Horace Greeley

Horace Greeley (February 3, 1811 – November 29, 1872) was an American newspaper editor and publisher who was the founder and editor of the New-York Tribune. Long active in politics, he served briefly as a congressman from New York and was the unsuccessful candidate of the new Liberal Republican Party in the 1872 presidential election against incumbent President Ulysses S. Grant.

Greeley was born to a poor family in Amherst, New Hampshire. He was apprenticed to a printer in Vermont and went to New York City in 1831 to seek his fortune. He wrote for or edited several publications, involved himself in Whig Party politics, and took a significant part in William Henry Harrison's successful 1840 presidential campaign.

The following year, Greeley founded the Tribune, which became the highest-circulating newspaper in the country through weekly editions sent by mail. Among many other issues, he urged the settlement of the American Old West, seeing it as a land of opportunity for the young and the unemployed. Greeley popularized the slogan "Go West, young man, and grow up with the country." He endlessly promoted radical reforms such as socialism, vegetarianism, agrarianism, feminism, and temperance and hired a wide variety of people.

Greeley's alliance with William H. Seward and Thurlow Weed led to his serving three months in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he angered many by investigating Congress in his newspaper. In 1854, he helped found the Republican Party. Republican newspapers across the nation regularly reprinted his editorials. During the American Civil War, he mostly supported President Abraham Lincoln but urged him to commit to the end of slavery before Lincoln was willing to do so. After Lincoln's assassination, he supported the Radical Republicans in opposition to President Andrew Johnson. He broke with the Radicals and with Republican President Ulysses S. Grant because of the party's corruption and Greeley's view that Reconstruction-era policies were no longer needed.

Greeley was born on February 3, 1811, on a small farm about five miles from Amherst, New Hampshire. He could not breathe for the first twenty minutes of his life. It is suggested that this deprivation may have caused him to develop Asperger's syndrome—some of his biographers, such as Mitchell Snay, maintain that this condition would account for his eccentric behaviors in later life. His father's family was of English descent, and his forebears included early settlers of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, while his mother's family descended from Scots-Irish immigrants from the village of Garvagh in County Londonderry who had settled Londonderry, New Hampshire. Some of Greeley's maternal ancestors were present at the siege of Derry during the Williamite War in Ireland in 1689.

Greeley was the son of poor farmers Zaccheus and Mary (Woodburn) Greeley. Zaccheus was not successful, and moved his family several times, as far west as Pennsylvania. Horace attended the local schools and was a brilliant student.

Seeing the boy's intelligence, some neighbors offered to pay Horace's way at Phillips Exeter Academy, but the Greeleys did not want to accept charity. In 1820, Zaccheus's financial reverses caused him to flee New Hampshire with his family lest he be imprisoned for debt, and settle in Vermont. Even as his father struggled to make a living as a hired hand, Horace Greeley read everything he could—the Greeleys had a neighbor who let Horace use his library. In 1822, Horace ran away from home to become a printer's apprentice, but was told he was too young.

In 1826, at age 15, Greeley was made a printer's apprentice to Amos Bliss, editor of the Northern Spectator, a newspaper in East Poultney, Vermont. There, he learned the mechanics of a printer's job, and acquired a reputation as the town encyclopedia, reading his way through the local library. When the paper closed in 1830, the young man went west to join his family, living near Erie, Pennsylvania. He remained there only briefly, going from town to town seeking newspaper employment, and was hired by the Erie Gazette. Although ambitious for greater things, he remained until 1831 to help support his father. While there, he became a Universalist, breaking from his Congregationalist upbringing.

In late 1831, Greeley went to New York City to seek his fortune. There were many young printers in New York who had likewise come to the metropolis, and he could only find short-term work. In 1832, Greeley worked as an employee of the publication Spirit of the Times. He built his resources and set up a print shop in that year. In 1833, he tried his hand with Horatio D. Sheppard at editing a daily newspaper, the New York Morning Post, which was not a success. Despite this failure and its attendant financial loss, Greeley published the thrice-weekly Constitutionalist, which mostly printed lottery results.

On March 22, 1834, he published the first issue of The New-Yorker in partnership with Jonas Winchester. It was less expensive than other literary magazines of the time and published both contemporary ditties and political commentary. Circulation reached 9,000, then a sizable number, yet it was ill-managed and eventually fell victim to the economic Panic of 1837. He also published the campaign newssheet of the new Whig Party in New York for the 1834 campaign, and came to believe in its positions, including free markets with government assistance in developing the nation.

Soon after his move to New York City, Greeley met Mary Young Cheney. Both were living at a boarding house run on the diet principles of Sylvester Graham, eschewing meat, alcohol, coffee, tea, and spices, as well as abstaining from the use of tobacco. Greeley was subscribing to Graham's principles at the time, and to the end of his life rarely ate meat. Mary Cheney, a schoolteacher, moved to North Carolina to take a teaching job in 1835. They were married in Warrenton, North Carolina, on July 5, 1836, and an announcement duly appeared in The New-Yorker eleven days later. Greeley had stopped over in Washington, D.C., on his way south to observe Congress. He took no honeymoon with his new wife, returning to work while his wife took up a teaching job in New York City.

One of the positions taken by The New-Yorker was that the unemployed of the cities should seek lives in the developing American West (in the 1830s, the West encompassed today's Midwestern states). The harsh winter of 1836–1837 and the financial crisis that developed soon after made many New Yorkers homeless and destitute. In his journal, Greeley urged new immigrants to buy guide books on the West, and Congress to make public lands available for purchase at cheap rates to settlers. He told his readers, "Fly, scatter through the country, go to the Great West, anything rather than remain here ... the West is the true destination." In 1838, he advised "any young man" about to start in the world, "Go to the West: there your capabilities are sure to be appreciated and your energy and industry rewarded."

In 1838, Greeley met Albany editor Thurlow Weed. Weed spoke for a liberal faction of the Whigs in his newspaper, the Albany Evening Journal. He hired Greeley as editor of the state Whig newspaper for the upcoming campaign. The newspaper, the Jeffersonian, premiered in February 1838 and helped elect the Whig candidate for governor, William H. Seward. In 1839, Greeley worked for several journals, and took a month-long break to go as far west as Detroit.

By the end of the 1840 campaign, the Log Cabin's circulation had risen to 80,000 and Greeley decided to establish a daily newspaper, the New-York Tribune. At the time, New York had many newspapers, dominated by James Gordon Bennett's New York Herald, which, with a circulation of about 55,000, had more readers than its combined competition. As technology advanced, it became cheaper and easier to publish a newspaper, and the daily press came to dominate the weekly, which had once been the more common format for news periodicals. Greeley borrowed money from friends to get started, and published the first issue of the Tribune on April 10, 1841—the day of a memorial parade in New York for President Harrison, who had died after a month in office and been replaced by Vice President Tyler.

In the first issue, Greeley promised that his newspaper would be a "new morning Journal of Politics, Literature, and General Intelligence". New Yorkers were not initially receptive; the first week's receipts were $92 and expenses $525. The paper was sold for a cent a copy by newsboys who purchased bundles of papers at a discount. The price of advertising was initially four cents a line but was quickly raised to six cents. Through the 1840s, the Tribune was four pages, that is, a single sheet folded. It initially had 600 subscribers and 5,000 copies were sold of the first issue.

In the early days, Greeley's chief assistant was Henry J. Raymond, who a decade later founded The New York Times. To place the Tribune on a sound financial footing, Greeley sold a half-interest in it to attorney Thomas McElrath (1807–1888), who became publisher of the Tribune (Greeley was editor) and ran the business side. Politically, the Tribune backed Kentucky Senator Henry Clay, who had unsuccessfully sought the presidential nomination that fell to Harrison, and supported Clay's American System for development of the country. Greeley was one of the first newspaper editors to have a full-time correspondent in Washington, an innovation quickly followed by his rivals. Part of Greeley's strategy was to make the Tribune a newspaper of national scope, not merely local. One factor in establishing the paper nationally was the Weekly Tribune, created in September 1841 when the Log Cabin and The New-Yorker were merged. With an initial subscription price of $2 a year, this was sent to many across the United States by mail and was especially popular in the Midwest. In December 1841, Greeley was offered the editorship of the national Whig newspaper, the Madisonian. He demanded full control, and declined when not given it.

Greeley, in his paper, initially supported the Whig program. As divisions between Clay and President Tyler became apparent, he supported the Kentucky senator and looked to a Clay nomination for president in 1844. However, when Clay was nominated by the Whigs, he was defeated by the Democratic Party candidate, former Tennessee governor James K. Polk, though Greeley worked hard on Clay's behalf. Greeley had taken positions in opposition to slavery as editor of The New-Yorker in the late 1830s, opposing the annexation of the slaveholding Republic of Texas to the United States. In the 1840s, Greeley became an increasingly vocal opponent of the expansion of slavery.

Greeley hired Margaret Fuller in 1844 as first literary editor of the Tribune, for which she wrote over 200 articles. She lived with the Greeley family for several years, and when she moved to Italy, he made her a foreign correspondent. He promoted the work of Henry David Thoreau, serving as literary agent and seeing to it that Thoreau's work was published. Ralph Waldo Emerson also benefited from Greeley's promotion. Historian Allan Nevins explained:

As had been the case for much of the 19th century, political parties continued to be formed and to vanish after the Civil War. In September 1871, Missouri Senator Carl Schurz formed the Liberal Republican Party, founded on opposition to President Grant, opposition to corruption, and support of civil service reform, lower taxes, and land reform. He gathered around him an eclectic group of supporters whose only real link was their opposition to Grant, whose administration had proved increasingly corrupt. The party needed a candidate, with a presidential election upcoming. Greeley was one of the best-known Americans, as well as being a perennial candidate for office. He was more minded to consider a run for the Republican nomination, fearing the effect on the Tribune should he bolt the party. Nevertheless, he wanted to be president, as a Republican if possible, and if not, as a Liberal Republican.

The Liberal Republican national convention met in Cincinnati in May 1872. Greeley was spoken of as a possible candidate, as was Missouri Governor Benjamin Gratz Brown. Schurz was ineligible, being foreign-born. On the first ballot, former minister to Britain Charles Francis Adams led, but Greeley took a narrow lead on a revised second ballot. Adams then retook the lead, but on the sixth ballot, after a "spontaneous" demonstration staged by Reid, Greeley gained the nomination, with Brown as the vice presidential candidate.

The Democrats, when they met in Baltimore in July, faced a stark choice: nominate Greeley, long a thorn in their side, or split the anti-Grant vote and go on to certain defeat. They chose the former, and even adopted the Liberal Republican platform, which called for equal rights for African Americans.

Greeley resigned as editor of the Tribune for the campaign, and, unusually for the time, embarked on a speaking tour to bring his message to the people. As it was customary for candidates for major office not to actively campaign, he was attacked as a seeker after office. Nevertheless, in late July, Greeley (and others, such as former Ohio governor Rutherford B. Hayes) thought he would very likely be elected. Greeley campaigned on a platform of intersectional reconciliation, arguing that the war was over and the issue of slavery was resolved. He asserted that it was time to restore normalcy and end the continuing military occupation of the South.

The Republican counterattack was well financed, accusing Greeley of support for everything from treason to the Ku Klux Klan. The anti-Greeley campaign was famously and effectively summed up in the cartoons of Thomas Nast, whom Grant later credited with a major role in his re-election. Nast's cartoons showed Greeley giving bail money for Jefferson Davis, throwing mud on Grant, and shaking hands with John Wilkes Booth across Lincoln's grave. The Crédit Mobilier scandal—corruption in the financing of the Union Pacific Railroad—broke in September, but Greeley was unable to take advantage of the Grant administration's ties to the scandal as he had stock in the railroad himself, and some alleged it had been given to him in exchange for favorable coverage. Grant wrote of Greeley, "He is a genius without common sense'".

