In August, 1881, having saved enough money to pay his traveling expenses, besides giving twenty-five or thirty dollars to his father, he arrived in New York City " with a suit of l)lue cotton jean, two brown shirts and five dollars in cash." He obtained work as a journeyman printer, and, in 1834, commenced with Jonas Winchester (afterwards publisher of the New World) a weekly paper, of sixteen pages quarto, called the New Yorker. Although conducted with mu(^h ability it was not successful, and was finally abandoned. While editing this journal Mr. Greeley also conducted, in 1838, The Jeffersonian, published by the Whig Central Committee of the State, and the Log Ca6/n, a campaign paper, published in the Presidential contest of 1840.

On Saturday, April 20, 1841, Mr. Greeley began the publication of the New York Tribune, which soon obtained recognition for the spirited and independent tone of its utterances. In 1848 he was elected a member of the United States House of Representatives, and in 1851 visited Europe and was chosen chairman of one of the juries of the World's Fair, at London. While in Paris the Emperor had him impi'isoned for his caustic criticism of the imperial government, but he was soon released through the intervention of the American Minister. His letters from Europe, written to the Tribune, were published in a volume entitled "Glances at Europe." In 1856 he published his "History of the Struggle for Slavery Extension," and, three years later, " An Overland Journey from New York to San Francisco," a series of letters reprinted from the Tribune. Of Mr. Greeley's editorial work on the Tribune it may be said that it was one of the most powerful of literary agencies in forming the Republican Party and in paving the way for the downfall of slavery.