LIBRARY OF CONGRESS DDD17SD7t.ia iiiiil^^ iiiiiif •*bo^ vOo^ ■V "'oo^ ' ,0- ^ V fy O^ -?=» // C' V ij. , «i fi> -A .'^ ^ , V -^ <.0 K^^' '^-^ '^J) 0^ ^^A v^^ --^o^ "yp'^i '^, '^A v^ ■^c^. o. HORACE GREELEY APPLETONS* SERIES OF HISTORIC LIVES. Father Marquette. By Reuben Gold Thwaites, Editor of "The Jesuit Relations," Third Edition. Daniel Boone. By Reuben Gold Thwaites. Third Edition. Horace Greeley. By William A. Linn, for many years Man- aging Editor of the " New York Evening Post." Sir William Johnson. By Augustus C. Buell, Author of "Paul Jones, Founder of the American Navy." [In preparation.^ Champlain. By Edwin Asa Dix. [In preparation.'] Sam Houston. By Prof. George P. Garrison, of the Univer- sity of Texas. [In preparation.] Sir William Pepperell. By Noah Brooks. [In preparation.] Each 12mo. Illustrated. $1.00 net. Postage. 10 cents additional. D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. HORACE GREELEY IN 1872. Horace #reelep Founder and Editor of The New York Tribune BY WILLIAM ALEXANDER LINN Author of "The Story of the Mormons " Illustrated New York 1903 t-r^ o /v THE Library of j CCNCjI^ESS. ■ Two Copies Received MAR 6 'Q03 C&pynghi hnlry CLASS g^ AXo. No COPY 8, ' COPTRIOHT, 1008 By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY PuUished, March, 1903 PREFACE 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 princi- pal city of the land with a few dollars in his pocket and a single suit of clothes, and fights a fight the result of which is the founding of the most influential newspaper of his day, and the acquirement of a reputation as its editor which secures for him a nomination for the presidency of the United States — in such a man's career there must be material for useful study. And the place to study Horace Greeley is in his newspapers. He made these newspapers; he gave them their character; and, in doing so, he left on them his mental photograph. V Horace Greeley Such a study is most interesting. No other editor has ever given opportunity for it. Beginning his editorial labors when both the tariff and the slavery questions were qui- escent, we find in the files of the New Yorker, the Jeffersonian, the Log Cabin, and the New York Tribune, in order, an expression of the growing national interest in these sub- jects, and a discussion of them which pic- tures, better than any mere recital of results can do, the building up of a public sentiment that had so far-reaching results. This is es- pecially true of the slavery question ; because Greeley was not an early Abolitionist — not an Abolitionist at all, in the technical sense. He was one of those who were content to leave the South alone with its slavery as that institution was defined in the Federal Consti- tution and restricted by the Missouri Com- promise. But he was foremost in the ranks of those who called for the observance of that compromise, who refused to concede to the South new slave territory, and who assisted in arousing the national conscience to the pitch that made an armed attempt to save the Union in the sixties a possibility. Why this valiant warrior stepped aside into the ranks of the timid and the compro- misers when the issue was drawn, each reader vi Preface may decide for himself. Why he was not con- tent with his position and influence as an edi- tor, and sacrificed a good deal of consistency in an effort to reach the office of President, may also be left to the reader's opinion. His weaknesses throughout his editorial career are almost as marked as his strength, and a lack of foresight often played havoc with his judgment. An editor of large experience said, on the occasion of his death: "The ed- itor of a daily paper is the object of un- ceasing adulation from a crowd of those who shrink from fighting the slow and doubtful battle of life in the open field, and crave the kindly shelter of editorial plaudits, ^ puffs,' and * mentions ' ; and he finds this adulation offered freely, and by all classes and condi- tions, without the least reference to his char- acter or talents or antecedents. What won- der if it turns the heads of unworthy men, and begets in them some of the vices of the despots — their unscrupulousness, their cruel- ty, and their impudence ; what wonder, too, if it should have thrown off his balance a man like Mr. Greeley, whose head was not strong, whose education was imperfect, and whose self-confidence had been fortified by a brave and successful struggle with adversity." Of Greeley's honesty and purity of motive vii Horace Greeley there was never any question. In his days of poverty no suggestions of a Weed that he remain quiet about some matter in which he believed, but which was not on the popular side, had any influence with him. In the days of the slavery contest, when the business in- terests of his city were ready for almost any concessions to Southern customers, he defied the "priests of the god Cotton," as he called them, and rebuked them in most scathing terms. When the war was over, and the ques- tions of adjustment and reconstruction were to be solved, he took a stand immediately and openly in favor of pardon and renewed brotherhood which cost him the favor of thousands of old associates, and lost him an election to the United States Senate. How- ever much his judgment swayed, it never swayed "on that side fortune leans." Vlll CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAOB Greeley's early years and first experiences as a compositor: New York city in 1831 — Parentage and farm life — His schooling — Opinions of a college education — Ap- prenticeship in Vermont — Appearance and dress — Views of country journalism — Amusements — A non- user of tobacco and liquor — Arrival in New York city . 1 CHAPTER n Discouragements in New York city : Looking for a job — His first employment — Setting up in business — Sources of income — How the New Yorker was started — Early journalism in the United States — Scope of the new paper — Greeley as a poet — Subjects of editorial discussion — Financial views — His straits for money . , , .21 CHAPTER HI Thurlow Weed's discovery : What attracted him to Gree- ley — Their first meeting — The Jeffersonian and the Log Cabin — Their character and features — Greeley's indus- try — Poor business management — Last of the New Yorker 40 CHAPTER IV Founding of the Tribune : Greeley's preparation — ^Views on good journalism — Local competition — The first num- ix Horace Greeley PAGB ber — Growth of business — McElrath as publisher — Gree- ley's courage in printing the news — Attacks and coun- ter-attacks — The Cooper libel suits — Profits . . .56 CHAPTER V Sources of the Tribune's influence : Its excellence as a newspaper — Some of Greeley's editorial associates — Getting news by express — Value of Greeley's " isms " — His connection with Pourierism — Later views on social- ism—The Graham diet— Margaret Fuller — What he be- lieved about spiritual rappings — His devotion to farm ( topics — In the lecture field — Some views on poets — His one term in Congress — The attention he attracted — His general supervision of his paper — An easy target for borrowers — Two editorial-room reminiscences , . 71 CHAPTER VI The tariff question : Greeley's early sympathies — Legisla- tion between 1833 and 1844 — A statement of his tariff principles — His work for Clay in 1844 — Its effect on his health — Desire to try the issue four years later . 110 CHAPTER VII Greeley's part in the antislavery contest: Acknowledg- ments of his influence — Why he was not an early Abo- litionist — His opinion of conservatism — Status of the slavery question during his early years — Need of arous- ing the Northern conscience — Illustrations of public feeling — Value of the Tribune as an ally — Greeley's views as set forth in the New Yorker — His aroused feel- ings — Influence of the Texas question — Effect of his devotion to Clay — Defense of Clay as a slaveholder — The Tribune's position stated — Disgust over Taylor's nomination — Defiance of the "business interests" of New York city — Position regarding the Compromise of 1850 — Rejection of the fugitive slave law — No yielding X Contents PAGE to the " god Cotton " — The Kansas-Nebraska struggle and the John Brown raid — Organization of the Repub- lican party . . , 123 CHAPTER Vni During the civil war: Greeley's weakness in a national crisis — His ambition to be Governor of New York — The story of his break with Seward and Weed — Lack of confidence in the Republican party movement — Course in the Chicago convention of 1860 — Weed's retaliation — Defense of the right of secession — The " On to Rich- mond " cry — Letter to Lincoln after the battle of Bull Run — Negotiations with Mercier — The "Prayer of Twenty Millions " — Opposition to Lincoln's renomina- tion — The Niagara Falls negotiations — A suppressed editorial — Final appreciation of the President . . 170 CHAPTER IX Greeley's presidential campaign and death : The changed attitude of the Tribune toward Grant's administration — Causes of Republican discontent — Carpet-baggers and Kuklux — The demand for universal amnesty — Greeley's leadership in that cause — An opponent of President Johnson — Bondsman for Jefferson Davis — His Richmond speech — The Liberal movement in Mis- souri — Forerunnings of the Cincinnati convention — Sumner's influence — The demand for tariflE reform — Greeley's alliance with the Liberals — Proceedings of the Cincinnati convention — How Greeley's nomination was brought about — His retirement from the Tribune control — Progress of the campaign — His defeat and its effect on him — His last hours 214 XI LIST OF ILLUSTKATIONS FACINO PAGE Horace Greeley Horace Greeley's birthplace . Park Row in 1830 Facsimile extract from the New Yorker Greeley's house at Chappaqua Specimen of Greeley's handwriting Newspaper Row in 1870 Statue in Greeley Square Frontispiece 4 23 27 93 181 234 257 ZIU HORACE GEEELEY CHAPTER I HIS EAELY YEAKS AND FIRST EMPLOYMENT AS A COMPOSITOR 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 Is- land (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 per- sonal, in 1833, was only $166,491,542; in 1900 it was, for the Borough of Manhattan, $2,853,363,382. No railroad then landed pas- sengers or freight in the city, no ocean steam- ers departed from the docks, and there was no telegraphic communication. Thirteenth Street marked the northern boundary of the settled part of Manhattan Island, and al- 3 1 Horace Greeley though, in 1828, lots from two to six miles dis- tant from the City Hall were valued at from only $60 to $700 each, more than one writer of the day was ready to concede that, owing to advantages of cheaper land on the oppo- site shores of Long Island and New Jersey, newcomers were likely to settle there before the city could count on a larger growth. We get an idea of the rural condition of the city in the announcement that the post-office (in Exchange Place) was open only from 9 a. m. to sunset; that the "elegant [dry goods] em- porium " of Peabody & Co. occupied a front- age of two windows under the American Hotel, at the northwest corner of Broadway and Barclay Street, the residences of Phillip Hone and another prominent citizen being sit- uated in the same block, and that Greenwich Village had not yet lost its character as a summer resort ; and, five years later, the New Yorker, in an article setting forth the growth of the city, said, " Her streets, lacking more direct appliances, have been sun-dried and rain-washed till they are passably, if hardly, respectable." This was the city on one of whose wharves an Albany boat landed Horace Greeley one summer morning. His equipment for a strug- gle for a living among entire strangers he 2 His Early Years has thus described : " I was twenty years old the preceding February; tall, slender, pale, and plain ; with ten dollars in my pocket, sum- mer clothing worth perhaps as much more, nearly all on my back, and a decent knowl- edge of so much of the art of printing as a boy will usually learn in the office of a coun- try newspaper." The Greeleys, for generations back, had not known affluence. Of Scotch-Irish stock, some of them had emigrated to America as early as 1640, and had fought the fight for a living as farmers or as blacksmiths. Hor- ace's father Zaccheus was a farmer, and the future journalist was born on his farm of fifty acres five miles from Amherst, N. H., on February 3, 1811. With the best of man- agement it would have been difficult to obtain from such a farm more than a living for the owner's family. The Greeleys did work hard, the mother sharing with her husband such labor as raking and loading hay, besides doing housework and carding and spinning, and Horace, when five years old, gave such assistance as riding the horse to plow before going to school for the day, and killing wire- worms in the corn. But the father was an easy-going rather than an energetic man. In those days whisky, rum, and cider were 3 Horace Greeley served even at the ordination of clergymen in parts of New England, and Zaccheus Gree- ley was never behind his neighbors in acts of hospitality. He was, his son has testified, " a bad manager," and always in debt, and his farm did not enable him to gain on his in- debtedness. In the hope of improving mat- ters, he let his own farm to a younger brother and rented a larger one near by. But the brother could not meet his engagements, and the family moved back in 1819. Sickness en- sued, a speculation in lumber proved disas- trous, and the end came in the summer of 1820, when the home farm was seized by the sheriff at the instance of several creditors, _ the father took his departure to escape arrest for debt, and the farm and crops, when sold, left nothing for the wife and children. " When night fell," wrote the son in later years, " we were as bankrupt a family as well could be." Horace then had a brother, eight years old, and two sisters of six and four years; another sister was born in 1822. In the following January the Greeleys, with their effects packed in a two-horse sleigh, joined the father in Westhaven, Vt., where he had hired a house at a rental of $16 a year. There for two years the elder Greeley worked by the day at such jobs as he could secure, 4 Horace Greeley's birthplace. His Early Years the largest of these being the clearing of a fifty-acre tract of land. The two boys at- tended school in the winter months, but as- sisted their father in his laborious tasks the rest of the time. Cutting down trees was not the work for which boys of eight and ten were fitted; but they did what they could at that, and carried off the brush and drove the team. In the early spring they chopped away, stand- ing in slush knee-deep, and in summer they endured at night the torture of having the lances. of thistles dug out of their festered feet which they could not afford to protect with shoes. Seven dollars an acre, and half the wood, was to have been the recompense for this labor; but before the account was ad- justed their employer died, and a part of even this small emolument they never received. Next, the father, again with the sons' assist- ance, tried farming and running a sawmill on shares at the same time, and later he united land-clearing and farming — all without finan- cial success. This was the last of Horace Greeley's farm work as a boy. He had found in it "neither scope for expanding faculties, incitement to constant growth in knowledge, nor a spur to generous ambition." But he believed in farming on business principles, and it was his experience in these early years 5 Horace Greeley which led him, when in command of a great newspaper, to devote so much thought to a higher agriculture, and to write and speak so many words in behalf of intelligent land cul- ture. Any one who visits the neighborhood where the early days of a man afterward fa- mous have been spent will not fail to discover reminiscences of his youthful talent, and to unearth venerable predictions of his future greatness. This has been the case with Hor- ace Greeley, producing a kind of biography which he himself pronounced "monstrously exaggerated by gossip and tradition." In his early years he was very delicate, and the death of two children who had preceded him made his mother especially tender of him. She had a rare store of old-country traditions told to her by her Irish grandmother, and the child took an eager interest in these ; and an open book on his mother's knees while she spun so attracted him that when he was four years old he could read, and, from the manner of taking his lessons, it became indifferent to him whether the book was held sideways or even upside down. Before he was quite three years old he was sent to the district school from the house of his grandfather, which was nearer it than his home, and this school he 6 His Early Years attended most of the winter, and some of the summer, months during the next three years. He also attended the district school while they lived in Vermont, as circumstances per- mitted. The text-books in those days were as primitive as the teaching and the disci- pline, embracing Webster's Spelling-Book (just introduced). The American Preceptor as a reader, and Bingam's Ladies' Accidence as a grammar. Reviewing his school days, in his Recollections of a Busy Life, Greeley said: "I deeply regret that such homely sci- ences as chemistry, geology, and botany were never taught. Yet I am thankful that algebra had not yet been thrust into our rural com- mon schools, to knot the brains and squander the time of those who should have been learn- ing something of positive and practical utility." Horace was certainly a precocious child. He had read the Bible through, under his mother's guidance, when he was five years old. When he was four years old he was so good a speller that, in the weekly matches at school, in which sides were chosen, he would easily secure and retain the head of his side, but was so much a child that the "choosing " of the spellers had to be committed to some one else, because he always selected for his 7 Horace Greeley side the playmates whom he liked best, with- out regard to their spelling ability. All his schoolfellows testified in later years to his early love of books, and that not one of the few volumes which the neighborhood afforded escaped him, and they recalled also his inter- est in the weekly newspaper for which his father subscribed. The first book that Gree- ley owned was The Columbian Orator, given to him by an uncle when, five years old, he lay sick with the measles. At Westhaven, Vt., the Greeleys lived near the house of the landowner who gave them employment, and he allowed Horace access to his library; and thus, by the time the boy was fourteen years old, he had read the Arabian Nights, Robin- son Crusoe, Shakespeare, and some history. During the family's last year's residence in New Hampshire Horace's repute as a stu- dent induced a man of means to offer to send the lad, at his own expense, to Phillips Acad- emy at Exeter, and afterward to college. Some men, after going through such strug- gles as Greeley encountered, would have re- gretted in later years the loss of this oppor- tunity. Greeley did not. On the contrary, he expressed his thanks that his parents did not let him be indebted to any one of whom he had not a right to expect such a favor, and 8 His Early Years he was ever hostile to the education furnished by the colleges of the day. To a young man who wrote to him in 1852 for his advice about going to college, Greeley replied, "I think you might better be learning to fiddle," and in his Busy Life (1868) he said he would reply to the question, " How shall I obtain an educa- tion," by saying, "Learn a trade of a good master. I hold firmly that most boys may better acquire the knowledge they need than by spending four years in college." In an address at the laying of the corner-stone of the People's College at Havana, N. Y., in 1858, he explained, however, that he did not denounce a classical course of study, but only "protested against the requirement of appli- cation to and proficiency in the dead lan- guages of all college students, regardless of the length of time they may be able to devote to study, and of the course of life they medi- tate." The founding of agricultural and tech- nical colleges, the opening of scientific depart- ments in our classical institutions, and the de- vice of optional courses are all concessions to the idea for which Greeley then contended. A lad disgusted with the hard labor and slight remuneration of farming and land- clearing, and with a decided literary taste, naturally looked, in those days, to the print- 9 Horace Greeley er's trade as a congenial occupation. News- papers Greeley had "loved and devoured " from the time when he had learned to read, and when he was eleven years old he induced his father to accompany him to a newspaper office in Whitehall, N. Y., where he had heard that there was an opening for an apprentice. But he was rejected as too young for the place. By the spring of 1826 his father had given up the fight for a living in New Eng- land, and decided to carry out a project he had long had in mind — a move to Western Pennsylvania. He bought a tract of four acres in Erie County, about three miles from Clymer, N. Y., on which was a log cabin with a leaky roof, in a wilderness, where the woods abounded with wild animals, and the forest growth was so heavy that he and his younger son were a month in clearing an acre. By additional purchases he in time increased his holding to some three hundred acres. The life of the family there was a discouraging one, and Horace says he never saw the old smile on his mother's face from the day she entered that log cabin to the day of her death in 1855. That spring, before the family moved, Horace saw an advertisement, stating that an apprentice was wanted in the office of the Northern Spectator at East Poultney, Vt-, 10 His Early Years and lie at once applied for tlie place. In all Ills early applications for work his personal appearance was an obstacle to his success. m His figure was tall and slender, and his head large and covered with a growth of yellowish, tow-colored hair, so light that it seemed al- most white with age. "Gawky" would de- scribe his general aspect. His carelessness about dress, which was a personal character- istic in after-life, and which he was some- times accused of cultivating with a view to effect,^ began with his boyhood, partly be- 1 In his controversy with Cooper, the novelist, over the lat- ter's libel suits, in the early days of the Tribune, Greeley printed a report of an imaginary argument by Cooper in court, in which he made Cooper thus allude to his appearance : "Fenimore — 'Well, then, your Honor, I offer to prove by this witness that the plaintiff is tow-headed, and half bald at that ; he is long-legged, gaunt, and most cadaverous of visage — ergo, homely. ... I have evidence to prove the said plaintiff slouching in dress ; goes bent like a hoop, and so rocking in gait that he walks on both sides of the street at once.'" When, in 1844, Colonel James Watson Webb, in the Courier and Enquirer, accused Greeley of seeking notoriety by his oddity in dress, the Tribune retorted that its editor had been dressed better than any of his assailants could be if they paid their debts, adding "that he ever affected eccen- tricity is most untrue ; and certainly no costume he ever appeared in would create such a sensation on Broadway as that which James Watson Webb would have worn but for the clemency of Governor Seward " — an allusion to Webb's sen- tence for fighting a duel. 11 Horace Greeley cause he had no money with which to buy good clothes, and partly because he was in- different in the matter. A tattered hat, a shirt and trousers of homespun material, and the coarsest of shoes, without stockings, sufficed for his summer costume, and when, on his arrival in New York city, he added a linen roundabout, his appearance was so amusing that the boys jeered at him on the streets. The business manager of the Northern Spectator, when Horace asked him, "Do you want a boy to learn the trade I " thought it strange that so unpromising a subject should have conceived the idea of becoming a printer. But he found the lad intelligent, and was told by him that he "had read some," and that he understood what he had read ; so he sent him to the foreman. The latter also changed a first unfavorable impression to the opinion that they should give him a trial, and he was engaged. A few days later, he appeared at the office with his father, his worldly posses- sions tied up in a handkerchief, and entered into a verbal agreement to work for the con- cern until he was twenty-one years old, re- ceiving only his board for the first six months, and after that $40 a year in addition. This compensation was somewhat increased before he left Poultney, and out of his slender means, 12 His Early Years as afterward in New York, he always found some surplus to send to the struggling family in the Pennsylvania wilderness. It is inter- esting here to note that from the town of Poultney, Vt., came George Jones, who gave Henry J. Raymond his chief financial assist- ance in founding the New York Times, and long survived both Greeley and Raymond as controlling owner of the Times. Horace's experience in East Poultney was of the greatest educational value to him. There he first had access to a public library. He soon joined a debating club, of which the leading citizens of the town were members, and, without changing his working clothes or attempting oratory, he won a reputation as a cogent reasoner, and a speaker who was always sure of his facts. As there were only two or three workmen employed in the office, he had experience, not only in setting type, but in blistering his hands and laming his back assisting in running off the edition on an old-fashioned hand-press. His opportu- nity went further than this. Writing "com- positions " had not been one of the require- ments of the schools he had attended ; but the editor of the Northern Spectator was a Bap- tist clergyman, whose religious duties took up a good deal of his time, and the apprentice, 13 Horace Greeley when his taste for reading and his ability in debate became known, was entrusted with the selection of some of the miscellany for the paper, the condensation of news, and the preparation of occasional original para- graphs, which were often set up in type by him without first reducing them to manu- script form. This was that kind of practical education for which Greeley always contended, and it was excellent fundamental instruction for the future editor of a city daily. The place for a young man to begin in journalism is at the bottom — as a reporter, if he is employed on a daily newspaper, or a condenser and gleaner if news is not the leading feature of the journal he is helping to make. While Horace Greeley achieved his chief fame as a writer — a debater of principles — it would be a mistake not to recognize the fact that he was a good "all-around " newspaper man. His first journalistic attempts in New York city, as we shall see, illustrated this; his re- ports of legislative and congressional pro- ceedings and other matters demonstrated his skill as a reporter, and his close supervision of all the columns of the Tribune was made plain in the correspondence with his man- aging editor, Charles A. Dana, published 14 His Early Years after his death. He always felt a responsi- bility for the kind of journal that he gave to his subscribers. "I think that newspaper reading is worth all the schools in the coun- try," he told a committee of the House of Commons, of which Cobden was a member, when invited, in London in 1851, to give his views on "taxes on knowledge," and he was too honest to offer his readers anything less than the best that he could supply. Some ad- vice to a country editor, written by him in 1860, could hardly be improved upon. His first principle laid down was that "the sub- ject of deepest interest to an average human being is himself ; next to that, he is most con- cerned about his neighbor." He therefore told his correspondent that, if he would make up at least half his paper of local news, se- cured by "a wide-awake, judicious corre- spondent in every village and township in your county, nobody in the county can long do without it. Make your paper a perfect mirror of everything done in your county that its citizens ought to know." This covers the whole ground of breadth and restriction. Next, he would have the editor take an active part in promoting all "home industries," in which he included local fairs and new busi- ness enterprises of all kinds. Thirdly, and 15 Horace Greeley lastly, lie says: "Don't let the politicians and aspirants of the county own you. . . . Re- member that — in addition to the radical righteousness of the thing — the taxpayers take many more papers than the tax con- sumers." The following of this advice would have made a success of many a journalistic experiment that has proved a failure. Greeley's interest in politics began with his early interest in newspapers, and he con- fesses that he was an " ardent politician " when he was not half old enough to vote. His newspaper apprenticeship gave him his first opportunity to share in political discus- sion, and aid in the work of a campaign. John Quincy Adams was President, Calhoun Vice- President, and Henry Clay Secretary of State when Greeley went to East Poultney, and public feeling was seething over the charge that there had been a corrupt bargain between Adams and Clay. In the national election of 1828 Calhoun was the candidate for Vice-President on the Jackson (Demo- cratic) ticket, and Adams and Rush headed the National Republican ticket. "We Ver- monters were all protectionists," wrote Gree- ley; the Northern Spectator was an Adams paper of the partizan type, and on election day Poultney gave Adams 334 votes and 16 His Early Years Jackson only 4. Greeley was also greatly interested in the Antimasonry political move- ment, sympathizing with the opponents of the secret order, and maintaining his oppo- sition to such organizations throughout his life. Diligent student as he was, Horace was not averse to amusements in those days. In his school and farming life, fishing was his favorite recreation, and in picturing an ideal rest, in his Busy Life, he suggested a party of congenial friends, camped on some coast islet or Adirondack lake, where fish or game could be had. He sometimes, when at Poult- ney, joined a party of bee-hunters, and occa- sionally took part in a game of ball, but ac- knowledged his inability "to catch a flying ball, propelled by a muscular arm straight at my nose." He in later years objected to base- ball matches between clubs of distant cities, and advocated giving the prize to the club that made the lowest score, as this demon- strated that these players attended better than their opponents to their business duties. Old acquaintances in Poultney said that he was fond of whist, checkers, and chess, and told of his defeating a locally famous checker player; but such games did not win his ad- miration, and he afterward advised persons 3 17 Horace Greeley of sedentary habits to shun them "because of their inevitable tendency to impair digestion and incite headache." He never witnessed a game of bilhards, but he recommends bowl- ing as an indoor exercise. Two rules of life Greeley had already formed when he reached New York — he was a non-user of intoxicants and tobacco. Neither of his parents, he says, was a total abstainer from the use of liquor, and both loved their pipe. But the son was made sick by smoking a half-burned cigar in his grand- father's house when not more than five years old, and from that time he looked on the use of tobacco in any form as "if not the most pernicious, certainly the vilest, most detest- able abuse of his corrupt sensual appetites whereof depraved man is capable." On January 1, 1824, young Greeley "de- liberately resolved to drink no more distilled liquors," and he kept this pledge thus made to himself when only thirteen years old, in a community where strong drink was as free as water, and nine years before the American Temperance Society declared for total absti- nence. Soon after he went to Poultney he assisted in organizing a temperance society, and, to make sure that his own years would not bar him from membership, he had a 18 His Early Years resolution adopted that members be received "when they were old enough to drink." The Northern Spectator was not a finan- cial success. It struggled on, however, under different ownerships, until June, 1830, when its publication was discontinued and the office was closed. Greeley left the town with en- larged information on many subjects, inclu- ding writing and speaking and the duties of newspaper editing. In the way of capital he had only $20 in cash and perhaps a few more clothes than he came into the town with. He went at once, part of the way on foot, to his parents' home, made a visit there of a few weeks, and then set out to seek work at his trade. He found employment at Jamestown and Gowanda, N. Y., and later began an en- gagement that lasted for seven months in the office of the Erie (Penn.) Gazette. Wherever he applied his personal appearance was still against him. The proprietor of the Gazette used to relate that when he entered the office and saw Greeley (who was waiting for him) reading some of the exchange newspapers, his first feeling was one of astonishment that a fellow so singularly "green " in his appear- ance should be reading anything. When the Gazette office no longer offered him employment, he tried to secure work in 19 Horace Greeley some of the neighboring towns, and, when this effort failed, made up his mind to look for a position in New York city. Accord- ingly, he again visited his parents, divided with them his cash, retaining only $25 for his own use, and with $10 of this sum, and his scanty wardrobe, he stepped from an Albany boat to a pier near "Whitehall Street early on the morning of Friday, August 18, 1831. 20 CHAPTER n FIRST EXPEEIENCES IN NEW YORK CITY — THE NEW YORKER 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 com- bined — 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 a hand ? " and incurring the accusation in one office of being a runaway apprentice. When Saturday night came he had satisfied himself that the city afforded him no hope of a living, and had decided to start for the country again on Monday, before his last dollar was spent. But this was not to be. Some young ac- quaintances of his landlord, who called on 21 Horace Greeley Sunday, told him of an office at No. 85 Chat- ham Street, where a compositor was wanted, and there Greeley betook himself on Monday morning so early that the place was closed when he arrived. So uncouth was the lad's appearance that here again he would prob- ably have been rejected had any one been at hand to undertake the work that was to be done. This was the putting in type of a small New Testament, with narrow columns, the text interspersed with references to notes marked by Greek and other letters. So com- plicated was this task, and so little could a man earn at it, paid by the ems set, that sev- eral compositors had abandoned it after a brief trial. This job the foreman offered to the country lad, confident that a half day would prove his incompetence to perform it. When the proprietor came in and saw Gree- ley at work, he inquired, "Did you hire that d — d foolf " adding, "For God's sake, pay him off to-night." But the foreman did not pay him off. The one thing this New Eng- lander, who had cleared land standing knee- deep in slush in the spring, and barefooted on thistles in summer, was not afraid of was hard work; the one thing he must have was an income sufficient to keep him alive. He set that Testament. When the foreman ex- 22 M P-i First Experiences in New York amined his first proof, lie found that the "d — d fool " had set more type and in better shape than any one else who had attempt- ed it. For two or three weeks the boy scarcely made his board, although he moved his quar- ters to a mechanics' boarding place near the office, and worked all the hours that were not given to his meals and to sleep ; but he gained in rapidity, and finally made $5 or $6 a week by working from twelve to fourteen hours a day, his "case " lighted at night by a candle stuck in a bottle. Naturally, the boys in the office played tricks on so promising a subject, but he took these without resentment, and the annoyance soon stopped, his good nature winning him friends. He was, even in that early year, a lender of money to his fellow- workmen, while he was denying himself everything outside of the bare necessities of life. The New Testament finished, he was out of work for a time, and was then as- signed to a "lean " job on a commentary on the Book of Genesis. Then came further tramping, and a discharge from one newspa- per office, tradition says, because he was not "decent looking," until he became so nearly discouraged that he seriously thought of try- ing some other form of employment. The 23 Horace Greeley idea of seeking work at the national capital occurred to him, but while he had employment he had treated himself to a suit of clothes — a second-hand suit of black, bought of a Chatham Street dealer, in which, he says, he found "no wear and little warmth " — and this had so depleted his capital that he had not money enough to pay his way to Wash- ington. In the following January, however, he found work in the office of the Spirit of the Times, which had just been started by W. T. Porter and James Howe, two newcom- ers from the country, with scant capital. This enterprise was a discouraging one from the start, but, while Greeley found it difficult to collect his wages, he also found opportu- nity to show his skill in writing articles for the paper, thus keeping in practise what he had learned in Vermont. Later in the year he secured employment in the office of J. S. Eedfield, afterward a prominent publisher, and remained there until he was induced to join a fellow printer in setting up a printing establishment of their own. That experiment came about in this way: Francis Story, the foreman of the Spirit of the Times composing-room, numbered among his acquaintances S. J. Sylvester, a leading seller of lottery tickets, and Dr. H. D. 24 First Experiences in New York Shepard, a medical student, who had about $1,500 in cash at command. Through Sylves- ter, Story counted on being able to secure the printing of the weekly Bank-Note Re- porter, and for Shepard he had in view the printing of a one-cent daily newspaper, which Shepard had decided to establish. With this business in sight, Story proposed to Greeley that they open a printing-office of their own, and, not without misgivings, Greeley finally consented. Between them they could count up less than $200 ; but they secured $40 worth of type on six months' credit, hired two rooms at No. 54 Liberty Street, and invested all their cash in the necessary equipment. Thence, on January 31, 1833, Dr. Shepard's Morning Post was issued. Finding no en- couragement for his one-cent scheme, he had fixed the price from the start at two cents; but as cheapness was to be the one quality that would induce people to buy a paper of which Greeley says, "it had no editors, no reporters worth naming, no correspondents, and no exchanges even," it was a certain fail- ure, and it died when two weeks and a half old. The one-cent Sun came nine months later, and came to stay. The firm of Greeley & Story lost about $50 through Dr. Shepard, but this did not 25 Horace Greeley bankrupt them. A purchaser was found for some of the Morning Post's equipment, the Bank-Note Reporter gave them a little in- come, and they secured the printing of a tri- weekly paper called the Constitutionalist, whose local habitation was in Delaware, and which was the organ of the lottery interest. Lottery-ticket selling was a reputable busi- ness in those days, and Greeley not only printed the dealers' organ, but was a con- tributor to it, one of his articles being a de- fense of lotteries when an outcry arose against them because of the suicide of a young man who had lost all his property in tickets. When his assistance was not re- quired in his own shop, Greeley would work as a substitute compositor in a newspaper office near by, and he was making fair if slow progress in the world, when, in July, 1833, Story was drowned while bathing in the East Eiver. His place in the firm was taken by Jonas Winchester, and the business contin- ued so prosperously that in 1834 Greeley had the courage to think seriously of starting a newspaper of which he should be the editor. That he had made something of a mark in the local newspaper world is shown by the fact that he was at this time invited by James Gor- don Bennett to become interested with him in 26 :6«.-ll«<'#ci'K^f- Uul.LAKt rcKlKtW* iuh I „4.i.-a ..0. i™.i,cMihi I..... |i.,mi, n.7V„, . ". Wh«l.h.««lu.vi-V,.K.,I ; ',',, WtaU ■MT*>i*4i»ll i. hi." ' ii hiv"w wl A .WiMT •«a '!»■ hU >«'W<»k j u.v»#n— »» III m?it..ynnr»-..E. Bn «■»:>• ^"^B. *■ •f^ "^ 6i.t->»-<. ™L;''iT iMtoad rf "-M o«nt.i lrt.1 <»■*• Uwu*. Vutd IkU (In UdAn k. (unr Iribvin Uif^, * (MB»«.7»U.i.p«»bj.i*i.. olU kihiled b) Q Sq t«a« o( -touuboi .«.. .wk. s'««i^- ^^^^^ -1 ■•■'^"-'■""7" iOlHilrnj«lf««^P SVSSku::'^": Si';;?^":^" ^ Facsimile extract from tlie New Yorker. First Experiences in New York starting a daily paper to be called the New York Herald. This offer was declined, but the idea of a paper of his own was carried out, and on March 22, 1834, appeared the first number of the weekly known as the New Yorker. Greeley was its editor; his partner confining himself to the business of the job-office. The people of this country early mani- fested a demand for newspapers, and, as set- tlements were pushed farther West, a local paper would spring up, sometimes before the stumps were removed from the new clearing. A usual plan was for a printer to issue a prospectus and ask for subscribers. If he secured sufficient encouragement, he might act as his own editor, or, more probably (as was the case with the Northern Specta- tor), engage some person of a literary bent to devote a part of his time to the editorial room. De Tocqueville, in 1835, wrote: "The number of periodicals and occasional publi- cations which appear in the United States actually surpasses belief. There is scarcely a hamlet which has not its own newspaper." ^ ^ The number of newspapers and periodicals in the United States in 1838 was estimated at 863, with an annual issue of over 68,000,000, while the census of 1840 showed 1,403, with a yearly issue of 195,838,073 copies. New York State reported 161 in 1828, and 245 in 1840. 27 Horace Greeley But he found that "the most distinguished classes of society are rarely led to engage in these undertakings"; and that "the journal- ists of the United States are usually placed in a very humble position, with a scanty edu- cation and a vulgar turn of mind." When John (afterward Lord) Campbell eked out his income in London, in the first years of the nineteenth century, by reporting parlia- mentary debates, the calling was so discredit- able that he concealed his avocation from his fellow law students. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes let it be understood that it would have hurt him professionally had it been known that he was a "literary man " when he began writing. Of the literary taste of New York city in 1828, a writer in the Picture of New York said: "Most of the periodical works attempt-, ed in this city have proved abortive in a few years. The population is so nearly commer- cial that the largest portion of the public at- tention is monopolized by the newspapers of the day." Whether Greeley had gaged the literary taste of New York by this measure and hoped to improve it, we do not know. He never exhibited long-headedness in busi- ness matters, and may have been guided by an ambition to edit a creditable literary jour- 28 First Experiences in New York nal rather than by any careful estimate of its possible financial success. Greeley planned to combine in his New Yorker "literature, politics, statistics, and general intelligence." His success in making a good paper of his initial venture was a sufficient proof of his editorial ability. What the New Yorker was he made it almost un- aided. In his farewell address to his sub- scribers, in 1841, when the paper was merged with the Weekly Tribune, he said: "The edi- torial charge of the New Yorker has from the first devolved on him who now addresses its readers. At times he has been aided in the literary department by gentlemen of de- cided talent and eminence [including Park Benjamin,^ C. H. Hoffman, and R. W. Gris- wold] ; at others the entire conduct has rested with him." A glance at the file of this jour- nal will show what a capacity for work its ^ Henry J. Eaymond, in a letter to R. W. Griswold, from Burlington, Vt., October 31, 1839, said : "I am sorry Benja- min has left the New Yorker. If he had exerted himself but a little he could have made that infinitely the best weekly in the United States. Who will Greeley associate with him ? I hope (but do not expect) that he will get one to fill B.'s place. The Sentinel here a few weeks since undertook to use up Benjamin instanter on account of his critique of Irving. I gave it a decent rap for it in the Free Press, and since that they have let B. alone and gone to pommeling me." 29 Horace Greeley editor liad.^ Beginning as a folio, it was pub- lished in both folio and quarto form after March, 1836, the folio being issued on Satur- day mornings and the quarto (of sixteen pages) on Saturday afternoons. Taking as ^ Greeley's idea of what a man should do in the way of newspaper work in those days was thus set forth in a letter to B. F. Randolph, dated May 3, 1836 : " I want the whole con- cern, printing-office included, to belong to you and I, and to be entirely managed between us. I want you to take com- mand at the publication office, and, in a short time, reduce the whole business to a system. Thus far our business depart- ment has been but half attended to, and the consequence is that we have lost a great deal by bad agents, runaway sub- scribers, etc. To remedy this it requires a man steadily at the publication office who not only knows what business is, but feels a deep interest in the prosperity of the concern. It needs some one who knows every agent and the state of his account familiarly, and who can almost repeat the names of the subscribers from memory. To do this he must make all the entries in the books himself and keep the accounts ; but as the new subscribers will not probably exceed 100 per week, the discontinuances 25 or 30, and the changes as many more, I believe all the business, including the making out of the bills (excepting, of course, the writing of mails, which is done by a clerk), might well be done by a thorough appropriation of five hours per day — at least after one had become practically familiar with it. As I should still have to do a share of the outdoor business, besides taking entire charge of the printing- office, I should expect you to assist me in the editorial man- agement — at first in the easier portion of it, such as examin- ing exchange papers, and taking entire charge of the city and domestic news; afterward, as experience in these departments and system in the other would allow you more time to do so, in the more especially literarv department of the paper." 30 First Experiences in New York a fair example the quarto of March 26, 1836, we find, first, eight pages devoted to original and selected poems; the first of a series of Letters of a Monomaniac; a description of a visit to the King of Greece, and prose selec- tions from home and foreign sources; then come two pages of editorial and political mat- ter; a little over a page devoted to a report of the proceedings of Congress; reviews of new books; the latest foreign and domestic news (particular attention being given to the politics of the different States), and the last page occupied with the words and music of Meet Me by Moonlight, "written and com- posed by J. Augustin Wade, Esq." The space given to the proceedings of Congress, to State politics, and to tabulated election re- turns gave every indication of the political bent of the editor, and his appreciation of the value of news was shown by the frequent additions of "postscripts " to the folio edi- tion, giving intelligence received by the mails after the first edition had gone to press. In later years the literary pages contained orig- inal stories — Dickens's Barnaby Rudge being printed as a serial (appearing also in the Tribune) — and increased space was devoted to book reviews. In an article contesting an argument that the best British writers of the 31 Horace Greeley day were superior to the best American wri- ters, the editor thus expressed his opinion of Disraeli: ''Himself an open libertine in life, we re- gard his works as among the most mon- strously absurd, and at the same time abom- inably pernicious, of the distorted and de- praved pictures of fashionable description in European high life that we ever unsuccess- fully attempted to endure to the end." Greeley contributed to the New Yorker and to other periodicals of the day a number of poems over his initials. They were of varied merit, some of them showing quite as much of the poetic "fire " as do current poet- ical contributions of our own day. A single quotation — the last of some verses On the Death of TVilliam TMrt — must suffice : Then take thy long repose Beneath the shelter of the deep green sod ; Death but a brighter halo o'er thee throws — Thy fame, thy soul alike have spurned the clod — Rest thee in God. But Greeley never considered himself a poet, and when, in 1869, Eobert Bonner pro- posed to print a volume of poems not to be found in Dana's Household Handbook of Poetry, Greeley sent him a letter saying: "Be good enough — you must — to exclude 7ne " 32 First Experiences in New York from your new poetic Pantheon. I have no business therein — no right and no desire to be installed there. I am no poet, never was (in expression), and never shall be." The reader of to-day, who had only a file of the New Yorker for his Uterary entertain- ment, would find it both interesting and in- structive. The editorial articles discussed a wide range of subjects with clearness and precision, and an exacting editor of a modern metropolitan journal would find in their form little that would call for revision. The editor had those prime qualifications for success in his calling — ideas to express and the power of expressing them. His views might at times be erratic and provoke much dissent, but this did not mean that he would not command an audience. As illustrations of the scope of his discussion it may be mentioned that he vigor- ously attacked the franking abuse; opposed all labor combinations, either of masters or journeymen, to regulate compensation, ex- cept the establishment of a unifonn scale of wages, to be followed in the absence of an agreement to the contrary; expressed a wish for the independence of Texas, but opposed its annexation as likely to cause foreign com- plications, and because "our territoiy is am- ple " ; objected to the expenditure of the Horace Greeley Treasury surplus (in 1836) on armaments and fortifications, believing that a railroad from Portland to New Orleans would serve the better purpose of assisting in the concen- tration of "the true safeguard against inva- sion — the muskets of our citizen soldiers " ; proposed the formation of associations in the city to enforce the law against houses of ill-fame; and, when rents were advanced downtown, urged the building of railroads from the Exchange, the park, and the Bat- tery to the Harlem River, in order to make the upper part of the island accessible; op- posed the forcible removal of the Creeks and Cherokees from their homes in the southern Atlantic States; and, while maintaining that the United States Government was right in its claim regarding the northeastern bound- ary, deprecated war and proposed arbitra- tion. Greeley's view of "clean " journalism was well set forth in an article in April, 1841, in which he condemned the spreading of de- tails of crime before newspaper readers, say- ing: "We weigh well our words when we say that the moral guilt incurred, and the violent hurt inflicted upon social order and individ- ual happiness by those who have thus spread out the loathsome details of this most damn- First Experiences in New York ing deed [a murder] are tenfold greater than those of the miscreant himself." He was an opponent of the spoils system, char- acterizing political removals (in 1837) as "calculated to corrupt and demoralize the public sentiment." The two great questions with which Gree- ley's name was afterward so intimately as- sociated — the tariff and slavery — were at- tracting little attention during the first years of the New Yorker, and their treatment by him at that time will be shown in later chap- ters. The great subject of public interest was the finances, State and national. The propo- sition to establish a United States Bank, the removal of the Federal deposits, the distribu- tion of the public funds among the States, Harrison's defeat by Van Buren, the expan- sion of the paper currency by the issues of the many new banks throughout the country, and the panic of 1837, all came within the scope of the New Yorker's editorials. In New York State, before the year 1838, bank charters were granted only as the Legisla- ture thought fit. "Accustomed as we are to the spoils system of to-day," says Horace White, "it sounds oddly to read that bank charters were granted by Whig and Democrat- ic Legislatures only to their own partizans. 35 Horace Greeley Not only was this the common practise, but shares in banks, or the right to subscribe to them, were parceled out to political ' bosses ' in the several counties." There was opposi- tion to all banks in the agricultural counties, and the laboring classes were generally hos- tile to paper money.^ The New Yorker fought steadily for free banking and for a redeemable paper currency. It expressed a hope that the agriculturist would be found "firmly united in spurning an unnatural and ruinous alliance with the mustering legions of agrarianism," and it combated the theory that money should be made only of the pre- cious metals. Under the free banking system that it favored no persons were to be allowed to issue notes "in excess of their actual cap- ital (or, better, only to equal three-quarters of this capital), in specie, or property readily ' A meeting in tho City Hall Park, in March, 1837, called to consider the high prices of the necessaries of life, adopted a report which said : " There is another great cause of high prices, so monstrous in its nature that we could hardly credit its existence were it not continually before us — we mean the curse of Paper Money. Gold and silver are produced from the earth by labor; they are, or ought to be, earned from the pro- ducer by labor. No man nor combination can by Christian means collect a sufficiency of these metals to enable him to engross the food, fuel, or houses of a nation ; but a leagued band of paper-promise coiners exert absolute control over the whole wealth of the country." — (New Yorker, March 18, 1837.) 3G First Experiences in New York convertible into specie." Some of its finan- cial recommendations were novel. Thus, in 1836, it suggested that each railroad, canal, and similar corporation be empowered to issue notes to the amount of two-thirds the value of its completed enterprise, "these notes to constitute a special lien on the work itself, taking precedence of all other claims." At the time of the suspension of payments by the New York city banks, in 1837, the New Yorker defended them warmly, charging the troubles to the Northwest, and on the day of the suspension it offered three-per-cent pre- mium "on every New York city bill mailed to our address before the first of June." Considering the editor's financial status at that time, this was a good deal like Daniel Webster's offer to pay the national debt. In February, 1838, as a means of obviating the necessity of both a National Bank and State banks, the New Yorker proposed the issue of $100,000,000 in Treasury notes, by the Fed- eral Government, bearing one-per-cent inter- est, receivable for all dues, and redeemable "in public lands at cash prices." The Sub- treasury scheme it constantly opposed. From these excerpts it is evident that the possession of "views " on public questions and boldness in advocating them were an 37 Horace Greeley early, as well as a late, characteristic of Horace Greeley. Beginning with less than a dozen sub- scribers, the New Yorker gained steadily in circulation at the rate of about one hundred a week, until, in 1836, its subscribers num- bered 7,500. Unfortunately, many of these readers did not pay for their subscriptions. The paper had agents all over the country (a list of them fills two columns of one num- ber) who sent in the names of subscribers, but in many cases did not accompany these names with the cash. Greeley lived with the utmost frugality — the life of a miser, as he once expressed it to Thurlow Weed — and for two years was obliged to look to his job-office for his income. Then, the paper having a fair prospect, he gave over the job-office en- tirely to his partner, and took the charge of the paper on himself. In 1836, when he was married, he thought that he was worth $5,000, and that he could safely count on an income of $1,000 a year. But the panic of 1837 came, and his books began to show a weekly loss of $100, He had given notes for his white paper, and he had used up some three thousand subscriptions paid in ad- vance. Earnest appeals to the delinquents appeared in the paper: "Friends of the New 38 First Experiences in New York Yorker! Patrons! We appeal to you, not for charity, but for justice. Whoever among you is in our debt, no matter how small the sum, is guilty of a moral wrong in withhold- ing the payment. We bitterly need it. We have a right to expect it." Greeley had a horror of debt, but he felt that he must keep up the struggle. One loan of $500 saved him from bankruptcy, and he would sometimes pay $5 for the use of $500 over Sunday.^ "If any one would have taken my business and my debts off my hands, upon my giving him my note for $2,000, I would have jumped at the chance," he said in later years, "and tried to work out the debt by typesetting, if noth- ing better offered." Something better offered. ' Greeley wrote to a friend on July 29, 1835 : " I paid off everybody to-night, had $10 left, and have |3oO to raise on Monday. Borrowing places all sucked dry. I shall raise it, however." 39 CHAPTER III THURLOW weed's DISCOVEEY — THE JEFFERSO- NIAN AND THE LOG CABIN Up in Albany another man who was at that time editing a newspaper had a fight on his hands, not so desperately against over- due notes as against a most powerful polit- ical 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 sev- eral years had not only written all its edi- torial articles, but had reported the legisla- tive proceedings, selected the miscellany, col- lected the local news, read the proofs, and sometimes made up the forms for the press. His fight in the first presidential campaign after his paper was founded (in 1832) ended in the loss of the State and the nation by his candidate, Henry Clay, and Marcy defeated Seward for Governor the year following. 40 Thurlow Weed's Discovery The Whig party, as the National Republi- cans had come to be called, was stunned by these defeats, and when Harrison ran against Van Buren in 1836, Van Buren carried forty- two of the fifty-six counties of New York State, Massachusetts wasted her vote on "Web- ster, and Van Buren carried New England and had a popular majority over his three opponents. But the Whigs were now to have as an ally the influence most potent, perhaps, in the politics of a republic — a financial panic and an era of hard times. How potent this influence is in shaping the fortunes of parties and candidates the history of the United States has proved in later years. On Presi- dent Van Buren was laid the responsibility for the long list of business failures, the monetary evils, and the commercial stagna- tion. "What constitutional or legal justifi- cation can Mr. Van Buren offer to the people of the United States for having brought upon them all their present diflSculties 1 " was the language of a remonstrance drawn up by a committee of New York city merchants, in April, 1837. In the following November the Whigs (in an "off-year ") carried New York city for the first time, as well as county after county in the State that had been considered Democratic beyond attack, and elected 100 41 Horace Greeley of the 128 members of the Assembly voted for. Weed and his associates in the Whig party leadership saw in this change of public feeling hope of electing a Whig Governor in New York in 1838, as well as a Whig Presi- dent in 1840, and they looked on a cheap weekly newspaper, which would vigorously espouse their cause and keep the voters in- formed and stirred up, as a necessary part of their campaign equipment. "In looking about for an editor," says Weed in his autobiography, "it occurred to me that there was some person connected with the New Yorker possessing the qualities needed for our new enterprise. In reading the New Yorker attentively, as I had done, I felt sure that its editor was a strong tariff man, and probably an equally strong Whig. I repaired to the office in Ann Street where the New Yorker was published, and inquired for its editor. A young man with light hair and blond complexion, with coat off and sleeves rolled up, standing at the case, * stick ' in hand, replied that he was the ed- itor, and this youth was Horace Greeley." Greeley accompanied Weed and a mem- ber of the Whig State Committee, who was with him, to their hotel, where, after the nec- 42 Tliurlow Weed's Discovery essary explanations, it was arranged that Greeley should edit at Albany a small weekly paper to be called the Jeffersonian, for which service he was to receive $1,000 a year, the expense of the publication to be met by some Whigs of means. Only a man of Gree- ley's indomitable energy and willingness to work to the utmost limit of his strength would have undertaken this task in addition to the labor of editing the New Yorker. He understood that he would be obliged to spend nearly all his time in Albany when the Legis- lature was in session, and half his time in summer; and as Albany was not then con- nected with New York by rail, the trip there and back, to a tired man, was no small un- dertaking. But Greeley did not even ask time to consider the matter. His first trip to the State capital was made in a sleigh, and of his routine he wrote seven years later: "I regularly went up to Albany Saturday night, made up my paper there by Tuesday night, took the boat down and got out my New Yorker by Friday; then prepared copy for part of my next number, and caught my valise for Albany again." As a further illus- tration of his industry, we find this remark in his Busy Life: "As my small [Albany] paper did not require all my time, I made 43 Horace Greeley condensed reports of the Assembly debates for the Evening Journal, and wrote some ar- ticles for its editorial columns." The political friendship — partnership, it has been called — thus begun between Weed and Greeley lasted until 1854, or, so far as Weed was concerned, until the nomination of Lincoln in 1860. Their usefulness as co- workers can not easily be overestimated. Weed was the cool, calculating, far-seeing pol- itician, who would leave unsaid or undone what it was right to say or to do, if this would favor his party's success, and who worked for ends, without a constant criticism of means. Greeley was not nearly so far- seeing in political matters as he was credited with being, but he was desperately honest in his convictions, and eminently fitted to give them expression. As illustrations of Weed's foresight may be recalled his advice against the defeat of Van Buren's nomination to the English mission because this was likely to make him the candidate for Vice-President, as it did. Weed urged Webster to take the nomination for Vice-President on the Harri- son, and again on the Taylor ticket, but in vain; if Webster had followed this advice, his ambition to be President would have been gratified. Weed personally favored a United 44 Thurlow Weed's Discovery- States Bank, but he would not print in the Evening Journal, in 1836, Webster's speech at a Whig mass meeting, in Boston, in sup- port of the bank scheme, and against Jack- son's veto, sajdng that two sentences in the veto message would carry ten votes against the bank to one gained for it by Webster's eloquence — viz., that our Government "was endangered by the circumstance that a large amount of the stock of the United States Bank was owned in Europe," and that the bank was designed "to make the rich richer and the poor poorer." Weed has been severely criticized for the defeat of Clay in the National Convention of 1839. Clay received early assurance that Weed was "warmly and zealously " in favor of his election, and Shepard, in his Martin Van Buren, says that "the slaughter of Henry Clay had been effected by the now formidable Whig politicians of New York, cunningly marshaled by Thurlow Weed." Weed did work against the election of Clay delegates to the convention, but he did so be- cause he foresaw that Clay would probably be defeated at the polls, and that there was a good chance of Harrison's election; and he proved himself a wise friend of Clay by ur- ging him, in the campaign of 1844, to write 45 Horace Greeley no letters, advice that was disregarded with disastrous consequences. Greeley who, as he expressed it, "profoundly loved Henry Clay," and looked for his nomination, de- fended Weed in this matter in his Busy Life, years after their political partnershipwas dis- solved, saying, "If politics do not meditate the achievement of beneficent ends through the choice and use of the safest and most effect- ive means, I wholly misapprehend them." But while Greeley would not urge the nomination of his own favorite when he thought that favorite would be a weak candi- date, he would not follow Weed in his views of expediency. Thus we find him saying, in one of his early letters to Weed: "I think you take the wrong view of the political bearing of this matter, though I act ivithout reference to that " (the italics are his), and Weed was powerless to repress Greeley's advocacy of what he considered vagaries in the Tribune. Weed says that he found Greeley in the early years of their acquaintance, when they were most intimate, "unselfish, conscien- tious, public-spirited, and patriotic. He had no habits or taste but for work — steady, indomitable work." ^ The young man was at * Lewis Gaylord Clark, in the Knickerbocker, said of Gree- ley : " A man careless, it mav be. of the style of his dress, pre- '46 Thurlow Weed's Discovery that time by no means unknown out of his own office in New York city. He had taken as practical an interest in political meetings as his time would allow, and had so far over- come the feeling of ridicule with which his first appearance had been greeted, that he had been offered (and declined) a place on the city Assembly ticket. His pen, too, was in demand, and for editorial contributions to, and for a time the practical supervision of, the Daily Whig, a short-lived journal, he re- ceived a salary of $12 a week.^ The first number of the Jeffersonian was issued on February 17, 1838, with Horace Greeley's name as editor under the title. Its prospectus announced its purpose to be "to supply a notorious and vital deficiency — to furnish counties and neighborhoods not otherwise provided with correct and reliable information upon political subjects," at a ferring comfort to fashion, but yet of scrupulous cleanliness in person and habiliments always; possessing a benevolent heart, and 'clothed with charity as with a garment'; frank and fear- less in the expression of his opinions, whether such opinions are to be praised or execrated ; of infatigable industry, and unpre- tending, kindly manners — this is Horace Greeley." * Greeley, in a letter to R. W. Griswold dated March 18, 1839, said : " I think better of my new pet, the Whig. I write the editorial for that, and edit it generally. Don't you think it better than formerly? If not, it's wretched bad, that's a fact. It is rather gaining in patronage." 47 Horace Greeley price within tlie reach of all (six subscrip- tions for $3). It was not to be a mere party organ, but would print the views of public men on both sides. The Jeffersonian was an eight-page quarto, containing usually a page of editorial discussion, the text of im- portant speeches in Congress, reports of the proceedings of Congress and of the Legisla- ture, and a summary of general news. The modern reader would pronounce it dull, with its columns of speeches and by no means "sparkling" editorials. One of the notable contrasts between the political journals of those days and of the present is found in the vastly greater importance which editors then attributed to speeches at Washington and Albany. The editor in the thirties and for- ties placed such matter, as well as full re- ports of legislative business, at the head of his list of "reliable information upon polit- ical subjects." Nowadays the compliment of printing in full a speech made in Congress or the Legislature is rarely paid, and the largest daily papers do not give a complete summary of the proceedings of Congress, al- lowing their special correspondents to serve up to their readers only the most entertain- ing subjects. Greeley was a member of the Young 48 Thurlow Weed's Discovery- Men's Whig State Committee, and after the nominations were made, the Jeffersonian warmed up to its campaign work. Here is one of its appeals to the Whigs of New York : "The eyes and the hopes of the Union are now upon New York. The Empire State must determine the great question at issue between the People and the Usurpers. She is the last and only barrier between Feeedom and Despotism. She must breast the shock alone." The Whigs carried New York State by 15,000 and elected Seward Gov- ernor in 1838 by about 38,000, and as the 15,000 copies of the Jeffersonian circulated principally among readers who had no other paper, Greeley's modest assumption that "it did good " will not be disputed. The suspen- sion of the publication was announced in the issue of February 9, 1839. In the next two years the Whig cause did not flourish, almost all the States which voted in 1839 showing a return to the Democrats, New York remaining Whig by a reduced ma- jority. Harrison received the nomination for President in the first Whig National Conven- tion, in 1839, and one of the most exciting campaigns in the history of the country fol- lowed. "Give Harrison a log cabin and a barrel of hard cider, and he will stay con- 5 49 Horace Greeley tented in Ohio, and not aspire to the presi- dency," was the unfortunate sneer of a Democratic editor. From that day "log cabin " and "hard cider " became Whig rally- ing cries, and successful ones, as the result proved. Greeley's editorship of the Jeffersonian had so satisfied the party managers at Al- bany — and shrewder ones never held council — that they selected him to conduct a Harri- son campaign paper, to be published in New York city, and to be called the Log Cabin. The first number of this paper — a folio, 15 by 28 inches — dated New York and Albany, ap- peared on May 2, 1840, the title line contain- ing a picture of a log cabin, with a cider bar- rel beside it, and a Harrison-Tyler flag wa- ving in front. The subscription price was fifty cents for six months, or seven copies for three dollars ; single copies costing two cents. The publishers described it as "a political and general newspaper, to be devoted to the dissemination of truth, the refutation of slan- der and calumny, and the vindication, by fair and full citations from the recorded history of our country, of the character and fame of one of her noblest and most illustrious patri- ots" (Harrison). The Log Cabin was a lively campaign 50 Thurlow Weed's Discovery- paper. It printed in full the leading speeches of the day, made a feature of the campaign news of the different States, gave, with every number, the words and music of a campaign song (Weed thought the music unnecessary), and used illustrations occasionally. The Democrats opened the campaign with a vol- ley of attacks on General Harrison, belittling his military and civil capacity, and raking up for use against him every public expression of his that would serve their purpose. The Log Cabin defended its candidate vigorous- ly, under such headings as "Another Slander Nailed," "The Devices of Baseness," and urged non-partizan voters to support Harri- son because he was the representative of Madison's view "that a President who should remove officers for political opinions alone would be justly liable to impeachment." The Log Cabin announced that it would not print articles "assailing the private character of Mr. Van Buren, or any of his supporters," but in doing so it gave this keen thrust: "We do not think it at all material to the present contest to prove Mr. Van Buren a slippery lawyer, dishonest as a man, or incorrect in private life. We have no warfare with him as an individual." As election day ap- proached, the paper's efforts in behalf of its 51 Horace Greeley ticket became more and more earnest, and it closed the campaign with an appeal to "Free- men! " "Americans! " in which it said: "The hour of deliverance has come. . . . Press on to the polls. Speak to your friends and your neighbors. Implore the doubtful and hesi- tating to give one vote now for their country, and as many as they please hereafter for their party." Harrison received 234 of the 294 electoral votes, and no one will dispute Greeley's modest remark, "I judge that there were not many who had done more effective work in the canvass than I." The Log Cabin was a remarkable success in one respect from the start. An edition of 30,000 of the first number was exhausted be- fore the close of the week, and 10,000 more did not satisfy the demand. Later editions of 80,000 were printed, that being the limit, not of the demand, but of the editor's press- room facilities. Greeley had, when the pub- lication of the Log Cabin was begun, taken one of his many partners in the firm of Hor- ace Greeley & Co., which published the New Yorker, but the new partner was so alarmed by the rush of subscribers, in connection with the low subscription price, that he soon re- tired. An extra number of the Log Cabin was issued on November 9, giving the elec- 52 Thurlow Weed's Discovery tion returns, and a prospectus was published announcing that, yielding to urgent requests, the editor would soon begin a new series of the paper, the subscription price of which would be $1.50 per annum. The first number of this new series was dated December 5, 1840, and the last number November 20, 1841, when it was succeeded by the Weekly Tribune. With good business management, a paper with the circulation of the Log Cabin should have made money for its proprietors. Even in those days advertising might have been secured.^ The experience in trusting sub- scribers of the New Yorker had not been a sufficient warning, and again credit was given, to be followed by another appeal to "friends who owe us," saying, "We implore you to do us justice, and enable us to do the same." Greeley was never a good business man, and it would have required a man of extraordinary business, as well as literary, ability to do the work he did in New York city and Albany from 1838 to 1841, with two journals almost constantly on his hands, and taking an active part in committee work, ma- * The Log Cabin in most of its numbers published less than a column of advertisements, increasing them to three and a half columns for a short time in November. The Herald in 1840 printed from ten to fifteen columns a day, 53 Horace Greeley king speeches, and receiving the hundreds of people who came to him with suggestions or for advice. In illustration of his business methods Parton relates that, one spring day, after getting the mail from the post-office, Greeley put it into his overcoat pocket, forgot all about it, and left his coat hanging on the peg until autumn, when he had occasion to use it again. Then he discovered the letters containing enclosures about which the wri- ters had been for months inquiring in vain. His partners who, he says, "were no help to me," withdrew, one after another. But the Log Cabin did afford some pecuniary aid, and he wrote to Weed in January, 1841, that he was beginning "to feel quite snug and com- fortable," and by the spring of that year he considered himself in a position to start the Tribune. But the New Yorker was a weight on his hands to the last. He gave its editorial conduct more largely to assistants in its last years, and tried hard to sell it, and its end came when it was superseded in September, 1841, by the weekly issue of the Tribune. He was then able to repay what was owing to subscribers who had paid in advance, al- though his books showed that $10,000 was due him from delinquents. These books, he says, he never opened again, and they were 54 Thurlow Weed's Discovery "dissolved in smoke and flame" when his office was burned in 1845. Greeley names four causes of the New Yorker's financial failure : That it was never properly advertised, that "it was never really published," the credit system with subscri- bers, and the lack of such facilities for dis- tribution as railroads and news-companies afford to-day. Certainly it was "never really published," and the want of good business management made its financial success im- possible. i)o CHAPTEE IV THE FOUNDING OF THE NEW YOKK TRIBUNE "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 cour- age to found it. He made it a greater power than has ever been exercised by another newspaper in the United States. He identi- fied his own name with it as no other editor has been personally identified with the jour- nal committed to his charge. Greeley had entered on his thirty-first year when the first number of the Tribune was issued, and had been a resident of New York city less than ten years. In these years he had fought a desperate fight with poverty, almost unaided. But he had secured a recog- nition not only in the city and State, but in a wider circle. His editorial writing in the 56 Founding of New York Tribune New Yorker had attracted the attention of so competent a critic as Thurlow Weed. His residence at Albany had widened his ac- quaintance with the lawmakers gathered from all parts of the State, and with the State officials and the managers of both par- ties. There was probably not another man in this country who was then editing two newspapers, and the editor of one news- paper was a person to be pointed out in those days. The big circulation of the Log Cabin had still further increased his reputation, and in 1841 he received an urgent invitation to assume the editorship of the Madisonian, a weekly which it was proposed to publish in Washington, D. C, as an Administration daily, and to which he afterward contributed. He was therefore justified in his belief that (if he referred to editorial experience) he "was in a better position to undertake the establishment of a daily newspaper than the great mass of those who try it and fail." As to his finances, he had a capital of about $2,000, half of it in printing material. A daily newspaper in New York required much less capital in those days than now, but a man of more careful business instincts would have hesitated to embark in the enterprise with so restricted resources. 57 Horace Greeley Greeley had a very clear idea of the kind of daily paper that he wanted to edit. In a letter to Weed in January, 1841, he said: "As for the country press, two-thirds of it is a nuisance and a positive curse — a mere mouth- piece for demagogues who are ravenous for spoils. . . . What good have such papers as [naming some] and many more of that stamp, done us! ... I do believe they are all a positive failure — that any paper in bad or injudicious hands is so." His purpose in publishing the Tribune is thus set forth in his Busy Life: "My leading idea was the es- tablishment of a journal removed alike from servile partizanship on the one hand, and from gagging, mincing neutrality on the other." The rivalry that he had to face may be understood from the following list of news- papers published in New York city in No- vember, 1842, with their estimated circula- tion, as given in Hudson's Journalism in the United States: Cash Papers Herald, 2 cents 15,000 Sun, 1 cent 20,000 Aurora, 2 cents 5,000 Morning Post, 2 cents. 3,000 Plebeian, 2 cents 2,000 Chronicle, 1 cent 5.000 Tribune, 2 cents 9,500 Union, 2 cents 1,000 Tattler, 1 cent 2,000 62,500 58 Founding of New York Tribune Sunday Papers Atlas 3,500 Times 1,500 Mercury 3,000 News 500 Sunday Herald 9,000 17,500 Wall Street Papers Courier and Enquirer. . 7,000 Journal of Commerce . 7,500 Express 6,000 American] 1,800 Commercial Advertiser 5,000 Evening Post 2,500 Standard 400 30,200 Saturday Papers Brother Jonathan 5,000 New World 8,000 Spirit of the Times 1,500 Whip 4,000 Flash 1,500 Rake 1,000 21,000 The Courier and Enquirer, Commercial Advertiser, American, and Express favored the Whig cause, but their price, as was that of the Evening Post and Journal of Com- merce, of the opposition, was $10 per annum, and they were commercial rather than polit- ical and general newspapers, as Hudson's classification shows. The Herald, then six years old, and the Sun, eight years old, while independent in name, were anti-Whig in sen- timent, and not in good moral repute, and Greeley found encouragement in the advice of Whigs who thought the field for a cheap Whig daily a good one. Having decided on his venture, he ob- tained a loan of $1,000 from his friend James Coggeshall, to add to his own little capital, 59 Horace Greeley and promises of more, which he did not get. Then he printed in the Log Cabin of April 3, 1841, an announcement that on April 10 he would publish the first number "of a new morning journal of politics, literature, and general intelligence," adding: "The Tribune, as its name imports, will labor to advance the interests of the people, and to promote their moral, social, and political well-being. The immoral and degrading police reports, advertisements, and other matter which have been allowed to disgrace the columns of our leading penny papers, will be care- fully excluded from this, and no exertion spared to render it worthy of the hearty approval of the virtuous and refined, and a welcome visitant at the family fire- side." Greeley's hopes for the success of his journal rested largely on expectations of fu- ture Whig ascendency, raised by the election of General Harrison to the presidency. How nearly the death of the President, which oc- curred on April 4, came to checking the Trib- une enterprise Greeley explained in a brief autobiography, dated April 14, 1845, which was published after his death: "In 1841 I issued the first number of the Daily Tribune, which I should not have done had I not is- 60 Founding of New York Tribune sued a prospectus before General Harrison's death." The birthday of the Tribune fell on the date of the funeral parade held in New York city as a mark of mourning for the President- It was a day of sleet and snow, and every Whig heart was bowed down. Friends of the editor had secured for him less than five hun- dred subscribers in advance, but an edition of five thousand was printed, and of these, Greeley says, "I nearly succeeded in giving away all of them that would not sell." The first week's receipts were only $92, with which to meet an outgo of $525 ; but by the close of that week the paper had two thousand paid subscriptions, and this number increased at the rate of five hundred a week until a total of five thousand was reached on May 22, and the growth continued. Writing to Weed in June of that year, Greeley said: "I am get- ting on as well as I know how with the Tribune, but not as well as I expected or wished," and he called the giving of the list of letters by the postmaster to Stone's paper, "the unkindest cut of all." In a note to E. W. Griswold, on July 10, he said: "I am poor as a church mouse and not half so saucy. I have had losses this week, and am perplexed and afflicted. But better luck must come. I 61 Horace Greeley am fishing for a partner." Certainly if ever an editor needed a good business partner Greeley did, and he was fortunate in finding one. Very soon after this note was written, Thomas McElrath surprised him with an offer to become his partner in the new enter- prise, and this Greeley gladly accepted, and the announcement of the new firm was made on July 31. McElrath contributed $2,000 in cash as an equivalent for a half-interest. Not until this arrangement was made did Greeley consider the paper "fairly on its feet." The new partner was a member of the firm of McElrath & Bangs, who kept a bookstore under the printing-office in which Greeley had set up the Testament, and his natural business tact and his experience sup- plied something in which the Tribune editor was always lacking. This partnership con- tinued for more than ten years. Greeley has called McElrath's business management "never brilliant nor specially energetic," but so " safe and judicious " that it lifted the re- sponsibility of the publication office from the editor's shoulders. The Weekly Tribune took the place of the New Yorker and the Log Cabin on September 20, and the new journal was then ready to address both city and rural 62 Founding of New York Tribune readers. The issue of a semiweekly edition was begun on May 17, 1845. The price of a single copy of the daily during the first year was one cent, which did not cover the cost of paper and printing, compelling the owners to look for their prof- its to the advertisements. Greeley asserted, in 1868, that "no journal sold for a cent could ever be much more than a dry summary of the most important, or the most interesting, occurrences of the day " — a view which many modern newspaper publishers would combat. The price was doubled with the beginning of the second volume, and increased to three cents in 1862, and to four cents in 1865. In 1866 it was enlarged to its present size. The Tribune's rivals gave it unintended assistance at the start. The penny Sun, for instance, finding that the new journal was gaining some of its readers, tried to hire the Tribune's carriers to give up its distribution, and, failing in this, informed newsdealers that those who sold the Tribune could not handle the Sun. This action stirred up a "war " between the two papers, in which the public took a lively interest, and attention was thus called to a new venture which was confessedly so serious a competitor. Before he had begun the publication of 63 Horace Greeley the Tribune Greeley had hired as an editorial assistant on the New Yorker a young man who, while a college student in Vermont, had been a valued contributor to that journal. This was Henry J. Raymond, in later years the founder of the Tribune's chief local com- petitor, the Times, and an antagonist in views social and political. Greeley has said that Raymond showed more versatility and ability in journalism than any man of his age whom he ever met, and that he was the only one of his assistants with whom he had to remonstrate "for doing more work than any human brain and frame could be expected long to endure." ^ Under this management the Tribune in its first year forged steadily ahead, winning more and more of the public attention, if not always of the public approval. Greeley's • Young editors who grow discouraged under criticisms of their first work may find encouragement in contrasting this praise of Raymond's practised labor with the following descrip- tion by Greeley of his first attempts (given in a private letter) : " Raymond is a good fellow, but iitterly destitute of experi- ence. . . . He went to work as a novice would, shears in hand, and cut out the most infernal lot of newspaper trash ever seen. He got in type a column of Lord Chatham, which you pub- lished a month ago, three or four column articles of amazing antiquity and stupidity, and then gave out an original transla- tion of a notorious story — which I fear we have published once. Thus the New Yorker is doomed for this week." 64 Founding of New York Tribune own energy was tireless, his editorial contri- butions averaging three columns a day. There was no valuable news that he was afraid to print, nothing evil in his view that he was afraid to combat. The transcenden- talists of the Boston Dial, to which Emerson and Margaret Fuller contributed, had a hear- ing in his columns, and the doings of a Mil- lerite convention found publication. Greeley himself reported a celebrated trial at Utica, sending in from four to nine columns a day. He aroused a warm discussion by character- izing "the whole moral atmosphere of the theater " as "unwholesome," and refusing to urge his readers to attend dramatic perform- ances, "as we would be expected to if we were to solicit and profit by its advertising patron- age." ^ At the same time he offended the religious element by publishing advertise- ments of unorthodox books, and he accom- ' Greeley always considered the stage inimical to many of his pet reforms. He remembered a song that he heard in a theater in derision of temperance, and a ridiculing of socialism by John Brougham, and he thought some of the impersonators of Irishmen " deserving of indictment as libelers of an unlucky race," In summing up his Dramatic Memories in his Busy Life, he said : " I judge that the wise man is he who goes but once to the theater, and keeps the impression then made on his mind fresh and clear to the close of his life " ; but he had faith in a future stage " which will exert a benign influence over the progress and destiny of our race." 6 65 Horace Greeley panied an advertisement of an offer of $50 for the best tract on the impropriety of dan- cing by church members, with an offer of prizes of his own for the best tracts on such subjects as "The rightfulness and consistency of a Christian's spending $5,000 to $10,000 a year on appetites and enjoyments of himself and family, when there are a thousand fam- ilies within a mile of him who are compelled to live on less than $200 a year." To a modern reader who runs over the pages of the earlier volumes of the Tribune the small space allotted to local news will be noticeable. One reason for this was that the smaller city did not then supply the topics of general interest to be found in the daily do- ings of a Greater New York. Another was Greeley's refusal to cater to the sensational, as promised in his prospectus. What we call "yellow journalism" he called "the Satanic press." In one of his attacks on this press he said (February 17, 1849): "Sometimes it will cant in dainty terms of the naughty ferocity of a fist-fight while devoting half its columns to an enormous exaggeration of all the details of that fight, and tagging thereto everything that can serve to whet the vulgar appetite for such exhibitions." But if some big event — like a meeting in behalf of the 66 Founding of New York Tribune Erie Railroad or a political gathering — re- quired attention, the report of the Tribune of those days would do credit to any news- paper of our own. When Greeley attacked a contemporary for some cause that aroused his indignation, his language was apt to descend to vitupera- tion, and "villain," "old villain," "escaped State-prison bird," and "deliberate false- hood " were among his favorite terms. The following on the result of a libel suit against the Herald, is an illustration: "The ruffian has got his deserts. The low-mouthed, bla- tant, witless, brutal scoundrel is condemned — condemned, too, by the people. Let not his sewer-sheet roll its nastiness and filth over the *' codfish aristocracies,' as he has called them for fifteen years." ^ 1 " I remember very well a conversation between Mr. Horace Greeley and my father, Mr, Park Benjamin, during a railway journey which they were then taking to fulfil one of their numerous lecture engagements. Mr. Greeley came into the ear where we were seated with his under lip sticking out, and evidently in a very disagreeable frame of mind. He seated himself, and having wrapped his legs in an old red blanket which he always carried with him, looked up and said : ' Benjamin, that man Bennett would disgrace a pigsty. I have told him so often enough for him to become convinced of the fact, but it is like water on a duck's back.' Mr. Benjamin laughed, and replied : ' Greeley, you are the bigger fool of the two. Don't you see that those socdolagers of yours only serve 67 Horace Greeley During its first year the Tribune pub- lished a letter on the trial of the suit for libel brought by J. Fenimore Cooper against Thurlow Weed, in which the novelist secured a verdict of $400. The writer of this letter remarked : " The value of Mr. Cooper's char- acter, therefore, has been judicially ascer- tained. It is worth exactly $400." This led Cooper to sue Greeley for libel, and the trial took place in Saratoga, in December, 1842. Greeley argued his own case, and the jury gave the plaintiff a verdict for $200. As soon as this result was announced, Greeley took a sleigh for Troy, where he caught a boat, and early the next morning he was at his desk writing his own report of the trial. This report, which filled twelve columns of the Tribune of December 12, 1842, he finished by 11 P.M. — "the best single day's work I ever did." Cooper made this report the ground for another libel suit, but that suit never came to trial. A young newspaper can secure no adver- to advertise him ? The general public has no memory. If you want to make a man prominent in New York city abuse him. The public will forget in a few days all you said of him, and will merely remember his name.' To this Mr. Greeley replied, 'I think you are right, and I won't bother with the hog in the future.' " The Tribune from that time dropped Ben- nett. — (G. H. Benjamin, in New York Evening Post.) 68 Founding of New York Tribune tising more effective than that which comes from making itself talked about, and the Tribune was soon talked of more widely than any other American newspaper. Its editor's personal following is indicated by the fact that he was so overrun with callers that he had to post a notice limiting visitors to the hours between 8 and 9 a. m. and 5 and 6 p. m. One may wonder when this editor of a morn- ing daily, who got to his ofSce before 8 a.m., found time to sleep. "For weeks together," he wrote to a friend in November, 1841, "my hour of quitting work has varied from 12 to 2.30 A. M. This is killing, especially to one whose hours have been regular and reason- able like mine." Subscriptions and adver- tisements kept on increasing, so that in its third year it was necessary to issue supple- mentary pages, to accommodate its adver- tisers. The issue of March 3, 1849, contains this notice: "For two months we have been obliged to leave out two to six columns of ad- vertisements a day to make room for reading matter." In a dispute over the question of circulation with the Herald, the Tribune thus stated its own circulation on August 1, 1849 : Daily, 13,330; weekly, 27,960; semi, 1,660; California edition, 1,920; European, 480. The circulation of the daily reached 45,000 69 Horace Greeley before the war, and during the exciting times of that conflict it mounted to 90,000, while the weekly edition had 217,000 subscribers in some of the years between 1860 and 1872. The profits in 1859 were $86,000. Of its earn- ings in its first twenty-four years the sum of $382,000 was invested in real estate, and an average of $50,000 a year was divided among the stockholders.^ ' In 1850 Greeley gave an example of the consistency of his views on cooperation by making the Tribune a stock concern, on a valuation of $100,000, represented by 100 shares of stock, some 20 of which were sold to its editors, foremen, and assist- ants in the publication oifice. 70 CHAPTER V SOUKCES OF THE TEIBUNE's INFLUENCE — gkeeley's PEKSONALITY Conceding that the Tribune was the most influential newspaper in this country in Mr. Greeley's day, and that he, as almost syn- onymous 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 Gree- ley could have secured the great clientage that came to be recognized as his if he had not supplied to his readers a good news- paper. The Tribune was a good newspaper almost from the start. Greeley's versatility now had full play, and he could not only hold the attention of a vast audience when he ad- dressed the public in an editorial, but could do marvelous pieces of reporting, compose interesting correspondence — as witness his letters from Europe and about his trip across the continent — and act as chief critic 71 Horace Greeley over all the columns under his control. To him, therefore, belonged no mere honorary share of the repute of the Tribune as a news- paper. But while on Greeley's shoulders rested most of the praise or blame for what ap- peared in its columns, his associates, to the day of his death, took no unimportant part in the making of the paper. In his first chief assistant, Raymond, he secured one of the ablest journalists of the day — a man who recognized the value of news, who knew how to select capable subordinates, and how best to direct their efforts. Among other con- tributors and editorial assistants to whom the Tribune was indebted were Margaret Fuller, Bayard Taylor, George William Cur- tis, Edmund Quincy ("Byles "), William Henry Frye, Hildreth, the historian, and Charles T. Congdon. Charles A. Dana joined the staff in 1847, and remained with it, a larger part of the time as managing ed- itor, until 1862. George Ripley began wri- ting for it in 1861, and, outliving Greeley, gave to its literary columns for twenty years a reputation that was unrivaled. Sidney Howard Gay, who was so conscientious an abolitionist that he abandoned his plan of becoming a lawyer because he could not take 72 Sources of the Tribune's Influence the oath to sustain the Federal Constitution, but to whose breadth of view and journalistic skill credit has been given for keeping the Antislavery Standard, which he edited, from being either narrow, bigoted, or dull, was one of Greeley's associates for ten years, dating from 1858, a part of the time as managing editor. Along with these worked a host of others, not so well known, who kept their de- partments up to the highest mark. The scent for news was as keen in those days as it is now, and, while the difficulties of obtaining it were greater, no effort was neglected to accomplish the object in view. Eailroads were then in their infancy, with less than 3,000 miles in operation in this coun- try in 1840. The first steamers to Europe began running in 1838. The Morse telegraph was first operated between Baltimore and Washington in 1844, and the first telegraph office was opened in New York city, at No. 16 Wall Street, in January, 1846. The means then employed to secure news quickly from a distance were what was called the special ex- press — relays of horses and riders, the latter sparing neither themselves nor their steeds in making the time required of them. The Tribune files contain some interesting ac- counts of the time made by its express riders. 73 Horace Greeley To obtain a Governor's message from Albany the Tribune contracted for three riders and ten relays of horses, and that the start from Albany should be made at noon, and New York city be reached not later than 10 p. m. The trip was finished at 9 p. m., a speed of a little less than eighteen miles an hour if the first rider did not start ahead of time — a point about which the Tribune in its boast- ing of the feat the next morning could not be certain. A rider charged with the duty of bringing in the returns of a Connecticut elec- tion left New Haven, in a sulky, at 9.35 p. m., on the arrival of the "express locomotive" from Hartford, reached Stamford in three hours; there encountered a snow-storm and darkness so intense that he ran into another conveyance near New Rochelle and broke a wheel; took the harness from his horse and pressed on on horseback, arriving at the office at five o'clock the next morning. The most energetic reporter of to-day could not exceed this rider in enterprise and persistency. The ocean steamers of those days were not "greyhounds," and so great was the com- petition for the earliest foreign news that en- terprising newspapers did not wait for the arrival of the mails by water at the nearest home port. On one occasion, when news of 74 Sources of the Tribune's Influence special importance was awaited, the Tribune engaged an express rider to meet the steamer (for Boston) at HaHfax, and convey the news package with all speed across Nova Scotia to the Bay of Fundy, where a fast steamboat was to meet him and carry him to Portland, Me., whence a special locomotive would take him to Boston, from which point his budget would be hastened on to New York by rail and on horseback. Modern enterprise can not hope to excel this scheme, and we can sympathize with the editor in its failure to save him from being "beaten." The rider made his way across Nova Scotia through drifts so deep that his sleigh was often up- set, and was hurried across the Bay of Fundy through ice in some places eighteen inches thick, making Boston in thirty-one hours from Halifax — several hours ahead of the ocean steamer. But from that point delays were encountered, and, although the last rider made the trip from New Haven in four hours and a half, a rival journal had had the news on the street for two hours before him. When Henry Clay delivered an im- portant speech on the Mexican War, in Lex- ington, Ky., on November 13, 1847, the Trib- une's report of it was carried to Cincinnati by horse express, and thence transmitted by 75 Horace Greeley wire, appearing in the edition of November 15. During the Mexican War a pony express carried the news from New Orleans to Peters- burg, Va., the nearest telegraph station, in this way delivering the New Orleans papers of March 29 at the telegraph office on Feb- ruary 4. The exploits of these expresses were described by the press all over the coun- try, and all this gave the competing journals a big advertisement. I am inclined to think that what did as much as anything to widen Greeley's reputa- tion, and to advertise his journal in its early days, was his devotion to "isms." One of his laudators had insisted that he had only two of these, but that assumption did him an injustice. "No other public teacher," to quote his own words, "lives so wholly in the pres- ent as the editor ; and the noblest affirmations of unpopular truth — the most self-sacrificing defiance of a base and selfish public senti- ment that regards only the most sordid ends, and values every utterance solely as it tends to preserve quiet and contentment, while the dollars fall jingling into the merchants' drawer, the land-jobbers' vault, and the miser's bag — can but be noted in their day, and with their day be forgotten." Herein we get Greeley's idea of "isms," a conception not 76 Sources of the Tribune's Influence unlike Carlyle's definition of a certain abbot's Catholicism— "something like the isms of all true men in all true centuries." The Tribune was started when, in the words of John Morley, "a great wave of hu- manity, of benevolence, of desire for im- provement—a great wave of social senti- ment, in short— poured itself among all who had the faculty of large and disinterested thinking " ; a day when Pusey and Thomas Arnold, Carlyle and Dickens, Cobden and O'Connell, were arousing new interest in old subjects; when the communistic experiments in Brazil and Owen's project at Hopedale in- spired expectation of social improvement; when Southey and Coleridge meditated a migration to the shores of America to assist in the foundation of an ideal society, and when philosophers on the continent of Eu- rope were believing that things dreamed of were at last to be realized. Greeley's mind was naturally receptive of new plans for re- form—a tendency inherited, perhaps, from his New England place of birth, "that land in which every ism of social or religious life has had its origin." The hard experience of his own family, as he shared it in his early boyhood, led him to think that something was wrong somewhere in man's struggle for ex- 77 Horace Greeley istence, and his observations among the city poor during the hard tiraes of 1837 enlisted his sympathies in behalf of all who live by labor. When, therefore, he found himself in control of a daily newspaper, he would not have been Horace Greeley if he had not been ready to make a "most self-sacrificing de- fiance " of pubhc opinion in behalf of doc- trines which he considered right. What seemed to his fellow Whig leaders, in the early years of the Tribune, vagaries — his advocacy of Fourierism, extreme temper- ence legislation, etc. — gave them much an- noyance, as likely to hurt the political cause with which Greeley's name and paper were associated, and they often labored with him on the subject. In minor points they met with some success, but when his mind was once made up, expediency was a futile argu- ment with which to approach him. In a let- ter to Weed, dated February, 1842, after de- scribing a sleepless night he had passed be- cause of some of Weed's criticisms, he made this declaration of personal independence: "You have pleased, on several occasions, to take me to task for differing from you, however reluctantly and temperately, as though such conditions were an evidence, not merely of weakness on my part, but of some 78 Sources of the Tribune's Influence black ingratitude or heartless treachery. . . . I have given, I have ever been ready to give you, any service within my power; but my understanding, my judgment, my conscien- tiousness of convictions, of duty and public good, these I can surrender to no man. You wrong yourself in asking them, and in taking me to task like a schoolboy for expressing my sentiments respectfully when they differ from yours. ... Do not ask me to forget that I, too, am a man; that I must breathe free air or be stifled." The New Yorker in its last year contained a series of articles on "What shall be done for the Laborer," in which it held to the prin- ciple that the "basis of all social and moral reform" lay "in a practical recognition of the Right of every human being to demand of the community an opportunity to labor and to receive a decent subsistence as the just reward of such labor." Greeley's sympa- thies were therefore ready to interest him in Albert Brisbane, a convert to Fourier's teaching, who had made the acquaintance of the French philosopher in France, and his friends, from his conversation, soon found that he had accepted Fourier's views. Bris- bane edited a magazine called The Future, which was printed in Greeley's office, and 79 Horace Greeley whose prospectus said: "The primary, posi- tive, and definite object of its labors will be to show that Human Happiness may be pro- moted, knowledge and virtue increased, vice, misery, waste, and want infinitely diminished, by a reorganization of society upon the prin- ciple of Association, or a combination of effort, instead of the present system of iso- lated households." ^ The Tribune of Novem- ber, 1841, contained an editorial which said: "We have written something, and shall yet write much more, in illustration and advo- cacy of the great Social revolution which our age is destined to commence, in rendering all useful Labor at once instructive and honor- able, and banishing Want and all consequent degradation from the globe. The germ of this revolution is developed in the writings of Charles Fourier." In the Tribune of March 1, 1842, was begun a series of articles by Brisbane on "Association," which were continued for many months. That the Trib- une and its editor might not be held respon- ' Henry J. Raymond wrote to R. W. Griswold in 1841 : " Greeley got himself into a scrape by connecting himself wit h it (The Future), and the city — especially the Sunday — papers came down upon him with a vengeance. He's rather sorry that he enlisted, and is trying to take the curse off by adver- tising Brisbane's name as editor." 80 Sources of the Tribune's Influence sible for the views expressed, each of these articles (with a few exceptions) bore this caption: "This column has been purchased by the advocates of Association, in order to lay their principles before the public. Its au- thorship is entirely distinct from that of the Tribune." The Tribune had little to say on the sub- ject while it was publishing the Brisbane es- says, but on January 20, 1843, the Fourier Association of the City of New York was formed, and Greeley was the first-named di- rector of the North American Phalanx, or- ganized soon after, with a capital of $400,000, to put the Association idea into practise, and the Tribune of January 27, in that year, said : "We can not but believe that Association, with its concert of action, its unity of inter- ests, its vast economies, and its more effect- ive application of labor and other means of production will be extremely profitable, and offer to those who enter it not only a safe and lucrative investment of their capital and a most advantageous field for their industry and skill, but social and intellectual enjoy- ments, and every means of a superior educa- tion of their children." The "Brook Farm " experiment, which was later placed on a Fourier basis, was initiated in 1841, and the 7 81 Horace Greeley "Sylvania" enterprise, in Pike County, Penn- sylvania, in 1843. The plant of the North Amercian Pha- lanx was established near Red Bank, N. J. Only one-qnarter of the capital was paid in, but a big dwelling for the members and their families, called the Phalanstery, was erected, with a steam apparatus for cooking and washing, and mills, storehouses, and other buildings. All the members were divided into groups, each of which was assigned its out- door or indoor work. This experiment at- tracted a great deal of attention. Charles A. Dana and his family were for a time resi- dents of the Phalanstery, and Margaret Ful- ler, Frederica Bremmer, and Rev. W. H. Channing were among its visitors; but the Phalanx, like "Brook Farm" and "Sylva- nia," was not a permanent success. "Sylva- nia " passed into the hands of the mortgagee in two years, and, after a disastrous fire, "with some other setbacks," the property of the Phalanx was sold, its debts were paid, and the stockholders received a dividend equal to about 65 per cent of their invest- ment. The Tribune and its editor incurred a great deal of criticism, and the paper lost some readers, because of Greeley's espousal 82 m Sources of the Tribune's Influence of the socialist doctrines, but he refused to disassociate himself from the experiments while they were being tried, and the attacks on him helped to advertise him and his paper, and increased its circulation among those who could not regard as inherently wrong a cause supported, or countenanced, by men like George Ripley, Charles A. Dana, Na- thaniel Hawthorne, and Parke Godwin. In February, 1841, Greeley wrote to Weed that he took a wrong view of the political bearing of the Fourier matter, explaining: "Hitherto all the devotees of social reform of any kind have been regularly repelled from the Whig party, and attracted to its opposite. It strikes me that it is unwise to persist in this course, unless we are to be considered the enemies of improvement, and the bulwarks of an outgrown aristocracy in this country." In a letter to R. W. Griswold, Greeley said : "I do not regard either office or money as a supreme good; and, though I never had either, I have been so near to each as to see what they are worth, very nearly. I regard principle and self-respect as more important than either." When the Courier and En- quirer, in April, 1844, spoke of the Tribune as "the organ of Charles Fourier, Fanny Wright, and R. D. Owen, advocating from 83 Horace Greeley day to day the destruction of our existing social system, and substituting in its stead one based upon infidelity, and an unrestricted and indiscriminate intercourse of the sexes," the Tribune began its reply, "We do not copy the above with a view to defend ourselves from the cowardly falsehoods of the escaped State-prison bird," etc. As late as February 10, 1848, replying to some criticisms in the Herald and the Observer, the Tribune said: "Should the Tribune get much further ahead of the Herald in circulation and business, we shall expect to hear that Fourier was a Fiji cannibal and the original contriver of Asiatic cholera." In 1846 the Courier and Enquirer accept- ed a challenge by the Tribune to a discussion of Fourierism, and its articles were written by Greeley's former assistant, Henry J. Ray- mond, who had joined its staff in 1843. Ray- mond denied that the condition of the labor- ing classes was as bad as the Fourierites pictured it, and called the new doctrines hos- tile to Christianity, to morality, and to con- jugal constancy. After the close of this de- bate the Tribune practically dropped the subject. Greeley's conviction, in the light of his later years, was that the social reformers were right on many points, and that Fourier 84 Sources of the Tribune's Influence was the most practical of them. He set forth in 1868, as part of his social creed, the fol- lowing affirmations: "I believe that there need be, and should be, no paupers who are not infantile, idiotic, or disabled; and that civilized society pays more for the support of able-bodied pauper- ism than the necessary cost of its extirpation. "I believe that they babble idly and libel Providence who talk of surplus labor, or the inadequacy of capital to supply employment to all who need it. "I believe that the efficiency of human effort is enormously, ruinously, diminished by what I term Social Anarchy. ... It is quite within the truth to estimate the annual prod- uct of our national industry at less than one- half of what it might be if better applied and directed. "The poor work at perpetual disadvan- tage in isolation, because of the inadequacy of their means. . . . Association would have these unite to purchase, inhabit, and cultivate a common domain — say, of 2,000 acres — whereby these advantages over the isolated system would be realized " (mentioning econ- omy, etc.). But, while holding to these beliefs, he ac- knowledged the difficulty of living up to them. 85 Horace Greeley His own experience had shown him that a prime obstacle to a successful social experi- ment was "the kind of persons who are nat- urally attracted to it, the conceited, the crotchety, the selfish, the headstrong, the pug- nacious, the unappreciated, the played-out, the idle, and the good-for-nothing generally; who, finding themselves utterly out of place and a discount in the world as it is, rashly conclude that they are exactly fitted for the world as it ought to be." He had found, too, that, where such experiments had been a success, they rested either on a communistic basis ( and he would not admit that a member contributing $100,000 to an industrial enter- prise should stand on the same footing as one who brings nothing, or that a skilled me- chanic should receive no more than a ditcher) or on a "firm and deep religious basis." In other words, the system as he took it up orig- inally was a failure, and a scheme as he would have limited it would have been rejected by modern socialists. Greeley was attracted by Sylvester Gra- ham's dietetic doctrine that there is better food for man than the flesh of animals ; that all stimulants, including tea and coffee, should be avoided ; that bread should be made of unbolted flour, and that spices should not 86 Sources of the Tribune's Influence be used, and only the least possible salt. After bearing Graham lecture, he became an inmate of his boarding-house, where the table conformed to the new views, and it was there that he met his future wife. Miss Mary Y. Cheney, a native of Connecticut, who was teaching in North Carolina, and who was even more susceptible to new doctrines than was her husband. Greeley used no alcoholic liquors, did not care for tea, and had given up coffee when he found his hand trembling after partaking of it at an evening entertain- ment. He preferred meat, in after years, to "hot bread, rancid butter, decayed fruit, and wilted vegetables," but always declared that, if we of this generation confined ourselves to a Graham diet, our grandchildren would live longer than we shall, and require less care from doctors. Mrs. Greeley lived up to her belief most conscientiously in their early married life, making no alteration in her table, and offering no excuse, when guests were present. "Usuallj^" Greeley tells us, "a day, or at most two, of beans and potatoes, boiled rice, puddings, bread and butter, with no condiments but salt, and never a pickle, was all they could abide; so, bidding her a kind adieu, each in turn departed to seek elsewhere a more congenial hospitality." 87 Horace Greeley Mrs. Greeley made the acquaintance of Margaret Fuller in Boston, and attended the conversations, for women only, planned by Miss Fuller, to discuss what woman was born to do, and how she could do it, and it was at Mrs. Greeley's invitation that Margaret be- came a member of the Greeley household when she went to New York. Until the latter part of the year 1844 the Greeleys had lived within less than half a mile of the Tribune office, one experiment in Broome Street con- vincing the editor that that location was too far from his work. After his exertions in the great Clay campaign of 1844 the family took an old wooden house, surrounded by eight acres of land, on the East River, at Turtle Bay, nearly opposite Blackwell's Island. Margaret Fuller described it as "two miles or more from the thickly settled part of New York, but omnibuses and cars give me con- stant access to the city." She did not com- plain of her accommodations there, but Gree- ley suggests that, in her physical condition, a better furnished room and a more liberal table would have added to her happiness. Greeley did not grant a ready acceptance to all of Miss Fuller's views. She wrote a great deal for the Tribune, however, on social questions, book reviews (including a very un- 88 Sources of the Tribune's Influence complimentary one of Longfellow's poems), and afterward letters from Europe, and Greeley has given generous praise to her con- tributions and her aims. But when she de- manded "the fullest recognition of social and political equality " for women, he was willing to concede the justness of this demand only on condition that the enfranchised woman "would emancipate herself from the thral- dom to etiquette, and the need of a mascu- line arm in crossing the street." Until this emancipation was secured he "could not see how the * woman's rights theory ' is ever to be anything more than a logically defen- sible abstraction " ; ^ and he declared his be- lief that "a good husband and two or three bouncing babies would have emancipated [Margaret] from a deal of cant and non- sense." Thus we see that there were "isms " to which Greeley could not be attracted. Greeley was responsible for an impres- sion, which gained wide currency at the time, that the Tribune editor was a believer in spir- ' In printing a full report of the first women's convention, held in Ohio, the Tribune, on May 1, 1850, declared that a sin- cere Republican could give no adequate reason for refusing the suffrage to women if they should, as a body, demand it, because it was " a natural right, however unwise or unnatural the demand." This view was combated by Dr. Horace Bushnell in his Women's Suffrage. 89 Horace Greeley itualism, especially as demonstrated in the "rappings " of the Foxes, which attracted so much attention in 1848. The Tribune did, in December, 1849, publish as a matter of news an account of the "rappings," signed by re- sponsible citizens of Rochester, while Greeley Was in Washington as a member of Congress ; but in a long review of a book on the "rap- pings " the next month it said: "We have not meant to imply that any statement in this book is necessarily false or incredible, but only that they are of such a nature as to require a very large amount of unimpeach- able evidence to sustain them." Some two years later, Greeley was present at one of the Fox seances in a hotel in New York, but he was not impressed with their exhibi- tion. His wife, whose attention had been turned to things spiritual by the recent death of the son whom they so greatly mourned, attended several of the seances, and was so much inter- ested that she invited the Foxes to spend sev- eral weeks at her house, and exhibitions of "rappings " given there were widely talked of, and Greeley's name was naturally asso- ciated with the business. But this was not an "ism " that won his unconditional accept- ance, and he told a correspondent, through 90 Sources of the Tribune's Influence the Tribune, that "ghosts who had anything worth listening to would hardly stoop to so uninteresting a business as hammering." In his autobiography he pronounced the so- called spiritual communications "vague, un- real, shadowy, trivial," but added, of the "communications" made by "mediums": "That some of them are the result of juggle, collusion, or trick I am confident ; that others are not, I decidedly believe." A subject not to be classed as an "ism," in which Greeley always manifested the greatest interest, and which won for him the regard of a vast clientage, was farming. "I should have been a farmer," he wrote in 1868. "Were I now to begin my life over I would choose to earn my bread by cultivating the soil." The lack of intelligence displayed in New England agriculture was impressed upon him in his boyhood, and he never wrote more enthusiastically than in teaching farm- ers what he thought they ought to know. In the forties his editions began to publish re- ports of the sessions of the Farmers' Club in connection with the American Institute, and large space was always devoted in the Weekly Tribune to agricultural subjects. In no character was Greeley so satirized as in that of a farmer, professing to give instruc- 91 Horace Greeley tion on a subject about wbicli he had no prac- -tical knowledge, and his agricultural experi- ment at Chappaqua received a ^'ast amount of attention from pen and pencil. But such sneers were far astray. Greeley's ideas on farming were not quixotic; they were good, and they were founded on the advice of the best authorities of the day. The Chappaqua estate was ridiculed on the assumption that it did not "pay." Most of the "gentlemen farmers " of this country would have to con- fess to a similar failure of their experiments if judged by their account books. Chappa- qua, too, was not selected by Greeley, but by his wife, or rather to meet three conditions on which she insisted — viz., a spring of pure water, a cascade or brawling brook, and a tract of evergreen woods, and, to be acces- sible to the busy editor, the site must be near the city. The best he could do, in satisfying these conditions, was to accept with them "a rocky, wooded hillside, sloping to the north of west, with a bog at its foot." Much money was spent on this unpromising tract that might have been saved where so many ob- stacles were not to be overcome; but the owner overcame many of these, and by in- telligent methods. When he wrote his auto- biography he declared that he had been 92 c8 O Ct5 Sources of the Tribune's Influence "making " rather than "working " a farm, but he insisted that "good farming " would pay, and every intelligent observer of our day will testify that most farming failures are due to bad farming. In the early seventies the Tribune printed a series of articles on farming, by its editor, and they were afterward collected under the title "What I Know of Farming." A reading of these essays will give any competent judge a good opinion of the writer's practical knowledge of the subject. There is excellent counsel to young farmers about the selection and preparation of a farm; suggestions about draining which have since been accept- ed by thousands of agriculturists; sound views about waste in the use of fertilizers; pleas for birds as farmers' assistants, and sensible advice on such subjects as deep plow- ing, level culture for potatoes, and the neces- sity of keeping farm accounts. Merely to mention subjects under the gen- eral classification of reforms to which the Tribune gave support in its earlier years, we may recall its enthusiastic defense of the Irish cause in 1848, and of the cause of Hun- gary, in whose behalf it proposed the raising of a patriotic loan, in shares of $100; its championship of cooperation in labor; its 93 Horace Greeley gradual approach to the radical view of tem- perance legislation represented by the Maine law, and its opposition to capital punishment, to more liberal divorce laws, and to flogging in the navy. It is true that its espousal of many causes raised up a host of enemies for the Tribune, and no other newspaper in the United States was looked on as so dangerous by those who did not agree with it. Nevertheless, the cham- pion whose sword was naked for an attack on any worthy foe was an intellectual hero in thousands of eyes, and when Eaymond start- ed the Times in 1852 to supply a journal of political views similar to those advocated by the Tribune without the Tribune's "vaga- ries," the new enterprise succeeded, but it made no serious inroads on the circulation of the older one.^ Greeley came to be a sort of general counsel for many people, some of whom could undoubtedly be classified among that "fringe of the unreasonable and half-cracked, with whom," Higginson says, "it is the tendency of every reform to sur- round itself." Before the Tribune was a year old its editor told his readers, "We have a number of requests to blow up all sorts of * Greeley complained that the Times's circulation exceeded that of the Tribune in New York city. 94 Sources of the Tribune's Influence abuses," and he added, with that self-confi- dence which always characterized him, "which shall be attended to as fast as possi- ble." Greeley thoroughly enjoyed his reputa- tion as a philosopher and a seer, and a glance through his columns will show how little he was hindered by modesty in giving advice, those receiving his ministrations including young men seeking employment, young doc- tors and lawyers, country merchants, would- be editors, and inquiring farmers. Greeley's lectures also gave him and his paper a good deal of advertising. It is some- what difficult to realize to-day the importance of the lecture platform when "it was consid- ered a sort of duty for educated men to have on hand a lecture or two which they were willing to read to any audience which was willing to ask them." ^ Emerson wrote to a friend in 1843, "There is now a 'lyceum,' so called, in almost every town in New England, and if I would accept an invitation I might read a lecture every night." But all lecturers were not expected to contribute their wisdom or entertainment without compensation. It was said in the early fifties that "Ik Marvel," from the delivery of one not very good lec- * Hale's Lowell and his Friends. 95 Horace Greeley ture, could secure money enough to support himself while he was writing a really good book, and that one course of Bayard Taylor's lectures brought him profit enough to pay his way ten times around the world. Greeley always loved to talk, and the lec- ture-field was a tempting one to him. In later years it used to be said in the office that the only way he could be induced to take a vaca- tion was to start him off on a lecturing tour. His first attempt on the platform was made in New York in February, 1842,^ and he wrote soon after, asking his friend Griswold to get him an engagement in Philadelphia, saying, "I know there are hardly a hundred persons in Philadelphia who know of me," but sug- gesting that he could "fill a hole " in a pro- gram. Greeley was never an orator, but peo- ple have a curiosity to see a public man of wide reputation, and after the Tribune be- came established he "drew " on this account, although his subjects were abstract rather than, in the common acceptance, entertaining. Eleven such lectures, written between 1842 and 1848, each of them in less than a day, were published in 1850 under the title Hints toward Reform, and the subjects included ^ Letters of R. W. Griswold, p. 104. 96 Sources of the Tribune's Influence Human Life, The Emancipation of Labor, and The Formation of Character. In a lec- ture on Poets and Poetry, printed in his auto- biography, he commented freely on almost the entire list of English poets, pronouncing The Faery Queen "a bore, unreal, insupport- able," and confessing his hatred of the Tory- ism of Shakespeare; and in another lecture, on Literature as a Vocation, he styled the great dramatist "the highest type of literary hack," finding in his writings a combination of "starry flights and paltry jokes, celestial penetration and contemptible puns," and ex- pressing his unqualified admiration for Mrs. Hemans, in whose Adopted Child he had found "hours of pure and tranquil pleas- ure." Most of the audiences which listened to these discourses were lyceums, or young men's associations in country villages. The great place for lectures in New York city was the Tabernacle, which seated 3,000 persons. Greeley's audiences there numbered on an average 1,200 in the early fifties. In a course of lectures delivered in Chicago in 1853, when its population was about 30,000, Greeley stood second as a "drawing card," being only preceded by Bayard Taylor in a list which included John G. Saxe, R. W. Emerson, The- 8 97 Horace Greeley odore Parker, George William Curtis, Hor- ace Mann, and E. P. WMpple. In 1848 Greeley was elected to Congress, for the only time in his career, accepting a nomination in the upper district of New York city, to fill a vacancy caused by the unseating of a Democrat on charges of fraud at the polls, without the seating of his Whig opponent. As the term would last only from December to March, and the original candidate de- clined the nomination for the short term when the nomination for the full term was denied him, Greeley got the place. He attracted wide attention during his short residence in Wash- ington, and his paper received through him a vast amount of advertising, for a large part of which it had to thank his unwise enemies. If he was not the only editor who was a mem- ber of that Congress, he was certainly the only member who acted as editorial corre- spondent of so well known a newspaper as the Tribune. His fellow members would therefore naturally look on him as doubly armed — prepared to meet them face to face, and to criticize them with his pen; and his readers would regard his letters as of un- usual value, coming from one having the op- portunity for an inside view of things. Greeley went to Washington with a con- 98 Sources of the Tribune's Influence viction that the national legislators were as much in duty bound to attend strictly to their public business, and so to earn their pay, as was a man in private employment. Two days after he took his seat he scored the ab- sentees. In a letter to the Tribune, speaking of the "annual hypocrisy of electing a chap- lain," he said: "If either House had a chap- lain who dared preach to its members what they ought to hear — of their faithlessness, their neglected duty, their iniquitous waste of time by taking from the treasury money which they have not even attempted to earn — then there would be some sense in the chap- lain business." This he followed on Decem- ber 22 with an exposure of the mileage abuse which involved him in a bitter contest with his fellow- members, and gained him wide no- toriety. Members of Congress then received pay at the rate of eight dollars a day, and mile- age at the rate of forty cents a mile, by "the usual traveled route." "When Greeley made his first call on the sergeant-at-arms for his money, he was shown a schedule giv- ing the amount of mileage drawn by each member. Some of the figures appeared to him to be extravagant, and he at once de- cided on a step, conscientiously taken, but LofG. 99 Horace Greeley which gave the best evidence of his news- paper tact. He hired a man to make for him a table showing the actual distance traveled by each member in reaching the capital, the distance for which he was allowed mileage, and what the saving would have been had the mileage been computed over the shortest route. As most members made out their schedules to cover as many miles as possible, without reference to the more modern steam- boat routes (and Greeley's amanuensis had taken the official mail route distances), his table, when the Tribune of December 22, con- taining it, came to Washington, excited a great sensation, every member being charged with receiving from $2 to more than $1,000 in excess of his equitable allowance. "I had expected that it would kick up some dust," says Greeley in his autobiography, "but my expectations were outrun." "I have divided the House into two parties," he wrote to his friend Griswold at the time; "one that would like to see me extinguished, and the other that wouldn't be satisfied without a hand in doing it." For some days members simply discussed the matter with one another or with their critic. Him they could not bend. On De- cember 27 the subject was brought to the 100 Sources of the Tribune's Influence attention of the House by an Ohio member named Sawyer, who had been previously held up to ridicule by a Tribune correspondent for eating his luncheon during the session be- hind the Speaker's chair, and who, in the table, was credited with receiving $281 more than was his honest due. Mr. Turner, of Illi- nois, whose excess of mileage was nearly $200, moved the appointment of a committee to inquire whether the Tribune's charges did not amount to an allegation of fraud against the members, and to report whether they were false or true. Turner charged the ed- itor-member — whom he alluded to as "per- haps the gentleman, or rather the individual, perhaps the thing " — with seeking notoriety, and being engaged in a very small business. Greeley took part in the ensuing debate, hold- ing tenaciously to the main point of his dis- closure. The discussion continued until January 16, when the committee made a report exon- erating the members, and there the mat- ter practically dropped. Greeley was ac- cused, during the discussion, of employing in his newspaper correspondence time that he should have devoted to the public business in the House, and a fierce and somewhat embar- rassing attack was made on him concerning 101 Horace Greeley a vote which he gave on an appropriation for the purchase of certain books — archives, debates, etc. — with which it was customary to supply members. He certainly got very much confused in his explanations. "For a time," he says in his autobiography, "it looked as though the mileage men had the upper hand of me, and I was told that a paper was drawn up for signatures to see how many would agree to stand by each other in voting my expulsion, but that the movement was crushed by a terse interrogatory remon- strance by Hon. John Wentworth, then a leading Democrat. ' Why, you blessed fools,* warmly inquired * long John,' ' do you want to make him President? ' " Wentworth's re- mark showed how strongly public feeling had shaped itself on Greeley's side of the main question. In one of the debates in the House a speaker declared that he had not seen a single newspaper that did not approve of Greeley's course. How restive the public are regarding attempts of members of Congress to increase unduly their own emoluments may be learned by recalling the excitement caused by the act of 1816 increasing the pay of mem- bers (including those then in office) from $6 a day to $1,500 a year (Clay's vote for this bill nearly causing his defeat for reelection), 102 Sources of the Tribune's Influence and the outburst of denunciation of the Con- gress which, in 1873, passed the so-called "salary grab " bill. But the mileage abuse was not the only- one to which Greeley drew attention. The waste of time was a constant subject of com- ment in his editorial correspondence, and on January 22 he moved an amendment to the general appropriation bill providing that members should not be paid when absent from their seats except in case of sickness or when employed elsewhere in public busi- ness, and he made a vain attempt to save the bonus of $250 which it had been customary to vote to the House employees. The value of the attention which the seven-years'-old Tribune attracted all over the country be- cause of its editor's course in Congress could not well be overestimated, and an indication of the practical result is seen in the fact that its advertising receipts were larger by $7,830 in 1849 than in the year previous. The econ- omist was received with great cordiality on the occasion of a trip to the West that he made in 1849, the marked warmth of his re- ception in Cincinnati calling out from him a special letter of thanks. Greeley's personality was always im- pressed on the Tribune. His favorite text 103 Horace Greeley was some article in another newspaper, and a count of his editorials would probably show that a majority of them began with a quota- tion from, or a reference to, some other ed- itor's views. His reply was very often em- phasized by the line, " Comments by the Trib- une," or the like, and if he desired to be par- ticularly emphatic he would sign his initials, "H. G." His correspondence, when he was out of the city in the earlier years, often oc- cupied the editorial columns, and he was for- tunate in getting before the public in his travels. Thus, when he first visited England, in 1851, he was chairman of one of the juries of award in the World's Exhibition in Lon- don, delivered the address proposing the health of the architect of the Crystal Palace at a notable banquet, and gave his experience as an editor to a Parliamentary Commission. When he visited Paris in 1855 he was ar- rested at the instance of a French exhib- itor at the Crystal Palace exhibition in New York, who tried to hold him responsible for a statue that was broken there because he was a director in the enterprise, and he was imprisoned for two days in the Clichy prison. His trip across the plains, in 1859, was made a notable event, and the driver of the stage in which he crossed the Sier- 104 Sources of the Tribune's Influence ras was a sort of hero for the rest of his life. Greeley "edited " the whole Tribune up to the day of his nomination for President. None of its columns escaped his supervision. He was not an easy man to please, as he con- sidered all mistakes likely to be placed on his own shoulders. The style of his own editorial articles was clear, forceful, and concise, with- out rhetorical adornment, and he expected his assistants to follow his model. Writing to one of these who had gotten out a number of the New Yorker in 1840, while he was in Al- bany, Greeley said: "The last New Yorker was a very fair number, bating typograph- ical errors, such as * Dugal ' for ' Dugald * Stuart, which is awful, as insinuating igno- rance against us. I saw ^ From whence ' in your verse, too. Don't you think that is shocking — positively shocking? " His letters to Charles A. Dana, written while he was watching the Banks speakership contest in 1855-56,^ give many pictures of him in the role of the editorial supervisor. One of these letters began thus : "What would it cost to burn the Opera House? If the price is reasonable, have it » New York Sun, May 19, 1889. 105 Horace Greeley done and send me the bill. . . . All Congress is disappointed and grieved at not seeing Pierce and Gushing demolished in the Trib- une. . . . And now I see that you have crowd- ed out the little I did send to make room for Fry's eleven columns of arguments as to the feasibility of sustaining the opera in New York if they would only play his composi- tions. I don't believe three hundred who take the Tribune care one chew of tobacco for the matter ! " Again he wrote : "I shall have to quit here or die, unless you stop attacking people here without consulting me; " and again: "If you were to live fifty years and do nothing but good all the time, you could hardly atone for the mischief you have done by that article on Benton. ... I write once more to entreat that I may be al- lowed to conduct the Tribune with reference to the mile wide that stretches either way from Pennsylvania Avenue. It is but a small space, and you have all the world besides." Indicating his zeal for exactness, and his quick detection of an error, he wrote: "The Tribune of Monday says that the bank sus- pension took place in 1836. It was '37 (May 10). Please correct in Weekly." Greeley was always easily approached, 106 Sources of the Tribune's Influence and the demands on his purse and influence were constant. He devoted a chapter of his autobiography to Beggars and Borrowers, but it gave no adequate idea of the money that such applicants obtained from him. He portrays many kinds of beggars — the "chron- ic," the " systematic," — and in summing up his experience says, "I can not remember a single instance in which the promise to repay was made good." But he went on lending. To a clerk from New Hampshire, who, arriv- ing in New York with his wife penniless, asked for a "loan " to take him back to his father's house, Greeley replied, "Stranger, I must help you get away. But why say any- thing about paying me? You know, and I know, you will never pay a cent." This makes us recall that "when the Spectator went out to meet Sir Eoger de Coverley he could hear him chiding a beggar asking alms for not finding some work, but at the same time hand- ing him sixpence." Some applicants, however, did meet with a refusal. Chauncey M. Depew has told of finding a visitor in Greeley's editorial room when he made a call on him. The editor's patience had evidently been almost exhaust- ed, and as he wrote on steadily he would give an occasional kick toward the caller, who 107 Horace Greeley every now and then put in a word. Finally, turning round, Greeley said: "Tell me what you want. Tell me quick, and in one sen- tence." The man said, "I want a subscrip- tion, Mr. Greeley, for a cause which will pre- vent a thousand of our fellow-beings from go- ing to hell." Greeley shouted, "I will not give you a cent. There don't half enough go there now." As Greeley was a Universalist, this reply was not so severe as it sounded. The first time I saw Greeley was in the little room, just off the publication oJBfice, where he did his work in his later years. Having occasion to ask him about the pub- lication of some article in the weekly edition, which was then in my charge, I found him busily writing, with a man, hat in hand, standing near him, evidently making some appeal. The desk was piled high with pa- pers, and there was a litter of the same around him on the floor. Over his desk dan- gled the handle of a bell-cord, with which he could summon his messenger-boy, and by an- other cord were suspended his scissors, which would have been lost as soon as he laid them down. To his visitor he apparently paid no attention, although the man would occasion- ally interject a few words, fumbling his hat nervously. At last, having reached the bot- 108 Sources of the Tribune's Influence torn of a page, Greeley swung around in his chair, and, in his querulous voice, said, "I'll \)Q (j_(i if I am going to spend my time get- ting New York offices for Jerseymen." Then the man went out. 109 CHAPTER VI THE TAEIFF QUESTION" Gkeeley'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, pro- fessed devotion to protection, and speeches which he heard at a consultation of protec- tionists in the American Institute, which he attended while waiting for a job during his first year in New York city, strengthened his already formed convictions. But during the earlier years of his editorial work in New York and Albany the tariff was not a prom- inent issue. The compromise act passed in 1833 continued in force until 1842, and, al- though it was not operating as Clay and other of his supporters anticipated (Clay looked for its speedy amendment), it was not made a "live issue." We find the existing tariff 110 The Tariff Question law named in the New Yorker as one of the causes of the hard times of 1836-37, the pos- sibilities of silk culture in New York State set forth, and the objections of the Evening Post to a proposed State bounty of fifty cents a pound on silk produced in the State warmly combated. The compromise act provided for a reduc- tion of all duties which exceeded 20 per cent under the act of 1832, on the following scale : 10 per cent of the excess to be removed on January 1, 1834; 10 per cent more on Jan- uary 1, 1836 ; another 10 per cent on January 1, 1838, and a fourth on January 1, 1840 ; on January 1, 1842, one-half of the remaining excess was to be abolished, and the remainder of the excess on July 1, 1842, leaving, after that date, a uniform tax of 20 per cent. One of the arguments used by Clay to secure sup- port for his compromise from his fellow pro- tectionists was that it would be superseded before its ultra reductions took effect. But during the second administration of Jackson and the administration of Van Buren — the latter had no very clear views about the tariff — other financial questions occupied the at- tention of the country, and even during the hard times of 1837 the tariff was only inci- dentally alluded to in the discussion of reme- 111 Horace Greeley dies; and until after the election of 1840 no aggressive steps were taken to change the law. But the approach of the date when the horizontal rate of 20 per cent would go into effect was causing uneasiness. The duty on rolled bar iron, for instance, which was 95 per cent (specific) in 1832, had dropped to 42.5 on January 1, 1842, and would drop to 20 per cent in the coming July. Moreover, the extra session of Congress which assembled in June, 1841, had to face a deficit of the revenues. As the Whigs were in control of both Houses they could make any change in the tariff on which they might agree, and to which the President would consent. Clay, their leader, quickly presented his program in the shape of a resolution setting forth the leading matters which should be acted upon, including, in order, the repeal of the Sub- treasury law, the incorporation of a United States Bank, and the raising of the necessary revenue both by an increase of duties and a loan. The extra session passed no tariff bill, but it did authorize a loan of $12,000,000, which, on account of the condition of the pub- lic credit, the Treasury found it difficult to secure. In his message at the opening of the regular session in the following December, 112 The Tariff Question President Tyler recommended tariff revision, with a view to the substitution of discrimina- ting for level rates, but without violating the spirit of the compromise of 1833. The Secre- tary of the Treasury, in his report, suggested that the condition of the finances would no longer permit a strict observance of that act. In the following March — just previous to his farewell to the Senate — Clay introduced reso- lutions favoring an increase to 30 per cent of the duties that would be reduced to 20 per cent in the following June, and at the same time a repeal of the law under which there was to be no distribution of the proceeds of land sales among the States so long as the tariff rate exceeded 20 per cent. The death of Harrison elevated to the presidency a man whom Greeley in later years characterized as " an imbittered, im- placable enemy of the party which had raised him from obscurity and neglect to the pin- nacle of power." The Tribune gave Tyler faithful support in the early part of his ad- ministration, even taking the view of only a minority of the Whigs in defending Web- ster's course in remaining in the Cabinet after his associates, at Clay's instigation, had resigned because of the President's veto of the United States Bank bill. But a visit to 9 113 Horace Greeley Washington in December, 1841, convinced Greeley that Tyler was "treacherously co- queting with Loco-f ocoism " with a view to his own renomination. Greeley made a trip in 1842 through parts of New England, New York State, and Pennsylvania, including "Washington in his itinerary, and on his re- turn he foreshadowed his view of the issue to be made prominent in the next presidential campaign in a note from "the senior editor," in which he said: "The cause of protection to home industry is much stronger throughout this and the adjoining States than even the great party which mainly upholds it; and nothing will so much tend to insure the elec- tion of Henry Clay next President as the veto of an efficient tariff bill by John Tyler. . . . If a distinct and unequivocal issue can be made upon the great leading questions at issue between the rival parties — on protection to home industry and internal improvements — the Whig ascendency will be triumphantly vindicated in the coming election." That year witnessed the struggle over the tariff be- tween President Tyler and the Whig Con- gress, the President vetoing two bills ^ be- * Of Tyler's veto, the Tribune said : " If the spirit of na- tional pride — the feeling of free sovereignty among the people — had not been stifled and destroyed by gradual and almost 114 The TarifF Question cause of provisions for the distribution among the States of the proceeds of land sales, and finally signing one which was de- cidedly protective, but which Calhoun de- clared was passed more to make a political issue than to please the manufacturers. This opinion was certainly in line with Gree- ley's recommendation. From that time to the date of his nomina- tion for President, Greeley, with the Tribune at his back, was the foremost advocate of a protective tariff in this country, addressing a larger constituency than any of the tariff advocates in Congress. He was early recog- nized as an authority on the subject, "Weed placing only Hezekiah Niles above him. He was the author of an article in the Merchants* Magazine of May, 1841, which replied to a free-trader's argument, and he and McElrath began, in 1842, the publication of a magazine called The American Laborer, whose purpose was the inculcation of the protective doctrine. In November, 1843, he and Joseph Blunt de- fended the affirmative side in a debate in the Tabernacle in New York city on the ques- imperceptible encroachments upon their rights during the last twelve years, a voice would go forth from the heart of the nation which would drive to Ms duty the weak man whose selfish ambition now turns him from it." 115 Horace Greeley tion, " Resolved, That a protective tariff is conducive to our national prosperity," Sam- uel J. Tilden and Parke Godwin taking tlie negative. As he printed liis argument on this occasion in his autobiography in 1868, it may be accepted as defining the ground- work of his belief. He laid down and explained five posi- tions : 1. "A nation which would be prosperous must prosecute various branches of industry, and supply its vital wants mainly by the la- bor of its own hands." History proved that an agricultural and grain-exporting nation had always been a poor nation. 2. " There is a natural tendency in a com- paratively new country to become and con- tinue an exporter of grain and other rude sta- ples, and an importer of manufactures." This was true because, in a new country, the available labor is in demand for clearing fields, opening roads, etc., while older coun- tries have not only an adequate labor supply, but capital and machinery. 3. "It is injurious to the new country thus to continue dependent for its supplies of cloth- ing and manufactured fabrics on the old." The ruling price of grain in a district which exports it will be the price at the point to 116 The Tariff Question which it is exported, less the freight — that is, the price it brings there as obtained from the countries nearest at hand, and which can pro- duce it most cheaply. The British manufac- turer would only be obliged to mark the price of his cloths 5 per cent below the whole- sale price of the same grade in Illinois in or- der to control the cloth market in this coun- try. The free-trader who sees in this only more cloth for the money for the American purchaser, overlooks the point that the Amer- ican grain-producing purchaser must, under free trade, look abroad for a market for his surplus grain at the lowest world's price — "in other words, while Illinois is making a quarter of a million dollars by buying her cloth where she can buy cheapest, she is losing nearly two million dollars on the net product of her grain." 4. "The equilibrium between agriculture, manufactures, and commerce, which we need, can only be maintained by means of pro- tective duties." It would not be wise to buy boots and hose and knives and forks in Eu- rope at a cost below the home price when the facility of paying for them manufactured at home would be greater. 5. "Protection is necessary and proper to sustain as well as to create a beneficent ad- 117 Horace Greeley justment of our national industry." Under this heading he explained that "if manufac- tures were protected as a matter of special bounty or favor to the manufacturers, a sin- gle day were too long " to continue the pro- tection; protection should be afforded "for the sake of all protective labor." Why not do without protection when, under the tariff, you can manufacture cheaj^er than you can buy abroad? Because, under free trade, Europe can at any time dump on us its surplus prod- uct, and so ruin our own markets. He did not admit the existence of any foreign mar- kets for American goods, and said, "If the American manufacturers can not make sales, the sheriff will and must. . . . Were it cer- tain that the price of home products would be permanently higher than that of the for- eign, I should still insist on efficient protec- tion. ... I look not so much to the nominal price as to the facility of payment. And, where cheapness is only to be attained by a depression of the wages of labor to the neigh- borhood of the European standard, I prefer that it should be dispensed with." ^ ' A series of 24 essays by Greeley, " designed to elucidate the science of political economy, while serving to explain and defend the policy of protection to home industry as a system of national cooperation for the elevation of labor," which had 118 The Tariff guestion Henry Clay received the Whig nomina- tion for President in 1844 without opposition, and Greeley threw himself into the campaign with all the devotion of one who loved the candidate "for his generous nature, his gal- lant bearing, his thrilling eloquence, and his lifelong devotion to what I [Greeley] deemed our country's unity, prosperity, and just re- nown." The Tribune early in the year had increased its size one-third and treated itself to a new "dress " (of type). As soon as the Clay ticket was in the field it issued a cam- paign weekly, called The Clay Tribune, fif- teen subscriptions to which (for the cam- paign) cost only five dollars. Greeley never, probably, worked as he did in that year. His wife was in Massachusetts, and he spent most of his time in the office, scarcely giving him- self opportunity to sleep. His contributions to the Tribune averaged three columns a day ; he made as many as six speeches in some weeks, and he conducted (without the aid of a secretary) a large correspondence. "Very appeared in the Tribune, were published in book form in 1870. In these essays he not only elaborated his view that protective duties do not necessarily increase prices to consumers, and met many arguments advanced by revenue reformers, but he dis- cussed paper money, usury, the balance of trade, slave and hired labor, cooperation, and kindred subjects. 119 Horace Greeley often," lie says in his Busy Life, "I crept to my lodging near the ofl&ce at 2 to 3 a. m. with my head so heated by fourteen to sixteen hours of incessant reading and writing that I could only win sleep by means of copious affusions from a shower-bath; and these, while they probably saved me from a dan- gerous fever, brought out such myriads of boils, that — though I did not heed them till after the battle was fought out and lost — I was covered by them for the six months en- suing, often fifty or sixty at once, so that I could contrive no position in which to rest, but passed night after night in an easy chair." It was in this campaign that Greeley won his position as the leading Whig ex- pounder and defender of the doctrine of pro- tection. Greeley accepted the election of Polk as a personal defeat of himself. "I was the worst beaten man on the continent," was his own later expression. But he also believed that Clay might have been elected had all the Ken- tuckian's supporters worked as hard as he did. The circulation of 100,000 copies of his Daily Tribune and of 25,000 of his Clay Trib- une would, he always thought, have secured Clay's election. Greeley did not ignore, in the next few 120 The Tariff Question years, the growing importance of the slavery question, as it was shaping itself in connec- tion with Texas annexation; but he did not abandon the tariff as his favorite leading is- sue for the campaign of 1848. Polk's letter to John K. Kane, in 1844, in which he had declared it "the duty of the Government to extend fair and just protection to all the great interests of the whole Union," had, to- gether with the placing of Dallas on the ticket with him, taken a good deal of the protection wind out of the Whig sails, so that Greeley did not consider the result a fair test of the popular opinion on the tariff. He was en- couraged, too, by the speedy passage of a new tariff bill by the Democratic Congress elected with Polk. The new Secretary of the Treas- ury, Robert J. Walker, of Mississippi, in his first report, strongly favored a lighter tariff, making what was considered an attack on the protection policy; and a bill which bore his name was passed (by the casting vote of Vice-President Dallas in the Senate, and against the vote of every Representative but one from Pennsylvania) which divided duti- able articles into classes, those in Schedule C, for instance, which included most prod- ucts over which there was a special contro- versy, to pay a duty of 30 per cent on their 121 Horace Greeley value; the tariff of 1842 provided that iron, in this schedule, should pay so many dollars per ton. In 1846, Pennsylvania, in an "off year," chose sixteen "Whigs out of her nine- teen Representatives in Congress, and the Whigs made encouraging gains in other im- portant States. Greeley strongly favored the nomination of Clay again in 1848, and another tariff campaign, but the convention named General Taylor. 122 CHAPTER VII geeeley's part in the antislavery contest 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 al- ways 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 of the most promi- nent places must be given to the sturdy, un- flinching, and persistent assaults of the Trib- une newspaper." His own estimate of the part he took in this contest was indicated in a speech at his reception in the Lincoln Club rooms in New York city, in June, 1871, when, referring to the Democratic "new departure " and the possibility of the Republicans going out of power, he said: "If it were my fate to 123 Horace Greeley go out at this moment, and every year of my life thereafter to be in the minority, prostrate and powerless, I should still thank God most humbly and heartily that he allowed me to live in an age, and to be a part of the genera- tion, that witnessed the downfall and extinc- tion of American slavery." To understand the value of Greeley's services in the anti- slavery contest it is necessary to examine the nature of that contest, the diverse views of the opponents of slavery, the public opinion in the North which had to be educated and directed, and the part taken in this work by the New York Tribune. The early opponents of slavery in the United States were of two classes — first, the Abolitionists, technically so-called, who re- garded slavery as a moral wrong so mon- strous that their consciences demanded its immediate extinction; and, second, those who condemned slavery, but recognized the rights of the slaveholders under the Federal Con- stitution, and confined their efforts to oppo- sition to the extension of slave territory, hoping for the gradual extinction of the insti- tution where it was established. Greeley be- longed to the second of these classes. In view of Greeley's inclination to asso- ciate himself actively with reforms, regard- 124 The Antislavery Contest less of hostile criticism or the effect of such association on his personal welfare, it seems somewhat curious that we do not find him en- rolled in the ranks of the early Abolitionists. He says that one of the incidents of his so- journ in East Poultney, Vt., which made a great impression on him, was the rescue of a slave who had fled there from New York State, and who, under the law of that State, was beholden to his master until he was twen- ty-eight years old. "Our people hated injus- tice and oppression," was the only explana- tion he thought it necessary to give of their action. The early Abolitionists, too, were in sympathy with him on many subjects. E. Kogers, in the Herald of Freedom, said: "Abolitionists are generally as crazy in re- gard to rum and tobacco as in regard to sla- very. Some of them refrain from eating flesh and drinking tea and coffee. . . . They do not embrace these newfangled notions as Abolitionists, but their one fanaticism leads to another, and they are getting to be mono- maniacs, as the Eev. Brother Purchard calls us, on every subject." But Greeley was naturally a politician, and his early editorial career educated him in the belief that, in a republic, political par- ties must be the means through which polit- 125 Horace Greeley ical reforms must be accomplibhed. His one political idol, Henry Clay, was a slaveholder, and his zeal in Clay's behalf, while the Ken- tuckian was a presidential possibility, as well as his devotion to a protective tariff, assisted in securing his acceptance of slavery as it existed, so long as the South was not actively striving to extend the slave power. Moreover, Greeley classed himself as a conservative, and some of his definitions of that term further explain his attitude toward the Abolitionists. Defining in his autobiog- raphy Clay's position as a slaveholder, he wrote: "He was a conservative in the true sense of that word — satisfied to hold by the present until he could see clearly how to ex- change it for the better." "Radicalism," he said in a lecture, "is the tornado, the earth- quake, which comes, acts, and is gone for a century. Conservatism is the granite, which may be chipped away here and there to build a new house or let a railroad pass, but which will substantially abide forever." The Abo- litionists, of whom Garrison was the leading exponent, were radicals of the most ultra type. Not only did they demand the imme- diate emancipation of all slaves, but they pronounced the compact between North and South which countenanced slavery, "a cove- 126 The Antislavery Contest nant with death and an agreement with hell," and refused to vote for any public officer un- der it, no matter how strongly the platform on which he stood opposed slavery ; and they declared, in the language of the Liberator, that "if the bodies and souls of millions of rational beings must be sacrificed as the price of the Union, better, far better, that a separa- tion took place." Of the constitution of the Non-resistance Society, whose tenet was that no man or government has the right to take the life of a man on any pretext, drawn by a committee of which he was chairman. Garri- son wrote: "It swept the whole surface of society, and upturned almost every existing institution on earth," one plank opposing the completion of the Bunker Hill monument. Many Abolitionists did not, it is true, follow the Garrisonians in their extreme views, and Giddings and Chase took part in the Free Soil convention of 1848 which nominated Van Buren for President; but it was the radicals who were the type in the public eye. Greeley was a boy ten years old when the Missouri compromise was adopted by Con- gress in 1821. Under that compromise the slavery question remained quiescent for many years. Slavery had not long been abol- ished in all the Northern States, and it ex- 127 Horace Greeley isted in the Southern States by permission of the Constitution, which specifically required that slaves escaping into another State should be delivered up. The few Abolition- ists who were then declaiming against this constitutional status were tolerated even in the North solely because of their insignifi- cance. "Had it been imagined," says Gree- ley, "that the permanence of slavery was en- dangered by their efforts, they would scarce- ly have escaped with their lives from any city or considerable village wherein they attempt- ed to hold forth." Greeley's own position, during the years of quiescence, he thus ex- plained in his autobiography: "Slavery, as a local institution, was primarily the business of the States which saw fit to uphold it. . . . Only when it sought to involve us in a com- mon effort, a common responsibility, with its upholders and champions, did it force us into an attitude of active, determined an- tagonism." While he could not withhold from the Abolitionists "a certain measure of sympa- thy for their great and good object," he failed to see how they were assisting to secure the end in view — how the conversion of all the people of Vermont to Abolitionism would overthrow slavery in Georgia. Hence, "con- 128 The Antislavery Contest servative by instinct, by tradition, and dis- inclined to reject or leave undone the prac- tical good within reach, while straining after the ideal good that was clearly unattainable, I clung fondly to the Whig party, and depre- cated the Abolition, or third, party in politics, as calculated fatally to weaken the only great national organization which was likely to op- pose an effective resistance to the persist- ent exactions and aggressions of the slave power." But before this was written, Gree- ley had witnessed the death of the Whig party, because it did not make its resistance effective, and had read, if not written, in the Tribune (November 24, 1847) : "As to the Abolition party, its movements and fulmina- tions have doubtless had the evil effect ob- served by Mr. Clay, of irritating and alarm- ing the masters generally, and rendering most of them impervious to the arguments for emancipation. But, on the other hand, their efforts have served to awaken and fix public attention, and, though their immediate influence has been unfavorable, we are not sure that the existence of slavery has been protracted by their labors as a whole." The vastness of the task required of those who were to educate public opinion in the Northern States to accept slavery as a moral 10 129 Horace Greeley wrong, and thus to array itself against sla- very extension, can be understood by an ex- amination of the popular opinion on the sub- ject in the years following the Missouri com- promise. For many of these years the opposition, not only to antislavery agitation, but to negro education and any approach to negro equality, was quite as strong in the Northern States as it was below Mason and Dixon's line. The Liberator, in its saluta- tory, said that "a greater revolution was to be effected in the Free States — and particu- larly in New England — than at the South. I [Garrison] found contempt more bitter, op- position more active, detraction more relent- less, prejudice more stubborn and apathy more frozen than among slaveholders them- selves." The list of antislavery societies in the United States in 1826 shows that there were none in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, or Connecticut, and only one each in Rhode Island and New York, while there were forty-one in North Carolina, twenty-three in Tennessee, four in Maryland, and two in Virginia. Edward Everett Hale recollects when black boys were not, except on one day, allowed by the bigger white boys to have the freedom of Boston Common ; and 130 The Antislavery Contest when he was graduated from Harvard Col- lege in 1839, William Francis Clianning was the only one of his classmates who would have allowed himself to be called an Aboli- tionist. When, in October, 1835, the Female Antislavery Society of Boston proposed to hold a public meeting, at which an address would be made by George Thompson, an elo- quent assailant of slavery, handbills were circulated announcing that a purse of $100 had been raised by patriotic citizens "to re- ward the individual who shall first lay vio- lent hands on Thompson so that he may be brought to the tar-kettle before dark. Friends of the Union, be vigilant ! " and the meeting was broken up by a mob which the mayor confessed himself unable to control. A meeting of Abolitionists in Philadelphia, on July 4, 1834, was made the occasion of mob violence, in which Lewis Tappen's house was gutted, and other buildings, including churches, were damaged, and unoffending negroes were assaulted in the streets; these disorders continued for several days, and ex- tended into New Jersey. The public animosity shown to the Abo- litionists in the North was quite as deter- mined against any attempt to better the con- dition of negroes. The "Jim Crow " cars of 131 Horace Greeley the Southern States to-day were common on Massachusetts railroads in 1840, and Higgin- son remembers when a colored woman was put out of an omnibus near Cambridge Com- mon. When, in 1831, it was proposed by the free people of color to establish a school on the manual labor plan, and New Haven, Conn., was selected as its site, a meeting of citizens there resolved to resist it by every lawful means. Because of the admission of colored students to Noyes's Academy, at Ca- naan, N. H., in 1835, three hundred men and one hundred yokes of oxen moved the build- ing from its foundation. When Miss Cran- dall, a Quakeress, advertised in 1832 that col- ored pupils would be admitted to her school in Canterbury, Conn., a town meeting was called to abate "the nuisance," and the town authorities induced the Legislature to pass an act forbidding any school in the State for the education of colored persons not resi- dents of the State, without the consent of the selectmen. When Miss Crandall persisted in teaching her colored pupils, she was arrested and confined overnight in a cell whose last occupant had been a murderer. Failiug to secure her conviction, her neighbors, in 1834, first tried to burn her house, and later so nearly demolished it with stones and clubs 132 The Antislavery Contest tliat it was left uninhabitable. It was twenty years later than this that Boston witnessed the scenes which accompanied the surrender of Anthony Burns. In 1835 the notes of a clergyman who tried to preach against sla- very in Worcester, Mass., were torn up; an academy in Concord, N. H., was demolished because colored pupils were admitted; a clergyman was arrested in the same State while delivering an antislavery lecture, and sentenced to three months' imprisonment as a disorderly person; and in 1834 an antisla- very celebration in the Chatham Street chapel in New York city was broken up, and three days' rioting followed. The most potent agent that could have been enlisted in the work of changing this public opinion, and building up a bulwark against slavery extension, was a newspaper that was not affiliated with the radicals, that ivas the leading mouthpiece (Greeley said it was not the organ) of one of the controlling political parties of the day, that was edited by a man who possessed in a large degree the confidence of his readers, and that had a circulation which gave his words a wide hear- ing. This matter of circulation is an impor- tant one in gaging the Tribune's part in the overthrow of slavery. The Abolition jour- 133 Horace Greeley nals, aside from the fact that they addressed, for the most part, readers who were already convinced, addressed few of these. Garri- son's Liberator had only between 150 and 2,500 subscribers during its entire career, and the National Antislavery Standard, whose paying circulation in 1846 was 1,400, was kept alive by annual bazaars. The Tribune's cir- culation grew with the intensity of its anti- slavery views, and in January, 1854, it had a circulation of 96,000 for its weekly, and of 130,000 for its total issues. How Horace Greeley led on his readers, step by step, to face the great issue, we may now learn from the words he addressed to them. When conducting the New Yorker, in 1834, Greeley, while believing slavery "to be at the bottom of most of the evils which affect the communities of the South," accepted and de- fended the right to be let alone, as regards this question, for which the South was con- tending. His paper said in July of that year : "The Union was formed with a perfect knowledge, on the one hand, that slavery ex- isted in the South, and, on the other, it was utterly disapproved and discountenanced at the North. But the framers of the Constitu- tion saw no reason for distrust and dissen- sion in this circumstance. Wisely avoiding 134 The Antislavery Contest all discussion of a subject so delicate and ex- citing, they proceeded to the formation of ' a more perfect union,' which, leaving each sec- tion in possession of its undoubted right of regulating its own internal government and enjoying its own speculative opinions, pro- vided only for the common benefit and mu- tual well-being of the whole. And why should not this arrangement be satisfactory and per- fect? Why should not even the existing evils of one section be left to the correction of its own wisdom and experience when pointed out by the unerring finger of experience? " The New Yorker supplies expressions of the editor's views of the agitation stirred up by the Abolitionists. On May 21, 1836, con- demning an attack on an antislavery conven- tion at Granville, Ohio, it expressed a hope that, on the next occasion of this kind, "the real and substantial opponents of the anti- slavery agitation " would repress the mob pretending to act in their behalf, and said: "It is quite enough to have some hundreds of Abolitionist declaimers exciting the public mind with regard to this subject, without obliging us to look with complaisance on such suicidal outrages committed in the name of the cause of moderation, right, reason, and the compromises of the Constitution." In 135 Horace Greeley May, 1838, referring to antiabolition riots in Philadelphia which resulted in the burning of Penn Hall, it said, "The Abolitionists, we doubt not, would like the fun of having their hall burned every year, and their chance to make ten or twenty thousand converts out of the outrage and excitement. Let no one sup- pose us inclined to treat such criminal out- rages with levity. Such humors of the body politic should be corrected by an application of grape and canister." Greeley says in his autobiography that the two events which "materially modified " his preconceptions of the slavery question were the attempts of the South to annex Texas, and the killing of Elijah P. Lovejoy at Alton, 111., in 1837, because he insisted on publishing there a religious newspaper which condemned slavery as one of the evils op- posed to godliness. The New Yorker of No- vember 25 in that year contained an editorial two columns long giving an account of the murder, and saying : "We dare not trust ourselves to speak of this shocking affair in the language which our indignation would dictate. It forms one of the foulest blots on the page of American history. . . . We loathe and abhor the miser- able cant of those who talk of Mr. Lovejoy as 136 The Antislavery Contest guilty of * resisting public opinion.' Public opinion, forsooth ! What right have five hun- dred or five thousand to interfere with the lawful expression of a freeman's sentiments because they happen to number more than those who think with him! We spurn the base tyranny — this utter denial of all rights save as the tender mercies of a mob shall vouchsafe them. . . . Love joy's errors, or those of Abolitionists generally, have nothing to do in any shape with the turpitude of this outrage." This protest was uttered when the Boston authorities were refusing the Rev. Dr. Chan- ning the use of Faneuil Hall in which to hold a meeting to condemn Love joy's murder, and when the Attorney-General of Massachusetts was declaring on the platform that Love joy died as the fool dieth, and that his murderers stood for what the men stood who threw the tea into Boston harbor! The Texas question played so important a part in the antislavery contest that a brief summary of the events involved is necessary to an understanding of Greeley's attitude. Americans who had received grants of land in Texas from Mexico adopted a constitution in 1833, and in 1836 declared their independ- ence. The massacre of the Alamo, avenged 137 Horace Greeley in the battle of San Jacinto, followed. The constitution of the independent State of Tex- as gave its sanction to the institution of sla- very, which was contrary to the law of Mexi- co, and the news of the victory at San Jacinto was received with joy in the Southern States, from which petitions were sent to Congress asking for the recognition of Texan inde- pendence. Webster held that our Govern- ment ought to recognize a de facto govern- ment in Texas, if one had been established, and Clay reported a resolution acknowledg- ing that obligation whenever our Government received satisfactory information that such a government was in operation, and his reso- lution was adopted by both Houses. Mean- while, claims against the Mexican Govern- ment, made by Americans, were piling up and were disregarded. In December, 1836, the United States charge d'affaires at the city of Mexico asked for his passports and departed, and in February, 1837, President Jackson, who had tried in vain to purchase Texas of Mexico, in a special message to Congress asked for power to make reprisals if the Mexican Government refused to meet its obligations. Webster made a speech in Niblo's Garden, New York city, on March 15, 1837, which, in 138 The Antislavery Contest Greeley's view, expressed "the more consider- ate Northern view of the [Texas annexation] subject " at that time. In that speech he said: "On the general question of slavery a great portion of the community is already strongly excited. The subject has not only attracted attention as a question of politics, but it has started a far deeper-toned chord. It has arrested the religious feeling of the country; it has taken strong hold oil the consciences of men. He is a rash man, in- deed, and little conversant with human na- ture, and especially has he a very erroneous estimate of the character of the people of this country, who supposes that a feeling of this kind is to be trifled with or despised. It will assuredly cause itself to be respected. It may be reasoned with ; it may be made willing — X believe it is entirely willing — to fulfil all ex- isting engagements and all existing duties, to uphold and defend the Constitution as it is established, with whatever regrets about some provisions which it does actually con- tain. But to coerce it into silence, to endeavor to restrain it from expression, to seek to com- press and confine it, warm as it is, and more heated as such endeavors would inevitably render it — should this be attempted, I know 139 Horace Greeley nothing, not even in the Constitution or in the Union itself, which would not be endan- gered by the explosion which might follow." President Van Buren in his message of December, 1837, informed Congress of his failure to adjust the American claims. The Texas Government had proposed annexation to our Government in August of that year, but Van Buren refused to entertain a propo- sition that was certain to involve us in a war with Mexico. This action of Texas aroused the country. The Legislatures of eight Northern States made formal protests against annexation, and Senator Preston, of South Carolina, offered a resolution favoring it, but no direct issue was reached. Van Bu- ren continued attempts to secure a settlement with Mexico, and in 1839, by means of a treaty, the matter was referred to the King of Prussia as arbitrator; but when the time at which the arrangement was to expire (1842) arrived, many claims remained unset- tled. It was charged then that these claims were allowed to remain unadjusted in order to keep the Texas question open. Tyler's elevation to the presidency, through the death of Harrison, gave the country an executive who was ready to make Texas annexation a part of his policy, no 140 The Antislavery Contest matter how the party that had elected him viewed the matter. Six months after his in- auguration he hinted to Webster the possi- bihty of securing Texas by treaty, and asked, ^' Could the North be reconciled to it? Sla- very — I know that is the objection, and it would be well founded if it did not already exist among us." But when, in March, 1842, Texas made another offer of annexation, Webster strongly opposed it, and in May, 1843, he left the Cabinet — too late to escape the criticisms of his warmest party friends. The new Secretary of State — Upshur, of Vir- ginia — was a strong annexationist, and the administration began at once secretly to take steps to carry out its policy. The elections of 1842 had given the Democrats a big major- ity in the House, but the Senate had to be reckoned with in securing the ratification of an annexation treaty. The administration made a direct proposal of such a treaty to Texas, and, after the Texas Government had received from the United States' diplomatic agent an assurance that no power would be permitted by the United States to invade Texas territory because of such a treaty, an envoy from Texas was sent to Washington to complete the negotiations. Before his arrival Upshur had been killed by the explosion on 141 Horace Greeley the frigate Princeton; in March, 1844, Cal- houn took his place; and on April 12 the treaty was signed and ten days later sent to the Senate, where, on June 8, it was defeated by a vote of sixteen yeas to thirty-five nays. Tyler at once, in a special message, urged the House to secure annexation by "some other form of proceeding," but Congress ad- journed without carrying out the scheme. The year 1844 was a presidential year, and the most probable candidates for the heads of the two tickets were Clay and Van Buren. Both of these leaders looked on the Texas question as a dangerous one, and two years earlier, when Van Buren visited Clay at Ashland, it was said that they had agreed to place themselves in opposition to annexa- tion. Clay found himself forced to define his position before the Whig convention met, and he did so in his "Raleigh letter " of April 17. In this he stated his belief that any title to Texas which our Government had received under the Louisiana purchase had been ceded to Spain by subsequent treaty; that the United States should not go to war with Mex- ico to secure Texas, and that he was not in favor of acquiring new territory simply to maintain a balance of power between the North and South. Van Buren also wrote a 142 The Antislavery Contest letter, in which he did not admit the constitu- tionality of acquiring Texas by treaty, and pointed out that annexation meant war with Mexico, but said that he was not to be "in- fluenced by local or sectional feelings " in dealing with such a question as slavery. Clay's nomination followed, but Van Buren was thrown over by the Democrats for Polk, although he had a majority on the first ballot, a resolution requiring a two-thirds vote to nominate having been carried. Some Aboli- tionists, under the name of the Liberty party, had in August, 1843, nominated James G. Birney as their candidate. Greeley was educated by the Texas con- troversy step by step. The New Yorker in October, 1836, opposed annexation as likely to cause a revival of the slavery controversy "so happily adjusted" by the Missouri com- promise. On February 18, 1837, announcing the vote of the House denying to slaves the right of petition, it expressed a hope that thus "the Abolition question, which has so consid- erably misimproved the time and temper of the House of Representatives, was put to rest, we trust, for the remainder of the ses- sion." On the twenty-third of December fol- lowing, it headed an account of the excite- ment in Congress over the presentation of 143 Horace Greeley petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, "By our latest advices from Washington we learn that the event which we have long anticipated — a disrup- tion of the ties which bind us together as a nation, through the influence of the Abo- lition question — seems on the brink of oc- currence." Before the Tribune was a year old its ed- itor's patience was tried by a decision of the United States Supreme Court (Prigg vs. Pennsylvania) that the right of a slaveholder to capture a fugitive slave anywhere was ab- solute, State laws to the contrary notwith- standing, and it said, "The effect of this deci- sion will be to deepen the impression on the public mind that the existence of slavery for some is inconsistent with, and fatal to, the preservation of perfect freedom for any." Greeley's greatest effort in behalf of a presidential candidate was made for Clay, whose name he had kept at the head of his editorial page throughout 1843, and for whose election he labored the next year as he never labored again. Clay's status as a slave- owner was the subject of attacks (which the Tribune called "a foul conspiracy") by the Democrats and the Liberty men, both before and after his nomination, and on January 16, 144 The Antislavery Contest 1843, the Tribune stated its own view of the matter thus : "Let no one pervert our position. We do not say the citizens of the free States have no means, no power, no right to act adversely upon slavery. They have means and powers which existed antecedently to the Constitu- tion, and were not affected by it. The right to speak and write and labor, as men, against any moral wrong, is anterior (might we not say superior) to all government. . . . We can excuse the thoroughgoing Abolitionist who, declaring the Constitution an iniquitous compact, refuses to vote or exercise any fran- chise under it. But he who uses the power granted by the Constitution in violation of its essential conditions, is guilty of a deep and moral wrong. ... To abandon Clay on such [slavery] grounds would be a breach of faith to the Whigs, and treason to the Constitu- tion." After the nominations were made the Tribune defended Polk in the same way. Greeley's early objection to the annexa- tion of Texas was based on the view that it would be a glaring assumption of Federal power, rather than that it would furnish new territory to slavery; and after Clay's nomi- nation the Tribune (May 16, 1844) "depre- 11 145 Horace Greeley cated, for reasons of policy, any Northern commingling of the questions of annexation and slavery for the present." In other words, Greeley as well as Clay would have been glad to keep the slavery question out of the pend- ing campaign. But Tyler's Texas scheme so aroused the editor's indignation that no ques- tion of "policy" could quiet his "abhor- rence " of the President, whose impeachment for moving troops to the Sabine he suggest- ed. When warned of the effect of its opposi- tion to annexation on the Whig ticket, the Tribune (June 12), while conceding that the annexation question would cause Clay to lose Louisiana, and make Georgia and Tennessee very close, replied, "Nay, friends, we always say what we think when we speak at all." The slavery question was, however, "com- mingled " with Texas annexation, and Gree- ley was soon forced to recognize this, and to change his front. This he did in an editorial on August 31, in which he thus expressed himself : "We see in this Texas iniquity, from its first secret and fraudulent inception in Ten- nessee and at the White House ten years ago to its present maturity, a conspiracy to cir- cumvent ' the inevitable laws of population,' and thereby secure a prolonged and unnatural 146 The Antislavery Contest duration of slavery. To this conspiracy tlie free States can not become parties, even by a skulking connivance, without fearful guilt. They ought to have taken their stand against any extension of their responsibility for sla- very when Louisiana was acquired, but they neglected it, and thereby prolonged the ex- istence of slavery in the Union at least half a century." On November 28, following Clay's defeat, the Tribune set forth its views on Texas and slavery in an editorial nearly two columns long. Still deprecating all sectional agita- tion, it reaffirmed its belief that the Govern- ment had no right to meddle with slavery in the existing slave States, but the danger of the disposition of those States to grasp for power was indicated, and its summing up (with its own italics) was as follows: "Brief- ly, then, we stand on the ground of Opposi- tion to the Annexation of Texas so long as a vestige of slavery shall remain ivithiyi her borders." This marked the throwing down of the Tribune's gantlet to the slave power. The Texas annexation resolution passed the House on January 25, 1845 (with the aid of eight Southern Whig votes, twenty-seven Democrats voting nay), and the Senate on February 27 (three Whigs voting yea). The 147 Horace Greeley Tribune's comment was: "The mischief is done, and we are now involved in war. We have adopted a war ready-made, and taken upon ourselves its prosecution to the end." It was not ready, however, to join the Aboli- tionists, and when a Western Whig journal proposed, in the following spring, that the party raise the standard of emancipation, it declared that, for itself, it should continue to act in good faith with all. North and South, who supported Whig principles ; " if we shall ever feel that this is no longer possible, the Federal Union will for us exist no longer." Greeley was a zealous advocate of Clay's nomination as the Wliig presidential candi- date again in 1848, while conceding that it was just that the head of the Whig ticket should be a citizen of a free State, and he came home from the convention cast down. The convention had given the nomination to General Taylor, and had laid on the table and refused to vote on a resolution pledging the delegates "to abide the nomination with the understanding that the nominee, in good faith, accepts of it, and adheres to the great principles of the Whig party — no extension of slavery, and in favor of American indus- try." Greeley had stated in advance his ob- 148 The Antislavery Contest jections to General Taylor — the fact that his views on public questions were not known, that he was supported as a slave-owner, and that his election would stimulate the war spirit, and set a bad example to young men. He did not place the ticket at the head of the Tribune's columns, but in a long editorial re- viewed the situation, and said: "We shall take time for reflection. If it shall appear to us that the support of General Taylor is the only course by which the election of Cass can be prevented, we shall feel bound to con- cur in that support." ^The Free-soil Demo- crats called a convention to meet in Buffalo on August 9, and on July 31 the Tribune re- stated its objections to Taylor, and refused to come out for him until the Buffalo conven- tion and the August elections made it certain that Taylor or Cass must be chosen. On June 27 a Taylor ratification meeting was held in New York city, which adopted the following among other resolutions: "Resolved, That we deprecate sectional issues in a national canvass, as dangerous to the Union and injurious to the public good; that we look with confidence to a Whig ad- ministration to remove all causes for such is- sues, and that we will countenance no faction of the Whig party, and no coalition with any 149 Horace Greeley faction out of it, wliich shall threaten to array one section of our common country in angry hostility against another." This was the voice of those Northern "business interests " which gave so much en- couragement to the slave power, and Greeley seized the opportunity to rebuke it. The Tribune the next day declared that the sim- ple meaning of the resolution was that "strenuous and consistent hostility to the ex- tension of slavery is factious," and con- tinued : "Gentlemen of Wall Street, and sharp, shrewd calculators generally ! be entreated to understand this matter aright. The hearts of the people are fully set in them to stop the passage of the Rio Grande by Human Slavery, and they will not be turned aside. They may be cajoled, deluded, and betrayed; but if they shall be, then woe to their betrayers. The Whigs of the North want to vote with their party, for President and all, if they can do so without voting to favor the extension of slavery, and that you must not ask them to do unless you wish to upset your dish alto- gether. . . . Over and over again this State has said, through her Legislature and her delegation in Congress, ' There must be no planting of slavery on free soil.' Do you 150 The Antislavery Contest think you can stifle this by your babble of ' faction ' and * sectional issues ' ! " Of the Van Buren-Adams ticket, nomi- nated at Buffalo, it said that it presumed that that ticket would receive the votes of nearly all who regarded resistance to slavery exten- sion as the paramount duty of the day, and indicated that it was among those so defined by declaring that, while it did not lose sight of the importance of the protection of home industries, internal improvements, a sound financial policy, etc., it deemed "the limita- tion of slavery to its present legal domain more imminent than any or all of them." It gave more attention to Irish than American politics in August and September; but the Whig hold on Greeley was a strong one, and at a meeting in Vauxhall on September 27 he confessed his belief that only by support- ing Taylor could Cass be defeated, and the Taylor ticket appeared on his editorial page two days later. He never, however, became enthusiastic over the candidate, and, writing from Washington to the Tribune about the inauguration ball, he said: "Had the dancing part of my education been less shockingly neglected, I should not have felt like dancing now." While a member of Congress (Greeley 151 Horace Greeley was elected that year) he took every oppor- tunity to oppose the slave power. He did not obtain the floor to speak in favor of the reso- lution (which was passed) declaring the traf- fic in human beings as chattels in Washing- ton "a notorious reproach to our country throughout Christendom," and directing the reporting of a bill prohibiting the slave-trade in the District of Columbia, but he wrote to the Tribune, "I could have wished that it had occurred on Forefathers' Day; but perhaps it is better as it is. The sons of the Pilgrims throughout the Union, as they assemble to- morrow to celebrate their fathers' landing on these shores, may greet each other on the de- cision of to-day." He opposed the introduc- tion of slavery in New Mexico, and, when it was proposed to refer the Texas boundary question to the United States Supreme Court, he objected on the ground that a majority of the court were slave-owners. The next great slavery contest that en- gaged the attention of the country was over the famous Clay "Compromise of 1850." In his autobiography Greeley says, "Mr. Clay's proffer seemed to me candid and fair to the North, so far as it related to the newly ac- quired territories." But even this guarded statement does not give a fair presentation 152 The Antislavery Contest of Greeley's part in this struggle. He did not accept any part of the compromise at the start. He announced open rebellion against his old leader's position. He repudiated the argument of Webster in the 7th of March speech. He did ally himself, later in the con- test, with the compromisers, but only to find that the so-called compromise was an apple of discord, which did as much as anything else preceding the war to arouse Northern opin- ion, make clear the aim of the slave power, and elect an antislavery President. Clay's compromise and Webster's famous speech had their origin in the fear that the South would attempt to destroy the Union, and Henry Wilson almost excuses Webster in view of the picture which the orator drew of the conflict that such an attempt would incite. The South had been growing more and more restless under the continued oppo- sition to the introduction of slavery in Cali- fornia and New Mexico, the activity of the Northern Abolitionists, and such an indica- tion of the Northern temper as was seen in the vote concerning slavery in the District of Columbia. Greeley did not believe that the body politic in the South would ever mean disunion, and he was not to be coerced by the threats of what he considered to be the voice 153 Horace Greeley of only the actual slave-owners. With a speech by Calhoun in the Senate as a text, the Tribune said on June 29, 1848: "Thanks to a kind providence, and the manly straightforwardness of John C. Cal- houn, the great question of the extension or non-extension of human slavery under the flag of this republic is to be pressed to a deci- sion now. . . . Human slavery is at deadly feud with the common law, the common sense, and the conscience of mankind; nobody pre- tends to justify it but those who share in its gains and its guilt. God, Man, Nature, Re- ligion, Law, Reason, are all against it. . . . If the slavery propagandists are ready for the inevitable struggle, let no retreat be beaten by the champions of universal Free- dom. The people are looking on." ^ On December 23, 1848, a secret conference of the Senators and Representatives from the Southern States was held in the Senate cham- ' The New York Evening Post, on January 4, 1850, charged that the editor of the Tribune, before he got home from Con- gress, was willing to divide the new territories with the slave- holders upon equitable terms. Greeley was out of town when this appeared, but on his return, in the Tribune of January 12, he made his oft-quoted reply : " You lie, villain ! wilfully, wickedly, basely lie I The editor of the Tribune was never willing to divide the territories with the slaveholders on any terms whatever." 154 The Antislavery Contest ber, and, after a number of adjourned meet- ings, a long address to their constituents was adopted, a motion to table the subject being lost by a vote of yeas, 28 ; nays, 60. This ad- dress, after reviewing the constitutional pro- vision concerning slavery, asserted the right of slave-owners to recover their slaves in free States, set forth the obstacles devised thereto and the existence of "secret combina- tions " in Northern States to induce slaves to escape; and complained of the "systematic agitation of the [slavery] question by the Abolitionists," which it pronounced "danger- ous to the rights of the South, and subversive of one of the ends for which the Constitution was established." Regarding slavery in the Territories, it laid down this doctrine: "We ask not for the extension of slavery. . . . What we do insist on is that we shall not be prohibited from migrating, with our proper- ty, into the Territories of the United States because we are slaveholders." The enact- ments proposed in Congress to abolish sla- very and the slave-trade in the District of Columbia were cited, and it was declared that these " measures of aggression " must be met. Finally, the address strenuously urged " uni- ted action " on the part of the South, closing thus: "As the assailed, you would stand jus- 155 Horace Greeley tified by all laws, Imman and divine, in repel- ling a blow so dangerous without looking to consequences, and to resort to all means nec- essary for that purpose. Your assailants, and not you, would be responsible for the consequences." The proceedings of these caucuses were published on January 30, and the Tribune with them printed an editorial in which it as- serted that nothing was ever "better adapted to the great work of arousing and fixing the North," and added: "Then, as to the other monstrous grievance, the free States — shamed into manhood by the Abolitionists of various species ^ — will not permit the exten- sion of slavery. The vast regions that came to us free must remain so." In October, 1849, a State convention in California adopted unanimously a constitu- tion which excluded slavery, and this was rati- fied by the people by a vote of 12,066 to 811. At the instance of Mississippi, a convention of the Southern people was called to meet in Nashville, Tenn., in June, 1850, to deliberate on the threatened rights of the South, and ' This was anticipatory of Lincoln's declaration : " I have been only the instrument. The logic and moral power of Garrison and the antislavery people of the country, and the army, have done all." 156 The Antislavery Contest talk of disunion became more wide-spread. In the North public opinion was quite as em- phatic, and by July, 1849, the Legislature of every free State but Iowa had instructed its representatives in Congress to vote against the introduction of slavery in territories where it was not already authorized. In Jan- uary, 1850, President Taylor recommended to Congress the admission of California. On January 29 of that year Clay intro- duced his famous compromise resolutions. They favored the admission of California, and the establishment of territorial govern- ments in lands acquired from Mexico, without any conditions as to slavery; declared it in- expedient to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, while it continued in Maryland, and without the consent of the people of the District, but opposed the slave-trade therein ; pronounced in favor of a more efficient provi- sion for the restitution of fugitive slaves, and asserted that Congress had no power to pro- hibit or abolish trade in slaves between slave- holding States. The Tribune parted from its leader at once, and on January 31 compared Clay's ef- fort to secure peace to the man who rushed between a fighting husband and wife, and was whipped by both. "No," it declared, "we are 157 Horace Greeley not yet ready for compromise on either side. Thus far our side has lost by compromise, and gained by struggles. We know well that Mr. Clay's heart is right, and that his views are temperate and far-seeing. But their adoption by the North as its own, in the pres- ent state of the case, is quite another affair." On February 1 it added to this protest, "To countermarch in the face of a determined and formidable foe is peril if not ruin. Our tower of strength and of safety is the Wilmot pro- viso." "Let the Union be a thousand times shivered," it said two weeks later, "rather than we should aid you to plant slavery on free soil." Greeley devoted a column on March 9 to the notable speech of Daniel Webster made two days previous. The following citations will show his spirit : "At such a crisis as the present there is no safe light but that of principle. He who tries to be guided by any other will err in the fruitless vague, or land his followers in the ditch. Expediency may debate the steps to be taken, but it must be principle that deter- mines the end. ... It takes courage to face an enemy in battle; it takes more courage to confront a great enemy in politics. . . . The position that Northern States and their ■ 158 The Antislavery Contest citizens are morally bound to recapture fugi- tive slaves may be good for a lawyer, but it is not good for a man. . . . But the Union! Preserve the Union. . . . "We say that it is not in danger ! Thank God, it does not exist by the pleasure of politicians, but by an over- ruling necessity of things. It can not be dis- solved. It is not only the enactment of Na- ture and God, but it is fortified by an admi- rable Constitution, by the whole power of the American people, and by the clear-headed, true-hearted, and strong-handed administra- tion which now guides our destiny." But Greeley abandoned the vital part of the views he had thus set forth. When, after a debate of three months, a bill, reported by a special committee of which Clay was chair- man, and known as the "omnibus bill," con- taining the substance of Clay's resolutions, was reported, Greeley went to Washington, and in his correspondence with the Tribune classed himself among the compromisers. This bill was in itself a further compromise, as it omitted Clay's original declaration that "slavery does not exist by law." The Trib- une even abandoned that "tower of strength and safety," the Wilmot proviso, saying on August 5: "Our opinion of the propriety and legality of the Wilmot proviso has not 159 Horace Greeley changed one hair, but the necessity for it is now far less than it has been. Give us Cali- fornia admitted, and territorial governments for New Mexico and Utah, and we will forego the Wilmot proviso, though we think we ought to have this and all the others besides." Even the "omnibus bill" was a failure, and it seemed probable that no legislation on the subject would be secured. Then came the elevation of Fillmore to the presidency through Taylor's death, and after that Con- gress passed four separate bills', which Fill- more signed. The first of these admitted California as a free State. The second ad- justed the Texas boundary, giving the State $10,000,000 as an indemnity, and also organ- ized New Mexico as a Territory, the State or States formed from which should be admit- ted "with or without slavery, as their consti- tutions may prescribe." The third bill amended the fugitive slave law of 1793 by providing new machinery for the capture of such slaves, and imposing a fine not exceed- ing $1,000 and imprisonment for not more than six months on any one who obstructed the enforcement of the law, or concealed a fugitive. A fourth bill forbade the traffic in slaves in the District of Columbia. The Tribune realized at once that the 160 The Antislavery Contest slave power had won in this great contest, and it refused to accept the result as a Whig victory. When, in October, it was proposed to hold in New York city a great meeting to indorse the peace measures, the Tribune said: "Forty Abolition meetings will not ad- vance the antislavery sentiment so much as one grand mercantile city meeting to put down Free-soilism and make a finish of anti- slavery excitement." Greeley was not even to be won over by an appeal to the peril there might be to the tariff in Whig discord, and, replying to an article in the Richmond (Va.) Whig, he said: " If it [the Tribune] can only procure protection to the labor of New York by conspiring to rob the laborers of Virginia of their just earnings, it will spurn the bar- gain." All that there was in the nature of pacify- ing compromise in the act of 1850 was over- shadowed by the practical effect of the at- tempts to enforce the new fugitive slave law. Greeley early declared that the existence of this law might be "endured " so long as it was rarely enforced, "but no longer," and he openly expressed his sympathy with every effort made in the North to obstruct it. When a "Union and Safety Committee," rep- resenting "commercial interests " in New 13 161 Horace Greeley York city, in September, 1851, circulated a petition declaring that a further agitation of the slavery question would be "fraught with incalculable danger to our Union," and ur- ging that no one should vote for a Congres- sional candidate opposed to the new peace measures, the Tribune vigorously opposed this pledge, and on November 6 it thus re- stated its position: "For our own part, living within the very shadow of the temple wherein the god Cotton is worshiped, we defy the priests who offi- ciate at the altar to do their worst. We tell them that from the depths of our soul we hate and abhor human slavery, and every in- stitution, law, or usage whereby the poor and feeble are racked and lashed to make them minister to the pomp and luxury of the wealthy and powerful. We tell them that we feel thaj: the soil we tread is desecrated, the air we breathe polluted, by the inhuman slave-hunts which an ill-considered compact, made when our fathers were themselves vir- tually slaveholders, compels us not to oppose by any other than a moral resistance. We tell them that we will not be instrumental in for- cing back into bondage those who have es- caped therefrom; but, while we would dis- suade all from violent resistance to any legal 162 The Antislavery Contest mandate, we will ourselves cheerfully go to prison, or bear any penalty which our refusal may invoke, rather than aid to consign an innocent fellow being to perpetual bondage." The Tribune favored the nomination of General Scott for President in 1852, but said of the declaration of the Whig platform in favor of the compromise of 1850, and depre- cating further agitation of the slave question, "If there be any five thousand Whigs whose voting for the Whig candidate depends on our agreeing not to speak in reprehension of slavery, or our agreeing to give any ' aid and comfort ' to the hunting and catching of fugi- tive slaves, they may as well take up their beds and walk, for we mean to stay in the Whig party, and not to keep silence about slavery, nor * acquiesce ' in fugitive-slave hunting. So if this is to drive Whigs into the Loco-f oco camp, they may as well go now as any time." Of the result of this campaign Greeley said in his autobiography, "The Whig party had been often beaten before; this defeat proved it practically defunct, and in an ad- vanced stage of decomposition." On January 4, 1854, Stephen A. Douglas reported to the Senate, with amendments, a bill introduced by Dodge, of Iowa, to organ- 163 Horace Greeley ize the Territory of Nebraska. This was the practical beginning of the contest known in our history as the Kansas-Nebraska struggle. Douglas's report set forth that the compro- mise measures of 1850 rested on the principle that all questions pertaining to slavery in the Territories, and the States formed from them, were to be decided by the people there- of, and his bill provided that Nebraska, when admitted, should be received with or without slavery, as its constitution should provide. The Tribune attacked this position at once, spoke of Douglas as "down on his mar- row-bones at the feet of slavery," and added: "Although antislavery is weak in political circles, it was never stronger with the masses of the people. The great heart of the country is sound. Thousands and millions of true men all over the North wait but the occasion for a practical demonstration of their power, to show how firm is their attachment to the principle of freedom, and how deeply they scorn the shallow fools who have the imperti- nence to talk about ' crushing out ' those prin- ciples." The Tribune fought the proposed legisla- tion step by step, but in vain, and when the bill passed the House (after midnight on May 23), it said "The revolution is accomplished, 164 The Antislavery Contest and slavery is king. How long shall this monarch reign? This is now the question for the Northern people to answer. . . . Con- spiracy has done its worst. Treason has done its worst. Who comes to the rescue f . . . Perhaps some such gigantic outrage upon the living sentiment of the North as the defeat of the Missouri compromise was necessary to arouse and consolidate the hosts of freedom in the free States." The Kansas-Nebraska question created a new alinement of parties. Greeley credited Douglas and Pierce with having made more Abolitionists in three months than Garrison and Phillips could have made in fifty years. The purpose of the slave power was rendered clearer, and the Northern determination to resist it was strengthened. The Tribune's files are a sufficient demonstration of the part it took in the formation of the new Northern sentiment, and Greeley's willingness to ac- cept the compromise measures when they were in process of formation increased his authority when he interpreted the actual re- sult. Now Whigs like Greeley and Seward, Free-soilers like Sumner and Chase, Aboli- tionists like Owen Love joy and Giddings, and Democrats like Trumbull and Blair saw a common ground on which they could fight 165 Horace Greeley under the same banner; and on this ground the foundation of the new Republican party was laid in 1854. Henry Wilson says : "At the outset, Mr. Greeley was hopeless, and seemed disinclined to enter upon the con- test. So often defeated by Northern defec- tion therein, he distrusted Congress, nor had he faith that the people would reverse the ver- dict of their representatives. He told his as- sociates that he would not restrain them, but, as for himself, he had no heart for the strife. But they were more hopeful. . . . Even Mr. Greeley himself became inspired by the grow- ing enthusiasm, and some of the most trench- ant articles were from his practised and pow- erful pen." ^ Greeley was in Washington during the contest which, in 1855-56, resulted finally in the election of N. P. Banks, of Massachusetts, as Speaker of the House. While the outcome was uncertain, Albert Rust, of Arkansas, in- troduced a resolution declaring it the senti- ment of the House that Banks (who lacked only three or four votes of election) and the three other leading candidates should forbid the use of their names any longer. Greeley considered this attempt to dictate to the ' Rise and Fall of the Slare Power, ii, p. 407. 166 The Antislavery Contest House a gross outrage, and called it, in his correspondence with the Tribune, "a more discreditable proposition than I had ever known gravely submitted to a legislative body." Thereupon Rust, on January 23, struck Greeley several blows with his fist as the editor was walking through the Capitol grounds, and repeated the assault when Gree- ley came up with him on his way to his hotel, breaking a cane over his critic's arm and in- flicting on him a severe bruise. Greeley re- fused to prosecute his assailant, saying that he "did not choose to be beaten for money," and that he did not think an antislavery ed- itor could get justice in a Washington court. It was in 1856 also that the Tribune was indicted in Harrison County, Virginia, on a charge of publishing in New York, and cir- culating in Virginia, a newspaper which in- cited negroes to insurrection, and "inculcated resistance to the rights of property of mas- ters in their slaves " ; and its agent there was indicted for getting up a club of the paper. Neither indictment ever came to trial. After the nomination of Fremont for President, in 1856, the Tribune conceded that the odds were greatly in favor of the Demo- crats, and in announcing his defeat it said, "We have lost a battle. The Bunker Hill of 1G7 Horace Greeley the new struggle for freedom is past; the Saratoga and Yorktown are yet to be achieved." The great political events between the presidential years 1856 and 1860 were the Dred Scott decision in 1857, allowing slave- holders to take their slaves into the Territo- ries; the Lecompton (Kan.) contest in Con- gress, and the Lincoln-Donglas debate in 1858, and John Brown's raid in Virginia in 1859. The Tribune held that Taney's deci- sion was "entitled to just so much moral weight as would be the judgment of a major- ity of those congregated in any Washington bar-room " ; it fought for free Kansas, and of the John Brown incident it said: "There will be enough to heap execration on the memory of these mistaken men. We leave this work to the fit hands and tongues of those who regard the fundamental axioms of the Declaration of Independence as ' glit- tering generalities.' Believing that the way to universal emancipation lies not through insurrection, civil war, and bloodshed, but through peace, discussion, and the quiet dif- fusion of sentiments of humanity and justice, we deeply regret this outbreak. But, remem- bering that, if their fault was grievous, griev- ously have they answered it, we will not 168 The Antislavery Contest by one reproachful word disturb the bloody shrouds wherein John Brown and his com- patriots are sleeping. They dared and died for what they felt to be the right, though in a manner which seems to us fatally wrong. Let their epitaphs remain unwritten until the not distant day when no slave shall clank his chains in the shades of Monticello or by the groves of Mt. Vernon." 169 CHAPTER VIII DIJEING THE CIVIL WAR 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 Gree- ley was, in fact, neither far-seeing in things political nor aggressive in the face of actual danger, and when aggressiveness counted most. He lacked that more exacting courage required "to confront a great enemy in poli- tics " for which he had expressed admiration while the Compromise of 1850 was pending. Combined with this was distrust of Lincoln and his official advisers, a constant inclina- tion during the war to obtrude his advice and his services where they could only cause annoyance and do harm, and a weakness of judgment in essential matters — all of which 170 During the Civil War seemed to justify Garrison in characterizing him as "the worst of all counselors, the most unsteady of all leaders, the most pUant of all compromisers in times of great public emergency." To understand clearly Greeley's conduct during Lincoln's administration it is neces- sary to retrace our steps in presenting the narrative of his career. What might be called the foundation prin- ciple of Greeley's early idea of journalism was independence of thought, and in the Log Cabin he laid down this very correct view of editorial office-holding : "If the administration has resolved that no individual shall be appointed to any office as a reward for any real or imaginary service to the Whig cause as a partizan editor, and that the holding of office under the Federal Government and the editing of a partizan newspaper at the same time are incompatible, we do not hesitate to say that it has made a wise and beneficent decision." By 1849 he had so far modified this view that he wrote (May 5) : "We trust editors will not come to regard office as a goal and recompense for their labors, but that they will not, on the other hand, be deemed ineli- gible by reason of their calling." Then he 171 Horace Greeley became ambitious to bold an office bimself. To one wbo realizes the power that he pos- sessed as an editor, it may seem strange that he should be willing to devote to public af- fairs any of the time that his editorial duties demanded, or that he should come to believe that a public office would add to his popular repute. But most of the big men in politics in those days did receive political rewards. Weed, it is true, was content to pull the wires — accepting only the position of State Print- er; but Seward had been Governor and was a United States Senator ; Greeley had helped elect scores of men to Congress and to the Legislature, and in the opposition party in his own State he had seen Van Buren, Marcy, and Silas Wright honored with one important office after another. So he came to feel that he was left neglected in his editorial room, and in 1854 he approached Weed with the query whether "the time and circumstances " were not favorable for his nomination for Governor. The Tribune had for some years been advocating the adoption of the Maine prohibition law in New York State,^ and ' As a city excise measure Greeley proposed in 1844 to abolish all license fees, and assess on the sellers of liquor, retail and wholesale, the carefully ascertained cost of the pauperism caused by rum. 172 During the Civil War Greeley was then classed among the nltra- prohibitionists. Weed's reply was that, al- though he was ready to admit that Greeley in the Tribune had educated the people up to the acceptance of his own temperance views for the State, the Weed men could not control the nomination, and that, while Gree- ley had shaken the temperance bush, Myron H. Clark was the man who would catch the bird. Greeley acquiesced in this opinion, but he soon after went to Albany and asked Weed if there was any objection to his running for Lieutenant-Governor. This request was a fair illustration of Greeley's ignorance of the practical side of politics, and Weed was obliged to point out to him how impolitic it would be to make up a ticket with two ultra- temperance men at its head. Again Greeley acquiesced, but when the convention resulted in the nomination of his rival, Henry J. Ray- mond, for Lieutenant-Governor, he was so ex- asperated that he held Weed responsible for Raymond's nomination, and accused Weed of concealing his intention in his conversation with him.^ Late in that campaign Greeley wrote to Seward that he wanted "an earnest talk'* ^ Weed's Autobiography, ii, p. 237. 173 Horace Greeley with him as soon as the election was over, adding: "I have held in as long as I can, or shall have by that time. ... I have tried to talk to Weed, but with only partial success. Weed likes me and always did — I don't think he ever had a dog about his house he likes better — but he thinks I know nothing about politics. If there are any plans for the fu- ture I want to know what they are, and if there are none, I want to know that fact, and I will try to form a plan of some sort my- self." In other words, Greeley did not pro- pose to be left out of the future Whig coun- cils. " No other journal had done so much as the Tribune," says Seward's biographer, "to make Seward the idol of the antislavery peo- ple of various degrees," If there was a sus- picion of a breach of trust in the Seward- Greeley-Weed firm, Greeley would naturally address any complaint to Seward. Stung by the outcome of the election, in which the ticket bearing Raymond's name was successful, Greeley, without seeking an in- terview with Seward, addressed to him a letter that has become famous. It was dated November 11, 1854, and it opened with the following words: "Governor Seward — The election is over, and its result sufficiently as- certained. It seems to me a fitting time to 174 During the Civil War announce to you the dissolution of the polit- ical firm of Seward, Weed, and Greeley, by the withdrawal of the junior partner, said withdrawal to take effect on the morning after the first Tuesday in February next " (when Seward would be elected United States Senator). The letter, which was a long one, went over Greeley's first acquaint- ance with Weed, set forth his editorial la- bors up to the time of Harrison's election, and said: "Now came the great scramble of the swell mob of coon minstrels and cider suckers at Washington — I not being counted in. Several regiments of them went on from this city, but no one of the whole crowd, though I say it who should not, had done so much toward General Harrison's nomination as yours respectfully. I asked nothing, ex- pected nothing; but you. Governor Seward, ought to have asked that I be Postmaster of New York. Your asking would have been in vain; but it would have been an act of grace neither wasted nor undeserved. . . . AYhen the Whig party, under your rule, had offices to give, my name was never thought of; but when, in 1842-'43, we were hopelessly out of power, I was honored with the party nomina- tion for State Printer. When we came again to have a State Printer to elect as well as 175 Horace Greeley nominate, the place went to Weed, ias it ought. ... If a new office had not been cre- ated on purpose to give its valuable patron- age to H. J. Raymond and enable St. John to show forth his Times as the organ of the Whig State administration, I should have been still more grateful." Reviewing the recent campaign, he contra- dicted what Weed in his later autobiography said about seeking the nomination for Gov- ernor, saying that, when Weed called on him to state why he could not support him for that nomination, " I [Greeley] had never asked nor counted on his support." He "should have hated to serve as Lieutenant- Governor," but would have "gloried in run- ning " so as to have had all his enemies upon him at once. But the nomination was given to Raymond, and he [Greeley] made the fight. The letter closed by saying that the writer trusted that they should never be found in opposition; "all I ask is that we shall be counted even on the morning after the first Tuesday in February, as aforesaid, and that I may thereafter take such course as seems best without reference to the past." Seward did not even inform Weed of the contents of this letter, and Weed was igno- rant of them until its publication, after Ray- 176 During the Civil War mond, in a letter in the Times explaining Seward's defeat at Chicago in 1860, had hint- ed of it as supplying the motive for Greeley's opposition to Seward there. What Weed knew of the incident at the time from Seward was contained in the following letter: "Has Greeley written to you, or do you see him nowadays? Just before the election he wrote me an abrupt letter. I did not think it wise to trouble you about it. Then, when he thought all was gone through your blun- ders and mine, he came out in the paper and said as much in a chafed spirit. To-day I have a long letter from him, full of sharp, pricking thorns. I judge, as we might well know, from his, at bottom, nobleness of dis- position, that he has no idea of saying or doing anything wrong or unkind; but it is sad to see him so unhappy. Will there be a vacancy in the Board of Regents this winter? Could one be made at the close of the session? Could he have it? Raymond's nomination and election is hard for him to bear. I think this is a good letter to burn. I wish I could do Greeley so great a kindness as to burn his." From the date of his letter to Seward, Greeley showed a determination to give his own judgment free rein, and, perhaps 13 177 Horace Greeley through lack of influences that had previous- ly restrained him, his course became more and more erratic. We find an early illustra- tion of this in 1858 — the year of the famous Lincoln-Douglas debate in Illinois — when he favored the acceptance of Douglas as the Re- publican candidate for United States Sena- tor, and in a letter to a Chicago editor spoke of the failure to conciliate Douglas as spurn- ing and insulting the Republicans of other States, and added: "If Lincoln would fight up to the work also, you might get through. . . . You have got your elephant — you would have him — now shoulder him. He is not so heavy after all." His early lack of faith in the suc- cess of the Republican party was not over- come, and in writing to G. E. Baker on April 28, 1859, he said: "I lack faith that the antislavery men of this country have either the numbers or the sagacity required to make a President. I do not believe there are a hundred thousand earnest antislaverymen in this State, or a million in the Union. . . . Slavery has not another body of servitors half so useful and efl&cient as the most rabid Abolitionists. . . . I hope Seward or Chase will be nominated on the platform of 1856, and then I will go to work for him with a will, but with perfect 178 During the Civil War certainty that we are to be horribly beaten. I only want to be in such a shape that, when the thing is over, I can say, ' I told you so.' I don't believe the time ever has been (or soon will be) when, on a square issue, the Re- publicans could or can poll one hundred elec- toral votes. But let her drive." ^ Greeley attended the National Republican Convention of 1860 not as a delegate from his own State, but as the representative of an Oregon district that had asked him to serve. He went to Chicago declaring that his can- didate was Edward Bates, of Missouri, a Vir- ginian by birth, and a lifelong slaveholder! "He was thoroughly conservative," Greeley afterward explained, "and so held fast to the doctrine of our revolutionary sages, that slavery was an evil to be restricted, not a good to be diffused. This conviction made him essentially a Republican; while I be- lieved that he could poll votes in every slave State, and if elected, rally all that was left of the Whig party therein to resist secession and rebellion." In a statement published soon after the nomination of Lincoln, Gree- ley said that he had considered the nomina- tion of Seward "unadvisable and unsafe," » Weed's Autobiography, ii, p. 255. 179 Horace Greeley but that Seward's defeat was due to the con- viction of the delegates from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Indiana that he could not carry those States. Thereupon Henry J. Raymond wrote from Seward's home a letter to the New York Times in which he gave a different account of Greeley's action at the convention. The letter was a very bitter one, as a few extracts from it will show: "The main work of the Chicago conven- tion was the defeat of Governor Seward, . . . and in that endeavor Mr. Greeley labored harder and did tenfold more than the whole family of Blairs, together with all the guber- natorial candidates to whom he modestly hands over the honors of the effective cam- paign. He had special qualifications as well as a special love for the task, to which none of the others could lay any claim. For twen- ty years he had been sustaining the political principles and vindicating the political con- duct of Mr. Seward through the columns of the most influential political newspaper in the country. . . . He had gone far beyond him in expressions of hostility to slavery, in pal- liation of armed attempts for its overthrow, and in assaults upon that clause of the Con- stitution which requires the surrender of the fugitive slaves; and he was known to have 180 The Union League Club, Madison Avenue, corner of Twenty-sixth Street, New-York, ../v\^. r?<^.._._ 187 ^y^-u Specimen of Greeley's handwriting. During the Civil War been for more than twenty years his personal friend and political supporter. . . . Mr. Gree- ley was in Chicago several days before the meeting of the convention, and he devoted every hour of the interval to the most steady and relentless prosecution of the main busi- ness which took him hither — the defeat of Governor Seward. He labored personally with the delegates as they arrived, commend- ing himself always to their confidence by pro- fessions of regard and the most zealous friendship for Governor Seward, but pre- senting defeat even in New York as the in- evitable result of his nomination. . . . While the contents of Greeley's letter of November 11, 1854, to Seward were known to some of Seward's supporters who were working at Chicago, no use was made of this knowledge in quarters where it would have disarmed the deadly effect of his pretended friendship for the man upon whom he was thus deliberately wreaking the long-hoarded revenge of a dis- appointed office-seeker. He was still allowed to represent to the delegations from Ver- mont, New Hampshire, Ohio, Indiana, and other States known to be in favor of Gov- ernor Seward's nomination, that, while he desired it upon the strongest grounds of personal and political friendship, he be- 181 Horace Greeley lieved it would be fatal to the success of the cause." This was the first public reference that had been made to Greeley's letter to Seward. Greeley now demanded its publication, and this followed, and the actual rupture of the political firm then occurred. Weed reviewed the letter in the Albany Evening Journal with this summing up : "In conclusion, we can not withhold an ex- pression of sincere regret that this letter has been called out. Having remained six years in ' blissful ignorance ' of its contents, we should much prefer to have ever remained so. It jars harshly upon cherished memories. It destroys ideals of disinterestedness and gen- erosity which relieve political life from so much that is selfish, sordid, and rapacious." When, in 1861, the nomination for United States Senator at Albany lay between Gree- ley and William M. Evarts, and Greeley was gaining in the caucus balloting. Weed had the name of Ira Harris presented, and so snatched the nomination from his old friend. When, in 1869, Greeley accepted the nomina- tion for State Comptroller, after three can- didates on the ticket had declined their nomi- nations. Weed refused to support him, and wrote a letter in which he analyzed Greeley's 182 During the Civil War course in later years, and declared that it was "preposterous " to suppose that the ed- itor of a daily journal in New York could so divide his time as to discharge also the du- ties of Comptroller, The vote at the polls stood: Greeley, 307,688; Allen, 330,371.i Greeley met with denials the charges that his opposition to Seward's nomination was due to any personal hostility, saying in reply to Weed's statement: "The most careful scavenger of private letters or the most sneaking eavesdropper that ever listened to private conversation, can not allege a single reason for any personal hostility on my part against Mr. Seward. I have never received from him anything but exceeding kindness and courtesy. He has done me favors (not of a political nature) in a manner which made them still more obliging ; and I should regard the loss of his friendship as a very serious loss. Notwithstanding this, I could not sup- port him for President. I like Mr. Seward personally, but I love the party and its prin- ciples more." * Greeley was a member of the State Constitutional Con- vention in 1867. In 1870 he ran for Congress against S. S. Cox, and was defeated by a majority of 1,025 votes, the district giv- ing the Democratic candidate for Governor a majority of 1,745 at the same election, 183 Horace Greeley The Albany Evening Journal charged that Seward's appointment by Lincoln as Secretary of State was made "against the persistent protestations of those who con- curred with the Tribune." The Tribune re- plied that it "promptly and heartily ap- proved " of Seward's selection, and let the new President know that its editor would not accept the Postmaster-Generalship.^ The announcement of Lincoln's election was followed by instant threats of secession on the part of the South, and by demands for concessions to the slave power by many in- terests — business and political — in the North. Greeley met this situation by taking the ground, in the Tribune of December 17, 1860, that, if the right of the colonists to rebel against Great Britain was justified by the "consent of the governed " clause of the Dec- laration of Independence, that clause would justify "the secession of five million of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861." Jefferson's principle might be "pushed to ex- treme and baleful consequences " ; but, while he would not uphold the secession of Gov- ernor's Island from New York, if seven or * " There was no moment of Mr. Lincoln's rule when any place in his gift would have been accepted by Mr. Greeley." — Tribune, March 16, 1873. 184 During the Civil War eight contiguous States should secede from the Union he would not think it right to " stand up for coercion." If Mayor Fernando Wood had not had free trade in view, Greeley might have joined him in his suggestion to the Common Council of New York city on Jan- uary 6, 1861, that, if the Union, which, he held, could not be constitutionally kept to- gether by force, was dissolved, the city should separate from the State and establish a " Free City," which would have " cheap goods nearly free from duty." A week later he declared that, if any six or more of the cotton States wanted to secede, "we will do our best to help them out, not that we want them to go, but that we loathe the idea of compelling them to stay." The abstract right of a State to secede, under the Constitution, is upheld by some Republicans of prominence to-day. Without following their argument, it may be pointed out that what Washington had in view was an "inviolable Union," that "indis- soluble Union " which he recommended to the Governors of the States ; and that John Quin- cy Adams, in 1828, declared that, while the people of a State, "by the primitive right of insurrection against oppression " might de- clare their State out of the Union, "they have delegated no such power to their legislators 185 Horace Greeley or their judges ; and if there be such a right, it is the right of an individual to commit sui- cide — the right of an inhabitant of a popu- lous city to set fire to his own dwelling house." Greeley's declarations were eagerly ac- , cepted by the most radical defenders of seces- '' sion in the South, Tombs using them to strengthen his argument in favor of the con- stitutional right of secession before the Geor- gia convention,^ and they perplexed and alarmed the friends of Union in the North. Lincoln, realizing the harm which an editor of Greeley's influence could do to the Union cause, wrote to him, cautioning him against expressing such views. Greeley in his reply said that one State could no more secede at ' In his American Conflict, written in 1864, Greeley quoted his editorial of December 17th in full, and in reasserting the possibility of justifying the free States in consenting to a with- drawal of the slave States from the Union, if that was the deliberate desire of the great body of their people, he added : " And the South had been so systematically, so outrageously, deluded by demagogues on both sides of the slave line, with regard to the nature and special importance of the Union to the North — it being habitually represented as an immense boon conferred on the free States by the slave, whose withdrawal would whelm us all in bankruptcy and ruin — that it might do something toward allaying the Southern inflammation to have it distinctly and plainly set forth that the North had no desire to enforce upon the South the maintenance of an ab- horred, detested Union." 186 During the Civil War its pleasure than one stave could secede from a cask, but that, if eight or ten States wanted to go, he would say, "There's the door, go." Still, if the seceding States began fighting while the Union was not yet dissolved, "I guess they will have to be made to behave themselves." The one thing he would object to would be "another nasty compromise." No more arguments in favor of secession ap- peared in the Tribune, and in January, 1861, Greeley wrote, "I deny to one State, or to a dozen different States, the right to dissolve this Union. It can only be legally dissolved as it was formed — by the free consent of all the parties concerned." Aside from its sup- port of Greeley's schemes for meddling, and its hostility to Lincoln, the Tribune vigorous- ly supported the Union cause during the war, and so concentrated on itself the hatred of the Southern sympathizers in New York city that, during the draft riots in 1863, its build- ing was attacked by the mob.^ When Lincoln's first call for troops came, and war was actually begun, the nation had had no experience in warfare for fifty years. It had to rely, too, not on an organized force, \ ' Henry Wilson gave to its managing editor, Sidney How- ard Gay, the credit of keeping the Tribune loyal during the war. 187 Horace Greeley but on raw recruits, hurriedly summoned from peaceful pursuits, and wlio had to be organized, drilled, fed, and sheltered under the direction of officers who were themselves without experience, save what some of them had been taught in the military school. But when a war begins, both sides are generally confident, and the desire of the public is for speedy action. It was so in 1861, and the Tribune soon gave voice to this desire by printing, day after day, on its editorial page, the following advice: "the nation's wak-cky "Forward to Richmond! Forward to Richmond! The rebel Congress must not be allowed to meet there on the twentieth of July! By that date the place must be held by the national army." When the advance was made, and the dis- aster of Bull Run followed, Greeley and the Tribune incurred what might be called a na- tional denunciation. "The battle of Bull Run," says Parton, "nearly cost the editor of the Tribune his life. Mr. Greeley was al- most beside himself with horror," to which "was added, perhaps, some contrition for hav- ing permitted the paper to goad the Govern- ment into an advance which events showed to 188 During the Civil War be either too late or premature." Greeley made a statement in July, 1861, in which he said that while the cry, "Forward to Rich- mond " was not his coining, and he would have preferred not to iterate it, he assumed the responsibility for it, but averred that neither he nor any one connected with the Tribune "ever commended or imagined any such strategy as the launching of barely thir- ty of the one hundred thousand Union volun- teers within fifty miles of Washington, against ninety thousand rebels, enveloped in a labyrinth of strong entrenchments, and un- reconnoitered masked batteries." This ex- planation of his position he repeated in later years, saying, for instance, in his most care- ful estimate of Lincoln ^ that the early delay was due to the President's "delusion" that "soft words would obviate all necessity for deadly strife," and that, because of this, "new volunteers were left for weeks to rot in idleness and dissipation in the outskirts and purlieus of Washington, because their commander-in-chief believed that it would never be necessary or advisable to load their muskets with ball cartridges." The extent of Greeley's panic was not disclosed until the * Address printed in the Century, July, 1891. 189 Horace Greeley publication of the following letter to Lincoln in 1887, many years after both he and Lin- coln were dead: " New York, Monday, July 29, 1S61. Midnight. "Dear Sir: This is my seventh sleepless night — yours, too, doubtless — yet I think I shall not die, because I have no right to die. I must struggle to live, however bitterly. But to business. You are not considered a great man, and I am a hopelessly broken one. You are now undergoing a terrible ordeal, and God has thrown the gravest responsibilities upon you. Do not fear to meet them. Can the rebels be beaten after all that has oc- curred, and in view of the actual state of feel- ing caused by our late awful disaster? If they can — and it is your business to ascer- tain and decide — write me that such is your judgment, so that I may know and do my duty. And if they can not be beaten — if our recent disaster is fatal — do not fear to sacri- fice yourself to your country. If the rebels are not to be beaten — if that is your judg- ment in view of all the light you can get — then every drop of blood henceforth shed in this quarrel will be wantonly, wickedly shed, and the guilt will rest heavily on the soul of every promoter of the crime. I pray 190 During the Civil War you to decide quickly, and let me know my duty. "If the Union is irrevocably gone, an ar- mistice for thirty, sixty, ninety, one hundred and twenty days — better still for a year — ought at once to be proposed with a view to a peaceful adjustment Then Congress should call a national convention, to meet at the earliest possible day. And there should be an immediate and mutual exchange or re- lease of prisoners and a disbandment of forces. I do not consider myself at present a judge of anything but the public sentiment. That seems to me everywhere gathering and deepening against a prosecution of the war. The gloom in this city is funereal — for our dead at Bull Run were many, and they lie unburied yet. On every brow sits sullen, scorching, black despair. It would be easy to have Mr. Crittenden move any proposi- tion that ought to be adopted, or to have it come from any proper quarter. The first point is to ascertain what is best that can be done — which is the measure of our duty — and do that very thing at the earliest moment, " This letter is written in the strictest con- fidence, and is for your eye alone. But you are at liberty to say to members of your Cab- 191 Horace Greeley inet that you know I will second any move- ment you may see fit to make. But do noth- ing timidly nor by halves. Send me word what to do. I will live till I can hear it, at all events. If it is best for the country and for mankind that we make peace with the reb- els at once, and on their own terms, do not shrink even from that. But bear in mind the greatest truth : ' Whoso would lose his life for my sake shall save it.' Do the thing that is the highest right, and tell me how I am to second you. "Yours, in the depth of bitterness, "Horace Greeley."^ Even this letter did not discourage the President. His biographers say: "He smiled at frettings like those of Scott, Dix, and Rich- ardson ; but letters like that of Greeley made him sigh at the strange weakness of human character. Such things gave him pain, but they bred no resentment, and elicited no reply." * The publication of this letter was a shock to Greeley's old Tribune office friends, and Samuel Sinclair, long his publisher, in a note to that journal, dated January 1, 1888, said : " When that letter was written Mr. Greeley had been and was still severely ill with brain fever ; the entire letter, in my judg- ment, revealed that he was on the verge of insanity when he wrote it." 192 During the Civil War Greeley's lack of faith in the ability of the North to preserve the Union by force of arms next manifested itself in efforts to settle the dispute by negotiation. With this end in view, he was ready to treat either with the representative of a foreign power or with any one assuming to represent the Confed- eracy. M. Mercier, the French minister at Washington, was openly friendly to the South. He had advised the Emperor Napo- leon to recognize the Confederacy and to raise the blockade, and was using all his in- fluence in behalf of the rebellious States. In 1862 Greeley appealed to Mercier to secure the intervention of the French Government to end the war. Mercier commended the sug- gestion to his fellow diplomats in Washing- ton, urging that it was an indication of the weakness of even the radicals of the North, and declaring that the idea that Greeley would favor no step that would endanger the Union was "all bosh." The view of the administration at Wash- ington concerning these negotiations was set forth in a reply by Secretary Seward to a de- spatch from the French Foreign Secretary to M. Mercier, suggesting "informal confer- ences " with the Confederates to end the war. In this reply (dated February 6, 1863), Sew- 14 193 Horace Greeley ard repudiated the suggestion that the war had not been vigorously carried on, and said : "M. de I'Huys, I fear, has taken other light than the correspondence of this Government for his guidance in ascertaining its temper and firmness. He has probably read of divi- sions of sentiment among those who hold themselves forth as organs of public opinion here, and has given to them undue impor- tance." As to the appointment of commis- sioners by our Government and the Confed- erates, to meet on neutral ground and discuss the situation, he said: "The commissioners must agree in recommending either that the Union shall stand or that it shall be volun- tarily dissolved; or else they must leave the vital question unsettled, to abide at last the fortunes of war. . . . There is not the least ground to suppose that the controlling (in- surgent) actors would be persuaded at this moment, by any arguments which national commissioners could offer, to forego the am- bition that has impelled them to the disloyal position they are occupying. Any commis- sioners who should be appointed by these actors, or through their dictation or influence, must enter the conference imbued with the spirit and pledged to the personal fortunes of the insurgent chiefs. The loyal people in 194 During the Civil War the insurrectionary States would be unlieard, and any offer of peace by this Government, on the condition of the maintenance of the Union, must necessarily be rejected. On the other hand, as I have already intimated, this Government has not the least thought of re- linquishing the trust which has been confided to it by the nation under the most solemn of all political sanctions ; and, if it had any such thought, it would still have abundant reason to know that peace proposed at the cost of dissolution would be immediately, unreserv- edly, and indignantly rejected by the Amer- ican people." Henry J. Eaymond, in his journal,* men- tions that Collector Barney told him in "Washington, on January 25, 1863, that he knew that Greeley had been in correspond- ence with Vallandigham about mediation, and that later Greeley said to him (Raymond), on the Albany boat, that "he meant to carry out the policy of foreign mediation, and of bringing the war to a close. ' You'll see,' said he, * that I'll drive Lincoln into it.' " On the way back to New York one of the trustees of the Tribune Association told Raymond that the trustees would not permit Greeley to con- 1 Scribner's Monthly, March, 1880. 195 Horace Greeley tinue the advocacy of intervention in the paper.^ Raymond also recalls an after-dinner con- versation in Washington, on January 26, 1863, when Secretary Seward, Rev. Dr. Bel- lows, George Bancroft, General McDowell, and others were present, at which Seward spoke very bitterly of the effect of Greeley's negotiations with the French minister, and said that Greeley had clearly made himself liable to the penalties of the law forbidding such intercourse. In August, 1862, following McClellan's re- treat from the Virginia peninsula, Greeley addressed to President Lincoln through the columns of the Tribune a long letter under the title The Prayer of Twenty Millions, signed with his initials. It began by saying that the President must already know that * In one of its articles favoring mediation by a friendly foreign power, the Tribune (in January, 1863) said: "The prevalent opinion on that [European] side of the Atlantic blames us Unionists more than the rebels because it is their belief that the rebels are willing and anxious for peace on any terms that impartial judges shall deem fair, while our Govern- ment will listen to no terms short of unconditional submission to its authority, and this conviction does very great harm to our cause." It would therefore assume that a foreign offer of mediation was friendly and generous, and agree to consider arbitration when the Confederate assent thereto had been obtained. 196 During the Civil War his supporters "are sorely disappointed and deeply pained by the policy you seem to be pursuing with regard to the slaves of rebels." Under nine headings he set forth the specifi- cations of this charge, its main points being that the President was "strangely and disas- trously remiss " in regard to the emancipa- tion provisions of the new confiscation act; that the Union cause had suffered immense- ly from mistaken deference to rebel slavery ; that timid counsels in such a crisis were cal- culated to prove perilous; and that if the President, in his inaugural address, had given notice that, if rebellion was persisted in, he would "recognize no loyal person as rightfully held in slavery by a traitor," the rebellion would have received a staggering, if not fatal, blow. Finally, he demanded that the President give his subordinates direction that, under the confiscation act, the slaves of rebels coming or brought within the Union lines were to be free. This letter called out Lincoln's reply of August 22, in which he said: "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it ; and if I could save it by freeing all slaves I would do it ; and if I could 197 Horace Greeley 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." In less than a month from the receipt of Gree- ley's letter, Lincoln issued his emancipation proclamation. As some writers have held that this proclamation was a result of Gree- ley's prodding, it is interesting to obtain Greeley's own statement on this point. In his lecture on Lincoln, written about the year 1868, he thus disposed of this matter: "I had not besought him to proclaim general eman- cipation; I had only urged him to give full effect to the laws of the land, which pre- scribed that slaves employed with their mas- ters' acquiescence in support of the rebellion should henceforth be treated as free by such employment, and by the general hostility of their owners to the national authority. I have no doubt that Mr. Lincoln's letter had been prepared before he ever saw my ' prayer,' and that this was merely used by him as an opportunity, an occasion, an excuse, for set- ting his own altered position — changed not at his volition, but by circumstances — fairly be- fore the country." ^ ' Owen Lovejoy, writing to William Lloyd Garrison in Feb- ruary, 1864, about the reported influence which induced Lin- 198 During the Civil War Tlie earliest opposition to Lincoln's re- nomination manifested itself in a call for a convention to be held in Cleveland, Ohio, one week before the date of the National Repub- lican Convention. The New Yorkers who signed this call included advocates of the nomination of General Fremont, the Rev. George B. Cheever and Elizabeth Cady Stan- ton. B. Gratz Brown, Greeley's running mate in 1872, was one of the signers in St. Louis, and Wendell Phillips was a warm sympa- thizer with the movement. The convention, amid much disorder, nominated General Fre- mont for President, and John Cochran for Vice-President (both from the same State, the Constitution to the contrary, notwith- standing). Fremont accepted, but Cochran coin to issue the emancipation proclamation, said : " Now, the fact is this, as I had it from his own lips : He had written the proclamation in the summer, as early as June, I think — but will not be certain about the precise time — and called his Cab- inet together and informed them he had written it and meant to make it, but wanted to read it to them for any criticism or remarks as to features or details. After having done so, Mr. Seward suggested whether it would not be well for him to withhold its publication until after we had gained some sub- stantial advantage in the field, as at that time we had met with many reverses and it might be considered a cry of despair. He told me he thought the suggestion a good one, and so held on to the proclamation until after the battle of Antietam." 199 Horace Greeley withdrew his name, and the Cleveland ticket was not heard of further. Meanwhile, the Republicans all over the country were manifesting their demand for Lincoln's second nomination, and the work of the Baltimore convention was, so far as the head of the ticket was concerned, decided in advance. A committee, self-constituted, of which Greeley's long-time opponent William Cullen Bryant was a member, urged the Na- tional Republican Committee to postpone the convention. The Tribune made no editorial comment on Fremont's nomination, but the day before the Republican convention met it declared its conviction that the gathering should be postponed "while every effort of the loyal millions should be directed toward the overthrow of the armed hosts of the re- bellion," adding: "We feel that the expected nomination, if made at this time, exposes the Union party to a dangerous 'flank move- ment ' — possibly a successful one." When the renomination of Lincoln was made, the Tribune restated its objection. And what was if? That there were a large number of foes in our own household, at heart enemies of the national cause, who wanted the war to break down, and the Gov- ernment to be forced to make peace on the 200 During the Civil War rebels' terms ; that these men made their as- saults under cover of hostility to the admin- istration, and that "the renomination of Mr. Lincoln will inevitably intensify their efforts, and rebarb their arrows. . . . We believe the rebellion would have lost something of its co- hesion and venom from the hour in which it was known that a new President would surely be inaugurated on the fourth of March next ; and that hostility in the loyal States to the national cause must have sensibly abated, or been deprived of its most dangerous weapons, from the moment that all were brought to realize that the President, having no more to expect or hope, could henceforth be influenced by no conceivable motive but a desire to serve and save his country, and thus win for him- self an enviable and enduring fame." In the light of what we now know of Lincoln's part and Greeley's part in pushing the great struggle for the preservation of the nation to a successful end, it is unnecessary to com- ment on this proposal to surrender Lincoln as a sop to Northern "Copperheads," or on this stab at the motives of the man who was wearing his heart out in the nation's behalf. Greeley's hostility to Lincoln did not cease with the action of the National Kepub- lican Convention. The summer of 1864 was 201 Horace Greeley a trying one to all loyal hearts, and when August closed Grant had met with a check before Petersburg, Sherman was supposed still to be out of Atlanta, and the Democratic National Convention had pronounced the war a failure, and called for a cessation of hos- tilities. Two days after this platform was adopted, Greeley, on September 2, sent to the Governors of the loyal States a letter making three inquiries: "Is the reelection of Mr. Lin- coln a probability? Can your own State be carried for Mr. Lincoln? Do the interests of the Union party require the substitution of another candidate in place of Mr. Lincoln? " The replies of the loyal Governors were re- bukes to the editor's suggestion. How could they be otherwise? The withdrawal of the Republican candidate a few weeks before the election would have been an acknowledgment of weakness that would have meant party de- moralization and certain defeat at the polls, no matter who might have been put up in Mr. Lincoln's place. Verily, Thurlow Weed was correct when he thought that Greeley "knew nothing about politics." Greeley's defeat in his efforts to prevent Lincoln's renomination did not make him any more modest in playing the part of adviser to the administration. "In personal inter- 202 During the Civil War views, in private letters, and in the columns of the Tribune, he repeatedly placed before the President with that vigor of expression in which he was unrivaled the complaints and the discontents of a considerable body of devoted, if not altogether reasonable. Union men," thus drawing around him "a certain number of adventurers and busybodies, who fluttered between the two great parties, and were glad to occupy the attention of promi- nent men on either side with schemes whose only real object was some slight gain or ques- tionable notoriety for themselves." ^ One of these adventurers who gained Greeley's ear was William Cornell Jewett, "of Colorado," who had been an interminable epistolary ad- viser of the President. In July, 1864, he wrote Greeley from Niagara Falls that two Confederate ambassadors were then in Can- ada, with "full and complete powers for a peace," and urging Greeley to go on at once for the purpose of a private interview, or to obtain the President's protection, that they might meet Greeley in the United States. This proposition so impressed Greeley that he wrote to the President, reminding him that "our bleeding, bankrupt country also > Nicolay-Hay Lincoln, ix, p. 184. 