Greeley resumed editorship of the Tribune but quickly learned that a movement to unseat him was underway. He found himself unable to sleep, and after a final visit to the Tribune on November 13 (a week after the election), he remained under medical care. At the recommendation of a family physician, Greeley was sent to Choate House, the asylum of Dr. George Choate at Pleasantville, New York. There, he continued to worsen, and he died on November 29, with his two surviving daughters and Reid at his side.

His death came before the Electoral College balloted. His 66 electoral votes were divided among four others, principally Indiana governor-elect Thomas A. Hendricks and Greeley's vice presidential running mate, Benjamin Gratz Brown.

Although Greeley had requested a simple funeral, his daughters ignored his wishes and arranged a grand affair at the Church of the Divine Paternity, later the Fourth Universalist Society in the City of New York, where Greeley was a member. He is buried in Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery. Among the mourners were old friends, Tribune employees including Reid and Hay, his journalistic rivals, and a broad array of politicians, led by President Grant.

Despite the venom that had been spewed over him in the presidential campaign, Greeley's death was widely mourned. Harper's Weekly, which had printed Nast's cartoons, wrote, "Since the assassination of Mr. Lincoln, the death of no American has been so sincerely deplored as that of Horace Greeley; and its tragical circumstances have given a peculiarly affectionate pathos to all that has been said of him." Henry Ward Beecher wrote in the Christian Union, "when Horace Greeley died, unjust and hard judgment of him died also". Harriet Beecher Stowe noted Greeley's eccentric dress, "That poor white hat! If, alas, it covered many weaknesses, it covered also much strength, much real kindness and benevolence, and much that the world will be better for".

Greeley supported liberal policies towards the fast-growing western regions; he memorably advised the ambitious to "Go West, young man." He hired Karl Marx because of his interest in covering working-class society and politics, attacked monopolies of all sorts, and rejected land grants to railroads. Industry would make everyone rich, he insisted, as he promoted high tariffs. He supported vegetarianism and opposed the consumption of alcohol.

Greeley was an eclectic and unsystematic thinker, a one-man switchboard for the international cause of "Reform." He committed himself, all at once, to utopian and artisan socialism, to land, sexual, and dietary reform, and, of course, to anti-slavery. Indeed Greeley's great significance in the culture and politics of Civil War-era America stemmed from his attempt to accommodate intellectually the contradictions inherent in the many diverse reform movements of the time.

Greeley's view of freedom was based in the desire that all should have the opportunity to better themselves. According to his biographer, Erik S. Lunde, "a dedicated social reformer deeply sympathetic to the treatment of poor white males, slaves, free blacks, and white women, he still espoused the virtues of self-help and free enterprise". Van Deusen stated: "His genuine human sympathies, his moral fervor, even the exhibitionism that was a part of his makeup, made it inevitable that he should crusade for a better world. He did so with apostolic zeal."

Nevertheless, Greeley's effectiveness as a reformer was undermined by his idiosyncrasies: according to Williams, he "must have looked like an apparition, a man of eccentric habits dressed in an old linen coat that made him look like a farmer who came into town for supplies". Van Deusen wrote, "Greeley's effectiveness as a crusader was limited by some of his traits and characteristics. Culturally deficient, he was to the end ignorant of his own limitations, and this ignorance was a great handicap."

The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America, 1860–64 Vol. I (1864) Vol. II (1866)

Essays Designed to Elucidate The Science of Political Economy, While Serving To Explain and Defend The Policy of Protection to Home Industry, As a System of National Cooperation For True Elevation of Labor (1870)

Journey from New York to San Francisco in the Summer of 1859 (1860)

"Alice and Phebe Cary", in Eminent Women of the Age; Being Narratives of the Lives and Deeds of the Most Prominent Women of the Present Generation (1868), pp. 164–172.

Horace Greeley's views on Virginia: and what he knows about the South, slave-breeding, mixed schools, miscegenation, making sectional war, Kansas and the South, favoring secession, letting "the erring sisters go, "confiscation, rapine, and ravage, slave insurrections, supporting General Butler's New Orleans order, the Ku--Klux trials. (1872).