Horace Greeley

His father farmed badly enough that the family fled New Hampshire in 1820 rather than face debtor's prison, one step ahead of the sheriff more than once. Neighbors offered to send the bookish boy to Phillips Exeter Academy — his parents, too proud, refused the charity. At 15 Horace apprenticed to a Vermont printer and became, by his own account and everyone else's, the smartest boy in town, able to quote almanacs and atlases from memory. He walked to New York City in 1831 with almost nothing, worked odd printing jobs, and in 1834 launched a literary weekly, The New-Yorker, that built a following and lost money for seven straight years before the Panic of 1837 finished it off.

He opened the New-York Tribune on April 10, 1841, the day of President Harrison's funeral, with 92 dollars against 525 dollars in expenses that first week. It became the most quoted paper in the country, reaching a national readership through its mailed weekly edition. Greeley ran it as a personal instrument: he hired Karl Marx as a European correspondent, championed western settlement as a cure for eastern poverty, served three angry months in Congress exposing colleagues' travel allowances, and helped found the Republican Party in 1854. In 1872 he ran for president himself, nominated by Liberal Republicans disgusted with Grant's corruption, and lost in a landslide, 286 electoral votes to 66.

The idealism curdled into self-destruction more than once. In July 1864 he traveled to Niagara Falls convinced he could broker peace with Confederate commissioners who turned out to have no authority to negotiate anything, and Lincoln let him go and watched him embarrass himself in print. In 1867 he signed Jefferson Davis's bail bond, and the North that had cheered his wartime editorials turned on him overnight. The 1872 campaign finished the pattern. Thomas Nast's cartoons in Harper's Weekly savaged him week after week, his wife Mary died five days before the vote, and the defeat that followed left him unable to sleep or return to the paper he had spent 31 years building.

He died at a private asylum in Pleasantville, New York, on November 29, 1872, before the Electoral College ever met, so his 66 votes went to four other men instead. His daughters ignored his wish for a plain funeral and buried him from a grand service that President Grant himself attended — Harper's Weekly, the same paper that had run Nast's cartoons, wrote that no American death had been so mourned since Lincoln's. Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn holds the grave. The Tribune outlived him for decades before merging into the Herald Tribune in 1924, and the line "Go West, young man" stuck to his name long after historians concluded he probably borrowed it from someone else.

Horace Greeley's life against the full span of the corpus.

• The New-Yorker company
  A literary weekly that built a following and lost money for seven years 1834
• New-York Tribune company
  Founded April 10, the day of President Harrison's funeral 1841
• The American Conflict book
  A two-volume history of the Civil War, written from the Union side 1864
• Recollections of a Busy Life book
  His memoir 1868
• What I Know About Farming book
  One of several books he wrote promoting agrarian reform 1871

• February 3, 1811 aged 0 Born near Amherst, New Hampshire
• 1826 aged ~15 Apprentices to a Vermont printer at fifteen Neighbors had offered to fund Phillips Exeter Academy for him — his parents refused the charity.
• 1831 aged ~20 Walks to New York City to find printing work
• 1834 aged ~23 Launches the literary weekly The New-Yorker It built a following and lost money for seven straight years.
• April 10, 1841 aged 30 Founds the New-York Tribune First-week revenue was 92 dollars against 525 dollars in expenses.
• December 1848 aged 37 Takes a seat in the U.S. House His three-month term, exposing colleagues' travel allowances, made him deeply unpopular there.
• 1854 aged ~43 Helps found the Republican Party
• November 5, 1872 aged 61 Loses the presidential election to Ulysses S. Grant in a landslide His wife Mary had died five days earlier.
• November 29, 1872 aged 61 Dies at a private asylum in Pleasantville, New York

• Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803–1882
  Essayist and philosopher who led the Transcendentalist movement and shaped American intellectual thought. published in the Tribune
• Henry David Thoreau 1817–1862
  Writer and philosopher whose works on nature, individual conscience, and civil disobedience influenced environmentalism and political protest. published in the Tribune
• Susan B. Anthony 1820–1906
  Suffragist and civil rights leader who played a pivotal role in the women's suffrage movement. ally in reform causes
• Ulysses S. Grant 1822–1885
  18th President and Union Army general whose leadership was decisive in winning the Civil War. defeated him for the presidency
• Jefferson Davis 1808–1889
  President of the Confederacy whose defense of slavery and secession made him central to the Civil War and its memory. posted bail for