USA > New Mexico > Men of our day; or, biographical sketches of patriots, orators, statemen, generals, reformers, financiers and merchants, now on the stage of action > Part 43
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The Tribune first saw light on the 10th of April, 1841, with a "start" of 600 subscribers, and a borrowed capital of $1000. Its first experiences were not altogether promising, but it was full of fight, and the foolish attempt of a rival, The Sun, to crush it, aroused the pugnacity of its editor to its fullest extent. The public became interested, also; and by its seventh week, it had an edition of 11,000. New presses became necessary-adver- tisements poured in; and then-just " in the nick of time"-Mr. Thomas McElrath was secured as a business partner, and with him came also the order and efficiency, which have rendered the Tribune establishment one of the best, if not the best, conducted newspapers in the world.
Now came another epoch in Horace Greeley's career-viz .: that of Fourierism. A Socialist in theory he had been for years before the Tribune was commenced-and, when Albert Brisbane returned from Paris, in 1841, full to overflowing of the principles of the Apostle of the Doctrine of Association, Greeley became one of his earliest and most devoted followers. He wrote, talked, lectured on Fourierism ;- but, with the famous six months' newspaper discussion of the subject, in 1846, between Greeley and his former lieutenant, H. J. Raymond, then of the Courier and Enquirer-the subject died out of the 1
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public mind. In April, 1842, the Tribune, which had started as a penny paper, commenced its second volume at two cents per number, without any appreciable loss of its subscription. At the same time, Greeley and McElrath commenced a monthly magazine, called " The American Laborer," devoted chiefly to the advocacy of protection. Gradually, also, they got into a some- what extensive book publishing business, which, however, proved unprofitable and was relinquished, excepting the " Whig Almanac," a valuable statistical and political compend, which has recently enjoyed the honor of being entirely reprin- ted by the process of photo-lithography. In 1843, began the Evening Tribune, and in 1845, the Semi- Weekly. Water-Cure, the Erie Railroad, Irish Repeal, Protection and Clay were the principal objects to which the Tribune gave the full weight of its powerful influence. In 1845, the Tribune office was burned ; and that year and the two following were years full of hard knocks received, and good earnest blows heartily given, against Capital punishment, the Mexican War, Slavery, Orthodoxy, the Native American party, the drama, etc., etc. In 1848, Mr. Greeley was chosen to represent the Congressional District in the House of Representatives for a short session; and hardly was he seated there before he introduced a Land Reform Bill; " walked into" the tariff, made in the Tribune a grand exposé of the Congressional Mileage system (which roused the wrath of that honorable body and became the talk of the nation), and " pitched into," generally, all the money-spending, time-wasting expedients by which public interests and business were delayed. The tide of corruption, however, was too great to be success- fully stemmed by one honest man, and Greeley's three months carcer as a Congressman may be summed up in this, that "as a member of Congress, he was truer to himself and dared more in
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behalf of his constituents than any man who ever sat for one session only in the House of Representatives."
Meantime, the Tribune establishment was on the high road of success ; and was valued by competent judges at $100,000, a low estimate perhaps, when we consider that its annual profits amounted over $30,000. Both of its proprietors were now in the enjoyment of incomes more than sufficient for what they needed-and now they determined to give a practical proof of their belief in a doctrine which they had earnestly advocated for several years previous-viz .: the advantages of associated labor and profit. The property was divided into one hundred $1000 shares, each of which entitled the holder to one vote in the decisions of the company-thus conferring the dignity and advantage of ownership on many interested parties, while the contesting power practically remained with Greeley and McElrath. It is needless to say that the " Tribune Association" has been an eminent success.
