Go West, young man

"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 as related to the concept of Manifest destiny.

Merritt, originally from Harpswell, Maine, completed a difficult operation on a friend of the aging statesman Daniel Webster.

Webster advised him, “Go out there, young man; go out there and behave yourself, and, free as you are from family cares, you will never regret it.” Samuel took the advice.

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.

In 1997, Wall wrote that an account of what he considered the true source of "Go West, young man" (and Greeley's disavowal of being the author of the phrase) was described in Dictionary of Quotations by Bergen Evans, published by Delacorte Press in New York in 1968 (p.