For large work he could
count on the North American Review, but this was scarcely a
press. For current discussion and correspondence, he could depend
on the New York Nation; but what he needed was a New York daily,
and no New York daily needed him. He lost his one chance by the
death of Henry J. Raymond. The Tribune under Horace Greeley was
out of the question both for political and personal reasons, and
because Whitelaw Reid had already undertaken that singularly
venturesome position, amid difficulties that would have swamped
Adams in four-and-twenty hours. Charles A. Dana had made the Sun
a very successful as well as a very amusing paper, but had hurt
his own social position in doing it; and Adams knew himself well
enough to know that he could never please himself and Dana too;
with the best intentions, he must always fail as a blackguard,
and at that time a strong dash of blackguardism was life to the
Sun. As for the New York Herald, it was a despotic empire
admitting no personality but that of Bennett. Thus, for the
moment, the New York daily press offered no field except the
free-trade Holy Land of the Evening Post under William Cullen
Bryant, while beside it lay only the elevated plateau of the New
Jerusalem occupied by Godkin and the Nation. Much as Adams liked
Godkin, and glad as he was to creep under the shelter of the
Evening Post and the Nation, he was well aware that he should
find there only the same circle of readers that he reached in the
North American Review.
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