The _World_ had a fast printing-press and obtained an Associated Press franchise. It hired some good men, including Alexander Cummings, who had made his mark on the Philadelphia _North American_, James R. Spalding, who had been with Raymond on the _Courier and Enquirer_, and Manton Marble. But the _World_, stripped of lively human news, was a failure. After two hundred thousand dollars had been sunk in a footless enterprise, the religious coterie retired, and left the _World_ to the worldly. Its later owners were variously reported to be August Belmont, Fernando Wood, and Benjamin Wood; but it finally passed entirely into the hands of Manton Marble, who made it a free-trade Democratic organ. Marble had learned the newspaper business on the _Journal_ and the _Traveler_ in Boston, and in 1858 and 1859 he was on the staff of the _Evening Post_. In July, 1861, the _World_ and the _Courier and Enquirer_ were consolidated, and Colonel J. Watson Webb, who had owned and edited the latter paper for thirty-four years, retired from newspaper life. During the Civil War the _World_ was strongly opposed to President Lincoln’s administration. Perhaps this fact accounts for the punishment which befell it through the misdeed of an outsider. In May, 1864, there was sent to most of the morning-newspaper offices what purported to be a proclamation by the President, appointing a day of fasting and prayer, and calling into military service, by volunteering and draft, four hundred thousand additional troops. This was a fake, engineered by Joseph Howard, Jr., a newspaperman who had been employed on the _Tribune_, and who put out the hoax for the purpose of influencing the stock-market. The _Sun_, the _Tribune_, and the _Times_ did not fall for the hoax, but the _Herald_, the _World_, and the _Journal of Commerce_ printed it, stopping their presses when they learned the truth. General John A. Dix seized the offices of the _Herald_, the _World_, and the _Journal of Commerce_, put soldiers to guard them, and suppressed the papers for several days--all this by order of the President. Howard, the forger, was arrested, and on his confession was sent to Fort Lafayette, where he was a prisoner for several weeks. Manton Marble wrote a bitter letter to Lincoln in protest against what he considered an outrage on the _World_. Marble remained at the head of the paper until 1876. The _Sun_ took the setback of Bull Run with better grace than most of the papers--far better than Horace Greeley, who yelled for a truce. It seemed to see that this was only the beginning of a long conflict, which must be fought to the end, regardless of disappointments. On August 15, 1861, it declared: Let there be but one war. Better it should cost millions of lives than that we should live in hourly dread of wars, contiguous to a people who could make foreign alliances and land armies upon our shores to destroy our liberties. On the subject of the war’s cost it said: