Charles Anderson Dana
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Charles Anderson Dana | |
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Born | Hinsdale, New Hampshire, U.S. | August 8, 1819
Died | October 17, 1897 Long Island, New York, U.S. | (aged 78)
Occupation(s) | Journalist Newspaper editor |
Relatives | Ruth Draper (granddaughter) |
Signature | |
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Charles Anderson Dana (August 8, 1819 – October 17, 1897) was an American journalist, author, and senior government official. He was a top aide to Horace Greeley as the managing editor of the powerful Republican newspaper New-York Tribune until 1862. During the American Civil War, he served as Assistant Secretary of War, playing especially the role of the liaison between the War Department and General Ulysses S. Grant. In 1868 he became the editor and part-owner of The New York Sun. He at first appealed to working class Democrats but after 1890 became a champion of business-oriented conservatism. Dana was an avid art collector of paintings and porcelains and boasted of being in possession of many items not found in several European museums.
Early life
Dana was born in
Journalism
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4e/Charles_Anderson_Dana.jpg/220px-Charles_Anderson_Dana.jpg)
Dana had written for and managed the Harbinger, the Brook Farm publication devoted to social reform and general literature. Later, beginning 1844, he also wrote for and edited the Boston Chronotype of
Returning to the Tribune in 1849, Dana became a proprietor and its managing editor, and in this capacity he actively promoted the anti-slavery cause, seeming to shape the paper's policy at a time when Horace Greeley was undecided and vacillating.[1] However, in 1895, as editor of The Sun, he wrote "we are in the midst of a growing menace," the year of eventual black heavyweight champion Jack Johnson's first professional fight. "The black man is rapidly forging to the front ranks in athletics, especially in the field of fisticuffs. We are in the midst of a black rise against white supremacy" in the field of fistic sport.[5][6]
When Charles A. Dana bought The Sun in 1868, he used the paper to support
In 1861, Dana went to
During the first year of the war, the ideas of Greeley and of Dana as to the proper conduct of military operations were somewhat at variance; the board of managers of the Tribune asked for Dana's resignation in 1862, apparently because of this disagreement and wide temperamental differences between him and Greeley.[8]
Civil War
When Dana left the Tribune,
Return to journalism
In 1865–1866, Dana conducted the newly established and unsuccessful Chicago Republican, when the paper was owned by
Upon taking control of the organization, he announced his credo:It will study condensation, clearness, point, and will endeavor to present its daily photograph of the whole world's doings in the most luminous and lively manner.[19]
Under Dana's control, The Sun opposed the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson; it supported Grant for the presidency in 1868; it was a sharp critic of Grant as president; and in 1872 took part in the Liberal Republican revolt and urged Greeley's nomination.[20][21] In contrast with "the young Dana [who was] touched by the Transcendental wand, a fiery youth, frank, open, trusting, a believer in the possibility of realizing an ideal society upon earth ... the Dana of the seventies and eighties and nineties [was] an aging cynic.... [H]e fought civil service reform tooth and nail.... He believed in expanding the American republic by wholesale land-grabbing.... He was opposed to the main aims of the labor movement.... Half the time he and the Sun were on the side of the worst politicians in Tammany, and against the reform movements in city government."[22]
Dana made the Sun a
In 1876, the Sun favored
In 1888 it supported Cleveland and opposed
Writing
Dana's literary style came to be the style of The Sun—simple, strong, clear, boiled down.[20] He recorded no theories of journalism other than those of common sense and human interest. He was impatient of prolixity, cant, and the conventional standards of news importance. Three of his lectures on journalism were published in 1895 as the Art of Newspaper Making.
With
Dana had an interest in literature. His first book was a volume of stories translated from German, entitled The Black Aunt (New York and Leipzig, 1848). In 1857, he edited an anthology, The Household Book of Poetry. His translation from German of "Nutcracker and Sugardolly: A Fairy Tale" was published in 1856 by the Philadelphia publisher C.G. Henderson & Co. In addition to translating German, Dana could read the
Dana edited The Life of Ulysses S. Grant: General of the Armies of the United States, published over his name and that of General James H. Wilson in 1868. His Recollections of the Civil War[24] and Eastern Journeys: Some Notes of Travel in Russia, in the Caucasus, and to Jerusalem were published in 1898.
Early in his journalism career, in 1849, he wrote a series of newspaper articles in defense of
Art collecting
Dana was an art collector. In 1880 he built a large residence in New York City on the corner of Madison Avenue and 60th Street and furnished it with paintings, tapestries, and Chinese porcelains, giving his greatest attention to his porcelains. He devoted much time and historical study in these areas of art throughout his life. An unnamed connoisseur praised the historical value and quality of items in his collection, noting that "they are not in the British Museum; they are not in the Louvre; and they are conspicuously absent at Dresden."[25]
See also
References
Citations
- ^ a b c d Chisholm 1911, p. 791.
