The Bogus Proclamation.

375

a search revealed the fact that those papers did not contain it. The Herald immediately struck it from the paper and recast the form. Only a few copies with the insertion had been sent out, and the remainder were consigned to the flames or the paper-mill.

The messenger had been instructed to deliver the copy to the Journal of Commerce last of all, and he subsequently testified that doubts had been expressed if it would pass muster at this office, no similar attempt at imposition ever having been successful in this quarter. It was haif past three o'clock in the morning before the conspirators ventured to send it. Not only had the night editor in charge and all his force left for home, but all the compositors save those employed in manipulating the forms had been dismissed. The proof-reader lingered a moment on the outside step of the entrance at No. 93 Wall Street to talk with the copy-holder, who had just been discharged for inattention and general incompetency. The boy was making some plea in the hope of being restored, after which the proof-reader turned down the street toward his Brooklyn home, and the copyholder started in the opposite direction. As the latter passed the corner he heard a pounding on the door of No. 91, which led to the business office, but did not connect with the upper stories. He called to know what was wanted, when a boy who was knocking came down the short steps and handed him the proclamation, saying that it was a very important dispatch from the Associated Press. He remarked that it was too late for the paper, but he would take it in, and thus receiving it from the other boy, he rushed with it up the stairs to the printing office. But for his officiousness the Journal of Commerce would have missed it as the Tribune did, and precisely for the same reason. Pausing a moment at the first landing, where there was a gas-light, to see what the news could be, his eye caught the words "a day of fasting," and he dashed up to the imposing table, where the foreman, with three assistants, was just taking off the form, with the words, "You'll have to wait; here's a holiday for you!"

On being questioned, he said he had received the dispatch "from an Associated Press boy at the foot of the stairs." As most of these messengers were intimate with the boys of the office, the foreman had no question of this statement, but he hesitated because the hour was so late and his workmen gone. His orders were that, after the form was closed and the editor gone, he should stop the press for nothing but the news of a battle or an official order. Of the latter the Journal of Commerce had published gratuitously enormous quantities about drafts, enlistments, etc., a large proportion of which came from Washington at a late hour in the night.

This proclamation was written on several pages of thin tissue paper. Looking at the foot of the last page the foreman saw the signature "Abraham Lincoln," and the countersign of Wm. H. Seward. Reluctantly he yielded to what he supposed to be the necessities of the case, and giving each of his assistants part of the copy, he set up part with his own hand. No proof was taken, each compositor setting his own part as carefully as possible, and thus the whole of it was read by no one in the office until it came from the press.

The writer of this was the first at the editor's office next morning. By a singular coincidence, the paper had failed to reach his hand that morning at his house for the only time during the whole year. There was an excited crowd on the streets and around the publication room. Hastily glancing at the page of the paper, we called for the copy. It was presented at once, and bore every internal evidence, both in paper and handwriting, of its genuineness as a Press dispatch, but we placed on the bulletin at once our suspicion of its authenticity.

A telegram of inquiry to the State Department at Washington was not answered until the next evening! But the moment we ascertained that the copy did not come from the office of the Association, we denounced it at once as a forgery, and forwarded at our own expense by the Cunard line a contradiction to be circulated by telegraph in Europe. The forged proclamation was printed on Wednesday morning, the 18th of May, 1864. The Herald was not molested for the few copies it had issued; but orders came immediately from the President to arrest the editors and proprietors of the Journal of Commerce and the World, lock them up in Fort Lafayette, and suppress their papers. Major General Dix, then in command of this military department, in a correspondence which reflected much credit upon him, endeavored in vain to secure the modification of this order by

representing that the parties to be punished were the victims of the fraud and not its perpetrators, and could not have been guilty of any disrespect to the national authority. The offices named were seized, and a portion of the designated persons arrested. The military were searching for the remainder, and a boat with steam up was waiting off the Battery to take them down the bay, when about three o'clock Thursday morning the President countermanded the order of arrest, but the troops still kept possession of the printing establishments that had been seized. In addition to the telegrams actually sent by General Dix to Washington, we have heard it asserted by undoubted authority that this distinguished officer wrote a still more creditable letter, declining to execute the military decree, and tendering his resignation if the service were insisted upon; but he was overruled in his judgment of what his sense of justice and a proper self-respect required, and, retaining the letter in his desk, he executed his disagreeable mission in the open violation of law and the sacred rights so solemnly guaranteed by the Constitution.

