Horace Greeley

Born February 3, 1811
Amherst, New Hampshire
Died November 29, 1872
New York City, New York

Newspaper publisher and abolitionist

Author Lewis Leary

Horace Greeley was America's leading journalist of the Civil War era. He was the founder and editor of the New York Tribune, America's most popular newspaper of the mid-nineteenth century. Using his newspaper editorials as a tool to comment on American society and politics, Greeley became known as a crusader for a wide range of social causes, including women's rights and land reform. He became most famous, however, for his fierce opposition to slavery and his strong support of the Union war effort.

Independent at an early age

Horace Greeley was born on February 3, 1811, to a poor farming family in Amherst, New Hampshire. His father, Zaccheus Greeley, uprooted his family on numerous occasions in failed efforts to establish a successful farm. This unsettled existence made it difficult for young Horace to obtain a good education. Nonetheless, he showed considerable abilities as a speller and reader. One classmate even stated that Greeley's spelling skills were known "for miles around." As Greeley entered his teen years, he began to think of ways in which he might use his spelling and reading talents to escape the family farm.

At age fourteen, Greeley left his parents' home to accept a position as a printer's apprentice in Vermont. This apprenticeship (agreement to work for another person in exchange for instruction in a trade) enabled him to learn a great deal about printing and newspaper production. In 1831, he left Vermont and traveled to New York City in hopes of securing a job with one of the city's many newspapers.

Greeley spent the next three years working for a number of New York newspapers, including the Morning Post and the Spirit of the Times. These jobs enabled him to continue to develop his knowledge of the newspaper business. As the months passed by, he began to dream of operating his own newspaper. He also started a family around this time. In 1836, he married Mary Cheney. The couple eventually had seven children, but only two survived to adulthood.

Launches the New York Tribune

From 1834 to 1840, Greeley served as editor and coowner of several New York publications. These periodicals, which were devoted to literature and politics, increased Greeley's reputation among the city's publishers and politicians. But he did not become famous until 1841, when he launched the New York Tribune.

Guided by Greeley's steady hand, the Tribune quickly became one of America's largest and most respected newspapers. "With its brilliant staff, exciting editorials, broad coverage of international and national events, the Tribune set a new standard for American journalism," wrote Lewis Leary in Horace Greeley.

Greeley's newspaper increased in popularity throughout the 1840s and early 1850s. As the audience for Greeley's wide-ranging newspaper editorials grew, he became powerfully influential in shaping public opinion in the Northern states. "Greeley's positions in his editorials represented some of the most important trends of public, social, and political commentary of the day," wrote Leary. For example, he became a leading advocate of women's rights and a strong defender of temperance, a movement that called for people to quit drinking alcohol. He also emerged as a leading critic of American laws and land distribution that favored rich people over farmers and laborers. As Greeley wrote in 1851, "if democracy be what we believe, it must have a wider and more perfect application [usage]. It must create a new social as well as a new political system. It must reform the relations of labor, of property and of social life, nor stop till all servitude [slavery], all castes [social classes], all inequality of privilege have disappeared to give place to . . . liberty, justice and fraternal [brotherly] cooperative relations."

By the 1850s, Greeley was known across the country for his support of policies that he thought might eliminate poverty and improve opportunities for poor and uneducated people. This concern for the poor led Greeley to become a leading champion of settlement of western territories, even though he thought that much of that land had been unfairly snatched from Mexico during the Mexican War (1846–48). He proclaimed that "I believe in migration—believe that there are thousands in the Eastern and Middle Western states who would improve their circumstances and prospects by migrating to the cheaper lands and broader opportunities of the West and South." In fact, Greeley popularized the slogan "Go West, young man," a famous expression associated with the settlement of the West.

Calls for end to slavery

Greeley's strong interest in eliminating poverty in America was a major factor in his antislavery stands of the 1850s. Slavery had been a part of America since the 1600s, when white people first captured African blacks and brought them to North America. The basic belief behind slavery was that black people were inferior to whites. Under slavery, white slaveholders treated black people as property, forced them to perform hard labor, and controlled every aspect of their lives. States in the Northern section of the United States began outlawing slavery in the late 1700s. But slavery continued to exist in the Southern half of the country, where it became an important part of the region's economy and culture.

Greeley hated the conditions in which many slaves were forced to live, and argued that the continued existence of slavery contradicted the nation's ideals of freedom and liberty. Many of his criticisms were directed at white people of the American South, who continued to defend slavery. But Greeley also criticized Northerners for their racist treatment of free black men and women.