In 1850, a volume of Mr. Greeley's lectures and essays was published, under the title of " Hints toward Reform." In April, 1851, Mr. Greeley visited England, to view the " World's Fair" and, on his arrival there, found that he had been appointed, by the American commissioner, as a member of the jury on hard- ware. The first month of his brief holiday was conscientiously employed in the discharge of the tedious and onerous duties thus assigned him ;- and, at the banquet, given at Richmond, by the London commissioners to the foreign commissioners, he had the honor of proposing, with a speech, the health of Joseph Paxton, the architect of the Crystal Palace. He also did good service to the cause of cheap popular literature, by his evidence given, as an American newspaper editor, before two sessions of a committee appointed by Parliament for the con- sideration of the proposed repeal of " taxes on knowledge," viz .:
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the duty on advertisements and on every periodical containing news. A rapid "run" through the continent, and Greeley was back in his sanctum in the Tribune building, by the middle of August, and his experiences were given to the world in an interesting volume entitled, "Glances at Europe." With the defeat of General Scott, and the annihilation of the old Whig party, in November, 1852, the Tribune ceased to be a party paper, and its editor a party man. The same year he performed a sad but grateful token of regard to the memory of one whom he devotedly admired, by finishing Sargent's Life of Henry Clay. And, as he found himself now released from the shackles of party politics, he began to yearn for the repose and calm delights of moral life. He purchased a neat farm of fifty acres in Westchester county, where, in such scanty leisure as his editorial life allows him, he has put into practical operation some of his long cherished theories in regard to farming, etc.
In 1856, he published an able " History of the struggle for Slavery Extension, or Restriction, in the United States, from 1787 to 1856;" and, in 1859, he made a trip to California, via Kansas, Pike's Peak and Utah, being received, at many princi- pal towns and cities, by the municipal authorities and citizens, whom he addressed on politics, the Pacific railroad, tem- perance, etc., and on his return, published the facts in regard to the mining regions which he had observed, in a duodecimo volume, which sold largely.
Into all the momentous issues of the war of the rebellion, Mr. Greeley, as was to have been expected from his position and his antecedents, threw the full weight of his immense influence and endeavors. During the great " Draft Riot" of New York, in July, 1863, he was " marked" as an obnoxious person, and a house where he had formerly boarded was entered and com- pletely sacked by the mob. The office of the Tribune was also
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attacked by the mob, who sought diligently for him, but the gallant efforts of the police soon dispersed them. In July, 1864, he was induced, by the pretended anxiety of certain parties claiming to represent the Confederate Government, and who desired to enter into negotiations for peace, to use his per- sonal influence with President Lincoln for an interview, but Mr. Lincoln's adroitness soon elicited the fact that these self- styled pacificators had no real authority to act in the premises, and the matter resulted only in the issue of the celebrated "To whom it may concern" message.
In 1865-67, Mr. Greeley's history of the war was published in two volumes, under the title of ." The American Conflict," had an immense sale, and is justly regarded, North and South, as the best political history of that struggle, yet presented to the public.
Horace Greeley is what botanists would delight in as " sin- gle," or what the German would style "a nature." He is not complicated, or many sided, but is pretty much as he grew. Tough, rough, persevering, honest, tenacious, reflective, ready, independent, humane-he is pre-eminently possessed of that rarest of gifts-the Christ-like quality, an ability to take supreme interest in human welfare. His forte is the making of practical suggestions for the better conduct of life and affairs. He is the liberalized, enlightened Franklin of this generation- more pious than religious, more humane than devout-yet solely devoted to the improvement of the material condition of his fellow-men. Not free from errors, of course, for what man is ? But lovable and to be respected, in spite of all his faults. Beginning life as a workingman, he has risen from the ranks, " ceasing," as has been well said, "to be a workingman with workingmen, only to become a workingman for workingmen."
His greatest and only personal ambition has been to make the Tribune the best newspaper that ever existed, and the foremost
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paper of the United States. As he has recently said, in his auto- biography :
"Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident; riches take wings; the only earthly certainty is oblivion -- no man can foresee what a day may bring forth; and those who cheer to-day will often curse to-morrow ; and yet I cherish the hope that the journal I projected and established will live and flourish long after I shall have mouldered into forgotten dust, being guided by a larger wisdom, a more unerring sagacity to discern the right, though not by a more unfaltering readiness to embrace and defend it at whatever personal cost; and that the stone which covers my ashes may bear to future eyes the still intel- ligible inscription, " Founder of THE NEW YORK TRIBUNE."
Yet it is a fact, singularly to the credit of his honest, fearless nature, that on nearly every one of its special subjects, the Tri- bune has stood opposed to the general feeling of the country. Its editor is one who never accepts, unreservedly, the views of any man, dead or living. "Even though," he says, "I have found him right nine times, I do not take his tenth proposition on trust; unless that also be proved sound and rational, I re- ject it:"
WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.
ILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON, one of the earliest, the most persistent, and consistent of American abolitionists, was born at Newburyport, Massachusetts, on the 12th of December, 1804. His mother was a native of the Province of New Brunswick, of English stock, born in the faith of the established church, beautiful, spirited, and gay. At the age of eighteen, she was led by curiosity to attend the meetings of some itinerant Baptists, was converted and became a member of that church. For this her parents closed their hearts and their doors against her, and she was indebted to an uncle for a home until her marriage. She was a woman of marked indi- viduality, earnest convictions, enthusiastic temperament, and possessed a native gift of eloquence in prayer and exhorta- tion, which was frequently exercised in public, as well as allowed by the custom of that denomination. His father, Abijah Garrison, was master of a vessel, engaged in the West India trade, and was possessed of considerable literary ability and taste. Unfortunately, however, he became a victim to in- temperance ; and, under its baneful influence, abandoned his family. His wife, thus left with her children, in utter poverty, adopted the calling of a nurse; and, in 1814, went to Lynn, Massachusetts, and William was placed with Gamaliel Oliver, a Quaker shoemaker of that town, to learn the trade. So small
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for his age, was he, that his knees trembled under the weight of the lapstone; and his mother finding, at the end of a few months, that the business would not agree with her boy, sent him back to Newburyport. There he was placed at school, and taught the usual routine of New England district schools, at that time-reading, writing, ciphering, and a little grammar. He lived in the family of Deacon Ezekiel Bartlett; and, as an equivalent for his board, employed himself, when out of school, in assisting the deacon in his occupation of wood-sawyer, going with him from house to house. In 1815, he accompanied his mother to Baltimore, where, after a year spent in the capacity of " chore-boy," he returned to Newburyport. In 1818, he was apprenticed to Moses Short, a cabinet-maker of Haverhill, Massachusetts, but finding the trade very repugnant to his feelings, he finally succeeded in persuading his employer to release him, and in October of the same year, became indentured to Ephraim W. Allen, editor of the " Newburyport Herald," to learn the art of printing. He had, at last, found an employment congenial to his tastes, and speedily became expert in the mechanical part of the business. His mind, also, developed into activity ; and, when only sixteen or seventeen years of age he began to contribute to the columns of the paper, upon political and other topics-carefully preserving, however, his incognito. On one occasion, the apprentice, who thus had the pleasure of setting his own contributions in type, was the amused and flattered recipient of a letter of thanks from his master, who urged him to continue his communications.
A considerable time elapsed before Mr. Allen became aware that the correspondent, whose communications he so valued and eagerly welcomed, was his own apprentice. The ice once broken, however, young Garrison launched out somewhat more extensively in the literary line, his contributions being accepted,
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with much favor, by the " Salem Gazette," the " Haverhill Gazette," and the " Boston Commercial Gazette," especially by the latter, the editor of which, Samuel L. Knapp, was a man of marked culture and good taste. A series of Garrison's articles, published in the "Salem Gazette," over the signature of " Aristides," attracted much attention in political circles, and were highly commended by Robert Walsh, then editor of the " National Gazette" (Philadelphia), who attributed their author- ship to the venerable Timothy Pickering. In 1824, during the somewhat protracted absence of Mr. Allen, the "Herald" was edited by Garrison, who, also, superintended its printing. About the same time, his enthusiastic nature became so inter- ested in the cause of the Greeks, then struggling for their free- dom, that he was strongly inclined to seek admission to the Military Academy at West Point, with a view of preparing himself for a military career. In 1826, at the close of his apprenticeship, he became proprietor and editor of a journal in his native town, entitled " The Free Press ;" and toiled arduous- ly, putting his articles in type without committing them to paper. The enterprise, however, proved unsuccessful, and he sought and obtained employment, for awhile, as a journeyman printer, in Boston ; where, in 1827, he became the editor of the " National Philanthropist," the first journal ever established for the advocacy of the cause of "total abstinence." Before the close of its first year, the journal changed proprietors ; and during the next year, 1828, he joined a friend in the publication of " The Journal of the Times," at Bennington, Vermont. This journal supported the claims of John Quincy Adams to the presidency, and was devoted in part to the interests of peace, temperance, anti-slavery, and kindred reforms; but it failed of a sufficient support, and was discontinued. During his residence at Bennington, Mr. Garrison's influence, in regard to slavery, was
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felt not only in that place, but, also, throughout the entire State, and led to the transmission, to Congress, of an anti- slavery memorial, which was more numerously signed than any similar paper ever before submitted to that tribunal. This subject, indeed, had now fairly enlisted the full interest of Mr. Garrison's mind, and he delivered an address before a religious and philanthropic assembly, held on the 4th of July, 1829, in the Park street church, Boston, which excited general attention by the boldness and vigor of its tones.
