The "New York Tribune" under Horace Greeley exhibited the best features of the new and semi-independent personal journalism based upon political party supporters and inspired with an enthusiasm for service that is one of the fine characteristics of the period. In editing the "New Yorker" Greeley had acquired experience in literary journalism and in political news; his "Jeffersonian" and "Log Cabin," were popular Whig campaign papers, had brought him into contact with politicians and made his reputation as an insightful, vigorous journalist. He was a staunch party man, therefore he was chosen to manage a party organ when one was needed to support the Whig administration of Harrison. The prospectus of the "New York Tribune" appeared April 3, 1841. Greeley's ambition was to make the "Tribune" not only a good party paper, but also the first paper in America, and he succeeded by imparting to it a certain idealistic character with a practical appeal that no other journal possessed. His sound judgment appeared in the unusually able staff that he gathered about him. Almost from the first, the staff that made the Tribune represented a broad catholicity of interests and tastes, in the world of thought as well as in the world of action, and a solid excellence in ability and in organization, which were largely the result of the genius of Greeley and over which he was the master spirit. It included Henry J. Raymond, who later became Greeley's rival on the "Times", George M. Snow, George William Curtis, Charles A. Dana, Bayard Taylor, George Ripley, William H. Fry, Margaret Fuller, Edmund Quincy, and Charles T. Congdon. It is easy to understand how with such a group of writers the idea of the literary newspaper, which had been alive from the beginning of the century, should have advanced well-night to its greatest perfection.