When Sumter brought the North to its feet as one man, as Lowell wrote, the press and general public believed the war would be brief. The best editorial judgment1 in New York had been that the rebellion could be strangled by a blockade alone. “A half dozen ships of war stationed at the proper points is all that is wanted,” said the Times on Feb. 11, 1861. “In a few months’ time the Southern Confederacy would be completely starved out.” The Tribune, arguing Jan. 22 for closing the Southern ports, had predicted that as a consequence “the South will decline, and finally collapse2, in utter humiliation3. And this will not result from bloody4 wars, but from the peaceful operation of the laws of trade.” On the same date the Evening Post remarked that the secession disease required not cautery or the knife, but a little judicious5 regimen. Uncle Sam might crush the seceding6 States with ease. “He could devastate7 every cotton field, and level every seaboard city in less than a year, if he were so foolhardy and malignant8 as they have shown themselves to be.” It must be remembered that at the time of all these utterances9 Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas had not yet joined the South. But in his call to arms just after Sumter Bryant allowed himself to boast that every loyal arm was a match for ten traitors11. A pathetic Evening Post editorial of June 15, “The Beginning of the End,” following the Confederate evacuation of Harper’s Ferry, predicted that Jefferson Davis meant to make a desperate effort at Manassas, for “his cause is on its last legs, and unless he puts forth12 a bold stroke now, it is gone.”
It was because the Tribune was so confident of an easy victory that it raised the cry, “On to Richmond!” in285 June and early July. Simply because it shared the same confidence, the Evening Post, with greater wisdom, pleaded for deliberation and care, and carried editorials with such headings as “Patience!” (July 1). After the advance began, it thought that Jefferson Davis ought to be captured within a month (July 17).
When upon this over-confidence fell the shock of the rout13 at Bull Run, the Post felt it necessary to hearten the North by minimizing the defeat. There was no need to labor14 the moral that the war was going to be long and hard, and Bryant was worried lest the public should be depressed15. Frederic Law Olmsted wrote him that “although it is not best to say it publicly, you should know, at least, that the retreat was generally of the worst character, and is already in its results most disastrous16.” The Post harped17 for some time upon the lesson of the need for better discipline and officers. But it also tried to maintain that Manassas was the Sebastopol of the rebels, a powerful natural position; that “in any fair, open, hand-to-hand fight, the union troops are too much for the seceders”; and even that the moral effect of the battle would be in the North’s favor. Greeley felt the same impulse when, under the reaction from his “On to Richmond!” mischief18, he promised that the Tribune would cease nagging19 the army, and devote itself to inspiriting the public.
As soon as they perceived that the war would be bitter, the editors of the Post took their stand with what the historian Rhodes calls the radical20 party of the North; the party of Secretary Chase, Senators Trumbull and Sumner, and Gen. Carl Schurz. The paper’s Washington correspondent early (May 3) divided the Cabinet into radicals21—Welles, Chase, Blair—and conservatives—Seward, Bates, and Smith. The radicals wanted the war prosecuted24 with intense energy, no thought of compromise, and no particular regard for the feelings of the border States and Northern Democrats26. Always ardent27, sometimes precipitate28, they disliked the cautious Seward, and sometimes lost patience with Lincoln himself. In286 the end their policies were usually adopted, but Lincoln’s wisdom lay in not adopting them prematurely30; as Schurz admitted in 1864, when he wrote a schoolmate that he had often thought Lincoln wrong, but in the end had always found him right.
Much of the radicalism31 of Bryant and Parke Godwin was quite sound. In the first month the Evening Post published no fewer than four editorials asking for a hurried and strict blockade of the South, and prophesying32 that it would “put an end to the rebellion more quickly than any other plan of action.” On July 20 it anticipated Ericsson by asking for ironclads, recalling that Robert L. Stevens had begun building a floating armored battery under an act of Congress passed in 1842, but had never finished it. The paper thought that “half a dozen thoroughly33 shot-proof gunboats, of light draft,” could silence Forts Sumter, Pulaski, and Jackson, or better still, run past them and dominate Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans. It asked for a national draft on July 9, 1862, nine months before Congress passed a law for one. Lincoln’s early policy was to free and protect all Southern negroes who, having been employed in the military service of the Confederacy, came within the lines of the Northern commands, but this did not satisfy Bryant. On Dec. 6, 1861, he asked Congress to confiscate34 the property of the rebels, appoint State commissioners35 of forfeiture36 to take charge of it, and as fast as negroes came within Northern reach, make them freemen.
Bryant was in direct communication with radical officials in Washington and radical commanders in the field. He corresponded with Secretary Chase; Gen. James Wadsworth and Gen. E. A. Hitchcock wrote him startlingly frank letters; and he heard regularly from Consul37-General Bigelow in Paris. The slowness with which the war dragged on was deplored38 by the Evening Post even as it was deplored by Chase, Schurz, and Sumner. The paper did not criticize Lincoln with the signal lack of judgment Greeley often showed, much less with the rancorous hostility39 of Bennett’s Herald40 or the now Democratic287 World. But by the middle of September, 1861, it was censuring41 him for the reluctance42 with which he signed the Confiscation43 Act, and reminding him that “his official position is in the lead, and not in the rear.” On Oct. 11 it published an editorial, “Playing With War,” in which it criticized the Administration for lukewarmness and declared that the public wanted active measures; “the more energetic, the more effective these measures, the more telling the blow, the more they will applaud.”
These complaints, the complaints of a large party all over the North and of an able Congressional group, redoubled as the first half of 1862 passed with almost no news from Virginia but that of disasters. On July 8 the Post asked three sharp questions. Why had enlistments been stopped three or four months earlier—for Stanton, believing success at hand, had foolishly halted the recruiting on April 3? Why had the militia45 of the loyal States never, since the war began, been reorganized, drilled, and armed? And why had no great arsenals46 of munitions47 been collected? “We have been sluggish48 in our preparations and timid in our execution,” the paper admonished49 Washington. “Let us change all this.” Such complaints were natural and useful in the dark hour when McClellan’s army recoiled50 after bloody fighting from its first advance on Richmond. Bryant also did well to press his attacks upon corruption51 in government contracts, and political favoritism in military appointments. When this month Congress authorized52 the use of negroes in camp service and trench53 digging, he reasonably found fault with the Administration for its slowness in acting54 upon the authorization55.
But Bryant’s “radicalism” was not commendable56 when he complained of the delay in emancipating57 the slaves; of the prominence58 of Northern Democrats, not hostile to slavery, in the army and at Washington; and of the consideration given border State sentiment. Had Lincoln acted rashly in the early months of the war, he would have forced Kentucky and Missouri into the arms of the288 South, and he thought (Sept. 22, 1861) that “to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game.” Had he made haste to emancipate59 the slaves, he would irretrievably have offended powerful elements in the North and the Border States which were willing to fight for the union, but not to fight against slavery. Military historians have generally condemned60 Lincoln’s interference with McClellan’s plans in the early spring of 1862, an interference into which he was forced by such pressure as Bryant was exerting. The Evening Post was unjust to Lincoln when it explained (July 7, 1862) why the people suspected him of indecision. “He has trusted too much to his subordinates; he has not been sufficiently62 peremptory63 with them, either with his generals or his Secretaries; and his whole Administration has been marked by a certain tone of languor64 and want of earnestness which has not corresponded with the wishes of the people.” It was unjust when it spoke65 again (July 23) of Lincoln’s “slumbers,” and of the “drowsy influence of border State opiates.”
In condemning66 the military incapacity of the union generals in the East the newspaper was upon firmer ground. McClellan became commander of the Army of the Potomac immediately after Bull Run, and was made commander-in-chief of all the armies on Nov. 1, 1861. As the new year arrived without any movement, Bryant began grumbling67 over the idea held by many officers “that the wisest way of conducting the war is to weary out the South with delays.” He argued that if the North did not show more energy, France or England might eventually interfere61. “If we understand the case,” he wrote caustically68 on Feb. 6, “Gen. McClellan has infinite claims upon our gratitude69 for the discipline which he has given to the army, but that discipline is still too imperfect to warrant any movement.” He pointed70 out that the enemy was relying upon this inefficiency71, and was so confident of the situation in Virginia that Beauregard had just been dispatched to reinforce the Confederate army in the West. A few days later Bryant received a letter which289 Gen. Wadsworth wrote him from camp, denouncing McClellan roundly:
I repeat the conclusion intimated in my last letter. The commander-in-chief is almost inconceivably incompetent73, or he has his own plans—widely different from those entertained by the people of the North—of putting down this Rebellion. I have just read the gloomy reports from Europe, threatening intervention74, etc. In my despair, I write in the faint hope of arousing our Press to speak out what is in the hearts of ninety-nine one hundredths of the army, and nine-tenths of the country—the commander-in-chief is incompetent or disloyal. I have come slowly to this conclusion. No man greeted his appointment more cordially than I did. There is not the shadow of any personal feeling in my conviction. I have nothing personal to complain of. I must again caution you, that all this is strictly75 confidential76.
Wadsworth reiterated77 this opinion all spring, while Bryant heard from Gen. John Pope and Gen. Hitchcock in the same vein78. It was not until May 5 that McClellan fought his first battle, though he had held command since the preceding July. The Evening Post was full of hope in the Peninsular campaign that followed, warning McClellan not to overestimate79 the enemy’s forces, and that “hitherto our great fault has been that we have not followed up our successes.” Its dejection was proportionately great when in the first days of July the campaign ended in failure, and McClellan withdrew his army from the position he had reached immediately in front of Richmond. The disgust of the radicals with McClellan was now complete, and the Post was as eloquent80 as the Tribune or Times in attacking him. On July 3 it mournfully remarked that “while the cause cannot perhaps be defeated even by incompetence,” it could be gravely imperilled. “We have suffered long enough from inaction and overcaution. Henceforth we must have action.... If it be asked who is the best man, we can only say that it is Mr. Lincoln’s business to know, but bitter experience has taught us that Gen. McClellan is not.” Lincoln was admonished that he must open his eyes without a moment’s delay to the exigency81, dismiss every slothful or290 imbecile leader, infuse energy and unity82 into his Cabinet, and recruit new armies. It was now that the Post began asking for conscription, while it gave a ringing endorsement83 to Lincoln’s call for “three hundred thousand more.”
The Herald, incapable84 of blaming a Democrat25 like McClellan, in July attacked Stanton for the army’s failure, but the Evening Post showed that McClellan himself had said that he had more than enough troops to take Richmond. The Chicago Tribune later accused it of injustice85 to Lincoln in saying that McClellan should have been dismissed earlier, since Lincoln could not do so without offending loyal Democrats. That, rejoined the Post, is precisely86 the ground for our objection to McClellan; he was retained for political, not military, reasons.
These July days were the days in which Lincoln grew thin and haggard, Seward was sent upon a circuit of the North to arouse public men in support of the new enlistment44 programme, and Lowell wrote, “I don’t see how we are to be saved but by a miracle.” Who should succeed McClellan? Chase and Welles believed that the best general in view for the eastern command was John Pope, whose victory at Island No. 10 had given him national fame; and Bryant and Godwin, who had had some personal contact with Pope, agreed. He was called east and given the Army of Virginia. The chief command, however, went to Halleck, whom the Evening Post distrusted as much as Welles did, and had already (July 23) described as slower and less enterprising than McClellan.
To Halleck the Evening Post said that his motto must be that of the Athenian orator87, action—action—action. The country wanted a Marshal Vorwarts; should its historians have none to record but General Trenches88, General Strategy, or General Let-Escape? A few days later (Aug. 19) it published an editorial headed “Onward90! Onward!” “The one essential element in our military movements now is celerity,” it urged. “Promptness in filling up the ranks already thinned by the war,291 promptness in organizing and sending forward new regiments91, promptness in moving on the enemy.” Bryant had written Lincoln protesting against the sluggishness92 of military operations, and under pressure from other radicals, early in August the editor visited Washington to remonstrate93. Mayor Opdyke, President Charles King of Columbia, and many other influential94 New Yorkers went at about the same time for the same purpose. Bryant tells us that he had a long talk with Lincoln, “in which I expressed myself plainly and without reserve, though courteously95. He bore it well, and I must say that I left him with a perfect conviction of the excellence96 of his intentions and the singleness of his purposes, though with sorrow for his indecision.” A movement immediately began in New York to organize the radicals under a local committee.
