Recollections of a Busy Life (1868)

AUTHOR: Greeley, Horace

The summary below is based on the 1873 expanded edition.

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 include farming and Temperance, and it is in the context of the latter that he also broaches the question of veganism. He reports how, at different times, he lived in boarding-houses operated on Grahamite principles. He remains convinced “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 [vegan] 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).

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 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).

Greeley's ethical understanding of the role of appetites and veganism in relation to social reform and 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 conform to his crotchets, and live on bran-bread and blue cold water (502-503).

Greeley's veganism is thus integral to the overarching, intersectional ethics of the social reformer.