The story of the Sun, New York: 1833-1928 / by Frank M. O'Brien ; with an introduction by Edward Page Mitchell ...

152.

THE STORY OF "THE SUN"

When Dana came into control of the Sun, the city of
New York, which then included only Manhattan and the
Bronx, had less than a million population, yet it supported, or was asked to support, more newspapers than
it has to-day. That was the day of the great personal
editor. Bennett had his Herald, with James Gordon
Bennett, Jr., as his chief helper. Horace Greeley was
known throughout America as the editor of the Tribune.
Henry J. Raymond was at the head of the Times. Manton Marble was the intellectual chief of the highly intellectual World.
The greatest Republican politician of that day, Thurlow Weed, was the editor of the (ommncrcial Advertiser.
Weed was seventy-one years old, but not the Nestor of
New York editors, for William Cullen Bryant was three
years his senior and still the active editor of the Evening
Post. The Evening Express, later to be incorporated
with the Mail, was ruled by the brothers Brooks, James
as editor-in-chief and Erastus as manager. David M.
Stone ran the. Journal of Commerce. Ben Wood owned
the only penny paper in town-the Evcning News.
Marcus M. Pomeroy, better known as Brick PIomeroy,
had just started his sensational sheet, the DeImocrat,
on the strength of the reputation he had won in the
West as editor of the La Crosse Democrat. Later he
changed the title of the Democrat to Pomeroy's Advance
Thought.
These were the men who assailed or defended the
methods of the reconstruction of the South; who stood
up for President Johnson, or cried for his impeachment;
who supported the presidential ambitions of Grant, then
the looming figure in national politics, or decried the