(1811-1872)
[Footnote 14: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]
[Illustration: Horace Greeley. [TN]]
Horace Greeley was one of the few persons whose manhood fulfilled the
precocious promise of his youth. He could read before he could speak
plainly, and at the age of six he had declared that his purpose in life
was to be a printer. At eleven he tried to be apprenticed at the village
printing-office and was unsuccessful; at the age of fourteen he was
taken on as an apprentice in the office of the _Northern Spectator_, at
East Poultney, Vt.
His family were of Scotch-Irish origin, but had lived in the northern
part of New Hampshire for several generations. Horace was born in
Amherst, N. H., February 3, 1811. So quick of apprehension was he, and
so active was his intellect, that the commonest of common-school
education was for him sufficient. His schooling was only that which he
could obtain during three or four months in winter; for at other seasons
of the year he labored in the field with his father and brothers; and
when he went to be an apprentice for five years in the printing-office,
he was paid a very slender pittance, the greater part of which he gave
to his father, whose income was probably next to nothing.
In June, 1830, the newspaper office in which young Greeley was learning
his trade became insolvent, and Greeley, then in his twentieth year, was
released from his indentures. He tramped from office to office as a
journeyman printer, and his father having removed to the then "new
country of western Pennsylvania," the youngster, with ten dollars in his
pocket, walking part way and part way earning his passage on a tug-boat,
entered the city of New York, August 18, 1831. For days he sought in
vain for employment among the printing-offices of the metropolis. He was
gawky, poorly clad, and doubtless presented a very grotesque appearance
to the cityfied people to whom he vainly applied for employment. Finally
he effected an entrance into one of the printing-offices of the city,
and, much to the surprise of those who sneered at his ungainly and
unpromising figure, he straightway proved himself to be a competent,
careful, and skilful printer. For fourteen months or more, he picked up
odd jobs in the offices of the newspapers, always making friends and
always managing to save a little money.
Finally, at the beginning of 1833, in partnership with Francis V. Story,
a printer, he established a penny paper called _The Morning Post_. This
venture failed, but Greeley and Story saved from the wreck two-thirds of
their capital, which was $150, all told, and still had on hand their
type and materials. They now became master job-printers and made small
contracts with persons who had newspaper printing to give out. In his
New England boyhood Greeley had occasionally contributed to the columns
of the newspapers on which he worked, and now he resumed that
employment. He wrote for several of the feeble newspapers of the time,
and on the death of his partner, Francis Story, he associated himself
with Jonas Winchester. The firm prospered, and in 1834 was strong enough
to establish a weekly literary newspaper called _The New Yorker_. The
first number of this paper appeared on March 22, 1834, and it sold one
hundred copies; for the three months next succeeding this was the
average of its weekly circulation. The paper gradually increased in
popularity, and the name of its Editor-in-Chief, Horace Greeley, was now
known and respected. He furnished editorials also to the _Daily Whig_
and to other journals, and was selected by William H. Seward and Thurlow
Weed for the editorship of a campaign paper called _The Jeffersonian_,
published in Albany. This was a Whig newspaper printed weekly, and the
audacity, aggressiveness, and ability with which it was edited commanded
the respect of its readers. _The Jeffersonian_ was finally suspended in
the spring of 1839, and during the presidential canvass of the following
year, Greeley, foreseeing the activity of the campaign, seized upon the
opportunity to establish a new campaign paper called _The Log Cabin_.
This journal at once achieved the extraordinary circulation of twenty
thousand copies for its first edition. It succeeded beyond the most
sanguine expectations of its founders, H. Greeley & Company, and in a
few weeks the circulation ran up to sixty thousand, eighty thousand, and
even ninety thousand copies, a newspaper circulation in those days
absolutely unprecedented. _The Log Cabin_ was characterized by the
homely wit, the unsparing logic, and the terseness and vigor of
expression which were always Horace Greeley's most marked traits as a
journalist.
After the campaign of 1840 _The Log Cabin_ became a family political
paper, and on April 10, 1841, its name was supplanted by that of _The
New York Tribune_. Its home was at 30 Ann Street, and Horace Greeley,
its editor, promised that it should be "worthy of the hearty approval of
the virtuous and refined, and a welcome visitant to family firesides."
