Charles Anderson Dana

Charles Anderson Dana was an American journalist, author, and senior government official. He was a top aide to Horace Greeley as the managing editor of the powerful Republican newspaper New-York Tribune until 1862. During the American Civil War, he served as Assistant Secretary of War, playing especially the role of the liaison between the War Department and General Ulysses S. Grant. In 1868 he became the editor and part-owner of The New York Sun. He at first appealed to working class Democrats but after 1890 became a champion of business-oriented conservatism. Dana was an avid art collector of paintings and porcelains and boasted of being in possession of many items not found in several European museums. 

  
Dana was born in Hinsdale, New Hampshire on August 8, 1819. At the age of twelve, Charles Dana became a clerk in his uncle's general store at Buffalo, until the store failed in 1837. At this time, he began the study of Latin grammar, and prepared himself for college. In 1839 he entered Harvard, but the impairment of his eyesight forced him to leave college in 1841. He also abandoned his intentions to study in Germany and enter the ministry. 

Dana had written for and managed the Harbinger, the Brook Farm publication, devoted to social reform and general literature. Later, beginning 1844, he also wrote for and edited the Boston Chronotype of Elizur Wright for two years. In 1847 he joined the staff of the New York Tribune, and in 1848 he wrote from Europe letters to it and other papers on the revolutionary movements of that year. In Cologne he visited Karl Marx and Ferdinand Freiligrath. (From 1852 to 1861, Marx was one of the main writers for the New York Daily Tribune). 

Returning to the Tribune in 1849, Dana became a proprietor and its managing editor, and in this capacity actively promoted the anti-slavery cause, seeming to shape the paper's policy at a time when Horace Greeley was undecided and vacillating. 

In 1861, Dana went to Albany to advance the cause of Greeley as a candidate for the U. S. Senate, and nearly succeeded in nominating him. The caucus was about equally divided between Greeley's friends and those of William M. Evarts, while Ira Harris had a few votes which held the balance of power. At the instigation of Thurlow Weed, the supporters of Evarts went over to Harris. 

  
During the first year of the war, the ideas of Greeley and those of Dana in regard to the proper conduct of military operations were somewhat at variance; the board of managers of the Tribune asked for Dana's resignation in 1862, apparently because of this disagreement and wide temperamental differences between him and Greeley. 

  
When Dana left the Tribune, Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, made him a special commissioner of the War Department during the American Civil War. In this capacity, Dana discovered frauds committed by quartermasters and contractors. As the eyes of the administration, as Abraham Lincoln called him, Dana spent much time at the front and sent to War Secretary Edwin Stanton frequent reports concerning the capacity and methods of various generals in the field. In particular, the War Department was concerned about rumors of Ulysses S. Grant's alcoholism. Dana spent considerable time with Grant, becoming a close friend and assuaging administration concerns. Dana reported to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton that he found Grant "modest, honest, and judicial . . . 'not an original or brilliant man, but sincere, thoughtful, deep, and gifted with a courage that never faltered.' Although quiet and hard to know, he loved a humorous story and the company of his friends." 

In 1865–1866, Dana conducted the newly established and unsuccessful Chicago Republican, when the paper was owned by Jacob Bunn, and published by A.W. (Alonzo) Mack (1822-1871). He became the editor and part-owner of The Sun (New York) in 1868, and remained in control of it until his death.