Horace Greeley's Birthday Today

From Garrison Keillor's "The Writer's Almanac":

Today is the birthday of the journalist Horace Greeley, born in Amherst, New Hampshire (1811).

He started the penny daily The New York Tribune when he was 30 years old. He wrote editorials during the Civil War, championing his radical politics, and he ran for president against Ulysses S. Grant.

But just before the election, his wife died, and Greeley went crazy and died a few weeks later — after the popular vote, which he had lost, but before the electoral votes had officially been cast. More people attended his funeral than attended Abraham Lincoln's, and they filled the streets of New York for days in his honor.

He said, "Common sense is very uncommon."