As an editor Mr. Greeley was eccentric, and his marked personal traits
were perceptible in his management of his newspaper. He was severely
temperate, although opposed to prohibition as impracticable; he was in
favor of a high protective tariff, opposed to slavery, predisposed to
vegetarian diet, and at times manifested a proclivity to the doctrines
of Fourier and Prudhomme.
In his management of _The Tribune_ Mr. Greeley made a wide acquaintance
with the newspaper men, politicians, and the statesmen of the time.
Among those associated with him in the management of his paper was
Henry J. Raymond, who afterward became the founder of _The New York
Times_. Those who rendered service to _The Tribune_ were George William
Curtis, Charles A. Dana, Margaret Fuller, Bayard Taylor, and others who
subsequently achieved renown. Mr. Greeley himself has said that of his
first issue of five thousand copies of the paper, nearly all "were with
difficulty given away." _The Tribune_ was first sold at one cent a copy;
in a month's time it reached a circulation of three thousand, and a
month later it had reached the extraordinary circulation of eleven and
twelve thousand. _The New Yorker_ and _The Log Cabin_ had all along been
managed as weekly issues from the same office; but in September of the
first year of the establishment of _The Tribune_ these were merged in
what was now _The New York Weekly Tribune_, which at once leaped to a
large circulation and became a great force throughout the country,
especially in the rural districts.
In 1842 Mr. Greeley began to print in his paper one column daily of
matter on Fourierite topics, written by Albert Brisbane, and
occasionally these theories were defended in his editorial columns, and
he thereby gained a certain amount of obloquy from which he did not
readily recover. The paper had the reputation of being not only
extremely radical in its political views, but also committed to many of
the "isms" of the times. It paid much attention to the spirit-rappings
of the Fox sisters, of Rochester, and investigated the curious phenomena
with fearless open-mindedness. _The Tribune_ prospered, though not
greatly, and it was evident that Mr. Greeley's business management was
never very successful; and it may be said that his greatest success as
the editor of a prosperous and profitable newspaper was always achieved
by the co-operation of wiser managers than himself. His personal
appearance was peculiar, and he very soon became a well-known figure in
the public life of New York. He usually wore a broad-brimmed, soft white
hat and a light-colored overcoat, and his appearance, although always
spotlessly neat, was characterized by a certain disorderliness which
instantly attracted attention. He had a shrill, high-keyed voice; he was
irascible in temper, and was never the "philosopher" which those who
least knew him credited him with being. In an angry letter published in
his own newspaper he referred to the editor of _The Daily Times_ as
"that little villain, Raymond;" and replying to an offensive charge
against him by _The Evening Post_, he began with, "You lie, villain,
wilfully, wickedly, basely lie." Other passages at arms like these
occasionally enlivened, if they did not disfigure, the editorial columns
of _The Tribune_, over which Greeley exercised a personal censorship
which, in later years, he found it necessary to relax. He was sincerely
and ardently devoted to the cause of Protection, to the interests of the
farmer and the laboring man, to sound money, and to all the ennobling
and refining activities of social life. In spite of a careless personal
manner, and a voice not at all agreeable to the ear, he became a popular
and greatly sought public speaker. As a lecturer in the lyceums of towns
and villages, then greatly in vogue, he was always an acceptable and
greatly admired figure.
In 1848 he was elected to the United States House of Representatives to
fill a vacancy for three months. With great vigor he charged upon
several of the most prominent abuses of the time, and selecting the
practice of paying mileage to Congressmen, he assaulted that with a
vehemence which ultimately destroyed it. As a member of Congress he also
introduced the first bill to give free homesteads to actual settlers on
the public lands. He was a candidate in 1861 for United States Senator,
but was defeated by Ira Harris, of Albany. In 1864 he was one of the
Republican Presidential Electors, and in 1870 was nominated for Congress
in a hopelessly Democratic district, and was defeated. He had always
been an intense opponent of human slavery, and in 1848 his hostility to
the war with Mexico was doubtless inspired by his dread of the extension
of the slave system. He was an enthusiastic supporter of John C.
