Juneteenth we spent rereading the early editorials of the Sun in respect of slavery — a record that began in 1833, with its fourth issue, apparently at the instigation of its crime reporter, George Wisner. The occasion was the move by Britain to free the slaves in its West Indian colonies. The Sun reacted with a short but eloquent editorial of praise, one that put it among the van on the most important story in the new republic.

“We imagined that the slave would have to toil on for years and purchase what in justice was already his own,” the Sun’s editorial said. “We did not once dream that light had so far progressed as to prepare the British nation for the colossal stride in justice and humanity and benevolence which they are about to make. The abolition of West Indian slavery will form a brilliant era in the annals of the world.”

The editorial added: “It will circle with a halo of imperishable glory the brows of the transcendent spirits who wield the present destinies of the British Empire.” The Sun wished “the honor of leading the way in this godlike enterprise has been reserved to our own country! But as the opportunity for this is passed, we trust we shall at least avoid the everlasting disgrace of long refusing to imitate so bright and glorious an example.”

Wisner’s influence was also detected, Frank O’Brien wrote in his history of the Sun, in an article in 1834 about one Martin Palmer, who had found himself “pelted with stones in Wall Street on suspicion of bring a runaway slave.” The Sun, in O’Brien’s telling,  “paid its respects” — so to speak — to a slave-catcher, a figure  named Boudinot, who, O’Brien writes, “had set the crowd after” Palmer. The Sun came down on Boudinot like a ton of bricks.

“The man who will do this will do anything; he would dance on his mother’s grave; he would invade the sacred precincts of the tomb and rob a corpse of its winding sheet; he has no SOUL.” This was in a city riddled with pro-slavery sentiments. Yet the Sun noted rumors that “this useless fellow is about to commence a suit against us for libel.” Its reaction: “Try it, Mr. Boudinot!” Or, as Clint Eastwood might have said, “make our day.” 

On slavery, though, there was a tension between Wisner and the Sun’s proprietor, Benjamin Day, who was far more of a gradualist and sided with the Democats. If their political differences were emblematic of the times, Day did make Wisner a half-owner of the paper. One historian, Gary Whitby, suggests that the Sun’s coverage of the abolition debate might “have touched off a 1834 pro-slavery riot in New York.”

In any event, O’Brien writes, while the Sun at the time “listed heavily toward the Democratic party nationally,” the paper “did not disguise its dislike” of the scheme put forward in the 1850s by Senator Douglas, the so-called Little Giant, to “organize the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska on the principle of squatter sovereignty.” This threatened to bring slavery into lands north of the line set under the Missouri Compromise.

The Sun opposed this “local option scheme,” O’Brien writes. In response to announcements that “certain Missourians” intended to bring their slaves to the new territory, the Sun noted in an editorial that when they arrived “they will have no law for holding the slaves. Slavery is a creation of local law.” Unless the new territory made such a law — an unlikely prospect — “all slaves taken into the Territory will be entitled to their freedom.”

In 1857, the Sun opposed the Supreme Court ruling that a slave, Dred Scott, couldn’t sue for his freedom — or citizenship — despite residing in a Free State. “We believe the State of New York can confer citizenship on men of whatever race,” the Sun wrote, “and that its citizens are entitled, by the Constitution, to be treated in Missouri as citizens of New York State. To treat them otherwise is to discredit our State sovereignty.”

When, in the closing days of the Civil War, the House passed what would become the 13th Amendment, the Sun predicted it would “efface from the Constitution the implied sanction which it gives to slavery.” On ratification in December, the Sun exulted. “We have just emerged from the great danger of disunion and anarchy; the Union is now cemented indissolubly and the blot of slavery has been erased from its escutcheon.”