news, and in supplying the final editions of his paper with everything of importance chronicled up to the moment of going to press.
Yet, reading through those editorials of twenty years, with the light of subsequent events to guide, I am amazed at the sureness of his instinct, the accuracy of his judgment, and the terse vigor of his pronouncements on every event of more than ephemeral interest. His political forecasts were often as erroneous as those of other editorial prophets; but his instincts never once failed on a definite question of right and wrong. There he was infallible.
When the treacherous murder of General Canby by the Modoc Indians, in the lava beds of Oregon, aroused a clamor for vengeance throughout the country, he took the part of the poor savages who had no newspaper organ to advocate their cause, saying:
He was a Democrat, imbued with the best spirit of his party, but he was never a blind partisan. On the negro question he stood beside his friend, Wendell Philipps, on the platform of Daniel O'Connell. Here is one of his early pleas in behalf of the Southern negro, written at a time when the rascally rule of the carpet-baggers in the South had made even the Republicans in the North lose much of their sympathy for the freedmen.