John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana

[405] was not indifferent to their good opinions, as many supposed him to be, nothing turned him from the course he thought it his duty to pursue. He may not have been right always in the details of his statements or opinions, and probably cared but little for the mere appearance of consistency in what he said from day to day, but it is certain that he pursued the general course he had chosen with unfaltering constancy and fearlessness to the end. And it was by these virtues, commingled as they may have been from time to time with faults and errors of detail, that the Sun soon came to be the most widely read and most frequently quoted newspaper of the United States. Its style was terse and vigorous, clear and luminous, from the start. Whatever was worth saying at all was worth saying well, and in language which no man could affect to misunderstand. Statesmen, lawyers, preachers, professors, and educated men of every calling read it with avidity, and this fact made it possible, not only by its utterances, but by the persistency with which it reiterated them, to exert a tremendous influence upon every occasion in shaping public opinion.

During the month of February, 1869, while staying with General Grant in Washington, he read his inaugural address to J. Russell Jones, of Chicago, and myself, and invited our comments upon all important subjects except the cabinet. This he naively told us he regarded as “a purely personal matter” which he would not discuss with any one, not even with his wife. He gave us his views freely about many prominent civilians and soldiers, and asked us for the names of such as we thought worthy of consideration and place. On this hint we reminded him of a number he had not mentioned. It was during the first of these interesting conferences that he told us, in answer to a direct inquiry that he intended to send Rawlins, the chief of staff of the army, to command the Department