William Alexander Linn, Horace Greeley Founder and Editor of The New York Tribune, Chapter 4: the founding of the New York Tribune, page 67

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19th-Century American

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When Greeley attacked a contemporary for some cause that aroused his indignation, his language was apt to descend to vituperation, and “villain,” “old villain,” “escaped State-prison bird,” and “deliberate falsehood” were among his favorite terms. The following on the result of a libel suit against the Herald, is an illustration: “The ruffian has got his deserts. The low-mouthed, blatant, witless, brutal scoundrel is condemned — condemned, too, by the people. Let not his sewer-sheet roll its nastiness and filth over the ‘ codfish aristocracies,’ as he has called them for fifteen years.” ¹

1 “ I remember very well a conversation between Mr. Horace Greeley and my father, Mr. Park Benjamin, during a railway journey which they were then taking to fulfill one of their numerous lecture engagements. Mr. Greeley came into the car where we were seated with his under lip sticking out, and evidently in a very disagreeable frame of mind. He seated himself, and having wrapped his legs in an old red blanket which he always carried with him, looked up and said: ‘ Benjamin, that man Bennett would disgrace a pigsty. I have told him so often enough for him to become convinced of the fact, but it is like water on a duck's back.’ Mr. Benjamin laughed, and replied: ‘ Greeley, you are the bigger fool of the two. Don't you see that those soedolagers of yours only serve to advertise him? The general public has no memory. If you want to make a man prominent in New York city abuse him. The public will forget in a few days all you said of him, and will merely remember his name.’ To this Mr. Greeley replied, ‘I think you are right, and I won't bother with the hog in the future.’ ” The Tribune from that time dropped Bennett.-(G. H. Benjamin, in New York Evening Post.)

New York, D. Appleton and Company, March 1903.

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

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