14. Horace Greeley and “Go west young man, go west and grow up with the country”
Following the American Civil War and the passage of the Homestead Act the American Western Plains were open for expansion. There is no disputing that Horace Greeley was a proponent of western expansion, and that he wrote editorials, articles, and speeches recommending the veterans of the war make a new life to the west. But the famous quotation attributed to him, today usually shortened to simply “Go West, young man”, has never been found in any of the documents cited as containing it. Some scholars attribute the quote to Greeley more than thirty years earlier, but they too have not been able to locate its source. In short, unless it was uttered in private conversation, Greeley never said it.
Greeley denied using the phrase, let alone coining it, and it has been attributed to other, lesser-known writers, but a copy of the newspaper or other periodical in which it first appeared has never been found. Many of the editions of newspapers cited as containing the phrase have been scoured by scholars with no trace of the comment. When and how it appeared is a mystery, but there is no evidence Greeley ever uttered the phrase, and there is also his denial of being its author to consider. Horace Greeley counseling the young of America to “Go West” is an American myth, at least as far as his use of the full quotation so often attributed to him is concerned.