The story of the Sun, New York, 1833-1918 / by Frank M. O'Brien.

CHAPTER VIII

" THE SUN " DURING THE CIVIL WAR
One of the Few Entirely Loyal Newspapers of New York.Its Brief Ownership by a Religious Coterie.-It Returns
to the Possession of M. S. Beach, Who Sells It to Dana.
I N 1852, when Moses Sperry Beach came into the sole
ownership of the Sun, it was supposed that the
slavery question had been settled forever, or at least
with as much finality as was possible in determining
such a problem. The Missouri Compromise, devised by
Henry Clay, had acted as a legislative mandragora
which lulled the United States and soothed the spasms
of the extreme Abolitionists. Even Abraham Lincoln,
now passing forty years, was losing that interest in
politics which he had once exhibited, and was devoting
himself almost entirely to his law practice in Springfield, Illinois.
The Sun had plenty of news to fill its four wide pages,
and its daily circulation was above fifty thousand. The
Erie Railroad had stretched itself from Piermont, on
the Hudson River, to Dunkirk, on the shore of Lake
Erie. The Hudson River Railroad was built from New
York to Albany. The steamship Pacific, of the Collins
Line, had broken the record by crossing the Atlantic
in nine days and nineteen hours. The glorious yacht
America had beaten the British Titania by eight miles
in a race of eighty miles.
Kossuth, come as the envoy plenipotentiary of a
Hungary ambitious for freedom, was New York's hero.
172