John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana

[87] the Bonapartists, the socialists, nor the radicals would try to overthrow it. Surveying the whole field, he concluded that the party into whose hands the revolution had fallen “had been tried and found wanting,” that the prominent impulse in every quarter was to oust it, and that as there was no really great man to save it, the voters would settle down “on Louis Napoleon, whom they despised, to defeat Cavaignac, whom they hated.”

Mingling with the plain people in their daily life, studying their manners and habits of thought, their labor and socialistic associations, and conversing freely with them in the restaurants, workshops, places of amusement, and streets, Dana wrote seven letters to the Tribune in quick succession, the last of which was dated January 2, 1849. In these letters he summarized the situation of political affairs throughout Europe, discussed the election in France, the inauguration of the new president, the personnel and character of his cabinet, and finally gave what is aptly designated as “the balance-sheet of the revolution.” In his astonishment at the enormous popular majority of Louis Napoleon, he declared that “France has voted like a drunken man,” and that many feared he would at once make himself emperor, but such an act of usurpation he dismissed as improbable, and if undertaken, no matter under what pretence, as sure to result in failure as did that at Boulogne. He believed that both the army and the great body of the people were true to the republic, and would support it against all its enemies whatsoever, and that there was at that time no reason to fear that the president-elect would accept the imperial crown if it were offered him. Besides, he suggested that with the formation of his cabinet and the establishment of his government on a working basis, “M. Napoleon has his hands full without thinking immediately of putting on the crown of his uncle.” He added: