Eastern newspapers at first failed to appreciate the importance of this challenge and acceptance, although the arrangement caused extensive comment in the Illinois press, as the above quotations would indicate. In the older section the breach between Douglas and Buchanan continued to be extensively treated by editorial writers. CHAPTER IV REPORTING THE DEBATES MR. HORACE WHITE Mr. White, the official reporter of the Debates for the Chicago Press and Tribune, was born in New Hampshire in 1834. When three years of age, he was taken with the family to Wisconsin Territory, where the city of Beloit now stands. In 1849, Horace entered Beloit College, was graduated in 1853, and became a reporter on the Chicago Evening Journal. In 1857 he spent a short time in Kansas, returning to Chicago to become an editorial writer on the Chicago Press and Tribune. While holding this position, he was designated as chief correspondent to accompany Abraham Lincoln in 1858 on his campaign against Stephen A. Douglas for the United States senatorship. The notable features of this campaign were given to the public chiefly through Mr. White's letters to the Chicago Tribune, and were subsequently condensed by him at the instance of William H. Herndon and published in the latter's Life of Lincoln (2d ed., D. Appleton & Co., New York). In 1861 Mr. White was sent to Washington as correspondent of the Chicago Tribune, and while there he filled successfully the places of clerk of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs and clerk in the War Department. In the latter capacity he was assigned to the special service of P. H. Watson, assistant secretary of war, and later of Edwin M. Stanton, secretary. In 1865 he became part owner and chief editor of the Chicago Tribune, which place he filled until September, 1874, when he resigned and was succeeded by Joseph Medill; he spent the year 1875 in Europe. In 1877 he removed to New York and became associated with Henry Villard in the latter's railroad enterprises, especially that of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Co., of which he was treasurer for the next few years. In 1881 he joined with Mr. Villard in the purchase of the New York Evening Post, of which he became the president and one of the editors, in conjunction with Carl Schurz and Edwin L. Godkin Mr. Schurz retired in 1884, Mr. Godkin in 1899, and Mr. White in 1903. Mr. White is best known by his contributions to the various campaigns for sound money that have been fought in the political arena since the close of the Civil War. In addition to his editorial work he has been a frequent contributor to the magazines and pamphlet literature of that period. He resides (1908) in New York City. It was my good fortune to accompany Mr. Lincoln during his political campaign against Senator Douglas in 1858, not only at the joint debates but also at most of the smaller meetings where his competitor was not present. We traveled together many thousands of miles. I was in the employ of the Chicago Tribune, then called the Press and Tribune. Senator Douglas had entered upon his campaign with two short-hand reporters, James B. Sheridan and Henry Binmore, whose duty it was to "write it up" in the columns of the Chicago Times. The necessity of counteracting or matching that force became apparent very soon, and I was chosen to write up Mr. Lincoln's campaign. I was not a short-hand reporter. The verbatim reporting for the Chicago Tribune in the joint debates was done by Mr. Robert R. Hitt, late assistant secretary of state. . . . . Verbatim reporting was a new feature in journalism in Chicago and Mr. Hitt was the pioneer thereof. The publication of Senator Douglas's opening speech in that campaign, delivered on the evening of July 9, by the Tribune the next morning, was a feat hitherto unexampled in the West, and most mortifying to the Democratic newspaper, the Times, and to Sheridan and Binmore, who, Mr. Horace White in Herndon's Life of Lincoln, by permission of D. Appleton & Co. |