Origin of “Go west, young man” is debated

Origin of “Go west, young man” is debated

By Tom Emery

The legendary phrase “go west, young man” became the embodiment of westward expansion in the United States in the 19th century. Tens of thousands joined the rush to settle the West, looking for political opportunity, economic gain, and a new start.

Many attribute the phrase to Horace Greeley, the founder editor of the New York Tribune and one of the nation’s most vocal abolitionists. However, others believe the slogan was first coined by John Babson Lane Soule, an Indiana newspaper editor.

Soule, who was born in Maine in 1815, attended Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire where one instructor lauded Soule as “the most accurate scholar he had in his fifty years of service.” By 1844, he was living in Terre Haute, Indiana, where he founded a private school. Ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1849, he also edited the Terre Haute Daily Express and a sister publication, the Wabash Weekly Express, from 1851 to 1855.

Oddly, Soule received no credit for the phrase until June 1890, when the Chicago Mail printed a recollection of an exchange between Soule and Dick Thompson, who later served as Secretary of the Navy in the Hayes administration. The account states that Thompson heaped praise on Soule’s writing ability and declared that Soule “could write an article that would be attributed to Horace Greeley if you tried.”

Soule protested, and Thompson made a bet of a barrel of flour that would “go to some deserving poor person.” The bet was accepted, and Soule wrote “Horace Greeley could have never given a young man better advice than that contained in the words, ‘Go West, young man.’”

This unusual account went on to state that even though Soule had not quoted Greeley, “exchanges began coming into the Express office with the epigram reprinted and accredited to Greeley almost universally.” The reaction was apparently so strong that Greeley’s own New York Tribune ran an editorial footnote that the “sentiment has been attributed to (Greeley) erroneously, but so heartily does he concur in the advice that he endorses it.”

There is no evidence that Soule personally sought credit for the phrase, and he died in 1891, the year after the Chicago article appeared. A number of researchers, however, have seized upon the account and credited Soule for the slogan.

Among them are reference historians David Wallechinsky and Irving Wallace, who cited Soule in their 1981 work “The People’s Almanac.” A 1992 Chicago Tribune also credited Soule.

However, no existing issues of the Terre Haute paper with Soule’s editorial have been found, which Indianapolis attorney Thomas Fuller pointed out in a 2004 article. Fuller concluded that “the primary source historical record contains not a shred of evidence that Soule had anything to do with the phrase.”

Fuller, though, concedes there is also no direct evidence that Greeley first used the phrase. Noting that “proof is maddeningly elusive,” he says that Greeley used similar words to “go west, young man,” which may have led to the belief that the New York abolitionist coined the phrase.

Some of the stronger pieces of evidence pointing to Greeley are the memoirs of Josiah Bushnell Grinnell, an abolitionist minister and lifelong Greeley friend who founded the town of Grinnell, Iowa.

Grinnell, an Iowa Congressman from 1863 to 1867, wrote that Greeley first used the phrase in September 1853, and the words inspired Grinnell to “go west” himself. An 1872 article in Harper’s Weekly also reported that Greeley had uttered the words “go west, young man, go west!”

Soule, meanwhile, remained in the Midwest. After leaving Terre Haute, he served as pastor in Plymouth, Indiana before moving to southern Wisconsin, holding pastorates in Raymond and Elkhorn. In 1865, he accepted a position as professor of languages at Blackburn College in Carlinville, Illinois (60 miles northeast of St. Louis), which he held for 11 years.

He remained in Carlinville as pastor of the local Presbyterian Church until 1878, when he accepted a similar position in Highland Park, Illinois, near Chicago, where he stayed for nine years.

Greeley, who apparently went West only once in his life, remains a face of the abolitionist movement in the United States as well as one of the nation’s most respected journalists. He opposed Ulysses S. Grant for president in 1872, losing decisively. He died three weeks after the election.

Millions of Americans embarked on the westward movement, and the American frontier was declared closed in 1890. However, three of the lower 48 states — Oklahoma (1907), New Mexico (1912), and Arizona (1912) — did not gain admission to the Union until the 20th century.

Tom Emery is a freelance writer and historical researcher from Carlinville, Illinois.

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