telligencer, run by Gales and Seaton, and The Madisonian, run by Thomas Allen. James Gordon Bennett, of The New York Herald, promptly attacked this favoritism and announced that he was willing to give daily reports at the Senate without any remu- neration. Out of his efforts grew the "freedom of the press" for all newspaper correspondents at Washington.
SENSATIONAL NEWS OF THE PERIOD
In 1843 The United States Gazette published the statistics of the murders and other crimes recorded in its pages from January to July of that year. The account showed over nine hundred accidental deaths, of which fully one half came from drowning. There were two hundred and fifteen murders by guns, pistols, bowie-knives, etc.; there were fifty-six deaths by firearms which were imprudently handled; forty-five died from clothing taking fire; forty-six were struck by lightning; forty-three were killed by falling from horses or by the upsetting of carriages, etc.; eighty-three committed suicide. From this account, which was copied by many newspapers to show that they had not been beaten in recording such catastrophes, it is evident that the news- papers even at this time were not neglecting the so-called sen- sational news.
PARTY PATRONAGE VS. "THE POST"
As late as 1835 the National Government still exerted a tre- mendous influence through its patronage in moulding American newspapers. Party organs were kept strictly in line by the threat which continually hung over them of "Stop the Govern- ment advertising." Bribes for party support were fairly num- erous. Criticism of any department of the Government was dangerous. For example, because The New York Evening Post criticized the seditious doctrines of the Postmaster-General in the matter of the destruction of Northern papers circulated in the South, the official list of letters uncalled for in the New York Post- Office was transferred to The New York Times (not the paper which bears that name to-day). Because The New York Evening Post believed the tone of a letter of the Secretary of the Treas- ury to the President of the United States Bank was undignified,
