[4] In his history of the newspaper, Harry William Baehr characterized him as "[a] lank-built man with sandy hair and side whiskers, [who] possessed real charm of style and breadth of culture".
[5] As music critic of the Tribune, Hassan was a Wagnerite; he wrote dispatches from the Wagner festival at Bayreuth, which were republished as a book on the first performance of The Ring.
[6] Beside the biography of Archbishop Hughes, Hassard wrote a life of Pope Pius IX,[7] as well as a History of the United States for use in Catholic schools.
He had attempted to cure himself by spending time in England, the West Indies, the South of France, Southern California, and especially the Adirondacks at Saranac Lake, but it was not apparent that he was seriously ill until shortly before he died.
[1] A number of sources attribute the breakdown of his health to the strain of attempting to decipher coded telegrams between the Democratic Party and their operatives in the Southern states during the 1876 presidential election.