Go West, young man

"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 as 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 does not appear in the July 13, 1865 issue 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 editorial instead encourages American Civil War veterans to take advantage of the Homestead Act and colonize the public lands.

In 1849, Samuel Merritt was making a name for himself as a physician in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Merritt, originally from Harpswell, Maine, completed a difficult operation on a friend of the aging statesman Daniel Webster. Webster lived in nearby Marshfield at the time. Impressed, Webster befriended the young doctor. As they spoke, Merritt admitted his fascination with the gold rush drawing people to California. Webster advised him, “Go out there, young man; go out there and behave yourself, and, free as you are from family cares, you will never regret it.” Samuel took the advice.

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.