Horace Greeley This page intentionally left blank Horace Greeley Print, Politics, and the Failure of American Nationhood James M. Lundberg Johns Hopkins University Press Baltimore © 2019 Johns Hopkins University Press All rights reserved. Published 2019 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1 Johns Hopkins University Press 2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363 www.press.jhu.edu Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Lundberg, James M., author. Title: Horace Greeley : print, politics, and the failure of American nationhood / James M. Lundberg. Description: Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019005190 | ISBN 9781421432878 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781421432885 (electronic) | ISBN 1421432870 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 1421432889 (electronic) Subjects: LCSH: Greeley, Horace, 1811–1872. | Presidential candidates—United States—Biography. | Newspaper editors—New York (State)—New York— Biography. | Politicians—United States—Biography. | United States—Politics and government—1849–1877. Classification: LCC E415.9.G8 L86 2019 | DDC 070.92 [B] —dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019005190 A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Special discounts are available for bulk purchases of this book. For more information, please contact Special Sales at 410-516-6936 or specialsales@press .jhu.edu. Johns Hopkins University Press uses environmentally friendly book materials, including recycled text paper that is composed of at least 30 percent post- consumer waste, whenever possible. For Rebecca, and for Delaney and Winifred This page intentionally left blank Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction Print and Legends 1 1 Oracle 17 2 The Nation in the Balance 53 3 Making the Yankee Nation 79 4 Horace Greeley’s American Conflict 113 5 The Most American of Americans 145 Epilogue Union Printer 175 Notes 183 Index 225 This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments I initially went to graduate school to study early America, but my interests quickly moved forward through time. My collected seminar papers and prospectuses track me moving from seventeenth-century writing on colo- nial settlement, to eighteenth-century book history, to Revolutionary print culture. I might well have made it to the twentieth century by the end of my second year but for the intervention of three professors who stopped me firmly in the nineteenth. Joanne Freeman and David Blight have shaped me and this book in countless ways. Any faults with either product are the result of my imper- fect emulation of Joanne and David as scholars, writers, and teachers. Both encouraged me to take on and stick with this project; both picked me up in moments of doubt; both bought me too many lunches at Yorkside Pizza. Joanne’s teaching and scholarship opened my eyes to the early Ameri- can republic and political culture, and I’ve seen the past in a new light ever since. When I returned to this project after some years in the teaching swamps, Joanne helped give it new life, as her own research had moved into the antebellum period. I was energized by my conversations with her about the content, fortified by her advice about the process. She generously showed me chapters of her brilliant manuscript as working models of re- search and writing. David’s refrain through this process was always, “Greeley is important.” My work with him has helped me explain why. After any conversation we’ve had about this project, I’ve always found a note in my inbox from David with some additional words of encouragement, some new lead, some fuller re-