Albany, in February, 1854, on the Press of that city thirty years previously?

I said NEWSPAPERS, but, I believe, we had but one-the old Albany Gazette, which was quiet as the times, and gentle as the manners were of yore. You would look, in vain, in it for the skill and power of the existing Gladiators of Literature; for the eloquent invective, the tart reply, the stinging personality, the dexterous argument, and the brilliant repartee of modern Journals. These things would have startled the gentle newsmongers of forty years ago. Nor was it crowded with intelligence from all Christendom, watching by the hour the negotiations of the Russian and the Turk, kindling and extinguishing insurrections, changing or enlarging the boundaries of the republic, examining everything, disturbing everything, and controlling everything.

Not such was our good Gazette. But it gave us all we wanted to know in reasonable times, and homeopathic quantities;-the deaths and the marriages; the accidents of storm, and flood and fire; advices from Europe two or three months old, and all the simple annals of a primitive and quiet neighborhood. Occasionally a political essay from Junius, Publius, Cato, or some other Roman Patriot, would disclose to us something rotten in the state of the Republic; and, before the Spring election, the address of some Federal meeting would declare to us that if Liberty was not absolutely gone, she was packing up her effects for her final departure. We took all this very calmly; and the annual crisis of Constitutional danger, which has become chronic in our politics, passed off very lightly in good old times. But the Gazette was a sensible and useful paper, and is remembered with respect by the fast diminishing number of its former readers. Nor do they forget the place of its publication, the book store, under the old elm tree at the corner of Pearl street, where the visitor was sure of courteous and affable reception, and where the gentle Quidnuncs and elderly Politicians of former days used to love to congregate. I have heard discussions and suggestions there, which, if they reached the ears of the Arch-Duke Charles and the Emperor Napoleon, might have had an important influence on the conduct of their campaigns. But I believe they never reached so far.

The Gazette disappeared with the times, of which it was the product and reflection. It gave way to hardier and more skilful journals, as untutored labor yields to scientific skill. It left an unblemished name. It had hurt no man's feelings; it had injured no man's reputation: it might, like the good Athenian, claim for its epitaph, that no citizen had worn morning on its account. Light lie the earth on its ashes!

I remember the rise, and somewhat of the progress of the modern school of Journalists in Albany; and did time permit, might attempt some sketches of such of the writers as are departed,—of the bold character, glowing pen, and ardent temperament of SOLOMON SOUTHWICK, the editor of the Register; of HARRY CROSWELL, the witty and fearless manager of the Balance, then a Federal paper; of JESSE BUEL, the discreet and skillful conductor of the dominant Democratic Journal; and, if personal feeling were permitted, would place a humble chaplet on the tomb of CARTER, of the Statesman, accomplished in various learning and warmed with gentle sensibility, which shrank from the fierceness of political strife.

It were indiscreet to go further, though the temptation is irresistible to allude to a surviving writer, whose pen lent occasional and powerful assistance to the Statesman-one who supports with unabated strength the inherited right of a splendid name-who stands foremost in our forensic ranks-who sports with labor, professional, political and legislative, under which other men sink, and whose writing was recognized, like an electric gleam, among the political productions of the day. The contests of 1817 and '20 were of no ordinary character. The political Divinities, as in the wars of Troy, were seen mingling in the combat, and Jupiter himself, from his Olympian throne, dispersed his thunders.

The Albany Advertiser, Colonel W. L. Stone's old journal, was edited in 1838 by James Gordon Brooks, when he got into some trouble with the Van Rensselaers, the owners of the paper, and resigned his

James Gordon Brooks, the Poet.

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position in consequence. He was belligerent, and posted John S. Van Rensselaer on this occasion. He edited the New Era, in New York, in 1839. He had previously been an editor in the metropolis on the Courier and Enquirer. This was in 1828-29, although Griswold states that Brooks removed to New York in 1823, "where he was for several years an editor of the Morning Courier, one of the most able and influential journals in this country." There was a difference of opinion in the establishment of the Courier and Enquirer in 1829 in regard to the control of that journal at that time. The following extract of a letter seems to settle this point in history:

Messrs. Tylee & Webb:

ALBANY, 20th July, 1829.

Your note of the 16th inst. did not reach me till late on Friday night last.

*

*

Your statement that Mr. James G. Brooks and Mr. James Lawson possess no control over the course of the Courier and Enquirer shall be duly attended to when I consult my political friends here and elsewhere. Your assurance settles finally the question of proprietorship. I have written to Messrs. Brooks & Lawson on the subject. By the same mail which conveys this to you, I have informed them of the course I mean to pursue in relation to this matter.

I am, &c., &c.,

JAMES G. BENNETT.

Rufus King succeeded Brooks on the Advertiser, and was editor in 1839, and until he went to Rome on a diplomatic mission.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE NATIONAL ADVOCATE AND ENQUIRER.

TROUBLES OF POLITICIANS.-HENRY WHEATON.-MAJOR NOAH.-WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENCE AND JAMES GORDON BENNETT.-THE DUEL BETWEEN BARTON AND GRAHAM.—INGATHERING OF THE JEWS ON GRAND ISLAND. THE CITY OF ARARAT.-NOAH'S PROCESSION AND ORATION.— NEWSPAPER EDITOR IN GENERAL.

ORGANS of political parties had to be changed. There would be differences of opinion among leaders difficult to reconcile, and new organs were necessary to meet the emergency and satisfy contending factions. Sometimes an editor would feel less like submitting to party dictation, and would rebel. Often there would be more office-seekers than offices. This would lead to heart-burnings, and jealousies, and troubles of all kinds. Newspapers were an outlet to these personal grievances.

