THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA IN MEMORY OF PROFESSOR EUGENE I. McCORMAC IT THE LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY, EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK TRIBUNE. BY JAMES PARTON. " If, on a full and final review, my life and practice shall be found unworthy my prin ciples, let due infamy be heaped on my memory ; but let none be thereby led to distrust the principles to which I proved recreant, nor yet the ability of some to adorn them by a suitable life and conversation. To unerring time be all this committed." HORACE GREELEY in 1846. NEW YORK: DERBY AND MILLER 1868. LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by MASON BROTHEK8, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by TICKNOR AND FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. r t i a c t * JUSTICE, alike to the author and to his subject, demands the explicit statement of a fact. Horace Greeley is wholly innocent of this book. Until I had determined to write it, I had no acquaintance with him of a personal nature, and no connection except that which exists between every subscriber to the Tribune and its editor. Since that time, I have had a few short interviews with him heard and overheard a few facts of his career from his own lips had two or three of my best stories spoiled by his telling me that that part of them which redounded most to his credit was untrue. He has had nothing whatever to do with the com position of the volume, nor has he seen a page of it in manu script or proof, nor does he know one word of its contents. I undertook the task simply and solely because I liked the man, because I gloried in his career, because I thought the story of his life ought to be told. The writings of an editor usually pass away with the occa sions that caJed them forth. They may have aroused, amused, iv PREFACE. instructed and advanced a nation many nations. They may have saved or overturned systems and dynasties ; provoked or prevented wars, revolutions and disasters ; thrown around Prejudice and Bigotry the decent mantle of Respectability, or *orn it off; made great truths familiar and fruitful in the pub lic mind, or given a semblance of dignity to the vulgar hue and cry which assails such truths always when they are new. These things, and others equally important, an editor may do, editors have done. But he rarely has leisure to produce a WORK which shall perpetuate his name and personal influence. A collection of his editorial writings will not do it, for he is compelled to write hastily, diffusely, and on the topics of the hour. The story of his life may. It is the simple narratives in Franklin's autobiography that have perpetuated, not the name of that eminent man, the thunder and lightning have his name in charge, but the influence of his personality in forming the characters of his countrymen. The reader has a right to know the manner in which the facts and incidents of this work were obtained. I procured, first of all, from various sources, a list of Mr. Greeley's early friends, partners and relations ; also, a list of the places at which he has resided. All of those places I visited ; with as many of those persons as I could find I conversed, and endeavored to extract from them all they knew of the early life of my hero. From their narratives, and from the letters of others to whom I wrote, the account of his early life was compiled. To all of them, for the readiness with which they made their communi cations, to many of them for their generous and confiding hos- PREFACE. V pitality to a stranger, I again offer the poor return of my sin cere thanks. For the rest, I am indebted to the following works : E. L. Parker's History of Londonderry ; the Bedford Centennial > the New Hampshire Book ; the Rose of Sharon ; the Life of Margaret Fuller ; Horace Greeley's Hints towards Reforms, and Glances at Europe ; also, to files of the New Yorker, Log Cabin, Jeffersonian, American Laborer, Whig Almanac, and Tribune. Nearly every number there are more than five thousand numbers in all of each of those periodicals, I have examined, and taken from them what they contain respecting the life and fortunes of their editor. This book is as true as I could make it ; nothing has been in serted or suppressed for the sake of making out a case. Er rors of detail in a work containing so many details as this can scarcely be avoided ; but upon the correctness of every import ant statement, and upon the general fidelity of the picture presented, the reader may rely. Horace Greeley, as the read er will discover, has been a marked person from his earliest childhood, and he is remembered by his early friends with a vividness and affection very extraordinary. Moreover, in the political and personal contentions of his public life, he has fre quently been compelled to become autobiographical ; therefore, in this volume he often tells his own story. That he tells it truly, that he is incapable of insincerity, every one with truth enough in his heart to recognize truth in others will perceive. The opinion has been recently expressed that the life of a man ought not to be written in his lifetime. Tr which, among \i PREFACE. many other things, this might be replied : If the lives of pol iticians like Tyler, Pierce, and others, may be written in their lifetime, with a view to subserve the interests of party, why may not the life of Horace Greeley, in the hope of sub serving the interests of the country 1 Besides, those who think this work ought not to have been written are at liberty not to read it. There are those who will read it ; and, imperfect as it is, with pleasure. They are those who have taken an interest in Hor ace Greeley's career, and would like to know how he carne to be the man he is. J. P. Nnw YORK, December, 1864, PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION. THE first edition of this work appeared in the year 1854, and found much favor with a part of the public. During the last ten years it has been out of print, and I did not suppose there would ever be occasion to revive it. It appears, how ever, that it is still frequently called for, and I do not see any good reason why those who desire copies should not have their wish gratified. I have been repeatedly informed that the book, with all its crudities and imperfections, has been of some ser vice to the young men of the country. I therefore willingly consent to the publication of a new edition, which was sug gested by valued friends. To make the work somewhat less incomplete, a few chapters have been added, in which the more recent events of Mr. Greeley's life are related, chiefly in his own words. After the lapse of so many years, it would be impossible for me to continue the work in the spirit in which it was conceived ; and as the editor of the Tribune is generally compelled to relate and explain his own actions, it is altogether best to use his own graphic and lively nar ratives. I should add, perhaps, that this new edition was prepared for the press, and in the printers* hands, before the publica PREFACE. tion of Mr. Greeley's "Recollections" in the New York Ledger had been contemplated. Mr. Bonner's announcement of that series of papers caused us to lay aside our project for a time, and it was resumed only after I had received from Mr. Greeley an assurance that he had no objection to our going on. J P. NEW YORK, June, 1868. ILLUSTRATIONS. STEEL PORTRAIT BY EITCUIH. PULL LENGTH PORTRAIT ON WOOD. HORACE GREELEY'S BIRTH-PLACE. WHERE GREELEY ATTENDED SCHOOL. GREELEY'S ARRIVAL IN NEW YORK. EDITORIAL ROOMS GREELEY AND DANA. FAC-SIMILE OP EDITORIAL MS. VIEW OF THE TRIBUNE BUELDIKGS COUNTRY RESIDENCE OF HORACE GREELEY, CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. THE SCOTCH-IRISH OF NEW HAMPSHIRE. PAOl Londonderry in Ireland The Siege Emigration to New England Settlement of Londonderry, New Hampshire The Scotch-Irish introduce the culture of the potato and the manufacture of linen Character of the Scotch-Irish Their sim plicityLove of fun Stories of the early clergymen Traits in the Scotch-Irish character Zeal of the Londonderrians in the Revolution Horace Greeley's al usion to his Scotch-Irish ancestry Id CHAPTER II. ANCESTORS. PARENTAGE. BIRTH. Origin of the Family Old Captain Ezekiel Greeley Zaccheus Greeley Zaccheus the Second Roughness and Tenacity of the Greeley race Maternal Ancestors of Horace Greeley John Woodburn Character of Horace Greeley's Great-grand mother His Grandmother Romantic Incident Horace Greeley is born "as black as a chimney" Comes to his color Succeeds to the name of Horace -28 CHAPTER III. EARLY CHILDHOOD. The Village of Amherst Character of the adjacent country The Greeley farm The Tribune In the room in which its Editor was born Horace learns to read- Book up-side down Goes to school in Londonderry A district school forty years ago Horace as a young orator Has a mania for spelling hard words Gets great glory at the spelling school Recollections of his surviving schoolfel lows His future eminence foretold Delicacy of ear Early choice of a trade His coiir.-ige and timidity Goes to school in Bedford A favorite among his schoolfellows His early fondness for the village newspaper Lies in ambush for the post-rider who brought it Scours the country for books Project of sending him to an academy The old sea-captain Horace as a farmer's boy Let us do our stint first His way of fishing 31 CONTENTS. CHAPTER IV. HIS FATHER R'JINE D R EMOVAL TO VERMONT. PAGE New Hampshire before the era of manufactures Causes of his father's failure Rum in the olden time An execution in the house Flight of the father Horace nud the Rum Jug Compromise with the creditors Removal to another farm- Final rui ii Removal to Vermont The winter journey Poverty of the family- Scene ut their new home Cheerfulness in misfortune 52 CHAPTER V. AT WESTHAVEN, VERMONT. Description of the country Clearing up Land All the family assist a la Swiss- Fmnily-Robinson Primitive costume of Horace His early indifference to dress His manner and altitude in school A Peacemaker among the boys Gets into a scrupe, and out of it Assists his school-fellows in their studies An evening scene at home Horace knows too much Disconcerts his teachers by his ques tionsLeaves school The pine-knots still blaze on the hearth Reads incessant ly Becomes a great draught player Bee-hunting Reads at the Mansion House Taken for an Idiot And for a possible President Reads Mrs. Hemans with rapture A Wolf Story A Pedestrian Journey Horace and the horseman- Yoking the Oxen Scene with an old Soaker Rum in Westhaven Horace's First Pledge Narrow escape from drowning His religious doubts Becomes a Unive: salist Discovers the humbug of " Democracy" Impatient to begin his ap prenticeship -..._ 57 CHAPTER VI. A PPR ENTICE SHIP. The Village of East Poultney Horace applies for the Place Scene in the Garden fie makes an Impression A difficulty arises and is overcome He enters the office Rite of Initiation Horace the Victor His employer's recollections of him The Pack of Cards Horace begins to paragraph Joins the Debating Society His manner of Debating Horace and the Dandy His noble conduct to his father His first glimpse of Saratoga His manners at the Table Becomes the Town-Encyclopedia The Doctor's Slo'y Recollections of one of his fellow ap prentices Horace's* favorite Poets Politics of the time The Anti-Mason Excite ment Ti.e Northern Spectator stops Tlie Apprentice is Free CONTENTS. XI CHAPTER VII. HE WANDERS. PAOB Horace loaves Poultney His first Overcoat Home to his Father's Log House Ranges the country for work The Sore Leg Cured Gets Employment, tr.it litile Money Astonishes the Draught-PIaj ers Goes to Erie, Pa. Interview with an Editor Becomes a Journeyman in the Office Description of Erie The Lake His Generosity to his Father His new clothes No more work ht Erie Starts for New York ~ 106 CHAPTER VIII. ARRIVAL IN NEW YORK. The journey a night on the tow-path He reaches the city Inventory of his prop ertyLooks for a boarding-house Finds one Expends half his capital upon clothes Searches for employment Berated by David Hale as a runaway ap prenticeContinues the search Goes to church Hears of a vacancy Obtains work The boss takes him for a * fool,' but changes his opinion Nicknamed 'the Ghost' Practical jokes Horace metamorphosed Dispute about commas The shoemaker's boarding-house Grand banquet on Sundays llrt CHAPTER IX. PROM OFFICE TO OFFICE. Leaves West's Works on the 'Evening Post' Story of Mr. Leggett ' Commer cial Advertiser ' * Spirit of the Times 'Specimen of his writing at this period Naturally fond of the drama Timothy Wiggins Works for Mr. Redfield The flrstlift... .. 133 CHAPTER X. THE FIRST PENNY PAPER AND WHO THOUGHT OF IT Importance of the cheap daily press The originator of the idea History of the idea Dr. Sheppard's Chatham-street cogitations The Idea is conceived It is born Interview with Horace Greeley The D >ctor thinks he is 'no common boy' --The schemer baffled Daily papers twenty-five years ago Dr. Sheppard comes to a resolution The firm of Greeley and Story The Morning Post appears And fails The sphere of the choap press Fanny Fern and the pea-nut merchant. ... 137 Xll CONTENTS. CHAPTER XL THE FIRM CONTINUES. fAoa Lottery printing The Constitutionalist Dudley S. Gregory T/ie lottery suicide The firm prospers Sudden death of Mr. Story A new partner Mr. Greeley as a master A dinner story Sylvester Graham Horace Greeley at the Graham House The New Yorker projected James Gordon Bennett. . ]4(' CHAPTER XII. EDITOR OF THE NEW YORKER. Character of the paper Its early fortunes Happiness of the Editor Scene in the Office Specimens of Horace Greeley's Poetry Subjects of his Essays His Opin ions then His Marriage The Silk-stocking Story A day in Washington His impressions of the Senate Pecuniary difficulties Cause of the New Yorker's ill- success as a Business The missing letters The Editor gets a nickname The Agonies of a Debtor Park Benjamin Henry J. Raymond 151 CHAPTER XIII. THE JEFFERSONI AN. Objects of tho Jeffersonian Its character A novel Glorious-Victory paragraph The Graves and Cilley duel The Editor overworked 174 CHAPTER XIV. THE LOG CABIN . u TIPPEOANOE AND TYLER TOO." Wire-pulling The delirium of 1840 The Log Cabin Unprecedented hit A glance at its pages Log Cabin jokes Log Cabin song Horace Greeley and the cake-basket Pecuniary difficulties continue The Tribune announced 180 CHAPTER XV. STARTS THE TEIBUNE. The Capital The Daily Press of New York in JWI- The Tribune appearsThe Omens unpropitious The first wet-k - Ooaspircqy to pnt down the Tribune The Tribune triumphs Thomas McElrath- The TTibODO fame Industry of the Edi tors -Their independence Horuoe 3:ricy UT/1 vkmn Tyler The Tribune a Fixed Fact. . ...~~, 19; CONTENTS. Xill CHAPTER XVI. THE TKIBUNE AND FOURIERISM. PAQK What uade Horace Greeley a Socialist The hard winter of 1838 Albert Brisbane The- subject broached Series of articles by Mr. Brisoane begun Their effect- Cry of Mad Dog Discussion between Horace Greeley and Henry J. Raymond- How it arose Abstract of it in a conversational form IDS CHAPTER XVII. THE TRIBUNE'S SECOND TEAK. Increase of price The Tribune offends the Sixth Ward fighting-men The office Threatened Novel preparations for defense Charles Dickens defended The Editor travels Visits Washington, and sketches the Senators At Mount Vernon -At Niagara A hard hit at Major Noah 217 CHAPTER XVIII. THE TRIBUNE AND J. FENIMOEE OOOPEE. The libel Horace Greeley's narrative of the trial He reviews the opening speech of Mr. Cooper's counsel A striking illustration He addresses the jury Mr. Cooper sums up Horace Greelcy comments on the speech of the novelist In doing BO he perpetrates new libels The verdict Mr. Greeley's remarks on the same Strikes a bee-line for New York A new suit An imaginary case 224 CHAPTER XIX. THE TRIBUNE CONTINUES. The Special Express system Night adventures of Enoch Ward Gig Express Ex press from Halifax Baulked by the snow-drifts Party warfare then Books published by Greeley and McElrath Course of the Tribune The Editor travels Scenes in Washington An incident of travel Clay and Frelinghuysen The exertions of Horace Greeley Results of the defeat The Tribune and Slavery Burning of the Tribune Building The Editor's reflections upon the fire 240 CHAPTER XX. MARGARET FULLER. Her writings in the Tribune She resides with Mr. Greeley His narrative Dietetic Sparring Her manner of writing Woman's RightsHer generosity Her inde pendence Her love of children Margaret and Pickie Her opinion of Mr. Groe- ley Death of Pickie 253 xiv CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXI. EDITORIAL REPARTEES. PA 61 \t war with all the world The spirit of the Tribune Retorts vituperative The Tribune and Dr. Potts Some prize tracts suggested An atheist's oath A word for domestics Irish Democracy The modern drama Hit at Dr. Hawks Disso lution of the Union Dr. Franklin's story A Picture for Polk Charles Dickens and Copyright Charge of malignant falsehood Preaching and Practice Col. Webb severely hit Hostility to the Mexican war Violence incited .A few sparks The course of the Tribune Wager with the Herald 262 CHAPTER XXII. 1848! Revolution In Europe The Tribune exults The Slievegammon letters Ta> l Fillmore Course of the Tribune Horace Greeley at Vauxhall Garden His elec tion to Congress CHAPTER XXIII. THREE MONTHS IN CONGRESS. His objects as a Member of Congress His first acts The Chaplain hypocrisy The Land Reform Bill Distributing the Documents Offers a novel Resolution Tlie Mileage Expose Congressional delays Explosion in the House Mr. Turner's oration Mr. Greeley defends himself The Walker Tariff Congress in a pet- Speech at the Printer's Festival The house in good humor Traveling dead headPersonal explanations A dry haul The amendment game Congressi--n- al dignity Battle of the Books The Recruiting System The last night of the Session The ' usual gratuity' The Inauguration Ball Farewell to his constitu ents. . . CHAPTER XXIV. ASSOCIATION IN THE TRIBUNE OFFICE Accessions to the corps The course of the Tribune Horace Greeley in Ohio The Rochester knockinps The mediums at Mr. Greeley's house Jenny Lincl goes tc see them Her behavior Woman's Rights Convention The Tribune Associ lion The hireling sjstem 319 CONTENTS. XV CHAPTER XXV. ON THE PLATFORM. HINTS TOWARDS REFORMS. PAOB The Lecture System Comparative popularity of the leading Lecturers Horace Greeley at the Tabernacle His audience His appearance His manner of speak ing His occasional addresses The 'Hints' published Its one subject, the Emancipation of Labor The Problems of the Time The 'successful' man The duty of the State The educated class A narrative for workingmen Tne catas trophe 326 CHAPTER XXVI. THREE MONTHS IN EUROPE. The Voyage out First impression of England Opening of the Exhibition Char acteristic observations He attends a grand Banquet He sees the Sights He speaks at Exeter Hall The Play at Devonshire House Robert Owen's birth-day Horace Greeley before a Committee of the House of Commons He throws light upon the subject Vindicates the American Press Journey to Paris The Sights of Paris The Opera and Ballet A false Prophet His opinion of the French Journey to Italy Anecdote A nap in the Diligence Arrival at Rome In the Galleries Scene in the Coli-eum To England again Triumph of the American Reaper A week in Ireland and Scotland His opinion of the English Homeward Bound His arrival The Extra Tribune 346 CHAPTER XXVII. RECENTLY. Deliverance from Party A Private Platform Last Interview with Henry Clay- Horace Greeley a Farmer He irrigates and drains His AdAnce to a Young Man The Daily Times A costly Mistake The Isms of the Tribune The Tribune gets Glory The Tribune in Parliament Proposed Nomination for Governor His Life written A Judge's Daughter for Sale 375 CHAPTER XXVIII. DAY AND NIGHT IN THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. The streets before daybreak Waking the newsboys Morning scene in the press room The Compositor's room The tour Phalanxes The Tribune Directory A lull in the Tribune office A glance at the paper The advertisements Tele graphic marvels Marine Intelligence New Publications Letters from the peo- XVI CONTENTS. FAGl pie Editorial articles The editorial Rooms The Sanctum Sanctorum Solon Robinson Bayard Taylor William Henry Fry George Ripley Charles A. Dana F. J. Ottarson George M. Snow Enter Horace Greeley His Preliminary both erationThe composing-room in the evening The editors at work Mr. Greeley'3 manner of writing Midnight Three o'clock in the morning The carriers 391 CHAPTER XXIX. HORACE GREELEY IN A FRENCH PRISON. Voyage to Europe Visit to the exhibition At the tomb of Napoleon Two days in the debtors' prison In London again Comments of the editor on men and things 412 CHAPTER XXX. ASSAULTED IN WASHINGTON BY A MEMBER OF CONGRESS. The provocation The assault Why Mr. Greeley did not prosecute The Tribune in dicted in Virginia Correspondence on slavery Slavery ex labor 435 CHAPTER XXXI. ACROSS THE PLAINS TO CALIFORNIA. Farewell to civilization The buffaloes on the Plains Conversation with Brigham Young Remarks upon polygamy Visit to the Yo Semite Valley Reception at Sacramento at San Francisco 451 CHAPTER XXXII. HORACE GREELET AT THE CHICAGO CONVENTION OF 1860. Mr. Greeley's reasons for opposing Mr. Seward Mr. Raymond's accusation The pri vate letter to Mr. Seward The comments of Thurlow Weed The three-cent stamp correspondence Mr. Greeley a candidate for the Senate He declines a seat in Mr. Lincoln's Tabernacle..., 478 CHAPTER XXXIII. DURING THE WAR. Mr. Greeley's opinions upon Secession before the war began The battle of Bull Run Correspondence with President Lincoln His peace negotiations Assault upon the Tribune office Indorses the proffer of the French mission to the editor of the Herald He writes a history of the war He offers prizes for improved fruits.. . 495 CONTENTS. XV11 CHAPTER XXXIV. RECONSTRUCTION. PAGB Horace Greeley's plan Hia mediation between President Johnson and Congress He joins in bailing Jefferson Davis His speech at Richmond 526 CHAPTER XXXV. MISCELLANEOUS. Horace Greeley upon poetry and the poets He objects to being enrolled among the poets His advice to a country editor His religious opinions Upon marriage and divorce His idea of an American college How he would bequeath an estate- How he became a protectionist Advice to ambitious young men To the lovers of knowledge To young lawyers and doctors To country merphante How far he is a politician A toast Reply to begging letters 552 CHAPTER XXXVL CONCLUSION. Mr. Greeley's appearance and phrenology A visit to his residence His ambition He does not coun'. majorities * APPENDIX HORACE GREELEY'S ADVICE TO AMERICAN FARMERS. An Address at the Fayette County Agricultural Fair, Connersville, Indiana, Sep tember 8, 1858 683 HORACE GREELBV IN 1854J THE LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY, CHAPTER I. THE SCOTCH-IRISH OF NEW HAMPSHIRE. L -rfdonderry in Ireland The Siege Emigration to New England Settlement of Londonderry, New Hampshire The Scotch-Irish introduce the culture of th potato and the manufacture of linen Character of the Scotch-Irish Their sim plicity Love of fun Stories of the early clergymen Traits in the Scotch- Irisa character Zeal of the Londonderrians in the Revolution Horace Greeley's allusion to his Scotch-Irish ancestry. HAMPSHIRE, the native State of Horace Greeley, was set tled in part by colonists from Massachusetts and Connecticut, and in part by emigrants from the north of Ireland. The latter were called Scotch-Irish, for a reason which a glance at their history will show. Ulster, the most northern of the four provinces of Ireland, has been, during the last two hundred and fifty years, superior to the rest in wealth and civilization. The cause of its superiority is known. About the year 1612, when James I. was king, there was a rebellion of the Catholics in the north of Ireland. Upon its sup pression, Ulster, embracing the six northern counties, and contain ing half a million acres of land, fell to the king by the attainder of the rebels. Under royal encouragement and furtherance, a com pany was formed in London for the purpose of planting colonies in that fertile province, which lay waste from the ravages of the re cent war. The land was divided into shares, the largest of which did not exceed two thousand acres. Ct lonists were invited over from England and Scotland. The natives were expelled from their fastnesses in the hills, and forced to settle upon the plains. Some 20 THE SCOTCH-IRISH OF NEW HAMPSHIRE. efforts, it appears, were made to teach them arts and agriculture. Robbery and assassination were punished. And, thus, by the in fusion of new blood, and the partial improvement of the ancient race, Ulster, which had been the most savage and turbulent of the Irish provinces, became, and remains to this day, the best culti vated, the richest, and the most civilized. One of the six counties was Londonderry, the capital of which, called by the same name, had been sacked and razed during the rebellion. The city was now rebuilt by a company of adventurers from London, and the county was settled by a colony from Argyle- shire in Scotland, who were thenceforth called Scotch-Irish. Of what stuff these Scottish colonists were made, their after-history amply and gloriously shows. The colony took root and flourished in Londonderry. In 1689, the year of the immortal siege, the city was an important fortified town of twenty -seven thousand inhabit ants and the county was proportionally populous and productive. William of Orange had reached the British throne. James II. re turning from France had landed in Ireland, and was making an effort to recover his lost inheritance. The Irish Catholics were still loyal to him, and hastened to rally round his banner. But Ulster was Protestant and Presbyterian; the city of Londonderry was Ulster's stronghold, and it was the chief impediment in the way of James' proposed descent upon Scotland. With what reso lution and daring the people of Londonderry, during the ever-mem orable siege of that city, fought and endured for Protestantism and freedom, the world well knows. For seven months they held out against a besieging army, so numerous that its slain numbered nine thousand. The besieged lost three thousand men. To such ex tremities were they reduced, that among the market quotations of the times, we find items like these: a quarter of a dog, five shil lings and six-pence ; a dog's head, two and six-pence ; horse-flesh, one and six-pence per pound ; horse-blood, one shilling per quart ; a cat, four and six-pence; a rat, one shilling; a mouse, six-pence. When all the food that remained in the city was nine half-starved horses and a pint of meal per man, the people were still resolute. At the veiy last extremity, they were relieved by a provisiom-d fleet, and the army of James retired in despair. Ou tiic settlement <>t' the kingdom under William and Mary, the EMIGRATION TO NEW ENGLAND. 21 Presbyterians of Londonderry did not find themselves in the en joyinent of the freedom to which they conceived themselves enti tled. They were -dissenters from the established church. Their pastors were not recognized by the law as clergymen, nor their places of worship as churches. Tithes were exacted for the support of the Episcopal clergy. They were not proprietors of the soil, but held their lands as tenants of the crown. They were hated alike, and equally, by the Irish Catholics and the English Episcopa lians. "When, therefore, in 1617, a son of one of the leading cler gyman returned from New England with glowing accounts of that ' plantation,' a furor of emigration arose in the town and county of Londonderry, and portions of four Presbyterian congregations, with their four pastors, united in a scheme for a simultaneous remo val across the seas. One of the clergymen waa first despatched to Boston to make the needful inquiries and arrangements. He was the bearer of an address to " His Excellency, the Eight Honorable Colonel Samuel Smith, Governor of New England," which assured his Excellency of " our sincere and hearty inclination to transport ourselves to that very excellent and renowned plantation, upon our obtaining from his Excellency suitable encouragement." To this address, the original of which still exists, two hundred and seven names were appended, and all but seven in the hand-writing of the individuals signing a fact which proves the superiority of the emi grants to the majority of their countrymen, both in position and intelligence. One of the subscribers was a baronet, nine were cler gymen, and three others were graduates of the University of Ed inburgh. On the fourth of August, 1718, the advance party of Scotch- Irish emigrants arrived in five ships at Boston. Some of them re mained in that city and founded the church in Federal street, of which Dr. Channing was afterwards pastor. Others attempted to settle in Worcester; but as they were Irish and Presbyterians, such a storm of prejudice against them arose among the enlightened Congregationalists of that place, that they were obliged to flee be fore it, and seek refuge in the less populous places of Massachusetts. Sixteen families, after many months of tribulation and wandering, selected for their permanent abode a tract twelve miles square, called Nutfield, wind- now embraces the townships of London 22 THE SCOTCH-IRISH OF NEW HAMPSHIRE. deny, Deny and Winham, in Rockinghain county, New Ilarap shire. The land was a free gift from the king, in consideration ol the services rendered his throne by the people of Londonderry in the defense of their city. To each settler was assigned a farm of one hundred and twenty acres, a house lot, and an out lot of sixty acres. The lands of the men who had personally served during the siege, were exempted from taxation, and were known down to the period of the revolution as the Exempt Farms. The settle ment of Londonderry attracted new emigrants, and it soon became one of the most prosperous and famous in the colony. It was there that the potato was first cultivated, and there that linen was first made in New England. The English colonists at that day appear to have been unacquainted with the culture of the po tato, and the familiar story of the Andover farmer who mistook the balls which grow on the potato vine for the genuine fruit of the plant, is mentioned by a highly respectable historian of New Hamp shire as " a well-authenticated fact." "With regard to the linen manufacture, it may be mentioned as a proof of the thrift and skill of the Scotch- Irish settlers, that, as early as the year 1748, the linens of Londonderry had so high a reputa tion in the colonies, that it was found necessary to take measures to prevent the linens made in other towns from being fraudulently sold for those of Londonderry manufacture. A town meeting was held in that year for the purpose of appointing " fit and proper persona to survey and inspect linens and hollands made in the town for sale, eo that the credit of our manufactory be kept up, and the purchaser of our linens may not be imposed upon with foreign and outlandish linens in the name of ours." Inspectors and sealers were accord ingly appointed, who were to examine and stamp " all the hollands made and to be made in our town, whether brown, white, speckled, or checked, that are to be exposed for sale ;" for which service they were empowered to demand from the owner of said linen " sixpence, old tenor, for each piece." And this occurred within thirty years from the erection of the first log-hut in the township of London derry. However, the people had brought their spinning and weav ing implements with them from Ireland, and their industry was not once interrupted by an attack of Indians. These Scotch -Irish of Londonderry were a very peculiar people. CHARACTER OF THE SCOTCH-IRISH. 23 They were Scotch-Irish in character and in name ; of Irish viva city, generosity, and daring; Scotch in frugality, industry, and reso lution ; a race in whose composition nature seems, for once, to have kindly blended the qualities that render men interesting with those that render them prosperous. Their habits and their minds were simple. They lived, for many years after the settlement began to thrive, upon the fish which they caught at the falls of Amoskeag, upon game, and upon such products of the soil as beans, potatoes, samp, and barley. It is only since the year 1800 that tea and coffee, those ridiculous and effeminating drinks, came into anything like general use among them. It was not till some time after the Revo lution that a chaise was seen in Londonderry, and even then it ex cited great wonder, and was deemed an unjustifiable extravagance. Shoes, we are told, were little worn in the summer, except on Sun days and holidays ; and then they were carried in the hand to within a short distance of the church, where they were put on ! There was little buying and selling among them, but much borrowing and lending. u If a neighbor killed a calf," says one writer, " no part of it was sold ; but it was distributed among relatives and friends, the poor widow always having a piece ; and the minister, if he did not get the shoulder, got a portion as good." The women were ro bust, worked on the farms in the busy seasons, reaping, mowing, and even ploughing on occasion ; and the hum of the spinning- wheel was heard in every house. An athletic, active, indomitable, prolific, long-lived race. For a couple to have a dozen children, and for all the twelve to reach maturity, to marry, to have large families, and die at a good old age, seems to have been no uncom mon case among the original Londonderrians. Love of fun was one of their marked characteristics. One of their descendants, the Rev. J. H. Morrison, has written " A prom inent trait in the characte r of the Scotch-Irish was their ready wit No subject was kept sacred from it ; the thoughtless, the grave, the old, and the young, alike enjoyed it. Our fathers were serious, thoughtful men, but they lost no occasion which might promise sport. Weddings, huskings, log-rollings and raisings what a host of queer stories i? connected with them ! Our ancestors dearly loved fun. There was a grotesque humor, and yet a seriousness, pathos and strangeness about them, which in its way has, perhaps, never been 24 THE SCOTCH-IRISH OF NEW HAMPSHIRE. equaled. It was the sternness of the Scotch Covenanter, softened by a century's residence abroad, amid persecution and trial, wedded to the comic humor and pathos of the Irish, and then grown wild in the woods among their own New England mountains." There never existed a people at once so jovial and so religious. This volume could bo filled with a collection of their religious re partees and pious jokes. It was Pat. Larkin, a Scotch-Irishman, near Londonderry, who, when he was accused of being a Catholic, because his parents were Catholics, replied: " If a man happened to be born in a stable, would that make him a horse ?" and he won his bride by that timely spark. Quaint, bold, and witty were the old Scotch-Irish clergymen, the men of the siege, as mighty with carnal weapons as with spiritual. There was no taint of the sanctimonious in their rough, honest, and healthy natures. During the old French war, it is re lated, a British officer, in a peculiarly "stunning" uniform, came one Sunday morning to the Londonderry Meeting House. Deeply conscious was this individual that he was exceedingly well dressed, and he took pains to display his finery and his figure by standing in an attitude, during the delivery of the sermon, which had the effect of withdrawing the minds of the young ladies from the same. At length, the minister, who had both fought and preached in Londonderry 'at home,' and feared neither man, beast, devil, nor red-coat, addressed the officer thus : " Ye are a braw lad ; ye ha'e a braw suit of claithes, and we ha'e a' seen them ; ye may sit doun" The officer subsided instantly, and old Dreadnought went on with his sermon as though nothing had happened. The same clergyman once began a sermon on the vain self-confidence of St. Peter, with the following energetic remarks : " Just like Peter, aye mair forrit than wise, ganging swaggering about wi' a sword at his side ; an' a puir hand he made of it when he came to the trial ; for he only cut off a chiel's lug, an' he ought to ha> split down his head." On another occasion, he is said to have opened on a well- known text in this fashion : u ' I can do all things ;' ay, can ye Paul ? I'll bet ye a dollar o' that (placing a dollar on the desk). But stop! let's see what else Paul says: 'I can do all things through Christ, which strengthened me ;' ay, sae can I, Paul. I draw my bet," and he returned the dollar to his pocket. Thej TRAITS IN THE SCOTCH CHARACTER. 25 prayed a joke sometimes, those Scotch-Irish clergymen. One pastor, dining with a new settler, who had no table, and served up his dinner in a basket, implored Heaven to bless the man " in his basket, and in his store ;" which Heaven did, for the man afterwards grew rich. " What is the difference," asked a youth, " between the Con- gregationalists and Presbyterians?" "The difference is," replied the pastor, with becoming gravity, "that the Congregationalist goes home between the services and eats a regular dinner ; but the Presbyterian puts off his till after meeting." And how pious they were ! For many years after the settle ment, the omission of the daily act of devotion in a single household would have excited general alarm. It is related as a fact, that the first pastor of Londonderry, being informed one evening that an individual was becoming neglectful of family worship, imme diately repaired to his dwelling. The family had retired; he called up the master of the house, inquired if the report was true, and asked him whether he had omitted family prayer that evening. The man confessed that he had; and the pastor, having admonished him of his fault, refused to leave the house until the delinquent had called up his wife, and performed with her the omitted observance. The first settlers of some of the towns near Londonderry walked every Sunday eight, ten, twelve miles to church, taking their children with them, and crossing the Merrimac in a canoe or on a raft. The first public enterprises of every settlement were the building of a church, the construction of a block-house for defense against the Indians, and the establishment of a school. In the early times, of course, every man went to church with his gun, and the minister preached peace and good-will with a loaded musket peering above the sides of the pulpit. The Scotch-Irish were a singularly honest people. There is an entry in the town-record for 1734, of a complaint against John Morrison, that, having found an axe on the road, he did not leave it at the next tavern, 4 as the laws of the country doth require.' John acknowledged the fact, but pleaded in extenuation, that the axe was of so small value, that it would not have paid the cost of pro^ claiming. The session, however, censured him severely, and ex horted him to repent of the evil. The following is a curious extract from the records of a Scotch-Irish settlement for 1756 : " Voted, to 2 '26 THE SCOTCH-IHISH OF NEW HAMPSHIRE. give Mr. John Houston equal to forty pounds sterling, in old tenor, as the law shall find the rate in dollars or sterling money, for his yearly stipend, if he is our ordained minister. And what number of Sabbath days, annually, we shall think ourselves not able to pay him, he shall have at his own use and disposal, deducted out of the aforesaid sum in proportion." The early records of those settle ments abound in evidence, that the people had an habitual and most scrupulous regard for the rights of one another. Kind, generous, and compassionate, too, they were. Far back in 1725, when the little colony was but seven years old, and the people were struggling with their first difficulties, we find the session or dering two collections in the church, one to assist James Clark to ransom his son from the Indians, which produced five pounds, and another for the relief of William Moore, whose two cows had been killed by the falling of a tree, which produced three pounds, seven teen shillings. These were great sums in those early days. We read, also, in the History of Londonderry, of MacGregor, its first pastor, becoming the champion and defender of a personal enemy who was accused of arson, but whom the magnanimous pastoi believed innocent He volunteered his defense in court. The man was condemned and imprisoned, but MacGregor continued his ex ertions in behalf of the prisoner until his innocence was established and the judgment was reversed. That they were a brave people need scarcely be asserted. Of that very MacGregor the story is told, that when he went out at the head of a committee, to remonstrate with a belligerent party, who were unlawfully cutting hay from the out-lands of London derry, and one of the hay-stealers, in the heat of dispute, shook his fist in the minister's face, saying, " Nothing saves you, sir, but your black coat," MacGregor instantly exclaimed, " Well, it shan't save you, sir," and pulling off his coat, was about to suit the action to the word, when the enemy beat a sudden retreat, and troubled the Londonderrians no more. The Scotch-Irish of New Hampshire were among the first to catch the spirit of the Revolution. They confronted British troops, and successfully too, 'before the battle of Lexington. Four English soldiers had deserted from their quarters in Boston, and taken refuge in Londonderry. A party of troops, dispatched for their arrest, discovered, secured, and conveyed them HORACE GREELEl's ILLUSION TO HIS ANCESTRY. 27 part of the way to Boston. A band of young men assembled and pursued them ; and so overawed the British officer by the boldness of their demeanor, that he gave up his prisoners, who were escorted back to Londonderry in triumph. There were remarkably fe\v tories in Londonderry. The town was united almost as one man on the side of Independence, and sent, it is believed, more men to the war, and contributed more money to the cause, than any other town of equal resources in New England. Here are a few of the town-meeting " votes" of the first months of the war : " Voted, to give our men that have gane to the Massachusetts government seven dollars a month, until it be known what Congress will do in that affair, and that the officers shall have as much pay as those in the liay government." " Voted, that a committee of nine men be chosen to inquire into the conduct of those men that are thought not to be friends of their country." " Voted, that the aforesaid com mittee have no pay." " Voted, that twenty more men be raised im mediately, to be ready upon the first emergency, as minute men." " Voted, that twenty more men be enlisted in Capt. Aiken's com pany, as minute men." " Voted, that the remainder of the stock of powder shall be divided out to every one that hath not already re ceived of the same, as far as it will go ; provided he produces a gun of his own, in good order, and is willing to go against the enemy, and promises not to waste any of the powder, only in self-defense ; and provided, also, that he show twenty good bullets to suit his gun, and six good flints." In 1777 the town gave a bounty of thirty pounds for every man who enlisted for three years. All the records and traditions of the revolutionary period breathe unity and determination. Stark, the hero of Benningtoii, was a London- derrian. Such were the Scotch-Irish of New Hampshire ; of such material were the maternal ancestors of Horace Greeley composed ; and from his maternal ancestors he derived much that distinguishes him from men in general. In the "New Yorker" for August 28, 1841, he alluded to hi Scotch-Irish origin in a characteristic way. Noticing Charlotte Elizabeth's " Siege of Berry," he wrote : " We do not like this work, and we choose to say so frankly. What is the use of reviving and aggravating these old stories (alas I 28 THE SCOTCH-IRISH OF NEW HAMPSHIRE. how true !) of scenes in which Christians of diverse creeds ha\e tor- tured and butchered each other for the glory of God ? We had an cestors in that same Siege of Derry, on the Protestant side, of course, and our sympathies are all on that side ; but we cannot forget that intolerance and persecution especially in Ireland are by no means exclusively Catholic errors and crimes. Who perse cutes in Ireland now * On what principle of Christian toleration are the poor man's pig and potatoes wrested from him to pay tithes to a church he abhors? We do hope the time is soon coming when man will no more persecute his brother for a difference of faith ; but that time will never be hastened by the publication of such books as the Siege of Derry." CHAPTER II. ANCESTOR S. P AKENTAGE. BIETH. Origin of the Family Old Captain Ezekiel Greeley Zoccheus Greeley Zaccheru the Second Roughness and Tenacity of the Grt-eley nice Maternal Ancestors of Horace Grt-eley John Woodburn Character of Horace Greeley's Great-grand mother His Grandmother Romantic Incident Horace Greeley is born u as black as a chimney" Comes to his color Succeeds to the name of Horace. THE name of Greeley is an old and not uncommon one in New England. It is spelt Greeley, Greely, Greale, and Greele, but all who bear the name in this country trace their origin to the same source. The tradition is, that very early in the history of New England probably as early as 1650 three brothers, named Greeley, emigrat ed from the neighborhood of Nottingham, England. One of them is supposed to have settled finally in Maine, another in Rhode Island, the third in Massachusetts. All the Greeleys in New Eng land have descended from these three brothers, and the branch of the family with which we have to do, from him who settled in Mas sachusetts. Respecting the condition and social rank of these broth ers, their occupation and character, tradition is silent. But from CAPTAIN EZEKIEL GREELEY. 29 the fact that no coat-of-arms has been preserved or ever hea.,:! of by any member of the family, and from the occupation of tht> ma jority of their descendants, it is plausibly conjectured that they were farmers of moderate means and of the middle class. Tradition further hints that the name of the brother who f mnd a home in Massachusetts was Benjamin, that he was a farmer, that he lived in Haverhill, a township bordering on the south-eastern cor ner of New Hampshire, that he prospered there, and died respected by all who knew him at a good old age. So far, tradition, We now draw from the memory of individuals still living. The son of Benjamin Greeley was Ezekiel, " old Captain Ezekiel," who lived and greatly flourished at Hudson, New Hampshire, (then known as Nottingham West,) and is well remembered there, and in all the region round about. The captain was not a military man. He was half lawyer, half farmer. He was a sharp, cunning, scheming, cool-headed, cold-hearted man, one who lived by his wits, who always got his cases, always succeeded in his plans, always prospered in his speculations, and grew rich \vithout ever doing a day's work in his life. He is remembered by his grandsons, who saw him in their childhood, as a black-eyed, black-haired, heavy-browed, stern-looking man, of complexion almost as dark as that of an Indian, and not unlike an In dian in temper. " A cross old dog," " a hard old knot," " as cunning us Lucifer," are among the complimentary expressions bestowed upon him by his descendants. " All he had," says one, " was at the service of the rich, but he was hard upon the poor." " His religion was nom inally Baptist," says another, " but really to get money." " He got all he could, and saved all he got," chimes in a third. He died, at the age of sixty-five, with " all his teeth sound, and worth three hundred acres of good land. He is spoken of with that sincere respect which, in New England, seems never to be denied to a very smart man, who succeeds by strictly legal means in acquiring property, however wanting in principle, however destitute of feeling, that man may be. Happily, the wife of old Captain Ezekiel was a gentler and better being than her husband. And, therefore, Zaccheus, the son of old Captain Ezekiel, was a gentler and better man than his father. Zaccheus inherited part of his father's land, and was a farmer all the days of his life. He was Dot, it appears, " too fond of work," though far more industrious 30 ANCESTORS. PARENTAGE. BIBTH. than his father ; a man who took life easily, of strict integrity, kind-hearted, gentle-mannered, not ill to do in the world, but not what is called in New England " 'fore-handed." He is remembered in the neighborhood where he lived chiefly for his extraordinary knowledge of the Bible. He could quote texts more readily, cor rectly, and profusely than any of his neighbors, laymen or clergy. men. He had the reputation of knowing the whole Bible by heart. He was a Baptist ; and all who knew him unite in declaring that a worthier man never lived than Zaccheus Greeley. He had a large family, and lived to the age of ninety-five. His second son was named Zaccheus also, and he is the father of Horace Greeley. He is still living, and cultivates an ample domain in Erie County, Pennsylvania, acquired in part by his own arduous labors, in part by the labors of his second son, and in part by the liberality of his eldest son Horace. At this time, in the seventy- third year of his age, his form is as straight, his step as decided, his constitution nearly as firm, and his look nearly as young, as though he were in the prime of life. All the Greeleys that I have seen or heard described, are persons of marked and peculiar characters. Many of them are " charac ters" The word which perhaps best describes the quality fo which they are distinguished is tenacity. They are, as a race, tena cious of life, tenacious of opinions and preferences, of tenacious memory, and tenacious of their purposes. One member of the family died at the age of one hundred and twenty years; and a large proportion of the early generations lived more than three score years and ten. Few of the name have been rich, but most have been persons of substance and respectability, acquiring their property, generally, by the cultivation of the soil, and a soil, too, which does not yield its favors to the sluggard. It is the boast of those members of the family who have attended to its geneal ogy, that no Greeley was ever a prisoner, a pauper, or, worse than either, a tory I Two of Horace Greeley's great uncles perished at Bennington, and he was fully justified in his assertion, made in the heat of the Roman controversy a few years ago, that he was " born of republican parentage, of an ancestry which participated vividly in the hopes and fears, the convictions and efforts of the American Involution." And he added : " We cannot disavow nor prove rec- TOUGHNESS OF THE GREELEY RACE. 31 reant to the principles on which that Revolution was justified on which only it can be justified. If adherence to these principles makes us 'the unmitigated enemy of Pius IX.,' we regret the en mity, but cannot abjure our principles." The maiden name of Horace Greeley's mother was Woodburn, Mary Woodburn, of Londonderry. The founder of the Woodburn family in this country was John Woodburn, who emigrated from Londonderry in Ireland, to London derry in New Hampshire, about the year 1725, seven years after the settlement of the original sixteen families. He came over with his brother David, who was drowned a few years after, leaving a fam ily. Neither of the brothers actually served in the siege of Lon donderry ; they were too young for that ; but they were both men of the true Londonderry stamp, men with a good stroke in their arms, a rnerry twinkle in their eyes, indomitable workers, and not more brave in fight than indefatigable in frolic ; fair-haired men like all their brethren, and gall-less. John Woodburn obtained the usual grant of one hundred and twenty acres of land, besides the " out-lot and home-lot " before alluded to, and he took root in Londonderry and nourished. Ho was twice married, and was the father of two sons and nine daugh ters, all of whom (as children did in those healthy times) lived to maturity, and all but one married. ' John Woodburn's second wife, from whom Horace Greeley is descended, was a remarkable wo man. Mr. Greeley has borne this testimony to her worth and in fluence, in a letter to a friend which some years ago escaped into print : " I think I am indebted for my first impulse toward intel lectual acquirement and exertion to my mother's grandmother, who came out from Ireland among the first settlers in Londonderry. She must have been well versed in Irish and Scotch traditions, pretty well informed and strong minded ; and my mother being left motherless when quite young, her grandmother exerted great influ ence over her mental development. I vras'a third child, the two preceding having died young, and I presume my mother was the more attached to me on that ground, and the extreme feebleness of my constitution. My mind was early filled by her with the tradi tions, ballads, and snatches of history she had learned from her grandmother, which, though conveying very distorted and incorrect 32 ANCESTORS. PARENTAGE. BIRTH. ideas of history, yet served to awaken in me a thirst for knowledge and a lively interest in learning and history." John Woodburn died in 1780. Mrs. Woodburn, the subject of the passage just quoted, survived her husband many years, lived to see her children's grand children, and to acquire throughout the neighborhood the familiar title of " Granny Woodburn." David Woodburn, the grandfather of Horace Greeley, was the eldest son of John Woodburn, and the inheritor of his estate. He married Margaret Clark, a granddaughter of that Mrs. Wilson, the touching story of whose deliverance from pirates was long a favor ite tale at the firesides of the early settlers of New Hampshire. In 1720, a ship containing a company of Irish emigrants bound to New England was captured by pirates, and while the ship was in their possession, and the fate of the passengers still undecided, Mrs. Wilson, one of the company, gave birth to her first child. The cir cumstance so moved the pirate captain, who was himself a husband and a father, that he permitted the emigrants to pursue their voyage unharmed. He bestowed upon Mrs. Wilson some valuable pres ents, among others a silk dress, pieces of which are still preserved among her descendants ; and he obtained from her a promise that she would call the infant by the name of his wife. The ship reached its destination in safety, and the day of its deliverance from the hands of the pirates was annually observed as a day of thanks giving by the passengers for many years. Mrs. Wilson, after the death of her first husband, became the wife of James Clark, whose son John was the father of Mrs. David Woodburn, whose daugh ter Mary was the mother of Horace Greeley. The descendants of John Woodburn are exceedingly numerous, and contribute largely, says Mr. Parker, the historian of London derry, to the hundred thousand who are supposed to have de scended from the early settlers of the town. The grandson of John Woodburn, a very genial and jovial gentleman, still owns and tills the land originally granted to the family. At the old homestead, about the year T807, Zaccheus Greeley and Mary Woodburn were married. Zaccheus Greeley inherited nothing from his father, and Mary Woodburn received no more than the usual household portion from hers. Zaccheus, as the sons of New England farmers usually do, HORACE GREELEY IS BORN BLACK. S3 or did in thuse days, went out to work as soon as he wa a old enough to do a day's work. Ho saved his earnings, and in his twenty -fifth year was the owner of a farm in the town of Amherst, Hillsborough county, New Hampshire. There, on the third of February, 1811, Horace Greeley was born. He is the third of seven children, of whom the two elder died be fore he was born, and the four younger are still living. The mode of his entrance upon the stage of the world was, to say the least of it, unusual. The effort was almost too much for him, and, to use the language of one who was present, u he came into the world as black as a chimney." There were no signs of life. He uttered no cry ; he made no motion ; he did not breathe. But the little discolored stranger had articles to write, and was not permitted to escape his destiny. In this alarming crisis of his exist ence, a kind-hearted and experienced aunt came to his rescue, and by arts, which to kind-hearted and experienced aunts are well known, but of which the present chronicler remains in ignorance, the boy was brought to life. He soon began to breathe ; then he began to blush ; and by the time he had attained the age of twenty minutes, lay on his mother's arm, a red and smiling infant. In due time, the boy received the name of Horace. There had been another little Horace Greeley before him, but he had died in infancy, and his parents wished to preserve in their second son a living memento of their first. The name was not introduced into the family from any partiality on the part of his parents for the Roman poet, but because his father had a relative so named, and because the mother had read the name in a book and liked the sound of it. The sound of it, however, did not often regale the maternal ear ; for, in New England, where the name of the corrtly satirist is frequently given, its household diminutive is " Hod;" and by that elegant monosyllable ,he boy was commonly called among his juvenile friends. 2* CHAPTER III. EARLY CHILDHOOD. The Village of A raherst Character of the adjacent country The Greeley farm The Tribune in the room in which its Editor was born Horace learns to read Book up-side down G.>ea to school in Londonderry A district school fortj years ago Horace as a young orator Has a mania for spelling hard words Geta great glory at the spelling school Recollections of his surviving schoolfellows His future eminence foretold -Delicacy of ear Early choice of a trade His courage and timidity Goes to school in Bedford A favorite among his school fellows His early fondness for the village newspaper Lies in ambush for the post-rider who brought it Scours the country for books Project of sending him to an academy The old sea-captainHorace as a farmer's boy Let us do our stint first His way of fishing. AMHERST is the county town of Hillsborough, one of the three counties of New Hampshire which are bounded on the South by the State of Massachusetts. It is forty-two miles north-west of Boston. The village of Araherst is a pleasant place. Seen from the summit of a distant hill, it is a white dot in the middle of a level plain, en circled by cultivated and gently-sloping hills. On a nearer ap proach the traveler perceives that it is a cluster of white houses, looking as if they had alighted among the trees and might take to wing again. On entering it he finds himself in a very pretty vil lage, built round an ample green and shaded by lofty trees. It con tains three churches, a printing-office, a court-house, a jail, a taveT^ naif a dozen stores, an exceedingly minute watchmaker's .snop, and a hundred private houses. There is not a human being to be seen, nor a sound to be heard, except the twittering of birds overhead, and the distant whistle of a locomotive, which in those remote regions seems to make the silence audible. The titter silence and the deserted aspect of the older villages in New Eng land are remarkable. In the morning and evening there is some appearance of life in Amherst ; but ia the hours of the day when the men are at work, the women busy with their household affairs, and the children at school, the visitor may sit at the win- [THE SCHOOL HOUSE.] AMHERST. 35 du if the village tavern for an hour at a time and not see a living creH* ire. Occasionally a peddler, with sleigh-bells round his horse, goes jingling by. Occasionally a farmer's wagon drives up to one of the stores. Occasionally a stage, rocking in its leather suspenders, stops at the post-office for a moment, and then rocks away again. Occasionally a doctor passes in a very antiquated gig. Occasion ally a cock crows, as though he were tired of the dead silence. A New York village, a quarter the size and wealth of Amherst, makes twice its noise and bustle; Forty years ago, however, when Horace Greeley used to come to the stores there, it was a place of some what more importance and more business than it is now, for Man chester and Nashua have absorbed many of the little streams of traffic which used to flow towards the county town. It is a curious evidence of the stationary character of the place, that the village paper, which had fifteen hundred subscribers when Horace Greeley was three years old, and learned to read from it, has fifteen hundred subscribers, and no more, at this moment. It bears the same name it did then, is published by the same person, and adheres to the same party. The township of Amherst contains about eight square miles of some what better land than the land of New England generally is. Wheat cannot be grown on it to advantage, but it yields fair returns of rye, oats, potatoes, Indian corn, and young men : the last-named of which commodities forms the chief article of export. The farmers have to contend against hilto, rocks, stones innumerable, eand, marsh, and long winters; but A ftundred years of tillage have sub dued these obstacles in part, fjyl the people generally enjoy a safe and moderate prosperity. Yf t severe is their toil. To see them ploughing alorg the sides of those steep, rocky hills, the plough creaking, the oxen groanir/, the little boy-driver leaping from sod to sod, as an Alpine boy fa supposed to leap from crag to crag, the ploughman wrenching tba plough round the rooks, boy and man every minute or two uniting in a prolonged and agonizing yell for the panting beasts to stop, when the plough is of a;ht by a hidden rock too large for it to overturn, and the Buiemn slowness with which the procession winds, and creaks, and groans along, gives tc the languid citizen, who chances to pass by, a new idea of hard work, and a new sense of the happiness of his lot. bt EARLY CHILDHOOD. The farm owned by Zaccheus Greeley when his son Horace was born, was four or five miles from the village of Arnherst. It con sisted of fifty acres of land heavy land to till rocky, moist, and uneven, worth then eight hundred dollars, now two thousand. The house, a small, unpainted, hut substantial and well-built farm- liouse, stood, and still stands, upon a ledge, or platform, half way up a high, steep, and rocky hill, commanding an extensive and al most panoramic view of the surrounding country. In whatever direction the boy may have looked, he saw rock. Kock is the feature of the landscape. There is rock in the old orchard behind the house ; rocks peep out from the grass in the pastures; there is rock along the road ; rock on the sides of the hills ; rock on their summits; rock in the valleys; rock in the woods; rock, rock, everywhere rock. And yet the country has not a barren look. I should call it a serious looking country ; one that would be congenial to grim covenanters and exiled round-heads. The prevailing colora are dark, even in the brightest month of the year. The pine woods, the rock, the shade of the hill, the color of the soil, are all dark aud serious. It is a still, unfrequented region. One may ride along the road upon which the house stands, for many a mile, without passing a single vehicle. The turtles hobble across the road fear less of the crushing wheel. If any one wished to know the full meaning of the word country, as distinguished from the word town, he need do no more than ascend the hill on which Horace Greeley saw the light, and look around. Yet, the voice of the city is heard even there ; the opinions of the city influence there; for, observe, in the very room in which our hero was born, on a table which stands where, in other days, a bed stood, we recognize, among the heap of newspapers, the wel 1 - known heading of the WEEKLY TEIBUNE. Such was the character of the region in which Horace Greeley passed the greater part of the first seven years of his life. His father's neighbors were all hard-working farmers men who work ed their own farms who were nearly equal in wealth, and to whom the idea of social inequality, founded upon an inequality in possess ions, did not exist, even as an idea. "Wealth and want were alike unknown.. It was a community of plain people, who had derived all their book-knowledge from the district school, and depended HORACE LEARNS TO READ. 37 upon the village newspaper for their knowledge of the world with out. There were no heretics among them. All the people either cordially embraced or nndoubtingly assented to the faith called Orthodox, and all of them attended, more or less regularly, the churches in which that faith was expounded. The first great peril of his existence escaped, the boy grew apace, and passed through the minor and ordinary dangers of infancy with out having his equanimity seriously disturbed. He was a " quiet and peaceable child," reports his father, and, though far from robust, suffered little from actual sickness. To say that Horace Greeley, from the earliest months of his exist ence, manifested signs of extraordinary intelligence, is only to repeat what every biographer asserts of his hero, and every mother of her child. Yet, common-place as it is, the truth must be told. Horace Greeley did, as a very young child, manifest signs of extraordinary intelligence. He took to learning with the promptitude and in stinctive, irrepressible love, with which a duck is said to take to the water. His first instructor was his mother ; and never was there a mother better calculated to aw r aken the mind of a child, and keep it awake, than Mrs. Greeley. Tall, muscular, well-formed, with the strength of a man without his" coarseness, active in her habits, not only capable of hard work, but delighting in it, with a perpetual overflow of animal spirits, an exhaustless store of songs, ballads and stories, and a boundless, ex uberant good will toward all living things, Mrs. Greeley was the life of the house, the favorite of the neighborhood, the natural friend and ally of children ; whatever she did she did " with a will.'* She was a great reader, and remembered all she read. "She worked," says one of my informants, " in doors and out of doors, could out-rake any man in the town, and could load the hay-wag ons as fast and as well as her husband. She hoed in the garden ; she labored in the field ; and, while doing more than the work of an ordinary man and an ordinary woman combined, would laugh and sing all day long, and tell stories all the evening." To these stories the boy listened greedily, as he sat on the flooi at her feet, while she spun and talked with equal energy. They u served," says Mr. Greeley, in a passage already quoted, " to awaken ta me a thirst for knowledge, and a lively interest in learning and 38 EARLY CHILDHOOD. history." Think of it, you word-mongering, gerund-grinding teachers who delight in signs and symbols, and figures and " facts," and feed little children's souls on the dry, innutrtious husks of knowledge ; and think of it, you play -abhorring, fiction-forbidding parents ! Awaken the interest in learning, and the thirst for knowl edge, and there is no predicting what may or what may not result from it. Scarcely a 'man, distinguished for the supremacy or the beauty of his immortal part, has written the history of his childhood without recording the fact that the celestial fire was first kindled in his soul by means similar to those which awakened an " interest in learning" and a " thirst for knowledge" in the mind of Horace Greeley. Horace learned to read before he had learned to talk ; that is, before he could pronounce the longer words. No one regularly taught him. When he was little more than two years old, he began to pore over the Bible, opened for his entertainment on the floor, and examine with curiosity the newspaper given him to play with. He cannot remember a time when he could not read, nor can any one give an account of the process by which he learned, except that he asked questions incessantly, first about the pictures in the news paper, then about the capital letters, then about the smaller ones, and finally about the words and sentences. At three years of age he could read easily and correctly any of the books prepared for children; and at four, any book whatever. But he was not satisfied with overcoming the ordinary difficulties of reading. Allowing that nature gives to every child a certain amount of mental force to be used in acquiring the art of reading, Horace had an over plus of that force, which he employed in learning to read with his book in positions which increased the difficulty of the feat, All the friends and neighbors of his early childhood, in reporting him a prodigy unexampled, adduce as the unanswerable and clinching proof of the fact, that, at the age of four years, he could read any book in whatever position it might be placed, rigi t-side up, up-side down, or sidewise. His third winter Horace spent at the house of his grandfather. Dnvid Woodburn, in Londonderry, attended the district school there, and distinguished himself greatly. He had no right to at tend the Londonderry school, and the people of the rural districts A DISTRICT SCHOOL FORTY YEARS AGO. 39 re would bo a dozen who were grown up, mar- 40 EARLY CHILDHOOD. riageable young men and women. Not unfreqi.entl) married men. and occasionally married women, attended school in the winter. Among the younger pupils, there were usually a dozen who could not read, and half as many who did not know the alphabet. The teacher was, perhaps, one of the farmer's sons of the district, who knew a little more than his elder pupils, and only a little ; or he was a student who was working his way through college. His wages were those of a farm-laborer, ten or twelve dollars a month and his board. He boarded u round" L e. he lived a few days at each of the houses of the district, stopping longest at the most agreeable place. The grand qualification of a teacher was the abil ity " to do" any sum in the arithmetic. To know arithmetic was to be a learned man. Generally, the teacher was very young, some times not more than sixteen years old ; but, if he possessed the due expertness at figures, if he could read the Bible without stumbling over the long words, and without mispronouncing more than two thirds of the proper names, if he could write well enough to set a decent copy, if he could mend a pen, if he had vigor enough of character to assert his authority, and strength enough of arm to maintain it, he would do. The school began at nine in the morn ing, and the arrival of that hour was announced by the teacher's rapping upon the window frame with a ruler. The boys, and the girls too, came tumbling in, rosy and glowing, from their snow balling and sledding. The first thing done in school was reading. The " first class," consisting of that third of the pupils who could read best, stood on the floor and read round once, each individual reading about half a page of the English Reader. Then the second class. Then the third. Last of all, the youngest children said their letters. By that time, a third of the morning was over ; and then the reading began again ; for public opinion demanded of the teach er that he should hear every pupil read four times a day, twice in the morning and twice in the afternoon. Those who were not in the class reading, were employed, or were supposed to be employed, in ciphering or writing. When they wanted to write, they went to the teacher with their writing-book and pen, and he set a copy, u Procrastination is the thief of time," u Contentment is a virtue," or some other wise saw, and mended the pen. When they were puzzled with a "sum," they went to the teacher to have it elucidat- THE SPELLING SCHOOL. 41 ed. They seem to have written and ciphered as much or as little as they chose, at what time they chose, and in what manner. Ir some schools there were classes in arithmetic and regular instruc tion in writing, and one class in grammar ; hut such schools, forty years ago, were rare. The exercises of the morning were concluded with a general spell, the teacher giving out the words from a spell ing-book, and the pupils spelling them at the top of their voices. At noon the school was dismissed ; at one it was summoned again, to go through, for the next three hours, precisely the same routine as that of the morning. In this rude way the last generation of children learned to read, write, and cipher. But they learned something more in those rude cchool-houses. They learned obedi ence. They were tamed and disciplined. The means employed were extremely unscientific, but the thing was done! The means, in fact, were merely a ruler, and what was called, in contradistinc tion to that milder weapon, " the heavy gad ;" by which express ion was designated five feet of elastic sapling of one year's growth. These two implements were plied vigorously and often. Girls got their full share of them. Girls old enough to be wives were no more exempt than the young men old enough to marry them, who sat on the other side of the schoolroom. It was thought, that if a youth of either sex was not too old to do wrong, neither he nor she was too old to suffer the consequences. In some districts, a teacher was valued in proportion to his severity ; and if he were backward in applying the ferule and the " gad," the parents soon began to be uneasy. They thought he had no energy, and inferred that the children could not be learning much. In the district schools, then, of forty years ago, all the pupils learned to read and to obey ; most of them learned to write ; many acquired a competent knowledge of figures; a few learned the rudiments of grammar; and if any learned more than these, it was generally due to their unassisted and unencouraged exertions. There were no school-libraries at that time. The teachers usually possessed little general information, and the little they did possess was not often made to contribute to the mental nourishment of their pupils. On one of the first benches of the Londonderry school-house, neai the fire, we may imagine the little white-headed fellow, whom every body liked, to be seated during the winters of 1813-14 and '14-'15. He 42 EARLY CHILDHOOD. was eager to go to school. When the snow lay on the ground in drifts too deep for him to wade through, one of his aunts, who still lives to tell the story, would take him up on her shoulders and carry him to the door. lie was the possessor that winter, of three books, the " Columbian Orator," Morse's Geography, and a spell ing book. From the Columbian Orator, he learned many pieces by heart, and among others, that very celebrated oration which prob ably the majority of the inhabitants of this nation have at some pe riod of their lives been able to repeat, beginning, " You 'd scarce expect one of my age To speak in public on the stage." One of his schoolfellows has a vivid remembrance of Horace's re citing this piece before the whole school in Londonderry, before he was old enough to utter the words plainly. He had a lisping, winning little voice, says my informant, but spoke with the utmost confidence, and greatly to the amusement of the school. He spoke the piece eo often in public and private, as to become, as it were, identified with it, as a man who knows one song suggests that song by his presence, and is called upon to sing it wherever he goes. It is a pity that no one thinks of the vast importance of those "Orators" and reading books which the children read and wear out in reading, learning parts of them by heart, and repeating them 'over and over, till they become fixed in the memory and embedded in the character forever. And it is a pity that those books should contain so much false sentiment, inflated language, Buncombe oratory, and other trash, as they generally do ! To compile a series of Reading Books for the common schools of this country, were a task for a conclave of the wisest and best men and women that ever lived ; a task worthy of them, both from its difficulty and the incalculable extent of its possible results. Spelling was the passion of the little orator during the first win ters of his attendance at school. He spelt incessantly in school and out of school. He would lie on the floor at his grandfather's house, for hours at a time, spelling hard words, all that he could find in the Bible and the few other books within his reach. It was the RECOLLECTIONS OF HIS SURVIVING SCHOOLFELLOWS. 43 standing amusement of the family to try and puzzle the boy with words, and no one remembers succeeding. Spelling, moreover, was one of the great points of the district schools in those days, and he who could out-spell, or, as the phrase was, " spell down " the whole school, ranked second only to him who surpassed the rest in arithmetic. Those were the palmy days of the spelling- school. The pupils assembled once a week, voluntarily, at the school-house, chose " sides," and contended with one another long and earnestly for the victory. Horace, young as he was, was eager to attend the spelling school, and was never known to injure the "side" on which he was chosen by missing a word, and it soon became a prime object at the spelling-school to get the first choice, because that enabled the lucky side to secure the powerful aid of Horace Greeley. He is well remembered by his companions in or thography. They delight still to tell of the little fellow, in the long evenings, falling asleep in his place, and when it came his turn, his neighbors gave him an anxious nudge, and he would wake instantly, spell off his word, and drop asleep again in a moment. Horace went to school three terms in Londonderry, spending part of each year at home. I will state as nearly as possible in their own words, what his school-fellows there remember of him. One of them can just recall him as a very small boy with a head as white as snow, who " was almost always up head in his class, and took it so much to heart when he did happen to lose his place, that he would cry bitterly ; so that some boys when they had gained the right to get above him, declined the honor, because it hurt Horace's feelings so." He was the pet of the school. Those whom he used to excel most signally liked him as well as the rest. He was an. active, bright, eager boy, but not fond of play, and seldom took part in the sports of the other boys. One muster day, this inform ant remembers, the clergyman of Londonderry, who had heard glowing accounts of Horace's feats at school, took him on his lap in the field, questioned him a long time, tried to puzzle him with hard words, and concluded by saying with strong emphasis to one of the boy's relatives, " Mark my words, Mr. Woodburn, that boy was not made for nothing." Another, besides confirming the above, adds that Horace was in some respects exceedingly brave, and in others exceedingly tim 44 EARLY CHILDHOOD. orous. He was never afraid of the dark, could not be frightened by ghost-stories, never was abashed in speaking or reciting, was not to be overawed by supposed superiority of knowledge or rank, would talk up to the teacher and question his decision with perfect freedom, though never in a spirit of impertinence. Yet he could not stand up to a boy and fight. When attacked, he would nei ther fight nor run away, but " stand still and take it." His ear was so delicately constructed that any loud noise, like the report of a gun, would almost throw him into convulsions. If a gun were about to be discharged, he would either run away as fast as his legs could carry him, or else would throw himself upon the ground and stuff grass into his ears to deaden the dreadful noise. On the fourth of July, when the people of Londonderry inflamed their patriotism by a copious consumption of gunpowder, Horace would run into the woods to get beyond the sound of the cannons and pistols. It was at Londonderry, and about his fourth year, that Horace began the habit of reading or book-devouring, which ho never lost during all the years of his boyhood, youth, and appren ticeship, and relinquished only when he entered that most exacting of all professions, the editorial. The gentleman whose reminis cences I am now recording, tells me that Horace in his fifth and sixth years, would lie under a tree on his face, reading hour after hour, completely absorbed in his book ; and " if no one stumbled over him or stirred him up," would read on, unmindful of dinnei time and sun-set, as long as he could see. It was his delight ii books that made him, when little more than an infant, determin to be a printer, as printers, he supposed, were they who made books " One day," says this gentleman, " Horace and I went to a black smith's shop, and Horace watched the process of horse-shoeing with much interest. The blacksmith, observing how intently he looked on, said, ' You 'd better come with me and learn the trade.' * Ko,^ said Horace in his prompt, decided way, 4 1 'in going to be a printer.' He was then six years old, and very small for his age ; and this pos itive choice of a career by so diminutive a piece of humanity, mightily amused the by-standers. The blacksmith used to tell the story with great glee when Horace was a printer, and one of some note." Another gentleman, who went to school with Horace at London- RECOLLECTIONS OF HIS SURVIVING SCHOOLFELLOWS. 45 deny, writes : " I think I attended school with Horace Greeley two summers and two winters, but have no recollection of seeing him except at the school-house. He was an exceedingly mild, quiet and inoffensive child, entirely devoted to his books at school. It used to be said in the neighborhood, that he was the same out of school, and that his parents were obliged to secrete his books to prevent his injuring himself by over study. His devotion to his books, together with the fact of his great advancement beyond others of his age in the few studies then pursued in the district school, rendered him notorious in that part of the town. He was regarded as a prodigy, and his name was a household world. He was looked upon as standing alone, and entirely unapproachable by any of the little mortals around him. Reading, parsing, and spelling are the only branches of learning which I remember him in, or in connection with which his name was at that time mentioned, though he might have given some attention to writing and arith metic, which completed the circle of studies in the district; school at that time; but in the three branches first named he excelled all, even in the winter school, which was attended by several young men and women, some of whom became teachers soon after. Though mild and quiet, he was ambitious in the school ; to be at the head of his class, and be accounted the best scholar in school, seemed to be prominent objects with him, and to furnish strong motives to effort. I can recall but one instance of his missing a word in tho spelling class. The classes went on to the floor to spell, and he al most invariably stood at the head of the 'first class,' embracing the most advanced scholars. He stood there at the time referred to, and by missing a word, lost his place, which so grieved him that he wept like a punished child. While I knew him he did not en gage with other children in the usual recreations hiid amuse ments of the school grounds ; as soon as the school was dismissed at noon, he would start for home, a distance of half a mile, with all his books u ider his arm, including the New Testament, Webster's Spelling Book, English Header, &c., and would not return till the last moment of intermission ; at least such was his practice in the Bummer time. With regard to his aptness in spelling, it used to be said that the minister of the town, Rev. Mr. McGregor, once at tempted to find a w ~d or name in 'the Bible which he could nol 46 EARLY CHILDHOOD. spell correctly, but It/tad to do so. I always supposed, however, that this was an exaggeration, for he could not have been more than ieven years old at the time this was told. My father soon after re moved to another town thirty miles distant, and I lost sight of the family entirely, Horace and all, though I always remembered the gentle, flaxen-haired schoolmate with much interest, and often won dered what became of him ; and when the 'Log Cabin' appeared, I took much pains to assure myself whether this Horace Greeley was the same little Horace grown up, and found it was." From his sixth year, Horace resided chiefly at his father's house. He was now old enough to walk to the nearest school-house, a mil and a half from his home. He could read fluently, spell any word in the language ; had some knowledge of geography, and a little of arithmetic ; had read the Bible through from Genesis to Revela tions ; had read the Pilgrim's Progress with intense interest, and dipped into every other book he could lay his hands on. From his sixth to his tenth year, he lived, worked, read and went to school, in Amherst and the adjoining town of Bedford. Those who were then his neighbors and schoolmates there, have a lively recollection of the boy and his ways. Henceforth, he went to school only in the winter. Again he at tended a school which he had no right to attend, that of Bedford, and his attendance was not merely permitted, but sought. The school-committee expressly voted, that no pupils from other towne should be received at their school, except Horace Greeley alone; and, on entering the school, he took his place, young as he was, at the head of it, as it were, by acclamation. Nor did his superiority ever excite envy or enmity. He bore his honors meekly. Every one liked the boy, and took pride in his superiority to themselves. All his schoolmates agree in this, that Horace never had an ene my at school. The snow lies deep on those New Hampshire hills in the winter, and presents a serious obstacle to the younger children in their way to the school-house ; nor is it the rarest of disasters, even now, for children to be lost in a drift, and frozen to death. (Such a calam ity happened two years ago, within a mile or two ot the old Gree ley homestead.) " Many a morning," says one of the neighbors then, a stout schoolboy, now a sturdy farmer "many a morning T HIS EARLY FONDNESS FOR THE VILLAGE NEWSPAPER. 4:7 have carried Horace on ray back through the drifts to school, and put my own mittens over his, to keep his little hands from freez ing " He adds, " I lived at the next house, and I and my brothers often went down in the evening to play with him ; but he never would play with us till he had got his lessons. We could neither coax nor force him to." He remembers Horace as a boy of a bright and active nature, but neither playful nor merry ; one who would utter acute and " old-fashioned" remarks, and make more fun for others than he seemed to enjoy himself. His fondness for reading grew with the growth of his mind, till it amounted to a passion. His father's stock of books was small indeed. It consisted of a Bible, a " Confession of Faith," and per haps all told, twenty volumes beside ; and they by no means of a kind calculated to foster a love of reading in the mind of a little boy. But a weekly newspaper came to the house from the village of Amherst; and, except his mother's tales, that newspaper proba bly had more to do with the opening of the boy's mind and the tendency of his opinions, than anything else. The family well re member the eagerness with which he anticipated its coming. Pa per-day was the brightest of the week. An hour before the post- rider was expected, Horace would walk down the road to meet him, bent on having the first read; and when he had got possession of the precious sheet, he would hurry with it to some secluded place, lie down on the grass, and greedily devour its contents. The paper was called (and is still) the Farmer's Cabinet. It was mildly Whig in politics. The selections were religious, agricultural, and miscellaneous ; the editorials few, brief, and amiable ; its summary of news scanty in the extreme. But it was the only bearer of tid ings from the Great World. It connected the little brown house on the rocky hill of Amherst with the general life of mankind. The boy, before he could read himself, and before he could understand the meaning of War and bloodshed, doubtless heard his father read in it of the triumphs and disasters of the Second War with Great Britain, and of the rejoicings at the conclusion of peace. He him self may have read of Decatur's gallantry in the war with Algiers, of Wellington's victory at Waterloo, of Napoleon's fretting away his life on the rock of St. Helena, of Monroe's inauguration, of the dismantling of the fleets on the great l^kes, of the prog) ess of tho 48 EARLY CHILDHOOD. Erie Canal project, of Jackson's inroads into Florida, and the subse quent cession of that province to the United States, of the first meeting of Congress in the Capitol, of the passage of the Missouri Compromise. During the progress of the various commercial trea ties with the States of Europe, which were negotiated after the conclusion of the general peace, the whole theory, practice, and his tory of commercial intercourse, were amply discussed in Congress anl the newspapers ; and the mind of Horace, even in his ninth year, was mature enough to take some interest in the subject, and derive some impressions from its discussion. The Farmer's Cabinet, which brought all these and countless othei ideas and events to bear on the education of the boy, is now one of the thousand pa pers with which the Tribune exchanges. Horace scoured the country for books. Books were books in thai; remote and secluded region ; and when he had exhausted the col lections of the neighbors, he carried the search into the neighbor ing towns. I am assured that there was not one readable book within seven miles of his father's house, which Horace did not bor row and read during his residence in Amherst. He was never without a book. As soon, says one of his sisters, as he was dressed in the morning, he flew to his book. He read every minute of *he day which he could snatch from his studies at schoc/l, and on the farm. He would be so absorbed in his reading, that when his pa rents required his services, it was like rousing a heavy sleeper from his deepest sleep, to awaken Horace to a sense of things around him and an apprehension of the duty required of him. And even then he clung to his book. He would go reading to the cellar and the cider-barrel, reading to the wood-pile, reading to the garden, reading to the neighbors ; and pocketing his book only long enough to perform his errand, he would fall to reading again the instant his mind and his hands were at liberty. He kept in a secure place an ample supply of pine knots, and as soon as it was dark he would light one of these cheap and brilliant illuminators, put it on the back-log in the spacious fire-place, pile up his school books and his reading books on the floor, lie down on his back on the hearth, with his head to the fire and his feet coiled away out of the reach of stumblers; and there he would lie and read all through the long winter evenings, silent, motionless, dead SCOURS THE COUNTRY FOR BOOKS. 49 to the world around him, alive only to the world to which he was transported by his book. Visitors would come in, chat a while, and go away, without knowing he was present, and without his being aware of their coming and going. It was a nightly struggle to get him to bed. His father required his services early in the morning, and was therefore desirous that he should go to bed early in the evening. He feared, also, for the eye-sight of the boy, read ing so many hours with his head in the fire and by the flaring, flicker ing light of a pine knot. And so, by nine o'clock, his father would begin the task of recalling the absent mind from its roving, and rousing the prostrate and dormant body. And when Horace at length had been forced to beat a retreat, he kept his younger brother awake by telling over to him in bed what he had read, and by reciting the school lessons of the next day. His brother was by no means of a literary turn, and was prone much to the chagrin of Horace to fall asleep long before the lessons were all said and the tales all told. So entire and passionate a devotion to the acquisition of knowl edge in one so young, would be remarkable in any circumstances. But when the situation of the boy is considered living in a remote and'cery rural district few books accessible few literary persons re siding near the school contributing scarcely anything to his mental nourishment no other boy in the neighborhood manifesting any particular interest in learning the people about him all engaged in a rude and hard struggle to extract the means of subsistence from a rough and rocky soil such an intense, absorbing, and persistent love of knowledge as that exhibited by Horace Greeley, must be accounted very extraordinary. That his neighbors so accounted it, they are still eager to attest. Continually the wonder grew, that one small head should carry all he knew. There were not wanting those who thought that superior means of instruction ought to be placed within the reach of so superior a child. I have a somewhat vague, but very positive, and fully con firmed story, of a young man j'ist returned from college to his father's house in Bedford, who fell in with Horace, and was so struck with his capacity and attainments that he offered to send him to an academy in a neighboring town, and bear all the ex- 3 50 EARLY CHILDHOOD. penses of his maintenance and tuition. But his mother could not let him go, his father needed his assistance at home, and the boy himself is said not to have favored the scheme. A wise, a fortunate choice, I cannot help believing. That academy may have been an institution where boys received more good than harm where real knowledge was imparted where souls were inspired with the love of high and good things, and inflamed with an ambition to run a high and good career where boys did not lose all their modesty and half their sense where chests were expanded where cheeks were ruddy where limbs were active where stomachs were peptic. It may have been. But if it was, it was a different academy from many whose praises are in all the newspapers. Jt was better not to run the risk. If that young man's offe** had been accepted, it is a question whether the world would have ever heard of Horace Greeley. Probably his fragile body would not have sus tained the brain-stimulating treatment which a forward and eager boy generally receives at an academy. A better friend, though not a better meaning one, was a jovial neighbor, a sea-captain, who had taken to fanning. The captain had seen the world, possessed the yarn-spinning faculty, and be sides being himself a walking traveler's library, had a considerable collection of books, which he freely lent Jx> Horace. His salute, on meeting the boy, was not ' How do you do, Horace ?' but l Well, Horace, what's the capital of Turkey ?' or, ' Who fought the battle of Eutaw Springs?' or, 'How do you spell Encyclopedia, or K'amt- schai.ka, or Nebuchadnezzar ?' The old gentleman used to question the boy upon the contents of the books he had lent him, and was again and again surprised at the fluency, the accuracy, and the full ness of his replies. The captain was of service to Horace in vari ous ways, and he is remembered by the family with gratitude. To Horace's brother he once gave a sheep and a load of hay to keep it on during the winter, thus adapting his benefactions to the various 1 tastes of his juvenile friends. A clergyman, too, is spoken of, who took great interest in Horace, and gave him instruction in grammar, often giving the boy er roneous information to test hia knowledge. Horace, he used to ay, could nerer be shaken on a point which he had once clearly understood, but would stand to his opinion, and defend it against anybody and everybody teacher, pastor, or public opinion. HIS WAT OF FISHING. 5j In New England, the sons of farmers begin to make themselvea useful almost as soon as they can walk. They feed the chickens, they drive the cows, they bring in wood and water, and soon come to perform all those offices which come under the denomination of " chores." By the time they are eight or nine years old, they fre quently have tasks assigned them, which are called " stints," and not till they have done their stint are they at liberty to play. The reader may think that Horace's devotion to literature would naturally enough render the farm work distasteful to him ; anr 1 if he had gone to the academy, it might. I am bound, however, to say that all who knew him in boyhood, agree that he was not more devoted to study in his leisure hours, than he was faithful and assid uous in performing his duty to his father during the hours of work. Faitliful is the word. He could be trusted any where, and to do anything within the compass of his strength and years. It was hard, sometimes, to rouse him from his books ; but when he had been roused, and was entrusted with an errand or a piece of work, he would set about it vigorously, and lose no time till it was done. u Come," his brother would say sometimes, when the father had set the boys a task and had gone from home ; " come, Hod, let's go fishing." u No," Horace would reply, in his whining voice, " let us do our stint first." " He was always in school, though," says his brother, " and as we hoed down the rows, or chopped at the wood pile, he was perpetually talking about his lessons, asking questions, and narrating what he had read." Fishing, it appears, was the only sport in which Horace took much pleasure, during the first ten years of his life. But his love of fishing did not originate in what the Germans call the " sport impulse." Other boys fished for sport; Horace fished for fish. He fished industriously, keeping his eyes unceasingly on the float, and never distracting his own attention, or that of the fish, by convers ing with his companions. The consequence was that he would often catch more than all the rest of the party put together. Shoot ing was the favorite amusement of the boys of the neighborhood, but Horace could rarely be persuaded to take part in it. When he did accompany a shooting-party, he would never carry or dis charge a gun, and when the game was found he would lie down and stop his ears till the murder had been done. CHAPTER IV. HIS FATHER RUINED REMOVAL TO VERMONT. New Hampshire before the era of manufactures Causes of his father's failure- -Rum in the olden time An execution in the house Flight of the father Horace and the Rum Jug Compromise with the creditors Removal to another farm Fi nal ruin Removal to Vermont The winter journey Poverty of the family- Scene at their new home Cheerfulness in misfortune. BUT while thus Horace was growing up to meet his destiny, pressing forward on the rural road to learning, and secreting char acter in that secluded home, a cloud, undiscerned by him, had come over his father's prospects. It began to gather when the boy was little more than six years old. In his seventh year it broke, and drove the family, for a time, from house and land. In his tenth, it had completed its work his father was a ruined man, an exile, a fugitive from his native State. In those days, before the great manufacturing towns which now afford the farmer a market for his produce, had sprung into exist ence along the shores of the Merrimac, before a net-work of rail roads regulated the price of grain in the barns of New Hampshire by the standard of Mark Lane, a farmer of New Hampshire was not, in his best estate, very far from ruin. Some articles which forty years ago were quite destitute of pecuniary value, now afford an ample profit. Fire-wood, for example, when Horace Greeley was a boy, could seldom be sold at any price. It was usually burned up on the land on which it grew, as a worthless incumbrance. Fire-wood now, in the city of Manchester, sells for six dollars a cord, and at any point within ten miles of Manchester for four dol lars. Forty years ago, farmers had little surplus produce, and that little had to be carried far, and it brought little money home. In short, before the manufacturing system was introduced into New Hampshire, affording employment to her daughters in the factory, to her sons on the land, New Hampshire was a poverty-stricken State. CAUSES OF HIS FATHER'S FAILURE. 53 It is one of the wonders of party infatuation, that the two States which if they have not gained most, have certainly most to gain from the " American system," should have always been, and ehould still he its most rooted opponents. But man the partisan, like man the sectarian, is, always was, and will ever he, a poor creature. The way to thrive in New Hampshire was to work very hard keep the store-bill small, stick to the farm, and be no man's security. Of these four things, Horace's father did only one he worked hard. He was a good workman, methodical, skillful, and persevering. But he speculated in lumber, and lost money by it. He was ' bound,' as they say in the country, for another man, and had to pay the money which that other man failed to pay. He had a free and generous nature, lived well, treated the men whom he employed liberally, and in various ways swelled his account with the store keeper. Those, too, were, the jolly, bad days, when everybody drank strong drinks, and no one supposed that the affairs of life could pos sibly be transacted without its agency, any more than a machine could go without the lubricating oil. A field could not be ' logged, 1 hay could no.t be got in, a harvest could not be gathered, unless the jug of liquor stood by the spring, and unless the spring was visited many times in the day by all hands. No visitor could be sent un- inoistened away. No holiday could be celebrated without drinking- booths. At weddings, at christenings, at funerals, rum seemed to be the inducement that brought, and the tie that bound, the com pany together. It was rum that cemented friendship, and rum that clinched bargains ; rum that kept out the cold of winter, and rum that moderated the summer's heat. Men drank it, women drank it, children drank it. There were families in which the first duty of every morning was to serve around to all its members, even to the youngest child, a certain portion of alcoholic liquor. Hum had to be bought with money, and money was hard to get in New Hampshire. Zaccheus Greeley was not the man to stint his work* men. At his house and on his farm the jug was never empty. In his cellar the cider never was out. And so, by losses which he could not help, by practices which had not yet been discovered to be unnecessary, his affairs became disordered, and he began to descend the easy steep that leads to the abyss of bankruptcy. He 54 HIS FATHER RUINED. REMOVAL TO VERMONT. arrive! lingered a few years on the edge was pushed in and scrambled out on the other side. It was on a Monday morning. There had been a long, fierce rain, and the clouds still hung heavy and dark over the hills. Horace, then only nine years old, on coming down stairs in the morning, saw several men about the house; neighbors, some of them; others were strangers; others he had seen in the village. He was too young to know the nature of an Execution, and by what right the sheriff and a party of men laid hands upon his father's property. His father had walked quietly off into the woods ; for, at that period, a man's person was not exempt from seizure. Horace had a vague idea that the men had come to rob them of all they possessed ; and wild stories are afloat in the neighborhood, of the boy's conduct on the occasion. Some say, that he seized a hatchet, ran to the neighboring field, and began furiously to cut down a fa vorite pear-tree, saying, " They shall not have that, anyhow." But his mother called him off, and the pear-tree still stands. Another story is, that he went to one of his mother's closets, and taking as many of her dresses as he could grasp in his arms, ran away with them into the woods, hid them behind a rock, and then came back to the house for more. Others assert, that the article carried off by the indignant boy was not dresses, but a gallon of rurn. Bot whatever the boy did, or left undone, the reader may imagine that it was to all the family a day of confusion, anguish, and horror. Both of Horace's parents were persons of incorruptible honesty ; they had striven hard to place such a calamity as this far from their house; they had never experienced themselves, nor witnessed at their earlier homes, a similar scene ; the blow was unexpected ; and mingled with their sense of shame at being publicly degraded, was a feeling of honest rage at the supposed injustice of so summary a proceeding. It was a dark day ; but it passed, as the darkest day will. An " arrangement" was made with the creditors. Mr. Greeley gave up his own farm, temporarily, and removed to another in the adjoining town of Bedford, which he cultivated on shares, and de voted principally to the raising of hops. Misfortune still pursued him. His two years' experience of hop-growing was not satisfac tory. The hop-market was depressed. His own farm iu Amherst BEGINNING THE WORLD ANEW. 55 was either ill managed or else the seasons were unfavorable. Ho gave up the hop-farm, poorer than ever. He removed back to his old home in Ainherst. A little legal maneuvering or rascality on the part of a creditor, gave the finishing blow to his fortunes ; and, in the winter of 1821, he gave up the effort to recover himself, be came a bankrupt, was sold out of house, land, and household goods by the sheriff, and fled from the State to avoid arrest, leaving his family behind. Horace was nearly ten years old. Some of the debts then left unpaid, he discharged in part thirty years after. Mr. Greeley had to begin the world anew, and the world was all before him, where to choose, excepting only that portion of it which is included within the boundaries of New Hampshire. He made his way, after some wandering, to the town of Westhaven, in Rutland county, Vermont, about a hundred and twenty miles northwest of his former residence. There he found a large landed proprietor, who had made one fortune in Boston as a merchant, and married another in Westhaven, the latter consisting of an extensive tract of land. He had now retired from business, had set up for a coun try gentleman, was clearing his lands, and when they were cleared he rented them out in farms. This attempt to " found an estate," in the European style, signally failed. The " mansion house" has been disseminated over the neighborhood, one wing here, another wing there ; the " lawn" is untrimmed ; the attempt at a park-gate l:as lost enough of the paint that made it tawdry once, to look shabby now. But this gentleman was useful to Zacchens Greeley in the day of his poverty. He gave him work, rented him a small house nearly opposite the park-gate just mentioned, and thus en abled him in a few weeks to transport his family to a new home. It was in the depth of winter when they made the journey. The teamster that drove them still lives to tell how ' old Zac Greeley came to him, and wanted he should take his sleigh and horses, and go over with him to New Hampshire State, and bring his family back ;* and how, when they had got a few miles on the way, he said to Zac, said he, that he (Zac) was a stranger to him, and he did n't feel like going so far without enough to secure him; and so Zac gave him enough to secure him, and away they drove to New Hampshire State. One sleigh was sufficient to convey all the little property the law had left the family, and the load could not have 56 HIS FATHER RUINED. REMOVAL TO VERMONT. been a heavy one, for the distance was accomplished in a little less than three days. The sleighing, however, was good, and the Con necticut river was crossed on the ice. The teamster remembers well the intelligent, white-headed boy who was so pressing with his questions, as they rode along over the snow, and who soon exhaust ed the man's knowledge of the geography of the region in which he had lived all his days. " He asked me," says he, " a great dea. about Lake Champlain, and how far it was from Plattsburgh to this, that, and t' other place ; but, Lord ! he told me a d d sight more than 1 could tell him. 11 The passengers in the sleigh were Horace, his parents, his brother, and two sisters, and all arrived safely at the little house in Westhaven, safely, but very, very poor. They pos sessed the clothes they wore on their journey, a bed or two, a few very few domestic utensils, an antique chest, and one or two other small relics of their former state ; and they possessed nothing more. A lady, who was then a little girl, and, as little girls in the coun try will, used to run in and out of the neighbors' houses at all houn without ceremony, tells me that, many times, during that winter she saw the newly-arrived family taking sustenance in the follow ing manner : A five-quart milk-pan filled with bean porridge an hereditary dish among the Scotch-Irish was placed upon the floor, the children clustering around it. Each child was provided with a spoon, and dipped into the porridge, the spoon going directly from the common dish to the particular mo.uth, without an intermediate landing upon a plate, the meal consisting of porridge, and porridge only. The parents sat at a table, and enjoyed the dignity of a sep arate dish. This was a homely way of dining ; but, adds my kind informant, " they seemed so happy over their meal, that many a time, as I looked upon the group, I wished our mother would let us eat in that way it seemed so much better than sitting at a table and using knives, and forks, and plates." There was no repining in the family over their altered circumstances, nor any attempt to con ceal the scantiness of their furniture. To what the world calls " ap pearances" they seemed constitutionally insensible. CHAPTER V. AT WESTHAVEN, VERMONT. Description of the country Clearing up Land All the family assist a la Swiss-Fam ily-Robinson Primitive costume of Horace His early indifference to dress HU manner and attitude in school A Peacemaker among the boys Gets into a scrape, and out of it Assists his school-fellows in their studies An evening scene at home Horace knows too much Disconcerts his teachers by his questions Leaves school The pine knots still blaze on the hearth Reads incessantly Becomes a great draught player Bee-hunting Reads at the Mansion House Taken for an Idiot And for a possible President Reads Mrs. Hemans with rapture A Wolf Story A Pedestrian Journey Horace and the horseman Yoking the Oxen- Scene with an old Soaker Rum in Westhaven Horace's First Pledge Narrow escape from drowning His religious doubts Becomes a Universalist Discovers the humbug of " Democracy "Impatient to begin his apprenticeship. THE family were gainers in some important particulars, by their change of residence. The land was better. The settlement was more recent. There was a better chance for a poor man to acquire property. And what is well worth mention for its effect upon the opening mind of Horace, the scenery was grander and more various. That part of Rutland county is in nature's large manner. Long ranges of hills, with bases not too steep for cultivation, but rising into lofty, precipitous and fantastic summits, stretch away in every direction. The low-lands are level and fertile. Brooks and rivers come out from among the hills, where they have been officiating as water-power, and flow down through valleys that open and expand to receive them, fertilizing the soil. Roaming among these hills, the boy must have come frequently upon little lakes locked in on every side, without apparent outlet or inlet, as smooth as a mirror, as silent as the grave. Six miles from his father's house was the great Lake Champlain. He could not see it from his father's door, but he could see the blue mist that rose from its surface every morning and evening, f.nd hung over it, a cloud veiling a Mystery. And he could see the long line of green knoll-like hills that formed its opposite shore. And he could go down on Sundays to the shore itself, and stand in the immediate presence of the lake. 3* 58 AT WESTHAVEN, VERMONT. Nor is it a slight tiling for a boy to see a great natural object which he has been learning about in his school books ; nor is it an unin- fluential circumstance for him to live where he can see it frequent ly. It was a superb country for a boy to grow up in, whether his tendencies were industrial, or sportive, or artistic, or poetical. There was rough work enough to do on the land. Fish were abundant in the lakes and streams. Game abounded in the woods. Wild grapes and wild honey were to be had for the search after them. Much of the surrounding scenery is sublime, and what is not sublime is beautiful. Moreover, Lake Champlain is a stage on the route of northern and southern travel, and living upon its shores brought the boy nearer to that world in which he was destined to move, and which he had to know before he could work in it to advantage. At Westhaven, Horace passed the next five years of his life. He was now rather tall for his age ; his mind was far in advance of it. Many of the opinions for which he has since done battle, were distinctly formed during that important period of his life to which the present chapter is devoted. At Westhaven, Mr. Greeley, as they say in the country, ' took jobs ;' and the jobs which he took were of various kinds. He would contract to get in a harvest, to prepare the ground for a new one, to 'tend' a saw-mill; but his principal employ ment was clearing up land; that is, piling up and burning the trees after they had been felled. After a time he kept sheep and cat tle. In most of his undertakings he prospered. By incessant labor and by reducing his expenditures to the lowest possible point, he saved money, slowly but continuously. In whatever he engaged, whether it was haying, harvesting, eawing, or land-clearing, he was assisted by all his family. There was little work to do at home, and after breakfast, the house was left to take care of itself, and away went the family, father, mother, boys, girls, and oxen, to work together. Clearing land offers an excellent field for family labor, as it affords work adapted to all de grees of strength. The father chopped the larger logs, and direct ed the labor of all the company. Horace drove the oxen, and drove them none too well, say the neighbors, and was gradually supplanted in the office of driver by his younger brother. Both the boys could chop the smaller tree*. Their mother and sisters PRIMITIVE COSTUME OF HORACE. 59 fathered together the light wood into heaps. And Avhcn the Teat logs had to be rolled upon one another, there was scope for die combined skill and strength of the whole party. Many happy and merry days the family spent together in this employment. The mother's spirit never flagged. Her voice rose in song and laughter from the tangled brush-wood in which she was often bur ied; and no word, discordant or unkind, was ever known to break the perfect harmony, to interrupt the perfect good humor that prevailed in the family. At night, they went home to the most primitive of suppers, and partook of it in the picturesque and labor-saving style in which the dinner before alluded to was con sumed. The neighbors still point out a tract of fifty acres which was cleared in this sportive and Swiss-Faraily-Kobinson-like man ner. They show the spring on the side of the road where the fam ily used to stop and drink on their way ; and they show a hem lock-tree, growing from the rocks above the spring, which used to furnish the brooms, weekly renewed, which swept the little house in which the little family lived. To complete the picture, imagine them all clad in the same material, the coarsest kind of linen or linsey-woolsey, home-spun, dyed with butternut bark, and the different garments made in the roughest and simplest man ner by the mother. More than three garments at the same time, Horace seldom wore in the summer^ and these were a straw bat, generally in a state of dilapidation, a tow-shirt, never buttoned, a pair of trousers made of the family material, and having the peculiarity of being very short in both legs, but shorter in one than the other. In the winter he added a pair of shoes am' a jacket. During the five years of his life' at Westhaven, probably 'na clothes did not cost three dollars a year; and, I believe, that duriu^ the whole period of his childhood, up to the time when he came ot >ee, not fifty dollars in all were expended upon his dress. ' He never nanifested, on any occasion, in any company, nor at any part of his eai'v life, the slightest interest in his attire, nor the least care for its effect upon others. That amiable trait in human nature which inclines us to decoration, which make us desirous to present an agreeab'e figure to others, ai.d to abhor peculiarity in our appearance, is a trjjit which Horaco never gave the smallest evidence of possessing. 60 AT WESTHAVEN, VERMONT. He went to school three winters in "Westhaven, but not to anj great advantage. He had already gone the round of district schoo* studies, and did little more after his tenth year than walk over the course, keeping lengths ahead of all competitors, with little effort "He was always," says one of his Westhaven schoolmates, "at the top of the school. He seldom had a teacher that could teach him anything. Once, and once only, he missed a word. His fair face was crimsoned in an instant. He was terribly cut about it, and I fancied he was not himself for a week after. I see him now, as he sat in class, with his slender body, his large head, his open, ample forehead, his pleasant smile, and his coarse, clean, homespun clothes. His attitude was always the same. He sat with his arms loosely folded, his head bent forward, his legs crossed, and one foot swinging. He did not seem to pay attention, but nothing escaped him. He appeared to attend more from curiosity to hear what sort of work we made of the lesson than from any interest he took in the subject for his own sake. Once, I parsed a word egregiously wrong, and Horace was so taken aback by the mistake that he was startled from his propriety, and exclaimed, loud enough for the class to hear him, ' What a fool !' The manner of it was so ludicrous that I, and all the class, burst into laughter." Another schoolmate remembers him chiefly for his gentle manner and obliging disposition. " I never," she says, " knew him to fight, or to be angry, or to have an enemy. He was a peacemaker among us. He played with the boys sometimes, and I think was fonder of snowballing than any other game. For girls, as girls, he never manifested any preference. On one occasion he got into a scrape. He had broken some petty rule of the school, and was required, as a punishment, to inflict a certain number of blows upon another boy, who had, I think, been a participator in the offense. The in strument of flagellation was placed in Horace's hand, and he drew off, as though he was going to deal a terrific blow, but it came down so gently on the boy's jacket that every one saw that Horace was shamming. The teacher interfered, and told him to strike harder ; and a little harder he did strike, but a more harmless flog ging was never administered. He seemed not to have the power, any more than the will, to inflict pain." If Horace got little good himself from his last winters at school DISCONCERTS HIS TEACHERS. 61 he was of great assistance to his schoolfellows in explaining to them the difficulties of their lessons. Few evenings passed in which some strapping fellow did not come to the house with his grammar or his slate, and sit demurely by the side of Horace, while the dis tracting sum was explained, or the dark place in. the parsing les son illuminated. The boy delighted to render such assistance. However deeply he might be absorbed in his own studies, as soon as he saw a puzzled countenance peering in at the door, he knew his man, knew what was wanted ; and would jump up from hi? recumbent posture in the chimney-corner, and proceed, with a patience that is still gratefully remembered, with a perspicuity that is still mentioned with admfration, to impart the information re quired of him. Fancy it. It is a pretty picture. The ' little white- headed fellow ' generally so abstracted, now all intelligence and ani mation, by the side of a great hulk of a young man, twice his age and three times his weight, with a countenance expressing perplex ity and despair. An apt question, a reminding word, a few figures hastily scratched on the slate, and light flashes on the puzzled mind. He wonders he had not thought of that : he wishes Heaven had given him such a ' head-piece.' To some of his teachers at Westhaven, Horace was a cause of great annoyance. He knew too much. He asked awkward ques tions. He was not to be put off with common-place solutions of serious difficulties. He wanted things to hang together, and liked to know how, if this was true, that could be true also. At length, one of his teachers, when Horace was thirteen years old, had the honesty and good sense to go to his father, and say to him, point blank, that Horace knew more than he did, and it was of no use for him to go to school any more. So Horace remained at home, read hard all that winter in a little room by himself, and taught his youngest sister beside. He had attended district school, altogether, about forty-five months. At Westhaven, the pine-knots blazed on the hearth as brightly and as continuously as they had done at the old home in Amherst. There was a new reason why they should ; for a candle was a lux ury now, too expensive to be indulged in. Horace's home was a favorite evening resort for the children of the neighborhood a fact which says much for 'the kindly spirit of its inmates. They came 62 AT WESTHAVEN, VERMONT. to hear his mother's songs and stories, to play with his brother and sisters, to get assistance from himself; and they liked to be there, where there was no stiffness, nor ceremony, nor discord. Horace cared nothing for their noise and romping, but he could never be induced to join in an active game. When he was not assisting some bewildered arithmetician, he lay in the old position, on his back in the fireplace, reading, always reading. The boys would hide his book, but he would get another. They would pull him out of his fiery den by the leg ; and he would crawl back, without the least show of anger, but without the slightest inclination to yield the point. There was a game, however, which could sometimes tempt him from his book, and of which he gradually became excessively fond. It was draughts, or * checkers.' In that game he acquired extraor dinary skill, beating everybody in the neighborhood ; and before he had reached maturity, there were few draught-players in the coun try if any who could win two games in three of Horace Greoley. His cronies at Westhaven seem to have been those who were fond of draughts. In his passion for books, he was alone among his companions, who attributed his continual reading more to indolence than to his acknowledged superiority of intelligence. It was often predicted that, whoever else might prosper, Horace never would. And yet, he gave proof, in very early life, that the Yankee ele ment was strong within him. In the first place, he was always do ing something; and, in the second, he always had something to sell. He saved nuts, and exchanged them at the store for the articles he wished to purchase. He would hack away, hours at a time, at a pitch-pine stump, the roots of which are as inflammable as pitch itself, and, tying up the roots in little bundles, and the little bundles into one large one, he would " back" the load to the store, and sell it for kindling wood. His favorite out-door sport, too, at "West- baven, was bee-hunting, which is not only an agreeable and excit ing pastime, but occasionally rewards the hunter with a prodigious mass of honey as much as a hundred and fifty pounds having been frequently obtained from a single tree. This was profitable sport, and Horace liked it amazingly. His share of the honey generally found its way to the store. By these and other expedients, the boy managed always to have a little money, and when a peddler cauie TAKEN FOR AN IDIOT. 63 along with books in his wagon, Horace was pretty sure to be his customer. Yet he was only half a Yankee. He could earn money, >ut the bargaining faculty he had not. What did he read ? "Whatever he could get. But his preference was for history, poetry, and newspapers. He had read, as I have before mentioned, the whole Bible before he was six years old. He read the Arabian Nights with intense pleasure in his eighth year ; Robinson Crusoe in his ninth ; Shakspeare in his eleventh ; in his twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth years, he read a good many of the common, superficial histories Robertson's, Gold smith's, and others and as many tales and romances as he could borrow. At Westhaven, as at Amherst, he roamed far and wide in search of books. He was fortunate, too, in living near the * mansion-house' before mentioned, the proprietor of which, it ap pears, took some interest in Horace, freely lent him books, and allowed him to come to the house and read there as often and as long as he chose. A story is told by one who lived at the ' mansion-house 7 when Horace used to read there. Horace entered the library one day, when the master of the house happened to be present, in conversa tion with a stranger. The stranger, struck with the awkwardness and singular appearance of the boy, took him for little better than an idiot, and was inclined to laugh at the idea of lending books to ' such a fellow as ihat? The owner of the mansion defended his conduct by extolling the intelligence of his protege, and wound up with the usual climax, that he should " not be surprised, sir, if that boy should come to be President of the United States." People in those days had a high respect for the presidential office, and really believed many of them did that to get the highest place it was only necessary to be the greatest man. Hence it was a very com mon mode of praising a boy, to make the safe assertion that he might, one day, if he persevered in well-doing, be the President of the United States. That was before the era of wire-pulling and rotation in office. He must be either a very young or a very old Iran who can now mention the. presidential office in connection with the future of any boy not extraordinarily vicious. Wire-pull ing, happily, has robbed the schoolmasters of one of their bad argu ments for a virtuous life. But we are wandering from the library. 64 AT WESTHAVEN, VERMONT. The end of the story is, that the stranger looked as if lie thought Horace's defender half mad himself; and, "to tell the truth," said the lady who told me the story, "we all thought Mr. had made a crazy speech." Horace does not appear to have made a favorable impression at the ' mansion-house.' But he read the books in it, for all that. Perhaps it was there, that he fell in with a copy of Mrs. Hemans' poems, which, wher ever he found them, were the first poems that awakened his enthu siasm, the first writings that made him aware of the better impulses of his nature. "I remember," he wrote in the Rose of Sharon for 1841, "as of yesterday, the gradual unfolding of the exceeding truthfulness and beauty, the profound heart-knowledge (to coin a Germanism) which characterizes Mrs. Hemans' poems, upon my own immature, unfolding mind. ' Cassabianca,' 'Things that change,' ' The Voice of Spring,' * The Traveler at the Source of the Nile,' 4 The Wreck,' and many other poems of kindred nature are enshrined in countless hearts especially of those whose intel lectual existence dates its commencement between 1820 and 1830 as gems of priceless value ; as spirit-wands, by whose electric touch they were first made conscious of the diviner aspirations, the loft ier, holier energies within them." Such a testimony as this may teach the reader, if he needs the lesson, not to undervalue the authors whom his fastidious taste may place among the Lesser Lights of Literature. To you, fastid ious reader, those authors may have little to impart. But among the hills in the country, where the feelings are fresher, and minds are unsated by literary sweets, there may be many a thoughtful boy and earnest man, to whom your Lesser Lights are Suns that warm, illumine, and quicken ! The incidents in Horace's life at Westhaven were few, and of the few that did occur, several have doubtless been forgotten. The people there remember him vividly enough, and are profuse in im parting their general impressions of his character; but the facts which gave rise to those impressions have mostly escaped their memories. They speak of him as an absorbed boy, who rarely saluted or saw a passer-by who would walk miles at the road-side, following the zig-zag of the fences, without once looking up wh his intimates to be, in the language of one of them " a darned smart fellow, in spite of his looks " who was utterly blameless in all his ways, and works, and words who had not, and could not have had, an enemy, because nature, by leaving out of his compo sition the diabolic element, had made it impossible for him to be one. The few occurrences of the boy's life, which, in addition to these general reminiscences of his character, have chanced to escape oblivion, may as well be narrated here. As an instance of his nervous timidity, a lady mentions, that when he was about eleven years old, he came to her house one even ing on some errand, and staid till after dark. He started for home, at length, but had not been gone many minutes before he burst into the house again, in great, agitation, saying he had seen a wolf by the side of the road. . There had been rumors of wolves in the neighborhood. Horace declared he had seen the eyes of one glar ing upon him as he passed, and he was so overcome with terror, that two of the elder girls of the family accompanied him home. They saw no wolf, nor were there any wolves about at the time ; the mistake probably arose from some phosphorescent wood, or some other bright object. A Vermont boy of that period, as a gen eral thing, cared little more for a wolf than a New York boy does for a cat, and could have faced a pack of wolves with far less dread than a company of strangers. Horace was never abashed by an audience; but two glaring eye-balls among the brush-wood sent him flying with terror. In nothing are mortals more wise than in their fears. That which we stigmatize as cowardice what is it but nature's kindly warning to her children, not to confront what they cannot master, and not to undertake what their strength is unequal to ? Horace was a match for a rustic auditory, and he feared it not. He was not a match for a wild beast ; so he ran away. Considerate nature ! Horace, all through his boyhood, kept his object of becoming a printer steadily in view ; and soon after coining to Vermont, about his eleventh year, he began to think it time for him to take a step towards the fulfillment of his intention. He talked to his father on the subject, but received no encouragement from him. His father said, and very truly, that no one would take an apprentice so young. But the boy was not satisfied ; and, one morning, he trudged off to 66 AT WESTIIAVEN, VERMONT. Whitehall, a town about nine miles distant, where a newspaper was published, to make inquiries. He went to the printing office, saw the printer, and learned that his father was right. He was too young, the printer said ; and so the boy trudged home again. A few months after, he went on another and much longer pedes trian expedition. He started, with seventy-five cents in his pocket and a small bundle of provisions on a stick over his shoulder, to walk to Londonderry, a hundred and twenty miles distant, to see Ins old friends and relatives. He performed the journey, staid sev- ral weeks, and came back with a shilling or two more money than he took with him owing, we may infer, to the amiable way aunts and uncles have of bestowing small coins upon nephews who visit them. His re-appearance in New Hampshire excited unbounded astonishment, his age and dimensions seeming ludicrously out of proportion to the length and manner of his solitary journey. He was made much of during his stay, and his journey is still spoken of there as a wonderful performance, only exceeded, in fact, by Horace's second return to Londonderry a year or tvo after, when he drove, over the same ground, his aunt and her four children, in a 'one-horse wagon,' and drove back again, without the slightest accident. As a set-off to these marvels, it must be recorded, that on two other occasions he was taken for an idiot once, when he entered a store, in one of the brownest of his brown studies, and a stranger inquired, "What darn fool is that?" and a second time, in the manner following. He was accustomed to call his father " Sir? both in speaking to, and speaking of him. One day, while Horace was chopping wood by the side of the road, a man came up on horse-back and inquired the way to a distant town. Horace could not tell him, and, without looking up, said, " ask Sir? meaning, ask father. The stranger, puzzled at this reply, repeated his question, and Horace again said, "ask Sir. n "I am, asking," shouted the man. " Well, ask Sir? said Horace, once more. " Aint I asking, you fool?" screamed the man. " But I want you to ask Sir? said Horace. It was of no avail, the man rode away in disgust, and inquired at the next tavern " who that tow-headed fool was down the road?" In a similar absent fit it must have been, that the boy once at- YOKING THE OXEN. 67 tempted, in vain, to yoke the oxen that he had yoked a hundred times before without difficulty. To see a small boy yoking a pair of oxen is, O City Reader, to behold an amazing exhibition of the power of Mind over Matter. The huge beasts need not come under the yoke twenty men could not compel them but they do come under it at tdie beck of a boy that can just stagger under the yoke himself, and whom one of the oxen, with one horn and a shake of the head, could toss over a hay-stack. The boy, with the yoke on his shoulders, and one of the ' bows ' in his hand, marches up to the ' off ' ox, puts the bow round his neck, thrusts the ends of the bow through the holes of the yoke, fastens them there and one ox is his. But the other ! The boy then removes the other bow, holds up the end of the yoke, and commands the 'near' ox to approach, and ' come under here, sir. 7 Wonderful to relate ! the near ox obeys ! He walks slowly up, and takes his place by the side of his brother, as though it were a pleasant thing to pant all day before the plough, and he was only too happy to leave the dull pasture. But the ox is a creature of habit. If you catch the near ox first, and then try to get the off ox to come under the near side of the yoke, you will discover that the off ox has an opinion of his own. He won't come. This was the mistake which Horace, one morning in an absent fit, committed, and the off ox could not be brought to deviate from established usage. After much coaxing, and, possibly, some vituperation, Horace was about to give it up, when his brother chanced to come to the field, who saw at a glance what was the matter, and rectified the mistake. "Ah !" his father used to say, after Horace had made a display of this kind, " that boy will never get along in this world. He '11 never know more than enough to come in when it rains." Another little story is told of the brothers. The younger was throwing stones at a pig that preferred to go in a direction exactly contrary to that in which the boys wished to drive him a com mon case with pigs, et cetera. Horace, who never threw stones at pigs, was overheard to sa}, "Kow, you ought n't to throw stones at that hog ; he don't know anything." The person who heard these words uttered by the boy, is one of those bibulant individuals who, in the rural districts, are called 'old K. \kers,' and his f.,ce, tobacco-stained, and rubicund with the 68 AT WESTHAVEN, VERMONT. drinks of forty years, gleamed with the light of other days, as he hiccoughed out the little tale. It may serve to show how the hoy is remembered in Westhaven, if I add a word or two respecting my interview with this man. J met him on an unfrequented road ; his hair was gray, his step was tottering ; and thinking it probable he might be able to add to my stock of reminiscences, I asked him whether he remembered Horace Greeley. He mumbled a few words in reply ; but I perceived that he was far gone towards in toxication, and soon drove on. A moment after, I heard a voice call ing behind me. I looked round, and discovered that the voice was that of the soaker, who was shouting for me to stop. I alighted and went back to him. And now that the idea of my previous questions had had time to imprint itself upon his half-torpid brain, his tongue was loosened, and he entered into the subject with an enthusiasm that seemed for a time to burn up the fumes that had stupefied him. He was full of his theme ; and, besides confirming much that I had already heard, added the story related above, from his own recollection. As the tribute of a sot to the champion of the Maine-Law, the old man's harangue was highly interesting. That part of the town of Westhaven was, thirty years ago, a desperate place for drinking. The hamlet in which the family lived longer than anywhere else in the neighborhood, has ceased to exist, and it decayed principally through the intemperance of its inhabitants. Much of the land about it has not been improved in the least degree, from what it was when Horace Greeley helped to clear it ; and drink has absorbed the means and the energy which should have been devoted to its improvement. A boy growing up in such a place would be likely to become either a drunkard or a tee-totaler, according to his organization ; and Horace became the latter. It is rather a singular fact, that, though both his parents and all their ancestors were accustomed to the habitual and liberal use of intoxicating liquors and tobacco, neither Horace nor his brother could ever be induced to partake of either. They had a constitutional aversion to the taste of both, long before they under stood the nature of the human system well enough to know that stimulants of all kinds are necessarily pernicious. Horace was therefore a tee-totaler before tee-totalisrn came up, and he took a sort of pledge before the pledge was inverted. It happened '>ne NARROW ESCAPE FROM DROWNING. 