Everything about Horace Greeley totally explained
Horace Greeley (
February 3,
1811 –
November 29,
1872) was an
American editor of a leading
newspaper, a founder of the
Liberal Republican Party, reformer and politician. His
New York Tribune was America's most influential newspaper from the 1840s to the 1870s and "established Greeley's reputation as the greatest editor of his day." Greeley used it to promote the
Whig and
Republican parties, as well as antislavery and a host of reforms. Crusading against the corruption of
Ulysses S. Grant's Republican administration, he was the
presidential candidate in 1872 of the new Liberal Republican Party. Despite having the additional support of the
Democratic Party, he lost in a landslide.
Early life
Greeley was born on
February 3,
1811, in
Amherst, New Hampshire, the son of poor farmers Zaccheus and Mary Greeley. He declined a scholarship to
Phillips Exeter Academy and left school at the age of 14; he apprenticed as a printer in Poultney, Vermont at The Northern Star, moving to
New York City in 1831. In 1834 he founded the weekly the
New Yorker, which was mostly comprised of clippings from other magazines.
In 1836 Greeley married
Mary Cheney Greeley, an intermittent
suffragette. Horace Greeley spent as little time as possible with his wife and would sleep in a boarding house when in New York City rather than be with her. Only two of their seven children survived into adulthood.
The New York Tribune
Whig
In 1838 leading Whig politicians selected him to edit a major national campaign newspaper, the
Jeffersonian, which reached 15,000 circulation. Whig leader
William Seward found him, "rather unmindful of social usages, yet singularly clear, original, and decided, in his political views and theories." In 1840 he edited a major campaign newspaper, the
Log Cabin which reached 90,000 subscribers nationwide, and helped elect
William Henry Harrison president on the Whig ticket. In 1841 he merged his papers into the
New York Tribune. It soon was a success as the leading Whig paper in the metropolis; its weekly edition reached tens of thousands of subscribers across the country. Greeley was editor of the
Tribune for the rest of his life, using it as a platform for advocacy of all his causes. As historian
Allan Nevins explains:
The Tribune set a new standard in American journalism by its combination of energy in news gathering with good taste, high moral standards, and intellectual appeal. Police reports, scandals, dubious medical advertisements, and flippant personalities were barred from its pages; the editorials were vigorous but usually temperate; the political news was the most exact in the city; book reviews and book-extracts were numerous; and as an inveterate lecturer Greeley gave generous space to lectures. The paper appealed to substantial and thoughtful people. [Nevinsin Dictionary of American Biography (1931)]
Greeley prided himself in taking radical positions on all sorts of social issues; few readers followed his suggestions.
Utopia fascinated him; influenced by
Albert Brisbane he promoted
Fourierism. His journal had
Karl Marx (and
Friedrich Engels too) as European correspondent in the early 1850s.
(External Link
) He promoted all sorts of agrarian reforms, including homestead laws. He was elected as a
Whig to the Thirtieth Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the unseating of
David S. Jackson and served from December 4, 1848, to March 3, 1849.
Greeley supported liberal policies towards settlers; he memorably advised the ambitious to "
Go West, young man." Though the phrase was originally written by
John Soule in the
Terre Haute Express in 1851, it's most often attributed to Greeley. Historian Walter A. McDougall quotes Josiah Grinnell, the founder of Iowa's Grinnell College, as saying, "I was the young man to whom Greeley first said it, and I went." For its first use in popular culture, see
Go West.
A champion of the working man, he 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, opposed liquor and paid serious attention to any "-ism" anyone proposed. What made the ‘’Tribune’‘ such a success were the extensive news stories, very well written by brilliant reporters, together with feature articles by fine writers. He was an excellent judge of newsworthiness and quality of reporting.
Republican
When the new
Republican Party was founded in 1854, Greeley made the
Tribune its unofficial national organ, and fought slavery extension and the slave power on many pages. On the eve of the Civil War circulation nationwide approached 300,000.
His editorials and news reports explaining the policies and candidates of the
Whig Party were reprinted and discussed throughout the country. Many small newspapers relied heavily on the reporting and editorials of the
Tribune. He served as Congressman for three months, 1848--1849, but failed in numerous other attempts to win elective office. In
1860 he supported the ex-Whig
Edward Bates of Missouri for president, an action that weakened Greeley's old ally Seward.[VanDusen 241-44]
Greeley made the
Tribune the leading newspaper opposing the
Slave Power, that is, what he considered the conspiracy by slave owners to seize control of the federal government and block the progress of liberty. In the secession crisis of 1861 he took a hard line against the Confederacy. Theoretically, he agreed, the South could declare independence; but in reality he said there was "a violent, unscrupulous, desperate minority, who have conspired to clutch power" –secession was an illegitimate conspiracy that had to be crushed by federal power. He took a
Radical Republican position during the war, in opposition to Lincoln’s moderation. In the summer of 1862, he wrote a famous editorial entitled "The Prayer of Twenty Millions" demanding a more aggressive attack on the Confederacy and faster emancipation of the slaves. A month later he hailed Lincoln’s
Emancipation Proclamation.
