Horace Greeley and the culture of American capitalism, 1834--1872.

摘要

This dissertation traces the rise and fall of the enigmatic New-York Tribune editor Horace Greeley (1811-1872) and his role as an interpreter of the "Market Revolution" that took place in nineteenth-century America. As the most influential journalist of his generation, Greeley became a powerful voice and advocate for his vast readership of white men in the North and West. With an audience of nearly 300,000 subscribers by the eve of the Civil War, Greeley worked to mark and maintain paths to competency and self-sufficiency for young men disoriented by the dynamic social and economic landscape of America amidst the transition to capitalism. In the process, he created an unlikely constellation of political beliefs, reform crusades, and intellectual commitments. Greeley's tortuous course from conservative Whig in the 1830s, to Fourierite socialist in the 1840s, radical Republican in the 1850s, and peace-seeking reconciliationist in the 1860s appears to be full of irreconcilable contradictions. This dissertation, however, understands those contradictions within Greeley's larger search for a benevolent form of capitalism that would maintain the moral foundation of the early republic. Taken as a whole, it argues that Greeley's story points up a broader narrative of evolving understandings of the individual's relationship to market society from the virtuous republicanism of the new nation to the calculating materialism of the Gilded Age. Ultimately, Greeley's contradictions track the broader struggle involved in adapting an existing culture to the imperatives of a market society.