In their editorials on military policy Bryant, Parke Godwin, and Charles Nordhoff were guided by officers who wrote from the field or whom they met in the city; and their comments were remarkably97 sound. At this moment, for example, the Evening Post sensibly ridiculed98 the talk of a rebel army 200,000 strong. It repeatedly expressed a conviction that never, neither at Manassas, Yorktown, of Richmond, had the enemy been superior. “There is excellent reason to believe that the rebels never had more than 40,000 men at Manassas; it is a notorious fact that when McClellan arrived on the Peninsula, there were not 10,000 men at Yorktown. At Fair Oaks Sumner’s corps99 and Casey’s division repulsed100 the whole rebel army.... A close examination of the battles before Richmond proves that the rebels never fought more than 15,000 to 25,000 men there on any one day.” McClellan, it thought, had been frightened by idle fears. But when Pope failed more ignominiously102 than McClellan, and was soundly drubbed at the second battle of Bull Run (Aug. 30, 1862), the Evening Post did not confine itself to military topics. It fell again into its unjustifiable censure104 of Lincoln. The President was honest, devoted105, and determined106—
292
and yet the effect of his management has been such that, with all his personal popularity, in spite of the general confidence in his good intentions, and in spite of the ability and energy of several of his advisers107, a large part of the nation is utterly108 discouraged and despondent109. Many intelligent and even wise persons, indeed, do not scruple110 to express their suspicions that treachery lurks111 in the highest quarters, and that either in the army or in the Cabinet purposes are entertained which are equivalent to treason.
All this has grown out of the weakness and vacillation112 of the Administration, which itself has grown out of Mr. Lincoln’s own want of decision and purpose. We pretend to no state secrets, but we have been told, upon what we deem good authority, that no such thing as a continued, unitary, deliberate Administration exists; that the President’s brave willingness to take all responsibility has quite neutralized113 the idea of a conjoint responsibility; and that orders of the highest importance are issued and movements commanded, which Cabinet officers learn of as other people do, or, what is worse, which the Cabinet officers disapprove115 and protest against. Each Cabinet officer, again, controls his own department pretty much as he pleases, without consultation116 with the President or with his coadjutors. (Sept. 15, 1862.)
At this juncture117 the Times and World were vehemently118 demanding a drastic change of Cabinet officers; and in Washington Congressional sentiment was shaping itself toward the crisis of December, when a Senatorial caucus119 demanded the resignation of the conservative Seward. The Herald, panic-stricken, was telling McClellan that he was “master of the situation”—that is, he might be dictator; and calling upon him “to insist upon the modification120 and reconstruction121 of the Cabinet.” It was not unnatural122 for Bryant to give way to his old fear that the Administration would “fight battles to produce a compromise instead of a victory.”
As befitted such a warlike journal, the Evening Post had its own strategic plan, which it first outlined Oct. 5, 1861, and thenceforth expounded123 every few weeks until the closing campaigns. Briefly124, it held that there was no important object in the capture of Richmond; that the indispensable aim was to destroy the Confederate armies, not to take cities. The Southern capital could293 be easily removed to Knoxville, Petersburg, or Montgomery. Except in so far as was involved in opening the Mississippi and applying the blockade, it opposed the “anaconda plan” of Scott and McClellan, the plan of attacking with a half dozen armies from a half dozen sides. The rebels, it pointed out, had the advantage of inside lines and could rapidly shift their forces to defeat one Federal onslaught after another. The true strategy was for the union itself to seize the inside lines. This could be done by concentrating its heaviest forces in those great Appalachian valleys which ran south through Virginia and Tennessee into the heart of the Confederacy. The population was in large part friendly; the Ohio River offered a base of supplies; the flanks could be secured by guarding the passes or gaps; and as the union armies moved southward in the Tennessee and Shenandoah Valleys, they could force the evacuation of the border States. From the valleys they could fall at will upon Virginia, upon North Carolina, upon Georgia, upon Mississippi, and could rend125 the Confederacy in twain.
But the good and bad sides of the Evening Post’s radicalism were best exhibited in its eagerness for emancipation126. It was a noble object for which to contend, yet no one doubts that Lincoln was right in his long hesitation127, and in declaring to Greeley so late as the summer of 1862 that his paramount128 object was to save the union, and not either to save or destroy slavery.
Even in the month of Bull Run the Evening Post, while rebuking129 a New England minister who asked for a national declaration in favor of emancipation, believed that the conflict, “though not a war directly aimed at the release of the slave, must indirectly130 work out the result in many ways.” When Fremont issued his hasty proclamation of September, 1861, liberating131 all slaves in Missouri, which Lincoln sensibly revoked133, the Post called it “the most popular act of the war,” and was much offended by the President. By October it was dropping the uncertainty134 of tone in which it had spoken of the subject. Early that month it said that if it became necessary294 to extinguish slavery in order to put down the rebellion, it must be given no mercy; a few days later it demanded the release of all captured slaves and their enlistment as cooks, trench-diggers, and other auxiliaries135; while on Sept. 25 it virtually called for emancipation. The paper believed that it “would change the whole aspect of the war, bring to our side a host of new allies, call off the attention of the rebels from their present plan, and hasten the period of their subjugation136.” Bryant wrote just before Thanksgiving upon the probable great result of the war; and “that the extinction137 of slavery will form a part of it,” he declared, “we have not the shadow of a doubt.”
During the first half of 1862 a considerable part of the Post’s criticism of Lincoln sprang from its impatience138 over his reluctance to free the slaves. This was the attitude of Sumner, of Thaddeus Stevens, of Carl Schurz, of Greeley in the Tribune and nearly all the Tribune’s great constituency; most of Bryant’s friends took it, and many, as Lydia Maria Child, wrote requesting editorial pleas for emancipation. It is an interesting coincidence, that on the very day, July 22, 1862, that Lincoln read his emancipation proclamation to the Cabinet, and upon Seward’s suggestion put it aside, the Evening Post’s leading editorial was an impassioned plea for such a document. Lincoln was only waiting for a victory, that his proclamation might seem to be supported by a military success. Possibly Bryant learned this from his friend Chase. At any rate, although the Evening Post was bitterly grieved by McClellan’s failure to win a decisive victory at Antietam in September, and wrote angrily that such drawn139 battles were “not war but murder; butchery which fills all right-minded men with horror,” it knew that emancipation might follow Lee’s retreat from Maryland soil. Just after the battle Bryant wrote an editorial (Sept. 17) called, “While the Iron is Hot.” There are crucial junctures140, he said, when great blows must be struck at great evils. Such a juncture had arrived; “a proclamation of freedom by martial141 law would be hailed,295 we believe, by an almost universal shout of joy in all the loyal States, as the death knell142 of the rebellion.” Just a week later the Evening Post was rejoicing over the President’s announcement of his forthcoming proclamation:
It puts us right before Europe; it brings us back to our traditions; it animates143 our soldiers with the same spirit which led our forefathers144 to victory under Washington; they are fighting today, as the Revolutionary patriots145 fought, in the interests of the human race, for human rights....
There was a lesson for all radicals in the resentment146 which, at even that late date, many Northern newspapers showed over the President’s act. The Journal of Commerce had “only anticipations147 of evil from it,” and believed that an immense majority of Northerners would view it with profound regret. The Herald predicted that it would ruin the white laborers148 of the West by bringing the negroes north to compete with them. The World held that it was nugatory—the South would have to be whipped before it could be given any effect. The Courrier des Etats Unis had deplored many errors since the republic “began rolling down the slope which promises to land it in the abyss,” but it thought this blunder the most wanton and complete. What would such papers and the great body of citizens they represented have said six months earlier?
Another and highly praiseworthy evidence of the “radicalism” of the Evening Post was its eagerness for a far-reaching system of taxation149, and for having the financial conduct of the war kept as strictly as possible upon a sound-money basis. Having been active in obtaining Chase’s appointment to the Treasury150, Bryant felt a special solicitude151 for that department. During the latter half of 1861 he repeatedly urged Congress to tax to the limit. He believed that the government should be able to pay for the war by heavy taxes, supplemented by the sale of long-term bonds, and only as a final resource should issue Treasury notes payable152 on demand. It was296 a disappointment to the paper that Chase took no early steps for the development of an appropriate tax system. A remarkable153 editorial of Feb. 1, 1862, pictured the wealth of the nation: the universal possession of property, the high per capita prosperity, the bursting granaries, the rich output of precious metals. It recalled the fact that three times the national debt contracted in great wars had been wiped out, while in the thirties the treasury overflowed154 until men racked their brains with plans for spending the superfluity. Never was a nation more cheerfully inclined to accept high taxes; “the general feeling is one of impatience that Congress is so slow in performing this necessary duty.”
As early as Jan. 15 the Evening Post had uttered its first warning against a reliance upon paper money. Naturally, the passage of the greenback legislation of Feb. 25, 1862, for the issue of $150,000,000 in legal-tender notes, dismayed it. It believed the law grossly unconstitutional, and was certain that it would be disastrous in effect. Secretary Chase wrote to Bryant, on Feb. 4, arguing for the bill, but in vain. “Your feelings of repugnance156 to the legal-tender clause can hardly be greater than my own,” said Chase; “but I am convinced that, as a temporary measure, it is indispensably necessary.” He thought that a minority of the people would not sustain the notes unless they were made a tender for debt, and that this minority could control the majority to all practical intents. But the Evening Post, like all the other New York journals save two, opposed the bill to the last. Bryant did not believe that the measure could be temporary, as Chase put it. In an editorial called “A Deluge157 at Hand,” he compared the law to the first breach158 made in one of the Holland dikes:
In all the examples which the world has seen, the evil of an irredeemable paper currency runs its course as certainly as the smallpox159 or any other disease. The first effects are of such a nature that the remedy is never applied160; there is no disposition161 to apply it. The inflation of the currency pleases a large class of297 persons by a rise of prices and an extraordinary activity in business. People buy to sell at higher prices; property passes rapidly from hand to hand; fortunes are made; the community is delirious162 with speculation163. At such a time suppose Mr. Chase to step in and say: “My friends, this fun has been going on long enough; you must be tired by this time of speculation. Let us repeal164 the legal-tender clause in the Treasury-note bill and return to specie payments.” What sort of reception would this proposal meet?
His prophecy was fulfilled. Successive issues of legal-tender notes followed, until the total reached $450,000,000; prices soared, and the cost of the war was immensely enhanced; and at one time $39 in gold would buy $100 in currency. The Evening Post, it may be added, was the first newspaper to suggest the issue of interest-bearing banknotes as an expedient165 for the gradual contraction166 of the currency, a measure Congress adopted in March, 1863.
Meanwhile, the Northern armies failed to make progress. When in December, 1862, the criminally incompetent Burnside attacked Lee’s entrenched167 army at Fredericksburg, and was flung back with the loss of nearly 13,000 men, an outburst of anger came from the whole New York press. “The Late Massacre” was the heading the Evening Post gave its editorial of Dec. 18, in which, three days after Burnside fell back, it could not understand why he was not already removed. “How long is such intolerable and wicked blundering to continue? What does the President wait for? We hear that a great, a horrible crime has been committed; we do not hear that those guilty of it are under arrest; we do not hear even that they are to be removed from the places of trust which they have shown themselves so incapable to fill.” The Democratic press, led by the Herald, demanded the reinstatement of McClellan, while the radical press wanted an entirely168 new general. Once more, like the Tribune, Herald, and World, the Evening Post blamed Lincoln for his generals’ mistakes. “The President has required too little from his agents; his good nature has led him to be less strict toward them than298 he ought to be, while at the same time his confidence in himself and his advisers has led him, unfortunately, to deny himself that general counsel of the nation by which he might have benefited had he kept up confidential relations between himself and the people.” Yet it had praised the choice of Burnside, calling him an energetic, calm, and judicious leader, who had the prestige of success in his favor.
As the spring campaign of 1863 opened, the Post reflected the renewed hopefulness of the North. It was not pleased by the selection of Hooker to be the new commander, but it was encouraged by his rapid reorganization of the army and restoration of fighting discipline. The new advance had the old result—disaster. On May 7, lamenting169 Hooker’s ignominious103 defeat at Chancellorsville, the Evening Post condemned his strategy as incomprehensible. It was quite right in its general verdict, and in a number of specific criticisms, as when it said that the disposition of the forces under Sedgwick had been insane. But we can hardly say as much of its censure of Hooker and the Administration for an alleged170 failure to use the needed reserves. There were 60,000 men among the Washington defenses, it declared, who might have been replaced by militia and thrown into the battle. As a matter of fact, Hooker had failed to employ 35,000 fresh troops right at hand; his army was large enough, and much too large for his capacity to handle it. It fell back across the Rappahannock, and the stage was set for Lee’s descent upon Pennsylvania.