- ^ O'Brien, Frank Michael (1918). The Story of The Sun. New York: George H. Doran Company. pp. 207–208. Retrieved 4 December 2011.
- ^ You know who was into Karl Marx? No, not AOC. Abraham Lincoln, The Washington Post, Gillian Brockell, July 27, 2019
- ^ Borden, M. (1959). Five Letters of Charles A. Dana to Karl Marx. Journalism Quarterly, 36(3), 314-316. https://doi.org/10.1177/107769905903600306
- ^ Davenport Weekly Republican, Davenport, Iowa , Wed, Nov 20, 1895, Page 4
- ^ "Unforgivable Blackness . Sparring . Timeline | PBS". www.pbs.org. Retrieved 2016-04-24.
- ^ Rivas, Eric X., "Charles A. Dana, the Civil War Era, and American Republicanism" (2019). FIU Electronic, Theses and Dissertations. 4347.
- ^ a b c d Wilson & Fiske 1900.
- ^ Guarneri, Carl J., Lincoln's Informer, p. 103.
- ^ Dana 1909, p. 61.
- ^ Winters 1991, p. 177.
- ^ Dana 1909, pp. 18–20.
- ^ Simpson 2014, p. 249.
- ^ Dana 1909, p. 16.
- ^ Wilson 1907, Preface.
- ^ George, Tom M., "'Mechem' or 'Mack': How a One-Word Correction in the Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln Reveals the Truth about an 1856 Political Event," Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, vol. 33, no. 2 (2012), pp. 20-33.
- ^ Chisholm 1911, pp. 791–792.
- ^ Mott 1962, pp. 373–374.
- ^ O'Brien, Frank M. (1918). The Story of the Sun: New York, 1833-1918. New York, George H. Doran company. p. 199.
- ^ a b c d e Chisholm 1911, p. 792.
- ^ Mott 1962, pp. 270, 369–371.
- ^ Nevins, Allan, "The Effects of Greeley on Dana," The Journalism Quarterly, vol. V, no. 2 (June, 1928), pp. 2, 3.
- ^ Mott 1962, pp. 511–512.
- ^ Dana 1909.
- ^ Wilson 1907, pp. 504–505.
Sources
- public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Dana, Charles Anderson". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 7 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 791–792. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
- Dana, Charles Anderson (1909). Recollections of the Civil War. D. Appleton and Company.
- Mott, Frank Luther (1962). American Journalism: A History, 1690-1960. Macmillan., pp. 373–378.
- ISBN 978-0-395-65994-6.
- ISBN 0-684-84927-5.
- Wilson, James Harrison (1907). The Life of Charles A. Dana. Harper & Brothers.
- ISBN 978-0-8071-1725-5.
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Wilson, J. G.; Fiske, J., eds. (1900). . Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. New York: D. Appleton.
Commentary on sources
- Recollections of the Civil War (Dana 1909) was actually written by Ida Tarbell; it is "a biographical essay disguised as a memoir." Guarneri, Carl J., Lincoln's Informer, p. 6.
- Historian Allan Nevins wrote that Wilson's biography of Dana (Wilson 1907) "is thoroughly unsatisfactory. It is too brief: it lacks documentation; it gives too much emphasis to Dana's service as Assistant Secretary of War in the Civil War, and too little to his work as editor; and above all, it makes no real effort to explore Dana's personality, to penetrate to the inner life of the man." Nevins, Allan, "The Effects of Greeley on Dana," The Journalism Quarterly, vol. V, no. 2 (June, 1928), p. 1.
- On the other hand, Guarneri writes, "In 1907 Dana's wartime colleague James H. Wilson compiled a deeply admiring biography that is important for including unique Civil War anecdotes and now-lost letters." Guarneri, Carl J., Lincoln's Informer, p. 6.
Further reading
- Guarneri, Carl J. Lincoln's Informer: Charles A. Dana and the Inside Story of the Union War (University Press of Kansas, 2019).
- Maihafer, Harry J. The General and the Journalists: Ulysses S. Grant, Horace Greeley, and Charles Dana (Brassey's, Inc., 1998).
- O'Brien, Frank Michael. The Story of The Sun: New York, 1833–1918 (1918) Online at Google.
- Steele, Janet E. The Sun Shines for All: Journalism and Ideology in the Life of Charles A. Dana (Syracuse University Press, 1993).
- Stone, Candace. Dana and the Sun (Dodd, Mead, 1938).
External links
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg/30px-Commons-logo.svg.png)
- Works by Charles A. Dana at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Charles Anderson Dana at Internet Archive
- Works by Charles Anderson Dana at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Mr. Lincoln and New York: Charles A. Dana Archived 2005-08-27 at the Wayback Machine
- Mr. Lincoln's White House: Charles A. Dana
- "Charles Anderson Dana". Find a Grave. Retrieved August 10, 2010.
- New International Encyclopedia. 1905. .