By the mid-1850s, Greeley had become one of the country's most visible abolitionists (people who worked to end slavery in America). In 1854, he helped establish the antislavery Republican Party, and he repeatedly spoke out against Southern efforts to expand the rights of slaveowners and the territories in which slavery would be permitted. "This is not an age of the world in which new domain [territories] can be opened to slavedrivers without an instinctive shudder convulsing the frame of Humanity," he wrote. By 1856, Greeley's editorials against slavery had grown so strong that proslavery Arkansas congressmen Albert Rust (1818?–1870) physically attacked him on the streets of Washington, D.C. Greeley quickly recovered from the assault, however, and resumed his abolitionist activities.

Greeley and the Civil War

By the late 1850s, most Northerners had become convinced that slavery was wrong. They wanted the federal government to take steps to outlaw slavery or at least keep it from spreading beyond the Southern states where it was already allowed. But the Southern economy had become so dependent on slavery that white Southerners worried that their way of life would collapse if slavery was abolished (completely done away with). Arguing that each state should decide for itself whether to allow the practice, Southerners refused to go along with attempts to limit or end slavery. By 1861, Southern dissatisfaction with the North had become so great that several states decided to secede from (leave) the Union and form a country that accepted slavery, called the Confederate States of America. The Northern states, however, were unwilling to see the United States split in two. They vowed to force the South back into the Union.

As America's Northern and Southern sections prepared to go to war to settle their differences, Greeley initially counseled the federal government to let the secessionist states leave in peace. Doubtful about the ability of President Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865; see entry) to guide the nation, Greeley desperately wanted to avoid a bloody war. He also argued that the departure of the Confederate states would finally eliminate slavery from the United States.

After the war erupted in April, however, Greeley became a key supporter of the Northern war effort. He knew that if the Union forces could stomp out the Confederate rebellion, the federal government would be able to institute laws ending slavery across all of North America. With this in mind, Greeley churned out a series of editorials urging Northerners to rally behind the Union flag.

Greeley's "Prayer of Twenty Millions"

Lincoln recognized that Greeley's views helped increase Northern support for the war, especially during the first two years of the conflict. Nonetheless, Greeley's editorials in the Tribune sometimes angered the president. The publisher sometimes criticized Lincoln for his military leadership, and he repeatedly called on Lincoln to free all blacks who were enslaved in the Southern states. Lincoln, though, worried that such a declaration would erode support for the war among Northerners, whose main concern was restoring the Union.

On August 19, 1862, Greeley issued his most famous demand for immediate emancipation (freeing) of slaves. Claiming that he spoke for twenty million disappointed Northerners, the abolitionist published an open letter to Lincoln in which he harshly criticized the president's "timid" policies toward slavery and the South. Lincoln responded three days later with his own note. "My paramount [most important] object is to save the Union and not either to save or destroy slavery," Lincoln stated.

Lincoln's response to Greeley seemed to indicate that he had no intention of tackling the slavery issue any time soon. In reality, though, the president's views on the issue changed dramatically during 1862. By the time that Greeley delivered his August 19 letter, Lincoln had come to believe that Northern support for the war might actually increase if he called for an end to slavery. After all, most Northerners felt that slavery was an immoral practice. In addition, many Northerners believed that restoration of the Union would never be possible if slavery were allowed to continue. By the fall of 1862, Lincoln had decided that "slavery must die [so] that the nation might live!" On January 1, 1863, Lincoln issued his famous Emancipation Proclamation, which freed all slaves in the Confederate states. This announcement delighted Greeley, who immediately published an editorial praising both Lincoln and his Proclamation.

War weariness sets in

In the months immediately following Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, Greeley's support for the war effort remained strong. From the summer of 1863 to the summer of 1864, however, the publisher's feelings about the Civil War changed dramatically. Horrified at the steadily rising casualty lists, he became convinced that the conflict had disintegrated into a bloody stalemate (deadlock). By the summer of 1864, Greeley was imploring Lincoln to make peace with the South, even if it meant giving up Northern dreams of a restored Union. "Our bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying" country cannot withstand "new rivers of human blood," wrote Greeley.

Greeley's disillusionment with the war became so strong that he made a failed attempt to negotiate an end to the conflict with Confederate officials. He also considered joining other Republicans who wanted to replace Lincoln with someone else for the fall 1864 presidential elections. In the weeks leading up to the election, however, Union forces won a series of dramatic victories in the South. These triumphs enabled Lincoln to win reelection and signaled the impending collapse of the Confederacy.

Postwar activities

The period in American history immediately after the war, from 1865 to 1877, was known as Reconstruction. During this time the federal government supervised the rebuilding of the Southern states. Greeley became personally involved in this effort. He devoted his time and energy to building a brighter future for Southern whites and blacks alike. For example, he opposed some Northern leaders who wanted to further punish Confederate soldiers and political leaders for their wartime activities. He felt that white Southerners should instead be encouraged to put the war behind them and rebuild their lives peacefully. Greeley also urged whites across the nation to treat free blacks and former slaves with fairness. "The Blacks are a portion not merely of the Southern but of the American people," wrote Greeley. He added that the North must protect blacks "no matter what the cost." In accordance with these beliefs, he strongly supported amendments to the U.S. Constitution that made blacks American citizens (the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified, or officially approved, in 1868) and gave them the right to vote (the Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870).

In 1872, Greeley ran for president as the nominee of both the Democratic Party and the Liberal Republicans, a group of Republicans that did not like the policies of Republican president Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885; see entry). The presidential campaign became a nightmarish one for Greeley, however. Grant's allies ridiculed Greeley's frantic peacemaking efforts during the Civil War. They convinced many Americans that the publisher was too eccentric (odd or unconventional) to be president. To make this difficult time worse, Greeley's wife died less than a week before the election.

Grant easily defeated Greeley in the election, winning 56 percent of the popular vote. The crushing defeat, combined with his wife's death, plummeted Greeley into deep despair. Within a matter of weeks, his mental and physical health declined greatly. He died in New York City on November 29, 1872, less than a month after the election.

Where to Learn More

Cross, Coy F. Go West Young Man!: Horace Greeley's Vision for America. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995.

Hale, William Harlan. Horace Greeley: Voice of the People. New York: Harper, 1950.

Horace Greeley (1811–1872), Editor of the New York Tribune. [Online] http://www.honors.unr.edu/~fenimore/greeley.html (accessed on October 10, 1999).

Lunde, Erik S. Horace Greeley. Boston: Twayne, 1981.

Maihafer, Harry J. The General and the Journalists: Ulysses S. Grant, HoraceGreeley, and Charles Dana. Washington, D.C.: Brasseys, 1998.

Van Deusen, Glyndon G. Horace Greeley: Nineteenth-Century Crusader. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1953. Reprint, New York: Hill and Wang, 1964.

Greeley's War of Words with President Lincoln

In August 1862, Horace Greeley and President Abraham Lincoln exchanged strongly worded letters concerning the continued existence of slavery in the Confederacy. Greeley wanted Lincoln to officially outlaw slavery in the South, even though the Federal government did not have any power to enforce such a law at the time. Lincoln, though, responded by saying that he would not take any action that might hurt his ability to eventually restore the divided Union.

Excerpt from Greeley's "Prayer of Twenty Millions":

To Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States:

Dear Sir: I do not intrude to tell you—for you must know already—that a great proportion of those who triumphed in your election, and of all who desire the unqualified suppression [complete crushing] of the rebellion now desolating [destroying] our country, are sorely disappointed and deeply pained by the policy you seem to be pursuing with regard to the slaves of rebels. . . .

We complain that you, Mr. President, elected as a Republican, knowing well what an abomination [great evil] Slavery is, and how emphatically [clearly] it is the core and essence of this atrocious [terrible] rebellion, seem never to interfere with these atrocities, and never give a direction to your military subordinates, which does not appear to have been conceived in the interest of Slavery rather than of Freedom. . . .

On the face of this wide earth, Mr. President, there is not one disinterested [impartial], determined, intelligent champion of the Union cause who does not feel that all attempts to put down the rebellion and at the same time uphold its inciting cause [the issue that triggered it] are preposterous [absurd] and futile—that the rebellion, if crushed out to-morrow, would be renewed within a year if Slavery were left in full vigor. . . .

I close as I began with the statement that what an immense majority of the loyal millions of your countrymen require of you is a frank, declared, unqualified, ungrudging execution of the laws of the land, more especially of the Confiscation Act [an 1862 law that declared all property—including slaves—owned by rebels to be "contraband of war"; since slaves were considered property in the South, escaped slaves were allowed to remain in the North under this law]. . . . As one of the millions who would gladly have avoided the struggle at any sacrifice but that of principle and honor, but who now feel that the triumph of the Union is indispensable [absolutely necessary] not only to the existence of our country but to the well-being of mankind, I entreat [beg] you to render a hearty and unequivocal [clear] obedience to the law of the land.

Yours, Horace Greeley

Excerpt from President Lincoln's response:

The sooner the national authority can be restored, the nearer the Union will be the Union it was.

If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them.

If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them.

My paramount object [main goal] is to save the Union and not either to save or destroy slavery.

If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it—If I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it—and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.

What I do about slavery and the colored race I do because I believe it helps to save this Union; and what I forbear [decide not to do], I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. . . .

. . . I have stated my purpose according to my views of official duty; and I intend no modification [change] of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.