The New Student's Reference Work/Greeley, Horace

HORACE GREELEY

Gree′ley (grē'lĭ), Horace, was born at Amherst, N. H., Feb. 3, 1811. After obtaining a common-school education, he entered a printing-office at East Poultney, Vt., and there rose to the position of assistant-editor on the Northern Spectator. He then worked as a journeyman-printer, reaching New York in 1831 with ten dollars in his pocket; and there, with a fellow-workman, he founded the New Yorker, a weekly, in 1834. His first success was the Log-Cabin, a campaign paper which aided largely to bring about the election of Gen. W. H. Harrison to the presidency in 1840. On April 10, 1841, he issued the first number of the New York Tribune, an advocate of temperance, co-operation, a protective tariff and the abolition of slavery and capital punishment. It at first was Whig, then antislavery Whig and subsequently the most powerful organ of the Republican party. This paper he edited until his death. In 1848 he was elected to congress. When the southern states seceded, he at first upheld their course as being in accordance with the Declaration of Independence; but when the war began, he became its earnest supporter. At the close of the war he was a strenuous advocate of amnesty for all, and went to Richmond to offer bail for Jefferson Davis, for which action he was strongly condemned. In 1872 he was a candidate for president against General Grant, and met with defeat. This broke his health and spirit, and he died on Nov. 29, 1872. Greeley was a good and popular speaker and one of America's greatest editors. He also was a well-known writer. The best known of his books are The American Conflict and What I Know of Farming. See his Life by Parton.