69 day that a neighbor stopped to take dinner with the family, and, as a matter of course, the bottle of rum was brought out for his entertainment. Horace, it appears, either tasted a little, or else took a disgust at the smell of the stuff, or perhaps was offended at the effects which he saw it produce. An idea struck him. He said, Dewey, arid edited by E. ou;:uey His first Overcoat Home to his Father's Log House Ranges Ae cou..hj for work The Sore Leg Cured Gets Employment, but little Money AuOuisneu Ine Draught-Players Goes to Erie, Pa. Interview witL an Editor Bbco.jes aJoumejinanin the Office Description of Erie The Lake His Generos ity to his Father His New Clothes No more work at Erie Starts for N 7 ew York. tk WELL, Horace, and where are you going now ?" asked the kind landlady of the tavern, as Horace, a few days after the closing of the printing-office, appeared on the piazza, equipped for the road i. ., with his jacket on, and with his bundle and his stick in his hand. " I am going," was the prompt and sprightly answer, " to Penn sylvania, to see iny father, and there I shall stay till my leg gets well." With these words, Horace laid down the bundle and the stick, and took a seat for the last time on that piazza, the scene of many a peaceful triumph, where, as Political Gazetteer, he had often gireji the information that he alone, of all the town, could give ; where, as political partisan, he had often brought an antagonist to extrem ities ; where, as oddity, he had often fixed the gaze and twisted the neck of the passing peddler. . And was there no demonstration of feeling at> the departure of BO distinguished a personage? There was. But it did not take the form of a silver dinner-service, nor of a gold tea ditto, nor of a piece of plate, nor even of a gold pen, nor yet of a series of reso lutions. While Horace sat on the piazza, talking with his old friends, who gathered around him, a meeting of two individuals was held in the corner of the bar-room. They were the landlord and one of his boarders ; and the subject of their deliberations were, an old brown overcoat belonging to the latter. The land lord had the floo^ and his speed was to the following purport : [YOUNG GREELEY'S ARRIVAL IN NEW YORK.] HORACE LEAVES POULTNEY. 107 " He felt like doing something for Horace before he went. Horace was an entirely unspeakable person. He had lived a long time in the house; he had never given any trouble, and we feel for him as for our own son. Now, there is that brown over-coat of .yours. It 's cold on the canal, all the summer, in the mornings and even ings. Horace is poor and his father is poor. You are owing me a little, as much as the old coat is worth, and what I say is, let us give the poor fellow the overcoat, and call our account squared." This feeling oration was received with every demonstration of ap proval, and the proposition was carried into effect forthwith. The landlady gave him a pocket Bible. In a few minutes more, Horace rose, put his stick through his little red bundle, and both over hia shoulder, took the overcoat upon his other arm, said * Good-by,' to his friends, promised to write as soon as he was settled again, and set off upon his long journey. His good friends of the tavern followed him with their eyes, until a turn of the road hid the bent and shambling figure from their sight, and then they turned away to praise him and to wish him well. Twenty-five years have passed ; and, to this hour, they do not tell the tale of his departure without a certain swelling of the heart, without a certain glistening of the softer pair of eyes. It was a fine, cool, breezy morning in the month of June, 1830. Nature had assumed those robes of brilliant green which she wears only in June, and welcomed the wanderer forth with that heavenly smile which plays upon her changeful countenance only when she is attired in her best. Deceptive smile ! The forests upon those hills of hilly Rutland, brimrifing with foliage, concealed their granite ribs, their chasms, their steeps, their precipices, their morasses, and the reptiles that lay coiled among them; but they were there. So did the alluring aspect of the world hide from the wayfarer the struggle, the toil, the danger that await the man who goes out frora his seclusion to confront the world ALONE the world of which he knows nothing except by hearsay, that cares nothing for him, and takes no note of his arrival. The present wayfarer was destined to be quite alone in his conflict with the world, and he was destined to wrestle with it for many years before it yielded him anything more than a show of submission. How prodigal of help is the Devil to liia scheming and guileful servants ! But the Powers Celestial 108 HE WANDERS. they love their chosen too wisely and too well to diminish by one care the burthen that makes them strong, to lessen by one pang the agony that makes them good, to prevent one mistake of the folly that makes them wise. Light of heart and step, the traveler walked on. In the after noon he reached Comstock's Fording, fourteen miles from Poultney ; thence, partly on canal-boat and partly on foot, he went to Schenec- tady, and there took a l line-boat' on the Erie Canal. A week of tedium in the slow line-boat a walk of a hundred miles through the woods, and he had reached his father's log-house. He arrived late in the evening. The last ten miles of the journey he performed after dark, guided, when he could catch a glimpse of it through the dense foliage, by a star. The journey required at that time about twelve days : it is now done in eighteen hours. It cost Horace Greeley about seven dollars ; the present cost by railroad is eleven dollars ; distance, six hundred miles. He found his father and brother transformed into backwoodsmen. Their little log-cabin stood in the midst of a narrow clearing, which was covered with blackened stumps, and smoked with burning tim ber. Forests, dense and almost unbroken, heavily timbered, abound ing in wolves and every other description of * varmint,' extended a day's journey in every direction, and in some directions many days' journey. The country was then so wild and ' new,' that a hunter would sell a man a deer before it was shot ; and appointing the hour when, and the spot where, the buyer was to call for his game, would have it ready for him as punctually as though he had ordered it at Fulton market. The wolves were so bold, that their bowlings could be heard at the house as they roamed about in packs in search of the sheep ; and the solitary camper-out could hear them breathe and see their eye-balls glare, as they prowled about his smoldering fire. Mr. Greeley, who had brought from Vermont a fondness for rearing fcheep, tried to continue that branch of rural occupation in the wil derness ; but after the wolves, in spite of his utmost care and pre caution, had killed a hundred sheep for him, he gave up the at tempt. But it was a level and a very fertile region * varmint' al ways select a good ' location' and it has since been subdued into a beautiful land of grass and woods. Horace staid at home foi several weeks, assisting his father, GETS EMPLOYMENT. 10& fishing occasionally, and otherwise amusing himself; while his good mother assiduously nursed the sore leg. It healed too slowly for its impatient proprietor, who had learned 'to labor,' not 'to wait;' and so, one morning, he walked over to Jamestown, a town twenty miles distant, where a newspaper was struggling to get published, and applied for work. Work he obtained. It was very freely given ; but at the end of the week the workman received a promise to pay, but no payment. He waited and worked four days longer, and discovering by that time that there was really no money to be had or hoped for in Jamestown, he walked home again, as poor as before. And now the damaged leg began to swell again prodigiously ; at one time it was as large below the knee as a demijohn. Out off from other employment, Horace devoted all his attention to the unfortu nate member, but without result. He heard about this time of a famous doctor who lived in that town of Pennsylvania which exults in the singular name of 'North-East,' distant twenty-five miles from his father's clearing. To him, as a last resort, though the family could ill afford the trifling expense, Horace went, and staid with him a month. " You don't drink liquor," were the doctor's first words as he examined the sore, " if you did, you 'd have a bad leg of it." The patient thought he had a bad leg of it, without drinking liquor. The doctor's treatment was skillful, and finally successful. Among other remedies, he subjected the limb to the action of electricity, and from that day the cure began. The patient left North-East greatly relieved, and though the leg was weak and troublesome for many more months, yet it gradually re covered, the wound subsiding at length into a long red scar. He wandered, next, in an easterly direction, in search of employ ment, and found it in the village of Lodi, fifty miles off, in Cata- raugus county, New York. At Lodi, he seems to have cherished a hope of being able to remain awhile and earn a little money. He wrote to his friends in Poultney describing the paper on which he worked, " as a Jackson paper, a forlorn affair, else I would have sent you a few numbers." One of his letters written from Lodi to a friend in Vermont, contains a passage which may serve to shov? what was going on in the mind of the printer as he stood at the case setting up Jacksonian paragraphs. " You are aware that an 110 HE WANDERS. important election is close at hand in this State, and of course, a great deal of interest is felt in the result. The regular Jacksonians imagine that they will be able to elect Throop by 20,000 majority ; but after having obtained all the information I can, I give it as my decided opinion, that if none of the candidates decline, we shall elect Francis Granger, governor. This county will give him 1000 majority, and I estimate his vote in the State at 125,000. I need not inform you that such a result will be highly satisfactory to your humble servant, H. Greeley." It was a result, however, which he had not the satisfaction of contemplating. The confident and yet cautious manner of the passage quoted is amusing in a politician but twenty years of age. At Lodi, as at Jamestown, our roving journeyman found work much more abundant than money. Moreover, he was in the camp of the enemy ; and so at the end of his sixth week, he again took bundle and stick and marched homeward, with very little more money in his pocket than if he had spent his time in idleness. On his way home he fell in with an old Poultney friend who had recently settled in the wilderness, and Horace arrived in time to assist at die ' warming ' of the new cabin, a duty which he performed in a way that covered him with glory. In the course of the evening, a draught-board was introduced, and the stranger beat in swift succession half a dozen of the best players in the neighborhood. It happened that the place was rather noted for its skillful draught- players, and the game was played in cessantly at private houses and at public. To be beaten in so scan dalous a manner by a passing stranger, and he by no means an ornamental addition to an evening party, and young enough to be the son of some of the vanquished, nettled them not a little. They challenged the victor to another encounter at the tavern on the next evening. The challenge was accepted. The evening arrived, and there was a considerable gathering to witness and take part in the struggle among the rest, a certain Joe Wilson who had been spe cially sent for, and whom no one had ever beaten, since he came into the settlement. The great Joe was held in reserve. The party of the previous evening, Horace took in turn, and beat with ease. Other players tried to foil his 'Yankee tricks,' but were themselves foiled. The reserve was brought up. Joe Wilson took his seat at GOES TO ERIE, PA. Ill the table. He played his deadliest, pausing long before he hazarded a move; the company hanging over the board, hushed and anxious. They were not kept many minutes in suspense ; Joe was overthrown ; the unornamental stranger was the conqueror. Another game the same result. Another and another and another ; but Joe lost every game. Joseph, however, was too good a player not to re spect so potent an antagonist, and he and all the party behaved well under their discomfiture. The board was laid aside, and a lively conversation ensued, which was continued * with unabated spirit to a late hour.' The next morning, the traveler went on his way, leav ing behind him a most distinguished reputation as a draught-player and a politician. He remained at home a few days, and then set out again on his travels in search of some one who could pay him wages for his work. He took a ' bee line ' through the woods for the town of Erie, thirty miles off, on the shores of the great lake. He had ex hausted the smaller towns ; Erie was the last possible move in that corner of the board ; and upon Erie he fixed his hopes. There were two printing offices, at that time, in the place. It was a town of five thousand inhabitants, and of extensive lake and inland trade. The gentleman still lives who saw the weary pedestrian enter Erie, attired in the homespun, abbreviated and stockingless style with which the reader is already acquainted. His old black felt hat slouched down over his shoulders in the old fashion. The red cot ton handkerchief still contained his wardrobe, and it was carried on the same old stick. The country frequenters of Erie were then, and are still, particularly rustic in appearance ; but our hero seemed the very embodiment and incarnation of the rustic Principle ; and among the crowd of Pennsylvania farmers that thronged the streets, he swung along, pre-eminent and peculiar, a marked person, the observed of all observers. He, as was his wont, observed nobody, but went at once to the office of the Erie Gazette, a weekly paper, published then and still by Joseph M. Sterrett. U I was not," Judge Sterrett is accustomed to relate, "I was not in the printing oifice when he arrived. I came in, soon after, and saw him sitting at the table reading the newspapers, and so absorbed in them that he paid no attention to my entrance. My first feeling wan one of astonishment, that a fellow so singularly 'green' in hl a 112 HE WANDERS. appearance should be reading, and above all, reading so intently I looked at him for a few moments, and then, finding that he made no movement towards acquainting me with his business, I took up my composing stick and went to work. He continued to read for twenty minutes, or more ; when he got up, and coming close to my case, asked, in his peculiar, whining voice, " Do you want any help in the printing business ?" " Why," said I, running my eye involuntarily up and down the extraordinary figure, " did you ever work at the trade ?" " Yes," was the reply ; " I worked some at it in an office in Ver mont, and I should be willing to work under instruction, if you could give me a job." Now Mr. Sterrett did want help in the printing business, and could have given him a job ; but, unluckily, he misinterpreted this modest reply. He at once concluded that the timid applicant was a runaway apprentice; and runaway apprentices are a class of their fellow-creatures to whom employers cherish a common and decided aversion. Without communicating his suspicions, he merely said that he had no occasion for further assistance, and Horace, without a word, left the apartment. A similar reception and the same result awaited him at the other office ; and so the poor wanderer trudged home again, not in the best spirits. "Two or three weeks after this interview," continues Judge Sterrett he is a judge, I saw him on the bench "an acquaint ance of mine, a farmer, called at the office, and inquired if I want ed a journeyman. I did. He said a neighbor of his had a son who learned the printing business somewhere Down East, and wanted a place. * What sort of a looking fellow is he ?' said I. He described him, and I knew at once that he was my supposed runaway apprentice. My friend, the farmer, gave him a high char acter, however; so I said, 'Send him along,' and a day or two after along he came." The terms on which Horace Greeley entered the office of the Erie Gazette were of his own naming, and therefore peculiar. He would do the best lie could, he said, and Mr. Sterrett might pay him what he (Mr. Sterrett) thought he had earned. He had only one request to make, and that was, that he should not be required THE TOWN OF ERIE. 113 tr work at the press, unless the office was so much huiried that his services in that department could not be dispensed with. He had had a little difficulty with his leg, and press work rather hurt him than otherwise. The bargain included the condition that he was to hoard at Mr. Sterrett's house ; and when he went to dinner on the day of his arrival, a lady of the family expressed her opinion of him in the following terms : " So, Mr. Sterrett, you 've hired that fellow to work for you, have you ? Well, you won't keep him three days." In three days she had changed her opinion ; and to this hour the good lady cannot bring herself to speak otherwise than kindly of him, though she is a stanch daughter of turbulent Erie, and ''must say, that certain articles which appeared in the Tribune during the WAR, did really seem too bad from one who had been himself an Eriean.' But then, ' he gave no more trouble in the house than if he had n't been in it.' Erie, famous in the Last War but one, as the port whence Com modore Perry sailed out to victory Erie, famous in the last war of all, as the place where the men, except a traitorous thirteen, and the women, except their faithful wives, all rose as ONE MAN against the Railway Trains, saying, in the tone which is generally described as ' not to be misunderstood ' : " Thus far shalt thou go without stopping for refreshment, and no farther," and achieved as Break of Gauge men, the distinction accorded in another land to the Break o' Day boys Erie, which boasts of nine thousand inhabit ants, and aspires to become the Buffalo of Pennsylvania Erie, which already has business enough to sustain many stores wherein not every article known to traffic is sold, and where a man cannot consequently buy coat, hat, boots, physic, plough, crackers, grind stone and penknife, over the same counter Erie, which has a Mayor and Aldermen, a dog-law, and an ordinance against shooting off guns in the street under a penalty of five dollars for each and every offense Erie, for the truth cannot be longer dashed from utterance, is the shabbiest and most broken-down looking large town, /, the present writer, an individual not wholly untraveled, ever saw, in a free State of this Confederacy. The shores of the lake there are ' bluffy,' sixty feet or more above the water, and the land for many miles back is nearly a dead level, exceedingly fertile, and quite uninteresting. No, not quite For 114 HE WANDERS. much of the primeval forest remains, and the gigantic trees that were saolings when Columbus played in the streets of Genoa, tower akft, a hundred feet without a branch, with that exquisite daintiness of taper of which the eye never tires, which architecture has never equaled, which only Grecian architecture approached, and was beautiful because it approached it. The City of Erie is merely a square mile of this level land, close to the edge of the bluff, with a thousand houses built upon it, which are arranged on the plan of a corn-field only, not more than a third of the houses have ' come up.' The town, however, condenses to a focus around a piece of ground called ' The Park,' four acres in extent, surrounded with a low, broken board fence, that was white-washed a long time ago, and therefore now looks very forlorn and pig-pen-ny. The side- walks around ' The Park ' present an animated scene. The huge hotel of the place is there a cross between the Astor House and a country tavern, having the magnitude of the former, the quality of the latter. There, too, is the old Court-House, its uneven brick floor covered with the chips of a mortising machine, its galleries up near the high ceiling, kept there by slender poles, its vast cracked, rusty stove, sprawling all askew, and putting forth a system of stovepipes that wander long through space before they find the chimney. Justice is administered in that Court-house in a truly free and easy style ; and to hear the drowsy clerk, with his heels in the air, administer, 'twixt sleep and awake, the tremendous oath of Pennsylvania, to a brown, abashed fanner, with his right hand raised in a manner to set off his awkwardness to the best advantage, is worth a journey to Erie. Two sides of ' The Park ' are occupied by the principal stores, before which the country wagons stand, presenting a con tinuous range of muddy wheels. The marble structure around the corner is not a Greek temple, though built in the style of one, and quite deserted enough to be a ruin it is the Erie Cus tom House, a fine example of governmental management, as it is as much too large for the business done in it as the Custom House of New York is too amall. The Erie of the present yeT is, of course, not the Erie of 1831, when Horace Greeley walked its streets, with his eyes on the pave ment and a bundle of excH'ges in his pocket, ruminating on the THE LAKE. 115 prospects of the next election, or thinking out a copy of verses to send to his mother. It was a smaller place, then, with fewei brick blocks, more pigs in the street, and no custom-house in the Greek style. But it had ono feature which has not changed. The LAKE was there ! An island, seven miles long, but not two miles wide, once a part of the main land, lies opposite the town, at an apparent distance of half a mile, though in reality two miles and a half from the shore. This island, which approaches the main land at either extremity, forms the harbor of Erie, and gives to that part of the lake the ef fect of a river. Beyond, the Great Lake stretches away further than the eye can reach. A great lake in fine weather is like the ocean only in one particu lar you cannot see across it. The ocean asserts itself; it is demon strative. It heaves, it Cashes, it sparkles, it foams, it roars. On the stillest day, it does not quite go to sleep ; the tide steals up the white beach, and glides back again over the shells and pebbles musically, or it murmurs along the sides of black rocks, with a subdued though al ways audible voice. The ocean is a living and life-giving thing, l fair, and fresh, and ever free.' The lake, on a fine day, lies dead. No tide breaks upon its earthy shore. It is as blue as a blue ribbon, as blue as the sky ; and vessels come sailing out of heaven, and go sail ing into heaven, and no eye can discern where the lake ends and heaven begins. It is as smooth as a mirror's face, and as dull as a mirror's back. Often a light mist gathers over it, and then the lake is gone from the prospect ; but for an occasional sail dimly descried, or a streak of black smoke left by a passing steamer, it would give absolutely no sign of its presence, though the spectator is standing a quarter of a mile from the shore. Often er the mist gathers thick ly along the horizon, and then, so perfect is the illusion, the stran ger will swear he sees the opposite shore, not fifteen miles off. There is no excitement in looking upon a lake, and it has no effect upon the appetite or the complexion. Yet there is a quiet, languid beauty hovering over it, a beauty all its own, a charm that grows upon the mind the longer you linger upon the shore. The Castle of Indolence should have been placed upon the bank of Lake Erie, where its inmates could have lain on the grass and gazed down, 116 HE WANDERS. through all the slow hours of the long summer day, upon the lazy, hazy, blue expanse. When the wind blows, the lake wakes up ; and still it is not the ocean. The waves are discolored by the earthy bank upon which they break with un-oceanlike monotony. They neither advance, nor recede, nor roar, nor swell. A great lake, with all its charms, and they are many and great, is only an infinite pond. The people of Erie care as much for the lake as the people of Niagara care for the cataract, as much as people generally care for anything wonderful or anything beautiful which they can see by turning their heads. In other words, they care for it as the means by which lime, coal, and lumber may be transported to another and a better market. Not one house is built along the shore, though the shore is high and level. Not a path has been worn by human feet above or below the bluff. Pigs, sheep, cows, and sweet-brier bushes occupy the unenclosed ground, which seems so made to be built upon that it is surprising the handsome houses of the town should have been built anywhere else. One could almost say, in a weak moment, Give me a cottage on the bluff, and I will live at Erie ! It was at Erie, probably, that Horace Greeley first saw the uni form of the American navy. The United States and Great Britain are each permitted by treaty to keep one vessel of war in commis sion on the Great Lakes. The American vessel usually lies in the harbor of Erie, and a few officers may be seen about the town. What the busy journeyman printer thought of those idle gentlemen, apparently the only quite useless, and certainly the best dressed, persons in the place, may be guessed. Perhaps, however, he passed them by, in his absent way, and saw them not. In a few days, the new comer was in high favor at the office of the Erie Gazette. He is remembered there as a remarkably correct and reliable compositor, though not a rapid one, and his steady devotion to his work enabled him to accomplish more than faster workmen. He was soon placed by his employer on the footing of a regular journeyman, at the usual wages, twelve dollars a month and board. All the intervals of labor he spent in reading. As soon as the hour of cessation arrived, he would hurry off his apron, wash his hands, and lose himself in his book or his newspapers, often forgetting his dinner, and often forgetting whether he had had NO MORE WORK AT ERIE. 117 liif- dinner or not. More and more, he became absorbed in politics. It is said, by one who worked beside him at Erie, that he could tell the name, post-office address, and something of the history and political leanings, of every member of Congress ; and that he could give the particulars of every important election that had occurred within his recollection, even, in some instances, to the county majorities. And thus, in earnest work and earnest reading, seven profitable and not unhappy months passed swiftly away. He never lost one day's work. On Sundays, he read, or walked along the shores of the lake, or sailed over to the Island. His better fortune made no change either in his habits or his appearance ; and his employer was surprised, that mouth after month passed, and yet his strange journeyman drew no money. Once, Mr. Sterrett ventured to rally him a little upon his persistence in wearing the hereditary homespun, saying, " Now, Horace, you have a good deal of money coming to you ; don't go about the town any longer in that out landish rig. Let me give you an order on the store. Dress up a little, Horace." To which Horace replied, looking down at the ' out landish rig,' as though he had never seen it before, " You see, Mr. Sterrett, my father is on a new place, and I want to help him all I can." However, a short time after, Horace did make a faint effort to dress up a little; but the few articles which he bought were so extremely coarse and common, that it was a question in the office whether his appearance was improved by the change, or the contrary. At the end of the seventh month, the man whose sickness had made a temporary vacancy in the office of the Gazette, returned to his place, and there was, in consequence, no more work for Horace Greeley. Upon the settlement of his account, it appeared that he had drawn for his personal expenses during his residence at Erie, the sum of six dollars ! Of the remainder of his wages, he took about fifteen dollars in money, and the rest in the form of a note ; and with all this wealth in his pocket, he walked once more to his father's house. This note the generous fellow gave to his father, reserving the money to carry on his own personal warfare with the world. And now, Horace was tired of dallying with fortune in coun- 118 ARRIVAL IN NEW YORK. try printing offices. He said, he thought it was time to do some thing, and he formed the bold resolution of going straight to New York and seeking his fortune in the metropolis. After a few days of recreation at home, he tied up his bundle once more, put his money in his pocket, and plunged into the woods in the direction of the Erie Canal. CHAPTER VIII. AKKIVAL IN NEW YOKE. The journey a night on the tow-path He reaches the city Inventory of his property Looks for a boarding-house Finds one Expends half his capital upon clothes Searches for employment Berated by David Hale as a runaway apprentice- Continues the search Goes to church Hears of a vacancy Obtains work Tlif boss takes him for a * fool,' but changes his opinion Nicknamed * the Ghost Practical jokes Horace metamorphosed Dispute about commas The shoe maker's boarding-house Grand banquet on Sundays. HE took the canal-boat at Buffalo and came as far as Lockport, whence lie walked a few miles to Gaines, and staid a day at the house of a friend whom he had known in Vermont. Next morn ing he walked back, accompanied by his friend, to the canal, and both of them waited many hours for an eastward-bound boat to pass. Night came, but no boat, and the adventurer persuaded his friend to go home, and set out himself to walk on the tow-path to wards Albion. It was a very dark night. He walked slowly on, hour after hour, looking anxiously behind him for the expected boat, looking more anxiously before him to discern the two fiery eyes of the boats bound to the west, in time to avoid being swept into the canal by the tow-line. Towards morning, a boat of the slower sort, a scow probably, overtook him ; he went on board, and tired with his long walk, lay down in the cabin to rest. Sleep was tf.rdy in alighting upon his eye-lids, and he had the pleasure of hearing his merits and his costume fully and freely discussed by his fellow passengers. It was Monday morning. One passen ger explained the coming on board of the stranger at so unusual an INVENTOR r OF HIS PROPERTY. 119 jour, by suggesting that he had been courting all night. (Sunday evening in country places is sacred to love.) His appearance was so exceedingly unlike that of a lover, that this sally created much amusement, in which the wakeful traveler shared. At Rochester he took a faster boat. Wednesday night he reached Schenectady, where he left the canal and walked to Albany, as the canal between those two towns is much obstructed by locks. He reached Albany on Thursday morning, just in time to see the seven o'clock steam boat move out into the stream. He, therefore, took passage in a tow-boat which started at ten o'clock on the same morning. At sunrise on Friday, the eighteenth of August, 1831, Horace Greeley landed at Whitehall, close to the Battery, in the city of New York. New York was, and is, a city of adventurers. Few of our emi nent citizens were born here. It is a common boast among New Yorkers, that this great merchant and that great millionaire came to the city a ragged boy, with only three and sixpence in his pocket; and now look at him I In a list of the one hundred men who are esteemed to be the most 'successful ' among the citizens of New York, it is probable that seventy-five of the names would be those of men who began their career here in circumstances that gave no promise of future eminence. But among them all. it is questionable whether there was one who on his arrival had so lit tle to help, so much to hinder him, as Horace Greeley. Of solid cash, his stock was ten dollars. His other property con sisted of the clothes he wore, the clothes he carried in his small bundle, and the stick with which he carried it. The clothes he wore need not be described ; they were those which had already astonished the people of Erie. The clothes he carried were very few, and precisely similar in cut and quality to the garments which he exhibited to the public. On the violent supposition that his wardrobe could in any case have become a salable commodity, wo may compute that he was worth, on this Friday morning at sun rise, ten dollars and seventy-five cents. He had no friend, no ac quaintance here. There was not a human being upon whom he had any claim for help or advice. His appearance was all against him. He looked in his round jacket like an overgrown boy. No one was likely to observe the engaging beauty of his face, or the noble round of his brow under that overhanging hat, over that 120 ARRIVAL IN NEW YORK. long and stooping body. He was somewhat timorous in his inter course with strangers. He would not intrude upon their attention ; he had not the faculty of pushing his way, and proclaiming his mer its and his desires. To the arts by which men are conciliated, by which unwilling ears are forced to attend to an unwelcome tale, he was utterly a stranger. Moreover, he had neglected to bring with him anj 7 letters of recommendation, or any certificate of his skill as a printer. It had not occurred to him that anything of the kind was necessary, so unacquainted was he with the life of cities. His first employment was to find a boarding-house where he could live a long time on a small sum. Leaving the green Battery ou his left hand, he strolled off into Broad-street, and at the corner of that street and Wall discovered a house that in his eyes had the aspect of a cheap tavern. He entered the bar-room, and asked the price of board. u I guess we 're too high for you," said the bar-keeper, after bestowing one glance upon the inquirer. " Well, how much a week do you charge ?" " Six dollars." " Yes, that 's more than I can afford," said Horace with a laugh at the enormous mistake he had made in inquiring at a house of such pretensions. He turned up Wall-street, and sauntered into Broadway. Seeing no house of entertainment that seemed at all suited to his circum stances, he sought the water once more, and wandered along the wharves of the North River as far as Washington-market. Board ing-houses of the cheapest kind, and drinking-houses'of the lowest grade, the former frequented chiefly by emigrants, the latter by sailors, were numerous enough in that neighborhood. A house, which combined the low groggery and the cheap boarding-house in one small establishment, kept by an Irishman named M'Gorlick, chanced to be the one that first attracted the rover's attention. It looked so mean and squalid, that he was tempted to enter, and again inquire for what sum a man could buy a week's shelter and sustenance. u Twenty shillings," was the landlord's reply. " Ah," said Horace, "that sounds more like it." Ho engaged to board with Mr. M'Gorlick on the instant, and SEARCHES FOR EMPLOYMENT. 121 proceeded soon to test the quality of his fare by taking breakfast in the bosom of his family. The cheapness of the entertainment was its best recommendation. After breakfast Horace performed an act which I believe he had never spontaneously performed before. He bought some clothes, with a view to render himself more presentable. They were of the commonest kind, and the garments were few, but the purchase absorbed nearly half his capital. Satisfied with his appearance, he now began the round of the printing-offices, going into every one he could find, and asking for employment merely asking, and going away, without a word, as soon as he was refused. In the course of the morning, he found himself in the office of the Journal of Commerce, and he chanced to direct his inquiry, * if they wanted a hand, 1 to the late David Hale, one of the proprietors of the paper. Mr. Hale took a survey of the person who had presumed to ad dress him, and replied in substance as follows : " My opinion is, young man, that you 're a runaway apprentice, and you 'd better go home to your master." Horace endeavored to explain his position and circumstances, but the impetuous Hale could be brought to no more gracious response than, u Be off about your business, and don't bother us." Horace, more amused than indignant, retired, and pursued his way to the next office. All that day he walked the streets, climb ed into upper stories, came down again, ascended other heights, descended, dived into basements, traversed passages, groped through labyrinths, ever asking the same question, l Do you want a hand ?' and ever receiving the same reply, in various degrees of civility, 4 No.' He walked ten times as many miles as he needed, for he was not aware that nearly all the printing-offices in New York are in the same square mile. He went the entire length of many streets which any body could have told him did not contain one. He went home on Friday evening very tired and a little dis couraged. Early on Saturday morning he resumed the search, and continued it with energy till the evening. But no one wanted a hand. Busi ness seemed to be at a stand-still, or every office had its full comple ment of men. On Saturday evening he was still more fatigued. He resolved to remain in the city a day or two longer, and then, if A 122 ARRIVAL IN NEW YORK still unsuccessful, to turn his face homeward, and inquire for work at the towns through which he passed. Though discouraged, he was not disheartened, and still less alarmed. The youthful reader should ohserve here what a sense of inde pendence and what fearlessness dwell in the spirit of a man who has learned the art of living on the mere necessaries of life. If Horace Greeley had, after another day or two of trial, chosen to leave the city, he would have carried with him ahout four dollars ; and with that sum he could have walked leisurely and with an unanxious heart all the way back to his father's house, six hundred miles, inquiring for work at every town, and feeling himself to he a free and independent American citizen, traveling on his own honestly- earned means, undegraded by an obligation, the equal in social rank of the best man in the best house he passed. Blessed is the young man who can walk thirty miles a day, and dine contentedly on half a pound of crackers! Give him four dollars and summer weather, and he can travel and revel like a prince incog, for forty days. On Sunday morning, our hero arose, refreshed and cheerful. He went to church twice, and spent a happy day. In the morning he induced a man who lived in the house to accompany him to a small Universalist chnrch in Pitt street, near the Dry Dock, not less than three miles distant from M l Gorlick's boarding-house. In the evening he found his way to a Unitarian church. Except on one occasion, he had never before this Sunday heard a sermon which accorded with his own religious opinions; and the pleasure with which he heard the benignity of the Deity asserted and proved by able men, was one of the highest he had enjoyed. In the afternoon, as if in reward of the pious way in which he spent the Sunday, he heard news which gave him a faint hope of being able to remain in the city. An Irishman, a friend of the landlord, came in the course of the afternoon to pay his usua, Sun day visit, and became acquainted with Horace and his fruitless search for work. He was a shoemaker, I believe, but he lived in a house which was much frequented by journeymen printers. From them he had heard that hands were wanted at West's, No. 85 Chat ham street, and be recommended his new acquaintance to make immediate application at that office. Accustomed to country hours, and eager to seize the chance, HE HEARS OF A VACANCY. 123 Horace was in Chatham street and on the steps of the designate^ nouse by half-past five on Monday morning. West's printing office was in the second story, the ground floor being occupied by Mc- Elrath and Bangs as a bookstore. They were publishers, and West was their printer. Neither store nor office was yet opened, and Horace sat down on the steps to wait. Had Thomas McElrath, Esquire, happened to pass on an early walk to the Battery that morning, and seen our hero sitting on those steps, with his red bundle on his knees, his pale face supported on his hands, his attitude expressive of dejection and anxiety, his attire extremely unornamental, it would not have occurred to Thomas Mc Elrath, Esquire, as a probable event, that one day he would be the PARTNER of that sorry figure, and proud of the connection ! Nor did Miss Reed, of Philadelphia, when she saw Benjamin Franklin pass her father's house, eating a large roll and carrying two others under his arms, see in that poor wanderer any likeness to her future hus band, the husband that made her a proud and an immortal wife. The princes of the. mind always remain incog, till they come to the throne, and, doubtless, the Coining Man, when he comes, will appear in a strange disguise, and no man will know him. It seemed very long before any one came to work that morning at No. 85. The steps on which our friend was seated were in the narrow part of Chatham-street, the gorge through which at morn ing and evening the swarthy tide of mechanics pours. By six o'clock the stream has set strongly down-town-ward, and it gradu ally swells to a torrent, bright with tin kettles. Thousands passed by, but no one stopped till nearly seven o'clock, when one of Mr. West's journeymen arrived, and finding the door still locked, he sat down on the steps by the side of Horace Greeley. They fell into conversation, and Horace stated his circumstances, something of his history, and his need of employment. Luckily this journeyman was a Vermonter, and a kind-hearted, intelligent man. He looked upon Horace as a countryman, and was struck with the singular candor and artlessness with which he told his tale. " I saw," says he, " that he was an honest, good young man, and being a Vermonter myself, I determined to help him if I could." He did help him. The doors were opened, the men began to ariive; Horace and his newly-found friend ascended to the office, 124 ARRIVAL IN NEW YORK. and soon after seven the work of the day began. It is hardly neces sary to say that the appearance of Horace, as he sat in the office waiting for the coming of the foreman, excited unbounded astonish ment, and brought upon his friend a variety of satirical observations. Nothing daunted, however, on the arrival of the foreman he stated the case, and endeavored to interest him enough in Horace to give him a trial. It happened that the work for which a man was wanted in the office was the composition of a Polyglot Testament ; a kind of work which is extremely difficult and tedious. Several men had tried their hand at it, and, in a few days or a few hours, given it up. The foreman looked at Horace, and Horace looked at the foreman. Horace saw a handsome man (now known to the sporting public as Colonel Porter, editor of the Spirit of the Times.) The foreman beheld a youth who could have gone on the stage, that minute, as Ezekiel Homespun without the alteration of a thread or a hair, and brought down the house by his l getting up' alone. He no more believed that Ezekiel could set up a page of a Polyglot Testament than that he could construct a chronometer. However, partly to oblige Horace's friend, partly because he was unwilling to wound the feelings of the applicant by sending him abruptly away, he con sented to let him try. u Fix up a case for him," said he, " and we '11 eee if he can do anything." In a few minutes Horace was at work. The gentleman to whose intercession Horace Greeley owed his first employment in New-York is now known to all the dentists in the Union as the leading member of a firm which manufactures annually twelve hundred thousand artificial teeth. He has made a fortune, the reader will be glad to learn, and lives in a mansion up town. After Horace had been at work an hour or two, Mr. West, the * boss,' came into the office. What his feelings were when he saw his new man, may be inferred from a little conversation upon the subject which took place between him and the foreman. " Did you hire that fool ?" asked West with no small irri tation. " Yes ; we must have hands, and he 's the best I could get," said the foreman, justifying h's conduct, though he was really ashamed of it. 125 "Well," said the master, "for God's sake pay him off to-night, and let him go about his business." Horace worked through the day with his usual intensity, and in perfect silence. At night he presented to the foreman, as the cu? torn then was, the 'proof of his day's work What astonishment was depicted in the good-looking countenance of that gentleman when he discovered that the proof before him was greater in quan tity, and more correct than that of any other day's work which had yet been done on the Polyglot ! There was no thought of send ing the new journeyman about his business now. He was an es tablished man at once. Thenceforward, for several months, Horace worked regularly and hard on the Testament, earning about six dol lars a week. He had got into good company. There were about twenty men and boys in the office, altogether, of whom two have since been members of Congress, three influential editors, and several othera have attained distinguished success in more private vocations. Most of them are still alive ; they remember vividly the coming among them of Horace Greeley, and are fond of describing his ways and works. The following paragraph the reader is requested to regard as the condensed statement of their several recollections. Horace worked with most remarkable devotion and intensity. His task was difficult, and he was paid by the 4 piece.' In order, therefore, to earn tolerable wages, it was necessary for him to work harder and longer than any of his companions, and he did so. Often he was at his case before six in the morning; often he had not left it at nine in the evening ; always, he was the first to begin and the last to leave. In the summer, no man beside him self worked before breakfast, or after tea. While the young men and older apprentices were roaming the streets, seeking their pleasure, he, by the light of a candle stuck in a bottle, was eking out a slender day's wages by setting up an extra column of the Polyglot Testament. For a day or two, the men of the office eyed him askance, and winked at one another severely. The boys were more demonstra tive, and one of the most mischievous among them named him THE GHOST, in allusion to his long white hair, and the singular fair ness of his complexion. Soon, however, the men who work*** near 126 ARRIVAL IN NEW YORK. him began to suspect that his mind was better furnished than his person. Horace always had a way of talking profusely while at work, and that, too, without working with less assiduity. Conver sations soon i^rose about masonry, temperance, politics, religion ; and the new journeyman rapidly argued his way to respectful con sideration. His talk was ardent, animated, and positive. He was perfectly confident of his opinions, and maintained them with an assurance that in a youth of less understanding and less geniality would have been thought arrogance. His enthusiasm at this time, was Henry Clay ; his great subject, masonry. In a short time, to |note the language of one his fellow-workmen, i he was the lion of the shop.' Yet for all that, the men who admired him most would nave their joke, and during all the time that Horace remained in the office, it was the standing amusement to make nonsensical re marks in order to draw from him one of his shrewd, half-comic, Scotch-Irish retorts. " And we always got it," says one. The boys of the office were overcome by a process similar to that which frustrated the youth of Poultney. Four or five of them, who knew Horace's practice of returning to the office in the even ing and working alone by candle-light, concluded that that would be an excellent time to play a few printing-office tricks upon him. They accordingly lay in ambush one evening, in the dark recesses of the shop, and awaited the appearance of the Ghost. He had no sooner lighted his candle and got at work, than a ball, made of ' old roller,' whizzed past his ear and knocked over his candle. He set it straight again and went on with his work. Another ball, and another, and another, and finally a volley. One hit his 4 stick,' one scattered his type, another broke his bottle, and several struck his head. He bore it till the balls came so fast, that it was impossible for him to work, as all his time was wasted in repairing damages. At length, he turned round and said, without the slightest ill-humor, and in a supplicating tone, " Now, boys, don't. I want to work. Please, now, let me alone." The boys came out of their places of concealment into the light of the candle, and troubled him no nore. Thus, it appears, that every man can best defend himself with the weapon that nature has provided him whether it be fists or forgiveness. Little Jane Eyre was of opinion, that when anybody THE OBLIGING MAN OF THE OFFICE. 127 has struck another, he should himself be struck; " 4 y hard," says Jane, "so hard, that lie will be afraid ever to stri" j anybody again." On the contrary, thought Horace Greeley, whe any ono has wan tonly or unjustly struck another, he should bf ,o severely forgiven, and made so thoroughly ashamed of himself, ,nat he will ever after shrink from striking a wanton or an unjust olow. Sound maxims, both; the first, for Jane, the second, for Hjrace. His good humor was, in truth, naturally imperturbable. He was soon the recognized OBLIGING MAN of the office ; the person relied upon always when help was needed a most inconvenient kind of reputation. Among mechanics, money is generally abundant enough on Sundays and Mondays ; and they spend it freely on those days. Tuesday and Wednesday, they are only in moderate circumstances. The last days of the week are days of pressure and borrowing, when men are in a better condition to be treated than to treat. Horace Greeley was the man who had money always; he was as rich apparently on Saturday afternoon as on Sunday morning, and as willing to lend. In an old memorandum-book belonging to one of his companions in those days, still may be deciphered such en tries as these: 'Borrowed of Horace Greeley, 2s.' 'Owe Horace Greeley, 9s. 6d.' * Owe Horace Greeley, 2s. 6d, for a breastpin.' He never refused to lend his money. To himself, he allowed scarce ly anything in the way of luxury or amusement; unless, indeed, an occasional purchase of a small share in a lottery-ticket may be styled a luxury. Lotteries were lawful in those days, and Chatham-street was where lottery-offices most abounded. It was regarded as a per fectly respectable and legitimate business to keep a lottery-office, and a perfectly proper and moral action to buy a lottery-ticket. The business was conducted openly and fairly, and under official supervision ; not as it now is, by secret and irresponsible agents in ail parts of the city and country. Whether less money, or more, is lost by lotteries now than formerly, is a question which, it is surprising, no journalist has determined. Whether they cause less or greater demoralization is a question which it were well for moralists to consider. Of the few incidents which occurred to relieve the monotony of 128 ARRIVAL IN NEW YORK. the printing-office in Chatham street, the one which is most glee fully remembered is the following : Horace was, of course, subjected to a constant fire of jocular observations upon his dress, and frequently to practical jokes sug gested by its deficiencies and redundancies. Men stared at him in the streets, and boys called after him. Still, however, he clung to his linen roundabout, his short trowsers, his cotton shirt, and his dilapidated hat. Still he wore no stockings, and made his wrist bands meet with twine. For all jokes upon the subject he had deaf ears ; and if any one seriously remonstrated, he would not defend himself by explaining, that all the money he could spare was Deed ed in the wilderness, six hundred miles away, whither he punctually sent it. September passed and October. It began to be cold, but our hero had been toughened by the winters of Vermont, and still he walked about in linen. One evening in November, when busi ness was urgent, and all the men worked till late in the evening, Horace, instead of returning immediately after tea, as his custom was, was absent from the office for two hours. Between eight and nine, when by chance all the men were gathered about the l com posing stone,' upon which a strong light was thrown, a strange figure entered the office, a tall gentleman, dressed in a complete suit of faded broadcloth, and a shabby, over-brushed beaver hat, from beneath which depended long and snowy locks. The garments were fashionably cut ; the coat was in the style of a swallow's tail ; the figure was precisely that of an old gentleman who had seen better days. It advanced from the darker parts of the office, and emerged slowly into the glare around the composing stone. The men l9oked inquiringly. The figure spread out its hands, looked down at its habiliments with an air of infinite complacency, and said, " Well, boys, and how do you like me now 2" " Why, it 's Greeley," screamed one of the men. It was Greeley, metamorphosed into a decayed gentleman by a second-hand suit of black, bought of a Chatham-street Jew for five dollars, A shout arose, such as had never before been heard at staid and regular 85 Chatham-street. Cheer upon cheer was given, and meu PRACTICAL JOKES. 129 laughed till the tears came, the venerable gentleman being as happy as the happiest. " Greeley, you must treat upon that suit, and no mistake,'' eaid one. " Oh, of course," said everybody else. " Come along, boys ; I '11 treat," was Horace's ready response. All the company repaired to the old grocery on the corner of Duane-street, and there each individual partook of the beverage that pleased him, the treater indulging in a glass of spruce beer. Posterity may as well know, and take warning from the fact, that this five-dollar suit was a failure. It had been worn thin, and had been washed in blackened water and ironed smooth. A week'a wear brought out all its pristine shabbiness, and developed new. Our hero was not, perhaps, quite so indifferent to his personal ap pearance as he seemed. One day, when Colonel Porter happened to remark that his hair had once been as white as Horace Greeley's, Horace said with great earnestness, "Was it?" as though he drew from that fact a hope that his own hair might darken as he grew older. And on another occasion, when he had just returned from a visit to New-Hampshire, he said, "Well, I have been up in the country among my cousins ; they are all good-looking young men enough ; I do n't see why I should be such a curious-looking fel low." One or two other incidents which occurred at West's are perhaps worth telling; for one well-authenticated fact, though apparently of trifling importance, throws more light upon character than pages of general reminiscence. It was against the rules of the office for a compositor to enter the press-room, which adjoined the composing-room. Our hero, how ever, went on one occasion to the forbidden apartment to speak to a friend who worked there upon a hand-press that was exceedingly hard to pull. "Greeley," said one of the men, "you're a pretty stout fellow, but you can 't pull back that lever." " Can 't I ?" said Horace ; " I can." " Try it, then," said the mischief-maker. The press was arranged in such a manner that the lever offered no resistance whatever, and, consequently, when Horace seized it, 6* 130 ARRIVAL IN NEW YORK. and cohected all his strength for a tremendous effort, he fell back wards on the floor with great violence, and brought away a large part of the press with him. There was a thundering noise, and all the house came running to see what was the matter. Horace got up, pale and trembling from the concussion. " Now, that was too bad," said he. He stood his ground, however, while the man who had played the trick gave the * boss' a fictitious explanation of the mishap, with out mentioning the name of the apparent offender. When all was quiet again, Horace went privately to the pressman and offered to pay his share of the damage done to the press ! With Mr. West, Horace had little intercourse, and yet they did on several occasions come into collision. Mr. West, like all other bosses and men, had a weakness ; it was commas. He loved com mas, he was a stickler for commas, he was irritable on the subject of commas, he thought more of commas than any other point of prosody, and above all, he was of opinion that he knew more about commas than Horace Greeley. Horace had, on his part, no objec tion to commas, but he loved them in moderation, and was deter mined to keep them in their place. Debates ensued. The journey man expounded the subject, and at length, after much argument, convinced his employer that a redundancy of commas was possible, and, in short, that he, the journeyman, knew how to preserve the balance of power between the various points, without the assist ance or advice of any boss or man in Chatham, or any other street. There was, likewise, a certain professor whose book was printed in the office, and who often came to read the proofs. It chanced that Horace set up a few pages of this book, and took the liberty of al tering a few phrases that seemed to him inelegant or incorrect. The professor was indignant, and though he was not so ignorant as not to perceive that his language had been altered for the better, he thought it due to his dignity to apply opprobrious epithets to the impertinent compositor. The compositor argued the matter, but did not appease the great man. Soon after obtaining work, our friend found a better boarding- house, at least a more convenient one. On the corner of Duane- street and Chatham there was, at that time, a large building, oc cupied below as a grocery and bar-room, the upper stories as a ' e- *a.& SHOEMAKER'S BOARDING-HOUSE. 131 chanics' boarding-house. It accommodated about fifty boarders, most of whom were shoe-makers, who worked in their own rooms, or in shops at the top of the house, and paid, for room and board, two dollars and a half per week. This was the house to which Horace Greeley removed, a few days after his arrival in the city, and there he lived for more than two years. The reader of the Tribune may, perhaps, remember, that its editor has frequently dis played a particular acquaintance with the business of shoe-making, and drawn many illustrations of the desirableness and feasibility of association from the excessive labor and low wages of shoe makers. It was at this house that he learned the mysteries of the craft. He was accustomed to go up into the shops, and sit among the men while waiting for dinner. It was here, too, that he obtain ed that general acquaintance with the life and habits of city me chanics, which has enabled him since to address them so wisely and so convincingly. He is remembered by those who lived with him there, only as a very quiet, thoughtful, studious young man, one who gave no trouble, never went out l to spend the evening,* and read nearly every minute when he was not working or eating. The late Mr. Wilson, of the Brother Jonathan, who was his room mate for some months, used to say, that often he went to bed leav ing his companion absorbed in a book, and when he awoke in the morning, saw him exactly in the same position and attitude, as though he had not moved all night. He had not read all night, however, but had risen to his book with the dawn. Soon after sunrise, he went over the way to his work. Another of Mr. Wilson's reminiscences is interesting. The reader is aware, perhaps, from experience, that people who pay only two dollars and a half per week for board and lodging are not pro vided with all the luxuries of the season ; and that, not unfrequent- ly, a desire for something delicious steals over the souls of boarders, particularly on Sundays, between 12, M. and 1, P.M. The eating- house revolution had then just begun, and the institution of Dining Down Town was set up ; in fact, a bold man established a Sixpenny Dining Saloon in Beek man -street, which was the talk of the shops in the winter of 1831. On Sundays Horace and his friends, after their return from Mr. Sawyer's (Universalist) church in Orchard- street, were ar-customed to repair to this establishment, and indulge Ji32 ARRIVAL IN NEW YORK. in a splendid repast at a cost of, at least, one shilling each, rising on some occasions to eighteen pence. Their talk at dinner was of the soul-banquet, the sermon, of which they had partaken in the morning, and it was a custom among them to ascertain who could repeat the substance of it most correctly. Horace attended that church regularly, in those days, and listened to the sermon with his head bent forward, his eyes upon the floor, his arms folded, and one leg swinging, quite in his old class attitude at the Westhaven school. This, then, is the substance of what his companions remember of Horace Greeley's first few months in the metropolis. In a way so homely and so humble, New York's most distinguished citizen, the Country's most influential man, began his career. In his subsequent writings there are not many allusions of an au tobiographical nature to this period. The following is, indeed, the only paragraph of the kind that seems worth quoting. It is valu able as throwing light upon the Tidbit of his mind at this time : " Fourteen years ago, when the editor of the TRIBUNE came to this city, there w as published here a small daily paper entitled the ' Sentinel,' devoted to the cause of what was called by its own supporters ' the Working Men's Party,' and by its opponents c the Fanny Wright Working Men.' Of that party we have little personal knowledge, but at the head of the paper, among several good and many objectionable avowals of principle, was borne the fol lowing : " ' Single Districts for the choice of each Senator and Member of Assembly. 1 " We gave this proposition some attention at the time, and came to the con clusion that it was alike sound and important. It mattered little to us that it was accompanied and surrounded by others that we could not assent to, and was propounded by a party with which we had no acquaintance and little sym pathy. We are accustomed to welcome truth, from whatever quarter it may approach us, and on whatever flag it may be inscribed. Subsequent experience has fully confirmed our original impression, and now we have little doubt that this principle, which was utterly slighted when presented under unpopular auspices, will be engrafted on our reformed Constitution without serious oppo sition." Trt&une, Dec., 1845. CHAPTER IX. FROM OFFICE TO OFFICE. Zjeaves West's Works on the ' Evening Post' Story of Mr. Leggett ' Commercial Advertiser' ' Spirit of the Times' Specimen of his writing at this period Natu rally fond of the drama Timothy Wiggins Works for Mr. Redfleld The first lift. HORACE GREELEY was a journeyman printer in this city for four teen months. Those months need not detain us long from the more eventful periods of his life. He worked for Mr. West in Chatham street till about the first of November (1831). Then the business of that office fell off, and he was again a seeker for employment. He obtained a place in the office of the 'Evening Post,' whence, it is said, he was soon dis missed by the late Mr. Leggett, on the ground of his sorry appear ance. The story current among printers is this : Mr. Leggett came into the printing-office for the purpose of speaking to the man whose place Horace Greeley had taken. " Where 's Jones ?" asked Mr. Leggett. " He 's gone away," replied one of the men. " Who has taken his place, then ?" said the irritable editor. " There 's the man," said some one, pointing to Horace, who was 4 bobbing' at the case in his peculiar way. Mr. Leggett looked at * the man,' and said to the foreman, " For God's sake discharge him, and let 's have decent- looking men in the office, at least." Horace was accordingly so goes the story discharged at the end of the week. He worked, also, for a few days upon the * Commercial Adver tiser,' as a * sub,' probably. Then, for two weeks and a half, upon a little paper called * The Amulet,' a weekly journal of literature and art. The ' Amulet' was discontinued, and our hero had to wait ten years for his wages. His next step can be given in his own words. The follr iving is 134 FROM OFFICE TO OFFICE. the beginning of a paragraph in the New Yorker of March 2d, 1839: " Seven years ago, on the first of January last that being a holi day, and the writer being then a stranger with few social greetings to exchange in New York he inquired his way into the ill-furnish ed, chilly, forlorn-looking attic printing-office in which William T. Porter, in company with another very young man, who soon after abandoned the enterprise, had just issued the ' Spirit of the Times,' the first weekly journal devoted entirely to sporting intelligence ever attempted in this country. It was a moderate-sized sheet of indifferent paper, with an atrocious wood-cut for the head about as uncomely a specimen of the ' fine arts' as our ' native talent' has produced. The paper was about in proportion ; for neither of its conductors had fairly attained his majority, and each was destitute of the experience so necessary in such an enterprise, and of the funds and extensive acquaintance which were still more necessary to its success. But one of them possessed a persevering spirit and an ardent enthusiasm for the pursuit to which he had devoted him self." And, consequently, the l Spirit of the Times' still exists and flour ishes, under the proprietorship of its originator and founder, Colonel Porter. For this paper, our hero, during his short stay in the offioe, composed a multitude of articles and paragraphs, most of them short and unimportant. As a specimen of his style at this period, I copy from the ' Spirit' of May 5th, 1832, the following epistle, which was considered extremely funny in those innocent days : " MESSRS. EDITORS : Hear me you shall, pity me you must, while I pro ceed to give a short account of the dread calamities which this vile habit of turning the whole city upside down, 'tother side out, and wrong side before, on the First of May, has brought down on my devoted head. " You must know, that having resided but a few months in your city, I was totally ignorant of the existence of said custom. So, on the morning of the eventful, and to me disastrous day, I rose, according to immemorial usage, at the dying away of the last echo of the breakfast bell, and soon found my self seated over my coffee, and my good landlady exercising her powers of volubility (no weak ones) apparently in my behalf; but so deep was the rev erie in which my half-awakened brain was then engaged, that I did not catch a single idea from the whole of her discourse. I smiled and said, "Yes, ma'am," "certainly ma'am," at each pause ; and having speedily dispatched NATURALLY FOND OF THE DRAMA. 135 my breakfast, sallied immediately out, and proceeded to attend to the busi ness which engrossed my mind. Dinner-time came, but no time for dinner; and it was late before I was at liberty to wend my way, over wheel-barrows, barrels, and all manner of obstructions, towards my boarding-house. All here was still ; but by the help of my night-keys, I soon introduced myself to my chamber, dreaming of nothing but sweet repose ; when, horrible to relate ! my ears were instantaneously saluted by a most piercing female shriek, pro ceeding exactly from my own bed, or at least from the place where it should have been ; and scarcely had sufficient time elapsed for my hair to bristle on my head, before the shriek was answered by the loud vociferations of a fero cious mastiff in the kitchen beneath, and re-echoed by the outcries of half a dozen inmates of the house, and these again succeeded by the rattle of the watchman ; and the next moment, there was a round dozen of them (besides the dog) at my throat, and commanding me to tell them instantly what the devil all this meant. " You do well to ask that," said I, as soon as I could speak, " after falling upon me in this fashion in my own chamber." " take him off," said the one who assumed to be the master of the house ; " perhaps he 's not a thief after all; but, being too tipsy for starlight, he has made a mistake in trying to find his lodgings," and in spite of all my remonstrances, I was forthwith marched off to the watch-house, to pass the remainder of the night. In the morning, I narrowly escaped commitment on the charge of ' burglary with intent to steal (I verily believe it would have gone hard with me if the witnesses could have been got there at that unseason able hour), and I was finally discharged with a solemn admonition to guard for the. future against intoxication (think of that, sir, for a member of the Cold Water Society !) " I spent the next day in unraveling the mystery ; and found that my land lord had removed his goods and chattels to another part of the city, on the established day, supposing me to be previously acquainted and satisfied with his intention of so doing; and another family had immediately taken his place ; of which changes, my absence of mind and absence from dinner had kept me ignorant ; and thus had I been led blindfold into a ' Comedy ' (or rather tragedy) of Errors. Your unfortunate, "TIMOTHY WIGGINS." His connection with the office of a sporting paper procured him occasionally an order for admission to a theater, which he used. He appeared to have had a natural liking for the drama ; all intel ligent persons have when they are young ; and one of his compan ions of that day remembers well the intense interest with which he once witne<^ed the performance of Richard III., at the old Chat- 136 FROM OFFICE TO OFFICE. ham theater. At the close of the play, he said there was another of Shakespeare's tragedies which he had long wished to see, and that was Hamlet. Soon after writing his letter, the luckless Wiggins, tempted by the prospect of better wages, left the Spirit of the Times, and went back to West's, and worked for some weeks on Prof. Bush's Notes on Genesis, ' the worst manuscript ever seen in a printing-office. That finished, he returned to the Spirit of the Times, and remained till October, when he went to visit his relatives in New Hampshire. He reached his uncle's farm in Londonderry in the apple-gathering season, and going at once to the orchard found his cousins engaged in that pleasing exercise. Horace jumped over the fence, saluted them in the hearty and unornamental Scotch-Irish style, sprang in to a tree, and assisted them till their task for the day was done, and then all the party went frolicking into the woods on a grape-hunt Horace was a welcome guest. He was full of fun in those days, and kept the boys roaring with his stories, or agape with descrip tions of city scenes. Back to the city again early in November, in time and on pur pose to vote at the fall elections. He went to work, soon after, for Mr. J. S. Redfield, now an emi nent publisher of this city, then a stereotyper. Mr. Redfield favors me with the following note of his connection with Horace Greeley : " My recollections of Mr. Greeley extend from about the time he first came to the city to work as a compositor. I was carrying on the stereotyping business in William street, and having occasion one day for more compositors, one of the hands brought in Greeley, re marking ' sotto voce ' as he introduced him, that he was a " boy ish and rather odd looking genius," (to which remark I had no diffi culty in assenting,) * but he had understood that he was a good workman.' Being much in want of help at the time, Greeley was set to work, and I was not a little surprised to find on Saturday night, that his bills were much larger than those of any other com positor in the office, and oftentimes nearly double those at work by the side of him on the same work. He would accomplish this, too, and talk all the time ! The same untiring industry, and the fearlessness and independence, which have characterized his THE FIRST PENNY PAPER. 137 course as Editor of the New York Tribune, were the distinguishing features of his character as a journeyman." He remained in the office of Mr. Redfield till late in December, when the circumstance occurred which gave him his FIRST LIFT in the world. There is a tide, it is said, in the affairs of every man, once in his life, which taken at the flood leads on to fortune. Horace Greeley's First Lift happened to take place in connection with an event of great, world-wide and lasting consequence ; yet one which has never been narrated to the public. It shall, there fore, have in this work a short chapter to itself. CHAPTER X. THE FIRST PENNY PAPEK AND WHO THOUGHT OF IT. Importance of the cheap daily press The originator of the idea History of the idea Dr. Sheppard's Chatham-street cogitations The Idea is conceived It is born Interview with Horace Greeley The Doctor thinks he is ' no common boy' The schemer baffled Daily papers twenty-five years ago Dr. Sheppard comes to a resolution. The firm of Greeley and Story The Morning Post appears And fails The sphere of the cheap press Fanny Fern and the pea-nut merchant. WHEN the Historian of the United States shall have completed the work that has occupied so many busy and anxious years, and, in the tranquil solitude of his study, he reviews the long series of events which he has narrated, the question may arise in his mind, Which of the events that occurred during the first seventy years of the Republic is likely to exert the greatest and moat last ing influence upon its future history ? Surely, he will not pause long for a reply. For, there is one event, which stands out so prominently beyond and above all others, the consequences of which, to this country and all other countries, must be so immense, and, finally, so beneficial, that no other can be seriously placed in com petition with it. It was the establishment of the first penny daily paper in the city of New York in the year 1833. Its results, in this country, ha^e already been wonderful indeed, and it is destined tc l38 THE FIRST PENNY PAPER. play a great part in the history of every civilized nation, and in that of every nation yet to be civilized. Not that Editors are, in all cases, or in most, the wisest of men ; not that editorial writing has a greater value than hasty composition in general. Editors are a useful, a laborious, a generous, an honor able class of men and women, and their writings have their due effect. But, that part of the newspaper which interests, awakens, moves, warns, inspires, instructs and educates all classes and con ditions of people, the wise and the unwise, the illiterate and the learned, is the NEWS ! And the News, the same news, at nearly the same instant of time, is communicated to all the people of this fair and vast domain which we inherit, by the instrumentality of the Cheap Press, aided by its allies the Rail and the Wire. A catastrophe happens to-day in New York. New Orleans shudders to-morrow at the recital ; and the Nation shudders before the week ends. A * Great Word,' uttered on any stump in the land, soon illuminates a million minds. A bad deed is perpetrated, and the shock of disgust flies with electric rapidity from city to city, from State to State from the heart that records it to every heart that beats. A gallant deed or a generous one is done, or a fruitful idea is suggested, and it falls, like good seed which the wind scatters, over all the land at once. Leave the city on a day when some stirring news is rife, travel as far and as fast as you may, rest not by day nor night ; you cannot easily get where that News is not, where it is not the theme of general thought and talk, where it is not doing its part in informing, or, at least, exciting the public mind. Abandon the great lines of travel, go rocking in a stage over corduroy roads, through the wilderness, to the newest of new villages, a cluster of log-houses, in a field of blackened stumps, and even there you must be prompt with your news, or it will have flown out from a bundle of newspapers under the driver's seat, and fallen in flakes all over the settlement. The Cheap Press its importance cannot be estimated ! It puts every mind in direct communication with the greatest minds, which all, in one way or another, speak through its columns. It brings the Course of Events to bear on the progress of every individual. It is the great leveler, elevator and democraticizer. It makes this huge Commonwealth, else so heterogeneous and disunited, think with one THE ORIGINATOR OF THE IDEA. 139 mind, feel with one heart, and talk with one tongue. Dissolve the Union into a hundred petty States, and the Press will still keep us. in heart and soul and habit, One People. Pardon this slight digression, dear reader. Pardon it, because the beginnings of the greatest things are, in appearance, so insig nificant, that unless we look at them in the light of their conse quences, it is impossible to take an interest in them. There are not, I presume, twenty-five persons alive, who know in whose head it was, that the idea of a cheap daily paper origin ated. Nor has the proprietor of that head ever derived from his idea, which has enriched so many others, the smallest pecuniary advantage. He walks these streets, this day, an unknown man, and poor. His name the reader may forget it, History will not is HORATIO DAVIS SHEPPARD. The story of his idea, amply confirmed in every particular by living and unimpeachable witnesses, is the following : About the year 1830, Mr. Sheppard, recently come of age and into the possession of fifteen hundred dollars, moved from his native "New Jersey to New York, and entered the Eldridge Street Medical School as a student of medicine. He was ambitious and full of ideas. Of course, therefore, his fifteen hundred dollars burned in his vest pocket (where he actually used to carry it, until a fellow stu dent almost compelled him to deposit it in a place of safety). He took to dabbling in newspapers and periodicals, a method of getting rid of superfluous cash, which is as expeditious as it is fascinating. He soon had an interest in a medical magazine, and soon after, a share in a weekly paper. By the time he had completed his medi cal studies, he had gained some insight into the nature of the news paper business, and lost the greater part of his money. People who live in Eldridge street, when they have occasion to go 'down tovvn,' must necessarily pass through Chatham street, a thoroughfare which is noted, among many other things, for the ex traordinary number of articles which are sold in it for a ' penny a piece.' Apple-stalls, peanut-stalls, stalls for the sale of oranges, melons, pine-apples, cocoanuts, chestnuts, andy, shoe-laces, cakes, pocket-combs, ice-cream, suspenders, lemonade, and oysters, line the sidewalk. In Chatham street, those small trades are carried on, on a scale of magnitude, with a loudness of vociferation, and a 140 THE FIRST PENNY PAPER. flare of lamp-light, unknown to any other part of the town. Along Chatham street, our medical student ofttimes took his way, musing on the instability of fifteen hundred dollars, and observing, possibly envying, the noisy merchants of the stalls. He was struck with the rapidity with which they sold their penny ware. A small boy would sell half a dozen penny cakes in the course of a minute. The dif erence between a cent, and no money, did not seem to be appreciated by the people. If a person saw something, wanted it, knew the price to be only a cent, he was almost as certain to buy it as though it were offered him for nothing. Now, thought he, to make a fortune, one has nothing more to do than to produce a tempting article which can be sold profitably for a cent, place it where everybody can see it, and buy it, without stopping and lo I the thing is done ! If it were only possible to produce a small, spicy i &\\y paper for a cent, and get boys to sell it about the streets, how it would sell ! How many pennies that now go for cakes and pea nuts would be spent for news and paragraphs ! The idea was born the twin ideas of the penny paper and the newsboy. But, like the young of the kangaroo, they crawled into the mental pouch of the teeming originator, and nestled there for months, before they were fully formed and strong enough to con front the world. Perhaps it is possible, continued the musing man of medicine, on a subsequent walk in Chatham street. He went to a paper ware house, and made inquiries touching the price of the cheaper kinds of printing paper. He figured up the cost of composition. He computed office expenses and editorial salaries. He estimated the probable circulation of a penny paper, and the probable income to be derived from advertising. Surely, he could sell four or five thousand a day ! There, for instance, is a group of people ; suppose a boy were at this moment to go up to them with an armful of pa pers, ' only one cent,' I am positive, thought the sanguine projector, that six of the nine would buy a copy ! His conclusion was, that lie could produce a newspaper about twice the size of an average sheet of letter-paper, half paragraphs and half advertisements, and ell it at a cent per copy, with an ample profit to himself. He was ture of it ! He had tried all his arithmetic upon tbe project, and fcLe figures gave the same result always. The twins leape' 1 from DAILY PAPERS TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 141 the pouch, and taking their progenitor by the throat, led him a fine dance before he could shake them off. For the present, they pos sessed him wholly. As most of his little inheritance had vanished, it was necessary for him to interest some one in the scheme who had either capital or a printing office. The Spirit of the Times was then in its infan cy. To the office of that paper, where Horace Greeley was then a journeyman, Mr. Sheppard first directed his steps, and there he first unfolded his plans and exhibited his calculations. Mr. Greeley was not present on his first entrance. He came in soon after, and began telling in high glee a story he had picked up of old Isaac Hill, who used to read his speeches in the House, and one day brought the wrong speech, and got upon his legs, and half way into a sAvelling ex ordium before he discovered his mistake. The narrator told his sto ry extremely well, taking off the embarrassment of the old gentleman as he gradually came to the knowledge of his misfortune, to the life. The company were highly amused, and Mr. Sheppard said to him self, " That 's no common Joy." Perhaps it was an unfortunate mo ment to introduce a bold and novel idea ; but it is certain that every individual present, from the editor to the devil, regarded the notion of a penny paper as one of extreme absurdity, foolish, ridiculous, frivolous! They took it as a joke, and the schemer took nis leave. Nor is it at all surprising that they should have regarded ic in that light. A daily newspaper in those days was a solemn thing. People in moderate circumstances seldom saw, never bought one. The price was ten dollars a year. Cut the present Journal of Com merce in halves, fold it, fancy on its second page half a column of serious editorial, a column of news, half a column of business and shipping intelligence, and the rest of the ample sheet cover afl with advertisements, and you have before your mind's eye the New York daily paper of twenty-five years ago. It "Yas not a thing for the people ; it appertained to the counting-house ; it was taken by the wholesale dealer ; it was cumbrous, heavy, solemn. The idea of making it an article to be cried about the streets, to be sold for a cent, to be bought by workingmen and boys, to come into competi tion with cakes and apples, must have seemed to the respectable New Yorkers of 1831, unspeakably absurd. When the respectable 142 THE FIRST PENNY PAPER. New Yorker first saw a penny paper, he gazed at it (I saw him) with a feeling similar to that with which an ill-natured man may be supposed to regard General Tom Thumh, a feeling of mingled curiosity and contempt ; he put the ridiculous little thing into his waistcoat pocket to carry home for the amusement of his family ; and he wondered what nonsense would be perpetrated next. Dr. Sheppard he had now taken his degree was not disheart ened by the merry reception of his idea at the office of the Spirit of the Times. He went to other offices to nearly every other office I For eighteen months it was his custom, whenever opportunity offered, to expound his project to printers and editors, and, in fact, to any one who would listen to him long enough. He could not convince one man of the feasibility of his scheme, not one ! A few people thought it a good idea for the instruction of the million, and recom mended him to get some society to take hold of it. But not a human being could be brought to believe that it would pay as a business, and only a few of the more polite and complaisant printers could be induced to consider the subject in a serious light at all. Reader, possessed with an Idea, reader, 'in a minority of one,' take courage from the fact. Despairing of getting the assistance he required, Dr. Sheppard resolved, at length, to make a desperate effort to start the paper himself. His means were fifty dollars in cash and a promise of credit for two hundred dollars' worth of paper. Among his printer friends was Mr. Francis Story, the foreman of the Spirit of the Times office, who, about that time, was watching for an opportunity to get into business on his own account. To him Dr. Sheppard announced his intention, and proposed that he should establish an office and print the forthcoming paper, offering to pay the bhM for composition every Saturday. Mr. Story hesitated ; but, on obtaining from Mr. Sylvester a promise of the printing of his Bank Note Reporter, he embraced Dr. Sheppard's proposal, and offered Horace Greeley, for whom he had long entertained a warm friendship and a great admiration, an equal share in the enterprise. Horace was not favorably impressed with Dr. Sheppard's scheme. In the first place, he had no great faith in the practical ability of that gentleman ; and, secondly, he was of opinion that the smallest price for which a daily paper could be profitably sold was two cents. THE FIRM OF GREELEY AND STORY. 143 His arguments on the latter point did not convince the ardent doc tor; but, with the hope of overcoming his scruples and enlisting his co-operation, he consented to give up his darling idea, and fix the price of his paper at two cents. Horace Greeley agreed, at length, to try his fortune as a master printer, and in December, the firm of Greeley and Story was formed. Now, experience has since proved that two cents is the best price for a cheap paper. But the point, the charm, the impudence of Dr. Sheppard's project all lay in those magical words, ' PRICE ONE CENT,' which his paper was to have borne on its heading but did not. And the capital to be invested in the enterprise was so ludi crously inadequate, that it was necessary for the paper to pay at once, or cease to appear. Horace Greeley's advice, therefore, though good as a general principle, was not applicable to the case in hand. Not that the proposed paper would, or could, have succeeded upon any terms. Its failure was inevitable. Dr. Sheppard is one of those projectors who have the faculty of suggesting the most valuable and fruitful ideas, without possessing, in any degree, the qualities need ful for their realization. The united capital of the two printers was about one hundred and fifty dollars. They were both, however, highly respected in the print ing world, and both had friends among those whose operations keep that world in motion. They hired part of a small office at No. 54 Liberty street. Horace Greeley's candid story prevailed with Mr. George Bruce, the great type founder, so far, that he gave the new firm credit for a small quantity of type an act of trust and kindness which secured him one of the best customers he has ever had. (To this day the type of the Tribune is supplied by Mr. Bruce.) Before the new year dawned, Greeley and Story were ready to execute every job of printing which was not too extensive or intricate, on favorable terms, and with the utmost punctuality and dispatch. On the morning of January 1st, 1833, the MORNING POST, and a snow-storm of almost unexampled fury, came upon the town together. The snow was a wet blanket upon the hopes of newsboys and car riers, and quite deadened the noise of the new paper, filling up areas, and burying the tiny sheet at the doors of its few subscribers. For several days the streets were obstructed with snow. It was very cole 1 . There were few people in the streets, and those few 144 THE FIRST PENNY PAPER. were not easily tempted to stop and fumble in their pockets for two cents. The newsboys were soon discouraged, and were fain to run shivering home. Dr. Sheppard was wholly unacquainted with the details of editorship, and most of the labor of getting up the num bers fell upon Mr. Greeley, and they were produced under every conceivable disadvantage. Yet, with all these misfortunes and drawbacks, several hundred copies were daily sold, and Dr. Shep pard was able to pay all the expenses of the first week. On the second Saturday, however, he paid his printers half in money and half in promises. On the third day of the third week, the faith and the patience of Messrs. Greeley and Story gave out, and the * Morning Post' ceased to exist. The last two days of its short life it was sold for a cent, and the readiness with which it was purchased convinced Dr. Sheppard, but him alone, that if it had been started at that price, it would not have been a failure. His money and his credit were both gone, and the error could not be retrieved. He could not even pay his printers the residue of their account, and he had, in consequence, to endure some emphatic observations from Mr. Story on the mad ness and presumption of his scheme. " Did n't I tell you so ?" said the other printers. " Everybody," says Dr. Sheppard, " abused me, except Horace Greeley. He spoke very kindly, and told me not to mind what Story said." The doctor, thenceforth, washed his hands of printers' ink, and entered upon the practice of his pro fession. Nine months after, the SUN appeared, a penny paper, a dingy sheet a little larger than a sheet of letter paper. Its success demon strated the correctness of Dr. Sheppard's calculations, and justified the enthusiasm with which he had pursued his Idea. The office from which the Sun was issued was one of the last which Dr. Sheppard had visited for the purpose of enlisting co-operation. Neither of the proprietors was present, but the ardent schemer ex pounded his plans to a journeyman, and thus planted the seed which, in September, produced fruit in the form of the Sun, which ' shines for all.' This morning, the cheap daily press of this city has issued a hun dred and fifty thousand sheets, the best of which contain a history of the world for one day, so completely given, BO intelligently com FANNY FERN AND THE PEA-NUT MERCHANT. 145 mented upon, as to place the New York Press at the head of the journalism of the world. The Cheap Press, be it observed, had ; first of all t to create itself, and, secondly, to create its Public. The papers of the old school have gone on their way prospering. They are read by the class that read them formerly. Bnt mark that long line of hackmen, each seated on his box waiting for a customer, and each reading his morning paper ! Observe the paper that is thrust into the pocket of the omnibus driver. Look into shops and factories at the dinner hoar, and nofce how many of the men are readiag their newspaper as they eat their dinner. All this is new. All this has resulted from the Chatham-street cogitations of Hora tio Davis ShepparcL A distinguished authoress of this city relates the following cir cumstance, which occurred last summer : THE MAN WHO DOES TAKE THE PAPES. T* the Editor f TAe JV. Y. Tribune. S : Not long since I read in your paper an article headed " the man who never took a newspaper." In contrast to this I would relate to you a little incident which came under my own observation : Having been disappointed the other morning in receiving that part of my breakfast contained in THE N. Y. DAILY TRIBUNE, I dispatched a messenger to see what could be done in the way of satisfaction. After half an hour's diligent search he returned, much to my chagrin, empty-handed. Recollecting an old copy get me at school after this wise : " If you want a thing done do it yourself," I seized my bonnet and sallied forth. Not far from my domicil appears each morning, with the rising sun, an old huckster-man, whose stock in trade consists of two empty barrels, across which is thrown a pro tern counter in the shape of a plank, a pint of pea-nuts, six sticks of peppermint candy, half a dozen choleric looking pears and apples, copies of the daily papers, and ae old stubby broom, with which the owner carefully brushes up the nut-shells dropped by graceless urchins to the endangerment of his side walk lease. " Have you this mornicg's TRIBUNE 3" said I, looking as amiable as I knew how. " No jJf in the editorial columns of the New Yorker, I certainly did write it. Gent. It was in No. 15. " The March of Humbug." Editor. Ah ! now I recollect it there is no mistake in my writing that article. Gent. Did you allude to me, sir, in those remarks ? Editor. You will perceive that the name ' Goward' has been introduced by yourself there is nothing of the kind in my paper. Gent. Yes, sir ; but I wish to know whether you intended those remarks to apply to me. Editor. Well, sir, without pretending to recollect exactly what I may have been thinking of while writing an article three months ago, I will frankly say, that I think I must have had you in my eye while penning that paragraph. Gent. Well, sir, do you know that such remarks are grossly unjust and im pertinent to me 1 Ed'ior. I know nothing of you, sir, but from the testimony of friends and your own advertisements in the papers and these combine to assure me that you are a quack. 155 Gent. That is what my enemies say, sir; but if you examine my certi ficates, sir, you will know the contrary. Editor. I am open to conviction, sir. Gent. Well, sir, I have been advertising in the Traveler for some time, and have paid them a great deal of money, and here they come out this week and abuse me so, I have done with them ; and, now, if you will say you will not attack me in this fashion, I will patronize you (holding out some tempt ing advertisements). Editor. Well, sir, I shall be very happy to advertise for you ; but I can give no pledge as to the course I shall feel bound to pursue. Gent. Then, I suppose you will continue to call me a quack. Editor. I do not know that I am accustomed to attack my friends and patrons ; but if I have occasion to speak of you at all, it shall be in such terms as my best judgment shall dictate. Gent. Then, I am to understand you as my enemy. Editor. Understand me as you please, sir ; I shall endeavor to treat you and all men with fairness. Gent. But do you suppose I am going to pay money to those who ridicule me and hold me up as a quack ? Editor. You will pay it where you please, sir I must enjoy my opinions. Gent. Well, but is a man to be judged by what his enemies say of him? Every man has bis enemies. Editor. I hopo not, sir ; I trust I have not an enemy in the world. Gent. Yes, you have I 'm your enemy ! and the enemy of every one who misrepresents me. I can get no justice from the press, except among the penny dailies. I '11 start a paper myself before a year. I 'II show that Borne folks can edit newspapers as well as others. Editor. The field is open, sir, go ahead. [Exit in a rage, Rev. J. R. Goward, A, M M Teacher (in six lessons) of everything.] Another proof of the happiness of the early days of our hero's editorial career might be found in the habit he then had of writing verges. It will, perhaps, surprise some of his present readers, who know him only as one of. the most practical of writers, one given to politics, sub-soil plows, and other subjects supposed to be unpo- etical, to learn that he was in early life a very frequent, and by no means altogether unsuccessful poetizer. Many of the early numbers of the New-Yorker contain a poem by u H. G." He has published, in all, about thirty-five poems, of which the New-Yorker contains twenty ; the rest may ba found in the Southern JJterary Messenger, and various other magazines, annuals, and occasional volumes. I 156 EDITOR OF THE NEW YORKER. have seen no poem of his which does not contain the material of poetry thought, feeling, fancy; but in few of them was the poet enabled to give his thought, feeling and fancy complete expression. A specimen or two of his poetry it would be an unpardonable omis sion not to give, in a volume like this, particularly as his poetic period is past. The following is a tribute to the memory of one who was the ideal hero of his youthful politics. It was published in the first number of the New-Yorker : ON THE DEATH OF WILLIAM WIRT. Rouse not the muffled drum, "Wake not the martial trumpet's mournful sound For him whose mighty voice in death is dnmb ; Who, in the zenith of his high renown, To the grave went down. Invoke no cannon's breath To sw.ell the requiem o'er his ashes poured Silently bear him to the house of death : The aching hearts by whom he was adored, He won not with the sword. No ! let affection's tear Be the sole tribute to his memory paid ; Earth has no monument so justly dear To souls like his in purity arrayed Never to fade. I loved thee, patriot Chief! i I battled proudly 'neath thy banner pure ; Mine is the breast of woe the heart of grief, Which suffer on unmindful of a cure Proud to endure. But vain the voice of wail For thee, from thia dim vale of sorrow fled 157 Earth has no spell whose magic shall not fail To light the gloom that shrouds thy narrow bed, Or woo thee from the dead. Then take thy long repose Beneath the shelter of the deep green sod : Death but a brighter halo o'er thee throws Thy fame, thy soul alike have spurned the clod Kest thee in God. A series of poems, entitled " Historic Pencilings," appear in the first volume of the New Yorker, over the initials " H. G." These were the poetized reminiscences of his boyish historical reading. Of these poems the following is, perhaps, the most ploasing and char acteristic : NERO'S TOMB. 11 When Nero perished by the iustest doom, ***** Some hand unseen strewed flowers upon his grave. BYRON. The tyrant slept in death ; His long career of blood had ceased forever, And but an empire's execrating breath Remained to tell of crimes exampled never. Alone remained ? Ah ! no ; Rome's scathed and blackened walls retold the story Of conflagrations broad and baleful glow. Such was the halo of the despot's glory ! And round his gilded tomb Came crowds of sufferers but not to weep- Not theirs the wish to light the house of gloom "With sympathy. No ! Curses wild and deep His only requiem made. But soft ! see, strewed around his dreamless bed The trophies bright of many a verdant glade, The living's tribute to the honored dead. 158 EDITOR OF THE NEW YORKER. What mean those gentle flowers ? So sweetly smiling in the face of wrath- Children of genial suns and fostering showers. Now crushed and trampled in the million's path What do they, withering here ? Ah ! spurn them not ? they tell of sorrow's flow There has been one to shed affection's tear, And 'mid a nation's joy, to feel a pang of woe ! No ! scorn them not, those flowers, They speak too deeply to each feeling heart They tell that Guilt hath still its holier hours That none may e 'er from earth unmourned depart ; That none hath all effaced The spell of Eden o 'er his spirit cast, The heavenly image in his features traced Or quenched the love unchanging to the last ! Another of the ' Historic Pencilings,' was on the 4 Death of Per- icles.' This was its last stanza : No ! let the hrutal conqueror Still glut his soul with war, And let the ignoble million With shouts surround his car ; But dearer far the lasting fame . Which twines its wreaths with peace- Give me the tearless memory Of the mighty one of Greece. Only one of his poems seems to have been inspired by the ten der passion. It is dated May 31st, 1834. Who this bright Vision was to whom the poem was addressed, or whether it was ever vis ible to any but the poet's eye, has not transpired, FANTASIES, They deem me cold, the thoughtless and light-hearted, In that I worship not at beauty's shrine ; FANTASIES. 159 They deem me cold, that through the years departed, I ne'er have bowed me to some form diviiie. They deem me proud, that, where the world hath flattered, I ne'er have knelt to languish or adore ; They think not that the homage idly scattered Leaves the heart bankrupt, ere its spring is o'er. No ! in my soul there glows but one bright vision, And o'er my heart there rules but one fond spell, Bright'ning my hours of sleep with dreams Elysian Of one unseen, yet loved, aye cherished well ; Unseen ? Ah ! no ; her presence round me lingers, Chasing each wayward thought that tempts to rove ; Weaving Affection's web with fairy fingers, And waking thoughts of purity and love. Star of my heaven ! thy beams shall guide me ever, Though clouds obscure, and thorns bestrew my path ; As sweeps my bark adown life's arrowy river Thy angel smile shall soothe misfortune's wrath ; And ah ! should Fate ere speed her deadliest arrow, Should vice allure to plunge in her dark sea, Be this the only shield my soul shall borrow One glance to Heaven one burning thought of thee ! 1 ne'er on earth may gaze on those bright features, Nor drink the light of that soul-beaming eye ; But wander on 'mid earth's unthinking creatures, Unloved in life, and unlamented die ; But ne'er shall fade the spell thou weavest o'er me, Nor fail the star that lights my lonely way ; Still shall the night's fond dreams that light restore me, Though Fate forbid its gentler beams by day. I have not dreamed that gold or gems adorn thee That Flatt'ry's voice may vaunt thy matchless form ; I little reck that worldlings all may scorn thee, Be but thy SOUL still pure, thy feelings warm ; 160 EDITOR OF THE NEW YORKER. Be thine bright Intellect's unfading treasures, And Poesy's more deeply-hallowed spell, And Faith the zest which heightens all thy pleasures, With trusting love Maid of rny soul ! farewell ! One more poem claims place here, if from its autobiographi tl character alone. Those who believe there is such a thing as regen eration, who know that a man can act and live in a disinterested spirit, will not read this poem with entire incredulity. It appeared in the Southern Literary Messenger for August, 1840. THE FADED STARS. I mind the time when Heaven's high dome Woke in my soul a wondrous thrill When every leaf in Nature's tome Bespoke creation's marvels still ; When mountain cliff and sweeping glade, As morn unclosed her rosy bars, Woke joys intense but naught e'er bade My heart leap up, like you, bright stars ! Calm rainistrants to God's high glory ! Pure gems around His burning throne ! Mute watchers o'er man's strange, sad story Of Crime and Woe through ages gone 1 'Twas yours the mild and hallowing spell That lured me from ignoble gleams Taught me where sweeter fountains swell Than ever bless the worldling's dreams. How changed was life 1 a waste no more, Beset by Want, and Pain, and Wrong ; Earth seemed a glad and fairy shore, Vocal with Hope's inspiring song. But ye, bright sentinels of Heaven ! Far glories of Night's radiant sky 1 Who, as ye gemmed the brow of Even, Has ever deemed Man born to die ? * * * * SUBJECTS OF HIS ESSAYS. 101 'Tis faded now, that wondrous grace That once on Heaven's forehead shone ; I read no more in Nature's face A soul responsive to my own. A dimness on my eye and spirit, Stern time has cast in hurrying by ; Few joys my hardier years inherit, And leaden dullness rules the sky. Yet mourn not I a stern, high duty Now nerves my arm and fires my brain ; Perish the dream of shapes of beauty, So that this strife be not in vain ; To war on Fraud entrenched with Power- On smooth Pretense and specious Wrong This task be mine, though Fortune lower ; For this be banished sky and song. The subjects upon which the editor of the New Yorker ttfed to descant, as editor, contrast curiously with those upon which, as poet, he aspired to sing. Turning over the well-printed pages of that journal, we find calm and rather elaborate essays upon l The Interests of Labor,' ' Our Relations with France,' * Speculation,' * The Science of Agriculture,' * Usury Laws,' ' The Currency,' * Over trading,' ' Divorce of Bank and State,' * National Conventions,' * In ternational Copyright,' ' Relief of the Poor,' * The Public Lands,' ' Capital Punishment,' ' The Slavery Question,' and scores of others equally unromantic. There are, also, election returns given with great minuteness, and numberless paragraphs recording nomina tions. The New Yorker gradually became the authority in the de partment of political statistics. There were many people who did not consider an election * safe,' or ' lost,' until they saw the figures in the New Yorker. And the New Yorker deserved this distinc tion ; for there never lived an editor more scrupulous upon the point of literal and absolute correctness than Horace Greeley. To quote the language of a proof-reader " If there is a thing that will make Horace furious, it is to have a name spelt wrong, era mistake , EDITOR OF THE NEW YORKER. in election returns." In fact, he was morbid on tho subject, till time toughened him ; time, and proof-readers. The opinions which he expressed in the columns of the New Yorker are, in general, those to which he still adheres, though on a few subjects he used language which he would not now use. His opinions on those subjects have rather advanced than changed. For example : he is now opposed to the punishment of death in all cases, except when, owing to peculiar circumstances, the immediate safety of the community demands it. In June, 1830, he wrote : " And now, having fully expressed our conviction that the punish ment of death is one which should sometimes be inflicted, we may add, that we would have it resorted to as unfrequently as possible. Nothing, in our view, but cold-blooded, premeditated, unpalliated murder, can fully justify it. Let this continue to be visited with the sternest penalty." Another example. The following is part of an article on the Slavery Question, which appeared in July, 1884. It differs from his present writings on the same subject, not at all in doctrine, though very much in tone. Then, he thought the North the ag gressor. Since then, we have had Mexican Wars, Nebraska bills, etc., and he now writes as one assailed. " To a philosophical observer, the existence of domestic servitude in one portion of the Union while it is forbidden and condemned in another, would indeed seem to afford no plausible pretext for variance or alienation. The Union was formed with a perfect knowledge, on the one hand, that slavery ex isted at the south, and, on the other, that it was utterly disapproved and dis countenanced at the north. But the framers of the constitution saw no reason for distrust and dissension in this circumstance. Wisely avoiding all discuss ion of a subject so delicate and exciting, they proceeded to the formation of ' a more perfect union,' which, leaving each section in the possession of its undoubted right of regulating its own internal government and enjoying its own speculative opinions, provided only for the common benefit and mutual well-being of the whole. And why should not this arrangement be satisfac tory and perfect ? Why should not even the existing evils of one section be left to the correction of its own wisdom and virtue, when pointed out by the unerring finger of experience 7 ********* Wt entertain no doubt that the system of slavery is at the bottom of most of the evils which afflict tho communities of the south that it has occasioned HIS OPINIONS THEN. 163 the decline of Virginia, of Maryland, of Carolina. We see it even retarding the growth of the new State of Missouri, and causing her to fall far behind her sister Indiana in improvement 'and population. And we venture to assert, that if the objections to slavery, drawn from a correct and enlightened politi*. cal economy, were once fairly placed before the southern public, they would need no other inducements to impel them to enter upon an immediate and effective course of legislation, with a view to the ultimate extinction of the evil. But, right or wrong, no people have a greater disinclination to the lec tures or even the advice of their neighbors ; and we venture to predict, that whoever shall bring about a change of opinion in that quarter, must, in this case, reverse the proverb which declares, that ' a prophet hath honor except in his own country.' " ******* After extolling the Colonization Society, and condemning the form ation of anti-slavery societies at the North, as irritating and useless, the editor proceeds : " We hazard the assertion, that there never existed two distinct races so diverse as to be incapable of amalga mation inhabiting the same district of country, and in open and friendly contact with each other, that maintained a perfect equality of political and social condition. * * * It remains to be proved, that the history of the nineteenth century will afford a direct con tradiction to all former experience. * * * We cannot close without reiterating the expression of our firm conviction, that if the African race are ever to be raised to a degree of comparative happiness, intelligence, and freedom, it must be in some other region, than that which has been the theater of their servitude and degra dation. They must ' come up out of the land of Egypt and out of the house of bondage ;' even though they should be forced to cross the sea in their pilgrimage and wander forty years in the wilder ness." Again. In 1835, he had not arrived at the Maine Law, but waa feeling his way towards it. He wrote thus : " Were we called upon to indicate simply the course which should be pursued for the eradication of this crying evil, our compliance would be a far easier matter. We should say, unhesitatingly, that the vending of alcohol, or of liquors of which alcohol forms a leading component, should be regulated by the laws which govern the sale of other insidious, yet deadly, poisons. It should be kept for sale oily by druggists, and dealt out in small portions, and with like regard to the character and ostensible purpose of the applicant 164 EufTOR OF THE NEW YORKER. as in the case of its counterpart. * * * * But we must not forget, that we are to determine simply what may be done by the friends of temperance for the advancement of the noble cause in which they are engaged, rather than what the more ardent of them (with whom we are proud to rank our selves) would desire to see accomplished. We are to look at things as they are; and, in that view, all attempts to interdict the sale of intoxicating liquors in our hotels, our country stores, and our steam-boats, in the present state of public opinion, must be hopelessly, ridiculously futile. * * * * The only available provision bearing on this branch of the traffic, which could be urged with the least prospect of success, is the imposition of a real license- taxsay from $100 to $1000 per annum which would have the effect ol diminishing the evil by rendering less frequent and less universal the temp tations which lead to it. But even that, we apprehend, would meet with 9 trenuous opposition from so large and influential a portion of the community, as to render its adoption and efficiency extremely doubtful." The most bold and stirring of his articles in the New Yorker, was one on the " Tyranny of Opinion," which was suggested by the extraordinary enthusiasm with which the Fourth of July was cel ebrated in 1837. A part of this article is the only specimen of the young editor's performance, which, as a specimen, can find place in this chapter. The sentiments which it avows, the country h-as not yet caught up with ; nor will it, for many a year after the hand that wrote them is dust. After an allusion to the celebration, the article proceeds: " The great pervading evil of our social condition is the worship and the bigotry of Opinion. While the theory of our political institutions asserts or implies the absolute freedom of the human mind the right not only of free thought and discussion, but of the most unrestrained action thereon within the wide boundaries prescribed by the laws of the land, yet the practical com mentary upon this noble text is as discordant as imagination can conceive. Beneath the thin veil of a democracy more free than that of Athens in her glory, we cloak a despotism more pernicious and revolting than that of Turkey or China. It is the despotism of Opinion. Whoever ventures to j ropound opinions strikingly at variance with those of the majority, must be content to brave obloquy, contempt and persecution. If political, they ex clude him from public employment and trust ; if religious, from social inter course and general regard, if not from absolute rights. However moderately heretical in his political views, he cannot be a justice of the peace, an officer of the customs, or a lamp-lighter ; while, if he be positively and frankly skeptical in his theology, grave judges pronounce him incompetent to give HIS MA.RRIAGE. 1C5 testimony in courts of justice, though his character for veracity be indubitable. That is but a narrow view of the subject which ascribes all this injustice to the errors of parties or individuals ; it flows naturally from the vice of the age and country the tyranny of Opinion. It can never be wholly rectified until the whole community shall be brought to feel and acknowledge, that the only security for public liberty is to be found in the absolute and unqualified freedom of thought and expression, confining penal consequences to acts only which are detrimental to the welfare of society. " The philosophical observer from abroad may well be astounded by the gross inconsistencies which are presented by the professions and the conduct of our people. Thousands will flock together to drink in the musical periods of some popular disclaimer on the inalienable rights of man, the inviolability of the immunities granted us by the Constitution and Laws, and the invariable reverence of freemen for the majesty of law. They go away delighted with our institutions, the orator and themselves. The next day they may be en gaged in 'lynching' some unlucky individual who has fallen under their sovereign displeasure, breaking up a public meeting of an obnoxious cast, or tarring and feathering some unfortunate lecturer or propagandist, whose views do not square with their own, but who has precisely the same right to enjoy and propagate his opinions, however erroneous, as though he inculcated nothing but what every one knows and acknowledges already. The shaine- lessness of this incongruity is sickening ; but it is not confined to this glaring exhibition. The sheriff, town-clerk, or constable, who finds the political majority in his district changed, either by immigration or the course of events, must be content to change too, or be hurled from his station. Yet what necessary connection is there between his politics and his office ? Why might it not as properly be insisted that a town-officer should be six feet high, or have red hair, if the majority were so distinguished, as that he should think with them respecting the men in high places and the measures projected or opposed by them ? And how does the proscription of a man in any way for obnoxious opinions differ from the most glaring tyranny 7" In the New Yorker of July 16th, 1836, may be seen, at the head of a long list of recent marriages, the following interesting an nouncement: "In Immanuel church, Warrenton, North Carolina, on Tues day morning, 5th inst, by Kev. William Norwood, Mr. Horace Greeley, editor of the New Yorker, to Miss Mary Y. Cheney, of Warrenton, formerly of this city." The lady was by profession a teacher, and to use the emphatic language of one of her friends, * crazy for knowledge.' The ac quaintanco had been formed at the Graham House, and was con- 166 EDITOR OF THE NEW YORKER. tinued by correspondence after Miss Cheney, in the pursuit of hei vocation, had removed to North Carolina. Thither the lover hied ; the two became one, and returned together to New York. They were married, as he said he would be, by the Episcopal form. Sumptuous was the attire of the bridegroom ; a suit of fine black broadcloth, and " on this occasion only," a pair of silk stockings ! It appears that silk stockings and matrimony were, in his mind, as sociated ideas, as rings and matrimony, orange blossoms and matri mony, are in the minds of people in general. Accordingly, he bought a pair of silk stockings; but trying on his wedding suit pre vious to his departure for the south, he found, to his dismay, that the stockings were completely hidden by the affluent terminations of another garment. The question now at once occurred to his log ical mind, 4 What is the use of having silk stockings, if nobody can see that you have them ?' He laid the case, it is sakl, before his tailor, who, knowing his customer, immediately removed the diffi culty by cutting away a crescent of cloth from the front of the aforesaid terminations, which rendered the silk stockings obvious to the most casual observer. Such is the story. And I regret that other stories, and true ones, highly honorable to his head and heart, delicacy forbids the telling of in this place. The editor, of course, turned his wedding tour to account in the way of his profession. On his journey southward, Horace Gree- ley first saw Washington, and was impressed favorably by the houses of Congress, then in session. He wrote admiringly of the Senate: "That the Senate of the United States is unsurpassed in intellectual greatness by any body of fifty men ever convened, is a trite observation. A phrenologist would fancy a strong con firmation of his doctrines in the very appearance of the Senate ; a physiognomist would find it. The most striking person on the floor is Mr. Clay, who is incessantly in motion, and whose spare, erect form betrays an easy dignity approaching to majesty, and a perfect gracefulness, such as I have never seen equaled. His coun tenance is intelligent and indicative of character; but a glance at his figure while his face was completely averted, would give assur ance that he was no common man. Mr. Calhoun is one of the plainest men and certainly the dryest, hardest speaker I ever listened to. The flow of his ideas reminded me of a barrel filled PECUNIARY DIFFICULTIES. 167 with pebbles, each of which must find great difficulty in escaping from the very solidity and number of those pressing upon it and impeding its natural motion. Mr. Calhoun, though far from being a handsome, is still a very remarkable personage ; but Mr. Benton has the least intellectual countenance I ever saw on a sc-nator. Mr. Webster was not in his place." * * * * " The best speech was that of Mr. Crittenden, of Kentucky. That man is not appreciated so highly as he should and must be. He has a rough readiness, a sterling good sense, a republican manner and feeling, and a vein of biting, though homely satire, which will yet raise him to distinction in the National Councils." Were Greeley and Co. making their fortune meanwhile ? Far from it. To edit a paper well is one thing ; to make it pay as a business is another. The New Yorker had soon become a famous, an admired, and an influential paper. Subscriptions poured in ; the establishment looked prosperous ; but it was not. The sorry tale of its career as a business is very fully and forcibly told in the vari ous addresses to, and chats with, Our Patrons, which appear in the volumes of 1837, that 'year of ruin,' and of the years of slow re covery from ruin which followed. In October, 1837, the editor thus stated his melancholy case : " Ours is a plain story ; and it shall be plainly told. The New Yorker was established with very moderate expectations of pecuniary advantage, but with strong hopes that its location at the head-quarters of intelligence for the continent, and its cheapness, would insure it, if well conducted, such a patron age as would be ultimately adequate, at least, to the bare expenses of its pub lication. Starting with scarce a shadow of patronage, it had four thousand five hundred subscribers at the close of the first year, obtained at an outlay of three thousand dollars beyond the income in that period. This did not mate rially disappoint the publishers' expectations. Another year passed, and their subscription increased to seven thousand, with a further outlay, beyond all re ceipts, of two thousand dollars. A third year was commenced with two edi tions folio and quarto of our journal ; and at its close, their conjoint sub scriptions amounted to near nine thousand five hundred ; yet our receipts had again fallen two thousand dollars behind our absolutely necessary expendi tures. Such was our situation at the commencement of this year of ruin ; and we found ourselves wholly unable to continue our former reliance on the honor and ultimate good faith of our backward subscribers. Two thousand five hundred of them were stricken from our list, and every possible retrenchment of 168 EDITOR OF THE NEW YORKER our expenditures effected. With the exercise of the most parsimonious frugal ity, and aided by (he extreme kindness and generous confidence of our friends, we have barely and with great difficulty kept our bark afloat. For the future, we have no resource but in the justice and generosity of our patrons. Our humble portion of this world's goods has long since been swallowed up in the all-devour ing vortex ; both of the Editor's original associates in the undertaking have abandoned it with loss, and those who now fill their places have invested to the full amount of their ability. Not a farthing has been drawn from the concern by any one save for services rendered ; and the allowance to the proprietors having charge respectively of the editorial and publishing departments has been far less than their services would have commanded elsewhere. The last six months have been more disastrous than any which preceded them, as we have continued to fall behind our expenses without a corresponding increase of pat ronage. A large amount is indeed due us ; but we find its collection almost impossible, except in inconsiderable portions and at a ruinous expense. All appeals to the honesty and good faith of the delinquents seem utterly fruit less. As a last resource, therefore, and one beside which we have no alterna tive, we hereby announce, that from and after this date, the price of the New Yorker will be three dollars per annum for the folio, and four dollars for the quarto edition. " Friends of the New Yorker ! Patrons ! we appeal to you, not for charity, but for justice. Whoever among you is in our debt, no matter how small the sum, is guilty of a moral wrong in withholding the payment. We bitterly need it we have a right to expect it. Six years of happiness could not atone for the horrors which blighted hopes, agonizing embarrassments, and gloomy apprehensions all arising in great measure from your neglect have con spired to heap upon us during the last six months. We have borne all in si lence : we now tell you we must have our pay. Our obligations for the next two months are alarmingly heavy, and they must be satisfied, at whatever sac rifice. We shall cheerfully give up whatever may remain to us of property, and mortgage years of future exertion, sooner than incur a shadow of dishonor, by subjecting those who have credited us to loss or inconvenience. We must pay ; and for the means of doing it we appeal most earnestly to you. It is possible that we might still further abuse the kind solicitude of our friends ; but the thought is agony. We should be driven to what is but a more delicate mode of beggary, when justice from those who withhold the hard earnings of our unceasing toil would place us above the revolting necessity ! At any rate, we will not submit to the humiliation without an effort. " We have struggled until we can no longer doubt that, with the present jurrency and there seems little hope of an immediate improvement we can not live at our former prices. The suppression of small notes was a blow to cheap city papers, from which there is no hope of recovery. With a currency including notes of two and three dollars, one half our receipts would come to PECUNIARY DIFFICULTIES. 109 us directly from the subscribers ; without such notes, we must sibmit to an agent's charge on nearly every collection. Besides, the notes from the South Western States are now at from twenty to thirty per cent, discount ; and have been more : those from the West range from six to twenty. All notes beyond the Delaware River range from twice to ten times the discount charged upon them when we started the New Yorker. We cannot afford to depend exclu sively upon the patronage to be obtained in our immediate neighborhood ; wo cannot retain distant patronage without receiving the money in which alone our subscribers can pay. But one course, then, is left us to tax our valuable patronage with the delinquencies of the worse than worthless the paying for the non-paying, and those who send ua par-money, with the evils of our pres ent depraved and depreciated currency." Two years after, there appeared another chapter of pecuniary his tory, written in a more hopeful strain. A short extract will com plete the reader's knowledge of the subject : " Since the close of the year of ruin (1837), we hare pursued the even tenor of our way with such fortune as was vouchsafed us ; and, if never elated with any signal evidence of popular favor, we have not since been doomed to gazo fixedly for months into the yawning abyss of Ruin, and feel a moral certainty that, however averted for a time, that must be our goal at last. On the con trary, our affairs have elowly but steadily improved for some time past, and we now hope that a few months more will place us beyond the reach of pecu niary embarrassments, and enable us to add new attractions to our journal. 11 And this word ' attraction 1 brings us to the confession that the success of our enterprise, if success there has been, has not been at all of a pecuniary cast thus far. Probably we lack the essential elements of that very desirable kind of success. There have been errors, mismanagement and losses in the conduct of our business. "We mean that we lack, or do not take kindly to, the arts which contribute to a newspaper sensation. When our journal first ap peared, a hundred copies marked the extent to which the public curiosity claimed its perusal. Others establish new papers, (the New World and Brother Jonathan Mr. Greeley might have instanced,) even without literary reputa tion, as we were, and five or ten thousand copies are taken at once just to see what the new thing is. And thence they career onward on the crest of a towering wave. " Since the New Yorker was first issued, seven copartners in its publication have successively withdrawn from the concern, generally, we regret to say, without having improved their fortunes by the connection, and most of them with the conviction that the work, however valuable, was not calculated to prove lucrative to its proprietors. 'You don't humbug enough,' has been the complaint of more than one of our retiring associates ; ' you ought to 170 EDITOR OF THE NEW YORKER. make more noise, and vaunt your own merits. The world wul never believe you print a good paper unless you tell them so.' Our course has not been changed by these representations. We have endeavored in all things to maintain our self-respect and deserve the good opinion of others ; if we have not succeeded in the latter particular, the failure is much to be regretted, buthnrdly to be amended by pursuing the vaporous course indicated. If our journal be a good one, those who read it will be very apt to discover the fact ; if it be not, our assertion of its excellence, however positive and frequent, would scarcely outweigh the weekly evidence still more abundantly and convincingly fur nished. "We are aware that this view of the case is controverted by practical results in some cases ; but we are content with the old course, and have never envied the success which Merit or Pretense may attain by acting as its own trumpeter." The New Yorker never, during the seven years of its existence became profitable ; and its editor, during the greater part of the time, derived even his means of subsistence either from the business of job printing or from other sources, which will be alluded to in a moment. The causes of the New Yorker's signal failure as a busi ness seem to have been these : 1. It was a very good paper, suited only to the more intelligent class of the community, which, in all times and countries, is a small class. u We have a pride," said the editor once, and truly, "in be lieving that we might, at any time, render our journal more attrac tive to the million by rendering it less deserving ; and that by merely considering what would be sought after and read with avidity, with out regard to its moral or its merit, we might easily become popu lar at the mere expense of our own self-approval." 2. It seldom praised, never puffed, itself. The editor, however, seems to have thought, that he might have done both with pro priety. Or was he speaking in pure irony, when he gave the Mirror this ' first-rate notice.' " There is one excellent quality," said he, u which has always been a characteristic of the Mirror the virtue of self-appreciation. We call it a virtue, and it is not merely one in itself, but the parent of many others. As regards our vocation, it is alike necessary and just. The world should be made to under stand, that the aggregate of talent, acquirement, tact, industry, and general intelligence which is required to sustain creditably the char acter of a public journal, might, if judiciously parceled out, form -.he stamina of, at least, one professor of languages, two brazen lee- 171 turers on science, ethics, or phrenology, and three average congress ional or other demagogues. Why, then, should starvation wave his skeleton scepter in terrorem over such a congregation of avail able excellences 2" 3. The leading spirit of the New Yorker had a singular, a consti tutional, an incurable inability to conduct business* His character is the exact opposite of that * hard man ' in the gospel, who reaped where he had not sown. He was too amiable, too confiding, too absent, and too * easy,' for a business man. If a boy stole his let ters from the post-office, he would admonish him, and either let him go or try him again. If a writer in extremity offered to do certain paragraphs for three dollars a week, he would say, " No, that 's too little; I '11 give you five, till you can get something better." On one occasion, he went to the post-office himself, and receiving a large number of letters, put them, it is said, into the pockets of his overcoat. On reaching the office, he hung the overcoat on its accustomed peg, and was soon lost in the composition of an article. It was the last of the chilly days of spring, and he thooght no more either of his overcoat or its pockets, till the autumn. Letters kept coming in complaining of the non-receipt of papers which had been ordered and paid for; and the office was sorely perplexed. On the first cool day in October, when the editor was shaking a summer's dirt from his overcoat, the missing letters were found, and the mys tery was explained. Another story gives us a peep into the office of the New Yorker. A gentleman called, one day, and asked to see the editor. ** I am the editor," said a little coxcomb who was temporarily in charge of the paper. u You are not the person I want to see," said the gentleman. u Oh!" said the puppy, "you wish to see the Printer. He 's not in town." The men in the com posing-room chanced to overhear this colloquy, and thereafter, our hero was called by the nickname of 4 The Printer,' and by that alone, whether he was present or absent. It was " Printer, how will you have this set?" or "Printer, we're waiting for copy." All this was very pleasant and amiable ; but, businesses which pay are never carried on in that style. It is a pity, but a fact, that busi nesses which pay, are generally conducted in a manner which is exceedingly disagreeable to those who assist in them. 4. The Year of Rain. 172 EDITOR OF THE NEW YCRKER. 5. The l cauh principle,' the only safe one, had not bejn yet ap plied to the newspaper business. The New Yorker lost, on an aver age, 1,200 dollars a year by the removal of subscribers to parts unknown, who left without paying for their paper, or notifying the office of their departure. Of the unnumbered pangs that mortals know, pecuniary anxiety is to a sensitive and honest young heart the bitterest. To live up on the edge of a gulf that yawns hideously and always at our feet, to feel the ground giving way under the house that holds our hap- piness, to walk in the pathway of avalanches, to dwell under a volcano rumbling prophetically of a coming eruption, is not pleas* ant. But welcome yawning abyss, welcome earthquake, avalanche, volcano 1 They can crush, and burn, and swallow a man, but not degrade him. The terrors they inspire are not to be compared with the deadly and withering FEAK that crouches sullenly in the soul of that honest man who owes much money to many people, and cannot think how or when he can pay it. That alone has power to take from life all its charm, and from duty all its interest. For other sorrows there is a balm. That is an evil unmingled, while it lasts ; and the light which it throws upon the history of mankind and the secret of man's struggle with fate, is purchased at a price fully commensurate with the value of that light. The editor of the New Yorker suffered all that a man could suf fer from this dread cause. In private letters he alludes, but only alludes, to his anguish at this period. "Through most of the time," he wrote years afterward, " I was very poor, and for four years re ally bankrupt ; though always paying my notes and keeping my word, but living as poorly as possible." And again : " My embar rassments were sometimes dreadful ; not that I feared destitution, but the fear of involving my friends in my misfortunes was very bitter." He came one afternoon into the house of a friend, and handing her a copy of his paper, said : u There, Mrs. S., that is the last number of the New Yorker you will ever see. I can secure my friends against loss if I stop now, and I '11 not risk their money by holding on any longer." He went over that evening to Mr. Gregory, to make known to him his determination ; but that con stant and invincible friend would not listen to it. He insisted on his continuing the struggle, and offered his assistance with such PARK BENJAMIN. HENRY J. RAYMOND. 173 frank and earnest cordiality, that our hero's scruples were at length removed, and he came home elate, and resolved to battle another year with delinquent subscribers and a depreciated currency. During the early years of the New Yorker, Mr. Greeley had lit tle regular assistance in editing the paper. In 1839, Mr. Park Ben jamin contributed much to the interest of its columns by his lively and humorous critiques ; but his connection with the paper was not of long duration. It was long enough, however, to make him ac quainted with the character of his associate. On retiring, in Octo ber, 1839, he wrote : " Grateful to my feelings has been my inter course with the readers of the New Yorker and with its principal editor and proprietor. By the former I hope my humble efforts will not be unremembered ; by the latter I am happy to believe that the sincere friendship which I entertain for him is reciproca ted. I still insist upon my editorial right so far as to say in oppo sition to any veto which my coadjutor may interpose, that I can not leave the association which has been so agreeable to me with out paying to sterling worth, unbending integrity, high moral prin ciple and ready kindness, their just due. These qualities exist in the character of the man with whom now I part ; and by all, to whom such qualities appear admirable, must such a character be esteemed. His talents, his industry, require no commendation from me ; the readers of this journal know them too well ; the public is sufficiently aware of the manner in which they have been exerted. What I have said has flowed from my heart, tributary rather to its own emotions than to the subject which has called them forth; his plain good name is his best eulogy." A few months later, Mr. Henry J. Raymond, a recent graduate of Burlington College, Vermont, came to the city to seek his for tune. He had written some creditable sketches for the New Yorker, over the signature of "Fantome," and on reaching the city called upon Horace Greeley. The result was that he entered the office as an assistant editor " till he could get so.nething bet ter," and it may encourage some young, hard-working, urn >cognized, ill-paid journalist, to know that the editor of the New York Daily Times began his editorial career upon a salary of eight dollars a week. The said unrecognized, however, should further be informed, that Mr. Raymond is the hardest and swiftest wrrker connected with the New York Press. CHAPTER XIII. THE JEFFERSONIAN. Objects of the Jeflersonian Its character A novel Glorious-Victory paragraph Tho Graves and Cilley duel The Editor overworked. THE slender income derived from the New Yorker obliged its editor to engage in other labors. He wrote, as occasion offered, for various periodicals. The Daily Whig he supplied with its leading article for several months, and in 1838 undertook the entire edito rial charge of the Jeffersonian, a weekly paper of the c campaign * description, started at Albany on the third of March, and continu ing in existence for one year. With the conception and the establishment of the Jeffersonian, Horace Greeley had nothing to do. It was published under the auspices and by the direction of the Whig Central Committee of the State of New York, and the fund for its establishment was con tributed by the leading politicians of the State in sums of ten dol lars. " I never sought the post of its editor," wrote Mr. Greeley in 1848, " but was sought for it by leading whigs whom I had never before personally known." It was afforded at fifty cents a year, attained rapidly a circulation of fifteen thousand ; the editor, who spent three days of each week in Albany, receiving for his year's services a thousand dollars. The ostensible object of the paper was to quote the language of its projectors "to furnish to every person within the State of New York a complete summary of politi cal intelligence, at a rate which shall place it absolutely within the reach of every man who will read it." But, according to the sub sequent explanation of the Tribune, "it was established on the im pulse of th- whig tornado of 1837, to secure a like result in 1838, so as to give the Whig party a Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Senate, Assembly, U. S. Senator, Congressmen, and all the vast ex ecutive patronage of the State, then amounting to millions of dol- jirs a year/ GLORIOUS VICTORY. 175 The Jeffersonian was a good paper. It was published in a neat . to form of eight pages. Its editorials, generally few and brief, were written to convince, not to inflame, to enlighten, not to blind. It published a great many of the best speeches of the day, some for, some against, its own principles. Each number contained a full and well-compiled digest of political intelligence, and one page, or nore, of general intelligence. It was not, in the slightest degree, like what is generally understood by a * campaign paper.' Capital letters and po ; nts of admiration were as little used as in the sedate and courteous columns of the Jf ew Yorker ; and there is scarcely anything to be found of the ' Glorious- Victory ' sort except this : " Glorioiw Victory ! * We have met the enemy, and they are ours !' Our whole ticket, with the exception of town clerk, one constable, three fence-view ers, a pound-master and two hog-reeves elected ! There never was such a liumph !" Stop, my friend. Have you elected the beet men to the several offices to be filled 1 Have you chosen men who have hitherto evinced not only capacity but integrity 1 men whom you would trust implicity in every relation and business of life ? Above all, have you selected the very best person in the township for the important office of Justice of the Peace ? If yea, we rejoice with you. If the men whose election will best subserve the cause of virtue and public order have been chosen, even your opponents will have little rea son for regret. If it be otherwise, you have achieved but an empty and du bious triumph. It would be gratifying to know what the Whig Central Commit tee thought of such unexampled * campaign ' language. In a word, the Jeffersonian was a better fifty cents' worth of thought and fact than had previously, or has since, been afforded, in the form of a weekly paper. The columns of the Jeffersonian afford little material for the pur poses of this volume. There are scarcely any of those character istic touches, those autobiographical allusions, that contribute so much to the interest of other papers with which our hero has been connected. This is one, however : (Whosoever may have picked up the wallet of the editor of this paper lost somewhere near State street, about the 20th ult., shall receive half the contents, all round, by returning the balance to this office.) 176 THE JEFFERSONIAN. I will indulge the reader with one article entire from" the Jeffer- sonian ; 1, because it is interesting ; 2, because it will serve to show the spirit and the manner of the editor in recording and comment ing upon the topics of the day. He has since written more em phatic, but not more effective articles, on similar subjects : THE TRAGEDY AT WASHINGTON. THE whole country is shocked, and its moral sensibilities outraged, by the horrible tragedy lately perpetrated at Washington, of which a member of Congress was the victim. It was, indeed, an awful, yet we will hope not a profitless catastrophe ; and we blush for human nature when we observe the most systematic efforts used to pervert to purposes of party advantage and personal malignity, a result which should be sacred to the interests of human ity and morality to the stern inculcation and enforcement of a reverence for the laws of the land and the mandates of God. Nearly a month since, a charge of corruption, or an offer to sell official in fluence and exertion for a pecuniary consideration, against some unnamed member of Congress, was transmitted to the New York Courier and Enquirer by its correspondent, ' the Spy in Washington.' Its appearance in that journal called forth a resolution from Mr. Wise, that the charge be investigated by the House. On this an irregular and excited debate arose, which consumed a day or two, and which was signalized by severe attacks on the Public Press of this country, and on the letter-writers from Washington. In particular, the Courier and Enquirer, in which this charge appeared, its chief Editor, and its correspondent the Spy, were stigmatized ; and Mr. Cilley, a member from Maine, waa among those who gave currency to the charges. Col. Webb, the Editor, on the appearance of these charges, instantly proceeded to Washington, and there addressed a note to Mr. Cilley on the subject. That note, it ap pears, was courteous and dignified in ita language, merely inquiring of Mr. C. if his remarks, published in the Globe, were intended to convey any per sonal disrespect to the writer, and containing no menace of any kind. It was handed to Mr. Cilley by Mr. Graves, a member from Kentucky, but declined by Mr. C., on the ground, as was understood, that he did not choose to be drawn into controversy with Editors of public journals in regard to his remarks in the House. This was correct and honorable ground. The Constitution expressly provides that members of Congress shall not be responsible else where for words spoken in debate, and the provision is a most noble and necessary one. But Mr. Graves considered the reply as placing him in an equivocal posi tion. If a note transmitted through his hands had been declined, as was liable to be understood, because the writer was not worthy the treatment of a gentleman, the dishonor was reflected on himself as the bearer of a disgrace- THE GRAVES AND CILLEY DUEL. 17*7 fill message. Mr. Graves, therefore, wrote a note to Mr. C., asking h,m if he were correct in his understanding that the letter in question was declined because Mr. C. could not consent to hold himself accountable to public jour nalists for words spoken in debate, and not on grounds of personal objection to Col. Webb as a gentleman. To this note Mr. Cilley replied, on the ad visement of his friends, that he declined the note of Col. Webb, because he " chose to be drawn into no controversy with him," and added that he " neither affirmed nor denied anything in regard to his character." This was considered by Mr. Graves as involving him fully in the dilemma which he was seeking to avoid, and amounting to an impeachment of his veracity, and he now addressed another note to inquire, " whether you declined to receive his (Col. Webb's) communication on the ground of any personal objection to him as a gentleman of honor ?" To this query Mr. Cilley declined to give an /finswer, denying the right of Mr. G. to propose it. The next letter in course was a challenge from Mr. Graves by the hand of Mr. Wise, promptly respond ed to by Mr. Cilley through Gen. Jones of Wisconsin. The weapons selected by Mr. Cilley were rifles ; the distance eighty yards. (It was said that Mr. Cilley was practicing with the selected weapon the morning of accepting the challenge, and that he lodged eleven balls in suc cession in a space of four inches square.) Mr. Graves experienced some diffi culty in procuring a rifle, and asked time, which was granted ; and Gen. Jones, Mr. Cilley' s second, tendered him the use of his own rifle ; but, mean time, Mr. Graves had procured one. The challenge was delivered at 12 o'clock on Friday ; the hour selected by Mr. Cilley was 12 of the following day. His unexpected choice of rifles, how ever, and Mr. Graves' inability to procure one, delayed the meeting till 2 o'clock. The first fire was ineffectual. Mr. Wise, as second of the challenging party, now called all parties together, to effect a reconciliation. Mr. C. declining to negotiate while under challenge, it was suspended to give room for explana tion. Mr. Wise remarked " Mr. .Jones, these gentlemen have come here without animosity towards each other ; they are fighting merely upon a point of honor ; cannot Mr. Cilley assign some reason for not receiving at Mr. Graves' hands Colonel Webb's communication, or make some disclaimer which will relieve Mr. Graves from his position ?" The reply was " I am author ized by my friend, Mr. Cilley, to say that in declining to receive the note from Mr. Graves, purporting to be from Colonel Webb, he meant no disrespect to Mr. Graves, because he entertained for him then, as he now does, the highest respect and the most kind feelings ; but that he declined to receive the note because he chose not to be drawn into any controversy with Colonel Webb.' This is Mr. Jones' version ; Mr. Wise thinks he said, " My friend refuses to disclaim disrespect to Colonel Webb, because he does not choose to be drawn Into an expression of opinion as to him." After consultation, Mr Wise re- 8* 178 THE JEFFERSONIAN. turned to Mr. Jones and said, " Mr. Jones, this answer leaves Mr. Graves pre cisely in the position in which he stood when the challenge was sent." Another exchange of shots was now had to no purpose, and another attempt at reconciliation was likewise unsuccessful. The seconds appear to have been mutually and anxiously desirous that the affair should here terminate, but no arrangement could be effected. Mr. Graves insisted that his antagonist should place his refusal to receive the message of which he was the bearer on some grounds which did not imply such an opinion of the writer as must reflect dis grace on the bearer. He endeavored to have the refusal placed on the ground that Mr. C. " did not hold himself accountable to Colonel Webb for words spoken in debate." This was declined by Mr. Cilley, and the duel proceeded. The official statement, drawn up by the two seconds, would seem to import that but three shots were exchanged ; but other accounts state positively that Mr. Cilley fell at the fourth fire. He was shot through the body, and died in two minutes. On seeing that he had fallen, badly wounded, Mr. Graves ex pressed a wish to see him, and was answered by Mr. Jones " My friend la dead, sir!" Colonel Webb first heard of the difficulty which had arisen on Friday even ing, but was given to understand that the meeting would not take place for several days. On the following morning, however, he had reason to suspect the truth. He immediately armed himself, and with two friends proceeded to Mr. Cilley'e lodgings, intending to force the latter to meet him before he did Mr. Graves. He did not find him, however, and immediately proceeded to the old dueling ground at Bladensburgh, and thence to several other places, to interpose himself as the rightful antagonist of Mr. Cilley. Had he found the parties, a more dreadful tragedy still would doubtless have ensued. But the place of meeting had been changed, and the arrangements so secretly made, that though Mr. Clay and many others were on the alert to prevent it, the duel was not interrupted. " We believe we have here stated every material fact in relation to this melancholy business. It is suggested, however, that Mr. Cilley was less dis posed to concede anything from the first in consideration of his own course when a difficulty recently arose between two of his colleagues, Messrs. Jarvis and Smith, which elicited a challenge from the former, promptly and nobly declined by the latter. This refusal, it is said, was loudly and vehemently stigmatized as cowardly by Mr. Cilley. This circumstance does not come to us well authenticated, but it is spoken of as notorious at Washington. " But enough of detail and circumstance. The reader who has not seen the official statement will find its substance in the foregoing. He can lay the blame where he chooses. We blame only the accursed spirit of False Honor which required this bloody sacrifice the horrid custom of Dueling which ex acts and palliates this atrocity. It appears evident that Mr. Cilley's course must have been baaed on the determination that Col. Webb was no' entitled THE EDITOR OVERWORKED. 179 lo be regarded as a gentleman ; and if so, there was hardly an escape from a bloody conclusion after Mr. Graves had once consented, however uncon sciously, to bear the note of Col. Webb. Each of the parties, doubtless, acted as he considered due to his own character ; each was right in the view of the duelist's code of honor, but fearfully wrong in the eye of reason, of morality, of humanity, and the imperative laws of man and of God. Of the principals, one sleeps cold and stiff bsneath the icy pall of winter and the clods of the valley ; the other far more to be pitied lives to execrate through years of anguish and remorse the hour when he was impelled to imbrue his hands in the blood of a fellow-being. Mr. Graves we know personally, and a milder and more amiable gentleman is rarely to be met with. He has for the last two years been a Representative from the Louisville District, Kentucky, and is universally esteemed and be loved. Mr. Cilley was a young man of one of the best families in New Hamp shire ; his grandfather was a Colonel and afterwards a General of the Revo- lutkm. Hie brother was a Captain in the last War with Great Britain, and leader of the desperate bayonet charge at Bridgewater. Mr. Cilley himself, though quite a youug man, has been for two years Speaker of the House of Representatives of Maine, and was last year elected to Congress from the Lincoln Pistrict. which is decidedly opposed to him in politics, and which recently gave 1,200 majority for the other side. Young as he was, he had ac quired a wide popularity and influence in his own State, and was laying the foundations of a brilliant career in the National Councils. And this man, with so maoy ties to bind him to life, with the sky of his future bright with hope, without an eeejny on earth, and with a wife and three chi.Mreu of tccder age whom bis death must drive to the verge of madnesshas perished miserably in a combat forbidden by God, growing out of a difference so pitiful in itself, so direful in its consequences. Could we add anything to render the moral more terribly impressive 7 The year of the Jeffersonian was a most laborious and harassing :>ne. No one bat a Greeley would or could have endured such con tinuous End distracting toils. He had two papers to provide for ; papers diverse in character, papers published a hundred and fifty riiles apart, papers to which e.3fpect^ant thousands looked for their weekly supply of mental pabulum. As soon as the Agony of getting the New Yorker to press was over, and copy for the outride of the next number given out, away rushed the editor to the Albany boat ; and after a night of battle with the bed-bugs of the cabin, or the politicians of the hurricane-de.ck, he hurried off to new duties at the office of the Jeffersonian. The Albany boat of 1838 was a very different style of conveyance from the Albany boat of the present 180 THE LOG CABIN. year of onr Ix^rd. It was, in fact, not much more than six times as elegant and comfortable as the steamers that, at this hour, ply in the seas and channels of Europe. The sufferings of our hero may be imagined. But, not his labors. They can be understood only by those who know, by blessed experience, what it is to get up, or try to get up, a good, correct, timely, and entertaining weekly paper. The sub ject of editorial labor, however, must be reserved for a future page. CHAPTER XIV. THE LOG-CABIN. "TUTPECANOE AND TYLER TOO." Wire-pulling The delirium of 1840 The Log-Cabin Unprecedented hit A glance at its pages Log-Cabin jokes Log-Cabin songs Horace Greeley and the cake-bas ket Pecuniary difficulties continue The Tribune announced. WIKE-PULLING is a sneaking, bad, demoralizing business, and the people hate it. The campaign of 1840, which -resulted in the elec tion of General Harrison to the presidency, was, at bottom, the revolt of the people of the United States against the wire-pulling principle, supposed to be incarnate in the person of Martin Van Buren. Other elements entered into the delirium of those mad months. The country was only recovering, and that slowly, from the disasters of 1836 and 1837, and the times were still l hard.' But the fire and fury of the struggle arose from the fact, that Gen eral Harrison, a man who had done something, was pitted against Martin Van Buren, a man who had pulled wires. The hero of Tip- pecanoe and the farmer of North Bend, against the wily diplomatist who partook of sustenance by the aid of gold spoons. The Log- Cabin against the White House. Great have been the triumphs of wire-pulling in this and other countries; and yet it is an unsafe tLing to engage in. As bluff King Hal melted away, with one fiery glance, all the greatness of UNPRECEDENTED HIT. 181 "Wolsey ; as the elephant, with a tap of his trunk, knocks the hreath out of the little tyrant whom he had been long accustomed implicitly to obe} 7 , so do the People, in some quite unexpected moment, blow away, with one breath, the elaborate and deep-laid schemes of the republican wire-puller; and him! They have done it, O wire-pul ler ! and will do it again. Who can have forgotten that campaign of 1840? The 'mass meetings,' the log-cabin raisings, the ' hard cider' drinking, the song singing, the Tippecanoe clubs, the caricatures, the epigrams, the jokes, the universal excitement ! General Harrison was sung into the presidential chair. Yan Buren was laughed out of it. Every town had its log-cabin, its club, and its chorus. Tippecanoe song- books were sold by the hundred thousand. There were Tippecanoe medals, Tippecanoe badges, Tippecanoe flags, Tippecanoe handker chiefs, Tippecanoe almanacs, and Tippecauoe shaving-soap. All other interests were swallowed up in the one interest of the eleo- tion. All noises were drowned in the cry of Tippecanoe and Tylor too. The man who contributed most to keep alive and increase the popular enthusiasm, the man who did most to feed that enthusiasm with the substantial fuel of fact and argument, was, beyond all ques tion, Horace Greeley. On the second of May, the first number of the LOG-CABIN ap peared, by * H. Greeley & Co.,' a weekly paper, to be published simultaneously at New York and Albany, at fifty cents for the cam paign of six months. It was a small paper, about half the size of the present Tribune ; but it was conducted with wonderful spirit, and made an unprecedented hit. Of the first number, an edition of twenty thousand was printed, which Mr. Greeley's friends thought a far greater number than would be sold ; but the edition vanished from the counter in a day. Eight thousand more were struck off; they were sold in a morning. Four thousand more were printed, and still the demand seemed unabated. A further supply of six thousand was printed, and the types were then distributed. In a few days, how ever, the demand became so urgent, that the number was re-set, and an edition of ten thousand struck off. Altogether, forty-eight thou sand of the first number were sold. Subscribers came pouring in at the rate of seven hundred a day. The list lenarr.hened in a fow 182 THE LOO CABIN. weeks to sixty thousand names, and kept increasing till the weekly issue was between eighty and ninety thousand. ' H. Greeley and Co.' were really overwhelmed with their success. They had made no preparations for such an enormous increase of business, and they were troubled to hire clerks and folders fast enough to get their stupendous edition into the mails. The Log Cabin is not dull reading, even now, after the lapse of fifteen years ; and though the men and the questions of that day are, most of them, dead. But then, it was devoured with an eager ness, which even those who remember it can hardly realize. Let us glance hastily over its pages. The editor explained the * objects and scope' of the little paper, thus : 44 The Log Cabin will be a zealous and unwavering advocate of the rights, interests and prosperity of our whole country, but es pecially those of the hardy subduers and cultivators of her soil. It will be the advocate of the cause of the Log Cabin against that of the Custom House and Presidential Palace. It will be an advocate of the interests of unassuming industry against the schemes and devices of functionaries * drest in a little brief authority,' whose salaries are trebled in value whenever Labor is forced to beg for em ployment at three or four shillings a day. It will be the advocate of a sound, uniform, adequate Currency for our whole country, against the visionary projects and ruinous experiments of the official Dous- terswivels of the day, who commenced by promising Prosperity, Abundance, and Plenty of Gold as the sure result of their policy; and lol we have its issues in disorganization, bankruptcy, low- wages and treasury rags. In fine, it will be the advocate of Free dom, Improvement, and of National Reform, by the election of Harrison and Tyler, the restoration of purity to the government, of efficiency to the public will, and of Better Times to tho People. Such are the objects and scope of the Log Cabin." The contents of the Log Cabin were of various kinds. The first page was devoted to Literature of an exclusively Tippecanoe charac ter, such as 4< Sketch of Gen. Harrison," " Anecdote of Gen. Har rison," " General Harrison's Creed." " Slanders on Gen. Harrison re futed," " Meeting of the Old Soldiers," &c. The first number had twenty -eight articles and paragraphs of this description. The fec- A GLANCE AT ITS PAGES. 183 and page contained editorials and correspondence. The third was where the " Splendid Victories," and " Unprecedented Triumphs," were recorded. The fourth page contained a Tippecanoe song with music, and a few articles of a miscellaneous character. Dr. Chan- ning's lectuie upon the Elevation of the Laboring Classes ran through several of the early numbers. Most of the numbers con tain an engraving or two, plans of General Harrison's battles, por traits of the candidates, or a caricature. One of the caricatures represented Van Buren caught in a trap, and over the picture was the following explanation: "The New Era has prepared and pictured a Log Cabin Trap, representing a Log Cabin set as a figure-4-trap, and baited with a barrel of hard cider. By the follow ing it will be seen that the trap has been SPRUNG, and a sly nibbler from Kinderhook is looking out through the gratings. Old Hickory is intent on prying him out; but it is manifestly no go." The editorials of the Log Cabin were mostly of a serious and argument ative cast, upon the Tariff, the Currency, and the Hard Times. They were able and timely. The spirit of the campaign, however, is contained in the other departments of the paper, from which a few brief extracts may amuse the reader for a moment, as well as illustrate the feeling of the time. The Log Cabins that were built all over the country, were 'raised 'and inaugurated with a great show of rejoicing. In one number of the paper, there are accounts of as many as six of these hilarious ceremonials, with their speechify ings and hard-cider drink- ings. The humorous paragraph annexed appears in an early num ber, under the title of " Thrilling Log Cabin Incident :" 11 The whigs of Erie, Pa., raised a Log Cabin last week from which the ban ner of Harrison and Reform was displayed. While engaged in the dedica tion of their Cabin, the whigs received information which led them to appre hend a hostile demonstration from Harbor Creek, a portion of the borough whose citizens had ever been strong Jackson and Van Buren men. Soon after wards a party >f horsemen, about forty in number, dressed in Indian costume, armed with tmahawks and scalping knives, approached the Cabin! The whigs made prompt preparations to defend their banner. The scene became in tensely exciting. The assailants rode up to the Cabin, dismounted, and surren dered themselves up as voluntary prisoners of war. On inquiry, they proved t be stanch Jackson men from Ha-bor Creek, who had taken that or ode of array- 184 THE LOG CABIN. ing themselves under the HARRISON BANNER ! The tomahank was then bur led ; after which the string of the latch was pushed out, and the Harbor-Creek ers were ushered into the Cabin, where they pledged their support to Harri son in a bumper of good old hard cider." The great joker of that election, as of every other since, was Mr. Prentice^ of the Louisville Journal, the wittiest of editors, living or dead. Many of his good things appear in the Log Cabin, but most of them allude to men and events that have been forgotten, and the point of the joke is lost. The following are three of the Log Cab in jokes ; they sparkled in 1840, flat as they may seem now : " The Globe says that ' there are but two parties in the country, the poor man's party and the rich man's party,' and that ' Mr. Van Puren is the friend of the former.' The President is certainly in favor of strengthening the poor man's party, numerically ! He goes for impoverishing the whole country except the office-holders." " What do the locofocos expect by vilifying the Log Cabin ? Do they not know that a Log Cabin is all the better for being daubed with mud ?" " A whig passing through the streets of Boston a few mornings ago, espied a custom-house officer gazing ruefully at a bulletin displaying the latest news of the Maine election. ' Ah! Mr. , taking your bitters this morning, I see.' The way the loco scratched gravel was a pattern for sub-treasurers." One specimen paragraph from the department of political news will suffice to show the frenzy of those who wrote for it. A letter- writer at Utica, describing a * mass meeting ' in that city, bursts up on his readers in this style : " This has been the proudest, brightest day of my life ! Never no, never, have I before seen the people in their majesty ! Never were the foundations of popular sentiment so broken up ! The scene from early dawn to sunset, has been one of continued, increasing, bewildering enthusiasm. The hearts of TWENTY-FIVK THOUSAND FREEMEN have been overflowing with gratitude, and gladness, and joy. It has been a day of jubilee an ERA OF DELIVERANCE FOR CENTRAL NEW YORK ! The people in waves have poured in from the val leys and rushed down from the mountains. The city has been vocal with elo quence, with music, and with acclamations. Demonstrations of strength, and em blems of victory, and harbingers of prosperity are all around us, cheering and animating, and assuring a people who are finally and effectually aroused. I wiy not now attempt to describe the procession of the people. Suffice it to say that LOG CABIN SONGS. 185 there was an ocean of thorn ! The procession was over m E MILES LONO. * * * Governor Seward and Lieut. Gov. Bradish were unanimously nomina ted by resolution for re-election. The result was communicated to the people assembled in MASS in Chancery Square, whose response to the nomination was spontaneous, loud, deep and resounding." The profusion of the presidential mansion was one of the stand ing topics of those who wished to eject its occupant. In one num ber of the Log-Cabin is a speech, delivered in the House of Repre sentatives by a member of the opposition, in which the bills of the persons who supplied the White House are given at length. Take these specimens : 34 table knives ground, . . . . . . . $l,37j 2 new knife blades, . ...... 75 2 cook's knife blades, ....... 2,50 2 dozen brooms, . . . . . . . . $3,75 1-2 do. hard scrubs, ....... 2,37 1-2 do. brooms, ......... 1,38 6,50 2 tin buckets, ......... $2,00 Milk strainer and skimmer, ....... 92 Chamber bucket ......... 2,00 2 dozen tart pans, ...... . . 2,50 " This seems like putting an extremely fine point upon a political ar gument. What the orator wished to show, however, was, that suck articles as the above ought to be paid for out of the presidential salary, not the public treasury. The speech exhibited some columns of these 4 house-bills.' It made a great sensation, and was enough to cure any decent man of a desire to become a serrant of the people. But, as I have observed, Gen. Harrison was sung into the presi dential chair. The Log Cabin preserves a large number of the politi cal ditties of the time ; the editor himself contributing two. A very few stanzas will suffice to show the quality of the Tippecanoe poetry The following is one from the * Wolverine's Song': 186 THE LOG CABIN. We know that Van Buren can ride in his coach, With servants, forbidding the Vulgar's approach We know that his fortune such things will allow, And we know that our candidate follows the plough ; But what if he does 1 Who was bolder to fight In his country's defense on that perilous night, When naught save his valor sufficed to subdue Our foes at the battle of Tippecanoe ? Hurrah for Tippecanoe ! He dropped the red Locos at Tippecanoe ! From the song of the ' Buckeye Cabin,' these are two stanzas : Oh ! where, tell me where, was your Buckeye Cabin made 1 Oh ! where, tell me where, was your Buckeye Cabin made ? 'Twas made among the merry boys that wield the plough and spade Where the Log Cabins stand in the bonnie Buckeye shade. Oh ! what, tell me what, is to be your Cabin's fate ? Oh ! what, tell me what, is to be your Cabin's fate 1 We '11 wheel it to the Capitol and place it there elate, For a token and a sign of the bonnie Buckeye State. The l Turn Out Song ' was very popular, and easy to sing : From the White House, now Matty, turn out, turn out, From the White House, now Matty, turn out ! Since there you have been No peace we have seen, So Matty, now please to turn out, turn out, So Matty, now please to turn out ! ****#** Make way for old Tip ! turn out, turn out ! Make way for old Tip, turn out ! 'Tis the people's decree, Their choice he shall be, So, Martin Van Buren, turn out, turn out, So, Martin Van Buren, turn out! But of all the songs ever sung, the most absurd and the most tell ing, was that which began thus LOG CABIN SONGS. 187 What has cau*ed this great commotion-motion-motion Our country through 1 It is the ball a-rolling on For Tippecanoe and Tyler too, For Tippecanoe and Tyler too ; And with them we '11 beat little Van ; Van, Van, Van is a used-up man, And with them we '11 beat little Van. This song had two advantages. The tune half chant, half jig was adapted to bring out all the absurdities of the words, and, in particular, those of the last two lines. The second advantage was, that stanzas could be multiplied to any extent, on the spot, to suit the exigences of any occasion. For example : " The beautiful girls, God bless their souls, souls, souls, The country through, Will all, to a man, do all they can For Tippecanoe and Tyler too ; And with them," etc., etc. During that summer, ladies attended the mass meetings in thou sands, and in their honor the lines just quoted were frequently sung. These few extracts from the Log Cabin show the nature of the element in which our editor was called upon to work in the hot months of 1840. His own interest in the questions at issue was in tense, and his labors were incessant and most arduous. He wrote articles, he made speeches, he sat on committees, he traveled, he gave advice, he suggested plans; while he had two news papers on his hands, and a load of debt upon his shoulders. His was a willing servitude. From the days of his apprenticeship he had observed the course of ' Democratic' administrations with dis gust and utter disapproval, and he had borne his full share of the consequences of their bad measures. His whole soul was in this contest. He fought fairly too. His answer to a correspondent, that 1 articles assailing the personal character of Mr. Van Buren or any of his supporters cannot be published in the Cabin,' was in advance of the politics of 1840. One scene, if it could be portrayed on the printed page as visibly as it exists in the momories of those who witnessed it, would show 188 THE J.OG CABIN. better than declaratory words, how absorbed Mr. Greeley was in politics during this famous 'campaign.' It is a funny story, and literally true. Time, Sunday evening. Scene, the parlor of a friend's house. Company, numerous and political, except the ladies, who are gracious and hospitable. Mr. Greeley is expected to tea, but does not come, and the meai is transacted without him. Tea over, he arrives, and plunges headlong into a conversation on the currency. The lady of the house thinks he * had better take some tea,' but cannot get a hearing on the subject ; is distressed, puts the question at length, and has her invitation hurriedly declined ; brushed aside, in fact, with a wave of the hand. " Take a cruller, any way," said she, handing him a cake-basket containing a dozen or so of those unspeakable, Dutch indigestibles. The expounder of the currency, dimly conscious that a large ob ject was approaching him, puts forth his hands, still vehemently talking, and takes, not a cruller, but the cake-basket, and deposits it in his lap. The company are inwardly convulsed, and some of the weaker members retire to the adjoining apartment, the ex pounder continuing his harangue, unconscious of their emotions or its cause. Minutes elapse. His hands, in their wandering through the air, come in contact with the topmost cake, which they take and break. He begins to eat ; and eats and talks, talks and eats, till lie has finished a cruller. Then he feels for another, and eats that, and goes on, slowly consuming the contents of the basket, till the last cruin is gone. The company look on amazed, and the kind lady of the house fears for the consequences. She had heard that cheese is an antidote to indigestion. Taking the empty cake- basket from his lap, she silently puts a plate of cheese in its place, hoping that instinct will guide his hand aright. The experiment succeeds. Gradually, the blocks of white new cheese disappear. She removes the plate. No ill consequences follow. Those who saw this sight are fixed in the belief, that Mr. Greeley was not then, nor has since become, aware, that on that evening he par took of sustenance. The reader, perhaps, has concluded that the prodigious sale of the Log Cabin did something to relieve our hero from his pecuniary embarrassments. Such was not the fact He paid some debts, THE CAKE-BASKET. 18 wit he incurred others, and was not, for any week, free from anxiety. The price of the paper was low, and its unlooked-for sale involved the proprietors in expenses which might have been avoid ed, or much lessened, if they had been prepared for it. The mail ing of single numbers cost a hundred dollars. The last number of the campaign series, the great " O K" number, the number that was all staring with majorities, and capital letters, and points of admiration, the number that announced the certain triumph of the Whigs, and carried joy into a thousand Log Cabins, contained a most moving "Appeal" to the "Friends who owe us." It was in small type, and in a corner remote from the victorious columns. It ran thus : " We were induced in a few instances to depart from our general rule, and forward the first series of the Log Cabin on credit having in almost every instance a promise, that the money should be sent us before the first of November. That time has passed, and we regret to say, that many of those prom ises have not been fulfilled. To those who owe us, therefore, we are compelled to say, Friends! we need our money our paper- maker needs it ! and has a right to ask us for it. The low price at which we have published it, forbids the idea of gain from this paper : we only ask the means of paying what we owe. Once for all, we implore you to do us justice, and enable us to do the same." This tells the whole story. Not a word need be added. The Log Cabin was designed only for the campaign, and it was expected to expire with the twenty-seventh number. The zealous editor, however, desirous of presenting the complete returns of the victory, issued an extra number, and sent it gratuitously to all his subscribers. This number announced, also, that the Log Cabin would be resumed in a few weeks. On the fifth of December the new series began, as a family political paper, and continued, with moderate success, till both it and the New Yorker were merged in the Tribune. For his services in the campaign and no man contributed as much to its success as he Horace Greeley accepted no office ; nor did he even witness the inauguration. This is not strange. But it is somewhat surprising that the incoming administration had not the decency to offer him something. Mr. Fry (W. H.) made a speech one evening at a political meeting in Philadelphia. Th J90 THE LOG CABIN. next morning, a committee waited upon him to k low i jr what of fice he intended to become an applicant " Office ?" said the aston ished composer " No office." " Why. then," said the committee, u what the h II did you speak last night for f n Mr. Greeley had not even the honor of a visit from a committee of this kind. The Log Cabin, however, gave him an immense reputation in all parts of the country, as an able writer and a zealous politician a reputation which soon became more valuable to him than pecuniary capital. The Log Cabin of April 3d contained the intelligence of General Harrison's death ; and, among a few others, the following advertisement : "NEW YORK TRIBUNE. " On Saturday, the tenth day of April instant, the Subscriber will publish the first number of a New Morning Journal of Politics, Literature, and Gen eral Intelligence. " The TRIBUNE, as its name imports, will labor to advance the interests of the People, and to promote their Moral, Social, and Political well-being. The immoral and degrading Police Reports, Advertisements and other matter which have been allowed to disgrace the columns of our leading Penny Papers, will be carefully excluded from this, and no exertion spared to render it worthy of the hearty approval of the virtuous and refined, and a welcome visitant at the family fireside. " Earnestly believing that the political revolution which has called William Henry Harrison to the Chief Magistracy of the Nation was a triumph of Right Reason and Public Good over Error and Sinister Ambition, the Tribune will give to the New Administration a frank and cordial, but manly and iude pendent support, judging it always by its acts, and commending those only so far as they shall seem calculated to subserve the great end of all govern ment the welfare of the People. " The Tribune will be published every morning on a fair royal sheet (size of the Log-Cabin and Evening Signal) and transmitted to its city subscribers at the low price of one cent per copy. Mail subscribers, $4 per annum. It will contain the news by the morning's Southern Mail, which is contained in no other Penny Paper. Subscriptions are respectfully solicited by HORACE GREELEY, 30 ANN ST. CHAPTER XV. STARTS THE TRIBUNE. Die Capital The Daily Press of New York in 1841 The Tribune appears The Omeiw unpropitious The first week Conspiracy to put down the Tribune The Tribund triumphs Thomas McElrath The Tribune alive Industry of the Editors Their independence Horace Greeley and John Tyler The Tribune a Fixed Fact. WHO furnished the capital? Horace Greeley. But he wa scarcely solvent on the day of the Tribune's appearance. True; and yet it is no less the fact that nearly all the large capital required for the enterprise was supplied by him. A large capital is indispensable for the establishment of a good daily paper ; but it need not be a capital of money. It may be a capital of reputation, credit, experience, talent, opportunity. Horace Greeley was trusted and admired by his party, and by many of the party to which he was opposed. In his own circle, lie was known to be a man of incorruptible integrity one who would pay his debts at any and at every sacrifice one who was quite incapable of contracting an obligation which he was not confident of being able to discharge. In other words, his credit was good. He had talent and experience. Add to these a thousand dollars lent him by a friend, (James Coggeshall,) and the evident need there was of just such a paper as the Tribune proved to be, and we have the capital upon which the Tribune started. All told, it was equivalent to a round fifty thousand dollars. In the present year, 1855, there are two hundred and three peri odicals published in the city of New York, of which twelve are daily papers. In the year 1841, the number of periodicals was one hundred, and the number of daily papers twelve. The Courier and Enquirer, New York American, Express, and Commercial Adver tiser were Whig papers, at ten dollars a year. The Evening Post and Journal of Commerce, at the same price, leaned to the * Demo cratic' side of politics, the former avowedly, t,he latter not. The 192 STARTS THE TRIBUNE. Signal, Tatler, and Star were cheap papers, the first two neutral, the latter dubious. The Herald, at two cents, was the Herald ! The Sun, a penny paper of immense circulation, was affectedly neutral, really ' Democratic,' and very objectionable for the gross character of many of its advertisements. A cheap paper, of the Whig school of politics, did not exist. On the 10th of April, 1841, the Tribune appeared a paper one-third the size of the present Tribune, price one cent; office No. 30 Ann-street; Horace Greeley, editor and proprietor, assisted in the department of literary criticism, the fine arts, and general intelligence, by H. J. Raymond. Under its head ing, the new paper bore, as a motto, the dying words of Harrison : *' I DESIRE YOU TO UNDERSTAND THE TRUE PRINCIPLES OF THE GOVERN MENT. I WISH THEM CARRIED OUT. I ASK NOTHING MORE." The omens were not propitious. The appallingly sudden death of General Harrison, the President of so many hopes, the first of the Presidents who had died in office, had cast a gloom over the whole country, and a prophetic doubt over the prospects of the Whig party. The editor watched the preparation of his first number all night, nervous and anxious, withdrawing this article and altering that, and never leaving the form till he saw it, complete and safe, upon the ^yress. The morning dawned sullenly upon the town. " The sleety atmosphere," wrote Mr. Greeley, long after, " the leaden sky, the unseasonable wintriness, the general gloom of that stormy day, which witnessed the grand though mournful pageant whereby our city commemorated the blighting of a nation's hopes in the most untimely death of President Harrison, were not inaptly miniatured in his own prospects and fortunes. Having devoted the seven pre ceding years almost wholly to the establishment of a weekly coin- pen d of literature and intelligence, (The New Yorker,) wherefrom, though widely circulated and warmly praised, he had received no other return than the experience and wider acquaintance thence accruing, he entered upon his novel and most precarious enterprise, most slenderly provided with the external means of commanding gubsistence and success in its prosecution. With no partner or busi ness associate, with inconsiderable pecuniary resources, and only a promise from political friends of aid to the extent of two thousand dollars, of which but one half was ever realized, (ana that long THE TRIBUNE APPEARS. 193 since repaid, but the sense of obligation to the far from wealthy friend who made the loan is none the less fresh and ardent,) he un dertook the enterprise at all times and under any circumstances hazardous of adding one more to the already amply extensive list of daily newspapers issued in this emporium, where the current expenses of such papers, already appalling, were soon to be doubled by rivalry, by stimulated competition, by the progress of business, the complication of interests, and especially by the general diffusion of the electric telegraph, and where at least nineteen out of every twenty attempts to establish a new daily have proved disastrous failures. Manifestly, the prospects of success ia this case were far from flattering." The Tribune began with about six hundred subscribers, procured by the exertions of a few of the editor's personal and political friends. Five thousand copies of the first number were printed, and " we found some difficulty in giving them away," says Mr. Greeley in the article just quoted. The expenses of the first week were five hundred and twenty-five dollars ; the receipts, ninety-two dol lars. A sorry prospect for an editor whose whole cash capital was a thousand dollars, and that borrowed. But the Tribune was a live paper. FIGHT was the word with it from the start ; FIGHT has been the word ever since ; FIGHT is the word this day ! If it had been let alone, it would not have died ; its superiority both in quantity and the quality of its matter to any other of the cheap papers would have prevented that catastrophe ; but its progress was amazingly accelerated in the first days of its existence by the efforts of an enemy to put it down. That enemy was the Sun. u The publisher of the Sun," wrote Park Benjamin in the Even ing Signal, u has, during the last few days, got up a conspiracy to crush the New York Tribune. The Tribune was, from its incep tion, very successful, and, in many instances, persons in the habit of taking the Sun, stopped that paper wisely preferring a sheet which gives twice the amount of reading matter, and always contains the latest intelligence. This fact afforded sufficient evidence to Beach, as it did to all others who were cognizant of the circum stances, that the Tribune would, before the lapse of many weeks, supplant the Sun. To prevent this, and, if possible, to destroy th 9 J04 STARTS THE TRIBUNE- circulation of the Tribune altogether, an attempt was made to bribe the carriers to give up their routes ; fortunately this succeeded only in the cases of two men who were likewise carriers of the Snn In the next place, all the newsmen were threatened with being de prived of the Sun, if, in any instance, they were found selling the Tribune. But these efforts were not enough to gratify Beach, lie instigated boys in his office, or others, to whip the boys engaged in selling the Tribune. No sooner was this fact ascertained at the yffice of the Tribune, than young men were sent to defend the sale of that paper. They had not been on their station long, be fore a boy from the Sun office approached and began to flog the lad with the Tribune ; retributory measures were instantly resorted to ; but, before a just chastisement was inflicted, Beach himself, and a man in his employ, came out to sustain their youthful emis sary. The whole matter will, we understand, be submitted to the proper magistrates." The public took up the quarrel with great spirit, and this was one reason of the Tribune's speedy and striking success. For three weeks subscribers poured in at the rate of three hundred a day ! It began its fourth week with an edition of six thousand ; its sev enth week, with eleven thousand, which was the utmost that could be printed with its first press. The advertisements increased in proportion. The first number contained four columns; the twelfth, nine columns ; the hundredth, thirteen columns. Triumph ! tri umph ! nothing but triumph ! New presses capable of printing the astounding number of thirty-five hundred copies an hour are duly announced. The indulgence of advertisers is besought * for this day only ;' ' to-morrow, their favors shall appear.' The price of advertising was raised from four to six cents a line. Letters of approval came by every mail. " We have a number of requests, 1 * said the Editor in an early paragraph, u to blow up all sorts of abuses, which shall be attended to as fast as possible." ]n another, he returns his thanks " to the friends of this paper and the princi ples it upholds, for the addition of over a thousand substantial names to its subscription list last week." Again : " The Sun is rush ing rapidly to destruction. It has lost even the groveling sngacifry, the vulgar sordid instinct with which avarice once gifted it." Again: "Everything appears to work well with us. True, we CONSPIRACY TO PUT DOWN THE TRIBUNE. 105 have not heard (except through the veracious Sun) from any gen tlemen proposing to give us a $2,500 press ; but if any gentlemen Tiave such an intention, and proceed to put it in practice, the pub lic may rest assured that they will not be ashamed of the act, while we shall be most eager to proclaim it and acknowledge the kind ness. But even though we wait for such a token of good-will and oyinpathy until the Sun shall cease to be the slimy and venomous instrument of loco-focoism it is, Jesuitical and deadly in politics and groveling in morals we shall be abundantly sustained and cheered by the support we are regularly receiving." Editors wrote in the English language in those days. Again : " The Sun of yesterday gravely informed its readers that ' It is doubtful whether the Land Bill can pass the House? The Tribune of the same date contained the news of the passage of that very bill I" Triumph ! saucy tri umph ! nothing but triumph ! One thing only was wanting to secure the Tribune's brilliant suc cess ; and that was an efficient business partner. Just in the nick of time, the needed and predestined man appeared, the man of all others for the duty required. On Saturday morning, July 31st, the following notices appeared under the editorial head on the second page: The undersigned has great pleasure in announcing to his friends and the public that he has formed a copartnership with THOMAS MCELRATH, and that THE TRIBUNE will hereafter be published by himself and Mr. M. under the firm of GREELEY & McELRATH. The principal Editorial charge of the paper will still rest with the subscriber ; while the entire business man agement of the concern henceforth devolves upon his partner. This arrange ment, while it relieves the undersigned from a large portion of the labors and cares which have pressed heavily upon him for the last four months, assures to the paper efficiency and strength in a department where they have hitherto been needed; and I cannot be mistaken in the trust that the accession to its conduct of a gentleman who has twice been honored with their suffrages for an important station, will strengthen THE TRIBUNE in the confidence and affections of the Whigs of New York. Respectfully, July 31st. HORACE GHEELEY. The undersigned, in connecting himself with the conduct of a public jour nal, invokes a continuance of that courtesy and good feeling which has been extended to him by his fellow-citizens. Having heretofore received evidence of kindness and regard from the conductors of the Whig press of this citv 190 STARTS THE TRIBUNE. and rejoicing in the friendship of most of them, it will be his aim in his new vocation to justify that kindness and strengthen and increase those friendships. His hearty concurrence in the principles, Political and Moral, on which THB TRIBUNE haa thus far been conducted, has been a principal incitement to the connection here announced ; and the statement of this fact will preclude the necessity of any special declaration of opinions. With gratitude for past favors, 9nA an anxious desire to merit a continuance of regard, he remains, The Public's humble servant, THOMAS McEuiATH. A a'rict disciplinarian, a close calculator, a man of method and order, experienced in business, Mr. McElrath possessed in an emi nent degree the very qualities in which the editor of the Tribune was most deficient. Roll Horace Greeley and Thomas McElrath tato one, and the result would be, a very respectable approximation to a Perfect Man. The two, united in partnership, have been able to produce a very respectable approximation to a perfect newspa per. As Damon and Pythias are the types of perfect friendship, so may Greeley and McElrath be of a perfect partnership; and one may say, with a sigh at the many discordant unions the world pre sents, Oh 1 that every Greeley could find his McElrath ! and bless ed is the McElrath that finds his Greeley ! Under Mr. McElrath 's direction, order and efficiency were soon introduced into the business departments of the Tribune office. It became, and has ever since been, one of the best-conducted news paper establishments in the world. Early in the fall, the New Yorker and Log Cabin were merged into the Weekly Tribune, the first number of which appeared on the 20th of September. The concern, thus consolidated, knew, thenceforth, nothing but prosper ity. The New Yorker had existed seven years and a half; the Log Cabin, eighteen months. The Tribune, I repeat, was a live paper. It was, also, a variously interesting one. Its selections, which in the early volumes occupied several columns daily, were of high character. It gave the philos ophers of the Dial an ample hearing, and many an appreciating notice. It made liberal extracts from Carlyle, Cousin, and others, whose works contained the spirit of the New Time. The eighth number gave fifteen songs from a new volume of Thomas Moore Barnaby Rudge was published entire in the first volume. Mr. Ray mond's notices of new books were a conspicuous and interesting fea- ITS INDEPENDENCE. 197 tare. Still more so, were his clear and able sketches and reports of public lectures. In November, the Tribune gave a fair and cour teous report of the Millerite Convention. About the same time, Mr. Greeley himself reported the celebrated McLeod trial at Utica, sending on from four to nine columns a day. Amazing was the industry of the editors. Single numbers of the Tribune contained eighty editorial paragraphs. Mr. Greeley's aver age day's work was three columns, equal to fifteen pages of foolscap : and the mere writing which an editor does, is not half his daily labor. In May, appeared a series of articles on Retrenchment and Reform in the City Government, a subject upon which the Tribune has since shed a considerable number of barrels of ink. In the same month, it disturbed a hornet's nest by saying, that " the whole moral atmosphere of the Theater, as it actually exists among us, is in our judgment unwholesome, and therefore, while we do not pro pose to war upon it, we seek no alliance with it, and cannot con scientiously urge our readers to visit it, as would be expected if we were to solicit and profit by its advertising patronage." Down came all the hornets of the press. The Sun had the effront ery to assert, in reply, that u most of the illegitimate births in New York owe their origin to acquaintances formed at 'Evening Churches,' and that ' Class-meetings ' have done more to people the House of Refuge than twenty times the number of theaters." This discussion might have been turned to great advantage by the Tribune, if it had not, with obstinate honesty, given the re ligious world a rebuff by asserting its right to advertise heretical books. " As to our friend," said the Tribune, " who complains of the advertising of certain Theological works which do not square with his opinions, we must tell him plainly that he is unreasonable. No other paper that we ever heard of establishes any test of -the Or thodoxy of works advertised in its columns; even the Commercial Advertiser and Journal of Commerce advertise for the very sect proscribed by him. If one were to attempt a discrimination, where would he end ? One man considers Univerealism immoral ; but another is equally positive that Arminianism is so ; while a third holds the same bad opinion of Calvinism. Who shall decide be tween them ? Certainly not the Editor of a daily newspaper, un 198 STARTS THE TRIBUNE. less ha prints it avowedly under the patronage of a particular sect Our friend inquires whether we should advertise infidel books also We answer, that if any one should offer an advertisement of lewd, ribald, indecent, blasphemous or law-prohibited books, we should claim the right to reject it. But a work no otherwise objection able than as controverting the Christian record and doctrine, would not be objected to by us. True Christianity neither fears refutation nor dreads discussion or, as JEFFERSON has forcibly said, ' Error of opinion may be tolerated where Reason is left free to combat it.'" In politics, the Tribune was strongly, yet not blindly whig. It appealed, in its first number, to the whig party for support. The same number expressed the decided opinion, that Mr. Tyler would prove to be, as president, all that the whigs desired, and that opinion the Tribune was one of the last to yield. In September it justified Daniel Webster in retaining office, after the * treachery' of Tyler was manifest, and when all his colleagues had resigned in disgust. It justified him on the ground that he could best bring to a conclusion the Ashburton negotiations. This defense of Web ster was deeply offensive to the more violent whigs, and it remain ed a pretext of attack on the Tribune for several years. With regard to his course in the Tyler controversy, Mr. Greeley wrote in 1845 a long explanation, of which the material passage was as follows: "In December, 1841, I visited Washington upon assur ances that John Tyler and his advisers were disposed to return to the Whig party, and that I could be of service in bringing about a complete reconciliation between the Administration and the Whigs in Congress and in the country. I never proposed to 'connect myself, with the cause of the Administration,' but upon the under standing that it should be heartily and faithfully a WHIG Adminis tration. * * Finally, I declined utterly and absolutely, to ' con nect myself with the cause of the Administration' the moment I became satisfied, as I did during that visit, that the Chief of the Government did not desire a reconciliation, upon the basis of sus taining Whig principles and Whig measures, with the party he had so deeply wronged, but was treacherously coqueting with Lo- co-Focoism, and fooled with the idea of a re-election." Agaicst Repudiation, then an exciting topic, the Tribune went THE TRIBUNE AND FOURIERISM. 9 1 J dead in many a telling article. In behalf of Protection to Ameri can Industry, the editor wrote columns upon columns. In a word, the Tribune was equal to its opportunity ; it lived up to its privileges. In every department it steadily and strikingly im proved throughout the year. It began its second year with twelve thousand subscribers, and a daily average of thirteen col umns of advertisements. The Tribune was a Fixed Fact. The history of a daily paper is the history of the world. It is obviously impossible in the compass of a work like this to give anything like a complete history of the Tribune. For that pur pose ten octavo volumes would be required, and most interesting volumes they would be. All that I can do is to select the leading events of its history which were most intimately connected with the history of its editor, and dwell with some minuteness upon them, connecting them together only by a slender thread of nar rative, and omitting even to mention many things of real interest. It will be convenient, too, to group together in separate chapters events similar in their nature, but far removed from one another in the time of their occurrence. Indeed, I am overwhelmed with the mass of materials, and must struggle out as best I can. A great book is a great evil, says the Greek Reader. This book was fore-ordained to be a small one. CHAPTER XVI. THE TRIBUNE AND FOURIERISM. What made Horace Greeley a Socialist The hard winter of 1838 Albert Brisbane- The subject broached Series of articles by Mr. Brisbane begun Their effect Cry of Mad Dog Discussion between Horace Greeley and Henry J. Raymond How it arose \bstract of it in a conversational form. THE editor of the Tribune was a Socialist years before the Tri bune came into existence. The winter of 1838 was unusually severe. The times were hard, 200 THE TRIBUNE AND FOURIERISM. fuel and food were dear, many thousands of men and women were out of employment, and there was general distress. As the cold months wore slowly on, the sufferings of the poor became so aggra vated, and the number of the unemployed increased to such a de gree, that the ordinary means were inadequate to relieve even those who were destitute of every one of the necessaries of life. Some died of starvation. Some were frozen to death. Many, through exposure and privation, contracted fatal diseases. A large number, who had never before known want, were reduced to beg. Re spectable mechanics were known to offer their services as waiters in eating-houses for their food only. There never had been such a time of suffering in New York before, and there has not been since. Extraordinary measures were taken by the comfortable classes to alleviate the sufferings of their unfortunate fellow-citizens. Meet ings were held, subscriptions were made, committees were appoint ed ; and upon one of the committees Horace Greeley was named to serve, and did serve, faithfully and laboriously, for many weeks. The district which his committee had in charge was the Sixth Ward, the l bloody' Sixth, the squalid, poverty-stricken Sixth, the pool into which all that is worst in this metropolis has a tendency to reel and slide. It was his task, and that of his colleagues, to see that no one froze or starved in that forlorn and polluted region. More than this they could not do, for the subscriptions, liberal as they were, were not more than sufficient to relieve actual and pressing distress. In the better parts of the Sixth Ward a large number of mechanics lived, whose cry was, not for the bread and the fuel of charity, but for WORK 1 Charity their honest souls disdained. Its food choked them, its fire chilled them. Work, give us work ! was their eager, passionate demand. All this Horace Greeley heard and saw. He was a young man not quite twenty-six compassionate to weakness, generous to a fault. He had known what it was to beg for work, from shop to shop, from town to town ; and, that very winter, he was struggling with debt, at no safe distance from bankruptcy. Why must these things be ? Are they inevitable ? Will they always be inevitable ? Is it in human wisdom to devise a remedy? in human virtue to ap ply it? Can the beneficent God have designed this, who, with such wonderful profusion, has provided for the wants, tastes, and luxuries ALBERT BRISBANE. 201 of all his creatures, and for a hundred times as many creatures a8 yet have lived at the same time ? Such questions Horace Greeley pondered, in silence, in the depths of his heart, during that winter of misery. From Paris came soon the calm, emphatic answer, These things need NOT be ! They are due alone to the short-sightedness and in justice of man ! Albert Brisbane brought the message. Horace Greeley heard and believed it. He took it to his heart. It became a part of him. Albert Brisbane was a young gentleman of liberal education, the son of wealthy parents. His European tour included, of course, a residence at Paris, where the fascinating dreams of Fourier were the subject of conversation. He procured the works of that ami able and noble-minded man, read them with eager interest, and be came completely convinced that his captivating theories were capa ble of speedy realization not, perhaps, in slow and conservative Europe, but in progressive and unshackled America. He returned home a Fourierite, and devoted himself with a zeal and disinterest edness that are rare in the class to which he belonged, and that in any class cannot be too highly praised, to the dissemination of the doctrines in which he believed. He wrote essays and pamphlets. He expounded Fourierism in conversation. He started a magazine called the Future, devoted to the explanation of Fourier's plans, published by Greeley & Co. He delivered lectures. In short, he did all that a man could do to make known to his fellow men what he believed it became them to know. He made a few converts, but only a few, till the starting of the Tribune gave him access to the public ear. Horace Greeley made no secret of his conversion to Fourierism. On the contrary, he avowed it constantly in private, and occasion ally in public print, though never in his own paper till towards the end of the Tribune's first year. His native sagacity taught him that before Fourierism could be realized, a complete revolution in pub lic sentiment must be effected, a revolution which would require many years of patient effort on the part of its advocates. The first mention of Mr. Brisbane and Fourierism in the Tribune, appeared October 21st, 1841. It was merely a notice of one of Mr. Brisbane's lectures : 9* THE TRIBUNE AND FOURIERISM. " Mr. A. Brisbane delivered a lecture at the Stuyvesant Institute last evening upon the Genius of Christianity considered in its bearing on the Social Insti tutions and Terrestrial Destiny of the Human Race. He contended that the mission of Christianity upon earth has hitherto been imperfectly understood and that the doctrines of Christ, carried into practical effect, would free the world of Want, Misery, Temptation and Crime. This, Mr. B. believes, will be effected by a system of Association, or the binding up of indiridual and fam ily interests in Social and Industrial Communities, wherein all faculties may be developed, all energies usefully employed, all legitimate desires satisfied, and idleness, want, temptation and crime be annihilated. In such Associa tions, individual property will be maintained, the family be held sacred, and every inducement held out to a proper ambition. Mr. B. will lecture hereafter on the practical details of the system of Fourier, of whom he is a zealous dis ciple, and we shall then endeavor to give a more clear and full account of his doctrines." A month later, the Tribune copied a flippant and sneering arti cle from the London Times, on the subject of Fourierism in France In his introductory remarks the editor said : " We have written something, and shall yet write much more, in illustra tion and advocacy of the great Social revolution which our age is destined to commence, in rendering all useful Labor at once attractive and honorable, and banishing Want and all consequent degradation from the globe. The germ of this revolution is developed in the writings of Charles Fourier, a phil anthropic and observing Frenchman, who died in 1837, after devoting thirty years of a studious and unobtrusive life to inquiries, at once patient and pro found, into the causes of the great mass of Social evils whbh overwhelm Hu manity, and the true means of removing them. These means he proves to be a system of Industrial and Household Association, on the principle of Joint Stock Investment, whereby Labor will be ennobled and rendered attractive and universal, Capital be offered asecuie and lucrative investment, and Tal ent and Industry find appropriate, constant employment, and adequate re ward, while Plenty, Comfort, and the best means of Intellectual and Moral Improvement is guaranteed to all, regardless of former acquirements or con dition. This grand, benignant plan is fully developed in the various works of M. Fourier, which are abridged in the single volume on c The Social Des tiny of Man,' by Mr. A. Brisbane, of this State. Some fifteen or sixteen other works in illustration and defense of the system have been given to the world, by Considerant, Chevalier, Paget, and other French writers, and by Hugh Do- herty, Dr. H. McCormack. and others in English. A tri-weekly journal (' La Phalange 1 ) devoted to the system, is published by M. Victor Considerant in SERIES OF ARTICLES BY MR. BRISBANE BEGUN. 203 Paris, and another (the 'London Phalanx') by Hugh Doherty, in London, sach ably edited." Early in 1842, a number of gentlemen associated themselves to gether for the purpose of bringing the schemes of Fourier fully and prominently Before the public; and to this end, they purchased the right to occupy one column daily on the first page of the Tribune with an article, or articles, on the subject^ from the pen of Mr. Brisbane. The first of these articles appeared on the first of March, 1842, and continued, with some interruptions, at first daily, after wards three times a week, till about the middle of 1844, when Mr. Brisbane went again to Europe. The articles were signed with the letter B, and were known to be communicated. They were calm in tone, clear in exposition. At first, they seem to have attracted little attention, and less opposition. They were regarded (as far as my youthful recollection serves) in the light of articles to be skip ped, and by most of the city readers of the Tribune, I presume, they were skipped with the utmost regularity, and quite as a matter of course. Occasionally, however, the subject was alluded to edi torially, and every such allusion was of a nature to be read. Grad ually, Fourierism became one of the topics of the time. Gradually certain editors discovered that Fourierism was unchristian. Grad ually, the cry of Mad Dog arose. Meanwhile, the articles of Mr. Brisbane were having their effect upon the People. In May, 1843, Mr. Greeley wrote, and with perfect truth : " The Doctrine of Association is spreading throughout the country with a rapidity which we did not anticipate, and of which we had but little hope. W receive papers from nearly all parts of the Northern and Western States^ and some from the South, containing articles upon Association, in which gen eral views and outlines of the System are given. They speak of the subject as one ' which is calling public attention, 1 or, ' about which so much is now said,' or, ' which is a good deal spoken of in this part of the country,' &c., showing that our Principles are becoming a topic of public discussion. From the rapid progress of our Doctrines during the past year, we look forward with hope to their rapid continued dissemination. We foal perfectly confident that never, in the history of the world, has a philosophical doctrine, or the plan of a great reform, spread with the rapidity which the Doctrine of Association hue spread in the United States for the last year or two. There are now a lar^e number of papers, aad quite a number of lecturers in various parts of 204 THE TRIBUNE AND FOUBIERISM. the country, who are lending their efforts to the cause, so that the onward movement must be greatly accelerated. "Small Associations are springing up rapidly in various parts of the coun try. The Sylvania Association in Pike country, Pa., is now in operation ; about seventy persons are on the domain, erecting buildings, Ac., and prepar ing for the reception of other members. " An Association has been organized in Jefferson county. * Our friend, A. M. Watson, is at the head of it; he has been engaged for the last three years in spreading the principles in that part of the State, and the result is the formation of an Association. Several farmers have put in their farms and taken stock ; by this means the Domain has been obtained. About three hundred persons, we are informed, are on the lands. They have a very fine quarry on their Domain, and they intend, among the branches of Industry which they will pursue, to take contracts for erecting buildings out of the Association. They are now erecting a banking-house in Watertown, near which the Association is located. " Efforts are making in various parts of thui State, in Vermont, in Penn sylvania, Indiana, and Illinois, to establish Associations, which will probably be successful in the course of the present year. We have heard of these movements ; there may be others of which we are not informed." About the same time, lie gave a box on the ear to the editors who wrote of Fonrierism in a hostile spirit : " The kindness of our friends of the New York Express, Eoch ester Evening Post, and sundry Other Journals which appear inclined to wage a personal controversy with us respecting Fourierism, (the Express without knowing how to spell the word,) is duly appreciated. Had we time and room foi disputation on that subject, we would prefer opponents who would not be compelled to confess frankly or betray clearly their utter ignorance of the matter, whatever might be their manifestations of personal pique or malevolence in unfair representations of the little they do understand. We counsel our too belligerent friends to pos sess their souls in patience, and not be too eager to rival the for tune of him whose essay proving that steamships could not cross the Atlantic happened to reach us in the first steamship that did cross it. ' The proof of the pudding ' is not found in wrangling about it." "We also find, occasionally, a paragraph in the Tribune like this : "T. W. Whitley and H. Greeley will address such citizens of New- ark as choose to hear them on the subject of * Association ' at t l\ DISCUSSION BETWEEN H. GREELEY AND H. J. RAYMOND. 205 o'clock this evening at the Relief Hall, rear of J. M. Quiinby's Re pository." Too fast. Too fast. I need not detail the progress of Fourier- j sm the many attempts made to establish Associations the failure of all of them but one, which still exists the ruin that ensued to many worthy men the ridicule with which the Associationists were assailed the odium excited in many minds against the Tribune the final relinquishment of the subject. All this is perfectly well known to the people of this country. Let us come, at once, to the grand climax of the Tribune's Fou- rierism, the famous discussion of the subject between Horace Gree- ley and H. J. Raymond, of the Courier and Enquirer, in the year 1846. That discussion finished Fourierism in the United States. Mr. Raymond had left the Tribune, and joined the Courier and Enquirer, at the solicitation of Col. Webb, the editor of the latter. It was a pity the Tribune let him go, for he is a born journalist, and could have helped the Tribune to attain the position of the great, only, undisputed Metropolitan Journal, many years sooner than it will. Horace Greeley is not a born journalist. He is too much in earnest to be a perfect editor. He has too many opinions and pref erences. He is a BORN LEGISLATOR, a Deviser of Remedies, a Sug- gester of Expedients, a Framer of Measures. The most successful editor is he whose great endeavor it is to tell the public all it wants to fawWi and whose comments on passing events best express the feeling of the country with regard to them. Mr. Raymond is not a man of first-rate talent great talent would be in his way he is most interesting when he attacks ; and of the varieties of composition, polished vituperation is not the most difficult. But he has the right notion of editing a daily paper, and when the Tri bune lost him, it lost more than it had the slightest idea of as events have since shown. However, Horace Greeley and Henry J. Raymond, the one nat urally liberal, the other naturally conservative the one a Universal- ist, the other a Presbyterian the one regarding the world as a place to be made better by living in it, the other regarding it as an oyster to be opened, and bent on opening it would have found it hard to work together on equal terms. They separated amicably, and each went his way. The discussion of Fourierism arose thus 206 THE TRIBUNE A ND FOURIERISM. Mr. Brisbane, on his return from Europe, renewed the agitation of his subject. The Tribune of August 19th, 1846, contained a letter by him, addressed to the editors of the Courier and Enquirer, proposing several questions, to which answers were requested, respecting Social Reform. The Courier replied. The Tribune re joined editorially, and was answered in turn by the Courier. Mr. Brisbane addressed a second letter to the Courier, and sent it direct to the editor of that paper in manuscript. The Courier agreed to publish it, if the Tribune would give place to its reply. The Tribune declined doing so, but challenged the editor of the Courier to a public discussion of the whole subject. '* Though we cannot now," wrote Mr. Greeley, " open our col umns to a set discussion by others of social questions (which may or may not refer mainly to points deemed relevant by us), we readily close with the spirit of the Courier's proposition. * * As soon as the State election is fairly over say Nov. 10th we will pub lish an entire article, filling a column of the Tribune, very nearly, in favor of Association as we understand it ; and, upon the Courier copying this and replying, we will give place to its reply, and re spond ; and so on, till each party shall have published twelve articles on its own side, and twelve on the other, which shall fulfill the terms of this agreement. All the twelve articles of each party shall be published without abridgment or variation in the Daily, Weekly, and Semi-weekly editions of both papers. Afterward each party will, of course, be at liberty to comment at pleasure in his own columns. In order that neither paper shall be crowded with this discussion, one article per week, only, on either side, shall be published, unless the Courier shall prefer greater dispatch. Is not this a fair proposition ? What says the Courier ? It has, of course, the advantage of the defensive position and of the last word." The Courier said, after much toying and dallying, and a pre liminary skirmish of paragraphs, COME ON! and, on the 20th of November, the Tribune came on. The debate lasted six months. It was conducted on both sides with spirit and ability, and it at tracted much attention. The twenty-four articles, of which it con sisted, were afterwards published by the Harpers in a pamphlet of eighty-three closely-printed, double-columned pages, which had a considerable sale, and has long been out of prio.t. On one side ABSTRACT OF THE DISCUSSION. 207 we see earnestness and sincerity; on the other tact and skill. One strove to convince, the other to triumph. The thread of ar gument is often lost in a maze of irrelevancy. The subject, in deed, was peculiarly ill calculated for a public discussion. When men converse on a scheme which has for its object the good of mankind, let them confer in awful whispers apart, like conspir ators , not distract themselves in dispute in the hearing of a nation ; for they who would benefit mankind must do it either by stealth or by violence. I have tried to condense this tremendous pamphlet into the form and brevity of a conversation, with the following result. Neither of the speakers, however, are to be held responsible for the language employed. Horace Greeley. Nov. 2Qth. The earth, the air, the waters, the sunshine, with their natural products, were divinely intended and appointed for the sustenance and enjoyment of the whole human family. But the present fact is, that a very large majority of man kind are landless ; and, by law, the landless have no inherent right to stand on a single square foot of their native State, except in the highways. Perishing with cold, they have no legal right to a stick of decaying fuel in the most unfrequented morass. Famishing, they have no legal right to pluck and eat the bitterest acorn in the depth3 of the remotest forest. But the Past cannot be recalled. What has been done, has been done. The legal rights of individuals must be held sacred. But those whom society has divested of their natu ral right to a share in the soil, are entitled to Compensation, i. e. to continuous opportunity to earn a subsistence by Labor. To own land is to possess this opportunity. The majority own no land. Therefore the minority, who own legally all the land, which natu rally belongs to all men alike, are bound to secure to the landless majority a compensating security of remunerating Labor. But, aa society is now organized, this is not, and cannot be, done. " Work, work ! give us something to do! anything that will secure us hon est bread," is at this moment the prayer of not less than thirty thousand human beings within the sound of the City-Hall bell. Here is an enormous waste and loss. We must devise a remedy and'that remedy, I propose to show, is found in Association. 208 THE TRIBUNE AND FOURIERISM. H. J. Raymond. Nov. 23$. Heavens ! Here we have one of the leading Whig presses of New York advocating the doctrine that no man can rightfully own land ! Fanny Wright was of that opinion. The doctrine is erroneous and dangerous. If a man cannot right fully own land, he cannot rightfully own anything which the land produces ; that is, he cannot rightfully own anything at all. The blessed institution of property, the basis of the social fabric, from which arts, agriculture, commerce, civilization spring, and without which they could not exist, is threatened with destruction, and by a leading Whig paper too. Conservative Powers, preserve us ! Horace Greeley. Nov. %Gth. Fudge ! What I said was this : So ciety, having divested the majority of any right to the soil, is bound to compensate them by guaranteeing to each an opportunity of earn ing a subsistence by Labor. Your vulgar, clap-trap allusion to Fan ny Wright does not surprise me. I shall neither desert nor deny a truth because she, or any one else, has proclaimed it. But to pro ceed. By association I mean a Social Order, which shall take the place of the present Township, to be composed of some hundreds or some thousands of persons, who shall be united together in inter est and industry for the purpose of securing to each individual the following things : 1, an elegant and commodious house ; 2, an edu cation, complete and thorough ; 3, a secure subsistence ; 4, oppor tunity to labor ; 5, fair wages ; 6, agreeable social relations ; 7, prog ress in knowledge and skill. As society is at present organized, these are the portion of a very small minority. But by association of capital and industry, they might become the lot of all ; inasmuch as association tends to Economy in all departments, economy in lands, fences, fuel, household labor, tools, education, medicine, legal advice, and commercial exchanges. My opponent will please ob serve that his article is three times as long as mine, and devoted in good part to telling the public that the Tribune is an exceedingly mischievous paper ; which is an imposition. H. J. Raymond. Nov. 80th. A home, fair wages, education, etc., are very desirable, we admit; and it is the unceasing aim of all good men in society, as it now exists, to place those blessings within the reach of all. The Tribune's claim that it can be accomplished only by association is only a claim. Substantiate it. Give us proof of ABSTRACT OF THE DISCUSSION. 209 its effLacy. Tell us in whom the property is to be vested, how labor is to be remunerated, what share capital is to have in the con cern, by what device men are to be induced to labor, how moral offenses are to be excluded or punished. Then we may be able to discuss the subject. Nothing was stipulated about the length of the articles ; and we do think the Tribune a mischievous paper. Horace Greeley. Dec. 1st. The property of an association will be vested in those who contributed the capital to establish it, repre sented by shares of stock, just as the property of a bank, factory, or railroad now is. Labor, skill and talent, will be remunerated by a fixed proportion of their products, or of its proceeds, if sold. Men will be induced to labor by a knowledge that its rewards will be a certain and major proportion of the product, which of course will be less or more according to the skill and industry of each individ ual. The slave has no motive to diligence except fear; the hireling is tempted to eye-service ; the solitary worker for himself is apt to become disheartened ; but men working for themselves, in groups, will find labor not less attractive than profitable. Moral offenses will be punished by legal enactment, and they will be rendered un frequent by plenty and education. IT. J. Raymond. Dec. 8th. Oh then the men of capital are to own the land, are they? Let us see. A man with money enough may buy an entire domain of five thousand acres; men without money will cultivate it on condition of receiving a fixed proportion of its products ; the major part, says the Tribune ; suppose we say three-fourths. Then the contract is simply this : One rich man (or company} owns jive thousand acres of land, which he leases forever to two thousand poor men at the yearly rent of one-fourth of its products. It is an affair of landlord and tenant the lease perpet ual, payment in kind ; and the landlord to own the cattle, tools, and furniture of the tenant, as well as the land. Association, then, is merely a plan for extending the relation of landlord and tenant over the whole arable surface of the earth. Horace Greeley. Dec. IQth. By no means. The capital of a mature association would be, perhaps, half a million of dollars; if 210 THE TRIBUNE AND FOURIERISM. an infant assoc ation, fifty thousand dollars ; and this increase of value would be both created and owned by Labor. In an ordinary township, however, the increase, though all created by Labor, ia chiefly owned by Capital. The majority of the inhabitants remain poor; while a few merchants, land-owners, mill-owners, and manu facturers are enriched. That this is the fact in recently-settled townships, is undeniable. That it would not be the fact in a town ship settled and cultivated on the principle of association, seems to me equally so. H. J. Raymond. Dec 14=t7t. But not to me. Suppose fifty men furnish fifty thousand dollars for an association upon which a hun dred and fifty others are to labor and to live. With that sum they buy the land, build the houses, and procure everything needful for the start. The capitalists, bear in mind, are the absolute owners of the entire property of the association. In twenty years, that prop erty may be worth half a million, and it still remains the property of the capitalists, the laborers having annually drawn their share of the products. They may have saved a portion of their annual share, and thus have accumulated property ; but they have no more title to the domain than they had at first. If the concern should not prosper, the laborers could not buy shares; if it should, the capitalists would not sell except at their increased value. What advantage, then, does association offer for the poor man's acquiring property superior to that aiforded by the present state of things? None, that we can see. On the contrary, the more rapidly the domain of an association should increase in value, the more difficult it would be for the laboring man to rise to the class of proprietors ; and this would simply be an aggravation of the worst features of the social system. And how you associationists would quarrel ! The skillful would be ever grumbling at the awkward, and the lazy would shirk their share of the work, but clamor for their share of the product. There would be ten occasions for bickerings where now there is one. The fancies of the associationist, in fact, are as base less, though not as beautiful, as More's Utopia, or the Happy Valley of Rasselas. Horace Greeley Dec. IGth. No, Sir! In Association, those who ABSTRACT OF THE DISCUSSION. 211 furnish the original capital are the owners merely of so much stock in the concern not of all the land and other property, as you repre sent. Suppose that capital to be fifty thousand dollars. At the end of the first year it is found that twenty-five thousand dollars have been added to the value of the property by Labor. For this amount new stock is issued, which is apportioned to Capital, Labor and Skill as impartial justice shall dictate to the non-resident capitalist a certain proportion ; to the working capitalist the same proportion, plus the excess of his earnings over his expenses ; to the laborer that excess only. The apportionment is repeated every year ; and the proportion of the new stock assigned to Capital is such that when the property of the association is worth half a million, Capi tal will own about one-fifth of it. With regard to the practical working of association, I point you to the fact that association and civilization are one. They advance and recede together. In this age we have large steamboats, monster hotels, insurance, partner ships, joint stock companies, public schools, libraries, police, Odd Fellowship -all of which are exemplifications of the idea upon which association is based ; all of which work well as institutions, and are productive of incalculable benefits to mankind. H. J. Raymond. Dec. 24^. Of course; but association as sumes to shape and govern the details of social life, which is a very different affair. One ' group] it appears, is to do all the cooking, another the gardening, another the ploughing. But suppose that some who want to be cooks are enrolled in the gardening group. They will naturally sneer at the dishes cooked by their rivals, per haps form a party for the expulsion of the cooks, and so bring about a kitchen war. Then, who will consent to be a member of the boot-blacking, ditch-digging and sink-cleaning groups ? Such labors must be done, and groups must be detailed to do them. Then, who is to settle the wages question ? Who is to determine upon the com parative efficiency of each laborer, and settle the comparative value of his work? There is the religious difficulty too, and the educa tional difficulty, the medical difficulty, and numberless other diffi culties, arising from differences of opinion, so radical and so earnest ly entertained as to preclude the possibility of a large number of 212 THE TRIBUNE AND FOURIERISM. persons living together in the intimate relation contemplated bj association. Horace Greeley. Dec. 28th. Not so fast. After the first steam ship hAd crossed the Atlantic all the demonstrations of the impos sibility of that fact fell to the ground. Now, with regard to as sociations, the first steamship has crossed! The communities of Zoar and Rapp have existed from twenty to forty years, and several associations of the kind advocated by me have survived from two to five years, not only without being broken up by the difficulties alluded to, but without their presenting themselves in the light of difficulties at all. No inter-kitchen war has disturbed their peace, no religious differences have marred their harmony, and men have been found willing to perform ungrateful offices, required by the general good. Passing over your objections, therefore, I beg you to consider the enormous difficulties, the wrongs, the waste, the mis ery, occasioned by and inseparable from society as it is now organ ized. For example, the coming on of winter contracts business and throws thousands out of employment. They and their families suf fer, the dealers who supply them are losers in custom, the alms- house is crowded, private charity is taxed to the extreme, many die of diseases induced by destitution, some are driven by despair to intoxication ; and all this, while every ox and horse is well fed and cared for, while there is inaccessible plenty all around, while capi tal is luxuriating on the products of the very labor which is now pal sied and suffering. Under the present system, capital is everything, man nothing, except as a means of accumulating capital. Capital founds a factory, and for the single purpose of increasing capital, taking no thought of the human beings by whom it is increased. The fundamental ideas of association, on the other hand, is to effect a just distribution of products among capital, talent and labor. H. J. Raymond. Jan. 6th. The idea may be good enough ; but the means are impracticable ; the details are absurd, if not in humane and impious. The Tribune's admission, that an association of indolent or covetous persons could not endure without a moral transformation of its members, seems to us fatal to the whole theory of association. It implies that indhidual reform must precede so ABSTRACT OF THE DISCUSSION. 213 eial reform, which is precisely our position. But IIOTV *> individual reform to be effected ? By association, says the Tribune. That is, the motion of the water-wheel is to produce the water bj which alone it can be set in motion the action of the watch is to pro duce the main-spring without which it cannot move. Absurd. Horace Greeley. Jan. ISth. Incorrigible mis-stater of my posi tions ! I am as well aware as you are that the mass of the igno rant and destitute are, at present, incapable of so much as under standing the social order I propose, much less of becoming efficient members of an association. What I say is, let those who are capa- ole of understanding and promoting it, begin the work, found asso ciations, and show the rest of mankind how to live and thrive in harmonious industry. You tell me that the sole efficient agency of Social Reform is Christianity. I answer that association is Chris tianity ; and the dislocation now existing between capital and labor, between the capitalist and the laborer, is as atheistic as it is in human. H. J. Raymond. Jan. %Qth. Stop a moment. The test of true benevolence is practice, not preaching; and we have no hesitation in saying that the members of any one of our city churches do more every year for the practical relief of poverty and suffering than any phalanx that ever existed. There are in our midst hun dreds of female sewing societies, each of which clothes more naked ness and feeds more hunger, than any ' association ' that ever was formed. There is a single individual in this city whom the Tribune has vilified as a selfish, grasping despiser of the poor, who has ex pended more money in providing the poor with food, clothing, edu- cuation, sound instruction in morals and religion, than all the advo cates of association in half a century. While association has been theorizing about starvation, Christianity has been preventing it. Associationists tell us, that giving to the poor deepens the evil which it aims to relieve, and that the bounty of the benevolent, as society is now organized, is very often abused. We assure them, it is not the social system which abuses the bounty of the benevolent ; it is simply the tiim^nesty and indolence of individuals, and they would do the same undor any system, and especially in association. 214 THE TRIBUNE AND FOURIERISM. Horace Greeley. Jan. 29 th. Private benevolence is good and necessary ; the Tribune has ever been its cordial and earnest ad vocate. But benevolence relieves only the effects of poverty, while Association proposes to reach and finally eradicate its causes. The charitable are doing nobly this winter for the relief of the destitute ; but will there be in this city next winter fewer objects of charity than there are now ? And let me tell yon, sir, if you do not know it already, that the advocates of association, in proportion to their number, and their means, are, at least, as active and as ready in feeding the hungry and clothing the naked, as any class in the com munity. Make the examinations as close as you please, bring it as near home as you like, and you will find the fact to be as I have asserted. H. J. Raymond. Feb. 1.0th. You overlook one main objection. Association aims, not merely to re-organize Labor, but to revolu tionize Society, to change radically Laws, Government, Manners and Religion. It pretends to be a new Social Science, discovered by Fourier. In our next article we shall show what its principles are, and point out their inevitable tendency. Horace Greeley. Feb. 17th. Do so. Meanwhile let me remind yon, that there is need of a new Social System, when the old one works so villanously and wastefully. There is Ireland, with three hundred thousand able-bodied men, willing to work, yet unem ployed. Their labor is worth forty-five millions of dollars a ye.ir, which they need, and Ireland needs, but which the present Social System dooms to waste. There is work enough in Ireland to do, and men enough willing to do it ; but the spell of a vicious Social System broods over the island, and keeps the woikmen and the work apart. Four centuries ago, the English laborer could earn by his labor a good and sufficient subsistence for hi* family. Since that time Labor and Talent have made England rich ' beyond the dreams of avarice ;' and, at this day, the Laborer, as a rule, cannot, by unremitting toil, fully supply the necessities of his family. His bread is coarse, his clothing scanty, his home a hovel, his childrer uninstructed, his life cheerless. He lives from hand to mouth ir abject terror of the poor-house, wnere, he shudders to think, he ABSTRACT OF THE DISCUSSION. 215 must end his days. Precisely the same causes are in operation here, and, in due time, will produce precisely the same effects. There is NEED of a Social Ke-formation ! H. J. Raymond. March 3d. You are mistaken. The state ment that the laborers of the present day are worse off than those of former ages, has been exploded. They are not. On the contrary, their condition is better in every respect. Evils under the present Social System exist, great evils evils, for the removal of whicL the most constant and zealous efforts ought to be made ; yet they are very far from being as great or as general as the Associationists assert. The fact is indisputable, that, as a rule throughout the country, no honest man, able and willing to work, need stand idle from lack of opportunity. The exceptions to this rule are com paratively few, and arise from temporary and local causes. But we proceed, to examine the fundamental principle of the Social System proposed to be substituted for that now established. In one word, that principle is Self-indulgence ! " Reason and Passion," writes Parke Godwin, the author of one of the clearest expositions of So cialism yet published, " will be in perfect accord : duty and pleas ure will have the same meaning; without inconvenience or calcu lation, man will follow his bent: hearing only of Attraction, he will never act from necessity, and never curb himself by restraints." What becomes of the self-denial so expressly, so frequently, so em phatically enjoined by the New Testament ? Fourierism and Chris tianity, Fourierism and Morality, Fourierism and Conjugal Constancy are in palpable hostility ! We are told, that if a man has a passion for a dozen kinds of work, he joins a dozen groups ; if for a dozen kinds of study, lie joins a dozen groups ; and, if for a dozen women, the System requires that there must be a dozen different groups for his full gratification ! For man will follow his bent, and never curb himself by restraints ! Horace Greeley. March 12th. Not so. I re-assert what I before proved, that the English laborers of to-day are worse off than those of former centuries ; and I deny with disgust and indignation that there is in Socialism, as American Socialists understand and teach it, any provision or license for the gratification of criminal passions o? 216 THE TRIBUNE AND FOURIERISM. nnlawful desires. Why not quote Mr. Godwin fully and fairly? Why suppress his remark, that, " So long as the Passions may bring forth Disorder so long as Inclination may be in opposition to Duty we reprobate as strongly as any class of men all indulg ence of the inclinations and feelings ; and where Reason is unable to guide them, have no objection to other means" ? Socialists know nothing of Groups, organized, or to be organized, for the perpetra tion of crimes, or the practice of vices. H. J. Raymond. March 19th. Perhaps not. But 7 know, from the writings of leading Socialists, that the law of Passional Attrac tion, i. e. Self-Indulgence, is the essential and fundamental principle of Association ; and that, while Christianity pronounces the free and full gratification of the passions a crime, Socialism extols it as a virtue. Horace Greeley. March 26th. Impertinent. Your articles are all entitled " The Socialism of the Tribune examined" ; and the Tri bune has never contained a line to justify your unfair inferences from garbled quotations from the writings of Godwin and Fourier. What the Tribune advocates is, simply and solely, such an organiza tion of Society as will secure to every man the opportunity of unin terrupted and profitable labor, and to every child nourishment and culture. These things, it is undeniable, the present Social System 4oes not secure ; and hence the necessity of a new and better organ ization. So no more of your ' Passional Attraction.' H. J. Raymond. April 16th. I tell you the scheme of Fourier is essentially and fundamentally irreligious ! by which I mean that it cloes not follow my Catechism, and apparently ignores the Thirty- Nine Articles. Shocking. Horace Greeley, April 28^. Humph ! H. J. Raymond. May 20th. The Tribune is doing a great deal of harm. The editor does not know it but it is. Thus ended Fourierism. Thenceforth, the Tribune alluded to tho THE TRIBUNE'S SECOND YEAR. 217 subject occasionally, but only in reply to those who sought to make political or personal capital by reviving it By its discussion of the subject it rendered a great service to the country : first, by afford ing one more proof that, for the ills that flesh is heir to, there is, there can be, no panacea ; secondly, by exhibiting the economy of association, and familiarizing the public mind with the idea of asso ciation an idea susceptible of a thousand applications, and capable, in a thousand ways, of alleviating and preventing human woes. We see its perfect triumph in Insurance, whereby a loss which would crush an individual falls upon the whole company of insur ers, lightly and unperceived. Future ages will witness its success ful application to most of the affairs of life. CHAPTER XVII. THE TRIBUNE'S SECOND TEAR. Increase of price The Tribune offends the Sixth Ward fighting-men The office threat enedNovel preparations for defense--Charles Dickens defended The Editor travels Visits Washington, and sketches the Senators At Mount Vernon At Niagara A hard hit at Major Noah. THE Tribune, as we have seen, was started as a penny paper. It began its second volume, on the eleventh of April, 1842, at the in creased price of nine cents a week, or two cents for a single num- oer, and effected this serious advance without losing two hundred of its twelve thousand subscribers. At the same time, Messrs. Gree- ley and McElrath started the 4 American Laborer,' a monthly maga- tine, devoted chiefly to the advocacy of Protection. It was pub lished at seventy-five cents for the twelve numbers which the pros pectus announced. When it was remarked, a few pages back, that the word with the Tribune was FIGHT, no allusion was intended to the use of carnal weapons. u The pen is mightier than the sword," claptraps Bulwer in one of his plays ; and the Pen was the only fighting implement 218 referred to. It came to pass, however, in the first month of the Tribune's second year, that the pointed nib of the warlike journal gave deadty umbrage to certain fighting men of the Sixth Ward, by exposing their riotous conduct on the day of the Spring elections. The office was, in consequence, threatened by the offended parties with a nocturnal visit, and the office, alive to the duty of hospital ity, prepared to give the expected guests a suitable reception by arming itself to the chimneys. This (I believe) was one of the paragraphs deemed most offen sive : " It appears that some of the ' Spartan Band,' headed by Michael Walsh, after a fight in the -1th District of the Sixth Ward, paraded up Centre street, opposite the Halls of Justice, to the neighborhood of the poll of the 3d Dis trict, where, after marching and counter-marching, the leader Walsh re-com menced the work of violence by knocking down an unoffending individual, who vras following near him. This was the signal for a general attack of this band upon the Irish population, who were knocked down in every direction, until the street was literally strewed with their prostrate bodies. After this demonstra tion of ' Spartan valor,' the Irish fled, and the band moved on to another poll to re-enact their deeds of violence. In the interim the Irish proceeded to rally their forces, and, armed with sticks of cord- wood and clubs, paraded through Centre street, about 300 strong, attacking indiscriminately and knocking down nearly all who came in their way some of their victims, bruised and bloody, having to be carried into the Police Office and the prison, to protect them from being murdered. A portion of the Irish then dispersed, while another portion proceeded to a house in Orange street, which they attacked and riddled from top to bottom. Re-uniting their scattered forces, the Irish bands again, with increased numbers, marched up Centre street, driving all before them, and when near the Halls of Justice, the cry was raised, ' Americans, stand firm !' when a body of nearly a thousand voters surrounded the Irish bands, knocked them down, and beat them without mercy while some of the fallen Irishmen were with difficulty rescued from the violence that would have destroyed them, had they not been hurried into the Police Office and prison as a place of refuge. In this encounter, or the one that preceded it, a man named Ford, and said k be one of the 'Spartans,' was carried into the Police Office beaten almost to death, and was subsequently transferred to the Hospital." On the morning of the day on -which this appeared, two gentle men, more muscular than civil, called at the office to say, that the Tribune's account of the riot was incorrect, and did injustice to THE OFFICE THREATENED. 219 Individuals, who expected to see a retraction on the following day. No retraction appeared on the following day, but, on the contrary, a fuller and more emphatic repetition of the charge. The next morning, the office was favored by a second visit from the muscular gentlemen. One of them seized a clerk by the shoulder, and re quested to be informed whether Tie was the offspring of a female dog who had put that into the paper, pointing to the offensive arti cle. The clerk protested his innocence; and the men of muscle swore, that, whoever put it in, if the next paper did not do them jus tice, the Bloody Sixth would come down and 'smash the office.' The Tribune of the next day contained a complete history of the riot, and denounced its promoters with more vehemence than on the days preceding. The Bloody Sixth was ascertained to be in a ferment, and the office prepared itself for defense. One of the compositors was a member of the City Guard, and through his interest, the muskets of that admired company of citi zen soldiers were procured ; as soon as the evening shades pre vailed, they were conveyed to the office, and distributed among the men. One of the muskets was placed near the desk of the Ed itor, who looked up from his writing and said, he ' guessed they would n't come down,' and resumed his work. The foreman of the press-room in the basement caused a pipe to be conveyed from the safety valve of the boiler to the steps that led up to the sidewalk. The men in the Herald office, near by, made common cause, for this occasion only, with their foemen of the Tribune, and agreed, on the first alarm, to rush through the sky-light to the flat roof, and rain down on the heads of the Bloody Sixth a shower of brick-bats to be procured from the surrounding chimneys. It was thought, that what with volleys of musketry from the upper windows, a storm of bricks from the roof, and a blast of hot steam from the cellar, the Bloody Sixth would soon have enough of smashing the Tribune office. The men of the allied offices waited for the expect ed assault with the most eager desire. At twelve o'clock, the part ners made a tour of inspection, and expressed their perfect satisfac tion with all the arrangements. But, unfortunately for the story, the night wore away, the paper went to press, morning dawned, and yet the Bloody Sixth had not appeared! Either the Bloody Sixth had thought better of it, or the men of muscle had hac 3 no 220 right to speak in its awful name. From whatever cause these masterly preparations were made in vain; and the Tribune went on its belligerent way, unsmashed. For some weeks, 4 it kept at ' the election frauds, and made a complete exposure of the guilty persons. Let us glance hastily over the rest of the volume. It was the year of Charles Dickens' visit to the United States. The Tribune ridiculed the extravagant and unsuitable honors paid to the amiable novelist, but spoke strongly in favor of international copyright, which Mr. Dickens made it his 'mission' to advocate. "When the 4 American Notes for General Circulation ' appeared, tho Tribune was one of the few papers that gave it a ' favorable notice.' 44 We have read the hook," said the Tribune, " very carefully, and we are forced to say, in the face of all this stormy denunciation, that, so far as its tone toward this country is concerned, it is one of the very best works of its class we have ever seen. There is not a sentence it which seems to have sprung from ill-nature or con tempt; not a word of censure is uttered for its own sake or in a fault-finding spirit ; the whole is a calm, judicious, gentlemanly, unexceptionable record of what the writer saw and a candid and correct judgment of its worth and its defects. How a writer could look upon the broadly-blazoned and applauded slanders of his own land which abound in this how he could run through the pages of LESTER'S book filled to the margin with the grossest, most un founded and illiberal assaults upon all the institutions and the social phases of Great Britain and then write so calmly of this country, with so manifest a freedom from passion and prejudice, as DICK- KNS has done, is to us no slight marvel. That he has done it is infinitely to his credit, and confirms us in the opinion we had long since formed of the soundness of his head and the goodness of his heart." In the summer of 1842, Mr. Greeley made an extensive tour, visit ing Washington, Mount Yernon, Poultney, Westhaven, London derry, Niagara, and the home of his parents in Pennsylvania, from all of which he wrote letters to the Tribune. His letters from Washington, entitled 'Glances at the Senate,' gave agreeable sketches of Calhoun, Preston, Benton, Evans, Crittenden, Wright, and others. Silas Wright he thought the 'keenest logician in the Senate,' the 'Ajax o' plausibility,' the 'Talleyrand of tbe forum. 1 ' VISITS NIAGARA. 221 Calhoun he descriled as the l compactest speaker' in the Senate; Preston, as the 4 most forcible declaimer ;' Evans, as the * most dex terous and diligent legislator ;' Benton, as an individual, " gross and burly in person, of countenance most unintellectual, in manner pom pous and inflated, in matter empty, in conceit a giant, in influence a cipher !" From Mount Vernon, Mr. Greeley wrote an interesting letter, chiefly descriptive. It concluded thus: "Slowly, pensively, we turned our faces from the rest of the mighty dead to the turmoil of the restless living from the solemn, sublime repose of Mount Ver non to the ceaseless iningues, the petty strifes, the ant-hill bustle of the Federal City. Each has its own atmosphere ; London and Mecca are not so unlike as they. The silent, enshrouding woods, the gleaming, majestic river, the bright, benignant sky it is fitly here, amid the scenes he loved and hallowed, that the man whose life and character have redeemed Patriotism and Liberty from the reproach which centuries of designing knavery and hollow profess ion nad cast upon them, now calmly awaits the trump of the arch angel. Who does not rejoice that the original design of removing his ashes to the city has never been consummated that they lie where the pilgrim may reverently approach them, unvexed by the 7 .ight laugh of the time-killing worldling, unannoyed by the vain or vile scribblings of the thoughtless or the base? Thus may they repose forever ! that the heart of the patriot may be invigorated, tl>e hopes of the philanthropist strengthened and his aims exalted, the pulse of the American quickened and his aspirations purified by a visit to Mount Vernon !" From Niagara, the traveller wrote a letter to Graham's Magazine : " Years," said he, ' though not many, have weighed upon me since first, in boyhood, I gazed from the deck of a canal-boat upon the distant cloud of white vapor which marked the position of the world s great cataract, and listened to catch the rumbling of its deep thunders. Circumstances did not then permit me to gratify my strong desire of visiting it ; and now, when I am tempted to won der at the stolidity of those who live within a day's journey, yet live on through half a century without one glance at the mighty torrent, I am checked by the reflection that I myself passed within a dozen miles of it no less than five times before I was able to enjoy its magnificence. The propi tious hour cam< at last, however ; and, after a disappointed gaze from the 222 upper terrace on the British side, (in which I half feared that the sheet of broken and boiling water above was all the cataract that existed,) and rapid tortuous descent by the woody declivity, I stood at length on Table Rock, and the whole immensity of the tremendous avalanche of waters burst at once on my arrested vision, while awe struggled with amazement for the mastery of my soul. " This was late in October ; I have twice visited the scene amid the freshness and beauty of June ; but I think the late Autumn is by far the better season. There is then a sternness in the sky, a plaintive melancholy in the sighing of the wind through the mottled forest foliage, which harmonizes better with the spirit of the scene; for the Genius of Niagara, friend! is never a laughter- loving spirit. For the gaudy vanities, the petty pomps, the light follies of the hour, he has small sympathy. Let not the giddy heir bring here his ingots, the selfish aspirant his ambition, the libertine his victim, and hope to find enjoyment and gaiety in the presence. Let none come here to nurse his pride, or avarice, or any other low desire. God and His handiwork here stand forth in lone sublimity ; and all the petty doings and darings of the ants t the base of the pyramid appear in their proper insignificance. Few can have visited Niagara and left it no humbler, no graver than they came." On his return to the city, Horace Greeley subsided, with curious abruptness, into the editor of the Tribune. This note appears on the morning after his arrival : " The senior editor of this paper has returned to his post, after an absence of four weeks, during which he has visited nearly one half of the counties of this State, and passed through portions of Pennsylvania, Vermont, Massachu setts, etc. During this time he has written little for the Tribune save the casual and hasty letters to which his initials were subscribed ; but it need hardly be said that the general course and conduct of the paper have been the same as if he had been at his post. " Two deductions only from the observations he has made and the information he has gathered during his tour, will here be given. They are these : " 1. The cause of Protection to Home Industry is much stronger throughout this and the adjoining States than even the great party which mainly up holds it; and nothing will so much tend to ensure the election of Henry Clay next President as the veto of an efficient Tariff bill by John Tyler. " 2. The strength of the Whig party is unbroken by recent disasters and treachery, and only needs the proper opportunity to manifest itself in all the energy and power of 1840. If a distinct and unequivocal issue can be made upon the great leading questions at issue between the rival parties on Pro tection to Home Industry and Internal Improvement the Whig ascendency will be triumphantly vindicated in the coming election." A HARD HIT AT MAJOR NOAH. 223 I need not dwell on the politics of that year. For Protection- - for Clay against Tyler against his vetoes for a law to punish se ductiou against capital punishment imagine countless columns. In October, died Dr. Channing. " Deeply," wrote Mr. Greeley, " do we deplore his loss, most untimely, to the faithless eye of man does it seem to the cause of truth, of order and of right, and still more deeply do we lament that he has left behind him, in the same department of exertion, so few, in proportion to the number needed, to supply the loss occasioned by his death." Soon after, the Tri bune gave Theodore Parker a hearing by publishing sketches of his lectures. An affair of a personal nature made considerable noise about this time, which is worth alluding to, for several reasons. Major Noah, then the editor of the i Union,' a Tylerite paper of small circula tion and irritable temper, was much addicted to attacks on the Tri bune. On this occasion, he was unlucky enough to publish a ri diculous story, to the effect that Horace Greeley had taken his breakfast in company with two colored men at a boarding-house in Barclay street. The story was eagerly copied by the enemies of the Tribune, and at length Horace Greeley condescended to notice it. The point of his most happy and annihilating reply is contained in these, its closing sentences: "We have never associated with blacks ; never eaten with them ; and yet it is quite probable that if we had seen two cleanly, decent colored persons sitting down at a second table in another room just as we were finishing our break fast, we might have gone away without thinking or caring about the matter. We choose our own company in all things, and that of our own race, but cherish little of that spirit which for eighteen centuries has held the kindred of M. M. Noah accursed of God and man, outlawed and outcast, and unfit to be the associates of Chris tians, Mussulmen, or even self-respecting Pagans. Where there are thousands who would not eat with a negro, there are (or lately were) tens of thousands who would not eat with a Jew. We leave to such renegadee as the Judge of Israel the stirring up of prejudices and the prating of ' usages of society,' which over half the world make him an abhorrence, as they not long since would have done here; we treat all men according to what they are and not whence they spring. That he is a knave, we think much to his dis- 224 THE TRIBUNE AND J. FENIMORE COOPEll. credit ; that he is a Jew nothing, however unfortunate it may be for that luckless people." This was a hit not more hard than fair. The ' Judge of Israel,' it is said, felt it acutely. The Tribune continued to prosper. It ended the second volume with a circulation of twenty thousand, and an advertising patron age so extensive as to compel the issue of frequent supplements. The position of its chief editor grew in importance. His advice and co-operation were sought by so many person? and for so many ob jects, that h was obliged to keep a notice standing, which request ed u all who would see him personally in his office, to call between the hours of 8 and 9 A. M., and 5 and 6 P. M., unless the most im perative necessity dictate a different hour. If this notice be dis regarded, he will be compelled to abandon bis office and seek else where a cbance for an hour's uninterrupted devotion to his daily duties." His first set lecture in New York is thus announced, January 3d, 1843 : "Horace Greeley will lecture before the New York Ly ceum at the Tabernacle, this evening. Subject, ' Human Life.' The lecture will commence at half past 7, precisely. If those who care to hear it will sit near the desk, they will favor the lecturer's weak and husky voice." CHAPTER XYIIL THE TRIBUNE AND J. FENIMORE COOPER. The libel Horace Greetey's narrative of the trial He reviews the opening speech o4 Mr. Cooper's counsel A striking illustration He addresses the jury *!r. Cooper sums up Horace Greeley comments on the speech of tbe novelist In doing so he perpetrates new libels The verdict Mr. Greeley's remarks on the same- Strikes a bee-line for New York A new sn:t An imaginary case. A MAN is never so characteristic as when he sports. There was something in the warfare waged by the author of the Leatherstock- ing against the press, and particularly in his suit of the Tribune for libel, that appealed so strongly to Horace Greeley's sense of the THE LIBEL ON J. FENIMORE COOPER. 25 comic, that he seldom allnded to it without, apparent! y, falling into a paroxysm of mirth. Some of his most humorous passages were written in connection with what he called ' the Cooperage of the Tribune.' To that affair, therefore, it is proper that a short chapter should be devoted, before pursuing further the History of the Tribune. The matter alleged to be libelous appeared in the Tribune, Nov. 17th, 1841. The trial took place at Saratoga, Dec. 9th, 1842. Mr. Greeley defended the suit in person, and, on returning to New York, wrote a long and ludicrous account of the trial, which occupied eleven columns and a quarter in the Tribune of Dec. 12th. For that number of the paper there was such a demand, that the ac count of the trial was, soon after, re-published in a pamphlet, of which this chapter will be little more than a condensation. The libel such as it was the reader may find lurking in the following epistle : " MR. FENIMORE COOPER AND HIS LIBELS. " FONDA, Nov. 17, 1841. " To THE EDITOR OF THE TRIBUNE : " The Circuit Court now sitting here is to be occupied chiefly with the legal griefs of Mr. Fenitnore Cooper, who has determined to avenge himself upon the Press for having contributed by its criticisms to his waning popularity as a novelist. " The ' handsome Mr. Effingham' has three cases of issue here, two of which are against Col. Webb, Editor of the Courier and Enquirer, and one against Mr. Weed, Editor of the Albany Evening Journal. " Mr. Weed not appearing on Monday, (the first day of court,) Cooper mov ed for judgment by default, as Mr. Weed's counsel had not arrived. Col. Webb, who on passing through Albany, called at Mr. Weed's house, and learned that his wife was seriously and his daughter dangerously ill, request ed Mr. Sacia to state the facts to the Court, and ask a day's delay. Mr. Sacia made, at the same time, an appeal to Mr. Cooper's humanity. But that appeal, of course, was an unavailing one. The novelist pushed his advantage. The Court, however, ordered the cause to go over till the next day, with the un derstanding that the default should be entered then if Mr. Weed did not ap pear. Col. Webb then despatched a messenger to Mr. Weed with this infor mation. The messenger returned with a letter from Mr. Weed, stating that his daughter lay very ill, and that he would not leave her while she was suf fering or in danger Mr. Cooper, therefore, immediately moved for his default. Mr. Sacia interposed again for time, but it was denied. A jury was empan- 10* 226 THE TRIBUNE AND J. FENIMORE COOPER. eled to assess Mr. Effingham's damages. The trial, of course, was ex-parte, Mr. Weed being absent and defenceless. Cooper's lawyer made a wordy, windy, abusive appeal for exemplary damages. The jury retired, under a strong charge against Mr. Weed from Judge Willard, and after remaining in their room till twelve o'clock at night, sealed a verdict for $400 for Mr. Effing- harn, which was delivered to the Court this morning. " This meager verdict, under the circumstanses, is a severe and mortifying rebuke to Cooper, who had everything his own way. " The value of Mr. Cooper's character, therefore, has been judicially ascer tained. " It is worth exactly four hundred dollars. " Col. Webb's trial comes on this afternoon ; his counsel, A.L. Jordan, Esq., having just arrived in the up train. Cooper will be blown sky high. This experiment upon the Editor of the Courier and Enquirer, I predict, will cure the ' handsome Mr. Effingham' of his monomania for libels." The rest of the story shall he given here in Mr. Greeley's own words. He begins the narrative thus : " The responsible Editor of the Tribune returned yesterday morning from a week's journey to and sojourn in the County of Saratoga, having been thereto urgently persuaded by a Supreme Court writ, requiring him to answer to tho declaration of Mr. J. Fenimore Cooper in an action for Libel. " This suit was originally to have been tried at the May Circuit at Ballston ; but neither Fenimore (who was then engaged in the Coopering of Col. Stone of the Commercial) nor we had time to attend to it so it went over to this term, which opened at Ballston Spa en Monday, Dec. 5th. We arrived on the ground at eleven o'clock of that day, and found the plaintiff and his lawyers ready for us, our case No. 10 on the calendar, and of course a good prospect of an early trial ; but an important case involving Water-rights came in ahead of us (No. 8) taking two days, and it was half-past 10, A.M., of Friday, before ours was reached very fortunately for us, as we had no lawyer, had never talked over the case with one, or made any preparation whatever, save in thought, and had not even found time to read the papers pertaining to it till we arrived at Ballston. " The delay in reaching the case gave us time for all ; and that we did not employ lawyers to aid in our conduct or defense proceeded from no want of confidence in or deference to the many eminent members of the Bar there in attendance, beside Mr. Cooper's three able counsel, but simply from the fact that we wished to present to the Court some considerations which we thought had been overlooked >r overborne in the recent Trials of the Press for Libel before our Supreme and Circuit Courts, and which, since they appealed more directly and forcibly to the experience of Editors than of Lawyers, we pro- eumed an ordinary editor might present as plainly and fully as an able law yer. We wished to place before the Court and the country those views which we understand the Press to maintain with us of its own position, duties, responsibilities, and rights, as affected by the practical construction given of late years in this State to the Law of Libel, and its application to editors and journals. Understanding that we could not appear both in person and by counsel, we chose the former; though on trial we found our opponent was per mitted to do what we supposed we could not. So much by way of explana tion to the many able and worthy lawyers in attendance on the Circuit, from whom we received every kindness, who would doubtless have aided us most cheerfully if we had required it, and would have conducted our case far more skillfully than we either expected or cared to do. We had not appeared there to be saved from a verdict by any nice technicality or legal subtlety. " The ease was opened to the Court and Jury by Richard Cooper, nephew and attorney of the plaintiff, in a speech of decided pertinence and force. * * * Mr. R. Cooper has had much experience in this class of cases, and is a young man of considerable talent. His manner is the only fault about him, being too elaborate and pompous, and his diction too bombastic to pro duce the best effect on an unsophisticated auditory. If he will only contrive to correct this, he will yet make a figure at the Bar or rather, he will make less figure and do more execution. The force of his speech was marred by Fenhnore's continually interrupting to dictate and suggest to him ideas when he would have done much better if left alone. For instance : Fenimore in structed him to say, that our letter from Fonda above recited purported to be from the ' correspondent of the Tribune,' and thence to draw and press on the Jury the inference that the letter was written by some of our own corps^ whom we had sent to Fonda to report these trials. This inference we were obliged to repel in our reply, by showing that the article plainly read ' correspondence of the Tribune, 4 just as when a fire, a storm, or some other notable event occurs in any part of the country or world, and a friend who happens to be there, sits down and dispatches us a letter by the first mail to give us early advices, though he has no connection with us but by subscription and good will, and perhaps never wrote a line to us in his life till now. ********* "The next step in Mr. R. Cooper's opening: We had, to the Declaration against us, pleaded the General Issue that is Not Guilty of libeling Mr. Cooper, at the same time fully admitting that we had published all that he called our libels on him, and desiring to put in issue only the fact of their being or not being libels, and have the verdict turn on that issua. But Mr. Cooper told the Jury (and we found, to our cost, that this was New York Su preme and Circuit Court law) that by pleading Not Gruilty we had legally ad mitted ourselves to be Guilty that all that was necessary for the plaintiff under that plea was to put in our admission of publication, and then the Jury 228 THE TRIBUNE AND J. FENIMORE COOPEU. had nothing to do but to assess the plaintiffs damages under the direction of the Court. In short, we were made to understand that there was no way un der Heaven we beg pardon; under New York Supreme Court Law in which the editor of a newspaper could plead to an action for libel that the matter charged upon him as libelous was not in its nature or intent a libel, but sim ply a statement, according to the best of his knowledge and belief, of some notorious and every way public transaction, f the Press has often been compelled to appeal from the bench to the people. It will do so now, and we will nut doubt with success. Let not, then, the wrong-doer who is cunning enough to keep the blind side of the law, the swindling banker who has spirited away the means of the widow and orphan, the libertine who has dragged a fresh victim to his lair, imagine that they are permanently shielded, by this misapplication of the law of libel, from fearless exposure to public scrutiny and indignation by the eagie gaze of an unfettered Press. Clouds and darkness may for the moment rest upon it, but they cannot, in the nature of things, endure. In the very gloom of its present humiliation we read the prediction of its speedy and certain restoration to its rights and its true dignity to a sphere not of legal sufferance merely, but of admitted usefulness and honor." This narrative, which came within three-quarters of a column of filling the entire inside of the Tribune, and must have covered fifty pages of foolscap, was written at the rate of about a column an hour. It set the town laughing, elicited favorable notices from more than two hundred papers, and provoked the novelist to new anger, and another suit; in which the damages were laid at three thousand dollars. " We have a lively trust, however," said the offending edi tor, " that we shall convince the jury that we do not owe him the first red cent of it." This is one paragraph of the new complaint : " And the said plaintiff further says and avers that the syllables inhu, fol lowed by a dash, when they occur in the publication hereinafter set forth, as follows, to wit, inhu , were meant and intended by the said defendants for the word inhuman, and that the said defendants, in using the aforesaid sylla bles, followed by a dash as aforesaid, in connection with the context, intended to convey, aad did convey, the idea that the said plaintiff, on the occasion re ferred to in that part of said publication, had acted in an inhuman manner. And the said plaintiff also avers that the syllable ungen, followed Dy a dash, as follows, to wit, ungen , when they occur in the publication hereinafter set forth, were meant and intended by the said defendants either for the word ungenerous or the word ungentlemanly, and that the said defendants, in using the syllables last aforesaid, followed by a dash as aforesaid, in connection with the context, intended to convey, and did convey, the idea that the said plain tiff, on the occasion referred to in that part of said publication, hod acted 238 THE TRIBUNE AND J. FENIMORE COOPER. either in a most ungenerous or a most ungentlemanly manner, to wit, at the place and in the county aforesaid." In an article commenting upon the writ, the editor, after repel ling the charge, that his account of the trial was 'replete with errors of fact,' pointedly addressed his distinguished adversary thus : "But, Fenimore, do hear reason a minute. This whole business is ridicu lous. If you would simply sue those of the Press-gang who displease you, it would not be so bad ; but you sue and write too, which is not the fair thing. What use in belittling the profession of Literature by appealing from its courts to those of Law 1 We ought to litigate upward, not down. Now, Fen imore, you push a very good quill of your own except when you attempt to be funny there you break down. But in the way of cutting and slashing you are No. one, and you don't seem averse to it either. Then why not settle this difference at the point of the pen 1 We hereby tender you a column a day of The Tribune for ten days, promising to publish verbatim whatever you may write and put your name to and to publish it in both our daily and weekly papers. You may give your view of the whole controversy between yourself and the Press, tell your story of the Ballston Trial, and cut us up to your heart's content. We will further agree not to write over two columns in reply to the whole. Now why is not this better than invoking the aid of John Doe and Richard Roe (no offense to Judge W. and your ' learned kinsman !') in the premises? Be wise, now, most chivalrous antagonist, and don't detract from the dignity of your profession !" Mr. Cooper, we may infer, became wise ; for the suit never came to trial; nor did he accept the Tribune's offer of a column a day for ten days. For one more editorial article on the subject room must be afforded, and with that, our chapter on the Cooperage of the Tribune may have an end. "Our friend Fenimore Cooper, it will be remembered, chivalrously declared, in his summing up at Ballston, that if we were to sue him for a libel in assert ing our personal uncomeliness, he should nc t plead the General Issue, but Justify. To a plain man, this would seem an easy and safe course. But let us try it : Fenimore has the audacity to say we are not handsome ; we employ Richard we presume he has no aversion to a good fee. even if made of the Editorial 'sixpences' Fenimore dilated on and commence our action, laying the venue in St. Lawrence, Allegheny, or some other county where our personal appearance is not notorious; and, if the Judge should be a friend of ours, so much the better. Well : Fenimore boldly pleads Justification, thinking it as easy as not. But how is he to establish itl We of course should not be so AN IMAGINARY CASE. 239 green as to attend the Trial in person on such an issue no man is obliged to make out his adversary's case but would leave it all to Richard, and the help the Judge might properly give him. So the case is on, and Fenimore undertakes the Justification, which of course admits and aggravates the libel ; so our side is all made out. But let us see how he gets along : of course, he will not think of offering witnesses to swear point-blank that we are homely that, if he did not know it, the Judge would soon tell him would be a simple opinion, which would not do to go to a Jury ; he must present facts. " Fenimore. ' Well, then, your Honor, I offer to prove by this witness that the plaintiff is tow-headed, and half bald at that ; he is long-legged, gaunt, and most cadaverous of visage ergo, homely.' " Judge. How does that follow 1 Light hair and fair face bespeak a purely Saxon ancestry, and were honorable in the good old days : / rule that they are comely. Thin locks bring out the phrenological developments, you see, and give dignity and massiveness to the aspect ; and as to slenderness, what do our dandies lace for if that is not graceful 1 They ought to know what is attractive, I reckon. No, sir. your proof is irrelevant, and I rule it out.' " Fenimore (the sweat starting). 