William Alexander Linn, Horace Greeley Founder and Editor of The New York Tribune

[34] Treasury surplus (in 1836) on armaments and fortifications, believing that a railroad from Portland to New Orleans would serve the better purpose of assisting in the concentration of “the true safeguard against invasion — the muskets of our citizen soldiers” ; proposed the formation of associations in the city to enforce the law against houses of ill-fame; and, when rents were advanced downtown, urged the building of railroads from the Exchange, the park, and the Battery to the Harlem River, in order to make the upper part of the island accessible; opposed the forcible removal of the Creeks and Cherokees from their homes in the southern Atlantic States; and, while maintaining that the United States Government was right in its claim regarding the northeastern boundary, deprecated war and proposed arbitration.

Greeley's view of “clean” journalism was well set forth in an article in April, 1841, in which he condemned the spreading of details of crime before newspaper readers, saying: “We weigh well our words when we say that the moral guilt incurred, and the violent hurt inflicted upon social order and individual happiness by those who have thus spread out the loathsome details of this most damning ”