SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT OF THE NEW YORK "TRIBUNE" With Portraits and Maps. EDITED, WITH NOTES, BY JAMES R. GILMORE, AUTHOR OF 66 PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN," Ze. S. 6050, 125 HARVARD COLLEGE DEC 21 1898 Bright funds. Copyright, 1898, BY L. C. PAGE AND COMPANY (INCORPORATED) University Press: JOHN WILSON and Son, CamBRIDGE, U.S.A. BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. HE correspondence of a first-class newspaper during our THE civil war is, in many respects, more valuable and instructive than the most impartial history of that important period. The historian relates facts and opinions as he has distilled them from the reports of others; the correspondent gives us his own impressions of events as they actually passed before his eyes. He is in the thick of the fight, where sabres clash, and minieballs whistle, or he is perched in a friendly tree, or on some commanding hill, whence he views all the movements of the hostile battalions; and hence, if he be cool, truthful, and intrepid, we gather from him a living photograph of the tremendous conflict. No more graphic, faithful, or venturous correspondent than Charles A. Page looked on at our civil war, and none more truthfully or graphically described its momentous events. "If Page says that it is so," was a common remark of Horace Greeley's in the "Tribune” editorial rooms; and the subsequent motto of the "Sun," "If you see it in the 'Sun,' it is so,” was merely Charles A. Dana's appropriation of this familiar saying of Mr. Greeley. He once met Mr. Page on a railway train and said to him: "We are greatly pleased with your work; you are. quick and graphic, and give us the news early, and we must have it early; but, Mr. Page, you are the most expensive young man the 'Tribune' has ever employed." To this Mr. Page replied: "Early news is expensive news, Mr. Greeley; if I have the watermelons and whiskey ready when the officers come along from the fight, I get the news without asking questions." But, watermelons and whiskey in war times are cash commodities, and so are steamboats and railway trains when they are chartered to convey a single passenger. Mr. Page did this on several occasions, and once he turned loose a valuable saddlehorse to catch a train. The passengers were noisy, and he could not think or write in the din, but getting to the office without sleep, he sat down and wrote out a five-column report of the Battle of the Wilderness in five hours, while the printers were putting it into type. The result was that the "Tribune" sold an extra edition of fifteen thousand copies four hours before any other journal had the news. Then Mr. Page went to sleep, and he did not wake for twenty-four long hours. He performed a like feat on a similar occasion after a horseback ride of seventyfive miles. The old adage has it that "it is the early bird that catches the worm." Mr. Page was always early, first on the ground, and however great the obstacles, they never deterred him. He was one of the three correspondents who were the first to enter Richmond after the capture of that city, and the two who entered with him-Whitelaw Reid and Mr. R. T. Colburn only got there by placing themselves under his wing, and submitting to his guidance. As soon as the War Department at Washington had tidings of the event, it cancelled all newspaper passes, and issued strict orders that no correspondent should be permitted to reach the army front. Mr. Page knew of this, but calling to mind that he had among his papers an outlawed pass from General Grant that might serve in the emergency, he, with his two friends, went boldly on board the Government steamer. Charles A. Dana, then Assistant War Secretary, hearing of their departure, sent telegram after telegram in pursuit of them; but by shifting from one steamer to another, and other expedients, they dodged the telegrams and got promptly into Richmond. Meeting Mr. Dana at a social gathering soon after his return to Washington, Mr. Page rallied |