Who said “Go west, young man” and Where did the phrase come from?

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Karen Hill

An Indiana journalist named John Soule (1815-1891) was the first to print the phrase, “Go west, young man” in 1851.

But New York newspaper editor Horace Greeley (1811-1872) popularized the expression until people came to think he invented it. The West, said Greeley, was the place to “build up a home and fortune.”

After the Civil War ended in 1865, many Anglo Americans heeded his call: farmers, ranchers, miners, railroad magnates, business people of every stripe.

Prosperity followed for most of them, but not for most of the region’s Mexican Americans.

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