New York Times

City: New York

County: New York

State: New York

On August 5, 1851, Henry J. Raymond and George Jones formed the firm Raymond, Jones & Company. On September 18, 1851, they published the inaugural issue of the New-York Daily Times, proclaiming that the paper would be conservative when “we think Conservatism essential to the public good,” radical “in everything which may seem to us to require radical treatment and radical reform,” but wholly non-partisan. By 1855, the paper was successful and boasted a circulation second only to the New York Herald. In 1857, Raymond and Jones changed the paper’s title to the New York Times. In August 1860, Raymond, Jones & Company became H. J. Raymond & Company. During the 1860 federal election campaign the Times became one of the foremost Republican papers in the country. Although it voiced a preference for William H. Seward over Abraham Lincoln for the Republican Party’s presidential nominee, it reprinted many of Lincoln’s speeches and expressed confidence in him at a time when many Republicans in the eastern United States were doubtful of his leadership capabilities. Following Lincoln’s election as president and the secession crisis, Raymond became an ardent Republican and Lincoln supporter. Under his direction, the Times became a wartime ally of Lincoln. The paper expanded rapidly during the Civil War: it began publishing a Sunday issue on April 20, 1861, gained 40,000 subscribers in just two weeks in April and May 1861, and became so successful that, in December 1865, it enlarged its pages in both length and width, becoming the largest paper in the U.S. at the time.

New-York Evening Times (New York, NY), 18 September 1851, 2:1; Elmer Davis, History of the New York Times, 1851-1921 (New York: The New York Times, 1921), 3, 17-18, 46, 49-50, 51-52, 62-64.