[1] De Nyse's articles appeared as early as 1857, when the New York Dispatch published his fictional story "Paul Genot, The Miser.
[6] One of 200 Civil War correspondents for the New York Herald, De Nyse was accused of writing and publishing dispatches that aided the Confederate States Army.
Under a military commission led by George H. Sharpe, colonel of the 120th New York Infantry, he was convicted and sentenced to six months' hard labor after which he would be banished from the Civil War front.
But in his sentencing, Commander Joseph Hooker said "...it cannot be tolerated that newspapers correspondents should abuse the privilege of remaining with this army by the publication of intelligence certain to be of use to the enemy...Trusting that a milder punishment than that awarded by the Commission will be sufficient to serve as a warning to others of that class, the commanding General adopts the recommendation of the Commission and commutes the sentence to expulsion from the lines of this army.
Accompanying the brigade led by Robert Sanford Foster, De Nyse wrote a series of dispatches detailing the war from the vantage point of being with the Union Army in Southern territory.
[10] Writing in 1899, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle wrote that he was a "well known playwright of a generation ago"[3] and had done favors for the Kiralfy family of impresarios.
[5] In 1877, the "Theatrical Notes" column of the National Republican (Washington, D.C.) reported on a prospect of a production of Anthony and Cleopatra at Niblo's Garden with Lulu Prior, with De Nyse "in the business department" (i.e.