Rushmore G. Horton

{{Short description|American white supremacist (1826–1867)}}

{{use mdy dates|date=April 2025|cs1-dates=ly}}

{{use American English|date=April 2025}}

File:Van Evrie Horton & Co. publications 1866.jpg

Rushmore George Horton (1826–1867), often publishing as R. G. Horton, was an American white supremacist and pro-slavery writer and book publisher.{{Cite web |title=Rushmore G. Horton Papers |url=https://archives.nypl.org/mss/6293 |access-date=2025-04-15 |website=New York Public Library Manuscripts and Archives Division, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building}} A native of New York,{{cite web |work=New York City Marriage Records, 1829–1938 |publisher=FamilySearch |url=https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:24Z1-PF6 |title=Rushmore G. Horton and Hannah T. Smith, 17 Feb 1858}} he was business partners with John H. Van Evrie, who has been described as America's "first professional racist."{{cite book |last=Yacovone |first=Donald |title=Teaching White Supremacy: America's Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity |publisher=Pantheon Books |year=2022 |isbn=9780593316634 |location=New York |pages=76–77 |lccn=2021058205 |oclc=1289922588}} Historian Mark Neeley describes Horton as "a loyal Democratic scribbler to whom the party turned in haste in the summer of 1856 to write a campaign biography of their presidential candidate," James Buchanan.{{Cite book |last=Neely |first=Mark E. Jr. |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/9781139567213/type/book |title=Lincoln and the Democrats: The Politics of Opposition in the Civil War |date= |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2017 |isbn=978-1-139-56721-3 |edition= |series=Cambridge Essential Histories |pages=101, 105 |chapter=3. Peace, 'White Supremacy,' and the Problem of a Loyal Opposition |doi=10.1017/9781139567213.004}}

Beginning in 1857 Horton and Van Evrie co-edited the New York Day Book, later the Weekly Caucasian.{{cite news |date=September 24, 1867 |title=Deceased |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-buffalo-commercial-deceased/170347270/ |newspaper=The Buffalo Commercial |page=4 |via=Newspapers.com}} The younger Horton had replaced Nathaniel B. Stimson, who had founded the Day Book newspaper and then died at age 42. The offices of the pro-slavery Day Book were not far from the offices of Horace Greeley's anti-slavery New-York Tribune, which was located before the American Civil War in an old wooden building at the corner of Nassau and Spruce streets in New York City.{{cite news |newspaper=Hartford Courant |date=August 4, 1908 |page=16 |via=Newspapers.com |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/hartford-courant-tom-and-walt/170347489/ |title=Tom and Walt}}

Horton is the credited author of The Life and Public Services of James Buchanan, The History of the Tammany Society, and A Youth's History of the Great Civil War in the United States, from 1861–1865. In 1864, Horton was elected secretary of the Anti-Abolition State Rights Society. He died at Dobbs Ferry, New York in 1867. At least one library catalog notes that A Youth's History was written by "a sympathizer with the southern cause."{{Cite book |last=Horton |first=R. G. |url=https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/012446839 |title=A youth's history of the great Civil War in the United States, from 1861 to 1865. |date=1866 |publisher=Van Evrie, Horton & Co. |location=New York}} When a revised edition of his A Youth's History was published in 1926, the Tampa Tribune stated that, "This book merits the support of all southern people and of all interested in an authentic story of the period of the Civil War."{{cite news |newspaper=The Tampa Tribune |date=February 21, 1926 |page=103 |via=Newspapers.com |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-tampa-tribune-book-notes/170347766/ |title=Book Notes}}