Page:History of American Journalism.djvu/331



In the matter of publishing war news, possibly the most im- portant papers were those of New York, which still had an ex- tensive circulation out of the city. Honors were fairly evenly divided among The Herald, The Times, and The Tribune. The first had already learned the value of the interview in connection with John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry, and this innovation proved of the utmost value in getting news from those in au- thority. Before Sumter was fired upon, The Herald had sent to the various strategic points in the South correspondents with instructions to gather Southern newspapers, to collect all in- formation possible about Confederate situations, and to forward the same at once to New York. The data thus gathered enabled The Herald as hostilities broke out to publish a muster roll of the Confederate army with such accuracy that a leak was suspected in the War Office at Richmond. Several times The Herald pub- lished items based upon such accurate information that rivals positively asserted that The Herald was in collusion with Con- federate authorities. In the number of war correspondents pos- sibly The Herald excelled. Every army of the North had its Herald headquarters equipped with tents, a wagon bearing the name of the paper, and several attendants. A full half-million dollars was spent by this paper on its war correspondence. The Times had for its representatives equally as daring men : one of them, being caught in an unavoidable delay which prevented his presence with the Union forces, deliberately surrendered himself to the Confederate army in order that he might witness the battle from the opposite side. His correspondence was un- usually interesting, because, being written inside the Confeder- ate lines, it gave a new point of view to military manceuvers. Correspondents for other papers outside of New York, however, achieved distinction because of the excellence of their reports. C. H. Ray, of The Chicago Tribune, attracted much attention when he exposed the fake correspondents of The London Times. (Incidentally, it may be said that much of the correspondence which appeared in English papers was written in London and was based upon data taken from Union and Confederate news- papers.) The London Times was also criticized in the American press because of the insertion of an item, sent by its New York