Herald for 1858-1859, "printed on splendid rag paper which is white and strong to this hour," the news is treated in a manner very mild compared to the conservative dailies of to-day, and what is more, the accounts are accurate. Yet Bennett, to his contemporaries, was a blackguard and all that was horrible, and Mr. Villard, who fails to see Bennett as an instrument and whose attention is concentrated on him as an individual and a sensationalist, can only see by the reflected light of the past. .
This seeing the past in the light of present-day developments—developments which our ancestors could not foretell—must be studiously avoided in making ^historical judgments. Mr. Villard's horror over the elder Bennett is no greater than the disgust with which the good people of Boston viewed his own distinguished grandfather, William Lloyd Garrison, and it must be remembered that, a century ago, the editors of even the conservative papers were men who did things that the editors of the radical papers of to-day would consider barbarous and vulgar.
The elder Bennett was pro-slavery and pro-Tammany, and it was said that not until a mob had gathered in front of his office did he become a loyal supporter of the Union. And yet Count Gurowski wrote in his diary, in August, 1861, that it was "generally believed that Lincoln read only the Herald."
In the study of the history of journalism the personal characteristics of the editor are not of vital importance, unless those personal characteristics are obtruded in such a way as to corrupt the public mind. There is great danger that, in writing history and in making historical judgments, we may use the phraseology and assume the moral tone of those who would arrogate to themselves the exclusive control of moral standards.
