<P> "Go West, young man" is a phrase, the origin of which is often credited to the American author and newspaper editor Horace Greeley concerning America's expansion westward, related to the then - popular concept of Manifest Destiny . No one has yet proven who first used this phrase in print . </P> <P> In 2010, Timothy Hughes of "Rare & Early Newspapers" (blog) examined Greeley's writings and concluded: "Here is the Tribune of that date and I've scoured through the issue yet never found the quote . The closest I could come is in' The Homstead Law' article, page 4 column 4, where he mentioned:'...We earnestly urge upon all such to turn their faces Westward and colonize the public lands ...' . (See text image)." </P> <P> Some claim it was first stated by John Babsone Lane Soule in an 1851 editorial in the Terre Haute Express, "Go west young man, and grow up with the country"; and that Greeley later used the quote in his own editorial in 1865 . An analysis of this phrase in the 2007 Skagit River Journal concludes: "the primary - source historical record contains not a shred of evidence that Soule had anything to do with the phrase ." </P> <P> Greeley favored westward expansion . He saw the fertile farmland of the west as an ideal place for people willing to work hard for the opportunity to succeed . The phrase came to symbolize the idea that agriculture could solve many of the nation's problems of poverty and unemployment characteristic of the big cities of the East . It is one of the most commonly quoted sayings from the nineteenth century and may have had some influence on the course of American history . </P>

Who said go west young man go west