Greeley

GREELEY, Ilott;xCE (ante), the eminent American journalist, never enjoyed the advantages of. cellegiate'education, but he was an apt scholar and made the most of such opportunities for acquiring knowledge as were within his reach. His father was a poor, unprosperous farmer, and the boy, in his earliest years, was put to hard work. But he had an insatiable fondness for books, and every minute that he could spare from work or sleep was devoted to reading, and what he read he remembered. He neither shirked nor slighted any task, but did properly and well whatever the needs of the family required at his hands, the hope of finding time for reading acting as a constant stimulus to his fidelity. tie made more of the scanty advantages of an ill-furnished country printing-othee than sonic young men do of the opportunities afforded by a richly endowed college. The offer of " leading men in the neighborhood" to bear his expenses in a college course was doubtless declined by his parents not from any lack of apprecia tion of the advantages of such an education, but partly because they needed his services at home and partly on account of the pride which would not permit them to receive such a boon as an act of charity. However this may be, it is to be lamented that a man so richly endowed by nature did not receive the best education the country could fur nish. His early interest in political, industrial, and social questions was fortunate, for it was this that led him to qualify himself for a career of eminent usefulness. lie brought. to the discussion of such topics not the ambition of an office-seeker or the arts of the demagogue, but a strong desire and purpose to secure the highest welfare of the whole people. If he was not always right on current questions, nor always free from the impetuosity which too often mars the efforts of reformers, he discussed those ques tions with a vigor and intelligence not often exhibited by the conductors of political journals in his day. A high moral purpose was at the bottom of every form of politi cal and social activityto which he lent his support. He was a partisan, with many of the faults which must ever spring from that bitter root, but few men have ever enjoyed in a higher degree than himself the respect and confidence of his political opponents. 'When he came to New York in 1831, a boy of 20 years, poorly clad, with only $10 in his pocket, his aspirations were of the noblest sort, his character unsullied, his mind well informed upon many subjects of the highest interest. Every step from the obscurity of that period to the eminence he afterwards attained was perfectly natural. The Morning Post, the first penny daily ever published, was marked by that genius for editorship which he possessed in so high a degree. It failed not for lack of intellec tual strength. The New Yorker, which lived for seven years and was finally merged in the Weekly Tribune, was confessedly the best literary newspaper in America at that period. The Log Cabin, showed for the first. time how a campaign paper may be made a vehicle of instruction as well as a means of political excitement. These all, naturally enough, prepared the way for The Tribune, which was founded in 1841, and which is the noblest monument to his fame, In his Recollections of a Busy Life he says: "Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident; riches take wings; the only earthly certainty is oblivion; no man can foresee what a day may brimg forth, while those who cheer will often curse to-morrow: and yet I cherish the hope that the journal I projected and established will live and flourish long after I shall have molded into forgotten dust, being guided by a higher wisdom, a more unerring sagacity to discern the right, though not by a more unfaltering readiness to embrace and defend it at whatever personal cost; and that the stone which covers my ashes may bear to future eyes the still intelligible inscription, Founder of the New York Tribune." In 1848 he was elected to congress to fill a vacancy, serving from Dec. 1 of that year to March 4, 1849. He distinguished himself by an uncompromising but unpopular war against the abuses of the mileage system, thereby incurring the bitter hostility of not a few of his own party. In this as in many other instances he wascareless of his own popularity and bent only upon promot ing the public welfare. He was warmly interested in every movement. which seemed to Lim likely to improve the condition and enlarge the opportunities of the toiling poor, a»d his paper was ever open to the consideration of such themes. When the North American Phalanx was organized, in 1843, near Bed Bank, N. J., in part upon the principles of Charles Fourier, the French socialistic reformer, he gave it such aid as lay in his power. Ile opened the columns of The Tribune, to a limited extent, to an exposition and defense of Fourier's general plan, though dissenting very earnestly from some of his doctrines. Ile was intolerant of every assault upon the institution of the funnily, prompt to denounce every sentiment and practice inconsistent with the highest standard of social purity. He was quick to discern and point out the evils and abuses of existing insti tutions, but he was neither a revolutionist nor an iconoclast. He recognized the law of growth and development in human society, and, having done what he could to diffuse right principles, awaited the result with a cheerful confidence in the Providence that watches over human affairs. He lectured much in different parts of the country, generally upon topics of social and political reform ; and, though utterly destitute of the qualities of an orator, the respect entertained for his character and opinions was always sum to conttnand.for,iliim a wide and favorable hearil Ogricultural and manufacturing industries eligiged Much of his and fell. men in his day did Snore than he to promote their development. He served as one of the American jury men at the great London exposition of 1851, and before returning home traveled through France, Italy, and Great Britain. In 1855 he went to Europe for the second time, spending six weeks in Paris, where lie was imprisoned for two days, being prosecuted by aFrench sculptor, to recover compensation for damages done to a statue in the New York world's fair of 1853, of which he was a director. He was liberated in the reg ular course of judicial proceedings. If he had depended for his freedom upon the clemency of the emperor, his imprisonment would in all probability have been pro longed; for that monarch could hardly have been expected either to forget or forgive the American editor who had so conspicuously and persistently denounced as an inde scribable infamy the coup Want of 1851. Though not in the technical sense of the word an abolitionist, Mr. Greeley was an opponent of slavery, and foremost among those who sought to resist its extension to the territory acquired from Mexico. From 1850 to the end of the conflict, The Tribune, under his direction, did much to inform and invigo rate the anti-slavery sentiment of the northern people, and to prepare them for the great struggle that ensued. When, after the election of Lincoln in 1860, the south threatened to secede from the'union, he frankly declared that if a majority of the people of any state, after full and free discussion, should sincerely and deliberately vote to withdraw, he was willing they should do so. But he held that the votes actually taken at the south did not express the real convictions of the majority, but were the result of terror ism and panic; and when the rebellion broke out, he lent his voice and influence to the support of the government in its efforts to suppress it by force. He had a keen sense of the horrors of a civil war, and was willing to adopt any reasonable and rational plan to avert them. His belief was that if any of the states should deliberately decide to secede, they would soon conic to their senses and return to the union, and that this would be better than war. But when nearly the whole south gave itself up to the frenzy of secession and rebellion, he saw at once that the north had no other honorable alternative than a prompt and forceful resistance. The war once begun, he was in favor of its vigorous prosecution, and impatient with what seemed to him unreason able slowness on the part of the government. At times he was much discouraged, and disposed to think that, to avoid worse calamities, the war should be ended by some compromise short of the result most to be desired. It was this feeling that made him willing to go to Canada. in 1864, with the unofficial sanction of Lincoln, to hold a fruit less conference with George N. Sanders, Jacob Thompson, and Beverly Tucker, the confederate agents on the subject of 'peace. At the close of the war he advocated the doctrine of universal amnesty and universal suffrage. In other words, he held that there should be no civil penalties inflicted upon those who had taken part in the rebel lion, and that negroes should be admitted to vote on equal terms with the whites. He

held that the prolonged imprisonment of Jefferson Davis, without indictment or trial for any offense, was a palpable infraction of the sixth amendment of the constitution, which declares that " in all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed;" that the government was bound either to try or release him at once; and that to make a martyr of him by an imprisonment not warranted by law was a gratuitous aggravation of the obstacles to reconstruction, and a stigma upon the character of the republic. He therefore joined with Gerrit Smith and others in signing the bail-bond of Mr. Davis, whereby he and they became responsible to the government for his appearance to answer any indictment that might be found against him. This act, in the then state of public sentiment at the north, brought upon him much odium. but he was always proud of it as right in itself and calculated to promote the best interests of the country. It certainly was an act which demanded a high degree of moral courage for its performance. In 1861, not by any agency of his own, but doubtless with his own consent, he was a candidate for the republican nomination for U. S. senator, but was defeated by Ira Harris: In 1864 he served as a presidential elector, voting for the re-election of Lincoln. In 1869 he was the republican candidate for comptroller of the state of New York, but was defeated, the democrats being then in power in the state. In 1870 he was a candidate for congress in the 6th New York district, but without any chance of success, the district being overwhelmingly demo cratic. He ran 300 votes ahead of the republican state ticket: It is said by men who shared his confidence, that while he was too proud to be an applicant for any office or to take any step to secure a nomination, he yet very keenly felt the neglect of others to recognize his honorable claims for promotion upon the parties lie served so faithfully and well. This view of his character finds striking confirmation in a private letter addressed by him, Nov. 11, 1854, to gov. Seward. When, in 1860, Mr. Seward, largely no doubt through Mr. Greeley's influence, failed of a nomination for the presidency, he permitted his friends to make public allusions to the contents of this letter as affording evidence that Mr. Greeley's opposition to himself was of a selfish and personal charac ter. Mr. Greeley thereupon demanded the publication of the letter, in which, under the seal of privacy, he reminded gov, Seward of what he had done for the whip cause in 1838. and then said: " I was a poor young printer. . . I did the work required to the best of my ability, and 1414 it When it- was yotr?ivera governor, dis pensing offices worth $3,000 'to $20,000 per year to your friends and compatriots. I returned to my garret and my crust, and my desperate battle with the pecuniary obliga tions heaped upon me by bad partners in