Part 11 (2/2)

There was a party of reaction in Kentucky, clai to the lead of the party of repression at the North It refused to admit that the head of the South was in the lion's et it out The Courier-Journal proposed to stroke the mane, not twist the tail of the lion Thus it stood between two fires There arose a not unnatural distrust of the journalistic monopoly created by the consolidation of the three for an unfa its policy of sectional conciliation it picked its way perilously through the cross currents of public opinion There was scarcely a sinister purpose that was not alleged against it by its enemies; scarcely a hostile device that was not undertaken to put it down and drive it out

Its constituency represented an unknown quantity In any event it had to be created Meanwhile, it e of the venture, by the integrity of its convictions and aims, and by faith in the future of the city, the state and the country

Still, to be precise, it was the ht before the good people of Louisville had gone to bed expecting nothing unusual to happen They awoke to encounter an uninvited guest arrived a little before the dawn No hint of its coreater Truth to say, it was not a pleased surprise, because, as it flared before the eye of the startled citizen in big Gothic letters, The Courier-Journal, there issued thence an aggressive self-confidence which affronted the _aers They were used to a very different style of newspaper approach

Nor was the absence of a timorous demeanor its only offense The Courier had its partisans, the Journal and the Democrat had their friends

The trio stood as ancient landnized and familiar institutions Here was a double-headed”by your leave” or ”blast your eyes” or any other politeness, had taken possession of eachand was come to stay

The Journal established by Mr Prentice, the Courier by Mr Halde to the standards of those days successful newspapers But the War of Sections had es At its close new conditions appeared on every side

A revolution had come into the business and the spirit of American journaliseneration struggled for the right of way Yet Louisville was a city of the tenth or twelfth class, having hardly enough patronage to sustain one daily newspaper of the first or second class The idea of consolidating the three thus contending to divide a patronage so insufficient, naturally suggested itself during the years i the war But it did not take definite shape until 1868

Mr Haldeether profitable pursuit of his ”rights in the territories” and had resu prospects I had succeeded Mr Prentice in the editorshi+p and part ownershi+p of the Journal Both Mr Haldeman and I were newspaper ood friends; and after our rivalry of six months maintained with activity on both sides, but without the publication of an unkind word on either, a union of forces seeent To practical men the need of this was not a debatable question All that was required was an adjust with the si the Courier and the Journal, it ended by the purchase of the Democrat, which it did not seem safe to leave outside

V

The political conditions in Kentucky were anomalous The Republican Party had not yet definitely taken root Many of the rich old Whigs, who had held to the Govern Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, had turned Deone with the Confederacy The party in power called itself Democratic, but was in fact a body of reactionary nondescripts clai, to the hard-and-fast prejudices of other days

The situation ro testimony”--the introduction to the courts of law of the newly made freedmen as witnesses--barred by the state constitution, was the burning issue A roes could not be lawfully proved in court Everything froht be cited before a jury, but not a hu if his skin happened to be black

[Illustration: Mr Watterson's Editorial Staff in 1868, When the Three Daily Newspapers of Louisville Were United into the ”_Courier-Journal_”

Mr George D Prentice and Mr Watterson Are in the Center]

To my mind this was monstrous From my cradle I had detested slavery

The North will never kno o with the Republican Party, however, because after the death of Abraham Lincoln it had intrenched itself in the proscription of Southern th and had broken down There was nothing for me, and the Confederates ith me, but the ancient label of a Democracy worn by a riffraff of opportunists, Jeffersonian principles having quite gone to seed But I proposed to lead and reform it, not to follow and fall in behind the selfish and short-sighted tiot nothing; and instant upon finding norance which was at least for the ti mainly what I had to look to for a constituency

Mr Prentice, who knew the lay of the ground better than I did, advised against it The personal risk counted for so issue, which--the coaveof the bully in the tone--that I ht not be able to hit a barn door at ten paces, but could shoot with anymyself at all tihting record in the army and it was not doubted that I meant what I said

But it proved a bitter, hard, uphill struggle, for a long while against odds, before negro testieneration of politicians were sent to the rear Finally, in 1876, a Democratic State Convention put its e to the National Democratic Convention of that year called to meet at St

Louis to put a Presidential ticket in the field

The Courier-Journal having colish dailies of the city the public began to rebel It could not see that instead of three newspapers of the third or fourth class Louisville was given one newspaper of the first class; that instead of dividing the local patronage in three inadequate portions, wasted upon a triple co the one newspaper to engage in a more equal coer cities as Cincinnati and St Louis; and that one of the contracting parties needing an editor, the other a publisher, in coether the tere able to put their trained faculties to the best account

Nevertheless, during thirty-five years Mr Haldeman and I labored side by side, not the least difference having arisen between us The attacks to which ere subjected froether the closer These attacks were so and sometimes comical, but they had one characteristic feature: Each started out apparently under a high state of exciterief, to be ani short of annihilation Frequently the assailants would lie in wait to see how the Courier-Journal's cat was going to juht take the other side; and invariably, even if the Courier-Journal stood for the reforan a system of misrepresentation and abuse In no instance did they attain any success

Only once, during the Free Silver craze of 1896, and the dark and tragic days that followed it the three or four succeeding years, the paper having stood, as it had stood during the Greenback craze, for sound er It cost more of labor and patience to save it from destruction than it had cost to create it thirty years before Happily Mr Haldeman lived to see the rescue complete, the tide turned and the future safe