Pulitzer

by James McGrath Morris

  The seats in the courtroom: MoDe, 3/24/75, 2; MoRe, 3/24/1875, 1; GlDe, 3/24/1875, 4.

  “Not for everybody”: Two weeks later, Bowman sued Hutchins for libel, for comments about the trial published in the Dispatch, a struggling afternoon newspaper that Hutchins ran in addition to the St. Louis Times.

  Hard feelings put aside: NYT, 3/29/1875, 7.

  In early May: SeDe, 5/6/1875, 1; Isidor Loeb, Introduction, Missouri Constitutional Convention, Vol. 1, 60–67; biographical account of the personnel of the convention by Floyd C. Shoemaker, Missouri Constitutional Convention, Vol. 1; Gary Kremmer, “Life in Post-Civil War Missouri” presented at Arrow Rock, Missouri, on 9/17/2000.

  At age twenty-eight: The style of hat Pulitzer wore is a later variation of the slouch, known as an Antietam, with a higher, flatter crown.

  Pulitzer had done: Loeb and Shoemaker, Debates of the Missouri Constitutional Convention of 1875, Vol. 1, 245, 249.

  The war of words: Ibid., 94–96.

  As the summer heat: Broadhead to his wife, 7/4/1875, JB.

  Pulitzer’s style: Debates, Vol. 1, 402–403.

  Behind closed doors: Ibid., Vol. 5, 412.

  In the end: In defense of Pulitzer, it should be noted that not until long after his lifetime would the detrimental effects of home rule in St. Louis become apparent. For a complete history of the issue, see William N. Cassella Jr., “City-County Separation: The ‘Great Divorce’ of 1876,” Missouri Historical Society Bulletin, Vol. 15, No. 2 (January 1959).

  As the convention: Debates, Vol. 5, 86–87.

  In July the: On October 30, 1875, voters gave their approval. The constitution would remain the state’s highest law until 1945.

  A sense of failure: JP to Hermann Raster, 9/27/1875 and 6/24/1875, HR.

  The only good news: See Timothy Rives, “Grant, Babcock, and the Whiskey Ring,” Prologue Vol. 32, No. 3 (Fall 2000).

  In December a grand jury: Ibid.; and ChTr, 2/8/1876, 1 and 2/11/1876, 5.

  During his first year: APM, 142, 135–138.

  At the Herald: Ibid., 104, 142, 148: Helena Independent, 12/12/1883, 6.

  When he received: “Testimony before the Select Committee Concerning the Whisky Frauds,” 7/25/1876, House of Representatives, 44th Congress, 1st Session, Mis. Doc. 186, 43.

  In April, Pulitzer’s: John Henderson to Elihu Washburne, 4/12/1876; JP to Elihu Washburne, 5/9/1876, EBW.

  In Germany, Pulitzer: Indianapolis Daily Sentinel, 9/4/1876, 2.

  CHAPTER 10: FRAUD AND HIS FRAUDULENCY

  The presidential campaign: NYT, 7/26/1876, 8.

  By his absence: Official Proceedings of the National Democratic Convention, St. Louis, MO, June 27, 28, 29, 1876, 21. The Democrats were the first party to hold a national convention west of the Mississippi.

  Pulitzer was elated: The campaign plans of leading Democrats were carried in newspapers. See, for instance, SeDe, 10/6/1876, 2. After 1885 only a few small states, such as Maine, continued to hold elections in October.

  In early September: Indianapolis Daily Sentinel, 9/4/1876, 2.

  For more than: DCS, 29; Galveston Daily News, 9/14/1876, 1. Several newspapers commented on Pulitzer’s English and his way of talking. Typical was one in Zanesville, Ohio, which said, “Mr. Pulitzer, though of German birth, has in his speech little or no foreign accent.” (“Schurz Shattered,” Mesker Scrapbook, Vol. 3, 45, MHS.)

  Fresh from his: “Schurz Shattered,” 45; Portsmouth Times, 9/9/1876, 3; JP to George Alfred Townsend, 9/19/1876. PDA; Cincinnati Enquirer, 11/2/1876, 2, quoted in King, Pulitzer’s Prize Editor, 81.

  In mid-September: JP to George Alfred Townsend, 9/19/1876, PDA.

  The next day: “Schurz Shattered,” 47. In another article, from an unidentified newspaper, Pulitzer compares the alliance of Morton and Schurz to the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. “As the muddy waters of the Mississippi absorb the clear waters of the Missouri, Morton will soon enough have entirely absorbed the spirit of Schurz. And they will both be as muddy as the Mississippi.”

  To the delight: NYT, 9/13/1876, 1; StLoTi, 9/4/1876, quoted in WAS, 40. Though he did not consent to meet Pulitzer, Schurz wrote a five-column rebuttal that was published in the New York Staats-Zeitung. The sympathetic New York Sun gave Pulitzer space to respond. (Edwardsville Intelligencer, 8/20/1876, 2.)