There seems to have been a necessity for a new organ in the Democratic Party in New York City after the death of Cheetham and the Citizen. Tammany Hall was dissatisfied with the Columbian and Irving, and repudiated both. It set up another paper, the National Advocate. It was established in 1813, and was first edited by Henry Wheaton, who became, in after years, a distinguished diplomat and publicist as our minister to Denmark and Prussia, and as the author of Elements of International Law.

Wheaton was a native of Rhode Island, and educated a lawyer. After he graduated he visited Europe, where he remained from 1802 to 1806, in the midst and height of Napoleon's career, a close student of the important events of that eventful period. On his return he commenced the practice of law in Providence, which he abandoned in 1812, to remove to New York. In 1813 he established himself in that city as the editor of the National Advocate. "In this capacity," said Edward Everett, "he proved himself an able and enlightened champion of Mr. Madison's administration. The great questions of our violated neutral rights were discussed with the pen, not only of a jurist, but of a gentleman and a scholar. Mr. Wheaton's long residence abroad had given him peculiar opportunities for understanding the controversies of the day. The new liabilities and duties created by the war, then recently declared, were elucidated by him with the learning of an accomplished publicist and

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the zeal of a sincere patriot. Several topics of international law were discussed in the columns of the Advocate with an ability which foreshadowed his future eminence in this department. Among these was a vindication, on the authority of Vattel and Bynkershoeck, of the right of expatriation, in answer to Mr. Gouverneur Morris, an eminent statesman and diplomatist of the Federal Party. Questions of maritime law were of course among those which most frequently presented themselves. In the Advocate first appeared the opinion of his friend, Mr. Justice Story, then recently elevated to the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, affirming the illegality of the trade under enemy's licenses, which had been extensively resorted to for the supply of the British armies in Spain. Mr. Wheaton, as a journalist, enjoyed the entire confidence of the administration, and his columns were sometimes the vehicle of semi-official expositions of its policy. In the autumn of 1814 he received the appointment of Division Judge Advocate of the Army, his nomination to that office being unanimously confirmed by the Senate. The year following he retired from the editorship of the Advocate on being appointed one of the Justices of the Marine Court of New York, a tribunal of limited jurisdiction, and now shorn of much of its former consideration, but which has been presided over by some of the most eminent men at the New York bar." In this position, in that of the editor of the Advocate at that peculiar juncture in our history, and as a reporter of the United States Supreme Court for a number of years, Wheaton laid the foundation of that knowledge and experience which have given the world his great and valuable work on International Law.

Wheaton was succeeded in the editorial management of the Advocate by Mordecai Manasseh Noah, who had been editor in 1810 of the City Gazette, in Charleston, S. C. Noah had also been, in 1811, American Consul at Riga, and afterwards at Tunis, with some sort of mission to Algiers. On his way to Tunis he was captured by the English. On his recall in 1816 he became one of the editors and proprietors of this Democratic organ. Wheaton, Gulian C. Verplanck, and others aided him with contributions. When De Witt Clinton was nominated for Governor in 1817, a number of the Tammanyites, or Bucktails, as they were then called, refused to support him on the ground that he had been the Peace Party candidate for the presidency in 1812. Wheaton, the Advocate, and a few members of Tammany Hall, threw away their votes and their influence on General Peter B. Porter. Their vote was only 1419, against 43,310 for Clinton. In 1823 Noah claimed to be the only Democratic editor in New York, entirely ignoring the American, edited by Charles King, and, as such, demanded a part of the state printing.

He had already received the appointment of sheriff of the city and county of New York, but, in a quarrel with the leaders of the party, he subsequently lost that office. When it was proposed to make him sheriff, objections were raised against him because he was a Jew, and that it would not be right for a Jew to hang a Christian. 'Pretty Christians,” replied Noah," to require hanging at all.”

Noah continued to act as editor of the Advocate till 1825, when Henry Eckford, the celebrated ship-builder, and afterwards chief naval architect to the Sultan of Turkey; Jacob Barker, till lately an active banker in New Orleans at the age of ninety; John Targee, and others, became the secret proprietors of the paper. Noah and Eckford could not agree. So Noah left. Thomas Snowden, afterwards publisher of the Courier and Enquirer, was then placed in charge of the mechanical and business part of the Advocate as nominal owner, and James Gordon Bennett- installed as editor. Mr. Bennett managed the paper for two years, but, on the approach of the next presidential campaign, Eckford, having made up his mind to support the re-election of John Quincy Adams, to which Mr. Bennett was not inclined, he retired in 1827, and Samuel S. Conant, of Vermont, purchased an interest in the concern with Snowden, and assumed the editorial management of the paper, and he continued in that capacity for some time after the Advocate and Statesman were united as one paper, and called the Morning Herald, an arrangement effected by the diplomacy and skill of Thomas B. Wakeman, so well known in connection with the American Institute. He was the mutual friend of all parties, and great in bringing individuals of different interests and opinions together in harmony.

Noah was a true Israelite. About this time, or in 1825, he originated a magnificent scheme of bringing together the scattered tribes of Israel, and forming a settlement of them on Grand Island, in Niagara River, on our northern frontier, since made more famous by the rebels of Canada. He believed that the Indians were the descendants of the lost tribes, and he proposed founding a city on that island as a nucleus for the ingathering of the Hebrew people, including the wild children of America. It appears that the peculiar characteristics of the Red Men, their features, hair, customs, laws, religious ceremonies, and tribal organizations, impressed him with. the belief that they came from the Jewish race. Noah may have been right. That they came from the East there is scarcely a doubt. Catlin, the famous traveler among the Indians, said, over thirty years ago, that he believed that they came originally from the East, perhaps driven by storms in canoes across the Pacific and Behring's Straits; and that those who had never come in contact with the whites till he saw them had the tradition of the dove and