The Boston Evening Journal.

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boys and the paper grew up together as warm friends. It was the Mercantile Fournal with them.

But Sleeper was not a man of enterprise in the modern sense of that word. Hawser Martingale was not an express rider. It took a hurricane to call him on deck. Rogers and Dix had the vim of the establishment. When one of its present editors, Mr. Stockwell, was a reporter, he once suggested to Captain Sleeper that he could run out to Brighton and make a brief report of a speech that Daniel Webster was to deliver in that town. Captain Sleeper, pushing his spectacles back over his forehead, said, "Well, no, I guess not, Mr. Stockwell; somebody will send us in something about it within two or three days."

It had one of those necessary appendages to a prosperous journal, an energetic business manager, in Charles O. Rogers, a son of the publisher of the National Ægis, in which office he took his first lessons in the art of printing and in the science of journalism. After years of tact and labor, he did so much towards building up the paper that he became the chief owner of the establishment; and when he died in 1869, it was found that, in leaving a property valued at a million and a half of dollars, he deserved the reputation he had obtained for skill and ability.

In 1852 a California Journal was issued, and boasted of the largest circulation of that edition of any of the kind in the country, and these California editions were a feature in those days of the Sullivans, and Gregorys, and other Pacific news agents. It was when the Atlantic furnished the Pacific with its newspapers-when the New York Herald sent out 10,000 copies by each monthly steamer, the New York Tribune nearly as many, and the New Orleans Delta 8000. San Francisco and the mines were then merely colonies of New England, New York, and the West.

The Journal is now managed by an association. Its chief editor is Stephen N. Stockwell, who has been connected with the paper for a quarter of a century or more. He commenced as a phonographic reporter, and through his skill, energy, and ability he kept the Journal up to the highest point of excellence in all important speeches and trials, not allowing the New York papers to have any advantage in his own bailiwick, when he had his own way. Webster and Choate praised him. This was the ribbon of the legion d'honneur to a stenographer of Boston. One of the other editors was James A. Dix, who twenty-five years ago looked after the marine news department-an important department in all commercial newspapers, and deemed especially so in Boston, where Harry Blake achieved renown in this peculiar journalistic science. Yet another editor, W. W. Clapp, son of the Clapp who started the Daily Adver

tiser, and whose fame comes from the Saturday Evening Gazette, in the title of which, years and years ago, it repeated, and, therefore, had faith in the prediction, of circling the world with the electric. wire. It published weekly, long before the introduction of the telegraph, a neat little portrait of the first telegraph operator, Puck. It pinned its faith to its motto, "I'll put a girdle around about the earth in forty minutes." Such a man ought to make a journalist of the modern type, and in this telegraphic age.

Several are

There are other papers of talent and tact in Boston. of recent origin. The Herald has done well since the days of the sedate William B. English. Ex-Postmaster Bailey managed it skillfully and made a fortune. Its present conductors keep up its character and reputation. Then there are the News and Times, and on the 4th of March, 1872, the Globe was inaugurated. It is a double sheet, made up in the style, somewhat, of the New York papers, with a touch here and there of Boston in its general appearance. It is the only "double sheet" printed in that city. It will need vigor, independence, and money to make it what it should be.

The Anti-Masonic Party.

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CHAPTER XXIV.

ANTI-MASONRY AND NULLIFICATION.

THURLOW WEED AND THE ALBANY EVENING JOURNAL.-THE ANTI-MASONIC PARTY.-WHO WROTE THE JUNIUS LETTERS?-THE ROORBACK HOAX. -THE NASHVILLE UNION.-THE CHARLESTON (S. C.) MERCURY. THE CHIEF ORGAN OF THE NULLIFIERS AND SECESSIONISTS.-MORE DUELS.NICE POINTS OF HONOR. -THE CODE. -THE "INDEPENDENCE" OF THE PRESS.

NEARLY all the leading journals of this period, being party papers, were established in the midst of great political excitements, or for the purpose of creating a political division, or to represent a new faction. The Albany Evening Journal came into existence in this way as the organ of the Anti-Masons in the Empire State. Another paper, named the Albany Fournal, as an organ of this party, was issued in 1825 by a son of Hezekiah Niles, of Niles's Register, but it passed out of existence before the Evening Journal made its appearance. Solomon Southwick, a name known to our readers for his brilliant and disastrous journalistic career, published the National Monitor in 1828 and '9, in the interest of the Anti-Masons, and became their candidate for governor in 1828. But it was not till 1830 that the Anti-Masonic party became formidable as a national as well as a state organization, and it was in that year that the Evening Journal was established, absorbing the Monitor in its publication. Thurlow Weed and Henry Dana Ward were the publishers of the new paper.

Thurlow Weed was editor of the Norwich (N.Y.) Journal in 1817. Shortly after he issued an opposition paper, named the Republican Agriculturist, in the interest of De Witt Clinton. In 1825 he became a member of the Legislature, where he met William H. Seward, and attached himself, in those days of political excitement, to the Anti-Masonic party. In 1830 he appeared in Albany as editor of the Evening Journal, the leading organ of that party.

