Go West, young man facts for kids
"Go West, young man" is a phrase, the origin of which is often credited to the American author and newspaper editor Horace Greeley concerning America's expansion westward, related to the concept of Manifest destiny. No one has yet proven who first used this phrase in print.
Washington [D.C.] is not a place to live in. The rents are high, the food is bad, the dust is disgusting and the morals are deplorable. Go West, young man, go West and grow up with the country.
—attributed to Horace Greeley, New-York Daily Tribune, July 13, 1865
The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations gives the full quotation as, "Go West, young man, and grow up with the country", from Hints toward Reforms (1850) by Horace Greeley, but the phrase does not occur in that book.
In 2010, Timothy Hughes of the "Rare & Early Newspapers" blog examined Greeley's writings and concluded that this text also does not appear the July 13, 1865 of the Tribune: "Here is the Tribune of that date and I've scoured through the issue yet never found the quote. The closest I could come is in 'The Homestead Law' article, page 4 column 4, where he mentioned: ' ... We earnestly urge upon all such to turn their faces Westward and colonize the public lands ... '. (See text image)." The actual editorial instead encourages American Civil War veterans to take advantage of the Homestead Act and colonize the public lands.
Greeley favored westward expansion. He saw the fertile farmland of the west as an ideal place for people willing to work hard for the opportunity to succeed. The phrase came to symbolize the idea that agriculture could solve many of the nation's problems of poverty and unemployment characteristic of the big cities of the East. It is one of the most commonly quoted sayings from the nineteenth century and may have had some influence on the course of American history.
See also
In Spanish: Go West, young man para niños
