Revolutions Incomplete: Horace Greeley and the Forty-eighters at Home and Abroad

Abstract

This article provides an overview of the sweeping events of 1848 on both sides of the Atlantic from the perspective of Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune. It analyzes editorial content about the year's election published concurrently with reports about the revolutionary movements in the German states that were influenced by Rhineland editor Karl Marx, suggesting Greeley's vision for the Whig Party understood the United States as intrinsically linked to international events. The article features newspaper columns, campaign-related literature, and the writings of Whig leaders who, during the short presidency of General Zachary Taylor, helped develop a free-soil platform that resonated in particular with German immigrants, the “Forty-eighters,” later forming the foundation of the Republican Party. Its findings are significant for media historians because they detail Greeley's efforts to attract a valuable immigrant demographic to his audience, and to present issues popularized in his newspaper in context with the ideas of European revolutionaries, including Marx, who later contributed to the Tribune as a correspondent.