Blog Post 5; EOTO 2 - Horace Greeley; A Journalism Hero

Horace Greeley; A Journalism Hero

"Journalism will kill you, but it will keep you alive while you're at it."

- Horace Greeley

An American journalist, publisher, editor, and politician who is known for his political legacy and newspaper, The New York Tribune, is Horace Greeley. But how did he get there and what influence did he leave behind?

    Horace Greeley was born on February 3, 1811, in Amherst, New Hampshire. He was the son of a New England farmer and was raised in the rural parts of the northeast. Due to the economic struggles of his family, Greeley had inconsistent schooling that ended when he was 14 years old. 

    Despite these economic and educational struggles, Greeley knew he did not want to become a farmer. He decided to flee his home in 1822 to pursue something he enjoyed. Over and over again he was told he was too young or unskilled, until 1826 when he was able to be an apprentice at the age of 14 to a newspaper editor in Vermont. It was here that Greeley learned the value of news and how it operates. Greeley served as an apprentice for about 5 years until 1831, when he decided to take matters into his own hands and move to New York City. 

    This turned out to be a very successful move for 20-year-old Greeley. He found himself with various job opportunities which provided him with some valuable capital. However, Greeley, again, decided to do it his way and started his own weekly literary and news journal in 1834, the New Yorker.

    Greeley contributed to the journal greatly as he was an extensive reader with a passion to write and edit. The journal attracted an extensive audience and reputation for Greeley, however, despite his efforts to keep the journal going, it failed to make money. Because of this, Greeley had to supplement his income by writing in support of the Whig party. This writing led him to gain connections with Thurlow Weed and William H. Seward as well as other famous Whigs. These connections paved the way for Greeley in his first editorship and work with weekly campaigns for the Log Cabin in 1840. This work with the Log Cabin grew Greeley's reputation and popularity which helped him in his future endeavors. 

    After gaining a respectable reputation with the Log Cabin, Greeley decided to go his own way and start his path to national prominence and founded the New York Tribune in 1841. Throughout the Tribune's upbringing, Greeley made it clear that as editor he was shifting things to what he envisioned. The paper became the dominant Republican source and soon became the leading paper in New York at the time. While the papers in this time were largely partisan-based, Greeley added sections about general city news, special articles, crime, book reviews, poetry, and other intellectual reading to appeal to a broader audience. These additions added to the Tribune's overall success, leading Greeley to become one of the head roles of the newspaper world in New York. 

    After the Tribune had gained extensive popularity and reached a circulation of about 200,000, Horace Greeley became a very prominent Republican figure. One of the most notable moments of Greeley's career was his crucial role in the political aspects of the Civil War. 

    One bit of information about Horace Greeley's political affiliation, as well as the Tribunes', was the support of Lincoln. Greeley very openly supported Lincoln when he first ran for president during the Civil War, but not when he re-ran in 1864. This support of Lincoln became a very controversial topic for the Tribune. Other controversial topics Greeley and the Tribune published were the promotion of abolishing slavery and opposing women's suffrage.

    To illustrate these views, Greeley famously editorialized on December 17, 1860, "For our own part, while we deny the right of slaveholders to hold slaves against the will of the latter, we cannot see how twenty millions of people can rightfully hold ten, or even five, in a detested union with them, by military force."

    Six weeks after Lincoln was elected, during the secession crisis, Greeley and the Tribune introduced the view called "peaceable secession". This idea was that the North should allow the disunionist South to depart in peace. 

    

    These radical views and ideas early on led to Greeley's importance during the Civil War. He was most widely known for his involvement with peace efforts. After learning that Confederate diplomats who were interested in peace negotiations were located in Canada, Greeley became one of the leading figures of the 1864 Niagara Peace Conference. Greeley then was able to mention these matters to president Lincoln, who then sent him to meet the Confederates on the condition that he aimed to restore the Union and abolish slavery. 

    Though these negotiations proved ineffective, Greeley continued to advocate and demonstrate an interest in making peace efforts until the end of the war. 

    In the midst of the war years, president Lincoln joined those radical Republicans who fought for a more vigorous prosecution of the war and believed that the war should include emancipation and the complete destruction of slavery. As a radical himself, Greeley's relationship with Lincoln was a bit muddled. There were times when Greeley was critical of Lincoln and argued that his political and military leadership was mediocre. This criticism is what ultimately led to Greeley no longer supporting Lincoln in his re-run in 1864. This did cause Greeley to lose some popular support but his premature peace efforts did as well, yet he still was a respected figure. 

    As mentioned, during and after the Civil War, Greeley and his political association were deemed highly controversial. During the period of presidential reconstruction from 1865 to 1867, Horace Greeley remained a radical Republican. He continuously insisted that freedom and equal rights for African-Americans were crucial and had to be the cornerstone of any kind of reconstruction effort.  Towards the end of the reconstruction, Greely joined the Congressional radicals to further his advocacy and support of equality for freedmen. 

    Due to all of his efforts on behalf of radical reconstruction, Greeley remained a classical liberal. He was reluctant to use the power of any state to ensure equal rights for African-Americans, as he thought it would not create a change that stuck. He was also very openly opposed to plans to confiscate land in the south for freedmen as well as being alienated by the radical tenor of labor activism after the war. In fact, Greeley was averse to any class view of the labor situation and stood on his belief in class harmony. He placed his faith in labor in cooperative movements and groups. 

    A few years later during the first administration of President Ulysses S. Grant, partly from political rebuff and from disagreement with the corruption, Greeley joined a group of Republican dissenters, who formed the Liberal Republican party.  Greeley's retreat from radicalism was finalized and embodied by his official involvement with the Liberal Republican movement. This was the movement that began to support amnesty, tariff reform, civil service reform, and opposition to the Grant administration as a whole.

    At the Liberal Republican's national convention that was held in Cincinnati in May of 1872, Horace Greeley was nominated for president. With a lack of a viable candidate who also had national appeal, the Democratic Party also endorsed Greeley for president. This was major and made the Tribune editor the first person to be nominated for president by two different parties. 

    While Greeley was greatly admired, he was also seen as eccentric and odd both in his personal appearance and radical reformist ideas. His behavior during and after the war raised eyebrows and cast doubt about his judgment. When Greeley was nominated to challenge Grant, he was attacked and labeled as a fool and a crank. In the dreary campaign that followed, the assault was so merciless that he said he scarcely knew whether he was running for the presidency or the penitentiary. 

    However, despite his party's inexperience and personal criticism, Greeley polled more than 40 percent of the popular vote.

    Unfortunately, during this time the Tribune went under significant change. The era of personal editorship was coming to a close and the Tribune was increasing to a size Greeley couldn't handle on his own and his influence diminished and passed off to others. In addition to the loss of his editorship, Greely was also losing drastically in the presidential race. Grant won by a popular majority of over 760,00 and a 56 percent margin.  All but 3 of the 66 electoral votes pledged to him went to four minor candidates.

    The final factor that caused great suffering for Greeley was the loss of his wife. Greeley was then institutionalized and passed away from a breakdown of both his mind and body on November 29, 1872. Greeley passed before the electoral college met and all votes were cast. 

    Horace Greeley was a dedicated and progressive figure during the era of the Civil War. If it was not for him and his radical views, we may not have reached an end to the war. Horace Greeley was not only a journalism hero but an American hero. His influence still lives on in his writing and in the echoes of his ideals in writing we see today. If it wasn't for Greely and his vision for journalism and for America, we may not be where we are today.