James Parton, The life of Horace Greeley

[201] of all his creatures, and for a hundred times as many creatures as yet have lived at the same time? Such questions Horace Greeley pondered, in silence, in the depths of his heart, during that winter of misery.

From Paris came soon the calm, emphatic answer, These things need not be! They are due alone to the short-sightedness and injustice of man! Albert Brisbane brought the message. Horace Greeley heard and believed it. He took it to his heart. It became a part of him.

Albert Brisbane was a young gentleman of liberal education, the son of wealthy parents. His European tour included, of course, a residence at Paris, where the fascinating dreams of Fourier were the subject of conversation. He procured the works of that amiable and noble-minded man, read them with eager interest, and became completely convinced that his captivating theories were capable of speedy realization—not, perhaps, in slow and conservative Europe, but in progressive and unshackled America. He returned home a Fourierite, and devoted himself with a zeal and disinterestedness that are rare in the class to which he belonged, and that in any class, cannot be too highly praised, to the dissemination of the doctrines in which he believed. He wrote essays and pamphlets. He expounded Fourierism in conversation. He started a magazine called the Future, devoted to the explanation of Fourier's plans, published by Greeley & Co. He delivered lectures. In short, he did all that a man could do to make known to his fellow men what he believed it became them to know. He made a few converts, but only a few, till the starting of the Tribune gave him access to the public ear.

Horace Greeley made no secret of his conversion to Fourierism. On the contrary, he avowed it constantly in private, and occasionally in public print, though never in his own paper till towards the end of the Tribune's first year. His native sagacity taught him that before Fourierism could be realized, a complete revolution in public sentiment must be effected, a revolution which would require many years of patient effort on the part of its advocates.

The first mention of Mr. Brisbane and Fourierism in the Tribune, appeared October 21st, 1841. It was merely a notice of one of Mr. Brisbane's lectures: