John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana

[151] hopefulness. While it inculcated economy and industry as the surest way to the restoration of confidence and the re-establishment of business, it did not fail to stand for the idea that “Capital is just as conducive to production as labor.”

As was his custom, Greeley was absent from the city frequently, and thus left the management of the Tribune, as before, largely in Dana's hands. Just what articles either wrote it would be difficult to ascertain. Indeed, it matters little, for enough has been quoted to show that they were a unit on all the fundamental questions of the day.

In a letter to Pike, September 1, 1859, Dana makes this entirely clear by the explicit declaration which follows:

... I have not invented or added anything to the programme of the paper when it came into my hands. I have simply pursued, and that with greater moderation, and, I think, with much greater caution than he exhibited, the course which Mr. Greeley started it upon. I think he was right, and I think I have been right, too. ... Pike, First Blows of the Civil War.

The struggle to keep slavery out of Kansas and Nebraska, and to bring those territories into the Union as free States, went on without relaxation or the thought of defeat. The doctrine of popular sovereignty — as embodied in the Lecompton constitution, and as advocated with such unflagging zeal by Senator Douglas, gave them greater difficulty than any other political doctrines of the day. It seemed plausible, and reasonable to the average man, that the people of the territories should carry with them such domestic institutions as prevailed in the States from which they went, or at least be free to adopt such as they might think proper, but the Tribune declared: