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Markers of Distinction

Joseph Medill
1823–1899
Journalist and mayor of Chicago

Joseph Medill was born in Canada and grew up in
Ohio. He became a newspaper publisher by the
time he was 26 and owned several papers in Ohio
before moving to Chicago in 1855. That year, he
purchased an interest in the eight-year-old
Chicago Tribune.

Under Medill’s direction, the paper took a strong
stand against slavery. An ardent abolitionist, he
opposed the expansion of slavery into the western
United States, which he believed should be open to
any citizen willing to settle and farm the land.

Medill was one of the founders of the Republican Party, and he played a central role in Abraham Lincoln’s nomination for president in 1860, orchestrating demonstrations inside and outside the convention hall in Chicago and garnering support from other powerful Republicans.

Medill’s most famous editorial, written before the embers had cooled from the Great Fire of 1871, exhorted Chicagoans to “Cheer Up!,” predicting the city would rise from its ashes. Elected mayor a month later on the Fireproof Party ticket, he presided over the creation of Chicago’s “Fire limits,” a central-city area within which buildings had to be constructed of brick or stone rather than wood.

The Tribune’s rise to prominence under Medill mirrored Chicago’s growth. He took the Tribune from a small, frontier paper to a major force in American journalism and an editorial champion of Middle America.