William Alexander Linn...

Horace Greeley is remembered by the men of his own day as a great editor and a somewhat eccentric genius. While we like to hear about a man's personal characteristics, in studying his biography the lessons of a life like Greeley's are to be found in his works. When a “Gawky” country lad, with a limited education and a slight acquaintance with the printer's trade, comes to the principal city of the land with a few dollars in his pocket and a single suit of clothes, and fights a fight the result o

The country lad who went to New York city in the summer of 1831 to seek his fortune, arrived in what would now be called a good-sized town. The population of Manhattan Island (below the Harlem River) was only 202,589 in 1830, as compared with the 1,850,093 shown by the census of 1900; the total population of the district now embraced in Greater New York was then only 242,278, while in 1900 it was 3,437,202. The total assessed valuation of the city, real and personal, in 1833, was only $166,491,5

Greeley soon satisfied himself with a stopping place, engaging a room and board for $2.50 a week with Edward McGolrick, who kept a grog-shop and boarding-house combined— a quiet, decent One-at No. 168 West Street; and after breakfast he started out to look for work. He was as persistent in this, in the face of discouragement, as he was in every duty. For Two days he tramped the streets, visiting Two-Thirds of the printing-offices in the city, always receiving a “No” to his question, “Do you want

Up in Albany another man who was at that time editing a newspaper had a fight on his hands, not so desperately against overdue notes as against a most powerful political opposition. That man was Thurlow Weed, and his opposition, known as “The Albany Regency,” included such leaders as Martin Van Buren, William L. Marcy, and Silas Wright. Weed had founded the Albany Evening Journal in March, 1830, and for several years had not only written all its editorial articles, but had reported the legislati

“I cherish the hope that the stone which covers my ashes may bear to future eyes the still intelligent inscription, Founder of the New York Tribune.” So wrote Greeley in his chapter on the Tribune in his Busy Life. In truth, the Tribune was his lasting monument. He had qualified himself to edit it. He had the courage to found it. He made it a greater power than has ever been exercised by another newspaper in the United States. He identified his own name with it as no other editor has been person

Conceding that the Tribune was the most influential newspaper in this country in Mr. Greeley's day, and that he, as almost synonymous with it, was the most influential editor, it is interesting to glance at some of the sources of this influence. It must be granted at once that not even an editor of so strong a personality as Greeley could have secured the great clientage that came to be recognized as his if he had not supplied to his readers a good newspaper. The Tribune was a good newspaper alm

Greeley's sympathies were always in favor of a protective tariff. He heard the hard times of his boyhood in New England attributed to the “Cheapness” of English products; both the political parties in the presidential campaign of 1828, when he was an apprentice in the East Poultney office, professed devotion to protection, and speeches which he heard at a consultation of protectionists in the American Institute, which he attended while waiting for a job during his First year in New York city, st

In the tributes paid to Greeley's memory at the time of his death by fellow journalists in New York city, Two, from the pens of men who had bitterly opposed him in many things, stand out prominent. “The colored race,” said the World, “When it becomes sufficiently educated to appreciate his career, must always recognize him as the chief author of their emancipation from slavery, and their equal citizenship;” and the Evening Post conceded that, in the history of the American antislavery contest, “

One who has followed Greeley's course in opposition to the slave power after 1850 might expect to find him an aggressive leader in the contest when his desire to see in the presidential chair a resident of a free State elected by Free-soilers was gratified, and when that decision of the people was met by threats of breaking up the Union. But Greeley was, in fact, neither far-seeing in things political nor aggressive in the face of actual danger, and when aggressiveness counted most. He lacked th

On the evening of March 4, 1869, John Russell Young, the managing editor of the Tribune, came to my desk (I was then the assistant city editor), with a long letter, written on Tribune notepaper, in his fine hand, which he asked me to copy for him. The letter was addressed to General Grant's intimate friend, General Adam Badeau. The next morning I found this letter, with only the necessary alterations, printed as the Tribune's leading editorial, giving an outline of what the paper hoped for Grant