GREAT MEN'S BODIES
during the war, where he served with distinction for three years; came to America, made an extensive horseback tour through the South, and recorded his observations in the Daily News. Read law with David Dudley Field, and was admitted to the New York Bar in 1859; through failing health revisited Europe; returning in 1862, and became an unattached editorial contributor to the New York Times. In July, 1865, with Mr. Olmsted, founded the Nation, of which he became, and has remained ever since, the editor-in-chief. As Mr. Wendell Phillips Garrison, its publisher from then till now, well says: "The moment was propitious. The four leading journalists of New York—Messrs. Bennett, Greeley, Bryant, and Raymond—were approaching the end of their activities, as of their existence. All of them had 'taken their crease,' as the French say, in the old order of things. What was needed was a fresh vision, an untrammelled criticism, a dispassionate temper, joined to a direct and virile expression; and these qualities were united in an altogether exceptional degree in Mr. Godkin. An American by naturalization; a Republican by 'convincement,' his foreign birth gave him the clear objective discernment which the native American could hardly possess; his judgment was undisturbed, as his utterances were unfettered, by political affiliations of any kind. The public, and especially the editorial fraternity, were not slow to perceive that a new force had arisen in American journalism. The politicians of both parties, on the other hand, 'viewed with alarm' a censor insensible to the glamour of their reputations, and who did not hesitate to treat them with a levity nothing short of irreverence.
"Mr. Godkin's judgment, in any summing up of his characteristics, stands at the head. But, prompt and certain as it is, it has, perhaps, not been unparalleled; whereas his humor is sui generis; and it was this that startled the shams, charlatans, and knaves, together with the fossils, whom the Civil War left in possession of the political field. Made editor-in-chief of the Evening Post in 1881, he not only enlarged his constituency, but immensely strengthened his local influence in a city where, as editor of the Nation, he was comparatively a stranger. To this Tammany, at least, can testify."
And it has testified; and has put the testimony on record by arresting him over and over and over for talking too plainly; till at one time it became almost a daily occurrence; and merely for hold-429
