William Alexander Linn, Horace Greeley Founder and Editor of The New York Tribune

[57] New Yorker had attracted the attention of so competent a critic as Thurlow Weed. His residence at Albany had widened his acquaintance with the lawmakers gathered from all parts of the State, and with the State officials and the managers of both parties. There was probably not another man in this country who was then editing two newspapers, and the editor of one newspaper was a person to be pointed out in those days. The big circulation of the Log Cabin had still further increased his reputation, and in 1841 he received an urgent invitation to assume the editorship of the Madisonian, a weekly which it was proposed to publish in Washington, D. C., as an Administration daily, and to which he afterward contributed. He was therefore justified in his belief that (if he referred to editorial experience) he “was in a better position to undertake the establishment of a daily newspaper than the great mass of those who try it and fail.” As to his finances, he had a capital of about $2,000, half of it in printing material. A daily newspaper in New York required much less capital in those days than now, but a man of more careful business instincts would have hesitated to embark in the enterprise with so restricted resources.