Greeley, Horace (1811-1872)

Two features of Horace Greeley's life make him notable in the fields of communication and journalism. The first is his rise to publisher of one of the most powerful newspapers in the nineteenth century, the New York Tribune. The second is his career as a writer of editorials and lectures for the popular "lyceums" (i.e., lecture series that provided education to the public on a variety of topics).

In his autobiography, Recollections of a Busy Life (published four years before his death), Greeley recalled the misery of his family's chronic, debt-ridden existence when he was a child: "Hunger, cold, rags, hard work, contempt, suspicion, unjust reproach, are disagreeable; but debt is infinitely worse than them all" (Greeley, 1868, p. 96). This statement characterizes the drive that turned a child from an impoverished farm family into one of the most influential newspaper editors of the nineteenth century.

Greeley took his first job on the path to journalism in East Poultney, Vermont, as a printer's apprentice, at the age of fifteen. In 1831, he went to work in Pennsylvania for the Erie Gazette, and later, he worked as a printer in New York City for the Spirit of the Times, the Morning Post, and the Commercial Advertiser. In 1834, two events that would shape Greeley's influence on the world of newspapers and on his own career as a politically minded publisher occurred: (1) he founded his New Yorker, a literary magazine, and (2) he joined the Whig party of New York. Joining forces with Thurlow Weed, an editor of the Albany Evening Journal, and William H. Seward, the Whig candidate for governor of New York in 1837, Greeley founded the Jeffersonian, a Whig paper. In 1840, Greeley also initiated the Log Cabin, a Whig paper designed to support the presidential candidacy of William Henry Harrison. Once Harrison was elected, and after Harrison's untimely death soon after he became president, Greeley published the first issue of his own newspaper, the New York Tribune, on April 10, 1841. Described as "A New Morning Journal of Politics, Literature and General Intelligence," the newspaper promised "to advance the interests of the people, and to promote their Moral, Political and Social well-being."

Thus began Greeley's tenure as an editor who crusaded against slavery, capital punishment, class injustice, and marital infidelity and who wrote editorials in favor of labor rights, protective tariffs, westward expansion, and women's rights (not suffrage). Greeley was a strong shaper of public opinion whose own views were loyal to Whig party causes, such as protection of industry, but who desired his newspaper to be politically neutral. Believing that newspapers should provide a forum for debate, Greeley's newspaper featured writings by such luminaries of the nineteenth century as Margaret Fuller and Karl Marx. The New York Tribune was known for its quality reporting of local, national, and international events, for its inclusion of various genres of writing, such as poetry and criticism, and for its embodiment of the virtues of a free press. It became one of the first great American newspapers, reaching a circulation of almost 300,000 by 1860. One of Greeley's most famous editorials, "The Prayer of Twenty Millions," was a plea to President Abraham Lincoln to authorize military commanders to free slaves during 1862. Lincoln's famous reply, that his concern was saving the Union, regardless of slavery, shows how Greeley's clout led many leaders of the day to engage with him editorially.

Throughout his lifetime, Greeley championed a variety of causes, some of them seemingly contradictory. He advocated protective tariffs but supported the presidential candidacy of the Republican party, which favored tariff reduction. He was apparently an inelegant speaker with a squeaky voice and a literary style, both of which combined with his eccentric and ill-fitting dress to give an impression of a well-schooled but painfully awkward orator. Nonetheless, Greeley gave extensive lectures on labor, education, and farming techniques throughout the country at agricultural fairs and lyceums. He was known as an articulate and opinionated speaker.

Greeley wrote twelve books in his lifetime, and four of them encapsulate his career as a journalistand statesman. The first, Hints Toward Reforms (1853), is a 400-page collection of his lectures at lyceums and agricultural fairs. Characterized as "editorials on legs," these lectures range widely in topic from labor to religion to slavery, thereby showing Greeley's own range of interests. The second, A History of the Struggle for Slavery Extension or Restriction in the United States, is an excessively detailed account of slavery in the United States, overlaid with Greeley's political commentary on the ordinances and bills that fueled the institution of slavery from the eighteenth century onward. This book, published in 1856, has been praised for its journalistic detail and research. The third, An Overland Journey, from New York to San Francisco, in the Summer of 1859, is a travelogue of Greeley's ventures west to California, complete with details of modes of transport and the variety of natural phenomena he witnessed. It is this work that may have contributed to Greeley's fame for the phrase "Go west, young man," which was actually coined by John Soule, an Indiana editor, in 1851. Finally, Greeley's 1868 autobiography, Recollections of a Busy Life, traces his life from the Puritan New England roots through his newspaper days. Included in this book are accounts of the U.S. Civil War and a discussion of the deaths of his children (he lost five out of seven). Comprehensive and evocative, it is considered to be on par with Benjamin Franklin's famous autobiography.

Greeley was the Republican candidate for president in 1872, but he was soundly defeated by the incumbent, Ulysses S. Grant, in an election that coincided with tragedy in Greeley's personal life, as he faced his wife's death and his own failing health.

Newspaper Industry, History Of.

Greeley, Horace. (1850). Hints Toward Reforms. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Greeley, Horace. (1856). A History of the Struggle for Slavery Extension or Restriction in the United States, from the Declaration of Independence to the Present Day. New York: Dix, Edwards.

Greeley, Horace. (1859). An Overland Journey from New York to San Francisco in the Summer of 1859. New York: C. M. Saxton, Barker.

Greeley, Horace. (1868). Recollections of a Busy Life. New York: J. B. Ford. Hale, William Harlan. (1950).

Horace Greeley: Voice of the People. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Lunde, Erik S. (1981). Horace Greeley. Boston: G. K. Hall

Maihafer, Harry J. (1998). The General and the Journalists: Ulysses S. Grant, Horace Greeley, and Charles Dana. Washington, DC: Brasseys.

Parton, James. (1882). The Life of Horace Greeley, Editor of the New York Tribune. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin.

Schulze, Suzanne. (1992). Horace Greeley: A Bio-Bibliography. Westport, CT: Greenwood.

Stoddard, Henry Luther. (1946). Horace Greeley: Printer, Editor, Crusader. New York: G. P. Putnam.

Van Deusen, Glyndon G. (1953). Horace Greeley: Nineteenth-Century Crusader. New York: Hill and Wang.

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