Horace Greeley

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Horace Greeley, 1860s
Greeley's signature

Horace Greeley (born February 3, 1811 in Amherst , New Hampshire , † November 29, 1872 in Pleasantville , New York ) was an American newspaper publisher , founder of the New York Tribune , politician and opponent of slavery .

Youth and apprenticeship years

Horace was the third of seven children. His father, Zacchaeus Greeley, owned a 50 acre farm on stony land. Before Horace was ten years old (1820), his father went bankrupt and the family home was sold by the sheriff. Zacchaeus Greeley himself avoided arrest for his debts by moving to West Haven, Vermont. After spending three years with the family as a day laborer in West Haven, Horace was able to learn the trade of a printer from 1826 to 1830 with the consent of his father at the Northern Spectator in Poultney (Vermont) . Here he soon became a good worker, developed a passion for politics and especially for political statistics. From 1831 he practiced this profession, first in Erie and later in New York City .

In 1831, shortly after arriving in New York City, he attended the Church of the Universalists on Orchard Street and quickly became friends with Reverend Thomas Jefferson Sawyer . Reverend Sawyer's wife, Caroline, later became a regular contributor to Greeley's The New Yorker. Greeley would belong to this church for life.

In January 1833, Greeley formed a partnership with Francis V. Story, a work colleague. Their combined capital was about $ 150. They got a loan, opened a small office, and printed the Morning Post, New York's first cheap newspaper, which failed in less than three weeks. The printers only lost $ 50 or $ 60 through the experiment. Six months into their partnership, Story drowned, but his brother-in-law, Jonas Winchester, took his place at the company. On March 2, 1834, Greeley and Jonas Winchester had completed the first issue of The New Yorker, a weekly newspaper. They sold over 100 copies of the first issue and almost 200 of the second. In the next month, the circulation increased by an average of 100 copies per week. In the first year the circulation rose to 4,550 copies, but brought in a loss of $ 3,000. The second year ended with 7,000 subscribers and another $ 2,000 loss. By the end of the third year, the New Yorker had a circulation of 9,500 copies and a total loss of $ 7,000. It was published for seven years (until September 20, 1841) and was never profitable. But he was very popular and added to Greeley's reputation.

By 1838 he had gained such a reputation as a writer that he was chosen by Thurlow Weed, William Henry Seward, and other Whig Party leaders to take over the editing of The Jeffersonian newspaper in Albany. Every week he traveled back and forth between Albany and New York to edit the two papers. The Jeffersonian was calm and opposed to a vehement campaign, and the Whigs believed it would have a big impact on next year's elections. On May 2, 1840, some time after William Henry Harrison was nominated for the presidency by the Whig Party, Greeley began publishing a new weekly newspaper, "The Log Cabin," which immediately sold 40,000 copies and had a circulation eventually doubled to 80,000. It was hailed as a brilliant political success, but the Log Cabin was not profitable, and in September 1841 it was merged with the Weekly Tribune and the New Yorker to become a weekly edition for outside subscribers.

Editorial staff of the New York Tribune , circa 1850. Seated from left: George M. Snow, Bayard Taylor , Horace Greeley, George Ripley, standing from left: William Henry Fry , Charles Anderson Dana, Henry J. Raymond

Editor of the "Tribune"

His personal friend James Coggeshall loaned him $ 1000. The New York Daily Tribune was founded in 1841 with this capital and the reputation of the editor. It started with 500 subscribers. The first week the cost was $ 525 and the income was $ 92. By the end of the fourth week it had reached a circulation of 6,000 and by the seventh week 11,000, which was the full capacity of the printer press. The paper was awake, cheerful and aggressive, made strong by attacks on newspaper rivals and promised success almost from the start.

With her serious reporting, she quickly set new standards in American journalism. It was considered the leading paper of the Whig Party , which, thanks to its strong position in New York, prevented the election of the Democratic presidential candidate in 1848. One of Greeley's closest collaborators were Charles Anderson Dana and Henry J. Raymond , who founded the New York Times after he left (1851).

Over the next two decades, the circulation rose by more than a quarter to a million, and the Tribune became the most influential newspaper in the country. Greeley added editorials and commentary on social and political issues to the usual news. He hired some of the best newspaper people and employed a few literary luminaries such as Margaret Fuller , George Ripley, and Richard Hildreth .

