Henry Jarvis Raymond
Henry J. Raymond helped create one of the country’s major political parties, but his creation of one of its leading newspapers may be his greatest achievement.
Henry Jarvis Raymond was born in Lima, Livingston County, on Jan. 24, 1820. He could read at age three and recite speeches from memory at five. After graduating from Genesee Wesleyan Seminary and the University of Vermont, he moved to New York City to become a newspaper man.
The newspaper business was booming in the early 1840s. New technologies allowed papers to reach wider audiences at cheaper prices. A multitude of papers were competing for readers and political influence when Raymond arrived in town.
Raymond applied for work at The New-Yorker, a weekly paper he’d read back home. The publisher, Horace Greeley, wouldn’t hire Raymond at first but gave him occasional assignments. He finally hired Raymond full-time to help launch a new daily paper, the New York Tribune. Raymond reported news, wrote editorials and book reviews, and clipped articles from other newspapers, all for eight dollars a week.
Despite a raise, Raymond quit the Tribune in 1843 and joined the more conservative Courier and Enquirer. While Greeley and Raymond both supported the Whig party, Raymond felt that Greeley’s sometimes extreme and eccentric views hurt the Whigs. He believed that he could give New York a more moderate Whig paper to counter Greeley’s influence.
In 1848, Raymond and banker George Jones tried to buy the Albany Evening Journal. After the deal fell through, Raymond won a seat in the New York State Assembly and became speaker the following year. While in Albany, he and Jones started planning their own newspaper.
The New York Daily Times first appeared in the summer of 1851. At a penny a copy, it was meant to be “the best and cheapest daily family newspaper in the United States.” Raymond wanted the Times to be “free from bigoted devotion to narrow interests.” It supported the Whigs, but the Whigs wouldn’t dictate its editorial policy. The Times expressed Raymond’s opinions, but it wasn’t an ego trip as Greeley’s Tribune seemed to be.
The Times moved to bigger offices twice in eight years and Raymond’s political influence grew. As conflicts over slavery and immigration tore the Whigs apart, Raymond was elected lieutenant governor in 1854. Soon afterward, he became a founder of the Republican Party. Raymond saw the Republicans as a moderate party opposed to the domination of the federal government by slaveholders as well as the abolition of slavery. Despite Raymond’s moderation, critics often called Republicans abolitionists. Most slave states seceded from the Union rather than accept Abraham Lincoln’s election as the first Republican president in 1860.
During the Civil War, Raymond defended the Times building with a Gatling gun from anti-war rioters. After another term as Assembly speaker, he was elected to Congress in 1864. He became chairman of the Republican National Committee but never let party interests override his own beliefs. He lost the chairmanship after the Times defended conservative postwar Reconstruction policies against widespread Republican opposition. When Raymond died suddenly on June 18, 1869, the New York Times’s greatest years were still to come. His paper is regarded by many today as the best newspaper in the U.S., if not the world.
For more about the history of the New York Times visit their website at www. nytimes.com.