Dana was an avid art collector of paintings and porcelains and boasted of being in possession of many items not found in several European museums.

[3] Dana had written for and managed the Harbinger, the Brook Farm publication devoted to social reform and general literature.

Returning to the Tribune in 1849, Dana became a proprietor and its managing editor, and in this capacity he actively promoted the anti-slavery cause, seeming to shape the paper's policy at a time when Horace Greeley was undecided and vacillating.

[2] However, in 1895, as editor of The Sun, he wrote "we are in the midst of a growing menace," the year of eventual black heavyweight champion Jack Johnson's first professional fight.

[6][7] When Charles A. Dana bought The Sun in 1868, he used the paper to support General Grant as the presidential candidate, aiming to unify the country during the aftermath of the Civil War.

The caucus was about equally divided between Greeley's friends and those of William M. Evarts, while Ira Harris had a few votes that held the balance of power.

[12] As the eyes of the administration, as Lincoln called him, Dana spent much time at the front and sent to War Secretary Edwin Stanton frequent reports concerning the capacity and methods of various generals in the field.

Dana reported to Secretary of War Stanton that he found Grant, as historian John D. Winters writes, to be "modest, honest, and judicial .

Dana warned President Lincoln and Stanton that the cotton trading and all related activity needed to be stopped, maintaining that General Grant was in full agreement with his assessment and recommendations.

[18] In 1865–1866, Dana conducted the newly established and unsuccessful Chicago Republican, when the paper was owned by Jacob Bunn, and published by A.W.

[20][21] Upon taking control of the organization, he announced his credo: It will study condensation, clearness, point, and will endeavor to present its daily photograph of the whole world's doings in the most luminous and lively manner.

"[25] Dana made the Sun a Democratic newspaper, independent and outspoken in the expression of its opinions respecting the affairs of either party.

His criticisms of civil maladministration during General Grant's terms as president led to a notable attempt on the part of that administration, in July 1873, to take him from New York on a charge of libel, to be tried without a jury in a Washington police court.

Perhaps to a greater extent than in the case of any other conspicuous journalist, Dana's personality was identified in the public mind with the newspaper that he edited.

In 1884 it supported Benjamin Butler, the candidate of Greenback-Labor and Anti-Monopolist parties, for the presidency, and opposed James G. Blaine (Republican) and even more bitterly Grover Cleveland (Democrat).

Early in his journalism career, in 1849, he wrote a series of newspaper articles in defense of anarchist philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and his mutual banking ideas.

This book remains in print today through a Charles H. Kerr Company Publishers edition with an introduction by Paul Avrich.

An unnamed connoisseur praised the historical value and quality of items in his collection, noting that "they are not in the British Museum; they are not in the Louvre; and they are conspicuously absent at Dresden.