203 Horace Greeley longs for peace ; shudders at the prospect of fresh conscriptions, of further wholesale dev- astation, and of new rivers of blood," disap- proving of the warlike tone of the platform on which Lincoln had just been renominated (Greeley's old rival, Henry J. Raymond had reported it), and suggesting, as terms of set- tlement, a Union restored and declared per- petual, the abolition of slavery, with com- plete amnesty, and a $400,000,000 indemnity for the freed slaves. In closing, he expressed a fear that Lincoln did not realize how in- tently the people desired " any peace con- sistent with the national integrity and hon- or," adding, "with United States stocks worth but forty cents in gold per dollar, and drafting about to commence on the third million of Union soldiers, can this be won- dered at? " Lincoln's patience and kindly treatment of Greeley throughout this episode are ad- mirably set forth in the Nicolay-Hay biogra- phy. Realizing the futility of the proposed negotiations, as well as Greeley's honesty of purpose, Lincoln decided to make use of his offer in order to show the country what such negotiations would amount to. So he placed Greeley in the front as negotiator, replying to him as follows: "If you can find 204 During the Civil War any person, anywhere, professing to have any proposition of Jefferson Davis in wri- ting, for peace, embracing the restoration of the Union and the abandonment of slavery, whatever else it embraces, say to him that he may come to me with you," nnder a safe-conduct. This broad acceptance of any authorized peace agent, under Greeley's guid- ance, puzzled the editor, and he first re- plied, expressing doubt whether the negotia- tors would "open their budget " to him. But very soon afterward he wrote Lincoln again, giving him in confidence the names of the Confederate agents (Clement C. Clay, of Ala- bama, and Jacob Thompson, of Mississippi), saying that he had reliable information of their authority and anxiety to confer with the President or such persons as he might au- thorize to treat with them, and urging prompt action, that it might do good in the coming North Carolina election. Greeley thus ig- nored the authority already given him to con- duct the peace agents to Washington ; but the patient Lincoln, in order to bring the matter to a head, sent Major John Hay (the present Secretary of State) to him with a letter expressing his disappointment that Greeley had not reached Washington with the Con- federate commissioners, repeating the invita- 205 Horace Greeley tion to bring them, and concluding, "I not only intend a sincere effort for peace, but intend that you shall be a personal witness that it is made." Greeley still hesitated, but he finally consented to go to Niagara if he should be furnished with a safe-conduct to Washington for four persons, and this was immediately granted. Upon his arrival at Niagara he sent by Jewett a letter to the Confederate negotiators, telling them of the safe-con- duct he had for them if they were " duly accredited from Richmond as the bearers of propositions looking to the establishment of peace." Thereupon he was informed that the men whom he was addressing had no such credentials; as they wrote to him later, that was "a character we had no right to assume, and had never affected to possess." They could only aver that they knew the view of their Government, and could get credentials. In other words, whatever terms might then have been proposed, would have been over- tures from the United States Government to the Confederates. But Greeley did not com- prehend this, and simply reported to Lincoln the reply he had received, and asked for fur- ther instructions. Lincoln's patience was not even then exhausted. He sent to Greeley at 206 During the Civil War once, by the hands of Major Hay, the follow- ing in his own handwriting: " Executive Mansion, Washington, July IS, 1864. ''To Whom it May Concern: Any propo- sition which embraces the restoration of peace, the integrity of the whole Union, and the abandonment of slavery, and which comes by and with an authority that can control the armies now at war against the United States, will be received and considered by the Ex- ecutive Government of the United States, and will be met by liberal terms on other substan- tial points, and the bearer or bearers thereof shall have safe-conduct both ways. "Abraham Lincoln." The handing of this letter to one of the Confederates practically ended the negotia- tions. But Greeley, unknown to Major Hay, privately authorized Jewett to act as his (Greeley's) representative in regard to any future offers that might come from the Con- federates; Jewett made known to the latter his regrets over the " sad termination " of the deliberations; the Confederates sent him a letter addressed to Greeley, in which they at- tacked the President for alleged lack of good faith, and Jewett gave this letter to the news- papers. In the newspaper discussion of the 207 Horace Greeley matter that followed, Greeley agreed with the Confederates that the President's safe- conduct abrogated the condition he had orig- inally set forth, thus making a "rude with- drawal of a courteous overture for negotia- tion at a moment it was likely to be accepted," and being "an emphatic recall of words of peace just uttered, and fresh blasts of war to the bitter end." In the Tribune of August 5, 1864, he held that the President's letter of July 18 changed the situation entirely, but added, "I am quite sure the mistake was not originally the President's, but that of some one or more of the gentlemen who are paid $8,000 a year from the Treasury for giving him bad advice; and from certain earmarks I infer that it had its initial impulse from the War Department." Lincoln, in his kindness of heart toward Greeley, proposed to the latter that, in view of the probable necessity of publishing their correspondence, parts of Greeley's letters, in- cluding those referring to the probable polit- ical advantage of the peace negotiations, be omitted, and invited him to Washington for a personal discussion. This invitation Greeley declined, and in his reply to a second one he said: "I fear that my chance for usefulness has 208 During the Civil War passed. I know that nine-tenths of the whole American people, North and South, are anx- ious for peace — peace on almost any terms — and utterly sick of human slaughter and devastation. I know that, to the general eye, it now seems that the rebels are anxious to negotiate, and that we repulse their advances. I know that if this impression be not re- moved we shall be beaten out of sight next November. I firmly believe that, were the election to take place to-morrow, the Demo- cratic majority in this State and Pennsylva- nia would amount to 100,000, and that we should lose Connecticut also.^ Now, if the rebellion can be crushed before November, it will do to go on; if not, we are rushing on certain ruin. "What, then, can I do in Washington? Your trusted advisers nearly all think I ought to go to Fort Lafayette for what I have done already. Seward wanted me sent there for my brief conference with M. Mercier. The cry had steadily been, No truce! No ar- mistice ! No negotiation ! No mediation ! Noth- ing but surrender at discretion! I never heard of such fatuity before. There is noth- * Pennsylvania gave Lincoln 20,075 majority the following November, Connecticut gave him 2,406, and New York gave Seymour onlv 6,749. 15 209 Horace Greeley ing like it in history. It must result in dis- aster, or all experience is delusive. . . . "In case peace can not now be made, con- sent to an armistice for 07ie year, each party to retain, unmolested, all it now holds, but the rebel ports to be open. Meantime, let a national convention be held, and there will surely be no war, at all events." Greeley, in closing this correspondence, insisted that all or none of it should be pub- lished. "This was accepted by Mr. Lincoln," say his biographers, "as a veto upon its pub- lication. He could not afford, for the sake of vindicating his own action, to reveal to the country the despondency — one might almost say the desperation — of one so prominent in Eepublican circles as the editor of the Trib- une." The correspondence did not appear until Messrs. Nicolay and Hay laid it before their readers in 1890. One illustration of Greeley's feeling to- ward Lincoln remains to be cited. On the day that Lincoln was shot Greeley had writ- ten an editorial, "a brutal, bitter, sarcastic personal attack " on the President. When the proof of this article reached the hands of the managing editor, Sidney Howard Gay, in the evening, Mr. Lincoln was dying from his wound. Gay suppressed the editorial, telling 210 During the Civil War the foreman to lock up the type and tell no one of its existence. The next day, when Greeley found that the article was not in the paper, he accosted Gay in a rage, saying, "They tell me you ordered my leader out of this morning's paper. Is it your paper or mine? I should like to know if I can not print what I choose in my own paper." Gay replied that the article was still in type, and could be used, but added: "Only this, Mr. Greeley. I know New York, and I hope and believe before God that there is so much vir- tue in New York that, if I had let that article go into this morning's paper, there would not be one brick upon another in the Tribune ofRce now." Greeley never alluded to the sub- ject again.^ The following statement has recently been printed: "It was known to but few persons at the time — and those then connected with the New York Tribune — that President Lincoln paid a visit to Horace Greeley, at the Trib- une office, of a most sacred nature and pre- sumably of a most urgent and important character, somewhere about the time of the accession of Grant to the office of command- er-in-chief of the army, arriving in the even- ' Hale's Lowell and his Friends, pp. 178, 179. 211 Horace Greeley ing and leaving for the capital early in the morning, with few but themselves cognizant of the fact. The important events around Petersburg and Richmond followed shortly afterward, and those events were probably the subject of their conference." This story is inherently improbable, and I have the most competent authority for saying that it be- longs in the list of romances which include another recently published story that Lincoln once went secretly to pass a night in prayer with Henry Ward Beecher. Greeley furnished his own comment on his estimate and treatment of Lincoln during the period of the war. One of his best pieces of literary work is an address on Lincoln, which he wrote in 1868. In this he reviewed Lin- coln's entire career, pointing out mistakes with which he credited him, and summing up his estimate of the man in these words: "Never before did one so constantly and visibly grow under the discipline of incessant cares, anxieties, and trials. The Lincoln of '62 was plainly a larger, broader, better man than he had been in '61; while '63 and '64 worked his continued and unabated growth in mental and moral stature. Few have been more receptive, more sympathetic, and (with- in reasonable limits) more plastic than he. 212 During the Civil War Had he lived twenty years longer, I believe he would have steadily increased in ability to counsel his countrymen, and in the estimation of the wise and good. . . . "The republic needed to be cast through chastening, purifying fires of adversity and suffering; so these came and did their work, and the verdure of a new national life springs greenly from their ashes. Other men were helpful to the great renervation, and nobly did their part in it ; yet, looking back through the lifting mists of seven eventful, tragic, try- ing, glorious years, I clearly discern that the one providential leader, the indispensable hero of the great drama — faithfully reflect- ing even in his hesitations and seeming vacil- lation the sentiment of the masses — fitted by his very defects and shortcomings for the burden laid upon him, the good to be wrought out through him, was Abraham Lincoln." 213 CHAPTER IX GEEELEY's presidential campaign — HIS DEATH 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, writ- ten on Tribune notepaper, in his fine hand, which he asked me to copy for him. The let- ter was addressed to General Grant's inti- mate 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's admin- istration. There were to be economy and re- trenchment; Cuba seemed to be "falling into our lap for nothing " ; Santo Domingo stood at our door, and with it would come Porto Rico ; for Canada we could wait ; Grant was to change possible national bankruptcy into solvency, bring about specie payments, and send ships carrying the American flag into every sea — in a word, to have a "splendid 214 Greeley's Presidential Campaign administration." At the close of the Presi- dent's first term, the editor of the Tribune was the candidate who was opposing him for reelection, and on a platform which was pre- ceded by an address accusing the Grant ad- ministration of usurpation of power, and of striking a blow at the fundamental principles of constitutional government and the liberties of the people; charging the President with the use of his high powers for the promotion of personal ends, making the public service "a machinery of corruption," and alleging that his partizans had "kept alive the pas- sions and resentments of the late civil war, to use them for their own advantage." In explaining this changed position, it is necessary to glance back at the causes of Re- publican discontent, and to review Greeley's position on the question of reconstruction. General Grant naturally carried his mili- tary ideas into the White House. He was not tactful in conciliating those who disagreed with him about his civil policy, and was stub- born in supporting men whom he had selected for office when they came under a fire of ad- verse criticism. Some of his advisers early encountered such criticism, and serious scan- dals were brought to light in the Post-Office and other departments. Many Republicans 215 Horace Greeley came to believe that the President was per- sonally corrupt, and that his fidelity to friends "under fire " was due to his own con- nection with their schemes. His civil ap- pointments were often very injudicious, and there grew up a large body of independents ready to accept the declaration of the Nation that the President had so used his power of appointment that there was in office "a body of officials such as no party in a constitutional country has ever been served by, and such as no government except that of imperial France has ever brought into play to in- fluence an election." Both among and outside of the radical civil service and revenue reformers were many men in the North who were anxious to see the negro question eliminated from Federal politics. The disfranchisement of the leading white men in the Southern States who had participated in the rebellion had handed over the governments of many of these States to the ignorant negroes, and to newcomers from the North, who were soon classified under the name of " carpetbag- gers," and an era of governmental chaos en- sued, out of which came scandalous waste of the public funds, the grossest travesties in the way of legislatures, and the organization of 216 Greeley's Presidential Campaign the whites in "Kuklux Klans," which, as is al- ways the case in such organizations formed outside of the law, committed terrible out- rages in their efforts to check existing evils. A motion in the House of Representatives, in June, 1870, to remove all political disabilities for participation in the rebellion was lost, 59 to 112, 11 Republicans voting with the mi- nority. President Grant, in his message in 1871, said: "It may be considered whether it is not now time that the disabilities imposed by the Fourteenth Amendment be removed." On a motion in the House by Mr. Dawes, on January 15, 1872, to remove all the disabil- ities named in this amendment, the vote was, yeas, 132; nays, 70; not two-thirds, as was necessary to pass the resolution, Dawes, Gar- field, and Hale voting with the yeas. While Greeley was not identified person- ally with the civil service reformers, he was the leader of those Republicans who demand- ed an end of all proscription for participation in the rebellion. With the laying down of the rebel arms he had lifted up his voice for mag- nanimity toward the South. The day after Lee's surrender the Tribune said (May 10, 1865) : "We can not believe it wise or well to take the life of any man who shall have submitted to the national authority," explain- 217 Horace Greeley ing, "Unquestionably, tliere are men in the South who have richly deserved condign pun- ishment. Whoever is responsible for the butchery of our black soldiers vanquished in fight, or the still more atrocious murder of captives by wanton exposure in prison- camps, stands in this category. But the im- mediate issue concerns, not the dispensation of justice to individuals, but the pacification of the whole republic." On November 27, 1866, when a hopeful candidate for United States Senator, Gree- ley, with the knowledge that the declaration would destroy his chances of election, said in the Tribune: "I am for universal amnesty — so far as immunity from fear of punishment or confiscation is concerned — even though im- partial suif rage should for the present be re- sisted and defeated. I did think it desirable that Jefferson Davis should be arraigned and tried for treason; and it still seems to me that this might properly have been done many months ago. But it was not done then, and now I believe it would result in far more evil than good. I hope to see impartial suf- frage established by very general consent. . . . The one simple, obvious mode of taking the negro out of politics is to treat him as a man." 218 Greeley's Presidential Campaign Greeley visited Washington by invitation after the elections of 1865, and took part in conferences with President Johnson, the ob- ject of which was to secure cooperation and peace between him and Congress. These ef- forts failed ; the President issued a proclama- tion of amnesty, excepting fourteen classes, including generally all persons who had taken official part in the rebellion, and by procla- mation he established governments in several of the lately rebellious States ; and on April 2, 1866, he officially proclaimed the rebellion at an end. Congress met, and appointed a joint committee to report on the existing con- dition of the rebelling States, and the con- flict between the President and the Federal Legislature ensued, the President vetoing the reconstruction measures which Congress passed during that conflict. Greeley was a bitter opponent of President Johnson's pol- icy. He called his veto of the bill establishing universal suffrage in the District of Colum- bia "the least plausible veto message we ever read" ; said of the veto of the reconstruction bill (March 3, 1867) : "Its obvious tendency to keep the Southern States unreconstructed and unrepresented is, in every view, deplor- able " ; and, during the impeachment trial, de- clared, "The nation demands impeachment." 219 Horace Greeley The reconstruction acts excluded from a share in the new State governments all per- sons already disfranchised for participation in the rebellion ; an amendment offered in the House by Mr. Blaine, that the rebel States should be entitled to representation in Con- gress whenever the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution should be ratified, and they should consent to it, was defeated, 69 to 94. Greeley in a speech in Richmond, Va., in May, 1867, stated that he accepted this pro- scription "only as a precaution against pres- ent disloyalty," adding: "I believe the nation will insist on such proscription being re- moved so soon as reasonable and proper as- surances are given that disloyalty has ceased to be powerful and dangerous in the South- ern States." When Jefferson Davis's counsel, George Shea, an old friend of Greeley, consulted the latter about procuring satisfactory bondsmen for his client, Greeley suggested two promi- nent Union men, and added, "If my name should be found necessary, you may use that." His name was asked for, and he went to Richmond, and there, in May, 1867, signed the bond with Gerritt Smith, Commodore Vanderbilt, and others. This act brought down on him such an avalanche of denuncia- 220 Greeley's Presidential Campaign tion from Ms party and personal admirers as he had never incurred. His motives were at- tacked, his interview with Davis misrepre- sented, and he was handed over by thousands of Repubhcans to the company of the late rebels. An indication of the public feeling was furnished by its effect on the sale of his history of the rebellion. In his own words, that sale then "almost ceased for a season; thousands who had subscribed for it refusing to take their copies." But, he added, "at all events, the public has learned that I act upon my convictions without fear of personal con- sequences." The feeling against Greeley in New York city manifested itself most pointedly in a call, signed by more than thirty members, for a special meeting of the Union League Club, to consider his conduct in becoming Davis's bondsman. In reply to an official notification of this meeting, Greeley wrote to the signers of the call a vigorous letter, in which he re- hearsed his early views about the disposition to be made of Davis, recalled the fact that, soon after their publication, the acceptance of a portrait of him by the club had been op- posed by its president, and added: "Gentlemen, I shall not attend your meet- ing this evening. I have an engagement out 221 Horace Greeley of town, and shall keep it. I do not recognize you as capable of judging, or fully appre- hending, me. You evidently regard me as a weak sentimentalist, misled by a maudling philosophy. I arraign you as narrow-minded blockheads, who would like to be useful to a great and good cause, but don't know how. Your attempt to base a great, enduring party on the hate and wrath necessarily engen- dered by a bloody civil war, is as though you should plant a colony on an iceberg which had somehow drifted into a tropical ocean. I tell you here, that, out of a life earnestly devoted to the good of human kind, your children will select my going to Richmond and signing that bail bond as the wisest act, and will feel that it did more for freedom and humanity than all of you were competent to do, though you had lived to the age of Methuselah. I ask nothing of you, then, but that you proceed to your end by a direct, frank, manly way. Don't sidle off into a mild resolution of cen- sure, but move the expulsion which you pro- pose, and which I deserve, if I deserve any reproach whatever. All I care for is that you make this a square, stand-up fight, and record your judgment by yeas and nays." The club, at its meeting, adopted a reso- lution setting forth that there was nothing in 222 Greeley's Presidential Campaign Greeley's action "calling for proceedings of this club." While Greeley was in Eichmond he ac- cepted an invitation to deliver an address in the African Church, in which he made an earnest plea for good-will and reconciliation. He pointed out objections to some of the laws passed by the Southern State governments established under military rule — such as the prohibition against negroes bearing arms or testifying against whites in the courts — call- ing them "unnecessary, invidious, and degra- ding." Urging the obligation of the South as well as the North to the blacks, he said: "Their equal rights as citizens are to be se- cured now or not at all. I insist, then, in the name of justice and humanity, in the name of our country, and of every righteous interest and section of that country, that the rights of all the American people — native or naturalized, born such or made such — shall be guaranteed in the State Constitutions first, and in the Federal Constitution as soon as possible ; that we make it a fundamental con- dition of American law and policy that every citizen shall have, in the eye of the law, every right of every other citizen. I would make the equal rights of the colored people of the country, under the laws and the Constitution 223 Horace Greeley thereof, the corner-stone of a true, beneficent reconstruction." As to the removal of dis- abilities in the South, he would deny the right to a voice in the Government to the "implaca- bly hostile," but he would look to the removal of all proscription at the earliest possible mo- ment. He closed thus : "Men of Virginia: I entreat you to forget the years of slavery and secession and civil war, now happily passed, in the hopeful con- templation of better days of freedom and union and peace now opening before you. Forget that some of you have been masters, others slaves — some for disunion, others against it — and remember only that you are Virginians, and all now and henceforth free- men. Bear in mind that your State is the heart of a great republic, not the frontier of a weaker Confederacy, and that your un- equaled combination of soil, timber, minerals, and water-power fairly entitles you to a pop- ulation of five millions before the close of this century. Consider that the natural highway of empire — the shortest and easiest route from the Atlantic to the heart of the great valley — lies up the James River and down the Kanawha, and that this city, with its mill- power superior to any in our country but that of St. Anthony's Falls on the Mississippi, 224 ™ SI m ni 3- ^' ^B*"-* - >^< Greeley's Presidential Campaign ought to insure you a speedy development of manufactures surpassing any Lowell or Lawrence, with a population of at least half a million before the close of this century.^ I exhort you, then. Republicans and Conserv- atives, whites and blacks, to bury the dead past in mutual and hearty good-will, and in a general, united effort to promote the pros- perity and exalt the glory of our long dis- tracted and bleeding, but henceforth reunited, magnificent country." In May, 1871, Greeley accepted an invita- tion to address the Texas State Fair at Hous- ton, and made a number of speeches in the South on his way to that city. On his return, a public welcome was given to him by his admirers at the Lincoln Club in New York city, on which occasion he made an elaborate address, urging once more universal amnes- ty. He said he believed that the leading men of the South would be safer and more useful in Congress than the second-rate men, and that the Republican party would be stronger 0/ if the Tombses, Wises, and Wade Hamptons ' Greeley was not a good prophet. The population of Vir- ginia in 1900 was 1,854,184, and of Richmond 85,050. In his autobiography he said, " I predict that California will have 3,000.000 of people in 1900 and Oregon at least 1,000,000." The population of California in 1900 was 1,485,053, and of Oregon 413,536. 16 225 Horace Greeley had been allowed to go to Congress four years before. Admitting that dishonest "car- petbaggers " were "a mournful fact," he ex- plained : "Do not mistake me. All the North- ern men in the South are not thieves. The larger part of them are honest and good men. . . . The time has been, and still is, when it was perilous to be known as a Republican or an Abolitionist in the South; but it never called the blush of shame to any man's cheek to be called so until those thieving carpet- baggers went there — never ! . . . ' Well, then, do you justify the Kuklux? ' I am asked. Jus- tify them in what? If they should choose to catch a hundred or two of these thieves, place them tenderly across rails, and bear them quietly and peacefully across the Ohio, I should, of course, condemn the act, as I con- demn all acts of violence; but the tears live in a very small onion that would water all my sorrow for them." He closed with a plea for an end of fighting over old issues. These outspoken expressions made Gree- ley — leading Republican and editor as he was — the acknowledged representative of the supporters of universal amnesty. In no border State had the loyal and rebel elements contended more bitterly during the war than in Missouri. When the State Con- 226 Greeley's Presidential Campaign stitution was revised in 1865, the new instru- ment disfranchised the sympathizers with the Confederates, and required a rigorous test oath, which was upheld by the United States Supreme Court. In December, 1866, B. Gratz Brown, an ex-United States Senator, took the lead in a movement for universal amnesty and universal suffrage in the State, and he was warmly supported by Carl Schurz,^ who went to St. Louis in 1867 to edit a German newspaper, and was elected a United States Senator in 1869. The Missouri Legislature of 1870 voted to submit to the people six amendments to the Constitution, which gave the right of suffrage to every male citizen of the United States, and abolished the test oath, and the oath of loyalty required of jurors. The Democrats — a hopeless minority — held no State convention that year. The Eepublican convention, by a vote of 439 to 342, adopted, instead of the report of the majority of the committee on resolutions (presented by its chairman. Senator Schurz) ' Schurz, who was a vice-president of the National Repub- lican Convention of 1868, moved an amendment to the plat- form, which was adopted, declaring in favor of " the removal of the disqualifications and restrictions imposed upon the late rebels in the same measure as the spirit of disloyalty will die out, and as may be consistent with the safety of the loyal people." 227 Horace Greeley which favored the removal of all disqualifi- cations and the conferring of equal political rights and privileges on all classes, a minor- ity report "in favor of reenfranchising those justly disfranchised for participation in the late rebellion as soon as it can be done with safety to the State." Thereupon nearly two hundred and fifty delegates, headed by Schurz, left the convention. The majority adopted a resolution heartily approving the administration of President Grant, and nomi- nated a State ticket. The bolters, with Schurz in the chair, also nominated a State ticket, headed by B. Gratz Brown for Gov- ernor. President Grant sided with the Radi- cals, and in a letter to a Federal office-holder in St. Louis, in September, said, "I regard the movement headed by Carl Schurz, Brown, etc., as similar to the Tennessee and Virginia movements, intended to carry a portion of the Republican party over to the Democracy, and thus give them control." ^ Brown was elected Governor by 41,917 majority. The Central Committee of the Missouri ' A report, current at the time, and ■which has found a place in some permanent records, that President Grant refused to receive Senator Schurz when he called at the White House, was without foundation, as I am able to say on the authority of Mr. Schurz himself. 228 Greeley's Presidential Campaign Liberal Republicans adopted a resolution in 1871 declaring that no citizen should be de- prived of a just share in the Government; de- manding the removal of all political disabili- ties; saying that the organization was un- equivocally hostile to any tariff which fosters one industry or interest at the expense of another; and calling for a thorough reform of the civil service. The resolution also de- clared that "this committee, believing that it has no power to disband or consolidate with any other committee, expresses its willing- ness to call a State convention of Liberal Re- publicans to take into consideration measures for the unity of the party." As an outcome of this action of the committee a call was is- sued for a State convention of Liberal Re- publicans, which was held in Jefferson City on January 24, 1872, with a representation from nearly every county. This convention, in turn, issued a call for a national conven- tion, to be held in Cincinnati, on the first Monday in May next, "to take such action as their convictions of duty and public exi- gencies may require." The platform adopted declared for universal amnesty and equal suffrage, tariff reform "by the removal of such duties as, in addition to the yielded reve- nue, increase the price of domestic products 229 Horace Greeley for the benefit of favored interests," and civil service reform, and denounced the "packing of the Supreme Court to relieve rich corpora- tions," and the attempt to cure the Kuklux disorders, irreligion, or intemperance "by means of unconstitutional laws." This movement for a national convention received some directions from Washington. Schurz was occupying his seat as Senator at the time, and he held intimate relations with Charles Sumner, whose quarrel with Presi- dent Grant was a matter of national interest. The unfriendliness of the Massachusetts Sen- ator and the President, beginning, perhaps, when Sumner was obliged, on constitutional grounds, to oppose the confirmation of A. T. Stewart, Grant's first nominee for Secretary of the Treasury, grew into charges and countercharges of great bitterness while the Santo Domingo treaty was under discus- sion, and the President gave Sumner the chief credit for the defeat of that measure. Motley's recall from England was the Presi- dent's first act of retaliation. In the fol- lowing December the President proposed the annexation of Santo Domingo in the same way that Texas had been annexed as a State, and Sumner again led the opposition, select- ing words that were especially irritating to 230 Greeley's Presidential Campaign the executive, and charging him with trying to remove three antitreaty members of the Committee on Foreign Relations. The publi- cation of the Motley correspondence, in Jan- uary, 1871, put an end to all cooperation be- tween the State Department and the Commit- tee on Foreign Relations. The Alabama High Joint Commission began its sessions in Washington in February, and in March, when the new Congress met, the Senate com- mittee was reorganized, and, in accordance with the President's wishes, Sumner was dropped as chairman. From that time Sumner was an out- spoken opponent of Grant's renomination, and so bitter a critic that he was persuaded by his friends to withhold from publica- tion an arraignment of Grant which he pre- pared; he circulated it privately, however. Early in 1871 he offered in the Senate a reso- lution to amend the Federal Constitution so that a President could serve but a single term, and he and others who objected to Grant's reelection discussed the steps necessary to defeat him, and had a share in shaping the Missouri movement. After the nomination of the Greeley ticket, and a few days before Grant's renomination, Sumner made a bitter speech in the Senate, of which he said, as he 231 Horace Greeley left the Capitol, "I have to-day made the renomination of Grant impossible," and throughout the campaign he refused to be- lieve that the Grant ticket would win.^ In 1871 and 1872 the tariff question was causing the Republicans a great deal of anx- iety. So firm a defender of protection as Senator Morrill had declared in 1870 that "it is a mistake for the friends of a sound tariff to insist on the extreme rates imposed during the war, if less will raise the necessary reve- nue." A bill prepared by David A. Wells, Special Commissioner of the Revenue, in 1867, reducing duties on raw material, had passed the Senate by a large majority, and received a vote of 106 to 64 in its favor in the House, but failed there because a two- thirds majority was necessary to reach it un- der a suspension of the rules. The subject came up again in 1870, when Garfield, in the House, warned his protectionist friends that, unless they revised the tariff "prudently and wisely " they would have to submit to a re- duction that would "shock, if not shatter, all our protected industries." Congress in that year passed a tariff bill, but it did not satisfy ' I am assured on the most competent authority that the published statement that Sumner expected that he would be nominated for President at Cincinnati is unfounded. 232 Greeley's Presidential Campaign the revenue reformers, since, while reducing the duty on pig iron from $9 to $7 a ton, it increased the duty on steel rails, nickel, flax, and marble. The removal of Mr. Wells from his of- fice was accepted as an affront both to tariff reform and to civil service reform. The urgency of the demand for relief from tariff burdens was shown by a letter from a Re- publican observer in Washington, printed in the Tribune in March, 1871, advocating "a carefully revised tariff bill " so wisely drawn "that it will permit the party to escape a split on this question in the coming presi- dential campaign." Hubbard, of New Hamp- shire, on March 27, 1871, moved in the House that the tariff should be so reformed as to be "a tax for revenue only, and not for the pro- tection of class interests at the general ex- pense." A motion to table this resolution was defeated by a vote of 2 yeas to 154 nays, and it was referred to the Ways and Means Committee. The House, at this session, passed a bill placing salt and coal on the free list, and to these, at the instance of the Penn- sylvanians, added tea and coffee; but these measures did not pass the Senate. Thus it will be seen that the tariff declara- tion of the Missouri Liberal Republicans ap- 233 Horace Greeley pealed to the sympathies of a large number of other Republicans. The Tribune of March 30, 1872, published a letter signed by several New York Republic- ans, addressed to the chairman of the execu- tive committee of the Liberal Republicans of Missouri, expressing their concurrence in the principles set forth by the Jefferson City convention, which, as regards the tariff, they interpreted to mean that "Federal taxes should be imposed for revenue, and should be so adjusted as to make the burden upon the industries of the country as light as pos- sible," hoping that the movement begun there would spread through all the States, and in- viting all Republicans of New York who agreed with them to cooperate. Greeley was the second signer of this letter. The Tribune had said, on March 16, "Of course, we shall ask to be counted out [of the Liberal move- ment] if the majority shall decide to make free trade a plank in their platform," and it explained on April 4, "In signing the letter to Colonel Grosvenor, we simply indi- cated our approval of the Cincinnati move- ment, not of every phase embodied in that letter." The Liberal movement received encour- agement in all the States, and on May 1 six 234 Greeley's Presidential Campaign hundred and fourteen delegates assembled in convention in Cincinnati. Meeting as they did without previous organization, they were largely at sea both as regards the form of the platform and the candidate. Charles Francis Adams was the preference of the radical civil service and tariff reformers. Illinois was divided between Senator Trum- bull and Judge David Davis, of the United States Supreme Court.^ Governor Brown was the favorite of most of the Missouri dele- gates, and Pennsylvania was ready to vote for Curtin. Horace Greeley was supported by sixty-six of the sixty-eight New York dele- gates. How to nominate him on a platform in line with the declarations of the Jefferson City platform was a problem even to his friends. The Missourians held that Brown was the logical leader of a movement which, they said, originated in his State and had made him Governor. In their earlier despatches, as the dele- gates were gathering, neither the Sun nor the Times correspondent considered Greeley's * A Labor Reform National Convention, at Columbus, Ohio, on February 21 (twelve States being represented), had nomi- nated Judge Davis for President. He declined the nomination on June 28 on the ground that he had consented to the use of his name in the Liberal Republican Convention. 