to The Sun office on Light Street. Within five minutes after its
arrival forty-nine compositors were hastily putting it into type
and in two hours this newspaper had the message on the streets
of the city. This was the beginning of the famous pony express
of The Sun.
From that time forward, until the invention of the telegraph, the pony express was used to bring the messages of the Presi- dents to Baltimore; from this point they were relayed by fresh expresses to New York and other cities. Through the help of its horses The Sun was enabled to give its readers President Harrison's Inaugural Address on the same day that it was de- livered. But it was in the war with Mexico that the pony express reached its highest development.
FIRST FLIGHT OF " BROOKLYN EAGLE" When Harrison was elected President, politicians of the rival party at once began to make preparations for the defeat of the Whig Party at the next presidential election. Many papers were established for the sake of influencing votes. Among those thus founded for political causes was The Eagle, of Brooklyn, New York. For some years previous to 1841 the county in which Brooklyn is located had been Whig: the Democrats sought an excuse for being in the minority by asserting that they had no party organ to represent them. A few of the leaders, there- fore, in the hopes of wresting control of the county from the Whigs, formed a company to start a new daily newspaper : the re- sult of their efforts was the establishment of The Brooklyn Eagle and The Kings County Democrat on October 26, 1841, with Isaac Van Anden as its first editor and publisher. After the county had been swung into the Democratic ranks, most of the men who had started The Eagle thought that, as the object for which the journal had been founded had been obtained, the paper might be well discontinued. Mr. Van Anden, however, thought otherwise, and as a protest against discontinuing the sheet he offered to purchase the interest of the others in the paper. In this way he became its sole owner and conductor. Though founded as a party organ, The Eagle both in national and local campaigns has supported in its editorial columns both
