GREELEY, HORACE (1811-72). An eminent American journalist, born in Amherst, N. H., February 3, 1811, of Scotch-Irish ancestry. His father, Zaccheus Greeley, was a farmer whose unfertile acres kept him poor. Horace's early education was limited. In 1826 he entered the office of the Northern Spectator at East Poultney, Vt., and in 1830 he started out for himself as a journeyman printer, working at James town and Lodi, N. Y., and then at Erie, Pa. In August, 1831, he went to New York City, where, after doing journeyman work in several offices, he founded, January 1, 1833, with Francis V. Story and H. D. Shepard, the Morning Post (said to have been the first two-cent daily ever pub lished), which failed within three weeks, and which was succeeded in March, 1834, by the New Yorker, confessedly the best literary paper in America at that time. Greeley also about this time contributed leading articles to the Daily Whig. In 1838-39 he also edited the Jeffersonian, a political weekly published at Albany, and in 1840 edited and published the Log Cabin, a weekly, in the interest of Harrison as a Presiden tial candidate. These ventures prepared the way for the Daily Tribune, of which Greeley was at. first sole proprietor and publisher, as well as chief editor, and the first number of which ap peared April 10, 1841, followed in the autumn by the Weekly Tribune, into which the New Yorker and Log Cabin had been merged. The Weekly ultimately circulated widely throughout the Northern and Western States, and came to wield an influence unprecedented in the history of American journalism, Greeley thus becoming a recognized power in national as well as State politics.
In December, 1848, Greeley entered Congress, to fill a vacancy, and served until March 4, 1849. He was quick to discern and point out the evils and abuses of existing institutions, but he was neither a revolutionist nor an iconoclast. Though not in the strict sense of the word an abolitionist, he 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 strengthen the anti slavery sentiment of the Northern people, and to prepare them for the great struggle that ensued. In this Greeley was ably assisted by an unusual corps of editorial workers, including Bay ard Taylor, Charles A. Dana, James S. Pike, and George Ripley. In addition to its championship of the anti-slavery cause, the Tribune became prominent through its advocacy of protection, and the extraordinary hold of the weekly edition upon the farming class was due in no small meas ure to the attention which the interests of agri culture received in its columns. It is said, by men who shared Greeley's confidence, that though he was too proud to be an applicant for any office, or to take any step to secure a nomina tion, he yet felt very keenly the neglect of others to recognise his honorable claims for promotion upon the parties he served so faithfully and well. He was a delegate from Oregon to the Republican National Convention at Chicago in 1860, his own State refusing to send him, and was influential in bringing about the nomination of Lincoln in preference to Seward. When, after Lincoln's election, the South threatened to secede from the Union, he declared that if a majority of the people of any State, after full and free discussion, should sincerely and deliberately vote to leave the Union, he was willing that they should with draw. He held, however, that the votes actually taken at the South did not express the real con victions of the majority, but were the result of terrorism and panic; and when the Civil War broke out, he lent his voice and influence to the support of the Government in its efforts to suppress the Rebellion 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. The war once begun, he was in favor of its vigorous prosecution, and impatient with what seemed to him unreasonable 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 conference, which proved fruitless, with George N. Sanders, Jacob Thompson, and Bever ly 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. He held that the prolonged imprison ment of Jefferson Davis, without indictment or trial, was a palpable infraction of the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution, and he therefore joined with Gerrit Smith and others in signing the bail-bond of the late head of the Confederacy. This action, in the existing state of public senti ment at the North, brought upon him much odium. In 1861 he was a candidate for the Re publican nomination for United States Senator, but was defeated by Ira Harris. In 1864 he served as a Presidential elector, and in 1869 was the unsuccessful Republican candidate for Comptroller of the State of New York. In 1870 he was a candidate for Congress in the Sixth New York District, but was defeated, the district being overwhelmingly Democratic. He neverthe less ran 300 votes ahead of the Republican State ticket. In 1872 he was opposed to the renomi nation of General Grant for a second term, and cooperated with a body of Liberal Republicans who held a convention in Cincinnati, on May 1st, in advance of the regular Republican con vention, to nominate another candidate. On the sixth ballot the nomination fell to Mr: Gree ley, and was accepted by him. Much doubt has been expressed with regard to the wisdom of Mr. Greeley in allowing himself under the circum stances to be made a candidate for President upon the platform adopted by this party (see LIBERAL REPUBLICAN PARTY) ; but he himself considered that he thereby merely reaffirmed the principles for which he had contended as a Re publican, and that he neither made nor proposed any concession whatever to those who had opposed and resisted these principles. When the Demo cratic Party adopted that platform in its en tirety and without qualification, and nominated him as their candidate for President, he recog nized the political unwisdom of their action, but accepted it as the sign and pledge of a new de parture, 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. A man of sensitive spirit and of great pride, he was deeply wounded, disappointed, and mortified on finding himself accused by many of his old friends of having thrown away his principles, and of having entered into a conspiracy to turn over the government of the country to the con trol of the men who had instigated the Civil War. The popular vote cast for him amounted to 2,8:34.079, against 3,597,070 for General Grant ; but the only States carried by him were Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas. He bad overtasked his powers for many years. Near the close of the campaign he was called upon 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, sinking rapidly, died on November29,1872. He published: [lints Toward Reforms (1850) ; Glances at Europe (1851); History of the Struggle for Slavery Extension or Restriction in the United States (1856) ; Over land Journey to San Francisco (1860) ; The American Conflict (2 vols., 1864-66) ; Recollec tions of a Busy Life (1868) ; Essays Designed to Elucidate the Science of Political Economy (1869); and What I Know of Fanning (1871). Consult: The biographies of Greeley by Parton (New York, 1855; later edition, Boston, 1872) ; by Reavis (New York, 1872) ; by Ingersoll (Chi cago, 1873) ; and by Zabriskie (New York, 1890).. Consult also A Memorial of Horace Greeley(New York, 1873).