My recent reading includes HORACE GREELEY, a biography of the famed editor-publisher of that name, written by James M. Lundberg of the University of Notre Dame. Much about Greeley I am just learning as I go along. Greeley was born in February 1811, in New Hampshire, though he did most of his growing up in Vermont. He went to New York City to seek his fortune in 1831. So it wasn't "go west young man" for him -- it was head south. Like a lot of young men from the provinces who have headed toward the nearest metropolis over millennia, he had a high opinion of himself and big plans to effectuate that opinion. It took him a decade to find his footing and to create the vehicle with which he will be forever associated. Greeley created the New-York Tribune in 1841. (Yes, the hyphen was standard then). This was a vehicle for a reform-oriented Whiggery associated also with William Seward and Thurlow Weed in the context of New York state's politics and beyond it that of the...