In 1846, Hughes took over the direct management—appointing his secretary James Roosevelt Bayley to take charge of it—in order to establish it on a solid financial basis.
Bayley did some little writing and attended to the business affairs of the paper, but the main work was done by James McMaster, who made an excellent editor.
On March 27, 1848, Bayley wrote for him to Orestes Brownson asking whether he would be willing to take the weekly "out and out," promising it would afford him "at present a clear income of 12 or 15 hundred Dollars," but Brownson declined in a reply of April 3, in which he went into considerable detail, adducing various reasons why he should not accept, the chief one being that he dared not trust himself away from the direction of the Bishop of Boston.
Under McMaster the paper supported Mayor Fernando Wood, Grand Sachem of Tammany Hall.
In July 1856, Hughes decided to break with the paper, informing McMaster that he must make clear to his readers that his columns were not to be taken as representing the official archdiocesan view on anything.
[7] The most popular post-war pro-Confederate poem, "The Conquered Banner", made its first appearance in the pages of the Freeman.