The first issue of the paper was published by
James Gordon Bennett Sr., on May 6, 1835. By 1845 it was the most popular and profitable daily newspaper in the United States. In 1861 it
circulated 84,000 copies and called itself "the most largely circulated journal in the world." Bennett stated that the function of a newspaper "is not to instruct but to startle and amuse." His politics tended to be anti-Catholic and he had tended to favor the "
Know Nothing" faction, but he was not so anti-immigrant as the Know-Nothing Native American Party. During the
American Civil War, Bennett's policy, as expressed by the newspaper, was to staunchly support the
Democratic Party.
Frederic Hudson served as managing editor of the paper from 1846 to 1866. During the mid-19th century, the
New York Herald adopted a
proslavery stance, with Bennett arguing that the
Compromise of 1850 would lead to "but little anxiety entertained in relation to the question of
slavery, the public mind will be so fatigued that it will be disinclined to think of the matter any further." In April 1867 Bennett turned over control of the paper to his son
James Gordon Bennett Jr. Under James Jr., the paper financed
Henry Morton Stanley's expeditions into Africa to find explorer
David Livingstone, where they met on November 10, 1871. The paper also supported
Stanley's trans-Africa exploration. In 1879 it supported the ill-fated expedition of
George W. De Long to the
Arctic region. In 1874 the
Herald ran the
New York Zoo hoax, in which the front page of the newspaper was devoted entirely to a fabricated story of wild animals getting loose at the
Central Park Zoo and attacking numerous people. From December 1887 through August 1888, 33 of Walt Whitman's poems appeared in the New York Herald. On October 4, 1887, Bennett Jr. sent
Julius Chambers to
Paris, France, to launch its European Edition. Later he moved to Paris himself, but the
New York Herald suffered from his attempt to manage its operation in New York by telegram. In 1916 a Saturday issue of the paper reported that a major financier was found dead from poisoning; it added that in 1901 he was "mysteriously poisoned and narrowly escaped death." After Bennett Jr. died in 1918,
Frank Munsey acquired control of the
New York Herald (including its European Edition). In 1924 Munsey sold the paper to the family of
Ogden Reid, owners of the
New-York Tribune, creating the
New York Herald Tribune (and the
International Herald Tribune with a divergent future). When the
Herald was still under the authority of its original publisher Bennett Sr., it was considered to be the most intrusive and sensationalist of the leading New York papers. Its ability to entertain the public with timely daily news made it the leading circulation paper of its period. ==European edition==