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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Horace Greeley Biography GREELEY, Horace, journalist, born in Amherst, New Hampshire, Feb. 3, 1811; died Nov. 29, 1872. He secured a common school education, learned the printer's art at East Poultney, Vermont, and became assistant editor of the "Northern Spectator." He came to New York City in 1831 with a capital of $10. Shortly after he engaged in printing and in 1834 established "The New Yorker." In 1810 he published the "Log Cabin," a weekly newspaper that attained a circulation of 80,000, and was of material aid to W. H. Harrison in the presidential election of that year. The success of this publication gave him considerable prestige in founding the "New York Tribune" in 1841, which he edited until his death. He was elected a member of congress in 1848, and visited Europe in 1851 on a commission to the Crystal Palace Exposition held in London. During the Civil War he supported the Union, advocated the election of President Lincoln, and, after the surrender of General Lee, favored general amnesty and universal suffrage for the purpose of bringing about a better feeling between the north and south. He went to Richmond in 1867, where he signed a bail bond for Jefferson Davis, an act that met with strong condemnation in the northern states. He was nominated by the liberal republicans and democrats in 1872 for the presidency against General Grant, but met with defeat. The extraordinary strain of the election and the decease of his wife caused an illness, from which he died a few weeks later. Greeley was an able journalist, an influential and popular orator, and a careful student of men. Among his best known writings are "The American Conflict;" Glances at Europe;" "Recollections of a Busy Life;" "History of the Struggle for Slavery Extinction," and "What I Know About Farming." The Teachers' and Pupils' Cyclopædia, Vol. I (Kansas City: Bufton Book Co., 1909) 761-762. |