Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 3

[178] was the ‘Atlas,’ a journal intensely partisan, the columns of which were almost exclusively given to politics, rarely containing any discussion of social questions, of foreign affairs, material enterprise, or scientific discovery,—topics which now so largely occupy a metropolitan journal. Its successive editors —Richard Haughton, William Hayden, Dr. Thomas M. Brewer, and William Schouler—were each true to the general spirit of the journal, regarding no institution so sacred as the Whig party, no men so deserving of invective and proscription as those who, having once borne its name, refused to submit to its authority. The last two named were at this period its managers. Schouler was by nature genial and kindly, and while an editor at Lowell was one of the antislavery Whigs who organized the opposition to the admission of Texas as a slave State. But he now yielded to the traditions of his journal and to the tone of the politicians who frequented his establishment. Instead of treating the seceders in a body, and assailing their positions, the ‘Atlas’ (the articles bearing the ear-marks of another than the editor) made every effort to give the controversy a personal direction, habitually naming the leading offenders, —Adams, Sumner, Allen, Wilson, Palfrey, Keyes, and Bird.¹ Adams, for whom the most venomous shafts were reserved, was described in that journal as ‘a political huckster, who lives upon the reputation as well as the wealth of his ancestors, intense egoism being the characteristic of his appearance, and selfishness that of his action;’ Palfrey was a ‘Judas;’ Sumner, a ‘transcendental lawyer.’ Adams, Sumner, and Palfrey were styled ‘The Mutual Admiration Society,’ or ‘Charles Sumner & Co.,’ with ‘their headquarters on Court Street;’ and they were held up to public odium as ‘ambitious s and unscrupulous,’ and abounding in ‘inordinate self-esteem, pride of opinion, and cormorant appetite for office.’² Altogether it was a disreputable