Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [47]
Not only did the convention put Pulitzer at the center of an exciting political battle, but he also met journalists from around the country. In particular, he was drawn to a local press figure, John A. Cockerill, the managing editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer. The two had a lot in common. Both were over six feet tall—six inches taller than the average American—and they were only two years apart in age. Most important, their passion for politics, reform, and journalism created an instant bond between them, which years later would bring them together in a legendary journalistic partnership.
The convention was a striking example of the confluence of independent journalism and politics. Like a fly on the wall, Pulitzer witnessed a few of the nation’s most powerful publishers try to impose their will on the convention. They met secretly in a room adjacent to Schurz’s that Pulitzer frequented. There were five men: Schurz; Henry Watterson, of the Louisville Courier-Journal; Samuel Bowles, of the Springfield Republican; Murat Halstead, of the Cincinnati Commercial; and Horace White, of the Chicago Tribune. Though they numbered five, they named themselves the Quadrilateral, after four northern Italian fortresses that had been prominent in the Milanese insurgency of 1848. As they saw it, the task before them was not solely to report the news of the convention but to shape it.
The group agreed that the convention should choose either Adams or Trumbull. “The first serious business that engaged us was the killing of the boom for Judge David Davis,” said Watterson. “The power of the press must be invoked. It was our chief if not our only weapon.”
Sitting at the same table, the editors wrote editorials for their respective papers, saying that there was no support among the delegates for Davis, despite the arrival of 700 of his supporters in Cincinnati, and that he was allied with Democrats to steal the convention away from the movement. After the editorials had been wired to the newspapers, they were reprinted in the Cincinnati Commercial, impressing on the arriving delegates the futility of supporting Davis. The editors failed, however, to shroud their machinations. It wasn’t long before the New York Times traced the “demoralization” of Davis’s followers to “a newspaper caucus of independent journalists late at night, in which it was determined to kill off Davis instantly by an editorial blast in four quarters of the country.”
On May 1, the convention got down to business. Delegates and spectators, on foot and in carriages, streamed from hotels toward the wood-framed Exposition Hall. They were a motley group. “A livelier and more variegated omnium-gatherum was never assembled,” said Watterson. “They were long-haired and spectacled doctrinaires from New England, spliced by short-haired and stumpy emissaries from New York…. The full contingent of Washington correspondents was there, of course, with sharpened eyes and pens to make the most of what they had already begun to christen a conclave of cranks.”
The Sängerhalle, as it was known to the large German population of the city, was ready. The three stages, typically used by musical choruses, were decorated with flags and emblems; and a larger single stage was set at the center with 300 to 400 chairs for the conventiongoers to watch each state’s delegation parade in. A last-minute crisis was averted when someone discovered that the ladies’ gallery—the only place in the hall where the fair sex would be permitted—had been inadvertently closed but was able to get it opened in time.
At noon, Grosvenor called the convention to order. To Pulitzer and Grosvenor, who had run the Jefferson City enclave that created this gathering, the sight was an impressive achievement. Seven hundred delegates from every state in the union except Delaware sat expectantly in rows on the floor below, surrounded by stands filled with 6,000 or 7,000 spectators, many of whom had come long distances. At that time, political conventions made for good theater. “This convention originated in a single state and