James Gordon Bennett Sr.

The Herald was officially independent in its politics but endorsed for president William Henry Harrison (1840), James K. Polk (1844), Zachary Taylor (1848), Franklin Pierce (1852), and John C. Frémont (1856). The author Garry Boulard speculates that Bennett ultimately turned against Pierce for not appointing him to a much-coveted post as American minister plenipotentiary (later called ambassador) to France. From then on, Bennett consistently lambasted Pierce on both his front and editorial page and often called him "Poor Pierce." Bennett supported Democrat and Secretary of State under Pierce, James Buchanan of Pennsylvania in the 1856 Election as tensions rose between the sections and states over slavery and states' rights and reached critical point during the 1850s, after the controversial Compromise of 1850.

He later endorsed Southern Democrat and incumbent Vice President John C. Breckinridge (lived 1821–1875, served 1857–1861), of Kentucky under Buchanan for the 1860 presidential campaign and shifted to John Bell (1796–1869), of Tennessee running as a Constitutional Unionist among the four presidential candidates in the confused but pivotal general election in November 1860. In the midst of the following Civil War (1861–1865), he promoted former Union Army General-in-Chief George B. McClellan (1826–1885), nominated from the Democratic Party in the 1864 election, campaigning for a negotiated peace with the South against a second term for wartime 16th President Abraham Lincoln (lived 1809–1865, served 1861–1865), but the paper itself endorsed no candidate for the unusual war election of 1864.

Although he generally opposed the Republican Lincoln, Bennett still backed the Northern cause for the Union and took the lead to turn the Republican war president into a martyr after his April 14, 1865 assassination at Ford's Theater in Washington. He favored most of successor 17th President Andrew Johnson (lived 1808–1875, served 1865–1869), former Vice President for one month in Lincoln's brief second term, a War Democrat, former U.S. Senator and loyal wartime Governor of Tennessee, and his following moderate Reconstruction Era policies and proposals towards the defeated South, following what was thought would have been Lincoln's gentle hand had he lived.

By the time that Bennett turned control of the New York Herald over to his son James Gordon Bennett Jr. (1841–1912), who was 25 in 1866, it had the highest circulation in America but would soon face increasing competition from Horace Greeley's New York Tribune and soon in the next decades, from Joseph Pulitzer's New York World, William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal, and Henry Jarvis Raymond's The New York Times. However, under the younger Bennett's stewardship, the paper slowly declined under the increasing stiff competition and changing technologies in the late 19th century and, after his 1912 death, it was merged a decade later with its former archrival, the New York Tribune in 1924, becoming the New York Herald Tribune for another 42 years. It met with considerable success and reputation in its last half-a-century until it finally closed in 1966–1967.

James Gordon Bennett Sr. and the Herald used racist language, advocated for Southern secession, attacked Lincoln for trying to keep the Union together and generally opposed the American Civil War. In June 1863 the Herald supported a mass anti-war rally in New York City where the war was denounced as an unconstitutional crusade that would lead to freed Blacks flooding North and competing for white jobs.[7]

Bennett endowed New York City Fire Department's highest honor for bravery in 1869 after his home was saved from destruction by firefighters. It remained one of the department's highest honors for 150 years. The City renamed it on Sept. 7, 2020, after Chief Peter J. Ganci to honor him as the highest ranking member of the department killed during the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. According to the New York Times, Bennett's racism has been called out for years by the Vulcan Society, a fraternal order of Black firefighters.[8]

According to historian Robert C. Bannister, Bennett was :

A gifted and controversial editor. Bennett transformed the American newspaper. Expanding traditional coverage, the Harold provided sports reports, a society page, and advice to the lovelorn, soon permanent features of most metropolitan dailies. Bennett covered murders and sex scandals and delicious detail, faking materials when necessary.... His adroit use of telegraph, pony express, and even offshore ships to intercept European dispatches set high standards for rapid news gathering.[9] Bannister also argues that he was a leading crusader in American election campaigns in the 19th century:

Combining opportunism and reform, Bennett exposed fraud on Wall Street, attacked the Bank of the United States, and generally joined the Jacksonian assault on privilege. Reflecting a growing nativism, he published excerpts from the anti-catholic disclosures of "Maria Monk," and he greeted Know-Nothingism cordially. Defending labor unions in principle, he assailed much union activity. Unable to condemn slavery outright, he opposed abolitionism.[9]

James Gordon Bennett reportedly had strabismus for most of his life; an acquaintance once said that he was "so terribly cross-eyed that when he looked at me with one eye, he looked out at the City Hall with the other."[10]

He has a street named for him from West 181st Street to Hillside Avenue in the Washington Heights neighborhood of northern Manhattan, and a New York City park, Bennett Park named in his honor along Fort Washington Avenue. The Avenue Gordon Bennett in Paris, France with Stade de Roland Garros, site of the French Open, tennis tournament, is also named after James Gordon Bennett, Sr., possibly thanks to his son.[11]

Bennett's account of the infamous Helen Jewett murder in the Herald was selected by The Library of America for inclusion in the 2008 anthology True Crime.