Starr claims that the history of journalism tends to be slanted towards examining the editorial process; Starr claims "we have more studies of Horace Greeley than of all the newsmen in his century" (vii). Starr also writes that Greeley's New York Tribune is an "archetype among newspapers of the day," and uses this paper to help focus the narrative of his history (viii).
Clapp's opinion of Greeley was as follows: "He is a self-made man who worships his creator" (4).
Of the increasing pace of the news and the press' emphasis on opinions rather than facts, Starr notes that Greeley realized that "the paper that brings the quickest news is the thing looked to." Starr also notes that the emphasis on editorial commentary helped to contribute to Greeley's fame (6).
Southern postmasters refused to deliver the Tribune and sedition laws were passed against the paper in Texas because of the letters from Charleston that were printed in the paper. In one instance, a Georgia editor invited Greeley to visit "the land you have lied and re-lied on" in a poem that ended:
"You can lower your chin, and open your mouth,
While your neck strains the rope you are tied on" (8).
Starr refers to Greeley, Raymond and Bennett as "those titans of newspaperdom" and notes that their offices were all located in a small area of New York near City Hall Park. Theirs were the "only eight-page dailies in the United States" and were vital news sources for the country (11).
Starr writes that visitors came to the Tribune offices "daily, during the afternoon visiting hours, hoping for a glimpse of Greeley's fabled white coat." Starr recounts the visit of Albert Deane Richardson during this time period and notes that although many came to catch a glimpse of Greeley, Richardson was unable to see him as Greeley was on a lecture tour and Dana often managed visitors and office business (14). According to Starr, Dana was "Blunt, decisive, by turns profane and charming, a Brook Farm idealist annealing into a man of the world after years of exposure to Greeley's irascible ways and the bitter disillusionment of a trip to Europe during the revolutions of 1848, he ran the paper with an iron hand. On more than one occasion he had thrown out Greeley's abstractions from Washington to make way for news -- once for a divorce story. It was the talk down in Pfaff's that he edited Greeley's editorials as well, and the Sunday Mercury hinted that he had been known to veto them" (15).
Of Greeley's fame, Starr writes: "Already the myth of Horace Greeley, the moralist in shining armor, the poor Vermont boy with a hatful of type who had worked hard and lived right and made good, the homely philosopher, the eccentric personality, the national oracle, towered almost frighteningly over the man himself. 'His entrance into a tavern, much more into a lecture hall, raises gratulating shouts,' Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, 'and I could scarcely keep the people quiet to hear my abstractions, they were so furious to shout Greeley! Greeley! Greeley! Catch me carrying Greeley into my lecture again!...I had as lief travel with...Barnum" (17-18). Part of Greeley's fame was the uniqueness of the Tribune, as "the paper seemed to suggest that its readers were as sophisticated as its editors, and that they shared the world between them." In addition, "Backed by Greeley's willingness to give battle for a cause, his broad humanitarianism, and his remarkable talent for getting himself on newsprint, the paper's fighting qualities kindled something like personal devotion. The Tribune was scarcely a newspaper in 1861; it was an article of faith" (17). Starr also notes that during the height of the Tribune's popularity, "people thought Greeley still edited the Tribune, and every word that went into it -- 'including shipping news,' Charles Congdon added wryly. But the Tribune, with 212 employees, including twenty-eight editors and reporters in 1861, was no more pure Greeley than was the myth he had become" (18). According to Starr, Greeley had the talent of attracting talented writers to the Rookery to cover for his own personal shortcomings; at the Rookery, Greeley "created an atmosphere in which they thrived; yet, in a sense, he was their prisoner." According to Starr, the staff of the paper kept the Tribune committed to anti-slavery while Greeley's own stance wavered and he sometimes feared what the editorials would say (18).
According to Starr, at the Tribune "Their [the staff's] loyalty was not to Greeley's politics, but to his idea of journalism...Such men gave superb implementation to Greeley's credo: that the newspaper must provide American society with leadership -- moral, political, artistic, and intellectual leadership -- before anything else" (19). Sensing changes in the newspaper industry, Greeley moved out of the office he shared with Dana in 1854 and moved to a more remote portion of the building, leaving Dana in "practical command" (19).
As the press sped up and "the leisurely days when one might edit with an eye for literary niceties and philosophical disputation were gone," Starr asks "How would the Tribune fare in this era?" He claims that the paper did not change much, with "Greeley and Dana serenely running news inside and advertising out; the most exciting paper in politics seemed to be the most conservative in journalism. There was another sign, more momentous, that the Tribune would go right no being the Tribune, come what may." This event was the loss of the Tribune's Washington correspondent, Pike, to the foreign service. Greeley sent Dana to Washington to hire a replacement and hired Fitz Henry Warren. Despite his loud nature and commanding presence, "Warren appeared to fit Greeley's bill of particulars" in his involvement in politics and anti-slavery stance and his past newspaper writing career (32-33).
In discussing the Tribune's error in its "On to Richmond" campaign, Starr defends the logic of the failed strategy but discusses the repercussions for Greeley and the paper. According to Starr, "Now Horace Greeley was a broken man. He took to his bed with an attack of 'brain fever,' visions of death flitting before him. He wrote to Lincoln: 'This is my seventh sleepless night.' He would 'second any movement you may see fit to make,' but he despaired of the Union cause. Dana loosed a thunderclap in his absence, an editorial demanding the resignation of the entire Cabinet. Agonized, Greeley publicly repudiated it. Fitz Henry Warren's letter of resignation, assuming the burden of responsibility for 'On to Richmond,' he quite properly refused to print. Rallying to one of his finer moments, Greeley wrote an editorial titled 'Just Once,' acknowledging his responsibility for what appeared in his paper, offering himself as a national scapegoat, coming to grips with what was the real 'great error' of the Tribune in a paragraph that read:
Henceforth I bar all criticism in these columns on Army movements, past or future...Correspondents and reporters may state fact, but must forebear comments.
According to Starr, Greeley made sure that his Washington correspondent Sam Wilkeson was sure that he was serious about this point, insisting that he wanted distance between news and opinion: "I want a man at Washington to find out all that is going on or preparing and calmly report it, writing Editorials separately, to be submitted to criticism and revision here, instead of embodying them in dispatches..." According to Starr, "Objectivity was a principle all but unknown to journalism, but if the results of Greeley's change of heart were difficult to discern in Tribune dispatches, the seed had been planted" (52-53). The error in the "On to Richmond" campaign caused the circulation of the paper to drop significantly, and Greeley was remarked negatively upon as "General Horace." While the paper still had the largest circulation, the Sunday edition was discontinued and the paper's influence was weakened (54-55). According to Starr, Dana, not Greeley, was primarily responsible for beginning the "On to Richmond" campaign, as Greeley was not in the office when Dana ran Warren's piece that called for the Union army to advance (34-35).
In one of Dr. Malcolm Ives's editorials in the Herald the "ultra Pro-Slavery Democrat, and, at the same time, a professed believer in the divinity of monarchical institutions," had "called for the arrest and imprisonment of Henry Ward Beecher, Wendell Phillips, and Greeley" (77).
According to Starr, at the Rookery (the Tribune office), one could seen "men wading through a sea of exchanges -- hundreds of dailies and weeklies sent by editors in hope that something would strike Mr. Greeley's fancy, and because they, in turn, must see the Tribune" (117).
According to Starr, when Gay took over for Dana at the Tribune, he had "inherited all of Dana's authority, and more. Greeley might cavil and carp, but he knew well enough that his managing editor must command unless he himself were to give up his lecturing, his far-flung correspondence, and his leader-writing for a job for which he had very little taste or judgment. It was enough for him that Horace Greeley and the New York Tribune remain indistinguishable int he public mind." Greeley told James R> Gilmore in the winter of 1862 that he had "relinquished control." Gilmore had never written for the paper in fear of Greeley's editing; Greeley replied, "But I have not resigned the blue pencil...You would not report to me but to Gay; and he is of your way of thinking." From then on, Greeley was only responsible for the editorials he wrote (117-118).
In a discussion of the preference of editors to keep the identities of their war correspondents anonymous or under the cover of a pen name, Starr writes about the different choice of editors. Some writers were allowed men names or initials, while editors like Bennet insisted on anonymity. Some writers, however, were allowed to identify themselves, as Starr quotes Sam Wilkeson's explanation of the "prevailing view" to Gay: "The anonymous greatly favors freedom and boldness in newspaper correspondence. I would not allow any letter writer to attach his initials to his communications, unless he was a widely known & influential man like Greeley or Bayard Taylor...Besides the responsibility it fastens on a correspondent, the signature inevitably detracts from the powerful impersonality of a journal" (195).
Starr notes that during the rivalry between the Herald and the Tribune the "poor, ragged Greeley" was often attacked, and despite council to ignore the jabs, could not always ignore the Herald (235).
Starr notes that Lincoln sought Greeley's and the Tribune's support: "having Greeley 'firmly behind me,' he wrote once, 'will be as helpful to me as an army of one hundred thousand men.'" According to Starr, Greeley "held aloof" (127), though he writes later that Greeley and other writers attempted to force Lincoln's hand (129). Under pressure from the intermediary James Gilmore who reported that Greeley was growing impatient, Lincoln would issue a proclamation in 1862 on slavery (127). Lincoln would later arrange for Greeley and the Tribune to receive insider information via Gilmore and Robert J. Walker in exchange for Greeley's public support; Starr notes that "The scheme bore little fruit for either party, and existed only briefly" (159).
Greeley attempted to persuade Villiard to soften his report of the battle at Fredericksburg, as "Greeley refused to let the Tribune assume sole responsibility for the dreadful news...but Monday morning's Tribune would carry the first authentic details of the most terrible repulse of the war" (166). After this battle, Greeley began to seriously discuss the idea of foreign mediation; this proved to be a controversial position for some, prompting Wilkeson to quit the Tribune (169, 196). Evidently Greeley's position also worried Gay, for who, according to Starr, "The constant threat of Greeley's insisting again on plumping for a negotiated peace haunted him"; Gay's job during this period was largely to "counteract" Greeley (289).
During the draft riots (July 13, 1863) that occurred in response to the conscription laws and tensions between runaway slaves and immigrant workers in New York, cries of "Tribune office to be burned tonight!" and "We'll hang Horace Greeley to a sour apple tree!" were heard (221). The mob marched to the Tribune offices that evening, where they yelled for the demise of the paper and Greeley. Greeley was in a meeting with Theodore Tilton of the Independent and informed of what was going on outside. Greeley agreed with Gay that the offices should be armed, but did not want arms brought into the building. Greeley also chose to remain in New York rather than fleeing the city for his safety; Greeley and Tilton had an dinner engagement that Greeley wished to honor. As the two men left the Tribune building, they passed through the mob untouched (222). The violence against the newspaper's offices, continued, however, with a mob of more than two thousand gathered outside; at about seven that evening, the mob began throwing pavement stones and breaking the windows of the building. The mob entered the counting-room, where they broke the furniture and began a fire that the Tribune staff fought to put out. Tom Rooker and the building engineer were positioned in the press room, ready to puncture the boilers and spray the rioters with hot water and steam. One hundred and ten police men arrived to fight the crowd, which they did, killing some of the rioters. The mob was driven out of the Tribune offices, where "Gay helped clean up the wreckage and succor the wounded until the ambulances arrived. Feeling like a Parisian during the Terror, he saw the Tribune to press, on schedule. It is described as the first day of the most violent civic disturbance in American history" (223). The rioting continued the next day (July 14), and the fighting in the streets between the mob and the army and police was more violent. Gay stayed at the Tribune offices all night and ordered that the walls be lined with reams of wet newsprint to help lower the fire hazard. The regular business of the paper - reporting and editing - continued. Gilmore brought a wagonload of old muskets from Governor's Island to protect the building, making it an "arsenal" by the time Greeley arrived. When Greeley came to the offices, he ordered the guns be removed: "Take 'em away! Take 'em away! I don't want to kill anybody, and besides they're a lot more likely to go off and kill us" (223). Starr suggests that Greeley would have thought differently of matters had he not gone home before the previous night's raid and fight. Gay ignored Greeley's orders and instead wrote a letter to his wife (a Quaker) about their escape plan and the situation at the offices as the rioters congregated in front of the offices (223-224).
During Lincoln's re-election campaign, like the President, Greeley was nearly certain that he had lost the election (323). Greeley also privately supported Chase during the election (314). By September 6, 1854, however, Greeley abandoned his plan to nominate someone else, and, as public sentiment towards Lincoln increased, the Tribune publicly announced its support of the re-election of the President (326-327). Gay and Greeley predicted early that Lincoln had carried New York during his win (333).
Extra page numbers: 221-224, 235, 239, 266, 289, 291, 292, 312, 314, 323, 326-327, 333, 348-349.
The Vault at Pfaff's