Page:History of Journalism in the United States.djvu/358

332 statesmanlike fight, but it was soon apparent that the battle was hopeless. While he was still bearing up under the gloom that followed the October elections, he was called home to nurse his dying wife; he passed a month of sleepless nights, and was at her bedside when she died, a week before his defeat in November. A few weeks later, November 29, 1872, his own death came.

"I was an abolitionist for years," he said a few days before he died, "when to be one was as much as one's life was worth even here in New York,—and the negroes have all voted against me. Whatever of talents or energy I have possessed, I have freely contributed all my life to protection, to the cause of our manufacturers; and the manufacturers have expended millions to defeat me. I even made myself ridiculous in the opinion of many whose good wishes I desired, by showing fair play and giving a fair field in the Tribune to Women's Rights; and the women have all gone against me."

So passed Horace Greeley, one of the greatest of American journalists, human in his faults, human in his greatness. He represented better than any other man in history what is noble and lasting in journalism. Of all that was written of him, none wrote with more understanding than did James G. Blaine.

"The strain through which he had passed, following years of incessant care and labor, had broken his vigorous constitution," wrote Blaine after Greeley's death. "His physical strength was completely undermined, his superb intellectual powers gave way. Before the expiration of the month which witnessed his crushing defeat he had gone to his rest. The controversies which had so recently divided the country were hushed in the presence of death; and all the people, remembering only his noble impulses, his great work for humanity, his broad