John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana

[153] the Tribune cultivated close relations with Seward, Collamer, Chase, Fessenden, Hale, Sunnier, Henry Wilson, and all the other rising men of the Republican party. A warm and devoted friendship grew up between them, with Dana as well as with Greeley. The paper was their chief support, as well as their chief means of reaching their constituents through a friendly interpretation. Under Dana's special guidance it had also come to be the leading literary journal of the country. Its columns were filled with criticisms of the latest books by Ripley, Hildreth, George William Curtis, and other rising men, and this made it welcome to the preachers, school-masters, and professional men throughout the North. Thus the advanced thought of the day on every subject was widely disseminated.

On the other hand, the leading Southern men, and the leading Democrats from both sections, were kept under constant observation and criticism. Such men as Davis, Toombs, Benjamin, Hammond, Chesnut, Hunter, Mason, Slidell, Douglas, and Breckenridge were kept constantly before the country. Their actions were questioned, their speeches were analyzed, and their motives were impugned. Nothing they did was allowed to go unchallenged. Every sentiment they uttered was tested by the Constitution as well as by the “eternal principles of justice.”

Benjamin was unsparingly denounced for his plea in the Senate in behalf of slavery as the necessary condition of labor in the tropics as well as in the Southern States. He was mercilessly excoriated for favoring the annexation of Cuba in the interest of that barbaric and aggressive institution. The killing of Senator Broderick, of California, by the fire-eater, Judge Terry, was held up to the country as a murder under the forms of the duel, in the interest, if not at the dictation, of the pro-slavery party. The insanity of John Brown, who was hanged for