Although after 1860 he increasingly lost control of the
Tribune’s operations, and wrote fewer editorials, in 1864 he expressed defeatism regarding Lincoln’s chances of reelection, an attitude that was echoed across the country when his editorials were reprinted. Oddly he also pursued a peace policy in 1863-64 that involved discussions with
Copperheads and opened the possibility of a compromise with the Confederacy. Lincoln was aghast, but outsmarted Greeley by appointing him to a peace commission he knew the Confederates would repudiate.
Reconstruction
In
Reconstruction he took an erratic course, mostly favoring the
Radicals and opposing president
Andrew Johnson in 1865-66. His personal guarantee of bail for
Jefferson Davis in 1867 stunned many of his long-time readers, half of whom canceled their subscriptions.
Election of 1872
After supporting
Ulysses Grant in the 1868 election, Greeley broke with Grant and the Radicals. Opposing Grant's re-election bid, he joined the
Liberal Republican Party in 1872. To everyone’s astonishment, that new party nominated Greeley as their
presidential candidate. Even more surprisingly, he was officially endorsed by the Democrats, whose party he'd denounced for decades.
As a candidate, Greeley argued that the war was over, the Confederacy was destroyed, and slavery was dead — and that
Reconstruction was a success, so it was time to pull Federal troops out of the South and let the people there run their own affairs. A weak campaigner, he was mercilessly ridiculed by the Republicans as a fool, an extremist, a turncoat, and a crazy man who couldn't be trusted. The most vicious attacks came in cartoons by
Thomas Nast in
Harper's Weekly. Greeley ultimately ran far behind Grant, winning only 43% of the vote.
This crushing defeat wasn't Greeley's only misfortune in 1872. Greeley was among several high-profile investors who were defrauded by
Philip Arnold in a
famous diamond and gemstone hoax. Meanwhile, as Greeley had been pursuing his political career,
Whitelaw Reid, owner of the
New York Herald, had gained control of the
Tribune.
Death
Not long after the election, Greeley's wife died. He descended into madness and died before the electoral votes could be cast. In his final illness, allegedly Greeley spotted Reid and cried out, "You son of a bitch, you stole my newspaper." Greeley died at 6:50 p.m. on Friday,
November 29,
1872, in
Pleasantville, New York at
Dr. George C. S. Choate’s private hospital. Greeley received no electoral votes, with the ones he was to have received being scattered among others. However, three of Georgia's electoral votes were left blank in honor of him. (Other sources have Greeley receiving 3 electoral votes posthumously, with those votes being disallowed by Congress.)
Greeley had requested a simple funeral, but his daughters ignored this request and arranged a grand affair. He is buried in New York's
Green-Wood Cemetery.
The Greeley home in
Chappaqua, New York now houses the New Castle Historical Society.
The local high school is named for him, and the name of one of the school newspapers pays homage to the 19th-century paper owned by Greeley.
Legacy & cultural references
- The New York Tribune building was the first home of Pace University. Today, the site where the building stood is now the One Pace Plaza complex of Pace's New York City campus. Dr. Choate’s residence and private hospital, where Horace Greeley died, today is part of Pace's campus in Pleasantville.
- There is a bas-relief of Greeley in the lobby of the Columbia Journalism School.
- The full name of Nazi economist Hjalmar Schacht was "Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht".
- Several places are named after him, including: Greeley, Pennsylvania, Greeley, Colorado, Greeley, Texas, Greeley County, Kansas (where there's also a town of Horace, and the county seat is Tribune), and Greeley County, Nebraska (which also has a town named Horace).
- Horace Greeley Square is a small park in the Herald Square area of Manhattan featuring a statue of Greeley. The park is next to the site of the former New York Herald building.
- Horace Greeley High School in Westchester, New York is named for him.
- Greeley Park in Nashua, New Hampshire is named for him.
- Mount Horace Greeley is one of the highest points in the Keweenaw Peninsula of Michigan.
- Greeley's endorsement of frontier economics was satirized in the environmentalist cartoon series Captain Planet and the Planeteers, which featured the antagonist and polluter Hoggish Greedly.
- Horace Greeley is depicted in Gangs of New York, where he's shown in a montage of the three layers of society at prayer. As the representative of the aristocracy, his notion of God is a God of mercy, as opposed to the God of Vengeance, prayed to by Bill Cutting and Amsterdam Vallon. He is portrayed by Michael Byrne.
- Greeley Avenue in the Grant City of the NY City Borough of Staten Island is named for Horace Greeley
Trivia
Horace Greeley is the one who misquoted President Andrew Jackson as saying, after the Supreme Court ruling in Worcester v. Georgia, "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!" (H. W. Brands, Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times, pg 492)
Greeley considered the word 'news' a plural word and would always correct his staff when they - in his view - mistakenly said, "Is there any news?" He once cabled a Tribune reporter: “ARE THERE ANY NEWS?” The employee cabled back: "NOT A NEW."Further Information
Get more info on 'Horace Greeley'.
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