Raymond of the Times

In an unfinished Manhattan brownstone building, one September night in 1851, a slight, intent man of 31 sat writing swiftly by candlelight. His name was Henry Jarvis Raymond, and he was rushing to put out the first edition of a new daily newspaper. The news was thin: President Fillmore was touring New England, Jenny Lind was to sing in Rochester, elections were coming up in France. But when Raymond's four-page, 1-c- daily appeared next morning, it opened a new chapter in the history of U.S. journalism. That day the New York Times was born.

In the first century of the good grey Times, Founder Raymond's fame was overshadowed by that of the Times's latter-day owner, Adolph Ochs.* Even to most Timesmen, Raymond was only a portrait peering down from a tenth-floor wall. But to one Times editor, with a special bent for history, Founder Raymond's portrait was an invitation to reverie. Francis Brown began spending his spare time trying to flesh out Editor Raymond's bones. Next week, after many a year of odd-moment research, Author Brown, now editor of the Times Sunday Book Review, brings Raymond to life in a biography (Raymond of the Times, Norton; $5). From it emerges clearly the fact that if the Times has grown great for its devotion, to printing all the news, and printing it straight, it was Henry Raymond who laid down the first principles by which it still lives. His original prospectus drew the pattern: "The Times will seek to be conservative in such a way as shall best promote needful reform ... It will best promote needful reform ... to substitute reason for prejudice, a cool and intelligent judgment for passion, in all . . . discussions of public affairs."

Shorthand & Daniel Webster. Raymond, a crack editor, was also a crack reporter. Born in upstate New York, farm-bred, he learned his newspapering under the great, grumpy Horace Greeley. On Greeley's Tribune, he devised his own shorthand system for swift, accurate note taking, sharpened his news nose on scoops. He beat James Gordon Bennett's Herald on a Boston speech by Daniel Webster (he took printers and type with him, had his story set on the boat back to New York).

Soon Greeley was calling him "the best reporter in the state." But when the Tribune refused to raise his $20-a-week salary, Raymond moved over to the Courier & Enquirer as an editor--for $5 more. There he helped found the Associated Press (by negotiating for telegraph wires to carry the news), developed a deft knack for winning the confidence of notables. Webster remembered the accuracy of his reporting so well that, when Raymond was delayed on his way to Washington by a train wreck, old Daniel postponed a speech for Raymond to cover it. Raymond was too antislavery for the Courier & Enquirer. Besides, he itched to start his own sheet.

Ink & Blood. With George Jones, also a former Tribune man, Raymond raised $40,000 to launch the daily Times. He drove his staff hard, drove himself harder. A good editor, said Raymond, needed "a constitution like the Wandering Jew's, a patience as inexhaustible as his frame, and a physical endurance equal to that of a victim of the Inquisition." His own 5 ft. 6 frame was slight, but he often worked twelve and 15 hours at a stretch, could keep writing even while listening to unrelated problems. "Get all of the news," he demanded. Much of it he got himself. He covered Napoleon Ill's war against Austria, and after the Civil War broke out, he turned up to cover the first Battle of Bull Run. Wrote Raymond of the Union retreat there: "The crowd in the rear became absolutely frenzied with fear, and an immense mass of wagons, horses, men on foot, and flying soldiers came dashing down the hill." But a censor held up his account so long that the Herald beat him on the streets.

He spared no expense to get the news. He spread Timesmen all over the Civil War fields. He paid Correspondent Ben C. Truman* an unheard-of $100 weekly; Truman sped to the Times the news of a Union victory at Franklin, Tenn. four days before the War Department got it. (But the Times was scooped on the fall of Vicksburg because its dispatch bearer got drunk along the way.) So timely were Times reports that General McClellan accused Raymond of aiding the enemy. The little general demanded that the paper be suppressed because it printed a detailed map of the defenses around Washington. Snapped Raymond: a similar map could be bought in any Washington bookstore. Nobody could intimidate Raymond. In the Draft Riots of '63, when surly crowds menaced the Times building, he manned a Catling gun himself.

Raymond's all-the-news formula worked. By 1865, the Times's circulation went up to 75,000; in income, it was second only to the Herald. Raymond also prospered; he dined in the walnut-paneled Union Club. Politically, he was neither as "infernally Tory" as Greeley (now his archfoe) claimed, nor the "doughty little bluestocking" the Herald called him. He steered a middle course, insisted that both radicalism and conservatism were necessary for balance.

Defeat & Death. While his paper prospered, his own political star rose. He served as a state assemblyman and lieutenant governor, helped start the Republican Party by writing one of its first statements of principles. Lincoln came to rely on him so much that Raymond managed his 1864 re-election campaign. Lincoln called him "my lieutenant general," and backed Raymond's own successful campaign for Congress.

There, after Lincoln's death, Raymond supported Andrew Johnson's benevolent policy for reconstructing the conquered South. For his pains, when Johnson nominated him minister to Austria, the Senate refused to confirm him. Soon afterward, Raymond's health began to fail. He still had enough fight to begin the Times's crusade which eventually smoked out the plundering Tweed Ring. But one June night in 1869, Henry Raymond went out for the evening, was brought home unconscious from a stroke. The next day, at 49, he died. Manhattan flags flew at half-staff. Horace Greeley, once his friend, put aside their later enmity to help carry him to his grave. The Rev. Henry Ward Beecher spoke his eulogy: "A man without hate . . . without animosity."

* Who bought into the paper in 1896 after it had passed through two previous ownerships. * No kin to the President.

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