Rhodes states that “by the middle of June (1863) the movements of Lee in Virginia warned the North of the approaching invasion” that culminated172 at Gettysburg. But the readers of the Evening Post were warned of it by a column editorial on May 21, two weeks before Lee took his first preliminary steps. That such a prophecy could be made shows how conversant173 with the military situation the great New York journals were kept by their war correspondents, their files of Southern newspapers, and their high official advisers. Bryant wrote that he299 believed Jefferson Davis was preparing his last desperate stroke, in the knowledge that Grant might soon wrest174 the whole Mississippi from him, that there would be more union cavalry175 raids like Stoneman’s and Grierson’s, and that even if the Confederacy beat off another attack like Hooker’s, it would prove a Pyrrhic victory:
There are unmistakable indications that Davis is quietly withdrawing troops from the outlying camps along the seacoasts to reinforce Lee, which movement will be continued, we think, until that general has a command of 150,000 to 200,000 men. As soon as it is ready Lee will move, we conjecture176, not in the direction of Washington, but of the Shenandoah Valley, with a view to crossing the Potomac somewhere between Martinsburg and Cumberland. It will be easy for him ... to defend his flanks ... and to maintain also uninterrupted communications with Staunton and the Central Virginia railway. The valley itself is filled with rapidly ripening177 harvests, and once upon the river supplies may be got from Pennsylvania.
The editorial proposed either the occupation of the Shenandoah in force, or a new attack on Lee, and advised the Maryland and Pennsylvania authorities to fortify178 their towns and raise fresh bodies of troops.
When the invasion actually began, parts of the North were frightened, but the Evening Post was almost gleeful. On June 17, when news came that the first Confederates were across the Potomac, it expressed the hope that Lee would push on so that he might be cut off and destroyed. Ten days later, when the rebels had reached Carlisle, Pa., it was jubilant: “It is time for the nation to rise; the great occasion has come, and now, if we had prepared ourselves for it, and had collected and drilled reserve forces, we might end the rebellion in a month.” On June 29, two days before the battle began, it congratulated Meade on an unsurpassed military opportunity, and urged three considerations upon him. He should insist that Washington help and not embarrass him, he should ask for all the reserves available, “and then, having given battle in due time, let him avoid the mistake of McClellan at Antietam, by pursuing the enemy until300 he is completely overthrown179.” That the chance for pursuit would come the Post never doubted.
The close of the three days’ struggle at Gettysburg left Bryant confident that the turning point of the war had been passed. “There is every reason to hope that the rebel army of Virginia will never recross the Potomac as an army,” he said on July 6; but whether Lee crossed it or not, “the rebellion has received a staggering blow, from which it would scarcely seem possible for it to recover.” The next day he insisted that the rebels be followed at once and destroyed, but in his exultation181 he accepted philosophically182 Meade’s failure to advance.
II
At this moment of rejoicing over Gettysburg and Vicksburg the city was horrified183 and humiliated184 by the Draft Riots, a sharp reminder185 that the home front was only less important than the battle front. Of this fact the Evening Post had never lost sight. Bryant’s editorials always held in view the necessity of sustaining the spirits of the North. For every “radical” utterance10 criticizing the Administration’s faults there were ten exhorting186 the people to support its central aims. In the first months of the war he published two martial lyrics187, one addressed to European enemies who hoped for the ruin of the republic, and one a plea for enlistment:
Few, few were they whose swords of old
Won the fair land in which we dwell;
But we are many, we who hold
The grim resolve to guard it well.
Strike, for that broad and goodly land,
Blow after blow, till men shall see
That Might and Right move hand in hand,
And glorious must their triumph be!
It was natural for New York city to have a lusty anti-war press when the struggle for the union began. It had been Democratic since Jackson’s time, and remained Democratic during the Civil War. Its social connections301 with the South had always been close, while till 1860 its merchants and bankers had stronger business ties with the South than with the West. After the war began many Southern sympathizers, refugees from the border States, settled in the city.
But the capture of Fort Sumter turned all that indifference188 to the secession movement which William H. Russell had noted189 a few weeks earlier into a passionate190 enthusiasm of the majority for the Federal cause. At 3 p. m. on April 18, the day the first troops passed through New York southward, an excited crowd gathered before the Express office and demanded a display of the American flag. It surged up Park Row and made the same demand of the Day Book and Daily News (the latter Fernando Wood’s organ), and thence poured down Nassau Street and Broadway to the Journal of Commerce building, which also hurried out a flag. Already the Herald had decorated its windows with bunting. The Monday after Sumter, Bennett had braved popular feeling with another demand for peace, but now he hurried to Washington, pledged his support of the union to President Lincoln, and saw that beginning with the Herald for April 17, that policy was adopted.
Unfortunately, the tone of the pro-slavery press continued so objectionable that on Aug. 22, 1861, the postoffice forbade mail transportation to the Journal of Commerce, Day Book, Daily News, Freeman’s Journal, and Brooklyn Eagle, all five of which had been presented by a Federal Grand Jury. The Daily News was suppressed in New Jersey192 by the Federal Marshal. Gerard Hallock of the Journal of Commerce, complaining of threats of violence and an organized movement to cut off his subscribers and advertising193, sold his interest to David Stone and Wm. C. Prime, and the paper became less offensive. The Day Book permanently194 and the Daily News temporarily ceased publication. The foreign-language press also failed to show due patriotism195, many French citizens in August signing a petition for the suppression of the Courrier des états Unis as disloyal, and the Westchester302 grand jury presenting the Staats-Zeitung and National-Zeitung as disseminators of treason. The World, changing hands, became under the able Manton Marble, who had recently been an employee of the Post, a leader of the “copperhead” press.
There is no need to quote from the World, Daily News, and Journal of Commerce to show how, boldly when they dared, covertly196 when they did not, they continued to attack the union cause. Their methods were defined by the Evening Post of May 20, 1863, in a “Recipe for a Democratic Paper,” which may be briefly summarized:
(1) Magnify all rebel successes and minimize all Federal victories; if the South loses 18,000 men say 8,000 men, and if the North loses 11,000 say 21,000.
(2) Calumniate197 all energetic generals like Sherman, Grant, and Rosecrans; call worthless leaders like Halleck and Pope the master generals of the age.
(3) Whenever the union suffers a reverse, declare that the nation is weary of this slow war; and ask how long this fratricidal conflict will be allowed to continue.
(4) Expatiate198 upon the bankruptcies199, high prices, stock jobbers200, gouging201 profiteers and “shoddy men.”
(5) Abuse Lincoln and the Cabinet in two ways: say they are weak, timid, vacillating, and incompetent; and that they are tyrannous, harsh, and despotic.
(6) Protest vehemently against “nigger” brigadiers, and the atrocity202 of arming the slaves against their masters.
(7) Don’t advise open resistance to the draft. But clamor against it in detail; suggest doubts of its constitutionality; denounce the $300 clause; say that it makes an odious203 distinction between rich and poor; and refer learnedly to the military autocracies204 of France and Prussia.
The copperhead politicians were as active as the copperhead press. At their head was Mayor Wood, who ran for re?lection in the fall of 1861 and was opposed by Bryant’s friend George Opdyke. Called a blackguard by the Tribune and a miscreant205 by the Evening Post, Wood based his campaign upon denunciation of the abolitionists303 and appeals to racial prejudice. In a speech reported by the Post of Nov. 29 he declared that Lincoln had brought the nation to the verge206 of ruin, that the negro-philes would prosecute23 the war as long as they could share the money spent upon it, and that “they will get Irishmen and Germans to fill up the regiments under the idea that they will themselves remain at home to divide the plunder207.” Just before election day the Post gave part of its editorial page to the following bit of drama:
FERNANDO IN A PORTER HOUSE
(Scene: A porter house in the 22d ward22. Proprietor209 behind the counter. Behind him a row of bottles, etc. Enter Fernando and a voter.)
Fernando: Good morning, my dear friend. Please let me and my friend have something to drink. (Glasses are set before them and a decanter. They help themselves. Fernando throws a double eagle upon the counter, waving away the offer to give back change.) You will support me, I suppose?
Proprietor (quietly depositing the money in the till): Yes, I shall support you for the State prison. You have been up for a place there, I believe.
Fernando (going out and coming back): By the way, you did not mean what you said just now?
Proprietor: Yes, I did mean just that. You deserve State prison and would have gone there three years ago if you had not cheated the law.
Fernando: Will you give me my change?
Proprietor: No, I will not. I want it to show my neighbors how you tried to influence my vote.
(Exit Fernando, crestfallen)
Opdyke, with the first war enthusiasm behind him, won the Mayoralty election from the egregious210 Wood. But the strength of the Democrats, which in large degree meant the strength of the anti-war party, was thereafter triumphant211 in every election till Grant took Richmond. The State and Congressional campaign of 1862, coming during the dark period after the Peninsular campaign and the drawn battle of Antietam, aroused the Evening Post,304 Times and Tribune to great exertions212. Horatio Seymour, the “submissionist” candidate, contested the Governorship with Gen. James Wadsworth. His speeches, wrote Bryant, have a direct tendency to discourage our loyal troops and sustain the hopes of the South. The Post denied his echo of the World’s and Herald’s statements that the Administration was a failure. “It has been a grand and brilliant success. History will so account it.” Lincoln, predicted the Post, need only give rein72 to the Northern determination, and his name “will stand on the future annals of his country illustrated213 by a renown214 as pure and undying as that of George Washington.” But Seymour easily won, obtaining 54,283 votes in New York city against 22,523 given Wadsworth; and the Democrats swept the Congressional districts, including one in which they had nominated Fernando Wood.
One factor in this result, said the Evening Post, was the alarm many had taken at the threat of the draft. The World played upon this alarm, and both it and the Herald attacked the emancipation proclamation as a change in the objects of the war; to which Bryant replied that the Revolution had begun to assert the rights of the Colonies within the British Empire, and had shortly become a war to take them out of it. Bryant in the spring of 1863 characterized the Express as an organ “which has called repeatedly upon the mob to oust215 the regular government at Washington, and upon the army to proclaim McClellan its chief at all hazards”; while the Journal of Commerce, he said, “has always denounced the war, and even now argues ... that the allegiance of the citizens is due to the State, and not to the Federal Government.” Some of the most prominent men of the city—Tilden, James Brooks216, S. F. B. Morse, August Belmont, David E. Wheeler, and others—met at Delmonico’s on Feb. 6, 1863, and formed a plan for circulating copperhead doctrines217, or, as they put it, for “the diffusion218 of knowledge”; whence the Post nicknamed them “diffusionists.”
305 When the Draft Act was enforced throughout the North just after Gettysburg, disorders219 occurred in widely scattered220 centers; and it was inevitable221 that they should be gravest in New York. Not merely did the city contain many half disloyal Americans of native birth. It was full of a class of Irishmen who had proved especially responsive to the demagogues opposing the war. Clashes between the Irish and negroes had been common for a decade. In August, 1862, a mob in Brooklyn attacked a factory in which blacks were working, and tried to set it afire with the negroes inside. Similar riots, the Post remarked, had disgraced several Western cities. “In every case Irish laborers have been incited222 to take part in these lawless attempts; and the cunning ringleaders and originators of these mutinies, who are not Irishmen, have thus sought to kill two birds with one stone—to excite a strong popular prejudice against the Irish, while they used them to wreak223 their spite against the blacks.”
The copperhead press in the early July days preceding the first drawing of draft numbers was filled with abuse of conscription. The Herald, to be sure, which professed224 neutrality between the “niggerhead” press (the Evening Post, Times, and Tribune) and the copperhead papers, advocated the draft as a means of hastening union victory, though it abused Lincoln as a nincompoop. But the World spoke of Lincoln’s “wanton exercise of arbitrary powers,” and predicted that if the war was carried on to enforce the emancipation proclamation a million men, not three hundred thousand, would have to be conscripted. “A measure,” it said of the Draft act, “which could not have been ventured upon in England even in those dark days when the press-gang filled the English ships of war with slaves ... was thrust into the statute225 books, as one might say, almost by force.” The Daily News applauded the speeches at a city peace meeting on July 9, where one orator had declared: “The Administration now feels itself in want of more men to replace those it has slaughtered226, and to aid it in upholding its despotism, and for this purpose has ordered the conscription.”
