James Parton, The life of Horace Greeley

“ [439] merely your hundred but every one of our subscribers to desert us, we should cheerfully accept such a release from our present duties and try to earn a livelihood in some easier way. So please go ahead!”

And now to our would-be friend who suggests that we are wrecking our influence by breasting the popular current: “Good Sir! do you forget that whatever influence or consideration The Tribune has attained has been won, not by sailing with the stream, but against it? On what topic has it ever swam with the current, except in a few instances wherein it has aided to change the current? Would any one who conducted a journal for Popularity's or Pelf's sake be likely to have taken the side of Liquor Prohibition, or Anti-Slavery or Woman's Rights, or Suffrage regardless of color, when we did? Would such a one have ventured to speak as we did in behalf of the Anti-Renters, when everybody hereabouts was banded to hunt them down unheard? Can you think it probable that, after what we have dared and endured, we are likely to be silenced now by the cry that we are periling our influence?”

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And now, if any would prefer to discontinue The Tribune because it is and must remain opposed to every measure or scheme of proscription for opinion's sake, we beg them not to delay one minute on our account. We shall all live till it is our turn to die, whether we earn a living by making newspapers or by doing something else.

Every race has its own idea respecting what is best in the character of a man. The English admire “pluck;” the French, adroitness; the Germans, perseverance; the Italians, craft. But when a Yankee would bestow his most special commendation upon another, he says, “That is a man, sir, who generally succeeds in what he undertakes.” Properly interpreted, this is high, perhaps the highest, praise; for a man who succeeds in doing what he tries to do, must have the sense to choose enterprises suited to his abilities and circumstances. This praise, it is true, is frequently given to men whose objects are extremely petty-making a fortune, for example; but if those objects were such as they could attain, if enterprises of a higher nature were really beyond their abilities, how much wiser is it in them to attempt petty objects only! But whatever may be the value of the American eulogy—and a Yankee is an American, only more so—it may most justly be bestowed upon Horace Greeley. Whatever he has attempted, he has done as well as, or better than, any one else had done it before him. A piously generous son, a perfect pupil, an apprentice of ideal excellence, a journeyman of unexampled regularity, perseverance, and effectiveness.