Springfield, MA: Gurdon Bill & Company; Cincinnati, Ohio: H.C. Johnson; Chicago: Charles Bill, 1868.

8vo.; full brown morocco stamped in gilt and blind.

First edition.

Charles A. Dana (1819-1897) came to Ulysses Grant as an exile from Greeley’s Tribune, where his 18-year career as a journalist ended in a bitter dispute over the paper’s editorial line on the war. One of the few Union generals who understood the importance of the press in the war, Grant saw the equation between access and favorable coverage and Dana was soon sharing the General’s mess, and writing reports back to Washington that stressed the Grant’s competence. During the Vicksburg campaign, Dana did Grant the tremendous service of endorsing the wisdom of the siege strategy, and he undercut another Grant rival, John A. McClernand. It is a measure of how heavily the administration relied on Dana’s reports that Lincoln removed McClernand from his command, and stuck with Grant. Dana even did Grant the huge favor of sugarcoating his drinking. “Whenever he commits the folly of tasting liquor,” Dana told the White House, “Rawlins can be counted on to stop him.”

After Vicksburg, Dana was made an assistant secretary of war and sent to spy on Rosecrans in his fight against Braxton Bragg at Chatanooga. After the war, in 1868, Dana won the backing of leading New York politicos and businessmen to start The New York Sun, whose editorial line was committed to speedy restoration of the rebel states and the advancement of Grant to the presidency. He soon broke with Grant after the administration took office, however, and opposed him vigorously in 1872 with his paper’s slogan of “turn the rascals out.” Unlike Grant, Dana’s post-Civil War career was one of uninterrupted success. The Sun thrived and made its editor a wealthy man, as did the royalties from Dana’s hugely successful, sixteen volume, American Cyclopedia, which he edited along with George Ripley, and which sold over 3 million copies in two editions.