John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana

[419] and of fair abilities, although without experience in politics, was well received by the country and the disbanded volunteer army. Dana, who had known him during the Vicksburg campaign, commended it, but rather on account of the independence Belknap had shown towards a kinsman of Grant's living in Iowa, who had claimed to control the internal-revenue appointments for that State, than for any special fitness for a cabinet position. While Belknap was technically an excellent Secretary of War, his career was unfortunately closed by scandal and impeachment, under circumstances that the Sun, in common with the independent and opposition newspapers throughout the country, did not fail to denounce.

Although Dana had come to be an unsparing critic of the administration before the end of its first year, he did not fail to praise the President whenever an opportunity presented itself. He specially commended him for adopting Secretary Seward's policy of purchasing Haiti and acquiring Santo Domingo. He also praised the President's views on the currency question as “sound and statesmanlike,” while on the other hand he criticised him severely for advocating the renewal of the income tax, which had been passed as a war measure with a specific declaration on the part of Congress that it should continue till 1870, and “no longer.” Dana regarded this as a species of repudiation, alike injurious to the government and the business of the country. Somewhat later the Sun came out strongly against the nomination of Hoar, of Massachusetts and of the cabinet, for a seat on the bench of the Supreme Court, for the circuit formerly represented by Justice Wayne, of Georgia. While it could say nothing against the eminent fitness of Hoar, it opposed his confirmation on account of his locality, and pronounced the appointment as “one of the most repugnant cases of carpet-bag-ism which had marked the era of reconstruction.”