John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana

But Dana was not to be long left in doubt or idleness. His course and influence as managing editor of the Tribune had come to be well understood in Washington, and had made him many friends among the public men connected with the various branches of the government. His personality and character were differentiated with distinctness from those of Greeley and the other New York editors. He was generally recognized as a more virile and vigorous writer than his chief, and a more consistent and patriotic one than most of his rivals.

On September 30th of the same year, after a page of personal gossip, he wrote to his friend:

... I have sent you a copy of The Household Book of Poetry, . . . which also promises a fair pecuniary success. Lord, how the omitted poets growl over it!. .. [Fordyce] Barker is getting up in his practice, and must be a rich man very soon. When I see him trooping about with his two roan horses, I get vexed at you because you aren't a doctor, too. That was apparently what nature laid you out for, but you've been and stopped her.

The next year, after wondering how he ever found time to write at all, he wrote a long letter about the Cyclopaedia, the book of poetry, and also about their common friends, Bayard Taylor, George William Curtis, Count Gurowski, Pike, and Parke Godwin, winding up with thanks for the little moral lecture Huntington, his correspondent, had given him on the Cyclopaedia, which he suggested was not needed, because he probably knew its faults and the difficulties attending its composition and publication better than any one else.

With the first shot directed against the flag at Fort Sumter, Dana came out for war to the death. The Tribune also buckled on its armor and warned traitors of their doom. The administration had already begun to show