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Horace Greeley

Print, Politics, and the Failure of American Nationhood

James M. Lundberg

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A lively portrait of Horace Greeley, one of the nineteenth century's most fascinating public figures.

The founder and editor of the New-York Tribune, Horace Greeley was the most significant—and polarizing—American journalist of the nineteenth century. To the farmers and tradesmen of the rural North, the Tribune was akin to holy writ. To just about everyone else—Democrats, southerners, and a good many Whig and Republican political allies—Greeley was a shape-shifting menace: an abolitionist fanatic; a disappointing conservative; a terrible liar; a power-hungry megalomaniac.

In Horace Greeley...

A lively portrait of Horace Greeley, one of the nineteenth century's most fascinating public figures.

The founder and editor of the New-York Tribune, Horace Greeley was the most significant—and polarizing—American journalist of the nineteenth century. To the farmers and tradesmen of the rural North, the Tribune was akin to holy writ. To just about everyone else—Democrats, southerners, and a good many Whig and Republican political allies—Greeley was a shape-shifting menace: an abolitionist fanatic; a disappointing conservative; a terrible liar; a power-hungry megalomaniac.

In Horace Greeley, James M. Lundberg revisits this long-misunderstood figure, known mostly for his wild inconsistencies and irrepressible political ambitions. Charting Greeley's rise and eventual fall, Lundberg mines an extensive newspaper archive to place Greeley and his Tribune at the center of the struggle to realize an elusive American national consensus in a tumultuous age. Emerging from the jangling culture and politics of Jacksonian America, Lundberg writes, Greeley sought to define a mode of journalism that could uplift the citizenry and unite the nation. But in the decades before the Civil War, he found slavery and the crisis of American expansion standing in the way of his vision.

Speaking for the anti-slavery North and emerging Republican Party, Greeley rose to the height of his powers in the 1850s—but as a voice of sectional conflict, not national unity. By turns a war hawk and peace-seeker, champion of emancipation and sentimental reconciliationist, Greeley never quite had the measure of the world wrought by the Civil War. His 1872 run for president on a platform of reunion and amnesty toward the South made him a laughingstock—albeit one who ultimately laid the groundwork for national reconciliation and the betrayal of the Civil War's emancipatory promise.

Lively and engaging, Lundberg reanimates this towering figure for modern readers. Tracing Greeley's twists and turns, this book tells a larger story about print, politics, and the failures of American nationalism in the nineteenth century.

Reviews

Reviews

In "Horace Greeley: Print, Politics, and the Failure of American Nationhood," James M. Lundberg, a history professor at Notre Dame, traces Greeley's struggles with the vicissitudes of U.S. history during his lifetime, from the anguish induced by James Polk's Mexican War to the tensions of Reconstruction. It's a compact volume, well crafted and filled with insight, designed to illuminate such events through Greeley's thinking—and employ history, in turn, to probe the Greeley legacy.

Through Greeley, Lundberg paints a rich picture of an American political economy coming to grips with its internal contradictions. Lundberg's history provides us with key insights into the ways in which the emergent conditions of American nationhood were both compelled and repelled by a media landscape unsure of its place in the construction and maintenance of American political discourse.

An enthralling and well-written biography of Greeley. It brings to life his fascinating connections, thwarted ambitions, and importance to nineteenth-century American history. A cracking read.

Beyond its complex and challenging thesis, this book is simply an exceptional work of history. Written in a brisk yet comprehensive style that will appeal to scholars and general readers alike, Horace Greeley is clear, logical, lucid, and concise. Lundberg's treatment of Greeley's New-Yorker years is both fresh and original, bringing to life the formative period in the editor's professional life. A compelling work of history on a timely, relevant topic.

James M. Lundberg's fresh, timely approach to Greeley sheds new light not only on the influential editor himself, but also on his era. Alas, as Professor Lundberg persuasively shows, the newspaper revolution, which kindled such optimism in Greeley, did more to weaken the bonds of union than to strengthen them.

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Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
248
ISBN
9781421432878
Illustration Description
6 b&w photos, 5 b&w illus.
Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction. Print and Legends
Chapter 1. Oracle
Chapter 2. The Nation in the Balance
Chapter 3. Making the Yankee Nation
Chapter 4. Horace Greeley's American Conflict
Chapter 5. The

Acknowledgments
Introduction. Print and Legends
Chapter 1. Oracle
Chapter 2. The Nation in the Balance
Chapter 3. Making the Yankee Nation
Chapter 4. Horace Greeley's American Conflict
Chapter 5. The Most American of Americans
Epilogue. A Union Printer
Notes
Index

Author Bio
James M. Lundberg
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James M. Lundberg

James M. Lundberg is the director of the Undergraduate Program in History and an assistant professor of the practice at the University of Notre Dame.
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