  Although Schurz remained: WP, translated in Decatur Daily Republican, 9/28/1876, 1; NYT, 8/7/1876, 4.

  Pulitzer sought to: “Schurz Shattered,” 46.

  As in his other speeches: DeFr, 10/18/1876, 1.

  At the end: NYT, 10/26/1876, 5 and 10/31/1876, 10; WaPo, 12/24/1885, 4. Pulitzer’s work in the campaign not only pleased the Democratic Party but also, as he had hoped, attracted attention. The following year the New York Tribune said that Pulitzer was so frenetic as a campaigner “that old Mr. Tilden couldn’t make out for a while whether he or Pulitzer was running for the Presidency, and never has been entirely clear about it since Pulitzer first burst on the scene.” (NYTr, 3/14/1877, 4.)

  Bringing his assault: NYS, 11/1/1876, 1. Almost thirty years later, Pulitzer wrote to a friend that his speeches during the campaign “attracted a good deal of attention and gave me a greater reputation than that I have now.” (JP to FDW, 10/13/1903, SLPA.)

  The New York Sun: Turner, When Giants Ruled, 95; Allen Churchill, Park Row (New York: Rinehart, 1958), 12.

  The famous editor’s office: Don Carlos Seitz, Newspaper Row: Some Account of a Journey along the Main Street of American Journalism (unpublished, American Heritage Center), 98; Smythe, The Gilded Age Press, 10.

  Pulitzer told the men: Mitchell, Memoirs of an Editor, 264; John Schumaker to JP, 10/29/1887, JP-CU.

  The nation’s partisan press: StLoTi, 11/11/1876, 4 and 11/16/1876, 4.

  In New York: Mitchell, Memoirs of an Editor, 265; Harper’s Weekly, 12/30/1876, 1055; Young, The American Statesman, 1593.

  As a member: NYS, 12/30/1876, 3.

  By this point: NYS, 12/29/1876, 3.

  Pulitzer did not limit: ChTr, 1/9/1877, 1. The New York Times described Pulitzer’s “fiery talk” as being “on the order which was current among German students of 1848” (NYT, 1/9/1877, 1). Watterson found his speech hard to live down. “I became the target for every kind of ridicule and abuse. Nast drew a grotesque cartoon of me, distorting my suggestion for the assembling of 100,000 citizens, which was both offensive and libelous…. For many years afterward I was pursued by this unlucky speech, or rather by the misinterpretation given to it alike by friend and foe. Nast’s first cartoon was accepted as a faithful portrait, and I was accordingly satirized and stigmatized, though no thought of violence ever had entered my mind, and in the final proceedings I had voted for the Electoral Commission Bill and faithfully stood by its decisions. Joseph Pulitzer, who immediately followed me on the occasion named, declared that he wanted my ‘one hundred thousand’ to come fully armed and ready for business; yet he never was taken to task or reminded of his temerity.” (Watterson, Henry Marse, 303.)

  On March 2: The end of Reconstruction was not, of course, such a simple matter. For a more complete story, see Foner, Reconstruction; or Lemann, Redemption. See also Turner, When Giants Ruled, 96.

  The loss stung: Galveston Daily News, 3/10/1877, 1.

  In St. Louis: ChTr, 4/12/1877, 1; NYT, 4/12/1877, 1.

  On April 10: MoRe, 4/12/1877, 4. Reynolds, in “Joseph Pulitzer,” believed it was a “tea party,” given by Mrs. Dan Morrison, that Pulitzer attended. The only thing known with certainty is that Pulitzer returned to his hotel at midnight.

  The fire engines: ChTr, 4/12/1877, 1. One fireman, Phelim O’Toole, saved a dozen people from the fire and inspired a song, the second stanza of which is: “To save helpless women, at the word of command,/He bravely came forward, for duty he strives;/Ascending the ladder, his life in his hand,/Defying the fire fiend, while hope now survives./Brave Phelim O’Toole mounts higher and higher,/And reaches the high elevation at last;/He bears fainting women from torturing fire/Down the p
erilous ladder the danger is past.”

  Pulitzer was the first witness: MoRe, 4/17/1877, 4.

  On April 27: ChTr, 4/28/1877, 2; NYT, 4/28/1877, 5.

  A month later: NYT, 4/27/1877, 8. Albert’s itinerary is reprinted in APM, 152–153. The letter from Fannie Pulitzer is reprinted in APM, 154–157.

  Pulitzer found the aging editor: Ohio Democrat, New Philadelphia, OH, 7/12/1877.

  With a flourish: The article in the Sun, which appeared during August, was reprinted in the Washington Post, 1/22/1878, 2, shortly after Bowles’s death. It carried the byline “J. P.”

