character of sporting journalism. Colonel Porter died in 1858, when the paper passed into the hands of Mr. Wilkes. It is now called The Spirit of the Times: the American Gentleman's Newspaper. When the war broke out in 1861 its present editor run into politics, and mixed the rebellion and the race-course in fair proportions in his columns.

One of the curious incidents of life in New York is related, in connection with the Spirit of the Times, by Mr. Raymond, of the Daily Times, as having come under his observation:

While walking down Broadway one afternoon, before I had begun to earn much money, I fell into the wake of a tall, handsome, splendidly-dressed young man, displaying himself, in all the luxury of white kids and diamond studs, to the general admiration. I fancied him one of the nabobs of the town, and fell into a train of wondering thought as to how he had probably reached his present height of dazzling splendor. Of course, I could not wholly forbear contrasting my own position with his, though without any feelings of special envy. The next day Mr. Greeley asked me to go to the office of Porter's Spirit of the Times, then in Barclay Street, and get him a copy of the paper. While waiting at the desk, the door opened, and my magnificent friend of the day before, all accoutred as he was, sailed in. He walked into the back part of the office, took off, folded, and put away his white gloves, hung up his hat and coat, put on an ink-stained linen jacket, and set himself busily to work writing wrappers. I felt decidedly encouraged as to the prospects of New York life!

Another paper of this class, called the New York Clipper, was started in New York about 1853. It is also an authority. It is owned and edited by Frank Queen. It has been quite prosperous, and recently its proprietor erected a fine building in Centre Street, an ornament to that noted thoroughfare, for the transaction of his increasing business. The Clipper is a large quarto, handsomely made up and printed. It has the additional title of the Oldest American Sporting and Theatrical Journal, but the Spirit of the Times is more than twenty years its senior. When such men as Tom Hyer and John C. Heenan prepared for a fight in the ring, the stakes were deposited at the office of the Clipper.

The Turf, Field, and Farm is yet another publication devoted to the kindred subjects of its title. It makes its weekly appearance in the metropolis, and is also successful. This is not surprising, for there is so much wealth and time now expended in horses that there is every desire to know all about them.

These papers indulge in learned and edifying articles on racing, angling, base-ball, cricket, la crosse, yachting, skating, shooting, rowing-indeed, in all outdoor sports. They give an impulse to openair enjoyments, and do a great deal towards improving the physique of the human family, and towards throwing away the physic of the family physician.

There are other publications in the Union devoted more or less to horses, and hunting, and fishing, but these take the lead, and are specialties in this kind of journalism. John S. Skinner, as far in the

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rear as 1818, published a Turf Magazine in Baltimore, and paid attention to the breed of horses. The Western Stock Journal is a paper now printed at the West devoted to the improvement of all sorts of animals. No country surpasses this in attention to this subject. Our daily papers are also interested in all matters connected with the turf, field, and water-courses-the prize ring, the race-course, pigeon shooting, buffalo hunting, mains, and similar sports-but they do not confine themselves to these matters. Occasionally, it is true, a sporting paper takes higher flights-Wilkes's Spirit of the Times, for instance-and makes suggestions to politicians, statesmen, and generals, and sometimes brings down such game with a shot or two.

The interest exhibited in the success of these papers is also to be seen in the improvement of our horses, in our game-laws, in the introduction of fish-ways on rivers and streams where factories had driven away or destroyed the trout, shad, salmon, black bass, and alewives, and in all farm animals. When Dexters sell for $30,000 apiece, and Flatbush mares for $20,000, and the value of horses that make their magnificent appearance in Central Park, on Bellevue Avenue, and on the Brighton Road in one day, for pleasure alone, is estimated at a million of dollars, need there be any surprise at the erection of handsome stone edifices for publication offices of sporting papers?

These class papers have their value. Their circulation is not, comparatively, large; it is necessarily limited to the particular interest it represents; but these papers unquestionably give more information on the subjects they treat than the general newspaper can. It may be impossible for a daily paper to embrace within its space all the movements of the day-science, fashion, politics, history, philosophy, literature, theatres, art, music, sporting, yachting, inventions, discoveries, religion, law, poetry, agriculture, trade, finance, morals, education-all in full and complete. News on all these points are given, but the elaborate and scientific details go into the class papers, where each particular interest can learn all that has been developed on the subject, and frequently illustrated with superior engravings of plans, machinery, horses, cows, models, instruments, and diagrams.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE BLANKET SHEETS OF NEW YORK.

THE MORNING COURIER AND NEW YORK ENQUIRER. JAMES WATSON WEBB.-NEWSPAPER ENTERPRISE.-SIZE OF THE SHEETS.-THE CILLEY DUEL-THE WOODS RIOT.-THE MARSHALL DUEL-Sentence of ColONEL WEBB.-WILLIAM L. MARCY AND JAMES GORDON BENNETT.-THE MACKENZIE PAMPHLET.-WEBB AND NAPOLEON. THE JOURNAL OF COMMERCE. ITS ORIGIN. -HALE AND HALLOCK.-NEWS SCHOONERS AND PONY EXPRESSES.-ABOLITION RIOTS IN NEW YORK.-Origin of THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. THE BOGUS LINCOLN PROCLAMATION.-SUSPENSION OF NEW YORK PAPERS.

THE "blanket sheets" made their appearance in the city of New York in 1827. The Morning Courier and Journal of Commerce were established in that year, and became leading metropolitan journals. They did not come under the cognomen of "blanket sheets" for several years after that period, but this is the title they enjoy in journalistic annals. They made some noise in Gotham in their day. They were commercial and political papers. They pretended to look after the interests of the mercantile classes. They acquired their influence mostly, however, from their politics, negative and positive. In their early days, one was Democratic, the other Abolition. In their later life, the Democrat became a Whig, and the Abolition a Democratic organ.