306 On July 11, 1863, the draft began, and on the 13th, Monday, when an effort was made to renew it, the rioting commenced. The first disturbances228 occurred at the draft headquarters on the corner of Third Avenue and Forty-sixth Street, which were sacked about noon; the disorders grew much worse on Tuesday, and were not entirely suppressed until Thursday. The story of the four days of bloodshed need not be rehearsed in detail, but the Evening Post files afford certain new lights upon it. The historian Rhodes, in his account, draws upon the files of the Tribune, Times, World, Herald, and Post as sources, but only upon the issues of the week of the riot. Ten days later (July 23) an 8,000 word history of the riot appeared in the Evening Post, a close-knit, graphic229 narrative230, apparently231 written by Charles Nordhoff, who had been an eye-witness of much of it.
Nordhoff makes it clear that the mob was against not merely the draft, but the war. “Seymour’s our man”; “Seymour’s for us”; “Yis, and Wood too”; “It’s Davis and Seymour and Wood,” were expressions heard at every turn. “Cheers for Jeff Davis were as common as brickbats.” Above all, Nordhoff was convinced that the mob had intelligent leaders outside of its own ranks. The nucleus232 of the mob was a gang of about fifty rough fellows who at nine o’clock in the morning began prowling along the East River wharves233 in the Grand Street neighborhood, picking up recruits. As the crowd grew in size it entered foundries and factories for more men. “It is absolutely certain that there was no planning or directing head among the acting ringleaders. No one could follow or watch them without seeing that they were instigated234; though by whom it was impossible to tell. They were men themselves incapable of self-direction; men of the lowest order and of the most brutal235 passions—and at that doubly infuriated by rum.” Immediately the destruction of the Third Avenue draft headquarters was complete, the mob split into three parts, which at once sought three important objectives, a fact which Nordhoff regarded as proving outside leadership.
307 One of the three mobs destroyed the Armory236 on Second Avenue at Twenty-First Street—this was on Monday at four p. m.; a second simultaneously237 demolished238 the draft office at Broadway and Twenty-ninth Street; and a third, the largest, sacked and burnt the Colored Orphan239 Asylum240 on Fifth Avenue. Meanwhile, small groups had begun hunting down negroes and clubbing them to death. Nordhoff describes a scene during the burning of the Colored Orphan Asylum:
Opposite the Reservoir stood a knot of gentlemen, strangers to each other. Said one of them, a timid, clerical-looking man:
“How long is this to last?” asked another—who might have been a merchant.
“I will tell you how long,” replied a third, who looked like a Tammany alderman, but as respectably dressed as either of the others, and buttoning up his coat to his chin defiantly242: “Just as long as you enact243 unjust laws.”
The rioting, Nordhoff believed, might have been ended the first day by determined military forces. While ruffians at the Orphan Asylum were crying, “Kill the little devils!” a steady attack by a small armed force would have routed them. “The rioters evidently expected such an attack, and at one time, frightened by a squabble on their outskirts244 between a few firemen and a gang abusing a bystander, actually took to their heels, but returned to their work with cries of derision.” The first charge was made by the police just after 4 p. m. at the La Farge Hotel, and the rioters ran like sheep, leaving about thirty dead or wounded. Nordhoff’s observation that the pillaging245 was done mainly by women and boys, who took two hours to carry 300 iron bedsteads from the Orphan Asylum, was borne out by a news item printed by the Post during the riots:
HOW A HOUSE IS SACKED
Having witnessed the proceedings246 of the rioters on several occasions ... we describe them for the benefit of our readers.308 On yesterday afternoon about six o’clock they visited the residence of a gentleman in Twenty-ninth Street. A few stragglers appeared on the scene, consisting mainly of women and children. Two or three men then demanded and gained admittance, while their number was largely increased on the outside. One elderly gentleman was found who had liberty to leave. Then commenced indiscriminate plunder. This was carried on mostly by old men, women and children, while the “men of muscle” stood guard. Every article was appropriated, the carriers often bending under their burden. Women and children, hatless and shoeless, marched off having in their possession the most costly247 of fabrics248, some of them broken and unfit for use.
To this wanton destruction of private property the neighbors and the many visitors drawn to the spot were silent spectators. A word of remonstrance249 cost a life. Two gentlemen, we are informed, paid the penalty yesterday for expressing their righteous indignation....
An hour later, in another visit, we saw the crowd engaged in breaking the sashes and carrying off the fragments of woodwork.
Nordhoff gave high praise to the city police and the United States troops, but thought the State militia miserably250 ineffective, and the firemen often allies of the mob. He ascertained251 that the rioters’ casualties were much higher than the public believed, and estimated that 400 to 500 lives were lost. “A continuous stream of funerals flows across the East River, and graves are dug privately252 within the knowledge of the police here and there.”
Just how much basis there was for the Evening Post’s view that the mob was not spontaneous, but instigated by disloyalist leaders of brains, it is impossible to say. On the second day “a distinguished253 and sagacious Democrat,” Bryant wrote editorially, visited the office to warn him that the riots “had a firmer basis and a more fixed254 object than we imagined.” But it is certain that the copperhead press seemed to cheer on the mob even while it denounced it. Thus the World on Tuesday spoke of the rioters as possessed255 “with a burning sense of wrong toward the government,” and though it appealed to them to stop, asked: “Does any man wonder that poor men refuse to be forced into a war mismanaged almost into309 hopelessness, perverted256 almost into partisanship257?” The Evening Post was particularly incensed258 by the Herald’s references to the riots as a “popular” outbreak, and that of the Daily News to “the people fired on by United States soldiers.” Not the people, it said; “a small band of cutthroats, pickpockets259, and robbers.” It wanted the miscreants260 given an abundance of grape and canister without delay, and declared that an officer who had used blank cartridges261 ought to be shot. To this the Herald made its usual impudent262 kind of rejoinder. Aren’t the members of the mob people, it asked? They have arms, legs, and five senses; “their intelligence is low, but it is at least equal to that of the editors of the niggerhead organs.”
III
News of the complete victory at Vicksburg, arriving in New York at the same time that it became evident Meade was not vigorously following up his repulse101 of Lee at Gettysburg, brought home to the East the superiority of Grant as a commander. That superiority the Evening Post had begun to recognize as early as Feb. 14, 1862, when it had contrasted his capture of Fort Donelson, in a sea of mud, using men half trained and half supplied, with McClellan’s inaction in Virginia. “A capable, clear-headed general,” it said, who knew that where there is a will there is a way. After Corinth the paper hailed Grant (Oct. 8, 1862) as the one general “able not only to shake the tree, but to pick up the fruit.” When by a brilliantly bold campaign he invested Vicksburg, it used precisely the comparison that John Fiske used years later in his history of the Mississippi Valley in the Civil War: “The dispatches from the Southwest read like the bulletins of the young conqueror263 of Italy when he first awakened264 the world to the fact that a new and unprecedented265 military genius had sprung upon the stage.”
Sober history doubts whether Lincoln actually said that if he knew what whisky Grant used he would send other generals a barrel; but the Evening Post almost said it.310 Just after the surrender of Vicksburg it published (July 8) a defense171 of Grant from the charge that he drank heavily. It recalled the many evidences of his single-mindedness, alertness, and decision, and the fact that he had gained more victories and prisoners than any other commander. “If any one after this,” it concluded, “still believes that Grant is a drunkard, we advise him to persuade the Government to place none but drunkards in important commands.”
Years later the Evening Post related that while Grant lay before Vicksburg, a letter from a prominent Westerner assured the editors that the general and his staff had once gone from Springfield to Cairo in the car of the president of the Illinois Central, and that almost the whole party had got drunk, Grant worst of all. By a coincidence, while this letter was under discussion President Osborne of the Illinois Central entered the office. He characterized it as a malignant falsehood. “Grant and his staff did go down to Cairo in the President’s car,” he said; “I took them down myself, and selected that car because it had conveniences for working, eating, and sleeping on the way. We had dinner in the car, at which wine was served to such as desired it. I asked Grant what he would drink; he answered, a cup of tea, and this I made for him myself. Nobody was drunk on the car, and to my certain knowledge Grant tasted no liquid but tea and water.”
After Grant was made commander-in-chief in March, 1864, and took charge in the East, the Evening Post was confident that victory was at hand. This faith increased during the summer. Bryant wrote Bigelow on June 15 that the North ought certainly to bring the war to an end within the year, at least so far as concerned all great military operations. On Sept. 3, just after Grant had asked for 100,000 additional men, he said editorially that if he were given them, peace might be won by Thanksgiving. The next day, when news had come that Sherman had captured Atlanta, the paper renewed the prophecy of an early triumph, changing the date, however, to311 Christmas. It no longer grumbled266 over military nervousness and dilatoriness267. It was disturbed by the state of the currency, which was making the public debt twice what it should have been; but its chief fear was that the men at the North in favor of a premature29 peace would rob the union of the fruits of its bloody struggle.
As early as December, 1862, and January, 1863, Greeley had begun in the Tribune a movement for ending the war by foreign mediation268 between North and South. The following month Napoleon III actually made an offer of mediation, which Lincoln immediately refused. Advance news of it had been sent Bryant by Bigelow, and the Post was ready to speak vigorously against it. Greeley in July, 1864, again tried to initiate269 peace negotiations270, and asked Lincoln to arrange a conference at Niagara with two Confederate “ambassadors” who were reported to be there, telling him that “our bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying country longs for peace, shudders271 at the prospect272 of fresh conscriptions, of further devastations, and of new rivers of human blood.” The attitude of the Evening Post was contemptuous. “No,” wrote Bryant as Greeley bought his ticket to Niagara, “the most effective peace meetings yet held are those which Grant assembled in front of Vicksburg, which Meade conducted on the Pennsylvania plains, which Rosecrans now presides over near Tullahoma; their thundering cannons273 are the most eloquent orators274, and the bullet which wings its way to the enemy ranks the true olive branch.”
There was some fear for the moment that the Times would join the Tribune in its readiness for peace without victory. Bryant wrote his wife on Sept. 7, 1864, that he had a good deal of political news which he could not put in his letter. “I wrote a protest against treating with the Rebel Government, which you will have seen in the paper.... I was told from the best authority that Mr. Lincoln was considering whether he should not appoint commissioners for the purpose, and I afterwards heard that Raymond of the Times had been in Washington to persuade Mr. Lincoln to take the step, and was willing himself312 to be one of the commissioners.” Bryant’s 1,500 word editorial, “No Negotiations With the Rebel Government,” anticipated the arguments of Lincoln’s message to Congress in December opposing any parley275.
At this moment the Democratic party was carrying on its campaign for the Presidency276 upon a platform which declared the war a failure, and asserted that an armistice277 should be sought at the first practicable opportunity. It is true that McClellan, the party’s candidate, had repudiated279 these planks280. But when he did so, Fernando Wood had wanted at once to repudiate278 McClellan, saying that the platform was sound, and that the Democrats should call their Chicago Convention together again to seek a man who would stand upon it. The Daily News, edited by his brother Benjamin Wood, similarly upheld the platform. So did the World, which went to shocking lengths in attacking Lincoln; not content with calling his Administration ignorant and incompetent, it cast imputations upon his personal honesty, while in a phrase that became temporarily famous it remarked that the White House was “full of infamy281.” According to the World, the war could and should be stopped instantly. The South was ready to re?nter the union if only Lincoln would cancel his outrageous282 emancipation proclamation. “Are unknown thousands of wives yet to become widows, and unknown tens of thousands of children to become orphans283, that Mr. Lincoln’s positive violations284 of solemn pledges may be assumed by the people as their own?” Manton Marble argued throughout the campaign for an armistice, a convention of all the States, and an effort to conclude peace upon the basis of union and slavery. Emancipation, he asserted, meant “industrial disorganization, social chaos285, negro equality, and the nameless horrors of a civil war.”
In this election the Evening Post maintained a straight course. Early in the year Bryant had inclined to doubt, as did Beecher, Greeley, Thaddeus Stevens, George W. Julian, and a majority of Congress, whether Lincoln’s renomination would be wise. This was a reflection in part313 of his impatient “radicalism,” in part of his attachment287 to Chase; and on March 25, 1864, he made one of many prominent union men who wrote the Republican Executive Committee suggesting a postponement288 of the Convention until September. But no hint of this doubt entered the columns of the Evening Post. It never spoke of any other possible nomination286 than Lincoln’s. Indeed, every one soon saw that the choice was inevitable, and Bryant cast whatever hesitation he felt, which was not much, behind him. “It was done in obedience289 to the public voice,” he wrote Bigelow June 15, “a powerful vis a tergo pushed on the politicians whether willing or unwilling290. I do not, for my part, doubt of his re?lection.” By this time the Evening Post was ready to admit that the President had made fewer errors and seen more clearly than it had supposed. It wrote (Sept. 20):
He has gained wisdom by experience. Every year has seen our cause more successful; every year has seen abler generals, more skillful leaders, called to the head; every year has seen fewer errors, greater ability, greater energy, in the administration of affairs. The timid McClellan has been superseded291 by Grant, the do-nothing Buell by Sherman; wherever a man has shown conspicuous292 merit he has been called forward; political and military rivalries293 have been as far as possible banished294 from the field and from the national councils.... While Mr. Lincoln stays in power, this healthy and beneficial state of things will continue....
Throughout the campaign Parke Godwin did much public speaking. During October the Post published a weekly campaign newspaper addressed particularly to laboring295 men, which had an enormous circulation at one cent a copy; the edition the first week was 50,000. In its local result the election justified296 the labors297 of the copperhead press, for McClellan carried New York city by a vote double Lincoln’s—78,746 to 36,673. But the national result showed how totally unrepresentative this anti-war press was of any extensive Northern sentiment. It proved that Bryant had been right in declaring in the Post of March 16, 1863, when Greeley and the Tribune314 actually said the nation should give up if the campaign then beginning failed:
It certainly is remarkable how unable the newspapers of the country, even those of the largest circulation, have been to divert the public mind from a fixed determination to put down the rebellion by every possible means, and to allow no pause in the war until the integrity of the union is assured. One class of journals has labored299 to show that the war for the union is hopeless; the people have never believed them. One class has called for a revolutionary leader; the call has only excited a little astonishment300, the people being satisfied to prosecute the war under the legal and constitutional authorities.
The last effort at a premature armistice, that made by the venerable Francis P. Blair, culminating in the Hampton Roads conference between Lincoln and Vice-President A. H. Stephens, was treated by the Evening Post like previous efforts. Blair was an old friend, but under the caption301, “Fools’ Errands,” Bryant wrote (Jan. 10, 1865) that his gratuitous302 diplomacy303 might do much harm. “No, our best peacemakers yet are Grant, Sheridan, Thomas, Sherman, and Farragut, and the black-mouthed bulldogs by which they enforce their pretensions304 over more than half of what was once an ‘impregnable’ part of rebeldom.” The final peace, the peace made by the black-mouthed bulldogs, was greeted by the Post three months later in fervent305 terms:
GLORY TO THE LORD OF HOSTS
The great day, so long and anxiously awaited, for which we have struggled through four years of bloody war, which has so often ... dawned only to go down in clouds of gloom; the day of the virtual overthrow180 of the rebellion, of the triumph of constitutional order and of universal liberty,—of the success of the nation against its parts, and of a humane306 and beneficent civilization over a relic307 of barbarism that had been blindly allowed to remain as a blot308 on its scutcheon—the day of PEACE has finally come....
Glory, then to the Lord of Hosts, who hath given us this final victory! Thanks, heartfelt and eternal, to the brave and noble315 men by land and sea, officers and soldiers, who by their labors, their courage and sufferings, their blood and their lives, have won it for us. And a gratitude no less deep and earnest to that majestic309, devoted, and glorious American people, who through all these years of trial have kept true to their faith in themselves and their institutions....
IV
Throughout the Civil War the news pages were in charge of one of the most picturesque310 and able men ever employed by the paper, Charles Nordhoff. It was a trying position. O. W. Holmes wrote an essay in 1861 called “Bread and Newspapers,” in which he described the state of mind in which the North lived, waiting but from one edition to another. The Civil War was the heroic age of American press enterprise, and while the Evening Post conducted a less extensive war establishment than the Herald, Tribune, or Times—the Herald spent $500,000 on its correspondence—Nordhoff saw that it maintained a creditable position. He stepped into the office just after Bigelow’s departure, in 1861. Along with Bigelow the Post had just lost William M. Thayer. This young man, after a brilliant ten years partly in New York, partly as the only correspondent with the Walker filibustering311 expedition in Nicaragua, and partly in Washington, had quarreled with Isaac Henderson, while at the same time his health failed; and he was glad to be appointed consul at Alexandria. Nordhoff’s chief assistant in gathering312 news became Augustus Maverick313, a veteran newspaper man previously314 with the Times.
Nordhoff, though only thirty years old in 1831, had already passed through enough adventure to fill an active lifetime. He was born in Prussia, where his father was a wealthy liberal who had served in Blucher’s army and had later set up a school at Erwitte. Compelled for political reasons to leave, the elder Nordhoff gathered together all his funds, about $50,000, and reached America in 1834. The family went to the Mississippi Valley, and for a time lived an anomalous315 life, eating in the wilderness316 from rich silver and drinking imported German316 mineral water. The boy was left an orphan at the age of nine, and was reared by the Rev132. Wilhelm Nast of the Methodist Church in Cincinnati. Revolting against the rigid317 ecclesiastical discipline to which he was subjected, believing that his health was suffering from indoors work, and longing318 for the adventures at sea of which he had read in Marryat and Cooper, in 1844 he ran away.
Hundreds of thousands of American boys in the last half century have read the three books in which Nordhoff graphically319 relates his experiences aboard men of war, merchant ships, a whaler, and a cod320-fishing boat. The story of how he went to sea is an interesting illustration of his pluck and persistence321. He had $25, two extra shirts, and an extra pair of socks when he left Cincinnati, and his money took him to Baltimore. At every vessel322 to which he applied he was met by the same rebuff: “Ship you, you little scamp? Not I; we won’t carry runaway323 boys. Clear out!” Undaunted, he went on to Philadelphia, and found a place on the Sun as printer’s devil, at $2–4 a week and his board. He confided324 his ambition to no one, but every Saturday afternoon he was down among the shipping325, looking for a place. Finally he heard that the Frigate326 Columbus, 74 guns, was about to sail under Commodore Biddle for the Far East, and sought a berth—again in vain. Still undiscouraged, he induced the editor of the Sun, to whose home he daily took a bundle of proofs, to introduce him to Commodore Elliot. The editor’s note ran, “Please give him a talking to,” and the gruff officer scolded the boy roundly for wanting to ruin his life, described the dissolute, brutalizing existence of most sailors, and flatly refused him a place. But Nordhoff returned daily until the Commodore yielded.
The boy soon realized that the sailor’s life had little of the romance that Cooper gave it, but he showed both his grit298 and shrewdness when with a distinct literary intention he made the most of it. He went around the world in the Columbus, and was discharged at Norfolk in 1848; for several years he worked in the merchant marine327, visiting Europe, Asia, South America, Australia,317 and the South Sea islands; sailing from Sag155 Harbor in a whaler which cruised in the Indian Ocean, he deserted328 at the Seychelles, and for a time supported himself as a boatman in Mauritius; and he finished his eight years at sea by a brief period with the Cape89 Cod fishermen. All the while he was busy collecting material for his books, losing no opportunity to share new sights and experiences, and pumping his mates for their stories. He wrote his three volumes to give a common-sense picture of a life which he believed had been unduly329 romanticized; and his pictures of flogging in the navy, of dysentery and cholera330 aboard a frigate, of the degradation331 of the naval332 discipline, of the danger and hardship met on a merchant craft, and of the intolerable monotony of whale-hunting carry out the purpose. It was good preliminary training for a reporter and editor. In 1853 he entered journalism333, first on the Philadelphia Register and later on the Indianapolis Sentinel, meanwhile writing the sea books, which gave him such a reputation that in 1853 George W. Curtis recommended him to Harper’s as an editorial worker.
Bigelow in the closing days of 1860 made an arrangement with Brantz Meyer, a Baltimore writer of some reputation, to go South for $50 a week and his expenses to do special reporting. He wrote R. B. Rhett, editor of the Charleston Mercury, asking whether it would be safe for Meyer to attend the secession convention in Charleston, and Rhett assured him that “no agent or representative of the Evening Post would be safe in coming here”; “he would certainly be tarred and feathered and made to leave the State, as the mildest possible treatment”; “he would come with his life in his hand, and would probably be hung.” Nevertheless, the Post did have unsigned correspondence from Charleston and other Southern cities during the days the secession movement was ripening. When war began, Nordhoff hurriedly whipped a corps of special writers into shape. He requested Henry M. Alden, later editor of Harper’s to go to the Virginia front, but Alden’s health was too precarious318 to permit him to face the hardships which other young literary men like E. C. Stedman were undertaking334. William C. Church, a rising young journalist, who later established the Army and Navy Journal and the Galaxy335, was obtained. Philip Ripley made another of the staff, and Walter F. Williams was soon sending admirable letters from the field.
Repeatedly during the war the Post scored notable “beats.” Church was with the joint114 military and naval expedition under Sherman and Dupont that captured Port Royal, and sent the Evening Post the first account published at the North. The best picture of the battle of Pittsburgh Landing in any newspaper was one contributed the Post by a member of Halleck’s staff. The most graphic running account of Sherman’s march to the sea was also that furnished the paper by Major George Nichols, who was on Sherman’s staff, and who later reworked his letters—in which it has been well said the style is photographic, with a touch of national music in the sentences—into a book. When John Wilkes Booth was killed in the burning Virginia barn by Sergeant336 Boston Corbett, Nordhoff obtained Corbett’s exclusive story of the event—an absorbing three-quarters column of close print. It need not be said that the Paris correspondence which E. L. Godkin, later editor, furnished in 1862, offered the shrewdest and clearest view of French opinion published in any American newspaper. There was a large group of occasional correspondents at various points along the wide fighting line. The Evening Post profited, in a way that it was quite impossible for the Herald to do, from the kindness of loyal union men of prominence who came into contact with great events or figures, and without thought of remuneration wrote to Bryant. A long and highly interesting article embodying337 personal reminiscences of Lincoln, for example, was contributed a few weeks after the assassination338 by R. C. McCormick, then well known in New York political circles. There were frequent bits like the following from a319 New Yorker who had seen Grant at City Point (Aug. 5, 1864):
“General,” I remarked, “the people of New York now feel that there is one at the head of our armies in whom they can repose339 the fullest confidence.”
“Yes,” he interrupted, “there is a man in the West in whom they can repose the utmost confidence, General Sherman. He is an able, upright, honorable, unambitious man. We lost another one of like character a few days ago, General McPherson.”
One reporter for the Post, a young Vermonter named S. S. Boyce, became intimate with the United States Marshal in New York, and distinguished himself by important detective service against disloyalists. The Marshal once handed him a letter taken upon a captured blockade runner, mailed from New York and giving the Southern authorities the time of the sailing of the Newbern expedition. It carried no New York address, but within a fortnight Boyce had tracked down the writer of the letter, and some months later witnessed his hanging.
Many traditions long survived in the office of Nordhoff’s energy, courage, shrewdness, and impassivity in moments of excitement. He was a man of the world, and his sense for news was amazing. Expected to contribute to the editorial page as well as manage the news staff, he would seat himself at his desk and write with unresting hand, meanwhile puffing340 a black cigar so furiously that he could hardly see his sheet through the smoke. A bluff341 seamanlike342 quality was always distinguishable about him; he walked with a sailor’s roll, and used nautical343 terms with unconscious frequency. His executive ability, geniality344, fearlessness, and intense hatred345 of anything equivocal or underhanded, made the staff love him. Mr. J. Ranken Towse, who knew him after the war, says that “he had a comprehensive grasp of essential knowledge, a great store of common sense, a rare faculty346 of penetrating347 insight, and a huge scorn for prevarication348 or double-dealing. A mistake due to ignorance or carelessness he could and often did overlook, but anything in the nature320 of a shuffling349 excuse roused him to flaming ire. He was impetuous and irascible, but naturally generous and tender-hearted.”
