Ferdinand
Hilgard was born
in Bavaria, Germany on 10th April, 1835.
After studying at Munich and Wurzburg, he emigrated to the United
States in 1853. Soon after arriving he adopted the name, Henry Villard.
Villard became a journalist in Milwaukee
and after moving to Racine, Wisconsin, in 1856, began editing the
German language Volksblatt. An opponent of slavery,
he reported on the Abraham Lincoln -
Stephen A. Douglas debates in Illinois
for the New York Herald Tribune.
A member of the Republican Party,
the conservative New York Herald Tribune
surprisingly published Villard's radical articles. Villard supported
the nomination of William H. Seward in
1860. Although critical of Abraham Lincoln
he supported him both before and after his election as president.
During the American Civil War Villard
began writing for the the New York Tribune.
Over the next few years Villard reported several of the major battles
including Bull Run (July, 1861), Perryville
(October, 1862), Fredericksburg
(December, 1862), Murfreesboro (January,
1863) and the Wilderness (June,
1864).
On 3rd January, 1866, Villard married Helen
Frances Garrison, the daughter of the anti-slavery
campaigner, William Lloyd Garrison.
Employed by the New York Tribune,
six months later he was sent to Europe to report on the Franco-Prussian
War.
An early supporter of the railways, his successes with the Oregon
Railway and the Northern Pacific Railroad enabled him in 1881 to acquire
a controlling influence in the New York
Evening Post and The Nation.
Villard also helped to finance the early ventures of the American
inventor Thomas Edison. and in 1889 helped
establish Edison General Electric. When Henry Villard died in November,
1900, his son, Oswald Garrison Villard,
took over his business interests.
(1)
Henry Villard wrote about arriving in
New York in 1853 in his Memoirs: Journalist
and Financier (1904)
My
landing upon American soil took place under anything but auspicious
circumstances. I was utterly destitute of money, had but a limited
supply of wearing apparel, and that not suited to the approaching
cold season, and I literally did not know a single person in New York
or elsewhere in the Eastern States to whom I could not apply for help
and counsel. To crown all, I could not speak a word of English.
A travelling companion who had tried to persuade me to accompany him
to California noticed my depression, and guessed its cause from what
he had drawn out of me on the voyage about my antecedents and plans.
He generously offered to lend me twenty dollars, which I accepted,
of course, with joy.
(2)
In 1856 Henry Villard moved to Milwaukee
where he started a career in journalism. He wrote about the city in
his Memoirs: Journalist and Financier
(1904)
Milwaukee has always been an almost German
city. In 1856, the preponderance of the German element was even greater
than at present; in fact, its Americanization, which has in the meantime
progressed very rapidly, had then hardly begun. It was known among
German-Americans as "Deutsch-Athen" and comparatively speaking,
deserved the name. There was a large number of educated and accomplish
men among my countrymen, and in them the love of music and art was
very marked.
(3)
Henry Villard, described the Stephen A.
Douglas and Abraham Lincoln debate
at Ottawa, Illinois, on 21st August, 1858.
The first joint debate between Douglas
and Lincoln, which I attended, took place on the afternoon of August
21, 1858, at Ottawa, Illinois. It was the great event of the day,
and attracted an immense concourse of people from all parts of the
State.
Senator Douglas was very small, not over four and a half feet height,
and there was a noticeable disproportion between the long trunk of
his body and his short legs. His chest was broad and indicated great
strength of lungs. It took but a glance at his face and head to convince
one that they belonged to no ordinary man. No beard hid any part of
his remarkable, swarthy features. His mouth, nose, and chin were all
large and clearly expressive of much boldness and power of will. The
broad, high forehead proclaimed itself the shield of a great brain.
The head, covered with an abundance of flowing black hair just beginning
to show a tinge of grey, impressed one with its massiveness and leonine
expression. His brows were shaggy, his eyes a brilliant black.
Douglas spoke first for an hour, followed by
Lincoln for an hour and a half; upon which the former closed in another
half hour. The Democratic spokesman commanded a strong, sonorous voice,
a rapid, vigorous utterance, a telling play of countenance, impressive
gestures, and all the other arts of the practiced speaker.
As far as all external conditions were concerned, there was nothing
in favour of Lincoln. He had a lean, lank, indescribably gawky figure,
an odd-featured, wrinkled, inexpressive, and altogether uncomely face.
He used singularly awkward, almost absurd, up-and-down and sidewise
movements of his body to give emphasis to his arguments. His voice
was naturally good, but he frequently raised it to an unnatural pitch.
