Quotes about Horace Greeley

Abraham Lincoln

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution … If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union.

Some Lincoln critics point to this quotation to illustrate their belief that Lincoln’s emancipation of slaves was not based on deeply held personal moral convictions but was the result of pragmatic political forces pure and simple. Others believe that this statement to Greeley represented a political tactic to hold Maryland and Kentucky—then slave states—in the Union, but that Lincoln was waiting for the right time to adopt a policy of making emancipation paramount.

James Baker

Puritan standards have become the public standards of America, and you will find more of New England in Colorado Springs, Boulder, or Greeley than in most towns of Massachusetts.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Greeley does the thinking for the whole West at $2 per year for his paper.

The New York Tribune in 1856 had a circulation of 220,000—many of whom were Westerners

Ulysses S. Grant

If I saw Greeley, I would tell him that when I wanted the advice of a political editor in selecting generals I would call on him.

Horace Greeley was constantly writing editorials about who should be promoted in the army

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Take egoism out and you would castrate the benefactors. Luther, Mirabeau, Napoleon, John Adams; and our nearer eminent public servants,—[Horace] Greeley, Theodore Parker, [Henry] Ward Beecher, Horace Mann, [William Lloyd] Garrison would lose their vigour.

Elmer Davis

The chief characteristic of 'The Tribune' under Greeley was an aggressive and even ostentatious purity. 'Immoral and degrading police reports,' and any notices of the existence of the theater, whether in news or advertising, were at first scrupulously excluded.

Harper Reed

I grew up in Greeley, Colorado, in a house without a television set. I was a very nerdy kid: I used to play 'astronaut' and eat bouillon as astronaut food. We also had tons of books.

Isabella Bird

My first experiences of Colorado travel have been rather severe. At Greeley, I got a small upstairs room at first, but gave it up to a married couple with a child, and then had one downstairs no bigger than a cabin, with only a canvas partition. It was very hot, and every place was thick with black flies.

Horace Greeley Quotes