During the Draft Riots Nordhoff connected a hose with the steam-boiler in the basement and gave public notice that any assailant would meet a scalding reception. He had not only the Evening Post property to protect, but a score of wounded soldiers in a temporary hospital fitted up on an upper floor. The strain under which he lived in the war days was intense, and he used to spend the summer nights on a small sailboat which he kept on the Brooklyn waterfront, for he could sleep more soundly drifting about the bay than on shore. Yet he managed to find time to contribute to the newspaper’s atmosphere of literary sociability350. Paul Du Chaillu had become his friend when, as a worker at Harper’s, he helped put some of Du Chaillu’s books into good English, and a story survives of how Du Chaillu and Nordhoff once took possession of the restaurant stove across the street from the Evening Post, and taught the cook to broil351 bananas—the first bananas ever eaten cooked in the city. Nordhoff’s impress was visible everywhere in the paper of those years, and its marked prosperity was in large degree traceable to his energy. The local reporting was better than ever before, and we are tempted352 to discern his own hand in the frequent human-interest paragraphs, of which one may be given as a specimen353:
AN INCIDENT IN THE CARS
In a car on a railroad which runs into New York, a few mornings ago, a scene occurred which will not soon be forgotten by the witnesses of it. A person dressed as a gentleman, speaking to a friend across the car, said: “Well, I hope the war may last six months longer. In the last six months I’ve made a hundred thousand dollars—six months more and I shall have enough.”
A lady sat behind the speaker, and ... when he was done she tapped him on the shoulder and said to him: “Sir, I had two sons—one was killed at Fredericksburg; the other was killed at Murfreesboro.”
She was silent a moment and so were all around who heard her. Then, overcome by her indignation, she suddenly slapped the321 speculator, first on one cheek and then on the other, and before he could say a word, the passengers sitting near, who had witnessed the whole affair, seized him and pushed him hurriedly out of the car, as not fit to ride with decent people.
The Government censorship of news early became a painful and difficult question to all journals. Repeatedly during the war Northern papers allowed news to leak to the enemy which should have been kept strictly secret, and the Evening Post early recognized this danger. When Gen. McClellan in August, 1861, drew up his gentlemen’s agreement with the press, the Post hoped that all editors would acquiesce355 in it, and attacked the Baltimore secession newspapers for giving the South important news. Two months later it blamed the Herald and Commercial Advertiser for twice having given prominence to articles they should have suppressed. Sherman as early as the summer of 1862 raged violently at the press in his private letters for writing some generals up and others down, and the Post had already (Feb. 27) commented upon the same abuse. The Herald in March, 1862, prematurely published the news of Banks’s passage of the Potomac, to the great indignation of the Post, which had suppressed it the day before. But Nordhoff himself erred356 in September, when his publication of some “contraband” facts about the strength of the forces at Newbern brought a protest from Gen. Foster. No other mistake of the sort was made, and this one did not compare with the blunders of other New York journals. Early in 1863 a Herald correspondent, having foolishly printed the substance of some confidential orders, was convicted and sentenced to six months hard labor in the Quartermaster’s Department. In November, 1864, the Times brought an angry protest from Grant by stating Sherman’s exact strength and his programme in the coming march to the sea. The Tribune early the next year, informing its readers that Sherman was heading for Goldsboro, enabled Gen. Hardee on the Confederate side to fight a heavy battle which Sherman had hoped to avoid;322 and the hero of the great march later refused to speak to Greeley.
But the Evening Post repeatedly protested against the undue357 severity of the censorship, just as it protested against improper358 interferences with personal liberty in other spheres. It complained that the rules laid down by Stanton and the field commanders were often capricious, and that by holding up harmless news they bred harmful rumors359.
Thus on Sept. 1, 1862, New York was highly excited all afternoon by a canard360 that Pope had been pushed back to Alexandria and was being beaten by the Confederates within sight of Washington. Why? asked the Evening Post next day. It was because Stanton wanted all the correspondents kept away from the front, and the public was at the mercy of every rogue361 or coward who started a false report. The terrible disaster of Fredericksburg was concealed362 by the censorship in the most inexcusable way. The battle was fought on Saturday, the 13th of December. On the 14th and 15th there was no news; on the 16th the Post carried the bare statement that the army had recrossed the Rappahannock, which it optimistically interpreted as meaning that the heavy rains had swollen363 the river and imperilled the communications. On the 17th it knew that Burnside’s forces had been flung back with terrible slaughter227 four days before, and it joined the chorus of the New York press in denouncing the official secrecy364. The first authentic365 news of this battle was sent the Tribune by a future owner of the Evening Post, Henry Villard, who obtained it by an heroic all-night ride, and bringing it to Washington, evaded366 Stanton’s order by sending it north by railway messenger.
Similar secrecy attended the early stages of the battle of Chancellorsville, causing needless agony of mind at the North and profiting only the stock-jobbers. Just before Gettysburg rumors were afloat of a heavy blow to Hooker. C. C. Carleton, said the Post, tried to wire his Boston paper, “Do not accept sensation dispatches,” but the telegraph censor354 brusquely canceled this sensible message.323 The Philadelphia editors and correspondents long surpassed all others in the picturesqueness367 of their lies, and the Post called attention to some of their masterpieces—e.g., their circumstantial story of the capture of Richmond by Gen. Keyes in 1862—as made possible by the censor’s concealment368 of the real facts. Nordhoff complained that some of the paper’s dispatches filed in the morning at 10:30 did not reach New York till 5 p. m., simply because the censor was out of his office or negligent369. The worst count in the indictment370, however, was that some great bankers got news of the battles by cipher371, and used it in speculation while the people remained ignorant of the actual events.
With the Civil War came the first plentiful372 use of headlines in the Evening Post, usually placed on page three, where the telegraphic news was used. In those days verbs in headlines were conspicuous chiefly by their absence; but the writer knew his business. When the bombardment of Sumter began he summarized the whole significance of the event in his first two words: “CIVIL WAR—BOMBARDMENT OF FORT SUMTER—A DAY’S FIGHTING.” After Bull Run he tried to save the feelings of New Yorkers by tactful phrasing: “RETROGRADE MOVEMENT OF OUR ARMY!—GEN. McDOWELL FALLING BACK ON WASHINGTON—OUR LOSS 2,500 to 3,000.” And the two most important headlines of the whole war were admirable in their simple fitness. It would be impossible to improve upon the first three words used on April 15, “AN APPALLING373 CALAMITY—ASSASSINATION OF THE PRESIDENT—MR. LINCOLN SHOT IN FORD’S THEATRE IN WASHINGTON”; or upon the first three of April 10, “THE GLORIOUS CONSUMMATION—THE REBELLION ENDED—SURRENDER OF LEE.”
Throughout the war the Evening Post was as distinguished for one feature—its poetry—as the Herald was for its admirable maps. Every writer of verse took inspiration from the conflict, and sent it to the only newspaper324 conducted by a great poet. A few days after Sumter surrendered, the editors declared that if poetry could win the war, they already had enough to do it. Four years later, on April 13, 1865, they remarked that “we have received verses in celebration of the late victories enough to fill four or five columns of our paper.”
Among the first war poems published by the Evening Post were two of genuine distinction, R. H. Stoddard’s stirring call to war, “Men of the North and West,” and Christopher Cranch’s stanzas374, “The Burial of Our Flag”:
O who are they that troop along, and whither do they go?
Why hurry they so fast away without a prayer to God?
The golden stars, the gleaming stripes were gathered fold on fold,
And lowered into the hollow grave to rot beneath the mould.
That very night there blew a wind that tore them all to rags!
Where, soaked with rain and stained with mud, they found it the next day.
From out the North a Power comes forth—a patient power too long—
The spirit of the great free air—a tempest swift and strong;
Her billowy folds, like surging clouds, o’er North and South shall stream.
She is not dead, she lifts her head, she takes the morning’s beam!
* * * * *
325 Much verse came from writers of the rank of Alice and Ph?be Cary, who published nearly all their war poems in the Post. Mrs. R. H. Stoddard, still remembered as a novelist, wrote unfinished but sincere and touching387 poetry. Miles O’Reilly, whom Walt Whitman found the most popular writer of war verse among the troops, contributed repeatedly. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, leading his black troops in South Carolina, and recalling Bryant’s “Song of Marion’s Men,” sent his graceful388 “Song from the Camp.” Park Benjamin wrote much in the early years of the war, and before its close Helen Hunt Jackson began to appear in the Evening Post’s pages. One of the most stirring songs of the conflict, “We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more,” originally appeared in the Evening Post of July 16, 1862. Unsigned, many supposed it was the editor’s. At a large Boston meeting the next night, Josiah Quincy read it as “the latest poem written by Mr. Wm. C. Bryant.” Its actual author was John S. Gibbons, who for a time was financial editor of the Post, and wrote two volumes on banking389.
Bryant himself published two hymns390 in the journal, “The Earth Is Full of Thy Riches” (1863) and “Thou Hast Put All Things Under His Feet” (1865). But the finest poetical391 contribution which he ever made to it was his “Death of Lincoln”:
Gentle and merciful and just!
which first saw the light in the Evening Post of April 20, 1865.