235 Horace Greeley nomination a possibility, and both made pre- dictions of the disposition of his vote after the first "complimentary " ballot. E. L. God- kin, in his letter to the Nation reviewing the convention (which he attended), said: "Strange as it may seem, Greeley's nomina- tion was generally regarded as impossible. I think I am right in saying that nobody out- side the circle of his immediate supporters treated it as a serious probability. Men laughed when his name was spoken of; all said he ought to have a good complimentary vote; but nearly everybody talked of his se- lection for the presidency by the convention as an utterly ludicrous thing, which would cover the proceedings with ridicule and con- tempt. What was feared by the reformers was not this, but some ' sinful game ' on the part of the politicians which would defeat Adams and deprive the movement of all weight and significance." To Adams objection was made that he had not been identified with the Liberal move- ment; that he was "cold-blooded," and would arouse no enthusiasm in the West, and that his relations with Sumner would drive the latter back to Grant if Adams was nomi- nated. That Adams was not a "practical pol- itician " was shown by the publication, on 236 Greeley's Presidential Campaign April 25, of a letter addressed by Mm to David A. Wells, in which he said : "I do not want the nomination, and could only be induced to consider it by the circum- stances under which it might possibly be made. If the call upon me were an unequiv- ocal one, based upon confidence in my char- acter, earned in public life, and a belief that I would carry out in practise the principles that I professed, then indeed would come a test of my courage in an emergency ; but if I am to be negotiated for, and have assurances given that I am honest, you will be so kind as to withdraw me out of that crowd. ... If the good people who meet at Cincinnati sin- cerely believe that they need such an anoma- lous being as I am (which I do not), they must express it in a manner to convince me of it, or all their labor will be thrown away." The Tribune was quick to make use of this letter. Its Cincinnati despatch the next day said that it had created a flutter; "the Missouri and Kansas delegates say it ruins his [Adams's] prospects for the nomination here." Its despatch dated April 26 said that, according to a leading Pennsylvanian, the delegation from that State indicated a will- ingness to sustain Greeley, "whose presence on the ticket should be a guaranty to the 237 Horace Greeley country of the dignity and power of the re- form movement ; he would, they argue, carry an overwhelming Eepublican vote, and ren- der the work of the Philadelphia gathering [the National Republican Convention] use- less. They are equally frank in their repug- nance to Charles Francis Adams, whose let- ter is regarded as frivolous and undignified. He is accused of courting administration bounty by his careless, or as they term it, slighting allusion to the Liberal convention. It is claimed that Adams has lost the chance he had last week, through the earnest sym- pathy and support extended to him by the World and August Belmont." On April 28 its correspondent telegraphed, "The loudest talking is for Davis, the strongest for Ad- ams, the most boastful for Brown, while the friends of Trumbull and Cox counsel quiet- ly." The next day its advices from the same source were, "There is much talk about Hor- ace Greeley, but his friends are not making any vehement contest for him. Their policy, so far as they can be said to have one, ap- pears to be that of awaiting events ; they be- lieve their favorite to be the second choice, in a large measure, of both the Adams and Davis men." Editorially, at the same time, the Tribune said: "The Tribune has no can- 238 Greeley's Presidential Campaign didate; it asks for no particular man; but it does ask the choice of some man whose name should symbolize the national movement for reform." The position of Illinois in the convention was an important one. It was represented by forty-two delegates, and the supporters of Trumbull and Davis were stubbornly antag- onistic. The anti-Adams feeling among some of these delegates was very strong, and they were quoted as saying, after the publication of his letter to Wells, that Grant would carry their State against Adams by 50,000 major- ity. As events proved, this feeling caused Adams's defeat. The convention organized with Senator Schurz in the chair. Two days were devoted to preliminary matters, and on Friday, May 3, the platform was adopted and the ballot- ing for candidates took place. The platform, reported by Horace White, editor of the Chi- cago Tribune, opened with an address char- ging the Grant administration with corrup- tion, and the President with using his official position for personal ends, keeping corrupt men in public places, and being unequal to the duties of his office, and declaring that a party "thus led and controlled can no longer be of service to the best interests of the re- 239 Horace Greeley public." The resolutions demanded the im- mediate removal of all disabilities imposed for participation in the rebellion, a thorough reform of the civil service, the maintenance of the public credit and a speedy return to specie payments, and opposed further land- grants to railroads. On the question of the tariff it declared as follows: "Seventh. We demand a system of Fed- eral taxation which shall not unnecessarily interfere with the industries of the people, and which shall provide the means necessary to pay the expenses of the Government, eco- nomically administered, the pensions, the in- terest on the public debt, and a moderate annual reduction of the principal thereof; and, recognizing that there are in our midst honest but irreconcilable differences of opin- ion with regard to the respective systems of protection and free trade, we remit the dis- cussion of the subject to the people in their Congressional districts, and to the decision of Congress thereon, wholly free from execu- tive interference or dictation." The delegates were still "at sea" as re- gards the head of their ticket. On the pre- ceding night the New York Times corre- spondent, who the day before had insisted 240 Greeley's Presidential Campaign that Greeley stood no chance of the nomina- tion, reported no change, except that Greeley and Trumbull were "a little stronger"; and the Sun correspondent noted a belief that Adams was the coming man. The most influ- ential Adams men thought that he would be nominated without difficulty. On Thursday morning it was rumored in convention circles that B. Gratz Brown and Frank Blair were on their way to Cincinnati, and they arrived that evening. It had been stated from the time the delegates began to arrive that Brown would not attend the con- vention, and different reasons have been as- signed for his change of purpose. One writer ^ found his motive in jealousy of the growing influence of Schurz in the Liberal ranks, indicated by the selection of the Mis- souri Senator for chairman of the conven- tion. But Schurz was already a member of the upper house of Congress, and, as a for- eign-born citizen, could not receive the nomi- nation for President. Moreover, Brown could easily have ascertained that Schurz ad- vised against his own selection as chairman, both because he thought he could be more useful on the floor, and because it was his * Cincinnati correspondence of the Nation of May 9, 1872. 17 241 Horace Greeley opinion that a native-bom Eepublican should preside; and that he consented to take the place only when assured that, if he did not, it would go to a man who was radically ob- jectionable to the entire intelligent reform sentiment of the movement. The real ex- planation of the Blair-Brown scheme in favor of Greeley is rather to be sought in the long- time political enmity of the Blair and Adams families. When the balloting began, only vague ru- mors of the Brown program had reached a majority of the delegates, and very many of them were ignorant of the light in which it was regarded by their chairman. The first ballot resulted as follows: Greeley 147 Adams 205 Trumbull 110 Davis 92i Brown 95 Curtin 62 Chase 2^ This vote aroused the enthusiasm of the Adams supporters, but evidence of the Brown-Greeley deal was supplied at once. As soon as the result was announced the chairman, reading from a slip of paper which he held in his hand, informed the convention that a gentleman who had just received a large number of votes desired to make a com- munication, and Governor Brown ascended 242 Greeley's Presidential Campaign the platform. In his remarks he not only stated his own withdrawal, but urged the nomination of Greeley. The Missouri dele- gation at once retired for consultation, dur- ing which Schurz made a vigorous plea against handing over to Greeley their vote. In the first ballot Missouri had given Brown 30 votes and Trumbull 3. In the second ballot it gave Greeley 10, Trumbull 16, and Adams 4. In the fifth ballot it increased the vote for Greeley to 18, giving Trumbull 8 and Adams 4, and the total of this ballot gave Adams 309, and Greeley 258. Adams's sup- porters now counted on his nomination as a certainty on the next ballot, believing that the Trumbull vote (of 91) would be cast for him. The Illinois delegates were absent in con- ference when the sixth ballot was ordered, and the Greeley men began a noisy effort to start a stampede for their favorite. The dele- gates generally were in a nervous state, not understanding clearly how the wires were being pulled by the skilled manipulators, nor what the wishes of the most trusted leaders were; and had one of the latter taken the floor (as was suggested but not done), and moved the nomination of Adams by acclama- tion, there is little doubt that the convention 243 Horace Greeley would have so decreed. The Greeley sup- porters received unexpected aid when the vote of Illinois was announced, as it gave Greeley 14 and Adams only 27. This marked the beginning of the end. The Greeley hur- rah was kept up, votes were changed so rap- idly and amid so much confusion that the secretaries could not keep accurate register of them, and the chairman, unable to recog- nize any one, had to suggest that the changes be handed up in writing. When at last the announcement of the ballot was made, it gave Greeley 482 and Adams 187. Greeley was the nominee of the convention, with Brown for Vice-President. "When the call for a unanimous vote came," said the Tribune's re- port, "the element known as Free Trade and Kevenue Reform manifested a disposition to mar the enthusiasm by dogged silence, and an indignant and unanimous nay." When the country heard of this result, it taxed public credulity. Greeley's nomination by these tariff reformers and civil service re- formers seemed like an impossibility. At the Union League Club in New York city mem- bers individually predicted that the candi- date would decline the honor, but Greeley had no such intention. How could it seem to him otherwise than that the gratification of 244 Greeley's Presidential Campaign an ambition unsatisfied for years had come at last? Weed might consider him no politi- cian; Seward might overlook him in the ap- portionment of nominations and appoint- ments ; Lincoln might reject his advice. But now a great movement of the people in favor of that honest government and universal am- nesty for which he had so long been pleading, and on account of which he had made so seri- ous sacrifices, had called on him to be its leader. Never satisfied with the position and influence he had gained by means of his edi- torial pen, he now saw within his reach the great office which would bestow upon him an honor that would gratify his pride, and give him an opportunity to demonstrate those ad- ministrative qualities which he had been made to feel that others doubted. During the ses- sions of the convention he had been occupy- ing a room in a hotel near the Tribune office in order to be in close touch with the conven- tion. When the result of the final ballot was made known to him he received the news with a smiling countenance, and telegraphed at once, instructing his representatives in Cin- cinnati to tender to the convention his "grate- ful acknowledgment for the generous confi- dence " they had shown in him, adding, "I shall endeavor to deserve it." 245 Horace Greeley But tariff reform ! Greeley was ready to accept the platform. To a reporter who asked him that evening, "If the people elect a majority of Congressmen in favor of a repeal of the tariff bill, and Congress repeals that bill, what would be the duty of the next President of the United States ! " Greeley replied, "It would be his duty to sign the bill passed by Congress." " If you are elected President," again asked the reporter, " will you sign such a bill if Con- gress passes it I " Greeley replied, "I cer- tainly will." Greeley formally accepted the nomination in due order, and, on May 15, printed a card in the Tribune announcing that, from that date, he had "withdrawn absolutely from the conduct of the Tribune and would hence- forth, until further notice, exercise no con- trol or supervision over its columns." Although Greeley and his personal fol- lowers did not realize it, the disintegration of the body that nominated him began with the declaration of the final ballot. This was indicated by the press comments. The Na- tion, which spoke for the supporters of the, Liberal movement who considered Adams the type of candidate to represent them, and who could not be allured from revenue and civil 246 Greeley's Presidential Campaign service reform, repudiated the Cincinnati ticket at once, saying, "The convention has offered us a candidate of undoubted personal honesty, who is, and has long been, associ- ated intimately with the worst set of politi- cians the State contains — excepting the Tam- many ring — whose supporters at the conven- tion included some of the worst political trash to be found anywhere, who would, in all possibility be followed by them to Wash- ington, and who, if left in their hands there, would set up the most corrupt administration ever seen, and that from which least might be expected in the way of administrative re- form; who is not more remarkable for his generosity and kindheartedness than for the facility with which he is duped, and not more remarkable for his hatred of knavery than for the difficulty he has in telling whether a man is a knave or not." The New York Even- ing Post,* which would have supported Ad- ams with enthusiasm, rejected Greeley with • A conference of Republicans opposed to Grant's adminis- tration and not satisfied with Greeley was held, at the invi- tation of Carl Schurz, J. D. Cox, William Cullen Bryant, Os- wald Ottendorfer, David A. Wells, and J. Brinkerhoff, at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, in New York, on June 20, and William S. Groesbeck, of Ohio, was nominated for President, and Fred- erick Law Olmstead for Vice-President. But there the matter ended. Schurz later made speeches for Greeley. 247 Horace Greeley scorn, Mr. Bryant writing the editorial which stated "Why Mr. Greeley should not be sup- ported for the Presidency," the reasons being his lack of courage, firmness, and consist- ency; his bad political associations (espe- cially his alliance with Senator Fenton) ; his want of settled political convictions, except on the subject of the tariff, and "the gross- ness of his manners." But to the candidate, and perhaps to his campaign managers, all this objection seemed trivial after his acceptance, on the Cincinnati platform, by the Democratic National Con- vention on the ninth of July. To one of his associate editors who announced to him his nomination by the Democratic convention he remarked, " I shall carry every Southern State but South Carolina. That they will steal from me." Naturally, there was considerable appre- hension on the part of the Republicans when the campaign opened. If Greeley could poll the Democratic vote, the addition of not a very large number of Republicans would se- cure for him several important States. In 1872 Maine held her State election in Septem- ber, and Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana held theirs in October. To these States the whole country looked for the first indication 248 Greeley's Presidential Campaign of public sentiment on the new alinement. Maine responded with a Republican majority of a little over 17,000. The Tribune, to make the best of this, estimated the reduction of the previous Republican majority in the State by the Liberal movement at 5 per cent, and said, "The lesson, then, of the Maine election is plain. It reveals a percentage of change which, with proper organization and work, gives us Pennsylvania and Indiana in October. After these, the battle wins itself." When, in October, Pennsylvania gave a Re- publican majority of 40,443, and Ohio a Re- publican majority of 14,150, while Indiana gave Hendricks, the Democratic-Liberal, 1,148 majority, the Tribune counted 178 elec- toral votes for Greeley, 119 for Grant, and 69 in doubt, and said, "This leaves us but 6 votes to win from the doubtful States; it leaves Grant 65. On that showing, who can doubt which side the chances lie? Courage, friends. The enemy have done their worst. We have wrested Indiana from their grasp; the way to final victory is clear." This sort of journalism was more in vogue thirty years ago than it is now, but even then it really deceived no one but Greeley. He, up to the announcement of the result, seemed to have no doubt of his election, and to deem 249 Horace Greeley himself thousands of votes stronger in these States than were the State candidates. The managers of the Liberal canvass early real- ized the trend of public opinion, and they de- cided that Greeley should set out on a speech- making tour. Starting on September 18, he spoke in Pennsylvania and Ohio on his way to Cincinnati, where he made two elaborate addresses. On the return trip he spoke in Kentucky and Indiana, and again in Ohio and Pennsylvania. He presented himself as the champion of universal amnesty, and was cheered and encouraged by the friendly re- ception which he everywhere received. The Republican campaign managers, of whom perhaps Senator Roscoe Conkling was the leader, made the attacks on President Grant their keynote, defending the purity of his personal character and motives, and hold- ing up Greeley as weakly inconsistent when seeking the presidency on a platform adopt- ed by revenue reformers, and as the candi- date, not only of discontented Republicans, but of his lifelong opponents, the Democrats. In no presidential campaign did the cartoon- ists ever take so large a part. Greeley was a good subject for their witty pencils, and they dealt him some effective blows; for a really telling cartoon can carry home an ar- 250 Greeley's Presidential Campaign gument more forcibly and instantly than the most carefully prepared address. When the November returns came in, Greeley found that he was the most thor- oughly beaten candidate, so far as the elec- toral vote was concerned, who had ever run for President of the United States. Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas alone gave him their votes. Penn- sylvania, which had given the Eepublican candidate for judge 40,443 majority in Oc- tober, gave Grant 137,548; Ohio increased her October Republican majority of 14,150 to 37,531; and Indiana changed the small Lib- eral-Democratic majority to a Republican majority of 22,515. Greeley's own State gave a majority of 53,456 against him, and the majority for Grant in the whole country was 762,991. Many things contributed to this result. There are prominent participants in the Lib- eral movement of 1872 still living who think that, if Adams had been the choice of the Cincinnati convention, he would have been elected. Adams would have retained the sup- port of a good many earnest and consistent reformers who could not vote for Greeley, and he would probably have proved less dis- tasteful to Democrats than Greeley was 251 Horace Greeley found to be. But all such calculations have to reckon with U. S. Grant. Unfortunate as he was in many of the incidents of his first term administration, in the popular eye he was the general whose persistency and faith in the final result — whose generalship — had crushed the rebellion. He might lack experience in choosing civil oflQcers. He might stand up too firmly for his friends. He might give Federal support to unworthy Republicans in the South. He might, in a word, be attacked on this ground and on that. But so had been the early fathers of the re- public, whose names were now enshrined in the list of national heroes. To elect Greeley, to elect Adams, it was necessary to defeat Grant, and that was as hard a task in civil as in military movements. Greeley counted on the support of that large body of men whom he had so long ad- dressed with his pen, and especially of the agricultural classes. But he had been ad- dressing these men in defense of principles which had, for almost twenty years, been identical with the Republican party. The men who admired him as the opponent of slavery extension, as the defender of home productions, as the teacher of temperance, as the spokesman for the farmer, had fol- 252 Greeley's Presidential Campaign lowed his lead for many years as the most influential Republican editor of the country. The war feeling was by no means extin- guished. Distrust of the South had not yet disappeared. It was counting on a great un- certainty, therefore, for Greeley to expect to lead out of his old party's ranks, in 1872, the body of Republicans who had taken their po- litical instruction from his pen. The task would have been an easier one before the war. But, while Greeley's electoral vote was small, his popular vote reached 2,834,079, and this was large enough to account for the continued devotion of all his strictly personal following. The Tribune, on November 7, printed a card from Greeley announcing his resump- tion of the editorship "which he relinquished on embarking in another line of business six months ago," and saying that it would be his effort to make the paper "a thoroughly inde- pendent journal, treating all parties and po- litical movements with judicial fairness and candor, but courting the favor and depreca- ting the wrath of no one." He would gladly say anything he could to unite the whole peo- ple on a platform of universal amnesty and impartial suffrage, but for the present he could do most for that end by silence. As he 253 Horace Greeley would never again be a candidate for office, lie would give more regard to science, industry, and the useful arts, and would "not be pro- voked to indulgence in those bitter person- alities which are the recognized bane of jour- nalism." This same issue of the Tribune contained a remarkable editorial headed Crumbs of Comfort. In this it was set forth that for twelve years the Tribune had been supposed to keep "for the benefit of the idle and inca- pable a sort of Federal employment agency. . . . Any man who had ever voted the Re- publican ticket believed that it was the duty and the privilege of the editor of this paper to get him a place in the custom-house. Every red-nosed politician who had cheated at the caucus and fought at the polls looked to the editor of the Tribune to secure him ap- pointment as gager, or as army chaplain, or as minister to France. ... It is a source of profound satisfaction to us that office-seek- ers will keep aloof from a defeated candidate who has not influence enough at Washington or at Albany to get a sweeper appointed un- der the sergeant-at-arms, or a deputy sub- assistant temporary clerk into the paste-pot section of the folding-room. At last we shall be let alone to mind our own affairs and man- 254 Greeley's Presidential Campaign age our own newspaper, without being called aside every hour to help lazy people whom we don't know, and to spend our strength in efforts that only benefit people who don't de- serve assistance. At last we shall keep our office clear of blatherskites and political beg- gars." Such a declaration could not fail to give pain to the venerable editor of the Trib- une for more reasons than one. It pictured his editorial room as a sort of office-broker- age shop; it offended many of his friends who might consider themselves classed among the "red-nosed"; it counted him out of the list of future political advisers. His action was characteristic. As soon as he read the article he penned the following, and sent it up to the composing-room: "By some unaccountable fatality, an article entitled Crumbs of Comfort crept into our last, un- seen by the editor, which does him the gross- est wrong. It is true that office-seekers used to pester him for recommendations when his friends controlled the custom-house, though the ' red-nosed ' variety were seldom found among them; it is not true that he ever obeyed a summons to Washington in order that he might promote or oppose legislation in favor of this or that private scheme. In 255 Horace Greeley short, the article is a monstrous fable, based on some other experience than that of any editor of this journal." ^ This retraction did not appear in the Tribune. It was so severe a rebuke to the writer and publisher of the Crumbs of Comfort that Greeley was urged not to insist on its publication, on the ground that the matter would be soonest forgotten if it was simply dropped. In earlier years he would have asserted his authority and his judgment; now, crushed by his defeat, he yielded. In the last week of November the country was shocked to hear that Horace Greeley was critically ill, and he died at 6.50 p. m. on No- vember 29, 1872. His wife had been taken to Chappaqua, a helpless invalid, a short time before the date of the election, and he had watched by her bedside day and night. The Tribune in announcing his death said: "His incessant watch around the dying pillow of his wife had well-nigh destroyed the power of sleep. Symptoms of extreme nervous prostration gradually became apparent. His appetite was gone. The stomach rejected food. The free use of his faculties was dis- ' A facsimile of this paragraph was printed in the New York Boycotter in November, 1884. 256 statue in Greeley Square. His Death turbed, and he sank with a rapidity that, even to those who watched him closest, seemed startling." In one of Greeley's Letters to a Lady Friend (published in 1893), he wrote, under date of November 8, 1872, "As to my wife's death, I do not count it. Her suffer- ings since she returned to me were so terrible that I rather felt relieved when she peace- fully slept the long sleep. . . . Nor do I care for defeat, however crushing. I dread only the malignity with which I am hounded, and the possibility that it may ruin the Tribune. My enemies mean to kill that; if they would kill me instead I would thank them lovingly. And so many of my old friends hate me for what I have done that life seems hard to bear." His own words tell the story of his death. "Mr. Greeley," said Dr. Cuyler in his me- morial sermon, "died of a broken heart." He had seen the realization of a great ambition within his reach, and had been disappointed. Had he been elected, the campaign criticisms of old friends who had not followed him in his departure from the Republican ranks would have been forgotten in the mapping out of the policy to which he would have devoted himself, and his paper would have had a new status as the organ of the Federal admin- 18 257 Horace Greeley istration. But, cast down by his defeat — a rejected leader — the personal criticisms were killing, and it was only natural that he, with others, should fear for the future of the journal of his creation, which, he might sup- pose, must now look to a new constituency for support. But in his death all the animosities of the recent campaign were forgotten. New York city realized that it had lost its citizen whose renown was widest, and whose fame was most intimately associated with the metrop- olis, and the whole nation, through press and pulpit, paid tribute to his personal honesty and the purity of his aims. The body lay in state for a day in the City Hall, where it was viewed by more than fifty thousand persons, and among the attendants at the funeral were the President and Vice-President of the United States, Chief Justice Chase, and lead- ing United States Senators. The burial took place in Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn. The printers of the United States began at once a movement to erect over his grave a bust of the veteran editor made of melted newspaper type, and such a bust, designed by Charles Calverly, was unveiled there on December 4, 1876. The Common Council of the city, as their tribute, voted to name the 258 His Death little triangle at Broadway and Thirty-third Street "Greeley Square," and there a Greeley statue, by Alexander Doyle, was unveiled by the "Horace Greeley Statue Committee " on May 30, 1894. 259 INDEX ABO ABOLITIONISTS, defined, 124 ; ultra views of, 125-127; Gree- ley on, 128, 129, 135, 136, 156, 178. Adams, Charles Francis, candi- date before the Liberal Republi- can Convention, 235. Adams-Jackson campaign, 16. American Laborer (magazine), 115. BANKING, Greeley on, in New Yorker, 35-38. Banks speakership contest, 166. Bates, Edward, Greeley's candi- date for presidential nomination, 179. Beggars, Greeley's experience with, 106-108. Benjamin, Park, work on New Yorker, 29 ; advice to Greeley, 67. Bennett, James Gordon, offer to Greeley, 26 ; Greeley on, 67. Blaine, J. G., motion for amnesty, 220. Blunt, Joseph, 115. Brisbane, Albert, Greeley's sup- port of, 79-84. Brook Farm, 81. Brown, B. Gratz, leader in Liberal Republican movement, 227, 228 ; candidate for presidential nomi- nation, 235 ; withdrawal in favor of Greeley, 241-243. Brown, John, raid, 168. Bryant, William Cullen, 200, 248. CUR CALHOUN, John C, for Texas annexation, 142 ; Greeley's reply to, 154. CaUfornia statehood question, 156- 160. Carpetbagger scandals, 216, 226. Cass, presidential candidate, 151. Chappaqua farm, 92. Clark, Lewis Gaylord, on Greeley, 46 note. — , Myron H., candidate for Gov- ernor, 173. Clay, Henry, Weed's opposition to, in 1839, 45 ; Greeley's love of, 46, 119 ; tariff views, 110-113 ; presi- dential campaign of 1844, 119, 120 ; Greeley's choice in 1848, 148 ; defended as a slaveholder, 126, 144, 145 ; on Texas annexa- tion, 142 ; Compromise of 1850, 151-163. Cochran, John, nominated for Vice-President, 199. Coggeshall, James, loan to Gree- ley, 59. Compromise of 1850, 151-163. Congdon, C. T., 72. ConstitutionaUst, Greeley's work for, 26. Cooper libel suits, 11, 68. Crandall, Miss, opposition to her plan for negro education, 132. Curtis, George William, 72. 261 Horace Greeley DAL DALLAS, vote on tariff, 121. Dana, Charles A., 72, 82, 105. Davis, Judge David, candidate for presidential nomination, 235. Davis, Jefferson, Greeley on, 218, 220-222. Depew, C. M., anecdote of Greeley, 107. De Tocqueville on early American newspapers, 27. Douglas, Stephen A., in the Kan- sas-Nebraska contest, 1C3-165 ; Greeley favors for Senator, 178. Dred Scott decision, 168. EVENING Post, 111, 154 note. Express newsgathering, 73- F ARMING, Greeley on, 91-93. Fillmore signs compromise bills, 160. Finances, Federal and State, Gree- ley on, in the New Yorker, 35-38. Fourierism, Greeley's beUef in, 79- 84 ; later views, 85 ; Fourier As- sociation formed, 81. Foxes' stances, 90. Fremont campaign of 1856, 167 ; nominated for President in 1864, 199. Frye, W. H., 72, 106. Fugitive slaves, 144 ; compromise act, 160-163. Fuller, Margaret, 72, 82 ; member of Greeley's family, 88 : contri- butions to the Tribune, 88, 89. GARRISON, William Lloyd, abolition views, 126, 127 ; on Greeley, 171. Gay, Sidney Howard, 72, 187, 210. Greeley, Horace, landing in New York city, 2, 20 ; early farm ex- perience, 3-5 ; his mother, 3, 10 ; education, 6-8 ; precocity, 7 ; ORE ▼lews of college education, 8 ; attraction to the printer's trade, 9 ; personal appearance, 11, 12, 19, 22 ; first newspaper writing, 13 ; views on journalism, 15 ; in- terest in politics, 16 ; a protection- ist when a boy, 16 ; amusements, 17 ; non-user of intoxicants and tobacco, 18 ; employment in New York State and Pennsylvania, 19; first experiences in New York city, 21-24 ; partnership with Story, 24-26; offer by Bennett, 26 ; starts New Yorker, 27 ; his work on, 29 ; idea of newspaper work, 30 ; a poet, 32 ; editorial views in the New Yorker, 33-37 ; on "clean" journaUsm, 34, 66; State and Federal finances, 35- 38 ; financial straits, 38, 39 ; first meeting with Weed, 42 ; the two men contrasted, 44-40 ; edits the Jeffersonian, 47^9 ; work for the Whig (newspaper), 47 ; on State committee, 48 ; edits the Log Cabin, 50-52 ; its business man- agement, 52, 54 ; last of the New Yorker, 54, 55 ; on the civil serv- ice, 51 ; absent-mindedness, 54 ; on the failure of the New Yorker, 55 ; estimate of New York Trib- une, 56 ; equipment for editing, 56 ; contributor to Madisonian, 57 ; on the country press, 58 ; plan of the Tribune, 58, 60 ; Har- ri.son's death, 60 , birth and early struggles of the Tribune, 61 ; partnership with McElrath, 62 ; on Henry J. Raymond, 64 ; labor on the Tribune, 65, 69 ; views of the stage, 65 ; use of epithets, 67, 154 note ; report of Cooper libel suit, 68 ; newspaper versatility, 71 ; associates, 72 ; value of his "isms" to the Tribune, 76; his view of Independent thinking, 262 Index ORE 76-78, 83, 146; refusal to be guided by Weed, 78 ; early sympathy with socialism, 79 ; support of Brisbane's Fourierism, 79-84 ; director of North American Phalanx, 81 ; discussion with Raymond, 84 ; later views ou socialism, 84-86 ; acceptance of Graham's dietetic doctrine, 86 residence on the East River, 88 Margaret Fuller's views, 88, 89 opinion of spiritualism, 89-91 views on farming, 91-93 ; at Chappaqua, 92 ; sympathy with Ireland and Hungary, 93 ; as counselor-at-large, 94 ; his lec- tures, 95-97 ; member of Con- gress, 98-103, 151 ; visits to Lon- don and Paris, 104 ; how he "ed- ited" the Tribune, 105; letters to Dana, 105, 106 ; experience with beggars, 106-108 ; editorial- room pictures, 108, 109 ; advocate of a protective tariff, 110-122; views of President Tyler, 113, 114 ; early prominence as a pro- tection advocate, 115 ; his tariff principles, 116-118 ; support of Clay in 1844, 119, 120 ; plague of boils, 120 ; Clay his choice in 1848, 122, 148 ; part in the aboli- tion of slavery, 123 ; party influ- ence over, 125, 129 ; his idea of conservatism, 126 ; defense of Clay as a slaveholder, 126, 144, 145 ; opinions of the Abolition- ists, 128, 129, 135, 136, 143, 156, 178 ; the Tribune's influence in the slavery contest, 133 ; early views on slavery, 134-136 ; on the murder of Lovejoy, 136 ; on Texas annexation, 137-148 ; list- less support of Taylor, 148-151; defiance of New York " business interests," 149-151, 161, 162 ; op- position to slavery in Congress, 263 * GRE 151 ; Compromise of 1850, 151- 163 ; reply to Calhoun, 154 ; on Webster's 7th of March speech, 158 ; abandons Wilmot proviso, 159 ; on fugitive slave law, 161- 163 ; favors Scott's nomination, 163 ; on Kansas-Nebraska con- test, 163, 165 ; early attitude toward Republican party, 166, 178 ; attack by Rust, 166 ; on Fremont's defeat, 167 ; Dred Scott decision, 168 ; Lecompton contest, 168 ; John Brown raid, 168 ; on office-holding editors, 171, 172, 175 ; desire for guberna- torial nomination, 172, 173, 176 ; advocacy of prohibition, 172 ; complaint to Seward, 173 ; letter dissolving the " firm of Seward, Weed, and Greeley," 174-177; fa- vors Douglas for Senator, 178 ; delegate to National Repubhcan Convention of 1860, 179 ; prefer- ence for Bates, 179 ; reason for opposing Seward's nomination, 179, 183 : Raymond's letter, 180- 182 ; defeated for United States Senator, State Comptroller, and Congress, 182, 183 ; not a candi- date for office under Lincoln, 184 ; justifies the right to secede, 184-187 ; " Forward to Rich- mond" cry, 188, 189; letter to Lincoln after Bull Run, 190 ; efforts for foreign mediation, 193-196 ; Prayer of Twenty Mil- lions, 196-198 ; opposition to Lin- coln's renomination, 199-201 ; proposed withdrawal of Lincoln's name, 201 ; a faultfinder, 202 ; Niagara Falls negotiations, 203- 208; letter to Lincohi, 208; a suppressed editorial, 210, 211 ; final view of Lincoln, 212, 213 ; for universal amnesty and im- partial suffrage, 217-226; de- Horace Greeley GRB stroys his chance for United States Senator, 818 ; on Jefferson Davis, 218, 220-222 ; on President Johnson's course, 219 ; action of Union League Club, 221, 222 address in Richmond, 223-225 trip to Texas, 225 ; failure as a prophet, 225 ; signs letter in fa vor of Liberal movement, 234 candidate before the Liberal Re pubUcan Convention, 235-243 nominated for President, 244 acceptance of tarifC plank, 246 ■withdrawal from Tribune, 246 speech-making tour, 250 ; his de feat and its causes, 251-253 ; re Bumes Tribune editorship, 253 Crumbs of Comfort editorial 254-256 ; his death and its cause 256-258; bust and statue, 258 259. Greeley, Mrs. Horace, her hus- band's first acquaintance with, 87 ; a Grahamite, 87; admirer of Margaret Fuller, 88 ; acceptance of spiritualism, 90 ; requirements at Chappaqua, 93 ; her death, 256, 257. — , Zacheus, 2-5, 10. Godkin, E. L., on Greeley's nomi- nation, 236, 247. Godwin, Parke, 83, 116. Graham, Sylvester, dietetic doc- trine, 86. Grant, U. S., causes of Republican opposition to, 214 ; sides with Missouri radicals, 228. Griswold, R. W., work on New Yorker, 29. HARRISON, campaign of 1840, 49-52 ; death of, as affecting the Tribune, 60. Hay, John, messenger to Greeley, 205, 207. Hildretb, the historian, 72. LIN Hoffman, C. H., work on New Yorker, 29. Howe, James, 24. Hungary, Greeley's sympathy with, 93. IRELAND, Greeley's sympathy with, 93. JACKSON-Adams campaign, 16. Jeffersonian (newspaper), 42, 43, 47-49. Jewett, W. C, part in Niagara FaUs negotiations. 203-208. "Jim Crow" cars in Massachu- setts, 131. Johnson, President Andrew, Gree- ley on, 219. Jones, George, 13. Journalism, the best school, 14; country, 15, 58 ; ofiQce-holding editors, 171, 172. KANSAS - Nebraska question, 163-165. Kuklux, Greeley on, 226. T ECTURES, Greeley's, 95-97; -'— ^ early lecture field, 95. Liberal Republican movement, origin of, 226-229; Sumner's part, 230-232 ; how tariff question in- volved, 232-234 ; Cincinnati con- vention, 234-244 ; platform, 239 ; balloting, 242-244 ; Greeley's nomination, 244 ; early dissolu- tion of the movement, 246, 247. Lincoln, Abraham, Greeley's pref- erence for Douglas, 178 ; caution to Greeley, 186 ; Greeley's letter to, after Bull Run, 190-192 ; reply to Greeley's Prayer of Twenty Millions, 197; Greeley's opposi- tion to his renomination, 199-202 ; part in Niagara Falls negotia- tion, 203-208 ; suppressed edito- 264 Index LOG rial on, 210 ; Greeley's final view of, 212, 213. Log Cabin (newspaper), how start- ed, 50 ; its character, 50-52 ; big circulation, 52. Lottery ticket selling, 26. Love joy, E. P., murder of, 136. — , Owen, on emancipation procla- mation, 198 note. MADISONIAN (newspaper), in- vitation to Greeley, 57. McElrath, T., partner in the Tri- bune, 62. Mercier, Greeley's approach to, 193. Mileage abuse, Greeley's attack on, 99-103. Missouri compromise, 127. Missouri, Liberal Republican move- ment in, 226-230. Morning Post, 25. nSTEBRASKA question, 163-165. -^^ Negro education. Northern opposition to, 132. Newspapers, early, in the United States, 27 ; New York city in 1842, 58 ; Greeley on the " Satan- ic press," 66. New York city in 1830, 1 ; literary tastes in 1828, 28 ; bank suspen- sions in 1837, 37 ; newspapers in 1842, 58. New Yorker started, 27; character of, 30-34 ; topics discussed, 35-38 ; a financial failure, 38, 39 ; last days, 54, 55 ; on slavery and the Abolitionists, 134-136 ; on Love- joy's murder, 136 ; on Texas an- nexation, 143. Niagara Falls peace negotiations, 203-208. Northern Spectator, Greeley's em- ployment on, 10-16, 19. Noyes's Academy, attack on, 132. SHE TDAPER money, laborers' oppo- -*- sition to, 36 note. Phalanx, North American, 81, 82. Polk, J. K., election of, 120 ; letter to Kane, 121. Porter, W. T., 24. Prayer of Twenty Millions, 196-198. Prohibition, Greeley's advocacy of, 172. /^UINCY, Edmund, 78. RAYMOND, Henry J., concern- ing the New Yorker, 29 ; Greeley's assistant, 64 ; discus- sion on Fourierism, 84 ; founds New York Times, 94 ; Lieutenant- Governor, 173; letter on Greeley's opposition to Seward's nomina- tion, 180-182 ; on Greeley's media- tion schemes, 195, 196 ; reports Republican platform, 204. Redfield, J. S., 24. Republican party, founding of, 166 ; Greeley's attitude toward, 166. Ripley, George, 72, 83. SCOTT, Gen. W., Tribune favors his nomination, 163. Schurz, Carl, part in Liberal move- ment in Missouri, 227, 228, 230 ; chairman Liberal national con- vention, 241. Secession, the right of, 184. Seward, William H., Greeley's com- plaint to, 173 ; dissolution of "firm of Seward, Weed, and Greeley," 174-176 ; letter to Weed, 177 ; Greeley's objection to his nomination, 179 ; Secretary of State, 184 ; reply to Mercier, 193-195 ; on Greeley's negotia- tions, 196. Shepard, H. D.'s, Morning Post, 25. 265 Horace Greeley SLA Slavery, Greeley's part in its abo- lition, 123 ; Abolitionists defined, 124 ; their erratic views, 125 ; early antislavery societies, 130 ; Northern attitude, 128-136 ; the Triljune's influence as an oppo- nent of slavery, 133 ; Lovejoy's murder, 136 ; Texas annexation, 137-148; Supreme Court decision, 144 ; Greeley's rebukes of New York "business interests," 149, 161 ; Greeley's attitude in Con- gress, 151 ; Compromise of 1850, 152-163 ; conference of Southern Congressmen, 154-156 ; talk of disunion, 156, 162 ; Dred Scott de- cision, 168 ; John Brown raid, 168; emancipation proclamation, 196-198. Socialism, Greeley's views, 79-86. Spirit of the Times (newspaper), 24. Spiritualism, Greeley's views on, 89-91. Stage, Greeley's views on, 65. Story, Francis, 24. Sumner, Charles, quarrel with Grant, 230-232. Sun (newspaper). Tribune "war" with, 63. Sylvania enterprise, 82. Sylvester, S. J., 24. TARIFF, Greeley's views on, 110- 122 ; compromise of 1833, 110- 113; Tyler's position, 113, 114; the leading political issue, 114; Greeley's early advocacy of pro- tection, 115-118 ; Clay campaign of 1844, 119, 120 ; Polk's position, 121 ; R. J. Walker's views, 121 ; tariff vs. slavery, 161 ; part in the Liberal Republican campaign of 1372,232-234 ; Liberal Republican plank, 240 ; Greeley's acceptance of it, 246. Taylor, Bayard, 72, 96. TRI Taylor, Gen. Z., Greeley's listless support of, 148-151 ; on admission of California, 157. Temperance, Greeley's views, 18, 172. Texas annexation, 137-148. Tilden, SamuelJ., 116. Times, New York, started, 94. Tribune, New York, Greeley's esti- mate of, 56 ; his plan of, 58-60 ; capital to start with, 59 ; its birth and early struggles, 61 ; weekly and semi editions begun, 62, 63 ; price, 63 ; war with the Sun, 63 ; its news character, 65-67 ; growth of subscriptions and advertise- ments, 69, 70 ; source of its influ- ence, 71 ; associate editors, 72 ; express news-gathering, 73-76 ; value of Greeley's " isms," 76 ; Brisbane's contributions, 80 ; support of Association scheme, 81 ; women's suffrage, 89 ; on spiritualism, 90, 91 ; its agricul- tural department, 91 ; 'exposure of mileage abuse, 100 ; Greeley's thorough editing, 103 ; on Tyler's tariff bill veto, 114 ; Clay edition, 119 ; part in the antislavery con- test, 123 ; on the Abolitionists, 129, 156 ; on fugitive slaves, 144 ; position on slavery question stated, 145, 147 ; on Texas an- nexation, 145-148 ; listless sup- port of Taylor, 148, 149, 151 ; re- buke of New York " business in- terests," 149, 161 ; on Van Buren- Adaras ticket, 151 ; on campaign of 1850, 157 ; on Webster's 7th of March speech, 158 ; on Kan- sas-Nebraska question, 163-165 ; Virginia indictment of, 167 ; on Dred Scott decision and John Brown's raid, 168 ; advocacy of the Maine law, 172 ; service to Seward, 174 ; on the right to se- 266 Ind ex TYL cede, 184-187 ; office attacked by a mob, 187 ; "Forward to Rich- mond" cry, 188; hopes for Grant's administration, 214 ; causes of its later hostility, 215 ; on amnesty, 217 ; reports and comments during the Liberal Republican convention, 237-239 ; Greeley's withdrawal from, 246 ; editorials during Liberal cam- paign, 248, 249 ; Greeley's return to, 253 ; Crumbs of Comfort edi- torial, 254-256 ; Greeley's fear for, 257. Tyler, President John, tariff recom- mendations, 113 ; Tribune's sup- port of, 113 ; Greeley's view of, 113, 114, 146 ; veto of tariff bill, 114 ; on Texas annexation, 140- 142. UNION League Club, proposed action against Greeley, 221, 222. Universal amnesty, 217. Upshur, A. P., Secretary of State, a Texas annexationist, 141. VALLANDIGHAM, Greeley's reported correspondence with, 195. Van Buren, Martin, Greeley'a thrust at, 51 ; tariff views. 111 ; Free Soil candidate, 127 ; on Texas question, 140, 142, 143 ; Van Buren-Adams ticket, 151. YOU WALKER, R. J., tariff views, 121. Webb, James Watson, on Greeley's dress, 11. Webster, Daniel, on Texas ques- tion, 138, 139, 141 ; 7th of March speech, 153-158. Weed, Thurlow, founding of the Albany Journal, 40 ; first meet- ing with Greeley, 42 ; the Jeffer- sonian, 43 ; Weed and Greeley contrasted, 44, 46 ; Clay's defeat in 1837, 45 ; discovery of Greeley, 46 ; Greeley's independence of, 78 ; on Greeley's proposed nomi- nation for Governor, 172 ; Gree- ley's complaints to Seward, 173- 176 ; Seward's letter to, 177 ; on Greeley's letter to Seward, 182 ; defeats Greeley's chances for ofSce, 182. Whig (daily newspaper), 47. — party, 1836 to 1840, 41-62 ; final defeat of, 163. White, Horace, on New York bank- ing laws, 35 ; reports Liberal Re- publican platform, 239. Wilmot proviso, Greeley on, 158, 159. Wilson, Henry, on Greeley, 166, 187. Winchester, Jonas, 26. Women's suffrage, Greeley on, 89. Wood, Fernando, proposed seces- sion of New York city, 185. Y OUNG, John Russell, on Grant's administration, 214. (1) THE END 267 THREE IMPORTANT BOOKS. Recollections of the Civil War. By Charles A. Dana. With Portrait and Index. Large i2mo. 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