NATHAN C. MEEKER PAPERS

Nathan C. Meeker (1817-1879) was born on July 12, 1817 in Euclid, Ohio. At age 17, he traveled to New Orleans where he worked as a copy boy and wrote poetry. Meeker lived in several states between 1835 and 1843, working as a newspaper man, traveling salesman and teacher. In 1843, while teaching in New Jersey, Meeker suffered severe health problems and moved back to Ohio to live with his parents.

Meeker later worked for Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune. In 1869, Greeley selected Meeker, the Tribune's agricultural editor, to organize, build and supervise the Union Colony of Colorado, which Meeker established near present Greeley, Colorado in 1870. Greeley, who provided major funding for the colony, had been impressed by the area during his travels through the West in 1859. Meeker selected 700 applicants from more than 3,000 who responded to his advertisements. The colony was particularly known for its utopian and religious organization and for its extensive use of irrigation. Meeker worked tirelessly on the project, but lacked administrative skills. Although Greeley invested heavily in the colony, Meeker could not make it a financial success. When Greeley died in 1872, lawyers settled his estate, leaving Meeker deeply in debt to Greeley's heirs.

Meeker was still in debt in 1878 when he accepted a job as Indian agent at the White River Ute Indian Agency in Western Colorado. Meeker's wife Arvilla managed the agency store, and their daughter, Josephine, became the agency’s schoolteacher. Meeker proved incapable of working with the Utes, and his call for Army troops in September 1879 triggered a Ute uprising in which Meeker and numerous agency employees were killed.

Horace Greeley (1811-1872) was born in Amherst, New Hampshire. Although he was the son of a poor farmer, Greeley declined a scholarship to Phillips Exeter Academy and left school at age 14. He apprenticed as a printer in Poultney, Vermont and later moved to New York City where, in 1834, he founded a weekly paper, The New Yorker.

Greeley agreed to edit The Jeffersonian, a New York Whig newspaper in 1838. He also edited the pro-Whig journal, Log Cabin, during the 1840 presidential election. In 1841, Greeley established the New York Tribune, a newspaper he would edit for over thirty years. Greeley campaigned against alcohol, tobacco, gambling, prostitution and capital punishment while supporting socialist and feminist causes. However, Greeley's primary passion was for the abolition of slavery. In 1841, he merged his various newspapers into the New York Tribune, which became one of America's leading newspapers, while serving as a platform for Greeley's views.

Elected as a Whig to the Thirtieth Congress, Greeley served in the U.S. House of Representatives from December 4, 1848, to March 3, 1849. Following the demise of the Whig Party, Greeley supported the Free Soil Party. He campaigned against the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, and in 1854 he helped to form the Republican Party. Although Greeley supported Abraham Lincoln for President, he criticized many of Lincoln's policies. Greeley also supported Republican candidate, Ulysses Grant in the 1868 election but subsequently broke with Grant to help form the Liberal Republican Party in 1872.

The Liberal Republican Party nominated Greeley for President in 1872, and he was also officially endorsed by the Democratic Party. As a candidate, Greeley argued for an end to the post-Civil War Reconstruction of the South. Greeley proved to be an inept campaigner and became the object of vicious attacks by cartoonist Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly. Shortly after losing the election to President Grant, Greeley died on November 29, 1872. A close friend said that Greeley had been "crushed by the unmerciful ridicule Nast had heaped on him."