'Well, your Honor, I have evidence to prove the said plaintiff slouching in dress ; goes bent like a hoop, and so rock ing in gait that he walks down both sides of a street at once. 5 " Judge. ' That to prove homeliness 1 I hope you don't expect a man of ideas to spend his precious time before a looking-glass 1 It would be robbing the public. " Bent," do you say ? Is n't the curve the true line of beauty, I 'd like to know 1 Where were you brought up? As to walking, you don't expect " a man of mark," as you called him at Ballston, to be quite as dapper and pert as a footman, whose walk is his hourly study and his nightly dream its perfection the sum of his ambition ! Great ideas of beauty you must have ! That evidence won't answer.' " Now, Fenitnore, brother in adversity ! wouldn't you begin to have a re alizing sense of your awful situation ? Would n't you begin to wish yourself somewhere else, and a great deal further, before you came into Court to jus tify legally an opinion ? Wouldn't you begin to perceive that the application of the Law of Libel in its strictness to a mere expression of opinion is absurd, mistaken, and tyrannical 1 " Of course, we shan't take advantage of your exposed and perilous condi tion, for we are meek and forgiving, with a hearty disrelish for the machinery of the law. But if we had a mind to take hold of you, with Richard to help us, and the Supreme Court's ruling in actions of libel at our back, wouldn't j ou catch it 1 We should get the whole Fund back again, and give a dinner to the numerous Editorial contributors. That dinner would be worth attend ing, Fenimore ; and we '11 warrant the jokes to average a good deal better than those you cracked in your speech at Ballston." CHATTER XIX. THE TKIBUNE CONTINUES. The Special Express system Night adventures of Enoch Ward Gig Express Ex press from Halifax Baulked by the snow-drifts -Party warfare then Books pub lished by Greeley and Me El rath Course of the Tribune The Editor travels- Scenes in Washington An incident of travel Clay and Frelinghuysen The exer tions of Horace Greeley Results of th* defeat The Tribune and Slavery Burn ing of the Tribune Building The Editor's reflections upon the fire. WHAT gunpowder, improved fire-arms, and drilling have done for war, the railroad and telegraph have done for the daily press, namely, reduced success to an affair of calculation and expenditure. Twelve years ago, there was a chance for the display of individual enterprise, daring, prowess, in procuring news, and, above all, in be ing the first to announce it ; which was, is, and ever will be, the point of competition with daily papers. Those were the days of the Special Expresses, which appear to have been run, regardless of expense, horseflesh, and safety, and in the running of which in credible things were achieved. Not reporters alone were then sent to remote places to report an expected speech. The reporters were accompanied, sometimes, by a rider, sometimes by a corps of printers with fonts of type, who set up the speech on the special steamboat as fast as the reporters could write it out, and had it ready for the press before the steamboat reached the city. "Wonder ful things were done by special express in those days ; for the com petition between the rival papers was intense beyond description. Take these six paragraphs from the Tribune as the sufficient and striking record of a state of things long past away. They need no explanation or connecting remark. Perhaps they will astonish the young reader rather : " The Governor's Message reached Wall street last evening, at nine. Tho contract was for three riders and ten relays of horses, and the Express was to tart at 12 o'clock, M., and reach this city at 10 in the evening. It is not THE SPECIAL EXPRESS SYSTEM. 241 known here whether the arrangements at the other end of the route were strictly adhered to ; but if they were, and the Express started at the hour agreed upon, it came through in nine hours, making but a fraction less than eighteen miles an hour, which seems almost incredible. It is not impossible that it started somewhat before the time agreed upon, and quite likely that ex tra riders and horses were employed ; but be that as it may, the dispatch ia almost if not quite unparalleled in this country." " Our express, (Mr. Enoch Ward,) with returns of the Connecticut Election, left New Haven Monday evening, in a light sulky, at twenty-five minutes be fore ten o'clock, having been detained thirty-five minutes by the non-arrival of the Express locomotive from Hartford. He reached Stamford forty miles from New Haven in three hours. Here it commenced snowing, and the night was so exceedingly dark that he could not travel without much risk. He kept on, however, with commendable zeal, determined not to be conquered by any ordinary obstacles. Just this side of New Rochelle, and while descending a hill, he had the misfortune to run upon a horse which was apparently stand ing still in the road. The horse was mounted by a man who must have been asleep ; otherwise he would have got out of the way. The breast of the horse came in contact with the sulky between the wheel and the shaft. The effect of the concussion was to break the wheel of the sulky by wrenching out nearly all the spokes. The night was so dark that nothing whatever could be seen, and it is not known whether the horse and the stranger received any material injury. Mr. Ward then took the harness from his horse, mounted him with out a saddle, and came on to this city, a distance of seventeen miles, arriving at five o'clock on Tuesday morning." "It will be recollected that a great ado was made upon the receipt in this city of the Acadia's news by two of our journals, inasmuch as no other paper received the advices, one of them placarding the streets with announcements that the news was received by special and exclusive express. Now, the facts are these : The Acadia arrived at Boston at half-past three o'clock, the cars leaving at four ; in coming to her wharf she struck her bow against the dock and immediately reversed her wheels, put out again into the bay, and did not reach her berth until past four. But two persons, belonging to the offices of the Atlas and Times, jumped on board at the moment the ship struck the wharf, obtained their packages, and threw them into the water, whence they were taken and put into a gig and taken to the depot. ' Thus, 1 said the Con*' mercial, from which we gather the facts stated above ' the gig was the " Spe cial Express," and its tremendous run was from Long Wharf to the depot about one mile !' ' " The news by the next steamer ia looked for with intense interest, and in 11 242 THE TRIBUNE CONTINUES. order to place it before our readers at an early moment, we made arrange ments some weeks since to start a horse Express from Halifax across Nova Scotia to the Bay of Fundy, there to meet a powerful steamer which will convey our Agent and Messenger to Portland. At the latter place we run a Locomotive Express to Boston, whence we express it by steam and horse power to New York. Should no unforeseen accident occur, we will be enabled by this Express to publish the news in New York some ten, or perhaps fifteen or twenty hours before the arrival of the steamer in Boston. The extent of this enterprise may in part be judged of by the fact, that we pay no less than Eighteen Hundred Dollars for the single trip of the steamer on the Bay of Fundy ! It is but fair to add that, in this Express, we were joined from the commencement by the Sun of this city, and the North American of Phila delphia; and the Journal of Commerce has also since united with us in the enterprise." " We were beaten with the news yesterday morning, owing to circumstances which no human energy could overcome. In spite of the great snow-storm, which covered Nova Scotia with drifts several feet high, impeding and often overturning our express-sleigh in defiance of hard ice in the Bay of Fundy and this side, often 18 inches thick, through which our steamboat had to plow her way we brought the news through to Boston in thirty-one hours from Halifax, several hours ahead of the Cambria herself. Thence it ought to have reached this city by 6 o'clock yesterday morning, in ample season to have gone south in the regular mail train. It was delayed, however, by unforeseen and unavoidable disasters^ and only reached New Haven after it should have been in this city. From New Haven it was brought hither in four hmirs and a half by our ever-trusty rider, Enoch Ward, who never lets the grass grow to the heels of his horses. He came in a little after 11 o'clock, but the rival ex press had got in over two hours earlier, having made the shortest run from Boston on record." " The Portland Bulletin has been unintentionally led into the gross error of believing the audacious fabrication that Bennett's express came through to this city in seven hours and five minutes from Boston, beating onrsfae or six hours ! That express left Boston at 11 P. M. of Wednesday, and arrived here 20 minutes past 9 on Thursday actual time on the road, over ten hours. The Bulletin further says that our express was sixteen hours on the road. No such thing. We lost some fifteen minutes at the ferry on the east side of Boston. Then a very short time (instead of an hour and a half, as is reported by the express) in finding our agent in Boston ; then an hour in firing up an engine and getting away from Boston, where all should have been ready for us, but was not The locomotive was over two hours in making the run to Worcester 42 miles though the Herald runner who cam* hrough on the arrival of the Cauibria PARTY WARFARE THEN. 243 aoine time after, was carried over it in about half the time, with not one-fourth the delay we en;ountered at the depot in Boston. (We could guess how all this was brought about, but it would answer no purpose now.) At Worcester, Mr. Twitchell (whom our agent on this end had only been able to find on Tuesday, having been kept two days on the route to Boston by a storm, and then finding Mr. T. absent in New Hampshire) was found in bed, but got up and put off, intending to ride but one stage. At its end, however, he found the rider he had hired sick, and had to come along himself. At one stopping- place, he found his horse amiss, and had to buy one before he could proceed. When he reached Hartford (toward morning) there was no engine fired up, no one ready, and another hour was lost there. At New Haven our rider was asleep, and much time was lost in finding him and getting off. Thus we lost in delays, which we could not foresee or prevent, over three hours this side of Boston ferry, the Cambria having arrived two or three days earlier than she \as expected, before our arrangements could be perfected, and on the only night of the week that the rival express could have beaten even oicr bad time, the Long Island Railroad being obstructed with snow both before and after ward. The Herald express came in at 20 minutes past 9; our express waa here at 15 minutes past 12, or less than three hours afterward. Such are the facts. The express for the U. S. Gazette crossed the ferry to Jersey City at 10 J instead of 11|, as we mis-stated recently." That will do for the curiosities of the Special Express. Another feature has vanished from the press of this country, since those paragraphs were written. The leading journals are no longer party journals. There are no parties; and this fact has changed the look, and tone, and manner of newspapers in a remarkable degree. As a curiosity of old-fashioned party politics, and as an illustration of the element in which and with which our hero was compelled oc casionally to labor, I am tempted to insert here a few paragraphs of one of his day-of-the-election articles. Think of the Tribune of to-day, and judge of the various progress it and the country have made, since an article like the following could have seemed at home in its columns. THE WARDS ARE AWAKE! " OLD FIRST ! Steady and true ! A split on men has aroused her to bring out her whole force, which will tell nobly on the Mayor. Friends ! fight out your Collector, split fairly, like men, and be good friends as ever at sunset to-day ; but be sure not to throw away ?our Assistant Alderman. We set you down 600 for Robert Smith. 244 THE TRIBUNE CONTINUES. " SAUCY SECOND ! Never a Loco has a look here ! Our friends are uni. ted, and have done their work, though making no noise about it. We count on 400 for Smith. " GALLANT THIRD ! You are wanted for the full amount ! Things are altogether too sleepy here. Why won't somebody run stump, or get up a volunteer ticket 1 We see that the Loco-Foco Collector has Whig ballots printed with his name on them ! This ought to arouse all the friends of the clean Whig Ticket. Come out, Whigs of tho Third ! and pile up 700 major ity for Robert Smith ! One less is unworthy of you ; and you can give more if you try. But let it go at 700." ********* " BLOODY SIXTH ! We won 't tell all we hope from this ward, but we know Aid. CROLIUS is popular, as is OWEN W. BRENNAN, our Collector, and we feel quite sure of their election. We know that yesterday the Locos were afraid Shaler uould decline, as they said his friends would vote for Crolius rather than Emmons, who is rather too well known. We concede 300 major ity to Morris, but our friends can reduce it to 200 if they work right." ******** " EMPIRE EIGHTH ! shall your faithful GEDNEY be defeated ? Has he not deserved better at your hands ? And SWEET, too, he was foully cheated out of his election last year by Loco-Foco fire companies brought in from the Fifteenth, and prisoners imported from Blackwell's Island. Eighteen of them in one house ! You owe it to your candidates to elect them you owe it still more to yourselves and yet your Collector quarrel makes us doubt a little. Whigs of the Eighth ! resolve to carry your Alderman and you WILL ! Any how, Robert Smith will have a majority we '11 state it moderately at 200." ******** " BLOOMING TWELFTH ! The Country Ward is steadily improving, po litically as well as physically. The Whigs run their popular Alderman of last year ; the Locos have made a most unpopular Ticket, which was only forced down the throats of many by virtue of the bludgeon. Heads were cracked like walnuts the night the ticket was agreed to. Wo say 50 for Smith, and the clean Whig ticket." ******** " Whigs of New York ! THE DAY is YOURS IF YOU WILL ! But if you afeulk to your chimney corners and let such a man as ROBERT SMITH be beaten by Robert H. Morris, you will deserve to be cheated, plundered and trampled on as you have been. But, No ! YOU WILL NOT ! On for SMITH ANU VICTORY !" We now turn over, with necessary rapidity, the pages of the third and fourth volumes of tho Tribune, pausing, here and there, when something of interest respecting its editor catches our eye. BOOKS PUBLISHED BY GREELEY AND McELRATH. Greeley and McElrath, we observe, are engaged, somewhat exten sively, in the business of publishing books. The Whig Almanac ap pears every year, and sells from fifteen to twenty thousand copies. It contains statistics without end, and much literature of what may be called the Franklin School short, practical articles on agricul ture, economy, and morals. ' Travels on the Prairies,' Ellsworth's 4 Agricultural Geology,' * Lardner's Lectures,' ' Life and Speeches of Henry Clay,' * Tracts on the Tariff' by Horace Greeley, ' The Farm ers' Library,' are among the works published by Greeley and McEl rath in the years 1843 and 1844. The business was not profitably I believe, and gradually the firm relinquished all their publications, except only the Tribune and Almanac. September 1st, 1843, the Evening Tribune began ; the Semi-Weekly, May 17th, 1845. Carlyle's Past and Present, one of the three or four Great Booka of the present generation, was published in May 1843, from a pri vate copy, entrusted to the charge of Mr. R. W. Emerson. The Tribune saw its merit, and gave the book a cordial welcome. " This is a great book, a noble book," it said, in a second notice, " and we take blame to ourself for having rashly asserted, before we had read it thoroughly, that the author, keen- sigh ted at discovering Social evils and tremendous in depicting them, was yet blind as to their appropriata remedies. He does see and indicate those reme dies not entirely and in detail, but in spirit and in substance very clearly and forcibly. There has no new work of equal practical value with this been put forth by any writer of eminence within the century. Although specially addressed to and treating of the People of England, its thoughts are of immense value and general application here, and we hope many thousand copies of the work will instantly be put into circulation." Later in the year the Tribune introduced to the people of the United States, the system of Water-Cure, copying largely from Eu ropean journals, and dilating in many editorial articles on the man ifold and unsuspected virtues of cold water. The Erie Railroad t^at gigantic enterprise had then and afterwards a powerful friend and advocate in the Tribune. In behalf of the unemployed poor, the Tribune spuKe wisely, feelingly, and often. To the new Native American Party, it gave no quarter. For'Irish Repeal, it fogght like a tigsr. For Protection and Clay, it could not say enough. Upon. 246 THE TRIBUNE CONTINUES. farmers it urged the duty and policy of high farming. To the strong unemployed young men of cities, it said repeatedly and in various terms, ' Go forth into the Fields and Labor with your Hands.' In the autumn, Mr. Greeley made a tour of four weeks in the Far West, and wrote letters to the Tribune descriptive and suggestive. In December, he spent a few days in Washington, and gave a sorry account of the state of things in that ' magnificent mistake.' "To a new comer," he wrote, " the Capitol wears an imposing appearance : Nay, more. Let him view it for the first time by daylight, with the flag of the Union floating proudly above it, (indicating that Congress is in session,) and, if he be an American, I defy him to repress a swelling of the heart a glow of enthusiastic feeling. Under these free-flowing Stripes and Stars the Representatives of the Nation are assembled in Council under the emblem of the National Sovereignty is in action the collective energy and embodiment of that Sovereignty. Proud recollections of beneficent and glorious events come thronging thickly upon him of the Declaration of Independence, the struggles of the Revolution, and the far more glorious peaceful advances of the eagles of Freedom from the Alleghanies to the Falls of St Anthony and the banks of the Osage. An involuntary cheer rushes from his heart to his lips, and he hastens at once to the Halls of Legislation to witness and listen to the displays of patriotic foresight, wisdom and eloquence, there evolved. "But here his raptures are chilled instanter. Entering the Capitol, he finds its passages a series of blind, gloomy, and crooked labyrinths, through which a stranger threads his devious way with difficulty, and not at all with out inquiry and direction, to the door of the Senate or House. Here he is met, as everywhere through the edifice, by swarms of superserviceable under lings, numerous as the frogs of Egypt, eager to manifest their official zeal and usefulness by keeping him out or kicking him out again. He retires dis gusted, and again threads the bewildering maze to the gallery, where (if of the House) he can only look down on the noisy Bedlam in action below him somebody speaking and nobody listening, but a buzz of conversation, the trot ting of boys, the walking about of members, the writing and folding of let ters, calls to order, cries of question, calls for Yeas and Nays, e inclined to reprobate all { nostrums ' for the cure of Social evils, and sneer 268 EDITORIAL REPARTEES. at 'labor-saving plans ' of cooking, washing, schooling, Ac., is rather deplora ble than surprising. Were he some poor day- laborer, subsisting hia family and paying rent on the dollar a day he could get when the weather permitted and some employer's necessity or caprice gave him a chance to Barn it, we be lieve he would view the subject differently. As to the spirit which can de nounce by wholesale all who labor in behalf of a Social Reform, in defiance of general obloquy, rooted prejudice, and necessarily serious, personal sacri fices, as enemies of Christianity and Good Morals, and call upon the public to starve them into silence, does it not merit the rebuke and loathing of every generous, mind? Heaven aid us to imitate, though afar off, that Divinest charity which could say for its persecutors and murderers, ' Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do !' * # # # * # #.# * " We are profoundly conscious that the moral tone and bearing of the Press fall very far beneath their true standard, and that it too often panders to pop ular appetites and prejudices when it should rather withstand and labor to cor rect them. We, for example, remember having wasted many precious col umns of this paper, whereby great good might have been done, in the publi cation of a controversy on the question, 'Can there be a Church without a Bishop ?' a controversy unprofitable in its subject, verbose and pointless in its logic, and disgraceful to our common Christianity in its exhibitions of unchar itable temper and gladiatorial tactics. The Rev. Dr. Potts may also remem ber that controversy. We ask the Pulpit to strengthen our *wn fallible reso lution never to be tempted by any hope of pecuniary profit, (pretty sure to be delusive, as it ought,) into meddling with such another discreditable per formance. " We do not find, in the Courier's report of this sermon, any censures upon that very large and popularly respectable class of journals which regularly biro out their columns, Editorial and Advertising, for the enticement of their readers to visit grogeries, theaters, horse-races, as we sometimes have thought lessly done, but hope never, unless through deplored inadvertence, to do again. The difficulty of entirely resisting all temptations to these lucrative vices is so great, and the temptations themselves so incessant, while the moral mischief thence accruing is so vast and palpable, that we can hardly think the Rev. Dr. slurred over the point, while we can very well imagine that his respected dis ciple and reporter did so. At this moment, when the great battle of Temper ance against Liquid Poison and its horrible sorceries is convulsing our State, and its issue trembles in the balance, it seems truly incredible that a Doctor of Divinity, lecturing on the iniquities of the Press, can have altogether over looked this topic. Cannot the Courier from its reporter's notes supply the omission ?" PROVOCATION. An advertisement offering a prize of fifty dollars for the best SOME PRIZE TRACTS SUGGESTED. 269 tract 4 n the Impropriety of Dancing by members of churches, tho tract to be published by the American Tract Society. REPLY. " The notice copied above suggests to us some other subjects on which we think Tracts are needed subjects which are beginning to attract the thoughts of not a few, and which are, like dancing, of practical moment. We would suggest premiums to be offered, as follows : " $20 for the best Tract on 'The rightfulness and consistency of a Chris tian's spending $5,000 to $10,000 a year on the appetites and enjoyments of himself and family, when there are a thousand families within a mile of him who are compelled to live on less than $200 a year. " $10 for the best Tract on the rightfulness and Christianity of a Christian's building a house for the exclusive residence of himself and family, at a cost of $50,000 to $100,000, within sight of a hundred families living in hovels worth less than $100. " $5 for the best Tract on the Christianity of building Churches which cost $100,000 each, in which poor sinners can only worship on sufferance, and in the most out-of-the-way corners. " We would not intimate that these topics are by any means so important as that of Dancing far from it. The sums we suggest will shield us from that imputation. Yet we think these subjects may also be discussed with profit, and, that there may be no pecuniary hindrance, we will pay the premiums if the American Tract Society will publish the Tracts." PROVOCATION. An assertion in the Express, that th Tribune bestows u peculiar commendation upon that part of the new Constitution which take? away the necessity of believing in a Supreme Being, on the part of him who may be called to swear our lives or property away." REPLY. " { The necessity of believing in a Supreme Being,' in order to be a legal witness, never existed ; but only the necessity of professing to believe it. Now, a thorough villain who was at the same time an Atheist would be pretty apt to keep to himself a belief, the avowal of which would subject him to legal penalties and popular obloquy, but a sincere honest man, whose mind had be come confused or clouded with regard to the evidence of a Universal Father, would be very likely to confess his lack of faith, and thereby be disabled from testifying. Such disability deranges the administration of justice and facil itates the escape of the guilty." 270 EDITORIAL REPARTEES. PROVOCATION. An assertion that it is false pride, that makes domestic service so abhorrent to American girls. REPLY. " You, Madam, who talk so flippantly of the folly or false pride of our girls, have you ever attempted to put yourself in their place and consider the mat ter 1 Have you ever weighed in the balance a crust and a garret at home, with better food and lodging in the house of a stranger ? Have you ever thought of the difference between doing the most arduous and repulsive work for those you love, and who love you, and doing the same in a strange place for those to whom your only bond of attachment is six dollars a month ') Have you ever considered that the words of reproof and reproach, so easy to utter, are very hard to bear, especially from one whose right so to treat you is a thing of cash and of yesterday 1 Is the difference between freedom and service nothing to you 7 How many would you like to have ordering you 7" PROVOCATION. A vain-glorious claim to pure democracy on the part of a pro- slavery Irish paper. " We like Irish modesty it is our own sorir but Irish ideas of Liberty are not always so thorough and consistent as we could wish them. To hate and resist the particular form of Oppression to which we have been exposed, by which we have suffered, is so natural and easy that we see little merit in it ; to loathe and defy all Tyranny evermore, is what few severe sufferers by Op pression ever attain to. Ages of Slavery write their impress on the souls of the victims we must not blame them, therefore, but cannot stifle our con sciousness nor suppress our sorrow. It is sad to see how readily the great mass of our Irish-born citizens, themselves just escaped from a galling, de grading bondage, lend themselves to the iniquity of depressing and flouting the down-trodden African Race among us it was specially sad to see them come up to the polls in squads, when our present State Constitution was adopt ed, and vote in solid mass against Equal Suffrage to all Citizens, shouting ' Down with the Nagurs ! Let them go back to Africa, where they belong /' for such was the language of Adopted Citizens of one or two years' stand ing with regard to men born here, with their ancestors before them for several generations. We learn to hate Despotism and Enslavement more intensely when wo are thus confronted by their ineffaceable impress on the souls of too many of their victims." THE MODERN DRAMA. 271 PROVOCATION. An article in the Sunday Mercury condemning the Tribune for excluding theatrical criticism. EBPLY. " The last time but one that we visited a theater it was from seven to ten years ago we were insulted by a ribald, buffoon song, in derision of total ab stinence from intoxicating liquors. During the last season we understand that Mr. Brougham whom we are specially blamed by the Mercury for not help ing to a crowded benefit has made a very nice thing of ridiculing Socialism. We doubt whether any great, pervading reform has been effected since there was a stage, which that stage has not ridiculed, misrepresented, aud held up to popular odium. It is in its nature the creature of the mob that is, of the least enlightened and least earnest portion of the community and flatters the prejudices, courts the favor, and varnishes the vices of that portion. It bel lows lustily for Liberty meaning license to do as you please but has small appetite for self-sacrifice, patient industry, and an unselfish devotion to duty. We fear that we shall not be able to like it, even with its groggeries and assig nation-rooms shut up but without this we cannot even begin." PROVOCATION. A sermon by Dr. Hawks denouncing Socialism in the usual style of well-fed thoughtlessness. EEPLT. " If * the Socialists,' as a body, were called upon to pronounce upon the pro priety of taking the property of certain doctors of divinity and dividing it among the mechanics and laborers, to whom they have run recklessly and heavily in debt, we have no doubt they would vote very generally and heartily in the affirmative." PROVOCATION. A letter bewailing the threatened dissolution of the Union. REPLY. The dissolution of the Union would not be the dreadful affair he repre sents it. It would be a very absurd act on the part of the seceding party, and would work great inconvenience and embarrassment, especially to the people of the great Mississippi Valley. In time, however, matters would accommo date themselves to the new political arrange ments, and we should grow as many bushels of corn to the acre, and get as many yards of cloth from a him- 272 EDITORIAL REPARTEES. dred pounds of wool, as we now do. The Union is an excellent thing quite too advantageous to be broken up in an age so u l il.'tarian as this ; but it ii possible to exaggerate even its blessings." PROVOCATION. An article in a Southern paper recommending the secession of the Slave States from the Union. REPLY. " Dr. Franklin used to tell an anecdote illustrative of his idea of the folly of dueling, substantially thus : A man said to another in some public place, 1 Sir, I wish you would move a little away from m, for a disagreeable odor pro ceeds from you.' 'Sir,' was the stern response, ' that is an insult, and yon must fight me !' ' Certainly,' was the quiet reply, < I will fight you if you wish it ; but I don't see how that can mend the matter. If you kill me, I also shall Bmell badly ; and if I kill you, you will smell worse than you do now.' " We have not yet been able to understand what our Ksunioaists, North or South, really expect to gain by dissolving the Union. * * * ' Three valu able Blares escaped,' do you say ? Will slaves be any less likely to run away when they know that, once across Mason and Dixon's line, they are safe from pursuit, and can never be reclaimed ? c Every slaveholder is in continual ap- apprehension,' say you ? In the name of wonder, how is Disunion to soothe their nervous excitement? They 'won't stand it,' eh? Have they never heard of getting * out of the frying-pan into the fire' 9 Do let us hear how Slavery is to be fortified and perpetuated by Disunion 1" PROVOCATION. The excessive ecnfidence of "Whigs in the election of Henry day. REPLY. " There is an old legend that once on a time all the fo.ks in the world entered into an agreement that at a specified moment they would give one unanimous shout, just to see what a noise they could make, and what tre mendous effects it would produce. The moment came everybody was ex pecting to see trees, if not houses, thrown down by the mighty concussion ; when lo ! the only sound was made by a dumb old woman, whose tongue waa loosed by the excitement of the occasion. The rest had all stood with mouths and ears wide open to hear the great noise, and so forgot to make any ! " The moral we trut our Whig friends everywhere will take to heart." A PICTURE FOR POLK. 273 PROVOCATION. The passage in the President's Message which condemned thof > who opposed the Mexican war as unpatriotic. REPLY. foir "IS THIS WAR 7" " MONTEREY, Oct. 7, 1846. " While I was stationed with our left wing in one of the forts, on the evening of the 21st, I saw a Mexican woman busily en gaged in carrying bread and water to the wounded men of both armies. I saw this ministering angel raise the head of a wounded man, give him water and food, and then carefully bind up his wound with a handkerchief she took from her own head. After having exhausted her supplies, she went back to her own house to get more broad and water for others. As she was returning on her mission of mercy, to comfort other wound ed persons, I heard the report of a gun, and saw the poor in nocent creature fall dead ! I think it was an accidental shot that struck her. I would not be willing to believe otherwise. It made me sick at heart, and, turning from the scene, I in voluntarily raised my eyes towards heaven, and thought, great God ! and is this War ? Passing the spot next day, I saw her body still lying there with the bread by her side, and the broken gourd, with a few drops of water still in it emblems of her errand. We buried her, and while we were digging her grave, cannon balls flew around us like hail." Cor. Louisville Cour. PROVOCATION. Complaints of Charles Dickens' Advocacy of International Oioy right at public dinners. REPLY. " We trust he will not be deterred from speaking the frank, round truth by any mistaken courtesy, diffidence, or misapprehension of public sentiment. He 'ught to speak out on this matter, for who shall protest against robbery 12* 274 EDITORIAL REPARTEES. if those who are robbed may not? Here is a man who writes for a living and writes nobly ; and we of this country greedily devour his writings, are entertained and instructed by them, yet refuse so to protect his rights as an author that he can realize a single dollar from all their vast American sale and popularity. Is this right? Do we look well offering him toasts, compli ments, and other syllabub, while we refuse him naked justice 1 while we Bay that every man may take from him the fruits of his labors without recom pense or redress 1 It does very well in a dinner speech to say that fame and popularity, and all that, are more than sordid gold ; but he has a wife and four children, whom his death may very possibly leave destitute, perhaps dependent for their bread, while publishers, who have grown rich on his writings, roll by in their carriages, and millions who have been instructed by them contribute not one farthing to their comfort. But suppose him rich, if you please, the justice of the case is unaltered. He is the just owner of his own productions as much as though he had made axes or horse-shoes ; and the people who refuse to protect his right, ought not to insult him with the mockery of thriftless praise. Let us be just, and then generous. Good reader ! if you think our guest ought to be enabled to live by and enjoy the fruits of bis talents and toil, just put your names to a petition for an Inter national Copyright Law, and then you can take his hand heartily if it comes in your way, and say, if need be, ' I have done what is in my power to pro tect you from robbery !' The passage of this act of long-deferred justice will be a greater tribute to his worth and achievements than acres of inflated compliments soaked in hogsheads of champagne." PROVOCATION. A paragraph recommending a provision for life for the soldiers disabled in the Mexican war. EEPLY. "Uncle Sam ! you bedazzled old hedge-hog ! don't you see 'glory' is cheap as dirt, only you never get done paying for it ! Forty years hence, your boys will be still paying taxes to support the debt you are now piling up, and the sripples and other pensioners you are now manufacturing. How much more of this will satisfy you ?" PROVOCATION. An accusation of ' malignant falsehood.' REPLY. " There lives not a man who knows the editor of this paper who can b6 made to believe that we have been guilty of ' malignant falsehood.' PREACHING AND PRACTICE. 275 " We seek no controversy with the Sun ; but, since it chooses to be personal, ire defy its utmost industry and malice to point out a single act of our life in consistent with integrity and honor. We dare it, in this respect, to do ita worst !" PROVOCATION. This sentence in the Express : " If the editor of the Tribune be lieved a word of what he says, he would convert his profitable printing establishment into a Fourier common-stock concern." EEPLY. " If our adviser will just point us to any passage, rule, maxim or precept of Fourier (of whom he appears to know so much) which prescribes a pro rata division of proceeds among all engaged in producing them, regardless of abil ity, efficiency, skill, experience, etc., we will assent to almost any absurdity he shall dictate. ******** " As to ' carrying out his theories of Fourierism,' etc., he (the editor of the Tribune) has expended for this specific purpose some thousands of dollars, and intends to make the same disposition of more as soon as he has it to expend. Whether he ought to be guided by his own judgment or that of the Express man respecting the time and manner of thus testifying his faith, he will con- eider in due season. He has never had a dollar which was not the fair product of his own downright labor, and for whatever of worldly wealth may accrue to him beyond the needs of those dependent on hie efforts he holds himself but the steward of a kind Providence, and bound to use it all as shall seem most conducive to the good of the Human Race. It is quite probable, how ever, that he will never satisfy the Express that he is either honest, sincere, or well-meaning, but that is not material. He has chosen, once for all, to an swer a sort of attack which has become fashionable with a certain class of his enemies, and can hardly be driven to notice the like again." PROVOCATION, An allusion in the Courier and Enquirer to Mr. Greeley's diet, itttire, socialism, philosophy, etc. REPLY. " It is true that the editor of the Tribune chooses mainly (not entirely) vegetable food ; but he never troubles his readers on the subject; it docs not worry them; why should it con^m the Colonel? * * * It is hard Cur Philosophy that so humble a man shall be made to stand as its exem* 276 EDITORIAL REPARTEES. plar ; while Christianity is personified by the here of the Sunday duel with Hon. Tom. Marshall ; but such luck will happen. "As to our personal appearance, it does seem time that we should say some thing, to stay the flood of nonsense with which the town must by this time b nauseated. Some donkey a while ago, apparently anxious to assail or annoy the editor of this paper, and not well knowing with what, originated the story of his carelessness of personal appearances ; and since then every blockhead of the same disposition and distressed by a similar lack of ideas, has repeated and exaggerated the foolery ; until from its origin in the Albany Microscope it has sunk down at last to the columns of the Courier and Enquirer, growing more absurd at every landing. Yet all this time the object of this silly rail lery has doubtless worn better clothes than two-thirds of those who thus as sailed him better than any of them could honestly wear, if they paid their debts otherwise than by bankruptcy ; while, if they are indeed more cleanly than he, they must bathe very thoroughly not less than twice a day. The editor of the Tribune is the son of a poor and humble farmer ; came to New York a minor, without a friend within 200 miles, less than ten dollars in his pocket, and precious little besides ; he has never had a dollar from a relative, and has for years labored under a load of debt, (thrown on him by others' misconduct and the revulsion of 1837,) which he can now just see to the end of. Thenceforth he may be able to make a better show, if deemed essential by his friends ; for himself, he has not much time or thought to bestow on the matter. That he ever affected eccentricity is most untrue ; and certainly no costume he ever appeared in would create such a sensation in Broadway as that James Watson Webb would have worn but for the clemency of Governor Seward. Heaven grant our assailant may never hang with such weight on another Whig Executive ! We drop him." (Colonel Webb had been sentenced to two years' imprisonment for fighting a duel. Governor Seward pardoned him before he had served one day of his term.) PROVOCATION. A charge of * infidelity,' in the Express. REPLY. " The editor of the Tribune has never been anything else than a believer in the Christian Religion, and has for many years been a member of a Chria tian Church. He never wrote or uttered a syllable in favor of Infidelity But truth is lost on the Express, which can never forgive us the ' Infidel ity' of circulating a good nuny more copies, Daily and Weekly, than are taken of that paper." COL. WEBB SEVEBEL t HIT. 277 PROVOCATION. Letters complaining of the Tribune's hostility to the Mexican war EEPLT. " Our faith is strong and clear that we serve our country best by obeying our Maker in all things, and that He requires us to bear open, unequivocal testimony against every iniquity, however specious, and to expose every lying pretense whereby men are instigated to imbrue their hands in each other's blood. We do not believe it possible that our country can be prospered in such a war as this. It may be victorious ; it may acquire immense accessions of territory ; but these victories, these acquisitions, will prove fearful calamities, by sapping the morals of our people, inflating them with pride and corrupting them with the lust of conquest and of gold, and leading them to look to the Commerce of the Indies and the Dominion of the Seas for those substantial blessings which follow only in the wake of peaceful, contented Labor. So sure as the Universe has a Ruler will every acre of territory we acquire by this war prove to our Nation a curse and the source of infinite calamities." PROVOCATION. An attempt on the part of Col. Webb to excite violence against the Tribune and its editor. REPLY. " This is no new trick on the part of the Courier. It is not the first nor the second time that it has attempted to excite a mob to violence and outrage against those whom it hates. In July, 1834, when, owing to its ferocious de nunciations of the Abolitionists, a furious and law-defying mob held virtual possession of our city, assaulting dwellings, churches and persons obnoxious to its hate, and when the Mayor called out the citizens by Proclamation to assist in restoring tranquillity, the Courier (llth July) proclaimed: " ' It is time, for the reputation of the city, and perhaps for the welfare of themselves, that these Abolitionists and Amalgamationists should know the ground on which they stand. They are, we learn, always clamorous with the Police for protection, and demand it as a right inherent to their characters as American citizens. Now we tell them that, when they openly and publicly outrage public feeling, they have no right to demand protection from the Peo ple they thus insult. When they endeavor to disseminate opinions which, if generally imbibed, must infallibly destroy our National Union, and produce scenes of blood and carnage horrid to think of; when they thus preach up treason and murder, the eegis of the Law indignantly withdraws its shelter from them 278 EDITORIAL REPARTEES. ' ' WheD they vilify our religion by classing the Redeemer of the world in the lowest grade of the human species ; when they debase the noble race from which we spring that race which called civilization into existence, and from which have proceeded all the great, the brave, and the good that have ever lived and place it in the same scale as the most stupid, ferocious and cow ardly of the divisions into which the Creator has divided mankind, then they place themselves beyond the pale of all law, for they violate every law, divine and human. Ought not, we ask, our City authorities to make them understand this ; to tell them that they prosecute their treasonable and beastly plans at their own peril ?' " Such is the man, such the means, by which he seeks to bully Freemen out of the rights of Free Speech and Free Thought. There are those who cower before his threats and his ruffian appeals to mob violence here is one who never will ! AH the powers of Land-jobbing and Slave-jobbing cannot drive us one inch from the ground we have assumed of determined and open hostil ity to this atrocious war, its contrivers aud abettors. Let those who threaten us with assassination understand, once for all, that we pity while we despise their baseness." PROVOCATION. The following, from the Express : ** For woman we think the fittest place is home, l sweet home '-^-by her own fireside and among her own children ; but the Tribune would put her in trowsers, or on stilts as a public woman, or tumble her pell-mell into some Fou rier establishment." REPLY. The following, from the Express of the same date : " At the Park this even ing the graceful Augusta, (whose benefit, last night, notwithstanding the weather, was fashionably and numerously attended,) takes her leave of us for the present. We can add nothing to what we have already said in praise of this charming artist's performances, farther than to express the hope that it may not be long ere we are again permitted to see her upon our boards. As in beauty, grace, delicacy, and refinement, she stands alone in her profession, BO in private life she enjoys, and most justly, too, the highest reputation in all her relations." PROVOCATION. To what a low degree of debasement must the Coons have indeed fallen, when even so notorious a reprobate as Nick Biddle is disgust ed with them. Plebeian. REPLY. " All the 'notorious reprobates ' in the country were ( disgusted* with the Whigs long ago. They have found their proper resting-place in the embraces of Loco-Focoism." EXPEDIENCY. 279 PEOVOCATION. Our whole national debt is less than sixty days' interest on that }f Great Britain, yet, with all our resources the English call us bankrupt! Boston Post. REPLY. " But England pays her interest large as it is ; and if our States will not viy even their debts, small as they are, why should they not be called ankrupt?" PROVOCATION. A charge that the Tribune sacrified the Right to the Expedient. REPLY. " Old stories very often have a forcible application to present times. The tallowing anecdote we met with lately in an exchange paper : " ' How is it, John, that you bring the wagon home in such a condition ?' " ' 1 broke it driving over a stump.' " ' Where V " Back in the woods, half a mile or so.' " ' But why did you run against the stump 1 Could n't you see how to drive " 1 1 did drrve straight, sir, and that is the very reason that I drove over it The stump was directly in the middle of the road.' " ' Why, theii, did you not go round it ?' " c Because, sir, the stump had no right in the middle of the road, and I had a right in it.' " ' True, Jonn, the stump ought not to have been in the road, but I wonder that you were so foolish as not to consider that it was there, and that it was stronger than your wagon.' " ' Why, father, do you think that I am always going to yield up my rights? Not I. I am determined to stick up to them, come what will.' " ' But what is the use, John, of standing up to rights, when you only get a greater wrong by so doing ?' " ' I shall stand up for them at all hazards.' " ' Well, John, all I have to say is this hereafter you must furnish your own wagon." PROVOCATION. The applicatioB of the word ' Bah ' to one of the Tribune's ar guments. REPLY. " We are quite willing that every animal should express its emotions in the language natural to it" 280 EDITORIAL REPARTEES. PROVOCATION. Conservatism in general. REBUKE. " The stubborn conservative is like a horse on board a ferry-boat. The horse may back, but the boat moves on, and the animal with it." PROVOCATION. A correspondent, to illustrate his position, that slave-owners have a right to move with their slaves into new territories, compared those territories to a village common, upon which every viilagei has an equal right to let his animals graze. REPLY. " No, sir. A man may choose to pasture his geese upon the common, which would spoil the pasture for cows and horses. The other villagers would bo right in keeping out the geese, even by violence." And thus the Tribune warred, and warring, prospered. Repeat ed supplements, ever-increasing circulation, the frequent omission of advertisements, all testified that a man may be independent in the expression of the most unpopular opinions, and yet not be 4 starved into silence. 7 One more glance at the three volumes from which most of the above passages are taken, and we accompany our hero to new scenes. In the Fifty-four-forty-or-Fight controversy, the Tribune of course took the side of peace and moderation. Its obituary of General Jackson in 1845, being not wholly eulogistic, called forth angry comment from the democratic press. In the same year, it gave to the advocates respectively of phonography, the phonetic system, and the magnetic telegraph, an ample hearing, and occa sional encouragement. In 1846, its Reporters were excluded from the gallery of the House of Representatives, because a correspond ent stated, jocularly, that Mr. Sawyer, of Ohio, lunched in the House on sausages. The weak member has since been styled Sau sage Sawyer a name which he will put off only with his mortal coil. Throughout the Mexican war, the Tribune gave all due honor to the gallantry of the soldiers who fought its battles, on one occa sion defending Gen. Pierce from the charge of cowardice and boast ing. In 1847, the editor made the tour of the great lake country, WAGER WITH THE HERALD. 281 going to the uttermost parts of Lake Superior, and writing a series of letters which revealed the charms and the capabilities of that region. In the same year it gave a complete exposition of the so- called ' Revelations' of Mr. Andrew Jackson Davis, but without ex pressing any opinion as to their supernatural origin. War followed, of course. To Mr. Whitney's Pacific Railroad scheme it assigned sufficient space. Agassiz' lectures were admirably reported, with from ten to twenty woodcuts in the report of each lecture. Gen. Taylor's nomination to the presidency it descried in the distance, and opposed vehemently. The last event of the seventh volume was the dispute with the Herald on the subject of the comparative circulation of the two papers. The Tribune challenged the Herald to an investigation by an impartial committee, whose report each paper should publish, and the losing party to give a hundred dollars to each of the two orphan asylums of the city. The Herald accepted. The report of the committee was as follows : " The undersigned having been designated by the publishers of the New York Herald and New York Tribune, respectively, to examine jointly and re port for publication the actual circulation of these two journals, have made the scrutiny required, and now report, that the average circulation of the two papers during the four weeks preceding the agreement which originated this investigation, was as follows : New York Herald. Average Daily circulation 16,71 1 " Weekly " 11,455 " Presidential " 780 Total 28,946 JVczo York Tribune. Average Daily circulation 1 1,455 1 Weekly " 15,780 ' Semi- Weekly 960 Total 28,195 " The quantity of paper used by each establishment, during the four weeks above specified, was as follows : By the New York Herald, 975 reams for the Daily ; 95i reams for the Weekly, and 5 reams for the Presidential. By the New York Tribune, 573 reams for the Daily ; 13H reams for the Weekly, and 16 reams for the Semi- Weekly. " We therefore decide that the Herald has the larger average circulation. "JAMES G. WILSON, "DANIEL H. MEGJE." The Tribune paid the money, but protested that the ' Presidential Herald,' and, above all, the Sunday Herald, ought to have been ex- eluded from the comparison. CHAPTER XXII. 1848! Revolutions in Europe The Tribune exults The Slievegammon letters Taylor and Fillmore Course of the Tribune Horace Greeley at Vauxhall Garden Hii election to Congress. THE Year of Hope ! You have not forgotten, O reader, the thrill, the tumult, the ecstasy of joy with which, on the morning of March 28th, 1848, you read in the morning papers these electric and transporting capitals. Regale your eyes with them once more : FIFTEEN DAYS LATER FROM EUROPE. ARRIVAL OF THE CAMBRIA, HIGHLY IMPORTANT NEWS! ABDICATION OF LOUIS PHILIPPE! A REPUBLIC PROCLAIMED. THE ROYAL FAMILY HAVE LEFT PARIS, ASSAULT OJV THE PALAIS ROYAL. GBEAT LOSS OF LIFE. COMMUNICATION WITH THE INTERIOR CUT OFF. RESIGNATION OF MINISTERS. REVOLT IN AMIENS.-PARIS IN ALARM. What history is condensed in these few words ? Why has not that history been faithfully and minutely recorded, as a warning and a guide to the men of future revolutions ? Why has no one deduced from the events of the last eighty years a science of Rev olution, laid down the principles upon which success is possible, probable, certain? The attempt, and not the deed confounded Eu- THE SLIEVEGAMMON LETTERS. 283 rope, and condemned her to more years of festering stagnation. " As I looked out of the window of my hotel, in Boulogne," says a recent traveler, " it seemed to me that all the men were soldiers, and that women did all the work." How pitiful ! How shameful ! A million of men under arms ! The army, the elite of the nation I One man of every ten to keep the- other nine in order ! O ! in finite and dastardly imbecility ! I need not say that the Tribune plunged into the European con tests headlong. It chronicled every popular triumph with exulta tion unbounded. One of the editors of the paper, Mr. Charles A. Dana, went to Europe to procure the most authentic and direct in formation of events as they transpired, and his letters over the well-known initials, ' 0. A. D.,' were a conspicuous and valuable feature of the year. Mr. Greeley wrote incessantly on the subject, blending advice with exhortation, jubilation with warning. In be half of Ireland, his sympathies were most strongly aroused, and he accepted a place in the " Directory of the Friends of Ireland," to the funds of which he contributed liberally. It was in August of this year, that the famous " Slievegammon " letters were published. As frequent allusions to this amusing affair are still made in the papers, it may as well be explained here. The country was on the tiptoe of expectation for important news of the Irish rebellion. The steamer arrived. Among the despatches of the Tribune were three letters from Dublin, giving news not con tained in the newspapers. The Tribune " without vouching for the accuracy of the statements," made haste to publish the letters, with due glorification. This is one of them : "DUBLIN, Aug. 3, 1848. " No newspaper here dare tell the truth concerning the battle of Sliere- namon, but from all we can learn, the people have had a great victory. Gen. Macdonald, the commander of the British forces, is killed, and six thousand troops are killed and wounded. The road for three miles is covered with the dead. We also have the inspiring intelligence that Kilkenny and Limerick have been taken by the people. The people of Dublin have gone in thousands to assist in the country. Mr. John B. Dillon was wounded in both legs. Mr. Meagher was also wounded in both arms. It is generally expected that Dub' Un will rise and attack the jails on Sunday night, (Aug. 6.) " All the people coming in on the Railroad are cautioned and commanded 284 TUB YEAR OF HOPE. not to tell the news. When the cars arrive, thousands of the Dublin people are waiting for the intelligence. The police drive away those who are seen asking questions. Why all this care of the government to prevent the spread of intelligence, unless it be that something has happened which they want kept as a secret 1 If they had obtained a victory they would be very apt to let us know it. " We are informed that the 3d Bluffs (a regiment of Infantry) turned and fought with the people. The 31st regiment, at Athlone, have also declared for the people, and two regiments have been sent to disarm them. " The mountain of Slievenamon is almost inaccessible. There is but one approach to it. It is said to be well supplied with provisions. It was a glo rious place for our noble Smith O'Brien to select. It is said he has sixty thousand men around him, with a considerable supply of arms, ammunition, and cannon. In '98, the rebels could not be taken from Slievenamon until they chose to come out themselves. " A lady who came to town yesterday, and who had passed the scene of bat tle, said that for three miles the stench arising from the dead men and horses was almost suffocating. " Wexford was quite peaceable till recently but the government in its mad- ne&s proclaimed it, and now it is in arms to assist the cause. Now that we are fairly and spiritedly at it, are we not worthy of help ? What are you doing for us ? People of America, Ireland stretches her hand to you for assistance. Do not let us be disappointed. B." For a day or two, the Irish and the friends of Ireland exulted ; but when the truth became known, their note was sadly changed, and the Tribune was widely accused of having originated a hoax. Whereas, it was only too innocent ! The most remarkable feature of the affair was, that the letters were written in good faith. The mind of Dublin was in a delirium of excitement, rumors of the wildest description were readily be lieved, and the writer of the Slievegammon letters was as completely deceived as any of his readers. It need only be added, that Hor ace Greeley never saw the letters till he saw them in print in the columns of the Tribune ; when they appeared, he was touring in the uttermost parts of Lake Superior. This was the year, too, of the Taylor and Fillmore ' campaign ;' from which, however, the Tribune held obstinately aloof till late in the summer. Mr. Greeley had opposed the nomination of Gen. Taylor from the dny it began to be agitated. He opposed it at the nominating convention in Philadelphia, and used all his influ- THE SLIEVEGAMMON LEfTERS. 285 ence to secure the nomination of Henry Glay, As soon as the final ballot decided the contest in favor of Taylor, he rushed from the hall in disgust, and, on his return to New York, could not sufficient ly overcome his ; repugnance td the ticket, to print it, as the' custom then was, at the head of his editorial columns. He ceased to oppose the election of Gen, Taylor, but would do nothing to promote it. The list of .candidates does not appear, in the usual place in the Tri bune, as the regular ' Whig nominations,' till the twenty -ninth of September, and even then, : our editor consented to its appearance with great reluqtance. Two days before, a whig meeting had been held at Vauxhall Garden, which Mr. Greeley chanced to attend. He was seen by the crowd, and after many, and very vociferous calls, he made a short address, to the following effect : " I trust, fellow-citizens, I shall never be afraid nor ashamed to meet a Whig assemblage and express my sentiments on the political questions of the day. And although I have had no intimation till now that my presence here was expected or desired, I am the more ready to answer your call since I have heard intimations, even from this stand, that there was some mystery in my course to be cleared up some astounding revelation with regard to it to be expected. And our eloquent friend from Kentucky even volunteered, in hia remarks, to see me personally and get me right. If there be indeed any mystery in the premises, I will do my best to dispel it. But I have, in truth, nothing to reveal. I stated in announcing Gen. Taylor's nomination, the day after it was made, that I would support if I saw no other way to defeat the election of Lewis Cass. That pledge I have ever regarded. I shall faithfully redeem it. And, since there is now no chance remaining that any other than Gen. Taylor or Gen. Cass can be elected, I shall henceforth support the ticket nominated at Philadelphia, and do what I can for its election. "But I have not changed my opinion of the nomination of Gen. Taylor. I believe it was unwise and unjust. For Gen. Taylor, personally, I have ever spoken with respect ; but I believe a candidate could and should have been chosen mora deserving, more capable, more popular. I cannot pretend to sup port him with enthusiasm, for I do not feel any. " Yet while I frankly avow that I would do little merely to make Gen. Tay lor President, I cannot forget that others stand or fall with him, and that among them are Fillmore and Fish anu Patterson, with whom I have battled for the Whig cause ever since T was entitled to vote, and to whom I cannot now be unfaithful. I cannot forget that if Gen. Taylor be elected we shall in all probability have a Whig Congress^ if Gen. Cass is elected, a Loco-Foco Congress. Who can isk me to throw away all these because of my objection! to Gen. Taylor? 286 THE YEAR OF HOPE. "And then the question of Free Soil, what shall be the fate of that? 1 presume there are here some Free Soil men ['Yes! Yes! all Free Soil !']--! mean those to whom the question of extending or restricting Slavery out weighs all other considerations. I ask these what hope they have of keeping Slavery out of California and New-Mexico with Gen. Cass President, and a Loco-Foco Congress 1 I have none. And I appeal to every Free Soil Whig to ask himself this question ' How would South Carolina and Texas wish you to vote ?' Can you doubt that your bitter adversaries would rejoice to hear that you had resolved to break off from the Whig party and permit Gen Casa to be chosen President, with an obedient Congress ? I cannot doubt it. And I cannot believe that a wise or worthy course, which my bitterest adversaries would gladly work out for me. " Of Gen. Taylor's soundness on this question, I feel no assurance, and can give none. But I believe him clearly pledged by his letters to leave legisla tion to Congress, and not attempt to control by his veto the policy of the coun try. I believe a Whig Congress will not consent to extend Slavery, and that a Whig President will not go to war with Congress and the general spirit of his party. So believing, I shall support the Whig nominations with a view to the triumph of Free Soil, trusting that the day is not distant when an amend ment of the Federal Constitution will give the appointment of Postmasters and other local officers to the People, and strip the President of the enormous and anti- republican patronage which now causes the whole Political action of the country to hinge upon its Presidential Elections. Such are my views ; such will be my course. I trust it will no longer be pretended that there ia any mystery about them." This speech was received with particular demonstrations of ap proval. It was felt that a serious obstacle to Gen. Taylor's success was removed, and that now the whig party would march on in an unbroken phalanx to certain victory. The day which secured its triumph elected Horace Greeley to a jeat in the House of Representatives, which the death of a member had made vacant. He was elected for one session only, and that, the short one of three months. How he came to be nominated has been explained by himself in a paragraph on the corruptive machin ery of our primary elections: "An editor of the Tribune was once nominated through that machinery. So he was to serve ninety days in Congress and he does. n't feel a bit proud of it. But let it be considered that the Convention was not chosen to nominate him, and did not (we presume) think of doing any such thing, HIS ELECTION TO CONGRESS. 287 until it bad unanimously nominated another, who unexpectedly de clined, and then one of us was pitched upon to supply his place. We don't know whether the Primaries were as corrupt then as now or not ; our impression is that they have been growing steadily worse and worse but no matter let us have them reformed." His nomination introduced great spirit into the contest, and he was voted for with enthusiasm, particularly by two classes, work ing-men and thinking-men. His majority over his opponent was 3,177, the whole number of votes being 5,985. His majority con siderably exceeded that of Gen. Taylor in the same wards. At the same election Mr. Brooks, of the Express, was elected to a seat in the House, and his * Card' of thanksgiving to those who had voted for him, elicited or suggested the following from Mr. Greeley : " TO THE ELECTORS OF THE VITH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT. " The undersigned, late a candidate for Congress, respectfully returns his thanks first, to his political opponents for the uniform kindness and considera tion with which he was treated by them throughout the canvass, and the un solicited suffrages with which he was honored by many of them ; secondly, to the great mass of his political brethren, for the ardent, enthusiastic and effect ive support which they rendered him ; and, lastly, to that small portion of the Whig electors who saw fit to withhold from him their votes, thereby nearly or quite neutralizing the support he received from the opposite party. Claiming for himself the right to vote for or against any candidate of his party as his own sense of right and duty shall dictate, he very freely accords to all others the same liberty, without offense or inquisition. " During the late canvass I have not, according to my best recollection, spoken of myself, and have not replied in any way to any sort of attack or imputation. I have in no manner sought to deprecate the objections, nor to soothe the terrors of that large and most influential class who deem my ad vocacy of Land Reform and Social Re-organization synonymous with In fidelity and systematic Robbery. To have entered upon explanations or vin dications of my views on these subjects in the crisis of a great National struggle, which taxed every energy, and demanded every thought, comported neither with my leisure nor my inclination. <; Neither have I seen fit at any time to justify nor allude to my participa tion in the efforts made here last summer to aid the people of Ireland in their anticipated struggle for Liberty and Independence. I shall not do so now. What I did then, in behalf of the Irish millions, I stand ready to do again. 288 THREE MONTHS IN CONGRESS. so far as my means win permit, when a similar opportunity, with a like pros pect of success, is presented and not for them only, but for any equally op pressed and suffering people on the face of the earth. If any ' extortion and plunder' were contrived and perpetrated, in the meetings for Ireland at Vauxhall last season, I am wholly unconscious of it, though I ought to bo as well informed as to the alleged ' extortion and plunder' as most others, whether my information were obtained in the character of conspirator or that of vic tim. I feel impelled, however, by the expressions employed in Mr. Brooks's card, to state that I have found nothing like an inclination to ' extortion and plunder' in the councils of the leading friends of Ireland in this city, and no thing like a suspicion of such baseness among the thousands who sustained and cheered them in their efforts. All the suspicions and imputations to which those have been subjected, who freely gave their money and their exer tions in aid of the generous though ineffectual effort for Ireland's liberation, have originated with those who never gave that cause a prayer or a shilling, and have not yet traveled beyond them. " Respectfully, " HORACE GREELEY. "New York, Nov. 8, 1848." CHAPTER XXIII. THREE MONTHS IN CONGRESS. his objects as a Member of Congress His first acts The Chaplain hypocrisy Tin Land Reform Bill Distributing the Documents Offers a novel Resolution The Mileage Expose Congressional delays Explosion in the House Mr. Turner's ora tionMr. Greeley defends himself The Walker Tariff Congress in a pet Speech at the Printers' Festival The House in good humor Traveling dead-head Per sonal explanations A dry haul The amendment game Congressional dignity- Battle of the books The Recruiting System The last night of the Session The usual gratuity' The Inauguration Ball Farewell to his constituents. JN the composition of this work, I have, as a rule, abstained from the impertinence of panegyric, and most of the few sentences of an applausive nature which escaped my pen were promptly erased on the first perusal of the passages which they disfigured. Of a good action, the simplest narrative is the best panegyric ; of a bad action, the best justification is the whole truth about it. Therefore, HIS OBJECTS AS A MEMBER OF CONGRESS. thougn Horace Greeley's career in Congress is tliat part of his II To which I regard with unmingled admiration, and though tne conduct of his enemies during that period fills me with inexpressible disgust, I shall present here little more than a catalogue of his acts and en deavors while he held a place in the National bear-garden. He seems to have kept two objects in view, during those three turbulent and exciting months : 1, to do his duty as a Representative of the People ; 2, to let the people know exactly and fully what manner of place the House of Representatives is, by what methods their business is kept from being done, and under what pretexts their money is plundered. The first of these objects kept him con stantly in his place on the floor of the House. The second he ac complished by daily letters to the Tribune, written, not at his desk in the House, but in his room before and after each day's hubbub. It will be convenient to arrange this chapter in the form of a jour nal. Dec. 4th. This was Monday, the first day of the session. Horace Greeley * took the oaths and his seat. 1 Dec. 5th. He gave notice of his intention to bring in a bill to discourage speculation in the public lands, and establish homesteads upon the same. Dec. 6th. He wrote a letter to the Tribune, in which he gave his first impressions of the House, and used some plain English. He spoke strongly upon the dishonesty of members' drawing pay and yet not giving attendance at the early sessions, though the House had a hundred bills ready for conclusive action, and every day lost at the outset insures the defeat of ten bills at the close. As a specimen of plain English take this : " On the third day, the Senate did not even succeed in forming a quorum , out of fifty-seven or eight members, who are all sure to.be in for their pay and mileage, only twenty-nine appeared in their seats ; and the annual hy pocrisy of electing a chaplain had to go over and waste another day. If either House had a chaplain who dare preach to its members what they ought to hear of their faithlessness, their neglect of duty, their iniquitous waste of time, and robbery of the public by taking from the treasury money which they have not even attempted to earn then there would be some sense in the chaplain business : bt any ill-bred Nathan or Elijah who should undertake such a job 13 THREE MONTHS IN CONGRESS. would be kicked -out in short order. So the chaplaincy remains a thing cf grimace and mummery, nicely calculated to help some flockless and complai jant shepherd to a few hundred dollars, and impose on devout simpletons aa exalted notion of the piety of Congress. Should not the truth be spoken ? ******** " But in truth the great sorrow is, that so many of the Members of Con gress, as of men in high station elsewhere, are merely dexterous jugglers, or the tools of dexterous jugglers, with the cup and balls of politics, shuffled into responsible places as a reward for past compliances, or in the hope of being there made useful to the inventors and patentees of their intellectual and moral greatness. To such men, the idea of anybody's coming to Congress for anything else than the distinction and the plunder, unless it be in the hope of intriguing their way up to some still lazier and more lucrative post, is so irre- eistibly comic such an exhibition of jolly greenness, that they cannot contem plate it without danger of explosion." Dec. TiSlTi. Mr. Greeley introduced the Land Reform bill, of which he had given notice. It provided: 1. That any citizen, and any alien who had declared his intention of becoming a citizen, may file a pre-emption claim to 160 acres of Public Land, settle upon it, improve it, and have the privilege of buying it at any time within seven years of filing the claim, at the Government price of $1 25 per acre: provided, that he is not the owner or claimant of any other real estate. 2. That the Land office where a claim is filed, shall issue a War rant of Pre-emption, securing the claimant in seven years' possess ion. 8. That, after five years' occupancy, a warrant-holder who makes oath of his intention to reside on and cultivate his land for life shall become the owner of any forty acres of his claim which he may select; the head of a family eighty acres. 4. That the price of public lands, when not sold to actual settlers, shall be five dollars per acre. 5. T hat false affidavits, made to procure land under the provisions of this bill, shall be punished by three years' hard labor in a State prison, by a fine not exceeding $1.000, arid by the loss of the land fraudulently obtained. Dec. l&tTi. The following notice appeared in the Tribune: " Ir Deference to many requests for copies of the President's Message and OFFERS A NOVEL RESOLUTION. 201 accompanying Documents, I desire to state that such Message and Documents are expected to cover twelve to fourteen hundred printed octavo pages, and to include three maps, the engraving of which will probably delay the publi cation for two or three weeks yet. I shall distribute my share of them as soon as possible, and make them go as far as they will ; but I cannot satisfy half the demands upon me. As each Senator will have nearly two hundred copies, while Representatives have but about sixty each, applications to Senators, especially from the smaller States, are obviously the most promising." Dec. I8tk. Mr. Greeley offered the following resolution in the House : " Resolved, That the Secretary of the Navy be requested to inquire into and report upon the expediency and feasibility of temporarily employing the whole or a portion of our national vessels, now on the Pacific station, in the transportation, at moderate rates, of American citizens and their effects from Panama and the Mexican ports on the Pacific to San Francisco in California." This was the year of the gold fever. The fate of the above reso lution may be given in its proposer's own words "Monday," he wrote, "was expressly a resolution day; and (the order commencing at Ohio) it was about 2 o'clock before New York was called, and I had a chance to offer the foregoing. It was received, but could not be acted on except by unanimous consent (which was refused) until it shall have laid over one day when of course it will never be reached again. When the States had been called through, I rose and asked the House to consider the above as modified so as to have the inquiry made by its own Naval Commit tee instead of the Secretary of the Navy thus bringing its immediate consid eration within the rules. No use two or three on the other side sang out ' Object,' * Object,' and the resolution went over as all resolutions which any member indicates a purpose to debate must do. So the resolution cannot bo reached again this Session." Dec. 19 th. Mr. Greeley made what the reporters styled 'a plain and forcible speech, 1 on the tariff, in which he animadverted upon a passage of the Message, wherein the President l*ad alluded to manufacturers as an ' aristocratic class, and one that claimed exclu sive privileges.' Mr. Greeley walked into the President. Dec. 22day the pent up rage of Congress at the Mileage THREE MONTHS IN CONGRESS. Expose, which had been fermenting for three days, burst forth ; and the gentleman who knocked out the bung, so to speak, was no other than Mr. Sawyer, of Ohio, Mr. Sausage Sawyer of the Tribune. Mr. Sawyer was l down' in the Expose for an excess of $281 60, and he rose to a ' question of privilege.' A long and angry de bate ensued, first upon the question whether the Expose could bo debated at all ; and secondly, if it could, what should be done about it. It was decided, after much struggle and turmoil, that it was a proper subject of discussion, and Mr. Turner, of Illinois, whose excess amounted to the interesting sum of $998 40, moved a series of resolutions, of which the following was the most important : " Resolved, That a publication made in the New York Tribune on the day of December, 1848, in which the mileage of members is set forth and commented on, be referred to a Committee, with instructions to inquire into and report whether said publication does not amount, in substance, to an allegation of fraud against most of the members of this House in this matter of their mileage ; and if, in the judgment of the Committee, it does amount to an allegation of fraud, then to inquire into it, and report whether that allega tion is true or false." The speech by which Mr. Turner introduced his resolutions was not conceived in the most amiable spirit, nor delivered with that 'ofty composure which, it is supposed, should characterize the elo cution of a legislator. These sentences from it will suffice for a specimen : " He now wished to call the attention of the House particularly to these charges made by the editor of the New York Tribune, most, if not all, of which charges he intended to show were absolutely false ; and that the individual who made them had either been actuated by the low, groveling, base, and malignant desire to represent the Congress of the nation in a false and un enviable light before the country and the world, or that he had been actuated by motives still more base by the desire of acquiring an ephemeral notoriety, by blazoning forth to the world what the writer attempted to show was fraud. The whole article abounded in gross errors and willfully false statements, and was evidently prompted by motives as base, unprincipled and corrupt as ever actuated an individual in wielding his pen for the public press. ******** " Perhaps the gentleman (he begged pardon), or rather the individual, per haps the thing, that penned that article was not aware that his (Mr. T.'s) por tion of the country was not cut up by railroads and traveled by stage-coaches EXPLOSION IN THE HOUSE. 205 tend other direct means of public conveyance, like the omnibuses in the City ot New York, between all points ; they had no other channel of communication except the mighty lakes or the rivers of the West ; he could not get here in any other way. The law on the subject of Mileage authorized the members to charge upon the most direct usually-traveled route. Now, he ventured the assertion that there was not an individual in his District who ever camo to this city, or to any of the North -eastern cities, who did not come by the way of the lakes or the rivers. ********* " He did not know but he was engaged in a very small business. A gentle man near him suggested that the writer of this article would not be believed anyhow ; that, therefore, it was no slander. But his constituents, living two or three thousand miles distant, might not be aware of the facts, and therefore it was that he had deemed it necessary to repel the slanderous charges and imputations of fraud, so far as they concerned him." Other honorable gentlemen followed, and discoursed eloquent dis cord in a similar strain. Mr. Greeley sat with unruffled composure and heard himself vilified for some hours without attempting to reply. At length, in a pause of the storm, he arose and gave no tice, that when the resolutions were disposed of he should rise to a privileged question. The following sprightly conversation ensued: " Mr. Thompson, of Indiana, moved that the resolutions be laid on the table. " The Yeas and Nays were asked and ordered ; and, being taken, were Yeas 28, Nays 128. " And the question recurring on the demand for the previous question : " Mr. Fries inquired of the Speaker whether the question was susceptible of division. "The Speaker said that the question could be taken separately on each res olution. "A number of members here requested Mr. Evans to withdraw the demand for the previous question (. t. permit Mr. Greeley to speak). " Mr. Evans declined to withdraw the motion, and desired to state the rea son why he did so. The reason was, that the gentleman from New York [Mr. Greeley 1 had spoken to an audience to which the members of this House could not speak. If the gentleman wished to assail any member of this House, lefc him do so here. " The Speaker interposed, and was imperfectly heard, but was understood to say that it was out of order to refer personally to gentlemen on this floor. " Mr. Evans said he would refer to the editor of the Tribune, and he insist ed that the gentleman was not entitled to reply. [" Loud cries from all parts of the House, ' Let him speak,' with mingling dissent.] 296 TETREE MONTHS IN CONGRESS. " The question was then taken on the demand for the previous question. " But the House refused to second it. " Mr. Greeley, after alluding to the comments that had been made upon the article in the Tribune relative to the subject of Mileage, and the abuse which had notoriously been practiced relating to it, said he had heard no gentleman quote one word in that article imputing an illegal charge to any member of this House, imputing anything but a legal, proper charge. The whole ground of the argument was this : Ought not the law to be changed? Ought not the mileage to be settled by the nearest route, instead of what was called the usually-traveled route, which authorized a gentleman coming from the center of Ohio to go around by Sandusky, Albany, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, and to charge mileage upon that route. He did not object to any gontleman's taking that course if he saw fit; but was that the route upon which the mileage ought to be computed 1 " Mr. Turner interposed, and inquired if the gentleman wrote that article! " Mr. Greeley replied that the introduction to the article on mileage was writ ten oy himself ; the transcript from the books of this House and from the ac counts of the Senate was made by a reporter, at his direction. That reporter, who was formerly a clerk in the Post-Office Department, [Mr. Douglass How ard,] had taken the latest book in the Department, which contained the dis tances of the several post-offices in the country from Washington; and from that book he had got honestly, he knew, though it might not have been en- t'rely accurate in an instance or two the official list of the distances of the several post-offices from this city. In every case, the post-office of the inem- bor, whether of the Senate or the House, had been looked out, his distance as charged set down, then the post-office book referred to, and the actual, honest distance by the shortest route set down opposite, and then the computation made how much the charge was an excess, not of legal mileage, but of what would be legal, if the mileage was computed by the nearest mail route. " Mr. King, of Georgia, desired, at this point of the gentleman's remarks, to say a word; the gentleman said that the members charged; now, he (Mr. K.) desired to say, with reference to himself, that from the first, he had always lefused to give any information to the Committee on Mileage with respect tc the mileage to which he would be entitled. He had told them it was theii special duty to settle the matter ; that he would have nothing to do with it. lie, therefore, had charged nothing. " Mr. Greeley (continuing) said he thought all this showed the necessity of a new rule on the subject, for here they saw members shirking off, shrinking from the responsibility, and throwing it from one place to another. Nobody made up the account, but somehow an excess of $60,000 or $70.000 was charged in the accounts for mileage, and was paid from the Treasury. "Mr. King interrupted, and asked if he meant to charge him (Mr. K ) with shirking 1 Was that the gentleman's remark 1 MR. GREELEY DEFENDS HIMSELF. 297 ' Mr. Greeley replied, that he only said that by some means or other, this excess of mileage was charged, and was paid by the Treasury. This money ought to be saved. The same rule ought to be applied to members of Con gress that was applied to other persons. " Mr. King desired to ask the gentleman from New York if he had correctly understood his language, for he had heard him indistinctly 7 He (Mr. K.) had made the positive statement that he had never had anything to do with reference to the charge of his mileage, and he had understood the gentleman from New York to speak of shirking from responsibility. He desired to know if the gentleman applied that term to him 1 " Mr. Greeley said he had applied it to no member. " Mr. King asked, why make use of this term, then ? " Mr. Greeley's reply to this interrogatory was lost in lie confusion which prevailed in consequence of members leaving their seats and coming forward to the area in the center. " The Speaker called the House to order, and requested gentlemen to take their seats. " Mr. Greeley proceeded. There was no intimation in the article that any member had made out his own account, but somehow or other the accounts had been so made up as to make a total excess of some $60,000 or $70,000, charge able upon the Treasury. The general facts had been stated, to show that the law ought to be different, and there were several cases cited to show how the law worked badly ; for instance, from one district in Ohio, the member for merly charged for four hundred miles, when he came on his own horse all the way ; but now the member from the same district received mileage for some eight or nine hundred miles. Now, ought that to be so? The whole argu ment turned on this ; now, the distances were traveled much easier than for merly, and yet more, in many cases much more, mileage was charged. The gentleman from Ohio who commenced this discussion, had made the point that there was some defect, some miscalculation in the estimate of distances. He could not help it ; they had taken the post-office books, and relied on them, and if any member of the press had picked out a few members of this House, and held up their charges for mileage, it would have been considered invidious. " Mr. Turner called the attention of the member from New York to the fact that the Postmaster General himself had thrown aside that Post Office book, in consequence of its incorrectness. He asked the gentleman if he did not know that fact 7 " Mr. Greeley replied that the article itself stated that the Department did not charge mileage upon that book. Every possible excuse and mitigation had been given in the article ; but he appealed to the House they were the masters of the law why would they not change it, and make it more just and equal 1 " Mr. Sawyer wished to be allowed to ask the gentleman from New York a 13* 298 THREE MONTHS IN CONGRESS. question. His complaint was that the article had done him injustice, by set ting him down as some 300 miles nearer the seat of Government than his col league [Mr. Schenck], although his colleague had stated before the House that he [Mr. Sawyer] resided some 60 or 70 miles further. " Now, he wanted to know why the gentleman had made this calculation against him, and in favor of his colleague ? " Mr. Greeley replied that he begged to assure the gentleman from Ohio that he did not think he had ever been in his thoughts from the day he had come here until the present day ; but he had taken the figures from the Post Office book, as transcribed by a former Clerk in the Post Office Depart ment." After much more sparring of the same description, the resolu tions were adopted, the Committee -was appointed, the House ad journed, and Mr. Greeley went home and wrote a somewhat face tious account of the day's proceedings. The most remarkable sen tence in that letter was this : " It was but yesterday tJiat a Senator said to me that though he was utterly opposed to any reduction of Mileage, yet if the House did not stop passing Retrenchment bills for Buncombe, and then running to the Senate and beg ging Senators to stop them there, he, for one, would vote to put through the next Mileage Reduction bill that came to the Senate, just to punish Members for their hypocrisy." Jan. 2nd. Mr. Greeley offered a resolution calling on the Secre tary of the Treasury to communicate to the House the advantages resulting from the imposition by the Tariff of 1846 of duties of 5 and 10 per cent, on certain manufactures of wool and hemp, more than was imposed on the raw material, and if they were not advan tageous, then to state what action was required. Jan. r 6ilficially more than thirty times called on the defenders of the Tariff of 1846 CONGRESS IN A PET. 299 to explain these things, but had never been able to get one, and now he wanted fco go to headquarters. " Mr. Wentworth was not satified with this at all, and asked why the gentle man from New York did not call on him. He was ready to give him any in formation he had. " Mr. Grceley That call ig not in order. [A laugh.] " Mr. W. But he objected to the passage of a resolution imputing that the Secretary of the Treasury bad dictated a Tariff bill to Uie House. "Mr. Washington Hunt Does not the gentleman from Illinois know that the Committee of Ways and Means called upon the Secretary for a Tariff, and that he prepared and transmitted this Tariff to them 1 " Mr. Wentworth I do not know anything about it. " Mr. Hunt Well, the gentleman's ignorance is remarkable, for it was very generally known. " Mr. Wentworth renewed his motion to lay the resolution on the table, on which the Ayes and Noes were demanded, and resulted Ayes 86, Noes 87." Jan. 4:th. Congress, to-day, showed its spite at the mileage ex pose in a truly extraordinary manner. At the last session of this very Congress the mileage of the Messengers appointed by the Elec toral Colleges to bear their respective votes for President and Vice President to Washington, had been reduced to twelve and a half cents per mile each way. But now it was perceived by members that either the mileage of the Messengers must be restored or their own reduced. " Accordingly," wrote Mr. Greeley in one of his let ters, " a joint resolution was promptly submitted to the Senate, doubling the mileage of Messengers, and it went through that ex alted body very quickly and easily. I had not noticed that it had been definitively acted on at all until it made its appearance in the House to-day, and was driven through with indecent rapidity well befitting its character. No Committee was allowed to examine it, no opportunity was afforded to discuss it, but by whip and spur, Previous Question and brute force of numbers, it was rushed through the necessary stages, and sent to the President for his sanction." The injustice of this impudent measure is apparent from the fact, that on the reduced scale of compensation, messengers received from ten to twenty dollars a day during the period of their necessary ab sence from home. "The messenger from Maine, for instance, brings the vote of his State five hundred and ninety -five miles, and need not be more than eight days absent from his business, at an expense 300 THREE MONTHS IN CONGRESS. certainly not exceeding $60 in all. The reduced compensation was $148 75, paying his expenses and giving him $11 per day over." Jan. 7th. The Printers' Festival was held this evening at Wash ington, and Mr. Greeley attended it, and made a speech. His re marks were designed to show, that " the interests of tradesmen generally, but especially of the printing and publishing trade, includ ing authors and editors, were intimately involved in the establish ment and maintenance of high rates of compensation for labor in all departments of industry. It is of vital interest to us all that the entire community shall be buyers of books and subscribers to jour nals, which they cannot be unless their earnings are sufficient to supply generously their physical wants and leave some surplus for intellectual aliment. We ought, therefore, as a class, from regard to our own interests, if from no higher motive, to combine to keep up higher rates of compensation in our own business, and to favor every movement in behalf of such rates in other callings."' He concluded by offering a sentiment : " The Lightning of Intelligence Now crashing ancient tyrannies and top pling down thrones May it swiftly irradiate the world." Jan. 9th. The second debate on the subject of Mileage occurred to-day. It arose thus : The following item being under consideration, viz. : " For Com pensation and Mileage of Senators, Members of the House of Rep resentatives, and Delegates, $768,200," Mr. Embree moved to amend it by adding thereto the following : " Provided, That the Mileage of Members of both Houses of Congress shall hereafter be estimated and charged upon the shortest mail-route from their places of resi dence, respectively, to the city of Washington." The debate which ensued was long and animated, but wholly different in tone and manner from that of the previous week. Strange to relate, the Expose found, on this occasion, stanch de fenders, and the House was in excellent humor. The reader, it 1 he feels curious to know the secret of this happy change, may find it, I think, in that part of a speech delivered in the course of the de bate, where the orator said, that " he had not seen a single news paper of the country which did not approve of the course which TRAVELLING DEAD-HEAD 301 the gentleman from New York had taken ; and he believed there was no instance where the Editor of a paper had spoken out the genuine sentiments of the people, and made any expression of dis approbation in regard to the effort of the gentleman from New York to limit this unjustifiable taxation of Milage." The debate relapsed, at length, into a merry conversation on the subject of traveling ' dead-heads.'' " Mr. Murphy said, when he came on, he left New York at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, and arrived at Philadelphia to supper ; and then entering the cat again, he slept very comfortably, and was here in the morning at 8 o'clock. He lost no time. The mileage was ninety dollars. " Mr. Root would inquire of the gentleman from New York, whether he took his passage and came on as what the agents sometimes call a ' dead head ?' [Laughter.] " Mr. Murphy replied (amid considerable merriment and laughter) that h did not know of more than one member belonging to the New York delegation to whom that application could properly attach. " Mr. Root said, although his friend from New York was tolerably expert in everything he treated of, yet he might not understand the meaning of the term he had used. He would inform him that tha term ' dead-head,' was ap plied by the steamboat gentlemen to passengers who were allowed to travel without paying their fare. [A great deal of merriment prevailed throughout the hall, upon this allusion, as it manifestly referred to the two editors, the gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Levin, and the gentleman from New York, Mr. Greeley.] But Mr. R. (continuing to speak) said he was opposed to all personalities. He never indulged in any such thing himself, and he never would favor such indulgence on the part of other gentlemen. " Mr. Levin. I want merely to say " Mr. Root. I am afraid [" The confusion of voices and merriment which followed, completely drowned the few words of pleasant explanation delivered here by JVIr. Levin.] " Mr. Greeley addressed the cfcair. " The Chairman. The gentleman from New York will suspend his remarks till the Committee shall come to order. " Order being restored " Mr. Greeley said he did not pretend to know what the editor of the Phil adelphia Sun, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Levin], had done. But if any gentleman, anxious about the matter, would inquire at the railroad offices in Philadelphia and Baltimore, he would there be informed that he (Mr. G.) never had passed over any portion of either of those roads free of charge never in the world. One of the gentlemen interested had once told him h might, but he never had. 302 THREE MONTHS IN CONGRESS. " Mr. Embree next obtained the floor, but gave way for " Mr. Haralson, who moved that the Committee rise. "Mr. Greeley appealed to the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Haralson j to withhold his motion, while he might, by the courtesy of the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. EmbreeJ, make a brief reply to the allusions* which had been made to him and his course upon this subject. He asked only for five minutes But " Mr. Haralson adhered to his motion, which was agreed to. " So the Committee rose and reported, ' No conclusion.' " Jan. IQth. The slave-trade in the District of Columbia was the subject of discussion, and the part which Mr. Greeley took in it, he thus described : " SLAVE-TRADE IN THE DISTRICT. ME. GBEELEY'S REMARKS In Defense of Mr, Gotfs Resolution, (suppressed.} [" Throughout the whole discussion of Wednesday, Mr. Greeley struggled at every opportunity for the floor, and at first was awarded it, but the speaker, on reflection, decided that it belonged to Mr. Wentworth of 111., who had made a previous motion. Had Mr. G. obtained the floor at any time, it was his in tention to have spoken substantially as follows the first paragraph being sug gested by Mr. Sawyer's speech, and of course only meditated after that speech was delivered."] Then follows the speech, which was short, eloquent, and con vincing. Jan. llth. The third debate on the mileage question. Mr. Gree ley, who ^ hud been for three days struggling for the floor," ob tained it, and spoke in defense of his course. For two highly auto biographical paragraphs of his speech, room must be found in these pages : " The gentleman saw fit to speak of my vocation as an editor, and to charge me with editing my paper from my seat on this floor. Mr. Chairman, I do not believe there is one member in this Hall who has written less in his seat this session than I have done. I have oeon too much absorbed in the (to mo) novel and exciting scenes around me to write, and have written no editorial hero. Time enough for that, Sir, before and after your daily sessions. But die gentleman either directly charged or plainly insinuated that I have neg- PERSONAL EXPLANATIONS. 303 lected my dunes as a member of this House to attend to my own private bus iness. I meet this charge with a positive and circumstantial denial. Except a brief sitting one Private Bill day, I have not been absent one hour in all, nor the half of it, from the deliberations of this House. I have never voted for an early adjournment, nor to adjourn over. My name will be found re corded on every call of the yeas and nays. And, as the gentleman insinuated a neglect of my duties as a member of a Committee (Public Lands,) I ap peal to its Chairman for proof to any that need it, that I have never been ab sent from a meeting of that Committee, nor any part of one ; and that I have rather sought than shunned labor upon it. And I am confident that, alike in my seat, and out of it, I shall do as large a share of the work devolving upon this House as the gentleman from Mississippi will deem desirable. "And now, Mr. Chairman, a word on the main question before us. I know very well I knew from the first what a low, contemptible, demagoguing business this of attempting to save public money always is. It is not a task for gentlemen it is esteemed rather disreputable even for editors. Your gentlemenly work is spending lavishing distributing taking. Savings are always such vulgar, beggarly, two-penny affairs there is a sorry and stingy look about them most repugnant to all gentlemanly instincts. And beside, they never happer. to hit the right place it is always ' Strike higher !' ' Strike lower !' To be generous with other people's money generous to self and friends especially, that is the way to bo popular and commended. Go ahead, and never care for expense ! if your debts become inconvenient, you can re pudiate, and blackguard your creditors as descended from Judas Iscariot ! Ah ! Mr. Chairman, / was not rocked in the cradle of gentility !" Jan. 14th. He wrote out another speech on a noted slave case, which at that time was attracting much attention. This effort was entitled, " My Speech on Pacheco and his Negro." It was humor ous, but it was a ' settler' ; and it is a pity there is not room for it here. Jan. 16th. The Mileage Committee made their report, exonerat ing memhers, condemning the Expose, and asking to be excused from further consideration of the subject. Jan. 17th. A running debate on Mileage many suggestions made for the alteration of the law nothing done the proposed reform substantially defeated. The following conversation occurred upon the subject of Mr. Greeley's own mileage. Mr. Greeley tells the story himself, heading his letter ' A Dry Haul. " The House having resolved itself again into a Committtee of the Whole, 304 THREE MONTHS IN CONGRESS. and taken up the Civil and Diplomatic Appropriation Bill, on which Mr. Murphj of New York had the floor, I stepped out to attend to some business, and was rather surprised to learn, on my way back to the Hall, that Mr. M. was mak ing me the subject of his remarks. As I went in, Mr. M. continued " MURPHY. As the gentleman is now in his seat, I will repeat what I have stated. I said that the gentleman who started this breeze about Mileage, by his publication in the Tribune, has himself charged and received Mileage by the usual instead of the shortest Mail Route. He charges me with taking $3 20 too much, yet I live a mile further than he, and charge but the same. " GHEELEV. The gentleman is entirely mistaken. Finding my Mileage was computed at 8184 for two hundred and thirty miles, and seeing that the short est Mail Route, by the Post-Office Book of 1842, made the distance but two hundred and twenty-five miles, I, about three weeks ago, directed the Ser- geant-at-Arms to correct his schedule and make my Mileage $180 for two hundred and twenty- five miles. I have not inquired since, but presume he has done so. So that I do not charge so much as the gentleman from Brooklyn, though, instead of living nearer, I live some two or three miles further from this city than he does, or fully two hundred and twenty-nine miles by the shortest Post Route. " RICHARDSON of Illinois. Did not the gentleman make out his own ao count at two hundred and thirty miles 1 ' GREELEY. Yes, sir, I did at first ; but, on learning that there was a shorter Post Route than that by which the Mileage from our city had been charged, I stepped at once to the Sergeant's room, informed him of the fact, and desired the proper correction. Living four miles beyond the New York Post Office, I might fairly have let the account stand as it was, but I did not.' Jan. 18th. Mr. Greeley's own suggestion with regard to Mile age appears in the Tribune : " 1. Reduce the Mileage to a generous but not extravagant allowance for the time and expense of traveling ; " 2. Reduce the ordinary or minimum pay to $5 per day, or (we prefer) $8 for each day of actual service, deducting Sundays, days of adjournment within two hours from the time of assembling, and all absences not caused by sickness ; " 3. Whenever a Member shall have served six sessions in either House, 01 both together, let his pay thenceforward be increased fifty per cent., and aftei he shall have served twelve years as aforesaid, let it be double that of an or dinary or new Member; " 4. Pay the Chairman of each Committee, and all the Members of the three most important and laborious Committees of each House, fifty per cent THE AMENDMENT GAME. 30' above the ordinary rates, and the Chairmen of the three (or more) most, re sponsible and laborious Committees of eaeh House (say Ways and Means, Ju diciary and Claims) double the ordinary rates ; the Speaker double or treble, as should be deemed just ; " 5. Limit the Long Sessions to four months, or half-pay thereafter." Jan. %Qth. Another letter appears to-day, exposing some of the expedients by which the time of Congress is wasted, and the pub lic business delayed. The bill for the appointment of Private Claims' Commissioners was before the House. If it had passed, Congress would have been relieved of one-third of its business, and the claims of individuals against the government would have had a chance of fair adjustment. But no. " Amendment was piled on amendment, half of them merely as excuses for speaking, and so were withdrawn as soon as the Chairman's hammer fell to cut off the five-minute speech in full flow. The first section was finally worried through, and the second (there are sixteen) was mouthed over for half an hour or so. At two o'clock an amendment was ready to be voted on, tellers were ordered, and behold! no quorum. The roll was called over ; members came running in from the lobbies and lounging-places ; a large quorum was found present ; the Chair man reported the fact to the Speaker, and the House relapsed into Committee again. The dull, droning business of proposing amend ments which were scarcely heeded, making five-minute speeches that were not listened to, and taking votes where not half voted, and half of those who did were ignorant of what they were voting upon, proceeded some fifteen minutes longer, when the patriotic for titude of the House gave way, and a motion that the Committee rise prevailed." The bill has not yet been passed. Just claima clamor in vain for liquidation, and doubtful ones are bullied or maneuvered through. Jan. 22d. To-day the House of ^Representatives covered itself with glory. Mr. Greeley proposed an additional section to the General Appropriation Bill, to the effect, that members should not be paid for attendance when they did not attend, unless their ab sence was caused by sickness or public business. u At this very session," said Mr. Greeley in his speech on this occasion, "members have been absent for weeks together, attending to their private 306 THREE MONTHS IN CONGRESS. business, while this Committee is almost daily broken up for want of a quorum in attendance. This is a gross wrong to their con stituents, to the country, and to those members who remain in their seats, and endeavor to urge forward the public business." "What followed is thus related by Mr. Greeley in his letter to the Tribune : " Whereupon, Hon. Henry C. Murphy, of Brooklyn, (it takes him !) rose and moved the following addition to the proposed new section : " ' And there shall also be deducted for such time from the compensation of members, who shall attend the sittings of the House, as they shall be employ ed in writing for newspapers.' " . . " No objection being made, the House, with that exquisite sense of dignity and propriety which has characterized its conduct throughout, adopted this amendment. " And then the whole section was voted down. " Mr. Greeley next, with a view of arresting the prodigal habit which has grown up here of voting a bonus of $250 to each of the sub-clerks, messen gers, pages, &c., That the Committee on the Judiciary be instructed to inquire whether there be anything in our laws or authoritative Judicial decisions which countenances the British doctrine of ' Once a subject always a subject,' and to report what action of Congress, if any, be necessary to conform the laws and decisions aforesaid, consistently and thoroughly to the American doc trine, affirming the right of every man to migrate from his native land to some other, and, in becoming a citizen of the latter, to renounce all allegi ance and responsibility to the former." Objected to. The resolution, was therefore, according to the rule, withdrawn. Feb. 26th. A proposal having been made that the New Mexico and Texas Boundary Question be referred to the Supreme Court, Mr. Greeley objected, oo the ground that the majority of the mem bers of that Court were slaveholders, Fdb. 27th. The Committee to whom had been referred Mr. Gree- ley's Land Reform Bill, asked leave to be relieved from the further consideration of the subject. Mr. Greeley demanded the yeas and nays. Refused. A motion was made to lay the bill on the table, which was carried, the yeas and nays being again refused. In the debates on the organization of the new territories, California, etc., Mr. Greeley took a spirited part. March 4th. The last night of the session had arrived. It was Saturday. The appropriation bills were not yet passed. The bill for the organization of the new territories, acquired by the Mexican war, had still to be acted upon. It was a night of struggle, tur moil, and violence, though the interests of future empires were con cerned in its deliberations. A few sentences from Mr. Greeley 's own ianutive will .give an idea of the scene: 14 314 THREE MONTHS IN CONGRESS. "The House met after recess at six the seats soon filled,'the lobbite and galleries densely crowded. ***** " Members struggled in wild tumult for the floor. ***** " A vehement yell of 'Mr. Speaker !' rose from the scores who jumped *>n the instant for the floor. ******** "Here the effect of the Previous Question was exhausted, and the wild rush of half the House for the floor the universal yell of ' Mr. Speaker !' was re newed. ******** " The House, still intensely excited, proceeded very irregularly to other business mainly because they must await the Senate's action on the Thom son substitute. ******** " At length after weary watching till five o'clock in the morning, when even garrulity had exhausted itself with talking on all manner of frivolous pretexts, and relapsed into grateful silence when profligacy had been satiated with rascally votes of the public money in gratuities to almost everybody con nected with Congress, Ac., Ac., word came that the Senate had receded alto gether from its Walker amendment and everything of the sort, agreeing to the bill as an Appropriation Bill simply, and killing the House amendment by surrendering its own. Close on its heels came the Senate's concurrence in the Mouse bill extending the Revenue Laws to California ; and a message >*s sent with both bills to rouse Mr. Polk (still President by sufferance) from his first slumbers at the Irving House (whither he had retired from the Capitol some hours before), and procure his signature to the two bills. In due time though it seemed very long now that it was broad daylight and the excitement was subsiding word was returned that the President had signed the bills and had nothing further to offer, a message having been sent to the Senate, and the House was ready to adjourn ; Mr. Winthrop made an eloquent and affecting address on relinquishing the Chair; and the House, a little before seven o'clock in the bright sunshine of this blessed Sunday morning twice blessed after a cloudy week of fog and mist, snow and rain without, and of fierce con tention and angry discord within the Capitol adjourned sine die. " The Senate, I understand, has not yet adjourned, but the latter end of it had gathered in a bundle about the Vice- President's chair, and was still pass ing extra gratuities to everybody and if the bottom is not out of the Treas ury, may be doing so yet for aught I know. Having seen enough of this, I did not go over to their chamber, but came wearily away.*' March 5th. One more glimpse ought to be given at the House 315 during that last night of the session. Mr. Greeley explains the methods, the infamous tricks, by which the ' usual' extra allowance to the employes of the House is maneuvered through. " Let me," he wrote, " explain the origin of this ' usual' iniquity. I am informed that it commenced at the close of one of the earlier of the Long Sessions now unhappily almost biennial. It was then urged, with some plau sibility, that a number (perhaps half) of the sub-officers and employ6s of the House were paid a fixed sum for the session that, having now been obliged to labor an unusually long term, they were justly entitled to additional pay. The Treasury was full the expectants were assiduous and seductive the Members were generous (it is so easy for most men to be flush with other people's money) and the resolution passed. Next session the precedent was pleaded, although the reason for it utterly failed, and the resolution slipped through again I never saw how till last night Thenceforward the thing went easier and easier, until the disease has become chronic, and only to be cured by the most determined surgery. " Late last night or rather early this morning while the House was awaiting the final action of the Senate on the Territorial collision a fresh at tempt was made to get in the ' usual extra allowance' again. Being objected to and not in order, a direct attempt was made to suspend the Rules, (I think I cannot be mistaken in my recollection,) and defeated not two-thirds rising in its favor, although the free liquor and trimmings provided by the expect ants of the bounty had for hours stood open to all comers in a convenient side- room, and a great many had already taken too much. In this dilemma the motion was revamped into one to suspend the Rules to admit a resolution to pay the Chaplain his usual compensation for the Session's service, and I was personally and urgently entreated not to resist this, and thus leave the Chap lain utterly unpaid. I did resist it, however, not believing it true that no pro vision had till this hour been made for paying the Chaplain, and suspecting some swindle lay behind it. The appeal was more successful with others, and the House suspended its Rules to admit this Chaplain-paying resolution, on' of order. The moment this was done a motion was made to amend the reso lution, by providing another allowance for somebody or other, and upon this was piled still another amendment ' Monsieur Tonson come again' -to pay ' the usual extra compensation' to the sub-Clerks, Messengers, Pages, etc., eto. As soon as this amendment was reached for consideration in fact as soon as I could get the floor to do it I raised the point of order that it could not be in order, when the rules had been suspended for a particular purpose, to let in, under cover of that suspension, an entirely different proposition, for which, by itself, it was notorious that a suspension could not be obtained. This was promptly overruled, the Ayes and Noes on the amendment refused ditto on e Resolution as amended and the whole crowded through under the Previous 316 THREE M.ONTHS IN CONGRESS. Question in less than no time. Monroe Edwards would have admired the dex terity and celerity of the performance. All that could be obtained was a vote by Tellers, and ninety-four voted in favor to twenty-two against a bare quo rum in all, a great many being then in the Senate none, I believe, at that moment in the ' extra' refectory. But had no such refectory been opened in either end of the Capitol, I believe the personal collisions which disgraced the Nation through its Representatives would not have occurred. I shall not speak further of them I would not mention them at all if they were not un happily notorious already.' ' March 6th. Mr. Greeley was one of the three thousand persons who attended the Inauguration ball, which he describes as "a sweaty, seething, sweltering jam, a crowd of duped foregatherers from all creation." " I went," he says, " to see the new President, who had not before come within my contracted range of vision, and to mark the reception accorded to him by the assembled thousands. I came to gaze on stately heads, not nimble feet, and for an hour have been content to gaze on the flitting phantasmagoria of senatorial brows and epauletted shoulders of orators and brunettes, office- seekers and beauties. I have had ' something too much of this,' and lo ! ' the hour of hours' has come the buzz of expectation subsides into a murmur of satisfaction the new President is descending the grand stairway which ter minates in the ball-room, and the human mass forms in two deep columns to receive him. Between these, General Taylor, supported on either hand, walks through the long saloon and back through other like columns, bowing and greeting with kind familiarity those on this side and on that, paying especial attention to the ladies as is fit, and .everywhere welcomed in turn with the most cordial good wishes. All wish him well in his new and arduous position, even those who struggled hardest to prevent his reaching it. " But, as at the Inauguration, there is the least possible enthusiasm. Now and then a cheer is attempted, but the result is so nearly a failure that the daring leader in the exploit is among the first to laugh at the miscarriage. There is not a bit of heart in it. " 'They don't seem to cheer with much unction,' I remarked to a Taylor original. " ' Ne-e-o, they don't cheer much,' he as faintly replied ; ' there ia a good deal of doubt as to the decorum of cheering at a social ball.' 11 True enough : the possibility of indecorum was sufficient to check the im pulse to cheer, and very few passed the barrier. The cheers ' stuck in the throat,' like Macbeth's Amen, and the proprieties of the occasion were well lared for. " But just imagine Old Hal walking down that staircase, the just inaugu- FUIEWELL TO HIS CONSTITUENTS. 31"? rated President of the United States, into the midst of three thousand of the elite of the beauty and chivalry of the Whig party, and think how the rafters would have quivered with the universal acclamation. Just think of some one stopping to consider whether it might not be indecorous to cheer on such an. occasion ! What a solitary hermit that considerer would be ! ******** " Let those who will, flatter the chief dispenser of Executive patronage, dis covering in every act and feature some resemblance to Washington I am content to wait, and watch, and hope. I burn no incense on his altar, attach no flattering epithets to his name. I turn from this imposing pageant, so rich in glitter, so poor in feeling, to think of him who should have been the central figure of this grand panorama the distant, the powerless, the unforgotten ' behind the mountains, but not setting' the eloquent champion of Liberty in both hemispheres whose voice thrilled the hearts of the uprising, the long- trampled sons of Leonidas and Xenophon whose appeals for South American independence were read to the hastily mustered squadrons of Bolivar, and nerved them to sweep from this fair continent the myrmidons of Spanish op pression. My heart is with him in his far southern abiding-place with him, the early advocate of African Emancipation; the life-long champion of a diver sified Home Industry ; of Internal Improvement ; and not less glorious in his later years as the stern reprover of the fatal spirit of conquest and aggress ion. Let the exulting thousands quaff their red wines at the revel to the vic tor of Monterey and Buena Vista, while wit points the sentiment with an epigram, and beauty crowns it with her smiles : more grateful to me the still ness of my lonely chamber, this cup of crystal water in which I honor the cherished memory with the old, familiar aspiration ' Here 's to you, Harry Clay !' " March 9th. Mr. Greeley has returned to New York. To-day he took leave of his constituents in a long letter published in the Tri bune, in which he reviewed the proceedings of the late session, characterized it as a Failure, and declined to take to himself any part of the blame thereof. These were his concluding words : " My work as your servant is done whether well or ill it remains for you to judge. Very likely I gave the wrong vote on some of the difficult and somplicated questions to which I was called to respond Ay or No with hardly a moment's warning. If so, you can detect and condemn the error ; for my name stands recorded in the divisions by Yeas and Nays on every public and all but one private bill, (which was laid on the table the moment the Bitting opened, and on which my name had just been passed as I entered the Hall.) I wish it were the usage among us to publish less of speeches and 318 THREE MONTHS IN CONGRESS. more of propositions and votes thereupon it would give the mass of the peo ple a much clearer insight into the management of their public affairs. My successor being already chosen and commissioned, I shall hardly be suspected of seeking your further kindness, and I shall be heartily rejoiced if he shall be able to combine equal zeal in your service with greater efficiency equal fearlessness with greater popularity. That I have been somewhat annoyed at times by some of the consequences of my Mileage Expose is true, but I have never wished to recall it, nor have I felt that I owed an apology to any, and I am quite confident, that if you had sent to Washington (as you doubtless might have done) a more sternly honest and fearless Rep resentative, he would have made himself more unpopular with a large por tion of the House than I did. I thank you heartily for the glimpse of public fife which your favor has afforded me, and hope to render it useful hence forth not to myself only but to the public. In ceasing to be your agent, and returning with renewed zest to my private cares and duties, I have a single additional favor to ask, not of you especially, but of all ; and I am sure my friends at least will grant it without hesitation. It is that you and they will oblige me henceforth by remembering that my name is simply "HORACE GREELEY." And thus ended Horace Greeley's three months in Congress. No man ever served his country more faithfully. No man ever received less reward. One would have supposed, that such a manly and brave endeavor to economize the public money and the public time, such singular devotion to the public interests in the face of opposi tion, obloquy, insult, would have elicited from the whole country, or at least from many parts of it, cordial expressions of approval. It did not, however. With no applauding shouts was Horace Greeley welcomed on his return from the Seat of Corruption. No enthusiastic mass-meetings of his constituents passed a series of resolutions, approving his course. He has not been named for re election. Do the people, then, generally feel that an Honest Man is out of place in the Congress of the United States ? Only from the little town of North Fairfield, Ohio, came a hearty cry of WELL DONE ! A meeting of the citizens of that place was held for the purpose of expressing their sense of his gallant and honorable conduct. He responded to their applauding resolutions in a characteristic letter. "Let me beg of you," said he, "to think little of Persons, in this connection, and much of Measures. Should any see fit to tell you that I am dishonest, or ambitious, or hollow- ASSOCIATION IN THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. 319 hearted in this matter, don't stop to contradict or confute him, but press on his attention the main question respecting the honesty of these crooked charges. It is with these the public is concerned; and not this or the t man's motives. Calling me a hypocrite or demagogue cannot make a charge of $1,664 for coming to Congress from Illinois and going back again an honest one." CHAPTER XXIV. ASSOCIATION IN THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. Accessions to the corps The course of the Tribune Horace Greeley in Ohio The Rochester knocking* The mediums at Mr. Greeley's houseJenny Lind goes to see them Her behavior Woman's Rights Convention The Tribune Association The hireling system. Bur the Tribune held on its strong, triumphant way. Circula tion, ever on the increase; advertisements, from twenty to twenty- six columns daily ; supplements, three, four, and five times a week; price increased to a shilling a week without loss of subscribers ; Europeon reputation extending; correspondence more and more able and various ; editorials more and more elaborate and telling ; new ink infused into the Tribune's swelling veins. What with the supplements and the thickness of the paper, the volumes of 1849 and 1850 are of dimensions most huge. We must look through them, notwithstanding, turning over the broad black leaves swiftly, pausing seldom, lingering never. The letter R. attached to the literary notices apprises us that early in 1849, Mr. George Ripley began to lend the Tribune the aid of his various learning and considerate pen. Bayard Taylor, re turned from viewing Europe a-foot, is now one of the Tribune corps, and this year he goes to California, and ' opens up ' the land of gold to the view of all the world, by writing a series of letters^ graphic and glowing. Mr. Dana comes home and resumes his place in tlte office as manager general and second-in-command. During 320 ASSOCIATION IN THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. the disgraceful period of Re-action, William Henry Fry, now the Tribune's sledge-hammer, and the country's sham-demolisher, then an American in Paris, sent across the Atlantic to the Tribune many a letter of savage protest. Mr. G. G. Foster served up New York in savory 'slices' and dainty l items.' Horace Greeley confined himself less to the office than before ; but whether he went on a tour of observation, or of lecturing, or of political agitation, he Drought all he saw, heard and thought, to bear in enhancing the in terest and value of his paper. In 1849, the Tribune, true to its instinct of giving hospitality to every new or revived idea, afforded Proudhon a full hearing in re views, essays and biography. His maxim, PROPERTY is ROBBERY, a maxim felt to be true, and acted upon by the early Christians who had all things in common, furnished a superior text to the conserva tive papers and pulpits. As usual, the Tribune was accused of utter ing those benign words, not of publishing them merely. On the oc casion of the Astor-Place riot, the Tribune supported the authorities, and wrote much for law and order. In the Hungarian war, the ed itors of the Tribune took an intense interest, and Mr. Greeley tried hard to condense some of the prevalent enthusiasm into substantial help for the cause. He thought that embroidered flags and parch ment addresses were not exactly the commodities of which Kossuth. stood most in need, and he proposed the raising of a patriotic loan for Hungary, in shares of a hundred dollars each. "Let each vil lage, each rural town, each club, make up by collections or other wise, enough to take one share of scrip, and so up to as many as possible ; let our men of wealth and income be personally solic ited to invest generously, and let us resolve at least to raise one million dollars off-hand. Another million will come much easier alter the first." But alas ! soon came the news of the catastrophe. For a reformed code, the Tribune contended powerfully during the whole time of the agitation of that subject. It welcomed Father Matthew this year fought Bishop Hughes discussed slavery be wailed the fall of Rome denounced Louis Napoleon had Consul "Walsh, the American apologist of despotism, recalled from Paris helped Mrs. Putnam finish Bowen of the North American Review explained to workmen the advantages of association in labor- assisted Watson G. Haynes in his crusade ?.guiutt flogging in the THE ROCHESTER KNOCKINGS. 321 navy went dead against the divorce theories of Henry James and others and did whatsoever else seemed good in its own eyes. Among other things, it did this : Horace Greeley being accused by the Evening Post of a corrupt compliancy with the slave inter est, the Tribune began its reply with these words : "You lie, villain! willfully, wickedly, basely lie 1" This observation called forth much remark at the time. Thrice the editor of the Tribune visited the Great West this year, and he received many private assurances, though, I believe, no pub lic ones, that his course in Congress was approved by the Great "West. In Cincinnati he received marked attention, which he grace fully acknowledged in a letter, published May 21st, 1849 : " I can hardly close this letter without acknowledging the many acts of personal generosity, the uniform and positive kindness, with which I was treated by the citizens of the stately Queen of the West. I would not so far misconstrue and outrage these hospitalities as to drag the names of those who tendered them before the public gaze ; but I may express in these general terms my regret that time was not afforded me to testify more expressly my appreciation of regards which could not fail to gratify, even while they embarrassed, one so unfitted for and unambitious of personal attentions. In these, the disappointment caused by the failure of our expected National Tem perance Jubilee was quickly forgotten, and only the stern demands of an exacting vocation impelled me to leave so soon a city at once so munificent and so interesting, the majestic outpost of Free Labor and Free Institutions, in whose every street the sound of the build er's hammer and trowel speaks so audibly of a growth and great ness hardly yet begun. Kind friends of Cincinnati and of Southern Ohio ! I wave you a grateful farewell!" In December appeared the first account of the 'Rochester Knock- ings' in the Tribune, in the form of a letter from that most practical of cities. The letter was received and published quite in the ordi nary course of business, and without the slightest suspicion on the part of the editors, that they were doing an act of historical import ance. On the contrary, they were disposed to laugh at the myste rious narrative ; and, a few days after its publication, in reply to an anxious correspondent, the paper held the following language: " For ourselves, we really cannot see that these singular revelations 322 ASSOCIATION IN THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. and experiences have, so far, amounted to much. We have yet to hear of a clairvoyant whose statements concerning facts were relia ble, or whose facts were any better than any other person's, or who could discourse rationally without mixing in a proportion of non sense. And as for these spirits in Western New York or elsewhere, it strikes us they might be better engaged than in going about to give from one to three knocks on the floor in response to success ive letters of the alphabet ; and we are confident that ghosts who had anything to communicate worth listening to, would hardly stoop to so uninteresting a business as hammering." Nor has the Tribune, since, contained one editorial word intimat ing a belief in the spiritual origin of the l manifestations.' The sub ject, however, attracted much attention, and, when the Kochester * mediums' came to the city, Horace Greeley, in the hope of eluci dating the mystery, invited them to reside at his house, which they did for several weeks. He did not discover, nor has any one dis covered, the cause of the singular phenomena, but he very soon ar rived at the conclusion, that, whatever their cause might be, they could be of no practical utility, could throw no light on the tortu ous and difficult path of human life, nor cast any trustworthy gleams into the future. During the stay of the mediums at his house, they were visited by a host of distinguished persons, and, among others, by Jenny Lind, whose behavior on the occasion was not exactly what the devotees of that vocalist would expect. At the request of her manager, Mr. Greeley called upon the Nightingale at the Union Hotel, and, in the course of his visit, fell into conversation with gentlemen present on the topic of the day, the Spiritual Manifestations. The Swede approached, listened to the conversation with greedy ears, and expressed a desire to witness some of the marvels which she heard described. Mr. Greeley invited her to his house, and the following Sunday morning was appointed for the visit. She came, and a crowd came with her, filling up the narrow parlor of the house, and rendering anything in the way of calm investigation impossible. Mr. Greeley said as much ; but the 4 mediums' entered, and the rappings struck up with vigor, Jenny sitting on one side of the table and Mr. Greeley on the other. <; Take your hands from under the table/' said she to the master of the house, with the air of a new duchess. WOMAN'S RIGHTS CONVENTION. 