business and the disastrous events of 1837. I believe it did not then occur to me that some one of those abundant places might have been offered to me without injustice; I now think it should have occurred to you." And then he referred to his services for the party in the Harrison campaign of 1840, which had been requited after the same fashion. After the election was over, he says, "came the great scramble of the swell mob of corn minstrels and cider-suckers at Washington, I not being counted in. . . . I asked nothing, expected nothing; but you, governor Seward, ought to have asked that I be postmaster of New York.' It was for reasons such as these that lie notified gov. Seward of " the dissolution of the political firm of Seward, Weed, and Greeley, by the withdrawal of the junior partner," and the breach thus made was never healed. In 1872 Mr. Greeley was opposed to the renomination of gen. Grant for a second term, and co-operated with a body of "liberal republicans." who held a convention in Cincinnati, on the 1st of May, in advance of the regular republican convention, to nominate another candidate. On the 6th ballot the nomina tion fell to Mr. Greeley, and was by him accepted. The platform of the "liberal repub licans" affirmed in their entirety and in vigorous terms the cardinal principles of the republican party itself. It recognized the equality before the law of all men, of what ever nativity, race, color, or persuasion; it pledged its supporters to maintqin the union, emancipation, and enfranchisement, and to oppose any re-opening of the questions set tled by the latest amendment to the constitution; it demanded the immediate and abso lute removal of all disabilities imposed on account of the rebellion, in the belief that universal amnesty would result in the complete pacification of all sections of the coun try; it declared that local self-government, with impartial suffrage, would guard the rights of all citizens more securely than any centralized power; it declared that the public welfare required the supremacy of the civil over the military authority; freedom of persons under the protection of habeas corpus, and a return to the methods of peace and the constitutional limitations of power; it demanded a thorough reform of the civil service, which had become a scandal and reproach upon free institutions, and a source of demoralization dangerous to the perpetuity of republican government; and, finally, it declared that the public credit must be sacredly maintained, denounced repudiation in every form and guise, and demanded a speedy return to specie payment, as demanded alike by the highest considerations of commercial morality and honest government. Upon this basis the convention invited the co-operation of all patriotic citizens without regard to previous affiliations. Whatever may be the judgment of posterity as to the wisdom of Mr. Greeley in allowing himself under the circumstances to be made a can didate for president upon such a platform, it is only just to say that he understood him self to have reaffirmed the very principles for which he had contended as a republican, and to have neither made nor proposed any concession whatever to those who had opposed and resisted them. When the democratic party adopted that platform in its entirety and without qualification, and nominated him as their candidate for Asident, he accepted their action as the sign and pledge of a new departure, and believed that if he should be elected there would be an end of all political schemes having their root in the spirit of slavery and calculated to array the south against the north. Whether he was or was not deluded in this regard, there is no reason to doubt his entire sincerity and good faith in the course he pursued. Nor is there any reason to wonder that he was deeply wounded, disappointed, and mortified in finding himself accused by many of his old friends of having thrown away his principles and entered into a foul conspiracy to turn over the government of the country to the control of the men who had instigated the rebellion. It may be said that this accusation was alike natural and plausible, and that it was a weakness on his part not to have anticipated it; and perhaps this is all true. But those who stood near him in that conflict atlirm that it was not his defeat as a presidential candidate, but the cruel impeachment of his integrity by old friends, that wounded his spirit past all healing. The popular vote cast for him amounted to 2,834,079, against 3,597,070 for gen. Grant; but the only states carried by him were Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas.

He had overtasked his powers for many years. Near the close of the campaign he was required to watch at the bedside of his dying wife. During the whole contest his powers of endurance were strained to the utmost, and when it was at last over, he was prostrated by a disorder of the brain and sank rapidly into the arms of death. The sad event made a very profound impression upon the country, and showed how deeply he was admired rind loved by good men of all parties and every variety of opinion. His body lay in state in the city hall for one day, where it was visited by a vast multitude of people, many of whom lingered for hours iu the slow-moving procession for an opportunity to look upon his dead face. Ifis funeral was simple but very impressive, and was attended by the president and vice-president of the United States, and many other persons of distinction. He died as he had lived, in the faith of Universalism. His published volumes are as follows: Hints Toward Reforms (1850); Glances at Europe (1851); History of the Struggle for Slavery Extension (1856); Ocerland Journey to San Francisco (1860); The American Conflict (2 vols., Recollections of a Busy Life (1868); Essays Designed to Elucidate Science rf Political Economy (1870); and lirkat Know of Farming (1871). His life was written by James Parton in 1855, and a new edition appeared in 1868.