Greeley

Greeley, Horace (1811-72), American journalist and politician, was the son of a small farmer at Amherst, New Hampshire. At the age of 15 he was apprenticed to a printer at East Poulteney, Vermont. In 1834 he started a literary weekly paper entitled the New Yorlter, and soon afterwards the Log Cabin, which was political. The New York Tribune, which he edited until his death, was established in 1841, while the Log Cabin and New Yorker became merged in the Weekly Tribune. The Tribune supported a protective tariff, advocated temperance and co-operation, and agitated for the abolition of slavery and capital punishment. In this paper Greeley showed considerable sympathy with the socialistic views of Fourier (q.v.). In 1848 he was elected to Congress. He was one of the earliest members of the Republican party, and was instrumental in securing the election of Lincoln (1860). His efforts to effect a reconciliation between North and South after the surrender of Lee made him very unpopular in the northern states. In 1872 he unsuccessfully opposed Grant for the presidency. He wrote The American Conflict (1864), and Recollections of a Busy Life (1869).