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1
judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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collapse
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| vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷 | |
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humiliation
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| n.羞辱 | |
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bloody
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| adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染 | |
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judicious
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| adj.明智的，明断的，能作出明智决定的 | |
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seceding
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| v.脱离，退出( secede的现在分词 ) | |
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devastate
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| v.使荒芜，破坏，压倒 | |
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malignant
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| adj.恶性的，致命的；恶意的，恶毒的 | |
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utterances
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| n.发声( utterance的名词复数 )；说话方式；语调；言论 | |
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utterance
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| n.用言语表达，话语，言语 | |
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traitors
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| 卖国贼( traitor的名词复数 )； 叛徒； 背叛者； 背信弃义的人 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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rout
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| n.溃退，溃败；v.击溃，打垮 | |
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labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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depressed
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| adj.沮丧的，抑郁的，不景气的，萧条的 | |
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disastrous
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| adj.灾难性的，造成灾害的；极坏的，很糟的 | |
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harped
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| vi.弹竖琴（harp的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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mischief
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| n.损害，伤害，危害；恶作剧，捣蛋，胡闹 | |
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nagging
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| adj.唠叨的，挑剔的；使人不得安宁的v.不断地挑剔或批评（某人）( nag的现在分词 )；不断地烦扰或伤害（某人）；无休止地抱怨；不断指责 | |
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radical
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| n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的 | |
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radicals
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| n.激进分子( radical的名词复数 )；根基；基本原理；[数学]根数 | |
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ward
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| n.守卫，监护，病房，行政区，由监护人或法院保护的人（尤指儿童）；vt.守护，躲开 | |
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prosecute
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| vt.告发；进行；vi.告发，起诉，作检察官 | |
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prosecuted
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| a.被起诉的 | |
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democrat
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| n.民主主义者，民主人士；民主党党员 | |
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democrats
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| n.民主主义者，民主人士( democrat的名词复数 ) | |
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ardent
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，强烈的，烈性的 | |
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precipitate
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| adj.突如其来的；vt.使突然发生；n.沉淀物 | |
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premature
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| adj.比预期时间早的；不成熟的，仓促的 | |
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prematurely
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| adv.过早地，贸然地 | |
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radicalism
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| n. 急进主义, 根本的改革主义 | |
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prophesying
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| v.预告，预言( prophesy的现在分词 ) | |
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thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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confiscate
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| v.没收(私人财产)，把…充公 | |
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commissioners
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| n.专员( commissioner的名词复数 )；长官；委员；政府部门的长官 | |
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forfeiture
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| n.（名誉等）丧失 | |
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consul
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| n.领事；执政官 | |
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deplored
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| v.悲叹，痛惜，强烈反对( deplore的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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hostility
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| n.敌对，敌意；抵制［pl.］交战，战争 | |
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herald
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| vt.预示...的来临，预告，宣布，欢迎 | |
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censuring
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| v.指责，非难，谴责( censure的现在分词 ) | |
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reluctance
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| n.厌恶，讨厌，勉强，不情愿 | |
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confiscation
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| n. 没收, 充公, 征收 | |
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enlistment
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| n.应征入伍，获得，取得 | |
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militia
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| n.民兵，民兵组织 | |
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arsenals
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| n.兵工厂，军火库( arsenal的名词复数 )；任何事物的集成 | |
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munitions
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| n.军火，弹药；v.供应…军需品 | |
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48
sluggish
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| adj.懒惰的，迟钝的，无精打采的 | |
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49
admonished
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| v.劝告( admonish的过去式和过去分词 )；训诫；（温和地）责备；轻责 | |
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50
recoiled
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| v.畏缩( recoil的过去式和过去分词 )；退缩；报应；返回 | |
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corruption
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| n.腐败，堕落，贪污 | |
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authorized
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| a.委任的，许可的 | |
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trench
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| n./v.(挖)沟，(挖)战壕 | |
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acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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authorization
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| n.授权，委任状 | |
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commendable
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| adj.值得称赞的 | |
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emancipating
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| v.解放某人（尤指摆脱政治、法律或社会的束缚）( emancipate的现在分词 ) | |
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prominence
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| n.突出；显著；杰出；重要 | |
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emancipate
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| v.解放，解除 | |
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condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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interfere
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| v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰 | |
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sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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peremptory
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| adj.紧急的，专横的，断然的 | |
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64
languor
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| n.无精力，倦怠 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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66
condemning
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| v.（通常因道义上的原因而）谴责( condemn的现在分词 )；宣判；宣布…不能使用；迫使…陷于不幸的境地 | |
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67
grumbling
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| adj. 喃喃鸣不平的, 出怨言的 | |
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68
caustically
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| adv.刻薄地；挖苦地；尖刻地；讥刺地 | |
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69
gratitude
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| adj.感激，感谢 | |
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70
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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71
inefficiency
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| n.无效率，无能；无效率事例 | |
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72
rein
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| n.疆绳，统治，支配；vt.以僵绳控制，统治 | |
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73
incompetent
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| adj.无能力的，不能胜任的 | |
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74
intervention
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| n.介入，干涉，干预 | |
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75
strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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76
confidential
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| adj.秘（机）密的，表示信任的，担任机密工作的 | |
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77
reiterated
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| 反复地说，重申( reiterate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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78
vein
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| n.血管，静脉；叶脉，纹理；情绪；vt.使成脉络 | |
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79
overestimate
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| v.估计过高，过高评价 | |
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80
eloquent
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| adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的 | |
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81
exigency
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| n.紧急；迫切需要 | |
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82
unity
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| n.团结，联合，统一；和睦，协调 | |
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83
endorsement
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| n.背书；赞成，认可，担保；签(注)，批注 | |
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84
incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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85
injustice
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| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
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86
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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87
orator
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| n.演说者，演讲者，雄辩家 | |
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88
trenches
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| 深沟，地沟( trench的名词复数 )； 战壕 | |
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89
cape
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| n.海角，岬；披肩，短披风 | |
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90
onward
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| adj.向前的，前进的；adv.向前，前进，在先 | |
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91
regiments
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| （军队的）团( regiment的名词复数 )； 大量的人或物 | |
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92
sluggishness
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| 不振，萧条，呆滞；惰性；滞性；惯性 | |
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93
remonstrate
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| v.抗议，规劝 | |
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94
influential
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| adj.有影响的，有权势的 | |
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95
courteously
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| adv.有礼貌地，亲切地 | |
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96
excellence
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| n.优秀，杰出，(pl.)优点，美德 | |
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97
remarkably
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| ad.不同寻常地，相当地 | |
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98
ridiculed
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| v.嘲笑，嘲弄，奚落( ridicule的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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99
corps
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| n.(通信等兵种的)部队；(同类作的)一组 | |
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100
repulsed
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| v.击退( repulse的过去式和过去分词 )；驳斥；拒绝 | |
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101
repulse
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| n.击退，拒绝；vt.逐退，击退，拒绝 | |
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102
ignominiously
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| adv.耻辱地，屈辱地，丢脸地 | |
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103
ignominious
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| adj.可鄙的，不光彩的，耻辱的 | |
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104
censure
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| v./n.责备；非难；责难 | |
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105
devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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106
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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107
advisers
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| 顾问，劝告者( adviser的名词复数 )； （指导大学新生学科问题等的）指导教授 | |
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108
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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109
despondent
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| adj.失望的，沮丧的，泄气的 | |
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110
scruple
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| n./v.顾忌，迟疑 | |
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111
lurks
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| n.潜在，潜伏；（lurk的复数形式）vi.潜伏，埋伏（lurk的第三人称单数形式） | |
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112
vacillation
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| n.动摇；忧柔寡断 | |
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113
neutralized
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| v.使失效( neutralize的过去式和过去分词 )；抵消；中和；使（一个国家）中立化 | |
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114
joint
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| adj.联合的，共同的；n.关节，接合处；v.连接，贴合 | |
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115
disapprove
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| v.不赞成，不同意，不批准 | |
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116
consultation
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| n.咨询；商量；商议；会议 | |
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117
juncture
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| n.时刻，关键时刻，紧要关头 | |
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118
vehemently
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| adv. 热烈地 | |
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119
caucus
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| n.秘密会议；干部会议；v.（参加）干部开会议 | |
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120
modification
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| n.修改，改进，缓和，减轻 | |
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121
reconstruction
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| n.重建，再现，复原 | |
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122
unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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123
expounded
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| 论述，详细讲解( expound的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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124
briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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125
rend
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| vt.把…撕开，割裂；把…揪下来，强行夺取 | |
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126
emancipation
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| n.（从束缚、支配下）解放 | |
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127
hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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128
paramount
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| a.最重要的，最高权力的 | |
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129
rebuking
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| 责难或指责( rebuke的现在分词 ) | |
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130
indirectly
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| adv.间接地，不直接了当地 | |
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131
liberating
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| 解放，释放( liberate的现在分词 ) | |
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132
rev
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| v.发动机旋转，加快速度 | |
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133
revoked
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| adj.[法]取消的v.撤销，取消，废除( revoke的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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134
uncertainty
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| n.易变，靠不住，不确知，不确定的事物 | |
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135
auxiliaries
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| n.助动词 ( auxiliary的名词复数 )；辅助工，辅助人员 | |
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136
subjugation
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| n.镇压，平息，征服 | |
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137
extinction
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| n.熄灭，消亡，消灭，灭绝，绝种 | |
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138
impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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139
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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140
junctures
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| n.时刻，关键时刻( juncture的名词复数 )；接合点 | |
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141
martial
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| adj.战争的，军事的，尚武的，威武的 | |
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142
knell
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| n.丧钟声；v.敲丧钟 | |
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143
animates
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| v.使有生气( animate的第三人称单数 )；驱动；使栩栩如生地动作；赋予…以生命 | |
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144
forefathers
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| n.祖先，先人；祖先，祖宗( forefather的名词复数 )；列祖列宗；前人 | |
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145
patriots
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| 爱国者，爱国主义者( patriot的名词复数 ) | |
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146
resentment
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| n.怨愤，忿恨 | |
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147
anticipations
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| 预期( anticipation的名词复数 )； 预测； （信托财产收益的）预支； 预期的事物 | |
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148
laborers
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| n.体力劳动者，工人( laborer的名词复数 )；（熟练工人的）辅助工 | |
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149
taxation
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| n.征税，税收，税金 | |
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150
treasury
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| n.宝库；国库，金库；文库 | |
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151
solicitude
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| n.焦虑 | |
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152
payable
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| adj.可付的，应付的，有利益的 | |
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153
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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154
overflowed
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| 溢出的 | |
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155
sag
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| v.下垂，下跌，消沉；n.下垂，下跌，凹陷，[航海]随风漂流 | |
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156
repugnance
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| n.嫌恶 | |
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157
deluge
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| n./vt.洪水，暴雨，使泛滥 | |
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158
breach
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| n.违反，不履行；破裂；vt.冲破，攻破 | |
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159
smallpox
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| n.天花 | |
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160
applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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161
disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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162
delirious
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| adj.不省人事的，神智昏迷的 | |
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163
speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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164
repeal
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| n.废止，撤消；v.废止，撤消 | |
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165
expedient
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| adj.有用的，有利的；n.紧急的办法，权宜之计 | |
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166
contraction
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| n.缩略词，缩写式，害病 | |
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167
entrenched
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| adj.确立的，不容易改的(风俗习惯) | |
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168
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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169
lamenting
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| adj.悲伤的，悲哀的v.（为…）哀悼，痛哭，悲伤( lament的现在分词 ) | |
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170
alleged
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| a.被指控的，嫌疑的 | |
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171
defense
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| n.防御，保卫；[pl.]防务工事；辩护，答辩 | |
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172
culminated
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| v.达到极点( culminate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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173
conversant
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| adj.亲近的，有交情的，熟悉的 | |
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174
wrest
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| n.扭，拧，猛夺；v.夺取，猛扭，歪曲 | |
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175
cavalry
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| n.骑兵；轻装甲部队 | |
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176
conjecture
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| n./v.推测，猜测 | |
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177
ripening
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| v.成熟，使熟( ripen的现在分词 )；熟化；熟成 | |
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178
fortify
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| v.强化防御，为…设防；加强，强化 | |
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179
overthrown
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| adj. 打翻的，推倒的，倾覆的 动词overthrow的过去分词 | |
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180
overthrow
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| v.推翻，打倒，颠覆；n.推翻，瓦解，颠覆 | |
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181
exultation
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| n.狂喜，得意 | |
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182
philosophically
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| adv.哲学上；富有哲理性地；贤明地；冷静地 | |
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183
horrified
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| a.(表现出)恐惧的 | |
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184
humiliated
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| 感到羞愧的 | |
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185
reminder
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| n.提醒物，纪念品；暗示，提示 | |
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186
exhorting
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| v.劝告，劝说( exhort的现在分词 ) | |
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187
lyrics
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| n.歌词 | |
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188
indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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189
noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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190
passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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191
brook
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| n.小河，溪；v.忍受，容让 | |
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192
jersey
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| n.运动衫 | |
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193
advertising
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| n.广告业；广告活动 a.广告的；广告业务的 | |
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194
permanently
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| adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地 | |
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195
patriotism
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| n.爱国精神，爱国心，爱国主义 | |
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196
covertly
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| adv.偷偷摸摸地 | |
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197
calumniate
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| v.诬蔑，中伤 | |
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198
expatiate
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| v.细说，详述 | |
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199
bankruptcies
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| n.破产( bankruptcy的名词复数 )；倒闭；彻底失败；（名誉等的）完全丧失 | |
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200
jobbers
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| n.做零活的人( jobber的名词复数 )；营私舞弊者；股票经纪人；证券交易商 | |
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201
gouging
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| n.刨削[槽]v.凿( gouge的现在分词 )；乱要价；（在…中）抠出…；挖出… | |
