New York Tribune

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The New York Tribune building - today the site of Pace University's building complex of One Pace Plaza in New York City

The New York Tribune was established by Horace Greeley in 1841 and was long considered one of the leading newspapers in the United States. The Tribune was created by Greeley with the hopes of providing a straightforward, trustworthy media source in an era when newspapers such as the New York Sun and New York Herald thrived on sensationalism. Although considered the least partisan of the leading newspapers, the Tribune did reflect some of Horace Greeley's idealist views. His journal had Karl Marx (and Friedrich Engels) as European correspondent in the early 1850s.[1]

During the American Civil War (1861–1865) the Tribune was a radical Republican newspaper, which supported abolition and subjection of the Confederacy instead of negotiated peace. During the first few months of the war, the Tribune's "on to Richmond" slogan pressured Union general Irvin McDowell into advancing on Richmond before his army was ready, resulting in the disaster of the First Battle of Manassas on July 21, 1861. After the failure of the Peninsular Campaign in the spring of 1862, the Tribune pressured President Abraham Lincoln into instating John Pope as commander of the Army of Virginia.

Following Greeley's defeat for the presidency of the United States in 1872, Whitelaw Reid, owner of the New York Herald, assumed control of the Tribune. Greeley checked into Dr. Choate’s Sanitarium where he died a few weeks later. Under Reid's son, Ogden Mills Reid, the paper acquired the New York Herald to form the New York Herald Tribune, which continued to be run by Ogden M. Reid until his death in 1947.

Copies of the New York Tribune are available on microfilm at many large libraries. Indices from selected years in the late nineteenth century are available on the Library of Congress' website. The original paper articles from the newspaper's morgue are kept at The Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin.

Daguerrotype of the Tribune editorial staff by Mathew Brady, taken between 1849 and 1860

[edit] Trivia

The New York Tribune building was the first home of Pace University. Today, the site of where the building once stood is now the One Pace Plaza complex of Pace University's New York City campus. Dr. Choate’s residence and private hospital, where Horace Greeley died, today is part of the campus of Pace University in Pleasantville, New York.