James Parton, The life of Horace Greeley

[77] to American Industry was recommended strongly, and advocated by arguments so simple that a child could understand them; so cogent that no man could refute them—arguments, in fact, precisely similar to those which the Tribune has since made familiar to the country. In the message of 1822, the president repeated his recommendation, and again in that of 1824. Those were the years of the recognition of the South American Republics, of the Greek enthusiasm, of Lafayette's triumphal progress through the Union; of the occupation of Oregon, of the suppression of Piracy in the Gulf of Mexico; of the Clay, Adams and Jackson controversy. It was during the period we are now considering, that Henry Clay made his most brilliant efforts in debate, and secured a place in the sections of Horace Greeley, which he retained to his dying day. It was then, too, that the boy learned to distrust the party who claimed to be pre-eminently and exclusively Democratic.

How attentively he watched the course of political events, how intelligently he judged them, at the age of thirteen, may be inferred from a passage in an article which he wrote twenty years after, the facts of which he stated from his early recollection of them:

‘The first political contest,’ he wrote in the Tribune for August 29th, 1846,

in which we ever took a distinct interest will serve to illustrate this distinction [between real and sham democracy]. It was the Presidential Election of 1824. Five candidates for President were offered, but one of them was withdrawn, leaving four, all of them members in regular standing of the so called Republican or Democratic party. But a caucus of one-fourth of the members of Congress had selected one of the four (William H. Crawford) as the Republican candidate, and it was attempted to make the support of this one a test of party orthodoxy and fealty. This was resisted, we think most justly and democratically, by three-fourths of the people, including a large majority of those of this State. But among the prime movers of the caucus wires was Martin Van Buren of this State, and here it was gravely proclaimed and insisted that Democracy required a blind support of Crawford in preference to Adams, Jackson, or Clay, all of the Democratic party, who were competitors for the station. A Legislature was chosen as “Republican” before the people generally had begun to think of the Presidency, and, this Legislature, it was undoubtingly expected, would choose Crawford Electors of President. But the friends of the rival candidates at length began to bestir themselves and demand that the New York Electors should be chosen by a direct vote of the people, and not by a forestalled Legislature. This demand was vehemently resisted