Harold Holzer Quotes

#1. We need to know not only what is done but what is purposed and said by those who shape the destines of states and realms." Horace Greeley

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#2. Stephen Douglas's oratory was designed for the galleries, Lincoln's for his peers

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#3. Lincoln must have welcomed the chance that evening to escape from such friends, if only to submit to a final fitting for the recently delivered inaugural suit from the Chicago tailors Titsworth & Brother.

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#4. From "boyhood up," as Lincoln once confided to his old friend Ward Hill Lamon, "my ambition was to be President.

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#5. Only a writer "with Bennett's craft and brass could manage to praise and insult his readers at the same time.

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#6. The author says that though the Mexican War wound down, the interpretation of it was just beginning.

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#7. Greeley knew no language but his, but of that, he possessed a most extraordinary mastery. An employee

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#8. The mid-19th century was noted for a partisan, rather than a consensus press, but this partisanship was able to turn out voters consistently.

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#9. The infant New York Times boasted that no newspaper printing what was really worth reading ever perished for lack of readers.

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#10. By mid-November, his protests notwithstanding, whiskers began sprouting from his face. A few weeks later, his assistant private secretary, John Hay, approvingly punned: Election news Abe's hirsute fancy warrant - Apparent hair becomes heir apparent.44

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#11. Superficial and emotional subject might sway undecided voters.

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#12. The author observers that better technology actually increased division because rival outlets funded by rival parties could get their slant to the partisans

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#13. I'm the only English thing they can vent their anger on.

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#14. Lincoln said his spiky hair had "a way of getting up in the world".

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#15. One editor during the Civil War got a grievous message to meet his brothers corpse, only to find out that the telegraph operator had garbled the message to meet his living brother's CORPS.

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#16. At times, said the founder of the Chicago Tribune, Lincoln seemed to reach into the clouds and take out the thunderbolts.

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#17. On the subject of "personal beauty," for example, Lincoln merrily confided he felt fortunate that "'the women couldn't vote,' otherwise the monstrous portraits of him which had been circulated during the canvas by friends as well as by foes would surely defeat him.

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#18. His targets had little in common, other than that they had somehow aroused his enmity.

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#19. The author describes Lincoln's attitude in making a deal with a newspaper publisher as, "almost defiant transparency.

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#20. The author said Frederick Douglass described himself as a "graduate" of slavery with the marks of his diploma on his back.

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#21. Indeed, in 1794, George Washington had not only authorized sending national troops into battle against Pennsylvanians resisting the whiskey tax, he had taken to the field to lead the forces himself. Later, Andrew Jackson had acted boldly to crush South Carolina's attempt to nullify the 1832 tariff.

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#22. New York Times founder Henry Raymond started his newspaper, "with the goal of reforming government, not belittling it.

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#23. For a time, Greeley seemed to be following the historic advice he had once given young Josiah Grinnell: "Go West, young man, go West.

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#24. The Bible and newspapers, to both Lincoln and Greeley, they represented equally compelling gospel.

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#25. General literature without the humbug," was the New Yorker's original mission.

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#26. Fighting newspaper editors for the last word was a losing proposition.

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#27. Lincoln on a desire to hear Horace Greeley speak: "In print, every one of his words seems to weigh about a ton.

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#28. One of the cost of holding a Federal office was geographic isolation in the nation's capital.

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#29. John Hay calls the telegraph reporter, "the natural enemy of the scribe.

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#30. Lincoln again got his name prominently mentioned in the New York Tribune, though this time it was for allegedly pumping up his expense account.

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#31. One of Lincoln's intimates as a presidential candidate urged him to make no promises and not to part with those kind words which could be interpreted as promises.

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#32. Jefferson said he only read the advertisements in the newspaper, because it was there he was most likely to find the truth.

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#33. James Gordon Bennett said he aimed to be, "serious in my aims but full of frolic in my means.

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#34. Looking to advance in journalism, one future editor displayed skilled as varied as economic analysis and humorous commentary.

