UNLIKE THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, THE PUBLIC LEDGER followed Chief Jones’s instructions not to publish interviews, stories, or speculation about the Ross case. The paper wasn’t always known for its code of integrity; during its first year, 1836, the Ledger had had a reputation for favoring drama over fact. Most of Philadelphia’s papers printed gossip as truth then, largely because the city’s dailies shared reporters who exchanged information and inflated details to create cohesive stories. To gain an audience, the Ledger exaggerated more than other papers, attracting libel suits that made the penny paper instantly popular. Its sensationalist journalism began to change in 1837. Having established a readership, the Ledger’s editors began to more aggressively compete with their rivals: they hired their own writers, demanded their loyalty, and forced them to find their own stories on the streets. The Ledger staff was the first in Philadelphia to enlist newsboys, the first to experiment with a rotary press for quicker printing, and one of the first to use carrier pigeons and a pony express to collect national information quickly. And never had prompt reporting been more in demand than during the Civil War.
Between 1861 and 1865, battlegrounds changed the face of news-rooms. Nearly 3 million men fought in the war, and an estimated 620,000 died. Nobody had expected such large numbers of fatalities. As the war years dragged on, the newspaper went from being the mouthpiece of political parties to the strongest link between families at home and soldiers on the front. This rabid readership elevated journalistic standards: the public’s appetite for eyewitness reports, tolerance for graphic details and demand for prompt coverage became insatiable. In an attempt to scoop the competition, every major American city had correspondents on the battlefields; the New York Herald alone sent forty. This golden period of print journalism continued after the war ended, when both journalists and readers multiplied around the country.
During the 1860s, the ambition of the Philadelphia Public Ledger’s editors attracted a new owner—George W. Childs, a successful businessman and friend to Ulysses S. Grant. It was Childs who constructed the Ledger building, considered one of the biggest news offices in the country, across from Independence Hall. Under Childs’s leadership, the Ledger developed the second-largest circulation in America, boasting a readership of 400,000. In 1874, Childs’s chief editor was a man named William V. McKean. McKean wrote a code of reportorial ethics that he insisted his reporters follow, and so, while papers like the Inquirer ignored Chief Jones’s request, McKean honored his wishes. McKean also obeyed because the details surrounding the abduction were not quite clear, and Childs had told his staff to withhold any story until its facts could be corroborated. There was a third reason why he kept the Ross story out of his paper. McKean was one of the Republican advisers. As an editor, he did not want to print speculation and as a city leader, he wanted to minimize the amount of public attention given to the investigation.
New York papers blamed the Ledger and other dailies for endangering the lives of Charley and Philadelphia’s other children with their silence. “For what may be done in one instance, and in one place,” wrote the New York Tribune, “may be done in another instance and in another place.” On July 17, the Ledger responded to the accusations.
“We have abstained until now, because it was the expressed wish of the proper public authorities that as little as possible should be published about the matter, and so we have published nothing.” The Evening Bulletin, another target of New York’s criticism, defended itself by pledging its faith to Philadelphia’s police force. “The journalists of this city are well aware that from the day of the perpetration of the crime to the present moment there has been a ceaseless, vigilant and well organized movement on the part of the detective force against the kidnappers.” Three days before New York’s attack on Philadelphia’s press, however, the same Evening Bulletin had called police detectives “a particularly useless and expansive body” that “cannot detect” unless it “recovers stolen property by arranging the matter comfortably with the criminals.”
Both the Ledger and the Evening Bulletin cited jealousy, not concern for Charley, as motive for New York’s criticism. The Philadelphia press assumed that America, particularly the city of New York, envied the attention their city would likely get during the upcoming Centennial. The planning commission had already expressed surprise with the nation’s hesitancy to offer financial support, assistance, and displays, and there was no part of the country Philadelphia liked to blame more than New York City. By the mid-nineteenth century, Philadelphians had felt a shadow fall as New York surpassed their city as the cultural capital of the States. They were only too pleased when the federal government chose Philadelphia over New York as the Centennial location.
New York had tried, and failed, to host such an exhibition before. Inspired by the success of London’s Crystal Palace Exhibition in 1851, a Massachusetts auctioneer named Edward Riddle had convinced the city government to replicate the European expo—the first world’s fair—on the grounds of Bryant Park. Riddle’s efforts were doomed from the start. The centerpiece of London’s Crystal Palace was a 900,000-square-foot structure made of iron and nineteen acres of glass. There was no way the U.S. government would finance such a creation: the Southern states were moving toward secession, and their representatives weren’t looking to pour money into a fair in New York. Poor funding led to limited advertising and an unimpressive result; even though the city had approved a five-year lease on the land, the exhibition closed after three. Riddle’s risk cost the city $340,000, and in 1858, the building burned to the ground. By 1874, Europe had hosted six successful world’s fairs—two in London, two in Paris, and another in Vienna. The American Centennial in Philadelphia would be the world’s seventh party, and the first for the Americas.
But even the excitement over the Centennial didn’t keep the criticism of the New York press from aggravating Philadelphia’s inferiority complex. Almost daily, it suggested that Charley would die because of Philadelphia’s impotent police force and unethical parents. City authorities feared this image would prevail. The only way to uphold Philadelphia’s honor was to find the little boy and arrest the criminals without paying ransom.
“There must be no compromise with thieves,” the Philadelphia Inquirer said.
In response, the New York Herald asked why any parent would refuse payment if he or she knew the ransom would return a beloved child. It attacked Christian’s integrity and accused him of participating in the kidnapping.
“No man with any soul in him could have done such a thing,” responded Christian.
His friends loudly defended his innocence. They decried the New York Herald article and blamed the paper for further impairing Christian’s health. They encouraged Christian to defend himself by divulging the ransom letters and explaining the potential copycat consequences of appeasing the kidnappers. Christian refused. He said he didn’t want Sarah to read the letters at all—not at home, and not in the press. Friends pleaded with him to release a photograph of Charley so his critics could see he was trying to further the investigation.
“No possible good could result by their being read,” the advisers told Christian.
Christian’s friends and neighbors did not understand that the kidnappers were bargaining with Charley’s life. They knew the public demanded to see the letters, and they believed their friend was innocent of the crime, so it made sense to them for Christian to defend himself by publicizing everything he knew about the investigation. If Christian were to release the letters, he would be releasing the kidnappers’ threats against children in the city. In letter five, the kidnappers had said, “it is our interest then to restor him home unharmed, so that others will rely on our word.” Thus, they did reveal the intention that the advisers feared: a desire to repeat the crime after Charley was returned. Not only could these published words create pandemonium, but they could also turn the public’s concerns away from finding Charley—because if he were never returned home “unharmed,” the kidnappers’ word would be compromised and perhaps they wouldn’t take another child. Christian did worry about angering the kidnappers. Also in letter five, he had read, “if they open the dor for yu it wil only revele his (ded body).” Should he release the letters and a photo of Charley, he would be enabling the citizens of Philadelphia to become detectives themselves and risk provoking the kidnappers. The advisers’ decision to pass off counterfeit bills and to ignore the kidnappers’ communication directions had made Christian nervous enough; he didn’t want to endanger his child’s life further by defending himself from petty gossip.