Horace
Greeley
founded the New York Tribune in 1841. Greeley took a strong
moral tone in his newspaper and campaigned against alcohol, tobacco,
gambling, prostitution and capital punishment. However, his main concern
was the abolition of slavery and the
introduction of universal suffrage.
Greeley was very interested in socialist
and feminist ideas and published articles by Karl
Marx, Charles Dana, Margaret
Fuller and Jane Grey Swisshelm
in his newspaper. He also promoted the views of Albert Brisbane, who
wanted society organised into co-operative communities.
After the demise of the Whigs, Greeley supported
the Free Soil Party. He was one of the
leaders of the campaign against the 1850
Fugitive Slave Law and in 1856 helped form the Republican
Party.
During the Civil War Greeley and the
New York Tribune supported Abraham
Lincoln, but opposed his renomination in 1864.
Greeley was highly critical of the presidency of Ulysses
G. Grant and became associated with the Radical
Republicans. Later he helped form the Liberal Republican Party.
In 1872 he Liberal Republican Party nominated Greeley as their candidate
and he stood against Ulysses G. Grant
for the presidency. During the campaign Thomas
Nast produced a series of cartoons attacking Greeley. He commented
that the venom of these cartoons were so bad that he "scarcely
knew whether he was running for the presidency or the penitentiary."
Greeley, won 40% of the popular vote but died soon afterwards on 29th
November, 1872. One friend claimed that he had been "crushed
by the unmerciful ridicule Nast had heaped on him."
New York Tribune building in
Printing House Square, New York (1865)
(1)
Clarence Darrow, The Story of My Life
(1932)
From my youth I was always
interested in political questions. My father, like many others in
northern Ohio, had early come under the spell of Horace Greeley, and,
as far back as I can remember, the New York Weekly Tribune
was the political and social Bible of our home. I was fifteen years
old when Horace Greeley ran for the presidency. My father was an enthusiastic
supporter of Greeley and I joined with him; and well do I remember
the gloom and despair that clouded our home when we received the news
of his defeat.
Our candidate, Samuel J. Tilden, was elected in 1876, but was not
allowed to take his seat. The Civil War was not then so far in the
background as it is now, and any sort of political larceny was justifiable
to save the country from the party that had tried to destroy the union.
So, though Tilden was elected, Rutherford B. Hayes was inaugurated
and served Tilden's term.
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