[GREELEY, Horace]

Mr. Greeley and the Reformers [Caption Title]

N.p. [New York? 1872]. Broadside, 49cm x 24cm. Text in two columns beneath headline. Old fold lines, slight creasing and a few spots of foxing; complete and Good. In triple gallery mat with clear mylar window.

Anti-Greeley campaign broadside, reprinting two contemporary articles from the New York Evening Post and the Detroit Tribune. The Evening Post column questions Greeley's character and asserts that his backers are the sorts of "...men whose accession to power is fraught with danger, and who choose him as a fit instrument for their purposes...good men avoid him because they don't believe in the existence of his imputed good qualities, and because they fear those weak and bad ones of which so mischievous a use can be made." The Detroit Tribune article (which had in fact been reprinted in the Evening Post, leading us to suggest that this broadside was issued as a Post extra) offers a list of Greeley's supporters, casting aspersions upon each in turn, and quotes the Cincinnati Commercial at length: "...within our own knowledge...some of the worst men in this community, those who have lived and fattened upon public plunder, and are notorious schemers to empty the pockets of the many into the hands of the few, are Greeley men..."

In what turned out to be one of the most contentious presidential mud-slinging campaigns of the 19th century (no mean accomplishment), Greeley eventually lost in a landslide to Ulysses Grant, and died soon afterwards. Notoriously thin-skinned, it has been suggested that Greeley's death was the result of exhaustion and depression brought on by the many attacks on his character made over the course of the campaign. An attractive and representative 1872 campaign broadside; quite scarce – Beinecke the only physical holding noted in WorldCat, no other copies traced in commerce (2022).

Price: $850.00

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