Greeley first entered the political arena in 1840 to support William Henry Harrison's candidacy . He remained a politician for the rest of his life. Greeley was elected to the US House of Representatives for the Whigs in 1848 . He was a leader in the campaign against the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 and helped form the Republican Party in 1856. After the union of the Whig Party with the Free Soil Party and other opposition forces to form the Republican Party in 1854 , the Tribune now also represented its principles.

Greeley was very interested in socialist and feminist ideas and published articles by Karl Marx , Charles Dana , Margaret Fuller and Jane Gray Swisshelm in the New York Tribune . Margaret Fuller wrote literary reviews and commentaries on social issues and lived in Greeley's household from 1844 to 1845. She later served as the European correspondent for the Tribune . He also promoted the views of Albert Brisbane who wanted to organize society in cooperative communities and gave him a column in the newspaper. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were among his friends . In 1865 he hired John Russell Young , who soon became editor-in-chief.

Greeley and President Lincoln

Greeley's newspaper took on a strong moral tone, campaigning against alcohol, tobacco, gambling, prostitution and the death penalty. But his main concern was the abolition of slavery.

As a leading abolitionist , Greeley advocated the abolition of slavery in the southern United States before and during the Civil War . He was a critical supporter of Abraham Lincoln's policies , but repeatedly attacked the president in a journalistic manner because of what he saw as being too hesitant to proceed with the slave question.

In August 1862, Greeley wrote a letter to Lincoln expressing disappointment in Lincoln's slavery policy, which did not provide for liberation at the start of the Civil War. He tried to convince Lincoln by arguing that the blacks as scouts, scouts and spies could be crucial to the war against the southern states. From an open reply letter that Lincoln wrote to Greeley on August 22, 1862 in his capacity as editor of the Tribune , the statements on the President's war goals, which are often quoted to this day, come:

“My ultimate goal in this war is to save the Union; it is not to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing a slave, I would; if I could save them by freeing all the slaves, I would; and if I could save the Union by freeing some slaves and not others, I would do that too. Everything I do about slavery and blacks happens because I believe it will help save the Union. "

In July 1862, Congress approved the Second Act of Confiscation, which stipulated that all slaves who entered the Union ranks should be free forever. That law also authorized President Lincoln to draft blacks into the army.

The appeal "On to Richmond", which appeared daily in the Tribune , was falsely attributed to Greeley and was not fully approved - but was blamed for it after his defeat in the first battle of Bull Run . In 1864 he pushed for peace negotiations with envoys from the Confederate in Canada, to which he was also sent by President Lincoln. However, he found that they did not have sufficient authority.

Even during the war, the Lincoln government exerted gentle pressure on the border states that had remained loyal to voluntarily abolish slavery. After the war, the goals of the proclamation were implemented throughout the United States. On January 31, 1865, the US Congress passed the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, which finally and officially abolished slavery. With the ratification by Georgia on December 6, 1865, the addition was finally final.

From a practical point of view, the act of emancipation had little effect, as this proclamation neither ended slavery nor freed "all" slaves. In and of itself one was no further than after the second act of confiscation. But from 1863 onwards it changed the struggle to protect the Union and strengthened the movement against slavery. According to the proclamation, by the summer of 1864, 400,000 signatures had been collected calling for the complete abolition of slavery.

As editor of the New York Tribune, Horace Greeley was a prominent proponent of associationalism and thus a target of malicious attacks. The associationalist movement faced opposition from Americans who felt threatened by the central tenets of Fourierism : an end to capitalism, equal rights for all, and the abolition of slavery and class differences. Critics often associated the movement with sexual promiscuity, or "free love". While Fourier himself was an advocate of free and open sexual relations, American communities, mostly based on religious principles, were consistently "decent". The Brook Farm people supported marriage and insisted on strict sexual behavior. The allegations, unfair as they were, took their toll on Brook Farm Boarding School, the main source of income. Parents who lived outside the community and read or heard about the alleged "depravity" took their children out of boarding school.

to travel

In 1851 he visited Europe for the first time as a juror for the exhibition at Crystal Palace in London. He spoke to a committee of the House of Commons about taxes on newspapers and pushed for the abolition of stamps on advertising. In 1855 he made a second trip to Europe, during which he was arrested in Paris on the basis of a lawsuit by a sculptor who had been harmed at the New York World's Fair. Greeley had been one of the directors of the fair. The two days in Clichy's arrest were described in his travelogue.

