Slavery. The most hotly debated subject of the antebellum period. For more than 30 years abolitionist societies flooded the North, and to a lesser degree the South, with anti-slavery propaganda. Meanwhile related events piled up like so many flakes in a snowstorm: the Missouri Compromise, the Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner slave uprisings, the civil conflict in Kansas, the raid at Harper's Ferry.
Animosity and distrust fermented in both regions. Thousands of pamphlets were printed, pro- and anti-slavery treatises published, debates and symposiums held, songs and poems written, and abolitionist newspaper editors worked tirelessly to sway public opinion. But perhaps no men touched more people in this national debate than two New Yorkers. One, John Brown, wrote his story in blood, while the other, Horace Greeley, wrote his in words.
Brown's attitude about slavery was both rigid and unforgiving. In 1856 he gained notoriety after butchering pro-slavery settlers in Kansas. Criticized for excess by some, applauded for striking a bold blow by others, Brown quickly became a controversial figure in the anti-slavery movement.
Probably no one influenced more readers than the impetuous, and idealistic, "Uncle Horace" Greeley. That Greeley's effect was so strong is not surprising. Abolitionist journals tended to be provincial in audience reach, and their circulations were relatively small. Not so with the Tribune.
Greeley's stance on slavery was probably more acceptable to most northerners, simply because he was not as strident as the mildest abolitionist; he believed a strong stance on emancipation would result in everyone in the Republican Party being labeled a "Black Republican."
Greeley's influence, however, is found in simple numbers. By 1860 his Weekly Tribune reached more than 200,000 northerners, and he also published semi-weekly Tribunes and a Tribune Almanac, both of which were ripe with Greeleyisms.
Although other newspapers, such as the New York Herald and the New York Times, had larger circulations, no one reached the rural inhabitants of the North like the Tribune, and no big city editor was more openly opposed to slavery than Greeley.3 Perhaps more importantly, the glue which united the Republican Party was the anti-slavery movement and no newspaper in the 1850s reached the various elements of the Republican Party as well as Greeley's weekly and daily Tribunes. According to Greeley biographer Jeter Allen Isely:
After the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill in 1854, and the advent of enforced negro labor in those territories, increasingly thousands of workers and intellectuals, merchants and manufacturers, studied and believed the Tribune. It was more than a metropolitan journal, it was a sectional oracle.
Brown's legacy of violence in Kansas and his raid at Harper's Ferry were news events of the first magnitude. Both were products of the most absorbing issue of the times, as were the two men considered here. John Brown wielded the sword; Horace Greeley the pen. Both acted upon their passions.
It would be problematical to hold that Brown or Greeley helped clarify the issues for either the North or the South. However, through the acts of one and the immense news coverage provided by the other, the two men are forever tied by that strange link that binds newsmaker to newsman.
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Last updated: March 9, 1998.
Comments to: Communication Department
