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

184

THE STORY OF "THE SUN"

this was only the beginning of a long conflict, which
must be fought to the end, regardless of disappointments. On August 15, 1861, it declared:
Let there be but one war. Better it should cost millions of lives than that we should live in hourly dread of
wars, contiguous to a people who could make foreign
alliances and land armies upon our shores to destroy
our liberties.
On the subject of the war's cost it said:
No more talk of carrying on the war economically!
The only economy is to make short and swift work of
it, and the people are ready to bear the expense, if it
were five hundred millions of dollars, to-day.
This was printed when the war was very young; when
no man dreamed that it would cost the Federal government six times five hundred millions.
The Sun's editorial articles were not without criticism
of the conduct of the war. It was one of the many papers that demanded the resignation of Seward at a time
when the Secretary of State was generally blamed for
what seemed to be the dilly-dallying of the government.
Lincoln himself was still regarded as a politician as
well as a statesman-a view which was reflected in the
Sun's comment on the preliminary proclamation of
emancipation, September 22, 1862:
As the greatest and most momentous act of our nation, from its foundation to the present time, we would
rather have seen this step disconnected from all lesser
considerations and from party influences.
The inference in this was that Lincoln had deliberately made his great stroke on the eve of the Republican
State convention in New York.
The Tribune declared that the proclamation was " the