advocating free trade, free labor, and Free Soil. Except for the years from 1829 to 1836, Bryant held the editorial pen largely alone until after the Civil War. Occasional contributors formed a representative roster of leaders in many fields: Charles Francis Adams, Thomas Hart Benton, Francis P. Blair, Salman P. Chase, Thomas Cole, James Fenimore Cooper, Hamilton Fish, Parke Godwin (Bryant's son-in-law), Bret Harte, James K. Paulding, John Randolph, Samule J. Tilden, Martin and John Van Buren, Artemus Ward, Gideon Wlles, Walt Whitman, and Silas Wright. And now and then there were articles by British Parliamentarian Richard Cobden and artist-economist George Harvey, and the French critic Charles Sainte-Beuve.

Bryant's editorials after 1860 suggest separate treatment. The present volume traces the growth of his political and social maturity as he made of a conservative, parochial, small-city newspaper into a national organ which Charles Francis Adams in 1850 called "the best daily journal in the United States."

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xv
Foreword Publicly Available Download PDF	xvii
Introduction Publicly Available Download PDF	xix
Editorial Note Publicly Available Download PDF	xxvii
EDITORIALS
1829 John Quincy Adams Gives Way to Jackson. March 5 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1832 Effect of Climate on Age. March 1 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1833 Some Poets. January 26 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	14
1834 Three Opposition Leaders: Clay, Calhoun, and Webster. March 31 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	19
1836 How Abolitionists Are Made. April 21 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	22
1837 The Pilot Monopoly. January 5 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	61
1838 Ride and Tie. June 12 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	83
1839 Sensitiveness to Foreign Opinion. January 11 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	93
1840 Loss of Steamer Lexington. January 18 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	123
1841 Defense of Newspaper Editors. January 14 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	153
1842 International Copyright. February 11 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	171
1843 The Tariff with Country People. March 2 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	180
1844 De Mort[ui]s Nil Nisi Verum. February 28 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	191
1845 The Police Magistrates. February 14 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	248
1847 Pius IX-A Public Meeting. November 12 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	253
1848 Mr. Webster's Speech. March 30 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	257
1850 Mr. Webster's Speech. March 8 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	261
1851 The Fugitive Slave Riots. October 4 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	265
1853 Public Parks. July 2 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	268
1854 Backbones Wanted-A North. February 27 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	272
1855 Short Method with Disunionists. September 26 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	283
1856 Charity Made Easy. February 18 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	288
1857 Fate of Squatter Sovereignty. March 3 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	308
1858 Better Late Than Never. October 5 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	318
1859 The Direct Trade of the South with Europe. ca. January Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	331
1860 Who Is For a Coat of Tar and Feathers? January 9 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	365
1861 The Fifty-Ninth Anniversary of the Evening Post. ca. January 1 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	386
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	389

Language: English
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 394

eBook

Published: December 6, 2021
ISBN: 9780823296231