Mr. Howard, the author of the forgery, was arrested on Thursday, the 19th of May, and, making a full confession, was on Friday sent to Fort Lafayette. Mr. Mallison, the instrument, was arrested a day after, and on Saturday was sent to the fort. The newspaper offices were vacated by the military on Saturday afternoon, and resumed the publication of their issues on Monday morning. The guilty perpetrators of the forgery, having strong friends among the leading men of the dominant party, were soon after discharged from custody without punish

ment.

The Governor of this state called the District Attorney's attention to the violation of both "the state and national laws" in the attempt of the authorities to punish the victims instead of the authors of the wrong, and Major General Dix, with several inferior officers, were arrested, and on July 9th had a hearing before Judge Russell. Judge Pierrepont, General Cochrane, Wm. M. Evarts, and other eminent counsel, were heard, and Judge Russell held these officers subject to indictment by the Grand Jury. The editors who had suffered so unjustly, however, did not urge the prosecution, and no further action was ever taken.

After the newspapers were suspended the government discovered that it had been precipitate, and made efforts to withdraw from the untoward dilemma in which it had placed itself against the advice of Major General Dix, who at one time was on the point of sending in his resignation rather than carry out the orders of the authorities at Washington. The friends of the administration endeavored to induce the editors of the Journal of Commerce to petition the Secretary of War to release that paper from arrest and suspension, but Mr. Stone positively and properly refused to do so. "I'll ask no such favor," said Stone, in his vehement manner and tone, to the mild but firm General Dix. "I have wittingly committed no offence, and the Journal of Commerce shall never appear again if it must be on such conditions. Let the government right its own wrong."

The most extraordinary part of this extraordinary affair was the actual promulgation, a few weeks after these arbitrary proceedings, of a bona fide proclamation almost of the same purport of the bogus document! Modern usurpation could not go farther than this. It was as much as the people would permit under the peculiar condition of the country at the time, and for America in 1864 it was an extreme measure, and tolerated only in the supposed exigencies of the government.

The President of the Associated Press. 377

Shortly after the death of Mr. Gerard Hallock in 1869, his son William H. Hallock retired from the concern and went to Europe. On his return he made an effort to establish a cheap evening paper in New York. It was started, and called the Republic; but young Hallock having received his newspaper education in the office of one of the old class journals, he was not equal to the new state of things introduced by modern journalism and the telegraph. After losing $30,000 he gracefully succumbed to fate, and the Republic is

no more.

Since then Mr.William C. Prime has withdrawn from the Journal of Commerce to indulge in books, art, lectures, travel, and numismatics, leaving that paper entirely under the editorial management of David M. Stone, who seems fond of his position, and hugely enjoys himself as presiding officer of that distinguished illuminati, the New York Associated Press.

CHAPTER XXIII.

SOME OF THE BOSTON NEWSPAPERS.

THE BOSTON DAILY ADVERTISER.-HORATIO BIGLOW AND NATHAN HALE. -THE FIRST DAILY NEWSPAPER.-EDITORIAL ARTICLES.-THE EVENING TRAVELLER. THE BOSTON COURIER.-JOSEPH TINKER BUCKINGHAM.— THE TRANSCRIPT.-THE LIBERATOR.-WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.-OLD FILES OF NEWSPAPERS, THE BOSTON POST. CHARLES G. GREENE. THE ATLAS.-RICHARD HAUGHTON AND JOHN H. EASTBURN.—The MerCANTILE JOURNAL.-THE HERALD. THE LAST NEWSPAPER ENTERPRISE. -THE GLOBE.

