Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [44]
The grumbling by the press mattered little. The nomination moved to a vote. During the debate it was asked if Pulitzer was not the member of the House who “did a little shooting up here two years ago?” It was confirmed that he was, indeed, the man, but the senate was in a forgiving mood and approved the nomination.
Chapter Seven
POLITICS AND REBELLION
In late January 1872, Pulitzer and Grosvenor headed to Jefferson City to light the spark of a national political rebellion. The Liberal Republican state executive committee was convening to issue a national call to disaffected Republicans to gather and select a ticket to run against President Grant. “The time is ripe for an uprising of the people, in kind not unlike that which swept this state in 1870,” Grosvenor said.
As these reform-minded activists traveled by train to Jefferson City for an act of popular sovereignty, the capital’s station was a scene of celebration that morning for a symbol of the undemocratic Old World. A huge crowd stood in the damp cold to await Russia’s Grand Duke Alexis, who was coming in his $3,500-a-day private train, to lunch with Governor Brown at the new executive mansion. The completion of the mansion was also going to be celebrated with a ball, preparation for which had required many ladies to sleep upright lest they ruin their new coiffures.
As Liberal Republican activists descended amid this hallabaloo, they grabbed the last remaining hotel rooms, to the immense pleasure of the innkeepers. “There is a big crowd here—make no mistake about that,” reported Joseph McCullagh. “That is to say, the hotels are what the landlords will call very comfortably, and what the guests will consider very uncomfortably, full.”
McCullagh was among the throngs in Jefferson City on assignment to cover the meeting for the Missouri Democrat. He had recently rejoined the paper, where he had worked as a young reporter before the war. Since his modest start, McCullagh had served as a Civil War correspondent and then won national fame as a Washington correspondent who published a series of interviews with the embattled president, Andrew Johnson. McCullagh made a memorable impression on most who met him. Born in Dublin, Ireland, the short, thick, and pugnacious reporter was known to all simply as “Mack.” According to the novelist Theodore Dreiser, “He was so short, so sturdy, so napoleonic, so ursine rather than leonine, that he pleased and yet frightened me.”
On his first night in Jefferson City, McCullagh noticed that Senator Schurz had remained in Washington and left his less-known lieutenants Pulitzer and Grosvenor in charge. “If I had to select from the large crowds that throng the halls and doorways the most prominent managers of the Liberal movement,” McCullagh wrote, “I should, at a guess, point to Joe and Bill, as they are familiarly called by each other and by all their acquaintances.” From Schurz’s perspective this was a worrisome state of affairs. If the convention were a henhouse, Grosvenor would be the farmhand in charge, Brown a fox, and Pulitzer an unreliable watchdog.
That night Pulitzer and Grosvenor conferred with Brown, who left the festivities at the mansion to come to Schmidt’s Hotel. The prospects were good. About 130 had showed for the meeting. An equally promising sign was the diversity of the delegates. “In fact, while Liberal Republicans of all classes were more fully represented than ever before,” Grosvenor observed. “It was remarked with pleasure and surprise by German Liberals, that, for the first time, they were outnumbered by American Liberals.”
The following day, a few minutes before noon, Grosvenor and Pulitzer were caught in the sea of delegates and spectators jamming the floor of the House chambers.
“Joe,” Grosvenor yelled.
“All right, Bill,” replied Pulitzer from deep in the crowd on the floor as he made his way over to Grosvenor.
“Let’s