“When someone says, ‘He lost it all,’ they may be referring to Horace Greeley.”

Today, Horace Greeley is best known for his advice, “Go West, young man, and grow up with the country.” Born into a poor family in New Hampshire, he apprenticed for a printer and then went to New York to seek his fortune. Active in politics, he became involved with the Whig Party and was helpful in electing William Henry Harrison in 1840. Afterwards he founded the New York Tribune which became the highest circulation newspaper in the country. He urged the settlement of the West and popularized the slogan associated with his name. A utopian, he supported socialism, feminism, temperance and veganism. He served in the United States House of Representatives — for three months — where he angered members by investigating them and publishing the findings in his newspaper. He was a founder of the Republican Party under Lincoln and is credited with coming up the name. After Lincoln’s assassination he supported the Radical Republicans against Andrew Johnson. Stunned by the corruption of President Ulysses S. Grant, Greeley ran against the Grant as a candidate of the newly-formed Liberal Republican Party. Greeley was defeated in a landslide. Immediately after the election – and before the electoral votes were counted – he tried to re-assume editorship of the New York Tribune but was rebuffed. His wife died and he was consigned to a mental institute where he died. A month later, his 66 electoral votes were divided among other candidates. In a month he had lost it all: his newspaper, wife, sanity, his electoral votes and his life.

www.authormasterminds.com/steve-levi

Steve Levi is an Alaskan writer who specializes in the Alaska Gold Rush (nonfiction) and the ‘impossible crime,’ (fiction.)  An ‘impossible crime’ is one where the detective must figure out HOW the crime was committed before going after the perpetrators – like a Greyhound bus with bank robbers and hostages disappearing off the Golden Gate Bridge –THE MATTER OF THE VANISHING GREYHOUND. Steve’s books can be found at www.authormasterminds.com/steve-levi

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