| Henry Jarvis Raymond |
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Raymond was a member of the New York Assembly in 1850 and 1851, and in the latter year was speaker. He supported the views of the radical anti-slavery wing of the Whig Party in the North. His nomination over Greeley on the Whig ticket for lieutenant-governor in 1854 led to the dissolution of the famous political firm of Seward, Weed and Greeley. Raymond was elected, and served in 1854-56. He took a prominent part in the formation of the Republican Party , and drafted the famous Address to the People adopted by the Republican convention which met in Pittsburgh on 22 February 1856 . In 1862 he was again a member, and speaker, of the New York Assembly. During the Civil War he supported Lincoln 's policy in general, though deprecating his delays, and he was among the first to urge the adoption of a broad and liberal attitude in dealing with the people of the South. He opposed the Radical Republicans who wanted harsher measures against the South. In 1865 he was a delegate to the National Republican Convention, and was made a member, and chairman, of the Republican National Committee . He was a member of the National House Of Representatives in 1865-67, and on 22 December 1865 he ably attacked Thaddeus Stevens ' theory of the dead states, and, agreeing with the President, argued that the states were never out of the Union, in as much as the ordinances of secession were null. In consequence of this, of his prominence in the Loyalist (or National Union) Convention at Philadelphia in August 1866, and of his authorship of the Address and Declaration of Principles, issued by the convention, he lost favor with his party. He was removed from the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee in 1866, and in 1867 his nomination as minister to Austria , which he had already refused, was rejected by the Senate. He retired from public life in 1867 and devoted his time to newspaper work until his death in New York city in 1869. Raymond was an able and polished public speaker; one of his best known speeches was a greeting to Hungarian leader Lajos Kossuth , whose cause he warmly defended. But his great work was in elevating the style and general tone of American journalism. He published several books, including a biography of President Lincoln ''The Life and Public Services of Abraham Lincoln'' (1865), which in substance originally appeared as ''A History of the Administration of President Lincoln'' (1864). Raymond, who began his journalistic career on Greeley's ''Tribune'' and gained further experience in editing the respectable, old-fashioned, political Courier and Enquirer, perceived that there was an opening for a type of newspaper which should stand midway between Greeley, the moralist and reformer, and Bennett, the cynical, non-moral news-monger. He was able to interest friends in raising the hundred thousand dollars which he thought essential to the success of his enterprise. This sum is significant of the development of American daily journalism, for Greeley had started the Tribune only ten years earlier with a capital of one thousand dollars, and Bennett had founded the Herald with nothing at all. On this sound financial basis, Raymond began the career of the New York Times, 18 September, 1851, and made it a success from the outset. He perfected his news-gathering forces and brought into play his intimate acquaintance with men of affairs to open up the sources of information. Above all he set a new standard for foreign service. The American public never had a more general and intelligent interest in European affairs than in the middle years of the nineteenth century. The leading papers directed their best efforts toward sustaining and improving their foreign service, and Raymond used a brief vacation in Europe to establish for his paper a system of correspondence as trustworthy, if not as inclusive, as that of the Herald or Tribune. If our newspapers today are immeasurably in advance of those of sixty years ago in almost every field of journalism, there is only here and there anything to compare in worth with the foreign correspondence of that time. The men who wrote from the news centres of Europe were persons of wide political knowledge and experience, and social consequence. They had time and ability to do their work thoroughly, carefully, and intelligently, innocent of superficial effort toward sensation, of the practices of inaccurate brevity and irresponsible haste which began with the laying of the Atlantic cable. The theory of journalism announced by Raymond in the Times marks another advance over the party principles of his predecessors. He thought that a newspaper might assume the rôle now of a party paper, now of an organ of non-partisan, independent thought, and still be regarded by the great body of its readers as steadily guided by principles of sincere public policy. An active ambition for political preferment prevented him from achieving this ideal. Although he professed conservatism only in those cases where conservatism was essential to the public good and radicalism in everything which might require radical treatment and radical reform, the spirit of opposition to the Tribune, as well as his temperamental leanings, carried him definitely to the conservative side. He was by nature inclined to accept the established order and make the best of it. Change, if it came, should come not through radical agitation and revolution, but by cautious and gradual evolution. The world needed brushing, not harrowing. Such ideas, as he applied them to journalism, appealed to moderate men, reflected the opinions of a large and influential class somewhere between the advanced thinkers and theorists and the mass of men more likely to be swayed by passions of approbation or protest than by reason. It was the tone of the Times that especially distinguished it from its contemporaries. In his first issue Raymond announced his purpose to write in temperate and measured language and to get into a passion as rarely as possible. “There are few things in this world which it is worth while to get angry about; and they are just the things anger will not improve.” In controversy he meant to avoid abusive language. His style was gentle, candid, and decisive, and achieved its purpose by facility, clearness, and moderation rather than by powerful fervor and invective. His editorials were generally cautious, impersonal, and finished in form. With abundant self-respect and courtesy, he avoided, as one of his coadjutors said, vulgar abuse of individuals, unjust criticism, or narrow and personal ideas. He had that degree and kind of intelligence which enabled him to appreciate two principles of modern journalism—the application of social ethics to editorial conduct and the maintenance of a comprehensive spirit. As he used them, these were positive, not negative virtues. Raymond’s contribution to journalism, then, was not the introduction of revolutionizing innovations in any department of the profession but a general improving and refining of its tone, a balancing of its parts, sensitizing it to discreet and cultivated popular taste. Taking '' The Times '' as his model, he tried to combine in his paper the English standard of trustworthiness, stability, inclusiveness, and exclusiveness, with the energy and news initiative of the best American journalism; to preserve in it an integrity of motive and a decorum of conduct such as he possessed as a gentleman. REFERENCES
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