  Pulitzer sprained his ankle: WRR, 54–55. The account of this month is based on Johnson’s diary.

  CHAPTER 11: NANNIE AND KATE

  Much of this chapter revolves around the story told in six surviving love letters by Pulitzer. Three of them have been long known because they are reprinted in full in Seitz’s 1924 biography. The originals seem to have been lost in the years since then. They are remarkable in how honest and prescient Pulitzer was in warning Davis of the kind of life they would lead after their marriage.

  Two of the other three letters, the ones to Tunstall, have also been publicly available since they were donated to the American Jewish Historical Society. But as they were undated, and in fact incorrectly cataloged, anyone examining them would not have known that they were written during the same time period when Pulitzer was courting Davis. Fortunately, I was able to date them because Eric Fettmann, a remarkable collector of artifacts of American journalism, had purchased a letter from Pulitzer to Tunstall dated May 2, 1878. With this letter, one is able to correctly date the other two as having been written between February and May 1878.

  As 1877 ended: JP to KP, DCS-JP, 91.

  St. Louis grew: Quoted in Roberts, The Washington Post, 1.

  Field was not: Ibid., 7. It’s unclear to what extent, if any, Pulitzer participated in the launching of the Post. He had been a regular contributor to the St. Louis Times when Hutchins ran it. But a search of early editions of the Washington Post turns up only one article clearly written by Pulitzer, a reprint of one from the New York Sun in the summer of 1877.

  Journalism, however, was: GlDe, 1/03/1878, 3; ChTr, 11/19/1876, 2, 11/22/1876, 1, 11/18/1876, 1, 10/31/1877, 2. Seitz claims that Pulitzer studied for and passed the bar examination in the District of Columbia. A check of the record of the bar, now in the archives of the University of District of Columbia, found no attorneys standing for the bar in 1877 or 1878, so there was no way to determine if Pulitzer was admitted to practice in Washington. It would not, however, have been a requirement for appearing before the elections committee. Pulitzer was still ambiguous about his career path. He listed himself in the Washington city directory as a correspondent, probably because of his loose connection with the New York Sun.

  The Committee on Elections: Minute Book, Records of Committee on Elections, 45th Congress, 1/30/1878, NARA; WaPo, 1/30/1878, 1; BoGl, 2/14/1878, 1. Though at first glance this might seem like a late date to decide an election of 1876, it was not. During the nineteenth century Congress often took a year before holding its first session, so only a few days of lawmaking had elapsed when the case of who should represent the Third District of Missouri came before the House.

  If the Committee: WaPo, 2/12/1878, 2.

  The editorial had: Minute Book, Records of Committee on Elections, 45th Congress, 2/20 and 2/21/1878, NARA.

  Despite this loss: WaPo, 1/24/1878, 1; 1/29/1878, 4; 2/25/1878, 4; 2/26/1878, 4.

  Pulitzer did not lack: WaPo, 1/24/1878, 1, and 1/30/1878, 4; Gallagher, Stilson Hutchins, 26.

  On January 12: WaPo, 1/14/1878, 4; Washington Star, 6/20/1878; Stevens Point Journal, Stevens Point, WI, 6/29/1878, 1.

  But to Davis’s parents: Pitzman’s New Atlas of the City and County of Saint Louis, Missouri, 1878 shows Pulitzer, Hutchins, and Brockmeyer’s lots. Pulitzer owned 3.4 acres of land; Hutchins owned an adjacent acre; and Brockmeyer had almost four acres nearby.

  Trying to hide: The Jewish practice of circumcision was not introduced as a medical practice in the United States until 1870 and did not become widely practiced among Christians until the 1900s. See David L. Gollaher, “From Ritual to Science: The Medical Transformation of Circumcision in America,” Journal of Social History, Vol. 28, No. 1 (1994). Throughout his life, and long into the twentieth century, Pulitzer’s contention that his mother was not Jewish remained unchallenged. For instance, The Hebrews in America, published in 1888, reported, “The Messrs. Pulitzer, however, are not being classed among the chosen people, their father being a Hebrew and their mother a Christian lady of Vienna.” Ironically, Kate Davis was a strong-willed, independent-minded woman and might not have been deterred if Pulitzer had been honest.

  Davis was not: WaPo, 1/14/1878, 4.

  Born in a: Morris, The First Tunstalls.

  William Corcoran, one: Corcoran wrote to Tunstall that she was expected in January 1878. Corcoran to Tunstall, 12/14/1877, WCP-DU; WaPo, 2/24/1888, 2; Corcoran, A Grandfather’s Legacy, 490.

  Tunstall certainly filled: William MacLeod, Private Journal, 4/16/1888, CAG; Corcoran to Tunstall, 12/22/1885, WCP-DU. Governor Kemper of Virginia, a distant cousin, once sent her a bouquet for the New Year, writing, “If these flowers were all gold and diamonds, they would more worthily express your merits and my appreciation”: (James Lawson Kemper to Nannie Tunstall, 1/1/1876, NT-DU.)

  Tunstall was well-educated: Nannie Tunstall to Virginia Tunstall Clay, 3/21/1884, NT-DU.

  In February, while: NYT, 2/17/1878, 2. Unless otherwise indicated, the quotations from the letters of JP to Tunstall are drawn from the Joseph Pulitzer Letters, AJHS.

  “Is there no”: JP to Tunstall, 5/2/1878, EFJC.

  On a spring day: WaPo, 3/6/1878, 4, and 3/22/1878, 2.

  Indeed, Pulitzer was: House Journal, March 3, 731; Constitutional Convention, Vol. 4, 123; SeDe, 6/5/1875, 3.

  Pulitzer longed not: JP to KP, undated but probably April 1878, reprinted in DCS JP, 91–92.

  “You can now see”: JP to KP, undated but probably June 1878, reprinted in DCS-JP, 93. McCullough was in Washington, appearing in the theater, in early June. He was also, indeed, scheduled to sail to Europe on June 15 (WaPo, 5/31/1878, 2) as Pulitzer noted in his letter. Thus this letter to Davis was written in the first week of June 1878.

  “I must have business”: JP to KP, June 1878, reprinted in DCS-JP, 94–95.

  The ceremony actually: “Large, roomy and with an air of sober reliability about it, one feels the sentiment of respect for it,” wrote a newspaper reporter who had passed through its iron gates in search of newsworthy items only a month before; Tripp Jones, archivist, interview with author, Church of the Epiphany, Washington, DC, August 4, 2005. Examples of Washington luminaries who were members of the parish in 1878 would include Secretary of the Treasury John Sherman and Chief Justice Morrison Waite. “A Notable Church,” WaPo, 5/11/1878, 2.

  The newlyweds, whose union: Pulitzer told this tale to a neighbor in St. Louis. George S. John, “Joseph Pulitzer: Early Life in St. Louis and His Founding and Conduct of the Post-Dispatch up to 1883,” Missouri Historical Review (January 1931), 67.

  The Reverend John H. Chew: As H. L. Mencken observed, “Most Americans when they accumulate money climb the golden spires of the nearest Episcopal Church.” Quoted in Collier, The Rockefellers, 36–37. The stained-glass window has since been moved to the front wall of the church: Jones, interview.

  CHAPTER 12: A PAPER OF HIS OWN

  This chapter, as well as subsequent ones, benefits greatly from internal Post-Dispatch documents that came to light in 2008, when the Fogarty Papers became known. For more information, see page 12.

  In the early morning: At Hudnut’s pharmacy downtown, the temperature had hit ninety-two degrees the afternoon before. The Pulitzers may have been lucky and avoided much of the heat by staying for several days along the ocean at Long Branch, New Jersey, where Joseph held reservations at the West End hotel, which opened for
the summer season the day following their wedding. With each passing year, Long Branch was becoming an increasingly popular destination for the wealthy seeking a cool spot for the summer. It had a safe blue-blooded pedigree. As one hotel operator told the New York Times that June, he had “not received a single application for rooms from a Jew this year, while at the same time last year he had many.” (NYT, 6/11/1878, 1.)

  Having spent all: NYS, 10/20/1878, 3.

  When Joseph and Kate: NYS, 10/6/1878, 3. The socialists were the demagogues and were dangerous, admitted Pulitzer. But the despotic solution chosen by Bismarck was equally, if not more, dangerous. “To Germany it is a choice between the Scylla and the Charybdis,” said Pulitzer, referring to a mythical Greek sea monster and a whirlpool whose positions in a narrow channel meant that fleeing from one put one in danger of the other.

  In Paris, Kate: KP to JP, 10/2/1904, JP-CU.

  The two-month honeymoon: NYT, 9/12/1878, 2.

  The Pulitzers’ European: NYS, 9/6/1878.

  Because Pulitzer hated: Ibid., 3. Pulitzer’s friends Hutchins and Cockerill, at the Washington Post, likewise viewed the incident as further evidence of the illegitimacy of the administration and found it sufficiently noteworthy for an editorial. (WaPo, 10/7/1878, 2.)

  At the Sun: NYS, 9/22, 10/6, 10/13. 10/19, 10/20, and 10/27/1878.

  The most singular: NYS, 10/27/1878, 3.

  Although long-winded: NYS, 9/22/1878, 3.

  The St. Louis: W. H. Bishop, “St. Louis,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, quoted in JSR, 21; “Remarks of Gov. Chas. P. Johnson,” Birthday Anniversary Dinner,” 4/10/1907, 20–21, PDA.

  Encouraged, Pulitzer went: JN to JP, 3/10/1900, JP-CU.