Horace Greeley founder of the New York Tribune was born on February 3, 1811 in Amherst, New Hampshire. He was the third son of Zaccheus and Mary Woodburn who were farmers. Horace had no regular schooling and by the age of 15 he was apprenticing for a country weekly newspaper in East Poultney, Vermont. After the paper failed he moved to Erie County where his family was living on a farm. By August of 1831 Horace had moved to New York City as a newspaper compositor where he acted as a proof reader. By 1833 Horace opened a job printing office. This eventually led him to founding the New Yorker a weekly journal primarily dedicated to literature in 1834. At this time he wrote for the Daily Whig as well as edited the newspaper. By April 1841 he founded the New York Tribune a daily newspaper which he edited for forty years.
Horace Greeley was a social reformer who affected change through his editorials and articles in the Tribune. Some of the changes that he help create were temperance, homestead law, women’s rights, organization of labor, while opposing monopolies, landgrants for railroads, and slavery. He supported many utopian communities like Modern Times where different philosophies were practiced but he did not agree with every philosophy. For a short time he purchased property in Modern Times but there is no proof that he actually lived in Modern Times and was a member of the community. In 1853 the philosophy of Free Love started to take hold in this utopian community and Horace spoke out against the philosophy by writing many editorials against Stephen Pearl Andrews and Henry James, Sr. theories on Free Love. Horace believed that marriage was both “state-sanctioned and indissoluble” and therefore he be stressed that “no relationship that is not state-sanctioned and not indissoluble really is a marriage.
As time went on Horace became more involved with party politics and less involved with utopian communities and socialism. Perhaps in another article we will look closely at his writings on Free Love and his initial support of Modern Times.
M. Koferl, Local History Newsletter, September 2008
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