The featured cartoon’s caption reveals the negative reaction of Charles A.
                Dana, editor and publisher of the New York Sun, to Democratic losses in
                the “October” states of Ohio and Indiana.  He laments that the 1880
                Democratic presidential candidate, Winfield Hancock, is not as talented as the
                party’s 1876 standard-bearer, Samuel J. Tilden.  The image shows Dana as
                the setting sun, a pun on the name of his morning newspaper, behind a body
                of water reflecting the prediction:  “We Are Beaten.”

                Charles Anderson Dana was born in 1819 in Hinsdale, New Hampshire,
                where he grew up in poverty.  He entered Harvard in 1839, but inadequate
                financial resources forced him to drop out after one year.  While at Harvard,
                he met George Ripley, and two years later joined Ripley’s Massachusetts
                commune, Brook Farm, which promoted cooperative economics and
                harmonious social relations.  In 1845, Dana became a primary contributor to
                Brook Farm’s publication, The Harbinger, and then joined the staff of the
                New York Tribune the following year.  In 1848, Dana covered the largely
                failed liberal revolutions in Europe, and then returned the next spring to
                become managing editor of the Tribune, a position he held for thirteen years.
                During the 1850s, he hired Karl Marx as a regular contributor to the Tribune,
                and published The Household Book of Poetry (1857) and the first of 16
                volumes of the American Cyclopaedia (1858).

                Friction arose between Dana and the Tribune’s publisher and senior editor,
                Horace Greeley, due to the latter’s resentment of Dana’s unilateral decisions
                made during Greeley’s long absences.  The secession crisis during the winter
                of 1860-1861 heightened tensions further between the two men, as Greeley
                held out hope for compromise while Dana declared secession to be
                unconstitutional and a provocation for war.  On June 26, 1861, as the
                Confederate Congress prepared to convene in Richmond, Virginia, the next
                month, Dana began running a prominent editorial-page slogan urging Union
                troops:  “The Nation’s War-Cry!  Forward to Richmond!”  Greeley was at
                home recuperating from a knee injury, but he allowed the headline to continue
                running through July 4.  When the Union’s attempt to advance toward
                Richmond met with embarrassing failure later that month at the First Battle of
                Bull Run, many commentators blamed the Tribune, while Greeley blamed
                Dana.  In late March 1862, when Greeley informed the newspaper’s
                stockholders that they would have to choose between him and his managing
                editor, Dana resigned.

                Secretary of War Edwin Stanton immediately hired Dana, ostensibly
                dispatching him to investigate payroll services in the Western Theatre, but
                secretly instructing him to determine if reports of General Ulysses S. Grant’s
                intoxication were true.  Dana was impressed by Grant’s modesty, honesty,
                and fairness, and insisted that the general’s binge drinking was infrequent and
                did not affect his military duties.  In 1863, Dana was named assistant
                secretary of war, and thereafter served as a mediator between Stanton,
                Grant, and President Abraham Lincoln.

                At the end of the Civil War in April 1865, Dana accepted a position as editor
                of the Chicago Republican, where he introduced short paragraphs and
                humorous observations.  The reason for his departure from the newspaper in
                May 1866 was disputed, with friends blaming the journal’s bad financial state,
                and critics citing the editor’s desire for a lucrative patronage appointment with
                the New York Port Authority.  In 1867, with financial backing from wealthy
                Chicago friends, Dana purchased the New York Sun and the Associated
                Press wire service.  To balance the interests of the newspaper’s Republican
                stockholders with its readership consisting mainly of working-class
                Democrats, Dana announced that the Sun’s editorial stance would be
                independent of party.  Yet, his editorials consistently criticized the Grant
                administration (1869-1877), and increasingly moved toward the Democratic
                camp.

                From 1870 until 1884, the Sun had the highest circulation among the city’s
                morning newspapers.  The journal covered labor issues extensively, and
                Dana’s editorials encouraged workers to establish cooperative ventures for
                housing and education.  In addition, the paper’s reporters covered a wide
                array of current events, including what became known as “human interest”
                stories, and set standards that other journalists tried to emulate.  Dana is still
                widely quoted today for his definition of news:  “When a dog bites a man, that
                is not news, but when a man bites a dog, that is news.”

                In 1884, Dana used his editorials to attack Governor Grover Cleveland of
                New York, the Democratic presidential nominee, and to support Benjamin
                Butler, the Greenback-Labor nominee.  Dana had failed to anticipate both his
                readership’s loyalty to the Democratic Party and competition from Joseph
                Pulitzer's New York World, which resulted in a dramatic 43% decline in the
                Sun’s circulation from 1884 to 1886.  Dana mortgaged his paper to buy new
                presses and doubled its length to eight pages (the same as the World’s).  He
                essentially conceded the loss of his working-class readership to the World,
                but added a new audience by backing the policies of pro-business
                Democrats.  The changed look and stance of the Sun halted its decline and
                sparked a limited increase in circulation, but the newspaper would never again
                be the formidable journalistic giant that it was in the 1870s.  Dana broke with
                the Democratic Party again in 1896 when it nominated William Jennings
                Bryan for president; this time, he endorsed the Republican candidate, William
                McKinley.  Dana died the next year in New York City.

                Robert C. Kennedy