Duff Green, Militant Journalist of the Old School

Abstract

DUFF Green (born near Versailles, Kentucky, in I791, died at Dalton, Georgia, in I875) as editor of the United States Telegraph "was known and felt from one extremity of the Union to the other."' In fact he and the Telegraph were for a time as well known as Francis P. Blair and the Globe or Horace Greeley and the New York Tribune. A man of versatile interests, wide information, shrewd insight into human nature, with a penchant for political intrigue, and an unflagging industry, he had an interesting and varied career. He was successively a medical student, a school teacher, a surgeon in the War of I8I2, an early "chain store" merchant, a government land surveyor and founder of towns on the frontier, a lawyer, a member of the Missouri Constitutional Convention of I820 and of both houses of the state legislature, a government mail contractor, a brigadier general in Indian warfare, a railroad builder and industrial promoter, a consular and diplomatic agent to Texas and Europe, and a writer on finance and currency, as well as owner and editor of several newspapers. He dabbled in so many things that he succeeded in few; he was often referred to as "the ubiquitous General Green." 2 Green's journalistic career began in I824 when he purchased and became the editor of the St. Louis Enquirer. In the first issue of the paper after he assumed control, Green announced his editorial policy as follows: