was brought to a victorious and dramatic close by Greeley. From the time when Harris presumed to tell the government what it should not do in the matter of waging barbarous warfare, till the time when Greeley did tell the government what to do, when he became the most influential single figure in the selection of the country's presidents, there is a steady, never-failing progression. One might almost expect to find a blood descent from one to the other; indeed, the rise of journalistic power, from Harris to Greeley, moves with a precision such as marked the development of an ancient dynasty.
But Greeley, for all the good that he did and all the power that he had—and he never used power but for good—was not a happy man, and he founded no dynasty. The great paper that he founded passed to another on his death, and Whitelaw Reid, the man who succeeded him—with none of his struggles or handicaps—was a much happier man, and achieved far greater honors.
Greeley himself tells us[1] that from childhood he so loved and devoured newspapers that he early resolved to be a printer. Born on a rocky farm in New Hampshire in 1811, he was only eleven years of age when, hearing that an apprentice was wanted in a newspaper office at Whitehall, he went with his father to obtain the job, but he was rejected because of his youth.
In the spring of 1826 another opportunity came, when the Northern Spectator at East Poultney, Vermont, advertised for an apprentice. The spirit of the times is revealed in the fact that the citizens of the town of East Poultney had decided to finance the journal, private capital having come to the conclusion that there was no profit in the undertaking.
Greeley's father was moving for the west, one of the
- ↑ Recollections of a Busy Life, 61.
