George Smalley
George Washburn Smalley (2 June 1833 – 4 April 1916) was an American journalist, considered one of the first war correspondents of the 19th century.
Biography
George Smalley was born in Franklin, Massachusetts in 1833. He graduated in law from Yale University in 1855, started out as a lawyer and in 1862 married Phoebe Garnaut[1] — adopted daughter of noted abolitionist Wendell Phillips[2] — who would become a friend of Horace Greeley's daughter. The couple had five children, two boys and three girls.
As a reporter for the New-York Tribune from 1861, at the beginning of the Civil War, Smalley became known for his coverage of the Battle of Antietam, on September 17, 1862,[3] when he entered the battlefield, disguised in a military uniform, made a forbidden report and telegraphed a dispatch to his newspaper which was then transmitted to President Abraham Lincoln. In the train that brought him back to New York, after a first part of the journey by ferry, even the American general who had spied on him praised him. Smalley wrote his report, describing the fighting in detail, which contributed the next day to a gain of nearly 60,000 readers to the New York Tribune.[4]
He then acted as correspondent for the American newspaper in London, during the Austro-Prussian War. At the beginning of August 1866, he sent by way of the the transatlantic cable a telegram of one hundred words for a cost of 500 dollars on the movements of Prussian troops against Austria, soon after the Battle of Sadowa.
When the War of 1870 started, he was again a correspondent in London. His newspaper was competing with the very numerous envoys, about twenty, of the rival newspaper, the New York Herald. The team of reporters from the New York Tribune, led by Smalley, was the first to report the most important events, Sedan, Gravelotte and Metz, via the Atlantic cable. The information was transmitted to the English of the Daily News, which was even congratulated for its scoop by the Times. Then, from 1895, he was correspondent of The Times of London in the United States.[5]
Smalley was a member of the Beefsteak Club in London, where he socialised with men such as Carlo Pellegrini, Arthur Blouet and Corney Grain.[6]
Works
- London Letters and Some Others (1891; 2 volumes)
- Studies of Men (1895)
- The Life of Sir Sydney H. Waterlow, Bart. (1909)
- Anglo-American Memories (1911–1912)
Notes
- ↑ They separated in 1898.
- ↑ Wright, John D. (2013). The Routledge Encyclopedia of Civil War Era Biographies. New York and London: Routledge, p. 545.
- ↑ Hochfelder, David (2012). The Telegraph in America, 1832–1920. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
- ↑ Pohanka, Brian; William C. Davis and Don Troiani (1999). Civil War Journal: The Legacies. Rutledge Hill Press.
- ↑ He was the American correspondent to The Times from 1895 until 1906.
- ↑ Pennell, E. R.; Joseph Pennell (1973). The Life of James McNeill Whistler, Vol. 2. New York: AMS Press, p. 23.
References
- Baehr, Harry W. (1972). The New York Tribune since the Civil War. New York: Octagon Books.
- Mathews, Joseph J. (1973). George W. Smalley, Forty Years a Foreign Correspondent. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
External links
- Works by George Smalley at Open Library
- Works by George Smalley at Internet Archive
- George Smalley at The National Portrait Gallery
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