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

[100] which gave the best evidence of his newspaper tact. He hired a man to make for him a table showing the actual distance traveled by each member in reaching the capital, the distance for which he was allowed mileage, and what the saving would have been had the mileage been computed over the shortest route. As most members made out their schedules to cover as many miles as possible, without reference to the more modern steamboat routes (and Greeley's amanuensis had taken the official mail route distances), his table, when the Tribune of December 22, containing it, came to Washington, excited a great sensation, every member being charged with receiving from $2 to more than $1,000 in excess of his equitable allowance. “I had expected that it would kick up some dust,” says Greeley in his autobiography, “but my expectations were outrun.” “I have divided the House into two parties,” he wrote to his friend Griswold at the time; “one that would like to see me extinguished, and the other that wouldn't be satisfied without a hand in doing it.”

For some days members simply discussed the matter with one another or with their critic. Him they could not bend. On December 27 the subject was brought to the