Greeley was the great man of the _Tribune_ office, but Dana, in the present-day language of Park Row, was the live wire almost from the day of his return from Europe. When Greeley went abroad, Dana took charge. Greeley now drew fifty dollars a week; Dana got twenty-five, Bayard Taylor twenty, George Ripley fifteen. Dana’s five shares of stock netted him about two thousand dollars a year in addition to his salary. Here is a part of a letter which Dana wrote in 1852 to James S. Pike, the Washington correspondent of the _Tribune_: KEENEST OF PIKES: What a desert void of news you keep at Washington! For goodness’ sake, kick up a row of some sort. Fight a duel, defraud the Treasury, set fire to the fueling-mill, get Black Dan [Webster] drunk, or commit some other excess that will make a stir. The solemn phrases of transcendentalism had vanished from the tip of Dana’s pen. In the fight over slavery in the fifties, the effort of Greeley and Dana was against the further spread of the institution over new American territory, rather than for its complete overthrow. When Greeley was at the helm, the _Tribune_ appeared to admit the possibility of secession, a forerunner of “Let the erring sisters depart in peace.” But when Dana was left in charge, the editorials pleaded for the integrity of the Union at any cost. Greeley was heart and soul for liberty, but his fist was not in the fight. Of the political situation in 1854, Henry Wilson wrote, in his “Rise and Fall of the Slave Power”: At the outset Mr. Greeley was hopeless, and seemed disinclined to enter the contest. He told his associates that he would not restrain them; but, as for himself, he had no heart for the strife. They were more hopeful; and Richard Hildreth, the historian; Charles A. Dana, the veteran journalist; James S. Pike, and other able writers, opened and continued a powerful opposition in its columns, and did very much to rally and assure the friends of freedom and nerve them for the fight. Dana went farther than Greeley cared to go, particularly in his attacks on the Democrats; so far, in fact, that Greeley often pleaded with him to stop. Greeley wrote to James S. Pike: Charge Dana not to slaughter anybody, but be mild and meek-souled like me. Greeley wrote to Dana from Washington, where Dana’s radicalism was making his colleague uncomfortable: Now I write once more to entreat that I may be allowed to conduct the _Tribune_ with reference to the mile wide that stretches either way from Pennsylvania Avenue. It is but a small space, and you have all the world besides. I cannot stay here unless this request is complied with. I would rather cease to live at all.