Yet the unprejudiced mind felt at once that, while there was on the
one side a skillful dialectician and debater arguing a wrong and weak
cause, there was on the other a thoroughly earnest and truthful man,
inspired by sound convictions in consonance with the true spirit of
American institutions. There was nothing in all Douglas's powerful
effort that appealed to the higher instincts of human nature, while
Lincoln always touched sympathetic cords. Lincoln's speech excited
and sustained the enthusiasm of his audience to the end.
(4)
Henry
Villard reported on the the Republican
Party
Convention in 1860. Villard supported William
H. Seward and was surprised when Abraham
Lincoln won the nomination.
I was enthusiastically for the
nomination of William H. Seward, who seemed to me the proper and natural
leader of the Republican Party ever since his great "irrepressible
conflict" speech in 1858. The noisy demonstrations of his followers,
and especially of the New York delegation in his favour, had made
me sure, too, that his candidacy would be irresistible. I therefore
shared fully the intense chagrin of the New York and other State delegations
when, on the third ballot, Abraham Lincoln received a larger vote
than Seward.
I had not got over the prejudice against Lincoln with which my personal
contact with him in 1858 imbued me. It seemed to me incomprehensible
and outrageous that the uncouth, common Illinois politician, whose
only experience in public life had been service as a member of the
State legislature and in Congress for one term, should carry the day
over the eminent and tried statesman, the foremost figure, indeed,
in the country.
(5)
Henry
Villard was a reporter of the New
York Tribune during the American
Civil War.
Cameron
was the typical American politician with a well-defined purpose in
all he said and did. He also held himself a little too freely at the
disposal of newspapers men, to whom he was by far the most cordial
and talkative of all the secretaries. He made them feel at once as
though they had met an old acquaintance and friend. He was certainly
the cleverest political manager in the Cabinet, and, though unquestionably
as ambitious as any member of it, he never was guilty of the indiscretions
which the political records of Seward and Chase reveal. He had a very
shrewd way of tempting journalists by implications and insinuations
into publishing things about others that he wished to have said without
becoming responsible for them.
(6)
Henry Villard reported the battle of
Bull Run in July, 1861, for the New
York Tribune.
When the Unionists resumed their
advance, the rebels successfully resisted their rather desultory attacks
at different points. With every unsuccessful onward attempt there
was a rapid melting away of the assailants. Fewer and fewer officers
and men could be rallied for another advance. Towards four o'clock,
the rebels felt strong enough to take the offensive. A brigade with
a battery under Earle managed to strike the Federal right on the flank
and rear and throw it into utter confusion, which spread rapidly along
the whole front. Now came the disastrous end. Without any formal orders
to retreat, what was left of the several organizations yielded to
a general impulse to abandon the field. Officers and men became controlled
by the one thought of getting as far as possible from the enemy.
(6)
Henry
Villard worked for the New
York Tribune during the American
Civil War. Villard found General William
T. Sherman hostile to his attempts to report the war.
General
Sherman looked upon journalists as a nuisance and a danger at headquarters
and in the field, and acted toward them accordingly, then as throughout
his great war career. I did not, of course, agree with him at that
time as to my own calling, but candor constrains me to say that I
had to admit in the end that he was entirely right. For what I then
observed, on the one hand, of the natural eagerness of volunteer officers
of all grades (of whom so many were aspiring politicians at home)
to get themselves favorably noticed in the press, even at the cost
of indiscretions, and, on the other hand, of the publishing army news,
must lead any unprejudiced mind to the conclusion that the harm certain
to be done by war correspondents far outweighs any good they can possibly
do. If I were a commanding general I would not tolerate any of the
tribe within my army lines.
Under the circumstances, it was perfectly useless to approach General
Sherman formally as a news-gatherer. I was, however, brought into
contact with him in another more satisfactory way. He appeared every
night, like myself, at about nine o'clock, in the office of Mr. Tyler,
to learn the news brought in the night Associated Press report. He
knew me from the Bull Run campaign as a correspondent of the press.
As we met on neutral ground and I asked him no questions, we were
son on very good terms. He was a great talker, and he liked nothing
better than to express his mind upon the news as it came. There he
sat, smoking a cigar (I hardly ever saw him without one), leaning
back in a chair, with his thumbs in the armholes of his vest. Or he
was pacing up and down in the room, puffing away, with his head bent
forward and his arm crossed behind his back. Every piece of military
intelligence drew some comment from him, and it was easy to lead him
into a long talk if the subject interested him.
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