The Mount Rushmore of Editorialists: Horace Greeley

I am running a series on the great American editorialists This is part three. Part two is here. Part one is here.

I have previously defined a "great editorialist" with the following qualities: insightful, sometimes witty, frequently pithy, prudent, and most of all perceptive. At best, Horace Greeley was mainly insightful and perceptive. What Greeley really had going for him was influence, especially with President Lincoln. Of all editorialists, no one had a greater impact on the events of Lincoln's presidency.

Greeley began as editor of the New-York Tribune in 1841. That same year, he created a national version of his newspaper, called the Weekly Tribune, which was distributed by mail. 

During the years 1848-1849, Greeley served as a congressman from New York. It was during those years he first met Abraham Lincoln. It was also during this time that he introduced legislation to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia (this was later passed during the early years of the Civil War). Greeley was one of the great abolitionists of the era, which will be shown later.

Outside of his newspaper work, Greeley was very influential in politics, and was involved in the forming of the Republican Party. It has been speculated that Greeley, as a delegate at the first Republican National Convention in 1860, worked to get Lincoln nominated. True or not, what is known is that Greeley had Lincoln's ear during the Civil War. This was good for Lincoln, since Greeley was the most influential publisher/editorialist of his era. Imagine a 19th century Rush Limbaugh/Walter Cronkite, and that was Greeley.

Flash forward to August 19, 1862, when Greeley wrote and published what was arguably the most important editorial in American history: The Prayer of the Twenty Millions. Here is a small sample of the editorial, directed at Lincoln:

We complain that the Union cause has suffered, and is now suffering immensely, from mistaken deference to Rebel Slavery. Had you, Sir, in your Inaugural Address, unmistakably given notice that, in case the Rebellion already commenced were persisted in, and your efforts to preserve the Union and enforce the laws should be resisted by armed force, you would recognize no loyal person as rightfully held in Slavery by a traitor, we believe the Rebellion would therein have received a staggering if not fatal blow. At that moment, according to the returns of the most recent elections, the Unionists were a large majority of the voters of the Slave States. But they were composed in good part of the aged, the feeble, the wealthy, the timid--the young, the reckless, the aspiring, the adventurous, had already been largely lured by the gamblers and negro-traders, the politicians by trade and the conspirators by instinct, into the toils of Treason. Had you then proclaimed that Rebellion would strike the shackles from the slaves of every traitor, the wealthy and the cautious would have been supplied with a powerful inducement to remain loyal. As it was, every coward in the South soon became a traitor from fear; for Loyalty was perilous, while Treason seemed comparatively safe. Hence the boasted unanimity of the South--a unanimity based on Rebel terrorism and the fact that immunity and safety were found on that side, danger and probable death on ours. The Rebels from the first have been eager to confiscate, imprison, scourge and kill: we have fought wolves with the devices of sheep. The result is just what might have been expected. Tens of thousands are fighting in the Rebel ranks to-day whose, original bias and natural leanings would have led them into ours.

Some have speculated that Greeley's editorial put pressure on Lincoln to accelerate his emancipation plan, which Lincoln had actually planned for the end of the war. In fact, Lincoln's reply to Greeley's editorial shows that Lincoln was still not convinced of the need for emancipation:

"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union." 

By September 22, 1862, Lincoln announced he would issue the Emancipation Proclamation, which he did on January 1, 1863.

Greeley was not a great writer by any stretch of the imagination. He was verbose, and even one of his great lines has gotten re-written by history:

If any young man is about to commence the world, we say to him, publicly and privately, Go to the West. 

If you ever heard the phrase "Go west, young man", it was a popularly edited version of Greeley's comment above.

Regardless, if Abraham Lincoln deserves to be on Mount Rushmore, Horace Greeley doubly deserves the honor to be on a Mount Rushmore of editorialists.