Horace
Greeley, the founder and editor of the "New York Tribune" was a
farmer's boy who learned early to speak and write the vocabulary
of the plain people. Always interested in new ideas, even in
Transcendentalism and Fourierism, his courage and energy and
journalistic vigor gave him leadership in the later phases of the
movement for enfranchisement. He did not hesitate to offer
unasked advice to Lincoln on many occasions, and Lincoln enriched
our literature by his replies. Greeley had his share of faults
and fatuities, but in his best days he had an impressively loyal
following among both rural and city-bred readers of his paper,
and he remains one of the best examples of that obsolescent
personal journalism which is destined to disappear under modern
conditions of newspaper production. Readers really used to care
for "what Greeley said" and "Dana said" and "Sam Bowles said,"
and all of these men, with scores of others, have left their
stamp upon the phrases and the tone of our political writing.
In the concrete issue of Slavery, however, it must be admitted
that the most remarkable literary victory was scored, not by any
orator or journalist, but by an almost unknown little woman, the
author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin.
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