Horace Greeley Biography

Dictionary of Literary Biography on Horace Greeley

From the Jacksonian Era to Reconstruction, Horace Greeley was the most famous journalist in the United States--the first newspaperman nominated for president of the United States by a major political party. For more than three decades Greeley managed the New-York Daily Tribune. Under his direction the weekly edition of the newspaper attracted a national readership, becoming the most widely influential periodical in the United States in the mid nineteenth century. While not the originator of modern urban journalism, Greeley was among its most brilliant practitioners. For example, his two-hour interrogation of Brigham Young in 1859 is considered to have been the first important "media interview" in history. More significantly, Greeley's hundreds of lectures, editorials, articles, essays, pamphlets, and published letters, together with his several books, made him a powerful and prestigious mid-nineteenth-century opinion leader. Although his ill-fated campaign for the White House late in life tarnished his legacy to some extent, Greeley remains an important historical and literary figure.

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