323 It was as though she had said, ' I did n't come here to be hum bugged, Mr. Pale Face, and you 'd better not try it.' The insulted {Tcntleman raised his hands into the air, and did not request her to leave the house, nor manifest in any other way his evidently acute sense of her impertinent conduct. As long as we worship a woman on account of a slight peculiarity in the formation of part of her throat, the woman so worshiped will give herself airs. The blame is ours, not hers. The rapping continued, and the party retired, after some hours, sufficiently puzzled, but apparently convinced that there was no collusion between the table and the ' mediums.' The subsequent history of the spiritual movement is well known. It has caused much pain, and harm, and loss. But, like every other Event, its good results, realized and prospective, are greater far than its evil. It has awakened some from the insanity of indiffer ence, to the insanity of an exclusive devotion to things spiritual. But many spiritualists have stopped short of the latter insanity, and are better men, in every respect, than they were better, happier, and more hopeful. It has delivered many from the degrading fear of death and the future, a fear more prevalent, perhaps, than is supposed; for men are naturally and justly ashamed of their fears, and do not willingly tell them. Spiritualism, moreover, may be among the means by which the way is to be prepared for that gen eral, that earnest, that fearless consideration of our religious sys terns to which they will, one day, be subjected, and from which the truth in them has nothing to fear, but how much to hope! It was about the same time that the Tribune rendered another service to the country, by publishing a fair and full report of the first Woman's Convention, accompanying the report with respectful and favorable remarks. " It is easy," said the Tribune, " to be smart, to be droll, to be facetious, in opposition to the demands of these Female Reformers; and, in decrying assumptions so novel and opposed to established habits and usages, a little wit will go a great way. But when a sincere republican is asked to say in sober earnest what adequate reason he can give for refusing the demand of women to an equal participation with men in political rights, ha must answer, None at all. True, he may say that he believes it unwise in them to make the demand he may say the great major ity desire no such thing ; that they prefer to devote their time to 324 ASSOCIATION IN THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. the discharge of home duties and the enjoyment of home delights, leaving the functions of legislators, sheriffs, jurymen, militia, to their fathers, husbands, brothers ; yet if, after all, the question recurs, 'But suppose the women should generally prefer a complete political equality with men, what would you say to that demand ?' the an swer must be, ' I accede to it. However unwise or mistaken the demand, it is but the assertion of a natural right, and as such must be conceded.' " The report of this convention excited much discussion and more ridicule. The ridicule has died away, but the discussion of the subject of woman's rights and wrongs will probably continue until every statute which does wrong to woman is expunged from the laws. And if, before voting goes out of fashion, the ladies should gener ally desire the happiness, such as it is, of taking part in elections, doubtless that happiness will be conceded them also. Meanwhile, an important movement was going on in the office of the Tribune. Since the time when Mr. Greeley practically gave up Fourierism, he had taken a deep interest in the subject of Associa ted Labor, and in 1848, 1849, and 1850, the Tribune published countless articles, showing workingmen how to become their own employers, and share among themselves the profits of their work, instead of letting them go to swell the gains of a 'Boss.' It was but natural that workingmen should reply, as they often did, 4 If Association is the right principle on which to conduct business, if it is best, safest, and most just to all concerned, why "Hot try it your self, O Tribune of the People !' That was precisely what the Tri bune of the People had long meditated, and, in the year 1849, he and his partner resolved to make the experiment. They were both, at the time, in the enjoyment of incomes superfluously large, and the contemplated change in their business was, therefore, not in duced by any business exigency. It was the result of a pure, dis interested attachment to principle ; a desire to add practice to preaching. The establishment was valued by competent judges at a hundred thousand dollars, a low valuation ; for its annual profits amounted to more than thirty thousand dollars. But newspaper property differs from all other. It is won with difficulty, but it is precarious. An unlucky paragraph may depreciate it one-half; a perverse edi- THE TRIBUNE ASSOCIATION. 325 cor, destroy it altogether. It is tangible, and yet intangkle. It is a body and it is a soul. Horace Greeley might have said, The Tri bune it is /, with more truth than the French King could boast, when he made a similar remark touching himself and the State. And Mr. McElrath, glancing round at the types, the subscription books, the iron chest, the mighty heaps of paper, and listening to the thunder of the press in the vaults below, might have been par doned if he had said, The Tribune these are the Tribune. The property was divided into a hundred shares of a thousand dollars each, and a few of them were offered for sale to the leading men in each department, the foremen of the composing and press rooms, the chief clerks and bookkeepers, the most prominent edi tors. In all, about twenty shares were thus disposed of, each of the original partners selling six. In some cases, the purchasers paid only a part of the price in cash, and were allowed to pay the re mainder out of the income of their share. Each share entitled its possessor to one vote in the decisions of the company. In the course of time, further sales of shares took place, until the original proprietors were owners of not more than two-thirds of the con cern. Practically, the power, the controlling voice, belonged still to Messrs. Greeley and McElrath ; but the dignity and advantage of OWNERSHIP were conferred on all those who exercised authority in the several departments. And this was the great good of the new system. That there is something in being a hired servant which is natur ally and deeply abhorrent to men is shown by the intense desire that every hireling manifests to escape from that condition. Many are the ties by which man has been bound in industry to his fellow man ; but, of them all, that seems to be one of the most unfraternal, unsafe, unfair, and demoralizing. The slave, degraded and defraud ed as he is, is safe ; the hireling holds his life at the caprice of another man ; for, says Shylock, he takes my life who takes from me my means of living. "How is business?" said one employer to another, a few days ago. "Dull," was the reply. "I hold on merely to keep the hands in work." Think of that. Merely to keep the hands in work. Merely ! As if there could be a better reason for ' holding on ;' as if all other reasons combined were not infinitely inferior in weight to this one of keeping men in work ; 326 ON THE PLATFORM. keeping men in heart, keeping men in happiness, keeping men if use! But universal hirelingism is quite inevitable at present, when the governments and institutions most admired may be defined as Organized Distrusts. When we are better, and truer, and wiser, we shall labor together on very different terms than are known to Way- land's Political Economy. Till then, we must live in pitiful estrange ment from one another, and strive in sorry competition for triumphs which bless not when they are gained. The experiment of association in the office of the Tribune, has, to all appearance, worked well. The paper has improved steadily and rapidly. It has lost none of its independence, none of its viva city, and has gained in weight, wisdom, and influence. A vast amount of work of various kinds is done in the office, but it is done harmoniously and easily. And of all the proprietors, there is not one, whether he be editor, printer, or clerk, who does not live in a more stylish house, fare more sumptuously, and dress more expen sively, than the Editor in Chief. The experiment, however, is in- complete. Nine-tenths of those who assist in the work of the Tri bune are connected with it solely by the tie of wages, which change not, whether the profits of the establishment fall to zero or rise to the highest notch upon the scale. More of association in the next chapter, where our hero appears, for the first time, in the character of author. CHAPTER XXV. ON THE P L ATFORM. HINTS TOWAUDS REFORMS. The Lecture System Comparative popularity of the leading Lecturers Horace Gree- ley at the Tabernacle His nndirnce His appearance His manner of speaking His occasional addresses The 'Hints' published It* one subject, the Emancipa tion of I^abor The Problems of the Time The 'successful' man The duty of the State The educated class A narrative for workingmen The catastrophe. LECTURING, of late years, has become, in this country, what is facetionsly termed ' an institution.' And whether we regard it as 8 THE LECTURE SYSTEM. 327 means of public instruction, or as a means of making money, we cannot deny that it is an institution of great importance. " The bubble reputation," said Shakspeare. Reputation is a bub ble no longer. Reputation, it has been discovered, will * draw. Reputation alone will draw ! That airy nothing is, through the in strumentality of the new institution, convertible into solid cash, into a large pile of solid cash. Small fortunes have been made by it in a single winter, by a single lecture or course of lectures. Thack eray, by much toil and continuous production, attained an income of seven thousand dollars a year. He crosses the Atlantic, and, in one short season, without producing a line, gains thirteen thousand, and could have gained twice as much if he had been half as much a man of business as he is a man of genius. Ik Marvel writes a book or two which brings him great praise and some cash. Then he writes one lecture, and not a very good one either, and trans mutes a little of his glory into plenty of money, with which he buys leisure to produce a work worthy of his powers. Bayard Tay lor roams over a great part of the habitable and uninhabitable globe. He writes letters to the Tribune, very long, very fatiguing to write on a journey, and not salable at a high price. He comes home, and sighs, perchance, that there are no more lands to visit. " Lec ture!" suggests the Tribune, and he lectures. He carries two or three manuscripts in his carpet-bag, equal to half a dozen of his Tribune letters in bulk. He ranges the country, far and wide, and brings back money enough to carry him ten times round the world. It was his reputation that did the business. He earned that money by years of adventure and endurance in strange and exceedingly hot countries ; he gathered up his earnings in three months earn ings which, but for the invention of lecturing, he would never have touched a dollar of. Park Benjamin, if he swld his satirical poems to Putnam's Magazine, would get less than hod-carriers' wages \ but, selling them directly to the public, at so much a hear, they bring him in, by the time he has supplied all his customers, fiva thousand dollars apiece. Lecturing has been commended as an an tidote to the alleged ; docility' of the press, and the alleged dullness of the pulpit. It may be. /praise it because it enables the man of letters to get partial payment from the public for the incalculable services which he renders the public. ON THE PLATFORM. Lectures are important, too, as the means by which the public are brought into actual contact and acquaintance with the famous men of the country. What a delight it is to see the men whoso writings have charmed, and moved, and formed us ! And there is something in the presence of a man, in the living voice, in the eye, the face, the gesture, that gives to thought and feeling an express ion far more effective than the pen, unassisted by these, can ever at tain. Horace Greeley is aware of this, and he seldom omits an opportunity of bringing the influence of his presence to bear in in culcating the doctrines to which he is attached. He has been for many years in the habit of writing one or two lectures in the course of the season, and delivering them as occasion offered. No man, not a professional lecturer, appears oftener on the platform than he. In the winter of 18534, he lectured, on an average, twice a week. He has this advantage over the professional lecturer. The professional lecturer stands before the public in the same posi tion as an editor ; that is, he is subject to the same necessity to make the banquet palatable to those who pay for it, and who will not come again if they do not like it. But the man whose position is already secure, to whom lecturing is only a subsidiary employment, is free to utter the most unpopular truths. A statement published last winter, of the proceeds of a course of ectures delivered before the Young Men's Association of Chicago, af fords a test, though an imperfect one, of the popularity of some of our lecturers. E. P. Whipple, again to borrow the language of the thea ter, ' drew' seventy-nine dollars ; Horace Mann, ninety-five ; Geo. "W. Curtis, eighty-seven ; Dr. Lord, thirty-three ; Horace Greeley, one hundred and ninety-three; Theodore Parker, one hundred and twelve ; W. H. Channing, thirty-three; Ralph Waldo Emerson, (did it rain ?) thirty-seven ; Bishop Potter, forty-five ; John G. Saxe, one hun dred and thirty -five ; W. H. C. Hosmer, twenty-six ; Bayard Tay lor (lucky fellow !) two hundred and fifty-two. In large cities, the lecturer has to contend with rival attractions, theater, concert, and opera. His performance is subject to a com- mrison with the sermons of distinguished clergymen, of which some are of a quality that no lecture surpasses. To know the import ance of the popular lecturer, one must reside in a country towa the even tenor of whose way is seldom broken by an event of com- THE TABERNACLE. 329 manding interest. The arrival of the gre^t man is expected with eagerness. A committee of the village magnates meet him at the cars and escort him to his lodging. There has been contention who should be his entertainer, and the owner of the best house has car ried off the prize. He is introduced to half the adult population. There is a buzz and an agitation throughout the town. There is talk of the distinguished visitor at all the tea-tables, in the stores, and across the palings of garden-fences. The largest church is gen erally the scene of his triumph, and it is a triumph. The words oi the stranger are listened to with attentive admiration, and the im pression they make is not obliterated by the recurrence of a new excitement on the morrow. Not so in the city, the hurrying, tumultuous city, where the re appearance of Solomon in all his glory, preceded by Dodworth's band, would serve as the leading feature of the newspapers for one day, give occasion for a few depreciatory articles on the next, and be swept from remembrance by a new astonishment on the third. Yet, as we are here, let us go to the Tabernacle and hear Horace Greeley lecture. The Tabernacle, otherwise called ' The Cave,' is a church which looks as little like an ecclesiastical edifice as can be imagined. It is a large, circular building, with a floor slanting towards the plat form pulpit it has none and galleries that rise, rank above rank, nearly to the ceiling, which is supported by six thick, smooth col umns, that stand round what has been impiously styled the 'pit, 7 like giant spectators of a pigmy show. The platform is so placed, that the speaker stands not far from the center of the building, where he seems engulfed in a sea of audience, that swells and surges all around and far above him. A better place for an orator ical display the city does not afford. It received its cavernous nick name, merely in derision of the economical expenditure of gas that its proprietors venture upon when they let the building for an evening entertainment ; and the dismal hue of the walls and col umns gives further propriety to the epithet. The Tabernacle will contain an audience of three thousand persons. At present, there are not more than six speakers and speakeresses in the United States who can ' draw ' it full ; and of these, Horace Greeley is not 330 ON THE PLATFORM. one. His number is about twelve hundred. Let us suppose it half past seven, and the twelve hundred arrived. The audience, we observe, has decidedly the air of a country au dience. Fine ladies and tine gentlemen there are none. Of farmers who look as if they took the Weekly Tribune and are in town to night by accident, there are hundreds. City mechanics are present in considerable numbers. An ardent-looking young man, with a spacious forehead and a turn-over shirt-collar, may be seen here and there. A few ladies in Bloomer costume of surpassing ugliness the costume, not the ladies come down the steep aisles now and then, with a well-preserved air of unconsciousness. In that assem bly no one laughs at them. The audience is sturdy, solid-looking, appreciative and opinionative, ready for broad views and broad humor, and hard hits. Every third man is reading a newspaper, for they are men of progress, and must make haste to keep up with the times, and the times are fast. Men are going about offering books for sale perhaps Uncle Tom, perhaps a treatise on Water Cure, and perhaps Horace Greeley's Hints toward Reforms ; but certainly something which belongs to the Nineteenth Century. A good many free and independent citizens keep their hats on, and some 'speak right out in meeting,' as they converse with their neighbors. But the lecturer enters at the little door under the gallery on the right, and when the applause apprizes us of the fact, we catch a glimpse of his bald head and sweet face as he wags his hasty way to the platform, escorted by a few special adherents of the " Cause" he is about to advocate. The newspapers, the hats, the conversa tion, the book-selling are discontinued, and silent attention is the order of the night. People with * causes' at their hearts are full of business, and on such occasions there are always some preliminary announcements to be made of lectures to come, of meetings to be held, of articles to appear, of days to celebrate, of subscriptions to bo undertaken. These over, the lecturer rises, takes his place at the desk, and, while the applause, which never fails on any public occasion to greet this man, continues, he opens his lecture, puts on his spectacles, and then, looking up at the audience with an express ion of inquiring benignity, waits to begin. Generally, Mr. Greeley's attire is in a condition of the most hope- HIS MANNER OF SPEAKING. 331 less, and, as it were, elaborate disorder. It would be applauded on the stasre as an excellent ' make-up.' His dress, it is true, is never unclean, and seldom unsound ; but he usually presents the appear ance of a man who has been traveling, night and day, for six weeks in a stage-coach, stopping long enough for an occasional hasty ablu tion, and a hurried throwing on of clean linen. It must be admit ted, however, that when he is going to deliver a set lecture to a city audience his apparel does bear marks of an attempted adjustment. But it is the attempt of a -man who does something to which he is unaccustomed, and the result is sometimes more surprising than the neglect. On the present occasion, the lecturer, as he stands there waiting for the noise to subside, has the air of a farmer, not in his Sunday clothes, but in that intermediate rig, once his Sunday suit, in which he attends " the meeting of the trustees," announced last Sunday at church, and which he dons to attend court when a cause is coming on that he is interested in. A most respect able man ; but the tie of his neckerchief was executed in a fit of abstraction, without the aid of a looking-glass; perhaps in the dark, when he dressed himself this morning before day-light to adopt his own emphasis. Silence is restored, and the lecture begins. The voice of the speaker is more like a woman's than a man's, high-pitched, small, soft, but heard with ease in the remotest part of the Tabernacle. His first words are apologetic ; they are uttered in a deprecatory, slightly -beseeching tone; and their substance is, 'You must n't, my friends, expect fine words from a rough, busy man like me ; yet such observations as I have been able hastily to note down, I will now submit, though wishing an abler man stood at this moment in my shoes.' He proceeds to read his discourse in a plain, utterly unam bitious, somewhat too rapid manner, pushing on through any mod erate degree of applause without waiting. If there is a man in the world who is more un-oratorical than any other and of course there is such a man and if that man be not Horace Greeley, I know not where he is to be found. A plain man reading plain sense to plain men; a practical man stating quietly to practical men the results of his thought and observation, stating what he entirely be lieves, what he wants the world to believe, what he knows will not be generally believed in his time, what he is quitt sure will one day 332 ON THE PLATFORM. be universally believed, and what he is perfectly patient with the world for not believing yet. There is no gesticulation, no increased animation at important passages, no glow got up for the closing paragraphs; no aiming at any sort of effect whatever; no warmth, of personal feeling against opponents. There is a shrewd humor in the man, however, and his hits excite occasional bursts of laughter ; but there is no bitterness in his humor, not the faintest approach to it. An impressive or pathetic passage now and then, which loses none of its effect from the simple, plaintive way in which it is uttered, deepens the silence which prevails in the hall, at the end eliciting warm and general applause, which the speaker * improves 1 by drinking a little water. The attention of the audience never flags, and the lecture concludes amid the usual tokens of decided approbation. Horace Greeley is, indeed, no orator. Yet some who value oratory less than any other kind of bodily labor, and whom the tricks of elocution offend, except when they are performed on the stage, and even there they should be concealed, have expressed the opinion that Mr. Greeley is, strictly speaking, one of the best speakers this metropolis can boast. A man, they say, never does a weaker, an un worthier, a more self-demoralizing thing than when he speaks for effect ; and of this vice Horace is less guilty than any speaker we are in the habit of hearing, except Ralph Waldo Emerson. Not that he does not make exaggerated statements ; not that he does not utter sentiments which are only half true ; not that he does not sometimes indulge in language which, when read, savors of the high-flown. What I mean is, that his public speeches are literally transcripts of the mind whence they emanate. At public meetings and public dinners Mr. Greeley is a frequent speaker. His name usually comes at the end of the report, intro duced with " Horace Greeley being loudly called for, made a few remarks to the following purport." The call is never declined ; nor does he ever speak without saying something; and when ho has said it he resumes his seat. He has a way, particularly of late years, of coming to a meeting when it is nearly over, delivering one of his short, enlightening addresses, and then embracing the first opportunity that offers of taking an unobserved departure. A few words with regard to the subjects upon which Horace 333 Greeley most loves to discourse. In 1850, a volume, con tuning ten of his lectures and twenty shorter essays, appeared from the press of the Messrs. Harpers, under the title of " Hints toward Reforms." It has had a sale of 2,000 copies. Two or three other lectures have been published in pamphlet form, of which the one entitled " What the Sister Arts teach as to Farming," delivered be fore the Indiana State Agricultural Society, at its annual fair at Lafayette in October, 1853, is perhaps the best that Mr. Greeley has written. But let us glance for a moment at the ' Hints.' The title-page contains three quotations or mottoes, appropriate to the book, and characteristic of the author. They are these : " HASTEN the day, just Heaven ! Accomplish thy design, And let the blessings Thou hast freely given Freely on all men shine ; Till Equal Rights be equally enjoyed, And human power for human good employed; Till Law, and not the Sovereign, rule sustain And Peace and Virtue undisputed reign. HENRY WARE." " LISTEN not to the everlasting Conservative, who pines and whines at every attempt to drive him from the spot where he has so lazily cast his an chor. . . . Every abuse must be abolished. The whole system must be settled on the right basis. Settle it ten times and settle it wrong, you will have the work to begin again. Be satisfied with nothing but the complete tnfranchisement of Humanity, and the restoration of man to the image of ttis God. HENRY WARD BEECHER." "ONCE the welcome Light has broken, Who shall say What the unimagined glories Of the day 1 What the evil that shall perish In its ray 1 Aid the dawning, Tongue and Pen ! Aid it, hopns of honest men ! Aid it, Paper ! aid it, Type ! Aid it, for the hour is ripe ! And our earnest must not slacken Into play : Men of Thought, and Men of Action, CLEAR THE WAY ! CHARLES MACKAY." 334 ON THE PLATFORM. The dedication is no less characteristic. I copy that also, as throwing light upon the aim and manner of tl e man : " To the generous, the hopeful, the loving, who, firmly and joyfully believ ing in the impartial and boundless goodness of our Father, trust, that the errors, the crimes, and the miseries, which have long rendered earth a hell, shall yet be swallowed up and forgotten, in a far exceeding and unmeasured reign of truth, purity, and bliss, this volume is respectfully and affectionately inscribed by THE AUTHOR." Earth is not ' a hell.' The expression appears very harsh and very unjust. Earth is not a hell. Its sum of happiness is infinitely greater than its sum of misery. It contains scarcely one creature that does not, in the course of its existence, enjoy more than it suffers, that does not do a greater number of right acts than wrorg. Yet the world as it w, compared with the world as a benevolent heart wishes it to be, is hell-like enough ; so we may, in this sense, but in this sense alone, accept the language of the dedi cation. The preface informs us, that the lectures were prompted by invi tations to address Popular Lyceums and Young Men's Associations, ' generally those of the humbler class,' existing in country villages and rural townships. " They were written," says the author, " in the years from 1842 to 1848, inclusive, each in haste, to fulfill some engagement already made, for which preparation had been delayed, under the pressure of seeming necessities, to the latest moment allowable. A calling whose exactions are seldom intermitted for a day, never for a longer period, and whose requirements, already ex cessive, seem perpetually to expand and increase, may well excuse the distraction of thought and rapidity of composition which it renders inevitable. At no time has it seemed practicable to devote a whole day, seldom a full half day, to the production of any of the essays. Not until months after the last of them was written did the idea of collecting and printing them in this shape suggest itself, and a hurried perusal is all that has since been given them." The eleven published lectures of Horace Greeley which lie before me, are variously entitled ; but their subject is ONE ; his subject is ever the same ; the object of his public life is single. It is the THE EMANCIPATION OF LABOR 335 4 EMANCIPATION OF LABOR;' its emancipation from ignorance, vice, servitude, insecurity, poverty. This is his chosen, only theme, whether he speaks from the platform, or writes for the Tribune. If slavery is the subject of discourse, the Dishonor which Slavery does to Labor is the light in which he prefers to present it. If protec tion he demands it in the name and for the good of American worlcingmen, that their minds may be quickened by diversified em ployment, their position secured by abundant employment, the farmers enriched by markets near at hand. If Learning he la ments the unnatural divorce between Learning and Labor, and ad vocates their re-union in manual-labor schools. If 'Human Life' he cannot refrain from reminding his hearers, that "the deep want of the time is, that the vast resources and capacities of Mind, the far-stretching powers of Genius and of Science, be brought to bear practically and intimately on Agriculture, the Mechanic Arts, and all the now rude and simple processes of Day-Labor, and not merely that these processes may be perfected and accelerated, but that the benefits of the improvement may accrue in at least equal measure to those whose accustomed means of livelihood scanty at best are interfered with and overturned by the change." If the 'Formation of Character' he calls upon men who aspire to possess characters equal to the demands of the time, to "question with firm speech all institutions, observances, customs, that they may determine by what mischance or illusion thriftless Pretense and Knavery shall seem to batten on a brave Prosperity, while La bor vainly begs employment, Skill lacks recompense, and Worth pines for bread." If Popular Education he reminds us, that "the narrow, dingy, squalid tenement, calculated to repel any visitor but the cold and the rain, is hardly fitted to foster lofty ideas of Life, its Duties and its Aims. And he who is constrained to ask each morning, 'Where shall I find food for the day?' is at best unlikely often to ask, 'By what good deed shall the day- be signalized ?' " Or, in a lighter strain, he tells the story of Tom and the Colonel. "Torn," said a Colonel on the Rio Grande to one of his command, "how can so brave and good a soldier as you are so demean himself as to get drunk at every opportu nity ?" "Colone !" replied the private, "how can you expect all 336 ON THE PLATFORM. the virtues that adorn the human character for seven dollars a month?" That anecdote well illustrates one side of Horace Greeley's view of life. The problems which, he says, at present puzzle the knotted brain of Toil all over the world, which incessantly cry out for solution, and can never more be stifled, but will become even more vehe uient, till they are solved, are these : " Why should those by whose toil ALL comforts and luxuries are produced, or made available, enjoy so scanty a share of them ? Why should a man able and eager to work, ever stand idle for want of em ployment in a world where so much needful work impatiently awaits the doing ? Why should a man be required to surrender something of his independence in accepting the employment which will enable him to earn by honest effort the bread of his family ? Why should the man who faithfully labors for another, and receives therefor less than the product of his labor, be currently held the obliged party, rather than he who buys the work and makes a good bargain of it ? In short, Why should Speculation and Scheming ride so jauntily in their carriages, splashing honest Work as it trudges humbly and wearily by on foot ?" Who is there so estranged from humanity as never to have pon dered questions similar to these, whether he ride jauntily in a car riage, or trudge wearily on foot ? They have been proposed in for mer ages as abstractions. They are discussed now as though the next generation were to answer them, practically and triumph antly. First of all, the author of Hints toward Reforms admits frankly, and declares emphatically, that the obstacle to the workingman's elevation is the workingman's own improvidence, ignorance, and unworthiness. This side of the case is well presented in a sketch of the career of the ' successful' man of business : "A keen observer," says the lecturer, "could have picked him out from among his schoolfellows, and said, ' Here is the lad who will die a bank-presi dent, owning factories and blocks of stores.' Trace his history "closely," he continues, " and you find that, in his boyhood, he was provident and frugal that he shunned expense and dissipation that he feasted and quaffed seldom, THE PROBLEMS OF THE TIME. 3o7 unless at others' cost that he was rarely seen at balls or froiics that he was diligent in study and in business that he did not hesitate to do an uncomfoi ta ble job, if it bade fair to be profitable that he husbanded his hours and ma le each count one, either in earning or in preparing to work efficiently, lie rarely or never stood idle because the business offered him was esteemed uu- genteel or disagreeable he laid up a few dollars during his minority, wh'uh proved a sensible help to him on going into business for himself he married seasonably, prudently, respectably he lived frugally and delved steadily until it clearly became him to live better, and until he could employ his time to better advantage than at the plow or over the bench. Thus his first thou sand dollars came slowly but surely ; the next more easily and readily by the help of the former ; the next of course more easily still ; until now he adds thousands to his hoard with little apparent effort or care. * * * * Talk to such a man as this of the wants of the poor, and he will answer you, that their sons can afford to smoke and drink freely, which he at their age could not ; and that he now meets many of these poor in the market, buying luxu ries that he cannot afford. Dwell on the miseries occasioned by a dearth of employment, and he will reply that he never encountered any such obstacle when poor ; for when he could find nothing better, he cleaned streets or stab'e>, and when he could not command twenty dollars a month, he fell to work as heartily and cheerfully for ten or five. In vain will you seek to explain to him that his rare faculty both of doing and of finding to do his wise adapta tion of means to ends in all circumstances, his frugality and others' improvi dence are a part of your case that it is precisely because all are not creat ed so handy, so thrifty, so worldly-wise, as himself, that you seek so to modify the laws and usages of Society that a man may still labor, steadily, efficiently, and live comfortably, although his youth was not improved to the utmost, and though his can never be the hand that transmutes all it touches to gold. Fail ing here, you urge that at least his children should be guaranteed an unfail ing opportunity to learn and to earn, and that they, surely, should not suffer nor be stifled in ignorance because of their parent's imperfections. Still you talk in Greek to the man of substance, unless he be one of the few who have, in acquiring wealth, outgrown the idolatry of it, and learned to regard it truly as a means of doing good, and not as an end of earthly effort. If he be a man of wealth merely, still cherishing the spirit which impelled him to his life-long endeavor, the world appears to him a vast battle-field, on which some must win victory and glory, while to others are accorded shattered joints and dis comfiture, and the former could not be, or would lose their zest, without the latter." Such is the * case' of the conservative. So looks the battle of life to the victor. With equal complacency the hawk may philoso phize while he is digesting the chicken. But the chicken was of a 15 388 ON THE PLATFORM. different opinion ; and died squeaking it to the waving tree-tops, aa lie was borne irresistibly along to where the hawk could most con veniently devour him. Mr. Greeley does not attempt to refute the argument of the pros perous conservative. lie dwells for a moment upon the fact, that while life is a battle in which men fight, not for, but against each other, the victors must necessarily be few and ever fewer, the vic tims numberless and ever more hopeless. Resting his argument upon the evident fact that the majority of mankind are poor, unsafe, and uninstructed, lie endeavors to show how the condition of the masses can be alleviated by legislation, and how by their own co operative exertions. The State, he contends, should ordain, and the law should be fundamental, that no man may own more than a cer tain, very limited extent of land ; that the State should fix a defini tion to the phrase, ' a day's work ;' that the State should see to it, that no child grows up in ignorance ; that the State is bound to prevent the selling of alcoholic beverages. Those who are inter ested in such subjects will find them amply and ably treated by Mr. Greeley in his published writings. But there are two short passages in the volume of Hints toward Reforms, which seem to contain the essence of Horace Greeley's teachings as to the means by which the people are to be elevated, spiritually and materially. The following is extracted from the lec ture on the Relations of Learning to Labor. It is addressed to the educated and professional classes. " Why," asks Horace Greeley, " should not the educated class create an at mosphere, not merely of exemplary morals and refined manners, but of pal pable utility and blessing 1 Why should not the clergyman, the doctor, the lawyer, of a country town be not merely the patrons and commenders of every generous idea, the teachers and dispensers of all that is novel in science or noble in philosophy examplars of integrity, of amenity, and of an all- pervading humanity to those around them but even in a more material sphere regarded and blessed as universal benefactors? Why should they not be universally as I rejoice to say that some of them are models of wisdom and thrift in agriculture their farms and gardens silent but most effective preachers of the benefits of forecast, calculation, thorough knowledge and faithful application'] Nay, more: Why should not the educated class bo everywhere teachers, through lectures, essays, conversations, as well as prac tically, of those great and important truths of nature, which chemistry and THE EDUCATED CLASb. 339 other sciences aio just revealing to bless the industrial world? Why should they not unobtrusively and freely teach the farmer, the mechanic, the worker in any capacity, how best to summon the blind forces of the elements to his aid, and how most effectually to render them subservient to his needs 1 All this is clearly within the power of the educated class, if truly educated ; al/ this is clearly within the sphere of duty appointed them by providence. Le/ them but do it, and they will stand where they ought to stand, at the head of the community, the directors of public opinion, and the universally recog nized benefactors of the race. " I stand before an audience in good part of educated men, and I plead fo/ the essential independence of their class not for their sakes only or mainly but for the sake of mankind. I see clearly, or I am strangely bewildered, a deep-rooted and wide-spreading evil which is palsying the influence and par alyzing the exertions of intellectual and even moral superiority all over our country. The lawyer, so far at least as his livelihood is concerned, is too gen erally but a lawyer ; he must live by law, or he has no means of living at all. So with the doctor; so alas! with the pastor. He, too, often finds himself surrounded by a large, expensive family, few or none of whom have been sys tematically trained to earn their bread in the sweat of their brows, and who, even if approaching maturity in life, lean on him for a subsistence. This son must be sent to the academy, and that one to college ; this daughter to an ex pensive boarding-school, and that must have a piano and all to be defrayed from his salary, which, however liberal, is scarcely or barely adequate to meet the demands upon it. How shall this man for man, after all, he is with ex penses, and cares, and debts pressing upon him hope to be at all times faithful to the responsibilities of his high calling ! He may speak ever so flu ently and feelingly against sin in the abstract, for that cannot give offense to the most fastidiously sensitive incumbent of the richly furnished hundred-dol lar pews. But will he dare to rebuke openly, fearlessly, specially, the darling and decorous vices of his most opulent and liberal parishioners to say to the honored dispenser of liquid poison, ' Your trade is murder, and your wealth the price of perdition ! : To him who amasses wealth by stinting honest labor of its reward and grinding the faces of the poor, ' Do not mock God by put ting your reluctant dollar into the missionary box there is no such heathen in New Zealand as yourself!' and so to every specious hypocrite around him, who patronizes the church to keep to windward of his conscience and freshen the varnish on his character, ' Thou art the man !' I tell you, friends ! he will not, for he cannot afford to, be thoroughly faithful ! One in a thousand may be, and hardly more. We do not half sornprehend the profound signifi cance of that statute of the old church which inflexibly enjoins celibacy on her clergy. The very existence of the church, as a steadfast power above the multitude, giving law to the people and not receiving its law day by day from them, depends on its maintenance. And if we are ever to enjoy a Christian 340 ON THE PLATFORM. ministry which shall systematically, promptly, fearlessly war upon every shape and disguise of evil which shall fearlessly grapple with war and slave ry, and every loathsome device by which man seeks to glut his appetites at the expense of his brother's well-being, it will be secured to us through the instrumentality of the very reform I advocate a reform which shall render the clergyman independent of his parishioners, and enable him to say man fully to all, ' You may cease to pay, but I shall not cease to preach, so long as you have sins to reprove, and I have strength to reprove them ! I live in good part by the labor of my hands, and can do so wholly whenever that shall become necessary to the fearless discharge of my duty. " A single illustration more, and I draw this long dissertation to a close. I shall speak now more directly to facts within my own knowledge, and which have made on me a deep and mournful impression. I speak to your experi ence, too, friends of the Phenix and Union Societies to your future if not to your past experience and I entreat you to heed me ! Every year sends forth from our Colleges an army of brave youth, who have nearly or quite exhausted their little means in procuring what is termed an education, and must now find some remunerating employment to sustain them while they are more specially fitting themselves for and inducting themselves into a Profession. Some of them find and are perforce contented with some meager clerkship; but the great body of them turn their attention to Literature to the instruction of their juniors in some school or family, or to the instruction of the world through the Press. Hundreds of them hurry at once to the cities and the journals, seeking employment as essayists or collectors of intelligence bright visions of Fame in the foreground, and the gaunt wolf Famine hard at their heels. Alas for them ! they do not see that the very circumstances under which they seek admission to the calling they have chosen almost forbid the idea of their succeeding in it. They do not approach the public with thoughts struggling for utterance, but with stomachs craving bread. They seek the Press, not that they may proclaim through it what it would cost their lives to repress, but that they may preserve their souls to their bodies, at some rate. Do you not see under what immense disadvantages one of this band enters upon his selected vocation, if he has the rare fortune to find or make a place in it ? He is sur rounded, elbowed on every side by anxious hundreds, eager to obtain employ ment on any term? ; he must write not what he feels, but what another needs ; must ' regret' or ' rejoice* to order, working for the day, and not venturing to utter a thought which the day does not readily approve. And can you fancy that is the foundation on which to build a lofty and durable renown a brave and laudable success of any kind 1 I tell you no, young friends ! the farthest from it possible. There is scarcely any position more perilous to generous impulses and lofty aims scarcely any which more eminently threatens to sink the Man in the mere schemer and st.-iver for subsistence and selfish gratifica tion. I say, then, in deep earnestness, to every youth who hopes or desires ta THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOR. 341 become use! J to his Race or in any degree eminent through Literature, Seek first of all things a position of pecuniary independence ; learn to live by the labor of your hands, the sweat of your face, as a necessary step toward the career you contemplate. If you can earn but three shillings a day by rugged yet moderate toil, learn to live contentedly on two shillings, and so preserve your mental faculties fresh and unworn to read, to observe, to think, thus pre paring yourself for the ultimate path you have chosen. At length, when a mind crowded with discovered or elaborated truths will have utterance, begin to write sparingly and tersely for the nearest suitable periodical no matter how humble and obscure if the thought is in you, it will find its way to those who need it. Seek not compensation for this utterance until compensation shall seek you ; then accept it if an object, and not involving too great sacri fices of independence and disregard of more immediate duties. In this way alone can something like the proper dignity of the Literary Character be re stored and maintained. But while every man who either is or believes him self capable of enlightening others, appears only anxious to sell his faculty at the earliest moment and for the largest price, I cannot hope that the Public will be induced to regard very profoundly either the lesson or the teacher." Such is the substance of Horace Greeley's message to the literary and refined. I turn now to the lecture on the Organization of Labor, and select from it a short narrative, the perusal of which will enable the reader to understand the nature of Mr. Greeley's advice to working-men. The story may become historically valuable ; be cause the principle which it illustrates may be destined to play a great part in the Future of Industry. It may be true, that the despotic principle is not essential to permanence and prosperity, though nothing has yet attained a condition of permanent pros perity except by virtue of it. But here is the narrative, and it is worthy of profound consideration : " The first if not most important movement to be made in advance of our present Social position is the ORGANIZATION OF LABOR. This is to be effect ed by degrees, by steps, by installments. I propose here, in place of setting forth any formal theory or system of Labor Reform, simply to narrate what I saw and heard of the history and state of an experiment now in progress near Cincinnati, and which differs in no material respects from some dozen or score of others already commenced in various parts of the United States, not to Speak of twenty times as many established by the Working Men of Paris and other portions of France. u The business of IRON-MOLDING, casting, or whatever it may be called, 342 ON THE PLATFORM. is one of the most extensive and thrifty of the manufactures of Cincinnati, and I believe the labor employed therein is quite as well rewarded as Labor gen erally. It is entirely paid by the piece, according to an established scale of prices, so that each workman, in whatever department of the business, is paid according to his individual skill and industry, not a rough average of what is supposed to be earned by himself and others, as is the case where work ia paid for at so much per day, week or month. I know no reason why the Iron- Molders of Cincinnati should not have been as well satisfied with the old ways as anybody else. " Yet the system did not ' work well,' even for them. Beyond the general unsteadiness of demand for Labor and the ever- increasing pressure of compe tition, there was a pretty steadily recurring ' dull season,' commencing about the first of January, when the Winter's call for stoves, Ac., had been sup plied, and holding on for two or three months, or until the Spring business opened. In this hiatus, the prior savings of the Molders were generally con sumed sometimes less, but perhaps oftener more so that, taking one with another, they did not lay up ten dollars per annum. By-and-by came a col lision respecting wages and a 'strike,' wherein the Journeymen tried for months the experiment of running their heads against a stone wall. How they came out of it, no matter whether victors or vanquished, the intelligent reader will readily guess. I never heard of any evils so serious and com plicated as those which eat out the heart of Labor being cured by doing nothing. " At length but I believe after the strike had somehow terminated some of the Journeymen Molders said to each othej : ' Standing idle is not the true cure for our grievances : why not employ ourselves?' They finally con cluded to try it, and, in the dead of the Winter of 1847-8, when a great many of their trade were out of employment, the business being unusually depressed, they formed an association under the General Manufacturing Law of Ohio Twhich is very similar to that of New York), and undertook to establish the JOURNEYMEN MOLDERS' UNION FOUNDRY. There were about twenty of them who put their hands to the work, and the whole amount of capital they could scrape together was two thousand one hundred dollars, held in shares of twenty-five dollars each. With this they purchased an eligible piece of ground, directly on the bank of the Ohio, eight miles below Cincinnati, with which ' the Whitewater Canal' also affords the means of ready and cheap communication With their capital they bought some patterns, flasks, an en gine and tools, paid for their ground, and five hundred dollars on their first ouilding, which was erected for them partly on long credit by a firm in Cin- tinnati, who knew that the property was a perfect security for so much of its lost, and decline taking credit for any benevolence in the matter. Their iron, oal, Ac., to commence upon were entirely and necessarily bought on credit. " Having elected Directors, a Foreman, and a Business Agent (the last to A NARRATIVE FOR WORKINGMEN. 343 open a store in Cincinnati, buy stock, sell wares, &c.) the Journeymen's Union set to work, in August, 1848. Its accommodations were then meager ; they have since been gradually enlarged by additions, until their Foundry is now the most commodious on the river. Their stock of patterns, flasks, nd a dividend on his stock at the close of each business year. The workers b tre saved and invested from three hundred dollars to six hundred dollars e ich since their commencement in August of last year, though those who have joined since the start have of course earned less. Few or none had laid by so much in five to ten years' working for others as they have in one year working for themselves. The total value of their products up to the time of lay visit is thirty thousand dollars, and they were then making at the rate of five thousand dollars' worth per month, which they do not mean to diminish. All the profits of the business, above the cost of doing the work at journey men's wages, will be distributed among the stockholders in dividends. The officers of the Union are a Managing Agent, Foreman of the Foundry, and five Directors, chosen annually, but who can be changed meantime in case of necessity. A Reading-Room and Library were to be started directly ; a spa cious boarding-house (though probably not owned by the Union) will go up fiis season. No liquor is sold within a long distance of the Union, and there is little or no demand for any. Those original members of the Union who were least favorable to Temperance have seen fit to sell out and go away. " Now is it reasonable that the million or so of hireling laborers throughout our country who have work when it suits others' convenience to employ them, and must stand idle perforce when it does not, can read the above simple nar ration which I have tried to render as lucid as possible and not be moved to action thereby ? Suppose they receive all they earn when employed which of course they generally do not, or how could employers grow rich by merely buying their labor and selling it again 1 should not the simple fact THE CATASTROPHE. 345 that these Associated Workers never lack employment when they desire it, and never ask any master's leave to refrain from working when they see fit, arrest public attention "? Who is such a slave in soul that he w-uld not rather be an equal member of a commonwealth than the subject of a despotism 1 Who would not like to taste the sweets of Liberty on work-days as well as holidays 7 Is there a creature so abject that he considers all this mere poetry and moonshine, which a little hard experience will dissipate 1 Suppose the Cincinnati Iron-Molders' Association should break down, either through some defect in its organization or some dishonesty or other misconduct on the part of one or more of its members what would that prove 1 Would it any more prove the impracticability of Industrial Associations than the shipwreck and death of Columbus, had such a disaster occurred on his second or third voyage to America, would have disproved the existence of the New World 1 The story is incomplete ; the catastrophe is wanting. It can be told in one word, and that word is failure ! The Union existed about two years. It then broke up, not, as I am very positively as sured, from any defect in the system upon which it was conducted ; but from a total stagnation in the market, which not only ruined the co-operators, but others engaged in the same business. They made castings on the co-operative principle, made them well, made them as long as anybody would buy them ; then stopped. The reader of the volume from which I have quoted will find in it much that does less honor to the author's head than his heart. But I defy any one to read it, and not respect the man that wrote it. The kernel of the book is sound. The root of the matter is there. It shows Horace Greeley to be a man whose interest in hu man welfare is sincere, habitual, innate, and indestructible. We all know what is the usual course of a person who as the stupid phrase is ' rises' from the condition of a manual laborer to a posi tion of influence and wealth. If our own observation were not sufficient, Thackeray and Curtis have told the whole world the sorry history of the modern snob ; how he ignores his origin, and bends all his little soul to the task of cutting a figure in the circles to which he has gained admittance. Twenty men are suffocating in a dungeon one man, by climb ing upon the shoulders of some of his companions, and assisted up still higher by the strength of others, escapes, breathes the pure air of heaven, exults in freedom ! Does he not, instantly and with all 15* 346 THREE MONTHS IN EUROPE. his might, strive for the rescue of his late companions, still suffer ing ? Is he not prompt with rope, and pole, and ladder, and food, and cheering words ? No the caitiff wanders off to seek his pleas ure, and makes haste to remove from his person, and his memory too, every trace of his recent misery. This it is to be a snob. No treason like this clings to the skirts of Horace Greeley. He has stood by his Order. The landless, the hireling, the uninstructed he was their Companion once he is their Champion now. CHAPTER XXYI. THREE MONTHS IN EUROPE. /he Voysge out First impressions of England Opening of the Exhibition Charac teristic observalions He attends a grand Banquet He sees the Sights He speaks at Exeter Hall The Play at Devonshire House Robert Owen's birth-dayHorace Greeley before a Committee of the House of Commons He throws light upon the subject Vindicates the American Press Journey to Paris The Sights of Paris The Opera and Ballet A false Prophet His opinion of the French Journey to Italy Anecdote A nap in the Diligence Arrival at Rome In the Galleries Scene in the Coliseum To England again Triumph of the American Reaper A week in Ireland and Scotland His opinion of the English Homeward Bound- Hie arrival The Extra Tribune. " THE thing called Crystal Palace !" This was the language jvhich the intense and spiritual Carlyle thought proper to employ on the only occasion when he alluded to the "World's Fair of 1851, And Horace Greeley appears, at first, to have thought little of Prince Albert's scheme, or at least to have taken little interest in it. "We mean," he said, " to attend the "World's Fair at London, with very little interest in the show generally, or the people whom it will collect, but with special reference to a subject which seems to us of great and general importance namely, the improvements re cently made, or now being made, in the modes of dressing flax and hemp and preparing them to be spun and woven by steam or water- power." "Only adequate knowledge," he thought, was necessary to give a new and profitable direction to Free Labor, both agricul tural and manufacturing." THE VOYAGE OUT. 347 Accordingly, Horace Greeley was one of the two thousand Americans who crossed the Atlantic for the purpose of attending the World's Fair, and, like many others, he seized the opportuni ty to make a hurried tour of the most accessible parts of the Eu ropean Continent. It was the longest holiday of his life. Holi day is not the word, however. His sky was changed, but not the man ; and his labors in Europe were as incessant and arduous as they had been in America, nor unlike them in kind. A strange ap parition he among the elegant and leisurely Europeans. Since Franklin's day, no American had appeared in Europe whose 4 style' had in it so little of the European as his, nor one who so well and so consistently represented some of .the best sides of the American character. He proved to be one of the Americans who can calmly contemplate a duke, and value him neither the less nor the more on account of his dukeship. Swiftly he traveled. Swiftly we pursue him. At noon on Saturday, the sixteenth of April, 1851, the steamship Baltic moved from the wharf at the foot of Canal-street, with Hor ace Greeley on board as one of her two hundred passengers. It was a chilly, dismal day, with a storm brewing and lowering in the north -east. The wharf was covered with people, as usual on sailing days; and when the huge vessel was seen to be in motion, and the inevitable White Coat was observed among the crowd on her deck, a hearty cheer broke from a group of Mr. Greeley's personal friends, and was caught up by the rest of the spectators. He took off his hat and waved response and farewell, while the steamer rolled away like a black cloud, and settled down upon the river. The passage was exceedingly disagreeable, though not tempest uous. The north-easter that hung over the city when the steamer sailed 'clung to her like a brother' all the way over, varying a point or two now and then, but not changing to a fair wind for more than six hours. Before four o'clock on the first day before the steamer had gone five miles from the Hook, the pangs of sea sickness came over the soul of Horace Greeley, and laid him pros trate. At six o'clock in the evening, a friend, vyho found him iu the smoker's room, helpless, hopeless, and recumbent, persuaded and assisted him to go below, where he had strength only to un boot 348 THREE MONTHS IN EURO1 E. and sway into his berth. There he remained for twenty-four hours. He then managed to crawl upon deck ; but a perpetual head-wind and cross-sea were too much for so delicate a system as his, and he enjoyed not one hour of health and happiness during the passage. His opinion of the sea, therefore, is unfavorable. He thought, that a sea-voyage of twelve days was about equal, in the amount of misery it inflicts, to two months' hard labor in the State Prison, or to the average agony of five years of life on shore. It was a consolation to him, however, even when most sick and impatient, to think that the gales which were so adverse to the pleasure- seekers of the Baltic, were wafting the emigrant ships, which it hourly passed, all the more swiftly to the land of opportunity and hope. His were ' light afflictions' compared with those of the mul titudes crowded into their stifling steerages. At seven o'clock on the evening of Thursday, the twenty -eighth of April, under sullen skies and a dripping rain, the passengers of the Baltic were taken ashore at Liverpool in a steam-tug, which in New York, thought Mr. Greeley, would be deemed unworthy to convey market-garbage. With regard to the weather, he tells us, in his first letter from England, that he had become reconciled to sullen skies and dripping rains : he wanted to see the thing out, and would have taken amiss any deceitful smiles of fortune, now that Le had learned to dispense with her favors. He advised Ameri cans, on the day of their departure for Europe, to take a long, ear nest gaze at the sun, that they might know him again on their re turn ; for the thing called Sun in England was only shown occasion ally, and bore a nearer resemblance to a boiled turnip than to its American namesake. Liverpool the traveler scarcely saw, and it impressed him un favorably. The working-class seemed " exceedingly ill-dressed, stolid, abject, and hopeless." Extortion and beggary appeared very prevalent. In a day or two he was off to London by the Trent Valley Railroad, which passes through one of the finest agricultural districts in England. To most men their first ride in a foreign country is a thrilling and memorable delight. Whatever Horace Greeley may have felt on his journey from Liverpool to London, his remarks upon what he sw are the opposite of rapturous ; yet, as they are character- OPENING OF THE EXHIBITION. 349 istic, they are interesting. The mind of that man is a ' studj ,' who, when he has passed through two hundred miles of the enchmting rural scenery of England, and sits down to write a letter about it, begins by describing the construction of the railroad, continues by telling us that much of the land he saw is held at five hundred dollars per acre, that two-thirds of it was 4 in grass,' that there are fewer fruit-trees on the two hundred miles of railroad between Liverpool and London, than on the forty miles of the Harlem rail road north of White Plains, that the wooded grounds looked meager and scanty, and that the western towns of America ought to take warning from this fact and preserve some portions of the primeval forest, which, once destroyed, can never be renewed by cultivation in their original grandeur. ' The eye sees what it brought with it the means of seeing,' and these practical observa tions are infinitely more welcome than affected sentiment, or even than genuine sentiment inadequately expressed. Besides, the sug gestion with regard to the primeval forests is good and valuable. On his arrival in London, Mr. Greeley drove to the house of Mr. John Chapman, the well-known publisher, with whom he resided during his stay in the metropolis. On the first of May the Great Exhibition was opened, and our traveler saw the show both within and without the Crystal Palace. The day was a fine one for England. He thought the London sun shine a little superior in brilliancy to American moonlight; and wondered how the government could have the conscience to tax such light. The royal procession, he says, was not much ; a parade of the New York Firemen or Odd Fellows could beat it ; but then it was a new thing to see a Queen, a court, and an aristocracy doing honor to industry. He was glad to see the queen in the pageant, though he could not but feel that her vocation was behind the intel ligence of the age, and likely to go out of fashion at no distant day ; but not through her fault. He could not see, however, what the Master of the Buck-hounds, the Groom of the Stole, the Mistress of the Robes, and 'such uncouth fossils,' had to do with a grand ex hibition of the fruits of industry. The Mistress of the Robes made no robes ; the Ladies of the Bed-chamber did nothing with beds but sleep on them. The posts of honor nearest the Queen's person ought to have been confided to the descendants of Watt and Arkwright, 350 THREE MONTHS IN EUXOPE. 'Nupcleon's real conquerors; 1 while the foreign ambassadors should have heen the sons of Fitch, Fulton, Whitney, Daguerre and Morse; and the places less conspicuous should have been assigned, not to Gold-stick, Silver-stick, and 'kindred absurdities,' but to the Queen's gardeners, horticulturists, carpenters, upholsterers and milliners! (Fancy Gold-stick reading this passage !) The traveler, however, even at such a moment is not unmindful of similar nuisances across the ocean, and pauses to express the hope that we may he able, be fore the century is out, to elect ' something else' than Generals to the Presidency. Before the arrival of Mr. Greeley in London, he had been named by the American Commissioner as a member of the Jury on Hard ware, etc. There were so few Americans in London at the time, who were not exhibitors, that ho did not feel at liberty to decline the duties of the proffered post, and accordingly devoted nearly everyday, from ten o'clock to three, for a month, to an examination of the articles upon whose comparative merits the jury were to de cide. Few men would have spent their first month in Europe in the discharge of a duty so onerous, so tedious, and so likely to be thankless. His reward, however, was, that his official position opened to him sources of information, gave him facilities for obser vation, and enabled him to form acquaintances, that would not have been within the compass of a mere spectator of the Exhibition. Among other advantages, it procured him a seat at the banquet given at Richmond by the London Commissioners to the Commis sioners from foreign countries, a feast presided over by Lord Ash- burton, and attended by an ample representation of the science, talent, worth and rank of both hemispheres. It was the particular desire of Lord Ash burton that the health of Mr. Paxton, the Archi tect of the Palace, should be proposed by an American, and Mr. Riddle, the American Commissioner, designated Horace Greeley for that service. The speech delivered by him on that occasion, since it is short, appropriate, and characteristic, may properly have a place here. Mr. Greeley, being called upon by the Chairman, spoke as follows : " In my own land, ray lords and gentlemen, where Nature is still so rugged and unconquered, where Population is yet so scanty and the demands for hu man exertion are so various and urgent, it is but natural that we should ren- HE ATTENDS A GREAT BANQUET. 351 dor marked honor to Labor, and especially to those who by invention or dis covery contribute to shorten the processes and increase the efficiency of Indus try. It is but natural, therefore, that this grand conception of a comparison* of the state of Industry in all Nations : by means of a World's Exhibition, should there have been received and canvassed with a lively and general in- lerest, an interest which is not measured by the extent of our contributions, Ours is still one of the youngest of Nations, with few large accumulations of the fruits of manufacturing activity or artistic skill, and these so generally jeeded for use that we were not likely to send them three thousand miles Away, merely for show. It is none the less certain that the progress of this great Exhibition, from its original conception to that perfect realization which we here commemorate, has been watched and discussed not more earnestly throughout the saloons of Europe, than by the smith's forge and the mechanic's bench in America. Especially the hopes and fears alternately predominant on this side with respect to the edifice required for the Exhibition the doubts as to the practicability of erecting one sufficiently capacious and commodious to contain and display the contributions of the whole world the apprehension that it could not be rendered impervious to water the confident assertions that it could not be completed in season for opening the Exhibition on the first of May as promised all found an echo on our shores ; and now the tidings that all these doubts have been dispelled, these difficulties removed, will have been hailed there with unmingled satisfaction. "I trust, gentlemen, that among the ultimate fruits of this Exhibition we are to reckon a wider and deeper appreciation of the worth of Labor, and especially of those ' Captains of Industry' by whose conceptions and achieve ments our Race is so rapidly borne onward in its progress to a loftier and more benignant destiny. We shall not be likely to appreciate less fully the merits of the wise Statesmen, by whose measures a People's thrift and hap piness are promoted of the brave Soldier, who joyfully pours out his blood in defense of the rights or in vindication of the honor of his Country of the Sacred Teacher, by whose precepts and example our steps are guided in the pathway to heaven if we render fit honor also to those 'Captains of Industry' whose tearless victories redden no river and whose conquering march is un marked by the tears of the widow and the cries of the orphan. I give you, therefore, " The, Health of Joseph Paxton, Esq., Designer of the Crystal Palace Honor to him whose genius does honor to Industry and to Man !" This speech was not published in the newspaper report of the banquet, nor was the name of the speaker even mentioned. The omission gave him an opportunity to retort upon the London Times its assertion, that with the English press, 'fidelity in reporting is a religion.' The speech was w itten out by Mr. Greeley himself, and 352 THREE MONTHS IN EUROPE. published in the Tribune. It must be confessed, that the grad j^e of a Vermont printing-office made a creditable appearance boibre the * lords and gentlemen.' The sights in and about London seem to have made no great im pression on the mind of Horace Greeley. He spent a day at Hamp ton Court, which he oddly describes as larger than the Astc*' House, but less lofty and containing fewer rooms. Westminster Abbey appeared to him a mere barbaric profusion of lofty ceilings, stained windows, carving, groining, and all manner of contrivances for absorbing labor and money ' waste, not taste ; the contortions of the sybil without her inspiration.' The part of the building devoted to public worship he thought less adapted to that purpose than a fifty- thousand dollar church in New York. The new fashion of * inton ing ' the service sounded to his ear, as though a Friar Tuck had wormed himself into the desk and was trying, under pretense of reading the service, to caricature, as broadly as possible, the alleged peculiarity of the methodistic pulpit super-imposed upon the regular Yankee drawl. The Epsom races he declined to attend for three reasons; he had much to do at home, he did not care a button which of thirty colts could run fastest, and he preferred that his delight and that of swindlers, robbers, and gamblers, should not ' exactly coincide.' He found time, however, to visit the Model Lodging houses, the People's Bathing establishments, and a Ragged School. The spectacle of want and woe presented at the Ragged School touched him nearly. It made him feel, to quote his own language, that "he had hitherto said too little, done too little, dared too little, sacrified too little, to awaken attention to the infernal wrongs and abuses, which are inherent in the very structure and constitution, the nature and essence of civilized society, as it now exists throughout Christendom." He was in haste to be gone from a scene, to look upon which, as a mere visitor, seemed an insult heaped on injury, an unjustifiable prying into the saddest secrets of the prison-house of human woe ; but he apologized for the fancied impertinence by a gift of money. While in London, Mr. Greeley attended the anniversary of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, and made a speech cf a somewhat nov^l and unexpected nature. The question that was under discussion was, 'What can we Britons do to hasten the over- HE SPEAKS AT EXETER HALL. 353 throw of Slavery?' Three colored gentlemen and an M. P. had extolled Britain as the land of true freedom and equality, had urged Britons to refuse recognition to ' pro-slavery clergymen,' to avoid using the products of slave-labor, and to assist the free-colored people to educate their children. One of the colored orators had observed the entrance of Horace Greeley, and named him commend- ingly to the audience; whereupon he was invited to take a seat upon the platform, and afterwards to address the meeting; both of which invitations were promptly accepted. He spoke fifteen min utes. He began by stating the fact, that American Slavery justifies itself mainly on the ground, that the class who live by manual toil are everywhere, but particularly in England, degraded and ill-re quited. Therefore, he urged upon English Abolitionists, first, to use systematic exertions to increase the reward of Labor and the com fort and consideration of the depressed Laboring Class at home; and to diffuse and cherish respect for Man as Man, without regard to class, color or vocation. Secondly, to put forth determined ef forts for the eradication of those Social evils and miseries in Eng land which are appealed to and relied on by slaveholders and their champions everywhere as justifying the continuance of Slavery; and thirdly, to colonize our Slave States by thousands of intelligent, moral, industrious Free Laborers, who will silently and practically dispel the wide-spread delusion which affirms that the Southern States must be cultivated and their great staples produced by Slave Labor, or not at all. These suggestions were listened to with respectful attention ; but they did not elicit the 'thunder of applause' which had greeted the 'Stand-aside-for-I-am-holier-than-thou' oratory of the preceding speakers. Our traveler witnessed the second performance at the Devonshire House, of Bulwer's play, 'Not so Bad as we Seem,' for the benefit of the Literary Guild, the characters by Charles Dickens, Douglas Jerrold, and other literary notabilities. Not that he hoped much for the success of the project; but it was, at least, an attempt to mend the fortunes of unlucky British authors, whose works ' we Americans habitually steal,' and to whom he, as an individual, felt himself indebted. The price of the tickets for the first performance was twenty -five <} ollars. He applied for one too late, and #as there- 354 THREE MONTHS IN EUROPE. for<5 olj .iged to content himself with purchasing a ten-dollar ticket for the second. The play, however, he found rather dull than otherwise, the performance being indebted, he thought, for its main interest to the personal character of the actors, who played respect ably for amateurs, but not well. Dickens was not at home in the lending part, as 'stateliness sits ill upon him;' but he shone in the scene where, as a bookseller in disguise, he tempts the virtue of a poor author. In the afterpiece, however, in which the novelist personated in rapid succession a lawyer, a servant, a gentleman and an invalid, the acting seemed ' perfect,' and the play was heartily enjoyed throughout. Mr. Greeley thought, that the "raw material of a capital comedian was put to a better use when Charles Dickens took to authorship." It was half-past twelve when the curtain fell, and the audience repaired to a supper room, where the munificence of the Duke of Devonshire had provided a superb and profuse enter tainment. "I did not venture, at that hour," says the traveler, " to partnke ; but those who did would be quite unlikely to repent of it till morning." He left the ducal mansion at one, just as ' the vio lins began to give note of coming melody, to which nimble feet were eager to respond.' The eightieth birthday of Robert Owen was celebrated on the fourteenth of May, by a dinner at the Colbourne hotel, attended by a few of Mr. Owen's personal friends, among whom Horace Gree ley was one. "I cannot," wrote Mr. Greeley, "see many things as he does ; it seems to me that he is stone-blind on the side of Faith in the invisible, and exaggerates the truths he perceives until they almost become falsehoods ; but I love his sunny, benevolent nature, I admire his unwearied exertions for- what he deems the good of humanity ; and, believing with the great apostle to the Gentiles, that ' Now abide faith, hope, charity ; these three ; but the great est of these is charity,' I consider him practically a better Chris tian than half those who, professing to be such, believe more and do less." The only other banquet at winch Mr. Greeley was a guest in London during his first visit, was the dinner of the Fishmonger's Company. There he heard a harangue from from Sir James Brooke, the Rajah of Borneo. From reading, he had formed the opinion that the Rajah was doing a good work for civilization and humanity in Borneo, but this impression was not confirmed BE1ORE A COMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 355 by the ornate and fluent speech delivered by him on this occa sion. During Mr. Greeley's stay in London, the repeal of the ' taxes on knowledge ' was agitated in and out of parliament. Those taxes were a duty on advertisements, and a stamp-duty of one penny per copy on -5rv periodical containing news. A parliamentary com mittee, consisting of eight members of the House of Commons, tho Rt. Hon. T. Milnor Gibson, Messrs. Tufnell, Ewart, Cobden, Rich, Adair, Hamilton, and Sir J. Walmsey, had the subject under con sideration, and Mr. Greeley, as the representative of the only un- toammeled press in the world, was invited to give the committee the benefit of his experience. Mr. Greeley's evidence, given in two sessions of the committee, no doubt had influence upon the subsequent action of parliament. The advertisement duty was en tirely removed. The penny stamp was retained for revenue rea sons only, but must finally yield to the demands of the nation. The chief part of Mr. Greeley's evidence claims a place in this work, both because of its interesting character, and because it really influenced legislation on a subject of singular importance. He told England what England did not understand before he told her why the Times newspaper was devouring its contemporaries ; and he assisted in preparing the way for that coining penny-press which is destined to play so great a part in the future of ' Great England.' In reply to a question by the chairman of the committee with re gard to the effect of the duty upon the advertising business, Mr. Greeley replied substantially as follows : "Your duty is the same on the advertisements in a journal with fifty thousand circulation, as in a journal with one thousand, although the value of the article is twenty times as much in the one case as in the other. The duty operates precisely as though you were to lay a tax of one shilling a day on every day's labor that a man were to do ; to a man whose labor is wprth two shillings a day, it would be destructive ; while by a man who earns twen ty shillings a day, it would be very lightly felt. An advertisement is worth but a certain amount, and the public soon get to know what it is worth ; you put a duty on advertisements and you destroy the value of those coming to Dew establishments. People who advertise in your well-established journals, ould afford to nav a price to include the duty ; but in a new paper, tho adver 356 THREE MONTHS IN EUROPE. tisements would not be worth the amount of the duty alone ; and consequent ly the new concern would have no chance Now, the advertisements are one main source of the income of daily papers, and thousands of business men take them mainly for those advertisements. For instance, at the time when our auctioneers were appointed bylaw (they were, of course, party j oliticians), one journal, which was high in the confidence of ,he party in power, obtained not a law, but an understanding, that all the auctioneers appointed should ad vertise in that journal. Now, though the journal referred to has ceased to be of that party, and the auctioneers are no longer appointed by the State, yet that journal has almost the mtnopoly of the auctioneers' business to this day. Auctioneers must advertise in it because they know that purchasers are looking there ; and purchasers must take the paper, because they know that it contains just the advertisements they want to see ; and this, without regard to the goodness or the principles of the paper. I know men in this town who take one journal mainly for its advertisements, and they must take the Times, because everything is advertised in it ; for the same reason, advertisers must advertise in the Times. If we had a duty on advertisements, I will not say it would be impossible to build a new concern up in New York against the competition of the older ones ; but I do say, it would be impossible to preserve the weaker papers from being swallowed up by the stronger." Mr. COBDEN. " Do you then consider the fact, that the Times newspaper for the last fifteen years has been increasing so largely in circulation, is to be accounted for mainly by the existence of the advertisement duty 7" Mr. GREELEY. " Yes ; much more than the stamp. By the operation of the advertisement duty, an advertisement is charged ten times as much in one paper as in another. An advertisement in the Times may be worth five pounds, while in another paper it is only worth one pound ; but the duty is the same." Mr. RICH. "The greater the number of small advertisements in papers, the greater the advantage to their proprietors 7" Mr. GREELEY. " Yes. Suppose the cost of a small advertisement to be five shillings, the usual charge in the Times ; if you have to pay a shilling or eighteen pence duty, that advertisement is worth* nothing in a journal with a fourth part of the circulation of the Times." CHAIRMAN. " Does it not appear to you that the taxes on the press are hostile to one another ; in the first place, lessening the circulation of papers by means of the stamp duty, we diminish the consumption of paper, and therefore lessen the amount of paper duty ; secondly, by diminishing the sale of papers through the stamp, we lessen the number of advertisements, and therefore the receipts of the advertisement duty 1" Mr. GREELEY. " I should say that if the government were, simply aa a mat ter of revenue, to fix a duty, say of half a penny per pound, on paper, it would be easily collected, and produce more money ; i ud then, a law which is equal HE THROWS LIGHT UPON THE SUBJECT. 357 hi its operation does not require any considerable number of officers to collect the duty, and it would require no particular vigilance ; and the duty on papei alone would be most equal and most efficient as a revenue duty." CHAIRMAN. " It is clear, then, that the effect of the stamp and advertise ment duty is to lessen the amount of the receipt from the duty on paper." Mr. GREELEY. "Enormously. I see that the circulation of daily papers in London is but sixty thousand, against a hundred thousand in New York ; while the tendency is more to concentrate on London than on New York. Not a tenth part of our daily papers are printed in New York." Mr. COBDEN. " Do you consider, that there are upwards of a million papers issued daily from the press in the United States ?" Mr. GREELEY. " I should say about a million : I cannot say upwards. I think there are about two hundred and fifty daily journals published in the United States." Mr. COBDEN. " At what amount of population does a town in the United States begin to have a daily paper ? They first of all begin with a weekly paper, do they not 7" Mr. GREELEY. " Yes. The general rule is, that each county will have one weekly newspaper. In all the Free States, if a county have a population of twenty thousand, it has two papers, one for each party. The general average in the agricultural counties is one local journal to every ten thousand inhab itants. When a town grows to have fifteen thousand inhabitants in and about it, then it has a daily paper ; but sometimes that is the case when it hag as few as ten thousand : it depends more on the business of a place than its popula tion. But fifteen thousand may be stated as the average at which a daily pa per commences ; at twenty thousand they have two, and so on. In central towns, like Buffalo, Rochester, Troy, they have from three to five daily jour nals, each of which prints a semi-weekly or a weekly journal." Mr. RICH. " Have your papers much circulation outside the towns in which they are published 1" Mr. GREELEY. " The county is the genera! limit ; though some have a judicial district of five or six counties." Mr. RICH. " Would the New York paper, for instance, have much circula tion in Charleston ?" Mr. GREELEY. " The New York Herald, I think, which is considered the journal most friendly to Southern interests, has a considerable circula tion there." CHAIRMAN. " When a person proposes to publish a paper in New York, he is not required to go to any office to register himself, or to give security that he will not insert libels or seditions matter ? A newspaper publisher is not subject to any liability more than other persons V Mr. GREELEY. "No; no more than a man that starts a blacksmith'* hop." 358 THREE MONTHS IN EUROPE. CHAIRMAN. 'They do not presume in the United States, that because a man is going to print news in a paper, he is going to libel?" Mr. GREELEY. " No ; nor do they presume that his libeling would be worth much, unless he is a responsible character." Mr. COBDEN. "From what you have stated with regard to the circulation of the daily papers in New York, it appears that a very large proportion of the adult population must be customers for them'.?" Mr. GREELEY. " Yes ; I think three-fourths of all the families take a daily paper of some kind." Mr. COBDEN. " The purchasers of the daily papers must consist of a differ ent class from those in England ; mechanics must purchase them?" Mr. GREELEY. '' Every mechanic takes a paper, or nearly every one." Mr. COBDEN. " Do those people generally get them before they leave home for their work ?" Mr. GREELEY. " Yes ; and you are complained of if you do not furnish a man with his newspaper at his breakfast ; he wants to read it between six or seven usually." Mr. COBDEN. " Then a ship-builder, or a cooper, or a joiner, needs his daily paper at his breakfast-time?" Mr. GREELEY. "Yes; and he may take it with him to read at his dinner, between twelve and one ; but the rule is, that he wants his paper at his break fast " Mr. COBDEN. " After he has finished his breakfast or his dinner, he may be found reading the daily newspaper, just as the people of the upper classes do in England ?" Mr. GREELEY. " Yes ; if they do." Mr. COBDEN. " And that is quite common, is it not?" Mr. GHEELEY. " Almost universal, I think. There is a very low class, a good many foreigners, who do not know how to read ; but no native, I think." Mr. EWART. " Do the agricultural laborers read much ?" Mr. GHEELEY. " Yes ; they take our weekly papers, which they receive through the post generally." Mr. COBDEN. "The working people in New York are not in the habit of resorting to public-houses to read the newspapers, are they ?" Mr. GREELEY. " They go to public-houses, but not to read the papers. It is not the general practice ; but, still, we have quite a class who do so." Mr. COBDEN. " The newspapers, then, is not the attraction to the public- house?" Mr. GREELEY. "No. I think a very small proportion of our reading class go there at all ; those that I have seen there are mainly the foreign popula tion, those who do not read." CHAIRMAN. " Are there any papers published in New York, or in other parts, which may be said to be of an obscene or immoral character ?" VINDICATES THE AMERICAN PRESS. 359 Jlr. GREELEY. " We call the New York Herald a very bad paper those who do not like it ; but that is not the cheapest." CHAIRMAN. " Have you heard of a paper called the ' The Town,' publish ed in this country, with pictures of a certain character in it 7 Have you any publications in the United States of that character 1" Mr. GREELEY. " Not daily papers. There are weekly papers got up from time to time called the ' Scorpion,' the ' Flash,' and so on, whose purpose is to extort money from parties who can be threatened with exposure of immora practices, ur for visiting infamous houses." Mr. EWART. " They do not last, do they 1" Mr GREELEY. " I do not know of any one being continued for any con siderable time. If one dies, another is got up, and that goes down. Our cheap daily papers, the very cheapest, are, as a class, quite as discreet in their conduct and conversation as other journals. They do not embody the same amount of talent ; they devote themselves mainly to news. They are not party journals ; they are nominally independent ; they are not given to harsh language with regard to public men : they are very moderate. Mr. EWART. " Is scurility or personality common in the publications of the United States 7" Mr. GREELEY. "It is not common; it is much less frequent than it was; but it is not absolutely unknown." Mr. COBDEN. " What is the circulation of the New York Herald 7" Mr. GREELEY. " Twenty-five thousand, I believe." Mr. COBDEN. " Is that an influential paper in America V Mr. GREELEY. " I think not." Mr. COBDEN. " It has a higher reputation in Europe probably than at homo.' Mr. GREELEY. " A certain class of journals in this country find it their in terest or pleasure to quote it a good deal." CHAIRMAN. " As the demand is extensive, is thn remuneration for the ser vices of the literary men who are employed on the press, good 7" Mr. GREELEY. " The prices of literary labor are more moderate than in this country. The highest salary, I think, that would be commanded by any one connected with the press would be five thousand dollars the highest that could be thought of. I have not heard of higher than three thousand." Mr. RICH. " What would be about the ordinary remuneration 1" Mr. GREELEY. " In our own concern it is, besides the principal editor, from fifteen hundred dollars down to five hundred. I think that is the usual range." CHAIRMAN. " Are your leading men in America, in point of literary abil ity, employed from time to time upon the press as an occupation 7" Mr. GREELEY. " It is beginning to be so, but it has not been the custom There have been leading men connected with the press ; but the press has not been usually conducted by the most powerful men. With a few exceptions, the leading political journals are conducted ably, and they are becoming more 360 THREE MONTHS IN EUROPE. so ; and, with a wider diffusion of the circulation, the press is more able to ifay for it." Mr. RICH. " Is it a profession apart ?" Mr. GREELEV. " No ; usually the men have been brought up to the bar, to the pulpit, and so on ; they are literary men." CHAIRMAN. " I presume that the non-reading class in the United States is a very limited one?" Mr. GREELEY. " Yes ; except in the Slave States." CHAIRMAN. " Do not you consider that newspaper reading is calculated to keep up a habit of reading?" Mr. GREELEY. "I think it is worth all the schools in the country. I think it creates a taste for reading in every child's mind, and it increases his inter est in his lessons ; he is attracted from always seeing a newspaper and hear ing it read. I think." CHAIRMAN. " Supposing that you had your schools as now, but that your newspaper press were reduced within the limits of the press in England, do you not think that the habit of reading acquired at school would be frequently laid aside ?" MR. GREELEY. " I think that the habit would not be acquired, and that paper reading would fall into disuse." Mr. EWART. " Having observed both countries, can you state whether the press has greater influence on public opinion in the United States than in Eng land, or the reverse?" Mr. GREELEY. " I think it has more influence with us. I do not know that any class is despotically governed by the press, but its influence is more uni versal; every one reads and talks about it with us, and more weight is laid upon intelligence than on editorials ; the paper which brings the quickest news is the thing looked to." Mr. EWAHT. " The leading article has not so much influence as in England ?" Mr. GREELEY. " No; the telegraphic dispatch is the great point." Mr. COBDEN. " Observing our newspapers and comparing them with the American papers, do you find that we make much less use of the electric tele graph for transmitting news than in America ?" Mr. GREELEY. " Not a hundredth part as much- as we do." Mr. COBDEN. " An impression prevails in this country that our newspaper press incurs a great deal more expense to expedite new3 than you do in New York. Are you of that opinion ?" Mr. GREELEY. " I do not know what your expense is. I should say that a hundred thousand dollars a year is paid by our association of the six leading daily papers, besides what each gets separately for itself." Mr. COBDEN. " Twenty thousand pounds a year is paid by your associ ation, consisting of six papers, for what you get in common ?" Mr. GREELEY. " Yes ; we telegraph a great deal in the United States. Aa- THE SIGHTS OF PARIS. 361 auming that a scientific meeting was held at Cincinnati this yeAr, we should telegraph the reports from that place, and I presume other journals would have special reporters to report the proceedings at length. We have a repcrt every day, fifteen hundred miles, from New Orleans daily ; from St. Louis too, and other places." " The Committee then adjourned." On Saturday morning, the seventh of June, after a residence of seven busy weeks in London, our traveler left that 4 magnificent Babel, 1 for Paris, selecting the dearest and, of course, the quickest route. Dover, quaint and curious Dover, he thought a 'mean old town;' and the steamboat which conveyed him from Dover to Calais was ' one of those long, black, narrow scow-contrivances, about equal to a battonwood dug-out, which England appears to delight in.' Two hours of deadly sea-sickness, and he stood on the shores of France. At Calais, which he styles 'a queer old town,' he was detained a long hour, obtained an execrable dinner for thirty-seven and a half cents, and changed some sovereigns for French money, ' at a shave which was not atrocious/ Then away to Paris by the swiftest train, arriving at half-past two on Sunday morning, four hours after the time promised in the enticing adver tisement of the route. The ordeal of the custom-house he passed with little delay. '* I did not," he says, " at first comprehend, that the number on my trunk, standing out fair before me in hon est, unequivocal Arabic figures, could possibly mean anything but 'fifty-two;' but a friend cautioned me in season that those figures spelled 'cinquante-deux,' or phonetically 'sank-on-du' to the officer, and I made my first attempt at mouthing French accordingly, and succeeded in making myself intelligible." About daylight on Sunday morning, he reached the Hotel Choi- seuL, Rue St. Honoro, where he found shelter, but not bed. After breakfast, however, he sallied forth and saw his first sight in Paris, high mass at the Church of the Madeleine; which he thought a gorgeous, bat * inexplicable dumb show.' Eight days were all that the indefatigable man could afford to a stay in the gay capital ; but he improved the time. The obelisk of Luxor, brought from the banks of the Nile, and covered with mys terious inscriptions, that had braved the winds and rains of four thousand years, impressed him more deeply than any object he had 16 3G2 THREE MONTHS IN EUROPE. seen in Europe. The Tuileries were to his eye only an irregular mass of buildings with little architectural beauty, and remarkable chiefly for their magnitude. At the French Opera, he saw the musical spectacle of Azael the Prodigal, or rather, three acts of it ; for his patience gave way at the end of the third act. "Such a medley of drinking, praying, dancing, idol-worship, and Delilah- craft he had never before encountered." To comprehend an Eng lishman, he says, follow him to the fireside ; a Frenchman, join him at the opera, and contemplate him during the performance of the bal let, of which France is the cradle and the home. u Though no prac titioner,' 1 '' he adds, u I am yet a lover of the dance;" but the attitudes and contortions of the ballet are disagreeable and tasteless, and the tendency of such a performance as he that night beheld^ was earthy, sensual, devilish. Notre Dame he thought not only the finest church, but the most imposing edifice in Paris, infinitely supe rior, as a place of worship, to the damp, gloomy, dungeon-like "Westminster Abbey. The Hotel de Ville, like the New York City Hall, l lacks another story.' In the Palace of Versailles, he saw fresh proofs of the selfishness of king-craft, the long-suffering patience ol nations, and the necessary servility of Art when patronized by royalty. He wandered for hours through its innumerable halls, encrusted with splendor, till the intervention of a naked ante-room was a relief to the eye; and the ruling idea in picture and statue and carving was military glory. " Carriages shattered and overturn ed, animals transfixed by spear-thrusts and writhing in speechless agony, men riddled by cannon-shot or pierced by musket-balls, and ghastly with coming death ; such are the spectacles which the more favored and fortunate of the Gallic youth have been called for generations to admire and enjoy. The whole collection is, in its general effect, delusive and mischievous, the purpose being to exhibit War as always glorious, and France as uniformly triumph ant. It is by means like these that the business of shattering knee- joints and multiplying orphans is kept in countenance." At the Louvre, however, the traveler spent the greater part of two days in rapturous contemplation of its wonderful collection of paintings. Two days out of eight -the fact is significant. Let no man who has spent but three days in a foreign country, venture on prophecy with regard to its future. France, at the time HIS OPINION OF THE FRENCH. 363 of Horace Greeley's brief visit, went by the name of Republic, and Louis Napoleon was called President. For a sturdy republican like Mr. Greeley, it was but natural that one of his first inquiries should be, ' Will the Republic stand ?' It is amusing, now, to read in a letter of his, written on the third day of his residence in Paris, the most confident predictions of its stability. " Alike," he says, " by its own strength and by its enemies' divisions, the safety of the Republic is assured ;" and again, "Time is on the popular side, and every hour's endurance adds strength to the Republic." And yet again, "An open attack by the Autocrat would certainly consolidate it ; a prolongation of Louis Napoleon's power (no longer probable) would have the same effect." "No longer probable." The striking events of history have seldom seemed 4 probable ' a year before they occurred. Other impressions made upon the mind of the traveler were more correct. France, which the English press was daily repre senting as a nation inhabited equally by felons, bankrupts, paupers and lunatics, he found as tranquil and prosperous as England her self. He saw there less plate upon the sideboards of her landlords and bankers, but he observed evidences on all hands of general though unostentatious thrift. The French he thought intelligent, vivacious, courteous, obliging, generous and humane, eager to en joy, but willing that all the world should enjoy with them ; but at the same time, they are impulsive, fickle, sensual and irreverent. Paris, the l paradise of the senses,' contained tens of thousands who could die fighting for liberty, but no class who could even compre hend the idea of the temperance pledge I ! The poor of Paris seemed to suffer less than the poor of London ; but in London there were ten philanthropic enterprises for one in Paris. In Paris he saw none of that abject servility in the bearing of the poor to the rich which had excited his disgust and commiseration in London. A hundred princes and dukes attract less attention in Paris than one in London ; for ' Democracy triumphed in the drawing-rooms of Paris before it had erected its first barricade in the streets ;' and once more the traveler " marvels at the obliquity of vision, where by any one is enabled, standing in this metropolis, to anticipate the subversion of the Republic." "And if," he adds, "passing over the mob of generals and politicians-by-trade, the choice of candi- 364 THREE MONTHS IN EUROPE. dates for the next presidential terra should fall on some modest and unambitious citizen, who has earned a character by quiet probity and his bread by honest labor, I shall hope to see his name at tho head of the poll in spite of the unconstitutional overthrow of Uni versal Suffrage." Thus he thought that France, fickle, glory-loving France, would do in 1852, what he only hoped America would be capable of some time before the year 1900 ; that is, ' elect something else than (jenerals to the presidency.' Away to Lyons on the sixteenth of June. To an impetuous trav eler like Horace Greeley, the tedious formalities of the European railroads were sufficiently irritating ; but the " passport nuisance " was disgusting almost beyond endurance. One of the very few anecdotes which he found time to tell in his letters to the Tribune, occurs in connection with his remarks upon this subject. " Every one in Paris who lodges a stranger must see forthwith that he has a passport in good condition, in default of which said host is liable to a penalty. Now, two Americans, when applied to, produced passports in due form, but the professions set forth therein were not transparent to the landlord's apprehension. One of them was duly designated in his passport as a * loafer] the other as a 4 rowdy J and they informed him, on application, that though these professions were highly popular in America and extensively followed, they knew no French synonyms into which they could be translated. The landlord, not content with the sign manual of Daniel Webster, affirm ing that all was right, applied to an American friend for a translation 01 the inexplicable professions, but I am not sure that he has even .yet been fully enlightened with regard to them." lie thought that three days' endurance of the passport system as it exists on the con tinent of Europe would send any American citizen home with his love of liberty and country kindled to a blaze of enthusiasm. On the long railroad ride to Lyons, the traveler was half stifled with the tobacco smoke in the cars. His companions were all Frenchmen and all smokers, who " kept puff-puffing, through the day ; first all of them, then three, two, and at all events one, till they all got out at Dijon near nightfall; when, before I had time to congratulate myself on the atmospheric improvement, another Frenchman got in, lit his cigar, and went at it. All this was in direct and flagrant violation of the rules posted up in the car$ JOURNEY TO ITALY. 865 but when did a smoker 3ver care for law or decency ?" However he flattened his nose diligently against the car windows, and spied what he could of the crops, the culture, the houses and the people of the country. He discovered that a Yankee could mow twice as much grass in a day as a Frenchman, but not get as much from each acre ; that t the women did more than half the work c f the farms ; that the agricultural implements were primitive and rude, the hay-carts " wretchedly small ;" that the farm-houses were low small, steep-roofed, huddled together, and not worth a hundred dol lars each ; that fruit-trees were deplorably scarce ; and that the fitalls and stables for the cattle were * visible only to the eye of faith.' He reached Chalons on the Saone, at nine in the evening ; and Lyons per steamboat in the afternoon of the next day. Lyons, the capital of the silk-trade, furnished him, as might have been an ticipated, with an excellent text for a letter on Protection, in which he endeavored to prove that it is not best for mankind that one hundred thousand silk-workers should be clustered on any square mile or two of earth. The traveler's next ride was across the Alps to Turin. The let ter which describes it contains, besides the usual remarks upon wheat, grass, fruit-trees and bad farming, one slight addition to our stock of personal anecdotes. The diligence had stopped at Cham- bery, the capital of Savoy, for breakfast. " There was enough," he writes, " and good enough to eat, wine in abun dance without charge, but tea, coffee, or chocolate, must be ordered and paid for extra. Yet I was unable to obtain a cup of chocolate, the excuse being that there was not time to make it. I did not understand, therefore, why I was charged more than others for breakfast; but to talk English against French or Italian is to get a mile behind in no time, so I pocketed the change offered me and came away. On the coach, however, with an Englishman near me who had traveled this way before and spoke French and Italian, I ven tured to expose my ignorance as follows : " ' Neighbor, why was I charged three francs for breakfast, and the rest of yo-i but two and a half V ' ' Don't know perhaps you had tea or coffee.' " ' No, sir don't drink either.' " ' Then perhaps you washed your face and hands.' " ' Well, it would be just like me.' " * 0, then, that 's it ! The half franc was for the basin and towel.' " ' Ah oui, out.' So the milk in that cocoanut was accounted for." 366 THREE MONTHS IN EUROPE. Anecdotes are precious for biographical purposes. This is a little story, but the reader may infer from it something respecting Horace Greeley's manners, habits, and character. The morn ing of June the twentieth found the diligence rumbling over the beautiful plain of Piedmont towards Turin. Horace Greeley was in Italy. One of the first observations which he made in that enchanting country was, that he had never seen a region where a few sub-soil plows, with men qualified to use and explain them, were so much wanted ! Refreshing remark ! The sky of Italy had been overdone. At length, a traveler crossed the Alps who had an eye for the necessities of the soil. Mr. Greeley spent twenty-one days in Italy, paying flying visits to Turin, Genoa, Pisa, Florence, Padua, Bologna, Venice, Milan, and passing about a week in Rome. At Genoa, he remarked that the kingdom of Sardinia, which contains a population of only four mill ions, maintains sixty thousand priests, but not five thousand teach ers of elementary knowledge ; and that, while the churches of Ge noa are worth four millions of dollars, the school-houses would not bring fifty thousand. " The black-coated gentry fairly overshadow the land with their shovel-hats, so that corn has no ohance of sun shine." Pisa, too, could afford to spend a hundred thousand dol lars in fireworks to celebrate the anniversary of its patron saint ; but can spare nothing for popular education. At Florence, the trav- veler passed some agreeable hours with Hiram Powers, felt that his Greek Slave and Fisher Boy were not the loftiest achievements of that artist, defied antiquity to surpass his Proserpine and Psyche, and predicted that Powers, unlike Alexander, has realms still to conquer, and will fulfill his destiny. At Bologna the most notable thing he saw was an awning spread over the center of the main street for a distance of half a mile, and he thought the idea might be worth borrowing. On entering Venice his carpet-bags were searched for tobacco ; and he remarks, that when any tide-waiter finds more of that noxious weed about him than the chronic ill- breeding of smokers compels him to carry in his clothes, he is wel come to confiscate all his worldly possessions. Before reaching Venice, another diligence-incident occurred, which the traveler may be permitted himself to relate A NAP IN THE DILIGENCE. 307 " As midnight drew on," he writes, " I grew weary of gazing at the same endless diversity of grain-fields, vineyards, rows of trees, recede from our vision ; the watery waste is all around us ; and now, with God above and Death below, our gallant bark and her clustered company toprther brave the dangers of the mighty deep. May Infinite Mercy watch over owr onward path and bring us safely to our several homes ; for to die away from home and kindred seems one of the saddest calamities that could bofall me. This mortal tenement would rest uneasily in an ocean shroud : this spirit reluctantly resign that tenement to the chill and pitiless brine : these eyes close regretfully on the stranger skies and bleak inhospitat- ity of the sullen and stormy main. No ! let me see once more the scenes so well remembered and b loved ; let me grasp, if but once again, the hand of Friendship, and hear the thrilling accents of proved Affection, and when sooner or later the hour of mortal agony shall come, let my last gaze be fixed on eyes that will not forget me when I am gone, and let my ashes repose in that con genial soil which, however I may there be esteemed or hated, is still ' My own green land forever !' " Neptune was more gracious to the voyager on his homeward than he had been on his outward passage. The skies were clearer, the winds more favorable and gentler. A few days, not intolerably dis agreeable, landed him on the shores of Manhattan. The ship reached the wharf about six o'clock in the morning, cheating the expectant morning papers of their foreign news, which the editor of the Tri bune had already ' made up' for publication on board the steamer. However, lie had no sooner got on shore than he rushed away to the office, bent on getting out an l extra' in advance of all contempo raries. The compositors were all absent, of course; but boys were forthwith dispatched to summon them ftvm bed and breakfast. Mean- RECENTLY. 375 vhile, the impetuous Editor-in-Chief proceeded with Ms own hands to set the matter in type, and continued to assist till the form was ready to be lowered away to the press-room in the basement. In an hour or two the streets resounded with the cry, "Extra Try- bune ; 'yival of the Baltic." Then, but not till then, Horace Gree- ley might have been seen in a corner of an omnibus, going slowly ip town, towards his residence in Nineteenth street. CHAPTER XXVII. KECENTLY. Deliverance from Party A Private Platform Last Interview with Henry Clay Horace Greeley a Farmer He irrigate8 and drains His Advice to a Young Man The Daily Times A costly Mistake The Isms of the Tribune The Tribune g^ts Glory The Tribune in Parliament Proposed Nomination for Governor His Life written A Judge's Daughter for Sale. DURING the first eight or nine volumes of the Tribune, the history of that newspaper and the life of Horace Greeley were one and the same thing. But the time has passed, and passed forever, when a New York morning paper can be the vehicle of a single mind. Since the year 1850, when the Tribune came upon the town as a double sheet nearly twice its original size, its affairs have had a me tropolitan complexity and extensiveness, and Horace Greeley has run through it only as the original stream courses its way through a river swollen and expanded by many tributaries. The quaffing traveler cannot tell, as he rises from the shore refreshed, whether he has been drinking Hudson, or Mohawk, or Moodna, or two of them mingled, or one of the hundred rivulets that trickle into the ample stream upon which fleets and ' palaces' securely ride. Some wayfarers think they can, but they cannot; and their erroneous guesses are among the amusements of the tributary corps. Occa sionally, however, the original Greeley flavor is recognizable to the dullest palate. The most important recent event in the history of the Tribune 376 RECENTLY. occurred in November, 1852, when, on the defeat of General Scott and the annihilation of the Whig party, it ceased to be a party paper, and its editor ceased to be a party man. And this blessea emancipation, with its effect upon the press of the country, was worth that disaster. We never had great newspapers in this coun try while our leading papers gave allegiance to party, and never could have had. A great newspaper must be above everything and everybody. Its independence must be absolute, and then its power will be as nearly so as it ought to be. It was fit that the last triumph of party should be its greatest, and that triumph was secured when it enlisted such a man as Horace Greeley as the special and head champion of a man like General Scott. But as a partisan, what other choice had he ? To use his own language, he supported Scott and Graham, because, " 1. They can be elected, and the others can't. " 2. They are openly and thoroughly for PROTECTION TO HOME INDUSTRY, while the others, (judged by their supporters,) leau to Free Trade. " 3. Scott and Graham are backed by the general support of those who hold with us, that government may and should do much positive good." At the same time he ' spat upon the (Baltimore compromise, pro- fugitive law) platform,' and in its place, gave one of his own. As this private platform is the most condensed and characteristic state ment of Horace Greeley's political opinions that I have seen, it may properly be printed here. OUR PLATFORM. " I. As to the Tariff 1 : Duties on Imports specific so far as practicable, af fording ample protection to undeveloped or peculiarly exposed branches of our National Industry, and adequate revenue for the support of the govern ment and the payment of its debts. Low duties, as a general rule, on rude, bulky staples, whereof the cost of transportation is of itself equivalent to a heavy impost, and high duties on such fabrics, wares, &c., as come into de pressing competition with our own depressed infantile or endangered pursuits. " II. As to National Works : Liberal appropriations yearly for the improve ment of rivers and harbors, and such eminently national enterprises as the Saut St. Marie canal and the Pacific railroad from the Mississippi. Cut down the expenditures for forts, ships, troops and warlike enginery of all kinds, and add largely to those for workg which do not ' perish in the using,' but will re- A PRIVATE PLATFORM. 377 main for ages to benefit our people, strengthen the Union, and contribute far more to the national defense than the costly machinery of war ever could. " III. As to Foreign Policy : ' Do unto others [the weak and oppressed as well as the powerful and mighty] as we 'would have them do unto us.' No shuffling, no evasion of duties nor shirking responsibilities, but a firm front to despots, a prompt rebuke to every outrage on the law of Nations, and a generous, active sympathy with the victims of tyranny and usurpation. " IV. As to Slavery : No interference by Congress with its existence in any slave State, but a firm and vigilant resistance to its legalization in any national Territory, or the acquisition of any foreign Territory wherein slavery may ex ist. A perpetual protest against the 'hunting of fugitive slaves in free States ns an irresistible cause of agitation, ill feeling and alienation between the North and the South. A firm, earnest, inflexible testimony, in common with the whole non-slaveholding Christian world, that human slavery, though le gally protected, is morally wrong, and ought to be speedily terminated. " V. As to State rights: More regard for and less cant about them. " VI. ONE PRESIDENTIAL TERM, and no man a candidate for any office while wielding the vast patronage of the national executive. " VII. REFORM IN CONGRESS : Payment by the session, with a rigorous de duction for each day's absence, and a reduction and straightening of mileage. We would suggest $2,000 compensation for the first (or long), and $1,000 for the second (or short) session ; with ten cents per mile for traveling (by a bee- line) to and from Washington." The Tribune fought gallantly for Scott, and made no wry faces at the * brogue,' or any other of the peculiarities of the candidate's stump efforts. When the sorry fight was over, the Tribune submit ted with its usual good humor, spoke jocularly of the ' late whig party,' declared its independence of party organizations for the fu ture, and avowed its continued adhesion to all the principles which it had hoped to promote by battling with the whigs. It would still war with the aggressions of the slave power, still strive for free homesteads, still denounce the fillibusters, and still argue for the Maine Law. " 'Doctor," said a querulous, suffering invalid who had paid a good deal of money for physic to little apparent purpose, " you don't seem to reach tha seat of my disease. Why don't you strike at the seat of my disorder ?" " ' Well, I will," was the prompt reply, " if you insist on it ;" and, lifting his cane, he smashed the brandy bottle on the sideboard.' " And thus ended the long connection of the New York Tribune with the whig party 378 RECENTLY. In the summer of 1852, Horace Greeley performed the melan choly duty of finishing Sargent's Life of Henry Clay. He added little, however, to Mr. Sargent's narrative, except the proceedings of Congress on the occasion of Mr. Clay's death and funeral. One paragraph, descriptive of the last interview between the dying statesman and the editor of the Tribune, claims insertion : "Learning from others," says Mr. Greeley, "how ill and feeble he was, I had not intended to call upon him, and remained two days under the same roof without asking permission to do so. Mean time, however, he was casually informed of my being in Washing ton, and sent me a request to call at his room. I did so, and enjoyed a half hour's free and friendly conversation with him, the saddest and the last! His state was even wors*e than I feared; he was already emaciated, a prey to a severe and distressing cough, and complained of spells of difficult breathing. I think no physician could have judged him likely to live two months longer. Yet his mind was unclouded and brilliant as ever, his aspirations for his country's welfare as ardent ; and, though all personal ambition had long been banished, his interest in the events and impulses of the day was nowise diminished. He listened attentively to all I had to say of the repulsive aspects and revolting features of the Fugi tive Slave Law and the necessary tendency of its operation to ex cite hostility and alienation on the part of our Northern people, unaccustomed to Slavery, and seeing it exemplified only in the brutal arrest and imprisonment of some humble and inoffensive negro whom they had learned to regard as a neighbor. 1 think I may without impropriety say that Mr. Clay regretted that more care had not been taken in its passage to divest this act of features needlessly repulsive to Northern sentiment, though he did not deem any change in its provisions now practicable." A strange, but not inexplicable, fondness existed in the bosom of Horace Greeley for the aspiring chieftain of the Whig party. Very masculine men, men of complete physical development, the gallant, the graceful, the daring, often enjoy the sincere homage of soula superior to their own ; because such are apt to place an extravagant value upon the shining qualities which they do not possess. From Webster, tUe great over-Praised, the false god of cold New Eng- HORACE GREELEY A FARMER. 379 land, Horace Greeley seems ever to have shrunk with an instinc tive aversion. As he lost his interest in party politics, his mind reverted to the soil. He yearned for the repose and the calm delights of country life. " As for me," ht said, at the conclusion of an address before the Indiana State Agricultural Society, delivered in October, 1853, "as for me, long-tossed on the stormiest waves of doubtful conflict and arduous endeavor, I have begun to feel, since the shades of forty years fell upon me, the weary, tempest-driven voyager's longing for land, the wanderer's yearning for the hamlet where in childhood he nestled by his mother's knee, and was soothed to sleep on her breast. The sober down-hill of life dispels many illusions, while it develops or strengthens within us the attachment, perhaps long smothered or overlaid, for 4 that dear hut, our home.' And so I, in the sober afternoon of life, when its sun, if not high, is still warm, have bought a few acres of land in the broad, still country, and, bearing thither my household treasures, have resolved to steal from the City's labors and anxieties at least one day in each week, wherein to revive as a farmer the memories of my childhood's humble home. And already I realize that the experiment cannot cost so much as it is worth. Already I find in that day's quiet an anti dote and a solace for the feverish, festering cares of the weeks which environ it. Already my brook murmurs a soothing even-song to my burning, throbbing brain ; and my trees, gently stirred by the fresh breezes, whisper to my spirit something of their own quiet strength and patient trust in God. And thus do I faintly realize, though but for a brief and flitting day, the serene joy which shall irradiate the Farmer's vocation, when a fuller and truer Education shall have refined and chastened his animal cravings, and when Science shall have endowed him with her treasures, redeeming La bor from drudgery while quadrupling its efficiency, and crowning with beauty and plenty our bounteous, beneficent Earth." The portion of the ' broad, still country ' alluded to in this elo quent passage, is a farm of fifty acres in Westchester county, near Newcastle, close to the Harlem railroad, thirty-fonr miles from the city of New York. Thither the tired editor, repairs every Saturday morning by an early train, and there he remains directing and as- 380 RECENTLY. sisting in the labors of the farm for that single day only, returning early enough on Sunday to hear the flowing rhetoric of Mr. Cha- pin's morning sermon. From church to the office and to work. This farm has seen marvelous things done on it during the three years of Mr. Greeley's ownership. What it was when he bought it may be partly inferred :rom another passage of the same address : " I once went to look at a farm of fifty acres that I thought of buy ing for a summer home, some forty miles from the city of New York. The owner had been born on it, as I believe had his father before him ; but it yielded only a meager subsistence for his family, and he thought of selling and going West. I went over it with him late in June, passing through a well-filled barn-yard which had not been disturbed that season, and stepping thence into a corn-field of five acres, with a like field of potatoes just beyond it. 4 Why, neighbor Tasked I, in astonishment, 4 how could you leave all this manure so handy to your plowed land, and plant ten acres without any ?' ' O, I was sick a good part of the spring, and so hurried that I could not find time to haul it out.' 4 Why, suppose you had planted but five acres in all, and emptied your barn-yard on those five, leaving the residue untouched, don't you think you would liave harvested a larger crop?' 'Well, perhaps I should,' was the poor farmer's response. It seemed never before to have occurred to him that he could let alone a part of his land. Had he progressed so far, he might have ventured thence to the conclusion that it is less expensive and more profitable to raise a full crop on five acres than half a crop on ten. I am sorry to say we have a good many such farmers still left at the East." But, he might have added, Horace Greeley is not 'one of them. He did not, however, and the deficiency shall here be supplied. The farm is at present a practical commentary upon the oft- repeated recommendations of the Tribune with regard to ' high farming.' It consisted, three years ago. of grove, bog, and exhaust ed upland, in nearly equal proportions. In the grove, which is a fine growth of hickory, hemlock, iron-wood and oak, a small white cottage is concealed, built by Mr. Greeley, at a cost of a few hun dred dollars. The farm-buildings, far more costly and expensive, are at the foot of the hill on which the house stands, and around them are the gardens. The marshy land, which was formerly verj HE IRRIGATES AND DRAINS. 381 wet, i ery boggy, and quite useless, has been drained by a system of ditches and tiles ; the bogs have been pared off and burnt, the lano plowed and planted, and made exceedingly productive. The upland has been prepared for irrigation, the water being supplied by a brook, which tumbled down the hill through a deep glen. Its course was arrested by a dam, and from the reservoir thus formed, pipes are laid to the different fields, which can be inundated by the turning of a cock. The experiment of irrigation, however, has been suspended. Last spring the brook, swollen with rage at the loss of its ancient liberty, burst through the dam, and scat tered four thousand* dollars' worth of solid masonry in the space of a minute and a half. This year a new attempt will be' made to reduce it to submission, and conduct its waters in peaceful and fer tilizing rivulets down the rows of corn and potatoes. Then Mr. Greeley can take down his weather-cock, and smile in the midst of drought, water his crops with less trouble than he can water his horses, and sow turnips in July, regardless of the clouds. If a crop is well put in the ground, and well cared for as it progresses, its perfect success depends upon two things, water and sunshine. Science has enabled the farmer partly to regulate the supply of the latter, and perfectly to regulate the supply of the former. The slant of the hills, the reflection of walls, glass covers, trees, awn ings, and other contrivances, may be made to concentrate or ward off the rays of the sun. Irrigation and drainage go far to complete the farmer's independence of the wayward weather. In all the operations of his little farm, Mr. Greeley takes the liveliest interest, and he means to astonish his neighbors with some wonderful crops, by-and-by, when he has everything in training. Indeed, he may have done so already ; as, in the list of prizes awarded at our last Agricultural State Fair, held in New York, October, 1854, we read, under the head of ' vegetables,' these two items: "Turnips, H. Greeley, Chappaqua, Westchester Co., Two Dollars," (the second prize); "Twelve second-best ears of White Seed Corn, H. Greeley, Two Dollars." Looking down over the reclaimed swamp, all bright now with waving flax, he said one day, "All else that I have done may be of no avail ; but what I have done here is done ; it will last." A private letter, written about this time, appeared in the country papers, and still emerges occasionally. A young man wrote 'o Mr. 382 RECENTLY. Greeley, requesting his advice upon a project of going to college and studying law. The reply was as follows : " MY DEAR SIR, Had you asked me whether I would advise you to desert agriculture for law, I should have answered no ! very decidedly. There is already a superabundance of lawyers, coupled with a great scarcity of good farmers. Why carry your coals to Newcastle ? " As to a collegiate education, my own lack of it probably disqualifies me to appreciate it fully ; but I think you might better be learning to fiddle And if you are without means, I would advise you to hire ten acres of good land, work ten hours a day on it, for five days each week, and devote all your spare hours to reading and study, especially to the study of agricultural science, and thus ' owe no man anything,' while you receive a thorough practical education. Such is not the advice you seek ; nevertheless, I remain yours, HORACE GREELEY." This letter may serve as a specimen of hundreds of similar ones. Probably there never lived a man to whom so many perplexed in dividuals applied for advice and aid, as to Horace Greeley. He might with great advantage have taken a hint from the practice of Field Marshal the Duke of Wellington, who, it is said, had forms of reply printed, which he filled up and dispatched to anxious cor respondents, with commendable promptitude. From facts which I have observed, and from others of which I have heard, I think it safe to say, that Horace Greeley receives, on an average, five appli cations daily for advice and assistance. His advice he gives very freely, but the we.alth of Astor would not suffice to answer all his begging letters in the way the writers of them desire. In the fall of 1852, the Daily Times was started by Mr. H. J. Raymond, an event which gave an impetus to the daily press of the city. The success of the Times was signal and immediate, for three reasons : 1, it was conducted with tact, industry and prudence ; 2, it was not the Herald ; 8, it was not the Tribune. Before the Times appeared, the Tribune and Herald shared the cream of the daily paper business between them ; but there was a large class who disliked the Tribune's principles and the Herald's want of principle. The majority of people take a daily paper solely to as certain what is going on in the world. They are averse to profli gacy and time-serving, and yet are offended at the independent avowal of ideas in advance of their own. And though Horace A COSTLY MISTAKE. 383 Greeley is not the least conservative of men, yet, from his practice of giving every n<;\v thought and every new man a healing in the columns of his paper, unthinking persons received the impret-sion that he was an advocate of every new idea, and a champion of every ne\v man. They thought the Tribune was an unsafe, disorganizing paper. " An excellent paper," said they, "and honest, but then it 's so full of isms /" The Times stepped in with a complaisant bow, won over twenty thousand of the ism-hating class in a singla year, and yet without reducing the circulation of either of its elder rivals. Where those twenty thousand subscribers came from is one of the mysteries of journalism. In the spring of 1853 the Tribune signalized its ' entrance jnto its teens' by making a very costly mistake. It enlarged its borders to such an extent that the price of subscription did not quite cover the cost of the white paper upon which it was printed, thus throw ing t!ie burden of its support upon the advertiser. And this, too, in the face of the fact that the Tribune, though the best vehicle of advertising then in existence, was in least favor among the class whose advertising is the most profitable. Yet it was natural for Horace Greeley to commit an error of this kind. Years ago he had written, " Better a dinner of herbs with a large circulation than a stalled ox with a small one." And, in announcing the enlargement, he said, u We are confessedly ambitious to make the Tribune the leading journal of America, and have dared and done somewhat to that end." How much he ' dared' in the case of this enlargement may be in ferred from the fact that it involved an addition of $1,044 to the weekly, $54,329 to the annual, expenses of the concern. Yet he ' dared' not add a cent to the price of the paper, which it is thought he might have done with perfect safety, because those who like the Tribune like it very much, and will have it at any price. Men have been heard to talk of their Bible, their Shakspeare, arid their Tri bune, as the three necessities of their spiritual life; while those who dislike it, dislike it excessively, and are wont to protest that they should deem their houses defiled by its presence. The Tribune, however, stepped bravely out under its self-imposed load of white paper. In one year the circulation of the Daily increased from 17,640 to 26,880. the Semi- Weekly from 3.120 to 11,400, the Week- 384 RECENTLY. ly from 51,000 to 103,680, the California Tribune from 2,800 to 3,500, and the receipts of the office increased $70,900. The profits, however, were inadequate to reward suitably the exertions of its proprietors, and recently the paper was slightly reduced in size. The enlargement called public attention to the career and the merits of the Tribune in a remarkable manner. The press gener ally applauded its spirit, ability and courage, but deplored its isms, which gave rise to a set article in the Tribune on the subject of isins. This is the substance of the Tribune's opinions of isms and ismists. It is worth considering: " A very natural division of mankind is that which contemplates them in two classes those who think for themselves, and those who have their think ing done by others, dead or living. With the former class, the paramount consideration is' What is right ?' With the latter, the first inquiry is ' What do the majority, or the great, or the pious, or the fashionable think About it ? How did our fathers regard it 1 What will Mrs. Grundy say ?' ******** " And truly, if the life were not more than meat if its chief ends were wealth, station and luxury then the smooth and plausible gentlemen who as sent to whatever is popular without inquiring or caring whether it is essential ly true or false, are the Solomons of their generation. " Yet in a world so full as this is of wrong and suffering, of oppression and degradation, there must be radical causes for so many and so vast practical evils. It cannot be that the ideas, beliefs, institutions, usages, prejudices, whereof such gigantic miseries are born wherewith at least they co-exist transcend criticism and rightfully refuse scrutiny. It cannot be that the springs are pure whence flow such turbid and poisonous currents. " Now the Reformer the man who thinks for himself and acts as his own judgment and conscience dictate is very likely to form erroneous opinions. * * * But Time will confirm and establish his good works and gently amend his mistakes. The detected error dies ; the misconceived and rejected truth is but temporarily obscured and soon vindicates its claim to general ac ceptance and regard. " ' The world docs move,' and its motive power, under God, is the fearless thought and speech of those who dare be in advance of their time who are sneered at and shunned through their days of struggle and of trial as luna tics, dreamers, impracticables and visionaries men of crotchets, of vagaries, or of ' isms.' These are the masts and sails of the ship, to which Conser vatism answers as ballast. The ballast is important at times indispensable but it would ba of no account if the ship were not bound to go ahead." THE TRIBUNE IN PARLIAMENT. 