Duff Green

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Duff Green
Duff Green

Duff Green (August 15, 1791 – June 10, 1875), American politician and journalist, was born in Woodford County, Kentucky.

He was a school teacher in his native state, served during the War of 1812 in the Kentucky militia, and then settled in Missouri, where he worked as a schoolmaster and practiced law. He was a member of the Missouri Constitutional Convention of 1820, and was elected to the Missouri House of Representatives in 1820 and to the state Senate in 1822, serving one term in each house. Becoming interested in journalism, he purchased and for two years edited the St Louis Enquirer. In 1825 he bought and afterwards edited in Washington, D.C., The United States Telegraph, which soon became the principal organ of the Jackson men in opposition to the Adams administration.

Upon Andrew Jackson's election to the presidency, the Telegraph became the principal mouthpiece of the administration, and received printing patronage estimated in value at $50,000 a year, while Green became one of the côterie of unofficial advisers of Jackson known as the Kitchen Cabinet. In the quarrel between Jackson and John C. Calhoun, Green supported the latter, and through the columns of the Telegraph violently attacked the administration.

In consequence, his paper was deprived of the government printing in the spring of 1831. Under date of December 24, 1833, John Quincy Adams records in his diary that James Blair "had knocked down and very severely beaten Duff Green, editor of the Telegraph..." Diary (New York, Longmans, Green, 1929) p. 434. Blair paid "three hundred dollars fine for beating and breaking the bones" of Green. op. cit., p. 450.

Green, however, continued to edit it in the Calhoun interest until 1835, and gave vigorous support to that leader's nullification views. From 1835 to 1838 he edited The Reformation, a radically partisan publication, devoted to free trade, states' rights, and the idea of "Manifest Destiny". In 1841-1843 he was in Europe on behalf of the Tyler administration, and he is said to have been instrumental in causing the appointment of Lord Ashburton to negotiate in Washington concerning the boundary dispute between Maine and Canada.

In January 1843 Green established in New York City a short-lived journal, The Republic, to combat the spoils system and to advocate free trade. In September 1844 Calhoun, then secretary of state, sent Green to Texas ostensibly as consul at Galveston, but actually, it appears, to report to the administration, then considering the question of the annexation of Texas, concerning the political situation in Texas and Mexico.

After the close of the war with Mexico, Green was sent to that country in 1849 by President Taylor to negotiate concerning the moneys which, by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the United States had agreed to pay; and he saved his country a considerable sum by arranging for payment in exchange instead of in specie. Subsequently Green was engaged in railway building in Georgia and Alabama. On 10 June 1875 he died in Dalton, Georgia, a city which in 1848 he had helped to found.

[edit] Further Reading

  • Thomas Hart Benton, Thirty Years View: A History of the Working of The American Government For Thirty Years from 1820 to 1850 (two volumes, New York, 1854-56)
  • W. Stephen Belko, The Invincible Duff Green: Whig of the West (University of Missouri Press, 2006).