Recollections of a Busy Life (1868)

AUTHOR: Greeley, Horace

Recollections of a Busy Life is based on revised and rewritten earlier material published in the New York Ledger (vii). Greeley calls it his “mental biography” (xi). The topics he touches on range from politics and political economy to his newspaper ventures, from his collaboration with Margaret Fuller to slavery and Abolition, and from the Civil War to farming to Temperance. It is predominantly in the context of the latter that he also broaches the question of veg*ism. He reports how, at different times, he “became an inmate” of several boarding-houses operated on Grahamite principles, even though he himself “never wholly rejected the use of meat” (103). He remains convinced, however, “that there is better food obtainable by the great body of mankind than the butcher and the fisherman do or can supply; and that a diet made up of sound grain (ground, but unbolted), ripe, undecayed fruits, and a variety of fresh, wholesome vegetables, with milk, butter, and cheese, and very little of spices or condiments, will enable our grandchildren to live in the average far longer, and fall far less frequently into the hand of the doctors, than we do” (104). He also reports that his wife, whom he met at the boarding-house, “was long a more faithful, consistent disciple of Graham than [he] was” (104). Greeley believes that

[o]ther things being equal, … a strict vegetarian will live ten years longer than a habitual flesh-eater, while suffering, in the average, less than half so much from sickness as the carnivorous must. The simple fact, that animals are often diseased when killed for food; and that the flesh of those borne in crowded cars, from far inland, to be slaughtered for the sustenance of sea board cities, is almost always and inevitably feverish and unwholesome, ought to be conclusive (105).

Greeley also castigates “the chewing, smoking, or snuffing of tobacco,” which he calls “the vilest, most detestable abuse of his corrupted sensual appetites whereof depraved Man is capable” (99). Similarly with alcohol: Greeley promotes “Total Abstinence” (98, 102). As to animal farming, he maintains that “[n]o part of our rural economy is more wasteful than the habitual exposure of our animals to pelting, chilling storms, and to intense cold” (309).

Greeley's understanding of social reform in general is remarkable. What he says about the "true reformer" is worth quoting in full:

The true Reformer turns his eyes first inward, scrutinizing himself, his habits, purposes, efforts, enjoyments, asking, What signifies this? and this? and wherein is its justification? This daily provision of meat and drink, – is its end nourishment and its incident enjoyment? or are the poles reversed, and do I eat and drink for the gratification of appetite, hoping, or trusting, or blindly guessing, that, since it satiates my desires, it must satisfy also my needs? Is it requisite that all the zones and continents should be ransacked to build up the fleeting earthly tabernacle of this immortal spirit? Is not the soul rather submerged, stifled, drowned, in this incessant idolizing, feasting, pampering of the body? These sumptuous entertainments, wherein the palate has everything, the soul nothing, – what faculty, whether of body or mind, do they brighten or strengthen? Why should a score of animals render up their lives to furnish forth my day's dinner, if my own life is thereby rendered neither surer nor nobler? Why gorge myself with dainties which cloud the brain and clog the step, if the common grains and fruits and roots and water afford precisely the same sustenance in simpler and less cloying guise, and are far more conducive to health, strength, elasticity, longevity? Can a man worthily surrender his life to the mere acquiring and absorbing of food, thus alternating only from the state of a beast of burden to that of a beast of prey? Above all, why should I fire my blood and sear my brain with liquors which give a temporary exhilaration to the spirits at the cost of permanent depravation and disorder to the whole physical frame? In short, why should I live for and in my appetites, if these were Divinely created to serve and sustain, not master and dethrone, the spirit to which this earthly frame is but a husk, a tent, a halting-place, in an exalted, deathless career? If the life be indeed more than meat, why shall not the meat recognize and attest that fact? And thus the sincere Reformer, in the very outset of;his course, becomes a "tee-total" fanatic, represented by the knavish and regarded by the vulgar as a foe to all enjoyment and cheer, insisting that mankind shall con form to his crotchets, and live on bran-bread and blue cold water (502-503).

Greeley's musings on reform lead him to an explicitly intersectional understanding of both reform and anti-reform. Given that we live in a world in which “[o]ne man's necessity [is] another's opportunity … the existence and stubborn maintenance of Human Slavery” is not surprising (503). Hence, “[y]ou would not on three continents find a pirate or gaming-house bully who would not gladly tramp five miles on a dark, stormy night, to help lynch an Abolitionist. And thus not only have all Reforms a sympathetic, even if ill-understood relationship, but the enemies of reform are united by a free-masonry equally potent and comprehensive. The negro-trader of Charleston or New Orleans would always help to mob a Temperance lecturer, even though he did not himself drink; for he hated and dreaded the application of ethical laws to practical life” (504). Greeley's veg*ism is thus ethical to the extent that it is part and parcel of the overarching, intersectional ethics of the social reformer.

 

Last updated on September 29th, 2024

SNSF project 100015_204481

@VLS@veganism.social | VeganLiteraryStudies | @veganliterarystudies |