His "mission"-as the Germans would say-had found him, and a larger sphere of usefulness was opening before him. During the previous year (1828) he had become acquainted at Boston with one Benjamin Lundy, a Quaker and an abolition- ist, who had been publishing, in Baltimore, since 1824, " The Genius of Universal Emancipation" (established in 1821), "an anti-slavery paper which was read only by a few people in the city and adjacent country, mostly of his own faith, and which the southern people thought was not of sufficient consequence to be put down." The Baptist and the Quaker met and "struck hands" on this one common ground-their duty to the slave. So, in the autumn of 1829, Garrison went to Baltimore and joined Mr. Lundy in the editorship of the Genius; making, in the first number issued under the new auspices, a distinct avowal of the doctrine of immediate emancipation. Mr. Lundy was a gradual emancipationist and a believer in colonization, which Mr. Garrison entirely repudiated; but, as each of them appended his initials to his articles, the difference of opinion in- terposed no obstacle to a hearty co-operation. But the zeal of the new editor produced an unwonted excitement among the sup- porters of slavery, while his denunciation of the colonization project aroused an equal amount of hostility among the friends of the paper. "From the moment," says Garrison (in a specch
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at Philadelphia, 1863), "that the doctrine of immediate emanci- pation was enunciated in the columns of the Genius, as it had not been up to that hour, it was like a bombshell in the camp of the subscribers themselves; and from every direction letters poured in, that they had not bargained for such a paper as that, or for such doctrines, and they desired to have no more copies sent to them." Lundy seems to have borne patiently with the ruinous "rumpus" which his partner had raised; but an event soon occurred which occasioned a dissolution of the firm. It so happened that the ship Francis, belonging to a Mr. Francis Todd of Newburyport, Massachusetts, came to Baltimore, where she took in a cargo of slaves for the Louisiana market. It roused all the righteous indignation of Mr. Garrison, who denounced it as an act of "domestic piracy," and declared his intention to "cover with thick infamy all who were engaged in the transaction." Baltimore had patiently stood Lundy and his Genius for some years, but it could not brook this ferocious attack upon a business which was not only legitimized by use in their city but "by which they had their gain." Garrison was prosecuted for libel, indicted and convicted at the May term (1830) of the city, court, for "a gross and malicious libel" against the owner and master of the vessel, though the Custom House records proved that the number of slaves transported really exceeded that of the editor. In spite of the able defence of his counsel, Charles Mitchell, who occupied a position at the Baltimore bar second only to that of William Wirt, he was fined fifty dollars and costs of the court. Mr. Todd, in a civil suit, afterward obtained a verdict against him for one thousand dollars-but the judgment, probably on account of his well known poverty, was never enforced. During his imprisonment, he was considerately placed in a cell recently vacated by a man who had been hung for murder-but he experienced much
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kindness from the jailer and his family-and was visited frequently by Lundy and a few other Quaker friends. The northern press, generally, condemned his imprisonment as unjust, the South Carolina Manumission Society protested against it as an infraction of the liberty of the press, and his letters to the different newspapers, as well as several sonnets which he inscribed upon the walls of his cell, excited considerable attention in various quarters. After a forty-nine days' confine- ment he was released by the payment of the fine by Mr. Arthur Tappan, a New York merchant, whose generosity anticipated, by a few days, a similar purpose on the part of Henry Clay, whose interest had been awakened by a mutual friend. To Daniel Webster, also, Mr. Garrison was indebted, soon after his release, for sympathy and encouragement.
Freed from his chains, the dauntless champion of the op- pressed issued a prospectus for an anti-slavery journal to be published at Washington, and with the design of exciting a deeper and more wide-spread interest in his proposed enter- prise, he prepared a course of lectures on slavery, which he delivered in Philadelphia, New York, New Haven, Hartford, and Boston. In Baltimore, he failed to obtain a hearing. In Boston, all efforts to procure a suitable public place for his lectures having failed, he boldly announced, in the daily prints, that if no such place could be obtained within a certain speci- fied time, he would address the people on "The Common." The only hall placed at his disposal was by an association of infidels; and Mr. Garrison accepted the offer, and there de- livered his lectures; taking care, however, to distinctly avow his belief in Christianity, as the only power which could break the bonds of the enslaved. These lectures were largely attended, and were instrumental in awakening an increased interest in the subject. His experiences as a lecturer convinced him that
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Boston, rather than Washington, was the best location for an anti-slavery paper ; and that a revolution of public sentiment at the North must precede emancipation in the South. It was in Boston, accordingly, that he issued (January 1st 1831) the first. number of the " Liberator," taking for his motto, "my country is the world; my countrymen arc all mankind;" and declaring, in the face of an almost universal apathy upon the subject of slavery, " I am in earnest ; I will not equivocate ; I will not excuse ; I will not retract a single word, and I will be heard." And again : "On this question my influence, humble as it is, is felt at this moment to a considerable extent, and shall be felt in coming years -. not perniciously, but beneficially-not as a curse, but as a blessing ; AND POSTERITY WILL BEAR TESTIMONY THAT I WAS RIGHT."
Yet this earnest young man, who so defiantly threw down the gauntlet to the world, was without means, or promise of support from any quarter, and his partner in the proposed enterprise, Mr. Isaac Knapp, was as poor as himself. Fortu- nately they were both afforded employment in the office of the "Christian Examiner," the foreman of which was a warm per- sonal friend of Garrison-and were thus enabled to exchange their labor for the use of the type, Mr. Garrison working labor- iously at type-setting all day, and spending the night in his edito- rial capacity. The initial number was at length issued, and the young men waited anxiously to see what encouragement they should receive. The first cheering return for their labors was the receipt of fifty dollars, with a list of twenty-five sub- scribers, from James Forten, a wealthy colored citizen of Phila- delphia, and they cast aside all doubt as to their future. At the expiration of three weeks they were enabled to open an office for themselves; but, for nearly two years, their very restricted resources obliged them to reside in the office, making
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their beds upon the floor, and subsisting upon the plainest and humblest fare. In all sections of the country, both North and South, the " Liberator" attracted general attention, finding sympathy in some quarters, while in others it was denounced as fanatical and incendiary. The Hon. Harrison Gray Otis, then mayor of Boston, having been urged, by a southern magis- trate, to suppress the journal by law, if possible, wrote in reply that his officers had "ferreted out the paper and its editor, whose office was an obscure hole, his only auxiliary a negro boy, his supporters a very few insignificant persons of all col- ors." Almost every mail, at this period, brought threats of assassination to Mr. Garrison, if he persisted in publishing his sheet ; and in December, 1831, an act was passed by the Legisla- ture of Georgia, offering a reward of $5000 to any one who should arrest, bring to trial, and prosecute to conviction, under the laws of that State, the editor and proprietor of the obnox- ious journal. His friends, becoming alarmed for his safety, urged his arming himself for defence ; but being a non-resistant, he was conscientiously restrained from following their advice.
On the 1st of January, 1832, he, with eleven others, organ- ized " The New England (afterwards the Massachusetts) Anti- Slavery Society," upon the principle of immediate emancipation ; and this was the parent of the numerous affiliated societies by which, for many years, the anti-slavery question was so per- sistently kept before the public eye. In the spring of the same year, he published a work, entitled "Thoughts on African Colonization," etc., setting forth, at length, the grounds of his opposition to that scheme. Immediately after (1833), he went to England as an agent of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, for the purpose of securing the co-operation of the peo- ple of Great Britain, in measures for the promotion of emancipa- tion in the United States, and as opposed to the colonization
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