Horace Greeley (1811–72) was the founding editor of the New–York Tribune, which is described by Wikipedia as "among the great newspapers of its time." Established by Greeley in 1841, it merged with the New York Herald in 1924 to form the New York Herald Tribune, which eventually ceased publication in 1966.
(Horace Greeley is also described by Wikipedia as a statesman. This, to my mind, is a classic case of Wikipedia hyperbole; among what I could find elsewhere on Wikipedia itself, the closest I could find to statesmanship was that he spent four months in Congress between December 1848 and March 1849.)
Greeley is commonly credited with having coined the slogan "Go west, young man", but there is a great deal of controversy (and no little confusion) over how much truth there is in this. There's little doubt that he was a keen advocate of the settlement of the American West, which he saw as a land of opportunity for the young and the unemployed. His first use of the slogan in question is often dated to his editorial of 13 July 1865. Tim Hughes, in his blog about "rare and early newspapers", quotes one Hal Gordon. I don't know who Hal Gordon is – unless it's this former White House speech writer – but according to Hughes, he wrote:
'Greeley's editorial in the New York Tribune in 1865 was addressed specifically to young civil servants in Washington, D.C. who were complaining that the government didn't pay them enough, given the high cost of living in the nation's capital. Greeley had scant sympathy for them. He wrote: "Washington is not a place to live in. The rents are high, the food is bad, the dust is disgusting and the morals are deplorable. Go West, young man, go West and grow up with the country."'
Tim Hughes claims however to have scoured the 13 July 1865 edition of the Tribune and failed to find this extract.
Several observers note that Josiah Bushnell Grinnell, who was born in Vermont in 1821 and represented Iowa in Congress from 1863 to 1867, wrote in his autobiography (published in 1891) that Greeley gave him this famous piece of advice in 1833. It could well be that Greeley did say something along those lines to Grinnell (who would have been only 11 or 12 years old at the time), but there has to be some doubt as to whether he used those actual words.
Joseph Frazier Wall, the historian of a college that took Grinnell's name (founded in 1846 as Iowa College) claimed that Greeley himself denied providing that advice, and spent the latter part of his life "vigorously protesting that he had never given this advice to Grinnell or anyone else ..." (Note that Horace Greeley died in 1872.)
The Indiana–based journalist John Soule is sometimes said to have used the slogan in 1851, also in an editorial, and Greeley seems to have been keen to give Soule the credit for its creation. Wikipedia quotes a reference by the aforementioned college historian Joseph Frazier Wall, citing a letter written in 1983 by the Newspaper Librarian of the Indiana State Library, claiming that "Soule was the source for this statement." But the Yale Book of Quotations (also cited by Wikipedia) discounts this claim, having failed to find any mention of it by Soule before 1890.
In summary: there is little doubt that the famous slogan sums up Horace Greeley's enthusiasm for settlement of the American West, and he may well have used it on one or more occasions. But he denied having coined it, and no one really knows who did.
© Haydn Thompson 2019