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202
atrocity
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| n.残暴，暴行 | |
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203
odious
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| adj.可憎的，讨厌的 | |
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204
autocracies
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| n.独裁( autocracy的名词复数 )；独裁统治；独裁政体；独裁政府 | |
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205
miscreant
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| n.恶棍 | |
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206
verge
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| n.边，边缘；v.接近，濒临 | |
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207
plunder
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| vt.劫掠财物，掠夺；n.劫掠物，赃物；劫掠 | |
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208
sketch
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| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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209
proprietor
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| n.所有人；业主；经营者 | |
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210
egregious
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| adj.非常的，过分的 | |
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211
triumphant
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| adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的 | |
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212
exertions
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| n.努力( exertion的名词复数 )；费力；（能力、权力等的）运用；行使 | |
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213
illustrated
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| adj. 有插图的，列举的 动词illustrate的过去式和过去分词 | |
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214
renown
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| n.声誉，名望 | |
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215
oust
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| vt.剥夺，取代，驱逐 | |
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216
brooks
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| n.小溪( brook的名词复数 ) | |
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217
doctrines
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| n.教条( doctrine的名词复数 )；教义；学说；（政府政策的）正式声明 | |
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218
diffusion
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| n.流布；普及；散漫 | |
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219
disorders
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| n.混乱( disorder的名词复数 )；凌乱；骚乱；（身心、机能）失调 | |
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220
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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221
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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222
incited
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| 刺激，激励，煽动( incite的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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223
wreak
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| v.发泄；报复 | |
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224
professed
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| 公开声称的，伪称的，已立誓信教的 | |
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225
statute
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| n.成文法，法令，法规；章程，规则，条例 | |
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226
slaughtered
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| v.屠杀，杀戮，屠宰( slaughter的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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227
slaughter
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| n.屠杀，屠宰；vt.屠杀，宰杀 | |
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228
disturbances
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| n.骚乱( disturbance的名词复数 )；打扰；困扰；障碍 | |
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229
graphic
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| adj.生动的，形象的，绘画的，文字的，图表的 | |
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230
narrative
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| n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的 | |
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231
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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232
nucleus
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| n.核，核心，原子核 | |
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233
wharves
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| n.码头，停泊处( wharf的名词复数 ) | |
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234
instigated
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| v.使（某事物）开始或发生，鼓动( instigate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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235
brutal
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|
| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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236
armory
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| n.纹章，兵工厂，军械库 | |
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237
simultaneously
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| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
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238
demolished
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|
| v.摧毁( demolish的过去式和过去分词 )；推翻；拆毁（尤指大建筑物）；吃光 | |
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239
orphan
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| n.孤儿；adj.无父母的 | |
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240
asylum
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| n.避难所，庇护所，避难 | |
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241
dwelling
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| n.住宅，住所，寓所 | |
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242
defiantly
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| adv.挑战地，大胆对抗地 | |
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243
enact
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| vt.制定(法律)；上演，扮演 | |
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244
outskirts
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| n.郊外，郊区 | |
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245
pillaging
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| v.抢劫，掠夺( pillage的现在分词 ) | |
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246
proceedings
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| n.进程，过程，议程；诉讼(程序)；公报 | |
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247
costly
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|
| adj.昂贵的，价值高的，豪华的 | |
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248
fabrics
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|
| 织物( fabric的名词复数 )； 布； 构造； （建筑物的）结构（如墙、地面、屋顶）：质地 | |
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249
remonstrance
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|
| n抗议，抱怨 | |
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250
miserably
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|
| adv.痛苦地；悲惨地；糟糕地；极度地 | |
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251
ascertained
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|
| v.弄清，确定，查明( ascertain的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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252
privately
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|
| adv.以私人的身份，悄悄地，私下地 | |
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253
distinguished
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|
| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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254
fixed
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|
| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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255
possessed
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|
| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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256
perverted
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|
| adj.不正当的v.滥用( pervert的过去式和过去分词 )；腐蚀；败坏；使堕落 | |
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257
Partisanship
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|
| n. 党派性, 党派偏见 | |
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258
incensed
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| 盛怒的 | |
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259
pickpockets
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|
| n.扒手( pickpocket的名词复数 ) | |
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260
miscreants
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|
| n.恶棍，歹徒( miscreant的名词复数 ) | |
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261
cartridges
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|
| 子弹( cartridge的名词复数 )； （打印机的）墨盒； 录音带盒； （唱机的）唱头 | |
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262
impudent
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|
| adj.鲁莽的，卑鄙的，厚颜无耻的 | |
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263
conqueror
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|
| n.征服者，胜利者 | |
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264
awakened
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|
| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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265
unprecedented
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|
| adj.无前例的，新奇的 | |
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266
grumbled
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|
| 抱怨( grumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 发牢骚； 咕哝； 发哼声 | |
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267
dilatoriness
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|
| n.迟缓，拖延 | |
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268
mediation
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| n.调解 | |
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269
initiate
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|
| vt.开始，创始，发动；启蒙，使入门；引入 | |
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270
negotiations
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|
| 协商( negotiation的名词复数 )； 谈判； 完成（难事）； 通过 | |
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271
shudders
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|
| n.颤动，打颤，战栗( shudder的名词复数 )v.战栗( shudder的第三人称单数 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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272
prospect
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|
| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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273
cannons
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|
| n.加农炮，大炮，火炮( cannon的名词复数 ) | |
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274
orators
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|
| n.演说者，演讲家( orator的名词复数 ) | |
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275
parley
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|
| n.谈判 | |
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276
presidency
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|
| n.总统(校长，总经理)的职位(任期) | |
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277
armistice
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|
| n.休战，停战协定 | |
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278
repudiate
|
|
| v.拒绝，拒付，拒绝履行 | |
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279
repudiated
|
|
| v.（正式地）否认( repudiate的过去式和过去分词 )；拒绝接受；拒绝与…往来；拒不履行（法律义务） | |
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280
planks
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|
| （厚）木板( plank的名词复数 )； 政纲条目，政策要点 | |
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281
infamy
|
|
| n.声名狼藉，出丑，恶行 | |
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282
outrageous
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|
| adj.无理的，令人不能容忍的 | |
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283
orphans
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|
| 孤儿( orphan的名词复数 ) | |
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284
violations
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|
| 违反( violation的名词复数 )； 冒犯； 违反（行为、事例）； 强奸 | |
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285
chaos
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|
| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
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286
nomination
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| n.提名，任命，提名权 | |
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287
attachment
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|
| n.附属物，附件；依恋；依附 | |
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288
postponement
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| n.推迟 | |
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289
obedience
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|
| n.服从，顺从 | |
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290
unwilling
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|
| adj.不情愿的 | |
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291
superseded
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|
| [医]被代替的，废弃的 | |
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292
conspicuous
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|
| adj.明眼的，惹人注目的；炫耀的，摆阔气的 | |
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293
rivalries
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|
| n.敌对，竞争，对抗( rivalry的名词复数 ) | |
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294
banished
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|
| v.放逐，驱逐( banish的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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295
laboring
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|
| n.劳动，操劳v.努力争取(for)( labor的现在分词 )；苦干；详细分析；（指引擎）缓慢而困难地运转 | |
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296
justified
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|
| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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297
labors
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|
| v.努力争取(for)( labor的第三人称单数 )；苦干；详细分析；（指引擎）缓慢而困难地运转 | |
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298
grit
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|
| n.沙粒，决心，勇气；v.下定决心，咬紧牙关 | |
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299
labored
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|
| adj.吃力的，谨慎的v.努力争取(for)( labor的过去式和过去分词 )；苦干；详细分析；（指引擎）缓慢而困难地运转 | |
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300
astonishment
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|
| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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301
caption
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|
| n.说明，字幕，标题；v.加上标题，加上说明 | |
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302
gratuitous
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|
| adj.无偿的，免费的；无缘无故的，不必要的 | |
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303
diplomacy
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|
| n.外交；外交手腕，交际手腕 | |
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304
pretensions
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| 自称( pretension的名词复数 )； 自命不凡； 要求； 权力 | |
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305
fervent
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|
| adj.热的，热烈的，热情的 | |
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306
humane
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|
| adj.人道的，富有同情心的 | |
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307
relic
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|
| n.神圣的遗物，遗迹，纪念物 | |
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308
blot
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|
| vt.弄脏（用吸墨纸）吸干；n.污点，污渍 | |
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309
majestic
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|
| adj.雄伟的，壮丽的，庄严的，威严的，崇高的 | |
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310
picturesque
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|
| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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311
filibustering
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|
| v.阻碍或延宕国会或其他立法机构通过提案( filibuster的现在分词 )；掠夺 | |
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312
gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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313
maverick
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|
| adj.特立独行的；不遵守传统的；n.持异议者，自行其是者 | |
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314
previously
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|
| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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315
anomalous
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|
| adj.反常的；不规则的 | |
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316
wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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317
rigid
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|
| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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318
longing
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|
| n.（for）渴望 | |
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319
graphically
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|
| adv.通过图表；生动地，轮廓分明地 | |
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320
cod
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|
| n.鳕鱼；v.愚弄；哄骗 | |
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321
persistence
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| n.坚持，持续，存留 | |
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322
vessel
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| n.船舶；容器，器皿；管，导管，血管 | |
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323
runaway
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|
| n.逃走的人，逃亡，亡命者；adj.逃亡的，逃走的 | |
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324
confided
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| v.吐露（秘密，心事等）( confide的过去式和过去分词 )；（向某人）吐露（隐私、秘密等） | |
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325
shipping
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| n.船运（发货，运输，乘船） | |
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326
frigate
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| n.护航舰，大型驱逐舰 | |
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327
marine
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| adj.海的；海生的；航海的；海事的；n.水兵 | |
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328
deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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329
unduly
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| adv.过度地，不适当地 | |
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330
cholera
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| n.霍乱 | |
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331
degradation
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| n.降级；低落；退化；陵削；降解；衰变 | |
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332
naval
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| adj.海军的，军舰的，船的 | |
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333
journalism
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| n.新闻工作，报业 | |
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334
undertaking
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| n.保证，许诺，事业 | |
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335
galaxy
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| n.星系；银河系；一群(杰出或著名的人物) | |
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336
sergeant
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| n.警官，中士 | |
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337
embodying
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| v.表现( embody的现在分词 )；象征；包括；包含 | |
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338
assassination
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| n.暗杀；暗杀事件 | |
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339
repose
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| v.(使)休息；n.安息 | |
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340
puffing
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| v.使喷出( puff的现在分词 )；喷着汽（或烟）移动；吹嘘；吹捧 | |
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341
bluff
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| v.虚张声势，用假象骗人；n.虚张声势，欺骗 | |
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342
seamanlike
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| 海员般的，熟练水手似的 | |
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343
nautical
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| adj.海上的，航海的，船员的 | |
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344
geniality
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| n.和蔼，诚恳；愉快 | |
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345
hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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346
faculty
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| n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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347
penetrating
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| adj.（声音）响亮的，尖锐的adj.（气味）刺激的adj.（思想）敏锐的，有洞察力的 | |
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348
prevarication
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| n.支吾；搪塞；说谎；有枝有叶 | |
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349
shuffling
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| adj. 慢慢移动的, 滑移的 动词shuffle的现在分词形式 | |
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350
sociability
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| n.好交际，社交性，善于交际 | |
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351
broil
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| v.烤，烧，争吵，怒骂；n.烤，烧，争吵，怒骂 | |
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352
tempted
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| v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词） | |
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353
specimen
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| n.样本，标本 | |
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354
censor
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| n./vt.审查，审查员；删改 | |
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355
acquiesce
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| vi.默许，顺从，同意 | |
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356
erred
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| 犯错误，做错事( err的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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357
undue
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| adj.过分的；不适当的；未到期的 | |
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358
improper
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| adj.不适当的，不合适的，不正确的，不合礼仪的 | |
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359
rumors
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| n.传闻( rumor的名词复数 )；[古]名誉；咕哝；[古]喧嚷v.传闻( rumor的第三人称单数 )；[古]名誉；咕哝；[古]喧嚷 | |
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360
canard
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| n.虚报；谣言；v.流传 | |
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361
rogue
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| n.流氓；v.游手好闲 | |
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362
concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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363
swollen
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| adj.肿大的，水涨的；v.使变大，肿胀 | |
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364
secrecy
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| n.秘密，保密，隐蔽 | |
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365
authentic
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| a.真的，真正的；可靠的，可信的，有根据的 | |
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366
evaded
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| 逃避( evade的过去式和过去分词 )； 避开； 回避； 想不出 | |
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367
picturesqueness
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368
concealment
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| n.隐藏, 掩盖，隐瞒 | |
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369
negligent
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| adj.疏忽的；玩忽的；粗心大意的 | |
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370
indictment
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| n.起诉；诉状 | |
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371
cipher
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| n.零；无影响力的人；密码 | |
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372
plentiful
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| adj.富裕的，丰富的 | |
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373
appalling
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| adj.骇人听闻的，令人震惊的，可怕的 | |
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374
stanzas
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| 节，段( stanza的名词复数 ) | |
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375
trumpets
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| 喇叭( trumpet的名词复数 )； 小号； 喇叭形物； （尤指）绽开的水仙花 | |
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376
woe
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| n.悲哀，苦痛，不幸，困难；int.用来表达悲伤或惊慌 | |
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377
shovel
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| n.铁锨，铲子，一铲之量；v.铲，铲出 | |
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378
trample
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| vt.踩，践踏；无视，伤害，侵犯 | |
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379
corpse
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| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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380
foe
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| n.敌人，仇敌 | |
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381
hoisted
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| 把…吊起，升起( hoist的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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382
emblem
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| n.象征，标志；徽章 | |
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383
traitorous
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| adj. 叛国的, 不忠的, 背信弃义的 | |
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384
flaunted
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| v.炫耀，夸耀( flaunt的过去式和过去分词 )；有什么能耐就施展出来 | |
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385
hurled
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| v.猛投，用力掷( hurl的过去式和过去分词 )；大声叫骂 | |
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386
gild
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| vt.给…镀金，把…漆成金色，使呈金色 | |
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387
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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388
graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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389
banking
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| n.银行业，银行学，金融业 | |
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390
hymns
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| n.赞美诗，圣歌，颂歌( hymn的名词复数 ) | |
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391
poetical
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| adj.似诗人的；诗一般的；韵文的；富有诗意的 | |
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392
smite
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| v.重击；彻底击败；n.打；尝试；一点儿 | |
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