It has been stated that he was a drummer-boy in 1812. No doubt, if he had occupied that position, he would have performed his part at réveille; and when ridiculed for this by his opponents, he could have answered, as the rich merchant, William Gray, retorted, when told that he had been nothing but a drummer-boy, "What! a drummer-boy! and did you ever hear me drum ?" asked Mr. Gray. "Yes,

I have," confidently answered his would-be tormentor. "Well, well, didn't I drum well?" retorted the independent merchant. But Weed had not been a drummer-boy in the War of 1812, but he had been a cabin-boy on board of a splendid North River sloop, where he undoubtedly acquired the rudiments of Salt River navigation, so necessary, sometimes, in political life.

Of the two hundred and eleven papers published in New York in 1830, when the Evening Journal was established, thirty-two were Anti-Masonic organs. The Journal made the thirty-third. This party obtained its popular existence in 1827 with the mysterious disappearance of William Morgan in the previous year, after he had threatened to publish a pamphlet disclosing the secrets of masonry. It grew in popular favor with the increase of popular excitement caused by that curious event. It was, like the Know Nothing party, a political sensation, to bring all the elements in opposition to the Democracy into one party, and could only exist for a time and for a special purpose. It became an organized state party in 1830, and nominated Francis Granger, who had previously been on the Adams ticket, for governor, and gave him 120,361 votes against 128,842, which the Democrats polled for E. T. Throop. Such men as William H. Seward, John C. Spencer, Albert H. Tracy, and Millard Fillmore were Anti-Masonic members of the Legislature at this period of our political history. William Wirt, the distinguished lawyer of Virginia, was the national representative of the party, and obtained the electoral vote of Vermont in 1832. John C. Spencer, with his original and brilliant mind, wrote for the Journal, and aided in its becoming a leading and influential paper. This was the real beginning of the political career of Thurlow Weed and William H. Seward, electing the latter Governor of New York in 1838, and culminating with the administration of Andrew Johnson and a trip around the world.

After Weed assumed the editorial management of the Evening Journal he never held office, but devoted all his energies to the labor of putting others in and out of office-a sort of Warwick. His intimacy with William H. Seward commenced in the Legislature in 1830, when both were members, one in the Senate and the other in the House. Then came into existence the well-known firm of Seward and Weed. After the latter had secured the services of Horace Greeley, in 1839-40, to edit the Log Cabin, in the famous and hilarious campaign for William Henry Harrison, the name of the firm was changed to Seward, Weed, & Co., which was dissolved by mutual consent in 1856 by the retirement of the junior partner. No two men ever worked so well and harmoniously together, one before and the other behind the scenes, from 1830, when one was state senator and the other an editor, as Seward and Weed.

Thurlow Weed and the Albany Journal. 399

It is a singular fact that Mr.Weed has never held any other office since 1830 than that of state printer. He has had plenty of offices and opportunities within his grasp. It is fair to suppose that he might have been governor, senator, and vice-president. These nominations were offered to him and refused. When talked of for the United States Senate, he said:

Looking back through the long vista of time that has elapsed-nearly forty years since a responsible and delicate political duty devolved upon us, it is much less a matter of surprise that we are surrounded, in our own party, with enemies, than that, amidst the disappointments and jealousies incident to the experience of all parties, we retain so much of its regard. When it is supposed that an individual exercises influence in the councils and conventions of his partywhere, of necessity, the aspirations of hundreds are disappointed—nothing but an abiding faith among the people, in that individual's judgment and unselfishness, can sustain him. All men err, but if a politician, whom the people trusts, endeavors to do right, they find it out and stand by him.

The Evening Journal, in the warmly-contested presidential campaign of 1844, published what purported to be an extract of a tour through the South in 1836 by a traveler named Roorback. It pretended to describe scenes in the Southwest. Among other things, it stated that a party of slaves had been torn from the places where they were born and sold at auction. "Forty-three of these unfortunate beings had been purchased, I was informed," said the account, "of the Hon. J. K. Polk, the present Speaker of the House of Representatives, the marks of the branding-iron, with the initials of his name, on their shoulders distinguishing them from the rest."

It appeared that an extract from Featherstonhaugh's Tour in 1834 was made, and the above extract incorporated with his description of what he saw, and the whole accredited to another traveler, who was called Roorback. The story went the rounds of the Whig Press, in order to defeat the chances of Polk's election to the presidency. The extract was alleged to have been made from Roorback's Tour through the Western and Southern States in 1835." The statement produced a great sensation, but the affair was soon exposed by the Albany Argus, and the Journal made an effort to relieve itself of any responsibility in the hoax in the following manner:

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The Albany Argus of this morning charges the Evening Journal with fabricating from the whole cloth the extract published in this paper on Monday last from "Roorback's Tour through the Southern and Western States in 1836." This charge is utterly and unqualifiedly false. The extract in question was taken, precisely as it appeared in the Journal, from an exchange paper, and was published by us without a doubt of its genuineness.

The hoax had its origin, it was stated, in this way: Some one made the interpolation in the extract, and sent it to the editor of the Ithaca Chronicle, a Whig paper, to see if the manager of that paper, "moral and religious as he was allowed to be, would not, equal