Greeley goes west to warm Texas welcome

The New Orleans Picayune in a May 27, 1871 editorial echoed the same concern Horace Greeley expressed about his trip to Houston, when the New York publisher wrote, “I go to Texas reluctantly.” The Crescent City newspaper hoped “nothing will occur during the expected visit to the southwestern section that may mar his pleasure or leave upon his memory an impression derogatory to the reputation of our people forcourtesy.”  The Galveston-based Flake’s Daily Bulletin strongly objected to the unwarranted warning. “Why need the press be cautioning the people against making fools of themselves? There is no more danger that the people of the South will treat Horace Greeley otherwise than courteously than that they will treat any other man so.” As a leading abolitionist and founding figure of the Republican Party, Greeley felt he had reason to worry that the invitation to address a livestock fair might be a diabolical trap. But it was high time he finally heeded his famous advice to “Go west, young man!” As soon as he checked into a Bayou City hotel, two former governors came calling. The visit from J.W. Henderson, an ex-Confederate, and A.J. Hamilton, a Unionist, helped to put the nervous guest at ease. Fifteen thousand people showed up three days later for Greeley’s speech, his first appearance before a southern audience. The enormous turnout proved Texans, at least, were willing to let bygones be bygones. Greeley was, in fact, something of a hero in defeated Dixie. He had risked his reputation by pleading with Abraham Lincoln to give up his goal of military victory and to make peace with the Confederacy. He later tried on his own to open negotiations by meeting with Rebel representatives in Canada. After the war, Greeley publicly advocated pardons for Confederates and personally signed the bail bond for their president, Jefferson Davis. These compassionate gestures were harshly criticized in the North, where he was accused of being soft on traitors. There were Texans that preferred to ignore the old abolitionist’s recent record and focus instead on his earlier stand. Taking a dim view of the enthusiastic reception in Houston, the Galveston News fumed, “This is the first time in the history of the nation that the people of a state have stepped from their daily round of duty to do honor to a public enemy.” Greeley’s Lone Star admirers might have changed their minds had they read his post-trip commentary in the New York Tribune. For openers he offered the strange observation that “it has required less effort to live in Texas than in any other state in the Union. Many a man has grown rich without effort and almost without thought.” According to the arrogant critic, the typical Texan lived in “a rude cabin, with little or no glass in its windows, and nothing but dirt on its floors. His children grew up unschooled and rude-mannered.” He also bemoaned the lack of decent drinking water, which he snidely suggested gave Texans a handy “excuse for drinking bad coffee or even worse whiskey.” Almost a year to the day after the New Yorker spoke in Houston, he accepted the presidential nomination of the moderate wing of the GOP. Appalled by the rampant corruption of the Grant administration, liberal Republicans formed their own political party to deny the drunken general a second term. The endorsement of the Democratic Party, still identified with slavery and secession, did Greeley more harm than good. Kept on the defensive by charges he was a southern stooge, he failed to mount an effective offensive against the vulnerable incumbent.Tragedy suddenly destroyed the campaign and the candidate. Greeley spent a sleepless week at the bedside of his dying wife, who passed away six days before the election. Exhausted by the ordeal, he had neither the strength nor the will to make a last-minute appeal to voters. Although Greeley polled a respectable 44 percent nationally, he carried just six states, all south of the Mason- Dixon line. Among the maverick half dozen was Texas, where Grant could not have been elected dogcatcher. Grief-stricken Greeley was devastated and disoriented by the loss, which he interpreted as a personal repudiation. “I’m the worst beaten man that ever ran for high office,” he tearfully told his children. “I hardly know now whether I was running for the presidency or the penitentiary.” Greeley soon suffered a complete nervous breakdown. “I stand naked before my God the most utterly, hopelessly wretched and undone of all who ever lived,” he wrote in a despondent letter to a friend. “I pray God that he may quickly take me from a world where all I have done seems to have turned to evil, to my agony, remorse and shame.” With the month, his prayer was answered. On Nov. 29, 1872, only 24 days after the reelection of Ulysses S. Grant, Horace Greeley died. Visit barteehaile.com for Bartee’s books “Murder Most Texan” and “Texas Depression-Era Desperadoes” and bound collections of his Texas history columns from the past 32 years.