THE COURIER AND ENQUIRER.

First in order is the Morning Courier. It was established in May, 1827. In the following December it passed into the possession of James Watson Webb, a brother-in-law of its originator. Webb had been an officer in the army, a graduate of West Point, and was young and fresh in the fields of journalism. Thirty-four years after this event, in speaking of his debut as an editor, he said:

We left the army a mere boy, to take charge of a political press at the commencement of the political campaign which terminated in the election of Andrew Jackson to the presidency in 1828, and, in a party point of view, we possessed not a solitary qualification for the position. We brought into political life the one leading characteristic of the army, a determination on all occasions to speak not only the truth, but the whole truth, and in practicing upon this, to the mere politician, ridiculous theory, we, of course, became in a short time a target at which our political friends were as fond of firing as were our political opponents; and to this we may justly attribute the somewhat well-known fact that we have been considerably the best-abused personage connected with the American Press. Jack

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son had not been inaugurated a month before we openly condemned some of his acts; and when he abandoned a protective tariff and a Bank of the United States, we abandoned him; and we then made proclamation, and have ever adhered to our declaration, that doing battle under the motto of "Principles, not Men," we should never recognize any allegiance to party except so far as adherence to its forms might be necessary to carry out the great principles which we seek to establish.

The Enquirer, as we have stated, was merged with the Courier in the spring of 1829. Webb, Noah, and Bennett were in Albany seeking some of the public printing, and, to arrange the pending differences of that time, the latter suggested to Webb the purchase of the Enquirer. This idea was carried into effect, and the united papers appeared under the title of the Morning Courier and New York Enquirer. The Courier started free of party influence. It was established by the father-in-law of its first editor as a business or profession. But in those exciting times neutrality or independence in politics seemed impossible. Hence it became a political paper; and when it came into the hands of Webb, in spite, or in consequence of his inexperience, it assumed a more decided political character. Webb was young and ardent. He was a man of impulse. Excitement to the verge of a fight, and even actual hostilities, suited his temperament. If his rights were at all interfered or trifled with, from a theatrical criticism to a political opinion, there must be an atonement in some way, either in a riot at the Park Theatre or a duel at Bladensburg. Such a man, with sound judgment and strong persistency, would make a splendid journalist.

The Courier and Enquirer, by which name it is now known to fame, continued a Democratic organ and an influential Jackson paper till 1832. It was published in 1830 by James Watson Webb, Daniel E. Tylee, and James Lawson; in 1831 by Webb, Tylee, and James Gordon Bennett. It left the Democratic Party in 1832, early in the great fight on the United States Bank question. All sorts of stories have been told in explanation of this change in the politics of the Courier and Enquirer, and the well-known Silas E. Burrows, a public-spirited and enterprising merchant, abandoned Jackson, and came out in favor of Nicholas Biddle and the Bank at the same time. The paper was then published by James W. Webb & Co. The Democrats, led by Churchill C. Cambreleng in Congress, made every effort to throw some suspicion on Colonel Webb's motives for his advocacy of Biddle and the Bank. James Gordon Bennett disposed of his interest in the paper when the revolution in its political sentiments was decided upon.

Colonel Webb, in his valedictory in June, 1861, when the Courier and Enquirer was united with the World, stated that "from the time we became proprietor of the Morning Courier in December, 1827, until now, he who now writes has been the sole and only responsi

ble editor of the Morning Courier, and of the Morning Courier and New York Enquirer," yet he has been assisted by several leading and distinguished journalists: by James Gordon Brooks, known as "Florio ;" James Gordon Bennett, of the Herald; James Kirke ` Paulding; Charles King, afterwards President of Columbia College; John O. Sargent, afterwards editor of the Washington Republic, and known as Taylor's organ; Henry Jarvis Raymond, of the New York Times; Hoskins, Daniels, Spaulding, Smith, George H. Andrews, and half a dozen others. Some of the most powerful articles on nullification which appeared in the Courier and Enquirer were written by James K. Paulding, the novelist, and afterwards Secretary of the Navy.

The paper mostly in competition with the Courier and Enquirer was the Journal of Commerce-not politically, for the Courier was now a decided Whig, and the Journal at this time wished to be considered as decidedly neutral. It was for the support of the commercial classes that these papers fought and struggled. They enlarged their respective journals to an enormous size in competition for the advertisements of the merchants; they started news schooners and pony expresses; they spent money, and worked with a will. The news schooners of the Courier and Enquirer were the pilot-boats Thomas H. Smith and Eclipse, hired for the purpose. Then a superior clipper was built, and called the Courier and Enquirer. The Journal of Commerce had two schooners, one the Evening Edition, and the other the Journal of Commerce. Sometimes these five swift sailers would be together from fifty to a hundred miles at sea from Sandy Hook, in the exciting pursuit of ships and foreign news. These races were almost equal to those of the fast yachts of the New York Squadron in the fall of 1871 with the Livonia. News instead of silver cups were the prizes. This enterprise of these two journals, costing each paper $15,000 to $20,000 per year, was commenced in 1831, and was continued till 1834, when the schooners were disposed of, and small row-boats resumed their position in the harbor.

These "blanket sheets" were equally enterprising with their pony expresses from Washington, which they established to convey their dispatches from the national capital. Many interesting incidents occurred in their contests for news. Neither was persistent in its enterprise. One established a news schooner because the other did. The circulation of these papers was considered large at that time; it was about four thousand to four thousand five hundred eachnothing compared with the circulation of the journals of to-day. If that of the Herald, for instance, should rise or fall five thousand any day from any particular excitement, or in the absence of im