885 Many papers, however, gave the Tribune its full due of apprecia tion and praise. Two notices which appeared at the time are worth copying, at least in part. The Newark Mercury gave it this un- equaled and deserved commendation : " We never knew a man of illiberal sentiments, one unjust to his workmen, and groveling in his aspirations, who liked the Tribune ; and it is rare to find one with lib eral views who does not admit its claims upon the public regard." The St. Joseph Valley Register, a paper published at South Bend, Indiana, held the following language : " The influence of the Tribune upon public opinion is greater even than its conductors claim for it. Its Isms, with scarce an exception, though the people may reject them at first, yet ripen into strength insensibly. A few years since the Tribune commenced the advocacy of the principle of Free Lands for the Landless. The first bill upon that subject, presented by Mr. Greeley to Con gress, was hooted out of that body. But who doubts what the result would be, if the people of the whole nation had the right to vote up^n the question to day 1 It struck the first blow in earnest at the corruptions of the Mileage sys tem, and in return, Congressmen of all parties heaped opprobrium upon it, and calumny upon its Editor. A corrupt Congress may postpone its Reform, but is there any doubt of what nine-tenths of the whole people would accomplish on this subject if direct legislation were in their hands 7 It has inveighed in severe language against the flimsy penalties which the American legislatures have imposed for offenses upon female virtue. And how many States, our own among the number, have tightened up their legislation upon that subject within the last half-dozen years. The blows that 'it directs against Intemper ance have more power than the combined attacks of half the distinctive Tem perance Journals in the land. It has contended for some plan by which the people should choose their Presidents rather than National Conventions ; and he must be a careless observer of the progress of events who does not see that the Election of 1856 is more likely to be won by a Western Statesman, pledged solely to the Pacific Railroad and Honest Government, than by any political nominee'? And, to conclude, the numerous Industrial Associations of Workers to manufacture Iron, Boots and Shoes, Hats, Ac., on their own account, with the Joint Stock Family Blocks of Buildings, so popular now in New York, Model Wash-houses, Ac., Ac., seem like a faint recognition at least of the main principles of Fourierism (whose details we like as little as any one), Op portunity for Work for all, and Economy in the Expenses and Labor of the Family." From across the Atlantic, also, came compliments for the Tri bune In one of the debates in the House of Commons upon the 17 386 RECENTLY. abolition of the advertisement duty, Mr. Bright used a copy of tho Tribune, as Burke once did a French Republican dagger, for the purposes of his argument. Mr. Bright said : " lie had a newspaper there (the New York Tribune), which he was bound to say, was as good as any published in England this week. [The Hon. Mem ber here opened out a copy of the New York Tribune, and exhibited it to the House.] It was printed with a finer type than any London daily paper. It was exceedingly good as a journal, quite sufficient for all the purposes of a newspaper. [Spreading it out before the House, the honorable gentleman de tailed its contents, commencing with very numerous advertisements.] It con tained various articles, amongst others, one against public dinners, in which ho thought honorable members would fully agree one criticising our Chancellor of the Exchequer's budget, in part justly and one upon the Manchester school ; but he must say, as far as the Manchester school went, it did not do them justice at all. [Laughter.] He ventured to say that there was not a better paper than this in London. Moreover, it especially wrote in favor of Temperance and Anti-Slavery, and though honorable members were not all members of the Temperance Society perhaps, they yet, he was sure, all ad mitted the advantages of Temperance, while not a voice could be lifted there in favor of Slavery. Here, then, was a newspaper advocating great princi ples, and conducted in all respects with the greatest propriety a newspaper in which he found not a syllable that he might not put on his table and allow his wife and daughter to read with satisfaction. And this was placed on the table every morning for Id. [Hear, hear.] What he wanted, then, to ask the Government, was this How comes it, and for what good end, and by what contrivance of fiscal oppression for it can be nothing else was it, that while the workman of New York could have such a paper on his breakfast table every morning for ld. t the workman of London must go without or pay five- pence for the accommodation 7 [Hear, hear.] How was it possible that the latter could keep up with his transatlantic competitor in the race, if one had daily intelligence of everything that was stirring in the world, while the other was kept completely it ignorance ? [Hear, hear.] Were they not running a race, in the face of the world, with the people of America ? Were not the Collins and Cunard lines calculating their voyages to within sixteen minutes of time ? And if, while such a race was going on, the one artisan paid five- ponce for the daily intelligence which the other obtained for a penny, how was it possible that the former could keep his place in the international rival ry 1 [Hear, hear.J" This visible, tangible, and unanswerable fj*gument had its effect. The advertisement duty has been abolished, and now only the stamp duty intervenes between tt<) English workingman and his penny AN EDITORIAL REPARTEE. 387 paper the future Tribune of the English people, which is to ex pound their duties and defend their rights. In the summer of 1854, Mr. Greeley was frequently spoken of in the papers in connection with the office of Governor of the State of New York. A very little of the usual maneuvering on his part would have secured his nominati n, and if he had been nominated, he would have been elected by a majority that would have surprised politicians by trade. In 1854, his life was written by a young and unknown scribblet for the press, who had observed his career with much interest, and who knew enough of the story of his life to be aware, that, if sim ply told, that story would be read with pleasure and do good. This volume is the result of his labors. Here, this chapter had ended, and it was about to be consigned to the hands of the printer. But an event transpires which, it is urgently suggested, ought to have notice. It is nothing more than a new and peculiarly characteristic editorial repartee, or rather, a public reply by Mr. Greeley to a private letter. And though the force of the reply was greatly, and quito unnecessarily, diminished by the publication of the correspondent's name and address, con trary to his request, yet the correspondence seems too interesting to be omitted : THE LETTER. COUNTY, Miss., Sept. 1854. ' HON. HORACE GREELEY, New York City : " My object in addressing you these lines is this : I own a negro girl named Catharine, a bright mulatto, aged between twenty-eight and thirty years, who is intelligent and beautiful. The girl wishes to obtain her freedom, and reside in either Ohio or New York State ; and, to gratify her desire, I am willing to take the sum of $1,000, which the friends of liberty will no doubt make up. Catharine, as she tells me, wag born near Savannah, Ga., and was a daughter of a Judge Hopkins, and, at the age of seven years, accompanied her young mistress (who was a legitimate daughter of the Judge's) on a visit to New Orleans, where she (the legitimate) died. Catharine was then seized and sold by the Sheriff of New Orleans, under attachment, to pay the debts contracted in the city by her young mistress, and was purchased by a Dutch man named Shinoski. Shinoski, being pleased with the young girl's looks, placed her in a quadroon school, and gave her a good education. The girl can RECENTLY. read and write as well or better than myself, and speaks the Dutch and French languages almost to perfection. When the girl attained the ago of eighteen, Shinoski died, and she was again sold, and fell into a trader's hands, by the name of John Valentine, a native of your State. Valentine brought her up to , where I purchased her in 1844, for the sura of $1,150. Catharine is considered the best seamstress and cook in this county, and I could to-morrow sell her for $1,600, but I prefer letting her go for 81,000, so that she may obtain her freedom. She has had opportunities to get to a free State, and obtain her freedom ; but she says that she will never run away to do it. Her father, she says, promised to free hr, and so did Shinoski. If I was able, I would free her without any compensation, but losing $15,000 on the last presidential election has taken very near my all. " Mr. Geo. D. Prentice, editor of the Louisville (Ky.) Journal, knows me very well by character, to whom (if you wish to make any inquiries regard- wag this matter) you are at liberty to refer. " If you should make any publication in your paper in relation to this matter, you will please not mention my name in connection with it, nor tho place whence this letter was written. Catharine is honest ; and, for the ten years that I have owned her, I never struck her a lick, about her work or anything else. " If it was not that I intend to emigrate to California, money could not buy her. " I have given you a complete and accurate statement concerning this girl, and am willing that she shall be examined here, or in Louisville, Ky., before the bargain is closed. " Very respectfully. [Name in full.] REPLY. " Mr. , I have carried your letter of the 28th ult. in my hat for several days, awaiting an opportunity to answer it I now seize the first op portune moment, and, as yours is one of a class with which I am frequently favored, I will send you my reply through the Tribune, wishing it regarded as a general answer to all such applications. " Let me begin by frankly stating that I am not engaged in the slave trade, and do not now contemplate embarking in that business ; but no man can say confidently what he may or may not become ; and, if I ever should engage in the traffic you suggest, it will be but fair to remember you as among my prompters to undertake it. Yet even then I must decline any such examination as you proffer of the property you wish to dispose of. Your biography is so full and precise, so frank and straight-forward, that I prefer to rest satisfied with your assurance in the premises. " You will see that I have disregarded your request that your name and residence should be suppressed by me. That request seems to me inspired by A JUDGE'S DAUGHTER FOR SALE. 889 a modesty and self- sacrifice unsuited to the Age of Brass we live in. Are you not seeking to do a humane and generous act? Are you not proposing to tax yourself 0600 in order to raise an intelligent, capable, deserving woman from slavery to freedom ? Are you not proposing to do this in a manner perfectly lawful and unobjectionable, involving no surrender or com promise of ' Southern Rights' ? My dear sir ! such virtue must not be allow ed to ' blush unseen.' Our age needs the inspiration of heroic examples, and those who would ' do good by stealth, and blush to find it Fame.' must by gentle violence, if need be stand revealed to an amazed, admiring world. True, it might (and might not) have been still more astounding but for your unlucky gambling on the late presidential election, wherein it is hard to tell whether you who lost your money or those who won their president were most unfortun ate. I affectionately advise you both never to do so again. " And now as to this daughter of the late Judge Hopkins of Savannah, Georgia, whom you propose to sell me : " I cannot now remember that I have ever heard Slavery justified on any ground which did not assert or imply that it is the best condition for the negro. The blacks, we are daily told, cannot take care of themselves, but sink into idleness, debauchery, squalid poverty and utter brutality, the moment the master's sustaining rule and care are withdrawn. If this is true, how dare you turn this poor dependent, for whose well-being you are responsible, over to me, who neither would nor could exert a master's control over her 1 If this slave ought not to be set at liberty, why do you ask me to bribe you with $1,000 to do her that wrong 1 If she ought to be, why should I pay you $1,000 for doing your duty in the premises'? You hold a peculiar and respon sible relation to her, through your own voluntary act, but / am only related to her through Adam, the same as to every Esquimaux, Patagonian, or New- Zealander. w hatever may be your duty in the premises, why should I be called on to help you discharge it ? " Full as your account of this girl is, you say nothing of her children, though such she undoubtedly has, whether they be also those of her several masters, as she was, or their fathers were her fellow-slaves. If she is liber ated and comes North, what is to become of them 1 How is she to be recon- eiled to leaving them in slavery 1 How can we 'be assured that the masters wno own or to whom you will sell them before leaving for California, will prove as humane and liberal as you are ? " You inform me that { the friends of Liberty ' in New York or hereabout, 'will no doubt make up' the $1,000 you demand, in order to give this daugh ter of a Georgia Judge her freedom. I think and trust you misapprehend them. For though they have, to my certain knowledge, under the impulse of special appeals to their sympathies, and in view of peculiar dangers or hard ships, paid a great deal more money than they could comfortably spare (few of them being ri/>.h) to buy individual slaves out of bondage, yet their judg- 390 RECENTLY. ment has never approved such payment of tribute to man-thieves, an! every day's earnest consideration causes it to be regarded with less and less favor. For it is not the snatching of here and there a person from Slavery, at the possible rate of one for every thousand increase of our slave population, that they desire, but the overthrow and extermination of the slave-holding system ; and this end, they realize, is rather hindered than helped by their buying here and there a slave into freedom. If by so buying ten thousand a year, at a cost of Ten Millions of Dollars, they should confirm you and other slave holders in the misconception that Slavery is regarded without abhorrence by intelligent Christian freemen at the North, they would be doing great harm to their cause and injury to their fellow-Christians in bondage. You may have heard, perhaps, of the sentiment proclaimed by Decatur to the slave holders of the Barbary Coast' Millions for defense not a cent for tribute V and perhaps also of its counterpart in the Scotch ballad Instead of broad pieces, we'll pay them broadswords;' but ' the friend*, of Liberty ' in this quarter will fight her battle neither with lead nor steel much less with gold. Their trust is in the might of Opinion in the resistless power of Truth where Discussion is untrammeled and Com mercial Intercourse constant in the growing Humanity of our age in the deepening sense of Common Brotherhood in the swelling hiss of Christen dom and the just benignity of God. In the earnest faith that these must soon eradicate a wrong so gigantic and so palpable as Christian Slavery, they se renely await the auspicious hour which must surely come. " Requesting you, Mr. , not to suppress my name in case you see fit to reply to this, and to be assured that I write no letter that I am ashamed of, I remain, Yours, so-so, "HORACE GREELEY." And here, closing the last volume of the Tribune, the reader is invited to a survey of the place whence it was issued, to glance at the routine of the daily press, to witness the scene in which our hero has labored so long. The Tribune building remains to be ex hibited. [JIR. GBEELEY AND MR. DANA IN THE EDITORIAL ROOMS.] CHAPTER XXVIII. DAY AND NIGHT IN THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. The streets before daybreak Waking the newsboys Morning scene in the press-room The Compositor's room The four Phalanxes The Tribune Directory A lull in the Tribune office A glance at the paper The advertisements Telegraphic mar vels Marine Intelligence New Publications Letters from the people Editorial articles The editorial Rooms The Sanctum Sanctorum Solon Robinson Bay ard Taylor William Henry Fry George Ripley Charles A. Dana F. J. Ottarson George M. Snow Enter Horace Greeley His Preliminary botheration The composing-room in tho eTening The editors at work Mr. Greeley'a manner of writing Midnight Three o'clock in tha morning The carriers. WE are in the streets, walking from the regions where money is spent towards those narrow and crooked places wherein it is earned. The day is about to dawn, but the street lights are still burning, and the greater part of the million people who live within sight of the City Hall's illuminated dial, are lying horizontal and unconscious, in the morning's last slumber. The streets are neither silent nor de serted the streets of New York never are. The earliest milkmen have begun their morning crow, squeak, whoop, and yell. The first omnibus has not yet come down town, but the butcher's carts, heaped with horrid flesh, with men sitting upon it reeking with a night's carnage, are rattling along Broadway at the furious pace for which the butcher's carts of all nations are noted. The earliest workmen are abroad, dinner-kettle in hand ; carriers with their bundles of newspapers slung across their backs by a strap, are emerging from Nassau street, and making their way across the Park towards all the ferries up Broadway up Chatham street to wherever their district of distribution begins. The hotels have just opened their doors and lighted up their offices ; and drowsy waiters are perambulating the interminable passages, knocking up passengers for the early trains, and waking up everybody else. In unnumbered kitchens the breakfast fire is kindling, but not yet, in any except the market restaurants, is a cup of coffee attainable. Tin very groggeries strange to see are closed. Apparently, the 302 DAY AND NIGHT IN THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. last drunkard Las toppled home, and the last debauchee has skulked like a thieving hound to his own bed ; for the wickedness of the night has been done, and the work of the day is beginning. There is something in the aspect of the city at this hour the stars glittering over-head the long lines of gas-lights that stretch away in every direction the few wayfarers stealing in and out among them in silence, like spirits the myriad sign-boards so staring now, and useless the houses all magnified in the imperfect light so many evidences of intense life around, and yet so little of life vis ibly present which, to one who sees it for the first time (and few of us have ever seen it), is strangely impressive. The Tribune building is before us. It looks as we never saw it look before. The office is closed, and a gas-light dimly burning shows that no one is in it. The dismal inky aperture in Spruce street by which the upper regions of the Tribune den are usually reached is shut, and the door is locked. That glare of light which on all previous nocturnal walks we have seen illuminating the windows of the third and fourth stories, revealing the bobbing com positor in his paper cap, and the bustling night-editor making up his news, shines not at this hour; and those windows are undistin guished from the lustreless ones of the houses adjacent. Coiled up on the steps, stretched out on the pavement, are half a dozen sleeping newsboys. Two or three others are awake and up, of whom one is devising and putting into practice various modes of suddenly waking the sleepers. He rolls one off the step to the pavement, the shock of which is very effectual. He deals another who lies temptingly exposed, a 4 loud-resounding' slap, which brings the slumberer to his feet, and to his fists, in an instant. Into the ear of a third he yells the magic word Fire, a word which the New York newsboy never hears with indifference ; the sleeper starts up, but perceiving the trick, growls a curse or two, and ad dresses himself again to sleep. In a few minutes all the boys are awake, and taking their morning /xercise of scuffling. The base ment of the building, we observe, is all a-glow with light, though the clanking of the press is silent. The carrier's entrance is open, and we descend into the fiery bowels of the street. We are in the Tribune's press-room. It is a large, low, cellar-like apartment, unceiled, white-washed, inky, and unclean, with a vast MORNING SCENE IN THE PRESS ROOM. 393 folding table in tlie middle, tall heaps of dampened paper all aboat, a quietly-running steam engine of nine-horse power on one side, twenty-five inky men and boys variously employed, and the whole brilliantly lighted up by jets of gas, numerous and flaring. On one side is a kind of desk or pulpit, with a table before it, and the whole separated from the rest of the apartment by a rail. In the pulpit, the night-clerk stands, counts and serves out the papers, with a nonchalant and graceful rapidity, that must be seen to be appreciated. The regular carriers were all served an hour ago ; they have folded their papers and gone their several ways ; and early risers, two miles off, have already read the news of the day. The later newsboys, now, keep dropping in, singly, or in squads of three or four, each with his money ready in his hand. Usually, no words pass between them and the clerk; he either knows how many papers they have come for, or they show him by exhibiting their money ; "and in three seconds after his eye lights upon a newly- arrived dirty face, he has counted the requisite number of papers, counted the money for them, and thrown the papers in a heap into the boy's arms, who slings them over his shoulder and hurries off for his supply of Times and Heralds. Occasionally a woman comes in for a few papers, or a little girl, or a boy so small that he cannot see over the low rail in front of the clerk, and is obliged to an nounce his presence and his desires by holding above it his little cash capital in his little black paw. In another part of the press room, a dozen or fifteen boys are folding papers for the early mails, and folding them at the average rate of thirty a minute. A boy lias folded sixty papers a minute in that press-room. Each paper has to be folded six times, and then laid evenly on the pile ; and the velocity of movement required for the performance of such a minute's work, the reader can have no idea of till he sees it done. As a feat, nothing known to the sporting world approaches it. The huge presses, that shed six printed leaves at a stroke, are in deep vaults adjoining the press-room. They are motionless now, but the gas that has lighted them during their morning's work still spurts out in flame all over them, and men with blue shirts and black faces are hoisting out the * forms ' that have stamped their story on thirty thousand sheets. The vaults are oily, inky, and warm. Let us ascend. 17* 394 DAY AND NIGHT IN THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. The day has dawned. As we approach the stairs that lead to the upper stories, we get a peep into a small, paved yard, where a group of pressmen, blue-overniled, ink-smeared, and pale, are wash ing themselves and the ink-rollers ; and looking, in the dim light of the morning, like writhing devils. The stairs of the Tribune building are supposed to bo the dirtiest in the world. By their assistance, however, we wind our upward way, past the editorial rooms in the third story, which are locked, to the composing-room in the fourth, which are open, and in which the labor of transposing the news of the morning to the form of the weekly paper is in progress. Only two men are present, the foreman, Mr. Rooker, and one of his assist ants. Neither of them wish to be spoken to, as their minds are occupied with a task that requires care ; but we are at liberty to look around. The composing-room of the Tribune is, I believe, the most con venient, complete, and agreeable one in the country. It is very spacious, nearly square, lighted by windows on two sides, and by sky-lights from above. It presents an ample expanse of type-fonts, gas-jets with large brown-paper shades above them, long tables covered with columns of bright, copper-faced type, either 'dead' or waiting its turn for publication ; and whatever else appertains to the printing of a newspaper. Stuffed into corners and interstices are aprons and slippers in curious variety. Pasted on the walls, lamp-shades, and doors, we observe a number of printed notices, from the perusal of which, aided by an occasional word from the obliging foreman, we are enabled to penetrate the mystery, and comprehend the routine, of the place. Here, for example, near the middle of the apartment, are a row of hooks, labeled respectively, 'Leaded Brevier;' 'Solid Brevier;' 'Minion;' 'Proofs to revise;' 'Compositors' Proofs let no profane hand touch them except Smith's ;' ' Bogus minion when there is no other copy to be given out, then take from this hook.' Upon these hooks, the foreman hangs the ' copy ' as he receives it from below, and the men take it in turn, requiring no further direction as to the kind of type into which it is to be set. The ' bogus-rnin- ion ' hook contains matter not intended to be used ; it is designed merely to keep the men constantly employed, so as to obviate the necessity of their making petty charges for lost time, and thus com* THE TRIBUNE DIRECTORY. 395 plicating their accounts. Below the 'bogus-hook,' there appears this * Particular Notice :' ' This copy must bo set, and the Takes emptied, with the same care as the rest.' From which we may in fer, that a man is inclined to slight work that he knows to be use less, even though it be paid for at the usual price per thousand. Another printed paper lets us into another secret. It is a list of the compositors employed in the office, divided into four " Phalanxes" of about ten men each, a highly advantageous arrangement, devised by Mr. Booker. At night, when the copy begins to " slack up," i. e. when the work of the night approaches completion, one phalanx is dismissed ; then another ; then another ; then the last ; and the phalanx which leaves first at night comes first in the morning, and so on. The men who left work at eleven o'clock at night must be again in the office at nine, to distribute type and set up news for the evening edition of the paper. The second phalanx begins work at two, the third at five ; and at seven the whole company must be at their posts; for, at seven, the business of the night begins in earnest. Printers will have their joke as appears from this list. It is set in double columns, and as the number of men happened to be an un even one, one name was obliged to occupy a line by itself, and it appears thus u Baker, (the teat-pig.)" The following notice deserves attention from the word with which it begins : " Gentlemen desiring to wash and soak their distributing matter will please use hereafter the metal galleys I had cast for the purpose, as it is ruinous to galleys having wooden sides to keep wet type in them locked up. Thos. N. Rooker." It took the world an unknown number of thousand years to arrive at that word ' GEN TLEMEN.' Indeed, the world has not arrived at it ; but there it is, in the composing-room of the New York Tribune, legible to all visitors. Passing by other notices, such as " Attend to the gas-meter on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and to the clock on Monday morning,'* we may spend a minute or two in looking over a long printed cata logue, posted on the door, entitled, " Tribune Directory. Corrected May 10, 1854. A list of Editors, Reporters, Publishers, Clerks, Compositors, Proof-Readers, Pressmen, &c., employed on the New York Tribune." From this Directory one may learn that the Editor of the Tribune is Horace Greeley, the Managing-Editor Charles A. Dana, the Asso- 396 DAY AND NIGHT IN THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. cinte-Editors, James S. Pike, William II. Fry, George Ripley, George M. Snow, Bayard Taylor, F. J. Ottarson, William Newman, B. Brock way, Solon Robinson, and Donald 0. Henderson. We perceive also that Mr. Ottarson is the City Editor, and that his assistants are in number fourteen. One of these keeps an eye on the Police, chron icles arrests, walks the hospitals in search of dreadful accidents, and keeps the public advised of the state of its health. Three report lectures and speeches. Another gathers items of intelligence in Jersey City, Newark, and parts adjacent. Others do the same in Brooklyn and Williamsburgh. One gentleman devotes himself to the reporting of fires, and the movements of the military. Two examine and translate from the New York papers which are pub lished in the German, French, Italian and Spanish languages. Then, there is a Law Reporter, a Police Court Reporter, and a Collector of Marine Intelligence. Proceeding down the formidable catalogue, we discover that the l Marine Bureau' (in common with the Asso ciated Press) is under the charge of Commodore John T. Hall, who is assisted by twelve agents and reporters. Besides these, the Tri bune has a special ' Ship News Editor.' The * Telegraphic Bureau* (also in common with the Associated Press) employs one general agent and two subordinates, (one at Liverpool and one at Halifax,) and fifty reporters in various parts of the country. The number of regular and paid correspondents is thirty-eight eighteen foreign, twenty home. The remaining force of the Tribune, as we are in formed b} r the Directory, is, Thos. M'Elrath, chief of the depart ment of publication, assisted by eight clerks; Thos. N. Rooker, fore man of the composing-room, with eight assistant-foremen (three by day, five by night), thirty-eight regular compositors, and twenty- five substitutes; George Hall, foreman of the press-room, with three assistants, sixteen feeders, twenty-five folders, three wrapper- writers, and three boys. Besides these, there are four proof-readers, and a number of miscellaneous individuals. It thus appears that the whole number of persons employed upon the paper is about two hundred and twenty, of whom about one hundred and thirty devote to it their whole time. The Directory further informs us that the proprietors of the establishment are sixteen in number namely, seven editors, the publisher, four clerks, the foreman of the compos- A GLANCE AT THE Jt*APER. 397 ing-coom, the foreman of the press-room, one compositor and one press-man. Except for a few hours on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morn ing, the work of a daily paper never entirely ceases ; but, at this hour of the day, between six and seven o'clock, it does nearly cease. The editors are still, it is to be hoped, asleep. The compos itors have been in bed for two hours or more. The pressmen of the night are going home, and those of the day have not arrived. The carriers have gone their rounds. The youngest clerks have not yet appeared in the office. All but the slowest of the newsboys have got their supply of papers, and are making the streets and fer- ries vocal, or vociferous, with their well-known names. There is a general lull ; and while that lull continues, we shall lose nothing by going to breakfast. Part of which is the New York Tribune ; and we may linger over it a little longer than usual this morning. It does not look like it, but it is a fact, as any one moderately en dowed with arithmetic can easily ascertain, that one number of the Tribune, if it were printed in the form of a book, with liberal type and spacing, would make a duodecimo volume of four hundred pages a volume, in fact, not much less in magnitude than the one which the reader has, at this moment, the singular happiness of perusing. Each number is the result of, at least, two hundred days' work, or the work of two hundred men for one day ; and it is sold (to carriers and newsboys) for one cent and a half. Lucifer matches, at forty-four cents for a hundred and forty-four boxes, are supposed, and justly, to be a miracle of cheapness. Pins are cheap, consider ing ; and so are steel pens. But the cheapest thing yet realized un der the sun is the New York Tribune. The number for this morning contains six hundred and forty-one separate articles from two-line advertisements to two-column es says of which five hundred and ten are advertisements, the re mainder, one hundred and thirty-one, belonging to the various de partments of reading matter. The reading matter, however, occu pies about one half of the whole space nearly four of the eight broad pages, nearly twenty-four of the forty-eight columns. The articles and paragraphs which must have been written for this num ber, yesterday, or very recently, in the office or at the editors' resi 398 DAY AND NIGHT IN THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. elences, fill thirteen columns, equal to a hundred pages of foolscap^ or eighty such pages as this. There are five columns of telegraphic intelligence, which is, porhaps, two columns above the average. There are twelve letters from ' our own' and voluntary correspond ents, of which five are from foreign countries There have been aa many as thirty letters in one number of the Tribune ; there are sel dom less than ten. What has the Tribune of this morning to say to us ? Let us see. It is often asked, who reads advertisements? and the question is often inconsiderately answered, 'Nobody.' But, idle reader, if you were in search of a boarding-house this morning, these two columns of advertisements, headed 'Board and Rooms,' would be read by you with the liveliest interest ; and so, in other circumstances, would those which reveal a hundred and fifty ' Wants,' twenty -two places )f amusement, twenty-seven new publications, forty-two schools, ind thirteen establishments where the best pianos in existence are made. If you had come into the possession of a fortune yesterday, this column of bank-dividend announcements would not be passed by with indifference. And if you were the middle-aged gentleman who advertises his desire to open a correspondence with a young lady (all communications post-paid and tho strictest secresy ob served), you might peruse with anxiety these seven advertisements of hair-dye, each of which is either infallible, unapproachable, or the acknowledged best. And the eye of the 'young lady' who ad dresses you a post-paid communication in reply, informing you where an interview may be had, would perhaps rest for a moment upon the description of the new Baby-Walker, with some compla cency. If the negotiation were successful, it were difficult to say what column of advertisements would not, in its turn, become of the highest interest to one or the other, or both of you. In truth, every one reads the advertisements which concern them. The wonders of the telegraph are not novel, and, therefore, they seem wonderful no longer. We glance up and down the columns of telegraphic intelligence, and read without the slightest emotion, dispatches from Michigan, Halifax, Washington, Baltimore, Cincin nati, Boston, Cleveland, St. Louis, New Orleans, and a dozen places nearer the city, some of which give us news of events that hud not oo 'irred when we went to bed last night. The telegraphic news of THE DEPARTMENTS OF THE PAPER. 399 this morning has run along four thousand seven hundred and fifty miles of wire, and its transmission, at the puhlished rates, must have cost between two and three hundred dollars. On one occasion, re cently, the steamer arrived at Halifax at half-past eleven in the eve ning, and the substance of her news was contained in the New York papers the next morning, and probably in the papers of New Or leans. A debate which concludes in Washington at midnight, is read in Fiftieth street, New York, six hours after. But these are stale marvels, and they are received by us entirely as a matter of course. The City department of the paper, conducted with uncommon efficiency by Mr. Ottarson, gives us this morning, in sufficient detail, the proceedings of a ' Demonstration' at Tammany Hall of a meet ing of the Bible Union a session of the committee investigating the affairs of Columbia college a meeting to devise measures for the improvement of the colored population a temperance 'Demon stration 1 a session of the Board of Aldermen a meeting of the commissioners of emigration and one of the commissioners of ex cise. A trial for murder is reported ; the particulars of seven fires are stated ; the performance of the opera is noticed ; the progress of the ' State Fair ' is chronicled, and there are thirteen ' city items.' And what is most surprising is, that seven-tenths of the city mat ter must have been prepared in the evening, for most of the events narrated did not occur till after dark. The Law Intelligence includes brief notices of the transactions of five courts. The Commercial Intelligence gives minute informa tion respecting the demand for, the supply of, the price, and the re cent sales, of twenty-one leading articles of trade. The Marino Journal takes note of the sailing and arrival of two hundred and seven vessels, with the name of the captain, owners and consign ees. This is, in truth, the most astonishing department of a daily paper. Arranged under the heads of " Cleared," " Arrived," "Dis asters," " To mariners," " Spoken," " Whalers," " Foreign Ports," "Domestic Ports," "Passengers sailed," "Passengers arrived," it presents daily a mass and a variety of facts, which do not astound us, only because we see the wonder daily repeated. Nor is the shipping intelligence a mere catalogue of names, places and figures* Witness these sentences cut almost at random from the dense col- limns of small type in which the affairs of the sea are printed : 400 DAY AND NIGHT IN THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. "Bark Gen. Jones, (of Boston,) Hodgden, London 47 days, chalk to E. S. Belknap & Sons. Aug. 14, lat. 50 11', Ion. 9 20', spoke ship Merensa, of Boa ton, 19 days from Eastport for London. Aug. 19, signalized a ship showing Nos. 55, 31, steering E. Aug. 20, signalized ship Isaac Allerton, of New York. Sept. 1, spoke Br. Emerald, and supplied her with some provisions. Sept. 13, lat. 43 36', Ion. 49 54', passed a number of empty barrels and broken pieces of oars. Sept. 13, lat 43, long 50 40', while lying to in a gale, passed a vessel's spars and broken pieces of bulwarks, painted black and white ; supposed the ppars to be a ship's topmasts. Sept. 19, lat. 41 14', Ion. 56, signalized a bark showing a red signal with a white spot in center." As no one not interested in marine affairs ever bestows a glance upon this part of his daily paper, these condensed tragedies of the sea will be novel to the general reader. To compile the ship-news of this single morning, the log-books of twenty-seven vessels must have been examined, and information obtained by letter, telegraph, or exchange papers, from ninety-three sea-port towns, of which thir ty T-one are in foreign countries. Copied here, it would fill thirty-five pages, and every line of it was procured yesterday. The money article of the Tribune, to those who have any money, is highly interesting. It chronicles, to-day, the sales of stocks, the price of exchange and freight, the arrivals and departures of gold, the condition of the sub-treasury, the state of the coal-trade and other mining interests, and ends with gossip and argument about the Schuyler frauds. There is a vast amount of labor condensed in the two columns which the money article usually occupies. The Tribune, from the beginning of its career, has kept a vigilant eye upon passing literature. Its judgments have great weight with the reading public. They are always pronounced with, at least, an air of deliberation. They are always able, generally just, occasion ally cruel, more frequently too kind. In this department, taking into account the quantity of information given both of home and foreign literature, of books published and of books to be published and the talent and knowledge displayed in its notices and reviews, the superiority of the Tribune to any existing daily paper is simply undeniable. Articles occasionally appear in the London journals, written after every other paper has expressed its judgment,- written at ample leisure and by men pre-eminent in the one branch of let ters to which the reviewed book belongs, which are superior to the reviews of the Tribune. It is the literary department of the paper. EDITORIAL ARTICLES. 401 for which superiority is here asserted. To-day, it happens, that the paper contains nothing literary. In a daily paper, news has the precedence of everything, and a review of an epic greater than Paradise Lost might be crowded out by the report of an election brawl in the Sixth Ward. Thus, a poor author is often kept in trem bling suspense for days, or even weeks, waiting for the review which he erroneously thinks will make or mar him. Like People, like Priest, says the old maxim ; which we maj amend by saying, Like Editor, like Correspondent. From these 'Letters from the People,' we infer, that when a man has something to say to the public, of a reformatory or humanitary nature, he is prone to indite an epistle ' to the Editor of the New York Tribune,' who, on his part, in tenderness to the public, is exceedingly prone to consign it to the basket of oblivion. A good many of these let ters, however, escape into print to-day, four, on some days a dozen. The London letters of the Tribune are written in London, the Paris letters in Paris, the Timbuctoo letters in Timbuctoo. This is strange, but true. In its editorial department, the Tribune has two advantages over most of its contemporaries. In the first place, it has an object of attack, the slave power ; and secondly, by a long course of warfare, it has won the conceded privilege of being sincere. Any one who has had to do with the press, is aware, that articles in newspapers are of two kinds, namely, those which are written for a purpose not avowed, and those which are written spontaneously, from the impulse and convictions of the writer's own mind. And any one who has written articles of both descriptions is aware, further, that a man who is writing with perfect sincerity, writing with a pure de sire to move, interest, or convince, writes better, than when the necessities of his vocation compel him to grind the axe for a party, or an individual. There is more or less of axe-grinding done in every newspaper office in the world ; and a perfectly independent newspaper never existed. Take, for example, the London Times, which is claimed to be the most incorruptible of journals. The writers for the Times are trammeled, first, by the immense position of the paper 7 which give* to its leading articles a possible influence upon the affairs of the world. The aim of the writer is to express, not hiui.se 1 f, but ENGLAND; as the Times is, in other countries, the i02 DAY AND NIGHT IN THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. recognized voice of the British Empire ; and it is this which ren ders much of the writing in the Times as safe, as vague, and as pointless, as a diplomatist's dispatch. The Times is further train meled by the business necessity of keeping on terms with those who have it in their power to give and withhold important intelli gence. And, still further, by the fact, that general England, whom it addresses, is not up to the liberality of the age in which the leading minds alone fully participate. Thus, it happens, that the articles in a paper like The Leader, which reaches only the liberal class, are often more pointed, more vigorous, more interesting, than those of the Times, though the resources of the Leader are extremely limited, and the Times can have its pick of the wit, talent, and learn ing of the empire. When a man writes with perfect freedom, then, and only then, he writes his lest. Without claiming for the Tri bune a perfect innocence of axe-grinding, it may with truth be said, that the power of its leading editorial articles is vastly increased by the fact, that those who write them, do so with as near an approach to perfect freedom, i. e. sincerity, as the nature of newspaper-writ ing, at present, admits of. What it gains, too, in spirit and interest by having the preposterous inaptitude of the Southern press to rid icule, and the horrors of Southern brutality to denounce, is suffi ciently known. But it is time we returned to the office. It is ten o'clock in the morning. The clerks in the office are at their posts, receiving nd- vertisements, recording them, entering the names of new subscrib ers received by the morning's mail, of which on some mornings of the year there are hundreds. It is a busy scene. Up the dismal stairs to a dingy door in the third story, upon which we read, " Editorial Rooms of the New York Tribune. II. Greeley." We ought not to be allowed to enter, but we are, and we do ; no one hinders us, or even notices our entrance. First, a narrow passage, with two small rooms on the left, whence, later in the day, the rapid hum of proof-reading issues unceasingly, one man reading the 'copy' aloud, another having his eyes fixed upon the slip of proof. One may insert his visage into the square aperture in the doors of these minute apartments, and gaze upon the performance with persistent impertinence ; but the proof-reading goes on, like a machine. At this hour, however, these rooms contain no one. A THE EDITORIAL ROOMS. 403 few steps, and the principal Editorial Room is before us. It is a long, narrow apartment, with desks for tho principal editors along the sides, with shelves well-loaded with books and manuscripts, a great heap of exchange papers in the midst, and a file of the Tri bune on a broad desk, slanting from the wall. Everything is in real order, but apparent confusion, and the whole is ' blended in a common element of dust.' Nothing particular appears to be going on. Two or three gentlemen are looking over the papers ; but the desks are all vacant, and each has upon its lid a pile of letters and papers awaiting the arrival of him to whose department they be long. One desk presents an array of new publications that might well appal the most industrious critic twenty-four new books, seven magazines, nine pamphlets, and two new papers, all expect ing a ' first-rate notice.' At the right, we observe another and smaller room, with a green carpet, two desks, a sofa, and a large book-case, filled with books of reference. This is the sanctum sanc torum. The desk near the window, that looks out upon the green Park, the white City Hall in the midst thereof, and the lines of moving life that bound the same, is the desk of the Editor-in-Chief. It presents confusion merely. The shelves are heaped with manu scripts, books, and pamphlets ; its lid is covered with clippings from newspapers, each containing something supposed by the assiduous exchange-reader to be of special interest to the Editor ; and over all, on the highest shelf, near the ceiling, stands a large bronze bust of Henry Clay, wearing a crown of dust. The other desk, near the door, belongs to the second in command. It is in perfect order. A heap of foreign letters, covered with stamps and post-marks, awaits his coming. The row of huge, musty volumes along the floor against one of the walls of the room, is a complete file of tho Tribune, with some odd volumes of the New Yorker and Log Cajin. An hour later. One by one the editors arrive. Solon Robinson, looking, with his flowing white beard and healthy countenance, like a good-humored Prophet Isaiah, or a High Priest in undress, has dropped into his corner, and is compiling, from letters and newspa pers, a column of paragraphs touching the effect of the drouth upon the potato crop. Bayard Taylor is reading a paper in the American attitude. His countenance has quite lost tho Nubian 104 DAY AND NIGHT IN THE 1RIBUNE OFFICE. bronze with which it darkened on the banks of the White Nile, as well as the Japanning which his last excursion gave it. Pale, deli cate-featured, with a curling beard and subdued moustache, slight in figure, and dressed with care, he has as little the aspect of an ad venturous traveler, and as much the air of a nice young gentleman, as can be imagined. He may read in peace, for he is not now one of the ' hack-horses' of the daily press. The tall, pale, intense- looking gentleman who is slowly pacing the carpet of the inner sanctum is Mr. William H Fry, the composer of Leonora. At thia moment he is thinking out thunder for to-morrow's Tribune. Wil liam Henry Fry is one of the noblest fellows alive a hater of meanness and wrong, a lover of man and right, with a power of expression equal to the intensity of his hate and the enthusiasm of his love. There is more merit in his little finger than in a whole mass-meeting of Douglass-senators ; and from any but a grog-ruled city he would have been sent to Congress long ago ; but perhaps, as Othello remarks, ' it is better as it is.' Mr. Ripley, who came in a few minutes ago, and sat down before that marshaled array of books and magazines, might be described in the language of Mr. Welter the elder, as ' a stout gentleman of eight and forty.' He is in for a long day's work apparently, and has taken off his coat. Luckily for authors, Mr. Ripley is a gentleman of sound digestion and indomitable good humor, who enjoys life and helps others en joy it, and believes that anger and hatred are seldom proper, and never ' pay.' He examines each book, we observe, with care. Without ever being in a hurry, he gets through an amazing quan tity of work ; and all he does shows the touch and finish of the practical hand. Mr. Dana enters with a quick, decided step, goes straight to his desk in the green-carpeted sanctum sanctorum, and is soon lost in the perusal of 4 Karl Marx,' or ' An American Wo man in Paris.' In figure, face, and flowing beard, he looks enough like Louis Kossuth to be his cousin, if not his brother. Mr. Dana, as befits his place, is a gentleman of peremptory habits. It is his office to decide ; and, as he is called upon to perfr rm the act of de cision a hundred times a day, he has acquired Lie power both of deciding with despatch and of announcing his decision with civil brevity, If you desire a plain answer to a plain question, Charles A. Dana is the gentleman who can accommodate you. He is ao THE EDITORIAL CORPS. 405 able and, in description, a brilliant writer ; a good speaker ; fond and proud of his profession ; indefatigable in the discharge of its duties ; when out of harness, agreeable as a companion ; in harness, a man not to be interrupted. Mr. Ottarson, the city editor, has not yet made h's appearance ; he did not leave the office last night till three hours after midnight. Before he left, however, he prepared a list of things to be reported and described to-day, writing oppo site each expected occurrence the name of the man whom he wished to attend to it. The reporters come to the office in the morning, and from this list ascertain what special duty is expected of them. Mr. Ottarson rose from the ranks. He has been everything in a newspaper office, from devil to editor. He is one of the busiest of men, and fills the most difficult post in the establishment with great ability. That elegant and rather distingue gentleman with the small, black, Albert moustache, who is writing at the desk over there in the corner, is the commercial editor, the writer of the money article Mr. George M. Snow. We should have taken him for anything but a commercial gentlemen. Mr. Pike, the ' J. S. P.* of former Washington correspondence, now a writer on political subjects, is not present ; nor are other members of the corps. Between twelve and one, Mr. Greeley comes in, with his pockets full of papers, and a bundle under his arm. His first act is to dis patch his special aid-de-sanctum on various errands, such as to de liver notes, letters and messages, to procure seeds or implements for the farm, et cetera. Then, perhaps, he will comment on the morning's paper, dwelling with pertinacious emphasis upon its de fects, hard to be convinced that an alleged fault was unavoidable. After two or three amusing colloquies of this nature, he makes his way to the sanctum, where, usually, several people are waiting to see him. He takes his seat at his desk and begins to examine the heap of notes, letters, newspapers and clippings, with which it is covered, while one after another of his visitors states his busi ness. One is an exile who wants advice, or a loan, or an advertise ment inserted gratis ; he does not get the loan, for Mr. Greeley long ago shut down the door upon miscellaneous borrowers and beggars. Another visitor has an invention which he wishes par agraphed into celebrity. Another is one of the lecture-committee of ft country Lyceum, and wants our editor to l come out and give 106 DAY AND NIGHT IN THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. us a lecture this winter.' Another is a country clergyman who has called to say how much he likes the semi-weekly Tribune, and to gratify his curiosity by speaking with the editor face to face. Grad ually the throng diminishes and the pile of papers is reduced. By three or four o'clock, this preliminary botheration is disposed of, and Mr. Greeley goes to dinner. Meanwhile, all the departments of the establishment have beep in a state of activity. It is Thursday, the day of the Weekly Tri bune, the inside of which began to be printed at seven in the morn ing. Before the day closes, the whole edition, one hundred and sixteen thousand, forty-eight cart-loads, will have been printed, folded, wrapped, bundled, bagged, and carried to the post-office. The press-room on Thursdays does its utmost, and presents a scene of bustle and movement 'easier imagined than described.' No small amount of work, too, is done in the office of publication. To-day, as we ascertain, two hundred and thirteen business letters were received, containing, among other things less interesting, eleven hundred and seventy-two dollars, and four hundred and ten new or renewed subscriptions, each of which has been recorded and placed upon the wrapper- writer's books. The largest sum ever received by one mail was eighteen hundred dollars. The weekly expenditures of the concern average about six thousand two hundred dollars, of which sum four thousand is for paper. During the six dull months of the year, the receipts and expendi tures are about equal ; in the active months the receipts exceed the expenditures. It is nine o'clock in the evening. Gas has resumed. The clank of the press has ceased, and the basement is dimly lighted. The clerks, who have been so busy all day, have gone home, and the night-clerk, whom we saw this morning in his press-room pulpit, is now behind the counter of the office receiving advertisements. Night-work agrees with him, apparently, for he is robust, ruddy and smiling. Aloft in the composing room, thirty-eight men are setting type, silently and fast. No sound is heard but the click of the type, or the voice, now and then, of a foreman, or the noise of of the copy-box rattling up the wooden pipe from the editor's room below, or a muffled grunt from the tin tube by which the different rooms hold converse with one another, or the bell which calls for THE COMPOSING ROOM IN THE EVENING. 407 the application of an ear to the mouth of that tnbe. The place is warm, close, light, and still. "Whether it i-s necessarily detrimental to a compositor's health to work from eight to ten hours every night in such an atmosphere, in such a light, is still, it appears, a ques tion. Mr. G-reeley thinks it is not. The compositors think.it is, and seldom feel able to work more than four nights a week, filling their places on the other nights from the list of substitutes, or in printer's language ' subs.' Compositors say, that sleep in the day time is a very different thing from sleep at night, particularly in summer, when to create an artificial night is to exclude the needful air. They say that they never get perfectly used to the reversion of nature's order; and often, after a night of drowsiness so extreme that they would give the world if they could sink down upon the floor and sleep, they go to bed at length, and find that offended Morpheus has taken his flight, and left their eye-lids glued to their brows; and they cannot close them before the inexorable hour ar rives that summons them to work again. In the middle of the room the principal night-foreman is already ' making up' the out side forms of to-morrow's paper, four in number, each a section of a cylinder, with rims of polished iron, and type of copper face. It is slow work, and a moment's inattention might produce results more ridiculous than cross-readings. The editorial rooms, too, have become intense. Seven desks are occupied with silent writers, most of them in the Tribune uniform shirt-sleeves and moustache. The night-reader is looking over the papers List arrived, with scissors ready for any paragraph of news that catches his eye. An editor occasionally goes to the copy-box, places in it a page or two of the article lie is writing, and rings the bell ; the box slides up to the composing-room, and the pages are in type and corrected before the article is finished. Such articles are those which are prompted by the event of the hour ; others are more deliberately written ; some are weeks in preparation ; and of some the keel is laid months before they are launched upon the pub lic mind. The Editor-in-Chief is at his desk writing in a singular attitude, the desk on a level with his nose, and the writer sitting bolt upright. He writes rapidly, with scarcely a pause for thought, and not once in a page makes an erasure. The foolscap leaves fly from under his pen at the rate f one in fifteen minutes. He does 408 DAY AND NIGHT IN THE TRIBUKG OFFICE. most of the thinking before he begins to write, and produces matter about as fast as a swift copyist can copy. Yet he leaves nothing for the compositor to guess at, and if he makes an alteration in the proof, he is careful to do it in such a way that the printer loses no time in 'overrunning;' that is, he inserts as many words as he erases. Not unfrequently he bounds up into the composing-room, and makes a correction or adds a sentence with his own hand. He is not patient under the infliction of an error; and he expects men to understand his wishes by intuition; and when they do not, but interpret his half-expressed orders in a way exactly contrary to his intention, a scene is likely to ensue. And so they write and read in the editorial rooms of the Tribune for some hours. Occasionally a City Reporter comes in with his budget of intelligence, or his short-hand notes, and sits down at a desk to arrange or write them out. Telegraphic messages arrive from the agent of the Associated Press, or from 'our own corre spondent.' Mr. Dana glances over them, sends them aloft, and, if they are important, indites a paragraph calling attention to the fact. That omnipresent creature, the down-town apple-woman, whom no labyrinth puzzles, no extent of stairs fatigues, no presence overawes, enters, and thrusts her basket in deliberate succession under each editorial nose. Some of the corps, deep in the affairs of the nation, pause in their writing, gaze at the woman in utter abstraction, slow ly come to a sense of her errand, shake their heads, and resume their work. Others hurriedly buy an apple, and taking one prodig ious bite, lay it aside and forget it. A band of music is heard in the street; it is a target-excursion returning late from Hoboken; it passes the office and gives it three cheers ; the city men go to the win dows; the rest write on unconscious of the honor that has been done them ; the Tribune returns the salute by a paragraph. Midnight. The strain is off. Mr. Greeley finished his work about eleven, chatted a while with Mi*. Dana, and went home. Mr. Dana has received from the foreman the list of the articles in type, the articles now in hand, and the articles expected ; he has designated those which must go in ; those which it is highly desirable should go in, and those which will 'keep.' He has also marked the order in which the articles are to appear ; and, having performed this last duty, he returns the list to the compositor, puts on his coat and de- MIDNIGHT. 409 parts. Mr. Fry is on the last page of his critique of this evening's Grisi, which he executes with steam-engine rapidity, and sends uj> without reading. He lingers awhile, and then strolls off up town. Mr. Ottarson is still busy, as reporters continually arrive with items of news, which he hastily examines, and consigns either to the bas ket under his desk, or to the copy-box. The first phalanx of com positors is dismissed, and they come thundering down the dark stairs, putting on their coats as they descend. The foreman is absorbed in making up the inside forms, as he has just sent those of the outside below, and the distant clanking of the press announces that they have begun to be printed. We descend, and find the sheets coming off the press at the rate of a hundred and sixty a minute. The en- gine-mau is conmiodiously seated on an inverted basket, under a gas-jet, reading the outside of the morning's paper, and the chief of the press-room is scanning a sheet to see if the impression is perfect. The gigantic press has six mouths, and six men are feeding him with white paper, slipping in the sheets with the easy knack acquired by long practice. It looks a simple matter, this ' feeding ;' but if a new hand were to attempt it, the iron maw of the monster would be instantly choked, and his whole system disarranged. For he is as delicate as he is strong; the little finger of a child can start and stop him, moderate his pace, or quicken it to the snapping of his sinews. Three o'clock in the morning Mr. Ottarson is in trouble. The ontside of the paper is printed, the inside forms are ready to be low ered away to the basement, and the press-men are impatiently wait ing the signal to receive it. The pulpit of the night clerk is ready for his reception, the spacious folding- table is cleared, and two car riers have already arrived. All the compositors except the last phalanx have gone home ; and they have corrected the last proof^ and desire nothing so much as to be allowed to depart. But an English steamer is overdue, and a telegraphic dispatch from the agent of the Associated Press at Sandy Hook, who has been all night in his yacht cruising for the news, is anxiously expected. It does not come. The steamer (as we afterwards ascertain) has arrived, but the captain churlishly refused to throw on board the yacht the customary newspaper. Mr. Ottarson fancies he hears a gun. A moment after he is positive lie hears another. He has five men of 18 4 10 DAY AND NIGHT IN THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. his corps within call, and he sends them flying ! One goes to the Astor House to see if ihs.y have heard of the steamer's arrival; an other to the offices of the Times and Herald, on the same errand ; others to Jersey City, to be ready in case the steamer reaches her wharf in time. It is ascertained, about half-past three, that the steamer is coming up the bay, and that her news cannot possibly be procured before five ; and so, Mr. Ottarson, having first ascertained that the other morning papers have given up the hope of the news for their first editions, goes to press in despair, and home in ill humor. In a few minutes, the forms are lowered to the basement, wheeled to the side of the press, and hoisted to their places on the press by a crank. The feeders take their stands, the foreman causes the press to make one revolution, examines a sheet, pronounces it nil right, sets the press in motion at a rattling rate, and nothing remains to be done except to print off thirty thousand copies and distribute them. The last scene of all is a busy one indeed. The press-room is all alive with carriers, news-men and folding-boys, each of whom is in a fever of hurry. Four or five boys are carrying the papers in back- loads from the press to the clerk, and to the mailing tables. The carriers receive their papers in the order of the comparative dis tance of their districts from the office. No money passes between them aiid the clerk. They come to the office every afternoon, ex amine the book of subscribers, note the changes ordered in their respective routes, pay for the number of papers they will require on the following morning, and receive a ticket entitling them to receive the designated number. The number of papers distributed by one carrier varies from two hundred and fifty to five hundred. Some of the carriers, however, are assisted by boys As a carrier gains a weekly profit of three cents on each subscriber, one who delivers nve hundred papers has an income of fifteen dollars a week ; and it is well earned. Most of the small news-men in town, country, and railroad-car, are supplied with their papers by a wholesale firm, who deliver them at a slight increase of price over the first cost. The firm alluded to purchases from fonr to five thousand copies of the Tribune every morning. By five o'clock, usually, the morning edition has been printed off, the carriers supplied, the early mail dispatched, and the bundles THE CARRIERS. 411 for adjacent towns made up. Again there is a lull in the activity of the Tribune building, and, sleepily, we bend bur steps homeward. There is something extremely pleasing in the spectacle afforded by a large number of strong men co-operating in cheerful activity, by which they at once secure their own career, and render an im portant service to the public. Such a spectacle the Tribune build ing presents. At present men show to best advantage when they are at work ; we have not yet learned to sport with grace and un mixed benefit ; and still further are we from that stage of develop ment where work and play become one. But the Tribune building is a very cheerful place. No one is oppressed or degraded ; and, by the minute subdivision of labor in all departments, there is sel dom any occasion for hurry or excessive exertion. The distinctions which there exist between one man and another, are not artificial, but natural and necessary ; foreman and editor, office-boy and head clerk, if they converse together at all, converse as friends and equals ; and the posts of honor are posts of honor, only because they are posts of difficulty. In a word, the republicanism of the Con tinent has come to a focus at the corner of Nassau and Spruce- streets. There it has its nearest approach to practical realization ; thence proceeds its strongest expression. CHAPTER XXIX. HOKACE GKEELEY IN A FRENCH PEISON. Voyage to Europe Visit to the exhibition At the tomb of Napoleon Two days in the debtors' prison In London again Comments of the editor on men and things. IN the year 1855, which was that of the first Paris Exhibition, Mr. Greeley again enjoyed a few weeks' holiday in Europe. The voyage, however, was anything but enjoyment. " I have expressed," he says, " my own opinion of the sea and its behavior before, and do not care to reiterate it. I suffered far less intensely this time, and gratefully acknowledge the kind Providence which preserved us from the perils and afflictions by which others have been visited But to me c a life on the ocean wave ' is still surcharged with misery, and a steamship on rocking billows the most intolerable prison wherewith man's follies or sins are visited. I think I could just endure the compound stench of grease and steam which ' ascend- eth for ever and ever ' on board these fire-ships ; I might even bear the addition to my agonies which the damp, chilly breeze (when it happens not to be a gale) never fails to induce ; I might come in time to grapple with and throttle the demon Sea-sickness, remorse less as he is ; but when to these are added the fumes arising from the incessant cookery required for three or four hundred human beings, all huddled within a space two hundred feet long by some twenty-five wide, I am compelled to surrender. There certainly can be fabricated nowhere else on earth a jumble of smells so in tolerably nauseous and sickening." In his first letter to tne Tribune, from which the above is taken, he gives some particulars of the voyage which are interesting : THE ROUTINE ON SHIPBOARD. " The day opens at this season about sunrise with a concert of scrubbing implements on the decks, and the first passengers who rise find the sailors still intent on the purifying process. Occasion ally brass hand-railings, &c., are rubbed, and no pains spared gen- THE ROUTINE ON SHIPBOARD. 413 erally to keep the vessel as clean as possible. One by one, the passengers stumble up from their state-rooms, and gather for warmth around the great smoke-pipe amidships, or begin walk ing back and forth the hurricane or quarter-deck. When the wind is very high, or the spray particularly searching, this is abandoned for one or both of the open passages on the main deck, on either side of the dining-room ; when the rain pours fiercely, all out-door walking is forborne, or only prosecuted by the stubborn under the protection of an umbrella. A loud bell at eight sum mons the sluggish to prepare for breakfast, which is served half an hour later ; from one third to two thirds of the passengers, accord ing to the state of the weather and the waves, entering an appear ance at the breakfast-table. Some of the residue are served in their berths ; some have a plate on deck ; other some are too sick to eat at all. " From breakfast, the active adjourn to the decks, there to resume the monotonous tramp, tramp, or gather in knots around the great chimney, where heat is ever abundant ; many go forward to smoke, and some, alas ! smoke without going forward, to the aggravated discomposure of uneasy stomachs ; for the sick are crouching in corners, or lounging on settees, or propped up by the railing in front of cushions, or trying to walk by the help of a friendly arm, or attempting any other dodge which promises alleviation, if not temporary oblivion, of their woes. A few try to read ; still fewer to write ; but neither of these employments can be recommended to the sick, and they do not seem to recommend themselves very strongly to the great body of the well. As soon as the tables are partly cleared, some of the more inveterate card-players recom mence their various games ; two or three pairs sit down to chess, drafts, or backgammon. Noon brings luncheon, which accommo dates a class who do not rise in season for breakfast ; four o'clock summons to dinner, over which the comfortable manage to kill an hour or more, not ineffectively ; next follows the more general par ade and promenade on the upper deck, which the quality now con descend to honor by their patronage and co-operation ; and at half past seven the bell sounds for tea, and thus the evening is fairly begun. Tea being speedily despatched and the tables cleared, a goodly company gather in the dining-saloon, and sit down to cheerful 414 HORACE GREELEY IN A FRENCH PRISON. conversation, to the various sedentary games, to reading, &c. The number of whist-players is very much larger than "by day, for the salt spray and damp night-winds on decks are neither pleasant nor wholesome. Thus acquaintances are formed or ripened, sym pathies developed, and day after day sees the ice which had sepa rated the company of recent strangers gradually dissolving and dis appearing. By nine o'clock the more hardy or reckless begin to order supper, usually a Welsh rabbit (melted cheese on toasted bread), eggs, and toast, a grilled fowl, pickled salmon, or something of the kind. Lest such a refection late at night might over-tax the stomach, it is usual to wash it down with a tumbler of hot whiskey punch, a glass of cherry bounce, brandy and water, a tumbler or two of champagne, a bottle of ale, or something of the sort. I was a little surprised to see delicate ladies, who had clung to then* berths through the first two or three days of the voyage, soon after take their places at the evening table and partake freely of the edibles and potables above named. When they appeared next day, which was not till long after breakfast had vanished, I inquired anxiously the state of their health respectively, and was assured that it had been sensibly improved by the rabbits and punches aforesaid. On the third morning of my inquiries, however, I was informed by a candid male friend, who had freely indulged with the rest, that he had not slept well the last night; ' The rabbit kicked me,' was his way of stating the fact and hint ing the cause. Others were not all so candid ; but suppers and grog were not half so popular toward the end of the voyage as they were at the beginning." SUNDAY AT SEA. "I liked to hear the bell ring for worship on Sunday morning, and all the seamen not on duty thereupon march in, in their clean, smart blue jackets, prayer-bok in hand, and take their seats in the dining-saloon. Soon the passengers also were assembled, and the captain read appropriately the morning service of the Church of England, a majority of the assemblage uniting in the responses audibly, and nearly all, I presume, in spirit. Then a Presbyterian clergyman, who was one of the passengers, preached an off-hand sermon with great energy and zeal, commencing and closing with prayer. I think a liturgy never commends itself more forcibly MR GREELEY IS SHAVED. 415 than on such occasions as this ; and I would suggest that each de nomination should provide itself with complete forms of worship, with a view to their use by gatherings of lay members when no clergyman or other extempore leader of worship may be present. " The next evening we were favored with a discourse by (I should rather say through} a lady passenger, somewhat famous among Spiritualists as a ' medium ' for this sort of communications. I feel much obliged to her for so readily and freely enabling us to lis ten to this sort of teaching ; but my gratitude by no means extends to the ' spirits,' who gave us a poor, rambling, incoherent discourse, which seemed to me but a dilution of some of the poorest plati tudes of Jackson Davis, a weak sherry-cobbler, compounded from ' The Vestiges of Creation,' ' Nature's Divine Revelations,' and the most rarefied yet non-luminous fog of modern Pantheism. Withal, the manner was that of our very worst Fourth-of-July orators, which I do intensely abominate, and the diction full of forty-eight-pounders mounted on very rickety pig-pens. I am sure the lady would have done much better if she had exorcised the spirits, and just given us a discourse in her own natural man ner, and out of her own head. If she ever consents to speak again, I hope she will profit by this suggestion." MR. GREELEY IS SHAVED. " I got one extra glimpse of sea-life by reason of the lack of a barber on the Asia in common with all the Cunarders. Unschooled in the art tonsorial, I had gone unshaved more than a week, and met the remonstrances of friends with a simple averment that what they urged was impossible. In this I was at length overheard by a seaman on deck, who interpleaded that if I would follow him I should be speedily and satisfactorily rendered beardless. I could hardly back out ; so I followed him into the ship's forecastle, took my seat on a rough bench without a back, whereupon a rougher tar, with an instrument which he seems to have mistaken for a razor, performed the operation required, and pocketed a quarter therefor without grumbling. I did not offer him more, for my face was smarting at the time ; but the sights and smells of that fore castle were richly worth a dollar. When we consider that there, in a space not cubically larger than two average prison-cells, some thirty or forty men live and sleep, without a crevice for ventilation, 416 HORACE GREELEY IN A FRENCH PRISON. and in a reek of foul effluvia so dense as to defy description, how can we wonder that sailors often act like beasts on shore if they are forced to live so like beasts on water ? Ah, Messrs. Merchant Princes of New York 1 before you waste one more dollar on at tempts to improve the moral and religious condition of seamen, be entreated to secure them a chance to breathe pure air on board your own vessels, to sleep at least as healthfully and decently as your hogs ! Until you do this, preaching to them, scattering tracts and Bibles among them, and even building sailors' homes for them on land, though all excellent in their time and place, will be just so much cash and effort thrown away." Upon his arrival in Paris he entered upon the laborious duty of sight-seeing with his usual vigor, and daily related his experien ces to the readers of the Tribune with characteristic comments. One or two passages from his letters may detain the reader for a moment. The following remarks are almost as applicable to the present moment as they were to the state of things in 1855 : WILL THE EMPIRE LAST ? " I meet no one who believes it will survive the present Emperor, but very many who think it will last as long as he does. While no one speaks of his patriotism or disinterestedness, even by way of joke, there is a very general trust in his ability and confidence in his indefatigable energy. He is probably the most active, untir ing ruler now living, and in this respect at least reminds the French of * Napoleon le Grand.' He has, besides, the undoubted courage, inscrutable purpose, and unwavering faith in his ' star,' which befit the heir of the first Bonaparte. He is, moreover, the only focus around which all the anti-Republican forces and interests in France can for the present be rallied. The priests do not imagine him de vout nor sincerely attached to their fortunes, but they say, ' What matter, so long as he does our work ? ' The Legitimists and Or- leanists "(the former comprising nearly all the remains of the wool or land-owning aristocracy, the latter including many 6f the master manufacturers, contractors, thrifty traders, stock-jobbers, and lucky parvenues generally) say : ' This cannot last ; but while it does last, it protects us from Jacobinism, from Socialism, from turbu lence, anarchy, and the guillotine ; so let it last so long as it will. HORACE GREELEY AT THE TOMB OF NAPOLEON. 417 The more intelligent workmen, the skilful artificers, the thinkers, the teachers, the observing, aspiring youth, who are almost to a man Republicans, say : * This evidently cannot last ; then why plunge the nation into intestine convulsion and bloodshed, when it is already groaning under the load of a distant, expensive, and sanguinary foreign war ? ' And thus the general conviction that the empire is but a state of transition serves to protect it from present assault and immediate danger." THE EXHIBITION. " I bid adieu to the World's Exhibition of 1855 in the conviction that I have not half seen it, and that nine tenths of its visitors are even more ignorant of its contents than I am. Its immensity tends to confuse and bewilder ; the eye glances rapidly from one brilliant object to another, while the mind fixes steadily upon none ; so that lie who wanders, fitfully gazing from court to court, from gallery to gallery, may carry away nothing positive but a headache. You will see hundreds jostling and crowding for a peep at the Imperial diamonds, crowns, &c., which are said to have cost several millions of dollars, (by whom earned ? how taken from them ?) where a dozen can with difficulty be collected to witness the operation of a new machine calculated to confer signal benefits on the whole civ ilized world. Who looks at the self-adjusting windmill, which was first exhibited in our country last year ? Yet that, if it prove what it promises, will do mankind more service than all the dia monds ever diverted from their legitimate office of glass-cutting to lend a false, deceitful glitter to the brows of Tyranny and Crime. Here is a poor French artisan with a very simple contrivance for taking the long, coarse hairs from rabbit-skins, leaving the fine, soft fur to be removed by itself, the machine possibly costing twenty francs, and the dressing therewith of each skin hardly a cent, while the value of the fur is thereby doubled. This is a very small matter, which hardly any one regards ; yet it is proba bly worth to Europe more than the annual cost of either of its royal families, or twenty times the value of them all." HORACE GREELEY AT THE TOMB OF NAPOLEON. " The Invalides is a great establishment, erected in the southwest quarter of Paris by Louis XIV., as a hospital or home for maimed, 18* AA 418 HORACE GREELEY IN A FRENCH PRISON. disabled, or worn-out soldiers, the surviving victims of the bloody phantom, Glory. It has accommodations for some five thousand, though I believe a smaller number are now quartered there, some three thousand only ; but the war with Russia will doubt less create a speedy demand for all its accommodations, as in the days of Napoleon I. Here the still surviving wrecks and relics of bygone wars doze out their remnant of existence, being frugally fed and lodged at the expense of the nation for whose supposed safety, interest, or honor they have risked their lives, shed their blood, and often lost their limbs. The arrangements for their sub sistence and comfort are very systematic and thorough ; their food and lodging are of better quality and better ordered than those of the peasantry in their humble homes ; they have a fine church in one end of the great quadrangular building which forms their 'hotel,' with no lack of priestly ministrations. Their church is decorated rather than enriched with many pictures; yet there is one painting on glass representing the Dead Christ which may not be approved by critics, but which fixed my attention more than any other work of art I have seen in Paris. Though you know what it is, you cannot dispel the impression that you are looking through a glass case or coffin, and gazing on an actual corpse or waxen model of it lying cold and stark therein. The illusion is so perfect as to be painful, and therein, if anywhere, is its fault. " Opposite the entrance of this church (which is still hung with foreign flags, the trophies of French victories, though the twenty- five hundred such which formerly decorated it were burnt by Jo seph Bonaparte's order the night before the capture of Paris by the Allies in 1814) rises the grand altar, resplendent in gold, and lighted by side-windows with such art that, even in a dark, rainy day, the whole seems to bask and blaze in the richest sunlight ; and behind this, in what would seem to be an extension of the church, is the Tomb of Napoleon I. Though you are within a few feet of this structure when near the grand altar in the church, you are compelled to go half a mile around to enter it ; and I am not quite sure that the journey is repaid to those whose admira tion of military or other despots is not stronger than mine. Here marble and porphyry, painting and sculpture, gilding and mosaic, have been lavished without stint, and some two millions of dollars THE FRENCH SUNDAY. 419 wrested from the scanty earnings of an overtaxed peasantry to honor the bones of him who while living was so prodigal alike of their treasure and their blood. The author of this squandering idolatry was Louis Philippe, who thought he was ingratiating himself with the French people by pandering to the worship of the military Juggernaut, and whose family now live, as he himself died, in exile and humiliation, while the vast estates he left them have been seized and confiscated by the nephew and heir of the Corsican he thus helped to deify. Who can pity the schemer thus caught in his own snare ? Who can marvel that France, not yet fully cured of that passion for glory which exults over a victory because our side has won, and not because the universal sway of justice and equity has been brought nearer thereby, should find herself ground under the heel of a fresh despot, who tears her youth from their beloved homes and useful labors to swell the un ripe harvest of death on the battle-field ? I forget the name of the French Democrat who observed that his country could never enjoy true liberty until the ashes of Napoleon shall be torn from this costly mausoleum and thrown into the Seine, but I fully con cur ju his opinion." THE FRENCH SUNDAY. " I am no formalist, and would not have Sunday kept absolutely sacred from labor and recreations with all the strictness enjoined in the Mosaic ritual ; I believe the cramped and weary toiler through six days of each week may better walk or ride out with his children and breathe fresh, pure air on Sunday than not at all ; yet this French use of the Christian Sabbath as a mere fete day, or holiday, impresses me very unfavorably. Half the stores are open on that day ; men are cutting stone and doing all manner of work as on other days ; the journals are published, offices open, business transacted ; only there is more hilarity, more dancing, more drink ing, more theatre-going, more dissipation, than on any other day of the week. I suspect that Labor gets no more pay in the long run for seven days' work per week than it would for six, and that Morality suffers, and Philanthropy is more languid than it would be if one day in each week were generally welcomed as a day of rest and woiship." 420 HORACE GRERLEY IN A FRENCH PRISON. FRENCH AGRICULTURE. " A Yankee here lately said to a Frenchman : ' I am amazed that your people continue to cut grass with that short, clumsy, wide- bladed, straight-handled, eleventh-century implement, when we in America have scythes scarcely dearer which cut twice as fast.' 1 Why, you see,' responded Monsieur, ' while you have less labor than you need, we have far more ; so that while it is your study to economize human exertion, it is ours to find employment for our surplus. We have probably twice as many laborers as we need.' ' Then,' persisted Jonathan, ' your true course would seem to be to break your scythes in two and work them at half their present length, thus adjusting your implements to your work, since you are confessedly unable to find work enough for your la borers, even with the wretched implements you now use.' Mon sieur did not see the matter in this light, and the stream of conver sation flowed into another channel. "Now, while otherwise sensible Frenchmen actually believe that labor is here in excess, there is at this hour a pressing need of all the surplus labor of France for the next forty years to be absorbed in the proper drainage of her soil alone. For want of this, whole districts are submerged or turned to marsh for three or four months between November and April, obstructing labor, loading the air with unwholesome humidity, and subjecting the peasantry to fevers and other diseases. Thorough draining alone would im mensely increase the annual product, the wealth, and ultimately, by promoting health and diffusing plenty, even the population of France. " So with regard to ploughing. It is not quite so bad here as in Spain, where a friend this season saw peasants ploughing with an implement composed of two clumsy sticks of wood, one of which (the horizontal) worked its way through the earth after the man ner of a hog's snout, while the other, inserted in the former at a convenient angle, served as a handle, being guided by the plough man's left hand, while he managed the team with his right. With this relic of the good old days the peasant may have annoyed and irritated a rood of ground per day to the depth of three inches ; and, as care is taken not to afflict in this fashion any field that can not be irrigated, he may possibly, by the conjunction of good luck FRENCH AGRICULTURE. 421 with laborious culture, obtain half a crop. It is a safe guess that this cultivator, living the year round on black bread moistened with weak vinegar or rancid oil, because unable to live better, cherishes a supreme contempt for all such quackery and humbug as book- farming. " France has naturally a magnificent soil. I prefer it, all things considered, to that of our own Western States. We have much land that is richer at the outset, but very little that will hold its own in defiance of maltreatment so Well as this -does. Lime abounds here in every form, the railroads are often cut through hills of loose chalk, and very much of the subsoil in this vicinity appears to be a rotten limestone or gypsum, but is said to be a ma rine deposit, proved such by the infinity of shells therein imbed ded. There is not a particle of stone in the surface soil ; the rotten gypsum is, for the most part, easily traversed by the plough, though at a depth of ten to twenty feet the same original formation may be found hard enough to quarry into building-stone. To re-enforce such a soil, after the exhaustion produced by a hundred grain-crops in succession, it is only requisite to run the plough two inches deeper than it has hither gone, a process urgently desirable on other grounds than this. I never before observed land so thoroughly fortified against the destructive tendencies of human ignorance, indolence, and folly. Then the summer -of France, as compared with ours, is cool and humid, exposing grain-crops to fewer dan gers of smut, rust, &c., and breeding far fewer insects than does ours. (0 that there were some power in America adequate and resolved to protect those best friends of farmers the birds against the murderous instincts of every young ruffian who can shoulder a musket !) I have seldom seen finer wheat than grows profusely around Paris, and I think this region ought to average more bushels to the acre, in the course of a century, than any part of the United States. " But French genius and talent do not tend to the soil. I must have already observed that the ' Imperial School of Agriculture ' at G-rignon, though twenty-eight years old, with 1,100 acres of capital land, a choice stock, and well-adapted buildings, enters on its twenty-eighth year with barely seventy pupils. A kindred tes timony is wafted from a ' Reform School ' in the western part of the country. To this school young reprobates are sent from the 422 HORACE GREELEY IN A FRENCH PRISON. adjacent cities, and made adepts in agriculture as a just punish ment for their sins ; and its last official report boasts that the school has been conducted with such wisdom and success that over half of its graduates have enlisted in the army ! There 's a climax for you ! " While he was engaged in visiting the interesting objects of the French metropolis, he had the novel experience of being arrested for debt, and a debt which he had never contracted. Mr. Greeley has related this adventure at length, and in his own way. The following is his narrative : THE ARREST. " I had been looking at things if not into them for a good many years prior to yesterday. I had climbed mountains and descended into mines, had groped in caves and scaled precipices, seen Venice and Cincinnati, Dublin and Min eral Point, Niagara and St. Gothard, and really supposed I was approximating a middling outside knowledge of things in general. I had been chosen de fendant in several libel suits, and been flattered with the information that my censures were deemed of more consequence than those of other people, and should be paid for accordingly. I had been through twenty of our States, yet never in a jail outside of New York, and over half Europe, yet never looked into one. Here I had been seeing Paris for the last six weeks, visiting this sight, then that, till there seemed little remaining worth looking at or after, yet I had never once thought of looking into a debtors' prison, I should probably have gone away next week, as ignorant in that regard as I came, when circumstances favored me most unexpectedly with an inside view of this famous ' Maison de Detention,' or Prison for Debtors, 70 Rue de Clichy. I think what I have seen here, fairly told, must be instructive and interesting, and I suppose others will tell the story if I do not, and I don't know any one whose opportunities will enable him to tell it so accurately as I can. So here goes. u But first let me explain and insist on the important distinction between in side and outside views of a prison. People fancy they have been in a prison where they have by courtesy been inside of the gates ; but that is properly an outside view, at best, the view accorded to an outsider. It gives you no proper idea of the place at all, no access to its penetralia. The difference even between this outside and the proper inside view is very broad indeed. The greenness of those who don't know how the world looks from the wrong side of the gratings is pitiable. Yet how many reflect on the disdain with which the lion must regard the bumpkin who perverts his goadstick to the ignoble use of stirring said lion up ! or how many suspect that the grin whre- with the baboon contemplates the human ape who with umbrella at arm':} THE ARREST. 423 length is poking Jocko for his doxy's delectation, is one of contempt rather than complacency ! Rely on it, the world seen here behind the gratings is very different in aspect from that same world otherwise inspected. Others may think so, I know it. And this is how. " I had been down at the Palace of Industry and returned to my lodgings, when, a little before four o'clock yesterday afternoon, four strangers called for me. By the help of my courier, I soon learned that they had a writ of arrest for me at the suit or one Mons. Lechesne, sculptor, affirming that he sent a statue to the New York Crystal Palace Exhibition, at or on the way to which it had been broken, so that it could not be (at all events it had not been) re stored to him ; wherefore he asked of me, as a director and representative of the Crystal Palace Association, to pay him ' douze mille francs,' or $2,500. Not happening to have the change, and no idea of paying this demand if I had it, I could only signify those facts; whereupon they told me that I was under arrest, and must go along, which I readily did. We drove circuitously to the sculptor's residence at the other end of Paris, waited his convenience for a long half-hour, and then went to the President Judge who had issued the writ. I briefly explained to him my side of the case, when he asked me if I wished to give bail, i told him I would give good bail for my appearance at court at any time, but that I knew no man in Paris whom I felt willing to ask to become my security for the payment of so large a sum as $ 2,500. After a little parley I named Judge Piatt, United States Secretary of Legation, as one who, I felt confident, would recognize for my appearance when wanted, and this suggestion met with universal assent. Twice over I carefully ex plained that I preferred going to prison to asking any friend to give bail for the payment in any case of this claim, and knew I was fully understood. So we all, except the judge, drove off together to the Legation. " There we found Judge P., who readily agreed to recognize as I required; but now the plaintiff and his lawyer refused to accept him as security in any way, alleging that he was privileged from arrest by his office. He offered to give his check on Greene & Co., bankers, for the 12,000 francs in dispute as security for my appearance; but they would not have him in any shape. While we were chaffering, Mr. Maunsell B. Field, United States Commissioner in the French Exposition, came along, and offered to join Mr. Piatt in the recognizance ; but nothing would do. Mr. Field then offered to raise the money demanded; but I said, No, if the agreement before the judge was not ad hered to by the other side, I would give no bail whatever, but go to prison. High words ensued, and the beginning of a scuffle, in the midst of which I, half unconsciously, descended from the carriage. Of course I was ordered back instanter, and obeyed so soon as I understood the order, but we were all by this time losing temper. As putting me in jail would simply secure my forthcoming when wanted, and as I was ready to give any amount of security for this, which the other side had once agreed to take, I thought they were rather crowding matters in the course they were taking. So, as I was making my friends too late for a pleasant dinner-party at Trois Freres, where I had expected to join them, I closed the discussion by insisting that we should drive off. 424 HORACE GREELEY IN A FRENCH PRISON. " Crossing the Avenue Champs Elysdes the next moment, our horses struck another horse, took fright, and ran until reined up against a tree, disabling the concern. My cortege of officers got out; I attempted to follow, but was thrust back very roughly and held in with superfluous energy, since they had had abundant opportunity to see that I had no idea of getting away from them. I had in fact evinced ample determination to enjoy their delightful society to the utmost. At last, they had to transfer me to another carriage, but they made such a parade of it, and insisted on taking hold of me so numerously and so fussily (this being just the most thronged and conspicuous locality in Paris), that I came near losing my temper again. We got along, however, and in due time arrived at this spacious, substantial, secure estab lishment, No. 70 Rue de Clichy. " I was brought in through three or four heavy iron doors to the office of the Governor, where I was properly received. Here I was told I must stay till nine o'clock, since the President Judge had allowed me till that hour to find bail. In vain I urged that I had refused to give bail, would give none, and wanted to be shown to my cell, I must stay here till nine o'clock. So I ordered something for dinner, and amused myself by looking at the ball play, &c., of the prisoners in the yard, to whose immunities I was not yet eligible, but I had the privilege of looking in through the barred windows. The yard is one of the best I have ever seen anywhere, has a good many trees and some flowers, and, as the wall is at least fifteen feet high, and another of twenty surrounding it, with guards with loaded muskets always pacing between, I should judge the danger of burglary or other annoyances from without very moderate. " My first visitor was Judge Mason, U. S. Embassador, accompanied by Mr. Kirby, one of the attache's of the Embassy. Judge M. had heard of my luck from the Legation, and was willing to serve me to any extent, and in any manner. I was reminded by my position of the case of the prying Yankee who undertook to fish out a gratuitous opinion on a knotty point in a lawsuit in which he was involved. ' Supposing,' said he to an eminent counsellor, you were in volved in such and such a difficulty, what would you do? ' 'Sir,' said the counsellor with becoming gravity, ' I should take the very best legal advice I could obtain.' I told Judge M. that I wanted neither money nor bail, but a first-rate French lawyer, who could understand my statements in English, at the very earliest moment. Judge M. left to call on Mr. James Munroe, banker, find send me a lawyer as soon as could be. This was done, but it was eight o'clock on Saturday night, before which hour at this season most eminent Parisians have left for their country residences; and no lawyer of the proper stamp and standing could then be or has yet been found. THE INCARCERATION. " At the designated hour I was duly installed and admitted to all the privi leges of Clichy. By ten o'clock each of us lodgers had retired to our several apartments (about eight feet by five), and an obliging functionary came around THE INCARCEKATION. 425 and locked out all rascally intruders. I don't think I ever before slept in a place so perfectly secure. At six this morning this extra protection was withdrawn, and each of us was thenceforth obliged to keep watch over his own valuables. We uniformly keep good hours here in Clichy, which is what not many large hotels in Paris can boast of. " The bedroom appointments are not of a high order, as is reasonable, since we are only charged for them four sous (cents) per night, washing extra. The sheets are rather of a hickory order (mine were given me clean); the bed is indifferent, but I have slept on worse ; the window lacks a curtain or blinds, but in its stead there are four strong upright iron bars, which are a perfect safeguard against getting up in the night and pitching or falling out so as to break your neck, as any one who went out would certainly do. (I am in the fifth or highest story.) Perhaps one of my predecessors was a somnam~ bulist. I have two chairs (one less than I am entitled to), two little tables (probably one of them extra, by some mistake), and a cupboard which may once have been clean. The pint washbowl and half-pint pitcher, candles, &c., I have ordered and pay for. I am a little ashamed to own that my repose has been indifferent; but then I never do sleep well in a strange place. " Descending to the common room on the lower floor this morning, I find there an American (from Boston), who has met me often and knew me at once, though I could not have called him by name. He seemed rather amazed to meet me here (I believe he last before saw me at the Astor House), but greeted me very cordially, and we ordered breakfast for both in my room. It was not a sumptuous meal, but we enjoyed it. Next he made me ac quainted with some other of our best fellow-lodgers, and four of us agreed to dine together after business hours. Before breakfast, a friend from the outer world (M. Vattemare) had found access to me, though the rules of the prison allow no visitors till ten o'clock. I needed first of all lawyers, not yet pro curable; next law-books (American), which Mr. Vattemare knew just where to lay his hands on. I had them all on hand and my citations looked up long before I had any help to use them. But let my own affairs wait a little till I dispense some of my gleanings in Clichy. " This is perhaps the only large dwelling-house in Paris where no one ever suffers from hunger. Each person incarcerated is allowed a franc per day to live on ; if this is not forthcoming from his creditor, he is at once turned out to pick up a living as he can. While he remains here he must have his franc per day, paid every third day. From this is deducted four sous per day for his bedding, and one sou for his fire (in the kitchen), leaving him fifteen sous net and cooking fire paid for. This will keep him in bread any how. But there exists among the prisoners, and is always maintained, a ' Philanthropic Society,' which, by cooking altogether and dividing into messes, is enabled to give every subscriber to its articles a very fair dinner for sixteen sous (eleven cents), and a scantier one for barely nine sous. He who has no friends but the inevitable franc per day may still have a nine-sous dinner almost every day and a sixteen-sous feast on Sunday, by living on bread and water 426 HORACE GREELEY IN A FRENCH PRISON. or being so sick as not to need anything for a couple of days each week. I regret to say that the high price of food of late has cramped the resources of the ' Philanthropic Society,' so that it has been obliged to appeal to the public for aid. I trust it will not appeal in vain. It is an example of the advantage of association, whose benefits no one will dispute. " I never met a more friendly and social people than the inmates of Clichy. Before I had been up two hours this morning, though most of them speak only French and I but English, the outlines of my case were generally known, my character and standing canvassed and dilated on, and I had a dozen fast friends in another hour; had I been able to speak French, they would have been a hundred. Of course, we are not all saints here, and make no pretensions to bo; some of us are incorrigible spendthrifts, desperately fast men, hurried to ruin by association with still faster women, probably some unlucky rogues among us, and very likely a fool or two; though as a class I am sure my associates will compare favorably in intelligence and intellect with so many of the next men you meet on the Boulevards or in Broadway. Several of them are men of decided ability and energy, the temporary victims of other men's rascality or their own over-sanguine enterprise, sometimes of ship wreck, fire, or other unavoidable misfortune. A more hearty and kindly set of men I never met in my life than are those who can speak English ; I have acquired important help from three or four of them in copying and translating papers; and never was I more zealously nor effectively aided than by these acquaintances of to-day, to not one of whom would I dare to offer money for the service. Where could I match this out of Clichy? " Let me be entirely candid. I say nothing of ' Liberty,' save to caution outsiders in France to be equally modest, but ' Equality and Fraternity ' I have found prevailing here more thoroughly than elsewhere in Europe. Still, we have not realized the Social Millennium, even in Clichy. Some of us were born to gain our living by the hardest and most meagrely rewarded labor^ others to live idly and sumptuously on the earnings of others. Of course, these vices of an irrational and decaying social state are not instantly eradi cated by our abrupt removal to this mansion. Some of us cook, while others only know how to eat, and so require assistance in the preparation of our food, as none is cooked or even provided for us, and our intercourse with the outei world is subject to limitations. Those of us who lived generously aforetime, and are in for gentlemanly sums, are very apt to have money which the luck less chaps who are in for a beggarly hundred francs or so, and have no fixed income beyond the franc per day, are very glad to earn by doing us acts of kindness. One of these attached himself to me immediately on my taking possession of my apartment, and proceeded to make my bed, bring me basin and pitcher of water, matches, lights, &c., for which I expect to pay him, these articles being reckoned superfluities in Clichy. But no such aristocratic distinction as master, no such degrading appellation as servant, is tolerated in this community; this philanthropic fellow-boarder is known to all as my ' auxiliary.' Where has the stupid world outside known how to drape the hard realities of life with fig-leaf so graceful as this ? THE INCARCERATION. 427 " So of all titular distinctions. We pretend to have abjured titles of honor in America, and the only consequence is that everybody has a title, either Honorable, or General, or Colonel, or Reverend, or at the very least Esquire. But here in Clichy alt such empty and absurd prefixes are absolutely un known, even names, Christian or family, are discarded as useless, antiquated lumber. Every lodger is known by the number of his room only; mine is 139; and whenever a friend calls, a ' Commissionaire ' comes in from the outer apartments to the great hall sacred to our common use, and begins calling out, ' Cent-trente-neuf ' (phonetically ' sent-tran-nuf '), at the top of his voice, and goes on yelling as he climbs, in the hope of finding or calling me short of ascending to my fifth-story sanctuary. To nine tenths of my comrades I am only known as ' san-tran-nuf.' My auxiliary is No. 54, and when I need his aid I go singing ' Sankan-cat,' after the same fashion. Equality being thus rigidly preserved, in spite of slight diversities of fortune, the jealousies, rivalries, and heart-burnings which keep most of mankind in a ferment are here absolutely unknown. I never before talked so much with so many people intimately acquainted with each other without hearing something said or insinuated to one another's prejudice ; here there is nothing of the sort. Some folks out side are here fitted with characters which they would hardly consider flatter- in-g, some laws and usages get the blessings they richly deserve, but among ourselves all is harmony and good-will. How would Meurice's, tho Hotel de Ville, or even the Tuileries, like to compare notes with us on this head? " Our social intercourse with outsiders is under most enlightened regula tions. A person calls who wishes to see one of us, and is thereupon admitted through two or three doors, but not within several locks of us. Here he gives his card and pays two sous to a Commissionaire to take it to No. , of whom the interview is solicited. No. being found, takes the card, scrutinizes it, and, if he chooses to see the expected visitor, writes a request for his admission. This is taken to a functionary, who grants the request, and the visitor is then brought into a sort of neutral reception-room, outside of the prison proper, but a good way inside of the hall wherein the visitor has hitherto tarried. But let the lodger say No, and the visitor must instantly walk out with a very tall flea in his ear. So perfect an arrangement for keeping duns, bores (writ- servers even), and all such enemies of human happiness at a distance is found scarcely anywhere else, at all events not in editors' rooms, I am sure of that. But yesterday an old resident here, who ought to have been up to the trap, was told that a man wished to see him a moment at the nearest grate, and, being completely off his guard, he went immediately down, with out observing or requiring the proper formalities, and was instantly served with a fresh wriU ' Sir,' said he, with proper indignation, to the sneak of an officer (who had doubtless made his way in here by favor or bribery), 'if you ever serve me that trick again, you will go out of here half killed.' However, he had mainly his own folly to blame; he should have stood upon his reserved rights, and bade the outsider send up his card like a gentleman, if he aspired to a gentleman's society. 428 HORACE GREELEY IN A FRENCH PRISON. " And this brings me to the visiting-room, where I have seen very many friends during the day, including two United States Ministers, beside almost every one belonging to our Legation here, three bankers, and nearly all the Americans I know in Paris, but not one French lawyer of the standing re quired, for it seems impossible to find one in Paris to-day. This room can hardly be called a parlor, all things considered; but it has been crowded all day (ten to six) with wives and female friends visiting one or other of us insiders, perhaps it may be most accurately characterized as the kissing- room. I should like to speak of the phases of life here from hour to hour presented, of the demonstrations of fervent affection, the anxious consola tions, the confidential whisperings, and the universal desire of each hasty tete-a-tete to res-pect the sacredness of others' confidence, BO that fifteen or twenty couples converse here by the hour within a space thirty feet by twenty, yet no one knows, because no one wishes to know, what any other couple are saying. But I must hurry over all this, or my letter will never have an end. " Formerly, Clichy was in bad repute on account of the facility wherewith all manner of females called upon and mingled with the male lodgers in the inner sanctum. All this, however, has been corrected ; and no woman is now admitted beyond the public kissing-room except on an express order from the Prefecture of Police, which is only granted to the well-authenticated wife or child of an inmate. (The female prison is in an entirely separate wing of the building.) The enforcement of this rule is most rigid; and, while I am not inclined to be vainglorious, and do not doubt that other large domiciles in Paris are models of propriety and virtue, yet this I do say, that the domestic morals of Clichy may safely challenge a comparison with those of Paris generally. I might put the case more strongly, but it is best to keep within the truth. " So with regard to liquor. They keep saying there is no Prohibitory Law in France ; but they mistake, if Clichy is in France. No ardent spirits are brought into this well-regulated establishment, unless for medical use, except in express violation of law; and the search and seizure clauses here are a great deal more rigorous and better enforced than in Maine. I know a little is smuggled in notwithstanding, mainly by officials, for money goes a great way in France; but no woman comes in without being felt all over (by a woman) for concealed bottles of liquor. There was a small flask on our (private) dinner-table to-day of what was called brandy, and smelt like a compound of spirits of turpentine and diluted aqua-fortis (for adulteration is a vice which prevails even here); but not a glass is now smuggled in where a gallon used to come in boldly under the protection of law. Wine, being here esteemed a necessary, is allowed in moderation ; no inmate to have more than one bottle per day either of ten-sous or twenty-sous wine, according to his taste or means, no better and no more. I don't defend the consistency of these regulations; we do some things better in America than even in Clichy; but here drunkenness is absolutely prevented and riotous living sup pressed by a sumptuary law far more stringent than any of our States ever THE INCARCERATION. 429 tried. And, mind you, this is no criminal prison, but simply a house of deten tion for those who happen to have less money than others would like to ex tract from their pockets, many of whom do not pay simply because they do not owe. So, if any one tells you again that Liquor Prohibition is a Yankee novelty, just ask him what he knows of Clichy. " I know that cookery is a point of honor with the French, and rightly, for they approach it with the inspiration of genius. Sad am I to say that I find no proof of this eminence in Clichy, and am forced to the conclusion that to be in debt and unable to pay does not qualify even a Frenchman in the culi nary art. My auxiliary doubtless does his best, but his resources are limited, and fifty fellows dancing round one range, with only a few pots and kettles among them, probably confuses him. Even our dinner to-day (four of us two Yankees, an English merchant, and an Italian banker dined en famille in No. 98), on what we ordered from an out-door restaurant (such are the prejudices of education and habit), and paid fifty sous each for, did not seem to be the thing. The gathering of knives, forks, spoons, bottles, &c., from Nos. 82, 63, and 139, to set the common table, was the freshest feature of the spread. " The sitting was nevertheless a pleasant one, and an Englishman joined us after the cloth was (figuratively) removed, who was much the cleverest man of the party. This man's case is so instructive that I must make room for it. He has been everywhere and knows everything, bu-t is especially strong in Chemistry and Metallurgy. A few weeks ago he was a coke-burner at Rouen, doing an immense and profitable business, till a heavy debtor failed, which frightened his partner into running off with all the cash of the concern, and my friend was compelled to stop payment. He called together the creditors, eighty in number (their banker alone was in for forty-five thousand francs), and said, ' Here is my case; appoint your own receiver, con duct the business wisely, and all will be paid.' Every man at once assented, and the concern was at once put in train of liquidation. But a discharged employee of the concern, at this moment owing it fifteen thousand francs now in judgment, said, ' Here is my chance for revenge ' ; so he had my friend arrested and put here as a foreign debtor, though he has been for years in most extensive business in France, and was, up to the date of his bankruptcy, paying the government fifteen hundred francs for annual license for the privilege of employing several hundred Frenchmen in transforming valueless peat into coke. He will get out by and by, and may prosecute his per secutor, but the latter is utterly irresponsible; and meantime a most ex tensive business is being wound up at Rouen by a receiver, with the only man qualified to oversee and direct the affair in close jail at Paris. This is but one case among many such. I always hated and condemned imprison ment for debt untainted by fraud, above all, for suspicion of debt, but I never so well knew why I hated it as now. " There are other cases and classes very different from this, gay lads, who are working out debts which they never would have paid otherwise ; for here in Clichy every man actually adjudged guilty of indebtedness is sen- 430 HORACE GREELEY IN A FRENCH PRISON. teuced to stay a certain term, in the discretion of the court, never more than ten years. The creditors of some would like to coax them out to-morrow, but they are not so soft as to go until the debt is worked out, so far, that is, that they can never again be imprisoned for it. The first question asked of a new-comer is, ' Have you ever been here before V ' and if he answers, ' Yes,' the books are consulted; and if this debt was charged against him, then he is remorselessly turned into the street. No price would procure such a man a night's lodging in Clichy. Some are here who say their lives were so tor mented by duns and writs, that they had a friendly creditor put them here for safety from annoyance. And some of our humbler brethren, I am assured, having been once here, and earned four or five francs a day as auxiliaries, with cheap lodgings and a chance to forage off the plates of those they serve, ac tually get themselves put in because they can do so well nowhere else. A few days since, an auxiliary, who had aided and trusted a hard-up English man forty-eight francs on honor (all debts contracted here are debts of honor purely, and therefore are always paid), received a present of five hundred francs from the grateful obligee, when, a few days after, he received ample funds from his distant resources, paid everything, and went out with flying colors. " To return to my own matter: I have been all day convincing one party of friends after another as they called, that I do not yet need their generous ly proffered money or names, that I will put up no security, and take no step whatever, until I can consult a good French lawyer, see where I stand, and get a judicial hearing if possible. I know the Judge did not mean nor ex pect that I should be sent here, when I left his presence last evening; I want to be brought before him forthwith on a plea of urgency, which cannot so well be made if I am at liberty. If he says that I am properly held in duress, then bailing out will do little good ; for forty others all about me either have or think they have claims against the Crystal Palace for the damage or non return of articles exhibited: if I am personally liable to these, all France be comes a prison to me. When I have proper legal advice I shall know what to do; until then it is safest to do nothing. Even at the worst, I hate to have any one put up 12,000 francs for me, as several are willing to do, until I am sure there is no alternative. I have seen so much mischief from going security, that I dread to ask it when I can possibly do without. ' Help one another' is a good rule, but abominably abused. A man in trouble is too apt to fly at once to his friends ; hence half a dozen get in where there need have been but one. There is no greater device for multiplying misery than misused sympathy. Better first see if you cannot shoulder your own pack. " OUT OF CLICHY, Monday eve, June 4, 1855. " Things have worked to-day very much as I had hoped and calculated. Friends had been active in quest of such lawyers as I needed, and two of the right .sort were with me at a seasonable hour this morning. At three o'clock they had a hearing before the Judge, and we were all ready for it, thanks to friends inside of the gratings as well as out. Judge Piatt's official certificate THE INCARCERATION. 431 as to the laws of our State governing the liability of corporators has been of vital service to me; and when my lawyers asked, ' Where is your evidence that the effects of the New York Association are now in the hands of a receiver ? ' I answered, ' The gentleman who was talking with me in the visitors' room when you came in and took me away knows that perfectly; perhaps he is still there.' I was at once sent for him, and found him there. Thus all things conspired for good; and at four o'clock my lawyers and friends came to Clichy to bid me walk out, without troubling my friends for any security or deposit whatever. So I guess my last chance of ever learn ing French is gone by the board. " Possibly I have given too much prominence to the brighter side of life in Clichy, for that seemed most to need a discoverer; let me put a little shading into the picture at the finish. There is a fair barber's shop in one cell in Clichy which was yesterday in full operation; so, expecting to be called personally before the Judge, and knowing that I must meet many friends, I walked down stairs to be shaved, and was taken rather aback by the infor mation that the barber had been set at liberty last evening, and there was not a man left in this whole concourse of practical ability to take his place. So there are imperfections in the social machinery even in Clichy. Fourier was right; it will take 1,728 persons (the cube of 12) to form a perfect Social Phalanx; hence all attempts to do it with two hundred or less fail and must fail. We had about 144 in Clichy this morning, men of more than average capacity; still there are hitches, as we have seen. I think I have learned more there than in any two previous days of my life; I never was busier; and yet I should feel that all over a week spent there would be a waste of time. '* Let me close by stating that arrangements were made at once for the liberation of the only American I found or left there ; the first, I believe, who had been seen inside of the middle grating for months. For this he will be mainly indebted to the generosity of Messrs. Greene & Co., bankers, but others are willing to co-operate. I fear he might have stayed some time, had not my position brought him into contact with men whom his pride would not permit him to apply to, yet who will not let him stay there, I am well assured that he comes out to-night." This event, as the reader may infer from Mr. Greeley's narrative, threw the Americans in Paris into a high degree of excitement, and there was manifested by all of them the utmost willingness to con tribute both money and service for his liberation. It was at first supposed that the debt was only a pretext, and that the real mo tive was political. This, however, was not the case. Mr. G-reeley received particular attention from persons connected with the gov ernment with whom he came in contact. " I left Paris," he says, "with a feeling that I had had quite enough of it. Paris is a pleasant city for those to whom pleasure is the 432 HORACE GREELEY IN A FRENCH PRISON. end of life ; but I, if exiled for five years to Europe, should be apt to give two of them to the British Isles, one each to Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, and hardly a month to France, her capital included. Life is here too superficial, too material, too egotistic. I could not be content in a great city which neither has nor feels the need of a Tabernacle or Exeter Hall. Vevay's and the Trois Freres are well in their way, but no substitute for those. Paris is the Paradise of Frenchmen, but my nature is not French, and never can be. I found friends in the gay metropolis, and trust I did not alienate any ; but I could make or strengthen attachments faster almost anywhere else. And so, with some pleasant and other less agreeable remembrances of the two months I had spent there, and with grateful regard to those who had there proved themselves friends indeed, it was with a real sense of relief that I saw Paris fade behind and the broad, green country open before me, in the direction of Rouen, Dieppe, and the English Channel." He felt far more at home in London. " London," he remarked, "deepens its impression upon me with each visit; nay, I rarely spend a day within its vast circumference without increasing won der and admiration. It is the capital, if not of the civilized, cer tainly of the commercial world, civilized and otherwise. To her wharves the raw produce of all climes and countries, to her vaults the gold of California and Australia, to her cabinets the gems of Golconda and Brazil, insensibly gravitate. From this mighty heart radiate the main arteries of the world's trade ; a great crash here brings down leading and long-established houses in the South Pa cific or the Yellow Sea. I dropped in to-day on an old friend whom I had known ten or fifteen years ago as a philosophic radical and social reformer in America. I found him in a great sugar-house under the shadow of the Bank, correcting a Price Current which he edits, having just made up a telegraphic despatch for his house's correspondents in Bombay. I found him calm and wise as ever ; more practical, some would say, but still hopeful of the good time coming ; he had been several years with that house, and he told me his income was quite satisfactory, and that his eldest son was doing very well in Australia. I came over from America with an intelligent and excellent English family that had been several years in Mexico, the husband and father managing a mine. They were on a visit to their native land to say good by to a son and brother THE INCARCERATION. 433 in the army, who was ordered to the Crimea. By this time they are probably on their return to Mexico for another four years' so journ. Their many heavy trunks were inscribed ' Maj. F , Lon don.' And so the great city is constantly sending forth her thou sands to every corner of the globe where goods may be sold, mines profitably worked, products gathered up, settlements planted or railroads constructed, some of them to return after a season with riches, or distinction, or competence, others to fill unmarked graves on far-off, lonely shores, but all to contribute to the wealth and power of the world's commercial emporium. Among our passengers out was Capt. B , a civil engineer, who had been surveying for a railroad, somewhere down in Spanish Amer ica, and was returning with the result to his London employers. * Capt B ,' asked a friend, casually, l do you remain in England some time ? or are you going off again ? ' 'I am going again,' was his quiet reply; 'but I don't know till I reach London whether I shall be employed in Brazil or in Asia Minor.' There is much mistaken pride and false dignity in England; but if a Briton insists on being proud of London, I shall not quarrel with him on that head." Of the House of Commons he said : " On the whole, I judged that the better order of speaking in the House of Commons sur passes that which may be heard in our House of Representatives, is more direct, substantial, and to the point, while the average abil ity evinced in the speaking here is quite below that manifested in Congress. I had been misled into the notion that decided bores are regularly coughed down when they undertake to enlighten the House ; but I saw and heard half a dozen of them try it, and the remedy was never once applied. Yet I cannot realize that the provocation could well be greater." The celebrated Cremorne Grardens appear to have rather puzzled the American editor, as well they might. "I looked in," he says, u with a friend one evening, and found some three thousand people there, as many as six or eight hundred of them dancing at once under the open sky, on a slightly raised floor surrounding the tall stand or tower in which the musicians were seated. There were not far from a thousand women present, most of them quite young, and the majority manifestly already lost to virtue if not quite dead to shame. What struck me with surprise was the fact that many 19 BB 434 HORACE GREELEY IN A FRENCH PRISON. obviously respectable and undepraved girls mingled and danced in the throng, including mere children of ten or twelve years, who could not fail speedily to comprehend the errand on which the lost ones come hither. I had heard much of the decorous de pravity of the Parisian dancing-gardens, though I never visited them ; here the decorum was dubious and the depravity unmistak able. The English are not skilful in varnishing vice, at least, I have seen no evidence of their tact in that line. I endured the spectacle of men dancing with women when rather beery, and smoking ; but at last the sight of a dark and by no means elegant mulatto waltzing with a decent-looking white girl, while puffing away at a rather bad cigar, proved too much for my Yankee prej udice and I started. In fact, it was about time, since it wanted but a quarter to eleven, and. my lodgings, though this side of the middle of London, were some six miles distant. (The cabman charged for seven.) Cremorne, however, appeared to be just warming up to its evening's delectation." Two days after this adventure he was at Liverpool, preparing to embark for his native land, which he reached in safety after an absence of about three months. CHAPTER XXX. ASSAULTED IN WASHINGTON BY A MEMBER OF CONGRESS. The provocation The assault Why Mr. Greeley did not prosecute The Tribune in dicted in Virginia Correspondence on slavery Slavery, ex labor. DURING the administrations of Franklin Pierce and James Bu chanan, when the controversy respecting slavery was approaching a crisis, Mr. Greeley spent much of his time in Washington, com menting for the Tribune upon the proceedings of Congress. While performing this duty in January, 1856, lie incurred the resentment of Albert Rust, a member of Congress from Arkansas, by the fol lowing remarks upon the course of that member during the con test for the Speakership which resulted in the election of Mr. N. P. Banks. The following were the offensive words : " I have had some acquaintance with human degradation; yet it did seem to me to-day that Rust's resolution in the House was a more discreditable propo sition than I had ever known gravely submitted to a legislative body. Just consider the facts: Mr. Banks has for more than six weeks received the votes of a very large plurality of the House, never polling more than ten short of a majority, usually only six or seven, and sometimes coming within two or three. He has repeatedly tendered his declination to his friends, and they have uniformly refused it, and placed him again in nomination. Last evening they held another caucus, resolved to support him to the end, and resolved to hold no more caucuses, lest their adversaries might be encouraged to hope that they would change their candidate. Yet, in the face of this demonstration, the two hostile minorities come into the house this morning and seriously at tempt to invite Mr. Banks to decline ! for that is just what Rust's resolution amounts to. It could not affect Mr. Banks's rights nor those of his support ers; but it would seem to be an indignity > and might be expected to wound his sensibilities. But Mr. Banks will never take counsel with his bitter enemies as to the propriety of his withdrawal from the canvass." This appeared in the Tribune of January 26, 1856. A few- hours after the arrival of the paper in Washington Mr. Rust mani fested his indignation in the manner related by Mr. Greeley in the following letter: 436 ASSAULTED BY A MEMBER OF CONGRESS. "I have heard since I came here a good deal of the personal vio lence to which I was exposed, but only one man has offered to attack me until to-day, and he was so drunk that he made a poor fist of it. In fact, I do not remember that any man ever seriously attacked me till now. " I was conversing with two gentlemen on my way down from the Capitol, after the adjournment of the House this afternoon, when a stranger requested a word with me. I stopped, and my friends went on. The stranger, who appeared in the prime of life, six feet high, and who must weigh over two hundred, thus began : " ' Is your name Greeley ? ' " < Yes.' " ' Are you a non-combatant ? ' " ' That is according to circumstances.' " The words were hardly out of my mouth when he struck me a stunning blow on the right side of my head, and followed it by two or three more, as rapidly as possible. My hands were still in my great-coat pockets, for I had no idea that he was about to strike. He staggered me against the fence of the walk from the Capitol to the Avenue, but did not get me down. I rallied as soon as possible, and saw him standing several feet from me, with several persons standing or rushing in between us. I asked, ' Who is this man? I don't know him,' and understood him to answer, with an imprecation, 'You '11 know me soon enough,' or 'You '11 know me hereafter,' when he turned and went down toward the street. No one answered my inquiry directly, but some friends soon came up, who told me that my assailant was Albert Rust, M. C. from Arkansas. He gave no hint of any cause or pretext he may have had for this assault, but I must infer that it is to be found in my strictures in Monday's Tribune (letter of Thursday evening last) on his attempt to drive Mr. Banks out of the field as a candi date for Speaker, by passing a resolution inviting all the present candidates to withdraw. I thought that a mean trick, and said so most decidedly ; I certainly think no better of it, now that I have made the acquaintance of its author. "The bully turned and walked down along; I followed, conversing with two friends. Crossing Four-and-a-half Street, they dropped behind to speak to acquaintances, and I, walking along toward the ASSAULTED BY A MEMBER OF CONGRESS. 437 National Hotel, soon found myself in the midst of a huddle of strangers. One of these turned short upon me I saw it was my former assailant and said, 'Do you know me now?' I answered, 'Yes; you are Rust of Arkansas.' He said something of what he would do if I were a combatant, and I replied that I claimed no exemption on that account. He now drew a heavy cane, which I had not seen before, and struck a pretty heavy blow at my head, which I caught on my left arm, with no other damage than a rather severe bruise. He was trying to strike again, and I was endeavoring to close with him, when several persons rushed be tween and separated us. I did not strike him at all, nor lay a fin ger on him; but it certainly would have been a pleasure to me, had I been able to perform the public duty of knocking him down. I cannot mistake the movement of his hand on the Avenue, and am sure it must have been toward a pistol in his belt. And the crowd which surrounded us was nearly all Southern, as he doubt less knew before he renewed his attack on me " I presume this is not the last outrage to which I am to be sub jected. I came here with a clear understanding that it was about an even chance whether I should or should not be allowed to go home alive; for my business here is to unmask hypocrisy, defeat treachery, and rebuke meanness, and these are not dainty employ ments even in smoother times than ours. But I shall stay here just so long as I think proper, using great plainness of speech, but endeavoring to treat all men justly and faithfully. I may often judge harshly, and even be mistaken as to facts, but I shall always be ready to correct my mistakes and to amend my judgments. I shall carry no weapons and engage in no brawls ; but if ruffians waylay and assail me, I shall certainly not run, and, so far as able, I shall defend myself." The editor of the Tribune, though severely bruised, was not in capacitated from continuing his editorial labors. Gentlemen who called upon him that evening found him writing at his table as usual, though with wet cloths bound round his head and arm. The assault called forth indignant comments from the press ; but no one so well expressed the sense of the country with regard to it as the editor of the Albany Knickerbocker, who said : " The fellow who would strike Horace Greeley would strike his mother." 438 ASSAULTED BY A MEMBER OF CONGRESS. Mr. Greeley was censured by a portion of the public for not prosecuting the drunken ruffian who committed this atrocity. He gave his reasons for not seeking redress from the law. " 1. I do not know this Mr. Rust. I had not the remotest idea of his personal appearance up to the moment of his assault on me. If he were in court, I think I could identify the man who assaulted me beyond doubt; but if I were asked before a grand jury, 'How do you know that the man who struck you was Albert Rust, M. C. from Arkansas ? ' I could only answer, ' I was so informed by those who witnessed the assault,' and this of itself would not be conclusive. I never saw my assailant in the House so as to identify him, and he was never but once pointed out to me else where, and then he was walking from me. " 2. The complaint against Mr. Rust did not originate with the citizens or authorities of Washington. No witness of the assault saw fit to make any. Nothing was done until, some two or three weeks after the occurrence, a lawyer of this State went to Wash ington and made it. Had I appeared on this complaint as the prin cipal, if not sole witness in its support, I should have been sus pected of having instigated it. I did not choose to rest under that imputation. When I see fit to complain of an attack upon me, I shall seek no screen. " 3. I do not choose to be beaten for money, even though the public is to pocket it ; and I know the sentiment of our Federal metropolis too well to believe that an anti-slavery editor has any chance of substantial justice there, in a prosecution against a Southern member of Congress. If the price to be paid for beat ing me is ever to be legally fixed, I choose to have it assessed by a Northern jury. " 4. I have chosen to treat my assailant throughout in such man ner as to make him ashamed of his assault on me. In this I think I have succeeded. For the credit of human nature, I will so be lieve." In the same year, 1856, the Tribune had the honor to be indicted in the State of Virginia, for advising negroes, as it was alleged, to rise in rebellion against their masters. As a curious relic of that bad time, I place this affair on record. In September, 1856, the following letters were received at the Tribune office : THE TRIBUNE INDICTED IN VIRGINIA. 439 " SHINNSTOX, VA., Sept. 26, 1856. "MESSRS. GREELEY & MCLRATH: "I regret to inform you that I am indicted for getting up a club for the Tribune. Great God! has it come to this, that a man must be sent to the penitentiary for reading a newspaper? The grand jury had one of the sub scribers brought before them with an armful of copies of the Tribune, and they were distributed among them. They examined them a long time, and were about giving it up that it would have to pass, when, lo and behold ! one of them discovered an extract from the Pittsburg Dispatch, which gave an account of the great negro hunt of Ross & Co., and on that they pronounced it an Abolition document. The court ordered the jury to meet on Monday next, to indict the postmaster at Shinnston. " I discover that the law of Virginia makes my case felony. I may have to flee, or serve a time in the Richmond Penitentiary. I would like to hear from you, whether it is not legal for your paper to circulate in this State. I have notified the court that, if they would show some lenity in my case if they should decide the said paper to be illegal, I would discontinue my club. " W. P. HALL." To the Editor of the N. Y. Tribune. " SIR: The grand jury for this county this week presented Horace Greeley of New York, Mr. Hall of Shinnston, and myself of this place, for circulating the Tribune. You may make any use of this information you may desire. " Yours very truly. !EA HART. " Clarksburg, Harrison County, Va., Oct. 2, 1856." The subsequent proceedings were thus related in the Tribune: " Immediately upon the receipt of these letters answers were addressed to the writers, expressing the readiness of the con ductors of the Tribune to do their part toward testing the law of the case, and desiring copies of the indictments. To the letter addressed to Mr. Hall no answer has arrived, and perhaps he never received it. We are informed from another quarter that, shortly after the finding of the indictment, being greatly alarmed at it, he left home. In the mean while, however, it was discovered that the grand jury by which the bills were found was illegal, one of its members being disqualified to sit as a grand juror. As soon as this discovery was made another jury was impanelled, which returned the indictment, which we shall presently give, against Horace G-reeley, but omitted to find any against the two citizens of the county who had been previously indicted. This, however, does 440 THE TRIBUNE INDICTED IN VIRGINIA. not appear to have been through any disposition to give over the persecution of the readers of the Tribune, as will appear from the following letter of Mr. Hall, addressed to us after his return home : "SHINNSTON, VA., 20th Oct., 1856. " ' MESSRS. GREELEY & MCELRATH : "'Since I returned home, I find the storm raging as bad as ever against me. They say I shall stop the Tribune club, or they will bring my case up at the next Grand Jury Court, and put me clear through. " I therefore request you to stop the club. " ' WM. P. HALU " ' This from a friend.' " So much for Shinnston. Mr. Hart, the other person indicted, a resident in Clarksburg, in the same county, appears to be made of somewhat sterner stuff. Some time since the postmaster at Clarks burg refused to deliver his paper, under pretence of a law of Vir ginia imposing a fine of $ 200 on any postmaster for delivering in cendiary mail matter. Mr. Hart thereupon applied to the Post master-General, who, in performance of his duty, wrote to the Clarksburg deputy that he must deliver. This caused a tremen dous stir among the magnates of Clarksburg, but the paper has since been regularly delivered. The next move was to indict Mr. Hart, as already mentioned; but here too was a legal difficulty, which probably prevented the refinding of the indictment. The offence, it seems, made felony by the statutes of Virginia, is not having in possession or reading incendiary documents, but circulat ing or carrying or procuring them to be circulated; and as Mr. Hart merely took his paper from the post-office and read it at home, his case did not seem to come under that provision. The evidence upon which the first indictment was found was, that he had asked some of his neighbors to form a club with him for tak ing the Tribune ; but as no such club was actually formed, it was plain that this evidence was not sufficient. "We come now to the indictment actually found and now pend ing, which is in the words and figures following : "'VIRGINIA, ss. "'In the Circuit Court of Harrison County. " ' The grand jurors for said county, on their oaths, present that heretofore, to wit, on the 5th day of July, in the year 1856, and from that day to the find ing of this presentment, Horace Greeley did write, print, and publish, and cause to be written, printed, and published weekly, in the city of New York THE TRIBUNE INDICTED IN VIRGINIA. 441 and State of New York, a book and writing, to wit, a newspaper and public journal, styled and entitled New York Tribune, the object and purpose of which said New York Tribune was to advise and incite negroes in this State to rebel and make insurrection, and to inculcate resistance to the rights of property of masters in their slaves in the State of Virginia. "'And the jurors do further present that the said Horace Greeley afterward, to wit, on the 5th day of July, in the year 1856, did knowingly, wilfully, and feloniously transmit to, and circulate in, and cause and procure to be trans mitted to and circulated in the said county of Harrison, the said book and writing, to wit, the said New York Tribune, with the intent to aid purposes thereof against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth. '"And the jurors aforesaid, upon the oaths aforesaid, do further present that said Horace Greeley, on the day of July, in the year 1856, did knowingly, unlawfully, and feloniously circulate and cause to be circulated in said county of Harrison, a writing, to wit, a newspaper and public journal, which said writing, newspaper, and public journal, was on the 5th day of July, in the year 1856, published, written, and printed in the city of New York, and State of New York, and was styled and entitled New York Tribune, with intent in him, the said Greeley, then and there to advise and incite negroes in the State of Virginia aforesaid to rebel and make insurrection, and to inculcate resistance to the rights of property of masters in their slaves, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth. " ' Upon the information of Amaziah Hill and Seymour Johnson, witnesses sworn in open court, and sent to the grand jury to testify at the request of the grand jury, who had the New York Tribune in the above presentment referred to before them, and examined the same. "'B. WILSON, Attorney for the Commonwealth. " Indorsed, ' State v. Horace Greeley. Presentment for felony. A true bill. " 'A. J. GARRETT, Foreman. 1 " The Tribune favored its readers with a brief description of the persons supposed to be chiefly instrumental in procuring this in dictment : " This Grarrett, we understand, who indorses the indictment as foreman, is a Baptist minister we imagine of the hard-shell or der who, having got some * chattels ' with his wife, feels him self quite an aristocrat, and by his insolent and overbearing de meanor has secured the hatred of all his neighbors, over whom in his character of slaveholder he enjoys, however, the privilege of domineering. Johnson, one of the witnesses, we understand to be a vagabond relation of the late Governor of Virginia of that name, one of those offshoots of the first families, too lazy and too 19* 442 A CORRESPONDENCE ON SLAVERY. prou'd to work, but not too proud to sneak behind the waiter into complimentary dinners to his relative the Governor, into which he could get admission in no other way." The provocation to such assaults as these upon the Tribune and its editor was simply the opposition of that newspaper to every scheme devised by the Southern oligarchy to extend the area of slavery. Upon looking over the Tribune of those days, the reader will find that the tone in which slavery was discussed was emi nently moderate. Nevertheless, it published hundreds of articles most damaging to slavery, and did more than all other things to gether to create a party powerful enough to enter the Presidential campaign with rational hopes of success. From the mass of Mr. Greeley's more personal writings of that period room can be found here for one or two specimens : "A CORRESPONDENCE ON SLAVERY. " HORACE GREELEY, ESQ. : "DEAR SIR: I live in a warm place for an Abolitionist, for that is the title you are known by here, and we who take your paper have the same application. " Give us a short sketch very plain in regard to the abolition of slavery, so that I may show my pro-slavery brethren your platform. " Success to your paper ! " Albany, Mo., January 18, 1859." "REPLY. "NEW YORK, Jan. 29, 1859. " MY DEAR SIR : I have yours of the 17th. You ask me why the abolition of slavery is deemed desirable. I answer, very briefly : " I. Because, in the order of nature, every adult human being has a right to use his own God-given faculties muscles, sinews, organs for the sustenance and comfort of himself and his family. Conse quently, it is wrong to divest him of the control of those capacities, and render him helplessly subservient to the pleasure and aggran dizement of another. " II. Because the mixture of whites and blacks in the same com- A CORRESPONDENCE ON SLAVERY. 443 munity, society, household, an inevitable result of African slavery, is not favorable to the moral purity or social advancement of either caste. Better let the two races form separate communities. " III. Because the earth should be so cultivated, and the various departments of industry so mixed and blended, that every year's cultivation should increase, rather than diminish, the productive ca pacities of the soil. Slavery, by placing long distances between those who pursue agriculture and manufactures respectively, for bids this. " IV. Because the fullest cultivation of his intellect, through edu cation, reading, study, &c., is the right of every rational being. In the Divine economy, this would seem one of the main rea sons for placing men on earth. Slavery is incompatible with such cultivation, forbidding itg subjects even to read or write. " V. Slavery is palpably at war with the fundamental basis of our government, the inalienable rights of man. It is a chief obsta cle to the progress of republican institutions throughout the world. It is a standing reproach to our country abroad. It is the cause of exultation and joy on the side of the armed despots. It is worth more to the Austrian and French tyrantg than an additional army of 100,000 men. "VI. Slavery is the chief cause of dissension and hatred among ourselves. It keeps us perpetually divided, jealous, hostile. If it were abolished, we should never dream of fighting each other, nor dissolving the Union, " VII. Slavery powerfully aids to keep in power the most thor oughly unprincipled party, the most corrupt demagogues, that our country has ever known. " VIII. Slavery makes a few rich, but sinks the great mass, even of the free, into indolence, depravity, and misery. It prevents the accumulation of wealth. It renders land a drug, and keeps popu lation so sparse and scattered that common schools are for the most part impossible. " For these and other reasons, I am among those who labor and hope for the early and complete abolition of human, but especially of American slavery, ( ' Yours, "HORACE Q-REELEIT, "W. C. COWAN, ESQ., Albany, Gentry County, Ho." 444 CORRESPONDENCE WITH A SLAVEHOLDER. CORRESPONDENCE WITH A SLAVEHOLDER. "INVITATION TO BUY A SLAVE. " , VA., March 7, 1857. "MR. HORACE GREKLET: " I offer no apology for this communication. You claim to be a philan thropist, and you are, notoriously, a champion of African slaves. I propose, simply and in good faith, to afford you au opportunity of giving (to the world, if you please) a practical illustration of the philanthropy you preach. "I know a slave who is fit to be free. He is intelligent, able to read and write and make up accounts in a small way, is a good carpenter and cabinet-maker, an honest man and a consistent member of a Christian church. For some years this slave hired himself, paid his owner a full price for his time, laid up money, and bought his slave-wife and their younger children. Two of their older children are still slaves. " The owner of this man has offered to sell him to me, at the slave's request; but I am not able to buy him, nor would I if I were able. " I suppose that $ 4,500 would buy the man and his two slave sons, and re move the family to a Free State. It has occurred to me that you may be able, or may know somebody who is able, to spare this sum of money for so good a purpose. It would give me pleasure to aid in the matter, by pur chasing the slaves, emancipating them, and attending to their removal ; and I invite you to a correspondence on the subject. " If you want any knowledge of me you may refer to [here the writer inserts the names of several well-known and distinguished persons, which we omit], or any of the editors at Richmond. " I can give you any desirable security for the faithful application of the funds. " I ought to have stated that these negroes are of nearly pure white blood, the wife a woman of excellent character, and the children handsome and sprightly. " I am, perhaps, as far from any sympathy with Abolitionists as you are from sympathy with slaveholders. I own slaves, and expect to own them during my life. Knowing something of the matter by personal experience, I am a better judge of it than you can be; and I take the opportunity of saying to you, that you and your coadjutors are the worst enemies of the slave. They are, by great odds, in a happier condition than your white slaves ; but, like all other human beings, may be made discontented with their lot. You excite them to discontent, then to insubordination; and thus you make it necessary for us to rule them more rigidly. Let us alone, Mr. Greeley. " Why, then, you may ask, do I care about emancipating this particular family? I say, because they are almost white people; they are partly educated, are industrious, moral, and Christian, and axe fitted for freedom. CORRESPONDENCE WITH A SLAVEHOLDER. 445 " I know hundreds of slaves; I do not know one dozen who are fit to be free. I know scores of free negroes ; but, with a very few exceptions, they are more ignorant, immoral, and degraded than our slaves. " This letter is not for publication. " Your obedient servant, "REPLY. " NEW YORK, March 11, 1857. " MY DEAR SIR : I have yours of the 7th inst., which com mences with a great mistake : ' You profess to be a philanthropist.' I make no such profession, very few professions of any kind. The world judges me as it sees fit from my acts ; I silently abide its verdict. " If I can only deserve the reputation of a philanthropist by buy ing out of slavery such negroes, ' almost white,' as the masters be lieve unfit to be longer slaves, then I have no desire to earn that title. So far from inclining to buy them, I do not wish this par ticular class bought or otherwise emancipated, while the great mass of their brethren remain in bondage. On the contrary, I wish them to remain where they are, looking their white uncles and cousins in the face, a perpetual reminder of the infernal system of which they are victims, and of the iniquities which, even in the judg ment of slaveholders, may be and are perpetrated under it. No, sir, I hate slavery too deeply to help drug the consciences of your caste by buying out of slavery those whom even you say are fit no longer to be bondmen. " Your request to 'let you alone ' in the Slave States I shall duly respect; I ask your members of Congress and Supreme Court judges to do likewise by us. Your Nebraska bills and Dred Scott decisions, forcing slavery upon the Free States in spite of them selves, are goading us beyond the point of peaceful endurance. " Yours, "HORACE G-REELEY. "To , Ya. " P. S. I will print your letter, so that any one North or South, who wishes to do what you ask of me, may have the opportu nity." 446 SLAVERY AND LABOR. SLAVERY AND LABOR. " A humble farmer's son, upon the granite hills of New England, early impelled and inured to rugged and persistent toil, I learned not merely to confront labor, but to respect it, and to recognize in its stern exactions, its harsh discipline, one of the most precious and vital of the countless blessings which Heaven sends us dis guised as afflictions, as judgments, or at least as trials. I learned to realize the divine benignity underlying and animating the sen tence passed on our common ancestors as the penalty of the first transgression ; I learned to feel that in the world we inhabit, and with such faculties, appetites, and passions as make up that super lative paradox called Man, the denunciation, ' In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,' was in fact our necessary, vital safeguard against falling into the lowest abysses of depravity and misery. Only through the inexorable requirement of industry has our race or, more strictly, some part of it ever risen in the scale of moral being ; and this only where such necessity was urgent and palpable. Not on the bleak crests and amid the icy gorges of wind-swept mountains, but in unctuous, sunny vales, amid trop ical verdure and luxuriance, have the darker aspects of human in firmity been developed ; not unmeaning was the first great visita tion of human wickedness by deluge, which covered soonest the low intervales, the deltas of rivers, and seaside glades, so rich in corn and cattle, so fertile also in pride and sin. Sodom and Go- morrah, Herculaneum and Pompeii, Catania, Caracas, and a hun dred other victims of some gigantic outpouring of judgment, unite in attesting that where least labor is required to satisfy his physical needs, there is man's moral raggedness most flagrant and repulsive. No well-informed naturalist need be told that Iceland is more moral than Madagascar ; he finds this fact graven on the earth, foreorr dained through eternal and immutable laws. And it is not too much to say, that, if the doom of Adam could be so far remitted that all man's primary and inexorable wants should henceforth be satisfied without labor on his part, there is no power on earth that could save him from sinking, gradually but inevitably, into a bru tish and debauched Australian or Patagonian barbarism, " Our primitive conceptions of integrity are derived from work, As a problem is something to be proved or tested, so probity is . SLAVERY AND LABOR. 447 character that has been subjected to the ordeal and has stood the test, in other words, is integrity proved. All the processes of industry, all the operations of Nature, imply honesty and truth. If any man ever made bass-wood seeds, he certainly made them to sell, not to plant ; and no knave ever imagined that he could hood wink or dupe Nature by the semblance of service without the real ity. The ploughman is always honest toward her, for he holds his livelihood by the tenor of such fidelity : it is only when he ceases to be a producer, and appears in the radically different attitude of a trader, or vender of his products, that he is tempted to be a knave. All Nature's processes are hearty, earnest, thorough ; and man, if he would aid, direct, or profit by her evolutions, must approach her with frank sincerity. Hence, I hold that no man ever really loved work and was content to live by it who was not essentially honest and upright, and did not tend to become day by day more manly and humane. " This very hour, the lumbermen of the Ottawa are driving the first approaches of persistent civilization to a point nearer the pole than was ever before attained on this eastern slope of our conti nent. Among the pines of the Aroostook, the Saginaw, the Wis consin, the Minnesota, the axes of the woodmen are hewing out the timbers of many a stately edifice, which a coming summer shall see rise among the shrines of traffic by the far shores of the Atlan tic Ocean. To-day, for the first time since the flood, is the sun let in upon spot after spot in the great Western wilderness, on which a rude cabin shall emerge from amid smoke and stumps next sum mer, a warm hearth-stone within, and sturdy, fair-haired chil dren playing around it. Pass a few years more, and that little dot of blackened clearing will have gradually eaten away the encircling woods, and given a hand to the newer adjacent clearings on either side ; and soon commodious dwellings, fair villages, the hum of steady, prosperous industry, and all the manifestations of civilized life will have supplanted the howl of the wolf and all the sullen in fluences of perpetual shade. Around no Silistria or Sevastopol, in no Crimea or Dobrodja, is the drama of man's life-struggle being enacted, but in the freshly trodden wilds of Iowa and Minnesota, on the rolling prairies of Kansas, in the far glens of Utah, and along the great future highway across the continent, where California beckons to her Eastern sisters, and points them to the wealth and 44$ SLAVERY AND LABOR. . work which stretch beyond her, and across the great Pacific and among the isles of the Indian tropic. Not with the sword, but with the axe, does man hew out his path to a higher and purer civilization ; and the measure of his present attainment is his re gard for the humble and untinselled, but mighty and beneficent arts of peace. " Can it be wondered, then, that I, a child of many generations of cotters and drudging delvers, should ponder and dream over THE ELEVATION OF LABOR to something like the dignity and esteem which its merits and its utility demand ? What can be more nat ural than that I should ask whether this fair and stately structure of society, wherein we are so amply sheltered and shielded, must always rest heavily on those by whom its foundations were laid and its walls erected ? If a peer may without reproach ' stand by his order,' why may not a peasant as well? "For still, to the earnest vision, the condition of the worker even in -this favored region is a rugged and hard one. He is not respected by others ; he too often does not respect himself. Work ing in the main either because he must work or starve, or in order that he may be raised above the necessity of working, he does not accept labor as a benignantly appointed destiny, but as a vindic tively denounced penalty which he must endure as unmurmuringly and finish as speedily as possible. Happiness in the vulgar con ception being compounded of idleness and the most unlimited grati fication of the sensual appetites, and this happiness being the ' end and aim ' of every earthly effort, it is inevitable that the worker should be regarded alike by himself and by others as one who has thus far failed, and who is therefore obnoxious to the stigma which the common mind ever affixes to the unsuccessful. " The institution of human slavery appears to me the logical cul mination and result of the popular ideas respecting labor; for if labor be essentially and necessarily an infliction, a penalty, a curse, then it is but human nature that each should endeavor to do as little of it as possible. If the obligation to work be a bolt of Divine wrath, then it is to be expected that man should seek to interpose some other body between his dodging head and the ce lestial vengeance. Teach a child that labor is not a good to be ac cepted and improved, but an evil to be shunned and shirked, and you have impelled him far on the road to the slave-jockey's pen as a cheapener and customer. SLAVERY AND LABOR. 449 "I do not marvel, then, that slavery has so long cursed the earth; I see clearly that it could not have failed to do so. To the pre mise that labor is an evil to be shunned so far as possible add the assumption that war and conquest are legitimate, and slavery fol lows of course. I have vanquished my enemy in battle, and have a right to kill him ; but that would be too costly and transient a gratification, when I can save him to take my place in the field or the shop; to receive that share of the primal curse which was providentially intended for me; to be my substitute in all cases where I would rather not perform a duty in person, and the butt of my ill-humor, whenever, through his fault, or mine, or neither, my plans miscarry, and my hopes are blasted by defeat. My slave or captive, having been spared by my clemency, and living only at my mercy, owes me boundless obedience and service, while I owe him nothing but such food and clothing as will keep him alive and in condition to perform that service. I have become to him Church, State, and Providence, Law, Conscience, and Divinity, and he can only go amiss by disobeying my commands. If he have wife or children, they too are mine, or his only in subordination to my interests and my will ; those children would not have been but for my clemency ; they too owe everything to me, and must live only for my convenience, advantage, and profit. Thus the system ac quires a self-perpetuating quality, and may endure, even without fresh wars and subjugations, to the end of time. And, so far as the enslaver can realize, it is a most convenient and satisfactory system, supplying him with hands to do his work, feet to run his errands, eyes to watch and arms to guard his possessions, and ready ministers to every whim or lust. "But though eternal laws may thus, in one sense, be defied, their penalties cannot be evaded. The stern Nemesis is ever close on the heels of the transgressor. A household of masters and slaves, of sacrificers and victims, can never be a loving and happy home. It includes too many crushed aspirations, outraged sensi bilities, unavenged wrongs. The children of both master and slave are in false positions : the former necessarily grow up self-willed, overbearing, indolent; the latter, abject, servile, false, and devoid of self-respect. Vainly shall the master seek, in such a presence, to imbue his children with lessons of industry, humility, and defer ence ; for to every such lesson the ready response will be : ' What are slaves for, if not to minister to our convenience and enjoyment? 450 SLAVERY AND LABOR. If we are to work, to be frugal, to wait upon ourselves, why should we endure the presence, the low moral development, the care and responsibility, of these Helots ? If we do all for ourselves, at least give us opportunity, give us room ! ' The moment a master re solves to square his life and that of his family by the golden rule, the presence and direction of a lot of stupid, sensual, indolent slaves is felt to be a nuisance and a burden. "And, while it is true that slavery is the logical consequence, the Corinthian capital, of the popular notions respecting labor, it is none the less certain that the arts which flourish where the la borer is free from any constraint but that of his own aspirations, appetites, and needs flicker and die out where slavery bears sway. In our own sunny South answering to the Italy, Greece, Asia Minor, and Carthage of the Old World there is the best of ship-timber, yet the cotton and tobacco there grown seek distant markets, in Northern vessels, sailed by sons of New England, and manned by Yankee crews. Northern merchants and clerks fill their seaports and buy their crops ; Northern teachers instruct their children, so far as they are taught at all ; their time is measured by Yankee clocks, and their tables set with Northern or European dishes ; in short, about the only trophy of human genius peculiar to the Southrons is the cotton-gin, which they stole from Whit ney, a Yankee. And every one who has travelled or lived there must be conscious that life is far ruder and poorer among the planters than in the corresponding class in any non-slaveholding region of the civilized world ; and that, beyond a bountiful supply of coarse and ill-cooked food, the majority of Southern homes are devoid of nearly everything which civilized men consider essential to the comfort of life. " Do I state these facts with 'a feeling of exultation ? Surely not. I state them only to enforce the vital truth that MAN MUST CREATE IN ORDER TO ENJOY. He must produce, if he would find pleasure in consuming ; must do good to others, in order to secure good to himself. In other words, work is not a curse to be escaped, but a blessing to be accepted and improved. If every freeman now on earth were offered a dozen slaves, I fear nine tenths know no better than to accept; yet, I feel sure, also, that, simply as a question of personal loss and gain, it would be better for any one of them to be burned out of house and home than to receive such a Trojan horse into his keeping." CHAPTER XXXI. ACROSS THE PLAINS TO CALIFORNIA. Farewell to civilization The buffaloes on the Plains Conversation with Brigham Young Remarks upon polygamy Visit to the Yo Semite Valley Eeception at Sacramento at San Francisco. IN the summer of 1859 Mr. G-reeley made his celebrated journey across the Plains to California, the particulars of which, according to his custom, he related to his readers. The manner in which he announced his purpose was characteristic : " About the 1st of Oc- ber next we are to have a State election; then a city contest; then the organization and long session of a new Congress ; then a Presi dential struggle; then Congress again; which brings us to the forming of a new national administration and the summer of 1861. If, therefore, I am to have any respite from editorial labor for the next two years I must take it now." So on the 9th of May, 1859, he left New York for a trip across the continent. From his letters and other sources I glean a few of the more peculiar and interesting incidents. HIS FAREWELL TO CIVILIZATION AT PIKE'S PEAK. " I believe I have now descended the ladder of artificial life nearly to its lowest round. If the Cheyennes thirty of whom stopped the last express down on the route we must traverse, and tried to beg or steal from it should see fit to capture and strip us, we should of course have further experience in the same line ; but for the present the progress I have made during the last fort night toward the primitive simplicity of human existence may be roughly noted thus : "May 12th, Chicago. Chocolate and morning newspapers last Been on the breakfast-table. "23rf, Leavenworth. Room-bells and baths make their last ap pearance. " 24th, TopeTca. Beefsteak and washbowls (other than tin) last visible. Barber ditto. 452 ACROSS THE PLAINS TO CALIFORNIA. "26ERS." HORACE GREELEY TO MESSRS. CLEMENT C. CLAY, AND OTHERS. u NIAGARA FALLS, N. Y., July 17, 1864. "GENTLEMEN: I am informed that you are duly accredited from Richmond, as the bearers of propositions looking to the establish- PEACE NEGOTIATIONS. 507 ment of peace ; that you desire to visit Washington in the fulfil ment of your mission, and that you further desire that Mr. George "N. Sanders shall accompany you. If my information be thus far substantially correct, I am authorized by the President of the United States to tender you his safe-conduct on the journey pro posed, and to accompany you at the earliest time that will be agreeable to you. " I have the honor to be, gentlemen, yours, "HORACE GREELEY. "To MESSRS. CLEMENT C. CLAY, JACOB THOMPSON, JAMES P. HOL- COMBE, Clifton House, C. W." MESSRS. CLAY AND HOLCOMBE TO HORACE GREELEY. " CLIFTON HOUSE, NIAGARA FALLS, July 18, 1864. " SIR: We have the honor to acknowledge your favor of the 17th instant, which would have been answered on yesterday, but for the absence of Mr. Clay. The safe-conduct of the President of the United States has been ten dered us, we regret to state, under some misapprehension of facts. We have not been accredited to him from Richmond as the bearers of propositions look ing to the establishment of peace. " We are, however, in the confidential employment of eur government, and are entirely familiar with its wishes and opinions on that subject; and we feel authorized to declare that, if the circumstances disclosed in this corre spondence were communicated to Richmond, we would be at once invested with the authority to which your letter refers, or other gentlemen clothed with full powers would be immediately sent to Washington, with the view of has tening a consummation so much to be desired, and terminating at the earliest possible moment the calamities of the war. " We respectfully solicit, through your intervention, a safe-conduct to Wash ington, and thence by any route which may be designated, through your lines to Richmond. We would be gratified if Mr. George N. Sanders was embraced in this privilege. Permit us, in conclusion, to acknowledge our obligations to you for the interest you have manifested in the furtherance of our wishes, and to express the hope that, in any event, you will afford us the opportunity of tendering them in person before you leave the Falls. " We remain, very respectfully, &c., " C. C. CLAY, JR. J. P. HOLCOMBE. "P. S. It is proper to add that Mr. Thompson is not here, and has not been staying with us since our sojourn in Canada." 508 DURING THE WAR. HORACE GREELEY TO MESSRS. CLAY AND HOLCOMBE. " INTERNATIONAL, HOTEL, NIAGARA, N. Y., July 18, 1864. "GENTLEMEN: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of yours of this date, by the hand of Mr. W. 0. Jewett. The state of facts therein presented being materially different from that which was understood to exist by the President, when he intrusted me with the safe-conduct required, it seems to me on every account advisable that I should communicate with him by telegraph, and solicit fresh instructions, which I shall at once proceed to do. " I hope to be able to transmit the result this afternoon, and, at all events, I shall do so at the earliest moment. "Yours truly, " HORACE GREELEY. "To MESSRS. CLEMENT C. CLAY and JAMES P. HOLCOMBE, Clifton House, C. W." MESSRS. CLAY AND HOLCOMBE TO HORACE GREELEY. " CLIFTON HOUSE, NIAGARA FALLS, July 18. 1864. " To the HONORABLE H. GREELEY, Niagara Falls, N. Y. : " SIR: We have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your note of this date, by the hands of Colonel Jewett, and will await the further answer which you purpose to send to us. " We are, very respectfully, &c., "C. C. CLAY, JR. JAMES P. HOLCOMBE." HORACE GREELEY TO MESSRS. CLAY AND HOLCOMBE. "INTERNATIONAL HOTEL, NIAGARA FALLS, N. Y., July 19, 1864. "GENTLEMEN: At a late hour last evening (too late for com munication with you) I received a despatch informing me that further instructions left Washington last evening, which must reach me, if there be no interruption, at noon to-morrow. Should you decide to await their arrival, I feel confident that they will enable me to answer definitely your note of yesterday morning. Regretting a delay, which I am sure you will regard as unavoid able on my part, " I remain, yours truly, "HORACE GTREELEY. " To the HONORABLE MESSRS. C. C. CLAY, JR., and J. P. HOLCOMBE, Clifton House, Niagara, C. W." PEACE NEGOTIATIONS. 509 MESSRS. CLAY AND HOLCOMBE TO HORACE GREELEY. " CLIFTON HOUSE, NIAGARA FALLS, July 19, 1864. " SIR: Colonel Jewett has just handed us your note of this date, in which you state that further instructions from Washington will reach you by noon to-morrow, if there be no interruption. One, or possibly both of us, may be obliged to leave the Falls to-day, but will return in time to receive the com munication which you promise to-morrow. " We remain truly yours, &c., " JAMES P. HOLCOMBE. C. C. CLAY, JB. " To the HONORABLE HORACE GREELEY, now at the International Hotel." MESSRS. CLAY AND HOLCOMBE TO M. C. JEWETT. " CLIFTON HOUSE, NIAGARA FALLS, Wednesday, July 20, 1864. "COLONEL M. C. JEWETT, Cataract House, Niagara Falls: " SIR : We are in receipt of your note, admonishing us of the departure of the Honorable Horace Greeley from the Falls ; that he regrets the sad termi nation of the initiatory steps taken for peace, in consequence of the change made by the President in his instructions to convey commissioners to Wash ington for negotiations, unconditionally, and that Mr. Greeley will be pleased to receive any answer we may have to make through you. " We avail ourselves of this offer to enclose a letter to Mr. Greeley, which you will oblige us by delivering. We cannot take leave of you without ex pressing our thanks for your courtesy and kind offices as the intermediary through whom our correspondence with Mr. Greeley has been conducted, and assuring you that we are, very respectfully, " Your obedient servants, " C. C. CLAY, JR. JAMES P. HOLCOMBE." MESSRS. CLAY AND HOLCOMBE TO HORACE GREELEY. " NIAGARA FALLS, CLIFTON HOUSE, July 21, 1864. To the HONORABLE HORACE GREELEY : " SIR : The paper handed to Mr. Holcombe on yesterday, in your presence, by Major Hay, A. A. G., as an answer to the application in our note of the 18th instant, is couched in the following terms : "'EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C., July 18, 1864. " ' To whom it may concern : " ' Any proposition which embraces the restoration of peace, the integrity of the whole Union, and the abandonment of slavery, and which comes by and with an authority that can control the armies now at war against the United States, will be received and considered by the Executive Government of the United States, and will be met by liberal terms, on other substantial and collateral points, and the bearer or bearers thereof shall have safe-conduct both ways. - " ' ABRAHAM LINCOLN.' 510 DURING THE WAR. " The application to which we refer was elicited by your letter of the 17th instant, in which you inform Mr. Jacob Thompson and ourselves that you were authorized by the President of the United States to tender us his safe- conduct, on the hypothesis that we were ' duly accredited from Richmond as bearers of propositions looking to the establishment of peace,' and desired a visit to Washington in the fulfilment of this mission. This assertion, to which we then gave and still do, entire credence, was accepted by us as the evidence of an unexpected but most gratifying change in the policy of the President, a change which we felt authorized to hope might terminate in the conclusion of a peace mutually just, honorable, and advantageous to the North and to the South, exacting no condition but that we should be ' duly accredited from Rich mond as bearers of propositions looking to the establishment of peace.' Thus proffering a basis for conference as comprehensive as we could desire, it seemed to us that the President opened a door which had previously been closed against the Confedei-ate States for a full interchange of sentiments, free discussion of conflicting opinions, and untrammelled effort to remove all causes of contro versy by liberal negotiations. We, indeed, could not claim the benefit of a safe- conduct which had been extended to us in a character we had no right to assume, and had never affected to possess ; but the uniform declarations of our Execu tive and Congress, and then thrice-repeated and as often repulsed attempts to open negotiations, furnish a sufficient pledge to us that this conciliatory mani festation on the part of the President of the United States would be met by them in a temper of equal magnanimity. We had. therefore, no hesitation in declaring that if this correspondence was communicated to the President of the Confederate States, he would promptly embrace the opportunity presented for seeking a peaceful solution of this unhappy strife. We feel confident that you must share our profound regret that the spirit which dictated the first step toward peace had not continued to animate the councils of your President. Had the representatives of the two governments met to consider this question, the most momentous ever submitted to human statesmanship, in a temper of becoming moderation and equity, followed, as their deliberations would have been, by the prayers and benedictions of every patriot and Christian on the habitable globe, who is there so bold as to pronounce that the frightful waste of individual happiness and public prosperity which is daily saddening the universal heart might not have been terminated, or if the desolation and car nage of war must still be endured through weary years of blood and suffering, that there might not at least have been infused into its conduct something more of the spirit which softens and partially redeems its brutalities ? " Instead of the safe-conduct which we solicited, and which your first letter gave us every reason to suppose would be extended for the purpose of initiat ing a negotiation, in which neither government would compromise its rights or its dignity, a document has been presented which provokes as much indig nation as surprise. It bears no feature of resemblance to that which was origi nally offered, and is unlike any paper which ever before emanated from the constitutional executive of a free people. Addressed ' to whom it may con cern,' it precludes negotiations, and pi-escribes in advance the terms and con- PEACE NEGOTIATIONS. 511 ditions of peace. It returns to the original policy of * no bargaining, no negotia tions, no truces with Rebels except to bury their dead, until every man shall have laid down his arms, submitted to the government, and sued for mercy.' " Whatever may be the explanation of this sudden and entire change in the views of the President, of this rude withdrawal of a courteous overture for negotiation at the moment it was likely to be accepted, of this emphatic recall of words of peace just uttered, and fresh blasts of war to the bitter end, we leave for the speculation of those who have the means or inclination to pene trate the mysteries of his cabinet, or fathom the caprice of his imperial will. It is enough for us to say that we have no use whatever for the paper which has been placed in our hands. " We could not transmit it to the President of the Confederate States with out offering him an indignity, dishonoring ourselves, and incurring the well- merited scorn of our countrymen. While an ardent desire for peace pervades the people of the Confederate States, we rejoice to believe that there are few, if any, among them who would purchase it at the expense of liberty, honor, and self-respect. If it can be secured only by their submission to terms of conquest, the generation is yet unborn which will witness its restitution. " If there be any military autocrat in the North who is entitled to proffer the conditions of this manifesto, there is none in the South authorized to en tertain them. Those who control our armies are the servants of the people, not their masters; and they have no more inclination, than they have the right, to subvert the social institutions of the sovereign States, to overthrow their established constitutions, and to barter away their priceless heritage of self-government. This correspondence will not, however, we trust, prove wholly barren of good result. " If there is any citizen of the Confederate States who has clung to a hope that peace was possible with this administration of the Federal government, it will strip from his eyes the last film of such delusion; or if there be any whose hearts have grown faint under the suffering and agony of this bloody struggle, it will inspire them with fresh energy to endure and brave whatever may yet be requisite to preserve to themselves and their children all that gives dignity and value to life or hope and consolation to death. And if there be any patriots or Christians in your land, who shrink appalled from the illimi table vista of private misery and public calamity which stretches before them, we pray that in their bosoms a resolution may be quickened to recall the abused authority, and vindicate the outraged civilization of their country. For the solicitude you have manifested to inaugurate a movement which con templates results the most noble and humane we return our sincere thanks, and are most respectfully and truly your obedient servants, " C. C. CLAY, JR. JAMES P. HOLCOMBE." Mr. Greeley returned to New York little pleased with the results of his mission, nor satisfied with the course of the administration. He experienced the truth of Dr. Franklin's remark, that, however 512 DURING THE WAR. " blessed " peacemakers may bo in another world, they are usually rewarded with curses in this. Events have since shown that there was never a moment during the war when the Confederate gov ernment would have entertained a proposition for peace on any other basis than that of separation. THE TRIBUNE OFFICE ATTACKED DURING THE DRAFT RIOTS OF 1863. At the beginning of the war there was a slight disturbance in ^Nassau Street, opposite the Herald office, in consequence of the doubtful position of the Herald with regard to the opening con test. Upon the exhibition of the United States flag from one of the windows of the Herald building, the people assembled cheered the flag, and soon after dispersed. This event was reported in the Tribune, in such a manner as to suggest the inference that the Herald cared not which flag floated above its office, that of the Union, or that of the Rebellion,, and that nothing but the threats of a mob determined its choice. The editor of the Herald took deep offence at this report, and seemed to be resolved to wreak upon his neighbor a bloody vengeance. Almost every day, for the next two years, an article or a paragraph appeared in the Herald, hold ing up the Tribune and its editor to popular execration, denouncing them as the authors of the war, and intimating that the time would come when the people would see this., and hang the editor upon a lamp-post. Probably two hundred articles like the following could be collected from the columns of the Herald, during the first two years of the war: u This crazy, contemptible wretch, who now asserts the equality of white men and negroes, formerly asserted, with quite as much persistency and fer vor, that all men should have property in common ; that all persons should live in common ; that all women should be common prostitutes. These dam nable doctrines, under the names of Fourrieriteism,phalanxism, and free-Iove- ism, Greeley openly professed and daily advocated in his Tribune. One by one these abominable bantlings of his have been strangled^ and now abolition ism which is a part of the same accursed brood only remains. With the others, he sought to break up all society and to abolish the institution of the family. With this last he has attempted to break up the Union, and to put white men and black upon an equality in everything. With the other isms he did much harm, and debauched many innocent people. With this last, he has involved us in a civil war, and sacrificed thousands of valuable lives. Un doubtedly Greeley's abolitionism will finally be put down, as his other isms have been ; but at what a terrible cost of blood and treasure will this be ae- ASSAULT UPON THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. 513 complished! When the white and black races are once arrayed against each other, one of them will be exterminated. To that point, Greeley and his tool, the black parson Garnett, are fast hastening matters. They are the enemies of both the white and black races alike ; their efforts injure the negroes as much as they injure the white people. Sensible persons of both races hate and despise them." The following may serve as a specimen of the more elaborate efforts of the Herald to excite odium against the editor of the Tribune : " Deliberately, and with malice prepense, ' that horrible monster Greeley,' as he is called upon the floor of Congress, has instigated this dreadful civil war for years past, and carefully nurtured and fostered the abolition senti ment, with which he hoped to poison and kill the Republic. Most persons suppose that a desire for gain has rendered him insane, and that visions of rich plantations, confiscated from slaveholders and bestowed upon him, have tempted him on in his ruinous path. Others regard him as one possessed of a devil. Others still are of opinion that he is in his senses, and is only a bad mau made worse- by cupidity and disappointment. We do not pretend to decide which of these theories be correct; but it is certain that until recently he has made but very little money by his wickedness. Like the magician's gold, all of his ill-gotten gains brought him ruin. He acknowledged in his Tribune that he had lost money by the publication of his paper last year, and he wrote penny-a-line articles for weekly papers in order to make a living. The publi cation was continued, therefore, only that the paper might be used to secure offices and contracts. It has now no circulation and less advertising, and lives only by illegitimate aid. Its fruit is blood and spoils. Sam Wilkeson of the Tribune acknowledged that he had kept a Tribune contract bureau at Washington. The official correspondence of Secretary of War Cameron shows that the Tribune Association has gun contracts. In the following tables we have collected some of the items of expenditure in treasure and blood for which the country is indebted to the Tribune : " GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES IN ACCOUNT WITH NEW YORK TRIBUNE. Dt\ To a civil war, fomented by Tribune abolitionists, costing the country in crisis, ruined commerce, suspended manufactures, army expenses, losses in trade, &c., about $2,000,000,000.00 To the loss of Fort Sumter, and the failure of the expedition for the re lief, caused by the revelations of Harvey, the Tribune's Washing ton correspondent 2,000,000.00 To losses at the battle of Bull Run, caused by the Tribune's Onward to Richmond 1 articles, amounting, according to Thurlow Weed, to about 100,000,000.00 To delays, extra expenses, &c., caused by the Tribune's assaults upon General McClellan, say 200,000,000.00 22* CG 514 DURING THE WAR. To the abolition campaign of Fremont in Missouri, including mule, blanket, and musket contracte $50,000,000.00 To Banks's disaster, caused by the Tribune abolitionists and their in trigues against McCleilan 10,000,000.00 To various emancipation schemes, darkey schools, nigger conservatories at Beaufort, and General Hunter's squashed proclamation, includ ing expenditures for red trousers, and Tribune muskets . . . 5,000,000.00 To daily attacks upon the administration and the army, encouraging the Rebels and weakening the Union cause, say .... 100,000,000.00 To a contract for 25,000 muskets, obtained by the Tribune Gun Associ ation, and sub-let to outside parties 625,000.00 To a second contract for 40,000 muskets, sub-let as above . . . 600,000.00 To Greeley's pay, franking, pickings, books, and mileage, while in Congress 5,000.00 To salary of Harvey, of the Tribune, Minister to Portugal, four years 80,000.00 To salary of Pike, of the Tribune, Minister to the Netherlands, four years 30,000.00 To salary of Hildreth, of the Tribune, Consul at Trieste, four years 3,000.00 To salary of Fry, of the Tribune, Secretary of Legation at Sardinia . 7,200.00 To salary of Bayard Taylor, of the Tribune, Secretary of Legation at St. Petersburg 7,200.00 To profit on various jobs and contracts of Camp, stockholder of the Tribune 500,000.00 To profit of Almy, of the Tribune, on gun contracts .... 250,000.00 To profit of Snow, of the Tribune, on gun contracts .... 100,000.00 To profit of Hall, stockholder of the Tribune, on army shoes . . 60,000.00 To profit of Dr. Ayer, stockholder of the Tribune, on Cherry Pectoral for the army 60.000.00 To profit of Wilkeson, of the Tribune, on the 'Tribune's Contract Bu reau' at Washington .05 Total, $2,469,162,400.05 " So much for the spoils ; and now for the blood. The following list, it will be observed, does not include the captured, the missing, or the sick Union sol diers, losses equally chargeable to the Tribune and the Abolitionists : 1 To Bull Run . . . To Davis Creek, Mo. . To Lexington, Mo. . To Ball's Bluff . To Belmont . . * To Mill Spring, Ky. . To Fort Henry To Roanoke Island . < To Fort Donelsoii . To Fort Craig, New Mexico To Pea Ridge . To Attack of the Merrimac To Newbern . . . To Winchester Killed. 481 223 84 39 17 60 446 62 203 201 91 132 Wounded. 1,011 721 120 266 288 207 31 222 1,735 140 972 108 466 640 ASSAULT OX THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. 515 To Pittsburg Landing 1,735 7,882 To Yprktown 85 120 To Forts Jackson and St. Philip 30 119 To Williamsburg 455 1,411 To West Point 44 100 To McDowell 87 225 To near Corinth 21 149 To Banks's retreat, estimated 100 800 To Hanover Court-House 63 296 To Fair Oaks 890 3,627 To Port Republic (Fremont) .181 456 To Port Republic (Shields) 67 370 To seven days' contests, estimated 4,000 11,000 To skirmishes 690 1,740 Total 10,889 35,822 " We bring the account current of the Tribune up to date. What greater disasters it may bring upon us in the future, if not soon suppressed, time alone can tell. By its opposition to McClellan it has indefinitely prolonged the war, added immensely to our expenses in men and money, and made European inter vention probable. Its motive for this is self-evident, it is self-interest. Poor Greeley makes money out of the war. He has contracts which cease when the war ceases, and therefore he is determined that the war shall continue. Mad with greed, he rushes onward to his ruin. In vain his array correspondent 1 S. W.' assures him that he and his associates are ' doomed men.' He will not cease to do evil until the government or the people shall lose all patience, and suddenly annihilate him and his infamous Tribune. That time now seems not very distant. He will be fairly tried, and if found insane, he will be sent to an asylum ; if sane, to the gallows. This monster, ogre, ghoul, will soon feast his last upon Union blood and national spoils." In many articles the mob was incited to make Mr. Greeley the first victim of their vengeance. "If," said the Herald, "we decide to hang the Abolitionists, poor Greeley shall swing on the post of honor at the head or tail of the lot. We promise him that high honor." These efforts were at length crowned with some degree of suc cess. The Tribune office was assailed by a mob during the draft riots of July, 1863, and its editor would certainly have been put to death but for the precautionary measures of his friends. It fell to my lot to witness the attempt to destroy the Tribune building,. On Monday, the first day of the disturbance, about four o'clock in the afternoon, my wife and I were strolling down Fourteenth Street in that languid state of mind which writers know who have spent a long morning at the desk. Near the corner of the Fifth 516 DURING THE WAR. Avenue we were startled from our state of vacancy by a large stone falling upon the pavement before us, which was followed by a yell of many voices, and the swift galloping past of a horse with a black man on his back. We saw streaming down the Fifth Ave nue a crowd of ill-dressed and ill-favored men and boys, each car rying a long stick or piece of board, and one or two of them a rusty musket. They were walking rapidly and without order, on the sidewalk and in the street, and extended perhaps a quarter of a mile ; in all, there may have been two hundred of them. The stone which had recalled our attention to sublunary things was aimed by one of these scoundrels at the negro, who owed his es cape from instant death to his being on horseback. Having heard nothing of the riots of that morning, we were puz zled to account for the presence of this motley crew in a region usually so serene, until one of them cried out, as he passed, "There 's a three-hundred-dollar fellow." When the main body had gone by, I asked one of the stragglers where they were going. The reply was, " To the ' Trybune ' office." It was a strange looking gang of ruffians. I have lived in New York from childhood, and supposed myself to be pretty well ac quainted with the various classes of its inhabitants. But I did not recognize that crowd. I know not to this day whence they came nor whither they vanished. Three fourths of them were under twenty-one years of age, and many were not more than fourteen. The clubs with which they were armed were all extempore, evi dently seized, as they passed, from some pile of old boards and timber. Their clothes were not of any kind of shabbiness that I have ever seen in our streets. They were not the garments of laborers or mechanics, nor of any other class usually seen here. I should say they might be dock thieves, plunderers of ship-yards, and stealers of old iron and copper. It occurred to me that, by taking an omnibus, I could get ahead of the gang, and give warning at the office threatened, about a mile and a half distant. So we hurried to Broadway ; but the om nibuses being full, I strode on at a great pace down town, and thus had the exquisite satisfaction of seeing that crew of villains put to flight near the corner of Tenth Street. It so happened that, just as the head of the gang turned into Broadway, a body of policemen was passing on toward the scene of the riots up town. The police ASSAULT ON THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. 517 instantly formed into two lines, extending from curbstone to curb stone, and rushed upon the mob. " Strike hard and take no pris oners," was the word. There was a rattling of clubs for a moment, a dozen knock-down blows given, and the ruffians fled by every street, leaving their wounded in the mud. The police re-formed in marching order, and continued their course, making no arrests. It was all over in about a minute. All the wounded were able to get away, except one, who staggered into a drug-store as I got into an omnibus. He was evidently in a damaged condition about the head, and his face was covered with blood. Only one of the police was hit, and he was able to go on with his company. At the Tribune office everything wore an aspect so little unusual that I felt rather ashamed to tell my story. The windows and doors were all open, the business office was nearly empty, the ed itorial rooms quite so, and there was no crowd around the build ing. The reporters and editors were absent, collecting details of the riot. While I was suggesting the propriety of shutting up the office, as a precautionary measure, Mr. G-ilmore (Edmund Kirke) came in, and to him I stated what I had seen and heard. He was fully alive to the situation, and proposed that we should go to the Chief of Police and to General Wool, and see what was pre pared for the protection of the office during the night. We went. At police head-quarters, we found a squad of more than a hundred men drawn up on the sidewalk, who, we were assured, would march to the office and remain on guard there. This seemed suf ficient; but. to make assurance doubly sure, Mr. G-ilmore insisted on our going to General Wool. We found the General at the St. Nicholas Hotel, with the Mayor and a staff. Mr. Gilmore pro cured from him an order on the ordnance officer at Governor's Isl and for one hundred muskets, and the requisite ammunition. He started immediately for the island ; and I, satisfied that the Trib une was safe, walked leisurely to the office to report progress. It was about seven in the evening when I reached it. The ap pearance of the neighborhood had changed. The office was closed, and the shutters were up. A large number of people were in the open space in front of it, talking in groups, but not in a loud or ex cited manner. Not a policeman was to be seen. Upon getting into the office, I found only two or three persons there, neither of whom 518 DURING THE WAR. knew anything about the body of police detailed to guard the prem ises, nor had they heard of any measures taken to defend it. Their official position made it their duty to stand by the ship ; and there they were, helpless and alone. Crossing over to the police station in the City Hall, in search of the promised squad, I found one po liceman in charge, who said that a hundred and ten men had, in deed, come down to that station ; but that, upon a rumor of a riot in the First Ward, they had immediately marched away again. As Mr. Gilmore could not possibly get back with the arms under two hours, the office was no safer than before. I went among the crowd in front of the Tribune office, to learn the tone of the conversation going on there. There was nothing remarkable in the appearance of the people, most of whom seemed to be merely attracted by curiosity, and detained by the impulse there is at such times for people to gather in knots and talk. One good-natured looking bull of a man was declaiming a little. " What is the use of killing the niggers? " said he. " The niggers have n't done nothing. They didn't bring themselves here, did they? They are peaceable enough ! They don't interfere with nobody." Then pointing to the editorial rooms of the Tribune, he exclaimed, " Them are the niggers up there." Others were holding forth in a similar strain. Little by little the crowd gathered more closely about the office, and became more compact. The sidewalk was kept pretty clear ; but from the curbstone back to the middle of the square there was a mass of people who stood looking at the building, which loomed up in the dusk of the evening, unlighted and apparently unoccu pied. The crowd was still very quiet. At length a small gang of such fellows as I had seen demolished by the police in the after noon came along from Chatham Street and mingled with the crowd, which from that time began to be a little noisy. A voice would utter something, and the rest of the people would laugh or cheer, or both. It was the laughter and cheers which appeared to work the mob up to the point of committing violence. Gradually the shouts became louder and much more frequent. At last a stone was thrown, which hit one of the shutters and fell upon the pavement close to the building. This was greeted by a perfect yell of applause ; and then, for the first time, I felt that the office was in danger. Before that, the crowd had laughed too much to sug- ASSAULT ON THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. 519 gest the fear that it meant mischief. Besides, the fringe of the crowd nearest the building was composed of boys, newsboys, apparently, some of whom were not more than twelve years old. I ran over to the police station at the City Hall. A few police men were there, to whom I said : "The mob are beginning to throw stones at the Tribune office. Five men can stop the mischief now; in ten minutes a hundred cannot." It happened that the number of men present was six, five of whom very promptly drew their clubs, and repaired to the scene. By the time they arrived stones were flying fast, and little boys would run forward, under the shower of missiles, pick up a stone or two, and run back. Occasionally a window would be broken, eliciting a yell of triumph from the mob. The five men went boldly along the sidewalk, and gained a position between the office and the crowd. The firing totally ceased for a minute or two, and the mob slunk away from the police, as if fearing, possibly, revolv ers. Very soon, however, the smallness of the force became appar ent; no revolvers were shown; and the stones again began to bat ter against the shutters and smash the windows. The mob surged forward ; those in front being pushed upon the clubs of the police men, who were soon overpowered and thrust aside. Then the mob rushed at the lower shutters and doors. There was a loud banging and thumping of clubs, and, in an exceedingly short time, amid the most frantic yells of the multitude, the main door was forced, and the mob poured into the building. I supposed then that the Trib une was gone. But at that moment the report of a pistol was heard, fired somewhere in front of the building, whether from one of the windows or from a policeman below, I know not. Instantly most of the assailants took to flight, and Printing-House Square appeared as empty as it usually is at two o'clock in the morning. It was like magic. The gates of the opposite Park were choked with fugitives. Before the dastards had time to rally a whole army of blue uniforms came up Nassau Street, at the double-quick, and the office was saved. These men, I suppose, were the original one hundred and ten detailed for the purpose ; but, in the dim light of the evening, it seemed as if Nassau Street was a rushing torrent of dark-blue cloth, flecked with the foam of human faces. Mr. Greeley was slow to believe that anything serious was in- 520 DURING THE WAR. tended by those who opposed the draft. One of his associates said to him that morning : " We must arm the office. This is not a riot ; it is a revolution." "No," replied the editor; "do not bring a musket into the build ing. Let them strike the first blow. All my life I have worked for the workingmen ; if they would now burn my office and hang me, why, let them do it." Mr. G-ilmore may continue the story of the assault upon the of fice: "While these events were going on, the senior editor of the Tribune was quietly reading the evening newspaper at his up-town lodgings, in happy ignorance of the drama that was being enacted in Printing-House Square. His dinner had been a somewhat lengthy one, owing to the fact that his friends, to keep him away from his office as long as possible, had shrewdly ordered viands that consumed a long time in cooking. But they were done at last ; and the repast over, this man, who was marked out for the especial fury of the populace, rose to go openly back to his office, and write another editorial. He was in Ann Street ; and all Nas sau Street, and Printing-House Square, and Broadway around the corner, was filled with an excited crowd clamoring, ' Down with the Tribune ! ' ' Down with the old white coat what counts a nayger as good as an Irishman ! ' He could not have gone ten paces without recognition; and recognition by that mob meant death in ten min utes from the nearest lamp-post. In these circumstances, it was fortunate that he was attended by a friend (Theodore Tilton) who was fully alive to the danger. For a time the Tribune editor in sisted that he would not be kept from his office by a crew of riot ers, but at last he was persuaded that discretion is the better part of valor,' and consented to be driven homeward. A carriage was brought, the curtains were drawn down, and entering with his two friends he was hurried through the very midst of the mob to his home on one of the up-town avenues. He had escaped immi nent peril; and safely arrived there, might have drawn a long breath ; but it is more than likely that he did not, for all through the riots he seemed totally oblivious to the fact that he was in any personal danger." In the course of the evening Mr. Gilmore returned with an abundant supply of arms and ammunition, and the office was thor oughly fortified. Mr. Gilmore adds the following particulars : ASSAULT ON THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. 521 "As he went down Broadway, the managing editor heard that the Tribune building had been sacked and burned ; but he kept on, and in half an hour reached the office, just as the police were driv ing off the rear-guard of the rioters. Entering the lower story, he came upon a scene which beggared description. In the two min utes they had held possession the mob had accomplished the most thorough and complete destruction. Not an article of furniture re mained in its proper position. G-as-burners were twisted off, coun ters torn up, desks overturned, doors and windows battered in; and, in the centre of the room, two charred spots, littered over with paper cinders, showed where fires had been kindled to reduce the building to ashes. " Ascending to the upper stories, he found the editorial rooms si lent and deserted by all save one of the corps, the brave Smalley, who, a year before, had ridden by the side of Hooker through the fire of the bloody field of Antietam. The composing-rooms, also, had but a single tenant, the rest having escaped by the roof when the mob attacked the building. Out of a force of a hundred and fifty men, only three were at their posts. But, if the whole num ber had stood their ground, what could they, unarmed, have done against a furious mob of five thousand? " But the editor did not waste thought on this subject ; for it was already eight o'clock at night, and, before daybreak, fifty thousand copies of his journal had to be in press, and borne on the four winds to every quarter of the country. Looking down on the street, he saw that the mob had dispersed ; and, quietly sallying out, he ral lied a dozen of his printers. With this small force he began work ; but soon, one by one, the others fell in, and in half an hour the types were clicking, and the monster press was rumbling, as if only quiet reigned over the great city." The vengeance which Mr. Greeley took upon the editor of the Herald was of the kind described in Scripture as "heaping coals of fire upon the head." During the Presidential campaign of 1864 Mr. Lincoln and his friends deemed the support of the Herald al most essential to his success, and that support was deliberately pur chased. The price paid was the proffer of the mission to France. This bargain was made known to several editors of Republican newspapers, who agreed not to denounce it. Mr. Greeley was even prevailed upon to insert in the Tribune a paragraph, written 522 DURING THE WAR. by another hand, in which the editor of the Herald was commended as a proper person to represent the United States at the court of France. I have no more doubt that Mr. Greeley's motives in coun tenancing this bargain were patriotic than I have that the act was wrong. It was not only wrong, but impolitic, since the city of New York, where the Herald chiefly circulates, and where alone it can be said to have any influence over votes, gave to the candi date for the Presidency opposed to Mr. Lincoln the great majority of thirty-seven thousand. We must remember, however, that when this compact was made the prospects of the United States were gloomy in the extreme ; and to many men the clamorous sup port of the Herald was supposed to be desirable, even though pur chased by the sacrifice of honor. During the year 1863, when the immense expenses in which the war involved the Tribune consumed the profits of the establish ment, Mr. G-reeley accepted a very liberal offer from Messrs. Case & Co. of Hartford, to write a history of the war, and, during the next two or three years, he performed two days' work in one. At nine in the morning he shut himself up in his room in the "Bible House" with an amanuensis, and worked upon his history until four in the afternoon ; after which he went down town, dined, and labored upon the newspaper until eleven at night. And, as if this were not enough, he frequently snatched an hour or two during the evening to address a political meeting. The history was finished in 1865, and has had a sale of a hundred and fifty thousand copies, and is still in active demand. No one knows better than Mr. Gree- ley that the complete and final history of the war has not yet be come possible, and will not for some years to come. Nevertheless, it may be said of Mr. Greeley's work, that it is the most valuable contribution to the means of understanding the war, both in its causes and in its results, that has yet been made by an individual. The spirit of it is high, humane, and every way admirable, and it contains an astonishing mass of instructive details. Mr. Greeley says in his Preface, and truly says : " I shall labor constantly to guard against the error of supposing that all the heroism, devoted- ness, humanity, chivalry, evinced in the contest were displayed on one side ; all the cowardice, ferocity, cruelty, rapacity, and general depravity, on the other. I believe it to be the truth, and as such I shall endeavor to show that, while this war has been signalized PRIZES FOR IMPROVED FRUITS. 523 by some deeds disgraceful to human nature, the general behavior of the combatants on either side has been calculated to do honor even to the men who, though fearfully misguided, are still our countrymen, and to exalt the prestige of the American name." The dedication of the work was as follows : TO JOHN BRIGHT, BRITISH COMMONER AND CHRISTIAN STATESMAN ! THE FRIEND OF MY COUNTRY, BECAUSE THE FRIEND OF MANKIND I THIS RECORD OF A NATION'S STRUGGLE UP FROM DARKNESS AND BONDAGE TO LIGHT AND LIBERTY, IS REGARDFULLY, GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR. In 1864, when the subscriptions to the forthcoming history prom ised to put a little money in Mr. G-reeley's pocket, he concluded to spend a few hundred dollars of it in the manner indicated in the following article : "IMPROVED VARIETIES OF FRUIT. " So much has been well done within the last few years in Amer ican fruit-growing, that it seems feasible to do still more, or at least to realize more extensively and rapidly the benefit of past improve ments. " I. Perhaps the most signal advance has been made in the pro duction of GRAPES. There are probably twenty-fold more grapes grown for sale in this country to-day than there were thirty years ago, while the improvement in current varieties, in culture and in quality, has been equally decided. Still, we are growing far too many inferior grapes, while our established favorites are too gener ally deficient in one or more respects ; they require too long a sea son, or they have some notable defect as a table-fruit. So much labor has been wasted on varieties of foreign origin, that it is not deemed advisable to incite to further effort in that direction. There is not to-day in the United States a good table-grape of foreign origin that can safely be grown in open air, north of the Potomac 524 DURING THE WAR. and the Ohio. But it is plausibly claimed that several substantially new or little known varieties of domestic origin are of high quality, fulfilling all the requisites of choice table-fruit. It is time that these claims were tested and passed upon by disinterested and capable judges. As a humble contribution toward this end, I hereby offer a premium of $ 100 for the best plate of native grapes, weighing not less than six pounds, of any variety known to the growers or propa gators of this country. I require that the grapes competing for this premium shall ripen earlier than the Isabella, Catawba, or Diana, none of which is considered well adapted to a season no longer and no hotter and drier than ours. The berries must be of at least good medium size, and not liable to fall from the stem when ripe. The flesh must be melting and tender quite to the centre. The flavor must be pure, rich, vinous, and exhilarating. The vine must be healthy, productive, of good habit of growth for training in yards and gardens as well as in vineyards, with leaves at least as hardy and well adapted to our climate as those of the Delaware. In short, what is sought is a vine which embodies the best qualities of the most approved American and foreign varieties, so far as possible. "I propose to pay this premium on the award of the fruit depart ment of the American Institute, and invite competition for it at the annual fair of that Institute soon to open ; but, if a thoroughly sat isfactory grape should not now be presented, the Institute will of course postpone the award till the proper claimant shall have ap peared. " II. I offer a further premium of $ 100 for the best bushel of APPLES, of a variety which combines general excellence with the quality of keeping in good condition at least to the 1st of February, and is adapted to the climate and soil of the Northern and Middle States. " It is not required that the apple submitted for competition shall be new ; but it is hoped that one may be found which combines the better characteristics of such popular favorites as the Northern Spy, Baldwin, Greening, and Newton Pippin, or a majority of them. Let us see if there be not a better apple than the established favorites ; if not, let us acknowledge and act upon the truth. "III. I further offer a premium of $100 for the best bushel of PEARS of a specific variety, size, flavor, season, &c., being all con sidered. It must be a pear adapted to general cultivation. It need PRIZES FOR IMPROVED FRUITS. 525 not be a new sort, provided it be unquestionably superior ; but one object of the premium is to develop unacknowledged excellence if such shall be found to exist. "One object of these offers is to afford a landmark for fruit growers in gardens and on small farms, who are now bewildered by the multiplicity of sorts challenging their attention, each setting up claims to unapproachable excellence. I leave the determination of all questions which may arise as to the propriety of making a prompt award, or awaiting further developments, entirely to the appropriate department of the Institute. "HORACE G-REELEY. "NEW YORK, September 22, 1864" CHAPTER XXXIV. RECONSTRUCTION. Horace Greeley's plan His mediation between President Johnson and Congress He joins in bailing Jefferson Davis His speech at Richmond. No reader of this work need be informed how Horace Greeley felt toward the people of the Southern States when the war ended. Unless his nature had suddenly changed, he could have had no other than a friendly feeling toward them, and an intense desire for the restoration of good feeling between the two sections of the Union. His policy of reconstruction is summed up in four words, a thousand times repeated in the Tribune : " UNIVERSAL AMNESTY, IMPARTIAL SUFFRAGE." To this simple but all-including plan he has constantly adhered, until at the present moment there is a prospect of its speedy and complete adoption. In a speech delivered in March, 1866, he expressed his views with clearness and force. " What has the war decided ? First, all men agree that our war's close has settled this point : that we all the States compos ing this Federal Union are not a mere confederacy ; we are not a league ; we are not an alliance : we are a nation. This country of ours, this American people, compose a nation; and your alle giance and my allegiance is due, primarily, to the country, to the United States, and not to New York, nor New Jersey, nor Penn sylvania, nor Virginia, wherever we may happen to live, not to our State, but to our country. There were differences of opinion about this before the war, but I believe that all men now agree that the point has been settled ; and, whatever may have been heretofore believed or taught with regard to State rights or the right of seces sion, it is generally conceded now that that issue has been settled, and that, first and above all things, we are a nation. " Now, then, this conclusion carries very much more with it ; for, if the government of the United States is entitled to your alle giance and my allegiance, primarily, then we are entitled to its HORACE GREELEY'S PLAN. 527 protection. It cannot be that in the one case the Union is entitled to our first and paramount allegiance, and, on the other hand, we are not entitled to that Union's paramount and complete protec tion. If the State may wrest from me the protection of my coun try, if the State may stand between me and the country and say, * The nation decrees this ; but we will do with you as we please, in spite of the nation,' then it is most unjust that the nation should demand from me my allegiance at the same time that it withholds from me its protection. I think all men say yes to this. " But that conclusion reaches very much further than many of us would be willing to follow it ; for, if what I have said is true with regard to white men, it is also true with regard to black men. If the government of the United States, before and above all else, is entitled to the allegiance of every great and every small man, every intelligent and every ignorant man, every white and every black man in the country, then that government, before all else, is bound to protect these men in their rights as free men. So, when I am asked, ' From whence do you derive the power of the govern ment to pass and make law the Freedmen's Bureau Bill and the Civil Rights Bill, especially the Civil Rights Bill ? ' I answer, ' I de rive it from the fact that the government claims, and rightfully claims, the allegiance of those men, and therefore owes them its protection.' " I believe it is conceded by all men now that the war has set tled one other thing, that this is to be a land of only free people. It is not to be a land part slave and part free ; but it is to be a land of freemen ; freedmen, we say, with regard to some of our people to-day, those who were lately enslaved, but their children will not be freedmen, but free men. There are none in this land to-day, law fully and rightfully, but free people, and this point even those who differ most widely from us all admit : that we are, and henceforth are to be, a nation of free men." Then, as to the blacks and their right to citizenship : "While slavery existed, there was a tremendous class interest which was hostile to the recognition of human equality. You could not expect human nature, such as it is, to give away, or to put away, $4,000,000,000 worth of property, even though we have grossly exaggerated our estimate of its value. But it is very hard for men to give up what is to them capital, wealth, ease, conse- 528 RECONSTRUCTION. Alienee, importance, to throw this aside and say, ' No, we will come down to a plain level with other people.' It is very hard to do this, and it is a good deal to ask them to do it. "But slavery being gone; no longer an interest; nothing but a prejudice to overcome, nothing but a rapacity reaching out for power, I have no fears that they will last forever ; I have no fear that we shall go on quarrelling about a matter so perfectly clear as the right of freemen, four millions of freemen, to a voice in the government of their country. It cannot be that this question shall be settled wrong, when there is not on the face of the earth one other nation than this in which it is settled wrong. There are republics and limited monarchies and aristocracies and despotisms, but there is no other land but ours on earth where a freeman, sim ply because of his color, is deprived of the essential rights of a free man where everybody enjoys them. " Brazil is a slaveholding country, and has been for these three hundred years, but there the colored freeman has the same right as every other freeman. Now, then, I say it is not possible that this poor remnant of a bygone prejudice, * a prejudice which was perfectly intelligible while slavery existed in the country, it is not possible that this poor remnant of a prejudice shall remain for ever to distract and divide us. It will not be. We shall ultimately settle our differences on the basis of equal rights for ah 1 men before the law. "But when I say this, I never mean that the worthless, bad, profligate, desperate, wicked man has equal rights with the good man ; nobody believes he has or will have, but that the law will be so fixed, and the Constitution so amended^ that every peaceable, good man shall have a voice in the government of his country. That we insist upon as his privilege, not that every bad man shall vote, but that every man who is a good, law-abiding citizen shah 1 have a voice in the government of his country. ***** " The President says that if the freedmen are allowed to vote, the whites will kill them. Now I say I never heard a better argu ment for letting them vote. If the men among whom they live are so unfriendly, that if the black men are permitted to vote they will kill them, certainly the men who cherish such a purpose are not worthy of being trusted with the rights of those black men. But HORACE GREELEY'S PLAX. 529 this is only an exaggerated statement of a truth. A very great dislike, a hatred of the freedmen, does undoubtedly exist among the people of the South. They are a sore people, and very proud. They still feel revengeful toward those who defeated them in war ; and they do not feel quite strong enough to whip the Union for it, but they do feel able to punish the blacks, and no doubt a great many of them feel and say, ' We '11 make these niggers realize that liberty is not such a very fine thing for them as they think it is.' "Now, I say, if we allowed the people at the South who felt and fought with us to be cast, bound hand and foot, into the power of the people who fought against us, we can have no true prosperity, North or South. It will be as it was in Spain when she banished her Moors, the most industrious, thrifty, and ingenious of her popu lation ; as it was in France when she expelled the Huguenots, and with them expelled productive manufacture and useful art, to her own great detriment and injury. If the late Rebels are allowed to work their will on the black population, they will never be satisfied until that population is either exiled or destroyed, driven out of the country or out of the world. Now, then, it becomes us, the loyal people of the North, who have profited by the good-will and the loyalty of the black people df the South, who have triumphed in the grandest struggle the world ever saw, in part by their ample aid, for never yet was there a Northern soldier escaping from a Southern prison-house, no matter how great a copperhead he may have been at home, who did not seek the black man's cabin for aid, and shelter, and guidance; no Northern Democratic soldier, however strong may have been his party attachments, ever sought a Southern Democrat for shelter when he was escaping from prison, it becomes us, I say, to see to it that these black Union men do not fall unprotected into the hands of their enemies." Every one knows how this affair of reconstruction has been com plicated and delayed by the defection of President Johnson from the party which elected him, Mr. Greeley was one of those who strove to prevent the disagreement between Congress and the Pres ident, indications of which he early discovered. In September, 1866, he thus related his endeavors to reunite the two diverging departments of the government: "Soon after our last State election, and before the assembling of the present Congress, I went, not uninvited, to Washington, ex.- 23 OH 530 RECONSTRUCTION. pressly to guard against such a difference. Being admitted to an interview with the President, I urged him to call to Washington three of the most eminent and trusted expositors of Northern anti- slavery sentiment, and three equally eminent and representative Southern ex-Rebels, and ask them to take up their residence at the White House for a week, a fortnight, so long as they might find necessary, while they, by free and friendly conference and discus sion, should earnestly endeavor to find a common ground whereon the North and the South should be not merely reconciled, but made evermore fraternal and harmonious. I suggested that the Presi dent should occasionally, as he could find time, drop in on these conferences, and offer such suggestions as he should deem fit, rather as a moderator or common friend, than as a party to the discussion. " A suggestion of names being invited, I proposed those of Gov ernor Andrew of Massachusetts, Gerritt Smith of New York, and Judge R. P. Spaulding of Ohio, as three who seemed to me fair representatives of the antislavery sentiment of the North, while neither specially obnoxious to, nor disposed to deal harshly with, the South; and I added that I hoped they would be met by men like General Robert E. Lee, Alexander H. Stephens, &c., who would be recognized and heeded by the South as men in whose hands her honor and true interests would be safe. But I added that I had no special desire that these or any particular men should be selected, wishing only that those chosen from either section should be such as to command their people's confidence and sup port. And I pledged myself to support, to the extent of my power, any adjustment that should thus be matured and agreed upon. "Some two months later, after the meeting of Congress, and when the political sky had become darker, I went again to Wash ington, on the assurance of a mutual friend that the President de sired to see me. The joint committee on reconstruction had then been appointed. At an interview promptly accorded, I urged the President to invite this committee to the White House, and discuss with them, from evening to evening, as friend with friends, all the phases of the grave problem of reconstruction, with a fixed resolve to find a basis of agreement if possible. I urged such considera tions as occurred to me in favor of the feasibility of such agreement, if it were earnestly sought, as I felt sure it would be on the side of BAILING JEFFERSON DAVIS. 531 Congress. The vast patronage in the President's hands, the reluc tance of the majority in Congress to see their friends, supporters and nominees, expelled by wholesale from office, and their places supplied by bitter adversaries; the natural anxiety of every party in power to maintain cordial relations with the head of the govern ment chosen by its votes, these, and a thousand kindred consider ations, rendered morally certain an agreement between Congress and the President, without a sacrifice of principle on either hand, if the latter should sincerely seek it. " I speak only of what I said and proposed, because I have no permission and no right to speak further. That my suggestions were not followed, nor anything akin to them, the public sadly knows. And the conclusion to which I have been most reluctantly forced is, that the President did not want harmony with Congress, that he had already made up his mind to break with the party which had elected him, and seek a further lease of power through the favor and support of its implacable enemies." An interesting event in the life of Horace G-reeley, and in the history of the country, occurred in May, 1867, when he went to Richmond for the purpose of signing the bail-bond which restored to liberty Jefferson Davis, after two years' confinement in Fortress Monroe. " I went to Richmond," he says, " and signed the bond, simply because the leading counsel for the prisoner deemed it im portant. If any other name would have answered as well, they would not have proffered mine : for they could easily have given ten millions of dollars, all of it by men who were worth double the amount for which they became responsible, and each of whom would have esteemed signing the bond a privilege. But the coun sel believed it eminently desirable that they should present some Northern names, of men who had been conspicuous opponents of the Rebellion; perhaps because the application to admit to bail would otherwise be strenuously resisted. I know nothing of their reasons ; I only know that they would not have required me to face this deluge of mud if they had not believed it necessary." The bond was for the sum of one hundred thousand dollars, and was signed by twenty persona, among whom were Horace Gree- ley, John Minor Botts, Augustus Schell, G-erritt Smith, and Cor nelius Vanderbilt. " A happier looking man," wrote one of the reporters, " never pledged himself for another's honor than Horace 532 RECONSTRUCTION. Greeley appeared, as he took the pen and affixed himself as surety upon the bond. He had scarcely laid down the pen and turned from the clerk's table, when Mr. Davis hastily put himself in his way, and, grasping his hand, uttered a few warm words of ac knowledgment. It was their first meeting, and he returned the pressure and ventured to hope, in a few homely sentences, that he had done his companion an essential service. " The announcement of Judge Underwood : l The United States Marshal will now discharge the prisoner from custody,' was the signal for giving vent to the delight that had been so imperfectly schooled among the audience during the early progress of the pro ceedings. For a moment the din was terrific, and would not be subdued by any amount of crying the peace by the Marshal. "Mr. Davis was seized, congratulated, and sobbed over, and in the same moment hurried from the court-room to the street, where a thousand people were uncovered and cheering as he passed. Alighted from his carriage at the hotel, the crowd demanded audi ence, and for two hours thereafter poured into his parlors, so tear ful and happy, that it was impossible not to catch the infection. Later, Mr. Davis drove out with his friends, everywhere encoun tering cheers and congratulations from the people surrounding his carriage-wheels to those upon the house-tops." If we may judge from the Southern newspapers, this act of the editor of the Tribune will do its part toward the reconciliation of the country. The Richmond Whig said : " The generous course pursued toward Mr. Davis yesterday was one of the most effective reconstruction steps yet taken. It was indeed a stride in that direction. But the legal action taken was not all that we feel called upon to notice. That action was accompanied and embellished by circumstances of courtesy and cordial generosity from Northern and Republican gentlemen of distinction and influence, which will go far to commend them to the grateful consideration of the South. They joined our own Virginians in both bail- bonds and congratulations. In so doing, they illustrated their magnanimity, and in one moment levelled barriers that might otherwise have remained for years. The effect of yesterday's work will be felt and shown throughout the South, or we much mistake Southern character. Let us all show that North ern generosity is the true avenue to Southern friendship. We repeat, a great stride was yesterday taken in the line of reconstruction." The Lynchburg Virginian held the following language : " We hail the event as an auspicious one, fraught with good, and recognize SPEECH AT RICHMOND. 533 the present as a fortunate time for both sections of the Union to set out with a new purpose, to bury their animosities, and meet together on a common ground of justice, peace, and fraternity. No one, we are sure, would do more to bring about such a result, or more rejoice at it, than he who was yesterday restored to the free air of heaven from the confines of his long incarceration." A Richmond letter published in the Baltimore Sun contained the following : " The effect of his release in all parts of the State has been not only cheer ing and exhilarating, but it has done more to promote good feeling, real cor diality, toward the North and toward the government, than any event which has occurred since the close of the war. I have not seen till now any reason to believe that the South would, for years, do more than accept the situation, and content herself with a perfunctory performance of the obligations she has assumed; but the release of Mr. Davis has touched the Southern heart, and I believe that it is at this moment beating strong to the old music of nationality and brotherly love. The appearance in court of Mr. Horace Greeley and Mr. Gerritt Smith, and their noble interposition in behalf of Mr. Davis, have had peculiar influence in bringing about this happy result. Our people look upon them as representative Northern men, and the hand thus stretched out to them they have grasped warmly. This time it is no dramatic grasp, but pal pably honest, and prompted by full hearts." During Mr. Greeley's stay at Richmond he was invited to ad dress a public meeting at the African Church, which is usually used for political meetings, because of its great size. The main body of the church was filled with the most respectable citizens of Rich mond, while the side aisles and galleries were crowded with colored men. Upon being introduced to the audience by the Governor of the State, he delivered the following excellent speech : " FRIENDS AND FELLOW-CITIZENS: I did not understand that my invita tion to speak here to-night, hasty and informal as it was, was the dictate es pecially of any party or section of this people. I understood that a few cit izens of different views perhaps I should rather say, of differing antecedents wished to hear me on the present aspect of our public affairs, and I con sented to address them. Hence, I shall not regard myself as speaking here to-night for a party nor to a party. [Applause.] I shall speak as a citizen of New York to citizens of Virginia, on topics which concern our common in terest, our common country; and, while I shall speak with entire frankness, I trust you will realize that I speak in a spirit of kindness to all, and with ref erence to the feelings of all. [Applause.] "'SHALL THE SWORD DEVOUR FOREVER?' So asked of old a Hebrew prophet, standing amid the ruins of his desolated country. So I, an American citizen, standing amid some of the ruins of our great civil war, encircled by a hundred thousand graves of men who fell on this side and on that, in obe- 534 RECONSTRUCTION. dience to what they thought the dictates of duty and of patriotism, shall speak in the spirit of that prophet, asking you whether the time has not fully come when all the differences, all the heart-burnings, all the feuds and the hatreds which necessarily grew up in the midst of our great struggle, should be aban doned forever ? [Applause.] There have been rivers of blood shed; there have been mountains of debt piled up ; and on every side sacrifices, sufferings, and losses attest the earnestness and the sincerity with which our people fought out this great contest to its final conclusion. " The wise king said, ' There is a time for war and a time for peace.' I trust the time for war has wholly passed, that the time for peace has fully come. What obstacles have for the last two years impeded, what obstacles still impede, the full realization of peace to this country? There may be what is called peace, which is only a mockery of peace, when people of dif ferent sections and of different parties in a great struggle still look distrust fully, hatefully, as it were, upon each other, and are unwilling to meet and to exchange civilities. There may be an enforced quiet, an avoidance of posi tive hostilities, and yet no peace, no real peace. What is it, then, that has so long in this country obstructed the advent of a real peace ? " The war for or against the Union virtually ended with the surrender of General Lee's army more than two years ago. Both parties felt that that sur render was conclusive of the struggle; and, while much had been idly or boastingly said of twenty years of guerilla war, after the armies should be dispersed, yet, when the surrender was communicated to different sections of the South, the people everywhere said, ' This is the end of the war; there is no use in struggling any longer.' And, according to ordinary calculations, one year from that hour should have seen a perfect restoration of peace. " Why have we not yet realized that expectation ? " In the first place, when the national party, if I may so call it, the party of the Union, was in the first flush of a perfect, undivided triumph, an as sassin's blow struck down the Chief Magistrate of the nation. I would be the last to argue, or to insinuate, that that was the act of the defeated party in the nation. [Applause.] Still, there were certain facts connected with it which tended to give an exceedingly malign aspect to that general calamity. The assassin and his fellow-conspirators were violent, vehement partisans of the Southern cause. I believe one of them had fought for it; while they had all been ardent champions of the principles upon which it was founded, and of the system of human bondage with which it was identified. It was the act of men who were heart and soul with the Confederacy, not merely in its efforts, but in its fundamental aspirations. " As the news was flashed across the country that its Chief had been stricken down in the hour of general exultation, his first assistant in the government even more foully stabbed and mangled on a bed of sickness and pain, and that co-ordinate efforts had been made to destroy the lives of other heads of the government, a cry of wild and passionate grief and wrath arose from the whole people. Those who had been pleading for magnanimity and mercy to the conquered, who had been appealing to not unwilling ears in the few days SPEECH AT RICHMOND. 535 intervening between the close of the war and the occurrence of that terrible calamity were silenced in a moment by this appalling crime committed upon the person of our great and good President. The nation could not fairly consider, amid its blind rage and grief, that this assassination was the work of a few, unauthorized by and unknown to the great mass of those against whom their fury was directed. It was an unspeakable calamity, a calam ity to the Southern quite as much as to the Northern part of the country. " The military trials which followed that event which, I might say, com pleted the tragedy were gratifications of the popular wrath which rather tended to stimulate than to appease it. They were the expressions of what the popular heart felt and desired at the time. For my part, I was opposed to them ; and I trust that all Americans have, by this time, learned to regret that the regular and ordinary tribunals of the country had not been allowed to deal with these criminals as they deal with others. [Applause.] " Before the popular frenzy had had time to subside, there assembled, under the military order of the President of the United States, conventions or legis latures in the several Southern States, representing only, or mainly, those who had been defeated in our great struggle. I say the Southern conventions or legislatures which then met represented mainly those persons; and the first aspect presented to the people of the North by the action of these legislatures was one of what I may mildly term unfriendliness toward the colored portion of the people of the South. " I am not here to discuss what absolutely was, but what was very appar ent at that time. The Southern legislatures met, and began at once either to enact or revive laws discriminating harshly and unjustly against the colored people of the South, as if the object had been to punish them' for their sym pathy with the Union in the struggle that had just closed. " I will here merely glance at the substance of these laws. You are familiar with them ; for some of them were passed in your own State. There, for in stance, are the laws in relation to marriages, to contracts for labor, to arms- bearing, and to giving testimony in courts, which, if they ever had been neces sary or wise, had utterly ceased to be applicable after the overthrow of slavery, and the institutions based upon it. I will not detain you by any comments upon these laws, but will content myself by bringing your attention to two of them, which have been revived in most of these States. " There are, first, the laws forbidding the black people of the South to bear arms. Now, so long as slavery existed here and in the other States of the South, it was perfectly reasonable and proper, so far as anything growing out of slavery was proper, that blacks should be forbidden to have arms in their hands. You may find fault with slavery, but you cannot find fault slavery being admitted as a fact with slaveholding legislatures for forbidding the col ored people to hold and bear arms. It was not deemed compatible with public safety that blacks should be allowed to keep and use arms like white persons. But, the moment slavery had passed away, all possible pretexts for disarming Southern blacks passed away with it. Our Federal Constitution gives the right to the people everywhere to keep and bear arms ; and every law where- 536 RECONSTRUCTION. by any State legislature undertakes to contravene this, being- in conflict with the Constitution of the United States, had no longer any legal force. And, when it was seen that Confederate soldiers in their uniforms of gray went around to black men's houses, and took away arms which they had earned by fighting for the Union, and which had been assigned to them for honourable service, what covld this look like but a revival of the Rebellion V " Then, as to this matter of testimony: I believe that sound, enlightened jurists, the world over, are agreed that it is the true rule of judicial procedi7re to admit all testimony, and allow the court and jury to decide as to its value. This is the just rule with regard to atheists, to children of tender years, to persons of evil repute, to persons presumed to be half-witted y &c. Let wit nesses of all sorts and characters come forward and testify, and an enlightened judge, an intelligent jury, will have no difficulty in determining the value of the evidence. We in New York have admitted the testimony even of a wife for her husband, without detriment, so far as can be ascertained, to the cause of justice. There should be exclusion from a privilege so palpably just and fair as this, especially when a discretion always remains with the court and jury before whom the testimony is given to regard it favorably or other wise. When legislatures came together in this State and others, and pro ceeded to enact or revive laws to establish that a black person may give testi mony in controversies between two blacks, or possibly between a black and white, yet not in a suit between two whites, the common sense of the country was insulted, and its feelings outraged, by this odious and plainly arbitrary re striction. For, when you say a black is fit to give testimony in a case be tween a black and a white man, you must realize that he is at least as well qualified to give testimony in a controversy between two whites, where it is probable he would have no such bias or partiality as he might have if one of the parties were black. " I say, all these laws, invidious, unnecessary, and degrading as they were, looked to the people of the North like a revival of the Rebellion in a more in sidious and a good deal less manly aspect than it wore on the heights of Fred- ericksburg and in the valley of the Chickamauga. It looked to us at the North, as if men who had been beaten in fair, stand-up fight chose to revive the contest in such a manner that they could annoy and irritate ns without exposing themselves to the perils of battle or the penalties of treason. I say that this legislation, which prevailed more or less throughout the States of the Scuth, was one of the chief obstacles, and is one of the still remaining impedi ments, to an e^rly and genuine reconstruction of the Union. " I need not more than allude to the deplorable outrages at Memphis and New Orleans, which seemed to indicate the animus to this course of oppressive class-legislation. You may not probnbly know to how great an extent the public feeling and the elections of the North in the year 1866 were affected by what we call the New Orleans massacre. I don't care to argue or assume that those who were the victims of those outrages were entirely right, nor that their adversaries or slaughterers were wholly wrong. It was a fact that the colored people of Louisiana were trying to get the right of suffrage, and by SPEECH AT RICHMOND. 537 means which their friends thought legitimate. The other party, however, thought otherwise ; and instead of referring the matter to the general in com mand, or to some peaceful tribunal, the reassembling of the old Constitutional Convention was made the pretext for an attack, which resulted in the slaugh ter of some scores of American citizens, and in a very stern, sad revulsion of public sentiment to the prejudice of those of you who had been in arms against the Union. These outrages, this unwise and invidious legislation, fixed in the minds, I will not say of a majority of the people of the North, but in the minds of a very large proportion of the wise, intelligent, and conscientious people of the North, a conviction which I think will not easily be shaken, that there can be no real peace in the Union, that there can be no true reconstruction, without the hearty admission on the part of the Southern States, and the securing on the part of the nation, of the right of all men to be governed by equal laws, and to have an equal voice in making and administering those laws. [Applause.] I will not say that we who so hold constitute a great ma jority of the Northern people; but I will say that we are very many more than we were prior to the anti-negro enactments of Mr. Johnson's legislatures in the Southern States, and before the outrages of 1866 at Memphis and at New Orleans. I think that, before these collisions were reported to the North, the conviction was fixed in a great many minds, as it now is in a great many more, that no reconstruction would be real and enduring which did not in clude guaranties for the rights of the colored people of the South; and when I say rights, I mean their equal rights with any and all other persons. [Ap plause by the negroes.] It is a very common remark, and a very true one, that the North is in honor bound to guarantee the liberties of the black people of this country, because of their conduct during our great war. I have no doubt that this is true ; yet I deem it but half the truth. I hold the South equally bound to secure the same result, because of the conduct of the blacks toward the whites of the South in that same civil war. " I fully admit the obligations of the North (or the nation) to the blacks. Some may exaggerate their services, others unduly depreciate them; but there was the general fact, that, whereas, in the beginning of the war, when nothing was* said about emancipation, the blacks of the South shouted with their masters without knowing much about the cause of the war, yet, as the struggle proceeded and became more deadly, and the North found itself obliged to proclaim emancipation as a means of putting down the resistance at the South, the sympathies of the colored people of the South, however silently ex pressed, became from that hour more and more decided and unanimous on the side of the Union. They did not at first comprehend the contest; and yet thousands, from mere instinct, from what they heard at Southern barbecues and in their masters' houses, learned that the war on the part of the South was a war for slavery; and they naturally argued that the war on the part of the North either was or must become a war for freedom. [Applause.] Now, then, I say that, while the North is under obligations to those people for thou sands of acts of kindness toward our soldiers, who were sometimes scattered as fugitives in a hostile territory, and for acts of positive aid on the battle-field 538 RECONSTRUCTION. and in the camp, the South also owes a debt of gratitude to these people for their general fidelity and good-will, as well as good sense, displayed in resist ing every temptation to take advantage of their masters' extremity to achieve at any cost their own liberties. I believe Southern men will do the blacks of the South the justice to say, that very often whole neighborhoods were almost stripped of white men of any considerable force, and lay wholly at the mercy of those white men's slaves. These knew what the contest meant; they knew that they might, if they chose to do so, commit massacre, and, having deso lated their masters' households, they might fly to the Yankees, by whom they reasonably hoped to be protected. But I do not know, out of the ten thousand instances where these temptations were presented, that there were even five cases in all where they were not resisted. You heard it said that Mr. Lincoln's proclamation was intended to put the knife to the throats of all the Southern whites, that it was a general proclamation of liberty to kill and burn and ravage throughout the South. In that light, it was held up to general repro bation. I ask you all to bear witness, that this prediction was nowhere justi fied by the event. The colored people of the South who were still held as slaves uniformly felt that their affection for their masters and their families was such, that they would be felons and outlaws, murderers and criminals of the deepest dye, if they should take advantage of their masters' absence in the war, to abuse their families. The Southern whites ought to feel, and I trust that many of them do feel, gratitude toward the colored people for their general deportment throughout the war. The blacks often ran away to the Union armies and enlisted there; but they took no undue advantage of the opportunities offered by their masters' distress or their masters' absence. [Applause.] " Fellow-citizens, there have been many instances wherein men held in slav ery have been instantly or gradually, by one means or another, emancipated, but I don't remember any instance where a fettered race was liberated from slavery, and yet kept for generations in a servile, abject, degraded condition. There is the great slaveholding Empire of Brazil, always slaveholding since it had any consequence at all, wherein men who are slaves to-day may be free to-morrow, and thenceforth eligible to any trust, any office, being voters and citizens, precisely as though born free and white. Such was the course pursued by Great Britain in respect to the slaves emancipated in her colonies. Slavery is one thing, freedom another. But there is an intermediate condition, which is neither slavery nor liberty, that incites all the energy and aspiration of freemen, and yet involves more than half the disabilities of the slave. Such n, condition as that, I believe, was never long maintained or endured in any civilized country. And yet that seems to be the condition which the domi nant race in the South destined the blacks to occupy by the legislation of 1865-66, a condition which is neither slavery nor freedom, and one which men partly educated, and who felt themselves to a certain extent emancipated, would find utterly unbearable. " Let me here meet an objection which is sometimes offered. Some nr>n say/ The black people of the South are, to a great extent, ignorant and de- SPEECH AT RICHMOND. 539 graded: how then can you insist that they are qualified to enjoy all the priv ileges of citizens? ' I say if you make ignorance a uniform ground of exclu sion from political power, I can comprehend the justice of your rule, your objection. But so long as ignorance or degradation is no bar to citizenship as to white men, I protest against making it a bar to suffrage on the part of black men, who have excuses for ignorance which white men have not. [Ap plause.] " But then, there are peculiar reasons why this race among us should have its liberties secured by the most stringent, firmest guaranties. They are, and must remain, to some extent, a separate and peculiar people in the land. They will be exposed at every step to perils and antipathies which other men are not, not only because of their color, but because of their weakness as well. For they are not only a minority of our people, but their numerical impor tance is steadily declining. When our first Federal census was taken, in 1790, they were nearly a fifth of our entire population ; when our last census was taken, in 1860, they were but an eighth: and the child is now born who will see them no more than a twentieth. I do not believe that they will prove un able to hold their ground among us as freemen, nor that they will prove less prolific in freedom than in bondage. But there is no African immigration to this country, and never has been any voluntary immigration of negroes to any region outside of the tropics. They may be dragged into the temperate zone in fetters, as they have been ; but in freedom, their tendency is wholly the other way. And, on the other hand, the waves of a great and steadily swell ing European immigration are constantly breaking on onr shores, depositing here some 250,000 persons per annum, mainly in the prime of youthful vigor. By this gigantic influx the character of our population is being constantly modified, so that the blacks, now a majority in two or three States, will soon be a minority in each, and an inconsiderable, powerless fraction of our whole people. The present, therefore, is the accepted time to secure their rights, when there is a public interest felt in them, and when there are obligations of honor incumbent upon the whole country which it cannot well disregard Their equal rights as citizens are to be secured now or not at all. I insist, then, in the name of justice and humanity, in the name of our country, and of every righteous i-nterest and section of that country, that the rights of all the American people native or naturalized, born such or made such shall be guaranteed in the State constitutions first, and in the Federal Constitution so soon as possible, that we make it a fundamental condition of American law and policy, that every citizen shall have, in the eye of the law, every right of every other citizen. [Applause.] I would make the equal rights of the col ored people of the country, under the laws and the constitutions thereof, the corner-stone of a true, beneficent reconstruction. [Applause.] I wish to be done with the topic at once and forever. I wish to have it disposed of and out of the way, so that we can go on to other topics and other interests that demand our attention. I long to say that we have settled forever the question of black men's rights by imbedding them in the constitutions of the States and the nation, so that thev cannot be disturbed evermore. If this had been 540 RECONSTRUCTION. promptly and heartily done two years ago, when the Johnson legislatures of the South first assembled, every State of the South would have been in the Union ere this, and every apprehension of penalties to be inflicted on the peo ple of the South would have been banished forever. u But it is said that there are Republican States, or States under Republican rulers, which have not granted to the blacks their full rights. That is dis gracefully true. The great mass of the Republicans have always insisted that black enfranchisement was a necessity, and have uniformly insisted that it should be effected. We have been resisted, and to some extent overborne, by a mere shred of our party combining with the Democrats to defeat us. Still, public sentiment has steadily improved, until nearly every Republican in the North, with many who have acted with the Democrats, now heartily favor a national guaranty of all rights to all. [Applause.] " If there be any who think the Republican party ought to be dissolved. if there be one present who desires that it should get out of the way to give room for new combinations, I say to him, help us to finish this controversy by imbedding in every constitution (State or national) a provision that every citizen shall have all the legal rights of every other citizen, and no more. Let us be done with this matter, and then we can move on to what may be the next question in order. [Applause.] " I come now to proscription as another obstacle, impediment, or whatever you may choose to call it, to the reconciliation of the Southern people to the Union. It is asked, and very cogently, ' How can you expect us to be recon ciled to a government Avhich denies us the right to vote or to hold office under it ? ' A very fair question. In my judgment, there is no reason why any man who. to-day, is a thoroughly loyal and faithful citizen of the United States, should be restrained from voting. This, however, is a matter which rests entirely with Congress ; and what I offer are my own private views. It is just and wise to disfranchise men who are still disloyal, and who desire that disloyal men should obtain the mastery of this country. I deny that those who are implacably hostile to the national authority, who are wan dering off to Brazil, to Mexico, &c. have any natural right to a voice in the government of the country. And that there is a class in the South who 7nerely submit or acquiesce, who are reconciled only so far that they don't choose to put themselves in the way of punishment, there can be very little doubt. I hope the number of this class is comparatively small now, and that it is daily diminishing. May I not hope that the doings in this city this week have contributed somewhat to diminish its numbers ? The government should see that these dissatisfied men have no control in the country. The people should deny to any man who would divide the country, or refuses to be recon ciled to it, a share in its government. I accept the proscription embodied in the military reconstruction act of Congress, only as a precaution against pres ent disloyalty ; and I believe the nation will insist on such proscription being removed, so soon as reasonable and proper assurances are given that disloyalty has ceased to be powerful and dangerous in the Southern States. " Then as to the qxiestion of confiscation, what is to be said ? What is the SPEECH AT RICHMOND. 541 truth about confiscation ? I have been told, since I came here, that the col ored people of this city and the State were refusing to buy for themselves homes, because they were imbued with the belief that Congress would very soon confiscate and distribute the lands of the Rebels of this State, and give each of them a share. If this be so, I beg you to believe that you are more likely to earn a home than get one by any form of confiscation. I have no right to speak for Congress, and cannot say what it will do ; but I have a right to say what Congress has done. Now we have had, since the war closed, two years of violent political contest. Acts have been done and feelings evinced in the South within those years which were strongly calculated to irritate the overwhelming majority in Congress. Then there has been at the head per haps I should say the head and foot of the movement for confiscation the very ablest as well as the oldest member of Congress, Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, one of the strongest men who has been seen in Congress at any time, and who has achieved great influence at the North by forty years of uncompromising warfare against every species of human bondage. He has been the recognized leader of the House for the last six or eight years. Mr. Stevens has made speeches for confiscation, first, to his constituents ; next, in Congress ; and he has lately written a letter condemning those men who are 'peddling out amnesty,' and insisting upon confiscation. But if any other member of Congress has gravely proposed any measure of confiscation at all, I don't remember the fact; and if any committee of either house has reported any scheme of confiscation since the close of the war, I am not aware of it. I say no bill has been even reported which proposed to take away the property of persons merely because they have been Rebels, and give it to others because they were loyal. These are the facts in the past. You can judge of the future as well as I can. I don't mean to say that Congress could not be provoked to decree confiscation by menaces of violence and acts of outrage at the South. I don't pretend to know what Congress may do under some conceivable cir cumstances ; I state what it has done and has intimated its purpose to do, so far as I can speak from knowledge and recollection. " Let me speak for myself only as to the general policy of confiscation. If half the vacant, waste lands of the South could be instantly distributed among the landless, I have no doubt that the effect would be beneficent. I think that such an allotment of a small farm to every poor man would do good to the many and no real harm to the few. But, when you come to the practical work of confiscation, it will be found a very tedious process that years would be required to consummate. And, meantime, what is to become of those who must live by their daily labor? Who is to fence and cultivate the land? What is to become of the great mass of the poor who must live by cultivating the earth ? When we reflect upon the general devastation of the South, by reason of the turmoil and ravage of war, and consider how all industry would be paralyzed by the prospect and the process of confiscation, we shall realize that inevitable evils of confiscation are too great to justify an experiment of this character. In my judgment, any general confiscation will produce general bankruptcy and desolating famine. I judge that the evils of such confiscation exceed all that have been experienced by the country in all its past convulsions. 542 RECONSTRUCTION. "Again: Mr. Stevens proposes to pay five hundred million dollars into the treasury bv a ' mild process of confiscation.' I do not know what could be done in this way; but I am very confident that all the confiscations that have ever taken place since men first went to war have not altogether resulted in putting five hundred million dollars into the public treasuries of nations. I do not speak of those confiscations whereby some great conquerors seized and appropriated the treasures and jewels of an Oriental king; I speak of the con fiscation of individual property in the shape of lands and houses. Individuals have grown enormously rich by confiscation, have secured to themselves duke doms and principalities ; but they were the men who worked the machinery [applause and laughter] ; the great mass derived no benefit, or very little, from their plunder. How much better are our functionaries to-day ? " Now, as to providing poor men with lands by any such process as this. I admit the premise that the poor should have lands. I have for many years advocated the policy of allowing every poor man to help himself to a portion of the public lands upon the easiest terms. There are hundreds of millions of acres still belonging to the Republic in the South as well as in the North and West, in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, as well as in States farther north. These lands are public property, and one hundred and sixty acres of them are offered to actual settlers on the payment of ten dollars, which is charged to cover the expense of surveys, deeds, &c. I have always been in favor of encouraging settlement upon the public lands, and I am of the opinion now that it will be easier and much wiser for the colored man to acquire a home in this form than be vainly awaiting the possible chance of acquiring one by confiscation. " I may speak confidently of what has occurred in other lands ; and I say confidently that confiscation has rarely or never aided the poor to secure homes any more than it has filled treasuries. It has bred deadly feuds and perpetuated class hatreds. Many of the lands confiscated in Ireland two cen turies ago by Cromwell are yet the occasion of strife and bitterness: the heirs of the original owners believing themselves to-day justly entitled to those lands, and that any means of recovering them, rebellion inclusive, would be justifiable. ; ' I believe no man who is the true friend of our colored people would advise them to help themselves to the lands which had been wrested from their white neighbors by confiscation. I will not further insist upon the fact that confis cation shrivels and paralyzes the industry of the whole community subjected to its influence; but, in my judgment, if all the property of the Southern States were taken by confiscation to-morrow, and put up at auction, you could not get five hundred millions of dollars out of it and into the treasury. How fraud and perjury would flourish, what mountains of falsehood would be conjured up by the presence of general confiscation, I need not say. Instantly, every one who apprehended danger to his property would make a sham sale or trans fer of it to some loyal cousin or nephew whom he thinks he can trust, to be kept until the proper time for its safe restoration; when he might find that his trusted relative had concluded to keep it. So it has been, so it would be. All manner of deceit, fraud, corruption, and miscellaneous iniquity flourishes in trie presence of any attempt at general confiscation. SrEECII AT RICHMOND. 543 " I do not approve of appeals to any particular class, and I make no claim to be a special friend of the colored people ; but this I say, friends and coun trymen, since I have been here I have been more than ever before impressed with the exceeding cheapness of Virginia lands. I believe there are lands selling to-day near this city at ten dollai's per acre, which will be worth in a few years ten times that price ; and I say to all, if you can buy lands in Virginia and pay for them, buy them ; for they are certain to be dearer in the early future. I am confident buying lands is the cheapest way of getting them. I am confi dent that buying these lands is the cheapest possible mode of securing a home stead. Carlyle says that the great mistake of Rob Roy was his failure to re alize that he could obtain his beef cheaper in the grass market of Glasgow than by harrying the lowlands ; and he will repeat that mistake who fails to secure a farm by purchase to-day in Virginia, because he hopes to obtain one under some future act of confiscation. " I urge you, poor men of Virginia, whether white or black, to secure your selves homes of your own forthwith. If you can buy them here, do so, before the coming influx of immigration shall have rendered lands too dear. If not, strike off to the public lands, South, North, and West, and hew out for your selves homes as my ancestors did in New Hampshire, and as millions have done throughout the country. Become land-owners, all of you, so soon as you may. Own something which you can call a home. It will give you a deeper feeling of independence and of self-respect, and do not wait to obtain a home by confiscation. [Applause.] " ' Well,' says a Conservative, ' what you mean by all your talk is, that we may get back to self-government and representation in Congress, if we all be come Republicans arid vote the Radical ticket.' No, sir, I do not mean that. I heartily wish you were all Republicans ; for I believe the Republican party, while it has made some mistakes, and includes perhaps its fair share of the fools and rascals, does yet embody the nobler instincts and more generous as pirations of the American people. But many of you are not Republicans ; and I do not seek the votes of these for my ticket, except in so far as they shall be heartily converted to my faith. I expect the rest to vote what they call the* Conservative ticket; and I ask of them only: 1. That they interpose no ob stacle to any man's voting the Republican ticket who wants to; and, 2. That they select from their own ranks men who can take the oath prescribed by Congress, so that then- choice shall nowise emban-ass nor impede an early and complete reconstruction. Your way to restoration lies through the gate of obedience, and I entreat you to take it promptly and heartily. " Men of Virginia ! I entreat you to forget the years of slavery, and seces sion, and civil war, now happily past, in the hopeful contemplation of the bet ter days of freedom and union and peace, now opening before you. Forget that some of you have been masters, others slaves, some for disunion, others against it, and remember only that you are Virginians, and all now and henceforth freemen. Bear in mind that your State is the heart of a great Republic, not the frontier of a weaker Confederacy, and that your unequalled combination of soil, timber, minerals, and water-power fairly entitle you to a 544 RECONSTRUCTION. population of five millions before the close of this century. Consider that the natural highway of empire the shortest and easiest route from the Atlantic to the heart of the great valley lies up the James River and down the Kan- awha, and that this city, with its mill-power superior to any other in our coun try but that of St. Anthony's Falls on the Mississippi, ought to insure you a speedy development of manufactures surpassing any Lowell or Lawrence, with a population of at least half a million, before the close of this century. I ex hort you, then, Republicans and Conservatives, whites and blacks, to bury the dead past in mutual and hearty good-will, and in a general, united effort to promote the prosperity and exalt the glory of our long-distracted and bleed ing, but henceforth reunited, magnificent country ! " If there were those among the Republicans of the Northern States who disliked to see the editor of the Tribune assisting in the release of Jefferson Davis, there were none who could be insensi ble to the good sense and humanity of the speech which he was thus enabled to deliver in the capital of the late Confederacy. It appears to have astonished the people of Richmond, who have been hating an imaginary Horace Greeley for twenty-five years, to find that he was a human being. " We would not object," said the Richmond Whig, " to have him upon the jury if we were to be tried." Upon his return to New York, Mr. Greeley discovered that a large number of the Republican journals were criticising his con duct with severity, while others were damning him with faint praise. The action of some members of the Union League Club of the city of New York, of which he is a member, called out the following letter : "BY THESE PRESENTS, GREETING! "To MESSRS. GEORGE W. BLUNT, JOHN A. KENNEDY, JOHN 0. STONE, STEPHEN HYATT, and thirty others, members of the Union League Club : " GENTLEMEN : I was favored, on the 16th instant, by an official note from our ever-courteous President, John Jay, notifying me that a requisition had been presented to him for ' a special meeting of the Club at an early day, for the purpose of taking into consid eration the conduct of Horace Greeley, a member of the club, who has become a bondsman for Jefferson Davis, late chief officer of the Rebel government.' Mr. Jay continues : " ' As I have reason to believe that the signers, or some of them, disapprove of the conduct which they propose the Club shall consider, it is clearly due, LETTER TO THE UXION LEAGUE CLUB. 545 both to the Club and to yourself, that you should have the opportunity of being heard on the subject ; I beg, therefore, to ask on what evemng it will be con venient for you that I call the meeting,' &c., &c. " In my prompt reply I requested the President to give you rea sonable time for reflection, but assured him that / wanted none ; since I should not attend the meeting, nor ask any friend to do so, and should make no defence, nor offer aught in the way of self- vindication. I am sure my friends in the Club will not construe this as implying disrespect ; but it is not my habit to take part in any discussions which may arise among other gentlemen as to my fitness to enjoy their society. That is their affair altogether, and to them I leave it. " The single point whereon I have any occasion or wish to ad dress you is your virtual implication that there is something novel, unexpected, astounding, in my conduct in the matter suggested by you as the basis of your action.. I choose not to rest under this assumption, but to prove that you, being persons of ordinary intelli gence, must know better. On this point I cite you to a scrutiny of the record : " The surrender of General Lee was made known in this city at 11 P. M. of Sunday, April 9, 1865, and fitly announced in the Tribune of next morning, April 10th. On that very day I wrote, and next morning printed in these columns, a leader entitled ' Mag nanimity in Triumph,' wherein I said : " ' We hear men say: " Yes, forgive the great mass of those who have been misled into rebellion, but punish the leaders as they deserve." But who can accurately draw the line between leaders and followers in the premises ? By what test shall they be discriminated? .... Where is your touchstone of leadership ? We know of none. " ' Nor can we agree with those who would punish the original plotters of secession, yet spare their ultimate and scarcely willing converts. On the con trary, while we would revive or inflame resentment against none of them, we feel far less antipathy to the original upholders of " the resolutions of '98." to the disciples of Calhoun and McDuffie, to the nullifiers of 1832, and the " State Rights " men of 1850, than to the John Bells, Humphrey Marshalls, and Alexander H. H. Stuarts, who were schooled in the national faith, and who, in becoming disunionists and Rebels, trampled on the professions of a lifetime, and spurned the logic wherewith they had so often unanswerably demonstrated that secession was treason We consider Jefferson Davis this day a less culpable traitor than John Bell. " ' But we cannot believe it wise or well to take the life of any man who shall ii 546 RECONSTRUCTION*. have submitted to tne national authority. The execution of even one such would be felt as a personal stigma by every one who had ever aided the Rebel cause. Each would say to himself, "I am as culpable as he; we differ onlv in that I am deemed of comparatively little consequence." A single Confed erate led out to execution would be evermore enshrined in a million hearts as a conspicuous hero and martyr. We cannot realize that it would be whole some or safe we are sure it would not be magnanimous to give the over powered disloyalty of the South such a shrine. Would the throne of the house of Hanover stand more firmly had Charles Edward been caught and executed after Culloden? Is Austrian domination in Hungary more stable to-day for the hanging of Nagy Sandor and his twelve compatriots after the surrender of Vilagos ? " ' We plead against passions certain to be at this moment fierce and intol erant; but on our side are the ages and the voice of history. We plead for a restoration of the Union, against a policy which would afford a momentary gratification at the cost of years of perilous hate and bitterness " ' Those who invoke military execution for the vanquished, or even for their leaders, we suspect will not generally be found among the few who have long been exposed to unjust odium as haters of the South, because they ab horred slavery. And, as to the long-oppressed and degraded blacks, so lately the slaves, destined still to be the neighbors, and (we trust) at no distant day the fellow-citizens of the Southern whites. we are sure that their voice, could it be authentically uttered, would ring out decidedly, sonorously, on the side of clemency, of humanity.' il On the next day I had some more in this spirit, and on the 13th, an elaborate leader, entitled 'Peace, Punishment,' in the course of which I said : " ' The New York Times, doing injustice to its own sagacity in a character istic attempt to sail between wind and water, says : " Let us hang Jefferson Davis and spare the rest." .... We do not concur in the advice. Davis did not devise nor instigate the Rebellion ; on the contrary, he was one of the latest and most reluctant of the notables of the Cotton States to renounce definitively the Union. His prominence is purely official and representative.: the only reason for hanging him is that you therein condemn and stigmatize more per sons than in hanging any one else. There is not an ex-Rebel in the world no matter how penitent who will not have unpleasant sensations about the neck on the day when the Confederate President is to be hung. And to what good end? " ' We insist that this matter must not be regarded in any narrow aspect. We are most anxious to secure the assent of the South to emancipation; not that assent which the condemned gives to being hung when he shakes hands with his jailer and thanks him for past acts of kindness; but that hearty as sent which can only be won by magnanimity. Perhaps the Rebels, as a body, would have given, even one year ago, as large and as hearty a vote for hanging the writer of this article as any other man living; hence, it more especially LETTER TO THE UNION LEAGUE CLUB. 547 seems to him important to prove that the civilization based on free labor is of a higher and humaner type than that based on slavery. We cannot realize that the gratification to enure to our friends from the hanging of any one man, or fifty men, should be allowed to outweigh this consideration.' " On the following day I wrote again : " ' We entreat the President promptly to do and dare in the cause of mag nanimity. The Southern mind is now open to kindness, and may be mag netically affected by generosity. Let assurance at once be given that there is to be a general amnesty and no general confiscation. This is none the less the dictate of wisdom, because it is also the dictate of mercy. What we ask is, that the President say in effect, " Slavery having, through rebellion, committed suicide, let the North and the South unite to bury the carcass, and then clasp hands across the grave." ' " The evening of that day witnessed that most apalling calamity, the murder of President Lincoln, which seemed in an instant to curdle all the milk of human kindness in twenty millions of Ameri can breasts. At once insidious efforts were set on foot to turn the fury thus engendered against me, because of my pertinacious ad vocacy of mercy to the vanquished. Chancing to enter the Club- House the next (Saturday) evening, I received a full broadside of your scowls, ere we listened to a clerical harangue intended to prove that Mr. Lincoln had been providentially removed because of his notorious leanings toward clemency, in order to make way for a successor who would give the Rebels a full measure of stern justice. I was soon made to comprehend that I had no sympathiz ers or none who dared seem such in your crowded assem blage. And some maladroit admirer having, a few days afterward, made the Club a present of my portrait, its bare reception was re sisted in a speech from the chair by your then President, a speech whose vigorous invective was justified solely by my pleadings for lenity to the Rebels. "At once a concerted howl of denunciation and rage was sent up from every side against me by the little creatures whom G-od, for some inscrutable purpose, permits to edit a majority of our minor journals, echoed by a yell of ' Stop my paper ! ' from thousands of imperfectly instructed readers of the Tribune. One impudent puppy wrote me to answer categorically whether I was or was not in favor of hanging Jefferson Davis, adding that I must stop his paper if I were not ! Scores volunteered assurances that I was de fying public opinion; that most of my readers were against me; as 548 RECONSTRUCTION. if I could be induced to write what they wished said rather than what they needed to be told. I never before realized so vividly the baseness of the editorial vocation, according to the vulgar con ception of it. The din raised about my ears now is nothing to that I then endured and despised. I am humiliated by the reflection that it is (or was) in the power of such insects to annoy me, even by pretending to discover with surprise something that I have for years been publicly, emphatically proclaiming. " I must hurry over much that deserves a paragraph, to call your attention distinctly to occurrences in November last. Upon the Republicans having, by desperate effort, handsomely carried our State against a formidable-looking combination of recent and ven omous apostates with our natural adversaries, a cry arose from sev eral quarters that I ought to be chosen United States Senator. At once, kind, discreet friends swarmed about me, whispering, 'Only keep still about universal amnesty, and your election is certain. Just be quiet a few weeks, and you can say what you please thereafter. You have no occasion to speak now.' I slept on the well-meant suggestion, and deliberately concluded that I could not, in justice to myself, defer to it. I could not purchase office by even passive, negative dissimulation. No man should be enabled to say to me, in truth, 'If I had supposed you would persist in your rejected, condemned amnesty hobby, I would not have given you my vote.' So I wrote and published,, on the 27th of that month, my manifesto entitled 'The True Basis of Reconstruction/ wherein, repelling the idea that I proposed a dicker with the ex-Rebels, I explicitly said : " ' I am for universal amnesty, so far as immunity from fear of punishment or confiscation is concerned, even though impartial suffrage should, for the present, be defeated. I did think it desirable that Jefferson Davis should be arraigned and tried for treason ; and it still seems to me that this might prop erly have been done many months ago. But it was not done then ; and now I believe it would result in far more evil than good. It would rekindle pas sions that have nearly burned out or been hushed to sleep ; it would fearfully convulse and agitate the South; it would arrest the progress of reconciliation and kindly feeling there ; it would cost a large sum directly, and a far larger in directly; and, unless the jury were scandalously packed, it would result in a non-agreement or no verdict. I can imagine no good end to be subserved by such a trial ; and, holding Davis neither better nor worse than several others, would have him treated as they are.' "Is it conceivable that men who can read, and who were made LETTER TO THE UNION LEAGUE CLUB. 549 aware of this declaration, for most of you were present and shouted approval of Mr. Fessenden's condemnation of my views at the Club, two or three evenings thereafter, can now pretend that my aiding to have Davis bailed is something novel and unexpected? " Gentlemen > I shall not attend your meeting this evening. I have an engagement out of town, and shall keep it. I do not rec ognize you as capable of judging, or even fully apprehending me. You evidently regard me as a weak sentimentalist, misled by a maudlin philosophy. I arraign you as narrow-minded blockheads, who would like to be useful to a great and good cause, but don't know how. Your attempt to base a great, enduring party on the hate and wrath necessarily engendered by a bloody civil war, is as though you should plant a colony on an iceberg which had some how drifted into a tropical ocean. I tell you here, that, out of a life earnestly devoted to the good of human kind, your children will select my going to Richmond and signing that bail-bond as the wisest act, and will feel that it did more for freedom and humanity than all of you were competent to do, though you had lived to the age of Methuselah. " I ask nothing of you, then, but that you proceed to your end by a direct, frank, manly way. Don't sidle off into a mild resolu tion of censure, but move the expulsion which you purposed, and which I deserve, if I deserve any reproach whatever. All I care for is, that you make this a square, stand-up fight, and record your judgment by yeas and nays. I care not how few vote with me, nor how many vote against me ; for I know that the latter will re pent it in dust and ashes before three years have passed. Under stand, once for all, that I dare you and defy you, and that I propose to fight it out on the line that I have held from the day of Lee's surrender. So long as any man was seeking to overthrow our government, he was my enemy ; from the hour in which he laid down his arms, he was my formerly erring countryman. So long as any is at heart opposed to the national unity, the Federal author ity, or to that assertion of the equal rights of all men which has become practically identified with loyalty and nationality, I shall do my best to deprive him of power ; but, whenever he ceases to be thus, I demand his restoration to all the privileges of American citizenship. I give you fair notice, that I shall urge the re-enfran- chisemerit of those now proscribed for rebellion so soon as I shall 550 RECONSTRUCTION. feel confident that this course is consistent with the freedom of the blacks and the unity of the Republic, and that I shall demand a re call of all now in exile only for participating in the Rebellion, when ever the country shall have been so thoroughly pacified that its safety will not thereby be endangered. And so, gentlemen, hop ing that you will henceforth comprehend me somewhat better than you have done, I remain, "Yours, "HORACE GREELEY. "NEW YORK, May 23, 1867." The meeting of the Club was held at the time appointed, and continued in session for nearly four hours. Two hundred mem bers were present. The following resolutions were moved : " Whereas, It is declared in the articles of association of the Union League Club, that 'the primary object of the association shall be to discountenance and rebuke, by moral and social influences, all disloyalty to the Federal gov ernment,' and that ' to that end the members will use every proper means in public and private ' ; and " Whereas, Jefferson Davis has been known by all loyal men as the ruling spirit of that band of conspirators who urged the Southern States into rebel lion; as the chief enemy of the Republic, not more from the position which he occupied in the Rebel Confederacy than from the vindictive character of his official acts and utterances during four years of desolating civil war; and as one who knew of, if he did not instigate, a treatment of prisoners of war unwar ranted by any possible circumstances, unparalleled in the annals of civilized nations, and which, there is abundant evidence to prove, was deliberately de vised for the purpose of destroying them ; and " Whereas. Horace Greeley, a member of this Club, has seen fit to become a bondsman for this man, whose efforts were for many years directed to the overthrow of our government; therefore "Resolved. That this Club would do injustice to its past record, and to the high principle embodied in its articles of association, should it fail to express regret that one of its members had consented to perform an act of this nature. "Resolved, That this Club, while ready and anxious to vindicate the law of the land, cannot forget that there is also a sense of public decency to which it must defer; and that no one of its members, however eminent his services may have been in the cause of liberty and loyalty, can give aid and comfort to Jef ferson Davis without offering a cruel insult to the memory of the thousands of our countrymen who perished, the victims of his ambition. " Resolved, That the Union League Club disapprove of the act of Horace Greeley, in becoming the bondsman of Jefferson Davis. "Resolved. That these resolutions be published in the newspapers of this city, and that a copy of them be sent to Mr. Greeley." RESOLUTIONS OF UNION LEAGUE CLUB. 551 These resolutions were not adopted. The following Avas pro posed, and received a majority of the votes of those present: " Resolved, That there is nothing in the action of Horace Greeley, relative to the bailing of Jefferson Davis, calling for proceedings in this Club." CHAPTER XXXV. MISCELLANEOUS. Horace Greeley upon poetry and the poets He objects to being enrolled among the poets His advice to a country editor His religious opinions Upon marriage and divorce His idea of an American college How he would bequeath an estate How he be came a protectionist Advice to ambitious young men To the lovers of knowledge To young lawyers and doctors To country merchants How far he is a politician A toast Reply to begging letters. FROM a great heap of clippings, which have been accumulating for many years, I select a few which throw light upon the charac ter of the man. HIS PECULIAR OPINIONS RESPECTING POETRY. One of Mr. G-reeley's lectures is upon poetry and poets, and it contains some opinions so curious and original that I insert an outline of it: " All men, lie said, are born poets ; not that he meant to imply that every cradle held an undeveloped Shakespeare, far from it. But it was not the less true that young children were poets. The child who thought the stars were gimlet-holes to let the glory of heaven through, was a poet. The un- comipted child instinctively perceives the poetic element in nature. Every close observer must have noticed how naturally the unschooled child comes to talk poetically. Emerson says the man who fii-st called another a puppy or an ass was a poet, disceming in those animals the likeness of the individual, symbolic of his moral nature. Imagination and the poetic element are ever most fertile in the youth, whether of men or nations, and to this might be ascribed that wild extravagance of our popular stories, of the land being so fertile that if you planted a crow-bar overnight, in the morning it would be sprouting forth iron spikes and tenpenny nails, or of the pumpkin-vine that grew so fast that it outran the steed of the astonished traveller. The English man was so fenced in by forms and rules and conventionalities, that the poetic element was choked out of him. Hence, the English poets were more appre ciated in America than in England, and there were more Americans who read Scott and Byron, and, he believed, Shakespeare, than there were Englishmen. " The most vulgar error of a vulgar mind, with respect to poetry, was the confounding it with verse, or with even rhyme. Fond mothers would take from some secret drawer the cherished productions of her children, imagining that because they were in rhyme they were therefore poetry, when indeed HIS PECULIAR OPINIONS RESPECTING POETRY. 553 there was no more poetry in them than in an invitation to pass the baked po tatoes. To the fresh, unhackneyed soul, rhyme was as repulsive as a fools cap and bells. Many of the best poems were not written metrically. Bun- van's Pilgrim's Progress was the epic of Methodism, but he wrote hideous doggerel when he attempted verse, as the introduction to that work proved. There can scarcely be a surer proof that a youth has ceased to be a poet than when he begins to rhyme. Yet the poet of our day must be a vassal to the onerous rule. A wild colt of a young bardling will now and then spurn the yoke, as Donald Clark did, and Walt Whitman is doing; but the latter, though he had received the commendation of one of our greatest poets, would never receive sufficient notice from the critics to be knocked in the head by a vol ume of the Edinburgh Eeview. " The Book of Job the lecturer considered the simplest, grandest, as well as oldest of pastoral poems. David, the warrior-king, had bequeathed to us psalms in which were to be found a more fitting interpretation of our aspira tions and spiritual needs than in all the religious poets of the intervening ages. He reigns King of Psalmody till time shall be no more. " Of Greek poetry Mr. Greeley said he had no right to say much. The Greek epic held substantially the place of the modern novel. Greek life, as depicted by Homer, was rude and stern, and not distinguished for its vir tues. About the merit of Homer's poems, it might be imprudent to contradict the verdict of scholars who ranked them so high, but he would secretly cher ish his own opinion. Where was the youth, in England or this country, who sought a translation of the Iliad for amusing reading? There were ten copies of the Arabian Nights read for one of Homer. Still, we must be grateful to the epic for originating tragedy, ^Eschylus was the lineal child of Homer. " Of the Romans the lecturer said that they were never a poetic people. They had Horace, an Epicurean, philosophizing in verse ; Juvenal, a biting satirist; Virgil, a weaver of legendary lore, but the compositions of these writers smell of the land, while from the Augustan age to Dante there was nothing worth reading. One must be as devout a Catholic as Dante to enjoy his Inferno. "Proceeding to the consideration of English poetry, Mr. Greeley had noth ing to say in favor of Chaucer or Spenser. Whoever, he asked, sat down to read them otherwise than as a task ? For his part, he voted the Faerie Queene a bore. Let the gathering dust bury it out of sight. " Shakespeare he did not love, because of his Toryism, but was not insensi ble to his wonderful genius. His puns were, in the lecturer's opinion, mostly detestable, and his jokes sorry. He was an intense Tory. No autocrat born in the purple had a more thorough contempt for the rabble. With Shake-- speare only the court cards counted. His world was bounded by the fogs of London and the palace of Whitehall. He must have heard Raleigh and Drake, and other adventurous spirits, who had visited America, talk of the New World, and yet he never referred to any portion of it, except in that inaccu rate allusion 4 the still-vexed Berrnoothes/ He was no friend of the people. He saw in the million only the counters wherewith kings and nobles played 24 554 MISCELLANEOUS. their games, and lie did not recognize the possibility of their becoming any thing else. Mr. Greeley would not say which was the greater poet, but he would say that Milton was the better man. There was not a single passage iu Shakespeare which did his manhood such honor as Milton's two sonnets on his blindness. " Of the English poets, after Milton and prior to the present centuiy, Pope alone was deserving of mention. Not that he was a poet at all, but a very respectable philosopher. Of Goldsmith, Thomson, Gray, Young, Cowper, it might be said that they were not poets, but essayists and sermonizers. They have produced nothing which mankind could not well spare. Let them qui etly sink into oblivion. " Mr. Greeley gave Burns the praise of having written true poetry, after the ngs had been satiated with a heap of mediocre or worthless verse. In his poems might be found the fitting answer of the dumb millions to the taunts and slurs of Shakespeare. " Of the present poetical era Keats was the morning star. Byron held the highest place among modern poets, though the influence of much that he had written was bad. As Goethe could not have modelled his Mephistopheles on Byron's life, it had been said that Byron must have modelled his life on Goethe's Mephistopheles. Byron's life has never yet been properly written, and it would indeed be a difficult task to write a life of him that would suit the Sunday schools. u Coleridge, Rogers, Southey, Campbell, with the exception of one or two little poems of each, literature, the lecturer thought, could spare them all. Wordsworth was a remarkable instance of tenacity. He began his poetical life with a theory, and, though possessed of no remarkable powers, he per sisted in his theory, and finally conquered his critics. The credit of that theory, however, was not so much due to Wordsworth as to Mrs. Hemans, whose poetry Mr. Greeley greatly praised. "Of Hood he spoke in high terms. Tennyson he lauded warmly, instan cing the In Memoriam, The Princess, and Maud as foremost among the gems of English literature. u Of Robert Browning he said the reading public knows too little. Even in England he startled some of his judicious friends by saying that he was not inferior to Tennyson. He especially indicated the Blot in the Scutcheon, Pippa Passes, and Paracelsus as among the best poems of the century. Eliz abeth Barrett Browning, the wife of Robert, received due praise from Mr. Greeley, especially for her poem of Aurora Leigh." HE OBJECTS TO BEING ENROLLED AMONG THE POETS. HORACE GREE LEY TO ROBERT BONNER. "NEW YORK, February, 1859. " MR. BONNER: I perceive by your Ledger that you purpose to- publish a volume (or perhaps several volumes) made up of poems HE OBJECTS TO BEING ENROLLED AMONG THE POETS. 555 not contained in Mr. Dana's Household Book of Poetry, and I heartily wish success to your enterprise. There are genuine poems of moderate length which cannot be found in that collection, ex cellent as it palpably is, and superior in value, as I deem it, to any predecessor or yet extant rival. There are, moreover, some gen uine poets whose names do not figure in Mr. Dana's double index ; and I thank you for undertaking to render them justice ; only take care not to neutralize or nullify your chivalrous championship by burying them under a cartload of rhymed rubbish, such as my great namesake plausibly averred that neither gods nor men can abide, and you will have rendered literature a service and done justice to slighted merit. " But, Mr. Bonner, be good enough you must to exclude me from your new poetic Pantheon. I have no business therein, no right and no desire to be installed there. I am no poet, never was fin expression), and never shall be. True, I wrote some verses in my callow days, as I presume most persons who can make intelli gible pen-marks have done ; but I was never a poet, even in the mists of deluding fancy. All my verses, I trust, would not fill one of your pages ; they were mainly written under the spur of some local or personal incitement, which long ago passed away. Though in structure metrical, they were in essence prosaic: they were read by few, and those few have kindly forgotten them. Within the last ten years I have been accused of all possible and some im possible offences against good taste, good morals, and the common weal. I have been branded aristocrat, communist, infidel, hypo crite, demagogue, disunionist, traitor, corruptionist, &c., &c., but I cannot remember that any one has flung in my face my youthful transgressions in the way of rhyme. Do not, then, accord to the malice of my many enemies this forgotten means of annoyance. Let the dead rest ! and let me enjoy the reputation which I covet and deserve, of knowing poetry from prose, which the ruthless res urrection of my verses would subvert, since the undiscerning ma jority would blindly infer that / considered them poetry. Let me up ! " Thine, "HORACE GTREELEY." 556 MISCELLANEOUS. HORACE GREELEY'S ADVICE TO A COUNTRY EDITOR. " NEW YORK, April 3, 1860. " FRIEND FLETCHER : I have a line from you, informing me that you are about to start a paper at Sparta, and hinting that a line from me for its first issue would be acceptable. Allow me, then, as one who spent his most hopeful and observant years in a coun try printing-office, and who sincerely believes that the art of con ducting country (or city) newspapers has not yet obtained its ulti mate perfection, to set before you a few hints on making up an interesting and popular gazette for a rural district like yours. " I. Begin with a clear conception that the subject of deepest interest to an average human being is himself; next to that, he is most concerned about his neighbors. Asia and the Tongo Islands stand a long way after these in his regard. It does seem to me that most country journals are oblivious as to these vital truths. If you will, so soon as may be, secure a wide-awake, judicious cor respondent in each village and township of your county, some young lawyer, doctor, clerk in a store, or assistant in a post-office, who will promptly send you whatever of moment occurs in his vicinity, and will make up at least half your journal of local matter thus collected, nobody in the county can long do without it. Do not let a new church be organized, or new members be added to one already existing, a farm be sold, a new house be raised, a mill be set in motion, a store be opened, nor anything of interest to a dozen families occur, without having the fact duly though briefly chronicled in your columns. If a farmer cuts a big tree, or grows a mammoth beet, or harvests a bounteous yield of wheat or corn, set forth the fact as concisely and unexceptionably as possible. In due time, obtain and print a brief historical and statistical account of each township, - who first settled in it, who have been its prom inent citizens, who attained advanced years therein, &c. Record every birth as well as every marriage and death. In short, make your paper a perfect mirror of everything done in your county that its citizens ought to know ; and, whenever a farm is sold, try to ascertain what it brought at previous sales, and how it has been managed meantime. One year of this, faithfully followed up, will fix the value of each farm in the county, and render it as easily de termined as that of a bushel of corn. "II. Take an earnest and active, if not a leading, part in the HIS RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 557 advancement of home industry. Do your utmost to promote not only an annual county Fair, but town Fairs as well. Persuade each farmer and mechanic to send something to such Fairs, though it be a pair of well-made shoes from the one or a good ear of corn from the other. If any one undertakes a new branch of industry' in the county, especially if it be a manufacture, do not wait to be solicited, but hasten to give him a helping hand. Ask the people to buy his flour, or starch, or woollens, or boots, or whatever may be his product, if it be good, in preference to any that may be brought into the county to compete with him. Encourage and aid him to the best of your ability. By persevering in this course a few years, you will largely increase the population of your county and the value of every acre of its soil. " III. Don't let the politicians and aspirants of the county own you. They may be clever fellows, as they often are ; but, if you keep your eyes open, you will see something that they seem blind to, and must speak out accordingly. Do your best to keep the number of public trusts, the amount of official emoluments, and the consequent rate of taxation other than for common schools, as low as may be. Remember that in addition to the radical righteous ness of the thing the tax-payers take many more papers than the tax-consumers. " I would like to say more, but am busied excessively. That you may deserve and achieve success is the earnest prayer of " Yours, truly, " HORACE G-REELEY. " Tribune Office, New York." HIS RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. " NEW YORK, Sunday, February 10, 1855. "To THE EDITOR OF THE CHRISTIAN AMBASSADOR: tl MY DEAR SIR : I find in your issue of this date an extract from the Rome Excelsior, asserting that I am not a Universalist, to which you have appended an explicit denial. I could have wished that no necessity for such denial had arisen, and I am very sure that the Excelsior intended to state the truth. Yet its assertion, on whatever incidental expression or conversation it may have been based, is certainly erroneous. I have for thirty years ear nestly hoped and believed that our Father in heaven will, in his 558 MISCELLANEOUS. own good time, bring the whole human race into a state of willing and perfect reconciliation to himself and obedience to his laws, consequently one of complete and unending happiness. But as to the time when and the means whereby this consummation is to be attained, I have no immovable conviction ; though my views have generally accorded nearly with those held by the Unitarian Resto- rationists. In other words, I believe that the moral character formed in this life will be that in which we shall awake in the life to come, and that many die so deeply stained and tainted by lives of transgression and depravity, that a tedious and painful discipline must precede and prepare for their admission to the realms of eter nal purity and bliss. I can only guess that the Excelsior's article was based upon some conversation in which this expose of my be lief was prominently set forth. And yet I cannot recollect that I ever changed a word with its editor on the subject of theology. " Your statement that I am a member of Mr. Chapin's church organization, and a communicant therein, impels me to say that, though a member of his society from the day of his settlement among us, I am not technically a member of his church, but of that in Orchard Street, in which I was a pew-holder, until Dr. Sawyer's removal from our city to Clinton, when I attached myself to the society which is now Mr. Chapin's. And, believing the ordinance of the Lord's Supper, as now celebrated among us, a fearful imped iment to the progress and triumph of the principle of total absti nence from all that can intoxicate. I have for some time past felt it my .duty to abstain from it, awaiting and hoping for the day when Christians of every name shall realize that the blood of our Saviour is not truly represented by the compounds of vile and poisonous drugs commonly sold here as wine, nor yet by any liquid essen tially alcoholic, therefore intoxicating. If a few more would unite in this protest, we should soon have no other wine used in the Eu charist than that freshly and wholly expressed from grapes, a liquid no more intoxicating or poisonous than new milk or toast- water. And then we shall cease to hear of reformed drunkards corrupted and hurled back into the way of ruin by a vicious thirst reawakened at the communion-table. " Regretting both the necessity for and the length of this ex planation, I remain, Yours, " HORACE GREELEY. "REV. J. M. AUSTIN." HIS OPINION RESPECTING MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 559 HIS OPINION RESPECTING MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. " I am perfectly willing to see all social experiments tried that any earnest, rational being deems calculated to promote the well- being of the human family; but I insist that this matter of marriage and divorce has passed beyond the reasonable scope of experiment. The ground has all been travelled over and over, from indissolu ble -monogamic marriage down through polygamy, concubinage, easy divorce, to absolute free love, mankind have tried every possi ble modification and shade of relation between man and woman. If these multiform, protracted, diversified, infinitely repeated ex periments have not established the superiority of the union of one man to one woman for life, in short, marriage, to all other forms of sexual relation, then history is a deluding mist, and man has hitherto lived in vain. " But you assert that the people of Indiana are emphatically moral and chaste in their domestic relations. That may be : at all events, / have not yet called it in question. Indiana is yet a young State, not so old as either you or I, and most of her adult popula tion were born, and I think most of them were reared and married, in States which teach and maintain the indissolubility of marriage. That population is yet sparse, the greater part of it in moderate circumstances, engaged in rural industry, and but slightly exposed to the temptations born of crowds, luxury, and idleness. In such circumstances, continence would probably be general, even were marriage unknown. But let time and change do their work, and then see ! Given the population of Italy in the days of the Caesars, with easy divorce, and I believe the result would be like that ex perienced by the Roman Republic, which, under the sway of easy divorce, rotted away and perished, blasted by the mildew of un chaste mothers and dissolute homes. " If experiments are to be tried in the direction you favor, I in sist that they shall be tried fairly, not under cover of false prom ises and baseless pretences. Let those who will take each other on trial; but let such unions have a distinct name, as in Paris or Hayti, and let us know just who are married (old style), and who have formed unions to be maintained or terminated as circum stances shall dictate. Those who choose the latter will of course consummate it without benefit of clergy ; but I do not see how they need even so much ceremony as that of jumping the broom- 560 MISCELLANEOUS. stick. ' I 'II love you so long as I 'in able, and swear for no longer than this,' what need is there of any solemnity to hallow such a union ? What libertine would hesitate to promise that much, even if fully resolved to decamp next morning ? If man and woman are to be true to each other only so long as they shall each find con stancy the dictate of their several inclinations, there can be no such crime as adultery, and mankind have too long been defrauded of innocent enjoyment by priestly anathemas and ghostly maledic tions. Let us each do what for the moment shall give us pleasur able sensations, and let all such fantasies as Grod, duty, conscience, retribution, eternity, be banished to the moles and the bats, with other forgotten rubbish of bygone ages of darkness and unreal terrors. "But if as I firmly believe marriage is a matter which con cerns, not only the men and women who contract it, but the state, the community, mankind, if its object be not merely the mutual gratification and advantage of the husband and wife, but the due sustenance, nurture, and education of their children, if, in other words, those who voluntarily incur the obligations of parentage can only discharge those obligations personally and conjointly, and to that end are bound to live together in love at least until their youngest child shall have attained perfect physical and intellectual maturity, then I deny that a marriage can be dissolved save by death or that crime which alone renders its continuance impossi ble. I look beyond the special case to the general law, and to the reason which underlies that law ; and I say, no couple can inno cently take upon themselves the obligations of marriage until they KNOW that they are one in spirit, and so must remain forever. If they rashly lay profane hands on the ark, theirs alone is the blame; be theirs alone the penalty ! They have no right to cast it on that public which admonished and entreated them to forbear, but ad monished and entreated in vain." HIS IDEA OF AN AMERICAN COLLEGE. An address at the laying of the corner-stone of the People's Col lege, at Havana, in the State of New York, September 1, 1858. "FELLOW-CITIZENS AND FRIENDS: William Hazlitt, an eminent scholar and critic, writing some thirty or forty years since of the ignorance of the learned, says : HIS IDEA OF AN AMERICAN COLLEGE. 561 " ' Learning is the knowledge of that which none but the learned know. He is the most learned man who knows the most of what is furthest removed from common life and actual observation, that is of the least practical utility, and least liable to be brought to the test of experience, and that, having been handed down through the greatest number of intermediate stages, is the most full of uncertainties, difficulties, contradictions. It is seeing with the eyes of others, hearing with their ears, and pinning our faith on their understandings. The learned man prides himself on the knowledge of names and dates, not of men and things. He does not know whether his oldest acquaintance is a knave or a fool, but he can pronounce a pompous lecture on all the principal characters in history. He knows as much of what he talks about as a blind man does of colors.' " Such is the learning which the People's College is intended to supplant; such the ignorance which it is designed to dispel; such the reproach which it is intended to remove. " As one of the early and earnest, if not very efficient advocates of this College, allow me to state briefly the ideas and purposes which animated the pioneers in the enterprise of which we to-day celebrate the preliminary triumph. " I. The germinal idea of the People's College affirms the neces sity of a thorough and appropriate education for the practical man in whatever department of business or industry. The farmer, me chanic, manufacturer, engineer, miner, &c., &c., needs to understand thoroughly the materials he employs or moulds, and the laws which govern their various states and transmutations. In other words, a thorough mastery of geology, chemistry, and the related sciences, with their applications, is to-day the essential basis of fitness to lead or direct in any department of industry. This knowledge we need seminaries to impart, seminaries which shall be devoted mainly, or at least emphatically, to Natural Science, and which shall not re quire of their pupils the devotion of their time and mental energies to the study of the dead languages. I am not here to denounce or disparage a classical course of study. I trust and have no doubt that facilities for pursuing such a course will be afforded and im proved in this institution. I only protest against the requirement of, application to, and proficiency in, the dead languages of all col lege students, regardless of the length of time they may be able to devote to study, and of the course of life they meditate. A clas sical education may be very appropriate, even indispensable, for the embryo lawyer or clergyman, yet not at all suited to the wants of 24* jj 562 MISCELLANEOUS. the prospective farmer, artisan, or engineer. We want a seminary which recognizes the varying intellectual needs of all our aspiring youth, and suitably provides for them. We want a seminary which provides as fitly and thoroughly for the education of the 1 captains of industry,' as Yale or .Harvard does for those who are dedicated to either of the professions. "II. We seek and meditate a perfect combination of study with labor. Of course, this is an enterprise of great difficulty, destined to encounter the most formidable obstacles from false pride, natural indolence, fashion, tradition, and exposure to ridicule. It is deplor ably true that a large portion, if not even a majority, of our youth seeking a liberal education addict themselves to study in order that they may escape a life of manual labor, and would prefer not to study if they knew how else to make a Living without downright muscular exertion, but they do not; so they submit to be ground through academy and college, not that they love study or its intel lectual fruits, but that they may obtain a livelihood with the least possible sweat and toil. Of course, these will not be attracted by our programme, and it is probably well for us that they are not. But I think there is a class small, perhaps, but increasing who would fain study, not in order to escape their share of manual labor, but to qualify them to perform their part in it more efficiently and usefully ; not in order to shun work, but to qualify them to work to better purpose. They have no mind to be made drudges, but they have faith in the ultimate elevation of mankind above the ne cessity of life-long, unintermitted drudgery, and they aspire to do .something toward securing or hastening that consummation. They know that manual labor can only be dignified or elevated by ren dering it more intelligent and efficient, and that this cannot be so long as the educated and the intellectual shun such labor as fit only for boors. " Our idea regards physical exertion as essential to human devel opment, and productive industry as the natural, proper, God-given sphere of such exertion. Exercise, recreation, play, are well enough in their time and place ; but work is the divine provision for devel oping and strengthening the physical frame. Dyspepsia, debility, and a hundred forms of wasting disease are the results of ignorance or defiance of this truth. The stagnant marsh and the free, pure running stream aptly exemplify the disparity in health and vigor HIS IDEA OF AN AMERICAN COLLEGE. 563 between the worker and the idler. Intellectual labor, rightly di rected, is noble, far be it from me to disparage it, but it does not renovate and keep healthful the physical man. To this end, we insist, persistent muscular exertion is necessary, and, as it is always well that exercise should have purpose other than exercise, every human being not paralytic or bed-ridden should bear a part in manual labor, and the young and immature most of all. The brain- sweat of the student, the tax levied by study on the circulation and the vision, are best counteracted by a daily devotion of a few hours to manual labor. " Moreover, there are thousands of intellectual, aspiring youth who are engaged in a stern wrestle with poverty, who have no relatives who can essentially aid them, and only a few dollars and their own muscles between them and the almshouse. These would gladly qualify themselves for the highest usefulness ; but how shall they ? If they must give six months of each year to teaching, or some other vocation, in order to provide means for pursuing their studies through the residue of the year, their progress must be slow indeed. But bring the study and the work together, let three or four hours of labor break up the monotony of the day's lessons, and they may pursue their studies from New Year's to Christmas, and from their sixteenth year to their twenty-first respectively, should they see fit, without serious or damaging interruption. I know that great difficulties are to be encountered, great obstacles surmounted, in the outset; but I feel confident that each student of sixteen years or over, who gives twenty hours per week to man ual labor at this College, may earn at least one dollar per week from the outset, and ultimately two dollars, and in some cases three dol lars per week by such labor. How welcome an accession to his scanty means many a needy student would find this sum I need not insist on. And when it is considered that this modicum of la bor would at the same time conduce to his health, vigor, and phys ical development, and tend to qualify him for usefulness and inde pendence in after life, I feel that the importance and the beneficence of the requirement of manual labor embodied in the constitution of this College cannot be overestimated. " III. Another idea cherished by the friends of this enterprise was that of justice to woman. They did not attempt to indicate nor to define woman's sphere, to decide that she ought or ought 564 MISCELLANEOUS. not to vote or sit on juries, to prescribe how she should dress, nor what should be the limits of her field of life-long exertion. They did not assume that her education should be identical with that of the stronger sex, nor to indicate wherein it should be pecu liar ; but they did intend that the People's College should afford equal facilities and opportunities to young women as to young men, and should proffer them as freely to the former as to the lat ter, allowing each student, under the guidance of his or her parents, with the counsel of the faculty, to decide for him or herself what studies to pursue and what emphasis should be given to each. They believed that woman, like man, might be trusted to deter mine for herself what studies were adapted to her needs, and what acquirements would most conduce to her own preparation for and efficiency in the duties of active life. They held the education of the two sexes together to be advantageous if not indispensable to both, imparting strength, earnestness, and dignity to woman, and grace, sweetness, and purity to man. They believed that such commingling in the halls of learning would animate the efforts and accelerate the progress of the youth of either sex, through the influ ence of the natural and laudable aspiration of each to achieve and enjoy the good opinion of the other. They believed that the mere aspect of a college whereto both sexes are welcomed as students would present a strong contrast to the naked, slovenly, neglected, ungraceful, cheerless appearance of the old school colleges, which would furnish of itself a strong argument in favor of the more gen erous plan. I trust this idea of the pioneers will not be ignored by their successors. "Friends, a noble beginning has here been made ; may the enter prise be vigorously prosecuted to completion. To this end, it is necessary that means should be provided, that the wealthy of their abundance and the poorer according to their ability should contribute to the founding and endowment of the noble institution whose corner-stone we have just laid. Let each contribute who can, and a seminary shall here be established which shall prove a blessing, and the parent of kindred blessings, to your children and your children's children throughout future time." HOW HE WOULD BEQUEATH AN ESTATE. 565 WHAT HE WOULD DO IF HE HAD A LARGE ESTATE TO BEQUEATH. " To THE EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK TRIBUNE : " SIR : An unmarried man, who has passed the meridian of life, who has gained his plum, and made provision for the attendants who have served him diligently through the summer of life, feels desirous of making the best use of the substance he may leave, and would ask as a special favor of the editors (in whom he has the utmost confidence) what disposition it is best to make of it. Please reply through the medium of your journal, and oblige, "A CONSTANT READER." "REPLY. "I. If we had ' a plum ' to dispose of, and were as unfettered in its disposition as our ' reader ' would seem to be, we would, first of all things, establish in this city a Universal Free Intelligence Office, that is, an office to which any person or company in any part of the world might freely apply for laborers in any capacity, and to which persons of each sex and of whatever capacity or condition might freely apply at all times for work. At this office let the names of all who want employment be duly inscribed, stating, 1. What they know how to do well ; 2. What they would prefer to do ; 3. What wages will satisfy them ; and 4. Where they may be seen or addressed when not at the office, and at what hour of each day they will call at said office until engaged. Here let also the names of all who want teachers, clerks, copyists, farmers, gar deners, laborers, cooks, nurses, seamstresses, &c., be inscribed in another set of books, setting forth their respective locations, re quirements, and what they are willing to pay, and to whom refer ence may be made in the city with regard to their character and responsibility. Such an office, wherein all who want work and all who want workers should be brought freely into communication with each other, would, at a cost of less than $ 10,000 per annum,- save the poor the $ 100,000 or over that they now pay to Intelli gence Offices, and serve them ten times as well as these do or can. It would add largely to the industrial efficiency of our country, by reducing the sum of involuntary idleness to a minimum, and send back to the cornfields and meadows which need them, thousands of youth who now idly, wastefully, perilously haunt our pave ments, hoping to be employed as clerks, copyists, teachers, &c., when there is no demand for their services in any such capacity. " II. If our ' reader ' does not incline to the good work above in* 50 G MISCELLANEOUS. dicated, or is able to do that and something more, or his kind pur pose is emulated by some one else who has wealth at command, we would earnestly urge the importance of establishing a Free University, not one wherein aspiring youth may be educated at others' cost, but one wherein youth of either sex may earn their own tuition and subsistence during the years, few or many, which they may see fit to devote to study. This country should have at least one hundred seminaries to which any youth eager to learn and willing to work might repair at any time after his or her fif teenth year, and there, alternating from work to study daily, being credited for his work, and charged for his room, tuition, and board, remain two, four, or six years, and find a small balance in his favor on making up his account when preparing to leave. One person, being specially energetic and skilful, might pay his way by three hours' work per day ; others might have to work five to insure the same result; but so long as food, clothing, shelter, &c., are the product of human muscles, it ought to be easy for those who desire to study, yet have no other means than their own God-given fac ulties, to acquire a thorough education, paying for it as they re ceive it. We have in our State an embryo of such a seminary in 'The People's College' (for further information, address Amos Brown, Havana, N. Y.), and there are some kindred beginnings in Illinois, Kansas, and other quarters. Let our ' Constant Reader ' make himself familiar with these, and, if none of them proves satis factory, let him, or some one like him, establish a better. What ever faults may be developed in this or that plan, or its execution, the idea of self-supporting education is a noble one, and will yet be realized. And, if there only were fifty colleges in which youth who aspire to knowledge, but are unblessed (or uncursed) with .property, could pursue a thorough course of study, and pay their way throughout by their own labor, we believe they would all be filled with students within a year. ' It is the first step that costs ' ; and when one such institution shall have been established, and shall have proved that study and labor are by no means incompat ible, the other forty -nine will easily and rapidly follow. Will not our ' Constant Reader,' and other constant or occasional readers, be moved to do something toward this great and necessary work of rendering the highest and most thorough education accessible to .the poorest youth, so that they be willing to work for it ? " HOW HE BECAME A PROTECTIONIST. 567 HOW HE BECAME A " PROTECTIONIST." From an address on taking the chair as President of the " Amer ican Institute," in 1866: " It is now more than thirty-four years since I, a minor and a stranger in this city, had my attention drawn to a notice in the journals that the friends of protection to American industry were to meet that day in convention at the rooms of the American In stitute, said Institute being then much younger than, though not so obscure as, I was. I had no work, and could find none : so, feel ing a deep interest in and devotion to the cause which that con vention was designed to promote, I attended its sittings ; and this was my first introduction to the American Institute ; which I have ever since esteemed and honored, though the cares and labors of a busy, anxious life have not allowed me hitherto to devote to its meetings the time that I would gladly have given them. " I recur to the fact that I was drawn to the American Institute by my interest in and sympathy with the cause of protection to home industry. From early boyhood I had sat at the feet of Hez- ekiah Niles and Henry Clay and Walter Forward and Eollin 0. Mallory, and other champions of this doctrine, and I had attained from a perusal of theirs and kindred writings and speeches a most undoubting conviction that the policy they commended was emi nently calculated to impel our country swiftly and surely onward through activity and prosperity to greatness and assured well- being. I had studied the question dispassionately, for the jour nals accessible to my boyhood were mainly those of Boston, then almost if not quite unanimously hostile to protection ; but the argu ments they combated seemed to me far stronger than those they advanced, and I early became an earnest and ardent disciple of the school of Niles and Clay. I could not doubt that the policy they commended was that best calculated to lead a country of vast and undeveloped resources, like ours, up from rude poverty and depen dence, to skilled efficiency, wealth, and power. And the convic tions thus formed have been matured and strengthened by the observations and experience of subsequent years. Thus was I attracted to the rooms and the counsels of the American Institute." 568 MISCELLANEOUS. HIS ADVICE TO AMBITIOUS YOUNG MEN. "'I want to go into business,' is the aspiration of our young men ; ' can't you find me a place in the city ? ' their constant in quiry. * Friend,' we answer to many, l the best business you can go into you will find on your father's farm, or in his workshop. If you have no family or friends to aid you, and no prospect opened to you there, turn your face to the Great West, and there build up a home and fortune. But dream not of getting suddenly rich by speculation, rapidly by trade, or anyhow by a profession : all these avenues are choked by eager, struggling aspirants, and ten must be trodden down in the press, where one can vault upon his neighbor's shoulders to honor or wealth Above all, be neither afraid nor ashamed of honest industry ; and if you catch yourself fancying anything more respectable than this, be ashamed of it to the last day of your life. Or, if you find yourself shaking more cordially the hand of your cousin the congressman than of your uncle the blacksmith, as such, write yourself down an enemy to the princi ples of our institutions, and a traitor to the dignity of humanity.' " TO THE LOVERS OF KNOWLEDGE. " Avoid the pernicious error that you must have a profession, must be a clergyman, lawyer, doctor, or something of the sort, in order to be influential, useful, respected ; or, to state the case in its best aspect, that you may lead an intellectual life. Nothing of the kind is necessary, very far from it. If your tendencies are intellectual, if you love knowledge, wisdom, virtue, for them selves, you will grow in them, whether you earn your bread by a profession, a trade, or by tilling the ground. Nay, it may be doubted whether the farmer or mechanic, who devotes his leisure hours to intellectual pursuits from a pure love of them, has not some advantages therein over the professional man. He comes to his book at evening with his head clear and his mental appetite sharpened by the manual labors, taxing lightly the spirit or brain ; while the lawyer, who has been running over dry books for prece dents, the doctor, who has been racking his wits for a remedy adapted to some new modification of disease, or the divine, who, immured in his closet, has been busy preparing his next sermon, may well approach the evening volume with faculties jaded and palled." TO COUNTRY MERCHANTS. 569 TO YOUNG LAWYERS AND DOCTORS. " Qualify yourselves at college to enlighten the farmers and mechanics among whom you settle in the scientific principles and facts which un derlie their several vocations. The great truths of geology, chemis try, &c., &c., ought to be well known to you when your education is completed, and these, if you have the ability to impart and eluci date them, will make you honorably known to the inhabitants of any county wherein you may pitch your tent, and will thus insure you a subsistence from the start, and ultimately professional em ployment and competence. Qualify yourself to lecture accurately and fluently on the more practical and important principles of Nat ural Science, and you will soon find opportunities, auditors, cus tomers, friends. Show the farmer how to fertilize his fields more cheaply and effectively than he has hitherto done, teach the builder the principles and more expedient methods of heating and ventilation, tell the mason how to correct, by understanding and obeying nature's laws, the defect which makes a chimney smoke at the wrong end, and you need never stand idle, nor long await remunerating employment." TO COUNTRY MERCHANTS. " The merchant's virtue should be not merely negative and ob structive, it should be actively beneficent. He should use oppor tunities afforded by his vocation to foster agricultural and mechan ical improvement, to advance the cause of education, and diffuse the principles, not only of virtue, but of refinement and correct taste. He should be continually on the watch for whatever seems calcu lated to instruct, ennoble, refine, dignify, and benefit the community in which he lives. He should be an early and generous patron of useful inventions and discoveries, so far as his position and means will permit. He should be a regular purchaser of new and rare books, such as the majority will not buy, yet ought to read, with a view to the widest dissemination of the truths they unfold. If located in the country, he should never visit the city to replenish his stock, without endeavoring to bring back something that will afford valuable suggestions to his customers and neighbors. If these are in good part farmers, and no store in the vicinity is de voted especially to this department, he should be careful to keep a 570 MISCELLANEOUS. supply of the best ploughs and other implements of farming, as well as the choicest seeds, cuttings, &c., and those fertilizing sub stances best adapted to the soil of his township, or most advan tageously transported thither; and those he should be very willing to sell at cost, especially to the poor or the penurious, in order to encourage their general acceptance and use. Though he make no profit directly on the sale of these, he is indirectly but substantially benefited by whatsoever shall increase the annual production of his township, and thus the ability of his customers to purchase and consume his goods. The merchant whose customers and neighbors are enabled to turn off three, five, seven, or nine hundred dollars' worth of produce per annum from farms which formerly yielded but one or two hundred dollars' worth, beyond the direct consump tion of their occupants, is in the true and safe road to competence and wealth if he knows how to manage his business. Every wild wood or waste morass rendered arable and fruitful, every field made to grow fifty bushels of grain per acre where but fifteen or twenty were formerly realized, is a new tributary to the stream of his trade, and so clearly conducive to his prosperity." IN WHAT SENSE HE CONSIDERS HIMSELF A POLITICIAN. " If the designation of politician is a discreditable one, I trust I have done nothing toward making it so. If to consider not only what is desirable, but what is possible as well, if to consider in what order desirable ends can be attained, and attempt them in that order, if to seek to do one good so as not to undo another, if either or all of these constitute one a politician, I do not shrink from the appellation." HORACE GREELEY'S TOAST, SENT TO A "KNOW-NOTHING" BANQUET. " The Comrades of Washington, Let us remember that, while the ' foreigners ' Montgomery and Pulaski died gloriously, fighting for our freedom, while Lafayette, Hamilton, and Steuben proved nobly faithful to the end, the traitor Arnold and the false ingrate Burr were sons of the soil, facts which only prove that virtue is bounded by no geographical limits, and treachery peculiar neither to the native nor the immigrant." HIS REPLY TO A BEGGING LETTER. 571 HIS REPLY TO A BEGGING LETTER. To THE EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK TRIBUNE: MY DEAR SIR: The young gentlemen of the Philologian Literary So ciety of the Masonic College request me to tender their sincere regards to you and ask if you will be so kind as to donate to them a copy of the Weekly Tribune. The Society consists of fifty students, who are anxious to form, for their sole benefit, a reading-room in their hall. " While we all abhor your principles, we respect you as a talented and hon orable foe ; and your paper would be cheerfully welcomed in our hall, not for the principles which it advocates, but for the ability with -which they are promulgated. Be assured, sir, that we will all feel under many obligations if you will make us such a present. With gratitude and respect, " S. C. H., Corresponding Secretary. " LEXINGTON, Mo., January 30, 1855." "REPLY. "MR. SECRETARY: Among those 'principles' which you say you abhor, this one is prominent, namely, that God having wisely and benignly ordered his universe that Something can never be ac quired for Nothing, that ' so much for so much ' is the eternal and immutable law, man should conform his conduct to this be neficent law. The robber, the swindler, the beggar, the slave holder, all vainly suppose that there is some other way of acquir ing and enjoying the products of other men's labor than by paying for it; but God says no, and he will be obeyed. Steal, cheat, beg, or enslave as you may, you can at best but postpone payment, it will at last be exacted with fearful usury. In short, as there is no other proper way, so there is no other way so cheap, when we desire aught that is produced by the labor of others, as to fork over the needful. lay it right down on the nail. You will see, there fore, that those detested principles, which you are at liberty hence forth to abhor more than ever, forbid my complying with your delicately worded request. " EDITOR TRIBUNE." HIS REPLY TO ANOTHER. A. B. TO HORACE GREELEY. "DEAR SIR: In your extensive correspondence, you have undoubtedly secured several autographs of the late distinguished American poet, Edgar A. Poe. If so, will you please favor me with one, and oblige, " Yours, respectfully, "A.B." 572 MISCELLANEOUS. HORACE GREELEY TO A. B. " DEAR SIR : I happen to have in my possession but one auto graph of the late distinguished American poet, Edgar A. Poe. It consists of an I. 0. U., with my name on the back of it. It cost me just $ 50, and you can have it for half price. "Yours, " HORACE GREELEY." CHAPTER XXXVI. CONCLUSION. Mr. Greeley's appearance and phrenology A visit to his residence His ambition He does, not count majorities. HORACE GTREELEY, in this year 1867, is fifty-five years of age. He stands five feet ten and a- half inches, and weighs, perhaps, one hundred and fifty-five pounds. He stoops a little, and in walking he swings from side to side, something in the manner of a plough man. Seen from behind, he looks, as he walks with head de pressed, bended back, and swaying gait, like^an old man ; an illu sion which is heightened, if a stray lock of white hair escapes from under his hat. But the expression of his face is singularly and engagingly youthful. His complexion is extremely fair, and a smile plays ever upon his countenance. His head, measured round the organs of Individuality and Philoprogenitiveness, is twenty- three and a half inches in circumference, which is considerably larger than the average. His forehead is round and full, and rises into a high and ample dome. The hair is white, inclining to red at the ends, and thinly scattered over the head. Seated in com pany, with his hat off, he looks not unlike the " Philosopher " he is often called ; no one could take him for a common man. According to the Phrenological Journal, his brain is very large, in the right place, well balanced, and of the best form, long, nar row, and high. It indicates, says the same authority, small animal- ity and selfishness, extreme benevolence, natural nobleness, and loftiness of aim. His controlling organs are Adhesiveness, Benev olence, Firmness, and Conscientiousness. Reverence is small; De- structiveness and Acquisitiveness less. Amativeness and Philo progenitiveness are fully developed. The Love of Approbation is prominent; Self-Esteem not so. Resistance and Moral Courage are very full; Secretiveness full; Cautiousness large; Continuity small; Ideality fair; Taste very small; Imitation small; Mirthful- ness very large; Eventuality and Comparison large; Language good; Reasoning better; Agreeableness deficient; Intuition great; 574 CONCLUSION. Temperament active. His body, adds the Phrenologist, is not enough for his head. In manner, Horace Greeley is still a rustic. The Metropolis has not been able to make much impression upon him. He lives amidst the million of his fellow-citizens, in their various uniforms, an unas- similated man. I have seen Horace Greeley in Broadway on Sunday morning with a hole in his elbow and straws clinging to his hat. I have seen him asleep while Alboni was singing. When he is asked re specting his health, he answers sometimes by the single word "stout," and there the subject drops. He is a man who might save a nation, but never learn to tie a cravat ; no, not if Brummell gave him a thousand lessons. A young gentleman who visited him on a Saturday evening, some years ago, thus relates the interview : " In point of pretension, Horace Greeley's house is about midway between the palaces of the Fifth Avenue and the hovels of the Five Points. It is one of a row of rather small houses, two and a half stories high, built of brick, and painted brown ; the rent of which, I was told, is likely to be about seven hundred dollars a year. It was a chilly, disagreeable evening. I went early, hoping to have a little talk with the editor before other company should arrive. I rang the bell, and looked through the pane at the side of the door. The white coat was not upon its accustomed peg, and the old hat stuffed with newspapers was not in its usual place at the bottom of the hat-stand. Therefore I knew that the wearer of these arti cles was not at home, before the ' girl ' told me so ; but, upon her informing me that he was expected in a few minutes, I concluded to go in and wait. The entrance-hall is exceedingly narrow, and the stairs, narrower still, begin at a few feet from the door, afford ing room only for the hat-stand and a chair. The carpet on the stairs and hall was common in pattern, coarse in texture. A lady, the very picture of a prosperous farmer's wife, with her clean de laine dress and long, wide, white apron, stood at the head of the stairs, and came down to meet me. She lighted the gas in the parlors, and then, summoned by the crying of a child up stairs, left me to my observations. " Neither I nor anybody else ever saw parlors so curiously fur nished. There are three of them, and the inventory of the furni- A VISIT TO HIS RESIDENCE. 575 ture would read thus : One small mahogany table at the head of the front parlor ; one lounge in ditto ; eleven light cane-chairs in front and back parlors; one bookcase of carved black-walnut in the small apartment behind the back parlor; and, except the carpets, not another article of furniture in either room. But the walls were almost covered with paintings; the mantel-pieces were densely peopled with statuettes, busts, and medallions ; in a corner on a pedestal stood a beautiful copy of Powers' s Proserpine in marble ; and various other works of art were disposed about the floor or leaned against the walls. Of the quality of the pictures I could not, in that light, form an opinion. The subjects of more than half of them were religious, such as, the Virgin ; Peter, lovest thou me ? Christ crowned with thorns ; Mary, Joseph, and Child ; Vir gin and Child ; a woman praying before an image in a cathedral ; Mary praying ; Hermit and Skull ; and others. There were some books upon the table, among them a few annuals containing con tributions by Horace G-reeley, volumes of Burns, Byron, and Haw thorne, Downing's Rural Essays, West's complete analysis of the Holy Bible, and Ballou's Voice of Universalism. " I waited an hour. There came a double and decided ring at the bell. No one answered the summons. Another and most tre mendous ring brought the servant to the door, and in a moment the face of the master of the house beamed into the room. He apologized thus : ' I ought to have been here sooner, but I could n't.' He flung off his overcoat, hung it up in the hall, and, looking into the parlor, said, ' Just let me run up and see my babies one min ute ; I have n't seen 'em all day, you know ' ; and he sprung up the stairs two steps at a time. I heard him talk in high glee to the children in the room above for just ' one minute,' and then he re joined me. He began to talk something in this style : " ' Sit down. I have had a rough day of it, eaten nothing since breakfast, just got in from my farm, been up the country lec turing. started from G-oshen this morning at five, broke down, crossed the river on the ice, had a hard time of it, ice a good deal broken and quite dangerous, lost the cars on this side, went dogging around to hire a conveyance, got to Sing Sing, went over to my farm and transacted my business there as well as I could in the time, started for the city, and as luck would have it, they had taken off the four o'clock train, did n't know that I 576 CONCLUSION. should get down at all, harnessed up my own team, and pushed over to Sing Sing again, hadn't gone far before snap went the whiffletree, got another though, and reached Sing Sing just two minutes before the cars came along, I 've just got in, niy feet are cold, let 's go to the fire.' "With these words, he rose quickly and went into the back room, not to the fireplace, but to a corner near the folding-door, where hot air gushed up from a cheerless round hole in the floor. His dress, as I now observed, amply corroborated his account oi the day's adventures, shirt all crumpled, cravat all awry, coat all wrinkles, stockings about his heels, and general dilapidation. " I said it was not usual at the West to go into a corner to warm one's feet; to which he replied by quoting some verses of Holmes which I did not catch. I entreated him to go to tea, as he must be hungry, but he refused 'pine blank.' The conversation fell upon poetry. He said there was one more book he should like to make before he died, and that was a Song-Book for the People. There was no collection of songs in existence which satisfied his idea of what a popular song-book ought to be. He should like to compile one, or help do it. He said he had written verses himself, but was no poet; and bursting into a prolonged peal of laughter, he added, that when he and Park Benjamin were editing the New-Yorker, he wrote some verses for insertion in that paper, and showed them to 'Park,' and 'Park' roared out, 'Thunder and lightning, Greeley, do you call that poetry ? ' Speaking of a certain well-known versi fier, he said : ' He 's a good fellow enough, but he can't write po etry, and if had remained in Boston, he would have killed him, he takes criticism so hard. As for me, I like a little opposi tion, I enjoy it, I can't understand the feeling of those thin-skinned people.' " I said I had been looking to see what books he preferred should lie on his table. 'I don't prefer,' he said; 'I read no books. I have been trying for years to get a chance to read Wilhelm Meis- ter, and other books. Was Goethe a dissolute man ? ' To which I replied with a sweeping negative. This led the conversation to biography, and he remarked: ' How many wooden biographies there are about. They are of no use. There are not half a dozen good biographies in our language. You know what Carlyle says : "I want to know what a man eats, what time he gets up, what color A VISIT TO HIS RESIDENCE. 577 his stockings are " ? ' (His, on this occasion, were white, with a hole in each heel.) ' There 's no use in any man's writing a biog raphy unless he can tell what no one eke can tell.' Seeing me glance at his pictures, he said he had brought them from Italy, but there was only one or two of them that he boasted of. " A talk upon politics ensued. He said he had had enough of party politics. He would speak for temperance, and labor, and agriculture, and some other objects, but he was not going to stump the country any more to promote the interest of party or candi dates. In alluding to political persons he used the utmost freedom of vituperation, but there was such an evident absence of anger and bitterness on hie part, that if the vituperated individuals had overheard the conversation, they would not have been offended, but amused. Speaking of association, he said, * Ah ! our working- men must be better educated ; we must have better schools ; they must learn, to confide in one another more; then they will asso ciate,' Then, laughing, he added, ' If you know anybody afflicted with democracy, tell him to join an association ; that will cure him if anything will ; still, association will triumph in its day, and in its own way,' In. reply to G- 's definition of Webster as * a petty man,- with petty objects, sought by petty means,' he said, ' I call him a but his last reply to Hayne was the biggest speech yet made; it's only so long,' pointing to a place on his arm, *but it's very great' Another remark on another subject elicited from him the energetic assertion that the ' invention of the key was the Devil's masterpiece,' Alluding to a recent paragraph of his, I said I thought it the best piece of English he had ever written. 1 No,' he replied, ' there 's a bad repetition in it of the word sober in the same sentence ; I can write better English than that.' I told him of the project of getting half a dozen of the best men and wo men of the country to join in preparing a series of school reading- books. He said, ^ They would be in danger of shooting over the heads of the children.' To which I replied, 'No; it is common men who do that ; great men are simple, and akin to children.' " A little child, four years old, with long flaxen hair and rud-dy cheeks, came in and said, * Mother wants you up stairs.' He caught it up in his arms with every manifestation of excessive fondness, saying, * No, you rogue, it 's you that want him ' ; and the child wriggled out of his arms and ran away. 25 KK 578 CONCLUSION. " As I was going, some ladies came in, and I remained a moment longer, at his request. He made a languid and quite indescribable attempt at introduction, merely mentioning the names of the ladies with a faint bob at each. One of them asked a question about Spir itualism. He said, ' I have paid no attention to that subject for two years. I became satisfied it would lead to no good. In fact, I am so taken up with the things of this world, that I have too little time to spend on the affairs of the other.' She said, ' A distinction ought to be made between those who investigate the phenomena as phenomena, and those who embrace them fanatically.' 'Yes,' said he, ' I have no objection to their being investigated by those who have more time than I have.' 'Have you heard,' asked the lady, ' of the young man who personates Shakespeare ? ' ' No,' he replied, ' but I am satisfied there is no folly it will not run into.' Then he rose and said, ' Take off your things and go up stairs. I must get some supper, for I have to go to that meeting at the Tabernacle to-night ' (anti-Nebraska). " As I passed the hat-stand in the hall, I said, ' Here is that im mortal white coat.' He smiled and said, ' People suppose it 's the same old coat, but it is n't.' I looked questioningly, and he con tinued, l The original white coat came from Ireland. An emigrant brought it out ; he wanted money and I wanted a coat ; so I bought it of him for twenty dollars, and it Was the best coat I ever had. They do work well, in the old countries ; not in such a hurry as we do.' " The door closed, and I Was alone with the lamp-post. In an other hour, Horace G-reeley, after such a day of hunger and fatigue, was speaking to an audience of three thousand people in the Tabernacle." This narrative, with other glimpses previously afforded, will per haps give the reader a sufficient insight into Horace Greeley's hur ried, tumultuous way of life. Not every day, however, is as hurried and tumultuous as this. Usually, he rises at seven o'clock, having returned from the office about midnight. He takes but two meals a day, breakfast at eight, dinner when he can get it, generally about four. Tea and coffee he drinks never ; cocoa is his usual beverage. To depart from his usual routine of diet, or to partake of any viand which experience has shown to be injurious, he justly denominates a "sin/ T and HIS AMBITION. 579 " groans " over it with very sincere repentance. A public dinner is one of his peculiar aversions; and, indeed, it may be questioned whether human nature ever presents itself in a light more despica ble than at a public dinner, particularly towards the close of the entertainment. Mr. Greeley is a regular subscriber to the New York Tribune, and pays for it at the usual rate. As soon as it ar rives in the morning, he begins the perusal of that interesting paper, and examines every department of it with great care, bestowing upon each typographical error a heartfelt anathema. His letters arrive. They vary in number from twenty to fifty a day ; every letter requiring an answer is answered forthwith ; and, not unfre- quently, twenty replies are written and despatched by him in one morning. In the intervals of work, there is much romping with the children. But two are left to him out of six* Toward noon, or soon after, the editor is on his way to his office. Mr. Greeley has few intimate friends and no cronies. He gives no parties, attends few; has no pleasures, so called; and suffers little pain. In some respects, he is exceedingly frank ; in others, no man is more reserved. For example, his pecuniary affairs, around which most men throw an awful mystery, he has no scru ples about revealing to any passing stranger, or even to the public ; and that .in the fullest detail. But he can keep a secret with any man living, and he seldom talks about what interests him most. Margaret Fuller had a passion for looking at the naked souls of her friends ; and she often tried to get a peep into the inner bosom of Horace G-reeley ; but he kept it buttoned close against her observa tion. Indeed, the kind of revelation in which she delighted he entirely detests, as probably every healthy mind does. He loves a joke, and tells a comic story with great glee. His cheerfulness is habitual, and probably he never knew two consecu tive hours of melancholy in his life. His manner is sometimes ex ceedingly ungracious ; he is not apt to suppress a yawn in the pres ence of a conceited bore ; but if the bore is a bore innocently, he submits to the infliction with a surprising patience. He has a sin gular hatred of bungling, and rates a bungler sometimes with ex traordinary vehemence. He clings to an opinion, however, or a prejudice, with the tena city of his race ; and has rarely been brought to own himself in the wrong. If he changes his opinion, which sometimes he does, he may show it by altered conduct, seldom by a confession in words. 580 CONCLUSION. The great object of Horace Greeley's personal ambition has been to make the Tribune the best newspaper that ever existed, and the leading newspaper of the United States. To a man inflamed with an ambition like this, the temptation to prefer the popular to the right, the expedient to the just, comes with peculiar, with un equalled force. No pursuit is so fascinating, none so absorbing, none so difficult. The competition is keen, the struggle intense, the labor continuous, the reward doubtful and distant. And yet, it is a fact that, on nearly every one of its special subjects, the Trib une has stood opposed to the general feeling of the country. Its course on slavery excluded it from the Slave States. When the whole nation was in a blaze of enthusiasm about the triumphs of the Mexican war, it was not easy even for a private person to re frain from joining in the general huzza. But not for one day was the Tribune forgetful of the unworthiness of those triumphs, and the essential meanness of the conflict. There were clergymen who illuminated their houses on the occasion of those disgraceful victo ries, one, I am told, who had preached a sermon on the unchris tian character of the Tribune. Mr. Greeley wrote, some time ago : " We are every day greeted by some sage friend with a caution against the certain wreck of our influence and prosperity which we defy by opposing the secret political cabal commonly known as 1 the Know-Nothings.' One writes us that he procured one hun dred of our present subscribers, and will prevent the renewal of their subscriptions in case we persist in our present course ; another wonders why we will destroy our influence by resisting the pop ular current, when we might do so much good by falling in with it and guiding it and so on. " To the first of these gentlemen we say : * Sir, we give our time and labor to the production of the Tribune, because we believe that to be our sphere of usefulness; but we shall be most happy to abandon journalism for a less anxious, exacting, exhausting voca tion, whenever we are fairly and honorably released from this. You do not frighten us, therefore, by any such base appeals to our presumed selfishness and avarice ; for if you could induce not merely your hundred but every one of our subscribers to desert us, we should cheerfully accept such a release from our present duties, and try to earn a livelihood in some easier way. So please go ahead 1 ' HE DOES NOT COUNT MAJORITIES. 581 "And now to our would-be friend who suggests that we are wrecking our influence by breasting the popular current : ' Good sir! do you forget that whatever influence or consideration the Tribune has attained has been won, not by sailing with the stream, but against it ? On what topic has it ever swam with the current, except in a few instances wherein it has aided to change the cur rent? Would any one who conducted a journal for popularity's or pelf's sake be likely to -have taken the side of liquor prohibition, or anti-slavery, or woman's rights, or suffrage regardless of color, when we did ? Would such a one have ventured to speak as we did in behalf of the anti-renters, when everybody hereabouts was banded to hunt them down unheard ? Can you think it probable that, after what we have dared and endured, we are likely to be silenced now by the cry that we are perilling our influence ? ' " And now, if any would prefer to discontinue the Tribune be cause it is and must remain opposed to every measure or scheme of proscription for opinion's sake, we beg them not to delay one minute on our account. We shall all live till it is our turn to die, whether we earn a living by making newspapers or by doing some thing else." These words were written fifteen years ago. If we may judge from recent events, the editor of the Tribune has not changed his system since. APPENDIX. HOEACE GREELEY'S ADVICE TO AMERICAN FARMERS. AN ADDRESS AT THE FAYETTE COUNTY AGRICULTURAL FAIR, CONNERS- VILLE, INDIANA, SEPTEMBER 8, 1858. MR. PRESIDENT AND FRIENDS: I consider the preparation of an agricul tural address, by one whose every-day life is not that of a practical farmer, the most discouraging task ever undertaken by man. It must be begun and prosecuted to completion in full view of the fact that those who are to be won, if possible, to listen to the whole or some part of it, are inflexibly rooted and grounded in two primary convictions : first, that they have little or nothing to learn on the subject; and, secondly, that, even if they could be taught, he can not teach them. He is aware that he was invited to speak, not because he was supposed capable of imparting any useful information, that, if that had been the object, a very different sort of person would have been applied to, but because he is either a pliant lawyer, known to possess a glib facility of talk ing, talking, on any subject, whether he knows anything or nothing about it, in a way to please a crowd; or else he has somehow acquired a notoriety that will help create an interest and a buzz throughout the adjacent country, and thus draw dimes into the Society's not usually overburdened treasury. He is in fact some fancy zebra or mustang which the enterprise of the managers has hired to increase, if it may be, the attractions and profit of the show. I have been a good many times invited to speak at these gatherings ; but I cannot recollect that one of these invitations urged as a reason why I should accept that I could probably say something that the Society or its patrons might prof itably hear and consider. No speaker at an agricultural fair thinks of being offended or mortified because, after he has been holding forth fifteen or twenty minutes, a majority of the young people who first crowded the area in front of him, finding their position constrained and uncomfortable, and that he is merely talking plain, homely common sense about soils, crops, cultivation, and fertilizers, conclude that longer listening will not pay, and quietly sidle off to locations in which they may enjoy the freedom of the grounds and the delights of each other's society. Is it any wonder, then, that the great majority of speakers at these fairs find it advisable to deal out wares c'arefully adapted to the popular demand, to glorify the American farmer as the wisest, greatest, happiest of earthly beings, and his rural home as the focus of all celestial 584 APPENDIX. virtue and mundane bliss, or to mount the high-soaring American eagle and incite him to expand his umbrageous wings until one of them shall overshadow Cape Horn, and the other intercept the sunlight that else would gleam on the icy bosom of Hudson's Bay, winding up at length with a tribute to u our fair countrywomen," and especially to those whose bright eyes now dazzle and transfix him, as the most lovely, enchanting, angelic creatures whose cluster ing ringlets breeze ever fluttered, on whose seraphic faces sun ever shone 1 I lack taste for that style of oratory, probably because I lack ability to excel in it. If I ever am moved by its utterance, the influence ceases with the last tones of the orator's voice, and, in my colder, natural mood, I earnestly ask, If this is all so, what use in talking- to such favored, such exalted beings ? at least, what use in my talking? Why not rather invite them to speak, while I listen and learn, since I am sadly aware that my knowledge of agri culture is very crude and imperfect? If the actual, average husbandry of our farmers is indeed so wise, so skilful, so conformed to the truths of science and the dictates of reason, why do they form and sustain societies, and hold fairs, and offer premiums ? All these are, to my mind, indications of a desire for improvement, which implies a consciousness of present imperfection or defi ciency. I know that with many the State or county fair is a mere spectacle or holiday; but I insist that, if enjoyment were its sole end, then a circns would be quite as effective, and got up at far less expense. He whom an ag ricultural fair may not teach can spend his time more profitably elsewhere. But whether I am or am not qualified to instruct. I know that the great body of the farmers of this country sadly need instruction. I know they might, if wiser, secure a larger reward for their labor than they now do. I know they might not only have larger but surer harvests than they now obtain. I know that they might and should be more intelligent, more thrifty, less in debt, more thoroughly comfortable, than they have yet been. I realize that they are to-day in the enjoyment of great advantages, great blessings ; but I insist that they make their life-struggle under great impediments also, and that these must and should be removed, while the former shall be cherished and preserved. These convictions inform the argument and direct the aim of this address. Let me deal decisively at the outset with that mistaken consciousness of self-sufficiency which is the chief obstacle to agricultural progress. It is by no means a local infirmity, in fact, I know not a locality absolutely free from it. -Bayard Taylor, at the close of his last winter's survey of modern Greece, whose naturally fertile soil has been afflicted and exhausted by thirty centu ries of ruinous abuse at the hands of enslaved or oppressed and benighted cul tivators, finds in the enormous self-conceit of the people the fatal obstacle to improvement in Greek tillage. " To crown the Greek's shortcomings as an agriculturist," says Taylor, "add his egregious vanity, which prevents him from suspecting that there is any knowledge in the world superior to his own." And he proceeds to relate how an Euglish farmer, now twenty-four years set tled in Greece, finds it impossible to get anything done as it should be, because evei-y laborer he employs insists on teaching him how to do it, instead of obey ing his directions. The same spirit is to-day rampant in venerable, conserva- HORACE GKEELEY'S ADVICE TO AMERICAN FARMERS. 585 tive China, in Western Asia, in Spain, as well as among the West India negroes, who, when furnished by their masters' humanity with wheelbarrows in order that they might no longer cany such enormous loads on their heads, persisted in carrying their burdens in the good old way, wheelbarrows and all. Hence Iwas hardly surprised to find, at the council-board of the great World's Exhi bition in London, that Mr. Philip Pusey, who there represented British agricul ture, and who was undoubtedly one of the most enlightened and best farmers in the kingdom, had absolutely no conception that there existed any knowl edge, any practice, any implement even, in the round world beside, by which British agriculture could be advanced or profited. He evidently presumed that to give premiums for ploughs, for instance, with sole regard to their abso lute merits, would be to have those premiums all monopolized by British in ventors and manufacturers, at the risk of offending and mortifying those of all other countries ; and the triumph of an American reaper, which he was among the first to acknowledge and to crown, was to him even more an astonishment than a gratification. I instance this most intelligent, successful, eminent agri culturist, to indicate how universal these prejudices are. While nearly every other vocation is pursued under circumstances which invite and facilitate a constant comparison of processes, progress, efficiency, results, each farm is to some extent insulated, if not isolated, and its round of labors is prosecuted without much regard to what is doing on the next farm, and much less in the next township. The unparalleled frequency of migration, and the consequent frequency of visits from the new homes to the old hearths, and reciprocally, somewhat modify this inertia among us ; the benignant influence of our fairs, still more of our agricultural press, battles it with even greater efficiency; but it nevertheless remains deplorably true that improvements are diffused more slowly and adopted more reluctantly in agriculture, than in any other depart ment of productive industry. But, without further preface, let me indicate in the brief, suggestive form required by the occasion, what, in my judgment, are the principal needs of American agriculture. I. I place at the head of all, the need of an adequate conception by farmers of the nature and the worth of their vocation. In taking this position, I put aside as impertinent, or trivial, or chaffy, all mere windy talk of the dignity, honor, and happiness of the farmer's calling. When I hear any one dilate in this vein, I want to look him square in the eye and ask, " Sir, do you know a farmer who acts and lives as though he believed one word of this ? Do you know one who chooses the brightest, ablest, best instructed among his four or five sons, and says to him, ' Let the rest do as they please, I want you to suc ceed me in the old homestead, and be the best fanner in the country ' ? " Do you know one who really believes that his son who is to be a farmer requires as liberal and as thorough an education as his brothers who are to be respec tively lawyer, doctor, and divine ? Do you know one who is to-day personally tilling the soil, who, if he were enabled to choose for his only and darling son just what career he preferred above all others, would make him a fanner? If vou do know such a farmer, and I confess / do not, then I say you know 25* 586 . APPENDIX. one who will not be offended at anything I shall say implying that agriculture is not now the liberal and liberalizing vocation it should and yet must be. Whenever the great mass of our farmers shall have come fully to realize that the.re is scope and reward in their own pursuit for all the knowledge and all the wisdom with which their sons can be imbued, rare geniuses as we know many of them are, then we shall have achieved the first great step toward making agriculture that first of vocations which it rightfully should be. But to-day it is the current though unavowed belief of the majority, and of farm ers even more than of others, that any education is good enough for a hus bandman, and that any blockhead who knows enough to come in when it rains is qualified to manage a farm. II. The need of our agriculture next in order is a correction of the common error, that farming is an affair of muscle only ; and that the best farmer is he who delves and grubs from daylight to dark, and from the first of January to the last of December. You will not, I am sure, interpret me as undervaluing industry, diligence, force ; certainly, you will not believe me to commend that style of farming which leaves time for loitering away sunny hours in bar rooms, and for attending every auction, horse-race, shooting-match, or mon key-show that may infest the township. I know right well that he who would succeed in any pursuit must carefully husband his time, making every hour count. What I maintain is, that, while every hour has its duties, they are not all muscular; and that the farmer who would wisely and surely thrive must have time for mental improvement as well as for physical exertion. I know there are farmers who decline to take regularly any newspaper, even one de voted to agriculture, because they say they can't afford it, or have no time to read it. I say no farmer can afford to do without one. To attempt it is a blunder and a loss; if he has children growing up around him, it is moreover a grievous wrong. If every hard-working farmer, who says he cannot read in summer, because it is a hurrying season, were to set apart two hours of each day for reading and reflection, he would not only be a wiser and happier man than if he gave every hour to mere labor, he would live in greater comfort and acquire more property. To dig is easily learned ; but to learn how, where, and when to dig most effectively is the achievement of a lifetime. There is no greater and yet no more common mistake than that which confounds inces sant, exhausting muscular effort with the highest efficiency in farming. I know men who have toiled early and late, summer and winter, with resolute energy and ample strength, through their forty years of manhood, yet failed to secure a competence, not because they have been specially unfortunate, as they are apt to suppose, but because they lacked the knowledge and skill, the wisdom and science, that would have enabled them to make their exertions tell most effectively. They have been life-long workers ; but they have not known how to work to the greatest advantage. Each of them has planted and sowed enough to shield him from want for the remainder of his days ; but when the time came for reaping and gathering into barns, his crops were defi cient. One year, too much rain ; the next year, too little ; now an untimely frost, and then the ravage of insects, have baffled his exertions and blasted HORACE GREKLEY'S ADVICE TO AMERICAN FARMERS. 587 his hopes, and left him in the down-hill of life still toiling for a hand-to-mouth subsistence. I think the observation of almost any of you will have furnished parallels in this respect for my own. III. Now I am quite aware that no conceivable acquirements and precau tions, no attainable wisdom and foresight, can absolutely guard the farmer against disappointments and disasters. As the ablest seamanship will not always triumph over the angry, warring elements, so the most thorough, skil ful husbandry will not always avert from the fruitful field the ravages of frost, or hail, or flood. It is only in a qualified, yet nevertheless a very important sense, that the maxim, " God is on the side of the heaviest artillery, the strongest battalions," is true. We cannot certainly affirm that the man who farms excellently will this year have a bountiful harvest, and that his shiftless, down-at-the-heel neighbor will not have half a crop ; for the elements may in either case derange our calculations and defeat our pi'edictions. But what may be doubtful with regard to a single year's operations and their results is not at all questionable when we embrace within our purview the operations of a lifetime. The pendulum njay swing ever so fur this way, then that, but does not the less obey the inexorable law of gravitation; and, in spite of tem porary and seeming aberrations, the connection of cause with effect is constant, perfect, eternal. The good farmer, he whose fences never fail to protect his crops, and whose crops are so dealt with that they require and justify protec tion, who ploughs deeper and better, manures his land more bountifully, sows his grain earlier, tills his fields more thoroughly, and keeps down weeds more vigorously, will not only have more bushels per acre, but he will grow his grain cheaper per bushel, secure larger average profits, and thrive far better, than his easy-going neighbor who ploughs in May, plants in June, finds no time for makjng composts, manures fitfully and sparingly, and tills grudgingly. In any field of honorable exertion, success follows thoroughness and crowns merit. Were it not so, the universe would be a riddle, and the distinction be tween right and wrong a subtlety or an accident. I fear these truths need reiterating in this great valley of the Mississippi with an emphasis that would be out of place in a more sterile region. I have been accustomed for thirty years to hear " the West" commended as a region SQ fertile that manures were superfluous, and thoroughness in cultivation a sheer waste of effort. That naturally rich virgin prairies, often resting on de caying limestone, their surface blackened with the ashes of five thousand an nual conflagrations, will produce better crops than the rugged hillsides of New England, where the yellow soil scarcely covers the unrelenting granite or sand stone, and whence two centuries of exhausting cultivation have wrenched nearly every plant-forming substance which rains and thaws have not mean time washed away, is a very manifest truth. Jt needs no Liebig, no science, no subtle analysis, tp teach us that. But I do gravely dispute the cuiTent as sumption that, as a general rule, though poor spils may pay for fertilizing, rich ones will not. I apprehend that the absolute truth is just the opposite of this; that it js the fanner's tiiie economy, if his fai'm be large and his means but moderate, to apply not only his labor but his fertilizers to his best soils to the 588 APPENDIX. neglect of the poorest, leaving the latter in pasture, or in wood, or in common, as circumstances may determine. It seems tolerably clear that a soil that contains ninety per cent of the elements of a bounteous harvest will better reward the addition of the remaining ten per cent, than one containing but twenty to forty per cent of those elements will reward any application what ever. I may possibly be wrong in this ; but I cannot help thinking that the grievous mistake of running over too much land; of increasing the area of cultivation rather than the acreable product ; of striving rather to bring a whole farm into a state of middling fertility than to make the best part of it produce the largest possible crops, is quite as common in the West as at the East. JV. And here we find ourselves face to face with the great problem of SCI ENCE IN FARMING, which seems to me the central present need of American agriculture. Say, if you will, that what is termed agricultural science soil analysis, special fertilizers, and all that is quackery and humbug; that nobody ever did or ever could tell by chemically analyzing a soil what it would produce to greatest profit, or what could be most profitably added to render it still more productive, and I shall not contradict you. The more urgent your proofs that no science of agriculture now exists, the more obvious is the truth that one is urgently needed. The carpenter, joiner, cabinet-maker, who buys plank, boards, joists, beams, or lathing, who orders oak, pine, hemlock, spruce, or mahogany, knows just what he is buying and what he can do with it. But how many farmers in a thousand who every year buy lime, plaster, bones, guano, or other fertilizers, know just what they are, and what they will do for them ? How many, even of those who freely buy this or that substance to enrich their lands, and who have better crops since than before such purchase, know how much of the improvement is due to more fa vorable seasons or better culture, how much to the improved composition of the soil ? / try to be an improving farmer, I keep my eyes open and my prejudices under foot, I may be very ignorant, but I know I am not unwill ing to learn, I have covered my forty acres successively with almost every fertilizer I could buy, and I know that I have greatly increased their fertility, but how much of this is due to this ingredient and how much to that, whether my lime, or my plaster, or my guano, or my ground bones, or my phosphate, was the better purchase, which of them has proved worth more than its cost, and which, if any, was a bad investment, I have scarcely an idea. Had I been able to live on my farm and constantly watch every devel opment, I am sure I should have known more on this subject than I now do. But so various are the original or the acquired conditions of our soils, so mul tiform and so complex are the influences of soil and climate, rain and sunshine, season and culture, that any one man's observation, even though continued through a lifetime, could go but a little way toward establishing the great landmarks of the science we need. But difficulty is not impossibility; and the most majestic edifices are slowly, toilsomely built up, stone after stone. We ought to have a thousand patient observers and careful recorders of agri cultural phenomena where we now have a dozen ; each school district should have its chemical laboratory and circle of experiments ; demonstrations should HORACE GREELEY'S ADVICE TO AMERICAN FARMERS. 589 be multiplied, sifted, collated, until, in the crucible of genius, a true science of agriculture should gradually be evolved, a science which shall ultimately teach the farmer to buy or combine just such fertilizers as his pai'ticular soil needs, and in such forms and quantities as are precisely adapted to its needs. This will be a great achievement, one that may well employ a busy century, but it is so necessary, and will prove so widely beneficent, that it cannot be too soon attempted nor too rapidly urged to completion. V. Meantime, however, it is requisite that the farmers of this country should acquire a knowledge of Entomology, or the laws of insect life. Our agriculture is in danger of local if not general destruction through the multi plication and ravages of devastators too numerous and too disgusting or con temptible to be singly exterminated, yet whose conjoint attacks upon us are more formidable and more destructive than those of any human adversary. Onr grandfathers dreaded and loathed the Hessian soldiers brought over to subdue or slaughter them; but what were their devastations to those of the Hessian fly ? The frogs of Egypt, the clouds of locusts that often strip the southern and eastern coasts of the Mediterranean bare of every green leaf, begin to be paralleled by the grasshopper pests of our remoter prairies. The midge, the weevil, the chinch-bug, the fly, are rendering the cultivation of our great bread staple every year more precarious, and its yield more and more meagre. Caterpillars and other vermin infest, injure, and ultimately destroy our fruit-trees. Grubs and wireworms devour our seed in the ground ; bugs are equally pernicious to our melons ; and it is now pretty well settled that the potato-rot and the oat-rust are the work of minute, but none the less destructive insects. The improvement and careful use of the microscope will doubtless prove in time that scores of mysterious and inscrutable diseases, to which not only plants but animals fall a prey, have a kindred origin. And these devastations are palpably increasing in extent and mischief with each recurring year. We must arrest and repel them, or the farmer's vocation will be ruined, and thousands perish for lack of food. The vulgar error that nothing can be effectually done to stop these ravages, that insects must be allowed to come when they will, do what they like, and go when they please, is the great obstacle to their speedy extermination. In fact, it would not be half so difficult to cope with worms as with wolves, if we only understood them as well. Their safety, their power, is in our heed- lessness, our ignorance, our unwise despair. I have no doubt that every one of them could be put out of the way, not only without great cost, but with ab solute profit, apart from the advantage of being rid of them, if we only knew what we might surely though slowly learn with regard to their origin, habits, and vulnerable points. I do not pretend to know just how they should be treated, but I venture the prediction, that the cheap, abundant alkalis, salt, lime, potash, nitre, will ultimately be applied to seeds and to soils in which these pests lurk in the germ or in infancy, and that they will thus be cut off by acres, leaving none to tell the tale of their swift and total destruction. If there be any of them impervious to alkalis, the acids which are easily produced, and even cheaper will be found effectual. What we need to know is just 590 APPENDIX. when and how to apply these caustics so as to destroy the adversary, root and branch, yet not injure, but rather benefit, the soil and the expected crops. Here opens a wide field of useful observation and effort, simple and easy to be ex plored, and certain to reward the intelligent and patient investigator. Until it shall have been traced out, the microscope should be always in the house, when it is not in the hand, of every leading farmer, and experiment should go hand in hand with observation. Ten years thus improved would enable us to save our now imperilled and half*destroj'ed crops at a cost below what we now pay for threshing out grain -*. or rather straw which the ravages of in sects have rendered seedless, and thus worthless. I have indicated the microscope as an instrument which should be always on the premises and often in the hands of the improving farmer; but I cannot begin here to indicate the multifarious and important uses which it might, and ultimately must, be made to subserve. The water of springs, wells, brooks, or artificial reservoirs, when used for culinary purposes, and even that from which animals are allowed to drink, ought to be subjected to its scrutiny, so as to detect the presence of any vitiating or perilous substance in particles too minute to be detected by the unaided eye. The vegetable world, closely scanned by its help, reveals not wonders merely, but lessons by which the wisest and the most ignorant alike may profit. I suspect there cannot be mam' whose consciousness of their own ignorance would not be deepened as I confess mine was by a glance at the microscopically magnified photo graphic illustrations of Dr. Goadby's " Animal and Vegetable Physiology," just published by the Appletons. I then and there truly saw, for the first time, many things that I had been looking at quite frequently from early childhood without at all understanding them. How many of us, for instance, who have an every-day familiarity with the green substance which is seen each summer floating in and upon shallow pools of stagnant, tepid water, and which is popularly attributed in some manner to frogs, because frogs are ad dicted to such pools, know that it is a living vegetable, -r- as fully so as oats or clover ? How many are even aware that the purest brook water is full of living animals, too minute to be discovered by the human eye, but not too small to have perfect organs and external relations, and to love and fight, to grudge and covet, to be envious and jealous, in a spirit very absurd, no doubt, in its occasional manifestations, but which does not necessarily separate them from human interest and human sympathy ? Another instrument which seems to me destined to play an important part in the future economy of farming is the barometer. The alternations of storm and calm, cloud and sunshine, are of deepest interest to the mariner; next to him they most concern the farmer, who is often a heavy loser by a bad guess as to what will be the weather for the next twelve or twenty-four hours. But why should he rest content with guessing, when science has provided an in strument by which changes of weather may be foretold with a very decided approach to certainty? Why should not the oldest, thriftiest ftirmer in each school-district put up his barometer where it may be freelv visited and in spected by his neighbors, especially through the critical season of the summer HORACE GKEELEY'S ADVICE TO AMERICAN FARMERS. 591 harvest ? Why should not the telegraph apprise us whenever a storm is rag ing within two or three hundred miles of us, letting us know where and when it began, in what direction it has since moved, and what winds now prevail in its vicinity, so that we may safely compute the chances and the probable time of its appearance in our neighborhood ? Doubtless, the first deductions from such observations would be crude, imperfect, and often mistaken; but experience would gradually and surely correct our errors and improve our conclusions, until we should be qualified, by the help of the telegraph and the barometer combined, to anticipate the weather with as much confidence as we now do the advent of spring, summer, or winter. I may err as to the means, but not as to the fact that beneficent progress in this direction is feasi- ble ; therefore, in this day of light and investigation, inevitable. VI. One of the greatest present needs of agriculture is a habit of recording and journalizing their experience for public use and benefit on the part of thoroughly practical men. Day after day, we, who are termed theorizers, city farmers, dabblers in agriculture, are reminded of the superiority of prac tice to theory, fact to speculation, ~ as if we had ever disputed that aver ment. Day after day we ineffectually respond, "Yes, we know it; we want facts ; we wish to profit by your experience ; do not confine it to the narrow limits of your farm and your life, but let us have it so recorded and displayed that all may acquire, comprehend, and profit by it." But those who say most of the superiority of practice to theory are the last to give the world the bene fit of their practice. How many corn-growers in Indiana can tell what has been the precise cost per bushel of the corn they have grown in each of the last five or ten years ? How many can tell, even for their own guidance, what crops they have grown to the greatest profit, and which have involved them in loss, during any term of years? How many know what the live stock which they have raised and now own has cost them ? Who knows what the intrinsic value of a hundred acres of good corn land at a given point on the Wabash or Miami is, and how many dollars, more or less, it should command per acre than just such land in another given locality, therefore more or less convenient to market ? These, and a thousand like questions, require practi cal solutions, and practical men should promptly grapple with them. The thriving artisan, mechanic and manufacturer, all count the cost of their sev eral undertakings and products ; if they find they are making an article that does not pay, they speedily relinquish it for another more promising. Will any one say that this is generally the case with our farmers ? VII. It is a melancholy truth, that, while the acreable product of Great Britain has increased at least fifty per cent within the last century, that of the United States has actually fallen off! With all our boasted progress, our fairs and premiums, our books and periodicals treating who% or mainly of agriculture, our subsoil ploughs and vastly improved implements, our self- glorifying orations and addresses at gatherings like this, and our constant presumption and assumption that no people were ever so enlightened and free from antiquated prejudices as ours, this is the net result. Even I can remem ber when New England farmers grew wheat as an ordinary crop ; now you 592 APPENDIX. shall not find a patch of wheat grown this year, or to be grown next on one New England farm in every five hundred. Thirty-five years ago, when I was a boy employed at land-clearing in Western Vermont, I used to see thirty or forty wheat-laden wagons pass daily,in October and November, on their way to market at Troy or Albany; now Vermont does not export a bushel of wheat, but imports at least two thirds of the wheaten flour consumed by her people. In those days Western New York produced larger crops of wheat than any other section of our Union, and " Genesee flour" was about the best that could be bought anywhere; to-day, New England not only does not, but could not, by her ordinary processes, produce eight bushels of wheat to each arable acre, while the product of my own State does not exceed ten bushels from each acre sown. We are dreaming of buying our cloth mainly abroad, and paying for it in grain and flour, a feat which no decently dressed nation was ever yet able to accomplish ; yet our ability to grow grain is stead ily decreasing; and we are quite likely, before the close of this century, to be n-nable to grow enough for our own use. Our longest cultivated soil is, in the average, far poorer this day than it was when Columbus first set foot on the shore of the New World, and the larger part of it is steadily growing worse. Old Jamestown, the site of the first successful attempt by Englishmen to col onize North America, could be bought to-day for less than it was worth in John Smith's time; and Plymouth Rock, though not quite so badly run down, cannot prudently take on airs at the expense of her rival. There are hun dreds of square miles together of Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas, that yield absolutely nothing, and are scarcely worth taking as a gift: that is to say, it would be cheaper to buy good lands at fifty dollars per acre than to take these as a present, and make them worth as much as the former. In whole sections, they know no other way of renovating worn-out fields than to throw them out into common, and let them grow up to bushes, and ultimately to wood, then clear and start afresh, which is a little behind the agricultu ral wisdom of the days of Moses. Two thirds of the originally wooded area of our country has been opened to civilization by pioneers who knew no bet ter at least, they did no better than to extract the potash from the ashes of the primitive forest and sell it for less than the average cost of the process, thus robbing their future industry, their future harvests, of an element of most agricultural products worth to them at least twenty times what they receive for it. So two thirds of the bones of our dead animals have been quietly gath ered from the gutters and rubbish-heaps cf our cities and villages, and shipped off to England or Belgium, to fertilize fields already far better supplied with phosphate than ours, the American farmers looking on or co-operating with a heedlessness which would have discredited the stupidity of their own oxen. After forty years of this ruinous traffic, they begin to wake up, I mean, a few of them do, and discover that these bones, which have not yielded to the gatherers more than ten cents per bushel, and which they might have secured for au average of less than twenty, were worth at least fifty, that a soil from which bones have been extracted without return, by means of pasturing and hay-cutting for a century, is incapable of producing either bones or milk ad- HORACE GREELEY'S ADVICE TO AMERICAN FARMERS. 593 vantageously to the farmer until the slow and unheeded extraction of its phos phates has been counteracted by replacing them in some form; that what ever is taken from a good soil must somehow be replaced, or that soil is impoverished, and must run out; that the farmer's art consists in extracting these elements in their most useful and valuable combinations, and replacing them in those of least cost ; that he who only knows how to grow great crops, knowing or caring little of the best means of restoring their equivalents to the soil, is exactly half a farmer. Are these hackneyed truths ? Theoretically, they may be ; but practically they were never more applicable, more necessary, more urgent, than they are to-day. You of this magnificent valley of the Mississippi are living as a peo ple in their constant and flagrant violation. Blindly confiding in the marvel lous fertility and depth of your soil, you are taking grain-crop after grain- crop so long as grain will grow, in utter forgetfulness that each bushel exported from your State, your county, renders your soil absolutely poorer, and that the process must end in utter exhaustion and sterility ; for you are imparting little or nothing to repay the soil for these heavy and constant drafts upon it. In view of this mistaken policy, the grand improvements recently made or now promised in agricultural machinery, cast before them a shadow that is absolutely baleful. In the old days, when the plough was a forked hickory, with the longer prong for a beam and the shorter for a coulter, and with other implements of like rudeness and inefficiency, the tillage might be and was very unskilful and erroneous, but the earth was too slightly scratched to be by any means exhausted. But now that we are on the eve of steam ploughing and correspondent advances, the old safeguards against the extreme consequences of human ignorance and perverseness lose their efficiency. We talk, for instance, of certain long-cxiltivated portions of the seaboard Slave States as worn out, exhausted, ruined, worthless; when they have really never been disturbed, and of course are not at all injured by cultivation, ex cept for the first four or five inches below their surface. So, measurably, with the past cultivation of the Great West. But when the steam plough comes snorting and tearing through your great prairies, turning up and pulverizing their soil to a depth of two and even three feet, then you will realize great crops at first, with welcome security against both flood and drouth, but paral leled by an exhaustion of the soil more rapid and thorough than the world has ever known. Then you will understand why I feel and say that a Euro pean market for your grain and meat is a snare and a curse to you, that it gives to your industry the drunkard's exhilaration that must be followed by the drunkard's prostration and despair, that no country ever did or ever can really prosper by the production of rude, bulky staples, and their ex change in distant, foreign lands for the finer fabrics and tissues which civil ized comfort and fashion require, that every acre of this State of Indiana would be worth far more this day if a bale of cloth or a case of silks could never more reach us from the Old World. For every year of the present course of industry and trade is diminishing the essential value of your soil ; and the more bounteous your harvests the greater is this fatal depreciation. LL 594 APPENDIX. Let me hope, at least, that some means of arresting it will be found ere your fields shall have shared the fate of those of too many on the seaboard, out of which nearly all that is valuable has been extracted in the shape of wheat, corn, tobacco, and live stock, and shipped away to increase the fertility of countries which, because they are predominantly manufacturing, therefore intelligent, thrifty, and constantly receiving and absorbing agricultural staples from abroad, are already the most fertile and productive on earth. VIII. I rank among the urgent needs of our agriculture a more intimate and brotherly intercourse among our neighboring farmers and their families. I apprehend that we are to-day the least social people on earth, and that this is especially true of our purely agricultural districts. The idle and the dissi pated are gregarious; but our industrious, sober, thrifty farming population enjoy too little of each other's society. In the Old World, for the most part, the tillers of the soil live in villages or hamlets, surrounded, at distances vary ing from ten rods to three miles, by the lands they cultivate and sometimes own. When the day's labor is over, they gather, in good weather, on the vil lage green, under a spreading tree, or in some inviting grove, and song and story, conversation and a moonlight dance, are the cheap solace of their priva tions, their labors, and their cares. But our American farms are islands, sep arated by seas of forests and fencing, and our farmers, their families, and la borers, rarely see those living a mile or two away, save when they pass in the road, or meet on Sunday in church, This isolation has many disadvantages, prominent among which are the obstacles it interposes to the adoption of im proved processes and happy suggestions. As " iron sharpeneth iron," so the simple coming together of neighbors and friends brightens their intellects and accelerates the process of thinking. The farmer not merely profits by the narrations of his neighbor's experience and experiments in this or that field of production, he gains quite as much by the stimulus given to his desire for improvement as by the facilities afforded for gratifying that desire. It is well that he should be enabled to share the benefits of others' observations and achievements ; it is even better that he should be incited to observe and achieve for himself. But, more than all else, it is important that he should now and then be lifted out of the dull routine of ploughing, tilling, and reaping, that he should be reminded that " the life is more than meat," and that the growing of grain and grass, the acquisition of flocks and herds, are means of living, not the ends of life. Especially is it important to give a more social, fraternal, in tellectual aspect to our rural economy, in view of the needs and cravings of the rising generation, who, educated too little to enjoy solitude and their own thoughts, too much to endure the life of oxen, are being unfitted by their very acquirements for the rural existence which satisfied their less intellectual, less cultivated grandfathers. It is the most melancholy feature of our present so cial condition that very few of our bright, active, inquiring, intellectual youth are satisfied to grow up and settle down farmers. After all the eloquence and poetry that have been lavished upon the farmer's vocation, its independence, its security, its dignity, its quiet, its happiness, there are not many decidedly clever youth, even in the households of fanners, who are deliberately choosing HORACE GREELEY'S ADVICE TO AMERICAN FARMERS. 595 the fanner's calling as preferable to all others. Hundreds drift or settle into agriculture because they cannot acquire a professional training, or because they hate to study, or because they cannot get trusted for a stock of goods, or for some one of a hundred other such reasons ; very few because they decidedly prefer this life to any other. Advertise in the same paper to-morrow for a clerk in a store and for a man to work on a farm, the wages in each case being the same, and you will have twenty applications for the former place to one for the latter. This fact argues a grave error somewhere ; and, as I don't believe it is in human nature, nor in that Providential necessity which requires most of us to be farmers, I must believe it is to be detected in the arrangements and conditions under which farm labor is performed. We must study out the de fect and amend it. When the rural neighborhood shall have become more social and the farmer's home more intellectual, when the best books and peri odicals, not only agricultural but others also, shall be found on his evening table, and his hired men be invited to profit by them, the general repugnance of intellectual youth to farming will gradually disappear. IX. Nor can I refrain from insisting on the beautifying of the farmer's homestead as one of the most needed reforms in our agricultural economy. We Americans, as a people, do less to render our homes attractive than any other people of equal means on earth. And for this there is very much excuse. We are " rolling stones " which have not yet found time to gather any very grace ful moss. We are on our march from Western Europe to the shores of the Pacific, and have halted from time to time by the way, but not yet settled. That sacred and tender attachment to home which pervades all other human breasts has but slender hold upon us. There are not many of us who would not sell the house over his own head if he were offered a good price for it. Not one fourth of us now live in the houses in which we were born ; not half of us confidently expect to die in the homes we now occupy. Hence we can not be expected to plant trees, and train vines, and set flowering shrubs, as we might do if we had, in the proper sense of the word, homes. But we ought to have homes, we ought to resolve to have them soon. I would say to every head of a family: Whatever else you may do or forbear to do, select your home forthwith, and resolve to abide by it. Let your next move, if move you must, be inflexibly your last. I would say to our youth: Never marry, never fix upon any place of abode or occupation, until you shall have selected your home. If you will have it in Oregon or California, so be it; but fix it some where, and so soon as may be ; at least before you form any other ties that promise to be enduring. Though it be but a hut on a patch of earth, let it be your fixed home evermore, and begin at once to improve and beautify it in every hour that can be spared from more pressing avocations and needful re pose. So shall your later years be calm and tranquil, so shall you realize and diffuse the blessedness which inheres in that sacred temple, home ! The one great point of superiority enjoyed by our countrymen over their cousins in Western Europe is the facility wherewith every American who is honest, industrious, and sober may acquire, if he does not already possess, a homestead of his own ; not a leasehold from some great capitalist or feudal 596 APPENDIX. baron, but a spot of earth of which no man may rightfully dispossess him so long as he shall shun evil courses and live within his means. In Europe, on the other hand, save in France, but a small minority of the workers own the lands they till, the dwellings they inhabit, while a large proportion even of the thrifty and forehanded, including some who would here be deemed quite rich, cannot call one foot of earth their own. To own arable land in Great Britain is a mark of social distinction, a badge of high caste, so that estates are held at prices which hardly yield three per cent to the producers, and only the very wealthy can really afford to be owners of land. But here there is not a youth of eighteen to-day who cannot, by simple industry, economy, and tem perance, have his own farm of fifty to a hundred acres of fair land by the time he shall have attained the age of twenty-five ; and it is an amazing fact that two thirds of our youth seem utterly heedless of this opportunity, wasting their days and their dollars in frivolous amusements or rash speculations, and suffering ripe manhood to creep upon them while still drifting with the tide, with greedy ears for every tale of a new California, Australia, Sonora, or Nicaragua, but blind to the truth that to the instructed brain and willing hand every field is a placer, and that gold is acquired far more surely in Indiana than in new Caledonia. Youth being thus squandered on delusive hopes and vain adventures, the cares and burdens of an increasing family bar the way to future acquisition, and the mistaken dreamer, who in his youthful prime regarded the slow and arduous gains of the hired worker with contempt, lives to drag out forty years of grudging toil, floating from farm to farm, never ris ing above that necessity of living from hand to mouth which he might, while still young and single, have vanquished forever by five years' patient, plod ding industry. Again let me exhort you, young men ! to choose your future homes; choose where you will, choose carefully, but choose soon, and re solve, by years of quiet energy and patient thrift, to make them your own for ever ere you shall be weighed down by the heavy burdens of riper years. You cannot deliberately choose to pass your lives as other men's hirelings; yet this is the end to which you drift if you set sail from the haven of youth without the ballast of some nest-egg, fairly earned and saved, as the nucleus of future acquisitions. The rule is almost infallible that the yoting man who has saved nothing out of the earnings of his first year of independence will never earn and save anything. So, on the other hand, he who can say, on his twenty-second birthday, " I have fairly earned what I could during the past year, have saved fully half of it, and owe no man a dollar," is morally certain, if his life and health be spared, to win his way steadily to independence and competence. It is the first step that counts as well as costs ; let our young men be entreated to take that step thoughtfully and in the right direction. How light the occasional labor and how great the success with which even the humblest home may be enriched and beautified, especially by tree-plant ing, is yet but imperfectly realized. Only the few can live in lordly man sions: but roadside elms which shade the lowliest cot may be as stately and graceful as any that stud the park of the wealthiest merchant, the proudest earl. As I am whirled through our rural districts, and see house after house HORACE GREELEY'S ADVICE TO AMERICAN FARMERS. 597 unsheltered even by a single tree, I mourn the heedlessnoss, the blindness, which thus denies them an ornament and comfort so completely within the reach of the poorest. The farmer who goes to mill or to market may return with a sapling which, once fairly planted (and it is a good half-day's work to prepare the ground for and properly plant a tree) and effectually shielded from injury, will be a solace and a joy to his family and their successors for centu ries. In a country whose forests are so rich in admirable trees as are ours, where the buckeye, the tulip, the elm, the maple, the white-oak, and the hickory are so easily procured, it is a shame that even one human habitation so much as a year old should still be unblest by shade-trees. Every school-house, every church, at least where land can still be bought by the acre, should be half hidden by a grove of the most umbrageous, hardy, cleanly trees, and every school-boy should consider himself a debtor by at least one tree to the little edifice in which the rudiments of knowledge were first instilled into his understanding, until such a grove shall there have been completed. X. In our capricious, fervid climate, we need shade-trees ; but not these alone. The dearth of fruit, especially in the West, is still almost universal. Not one dwelling in ten is flanked and backed by such a belt of apple, peach, pear, cherry, quince, and plum trees as should thrive there. Of grapes, there is not a vine where there should be a hundred. Even the hardy and easily started currant-bush is not half so abundant as it deserves to be. Most fann ers would deem it a waste to devote two square rods of each of their gardens to the strawberry; while the bare idea of cultivating raspberries or blackber ries strikes a large majority of them as intensely ridiculous. Now there is no dispute as to the folly of cultivating that which abounds on every side and may be obtained without labor or care; and I judge, from observations on the fence-sides and corners of many farms, that the cultivation of anything of the brier kind on those farms would be a most superfluous undertaking. Yet I do not the less insist that as a people we have far too little fruit, and that most of this is of needlessly inferior quality : that the grossness of our food is the cause of many painful and disabling diseases which a free and frequent use of good fruit would prevent ; that, even regarded solely in the light of profit, our farmers ought to grow more and better fruit, both for their own use and for sale ; and that noble orchards as well as forests must in time diversify the bare landscape even of the great prairies, breaking the sweep of their fierce winds, and increasing the salubrity of the atmosphere, and contributing in a thousand ways to the physical enjoyment and spiritual elevation of man. I leave untouched, for this occasion, the great fields of drainage, or the me chanical preparation of the soil for tillage ; of fertilizers, or its material, essen tial improvement; and of implements, or the means of its economical cultiva tion ; for my hour draws to a close, and even the few who suppose it possible that I should advance some ideas worthy of consideration are not willing to be hearers forever. Let me simply add, with reference to these departments of agricultural knowledge, that I believe we are on the verge of grand, far-reach ing transformations; that genius and science are destined to revolutionize the production of grain, as they have already, and but recently, that of cloth ; that 598 APPENDIX. the time is at hand when combined, organized effort, guided by the ripest ex perience, the fullest knowledge, will produce and send to market cargoes of wheat, corn, oats, &c., at a cost per bushel and in a profusion with which in dividual energy, cramped by costly division fences, stinted in capital, using inferior implements, ploughing feebly and shallowly at a snail's pace a foot in width, instead of tearing up and pulverizing an acre or two per hour to a depth of two or three feet, and using the muscle of men and animals also in thrash ing and winnowing, will not be able successfully to compete. Indeed, it were idle to presume that the genius for mechanical invention, which has so re cently revolutionized household industry by the invention of the spinning- jenny and the power-loom, resistlessly taking away the whole business of transmuting fibres into fabrics from the family fireside to the spacious fac tory, which is now rapidly effecting a still further transformation in sup planting the needle by the sewing-machine, and which is soon to effect a like change in washing and in the operations of the dairy, will leave the husbandman sowing and tilling his fields as his father and grandfather did before him. Already, the implements required to till a farm advantageously, in number and cost overtax the ability of the average farmer, and compel him to work at disadvantage against the owner of broad acres, of steam-power, seed-drills, cultivators, reapers, and threshing-machines. This disparity is sure to increase, lessening the relative value in agriculture of mere human muscle, and rendering intellectual force and training, not merely an advantage, but an absolute necessity to all who would not sink to the lowest level of ab ject drudgery. But to the instructed, intelligent, wide-awake cultivator, no change which the future has in store threatens evil or counsels discourage ment. For him, and such as he is, every advance in the mastery of Nature by man is a personal advantage and an assurance of that ultimate triumph wherein, every atmospheric change being foreseen and prepared for, every latent force of Nature evolved and rendered useful, the marvels of chemistry shall become the familiar handmaids of tillage, and every breeze that wanders idly across a continent shall journey laden with bounties and blessings for the human race. THE END THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW RENEWED BOOKS ARE SUBJECT TO IMMEDIATE RECALL LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS Book Slip-70m-9,'65(F7151s4)45S N2 418662 . 9 Parton, J. 08 The life of P2 Horace Greeley. 1868 LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA DAVIS HH aEggKg 'tf '.-' ^"t &