Sunday, August 1, 2010

AS SEEN ON TV: HORACE GREELEY

Horace Greeley said, "Go West, Young Man!" and that's what we're going to do in what has now become the traditional look at historical figures of the Old West As Seen On TV.

So who better to kick off the rush than Mr. Greeley himself?

HORACE GREELEY

AS SEEN IN:
'Branded'

AS PLAYED BY:
Burgess Meredith
(seen here with Jason McCord played by Chuck Connors)

From Wikipedia:
Horace Greeley (February 3, 1811 – November 29, 1872) was an American editor of a leading newspaper, a founder of the Liberal Republican Party, a reformer, and a politician. His New York Tribune was America's most influential newspaper from the 1840s to the 1870s and "established Greeley's reputation as the greatest editor of his day." Greeley used it to promote the Whig and Republican parties, as well as opposition to slavery and a host of reforms. Crusading against the corruption of Ulysses S. Grant's Republican administration, he was the new Liberal Republican Party's candidate in the 1872 U.S. presidential election. Despite having the additional support of the Democratic Party, he lost in a landslide. He is currently the only presidential candidate who has died during the electoral process.

In a July 13, 1865 editorial, he famously advised "Go West, young man, go West and grow up with the country." Some have claimed that the phrase was originally written by John Soule in the Terre Haute Express in 1851, but it is most often attributed to Greeley. Historian Walter A. McDougall quotes Josiah Grinnell, the founder of Iowa's Grinnell College, as saying, "I was the young man to whom Greeley first said it, and I went." Researcher Fred R. Shapiro questions whether Greeley ever used the term at all and cites, instead, an occurrence of Greeley writing "If any young man is about to commence the world, we say to him, publicly and privately, Go to the West" in the Aug. 25, 1838, issue of the newspaper New Yorker.

BCnU!

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