Horace Greeley
Horace Greeley (1811-1872) was born on February 11, 1811, in Amherst, New Hampshire. Greeley grew up on his parents’ farm and was the third of his seven siblings. He would attend a local school, though his attendance was quite irregular. In his private capacity, however, Greeley would be an avid reader and had apparently read the Bible at the age of five. In 1826, at the age of fourteen, Greeley would become an apprentice at the Vermont based newspaper The Northern Spectator. Greeley would remain there for five years until the newspaper ceased. With the money he had saved, Greeley decided to move to New York City. He worked briefly for the New York Evening Post as a typesetter, before establishing The New York Morning Post in 1833. The newspaper proved unsuccessful though, failing not long after its establishment. The printery itself continued, however, and after entering into a partnership with Jonas Winchester in 1834, the two established The New Yorker. During this time, Greeley also wrote for various other newspapers and journals, including the Daily Whig.
Later in 1838, Greeley would be made editor of the weekly Whig Party campaign organ, the Jeffersonian. Greeley’s efforts helped to elect the prominent Whig statesmen William H. Seward to the New York Governorship, and this also helped Greeley to establish a political alliance with Seward and Thurlow Weed, the latter of whom was Seward’s advisor. Later in 1840, Greeley would establish another Whig newspaper, The Log Cabin, which would aid William Henry Harrison’s successful presidential campaign. The following year, on April 10, 1841, Greeley would establish his most important newspaper, The New York Tribune, which became the most widely circulated newspaper in the country. The New York Tribune was strongly Whig, but not blindly so. Greeley would allow a broad array of alternative viewpoints, even employing Karl Marx as a foreign correspondent during the 1850s and 1860s. After the demise of the Whigs, Greeley would help found the Republican Party in 1854. Greeley would remain a committed Republican until 1871, when he defected from the Party in opposition to the alleged corruption of the Grant Administration. Greeley would then run for President of United States on the ticket of the newly formed, yet short lived, Liberal Republican Party, but would lose to Grant in a landslide.
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During his life, Greeley would author numerous works on the subject of political economy. His first work was a small compilation entitled Tracts on the Tariff which appeared in 1840. In 1843, he would publish a periodical entitled The American Laborer, Devoted to the Cause of Protection to Home Industry, which consisted of twelve issues. Then, in 1844, in support of Henry Clay’s presidential campaign, Greeley would publish Protection and Free Trade: The Question Stated and Considered. Later in 1858, he would also produce a pamphlet entitled Labour’s Political Economy; or the Tariff Question Considered. Greeley’s most important and theoretically sophisticated work would appear, however, in 1870. This was his Essays Designed to Elucidate the System of Political Economy, which was dedicated to Henry Clay. Two years after the publication of this work, Greeley would pass away near his home in Chappaqua, New York on November 28, 1872.