guns, though in his own judgment it was ill-advised and would probably prove fatal to him. When the National troops were repelled, by his admirable management of the guns he protected them from pursuit and destruction. Just at the close of the action, when he had given the orders to withdraw his guns from the field, he was struck by a rifle-ball on the right temple and instantly killed. For his bravery in the two days' action he was brevetted captain, major, and lieutenant-colonel, on the day of his death.
GREELEY, Horace, journalist, b. in Amherst,
N. H., 3 Feb., 1811; d. in Pleasantville, near New
York city, 29 Nov., 1872. His birthplace is shown
in the accompanying engraving. On both sides
his ancestors were of Scotch-Irish origin, but had
been settled in New England for some generations.
His father, Zaccheus Greeley, was a small farmer,
always poor, and, by the time Horace was ten
years old, a bankrupt and a fugitive from the
state, to escape arrest for debt. Horace was the
third child, four followed him, and when the
little homestead of fifty acres of stony land at
Amherst was lost and his father became a day-laborer
at West Haven, Vt., the united exertions
of all that were able to work brought the family
only a hard and bare subsistence. Horace
had been a precocious child, feeble, and not fond
of sports, but with a strong bent to books. He
could read before he could talk plainly, when he
was not yet three years old, and he was soon after
the acknowledged chief in the frequent contests of
the village spelling-match. He received only a
common-school education, and after his sixth year
had schooling only in winter, laboring at other
times in the field with his father and brothers.
When six years old he declared he would be a
printer, and at eleven he tried to be apprenticed in
the village office. He was rejected then on account
of his youth, but tried again, three years later, at
East Poultney, Vt., in the office of the “Northern
Spectator,” and was accepted as an apprentice for
five years, to be boarded and lodged, and, after six
months, to be paid at the rate of $40 a year. He
learned the business rapidly, became an accurate
compositor, gained the warm regard of his
employer and of the whole village, showed a special
aptitude for politics and political statistics, rose to
be the neighborhood oracle on disputed points,
took a leading part in the village debating-society,
and was intrusted with a portion of the editorial
work on the paper. Meantime he spent next to
nothing, dressed in the cheapest way, went without
a coat in summer and without an overcoat in
winter, was laughed at as “gawky” and “stingy,”
and sent almost every cent of his forty dollars a
year to his father. At last, in June, 1830, the
paper was suspended, and young Greeley, then in his
twentieth year, was released from his apprenticeship,
and turned out upon the world as a “tramping
jour printer.” Fourteen months of such
experience sufficed. He visited his father, who had
now removed to the “new country” near Erie, Pa.,
worked with him on the farm when he could not
find employment in country printing-offices, sent
home most of his earnings, when he could, and at
last decided to seek his fortune in New York.
With his wardrobe in a bundle, slung over his
shoulder by a stick, he set out on foot through the
woods, walked to Buffalo, thence made his way,
partly on canal-boats, partly by walking the towpath,
to Albany, and then down the Hudson on a
tug-boat. With $10 in his pocket, and his stick
and bundle still over his shoulder, on 18 Aug.,
1831, he entered the city in which he was to be
recognized as the first of American journalists.
He wandered for days from one printing-office to
another vainly searching for work. His grotesque
appearance was against him; nobody supposed he
could be a competent printer, and most thought
him a runaway apprentice. At last an Irishman
at the cheap boarding-house he had found told
him of an office where a compositor was needed;
a Vermont printer interceded for him, when he
was about to be rejected on his appearance, and at
last he was taken on trial for the day. The matter
assigned him had been abandoned by other printers
because of its uncommon difficulty. At night
his was found the best day's work that anybody
had yet done, and his position was secure.
He worked as a journeyman printer in New York for fourteen months, sometimes in job-offices, for a few days each in the offices of the “Evening Post” and the “Commercial Advertiser,” longer in that of the “Spirit of the Times,” making friends always with the steady men he encountered, and saving money. Finally, in January, 1833, he took part in the first effort to establish a penny paper in New York. His partner was Francis V. Story, a fellow-printer: they had $150 between them, and on this capital and a small lot of type bought on credit from George Bruce, on his faith in Greeley's honest face and talk, they took the contract for printing the “Morning Post.” It failed in three weeks, but they had only lost about one third of their capital, and still had their type. They had therefore become master job-printers, and Greeley never worked again as a journeyman. They got a “Bank-note Reporter” to print, which brought them in about $15 a week, and a little triweekly paper, “The Constitutionalist,” which was the lottery organ. Its columns regularly contained the following card : “Greeley and Story, No. 54 Liberty street, New York, respectfully solicit the patronage of the public to their business of letter-press-printing, particularly lottery-printing, such as schemes, periodicals, and so forth, which will be executed on favorable terms.”
Mr. Greeley had renewed his habit of writing for the papers on which he was employed as a compositor. He was thus a considerable contributor to the “Spirit of the Times,” and now, by an article contributed to the “Constitutionalist,” defending the lotteries against a popular feeling then recently aroused, he attracted the attention of Dudley S. Gregory, of Jersey City, the agent of a great lottery association, whose friendship soon became helpful and was long-continued. His partner, Story, died after seven months, and his brother-in-law, Jonas Winchester, was taken into the partnership instead. The firm prospered, and by 1834 Mr. Greeley again began to think of editorship. The firm now considered itself worth $3,000. With this capital and the brains of the senior partner, the “New Yorker,” the best literary weekly then
