Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [71]
At the end of October, Pulitzer reached New York City. By this time he had given more than seventy speeches, but he remained willing to deliver a few more in Brooklyn, in Queens, and across the river in Hoboken, New Jersey. New York Democrats rewarded him with an honor, including him among the guests at a reception at the Manhattan Club for the party’s presidential candidate. About 300 politicians attended, including members of the Democratic National Committee; August Belmont, the banker and American minister; and Oakey Hall, the former mayor, whom Albert had famously trapped in a bathroom for an interview.
Pulitzer’s role in the campaign came to an end the following evening with a speech at Cooper Union, the great hall where, in 1860, a relatively unknown Abraham Lincoln had given a famous address that set him on the path to the White House. To cheers and the accompaniment of a band, Pulitzer once again took up Schurz as his theme. “I came here to answer Carl Schurz,” he said. “And in speaking of him you will pardon me for saying that I do so more in a spirit of sorrow than of anger. I have no ill feeling against him.
“In earlier days I followed the leadership of that man, but I am free to say that if I ever did think he was a great light which any patriotic citizen could follow, I think now that he is but a great Will ’o the wisp,” he continued, to the laughter of the mostly German crowd. Then, casting doubt on his claim that he had no ill feeling toward Schurz, Pulitzer continued his attack, like a dog unwilling to loosen its grip on a bone. He highlighted all of Schurz’s inconsistencies, changes of heart, and electoral vacillations. “He is perfectly consistent in advocating the election of every popular candidate whose nomination he had previously denounced and damned, and also damning and denouncing the nomination of every popular candidate whose election he afterward supported and favored.”
Bringing his assault on Schurz to a close, Pulitzer then made his pitch to elect a Democrat for the first time since before the Civil War. “I stand here to say the war is over, and it is time that it should be,” Pulitzer said. Ringing out one applause line after another, he told the audience that the Union had not been saved for robbers, thieves, and carpetbaggers. “The Southern people belong to us and we belong to them. Their interests are our interests; their rights should be our rights; their wrongs should be our wrongs. Their prosperity is our prosperity; their poverty is our poverty,” he said, to waves of applause and cheers. “We are one people, one country, and one government; and whoever endeavors to make the union of all the people impossible, is a traitor to his country.”
The New York Sun gave front-page coverage to Pulitzer’s address at Cooper Union. As an unabashed admirer of the Sun and of its editor, Pulitzer went to call on Charles Dana. The Sun was on the same block of Park Row as the New York Tribune’s new building, which rose ten stories and towered over everything else in New York except the spire of Trinity Church. As newspapers sought new ways to find readers, the circulation wars of Park Row expanded into architecture. Dana had abstained from this new battle. The structure that housed his enterprise, which had once served as headquarters to Tammany Hall, was aging and run-down. To reach Dana’s office, Pulitzer ascended a narrow iron spiral staircase and passed through a cavernous loft filled with reporters and editors dashing about, shouting, in an atmosphere of controlled bedlam.
The famous editor’s office was a quiet refuge. From its door, its occupant and his long, white flowing beard and gleaming, bespectacled eyes gave him almost a look of Santa Claus. (Years later, after Dana’s time, the Sun published the famous editorial