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#35. Horace Greeley's conversation inevitably becomes a speech.

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#36. One writer may speak of something more lasting than Horace Greeley when he writes of that editor that his secular philanthropy drifted into autocratic ambition.

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#37. Horace Greeley pursues temperance to extravagance." Lord Acton

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#38. A female war correspondent so popular that she had some credibility in saying she controlled half of her newspaper's circulation approached General Winfield Scott during the Mexican War with information that could help him. He was unwilling to get help from someone in petticoats.

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#39. Lincoln had an almost childlike habit of regaling visitors with any sharp saying he'd uttered during the day, taking simple-hearted pleasure in some of his best hits.

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#40. A rival editor in Philadelphia said that the spreading railroad network carried "New York everywhere" in terms of the city's predominant influence.

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#41. Southern newspapers hungry for fodder to roil the secession debate fed their subscribers the most inciteful material they could unearth in the Northern press. Northern journals scoured Southern papers for similarly provocative reports designed to confirm hotheaded Southern disloyalty.

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#42. The firmament breaks up. In black eclipse Light after light goes out. One evil star, Luridly glaring through the smoke of war, As in the dream of the Apocalypse, Drags others down.

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#43. Historian David M. Potter pointed out in 1942 that as president-elect, Lincoln was no more than "simply a lawyer from Springfield, Illinois - a man of great undeveloped capacities and narrowly limited background. He was more fit to become President than to be President.

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#44. I have not done enough for effect." Horace Greeley

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#45. Newspaper accounts must not only be studied, but, occasionally refuted.

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#46. Saying nothing was preferable to saying too much. Well versed in the Bible, Lincoln may also have remembered the lines from Isaiah: "You silence the uproar of foreigners; as heat is reduced by the shadow of a cloud, so the song of the ruthless is stilled."102

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#47. THE APPROACH OF Thanksgiving on November 29 sent Springfield into a panic - not over the nation-imperiling crisis plaguing its leading citizen, but the apparently more dismaying prospect of a local turkey shortage.

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#48. As the endlessly patient husband explained of his volatile wife's outbursts some years later: "If you knew how little harm it does me, and how much good it does her, you wouldn't wonder that I am meek.

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#49. The letter is too belligerent. If I were you, I would state the facts as they were, without the pepper and salt. Abraham Lincoln

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#50. In March 1861 alone - Lincoln's first month in office - the U.S. Senate would receive for its advice and consent some sixty pages of names submitted for civilian and military appointments ranging from secretary of state to surveyor-general of Minnesota.

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#51. Samuel FB Morse's SECOND question over the telegraph was, "Have you any news?

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#52. Lincoln bought a German language newspaper.

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#53. Harvard students rallied on campus to offer formal, but "cordial," congratulations to their fellow student, Robert T. Lincoln, son of the president-elect and newly dubbed - in honor of the Prince of Wales's recent triumphant American tour - the "Prince of Rails.

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#54. Lincoln jibed that a general INVADED Canada without resistance and out-vaded it without pursuit.

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#55. The press-savy Lincoln looked not to the future, but to the past.

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#56. A writer at the time said, "Lincoln means to sink the man in the public officer.

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#57. President-elect Lincoln to his confidants: "The people of the South do not know us. They are not allowed to receive Republican papers down there.

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#58. One paper boasted that its subscription and advertising numbers proved that America did not need the social change it rival paper advocated.

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#59. Feeling its power, one Civil War paper trumpeted that Milton and Homer were for another age but for this one was the New York Herald.

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#60. In Lincoln's mind, at least as Lamon interpreted the story, "the illusion was a sign." Both the president-elect and his wife believed it meant he would not only survive his term in office, but four years later win reelection to a second one, only to die before it ended.

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#61. Not only was he sorrowful at the prospect of leaving home, he was convinced, he whispered, that he would never return alive. Herndon implored him to abandon such thoughts.

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#62. It is a newspaper's duty to print the news and raise hell. Wilbur Storey

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#63. Any journalist who holds the office writes in a straitjacket.

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