The Evening Post: A Century of JournalismNevins, Allan
History
The Evening Post: A Century of Journalism
Nevins, Allan
New York post
Our third President and the _Evening Post_ stepped upon the stage
almost simultaneously. “Hamilton’s gazette,” said travelers from the
South, was to be seen at Monticello; while the _Evening Post_ followed
Jefferson with steady hostility as he came forward to play his part, in
the words of a description in its meager news columns:
Dressed in long boots, with tops turned down about the ankles,
like a Virginian buck; overalls of corduroy, faded by frequent
immersions in soapsuds from a yellow to a dull white; a red,
single-breasted waistcoat; a light brown coat with brass buttons,
both coat and waistcoat quite threadbare; linen very considerably
soiled; hair uncombed and beard unshaven.
Coleman’s most unjustifiable display of party animosity occurred
when his promise of fairness in the _Evening Post’s_ prospectus was
still fresh in men’s minds. In the summer of 1802 he reprinted from
the Richmond _Recorder_ the treacherous Callender’s attack upon the
personal morals of the President, arousing a storm of protest. Much
of this storm fell upon the head of Hamilton, and on Sept. 29 Coleman
published a statement that Hamilton had not seen the attack before it
appeared. Indeed, wrote Coleman, Hamilton had been consulted upon only
one of the twelve Jefferson-Callender articles, that one involving
constitutional questions. When the statesman saw the accusations,
he had expressed regret, for “he declared his sentiments to be
averse to all personalities, not immediately connected with public
considerations.” But the editor did not take his lesson to heart.
From time to time he indulged in outbursts against Jefferson of a
character which we can comprehend only when we recall how outrageously
even Washington had been vilified by the opposition press. Coleman
was not content with harping upon Jefferson’s actual humiliations and
errors, as his flight before Tarleton in 1781 and his opposition to the
Constitution in 1788. He accused him of trying to cheat a friend out
of a debt, and repeated the tale of a black harem. In 1805 he wrote:
“There is a point of profligacy in the line of human impudence, at
which the most disguised heart seems to lose all sensibility to shame;
and we congratulate the American public that our chief magistrate has
so completely arrived at this enviable point.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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