Fremont, who was nominated for President by the Republicans in 1856; and
he made his newspaper so dreaded and feared by the opposition that he
was indicted in Virginia for circulating incendiary documents through
its columns. During these years he was an incessant and untiring worker,
and produced for the columns of his own and other newspapers a
prodigious amount of matter. He had heretofore labored in politics in
conjunction with William H. Seward, Governor, and afterward United
States Senator. In 1854 the separation between Greeley, Seward, and
Thurlow Weed became established, and Mr. Seward's friends prevented the
election of Mr. Greeley as a delegate to the Republican Convention which
nominated Abraham Lincoln in 1860. Greeley, however, obtained a seat as
delegate in the Convention as a representative from the State of Oregon,
and in that capacity he, more than any other man, doubtless turned the
tide against Mr. Seward and in favor of Abraham Lincoln, who was
nominated by the Convention.
At the breaking out of the Civil War Mr. Greeley manifested great
trepidation and reluctance to face the issue. He even advised in _The
Tribune_ that the "Erring Sisters" be allowed to depart in peace; but
later he rallied manfully to the cause of the defence of the Union, and
his newspaper rang with impassioned appeals for the freedom of the
slaves held in bondage in the South. He incessantly urged a more
vigorous prosecution of the war, and called upon President Lincoln to
take every possible measure for the emancipation of the Southern
bondmen.
In 1864, being convinced that the cause of the rebellion was gradually
weakening, he urged upon the President the policy of negotiating with
the leaders of the Confederate government for a surrender of their
warlike policy, on conditions to be arrived at by commissioners from
both sides. This proposition excited much indignation throughout the
country, and when, in answer to repeated demands from Mr. Greeley,
President Lincoln authorized him to undertake such a conference at
Niagara Falls, the people generally applauded the wisdom of the
President, as well as the disappointment of Mr. Greeley, when the
conference came to naught.
After the final surrender at Appomattox and the capture of the
Confederate President, Mr. Greeley visited Richmond and signed the bail
bond of Jefferson Davis. This action raised a storm of public censure,
and he was for a time overwhelmed by the wrath and indignation of those
who had been formerly associated with him in political affairs. He
defended himself with great vigor, and fearlessly assailed those who
stigmatized him as a sympathizer with the fallen rebel chieftain. He was
not friendly to the nomination of General Grant in 1868, and disapproved
of many of the schemes that marked his administration. Returning from a
visit through the Southern States in the early years of President
Grant's term, he brought to his newspaper some vigorous and outspoken
denunciations of the "carpet-bag" governments of the formerly rebel
States, and denunciations of the "scalawags" who, he said, "were the
pests of the reconstructed States of the South." These and similar
outgivings attracted the attention of a large element of the Republican
party, and he was nominated for the Presidency, against General Grant,
in 1872. Mr. Greeley's canvass was one of great picturesqueness and
industry. He made a series of speeches extending over a tour from New
England to the West, and returning to New York, which were marked by a
most wonderful originality, freshness, and brilliance; but nothing could
avail to stem the tide of prejudice which rose against him and in favor
of General Grant. He had been nominated by the so-called Liberal
Republicans and by the Democrats, but he failed to carry any one of the
Northern States, and of the other States he carried only Georgia,
Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas. He was assailed
during this canvass in the bitterest terms by those who regarded him as
a turncoat and a traitor, and undoubtedly the vituperation and abuse
showered upon him had the effect of disheartening him and destroying the
zest with which he had theretofore undertaken the multifarious duties of
life. He returned to New York from an exhausting campaign, depressed in
spirit and weary in body and in mind. The death of his devoted wife
added to his sorrows, and on November 29, 1872, only a few weeks after
the Presidential election, he died at Pleasantville, N. Y., of mental
and nervous prostration. His body lay in state in the City Hall, and his
funeral was attended by the notables of the land--President Grant, who
had just been re-elected by the people, being numbered among those who
mourned at his bier.
In addition to his editorial labors Mr. Greeley was the author of a
number of works, among which were "Hints toward Reforms," "Glances at
Europe," "History of the Struggle for Slavery Extension," "Overland
Journey to San Francisco," "The American Conflict," and "Recollections
of a Busy Life." He was also the founder of "The Whig Almanac," a manual
of politics, which in later years became known as "The Tribune Almanac,"
and survived his demise.
[Signature of the author.]