New York Post founded by Alexander Hamilton
History
19th century
The Post was founded by Alexander Hamilton with about US$10,000 (equivalent to $175,880 in 2022) from a group of investors in the autumn of 1801 as the New-York Evening Post, a broadsheet. Hamilton's co-investors included other New York members of the Federalist Party, such as Robert Troup and Oliver Wolcott, who were dismayed by the election of Thomas Jefferson as U.S. president and the rise in popularity of the Democratic-Republican Party. The meeting at which Hamilton first recruited investors for the new paper took place in Archibald Gracie's then-country weekend villa that is now Gracie Mansion. Hamilton chose William Coleman as his first editor.
The most famous 19th-century Evening Post editor was the poet and abolitionist William Cullen Bryant. So well respected was the Evening Post under Bryant's editorship, it received praise from the English philosopher John Stuart Mill, in 1864.William Leggett, in addition to literary and drama reviews, began to write political editorials. Leggett's espoused a fierce opposition to central banking and support for the organization of labor unions. He was a member of the Equal Rights Party. He became a co-owner and editor at the Post in 1831, eventually working as sole editor of the newspaper while Bryant traveled in Europe in 1834 through 1835.Another co-owner of the paper was John Bigelow. Born in Malden-on-Hudson, New York, John Bigelow, Sr. graduated in 1835 from Union College, where he was a member of the Sigma Phi Society and the Philomathean Society, and was admitted to the bar in 1838. From 1849 to 1861, he was one of the editors and co-owners of the Evening Post.Another owner with Bryan and Bigelow was Isaac Henderson. This led to the involvement of his son Isaac Henderson Jr. who became the paper's publisher, stockholder, and member of its board in 1877, just five years after graduating from college. Henderson Sr.'s thirty-year tenure with the Evening Post ended in 1879, when it was learned that he had defrauded Bryant the entire time. Henderson Jr. sold his interest in the newspaper in 1881.In 1881, Henry Villard took control of the Evening Post, as well as The Nation, which became the Post's weekly edition. With this acquisition, the paper was managed by the triumvirate of Carl Schurz, Horace White, and Edwin L. Godkin. When Schurz left the paper in 1883, Godkin became editor-in-chief. White became editor-in-chief in 1899, and remained in that role until his retirement in 1903.In 1897, both publications passed to the management of Villard's son, Oswald Garrison Villard, a founding member of both the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the American Civil Liberties Union.