Josephus Daniels: His Life and Times

5. A Nuisance and Disturber

165 5. A Nuisance and Disturber The big question that now loomed was the best plan of withdrawing from the ignorant Negroes, who had been used as tools for the bad government that cursed the State, the right of suffrage. —JOSEPHUS DANIELS Daniels resigned from the Cleveland administration in the summer of 1895, and he was soon back in Raleigh full time, running the News and Observer. The infusion of new capital and Daniels’s vigorous management revived the N&O. The paper had no serious daily competitor, and its circulation quickly reached 10,000 at a time when Raleigh’s population was only a bit more than that. Although a complete reconstruction of the firm’s accounts is not possible for these years, it is clear from Daniels’s correspondence that the business was a financial success. A conservative estimate would yield annual profits of $6,000 to $7,000.1 As the firm paid no regular dividend to its outside stockholders (they received only their annual subscriptions ), Daniels was essentially the residual claimant of the company’s profit. Within a year of taking over the paper, Daniels was clearing between $3,000 and $4,000 (more than ten times North Carolina’s per capita income at the time), more than he had made as Hoke Smith’s chief of staff in the Interior Department. Only thirty-­ three years old at the time, Daniels had moved well beyond middle-­ class comfort. During the first eighteen months Daniels owned the N&O, on a day-­ to-­ day basis, combating the Fusionists was the primary editorial objective of the newspaper. However, in the spring of 1896 Daniels turned back to national politics and the upcoming presidential campaign. In those days, the national conventions were the means by which the parties actually nominated their presidential candidates.The state parties typicallyconducted an election for delegates to the national convention. These delegates, usually local politicos of varying degrees of prominence, would on occasion formally announce their support for a presidential candidate, or they might quietly signal their support for a particular candidate. But frequently they were elected to exercise their judgment based on what transpired at the A Nuisance and Disturber 166 convention itself. Thus to be a state delegate was to be recognized as a key player in party affairs and offered the possibility of being a kingmaker at the convention. By the spring of 1896, Daniels was clearly a leader of North Carolina’s Democratic Party, but he was among the youngest members of the shifting inner circle in Raleigh. Accordingly, he thought that if he were elected as a delegate to the upcoming Democratic National Convention, to be held in the Chicago Coliseum between July 7 and 11, his new, lofty standing would be recognized. Unfortunately for Daniels, the number of convention delegates was much smaller in those days than it is today.2 Under national party rules, North Carolina would only send twenty-­ four delegates to the 1896 convention. Thus the seats became valuable political property. Daniels had attended the 1892 Republican National Convention in Minneapolis on his way back from a vacation in California (taken after he sold the Chronicle), but he had never attended a Democratic convention. He understood that any number of older party loyalists, men who had shed more blood over more years than he had, sought the position. Still, he had ambition alloyed with hope, frankly confessing that he “was anxious to be elected to that convention.”3 To that end, he quietly began sending out feelers to see who else might be in the running and who among the local sachems might be willing to back his candidacy. His heart fell when he learned that Wake County sheriff Mack Page was in the running to be the local delegate.4 Despite his yearning for the position, Daniels could not hope to beat Page, a former Confederate officer, and Daniels settled on accompanying the delegation as a journalist. Feeling, in his own words, “quite miserable about” not being a delegate, Daniels soon achieved a more important position in the party. Page and Daniels traveled on the same train to Chicago, and during the trip Page initiated a campaign to have Daniels elected as the delegation’s representative to the Democratic National Committee. The position was open because its longtime occupant, former senator Matt Ransom, was stepping down. Having lost his Senate seat to the Fusionist Marion Butler the previous year, Ransom was now U.S. ambassador to Mexico. Daniels professed...