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

THE FIELD OF THE LITTLE "SUN"

29

conducted by "a company of rich, aristocratical men,"
and that it would take sides with any party to gain a
subscriber.
The influence of Partner Wisner, the Abolitionist, was
evident in many pages of the Sun. On June 23, 1834,
it printed a piece about Martin Palmer, who was "pelted
down with stones in Wall Street on suspicion of being a
runaway slave," and paid its respects to Boudinot, a
southerner in New York who was reputed to be a tracker
of runaways. It was he who had set the crowd after the
black:
The man who will do this will do anything; he
would dance on his mother's grave; he would invade
the sacred precincts of the tomb and rob a corpse
of its windingsheet; he has no SOUL. It is said that
this useless fellow is about to commence a suit
against us for libel. Try it, Mr. Boudinot!
I)uring the anti-abolition riots of that year the Sun
took a firm stand against the disturbers, although there
is little doubt that many of them were its own readers.
The paper made a vigorous little crusade against the
evils of the Bridewell in City Hall Park, where dozens
of wretches suffered in the filth of the debtors' prison.
The Sun was a live wire when the cholera reappeared,
and it put to rout the sixpenny papers which tried to
make out that the disease was not cholera, but "summer
complaint." Incidentally, the advertising columns of
that day, in nearly all the papers, were filled with patent
"cholera cures."
The Sun had an eye for urban refinement, too, and
begged the aldermen to see to it that pigs were prevented