In 1859 he visited California and had to attend numerous public receptions. In 1871 he visited Texas and his trip through one of the southern states, where he was once so hated, became a triumphal procession for him.

Greeley's grave in Green-Wood Cemetery , Brooklyn

Presidential election campaign against incumbent President Ulysses Grant

In 1872 Greeley himself ran for the presidency. He stood as a candidate for a breakaway from the Republicans, the Liberal Republican Party , and supported by the - often criticized by him - Democrats against incumbent Republican President Ulysses S. Grant after meeting with the party's radical wing on the question of reconstruction had divided; his running mate as a candidate for the vice presidency was B. Gratz Brown . The Democratic Party nominated him because its leading members feared that a separate candidate would split President Grant's opposition, which would mean that the goal of replacing him could not be achieved. The delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Baltimore agreed with this view and gave him 686 out of 724 votes, but were generally less than enthusiastic about nominating Greeley, who had repeatedly attacked their party journalistically in previous years.

In 1872 Greeley's life came to a sad and bitter end. During his campaign for the presidency, Republicans had ridiculed him for his clothes, waddling gait and absent-minded manner, and portrayed him as a traitor (for his earlier criticism of President Lincoln), a fool, ignoramus and eccentric, weak of judgment and nerves . He was pilloried in merciless caricatures by Thomas Nast and others.

Greeley received 44% of the vote (Grant: 56%), but he died before the meeting of the electoral college , so that he received only three invalid votes, while “his” electorate was divided among four other Democratic politicians. Mathematically, he could have expected a result of 66 out of 352; so he would certainly have lost.

He described himself as "the worst beaten man to ever run for high office." During the campaign, he was stripped of editorial power by his colleague at the Tribune , Whitelaw Reid . His wife died shortly before the election. The combined effects of these disasters resulted in a complete physical and mental breakdown. Greeley died on November 29, 1872.

Greeley's memorial service at the Church of the Divine Paternity on December 4 was attended by many dignitaries, including the president, vice president, cabinet members, mayors, and three governors.

family

In 1836 Greeley married the schoolteacher Mary Young Cheney, with whom he shared his passion for the poetry and the vegetarian reform diet of Sylvester Graham . The Greeleys had seven children, but only two, Gabrielle and Ida, reached adulthood. Mary hadn't been able to give him the kind of love he'd hoped for. She suffered from frequent nervous disorders and neglected the household. Greeley's domestic life was bleak. He called his country home outside New York City "Castle Doleful" and slept in accommodations near the newspaper most nights.

effect

The still famous slogan Go West, Young Man! who called for the colonization of the American West is commonly attributed to Horace Greeley. B. in the opening credits of the Marx Brothers film Go West (cited there with the year 1851).

Greeley appears as a cartoon character in the Lucky Luke volume 45 The Daily Star and in The Blue Boys volume 28 Riot in New York . In the western The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance , lawyer Ransom Stoddard, played by James Stewart, appeals to Greeley and his encouraging advice “Go West, Young Man!”, Which the latter gave him personally.

The parents of the later German Reichsbank President Hjalmar Schacht (1877-1970) gave their son the name "Horace Greeley" as his first and second name.

After Greeley are Greeley County , Kansas and Greeley County named in Nebraska.

Works

literature

Web links

Commons : Horace Greeley  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: Horace Greeley  - Quotes
Wikisource: Horace Greeley  - Sources and full texts (English)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mr. Lincoln's White House Notable Visitor Charles A. Dana
  2. ↑ Brockhaus Encyclopedia. FA Brockhaus, Mannheim 1988, Volume 7, p. 616.
  3. ↑ John Russell Young -7th Librarian of Congress 1897-1899
  4. ^ Greeley's letter "The Prayer for twenty Millions" to President Lincoln
  5. ↑ a b Howard Zinn: A People's History of the United States , Harper Perennial, 2005, ISBN 0-06-083865-5 , pp. 190-191.
  6. ↑ Brook Farm ( Memento from July 16, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ↑ Dictionary of Unitarian Universalist History and Heritage Society (UUHHS) 1999–2013 ( Memento of September 28, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ The great conflict in America. The history of the great rebellion in the United States of North America according to its causes, progress and results . OD Case, Hartford 1865.
personal data
SURNAME Greeley, Horace
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American newspaper publisher and politician
DATE OF BIRTH February 3, 1811
PLACE OF BIRTH Amherst , New Hampshire
DATE OF DEATH November 29, 1872
Place of death Pleasantville , New York