New York Tribune - History

History

Greeley had previously published a weekly newspaper, The New Yorker (unrelated to the modern magazine), in 1833, and was also publisher of the Whig Party's political organ, Log Cabin. In 1841, he merged operations of the two into a new newspaper, the New-York Tribune.

The Tribune was created by Greeley with the goal of providing a straightforward, trustworthy media source in an era when newspapers such as the New York Sun and New York Herald thrived on sensationalism. The Tribune did reflect some of Horace Greeley's idealist views. His journal retained Karl Marx as European correspondent in 1852; although Marx viewed the Tribune as a 'filthy rag', the arrangement, whereby his collaborator Engels also submitted articles under the by-line, lasted ten years, the final Marx column being published in February 1861.

During Greeley's editorship, the paper was aided by able writers including Charles Anderson Dana, George William Curtis, William Henry Fry, Bayard Taylor, Margaret Fuller, George Ripley, Julius Chambers and Henry Jarvis Raymond.

In 1854 the paper joined the newly formed Republican Party—Greeley chose the party's name—and emphasized opposition to slavery. During the American Civil War (1861–1865) the Tribune usually spoke for the Radical Republican faction that was very hostile to the Confederacy and wanted slavery abolished immediately.

During the first few months of the war, the paper's "on to Richmond" slogan pressured Union general Irvin McDowell into advancing on the Confederate capital of Richmond before his army was ready, resulting in the defeat at the First Battle of Manassas on July 21, 1861. After the failure of the Peninsular Campaign in the spring of 1862, the Tribune pressured President Abraham Lincoln into installing John Pope as commander of the Army of Virginia. During the 1863 Draft Riots a mob tried to burn down the Tribune building which lacked the Gatling guns of the nearby New York Times.

Following Greeley's defeat by Ulysses S. Grant for the presidency of the United States in 1872, Whitelaw Reid, owner of the New York Herald, assumed control of the Tribune. Greeley checked into Dr. Choate's Sanitarium where he died a few weeks later. Under Reid's son, Ogden Mills Reid, the paper acquired the New York Herald to form the New York Herald Tribune, which continued to be run by Ogden M. Reid until his death in 1947. Copies of the New-York Tribune are available on microfilm at many large libraries and online at the Library of Congress. Also, indices from selected years in the late nineteenth century are available on the Library of Congress' website. The original paper articles from the newspaper's morgue are kept at The Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin.