Horace Greeley: Champion of American Freedom

by Robert C. Williams

From his arrival in New York City in 1831 as a young printer from New Hampshire to his death in 1872 after losing the presidential election to General Ulysses S. Grant, Horace Greeley (b. 1811) was a quintessential New Yorker. He thrived on the city’s ceaseless energy, with his New York Tribune at the forefront of a national revolution in reporting and transmitting news. Greeley devoured ideas, books, fads, and current events as quickly as he developed his own interests and causes, all of which revolved around the concept of freedom. While he adored his work as a New York editor, Greeley’s lifelong quest for universal freedom took him to the edge of the American frontier and beyond to Europe. A major figure in nineteenth-century American politics and reform movements, Greeley was also a key actor in a worldwide debate about the meaning of freedom that involved progressive thinkers on both sides of the Atlantic, including Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Karl Marx.
Greeley was first and foremost an ardent nationalist who devoted his life to ensuring that America live up to its promises of liberty and freedom for all of its members. Robert C. Williams places Greeley’s relentless political ambitions, bold reform agenda, and complex personal life into the broader context of freedom. Horace Greeley is as rigorous and vast as Greeley himself, and as America itself in the long nineteenth century.
In the first comprehensive biography of Greeley to be published in nearly half a century, Williams captures Greeley from all editor, reformer, political candidate, eccentric, and trans-Atlantic public intellectual; examining headlining news issues of the day, including slavery, westward expansion, European revolutions, the Civil War, the demise of the Whig and the birth of the Republican parties, transcendentalism, and other intellectual currents of the era.

Genres: History

440 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2006

Reviews

[Mark Phillips · Rating 5 out of 5]

A solid, well-documented biography of a fascinating and flawed man, an extended analysis of the gradual shift in American notions of freedom, a nuanced account of the shifting fortunes of the Whig, Republican, and Democratic parties, as well as all the little single-issue parties that complicated the political landscape of mid-19th-century American politics, a timely examination of the role of the press in politics and both the promise and threat of a naive parvenu with way too much influence combined with sometimes more integrity than sense. I'm an American history buff, and I learned a lot. Greeley's interactions with Lincoln revealed a side of Lincoln I hadn't encountered before. The insights into the 1872 presidential election were mostly new to me, as were the connections of Jefferson Davis and George N. Sanders to John Wilkes Booth and Lincoln's assassination. Vignettes involving Karl Marx, John Fremont, William Lloyd Garrison, Mark Twain, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and John Brown were interesting.

[Kathleen Nalley · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you want to read about this fascinating man without all the unnecessary commentary from the author, find another book. This was a well-referenced (I appreciate that) text, but not what I was looking for. His life story was buried.

[cariniverse · Rating 3 out of 5]

For Concord Review

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

...Both McClellan and Lincoln pleaded with the press to keep secret the information they received about troop movements. The reporters, in turn, were generally ignorant about all matters of military strategy and tactics. Like their papers, they were actively partisan in their politics. Using the heroic language of chivalry, they often produced ignorant and outmoded dispatches. They therefore came to depend on official news briefings provided by the War Department.

Charles A. Dana once received the following battle report from a Tribune reporter in the early days of the war: "To God Almighty be the glory! Mine eyes have seen the work of the Lord and the cause of the righteous hath triumphed." Wrote Dana in reply: "Hereafter, in sending you reports, please specify the number of the hymn and save telegraph expenses."

[Justin Bumgarner · Rating 3 out of 5]

This sucked but it wasn't because of the author, it was the subject. F*ck Horace Greeley