Chapter 13: the Jeffersonian.
- Objects of the Jeffersonian -- its character -- a novel glorious -- victory paragraph -- the Graves and Cilley duel -- the editor overworked.
The slender income derived from the New Yorker obliged its editor to engage in other labors. He wrote, as occasion offered, for various periodicals. The Daily Whig he supplied with its leading article for several months, and in 1838 undertook the entire editorial charge of the Jeffersonian, a weekly paper of the “campaign” description, started at Albany on the third of March, and continuing in existence for one year. With the conception and the establishment of the Jeffersonian, Horace Greeley had nothing to do. It was published under the auspices and by the direction of the Whig Central Committee of the State of New York, and the fund for its establishment was contributed by the leading politicians of the State in sums of ten dollars. ‘I never sought the post of its editor,’ wrote Mr. Greeley in 1848, ‘but was sought for it by leading whigs whom I had never before personally known.’ It was afforded at fifty cents a year, attained rapidly a circulation of fifteen thousand; the editor, who spent three days of each week in Albany, receiving for his year's services a thousand dollars. The ostensible object of the paper was —to quote the language of its projectors—‘to furnish to every person within the State of New York a complete summary of political intelligence, at a rate which shall place it absolutely within the reach of every man who will read it.’ But, according to the subsequent explanation of the Tribune, ‘it was established on the impulse of the whig tornado of 1837, to secure a like result in 1838, so as to give the Whig party a Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Senate, Assembly, U. S. Senator, Congressmen, and all the vast executive patronage of the State, then amounting to millions of dollars a year.’