NEW ENGLAND could always boast of her newspapers. She is the mother of them in America. They were always well edited; always neatly printed; always felt an amore propre that was of service to them; always believed in New England; and always had faith in Boston. Augusta, Concord, Montpellier, Hartford, and Providence are nice cities, and respected as capitals in their respective states, but Boston above all in the estimation of every New Englander. She being the Hub, the others are the spokes, and so they revolve. The newspapers of Boston, therefore, are the newspapers par excellence of New England. The Springfield Republican and Worcester Spy, and one or two other journals in the rural districts, are influential, and as potent, probably, as the metropolitan papers, but not in the same districts and in the same way. These journals have an individuality, and an enterprise of their own that has kept them in power with their readers. Our pages indicate the prominent part the papers of New England have performed in history, from the News-Letter to the Globe.

The first prominent daily paper issued in New England was the Boston Daily Advertiser, the publication of which was commenced on the 3d of March, 1813. There was a daily paper begun in that city on the 6th of October, 1796, by Alexander Martin, and edited by John O'Ley Burk, one of the "United Irishmen." It lived about six months. It was called the Polar Star and Boston Daily Advertiser. Another was attempted on the 1st of January, 1798, by Caleb P. Wayne, who was afterwards editor of the United States Gazette of Philadelphia. This second daily paper of Boston was named the Federal Gazette and Daily Advertiser. It lived three months. The third attempt at a daily paper in the capital of Massachusetts was

Nathan Hale, of the Boston Advertiser.

a success.

379

It was published by William W. Clapp, afterwards of the Saturday Evening Gazette, and edited by Horatio Biglow. Its editor, on the previous January, printed a prospectus, of which the following is an extract:

Whilst every other city on the continent is teeming with diaries, we will not, by unnecessary apology, anticipate the charge of presumption in offering to the patronage of the citizens of Boston the plan of a Daily Commercial and Political Gazette, nor betray, by the wariness of precaution, a diffidence to that candor and liberality which has ever characterized the inhabitants of this ancient and respectable metropolis. We might, however, find a sufficient justification in the features of the times, which are of so extraordinary an aspect and so varying a hue, that whilst every interest is absorbed in political anxiety, every hour gives a different complexion to the chameleon-like object of our solicitude. By delaying the impression of our paper till the arrival of the Southern mail, we shall be able to insert an abstract of congressional debates, and so communicate the earliest intelligence of any portentous movement in the cabinet or camp. The frequency of publication will prevent the accumulation of important matter, and leave us ample room for the favors of our advertising friends.

It was the intention then to name the new paper the Morning Post and Daily Advertiser, a Commercial and Political Journal. On the 3d of March, however, the first number appeared as the Boston Daily Advertiser. This was the principal head-line. On the second number the name of Repertory was added to the sub-head only. The editor, in the initial sheet, said:

It is about six weeks since the editor of this paper first announced the design of it to the public. The liberal encouragement he has already received, and an arrangement with the proprietor of the Repertory, have enabled him to commence the publication sooner than he could have anticipated. He has, in one respect, departed from his original intention. In compliance with the wish of his advertising friends, the Daily Advertiser will be issued at an early hour, without regard to the arrival of the morning post, and forwarded to distant subscribers by the mail of the day.

In instituting the comparison, he has no wish to derogate from the merits, or the ability, or the utility of the Federal papers of this town. No one can be more ready to do justice to their character, and no one can more highly appreciate their services. He would be unwilling to think that his support must detract from theirs-he only asks for a share of public patronage. Besides monthly, weekly, and semi-weekly publications, EIGHT daily papers are circulated in New York, and the little city of Alexandria, with not half the population of Salem, is provided with Two. It were an unworthy supposition that Boston, with all its wealth and liberality, is incompetent to the maintenance of ONE.

Biglow conducted the paper till the 6th of April, 1814. He then went to New York, where he edited the American Monthly Magazine and Critical Review in 1817. Nathan Hale, a nephew of "the patriot spy of the Revolution," after whom he was named, assumed the editorial management of the Advertiser on the 7th of April, 1814. Mr. Clapp continued to be the publisher. Its sub-head was then Repertory and Daily Advertiser. It was once more changed, and Repertory was dropped.

Mr. Hale entered upon his duties with a full appreciation of the responsibilities of an editor. On the 7th of April he said: