by Gregory A.
Borchard
In August 1862 there was an amazing exchange of letters
between Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York Tribune, and Abraham
Lincoln, President of the United States.
These letters were not exchanged through the mail, but rather in the
pages of the country’s newspapers. In an
open letter to Lincoln, published under the heading “The Prayer of Twenty
Millions,” Greeley demanded that Lincoln ungrudgingly execute the Confiscation
Act, thereby giving freedom to the slaves of the Rebels. A few days later Lincoln famously replied, “ 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.”
Greeley is too often pushed aside in many books written
about Lincoln, but the relationship between Abraham Lincoln and Horace Greeley
is a long and complicated one. Abraham Lincoln and Horace Greeley, by Gregory
A. Borchard, a volume in Southern Illinois University Press’ Concise Lincoln Library, uncovers the
tangled history of these two men.
Lincoln and Greeley were more alike than they were
different. Mr. Borchard’s linear
narrative traces the parallel lives of these two men; both grew up in poverty,
were self-made men, and were ultimately successful in their chosen fields of
politics and journalism. Both men
favored the limitation and eventual abolition of slavery.
Though geographically separated, Greeley & Lincoln’s
lives frequently intersected. Both were
members of the Whig party who served together in the House of Representatives
during the 30th Congress of the United Sates, and both eventually became
Republicans. Greeley, who broke ranks
with his former political allies, Thurlow Weed and William H. Seward, was a
delegate to the 1860 Republican National Convention and supported Lincoln over
Seward for the party’s nomination.
Mr. Borchard also traces the divergence of the lives of
Lincoln and Greeley once Lincoln became the President. Often antagonistic, Greeley used the power of
his pen to try to goad Lincoln into action, while Lincoln steadfastly led the
nation through four years of civil war.
Abraham Lincoln and
Horace Greeley is a well researched book written in an easily read style,
and covers the relationship between these two men in a depth not found in other
works about Lincoln.
Mr. Borchard, an associate professor of mass communication
and journalism in the Hank Greenspun School of Journalism and Media Studies at
the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, is the coauthor of Journalism in the
Civil War Era and has published journal articles focusing on the
nineteenth-century press.
ISBN 978-0809330454, Southern Illinois University Press, ©
2011, Hardcover, 168 pages, End Notes, Selected Bibliography & Index.
$19.95
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